The Wild Places Bible Guide – 4

The Wild Places – Day 3

Thursday, March 14

Exodus 16:13-30
13 In the evening a flock of quail flew down and covered the camp. And in the morning there was a layer of dew all around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the desert surface were thin flakes, as thin as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” They didn’t know what it was.

Moses said to them, “This is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Collect as much of it as each of you can eat, one omer per person. You may collect for the number of people in your household.’” 17 The Israelites did as Moses said, some collecting more, some less. 18 But when they measured it out by the omer, the ones who had collected more had nothing left over, and the ones who had collected less had no shortage. Everyone collected just as much as they could eat. 19 Moses said to them, “Don’t keep any of it until morning.” 20 But they didn’t listen to Moses. Some kept part of it until morning, but it became infested with worms and stank. Moses got angry with them. 21 Every morning they gathered it, as much as each person could eat. But when the sun grew hot, it melted away.

22 On the sixth day the people collected twice as much food as usual, two omers per person. All the chiefs of the community came and told Moses.23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord has said, ‘Tomorrow is a day of rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord. Bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. But you can set aside and keep all the leftovers until the next morning.’” 24 So they set the leftovers aside until morning, as Moses had commanded. They didn’t stink or become infested with worms. 25 The next day Moses said, “Eat it today, because today is a Sabbath to the Lord. Today you won’t find it out in the field. 26 Six days you will gather it. But on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will be nothing to gather.”

27 On the seventh day some of the people went out to gather bread, but they found nothing. 28 The Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to obey my commandments and instructions? 29 Look! The Lord has given you the Sabbath. Therefore, on the sixth day he gives you enough food for two days. Each of you should stay where you are and not leave your place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

Points of Interest

  • The miracle of this wilderness begins with bread and meat, but especially bread. There’s more than enough for each person, a whole omer (which is about eight cups worth – that’s a lot of bread)! The root of this magical food means “what?” in Hebrew; I love that they name this bread “what-is-this.” So there is food for hunger of the belly and mystery and beauty for huger of the soul. Lest we forget, our stomachs and our hearts, our bodies and our imaginations both need feeding. 
  • Another part of the magic of God’s food is how it interacts with space and time. Aggressive gatherers can’t overfeed, and folks that struggle to keep up – the physically disabled, the young, the old, the easily distracted – still have enough. And this food’s sell-by date is always today. It can’t be stored up for the future. How much of our life is robbed by our obsession with the future? God’s interested in nudging us back to today again and again. This is the day in which we’re alive. This is the day.
  • The other miracle of this wilderness is called the Sabbath, which means rest. Rest has got to be one of the least strategic activities in wild places. Out of control? Lost in the wilderness? Overwhelmed? In chaos, duress, or confusion? To not do anything, to simply rest seems counter-intuitive. But rest is part, maybe a seventh part, of what people in all places – wild places included – need. In this story, God bends the laws of biology and physics to make this point, and to invite people to walk into the gift of rest.

A Direction for Prayer

Pray that the people of your church will learn to be people who know how to rest, that in the middle of a stressed out, under-slept, over-caffeinated, busy world, you would all embody the joy of peace. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Honest Prayer and Requests for Encounter, Discovery, and Rescue – This week, you are invited to name a place in your life where you are out of your element, beyond your resources, or out of control. Tell God about this. How is it that you want to experience God’s faithful love with you? What do you hope to learn in this season? How is it that you would like God to rescue you?  

The Wild Places Bible Guide – 3

The Wild Places – Day 2

Wednesday, March 13

Exodus 16:1-12

16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Sin desert, which is located between Elim and Sinai. They set out on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had left the land of Egypt.2 The whole Israelite community complained against Moses and Aaron in the desert. 3 The Israelites said to them, “Oh, how we wish that the Lord had just put us to death while we were still in the land of Egypt. There we could sit by the pots cooking meat and eat our fill of bread. Instead, you’ve brought us out into this desert to starve this whole assembly to death.”

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I’m going to make bread rain down from the sky for you. The people will go out each day and gather just enough for that day. In this way, I’ll test them to see whether or not they follow my Instruction. 5 On the sixth day, when they measure out what they have collected, it will be twice as much as they collected on other days.”6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “This evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt.7 And in the morning you will see the Lord’s glorious presence, because your complaints against the Lord have been heard. Who are we? Why blame us?” 8 Moses continued, “The Lord will give you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning because the Lord heard the complaints you made against him. Who are we? Your complaints aren’t against us but against the Lord.”

9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole Israelite community, ‘Come near to the Lord, because he’s heard your complaints.’” 10 As Aaron spoke to the whole Israelite community, they turned to look toward the desert, and just then the glorious presence of the Lord appeared in the cloud.

