Owlets, UFOs, Microbes, Miracles

On my back patio Wednesday morning, I noticed unusual activity in our littleleaf linden tree. The
house wrens were chattering and darting around, the robins were scolding, the blue jays were dive-bombing in and out at a furious pace. For a moment it looked as if something was falling, a strange grey shape that dropped from a lofty branch but never hit the ground. I watched a few minutes, mystified, then grabbed my binoculars from the patio table and went to investigate.

From most angles I could see nothing but the small neighborhood birds, darting in and out. Finally, from a back corner of the yard, I saw more grey shapes, two, larger than the blue jays, silently clinging to branches 30 to 40 feet up in the tree. Puzzled, I scanned the nearby branches until I saw a more identifiable shape: an adult great horned owl, peering down at me.

I had never seen such young great horned owlets, but some quick research convinced me that's exactly what they were. The birds nest in abandoned squirrel, crow or hawk nests. The owlets emerge from their nests before they're old enough to fly, then spend a few weeks perched on branches, waiting for food, strengthening their wings. They're the most suburban of owls: sometimes nesting in back yards, or busy parks, near highways, anywhere they can find an empty nest high enough for their use. 

I wondered if there was a nest hidden high in that tree. There are plenty of squirrels in my yard, but I've never found their nests. I wondered if they'd fledged in the tree itself, and if that other shape I saw was a third baby owl, falling from its branch and grabbing hold of another branch before it hit the ground. I went back to look again later in the day, and sure enough, now there were three, sitting very still with a watchful parent nearby. I took a grainy photo, hoping they'd linger a day or two so someone could come take some better photos before they left, but the next morning the tree was quiet with no sign of baby owls. 

I've been thinking lately of how very little we really know about the world around us. We've been living through a global science experiment, testing out the efficacy of masks, of vaccines, of social distancing, our lives constrained by invisible microbes unknown and unnamed just two years ago. 

Human Biome Project Reaches Completion

In the process, we've also been learning about the world within us: how internal conditions can impact our resistance to disease or help us back to health.

I had my first glimpse of the human microbiome three decades ago when our tiny daughter spent weeks on a powerful antibiotic. The medicine was needed to fight life-threatening strep pneumonia, but also killed beneficial bacteria. Her doctors warned it might take years to offset the impacts of that powerful drug. Since then much has been discovered about the human microbiome: the teeming microbial world in our intestinal tracts, respiratory systems, skin and hair. So far researchers have identified over a thousand different microbes helping process food, fight off disease, or causing disruption and harm.

There is so very much we don't see, don't know, don't understand. I suppose with the right equipment, and enough time to spend, I could have tracked those baby owls. But despite huge investments in time and technology, ornithologists are still uncertain about some bird species' breeding grounds, or how birds navigate on long migrations, or how they know when to begin those migrations. 

Despite plenty of research on how to rebuild a disrupted human biome, there is still much we don't know: does yogurt really help? What about probiotics? Vinegar? Wine? Are there different remedies for different people?  

Gathered for pizza last night on my daughter's patio, the conversation turned to alien invaders. I had somehow missed the news this week that aliens had / had not been confirmed in Roswell, New Mexico, UFO capital of the world.  After a short amusing discussion, I had no clearer idea of what the news had been. Apparently, the news was that there's no news:

"U.S. officials and analysts who examined video footage from U.S. Navy planes and other records say the evidence doesn't point to alien technology — but they also say they can't explain the unusual phenomena." 

Our church is studying Acts, and I've been reading in Acts in my morning readings. The coming of the Holy Spirit left the crowd accusing the disciples of being drunk. The healing of a man crippled from birth left the crowds mystified and religious leaders angry. The transformation of Peter from frightened fisherman to fearless preacher and teacher left onlookers perplexed or completely convinced. 

I grew up in churches that barricaded themselves against the work of the Spirit: insistent that God worked in signs and wonders in the days of Acts, but those days are over and won't return. I don't remember hearing the term "cessasionist" as a kid, but I do remember lots of talk about "dispensationalism," and the grave certainty that God works within defined limits of time and space. I was never sure what those church leaders meant, but quite sure they were wrong.

I remember listening to stories from my grandmothers' friends, missionaries in places like Ethiopia, where they had done spiritual battle with witch doctors, taken part in exorcisms, seen dramatic healings. As women, they were allowed to talk to our gathered Sunday School about planting churches in African villages, but not allowed to tell those dramatic stories. And although they preached and taught in other countries, they were not allowed to speak from the pulpit in the American churches that sent them. 

We miss so much by our own inattention, our determined refusal to listen, our predetermined categories, our amazing arrogance. We know so little, yet we think we understand enough to say what's real, what's not, what's worth our time, what isn't.

Owlets, UFOs, microbes, miracles; we see in part, we know in part. I'm thankful for what we see and know. I'm open to seeing and knowing more. 

