Scripture

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12.2

A Word of Hope

From what base do you operate?

I go see a lot of comic book movies. In the latest entry from the Marvel universe, I was thrilled to see the new Captain Marvel movie. This is not the DC comics version of the character Billy Batson who shouts Shazam!” No. This character is pronounced ‘Mar-Vell’ and this time Marvel studios gives us a female hero, who, in this case, must outthink her own origin and decide who is she is going to represent and ultimately save. Without revealing spoilers, I was first interested in seeing how the writing team developed a character that originally appeared in comics as a male. The world of superhero comics was predominantly white and male when I grew up. Usually only boys read them. I was “conformed to this world.” But, finally, the studios have realized that the current audience for these movies is everybody. I’ve been thrilled to see characters reworked to fit our current world in which heroes truly do come from a big melting pot. Black or white, male or female, our heroes come to us from all kinds of backgrounds and from varied circumstances.

I’m thankful for this approach in storytelling. It took a long time for me to embrace the idea that our world shouldn’t be structured just to serve the privileged white male. I am the product of mid century thinking, from the era that was realistically portrayed in the TV series called Mad Men. I enjoyed that series not only because it was my era from the 1960s, but also that it represented a society in which the everyday heroes were female, the people never given the highest ranking in my boy-centric universe. Yet, looking back on my real life growing up, my actual favorite heroes then were my grade school teachers, most of which were very strong women, standout survivors of that era.

I remember that about 20 years ago I was casually sharing my experiences about the many strong women in my life who were true leaders. I was speaking with a person I considered to be a friend. The man to whom I stated my obviously feminist viewpoint did not care for my opinion in the least. I told him that the strong women should be applauded for their tenacity, but he was stuck in an earlier time, the Mad Men era when men ruled on all fronts. I concluded that women should be running for the highest of offices including the presidency and he looked at me as if I had gone crazy. So many frightened men still look at me the same way 20 years later. Seeing my old friend’s extreme reaction, I began questioning myself, at that time, and why I was feeling so strongly about women in leadership roles.

My attitude was the opposite of my upbringing and my experiences. Was I led by the Spirit; the will of God? Transformed? I can’t say for sure. I do know I had simply found that those old misogynist teachings were dead to me because so many of my personal heroes for so long had been the women of my life. I had witnessed them continually working harder than any man for that honor. Christopher Reeve once said, “A hero is an individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” Even though he had portrayed the first male superhero from which all the others grew, he was referring to anybody and everybody, regardless of gender or ethnic origin. These women had endured in spite of the most overwhelming of obstacles.

So from which base will you operate in this world? Who are the people that you call your heroes? Do they match your race and gender? Are they those certain heroic ordinary people who usually go unnoticed? I, myself, want to complete the unlearning of the message I grew up with, when all my favorite comic book superheroes were white and male. I want a hero to be everybody’s hero, but more specifically I want to be sure to never overlook those ordinary people who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times; the real heroes without credit or awards or a picture in the news.

I hope some of my original women heroes are still around to see Captain Marvel as the representative of the credit they are long overdue in receiving. I’m certainly not paid by the Disney company or Marvel Studios, but I would urge you to see Captain Marvel, a woman of ordinary beginnings who re-defines true heroism. So far, I’ve seen it three times.

Prayer

Send us a hero for these extraordinary times. May she show us how to save us from ourselves and be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

Devotion Author

Charlie Rose
Order of St. Francis and St. Clare

Scripture

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. Romans 12.2

A Word of Hope

From what base do you operate?

I go see a lot of comic book movies. In the latest entry from the Marvel universe, I was thrilled to see the new Captain Marvel movie. This is not the DC comics version of the character Billy Batson who shouts Shazam!” No. This character is pronounced ‘Mar-Vell’ and this time Marvel studios gives us a female hero, who, in this case, must outthink her own origin and decide who is she is going to represent and ultimately save. Without revealing spoilers, I was first interested in seeing how the writing team developed a character that originally appeared in comics as a male. The world of superhero comics was predominantly white and male when I grew up. Usually only boys read them. I was “conformed to this world.” But, finally, the studios have realized that the current audience for these movies is everybody. I’ve been thrilled to see characters reworked to fit our current world in which heroes truly do come from a big melting pot. Black or white, male or female, our heroes come to us from all kinds of backgrounds and from varied circumstances.

