Tribal Church

Presbyterian News Services issued a report about Spiritual But Not Religious (shortened to SBNR) people, based on the research of Linda Mercandante, a minister who teaches at a Methodist Theological School in Ohio.

There are three points that I would like to discuss. First, the article states:

One of the common assumptions — that many spiritual but not religious people had bad experiences in the church — is simply not true, Mercandante said. “I was surprised, but there was very minimal reporting by people that they had been hurt in or by the church.”

I’m a person who has written about the pain that church has caused, and I do hope that this point is not completely disregarded. As a pastor, I have heard story after story of mistreatment in congregations. It is there and I hope that we don’t ignore it.

Second, Mercandante points out that people react against stereotypes of the church like:

• churches claim to “exclusive truthfulness — that they have a corner on the truth market”;
• churches demand that personal beliefs be abdicated;
• churches demand conformity to a “corporate mentality”;
• joining a church means a loss of personal integrity;
• churches demand commitment “to things that have no meaning”’
• churches demand commitment to disagreeable codes of conduct; and
• churches profess arbitrary or implausible beliefs.

“I heard the same arguments over and over again,” Mercadante said of her research. “I don’t know where this script comes from — no one knows any real churches that fit this profile or stereotype.”

Let me explain where the script comes from. They are describing many Evangelical/ conservative congregations in our country. Since the WASPs left power forty years ago, our political power and media coverage has highlighted Evangelical congregations as the norm in our society. And many of them (not all, of course) live up to the stereotype perfectly.

It does not describe many mainline congregations, but that has not been the predominate religious voice in our country for a couple of decades now.

Third, Mercandante highlights Wuthnow’s important research, highlighting our assumption that people will join the church after they get married and have children. But then showing the realities of many Americans:

• delayed marriage (Americans are marrying at a later age, on average) and increased divorce rates;
• fewer children born later in their parents life;
• less job security, therefore greater financial insecurity, making commitment less likely;
• higher levels of education, which decreases “unquestioned belief”;
• “loosening relationships,” resulting in less community involvement;
• Globalization, producing less homogeneity and greater diversity; and
• the “information explosion,” which creates “broader spiritual horizons and therefore looser religious identification.”

“I think it’s clear that much of the problem organized religion faces today is not really the church’s fault,” Mercadente said.

This is the most important piece I think that we need to look at.

Of course it is our fault. We have expected people to become married, with children, secure, financially stable, and (sometimes even) white before they can be welcome in our churches. We have not reached out to the world around us, we have expected people to become something that they are not before they enter our doors.

That’s like saying it’s not GM’s fault that they are going under, even though they kept pushing SUVs when our planet was clearly in trouble. It’s like saying it’s not the McCain campaign’s fault that they lost the election, even though they were talking about the “real America” when most Americans are urban and diverse. That’s like saying it’s not the mortgage companies fault, even though they were lending huge amounts of money, with ballooning payments to people they knew could not pay it back.

When we cannot face the realities around us, it is our fault.

I have great hope for our congregations. But…let’s not let ourselves off the hook too easily. We have much to confess before we can change our ways.

What do you think? Do you agree with Mercandante’s research? Would you want her to know about people who are SBNR?

10 Comments »

Here is a portion of an article I wrote for the LifeLong Faith Journal. It was inspired by a visit that Gus and Susan Schumacher made to our Sunday Night Coffehouse.

As we gather to worship on Sunday morning at Western Church, we have a sense that God empowers us to work for a just and compassionate society, and we try to imagine small ways in which we can help. Much of what Western has done has been in the area of food. It makes sense. After all, the good feast is central to our service, and we gather to receive the Eucharist in the sanctuary, we often remind ourselves that the Communion table is connected to the tables in our church basement, where homeless men and women receive a hot, nutritious breakfast.

Our worship often leads us to think about big issues in our congregation, for example:

•Soaring oil prices mean escalating food costs. A strain on our resources has contributed to rising costs of petroleum and petroleum-based fertilizers. The gas hike has exacerbated the escalating cost of food nationally and the food crisis globally.

