Poet, Author, Composer....
Thoughts on the Death Penalty
283. Thoughts on the Death Penalty
I have strong feelings against the death penalty. I have read extensively about it. I was on a task force to abolish the death penalty in the United Methodist Church in the Greater New Jersey Conference. For the churches in that conference I wrote a six-session study curriculum. All of those activities contributed to my strong feelings. Here are five reasons:
1) As a matter of faith, I believe that all life, every life, has value. When one person commits a horrible crime, I think we need to remove that person from society. And it may be necessary to keep the person separated from society for the rest of his or her life.
2) The death penalty is not a deterrent. Studies in fact have shown that crime rates go up after an execution and that crime rates are lower in states that do not have the death penalty.
3) The person who is executed is rarely the same person who committed the crime. Change happens in the years that it takes for appeals to be finished, and we find that the person who was convicted is now different.
4) Mistakes are made in courts and there is always the possibility that we are executing a person who is innocent of the crime. In the Easter season we experience that reality—of an innocent who is put to death.
5) By using the death penalty society says: this person cannot be redeemed. And yet we know that there are people in prison, people on death row who have turned their lives around and ended up spending the rest of their life in prison but making their life count for something. To give up on a person is to give up on God’s ability to change that person.
Does God Intervene
282. Does God Intervene
I’ll say at the very beginning that I am not satisfied or pleased with this days’ writing. It’s a hard question, and there is no easy answer, but I can’t avoid all the hard questions. Does God intervene? I believe that most of the time God does not intervene in the world.
I think that the world is set up so there are natural consequences when a certain thing happens. For instance I think that as a society we can become aware that a certain species is near extinction. We pass laws to mark that species as endangered. We start working on providing favorable conditions for that species and slowly, slowly the species begins to move away from that endangered category.
Cause and effect. There are many things in the world that the human species has messed up and likewise there are instances where with intention and with hard work, the effect that was a natural one can be reversed.
I wonder about energy. And perhaps about the energy of prayer. I think it is possible that we haven’t begun to use the kind of energy that we have at our disposal. Years ago a friend of mine in California had a daughter who was undergoing surgery and the doctors were saying she might not survive it and it might not be a solution. Her father called people all across the country. He knew the surgery was scheduled for 8:30 in the morning. He gave each person he talked to the appropriate time depending on their time zone and asked them to take thirty minutes wherever they were and pray for this child.
My time was 11:30 and I was at work on that weekday but I had arranged to be able to go into an empty office for those thirty minutes. I did that and I prayed—I sent healing energy to that doctor and to that child. I was joined by many others. The child survived and the operation was a success. I think that is an example of a skilled doctor and the focused energy of a lot of people.
I can’t get to the real answer of the situation just above. But I have to do my part—to reverse the messes that are in the world, to accept responsibility for not contributing to those messes. And I need to not give up on the power of prayer. Ultimately I say mystery.
The Footwashing
281. The Footwashing
Remember the time when Jesus insisted on washing the feet of the disciples? A woman who was speaking at a conference asked me to write a song to go with this story of the footwashing. I believe it’s not about everyone being willing to wash the other person’s feet. I think it is about knowing the truth in a new way, doing for others so they know of your great love for them, and seeing the need and doing what needs to be done.
—
The Footwashing
—
Jesus stood
and took the towel
and washed the feet
of those who followed him
and heard the word,
Time was short,
and Jesus knew
that they must see
and feel the truth
in some new way.
“I will bend and wash the dust,
I will wash your feet.”
—
Peter cried,
“My Lord, you must not
wash my feet,
and Jesus said,
“You do not understand,
Time is short,
and you must do for others
what I’ve done for you
in some new way.
You can bend and wash the dust,
Go and wash their feet.”
—
Master – slave –
the least of these –
who shall be first –
Christ answered clearly
when he said to us,
“Time is short
and it is good
when you can see the need
and act in some new way.
Go and bend and wash the dust,
Go and wash their feet.”
—
© Copyright 1981 Ann Freeman Price
Hosanna in the Highest
279. Hosanna in the Highest
—
Hosanna
—
Where will you go after the palms are spread,
Where will you stand when the parade is done,
What will you do when the hosannas have been said
And there is need for you alone to live the faith?
—
It is not hard to join the shouting crowd
There is no risk involved when times are good,
Are you content to stand and simply wave the palms
When there is need for you alone to live the faith?
—
This Christ rode slowly on that donkey’s back,
Such joyous multitudes were gathered round,
This Christ went thru the palms and walked the untrod road,
For there was need for one alone to live the faith.
—
Winds on a hillside whisper round the cross,
Such is the challenge of this day of palms,
This is the call: to step beyond the noisy crowd
And fill the need for one alone to live the faith.
—
Hosanna in the highest,
Hosanna in the highest,
Blessed are those who come
In the name of the Lord.
—
© Copyright 1981 by Ann Freeman Price
Afghan of Prayer
278. Afghan of Prayer
Five or six years ago I preached a sermon titled “The Afghan of Prayer.” I asked the congregation to imagine we were sewing an afghan together and the part I was suggesting would have nine squares about prayer. They might have another two or three or fifteen squares, but then—and now—we’ll start with nine.
1. The first square says: God answers prayer—Yes! A friend told me the four possible answers God gives in response to prayer. The first answer is, “Yes, I thought you would never ask.” The second is, “Yes, but not now.” The third response is, “Yes, but wait till you see what I have in store for you.” And the fourth possible answer from God to a person’s prayer is, “No. I love you too much.”
