The Spirit Will Tell You

Test Exams for Grace

When I was in college I would often buy used books.  Back in the 60’s and 70’s college books were not obscenely priced as they are today.  I remember one quarter buying books for four classes for less than 100$.  I had one book that cost 20.$ and I thought that outrageous.  Then there was the term when I was taking an entomology class and the news came out that DDT had been banned.  They book had listed DDT as the best pest deterrent.  I went mid quarter and sold my book for usual buy-back rates.  Usually 3/4 if you kept the book in good shape and hadn’t written in it.  I got a good rate for that entomology book but about a week later it was worth nothing.  

When I was in graduate school I had a class in ecology that we were given ahead a 20 page exam.  The exam went through the book for the class.  It was totally fill in the blank.  If you went through, and filled into the blanks the missing parts you could then go through and memorize them.   When the exam came you were given the same 20 page blank packet of papers with random of the fill in questions circled.  You might have three on one page and six on another.  It was actually much harder an exam that one expected unless you were the kind of person who could memorize verbatim vast amount of information.  There was as far as I could say no rhyme or reason about what information you were asked to recall. You just had to memorize what was there.  I didn’t like, nor did well, on that exam.   If you had asked for an essay on one part of the books whole setting about the areas.  The questions didn’t really measure what you had learned. It did measure what you could memorize.  From the memorized parts individual concepts could be ignored and not learned.  

In entomology class we would have practical exams where there would be 60 or so insects on pins with a question about name, scientific name. You had to know them well.  There were two sessions you could practice with the insects and names so you could come to identify them.  One kid was going through making notes like.  4 flies in a box.  We tried to tell him that the day of the exam they would be on a pin, solitary,    The next day we went in and as we had said they were singular on a pin. The  kid was furious.  

I took an advanced course in Abnormal Psychology.  It fascinated me.  The professor started class saying he didn’t want marginal cases.  He went on to explain it was common for students to go through the reading about the individual pathologies and think… Wow. I sometimes feel that way I must have psychosis..   Highlighting the possible symptoms.  

The subject I found fascinating.  Th exams were brutal. jThey would be matching.  ‘’The worst part of this multiple choice was the way it was constructed.   Statement, question, possible answers. A,B,C,D.  A+B, B+C.  All of the above, none of the above.  Seriously that kind of combination on all the questions.  It was an hour exam.  I don’t know how many questions there were.  I just remember clearly going outside, being met by a friend who said I didn’t look good.  He asked how it went. I said.  “I have no idea.”   Seriously it was so confusing.  That was a Friday.  Monday we got the results and I had a B.  But it was little consolation as I really learned nothing from the exam.   Many must have complained because the next exams weren’t like that.  Thank Goodness, we all needed counseling after that first exam.  

So testing isn’t so bad if you can learn something from it.  But it makes no sense and takes time to study for an odd reasons.   

I had a parasitology exam that threw us a curve too.   It was one of those odd exam days when during exam week I had back to back exams.   That wasn’t the usual way the schedule went.  Several of us were in the two classes that lined up like that and we were standing in the hall trying to shift gears from the first exam and the assistant came by and laughed and said it’s too late for that.   We had studied so many parasites that we had been given a list of the different ones that we had been told we could use during the exam.  You still had to know them you just didn’t have to know how to spell them all.   We get into the exam after that wise crack in the hall, and the TA said we couldn’t use the key.  What?  What?  We had to spell them out ourselves.  That really threw us all for a loop because the spellings were intricate and tricky.  And they said you had to have it exactly right.  We ALL floundered through that exam.  The tests were scored and the test grades were really poor.  I had told my Daddy about it when he asked how it went.  I had known this professor since I was a kid and wanted to do well.  He had noticed my score was low.  The professor wasn’t around because he was in the hospital.  He called my Dad and said that I hadn’t done well on the exam.  He wasn’t ratting me out he was concerned.  Daddy told him we didn’t have the key.  He was surprised.  Apparently he called the TA in and asked about the exam, how it had gone, how the grades were.  He asked if the key was handed out with it.  The TA said no.  The professor looked at the individual grades and recognized that enough of the otherwise top students had done poorly.  He re-scaled the curve for everyone.  It worked out.  

