frozen (over)

 the mississippi river here is

at least a little bit

frozen over

subfreezing

and some subzero

temperatures will do that

even to a 

grand river

like the mississippi

as a result

the river is quite still

and even has some patches

where snow has accumulated 

on top of the ice

the thing about rivers

though 

is that 

in most cases

and especially in the case of

big rivers like this one

is that 

frozen over

does not equal

frozen

there is water under that 

sheet of ice that is

still liquid

still moving

still flowing

and in time that will 

thaw

break up

melt

that layer of ice

especially when

the sun 

comes out to help

it seems like

there's a metaphor in there

somewhere

(especially if you capitalize 

three particular letters)

 

 

 

january 2026

milltown coffee

(with a very nice view

of the river)

moline il

The Ballad of the Democracy Destroyer, or, Let It Slide

There came a man, wealth was his god;

And vain and boastful was his play,

But still the people did applaud

And send him on his merry way

To fame and fortune, wrongly earned.

But he the power of fame had learned.

But when his star began to fade,

Ill fortune raised him up anew.

So to TV he turned, and played

A corporate mogul, strong and true.

But when off-camera, lust ran wild - 

It mattered not woman or child.

But those who fawned him let it slide

And helped his heinous deeds to hide.

Though fame was fun, he wanted more,

So power he ventured next to seek.

He sought it as he had before:

Suck up to strong and crush the weak.

The simpering haters joined his cause,

Ignoring all the rules and laws. 

Though all the girls he'd groped before 

Bore witness and called out his ways,

And others named the Russian shore

As stoking his demented haze,

Still half a nation followed him;

Liberty's light grew faint and dim.

Somehow this nation let it slide; 

Democracy just up and died.

Four years his ego rampant ran

Before the voters turned him out.

But four years on it was his plan

That put plain decency to rout.

Now regained his tainted height,

He turned to put his foes to flight.

A goon squad serving him alone

And minions spouting garbled lies?

Ere long, pretense was up and gone.

See, this is how a nation dies.

But still the ones with legal power

Failed oh, so badly in that hour.

Again the cowardly let it slide

And left him on his throne of pride.

He waged his war yet undeclared

On all who dared to disagree,

And rained foul hate throughout the land

From sea to no-more-shining sea.

E'en as his mind grew weak and pained, 

His minions siezed his power and reigned.

And so we stand at Hell's own gate - 

Or is it Heaven's? But who can tell?

Are we defunct? Is it too late?

Or can this story yet end well?

Will evil be cast out for good,

This nation yet be what it should?

Or, since vain Congress let it slide,

Has this country, at long last, died?

(January 2026)

acts 11 1-18

if the same story appears 

in some fashion 

three different times 

in the same book of scripture 

we should probably consider 

that it is a

very important story 

acts 10

narrates the original event 

peter will refer to that event 

one more time 

in acts 15

acts 11 is the defense when peter gets summoned 

(not merely called or invited)

to appear before the council 

of church leaders 

in jerusalem 

they are apparently 

bent out of shape 

over peter’s eating with gentiles 

so what does peter do but

tell the story 

more specifically 

tell the story of what God did

right down to 

the Holy Spirit tripping out

on cornelius and his household 

after all

you have to figure some of them 

had been at pentecost 

there was silence

and then there was praise 

that what God had done for them

God had now done for gentiles too

sadly though 

I can’t shake the feeling 

that even through the silence 

and then the praise 

some of those council members 

were still trying to figure out 

a way to get peter in trouble 

for eating with gentiles

farmstead

farmstead

not many such things
on presbyterian properties 
i would guess 

a few chickens 
several goats 
and a pair of donkeys 
plus some garden patches

as i am about to walk away
one of the donkeys eyes me
and starts to walk towards me
carefully 
i approach the fence at an angle 
the donkey comes to meet me 

what happens next 
i’ve seen many times 
from our cats
a slight tilt of the head 
towards my hand
i know that sign

so i stand there for a few minutes 
patting a donkey’s head 

the point
is not that this was somehow a
magical
mystical
cosmic 
spiritual moment 
it doesn’t get special 
just because i’m writing 
one of these 
silly little poems about it

if anything 
maybe the point is to wonder 
that we have created a world 
in which
such a moment *seems*
magical 
mystical 
cosmic
spiritual 
and not
something that happens 
between fellow creatures of God

i mean
we are fellow creatures of God
right?

they launched a rocket tonight

they launched a rocket tonight

seventy-four miles north of here

 

we were promised a big show

by very enthusiastic resort staff

and so

a small but notable crowd

perhaps a dozen and a half

maybe two dozen

gathered on the overlook by the beach

which promised (we were told) an excellent view

 

the numbers gathered on the overlook

while the moon

stood stalwart sentinel

slam-dunking its reflected sunlight 

onto a lightly ruffled ocean

 

a plane fooled everybody for a moment

 

but sure enough

at 9:02 p.m.

a reddening glow blossomed low on the northern horizon

from which emerged a large red spot

larger than the stars anyway

not as large as the moon

standing stalwart sentinel

 

to the delight of all 

the newly launched large red spot 

turned south 

toward us

and eventually passed right in front of us

still climbing and growing smaller

its vaguely comet-tail-like trail changing colors 

and eventually fading away 

as the rocket climbed higher and faded into the sky

on its way to disgorge forty-something satellites

 

eventually

the smallish but notable crowd drifted away 

as the rocket could no longer be seen with unaided eye

 

and yet the moon 

still stood stalwart sentinel

slam-dunking its reflected sunlight

onto a lightly ruffled ocean

A sunrise

Morning is not my time. It is usually the time that sleep, which ordinarily spends the full night taunting and then eluding me, now attempts to ensnare me at that moment I need to quit purusing it. But when one is staying at a resort directly on the beach, one is obligated to get up early enough to go out to that beach and watch a sunrise. Today was that day.

The sky had already begun to lighten well before I arrived, and darkness itself had been well and truly vanquished long before I took up my post on the corner of the walkway overlook, not wanting to sacrifice my ankles to the demon beach sand. This day was simply and only for watching the sun rise. No pictures or video clips. No distractions. Only a drink to sip on, and eyes peeled to the east.

A few people were about; a smattering of morning walkers on the beach, including the ubiquitous older fellows with their metal detectors and at least one man toting a surfboard; one or two on other parts of the walkway overlook, cameras or phones at the ready; one couple in conversation with another woman, the only disruption of the beachside pseudo-silence.

