pastor john's Weblog

It is my mom's 89 birthday today...and it is wonderful to be with her here in Dallas. There are significant times in our lives that need to be remembered and celebrated, and this day is one of them! We went to lunch over in Fort Worth at a little restaurant we know called the "Cattleman." The server was so astonished that mom was 89 that she brought over the other servers to see her! She kept saying that, "You can't be 89, you don't look 89, you look great!"
Tomorrow my sister and niece are coming by for another luncheon with mom...that will be great as well.
I think we are poorer for not remembering milestones in the lives of those we know and love. We need to pay attention to each other. We need to be willing to hold up the significant moments in each others lives.
So, if you are celebrating something important today or this week, great, congratulations and blessings.

One more photo of this fabulous guitar...the back has a stripe of cocobolo sapwood down the back which is striking and gorgeous. David Reynolds is a true artist!

My friend, David Reynolds, made a guitar for me. It is not only a work of art, it is a work of friendship and love that I deeply value. He has been working on this guitar for months and this week brought it to me... I am deeply moved and thankful for this incredible gift. He used cocobolo wood for the back and sides, curly maple for the binding, adirondack spruce for the top, and striped ebony for the fretboard. It is a guitar of a lifetime!

For me Spring and Summer are times when I pick up old friends (books) that I have read in the past. Novels like "Dune," "Lord of the Rings," "The Glass Bead Game (or Magister Ludi), "Brother to a Dragonfly," "Cry the Beloved Country," etc.,
I have felt drawn to an interesting book lately, Michener's, "The Source," which is about the rise of civilization in what would become Israel. The book centers around an imaginary tell (a site of multiple cities which have been built one on top of the other). This tell is 71 feet high and has the remains of 15 chronological levels. Michener recounts the pseudo-history of each age which ends in the rise of the new state of Israel.
It is fascinating to travel back though time and get a glimpse of ancient civilizations...
Anyway, I hope you have some book friends you can spend part of the summer with as well!

Yeats once said, "the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." That phrase has always haunted me. I have stood by Yeats grave which stands at the base of the marvelous Benbulben mountain in Sligo, Ireland, and recited the whole poem that phrase came from... it was that important to me to go there and do that...such truth, such sad truth.
Faithfulness, where has that gone? Is it boring to be full of faith unless you have a gun in hand and a bomb in place? How misguided are those who think that God is pleased with such violence and hatred.
We are so parochial. We see life all around us, plants, trees, grass, animals and people, and we think, ho hum...but listen to this, all life is rare in the cosmos. There is no life anywhere else in our own solar system, unless it is some microbe under the ice on one of Saturn's moons. There is no detectable life as far as our scientific instruments can discern. No one has responded to our continual SETI transmissions into space...
Life is not only rare but distinct. To not appreciate God's creation of life here on earth is arrogant and small minded.
To not be able to work together as people on earth must kill the heart of God. We see such differences, while in reality those differences are very, very small.
May faith make a comeback in, as Yeats says, "the best..." those all over this beautiful world who seek reconciliation and peace.