Christmas Light

On this end of the blue sphere
December is the time when
big ball of light’s angle and duration
are fading fast and furious
as if it just might fizzle out for good.

Fine time indeed to light
an additional candle each Sunday,
reminding ourselves of the in-the-flesh
arrival of the very self of God in
the gospel birth of Bethlehem babe.

As you wend your way through
another holiday season this year,
adding lights at every turn,
may you find it in your heart and mind
to keep them burning year-round.

If the neighbors and their association
keep you from doing it literally,
I hope you’ll still conspire to
keep them burning in your life.
Every month needs Christmas light!

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Genuine Hope

Quote from the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of “Weavings”:
“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom.” (Mark 4:11) In his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung comments that the world will ask you who you are, and if you do not have an answer the world will give you one. Jung understands that the world is impatient with mystery because mystery lies beyond the world’s control. Faced with true mystery, the world will impose answers or contrive confusion, neither of which can bear the weight of genuine hope. Children of God, on the other hand, are stewards of mystery. We dwell gently with it, not so much to search for answers as to be transformed by questions that open onto eternity. We embrace a lifelong movement from immersion in the opaque mystifications of the world to immersion in the luminous mystery of God’s reign. (Written by John S. Mogabgab, in “Editors Introduction.”)

Advent—that season of preparation for the arrival of God’s Christmas gift—is about remembering that our task is to “bear genuine hope.” We don’t have to figure out the mystery of Christmas in order to bear genuine hope. In fact, many would argue that insistence on solving the mystery is precisely what prevents many in the church from finding hope at all. We are better detectives than we are witnesses.

As witnesses, our egos and our intellects wish for us to have seen and understood more than we do. In the “court of faith” the divine defense attorney would certainly object to the conjecture and conclusions toward which we jump. It is very hard for us to say, “I can’t explain how it works, and I haven’t seen it all. All I know is that the promise has been made, the gift given, and nothing else will ever be the same.” Most of the time, we are more comfortable solving faith than we are living it.

“Genuine hope” is not built on understanding and reasonable conclusions. It comes from wide-eyed encounters with divine mystery, often-desperate confidence in future promises, and a willingness to take one step at a time into darkness, before light appears. It is neither for the faint-hearted nor the self-controlled. It lights in the palm of those whose hands dare to remain open.

P.S. The bluebird photo is from a friend, Carole Knight; a photo of "Little Missy" from last spring.

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Music and God

Music is an essential part of most faith communities’ worship; whether it is generated by the human voice alone, a single instrument like piano or organ, or a plethoric blend of many instruments and musicians. Though form, instrumentation, and execution may be the single issue around which the most passionate worship arguments erupt, we can all generally agree that worship wouldn’t be the same without some form of music.

Music even transcends the limitations of human language’s barrier. The young shepherd, David, soothed the angry and deranged psyche of King Saul, if only for a while, with his instrumental interludes. History records more than one instance where, at Christmas, warring troops laid down their weapons and picked up their instruments in order to share their common musical bond. If the concert had continued, perhaps the conflict would have had no choice but to cease.

I've thought, more and more over the years, that music is a near-perfect metaphor for Godness, and one of the most valuable tools in expanding the human-divine conduit. Think about it. Music has a nearly-unlimited variety of combinations, including the range beyond human perception where we have to rely on our animal friends for recognition & interpretation. The vilest dis-chord can, through the ear and hands of skilled composer and musician, be resolved miraculously into breathtaking and melodious finale.

I could go on, but I suspect that trained musicians could do so more effectively, as all I really understand is that the pitch goes up & down to match the rise & fall of the differently shaded and appendaged little circles on the staff. Maybe that's another one of music's miracles - that a simpleton like me can appreciate & absorb so much from it despite my complete ignorance of its intricacies.

Play on! Sing on! God on!

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Dog

O, the emotional fire we log,
when into our lives we weave a dog.
Frontwards, backwards, from dog to God,
we learned of love on this path we trod.

Unconditional grace outpoured;
lives of abundant joy restored.
Learning to share, give, sit, and wait
from our dog’s life we extrapolate.

Life’s limits often catch us unaware,
grief’s pall spreads pain everywhere.
Telling the story, reliving the years,
helps to assuage the flowing tears.