Of course, it is no silence, not truly; nature has more than enough to say if one listens in such a setting. On this day it is the waves on the beach generating the most chatter. They have been stirred up by an extremely sizable hurricane in the Atlantic, one that has had the nickname "large Larry" attached to it since one of the earliest advisories on the storm in its hurricane shape began with the alliteration "Large Larry lumbering...". Large Larry has been kind enough to steer its major-storm winds well clear of land masses or populated areas to this point. Bermuda may yet be affected by the storm, and the extreme outer fringes of Newfoundland may get brushed by it much later. But for now, it is merely a large storm with high winds and enough force to generate substantial waves and swells as far as the eastern coasts of the US, including this outpost in Florida.

And those waves clamor for attention. Look at me, they say. Listen to me. I am far more interesting than that big gas ball in the sky. Look how large I am. Listen to how fierce I am. See how I am stripping away the sand from this beach. Pay attention to me. 

And of course, they are fascinating in themselves. They are large for this location. They are generating a great deal of noise. They are indeed stripping away sand from the beach. I am here just as high tide is wrapping up. The waves make it clear that it is not their choice to pull back. I'll be back, they say. I may be pulling back for now, but I will be back. I promise you that. 

They are most distracting in themselves. However, they cannot claim main-attraction status for this moment, for just when one is almost ready to forget the reason for being out on this beach before being fully awake, the tiniest of orange slivers has appeared on that horizon, slightly south of due east.

More observers have accumulated on the overlook and the beach itself by now, just in time for the main attraction from which they seem rather distracted. The sun is booking it this morning. That tiny orange sliver is already growing into a quarter-, third-, even half-sun. Before one can even calculate how long it will take, that sun has overtopped the horizon, perched like a child's favorite ball waiting to be kicked or tossed or picked up and lumbered around.

But wait; there is a challenge yet coming. The luminous orange disk is encountering a small cloud. Just as it had so quickly cleared the horizon it now slipped hastily behind the small cloud. It isn't a solid cloud; the sun can still glimmer through its thinner places, not with the vivid orange glow of its first appearing, but now brightly spreading its illumination from behind the cloud. 

The cloud is small, and the sun does not take long to surmount it as well. It is not the same sun as before; the orange luminescence is now transigured into the diffuse yet illuminating yellow that we know from our daytime hours. It is shining now, and ready to claim its rightful place of importance in a sky that has few other obstacles or challenges to offer. 

And it is done. A sunrise has been completed. The day is on.

Court Prophets Revel in Their "Unprecedented" Royal Access

JERUSALEM (ARNS*) -- Squeezed in among two dozen other prophets in residence at the royal court, Hananiah added his hand to the other reaching to pray for King Zedekiah of Judah.

The royal prayer session is just one example of the access the court of Zedekiah and his key aides have given to a cadre of prophets, from evening-long dinners to all day meetings.

"This is unlike anything we've experienced in our career in prophecy -- unprecedented access, unprecedented solicitation of viewpoints and opinions," said Hananiah.

Previous kings had granted access to prophets across the spectrum, although not always positively -- the death of the prophet Uriah son of Shemaiah at the hands of King Jehoiakim comes to mind -- but Zedekiah's court has been particularly given over to those prophets of the party of Hananiah.

Observers suggest that the cadre of court prophets gives Zedekiah a "seal of approval" among an important constituency in Judah, a significant support for a king whose situation is shaky at best. The court prophets also offer Zedekiah protection against non-conformist prophets such as Jeremiah, an agitating presence across multiple royal courts. Hananiah's spectacular attack against Jeremiah, in which he took the prophet's wooden yoke and broke it in front of the king, was reported to have been received with great favor by Zedekiah and Hananiah's fellow court prophets.

"I'm sure that the king would be happy if Jeremiah had been elimiated with Uriah years ago, although fortunately that didn't happen somehow thanks to the protection of Ahikam son of Shaphan. But to be able to put that pest in his place shows just how much the king values our prophetic utterances in support of the kingdom and of the king," Hananiah is reported to have said. "We do the job of supporting the king when fake prophets like Jeremiah won't, and the king favors us accordingly. It's the best situation we've ever known."

Clearly Zedekiah enjoys the support of the so-called court prophets; after the latest such meeting he referred to the court prophets as "my kind of people," and he was reported to have laughed uproariously at Hananiah's breaking of Jeremiah's yoke.

While prophets such as Jeremiah have not gone away, their number is far fewer and their safety is not guaranteed. Hananiah's star rose with his prophecy of the end of Babylon's power and the return of exiled people and stolen artifacts, against which Jeremiah had spoken (leading to the yoke-breaking incident). The direct attack of one prophet against another is seen as a sign of just how much favor the court party of prophets has with the relatively new king.

Jeremiah, the non-court prophet, responded to a request for comment for this story with a lengthy prophetic statement about wooden and iron yokes. Hananiah the unofficial leader of the court prophet party, was also asked for further comment but was unable to reply due to illness.

An artist's depiction of the incident in which Hananiah broke Jeremiah's yoke (video cameras were not allowed at the session).

Note: the original article being parodied is here; a quick browse of Jeremiah 26-28 is also recommended.

*ARNS = Ancient Religion News Service

(If you still need a mainline "moral of the story" at this point...don't be like Hananiah. Even Billy Graham came to regret how much he let Richard Nixon use him.)

New hymn, particularly suitable for a week ago.

Frankly, this week has rotted.  I have had too many occasions to let my temper flare.  (Yes, I have one.  It's not pretty.)  Typically that anger is directed at myself for my own incompetence, as was sometimes the case this week (I have control of mostly nothing in my life right now, so I get particularly wrathful against myself when I screw up one of the things I do control).  Very few people have really experienced my anger directed against them.  By the grace of God, a few of them are still friends.  This week produced some angry, or at least argumentative, moments directed less at people than against events, or in some cases memories of events -- a past where those who were putatively leaders in my church of raising ranted on about childless married couples (like, um, us) being in rebellion against God or some such rot in one case, and the spoilage of baseball in another, as witness yesterday's rant over on the other blog.
Fortunately, though, the rages of the week somehow did not prevent me from fulfilling the third part of my Lenten task for this year.  I took on the assignment of reading two books (not related to class assignments) and writing two new hymns this lent, and thankfully I can now say the hymn part of that is done.  (One book is read, which is described in the previous entry in this blog.)  I'm fudging a little, to count a set of responses for the Eucharistic Great Prayer of Thanksgiving as a hymn, but the same work is involved, so there.
Last week's scriptures, Ezekiel's dry-bones encounter and the raising of Lazarus, started the percolation of the idea.  It took a while for the ideas to shape themselves into verses, with the result that the hymn in its final (so far) form finally took shape and demanded my attention about midnight last night.  Fortunately my iPhone was nearby and I could type it out in the "Notes" app until I could record it here.


