Weeks earlier, I’ve gone through the lectionary, paying attention to which of the three passage catches my attention. I jot down a few ideas of why the passage seems important.

Then, on the Monday of the week that the passage is going to be read, I do my work with the commentaries, jotting down notes from the writings of real smart people who are Biblical scholars. Then I don’t think about it — consciously. But the process is going on, at a deeper level than my consciousness. Because, when I return to the sermon preparation on Tuesday, I’m way past where I was the day before.

This morning, it happened as the sun was coming up. I was sitting on the screened porch, in the humidity, listening to the birds, looking at the trees. I had been reading Barbara Kingsolver’s novel, “Prodigal Summer.” And, suddenly, I knew what this coming Sunday’s passage was saying to me. I knew how to begin the sermon outline. I sat down and wrote it out in about 10 minutes.

Next I’ll begin the writing. The writing is always the easiest part — once I’ve heard what to write.  And often, what I’ve heard is helpful to those who will listen on Sunday morning.

Sermons come from the Holy Spirit.

For the second morning in a row, this morning, when the clock struck 4:00, I was instantly awake and alert. The verse that has come to mind is from 1 Samuel 3: “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

I think it’s part of the discernment process in our search process for a new staff member. We’ve interviewed four of the five people we’ve invited to meet with us. And I’ve spent a number of hours with each candidate informally, getting an idea of how easily we can talk together and understand how each other thinks. I surely don’t want a relationship that would be hard work, and I have found that communication either happens easily or it doesn’t.

What’s making the process wonderfully difficult is that we’ve been blessed with more than one person who would bring great energy and vitality to our congregation. I find that reasoning only carries me so far, in making a decision like this. Listening to the wise folks serving on the committee with me is essential. We have become a discernment group.  The 4:00 AM listening is essential, too. I don’t think this is just me, churning in my own thoughts (which is sometimes the case). I think it is a call to prayer: “a God thing,” as my spiritual director likes to say.  It’s a listening for God.  Who is God calling to be our Ministry Associate?

A week from now, at 4:00 AM, I will already have been up for an hour. I’ll spend next week at Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina. Wake up is at 3:00. Vigils (the first of the seven daily prayer offices) begins at 3:20. The day ends following Compline, at 8:00 PM. Then it’s time for sleep.

I’m such a morning person! After a week of that monastic schedule, my mind and body are really charged up!

Unfortunately, back here in the real world, there are folks who expect me to be awake and attentive later than 8:00 in the evening.  And there’s another major impediment to my becoming a monk.  It’s that darn rule of celibacy.

Since I think of life in terms of Christianity, I keep returning to Paul’s lists of virtues, such as patience, humility, generosity, self-control …   George Steinbrenner?  Hmmm…

The best commentary on Steinbrenner that I’ve come across is in this morning’s conversation between David Brooks and Gail Collins on the New York Times website:

David Brooks: Gail, I have to admit I’ve always had a soft spot for unpleasant people. This comes to mind as a result of the death of George Steinbrenner.

Gail Collins: Well, that’s a relief. I was afraid the second sentence was going to be something like: “And I guess that’s why we’ve always gotten along so well.”  It’s New Yorkers like Steinbrenner who have largely averted the triumph of the milquetoast.

David Brooks: Back in the 1980s and 1990s, much more so than in recent years, Steinbrenner was an overbearing jerk. His employees lived in fear of him. He hired and fired managers as if they were pieces of meat. He was shameless about buying championships. He was the personification of the tough, obnoxious, imperious, hyper-demanding, win-at-all-costs business owner.

Gail Collins: A friend just sent me a quote from Harvey Greene, the former Yankees PR director: “The phone would ring in the middle of the night and you knew it was either Mr. Steinbrenner or a death in the family. After a while you started to root for a death in the family.”

David Brooks: From a distance (I spent my nights over at Shea Stadium, not Yankee Stadium) Steinbrenner was, at least, colorful. He was, at least, New York. I’ve always been willing to forgive people like Steinbrenner and Bobby Knight and Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani a lot, because their incandescent competitiveness is so fascinating to watch.

Gail Collins: Can I propose that these obnoxious, overbearing egomaniacs be confined to running sports teams? Once you let them get into the real world, they can do some damage. In a worst-case scenario they might even put the New York City emergency command center inside the World Trade Center because even though the building is known to be the No. 1 terrorist target in the country, it’s close to their office in city hall.

