So This is Christmas...

And what have you done? Another year over...blah, blah, blah. Um, Yoko, could you take the microphone away from him?

It's not quite as lyrical as John Lennon's, but here is a New Year's Eve prayer for thee and thine as well as me and mine:

Giving honor to what is past, we thank you God for the completion you bring.
Giving hope to what lies ahead, we thank you God for each new work you begin.

May we in the next year:

• Love without care for risk
• Drink deeply from the cup of life
• Know sorrow only because we have lived & loved well

What, readers, would you add to my prayer for 2007?

The Boys Go to Galveston

The Brother and I have been planning a fishing trip for about three weeks. We were going to take the Bolivar Ferry over to Crystal Beach and camp last night and surf fish. That got rained out.

So, a friend’s bay house came to the rescue. We packed a bag and headed down to Bayou Vista for a 24-hr all-male bonding time.

• We took in A Night at the Museum. You should wait for video, but worth it to hear Owen Wilson say, “I can’t quit you.”


• I put him on a diet of unlimited junk-food. One bag of Dorito’s, a half pound of sunflower seeds, a king-size Hershey bar, a huge bag of movie popcorn, two Coke’s (and half of my Diet Dew and Diet Coke), a Salt Grass sirloin and salad, and half of a brownie sundae later he said, “I’m full.”


• We rode the Bolivar Ferry anyway – at 10pm in a horrible thunderstorm. It was cool to stand on the observation deck in the howling wind and rain. We got soaked, hurried back to “Dora the Explorer,” and u-turned it on Bolivar Peninsula to catch the same ferry back to Galveston. We braved the storm again with laughter and a “dispute” over whose hair got the wettest.


• Finally dried off and in bed back at the bay house, we watched Sea Biscuit and Jackie Chan’s First Strike until 3am.


• The Brother souvenir shopped in the morning and we took this photo at the hurricane commemoration statue on the sea wall. Then it was Shipley’s donuts and kolaches for breakfast while he drank straight from the 2-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper.

We talked about everything and nothing, and he said “Thanks for the trip, Dad” more times than I can count. He is growing into a young man right before my eyes. Every time I blink he’s grown another inch, hit another single, learned a new word, laughed too many times that I missed. His room is messy, he “forgets” to brush his teeth, and sometimes he’s a pain to the Two Sisters. He is a normal 9 year old.

I thank God for his bright blue eyes, his inquisitive mind, and his healthy body. And his messy room. He has a gentle spirit, a need to be building or drawing something, and an eye for detail. All of these are traits that will serve him well in adulthood. They’re also things I’d wish to instill in him as a man.

It was about 5 am when the king size bed we shared became a little too big for him. He nestled against me in his sleep and said, “Dad, you’re warm.” Ahhh, for the moment, he's still a boy.

Lord, help me wisely use these days as a father to a young boy. I have some important work to do.

The Kennedy's are Upstairs

The Three Siblings are all upstairs in the Oldest Sister's room. They're not there by force, and they're not fighting. They've actually been upstairs for almost twenty minutes and there's been no screaming. I can't verify they're dancing up there, but the light fixtures down here bear witness to my surmisal.

Mark it down. Cats are sleeping with dogs and the lambs with the lions. The four horsemen of the apocolypse are coming down the street. The Three Siblings are getting along, if but for a beautiful moment. As John Mayer's Waiting on the World to Change was blaring down the stairs it was a melodious gift to hear them, 15, 9, and 5, all sing/shouting,

One day our generation
Is gonna rule the population
So we keep on waiting,
Waiting on the world to change.

I don't think they understood what they were singing I'm pretty sure I've got some parenting left to do before I turn them loose on the world.

Getting "It" Back in Steamboat Springs

A longer post than normal.
I met James the ski instructor on Sunday, December 17. I’d put him at 43, give or take a few years. I based that on his story not on his looks because the dry Colorado air made him seem more like 55. Along with Traci and the Oldest Sister, I signed up for a boarding lesson and wound up in James’ Level 1 class.

He wasn’t the greatest teacher because he sometimes gave us contradictory instructions and spent a little too much time on the “philosophy” of snowboarding. Pause to allow the absurdity of a “philosophy” of snowboarding to sink in.

What’s more, his spit built up in the corner of his mouth like someone who’d lost feeling in his lips. I thought maybe he’d hit his head on the ice in a bad fall and damaged the part of the brain that tells the rest of us, “Wipe your mouth or at least lick your lips.” I stared at the corner of his mouth thinking, “Can you feel that or what?”

What I liked about James wasn’t his teaching method – or his accumulating spittle. I learned far more two days later from Pete, a 20 year old instructor who wiped his mouth and taught me how to “feel” the board. No, I liked the stories James told. In a former life he’d been the CFO of some company that mined some obscure metal in some dangerous place in South America. He’d given it all up to play in the snow.

His stories were a stretch beyond believable, but they were entertaining. I didn’t catch the details, but somewhere in between leaving behind the corporate life and landing in the powder of Steamboat Springs, he lost a wife, a daughter, a house in Hilton Head, and a nice car.

He tried just a little too hard to get us to validate his lifestyle by saying about a dozen times, “Isn’t life great here in winter paradise?” But somewhere in between the truth and the stories he spun I caught a glimpse of a soul that fought and beat the slow death that comes from doing the “corporate thing.”

