Grace in the pebbles

“You have shaken the earth and split it open; repair the cracks in it, for it totters…”Psalm 60:2 

“After this, Jesus and his disciples went into the Judean countryside, and he spent some time there with them and baptized…” John 3:22

Photo by Lori Korleski Richardson

During Lent, I have taken to reading the psalms in the evening. Psalm 60 came as the lectionary assignment for last night, full of earthquakes, armies, enemies and God’s wrath. Not exactly comforting bedtime reading.

This morning’s reading from John 3:22-36 brings calm. Jesus is in the countryside, teaching his disciples and baptizing. A side discussion ensues about baptism and how it is a gift of the spirit. It is the only suggestion in any of the gospels that Jesus himself might have been baptizing people, though a few lines later the gospel writer says it is the disciples – not Jesus – who are performing the baptisms.

A couple of years ago, Lori and I traveled to the Judean countryside for a few days. In the morning I sat beside the Sea of Galilee and watched the sun rise. The beach was thick with stones and pebbles, the rubble from the earth split open from centuries of earthquakes and floods. I could easily imagine Jesus sitting on this shoreline, praying as the sun came up.

Nearby were olive groves, and it was easy for me to imagine Jesus and his disciples finding shade there at the noonday. No words were necessary for my imaginings.

I brought back a few olive leaves from the groves, and pressed them in my prayer book. I also brought back a pocketful of pebbles from the shore of the Sea of Galilee. I keep them in an olive wood bowl near my favorite chair at home.

Lately I hold one of the pebbles during my morning prayers. A few days ago, as I held the smallest of pebbles, I heard a small still voice telling me to look for the small pebbles of grace in my day.

I leave you with this today: Hold a pebble in your hand. Find the grace that comes your way. It might be very small, and unexpected. It might be a smooth or rough. But that pebble is a blessing that is yours to keep forever.

Also from today's readings. . .

So now, O Israel, what does the Lord your God require of you? Only to fear the Lord your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to keep the commandments of the Lord your God and his decrees that I am commanding you today, for your own well-being. Although heaven and the heaven of heavens belong to the Lord your God, the earth with all that is in it, yet the Lord set his heart in love on your ancestors alone and chose you, their descendants after them, out of all the peoples, as it is today.

Circumcise, then, the foreskin of your heart, and do not be stubborn any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship.

Deuteronomy 10:12-20

By James Richardson, Fiat Lux

The Book of Ruth: tears, love, grace and friendship

This week we've been immersed in the Book of Ruth in the Daily Office readings, and I am much engrossed in the story.

I recall from my seminary education that it was dryly put that Ruth is in the Hebrew Scriptures primarily as a prequel to the King David saga and to show his mixed pedigree.

All that may be true, but I am struck by Ruth's courage, the power of friendship, and the humility of servanthood. There is pain and tears, joy and grace lacing throughout the Book of Ruth.

Many years ago Lori and I led our youth group on a pilgrimage (one of five) to an Indian reservation, joining youth groups from four or five other churches. One evening the teens were asked to do a skit on a book of the Bible, and I recall one of the groups picked the Book of Ruth. Their enactment had humor and teenage goofiness, but it also had a memorable underlying poignancy and humility as these young adults recognized that they were foreigners on the reservation and the recipients of hospitality from people not their kin.

I looked around the internet to see if I could find a poem about Ruth, and I found this one from Jewish Heritage Online Magazine. Hope you enjoy:

The Book of Ruth and Naomi
By Marge Piercy

When you pick up the Tanakh and read
the Book of Ruth, it is a shock
how little it resembles memory.
It's concerned with inheritance,
lands, men's names, how women
must wiggle and wobble to live.

Yet women have kept it dear
for the beloved elder who
cherished Ruth, more friend than
daughter. Daughters leave. Ruth
brought even the baby she made
with Boaz home as a gift.

Where you go, I will go too,
your people shall be my people,
I will be a Jew for you,
for what is yours I will love
as I love you, oh Naomi
my mother, my sister, my heart.

Show me a woman who does not dream
a double, heart's twin, a sister
of the mind in whose ear she can whisper,
whose hair she can braid as her life
twists its pleasure and pain and shame.
Show me a woman who does not hide
in the locket of bone that deep
eye beam of fiercely gentle love
she had once from mother, daughter,
sister; once like a warm moon
that radiance aligned the tides
of her blood into potent order.

At the season of first fruits, we recall
two travellers, co-conspirators, scavengers
making do with leftovers and mill ends,
whose friendship was stronger than fear,
stronger than hunger, who walked together,
the road of shards, hands joined.

Marge Piercy's poem "The Book of Ruth and Naomi" first appeared in Mars and Her Children (Knopf, 1992).

