Farewell Discourse

A Reflection 

for VI  Easter                                       

  All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   

May 1, 2016                                                                  

  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 16:9-15               Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5                   John 14:23-29             Psalm 67

Farewell Discourse

A couple weeks ago, Pat and I went to a conference put on by the Church Pension Fund called “Planning for Tomorrow”, looking at preparing for retirement and beyond. One of the “beyond” aspects is about helping the people who survive after you die, e.g. with wills, final instructions and the like. For instance, it would probably be good for me to list and locate all the documents the survivors need and all the computer programs I use to pay the bills and their passwords. I see that happen a lot when a parent or spouse dies and the family gathers together and tries to figure out where everything is.

I remember that, for years before my mother died, she would sit me down every time I visited her and she would go through all the bank accounts, wills, powers of attorney, and instructions. She didn’t use a computer, but she had different places for everything. She talked about what she wanted done and how she did not want to outlive her money because she thought that the “children” might need some. I kept telling her that the orphans would be in their 60’s and she was to spend every penny she had and write some bouncing checks for the rest. We would talk about her hopes for her children and grandchildren and said some of the things she did not want to die without saying. It was a labor of love, for she did love us and wanted her loving spirit to live within us after she died. When I would visit my mother, it was not in the places that I had ever called home, and I was a guest there. The real home was in the loving space between us regardless of any geography.

The Gospel lesson from John for today is part of what is called the “farewell discourse”, before Jesus’ arrest and after he has had the last supper with the disciples, washed their feet and given them the commandment of love. He is saying “Good bye”, saying the things he knows he wants to say to them before he is arrested and killed by the religious and political authorities. He says that he will not leave them orphaned but that he will come to them. The whole discourse is contained in Chapters 14 through 17. Today I want to focus in on one sentence: “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

“Make our home with them”. All of us are passing through, and home can mean different things. Paul in the lesson from Acts is invited by Lydia to come stay at her home. The Greek word that is used is a family dwelling, a household; so he will be a guest, but it is her “home”. I was struck with idea that both lessons mentioned “home”. But when I did Greek word studies, there were two different words. The Greek word for “home” the author of John uses is the same word he remembers Jesus saying earlier in the discourse, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.” 

The King James Version will translate it as “mansions” because the translators for His Majesty King James were instructed to make everything majestic, as a way underscoring the Majesty of King James himself. James was new to the throne of England and was somewhat insecure, and he did not want to come across as a the poor relation from Scotland who was a guest King at Elizabeth’s invitation. He went to great lengths to have everything impressive and wanted to have everything, as one contemporary office seeker keeps saying, “HUGE”.

What does it mean to “make a home” with someone? It is not about the number of rooms or the furnishings, but a loving commitment of heart and spirit. It is the difference between people who are “roommates with benefits”, who only share expenses, food, and saliva for as long as it is convenient, and those who make a full life-time commitment of their whole selves with each other. To make a “home” with someone means to know and be known and yet to be aware of, and honor, the mystery in the other.

The other difficulty in many translations of the King James and many of the Western translations is that there is a tendency to interpret things in the private singular tense of “I”, “my” “his”, as in “His Faith”, My personal relationship” and “HE walks with me.” I approve of the New Revised Standard, which we use for the Sunday Lectionary, which emphasizes the corporate community - “They and “Their”. When Jesus gives his Farewell Discourse, he uses the second person plural of “You” rather than the second person singular. He is speaking to the community gathered together.  When he says, “The Father and I are one”, Jesus reminds them that he himself is part of the community of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, never divided but always lovingly connected, and the promise is that we will be taken into that dynamic community of being fully connected and committed, one to another. To live into the commitment of the Trinity is a cosmic commitment where we are connected to all things – past, present, and future, friends and family, neighbors, enemies, animals, the earth, the air, the stars. That is the vision of the author of the Book of Revelation where God becomes the light that shines in and through us. The home of God is in us. God is way more than the guest in our homes; God is the deep life breath of all home.

My vision of my death is that when I die, all those things that went into keeping me singular and apart and only sporadically committed will die, and I will be joined fully with the creative energy underneath all life, no longer a part time guest but now at home.