I like to imagine James came home from a skiing vacation and one day ripped off his tie and told his wife, “I’m going to go teach snowboarding now,” and hopped the next plane to Hayden with a mule bag full of ski’s, poles, and parkas. The powder will do that to you: Make you ask yourself why you do what you do, make you try to remember when you started doing what you are doing, leave you to wonder how much longer you can do it, and even if you should.

That was on Sunday.

By Thursday I’d gotten good enough on the board to board the peak of the mountain. I was all alone headed down a trail called Cowboy Coffee when I turned the bend and before me was a view of the Yampa Valley that took my breath. I could go no further. I did a quick heel turn, skidded to a stop, and sat down to savor the splendor that God had poured out for me drink in.

I sat solitary in snow ten inches deep. The woods were so quiet that I could hear the snow landing on me and the ground around me. You really can hear snow land in the Big Room when it gets quiet enough. It’s corny, but like a little kid I actually stuck my tongue out to taste the falling snow.

In those moments I remembered why I got into this whole religion business to begin with. I remembered that at heart I am an admirer of God’s work and want to share the wonder with others. My ministry used to resemble some kid jumping up and down, shouting to his friends, “Hey guys, look over here at this!” Instead of being a docent on the spiritual journey, I’ve become a relatively impotent religious administrator who knows way more about budgets and church logistics than should be required for any child of God.

I thought of Lester in American Beauty saying, “I know that I didn't always used to feel this ... sedated. But it’s never too late to get it back.”

There in the snow I had communion with God and resolved that I am undoubtedly called to ministry, but I need to "get it back." God reminded me that I’m in this for the wonder and the journey, not the personal glory or the approval of others. Where this latest revelation will lead is uncertain, but I believe this:

God saved me one more time on that mountainside.

Snow Boarding Mt Werner

Written 12/23/06
I am writing by the fire and gazing longingly at the snow on Mt. Werner in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. In a few minutes I’ll load my family’s bags into the rental and catch our flight home to Houston. If it all goes well I’ll have my family of five back in time to celebrate Christmas at home.

But for now I have my eye on the lifts conveying eager skiers and boarders atop the piles of powder that I’ve been running a board over the last six days straight. My muscles are sore but satiated from snowboarding down the shoulders of the she-mountain. She’s all woman, gently curving and porcelain white, and though cold to the touch, perfect and enticing.

But make no mistake, that’s my view from the valley. The peak is 10,568 feet above sea level and when you’ve made it to the top you realize you’ve mounted a mountain, not a woman. The wind whips cold and the snow accumulates on your body if you stand still for only a moment. The air is thinner than newspaper and deep breathing is a constant companion.

It’s on this mountainess (named after Buddy Werner, who was an Olympian from Steamboat that died in a Swiss avalanche in 1964) that I’ve learned to be a little better than competent on a snow board, something that I think, at age 36, is a pretty adventurous thing.

I was 17 when my wife-to-be first taught me to get down a mountain on two skis, and over the years I followed it up with a few lessons here and there. I was confident enough to ski all the blues and most of the blacks and though my form was never that great, I could get down the mountain and enjoyed it. Now I’m legitimately able to say “that was gnarly” in reference to anything that happens on a snow board and I plan never to go back to skis.

Look for some stories soon about the people I met this week, I’ll post them as I have time after Christmas.

Cartridge in a Bare Tree

This is the Christmas tree my father brought to Houston from North Carolina. He even brought the decorations in his checked luggage. Easy to see why I like this guy, huh?

If you don't see the humor just start singing The Twelve Days of Christmas. If you still don't get it, email me at garylong@houston.rr.com.

Al Pacino and Elton Trueblood...Together at Last

In Al Pacino – In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel Pacino is asked about screen testing for the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather.

Pacino - At first I didn't care if I got the part or not. The less you want things, the more they come to you. If it's meant to be, it will be. Every time I've stuffed or forced something, it hasn't been right.

Grobel - Yet you always knew you'd get the part, didn't you?

Pacino - You just get a sense of things sometimes. You just know it. It's kind of simple to assess something if you allow it to happen. It's when the ego and greed get in the way that it's harder to assess what the situation is. But if you step back and you take a look at it, you can sense what's going to happen. If I hadn't gotten the Godfather role, it would have surprised me, frankly.

Pacino was 39 or so when he said that. Throughout the 1979 interview Pacino bears a mantle of surety that stops short of arrogance. He is confident in his acting, yes, but not too confident. He ascribes to standards that are beyond the reach of his craft.

Because he reaches for his own high standards he creates a film and stage presence that consumes everything around him. “He had so much violence in him that he shattered the mystical line that allows the audience to feel comfortable. He scares the s*** out of me,” wrote Arvin Brown, reviewing one of his plays.

We are captivated by excellence, and Pacino’s career testifies that striving for high standards is the noble way to escape the mediocrity for which most of us settle. That truth applies to all us, whether plumbers or actors or preachers.

I am reminded of a gem given to me recently by my octogenarian friend Mary Mills. In the foreword to Elizabeth O'Conner's Call to Commitment, Elton Trueblood wrote this:

There are, at one point on this earth, men and women who have been so touched by the love of Christ that they tithe their time as well as their money, make their secular occupations into ministries, and pray and study and witness and serve. These same people have avoided spiritual pride by virtue of the fact that their standard is so high they never reach it. They are conscious daily of the contrast between their standard and their practice.

To see the great distance between where we are and where we would like to be is ambitious. But to see the distance between where we and where God would have us be is something altogether different. It is imaginative. It is visionary. It is spiritual.

