Psalm 8: 1-9 (links validated 5/15/23)

Some while back I read Stephen Ambrose’s book Undaunted Courage that details the voyage westward of explorers Lewis and Clark. Again and again as they pushed west in the early 1800s, these two explorers and their comrades were stunned to see prairies literally black with herds of buffalo, the thunder of whose hoof beats reverberated for miles. Some days the sunshine would be blocked from view for long periods due to passing flocks of passenger pigeons. One day the river on which they were traveling became clotted with some white, fluffy substance. Upon rounding a bend in the river they discovered the source: a mind-numbing rookery of white pelicans who were molting. Something like that is what Genesis 1 shows us as God’s original intent: to fill the world up to the brim with swarms of creatures...

("The first of the dream-forms is that of Sophia, or divine Wisdom, a feminine figure who waits in the liminal places, the thresholds of crossing between divine and human realities: 'Does not Wisdom call, And does not understanding raise her voice?...")

A young woman involved in demonstrations against the oppressiveness and injustices of the government in her country in South America, was arrested and placed in solitary confinement. Her jail cell was cold, and damp, there was a bucket in the corner for a toilet and a mattress on the floor for a bed. There was no window and only a single light bulb. In going to jail; she said farewell to her freedom, friends and perhaps even to life itself. After a few days in jail, a soldier came in and unscrewed the light bulb and took it, leaving her in total darkness. Through the darkness he laughed at her and taunted her, “We have taken away your freedom, your friends and now your light. What are you going to do now? You are all alone in the dark!” Immediately the young woman replied, “You have taken away my light bulb, but you can't take away the true Light. Jesus is my Light! He is here with me in the dark!”

This may not be a fully apt illustration or analogy but I am reminded of a couple scenes from the fine movie A Beautiful Mind. On his first date with Alicia, the woman who will become his wife, the absent-minded professor John Nash seems completely distracted when at a big party at the Governor’s Mansion Alicia comments on the beautiful paintings on the wall, saying at one point, “God must be a painter or else why did he invent every possible color.” Nash does not respond. But later in the film—in the scene you can see here—Nash shows up late for a birthday dinner. Alicia is annoyed. But then he gives her a gift—a crystal that disperses light so you can see every possible color and he reminds her of what she had said many months before at the Governor’s Mansion. “I didn’t think you were listening” she says. “I was listening” he replies. Maybe sometimes God seems remote from our lives. Maybe our prayers seem to bounce right off the ceiling and come back at us as a kind of whistling in the dark. But maybe once in a while by the Holy Spirit God comes to us and helps us, answers us, touches us (perhaps through another person even) and we say “I didn’t think you were listening.” “I was listening” God replies. “I always listen.” For God is mindful of us.

This may not be a fully apt illustration or analogy but I am reminded of a couple scenes from the fine movie A Beautiful Mind. On his first date with Alicia, the woman who will become his wife, the absent-minded professor John Nash seems completely distracted when at a big party at the Governor’s Mansion Alicia comments on the beautiful paintings on the wall, saying at one point, “God must be a painter or else why did he invent every possible color.” Nash does not respond. But later in the film—in the scene you can see here—Nash shows up late for a birthday dinner. Alicia is annoyed. But then he gives her a gift—a crystal that disperses light so you can see every possible color and he reminds her of what she had said many months before at the Governor’s Mansion. “I didn’t think you were listening” she says. “I was listening” he replies. Maybe sometimes God seems remote from our lives. Maybe our prayers seem to bounce right off the ceiling and come back at us as a kind of whistling in the dark. But maybe once in a while by the Holy Spirit God comes to us and helps us, answers us, touches us (perhaps through another person even) and we say “I didn’t think you were listening.” “I was listening” God replies. “I always listen.” For God is mindful of us.

