Broke the blender pureeing the great northern beans with spinach. Fortunately I was just about done when the blender cut out. Unfortunately I have no leads on economical repair options, a more reliable model, or a workable manual-powered option under $90.
Conked out early last night, woke 1AM to 2 or 3AM, was a little concerned I wouldn't make church... AGAIN... but I woke before the alarm, coffee+vitamins, vacuumed up another cat5 roach (in the enormous tub I never use) and got shaved and showered and dressed in plenty of time. I probably could have ducked in McD for an egg mcmuffin en route but I decided against it. My former attorney wasn't there. My friend Bob was.
Today's homily was on the topic of prayer - the tradition of teachers to teach their disciples a prayer, hence Jesus's disciples saying hey, John The Baptist taught his followers to pray, so how's about you teach us to pray? And thus Jesus gave them/us The Lord's Prayer, ala Matthew 6:9-13 (the "liturgical" version) and Luke 11:1-4. Other teachers have since given other respectable prayers. The preacher cited a traditional Irish/Gaelic blessing ("May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back") and I think he attributed it erroneously to St. Francis of Assisi; and the Serenity Prayer of Reinhold Niebuhr. (Evidently Fr. Charles studied under Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan.)
Seems I always find something that rubs me wrong with certain pastors' sermons. In this case I took issue with a snipe at "other churches" anthems, specifically citing Charles Austin Miles' In the Garden: "He walks with me / He talks with me / And He tells me I am his own"... concluding dismissively, "That's not our God". And in reiteration, recounting Jane Russell's characterization of God as "a living doll". "That's not the God of the Bible!"
Well you know what? I'm very leery of "the God of the Bible"! The OT concept of God is harsh, petty, at best capricious. A God-concept that rubber-stamps genocide and slavery. A God-concept beloved of the Pharisees as surely as it was contrary to Jesus. By the time we receive the epistolary New Testament, you cannot reconcile the one "God of the Bible" (OT rape-and-pillage) with "the other God" of the Bible (NT mercy-and-redemption). One of those concepts is wrong. Guess which one I think is wrong.
If we are truly to believe that God incarnated in the person of Jesus, then hey wait a minute, yes God-in-the-person-of-Jesus DID walk with us, DID talk with us, and DID tell us that we are His own! I'm all for "letting God be God"... but it was God-in-Jesus, not me, who saw fit to tear away the curtain and reveal His humanity. Are we not "made in His image"? And since God-the-Father is not of flesh and blood, then what else can it mean to be "in His image" than to be psychologically human - comforted, nourished and uplifted by affection and companionship? Why else did he create us, if not to share, and share in His abounding love? And what kind of love says "don't dare look at Me, don't presume to touch Me, I will not walk or talk with you and you are not My own"? 1 John 4:16 tells us "God is love". Is God not love? Or would you point to the ultraviolet extreme of the spectrum of love and say "well okay, God can be love... but He has to stay in this range where coincidentally we cannot actually perceive Him with our raw human senses!"
That's a very old-school Jewish and coincidentally Muslim concept of God: too pure and rarified and perfect to actually connect with. That way lieth resentment and apostasy. It's even a very Puritan Christian concept of God. Hellfirey. Witch-hunt-y. Inquisition-y. Enslave-y. Not merciful, not good-neighborly, still more the worst of humanity than the best.
So if Jane Russell in 1957's hip vernacular attested that God is "a living doll", I think we can with full intellectual integrity understand that she was not saying He is a china doll, a kewpie doll, a Polly Pocket, Barbie and Ken or Raggedy Anne and Andy doll. He is a "doll" in that He is faithful, abundant, and true - all the things that could not be said of the agents, producers, directors, sycophants and pimps of 1950s Hollywood society that Russell would have been immersed in.
The really funny thing now that I'm investigating the source material (Russell's quote and the origin of In the Garden is just how OLD these bones of contention are. In the Garden was written in 1912. Over 100 years ago! It was already popular from circulation in American evangelical culture, when it was recorded in 1950 by Rogers and Evans, '58 by Perry Como, and '67 by Elvis Presley. Like, before I was born. Older than the average American.
And this preacher was a guy who was involved early in his career in the ecumenical movement. So much for seeking common ground;