Some Thoughts on Title IV

Over the weekend a couple of parishioners asked me about a letter to the editor they had seen in The Richmond Times-Dispatch. The letter was about changes to the canon law of the Episcopal Church which have taken effect as of the first of July. In the letter, the author makes claims that the new Title IV canons give “sweeping ‘Metropolitan’ powers” to the Presiding Bishop, that they “diminish the authority of bishops and clergy,” and that they create a situation where the Presiding Bishop can remove any bishop from any diocese if that bishop “doesn't go along with Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori's agenda.” These are disturbing statements, and the parishioners who asked me about them were understandably disturbed.

I can assure you that these statements are simply not true. While Title IV does mark a major shift in church practices regarding clergy discipline, they in no way concentrate power in the office of the Presiding Bishop, and certainly do not give the PB authority to enforce any particular “agenda.” Instead, the new Title IV sets out new procedures for assessing claims of clergy misconduct and their proper remedies.

The old Title IV was based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and basically set up procedures for clergy discipline resembling courts martial. It was an adversarial process, in which charges were made,  a “prosecution” and a “defense” argued the merits of those charges, and sentences were pronounced. The new Title IV is designed to be less adversarial and more pastoral, where the process is intended to reveal the truth, to make sure all parties to a situation are able to tell their stories, and to determine a pastoral response. Instead of a list of offenses for which clergy can be charged, as in the old Title IV, the new Title IV provides a code of conduct to which clergy are expected to adhere. When a complaint is made against a bishop, priest, or deacon, panels are convened to determine whether the cleric has indeed committed the act, and whether the act constitutes a breach of the code of conduct. If the panel determines that the cleric has failed to uphold the code of conduct, the bishop may direct the cleric regarding more appropriate behavior, the bishop may restrict the cleric’s ministry or put him or her on administrative leave, or the bishop may depose the cleric, depending on the severity of the failure of conduct. The new canons direct that every complaint be taken seriously and be investigated; but it has many safeguards built in to weed out frivolous or baseless complaints. It is not true, as the Times-Dispatch letter writer claimed, that “bishops will be able to remove parish leaders on the flimsiest of charges.” Instead, the process of clergy discipline has been made much more similar to codes of ethics and professional conduct used in other professions in American society.

The new Title IV has caused some consternation in the Church, largely because clergy discipline is an issue laden with emotions and often unpleasant to think about in even the best of circumstances. In some ways it does make clergy more vulnerable, since it is arguable that living up to a code is always more difficult than avoiding particular offenses; and clergy against whom complaints are made must always tell their sides of the story, effectively meaning that clergy cannot “plead the fifth” in church complaints. But overall the new Title IV is intended to make the process of clergy discipline more transparent, more open, and more pastoral -- not to concentrate power in the top levels of hierarchy.

While it will take the Church some time to live into these new canons, and to learn the best ways to bring pastoral outcomes out of misconduct situations, I think the new Title IV is in fact a step forward, and is a better reflection of the covenant of trust our Church wishes to build up between people and their leaders.

The Last Supper and the Seder

A professor at Cambridge has published a new book in which he argues that Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples took place on the Wednesday before Easter, not the Thursday, as church tradition has long taught. He bases his arguments on astronomical calculations and an ancient variant calendar that seems to have originated in Egypt, concluding that Jesus held his seder one day earlier than the official Jerusalem calendar would have called for. Books of this sort of scholarly speculation appear fairly regularly. But in this case the secular press, with its typical taste for controversy, has seized on the book as a potential challenge to the observances of Holy Week, and is making hay of it as another example of how churches Get It Wrong.

This is, to my mind, an excellent example of the silliness of trying to take the Bible too literally. The four canonical gospel accounts of the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Jesus' death and resurrection vary in many details. It has long been known that Matthew, Mark, and Luke present the Last Supper as a Passover seder and John does not. There's nothing new there. The Synoptics present it as a seder because they have a thematic and theological interest in showing how Jesus reinterprets the bread and cup of the seder meal to refer to the new covenant in his blood. John famously presents the meal as not a seder -- there is no institution of the Eucharist, no bread and cup at all, in John's Last Supper -- because he has a thematic and theological interest in narrating how Jesus dies on the cross at the very moment the Passover lambs are being slaughtered in the Temple. John's theological interest is not to show that Jesus reinterprets anew the Passover meal, but that Jesus is the new Passover meal (he earlier identified Jesus as the Bread of Life as well). It is directly connected to the verse in John 1:29 where John the Baptist identifies Jesus as the Lamb of God: Jesus as Lamb is a theme that runs through the entire gospel, and reaches its climax at his death on the cross. To John, the identification of Jesus as Lamb is far more important than the repurposing of the seder. The Synoptics, on the other hand, do not have John's theological focus on demonstrating that Jesus is the embodiment of the traditional symbols; to them, it is far more important to show how Jesus redirects the symbols to point to the reign of God rather than the Mosaic covenant. So for them it makes theological sense to stress that Communion is based on the seder, and they narrate accordingly. (It may also be significant that Paul, in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, the oldest textual account of the institution of the Eucharist, makes no mention of it being a seder.) The point is that the identification of the Supper as seder or not is driven by theological, not historical, concerns. What all four (and Paul) agree on is the central point that Jesus died and was raised at Passover. That is enough.

So for a 21st century metallurgist to say that an Egyptian offshoot calendar can account for how Jesus could have had a seder on Wednesday rather than Thursday, so that all four gospels can be historically accurate, is, to my mind, simply missing the point. It is treating the gospels' carefully crafted theological symbolism with all the nuanced understanding of a baseball bat. I'd rather let the symbols be symbols, and the difference be a difference, and thank God for the richness of meaning in our communion with our Lord.

And don't even get me started on the conundrums hidden in the assumption that the date of Jesus' passion can be assigned confidently to 33 CE!

Monday in the Fifth Week of Lent

As Jesus walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him." (John 9:1-3)

These verses are the beginning of an extended story about the healing of the man born blind, which gradually unfolds from the physical into a story about spiritual blindness and insight. At the very outset, however, there is this little exchange between Jesus and the disciples; it is almost a throwaway line in its context, but it poses an important question all by itself.

