Like many of you, I admire words and how even the simplest of thoughts can be strung together until their beauty shines brighter than the sum total of the words themselves. I’ve come to love reading Mary Pipher - known widely for her courageous exploration of how fragile young girls can be in their journey to womanhood. Pipher is a psychotherapist with a poet’s heart whose practice has centered in the heartland of America.

A few weeks ago in preaching about King David’s mid-life struggles, I referred to a question John Claypool raised that asked, “where are the maps for the second half of adulthood?” There are many resources for the struggles of young adulthood - but where do we go for the tools needed for the second half of life? This past week I finished a Mary Pipher book I enthusiastically recommend, Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World. After Pipher experienced what some would call a mental breakdown triggered by her own wild success as an author, she had to retreat in order to save herself. Here’s a snippet from the last chapter of her story of recovery:

“At sixty, I am still ahead of the horses, as my grandfather used to say. But I am aware that I have only a finite number left of Thanksgivings, full moons or spring flowers. That realization makes me sad, but it also makes me notice. I don’t often squander much time or let beauty pass me by.

I heard recently that Japanese companies offer employees what is called heartache leave – days off after they break up with a partner. With a young person it is only one day; for older people, heartache leave is longer. At this stage of my life, every day is a kind of heartache leave. I am always losing someone or something I love.

But here are the gifts of this stage of life:  A deep reverence for all living creatures. The realization I have been useful. The freedom to do as I please. The knowledge that I am loved. The acceptance of my place in time.

I do not fear death, but I hate to think of abandoning people who love me. I wish I could always be here to watch over my generations of family. I especially want to be part of my grandchildren’s lives as long as I can. I want to take them to see the Sandhill cranes, read them the books I loved as a girl, teach them the constellations and the names of butterflies. I want to give them what my grandmothers gave me – a seep sense that I was loved and understood …

Not all adults have grandchildren or find them fulfilling. The key to happiness is not so much grandchildren as it is Generativity. This was Erik Erikson’s term for a sense that our work will leave a good and useful legacy for the generations to come. Many people without children or grandchildren experience this through their professions, their avocations and their commitments to their communities. The fullness of life comes from an identity built on giving and on joy. This is the great trick at this stage in the life cycle – finding useful work that gives us pleasure.

I luxuriate in my life, and it will be hard to say good-bye. Yet death is the greatest democrat. In the end we are all equals. There is a comfort in knowing that I face what every human being who has ever lived faced in his or her time. I expect to return to the great commons where all our ancestors will be waiting to greet us. I predict that whatever comes after death will be better than I can possibly imagine …

All transformations are returns. After setting forth on a voyage of discovery, being chased by monsters, encountering great suffering and beauty, getting lost and being pummeled by storms, we find our way back to our original place and realize that the truth has always been there waiting for us. We connect with that which we knew before we were born. We can resume our ordinary lives with eyes unclouded by longing.”

[Mary Pipher, Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World, New York: Riverhead Books, 2009, 244-46]

Other fine books I’ve enjoyed of hers include Letters to a Young Therapist, Another Country: Navigating the Emotional Terrain of our Elders and, of course, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls.

By adulthood, we’re good at burying our secret mistakes in places where they’re difficult to find. But some mistakes refuse to stay buried.

The story of David and Bathsheba should be rated R for adults as anytime someone breaks the 6th, 7th and 10th Commandments (murder, adultery and coveting your neighbor’s wife) in a chain of events that are all part of one larger sexual issue, there’s an overwhelming chance it’s not meant for children.

In the past, I’ve treated the story of David and Bathsheba as a story of marital infidelity and the subsequent cover-up as though it was thoroughly modern and as a morality tale we can hopefully learn from in our relationships with our spouses. But in truth, it’s not a modern story because none of us are kings and the modern notion of marriage being defined as one man and one woman for life is a part of the problem.

Another common error of assumptions in this reading is to imply Bathsheba had done something morally wrong by bathing on the roof. The sin of rape is only eclipsed by the sin of assumption that the woman has somehow done something to lure the rapist into committing the crime. Likely Bathsheba was not taking a bath in the same daily manner we might bathe in order to freshen our bodies from our daily grime; rather, she was bathing ritually according to Jewish law to cleanse herself after her time of menstruation. To her defense, the Bible never questions her possible intentions.