11 The Lord spoke to Moses, 12 “I’ve heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat. And in the morning you will have your fill of bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”

Points of Interest

  • God’s newly freed people leave the oasis named after the god “El” and enter the desert named for the Canaanite moon-god Sin. (The connection to the English word for missing the mark or bad living is entirely coincidental.) The God of Israel proves again and again to not just be another tribal god. This Divine Mother/Father/Creator/Guide can be found everywhere and anywhere, even in places dedicated to or known for other gods. 
  • It’s easy to get a little judgy about these stories of constant grumbling and complaining, unless we notice the time. It’s been forty-three days on the road, on foot in a hot, dry land without enough water or foot. I’d be pretty whiny myself!
  • In hard or confusing times, it’s easy to lose perspective. Forty-three days of trouble, and they wish they had died. That, or they wish they could return to what their life used to be; they fondly remember the occasional big, fireside meal, forgetting they were enslaved! 
  • The hangry (hungry + angry) people lose perspective both in romanticizing their past and in blaming God. I think we see two temptations we all face in hard times – fantasy for a life we wish we had but that doesn’t exist, and fear that God or life or the universe is out to rob us of the good we wish we had, or that others have now.  This loss of perspective only compounds our pain. The people aren’t just hot and hungry, they’re also alienated and bitter.
  • Once again, Moses is understandably, predictably stressed and defensive. God is not. God devises a rain-bread-from-the-sky and fat-birds-gather-at-twilight plan to address the hunger of the people God loves. 
  • God attaches a learning opportunity to God’s provision. In hard times, God is interested in taking care of us, but also teaching us. We’ll examine this lesson more tomorrow, but it seems related to learning to live in the present, trusting that each day God will again give us what we need.

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for the most hungry and angry and lonely and tired residents of your city, that God will provide for them the relief they need this day. After this prayer, ask God is God would like to help gently reframe your perspective of your own life circumstances in any way. 

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Honest Prayer and Requests for Encounter, Discovery, and Rescue – This week, you are invited to name a place in your life where you are out of your element, beyond your resources, or out of control. Tell God about this. How is it that you want to experience God’s faithful love with you? What do you hope to learn in this season? How is it that you would like God to rescue you?  

The Wild Places Bible Guide – 2

The Wild Places – Day 1

Tuesday, March 12

We’ll spend the first two weeks of Lent reading passages from the wilderness narratives that sit between Israel’s deliverance from slavery and their arrival in the Promised Land. The founding stories of this people of faith include rescue and promise, but also the chaos and confusion of wild places.

Exodus 15:22-27 (CEB)

22 Then Moses had Israel leave the Reed Sea and go out into the Shur desert. They traveled for three days in the desert and found no water.23 When they came to Marah, they couldn’t drink Marah’s water because it was bitter. That’s why it was called Marah. 24 The people complained against Moses, “What will we drink?” 25 Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD pointed out a tree to him. He threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.

The LORD made a regulation and a ruling there, and there he tested them. 26 The LORD said, “If you are careful to obey the LORD your God, do what God thinks is right, pay attention to his commandments, and keep all of his regulations, then I won’t bring on you any of the diseases that I brought on the Egyptians. I am the LORD who heals you.” 27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees. They camped there by the water.

Points of Interest

  • The Shur desert lies to the northeast of Egypt. It’s a dry place on the road away from the fertile Nile delta. The word “marah” means bitter. The final place, Elim, is likely connected to the ancient Canaanite root word for god, “El,” meaning this name for this oasis might mean something like “Land of the gods.” Coming out of a hard and dry season of life, it’s easy to lose our way in bitterness before we reach the land of God.
  • I find Moses and God’s reactions to bitterness to be interesting. Moses is stressed out, as leaders usually are when managing bitter or angry people. That’s normal God is not stressed out. God recognizes that embittered people need to taste something sweet, and God’s glad to provide that.
  • Let’s notice the bargain God does and doesn’t strike. God doesn’t criticize them for their bitterness or tell them to never again feel embittered. God says to them in this wild, empty place: Follow me, do what I say. I know the way out of here. I am the one who heals you, again and again, as I just did. God’s response to our problems is healing, not judgment.
  • The people have the good sense to not just fuel up at the oasis and move on, but to camp out for a while. In busy, hectic times, it seems to me we rush on from most of our sweetest experiences of relief, without pausing to enjoy and savor a bit. Life is a journey – we always keep moving – but there’s time and space to camp out a bit and enjoy the best parts.

A Direction for Prayer

Pray for any of your friends or family who seem lost or embittered, that the God who heals would drop that tree of sweetness into their lives, bringing the kindness and relief they need.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Honest Prayer and Requests for Encounter, Discovery, and Rescue – This week, you are invited to name a place in your life where you are out of your element, beyond your resources, or out of control. Tell God about this. How is it that you want to experience God’s faithful love with you? What do you hope to learn in this season? How is it that you would like God to rescue you?

The Wild Places Bible Guide – 1

The Wild Places – Introduction

Monday, March 11

We begin our guide with our longest passage – a poem of encounter and discovery in wild places. 