Farewell Discourse (poem)

I breathe you in deeply with each breath

that every part of me is filled with you

living into your vision of us being true

that I continue breathing you after death.

The Problem with THEM

A Reflection for V Easter                                              All Saints Church, Southern Shores, NC April 24, 2016                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 11:1-18                Revelation 21:1-6         John 13:31-35              Psalm 148

The Problem With THEM!

When I was younger there were things that I knew that I knew that I knew. There was never any question that what I knew was the end of the discussion. For instance when I was a child I knew that the Sun rose every morning and set every night. That was the language we used. Except, as I my father explained to me that it was the earth and all the other planets that were moving in elliptical orbits and the sun remained where it was. So I then knew that the sun was the center of the one and only galaxy which we called the Milky Way and we there were thousands of stars. Except, I learned that our solar system is 27000 light years away from the Galactic Center and there are hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy and billions of other galaxies and they are all part of an expanding universe in which 95+% is dark matter and dark energy. There is still much I do not know. Did the suns, planets and stars change? or the Universe? or the nature of energy and matter? None of these things changed; only my perception is constantly changing.

When I was very young I was taught people were poor because they were lazy and they were “happy” being poor; obviously since there were so many jobs available in the miracle of capitalism. If they would just get off their behinds, and go to work! Except, I learned that there were not enough jobs for everybody; in fact people were kept at low wages when there was a fear of being unemployed and the greater the mass of unemployed the lower that wages were payed and businesses made more money if wages were kept low. When I started working for minimum wage I learned the very real lesson that minimum wage does not equal a living wage. Did capitalism change? Minimum wage did change when I worked at my first part time job in 1961 the minimum wage was $1.15 an hour, which when adjusted to 2016 dollars would equal $9.00 an hour in buying power. The current state minimum wage in North Carolina is $7.25 an hour, and the state legislature, in its wisdom, has denied localities to change minimum wage higher. My first job out of college in 1968 was $5,000.00; and it was tight with my house, a two bedroom, den, 2 bath, corner lot bungalow in Wrightsville Beach costing $15,000.00 paying one quarter of salary on mortagae. Everything has changed and my perceptions most of all.

I was taught that Anglo-Saxons people and people of color were very different. I believed we had different blood, brains, emotions; they were unfortunate and needed to be treated kindly but not as equals. Except all my ideas of race were based on racism, which was part of the very air I breathed for thousands of years. Shakespeare had Shylock speak against this kind of thinking in the Merchant of Venice on this the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death:

                                   I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.

330 years before I was born, poets knew that there were no real differences in people in race, religion, or national origin; it just takes time for science to come up with the evidence that the poets, prophets and apostles already knew; and the demagogue, preachers and fear mongers keep denying. My perceptions changed.

When I was growing up we used words like “queer” or “pansy” as a way to put down people. I was taught that people who were homosexual or lesbian were sick people who were driven by perverted lust based on an early sexual trauma and if not stopped would sexually abuse or kill young children. Then when I was 15, I went to work as an apprentice in an equity summer stock theater. There I ran across people who were normal in every way as I was but were different in sexual orientation. Shylock’s speech applied as my perceptions changed.

A couple of thousand years ago the followers of Jesus were split on the idea that gentiles were different from Jews. There were the purveyors of the old fears and prejudices in the followers of the Risen Lord and they thought that gentiles could never be part of God’s plan. Peter thought that way until God gave him a vision to see that all were fellow children of God. Have the gentiles changed or has Peter’s vision changed him?

Peter should have known better for of course he had been exposed to the Psalms, like the Psalm for today, Psalm 148. The God the Psalmist knows is not a tribal God that backs up local prejudices but a Cosmic God over all of the universe. The Psalmist sings that this is the God of the heavens and sea monsters, of hail and snow, of all people in all places. The Psalmist helps us to change how we perceive God in this world

The writer of the Revelation to John dreams of the home of God being among mortals; for in the dream there is a new heaven and a new earth in his vision. Has God changed or has our vision?