I'll be worshipping in church this morning, taking communion (bread only so far thanks to Covid precautions), ending as we always do with this prayer:

Almighty and everliving God,
we thank you for feeding us with the spiritual food
of the most precious Body and Blood
of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ;
and for assuring us in these holy mysteries
that we are living members of the Body of your Son,
and heirs of your eternal kingdom.
And now, Father, send us out
to do the work you have given us to do,
to love and serve you
as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord.
To him, to you, and to the Holy Spirit,
be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen. 

Prayer for Pentecost: Rooted in Love

Today is my oldest daughter's fortieth birthday. We celebrated last night with a pizza gathering at Charlestown Farm, the beautiful farm where we buy a share every summer. We meet there on Thursday afternoons to collect root crops and greens from the cool lower barn, pick herbs,  strawberries, and flowers in the gently rolling fields, and enjoy the swings hung from trees along the hillside.

Last night, while we baked pizza in a homemade brick oven and watched purple martins twirl across the recently planted fields, the farm family and friends gathered across the road commemorating the life of the founder, Marvin Andersen, who died a few weeks before. His investment in Charlestown Farm continues to bring health and joy to his family, his community, all who share the fruit and beauty of his farm. 

Today is also Pentecost Sunday. My younger grandson will be baptized today, with our extended family gathering in church, in person, for the first time in over a year. He's already part of the family, but marking that more formally today: part of our family, part of our church family, part of the borderless family of God.

I've been reading lately in Ephesians. I memorized Ephesians 3 long ago, but am newly aware of how tightly connected the strands of this letter are woven. Paul's repetitions of  "therefore" and "for this reason" tie the entire letter together, almost as one thought about unity in Christ. Arbitrary chapter divisions obstruct the connections Paul was trying to make: 

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. . . . 

Therefore, remember . . . now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . . 

Therefore, you are longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. 

For this reason . . .  I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power . . . . I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

The ideas are connected, but they also speak of deep connections in all of heaven and earth, far beyond our understanding. 

I've been starting my days, now that the weather has warmed, outside on my patio. I read, think, journal, then pause to watching the robins enjoy my birdbath. The yard is full of the sweet scent of locust tree blooms. The bugs drawn to those blooms attract cedar waxwings and great crested flycatchers. I can't always see them, high up in the branches, but I can hear them, chattering and calling. 

See it or not, admit it or not, we are part of a mighty web of interconnected nature. The air we breathe is a gift from the green plants around us. The food we eat is a gift of the soil and sun. My morning coffee is grown on hillsides far from my home, harvested by hands I will never see. 

Paul's "therefores" weave it all closer: this is not a world of disparate parts, of aliens and strangers, little islands on our own, answering to no one. We are woven into interconnected families, all rooted and established in love, all bound together by a gracious power far beyond our own. 

I sometimes listen to people pronouncing judgement, dividing the world into "them" and "us," and wonder: have you read those words of Ephesians? Have you let that reality sink into your heart, and soul, and bones?

I sit on my patio and listen to God's love singing around me: bird families, bug families, woven together with plant families and our own neighborhood human families.

I sat on the hillside yesterday with my children and grandchildren, my daughter's oldest friend, my daughter's husband's parents, and reflected on the ways God weaves us into families. I thought of the ways we become rooted and established in love, over years, decades, llfetimes. Sometimes we catch glimpses of that love, but we will never fully grasp how wide and long and high and deep it is.

Watching my family, I see and enjoy each one. And I see and enjoy their care for each other: my son walking with his nephew around the distant fields. My older grandson swinging in the trees with my younger grandson, laughing. One daughter spending her day gathering flowers for her sister's party. The childhood friend driving hours to spend the evening with the family, remembering together. 

God loves us all more than any of that. Enjoys us more than the most loving parent enjoys the most devoted child. Delights in our care for each other, our care for those near us, our care for those farther away.

The real work of the Holy Spirit, I'm beginning to see, is love: giving us love beyond our own, and helping us see and share that love. 

"The Lord's holy people," I've come to believe, are not the "chosen," the sole recipients of love. We're the ones who have begun to see how amazingly expansive God's love is. We're the ones who have begun to live in that love as dearly loved children. And we're the ones who have begun to treat those around us, those far from us, even those difficult or hostile or completely foreign to us, as dearly loved children as well

Here's the awareness I pray for us today: that we will see how much we are loved, but also how much others are loved. All of us: near and far. We are not foreigners and strangers. We are not members of different tribes, distant households. We are not divided between the loved and unloved, those within and those without God's love and care. God's infinite love includes us all, surrounds us all. Every piece of creation, every person ever made, is part of this mystery, made alive to us by the working of the Spirit:  

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Nurturing Connections

As of Thursday, I'm now fully vaccinated.

And as of Thursday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced: “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

So last night, meeting members of our family for outdoor pizza, as we've been doing in good weather since the pandemic started, we gave them all hugs.

This morning, my husband Whitney and I attended church indoors together, for the first time since March 2020. It was wonderful to be in church again, to see people I hadn't seen since our outdoor worship ended late last fall. It was wonderful to pray together, to take communion, to feel the words of worship wash over us.

The pews had blue painters tape, marking where to sit to maintain social distance. We did our best to respect that. 

Most parishioners were wearing masks, as were we. A few were not.

