rick morley | a garden path

Book Review: Psalms for Young Children by Marie-Helene Delval

July 5, 2011

by rick

A few weeks ago I picked up Psalms for Young Children by Marie-Helene Delval at one of my favorite bookstores, St. Bede’s Books in Baltimore, Maryland.

I like books that I can read with my children that they really want to hear and read for themselves, and which also helps them in their young relationship with God. This book fills the bill, and then some.

The pictures are striking, and Delval’s interpretation of this selection of Psalms are really very, very good. If you’re looking for detailed translations from the original languages, this isn’t your book. What Delval does is condense the meaning of the whole psalm into a few verses, which captures it’s essence in a way that children can readily absorb.

It’s not a “dumbing down” though, in fact it’s spurred some really good conversation between me and my kids about biblical poetic metaphor. We had a really good bedtime conversation the other day about that it means to be like “a tree planted by a river…full of fruit,” when we “listen to… God” in her paraphrase of Psalm 1. We talked about what kind of tree we’d be if we didn’t listen to God, and my kids painted a pretty grim portrait of a sad little tree.

Good stuff!

But, don’t just take my word…

An interview with children’s book expert extraordinaire, Zoe Jane Morley—soon to be 2nd grader.

Zoe, what do you like about the Psalms?

Zoe showing the page with her favorite psalm.

They tell you what people in the Bible prayed a long time ago.

What do you like about this book, Psalms for Young Children?

I like how the author wrote the psalms so that children can understand them.

Right now, what’s your favorite Psalm?

Psalm 46, because if you’re in a little boat and there’s lighting coming down at you and waves go as high as giants you can still be safe because God is with you.

Zoe, do you ever get scared?

I do. A lot.

Now, after reading this book, do you know that God is with you?

Yes, I do. That helps me get through the scary times.

Zoe, what would you say to one of your friends if they wanted to read this book?

They will like every single detail that the author put into it, especially the pictures.

Book Review Part 1: Evolving in Monkey Town, by Rachel Held Evans

July 4, 2011

by rick

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book review

This is Part 1 of 3…

A good story is one that 1) conveys something important and 2) which is captivating due to tension, drama, comedy—or all three.

A great story is one where you find all of those things, AND you also find yourself in the story.

Rachel Held Evans first book (there’s apparently another on the way) Evolving in Monkey Town: How a Girl Who Knew All the Answers Learned to Ask the Questions is, for me, a great story. Because I’m in it.

Not literally of course. She’s probably never heard of me. (Though we are Facebook friends now, so we’re practically BFF’s…)

But, I do find myself peeking out every once in a while.

Her teenage years were lived in Dayton, Tennessee, the setting of the Scopes “Monkey” trial in 1925. But, even without the historical notoriety of Dayton, her “habitat,” as she titles the first part of the book, was saturated, at home, at church, at school, and in the larger community, within the conservative evangelical cultural soup of the south.

It was a community that exalted in having all the “answers,” especially as regards matters of faith. As she tells the story she didn’t have to figure much out in her faith, except the best ways to tell others, or more to the point, convince others that she was right.

But, with a precocious mind, the “answers” began to feel less and less trustworthy. With the awareness that her habitat shaped her religiously, came the realization that the habitats of others might shape them religiously.

Could everyone else with a different upbringing really all be going to hell? Was she the product of luck and fortune that she got to be in the “right” Habitat with all the answers? Or, is it just a little suspicious that her faith proclaimed to be the only right answer?

I didn’t grow up in the south, but I did grow up in Ocean City, a resort community that began as a Methodist retreat center. The main arteries in town are Wesley and Asbury Avenues. It’s still a dry island—which means no alcohol can be purchased anywhere within city limits. While reasonably secular today, it used to be Methodist Wonderland, and those roots are still visible. And those roots influenced my young, Methodist life very much.

I identify closely with Evans’ remark: “I felt closer to God as a teenager than at any other time in my life.”

And, I identify with the cracks in my porcelain faith that emerged as my faith matured-with the inevitable questions that rose to the surface like an army of bubbles.

After Part One, I like where this book is going. And I look forward to where I’m going to be going with it.

Because this story, is great.

hair and heals: proper 10, year a

June 29, 2011

by rick

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From the medieval collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It's a Madonna, but it might as well be Rebekah. Photo by Rick Morley

Genesis 25 moves quickly. If you lift your eyes from the page you just might miss a few decades.

In less than fifteen verses Jacob and Esau go from zygotes to teenagers. And yet, not much changes in those verses, or in those years: Jacob and Esau are very different creatures in the womb and very different creatures outside of the womb.

Like their forebears Cain and Abel, one is refined and the other is a brute. Not that anything is wrong with either of those two, it just seems that, biblically speaking, that’s a bad combination.

A tragic combination.

However while the refined Abel was ‘done in’ with a blunt rock to the skull, the refined Jacob comes out on top with his sibling.

And no rock needed. Just a pot of beans.

I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about the stories of Genesis and how they found their own origin in oral tradition. These stories were told over campfires, and passed down through the generations from parents to children long, long before they were ever written down.