Psalm 107 (CEB)
“Give thanks to the Lord because he is good,
        because his faithful love lasts forever!”
2 That’s what those who are redeemed by the Lord say,
    the ones God redeemed from the power of their enemies,
3     the ones God gathered from various countries,
    from east and west, north and south.
4 Some of the redeemed had wandered into the desert, into the wasteland.
    They couldn’t find their way to a city or town.
5 They were hungry and thirsty;
    their lives were slipping away.
6 So they cried out to the Lord in their distress,
    and God delivered them from their desperate circumstances.
7     God led them straight to human habitation.
8 Let them thank the Lord for his faithful love
    and his wondrous works for all people,
9     because God satisfied the one who was parched with thirst,
    and he filled up the hungry with good things!
10 Some of the redeemed had been sitting in darkness and deep gloom;
    they were prisoners suffering in chains
11     because they had disobeyed God’s instructions
    and rejected the Most High’s plans.
12 So God humbled them with hard work.
    They stumbled, and there was no one to help them.
13 So they cried out to the Lord in their distress,
    and God saved them from their desperate circumstances.
14 God brought them out from the darkness and deep gloom;
    he shattered their chains.
15 Let them thank the Lord for his faithful love
    and his wondrous works for all people,
16     because God has shattered bronze doors
    and split iron bars in two!
17 Some of the redeemed were fools because of their sinful ways.
    They suffered because of their wickedness.
18 They had absolutely no appetite for food;
    they had arrived at death’s gates.
19 So they cried out to the Lord in their distress,
    and God saved them from their desperate circumstances.
20 God gave the order and healed them;
    he rescued them from their pit.
21 Let them thank the Lord for his faithful love
    and his wondrous works for all people.
22 Let them offer thanksgiving sacrifices
    and declare what God has done in songs of joy!
23 Some of the redeemed had gone out on the ocean in ships,
    making their living on the high seas.
24 They saw what the Lord had made;
    they saw his wondrous works in the depths of the sea.
25 God spoke and stirred up a storm
    that brought the waves up high.
26 The waves went as high as the sky;
    they crashed down to the depths.
The sailors’ courage melted at this terrible situation.
27     They staggered and stumbled around like they were drunk.
    None of their skill was of any help.
28 So they cried out to the Lord in their distress,
    and God brought them out safe from their desperate circumstances.
29 God quieted the storm to a whisper;
    the sea’s waves were hushed.
30 So they rejoiced because the waves had calmed down;
    then God led them to the harbor they were hoping for.
31 Let them thank the Lord for his faithful love
    and his wondrous works for all people.
32 Let them exalt God in the congregation of the people
    and praise God in the assembly of the elders.
33 God turns rivers into desert,
    watery springs into thirsty ground,
34     fruitful land into unproductive dirt,
        when its inhabitants are wicked.
35 But God can also turn the desert into watery pools,
    thirsty ground into watery springs,
36     where he settles the hungry.
They even build a city and live there!
37     They plant fields and vineyards
    and obtain a fruitful harvest.
38 God blesses them, and they become many.
    God won’t even let their cattle diminish.
39 But when they do diminish—
    when they’re brought down by oppression, trouble, and grief—
40     God pours contempt on their leaders,
        making them wander aimlessly in the wastelands.
41 But God raises the needy from their suffering;
    he makes their families as numerous as sheep!
42 Those who do right see it and celebrate,
    but every wicked person shuts their mouth.
43 Whoever is wise will pay attention to these things,
    carefully considering the Lord’s faithful love.

Points of Interest

  • This is a poem of rescue, to be sung by “the redeemed” – people who God has found and helped while in all kinds of out of control situations. The theme of the song is God’s “faithful love” – that the love and help of God is available for all people, at all times, in all circumstances. 
  • As we consider the tight jams of this psalm, see if at least one describes a time in your past that is mercifully over. If so, thank God for rescue, however it came. Let’s also see if one of these situations poetically describes your own current wild place. 
    • The desert wasteland – a time of hunger and thirst, where there’s not enough of what you need
    • Darkness and deep gloom – the hopeless, hard living that comes with addiction, oppression or any other form of being trapped
    • The distress that follows foolishness – the suffering and ill-at-ease sensation that comes with regret for what we have or haven’t done
    • Over one’s head at sea – what might have started as exhilaration is now out of control chaos that leaves you anxious or discouraged
  • There’s a pattern in these stories: people notice the chaos, they cry out to God, they find God is with them, and God makes a way through and out of suffering. 

A Direction for Prayer

Pray that, by Easter, our church will be filled with stories of encounter, discovery, and rescue, people learning things of great value, and experiences of God with us, and God’s help for us.

Spiritual Exercise of the Week

Honest Prayer and Requests for Encounter, Discovery, and Rescue – This week, you are invited to name a place in your life where you are out of your element, beyond your resources, or out of control. Tell God about this. How is it that you want to experience God’s faithful love with you? What do you hope to learn in this season? How is it that you would like God to rescue you?  

The Wild Places Bible Guide – Introduction

Lent at Reservoir

Each year during the pre-Easter season of Lent, we’ve become accustomed to exploring a section of Scripture together. You can check out past daily bible guides here if you’re interested. This year, we’re going to explore the concept of wilderness and exile, and our series will be called The Wild Places. Our Sunday sermons will also explore this from 3/10-4/14, so you’re invited to read/listen to those as well.

The Wild Places: Introduction

By choice or by circumstance, we sometimes find ourselves in times and in places, in circumstances and in seasons, where we are out of our element, beyond our resources, and out of control. Let’s call these the wild places.

