Welcome to Pastor Jack Buckley's weekly blog and podcast.
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Monday, July 25, 2005
Imagine That
"How can I believe?"
I get that question a lot. It's natural, of course. I mean, I am a minister!
My first impulse is to reply, "How can you breathe?"
Either way, you're doing it or you're not.
But I understand the dilemma my questioner wrestles with. Especially in our western tradition, faith seems like the opposite of knowledge. Abstract and ethereal, it easily loses out to concrete measurable facts.
I suppose the question really is, "How can I know that my beliefs are rooted in reality?"
Amen to that! After all, what good is it to have your feet firmly planted in mid-air? The acid test of faith is how it works in real life.
I'm convinced that Jesus felt the same way. For example, in Matthew 13 he uses little stories from everyday life to tease our imagination about what faith means and how it works.
Seven times he says "the kingdom of heaven is like what happens when..." God's kingdom means what God is up to in the world, where God is at work to make us what we're meant to be.
Jesus asks us to put ourselves in the shoes of the people he describes as catching onto God's way with the world.
A farmer doing what every farmer does with seeds, weeds, plows, and reapers...
A woman kneading leaven into dough...
Fishermen netting fish...
On and on, seven times he paints his familiar word pictures, hoping we'll get the spiritual point.
Frankly, some of them read like riddles. The point might as well be at the tip of a needle in a haystack.
But I'm so glad Jesus teases our imagination instead of spelling everything out the way a philosophy professor would.
I think his point behind the point, story by story, is that faith works along the lines of a good adventure story. Harry Potter, the Narnia chronicles, Frodo and the gang -- Kids love 'em, and they call out the inner child in every reader regardless of our age.
It's no accident that Jesus more than once said God's ways are most accessible to children and anyone who's willing to act like one.
Kids love stories. They're curious enough to question everything. And yet they're able to trust that what you see is usually what you get.
Maybe that combination of ingredients is a recipe for faith.
Instead of trying to unscrew the inscrutible with logic-chopping arguments, Jesus invites you and me to listen up with our imagination in gear, to watch what he does and listen to his words carefully enough to get it for once.
Not in contradiction of real-life facts, but in light of them. Faith sees life as all of a piece, the warp and the woof of God's grand tapestry.
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:28 AM
Monday, July 18, 2005
Howdy, Buckaroos
Joanne and I spent all last week loafing about luxurianty, most of it incognito right in our own back yard.
We did get away for 2 secluded days and nights at Stinson Beach, to celebrate our 43rd(!) wedding anniversary. How sweet it was when a woman came over to our dinner table on that auspicious evening to exclaim, "You are such a cute couple! I've got to tell my boyfriend that romance is really not out of fashion for us 50ish folks."
First of all, I didn't realize we were being all that romantic. And I think you already know the second of all. Ah well....
So now I'm back in the saddle. Almost literally. Cuz all this week I'm a senior ranch-hand at the Circle G Ranch.
That's our Vacation Bible School, with 45 little buckaroos and buckarettes signed up. Bales of hay and other ranch-style paraphernalia here and there nicely set the week's theme.
Since it's Vacation Bible School, can you guess what/who the "G" stands for? Yup, our great big Pardner In The Sky.
I remember my own first experience of VBS.
We carpooled across my part of Newark, NJ -- a handful of us from my neighborhood Sunday school -- to join kids from what seemed like 20 other churches. Probably 3 or 4.
Anyway, I'd never felt so much churchly energy before.
We threw ourselves into group singing, Bible stories, crafts, and snacks. And, wow, all those girls! I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.
All these years later I'm so grateful for the way VBS introduced me to a church that existed beyond my little congregation. Of course, I knew in my head that was the way things are. But now I saw and felt it for myself -- in living color and surround sound.
Imagine the encouragement one of this week's kids will have next September, when she recognizes a new classmate as that boy or girl who wore the same team shirt all this week, worked on the same crafts project, and co-starred in the same skit at Friday night's closing celebration.
In a culture where God-talk is sometimes scoffed at if not forbidden, how good it is to know you belong to an extended family of faith. Of people who understand how and why you live the best you can for the glory of God. Who want with you to spread around God's kind of love. And peace. And hope.
It's life-changingly wonderful to know those good things are not yet out of fashion, for folks of any age.
Circle G Ranch. Yahoo!
posted by Jack Buckley at
11:41 AM
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
I Love a Parade
I was so excited when the whole town turned out for a parade to welcome me as this church's new pastor.
What did I know?
My first day on the job was July 1, 1993. The parade came three days later, my first Sunday in the pulpit.
Right after church, there they all came -- civic dignitaries, marching bands, 101 different kinds of floats, even the local lesbian potluck dinner society. Though I personally prefer teal and fuchsia, the prevelant colors turned out to be red, white, and blue.
So, okay... What did I know?
Yesterday Alameda threw another 4th of July parade. And First Presbyterian Church had our own float 2/3 of the way back in the marching order.
We were sort of anti-climactic, though, following immediately behind Trader Joe's young staff on their skateboards dressed like beach bums (bare chested) and bummettes (halter tops).
Adding insult to injury, the "Pirates" junior cheerleaders -- right behind us -- kept rushing up on their strong young legs and almost bumping into our noble float.
Still, we kept our cool and garnered some crowd approval all along the 3 1/2 mile parade route.
And rightly so, for we were pretty cool. The float was a not-quite-to-scale convertible model of our Victorian Sanctuary, filled with singers who belted out old-timey patriotic songs. I spotted just two people who made a point of standing up as we passed by singing the Star-Spangled Banner.
(Which reminds me... One long-ago midnight in Galway, Ireland, Joanne and I saw a bar band close their show by playing the Irish national anthem right at the stroke of midnight. Everyone had to stand at attention, of course. Immediately afterwards the band yelled "Thank you, and good night!" No encores. Period. Sly ol' devils.)
This annual parade gives Alameda the chance to say, sing, show to each other that we're a wonderfully diverse community. We've got innumerable differences among ourselves, some as opposite as red and purple on the spectrum, yet we're able to blend with a little imagination into a harmonious rainbow.
Between July's, our challenge and our goal is to be as accepting, understanding, and affirming of each other as we'd like to receive for ourselves. I'm pleased and proud that our church family said Amen! to that by our presence in the parade.
Like the man said, "Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Everything else is just commentary."
posted by Jack Buckley at
10:48 AM
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