At Home in the Tower of Song

My musical thoughts have turned back to Leonard Cohen in recent days.  I was recently lent an anthology of Leonard’s songs by a friend, Carolyn Hull-Johnston.  I have been perusing it and have been reminded of some of his wonderful songs that are not in my repertoire, as well as, surprizingly, a few of his songs that I was not familiar with – I thought I knew all his published songs.  I must say that these few are not memorable – but I guess even Leonard couldn’t be brilliant all the time or perhaps I haven’t given them a proper chance to grow on me.

As it said in his song, ‘I’m Your Man’, Leonard Cohen was my man when it came to songs that I love to play and sing. Now that the season of Easter has arrived and Lent is passed, I can report that Hallelujah is my all-time favourite song of Leonard’s – for you non-Christians, we are not to say the H word during Lent as it is a time of reflection and repentance and not celebration.  Before that it was ‘Suzanne’ that for many years was in the top spot in my Leonard Cohen hit list. 

During my personal Leonard Cohen song revival as I perused the Anthology of his songs, I woke up one morning with his song ‘Tower of Song’ in my head.  This is one of his really good ones, but I had to wonder why would my unconscious be bringing that to my awareness?  Then I remembered the great opening line of the song, “Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey.  I ache in the places where I used to play.”  As I had just marked my 77^th birthday, perhaps this was an appropriate theme for my time of life.  However, on reflection, it’s likely the unconscious didn’t want me to stop there in my exploration of the meaning of the song for me at this time.

Looking at the rest of the first verse, “and I'm crazy for love, but I'm not comin' on.  I'm just payin' my rent every day, in the tower of song.”  Perhaps the message for me right now is that my love of music and particularly his music has been on hiatus and I need to fall in love with it again to pay my rent in the Tower of Song.  Something for me to consider.

That first line of the song, “Well, my friends are gone and my hair is grey.  I ache in the places where I used to play.”  It is one of Leonard’s many great lines from his songs which resonate with me and with many of his fans.  I think of the line, “Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”  His opening verse from ‘Passing Through’ sums up the message of Jesus Christ for me:

I saw Jesus on the cross on a hill called Calvary

"Do you hate mankind for what they done to you?"

He said, "Talk of love not hate, things to do, it's getting late

I've so little time and I'm only passin' through."

 

There is that hope in life that you will be able to say for the bottom of your heart that someone or something will, “dance me to the end of love.”  Or you will know what it means to go to your depth, “a thousand kisses deep.” You may have had the experience of someone bringing you, “tea and oranges all the way from China.”  But we all know that in the end, “there ain’t no cure, there ain’t no cure for love.” 

In the end, “I have tried in my way to be free.”  However, I have found it is really not something that is easy.  Perhaps I do, “want it darker” as Leonard says.

In any case, I’m sure you Leonard Cohen fans have your own experience of listening to and singing his songs.  I will keep searching for that, “secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord.”  If you aren’t a fan, I invite you to listen to a few of his songs and see if they resonate with you.  I know his voice is an acquired taste, but he really had the gift, “of a golden voice.”  Yes, I do really care for music.  Leonard did get me singing and I hope I have more songs to sing in the years left to me.  May you be blessed to visit the Tower of Song many times in your life.

Love Your Enemies? – Get Real!

As Lent has ended and we are approaching Easter, the commandment of Jesus that we should love our neighbours and, yes, our enemies, seems to loom very large on my horizon.  The apparent defeat of the Good Friday Passion and the triumph of the Resurrection put this commandment into focus.  Jesus was able to ask his heavenly Father to forgive those who were executing him so violently.  He didn't say that he loved them, but I must conclude that he did love them.  This begs the question, is it possible for us to actually do the same and love our enemies?  I don’t know about you, but it seems almost  impossible for me.

So, I want to delve into this commandment which is seemingly impossible to keep.  Fortunately, I have had access to a few reflections which I have found helpful in exploring this conundrum.  First, there is the perspective of Rabbi Shai Held; author of Judaism is About Love.  He makes the helpful clarification that love is not a feeling - rather it is a disposition:

I can have a disposition to love, but if you actually ask me what I’m feeling right now, what I’m feeling is grumpy and heartbroken. Right. When people talk about, you know, the spiritual life being built on a feeling, that’s by definition a dead end because feelings are fleeting. You can’t have any feeling … no one feels love all the time. 

