New Eyes

New Eyes

Last week, Pastor Johnson suggested that Jesus hands out “invisibility glasses” … if you’re willing to take them and put them on; Glasses that allow us to see “the marginal ones” who really need our help. This week, the message seemed to continue; That when we don the glasses, it is Jesus who is revealed to us through service to those less fortunate than ourselves. Last week I mentioned a quote from Mother Theresa that really probably is better said here:

“The dying, the crippled, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved, they are Jesus in disguise.”

Pastor Johnson reminds us that Christ is CONSTANTLY being revealed to us, like layers upon layers of paint upon a canvas. There’s always something to be found “just underneath the surface”. And, at moments when He is revealed, you FEEL the ENERGY!

He seemed to build on a theme from his sermon last year on The Transfiguration; That it is two-fold in nature: there is the mountaintop experience and then that which happens when we “come down from the mountaintop”. The former is a good thought-provoking phenomenon. When is God revealed to you? Where have you experienced “mountaintop experiences”? Pastor Johnson shared that confirmation students confided these often occurred “away from home and the Monday-to-Friday routines”. We are imminently capable of sweeping many a magical moment under the rug of a scheduled life. Often it is our children who save us from this by “peeling us away”. Pastor Johnson once shared a story with us about going out onto 68th Street in Wauwatosa just after a snowstorm to just “revel in the view” with Hannah and Caleb. I gave my wife, Laurna, a Valentine card this week that simply said:

“The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow; but the rainbow will not wait while you do the work”

The rabbi Harold Kushner wrote about the Jewish celebration of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles:

“We celebrate Sukkot by building a small annex onto our houses, just a few boards and branches, inviting friends in, and drinking wine and eating fruit in it for a week. Sukkot is a celebration of the beauty of things that will not last, the little hut which is so vulnerable to wind and rain (and will regularly collapse a day or two after we put it up); the ripe fruits that will spoil if not picked and eaten right away; the friends who may not be with us as long as we would wish …. Sukkot comes in the fall, the evenings already chilly with the first whispers of winter. It comes to tell us that the world is full of good and beautiful things, food and wine, flowers and sunsets, and good company to share them with, but we have to enjoy them right away because they will not last …… not despite the fact that life does not go on forever, but precisely because of that fact.”

Mountaintop experiences can often occur in reveling in the simple and the ordinary or in escaping our day planner long enough to smell the roses of “being with Dad away from his work”, reading a book with no phone or email beeping in the background, escaping “the noise” of the modern world that bombards us with stimuli at every turn. The message IS about the mountain top, for sure, an idyllic moment, a place where all is somehow revealed in the eye or the simple request of a child, the roar of a waterfall, the impenetrable moment of an iridescent sunset.

But it’s also about “coming down from the mountaintop”. It’s about returning to the grind of the Monday-to-Friday. And the challenge Pastor Johnson reminds us is to “look for Christ revealed in the ordinary everyday”. He’s there also. He reminded us that everyone of us will meet Christ “on the street” this week. It’s too easy, as Pastor Johnson points out, in THAT world to get so tired and bogged down. Even the disciples, in their fatigue, could “not see”. We’ve all been there; many of us are there right now. And when disciples are tired, the invisibility glasses might not work so well. Even amidst the clouds and lightning of a transfiguring event! Actually, there’s nothing wrong with the glasses. We need to guard our energy so the glasses will continue to work.

Robert Fulghum tells a great story about a couple about to get married. He says that months before the wedding, they sit around a kitchen sink doing dishes, talking about the enormous responsibility it means to have children, about caring for each other into their elderly years, about where their boundaries will be as partners in a lifelong relationship. Years later comes a ceremony with a lot of ritual and fanfare, but, he cautions young couples:

“ …. .pay attention as you wash those dishes and talk with each other. You wouldn’t want to miss your own wedding.”

He craftily points out that, perhaps in God’s eyes, that wedding, in fact, takes place at that kitchen sink …. long before the ceremony in a Church or elsewhere. God is revealed “in the ordinary” if you have the eyes to see. Proust said:

“The voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

New eyes for the happenings of Monday-to-Friday. Christ will continually be revealed to you this week. But the questions beckons: “Will you have the eyes to see Him?” We all have transfiguration through the Holy Spirit. It is in handing a roll to someone at the Rescue Mission, a hand that is warm for the first time that day. It is in the common moment, when we feel we have already come down the mountain to the valley, …. It’s then that we may be most at the mountaintop!