Sometimes a journey into the wild places is deliberate. We swim in the ocean, we trek into the woods, we travel outside our comfort zone. We know these can be times of profound learning and encounter, opportunities to discover something new about ourselves, our neighbor, our world, even the divine. Other times we end up in wilds we’d never wish for. A loved one dies, a relationship or venture fails, a dream goes unfulfilled, disaster or chaos strike. These can be times that make or break us, that shape us or undo us, or both.

In the Bible’s treasure of metaphors, these places are often connected to the place and experience of wilderness. People end up in the wilderness of nature and praise God for all they see and discover there. People, and whole nations and cultures, are also driven into the wilderness and need to come to grips with their greatest fears and most crippling habits. But again and again, these wild places are times and spaces of profound learning and discovery and formation.

This year, we hope that the Lenten1 season will be for us all a profound time of learning and discovery and formation. This year’s Bible guide won’t examine a single, contiguous section of scripture as we so often do (Revelation last year, Romans three years ago) but will be more of a thematic survey.

Each weekday we’ll present you with a different passage, in the Common English Bible translation. On weekends, you can catch up on a missed day, review a favorite passage, or skip the guide all together.

Points of Interest — a handful of comments, which include literary or historical notes as well as impressions, thoughts, questions, and reactions. These aren’t meant to be exhaustive or authoritative, but simply to give you some more perspective to work with as you ponder the passage yourself. We try to name things you hadn’t noticed but wish you had, as well as give voice to some of the questions and observations you did have but weren’t sure what to do with.

A Direction for Prayer — there will also be a prompt for prayer that you can use. These invitations focus on the prayers for others we encourage you to try during this season:

For your friends and family: Consider some of your favorite people, people you interact with on a regular basis, who don’t seem to have much of a direct connection to God, but for whom you are very much rooting. What does this passage have to say to them, or to you about them?

For your church or city: How can we apply the passage corporately as a faith community?

Spiritual Exercise — each week, there will a different daily spiritual exercise to try, inspired by the week’s passages. Or what does this passage say about or to our entire city?

We hope Lent will be a season of spiritual formation for us – of engaging spiritual practice that increases our health and encourages the flourishing of the life of God in and through us. If you would like to engage in fasting or increased generosity, these are two traditions of spiritual formation that have been traditionally helpful during this season. See the March 3rd sermon on spiritual formation for more. Meanwhile, we’ll be encouraging the spiritual practices of Scripture reading and prayer in community. Attend our Sunday services and join a community group for the season if you’re able. You could also find a friend to touch base with on your own if you like. May your Lent be a place of warm encounter with God and with others, and may it be a time of rich learning, discovery, and formation.

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1Lent is from an Old English word meaning “spring”. It’s used to refer to the 6-week period before Easter Sunday. For centuries, Jesus followers have marked this period of anticipation for Easter through prayer, fasting, and giving. In past years, we’ve called this season the 40 Days of Faith. We’re putting that title aside for two reasons. One, it’s our own in-house jargon that isn’t familiar to those outside our church. “Lent” is part of our faith tradition and is still a familiar (if misunderstood) season in our broader culture. The other reason is that the 40 Days of Faith featured an encouragement to people to ask God for a big desire or need. Many individuals have experienced dramatic answers to their prayers over the years. But for others, this practice has been confusing or wearisome. Anybody is able to ask God for their heart’s desire in any time or season. This year, though, we’ll encourage that practice for those who are interested during our Advent season, the time before Christmas when we traditionally connect some of our deepest longings with Jesus’ presence with us and our longing for Jesus to come again.

5 Resources to Help You Flourish: March

by Lydia Shiu

This month, as I thought about what I wanted to share for resources on flourishing, I realized that there are a lot of things going on right here within our own community that I legitimately think are good and beautiful things that will help you  flourish. So, at the risk of doing some shameless plugs for internal things, I will go ahead and tell you about the things that I genuinely believe you should take advantage of or participate in that can add to your spiritual journey. I’ll give my personal takes on why I think they are good and important things that can help you flourish.

Here are the 5 things.

1. Immigration:

When I first moved to the United States as an immigrant, there were many random and small things that made life so difficult. I was 10 years old, trying to help my parents figure out things like insurance, banking, or the DMV. For recent immigrants or refugees, a little help on small things (like getting a ride to their lawyer) or big things (like finding someone to teach you how to drive) makes a huge difference in their transition and settlement. Recently, Steve has joined a pretty grassroots network of clergy that’s a part of an organization called the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network. Long name, I know. It’s a pretty cool niche work. Basically, because of some loophole, clergy have access to accompanying people at detention centers or court dates, sometimes even more than family. Through it, these clergy can sometimes be a critical lifeline to firsthand needs of these folks in transition. And their needs are met mostly through a call made out to the community. If you would like to be a part of network of this community, to help in any way, email me at lydia@reservoirchurch.org. Helping new immigrants flourish will give you the gift of being a part of new beginnings and life flourishing.

