More and More of Me

Today's Link
An Aerial Armadillo

Saying for the Day
When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it. ~French Proverb

Picture of the Day

Monday and the day in which I share stories and facts about me.
Last Thursday in response to my blog on free speech Alaistair said this:
“My preferred option is speaking the truth in love.…”
As often happens with old men that comment sparked a long buried memory which I am going to share with you today.
I had been in the ministry two years and was serving three churches. One of my parishioners asked me to go with her to the funeral of her brother. He was being buried from a church that believed that only their members could be saved and that in order to be saved you had to confess all your sins before the entire congregation. She was afraid to go to the funeral alone. So I went with her.
The preacher gave two thirty minute funeral sermons, one in English and one in Finnish . I don’t remember all of what he said but two things stand out. He pointed at me and shouted “ Even dat preacher must repent”. He pointed at my parishioner and said she would never see her brother again because he was going to heaven and she wasn’t. But there was still time for her to repent. Somehow she held it together but you could see how it hurt her.
After the service I took the preacher aside and told him that I didn’t care what he said about me but he had really hurt the sister and she was already grieving. He looked me right in the eye and said “ I spoke the truth in love.” and he believed it.
His truth had no room for grace or mercy. His truth was absolute. Without confession before the congregation there could be no absolution and no salvation. Most frightening of all the Church he served had Lutheran in the title. In a sense he was a relative. The kind you don’t want anybody to know you have.
What that experience did to me was to make me more open to other Christian denominations. I was less sure that we alone had the truth. In fact I was sure that God’s truth was far greater than ours.
The other thing it did is that whenever I do something I know I shouldn’t I hear him saying “ Even dat preacher must repent”.
Now that is a word of truth however spoken.

News from Pigeon Falls

The little town in my basement where the trains still run, dragons fly, and life is back to normal.
This morning Oops, Pastor Joan, and Herman were gathered in the kitchen of the parsonage . Suddenly Herman and Pastor Joan could hear Oops talking. But it wasn’t really talking she was projecting the words right into their heads.
She said she was sorry. She had come to this dimension to hide from the demon since it wanted to destroy her. She did not intend to fight it here because it was, in truth, more powerful than her. She was just going to hide for a little while. But then she met Herman. Herman had power of his own coming from his faith in the One Creator. She thought his power and hers together might be able to destroy the demon. But when the battle started she knew she had made a mistake. She saw the damage done to the town. She wasn’t sure they could win. Once the battle started she knew the outcome would be very close and for a moment it looked like they might lose. Then the other power came. Somewhere in this world is somebody with a huge amount of power and he or she saved us.
Monday night she used her power to put the town back the way it was before the fight. She owed them that.
But now her time here was over.
She would wipe from their memories all recollection of her. All papers, documents, pictures, would vanish. It will be as if she was never here.
Pastor Joan she was leaving with a thank you gift.
Herman alone would remember her and she gave him a word to use if he ever needed her power.
All he had to do was say Mazahs and she would empower him.
Having communicated this to them she vanished and Pastor Joan found herself having coffee with Herman who was asking another question about the book of Daniel.
But Herman, alone, remembered Oops.

Wrap UP

It was a dreary looking day.The temperature just made it up to freezing. I did some work on the Church website. I keep learning things. Then I posted the ELCA bible study on the website. Betty always has me make six copies for the Tuesday Bible study but on the third copy we ran out of black ink. Super Wal Mart didn't have either of the two cartridges we needed so we wnt to office Max in the Mall . Then I finished printing the study for Betty. Now I need a breathing treatment.'
GBYA

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