The worship team sang. Most parishioners didn't.

Most took communion. A few did not.

Does any of that matter? Is anyone keeping score?

It's been a hard, strange year for churches. Changing guidelines forced creative response, investment in new technologies, hard conversations. Divided attitudes on everything from masks to electoral outcomes made some church sanctuaries feel unsafe or unwelcoming. Friends report leaving churches where the conflict became too destructive. Some pastors we know are exhausted: whatever they do, whatever they say, there's someone just waiting to attack. 

Our own church seems to have weathered the storm fairly well, but I find myself wondering, and praying, for the church writ large. Stats show that among younger generations, engagement with church in any way is dropping fast. Emotional distress is rising: anxiety, depression, loneliness.

If we're the body of Christ, are we a healthy body?

Last week I wrote about the book my daughter gave me: Finding the Mother Tree. I've been reading it, puzzling over descriptions of mycelium and mycorrhizae: the underground network of microbes connecting trees, plants, and fungi. When those connections are healthy, young plants thrive. When connections are lost, young plants are at risk. 

During my years of youth ministry, I became aware of Search Institute's Developmental Assets® Framework, 20 external resources young people need in order to nurture 20 internal strengths. Several I spent time thinking and strategizing about:

Young person receives support from three or more non-parent adults.
Young person perceives that adults in the community value youth. 

It seemed to me then that if kids knew and trusted at least a few adults within the church, that would help build an understanding of personal faith at different stages of maturity and provide a future resource when crises of faith emerged.

I've learned since that that need doesn't stop when teens graduate from high school or college. I remember with thanks the warm older adults I knew during my first years after college. I give thanks for Bible studies I was part of where Christians just a bit older, sometimes decades older, shared their faith, listened to my worries, regularly prayed for my concerns.

One challenge of this past year has been that the informal rhythms of relationship our church worked hard to develop were interrupted when we moved to virtual worship. Will we find ways to reclaim what was lost?

In many US churches, demographics find themselves siloed: teens; college students; young single adults; young parents and children; older single adults; older couples. 

I need prayer from people older than me: from people who have weathered the first years of retirement, who have lost spouses, who have learned to move slowly with dignity and grace. 

I need insight from people younger than me: young women still bumping their heads against invisible ceilings. Young moms struggling to balance expectations and demands and too little time. 

We all need conversation and friendship from people unlike us: older, younger, single, married, working hard in tough careers, learning new hobbies, processing illness and loss and change. 

The pandemic shattered some of those connections. 

So did the harsh partisan climate we've been living through.

I'm okay, but are there others who aren't? 

Digging through Search Institute materials this afternoon, reminding myself that nurturing relationships take time and intention, I found a resource, A Coronavirus Checklist for parents and teachers, one I'll be using as a prayer prompt in the days ahead, not just as I think of kids in my life, but beyond that. We all need someone to express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities, no matter how old we are.

And we all, always, need prayer: an essential part of that invisible network of communication and resource. Not starting with us, not ending with us. Fueled, always, by love far beyond our own. 

Becoming a Mother Tree

One of my daughter's gave me a perfect Mother's Day gift: Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard. I heard her on an interview this week, so was thrilled to be given the book, although I'm not quite sure when I'll find time to read it.

The book is part memoir of Simard's career in forestry, part exploration of new theories about how forests work. Her thesis: plants communicate through an underground mycorrhizal network and share resources that flow from hub trees, "mother trees," to places of greatest need.  Forests with healthy older trees, can adjust more easily to environmental stressors. With multiple hub trees, overlapping networks of connection make a forest more resilient.

I haven't yet read the book, and even if I had, wouldn't be able to give the breadth of depth of her research in just a few short paragraphs. What I heard, as I listened to the interview, was a reflection of what I know to be true in the human forests around me. Urban neighborhoods with a strong Mother Tree in place are healthier, and happier. Churches blessed with wise, generous Mother Trees can withstand stresses and nurture younger believers better than those without. 

My own grandmother was a Mother Tree. Elda Capra was fifth of 9 children in a poor rural family, ran away at 13, married at 16. She came to faith listening to a itinerant evangelist on a street corner in Oklahoma sometime in her early twenties, when she was already the mother of three small boys. In an angry, abusive marriage, she immersed herself in scripture and prayer. By her sixties she had become a hub of nurture for dozens of families who looked to her for prayer, advice and wisdom. I watched from the edges of that as her own years of struggle were turned to grace for other families in their own times of stress. 

Another Mother Tree was Doris Neilson, director of the camp where I worked in my college years. She had lost a child in a camp riflery accident, yet continued her camp work without reserve. In a time and context when so many others were telling young women, "No, you can't," her message was always, "you can." That message still ripples through the lives of so many of us. When everyone else insisted we follow, Doris saw us as leaders, and showed us what that looked like.

My mother-in-law, Althea Kuniholm, is another Mother Tree. Now 92, she is still writing poetry, still prompting those around her to read, and think, and talk, still inventing games and investing time and love in children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. 

Of course Mother Trees don't need to be mothers. They don't need to be women. They DO need to be wiling to put give more than they get, to listen well, to share beyond their own control. 

