Random on a September Sunday

 It's been two months since I posted here at the Perverse Lutheran. One reason is that there are so very many words out there every single day. I'm so inundated with incoming information, so flooded, that there's no time to let anything soak in, let alone spin it back out into the world with added thoughts or insight. 

So, random thoughts today, on a Sunday.

From the lectionary this morning: choose life, choose Jesus. In church we sang "Let Us Every Walk With Jesus," German chorale from the 17th century. The second stanza begins "Let us suffer here with Jesus." So, one has to ask, who would choose Jesus if that meant choosing suffering? What's wrong with Christians? I think the Buddha has an answer for that: life is suffering. What crossed my mind singing the hymn this morning was not so much the "suffer here" part as the "with Jesus" part. The suffering is inevitable, sometimes because that's just how things are, sometimes because we bring it on ourselves even as we struggle against it. (Buddha again.) I think that suffering is a whole lot easier to manage, spiritually anyway, in the context of a God who gave himself up to suffering in life and death as a human person. 

"Choose life" comes from Deuteronomy 30:15-20, the Old Testament lesson read this morning. 

Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him.

Choosing life means choosing what God values. Life worth living means choosing God's values and attributes: love, mercy, righteousness. "Choose life" is not just choosing to continue to live and breathe on this earth. It's not judging other people's healthcare choices. It's not even deciding to live your life to its fullest, or to seize the moment, or to resolve to live in the present every day. It's love and trust in what and who is God. It's bringing all of that into relationships with others. 

This is all pretty preachy for the perverse Lutheran. The sun is setting on what was a beautiful September day. The sky was so blue, the weather cool, the light at this time of day, golden. How did I end up in a post with all these imperatives? 

Spent some time in the car this afternoon and while driving I listened to Dan Pfeiffer of Pod Save America interview Heather Cox Richardson of Letters From an American. (Listen here.) She introduced herself as a cultural historian and told stories from American history that chronicled two different ideas: the strong individual under no constraints, no government regulation, that gathers resources to himself, versus the collective good, democracy, the people govern, resources are used for the good of all. (Pejoratively this is "socialism"--horrors!) One idea empowers enslavers, Jim Crow, Nixon, Reagan, and the current radical right. The other was articulated by Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama and turned into legislation by LBJ. 

Choose life. Choose life in a way that includes all, that suffers with all, that rises again. 

Waiting for the fireworks

It’s the Fourth. I did not brave the rain this morning to watch for my daughter in the local parade. I picked her up when it was over. Her red, white and blue t-shirt was damp, her red shorts, too. 

Damp falls far short of describing my depressed patriotic spirit today. 

But the weather has cleared up, it's evening, and I’m sitting in the park listening to a cover band entertain the crowd until it’s dark enough for the fireworks to begin. 

I don’t think anyone’s here for the music, but live music does seem to say this is the place to be. Celebrate, come on. There are a few women standing and dancing. I’m guessing they’ve had a beverage or two. And we just heard a round of “USA, USA” yelled from the bandstand. The band leader tired but if anyone picked that up, well, I’m too far away to hear it. 

The people-watching is good. Children with parents. Parents and kids on the blanket next to me are playing a card game. Teens are casing the crowd, pairs of girls in shorts and crop tops. Who’s here, who’s new. And plenty of people like me who are doing stuff on their phones. Not much conversation. The music is LOUD.

I like fireworks. I’m hoping these will brighten the end of July 4, 2025. I’ve been working on threading my loom today (and yesterday, and the day before yesterday), and I’m looking forward to sitting here in the dark, hearing the whoosh after the shell is lit, that second of suspense, and then the pow! and exploding sphere of blue or red or white light. And again the suspense before the sparks fade and fall. 

Lots of kinds of people here. This is the suburb where I grew up, and it’s a more diverse place now than it was then. The kids I grew up with have mostly moved elsewhere, farther away from the city. 

