Monday Morning Music Ministry

3-18-24

There is an “Irish Shop” a few towns away from where I live. It sells imported items and offers annual tours to the Ould Sod. The American-born woman who operates the shop with her husband always seemed to appreciate our visits, and, like my late wife, is a kidney transplant recipient, so there was never a shortage of conversation.

Once my daughter Emily, who has lived in Northern Ireland for 20 years, visited with us. She shared the reasons she move there – visits as a missionary to street kids in the “troubled” neighborhoods wracked by sectarian violence and the well-documented ancient hatreds; how her ministry was scrupulous about being “Christian,” not Protestant or Catholic in its outreach; about the many severe dangers in neighborhoods they entered with hot coffee and warm words. And how, soul by soul, hatred is dying and love is rising. Her heart is with those people – so is mine, especially now that I have two Irish-American grandchildren.

One time I entered the shop alone, and by way of introduction – for she has many customers – I said, “I’m the guy with the daughter who works with the street kids of Derry…” She remembered and said, matter-of-factly, “Oh, yes. Teaching the Protestant kids to hate Catholics.” No tongue-in-cheek. She was not kidding. Automatic reaction. Despite having heard testimonies, even having talked with Emily.

That remark, that attitude, knee-jerk prejudice, taught me anew about the lingering presence and power of hate.

I am sadly reminded that hatred and prejudice persist in this world. Some people seem happy only when they hate. Some people are virtual professional haters about causes and issues halfway around the world, even when they have never been to those places. These tendencies are in the news every day. For me, I still nervously listen to short-wave radio newscasts from Londonderry/Derry, on the border of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where, yes, bombs still explode.

St Patrick knew about hatred. He was not a legend; that is, he really existed, unlike some other “saints” who nevertheless are celebrated. He lived in the late 400s, born in western England and kidnapped by Irish marauders when he was a teenager. As a slave he worked as a shepherd, during which time, somehow never despondent, his faith in God grew. He escaped to Britain, became learned in the Christian faith, and felt called to return to Ireland. On that soil he converted thousands, he encouraged men and women to serve as pastors, he worked against slavery, and helped quash Druid paganism and heresies. Among his surviving colorful lessons is using the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity to converts.

He left Ireland on occasion… to travel through European lands, preaching, sharing Christ, explaining the Gospel, establishing church communities. Four hundred years after Christ, it is notable that even when the mighty Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, it was Patrick who first preached to alien and hostile tribes and barbarians. Roughly contemporaneous with St Augustine in Northern Africa, he was the first great missionary since Saint Paul himself.

Today, almost 1600 years later, in an odd way St Patrick is more of an American saint than Irish or universal. Why do I have that opinion? In America, not Ireland, cities hold massive parades, dye entire rivers green, and festoon homes and schoolrooms, even those of Blacks and Jews and Hispanics, in green. I once was in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, and in the Temple Bar section of the city there were uncountable drunks in funny green hats, green vests, and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons. To a person, they were all… American tourists.

The Irish, north and south (and in the Anglican Communion too) revere St Patrick in a more proper and reasonable manner. My son-in-law Norman McCorkell, Emily’s husband, shares some thoughts here. He is a BA (Hons) graduate of the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, and is passionate about discipleship and mission.

Patrick passionately embraced the best of Irish culture, redeeming it for the Gospel by firmly standing against elements that were incompatible – ending the slave trade; reducing tribal warfare and murder. His life was an example of a new and different kind of courage – one that lived fearlessly and peaceably through God’s promises in an atmosphere containing daily threats of those horrors: murder, betrayal, and enslavement.

Despite the violent, and even magical, opposition from locals (Druids and chieftains), and criticism from church leaders (conventional bishops in Britain), Patrick used his lack of formal church training to work creatively within his context. Instead of employing church structures used by the civilized Roman Empire – based in cities, where bishops were supreme – Patrick formed an ecclesiastical model more like the Irish, who were rural and tribal. The inhabitants of Ireland had no settled towns, roads, currency, written law, government bureaucracy, or taxation. Society was decentralized, and organized around tribes led by local “kings.”