Whatever it is, it can’t be found on eBay, but it can drag us out of bed in the early mornings and keep us at task until late in the night. It is to live audaciously close to God. It is to imitate God.

One of my Jewish friends goes so far as to say that striving for a high standard is part of being a tsaddiyq – a righteous one – and that the human grasp for the unobtainable is part of God’s way of finishing an unfinished creation.

So I pray the lyrics to one of my favorite songs, Sweet Tequila Blues by Chip Taylor/Carrie Rodriguez:

I keep looking for it,
I hope I never find.
If I get close to it,
Just put me on the train.

I pray for my children that they would be captured by a dream that forces them to stretch, and I pray for me that I never lose my restless stretching.

Between the second and third Sundays of Advent, 2006

Christmas Parade To Remember

Reading this story I am reminded why, growing up in North Carolina, I was taught my home state was a vale of humility and grace between two pillars of arrogance and ignorance.

Drunk at the helm of float
AP 12/6/06
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A man accused of speeding down Main St. in Anderson, South Carolina, has been charged with drunken driving -- of a float in a Christmas parade.
When officers caught up to David Rodgers, 42, he had an open container of alcohol in the truck he used to haul the children and adults on a float for the Steppin' Out Dance Studio, police spokesman Linda Dudley said.
Witnesses said Rodgers was driving in line in Sunday's parade when he pulled out to pass a tractor in the float.
CALLED 911
Rodgers sped down Main St. and ran a red light, while a witness on the float called 911 on a cellphone, police said. Officers started chasing Rodgers, who didn't stop for 3 miles. When he pulled over, he tried to attack an officer, Dudley said.
Rodgers, whose child was on the float, faces more than three dozen charges, including driving under the influence, 18 counts of kidnapping, and assaulting an officer, authorities said.

Full Belly – Empty Soul

"It's not easy to put a light-up representation of a baby in a small manger scene, you know." At least that’s what Dick Callaway, mayor of St. Albans, West Virginia says. His town left Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of the manger this year because of lawsuit fears concerning separation of church and state.

There’s irony here, if you’re following the church’s calendar. You see, this is Advent, the season of preparation and waiting. To be liturgically correct, there should be no baby in the manger until Christmas day. Nor should there be any Christmas carols or Christmas trees. All that stuff is for Christmastide, the two week period of the church’s calendar beginning December 25 when we celebrate the birth of Christ.

The dominant culture of America, though, is about spending and consuming, and all that happens in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Christmas meaning has morphed into gift giving – or gift getting – whereas Advent is about waiting. We cut to the party before properly preparing, creating lots of opportunity for empty rituals.

Isaiah uttered a harsh word on God’s behalf about this. “Your New Moon feasts and appointed festivals I hate with all my being. They have become a burden to me; I am weary of them.” Imagine a ritual so empty that God is burdened and tired of it. Or, closer to home, consider the holiday rituals that burden and tire you. Why do we do all the things we do?

Empty rituals and feasts of Christmas leave us with a full belly, but an empty soul. Like so many sugar cookies and fruit cakes, the calories of Christmas are aplenty, but we wake up December 26 unsatisfied. Have our feasting and rituals become meaningless? Is your family’s observance much different that the feasting that Isaiah condemns?

Maybe the empty manger in St. Albans is a good thing. Maybe it is good for us to wait on Jesus’ birth and postpone the hype until we’re sure the Savior is central in the scene – in the manger, and in our lives. Or at the very least we can reflect on which of our traditions matter most and jettison the ones that tire both God and us.

I’ll be preaching a sermon entitled Full Belly – Empty Soul this Sunday based on Isaiah 1.14-19. Willow Meadows Baptist Church will gather at 10:30am, so why not join us for a few Advent songs and prayers? Maybe we’ll decide together that Christmas is worth the wait.

Postponing the party,
Pastor Gary

You Would Be Impressed by Who I Know

My friend and ministry colleague Cyndi is a real artist. That is to say that she makes art whether anyone else pays her, notices the art, or otherwise lets her know she's talented. So you can imagine why I'm excited that she's entering some of her art, like this piece, in a sale this weekend.

This is a painting w/ water colors and ink mixed. The others are too large to get scanned in, but they are mixed medium as well, such as oil and ink on canvas.

The sale is a good cause, too. It's the Christmas Bazaar sponsored by Ecclesia Church here in Houston. Ten percent of all sales will go to Living Water to build a well for Project Chacocente. The show will be at the Taft Street Coffee House and Art Gallery (2511 Taft Street in Houston) on December 9, 2006 from 11am - 3pm.

You can contact her at cwehmeyer@wmbc.org if you're interested but can't make the show. Cyndi has real potential to be famous one day, so help a good cause and invest in some art. Then your friends will be impressed with who you know!

We Buried Jessie Today

At 93 she’d begun to recede as the Alzheimer’s took over. Just before that happened, though, I got to know her. When I first became her pastor she was only 89 and spry. Genteel falls short in describing this Lady (yes, that’s a capital “L”) and her vivacious bright eyes kept her dim sight a secret.

She was a part of the Sunshine Sunday School Class, a group I like to drop in on from time to time and “flirt” with my “girlfriends.” Jessie was one of them and she was always appreciative for any gesture, saying thanks for the smallest of things that go unnoticed by most of us. I smile every time I remember her in that beautiful green dress that she wore to her 90th birthday party. She looked positively giddy as young girl when she told us that she'd been ready since 8am that morning for a 2pm party.