It’s a hard year for celebrating the birth of the American nation, a nation founded on ideas. What can we count on as shared values when fundamental words like liberty and freedom and citizen mean different things to different people and parties. Where are we headed with the country led by a narcissistic, stupid, boastful man with an unfortunate gift for getting attention and with no moral compass for how to use power. 

This too shall pass? Or will the things that are breaking stay broken for a long time? Those white men who met in Philadelphia 249 years ago and pledged each other their lives and their sacred honor — the sky just exploded! — started something we keep trying to make better. A more perfect union. A more caring and inclusive society. Lincoln's "last best hope." 

Here in the park, the fireworks kicked off with the "Star Spangled Banner" on the loudspeaker. It was followed by Bruce Springsteen and “Born in the USA.”

A protest song. Damn, it’s a patriotic night.  

Splendor

Blog or weed? Are those verbs or nouns? 

To blog or to weed, that is the question. To sit in the sun and type, or put the gardening gloves on, kneel by the perennial bed and pull out thistles? Or maybe this is a metaphor. Are the words I'm about to type worth keeping, or will they end up in the compost pile?

It's a blessed Sunday in May when you can sit in the sun and look through the green leaves of the maples into a vividly blue sky. The house sparrows are chipping in surround-sound in all the backyards up and down the alley. A few minutes ago a dogged robin sat on the corner of the fence and sang the same five or six notes over and over again, calling, calling, with every part of its body from grey-brown tail to yellow beak. 

Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you.

We had Psalm 67 this morning.

and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe.

 Stand silently in awe. Or praise with chirps and bouncing tails. From one end of the earth to the other.

There are too many words in this world, and too many of them lately mean nothing or worse than nothing. They're weapons, or bullshit, or obfuscation, the kind that may not fool listeners but that the speaker uses to fool himself. 

"Ugh" was a significant part of my vocabulary this week, the word I yelled at the news on the car radio. "Ugh" and another word with a similar vowel. We now have a budget bill in this country that will rob the poor in order to make the rich richer while compromising our collective economic future as a nation. Because money means more to the people who have more of it? 

This morning's preaching included a lot of "I." I didn't want to look inside the preacher's soul; I didn't even want to look inside my own. I didn't come to church to be soothed. I turned to my phone and was able to provide useful affirmation to a fellow knitter on Facebook. And then I got the pencil out of my choir folder and set myself a puzzle, inspired by the entrance hymn we had sung earlier in the service: 

Immortal, invisible, God only wise,
in light inaccessible hid from our eyes.

 Its final lines:

All praise we would render, O help us to see
'tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.

Fill in the blank: 

'Tis only the splendor of _______ hideth thee.

So many things could go there. God's vision for justice, blinding unimaginable justice? God's merciful and gracious will, reaching beyond our comprehension? Or the splendor of divine love described by Jesus in the gospel for the day: 

“Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them." (John 14:23)

Surely some dazzling imperatives would come with having Jesus and his Father for housemates. Works powered by light, hope, revelation in a new kingdom, so much larger than ourselves. 

Full text of the hymn here. Psalm 67 here. 

The day after

Last week was "B Minor Mass" week in my world: final rehearsals for and performances of J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor. It's a long sing (to use a technical term). A lot of singing and a lot of thinking. A lot of counterpoint. A lot of Latin. A lot. I applied a lesson learned in yoga class: smile when you do the hard stuff. And be patient with yourself.

But it's glorious music. Glorious in listening. Glorious in live performance. Glorious in hard work, and exhilarating in completion.

Bach, of course, never performed this work. (Start your background reading here.) It's not clear what his intentions were in putting this massive work together in his mid-60s, eyesight deteriorating and nearing the end of a life spent applying himself to the work of playing, teaching and composing music that he understood to be a gift of God to humanity. He chose compositions from his past work and adapted, edited, and reassembled them into the great, over-arching musical form of the mass: the Kyrie, calling on God's mercy; the Gloria of thanks and praise for salvation; a Credo, with newly-composed music for the wonder of incarnation, God becoming human like us. And a Sanctus that requires a lot of stamina to sing in 12/8 time, imitating angels floating, without effort, in the rafters of prophetic vision. 