Rise up, old bones, return to life,
Take sinew, flesh, and breath;
Give witness to the power of God,
A power that overcomes death,
A power that overcomes death.

Rise up, dear friend, return to life,
No longer in the grave;
Give witness to the love of God
That drives a Savior to save,
That drives a Savior to save.

Rise up, old church, return to life,
No longer drowned in fear;
Give witness to the word of God
The world refuses to hear, etc.

Rise up, my heart, return to life,
No longer bound in sin;
Give witness to the grace of God
And let a new life begin, etc.


The tune of choice for right now is DOVE OF PEACE, probably best known with "I come with joy to meet my Lord."  This hopefully explains the repetitions and "etc."s in each verse, if you know the tune.  Hopefully the Ezekiel and Lazarus parts are clear enough; the two latter verses bring that idea of returning to life forward to our own church and self.  (It's possible I had the PC(USA) specifically in mind when verse three developed.  Possible.  Maybe even most specifically in the last two lines of that verse  And it might even be possible that the "world" that "refuses to hear" might just include other domains of Christianity.  Just maybe.)  I'm not opposed to other tune suggestions.  It would be good to find a tune collaborator at some point if I'm going to keep doing this, so if you know any such person feel free to connect me to them or vice versa.

So anyway, there 'tis.  It might be a little too specific for wide use, but make of it what you will.

La rappresentazione dello spirito e il ricercatore dello spirito

Of late in driving about nearby I see signs advertising a "Spirit-filled Bible Study."  I have no idea what this means.  Bible study is a good thing.  I'm not quite sure where the "spirit-filled" part fits in, as if somehow the actual Holy Spirit would ever be absent from a serious and genuine attempt to read and study the Bible.

The title refers to this musical work, one of the best titles ever if nothing else in musical history.  "Dialogue of the soul and the body" was a pretty common literary type as well.  This isn't quite that, but for whatever perverse reason the allusion appealed to me, if for no other reason than one of irony.

Nothing so lofty as this, no...

Spirit-seeker: O Lord, send me your spirit.
Spirit: Yo! I'm right here.
Spirit-seeker: I yearn for the touch of your spirit, O Lord.
Spirit: Still right here.  Is there something in particular you're looking for?
Spirit-seeker: Lead me, O Lord.  Guide me by your Spirit.
Spirit: Excuse me, have you not been listening?  "What does the Lord require of you, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" 
Spirit-seeker: Give me a double portion of your Spirit, O Lord.
Spirit: Huh?  What?  You want me to say everything twice?
Spirit-seeker: I long to feel your Spirit, Lord, in this dry and barren land.
Spirit: So you want a feeling, huh? Go feed the hungry and see how that feels.  
Spirit-seeker: I want to be filled with your Spirit, God! Lift me up! Raise me higher!
Spirit: You want to be lifted up? Go lift up others.  Care for the sick.  Sit with the dying.  Loosen the bonds of the oppressed.  
Spirit-seeker: Why can't I feel your presence, God? Why do you withhold your Spirit from me?
Spirit: Are you spiritually deaf? I'm not here to be your amphetamines.  I'm here to remind you what God has already commanded you to do.  It's all over the Bible already.  You say you love that book, but I am starting to wonder if you've ever read it.  And yes, that would help a lot if you really want to be filled with me.  
Spirit-seeker: Are you there, God? Why do you withhold your Spirit from me?
Spirit: When you tell me why you withhold your service from me, then you'll get your answer.  Get out there and be Christ-like, act like you actually follow Christ.  Stop sitting here whining about somebody else filling you with anything.  Go be a Christ-follower!  That's where you'll get full of me! What will it take to get you to hear me?  Go minister to the least of these!
Are you listening???
Spirit-seeker: O Lord, send me your spirit!
Spirit: <facepalm>

*Sigh...*

The "not quite dead" church, or new names for "mainline"

Thanks to my Twitter feed today I got directed to a conversation on the subject of the "mainline" church, or more precisely what to call said informal branch of American Protestantism.  The discussion was touched off by a blog post by Carol Howard Merritt, on the outdatedness of the term (apparently derived from a railroad line in Philadelphia backintheday) and its general inaccuracy at describing those denominations and their influences historically and currently.  The tweet that lured me into the subject was an article on Religion News Service by Cathy Lynn Grossman, taking up the question of renaming, if such a thing was even possible, and offering up suggested names from others (some serious, some humorous, some hostile).

What follows is thoroughly tongue in cheek.  After the junk I sat through today, even bailing after an hour, I need some humor even if it is of the self-generated variety.  And yet, there might be grains of truth in the humor, hopefully.  Forthwith, my own jesteresque nominations for new names for the "mainline" church.

*Progressive Church -- Yeah, that's a loaded term, implying that other churches are backward and regressive.  Still, there's something to be said for declaring yourself as forward-looking and not trapped in the past that wasn't nearly as glorious as we sometimes think it was.

*Clerical-Collar Church -- In honor of the tendency of (some, not all) ministers in these denominations to be identifiable by what they're wearing, whether the telltale collar (admittedly, not all do this, or not consistently) or by the vestments of various varieties found in pulpits here and there.  It seems fair: it's a kind of early-warning system for those who otherwise might get ambushed by the cool-kid megachurch types who strut around in jeans and cool t-shirts only to ambush you with God-talk.  You approach the person with the collar, you know what you're getting into.

*Liberated Church -- A spin on one of Merritt's preferences, Liberationist Church, but (to my taste) placing the credit not on the church but on the One who sets us free.  Maybe this isn't so tongue-in-cheek as others unless some hoary old "women's lib" punchlines get dragged out of the attic.

*The Faithful Remnant Church -- While other branches of the faith go off on wild goose chases and popularity-seeking experiments (and while some churches in those denominations can't wait to bail out), The Faithful Remnant remains, well, faithful or something like that.  Own your smallness!

*The "Not Quite Dead" Church -- My personal favorite.  Devotees of Monty Python and the Holy Grail will get the reference possibly.  No, not the "bring out your dead" sequence, but later, when Launcelot believes his trusty squire Concord mortally wounded.  Certainly the mainline denominations have been pronounced mortally wounded a time or two (sometimes with sorrow, sometimes with glee to be honest -- and often by our own as much as those of other persuasions).  Yet, like Eric Idle's character in the first 1:20 or so of this clip, even an arrow smack in the chest/gut doesn't seem to have finished us off just yet.  Hey, miracles do happen, right?  Eventually, Concord's going to have to get up and walk, though.  The "sitting around with an arrow in its chest church" doesn't really work.

