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Preach the Gospel!

7/30/2018

by Pastor Kathy Itzin

Last Spring, I decided to offer congregational members the opportunity to give a sermon in our sermon series "Books Speaking to Faith." I thought that this would be a great opportunity for people to share messages that are important to them.
I didn’t expect the Great wisdom, creativity, and organization that our members offered in the sermons that they created and shared with us. Wow! I am not surprised, but I am impressed! This has also been evidenced in the stories we submitted for the July Courier. (Great idea, Char)!
We all offer our talents in so many ways: serving on committees, working in the community, fixing, improving and maintaining property (and the churchyard), cleaning and organizing areas in the church, and contributing money, labor, and energy to our neighborhoods and the causes that we support.

The speakers in our sermon series have reminded me that we each have an important message, or several important messages to give. Someone once said that everyone has at least one good sermon within them! Lately, I’ve been reflecting upon how our ‘sermons’ may be offered in the form of advice given to a friend or loved one, a visit with someone who needs it, or a sign placed in a yard. Even beyond that, ‘sermons’ can be preached by our actions or examples.
That reminds me of the story of an old German farmer. He spent his life caring for his farm and family. After his wife died, he told a friend, "I loved her so much I even told her once." She knew his love by his actions.
That is also true about preaching. Our children learn our values by the examples we give them. Our friends and relatives see how we act and live our lives. That is spreading the Gospel! We teach perhaps more by what we do, than by what we say.
A mechanic, cashier, or person who is retired may be a better preacher than a minister. When we think about the people who serve as examples to us, it is usually those with whom we spent time, the ones who live good, honest lives.
That’s us! Others who may never enter a church, learn about following Jesus by our actions. We may follow those actions by words, but we don’t need to. Whether or not we ever ‘hear’ an official sermon by you, you are living a sermon every day. A holy man once sent out his disciples to share the Good News of Jesus. He said, "Go preach! And, if you need to, you can use words."
Jesus said, "Go, and make disciples of all nations…teach them…and know that I am with you always..." (Matthew 28: 19-20)