I have had dreams now and then that I have a test coming up and it is for a class I’ve ben registered for but never attended.  It takes a minute or so to recognize it was just a dream.  

My Favorite story about exams was a professor I’ve always admired had a student come up after the first class and say what do I have to do to get an A.  The student had many many questions.  Finally the professor said come with me.  He took him to the registrar and said please record an A for this class for him.  Odd as it was he did.  The professor turned to the guy and said…Now just learn something.  Apparently it worked as the student provided the best conversation and the best exam scores and the best final project.  

Life is really like that for the faithful.  It’s called a full measure of grace.  

E 

I looked at the weather forecast and was surprised to see the low low percentage chance for snow for the next week..maybe. We have had a Winter here even by PA folk estimates as we’ve had one snow event after another. Now it is piled up along the streets and since Ive not been driving my car, ala pandemic where would I go, my car has a blanket of white on and around it. (I keep telling it I will indeed free it someday.). The melt though is welcomed. It is good not to be hit by really cold when you walk out.

I remember the Melt in Utah where we’d had a bunch of snow and then the beautiful awesome dominating blue skies would come out in the afternoon. It was always refreshing, blinding a little, but refreshing. The sunlight made the really cold temperatures there seem not so extreme.

The first year we moved there in October we found out what UT mountain cold was all about as we had moved from TX and weren’t prepared with coats or boots or all necessary. I felt like I had a direct line to Eddie Bauer. Hi Eddie Bauer, it’s Bobbie…ya send me more warm stuff. I remember having two great flannel shirt dresses that I wore out. Eddie Bauer became a good supplier for the whole family.

The kids and I had moved out mid September to get them settled in school and us settled in our house till John came out. We had rented one house but it sold rather than rented. We were in a much smaller house that was a house of boxes. We had settled the kids rooms but the den was a maze of boxes with tables on them like ‘lenenes’. old lamp, (antique fragile lamp) and many mystery boxes.

The neighbor girls would come over and help us unpack. For them it was like a treasure find. At one point they unwrapped a big ball of paper and in it found something unknown. A leaf? Dried flat little thing. They showed Betsy and she said MY FISH. She’d had one of those solitary fighting fish that had disappeared months before. Apparently it had jumped out of the bowl and landed behind the bookshelf. Mystery solved. We still laugh when we remember.

What surprised me most I think about the Utah melt was that we could be in the single digits for weeks then we had the melt. Once the first melt happened the rest of the winter was a quick snow and melt. We didn’t have the foot or two that snowed and remained. Nothing stopped in Utah for the snow. They were prepared for the winters. The streets would be plowed and everything open. Only once in 12 years did we have a snow day caused by a blizzard that came in at 4am and they determined they could get people out, busses to schools, but when the blizzard continued getting the kids home was another story.

The first January we were there we had a particularly cold phase. I remember waking and finding out the temperature, minus 22, and telling John the temperature and asking him if he thought the cars would start because they were still having school. I didn’t want to get the kids up if we couldn’t go anywhere. I am not sure that John even opened his eyes but he said, no, they won’t start and we both went back to bed.

That year for 20 days in a row it didn’t get UP to zero. That was cold. We made adjustments for the cars and got them working and went on about the day. Everything freezes really fast. When it ‘warmed’ up we sent to Ice-skate in the park. The city would flood two baseball fields and they rented skates for $2.00. Everyone could skate. My rule became it had to be 10 or you would get so cold after 10 minutes you almost always had to go home. But between 10-18 it was perfect. The evenings skating were so much fun. The lights and the sky and the whole atmosphere. Most years we had several days of skating but toward 2000 we had several winters where it didn’t get cold enough.

Ok, the melts. Maybe that’s what we all need right now, a case of the Melts. Things have been set down, it seems like they won’t ever change, and then they do. Then things that seem hard and certain one way get softer and more pliable. We learn. Let’s learn.

Melting…away any hardness of heart.