Pay attention, put on your glasses, listen. Often the REAL wedding occurs at the kitchen sink and the kitchen counter at the Rescue Mission is where Jesus is waiting for us to meet Him. Talk about Topsy Turvy!?

Thanks be to God .... I Think

Thanks Be to God – I Think

The Epiphany story of the Topsy Turvy world of Jesus continues …… with Luke’s Sermon on the Mount. Pastor Gary Johnson took us on a small tour of “the other side of the tracks” where the true message of The Sermon on the Mount is that “it’s rough stuff”. We say “Thanks be to God ….. I think”. These messages are Jesus proverbially “grabbing us by the lapels” and trying to shake the message into us. A good friend recently told me something I needed to here in very direct language. She likened the act as “a message perhaps I needed to hear – delivered like a sledgehammer – meant to shape me into a better person”. Often messages we are not ready to hear or want to avoid hearing must be brought to us repeatedly and in a “grabbing the lapels” type of delivery. So what’s this disturbing message? Jesus tells us in no uncertain terms that we are to engage those that society treats, on the whole, as marginal, “on the edge” or the outskirts of acceptability. Pastor Johnson shared yet another street-wise Detroit story – this time about Jimmy Kirkland, an outsider who nobody wanted to know or be with. The Forest Gump-like “nobody” who lived “on the edge” of our sensibilities. Jesus extols that “Blessed are The Jimmys” and “Woe to you (to us!) who have not these crosses to bear nor help our fellow disciples with theirs. Our inheritance in the kingdom will be lost for such indiscretions. Jesus reminds us that in the end, if what we have is only what we have managed to accumulate, then ours will be an uninhabited “salt marsh” where all is barren and nothing grows. And Jesus will “not be there”. Rather, he will be “in that place where those invisible to us have been all along … waiting for our witness, our help, an outstretched hand. Where ever these misfortunes lie, where we find those less fortunate and “with less” Jesus tasks us to feed them, nourish them, clothe them, attend to them, be with them, help them along, help them carry their cross! Jesus is tasking us to “see” Jimmy – and not only that, but to “see ourselves in Jimmy”. When we are “off message”, those at the outskirts of “our world” become invisible. Or, we become blind to them! As holograms passing through our field of vision, they are there, but we do not recognize them as needing us. We recognize neither their pain nor their lacking in the light of our plenty. We have lost the ability to see why they are not as different from us as we would want to imagine. We live in a society that shuns “the invisible”. Those people “on the edge of society” are those Jesus walks with: the unclean, the diseased, the mentally and emotionally ill, the annoying, the frightening, the dirty, the hungry, those dealing daily with the utter despair of their lives. These are the people who frighten us, who “belong where we won’t have to confront them”. Mary Chapin Carpenter wrote a song “Stones in the Road” in which she sings:

When we were young, we pledged allegiance every morning of our lives

The classroom rang with children's voices under teacher's watchful eye

We learned about the world around us at our desks and at dinnertime

Reminded of the starving children, we cleaned our plates with guilty minds

The starving children have been replaced by souls out on the street
We give a dollar when we pass, and hope our eyes don't meet

And the stones in the road fly out from beneath our wheels

And then a voice called to us to make our way back home

Yes ….. “We give a dollar on the street and hope our eyes don’t meet”. Have you been there? I sure have. Why is it at that moment, I avoid Jesus’ “grabbing my lapels”; why do I not hear The Voice saying “feed them, attend to them, be with them, help them along. We remain in that society that shuns the invisible; we are NOT like them, we do not want to see them, or even be near them. The "rough stuff" message is "Woe to us" when we do this.

Jesus is walking around “handing out glasses” that fight the invisibility! Mother Theresa sure had a pair. I occasionally wonder HOW she managed to wear them constantly. She once said

“Places like Calcutta can be seen all over the world if you have eyes to see.”

She also said

“The dying, the crippled, the mental, the unwanted, the unloved, they are Jesus in disguise.”

Mother Theresa lived “on the other side of the tracks” in the slums of Calcutta. She wasn’t averse to serving at the Rescue Mission; you could find her attending to those “at the edge”; she did not “see them as marginal", but she did SEE them. The people who take three buses to work, who work three jobs to “keep it going”, bag our groceries, wash our cars, clean our floors, empty our wastebaskets, bus our dishes. She “heard Jesus” when he said “If you want to find me, THIS is where I’ll be!”

