THANKSGIVING QUESTION  (2012)

Where are you

Mom and Dad, we miss you

Where are you

Marion and Harry. Joe and Ethel

Where are you Hazel,

Where are you Jeannie

Where are you grandma and grandpa, and Ruth and Lois, Cal, Verne, Joe, Mildred, Tom, Jerry, Jack, Michael, Louanne,

Where are you family, friends, -- scattered  across time

             all we name family -- scattered across the miles today

????????

You are here, --  Cindy and Jay, Beth, Donna and Mike, Jim and Sheril

You are here and shall be  -- Allison, Ashley

With us, Always to ask and answer with THANKSGIVING  to God: YOU’RE HERE.

The Breath of Christ

John 20:21-22 Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.
First United Methodist Church of Oak Park. Rev. Young-Mee Park

Isaiah 43:1-5 Video

Isaiah 43:1-5

But now, God's Message,
the God who made you in the first place, Jacob, the One who got you started, Israel:
"Don't be afraid, I've redeemed you. I've called your name. You're mine.
When you're in over your head, I'll be there with you.
When you're in rough waters, you will not go down.
When you're between a rock and a hard place, it won't be a dead end
—Because I am God, your personal God, The Holy of Israel, your Savior.
I paid a huge price for you: all of Egypt, with rich Cush and Seba thrown in!
That's how much you mean to me! That's how much I love you!
I'd sell off the whole world to get you back, trade the creation just for you.
So don't be afraid: I'm with you.

Transfiguration - Thin Places

This is sermon by Young-Mee Park, pastor of First United Methodist Church of Oak Park, IL
324 N. Oak Park Avenue, 60302
Preached Transfiguration Sunday, February 14, 2010
February 16, 2010 9:59 PM

YMP -2-7-10 Sailing into the Deep

Luke 5:1-11
5:1 Once while Jesus was standing beside the lake of Gennesaret, and the crowd was pressing in on him to hear the word of God,

5:2 he saw two boats there at the shore of the lake; the fishermen had gone out of them and were washing their nets.

5:3 He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little way from the shore. Then he sat down and taught the crowds from the boat.

5:4 When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, "Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch."

5:5 Simon answered, "Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."

5:6 When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break.

5:7 So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them. And they came and filled both boats, so that they began to sink.

5:8 But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, "Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!"

5:9 For he and all who were with him were amazed at the catch of fish that they had taken;

5:10 and so also were James and John, sons of Zebedee, who are partners with Simon. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people."

5:11 When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.

He comes to us as one unknown

Look Ma, No hands!

POEM - 60TH BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS
Look Ma, No hands!

Beneath it all - beneath a body of 60 years
And the face - they don't card me - even for AARP
The boy is there.

Those hierarchs who give me a job
"He's "old enough" - credible in authority and expertise
"Be presiding elder at a Charge Conference"
Represent the judicatory in the ecumenical world.

Little do they know...
How exciting it is to play with the 'big boys'
The term is not pc, but the reality is
Even when the 'big boys' are women

To be chosen to bat, in-field, trusted
Like my face pressed again the display window for the new toys
(Internet), each step a challenge, a stretch, and excitement
of discovery
of accomplishment, control a part of world
of self and a new skill.

How exhilarating to see God's grace in a new group of people
the wonder of the church, a charge conference of N. Austin,
and to be able to serve and do something worthwhile.
Always a stretch, a bit above my head, or out of my league;

But God there to see it through
- to stabilize the bike and guide it with his hands -
and let my hands rest upon the worldly handles

But the others - exteriors anyway, seem so serious.
Their demeanor matches the situation -
Conveys assurance, competence, credentialed authority
They deserve to be here.
Can I meet the demand to fill the role like that?
............
Inside, the boy wants to shout, "Look Ma, No hands!

December 7, 1993

Anti-Consolation Poem

We are like a platoon in a trench; hanging on to each other as one after another is killed. We do become more comrades than at the beginning of the engagement with the enemy.

Hunkered down, but still answering calls to go over the edge
Duty to respond, habit, or just automatons,
It doesn’t matter – if not today….tomorrow.

This isn’t the way it once was--
“Let’s face the multi-headed hydra out there
We have the strength, the courage, the audacious hubris.”

Each enemy will be met with equal counterforce
Equanimity amid adequate adrenalin
Kick both the stony rocks and hard places.

Our comrades were there too
We were recruits in same times and place
Families and friends engaged in the history’s engagement.