*The Refuge Church -- Not very funny, but it is largely what the tradition has been for me.

*The Humbled Church -- Yeah, we had the power and influence, and to a large degree squandered it on Sunday blue laws and tall pointy steeples.  We tiptoed into the civil rights movement, sometimes kicking and screaming, and paid for it to some degree.  Our pride has been taken down more than a peg or two.  Own it.

*The "Friend Zone" Church -- When you've had your flings with the cool kids, the ones with the fancy buildings and snappy dressers and all that, and it has left you high and dry, the one who really cared for you most of all will still be there waiting.  Maybe not all that handsome/beautiful, but we'll be faithful and love you.  (This of course puts a major burden on mainline churches to live up to such a claim, but then we should be doing that anyway, right?)

OK, enough flailing attempts at humor.  I wonder if the discussion is only partly about rebranding, and much more about vision.  What do such churches, in their beat-up and kicked-around state, have to offer?  What is our hope?  These are not bad questions to ask, even if Eric Idle as Concord never becomes the mainline church's role model.

Philemon's Rant

Dammit, Paul, what are you doing to me?

Seriously, what the hell?

Even in prison you manage to be a pain.

How could you write that kind of letter to me, asking me to do something so out of line, so sure to draw attention...so...wrong?  

Do you know what people will think of me if I free this worthless slave?  After what he did?  

And if asking me to do this wasn't enough, you put it in a letter not just to me, but to Apphia and Archippus and to the whole church?  I know you know there are other slaveholders in the church that meets in this house.  Are you trying to turn all of us into outcasts?  And what are those other slaves going to say now that they've heard this letter from you?  How are they going to behave to their masters?

Paul, I am so angry with you I can't see straight.  How could you ask me, in front of a whole houseful of witnesses, to do something like this?  It's arrogant.  It's disruptive.  It's just completely out of order.  If you were here I'd probably try to choke some sense into you.  I am so angry with you because ... because ...

Because you're right.

Yes, I know you're in prison.  I never forget that.  You know that, don't you?  Do you really have that little faith in me?  

And yes, I know I owe you my own life.  I see what you did there, "not mentioning" that.  I remember what I was before.  If only God would let me forget.  

And yes, I can see that Onesimus is different.  That slave chapped me like no slave I've ever had.  If it weren't for what he took when he ran I'd frankly have been relieved to be rid of him.  Now?  Totally different.  Quiet, humble, gracious. And yet incredibly well-spoken on your behalf.  I don't even recognize him.  It's almost as if he has become an evangelist himself.  And yes, I can see that he really wants to go back to you and Timothy and Epaphras and the others.  I remember what it was like to be changed like that.  To know suddenly what it is to live, not just survive or get by.  Or maybe I didn't completely learn that before.

Last night I overheard Archippus speaking to Onesimus.  Trying to be quiet, but Archippus has a voice like a trumpet.  Obviously he was testing Onesimus.  "You know you could be killed, don't you?"  Onesimus's answer sounded so like you: "If I live, it is for the Lord.  If I die, it is for the Lord."  

You know I'm going to send him back.  You did know this, didn't you?  Did you at least have that much faith in me?  I believe he will be carrying some gifts from the congregation as well.  Receive them in good health.

And you had better come back here as soon as you are freed.  Do you know what kind of ruckus is likely to break out around here?  You better get here and help settle things down.  

I can't believe what I'm doing.  I cannot imagine what life is going to be like now.  

You'd better be here to help, Paul.  

A hymn, or the beginning of one, maybe?

In starting to peek ahead for a sermon on July 21, I couldn't help but be frustrated at the seeming lack of good hymns, particularly where the last verse of the gospel passage (Luke 10:38-42) was concerned.  So of course something happened that I thought I had dismissed from my life: I apparently wrote a hymn.  It's rather slight and perhaps a bit obvious, and I don't have an obvious tune to go with it (though it falls in common meter and there are a kajillion options).

Anyway, here it is, and make of it what you will.

This one thing only, loving God, plant firmly in my heart;

Amidst our work, to hear your word and choose the better part;

Lord, teach us when to labor on and when to stop and rest,

To hear your voice and, so restored, to serve you at our best.

O give this gift, our loving God, and this one grace please give:

To know one thing above all else and in this one thing live.

An experiment, just for the few faithful NoaFE readers...

A couple of years ago when I started this blog, one of my goals (not necessarily stated out loud) was to work myself away from the academic mode of writing and towards one that was more suitable for the task ahead of me in my newly-pursued vocation, where preaching would probably me my primary outlet for writing.  Preaching has its forms, to be sure, and its forms are not necessarily less rigorous than your basic academic paper or encyclopedia article, but they are different, and they call upon a different character of language.  Even as informal as I was in academic mode, that was still a different tack than preaching, and I wanted at the minimum to start to loosen up my writing from my accustomed academic habits and patterns and begin to adapt to something different. Feel free to pass your own judgment on my success or failure at that task to whatever degree you care.

At this point, given the limited circumstances of being a seminary student currently in a parish internship, I have a moderate to reasonable degree of confidence that I can write a sermon.  No, I'm not in the position of grinding one out every week, but it is a task for which I have the capability.  There will be stinkers along the way, to be sure, and I'll be stuck with no option but to throw it out there and trust the grace of God to be ready to make something useful or at least harmless out of it.

I seem to have mastered the art of the rant, in a few cases here and there.  I'm not entirely sure of the value of those things, but they do seem to touch a chord with the handful of folks who read them.  I guess there's some value in being willing or able to put a face on feelings that many folks can't find a way to make real and viable to others, and I'm not complaining, but it's not the kind of thing one can do all that often.  It has a limited shelf life, so to speak.  And frankly, I hope not to be in the position of needing to rant those health-related rants, or at least to do so less often.  Mind you, there are plenty of things in the world to rant about, but if I took on all of those I'm pretty sure I'd have jumped off a building by now, and there are plenty of other writers and bloggers out there who can tackle those subjects far more effectively than I.

The hymn writing urge is low at the moment.  I have put up one or two of those along the way here, but the news of needing chemo back in February put me in a state of rebellion, of sorts, in which I am not attuned to that particular frequency of creativity/devotion.  I can't truly say if it will return.

Still, I feel the need (urge? passion?  dare I speculate, calling?) to try something different.  There was one post, quite some time ago, I did toss a monologue up here.  The faithful few of you who actually read this blog are going to see a few more such things pop up here.

