Doug Floyd, Author at Pilgrim Notes

Author: Doug Floyd (page 7 of 8)

Singing Peace to the Neighborhood

April 6, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 3 Comments

Los Lobos

Released in 1990, Los Lobos’ album “The Neighborhood” continues to sing peace into the community.The themes that highlight this album have resounded across the 40 year span that Los Lobos has been singing, performing and producing albums. They sing about living in a family, a community, a culture. Though considered a Chicano rock band, their music draws sounds from folk, rock, rhythm & blues, bayou, country, and soul not to mention Spanish and Mexican sounds. Their sound and their words bring together a rang of characters and sounds in a common celebration.

For the last several months, I’ve been listening to “The Neighborhood” almost every day as I walk through my neighborhood. The music still sounds as fresh as the day I first heard in the early 1990s. And the words still provoke my heart to pray that the Lord will “bring peace to the neighborhood.” The title sounds repeats the refrain as a litany,

Thank you Lord for another day
Help my brother along his way
And please bring peace to the Neighborhood

This prayer appears in a song that highlights the pain and brokenness of the neighborhood. The songs finds a brother looking for trouble, a sister rocking her new baby, a father drinking whiskey in his chair, and a mother working nine to five and hardly “making enough to keep alive,” but praying with tears in her eyes,

Thank you Lord for another day
Help my brother along his way
And please bring peace to the Neighborhood
Grant us all peace and serenity
They’re just songs sung on a dirty street
Echoes of hope lie beneath their feet
Struggling hard to make ends meet

These prayers, these songs echo hope in the midst of a messy and broken world. I cannot but help think of the people of God revealed in the Torah praying for and bringing blessing to the world around them. If we follow the story of Abraham, Izaak, Jacob and Joseph, we see each of these men contributing to the flourishing of their surrounding cultures. They bring blessings. Their blessings are not limited to their ethnic group, they bring blessing to the world around them.

The Lord tells Abraham that through him all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abraham even prays for mercy over Sodom and Gomorrah when judgment is at hand. Joseph acts to bless Potiphar’s house and later to bless Pharaoh’s house and all of Egypt. Later Moses commands Israel to care for the sojourner and the stranger at the gate. Hospitality is celebrated all through the Old and New Testament.

This takes me back to Los Lobos. They direct our eyes to the people living in the community. In “The Neighborhood” they sing about families, young lovers, parties, troubled hearts, those struggling with depression, broken relationships, struggle and joy. They sing a song of praise about a boy with limitations, calling him “Little John of God.” In their songs, I hear a reminder that echoes back from ancient Israel: bless the world around you, be present to the world around you, offer yourself in love to serve the world around you, and ask God’s blessings upon the world around you. Their song “The Giving Tree” captures this spirit of love and grace that permeates the music:

A warm wind is blowing through the valleys and the mountain tops
Down the road to a place we know so well
The children are running with ribbons in their baby hands
While we all gather ’round the Giving Tree

Let’s go sing songs, the blue ones
Let’s go sing about the Lord above
And thank the old sun for all we have
The sad times, the glad times
The babies swinging in our arms
Just don’t seem like much like rain ’round the Giving Tree

Like the shedherds once followed a star bright up in the sky
We’ve come to say, come be with us know
Come give us a good one
Come give us a happy time
While we all here dance ’round the Giving Tree

Image by Dena Flows (used by Creative Commons Permission via Flickr)

The Beautiful Beloved

April 2, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 1 Comment

“There is the great lesson of ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ that a thing must be loved before it is lovable.”
― G.K. Chesterton

Chesterton articulates a Gospel-shaped wisdom: love makes lovable. The Lord loved us even when we were enemies (Romans 5:8). His love transforms us into friends (John 15:15) and then to lovers (1 John 4:11). God’s love toward us in Christ is what makes us beloved. We are beautiful because we are loved by the true lover. In the opening pages of Genesis, we hear the Creator repeatedly proclaim over His creation, “It is good!”

We live in an age when the word “good” seems a bit devalued. To help us get a sense of its richness, we might consider the implications of the Hebrew word (towb) for good used in Genesis 1. “Towb” can mean good, merry, prosperous, precious, beautiful, favored, and more. The Lord delights in His good creation. After sin has scarred the world, He loves His creation so completely that the He overcomes the corruption of sin in and through His Son Jesus Christ. This is the same love of Christ that is transforming us into His image.