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The Little Prince

7/27/2018

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By Kevin Korell
Let me start with a little story. Way back in the 90s, when I was a young man, I was browsing a garage sale where I saw a book called The Little Prince, which I remembered fondly as a child. So I tucked it under my arm and brought it to a young lady to pay. She asked me a few questions. Why was I buying it? Would I take care of it? Would it get read? She wanted to make sure her copy went to a good home. It’s that kind of book.
It was written and illustrated by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a French pilot and author. In 1935, his plane crashed in the Sahara desert. His miraculous survival inspired this book, published shortly before his death in 1944, while flying a reconnaissance mission over Germany during WWII.
It starts off with this quote: All grown-ups were once children – although few of them remember it.
A primary theme in this book is learning to see the world as a child. The “grown ups” in this story really take a beating, though I think his use of the phrase “grown Ups” is kind of a shorthand for that part of us that has grown ‘old’, rigid, unseeing, and uncaring. I think he’s trying to help us remember what it’s like to experience the world as we once did. When we could ‘see’ beneath the surface of things. When we knew what was really important.
Here’s a quote:
“Grown ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them. When you tell them about a new friend you made, then never ask what his voice sounds like, what games does he play, does he collect butterflies?” Instead they want to know numbers. How old is he, how many brothers does he have, how much do his parents make. “Children should always show great forbearance towards grown-up people.”
So, as our story begins: our Narrator, when he was a child, drew a picture of a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant. When asked if the drawing frightens them, the grown-ups would say, “Frighten? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?” They can only see a hat, no matter how many times they have it explained to them. They advise him to put aside his artistic dreams, and so he did. He grew up.
But even so, our narrator is lonely in the grown-up world. When he meets someone who seems to not be entirely grown up, he shows them the picture of the boa constrictor swallowing an elephant, to see if they are a person of understanding. But they would always say, “It is a hat.” And he would have to talk to them about grown up things, not about boa constrictors and elephants.
So he has lived his life without anyone he could really talk to. He becomes a pilot, and one day his engine dies and he has to make an emergency landing in the desert. Things are bleak: little food or water, extreme heat. He sleeps. When he opens his eyes he sees an extraordinary young person in a long, flowing robe.
This little man’s request: Draw me a sheep! After a couple failed attempts, our narrator draws a box, which pleases the Little Prince, who can see the sheep sleeping inside the box, and is glad that his sheep will have a house to live in. This makes our narrator sad, as he cannot see the sheep. “I have had to grow old,” he sighs.
The Little Prince is from a very small asteroid, and has journeyed far. His planet is so small that to watch a sunrise, all he has to do is move his chair a few feet until the sun pops back up over the horizon. “What a dull world you inhabit,” he says, “with only one sunset a day!”
There’s some subtle and not-so subtle Christian allegories in this book. The Little Prince worries about the weed-like baobab shoots, which, like sins, start small but if allowed to grow, threaten to overwhelm his tiny planet. One must nip the sin in the bud, as it were. This is why he needs the sheep.
But there’s a catch. The Prince is also very much in love with a rose. The sheep that will eat the baobab seeds will also eat his rose, thorns and all. So why do roses bother to grow thorns if the sheep will eat them anyway? This ‘theological’ question is of great importance to the Little Prince. For we need both sheep and roses in the world, he thinks. The Little Prince is quite distraught. So our narrator draws a muzzle for the sheep, and the Little Prince is satisfied.
I don’t know quite what to make of the sheep and rose allegory. Perhaps we must be careful in ‘eradicating the bad’ that we do not also ‘destroy the lovely.’
Anyway, The Little Prince waters and cares for his rose, and loves it, but the flower grows vain and needy, and expects to be cared for all the time. And so he doubts her, and is unhappy. When his sadness overwhelms him, he runs away from his little home.