The disciples want to know what sin caused the man to be born blind. In their general way of thinking, illness and disability are the result of sin, they are the concrete forms taken by God's punishment for wrongdoing. But this man has been blind from birth. He could not have sinned in the womb, could he? So why then was he punished with blindness? Perhaps he is being punished for his parents' sins. Moses certainly talked about punishment for sin being visited on children and children's children. But then the prophet Ezekiel had changed that, specifically hearing God say that from then on "the life of the parent as well as the life of the child is mine: it is only the person who sins that shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4). So, strictly speaking, it would go against the teachings of the prophets to assume this man was born blind because his parents had sinned. So the disciples are faced with a quandary: If this man's blindness is a punishment for sin, then what sin could possibly have warranted this punishment?

They can't figure this conundrum out. So they ask their teacher, "Rabbi, who sinned? Who's to blame for this man's blindness?"

Jesus' answer to them turns the whole query on its head. Instead of satisfying their curiosity about who to blame, Jesus tells them they are asking the wrong question in the first place. This man's blindness isn't the result of wrongdoing, but instead it is a preparation for glory. They want to know what thing in the past has caused this situation; Jesus tells them that what they should be looking for is what future God will bring from it. Instead of asking "What bad caused this?", Jesus makes the question "What good will God bring out of it?"

How often when we are confronted with disease and disaster are our first questions "What caused this?" and "Who is to blame?" It is as if we expect to find some emotional comfort from being able to assign responsibility, or we think we can control something and keep it from happening again if we can puzzle out the cause. And often that is true: knowing a certain drug causes birth defects, for instance, means we can know not to prescribe that drug, and further suffering can be prevented. But sometimes I think the urge to assign responsibility and figure out blame can become a red herring: we can spend so much energy trying to figure out why a bad thing happened that we become virtually blind to the good things that could and should be done to heal and cure the situation. Too often, I think, we can be like the disciples, asking "Who sinned?", when what God really wants for us is to be asking "What good will God bring forth from this?"

I think it can be a form of spiritual discipline to train our minds to ask the question "What good will God do here?" whenever we are faced with a situation of pain or grief or loss or disaster. Along with the necessary, practical questions about causes and effects, we can ask spiritual questions about purpose, about the end to be served, about the compassion and love and healing that can be revealed even in the worst of situations. And, asking that question, we can also ask "How can we be co-creators with God, to do God's work of revealing love and compassion even here?"

What insight into transforming loss into love will you be open to today?

Thursday in the Fourth Week of Lent

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. (Romans 8:22-23)

Living in the first-century Hellenistic world, Paul had no inkling of the Darwinian theory of evolution, nor of our contemporary scientific view that the universe began in a hot big bang and has been evolving into more complex and interesting forms ever since. But Paul did have something much of the Hellenistic world lacked, something that makes his thought closer to our own: a sense of the future, a sense that the universe is going somewhere, a sense that the universe is bringing forth something new and not just an eternal return of the same cycle of ages and epochs. Some historians suggest that one of the reasons Christianity caught on in the ancient world (along with its practice of radical hospitality) was that it gave people a hope for the future in place of an expectation of unending repetition. Paul says the creation is "groaning in labor pains," and that image of birth, even though it involves struggle and pain, that image of birth implies hope for something new in the world.

And Paul clearly ties that something new to the work of the Spirit. The Spirit, the immanent and active empowering and unifying power of God, is, Paul asserts, involved in the world now in a new way, and  that new way has transformative potential for the whole universe. "We ourselves," Paul says, we followers of Jesus, "have the first fruits of the Spirit" — that is, we have in ourselves the beginnings of transformation in a new relational way of living that can change everything. Because of Jesus, because of the embodiment of divine Word and Wisdom in the human life of Jesus, because of Jesus’ faithful living-out of God’s purposes for him, because of Jesus’ death and resurrection, a new way has been opened up for the Spirit to enter into the very constitution of human life, a new way has been created for human spirit and Holy Spirit to synergize in enacting divine ideals of justice and peace and compassion and love in the very concrete and down-to-earth activities of human life. The Spirit empowers us to share with God the very same kind of relationship that Jesus has with God, so that, like Jesus, we can become agents and instruments of God’s love in the world.

This is not yet a fully accomplished transformation: we have just the “first fruits,” we are still “groaning” inwardly as we await the full new birth. But something new is already happening in us, and we can bring that newness to bear in the work of helping the universe itself in its labor of new birth. Relationships of justice and peace and compassion and love begun among us by the Spirit can and must be extended and enlarged, by the Spirit’s empowerment, to embrace all sorts and conditions of people and places and creatures and environments and ecosystems and even the most fundamental processes by which we exist in the world. We, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, are called to be midwives of the universe in labor to give birth to the New Creation.

That’s all very grand and cosmic — but it’s also very personal. We participate in the New Creation with every moment of our personal experience. When you speak to someone, that is a creative act. When you choose how to respond to someone’s emotions, with compassion or caring or anger or indifference or rejection or patience, that is a creative act. When you open your eyes and look at the scene in front of you, and your brain assembles thousands of nerve impulses into a visual image, and your preconscious mind connects the image to memories of other images and provides an identity and a context for what you’re seeing, and your emotional infrastructure provides feelings and responses and likes and dislikes and flights and fights and attractions and affections for what you’re seeing, and the whole thing comes to your consciousness as a world to be part of — that is a creative act. And the Spirit also enters into that creative act, lifting our perspectives beyond our own immediate horizons, and empowering us to respond with capacities for love beyond what we thought we were capable of. We midwife the New Creation in every moment, and out of those moments we, with the Spirit, build the transformation of personality, and community, and society, and ecology, and everything.

What new bit of the future, what first fruits of the New Creation will you birth today?