David Brooks: Most people have a desire to be liked. Most people have some interest in comfort and pleasure. But men and women like that are in the grips of something uncontrollable — a desire to achieve some all-encompassing conquest that will satisfy their inner drive. They seem to torture themselves even more than they torture others. I don’t know what implants that ambition in them (Steinbrenner’s father was famously harsh and critical toward his son) but it’s epic and tragic at the same time.

Gail Collins: I’m still thinking that we could enjoy him because he only took his raging ego out on very well-paid adults.

David Brooks: People like Steinbrenner are also an antidote to — if I can be pseudo-intellectual for a second (and if I can’t who can?) — Tocqueville’s great fear. The Great Frenchman had many nice things to say about the culture of democracy, but he was plagued by the sense that democratic culture would be gentle, mild and mediocre. It would seduce people with its pleasantness into giving up strong passions and grand ambitions.  Under the influence of compromise and affluence, he predicted, Americans would lose any sense of honor, any hunger for immortal glory (which was the ambition that proudly motivated our founders). Instead, we’d all just chase tepid and mediocre pleasures, like good food and easy comfort.

Gail Collins: The really great heroes almost all had great self-control. (Well, not Hercules, but look how that worked out.) And to me the thing that defines people like Steinbrenner and the other guys you mentioned above was an unwillingness to give up the comfort of perpetual self-assertion. People like that aren’t heroic because they can’t ever put anybody else first. And if I can move this over to politics for a minute, the last thing we need is more people who think that greatness can be achieved by yelling louder than anybody else and pushing lesser mortals around.

David Brooks: Well, people like Steinbrenner cannot be accused of being tepid non-entities. Whatever flaws they suffer from, lack of spirit is not among them. If Tocqueville was wrong about those fears, it’s New Yorkers like Steinbrenner who have largely averted the triumph of the milquetoast. Maybe, at times, too much so.

Gail Collins: I’ll give you this: they’re great for the news business. Anybody who’s good copy is fine by me, as long as I don’t have to live with them, or under them. Maybe we can celebrate the fact that George Steinbrenner had the good sense to park his ego in a place where it couldn’t do any harm.

I was planning to ride my 17-mile exercise route around Queen’s Lake. I especially enjoy riding that route during the summer. That’s because there are only a third as many vehicles on the early-morning road, compared to fall, winter and spring. School is out, you see, and there is no traffic entering and exiting the two school’s parking lots that I ride past.

Why is there such a dramatic decrease in traffic during the summer? It’s because very little school traffic is composed of actual school buses. Nearly all of it is made up of a parent driving a child to school — a trip that is, of course, totally unecessary, because there is indeed school bus service.

I wonder how much gasoline is burned by such trips? (Certainly, there is much pollution, because a car pollutes the most during the first two miles it is driven.)

All of us who burn petroleum products bear responsibility for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The incessant demand for oil in our country, and the refusal to encourage the use of alternative-energy sources, is what drives more dangerous methods of drilling for oil, such as what BP attempted.

Cain’s question (Genesis 4:9) is, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God’s answer, of course, is “Yes!” Cain is under judgment.

In the same way, we are our pelican’s, and turtle’s, and fish’s keepers. We are all under judgment for their deaths in the Gulf of Mexico. Let us pray forgiveness, and for the healing of God’s creation.

The alarm woke me out of a dead  sleep.  And rain was pouring down outside. 

Was it only localized weather?  What about in Waverly?  I waited for an hour, and checked e-mail.  The ride leader wrote that he was cancelling the ride because it was raining in Waverly and Richmond too.

Sigh … 

We need rain, desperately.  Yes we do. But couldn’t it have rained yesterday?  Last night?  This afternoon, even, after lunch?

OK.  Enough self-centeredness.  Each day is a gift.

Does that prove “global warming?” Nope.

But isn’t it funny, that for weeks and weeks there hasn’t been a single letter or essay in the “Virginia Gazette” from those who think “global warming” is a hoax? (You remember how such mocking missives were regularly published over the winter, when it was quite cold?)

Did the cold weather this past winter debunk the “global warming” theory? Nope; just as this unusualy hot and dry summer doesn’t prove the theory.

It’s just part of human nature: that we respond to short-term stimuli, rather than forming reasoned responses to more accurate, long-term trends.

We’re funny that way.

Yup.  That’s how I spent this afternoon: being present and prayerful for those in need, while trying not to be distracted by having to process all that was going through my head about my own history.

The spiritual practice called for is gratitude: I recovered.  And, although she is still right on the edge, the young woman’s numbers are improving.

But there are times when this work is especially emotionally draining.