•Transporting food contributes to environmental damage. With the environmental harm that carbon emissions cause and the growing scarcity of resources due to the economic development of China and India, we realize that we will need to think differently about how we grow and transport food. We will need to develop markets for diverse, local food.

•People in poverty often do not have access to healthier food. People who are in difficult financial situations (for example, the elderly, the homeless, those on food stamps and WIC) often buy calorie dense food, because it is cheaper and it satisfies hunger quickly. Food pantries are filled with unhealthy alternatives; in contrast, fruit and organic meat is expensive to purchase.

•Eating poorly affects our health, as a nation. The low cost and availability of calorie dense food presents an incentive to eat more junk food, and it causes more health problems in our country in the long run, such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. The risk of diabetes is a particular danger for children.

These are major issues of our time, giant forces that affect our global environment, national landscape, and personal health. Yet these global issues often have local solutions, and innovative communities of faith are in a perfect position to take on some of these sizeable problems, in very small ways.

At Western, the table is central to our worship and our work, so feeding people is at the core of our spiritual practice, and we have been open to innovation as we do it. There are many things that we have done to educate and form our congregation around the importance of food, and they involve two initiatives: we organized a farmers market in our neighborhood and started a feeding program for the homeless.

•We helped to revive the farmers’ market in our neighborhood. Churches and other faith communities are often in the perfect situation to begin farmers’ markets because we often have the available parking lots and space. The Fresh Farm Market in Foggy Bottom relies on our parking garage to store tents and signs.

How could something as simple as a farmer’s market affect big issues like the environment, the food shortage, and our health?

Farmer’s markets will be crucial in the years to come, as they allow for a space where local agriculture can be bought and sold. When we nurture our relationships with local food sources, we help to give farmers a market and an impetus to diversify their crops, and we decrease our dependence on petroleum.

Furthermore, many farmers’ markets can become participants with government programs so that recipients of food stamps and WIC can receive checks to use to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables. In addition, seniors who need assistance also have incentives to shop at the markets.

In these tough economic times, fruits and vegetables are often the first thing that a financially-strapped family has to cross off of their grocery list, but farmer’s markets create a place where they can receive fresh produce, that has been picked that morning, creating a possibility and even incentives for buying healthy food.

All of this brings us to another innovative thing that Western did, twenty-five years ago: we helped to create Miriam’s Kitchen.

•We started a feeding program for the homeless men and women in our city. Miriam’s Kitchen is housed in the basement of our church, and our services have grown so that we now feed over 200 clients each weekday morning. We not only serve them breakfast, but the staff at Miriam’s is committed to assisting their guests with a wide array of social services.

It is not like any other feeding program in which I have been involved, because the chef at Miriam’s, Steve Badt, is committed to providing the most nutritious meals that we can. Each morning, the menu includes vegetables that are not often seen on the average American’s breakfast table, but they are essential to a healthy diet. Steve knows that a meal at Miriam’s may be the only one a client might receive that day, so he makes sure that it has the nutritional value that will get that guest through the next twenty-four hours.

Just as the cost of food increases on our grocery shelves, the food line item in Miriam’s budget also rises. In the last couple of years, the food costs at Miriam’s have increased by 50 percent. That is where the two initiatives, the farmers’ market and the breakfast program, work together.

Not only do farmers’ markets help women, infants, children, and the elderly have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, but many farmers are committed to helping the homeless as well. One farmer told me, “It only makes sense to give the left-over produce to people who need it. If I sell at a market that isn’t contributing to a soup kitchen or a food bank, then I make sure I find an agency that we can contribute to.”

At Western, we have seen the generosity of farmers first-hand. Each Wednesday evening, when the farmers are packing up, members of our congregation go gleaning. Participating in a spiritual tradition as old as the days of Ruth and Boaz, they fill their baskets with leftover items that the farmers will not be able to sell at the next market. The members then take those items to Miriam’s Kitchen. Through the generosity of the farmers, our members collected about $15,000 worth of produce last year.