And so begins his journey, his spiritual quest. He visits many little planets, each inhabited by a person with a particular way of failing to be happy. It’s kind of a ‘seven deadly sins tour’, each world a little lesson on how one can ‘grow old’.
On the first planet lives a king who expects everyone to worship him. He is full of Pride, yet he is utterly alone. He ermine robe completely fills the planet, so that there is no room for anyone else. When asked “Over what do you rule?” the King replies, “Over everything, even the stars.” Yet he cannot command a single sun set, while the Little Prince has as many as he likes. “The grown-ups are very strange,” he concludes.
On the second planet lives a conceited man. His sin is Vanity. To him, all others are admirers. The man orders the Little Prince to salute him. At first the Little Prince is full of joy. But the man can see nothing but admirers, and can hear nothing but praise. He is blind and deaf to joy. The Little Prince quickly grows tired of this game. “The grown-ups are certainly very odd,” he says.
On the third planet lives a tippler. His sin is Gluttony. He drinks to forget, to forget that he is ashamed, for he is ashamed of his drinking. A vicious, never ending cycle. This time the grown-ups are “very, very odd.”
On the fourth planet lives a businessman. His sin is Greed. He is forever counting. He is counting the stars, and calls them “Little glittering objects that set lazy men to idle dreaming.” He thinks by counting the stars, he owns them. He cannot fathom that the stars belong to no one. “The grown-ups are certainly altogether extraordinary,” says the Little Prince.
On the fifth planet there is only a lamplighter and a single lamp, which he dutifully lights over and over. Yet although the planet rotates so fast that it has 1,440 sunsets a day, he cannot enjoy them. He is only following orders. Nevertheless the Little Prince admires him for being faithful, for being concerned about something besides himself.
On the sixth planet lives a geographer. He catalogs everything, oceans and mountains, and everything in between, yet has never seen a one. He thinks a thing only becomes real when it has been written down. When told that the Prince would next visit the Earth, the geographer says a curious thing: “The planet Earth has a good reputation,” at least to him.
And so the seventh planet is our Earth, which is very big, and where we have 2 billion people, and not 1, but 462 thousand lamplighters. And yet when the Little Prince lands in the Sahara desert, there are no people. He is puzzled. He notes how lonely it is without people. “It is lonely among people too,” he is told.
The Little Prince walks along until he comes to a walled garden with roses. He is saddened, because he had thought his rose was unique in the whole universe, yet here are so many identical ones. A fox appears, under an apple tree. The fox will act as a kind of wisdom teacher to the Little Prince.
The fox would like to be tamed. To the fox, the Little Prince is like all other little boys, nothing special, and to him the fox is like all other foxes. “But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. Then you will be unique in all the world, and I shall be unique to you.” The Little Prince realizes that his rose has tamed him. He loves her, and that makes her special, unique in all the world. “It will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Yours will call me, like music.”
“One only understands the things that one tames,” says the fox. “Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things already made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends anymore.”
So the Little Prince tames the fox. And when he must continue his journey, the fox cries, for now he knows sadness. Before parting, the fox tells the Little Prince a secret:
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is the time that you have devoted to your rose that makes your rose so important. Men have forgotten this truth, but you must not forget it. You are responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose.”
Wandering back into the desert the Little Prince meets our unfortunate pilot. And here’s where we start to see some parallels to Jesus’s own journey upon our little planet.
Our narrator is dying of thirst. “We will find a well,” says the Little Prince. Our narrator thinks this absurd. He is full of doubt and despair. How will we find a well in the immense desert? They wander through the night, out of water, terribly thirsty. “I am thirsty too,” says the Little Prince. “Water is also good for the heart.” But our narrator does not understand.
As they walk through the night, facing certain death in the heat of the morning, the Little Prince tells this wonderful parable:
“The stars are beautiful because of a flower that cannot be seen. The desert is beautiful, and what makes it beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well.” Our narrator is reminded of the house he grew up in. He was told that it hid a treasure, and although he never found it, it cast an enchantment over the house.