Tuesday in the Fourth Week of Lent

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. (Romans 7:15, 19)


In these two verses, Paul captures the very heart of the Christian idea of sin. In its most genuine meaning, sin is more that just breaking the rules, more than just transgressing God's commandments, more than doing things we know we're not "supposed" to do even though we  think they're fun. In its most genuine meaning, sin is the experience of not being able to do the good things we really do want to do. Sin is a kind of fracture within ourselves, an alienation from our own best selves, the inescapable sense that no matter how hard we try we just can't seem to act with the good motives and characteristics and outcomes we truly desire. Sin is not about some high-up, far-off, distant vengeful god watching to catch us when we trip over some arcane rule and punish us for every minor infraction. Sin is about our own bafflement that even our best intentions, even our wisest aspirations, even our most generous impulses, so often go awry, so often fail to live up to the love we mean them to be.


And that means, in turn, that repentance and forgiveness of sin is about more than just God letting us off the hook for the rules we've broken, more than just God deciding not to punish us even though we "deserve" it. The word "forgive" is built on the word "give": forgiveness of sin is an act of giving, a generosity to make up for the failings and inadequacies of our good intentions that miss their mark. God's forgiveness is a gift of wisdom to help us understand our own actions, a gift strength that is greater than our own to do the good we want. The repentance we practice in Lent is much more than beating ourselves up for the bad things we've done, but instead is a discipline of opening ourselves up and preparing to receive the gift of God's forgiveness, the strength and wisdom and love that makes life new.


How will you understand what you do -- and do what you truly want -- today?

Monday in the Fourth Week of Lent

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?” Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. (John 6:8-11)


Two thoughts:


First thought: The boy had five loaves of bread, about the size of a modern pita, not the size of a loaf of Wonder Bread, and there were five thousand people there. Offering his five loaves to Jesus to share with the people was a silly thing to do. There was no way it would be enough, no way it would be anywhere near enough. A more sophisticated, more rational, more grown-up person would have known better than to have made the offer. But this naive child doesn't think the matter through; he gives what he has to give, even though it's nowhere near enough; and Jesus, also not limited by conventional rationality, takes it, and blesses it, and makes it enough.


Second thought: The boy had five barley loaves. Barley bread was poor people's bread. It was what you baked when you couldn't get wheat. It was ordinary -- it was less than ordinary. A more sophisticated, more rational, more grown-up person would have known better than to have offered barley bread to someone as important as Jesus, someone who had the public recognition and growing reputation that Jesus had. It's embarrassing. But this naive child doesn't know enough to be embarrassed by the poverty of his gift; he gives what he has to give, even though it's not good enough; and Jesus takes it, and blesses it, and makes it good enough.


Lent is a time for repentance, a time to be aware that we are not all we could be, a time to be mindful of the faults and failings and frailties that hinder and undercut our better aspirations. But we cultivate that mindfulness in Lent not to feel bad about ourselves or beat our breasts for our inadequacy: we cultivate that mindfulness in Lent so that we can open up our inadequacies to the possibility of blessing. Like five barley loaves, too little and too poor, we bring ourselves to Jesus; and Jesus takes us, and blesses us, and makes us more than we could be on our own, makes us enough to do the work of love.


What barley loaves will you offer Jesus for the sake of love today?

Sunday in the Fourth Week of Lent

The Pharisees came and began to argue with Jesus, asking him for a sign from heaven, to test him. And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” (Mark 8:11-12)

Why do we ask for signs? For guidance. For reassurance. As markers that we’re on the right path. Signs can come in many forms. Sometimes they are as obvious as voices from heaven. Sometimes they are subtler: a thought, an intuition, a synchronicity, a word from a friend at just the right moment. Sometimes when I  am trying to make a particularly important decision I look for the sign: after all the rational analysis and weighing of pros and cons and careful balancing of factors I wait for the intuitive “click,” or the significant coincidence, or the gut feeling that one option is just right — the suprarational sign of guidance for that moment.

But the Pharisees who come to Jesus are looking for a sign for a different reason. They seek a sign “to test him.” They want proof — irrefutable, incontestable, unquestionable proof — that Jesus is acting on behalf of God. They want something that will make them believe that Jesus is doing what God wants done in the things he does and the precepts he teaches and his (to them) radical notion that devotion to the reign of God made manifest in love of God and love of neighbor is more important than devotion to Torah. They want a sign to make them believe.

There’s just one problem: signs don’t work that way. Signs can’t force belief, but instead function within an already existing system of significant relationship. That’s true not only of religious signs, but of all kinds of signs. These words you’re reading, for instance: they are, on one level, nothing but glowing pixels, nothing but a series of shapes and squiggles against a background field. The shapes and squiggles on their own can’t communicate anything to you. But you are reading them and understanding them (I presume) because you and I share a relationship as speakers of English. It is the existing system of word-meanings, and the metaphorical power of meanings to connect with and point to deeper and wider and more suggestive meanings, and the presumption of trust that I am trying to say something and you are trying to understand it, that make all these shapes and squiggles come together to signify, to point to, a reality that is bigger than they are on their own. These word-signs can’t make you understand anything; but because you begin with a basic belief that they say something, they may have the power to point you to a new understanding that wasn’t in you before.

It is the same with religious signs. Miracles, healings, voices from heaven, intuitions, visions, feelings of transcendence, multiplications of loaves and fishes, rising from the dead — they can’t compel belief in anyone. They function as signs, they point to special meanings, because they function within an already existing system of relationships. The sign cannot prove the relationship, but the relationship is revealed in the sign. If you hold back from the relationship, if you’re not willing to attempt the relationship even provisionally, even experimentally — then you’ll never understand the sign. Jesus says no sign will be given to the Pharisees, not because he refuses to give it, but because they refuse to try to believe him, even to experiment with believing him, and so they refuse to receive it.

Christians believe that our primary relationship, the relationship in which all other relationships are comprehended and sustained, is our relationship with God, “in whom we live and move and have our being.” That fundamental relationship is what gives the potential of significance to everything else we say and do and feel and experience. In a sense, therefore, our lives are surrounded by signs, the very texture of every momentary experience is filled with factors that point beyond themselves to the love of God. That can’t be proven to someone who chooses not to experiment with experiencing life that way; these aren’t signs by which we test what we are willing to believe. But these are signs that reveal the reality of relationship in God that is always already there.

One of the purposes of the disciplines of Lent is to sharpen our ability to read the signs of everyday experience. Prayer, fasting, giving, reading and meditating on God’s holy Word — all of these build up our awareness of our foundational relationship with God, the ultimate context in which even the most ordinary things become signs that point beyond themselves to extraordinary love. That can be Lent’s gift of wonder and joy.