She wore that green dress again today.

In her eulogy I spoke of her quiet faithfulness. The church cannot function without gifted people like Jessie, who serve behind the scenes, without fanfare or need of public recognition. In my experience as a pastor – only 15 years or so – I have come to appreciate how the simple gift of faithfulness in the life of one individual touches the lives of others in many ways, ways unknown to the rest of the world.

She was no flash in the pan, and that’s a good thing, because I’m convinced that the world doesn’t need any more flashes in the pan, but solid, consistent, faithfulness. It’s a seemingly simple thing, but her presence was an anchor to many, and she was a gift to me, though I only knew her four years.

Receive our sister in Christ Jessie into the arms of your mercy.
Raise Jessie up with all your people at that great gettin' up in the morning!
Receive us also, and raise us into a new life.
Help us so to love and serve you in this world that we may enter into your joy in the world to come.
Into your hands, o merciful Savior, we commend your servant Jessie.
Acknowledge her, we humbly beseech You, a sheep of your own fold,a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.

And, God, if you don’t want her, we’ll take her back.

Amen.

"X" Marks the Spot

Again with the violin.

Tonight the Youngest Sister impressed us all at dinner by spouting off from memory the notes of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" (the foundation of Suzuki violin teaching method). On demand, we got the song, in the key of "A" from a kindergartener.

We were eating chili and crackers, a simple meal all at once morphed into a magical mystery tour for me as I realized that the lifelong love of music is being birthed in her as it was in me. Unsolicited, she sang over supper and I was stirred to remember the hours and dollars my parents invested in me to study piano, clarinet, tuba, and voice, a gift now being resuscitated, perhaps Easter-like, as I find enduring value in things asthetic.

In this I am learning perhaps as much - or more - than the Youngest Sister. I sense the ponderous nature of parental nurture and the often-elusive sense of what matters most. But more importantly, I find now, despite my deceased mother's shortcomings, a treasure imparted to me subtly through her valuing music in my life, a treasure stolen from the dysfunctional demons who pillaged our family and buried deep within me that is now marked by an obscure "X" in my heart that these children of mine seem to see easily.

Jesus said that a man who discovered a treasure of great value in a field would sell everything to purchase that field to possess the treasure. The secret to this story about the kingdom of heaven seems not to lie so much in understanding the value of a treasure on sight, but in plowing the right fields with diligence to unearth the things of worth, believing that despite the presenting circumstances there is treasure to be found everywhere in life.

I believe I have found the field of greatest worth, and it is my family. Logically, I say that surely the treasure lies within us and can be passed on to those who will follow our well-placed footsteps. Now it is upon me to leave a good map and well marked trail.

Untitled Poem

OK, dear readers, here is a post of poetry. I've never revealed verse publicly, so it if sucks be gentle in so saying. There is no title for this, perhaps you'd make a suggestion? If you wish not to post publicly, then email me at garylong@houston.rr.com.


With friends new and old
Gathered ‘round drink and warmth,
I laugh and watch you sparkle,
The poetry in your eyes a-wont to flail free.

But still the harboring, burgeoning, blissful burden:
Burden of pregnant restraint yielded there, yet now
Lying furtive and fallow in sheets, merely contented,
Unfruitful, unfertile, unaccompanied, and still.

Oh, so still.

My, how lonely the sleep of the pure-hearted must be.
But as for me? The waking and watching is but part,
The vigilant harboring, burgeoning, blissful burden,
That beats beneath this banal breath in lust for grace.

It yearns for freedom yet clings to the known,
Pulled t’ward something like Abraham’s bones,
Until at last upon finding the lost limbs discovers:
The still harboring, burgeoning, blissful, and burdened.

Hollow Daze or Holy Days?

The decorations are out, and the annual cursing of the Christmas lights has begun. On Monday my wife said, “I think we should get our tree this weekend,” and my anxiety about untangling lights has been growing all week.

No other holiday can elicit such intense emotions as Christmas. Whether it’s high joy or empty sadness, the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day can be hard on a soul. There is a high cultural expectation for families to have a “Hallmark Holiday,” a kind of pressure that can be enough to make the season ring more hollow than holy. A strong dose of the theology of Advent would serve us all well as we try to dodge the “Hollow Daze” and make space for the “Holy Days.”

One of the ways you can move from Hollow Daze to Holy Days is observe traditions with your church family. This Sunday marks the first day of the Christian calendar, on it we mark the first Sunday of Advent, a season of preparation celebrating the birth of Jesus. Among others traditions, we at Willow Meadows Baptist Church will hang our Christmon ornaments, hand made and maintained by the women of our church over the last thirty years.

The ornaments aren’t fancy. There have no “chasing lights” and they don’t move like some automated reindeer grazing in your front yard. With simplicity and beauty each of these hand sewn ornaments point to the Christ of Christmas while adorning the tree in our sanctuary. But they tell another story, too. They tell the stories of our spiritual mothers and sisters.

A cross – what story of trust lies behind the eyes of the one who sewed that one?
A dove – what strength was in the hands of the one who cut this one from the cloth?
An angel – what grace event brought healing to the one who stitched a sequin of repair on a broken wing?

This Sunday we’ll all remember the dear saints who made them - some gone on to glory, some still with us - and remembering them, we’ll also remember their faith. Across time they are handing us a cup of tradition filled with the spirit of Advent. Drink deeply from this cup and you will find that your hollow daze become holy days.