The image Jesus used wasn't of a tree, but a vine. Our sermon last week was from John 15, a passage I memorized as a kid because I found it so comforting: 

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 

Our rector, Richard Morgan, told of his experience seeing the the Great Vine of Hampton Court, the palace of Henry VIII built in the early 1500s. The vine was planted in 1768 and is now the largest and oldest in the world. It yields over 600 pounds of grapes a year. 

Richard focused on pruning, an important part of that passage in John, and of that metaphor. But my interest has always been in that sense of connection: if you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. 

The idea of hub trees takes the metaphor to another level, one that resonates with my own experience of prayer and time spent with others: when we remain in Christ, grace flows from us to others. When we stay open to connections, available to others, open to God's leading, invisible networks of mercy draw us closer together and others, more fragile, more lonely, find shelter in an ever expanding network of care. Then we ourselves, in our times of sadness, or need, or frailty, find comfort and care in that same network we've helped to nurture. 

For some, Mother's Day can be a lonely day, a day of sadness, regret, "if only", "I wish." We don't all have warm relationships with mothers or children. For some, the day can be a reminder of how very alone we feel.

But we are all part of an invisible network. We all draw sustenance, in some way, from others. We all can become part of those channels of grace for someone more fragile than ourselves. 

I have much more to learn about Mother Trees. More to learn about how that might apply to my own small backyard woods, to my own human networks. I have more to learn about becoming a healthy Mother Tree myself. 

But today, I celebrate the Mother Trees in my life, the networks I live in, the grace every part of those networks share with me. 

Thanks for being part of that. Happy Mother's Day. 

WHO is my neighbor?

I had my second Moderna vaccination on Thursday, in a very organized, well-run mass vaccination site two counties away. I was grateful to the volunteers staffing the desks, grateful to the recently-retired pharmacist who cheerfully jabbed my arm, grateful to the medical researchers and production managers and every person along the way from idea to inception to injection. 

This week, while looking forward to that moment on my calendar, I was also listening to news about a COVID outbreak in India. On NPR I heard stories of overwhelmed emergency rooms, listened to a reporter describe the constant sound of sirens in the streets of Mombia. Early in the week there were desperate please for US intervention, then of President Biden's conversation with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the promise to provide oxygen and vaccination production supplies on the same day the US agreed to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca doses with undersupplied countries. 

For me, one of the emotional challenges of this pandemic has been the pressing awareness of great need and of my own inability to help.

There are small things I can do, for family and friends who are struggling, or for groups in need beyond my easy reach. 

But the need has been huge and my reach has been in many ways smaller than usual: I can't have friends bring their kids to spend the weekend. I can't come hang out for the day to give. young mom a break. Of course there are things I can do, ways I engage, yet in the face of huge need, it all seems too small.  

I attend the Church of the Good Samaritan, a congregation that takes seriously the call to be a compassionate neighbor. Our logo is a graphic rendering of a statue that lived for years in the church entry. I walked by it almost daily during the eleven years I worked as youth pastor. That call to be a good samaritan is visceral to me: if you are in pain, I am in pain. I believe with all my heart: we all thrive when we all thrive, and only then. We all rest when we all can rest. Not until then. 

Those values were baked into me long before we landed at the Church of the Good Samaritan. My childhood family was the family in need, four kids and a grandmother who worked for minimum wage, always needing rides, resources, help of any kind. The churches we attended were under-resourced themselves but never failed to pick us up, get us where we needed to go. They provided shelter when we would have been homeless. They made sure we went to camp every summer so our grandmother could work.

Part of the emotional exhaustion of this past year has been the challenge in every direction: neighbors in need everywhere I look.

Who hasn't struggled with anxiety, isolation, fear of illness, grief at the divided political discourse?

Add the complicated challenges around racial justice, unjust policing, inequitable health care, COVID lockdowns colliding with mass incarceration. 

I have always found it a challenge to stay open to the pain of the world without becoming incapacitated by complexity. I'm good at compartmentalizing: putting hard emotions into cupboards in my heart and mind, to consider when the time is right, to hold until there's space to resolve. But what if every cupboard is full? What if every complex emotion is stashed away because there's no way, ever, to resolve them?

In 2016, I wrote about a fractured time and a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Rereading that post this morning, I find it speaks to me. It reminds me of what I've learned since then, and what I still need to learn.

Rather than pull pieces that fit today's context, I'm sharing it here. A sermon to myself. 

Heal the Land

I'm planning a canoe/kayak trip across the Susquehanna River this week, to demonstrate a gerrymandered district with one part on the eastern side of the river, and another, cut off by the river, with no way across except by boat unless you drive through neighboring districts. If you're in the area and have some free time, please join me!

Our river crossing will go just above Three Mile Island, the site of the worst nuclear accident in US history. The reactor was built on a sandbar in the river, a river that provides drinking water for millions in Pennsylvania and Maryland and supplies half the fresh water for the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the country. 