Even as we speak of becoming His image, we hear His call, “Love one another as I have loved you.” In this new command, we see a fulfilling of the old commands: honor your father and mother, do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not kill, do not steal, do not bear false witness, do not covet. Each of these commands are rooted in proper love to parent, sibling/neighbor, and spouse. As Christ restores His image in us, we are reordered to love properly. In turn, the object of love becomes lovable.

Humans struggle to love enemy and family alike. We fail to love those close to us because we no longer see their loveliness: many adult children disrespect their aging parents, many spouses fail to see the beauty of their once beloved. In Christ, the command to love precedes the vision of beauty. We love first, then we behold the lovely. This act of loving changes us. As C.S. Lewis writes,

“Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him.”
― C.S. Lewis

We act in love, trusting that the vision of love and the affection of love will follow. We follow Christ and by His Spirit we honor our parents, our spouses, our neighbors. In His love, we begin to see again, and though the people surrounding us are still imperfect, we learn to see the mystery and wonder and goodness of His creation in them.

* Image by Vinoth Chandar. Used by permission via Creative Commons.

Curses into Blessings

⁹ The sons of Eliab were Nemuel, Dathan, and Abiram. These are the Dathan and Abiram, representatives of the congregation, who contended against Moses and Aaron in the company of Korah, when they contended against the Lord; ¹⁰ and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up together with Korah when that company died, when the fire devoured two hundred and fifty men; and they became a sign. ¹¹ Nevertheless the children of Korah did not die. (Numbers 26:9-11)

This little passage appears in a larger passage listing the various names of fathers and sons in various tribes. In the middle of the extensive list, a reference appears to the rebellion against Moses in Numbers 16:

Now Korah the son of Izhar, the son of Kohath, the son of Levi, with Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab, and On the son of Peleth, sons of Reuben, took men; ² and they rose up before Moses with some of the children of Israel, two hundred and fifty leaders of the congregation, representatives of the congregation, men of renown. (Numbers 16:1-2)

In the end of the story, God brings judgment upon the families and the earth swallows them:

³¹ Now it came to pass, as he finished speaking all these words, that the ground split apart under them, ³² and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the men with Korah, with all their goods. ³³ So they and all those with them went down alive into the pit; the earth closed over them, and they perished from among the assembly. ³⁴ Then all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, “Lest the earth swallow us up also!” ³⁵ And a fire came out from the Lord and consumed the two hundred and fifty men who were offering incense. (Number 16:31-35)

Now we learn in Numbers 26 that God had mercy on them and didn’t remove their family line from the earth. (¹¹ Nevertheless the children of Korah did not die. Numbers 26:11). Later in the Psalms, we’ll discover a range of Psalms attributed to the sons of Korah (Psalms 42–49; 84; 85; 87; 88). What began as a curse later becomes a blessings and the sons of Korah (the sons of rebellion) become singers in the house of the Lord.

This reversal from curse to blessing is similar to a reversal of Jacob’s curse upon Reuben:

“Reuben, you are my firstborn,
My might and the beginning of my strength,
The excellency of dignity and the excellency of power.
Unstable as water, you shall not excel,
Because you went up to your father’s bed;
Then you defiled it—
He went up to my couch. (Genesis 49:3-4)

But centuries later, Moses will offer God’s blessing upon Reuben:

⁶ “Let Reuben live, and not die,
Nor let his men be few.” (Deuteronomy 33:6)

Some of the rebels mentioned in Numbers 16 (Dathan and Abiram the sons of Eliab) were sons of Reuben. God in his mercy does not blot out Reuben’s line, but pronounces life and not death.

Mercy and grace appear all through Torah. Though men and women break God’s law and come under curses, again and again and again, we behold the Lord showing “hesed” and turning curses into blessings.

* Image by Anthony Posey used by permission (per Creative Commons)

Praise is a Language

March 12, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 2 Comments

I’ve been thinking of the praise as a language that we must learn to speak. It is not simply a matter of learning to be grateful, it is tuning our ear and mouth to sound God’s praise. The Psalms teach us how to speak the language of praise or the grammar of praise.

