On Pentecost, I returned to the church that I had served for 29 years for the Sunday morning worship. That Sunday was also Mothers Day and our fortieth wedding anniversary. We married when we were both in graduate school and had no money. I told Gail that I would hitch hike from Chicago to Albany for the ceremnoy because I didnt want to pay for the bus.She insisted that I take the bus and sent me money for the ticket. Our reception was in the church basement. The caterer charged us $2.95 per person for food.
We were in love--times were tough. We moved to an illegal apartmenton the south side of Chicago. Robert Kennedy was assassinated a month after our marriage. King had been killed in April. Times were tough and yet we celebrated as we remembered loving each other and caring for one another through those days and weeks.
So we went to church together. Pentecost was also special because the confirmation class was leading much of the service.
Sixteen months ago, after I announced that I would be retiring in July of 2007, I met Patrick, one of our wonderful junior high youth. He said that he was bummed out that I wouldn't be there to teach confirmation. His concern brought joy to my heart and a decision to create a extra short term confirmation class. So this wonderful group of young people joined the church in 2007--with the understanding that they would continue studying and working together through 2008. So on Pentecost, 2008, they led worship again. When they were planning the service, Pastor Doug, the interim pastor, asked jokingly who was going to preach(he was planning on preaching, since he assumed no one would be willing). Everyone said Patrick should preach. So Pastor Doug asked Patrick, and Patrick said yes.
Patrick is the youngest of four. His parents had divorced and his father had died, when Patrick was about 9. He preached a sermon that he wrote himself on Mother's Day/Pentecost. He spoke powerfully and gratefully about how his mother had helped the children through such difficult times--and proudly said the his brother was now getting his Ph.D. at Harvard. See, mothers care for you and then when you are 18, you have to go out into the world and make you own way. In the same way, Jesus had been with the disciples in human form and then as a resurrected presence and now he has gone away. So the disciples have to act and live and serve based upon who Jesus taugth them to be.
Wow. What a joy--what a blessing to hear Patrick speak so eloquently and so comfortably. His slight nervousness simply reminded us all what a challenge it is to speak before other people and preach the word. I felt so blessed by the opportunity to love and lead this beautiful group of confirmands. I felt blessed and in truth a bit amazed at the throughtullness and grace and faith that flowed from Patrick.
Sometimes, life is filled with pain and distress. Sometimes, blessings just flow down upon us like a mighty river.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Thursday, May 1, 2008
William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition fo Slavery
All on Fire is the title of Henry Mayer's thorough and inspiring biography of William Lloyd Garrison. As I read it, I thought to myself that I had really missed out by not reading about Garrison years ago. Anyway, isn't it exciting to find people whose life and struggles just thrill your soul.
In 1840 Garrison attended a meeting of the British anti slavery society and refused to come down out of the balcony to the main floor because women were not allowed to fully participate. Not only did he lead the abolitionist crusade but he helped nurture the early stages of the women's movement. He was an anti imperialist. Like Lincoln, he saw the Mexican War as part of the slave power's efforts to create more slave states and thus resist the efforts of the Northern states to limit slavery.
His newspaper, the Liberator, was initially supported mainly by black subscribers. Blacks and whites together tested the levels of tolerance on the trains in and around Boston in the 1850's. They were freedom riders a hundred years before heroic folks went south to face angry mobs and be jailed and have buses burned in the early 1960's.
Garrison knew the Scripture and called for Christians to live out the Gospel and come out from the oppressive Babylon of the church's support or tolerance of slavery. He called the church to repentance and many heard the call.
He advocated disunion. Better to have states that were truly free than be united with the slave power. Create a northern bastion of freedom and in the long run slavery would be undermined, he argued. In 1854,to dramatize his commitments and to call for greated dedication to the cause, he burned a copy of the Fugitive Slave law and the Constitution at the 4th of July gathering of the New England Anti Slavery Society.
He became a pacifist, believing in the power of resistance to evil by means of moral suasion. He was opposed to war, even though one son served wit the black Massachusetts regiment. Before Tolstoy, before Gandhi, before King, Garrison advocated and practiced non violent resistance. He was jailed, vilified, threatened--and he was praised and lived to see his lifelong struggle culminate in the legal end of slavery.
We live in awe of the universe's vast, fiery and empty beauty. But we live too in awe at the human struggle for justice and for love and for happiness. Garrison's life witnesses gloriously to that struggle.
In 1840 Garrison attended a meeting of the British anti slavery society and refused to come down out of the balcony to the main floor because women were not allowed to fully participate. Not only did he lead the abolitionist crusade but he helped nurture the early stages of the women's movement. He was an anti imperialist. Like Lincoln, he saw the Mexican War as part of the slave power's efforts to create more slave states and thus resist the efforts of the Northern states to limit slavery.
His newspaper, the Liberator, was initially supported mainly by black subscribers. Blacks and whites together tested the levels of tolerance on the trains in and around Boston in the 1850's. They were freedom riders a hundred years before heroic folks went south to face angry mobs and be jailed and have buses burned in the early 1960's.
Garrison knew the Scripture and called for Christians to live out the Gospel and come out from the oppressive Babylon of the church's support or tolerance of slavery. He called the church to repentance and many heard the call.
He advocated disunion. Better to have states that were truly free than be united with the slave power. Create a northern bastion of freedom and in the long run slavery would be undermined, he argued. In 1854,to dramatize his commitments and to call for greated dedication to the cause, he burned a copy of the Fugitive Slave law and the Constitution at the 4th of July gathering of the New England Anti Slavery Society.
He became a pacifist, believing in the power of resistance to evil by means of moral suasion. He was opposed to war, even though one son served wit the black Massachusetts regiment. Before Tolstoy, before Gandhi, before King, Garrison advocated and practiced non violent resistance. He was jailed, vilified, threatened--and he was praised and lived to see his lifelong struggle culminate in the legal end of slavery.
We live in awe of the universe's vast, fiery and empty beauty. But we live too in awe at the human struggle for justice and for love and for happiness. Garrison's life witnesses gloriously to that struggle.
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