Bathsheba is not even considered one of the main characters of the story because she’s helpless against the will of the king. He wants her and she is forced to come to him. The Bible gives us the clue - Bathsheba was a woman with a hyphenated name:  Daughter of Eliam, wife of Uriah the Hittite. She had no existence of her own but was instead identified by the men to whom she belonged. King David was in Jerusalem with time on his hands and the boredom of his soul was soon obsessed with his sexual interest in this married woman.

The way this story is told, it appears an unyielding editor has struck all but the most essential words. It’s similar to the writing style whereby a writer puts down everything and strikes every word that is not absolutely needed until only the barest words remain to tell the story. It’s a story that’s mostly nouns and verbs (subjects and objects) with almost no adjectives or adverbs. The action is quick. The verbs rush just as the passion of David rushed. The act of the adultery itself takes very little time to tell. King David sees. He asks. He sends. He takes. He sleeps with her. He sends her home.

Religious scandals have always accompanied religious fervor. Carl Jung’s notion that great light necessarily creates great shadows is a reminder that there’s always been a House on C Street where piety and secret sexual sins are intertwined. Men of power may think they can escape from the desires of the flesh by having a Christian frat house where they can study the Bible by day and enjoy someone other than their wives by night, but no matter how they try to live otherwise, their sins will become public no matter how much they try to hide their sins.

It must be a form of magical thinking whenever we think we can do something of the magnitude of David’s sexual conquering of Bathsheba and think we can get away with it. We fool ourselves into thinking we can walk between the raindrops whenever we believe those we’ve betrayed won’t find out the truth of our sexual secrets.

Whether it’s about politicians or preachers, CEO’s or schoolteachers, we’re seductively intrigued about the dangerous liaisons of powerful public figures that risk their reputations, their families, and every other good thing in their lives for a few stolen moments of lust with a sexualized someone who comes to have a strange obsessional power over them. Yet it’s never as simple as just “a few stolen moments,” is it? Sins of deceit usually carry with them a past, a present, and a future. Often, those sins haunt and shape us for the remainder of our lives. But instead of confessing our sin and seeking forgiveness, we are more likely to try to cover them up.

A college student once found herself extremely nervous about an upcoming exam. She was a high achiever and worked hard, but the pressure to succeed in her grades was enormous. So when she had the opportunity to steal the answers to the test, she took them. After preparing for the test with the help of the stolen answers, she decided to destroy the evidence so no one would discover her secret. Around five o’clock the next morning, she snuck from her room and quietly tiptoed down the hall to burn the test questions in the metal trash bin in the hall bath. Just as she began to feel safe with the flames of her small fire, the fire alarm suddenly went off. Soon, the area was filled with students, local firefighters, and the Dean of Students. The young woman could do nothing but confess everything. Although she was a senior with a top academic record, she was expelled and her college work was ruined.

Sexual desire and the deep-seated need for intimacy is a part of every one of us because we’ve been created in the image of God and a part of that image includes the need for love, including sexual love. And that may be the most startling thing about this story … a God who thinks how sexy it is to be alive and to have someone with whom we give and receive love!

Every time I read something wise or wonderful and see that it was written by “Anonymous,” I cringe. It’s often a cop-out for not finding and crediting the person who actually wrote the piece. The most flagrant example occurs with the “Serenity Prayer,” most often attributed to “Anonymous.” The prayer was reportedly first prayed in a sleepy little church in Maine. A guest preacher concluded the worship service with a benediction he had penned just for that occasion. One of the congregants greeted the preacher at the back door of the church and inquired about the prayer. He was so bold as to ask for a copy of it, and the minister simply gave his only copy to the man.

The prayer was so meaningful to the man he later printed the prayer on his personalized Christmas cards. Others read the prayer and savored its words. Soon the prayer was shared locally, then regionally and widely by others who benefited from its meaning. Alcoholics Anonymous incorporated it in its worldwide ministry, and that only widened its popularity.

The visiting minister that day was Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the last century’s most influential theologians. Niebuhr is certainly known for these contributions to thoughtful Christian living and thinking, but he is best known for that simple prayer that is often attributed to “Anonymous.”

