The River Is Here!

1. Down the mountain the river flows
And it brings refreshing wherever it goes
Through the valleys and over the fields
The river is rushing and the river is here.

Chorus:

The river of God sets our feet a-dancing
The river of God fills our hearts with cheer
The river of God fills our mouths with laughter
And we rejoice for the river is here!

2. The river of God is teeming with life
And all who touch it can be revived
And those who linger on this river’s shore
Will come back thirsting for more of the Lord.

3. Up to the mountain we have to go
To find the presence of the Lord
Along the banks of the river we run
We dance with laughter giving praise to the Son!

Chorus

4. Down the mountain the river flows
And it brings refreshing wherever it goes
Through the valleys and over the fields
The river is rushing and the river is here.

Chorus

Tag

And we rejoice for the river is here!

love after love

From my fall 2002 management class, this poem - by the 1992 Nobel Laureate in Literature - says it all!

Love After Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was yourself.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes;
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

~~Derek Walcott

Song of Church Unity

Here's a favorite from long ago:

1. All living creatures with the same bread you sustain
        And to your Spirit's well nobody comes in vain.
   Give that we understand the language of your call,
        Uphold us by your hand; write your name on us all!



2. To You, Word in the flesh, we shall allegiance give:
        Because you suffered death, we will forever live.
   Show all who long for life the way to where you dwell,
        Oh Son, whose sacrifice broke down the gates of hell!



3. O Spirit, pioneer, keeper of humankind,
        We are a scattered rear, rebelliously behind.
   Abide with us and slay the powers that disunite,
        Oh Truth and Life and Way, Oh everlasting Light!

C. Michael De Vries

Christmas in the Desert 2004

Friday, Christmas Eve, as I flew into Tucson and into another southwestern sunset, the desert displayed to me its breathtakingly barren, apparently bleak magnificence for what felt like the thousandth time. Despite the Nativity-tides I've spent in the snowy climates of New England and the Intermountain West and notwithstanding representations of snowy if not actually snowbound states of nature generally being considered most illustrative of Christmas, for me the fullness of the reality of God's incarnation as a human alive in human history becomes most poignant among the palms, sands, rocks, cliffs, cacti, aloes and agaves (Partial list of local plants: barrel cacti, chollas, desert broom, Joshua trees, mesquite, ocotillo, palo verde, prickly pear cactus, saguaro...), the reality of God-among-us all the time no matter what, remains most self-evident in the fire of a desert sunset, in the budding dawn and incipient day the desert sunrise promises. [why? I’ll leave my readers thinking and guessing, though my essential theology gives you a major clue] And somehow remembering Jesus' birth in the Arizona desert is very different from recalling Jesus' Birth in the coastal desert of San Diego, where I've been spent more than a few wintertimes.

At Patti and Floyd's place way outside the Tucson city limits, our dinner for the big yearly gala was amazing! The buffet included chips and dips, a plethora of flavorsome and savory Mexican menu items (tacos, tostadas, flautas—or were they taquitos?—tamales, red chile, green chile, guacamole, refritos, arroz…as well as several sweet flavorfuls: giant cookies, chocolate layer cake, vanilla ice cream and homemade flan). Now Christmas Day evening has arrived; sundown's here again and we're ready to enjoy traditional turkey while the 7 (seven!) Husky, almost-Husky and Husky-look-alikes (Blues, Copper Queen, Denali, Easter Angel, Nanook, Nikki and Spirit of 2004) lounge around enjoying and protecting their gift toys and treats. Meanwhile, the evening news just announced it snowed today in Corpus Christi, TX, for the first time in over a century!

A most blessed Feast of the Nativity to all my readers and to God's entire beloved creation, reborn and redeemed in Christ Jesus!

All Who Love and Serve Your City

1. All who love and serve your city,
all who bear its daily stress,
all who cry for peace and justice,
all who curse and all who bless,

2. In your day of loss and sorrow,
in your day of helpless strife,
honor, peace, and love retreating,
seek the Lord, who is your life.

3. In your day of wrath and plenty,
wasted work and wasted play,
call to mind the word of Jesus,
"I must work while it is day."

4. For all days are days of judgment,
and the Lord is waiting still,
drawing near a world that spurns him,
offering peace from Calvary's hill.

5. Risen Lord! shall yet the city
be the city of despair?
Come today, our Judge, our Glory;
be its name, "The Lord is there!"


* Words: Erik Routley
* © 1969 by Stainer & Bell Ltd. (admin. by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188).
* All rights reserved.

* Music: Birabus by Peter Cutts
* ©' 1969 by Stainer & Bell Ltd. (admin. by Hope Publishing Co., Carol Stream, IL 60188).
* All rights reserved.

* Other tunes: Charlestown, Dominion-Chalmers, Marching, Omni die
* Meter: 87 87

so worth the long wait!

RED SOX NATION!!!!!

official site

ekistic units

anthropos – 1
room – 2
house – 5
housegroup – 40
small neighborhood - 250
neighborhood – 1,500
small polis – 10,000
polis – 75,000
small metropolis – 500,000
metropolis – 4,000,000
small megalopolis – 25,000,000
megalopolis – 150,000,000
small eperopolis – 1,000 million [1,000,000,000]
eperopolis – 7,500 million [7,500,000,000]
ecumenopolis – 50,000 million [50,000,000,000]

California!!!!!

