Today we sang Amazing Grace in church. This song is everywhere, and for some reason, this deeply Christian song does not offend, especially when it is played on the bagpipe. I often wonder why this song is okay, with its message of Christ's redemption blatantly simple and overt, out there for the whole world to hear. At a time when a manger scene if offensive, Amazing Grace is not.
For one thing, I think most people know the author of the song was a great sinner, almost the worst sort in the eyes of the world, a slave trader. He prospered by selling human flesh, then with the humility that comes from meeting Christ face to face, he repented, and then gave the world the gift of this deeply humble song.
To me, Amazing Grace is the anthem of the twentieth century. It is always, it seems, present at funerals, whether or not the service is for a Chistian.For no reason that I can think of from the words of the song, it is the default funeral song of the late twentieth century.
The twentieth century was the century of death. As centuries go, it outdid itself. More people died of genocide during the past 100 years than any other century. The nazis get most of the credit, for killing 6 million Jews, plus various and sundry other "undesirables."
But the communists did their part. Stalin starved millions, Pol Pot decimated his population after Vietnam, Mao followed in good suit, and the South American liberators kept up the trend.
People love to point out how many have fallen in wars of religion. The twentieth century's dead fell to atheism, and excelled all other evil at doing so.
So Amazing Grace is an appropriate song for an evil century. God still loves us after all we have done to kill the simple people he created and loves.
People are still enslaved, and we still sin, but by this slow dirgelike song, so often heard publicly, we affirm our sorrow at our sinfulness and our hope for redemption.
As a civilized people, sometimes we think we are too sophisticated to acknowledge our sinfulness. Many of express pride at our sinfulness, but deep down inside, we have heard the words of the poet. We know we have been lost and hope that we have been found.
We acknowledge our former blindness, and affirm that we see Christ now, and from now on, we hope, those who have bravely died in Christ's service did not die in vain, but that all may have the freedom to believe--once and for all.
That this song is ubiquitous almost to the point of becoming trite is ironic at a time when Western civilization is said to be in its "post Christian" period, but ironly is lost on me. I am glad to hear it so often, sung so solemnly. Perhaps there is hope for us after all. We picked a good anthem for the twentieth century.
I wonder what it will be for the twenty first?

This is the first full week of Lent. It has been wonderful to browse Facebook and note all the various ways people remember our Savior's 40 days in the wilderness and all the myriad attitudes toward the season.
Here in Colorado, it is a gloomy time of year, for us. Many days we have beautiful sunshine and brilliant natural beauty. But suddenly a cloud will descend over our slope of the mountain and obscure our usual view. Spring winds are dangerous and upsetting to one's mental attitude. Over the rest of the world, winter seems to have gone on too long. The snow is dirty and lumpy, and it reminds one of Narnia--winter without Santa.
Lent became more widely practiced as the persecution of Christians abated in the third century. Of those who believe it is unscriptural, may I dissent.
The Lord endured a 40 day fast. Therein it is scriptural. We should imitate him, although few of us could physically endure it.
Further, we don't have the luxury of being along in a desert without food or water. We are surrounded by plenty, most of us. We are located in families with friends. A true fast is pretty hard core for us.
But I do believe that abstinence and fasting are very important to spiritual formation when used with all the other tools given us for the purpose by God.
Lenten abstinence is a moment by moment decision to follow in Christ's footsteps.
It was human practice by the spiritual descendents of the apostles to institute the practice of having a church-wide fast/abstinence 40 day period on the church calendar. In that sense, practicing Lent is something that unites us as Christians. We are doing this together to strengthen our corporate faith. If we sacrifice something such as meat, alcohol or sugar as a family, we are in this together.
Naturally, a Lenten fast can deteriorate into nastiness of attitude, impatience, pride or even dishonesty if it is not accompanied by daily prayer, Bible reading and acts of mercy toward others as part of the program. I speak from experience here!
Read the daily offices faithfully, and spend as much time as possible with those on your prayer list. Seek out those in need in your community and provide for them however you can. This is a good time to clean out closets and donate to food pantries, or visit the sick and lonely in your world. Do all this with a happy smile upon your face.
Jesus tells his followers, "When you fast," not "if you fast." Then he proceeds to say we are to look as though we are making no sacrifice at all, because doing so is our reward.
Should we tell others about our sacrifices? I think it depends on one's motivation--is it bragging?--or is it sharing with another Christian who is also fasting in order to help one another?
I think the world would be a little worse for it if the practice of Lenten sacrifice passed into oblivion. It is good to question it, to dissect it, to wonder what Christ means for us to do in preparation for the observance of Easter, the most important day in our yearly calendar.
Ask your spiritual guide, ask your fellow Christians, search your own soul, and check your conscience for your motives. I hope you go for it!