We've been rehearsing since January, with three rehearsals in this last week before performances. I was tired all week and took naps on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, mostly because it's hard to go home and sleep after singing all this intense music in the evening. 

The concerts were a joint effort of Bach Cantata Vespers and Consonance and conducted by Grace Cantor Michael D. Costello. We sang the Mass ten years ago, so the music was not unfamiliar to me. The vocal lines are beautiful, interweaving in counterpoint that Bach took to its outer limits. Also remembered from ten years ago: the vocal panic engendered by long movements, zippy coloratura, and lots of high As for sopranos. 

But when the music is mastered, there's so much to discover as you listen while you sing. And while you sit (rest!) and listen to vocal soloists and instrumental soloists perform the movements that aren't choruses. 

So what does it all mean? Not that it has to mean anything in words, but still, what was J. S. Bach saying about God? And what is there for us, three centuries detached from the Lutheran dogma of Bach's time and place?

You can read commentary and analysis of the Mass that points to musical symbols -- the three-in-one of the Trinity, the descending notes of the incarnation, chromaticism illustrating all kinds of distressing things. I've read a number of analyses in the last few weeks and while scholars find lots to explain, I have to say that specific figures in the music rarely invoke theological concepts in my brain. I remember reading that something somewhere (in the Gloria?) showed the unity of the Son with the Father. I listened for it in various duets and solos last night, but can't honestly say it jumped out at me. 

Different century, different vocabulary. Instead I found myself thinking about all the different sounds and colors in the movements of the Mass. Flutes here, oboes there, violins high and low, plaintive, busy, and celebratory. A movement for the bass soloist accompanied by horn and two bassoons--who does that? And can keep it going that long? And all the different sounds in the chorus -- suspensions and resolutions, fugal entrances crescendoing one on top of another, step-by-step through a harmonic progression, or up the scale. Sudden unisons. Hushed resolutions. Explosive consonants. Loud cadences, quiet ones. Old-school counterpoint, baroque elaboration.

Yesterday as I listened I thought about Bach trying to show us something of what God sounds like, reaching for perfection beyond words, beyond literal, word-dependent theology. I thought about what it means to be a creator, a part of God's ongoing creation -- or, if you will, a creative person in an ever-demanding world of wonder, glory and terror. 

In that world, the world of Monday-morning headlines, we remain creatures dependent on mercy, received and shared, clashing and resolving. And in our finer moments, our God-honoring, creation-honoring moments we shared in the music of big, big choruses of gratitude (Gratias agimus tibi) and in the same music notes used in hopeful prayers for peace (Dona nobis pacem).

Transcendence. 

 

Anniversary blog 2025

Dishtowels on the loom. 

I went to my regular Friday morning yoga class today. It's "Hatha Yoga for the Core" which means there will be crunches or boat poses and a period of harder work and held poses in between the careful breathing and stretches and final rest pose. I like the instructor of this class because she finds a nice balance between predictable routine and bringing in new movement or new ideas. 

New to me today was a technique for shutting down the senses and moving into meditation that recalled the three monkeys who "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." We shut our eyes and placed our index and middle fingers softly over our eyelids, ring fingers on the nose, and pinkies on the lips. Our thumbs gently pressed our ears closed and we sat for a minute. Resting. 

I struggle these days to put my phone down or step away from the computer screen and take a break from the awful stuff that continues to rain down from the current presidential administration in Washington DC. So much evil to see! So much to object to! I'm emailing my representatives in Congress regularly, and also sending messages of support to Illinois's governor and attorney general in Springfield. I write mostly about Medicaid, but so many other issues leave me feeling disturbed and depressed: USAID funding, civil servants losing jobs willy-nilly, the betrayal of Ukraine, petty reprisals against political opponents. 

Closing your eyes to it all -- is that a better alternative? Is it even possible? I know people who don't pay much attention to politics, and others who think that the federal government needs a good goosing and choose to ignore the details and possible repercussions of all the upset. 