It’s why the stories have so much color to them. Their tragedy is relentlessly tragic. Their comedy is overwhelmingly funny–if we can get past their stilted and stained-glass English translations.

Obviously the cartoonish differences between Esau and Jacob were part of the oral canon that the descendents of Jacob told to laugh at the descendants of Esau, the Edomites.

The punch-line is that the great-great-grand-daddy of the Edomites was a hairy, brutish, blue-collar dunce who sold his most valuable possession for a bowl full of bean stew.

Or, “red stuff.”

book review: “Weird: Because Normal Isn’t Working” by Craig Groeschel

June 28, 2011

by rick

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book review

Click on the book above to go to the book on Amazon.

This was one of those books that I really wanted to love. As soon as I heard of it, I fell in love with the concept.

The Way of Jesus IS weird. It isn’t “normal.” And, the modern church and modern Christians have jumped through a lot of hoops over the last few decades to normalize the Gospel.

And Groeschel is absolutely correct: it isn’t working.

All we’re left with is a watered down Jesus and a few bland scraps of news that isn’t even all that good. It’s “Eehh News,” but with cool graphic-tees and an iPhone app.

So, I was pretty psyched by the prospect of this book.

And, it started out great-guns.

But, the best way I can describe the book, is that it’s like one of those 8-week sermon-teaching series that sounds great, and starts great, but by the third week you realize that everything that needed to be said in this series has already been said…and what the heck are we going to do in the next five weeks?

the buffoon: proper 9, year a

June 22, 2011

by rick

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Lectionary / Old Testament / Pentateuch

Remember “Sleepless in Seattle?”

It’s a story of romance – romance that didn’t begin over Facebook or Social Media – but over the radio.

The Empire State Building, taken from The High Line. By Rick Morley, 2010.

Jonah was wasn’t just dealing with his mother’s death, but his father’s depression. He wanted him to find someone…though he had to approve of her. He calls a radio show and spills his dad’s beans all over the country. One listener to the show, Annie, not only gets drawn in, but becomes Jonah’s woman of choice.

And so Jonah arranges a meet-and-greet between his father, Sam, and Annie on Valentine’s Day at the top of the Empire State Building.

The only problem is, Sam had no intention of going to New York City to mean someone he had never met, and who in all likelihood, might be a lunatic. He had other plans for the weekend.

Until his eight-year-old son boarded a transcontinental flight for New York. Then he had to go chasing after him.

There’s that moment when Sam and Annie see each other on the top of the Empire State Building, and it all comes together. As if it were written in the stars. It wasn’t the first time they’d laid eyes on each other, but it was the clincher.

They looked at each other, and they KNEW.

The story of the coming together of Isaac and Rebekah is similar in a few ways. Just without all the romance..and stars. Read More

proper 8 year a: when it all comes off the tracks

June 16, 2011

by Fr. Rick Morley

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Lectionary / Old Testament / Pentateuch

In the second chapter of Frederick Buechner’s epic novel, Son of Laughter, Isaac tells his son Jacob a story. It’s a story of Isaac’s childhood.

A dark story.

By the end of the telling of the story the elderly Isaac has covered his face with ashes and thrown himself down by a pile of dung. He lays there motionless. As if he were dead.

He told his younger son Jacob about the time that he and his father went on a journey.

It was a journey that Isaac was not meant to return from.

Isaac tells how they climbed a high mountain. His father, Abraham, carried a live coal in his hand to make a fire for a burnt offering. But, Isaac wondered where the gift was. There was no gift.

Except, as far as his father knew, he was the gift. Read More

trinity sunday year a: I’m a mess too

June 10, 2011

by Fr. Rick Morley

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Lectionary / New Testament / Paul / Theology

The Corinthian correspondence is hard to read. Not because it’s theologically thick or difficult to understand. But, because Paul had some tough things to say to the Corinthians.

They had major ethical issues going on. They had class issues, dividing them between the “have’s” and the “have nots.” They had issues competing with each other over the various spiritual gifts some of them believed they had been given.

And Paul confronted these issues head on. Directly. No mincing of any words whatsoever.

He talks over and over again about how he knew he was being tough on them, and how he wished he didn’t have to be.

The second letter is less harsh than the first letter. And some scholars think that there may be fragments of a third letter embedded in the second. But, in the ending of what we know of as Second Corinthians, we find a little ray of light and hope.

It’s a Trinitarian ray of light too, which is why we get it on Trinity Sunday.

May the love of God
The grace of Jesus
And the fellowship (koinonia) of the Holy Spirit
Be with you all Read More

a litany for father’s day

June 9, 2011

by Fr. Rick Morley

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Prayers of the People

You may use this Prayer, print it in your bulletin, adapt it as you’d like, etc. Please use common attribution.

On this day when we remember fathers, let us offer our prayers to God, who has adopted us as sons and daughters through the waters of baptism.

O God, you formed your son Adam from the dust of the ground, and breathed your holy breath into his lungs, giving us all the gift of life; breathe again your Life into, us, your children and your Church, that we might be one with you.