Rejoicing with those who rejoice

 Dear Friends

After more than a year of “weeping with those who weep” due to the devastation the pandemic brought (and is still bringing) to so many families and friends of victims, it is nice to have a chance to “rejoice with those who rejoice”, the other part of the admonition from Paul’s letter to the Romans (12:15).

I am referring to the Olympics and specifically the “watch parties” of family and friends watching thousands of miles away as their loved ones glorify God with their different bodies in so many, different ways. I don’t know any of the athletes personally, but I feel like part of their families as I see the real time reactions side by side as each event concludes. It is also so heartwarming to see athletes, who have just fiercely competed against each other, embrace after their events with mutual admiration and respect.

There are many reasons and times to weep with those who weep---think of the condo collapse in Florida last month, or the Capitol officers’ wrenching testimony before the January 6^th select committee last week. But we need to spend as much, if not more time, rejoicing with those who rejoice.

Emotions which cause us to weep and rejoice with perfect strangers remind us of how closely we are connected with humanity...more than we know.

May God keep bringing us opportunities to “rejoice with those who rejoice”!

John

P.S. This watch party picture is from 17 year old surprise winner Lydia Jacoby's high school in Seward, Alaska. Some of those jumps for joy could have qualified her peers for the high jump!

Celebrating the Salad

 

Dear Friends

A quick google search for the origins of “As American as Mom, Baseball and Apple Pie” reveals there are many variations of this old idea of what everyone is for, including a 1974 commercial jingle for a car company. It dropped Mom and added Hot Dogs and Chevrolet!

Most people love family, sports and dessert in some form. It’s just that we cannot limit what, specifically, brings people great joy. Someone once said that America is not so much a melting pot but more like a salad bowl. While we still struggle to rally around founding ideals that should easily unite us---that all are created equal, with liberty and justice for all---we can still celebrate our diversity which can enrich everyone.  (A current movie I just saw, “In the Heights”, is a great example of this).

While it might be hard to replace mom, there are many different sports and foods, songs and movies, fashions, traditions and destinations, you name it, that stir the souls of Americans. The menus for what feed us are many. The selections and ingredients and ways of cooking and presenting them are unending.  

Among the prayers for our national life in the Book of Common Prayer is one called “For our Country”. Among its petitions is this: “…fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues…”

So can we try harder once in a while, say on the Fourth of July, to recognize that with all our rich diversity, we can still try to agree on a dressing for this delicious salad we call America, a dressing which can make all the ingredients better? A dressing made up of courtesy, kindness, respect for starters? A way of living for more than self or party or position?

May our sweet land of liberty, still evolving, still healing, still trying to live up to its ideals, remember that we are, indeed, one of all nations under and dependent on God. Let us commit to the opening words of that prayer, “For Our Country”:

Almighty God, who has given us this good land for our heritage, we humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favor and glad to do thy will.

John