In the Gospel lesson from John, Jesus tells his disciples that there really only one Christian commandment; that they love. Love which has nothing to do with approval, or emotions or even liking, is that action, -for love without action is dead- that works for the best for each other. Had God through Jesus changed, as if Jesus was God’s plan B; or was it that Jesus helped us to see more about God and our perceptions changed?

When I was a kid I thought only good people went to church; because the purpose of church was a finishing school to associate with good people, to be entertained and enlightened in how we should be even better people, by getting away from the big bad world into a place of safety. The only drawback was when I felt especially sinful; I thought that I was an affront to the rigorous God if I dared to show up and especially if I tried to take Communion if I was unworthy. Later on I came to see that church is not a stained glass clubhouse for saints so we can prance around the Altar better, but a hospital for broken people who come to gather together to give thanks for God’s blessing and to find strength to help mend the deepest pains of our broken world as a way of putting love into action.

Before I came here I thought that the purpose of fundraising was to raise money to trick other people into paying the church bills. I came here and they helped me to see that the purpose of fundraising is to come together to have fun and to raise money to help support the love in action to all the people of this community in which God has so richly blessed us. Did the concept of “church” change or did the vision change us?

There was a time when we knew everything but as Bob Dylan sang in My Back Pages “Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.” May Christ continue to give us the strength to be open to be changed into the image of the One who created, and recreates, us so that we might perceive how God sees things.

The Problem With THEM! (Poem)

Rousing from the torpor; remembering tirades about THEM

I say; “I AM different than THEM!”

Their eyes are different,

because they see different.

They walk way different

            because their bodies fit different.

Their noses are different,

            because they smell different.

They pray different,

because they believe different.

They hear different,

because they think different.

They eat different,

if I were a cannibal they would taste different.

Life would be better without THEM!

I would be happier without THEM!

I would be richer without THEM!

I would be safer without THEM!

I don’t want to have deal with me;

let me dwell on THEM!

The Shepherd Calls Again

A Reflection for 4^th Sunday of Easter                                    All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC

April 17, 2016                                                                        Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 9:36-43               Revelation 7:9-17                    John 10:22-30             Psalm 23

The Shepherd Calls Again

In the summer of 1953, I was seven years old and had just finished 2^nd grade, and I was sent to the Presbyterian Church down the street to go to Vacation Bible School. My theology at that point was summed up by rote prayers at meals and bedtime: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake; I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless . . ”, and the list would follow.

The theme that year was “Jesus, the Good Shepherd”. Part of the task that summer was to memorize the King James Version of the 23^rd Psalm, and if you were able to do that task, you would win a six-inch tall, glow in the dark plastic statue of Jesus the Good Shepherd. During the craft part of VBS, I put together a small simple wooden corner étagère on which the statue could be displayed. While my bedtime prayer changed in a couple years, every night the faint purple glow that sat on the top shelf of the étagère on top of my book case would tell me that the Good Shepherd was with me and I should fear no evil while I was asleep. I held on to that statue until I went off the college ten years later when I did not feel comfortable taking childlike symbols of faith to college, so they stayed home.

That fall, my older brother went to Parris Island, South Carolina to Marine Corps boot camp, and I went to Chapel Hill, North Carolina to college. While we both had our lives changed, my little brother stayed home and changed things around in our shared bedroom, and my treasures disappeared.

But I held on to the 23^rd Psalm. Even when I was going through my Atheist stage, I found comfort in reciting the memorized lines in times of difficulty, in the 2:00 in the mornings of my supposedly non-existent soul, doing Rota duty with other existentially-riveting expressions - the Gettysburg Address, “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”;  Hamlet’s “To be or not to be/ That is the question.”; Othello’s final speech, “I pray you in your letters/ when you shall these unlucky deeds relate.”; the Rolling Stones “I can’t get no satisfaction”; and Pete Seeger’s version of “We shall overcome.”

I revered the King James Version of the 23^rd Psalm as literature, but it took me many years to stop feeling ashamed of holding on to remnants of, and regressing to, a child-like faith. However, I came to realize that we never really leave any part of our faith journey behind. God has blessed every step of that path - the good, the bad, and the ugly. None of those steps were made alone for there was a power greater than myself walking with me in the green pastures and in the presence of my enemies. That blessing was what I was really able to learn about the Psalm. The blessing was there,

independent of my behavior, for the Psalm does not add the proviso of being a good person or even believing before the LORD would be with me. It is said in the present tense, not the conditional future;  a statement of fact rather than a promise pending good behavior.