Think of a child learning to speak. According to some theories, the child is born with the ability to make all the sounds for all the languages of the world.* The child must learn which sounds not to make. As his parents speak, the child hears the sounds of his language. He learns which sounds to use and which sounds are not used. Over time, he learns to mimic the sounds of his parents, speaking words. Making mistakes. Correcting. Improving. Then he gradually learns how words work together. He learns this socially in a family, in a classroom, in church and later in life in a business. Every time we enter a new social circle, we may learn new patterns, new constructions of meaning, and possibly even new sounds.

As we read and sing the Psalms in community, we are learning the sounds, the words, the grammar of praise that can shape our speech in thanksgiving, praise, supplication, and even lamentation.

* – Thanks to Madalena Cruz-Ferreira’s article on “Child Language Acquisition” at The Linguist List and Carol Bainbridge’s article “How Do Children Learn Language?” at About.com.

Learning to Speak Torah

March 11, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 0 Comments

In Deuteronomy, we hear how Torah shapes listening, speaking and acting. Listen to the Shema,

4 “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.[1]

The first response of Israel to the Lord is “Hear.” Hearing gives way to loving, living, teaching. The parent resounds the call of the Lord to their children, and in turn, the children resound the call to their children. Torah shapes our speech. By rehearsing the Word of the Lord, the people of God learn how to speak, how to articulate life and wisdom and love in the world. Just as a child mimics her mother in learning to speak, the children of the Lord learn how to speak by mimicng, rehearsing His Word.

This rehearsing, this sounding out, changes us. Train us in listening, speaking and acting. St. Hilary offers a helpful prayer asking for grace to speak the articulate word,

‘Almighty God, bestow upon us the meaning of words, the light of understanding, the nobility of diction, and the faith of the true nature. And grant that what we believe we may also speak.’ – St.Hilary, The Trinity (de Trinitate, PL 10, 49)

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2001 (Dt 6:4–8). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.

Image from hoveringdog on Flickr (used by Creative Commons)

The Resounding Rejoice!

January 21, 2013 / Doug Floyd / 0 Comments

It’s mid January, but my house looks like Christmas is just around the corner. The bureau in my front room is covered with a porcelain re-creation of the birth of Christ. Nativities appear in almost every room. At the end of my driveway, antiqued copper statues of this ancient vigil stand in silent witness. Shepherds kneel, Wise Men behold, Joseph protects, Mary ponders, and Jesus gleams. O Holy Night continues to shine throughout the house.

Epiphany texts follow Jesus walking and preaching along the shores of Galilee. I’m still standing in Bethlehem, dwelling in the echo of the angels’, “Rejoice!” Heaven’s address continues to resound.

I think about how the word meets each person where they are. Gabriel comes to Mary’s home in Nazareth with the word “Rejoice!” In the depths of sleep, Joseph meets an angelic messenger. Glory shines all around while shepherds watch their flocks. A star glistens into the homelands of the Wise Men, leading them to the birth of the King who will rule over all. Herod, the king of Israel, sees no angel, has no dream, sees no glory, and does not recognize the star. He hears the good news of great joy from this wise group of Gentile stargazers.

“Rejoice!” breaks into the life of each person with terrifying wonder. Often the word, “Do not fear” accompanies this good news of great joy. “Rejoice!” comes with joy and terror intertwined.

“Rejoice!” sounds an alarm, calling the slumbering soul to action. Wake up!

Makes me think of a poem by Rumi.
I called through your door, “The mystics are gathering in the street. Come out!”
“Leave me alone. I’m sick.”
“I don’t care if you’re dead!’
“Jesus is here,
and he wants to
resurrect somebody!”
-Rumi [1]

“Rejoice!” comes as a sudden surprise, altering everything. Those who follow can’t go back. As Bob Dylan sings, You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.”[2] Mary and Joseph can’t come back. They begin a journey that takes them far from the comfort of the Nazareth. The wise man cannot return by the same way, but must go another way.

T.S. Eliot wonders if they ever really could return home:

“We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.” [3]

“Rejoice!” changes the language. The ancient Hebrew address “Shalom!” becomes “Rejoice!” The long-awaited One has come and everything is different. Words change. Worlds change. Kings and kingdoms topple.

“Rejoice!” is not simply a call to behold life, it is a call to enter death. The echo sounds like “Repent.” The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Let go of the old world, the old dispensation and walk forward into the Kingdom of God.

