ANNA LISA GROSS
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Anna Lisa Gross' blog. For the Mexico Permaculture AdVanture, click here. For publications, see writing.

Pedal Priestess

To be of good use

8/27/2015

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Sermon snippet from our congregational summit:


from Marge Piercy's To Be of Use:
"The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real."

The work that is real is rarely our jobs – though we are grateful and satisfied when we get to give 8 or more hours a day to our calling, to work that is real.

One of the reasons we come to church is to be part of something real – prayer that is really attentive to God, community that is really caring of our rough edges, spiritual questions and wisdom that really nourishes our soul’s longings. And we come to church to be part of work and activities that really matter by changing who we are, and making a difference in this community...."


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Pursue Peace

8/21/2015

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Sermon snippets: Psalm 34:11-14
Come, O children, and I will teach you the fear of the Lord....

"...What does fear naturally invite us to do? Avoid, hide, protect. We create distance between ourselves and what we fear. That's pretty smart when we're afraid of swine flu or the guy with the gun, but we're NEVER going to be safe by running away from God.

So here's what Teddy Roosevelt says:

"Fear God, in the true sense of the word, means love God, respect God, honor God; and all of this can only be done by loving our neighbors, treating them justly and mercifully, and in all ways endeavoring to protect them from injustice and cruelty; thus obeying, as far as our human frailty will permit, the great and immutable law of righteousness…."

Yir'at Yahweh, fearing or revering God, is no running away, it's no hiding. To yir'at God we have to chase after love and justice and mercy. Hear the Psalm again, in another translation:

Come, children, listen to me

I will teach you how to fall back in awe

Who has a passion for life

Loves every day and exults in happiness?

 

Guard your tongue from crookedness

And your lips from deceit

Avoid evil, do good

Seek peace—pursue it (Norman Fischer’s translation)


Last week we learned from flocks of birds and schools of fish as they belong to one another, as they have greater intelligence and skill moving together than moving alone. Look at the dove on your bulletin, inviting you to seek peace and pursue it. How might a bevy of doves seek and pursue peace? We admire birds for their flight. When we're afraid, we say we have a natural fight or flight response. So maybe we see this dove and think she's flying away from something. But movement – whether a dove's flight or our own movement in this world – is always away from something and toward something. We can choose to fixate on our fears, to focus on what we are moving away from. But just like trying not to think of an elephant, we'll keep thinking about scary stuff. Like when you're backing away from a snake and you don't want to let it out of your sight, so you watch it while you walk backwards until you can catch your breath and turn around and run – at least that's what I would do!

But movement is always toward something, too, and while it might make sense to back away from a snake, keeping our eyes on what we're moving away from, birds never fly backwards, and we can't seek and pursue peace by staring at violence, by fixating on our fears.
 
But we live in a culture of fear. Has anyone seen the Sharknado movies? I think there are three of them or something. I like scary movies, but I've never seen these, but I think the idea is that tornadoes are forming near the ocean and somehow picking sharks up in their swirl, and then people are trying to escape tornadoes and sharks at the same time. Pretty exciting. It took many millions of dollars and hundreds of people to make these movies. So many resources, so much time, so much money, so much creativity, poured into exploring the possibilities of fear. What would happen if we spent those millions of dollars and hundreds of talented people's time on designing films that teach people to start community gardens, or resolve conflicts peacefully, or use public transportation?

 The evening news, the Journal and Courier, most of our media are joining Sharknado, backing away from the snake, fixated on our fears. We are called apart, by our faith, by a Creator who tells us "be still and know that I am God" by Jesus who calmed the seas and said, "peace, be still" by a faith that stretches back thousands of years as people have looked toward God, chased after hope, sought and pursued peace, resisting their culture's invitation to fixate on fear, anger, revenge, scarcity...."

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Members of One Another

8/13/2015

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Sermon Snippets
Ephesians 4:25-29

Have you ever watched a flock of sparrows leave a tree, suddenly, altogether, responding to some alarm or desire that sends them all straight up in the air and then, like a wave, to the west, perhaps, then swirling together as the most talented dance troupe, until you see them come to rest as one in a nearby tree?

Virginia Woolf watched rooks out her window, and noticed that they looked like [quote] “a vast net with thousands of black knots in it, cast up into the air; which, after a few moments sank slowly down upon the trees until every twig seemed to have a knot at the end of it. Then, suddenly, the net would be thrown into the air again in a wider circle this time, with the utmost clamour and vociferation, as though to be thrown into the air and settle slowly down upon the tree tops were a tremendously exciting experience.”

