Happy birthday Nelson...

Today is Nelson Mandela's 92 birthday: many, many blessings! Today we began work on the Freedom Mass based upon South African freedom/folk songs and over 20 people stayed after worship for practice. Incredible spirit and GREAT sounds - this is going to be fun.

(I had hoped to share this for worship on August 8th but we're going to push it back a few weeks so that we can include more folk.)

Two post-worship thoughts: I am really captivated by Paul's sense that "sin" is breaking covenant as this has so many powerful implications for justice and compassion. Odd how you can read and think and preach a text for decades only to stumble upon a new insight that was there all the time. For me this makes the connections clear: breaking covenant is when we do not love compassion, do justice or walk with humility.

Also, a corrective to Bonhoeffer's somewhat incomplete notion that only that which is hard is of the Lord: as my sweetheart regularly reminds me, "What about joy? If God made me in the holy imagine, than God does not want me to be miserable, right?" That is, living into joy and blessings is also part of the holy will, yes? It is NOT just doing what is hard - that is part of the truth for part of the time - but it is not the whole truth about God's way.

Dig this... for this is the way of the Lord, too.