Pastor Don's Ponderings

OUR WORLD WOULD DO WELL TO REMEMBER THAT ASCENDING TO THE KINGDOM IS NOT ACCOMPLISHED BY STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF OTHERS, BUT BY BOWING DOWN BEFORE OTHERS IN HUMBLE SERVICE, EVEN WHEN YOU KNOW THEY WILL BETRAY YOU. STILL YOU HAVE FAITH, STILL YOU BOW DOWN, STILL YOU SERVE. ALLOW GOD TO TAKE CARE OF THE REST. (c)dcw2020

I love the photography of my friend and colleague, Fr. Jerry Schweitzer, who resides in Northern Indiana. He publishes a daily meditation which includes his photographs and, truth be told, most days I find myself just looking into the pictures he provides and imagining my place in each setting. Jerry, and so many others like him, have the God-given capacity to see with God's eyes, to intuitively capture a moment, an event or an environment, and then invite others to marvel with them at the sight. This scene holds me fast . . . On the shoreline of Lake Michigan, at a place where once someone sat and took in its beauty and power, where a fence divides the land to the place where the waters cannot be divided, and where under snow and blustery winds there still resides the vestiges of summers past: The windswept grasses tell their tales and shifting sands reveal their secrets. Here we meet ourselves. Here we see our reflections. Here we tremble, not for Winter's wind, but fo...

Just the sight of Fall tillage makes me smile. Anyone connected with farming smells a picture like this as much as we view it, maybe more than we want to admit. There is something about ground being opened in the Fall, something about the manner in which soil rolls around the tillage tool, something in the sound of the tractor pulling the tool and something in the sound of dirt opening and closing behind you which makes a farmer's heart happy . . . and the smell, the smell of Fall time tillage is luxuriant.  Fall tillage is essential for the coming crop year. Though not every acre of soil can be tilled in the Fall, due to erosion risk and crop history, those acres which can be tilled, weather permitting, are often done at something of an angle to the planting direction to facilitate cutting through layers of compaction. Yet, more than that, deep Fall tillage buries some of the refuse from the previous years crop, allowing for a more rapid rotting of the plant into needed hum...

Stopping at the door of the Vestry, one of my parishioners caught my attention before worship on Sunday, handed me a small magazine and simply said she enjoyed the article and thought I might, as well. It was the February 2020 issue of the Reader's Digest . Prominent above the printed pages was a sticky note which marked an article she wanted me to read and the words, "I've always felt people aren't so bad one on one." It was signed, "Kathy". The article highlighted by Kathy Hardin-Odle is, "Kindness, Pass It On!" This article is the record of a variety of Twitter conversations which seek to tell the story of kindness as people have experienced it along the way. The words recorded there bring tears on the train, give pause along the pathways and traverse the skies above us, all of them intended to remind us that there is good at work in the folk around us, if only we are open to the possibility and watching for the impact . . . all of whic...

I grew up in a family who attended Sunday morning worship every week, no questions asked. Mom played the organ, Dad taught Sunday School and was on the Church Council, Mom was part of the Women's Fellowship, we kids were part of the choirs and youth groups and everyone in our family was expected not only to show up, but also to participate. It was, and in many ways still is, who we were and are.  Going to Sunday morning worship no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car. Yet, if you never stand in a garage you will never know how a car feels when it is cared for and protected from the elements, just as if you never go to Sunday worship you will have a hard time experiencing the Love and Care of God made manifest in the gathering of the congregation. This may not be perfect imagery, but you get the idea. The Church, the gathered faith community, the congregation, the faith family, whatever you want to call God's people gathered together in the...

There is an old saying out there about our pets and, most particularly, our dogs, "To you your dog is part of your life, but to your dog you are their whole life." This has really been true for our two dogs, Mulligan and Birdie, who had been apparently dumped along the road by a nearby cemetery at the age of about eight weeks. Wandering the nearby field, they found me along the road where I had stopped to visit with my Aunt Verna as she made her way to the cemetery I was just leaving. They came running out of the standing soybeans and just jumped on my legs, so happy to see somebody, anybody, who might take care of them. I guessed they had run away from a neighbors home, so I put them in my truck and drove them to the home, knocked on the door and asked the gentleman if they were his. He just laughed and said, "No, they are yours!" He then went on to say that there had been five of these puppies dumped near the flooded creek just below us and his son had found ...

There are two times of the day when I have a tendency to be grumpy, when I am awake and when I am asleep. My wife thought about waking up grumpy the other day, but she let me sleep. There is a fine line between grumpy and gravitas . . . and I am currently doing a dance on the line with the music only I can hear in my mind. Seriously, there is a lot of truth in what I said here and the older I get the more I find it enjoyable to play the part of the grumpy theologian/academician/dad/papa. If you know just enough, grumpiness can become an interesting way to manage the younger generation or, for that matter, anyone else with whom you have to spend a lot of time. Grumpiness is a nice foil for dealing with the self-righteous, pompous and arrogant, being somewhere between the manifestation of karma and the foreshadowing of truth hitting the fan. In many ways, I have to wonder if Jesus' answer to the rich young lawyer wasn't more of a grumpy answer that others took as loving, tha...

One day last Fall I had the opportunity to ride a few rounds in the combine with my brother, Larry, as he clipped off another field. For those who are not accustomed to such a sight, this is a soybean field and we are sitting in the cab of the farm's John Deere combine. What you see in front of you near the ground is the header of the machine, the reel turns in a forward fashion bringing the standing crop into the header, which then moves it back into the rotary separator in the largest portion of the combine. The soybeans, once separated from the stalk and pod of the plants, will then move by way of the clean grain auger into the hopper on top of the machine and the residue of the soybean plant will be chopped and scattered behind the machine. It is really something to watch, especially when you can do it up close from in the cab sitting next to the operator. A ride with Larry in the fields is seldom just a ride. The cab is his office for a large amount of time in Fall, so as...

And so it happened . . . I received a text from our son, Ray, concerning our grandson, Holden, and his upcoming Cub Scout Pinewood Derby car, "Dad, would you mind coming out of retirement and giving Holden a hand on his car? The derby is at the end of the week." Just the request made me smile, as I remembered back to all of the cars our three sons and I had made in my basement shop over the years. Though I am not certain of the final number, it would have to be around 15 cars . . . sometime I will have to count them, for they are all up on a rail on display in my shop in our home. Each car reflects a bit of the personality of the son who imagined it, worked on it, raced it and cherished it. Each car held a place of high value and esteem in their lives - until they left home and the car was left with Mom and Dad for 'safe-keeping'. Each car now resides near me as I work on other projects and, now, each car looks on as the next generation begins th...

Every once in a while I have to take the time to walk in the pastures of our family farm. This old cottonwood tree is in our East pasture and has stood the test of time longer than I have been alive. I know it has been struck by lightning numerous times, has had multiple honeybee swarms make their home in its branches and trunk, been rubbed against by hundreds of cows satisfying an itch against its bark, and has had the land around it shaped and reshaped numerous times over the decades as our family has striven to manage the large amount of water which flows in that area of the farm. This tree is a survivor . . . and the cows still love it and the shade it provides on a warm Summer day. Coming back to blogging is a bit like walking the pasture towards this tree: It is nice to return to the places and things which are solid and standing the test of time. So much of our technological age is transitory, including the social media sites which tantalizingly draw our attention for a mom...