2. The second square of the afghan is: Make time for prayer. I support Jubilee Partners in Georgia and they tell the story of long, hard work days and someone in that community remembering Mother Teresa saying that when you get really tired, that’s when you need to pray more. Jubilee Partners already had over-full days but they decided to get up an hour earlier—at 5:30 instead of 6:30—for prayer. They did that and found that it worked. They looked forward to that hour. They had made the time.
3. The third square of the afghan is: Wait and receive. So often I think I have to do all the talking, when what I need to do is be quiet and wait.
4. The fourth square of the afghan is: We need to pray together. Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk, believes that there is energy in prayer when you pray alone AND that there is even greater energy when you gather together to pray. When I was a local pastor at St. Paul’s in Nyack, NY, there was a Korean Church that also used the building. I was quite impressed that some of them, a few of them, gathered at 6am every morning for group prayer.
5. The fifth square of the afghan is: You never pray alone. There’s a whole crowd of witnesses. There are people praying at the same time in different places. There are all those in your life who have died who will pray with you. Sometimes I forget to summon them and even to introduce them to each other.
6. The sixth square of the afghan is: Prayer is a practice. In First Thessalonians 5:17 it says “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” Lila, in my family, and her friend Maryellen have a practice (as I do) of lighting a candle for prayer. We call each other when there is a special need.
7. The afghan’s square seven is: Show up. Planning to pray isn’t enough. Feeling I ought to pray isn’t enough. I need to show up and pray.
8. Square eight is: We are each important to God. Often it is hard to fathom how prayer works. But over and over the Bible tells us that God cares about the world AND about individuals. God cares about Abraham and Sarah, Elizabeth, Jacob, you, me. God is the God of each one of our names.
9. And the ninth square of the afghan is: God is speaking to you. And telling you always to not be afraid because you are loved.
—
And that’s the sermon. And like a lot of sermons it needs to be lived.
National Spelling Bee
277. National Spelling Bee
I never attended any level of the National Spelling Bee until this week when my eleven-year-old granddaughter participated in the regional finals. It was held in Lipkin Theatre on the campus of Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania. There were 48 young people between fifth and eighth grades, and SadieGrace (a sixth grader) was one of them.
She spelled words like anachronism, rendezvous, gesundheit, and a few others that I can’t find in a dictionary. They spelled and spelled and the 48 were reduced one by one to ten, and five, and finally two—and Sadie was still in the running. Finally they gave her a word that she didn’t spell correctly, and the boy who was still spelling went ahead and spelled another word right and was the winner.
So Sadie was the first runner-up and won a fine dictionary AND a Kindle Fire, plus a tall trophy for her room. In the program there was a picture of each child, their name, school, grade, parents’ names, and their favorite animal and favorite word to spell. Her favorite animal is the manatee and her favorite word to spell is callipygian. Check out the meaning of that one!
What We Need to Learn
276. What We Need to Learn
There is an amazing story about the famous violinist Itzak Perlman. You see he had polio when he was a child, and so at concerts he walked on stage with braces on his legs and using crutches. The audience watched as he sat in the chair and removed each brace. He then placed one leg forward and the other leg back. He raised his violin and nodded to the conductor.
At this one particular concert in a matter of just a few measures the entire audience could hear the sound of the violin string that broke. Everything stopped and Perlman sat. He thought for a minute, then nodded to the conductor and they began again. He adjusted, he modulated, he played the entire piece, minus one string, and at the end there was astounded applause.
He motioned for silence and said, “It is the artist’s job to learn sometimes to play with what is left.”
It seems to me that that story does not just apply to Itzak Perlman but to each one of us. As we go through life we lose things and sure enough we have to have that creative spirit which invents how to continue to make music, to live life, with what we have left.
It’s Spring!
275. It’s Spring
March 20th—the vernal equinox. Vernal means occurring in the spring. Equinox comes from Latin words meaning equal night. Day and night are approximately equal everywhere. It’s the first day of spring, and I write of:
—
Spring Cleaning
—
let’s forget the house, God
and all the dusty corners
the smudged windows
dirty oven and
cluttered spaces
—
instead, help me open
the window on my time
and feel the freshness
of a day well spent
—
as a calendar spurs me
to straighten the closets
could you spur me God
to clear out bad habits
like eating when I’m not hungry
or “putting off” when I could
just go ahead and “do”
—
O God of March winds
and April rains
I think together we could
blow new air into my living
and scrub my soul
until it shines
—
© Copyright 2003 by Ann Freeman Price
Broody Hen
274. Broody Hen
In Luke 13:34 Jesus says, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing.”
Just stay with the image for a few minutes of God as that mothering hen, gathering us all under her wings.
There is a children’s book titled Little Chick’s Big Day by Mary DeBall Kwitz. It’s one of my favorites for thinking of God as a wonderful, caring Broody Hen. Little Chick, in this story, refuses her nap and runs off for an adventure by the pond. But then Little Chick worries that perhaps she is lost and she hurries back to find Broody Hen. Broody Hen welcomes Little Chick and as she settles under Broody Hen’s wings, this little chick says, “I am glad I am not lost.” And Broody Hen agrees.
It’s still available in paperback and is a grand reassuring book for children—and for me.
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Daybook of Personal Faith
Mama and Me
