Pentecost 4 (Luke 8:26-39) Being a Dad

 4 Pentecost

Being a Dad

Luke 8:26-39

June 20, 2010

 

I was 11 and my brother 10.  My little sister 6.  We were spending the summer in Superior Wisconsin where my Dad was attending Summer school to get his master’s in Art.  My mom worked nights as a nurse to help pay our bills while dad was in school.  Dad would take us to the art studio so he could work on his projects.  One night he set us up in the corner with oil paints while he worked on a painting.  2 and ½ hours we entertained ourselves but when dad came to get us we had paint every where.  He began to chastise us as he bathed us in mineral spirits to get the paint off.  When we were all back in the car he said, let go get ice cream at Bridgeman’s I shouldn’t complain you guys were good for hours so what if you smell like a turpentine rag and off we went for our treat.

I was reminded of that memory the other day as I had 3 of the kids at church with me for the day while Heidi ran Adam to soccer games on the west side of Madison.  I took the kids to get an Ice cream at the end of a long day because even though I was wiped out from balancing work and family they were really very well behaved.

Being a spiritual and physical father is immensely important to me.  I reflected on the God touches this week where the face of God was peeking through.  In the Dance recital where my girls danced but also watching Donna Davis at age 72 after 55 years of teaching dance tap dance with her 8^th graders.  Driving with a funeral director and having him thankful for having someone willing to be in challenging situation with families.  Being with a young family as the mourn the loss of their new born daughter.  A lady told me after the service of the infant that her daughter who passed away at age 7 came to the women’s brother who was a doctor but was not a believer in God because a minister had told him as a boy that because he had polio he must have done something terrible to make God mad.  That little girl appeared to her uncle at 3:24 the minute she died and woke him up and he heard her voice in a dream say tell mom I know she is too busy to hear me but I am in heaven, I went straight to heaven and I am ok.  The uncle’s a believe now.

Our lives are complicated and messy.  Fatherhood is messy.  Often we fall and come up short trying to inspire and teach our children.  But the goal of Dad’s is not found in perfection but in consistency and faithfulness.  My Dad often didn’t understand me but I never once doubted how much He loved me.  God is like that.  God never stops trying to show us just how much he loves us. 

I wonder what God likes about being a Dad?  We call God our father and I have no doubt God see us as His children but I wonder if God see GOD’S self as a Dad?

I wonder what God feels or thinks when the man possessed by a legion 600 demons is made whole.  I wonder what God thinks when all the town worries about is the loss of property and is so overwhelmed that they ask him to leave.

God our Father calls to us on father’s day and says.  I love you and I am proud of you.  We pray for our Father’s this day and in our imperfect and busy lives remember that God is constantly creating touches in our lives to let us know How much God cares and how real His love really is.  Happy father’s day.   May you see God in many wonders this week.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen

July 5th Sunshine Supper

Good Shepherd is co-hosting sunshine supper at the Masonic Logde on July 5th from 4:30-7pm.  We need afew more volenteers and 4 more gals of mile and three more watermelons sliced up.  Sign up at church in the Narthex or call Fr.  Mike 354 2866.  God bless and have a great week

Pentecost 5 (2Kings 2:1-2,6-14/LK 9:51-62) Leaving it all behind

5 Pentecost

Leaving it all behind

June 27, 2010

hungry

h Hungry I come to You
For I know You satisfy
I am empty but I know
Your love does not run dry

So I wait for You
So I wait for You

I’m falling on my knees
Offering all of me
Jesus You’re all
This heart is living for

Broken I run to You
For Your arms are open wide
I am weary but I know Your touch
Restores my life

So I wait for You
So I wait for You

I’m falling
I’m falling for You
Jesus You’re all
This heart is living for

 

 When we try in good faith to believe

In materialism, in the exclusive reality of

The physical, we are asking ourselves to

step aside; we are disavowing the very

realm where we exist and where all

things precious are kept—the realm of

emotion and conscience; of memory and

intention and sensation.

—John Updike.

• • •

The past is really almost as much a

work of the imagination as the future.

—Jessamyn West.

• • •

It’s somewhat daunting to reflect

that Hell is—possibly—the place where

you are stuck in your own personal

narrative for ever, and Heaven is—

possibly—the place where you can ditch

it, and take up wisdom instead.  Margret Atwood Negotiating with the dead

 

There are two things to take notice of in the reading today.  One is a question, what is God asking of us in these reading especially in the Gospel?  The other is what does God want us to know.

What I think God wants us to know is that if we are putting our trust in him we will never be alone.  Is that not one of our greatest fears?  People don’t want to be alone in their greatest times of strive especially at the time of death.  Elijah laments being the only faithful person left in Israel and God sends him Elisha the time in the history of the Old Testament that a prophet gets to name his successor.  Elijah who fears being alone in his quest for God is given a companion who is so faithful to him that he won’t leave him even to the point of his being whisked off in a flaming chariot.

The Question then is what does God ask of us?  Is God saying I want you to have nothing so you can concentrate only on my love?  Kind of I think but again I don’t think God cares about what you carry outside your heart.  God cares about your heart and soul.   Is God saying you can’t bury your dad or have friends or earthly responsibilities?  I don’t think so I think God is saying clearly what gets in your way needs to go.  Are you Hungry for me?  Am I what your heart is thirsting for?  What is your god?  If I am your God and I am a jealous God I have to have your heart.