I learned that whenever LORD is written in the Bible in all capital letters, it means that it is the Hebrew translation of a circumlocution of the name with no vowels, YHWH, which can be given vowels to make words like Yahweh or Jehovah. But the unpronounceable was the name of their God, the name which could not be taken in vain and therefore not to be loosely tossed about. Whenever the readers of the Holy Words would come across those unpronounceable four consonants, they would reverently try not to pronounce or add vowels, saying “The Name, Blessed be the Holy One” or, “the LORD Blessed be he.” Saying the circumlocution meant that the whole act of saying the Psalm was sacred.

We were meant not to rush through them, but meditatively to sing the psalms slowly, with deep breaths and long pauses at the end of each verse or verset so the words and images could sink in. This is the way Psalms are sung in Monasteries and Convents, holding on to the meditative reasons the psalms still have power over three thousand years later. To have the words on our lips come into our bodies, minds, and imagination meant that we could feel the water of the living stream in the desert and know that there was abundance in God’s provisions, that there was strength in the rod and staff to ward off all evil, so that God’s goodness and kindness would seep into our very being.

I learned that the Hebrew had no thought of people having a soul, but that they were souls. The Hebrew word is nephesh, which means life breath. The LORD brings back my life breath in this life, and not only alive in the next.

I learned that while we are always walking through Death’s shadow in this life, we have the assurance that God’s light can drive far away all darkness.

I learned that even if all the things I feared would harm me are present, I would be told to relax and have a seat. Take a load off my feet and feel that luxurious oil on my head as a sign of welcome. This is not the oil of anointing for a mission, but of welcome to a place where I could gather respite. The symbols of a good life - a table set with good things, a feeling of luxury, and an overflowing cup of wine - are outward and visible signs of the fact that we are not in Kansas anymore. We are in the LORD’s bosom.

I learned that the Hebrews had no word or concept of “forever”; all they knew was from horizon to horizon. An abstract concept of no beginnings and no ends were not part of their culture but came from the Greeks. Hebrews were not talking about a heaven after we die but right here and right now, in this life. The LORD is my shepherd right now.

Let me read you meditatively the 23^rd Psalm translation by Robert Alter, a Biblical scholar and poet, who tried to be faithful to the Hebrew mindset while holding on to the poetic tension:

A David Psalm

The LORD is my shepherd

            I shall not want.

In grass meadows He makes me lie down

            by quiet waters guides me.

My life he brings back.

            He leads me on pathways of justice

                        for His name’s sake.

Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,

            I fear no harm,

                        for You are with me.

Your rod and staff –

            it is they who console me.

You set a table before me

            in the face of my foes.

You moisten my head with oil,

            my cup overflows

Let but goodness and kindness pursie me,

            all the days of my life.

And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD

            for many long days.

Now I ask you to join with me and turn to page 476 in the Book of Common Prayer, meditatively pray with me, and learn the psalm the way we would have been taught it if our teachers wanted us to grow spiritually instead of memorizing it by rote to get it over with. We will pause, drink in the image and breathe at the periods, colons, semi-colons, and asterisks.

The Lord is my shepherd;*

 I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:*

he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul:*

he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his Name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:*

 for thou art with me;

thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:*            

thou anointest my head with oil;

my cup runneth over 

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:*

and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

The Shepherd Calls Again (poem)

Memories of incantations flow

from the flood of long ago years.

Even present in different spheres

the words take again strong holds.

crossing time aback before tears

moistd my daily bread with fears

but now your strength make bolds

my life breath, gives again cheers

as those promises reach mine ears

of hope, as your love anew enfolds.

