Testing msg
February 22, 2008
Pure in Heart
When I was growing up, today was Washington's birthday. With President's Day, this has all changed. Of course, George Washington wasn't born on February 22 anyway. He was born on February 11. He was born before the Gregorian calendar was introduced and everything got moved 11 days later. This accounts for some of the confusion surrounding the October revolution in Russia in the early part of the 20th century. They were still on the Julian calendar which loses time badly.
This has nothing to do with my spiritual journal for Lent. It does tell you a little about how my mind works. I get to thinking about this and find myself looking up dates and conversion factors and such and it is lunchtime before I finish. People say I'm knowledgeable about things. Yes, I am, but it comes at a cost.
I've been thinking also how compartmentalized I am. I separate God out from the rest of my life. Jesus has his sphere, but connecting him to the rest of my life is extremely difficult.
For example: I went for my last treatment on Wednesday. The muscle is better than it was when I started the first of the year, but it is, according to the nurse, a work in progress. I can come back in six months to be re-evaluated. Keep doing the exercises. Since I won't be monitored, I won't know if the muscle is in spasm and if I should cut back or increase my exercise. Of course, I won't be able to truly ascertain the benefit of doing all this until I can take long walks.
All of this is in the medical realm of doctors and nurses, computer printouts and probes. There doesn't seem much room for God here.
I know that God is everywhere. That's not my point. Jesus becomes a given in my universe, not personal in any way.
I distinctly remember a professor of mine raving against feeling God's presence. It wasn't what we could feel that mattered. It is what Christ does for us that matters.
Over time, I have come to disagree with this professor. I think it is important for knowledge to exist, to count on such knowledge in times of despair, melancholy and stress. However, such knowledge is not relationship-based and I have come to think that I am called into a personal relationship with Jesus. I'm not particularly good at relationships. So I can go about doing what I'm doing and leave Jesus out of it.
Yet I sat at the healing service Thursday morning and the phrase "Create in me a clean heart," came into my mind and with it, "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God." This has become my favorite of all the Beatitudes. I still hunger and thirst for righteousness, but I long to be pure in heart in order to see God. 'm still wondering what needs to be scrubbed clean in my heart in order for it to be pure.
February 18, 2008
Psalms 50 an51
When in doubt in Lent, go back to Psalm 51. However, I'm starting my reading at Psalm 50. Part of my conversation last Thursday on healing brought me to a discussion of how Psalm 50 ends: "... and to the blameless God will show salvation." or words to this effect. I have been wondering about these words: blameless and salvation. And then, in a burst of inspiration, it occurred to me that perhaps the answers to my question lay in Psalm 51.
After all, these two psalms did not start out being called 50 and 51. I get so used to the idea that psalms appear in the Psalter because, well, that's the place they occupy. Psalm 23 is Psalm 23. It couldn't be Psalm 23 if it was first or last or somewhere else in the book, right? But once upon a time it wasn't Psalm 23. In fact, we have Bibles in which it isn't Psalm 23. It has to do with how Psalms 9 and 10 are treated. If they're combined, as in some earlier renderings, Psalm 23 becomes Psalm 22. So there's that and further, once upon a time, these psalms weren't in this anthology.
I imagine some scribes -- not the nasty people we meet in the gospels but hard-working folks who knew how to read and write--being assigned the task of putting the Psalter together. It seems some psalms were already in little collections like the Songs of Ascents or perhaps even the Psalms of David, of Korah and Asaph,.. Did the scribe just go through the archive and whatever psalm fell to hand went next? Or is there an organizing principle here? Was it organized one way and then someone upset the stack of tablets or scrolls and the office flunky stacked them back up as best he could and that's the order we have?
What I'm getting at here is this: Are the psalms somewhat random in the Book of Psalms or not? And if not, what does that mean for Psalms 50 and 51?
Because, you see, I'm wondering if Psalm 51 helps answer my question about "... and to the blameless God will show salvation." If I am blame-filled, I won't be shown, given, see, God's salvation so I need to get my act together and that is what Psalm 51 is about.
I also started thinking that these psalms weren't versified and they were written in a scroll. Our psalms look pretty discrete. Our worship practices really enforce that kind of thinking. Turn to page --- and we'll read verses x through y responsively. Ancient readers had the text. They didn't even have white space between the words much less have books where each individual psalm had its own title at the top of a page. Scrolls are unrolled like a cassette tape. A reader could easily come to the end of Psalm 50 and start Psalm 51.
Next I asked myself what it meant to have a clean heart and to renew and have a right spirit within me. I'm not yet finished thinking about this so these are only preliminary and provisional thoughts.
I don't have direct access to the Hebrew at this point, but I did dig out Strong's numbers.
Create: the same word used back in Genesis in the beginning when everything was "so good".
clean: this suggests real cleansing with strong chemicals and the like. This is serious work. It can also mean pure. "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God," Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount.
renew: not like a library book. This is about repairing and rebuilding Again, serious work, real work, here.
right: the root has to do with being erect or set perpendicular which is why some translations use upright to describe the spirit. If I stick with "repair" for "renew," I'm back to my Lenten theme of realignment. I'm thinking about "On Christ the solid rock I stand/all other ground is sinking sand" and "Christ is made the sure foundation." This is definite restoration work which, although spiritual in nature, uses definite and strong images of physical construction to get across its meaning. This is going to be one heck of a facelift when all the scaffolding is taken down and the refurbished structure can be seen in its entirety.
Nothing less will do.. The building was a danger to anyone inside or outside of it. It could have collapsed at any time. The condemnation process was underway.
What I am thinking about now is the sheer courage and audacity it takes to present oneself to God and say these words.