“Yes,” says the Little Prince. “The house, the stars, the desert – what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible.” And so the man carries the Little Prince through the night, and they find the well at daybreak. They are saved.
“I am thirsty for this water,” says the Little Prince. Our narrator raises the bucket to his lips and says “This water is indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness is born of the walk under the stars, the effort of my arms. It is good for the heart, like a present.” And so he understands.
The Little Prince revives, and continues his parable. “Men do not know what they are looking for. They rush about, they get excited, and they turn around and around. The men of your world raise five thousand roses in the same garden – and they do not find in it what they are looking for. And yet what they are looking for could be found in one single rose, or in a little water. But the eyes are blind, one must look with the heart.”
Now the story takes on the themes of death and resurrection, with obvious hints to Jesus’s own story. It is certainly not your typical children’s book ending.
The Little Prince says that he came to Earth exactly one year ago on this very spot. He sends our narrator away, to repair his engine, saying to return the following night. The pilot knows he cannot get it working in one day, but the Little Prince is quite insistent. Our narrator is filled with foreboding, but does as he is told.
Now before the Little Prince a golden snake appears. He claims to have great powers. “Whomever I touch, I send back to the earth from whence he came, but you are innocent and true, and you come from a star. I can help you, if you grow too homesick for your own planet.”
The following evening our narrator returns, his plane repaired. The Little Prince is sitting on a wall. He is speaking to something unseen. Our narrator overhears: “You have good poison? It will not make me suffer too long?” Then man runs, frightened, and sees the deadly snake scurry away.
The Little Prince tells the man that he is glad his plane is fixed, that he can now go home. “I too, am going back home. It is much farther, and more difficult.” The man weeps, but the Little Prince says, “I have your sheep, and I have the sheep’s box, and I have the muzzle.” Our narrator is distraught, so the Little Prince gives him a gift, the gift of his laughter. He says:
“The thing that is important is the thing that is not seen. If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the night sky. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers. And at night you will look up, and you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens. For some, the stars are guides, for others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For them all the stars are silent. You – you alone – will have the stars as no one else has them. In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing. You – only you – will have stars that can laugh!”
“Tonight, do not come,” he pleads. “I shall look as if I’m suffering. I shall look a little as if I were dying. Do not come to see that.” “I shall not leave you,” our narrator tells him three times.
That night our narrator follows, disobeying the Little Prince. “It was wrong of you to come. I shall look as if I were dead, and that will not be true. It is too far. I cannot carry this body with me. It is too heavy. All the stars will be wells. All the stars will pour out fresh water for me to drink.”
Then there is a flash of gold on his ankle. The Little Prince does not cry out. “He fell as gently as a tree falls. There was not even a sound.” He is gone.
As so our Narrator returns home. He knows the Little Prince has returned to his planet, with the sheep and the muzzle, to his beloved flower. He is comforted, but saddened too, for he realizes that he did not draw a strap on his muzzle, and wonders if the sheep will eat the rose after all. His life has been forever changed, now that he knows this to be a matter of great importance.
So what can we take away from this story? A mystical traveler teaches our narrator a lesson in faith. He teaches us to stop seeing with only our eyes. For if we do, we will become ‘Grown Up’, blind to what lies beneath the surface. But grown up or not, we must try to see with the heart. To see as a child sees. It may be difficult, but we can do it.
Learn how to love. Learn how to be loved. Know that caring for a single flower is a matter of great consequence. Our grown up world is very small, it seems to me. There are great vistas we miss out on, wide and wondrous landscapes, made beautiful by what cannot at first be seen, the well hidden in the desert.
And isn’t that the essence of faith?