God abide, bobbie giltz mcgarey

Yesterday during church they read from the Children’s Bible about Noah and the rainbow.  There was a line that said that God was looking at the rainbow too.  It stopped me in my thinking.  It did because I had only thought of the rainbow from my side of the bow.  God looks at the bow and remembers too.  I loved this. 

What is it about God that we put in a box that doesn’t get opened each time we read it.  I recall a professor warning us not to say… this is a familiar text.  Well not everyone…everyone…has heard the scripture another time.  Perhaps even those who heard it have truly taken it into themselves.   For me even if I have read a scripture, or heard a scripture many times and then the last time I hear it…something has changed.   That change that lets me hear it. 

When my mother died about 6 years after my father I was in the pulpit reading the scripture from the day.   I had read it several times during the week.  I got up and was reading John 14, the line that says I will not leave you orphaned.  I stopped.  Full stop.  It had called out something in me that I had not acknowledged,  I was somewhere deep down feeling suddenly like an orphan, my parents were dead.  So I was almost 50, I was an orphan.  I stopped.  

The changing that happens because something in my life has shifted.   An experience in my life has changed what I hear.  My ears are opened in a new way.  

John, my husband, co pastor, recognized what happened.  He stood up behind me and put his hand on my back.  I couldn’t speak.  I sat down and he preached my written sermon.   That’s what being a co-pastor was for us.  When I couldn’t say the words, he knew and preached for me.  

I knew these words so well.  I knew the whole chapter having shared it at services everywhere.  It was however new to me.  It was not familiar.  It was New.  In that experience I knew just what my professor had said many years ago.  This newness, this familiarity, was true for us as it was true for everyone else who has known the scriptures.  

Our life experience translates what we read.  Let our experience be new lenses by which we “see” the Gospel messages.  The lens that opens the Gospel to our heart.  Our present heart.  Carpe Diem.   Hear the Word of God, as it comes to us This Day.  

GROUNDED – WHAT I AM READING 2

“Cosmology is the science of the origin, structure, and fate of the universe, an academic discipline of physics, astronomy, mathematics , and philosophy that seeks to explain, well everything. Cosmology looks beyond the immense sky toward the distant deeps of space, wondering about where we are from, why we are here, what mysteries are revealed in the stars. 1p06 Grounded Diane Butler Bass

Sometimes there are events that catch one’s breath. Yesterday, Feb 18, 2021 watching the Space rover, Perseverance, land on the planet Mars was one of those times. Seriously! How can we do this? I mean that it lands soft because they put out the largest parachute was amazing. The partial team that was in the control room, (had to limit number of folk because of pandemic), jumping up and down and fist bumping and so filled with glee that many were just jumping up and down like a high school student who on a big exam day gets a snow day, was exhilarating just watching. That there are brains like these folk we saw and so many beside them that can put together this as a possibility is inspiring.

So there are times like this that make us ask cosmological questions. The big questions that free float out there and that we sometimes engage as grow up and older. Are the cosmological questions left to the young and the old? The young who say they don’t want to grow up because now seems so good and growing up is such a mystery. The old want to slow time because there are questions and experiences that are recognized now as un-answerable in the time that is given them, also looking into mystery of what’s next.

We also see and are oft frustrated by the petty and inane issues that keep us from living in a more Kin-dom (a word that calls out the relationship of God’s kingdom without hierarchically elevation one person over another, rather brings people into relationship with one another and God.) How if we can land a Rover on Mars to gather data can we not solve the issues of hunger, of inequality in medical services, and in imbalance in educational opportunity? Seems like we could if we had the willpower and desire to bring remedy to the inequality of opportunity for all folks. Doesn’t it?

So then, what is our role in this? We are given brains. We are called to use them. (Austin College Activators, God gave us brains and expects us to use them.). Yet we would rather focus on escape. We would rather spend more time running from the bigger questions and our role in their solution than in sitting and talking and thinking about the big ones. And we teach one another to do that too. “Don’t talk about politics or religion it’s too controversial.”