Gleaning after markets is not the only way that this works. Families of all ages also drive out to farms in Virginia and glean the orchards and fields, so they can carry the produce back to Miriam’s.

It’s clear in our spiritual community that most people do not attend Western in order to worship for one hour. We are reminded that our service extends beyond our walls. We are called by God to look at big issues and to find innovate, local ways to address them.

Photo by Monitorpop

2 Comments »

I was back in action yesterday, leading worship at Western. And it was great to be there. I had not been to a service all month, so it felt really, really good.  

After the service, we ended up going out to eat. And for dinner, my husband and I were still too tired to cook and clean, so we grabbed a couple of sandwiches. This is how it often goes on Sundays (and on Easter, and on Christmas Eve), with two pastors in the family. There’s no one at home, making sure the roast comes out of the oven on time. We get so busy preparing for services, then we get the house, and realize that we have nothing to eat. As an introvert, I love people, but it’s exhausting for me to be in a crowd. On Sunday, I usually just want to (1) read and (2) nap.

I’m making this public confession because I realized this morning that my Sabbath-keeping is all messed up. Taking that particular, holy time has always meant worshiping and resting, but it’s also supposed to mean refraining from consumption. It’s not just rest for us, but rest for the earth.

But the truth is, I probably consume more on Sunday than any other day. It’s a practice that I have neglected, and yet we know that it would be quite good for the environment if all the Christian in our country began to refrain from consumption on our day of rest.

Sadly, for me, rest often means consumption. If my husband and I are not consuming, we’re cooking and doing dishes. I wonder if women in traditional family roles have always had this problem…. But aside from gender, it’s often that way, isn’t it? When we want to go on vacation, when we want to rest from our work, we want to be in a place where we can be waited on, and our rest leads us to consume stuff. 

So, my question is, for pastors, when you celebrate the Sabbath, do you do it on Sunday, or does that feel too much like work? I have one day off, of course, but that’s usually reserved for laundry and cleaning…. And for everyone, do you think about your consumption as a part of keeping that holy day? How do you do it? Crock pots and leaving the dirty dishes? Am I just being too literalistic? Or are dishes and cooking not considered work?

5 Comments »

In our home, we’ve been talking about becoming vegetarians for a while now. We did it for a couple of years, but then we became pastors. In Louisiana, there was no getting away from the roast at the Sunday afternoon potluck, and so I slid back into my carnivorous ways.

But, for some health and environmental reasons, I’m thinking about it again. It would be much, much easier in the D.C. area, because there are always vegetarian options on every menu–even at the church potluck. Although, I would hate to get rid of my grill. I have a serious bond with my grill.

Are there any vegetarians out there? What has your experience been? Have you been able to handle it as a church leader? What about parents? Any advice on the kids?

11 Comments »

We are a country of rugged individuals. We raise our sons and daughters to be independent. Self-sufficiency is the ultimate goal of parenting, and we would like for them to achieve it at age eighteen. As young adults, we won’t think of getting married until we are financially independent, even though we often need two incomes to sustain one household. And when we do get married, even in our own families, we are seeking a secluded life.

The Wall Street Journal observed this as it reported new trends in architecture. We are designing homes to make sure that people stay to themselves. “Major builders and top architects are walling off space. They’re touting one-person ‘Internet alcoves,’ locked-door ‘away rooms,’ and his-and her-offices on opposite ends of the house. In fact, the showcase of the Ultimate Family Home hardly had a family room. The boy’s personal playroom had its own forty-two-inch plasma TV, and the girl’s bedroom had a secret mirrored door leading to a ‘hideaway karaoke room.’”

We live in a society where ultimate happiness is portrayed by a man, in an expensive car, with leather seats, with a blasting stereo, driving as fast as he can, making smooth corners on a road somewhere, completely isolated, completely alone.

Of course, after driving in traffic gridlock of D.C., I do understand this fantasy a bit more… but the problem with this advertising fairytale is that the isolation, even in with great wealth, is not making us any happier. This era of independence, of self, does not bring us contentment.

