Love is the central virtue of the Christian life and it should be the motivation for everything we do. I had a great question posed to me this week when I was doing a book review for a newsletter that I work on. How do we argue in a loving way? Is that even possible?

​I think it is going to take a drastic reframing of our practice of argumentation. We should not attack our opponents. We do not have demolish or shoot down an argument.

I understand that there were problems with this before the pandemic started. It just seems worse because the mean spirited words are hurled, leaked, broadcast, muttered and tweeted online. And it's not just politicians who are the problem. The meanness is trickling down to every day discourse between ordinary people.

I witnessed a less than lovely exchange in a retail store.  Two women were shopping with two small children in tow--one a young boy of about three and the other a baby girl. The little boy was standing stock-still, staring at a broken bottle of perfume at his feet. As an employee was moving in to clean things up, she saw the children's mom had placed the baby girl on one of the store's rolling stock carts.  

The employee said, "Oh please don't do that--she might fall."

The older woman said, "She is not going to let her fall."

The employee said, "Yes, but that's dangerous--she can't be there." 

The woman said more loudly this time (as the mother held her daughter on the cart with one hand and the little boy wandered off on his own) "She is not going to fall, her mom is watching her."

The employee tried again: "Yes, ma'am, but we can't have her up there for liability reasons."

Then came this angry retort: "You don't care about the baby. You just don't want to get sued. You think she can't watch her own baby."

When the young employee tried once more to  politely explain herself, the older woman cut her short: "I know what you care about...and I don't want to hear another word from you. This conversation is over."  

Oh my! Unfortunately, this is also what has happened over Facebook, Twitter, KakaoTalk, and other social media applications.

I know that sometimes we actually feel better when we have told someone exactly what we think. But at what cost? 

The woman in the store could have been way more gracious to the young employee who was communicating a rule that the company she worked for wanted enforced. She seemd angry from the beginning of the exchange.

I can't change the world, the toxic climate in halls of power, or even the attitude of a single shopper. But in a world where meanness has become common, I can choose love instead.  

I can choose gracious responses. Acts of kindness. A caring word. Eye contact. A smile. A listening ear. These I can do. And so can you.

Choose love even when you do not want to!
 
 

Time
Have you thought about it? Most of the time, I think I don’t have enough of it. There are always deadlines to meet, meals to prepare, things to get done before the weekend hits. And it is summer. It is time to slow down and actually think about it.

Here are my practical thoughts. I know I have six more weeks until I graduate from Framingham University with A Masters of Education in TESOL.  I also know it is going to be at least a year and half before I am officially a pastor with the Nazarene Church. I also know that my children are getting taller, a slightly different way to be marking time.

Here are my spiritual thoughts. First and foremost, time is a gift.  Time is a creation of God, right after the second creation of God — light, which marks time.  In the very first chapter of Genesis, God separates light and darkness, calls one day and one night, and there was evening and morning — the beginning of time, which is declared good (Genesis 1:1-5). 

Time is one of creation’s “goods”.  As Thomas Merton explains: “Time for the Christian is then the sphere of his spontaneity, a sacramental gift in which he can allow his freedom to deploy itself in joy.”
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Do we receive time as a good gift from God, the matrix in which we can allow freedom to “deploy itself in joy”? Do we experience time as one of the many aspects of creation that we are to enjoy and to steward, or do we experience time as a taskmaster? Do we manage time, or does time manage us?

From God’s point of time there is lots of time, an eternity of it.  It follows that there will be plenty of time for what God intends to accomplish.  Personally, I have come to believe that God will give me the time to accomplish what is God’s will for me, and that is time “enough” for me.

The second aspect is that the Bible pushes us to understand time as the matrix of the sacred.  The God of Israel, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, was not a God of place.  Unlike the deities of other Ancient Near Eastern peoples, gods associated with temples, sacred springs, or groves of trees, the God of Israel was the God of events, of happenings in time.  The fact that the Divinity is manifested in history means that time is holy.  “The higher goal of spiritual living is not amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments,” Abraham Heschel writes.  “Spiritual life begins to decay when we fail to sense the grandeur of what is eternal in time.”

Living spiritually demands that we be “present tense” people.  The enormity of the concept of ‘God now” bears serious reflection for people who think their relationship with God is important.  Like Heschel, Paul Tillich believes: “There is no other way of judging time that to see it in the light of the eternal.” What is important about time, in short, is its “God content.”​

The third aspect of time I want to discuss is that time is experienced differently in different situations. According to John Donahue, “The quality of our experience always determines the actual rhythm of time.  When you are in pain, every moment slows down until it resembles a week.  When you are happy and really enjoying your life, time flies.”  Time spent with loved ones flies by.  Time spent on a deathbed drags almost unbearably for the loved ones gathered around it.  Three hours in the hospital waiting room during critical surgery is in “real time” much longer than the three hours spent on one’s favorite pastime.