I pray that you, too, will be able observe traditions of significance this season and find richness in faith, not just richness in stuff. This Sunday I’ll be preaching a sermon about this very thing, assuming I can untangle myself from the Christmas tree lights. I’ll start with Jeremiah 33.14-16 to examine how the incarnation – God becoming human in the person of Jesus – changed everything then and can change everything for you now. I hope you can join us in the flesh as we gather for worship at 10:30am.

Jeremiah 33.14-16, New International Version

14 " 'The days are coming,' declares the LORD, 'when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.
15 " 'In those days and at that time I will make a righteous Branch sprout from David's line; he will do what is just and right in the land.
16 In those days Judah will be saved and Jerusalem will live in safety. This is the name by which it will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.'

The Dean Smith Center No Garden of Oden

Ok, I'm a rabid - and happy - UNC fan. The pale blue is pulsing through my glad veins tonight because the 'Heels Ty&Tyler took it to OSU in a satisfying, hard running, sprint down the court, maddening win. If you don't follow college basketball you can stop reading now, I'm about to rant.

If I hear "UNC took advantage of Oden's absence" one more time I may just puke. Ohio State played a phenomenal game and I'm not able to comprehend how his contributions, if he weren't sitting on the bench with a towel on his head, could have made them play any better. Bottom line is a great UNC team beat a great Ohio State team tonight.

End of story.

C Sharp Recapitulation

To understand this, read the post called "A Toothless C Sharp" first. Then know that at bedtime the next night after the visit by the Tooth Fairy the Youngest Sister asked me, "What time will the Tooth Fairy come tonight?"

I was sad to say that the Tooth Fairy only comes once per tooth.

Still not convinced she asked, "So she won't turn my tooth into money again tonight?"

A Toothless C Sharp

It was a momentous evening in the Long household. The Youngest Sister lost her first tooth just before dinner and now lies sleeping with visions of a tooth fairy about to leave big bucks under the pillow.

The visions she has were put in her head by the Brother at the dinner table, where he described having once seen the tooth fairy. He used hand gestures and a very imaginative description to paint the picture.

Apparently, the tooth fairy is about 18-24 inches tall, wears a blue dress, and antes up three bucks per dentum. At least that’s the going rate in Texas, he says, which is higher than the measly two dollars he collected for each tooth when they were falling out of his head back in his former life in Virginia. Only nine years old, he made it sound like he was hammering out license plates “back in Virginia.”

I tried to argue with him that the blue was actually Carolina Blue, but neither of them was buying. With his chain-gang wisdom he clarified flatly, “No Dad, it’s a much darker blue than that.”

What he really meant was, “You’ve obviously never seen the tooth fairy. Not in person, not in a book. Not in Virginia, and definitely not in Texas. Now choke up a smoke, old man and let me finish my story.”

The Youngest Sister had already decided that Dad had never seen the tooth fairy and the Brother was clearly the authority in the room. She let us all know that she’d bought his description with a single sentence, “That’s how tall I was when I was a baby in a blue dress.”

After dinner the Youngest Sister had violin practice. She’s learning to play violin by the Suzuki method which means, for the initiate, that I as parent am also learning to play the violin. Tonight it was my job to pluck the notes to “Twinkle-Twinkle Little Star” and let her tell me their names.

She watched my hands fumble on her 1/10th size violin and correctly called out most of the notes while the rosin dust flew. I thought she sounded a little funny, so I watched her mouth and noticed that she was pushing her tongue through the new gap in her bottom teeth. She was clearly enjoying the new sounds her mouth could now make.

“Shee Shhhtharrp” = “C Sharp”
“Ohthpen A” = “Open A”

I don’t know much about Tooth Fairies or whether or not three bucks is a fair rate for peg of a tooth, but I do know my little violinist in the blue Scooby-Doo nightgown has a little finger big enough for my heart and the buzz-cut, blue eyed Brother who can eat everything in sight may have already beat her to the punch.

This dad thing, sometimes trying and tiring, still beats pretty much anything I’ve tried.

What Are You Asking Santa-God for This Christmas?

The prophets of prosperity proclaim that God wants us all to be healthy, wealthy, and wise when preaching “ask and ye shall receive.” By twisting Jesus’ words, “If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer," you too can create your very own “Santa-God.” It’s a very convenient religious framework where Santa-God simply checks to see if you’ve been naughty or nice before hitting the “yes” button on the cosmic computer of material blessing.

Detecting my sarcasm, you ask, “So, Pastor, if I shouldn’t be working on my Christmas wish list when it comes to prayer, what should a Christian really ask of God? I mean what can we really expect of the big guy in the sky with the long white beard?”

Would you like to peek at my Christmas prayer list? I found every single item on my list in “The Lord’s Prayer,” where Jesus told us what we need to ask of God, both in holiday-season and out of holiday-season.

Give us our daily bread.

With eyes of history we see how God has always provided “enough.” In their wilderness wandering the children of Israel were given manna to pick up and eat, but if they gathered more than they needed for that day it spoiled on them. How much, then, is “enough” for us? Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, thereby focusing our dependence on God for provisions rather than our own strength, as well as calling us to a lifestyle where simplicity frames our needs.

Forgive us – as we forgive

Jesus told a story about a certain businessman who was forgiven a great debt by his master but in turn refused to release those over whom he held debts. The master threw that certain businessman in jail because he’d failed to be generous in grace toward others. Me? I might be that certain businessman, because I’m all about the old eye for an eye trick – until it comes to my eye. My life sings “Oh, how I love judgment” instead of “Oh, how I love Jesus.” Jesus reminds us that our un-forgiveness of others is inextricably connected to our own spiritual well-being.