Bill McKibben writes about all of this in his book, Deep Economy. As wealth has grown in the last couple of decades in our country, happiness has declined. Americans who said they visited with their neighbors fell from one-third to one-fifth, and it keeps falling. We’ve been working too hard. We’ve been entertaining ourselves in our own personal playrooms.

Our sense of independence has affected American religion, where a personal, privatized faith in Jesus Christ has become much more important than the faith community. I know of some churches have difficulty maintaining their budgets because people give so much to televangelists. What they receive in the privacy of their own homes is more important than being a part of a body of believers.

We have based so much of our economy on individual gain, even though our communities suffer. Wal-Mart is a good example of this. My brother-in-law and sister-in-law work for Sam’s, so I know a lot about Wal-Mart and their employment practices. People shop there because the prices are so low for the individual customer. And yet, as the superstores have multiplied, we know that they are bad for our communities.

In the few years that Wal-Mart was expanding in Iowa, “the state lost 555 grocery stores, 298 hardware stores, 293 building supply stores, 161 variety shops, 158 women’s clothing stores, and 116 pharmacies.” A new Wal-Mart eliminates a job and a half for every job it creates. Comprehensive studies have shown that counties with Wal-Marts have grown poorer than surrounding counties, and the more Wal-Marts stores in the county, the faster they grew poorer. Communities suffered but the individual benefits, from lower prices.

The other problem with putting individual gain over the community is that humans seem to be genetically wired for community. People who have good friends or who are close to their families are happier than those who are not. People who participate in religious communities are happier than those who are not. Joining a club, a society, a church of some kind cuts in half the risk that you will die in the next year.

And the activity that makes Americans happy, that produced all kinds of joy? Volunteer work. People make friends through it. They see results. It broadens their experience of life. It gets people out of themselves.

(Speaking of volunteering, here is the latest news on Miriam’s Kitchen, the homeless program in our church. The photo is also of our happy volunteers.)

Now, how do we convince our culture? How do we let people who have grown up in an onslaught of “buy this and you’ll be happy and independent” messages know that it doesn’t actually work that way?

2 Comments »

So, as I write, I always like to bite off a little bit more than I can chew. And while working on my next book, I’m thinking a bit about globalization. Definitely a bigger subject than I can digest, but interesting nonetheless.

To get a handle on it, I’m sharpening the focus. I’m wondering how globalization affects church leaders in a new generation. (Generation here is not referring to a person’s age, but a time frame.)

There is an idea of global discontent that influences us. For example, as technology becomes available, people around the world see how we live in the West. Not only does resentment fester with these images of wealth, but it also triggers different economic models in other countries.

China is seeing a mass migration from the farming lands to the city, a place of industry. It’s because people are learning how much more money they can make by leaving their farms.

Of course, the problem with this is if all the people of China begin to live like we do in the United States, then we will need the resources of more than one planet to sustain us. Globally, tensions are rising around our natural resources: oil, water, lumber, soil, food. And as China and India change economic models, the tensions will get worse. The earth simply cannot sustain if everyone has two cars and a suburban home. (Interesting aside: my father, with this concern in mind, invented the way to grow plants in space. All due respect to my dad, I doubt that will be the answer….)

I wonder how all of this affects the church. The church has always been very global. We typically think about things “unto the ends of the earth.” And in the last couple of decades, with short-term mission trips, our faith has been formed as we ditch ditches, run sewer lines, and try to help people all over the world.

And so I wonder if the reverse is happening as well. I mean, we know there is discontentment among developing nations as they see our wealth, but do we also have discontentment as we go back to our wealth? We know that we have so much. And we have been face-to-face with people who have so little. How does this affect us? Spiritually, emotionally, ethically, how do we deal with it?

I spoke to Don Richter about this. And he said that we’re suffering from a gluttony hang-over. “Gluttony. One of the seven deadly sins. It’s not just about what we eat. It’s about everything we consume.” He explained when we see the global inequities, we cannot help but realize how gluttonous we are.