The final reflection or aspect of time to ponder here is the fact that the only time we really have is the present moment, now. 

Now is a gift of God; that is why it is called the present.  The old cliché is true: the past is gone; the future is yet to be. 

If we don’t find God in this present moment, we are unlikely to encounter the Divine at all.  Paul deeply understood this truth and wrote to the Corinthians, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2)

Time is more than chronology.  Time is opportunity.  The Hebrew prophets thought of history as a continuum of times, each filled with its content by God, and, therefore, each demanding a response from people.  The writers of the New Testament clearly thought of themselves as writing in the time of history.  And so we Christians have a particular reason to understand that time is a function of divine disclosure.  It is the arena of salvation.  It is “the means by which God makes use in order to reveal his gracious working.”  Time is valuable because God has entered time and brought eternity into it.

From Ephesians, we must “make the most of the time” (5:16). What that will mean for each one of us is at the heart of the mystery of our individual and God-given vocation.  

What will you be doing with your time this summer? 

I have had a rather busy time since COVID started last February. I teach full time, and I am in two academic programs. I am doing a Masters of Education in TESOL with Framingham University. I am also taking courses to become a pastor. I have three children, and I love to read with them in the evening. All of this has left me quite exhausted.

I am not exhausted when I am outside looking at nature. Birds, insects, turtles, trees, shrubs, and plants are all things that I enjoy when the stress level is too much.

Another thing I enjoy is a great mystery. Agatha Christie in book or movie form is all-time favorite, and that includes Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. I could name them all. Murdoch Mysteries, the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries are more recent ones that have been enjoyed.

The one that might surprise you is that I love reading poetry. Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman, William Wordsworth, and William Butler Yeats are a few of my favorites. A more contemporary person is Malcolm Guite (pictured above). If you haven't heard any of Malcolm Guite's poetry you are in for a treat.

I am chosen something for you. The festival of Corpus Christi has just passed (Thursday) and this was written in honor of the festival by Malcolm Guite. Corpus Christi celebrates the holy sacrament of communion. Enjoy this rather delightful romp into this sonnet!

​Love’s Choice

This bread is light, dissolving, almost air,
A little visitation on my tongue,
A wafer-thin sensation, hardly there.
This taste of wine is brief in flavour, flung

A moment to the palate’s roof and fled,
Even its aftertaste a memory.
Yet this is how He comes. Through wine and bread
Love chooses to be emptied into me.

He does not come in unimagined light
Too bright to be denied, too absolute
For consciousness, too strong for sight,
Leaving the seer blind, the poet mute;
Chooses instead to seep into each sense,
To dye himself into experience.

This is from Sounding the Seasons. I have a few of his other books too. He is definitely worth checking out on Amazon or wherever you buy books from. I am also including a YouTube link. You can delight in his incredibly messy office and a bit of his mind with the video below. Enjoy!

Finally, I want to ask what you do when you are exhausted and need to energize yourself? Drop a line here or Facebook or even email me...

Do you ever have that feeling that you are on a long and winding path that never seems to end?

I feel that way quite often. I wish I could come to the end of the path of life but it just will not happen soon. 

The pandemic happened and I know that many of you can relate to just wanting it to be over! (I would really to get off!)

As well, I am in two academic programs where graduation feels miles and miles away.

First, I am completing a Masters of Education in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages with Framingham University. I have three more courses left, so I know I am going to get off of this path soon, but it has not happened yet.

Second, I am taking courses to become a minister with the Church of the Nazarene. I enjoy these courses way more than the ones for Framingham University. I have five six week courses left. This program has been going on for about five years because I could arrange the schedule to take these courses during the breaks that I have from my current position teaching English at Korea University. Again, I am on a path that I enjoy, but I really want to get off and feel like a regular person again! 

The path of child-rearing is another path of life where I feel like I am right in the middle. Justin, my eldest son, is in his last year of high school and I know I will be ecstatic when he gets into university. Aidan and Jordan are in elementary school, grade six and grade four. It is going to take a while for this path to complete itself. 

Have you ever had that feeling? You want to get off the path you are on because it hard and its winding. You know that you are going to be a better person when you finish, but you still just want to quit.

That is me today. 

