eight::(four)five

Yesterday my best friend was married. It was a beautiful liturgy and celebration, an event that brought people together. I was supposed to give a toast at the reception with time going by quickly, but had I the chance, I would have told the story of how Amos and I met in a class called Plato and Aristotle, how we are friends in a sense that we bother understand, the Aristotelian way in which we are working towards a common end, a like telos. And now he will be doing so even more with his wife, Kaci, whom I think is wonderful for him, and he for her.

The lectionary texts yesterday even pointed toward the importance of their marriage. The Jubilee ordinances were proclaimed to the Hebrews, an economy that calls for the poor to freed, for justice to rule for the entire creation. Amos and Kaci are people that care about such things, and even more, are working for them with such things as gardening and starting a local farmer's market. The gospel text displayed a negative story about marriage. Herod the king had an unholy marriage and out of his humiliation and the nastiness of his brother's wife who was now his, he had John the Baptist beheaded. Marriage in our age is not something taken seriously. It is often done for the perceived need for pleasure of two selfish people, as opposed to being entered into in order to faithfully participate in God's economy of justice. I believe that Amos and Kaci know this and will work in this economy. I pray that as a single person I can participate in it, not that one must be married--my mind is simply focused on marriage at the moment.

(Leviticus 25:1, 8-17, Psalm 67, Matthew 14:1-12)

Further, today we are struck by the realization that as important as things are in our lives, much is vanity, vapor, and our work simply passes by. I was again stirred last night by a re-realization of my desire to justify myself. How vaporous that is. I have nothing to prove but that Christ has proven all things, that the Triune God is an abundant Love who provides. I haven't the need to store shit up, be it physical possession or ridiculous intellectual victories or "respect".

And such must be the call from my inner being to be still and silent. It will be a new silence, one that I have obviously not yet learned. But I hear the word. Now may my thanks be to God.

(Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23, Psalm 90, Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11, Luke 12:13-21)