I’m thankful for this approach in storytelling. It took a long time for me to embrace the idea that our world shouldn’t be structured just to serve the privileged white male. I am the product of mid century thinking, from the era that was realistically portrayed in the TV series called Mad Men. I enjoyed that series not only because it was my era from the 1960s, but also that it represented a society in which the everyday heroes were female, the people never given the highest ranking in my boy-centric universe. Yet, looking back on my real life growing up, my actual favorite heroes then were my grade school teachers, most of which were very strong women, standout survivors of that era.

I remember that about 20 years ago I was casually sharing my experiences about the many strong women in my life who were true leaders. I was speaking with a person I considered to be a friend. The man to whom I stated my obviously feminist viewpoint did not care for my opinion in the least. I told him that the strong women should be applauded for their tenacity, but he was stuck in an earlier time, the Mad Men era when men ruled on all fronts. I concluded that women should be running for the highest of offices including the presidency and he looked at me as if I had gone crazy. So many frightened men still look at me the same way 20 years later. Seeing my old friend’s extreme reaction, I began questioning myself, at that time, and why I was feeling so strongly about women in leadership roles.

My attitude was the opposite of my upbringing and my experiences. Was I led by the Spirit; the will of God? Transformed? I can’t say for sure. I do know I had simply found that those old misogynist teachings were dead to me because so many of my personal heroes for so long had been the women of my life. I had witnessed them continually working harder than any man for that honor. Christopher Reeve once said, “A hero is an individual who finds strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.” Even though he had portrayed the first male superhero from which all the others grew, he was referring to anybody and everybody, regardless of gender or ethnic origin. These women had endured in spite of the most overwhelming of obstacles.

So from which base will you operate in this world? Who are the people that you call your heroes? Do they match your race and gender? Are they those certain heroic ordinary people who usually go unnoticed? I, myself, want to complete the unlearning of the message I grew up with, when all my favorite comic book superheroes were white and male. I want a hero to be everybody’s hero, but more specifically I want to be sure to never overlook those ordinary people who do extraordinary things in extraordinary times; the real heroes without credit or awards or a picture in the news.

I hope some of my original women heroes are still around to see Captain Marvel as the representative of the credit they are long overdue in receiving. I’m certainly not paid by the Disney company or Marvel Studios, but I would urge you to see Captain Marvel, a woman of ordinary beginnings who re-defines true heroism. So far, I’ve seen it three times.

Prayer

Send us a hero for these extraordinary times. May she show us how to save us from ourselves and be transformed by the renewal of our minds.

Devotion Author

Charlie Rose
Order of St. Francis and St. Clare

Scripture

Psalm 131 (New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
    my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
    too great and too marvelous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
    like a weaned child with its mother;
    my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
    from this time on and forevermore.

Word of Hope

 In the NRSV bible, this beautiful scripture is titled “Song of Quiet Trust”.  Never, more than today, have we needed such an absolute trust in God. Yes, we know there is physical danger of serious illness and even death. Yes we know that our normal financial resources and our daily routines are disrupted. Our ways of interacting with our friends and loved ones are no longer an option. It stands to reason that we would feel fear, worry, frustration, and perhaps even anger or depression.  We may feel deprived even before we run out of toilet paper or anti-virus wipes.

Even so, our Christian faith helps us not be overwhelmed. We are reminded in the scriptures that we have hope and comfort in the worst of circumstances. We need not deny our feelings or require ourselves to be anything other than human. We can however, like the writer of this Psalm, calm our troubled souls and trust in God through all the circumstances.  

Easier said than done?  Here are a few ideas that may help. I think of it as Applied Christianity.

1. Start your day with a prayer of thanks for the blessings you have. Ask God to help you be more like Jesus today. Ask God to be a blessing to others.

2. Keep a journal in which you keep a list of all your blessings as well as all the people you have encountered who need prayer or have specific needs like a job or some food, or relationship troubles.  Use these lists to remember to pray for others and to recognize when God makes you aware of a possible solution like a job opening.

3. Keep in touch with your church family online or by phone. Stay conscious of your own spiritual needs.

4. Keep in touch with friends and family. Remember to be as polite and kind to those near you. We may be spending more time in closer proximity to loved ones. Be extra careful to be loving and don’t forget to love yourself.

Prayer

Beloved God, Thank you for being our hope in the midst of a storm. Despite the seemingly insurmountable troubles we face, grant me the faith and courage to keep my eyes on you. I know that you are with us and that in you we are always safe. May it be so.