2. Soccer Nights Planning Team:

During my phone interview with Reservoir two year ago, I asked at the end of the conversation to tell me something about the church that they thought were really good and exciting work. They told me about Soccer Nights and it immediately grabbed my attention. Growing up as an immigrant (you can see what life experiences shaped my thinking!) and in a family that was not very well off made sports this elusive thing. It usually involved some fancy uniforms that my parents couldn’t afford and it became a cultural barrier that I felt like I couldn’t cross. I could study hard at home, but team sports was not on the table for me. This is why Soccer Nights fluttered my heart, as I considered working at Reservoir; I’m not exaggerating. To put on that kind week program, for free, for the wide community to enjoy is such a gift to our neighboring kids. It’s a thing that I’ve literally heard a group of little girls at the local park say, “that’s like the best week ever!” when they saw me walking with Michaiah with the Soccer Nights shirt on. You want flourishing in your life? Try helping kids flourish through sports. That’s the thing about flourishing, you know. It’s contagious and extends beyond yourself. We’ve already started planning for this season, and have interest meetings after both services on March 17. To join the planning team, email soccernights@reservoirchurch.org.

3. Spring Couples Workshop: From Conflict to Healing Connection: March 16th

One of the best things I’ve done for myself and my relationship was going to therapy. But also, counseling can get expensive! This workshop, From Conflict to Healing Connection, is being led by two therapists. I say, take advantage of resources like this whenever you can! Honestly, who can’t utilize a tool for moving from conflict to healing? And they have pay-what-you-can tickets available, people! I’m using way too many exclamation marks for this portion. Because it’s worth it!

4. Ash Wednesday Service

The first time I attended Ash Wednesday Service was a weird experience. I felt like I was at a funeral or a creepy seance. I’m not selling this, am I?

It’s an old Christian ritual that’s sort of made a comeback in the last few decades. It kicks off the season of Lent, 40 days leading up to Easter. And although Easter gets all the credit and fanfare, there’s no resurrection without the recognition of mortality. If Easter is the bookend, Ash Wednesday is the other bookend that holds up everything in between. Such rituals are set up for people to experience the fullness—the depths and the heights—of the whole spiritual journey. Without the full journey, I personally really do think you miss out on so much. It’s like driving up to the mountain top, without the hike from the bottom. This season, I invite you, to journey through the whole breadth of the spiritual path, from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Our Ash Wednesday service is on March 6 at 7 PM, and will last about a half hour.

5. Serving Communion

While I’m on the topic of Christian ritual, I’ll end with this one. Communion is a central sacrament to the Christian faith. A “sacrament” is what Christians believe is a visual sign and symbol to the invisible reality of God’s love.We have communion every Sunday at Reservoir. When we serve communion, we get to participate in the union of the sacred and the profane, where God meets the ordinary. We get to say, to each person, “The Body of Christ for you.” and “The Cup of Salvation for you.” It’s serving someone a little bit of Jesus. What an honor that is.

If you’re interested in serving communion, email me at lydia@reservoirchurch.org.

Breaking All The Rules

Jillie Wowk-Kennedy, Reservoir Member, interviews Raymond Paradiso, whose work is currently on display in the Reservoir Dome Gallery. Ray is a Massachusetts-based oil painter. See his art through February 28 before/during/after our Sunday services. 

Something I discovered is that, if you stare long enough, Ray Paradiso’s paintings will lift off in layers, rewarding your patience with the knowledge that there are pure magenta skies under his stained glass trees. Next time you’re in the Dome Gallery at Reservoir, treat yourself to a few moments of meditation in front of one of his vibrant canvasses and tell me if you can’t feel the sun warm your face. Maybe when you turn back to the midwinter weather we’ve been “enjoying,” shadows of his landscapes will linger like those Magic Eye pictures and you can carry a little bit of that late summer sun into the cold.

How did you first develop your appreciation for oil painting?

When I first started painting about 12 years ago I was using acrylics because of the easier clean up and use of water for medium, and also because they dried very fast and I could re-paint and fix paintings more easily as I went along.  As I got more into painting, a well-known artist who I had the privilege of working with encouraged me to try oils because of the vivid colors. Once I started using oils and got the hang of them, I never went back. I don’t see myself going back to acrylic, but would like to try some other techniques, like the use of wax or other interesting mediums and materials.

How long have you been painting?

I was into art and did some painting throughout elementary school and high school, but then gave it up completely after I started college and pursued a career in high tech and had a family.  About 12 years ago I started dabbling with watercolors and acrylics; I fell in love with painting and did it part time in the evenings or weekends, when I wasn’t working my day job. I took some courses in the area and then I was lucky enough to be able to paint with some fine teachers who really helped me with my art.

What is something oil lets you do that other forms of paint just can’t?

It’s been a while since I used acrylics, but oil has a unique feel. The colors are just different; I suppose they are more vivid. They just flow differently.

What’s a lesson painting has taught you?

The more I paint, the more I find the process of painting to be a metaphor for so many other things I do in life.  I’m a type A person, so I find that I need to constantly be aware of having patience, not rushing, and being in the present.  While painting, you can look at what you have done at a certain point and then step away for even 10 minutes and come back and the painting can look different.  Again, something to be thought about in life.

If you could direct your viewers’ eyes to one thing in your work, what would it be?

