Vinyl records are made by cutting grooves or ruts into the vinyl. The record (at this point called a lacquer) is placed on the cutting machine where electronic signals from the master recording travel to a cutting head, which holds a stylus or needle. The needle etches a groove into the record that spirals to the center of the circular disc. The imprinted lacquer is then sent to a production company, where it is coated in metal, such as silver or nickel, to create a metal master.
Our lives also operate in grooves. We operate a certain way, day after day after day. Sometimes our grooves — our habits, our ways of being — create beautiful music. Sometimes our grooves are more like ruts — they create sounds that are less inviting, even harsh.
Lent is a season in which we are invited to break out of the ruts we may have fallen into, by changing up our habits, and acknowledging that our lives, by God’s grace, do not have to fall into ruts that are etched in metal or stone.
We can be changed.
Invitation:
Grab a record, feel its edges, its grooves, its texture. Imagine the music it creates. Consider your own present practices:
— what are the grooves that create music? How can you nourish them?
— what are the ruts that you would like to get out of? Consider ways you can change your present practices. What are new grooves you could create? What space might open up if you change a current habit?
Records
Prayer:
God thank you for this life you given me.
I cherish the music you have allowed me to hear, as well as to create.
Forgive me for the ruts that increase the chaotic noise of the world.
Free me to live into grooves of grace that create beautiful music.
Music that sings of you.
In Christ, Amen.
If we choose to accept this life-changing invitation, how do we start? How do we know that the path we take is not simply a trail that loops back to Egypt ends in a cul de sac in the desert? If we journey alone, we indeed run a high risk of picking a futile road to nowhere or, worse, to a place of great danger.
Surrounded by some new art, and still hovering in purgatory, about fifteen of us gathered at the Pub during Holy Week, or more precisely, on Maundy Thursday.
What exactly is Maundy Thursday?
Great question – but we weren’t there to answer that.
Is God’s forgiveness unconditional? Is it for everyone?
The first response:
"Yes it is conditional. I grew up in the church hearing that if God forgives you, you've got to start living differently, otherwise it obviously didn't make any difference, and in that case - you're not really forgiven."
Next response:
"What about Jesus saying that we need to forgive people seventy times seven? Doesn't that imply that forgiveness is unlimited, and therefore unconditional?"
I came across this poem shortly after our move to Washington, DC. It was written by Pub Theology's favorite poet, Chuck Trafelet, whose self-published collection of poetry was discovered in our previous home in Traverse City, MI. Fitting for us at a number of levels, including (or especially) the title. Picture me reading this in a house full of boxes on a cold November evening in an unfamiliar city where we've just uprooted the entire family, wondering what in the world we've done.
It was timely.
Poem: ROOTS
as evening once again steals across the land
and midwinter cold settles in the bones
here so far from home and friends
beginning a new life – ending the old
bones, why do you pain me so
you know as well as I and better
we cannot turn back now...
Mystery. Paraclete. God’s particular dance with the ordinary.
Usually, in the great 15th century paintings, shown as the dove.
You have to look up to see it, above the angel. Mary, sees only
the angel, holds fast the gaze of the extraordinary.
