LR / The Holiness of God in Others Leaves No Room for Violence
Robert W Guffey jr
October 30, 2018

In no universe is anti-Semitism or racism or all the other -isms that categorize human beings for the purposes of exclusion and persecution acceptable. When God created the world, the Bible does not say, “On the fifth day, God created this race” and “On the sixth day, God created” another. The Bible says God created humankind – period. God created human beings in the image of God – that is, with the capacity to be known and loved by God and to know and love God and others. Though the Bible has been used selectively, and perniciously, to support and promote anti-Semitism, racism and the oppression of women, the LGBT community and others, the whole witness of scripture is one of liberation and inclusion. The way Jesus treated women broke barriers and convention. The makeup of the church the Spirit put together throughout the timeline of the Book of Acts included persons of all kinds. An informed reading of the names of the persons Paul cites in his letters as partners in the faith is astounding. It is clear that God decided to create a beautiful world of complexity among humanity and that human beings have taken far too long to read and follow the mind of God when it comes to loving one another – and to living by the truth that “God so loved the (whole) world” and that Christ died for all of us, not just some.

Likewise, there is no place and no reading of scripture to justify or endorse violence against other persons because of who God created them to be. To endorse violence against others, whether it be in the context of families or communities or the institutions we depend on in order to build a safe and just world is not only unacceptable but, as persons of faith, it is a betrayal of the crucified God we claim to follow and Who dwells in us as the body of Christ called to make God’s love visible.

As disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ, let us commit ourselves each day to pray that God will use us as salt and light in a world that has far too many dark places, places that reside in every human heart, to some measure. Let us be those who are willing to speak the words of mercy and justice, and to act in ways that give witness to the world of our allegiance to the love of God which is our surest defense and greatest consolation.

Thanking God for you and your witness,
bg


©️2018 Robert W Guffey jr bg@lightreading.org

LR / It Is Who You Are and What You Do
Robert W Guffey jr
October 23, 2018 

“A single person is missing for you and the whole world is empty.”

The line is by Joan Didion and is found in her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, her memoir of loss written after the sudden death of her husband and the terminal illness of her adult daughter. I have held on to that line since first reading it ten years ago and have it underlined for remembrance. I thought of it again this past week as we ministered to friends and family in Christ who are grieving, and as we, too, grieve for the loss of cherished friends and family. Those whom we have loved are missing and our world is emptier. We miss them. We miss their voices. We miss the tangible signs of loving that come through deep, rich relationships. 

At the same time, in the paradox of being human, in the midst of absence, the church of the Lord Jesus is called to gather as presence. We are called to be God’s love made visible to the world. We have been called to be the body of Christ, to show the love of Christ. We have the privilege of bearing the heart of Christ, broken for love of another. We are to be the arms of Christ, embracing those who hurt and the feet of Christ walking alongside sharing the pathways of grief. You know what I mean.

For those who grieve -- and that will be all of us sooner or later -- the love shared by family and friends who become like family will be met with gratitude. Your capacity to love helps create room for sadness to be voiced and for grief to move forward in doing what God intended. Grief is God’s way of healing human hearts. It is real, sometimes remaining quietly in our souls and sometimes coming upon us in God-when-will-it-stop tears. Surrounded by the love of God and the love of the children of God, however slowly at first, God is at work turning our darkness into light, redeeming our current circumstance through the power of God’s love.

Keep going,
bg

(c) 2018 Robert W Guffey jr bg@lightreading.org 

LR / "The Flood Never Gets the Last Word"
(-bguffey.09.22.2018)
 

The things we witness in a lifetime
the experiences we never imagine
could become ours for we are 
too smart too smug too gifted
why it’s outside our experience 
so it must not be possible
... it will never happen to us

But it will in this world where 
there are none good but God
and God is often silent and we 
sit and wait for our salvation

Oh yes it will

For we have misunderstood the way
this life can be and have listened to
preachers of easy religion and prophets 
of consumerism and others who ignore 
the truth that “the sun rises on the evil 
and the good and the rain falls on the just 
and the unjust” no matter your tribe

This life visited by the power of mystery and
randomness and random sin and the cumulative 
power of our decisions and those of others 
some of whom we will never meet and some who
have taken this life and its purposes far too casually
and the great unstoppable currents of nature too

And so ...

We submit to the flood or we band together 
in humility and trust and stand against the dark 
and shine the light of love and go and do our 
best to be the lens of God’s fierce healing and 
God’s mind and heart and hands and feet and 
pocketbook at work in unifying love, God doing God’s 
redemption thing for us and with us and in us and 
through us and even if we fail it will only be for 
a season for our end game is secure for nothing 
can overcome the love of God and God’s best 
and final intentions for God’s children, and 
that is all of us. 

The floods of this life never get the last word. 

The last word belongs to the Word and the Word is Light 
and the darkness can never overcome this Light, 
this Love of God, creative pronouncement that holds 
us close in the heart of God and drenches us with grace
and hope and, finally, peace, not like the world gives 
but the transcendent peace of God. 

Keep going. Fear not.

Hallelujah.

-bguffey (09.22.2018)


(-2 Corinthians 4:1, 12)

(c) Robert W. Guffey, Jr. 2018
bg@lightreading.org 

LR / Questions and the Love of God
Robert W Guffey jr
August 1, 2018 

Preparing for this summer’s sermons on the “Questions God Asks” has affirmed for me again the truth of how deeply God cares for human beings. Though we sometimes may struggle to accept God’s love or have cause to question the reality of God’s love, the scripture is clear. God is love and God loves human beings, without exception or modifier. In his book, Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose: Vocation and the Ethics of Ambition, Brian Mahon, my major professor at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, emphasized this truth by sharing part of an address Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave to ministerial students at Candler:  

“You know what your problem is? I will tell you what it is. You just don’t have any idea how low God’s standards are. They are very low…very, very low, indeed. Remember, you cannot do anything to make God love you more, and you cannot do anything to make God love you less.”

By that I think Archbishop Tutu was emphasizing the grace of God. In seminary, they taught us the phrase “the grace of God” meant “God’s unmerited favor.” There is nothing you have to do to earn God’s love. There is nothing you can do to earn God’s love. God’s love, and the salvation it brings, is a gift. What do you do when someone gives you a gift? You accept it. When you have been loved imperfectly, or been abused, by those who raised you or who you have let come near, it’s sometimes hard to hear God’s message of love and acceptance. But it’s true and can change your life and how you experience the world to the ultimate. Anyone who tries to tell you differently is preaching another gospel.

Grace and peace,
BG

(c) Robert W Guffey Jr 2018 / 
bg@lightreading.org 

LR / Jesus and the Way Things Are
Robert W Guffey Jr
August 26, 2017

Tomorrow morning (August 27) in worship, we will conclude our summer journey of sermons from the Gospel of Luke. The text for the day comes from Luke 24:44-53 -- Jesus' parting words for and blessing upon his disciples. Luke concludes by writing, " While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshipped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God." I've always thought it something of a paradox, these words from our dear brother Luke. Jesus is leaving them, yet they are filled with joy. You would think they would be weeping, complaining, or mourning anew. After all, they had just gotten him back. That the power of Rome and the finality of the grave could not keep him down was stunning enough to try to comprehend. Now, instead of marching into the centers of earthly power as the One whom death cannot conquer, leading inspired multitudes to overthrow those who carried out the injustice of his death sentence, Jesus blesses the disciples, calls them to holy vocation -- "that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations ... You are witnesses of these things" -- then disappears from their sight. "My ways are not your ways," says the Lord, and the disciples are back in school again, at the feet of the Master. 

LR / Love
Robert W Guffey Jr
August 16, 2017 

Hate may fill the hole in a wounded soul, but just for a while. It may fire a sense of purpose and drive. It may be the admission ticket to a sense of belonging, but hate of other human beings can never coexist for long in the same space with the love, grace, mercy and justice that are the character of God. Eventually, one will overtake the other. 

If hate wins, it will consume you until nothing left of you as God intended will be recognizable. That's what hate does. It destroys the soul even as it fools you into thinking you are right and superior to others. Pray it's the love, grace, mercy and justice of God to which you surrender. It will save your soul. It will give you a life worth living in the grand communion of the children of God "from whom every family on earth takes its name." It will convert you to the politics of Jesus, which are neither left nor right. 

LR / 10 Ways to Make a Difference (Small Things Matter)
bguffey
May 27, 2017 

The Bible says, “Perfect love casts out fear,” but there seems to be plenty of which to be afraid these days. 

Taking appropriate steps to be safe is common sense. Letting fear rule our behavior to the point of seeing all strangers as potential sources of peril, or barricading ourselves, physically, emotionally, and spiritually from the world makes no sense for people of faith. So much more is expected of us. Time to trust the perfect, suffering, reconciling love of God. It is a love which says "No" to the forces that diminish life and says "Yes" to love, even at great cost. It is a love that will change us until we find we cannot help but be burdened by the pain of others and find ourselves asking God to use us to make a difference with all that we are, say, and do. 

“Perfect love casts out fear.”

Few of us will be called on to make ultimate sacrifices, but some members of our family -- the human family -- are called to make those sacrifices in love every day. For most of us living in the first world, we will be called on to make the difference for love in smaller, quieter ways. Still, small things matter. It's the tiny drip, drip, drip of water that wears away stone, and the slow, insistent growth of tender blades of grass that, over time, turns concrete into rubble. 

You and I can make a difference every day, even in ways as small and humble as these:

1. We can awaken to thank God for the day and ask God to cultivate in us a spirit of gratitude and grace through which to meet the day.