The understanding or belief that love is a feeling is, I believe, generally a widely accepted one.  However, to realize that you can love someone and not feel warm and fuzzy to them all, or even most of the time, is very helpful. 

The next perspective on love that is a helpful clarification is that love is not in opposition to justice. Zoe Matties notes:

Dr. Cornel West speaking at the University of Winnipeg on the power of love in the face of great evil. One line from his impassioned lecture sticks with me to this day: “justice is what love looks like in public.”   

It is a common misconception that forgiveness – which is intricately bound up in loving someone – means that the person being forgiven an offence avoids the consequences of their actions.  Matties expounds on this concept quoting Saint Augustine, “Hope has two lovely daughters, Anger and Courage. Anger so that what cannot be, may not be, and courage, so that what must be, will be.” Following on this she quotes theologian Dorothee Soelle, “Loving our enemies is impossible if we do not first name our enemies and tell the truth about the injustices we see.”

Finally, I will close with one of the Daily Words from the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE):

Abide: Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Jesus’ love is such that he willingly lays down his life for us. As we turn our hearts and minds to Holy Week, let us choose to abide in that love, a love that lays itself down, not to conquer empires, but to conquer death. Br. Jamie Nelson, SSJE

Abiding in, or having a disposition of love, seems to me to be a way of living that I can make an effort to attempt.  May you be blessed this week and always.  

 

 

The Truth in Miracles

 

The Gospel readings for the last two weeks recount two of the signs in the Gospel of John.  John’s Gospel has seven signs or miracles performed by Jesus.  The first is the great one for any wine lover, when Jesus changes the water into wine at a wedding when the host had done the unforgiveable and run out of wine.  The last sign, and last week’s Gospel, was the raising Lazarus from the dead.

The miracles recorded in the bible, can be a test of faith for Christian believers and a reason that many people have in not being able to believe the word of God presented in the bible.  It is, I believe, a key to understanding the relationship between God and humans – between the Divine and the human. 

Catholic biblical scholar Murray Watson gives a continuum of possibilities in how to understand the inspired nature of the relationship between the Divine and the Human.    

 

 

  

 It struck me that this is a good illustration of the challenge that miracles bring to people in our culture today.  The belief in the part which God plays in the world relates directly to how miracles are understood and accepted or not accepted by people.  On the one end of the continuum, the stories of miracles in the Old and New Testaments in the bible are actual, literal accounts of the events.  On the other end they are made up stories which have no validity as factual accounts of actual events.

To illustrate, how do you understand the account of the flood in Genesis in which God told Noah to build an arc to hold a pair of every kind of animal to enable them to survive the flood which God sent upon the face of the earth?  Whether you believe that this actually happened as recorded in the Book of Genesis or was just a “myth” i.e., it didn’t happen, can create an inseparable barrier to people exploring with each other how God is working in their lives today. 

In my view, there is little to be gained by arguing over the details of this account or other accounts of miracles in the bible.  If we can put aside the issue of the historical nature of the event, and whether the details are historical facts, we are much more likely to have a meaningful discussion of how God in working in our lives today.  Rather than argue over the truth of the facts of the case, we can explore the capital ‘T’ Truth of how God was operating in the lives of the people who wrote down the account and explore that Truth in our lives today.

For me, the story of the flood shows that God’s creation is redeemable regardless of how fallen the world seems to be.  God can and does work through individuals who can work to redeem the world against impossible odds.  That is certainly applicable to the world today as we see the challenges that are facing the world from pandemics, to an outbreak of conflict between the Israeli and Palestine, and now the war between United States and Iran - not to mention the chasm that exists between political parties in our neighbour to the south.  To me, it doesn’t matter whether or not a person named Noah existed and whether or not he built an arc that held all those animals.  The Truth is that God has and does work through people to bring about the salvation of the world.  We can have hope in that and not give into despair when we read today’s news.

Blessings on your journey and may you know the Truth of God in your life.

