Jan's Today

Today:

• I am trying to find the next book to read for the Wisdom Class, which meets every Tuesday morning at All Saints Episcopal Church. We are finishing up But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live by Karen L. Oberst. So I am reading a lot. The two most recent books are:

• A People's History of Christianity: The Other Side of the Story by Diana Butler Bass: "Organized chronologically, each section of the book includes a chapter on religious observance and one on social justice, illuminating the author's conviction that authentic Christianity can be discovered in the practice of loving God and neighbor." Bass is trying to follow Howard Zinn's book on American history, A People's History of the United States, in focusing on those people who seemed "outside"--those who tried to live what Jesus taught and embody the kingdom he proclaimed (or "walk the talk").

• Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices by Julie Clawson: I've read about half this book now and am impressed with her info, sources, and links about injustices most Americans are unaware of in our spending and living. The chapters are about coffee, chocolate, cars, food, clothes, waste, and debt. I am grateful that I don't drink coffee! (However, I love chocolate!) Reading this book is why I posted the badge for Equal Exchange at the top of my blog and why I posted a video below.

• Tomorrow Maisie will be spayed. Poor puppy, but she's six months old and it is time for this to happen. I took her in to the vet's office yesterday for her blood work to be done in preparation for this surgery. The vet said that after the neutering, we need to keep Maisie quiet for 14 days--which sounds impossible!!

• MJ got home yesterday, and today we had lunch out together. Then we went to the Art Center where we saw my friend Judith DeShong Hall's exhibit. I love her paintings, but cannot afford to buy one.

• MJ will be home for 1 1/2 weeks. Then she will return to Trinity University for the summer where she will do chemistry research. It's too bad that she had to move all her stuff out of her dorm and then will have to take it back to a different dorm for the summer. (Trinity University has a rule that for the first three years of college, its students must live in dormitories.)

• Rather oddly, both my daughters went to Trinity, while my two sons attended Texas A & M University in College Station. (And CB and I went to the college in our hometown of Bellingham, WA--Western Washington State College, which is renamed Western Washington University.)
  

Questions to ponder

Karen L. Oberst suggests these queries for thinking about one's values, especially about where one's treasures lie.

• Do you have poor in your church? Have you sought to find that out?

• Do you have poor in the neighborhood of your church or your home? In your city or town?

• Do you go where you can see and be touched by the poverty of others?

• Do your spending habits reflect the world's values or the values of God's kingdom?

• Have you become numb to the needs around you?

• Do you model a caring attitude before your children?

Oberst, Karen L. But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces A Better Way To Live. Newberg, Oregon: Barclay Press, 2007. 149-150.

Expanded Translation of The Lord's Prayer

The Lord’s Prayer

Expanded Translation

By Karen L. Oberst

Our heavenly Parent, may you be reverenced because of who you are.

May your kingdom come into being through us, as citizens of the kingdom.

May your will be carried out by human beings as it is all over the created universe.

Give us what we need for today, both physically and spiritually.

Don’t hold us accountable for our moral lapses, even as we also don’t hold others accountable when they don’t treat us as they should.

Don’t bring us into a place where we are tempted to do wrong, but protect us from the one intending evil.

(“The Authorized or King James Version adds, ‘For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.’ This version of the Bible was translated in the 1600’s when only a single Greek manuscript of the Bible existed, the Tischendorf manuscript. Other, older manuscripts that do not contain this phrase have since been found. Scholars believe this phrase was not originally part of the Lord’s Prayer, and was likely added when these verses were used in the corporate prayer life of the early church.”)

Oberst, Karen L. But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live. Newberg, Oregon: Barclay Press, 2007. 137-138.

This is the book we are still reading about the Sermon on the Mount in the Wisdom Class, our weekly reading group at All Saints Episcopal Church.

Push Out Into Deep Water
Based on Luke 5:1-11
by Karen L. Oberst

Fishing all night, they caught nothing
Morning frustration repairing nets
Getting ready to go home. Wait -
Where's the crowd coming from?

Then they saw him - Jesus.
The one they'd heard so much about.
"Put out a little from shore," he requested
And they rowed his bobbing pulpit there.

The fisherman sat spellbound as he spoke
Nets and sleep and fishlessness forgotten
They listened hungrily as he fed their souls.
Listened as he spoke words of life.

He sent off his audience on the shore
And the fishermen woke, as from a dream.
He turned to them and smiled
Acknowledging their help - and their need.

"Push out into deep water," he said
"And let your nets out for a catch
Half-heartedly protesting, they did as he asked
And multitudes of fish swam to them.

How often has he said to me
"Push out into deep water,"
When I would be content
To stay in the shallows listening?

I sit peaceful in my small life
Ticking off my to-do list
When his voice comes to me
"Push out into deep water."

"It's time to leave the ordinary,
Time to put learning into practice.
I'll care for you," he says.
"Push out into deep water."

Lord, point me to the deep
Show me where to row my life
I want to follow you as I
Push out into deep water.

But deep water wasn't the destination
Only the place where you showed them
Who you are - what you can do
Then you called on them to follow.

Those who push out into deep water
Learn things unknown to those on shore
Discover faith that can move mountains - or fish
And how to follow where you lead.

Lead me, Lord
Deep or shallow, High or low
Pastures or valleys, Sheep or eagle
Just point me the way - and bid me follow.

(From Karen Oberst's website)

A Good Book!