Virginia Woolf captures with impish eloquence a scene that has captivated most of us, when we’re blessed and astounded to be walking under or driving past the tree from which hundreds of birds suddenly emerge. Bird flocks have the coolest names: a flutter of sparrows, or a murmuration of starlings, or a chime of wrens, or a squabble of gulls. We give bird flocks these evocative names because their collective identity is as important as their individual identity. Birds in groups need their own names. What Virginia Woolf saw was one vast net with thousands of black knots in it – one net, not thousands of birds.

We see the same group behavior in a school of fish, or more specifically, a fleet of bass, a battery of barracudas, and a company of angel fish. A school of fish moves as one creature, swirling around coral, darting away from a shark, diving into dinner.

Colonies of ants and swarms of bees are so skilled at collective identity and group consciousness that they give us hope for our own societies. Social scientists study ants and bees looking for tips that we humans can use to give our own families and cities and countries more harmony and shared vision.

We’re learning from other species too. Biologists see that flocks of birds and schools of fish have quicker reaction time together than apart. Starlings rolling from one tree to another in one huge wave react to obstacles in 20 milliseconds, but when a starling is flying alone, it needs 80 milliseconds to react to an obstacle. Does that make sense? Biologists get these bird flights on video, slow them down, and figure out that as a flock of starlings swirls through the sky, when some other bird or another obstacle appears in the flock’s path, individual birds react, changing direction, within 20 milliseconds. When biologists watch birds flying alone, it takes them 80 milliseconds to change direction.

 In the flock only a few birds see the obstacle, the rest simply follow the lead of the birds right in front of them. Finely attuned, a flock changes direction in a quarter of the time an individual bird can. Collective unconscious, or group intelligence, or whatever we might call it, gives the birds more ability together than they have apart.

At least in U.S. culture, humans tend to assume we can be more agile on our own than together. If we were facing an obstacle course within a flock of birds or school of fish we’d likely worry about the slowpokes and the dawdlers and the inevitable arguments over which way to turn. We often think of one another as burdens more than blessings. At least when we’re trying to get somewhere, we want independence and autonomy.

But starlings think and move four times as fast when they’re traveling as a flock. What invisible intelligence, what surprising skills, what bonus blessings do we have when we’re moving through life together?...


Even before anyone studied mirror neurons or starling flock reaction time, we knew we belonged to one another physically. We read at least 12 times in the gospels about Jesus being “moved with compassion” or sometimes mistranslated “moved with pity.” The Greek word is splangchnizomai and means feeling in the gut, being moved in the bowels. The gospels writers tell us at least 12 times that Jesus felt people’s passion and pain in his gut. We are members of one another physically and spiritually. We feel one another’s emotions whether or not we want to....

We are members of one another. We change each other’s heart rates, we fire each other’s neurons, we get each other to yawn, we move each other’s bowels! Paul tells the church that we must speak only what is useful for building up, so that our words give grace to one another. When we realize how much power we have over one another, why would we be careless? We forget. We get in a long, slow-moving line and get caught up in our own world, forgetting that we’re impacting everyone around us. But we know in our core that we are members of one another....

Your heart, your brain, your gut, your words, your deeds are spreading through this room – what do you want to give us with your huge and holy power?..."

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Lording Under

8/5/2015

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Sermon snippet from Northern Plains District Conference
1 Chronicles 18:8-10, John 12:1-3

"...Mary anoints his feet and suddenly Jesus is kneeling before the disciples in the very next chapter. These days we usually anoint for healing, but most biblical anointings are to commission kings. Earlier in the gospel of John, chapter 6 verse 15, Jesus refuses to be anointed king by the people gathered by the Sea of Galilee, after the feeding of the multitudes. But as Mary anoints his feet, she prepares Jesus for his first kingly act - a grand entrance into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday. Soon after, king Jesus kneels and washes the disciples feet. Now do you know about feetwashing in 1st century Palestine? It wasn't a weird religious ritual then, it was a run-of-the-mill moment of hospitality, performed by a woman or a slave of the household. King Jesus kneels as a woman, as a slave, and turns the world upside down.

We might not like to call Jesus king, but he's an upside down king, he became king by his feet, not his head. Jesus lords under us, he never lords over us. The only way we can practice feetwashing tonight with joy is to dive into this upside down world with Jesus where slave becomes master and master becomes slave. We must renounce each and every worldly power and privilege that we have ever lorded over one another. They have no place in Jesus' upside down kindom....

Mary helps Jesus turn the world upside down, as he inverts master and slave, men and women, inspired by her inversion of head and feet. She doesn't anoint his head as kings are usually anointed - she anoints his feet and changes our world. Sole by sole, may we celebrate the kindom come. Tell the whole world who God is and that God has turned the world upside down! God-seekers, be jubilant in your soul and your soles!"

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    Anna Lisa Gross is a pedaling priestess with a pen.

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