What signs will you seek today?

Sunday in the Third Week of Lent

Jesus said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” (Mark 5:19)


Almost every story of miraculous healing in Mark's gospel ends with Jesus sternly warning the healed person not to tell anyone what has happened. When the healing involves an exorcism, Jesus commands the unclean spirits not to say anything about him, because they recognize who he is on the spiritual plane. But not this story. This story of the healing of the Gerasene demoniac in the fifth chapter of Mark ends with this unusual note of Jesus telling the healed man to go home, to go to his friends, and to tell them all about how much the Lord has done for him, and the mercy he has received. 


Many commentators on Mark say that this feature of Jesus telling people and spirits not to talk about him -- formally called "the Messianic secret" -- has to do with Mark the evangelist trying to tell his own community something important about their faith. Commentators theorize that Mark's community looked to Jesus as a wonderworker, a figure of power who could in turn save them by granting them power. Mark, however, understood Jesus' obedience to God's will, even to the point of crucifixion, as being the center of his saving work; and he wanted to turn his community's attention less toward deeds of power and more toward the work of obedience in their own lives. So he wrote his story of Jesus in such a way as to show Jesus caring less about power than about discipleship, so that his congregation, too, would care about their discipleship. That's why Mark's Jesus doesn't want people who've experienced his power to talk about his power.


Except for the Gerasene man who had been possessed by a "Legion" of demons. He is directed to go tell all his friends. Why?


Perhaps it is because this miracle of Jesus is less about power than it is about gentleness. Mark goes out of his way to say how strong the man with the legion is: the demons give him supernatural strength, so that no one can subdue him; his neighbors try to restrain him but he gets away; they try to chain him but he bursts the chains; the demons give him so much power that it has no place to go, but the man sits in the tombs and howls and bruises himself with stones. But when Jesus meets him, he doesn't try to overpower him or subdue him or restrain him. Jesus meets him with mercy, with assurance, with gentleness. When the neighbors come running up, they find the man sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, calm, gentle, intent, aware. (Jesus even shows gentleness and mercy with the legion of demons: when they state their fear that Jesus will torment them, he gives them permission to leave the man of their own accord, not to be driven out, and to go instead into a herd of pigs; unfortunately for the demons (and for the pigs) their addiction to abusive strength overpowers the pigs and turns them self-destructive, too; they rush down the steep bank in a frenzy and drown themselves in the lake.) Jesus meets power with gentleness, and his mercy draws forth an answering mercy, and the man is healed.


How often do we attempt to meet strength with strength? How often are we tempted to oppose power with power of our own? Could we instead learn from Jesus that strength will spend itself, and that we can respond with the gentleness that endures? That is a lesson that Mark could endorse for his congregation, and that needed no secret to redirect it. That is an invitation to us all to know -- and to tell -- the mercy God has shown us.

Friday in the Second Week of Lent

Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look around and take note! Search its squares and see if you can find one person who acts justly and seeks truth— so that I may pardon Jerusalem. (Jeremiah 5:1)


The prophet Jeremiah hears God calling him, begging him, to run through the streets of the city looking for one person, just one person, who is just and truthful, so that God can pardon the entire city and save it from the destruction that is to come. It is a picture of a God who wants desperately to save the people, who seeks in the people even the smallest opening of justice and truth through which to enter their hearts and their actions and transform them.


So often we picture God as strict and vengeful -- sometimes downright mean! -- sitting up in heaven and watching our every action, waiting to see if we infringe the commandments, implacably punishing for the merest of sins. So often opponents of Christianity picture Christians as joyless, fun-hating control freaks who use the threat of divine punishment to enforce rules and regulations that stifle freedom and creativity. Somehow we get in our minds the picture of God as eager to punish, and ourselves as fearful of that punishment.


But how different is Jeremiah's picture here! It's as if this God is looking for the barest excuse to avert punishment, the merest pretext for pardon. One just and truthful person could rescue the entire population! Even more importantly, the thing that deserves punishment here is not just "breaking the rules," not just an infringement of a juridical code. It is lack of justice, lack of right relationships, failure to be truthful, dishonesty, illusion, hypocrisy. God doesn't look for obedience to rules so much as integrity of heart. And the destruction that lurks is not so much punishment for infraction as it is self-destruction, disintegration from within of the person and the people who will not seek right relationship and who refuse to acknowledge reality. God sends Jeremiah to look for one instance of right relationship and true compassion, so that through that opening God can enter to inspire and transform the entire people. That is how eager God is to save.


What openings of justice and truth can we give God to enter our lives and transform us this day?

Wednesday in the Second Week of Lent

One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:5-6)

On the face of it, this seems like an absurd question from Jesus -- "Do you want to be made well?" Of course he does! He's been ill for 38 years, and he is sitting at the edge of a pool in the streets of Jerusalem that has a reputation for curative powers in its water. Why else would he be there, than wanting to be made well? Why would Jesus even ask the question?

Because what we think we want what we say we want and what we really want aren't always the same thing. There is a silly scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian which, for all its silliness, makes a point: a man who has been ill and has been a beggar for years is healed; but once he's not ill anymore, neither can he beg anymore; and in the aftermath he resents his healing because now he's going to have to work. Somewhat more seriously, there is that famous (or infamous) prayer of St Augustine in his youth: "Lord, make me chaste -- but not yet." Both reveal a gap between the wellness and healing and integrity they say they want, and the less healthful, less salutory and salvific, aspects of what they really want.

Do we want to be made well? Wholeness and integrity and commitment to mutual well-being don't just happen. Inspired by God, assisted by God's grace, these are things we must yet work out in our own selves -- and the work can get hard. It can be so easy to let our weaknesses, our failures, our shortcomings become excuses for not working for wholeness and integrity and unity of intention and action in our lives, so that we find it more attractive to stay ill than to be made well. But Jesus continues to ask "Do you want to be made well?", and he continues to offer the healing grace that opens us up to a process of growing more whole, more actualized, more loving.

Lent is a good time to ask yourself "Do I want to be made well?", and to be honest about the answer.