With Patrick’s influence, monasteries were established and developed as places of spiritual devotion and learning. Young men who had once given their lives to clan feuds were now transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ. Monasteries became “sending centers,” noted church scholar Steve Addison: “the Irish church took on the character of a missionary movement.” And thus Ireland became a glowing spiritual base for sending out monks into western and northern Europe to “be pilgrims for Christ.” This made Celtic monasticism “highly flexible, adaptable, and able to be transplanted – everything that the Roman Empire was not.”

“Sending Monasteries” grew rapidly throughout Ireland and Europe, bringing with them unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning. These population centers on the continent would eventually develop and become cities.

And by the way, Monasticism became bastions of civilization and Christianity during the long “Dark Ages.” I thank Norman for these words from “the Ould Sod” itself. These are lessons for today: what we can do, too, even by ourselves and against great odds, to bring the revolutionary message of Christ’s Good News to others. Love, not hatred.

Patrick was a saint for all, and is a Saint for today. He taught us not to drink green beer, but how to overcome challenges, hear the Holy Spirit, formulate a vision, and change the world. Not just his land but the world; and the world ever after.

Click: St Patrick’s Breastplate (Be Thou My Vision)

5-11-20

Sometimes, life’s circumstances can be like viruses. Appearing suddenly… not foreseeable… hard to pinpoint, harder to fight, often impossible to overcome – an invisible enemy.

My daughter Emily (yes, in whom I am well pleased!) in Ireland, with her family, has been a victim of life’s circumstances. Except that she has never fully seen the situation that way.

Onslaught? Oh, no question. She was a missionary, went to the “troubled” streets of Derry / Londonderry on the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland… lost her missions support… fell in love with a local lad in church, Norman McCorkell… married… went to Bible School together… jobs in church and running a retreat center near Dublin… setbacks… Norman’s epilepsy… with two great children, helpless but not hopeless for a spell, virtually homeless but for friends… returned to the Derry area.

Mr and Mrs Job, eh?

Don’t shed tears. Emily merely has pivoted, and pivoted again, starting an American-style food business (BBQ!) that has been well accepted in the city, her jars and bottles selling to stores and homes; her smoked meats selling via food truck to fans and to groups via catering. Emily has been on radio, in newspapers, magazine covers, billboards. She and Norman, a great team in the prep, production, and deliveries, were about to open a storefront… and then, you guessed it, the pandemic hit like a storm. The city is closed down.

What to do, especially with the insane PP rules? One thing not to do was retreat or moan or wait for things to resolve themselves. While making small batches of BBQ specialties to loyal (and hungry) customers, for non-contact pickups, she pivoted again. With sympathy for healthcare workers in hospitals and clinics, thinking the patients and the doctors should have other “angels,” she inaugurated a program for people to donate food – mostly packaged and easy-to-prepare – for the kitchen spaces in hospitals and clinics. For the workers and the over-worked on shifts, tired when they get home, to make their meals faster and special, and their days easier.

The response was immediate and enormous, after a little publicity and word-of-mouth. Individuals, cafes, stores, opened their cupboards; her garage was filled each day with donations. (As I write this, Emily reported that a man she doesn’t know heard about her “Pantry” campaign and ordered 87 Pounds, about $100, of foods from a shop to be delivered straight to her center.) She and Norman, and little Elsie and Lewis, pivoted to encouragement, thanks, deliveries. People were blessed – both givers and recipients. In interviews, again, Emily explained it all: “It’s what Jesus would do.”

All of these activities, pivoting to new activities, is what businesses call Entrepreneurship. It is what Jesus called “Doing unto the least of these.” The least? Taking care of one’s family is proper, prioritized. Then serving others. Good value and good taste and good service when times are good; good discernment of people’s needs and good organization and good charity – many untold stories, the time spent, the generosity of so many – when times are tight.

All in the space of a couple months. Emily will continue to serve the sometimes-forgotten workers. She is taking orders for no-touch BBQ orders for fans of her meats every Friday. She and Norman are looking again at a food truck with which – lockdown or no – they can deliver foods and be alongside events. Lo+Slo, her little operation, is not little, really, and cannot be suppressed!