Thanks be to God for the time we had;
short as it was, it made us glad.
Give us the courage to see good greater,
and do it again, sooner not later.

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

Mosaic Faith

(Originally published in First Presbyterian Church Fayetteville TN’s P&P on March 19, 2002, which means you’ll need a time machine to actually visit the store and table described below.)

In a gift shop on the square (Grapevine Art & Glass), there is a unique table that fascinates me. Underneath its exterior, the table is of good quality, though fairly ordinary. It is what Sue Tiekling—the artist—has done with the top of it that makes it unique.

In a kind of mosaic style, Sue has taken broken pieces of Noritake china and formed a thing of beauty. The tabletop’s border consists of inlaid pieces from the gold edging of the plates. In the center, she has taken broken pieces from the middle of the plates and formed beautiful mosaic patterns. Each piece shows a fragment of the china plate’s original design, but together, they form a new design all their own.

I’m not working on commission, either for the Grapevine or for Mrs. Tielking, but I would recommend going to see it, if for no other reason than the fact that my description of the table is very inadequate. When you look at it, I want you to think about your life. Think about how your life could be compared to that table. Underneath it all, most of us live ordinary lives. But often, unbeknownst to us, God is at work doing extraordinary things in and through us that we do not immediately recognize.

When the fine china dreams that we have built for ourselves are cracked and broken by events beyond our control—when life’s chaos swirls around us and shatters the patterns around which we’ve built our lives—God can take the broken pieces and rework them into a mosaic that has a beauty and a function beyond what we ever dreamed. It won’t be the same plate, or the same dream, but it can become a beautiful work of art nonetheless.

Sometimes I think we hinder God’s transformative work by holding on to the broken pieces of our lives in a futile attempt to clumsily reconstruct our dreams, making a glue-covered mess that has no purpose or usefulness. Other times we quickly and thoughtlessly jettison the broken pieces, sure that they will never be useful again. All the while, God is waiting for us to let go of them, or may even have to salvage them from the trash, so that we can be shown the path to “a more excellent way.”

Check your life’s china dream cabinet to see if there are some broken pieces that you can begin to let go of. Look through your life’s garbage, in search of discarded and broken dreams to see if they might be offered up to the power and transcendent grace of God. You never know when and how the beauty of Noritake dreams might easter-up from our brokenness.

© 2002 Todd Jenkins

Week Found

I found a week twice this week
but didn’t know what to do with it.
I didn’t really find a week,
but it sure felt like it,
when I believed on two separate occasions
that scheduled events and due dates had arrived,
only to find out a short time later that
I had a week’s reprieve for them both.

When I lose a week,
which happens much more often,
I sometimes wonder where it went.
I like to imagine that
I was abducted by aliens or some other
equally-dramatic scenario,
so that I don’t have to
take personal responsibility
for my calendar bulging like a three-day udder.

But when I find one,
which I can only remember happening recently,
what myth will help me explain this phenomenon?
What can I claim as the cause for a week found?

I know I didn’t do anything special
to deserve this bonus;
didn’t somehow save up some
chronographic karma
that suddenly paid dividends.

What will I do with this found week?
Is it like found money—
do I have a choice of splurging with it
or investing it wisely?
What would you do with a found week?

I ended up using it much like any other week,
but I think I enjoyed it a little more;
savored its days, hours, minutes more deliciously,
simply because I realized that,
if only in my mind and for a brief while,
I nearly lost it before I ever had a chance to taste it.

Cheers to a found week,
to the grace of living all over again,
even if it’s really only once,
a week that almost disappeared!

© 2010 Todd Jenkins

We Are Falcons!

We are Falcons
from Lincoln County High!
We’ll always be Falcons
until the day we die!

When the sun goes down,
and the air is chilled,
we strap it on & buckle up
as the Pit is filled!

From the first kick-off
‘til the final whistle blows,
our hard work and
our teamwork shows!

Falcon fever pitch,
rising higher and higher!
We’ll rock your world!
We’ll burn you like fire!

We let our game be
the walk that we walk!
We let the score be
the smack that we talk!

We'll knock you on your butt!
We'll leave you in the dust!
When the final whistle blows,
you will respect us!

We are Falcons
from Lincoln County High!
We’ll always be Falcons
until the day we die!