So what do you think? Certainly the recent food crisis and the spike in petroleum prices is causing us to rethink our place in the world. How does all of this affect you, as a church leader? How does it affect your spiritual community? Have you spent time overseas? What impact has that had on your faith formation? Do you sense gluttony? Or is it something else?

the photo’s by thiagokunz

6 Comments »

I’m going to write something that may sound incredibly disrespectful, but I’m asking honestly. I want to know.

Often, when I lead workshops and I talk about things like building community, environmentalism, creation care, I have someone who perks up and says, “I did this too! When I was young, we had communes, and we didn’t flush the toilet, and we were all back to nature and everything….”

Or else, there is someone rolling his eyes, saying, “Right. We’ve done this before. This isn’t new.”

I fully realize that it’s not new in a historic sense. But as a person growing up in the seventies, a lot of what’s happening now is new to me. And so the thing that I always want to ask is, “What happened?”

I never quite do it, because I don’t want to embarrass anyone. And, of course, many people who were good stewards of the environment still are. But I’m talking about as a general rule… as a country, how did we get from Jimmy Carter wearing sweaters to Ronald Reagan increasing speed limits? How did we move from the VW bug to the Hummer SUV? How did devolve from organic farming to every chicken being injected by hormones and antibiotics? If we were heading in the right direction in the late sixties and early seventies, how did we make that massive turn to the wrong one?

And if there is a revived movement to care for creation, how can we encourage it and sustain? Is there any way to keep that wrong turn from happening again? 

19 Comments »

Conversation with Lawn Chemical Guys trying to sell me treatment for my yard:

LCG: Hi! I’m wondering if you are interested in some lawn treatment.

Me: No. Thanks.

LCG: But have you noticed? You have clover in your lawn.

Me: Yeah. I noticed. I figure as long as it’s green, it’s good.

LCG: Well, we can take care of that.

Me: I don’t like to use chemicals on my lawn.

LCG: Well, we do use chemicals, but it won’t harm your children or pets.

Me: Mmmm. I’m not interested.

LCG: (Dramatically, triumphantly pulling out a leaf with holes in it) Oh yeah? Well are you interested now?

Me: (Looking to the side.) Nnnoooo.

LCG: Do you know what this IS? (Pointing to the leaf, even more emphatically.)

Me: What is it? (Expecting news of a plague of biblical proportions.)

LCG: THIS is a sign of insects! I just pulled this leaf off of your tree seconds ago. YOU have INSECTS living in your tree!

Of course I have insects living in my tree. That’s where insects live. What has the world come to? I’m supposed to be upset by that? I’m supposed to buy chemicals to get rid of them? Do my neighbors buy this stuff?

Scary.

photo by tanakawho    

7 Comments »

Text: Romans 8:18-25

I went to visit my friends, Jesse Quam and Grace Davenport, in their beautiful home in the mountains of North Carolina. Brian and I have been friends with Jesse since we were teenagers. We’ve kept in contact for twenty years. Now, they live in Black Mountain, outside of Asheville, where the ground almost looked fluid. As we drove, it seemed to roll around us, changing different shapes as we moved along the roads, keeping us in constant wonder.

It was a good time for us to take a vacation, but a terrible time for our friends. Grace was nine months pregnant and weighed down by her ample belly. We stayed in a cabin, tried to respect their space, while accepting any invitation to catch up.

While we were there, we learned more about Jesse’s work as a therapist, counseling teenagers in a wilderness setting. It’s a high burnout profession, but he’s been doing it for years. Actually, for over a decade now. He watches his friends come and go, but he keeps working with confused teenagers.

Even though Jesse works with the adolescent who’s in trouble, as most good therapists do, Jesse doesn’t just look at that one member of the family. He looks at their environment. He looks at the whole family, how it’s working and not working. How much the parents are away from the home. He wants to know if the teenager is in a context where he or she can grow. He’s concerned about the child’s attachment.