How, in the face of health and job and housing and now pandemic opposition, does she thrive? She has a saying – maybe not original? Too good to think others have not used it too. It has become her slogan during lockdowns and isolation:

I Can’t; We Can.

Brilliant, really. An inspirational rallying-cry. As I thought of my daughter, admiring her from afar but talking daily on the phone, I thought of Jesus too – but not only of His admonition that we be charitable; He fed the hungry and said that we should exercise love to the needy.

No, let us think of the larger Christian meaning, a lesson, really, inherent in that phrase I Can’t; We Can.

God has reached down through history via the inspired Word and prophets and given us guidance and wisdom. Jesus came that we might have life and life more abundant; He taught, and offered salvation. The Holy Spirit was sent that we can have spiritual encouragement, gifts, power.

With all this spiritual help, we are blessed. Surely we cannot fail to be good servants – serving God, serving each other…

Yet. Consider I Can’t; We Can. Not only in the context of the fellowship of the saints and the priesthood of all believers, as important as are those truths. No, the “We” I think God would have us remember – and too many Christians tend to forget – is the We of the Godhead. God the Father, Jesus the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

How many of us have faced a challenge or gone through a severe crisis, and we pray to God, with confidence (and I hope not pride) – “OK, God, I’ve got it from here.”

That is wrong. The more we know of Him and His ways, the more we need Him, and know that we need Him. The more mature our faith becomes, the more we realize how dependent we are on the Lord. In every aspect of our lives.

Our livelihoods, our families, our homes, our businesses, our health, our budgets. Our patience, our sanity, our resourcefulness. Our future.

I Can’t; We Can. I can’t do these things on my own. We – family, friends, fellowships – are important; thanks. But the We who will see us through is waiting for us to lean on the Everlasting Arms.

I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me (Philippians 4:13).

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Click: I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief

8-5-19

I am writing this in the first week of August, a time that once, and elsewhere, carries more significance than a new calendar page. In the 19th century, a lot of magazines published “Mid-Summer Numbers,” observing some sort of moment in the earth’s cycle, like taking a breath. In Europe – France especially – the entire month of August is devoted to vacations; trips far away from home. Some streets in Paris are virtually empty except for unlucky waiters and gendarmes.

For me, August reminds me of summers growing up outside New York City, in New Jersey. The Jersey Shore? Palisades Park? No, as an eternal foodie, my memories are of the best corn and the best tomatoes on earth. It is futile to seek such quality elsewhere, but these weeks beat Spring flowers and Fall harvests in many ways. De gustibus and all that…

It requires no stretch to see a spiritual aspect to the unique time between planting and harvest. We make plans, we live in hope, we anticipate; we pray. Planting seeds is a metaphor for being intentional about life, and commitments, our directions. Harvest? We anticipate the results of our work and plans. And prayers.

This week my son Ted, my daughter Emily, and I coincidentally went through separate but similar experiences, all related to the work we do. We praise God (always) for His leading, and His hand, the calling on our lives. But sometimes – without stopping to acknowledge God as the Master Farmer – it seems like we plant soybeans and we harvest alfalfa (or whatever those two plants look like; have mercy on this City boy; this is still a metaphor).

That growth period is just as important as Planting and Harvesting.

When Emily was very young, missionaries from Central America visited our little church and made a presentation about their work. Somehow their stories, their passion, affected her. As young as she was, she was overtaken with emotion and tears and… a conviction that she would serve in the missions field when she grew up. She eventually went to Bible College, joined missions trips to Mexico, Russia, and Ireland. And Ireland again. Her heart was joined there – in two ways; as she fell in love with Norman, attending a Bible college in Dublin, marrying, and being fruitful and multiplying. Still serving the Lod, of course.

Would all this have happened without that impactful visit of a missionary family decades ago? Maybe, or maybe not in the same way… but as a father I am awestruck at the growth (and nurture) of certain seeds that are planted in lives.