But the plague of “anonymous” goes deeper than that these days. The Internet makes credibility of authorship almost impossible to verify. E-mail messages are passed around like a virulent rumor. All too often, authorship goes under the lazy Anonymous, or else it’s attributed to the wrong author.

A few years ago, I received an e-mail of sayings attributed to Mother Teresa. I assumed they were legitimate and something shared from one of Mother Teresa’s inspirational books on service to humankind. My friend sent the e-mail to eight others. If you’re like me, all I had was an idealized notion of what Mother Teresa might have said. I was so struck by what I read, I even printed it and stuck it in my sermon illustration files that contain bits and pieces of ideas and words that might be useful for some future speaking opportunity.

A few years back, I read a story by David Kirkpatrick in The New York Times about Kent Keith, a vice-president of the Honolulu YMCA. At a Rotary luncheon a few years ago, Keith listened to a speaker repeat the same words of wisdom that I received through an e-mail message: People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered … love them anyway.

The speaker attributed the saying to Mother Teresa. After the meeting, Keith approached the speaker and said to him, “I actually wrote that.” The speaker looked at him and said flatly, “You poor, delusional megalomaniac.” But Keith was remembering, not imagining.
Now in his late 50’s, he had published those words nearly 4 decades ago as a 19-year-old Harvard student. It was a collection of motivational sayings he originally penned and published for high school student councils. When he moved to Hawai’i after college and law school, he forgot about it. But rediscovering his self-published work and learning he was no longer the author sent him on a search.

Using the Internet, he discovered that his words were also attributed to Bishop Abel Tendekai Muzorewa of Zimbabwe, the psychiatrist Karl Menninger, a Milwaukee clergyman, and a Cleveland high school wrestling coach. The New York Times article went on to say the inspirational words were found on Web sites all over the Internet. Cookie entrepreneur Wally Amos had them on his Web site. So did rocker Ted Nugent, DreamWorks-SKG and the English Cocker-Spaniel Club of America. Most recently, the Roches, a folk group of singer-sisters, set the words to music.

“I was totally amazed by everything,” Keith told the Times reporter. So he set out to claim his rightful place as the author of the sayings. He could do that because he had registered a copyright for his words when he originally prepared them in booklet form. Consequently, Penguin Putnam agreed to pay him an advance of $300,000 for the rights to The Paradoxical Commandments, a collection that puts his original 10 theses in print. By the way, here’s the list of The Paradoxical Commandments … they’ll do as “a good word for the week.”

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered … love them anyway
If you do good, people will accuse you of ulterior motives … do good anyway
If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies … succeed anyway
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow … do good anyway
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable … be honest and frank anyway
The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds … think big anyway
People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs … fight for a few underdogs anyway
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight … build anyway
People really need help but may attack you if you do help them … help them anyway
Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth … give the world the best you have anyway

Maybe Keith was saying far more than even he realized.

David was the smallest son of Jesse who grew in stature until even today he’s considered the greatest king in all Israel’s history. Every encounter, every battle, every challenge set before him was successfully engaged. David entered the time in life when he had as much life behind him as he did ahead of him and he began to focus on what to do now that he had himself on his hands. He came to the peak of adulthood and yet he didn’t know fully what to do next or what to expect out of the next stage of life.

David became obsessed with the fact he had a king’s palace made of cedar wood while the Ark of the Covenant, the uniquely Jewish symbol of God’s presence and mighty power, was still in the tent it had been in since the days of the Sinai when the people of Israel roamed about the desert like Bedouins. David and his men had roamed the whole of the Middle East fighting as if war was all they knew and likely it was; now he worried about what to do in the quiet days of hard fought peace. And his idle mind turned to building a home for God.

When John Claypool was pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Ft. Worth, he preached a marvelous series of sermons on the life stages from childhood to old age that later became the basis for his book, Stages: The Art of Living the Unexpected. In those sermons he wisely observed that in each stage of life there is a corresponding struggle of the spirit. And in the struggle through adulthood, the longest stage of our lives, there is a pointed difference in the challenges of climbing the mountain than from descending the mountain. Claypool makes a crucial observation:  “If adolescence is the most intense stage along the way,” he notes, “(then) adulthood is the most demanding.”  What makes it so tough is that by middle adulthood, we struggle on so many fronts … relational, professional and personal.