He says, ”You can have a beautiful rose, but if it’s stuck down in the basement, it’ll die. It needs to be in a healthy environment to thrive.” And he believes that all teenagers, all people, are the same way. We need healthy environments to thrive.

Jesse’s use of the word “environment” is intentional. Because he’s not just talking about parents and the siblings, he believes that the natural environment has an important effect on a person’s spiritual, emotional, and psychological health. And so he works with teenagers in the beautiful wilderness of North Carolina, hoping that they will develop some attachment, and have some grounding to the earth so that they can grow and thrive.

It is this notion throughout Scripture, and throughout some of our most important spiritual works–that attachment to the earth is vital for our spiritual nourishment.

There is an idea that somehow heaven and earth are connected. We pray, every week, “on earth, as it is in heaven,” and in the book of Revelations, those strange, prophetic scriptures, the writer communicates a vision of how there will be “a new heaven and a new earth.” And there, in Romans, there is an idea that the earth is groaning. The earth is moaning, as if it is in labor, waiting to be redeemed from destruction, waiting to be set free from the bondage of decay, waiting for new life.

There are some words of scripture don”t seem to make a whole lot of sense two thousand years later. Outside of their original context, they”re confusing. But this passage–this passage that John read this morning, the one from Romans, it makes so much more sense now than it must have thousands of years ago.

I often feel like I am wrapped in this bondage of decay that the ancient words speak about. Earth Day is coming up this week, and it is always a reminder that we have much to do to slow the effects of global warming. We will need to look at our personal habits, our practices as communities, and our national policies.

I know personally, we do what we can, buying our food from local farmer’s markets, growing what we can ourselves, relying on public transportation, cutting our energy use as much as possible. But, we are limited by time and by money, so that we can’t do everything that we wish we could do.

When I look at the businesses that surround us, (here, but also in South Louisiana, where there are so many companies that pollute) and realize the drastic changes that we will need to make before so that our corporations begin to act in a responsible manner, we know that it will take time, and it will take a lot of money. There will need to be a huge shift in priorities and sometimes it feels hopeless.

When we look globally, and we see the industrial and population expansion of countries around the world, then the problem gets too big for me. I’m not sure what can be done. I just know that the earth is groaning.

And, sometimes, it’s overwhelming. Often, my husband and I wonder if our grandchildren will be able to enjoy the earth in the same way that we have. And I become gripped by fear and sadness when I contemplate that answer, because I cannot automatically say yes. And that’s when I feel the bondage of decay.

The earth is groaning, and we are bound to destruction. The words, the words, I wish they weren’t true, but they are.

It’s so strange, but the church-at-large has not always done such a good job in caring for creation. Even though on of our first commands from God was to take care of the earth, in some religious movements, we have cut ourselves off from the earth, creating a separation between physical and the spiritual. From sciences and religion. I have seen it, over and over again from both sides. I have been in churches where they belittle science, and I have been saddened by their ignorance. And as a theological student, I have heard scientists berate me as ignorant.

I can understand the tensions, as people of faith have fought against stem cell research and theories of evolution in our country. People of faith have laughed at global warming theories. There is a growing home-school movement in our country dedicated to keep children away from the evils modern science. In some parts of our country these groups have done some significant damage in education. And they have certainly widened the rift between the spiritual and the natural, religion and the sciences.

Yet, I know what my friend Jesse says is true–that our spiritual, emotional, and environmental health is all wrapped up together. There’s no way to disassociate the Creator from the created. We cannot separate heaven from earth, and we cannot sit by and watch the divide between science and religion keep getting deeper and deeper in this country. We need to find bridges.

After all, it’s through hearing the birds that my eyes look up and focus on something beyond myself, it is through the pulsing streams that I have found so much peace and healing. There have been places in my life that are holy. And they are almost always among the jagged rocks, the flowing water, and the fine sand. It is when I look at the detailed texture of each shell that I know that we have an amazing God.

