1 Samuel 1:4-20 † 1 Samuel 2:1-10 † Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25 † Mark 13:1-8
You can view a video of the service and sermon here.

Franz Dolp was a professor of economics at Oregon State University when he began, perhaps, the greatest work of his life. As a young father and professor, his marriage had eroded, and his dream of creating an Oregon homestead with it. When he drove away from the farm intended for “till death do us part,” it was with the good-bye blessing, “I hope that your next dream turns out better than your last.”[i]
He eventually found his way to forty acres on Shotpouch Creek. This logged-out, chaotic hot mess of vine maples, leggy hardwoods, and thorns was in the same Oregon coast mountains where his grandfather had made a hardscrabble homestead.

In his journal, Franz wrote that he had “made the mistake of visiting the farm after it was sold. The new owners had cut it all.”
I sat among the stumps and the swirling red dust, and I cried. When I moved to Shotpouch after leaving the farm, I realized that making a new home required more than building a cabin or planting an apple tree. It required some healing for me and for the land.”[ii]

“My work [at Shotpouch] grew out of a deeply experienced sense of loss,” he wrote, “the loss of what should be here.”[iii]

Robin Wall Kimmerer tells the story of how Franz Dolp, a wounded man, moved to live on wounded land at Shotpouch Creek in her book Braiding Sweetgrass, in a chapter she titles “Old Growth Children.” 

Franz wrote in his journal, “These forty acres were to be my retreat, my escape to the wild. But this was no pristine wilderness.” The land was razed by a series of clear-cuts over the years—first the venerable old-growth forest and then its children. No sooner had the Doug firs grown back than the loggers came for them again.[iv]

Everything is different after land is clear-cut. Sunshine is abundant, the soil is broken open and unstable, temperatures rise, the humus blanket gives way to exposed minerals. Forest ecosystems have tools for dealing with disturbances, of course. Early plants get to work on damage control, quickly. 

​It took me about two minutes the other day to remember the name for these. I could see them in my mind’s eye, and I knew they were in the fridge right next to me, but I was determined to flex those memory muscles and work past this mind block. Every time the words came close to my consciousness, stupid broccoli kept getting in the way. 

​Bru, bru, bru…broccoli.

​No!
​
Finally, I got it! I conquered! 

​“Brussel sprouts!” I shouted to Barb who I suspect, by that point, was looking a bit anxious. It was almost as if I had to look out of the periphery of my brain to do it, but I prevailed! 

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13 † Psalm 20 † 2 Corinthians 5:6-10, 14-17 † Mark 4:26-34
You can view a video recording of this sermon here.

​

Isaiah 25:6-9 † Psalm 118 † 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 † Mark 16:1-8
A video version of this sermon can be found here.

​When I was young, we’d often go to the Saturday night races at the Tri-Cities raceway. We’d have a big group from the church that would gather in the stands of the unique 3-corner half-mile, high-bank track that would come roaring to life those summer evenings.
​
Every now and then the late-model NASCAR circuit would come to town, with their powerful cars and big sponsors. You could tell the difference between them and the local racers that raced most Saturdays because they had those wide, sticky racing tires all around the car. The local racers, on the other hand, only had one of the big tires—on the front, right wheel, the outside wheel as the cars were always turning left around the track. You could tell the difference because of the tire, and the chaos that was much more common with these local racers.

Now, this was especially true when, on some nights, the raceway held a special heat, just for the mechanics. This was the only time the mechanics would replace the regular drivers behind the wheel, and that was probably for the best.

The mechanic heats were, well, chaos. Pandemonium. They were all over the track, and off the track. The bumps and scrapes and spin outs that often occurred with the aggressive driving on those nights was multiplied exponentially when the mechanics got behind the wheel.

You might have thought it would have been just the opposite—that these mechanics who spent all their time fixing these vehicles would be the most careful, but, let me assure you, this was not the case! Not in the least.

Did I use the word pandemonium already? How about chaos? Bedlam?

Well, I’ve developed a theory about this that I think plays out in other areas of life as well. Let’s see what you think.

I suspect that these mechanics were just, plain and simple, terrible drivers. I mean terrible—at least compared to the racers who rightly belonged behind the wheel. But that’s not the part of the theory I wanted to run by you.

This is the part:

Isaiah 40:21-31 † Psalm 147 † 1 Corinthians 9:16-23 † Mark 1:29-39
A video version can be found here.

​​I need this word today. I need a reminder that this life, this faith, this God is so much bigger than I can imagine and even hope for.
​
Over the years as I monitor the ebb and flow of my own faith, I’ve noted that moments in which it feels—to me, at least—that we are coming out of crisis into something that seems heavier with possibility, my own emotional well-being seems to move in the opposite direction. I struggle more. Doubt more.
I wonder how it works for you.

So I need this good word today. I need Isaiah’s rhetorical flourish:
21Have you not known? Have you not heard?
      Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
 
Isaiah just piles it on, inundates us with reminders of what should be obvious to any of us who have paid much attention, who have taken the time to stop and pray as Jesus does in the midst of the swirl of activity and demand.

1 Samuel 3:1-10 † Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18 † 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 † John 1:43-51
​A video form of this meditation can be found here.

How do we hear the voice of God? How do we recognize the voice of truth when it speaks? How do we understand what we see with our own eyes, and the truth of it?
​
I suspect this is one of the most challenging aspects of the current moment. As we watch the crescendo of right-wing domestic terrorism, shaped and fueled as it has been by mistruths and lies, spreading into all institutions and corners of society. What hope do we have to hold out for our better angels and a future that is truer and safer and more equitable when our own perspectives are dismissed by those who seem to live in entirely different plausibility structures? And on what basis can we be sure that our perspective is fundamentally better than that of these our current president and his supporters call patriots?

While I hold to my own convictions, perhaps more strongly now than ever, I know my own perspectives are sometimes incomplete and flawed. I keep thinking of a viral video I suspect most of us have seen of capitol police officer Eugene Goodman making his way up the capitol steps with dozens of rioters menacing him.[i]