Ok, so maybe it is not that there are controversies, it is rather that we haven’t really learned how to talk to others. I love it when my grandchildren, ages 5 and 3 are arguing about an issue between them and my daughter turns to them and says, “You are going to have to work this out between you.:” She will step back and listens to them attempting to work it out. For the most part, they do. When there are, however, and they can’t get to resolution. she will mediate. This works because both she and Sean use this approach.

Friends in this present Lenten time let us all find ways to work on the big questions. We can write our writers and legislators. We can talk with friends and find out their understandings. We can write poetry, opening the questions in words. We can paint pictures illuminating the words carrying the questions. Lets get busy. I’m willing to try; You?

Here in this place where the snow has marshmellowed the landscape, wishing for a softening of the language that is sharp and harmful I pray. Let me be an instrument of your peace.

God abides and I thank God. bobbie g mcgarey, 022121

Diana Butler Bass pg 169. God’s Dwelling “Home is a central theme in the world’s religions. Jews seeking a homeland with God; Christians proclaiming that God dwells within our hearts; Muslims facing home to pray; Buddhists finding gods who make their home in the seas and trees. Human beings build temples to shelter God’s presence, we mark sacred places with shrines, and we buy, float, or burn out dead that they might find their way home to God.”

So where is home for you? What makes a place home? Deep sigh. There are no family homes that were home when I was a child. Because, well, now we are the elders and no one lives in their parents houses. When we get to live in Florida that apt was my parents. However, it was not the home of my childhood.

Oh we are blessed with family members with wonderful homes. Some simple, some very amazingly wonderful. But they are homes. That is to say when you enter you feel like they are ‘home’ and you are invited in.

John and I just ‘broke’ up what was our home at the manse in Raton. We left most of the furniture there. Furniture we’ve had forever. Seriously some for the 48 years we’ve been married. It wasn’t easy really. Our log bed, my parents couch, tables, dishes, glasses, mugs, bed coverings, and bookcases with books. I take a deep breath.

We have been blessed with some great places to live over our life. Some were family homes, some were rentals, some were church properties, manses, and some we owned. We had a ranch house with two acres in Oklahoma. We had a great house in Utah that looked out on the mountains with six bedrooms and two fireplaces. . We had a house in Texas that let us walk the kids to K and First and Second grades. We have an apt in Florida waiting for us.

But what makes home….Home? What is it that makes a house a welcoming place? There are as many answers to that as there are homes. What is home for one person is not for another.

Diana Butler Bass wrote in the above paragraph about how home is a definitely a religious concept. Home becomes where God dwells. Home is where we are accepted as we are, and called to be all we can be.

Having written this, I do know that some places where people live is not a home because they are not safe there. They are not nurtured and loved. They are not surrounded by affirmation and enough food and warmth to sustain them. That is why perhaps we should make homes places where people are welcomed.

Martina McBride sings, “Loves the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.” I have always thought this song is a call for a model for the church. When I was in ABQ I got a call from a young woman who had worshipped with us a couple of times. She asked if we could talk. I had her meet me at church.. One of our members had given us a lovely living room set of sofa, love seat and recliner. She came in and began to share the real trouble she had in her life. She said she had not been able to sleep for several nights because she didn’t feel safe where she lived. There was a small blanket on the couch and I invited her to lie down there and see if she could sleep. She asked me to stay with her. I did. She fell asleep and slept soundly for over an hour. (to be honest I really wanted to go to the bathroom but was afraid to leave and take the chance she would wake while I was gone and panic.)

When she woke she felt better. I got her some lemonade and we began to talk about her life and the choices she had before her. What each choice would mean on a short and long term part of her life. She said she finally felt safe. “Love’s the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.” The church for her was safe.

It was the church being its best for her right then. The church brought her peace.

Find somewhere that brings you peace and you will have found home. I pray you not only live in a home but live in a home that can invite those who have no home to find peace.

God abide with you, God abides with you.

bobbie giltz mcgarey. feb 12, 2021 bethlehem pa

CAN I still think Theology? 

What ever does that mean?  Well I recall when the children were little and we were in Bryan TX I was taking family leave and having fun with the kids.   I would on occasion preach at a church somewhere in the presbytery but mainly I was Reverend Mother..   