It would be easy to say notice my thick brush strokes, or the unusual combination of colors, but I would rather let viewers view my paintings organically and see and appreciate what stands out to them. Some might see a familiar landscape that they have visited (like the desert southwest) and some might see a colorful arrangement of shapes and colors.  I find that the more abstract I get, the more is left to the viewer to see and I enjoy hearing from them about what they see or what they like in one of my paintings.

Do you have a favorite piece? One that you’re most proud of or was the most fun to create?

These days I paint quite a bit and turn out about 1 painting a week on average, so I don’t think I have one favorite painting.  Sometimes the paintings I’m most happy with are not necessarily the ones that come out the best (in my opinion), but rather are the ones where the process from beginning to end was smooth, or to use a cliché, the ones where I was in the “zone” most of the time. These paintings are usually the ones that I don’t overdo and get to where I want them to be with the least gnashing of teeth.

I follow my instincts and in that process, am breaking rules all the time

What is one tool you can’t live without?

So far I’m pretty traditional with tools.  I paint in oils on stretched canvas. I use a variety of brushes and am starting to use palette knives, but that is it.  I read a lot and watch YouTube videos of artists who use an amazing variety of tools and methods like sticks, squeegees, their hands and other body parts, you name it.  I hope to eventually start to look at waxes and other mediums, but for now my brushes are my main tools.

What is a rule you love to break?

My paintings are mostly impressionistic and I’m starting to incorporate more abstraction into my work.  I continue to break the traditional rules of landscape and am more concerned with shapes, light, and interesting combinations of colors.  So, I don’t think there is one rule I break, but I follow my instincts and in that process, am breaking rules all the time.

Every artist has their own pace and practice. You say you don’t exactly start each piece with a preconceived notion of the end result, so how do these pieces reveal themselves to you? How do you know you’re on the right track?

Some paintings are easy from start to finish, but most are roller coaster rides.  There will be times during the process where I like the way things are going and [other] times when I think the painting is a disaster and I start having thoughts like time to trash this one.  But over time I have learned to slow down and not panic and maybe stop and see what things look like the next day. Because oils dry slowly, I have also started to occasionally scrape and wipe off a section of a painting that I feel is all wrong (in color or value or composition) and this allows me to go back and redo that section without it getting too messy, or muddy, which can happen if you just keep adding paint to the same area.  So, the paintings reveal themselves to me in different ways over and over again and sometimes surprise me with where they are going. If I can trust that phenomena and go with it, things sometimes come out pretty cool.

What are some pieces of Art that you’ve been enjoying or return to for inspiration or rest?

I almost always listen to music while I am painting.  Everything from jazz to rock to classical. Often I find there is a kind of synergy going on between the music and what I am painting.  I can’t really explain it. It happens most often with jazz, and I often title my paintings after the song titles I might have been listening to while I was painting a particular piece.

What’s your dream project? (No time constraints, money is no object, etc. etc.)

I’m pretty much doing what I really want to do now with my art. I don’t have any big plans or dreams to say spend a summer in Tuscany painting the landscape (but if offered I wouldn’t turn it down!).  I don’t have one particular project in mind but there will always be so much to learn, so much to experiment with, and so many things to try that I just hope I can continue to allocate the time and energy and perseverance to keep at it and continue to experiment and learn.

In troubled times, Fred Rogers says to look for the helpers. Who are your helpers?

My helpers are my wife and kids and a few good friends.  Whether it’s giving me encouragement, or helping to transport and set up paintings for an art show, they are my helpers.

Is there a question I haven’t asked that you wish I did?

Nothing specific, but I want to say I am very lucky to have found this endeavor that I love and am passionate about and have had the privilege of meeting and studying with some fine teachers.

_______

Well, not to sound extremely hokey, but I’m thankful for Raymond’s family, friends, and teachers, too. I love that he came back to his work after his life was already firmly on another track. There’s a Jurassic Park quote for every occasion and for this one it’s this: “Life finds a way.” I hope Raymond’s example will lead to many more people picking back up the passions of their youth, because, if you take a look at Bramble or (my personal favorite) Veridian Thicket, extraordinary things come of it. Thanks, Ray!

Why We’re Starting a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team

by Steve Watson, Senior Pastor

A couple of years ago, a young man who grew up in Cambridge walked into our church services on a Sunday and then kept coming back. Turns out, he had first visited on a whim while curious about finding more of a spiritual or religious center for his life. When I asked him why he kept coming back, the first thing he said was, “When I walked in, I saw my whole city there.” He didn’t mean that literally, of course. Cambridge is home to more than 100,000 residents and beautiful and accommodating as our sanctuary is, they would never all fit.

What he meant is that he assumed that when you visit a church, you knew people would mainly be older and they would almost all be of the same race. At Reservoir, though, he saw people of all ages. He met people of many races and cultures. And while he guessed that most people were probably straight (true), he thought that were quite a few LGBTQ folks as well (also true!).

We love this about Reservoir. We are and always have been a multi-racial church. (In America, that means that no more than 80% of people are of one race. Very few churches in America are multiracial, even by this limited definition.) We are also a church that fully includes LGBTQ guests and members and leaders. Again, for churches like ours, this is sadly rare. We are increasingly reflecting the class diversity of city as well, for which we are grateful.