Deliver us from evil.

This is a prayer seeking deliverance from evil we do not see. James Mulholland writes that this line is “not a personal mantra for protection” in his book Praying Like Jesus, but that it is a prayer with social and global implications. When we pray for deliverance with awareness, we recognize our tendency to march lock step into sins and shortcomings easily hidden behind corporate profits and partisan politics.

This Sunday I’ll be wrapping up this short series on the Lord’s Prayer entitled When You Pray. We’ll take up the three appropriate petitions of God, having considered in previous weeks what it means to pray “Our Father” and “Thy Kingdom Come.” If you’ve missed any in this series, you can contact the church office for tapes at 713-723-2870. I hope to see you in worship at either 9:15 or 11:45!

Beseechingly,
Pastor Gary

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column by Gary Long, pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. To subscribe or unsubscribe from this list, just contact me at glong@wmbc.org. You can read this and past issues over at the website for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, http://www.thefellowship.info/News/notasermon.icm. You can also check out my other writings at www.tothelees.blogspot.com.

400,000 Jedi Can’t Be Wrong

George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, has created a kingdom of his own. A recent news story reported that some 400,000 people declared “Jedi” as their religion in Great Britain’s 2005 census. It’s laughable because Star Wars is just a fictional world, the fantasy of a very good story teller. Still, Lucas’ kingdom is real because it exists in the hearts and minds of his fans. Within the epic battle of good and evil, the light and dark sides of the “force” have captured the imagination of millions of fans.

Jesus’ kingdom is a little like Lucas’ in that it only lives in the hearts of his followers. When he said, “My kingdom is not of this world” he was telling us that his kingdom does not compete with or imitate the kingdoms of this world, but in fact turns the reality of those worldly kingdoms upside down. Every time Jesus opened his mouth with the phrase, “the Kingdom is like…” his listeners found the opposite of what they expected:

The first become last.
The exalted are humbled and the humble are exalted.
The poor are blessed and rich are condemned.
The lion lies down with the lamb.
The spears are beat into pruning hooks, and swords into plow shares.

The kingdom of Jesus is made real when the hungry are fed, the naked are clothed, and the widow and orphan receive care. The kingdom of Jesus is made real when the ignored are noticed, the neglected are loved, and the oppressed are released. The more people are willing to live in such counter-cultural ways, the more the kingdom of Jesus becomes the dominant reality.

You can see the kingdom of Jesus if you know where to look. The kingdom of Jesus appears in the most unexpected places, like hospital rooms, prayer rooms, and chat rooms. You’ll find it around the table, on the factory floor, and in the cubicle down the hall. Like Jedi knights, followers of Jesus come armed – not with light sabers – but with the hands and feet of service. Using spiritual gifts rather than Jedi mind tricks, these are the people who wage war on the dark side of the force, engaging the enemy with what Walter Brueggemann calls “little moves against destructiveness.”

I believe that if we allow the kingdom of Jesus to capture our imaginations and hearts as much as the kingdom of Lucas lives in the minds his prodigal “Jedi” we’d move the phrase “thy Kingdom come” from wishful thinking to prayer of commitment. This Sunday we take up another section of the Lord’s Prayer, the phrase “thy Kingdom come…” The sermon is called Thy Kingdom Come and its installment two in our series When You Pray. I hope you can join us for worship at either 9:15 or 11:45.

Replacing the batteries in my light saber,
Pastor Yoda

Wanderlust and Frost

Tuesday night a wind blew in the coldest air Houston has had in a while, though sadly not cold enough to frost. As the cold front rushed in, acorns rained on the roof over my bed from the Old Tree, a huge live oak in my back yard that I'd guess to be about 70 or 80 years old.

Wednesday morning arrived chilly and The Old Tree's leaves were crunching underfoot on the back patio as I headed out to take the Brother and the Youngest Sister to school. The sound and feel caused me to freeze for just a moment as I was transported across time and space by the power of colliding memories:

Eleven years old, I was standing under the giant pecan tree behind the little white pack house on my family farm back in North Carolina. All at once I smelled cured tobacco, pecan pie, and my grandfather’s Aqua Velva. There was a frost on the cut corn stalks in the field and I could hear myself laughing with my cousin over who could pee the highest up the pecan tree.

Simultaneously I was on a Thanksgiving day walk around the perimeter of the farm with my father and grandfather, rifles on our shoulders as we hunted for squirrels. Our feet rustled through the frost-burnt fallen leaves and I remembered feeling nearly giddy to be included on this very manly expedition.

As fast as the surge came, it went. But the smells, sounds, and sensations hung up in my brain and I violently missed home for the day.

The Hebrews of the Old Testament and today are called am haaretz, Hebrew for “people of the land.” My people are such people, called by some enigmatic and subterranean force to the farm we call "The Lewis Place." It's both the new and old Jerusalem in many regards, but for some reason I've spent my entire adult life exchanging the familiar for the foreign. Over the years I’ve missed that piece of North Carolina dirt and the people there, and that longing is the price I pay for my own wanderlust. Maybe it wouldn't feel so expensive a price to pay if we had more frost in Houston.

At Peace in the Father's Hand

Meet Allison, the second child of some friends of mine. They used to belong to our church but life did what it usually does - by moving on without my permission - and now they have relocated out of Houston. Allison’s aunt is a professional photographer who caught this shot and there are lots of things to love about it. She is adorable. The lighting is perfect. The lines make it a work of art.