What makes your life worth getting out of bed in the morning? Do you have a dread of what lies ahead, or does the idea of another day give your heart a leap of joy?
Are the challenges before you seemingly insurmountable, or have you gotten a plan to make a difference in your own situation or in the world?
I have been sick for two months, and it has been difficult to get out of bed in the morning. To tell you the truth, it is for the love of my son, to make his breakfast and help him start his day, that I manage to comb my hair and dress. I think he sees through it, I think I discourage him with my weakness, but I am giving it my best shot, I really am.
Now I am going to try to get more exercise. Today I will join the gym again and try to regain some physical strength.
Baby steps. I hope God will give me a job I can handle, so that once again I can feel the joy of a new day ahead, instead of just trying to make it through. I pray for strength. I think of others with much harder challenges and pray for them, also. May God give us all strength through his infinite love. Amen

Hurt by religion: Our mother was always such a religion rebel. She rebelled so sadly, Rosie and I instinctively knew she had been hurt by the church. She was a heretic, her beliefs so far from biblical they defined the term. But she was also a kind person whose heart always went out to people rejected by "society." She marched for cures for birth defects, and made new doll clothes for our collections each Christmas. She made holidays special and her friends and family felt loved. She prayed for the end of suffering and illness.
Yet she could not behave in church.
I have always given "organized religion" the benefit of the doubt, because the whole dang organization is composed of imperfect people.
I am pushing 60 now, and I am getting pretty tired of helping people pick up the pieces of their life when thoughtless Christians, Jews or others hurt with their words and the twist of a belief.
I am tired of justifying the tyranny of the poor by the rich, which happens in churches just like any place else.
I am thankful that my mother remained faithful to God, a creator whose work she truly appreciated, while she wandered around the faith cafeteria making selections from doctrines with her not too inadequate intellect.
I am thankful for the times I disagreed with her heresies, but understood that she agreed with Jesus Christ, that loving the poor was a lot more important than understanding the intricacies of the Trinity.
I am opening a new chapter in my spiritual life. For Christ's sake, I will still read the morning and evening offices of the Book of Common Prayer, but I am no longer seeing myself an Anglican Catholic.
For far too long I have done this in the patience of a dog learning obedience by "staying" and "waiting."
I feel young as I shoulder my Bible and loose (I use this word on purpose) the rest of the luggage.
I hope I don't hurt anyone's faith anymore. I hope with less baggage, my prayers for the healing of myself and others will just be more effective.
I am thankful for a long line of faithful family members who practiced their religion with social conscience and intelligence. I am also thankful for my mother the independent thinker, whose conscience was perhaps the best honed of all of them!

Happy Birthday to the Church. That Jewish "Feast of Weeks" which occurred fifty days after Passover each year on the Hebrew calendar found Jesus's friends all gathered together in Jerusalem awaiting further instructions from their leader.
I bet most of them thought they would see and visit with their friend and rabbi that day. Surely no one was prepared to have their hats blown off and tongues of fire on top of their heads. They didn't forsee they would be speaking in tongues, or that goofy Peter would finally attach his tongue to his heart and brain and deliver a powerful sermon that moves believers to this day.
I'd say it was a "surprise birthday party!"
Seriously, I would like to give a gift of true repentence to this party this year. Over the years as I have searched for the truth, I have made Peter's worst blunders look brilliant. I have offended people in Jesus's name for all sorts of reasons. I am truly sorry for my lack of wisdom, my narrow vision and my limited trust in God.
If Christ can use this gift, I am glad. It's probably one thing that won't ever get regifted!