Just five years after the reactor was built in 1974, a broken pressure valve set off a series of misguided responses that yielded a partial meltdown, internal explosions and release of radiation into the air. The impacted reactor was never reopened. Another reactor continued in use until 2019. For forty years, there have been unanswered questions about what really happened, long-term impacts, and cost and implications of plans to fully decommission the reactors. 

Nicholas L. Tonelli, Flickr

Thursday, April 22, was Earth Day. I thought of that this morning, when my reading in Psalms spoke of jubilant rivers, joyful forest, mountains singing for joy. 

Just last week a new report on abandoned coal fields identified Pennsylvania and West Virginia as home to "roughly half the unreclaimed acres and two-thirds of the cost."  Another study described hundreds of thousands of orphan gas and oil wells in just four states, including Pennsylvania, leaking oil and gas into water, land and air. Yet another report gave four of Pennsylvania's most populous counties an F on air quality. Five others, including my own, scored a D. In 31 of our 67 counties, data is incomplete or non-existent. PA regulators apparently would like us to believe what we don't know can't hurt us. 

In 2012, just a year into this blog, I wrote a post called Earth Day Shalom: Ripple of Resurrection.

I’m not a farmer, or environmental scientist. But my knowledge of Christ’s shalom calls me to extend that experience of welcome and safe haven. On our own suburban half-acre, I’ve been working to build a place of sanctuary for bugs, butterflies, and birds. Native plantings, non-chemical lawn care, and lots of bird feeders and water supplies have helped create an oasis of bird song. Nesting in our yard this year are bluebirds, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, tufted titmice, chickadees, white throated and song sparrows, blue jays, cardinals, and two very dignified crows.

I know, though, that the world is bigger than my yard. Over the years I’ve helped plant trees on a city street, organized landscape days for a local elementary school, planted wildflowers around the edge of a townhouse complex. I’m currently trying to help organize a group of stewards for a neglected wetland near our home.

Looking back, I can see the ways God has led me ever deeper into a vision of connection: interwoven relationships between people, places, ideas, actions. Back in 2012, I quoted Nicholas Wolterstorff's Educating for Shalom:

“…Shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships: with God, with self, with fellows, with nature. . . But the peace which is shalom is not merely the absence of hostility, not merely being in the right relationship. Shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships. A nation may be at peace with all its neighbors and yet be miserable in its poverty. To dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before God, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself. . .”

Resurrection is practiced in part in harmony with God and ourselves, but also in a broader canvas: as good news to a broken, battered world. Like it or not, we operate, every day, in economic, political and environmental contexts. In THOSE contexts God invites us to act as agents of reconciliation and resurrection:

If the resurrection was the sign of the great reversal, it was also the sign of the coming shalom. When the resurrected Jesus greeted his friends, his first words were “peace be with you.”  In his letter to the Colossians, Paul insists that all creation is woven together by the creative, sustaining power of Jesus himself, and that the resurrection is the start of reconciliation and God’s shalom for “all things - on earth - or in heaven,” not just for humans, but for all creation.

In the past nine years, I've learned a great deal about the systems and structures of power and economic reality that prioritize profit over people. I've looked into the eyes of political and corporate agents who will do and say whatever is needed to ensure their own profit and power. I've seen good people pulled into destructive actions, complicit in things they know are wrong. And I've seen many of God's people construct convoluted arguments defending the destruction of creation and shalom.

I asked nine years ago: 

As a child of God, what role do I have in seeing the world freed from its bondage to decay, not just in the future, but now? Is it enough to sign a petition against fracking, or do I need to do more? Is it enough to buy organic, local food, or do I need to speak out on behalf of sustainable farming?

What I've learned since then is that speaking out on specific issues will do little good until we address the structures of power themselves: structures that enhance the flow of corporate money into the halls of government, systems that deliberately divide and conceal to undermine any attempt at change.

I still spend time doing what I can to heal my own little corner of the earth. As I do, I find insects I never saw before, birds I never heard, toads and snakes and fox and owls enjoying our little sanctuary. But I also find myself living a broader construct, working for fair elections, fair legislative policy. Looking for ways to wrest power from from destructive forces and to find ways to amplify the voices of the poor, the misplaced, the invisible and overlooked,

I've learned that as we commit to act as agents of resurrection, that obedience can lead into unexpected places and demand use of heart and mind, energy and time, resources we didn't know we had. 

I've also learned that as we learn to love what God loves, as we ask to see what God sees, we discover untapped reservoirs of grace, beauty, community and love. We see hints of God's kingdom on earth. We're drawn into new experiences of shalom. We find new fellowship with God, creation, and others as we pray and work for God's kingdom here on earth. 

Porters' Gate songs have become the soundtrack of this strange, pandemic season: songs of justice, lament, work and neighbor. This one reminds me of our calling, one we can never accomplish on our own: Heal the land, meet the need, set the captives free. 

The Porter's Gate - The Earth Shall Know (feat. Casey J, Leslie Jordan & Urban Doxology)

Setting Captives Free

from Works of Mercy, Rita Corbin, Catholic Worker, New York, ca 1970

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19     to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

That was the proclamation of Jesus' intent, read from Isaiah at the start of his public ministry. Some of that work was done in the few short years before his death. Some was accomplished in his death and resurrection. In Ephesians Paul wrote, "When he ascended on high, he led captivity captive": further proclamation of freedom; further setting the oppressed free.