But there’s one more thing, and to me it’s the most important thing to know about this image – the hands holding her are her father’s. If I were titling the photo I’d call it At Peace in the Father’s Hand.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray he began by addressing God as “Our Father.” To a first century Jew it would have sounded strange because the rabbis referred to God mostly with names describing God’s holiness and power and might. Jesus’ model prayer teaches us that when we pray to God as Father we are invited into a relationship of love and intimacy, something more akin to nuzzling up to our holy parent than formally addressing the deity of the cosmos.

Praying “our Father” with awareness of my words changes the way I pray. James Mulholland writes in Praying Like Jesus that when he prays to God as Father, “I can approach God with confidence in his desire and ability to meet my needs. I can trust him to do what is best for me.” Trusting God to do what is best for us is to be “at peace in the Father’s hand.” Ultimately, the phrase “our Father” makes the Lord’s Prayer one of intimacy, responsibility, self-denial, and community.

I’ll be taking that up in this weekend’s sermon, part one in the series entitled When You Pray. I hope you can join us for worship at Willow Meadows Baptist Church. Jubilate!, a traditional worship gathering, is at 9:15 on Sunday and Overflow, a non-traditional gathering, is at 11:45.

Peace out,
Pastor Gary

Hinder Not the Little Children

At my church one of our deacons buys the communion bread for us on Sunday mornings from Three Brothers Bakery. They really know how to make a great challah loaf. I tell you, if you've ever had this stuff for communion you'll never go back to those "chiclets" again.

A few Sundays ago we had a few unopened loaves of communion bread after the worship service and I was one of the glad recipients of a leftover loaf. On Monday I cooked breakfast for the Youngest Sister and the Brother. The scrambled eggs were begging for some of that bread, so I broke a few pieces off for all three of us. It was very tasty, I must admit.

The Youngest Sister, who is five years old was eagerly chowing down. We've talked with her about how, in our faith tradition, communion is a ritual only for those who have claimed aloud that they are followers of Jesus. You can imagine that as one who is usually only an observer of communion she must have been tickled pink to be eating this bread.

It just never occurred to me that she would connect the bread on the plate of scrambled eggs with the body of Christ.

I say that because I turned from the kitchen sink just in time to see her jaws packed like a chipmunk and a piece of bread hanging out of her mouth. She exclaimed, "Hey Dad, Jesus' body tastes great!"

If we each have to come to the kingdom as a little child, would you pass me a really really big piece of that bread?

Put a Cork In It

In the Long house we have a custom. Whenever we open a bottle of wine, everyone who partakes must sign the cork. We save the corks as a reminder of all the good friends and conversations that have taken place over the years in our house. To pull out the collection of corks is to remember goodness and count myself blessed.

We had an overnight guest this week who, though not related by blood, has been a family member for almost 15 years. We uncorked a 2005 Hook & Ladder Gewurstraminer. With the wine we had a small cheese flight which he, being an uncouth Carolinian mocked.

Having never heard of a cheese flight he, under the influence of only one glass of wine, made the cheese board "fly" around the room pretending once to be "Mission Control" in Houston, and another time provided "voice over" for radio conversation between the air traffic control tower and the "cheese flight." Needless to say, we laughed. Hard.

He signed the cork, put a cute phrase on it, and it now sits on the table before me, a tangible reminder that old friends are indeed like fine wine. They are both best uncorked.

Of Stardust and Hope

Not a Sermon - Just a Thought, October 27, 2006

Before the “boom box” there was the cassette recorder. I had one in the early 80’s and I spent almost every Sunday afternoon lying on the green shag carpet in front of my parent’s console stereo recording my favorite songs from Casey Kasem’s America’s Top 40 radio show. He counted down the hits, delivered the “Long Distance Dedication,” and told stories about the music stars. He was the music minister and I was a true disciple, holding out to the very end of the show to hear his famous sign off line, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars!”

Casey taught me how to hope with that line. I didn’t know anything about Jesus at that age and my life at home wasn’t always the greatest. Yet the unbridled optimism of Casey resonated in my soul and I believed that there was always something better out there if I could just keep reaching for the stars.

So you can see why it didn’t surprise me at all to read the scientific theory that the metals in our bodies come from the stars. According to scientists any metal heavier than iron (which makes up hemoglobin) was formed in a super nova. If this theory is true then virtually every atom in our bodies is from former stars and the dust of the ground from which God formed us in Genesis 2.7 must be stardust. I like to think that hope is our elemental human existence, our star dust DNA if you will, reaching for the heights of heaven despite the gravitational pull of life on this earth.

The Apostle Paul believed that our hopeful “reach for the stars” emerged from suffering. In Romans 5 he tells us how suffering leads to perseverance, perseverance to character, and character to hope. I believe that God has hardwired us to reach for the stars by instilling us with hope to live life fully. And it is Jesus’ life and death and resurrection which have instilled within us the hope to live eternally. I say all that to say that if you are reaching for the stars, however that looks in your life, despite setbacks and disappointments, then you are living out of hope.

So, the next time a dark situation besets you, hold on to God and hold on to hope. And when someone asks you how you made it through you can tell them, “It was in my stars.”

Stuff You Should Know About Kids

This list comes from the Youngest Sister's kindergarten teacher.