2. We can ask the Spirit to move through us during the day to help us see other human beings through the eyes of Jesus.

3. We can take the initiative to greet and to speak thoughtfully to strangers, especially service workers who help us throughout the day.

4. We can offer the gospel in thoughtful words and deeds, and pray God will let us see the opportunities to do this given to us throughout our day. We can include in words and deeds how we spend our money and how we give our time.

5. We can be the ones to follow The Letter of James’ teachings on the power of the tongue and be sure what we say reflects the heart of Jesus growing in us. We can refuse to be held captive to those who use the power of the tongue to make us afraid, too.

6. We can take to lunch a friend, colleague, or family who you know has been neglected, bruised, or wounded by a church. God can use you to restore a relationship between the person or family to faith that reflects God's heart and makes a meaningful difference.

7. We can ask God to identify for us those people who we seem to have the hardest time accepting as God’s children and ask the Lord to show us what we have in common.

8. We can forgive those who we find ourselves in conflict with while, also, asking God to help us set appropriate boundaries. (Some people bother us. Some people would abuse us or others, if we let them. To those people, it is within God’s will for us to say, “No.”)

9. We can commit ourselves to be 24/7 disciples of the ways of Jesus, that we become faithful, joyful, hope-full “doers of the word and not listeners only.”

10. We can close the day thanking God for being God, for bringing us through and giving us faith and courage to be made a little more like Jesus, who died to set human beings free, every day.

LR / How Will You Be Quiet Today?
bguffey
May 22, 2017 

One of the benefits of being in Enterprise, MS, during our beloved Sue's last days and weeks, was BEING IN ENTERPRISE, where it was easier to be quiet, to think, pray, listen, and write than amid the demands of life in the city. I'm taking as one of Sue's final gifts a reminder to ask myself as days begin: "How will you be quiet today?" The scripture indicates it's in the quiet places (in heart and world) that the still, small, voice of God will most likely be heard.

LR / "The Friendliest Man in Town"
bguffey
May 18, 2017

(Hi, All. I shared this story with our church family today by email newsletter and want to share it with you, too. As we celebrate Sue's life and healing, we are remembering, also, the life partnership of Frank and Sue, too. I’m grateful for you. –bg)

The funeral for Angie and Patti’s mother, Sue, on Monday, in Mississippi, was a strong, loving tribute to their mother, and a time of gratitude to God for the gift from God she was. Sue let God’s love flow through her and made a difference in the lives of others. Her excellence and authenticity in caring, teaching, hospitality, creativity and grace will linger in all who knew her. Those who know those who knew her will be affected, too, for that’s the way life is. The good God does in us has the potential to touch others. That’s worth remembering and honoring in each of us, gifts to one another from God.

After the service, we spent the day with extended family remembering and re-telling favorite stories of Sue, and about Frank, Angie’s father, too. One story in particular reminded me and reinforced the truth that both of her parents, Sue and Frank, were formidable friends of Jesus on mission for God. 

From 1947-1949, soon after finishing high school, Frank enlisted and served in the US Army, where he was a corporal and company clerk in Korea. Frank once told us he had never been so cold in his life as he was on the day his plane landed in Korea and the plane’s door was opened. It was bitter. Frank, being Frank, though, more than made the best of the situation. Though he had grown up very poor in a small town in the Mississippi delta during the Great Depression, there was always something different about Frank. Once you met him, you never forgot him. He truly never met a stranger. He had a way of seeing something special in everyone. His energetic personality matched his bright red hair and young-Mickey-Rooney-as-Andy-Hardy looks. Frank was one-of-a-kind at developing rich friendships with everyone, and, especially, later, for over thirty years, with students, as a Baptist campus minister.

One day, not long after Frank was back home, the postman stopped by and knocked on the door. He had a letter addressed to: “The Friendliest Man in Town, Drew, Mississippi.” Everyone at the post office knew exactly for whom that letter was meant. It was meant for Frank Horton. Frank opened the letter and found it was from one of his army buddies who was writing to thank Frank for reaching out to him in friendship during their time of service. He wrote, also, that he had lost Frank’s home street address, but knew if he sent it to “The Friendliest Man in Town,” it would get to him. He was right.

Frank was friendly with the zeal and energy of someone who deeply loved God, knew God’s love, and wanted to let God’s love live through him. Frank was friendly, and had a spine of steel, too, as students, faculty, and churches in Baton Rouge saw when he was targeted during the civil rights era for including students of all races in his ministry at LSU. Frank was thoroughly convinced the friendship of Christ was for every single person, no matter who they might be or what other people thought of him or them. Frank was friendly and fierce as a channel of the blessing and grace we can know through God in Christ. Frank and Sue met in college and together they made two lifetimes of difference in lives that is continuing to be felt through generations of family, friends, and former students, literally, around the world. 

This Sunday, as we thank God for all that has been, and as we “seek to transform lives by worshiping God, building relationships, developing disciples and serving our neighbors” today, I’ll be thanking God for Frank and Sue for showing me the life-changing friendship of Christ and praying to continually be growing to become that kind of person for Christ, too. I hope you will do the same – thank God for the person or persons in your life who showed you the best of Christ. Pray that you will become that kind of person for others. That’s the way life is for people of faith, you know. Faith is shared through those who are witnesses of God and God’s love, and whose faith is a living witness passed on in love to others.

LR / Changing Plans
bguffey
May 9, 2017 

With our sweet, tough Sue defying the laws of biology and medical expectations, we are trusting God and changing plans. 

Please continue to remember Angie and Patti, as they provide nursing care to their mother as their husbands return to work for a while. 

As for Angie and me, we are living in three cities right now, Enterprise, MS, Conway, SC, and Norfolk, VA, all inhabited by beloved children of God (and one house that will sell eventually). I arrived in Conway after midnight last night/this morning and have spent today mowing three weeks worth of grass, and remembering that nature carries on and houses still need tending and repair, whether people live in them or not. 

LR / Of Upper Rooms and Church Signs
bguffey
May 3, 2017

Riding the back roads of Mississippi this week, I saw a sign in front of a baptist church with this question and proclamation: "Are you ready? Jesus is coming!" 

Actually, that is only partially true. 

Just as the disciples in the upper room discovered post-resurrection, Jesus is already here! In fear, they hid thinking they were all alone in the world, then Jesus appeared to them. In their fear and grief, they could not see He had been there all the time. 

LR / The Good Leader
bguffey
May 3, 2017 

The meta-message of the Revelation to John is the same message God has been trying to get into human heads and hearts since the beginning: "Do not be afraid. I am with you." Healthy worship and discipleship practices open access to the peace that passes all understanding and transcends the chaos and anxiety of the moment. These connect the now to that which is true in God's kingdom, yet not yet fully realized in our present experience. 

Good leaders never manipulate others through fear and anxiety. They name the joy or challenge of the current reality, then lead in ways that reduce anxiety and fear, even at the cost of their personal benefit, pleasure or, in the extreme case, their lives. That is the way of Jesus - the Christ-like leader. In the world and season in which we are living, these are the leaders we need now, more than ever.

(c) 2017 Robert W. Guffey, Jr. 

“A PRAYER FOR THOSE WHO GRIEVE 
AND THOSE WHO GRIEVE WITH THOSE WHO GRIEVE”
-bguffey

Sue's home, "September Song"

LR / About Grief and Being Human
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
4/28/2017

This week our families have gathered in Mississippi due to a significant change in the health of Angie and Patti's mother, Sue, who is nearing the close of a long and faithful life as a child of God, sister, wife, mother, teacher, grandmother and gracious friend. We are in place to be present to her and help in partnership with an excellent, compassionate hospice team. Your thoughts and prayers for Sue will be appreciated.

LR / PRAYERS TODAY FOR NYC
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
September 19, 2016

Our family loves New York. It is woven into our lives like another home. All at the same time, it is familiar and exotic, affirming and extreme, filled with friends and utter strangeness, highly sacred and utterly secular, the ultimate in art that makes the soul soar and poverty that makes the heart weep, full of people who will give their lives to save a stranger and people who are motivated by ruthlessness and greed. It is full of people who are brusque and expert complainers -- like every place we have lived -- but, like most places we have lived, if you will stick with most of them for a while, you will learn their stories and they will begin to allow your story to become a part of the tapestry of their lives. 

LR / Grieving for Home
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
September 10, 2016

[From my journal, about four months after 9/11/01, while we were living in Connecticut... Reading this now, I see: (1) it is not an easy read, and (2) the reflection holds true still in my life. There is plenty to grieve these days. What we need is to learn what grief is trying to teach us, IMO. You may want to see what you think and if, somewhere, it might apply for you, too. grateful always, bg ]

Reflecting on our national trauma of September 11, 2001, Richard Rohr, Roman Catholic priest, internationally known retreat leader, and spiritual guide, wrote these words in an article called, “Grieving as Sacred Space,” published in Sojourners magazine:

"Tragedy is the cauldron of transformation, the belly of Jonah’s whale. We are being chewed up and spit out on new shores…It seems that pain is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the… ego and… cultural certitudes. When it comes, most of us will flee to quick formulas to avoid that destabilization. Suffering is, I am sorry to say, the most efficient means of transformation, and God makes full use of it whenever God can…. We must teach people not to get rid of the pain until we have learned what it has to teach us…Much of our understandable anger is actually disguised and denied sadness. Life should not be this way, but it always has been for most of humanity. Now this absurdity, this paschal mystery, has reached the shores of North America. This is a teachable moment, par excellence."

