Musings

666

It’s a number that fans flames in fevered minds.  A date with fate that comes around but once, nearly two thousand years since Revelation was put to paper.  This book of the Bible is rich with allegorical, apocalyptic references, and 666 is the most memorable of them all.  The mythical “Beast”, or anti-Christ, depicted in Revelation, commanded that everyone be marked with the number on the right hand or forehead.

Millions of Americans believe that Revelation literally predicts an impending “end-time”.  But biblical historians have shown that the book was focused on the era in which it was written.  The Roman emperor, Nero, was a vicious persecutor of the early Christians at the time, and much of Revelation was a screed against him and his kind.  The Jews used the letters of their alphabet also as numbers; 666 is the sum of the numeric value of their letters for “Nero Caesar”.

My mild interest in the number is the consequence of my profession as a minister.  But one of my parishioners has to live with it every day.  Talanoa Lesatele is an architect who works at 666 Bridgeway in Sausalito. For 40 years, Don Olsen’s firm has occupied the building, which was constructed in 1897.  Talanoa reported that as he applied for the job, his eyes got wide when he learned of Olsen’s address.  “666 was a big deal in the Pentecostal church I attended as a child in Samoa,” he said.  Olsen isn’t bothered by the number on his door.  “666 is my lucky number.  This has been a great place to work.  But my wife, Sandra, has always wanted me to move out of here,” he said.  “She doesn’t like the number and, just as much, she hates that this place isn’t earthquake-safe.  But I love it here.”  Claire Buchanan, Olsen’s office manager, interrupted him with a caveat.  “Of course, Don, you weren’t in the building with the rest of us when the 1989 earthquake cracked the wall!”  A British tourist on the sidewalk below was injured slightly by a falling brick.  When the earth shakes, stay clear of 666 Bridgeway.  Otherwise, it appears to be occupied by good-humored, friendly spirits.

For its readers today, Revelation’s “666” offers a potent metaphor for dis-ease with erosions of our liberty.  How comfortable do we feel with having our phone records overseen by the “Beast” in Washington? What’s next, bar codes that are genetically engineered as a pattern on our foreheads, to be read with a laser gun, just like cottage cheese containers at the grocery check-out?   Is this the kind of world we want to create?  One needn’t take the Bible literally to take these questions seriously.

If you are reading this article on or after 6-6-06, you and I were left behind on this foreboding date.  We got ditched in the rapture.  As for me, how much can I complain about being stranded in Marin, at the cusp of summer? 

WORD Jazz

Word Jazz

By Jim Burklo

(This is last Sunday's sermon at Sausalito Presbyterian.  I spoke it as jazz musicians improvised in the background.  Special thanks to Kevin Fugaro and his jazz combo, "Coastal Collective", for putting their jazz into the WORD!)

 