Of late I have been troubled/plagued/motivated by the challenge of identifying those things that stand in the way of full-fledged following of Christ.  I'm not talking about what keeps people from being a Christian; that's a different kettle of fish.  I am talking about people who identify themselves as Christians, who practice that devotion as a part of their everyday lives, who by every evidence are what we humans would call "good people" who truly do seek to follow, but there's that one thing, that one petty grievance, that one long-embedded hatred, that one fear, great or small, that stands in the way.  We can't, or won't, let go of it; we convince ourselves it is part of us, irreplaceable; we believe that it is in fact The Truth, the Real Christianity, perhaps; for whatever reason we choose it when we should be looking for that better thing to which Christ calls us.

What I am hoping is that by approaching the question via drama, I will be forced to approach the question with some level of empathy, at least some attempt to understand and feel for (if not agree with) the motivations behind that fear, or hatred, or refusal.  A sermon is, well, preachy; may not be beneficial for understanding.  Essays can get cold and clinical and, frankly, even more preachy than sermons in some places.  Maybe the drama device will help.  And yes, perhaps it becomes a means to identify that one thing (or things) in my own life.

I'm frankly a little scared of the idea.  This could go to some very dark places.  C. S. Lewis once acknowledged that the hardest thing about writing The Screwtape Letters was having to think, on a regular basis, like a devil.  Hopefully I'm not going into that level of darkness, but these characters aren't going to be living in sweetness and light necessarily.

Anyway, since this is drama and not documentary, I'm allowing myself a setup that may offer some freedom that a straightforward "realistic" monologue might not offer.  These little monologues will be offered to you, dear reader, under the title Sketches from the Heavensgate Boardinghouses.  Our characters will be just outside the Pearly Gates, a nice comfy familiar metaphor for our goal of full discipleship and union with the will of Christ.  I'm no Dante, folks, so don't look for anything that elaborate.  I'm not going to try for anything even so detailed as, say, Lewis's The Great Divorce.  It's a useful metaphor, that's all; I'm not trying to make any statements about the Afterlife or Heaven or the Holy City or whatever you choose to name (I've never been there, how would I know?).  As our folks approach those gates, they are confronted by that one thing; it is, literally in the context of the story, standing in the way.  Thus our protagonists are forced to confront, unavoidably and honestly, that one thing.  The boardinghouses are just a metaphorical place to get out of the heat.

Why am I doing this intro?  Partly to force myself forward.  A few of you will read it and maybe hold me accountable.  Partly to save myself the trouble of explaining myself when I put up the first one.  Partly as a means of laying out the plan in my head onto a slightly more durable medium.  I have some ideas, some of which will sound Law and Order-esque ("ripped from the headlines"), and others perhaps will be a little more obscure.  At any rate, now I'm committed.

To some degree I'm taking advantage of the fact that this isn't a highly trafficked blog.  In the grand scheme of things I'm pretty well anonymous, and there aren't large numbers of people waiting with baited breath for my next blog entry.  The pressure is a little less.  A faithful few readers I can trust to be supportive but honest is a better place for trying out this bizarre little experiment than a more heavily scrutinized medium.  If it doesn't work out very few people will know or care.  If it does work out, well, I'll burn that bridge when I get to it.

I do have other obligations, so this won't necessarily happen quickly.  But now that I've stuck my neck out I guess it has to happen.

A quickie: Looking ahead -- a "Christmas devotional" guide?

Something that first started to vex me last year, and seems to be returning this year: do any of you six or seven readers out there know of anyone or any organization or church (considering that churches aren't always that organized ;-) ) that puts out a "Christmas devotional guide" in the manner of the Advent devotional guides that many such groups produce and/or use?  By this I mean something targeted to the twelve-day orbit that begins on Christmas Day and continues up to Epiphany (yes, the "twelve days of Christmas").

Follow-up: were one to design or plan such a guide, what scriptures would one recommend for inclusion in such a guide?  The Nativity narratives from Luke and Matthew would be obvious choices, and John 1:14 seems needful; are there other texts you think should be included in such an orbit of devotional reading and contemplation around the Nativity event?  In what order should texts be arranged?

I don't know if this is something I am about to try and do or not.  On the one hand, my health issues may well interfere; on the other hand, presuming surgery is forthcoming, I may have a lot of time on my hands where getting around is unadvisable, so maybe it would be something useful to do once exams are past.  At any rate, beyond a naked plea for comments, I do think there is something to the idea of developing a long view of the Christmas season, particularly when one has spent much time and energy recovering or emphasizing a full Advent season.  So maybe it is something I want to develop.  And yes, I do really want your suggestions, by whatever means you care to make them.

The signpost

The death of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau earlier this week sent me looking for recordings and YouTube clips of the great singer of Lieder (for the uninitiated: a German word for "song," typically used in reference to art songs by composers such as Franz Schubert), like probably millions of other lovers of song.  Where I finally landed for sharing purposes was with this clip of Fischer-Dieskau singing "Der Wegweiser," the twentieth selection in the cycle Winterreise ("Winter's journey").

Winterreise, like Schubert's other great cycle Die schöne Mullerin ("the miller's beautiful daughter"), is developed from poems by Wilhelm Müller, a distinctly minor poet except for the fact that Schubert set so much of his poetry and gave it an immortality beyond its merits.  (One translation of the whole cycle is here, for what it's worth; you have to go down the page a ways to find "Der Wegweiser," which he translates as "the guide-post.")

Though much of the first half of the cycle is taken up with love found, lost, and renounced as the poet sets out on his winter's journey, by the time "Der Wegweiser" arrives the lost love is mostly forgotten; the journey has taken on its own relentless, implacable logic.  At this point in the cycle Schubert (who arranged the texts in an order not necessarily Müller's) confronts this drive.  In the translation by Gerald Mackworth-Young that is found in the trusty International Music Company edition of the cycle, the questioning nature of the poet's consideration is maintained through the first two stanzas (the translator of the version linked above abandons the interrogative found in Müller's second stanza).  "Why do I avoid the ways that other travellers tread...? ... .  What foolish longing drives me into deserted wastes?"  The final two stanzas answer without answering, at least not fully, as the poet acknowledges the signposts pointing to nice comfy towns along the way, but follows only the one signpost, "one road I must travel, a road along which none have returned."

How Schubert handles these verses, which could easily sound rather fatuous in a William-Shatner-"singing"-"MacArthur Park" manner, is where music becomes more than a cold bunch of notes.  I could play the program annotator for you, but not until you hear it for yourself: go click that link above, and the blog will be waiting for you when you get done.