Art by Pomegranate Studios. Translation of the Hebrew: "I will lodge where you lodge; ...your people are my people, and your G-d is my G-d."

Grape harvest, difficult terrain, being in a luminous world

Where I come from, Northern California, the grape harvest will soon be underway. The vintage in Napa Valley this year is said to be "tricky" because of cool weather and a lack of rain.

There are quite a few wineries in this part of Virginia, and anyone who can grow decent grapes in this climate gets my deepest respect. I had a glass of a Cabernet Franc the other night with grapes grown at Monticello, and it was fruity and pleasant.

The grape harvest represents the livelihoods of thousands of people, from immigrant grape pickers to wine moguls, and many people in between. Image aside, not everyone gets rich off wine.

Wine, of course, is rich with symbols. Drops of wine are used at Passover to symbolize the passage from captivity to freedom. Jesus at the Last Supper asks us to remember him in the cup wine he shares with his disciples. When we drink of the cup, the memory of that supper long ago becomes our memory. We drink deeply of God's saving grace. We drink deeply of life.

Our friend Karen from Tennessee sent this poem the other day. I like it a lot.

The Cornucopia

By Arthur Sze

Grapes grow up a difficult and
sloped terrain. A soft line of poplars
shimmer in the disappearing light.
At midnight, the poor move
into the train stations of Italy ,
spread out blankets for the children,
and pretend to the police they have tickets
and are waiting for a train.

The statue of Bacchus is a contrast
with his right hand holding a shallow but
wine-brimming cup. His left hand
reaches easily into the cornucopia
where grapes ripen and burst open.
It is a vivid dream: to wake
from the statue's grace and life force
to the suffering in the streets.

But the truth is the cornucopia
is open to all who are alive,
who look and feel the world in
its pristine beauty -- as a dragonfly
hovering in the sunlight over clear
water; and who feel the world
as a luminous world -- as green plankton
drifting at night in the sea.

My photos, Napa Valley, June 2010

Charles Darwin and God's toolbox

Charles Darwin and the Church don't seem to mix, or so it seems in our day. In fact, this coming Sunday is "Evolution Sunday" in many churches, and today we celebrate his 200th birthday. And it may interest you to know that his theory is embraced as evidence of "natural law" in Catholic (Big C) theology. Even many of the original fundamentalists were fine with evolution because, they believed, it demonstrated God's tool box at work in the world. The downside is that Darwin was employed in the early 20th century to support so-called "Social Darwinism" theories of race and class. 

So what happened to Darwin in our time? Why the Christian attack? Right-wing political agendas found traction in attacking evolution (recall the Republican presidential primary candidates for President last year who all raised their hands when asked if they did not "believe" in evolution). Meanwhile, Christian literalists felt they had to defend the absolute inherency of the Bible, and if the Genesis story of creation couldn't hold up as science then the rest of the Bible would collapse. Personally, I find that a sad one-dimensional reading of the Bible that seems to slice God's grace from the pages.

Denis Alexander, writing this morning for Ekklessia, has a good analysis of the contemporary attack on Darwin:

One of the deep mysteries of the early 21st century is why one set of Christians go round churches trying to persuade another set of Christians to reject the theory of evolution. This is in a world of incalculable need, both material and spiritual. Trying to persuade Christians to disbelieve Darwinism soaks up huge resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

To read the full article, go HERE.

I must admit my own fascination with evolution (and anyone who wants to fund me for a trip to the Galapagos you will have my eternal gratitude). Years ago I read The Voyage of the Beagle, Darwin's book on his scientific discoveries in the Galapagos. His book is one of the great adventure stories of all time, and that helped lead me to become an anthropology major at UCLA. I studied during a time when Louis and Mary Leakey were making their amazing finds at Olduvia Gorge, and Donald Johanson and Timothy White not long after discovered the fossil dubbed "Lucy" in Ethiopia which transformed the diagram of human lineage. To my delight I got to hear Louis Leakey and Johansen  lecture, and meet them both.

The story of evolution has only gotten more fascinating as scientists make new discoveries and sort out the mechanisms of evolution (a good deal more complicated that Darwin dreamed). The most remarkable discoveries of recent years aren't just fossils, but in the maps of human genetics. For me, the brilliance of God's creation shines through in each discovery. And I've always thought it somehow fittingly perfect that Timothy White's dating lab is located in the basement of my seminary in Berkeley, the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. 

There is a caution in this: climate change. If evolution demonstrates anything it is that no species has a guaranteed existence on earth. Our apathy over global warming could be our undoing. Our evolutionary line is at risk as is every species alive today. Our existence depends on our ability to repair this good Earth, and we need not - and cannot - wait until we iron out every question about evolution or how we interpret the Bible.