But we know that work continues. In one church I attended, a new rector preached on that text from Luke 4, then asked every parishioner to memorize it. 

If you wonder what God is calling you to, he told us, wonder no more. It's right here: 

• proclaim good news to the poor
• proclaim freedom for the prisoners
• engage in acts of healing
• set the oppressed free

He offended some parishioners by moving quickly to expand the church's work with the homeless. Soon our church was one of a coalition of congregations operating a day-center with showers, laundry facilities, computers and volunteer counselors ready to help navigate the challenges confronting someone trying to rebuild a broken life. 

I thought of him yesterday, listening to the sixth of a series of regional forums on prison gerrymandering I helped organize and lead. 

How is it that a nation claiming to be Christian has the highest incarceration rate on the planet?

How is it that people claiming to be followers of Christ are often the loudest proponents of tough-on-crime policies that warehouse kids and young adults most oppressed by racism, poverty and inequitable school funding?

April is "Second Chance Month" in Pennsylvania, a celebration of the Clean Slate Act passed in 2020, to seal the criminal records of non-violent offenders after specific crime-free periods, depending on the initial offense.

But as one of the speakers on our forum said yesterday, what about a first chance? How many in PA prisons are serving decades, even life sentences, for things done as kids, without ever having a chance to grow, to learn, to catch a glimpse of a promising future?

I've been carrying some heavy statistics these past few week, stats comparing the US to other nations. We have the highest per-capita incarceration rates in the word, far out-pacing other NATO nations.  And PA has the highest percent of juvenile lifers on the planet: as of 2018, 1 in 5 juvenile lifers in the US were right here in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. 

Some of them have since been released, thanks to the Supreme Court's decision in 2012 that sentencing juveniles to life without parole is cruel and unusual punishment. Several of those who have been released have been part of our panels in the last few weeks. They served decades for things done in their teens. Now they're working to help friends in prison gain their freedom and rebuild their lives. 

Our forums have looked at the intersection between prison gerrymandering, unjust prison policies, neglect of impacted communities, mass incarceration. One of our presenters yesterday mentioned Hebrews 13: 3: 

Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

I wrote about that text in 2012, as I tried to think through my own political platform: Remember those in prison. 

I shared lots of stats. Here's a sampling (accurate in 2012):

One in 104 American adults is behind bars. One in 33 is under correctional control (on bail, on parole, in prison or jail).

One in four of the world’s inmates is doing time in an American prison.

16% (350,000) of incarcerated adults are mentally ill. The percentage in juvenile custody is even higher.

3/4 of drug offenders in state prisons are non-violent offenders or in prison solely for drug offenses.

85 percent of all juveniles who appear in juvenile court are functionally illiterate. More than 6 in 10 of all prison inmates would have difficulty writing a letter, or filling out a job application.

Young black men without a high school diploma are now more likely to be incarcerated than employed. 

Not a lot has changed since then. In fact, in some ways things are worse. COVID-19 has hit prisons hard, with death tolls in prisons higher than the general public. At the same time, attempts to control the pandemic have resulted in increased lockdowns, increased solitary confinement, total suspension of programs that encourage mental health. 

read more: Joe Ligon release

One of our presenters has repeatedly shared some photos of men he's worked with. One is of Joe Lignon, a Phialdelphia resident who was recently released after 68 years in PA prisons. He was given life without parole at the age of 15 for involvement in two murders he says he had nothing to do with. He had been imprisoned longer than anyone else on record.  

I've been thinking the past few weeks about resurrection, what I believe, where belief intersects with action.

I believe in resurrection, and as part of that, I believe in redemption, reconciliation, restoration, first and second and third chances. 

I believe in setting captives free.

Anglican bishop and scholar N. T. Wright wrote: 

“Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven. That, after all, is what the Lord's Prayer is about. . . . Our task in the present . . . is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day.”  ( Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church , 2008)

I find myself reviewing my own contribution to that: what does it mean to live as a resurrection person in this deeply divided world of ours? How do I help proclaim freedom to the prisoners, help set captives free, remind myself and others of men like Joe, waiting, sometimes decades, for a word of restoration?

Today, I'll pray, as I do every Sunday:

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

And I'll confess, as I do every Sunday:

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

Beyond that, I'll continue to pray that God will break my heart with the things that break His own, and will lead me, every day, to be faithful in the work He gives me, wherever it may lead.  

I believe

I believe in science, medicine, doctors, vaccinations.

I had my first Moderna vaccination on Marcy 30, Doctor Appreciation Day. I found myself giving thanks for Dr. Fauci and all the doctors, nurses, medical professionals and hospital staff who have worked so tirelessly and courageously during this past year of pandemic. I also gave thanks and continue to give thanks for all the scientists, lab workers, researchers of every kind gathering data and racing to find treatments and vaccines while we travel together through this global experiment.

We've watched the scientific process play out in real time: Does the virus survive on food? Hard surfaces? Still air? 