Having Eyes to See

I had cataract surgery about a month ago.  It has been very successful.  I now have 20/20 vision in both eyes.    I have been wearing glasses since I was about 7 years old and I couldn’t see much without my glasses.  They were the first thing I reached for after getting out of bed in the morning and took them off when I went to bed at night.  I still require reading glasses, however, it's a different world out there and I see it with new eyes.

I had the opportunity to preach on Sunday and, coincidentally, last Sunday’s Gospel reading was John 9: 1-14.  This is the account of Jesus giving sight to the man born blind at birth.  The Gospel reading has taken on a new meaning for me from the many times I read it previously.  I now see it with new eyes.  I was certainly not blind before the surgery, but it is a whole new world out there for me to take in.

I have had many favourite singers in my life – favouring songs by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchel aPeter Paul and Mary, nd similar singers – one of my favourite songs for a long time has been one by Leonard Cohen or St. Leonard of Song as I like to call him.  You may know the one that begins with an H but I can’t say the title because we are in Lent.  However, I think I have a new favourite

I can see clearly now the rain is gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day
It's gonna be a bright, bright sun shiny day

So, this Gospel reading is an account of a blind man receiving his sight – a miracle performed by Jesus.  It was a not just any old miracle – the man was blind all his life – he was born blind.  This was undoubtedly seen as a miracle by the people in the account, “Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind.”  This is wonderful for the man who now could see for the first time.  The story might have ended there if it was a fairy tale – now that he could see, he found his princess and they lived happily every after.  But stories of the people of God in the bible never seem to be that simple.  No, in his new life, in which he is able to see, he is caught up in the midst of quarrels and disagreements and schisms in Israel at that time.

The man who was blind, now could see.  However, he was not the only one in this Gospel who was blind.  There are many in the story who are blind and remain that way.  First, we have the neighbours who don’t believe what they see - they can’t believe their lying eyes – “Some said, This is he: others said, He is like him: but he said, I am he.”

Next, we have the Pharisees – you can always depend on them not to see what is before their eyes.  This could not be a miracle because Jesus broke the rules and healed on the Sabbath.  Some one who is a sinner could not perform God’s work.  Then there were others who believed the man was a fraud – he had not actually been blind. 

Then we had the man’s parents.  They were blinded by fear. They were afraid to acknowledge Jesus as the one who performed this wonderful thing for their son:

His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. 23Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.”

Finally, we again have the wilful blindness of the Pharisees.  They completely reject the man who had been given his sight.  They can’t believe what they have seen, “They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.” 

So, we can see for this Gospel, that there are many ways in which we can be blind – turn a blind eye to how God is working in the lives of these people.  It can happen through physical blindness – but more to the point it can happen because of disbelief, or fear, or denial, or doubt and so on.  The question for us today is, how are we blind – how do we turn a blind eye to where God is in our lives?

It is a challenge for us and for many Christians to actually see and hear what God is doing in our lives and in the world.  As with those gathered in our Gospel reading – the formerly blind man, the family, the neighbours, the Pharisees – we are blind or turn a blind eye to God acting in the world and in our lives.  We may see where God is calling us but, like the parents of the blind man, be afraid to respond to what we see. 

We may be like the Pharisees – yes, those enemies of Jesus – and believe that God could not be doing because God is using a sinner.  We may be stuck in our old ways and believe those ways are right and God could not be calling us to be a church in different ways. 

There is no question that to follow the example of Jesus – to hear and truly believe his teaching, to love one another as he loves us, is no easy thing – to put it mildly.  But as they say the journey begins with the first step.  One way that you can be on that journey is to recognize God’s presence in your lives right now.  God is present to us and offers us the opportunity to be on that journey.  I invite you to reflect on how the Triune God is present in your lives now.  It may be in the wonders of God’ creation – in the great outdoors.  It may be in music.  It may be in gathering to study holy scripture.  It may be helping with the community dinner.  It may be in worship and being part of gathering in the name of Jesus Christ – it only takes two or three gathered together. 