I did attend the college youth program at TAMU and enjoyed my interaction with the college students.  I also was mentor for two of the interns there.  

One year a young Middler Student from Princeton came to do an internship.  We had a good relation but she couldn’t imagine taking time “off” as I had from ministry to

 be home with the kids.  

The program had a yearly retreat at a nearby church camp.  I had gone the year before so I knew the routine.  There would be a general announcement in all the cabins that it was time to get up.   The Intern was in charge of that duty this year and she and I made a plan.  

The first morning, when it was time for waking we put on a tape, (that dates this story eh?) playing Mr. Rogers theme song.  It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…a beautiful day for a neighbor.  The college students laughed or shouted when it came on.  Either way they got up.  There was one student who kept asking who had done that! He was going to stop them from doing it the next morning.  

The whole retreat unfolded in a wonderfully dynamic way and a good time was had by all.  The intern and I were ready for the next day.   Sesame Street theme woke them this day.  Sunny day keeping the clouds away… on my way.  We played the theme song,  ran to the cafeteria 

Poured ourselves 1/2 cup coffee, put cold water in it so it was tepid and sat at the table.  The minute we sat down we saw that student racing across the yard trying to get to the sound studio.  We could see him open the door, look around, and then run toward the cafeteria.  HA! He said when he saw us.  I said, “What?” We’ve been up for a while who did the music?”  He said no you haven’t you’ve got coffee and he picked up my cup and took a sip and it was cool.  He put it down, befuddled.  He left.  

We laughed so hard.  Though he asked again and again trying to find out who it was, he was unsuccessful.  Our little fun ruse had worked.  

Can I still think theology?    After the second year of working with the students a professor came from Austin Seminary as he was the faculty mentor for the student.  I liked what he did and asked if it would be possible for me to do an independent study, unofficial reading study with him to see if I could talk something but Sesame Street.   We set up a time.  

I went over and he enrolled me with no fee.  Austin Accepted without official document the info about my degree from  Vanderbilt Divinity School.  I began a 6 week study of a current book in pastoral care.  They asked me if I wanted to take the course for a grade and at first I said Yes, then coming to my senses said. NO grade.  

We had some fine conversations and established an easy report. (One that later dissolved in flames when my final D.Min. project came due. I said in my paper that rituals resonated with women’s life story.  He said, resonated? What the heck is resonated?)  I did discover that I could think on a theological level.  It was helpful.   

I’ve been retired for over a year now and sometimes wonder to myself if I can still think theologically.   I do know I’m a hard critic of sermons I hear.  Not because of their content but I’m more critical of style.  During this pandemic when preaching has become an entirely new exercise in presentation I know it might be harsh.  But there you go. 

I read the weekly passage for the sermon and without trying to being crafting a sermon, or thoughts on the pericope.  What background do I know?  What illustrations might I use?  Where might I go to find out more about a topic or do research on a word that has meanings unexplored in the sermon.  There is still that in me after 42 years. 

 (Rarely do I sleep soundly on Saturday Night though I have nothing to do Sunday mornings and we worship Online, sometimes in pajamas with coffee.). 

Perhaps what I really need is a discipline.  A time every day to read scripture and write about it, 

Or I could perhaps comment on something I read in the NYTimes.  Or I could just pull up a memory and go with that….But write about it.  I could call it.. What I am reading. 

It seems the best time for that would be early morning.  Even though I sometimes don’t get to sleep till late, the early morning might well be the best time for writing?  I could put them on my blog.  Let Facebook know I’d posted something.  

Maybe a good discipline.   

What do you think?  

In the meantime…

God abide bobbie giltz mcgarey 

02.03.21

CAN I still think Theology? 

What ever does that mean?  Well I recall when the children were little and we were in Bryan TX I was taking family leave and having fun with the kids.   I would on occasion preach at a church somewhere in the presbytery but mainly I was Reverend Mother..   

I did attend the college youth program at TAMU and enjoyed my interaction with the college students.  I also was mentor for two of the interns there.  

One year a young Middler Student from Princeton came to do an internship.  We had a good relation but she couldn’t imagine taking time “off” as I had from ministry to

 be home with the kids.  

