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Category: personal life

talking is easier than doing

talking is easier than doing

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It is easier to write than to do. Easier to complain than to do. Easier to rant and grieve about injustice and unfairness, than to do anything substantial to change the course of injustice and unfairness. Easier to say “No matter who you are, you are welcome here,” than to do the actual welcoming. Easier to be moved to tears by a song about “Jesus in all his distressing disguises,” a song about people failing to meet the eyes of a beggar on the street, than to meet the eyes of the beggar who greets you the next morning on the street.

I am in Nashville this week for the Festival of Homiletics, being edified, insprired, challenged, prepared for ministry by faithful men and women, passionate women and men, perceptive pastors and prophetic preachers, and, mostly, by the God who speaks through them. It is a joy to be here, to be embraced by the Spirit of Jesus, by the wonder of the gospel, by the power of the Word … that speaks to us with the help of its interpreters, and even in spite of the help of its interpreters.

But, most of all, I am reminded how much I am a writer, a talker, a teacher, a commentator. That comes easy. That I do well. And that is a task to which I believe God has called me. But, before all that and above all that, I am called, as we are all called, to do … to do what Jesus does, to go where Jesus goes, whatever that means, wherever that means, with whomever that means. And that is harder for me … and maybe for you, too.

We need to help each other to be the church, to be faithful people, to be faithful followers of Jesus … by what we do. We need to prod each other, provoke each other, not let each other off the hook too easily. At the same time, we need to encourage each other and remind each other from where, from Whom we draw our strength. The songs, the prayers, the Bible study, the sermons make us ready — and remind us of the One on whom we depend — to do whatever it is that God calls us to do.

It may be big, it may be small, but it will be something.

beauty out of place

beauty out of place

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A floating rose

The red rose is out of place, floating on the surface of the bay, but even there holds our attention with its beauty … just as the one the rose remembers is out of place, not being here, but even so still holds our attention.

peanut brittle

peanut brittle

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One of the pleasures of the holiday season: homemade peanut brittle! We make it each Christmas and share tins of peanut brittle with neighbors and friends … and save lots to eat ourselves!

the colors of the sea

the colors of the sea

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Another favorite Monhegan Island photograph. Don’t miss the gulls at the upper left! I especially love the color — the colors! — of the sea.

Monhegan Island shoreline

Click on the photo to see an enlarged image.

a view through the trees

a view through the trees

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ocean view through the trees on Monhegan Island

I like this photograph.

It is different from most of my other Monhegan photos — no stunning cliffs rising from the sea, no waves exploding on the rocks guarding the shoreline, no colorful lilies or picturesque lighthouses or interesting people — just this view through the trees.

Is it a photograph of the sea or is the sea just the background? Is our attention drawn by the dead tree in the foreground or do we see past the tree? Is it the dark lines of the dead tree or the bold greens of the living trees or orange of the lichen-covered rocks, the expansive sea in the distance or the intimate path in the near corner, that makes this photograph beautiful?

It is all these things. It is the way all the pieces of the photograph “fit” together and don’t fit together. It is the juxtaposition of life and death, of soft and hard, of light and dark, of sharp and smooth, of intimacy and immensity, that makes this photograph engaging … and beautiful. It is beautiful because it shows something real, this particular piece of earth as it is, as it has become, not something put together or composed by the artist, but something already there. Here is the artistry … of God: death and life, immediacy and transcendence, something that exists wholly oblivious to and careless of me, and yet of which, when I am present and when I pay attention, I am a part.

This is what we are like, too — products of God’s artistry, a strange juxtaposition of the heavenly and the mundane, full of contradictions, but beautiful as we are, beautiful because we are, beautiful because we are from God.