for the week of Epiphany…
Hello, sun in my face. Hello, you who made the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories, and into the windows of, even, the miserable and the crotchety – best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light –
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Why I Wake Early, 2004)
I <3 Mary Oliver!
Amy, there is a New Yorker feature by Gopnik in 2010 issue should google easy about the Human Jesus. On your improv riff, great couple of paragraphs in the piece on disciples as passersby. For full effect read the article; will be worth your time.
Not long ago you had here a discussion of Oscar Romero. I see in the January issue of Baptists Today a story on Rev. Palacio who is associated with your church. Please bring this note to his attention.
Here in the small town in NE Alabama there is a family from El Salvador; the father having seen both Oscar Romero and Roberto Daubuisson in the flesh as a young man in El Salvador.
One thing I think Baptists Today should pursue, not as a vendetta, but for the records sake, is honest appraisal, or reminder of the politics of Jesse Helms here in the states during Palacio’s ordeal.
Helms was not only a bane in the side of James Dunn and the Baptist Joint Committee working closely with Judge Pressler, but in matters of life and death in regard El Salvador in the early 80′s. For Helms to die in good stead for what passes to be a leading progressive Baptist church in North Carolina, just doesn’t quite scour with what Palacio witnessed in El Salvador and the history of that time in Baptist life ought to bear that out.
A Bishop Tutu like reconciliation conversation I think will request as much.