The Top 10 Worst Kid Birthday Party Games

10) Simon Cowell Says
9) Bobbing for Rocks
8) Red Poop/Green Poop
7) Dodgetraffic
6) Whack Grandma's Mole
5) Hide and No Cake
4) Pin the Tail on the Pitbull
3) Musical Potty Chairs
2) Mother, May I Puke?
...and the Number 1 Worst Kid Birthday Party Game...

1) Solve for X

Same Wind, Different Effect

My friend Doug Jackson (The Old Man from Scene 24), linked on the right, offered a nice post about a storm in Corpus Christi last weekend. It inspired me to write this.

The affect of wind upon humans is, of course, dependent upon which direction we are moving, not which direction the wind is blowing. A few Mondays ago I rode a strong southerly from Key West to Boca Grande Key on the bow of a 68 foot sail boat. It was smooth and exhilirating.

The same southerly blew in hard rain and nasty swells sometimes reaching 8-10 ft the as we sailed back the next day. It made me a lurching belly of sea sickness like I’ve never known.

Same wind, blowing the same direction. Different effect based upon my heading.

Christmas in October

I sighted the first Christmas decorations of the 2006 shopping season today. Cabella was the first business to send their Christmas catolog this year, beating the rest of the pack on October 20. Right on their heels came L.L. Bean on the 23rd. You can bet more are on the way, already stacked up in some bulk mail distribution center in North Dakota.

I'd like to do something useful with these catalogs rather than start fires and cause many a postal worker's back ache. Something like what I came up with last year to deal with all those credit card offers that jam up my mail box. It makes me giddy to think about the havoc I am wreaking single handedly upon those multinational banking corporations that jack up the consumer debt by making credit cards too readily available.

I save the credit applications until I get about ten, then write "NO THANKS" with a big Sharpie across the applications. I send the application, along with the original mailing envelope, a few Val-Pack coupons, and a folded up grocery store sale paper, all in the postage paid envelope so conveniently provided by the credit card company.

Sometimes when I'm feeling really "mailicious" I'll write little notes like, "Would you mind recycling this for me?" on the application. Or, "Let's keep working together to keep the USPS in business." Or my favorite, "Hey, look at this credit card offer from Bank XYZ, it's much better than yours."

I realized after a few months there would be no backlash, so I got a little too mean and started to include things like the tops to milk jugs, wet paper towels, and small scraps of food from the dinner table. I thought the ketchup leaking through the envelope would stop the companies from sending the offers, but I was wrong. So I soldier on, quietly fighting the good fight against the man.

This year I'm thinking I'll include a few pages from the Christmas catalogs in my returned credit card offers. At least the poor guy removing the shreds of my over-stuffed envelope from the processing machinery at Citibank or Discover can enjoy the Victoria's Secret models.

'tis the season to spread Christmas cheer.

Not a Sermon - Just a Thought, October 20, 2006

Baptists Get a Bad Rap

A recent poll conducted to find out if Southern Baptists were viewed favorably by the general public yielded mixed results. Generally speaking, they are more popular than the Mormons, but less popular than Catholics. What should be most alarming to the folk in the home office of the Southern Baptist Convention is that people under the age of 29 had a highly unfavorable view and were not likely to visit a church with “Baptist” in the name.

Among my non-churchgoing friends of many ages there exists a similar - if unscientifically derived - opinion that Baptists in general and Southern Baptists in particular are narrow minded, morally uptight, and exclusively Republican. Sadly, my friends have only the last two or three decades upon which to base their opinion. If they knew the principles upon which Baptists were founded they would know that Baptists historically have been open minded, tolerant of others’ beliefs, and politically aligned across the spectrum. In reality, Baptists have been great proponents of freedom for nearly 400 years.

- Freedom for an individual to stand before God with no creed as a measuring stick of orthodoxy.
- Freedom for an individual to read the Bible and interpret it on his or her own.
- Freedom for the church to be separate from the state – and from other churches.
- Freedom for all people to practice their religion no matter what faith basis they claim.

The conservative takeover in Baptist life over the last 30 years, replete with all the in-fighting and the bad sound-byte theology from the likes of Jerry Falwell, has done damage to the credibility and positive witness that Baptists had established in 400 years of existence. Follow these links and you’ll see what I mean:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Helwys

There have been more than a few occasions when I considered making the jump out of the Baptist frying pan into some other expression of Christianity, but I remain a Baptist because I understand from whence we came and where I hope we may one day return. I recognize that not all of you readers are Baptist, so I hope that my appreciation of my roots will prompt you to explore the meaning and mystery of your stream in the large and beautiful river of faith in Jesus.

If you’re interested in learning more about who Baptists are, then the sermon It’s Time to Rediscover our Baptist Heritage this Sunday at Willow Meadows Baptist Church might be for you. We’ll talk about the freedoms we need to reclaim as Baptists in order to live fully in the freedom of Christ described in Galatians 5.1. Worship gatherings are at 9:15 and 11:45 and Bible Study, covering this topic more deeply, begins at 10:30.

Freely,
Pastor Gary

Galatians 5.1-6, New International Version
Freedom in Christ
1It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.
2Mark my words! I, Paul, tell you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no value to you at all. 3Again I declare to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obligated to obey the whole law. 4You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. 5But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. 6For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column written by me, Gary Long. You can subscribe or unsubscribe to this email list by contacting me at glong@wmbc.org. You can find this and recent issues of Not a Sermon – Just a Thought at www.thefellowship.info. That’s the site for the good folk over at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, so take a few minutes to peruse their stuff when you can.