I just spent one uncomfortable post-surgical night trying to find something decent to listen to on the radio. All I could find to listen to were people who could find no moral difference between the U. S. and Al Queda.
More than I have ever seen in my life, it seems that spokespeople from government and intellegentia see our country as an entity with no intrinsic moral purpose. The conflicts we find ourselves in seem to matter no more to the commentators on the radio than where the line is drawn down the middle of a bedroom shared by two selfish brothers.
Islam, the religion of peace, and Christianity apparently enjoy moral equivalence, but Judaism seems to have slipped further back in the pack as a respected religion, somewhere behind the animism that is the philosophical underpinning of the green movement. Every channel I heard, every article I read last night was no more than starkly cynical.
This is not the truth about the United States of America.
The fact is, this nation has been a unique and successful attempt for mankind to be its best.
This nation was built like a pyramid with one strong intellectual or moral value stacked on top of another.
This nation was born of the great idea that educated, free people could rule themselves. The ideas, which began with the great Greeks and Latin thinkers, were enriched by the teachings of Jesus Christ, who taught us that we are created in God's image and were charged to love our neighbors as ourselves. The Judaic God of the Word and Law allowed our thinkers to look for patterns in the universe. Science was born. Science working with the nobility of human life gave us the practice of scientific medicine and the ability to improve agriculture and manufacturing. Ideas were leading to longer lives with increased meaning. Beautiful art expressed belief in symetry and reason.
Reading the words of the founders, we are always struck by how generous they were. The shame of slavery contrasted severely with the rest of the noble ideas our ancestors had, and eventually we conquered that shame.
George Washington is not thought of as a great hero today to many people, but he is one to me. He threw away a kingship to set the course for the future where all men would become equal.
No country's founding is perfect. However, I believe this nation's founding is the noblest undertaking in the history of the world. It wasn't just the Presbyterians for the Presbyterians. Our founders stretched their hearts and minds to their very limits in the pursuit of the idea that given freedom, education and the chance to work hard, the human species could rise not to the lamentable lust for power and wealth for its own sake, but for the beautiful idea that individuals and families could select meaningful lives in the service of others or in making new and better ways to live, socially and in agriculture and in the life of the mind. The common man would not be so common any more.
It is so degrading to see our forefathers' great struggle for achievement spit upon for its shortcomings. Truly great shifts in moral thought stretched us and grew us and through great struggle and growth, we have become better people, generous to our neighbors foreign and domestic.
Our moral struggles do continue, but without the understanding of the suffering and sacrifice made by individuals for the uniquely great ideas that founded our country there is little chance for great strides in the future like the ones we have accomplished in the past.
This is Memorial Day. Toward the end of the Civil War, my grandfather's father sat by the sides of sick and dying soldiers and helped them write letters home. In his own writings, he noted how moved he had been that idealism for a better world drove simple farmers to suffer and die so that even more people could enjoy the fruits of freedom.
I heard one Baghdad chieftain's words to my son, as he translated the arabic words under a photo of this man's beautiful brown-eyed children. "These are my boys--I hope they grow up like you."
We are the good guys. The bodies lying under the crosses and stars across the vast veterans' cemeteries stand for a long, vigorous line of men and women and their families who lived and died for the greatest idea in history--that given freedom, people will do good things with it.
Honor the dead today by studying, truly trying to understand, the great ideas our loved ones have sacrificed their lives to perpetuate.
Our country is a new thing--a good thing. Study what that is, as it may be our world's one and only chance for greatness.

We just finished Armed Services Day and Memorial Day is just around the corner. This is as good a time as any to tell everyone that I am a big fan of the United States of America. I am very grateful to our people in the armed services for their dedication every day. I am especially grateful to those who have given their lives for our county.
Our family goes back to the American Revolution. We have one ancestor who spent the winter at Valley Forge. What a visionary! What a revolutionary idea! To start a new nation with ideas of liberty and personal responsibility! How exciting to have been part of it.
To read what George Washington wrote about his soldiers there that winter, it is impossible for me to fathom how miserable they must have been. They were mostly naked that cold windy winter. They were barefoot. Many deserted and I doubt if they could be blamed.
But to have stuck with it for the idea of a new way of living was to be hopeful and intelligent. Our armed forces have continued to be the best of us throughout the years.
They are us. It isn't just the "lower classes" who have no hope of a future. Many of our presidents have been enlisted soldiers or sailors or Marines. Today, the services reflect the cross section of our population. They are the brave ones of us.
I recently visited Arlington cemetary where our son is a company commander in the Old Guard. His responsibilities include caring for the 52 caisson horses who pull the coffins to the graves in that solemn place.
Each evening, when the horses are washed down, fed and put in their roomy stalls, the volunteer soldiers get to work cleaning the saddles and harness used that day. Every strap must be clean and perfect to be used to bury someone who served our country in the military services. Arlington is a place where we look at the garden of headstones to see our friends and family who died to keep us free.
All men die, says William Wallace in Braveheart, but not all men really live. To live fully is to live for an idea you are willing to give your life defending.
It is sad to lay these men and women to rest, but we can always take heart that they were willing to give their lives for a sacred ideal.
For only when we are free can we truly give our lives for our personal dreams of a better world. Only free people can worship well and love one another to the fullest extent of their potential.
Freedom is a wonderful idea and the folk who have given their lives for its expression have my prayers all the time.
This memorial day I will be thinking of all the people through the years who have served so bravely to hallow our country's grounds with their blood.
I will be thinking of their families who miss them so much and who will never be the same after their death. They are my heroes, too.
With all my heart I thank those who have gone before and those who still serve in discomfort and danger, far from their families in places we at home cannot comprehend.
Thank you, one and all. May we who benefit from your sacrifice take it seriously enough to do our job in keeping our country free.