My friendly windstream tech called this morning about my internet connection. I really think of him as my personal tech. It turns out that I had two problems: 1. my local area connection had turned itself off. 2. I had a dead DSL modem, at least, the tech couldn't log onto it to ask it what was what. So I now have a new modem and my local area network is back online. LIfe is good again.
One of the things with system access is that it is internet based. No internet, no access even to local media and the media player. Of course I could go into folder and play anything on my hard drive, but I'm getting used to the menus.
I'm also liking the RSS reader a lot. I can mix podcasts and blogs, read the blog part of the podcast posts and sync whatever I want to my creative zen stone. I'm liking that a lot, too.
My internet connection failed this afternoon and no amount of fiddling with the hardware solved the problem. Technical support is always a trial. I can't see the lights on the modem. So the long and the short is I finally got my friend Steve--probably not his real name--to finally check to see if there was a signal coming into my modem. Perhaps not. A ticket was written up. Maybe by Monday night at 8 p.m. I will have my service restored.
I went to the PDA to check email. This meant started internet explorer, etc., etc. No new mail. Whew! I'm not sure I could have answered it. The mobile platform plus the screen reader is a little tricky since I am so unfamiliar with how everything works together. Although there are mobile versions of sites, there is still so much information and it is formatted assuming vision and the ability to tap things on the screen, not navigate to them with a tab key.
With the internet down, this means system access doesn't work. Not even the applications that deal with my own computer work. This is frustrating to say the least and is one of the weaknesses of system access. I was just getting into setting up all my RSS and being able to get to it without storing all that audio on my pc. Then, crash.
At least I am feeling a bit better. I took a nap this morning and sat in my comfy chair in the sunshine this afternoon. For the first time in weeks I actually felt warm, almost too warm. It was delicious.
Then I discovered my blog program wasn't working properly and I had to reinstall it from the internet. I'm proud of myself. I did find the correct page using googleon the PDA, launched it, installed it and now here I am, happily typing. I will have a boat load of work on top of the backlog I already have to get done, but, I'll think of it as job security.
February 12, 2008
Well, here we are at Day 7 of Lent and it is already difficult to remember I'm in Lent. I think it is the word "self" that creates the problem for me. Lent is about "self" examination, "self" discipline, "self" denial. It's even about "self induced action: prayer, reading, study, involvement. Oh, sure, there are group activities--extra worship services, programs, soup, but they require "self" motivation to get involved.
It's not like Christmas at all. There aren't Lent shopping days. Inane music does not blast out of speakers on my street. There are no Lenten decorations to get out and the grocery store doesn't stock special Lent items. I can't go to a Lent aisle at CVS. The closest I can come to is recalling a Lenten candle holder that worked like an Advent wreath though it was in the shape of a cross, hot cross buns--I can't eat them anymore--and, yes, matzo, if Passover and Easter coincide.
Oh, and if you're wondering, there was a church debate about that way back when. It's crazy that Easter, named for a fertility goddess, is tied to the astronomical calendar. However, the reason it got detached from Passover is twofold:
1. It meant Christians had to consort with Jews to know when Passover would occur. Christians had a habit of converting back to or just to Judaism if they kept in touch. So much for their convictions.
2. Passover doesn't fall on the same day of the week. Christians wanted to remember the crucifixion on a Friday and celebrate the resurrection on a Sunday. They weren't happy with Good Friday coming on Monday.
And Good Friday--it's a corruption of God's Friday. All the drivel you've read about why Friday is good may be true in and of itself, but it has nothing to do with how we refer to the day in English. Other languages use other words, like Holy Friday.
Anyway ... So much for my excursuses. Sometimes I just have to get this stuff out to write something more germane.
I spent yesterday doing church podcasts. I have more to go, including entries 4 and 5 of my journal. It meant hearing sermons. I heard two new ones. Going to church on Saturday night means I either get an early draft of Sunday's sermon or something entirely different. I sometimes even get a different preacher. That was true for Ash Wednesday.
As a result, my Bible study has fallen off. I'm wondering if it is the concentration of listening that I only have a finite amount of or whether my daydream quotient is high. If I use up my concentration on the forums--there are two to review on a subject I would personally skip over-- Does that mean I have nothing left to devote to Bible study? That doesn't sound right. I wonder, as I write this, if it means I choose something different. Maybe I will just listen to Psalm 51.
I checked, by the way. The use of Psalm 103 must be a prayer book thing. The Revised Common Lectionary has Psalm 51 with no alternatives. As I said in an earlier entry, I am glad of Psalm 103, but it does mean I'm not totally crazy.
I'm wondering if today's entry is like artist pages. Julia Cameron has this idea that artists by which she means creative people, would benefit by writing two or three pages a day to get the clutter out of their brains so they can create. As for me, I just want another cup of coffee. +
I am using a different screen reader tonight. It's a bit different than my usual screen reader and I'm seeing if I am writing in the correct fields. If I am, I will learn how to label this page better.
I've been exploring system access from serotek. It's a new screen reader which is menu-driven. It gives you a simple single-page web page with a blog. Another blog? Oh dear! However, I think it will solve a problem for me. I have this web site which is woefully out-of-date and which I have no enthusiasm for updating. If I trash it and its monthly fee, I'll be ahead. I can use the single page to say a little about myself, show the blog, and make judicious use of the blog to function as a resume of sorts. I can continue blogging here and point folks here for more information. It's not a fancy domain name thing, but it will work well enough and it's free with the purchase of the service. Sounds like a plan to me.
I haven't posted from my mobile platform for a few days because my storage card popped out of the phone and disappeared into the ether. I wasn't aware of this until I went to blog something and couldn't. Now I have a new storage card installed and vox is live again.
I haven't posted from my mobile platform for a few days because my storage card popped out of the phone and disappeared into the ether. I wasn't aware of this until I went to blog something and couldn't. Now I have a new storage card installed and vox is live again.