My friend Becky Spencer (writer, missionary, singer, songwriter) and her husband Tracy run a B+B and a Thrift Boutique in Kansas, to help finance their longtime work in Swaziland, now eSwatini in Africa. (I’m sorry, but the country’s new name sounds more like a video game to me…) It is a land with many challenges of health, poverty, disease, and education. And more. These past weeks has seen her crew from GrandStaffMinistries (.com, you know) experienced some family crises among relatives before they left America; financial challenges of course; a stolen passport at a stopover airport; stolen credit cards and money at another airport, followed by crazy rules and balky “facilitators” when help was needed; a ton-of-bricks debilitating infection to Becky herself… and so forth.

[And just as I write this, I received an emergency message from Becky in eSwatini that their facilities have caught fire that is spreading. Please pray, friends!]

Hard truth: when the devil attacks, it often means that you are doing something right. But when missions work – schools, clinics, worship centers, food sharing, teaching – is savagely attacked… is this God’s harvest for work well planned?

Well, yes, it is. For the overall accomplishments and victories of Grand Staff Ministries; for the work Emily has done and the blessings she receives; for the results of yieldedness that unfolds for Ted and me (and multiplied other testimonies), God does not bless our agendas. It’s about His plan, not our ideas of what His plan should be. He knows where we are headed. (Pssst – I can share a secret about how to know it: It is where He wants us.) And, almost always, He does not ordain where, and in what form, that harvest will be manifested.

Excuse me: He does ordain it. He just seldom shares it with us. And if we do work as unto the Lord, there are no “good” results or “bad” results; only God-results.

In fact I believe there is an aspect to spiritual planting-and-harvesting that we seldom think about. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices to serve Him, by serving others; we understand that, and we obey (not often enough, most us, but that’s another message). But our Sovereign God can use other people and other methods. But… the fact that He chooses us is a reminder that He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

It is truly the case that God wants to do a good work in us, not only in third-world kids or starving villages or abused women. By sharing Christ, sharing resources, and sharing ourselves we do not only do favors for the “lost”… but for ourselves.

And that is good theology. God will not take our lives, or our souls, for granted, as we do good. He cares about us as much as the people we serve.

Mary did not merely honor and bless Jesus by anointing His feet. She was blessed, and received honor and blessing from the Savior, for the choice she made. “The poor ye shall always have with you.” St Augustine saw that not as an admission of futility. He recognized that God wants to encourage in us, not only our loving targets, the reality of His love.

Not something only to deliver, but something to live, ourselves. Harvest time approacheth.

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Click: Thank You For Giving To the Lord

6-10-19

It is hard to hear the voice of God when we are stressed.

This is something most of us know, especially in these days when stress is blamed – probably correctly – for myriad ills from emotional problems to actual physical afflictions. It is the epidemic of contemporary life in many societies.

My son-in-law Norman McCorkell recently delivered a sermon on this message. At moments of high stress, we can not only miss the wisdom of God, but the words of those around us, and even that “still, small voice” of our own convictions. Stress can be like the moon in a full eclipse, blotting out the sun.

There is a frequent reaction among the faithful who occasionally feel abandoned that God has grown distant. Well, He does not grow distant – we move; He doesn’t – but when stress somehow keeps us from hearing God, the problem is not God’s voice, and maybe not even our internal “ears”… but our eyes.

We can seek God, not only in prayer, but by reading His Word.

It is human nature (which we must try to fight) that we seek God less when things are going well. When challenges, problems, crises – stress – comes, then we despair. Do we blame God? We pray and seek Him in those times.

If that is true, then short of physical sickness, should we not think, or fear, that God might allow those things, even stress, to cross our path… if that is a trigger for us getting closer to Him? It should make us shiver.

My late wife Nancy used to say that the devil is not really after our minds. After all, through life we believe this and that, learn and forget things, follow old or new theories. But the devil is after our hearts. He hates us not because we have pulses, but according to the amount of Jesus that exists in our hearts.

Head-knowledge is nothing when compared to heart-belief.

When your heart is serene, you will find that frustration over “hearing” the voice of God, or of friends, or of your own feelings, is less demanding.

And. Less. Stressful.

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Click: Till the Storm Passes By

3-19-18

In some ways, St Patrick is more of an American saint than an Irish saint. He was born in Britain and enslaved, while young, in Ireland. While tending flocks in the lonely hills, the unschooled boy sought God in his musings and humble prayers. Eventually he came to faith, followed God’s voice to dare returning to Britain. He did… he learned more of the Bible and Christian doctrine… returned to Ireland and mightily evangelized a special race of people, leading to their empowerment to great things, temporal and spiritual.

