Live in Love.

A couple of weeks ago we had a conversation about wisdom, what it is, where it comes from, whether we consider ourselves wise, and so on. I was thinking about this when I ran across an article about a book country music legend Willie Nelson wrote nearly 2o years ago. Nelson, now 91, wrote The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart, when he was a young man of 72. As you can guess from the title of book, Nelson's philosophy and outlook owe a lot to Eastern religious traditions. According to the article I ran across ( you can read it by clicking on this link ), Nelson, who was raised in Protestant churches in Abbott, Texas, began to suspect that the songs he was writing as a teenager, about experiences and heartbreaks that he was too young to know firsthand, might have been the consequence of past-life experiences. He came to the conclusion that he had led many past lives. “I haven’t run into anything I haven’t seen or heard before. I also feel as if I can put myself in the place of just about everyone I see, and that gives me the feeling I’ve been in their shoes before.” Beyond his belief in reincarnation, Nelson also came to think of the world's many religions as "a thousand paths to a single destination,” with the goal of bringing us closer to the divine. In short, Nelson has a lot of views that are consistent with some of what we've talked about in our PubTheo conversations over the last 11 years. So we're going to dive a little bit deeper into some of the nuggets of wisdom that Nelson shares in his book, and see what we have to say about them. The following is taken from Nelson's book and borrowed from the article mentioned above: The easiest mistake on earth is to forget to appreciate what you have right now. Happiness exists at just one time. And that time is now. You can be happy about how yesterday turned out, but you can’t be happy yesterday. You can only be happy today, this hour, this minute … now. Slow down. Not just your body but your mind. God is all around us, but it takes stillness to know his message. Breathing is its own form of meditation. Breathe from your chest; breathe from your gut; breathe from your heels. Breathing can calm you and put you in touch with your own spirit. It can deepen your contact with the world around you. If you concentrate and listen to your own breathing, what you will hear is the sound of God. As soon as you admit to yourself that everything good you do comes back to you twenty times over, then your life will change in incredible ways. Doing things because they’re the right thing to do—and not for some tangible gain—will ultimately reward you in better ways than money, power, or fame. Connections to those around you, to the world around us all, and to the universe that stretches into the great beyond are things that define us. The older I get, the more I realize it’s never too early to start appreciating the people in your life. If you love your family, it’s essential that you tell them. If you can make someone feel better with just a few words, why wouldn’t you use them? Love is what I live on. Love is what keeps me going. When in doubt, I try to remind myself that the path to God is paved with love. Join us at Casa Real in downtown Oxford on Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 7pm as we consider the wisdom of Willie Nelson. Our discussion will start there and then we'll see where else it wanders.

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

About 15 years or so ago I used to listen to a Detroit-based Gothic country band called Blanche. They had two great records back in the 2000s and then kinda faded away. You can still find their music various places online, but they haven't released an album since 2007, and as far as I know, they are defunct. It's a shame, because they had some really great songs. One line from one of their songs -- I couldn't tell you which anymore -- has really stuck with me though, and the sentiment behind it speaks directly to our discussion topic this week. The line goes something like this: "I dream in sepia." I hints at dreams and thoughts of days gone by, our memory of them faded and obscured but sweetly nostalgic. It's a dream of life as it used to be. In short, the good old days. But when exactly were those? And who exactly were those days good for? Why do we pine for some idealized vision of the past? Not surprisingly, scripture has something to contribute to this conversation. In Ecclesiastes 7:10 the writer (tradition attributes authorship to King Solomon) advises: "Do not say 'Why were the former days better than these?' For it is not from wisdom that you ask this." Why do we often hold this sentiment that the old days were better? Is it sometimes true? Why might the writer of Ecclesiastes suggest that this is not a wise question to ask? And what do you think of when you think of the good old days? That's the focus for our conversation this evening. Join us for the discussion starting at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford and tell us what you think.

This Sunday, all are welcome to join us for a morning of worship and fellowship. Whether you are with us in the sanctuary or joining from afar, your presence strengthens our community. Our services are at 8:30 & 10:00 a.m. We warmly welcome those who cannot attend in person to join us via our live stream for the 10:00 a.m. service.

Hurricane Helene brought devastating wind and flood damage to several Southeastern states last week. Especially hard hit were communities in the mountains of eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina, including the city of Asheville. As of this writing, nearly 90 people have been reported killed across six states, with thousands more displaced. Entire towns have reportedly been "erased" by the power of floods and mudslides, and much of the region remains inaccessible due to destroyed roads and rail lines. With this in mind, it's worth thinking about one of the great stories of suffering that appears in Scripture. Of course, I'm referring to the Book of Job, which we will start reading next week as part of the Sunday lectionary at St. Mary's. As writer and United Church of Christ pastor Bruce Epperly puts it , the Book of Job is "one of the greatest and most challenging descriptions of both God and the human condition. Job is every man, every woman, and every person who faces unexpected and unanticipated life-changing suffering." The Book of Job, Epperly suggests, represents an opportunity for us to think about the phenomenon of suffering -- not just ours but that of others as well -- and what that means for our understanding of our relationship with God. Epperly continues: "Life is difficult. Pain happens. We don’t know its source but we must endure or make the best of it. ... Job invites [us] to reflect on the universality of suffering. ... No one is immune from suffering of body, mind, spirit, or relationships. It’s only a matter of time. Suffering can ennoble or destroy us. We never fully know our character until we face unwarranted and unexpected suffering. As Viktor Frankl suggests, however, we are called to be worthy of our suffering, and that’s one of the themes of Job. Despite his pain, he must seek to be as moral and noble as possible. For Job, this will mean challenging God’s own justice." So what are we to take away from all of this? Is God capricious and arbitrary in his omniscience? We might fear such a God, but how on earth could we love or worship him? What is God's role in the suffering we, and others, experience? This is all worth thinking, and talking about, as Epperly notes, "suffering challenges our vision of God and the goodness of the universe." Join us for the conversation this Tuesday, Oct. 1, beginning at 7pm at Casa Real in downtown Oxford.