Scout Gives One Paws

Scout's movie debut.... I don't know if this will work or not....

After....

On Thursday, we had our regular community clergy gathering. This month we were slated to meet at the local African American church. They had prepared a wonderful lunch for us: sandwiches and wraps and pie and other sweets that I can't even remember now. It was quite a feast. One of the pastors there had printed two poems by James Weldon Johnson. He recited the first one for us, and could barely get through one of the stanzas, he was so filled with emotion. He told us that he had called his 93 year old father in Chicago on Tuesday morning, only to discover that his father had already voted. He said that his father felt so grateful that he had lived to see that day.

The second poem was Lift Every Voice and Sing. It is the Black National Anthem. He was going to recite that poem too, but one of us suggested that we might sing it, instead. So we did, all twelve of us around the table a capella.

I didn't know this at the time, but Lift Every Voice was sung often in the schools in the segregated south, just like I remember singing My Country 'Tis of Thee.

After our lunch, I met briefly with the other African American pastor. We are planning the next Martin Luther King Day worship service, which will take place this year the day before inauguration day. We also took a moment to check in about the social justice organization we both work with.

He confessed to me that he was not sure who he would vote for until he went into the voting booth on Tuesday. (He didn't tell me, either.) Neither candidate, he thought, was perfect. Both were good, but flawed people.

I told some of this story in church on Sunday. Most people did not know there was an African American church in our town.

We still have a lot of work to do. But we're starting.

Am I Reading Enough? An Update

1. March, Geraldine Brooks
2. The Mysterious Journey of Edward Tulane, Kate DiCamillo
3. God's Echo, Sandra Sasso
4. The Dwelling of the Light, Rowan Williams
5. Purple Hibiscus,
6. Giants in the Earth, Rolvaag
7. The Double Bind, Chris Bohjalean
8. Half Magic, Edward Eager
9. Neither Here Nor There, Bill Bryson
10. A Three Dog Life
11. The Competent Pastor, Ronald Sisk
12. Murder in the Marais, Cara Black
13. Red Bird, Mary Oliver
14. Sleeping With Bread, Linn
15. Praying in Color
16. If Your Name Was Changed At Ellis Island
17. Atonement, Ian McEwan
18. Water for Elephants
19. Tall Grass, Sandra Dallas
20. Take this Bread, Sara Miles

These are the books I already read and reported on. And new additions:

1. The Kommandant's Girl
2. Here if you Need Me
3. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
4. Preaching as Testimony, Anna Carter Florence
5. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
6. The Citizen Solution, Harry Boyte
7. Jesus for President (though I confess to skimming some parts)

There you have it, a record of my failure. I've only finished reading 27 books so far this year. I just don't get enough reading done. I won't get 50 books done this year, that's for sure. But I've realized a few things so far:

a) I can't read in bed for very long unless I get new glasses.

b) I need to be more self-disciplined in how I read; I have too many half-finished books lying around.

c) I have a lot of things to do.

I'm currently working on Tribal Church, and In the Bleak Midwinter.

A New Day

What can I say? He will need all of our prayer, and all of our work, and all of our wisdom, and all of our service.

Minnesota State Turn-out

Some may not know that Minnesota usually has the highest voter turnout of any state in the union. I wonder if we will keep that honor this year.

We have some wild and some weird and some extremely negative races this year. It hasn't always been this way. I'd rather be known for our high voter turnout.

This local column explains it.

Two Prayers for Election Day

Under your law we live, great God,
and by your will we govern ourselves.
Help us as good citizens
to respect neighbors whose views differ from ours,
so that without partisan anger,
we may work out issues that divide us,
and elect candidates to serve the common welfare;
through Jesus Christ the lord. Amen
-The Book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Church, USA, 1946

Sovereign Lord, foolish we are, believing that we can rule ourselves by selecting this or that person to rule over us. We are at it a gain. Help us not to think it more significant than it is, but also give us and those we elect enough wisdom to acknowledge our follies. Help us laugh at ourselves, for without humor our politics cannot be humane. We desire to dominate and thus are dominated. Free us, dear Lord, for otherwise we perish. Amen
-Stanley Hauerwas, 1999

Compiled in An American Prayer Book, ed. Christopher Webber

All Saints and other Sinners, too....

..... working backwards

Yesterday afternoon we had #2 stepson over (he was in town for the weekend) to celebrate his 21st birthday. Grandma and Grandpa came over; I put lasagne in the oven and they brought birthday cake. Also, I tossed up a bag salad; this is the type of entertaining I can muster up after church on Sunday. We kept calling the #1 stepson on his cell phone to let him know that the lasagne was just about ready. But his phone kept ringing and ringing; as it turned out, he slept all afternoon after a really exhausting Halloween party. He did turn up to eat leftovers in the early evening, after everyone else had gone home.

Right after church, I got together at a local coffee shop for a "confirmation reunion" with some of the girls from my confirmation class two years ago. Four out of six of them showed up. We drank coffee, cocoa, and caramel lattes and caught up: one of the girls is going to a TEC (Teens Encounter Christ) event this weekend; another has a part-time job at the Mall of America now. We promised to stop by. They all told me that the best way to keep in touch is by cell phone.

I had the children's message for our All Saints' worship yesterday. I cut out construction paper stars and prepared to tell the children about the Saints being the "stars" of the church -- and how they were stars, too. When I called the Kindergarteners up to the front, there was a cry from the back of the church. "All, right, how about 4 year olds too?" The little girl stopped crying and came to the chancel steps with her brother. So when I gave them each a star, I called them, "St. Molly," "St. Anya,", "St. Anthony." Stars of the church, letting their lights shine.

Yesterday I had the first of two Bible Classes with third graders and their parents. 9 children and their parents looked up Old Testament verses and learned a little bit about the Library of books that is the Bible. We have one more class, in two weeks, and then everyone gets to take home their Bible.

This class is still, after ten years, one of the most fun things I do. It is fun to watch the students and their parents look up passages together. It is fun for them to learn the "Books of the Old Testament" song. It is fun to play the Bible games we have created for them to play. It is also so fun to watch how interested the parents are in in some of these "Bible facts." It really is "Bible 101."

Later on, after stopping in at a wedding reception, we stopped in at Barnes and Noble. We've been going to the Library more and more for books. But we still haven't totally given up our bookstore habit. We buy a lot less,though. I was considering a specific Bible (more on that later) as a gift, and perusing a copy of The Predator State, by James Galbraith. I've been reading a little of the latter book every time we go in for coffee and window-shopping. I read a review in The New York Times a couple of weeks ago; it was critical, but provocative. As for me, I know I'm not an economist, but some of the things that Mr. Galbraith is saying make a lot of sense to me. He writes that the changes in the laws since the 1980s actually discouraged business executives from re-investing in their own companies, and encouraged them to cash in for private enrichment, that seems to me exactly what has been happening.

As we left the bookstore cafe, a man stopped us and asked me about the book I was reading. His name is Luis, and my husband says that he is also a regular at the bookstore. We seem to have similar taste in literature. He was reading The History of Money, by Jack Weatherford, a book my husband just got out of the library.

Somehow, we all have more interest in economics, lately.