Are children carriers? Can we contract it from people with no symptoms? Do masks work? For the wearer? For those around them?

There are things we know now we didn't know a year ago. There are things we still don't know, maybe never WILL know. The research matters. The humility matters too. 

My high school physics teacher, Mr. Appell, liked to lead us deep into the inner workings of theories that shaped science for decades, even centuries, then would start class off one day with a giant NG, for "NO GOOD," scrawled across the board. Copernicus. Galileo. Kepler. Months spent on each, then the giant NG as solar theories bit the dust. NG NG NG. 

Unknown East European Artist
Wood engraving

That's the way it is with science. Theories are tested. Data is studied. Some things add up. Some things don't. We balance what we know against what we don't and do our best on the wide continuum between sheer ignorance and total understanding. 

Our sermon this morning was about Thomas. He wanted empirical proof of the resurrection, and was given it, and believed, completely. History suggests he traveled through what is now India, founding churches, until he was martyred in 72 BC. 

Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." That's us, the centuries of believers, affirming faith in a resurrection we can never prove. 

This morning, after the sermon, we also had a baptism. This question is part of the liturgy:

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God? The answer: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord,     He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit         and born of the Virgin Mary.     He suffered under Pontius Pilate,         was crucified, died, and was buried.     He descended to the dead.     On the third day he rose again.     He ascended into heaven,         and is seated at the right hand of the Father.     He will come again to judge the living and the dead

And then this:

I believe in the Holy Spirit,     the holy catholic Church,     the communion of saints,     the forgiveness of sins,     the resurrection of the body,     and the life everlasting.

Do I believe in resurrection? I do, just as much as I believe in science. Maybe more. 

That doesn't suggest I know what resurrection means, or that I could describe Jesus' resurrection body, or that I have a fully-formed vision of life everlasting. 

I've never really understood the idea that science and belief, science and resurrection, science and miracle somehow contradict each other. We are bundles of cells, nerves, emotions, ideas: some mostly physical, some mostly not. 

Yet who can show the exact boundaries between physical, emotional, spiritual? 

Who can prove causations are entirely one realm or the other?

I heard Frances Collins speak at a youth conference over a decade ago. He led the Human Genome Project and has been director of the National Institute of Health since 2009, nominated by Barack Obama, unanimously approved by the US Senate, serving under Donald Trump and recently selected by Joe Biden to continue in the same role. 

He was an atheist in his youth, devoted to science, with a PhD in physical chemistry and an MD by the time he was 27. But along the way he began to see realities that didn't line up with his scientific training. There was nothing in science to explain morality, hope, or beauty. 

I had to admit that the science I loved so much was powerless to answer questions such as "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" "Why does mathematics work, anyway?" "If the universe had a beginning, who created it?" "Why are the physical constants in the universe so finely tuned to allow the possibility of complex life forms?" "Why do humans have a moral sense?" "What happens after we die?

I had always assumed that faith was based on purely emotional and irrational arguments, and was astounded to discover, initially in the writings of the Oxford scholar C.S. Lewis and subsequently from many other sources, that one could build a very strong case for the plausibility of the existence of God on purely rational grounds. My earlier atheist's assertion that "I know there is no God" emerged as the least defensible. As the British writer G.K. Chesterton famously remarked, "Atheism is the most daring of all dogmas, for it is the assertion of a universal negative."

But reason alone cannot prove the existence of God. Faith is reason plus revelation, and the revelation part requires one to think with the spirit as well as with the mind. You have to hear the music, not just read the notes on the page. Ultimately, a leap of faith is required.

For me, that leap came in my 27th year, after a search to learn more about God's character led me to the person of Jesus Christ. Here was a person with remarkably strong historical evidence of his life, who made astounding statements about loving your neighbor, and whose claims about being God's son seemed to demand a decision about whether he was deluded or the real thing. After resisting for nearly two years, I found it impossible to go on living in such a state of uncertainty, and I became a follower of Jesus.

Collins helped found BioLogos, an organization which explores the intersection of faith and science. The Biologos website might alarm those who hold to a literal interpretation of every part of scripture. It might intrigue those open to consider alternative perspectives. I enjoy reading the personal stories of scientists whose work in the field led them deeper and deeper into orthodox faith and used the site in my last years of youth ministry exploring questions our older students were asking. 

Tonight, April 11, Collins will be discussing How Christians can help end the pandemic. My guess is step one will be "believe the science." 

Also of interest, a podcast from last Easter: Resurrection in the time of Coronavirus. Step one: believe in resurrection. 

There is far more room on that wide continuum between sheer ignorance and total understanding than we sometimes acknowledge. Room for data, for scientific theory, for mystery, for faith. And for the humility to say "Lord, I believe, Help my unbelief."

Risen

James Reid, Life of Christ 
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Three close family members have had dangerous car accidents in the past nine months.

The first was on the PA turnpike one night last summer caused by debris from a shredded tire. My brother-in-law found his car thrown toward the median. The car was totaled, but he was okay, just badly shaken, replaying the incident in his mind for days after. It could have ended very differently.