After service today, I went to George Webb’s in downtown Tosa to have a bite with my kids. My daughter, Carmen, thanked the waitress, Emma, by name for bringing us our food. Thoughts flashed to an evening when Pastor Gary Johnson told me “there’s no sound on the face of this Earth more beautiful than the sound of your own name!” As a teacher, I know this is true, but I struggle with “making it happen” still. We had a booth right by the door so we could see everybody leave. Lorin, my son, said goodbye to patrons leaving irrespective of what they wore or how they appeared. He high-fived a man in a ragged coat as he was leaving the restaurant. It struck me that this person was not invisible to the children. Perhaps this is why Jesus loved the children so. Tom T. Hall once sung a country western ballad called Old Dogs and Children and Watermelon Wine:

I was sittin' in Miami pourin' blended whiskey down

When this old grey black gentleman was cleanin' up the lounge

Uninvited he sat down and opened up his mind

On old dogs and children and watermelon wine

Old dogs care about you even when you make mistakes

God bless little children while they're still too young to hate

When he moved away I found my pen and copied down that line

'Bout old dogs and children and watermelon wine

Yes …. God bless little children while they’re still too young to hate!!! The marginals of our society are NOT invisible to them. They see nearly everyone as not very different than themselves. In the Caldecott Award winning children’s book, The
Polar Express, only the children can hear the ringing of the Christmas Bell, the sound of which has long fallen silent to the adults. Children can hear the bell and feel the magic and they can see that to which we have long since become blind.

Just as Jesus admonishes us to “go to the edge”, he offers us the example of children who “go there readily and without hesitation or fear or unease”. As I was watching my kids eat and listened to the scuttle butt of snippets of conversation in the restaurant, the radio was playing “In the Arms of the Angels” from the movie City of Angels. This movie was a remake of the German director Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire in which God’s angels struggle with their existence between the human and the divine. The radio played in the background at George Webbs:

Spend all your time waiting for that second chance

For the break that will make it ok

There's always some reason to feel not good enough

And it's hard at the end of the day

So tired of the straight line, and everywhere you turn

There's vultures and thieves at your back

The storm keeps on twisting, you keep on building the lies

That you make up for all that you lack

It don't make no difference, escaping one last time

It's easier to believe

In this sweet madness, oh this glorious sadness

That brings me to my knees

In the arms of an Angel fly away from here

From this dark, cold hotel room, and the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage of your silent reverie

You're in the arms of an Angel;
may you find some comfort here

The song is soulful, singing of ALL of us ... that we are , none of us, except by God's grace, very far from “the edge”. Sometimes out personal struggles arew invisible to all but the angels; the angels invisible to all in the movie are ever present, though. Perhaps Jesus was “grabbing us by our lapels” on The Mount and trying to shake some sense into us. Letting us know we are angels for each other. That we are the strength for one another on our individual spiritual journeys. Jimmy Kirkland tried to be visible, “but he should have known better”. We are called to be angels to the Jimmy K’s who nobody wants. THEY are the blessed on this Earth. Blessed be Jimmy, Blessed be those who are invisible – may we “put on our glasses”, listen like the children, and may we FIND them. It is in crawling into the slums of Calcutta for Jimmy Kirkland, that we are saved from the salty, barren wastelands of a life lived blind and deaf to our fellow travelers on their spiritual journeys. And it is when we realize we are more like those we shun than we often imagine that our eyes are opened, our hearing restored, and we become as the children …… who Jesus welcomed with open arms.

Adult Forum: The Search for Vocation and Calling

What follows are notes for the Adult Forum for February 4, 2007. Its focus was primarily on Vocation and Finding Your Calling. The discussion and several tangent discussions broke out on issues of:

(1) spirituality in the workplace
(2) ethical decisions when work and Christian morals conflict
(3) I love my work, but I hate my job
(4) The struggle apparent in searching for one’s calling and methods for doing so
(5) Weaving marrying your calling into multiple career changes
(6) How mismatches in our work and calling nudge us to a realization that this work is not our calling
(7) How weaknesses can reveal our true purpose by indicating what our gifts are NOT

Many participants shared a story about their journey on the way to a calling or how that journey was one of frustration for various reasons including conflict with “administration” over their jobs, conflict between true and apparent intentions on the job, loving your work, but hating the context in which it is forced to be served by a culture or an organization. The stories were heartfelt and very personal. And, as might be expected, there were varying degrees to which we , the disciples of Mt. Zion, have felt that we either have found our calling and have been happy in service to the Lord, or are still searching for our purpose. There was enough overlap and commonality among the stories to prompt a good and meaningful discussion about why the search for one’s calling is truly helped by searching in a supportive community. We touched on a theme from one of Pastor Johnson’s previous sermons where he reminded us that Jesus sent his disciples out “in pairs” because they would need one another’s support; that without such it would be too easy to “give up”. Some exchanges occurred about whose counsel we have sought, as Christians, along the journey to calling, or when our moral compass is at odds with “the bottom line” and what is expected of us in the normal day-to-day playing out of our occupations.