Tuesday in the Second Week of Lent

"Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?" (Jeremiah 2:5)

"... they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator." (Romans 1:25)

These lines from Jeremiah and from Romans come from very different historical periods, speak of very different social situations, and address themselves to very different audiences. But they both point to one psychospiritual truth: We become like what we worship. Our English word "worship" is actually a contraction of the older word "worth-ship"; it points to what we experience as valuable, what is truly important to us, that toward which we would orient our actions and our emotions. The act of worship is an expression of what we value, and at the same time is a dynamic experience of that value. The act of worship takes what we value and raises it up to a level where we can be conscious and intentional about it, so that we can in turn replicate its core value in our own acts and works and lives. In that way we become like what we worship.

What Jeremiah and Paul warn about is what happens when we worship that which is not worthy of worship. When we "go after worthless things," when we "exchange truth for a lie," then we become like those things. We spend our time and energy chasing after possessions or power or prestige that, in the end, cannot satisfy our real longings. We build personas and social masks that dissemble our true selves, and end up living a lie. We lose touch with the core of creativity which our Creator shares with us, and become something less than the full selves our Lover wants us to be.

The Lenten discipline of repentance is about turning away from worthless things and lies, recognizing how our going after them diminishes us, and turning again to the true worship that helps us become like the One who creates us. Prayer expresses the core value of Love -- God's love for us, our love for God, our godly love for each other -- and in expressing it gives us also a living experience of Love. As we worship Love, we grow more loving ourselves. We become like what we worship.

How have you turned from what is worthless and worshiped Love today?

Monday in the Second Week of Lent

Meanwhile the disciples were urging Jesus, "Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about." So the disciples said to one another, "Surely no one has brought him something to eat?" Jesus said to them, "My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work." (John 4:31-34)


The Gospel of John is full of little invitations (and many big invitations, too) to see things with "binocular vision" -- that is, to perceive very ordinary, everyday things in their material presence and also simultaneously in their spiritual relationships. In these verses -- almost a throwaway exchange between Jesus and his disciples in the middle of the extended story of the Samaritan woman at the well -- the material/spiritual nexus is around the offer of food. Jesus has been traveling; he hasn't eaten for some time; he is tired from his journey; and while Jesus rests by the well the disciples go into town to buy food. That's all established in the narrative at the beginning of the chapter. But when the disciples return in verse 27, after Jesus has been talking with the woman about well water and running water and water of life -- another "binocular" conversation -- Jesus, instead of taking the food right away, speaks to them of the nourishment that comes from doing the work God has sent him to do. Jesus is here inviting the disciples to see their food with binocular vision: to see it not only as body-fuel, but also as an access of energy to do God's creative work in their material environment; to perceive the flavor not only as an aesthetic experience of taste, but also as an occasion for gratitude; to enjoy the companionship (literally, "bread-togetherness") of the meal not only as a social exchange, but also as a moment of communion in right relationship with each other and with God. Jesus encourages the disciples to perceive their material food as embedded in a whole web of relationships that carries deep spiritual meaning, and so to be nourished in both body and spirit.


One of the purposes of the Lenten discipline of fasting and abstaining from certain foods is to help us be more mindful of what and how we do eat. Perhaps that discipline can also help us see our food with binocular vision, and be nourished in doing God's work in our lives.

Friday in the First Week of Lent

Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)


When I think of someone approaching to ask for mercy, what I usually picture is that person bent down, with head bowed, approaching tentatively, in a classic "humble suppliant" posture. Asking for mercy, for compassion, for forgiveness, is hard, it requires of us that we admit that we're wrong -- something a lot of us don't like to do -- and it requires of us that we admit we have no control over whether the other will forgive or not -- something a lot of us like even less. Admitting our own weakness and the other's strength is a dicey thing for a lot of us; and it's something we feel, perhaps, we can best accomplish if we pose the part, adopting a humble tentativeness. And the pose is all the more genuine when we feel an actual fear that the other may not forgive, may not answer our approach with mercy -- and there's nothing we can do about that.


But the Letter to the Hebrews says we should approach God's throne of grace with boldness. Not with heads bowed and backs bent, not like abject suppliants, but with boldness. In the verses preceding, the author has pointed out that Jesus, our high priest in the rite of forgiveness, has been tempted in every way as we are, so he knows how hard it is to be human, and he therefore feels with us as we feel the need for mercy and grace. We do not need to beg from Christ something Christ is unwilling to give; therefore, when we approach his throne of grace, we do not need to come as fearful, tentative suppliants; we come as sisters and brothers. We can be unafraid to approach, because the mercy we seek is already evident in the invitation to come. We can approach with boldness.


Self-examination and repentance -- really looking at our own weaknesses and failures -- is one of the traditional spiritual disciplines of Lent. Psychologically, it's easy to expect that such an uncompromising look at our darker sides could make us cringe a little, bow our heads, draw into ourselves to make sure no one else sees that weakness. But the counsel of Hebrews is to stand up straight, to admit the truth without fear, to be bold in accepting who and what we really are, good and bad -- because in that acceptance is also revealed the acceptance of the one who has gone through what we go through, and who offers grace to help in time of need. The grace to transcend our failures and take them up into new possibilities for greater good can only come to those who are bold enough to ask with confidence.


This Lent, be bold.

Thursday in the First Week of Lent

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. (John 3:16)

This is it: the Gospel in one sentence, the Summary Statement, the one that people quote via chapter and verse reference on license plates and tee shirts and signs held up on camera at football games. Everything you need to know about the Christian message is here.

Which of course means that there is far more going on here than first meets the eye. The sentence seems direct and self-evident enough. But there are words here that have depths and nuances and extended clouds of meanings that defy too-easy definition: love, gave, believe, perish, eternal, life.  Or, for that matter, God and Son. Each of these words points to relationships and relationships of relationships that can link up in different ways.

For instance, many people interpret this verse to mean that God "gave" his Son Jesus to die for us, to be the substitutionary atonement for our sins, to pay the price that we ourselves are too weak or too sinful to pay, so that God's wrath could be appeased; and that by "believing" that this substitution has been made, Christians are now freed from the death-sentence of sin so that we will not "perish" but have "eternal life" in heaven.