We take none of this for granted, and it’s not coincidental for us. One of our core values at Reservoir is “Action.” Love for Jesus after all compels us to act – to seek justice, show compassion for reconciliation, and hope for transformation in joyful engagement in the world. If this value hadn’t made us a diverse community, we’d be lying or pretending. Another one of our core values is “Everyone.” That’s funny syntax for a value, but we wanted it to stand out a little. We seek to honor people in all their diversity, without condition or exception, as they consider embracing a life connected to Jesus and others. Special things have happened in our community on this front.

As a next step in this journey, we’ve commissioned a Diversity and Inclusion team to help us grow into the greatest possible health and equity in our community and to help position us to be a force for healing and justice in our city as well. This team will meet every couple of months for at least two years, and will have a representative from both our Board and our pastoral staff involved. I’ll also start on the team as well, as this is an area of high interest and passion for me.

Two things that this initiative is not, and then a tiny bit more about what it might become:

One is this is not a window dressing or token initiative. I was in a meeting recently with one of the members of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, discussing the follow-up to their major series on race in Boston, particularly many of the ongoing inequities facing Black Bostonians. When asked what kind of follow-up he’s seen institutions take, the best he could point to were organizations that hired an additional person of color, or started to consider talking about diversity in their human resources departments. That’s frankly relatively token, trivial work, and it’s not good enough. Our church isn’t just interested in micro-improvements to our culture or how we appear to the world. We’re interested in being a community where all people and groups experience an equitable degree of centering and decentering. This team will be taking a hard look at voices and cultures that have been centered too much, and those that have been marginalized, and suggesting ways to repair this. We’re interested in being a church where each person’s story and culture is given appropriate dignity and representation. And we’re interested in having something deeper and better to offer our city than merely the diversity that our young visitor saw in the room.

The other thing this is not is what some people might dismiss as political correctness or virtue signalling. Our core values and longings are matters of the heart, not issues of external conformity to our times. And our desire to write a better story than the stories of racism and classism and sexism and heterosexism and patriarchy have written in our history is a matter of passion and calling, not a yearning to be on trend in some way. Frankly, there’s no one we’re trying to impress, and churches as diverse as ours are rare enough that we also have nothing to prove. We’re shooting for more than that—to be a light and force of healing and justice in our times.

So this team, once it is assembled, will examine some questions and some data that our pastoral team provides. They will share with one another and study and talk and pray and see if they have other questions they’d like to ask themselves. And when they are ready, they will make recommendations to our Board, and talk with our congregation, about what they are learning and what that means.

If you’re reading this and are a member at Reservoir, we’re looking for spiritually engaged, relationally healthy people who have passion and/or experience in diversity, inclusion, and equity work and would be interested in serving on this team over the next couple of years. If you’d like to be considered by our Board, send a short interest statement to our Board member Brian Kang by March 1st. We hope to announce the team and have them start their work in Spring of 2019.

Dignity | A Year’s Meditation on Asha Values

by Steve Watson, Senior Pastor

Over the past three years, one of the most powerful forces of inspiration in my life has been the work of an Indian NGO called Asha. Over thirty years ago my friend Dr. Kiran Martin, recently graduated from medical school in Delhi, heard of a cholera epidemic in her city’s slum communities. It was devastating, but not unusual news, emanating from the poorest, least privileged corners of her city. But rather than saying a prayer, sending a check, or doing nothing, Dr. Martin set up a small cholera clinic in one slum neighborhood. As she stayed, she continued to take step after step to serve and empower her new friends. The work expanded beyond health clinics to public health, women’s and children’s empowerment, economic development, and higher education access. Asha is now transforming the lives of over 700,000 residents of nearly one hundred slum communities in around Delhi.

Through my family’s and my church’s partnership with Asha’s US-based advocacy organization, I have seen firsthand the amazing results of Asha’s work and the deep interpersonal and spiritual values by which it is conducted. More than anyone else right now, Asha is pushing me (I hope!) to be a better human being—less focused on consumption and material wealth, and more on relational and spiritual wealth.

In 2019, I am letting Asha’s values guide my daily meditation and prayers. Each month, I meditate daily on one of Asha’s ten values. Today I share a few thoughts from my January reflection on dignity, the first of Asha’s values.

Asha defines dignity as “the consciousness that we deserve honors,” whether or not we possess them. Dignity is “understanding who you are and taking your rightful place in the world.” To deepen my understanding of and commitment to human dignity, I read Jean Vanier’s beautiful book We Need Each Other. Vanier is the founder of L’Arche communities, where non-disabled assistants live together with people with significant disabilities. They find community and shared life and the love of God together.

Vanier wants us to know that God trusts us and that we are important to God. He says the cry of the poor, and in some ways of us all is: Do you see me as important? Am I of value? He asks if we can know we are loved and so be freed from our fears.

I thought that my meditations on human dignity would cause me to focus on how I treat others in my life. I am aware that I don’t treat my wife and children—those closest to and most beloved by me—with the dignity they deserve, let alone acquaintances and strangers and people of low status in my world. And I have returned again and again of the question about how to honor the dignity in the family, friends, and strangers in my life.