In these post-9/11 days, many of us have found ourselves in the classroom of life at levels we would have avoided, if only we could have. We could have done without the sadness. We could have done without the grief. We could have done without the new patterns of behavior we now participate in at airports and public places. We cannot return to “normal,” but find ourselves, as a new friend has affirmed, in the presence of “the new normal.”

In that way, we are much like the children of Israel in Egypt and the children of Judah in Babylon. We have been displaced, and we are not certain we will find our way back to the familiar country again. Though we are at home, some of us are not as much “at home” at home as we used to be. We are not as sure and arrogant. We have lost what was. Though for many “what was” was not all that great, still it was what they knew, and familiarity has a comfort about it if only a strange comfort. 

I heard this sense of displacement and sadness in my own voice not long ago. Coming out of the Christmas holidays, which had been a splendid time with family, I found myself feeling like I could not catch up at home or at work. I heard myself remarking to col- leagues and friends that I felt “behind,” if only by a step. I found myself fatigued, though I had just spent ten days away. I heard others saying much the same. At first, I thought it must be allergies, or the darker days of what little winter we have had this year.

I thought that until the pastoral care-trained part of my mind reawakened, and I remembered the power of our experiences of 9/11 and the immediate months just after. I remembered the outpourings of energy, care, compassion and goodwill that so many in our community of faith and in our community shared. I remembered the deep hurt and rupture of life, and of the grief that follows such deep loss. I remembered other events of life closer to home, events of joys and sorrows, which brought challenges of their own. 

While I cannot speak for others, I know now that what I was feeling was the delayed shockwave of grief from all these powerful events finally overtaking me. I told myself I was “fine,” but I could not outrun my grief. I could not outrun it, but I found, paradoxically, instead that I could embrace it.

In embracing it, I am finding myself in Rohr’s “cauldron of transformation.” I am finding a new sweetness to life, a new sense of pleasure with family, and a renewed energy for ministry. 

I am finding God present in prayer, scripture, worship, and in my famly of faith, in focused, deliberate ways that encourage and heal. 

I am being reminded that the true home in which human beings are to be “at home” is not a place but in the compassion of God.

As a Christian person, I am seeing Christ’s cross, the instrument of his suffering and death, as something I must carry, too, through the experience of my suffering, and through accepting the invitation to bear with others their own — even though doing so may change the fundamental fabric of who I thought I was to be. 

How are you doing these days? How are you?

If you are in the “cauldron,” the “belly of the whale,” know that others have been there, and are there with you.

If you find you are near past grieving over our lost collective past – if that is possible – or closer to recovery from grief over other losses and wounds in your life, you can be as love’s presence incarnate for sisters and brothers who are feeling a bit “behind” these days. 

You can walk with us as members of the family of God, all, until we all find ourselves, once again, whether here or beyond time and space, back Home. 

-rwg

(Not so) Light Reading / "An Eye for an Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind"
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
July 17, 2016 

I don't have to know a shooter's motives to know shooting another person is wrong. In the case of wounding or killing an innocent person, no matter if they are black, white, or blue, there's no other word for it than evil. 

I don't have to know why someone would hurt, wound, or maim another person, whether as a perpetrator or as someone seeking revenge on a perpetrator, to know that practicing "an-eye-for-an-eye leaves the whole world blind."

I don't have to know much about the radical, unreasonable Jesus to know he resisted evil with every fiber of His being, but he never returned "evil for evil" (Rom. 12:17).

LR / GO SET A WATCHMAN-Revisited
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
June 18, 2016 

“She flattened the paper cup into the table, shattering their images. The sun stood at two o’clock, as it had stood yesterday and would stand tomorrow.

“Hell is eternal apartness. What had she done that she must spend the rest of her years reaching out with yearning for them, making secret trips to long ago, making no journey to the present? I am their blood and bones, I have dug in this ground, this is my home. But I am not their blood, the ground doesn’t care who digs it, I am a stranger at a cocktail party.”

 -Harper Lee, Go Set a Watchman (p. 225)

 I returned recently to my unfinished copy
of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman
to see if I could finish it without prejudice,
to complete the reading, page-by-page,
to cut another notch in my metaphorical
library card. 

I returned again, long after the reviews
had faded in my mind, and the anger
or delight of fans had ceased to hang
in the air.

I returned and saw not the best book
I had ever read, but one immersed in
what it means to be starting out and
going our own young way in the world,
thinking our own thoughts, and
wondering how those whom we have
loved so dearly could seem so... wrong
about the ways of the world. 

And who are we to say this proto-novel
is not fine in its own way, that it does not
speak of ideas still forming and spirit
growing, coalescing around deep truths
that when spoken will hush the neighbors'
speculations and cut the gossips scathing
tongues? And who are we to say these words,
these ideas are not what it means to grow up
in small places -- not the small places
of small towns, but the small places
of other people’s minds and other people’s
ideas of who we are and should be. 

“Go Set a Watchman,” indeed, for Babylon has
fallen and we live in Yeatsian (as in W.B.) times: 

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.” 

Go set a watchman, and -woman, to tell the
truth the watchman, and -woman, sees,
to sound the alarm and awaken the conscience,
to name reality in ways we each might hear,
accept, then be moved to action, breaking
down the hardened borders of our fear-bound
or greed-kept hearts. 

Watchman-Watchwoman, speak the truth
that the only place we have to grow up and
thrive in this world is this very world
we share, and if we do not find the way of life
together, we shall surely find our lives apart
more than we can bear. 

For that is the course our Creator set within us,
and it is the course of love, a love that extends
even to those who raised us, some of whom
we thought were so very... wrong, 

but many of whom we have discovered
were not so much wrong as resolute,
determined to give past their very own lives
so to see what God might wrought
with love in this old world. 

(-rwg)

©2016 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
www.lightreading.org 

Light Reading / 14 Tips for Visitors to the South and Things to Know About Southerners, Written After a Long Day on I-20 East From MS To SC
Robert W Guffey jr
June 4, 2016

1. When it comes to cars and houses, air-conditioning is never an option. It is an assumption.

2. In small towns, especially, the best fried chicken and fried okra, other than that our mothers (or grandmothers) made, will be found at a nearby, independent convenience store/gas station – or “filling” station, to be more precise.

3. The best fried catfish restaurants will have outstanding taxidermy exhibits, too.

4. Many of us firmly believe the only reason a sane, normal person might not like fried chicken, okra, or catfish is because they have never had it done “right.”

5. If you show up at a local café fifteen minutes before closing as posted on the sign on the front door, and ask if there is still time to pick up something quick “to go,” do not be surprised when the owner/chef says, “Come on in and sit down, Dear! We’ll be open another hour, at least!” (just for you)

6. The love of dark, cold drinks, of all varieties, developed from the desperation to escape sweltering summer days of 95 degrees with 100% humidity.

7. The tradition of great storytelling, lengthy conversation, deep laughter, and afternoon naps developed, also, because, for six months out of the year, it is just too dang hot to step off the porch, or to go outside at all.

8. The sight of a tea rose or the sweet fragrance of a gardenia blossom will remind many of us of our grandmothers (and great-grandmothers).

9. While there are people here who fit the stereotype of the polite Southerner who say nice things to your face while slipping the knife in your back – “Bless your heart” – the great, grand majority of Southerners are sincere, kind, and mean exactly what they say.

10. And while we are on stereotyping: while commentators and filmmakers may often see Southerners as religious bigots, ignoramuses, science-deniers, and geographically-challenged beauty queens, we are, in reality, people of every age and color, citizens, teachers, doctors, farmers, lawyers, plumbers, artists, musicians, shop owners, carpenters, engineers, software designers, aircraft builders, athletes – and more. Most of the Southerners I know are people of compassion and smarts, some of whom made long pilgrimages to get here from every continent on the face of the earth. (You don’t have to look far to see that the South has no corner on ignorant, foolish citizens and rude jerks.)

11. No matter how far from home we travel on vacation, or climb up the ladders of success that take us far from home, our ears still perk up when we catch the lilt of a Southern accent in a crowd on a New York City street, or bump into someone wearing an SEC t-shirt at the entrance to Hanauma Bay. We just can’t help but smile.

12. No, we are not all related, except as members of God’s family, but visitors best remember what your Mother told you about saying something “nice or nothing at all” about the people you meet while you are here, because we just might be (related) and we will stand up, politely but firmly, for our own.

13. After a while, we might decide you are one of our own, too.

14. Come on down.

-rwg

©2016 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
www.lightreading.org

LR / Growing Season
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
May 30, 2016

This photo (a real deal, not photoshopped or otherwise enhanced) is of blooms from a mature “French Lace” weigela shrub, one of two I ordered online and planted a few years ago. At the encouragement of some of the ladies of the garden club, whose motto is “never pay for what God has provided free,” I began taking cuttings from the two and now have rooted about twenty plants that have grown in size from less than a foot, for the youngest, to about 3’ tall. Eventually they should all grow to a height of 5-6’ and form a beautiful, butterfly-attracting hedge in our back yard. Years of shade in the back yard had meant the best I could grow was weeds, but the environment changed last year, when a builder cut down the pines in the empty lots behind us, with two immediate, unintended results. For two days after the trees came down, our backyard feeders became the gathering place for 50 or so shiny, yellowish-green pine warblers, convening to deliberate about what to do and where to go since their piney homes had been taken from them. We had never seen them, or noticed them until the change forced them from their treetop hideaways. To our benefit, the added sunlight allowed in by the loss of the trees is allowing for a transformation of what was a mostly dreary little plot that now is home to weigelas, hydrangeas with flowers of white, blue and pink, and lantana just beginning to bloom for summer. Hummingbirds buzz and chirp as they visit the weigela and lantana. Other birds visit the feeders and dance around the new bird bath — this one stamped with large fleur de lis as a reminder of our Louisiana heritage. They seem to be enjoying the upgrade, and know that what weeds remain are soon to receive their eviction notices.