Others interpret this verse to mean that God "gave" his Son to live for us, to be the incarnation of the divine Wisdom and Word, to demonstrate in his own body and activity what a human life lived with divine love looks like. We in our turn "believe" in that divinely lived human life, not simply by accepting assertions about it as true even if we can't prove them, which is what we often mean by the word "believe," but by doing our best to live that way ourselves, by "believing in" the example of Jesus' life to the degree that we let its core values become our core values too. Living our lives with Christly core values puts us in touch with "eternal" realities in the heart of God, God's own love and generosity and creativity that are always and everywhere at work, through all the changes of time and space and temporal process, always expressed in ways appropriate to just that moment and just that experience. To live in touch with eternal divine activity means that we become self-transcending: in each and every moment of our experience there is something that transcends the moment, something not simply limited to the moment, something that enters into the world around us and God around everything and carries on the divinely inspired love and creativity of the moment. That self-transcendence saves us from "perishing," as the moments of our lives enter more and more into God. "Eternal life" in this sense is not just something for heaven after we die, but a quality of God-presence we enjoy and share in thick of this life.

And the root of it all is love: "God so loved the world that he gave his Son." Love is that which transcends the perishing of the moment and opens the way to living in eternal divine reality. The Gospel in one sentence comes down, I think, even to one word, noun, verb, and imperative all at once: Love.

Wednesday in the First Week of Lent

"For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. As it is said, 'Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.'" (Hebrews 3:14-15)

I'm struck by the phrase "partners of Christ." I think sometimes Christians regard Jesus as being superhuman, as having powers and abilities far beyond our own, as perfect before God in a way we could never be. Jesus plays a unique role in God's work of salvation, to be sure. But I think that regarding Jesus as superhuman in the long run does a disservice to the Good News. It puts Christ on a pedestal, as it were, so that our notion of him becomes so high and mighty that we can see no real connection between him and us. At the same time, it encourages us to regard ourselves as completely passive, as sinful and unable to do any good, as mere recipients of the good that Jesus does on our behalf before God -- and again we can see no real connection between him and us. But creating a living connection between him and us is the reason Christ became incarnate: bridging the gap between human and divine is the reason Jesus lives. So thinking of Jesus as exclusive Savior and ourselves as passive recipients of salvation ends up actually undercutting the purpose of Jesus' life and ministry and death and resurrection.

But the picture is very different if we think of ourselves as "partners of Christ." By the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we actually and actively take part in the work of Christ, we are empowered and enabled to do as Jesus does and love as Jesus loves and live as Jesus lives. Provided that we do not harden our hearts, provided that we open ourselves to the deep and uncompromising love Jesus reveals, then by participating in that love we also become workers of divine works.

How will you be a partner of Christ in what you do today?

Monday in the First Week of Lent

"Do not say to yourself, 'My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.' But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth." (Deuteronomy 8:17-18)

This passage for today intrigues me because it doesn't speak just about wealth, stuff, money, possessions -- but it speaks of the power to get wealth. It is not just about the material objects, but about the activity that produces the material objects. The things we count as valuable don't just have their value in a vacuum: they have value because we assign meaning to them, or we put effort into them, or we recognize that they are useful for meeting needs and sustaining life. A dollar bill is just a slip of paper; but it is invested with a powerful instrumental symbolism for conducting transactions in our economic system, so we count it as wealth -- or a little bit of wealth, at least. We can get so caught up in the attaining, trading, keeping, and increasing of our objects of wealth that we forget these objects have value in the first place because of a psychosociospiritual act that creates their value. And that spiritual act is rooted in God: it is God the Creator who creates us as creative beings, who in our turn can create meaning and value in the things of our material culture. Creating value is something God does first, and then God does in us, so that we can do it with things. Deuteronomy warns us that we forget that at our peril.  A Lenten discipline of simplicity and self-denial can help us refocus our attention less on the things themselves and more on the spiritual act of creativity, grounded in God, that is the source of value.

First Saturday in Lent

"Philip found Nathanael and said to him, 'We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.' Nathanael said to him, 'Can anything good come out of Nazareth?' Philip said to him, 'Come and see.'" (John 1:45-46)


When Nathanael questioned Philip's religious belief and commitment, Philip did not argue or explain or attempt to persuade him. He just invited him to come and try for himself the experience that meant something to Philip. Too much time and energy is spent these days, I think, arguing and explaining and persuading about Christianity, when what matters is the quality of the experience. Churches and creeds and ceremonies are intended to help us to love God and to love our neighbors -- that's it. Because our notion of "love" is often superficial, and because we are often overly selective about who we will consider a "neighbor," and because we can adopt some very silly notions about God, it is often the role of churches and creeds and ceremonies to call us out of ourselves, to set goals before us that are greater than those we'd choose for ourselves -- and that can often be less than comfortable. So the Christian experience can be demanding, and sometimes that comes off to people as being authoritarian or guilt-inducing or controlling, especially to people who do not "come and see," who do not enter into the experience but only observe it from the outside. And sometimes churches and creeds and ceremonies forget their own central purpose of love, and become actually controlling and repressive, and then they need to be reformed. But things like the fasting and self-denial and discipline of Lent, which can look so negative from the outside, are at root only about learning to love, clearing away the distractions so that we can love God and love our neighbors more genuinely. And that is something best understood by experience, not by arguing or explaining or persuading. That's why the great invitation of Lent is to "come and see."

First Friday in Lent

Andrew son of John was a disciple of John the Baptist. One day Andrew was standing near John when Jesus walked by, and John said "There is the Lamb of God." Andrew and another disciple went after Jesus; and when Jesus saw them he turned and said "What are you looking for?" (John 1:35-38). That is the question, isn't it? What are we looking for? What do we want? What ambitions drive us, what fears do we want to avoid, what imaginations shape us, what aspirations lift us higher than we thought we were capable of? What are we looking for? The purpose of fasting and self-denial in Lent is to set aside some of the things with which we habitually satisfy our desires, so that the desires themselves can come more clearly into view, so that we know more consciously what it is that we want. Fasting and self-denial is a way to hear Jesus ask us "What are you looking for?" If we take that question seriously, we may be better able to tell if what we are looking for in life is also what God is looking for in us.