Why do I say he is, in a way, more of an American saint? Because in America, not Ireland, cities hold massive parades, dye entire rivers green, and festoon homes and schoolrooms, even those of Blacks and Jews, in green. I once was in Dublin on St Patrick’s Day, and in the Temple Bar section of the city there were uncountable drunks in funny green hats, green vests, and “Kiss Me, I’m Irish” buttons.

To a person, they were all American tourists. The Irish, north and south (and the Anglican Communion too) revere St Patrick in a more proper and reasonable manner. My son-in-law Norman McCorkell, of Derry, Northern Ireland, is our guest blogger this week. He is a BA (Hons) graduate of the Irish Bible Institute in Dublin, and is passionate about discipleship and mission. He serves on the teaching team of Foyle Vineyard Church in Derry; and visits the local prisons as a volunteer through Prison Fellowship Northern Ireland.

During the “Patrick celebrations” the more theologically minded among us will find it difficult not to marvel at the prolific missionary work in Ireland led by Saint Patrick. After returning to the land of his enslavement as a teenager from western Britain, some 400 years after Christ gave the command to go and make disciples, Patrick inaugurated a disciple-making movement in Ireland that would change civilization. His burden to see the pagan “barbarians” transformed through the Gospel stood in stark contrast to the church of the Roman Empire, which for many years constrained the Gospel to within its borders. A lack, frankly, of missionary zeal.

Patrick passionately embraced the best of Irish culture, redeeming it for the Gospel by firmly standing against elements that were incompatible – ending the slave trade; reducing tribal warfare and murder. His life was an example of a new and different kind of courage – one that lived fearlessly and peaceably through God’s promises in an atmosphere containing daily threats of those horrors: murder, betrayal, and enslavement.

Despite the violent, and even magical, opposition from locals (druids and chieftains), and criticism from church leaders (conventional bishops in Britain), Patrick used his lack of formal church training to work creatively within his context. Instead of employing church structures used by the civilized Roman Empire – based in cities, where bishops were supreme – Patrick formed an ecclesiastical model more like the Irish, who were rural and tribal. The inhabitants of Ireland had no settled towns, roads, currency, written law, government bureaucracy, or taxation. Society was decentralized, and organized around tribes led by local “kings.”

With Patrick’s influence, monasteries were established and developed as places of spiritual devotion and learning. Young men who had once given their lives to clan feuds were now transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ. Monasteries became “sending centers,” noted church scholar Steve Addison: “the Irish church took on the character of a missionary movement.” And thus Ireland became a glowing spiritual base for sending out monks into western and northern Europe to “be pilgrims for Christ.” This made Celtic monasticism “highly flexible, adaptable, and able to be transplanted – everything that the Roman Empire was not.”

“Sending Monasteries” grew rapidly throughout Ireland and Europe bringing with them unprecedented prosperity, art, and learning. These population centers on the continent would eventually develop and become cities.

Norman tells us several enormously significant things here:

Saint Patrick was a real saint, not a manufactured icon – a real man who overcame ignorance and slavery; sought God’s leading… and followed it.

His work, and his powerful, persuasive witness, transformed the social manners and repressive tendencies of countless tribes and warrior-kings in ancient Ireland. The Irish indeed saved Western civilization.

St Patrick overcame his challenges by love, and the Gospel of love. He was brave, all by God’s grace.

Four hundred years after Christ, it is notable that even when the mighty Roman Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, it kept it within its borders, as large as the Empire was. It was Patrick who first preached to alien and hostile tribes and barbarians… the first missionary since Saint Paul.

— These are lessons for today: what we can do, too, even by ourselves and against great odds, to bring the revolutionary message of Christ’s Good News to others.

I thank Norman for these words from “the ould sod” itself. My daughter worked for awhile for the St Patrick Foundation, which works to bring healing, knowledge, and reconciliation to the two Irelands.

For Patrick is not an American saint, no. But he was not a Catholic saint alone, nor Protestant nor Church of England nor Church of Ireland.