There is the obvious struggle of the first half of adulthood we can call “The Season of Accomplishment.” But once one reaches the summit, reaching the peak of their powers having achieved with a mixture of success and failure, how do we turn and make the descent down the mountain? In the struggle of older age he asks poignantly, “Where are the navigational charts for the afternoon and evening of life?”  Most of us are so busy in the first half of adulthood achieving and conquering we are caught unprepared for the uniqueness of aging. It’s the kind of experience that comes when someone has focused all his or her adult energies on only one growth front during the early years of adulthood. How do we then cope with the second half of adulthood when climbing the mountain is no longer the primary challenge? One middle-aged man commented to Gail Sheehy that after his season of accomplishment, he was not nearly as fulfilled or satisfied as he supposed he would be. “I am near the top of the mountain that I saw as a young man,” he noted, “but lo and behold, this is not snow up here, it is mostly salt.”

David was at the pinnacle of his powers, at the mid-point of his life, and looked for a way to legitimize his reign and secure his place in history. He was worried about what he’d leave behind. Would it last? Would it mean something? David was in the season of his life where he hoped to find some way to balance the books between the gains of his accomplishments with the losses of his failures. Notice in the text, there is peace on all Israel’s borders. The wars were over and there were no more enemies to fight. He had done his job well in leading the people of God into a quiet peace in the Middle East.

David desired to mark his career with a lasting gift of remembrance in the form of the construction of a great Temple as a house of worship. Both he and Nathan the prophet were in agreement that God’s ark had lived long enough in the portable tents of the Tabernacle and it was time to provide a permanent residence for God in the newly christened City of David. But Nathan was told in an oracle that it was not to be; in fact, God made a play on the word “house” and offered instead to build David a house of his own, “I, Yahweh, will build you a house.”

The word play comes in knowing that in Hebrew, the word “house” can mean either a Temple or a Dynasty. Thus, the roles are reversed. David will not build Yahweh a house (a Temple). Instead, Yahweh will build David a house (a Dynasty). And in the word play, the seriousness of their conversation shifts. They’re no longer talking about building a place for the Ark of the Covenant to reside. They’re not contemplating building a structure that will house the visible presence of God. Instead, God speaks of the prospects of David’s reign being remembered for all time as a sign of his greatness.

How about one last story to make the point? It’s told in India about an argument among the gods over where to hide the secret of life so men and women would not find it.

“Bury it under a mountain,” one god suggested. “They’ll never find it there.”

“No,” the others countered, “one day they will find a way to dig up the mountain and uncover the secret of life.”

“Put it in the depths of the deepest ocean,” another god suggested. “It will be safe there.”

“No,” said the others, “some day humankind will find a way to travel to the depths of the ocean and will find it.”
“Put it inside them,” a wise, old god said, “men and women will never think of looking for it there.”

All the gods agreed, and so it is said the gods hid the secret of life within us.

David’s story up to this point is an example of the value of working hard and working on difficult tasks with all your heart. But there’s a limit to sheer force of will unless one is willing to take time to take an honest look at the major growth fronts upon which we struggle … relational growth (how we balance the need to both give and receive love), professional growth (our calling to a vocation), and personal growth (the willingness to accept both our successes and our failures). Gail Sheehy calls this “concomitant growth” and it’s the key to knowing the path that leads down the mountain of adulthood. The question for the second half of our long journey through adulthood seems to be, “Will we continue to grow or just grow stagnant?”

Here’s what moved me in Anne Lamott’s book, Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life:

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and the truth in what you say.

Try to write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique. Don’t be afraid of your material or your past. Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you. Be afraid of not getting your writing done.

If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting, and it will probably be universal. So, you must risk placing real emotion at the center of your work.

Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.

Risk being unliked. Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act … truth is always subversive.

My gosh, that’s inspiring! What’s startling is that this is what preaching should be like … fresh, conscious, direct as if spoken into the heart of a thing without using faith to slam people with shame. I love the connectivity of preaching and writing as if they are two sides of the same coin.

There’s a less-than-subtle mixing of King David’s public and private life in this text. On the surface, it’s one of the cutest tales in the Bible if you can animate the story in your imagination. Here’s a king so full of the joy of life he’s moved to dance and twirl before the Ark as it’s carried up to his city, the City of David – better than President Bush doing a jig to entertain the White House press corps on the front portico waiting for Republican nominee John McCain to emerge for a press appearance!