It does not help that I am right before midterms with my teaching job. There are another twelve weeks ahead of me. 

I am definitely on a long and winding path that is completely unique. And then I remembered this poem that I completely fell in love with way, way back in high school.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost

I am remembering decisions that have been made over the years. The decision to marry and move to South Korea. I am remembering the decision not to do mission work in Nepal. I am remembering digging my heels into Korean culture and learning how to teach students.

I am also remembering the isolation I felt being a foreigner overseas. But, it has been good. I do enjoy this life that was created from scratch and all the curves on the road that were the result of decisions made.

I am on the path of life. It has been beautiful and hard. It has been lovely and devastating. It has been one where I have taken the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. I am sure I will come to the end of the road some day. 

Lent is that season right before Easter. Even if you have been in the church for a long time, you may not be able to answer all of these questions. In a nutshell, it is the forty days and forty nights where Christians are to give up something in order to feel the full glory of God on Easter Sunday. 

Where did it come from?

In Matthew 4:2, we learn that Jesus spent 40 days in the desert fasting before the devil came and tempted him. He was getting himself ready for his ministry. 

What is the main idea behind Lent?

The main idea is that Jesus allowed himself to be tested. If we are serious about following him, we will do the same.

What do people usually give up for Lent?

Some people actually do the 40 days of fasting, but there are other options. You could give up chocolate, salty snacks, or even coffee for Lent. Children could give up candy.

When did Lent start?

It started in the fourth century. Traditionally, it is associated with penitence, fasting, alms giving, and prayer. It is a time for giving things up balanced by giving to those in need. 

How should one approach Lent?

The best way to approach Lent is see it as an opportunity. Lent actually means spring time. It is a little hard to get one's head around this but out of the darkness of sin's winter, a repentant, empowered people emerge. It truly is a joy-filled season. 

Why should one be surprised by joy during Lent?

Our self-sacrifice, what it that may be, serves no purpose unless we are able to satisfy the heart's deepest longing, unity with Christ. In Christ - in his suffering and death, his resurrection and triumph - we found our truest joy. 

This joy is costly. It arises from the reality of our sin, which crucified Christ. Meister Eckhart points out that those who have the hardest time with Lent are "the good people". Most of us are willing to give one or two things; and we may also admit our need for renewal. But actually die with Christ?

Another way to look at joy is see that our need for repentance cannot erase the good news that Christ overcame all sin. Christ' resurrection frees us from ourselves. His beautiful, empty tomb turns our attention away from all that is wrong with us and with the world, and spurs us on to experience the abundant life he promises. 

Do you want to experience that life? I know I do.

Advent Season began on Sunday. This is my favorite time of the year with all the beauty and stillness that come with it. It is time to sit and be still, to think, to ponder, to wonder, and to reach for hope.

Advent means coming. The birth of Jesus is coming. We are waiting for this event that brings hope, light, and goodness into this world. 

The boys and I are taking out the Advent Candle holder in the evenings. I read Scripture to them and we pray together. after supper We are also reading one of the many Christmas storybooks that I have collected over the years. I have three little Christmas sacks that I hide them in, and the boys take turns picking one to read. 

Yesterday was the first day that they were actually quite calm for the Advent readings. They answered questions and prayed. I had a moment where I thought "Wow" and was absolutely delighted that no one was insulting anyone. It was a joy!

And just in case you were wondering, we do have favorite storybooks that we read over and over again. I will share three of them here.
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Mr. Willowby's Christmas Tree is a delightful story of the tip of the Christmas tree being cut off in order for it to fit in Mr. Willowby's front room. The top of the tree travels to another part of the house, out of the house, and around the the neighborhood as all kinds of animals find it, are delighted with it, and then end up trimming it a little bit more in order to make it fit perfectly into whatever space they are dealing with.

This storybook is written as a long poem with rather delightful language. I enjoyed each and every rhyme. 

Yes, this was made into a TV movie back in 1995. Check it out on Youtube! 

The last book I will mention is Song of the Stars by Sally Lloyd Jones. Yes, this is the same person that wrote The Jesus Storybook Bible. This one features creation. Each and every animals is excited about the coming birth of Jesus. They seem to sense the magnificence of the event that is about to take place. Of course, the story culminates in the stable where all the animals gather around to see the baby who was born in a manger.
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Another Advent tradition I have is the reading of great poetry. I enjoy this because it is one way to be still and just savor the moment. We all need these moments where nothing is happening, all is quiet, and just sit with ourselves.

There are too many good poets to mention here, so I will save it until next year!