He was a saint for all, and is a Saint for today.

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A thousand-year-old Irish hymn, “Be Thou My Vision,” has an extra meaning, sung here by Ginny Owens, who is blind.

Click: Be Thou My Vision

7-17-17

Sent from Ireland this week, revived while visiting my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

Unlike some saints of trinkets and wall-hangings, Ireland’s Saint Patrick was real, and is real.

St Patrick knew persecution. There understandably is some obscurity about a man who lived in the late 400s, but two letters he wrote survive; there are records of his deeds; tremendous influences surely attributable to him are still felt; and he did die on March 17. These things, and more, we do know.

He was born in western England and kidnapped by Irish marauders when he was a teenager. As a slave he worked as a shepherd, during which time his faith in God grew, where others might have turned despondent. He escaped to Britain, became learned in the Christian faith, and felt called to return to Ireland. On that soil he converted thousands, he encouraged men and women to serve in the clergy, he worked against slavery, and quashed paganism and heresies. Among his surviving colorful lessons is using the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity, the Triune God, to converts.

He was an on-the-ground evangelist – possibly the church’s first great evangelist/missionary since St Paul, planting churches as far away as Germany – and he preceded much of history: living more than a hundred years prior to Mohammed; 500 years before Christianity split into Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy; and a thousand years before the Reformation.

I am not Irish; I am American. And my background is not at all Irish; it is German. But propelled, I am eager to admit, by a remarkable book, How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill, I have learned about a gifted people. Not unlike other ethnic groups, the Irish endured persecution through generations, but in many ways in special ways. I have learned about a land that was repository of many tribes, not least the Celts, until its craggy Atlantic coast became the last European stand against pagan barbarism. Those tribes became a people, and their land virtually became, for quite a while, the defiant yet secret refuge of literacy and faith, in lonely monasteries and libraries. You know, the “Dark” Ages. Which were not all that dark. Plumbing was neglected, perhaps; but faith thrived.

As Lori Erickson recently wrote in a series on St Patrick for Patheos, “In the eighth century, Celtic Christians created a masterpiece of religious art called the The Book of Kells, whose vividness, color, and artistic mastery reflected Christian traditions laced with Celtic enchantment. The Book of Kells is an illuminated Latin manuscript of the four Gospels. While scholars don’t know for certain, it was likely created on the remote island of Iona off the coast of Scotland, and later brought to the monastery at Kells, Ireland. Made from the finest vellum and painted with inks and pigments from around the world (including lapis lazuli from Afghanistan), the book is almost indescribable in its loveliness, with designs that are convoluted, ornate, sinuous, and dreamlike in their complexity. Some scholars have called it the most beautiful book in the world,” she wrote. I can add that it can be seen as an early graphic novel.

It is on display at the magnificent Trinity College Library in Dublin – whose famous, cavernous, multi-balconied library room is akin to heaven for bibliomaniacs like me – surrounded by back-lit photos and displays of enlargements. It sits in an environment-controlled case, one page at a time turned every few months. To behold that book, so magnificent in its reproductions, in its reality, was one of the great experiences of my life.

The Book of Kells is awesome for what it is, surely one of the greatest artistic achievements of the human hand, head, and heart. A majestic monument to faith, all the more remarkable for being anonymously produced, unlikely by one person; possibly by a virtual army of creative souls. The Book of Kells is significant, too, for what it represents:

The tenacity of faith; the triumph of trust; the assumption of lonely devotion in the face of worldly temptations and the world-system’s persecutions; the joy of creativity; and obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Knowing Him; making Him known. Not incidentally investing artistic beauty along the way… and having obvious, visceral, evident fun in the process.

Back to Saint Patrick. When the ancient masterpiece we behold as The Book of Kells was created, the man Patrick who bravely and no less tenaciously fought for the Gospel on that beautiful soil was already, himself, 500 years in the past. Our faith has been blessed with famous noted saints like Paul and Augustine; and those who touched souls for Christ but never were designated saints subsequently, like Martin Luther and J S Bach; and many, many saints who mightily served Christ in obscurity, like the monks who made The Book of Kells, and uncountable missionaries and martyrs.