Opening th Eyes of Faith

A Reflection for 3^rd Sunday of Easter                            All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC  April 10, 2016                                                                     Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 9:1-20                  Revelation 5:11-14                   John 21:1-19                Psalm 30

Opening The Eyes Of Faith

You know about movies and television shows that have ratings and warnings about content? Let me warn you know that this reflection is rated “J” for containing multiple quotes and references to Carl Gustav Jung. Jung was a contemporary and colleague of Sigmund Freud, but who differed significantly from him about the nature of the unconscious and the importance of a spiritual reality. Freud was interested in people getting rid of neurosis, which meant exposing the preconscious determinates of behavior. He considered most of the unconscious as junk and clutter to be gotten rid of. Jung was interested in people living into wholeness of mind and soul by bringing the deep material of the unconscious to light and claiming it and using it to grow. 

I started off as a Freudian to understand how humans act, but as I grew deeper in faith, I started to depend more on Jung, and the work that I have done on dream work is deeply Jungian. Jung saw dreams as a way that the Divine, the ground of our Being, the Collective Unconscious, who for convenience we call God, speaks to us in symbolic form. 

When I look at the stories in scripture, I look at them as if they are like a dream given to me, and I look at how the symbolic actions speak to me here and now. I am not really interested in having a newspaper account of the events, but I am interested in what God might be saying to us through these stories. I look at these visions/stories/dreams as if they are gifts from God for me. 

First of all, let’s take a look at the Collect for this Sunday. The word Collect comes from the early church practice of collecting the intercessions and petitions for prayers of the people in the congregation. Later they became regularized to be a collection of the thoughts and themes in the lessons for that Sunday. Sometimes the Collect is referred to as the “Prayer For the Day” as a way of avoiding the use of “churchy” words.  One of the themes for the 3^rd Sunday in Easter is exploring how we know and connect with this Risen Christ who is still meeting us in scripture and in life. 

The Collect for this Day, the third Sunday of Easter, has a petition: “Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work”.  We see the Risen Christ with eyes of faith, meaning that we look deeper than the surface. Meeting with the Risen Christ is a quest for the “attainment of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.” 

Let me give you an example of looking with the eyes of faith. I wake up early in the morning and walk my dog before I do my work out. It’s a slow walk and I get a chance to look at the moon and the stars. Now I know through my rational mind that the moon is a lifeless satellite in orbit around the earth, kept in that orbit by the gravitation pull of the earth during an approximately 28 day cycle. Living on the Beach, I know that the tides are affected by that cycle and that cycle has mental and physical effects on human beings as well. But with the eyes of faith, I see the moon as a beautiful gift from a loving God.  I know that I cannot prove this vision by any rational argument to take the place of the scientific explanation, but I choose to take it as true at a deeper dimension because it helps form the basis of how I live my life. It gives meaning to how I spend my time, my energy, my money. Without the eyes of faith, what I do could be seen as ridiculous - and it would be.

Looking with the eyes of faith has to be an experience done by every person instead of just relying on some sort of passed-on dogma to spare the effort. As Jung says:

“A dogma is always the result and fruit of many minds and many centuries, purified of all the oddities, shortcomings, and flaws of individual experience. But for all that, the individual experience, by its very poverty, is immediate life, the warm red blood pulsating today. It is more convincing to a seeker after truth than the best tradition.”

The stories in these lessons for today are about what people saw with eyes of faith. In the Revelation from John passage for today, he shares how his eyes of faith interpreted his dream. I look at this vision as if it was a gift from God for me. Am I open enough before the Divine that I see with the eyes of faith, to sing my song with a full voice, and live fully into my ministry? 

Almost a half century ago I was acting in an Outdoor Drama in a cast of about sixty people. They hired me for my acting ability, but I was too young and immature to understand that singing fully was not the same as singing loudly. To sing fully is to give up control over the song and make a disciplined commitment to join with others in something greater than oneself. Therefore, in my dreams, to sing with a full voice is a symbol of making a commitment. Jung, in his Psychology and Religion, wrote: “The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.”