The program had a yearly retreat at a nearby church camp.  I had gone the year before so I knew the routine.  There would be a general announcement in all the cabins that it was time to get up.   The Intern was in charge of that duty this year and she and I made a plan.  

The first morning, when it was time for waking we put on a tape, (that dates this story eh?) playing Mr. Rogers theme song.  It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…a beautiful day for a neighbor.  The college students laughed or shouted when it came on.  Either way they got up.  There was one student who kept asking who had done that! He was going to stop them from doing it the next morning.  

The whole retreat unfolded in a wonderfully dynamic way and a good time was had by all.  The intern and I were ready for the next day.   Sesame Street theme woke them this day.  Sunny day keeping the clouds away… on my way.  We played the theme song,  ran to the cafeteria 

Poured ourselves 1/2 cup coffee, put cold water in it so it was tepid and sat at the table.  The minute we sat down we saw that student racing across the yard trying to get to the sound studio.  We could see him open the door, look around, and then run toward the cafeteria.  HA! He said when he saw us.  I said, “What?” We’ve been up for a while who did the music?”  He said no you haven’t you’ve got coffee and he picked up my cup and took a sip and it was cool.  He put it down, befuddled.  He left.  

We laughed so hard.  Though he asked again and again trying to find out who it was, he was unsuccessful.  Our little fun ruse had worked.  

Can I still think theology?    After the second year of working with the students a professor came from Austin Seminary as he was the faculty mentor for the student.  I liked what he did and asked if it would be possible for me to do an independent study, unofficial reading study with him to see if I could talk something but Sesame Street.   We set up a time.  

I went over and he enrolled me with no fee.  Austin Accepted without official document the info about my degree from  Vanderbilt Divinity School.  I began a 6 week study of a current book in pastoral care.  They asked me if I wanted to take the course for a grade and at first I said Yes, then coming to my senses said. NO grade.  

We had some fine conversations and established an easy report. (One that later dissolved in flames when my final D.Min. project came due. I said in my paper that rituals resonated with women’s life story.  He said, resonated? What the heck is resonated?)  I did discover that I could think on a theological level.  It was helpful.   

I’ve been retired for over a year now and sometimes wonder to myself if I can still think theologically.   I do know I’m a hard critic of sermons I hear.  Not because of their content but I’m more critical of style.  During this pandemic when preaching has become an entirely new exercise in presentation I know it might be harsh.  But there you go. 

I read the weekly passage for the sermon and without trying to being crafting a sermon, or thoughts on the pericope.  What background do I know?  What illustrations might I use?  Where might I go to find out more about a topic or do research on a word that has meanings unexplored in the sermon.  There is still that in me after 42 years. 

 (Rarely do I sleep soundly on Saturday Night though I have nothing to do Sunday mornings and we worship Online, sometimes in pajamas with coffee.). 

Perhaps what I really need is a discipline.  A time every day to read scripture and write about it, 

Or I could perhaps comment on something I read in the NYTimes.  Or I could just pull up a memory and go with that….But write about it.  I could call it.. What I am reading. 

t seems the best time for that would be early morning.  Even though I sometimes don’t get to sleep till late, the early morning might well be the best time for writing?  I could put them on my blog.  Let Facebook know I’d posted something.  

Maybe a good discipline.   

What do you think?  

In the meantime…

God abide bobbie giltz mcgarey 

02.03.21

There are ways we come to know

When the time of winter is to come

The days get shorter and there is a longing for the light

Even though we have lamps and power

There is nothing like the sun to mark the day

We watch for the sunrise and sigh at sunset

There is nothing we can do to move this timing

We cannot call out and extend the day

Even lights don’t change the shadows

So then What do we do?

We wait

We wait and try to remember when the days were long

When the nights were warm

When we felt like small children no matter our age 

Oh help I need the light

But I will wait 

Impatience settles in 

Sigh I’m scared by the news

Need good tidings of Great Joy!

12.9.2020 

Bobbie giltz  Mcgarey 

www.ctsnet.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Advent-Journal-2020.pdf