Once you identify that, see if you can deepen that relationship with God but continuing whatever it is and acknowledge how God is present in your life and give thanks to God regularly and often.  It may also mean trying new ways and seeing if you can identify God’s presence in new ways.  I have never been one who finds God’s presence in the midst of nature. 

I don’t do that naturally.  However, I have been enjoying being part of the Holy Strollers and walking with others in the great outdoors that God has created.  I am beginning to find God’s presence in those walks.  So, I invite you to try something new and see if you can identify God’s presence in a new way.

A wise person once said, give thanks to God in all things.  I would say, give thanks to God in as many ways as it is possible for you.  That would be a step on the journey that Jesus calls us to be on as Christians.  Then we will have eyes to see and ears to hear more fully God’s presence in our lives.  Something to consider on our journey.  

 

COVID Rears its Ugly Head

I can hear in my head the theme music for the movie Jaws:  duunnn dunnn… duuuunnnn duun…

Well, I can confirm that it is not necessarily safe to go into – well in this case not the water – but places where people gather – like churches – if you let your guard down about the reality of COVID.  I can hear the murmurs – COVID?! – that’s no longer a thing, is it?  After all, we have the vaccine for COVID and there are no reports in media or government press releases about COVID outbreaks, are there?

Well, let me assure you, or perhaps scare you, that COVID still is with us.  My wife Lorna came down with COVID after contact with someone – not quite sure who – in our church a week ago.  You know, church is where two or three or more are gathered in the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Well, that’s just it, we are called as Christians to gather together.  That means if someone has symptoms of COVID and joins the gathering anyway or perhaps has no symptoms – they will likely infect others.  Our collective memories of COVID and the pandemic and all that we had to do, such as masking and hand washing and getting vaccinated have faded as time has passed.

Lorna came down with symptoms much like those of a cold – sniffles, cough, fever, and feeling lousy etc.  Due to unrelenting brain fog (her words), she suspected that it was more than a cold and dug out an old COVID test kit and, sure enough, the two lines appeared showing she tested positive for COVID – not a good thing in this case where you want to see a negative result. 

Now Lorna and I are fully up to date on our vaccinations.  Being vaccinated does not make you immune but will just lessen the severity of the symptoms.  I am symptom-free at this point and may have escaped.  Perhaps as result of being a special person; actually, just a matter of good luck.  However, that doesn’t mean I am free of COVID and have been lying low until I get a test kit and check it out.  These are not as readily available as they were at the height of the pandemic. 

There is also conflicting information online at government websites.  One site I checked said that if you are symptom-free you don’t have to isolate, but others say you should isolate if you are in contact with an infected person. 

We both stayed home from church last Sunday.  We have heard of a number of people with symptoms who have tested positive or suspect they have COVID - there may be more who are infectious but don’t know they are.  Our church – like many – has a demographic that skews to the older age – so they are in the vulnerable category, as Lorna and I are, and may be susceptible to symptoms that are more serious.  I believe it is a good idea that organizations where people congregate have policies that reinforce the necessity for people to stay home if they have symptoms that could mean they are infectious.  Also reinforcing rules around hand-sanitizing and providing hand sanitizing gel are good ideas.  We must not let our collective and individual guards down. 

Remember, the water may look safe – but who knows what lurks beneath the surface.  Blessings indeed. 

So Many 40’s

We are in the midst of the season of Lent in the Christian calendar.  Lent is forty days long, excluding Sundays which are of Lent but not in Lent.  Last Sunday was the second Sunday of Lent.  I have been thinking of the fact that the number forty (40) occurs frequently in the bible.  If you are familiar with the bible, I’m sure you can think of some of the times when this happens.  Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist.  It rained for 40 days and nights during the flood which God sent to cover the earth.  The Israelites were in the wilderness for 40 years after escaping from slavery in Egypt.  Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days and night in his encounter with YHWH (God).    That is just a few of the better-known examples of the number 40 occurring in the bible.  However, if we take a bit of a dive into this, we will find there are many more – including some that are rather obscure e.g. the Egyptians spent 40 days embalming the body of Jacob – how’s that for obscure.   