First Thursday of Lent

Titus 1:15, "To the pure all things are pure, but to the corrupt and unbelieving nothing is pure." Through Lenten discipline we work to purify our own hearts, to let go of addictions and illusions and compulsions, to see ourselves as we are and as we are in God. The more we can see ourselves in truth, the more we can see the things around us in truth, the more we see things as they are and not just as our desires color them. Then we see all things as pure -- neither temptations nor threats nor fears -- but facts to be engaged as we do the work God gives us to do.

Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 57:16, "I will not continually accuse, nor will I always be angry; for then the spirits would grow faint before me, even the souls that I have made." Remember that the purpose of Lent is not to feel bad about ourselves or our sins, but to come closer to the God who does not want our spirits to grow faint.

Home. Again.

A journey isn't really over until you're home again. And if you've taken a real journey, "home" isn't the same as when you left it, because you aren't the same as when you left. The final step of a true journey is not just getting home but being home, the step of integrating what you've experienced with where you live day-by-day.

So what's the final step of this journey?

Before I left, I said that I wanted to make this trip about being at prayer. I failed. That's not to say I didn't pray -- I said plenty of prayers, aloud when asked, silently when not. But I'd written before we left about prayer being a disposition of the soul, an opening of the spirit to a sacramental, "binocular" vision of outward and visible things radiant with inward and spiritual lights. I'd wanted to dispose myself to such prayer as much as I could on this trip. I couldn't do it -- or at least I couldn't do it as consistently as I had hoped. Sometimes the shovelful of dirt was just a shovelful of dirt, not a finite echo of the infinite creating Word; sometimes the good meal was just body fuel, not a gift of God; sometimes the work team was just a bunch of gabby, crabby people, not a gracefully functioning limb of the Body of Christ. There were sacramental moments, to be sure: listening to Oakley and Olman conversing in Spanish as we drove to Agua Caliente, not understanding a word they said (well, maybe one or two words) but hearing so very clearly the friendship and affection and genuine joy that passed between them; watching a large rock crack under my iron bar and having the sudden feeling that I could see the whole crystal geometry of the stone revealed in a single moment; even the feeling of some genuine hunger, some real appetite, after having been sick, and recognizing it as a touch of healing grace. The trip was not without its epiphanies. But they were fewer than I'd hoped for, my vision was more occluded than I'd imagined, my soul was not so well disposed as I'd intended.

I suppose that should be no surprise. Sacramental awareness is something saints strive for years to awaken. Like Zen mindfulness or yoga suppleness, sacramental awareness is the fruit of long and regular practice; it can't just be turned on and off like a switch. And even with years of practice, as I've had in the church, sacramental awareness must still be cultivated, awakened, invited, as a matter of intention -- it's not just automatic, like a reflex, but is something to which the mind and soul and spirit must be intentionally attuned. And that attunement happens more readily -- not automatically, but more readily -- when you take time for the practices that cultivate it.

For me, one of those practices is taking time alone with my thoughts. I am very introverted, as psychologists measure these things, and I know that if I don't get a certain amount of alone-time each day I begin to get twitchy. Alone-time is not easy to find on a worksite or a bus or a double-occupancy hotel room (even when the other occupant is one's own best beloved), and when the wee hours of morning and nighttime are blanked out by exhaustion. Without quiet time just to attend to the texture of my experience, that experience tends to get away from me, I tend to become too submerged in the rapid flux of feeling, and flashes of impatience, interest, irritation, humor, annoyance, wonder, fatigue, tend to drive me more than me integrating them. I'm sure there were times on this trip when the other mission trippers felt I was being antisocial or distant or just plain ornery, when really all I was was doing was trying to get a little quiet in my soul. And for me, getting submerged in the flux of feeling is a sure way to lose sight of the sacramental dimension of things: the inward and spiritual grace can only shine through if the mind and will and appetites are not too consumed by and attached to the outward and visible things. I am reminded (again, always again) that part of my prayer practice must always be getting time alone just to rise up a bit from the flux of experience and attend to it as it flows by.

And when I can, as it were, sit on the riverbank like Hesse's Siddhartha and observe my experience flow by, something else reveals itself as well. It's that even though the surface features of experience may be jangling or discordant or mismatched -- even painful -- down deeper there is a steadiness, a coordination, a harmony, that comprehends the elements and guides them toward some wholeness. Gerard Manley Hopkins writes in "God's Grandeur" -- that sacramental sonnet par excellence -- "there is the dearest freshness deep down things"; Alfred North Whitehead speaks of religion originating in the experience of "a character of permanent rightness inherent in the nature of things"; even Hamlet says "There is a power that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will." I believe that to be true, and I believe that to be God. Process theology teaches that every moment of reality begins and ends with God: God initiates each moment with an aim, a hope, a call, for what that moment can become; and when each moment becomes all it can and experiences itself in full, that fullness passes back into God as an element in God's ongoing and everlasting experience of the world. From this experience of the world-as-it-is, God shapes new aims and hopes and calls for the next generation of moments for the world-as-it-can-be. In this way the moments of the world and the outpouring of God are in a kind of constant dialogue, a perpetual exchange that constitutes Creation. It's all very cosmological; but it's very personal as well. The moments of my experience, disjointed as I might find them, form a thread -- a tiny thread perhaps, but a constitutive thread nonetheless -- in God's experience of the world. God is constantly looking at the world through my eyes, feeling the world through my feelings -- and everybody and everything else's too -- and pulling it all together into one whole harmonious reality. God makes me a partner in Creation, whether I know it or not; but I can be a much better partner when I know it, when I pay attention to the quality of the thoughts and feelings and experiences that flow through me, when I am aware of the ongoing dialogue of aims and fulfillments God is having with me, and when I intentionally do what I can to hold up my part of the conversation. Some of my most vivid prayer experiences have come under the image, not of me facing God and speaking, but of me beside God, both of us looking at the outward and visible things of the world, people and oceans and rocks and churches and mountains, and God guiding me to see and respond to the inward and spiritual grace. We sometimes describe Christian service as being God's hands and feet for acting in the world; we might equally well describe Christian prayer as being God's eyes and ears for feeling the world. That is also what it means to be God's witnesses. We can either grieve or delight the Holy Spirit of God with the quality of experience we pass on; we can be inspired and empowered by the experience of God within, shaping the thread of our moments toward compassion and love and beauty and peace and right relationship. That is, for me, the essence of prayer.