I thought about the farmers and the plowed field you can’t look back or you don’t plow a straight furrow, a looking back gives you crooked lines.  Today the famers have GPS on their tractors the satellite helps them plow perfectly straight furrows without looking backwards or forwards  GPS helps them live in the now.  What’s GPS stand for?  You might think Global positioning system.  I think it should stand for God’s plan of Salvation.  That’s where the rubber meets the road.  The question can be asked many ways but it boils down to this.  Who owns your heart?  What does your heart hunger for?  Stuff?  People?  Or God?  If your heart hungers for God then the stuff and the people will be given as you need it.  If anything else rules your heart then God has no room.  This is not a one and done event it is a daily, moment to moment and commitments to consistently pay attention to God and our heart and the connection between the two because our lives like our gardens grow weeds faster even they grow wheat.   May God find you waiting, hungry, and God holding your hearts key?

In the name of God

A tribute to Father’s for Father’s day June 20th, 2010

A tribute to a father from his daughter on father’s day.  The youngest daughter of Retired Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu reflects on her father.

I have only had one father. For most of my life I had neither the lens nor the critical distance to see my father. When people asked, “What’s it like being Desmond Tutu’s daughter?” I really had no answer. I didn’t know.

Now there is Joe, my husband. For 13 years I have watched him navigate the joys, woes and worries of fatherhood. I have seen him delight in our girls. I have seen him goaded into ire by the children’s attitudes or antics. I’ve seen him poised on the edge of despair. I have seen him wrestle with the complicated emotions that attend a father’s love. I have seen him struggle to do the right thing. I have seen that, in some ways, it is the child who makes the father, even as I know that the father shapes the child. Seeing Joe with our girls has helped me see who and how my father has been with me.

My earliest vivid memory is that my father was proud of me. It’s just a fragment of memory. I must have been three or four years old. I was kneeling on a padded chair, my arms supported by a desk. I remember the roughness of the seat fabric under my knees. My father and an uncle were coaching me through the labor of writing my name. I remember my father’s delighted pride in my accomplishment.

He was always ready with delight and pride, perhaps because I am the youngest of four, and because by the time I came along he had relaxed into parenting. My brother and sisters had filed smooth some of the rougher edges of his fathering. And my father was easy with me. My mother says that he was so easy with me that she knew I would be their last child.

My father took me seriously. When I watch Joe settle down to listen to the complicated details of our teenager’s day, there is an expression I remember from my father’s face. When I see Joe’s grave attention to the stories our four-year-old constructs, I glimpse something I saw in my father before. My heart remembers how important it was to be important enough to make my dad pause and listen. I remember feeling myself grow 10 inches taller as I saw my father pause for intrigued thought before he could respond to my comments and queries.

The high school I attended was a multi-ethnic boarding school. I had friends of many faiths. I knew enough to know that we believed differently but, with my Muslim and Jewish friends, I seemed to get lost on the way to defending my faith. I don’t remember my questions or the shape of my confusion. I don’t even really remember asking my father to explain. I do remember the long, thoughtful letter that came in response, not the words but the tone. I felt invited into a deeper understanding of my faith as an invitation to a beautiful place.

Later, much later, when I began to discern a call to ordained ministry, it seemed that he faced into a cascade. Delight and pride met that grave thoughtfulness. He took this oh-so-seriously, too. He did what he always does: he prayed. It was just a short, simple prayer that reached out to me across the miles. I was in Massachusetts clutching my phone; he was at home in South Africa grasping this new piece of news.

If he wasn’t my father, he might have been my pastor, marking my transitions. He baptized me. He married Joe and me. He baptized our adorable girls. He preached when I was ordained deacon. He anointed my palms with oil and blessed me into the priesthood. He knelt to receive my first priestly blessing.

But he is not my pastor; he is my father.

I am proud of my father. It is not for the awards and the accolades that I am proud of him. I am proud of him for his courage. I am proud of him for his integrity. Courage speaks truth to power. But the courageous usually speak on behalf of themselves or of their own communities. Integrity speaks the uncomfortable truth to the beloved power with love. My father speaks as the voice of the voiceless. No matter who they are and no matter where they live. Yet even his integrity has laughter in it. He is not the joyless prophet haranguing a nation. Often the bitter medicine of his indignation slides past our guard with the sweet sound of our own delighted laughter.

I take my father seriously. I delight in his agile mind. He has read a library. He has seen the world. He has spoken with the powerful and the powerless. He has written books. He has preached. He has prayed. When I was in high school he was invited to speak at my school. I cowered in the back of the assembly hall so I could make my escape if he was too painfully embarrassing. He was not. Now I sit on the edge of my seat listening to him say things that I have heard him say before. Each time it is as though I am hearing for the first time. Each time I walk away with my spirit renewed.

I love my father. I love the father whose love has shaped me. And I love the father of my children whose love shapes me now.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy. Happy Father’s Day, Joe.

Good Shepherd’s Schwan’s sale pick up is this Saturday 6/19

Good Shepherd’s Schwan’s sale pick up is this Saturday 6/19 from 10am until 2pm.  Please pick up your orders or stop by and buy something off the truck and Good shepherd will get 20% of your order or what you buy.  Thanks for your support and help.  God bless,  Fr.  Mike

Happy 90th Birthday Harriet Davison

Harriet Davison one of our founding members is 90 years old today, June 2nd.  Happy Birthday Harriet, God bless your day and your year.