Saint Patrick, born a pagan, made a slave, once a fugitive, was transformed by a knowledge of Christ. He taught us how to overcome challenges, listen to the Holy Spirit, formulate a vision, and change the world. Not just his world; but the world ever after.

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For more than a millennium a hymn, set to the haunting Irish tune “Slane,” and using St Patrick’s teaching in the words of the 6th-century Irish poet Saint Dallan, has spoken to the hearts of believers and non-believers: God is our All-In-All: Be Thou My Vision. It is performed here – with obvious and profound extra layers of meaning – by the blind gospel singer Ginny Owens.

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Click: Be Thou My Vision

6-1-15

Many of us have come to assume that “commencement,” as in every June’s spate of Commencement exercises, means the end: ceremonies that mark the end of high-school or college or grad school stints; the end of studying; for some people, the end of emergency calls from your kids needing money in their accounts at college. (Um, it doesn’t end with diplomas.)

But of course “commencement” means beginning. It is not a mere word-exercise to keep the meaning straight. It is well that we always have the attitude that almost everything we do is preparation for the next stage. This is true about one’s first job, and it is true about one’s last job, so to speak, in Glory, for which we always should prepare.

A personal note as I commence this little essay. I will write about endings and commencements and seasons of life. I usually do in June, for graduations are useful reminders of the larger cycles wherein we spin. I have just returned from a month overseas with my daughter and son-in-law Emily and Norman; my grandchildren Elsie and Lewis; my hosts Kenny Morrison and Ann Campbell and so many other new friends. It was not easy to arrange the trip there… but less easy to leave. Circles and cycles.

Parenthetically, this week is the exact fifth anniversary of this blog. And coincidentally, we just passed precisely 100,000 subscribers, hits, visitors, and, perhaps, even eavesdroppers. And respondents, from all over the world. It is truly humbling. I thank God and Google; the web and YouTube; my amazing Web Master (and I do mean Master) Norm Carlevato; and sites that pick us and share to places unknown – RealClearReligion, AssistNews, CBN.com, etc.

Ironically the germ of these messages was, five years ago, sharing a music video with a precious friend, singer/songwriter Becky Spencer… and I shared the link below, on the theme of kids’ graduations (and my enthusiasm for the singer Suzy Bogguss).

So here we are, back again. Circles and cycles. And thinking about the seasons of life. For me, enjoying my grandchildren after two years. For many, children graduating, and preparing for college or some other schooling or the military. You don’t have to be a parent or a grandparent to savor the unfathomable mixed but sweet emotions at the commencements of new chapters in life. You can be a child or grandchild. The pathos might take longer to be evident, but you eventually will feel it.

When Emily’s pastor Keith McCrory drove me to the Dublin Airport last week I wept for several minutes after waving to the family. Keith finally sympathized, “It must be hard to say good-bye.” I don’t think he believed me when I protested that I had merely jammed my fingers in the car door.

But these feelings of pathos, these tears we cry, are not sad, or not 100 per cent sad. There is an elemental part of us that appreciates when a significant transition of life takes place. It is natural, it is proper, it is what comprises life, as much as breathing and sleeping and eating. But because these moments come at fewer times, and with concentrated emotions, they seem more poignant. They ARE more poignant… but not unwelcome.

When kids go off to college, or the military, or professions, they are just doing what you reared them to do. When they marry, they fulfill your dreams, not only theirs. When they leave home, sometimes to live in other states or countries… you will miss them, but you feel the pride a mother bird must feel when a young one spreads its wings and flies. Elemental.

The tears we shed when we welcome our babies to the world have the same real and virtual ingredients as the tears we shed when the world, in turn, welcomes them years later, and we say Farewell. What different emotions! But parents holding on at first, after all, is the same sort of act as parents letting go later on.

“For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.” (Ecclesiastes 3: 1,2, New Living Translation)

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Music vid: Singer Suzy Bogguss was barely a newlywed when her husband Doug Crider wrote this song, an early hit record of hers, about circles and cycles of life, the mysterious poignant joys of parenthood. Two decades later she drove her own daughter to college before singing it on the Grand Ole Opry. Not an easy task. To every parent this June. Happy Commencement!

Click: Letting Go