Done?  Good.

Though the verses are of the same poetic structure, you'll note that Schubert gives each stanza a distinct and individual sonic physiognomy; from the minor-key first stanza to what at first seems a stereotypical brightening to major for the second, only to be diverted most harshly into a minor even more pensive and questioning than the first.  The third reverses that procedure, from minor to major via another expressive outburst.  The fourth stanza is a masterpiece of much out of little; the melody turns static, before a simple series of ascending gestures at unexpected melodic intervals generates one last moment, not of pensiveness or despair, but of something like resolve or even determination.  A truncated repeat of the final stanza closes the song.  In between these verses Schubert creates at least as much tension as in the stanzas, frequently by means of nothing more complicated than a repeated note, an insistent pattern of simple yet demanding straight eighth notes.

All in all, Schubert has invested the poem with the weight, the substance, the very sense of resignation and anguish and resolution that Müller could only suggest.  Others may have more regard for the poet's contribution, and I'll certainly agree that this is one of his better poems, but of its own substance it simply doesn't have that same power.  Schubert elevates the poem with his music, to a degree hard to explain or imagine.

Skilled musicians can do that.  Schubert did that for a lot of poets, some of whom (like Müller) needed more elevating than others (Goethe, for example, also set frequently by Schubert).  Add the vocal and interpretive prowess of a singer like Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and the result approaches transcendence.  Music can do that.

Sadly, music can also do the opposite.  Words that have power and substance and meaning can be rendered trite and inconsequential when shackled to trivial and hackneyed and petty music, or interpreted by a musician with, say, more concern for flash than substance.  I must confess that the church has had a bad historical habit of the latter, a habit which shows no signs of going away anytime soon.  Whether it is the overwrought rendering of the words of the Mass into a decidedly secular spectacle to please a princely patron or the factory-style churning out of popular songs designed more to push the listener's emotional tickle buttons than to challenge or provoke that listener to repent of something, or shut up and listen for God, or (God forbid!) to get up off his or her keister and go live like Christ, sacred words have a significant history of being dumbed down by the wrong music, or by the wrong musicians, or both.  A listener gets used to that, and pretty soon they don't -- nay, can't -- recognize its opposite when they hear it.

Clearly I never mastered "Der Wegweiser."  I got through it on my senior recital (I truly hope there are no copies of that floating around anywhere!), but that's as much as I'd allow.  Yet it sticks in my head to this day as a favorite example of what music can do to words.  I suppose one of my greatest fears about this fool's errand I'm on is how much I'll miss this particular power of music, and how much I'll be subjected to its opposite.

Thinking about The Creation with a poet's help

Spring term is all over but the shouting, which is as good a metaphorical image for exam-taking as any other I could come up with.  No more class meetings remain, and since all of the exams are take-home this term I have the liberty to spread out their writing at a pace and in an order that works for me.  It shall keep me plenty busy between now and next Friday, but it shall be done, no problem.

Today, though, was given to a small but interesting step on the way not only to a grade for this term, but a thing I shall have to accomplish as part of the ordination process.  At this approaching termination of the second semester of the theology sequence, it was time for me to put forth a brief, beginning theological statement of my own, and demonstrate some capacity to talk about it coherently and even explain it a little.  At this point it's just a small statement, only a page, and hardly complete, but it's a start, and a thing to build on.

In one page I was not going to cover every theological subject available, particularly after spending a good bit of time laying out a Christology.  To be blunt, I mostly ended up working on Christology, the church, and soteriology, with a few other topics addressed off to the side, so to speak.

I was aware in writing it that I wasn't getting to everything.  No talk about the Trinity, for example; I'll have to get to that before this goes to a presbytery committee.  And nothing on creation.  I realized after the fact that I should probably have squeezed something in on that, not because it's necessarily the most important topic to cover, but that some of my other statements were affected by an implicit set of ideas about God's creation, particularly of humanity, that I had not stated.

Thinking about creation, in a somewhat more relaxed way than in discussion of that statement today, allowed several other treatments of the subject to flit through my mind.  Obviously a few bits of Haydn's oratorio came to thought; I've always been a sucker for the chorus "The heavens are telling," and the "overture" to that work, what Haydn called "Representation of Chaos," was always to me one of the more striking things that composer ever did (and Haydn is a favorite of mine; I didn't stay in musicology long enough to develop that Haydn seminar I wanted to do.  By the by, that second link seems to include a pretty good chunk of oratorio for your listening, if you have the time.  Too bad about the artwork).

Ultimately, though, my mind settled more fixedly on another creative response to the Creative Event: the poem "The Creation," by James Weldon Johnson.  I don't remember the first time I heard or read that poem, but it has managed to retain a foothold in my mind for lo, these many years.  If you know the poem yourself you can probably imagine why; it's striking stuff.  On the principle that theologians* should occasionally listen to poets instead of merely critiquing them or finding fault with them, this felt like a time to let the poem do its thing again.

*I am in no wise claiming "professional" theologian status for myself.  Yes, part of the pastoral calling does involve being a kind of theologian-in-residence, you might say, but I do not conceive of myself ever being identified primarily as a theologian, or frankly ever getting paid to be primarily a theologian. By all means keep that disclaimer handy not only for this post, but pretty much everything that appears in this blog.  

Of course, the poem does an awful lot of anthropomorphizing of God.  The first thing that God does is look around and say, "I'm lonely."  I can imagine a lot of people--not just professional theologians, but professional and semi-professional scolds and self-appointed arbiters of theological purity, ruling such a response on the part of God to be anything from naïve to offensive to the majesty and sovereignty of God to out-and-out heretical.  I'm guessing Calvin would have had a stroke at the very suggestion.

On the other hand, is the idea that God would want some kind of fellowship so off-kilter?  Even thinking of God as a Triune Being, and imagining God surrounded by angels or cherubim and seraphim or whatever other heavenly creatures one might imagine: what kind of fellowship would that be?  Is it so beyond the realm of conception that God would want a different kind of fellowship; one freely given, not mandated or built irreversibly into the function of the being in question?  What could created humanity possibly provide for God that God did not already have in divine sufficiency, and that God might actually want?  It seems to me that freely given companionship is as reasonable and coherent an answer as any.  Your mileage may vary.