The battle has gone on, and looks like it will go on ad infinitum
Gradually, …or is it faster?
One or another of us rushed over the rampart

And did not return,
And our platoon withered,
And our feet were more willing to lock themselves in the mud down here.

Maybe we’ve learned something since we were early recruits.
Maybe we’ve learned to feel with each other how the call frightens
Maybe we’ve learned to hug/love here so as to trust love will be “over there.”

ELH September 23, 2009

I wrote this to place in pews in First United Methodist Church of Oak Park, Illinois. Nancy and I also sent it out with our Christmas letter in 2008 with this thought,

. Ed composed the enclosed bookmark for our church’s hymnals as an aid to prayer and meditation for the community that sustains us. Accept it as a kind of distilled worldview of his faith—albeit a work in progress. We share it trusting that whatever your faith, most thoughts will resonate with the faith out of which you also live under God.

"We have inherited a big house, a great "world house"[oikoumene] in which we have to live together - black and white, Easterners and Westerners, Gentiles and Jews, Catholics and Protestants, Moslem and Hindu, a family unduly separated in ideas, culture, and interests who, because we can never again live without each other, must learn, somehow, in this one big world, to live with each other.
This means that more and more our loyalties must become ecumenical [oikoumene] rather than sectional. We must now give an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in our individual societies.
This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class, and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all men."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr - Nobel Peace Prize Lecture - Dec. 11, 1964

SOME ECUMENICAL ETYMOLOGY The root of the word "ecumenical" is oikos, a Greek word in the Bible meaning "house." We find oikos in words like "economy" and "ecology." Therefore "ecumenical" has to do with the "household" of God - and oikoumene is a "world house" (see MLK above). I interpret various scriptures about the God's plan/telos/end as being that All (panta) people are to realize they are brothers and sisters in God's household. More
Another Greek word tells us how to participate in God's goal -- that is, to turn strangers into com-panions around the table of dialogue. Xenos means "stranger," as in xenophobia "fear of strangers (we see that as an overriding social/political pathology). Paradoxically, the Greek word for "hospitality" is xenia which means a "stranger turned into a guest."
While the word "ecumenical" has traditionally described the movement for unity within the Christian house, as against the words "interreligious" or "interfaith" meaning relationships to religions outside Christianity, I believe "ecumenical" can be correctly used to in relation to other faiths. (Again MLK) As such it connotes, not a movement to co-opt into unity, but a recognition of the Holy Spirit working amid the whole household toward the telos/end of a world family reconciled in a just peace. Interfaithing is a imperative verb for this whole household. You can draw some ecumenical views from Ephesians 1:10; John 17:21; Acts 2; Acts 9:10f; Acts 15:12f; Luke 4:24f; Mark 7:24-36.

Edgar Hiestand YDS 1959 50th
Being the bishop's ecumenical/interreligious factotum during retirement has been the absolutely satisfying outworking of ordination call since retiring as a pastor. In this role I resource our Northern Illinois Conference United Methodist Church and its Commission on Christian Unity and Interreligious Concerns. The role includes lots of liaisoning with other faith communities, ecumenical bodies, workshops, as well as maintaining our conference CCUIC website http://www.gbgm-umc.org/interrelig
Major projects have included organizing weekend interfaith bus tours to Chicago area's wide diversity of temples, mosques, synagogues, etc., and developing our UM Conference relationship with the Chicago metro area Council of Islamic Organizations. This involved a dialogue including Christian and Muslim college students, church and mosque clergy and laity using "scriptural reasoning." Helping plan the National Workshop on Christian Unity in Chicago, implementing a Korean emphasis of the Chicago area 's Week of Prayer for Christian Unity service, and with my wife, Nancy, being part of our bishop's delegation to intimate interfaith meetings in Turkey, made for rich experiences.
I've been pleased to see the things Yale Divinity School has been doing to transform "stranger/other" (xenos) to "guest" (xenia), as in last September's Chrisian-Muslim conference on loving God and neighbor, the earlier response by the YDS Center for Faith and Culture to "A Common Word between Us and You," and the orientation of the Class of 1959 gift to a global perspective resource.

Reading Ginkgo poem

Ginkgo Leaves in Fall

THE GINKGO LEAVES IN FALL

They fall all at once
No wind, no catastrophic trauma
But just the season of cold
And then the circle of yellow carpet around the trunk
Sign of the life that was
Perhaps it is teleological fulfillment
Like a beautiful life
Heaven bentward
Leaving its neverending circle of grace
For others to mark upon their way.
Defiant victory against a company of fossils.