Every Derby Horse's Foal Psalm

Since I assign a psalm to all the babies I baptize based on the date of their birth, why not assign every horse in the Kentucky Derby a foal psalm? Here they are (in alphabetical order):

By My Standards (5/22/16)

For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light. (36:9)

Code of Honor (5/23/16)

Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your

Happy St. George's Day

Saint George is England's patron saint. So today I'm posting the most glorious of all national anthems: Jerusalem.

Pogo the Possum

The quote "We have met the enemy and he is us" is a parody of a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after his victory in the Battle of Lake Erie, stating, "We have met the enemy, and they are ours." It first appeared in a lengthier form in A Word to the Fore, the foreword of the book The Pogo Papers, first published in 1953. Since the strips reprinted in Papers included the first appearances of Mole and Simple J. Malarkey, beginning Kelly's attacks on McCarthyism, Kelly used the foreword to defend his actions:

Traces of nobility, gentleness and courage persist in all people, do what we will to stamp out the trend. So, too, do those characteristics which are ugly. It is just unfortunate that in the clumsy hands of a cartoonist all traits become ridiculous, leading to a certain amount of self-conscious expostulation and the desire to join battle. There is no need to sally forth, for it remains true that those things which make us human are, curiously enough, always close at hand. Resolve then, that on this very ground, with small flags waving and tinny blasts on tiny trumpets, we shall meet the enemy, and not only may he be ours, he may be us. Forward! (Walt Kelly, June 1953)

The finalized version of the quotation appeared in a 1970 anti-pollution poster for Earth Day (see above) and was repeated a year later in the daily strip.

—from the Wikipedia entry on Pogo (comic strip)

Hidden and Revealed

SCRIPTURE INTRODUCTION

A friend of mine texted me on Monday, saying, “Notre Dame is on fire,” followed by a crying emoji. Well, since my alma mater is in the same conference as Notre Dame, I assumed we must be playing them in baseball, and that Notre Dame was winning big. It surprised me a little, though, because my friend had never bothered to text me about college baseball before… but I was too busy to look up the score. It wasn’t until later that I found out that her text was about the cathedral, not the college. And that the fire was literal, not figurative.

We all know, I hope, that the church is a people, and not a building— and that it’s in the people of the church that the Holy Spirit dwells, and not in any wood

Arise, My Love

Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

✥ Song of Solomon 2:10-13
Easter • resurrection

An Easter Prayer

O Lord, what a mighty God you are!
You were dead to us,
and yet you are the God of life!
Open our eyes to the wonder of life,
that we might see the risen Lord:
a bright light shining
not only in our everyday lives,
but also in the nighttime of our fear,
and in the darkness of our death.

May the light of the resurrection
shine on our open questions,

Psalm Today

In order to turn Opossum Screed into more of a personal blog, I'm going to be posting daily devotions based on the psalter on a different site: Psalm Today. The URL is <psalm.today> and it will be exclusively devoted to meditations on the psalms. See you there!

Meditation on Luke 22

Transition from Maundy Thursday to Good Friday

For just about all Christians, there’s no more memorable part of the gospel than the account of Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. The words spoken at that moment are among the most oft-quoted in the history of humanity. “This is my body… this is my blood… do this in remembrance of me.” These words make us a people. They tell us who and what we are. They give us strength. They both lay us low and lift us up. They are words of deep mystery. And yet they reassure us in their directness. They describe the very riches of God in the simplest of human experience: Bread, wine, body, blood.

This gift of thanksgiving, this sign of grace, this seal of God’s love that we long

Children Rock

When we hear of the Pharisees, we almost always assume the worst. After all, didn’t Jesus often point out their small-mindedness and hypocrisy?

But this is only part of the story. Because if Jesus identified with any particular movement within the Judaism of his day, it probably would’ve been the Pharisees.

You see, there were two principle ways of practicing the Hebrew religion in the first century, and they weren’t really mutually exclusive. We’re unusual, in that people in our congregation are fine belonging to two different denominations. Most Christians aren’t so comfortable with that idea.

Well in Jesus’ day, it was perfectly normal to practice both of the main kinds of Judaism. One was centered on the Temple in Jerusalem, and those who ran it

Psalm 22:22-31

I will tell of your Name to my brothers and sisters; in the midst of the congregation I will praise you:
You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.
From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations.
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

✙ Ps. 22:22-31 ✙

Meditation

Prayer

On Having the Poor with You

There seems to be a connection between this story in John 12 and the one in Luke 10, where Jesus is visiting in the home of Mary and Martha. There we find Martha serving and Mary at Jesus’ feet, listening to him teach. In that story, we can take the expression “sat at Jesus’ feet” somewhat figuratively, since that common expression probably simply meant to be in an attitude of listening and learning.

But here in today’s story, we find Jesus in the same house with Martha serving once again. Here we find not only Martha’s sister Mary, but also her brother Lazarus at the table with Jesus. But what happens next places Mary at Jesus’ feet in a very different way, for she anoints his feet with a huge quantity of very expensive perfume—so much perfume, in fact, that the scent fills the entire house.

I don’t know what nard smells like, but the Chinese call it sweet pine, which sounds rather pleasant. But there can be too much of a good thing, and this

UCC Conferences and DOC Regions

Pilgrim Christian Church is a partnership church, meaning it is affiliated with both the United Church of Christ and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Most interesting to me is the fact that this partnership was formed in 1950, 7 years before the UCC came into existence and 18 years before the Disciples were chartered in their present form. I plan to do some research, therefore, to find out if Pilgrim is the oldest partnership church in the USA (there are about three dozen in existence).

Below is a map of UCC conferences. Pilgrim is part of the Ohio Conference, which includes churches in West Virginia and two of the three northernmost

Plans

Most of my favorite quotes come from the Bible. My next most oft-quoted source is John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion. But way up on the list of people whose sayings touch and/or motivate me is a poet, essayist, and novelist named Wendell Berry. And it’s him I’ve been thinking of lately as I’ve been dealing with my move. “We live the given life,” he said, “and not the planned.”

This is important, because if I were to make a list of all the things that might not go as planned, many of the items on it come as a result of moving house

Come Home

But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; was lost and has been found. 

—Luke 15:32 

You all know the story I just read. It’s a story we call the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Because the son in the story is wayward, most of us automatically assume that the word prodigal must mean wayward. And even when we know the true meaning, this story has become so ingrained in our imaginations that we can’t quite make ourselves think of the word in any other way. But the actual meaning of the word prodigal is generous, or extravagant, or even wasteful.

And of course, the wayward son was indeed wasteful. He asked for his inheritance while is father was still alive, and his father granted his request. Now, I can imagine good reasons why he might have wanted his share of the inheritance early—like investing in a business. But, no, the boy took the money and ran off. He invested none of it, but just