David’s first action as king of the merged tribes of Israel was to decree that the Ark of the Covenant be brought up to Jerusalem, the new capital. As it was brought up the road he danced wildly at the head of the parade publicly flashing his privates before all the slave girls who egged him on. This public spectacle shifted from embarrassment of his actions to the marital shame of his wife who watched from the palace window. Marital shame is not a relational strength in any marriage because it’s often a sign of desperation or manipulation.

Much like any high-profile public figure, there are almost no secrets one can maintain, as one’s own private life is never beyond the scrutiny of the public eye. The list of public figures we could list where this is known is long and illustrative. Seems every other day a new inductee is admitted to the Hall of Shame and they come from all public walks of life … Presidents and presidential wanna-be’s, governors, mayors, members of Congress and/or the Senate, preachers, musicians and actors. Actually, the list goes on and on.

The Ark of the Covenant was brought to David’s city, a neutral site yet in safe proximity to the no-man’s-land separating one from the other. As one of his first actions as the unifying king of both Israel and Judah, it was a wise move. Much in the way the colony after the American Revolution, the colonies looked around and New York City was the capital city for a few years but they wanted to choose a place that had not been included in any of the colonies or was not officially a part. So they created the District of Columbia and Washington D.C. as a planned city to serve the new country as its capital. It was not a part of any of the thirteen colonies and not a part of any of the states.

There was something for both kingdoms in this move. The Ark was a unifying symbol even though it was in the hands of northern tribes of Israel – both tribal confederations were attached to it and placing it at the heart of the new capital symbolized the blessing of God’s central role in their unity and God’s presence upon them all.

But attached to this move the veil shielding David’s private life from view was opened for our view and here we are – three thousand years later considering the private relationship David had with his wife Michal. We’re given a glimpse into his private life with Michal, his wife who was a gift from Saul for his military prowess. In those days, “trophy wives” were the spoils of war, or the insurance of political alliances with tribal chiefs who became family members of neighboring tribes as a means of ensuring peace in the region. When reading these stories, consider the list of David’s wives first as a sign of his kingly politics and only in a secondary sense as romantic love between a husband and wife as we understand it today. Consequently, there are very few clues of romantic love in these stories. Behind the shame, the Bible tells us Michal was in love with David. Strangely, we’re never told how David felt about her. But understanding politics will shine a light on how they acted with one another as the Bible tells us obliquely she was barren.

Larger than the shame exchanged in their marriage, larger than the unification of Israel with the guiding presence of the Ark of God in new capital, was their the commentary we’re given about the state of things as David confronted in typical Middle Eastern style how to deal with the remnants of Saul’s years as the titular head of the so-called tribes of Israel – a power never fully realized as it has become under David’s leadership. Behind all these events, David systematically ridded the kingdom of the remnants of Saul’s family so no one from the old kingdom could rise up and challenge David’s new power on the throne.

The stories surrounding this story of David’s dance before the procession bearing the Ark to Jerusalem are bloody stories as one by one, Saul’s descendants are executed in a sequence of events… all but Meribbaal, the crippled son of Jonathan. The Bible depicts David as showing great kindness to Meribbaal because of his pledge of loyalty to his friend Jonathan. But it should be pointed out that David’s mercy also meant Meribbaal’s freedom to live meant he was kept under house arrest in David’s palace – probably meant to ensure he was kept on a short leash and always under David’s ever-vigilant eye. Michal, as Saul’s daughter, was hold as a sexual prisoner unable to give David the one thing in the Middle East a successful wife could give her husband, a male heir.

Thus, the titillation of the dance became a terribly haunting image for Michal, as she understood David was free to cavort among the servant class of women who would gladly make themselves available to the king for pleasure. All the while, Michal was the sexual suspect David could not afford to visit. She loved him and hated him at the same time and out of spite, she attempted to shame him when he arrived all sweaty at their shared palace from his lusty dance before the people who lined the streets for the spectacle of it all. So her love soured and she tried to shame him for his lascivious cavorting before the Ark.