In the lesson from the Book of Acts, Saul of Tarsus, wanting to please the Dogma of the religion of his youth, sees the followers of the Christ as heretics and tries to destroy them. At the core of his faith is a vision that God is loving, but his following of Dogma makes him respond in acts of hatred as he tries to purify his vision to fit with the Dogma. This internal conflict causes a break- down, and he loses his ability to see. If I am Paul in this vision/story/dream, then what part of me keeps me seeing what is poisoning my faith and life? Is it my desire to be the one who is so sure of the answers? Again to quote from Jung:

“If you carefully sterilize everything that you do, you make an extract of the impurity and leave it at the bottom, and once the water of life is poisoned, it doesn't need much to make everything wrong.”

In my dream, that part of me of which Ananias, a follower of the Christ, is a symbol, who hears about this Saul coming to town, is relieved that Saul is afflicted with blindness. But with the eyes of faith, he sees that Saul, his enemy is beloved of God, and Ananias hears Jesus call to him to minister to his enemy with love. Ananias has found meaning in his life with the Risen Christ and, to be true to this life, he has to follow it. It is the quest for “attainment of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.” If this were my dream/vision/ story, then what fear am I called to face in order to authentically love? Again as Jung says:

“Let us assume, to love life, but if one loves life then surely something should come from it. You see, life wants to be real; if you love life you want to live really, not as a mere promise hovering above things. Life inevitably leads down into reality. Life is of the nature of water: it always seeks the deepest place, which is always below in the darkness and heaviness of the earth.”

In the Gospel lesson, the life that the disciples were leading led them to get their hands dirty following the Risen Lord. They tried to go back to fishing as a way to escape, and they found that their life in this Christ came into their daily reality, interrupting a fishing trip with the presence of the meaning of their life, Christ himself. They saw with the eyes of faith. If this were my dream/story/vision, what is it that gets in my way so that I become too busy to see with the eyes of faith?

In this church I see people on a regular basis metaphorically singing Christ’s song with a full voice. Last week we had as our guests a number of homeless people through the Room in the Inn program, and this congregation saw it not just as a “Good Deed”, but saw it through the eyes of faith as a means of connection with the Risen Lord. We sang fully God’s song of welcome in service to our neighbors - “no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises”.

 Two weeks ago we had a memorial service here, and people came to give their best. This was Easter Week and people had their own lives to lead, but they committed their energy to help this family, for they saw things with the eyes of faith. We had the Hospitality Committee empty themselves out to minister to this family - for them there was “no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises”.  With their full voices, they sang God’s song. The tables were groaning with food, but more importantly, with God’s love.

Steve Blackstock came and played here on his vacation. He has a full-time job as a principal of a school, so he is never really away from that responsibility, but this week was planned to be with his family. Yet he saw this through the eyes of faith and came to symbolically sing with full voice of his talents to minister to help this family. Of course he was paid, but it is never what the gift is worth. His quest is for “attainment of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole being. Nothing less will do”. He does not fake his way through; “there are no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.”

The plan that Steve has presented for the Organ enrichment fund for bringing the instrument up to the level that is required to give the instrument’s best in worship of God is one “in attainment of wholeness requiring one to stake one's whole being”. The Organ’s quality is not in the volume it makes but in the fullness of its voice of worship. “Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.” The extraordinary and encouraging amounts pledged for over a two year period is over a $140 thousand,  and the amount paid so far, over $60,000.00 from 47 different people is not a result of fund-raising, but the fact that pledgers saw the program with the eyes of faith and have chosen to sing with a full voice. The whole plan will need another $30,000 over the next two years. I am hoping that more people will have allow their eyes to be opened and join with the organ to sing with a full voice. 

I see Steve do this with the choir, pushing them not for performance - performance is the easy way to satisfy one’s own ego - he pushes them to see what they do in singing through the eyes of faith as the hard dedication of worship, to sing, not loud, but with a full voice. “Nothing less will do; there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.”

What are these dreams/stories/visions telling you to see with the eyes of faith?

Opening The Eyes of Faith (Poem)

Remembering in a cast of sixty roles

marching in costume in triumph song,

I sang loud, not paying attention long.

Stand out! Call attention, to my goals!

Refusing to empty my ego is so wrong

resisting being part of a larger throng.

Even now tempted in or out of stoles

braying overpower nature’s birdsong.

Faiths eyes know songs to God belong.

Ceding to the divine will,  true controls,

claims. as our own, our deepest souls.