At the end of these notes are references for several books with direct impact on these topics, with stories of other Christians struggling along their similar and parallel path to what service it is they were SHAPED to perform, how they have shared their stories in a common discourse on the search for meaningful vocation and spirituality in the workplace.



Vocation and Your Calling: Is it your work?
Spirituality @ Work

At “what” are you truly gifted?

What is THE thing you feel called to do on this Earth? In your Life? For your service? What is your “native way of being in the world”?

Your calling is “the thing you can’t not do”!
(for reasons you may be unable to explain to anyone else
and don’t fully understand yourself! BUT they are compelling!)
Parker Palmer

The place (God calls you is the place) where your
deep Gladness meets the world’s deep Hunger”
Fredrick Buechner

Is this your work?

For pastors, these are often one-in-the-same.
For many teachers, their occupation is remarkably felt as a calling to vocation.

It does not have to be and may not be! Can there be a danger in letting work, i.e. ‘WHAT we do’, define WHO we are?
· Creative work that “doesn’t pay the bills”


“I could have gone to law school or business school and I would probably be richer financially now. But I chose to get a degree in education and to teach writing because it fit my talents better.”
Sharon Strand, college instructor, mother, grandmother

· Did Jesus do this? Or was his calling “apart” from his occupation?

If so (again), what do we do when these two come in conflict with one another?
· Do you seek out counsel of a colleague? Spouse? Mentor? Friend? Pastor?
· How do you resolve the “apparent tension”?

How do you “find it”?

“The Call comes in many ways, both subtle and explicit. It is the call to become what we were meant to become, the call to achieve our vital design …. If we have truly committed to follow our dream, we will find that a powerful force exists beyond ourselves and our conscious will, a force that helps us along our way, nurturing our quest and transformation.”
Joseph Jaworski

The Quakers have an expression: “Have faith, and ‘way will open' ".

The corollary: “In 60+ years of living, ‘way’ has never opened in front of me …… but a lot of ‘way’ has closed behind me “.
· Performing poorly at a task we force-fit ourselves into when we are not ‘meant for it’
· We are often led to truth by our weaknesses as well as our strengths
· You may have to close one door before another opens
· “There is as much guidance in what can not and does not happen in my life as there is from what can and does happen”

Has ‘way ever opened’ in front of you?
Have you felt or shared the frustration when it hasn’t?

Has ‘way’ ever closed behind you?




How do find the coexistence of your spirituality and your work?

What happens when the two butt heads?

“(Murdoch) was more than just successful ….. What a talent! This guy had ‘The Gift’!! You know … like … you know when you’re watching some athletes do what they’re doin’ ? …. ‘n it’s like they’re remembering something they’ve always known, instead of something they had to learn.”
From the movie “The Big Kahuna”

This is a movie based on the play Hospitality Suite in which a character faces himself at three different stages of his own life, and struggles with the role of spirituality and the changing role it has played in his life. At poignant moments, there are palpable, real struggles between “doing it right”, i.e. winning the business account, and “what’s the right thing to do”, perhaps not let business steer the conversation or “say what you need to land the account”. Are you your own person or are you “an arm of The Company”.

What do you do when these two come in (obvious) conflict with one another?

Whose counsel do we seek in these moments of conflict? Who, if anyone, do you call when you find yourself saying “I don’t know what to do”?

“The workplace is a sacred space filled with holy people, all held in context by a power much greater than ourselves …. Attempt to gather with others who are on a similar path”
Mary Jo Hazard, corporate trainer, wife, mother

Jesus ‘sent them out in pairs’ for a reason[1]. It can often times be too difficult to ‘go the spiritual journey alone’. Sometime your message is clear or vague, veiled conflict with that of The Company. Does your counsel help keep you ‘on spiritual message’? As PDL says, even if The Company won’t fold, at least you had the spiritual struggle, like Jacob did at the side of the river, after which they are a different person, after struggling with the birth pains of spiritual growth.

WWJD: What would Jesus do? Can we be expected to act as Jesus would?


