I Can’t Do That! I’m Presbyterian!

Some time ago, our church started something at the 11:15 service (the worship isn’t “contemporary” but something more akin to “new litgurical). What was new was the encouragement of the use of hands in the service, in addition to what we might to do pray.

While some (many?) might laugh at this being a radical departure or innovation, it was something like that for us. After all, we’re evangelical Presbyterians. Aren’t the use of hands in worship meant for (gasp!) charismatics?

Well, no.

I have to admit that when it was first discussed and undertaken, I sat on my hands (figuratively, not literally) (I couldn’t resist the pun). Most of the people in the service did as well. I didn’t rush to the Westminster Confession of Faith to see if it was either okay or some new heresy; I suspected the confession wouldn’t have much to say on the subject. I took a wait-and-see approach.

Months passed. People, even young people, didn’t rush into acceptance and implementation. We are Presbyterians, after all. But a few “early adopters” began to use their hands at critical points, like during songs and hymns.

One Sunday, at the end of the service when the pastor gives the blessing to the congregation, I lifted my hands. Not way up in the air, mind you, but enough to receive the blessing.

The world didn’t come to an end; the church building was left standing. It actually seemed like something natural. It was okay, and it was part of worship.

“We use our hands to reach up and cry for help, to tell of our soul’s thirst. To bless the Lord and to praise his holy name,” write Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold in The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation.

It’s what I do now. And I’m still a Presbyterian.

Over at The High Calling, we’re reading and discussing the Life of the Body during the month of May. The section included three chapters, including one entitled “The Theology of Food.” Marcus Goodyear is tackling that one in the main post today. I almost tackled that one here today, but decided to hold back.

Suffice it to say that I have a problem with the whole idea of “A Theology of Food” and suggestions that a proper theology includes natural, organic and local food, and excludes everything else (everything else is 99 percent of the food supply). The chapter also said organic food is pesticide-free, which is an understandable perception but understandably wrong. I might have had less of a problem if the chapter had been called “The Politics of Food” instead of “A Theology of Food.”

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Saturday Good Reads: Mary Harwell Sayler

I connected with poet and writer Mary Harwell Sayler online like most onlne connections happen – someone’s blog post comments, or someone’s Facebook page, or someone retweets someone. In Mary’s case, I think it was via Facebook. But I had been following one her blogs, Poetry Editor and poetry, for some time before that.

She lives in Florida and attended Florida State University. When she says “Christian poet” she means exactly that – poets of all Christian faiths – Catholic, evangelical, Protestant, and Orthodox. All are welcome and all are honored.

Mary is deeply involved with poetry – writing it, encouraging it, promoting it, encouraging poets, and writing about it. One her activities is administering the Christian Poets and Writers page on Facebook, and maintaining a corresponding blog called Christian Poets and Writers.

We had a conversation the other day about Joseph and Judah from the Book of Genesis, and she mentioned that she written poems about the Joseph story. I asked her for links, and she provided them: After Selling Joseph into Slavery and Choosing Judah.

Check out her various blogs, her poetry and the Facebook page for Christian Poets and Writers.

William Brown’s “Winner Lose All”

It’s early 1945. Hitler’s Germany is teetering; the eastern and western fronts are drawing close to German borders. But the Nazis are making one last-gasp effort with a rain of V-1 and V-2 rocket bombs on London, and German scientists may yet pull a rabbit out of a hat with a new jet fighter plane.

Ed Scanlon, an American army captain, is dropped behind enemy lines, to help local partisans in Leipzig disrupt German war efforts. The partisans are led by Hanni Steiner, a young communist who also happens to by an agent for Stalin’s NKVD. They work together, have a passionate affair and fall in love, roughly in that order. Scanlon is captured and taken to Gestapo headquarters, where he’s brutally tortured. Hanni organizes a daring rescue raid on Gestapo headquarters, and Ed is finally transported to safety in England.

But the Americans and the Soviets want those German jet fighter scientists. Scanlon, still recovering from his ordeal, is sent back to Leipzig. His primary motive for returning is to find Hanni, who’s been arrested by the Gestapo. He’s also to work with a German army officer to find and get the scientists to the American army in Bavaria. The head of the Leipzig Gestapo is working with the Soviets to get those same scientists to Russia. And the British would prefer that neither side get what they want.

Scanlon finds treachery everywhere he turns.

In Winner Lose All, William Brown has written another crackerjack novel of World War II, following last year’s Amongst My Enemies. The descriptions of the events, the people (including Stalin, Beria and Churchill) and the geography re so detailed and vivid that the reader is right there, carried along for one wild, breathtaking ride.

And in the process, Brown explores the themes of courage and treachery, love and fear, playing them through the characters in ways both real and often surprising. Who “wins” the triangulated race to get the scientists – and perhaps supreme power in the post-war world – may also be the one who loses the most.

Winner Lose All is an exciting, riveting read.

Related: My reviews of William Brown’s previous books:

Amongst My Enemies

Thursday at Noon

The Undertaker

Illustration (top): Leipzig Town Hall prior to World War II.