Change can be good. Growth in lovely, peaceful space is the goal, within the backyard, and in the heart, too. This project will take the summer and next year’s growing season, too, but growing in goodness and beauty is always worth the being and doing. I do love it when new worlds are born and begin to come together so nicely. –rwg

(Note to fans of the MP Flying Circus: Had the Knights of Ni been given such a lovely shrubbery as the French Lace weigela, their moodiness and mockery would have melted away to be replaced by peace and joy. :)

©2016 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
www.lightreading.org

LR /Once Upon a Time
Robert W Guffey, Jr.
May 21, 2016

During our Shreveport days, I was privileged to get to know Michael Matuson, who was then Rabbi at B’nai Zion Congregation. On my first visit to Michael’s office, he gave me a book of rabbinic stories with the affirmation, “Here! These are stories no Baptist has likely ever heard.” Michael’s affirmation was an invitation into a world that has led to the shelf full of books of rabbinic teachings I have collected, read, and cherished since.

The book Michael gave me that day was Rabbinic Stories for Christian Ministers and Teachers, by Rabbi William Silverman, first published in 1958, by Abingdon Press, and later updated, in the 1990s, as The Sages Speak: Rabbinic Wisdom and Jewish Values. I’ve marked and bookmarked its wonderful pages many times. It holds insights into the faith of our sisters and brothers in Judaism. It holds stories that invite the reader to focus calmly and hear truths about God, the world, and ourselves.

One of my favorite stories to both read and tell lays plain the truth about us human beings. (The story is found in Jerome Mintz’ Legends of the Hasidim, as retold by Belden Lane, writing for the Christian Century.)  It goes like this:

“Once upon a time…” three pious Jews decided to travel to a distant city to spend the high holy days with a famous rabbi. They set out on their journey, without food or money, intending to walk the entire way.

Several days into the journey, weak from hunger and still a long way from their destination, they knew they had made a mistake and they must do something. They came up with a plan. They decided that one of them would disguise himself as a rabbi. That way, when they came to the next village, the people would offer them food, honored to have a rabbi visit their town. None of the three, being pious, wished to be the deceitful one, so they drew straws, and the unlucky one who drew the short straw had to don the clothing of a rabbi. Another dressed as his assistant.

When they drew near to the next village, they were greeted with excited cries of joy, “A rebbe is coming! A rebbe is coming!” Escorted with great ceremony to the local inn, the hungry threesome was treated to a sumptuous meal. 

When the meal was done, however, the innkeeper approached the “rabbi” and spoke with great sorrow. “Rebbe, you must pray for my son,” he said. “He is dying and the doctors have given up hope. But the Holy One, blessed be his name, may respond to your prayers.”

The counterfeit rabbi looked desperately to his friends for help. They motioned for him to go with the innkeeper to his son’s bedside. They had begun this hypocritical ruse, and now there was no choice but to keep on playing the game. The mock rabbi accompanied the distraught father to his son’s sick bed.

That night, the three travelers slept fitfully. They were eager to leave town before their deception was discovered. In the morning, the innkeeper, still hoping for a miracle and grateful for the prayer of this visiting “rabbi,” sent the party off with the loan of a carriage and a team of horses.

They left the village and traveled to the great city where they spent magnificent holy days under the spell of the famous rabbi. His teaching of the Torah carried their spirits to the very vault of heaven. But too soon, the holy days were at an end, and the three companions had to go back home through the same village to return the borrowed carriage and horses.

Terrified, the mock rabbi resumed his disguise; his heart was in his throat as they approached the village, especially when he saw the innkeeper running toward them, waving his arms furiously. But to the pretender’s delight and surprise, the innkeeper embraced him with joy, exclaiming, “Thank you, rebbe. Only one hour after you left our village, my son arose from his bed well and strong. The doctors are amazed, but my son lives, and I am grateful for your faithful prayer.”

The two companions looked with astonishment at their phony “rabbi” companion. What had happened? Had his prayer healed the boy? Was he truly a rabbi all along, without telling them? When they were alone, they turned on him with their questions. “What had he done at that boy’s death bed?” they demanded to know.

He replied that he had stood at the boy’s side in silence and, then, began to lift his thoughts to heaven: “Master of the universe, please; this father and son should not be punished just because they think I’m a rabbi. What am I? I am nothing! A pretender! If this child dies, his father will think a rabbi can do nothing. So, Master of the universe, not because of me, but because of this father and his faith, can it hurt that his son would be healed?”

Lane concludes his re-telling with this interpretation:

“The Hasidim tell this story because of its profound insight into all of us. We are all pretenders, hypocrites. None of us is so worthy as to merit God’s favor; our religion is a mask we hide behind. But God is gracious and redemptive in spite of our pretense.”

Which for me affirms the truth that, without God, we are nothing. Once we accept that truth, and let go of the false realities that take the place of God in our lives, then God in the power of the Spirit and the compassion of Christ can be made real, resident and joyful, even, deep down in the core of our beings. Grace makes this possible, and only grace

Grace, grace, grace – when it comes to God and human beings, it’s all about God’s grace. 

©2016 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
www.lightreading.org

LR / Prince of Peace
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
May 5, 2016 

Jesus’ call to “come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest” is a call to a life of boundaries set by the love and grace of God. In the swift stream of our times, the need for rest and peace are acute and in desperate need of the love and grace of God. Embracing the love and grace of God sets a still point within the soul. It creates and re-creates within us a new way of seeing what is going on in the world around us. It gives us the strength to see ourselves and to see others through the lens of what God is like.

The love and grace of God points to the cross and says, “This is what God is like; this is how much God loves and how God loves, and until you figure that out your life is going to be touched by fury and wilderness and turbulence and even a certain kind of certainty, perhaps, but not God’s kind of peace which is wholeness of body-mind-soul-personhood-in-community with God and others.”

The love and grace of God does not call on people to hate but to love.

The love and grace of God calls on people to do the sometimes very, very, very hard work of trying to understand one another, to listen to one another, to know that sometimes we are right and sometimes we are wrong, but more important is “the greatest of these is love.”

The love and grace of God does not shout epithets or call for violence against others. The love and grace of God does not believe “For God so loved ‘some’ of the world – mostly the same people I love and who look like me” but “For God so loved the world.”

The love and grace of God offers a way forward beyond the dysfunctions of our personalities and the selfishness, greed and narcissism of our culture – a culture whose ways lead to oppression, depression, addiction and isolation. The love and grace of God calls for humility, gentleness, kindness – the fruit of the Spirit -- and the transformation of instruments of war into the instruments of peace – and accepting the truth that some of the fiercest instruments of war are the words we say to one another and the thoughts we think about one another that diminish and damn the gift we are each one of us from God to one another, including the terrible words and thoughts we think about ourselves alone in the darkness.

The love and grace of God does not mean we are doormats to abuse, but it does mean we are, “as far as it depends on us,” to live in peace with others (and our selves). The love and grace of God are radical and inclusive and call on all people of good will to live ethically toward one another, to want the best for one another and not just be out to get all we can for ourselves.

The love and grace of God look like weakness to many in this world, but it is the only way to rest and peace and security that lasts. The love and grace of God, applied in this world, can cause you a lot of trouble for this world cries, “Peace, peace,” and promises that which is not peace. It pushes back, sometimes with deadly force, on the advance of God’s kingdom of grace and mercy and love, but once you have experienced a taste of that kingdom, nothing else will come close to satisfying your soul, and it is in your soul, deep down, that you know what you want is rest and lightness of being and peace that lasts forever and gives you life and makes you at home with yourself and others and God. It saves you from your worst intentions as well as from the powers of this world. It makes your heart sing. It satisfies your soul. It opens the doorway to heaven on earth and fills your life with the gladness of God.

Praying for peace, 
rwg

© 2016 Robert W Guffey Jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

LR / Grief Has No Rules: Some Sentences about Grief
Robert W Guffey Jr
April 20, 2016 

I wrote these sentences to share in closing at a funeral recently and was asked to pass them along. You've likely heard something like this but, if you are like me, reminders are helpful. Grace and peace, bg 

As you go from this place, please remember that grief has no rules, and that is okay. Everyone grieves in their own way and in their own time. You will read about cycles of grief and phases of grief, but, in practical reality, there are no rules. That is the truth. There are many different feelings that will pass through you, some more intense than others, but just because you have felt one way for a while, then feel a change that prompts you to think, “Oh good, I am done with that,” do not be surprised when, on her birthday, or yours, five years from now, you feel odd and unsettled. Just as you wonder what is going on with you, your soul will remind you – “Oh, yes. Hello, Grief.” Grief will be, as one of my pastor-friends wrote in the season after both our mothers had died, your “most unexpected companion.” 

Grief is real and a sign of love. Most of us do not grieve those we have not loved. Because that is true, perhaps we can see grief as a gift as it reminds us, sometimes gently, sometimes fiercely, of love. 

Grief, because it is a sign of love, can become a cause for gratitude for it prompts us to remember what was best about the person’s life and to thank God that her life continues in manifold ways in God and in those who loved her. 

Grief can become a way we honor those we have lost. Doing the hard work of grieving and not running from it is a way of saying the person mattered, the loss matters, and our desire to heal matters, too. 