With God's resolution to make a world in place, Johnson unleashes a full arsenal of poetic description; this creation is a dynamic act.  God smiles so brightly and broadly as to unleash light on the world.  God rolls light around -- wonderful image -- to create the sun, and hurls the leftover light against the blackness to set the stars in the sky.  With light and darkness in place, God hurls the world into the space between.  It is vigorous, active language.  Things move -- and not just move, but move with power, with real force and even explosiveness.  Theologians would occasionally be well-advised not to let their theological language get so holy and splendid and systematic that the very holy stuff of which we speak is robbed of its rough power and dynamic energy.  God worked in Johnson's poem.  Things happened.  Even if one prefers the whole speaking-into-being literalism of Genesis, those things did not happen statically when God spoke.  Let it roar.

Johnson continues: God walks and treads the mountains and valleys into place, and spits the oceans into place (depending on how old I was at the time I may have gotten a good giggle out of that picture).  Still the dynamic pictures; still the vigor and energy and things moving and shaking.  Some of the images are gentle; lakes cuddle into their places, the rainbow curls around God's shoulder.  Some is sensory overload; the moment when living beings are called into being is an avalanche of imagery and a torrent of activity all in one nano-instant.

And after all that, God says, "I'm still lonely."

Time to make a man.

If God was a dynamic, working God in bringing creation into place, for the act of making this unique companion God truly rolls up the sleeves and breaks a sweat.  That word toiling may be somewhat lost to us, but it is a word that smells of sweat and labor and feels like aching muscles and weary joints.  The use of the "mammy" image is probably a game-ender for some of you; feel free to take it up with the very African-American Mr. Johnson in the afterlife, should the two of you meet.  Still, it introduces into this labor and toil just the touch of tenderness that makes the scene.  This is different, even from all that bountiful and exuberant and roisterous creation we've just seen; this is personal.  God toils and sweats over this last piece of creation as much, maybe more, as over all the rest.  The God Who stepped out into space, who flung the stars into the sky, who strode across the face of the earth--all these works of majesty, grandeur, splendor--now gets down on knees, rolls up sleeves, toils, sweats, mammys over this missing piece of the Creation.  This matters.

Johnson rounds off the poem with echoes of Genesis, as "man became a living soul.  Amen.  Amen."

Amen, indeed.  There are theological claims in here, one might say.  One doesn't have to buy them all to be moved by them, but if nothing else Johnson does introduce the note of God's extreme passion for this human creation.  Far from being obsessed with keeping Godself all pure and pristine, this God is down in the dust to make this new thing--well beyond a thing; this creature, this new living being--in God's own image.  Down and dirty, toiling.  Do we rightly appreciate this in Johnson's words?

And the one recurring theme, all through the poem just as through the Genesis story, God sees what is created and says, "That's good."  Yes, it is.

I am reminded, now matter how suicidal it sounds from here with exams to write, I have got to read more non-required stuff, listen to more music, see more paintings and sculpture, be with more people, lest I turn out to be a misshapen theologian.

Another hymn!

The hymn-writing muse struck again, which I suppose is good news.  The bad news is that it did so at 4:30 in the morning.

One of my classes this term, Spiritual Formation, has focused for most of the last half of the term on the Lord's Prayer, with readings from several different authors from N.T. Wright to Lauren Winner to John Dominic Crossan offering reflections and close readings of the prayer.  I guess under those circumstances, and with my hymn-antennae activated with last week's singing of a hymn of mine and the release of the new Presbyterian hymnal content list, some form of poetic-hymnic response was hardly surprising, if not quite inevitable.

So I will throw the four of you out there some raw meat.  Here 'tis, in its still fairly unpolished form.  It is part paraphrase and part trope of the prayer, with some metrical shoehorning as necessary.  It fits with tunes like GORDON ("My Jesus, I love thee") and FOUNDATION ("How firm a foundation"), but as the day goes on I find myself drawn to a pairing with ST. DENIO ("Immortal, invisible, God only wise").  Make of it what you will, comments welcome.

Our Father in heaven, all glorious above,

Your name be all-hallowed and honored with love.

Let Your kingdom come and Your will now be done,

Just as in your presence, here under Your sun.

Give us on this day just the bread that we need,

And let not this grace drive our hearts into greed.

Forgive us our sins as we also forgive,

And in this forgiving, Lord, teach us to live.

Do not lead our souls near temptation’s allure;

From evil’s great power Your deliv’rance be sure.

For Yours is the kingdom, the glory and power,

As long as we live, every day, every hour.

A hymn, and some thoughts on a new hymnal

The Presbyterian Committee on Congregational Song released its list of those hymns and tunes to be included in the forthcoming new hymnal for the Presbyterian Church (USA) and any others who want to use it.  (That list can be seen here.)  As a particular aficionado of hymns and the singing thereof, I was of course happy to get the chance to see and even download the list, though I won't pretend I've done anything like a thorough and thoughtful survey yet--I'm still in classes, after all.  Still, I can make a few close-to-home observations:

1) "Take Thou Our Minds, Dear Lord," about which I blogged some time back, appears to have survived to be sung from another book.  Yay!

2) When you get the hymnal in your church, plan to use the hymn "Look who gathers at Christ's table" immediately for communion.  Just do it.  You will thank me later.

3) I wish the table was sortable by heading (say, by author), because I'm curious about who the most-represented new hymnodists would be in this book.  I suspect John Bell and the Iona community show up well in that regard, though I am a little too preoccupied/lazy to go through and do the counting right now.  Taize songs would probably tally strongly, too, but there are at least a couple in the 1991 book, whereas I don't recall any Bell/Iona pieces in the current book.  I don't have one at hand so I can obviously be wrong here, so feel free to correct me without being a jerk about it. ;-)

4) Is it just me, or does there seem to be an odd influx of old nineteenth-century gospel hymnody into the new hymnal?  I'm not saying it's taking over, but there do seem to be several such pieces not in the current book that are going to give me bad flashbacks to my past in another denomination.

5) Is it fair to say by now that we can see what products of the "hymn explosion" of the 1970s have demonstrated staying power?  Fred Pratt Green remains quite well-represented in the new book, it appears from a too-quick scan.

6) Some years ago, when I was teaching at a school in south Florida and helping with a morning prayer service on that campus, I was looking for a somewhat topical hymn text for the service which followed shortly after the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.  Searching (I think) the message boards of the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada, I found a text suitable to the occasion by one Adam M. L. Tice.  Unable to find the tune he had recommended for that text, I searched out another to use and plugged the hymn into that service.  As requested, I sent the author a brief note mentioning its use, and received a very kind and gracious reply.  All of that is to say that it's nice to see a different hymn by that same author is to be found in the new hymnal.

