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I'm a believer. Of all the things that define who I am, this comes first. My faith in Jesus affects the way I think about my identity, the way I think about what I do, the way I think about the world.

This journal expresses the ideas and feelings and convictions to which my faith in Jesus leads me. It is a personal journal, and I do not claim to speak here for First Congregational Church or the United Church of Christ.

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illegal to love your neighbor in arizona?

Posted on April 23, 2010 | Filed Under church, justice, politics

Here is an excerpt from a recent report by Jim Wallis from Phoenix, Arizona. May the followers of Jesus in our own day echo the words of Peter and John and the other apostles: “We must obey God, not men.”

I got up at 4:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning to fly to Phoenix, Arizona, to speak at a press conference and rally at the State Capitol at the invitation of the state’s clergy and other leaders in the immigration reform movement. The harshest enforcement bill in the country against undocumented immigrants just passed the Arizona state House and Senate, and is only awaiting the signature of Governor Janet Brewer to become law.

Senate Bill 1070 would require law enforcement officials in the state of Arizona to investigate someone’s immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person might be undocumented. I wonder who that would be, and if anybody who doesn’t have brown skin will be investigated. Those without identification papers, even if they are legal, are subject to arrest; so don’t forget your wallet on your way to work if you are Hispanic in Arizona. You can also be arrested if you are stopped and are simply with people who are undocumented — even if they are your family. Parents or children of “mixed-status families” (made up of legal and undocumented, as many immigrant families are out here) could be arrested if they are found together. You can be arrested if you are “transporting or harboring” undocumented people. Some might consider driving immigrant families to and from church to be Christian ministry — but it will now be illegal in Arizona.

For the first time, all law enforcement officers in the state will be enlisted to hunt down undocumented people, which will clearly distract them from going after truly violent criminals, and will focus them on mostly harmless families whose work supports the economy and who contribute to their communities. And do you think undocumented parents will now go to the police if their daughter is raped or their family becomes a victim of violent crime? Maybe that’s why the state association of police chiefs is against SB 1070.

This proposed law is not only mean-spirited — it will be ineffective and will only serve to further divide communities in Arizona, making everyone more fearful and less safe. This radical new measure, which crosses many moral and legal lines, is a clear demonstration of the fundamental mistake of separating enforcement from comprehensive immigration reform. We all want to live in a nation of laws, and the immigration system in the U.S. is so broken that it is serving no one well. But enforcement without reform of the system is merely cruel. Enforcement without compassion is immoral. Enforcement that breaks up families is unacceptable. And enforcement of this law would force us to violate our Christian conscience, which we simply will not do. It makes it illegal to love your neighbor in Arizona.

easter sunrise 2010

Posted on April 5, 2010 | Filed Under beauty, photography, the natural world

full moon at dusk

Posted on March 25, 2010 | Filed Under beauty, photography, the natural world

merry christmas!

Posted on December 23, 2009 | Filed Under general

check out my updated recommendations page

Posted on October 14, 2009 | Filed Under general

My Recommendations page includes new listings for music and books I enjoyed this summer.

heaven can wait

Posted on October 14, 2009 | Filed Under personal life, religious language, spirituality, the natural world

I don’t expect to go to heaven.

At one time I did. At one time, making myself worthy of heaven was the focus of my life. From early childhood, I learned what it meant to ask Jesus into my heart with the hope of spending eternity with him in heaven. I learned to live for the sake of heaven. I wanted to please God now, do what God wanted now, so that one day, when my life came to its inevitable end, I might enjoy that great reward, life without end in a perfect place.

That childhood faith became my adolescent faith and the faith I carried into young adulthood. By that time, my faith was more informed and articulate and nuanced, but the core of my belief remained the same: faith in Jesus secured for me, and for all who share that faith, the reward of eternal life in heaven.

I don’t believe that anymore.

The seeds of a changed mind were planted almost from the beginning. I never questioned the wisdom of seeking heaven first, of ordering this life for the sake of the next, but, even as a child, I didn’t find the idea of heaven particularly appealing. I knew heaven wasn’t about harps and wings and streets of gold, but it was not clear to me what it was about. Being with God, enjoying God’s company, singing endless songs of praise, something like endless church? Any heaven I could imagine was amorphous and ethereal, a strange and sterile and wholly unfamiliar realm. In contrast, the beauty and substance and energy and delights of this life and this earth seemed a whole lot more attractive to me!

My love for this earth was one of those seeds, a seed planted by my father. He taught me to swim and paddle and sail. He took me hiking and woke me up before dawn to take me birding. My father birthed faith in me, but he also birthed in me an abiding fondness for mountain and stream and lake and forest.

My mother read to me. She read aloud the Narnia Chronicles of C. S. Lewis. The seven Narnia books were a seed, too, framing as much as the church did my early sense of Christian character and Christian hope. It was the last of these novels especially, the one entitled, The Last Battle, that planted in my imagination a vision of a “heaven” that was not foreign and uninviting, but familiar and compelling, a vision of a new world like this one — filled with mountains and streams and forests and familiar faces — a new world that was this one, only bigger somehow, somehow more real, more substantial, more alive.

But the most important seed of a changed faith was faith itself. I expected heaven, but I didn’t believe in heaven. I believed in Jesus. I loved Jesus, not for the sake of what Jesus might do for me, but because Jesus was worthy of my love. I wanted to follow him, learn from him, let him reshape my mind.

And he did. Jesus led me back into the story and that story changed my mind. As a philosophy student and seminarian and young pastor, I began to read the Bible more closely, more carefully, and the pieces of a new way of thinking began to take shape. I heard the creation story, as if for the first time, and its repeated refrain: “And God saw that it was good!” Yes! This is good: this world and all that fills it! This is what God loves! This is what God cares about! This is what God calls good!

I heard the Hebrews’ witness to God’s concern, not for disembodied souls, but for whole persons, for whole communities of persons. I heard the call to do justice for the poor, to welcome the stranger, and to care for the land. I understood that the human creature made in God’s image is an indivisible entity, spirit and body, not the sum of separable parts. I was enthralled with the biblical vision of “shalom, ” a vision of peace, but more than peace, a vision of fruitfulness and bounty and justice and harmony and fullness of life.

And I heard this: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth … I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God.” Coming down! Heaven comes down; we don’t go up! Those words from the book of Revelation were a revelation.

Of course! This is what God loves — this earth, these human beings. This is what God saves. We don’t go to heaven; heaven — God — comes to us, not to take us away to another place, but to make this place new, to make us new, to make “heaven” of this earth, to make this earth a place of “no more death, no more grief or crying or pain.”

I can’t wait …

a spring delight

Posted on May 22, 2009 | Filed Under beauty, the natural world

I have been experimenting with our new digital camera, the camera I plan to use extensively this summer during my sabbatical. This is a photo of the phlox and daylily shoots growing at the foot of our mailbox.

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