Grief tells us we are human, but being human is who God created us to be – and only a little lower than the angels. 

It is okay to grieve as we celebrate. We say THANKS BE TO GOD for the one we have loved. We say THANKS BE TO GOD for the healing that has come to her. We say THANKS BE TO GOD for the gift from God she was, and is. 

We thank God for those we love and have lost.
We thank God for today.
We thank God for the life to come. 

In all things today, let us say:
Thanks be to God.

© 2016 Robert W Guffey Jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

LR / What Jesus Said (going to church)
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
February 23, 2016

Growing up, I heard a lot about the Great Commission Jesus gave his disciples to “go therefore into the world” to disciple, baptize, and teach others about God in Christ (Mt 28, Acts 1). I learned Jesus, also, gave his disciples the Great Commandment, to love God with all your being and “your neighbor as yourself” (Mt 22, Mk 12, Lk 10). Both are crucial to understanding the mission and ethic of Jesus and must be practiced, one with the other. The most visible way we do this, it seems to me, is in being the church.

It’s been my experience that most people who don’t go to church don’t go for one or more of several reasons. Some never did. Their parents didn’t. They don’t.

Some went, but had terrible experiences. They ran into judgment without grace, discipline without mercy, or angry, bitter people who seemed not at all familiar with anything resembling Good News.

Some who grew up in church quit going because the church they grew up in was more a social club or society for people who had the same likes and dislikes, preferences and prejudices. That kind of churchy upbringing does little to prepare a person for the challenges of life when life doesn’t go your way, or you are confronted by hurt, sorrow, grief, death, disappointment, and depression – the kinds of trials that every person honest about life is going to face. Tough times came and they had no rootedness in the depths of God. Church made no difference, so why bother.

Some people quit going because they just didn’t want to follow Someone who says things like, “Take up your cross and follow me” and “Love your enemies.” Jesus called his disciples to put down what they were doing – preoccupations with vocation, career advancement, marrying the “right” person, making the “right” kinds of friends, worrying about money – and to follow him. Following him meant (and means, still) following all the way to the cross. While I believe following Jesus is the only way to a life that is deep, joyful, real and true, it takes grace, mercy, love, patience, perseverance, and daily dedication to the ways of Jesus, which most of us find a very tall order, even for the most committed disciple.

Sometimes I think we may forget that God did not create human beings to go to church. God created human beings to “be” the church. God created human beings to love God, and to live in loving community with others. If we who say we follow Christ are to reach people for Christ, especially those for whom God and church are not important, we are going to have to do it through love. Specifically, we are going to have to love people as God loves them, truly, deeply, and sacrificially (see Jn 3:16). Our love of God and our love of God-for-others will change us. It will make a difference. It will make us want to be with God and to be with those whom God loves that we might grow more in love with God and others. It will make us want to gather as the church, then go out as the church, given to the world in ministry.

It’s living into the Great Commandment of love in action that opens the way to relationships among equals, that shows the love of God, and that is evidence that we, ourselves, are truly Jesus’ disciples. It is in those moments of love that the Great Commission does its work, too. In the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of God changes people. It is an amazing thing to see happen, but it does, and it is real and you can be part of it.

Grace and peace, 

rwg

© 2016 Robert W Guffey Jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

LR / Can You Hear the Words of Grace?
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
January 27, 2016 

Marion Aldridge, my friend and colleague, is a South Carolinian spending the winter on a preaching and pastoring assignment in New Hampshire. You could say Marion is an adventurer – New Hampshire in the winter time? Why not!

Marion’s adventures are of the theological and bringing-meaning-to-life variety, too, which he blogs about regularly at “Where the Pavement Ends” (www.marionaldridge.wordpress.com). Marion posted this quote by Richard Rohr recently: 

“Poor theology has led most people to view God as a sometimes benevolent Santa Claus or as an unforgiving tyrant who is going to burn us in hell for all eternity if we don’t love him. (Who would love, or even trust, a god like that?) Psychologically, humans tend to operate out of a worldview of fear and scarcity rather than trust and abundance. This stingy, calculating worldview makes both grace and mercy unimaginable and difficult to experience.”

[Me, again.] Theology is formed in us by word and experience. Most of our earliest beliefs about God were shaped by the ways those who raised us spoke about and acted about God – or didn’t.

From his practice as a pastoral therapist, my dad would point out that the power words and actions that shape us when we are small and powerless often come in the form of “be-not be” messages.

Parents and grownups send the messages: 

         Be perfect.  

         Be pleasing.

         Be strong.

         Be careful.

         Try hard.

         Hurry up.

Childhood ears and hearts hear: 

         Don’t be messy.

         Don’t be close.

         Don’t be… ‘you’.

And so a life-script is created and we spend too much of our lives trying to turn off the “be-don’t be” messages so we can hear the words of authenticity and grace, words from the heart of God: 

         Be here.

         Be mine.

         Be accepted.

         Be loved.

         Be real. 

To be saved by grace is to know the true love of God. It means to allow God’s grace to heal the broken places in your life, and to receive forgiveness for the ways you have wounded yourself and others.

It means to be opened by God to learn of and grow into God’s worldview, one of generosity, trust, and love.

For some, it will mean a lifetime of unlearning, but what an adventure.

You will life your life diving deep into the mystery of God’s grace, finding that, no matter how deep you go, God’s grace goes deeper still. -rwg
 

© 2016 Robert W Guffey Jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

LR / Siblings' Secret Lives
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
September 7, 2015 

In my memories, it is another night in the ’60s – the 1960s – and I am standing with younger brother Paul in the hallway of 5635 Oakwood Drive, a small and spare rental house with 9x9 bedrooms and linoleum floors. Here we stand, having crept out of our cells to stand in the hallway at an angle where we cannot be seen by the parents, who love us, we are assured, too much to let us stay up so late – they are our wardens, too, you know. But here we stand snatching illegal glimpses of Saturday Night at the Movies, and disobedient views of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. We are supposed to be in bed, asleep – that is the law – but the iridescent luminosity of the Zenith console, in “living” color, is too much a temptation to bear.

It is true, we love our parents and wish to obey, but it is of the way of siblings to have secret lives of their own of which only siblings know, made of late night conspiracies, detours through neighborhoods and woods while walking the longest, roundabout ways home, and conflicts, jealousies, and consolations only a sibling can inflict or absolve. While I am sure it is fine and a different gift from God for only children to be “onlys,” and I know there are siblings who disappoint and even betray, if you have been blessed by God and mothers and nature to have a sister or brother who is near a spiritual twin, why the adventures you share in the beginnings of your journeys will load your souls for adventures of a lifetime, with its stellar successes and crushing disappointments, too. You will never be alone at the root of who you are, near your own soul, for that matter. And should the pathways and meandering detours of living carry you far apart, or should some slight or bruise wound you or, oh no, slice you deep through nerve to bone, “As far as it depends on you,” speak the truth between you in love, seek the healing you need, remember the grace that has bound you together since before you can remember. Do what you can to stay as near as is safe and, perhaps, relishing the ancient adventures, a step or two or three or a billion closer than safe. For this is your oldest companion, the keeper of your secrets, the one who helped you or whom you helped back in the beginning.

Neither Cain and Abel nor Jacob and Esau (for a long, long time) got this relationship right, but we did, for as long we could, standing at an angle so not to be seen by parents and keepers as we began our journeys, secret and otherwise, into the world; as we were apprenticed in what it means to live with others, to come to care about the details of the life of another (but no meddling), as the Spirit prepared us to join a great family, the family of sisters and brothers bound by grace and living sacrifice for the good of one another forever.

© 2015 Robert W Guffey Jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org

Light Reading / Creation Waits the Revealing of the Children of God
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
September 4, 2015 

Tomorrow's sermon will reflect upon discipleship in care of God's world -- this magnificent, mysterious big blue globe God created that we call home. The ideas and biblical text (“Creation Waits with Eager Longing” / Romans 8:18–30) have kept me company today in the midst of a day in the yard, setting out cuttings of variegated weigela I started last spring, taking new cuttings of the same from established plants to grow for another round, pulling up and adding to the compost pile plants that didn't survive the heat (or my inattention), and general tending to small things in the butterfly garden. 

LR / 10 Ways to Help Children Grow Spiritually During Summer Vacation
Robert W Guffey Jr
May 30, 2015

For students, parents, faculty and staff of elementary, middle and high schools, we are almost there. The LAST DAY OF SCHOOL FOR THIS SCHOOL YEAR (LDOSFTSY) will pass soon-and-very-soon, yea-and-verily-even-this-next-week in my part of God’s world. When I was a child, we celebrated LDOSFTSY as somewhere less important than Easter and Christmas, but not TOO much less important. I was a child who loved school, but by mid-April, I was feeling the need for summer. Looking back, I now know that my mother, the teacher, was ready for summer, too. After nine months of early morning arrivals at school, just after sunrise, and hours and hours of classes, presentations, and homework, we were ready for a break, THE big break of long, glorious summer. The arrival of the LDOSFTSY was like a magical day at Hogwarts where everything seemed possible and dancing in the hallways inevitable.

So, congratulations, students, parents, faculty and staff! Congratulations on another year well done of teaching, learning, building friendships and preparing young lives for long and fruitful living. My fervent hope is that you will find rest and renewal that will build and crest just in time for the happy energy of BACK-TO-SCHOOL (BTS) as the cycle begins again with purpose and anticipation.

