God and stuff on a Wednesday night...

(As I attempt to catch-up on my blogging a bit and finally post some of the links I've been saving...)

Back in late August, the ELCA (the synod of the Lutheran Church I grew up in) adopted a statement that will, quoting from the column I'll link to below, "allow congregations to bless and hold publicly accountable those in same-sex, lifelong, monogamous relationships, as well as to call GLBTQ pastors in such relationships to serve as their clergy." Not surprisingly, there's been some mixed responses to this decision and I won't say too much about it one way or the other. But I will point you towards this piece by Nadia Bolz-Weber.

A long excerpt:

"The debate on the floor between those at the green microphones who support these steps and those at the red microphones who reject these steps was sometimes inspired and sometimes insipid. Those in support urged the church to be open and loving as Jesus had been. Those opposed urged the church to heed the Bible. Both sides were passionate and faithful, and I’m proud to say that throughout the debate the assembly paused every 20 minutes to pray together. I watched people say prayerful things, hurtful things, thoughtful things, and idiotic things on both sides of the aisle.

And then a young pastor got up to speak at the green microphone and the first thing he said, in a quivering voice, was “Anyone else frightened to speak? I’m shaking. Please pray for me.” And the man standing right next to him at the red microphone reached over and laid his hand on him and prayed while his brother of the opposing viewpoint spoke.

Then I knew Jesus was really in between the red and green microphones. Not in some sort of neutral Jesus-as-Switzerland sort of way, but in the you-must-lose-your-life-to-gain-it sort of way. Jesus is between the red and the green microphones, between the red and the blue states offering us life and salvation in the words of eternal life and in the sacrament of his own body and blood. Jesus right there between the liberals and conservatives speaking the word that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Jesus standing there saying forgive as you have been forgiven."

That's good stuff, no?

And then there's this fantastic poem I found on (yes, you guessed it) the Poem of the Day podcast, called "Staying Power," by Jeanne Murray Walker.

In appreciation of Maxim Gorky at the International Convention of Atheists, 1929

Like Gorky, I sometimes follow my doubts
outside to the yard and question the sky,
longing to have the fight settled, thinking
I can't go on like this, and finally I say

all right, it is improbable, all right, there
is no God. And then as if I'm focusing
a magnifying glass on dry leaves, God blazes up.
It's the attention, maybe, to what isn't there

that makes the emptiness flare like a forest fire
until I have to spend the afternoon dragging
the hose to put the smoldering thing out.
Even on an ordinary day when a friend calls,

tells me they've found melanoma,
complains that the hospital is cold, I say God.
God, I say as my heart turns inside out.
Pick up any language by the scruff of its neck,

wipe its face, set it down on the lawn,
and I bet it will toddle right into the godfire
again, which—though they say it doesn't
exist—can send you straight to the burn unit.

Oh, we have only so many words to think with.
Say God's not fire, say anything, say God's
a phone, maybe. You know you didn't order a phone,
but there it is. It rings. You don't know who it could be.

You don't want to talk, so you pull out
the plug. It rings. You smash it with a hammer
till it bleeds springs and coils and clobbery
metal bits. It rings again. You pick it up

and a voice you love whispers hello.

You can read more from and about Jeanne Murray Walker here.