The new king of the unified kingdom brought the Ark home and in doing so, brought the presence of God home too. But as much of a cause for celebration it was, as much of a national victory it was, it only highlighted the internal strife of David’s private life with Michal, his political wife whom he couldn’t quite trust enough to love. And no matter how much she loved him she couldn’t move his heart to love her in return.

Before Al Gore won his Oscar and became the darling of Hollywood … before the late Jerry Falwell claimed “Satan is using the talk about global warming among evangelicals to distract Christians away from preaching the gospel and toward environmentalism” … before Exxon Mobil gave $16 million between 1998 & 2005 to 43 ideological groups in an effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming  … before any these things were said or done, the Bible was speaking eloquently, even poetically about creation care in a collection of psalms known as “creation psalms” written to extol the beauty and grandeur of all God has created and all that we enjoy as our earthly home.

Psalm 8:3-4a – When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established (ordained); What are human beings, that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?

Psalm 19:1 – The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork

Psalm 65:9-10 – You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it; the river of God is full of water; you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. You water its furrows abundantly, settling its ridges, softening it with showers, and blessing its growth

But that’s not all the Bible has to say on the subject. Go all the way back to the book of Genesis. There we find the story of creation and the intent of creation. In the first creation story in Genesis 1, God says, “Let us make humankind in our own image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over (them) …’”

And it seems that’s where the trouble began. The idea of dominion settled into the minds and hearts of the people of God believing God gave them the freedom, nay the right, to subdue and plunder the earth. Maybe political pundit Ann Coulter was closer to the truth than we like to admit when she cynically remarked, “God said: ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”

Maybe that’s why when Jesus was asked to describe hell he called it “Gehenna.” Gehenna is not this visionary place beyond the grave as a place where lost souls are burned for eternity.  Gehenna was valley just south of Jerusalem infamous during the Jewish monarchy period for the practice of child sacrifices by fire. While the term had a deep significance in describing a place where the dead were burned, it was also a trash dump for the rubbish generated by the residents of Jerusalem. Jesus’ description of hell was a garbage heap! That meaning seems to say that when we destroy the creation, we’re creating a hell on earth and how then can it reveal the glory of God?

And in the midst of this transcendent dream scene John had in a moment of worship, he saw the wiping away of the old world and God’s re-creation of “a new heaven and a new earth.”

From a Papillon-like penal colony on the island of Patmos, John had a vision of worship and the exaltation of God and in the midst of his worship he envisioned this astounding scene from Revelation 5 where the voices of a mass choir of singing angels broke out in full voice, “Worthy is the lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” They were uncountable simply out of sheer magnificence and John didn’t even try to count them; instead, he described them as, “… myriads and myriads and thousands and thousands.”

And in response to the moving nature of the majesty of their singing, the earth itself cried out an antiphonal response. “Every creature in heaven and on earth and in the sea, all that is in them sing:  ‘To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!’” Then the four living creatures added the coda: “Amen!” And the elders gathered around the throne of God fall down and worship.

This is not the first time we get the idea that the earth itself is involved in worship. It’s a distinctly Hebrew point of view that appreciates nature and senses that the trees and the mountains and the skies and the flowers and the sea creatures and the birds of the air are all a part of a holy choir that sings every moment of every day. Remember what Jesus said as he entered the city a week before his execution to the throngs of people who lined the path leading to the Temple? The Pharisees tried their best to restore calm by telling Jesus to order them quiet. Their voices could not be stilled, he said, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40b, NRSV). Jesus was tapping into that old Hebrew root that the created order was still mysteriously tied to the heartbeat of the Creator.

French paleontologist and Catholic theologian Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin asked, “Is life an open road or a blind alley?” In answering his own question, he observed, “Man has every right to be anxious about his fate so long as he feels himself to be lost and lonely in the midst of the mass of created things. But let him once discover that his fate is bound up with the fate of nature itself, and immediately, joyously, he will begin again his forward march.”

A poetic way of thinking about the earth is to see the creation, the entirety of it, (not just those beautiful places where the nature shines) as God’s body. If we could take it in and see it as something God created and gave to all of us that inhabit it, would it make a difference?

Robert Fulghum (pronounced full-jum - even with two vowels, read it as if it was only one syllable) leapt upon the national scene two decades ago with his wildly popular collection of our generation’s wisdom literature, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things. I think the book paved the way for other similar writings some might call “bathroom books” because they can be read in short sessions.