In the midst of this 6th century situation, the Spirit was working renewal. (As with all renewal movements in Church history, this one was not clearly identified until it had taken hold a century later.) The renewal took the form of monasticism. Benedict of Nursia was not the first, but he became the patriarch of western monasticism, founding 12 communities and writing a Rule for life that is followed to this day in many monasteries around the world. Monasticism grew to be the strongest expression of the Church over the next 500 years or so, as the Spirit called into these communities those people who wanted to center themselves in God’s presence, daily.

In a Trappist monastery, the monks gather seven times each day for prayer, as Benedict instructed. Most Benedictine monasteries observe four times for prayer daily. Our own Evangelical Lutheran Worship book offers liturgies for four daily prayer “offices.” So does the Daily Prayer book I use, published by the Presbyterian Church USA.

I’m not able to resist the arrhythmia of time in our culture even four times each day, to pause for prayer.  Most days I pray Noontime Prayer.  I always begin the early morning with the liturgy for Morning Prayer.

I find that Morning Prayer liturgy to be essential, for daily centering in God, in God’s blessings (which I would miss otherwise), in God’s reality of resurrection. 

Morning Prayer always opens with Psalm 95.  What a reminder: that all has been created by God — “the caverns of the earth,” “the heights of the hills,” “the sea is his, for he made it, and his hands have molded the dry land.”  “Come, let us bow down and bend the knee, and kneel before the Lord our Maker.”

With that orientation in gratitude for this new day that has been given by God the Creator, there are the prayers of the liturgy, appointed for each day.  In the same way that the Sunday morning liturgy includes words that are unchanging, so I read the same words every Monday that are appointed for that day; and every Tuesday, the words for that day; and every Wednesday…  It’s important that these words of liturgy do not change — because what changes is ME, day to day and week to week; because of what I’ve been experiencing, and what God is doing with me through those experiences.  The unchanging words of liturgy cover the entirety of Christian prayer each Sunday, and each weekday.  And so, there are phrases that jump out, according to where I am!

For instance, during these days when my family and I are recovering from our exhaustion over the past couple of weeks, journeying through the final days of Patty’s Dad’s illness, and then dealing with the crematorium and the cemetary and writing the obituaries and working on the memorial service, I come across these words of prayer:

“Especially we thank you for the miracle of life and the wonder of living, particular blessings coming to us in this day …”  And, “As you cause the sun to rise, O God, bring the light of Christ to dawn in our souls and dispel all darkness.”  (Reminders on Monday, that God is giving continuing days of life.)

“Eternal God, we rejoice this morning in the gift of life which we have received by your grace, and the new life you give in Jesus Christ.  Especially we thank you for the love of our families, the affection of our friends …”  (A reminder on Tuesday that life is made possible by the resurrection of Christ.  And how those words about families and friends jump out, as we have been blessed by exactly that during these days!  Gifts from God!)

“God of all mercies, we praise you that you have brought us to this new day, brightening our lives with the dawn of promise and hope in Jesus Christ.”  And, “Eternal God, you never fail to give us each day all that we ever need, and even more….”  (Reminders that I read every Wednesday; how vitally important it is to be reminded of that during a time of grief.)

How can a person live the life of faith without such daily centering?

Patty’s father died this past Monday night.  For the first time, I am making this journey as a member of the family, and it is entirely different from my previous 184 experiences. (It is true that my own father died, after a months-long illness, in October of 2006. I had the experience of visiting him in his debilitation. But, as some of you know, when he died, I was on a ventilator in an Intensive Care Unit, and was not able to even receive the news of his death until the week following his funeral.)

I’m used to being welcomed as the pastor, with wisdom and skill in helping those grieving work through their grief; someone who is able to bring some calm to frayed emotions and family dynamics that are, let us say, “interesting.” In this case, I am contributing to those interesting family dynamics!

I find that the spiritual gift of humility is essential.  Emotions are raw.  We must simply love each other, hold each other, pass no judgment on each other.  Each one of us is doing the best s/he can. 

We are people of resurrection.  And healing will come.  I know that!  I’ve been through this 184 times!

Well, not exactly this.  This time through, as a member of the family, will make me a much better pastor.

Here’s a picture of Dad Cogle, just one year ago, at his 89th birthday.

And afterwards, several people came up to me, marveling at the constructive tone of the conversation; how we respected each other.  They each said variations of this: “Wow.  In the church I belonged to before moving here, people would have never treated each other so well.”

What we demonstrated was Christian community, as described by the author of Ephesians (4:25 – 5:2): “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.  Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil. … Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.  And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.  Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.  Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”