As we look around us, we can begin to understand our connection to the earth, as a part of creation that flows from God. And we can realize that what we do personally affects the earth, when we care for it and when we abuse it. Even though we’ve created shelters against the storms, air conditioning when it is hot, and heating when it is cold, and it seems that we have conquered so much of nature that we are no longer subject to it, we cannot become deaf to its groans.

For the groans have become louder and louder. We are hearing the reports of global warming. We are just beginning to understand its effects on our lives. The earth is heading toward destruction, and we need every available imaginative resource that we can muster up from religion, science, literature, economics, business, technology, and the arts. Every creative and created being, needs to hear the moans and begin to respond in their own way. And perhaps then we can begin to understand that along with the groans, there is also hope.

George Washington Carver was a botanist and educator who spent many of his years teaching former slaves farming techniques so that they could become self-sufficient. A former slave himself, Carver lived from 1864 to 1943, and in the South, he is widely recognized as a man who helped the transition from cotton crops, to sweet potatoes and peanuts. The cotton was being decimate by boll weevils and it was depleting the soil of its natural resources, so the transition was extremely important for the South.

Carver was a deeply spiritual man, and since his lab notes were sparse, I think now, his contribution was almost as much spiritual as scientific. Carver said that if you love anything enough it will tell you its secrets. And that seemed to be his attitude toward nature. He would paint plants, capture their beauty, as well as study them. He said, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting system, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”

In 1924, the New York Times wrote an article entitled, “Men of Science Never Talk that Way” about George Washington Carver”s claim that God was leading him in his scientific pursuits. And he asked God every day, every moment, that God would give him wisdom, understanding and bodily strength so that he might convey what God was saying through the animal, mineral and Vegetable kingdoms. He wanted to communicate their relations to each other, to us, our relations to them, and to the Great God who made all of us. And he explained that he was asking and receiving at all times.

I grew up, hearing a lot about Carver. He’s a legendary figure in the South, and he continues to be a giant figure in my mind. Most often, I heard how he asked the God, “Dear Mr. Creator, please tell me what the universe was made for.”

The Great Creator answered, “You want to know too much for that little mind of yours. Ask for something more your size.”

Then he asked, “Dear Mr. Creator, tell me what man was made for.”

Again the Great Creator replied, “Little man you still are asking too much. Cut down the extent of your request and improve the intent.”

So then he asked, “Please Mr. Creator, will you tell me why the peanut was made?” And with that, Carver began to create hundreds of peanut products.

This morning is a morning of baptism. In this sacred time, we remember that our spiritual lives are marked by water. Clean, flowing water. And may this be a morning when we remember that our material lives are marked by water as well. They are bound together. Both our material and spiritual selves flow from God.

In this crucial moment in history, when we can hear the earth groaning, we can realize our connections. We can understand how our emotional, spiritual, physical and psychological health is bound to our environment. And in this crucial moment, we will need to pray for imagination and hope, so that we might find freedom from these bonds of destruction. So that we might have the strength and endurance to change our ways. So that we might work on a personal, communal, and political level to reverse our current trends. So that we might love this good earth enough, that we can hear its secrets. So that we can begin to understand how we can save it. So that our grandchildren might enjoy the beauty of the world as we know it.

The time for that spark of hope is now. We can hear the groans. We cannot wait any longer. We must act,

to the glory of God, our Creator,
God, our Liberator,
And God, our Sustainer. Amen.

the photo’s by Romoletto

No Comments »

For those of you in Maryland, D.C., and Northern Virginia, Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light announces its first Earth Day sermon writing contest. Earth Sunday (April 20) is a wonderful opportunity to explore the deep faith connections to the issue of global warming and to help inspire the community to live more sustainably.

Top Prize: $300 worth of CFL light bulbs for your favorite soup kitchen or similar low-income community project.

Two Runners-up prizes: $100 worth of CFLs.

To enter, please submit text of the entire sermon to Allison Fisher at Allison(at)gwipl(dot)org by May 2, 2008. Entering your sermon indicates your willingness for it to appear, with attribution, on the GWIPL website and winning entries will be featured on the GWIPL website.

the photo’s by Linda Yvonne

No Comments »