Fulghum’s gift has been to drink in the world as it comes to us … day-to-day observances and events to see goodness and mystery and marvel in them. If there’s a brilliance in being able to open one’s eyes and see clearly, Fulghum’s vision is twenty-twenty. Over the years I’ve come to love and respect his wholesome approach to life and faith and what I would call “a holy reverence and observation” about life.

Fulghum grew up in Waco Texas and escaped by his own wits in avoiding the Baptists. That’s a modern day miracle don’t you think? Waco’s surely the most Baptist city in America with more Baptist churches there per capita than any place on the face of the earth. Not only that, but Fulghum served time as a Unitarian minister before he became rich through his books. I like what he has to say and value his ability to capture life and faith in his quirky view of the world.

One of the best things he’s written in my estimation is From Beginning to End: The Rituals of Our Lives. This book is near-holy in its savoring of the rituals that define our lives from birth to death. It would make for a smart discussion book for a group that’s wanting a stimulating read to help the group members tell their stories to one another as an act of communion over their shared lives.

But I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew with Fulghum’s latest publication, Third Wish. It’s a 5-volume book in two bindings held together in a hard cover box set. I lifted the first book, volumes 1&2, and discovered I could do arm curls with it, as it was heavy and taxing. Marcel Proust would smile in envy at the audacity and ambition of it!

But on the backside of the box I ran across a quote worth passing along from Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis (names I can write but cannot pronounce). It’s titled, “Instructions for Wayfarers.” For accuracy, I looked up the word “wayfarer” and half-expected to see a small photo of Tom Cruise in his Ray-Bans and boxer shorts; instead, here’s what the dictionary says it means:  “One who travels, esp. on foot”

Wayfarers aren’t all that common these days. We drive our car across the parking lot to get closer to the next store on the same block. The loss of our car to the repair shop for even one day is like an amputation, for goodness sakes!

Back to Alexandros … here’s the quote that reads like ancient wisdom itself:

They will declare:  Every journey has been taken.
You shall respond: I have not been to see myself.

They will insist: Everything has been spoken.
You shall reply: I have not had my say.

They will tell you: Everything has been done.
You shall reply: My way is not complete.

You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.
Fear not, You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper.
And you shall go through and on …

Thanks Brother Fulghum for stirring the pot of ideas and keeping us alert and alive to the wonder of the world at hand!

On this weekend we’ve celebrated our nation’s 233rd birthday, the hard task of nation building has turned into perhaps the more difficult task of sustaining this nation. That implies our work has turned into vigilance over the needs of our nation and how to diligently embrace our challenges. It seems one of our challenges would be to let go of our partisan need to dominate those who disagree with us and build political alliances to address our highest concerns.

This last year has been, as usual, filled with very difficult issues we must rise up to meet. Chief among those issues is working for justice as we have children in our nation who go to bed hungry at night. We have millions, families and individuals across all classes, without healthcare coverage adequate for even the most common of medical concerns. The country’s war against poverty is in its fifth decade and it seems we lost ground this past year. Unemployment, economic crises, diversity concerns, religious oppression for minority religions, and a stymied political system with political parties more bent on defeating one another than for working for the common good – we’ve surely got our work cut out for us.

But on this day to celebrate our freedom as an American people we can celebrate this year the election of an African-American as our President. The unjust racial barriers of four centuries was broken this year and now we must find ways to move forward together to work on other ways in which our nation’s highest values of freedom are available to all until we truly are a shining light of freedom. Happy Birthday America …

King David’s life is a study of leadership. Even today he’s an ancient model for modern day leadership and we are given enough of his life’s story to know he was an extraordinary man. Thus, with the political conniving of someone very adept at creating coalitions that worked together, David united the entire country into a relatively small but powerful nation among the nations of the world. In the Bible, Saul is a contrast to David as a tragic figure as a model of leadership. Samuel as the original “God-chosen” leader for Israel anointed him. But the mantle of leadership passed from him because of his disobedience to the command of God. Reading the story today, this transition of God-appointed leadership from Saul to David is instructive to us of how God and politics are brought together in Israel.