I can't ignore the issues and actions that I'm upset about. Maybe that's the way I'm wired -- to complain and object and protest. To want things set right. Or maybe it's the type of Christianity I grew up with, the intense discussions we engaged in about race and poverty when I was in eighth grade in a Lutheran school in the spring of 1968. Maybe it's my demographic: college-educated, urban-suburban white woman, voting Democratic most of my life. 

Whatever. 

I do know that I need a rest. It may be time to take up meditation—again. To sit for hours at the loom and listen to a good story instead of political podcasts. To clean closets or choose new colors for the pillows on the couch. To contemplate the smeary blue of today's late-winter sky and start to watch for snowdrops and crocuses. To smile and laugh as the fifth and sixth-graders I'm working with discover the human fun and foibles in their characters in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." 

Sunday is Transfiguration, the last Sunday before Lent, which is when I mark this blog's anniversary. I have been posting for 19 years here at The Perverse Lutheran, through all kinds of times. I just now took a look back and saw posts I remember and posts I don't. Posts that remind me to look for God's grace, to look for the light, and to remember that hope does not disappoint us.

Here's a previous Transfiguration anniversary post. And the Ash Wednesday 2015 post from a few days later has some fun moments. Reminds me why I'm retired.

Sad

Gwen, Linda, and Karen, June 1961

Presidents Day 2025

I took a walk this afternoon while my daughter was working out with her trainer. It was cold as I walked east on Madison Street, and even colder when I turned back and faced west. But I was dressed for the weather — warm coat, new insulated gloves, wool hat and flannel-lined jeans — and both my mood and my body needed the brisk walk, the cold air on my cheeks, in my nose and my lungs. 

Madison Street in Forest Park and the cross streets to the south are my old neighborhood, where I rode my bike and walked to school. As I headed down Beloit, towards my mom's old house, I thought about being sent to school in this kind of weather, walking four or five blocks with a scarf wrapped over my face and pants on under my skirt. Off we went on cold winter days, and nobody thought much of it. School did get cancelled when the temperatures were consistently below zeros, and we had several days off during the Big Snow of 1967. 

Today my walk took me past the old savings and loan building at Madison and Desplaines. It's empty now and it's for sale. I looked through the front window and down the spiral staircase that led to a community room in the basement. I remembered going there on a Saturday afternoon with my dad and my sisters to get the polio vaccine, probably in 1961 when the oral vaccine became commercially available. It was a community event. We had probably brought a note home from school from the public health department sponsoring the event. We waited our turn and eyed the sugar cubes holding the vaccine  lined up on the table. We picked one, popped it in our mouths and crunched it and came back a few weeks later for a second dose. 

Going to First Savings, the first bank to occupy this building, was not a novelty. We went there happily on Saturdays with my dad when he did his (in-person!) banking. Most days we left with small rolls of LifeSavers, offered to us by the guard or the receptionist. More sugar. 

I imagine this easy-peasy polio protection meant a lot to parents. Of course they took advantage of it! Thinking back, I realize that I knew some children who'd had polio, who walked with a limp, whose parents had probably been very scared when they were sick. It was not something I had to worry about with my kids. 

As I was waking up this morning, head still buried in the pillow, trying to zero in on what day of the week it was, the first full sentence that came to my mind was, "I am sad for my country." This is what comes of doom-scrolling before bed. The ironies inherent in a 2025 celebration of U. S. presidents (I'm looking at you, Abe Lincoln and General Washington) didn't dawn on me until later. 

In my lifetime I have seen these United States become a more inclusive place, that arc of the universe bending towards justice. I don't know that I remember the passage of the Civil Rights Act, but I do remember Everett Dirksen, the Republican senator from Illinois who rounded up votes to make it possible. I remember the civil rights struggles, the voting rights act, the gradual changes in the acceptance of the LGBTQ community during my college and graduate school years, and the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). 