For those of you with children at home and in your care, as you enter summer, I hope you will take advantage of your days and weeks to let the changes in rhythm and routine yield to rest, renewal, and growth. Play ball, swim, do NOTHING on some days. Visit family. Travel and make memories of family togetherness. As you go and do, let me to suggest 10 ways that will help your children (or grandchildren) grow spiritually, too, during summer vacation. These will be good for the “inner child” in you, too.

Okay. Here goes:

1. Be reasonable in your summer spending. Memories are created by the time and good feelings that come from the closeness you share, not the amount of money you spend. Resist the temptation to “keep up with the Joneses.” Don’t let your good time together now be spoiled by worry and stress that will come later when the bills for your good time come due. 
    
2. Stay calm as much as it is within your power. Closeness can increase intimacy but it also can increase the opportunities for conflict. “Don’t make me stop this car” was an infrequent line I heard while on family vacation trips, and it was usually a well-deserved warning. Set expectations with children early for both home and travel. Plan ahead your several best strategies for enforcing discipline. Keep your personal frustrations about life separate from your frustrations with your children’s attitudes and behaviors. Be the grownup at all times.
   
   
3. Read a book together, either aloud or during family reading times at home or in the car on trips. Books like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, The Dawn Treader from the Chronicles of Narnia, the Little House on the Prairie books, The Secret Garden, Does God Know How to Tie Shoes?, Stellaluna, The Selfish Giant, Old Turtle and others have lessons about faith to impart while keeping you close together.
   
   
4. Plant and cultivate a garden. One of the favorite hymns of my childhood sang about “God’s beautiful world, God’s beautiful world, I love God’s beautiful world.” Guided contact with nature helps our children understand and appreciate the gift of God’s creation. While it may be late for some planting outdoors, indoor gardening is a year-end possibility, and you still have time to start late summer or fall vegetables, and flowers outdoors. Visit a nursery or garden center together for ideas.
   
   
5. Spend time with someone elderly, especially if they are shut-in. Getting to know those who are older and shut-in will brighten the day of the person you visit as well as your own. Bake bread or cookies together or take flowers from your garden or the store to share. You will help your child learn not to fear those who are older and affected by aging or illness as together you develop caring hearts for God’s children of all ages. (Your church can help you find someone to visit or “adopt” as a grandparent or great-grandparent.)
   
   
6. Choose music with a message to listen to on car or plane trips. Our twin grandchildren love listening to the CDs of the music from our Vacation Bible Schools over and over again as they travel and as they rest. You can help your children be wise in their listening to music that combines fun with a lively message. The same goes for the DVDs, video games, and other media you provide them.
   
   
7. Remember: The family that serves together is likely to stay together. Visit a mission site or go on a short-term mission trip. Your “mission” may be a visit to a Habitat for Humanity work site for an hour to help children connect caring to working for peace, wholeness, and justice. You might connect with a summer pen pal from across the world through the missions ministries of your congregation. You could collect food needed for a food pantry ministry, then deliver it together and take time to meet those who work there every day. The possibilities are endless with just a little imagination and openness to trying something new.
   
   
8. Pray before you begin a summer trip and each day at meals. Faith is more “caught” than “taught.” Your children will know what you think is important more by what you do. Help them learn to talk to God and know God wants to hear from them every day.
   
   
9. Go to church. (You knew that was coming.) There are no part-time Christians—and isn’t that a good thing! Even on vacation, practice what you preach about having a relationship with God. God is the giver of salvation, yes, and all the good gifts of our lives. Practice saying “Thank you” to God in all things, starting with worship.
   
   
10. And, of course, do not forget to be involved in the Vacation Bible School, summer camps, and the other opportunities to help your children grow through your church. Summer is the perfect time, too, to invite friends who are enjoying SUMMER, also, to learn about your child’s best and forever friend, the Lord Jesus.

LR / Today Is for Saying Yes to God
Robert W. Guffey Jr
March 22, 2015 

Yes is the word I hear in the love of God and the life of Jesus

Yes is the breath I breathe and the path I walk, it is the sky in which I soar and the water I savor

Yes that sets free the soul and fuels the spirit to grow in the grace-full likeness of Jesus

Yes that leads to other yeses, the kind that draw together people of good will and generosity

Yes that implicit in its proclamation is an emphatic No! to all that diminishes body mind and soul, even unto dying and death itself 

Yes ringing of promises of God come true, of kingdom come, of ideals realized, of passion and compassion fused and formidable establishing what it truly means to be human and whole

Yes as the person of Jesus, the “Yes” of God, in Whom we “live and move and have our being”

God’s Yes that trumps the world’s little yeses, nos and maybes

Yes!

-rwg

©2015 Robert W Guffey Jr
www.lightreading.org

LightReading / Why Beauty?
Robert W Guffey jr
June 27, 2014

So what is it that determines that my delicate azaleas will bloom pink, and why pink? Or why blooms of white, red or purple, for that matter?

And what is it about the azalea or the rose or the camellia or orchid or amaryllis that makes it pleasing to the human eye and, by extension, to the mind and soul?

What is it that determines these are the shapes and colors our senses will embrace as inviting and lovely, and does this event, reflected upon, rebut utilitarian theories of design and point toward a Designer?

Why is there beauty at all that we might recognize, and especially recognize outside our species? What is the purpose in this, this seeing this beauty in the flower or mountain peak or soaring bird?

Beauty within species can be utilitarian, I suppose, in its purpose of attraction and courtship. Human beings, though, in growing, spiritual awareness of beauty in fuller dimensions – the lyricism of music, the passion of spirit and mind, the power of sacrifice as gift, the inspiration of art in all its forms, par exemple – lean toward more transcendent understandings. We seek for deeper meaning and truer love, but even then, what is it in us to recognize beauty as beauty, or love as love, at all?

Why, indeed, unless there is some mystery at work within us, that we are more than physical processes and neurons firing, networks of cellular responses and chemical reactions?

What if it is true that somewhere deep within our human being, within our spiritual DNA, there is some near dormant, near-lost, deep but rich image of who and whose we are and what it means to yearn for our truer home?

What if there is within our ancestral memory the possibility that we, indeed, have been created in the image of God and we do not recall, re-member this until we faintly hear God calling? 

And what if the threshold of that calling sometimes comes to us through beauty that is deep and true and thumps our souls and calls us by our truest name, “Beloved,” and we begin to perceive and respond?

And what if in responding we find our true home is, indeed, God who we read in the loveliest of words of scripture is Love, and love, real love, redemptive love, likely the most beautiful of beauties you are likely to see in a lifetime, or an eternity, for that matter?

What if this life were that way?

Why, from what I am coming to know about God and God’s grace, I would not be surprised at all. And, in response, I would not be surprised to hear beauty coming from our own selves, singing praise of the Creator, in whose image we are made beauty, in our full originally-intended splendor as human beings, children of God, bearing God’s loveliness, grand gift from the Creator, drawing us near and bringing joy to our souls.

Grace and peace,
rwg


(c) 2014 Robert W Guffey jr
bg@lightreading.org
www.lightreading.org 

LR/”Sweet Judy, Blue Eyes”
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
February 8, 2014

For some this may be way more than you want to know about the subject, but I hope you’ll hang in there for a bit of personal indulgence and memoir this time around. Grace and peace! bg

My best guitar playing buddy, Joel, lives too far away in south Louisiana, so we have turned to keeping up our friendship and musical connections by email, Facebook, and, occasionally, trading YouTube videos featuring the musical heroes of our youth. A couple of weeks ago, before the epic Southern ice storm, we hit the mother lode. First, I stumbled, digitally speaking, onto an early recording of Gregg and Duane Allman singing and playing in an earlier, circa-1968, pre-Allman-Brothers-Band-lineup of musicians. Duane’s guitar playing was an inspiration for my teenage rock-wannabe self, and his talent is on display in these songs. Gregg’s voice is young and clear, before the effects of life on the road, addictions and celebrity marriage roughened it to the character it has today.

In these early recordings, the Allmans are very good instrumentally, and the songs are strong, too. “Melissa” is there, which fans will know as an ABB standard. This is the earliest recording of the song that I know of and it sounds sweet to the ear. Another track, “God Rest His Soul,” is a song I had never heard before. It was written by Gregg Allman as a tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., soon after Dr. King’s assassination. The song is soulful, sad and heartfelt. When I searched YouTube for other postings of “God Rest His Soul,” I found a number of video slide shows of Dr. King’s life had been uploaded by YouTube users. “God Rest His Soul” plays in the background of every one.

Finding the tributes to Dr. King reminded me of how much I love the way music touches people. It gives strangers something in common and can transform, focus or refocus a thought, a mood or a feeling. In listening, I felt sad again for Duane Allman, who experienced an early death, too, and appreciative again for the lyrical preaching of a man named Martin, who was used by God to tear down walls, and to show, once again, that one person can make a difference when it’s a difference God wants made.

Finding those songs would have been enough of a find, but then, a couple of nights later, I arrived home from midweek ministry activities at church and sat down to watch television for a few minutes to unwind. A song playing in the background soundtrack of the show I was watching reminded me of “4+20,” a song from our garage band days – and a rather depressing one, at that –   by Stephen Stills. I hadn’t thought of that song, or my teenage attempts to cover it, in thirty years, so I looked it up on YouTube (again) to see if I was remembering it correctly. (Note to Self: YouTube seems to have become my personal version of anti-cognitive impairment therapy.)