“There is a price to being a Christian, and part of that price is that you will not be as successful in the ways of the world as those who appear to be moral but who are in fact uninhibited by any scruples ….. we should behave well in the workplace and trust that God will not give us more than we can endure.”
Joseph Moore, software consultant

… and when you “go it alone”?

· use of sacred objects
· religious art
o Crucifix made of scrap metal by a Haitian artist
o Bronze Celtic cross
o Jar of mustard seeds
o Sketch of the Laughing Jesus!
o Angels all around us
· family photos
· framed proverbs & wise sayings
· remembrances of former colleagues and students
· Symbolic art
o Butterflies as signs of transformation
o Abstract art that speaks differently to everyone and differently to each of us at different times
· New art above the fireplace mantle at MZLC

“I try to make the desk in my office an altar on which I celebrate the liturgy of my work.”
Bill Farley, Real estate developer, husband, father, grandfather

“In the construction of artist work, often artisans will introduce an imperfection[2] to remind them that ONLY God is perfect.”

“On a bulletin board over my desk, I have a tiny note with two simple images drawn on it: a cross and a fish – as a reminder of how Christians identified themselves to one another. This reminds me, in my work, my spirituality is identified by making an effort to recognize the individuality of people, listening to them, putting them at ease, and treating them with respect.”
Cathlin Poronsky, family nurse, wife and mother

Vocation and Your Calling: Is it your work?
Spirituality @ Work

References

Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer (2000) Jossey-Bass Books

Spirituality @ Work, Gregory F. A. Pierce (2001) Loyola Press

The Spirit at Work Phenomenon, Sue Howard and David Welbourn (2004) Azure Publishers

The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren (2002) Zondervan




The Lenten theme at Mt. Zion this year will be

“The Road Less Traveled”

· How does “taking it” change your life?
· Jesus did not take “the path of least resistance”
· Discipleship is, in the end and along the way, a series of choices


[1] http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/devarchive.aspx and see February 1, 2007 “Two by two”
[2] In the Downtown Milwaukee Public Library, a single baluster in the marble staircase leading to the 2nd floor was intentionally placed upside down before completion of the stairs. In Indian basket weaving, often a part of the weave will be done purposefully incorrectly. Other artists have found unique ways to introduce subtle, but remindful imperfections in their creative work.

A God Who Knows ALL

This week’s sermon was a true gift from Pastor Dudley Riggle.

I share a deep interest of Pastor Riggle’s: a fondness for issues where science meets religion and spirituality. He recounted a story regarding Hans von Ohain, inventor of the first jet power aircraft in Germany, and later employed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Wright Patterson Air Force Base after the war. He recounted that he and Hans had shared numerous thought-provoking conversations on issues where faith, God, and science intersect. Hans, he recalled, mentioned (and I paraphrase) “I have no trouble believing God is all-seeing. I may not be entirely comfortable with that idea, but I have no trouble believing it.” Hans retold stories of reconnaissance satellites that could capture a person on Earth lighting a match. “If”, he said, “man can design an apparatus that can accomplish this, then I have no problem believing in an ‘all-seeing’ God.”

Hearing him tell these stories reminded me of two stories that are indelibly etched in my memory. I regularly used to attend the so-called Gordon conferences in Holderness, New Hampshire where no published papers are allowed – this stipulation is made so that scientists could discuss their “outlandish, out-there ideas” without fear of reviewer reprisal in the published archives. It had the flavor of a scientific institute where scientists could “think freely and outside-the-box” – a place where, most often, creative discoveries are made. This particular conference has early morning and late night sessions with afternoons free for the participants to “go for a run or a bike ride together” and freely discuss the germane issues in very informal settings. After one long bike ride with 3 colleagues, I was writing postcards following an intriguing conversation in which we imagined God looking down at Earth at Nobel Prize winners in string theory, much as we look at small children who’ve just learned to tie their shoes, thinking “Isn’t that cute. They’ve figured it out.” all the time knowing WHAT they’ve figured out is relatively simple in the grand scheme of things!

The second story is about a Franciscan nun who taught me Church History in High School. I remember that she had struggled with cancer of the tongue, having to have part of her jaw removed, leaving her disfigured. For whatever reasons we as high school students think this way, some students felt they could take advantage in her class. One day, one student was carrying on disrespectfully. She approached him and simply asked him “Henry, do you believe God sees everything you do?” Not knowing that she had seen everything he was doing, and thinking he was caught off-guard and that this was a question she was asking as part of the class, he boldly, with a smile on his face, loudly responded “Yes, sister I DO believe God sees everything I do!” She hesitated, looked him in the eye and said “Pretty embarrassing, isn’t it?”