Devotion Author

Carole Ann Sarah

Scripture

Deuteronomy 2.7

“For the LORD your God has blessed you in all that you have done; God has known your wanderings through this great wilderness…The LORD your God has been with you; you have not lacked a thing.”‘

A Word of Hope

How often have you started a rather complex and difficult task, and soon had second thoughts about why you were doing it? In Jesus’ humanity, surely there was a period during his wilderness experience in which he must have questioned the deeply spiritual presence within him and the path on which it seemed to propel him. As he realized more about the magnitude of this decision, there must have been the need for a time of serious discernment. Discernment is easier when the daily world activities do not interfere. The desert and wilderness of the great Jordan Valley provided the necessary isolation for a productive time of prayer and self-reflection.

Matthew’s Gospel (chapter 4) states that his journey into that desolate and unwelcoming environment soon caused Jesus’ body to be famished. During discernment, a person may become so physically and mentally exhausted that his mind will offer possible answers in an attempt to clarify or solve the problem. This gospel indicates that the starving Jesus was surrounded by a barren, rocky environment. Realizing more acutely the God presence within his body, he was tempted to allow this divine power to miraculously change stones into life-giving loaves of bread to satisfy his physical hunger. But he resisted the temptation to subvert his inner divine power to satisfy his physical needs.

Later when Jesus told his disciples about this temptation experience, he would have used an Aramaic word like “lachma” to mean bread which satisfies hunger. But that Aramaic word has multiple meanings including “wisdom”. This desert experience was an attempt to search for understanding and assurance about his spiritual quest for life. These dual meanings of the word convey Jesus’ response to the temptation by indicating that humans need not only food to live, but they also need wisdom (divine understanding) from God to live spiritually. Both are necessary.

Prayer

We are in the wilderness. We know the task ahead of us can drain us both physically and spiritually. In all that we seek, may we seek wisdom first that we may remember when you are with us we will never lack a thing.

Devotion Author

Donald (Luke) Day
Order of St. Francis and St. Clare

Scripture

“I pray that out of God’s glorious riches, She may strengthen you with power through Her Spirit in your inner being…And I pray that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power, together with all God’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” —Ephesians 3:16-18

A Word of Hope

Sometimes I feel like my own move into progressive Christianity has led me down a more balanced, reasonable, sane path. Many of us don’t roll around on the ground overcome by the Spirit, many of us don’t believe Jesus literally burst forth from the grave, we’re not too sure if we ever think Jesus is really going to come back, and many are rather certain there isn’t going to be some glorious thousand mile-wide city where God’s new house is built and Jesus reigns over the whole earth.

When we read stories in the early Jerusalem church about all the disciples sharing everything in common or about “cities being turned upside down” by the Christians in the Book of Acts, we don’t really associate ourselves with those people.

And maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe these experiences or ideas are too extreme. Too dangerous. Too much. In fact, I’ll go a step further, I’m fairly confident that one of the reasons progressive Christians often abandon the more extreme, absolutistic, intense, magical things is because such ideas do hurt people. They are problematic.

But recently, I’ve realized I miss the extremity, the madness of it all, the wildness, the insanity, the absurd faith. I miss how ridiculously dramatic it all was. Sounds strange, right? Progressive Christianity, with its central focus on evidenced wellbeing and sound ethics, keeps us safe from all of that. Its boundaries, its reasonableness, its sensitivity, its awareness of power and hurts, it keeps us safe. Right? I think it does. But I cannot help but wonder if there might be a way to keep some of those ethics, some of that safety, but add back in some of the wildness, some of the drama, some of the magic.

I wish I had the answer to it. But I read verses like the one above and I see someone who was seeing something unbelievable, something colossal, something not-of-this-world. And I think, where is that? Has my Christianity become entirely humanistic social justice? And don’t get me wrong, I LOVE humanistic social justice! But is there another layer of meaning I’m missing? Is my theism being replaced by my humanism? And right now, I’ve got this one idea to offer: maybe it’s okay to be as dramatic as this writer, to shout things as loudly as they did, to believe something as insanely, as wildly, as disruptively, as they did. Maybe it’s okay to be a dramatic theist.

Prayer

God, can faith be intense without being too dangerous? Is there a way for theism to be dramatically, vividly real without it hurting people? I yearn for it, Mother God. And I need your help, to be filled with the fullness of You. I need Your power, but I’m scared.

Devotion Author

Tyler James, LPC, MA