With any luck I'll be able to spend more time with this list and have some more focused thoughts on it before the next hymnal committee is formed.  For me, though, the week's other hymn news hit a little closer to home, even if it doesn't amount even to a tenth of a teardrop in the Atlantic Ocean by comparison.  It was this week that I joined the ranks of "hymnodists," so to speak--not in the sense of writing a hymn, but in actually having it sung by other people.

Dabbling in hymn-writing seems to have been an odd but pleasant side effect of the longer-term process that set me on this fool's errand.  My first effort actually dates back much further (and shall never see the light of day), but in the course of struggling over this whole change of my life and vocation a small number of hymn texts found their way into my psyche and into Word documents.  I won't pretend that many of them are of tremendous quality.  There is a Psalm 97 paraphrase that might be okay, and a hymn on the upper-room events of Maundy Thursday that might be workable.  The one which most pleased me, though, was a little text that actually came from a rather angry place, about the time Arizona started flogging its anti-immigrant law.  The furor surrounding that event put me in mind of Leviticus 19: 33-34, and the words formed themselves with frightening efficiency.  I tucked the result away, with a handful of possible hymn tunes attached, wondering what occasion might ever prove suitable, if any.

A few weeks ago, our New Testament class was offered the opportunity to participate in the planning of this past Wednesday's chapel, to be led by our professor, and as usual I jumped at the chance.  In the initial layout of plans for that chapel our professor indicated he would be giving his homily on verses from Romans, speaking to the idea of living in community, welcoming one another "without borders," as the eventual title of the homily would put it.  Perhaps surprisingly it took me some time to remember my own little hymn and to guess that this might be an opportunity to try it out, if the others were willing.  They were, and it went into the service.

When I first began studying music, I majored in voice, which meant I had to perform in front of others, obviously.  As I shifted into academia I obviously had to lecture in front of an awful lot of college and university classes, as well as give research papers in numerous locales in the United States, Canada, England and Ireland.  Getting up in front of people and speaking (sometimes my own writing) or singing (stuff written by other people) was, in other words, fairly common, though in some cases still nervousness-inducing.  It's been a long time, though, since I've been as nervous as I was in the couple of days leading up to Wednesday's chapel.  In a way the release of the hymn list on Monday may have heightened my nerves a bit, if only by reminding me that there are plenty of people out there who are quite good at writing hymns, and what makes me so arrogant as to think I had anything so useful to offer?  (I am not the most secure person, folks.)  Still, it was too late to back out.  It was printed in the service order and everything.  If I had hoped to escape notice even that could not be helped, since John Carroll pointed out my authorship of the hymn before we sang it.

So we sang it.  And it went well, as far as I can tell.  It sang pretty well, I believe (I did manage to pair it with a fairly familiar and singable tune), and at least some people responded to it positively.  So, somewhat emboldened, I will put it out here for others to see.  It's not under copyright or restricted or anything, so make of it what you will, and if you have any use for it in a worship service or other setting feel free to do so (all I ask is that you let me know, perhaps in a comment below).

There are several tunes with which this text can work; LAND OF REST (found in the current Presbyterian Hymnal at #522) was the one used this week, and it seems pretty suitable to me.

Receive the stranger in your midst with welcome and with grace;

For you are strangers in this world, and living out of place.

The world may splinter and divide by race or creed or clan,

But there are no dividing lines within God’s loving plan.

There are no aliens in Christ’s eyes, exempt from God’s full love;

But all are children of our God on earth just as above.

Receive the stranger in your midst as Christ has welcomed you,

And be Christ’s welcome in this world in all you say and do.

That Saturday

This is an odd day in the Christian calendar.  Tomorrow is obviously the big day.  The past two days, Manudy Thursday and Good Friday, have very clear places in the Christian narrative, even if large swaths of American Christendom choose to blow them off.  The previous Sunday, Palm Sunday, can even be claimed to initiate a whole week that can, depending on how one reads or manipulates the Gospels, be assigned particular places in the progress from palms and hosannas to crucifixion and then resurrection.

But Saturday?  It sits there, quietly, resisting all attempts at narrative.  Presumably Seventh-Day Adventists are celebrating Easter today.  I would guess that some megachurches have been celebrating Easter since Friday night, and are probably throwing at least two Easter "Sunday" services today.  On the flip side, some churches in the liturgical tradition will observe an Easter vigil starting sometime late this evening, possibly well into the night, marking the overnight/early morning act of resurrection as well as the sleepy human body can manage.

All of the above being true, the point still holds that this particular day itself is a bit of a void.  What does one do?  Keep Good Friday's attitude of sober remembrance, or jump ahead to Easter's celebration?

It could be worse, though.  Imagine if you can what it must have been to be a Christ-follower on that Saturday.

(We presume based on Acts that the word "Christian" did not yet exist, so let's try to avoid that.)

We might actually guess, counter-intuitively, that those who were the serious Christ-followers may actually have not given up much.  The fishermen in the bunch gave up their business, Matthew probably couldn't go back to his tax-collector gig.  Most of the other disciples proper, well, we don't know what they were doing before the hit the road with Jesus.  It's entirely possible that one of the reasons it was appealing to follow this traveling rabbi was that there wasn't really much to keep them where they were.

It might just be that the ones who gave up the most to follow Jesus were the group of women identified at various times as being supporters or part of the group or somehow attached.  It could have been bad for a woman's reputation, so to speak.  Maybe even shameful.

Of course, that day it could have been regarded as shameful for any of the followers.  With your leader hanging on that cross for all Jerusalem to see, it was hard to escape the ultimate and awful end of your teacher, your hopes, your aspirations.  Everything you had believed about this Jesus, every one of his amazing deeds, his mind-blowing teaching, all of that...the Romans had stomped on it all most ruthlessly.  What did you have left?

It was a Sabbath, but how could you observe the Sabbath?  How could you show your face at all, to anyone?

Since the Gospels don't seem to suggest that the disciples were remembering all those things Jesus had said about rising again in three days, we can only guess that this despairing, hopeless, possibly shamed and humiliated mindset is where Jesus's followers were on that day.  Whether hiding in an upper room, or off wherever Thomas decided to wander off to, or doing who knows what, I don't know if we modern Christ-followers can possibly comprehend the depths to which the hearts and minds of these first followers had sunk in the hours since the crucifixion.  And so far as they knew, they would go to sleep, and they would wake up, and (if the authorities hadn't showed up to haul them off to prison or worse) would live through the exact same kind of day.  Some of the women apparently planned to go take care of the body, but what else?  What could one do tomorrow that was any different?

So we can only guess that these followers went to sleep that day, so to speak, expecting the day after the Sabbath to be just like this awful, dark, hopeless Sabbath.

It wasn't, thank God.