Fox, watching

 1. Drove to church early this morning and saw a fox., standing on the sidewalk watching the cars go by. Slowed down, looked back. Definitely a fox. 

2. Movie recommendation (or not, you decide): I watched "Drive My Car" on Friday night. A meditation on seeing and being seen, grieving and failing to grieve, telling stories, telling lies, telling truth, talking about suffering, all of it infused with Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya." It's a few minutes short of three hours, in Japanese with subtitles, so it's a commitment. I had to rewind one important part because I nodded off. But I am still thinking about it.

3. Because one of the truths in "Drive My Car" was that humans are terrifyingly vulnerable, a truth echoed in a depressing quote from James Agee in a sermon given this afternoon at a Bach Cantata Vespers service. 

4. Yes, we had lots of Easter trumpets this afternoon and the confident assertion that the Shepherd of the Sheep has arisen ("Surrexit pastor bonus"). And in the cantata (BWV 67, Hold in Remembrance Jesus Christ) a graying baritone calming the anxious orchestra as the Vox Christi: "Peace be with you." 

5. I don't know. This might be all. That's it. That's the blog. It's a hard and lonely world.

6. And yet, a question in the sermon: When did you become you? One answer (maybe it was the answer) was in baptism, and maybe in every subsequent baptism you've witnessed, or subsequent trips to the communion table, opportunities to claim an identity, to be seen. I'm not sure how that works exactly -- something about being present in the presence of God. And being present affirms the presence of God.

7. Side note, Part of me was recalled to a younger me today by the opportunity to do some story-telling in the Sunday School hour, during a traveling retelling of the Passion Story. I was assigned the Garden of Gethsemane part of the script. I had words to read, but told the story rather than read it. Takes me back to 2nd grade where we acted out Bible stories all the time. Except I seldom got a chance to act.  I was invariably the narrator—through the ten plagues and the Exodus and the forty years in the wilderness, through the entire Passion story. 

8. Probably should have picked up a pen and the notebook/journal I keep and written this all out there, in wandering, questioning fashion. And then closed the cover on the questions, so I wouldn't have to come up with an ending.

9. Thankfully, today is ending. The sun has broken through the clouds in the west after a day of rain. The prayers have been said for Ukraine, for peace, for those who are sick, for those who mourn. We've given thanks with an "Alleluia" for those who've gone before us in Christ. We're getting ready for Monday. In Chekhovian fashion, we prepare to go on ... This, too, would be something about who we are, what we share. It's hard to be human, but it's a grand project. Imagine that fox, watching. 

In the beginning

Easter Eve, post-Easter Vigil. The smell of wood-smoke lingers in my hair. The chants ring in my ears. The post-Vigil Prosecco sparkles in my veins from palate to collarbone, to knees and elbows. 

Christ is risen--the full moon is bright, though it's dark outside. We await the Easter morning sunrise. (And may I still be asleep when that happens!)

For several years now, I have read the first of the Old Testament readings at the Easter Vigil service at my church: Genesis 1 and a couple verses of Genesis 2, the Creation story. I love it deeply, the way it anchors the Easter story. I love its long phrases that sing what God has made, all that vegetation and fruit with seeds in it, creeping and crawling creatures, cattle, winged birds and sea monsters. I love the short phrases that stand out — "and the stars!" — and the  repetitive, liturgical language: "And God said" "And it was so" "And the evening and the morning were the first, the second, the sixth, the seventh day." Most of all, I love the way it all stops and hovers and holds it breath at the creation of humankind in God's image. 

Read it here.

This afternoon I reread Walter Brueggemann's commentary on this section of Genesis. I own this book not because I have an extensive library of biblical commentary (I don't!) but because of an ambitious Bible study group that I participated in many years ago. Not that we read much of the commentary then, even as we took many months to work our way through Genesis. We had our own lives and faith to sort through, But the book is there on my shelf, and this world of Genesis, of ancient theologians, requires a reliable guide -- or at least, is much enriched by one. 

This Creation narrative comes from the time of the Exile, when the people of Israel were in despair and feared there were about to perish as a people. The formless void, the darkness that covered the face of the earth were everyday life to them. Not unlike waking up every morning and doom-scrolling through the headlines in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Awful stuff is happening, and more of it is revealed every single day. 

But in Genesis there's a promising wind from God, a God who creates, who allows the world to come into being, into freedom: "Let there be." It is good. God sees it, declares it good, blesses it. And then God puts God's own image into creation, in humankind. 

Brueggemann points out how different this is, that when those ancient theologians went looking for God in creation, they located God's image not in nature, not in the cosmos, not in a bunch of gods more capricious and more powerful than humans, and certainly not in statues or images "set up" by kings. 

God's image was in humankind, in individual humans and in humans in relationship with one another. In us. 

God did this already having grace for us, already in the tension that all these things God created -- Sky and Earth and Sea, creatures of water and air and land, and human beings most of all -- would never be perfect like God, but they would be good, called good by the same grace that said "let there be." The same grace that was revealed in Jesus Christ, which is to say, the same grace that gave up power, riches, kingship, domination, even though that led to a cross. Because on that cross, all that was left was love, God's gracious love, which restored the world. 

The headlines won't be great tomorrow morning. The horrors in Ukraine will continue, along with horrible stuff in parts of the world we too easily forget. The environment teeters on the edge of destruction. Fools are everywhere. 

Yet the Creation story reminds me every year (more often than that!) that God is good. And I am created for good, in God's image, restored in the waters of Baptism, restored daily to praise, to be joyful, and to join in God's gracious restorative project here on earth.  

Let there be Easter.