But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him.
I John 3:17
But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19:14
I John 3:17
But Jesus said, “Let the little children come to Me, and do not forbid them; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 19:14
Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
Matthew 18: 21-22
When I was in the last years of full time undergraduate study at Boston University, my friends Vickie and Steven and I were blessed with the friendship of a woman much more advanced than us in years and wisdom. Her name was Anita Mischler, and almost unbelievably, BU hired her to work in the University’s Division of Student Life with groups of students like Vickie and Steve and I. She and Steve were Jewish and Vickie and I were Christians.
Our relationship centered around building and sustaining communities of undergraduate students living “on campus” in 15 story dormitories. In our sophomore year, we created “Middle Earth” a new kind of student community in dorm number 3 on West Campus, the fifteen floor skyscraper abutting the athletic complex. “Middle Earth” was so successful, that the University made a template of what we did and offered variations of this kind of communities to many more students the next year.
As frequently as our conversation examined the sociological premises of what we were doing, it turned to the theological underpinnings. Anita always insisted that our problems, in ethics as much as in the stewardship of the earth (before the “Green Movement,” there was Schumacher and the “Small is beautiful” movement), sprang from mistranslation of the Hebrew scripture that has YHWH telling man to go and subdue the earth. She thought that rendering way too hegemonic, and preferred to understand that YHWH had instructed humans more to “till the earth,” or “to cultivate the earth.”
Anita died many years ago---maybe the first person I knew (besides an aging relative) who died of cancer. Vickie and Steve are very successful attorneys practicing in a large city, each married to someone else and living in the suburbs. I am happily married with five children and reside in Cincinnati, where I work for my wife as a financial manager and for my kids as a chauffeur. I am on call to fewer passengers every year (and on the hook for more auto insurance) as one after another, they get their licenses. Cincinnati is essentially now a city of suburbs.
Another of the great things about my current job (besides my boss), working for the Cincinnati Occupational Therapy Foundation, Inc.(or, COTF, or, simply,"the Foundation"), is that I work about 3 miles away from my home. My commute is about 10 minutes including three traffic lights. I meander out of our subdivision, turn right onto a fairly busy Kenwood Road, turn left at the first light onto a bigger, wider, busier Glendale-Milford Road, and then right at the first light onto Reed Hartman Highway. At the first light on Reed Hartman Highway, I turn onto the two lane access road that runs parallel to Reed Hartman Highway. Maybe a quarter mile down the access road, Carver Drive, I turn into the parking lot of the Foundation and park for free by the far side door and walk inside.
When I started working for COTF this commute was unimaginably easy. The subdivision’s roads are wide streets with lined with tree shaded sidewalks. Traffic in the morning consists of children walking to the local elementary school with maybe another car or a school bus sharing the road with me. The maximum posted speed is 25 miles per hour; most drivers don’t exceed it by much at all.
Similarly, the last leg of the commute is Carver Drive, an access road that winds away from Reed Hartman toward the office complex in wide gracefully sweeping curves. Its speed limit is also 25 miles per hour. Last June, when my son Jonathan was first learning to drive, we started in the parking lot outside the offices of the Foundation. As soon, as I knew Jonathan could steer and brake, we started entering and exited the parking lot from the access road. We had it all to ourselves, and when someone else came along, they slowed, stayed back and let us finish our maneuver before pulling past. Sometimes they waved.
Running between Carver Drive and the Highway is a modest drainage canal. All the offices along the first part of Carver Drive are single story buildings nestled in shrubbery under trees. The canal serves as the private swimming preserve of a flock of geese which returns to the Foundation’s campus each spring to mate, and nest and raise goslings. Frequently, they cross the access road trekking to their swimming hole from their nest in the morning, and returning back in the late afternoon.
Geese, one parent at the head of a line of goslings and one parent at the rear, wait patiently for a break in traffic to herd their young ones across the road. Reciprocally, drivers coming up to a family of geese crossing the road stop at a distance and wait patiently till they have finished crossing. If you are not used to sharing space with geese, you come to learn that they do not hurry for anyone under any circumstances. You also learn that the parents are fiercely protective of their young.
Recently developers built and opened an office complex further down the access road that houses one of the nation’s mega-bank’s IT groups, and one of those fast growing, for-profit colleges in towering structures that sit surrounded by asphalt parking lots. At rush hour a steady stream of cars now whiz down the access road. Frequently, they move faster on the access road than they do on the Reed Hartman Highway running roughly parallel to the access road. These speeders pull right up to the bumper of the car in front of them. If the car in front of them is going the speed limit, after they ride the bumper of the car in front, they move out to the left as if they were going to pass before dropping back into the lane, and then repeat the sequence, pulling out as if they were going to pass and dropping back in behind. Sometimes they honk their horn, sometimes they flip you off.
The other morning, as I drove down the access road and navigated the first sweeping curve, I had to swerve sharply to avoid a dead goose in the middle of the road. It’s the first dead goose, I have ever seen lying in the road. It was a full grown, adult goose, and I couldn’t tell if it had been at the head of a line, at the rear of a line or all by itself. It would be grossly unwarranted and unfair to assume that an IT staffer, a college faculty member or student ran over the goose. But it made me think of how easy it is to get caught up in the things of this world, and how, going fast, subduing the earth, it is easy to shut up one’s heart---even if it is just till one gets to work. However, God’s creation may not depend so much upon getting to work; it may require being present in the moment—it may require that one not shut up one’s heart.
