Category Archives: NaBloPoMo

Election Day Prayer: Recessional

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Recessional

God of our fathers, known of old,   
   Lord of our far-flung battle-line,   
Beneath whose awful Hand we hold
   Dominion over palm and pine—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,   
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
   The Captains and the Kings depart:   
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
   An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,   
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
   On dune and headland sinks the fire:   
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
   Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!   
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,   
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose   
   Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe,   
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
   Or lesser breeds without the Law—
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget—lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust   
   In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
   And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,   
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord!
Rudyard Kipling, 1897
Source: A Choice of Kipling’s Verse (1943)

Sunday Prayer: All Saints

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A reading from the Wisdom of Solomon (3:1-9)


 But the souls of the righteous are 
in the hand of God,
and no torment will ever touch them. 
In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died,
and their departure was thought to be a disaster, 
and their going from us to be their destruction;
but they are at peace. 
For though in the sight of others they were punished,
their hope is full of immortality. 
Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good,
because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; 
like gold in the furnace he tried them,
and like a sacrificial burnt-offering he accepted them. 
In the time of their visitation they will shine forth,
and will run like sparks through the stubble. 
They will govern nations and rule over peoples,
and the Lord will reign over them for ever. 
Those who trust in him will understand truth,
and the faithful will abide with him in love,
because grace and mercy are upon his holy ones,
and he watches over his elect. 

A Statement of Faith for All Saints Day

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We believe in God, who brings creation out of chaos, healing out of brokenness, light out of darkness, and life out of death.
We believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son and our Lord.
Jesus came into the world for teaching, for healing, for reconciliation, and to announce the reign of God’s kingdom.
Though his work was opposed, even unto death, the Word of Life could not be silenced.
He was resurrected for the sake of all, including we who are gathered here.
We await his return in glory and we continually look for his presence in this life.
We trust this expectation is not in vain. 
We believe in the Holy Spirit, giver of the gifts of community, communion, and consolation.
The Spirit preserves our hearts in the midst of things we cannot understand and connects us to the cloud of faithful witnesses, who are our encouragement.
The Spirit shapes us as God’s people and gives us faith and courage to respond to the gifts of mercy, grace, and healing until we reach the place our faith moves from hope to revelation.
Amen. 

Victory Lap

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I had hoped to do a more in-depth post today (perhaps in the 50 Essential Passages group), but life has intervened. It always does.

Thus, I’d like to take this moment to congratulate myself on completing National Blog Posting Month! This post means that I did write or post something for every day of the month.

Back on the 1 November, I thought this would be challenging. Then a personal friend died and I was helping with the funeral and what had previously seemed like a pleasant challenge became daunting when I was tired and grief-stricken. Yet, I plunged on with the project, though I told myself I could quit and nothing would happen.

Committing to daily blogging has helped me in a couple ways. First of all, I tend to have great ideas about posting, particularly about news items, but I think them out until I’m sick of them and the news is old. Then I decide there’s no point in commenting. The pressures of daily blogging made me go ahead and comment. This means you get a truer picture of my feelings than when I sanitize them through a long process (though that IS a good thing sometimes).

I also got a clearer picture of how long an individual post takes me. Something like Thanksgiving takes about 10-15 minutes, depending on the length of time it takes to find the video, article, whatever. It does take restraint to post something and not comment. Less is occasionally more. Posts in which I comment, but do little biblical work, take about 40 minutes to an hour. Good examples are my comments about the Pope and condoms or my thoughts about Lectionary Year A. Finally, posts that are based in the Bible and are primarily biblical analysis or commentary can take between 1-2 hours. Commenting about David and Jonathan and about Saul took about 90 minutes each time.

NaBloPoMo helped me just to go ahead and write, to consider my daily life at a different level and to go ahead and commit some of my reflections to the public view. Not everything I had to say was interesting, but the practice of writing helps develop the skills for when you need it to be interesting.

Even as I write this, I’m thinking about the NaBloPoMo website and their challenge for December blogging. The topic was zeitgeist- the spirit of a time or age. That’s something on which I could comment…

Two Favorite Authors

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I needed a NaBloPoMo prompt today: Who’s your favorite author, why and what work of  his or hers would you recommend reading first?

I’m going to give two. These authors are currently my favorite, non-theological writers. When I enjoy someone’s writing style, I tend to ravenously consume all their works and monitor their website for upcoming works. The two authors I’ll discuss, in brief, today are Tony Horwitz and Bill Bryson. (Links are to their respective websites.)

I was first introduced to Tony Horwitz through Confederates in the Attic (Pantheon, 1998). Intrigued by the grimacing Confederate on the front, I began reading the story of how the author dug into his own love of Civil War history to find out why the War Between the States continues to have skirmishes (so to speak). Horwitz’s style might best be classified somewhere between travel writing and historical expose´. I have pressed Confederates on every reading friend I have. I think it’s well-written and carefully exposes the nuances of why people participate in Civil War reenactments, frequently as Confederates, the continuing struggles around the Confederate flag (the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia) and the haunting feeling present on many battlefields from the War of Northern Aggression.

Horwitz has a great writing voice and style, humorous and smooth, conveying lots of information without being overly didactic. I’ve read everything he’s got out and I definitely recommend starting with Confederates. Blue Latitudes, about Captain Cook, is also very enjoyable.

Bill Bryson was my bridge over the Swamp Homesickness when I lived, briefly, in England. Because he’s lived there for a significant portion of his life, he is slightly more prominent in bookstore placement in England than here in his home country. His self-deprecating style of travel writing (through Europe, Australia, US, Appalachian Trail) is engaging and warm. I do own all his books, including the tiny one on Africa and the ones for writers. I’ll admit that I still haven’t made it all the way through A Short History Nearly Everything. And I’m about halfway through At Home: A Short History of Private Life, his most recent work detailing the history of home layouts and basic household items. It’s great, but a little dense.

I’ve mentioned A Walk in the Woods and In a Sunburned Country more than once in this blog. Respectively, these details travels through and history of the Appalachian Trail and Australia. I think they’re the best. I also love The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-town America  and Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe. He also wrote an autobiography about his childhood in America in the 50s: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.

With BB, you’ll either like him or you won’t. His voice and style are fairly constant, particularly with the travel books.

At this stage in my life, I enjoy learning while I’m reading, but I don’t like to work in my pleasure reading. Both these writers provide a lot of information and make that information accessible and approachable through their writing voices.