When I was a child, my aunt taught a Sunday School class for what we then called "mentally retarded" children and adults. I learned from listening to adult conversations that many of these individuals, who lived with their parents, didn't go to school. Schools for them were far away, or expensive, or unable to take any more students. Decades later, thanks to the IDEA and federal funding for special education, my daughter who has Down syndrome was picked up by a school bus and educated in our local public schools. 

With Medicare, Medicaid, WIC, and SNAP, we've also become a nation that cares for the sick and feeds women, children and families who simply need to eat.

The wrecking ball of the Trump presidency and Elon Musk's DOGE empire are threatening and destroying one thing after another, things government does for the good of all. American media has too many pundits already; I don't need to my bit about rich, narcissistic, foolish white men, their delusions and their resentments. 

But how did we get here? Many Americans go into the voting booth every four years with "throw the bums out" as their decision point. Incumbents lose when people are unhappy about the economy. It's not necessarily a formula for rational governance, although it seems to work well in politics. 

But what's happening in the U. S. right now, what's making me so sad, is the shift in values in our leaders. They don't care, they don't take care, they're not even hypocritical about saying they care. They certainly don't subscribe to the words of Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote that "unless all are free, no one is free." Ever-expanding freedom means freedom from want and fear, along with the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

The world keeps changing. Social media, social isolation, polarization, globalization, changes in how the economy works and who it works for — it's a lot. Our brains were designed for making our own little gardens grow. The show of power, the slashing and burning, are reassuring for some, sticking it to people who might take what they already have, or wish they had. But it makes the world less good for everybody.

It makes me sad.

A Cantata Sunday, late January 2025

Cantata Sunday (kənˈtädə sənˌdā). A Sunday on which a Bach cantata is performed as part of Bach Cantata Vespers. Also known as A Long Day at Church. Often thoughtful, sometimes tearful. 

One of the petitions in the Litany we use in the vespers liturgy is a list of people in need, culminating in "and all who await from the Lord great and abundant mercy." Once upon a time, when I was younger and self-involved (more self-involved than I am now),  I thought this was group of people awaiting mercy was a subgroup of humanity, people with particular, urgent problems who needed God to solve them now. Why did I think this? Because I included myself in that group and could not think much beyond myself. 

Foolish youngster! Who among us, from day-old newborn to gray-haired elder, does not need God's great and abundant mercy? I have long since yielded up my miserable hubris. Other people feel scared and vulnerable, too, and have intractable problems, unsolvable dilemmas. Knowing this makes life easier. I'm not alone. 

And we need God's mercy more than ever now, after a transition in government here in the U. S. You don't need a recap here from me. There's plenty to read everywhere you look. A lot to take in and a lot for the people of God to respond to, a flood of willfulness meant to clog our discernment and slow our response. 

Today at church I heard some particular groups of people named who are feeling dismissed and frightened. They are part of "all who await, etc." In naming some, we should not forget others lest we allow our self-protecting, self-justifying brains to divide the world into People Like Me and People Not So Much Like Me. 

I once thought I was special when we came to that petition in Evening Prayer — I had something I very much wanted a merciful God to grant me. But I was not alone, or part of a select group. All, all await God's mercy. Migrants, yes, the LGBTQ community. But also people who are disabled, people who need Medicaid to provide health care, civil servants, military leaders, lawyers and judges, refugees, and more. Fortunately God's mercy is great and abundant.

What disturbs me more than any single Executive Order of last week is the way our nation's stated values have shifted. "For all" has become "for certain ones," or only for "real Americans." I guess, on a civic level, one could discuss this, even justify the ins and outs, who's alike, who's different.  Earthly kingdoms are not God's kingdom. But we who, trusting in God's mercy, prayed and sang BWV 111 together today, saying "God's will is best" -- it's up to us to be part of the mission of bringing God's good and merciful will to the world. 

Pick your issue. What are you concerned about? Who can you speak for? Where can you do the most good? And join the ensemble. Many members, one body. 

Seems almost heretical to add this after Bach -- but I keep hearing that "High School Musical" refrain in my head. "We're all in this together."