In the beginning was the Word
W-O-R-D
And the Word was with God
And the Word was God
And the Word is the bird
That Jesus talked about
When he pointed at the bird
In his Sermon on the Mount
The birds of the air
Don’t store in the barns
The birds, they never worry
So don’t you ever fret
Except against the strings
Of a guitar’s fretted neck
Or you’re gonna be a wreck
Wracked with anxiety
That you just don’t need
In heaven’s reality
That you are gonna see
When you listen for the Word
In the singing of the bird
That the Almighty feeds
Day by day, while you pray
And say hey, Dear God
In your beginning was the Word
And like a winging bird
I’m feeling free
In the awesome presence
Of your eternity.
But we languish in expectation
Oppressed with the domination
That we must conform to the cogitation
That it’s cool to suffer from alienation
Floating adrift in inebriation
When we ought to be claiming your liberation
From fear and greed and discrimination
Oh the misery of comparing one to another
The wrongful judgment of sisters against brothers
Husband against wife
All that family strife
To all of that the Word is NO!
All that jive has got to go
Over the cliff where Jesus sent the hogs
Out of the eyes where he took out the logs
Out of the ears where he pulled out the mud
Off the cross where he shed all the blood.
The Word, the Word, the Word is YES
To all that for hearts and souls is best
Trust and faith and hope and grace
Belief in the future of the human race
The Word
W-O-R-D
Whispered again to you and me
Can you hear it? Can you feel it?
Can you start to catch the beat?
Can you stand to feel the heat?
Can you sense the buzz about it
That is spreading on the street?
Are you hip to the Word
The still small silent Word?
The Word insinuated in the coolness of a cat
Who shows a brother kindness
Even when he plays the brat?
The Word that changes spelling
The Word that keeps on telling
The Word that’s still upwelling
From the depths of this and that
From the hearts of you and me
When we finally start to see
That the package that we bought
Was completely full of rot
That the only way to get it is to give up all we thought
That the way to find abundance is to share all that we’ve got
That the way to change the System is to blow ‘em all away
With the love in our intentions and the truth in what we say
The Word, the Word, W-O-R-D
The ultimate cosmic graffiti
The Alpha, Omega, beginning and the stop
I’m prayin’ and I’m preachin’ till I finally gotta drop
The Word, W-O-R-D
The Word is the sound of the tables Jesus turned
Dumping all the money for the sacrifices burned
Dumping all the lies of the powers that be
They say that freedom’s precious but they give us tyranny
Is the Word really heard when they tap our telephones
Can they hear the wails and moans
Of the mothers of Iraq
And the inner city blacks
And the millions uninsured
To whose plight we’re so inured
Are we listening
To the W-O-R-D
That’s the ultimate verbal authority
Structuring our moral integrity
Giving us the spine
To stand for what’s divine
And do the thing that’s kind
Kind, kind.
Let’s just be kind.
And patient.
And humble.
And sweet.
And bold!
And free!
And Whee!
The creativity!
The serendipity!
Of knowing you and me
Express divinity!
Oh yeah! W-O-R-D –
I hear you in the forest
Behind a redwood tree
I hear you in the waves
That are crashing in the sea
I hear you, I hear you,
Speaking soft to me
Peace
Truth
Forgiveness
Acceptance
Courage
Are you still speaking?
Am I still listening?
Is there more, more, more, more
More you have to say
Can I bear to really hear
That I’m nowhere nearly near?
My ears burn, my feet are sore
My eyes sting, my fingers ache
I can’t type another
W-O-R-D
It’s so absurd
But you are the Word
And there’s more, yes more
More in store
Resonations, conflagrations,
Inhalations, excitations,
Inspirations, exclamations
I’m ready, I’m birdlike
I’m barnless,
I’m as hollow as a swallow
I’m as pinched as a finch
I’m as slow as a crow
Eager as an eagle
Un-uptight as a goose in flight
I’m a bird, God,
I’m your bird, Word,
I’m ready, Lord,
W-O-R-D
O let me be
All yours.
Amen.

Sorting Things Out

I was walking along Tomales Point, on the ocean side.  I came upon a long wavy line, parallel to the incoming surf.  It consisted of frisbees, plastic paint can lids, and other objects of about the same size, shape, and weight, which had been washed high on the sand.  Further up the beach, I came upon another line, this one made up of driftwood sticks, all about the same size, shape, and weight.  And then another long line – this one made up of plastic cigar tips and other similar objects. The wonder of it!  All that garbage, carelessly dumped all over the the Pacific.  Waves, varying in size, naturally separated and organized the junk.  Mother Nature displayed the results of the process on the sand, transforming trash into a work of art. 

If I let her, she’ll do the same thing with the flotsam and jetsam that litters my mind.  I have wasted so much of my life with fretting.  I try to sort out my challenges with brute mental force, and it never works.  If it’s a real problem – one that is refractory to an obvious fix – then there’s no way to worry it to resolution.  It’s time to let go and let God.  If I can stop flailing in a sea of frustration, then the elements of the problem and its solution can naturally float up to the surface.  If I do my part, by asking good questions and staying alert, then waves of wisdom, swelling from the deep, will sort things out on the beach of my consciousness, in their own good time.  I know it works – why don’t I trust it more often?

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”  Jesus’ disciples asked after a storm threatened to sink their boat, and he calmed the water.  The gospel myth tells us that Jesus was the master of the waves.  He could sleep on the boat even when they threatened to capsize it.  He could walk on the waves and order them to subside.  “Why are you afraid?” Jesus asked his disciples on the boat.  Just as he asked in his Sermon on the Mount:  “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?”  The waves rise and fall in the service of the divine, sorting things out for us if only we will allow them.

A few weeks ago, walking along Sausalito’s downtown waterfront, I found a coconut lying on the rocks.  This was clearly not the kind of coconut one would find at the grocery store.  It had spent a long time in the elements, judging by the worn condition of its exterior.  I stood by the shore, holding it up in my hand, and with a thrill I imagined that this coconut had fallen on an Hawaiian beach.  I imagined that it had been swept out to sea, bobbing in the waves, carried by currents all the way to Alaska and down the coasts of Canada and the Northwest, and then sucked by the tide into the San Francisco Bay.  I took it home and we opened it, and its milk and copra were still tasty.

If I can let the waves do their work, if I can stay patient, there is hope that the answers to my questions will bob up and be swept to my shore.  What serendipities, what unexpected solutions, await me if only I can abandon my anxiety and stay close to the water’s edge?