Last month is was my son, waiting on a busy road to make a left turn, rear-ended by someone not paying attention. Since his wheels were turned, he was pushed hard into the oncoming traffic lane. Fortunately, no one hit him head-on. His car, too, was totaled. A few seconds sooner, a few seconds later, the outcome could have been tragic.

Wednesday it was my husband, Whitney. Heading off for an oil change, he was hit by an SUV running a red light. The front end of his car was smashed, with debris thrown across the road. His wrist was abraded by an air bag, but other than that, he's fine, just shaken like the others. 

Life is fragile. Our days are uncertain. One second can change our lives. One nano-second can end them.

I've been reflecting on all that this week as I read the gospel accounts of crucifixion and resurrection. Many of Jesus' last conversations included predictions of his death and references to resurrection. No one believed him.

We sometimes think the people of his day were innocents, simple folks eager to believe a myth of a resurrected hero.

That's not what I see as I read the accounts. Death was much more present for the people of his time. Disease, hunger, violence: all leaned in close. There were a few surprising stories of resurrection: Lazarus, the rich ruler's daughter. But for every day folks, that seemed like nonsense. You lived. You died. Life was harsh and short. Maybe somewhere in the distant future there was an afterlife for the most pious and holy, but for most folks? Forget it. 

The Sadducees, students of religious law, concocted stories and questions to prove resurrection was ridiculous. 

I like the way The Message words the account from Mark 12:

Some Sadducees, the party that denies any possibility of resurrection, came up and asked, “Teacher, Moses wrote that if a man dies and leaves a wife but no child, his brother is obligated to marry the widow and have children. Well, there once were seven brothers. The first took a wife. He died childless. The second married her. He died, and still no child. The same with the third. All seven took their turn, but no child. Finally the wife died. When they are raised at the resurrection, whose wife is she? All seven were her husband.”

Jesus said, “You’re way off base, and here’s why: One, you don’t know what God said; two, you don’t know how God works. After the dead are raised up, we’re past the marriage business. As it is with angels now, all our ecstasies and intimacies then will be with God. And regarding the dead, whether or not they are raised, don’t you ever read the Bible? How God at the bush said to Moses, ‘I am—not was—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? The living God is God of the living, not the dead. You’re way, way off base.”

The phrasing of the response interests me: You don't know what God said; you don't know how God works. 

James Reid, Life of Christ,
woodcut, Philadelphia, 1930

Now, millennia later, we can read the words, but we still don't quite know what they said, and we definitely don't know how God works.

Jesus's friends, heading toward his tomb on that morning long ago, had spent time with him, watched him, listened to him. But none of them had the slightest hope that death had been defeated. They had loved and followed Jesus. They had watched with grief and fear as the crucifixion unfolded. Now they were hoping to see his broken body, hoping to wrap and bathe it and honor him in his death. Resurrection, from their own accounts, was the last thing on their minds.

Is resurrection on OUR minds, this Easter morning? I had my first COVID vaccination Thursday afternoon, and have spent the past two days slightly achy, slightly feverish, tired.

I'm thinking about the more than 500,000 here in the US who have died of COVID in the past year, the nearly 3 million around the globe. 

Does God care? Is resurrection part of that story?

In the days following that first resurrection morning, some believed quickly. Some needed convincing. 

Luke, the careful historian, describes the first report of resurrection:

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles. But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.

Were there some who heard the women's story and believed it immediately? When did "nonsense," for Peter, finally make sense? Were there some who saw the resurrected Jesus and explained it all away? Were there some who saw, and heard, and deliberately decided that belief would be too costly?

Saul fought those who spoke of resurrection until he was struck with a blinding light on the road to Damascus. Renamed Paul, he spent the rest of his life teaching others of the truth of the resurrection, risking his life for that central reality, facing imprisonment for the hope of resurrection. 

In his first letter to Corinthian converts he reminded them: 

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

There are mysteries on mysteries in considering resurrection. Are suffering and death anomalies, or essential parts of a much larger story? Is this life precious beyond all else, or a moment, a sigh, before the real song begins? Is it reasonable to believe in resurrection? Unreasonable to doubt it? Are all somehow equally true?

From a poem by John Terpstra (find the full poem here) 

Because I did not for a moment doubt in childhood
the story of this rising, shall I, now
I am wiser? The world still has no
boundary. The lines still shiver and wave;
the impossible takes place . . . 

I’ll say this: whom she supposed to be
the gardener sings and dances the contour lines
that are his body; this body that is broken
by time and season and violence too deep
for us to wonder at the source, broken
into beauty that lures our present rambling
and leads us to the edge of this escarpment . . .

and where we meet her
who has run and sung and danced these trails
since the day she first saw
the massive rock dislodged
from the cliff-face

     of any reasonable expectation. 

There is much I don't know: what the word "resurrection" means. What eternity will be. Where the boundaries of grace and love are found, if there are 

Today, Resurrection Sunday, is the day to set all wondering aside and simply rejoice that life has conquered death. 

Hallejuah. Christ is risen. 

He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. 

David Jones, The Resurrection, woodcut, London, 1924