I found someone had posted “4+20” in a video clip from a forty-something-years-old episode of “The Dick Cavett Show.” For those too young to have been there, “The Dick Cavett Show” was one of ABC-TV’s better attempts to compete with Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show,” back in the day when Johnny was the go-to guy to end most Americans’ work days. Cavett was different in that, instead of the usual steady stream of entertainer-guests plugging their most recent movie or where they would headline or star in a new show, Cavett often attempted deeper conversations involving the issues of the day through conversations with politicians, thinkers and artists. Looking back, some of what was presented was pretentious, and, now, very dated, but many of those old shows represent an accurate time capsule of those times in the nation and culture, and of what we were wearing too (Peace out).

The clip I had found was of a Cavett episode broadcast one night in August 1969, just after Woodstock. Cavett is hosting Stephen Stills who is playing his song, “4+20,” for an audience of hip, young adults who are watching and listening intently. For some reason, whoever had uploaded the clip to YouTube had edited onto the end of Stills playing on the Cavett Show in 1969, his band, Crosby, Stills and Nash, in concert from what looks like the late-1990s. It was a strange choice of editing but worth the trip (for us) for the song Crosby, Stills and Nash are playing was one of our very favorite songs, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” a song Stills had written in the midst of his breakup with Judy Collins, the singer-songwriter. Out of the failure of human relationships, and the heartbreak that accompanies it, Stills wrote this song, which features both his gifted guitar-playing and the remarkable, blending harmonies of Graham Nash, David Crosby and Stills. Hearing this again released one of the gifts music offers so freely and effectively. Listening, I was carried back to another time in another world.

When CS&N released “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” in 1969 as a single from their first album, it hit #21 on the Billboard Hot 100, and brought them acclaim. In 1969, I was learning to play my first guitar, a $50 Yamaha classical, a Christmas present from my parents to my eighth-grade self, and was a long way from playing anything recognizable as rock n roll, jazz, R&B, soul or Christian rock, which was just emerging. By the summer of 1973, that had changed. I was listening and trying to learn songs that were musically appealing to me and all of those had strong, blending harmonies. If the songs had good lyrics that was a plus, but it was the overall “sound” for which I was looking, and that sound was in the vocal harmonies. I realize now that the guitar work and harmonies of these three super artists had always been in the back of my mind when Joel, Frank, another great friend from LSU days – who is a superb guitarist – and I performed together for a few years in college as a trio.

In the summer of 1973, I was a 16-year-old, too-young-to-be-in-college college freshman attending summer school classes at LSU. In between and after classes, having not discovered the joys of hanging out at the LSU Baptist Student Union yet, I would go to the massive LSU Student Union and visit the audio listening rooms, as the TV lobbies were always full that summer of students watching the Senate Watergate hearings on network television.

In the listening rooms, as a student, you could request an LP of any genre to be played for you, and the usually no more than 6 or so other students who would share a particular listening room, and listen through headphones as your songs streamed through in glorious analog, high-fidelity sound. I had the student on duty at the desk play the album with “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” over and over for as many times as a freshman could get away with. I could not get enough of the guitar and the interplay of the harmonies. Granted, at 16, I was probably feeling sympathy for the guitar player who was singing and playing his heart out over a broken heart, too, but, whatever, I loved that group and, in particular, that song, with its contrast of bright sounds and sadness.  

Thinking back, I am glad to have those memories. I am glad, too, that I remember how much I really didn’t know about much of anything then, which reminds me to extend empathy and understanding to today’s 16-year-olds. I’m glad I remember how the vibrations and colors of the music motivated me to explore on my own playing the guitar and singing strong, tight, blending harmonies with my friends. Our music was not the kind that would not take us to fame – mostly it took us to singing for friends, playing concerts around the LSU campus and traveling around two states entertaining at an untold number of youth and adult church fellowships – but it bonded our friendship. It helped us articulate the complex emotional states of late-adolescence/early-adulthood. It said and sang what we could not yet articulate on our own, or at least articulate as well. It added measures of thoughtfulness and happiness to our days, and, once in a while, to the lives of others, or so we truly hoped. The music was a substantial gift of the Spirit then, and it, and much music since, of many kinds and classifications, continues to be so for me today.

And that’s about it, except that about now I should probably tell you that I don’t spend as much time on YouTube looking for old music as I’ve made it sound, or even playing my guitar as much as I should or want. Doing so is really rare, and I am almost sorry to write that for the joy that awakens in me when I hear music that is deeply woven into my life is something I know I need.

I am almost sorry to write that, too, because the best work music can do for us, and in us, is always a gift from God: God who sings galaxies into existence, equipped the greatest king in the Hebrew Scriptures with a lyre and the gift of writing and singing psalms, and inspired the greatest theologian in the New Testament to occasionally burst out in song in the middle of his letters to long-gone congregations, congregations who were tired or conflicted or who simply needed to connect again with purposes and glory of God.

It is a beautiful gift from God, who sustains us through the creative power of the Spirit and, should we choose to sing along, will draw from our final willing breaths and startling new-lives-in-God’s-presence amazing stanza-after-stanza of “Hallelujahs.”

Grace and peace,
bg

©2014 Robert W Guffey, Jr
bg@lightreading.org

©2014 Robert W Guffey jr
lightreading.org 

Please make us ready to carry the gospel,
even though we know it is shaped like the cross,
the ultimate answer to evil
and the means of our redemption. 

Help us get ready for this, too, O Lord. 

AMEN

Light Reading for Spring/One Day Soon
Robert W. Guffey, Jr. (© 2007)
bg@lightreading.org

        I am looking for it to happen any day now. By the time you read this column, it may be over.
        One day soon, I am going to be driving northward on Gilbert Drive, on my way to the church, and, as if by magic, something that did not exist the day before will be abundant around me.
        One day soon, all those deciduous trees lining Gilbert will have changed. Where the day before I saw only bare branches, on that day I will see explosions of green erupt from branch to stem in blades of vibrant color. The sun’s light will glow translucent through leaves rich with chloroplasts. In that light will be the life of the tree whose God-given ability it is to turn light into glucose, sweet food of life.
        Winter is no more. Spring, warm Spring, has begun.
        The disciples asked Jesus for signs of the end of the age in which they lived. They longed to leave an age of sickness and evil. They thirsted for the age of the Spirit, of God’s good reign of eternal compassion, to begin.
        When will it come? Jesus replied. Look around you. When the leaves bud on the trees, you know summer is coming. Look around you. What you long for is coming and soon.
        Look around you for hints of love expressed in inclusive ways where once hatred and bigotry sought sanctuary. Look around you for reflections of reconciling grace where before divisions and strife were. Look around you for small glimpses of God’s will being done on God’s earth as it is in God’s heaven.
        Look around you. God’s summer is coming. It will appear so suddenly it will surprise you. Keep watching and waiting and working. It’s coming.
        One day soon. 

Light Reading for Spring/Tending the Garden of God
Robert W. Guffey, Jr. (© 2007)
bg@lightreading.org

        Inspiration comes from unlikely places. An acquaintance commented on seeing spider lilies growing in the yard of his new home. The house is an older South Highlands dwelling and had been owned by an elderly woman who had lived there many years.
        Looking around the neighborhood, my friend noticed spider lilies growing in yards of houses no longer homes, houses vacant of family and caregivers. What became of whomever it was who chose well–drained soil and proper mixture of light in preparation of their planting?
        Spider lilies, root and stem yielded from scaly bulbs to raise strap–shaped leaves and showy umbels of roseate flowers, return again and again to reward absent caretakers. How long have they returned, year after year, season after season, cycle after unceasing cycle, with none to enjoy their beauty or to tend to their needs of water and nutrient? No one cares for them—or sees them—but an occasional, passing neighbor and God.
        How odd a sight, he remarked, to see flowers growing in spots of overgrown greenery near deteriorating structures of wood and stone waiting for the gardener’s return.
        Those houses and yards may serve as metaphor. We live untended lives. We plant church, relationships, marriages, family and world with enthusiasm and assume these will flourish with little tending. The disciplines of caring Christian living serve well the child of God who seeks a life strong against heat and drought and weed–ridden way.
        Church, relationships, marriages, family and world await your tending, O child of God. Take your place at work with God in God’s world. “The creation waits with eager longing” your revealing.

Grace and peace,
rwg

*Read on for reflections present and past, along with wisdom from a Connecticut colleague and friend.

Grace and peace, rwg

Light Reading / God Is Not Mad at You
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

September 3, 2011

This paragraph ran in the July 27 issue of The Christian Century. (For reference, the Archbishop of Canterbury is the leader of the Church of England and was in the news recently for officiating the most recent royal wedding.)

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recalled for the Guardian (July 8)

how he once was an angst-ridden young man who worried about whether he

was suffering enough or was compassionate enough. But then Mary Clare

Millea, a Catholic nun, said to him, “You don’t have to suffer for the sins of

the world, darling. It’s been done.” If we’re not preoccupied with justifying

ourselves, said Williams, then we can focus on other things and can even

afford to be wrong. “Jesus is the human event that reverses the flow of

human self-absorption.”

Glad to know people in such high places have dealt with the concerns of us mere mortal Christians. Too many of us live out of guilty feelings that we are not good enough, doing enough, attractive enough, or worthy enough to be loved by God, or anyone else. The biblical truth of the matter – and the good news of the gospel – is that we weren’t but, thanks be to God, we were made so because of God’s love revealed with astonishing transparence in Jesus.

      That good news became real for some of us when we realized and began to live into the startling fact, to paraphrase Dr. Paul Tournier, that God had accepted us, just as we are, “without one plea.” It’s the beginning of our journey of living into the best God intended for us as God’s creation and as an embodiment of God’s love. (Some folks call that our “sanctification,” I believe.)