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The Power of Now

7/27/2018

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By Jodie Walters
Parkway United Church of Christ – 7-15-18 – Jodie Walters
So … Kathy asked me to talk about a favorite book that influenced my spirituality. Years ago, a gal I worked with gave me a set of tapes of “The Power of Now,” read by the author Eckhart Tolle (Toe-lee). I listened to them several times, while I did the dishes. The ideas he presents in the book are not brand new. Thich Nhat Hanh (known as the father of mindfulness in the west) & other Zen masters have taught similar concepts. But the way they were explained in “The Power of Now” really rang true to me, Eckhart Tolle spoke with the power of conviction. After I started organizing my thoughts for today’s talk, I remembered that I’d been so impressed by this book when I first read it in 2005 I’d written an article about it for the Courier. I got some wonderful feedback from Joyce Momont & Owen Harris, two Parkway members who’ve passed on.
I was drawn to these ideas way before reading this particular book. As a baby boomer, I was attracted to these ideas by my experiences, circumstances, & natural disposition, they’d preoccupied by mind for decades.
I had read Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel, “Brave New World,” & his utopian novel, “Island,” & was very influenced by them.
Then, “Autobiography of a Yogi” by Paramahansa Yogananda really captivated me & I joined the Self-Realization Fellowship & learned meditation & breathing exercises.
Later, I read all of Carlos Castenada’s books, which some people consider true anthropological accounts of his time with a Yaqui Indian learning about shamanism, & some people consider fiction. I was fascinated by a completely different way of looking at the world, & what we consider reality.
“The Four Agreements,” by don Miguel Ruiz lays out a code of conduct based on ancient Toltec wisdom. I try to remind myself of these concepts every day & find them helpful.
These books, & many others, laid the groundwork for me to be receptive to the ideas in “The Power of Now.” I felt like the concepts made sense, & they were helpful. They also seemed to dovetail with things I’d absorbed from elsewhere that I’d judged to be valuable. There are so many choices in life. You have to decide – which religion, or which version of Christianity, to believe, & how devoutly you’ll live your faith. You have to decide – if other faith practices can also fit into your belief system, or if there’s only room for one way of thinking. You have to decide – when you have an unusual experience, do you dismiss it, maybe consider it a coincidence? Or do you appreciate the specialness of the event, maybe recognize it as a synchronicity, which Carl Jung referred to as one of the ways to experience the divine? As Kathy said in a benediction some weeks ago, “May you be blessed with the awareness of God.”
So, what is the book about? It could be viewed as another attempt to package Eastern mysticism for Westerners, like yoga & meditation. It was already selling well when Oprah featured it, then sales really took off, & it reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Eckhart Tolle is now a spiritual teacher & public speaker. But when he was a young man he suffered a deep depression & was suicidal. At his lowest point he was struck with the realization that the voice in his head was not his true self. He had an epiphany, & it changed him. He recovered & studied & has gone on to help many other people. We currently have an epidemic in this country of depression, drug abuse, & suicides. Many people are bothered to a greater or lesser degree by the voice in their head – a stream of incessant, involuntary, compulsive, often negative dialogue. Understanding, quieting, learning to ignore, this inner voice can be very helpful to your mental health, decreasing self-consciousness & increasing confidence. To clarify, we’re not talking about what people consider the voice of their conscience, or their intuition, or gut instinct, that can be a helpful, protective mechanism.
Tolle teaches that the beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not just this voice, this thinker, you can observe this thinker, watch this thinker, break old habits, activate a higher level of consciousness. He believes the mind/the ego, what he calls the egoic mind, creates the inner dialogue & gives you endless distractions to keep you from feeling your true self, your true core. It creates a false narrative where the past & the future take over increasing amounts of your waking thoughts, keeping you from truly experiencing the present moment, which is the only true reality. As Lao Tzu said over 2500 years ago: “If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
When Tolle talks about the egoic mind he means a false self, created by unconscious identification with the mind, where the present moment barely exists, it’s only concerned with the past & the future. When you are free of involuntary dialogue there is inner stillness. Most of us need to practice techniques to experience this on any kind of regular basis. Or, it can sometimes be experienced in times of extreme stress. This happened to me once when I was caught in crossfire while I was driving, my mind went blank & I felt the stillness, the scripture we heard earlier popped right into my mind. Now when I recall that experience, I also think of when Marv Ediger (another old Parkway member) used to say, “The God in me greets the God in you.” Heaven is within you.
Tolle talks a lot about breaking out of old patterns, inherited (taught) collective mind patterns that have kept humans suffering for eons. What is false within you – human unconsciousness & dysfunction – leads to conflicts in relationships, & to wars between tribes & nations. What is true – the possibility of attaining an enlightened state of consciousness, stillness, peace, & joy of being – leads to your true nature, oneness with creation. You can only know it when the inner voice is quiet, the mind is still, & you are fully present, fully in the now.
He believes the collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane & destructive entity ever to inhabit this planet. What do you think will happen on this planet if human consciousness remains unchanged? Consciousness raising is necessary – aside from increasing personal happiness it is needed to end the violent conflicts all over the planet. Just because it’s always been this way doesn’t mean it has to stay this way. Most scientists believe the Sixth Extinction is already underway – will it include us?
This quote at the end of the book really speaks to me: “What is God? The eternal One Life underneath all the forms of life. What is love? To feel the presence of that One Life deep within yourself & within all creatures. To be it. Therefore, all love is the love of God.”

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Why a ‘Books Speaking Faith’ sermon series?

7/4/2018

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by Pastor Kathy Itzin

I’ve noticed over the years that many churches have sermon series, especially during the summer.

I thought it would be interesting to share the core message of books that have said something important to us. The more I considered the idea, the more I thought it would be interesting to hear what books and messages have significantly impacted the lives of others as well. We all have a message to share!

We have a wide variety of people who volunteered to speak, and the books that they chose to speak about! We actually had too many speakers for July, so I am extending the series for the first couple weeks of August. We have a great variety: from Life of Pi and The Power of Now (by Char and Jodie), we also will enjoy Kevin’s thoughts on The Little Prince, Ann speaking about The Giving Tree, and Emily sharing Twinkle Loon.

We will still have scripture readings that share the theme of the books. I will also be here leading the services, and I am looking forward to hearing the experiences of our members, and how their lives have been impacted with these messages!

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