So, is this just a coincidence – or is there a deeper meaning in the number 40 than just a measurement of mathematics or a length of time?  Well, to explore this I did what most people would do these days, I started with a question to AI.  I found out that the number 40 occurs 146 times in the Old Testament and New Testament.  This is the type of question that AI is good at answering. As noted above, there are occurrences where the number seems to be significant and others where it is not so much.

Here’s a few more examples:

·         Jesus appeared to his disciples for 40 days between his resurrection and ascension

·         Elijah traveled 40 days and 40 nights without food to Mount Horeb

·         The first three kings of Israel—Saul, David, and Solomon—each reigned for 40 years

·         Several judges, including Othniel, Deborah, Barak, and Eli, served for 40 years.

·         The holy of holies in the Temple was 40 cubits long 

·         Mosaic Law allowed a maximum of 40 lashes (stripes) for a guilty person

·         Goliath taunted the army of Israel for 40 days before David defeated him

·         The prophet Jonah warned that Nineveh would be destroyed in 40 days

I will leave it to you to decide if the examples are significant or not – for me some are and some don’t seem to be.  However, taking the big picture view, it seems to me that 40 has a significance beyond just its use as a measurement or in counting.  Looking at the symbolic meaning of the number, we find that 40 can symbolize completion.  Forty can be used to represent a complete generation.  Turning to another source for symbols, the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols states, “the number forty marks the completion of a cycle, ending in a radical change or a passage to a fresh level of activity or of living.”  Symbols can be difficult to tie down their meaning.  However, it does give us a different way of looking at the biblical stories.  For me, the 40 in those stories don’t as much mean a measurement but, rather, can represent the story of completion.  Whether the Israelites were actually in the wilderness for 40 years, rather it was a completion of their time of preparation for entering into the Promised Land to fulfill the promise that God had made to Moses. In the bigger picture, we are not ready to move to the next phase of something until we have completed the current stage we are living in.  That’s why we are not born fully formed – like Athena who came fully formed out of Zeus’ forehead.  We need to grow through the stages of life from infancy to childhood to adult and on.  Hopefully we will continue growing throughout our lives.

Something to consider and pray about in Lent.  May your Lent be a blessed one.  

 

The Two Adams

Recently, I heard an interview with New York Times Columnist David Brooks in which he referred to the idea of two Adams in the biblical stories of creation.  He noted how the two stories of creation in the book of Genesis give a very different picture of Adam and how humankind is still living out those different models of humankind.  Brooks noted that this idea was not original to him and it is one that I had not heard of before but on reflection it contains a great deal of truth.

First, let’s review what Genesis tells us about creation.  There are two accounts of God creating the world – the first in chapter 1, and the second in chapter 2, which, in my edition of the bible (the NRSV) is captioned ‘another account of creation’.  In both accounts, God creates humankind.  However, the accounts are very different for how those humans live after the creation.  In the first account, God creates humans in God’s image, male and female God created them.  In the second account, God creates ‘the man’ (Adam) from the dust of the ground – and, of course, later creates the first woman from the man’s rib. 

That is very different, however, the differences only get even more different.  In the first account, God gives Adam (and Eve actually) dominion over the earth, with the charge that they should be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over everything that God has created:

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1: 28)

In the second account of creation, God places the human couple in the Garden of Eden – first the Adam alone but then creating Eve as his companion, “And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” (Genesis 2: 15) 

The first account is one of domination.  Adam – humankind is to subdue the earth and all that is in it.  The world is to be used for humankind’s purposes.  Humans have been very good at this and continue to do it today.  We find new and improved ways of using the resources – both animal, vegetable and mineral – unfortunately, often to the detriment of the world God has created.  Admittedly, there have been benefits as well as detriments, but we are facing an ecological disaster of – well – biblical proportions, if we continue on the course we have set in conjunction with the first Adam.

We have the other option - humans (Adam and Eve) who were set in paradise and lived in harmony with nature.  That has not gone nearly as well as fulfilling the first account.  I must be honest and admit that I don’t see how that vision of humankind could be brought about in this world as it stands now.  We were, after all, expelled from paradise.  The best we can do is to take steps – small ones and perhaps not so small ones – to use that second vision of creation as a guide to how we should be living in harmony with creation.    That is something to consider in this season of Lent.