An interesting summary statement punctuates our passage of Scripture:  “And David went on, and grew great, and the Lord of hosts was with him” (5:10). It’s the statement that unlocks our understanding of how this Bible writer wants us to understand the events that have just occurred. We are given this intriguing political story of who is aligned with whom and are given some strong hints at how the politics of their day operated (not too unlike our own day suggesting that politics is a very ancient art). And yet we are told that David was blessed while Saul was not “because God was with him.”

Building coalitions is often messy work and David brought the scattered tribes of Israel and Judah together, something that not occurred since they scattered nearly a thousand years before. Freedom earned must be a freedom maintained. David became king as he felt ordained in his bones and called by God to fulfill. Frederick Douglas said that in the days of his slavery he prayed often for freedom, but that his freedom was not answered until it got down into his heels and he ran away.

On this weekend we celebrate the founding of our nation, let us remember what it takes to tend the garden of our democracy. Remember to pray for our leaders and to pray for one another, all citizens, all of us recipients of the great gift of freedom.

The new face for Baptists is here this week in Houston at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly. Trust me, there are plenty of gray-haired folks here - sadly a good number of them are those whom I remember from Baylor and seminary days (almost all exclusively from the six SBC seminaries of the past) and from my experience of being a practicing Baptist minister the last thirty years. My contemporaries were raised and educated in another era that no longer exists. And it’s true my gang still exerts a strong influence over the affairs of our kind of Baptists. My generation is pastoring and staffing churches all over the CBF world. Many of them teach in colleges and seminaries and have a faithful role to play in shaping the future by training new leaders. While the new leaders are preparing, the current leaders still have gas in the tank for the needs of the church.

But no longer are we the only powerful group here as a new generation has found Baptist life to be invigorating and worth giving their lives to. For the last twenty years the new Baptist seminaries have been churning out young, intelligient and compelling young ministers. They are male and female and their gift to the church is less burdened by issues such as gender or race or other cultural issues upon which their elders seem stuck. The churches continue having a tough time accepting those differences as in the case of women in ministry. That will change, however, as this new generation assumes the great responsibilities given them and as the gender gap narrows. It’s obvious this younger generation will feel no compulsion for supporting the male priority that currently exists. Could you see Holmeswood pastored by one of these bright young women in the future? I can and hope you can too. By the way, we have two pastors on our staff with gifts for this and will surely pastor a church in the near future. The question should be, why not?

These younger pastors are graced by new programs that help seminary graduates make the tough transition from the classroom to the rigors of local church ministry. There are new programs of two-year residencies that provide ministry opportunities working with seasoned churches and pastors to give them chances to grow and develop for a couple of years before they are launched into churches with less collegiality and more of a sink-or-swim mentality.

I’m impressed with their holy sense of impatience as the church dawdles its way to the future refusing to recognize that some of the old patterns of false boundaries and old cultural mores have been left behind. They are less hung on structure and rigid rules of constitutions and bylaws and more into building communities of faithful followers of Jesus. Social justice and a pragmatic sense of ethics rule the day more than forms and hierarchies. It’s disturbing to those in charge because it implies that old order cannot continue, but it’s the wind of a new spirit that must blow.

Loneliness is a terrible issue for ministers and as I watch what’s going on with this new generation, I see how they’re being taught how to better care for themselves as ministry is less focused on programs and its measurable results and more focused on spiritual formation and the care of the soul - both for minister and laity.

At this meeting, the hotel lobby is the place to meet, and not so much in the seminars or worship services. There are laptops everywhere but that doesn’t mean these young ministers are consumed by them and non-communicative to those around them. Their laptops are useful in creating social connections that deepen their relationships with one another and the room buzzes with the genuine affection they have for one another.

We got a taste of that new energy last summer as Joey and Stacy Pyle spent the summer with us in an intern program established through our friend Hulitt Gloer at Truett Seminary. Joey and Stacy are a part of this new generation and have joined the staff of the Spring Creek Baptist Church in Oklahoma City to work alongside Preston Clegg, their creative pastor who’s about the same age. We can take heart with these new voyagers … they are bright, committed and carving their own paths as the trails carved by an earlier band of practioners have diminished.

Thankfully, new adventurers are stepping forward to take up the call of Christ in the world. Take heart, O church, for the face of the future is here and help is on the way.