Our relationship centered around building and sustaining communities of undergraduate students living “on campus” in 15 story dormitories. In our sophomore year, we created “Middle Earth” a new kind of student community in dorm number 3 on West Campus, the fifteen floor skyscraper abutting the athletic complex. “Middle Earth” was so successful, that the University made a template of what we did and offered variations of this kind of communities to many more students the next year.
As frequently as our conversation examined the sociological premises of what we were doing, it turned to the theological underpinnings. Anita always insisted that our problems, in ethics as much as in the stewardship of the earth (before the “Green Movement,” there was Schumacher and the “Small is beautiful” movement), sprang from mistranslation of the Hebrew scripture that has YHWH telling man to go and subdue the earth. She thought that rendering way too hegemonic, and preferred to understand that YHWH had instructed humans more to “till the earth,” or “to cultivate the earth.”
Anita died many years ago---maybe the first person I knew (besides an aging relative) who died of cancer. Vickie and Steve are very successful attorneys practicing in a large city, each married to someone else and living in the suburbs. I am happily married with five children and reside in Cincinnati, where I work for my wife as a financial manager and for my kids as a chauffeur. I am on call to fewer passengers every year (and on the hook for more auto insurance) as one after another, they get their licenses. Cincinnati is essentially now a city of suburbs.
Another of the great things about my current job (besides my boss), working for the Cincinnati Occupational Therapy Foundation, Inc.(or, COTF, or, simply,"the Foundation"), is that I work about 3 miles away from my home. My commute is about 10 minutes including three traffic lights. I meander out of our subdivision, turn right onto a fairly busy Kenwood Road, turn left at the first light onto a bigger, wider, busier Glendale-Milford Road, and then right at the first light onto Reed Hartman Highway. At the first light on Reed Hartman Highway, I turn onto the two lane access road that runs parallel to Reed Hartman Highway. Maybe a quarter mile down the access road, Carver Drive, I turn into the parking lot of the Foundation and park for free by the far side door and walk inside.
When I started working for COTF this commute was unimaginably easy. The subdivision’s roads are wide streets with lined with tree shaded sidewalks. Traffic in the morning consists of children walking to the local elementary school with maybe another car or a school bus sharing the road with me. The maximum posted speed is 25 miles per hour; most drivers don’t exceed it by much at all.
Similarly, the last leg of the commute is Carver Drive, an access road that winds away from Reed Hartman toward the office complex in wide gracefully sweeping curves. Its speed limit is also 25 miles per hour. Last June, when my son Jonathan was first learning to drive, we started in the parking lot outside the offices of the Foundation. As soon, as I knew Jonathan could steer and brake, we started entering and exited the parking lot from the access road. We had it all to ourselves, and when someone else came along, they slowed, stayed back and let us finish our maneuver before pulling past. Sometimes they waved.
Running between Carver Drive and the Highway is a modest drainage canal. All the offices along the first part of Carver Drive are single story buildings nestled in shrubbery under trees. The canal serves as the private swimming preserve of a flock of geese which returns to the Foundation’s campus each spring to mate, and nest and raise goslings. Frequently, they cross the access road trekking to their swimming hole from their nest in the morning, and returning back in the late afternoon.
Geese, one parent at the head of a line of goslings and one parent at the rear, wait patiently for a break in traffic to herd their young ones across the road. Reciprocally, drivers coming up to a family of geese crossing the road stop at a distance and wait patiently till they have finished crossing. If you are not used to sharing space with geese, you come to learn that they do not hurry for anyone under any circumstances. You also learn that the parents are fiercely protective of their young.
Recently developers built and opened an office complex further down the access road that houses one of the nation’s mega-bank’s IT groups, and one of those fast growing, for-profit colleges in towering structures that sit surrounded by asphalt parking lots. At rush hour a steady stream of cars now whiz down the access road. Frequently, they move faster on the access road than they do on the Reed Hartman Highway running roughly parallel to the access road. These speeders pull right up to the bumper of the car in front of them. If the car in front of them is going the speed limit, after they ride the bumper of the car in front, they move out to the left as if they were going to pass before dropping back into the lane, and then repeat the sequence, pulling out as if they were going to pass and dropping back in behind. Sometimes they honk their horn, sometimes they flip you off.
The other morning, as I drove down the access road and navigated the first sweeping curve, I had to swerve sharply to avoid a dead goose in the middle of the road. It’s the first dead goose, I have ever seen lying in the road. It was a full grown, adult goose, and I couldn’t tell if it had been at the head of a line, at the rear of a line or all by itself. It would be grossly unwarranted and unfair to assume that an IT staffer, a college faculty member or student ran over the goose. But it made me think of how easy it is to get caught up in the things of this world, and how, going fast, subduing the earth, it is easy to shut up one’s heart---even if it is just till one gets to work. However, God’s creation may not depend so much upon getting to work; it may require being present in the moment—it may require that one not shut up one’s heart.
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