This 2nd story relates directly to Pastor Riggle’s next point. If we have notion of a God that is all-seeing, that notion can be simultaneously refreshing and discomforting, reassuring and yet threatening. God is, at the same time, The Compassionate One who sees our fears and our failures, our valiant attempts to live the right way and our shortcomings in these attempts. This God is accepting and forgiving. God is also The One who sees into our hearts, sees our desires and our actual deeds, and may reject us and condemn us for these indiscretions.

The rabbi Harold Kushner, in a book titled How Good Do We Have to Be? reinterpreted the story of the Garden of Eden. He recounts that in Biblical translation, the word for “rib” (as in Eve was made from Adam’s rib), can, from the Hebrew, be translated as meaning “side”. His interesting interpretation is that man is “one side of God”, the paternal side, more demanding and one to whom we are held accountable for our actions; woman was created as “another side of God”, often the maternal, comforting, forgiving side that accepts us in spite of our shortcomings, a need we all have in order to grow well and be willing to “try again” without recourse to giving up for our unworthiness.

And this leads naturally to Pastor Riggle’s excellent segue into our worth despite Sin! Despite our sinful nature, we are not unworthy to serve God’s purpose. The Bible is filled with stories of God using truly human beings, complete with their inadequacies, to “do His will” and “spread His Word”.

I wanted, yes, to “find” a Peanuts comic strip Pastor Riggle referred to, but alas, when Googling Peanuts and peanut butter, I found the limits of my internet/downloading/cyber-interconnectedness skills. The strip went something like:

CHARLIE BROWN: Lucy! Hands are fascinating! They can write books, design bridges, they can create stirring art on canvases, they can save lives!”

LUCY: They’ve got peanut butter all over them!

Yes, they’re covered with peanut butter, seemingly all the time; dirty, soiled, yet they are capable of all those wonderful things as Charlie Brown reminds us. We are reminded in the texts today that we are called by God to serve DESPITE our shortcomings! God’s message in Isaiah is not so much about sin as it is about grace! And with that grace, what CAN we do to “go on” in spite of the human condition. Pastor eloquently said we are called, by the grace of God, to

“doubt our doubts”!!

Peter, Pastor reminds us, holds the record for prayers that don’t get the answers he would like! When he kneels in self-admission of unworthiness before God and says “God should walk away from him”, God refuses! And God calls him to be a “fisher of men”. God, the Compassionate, is for us – so who can be against? He forgives us our iniquities and, always, walks with us. So we are then tasked by the New Testament readings to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps for God and walk His walk! We should oppose injustice, as did Jesus, but focus NOT on guilt for our humanness, but on mercy & grace bestowed upon us by our Creator.

This reminds me of a line from a sermon given at a Baccalaureate service at my own college graduation; “If you believe in justice and not in mercy, you’d better not make any mistakes!” But that is our nature, to continually make mistakes. Voltaire once said “The enemy of The Good is The Great”. In a futile effort to be perfect, we make excuses for the futileness of our capacity for “good”. Pastor Riggle eloquently painted an illustration of this, The Human Condition. That condition is a continual struggle with the darker side of our nature. A tendency toward, as Pastor Riggle points out, self-centeredness, pride, and ultimately self worship.

Shakespeare penned, “The fault lies not within our stars, but in ourselves”

Mahatma Gandhi said “The greatest demons we ever fight are those from within”

And Pastor Riggle reminded us of Einstein’s admonition that “The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is easier to change the nature of Plutonium than to change the nature of man.”

But Einstein also reminded us that we are human and not divine when he said

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”

And we must continually remind ourselves that, despite our humanness, we are children of God, whom He loves and accepts and that, while unworthy, we are, with and through His unending grace, able to be his messengers here on Earth!

In one of the great quotes of this sermon, Pastor Riggle reminds us:

“The problem’s not in falling down – it’s in staying on the ground!”

Do not dwell on the peanut butter covering your hands, Charlie Brown, for as certain as tomorrow’s coming, they will be soon be “dirty” again. Do not dwell on the dirty hands and the guilt for our human nature. Rather, trust that, with God’s grace, all is possible; to serve His higher purpose is certainly possible. And that grace is always more present than it appears, more present than we seem to believe it is. But perhaps it should be our ardent hope that, like Hans von Ohain, we can bring ourselves to the brink – where we will also be able to say “I may not be comfortable with it always, but I have no trouble believing it!”