And that was the focus I could not consistently maintain on this trip. I suppose it shouldn't surprise me. As T.S. Eliot said, "human kind cannot bear very much reality." And I can hardly be surprised that depth of experience doesn't come when I don't do the things that allow my experience to go deep. But God works in us for compassion and justice and peace, even when we're not aware of it; and we are carried on the prayers of others, even when our own prayers aren't as consistent as we'd like them to be. God was at work on this trip, in breaking rock to build a church, in bearing witness to the contrasts between beauty and poverty and strength and weakness, in doing manual labor that the local folks could have done faster and better but couldn't do because they had jobs and lives and survival of their own to attend to, in celebrating Eucharist in a half-finished church. God was there, in my hands and eyes and heart, and in everyone else's too -- and now that we're home, God is inviting me to learn from this trip how to be more attentive to God's calling, rejoicing, always-already-there presence. God is, again, calling me to pray.

Wrapping Up

Today was our last day of work on this trip, and possibly our last day of work at this site. Oakley and Ted and Concepción and Olman have already discussed a new site we may well work on next year (these things can be somewhat fluid), in a barrio called San Pedrito up the hill from Copan. The youth will probably do some work at Santa Cruz when they come in June; but for the adult mission trippers, this was our last day on this site.

As workdays go it was much like the previous workdays: some people mixing cement, some flinging it on the walls as stucco, some breaking rocks on the back hillside. Can you guess which group I went with? We got a lot done, all the way around. The interior of the church is not entirely stuccoed, and it still has to be finished and polished before it can be painted; but when I looked inside at the midday break today, I was amazed how little of the wall was still bare cinderblock.

Meanwhile, out back, we picked and poked and chipped and levered and made big rocks into littler rocks and basically reshaped the hillside. The local congregation members will eventually build a retaining wall out back, to make sure the reshaped hillside stays in place; but from the perspective of one week's work, it's pretty surprising how much we dug out of that back section. Someone showed me a picture they'd taken on the first day; comparing that to how it looked this afternoon was quite a contrast! I'll post before and after pictures when I get a more reliable internet connection.

But we did more than work today — we also ate. Breaking bread together is an important human and religious ritual, and we engaged in it in several different ways. At fruit break in mid-morning there was fresh pineapple, a special treat of this climate. For lunch we had chilaquiles, shredded stewed chicken served over tortilla chips, one of my top favorite local dishes. And in the middle of the afternoon we broke from work entirely to break bread in a different way, by celebrating the Holy Eucharist together in the church.

We've had a concluding Eucharist with the people of Santa Cruz every time we've come here; but the previous two years it was held on a nearby porch. It really meant something that today the service was held in the church. Yes, the floor is still bare cement, not tiled. Yes, the walls are rough stucco, not yet complete. Yes, the dais for the altar is filled with bags of cement and boxes of tile, not with the altar, and, yes the altar is a little wooden table on the floor and the pews are boards on cinderblocks and plastic lawn chairs. It didn't matter: this was their church, their own house of worship, and they were happy to have it and happy to share it with guests. The Christian mariachi band that is part of this congregation, led by Cruz, the congregation's lay leader, has new outfits, black with great gold trim, and they were in their element this afternoon. I read the Gospel in English, and was invited to give the final blessing, which of course I can only do in English (I vow to learn some liturgical Spanish by this time next year!), and I did my best to follow the rest in Spanish. It's a little easier when you already know what it all means, from long familiarity with the liturgy in English. But knowing what it means is not the same as knowing how to pronounce or speak it, nor does it confer the ability to keep up with a roomful of native speakers. But the liturgy is the liturgy, however it's spoken, and the actions of gathering, blessing, breaking, and sharing are the signs of communion in Christ no matter what language us being used. It's another kind of experience of being carried along on the prayers of others.

And so we finished our work for this trip. We got back to the hotel, divvied out the bags of San Rafael coffee — some for personal use, some for Trinity — that each of us must carry, had dinner together as one big group — our only such dinner this trip — and retired to make our preparations for the morrow. We must leave very early in the morning, so bags need to be packed and coffee stowed and sleeping done fairly early tonight. And that is what I must attend to now.

Down Day

I have very little to report today, mostly because I spent the day resting and recuperating and making sure my stomach would behave itself. I read, I wrote, I kept myself hydrated, I prayed for the team at the worksite. I ate lunch and was pleased that I had a genuine appetite for it. And I looked forward to getting back to work tomorrow.

When the team got back, they filled me in on the day. It was sunnier and hotter onsite today, which meant everyone was more tired and dragging than at the ends of previous workdays. There was breaking of rocks (again) and mixing of cement (again). Lee was Superwoman of the Pickaxe they tell me; this makes me proud.

But the big news is that they started cementing the walls. By all accounts this is a very special talent that requires flinging wet cement at the cinderblock wall at just the right angle with just the right force to make it stick. This this is apparently far harder than it sounds. I already have an admiration for those who can do it, without even having yet seen it in action. I'm sure my admiration will only increase tomorrow. I'll probably be outside, breaking rocks. With Lee.

Another neat report the team brought me is that we've bought a high-efficiency wood stove for the church's neighbor. The house next door to the church belongs to a member of the congregation, and for three years they've been letting us use their water, their electricity, their outhouse, and, at times, their porch (which in the local houses is an integral part of the living space) for the construction work. We wanted to give something back, and what we gave was a new wood-burning cookstove that burns 80% more efficiently — and even burns well enough to use corncobs as fuel, since wood can get scarce and expensive here — and will make cooking a much easier task for the household. I'm told that the woman was so happy to receive the stove that she fired it up right away (she knows someone who has the same kind of stove, so she understood how to use it) and made fresh tortillas for the whole team. It sounds like a good gift to me.

So that's a brief report for a down day. Well, down for me; the team was up, and did good work and good ministry. And so we'll do again tomorrow.