Surprised by Grace

I’ve always loved the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis. And what I love is how he’s not made out to be some saint, but a rather naively obnoxious young man, or teenager, who pushes his brothers too far. They plot revenge, and get it.

In The Grace of God, Andy Stanley tells the story of Joseph in narrative fashion, but he also tells the story of Judah, the brother who convinced his siblings to sell Joseph as a slave, who lied to his father, and who neglected the duty he had to his daughter-in-law. Judah comes across as a rather lying weasel.

And yet, of all of the sons of Jacob, it is Judah who receives the kingly blessing from his father. It is Judah whose descendant will be King David. And it is Judah whose blood will run in the veins of Jesus.

In human terms, it doesn’t compute. Judah behaved like a creep. Judah was a creep. Shouldn’t the kingly blessing have gone to Joseph, or perhaps to Reuben, the oldest?

It goes to Judah. In one sense, Judah was the most undeserving of all the sons of Jacob.

And yet the line to the Messiah runs through Judah.

Perhaps that’s the point, the surprising point.

Perhaps Judah was chosen to be the line of the Messiah, the kingly or royal line, precisely because he was such a creep. Perhaps God took the most unexpected brother to lead down to the Messiah. Perhaps this isn’t about merit at all, but about grace. Perhaps that’s the point of the story – Judah was chosen because he didn’t deserve it.

And I think, perhaps we are chosen because we don’t serve it.

Led by Jason Stayszsen and Sarah Salter, we’re discussing The Grace of God each Wednesday. For the links to more posts on this chapter, “Surprised by Grace,” please visit Jason at Connecting to Impact.

Poetry at Work: The Airport Security Check-In

I’m on my way to San Antonio, and I’m standing in the security line at the airport, waiting my turn to deposit my belt, shoes, jacket, wallet and change, laptop and carry-on bag in the plastic bins for x-ray, and then to follow through x-ray myself. This is air travel in 21^st century America: herded, x-rayed, checked, peered at, prodded and eventually you get to your destination.

I’m thinking about the first time I flew on an airplane – it was 1959, and I was flying to spend a week with my grandmother. I had to dress up, Sunday best, because that’s what you did in the glamour days of flying. The stewardesses wore white gloves; even coach had linen napkins.

I notice a TSA agent standing in front of the x-ray scanners. He’s counting down the line. I look around; no one else notices, too intent on preparing for the security ordeal.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph by Petr Kratochvil via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

Body and Spirit – Aspects of the Same Thing?

We’re starting a new book discussion over at TheHigh Calling today, reading The Life of the Body: Physical Well-Being and Spiritual Formation by Valerie Hess and Lane Arnold.

As I read the introduction, my first reaction was something close to dismay. It almost seemed that the book was going to be a spiritually correct (translation: political correctness with a veneer of theology) approach to obesity, slow food, and other aspects of the current food movement.

But I trust Laura Boggess, our discussion leader, and I kept reading today’s assignment – the introduction and first two chapters. So far, my first impressions were incorrect.

The Life of the Body is focused on the connection between the physical and the spiritual – our spiritual life and our physical (bodily) life. And there is a connection – Jesus took on the physical body of a human being from conception to death. And we are part of the body of Christ in both physical and spiritual senses.

We’re told that the body is a temple, a picture of the the body of Christ. Paul uses the metaphor of the body to describe the church, with Christ as the head. We know we will have redeened bodies in heaven.

The point of Hess and Arnold is that there’s a strong connection between our physical and spiritual selves. They’re not identical, but they are strongly connected, and perhaps to the point of being interwoven.

Outside of scripture, we know that regular exercise is a good thing, not only for our physical well-being but for our mental and emotional well-being, too. We know emotions can wreak havoc on our physical bodies – anger, stress, and upset can affect is in powerfully physical ways.

Our physical and spiritual well-being is not an either/or proposition but a both/and reality. We can’t neglect either one.

One of the exercises the authors suggest at the end of Chapter 2 is to look at yourself in the mirror and note what you see – and critically examine what the physical might say about the spiritual.

So this is what I see when I do that,

I see someone who needs to get back on his bike, if he could inspire himself enough and if it would stop raining on weekends. About 15 to 20 pounds need to be shed.

I see someone who is physically stronger than he was a year ago, helped by twice-a-week appointments with a personal trainer.

I see someone whose eyes reflect almost three months of non-stop stress at work, who’s doing way too much and needs to let even more things go.

I see someone who is very tired.

We’ll see where The Life of the Body takes us. So far, the journey looks hard and soul-searching. It also looks necessary.

To see the discussion and posts by others, please visit The High Calling.

Photograph by George Hodan via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.

At the center of the earth

He stood at the center

of the earth, knowing

it could not would not

hold, dust returning

to dust, even then seeing

the rock turning to sand

stones singing a dirge

to mourn what was

no longer is what

could not would not

hold at the center

of the earth.

Photograph by Dario Sabio via Public Domain Pictures. Used with permission.