"In a Chinese folktale called 'The Neighbor's Shifty Son,' a farmer's ax disappears. Believing his neighbor's son to have stolen it, the farmer keeps watch all day, noticing how guilty both his neighbor and his neighbor's son appear. On the following day, however he finds his ax in the field where he left it. When he next looks at his neighbor, he sees a perfectly normal person with his perfectly innocent son. Learning the truth changed the way he saw his neighbor." (1)

The little tale quoted above comes from the pictured book (below it). The Wisdom Class, which meets every Tuesday at my church, is beginning to read this new book tomorrow: But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live by Karen L. Oberst. Her little bio says this about the author:

"Karen L. Oberst majored in Greek at Houghton College in Houston, NY. She is a librarian, and an elder at Klamath Falls Friends Church in Klamath Falls, OR."

It's a book where the author translates the Beatitudes from the original Greek to words we can understand more readily in our culture. Oberst is an excellent teacher.

I have previously quoted from this book, which you may look at here.

Shine, Glow, Be the Candle!

By Trudy Kenyon

Quote from Edith Wharton

Matthew 5:16

Thus shine your light before the people so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven.

“Having compared us to salt and light, Jesus now moves on to make sure we understand. This verse is usually translated by some variation on the anemic, ‘Let your light shine.’ However, the verb Christ uses is imperative, the tense used for a command. This isn’t a suggestion. ‘Shine your [pl.] light!’ Jesus orders. We are to shine in the presence of other people, not to glorify ourselves but to help others understand why we behave as we do. The phrase ‘good works’ might perhaps be better understood as the beautiful, useful service we do for others.

“If our light is shining—if we are not shy about who we are and whom we serve—then what we say and do will be seen by others and cause them to think well of the God we serve. We need to remember that at all times we are God’s ambassadors to this world, always in the public eye and always living our God-centered lives for the good of those around us. . . . .At the same time, we can take heart that all the yous in this verse are plural. Christianity is meant to be a community affair. Many grains of salt make people thirsty. Many different kinds of light make the city glow. When we work together with Jesus as our guide, we can do great things.” (47)

Oberst, Karen L. But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live. Newberg, Oregon: Barclay Press, 2007. 47.

The Lord's Prayer

I am really liking Karen Oberst's book about the Beatitudes, But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live. The way she translates The Lord's Prayer (Matthew 6: 9-13) from the Greek in an expanded way is eye-opening in her chapter entitled "Teaching on Prayer, " pp. 132-138:

"Without further ado, pray like this:
Our heavenly Parent, may you be reverenced because of who you are.
May your kingdom come into being through us, as citizens of the kingdom.
May your will be carried out by human beings as it is all over the created universe.
Give us what we need for today, both physically and spiritually.
Don't hold us accountable for our moral lapses, even as we also don't hold others accountable when they don't treat us as they should.
Don't bring us into a place where we are tempted to do wrong, but protect us from the one intending evil."

Then Oberst adds:

"The Authorized or King James Version adds, 'For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.' This version of the Bible was translated in the 1600's when only a single Greek manuscript of the Bible existed, The Tischendorf manuscript. Other, older manuscripts that do not contain this phrase have since been found. Scholars believe this phrase was not originally part of the Lord's Prayer, and was likely added when these verses were used in the corporate prayer life of the early church." (138)

I also appreciate Oberst's writing from her Quaker perspective.

Which Perspective?

I have just started reading a new book, while reading several others. On the first page of Karen Oberst's book on the Beatitudes was a paragraph that immediately connected me with a movie I saw last week, which was very much about how preconceptions shape the way we view someone. The movie was "The Closet," but first I am going to copy the paragraph from Oberst's book:

"In a Chinese folktale called 'The Neighbor's Shifty Son,' a farmer's ax disappears. Believing his neighbor's son to have stolen it, the farmer keeps watch all day, noticing how guilty both his neighbor and his neighbor's son appear. On the following day, however, he finds his ax in the field where he left it. When he next looks at his neighbor, he sees a perfectly normal person with his perfectly innocent son. Learning the truth changed the way he saw his neighbor." (1)

Oberst, Karen L. But I Tell You: Jesus Introduces a Better Way to Live. Newberg, OR: Barclay Press, 2007.

"The Closet" is a light-hearted French movie from 2001 that I watched while I was ironing clothes last Saturday. CB doesn't like subtitles, so I saw it while he was working at Habitat for Humanity. It's about a boring accountant who loses his job of many years, but regains it when doctored photos of him in male relationships are sent to the rubber corporation. When he returns everyone interprets his continued ordinary actions as "gay." He seems interesting now, while before he was not.

How expectations predispose us to see things and people in specific ways. I recently posted a quote from Gerald May's book The Awakened Heart about the difference between expectation and hope. Expectations (not "expectations" as "goals") limit us in a rigid way, while hope expands the situation. The movie and the Oberst quote point out how we have tainted vision when we have preconceived ideas of someone.

In fact, a friend and I were talking about this last Sunday when we walked in the humid, windy night. KK said someone on the church staff where she works was shocked that KK laughed a joke about an email that played various farting sounds. The secretary had an image of KK that limited who she thought KK to be. In a similar fashion, when I went to Zambia with four RC religious in 2006, one of the young men (who will soon be ordained an OMI priest), was shocked when I experienced "gas." He told me that his mother NEVER had flatulence and so he had thought mothers never did that!! Wow, did I open his mind (and senses)!

Unless we become more aware/awake, we'll never know we are restricting our views. No one is totally one way or another, but too often we assume they are. How little we know of ourselves, others, and God when we have automatic/reactive judgments that come from our childhood, family, and culture.

I am interested in this new book by Oberst, who is 'following the Greek where it leads, supplemented by research on customs of the times." (2) She says she is no theologian or expert, but was a Greek major in college. The book looks interesting, especially as I believe translations and semantics make big differences in our understanding.

And to end, I have to take part of a poem I read at Fran's (Go read the rest of the poem!):

Help me, O Mysterious God,
to understand the riddles you've hidden
inside your answers to my prayers.
~~Ed Hays