But as I read Vanier, I found myself first returning again and again to my own life. I found myself noticing again and again the subtle ways in which fear, loneliness, or despair cloud my consciousness. I asked what it would mean to approach my work for the day with love and without fear. I asked again and again: how will I live today if I’m already important, already of value, if I don’t need to earn importance or value today?

Interestingly, during this month, I had the opportunity to prepare two different teachings on living an unselfish love of oneself. I spoke on The Liberated, Loved, Gift-Giving Self, and on Finding Our True Selves Again. The first one features the story of a man who has been so traumatized by the violence of Roman occupation that he is now named and defined by his trauma. After his encounter with Jesus, he recovers peace and also discovers he has a great gift to give to his world. This is part of what I think it means to love ourselves and to live our dignity—to know we are free, we are loved, and we possess great gifts to give today. This, no less, is our rightful place in the world.

In the first of those two talks, I told a story of an African American scholar, Reggie Williams, who as of last fall, was watching excerpts of Black Panther daily to remind himself of his free, gift-giving self. I find myself wondering what each of us—myself included—can do each day to remember: I am free, I am loved, I have great gifts to give the world today. I will except no less!

Dignity consists not in possessing honors, but in the consciousness that we deserve them. Dignity is an essential part of every human being and it can never be separated from other essential aspects of the human person. It comes not from control, but from understanding who you are and taking your rightful place in the world. – Asha Values

The Worst Christmas Carol Ever

by Steve Watson

During my teenage years and into my very early twenties, I spent thousands of hours singing. I performed in art song recitals and musical theater, sang fake medieval music for an athletic ware television commercial, and wrote and sang original avant garde opera for a school mate’s dance recital. Interesting times, those were. I also sang in dozens of choirs, which were usually busy with sacred music this time of year. And one benefit of all that singing is that I can definitively tell you what is the worst Christmas carol ever.

It’s a popular one. You’ll likely hear it this week. But it’s horrible, and I’m on a mission to take it down. That carol is “Away in a Manger.” Musical tastes are personal, but it’s hard for me to understand this one. It’s a sappy lullaby, written in late 19th century America, which produced an oversized share of songs that sound like sappy lullabies.

Even if you like the music, though, the lyrics have got to go. The first verse is ordinary enough and fine on the whole. It sentimentalizes the Nativity scene; there are far more interesting things about the manger birth than Jesus’ “sweet head.” But there are worse things than a little sentimentality. At least the verse reminds us Jesus wasn’t born into the comfort or luxury of contemporary consumer baby-care products, but into a hay-strewn barn.

The final verse is worse, but in a vein that’s common to Christian theology. In a prayer that Jesus will be close to us and watch over children, it ends, “And fit us for heaven, to live with thee there.” This prayer implies that life is mainly a dress rehearsal for the afterlife, diminishing the significance of this life while also ending the song with the creepy vision of Jesus taking care of “the little children in (God’s) tender care” only to sweep them off into heaven. Like I said, though, this minimizing the sacred significance of our present life is common in disembodied Christian theology. Even the ancient creeds that serve as touchstones for the historic faith state that Jesus was born then crucified, as if his life and teaching in between were mere footnotes to his afterlife mission.

So far my complaints likely sound petty and small. You might want to play your Pentatonix or John Denver or cute animated video and keep this Christmas lullaby! The problem is that the middle verse of “Away in a Manger” undermines the heart of the good news of Jesus and insults our shared human condition. The carol states that while the baby wakes up under a starry sky, and the surrounding cattle make a bunch of noise, “the little lord Jesus no crying he makes.”

No crying – seriously? Did the man who wrote this song never care for an infant? (Actually, perhaps not.) What is the purpose of this lyric? To comfort weary parents who are tired of their children’s noise? To shame any dear children who might consider crying themselves? Or just to indicate that Jesus, the holy child who graced our world with divine presence, just floated above the difficulties of life, immune to our shared pains and problems?

The very heart of the Christmas story is to tell us that God is so interested in the human condition that God entered it along with us. Born temporarily homeless, into a working class family, in a marginalized region of a small nation, oppressed by a brutal empire, Jesus experiences the challenges of our lives, from his first cries of infancy to his last breath during his state-sponsored execution. To remove Jesus’ crying is to tell us that we are hopelessly flawed and forever out of God’s reach. Jesus did cry as an infant – loud, gas-suffering, milk-longing, breast-craving baby cries.

Consider instead these lines from the song “Sweet Little Jesus Boy,” by Robert MacGimsey, a White composer writing in the early to mid-1900s. While MacGimsey was guilty of cultural appropriation, he was at least genuinely interested in African-American culture, and in many ways an ally and advocate for African-American musicians and music. That carol also has us sing of the infant Jesus.

“Long time ago/you were born/born in a manger Lord/Sweet little Jesus boy.” Then we hear words that speak to Jesus’ share in our sufferings, from the very start of his life. “The world treats you mean Lord/Treats me mean too/But that’s how things are down here/We don’t know who you are.”

That’s how things are down here indeed. But at least God knows and understands. Cry with us, sweet Jesus, cry on, cry loudly. We’ve got plenty to cry about still, and we could use your help.