From The Road to Daybreak by Henri J. M. Nouwen:

[California] is a land to which people go to be free from tradition, constraints, and an oppressive history. But the price for this freedom is high: individualism, competition, rootlessness, and frequently loneliness and a sense of being lost. –Page 198

still-current lists from the past

Here's one I made for some class somewhere (at UMassBoston, probably):

City, cities:

• Cash economy—as opposed to barter economy
• Class, ethnic, economic, linguistic and cultural diversity
• Communications!
• Concentrated housing—esp vertical concentration
• Education on all levels, particularly university and technical
• Home of the middleclass!
• Home of the middleperson—the broker
• Major arts events; major sports events
• Medical centers
• Multiculturalism; transculturalism
• Habitual, deliberate, intentional and purposeful [how many more adjectives would you like to describe this activity?] contact with entities outside of itself

---

Ghetto of any kind and every type (my apologies for writing this down without a source):

"Nothing much goes in or out of it that wasn't there the day before."

---

Another list, from the same time, same place:

Body Image, where:

• body,
• mind,
• psyche,
• spirit and
• culture

converge. Its impact reverberates in all areas of life:

• mental,
• physical,
• emotional and
• spiritual.

From AT&T (1970s?) ads

• At least talk to each other!


• Divisions evolve from the barriers we construct


• Evol/Love (in addition to the print ad, I saw this one in a video at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago)


• Meet somebody halfway


• Out of a sense of self, a sense of the other


• Reach out for someone


• Understanding begins with communication


• There's something you can do about it...
  ...meet somebody halfway...
  ...to communicate is the beginning of understanding!

...did someone say "speech is the language of covenant?" I read that somewhere and I completely agree! For my theology site I'm working on some ideas about prayer.

Culture Bound

Culture, identity, home, belonging, etc.

As those cultural anthropologists insist, each of us inhabits a range of cultures; more than a single culture encumbers each of us. We see, hear and feel; we remember, dream and hope through the senses our cultures have given to us and we've inadvertently received; and to some extent, our cultural identities constrain and limit us.

Wednesday evening, August 18, 2004, I watched The Reunion, on our local ABC affiliate, KGTV Channel 10. The subject struck me extremely: present-day interviews and retrospective reminiscences of the experience of some Shaker Heights, Ohio residents who'd been part of an intentional racial integration project beginning with their kindergarten class and continuing through high school in the Shaker Heights public schools. Those were the identical years I spent experiencing blockbusting, white flight and redlining in Boston; those same years some of the neighborhoods around me blazed with anger and rage at the same time Watts, Detroit, Atlanta and too, too many U.S. inner cities became furious conflagrations and locales of supercharged and globally publicized citizen/police interactions.

But that's almost a digression, since lately I've been thinking I need to go home, and although there's no way I can return (or would return) to Chestnut Place or any of those other physical dwellings, no way could I return to First Mariner's Church (especially since it disbanded a while ago), I can return to my *home* culture, the culture that's my Muttersprach, my cultura franca – to invent an idiom – and I need occasionally to do so! Besides, in the same way you never step into the same river more than once, because both of you and the river have changed, the home you return to cannot be the home you left, so even if I had a physical option to go back there, I still wouldn't be able to relive something that's no longer there, a location that even in terms of my heart's identity I've rationalized, streamlined and simplified.

Font of blessing...

Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing!

Come, Thou Fount of every blessing,
Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of Thy redeeming love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Here by Thy great help I’ve come;
And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed His precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.

Words: Ro­bert Ro­bin­son, 1758; appeared in his A Collection of Hymns Used by the Church of Christ in Angel Alley, Bishopgate, 1759.

Music: "Nettleton," Wyeth’s Repository of Sacred Music, Part Second, by John Wy­eth, 1813

bibliography

Here's the start of my bibliography for

Justice, Freedom and Redemption:

Divine Image and Creation's Glory

bibliography

1. BEKER, JOHAN CHRISTIAAN, Paul's Apocalyptic Gospel: The Coming triumph of God. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982.

2. BRUEGGEMANN, WALTER, The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. First Edition, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977.

3. BRUEGGEMANN, WALTER, The Land: Place As Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. Second Edition, Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2002.

4. DE WAAL, ESTHER, The Celtic Vision: Prayers and Blessings from the Outer Hebrides. Petersham, Massachusetts: St. Bede’s Publications, 1988.

5. FOX, MATTHEW, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher | Penguin Putnam, Inc., 1983.

6. FOX, MATTHEW, Wrestling with the Prophets: Essays on Creation Spirituality and Everyday Life. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher | Penguin Group (USA) Inc, 1995.

7. MOLTMANN, JÜRGEN, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.

8. O’DONOHUE, JOHN, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom. New York: HarperCollins | Perennial, 1998.

9. O’DONOHUE, JOHN, Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on our Yearning to Belong. New York: HarperCollins | Perennial, 2000.

10. SANTMIRE, H. PAUL, How does the liturgy relate to the cosmos and care for the earth? In What are the ethical implications of worship? Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1996.

11. SANTMIRE, H. PAUL, Nature Reborn: The Ecological and Cosmic Promise of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000.

12. SANTMIRE, H. PAUL, The Travail of Nature: The Ambiguous Ecological Promise of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991.

13. STENDAHL, KRISTER, Paul among Jews and Gentiles. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1976.

4 July 2004

Sunday, July 04, 2004, Independence Day!!!!!

"Summer afternoon, summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language."
~~Henry James to Edith Wharton