      Or as an old preacher friend in Connecticut, who spent nearly a lifetime working with men addicted to drugs and alcohol, was fond of saying, “God loves you just the way you are and too much to let you stay that way.” That’s not something to worry about. It’s a fact made real in the grace of God and the life of Jesus because God loves you. Accept it as a given reality then ask God to help you can live out of gratitude and graciousness – instead guilt, frustration, judgment and fear – so that God’s love might soak the tiniest nuances of who you are and who you are becoming until it overflows into the world as Jesus alive in you. Imagine that!

Grace and peace,
rwg

Remember 9/11/01 and Rabbi Cohen

Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

September 7, 2011

Several times in the months after the tragic events of 9/11/01, Rabbi Leah Cohen and I shared the pulpit with priests and ministers of other faiths as we lived into the privilege and responsibilities of praying for our Connecticut communities in grief. In the Twin Towers on that brilliant, blue day, nine men died who were citizens of our town, as did a young family of three who were passengers on the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.

      In one of the services, Rabbi Cohen honored the deeper values of our faith when she shared a story from the Talmud that spoke a counterpoint to the blanket condemnations some were making on a whole people for what had happened through the work of a group of evil men.

      In the Talmud, as Moses and the children of Israel were singing in celebration of their successful crossing of the Red Sea, which we can read in Exodus 15. It is said the angels wanted to sing with them for joy as well but God chided them, saying, “How can you sing praises when my children the Egyptians are drowning?”

Light Reading / Presence Real, Always

Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

Fall 2002

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I twice visited the World Trade Center site with young adult friends and family who were new to the City and wanted to visit the site to pay their respects to those who died there. The first visit, coming one month after the attacks, was especially powerful for me. Thousands of us walked, almost silently, down Broadway through SoHo into the Financial District, as if we were a huge perambulatory funeral procession. As we neared and passed St. Paul’s Chapel, on the corner of Broadway and Fulton, the crowd slowed briefly to scan notes posted and banners draped on the church’s tall iron fence, to view and reflect on objects of devotion — flowers, candles, flags, photographs and stuffed animals — left as public display of confusion, shock and desire to console. As the ground underfoot grew uneven, I realized we were walking on a layer of dust, which covered the sidewalk and road. The dust was part of the remains of the Towers; “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” I do not think I will forget that first walk down Broadway and the power of being present, of being a witness to the aftermath of deep evil and to the sense of grave loss.

      As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, I found myself reflecting on the images of the devastation, both those I had seen firsthand and those broadcast on television. I began to feel as though a small window had opened, and that I could see and feel a bit of what it might have been like, to live in London in 1944, or Germany or Japan in 1945, or Sarajevo in the 1990s, to live in a war zone. In imagining the scenes of physical devastation again, I also remembered what in those days had became an even stronger image for me: the scenes of families and friends of the dead and missing, gathered in the weeks and months after 9/11, in their grief on the streets and at public gatherings for the victims and their families. Often, many of these wounded sisters and brothers in our human family could be seen holding photographs of the dead and missing, lifted for the world to see. I now see those photographs as pleas for presence, as deep calls for remedy to painful, startling absence cutting through hearts, bodies and souls. Perhaps, too, those photographs lifted before the world were calls to those of us whose pain was not so immediate to acknowledge and honor the lives of those lost, some of whom had literally vanished from the face of the earth.

      As the anniversary approached and I thought about these images, other brothers and sisters came to mind, other wounded members of our human family holding “photographs,” in a metaphorical sense. I saw these others holding images of loved ones whose presences they miss, too, whose absences carry pain and longing. I saw parents whose children were grown and gone not just physically but emotionally. They were holding photographs of sons and daughters at the ages of two or three, and saying, “I’d like to go back to this presence.” I saw ex-spouses holding photos of a first wife or husband saying, “I didn’t do it right the first time. I wish I could go back and try again to be present to the presence she/he offered then.” I saw some holding photos that were portraits of themselves, portraits from a time of innocence, naiveté and idealism, held by people who wondered what had happened to the person they thought they would become. In these images, the pain of absence and desire for presence conveyed anew the power of loss and longing.

      In writing about the book of Lamentations, Walter Brueggemann reminds his readers that a poetic text was used by Jews for an annual holy day of grieving over the destruction of Jerusalem. The destruction of Jerusalem was seen as paradigm for their lives and was mourned in the scripture by “asking haunting questions about being ‘forgotten’ and ‘abandoned’ by God.”

I remember my affliction and my wandering, the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.

YET this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for the Lord’s compassions never fail.

They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;

therefore I will wait for the LORD.”

[Lamentations 3:19–24]

      “What odd speech the people of God are about. What odd speech. To speak of remembrance when the soul feels abandoned; to speak of healing, nurturing presence when we sense God’s absence; and to speak of compassion, hope and grace when staring into the abyss of death.”

      We are an odd people, a people who through the voicing of sadness and grief are able to begin the move toward healing. We sing Zion’s songs a long way from Zion. We sing as those who grieve with hope. We sing affirming the reality of our grieving, the reality of painful absence and our deep desire for presence. We sing yearning for God in fullness as those who have been given a taste of God, of truth, of good, of holiness, of the presence of love. We hurt because we loved and are loved.

      On the evening of Wednesday, September 11, 2002, over 650 people of all faiths represented in the town of Wilton, Connecticut, gathered in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fatima Roman Catholic Church to pray, to sing, to remember, to console and to hope. As we prayed, I felt solidarity with the Spirit of God. I felt healing was not just possible but was happening and that our future in God is assured. I felt hope being realized in our midst.

      During the day and evening that anniversary Wednesday, a high wind visited our town, winds so strong trees and power lines came down. As we gathered at the church, the wind was blowing still, swirling around us. After the service, a child in attendance wondered aloud if the wind had been the memories of those who had died returning to say that it’s okay to be sad and, holding them in our hearts, it’s okay to move on into a new day. Not a bad thought at all, from a child paying attention. I think, though, the “Wind” we are feeling these days is One that “blows where it chooses” and chooses to be Presence to God’s children in the depths of our despair to lift us up in God’s time toward wholeness, more present to one another and God than we thought we ever could be.

© 2011 Robert W. Guffey, Jr.

bg@lightreading.org

www.lightreading.org

Just back from Macon, Georgia, and the funeral of a friend. In my line of work and being, funerals are not unusual, though saying goodbye to friends my own age, especially one with children still at home, is a bracing announcement of how precious each day is. Once you have lost the days, such sayings are no longer cliché.

Grace and peace,
bg

impressions on the way to macon

Robert W. Guffey, Jr./June 10, 2011

From 25-40 seems a lifetime
40-55 not so
55-70, oh my
- - -

The day will come
when all our loves and lovers
will matter not as past pain or present joy
but only as all is made all in all in Christ

The mending of the world begins
with the mending of hearts
the mending of hearts begins
in the healing of souls
the healing of souls is our salvation,
salvation resolute in the heart of God
our end in God’s beginning

Our lives returned to the source of life
our voices soaring in anthems of love
with distinction yet in unity
praise to the Savior, the all in all

Exploding suns moons stars beyond microscopic matter
come together again not collapsing on itself
but coalescing in eternal alleluias
these will carry us beyond the terror or nightmare
of annihilation of person and personality
beyond death and darkness and empty stillness
the promise of faith the faith of God the darkness of a tomb

Light Reading/The Person beside You
Robert W. Guffey, Jr.
February 26, 2011

When my boyhood buds in Baton Rouge, Ronnie and Randy, and I were traveling through junior high school band with Mr. Campo and high school concert band with Mr. Littel, we could count on these things: (a) cute girls in the flute and clarinet sections, (b) the guys in the baritone and drum sections causing mischief and trouble, usually humorous, (c) class chaos whenever the directors were away and the baton had been given to a substitute director, and (d) both Mr. Campo and Mr. Littel giving strict, sometimes heated, instructions as we neared the time of competitive concert festivals.

      While it’s true that I have long forgotten most of those instructions, I’ve never forgotten this one.

      “Ladies and gentlemen,” they would say, after stopping us in the middle of playing some musical passage that demanded attention to the dynamic changes between very soft (pianissimo) and loud (forte).

      “Ladies and gentlemen, if you cannot hear the playing of the person beside you, you are playing too loud. This is not about you; it is about the music. It’s not about your ego. If there is a solo in the music for you to play, I’ll let you know. It’s not about whether or not your mother is sitting on the front row and you want to stand out. It’s not about you. It’s about the music.”

      On one level, I am reminded of this every time I attend a concert or program for children or students today and parents (or grandparents) go out of their way to be sure their child (or grandchild) is treated like the “star.” Every video recorder recording every move of the singular performer neglects the truth that without the group their “star” would not be much. Discipline and decorum are not what they once were in many places but, oh, the difference when I encounter a director who is in charge in service to the music and to the greater good of his or her students.

      There’s wisdom there for life outside the band room and concert hall, as well. We can trust that we are growing up toward maturity in Christ when we stop living as if we wished we were the star in every performance of our lives. We know we are becoming more like the Lord Jesus when we begin paying more attention to the person beside us.

      As beloved as surely we are by God, so are the others who share with us this life of family, congregation, community, city and world. Paraphrasing our directors, we might say, it’s not about us; it’s about what God can create when “kindred live together” with an ear toward “unity.” (Psalm 133:1)

Grace and peace,
rwg

©2011 Robert W Guffey Jr
www.lightreading.org
bg@lightreading.org