“With great power comes great responsibility.” In Stan Lee’s original 1962 comic book Amazing Fantasy #15, a slightly varied form of this sentence appears as a caption below the last panel. In the 2002 Spider-Man film, Peter Parker hears these words from his beloved Uncle Ben. The implications are obvious: a rather awkward young man who is bitten by a radioactive spider and gains superhuman powers needs an enormous moral compass to stay humble and serve others in the best ways. As a devoted fan of Marvel films, I would say that this mantra belongs at the forefront of any action taken by our favorite superheroes, from Iron Man to Star-Lord to Captain Marvel...

I’m not much of an opera buff, but a while ago I was privileged to attend a performance of “Madama Butterfly.” It is the tragic story of a young Japanese girl who is swept off her feet by a dashing United States naval officer who is visiting Nagasaki. Though he is simply impetuous, she falls deeply in love with him and they marry. To cement their relationship, she leaves Buddhism and converts to Christianity. A large cross displayed in an important part of her house symbolizes her new faith and her love for her husband. His ship soon sails, and he is gone for three long years. Every day she scans the horizon looking for his ship. Every day she prays to the Christian God for his return. After three years, she begins to waver. “The Japanese gods are fat and lazy, but does the Christian God even know where I am?” Then her husband returns, and she is overjoyed– until she meets his new American wife. In a fit of rage and grief, Madame Butterfly sweeps the cross from its place in her house, smashing it to the ground. And then she kills herself...

I just finished my yearly quota of young adult books with two marvelous stories about disabled kids who demonstrate that they, too, are crowned with glory and honor. Soar is about a boy whose heart issues keep him from playing his beloved baseball, but not from coaching his peers to new heights. And Out of My Mind tells the story about a fifth grade girl who is unable to speak or control her body because of cerebral palsy. But behind her spastic movements and drooling grunts is a brilliant mind...

("Shortly after World War II came to a close, Europe began picking up the pieces. Much of the Old Country had been ravaged by war and was in ruins. One of the saddest sight of all was the little orphaned children starving in the streets of those war-torn cities. Early one chilly morning, an American soldier was making his way back to the barracks..." and other illustrations)

("I have heard people talk about the power of laughter to heal. I came across it first in a book written by Norman Cousins some years ago called Anatomy of an Illness. It was a story of his own debilitating illness, and how he conquered it with laughter..." and other illustrations)

("After a major downpour filled all the potholes in the streets and alleys, a young mother watched her two little boys playing in a puddle through her kitchen window. The older of the two, a five-year old, grabbed his younger brother by the back of his head and shoved his face into the water hole. As the boy recovered and stood laughing and dripping, the mother runs to the yard in a panic...")

The brilliant Anglican writer Dorothy L. Sayers wrote a small, tightly packed treatise on the Trinity in 1941, in the midst of the war that was devastating her native England and the rest of Europe. She had become famous and popular as a mystery writer, but her great passion and the focus of her extraordinary mind were meant for theology. And on this, she studied and wrote in a dizzying diversity until her early death in 1957. Her book on the Trinitarian nature of God and of humanity is called The Mind of the Maker and was praised as the best exposition of the Trinity by no less a writer than C.S. Lewis. The book is short but dense, exploring a number of difficult subjects. She makes it clear that the Doctrine of the Trinity is neither obscure nor impossible to comprehend since our own natures, made in the image of God, is also trinitarian. In The Mind of the Maker, Sayers explains that “in our image” refers to the creativity that exists in God-in-three, a creativity which was also given to humanity. She writes that everything begins with the Idea which finds its reality, its incarnation, in Energy, and is disseminated through Power. In theological language, God the Father is the Idea, Christ is the Energy or Activity, and the Holy Spirit is Power. This is also the way human beings think and create. They have an idea, which becomes real only through implementation, and is disseminated through interaction, as someone else put it. The analogy Sayers uses throughout is that of the creation of a book, since that is what she knew best. The writer has an idea for a novel, but if it stays in the mind it has no reality. In the process of writing the idea becomes enfleshed; it is now energy; and then when the book is read by others, it has power...

Scroll down to page 71 for this resource (with Ps. 88).

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