The Nativity continues to hold my attention even as I read about Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead, and proclaiming the Kingdom Come. This juxtaposition reminds me that the unbelievable Good News of God coming comes to each of us, where we are, in words and signs that we can hear, compelling us to behold our Savior and “Rejoice!

[1] Coleman Barks (translator), Jalal al-Din Rumi. The Essential Rumi – reissue: New Expanded Edition (Kindle Locations 3318-3319). HarperOne, Kindle Edition, 2010.
[2] Bob Dylan. “Mississippi.” From Love and Theft, 1997.
[3] T.S. Eliot. “The Journey of the Magi.” from Collected Poems 1909-1962 (Faber, 1974)

Poetry vs Prose

July 17, 2012 / Doug Floyd / 0 Comments

In “The Poetry of Thought,” George Steiner offers an essay on philosophic poetry in ancient Greece where he contrasts the vital power of poetry with the record keeping nature of prose. Drawing from Plato, he suggests that poetry is closer to oral patterns of speech and carries patterns of memory with the force of creating newness. I think can only think of Eugen Rosenstock Huessy’s (ERH) suggestion that “speech creates the future,” whereas most talking is not speech but simply chatter.

Another possible parallel with ERH is Steiner’s later discussion of Heraclitus and the value of the fragmentary voice, the incomplete in future speech. ERH suggests that the future generation is a grown seeking articulation. Speaking the future comes not in comprehensive records (as in prose), but in fiery proclamation like Isaiah’s charged language of the coming king.

Steiner writes,

Prose is wholly permeable to the dishevelment and corruptions of the “real world.” It is ontologically mundane (mundum). Narrative sequence often carries with it the spurious promise of logical relation and coherence. Millennia of orality precede the use of prose for anything but administrative and mercantile notations (those lists of domestic animals in LInear B). The writing down in prose of philosophic propositions and debates, of fictions and history is a specialized ramification. Conceivably, it is symptomatic of decay. Famously, Plato views it with distaste. Writing, he urges, subverts, enfeebles the primordial strengths and arts of memory, mother of the Muses. It purports a factitious authority by preventing immediate challenge and self-correction. It lays claim to false monumentality. Only oral exchanges, the license of interruption as in the dialectic, can quicken intellectual inquiry toward responsible insight, insight that is answerable to dissent.

Hence the recurrent resort to dialogue in the works of Plato himself, in the lost books of Aristotle, in Galileo, Hume and Valery. Because it preserves within its scripted forms the dynamics of the speaking voice, because it is in essence vocal and kindred to music, poetry not only precedes prose but is, paradoxically, the more natural performative mode. Poetry exercises, nurtures memory as prose does not. Its universality is indeed that of music; many ethnic legacies have no other genre. In Hebrew scriptures the prosaic elements are instinct with the beat of verse. Read them aloud and they tend toward song. A good poem conveys the postulate of a new beginning, the vita nova of the unprecedented. So much prose is a creature of habit. (25-26)

Researching Quotes Through Collaboration

February 3, 2012 / Doug Floyd / 1 Comment

When I research, I like to collect a wide range of responses to a given topic. Searching quotes online typically brings up a variety of quote sites. These are helpful, but some of the quotes are not relevant or out of date or not complete enough to capture my imagination. Recently, I’ve come up with a way to draw from the collective interests of readers online by using kindle.amazon.com and findings.com as a search engine for quotes. The Kindle site captures popular highlights and your own highlights if you use a Kindle. Findings is an attempt at social clippings. Not sure how active it is at the point, but it still is helpful for searching quotes.

I enter a search term topic or name, and find a range of quotes from books people are currently reading. While some are not relevant, I’ve actually been surprised by the number of quotes that provoke me to think about the topic in a new way. I copy the quotes onto an Evernote page, so I can access all quotes on a given topic later when I want to reflect, utilize and brainstorm through the quotes. They also point me to books that open the theme I’m researching that can serve as future reference.

We Used to Wait

April 27, 2011 / Doug Floyd / 1 Comment

Izaak read Change and Boats and thought about this song. Interesting connection between speed and waiting and memory and life. Believe it or not this stuff about speed and rate of change is all going somewhere at some point. Where? Not totally sure. Right now, I’m listening, watching and still waiting. Sometimes learning new things requires that we stare.

Here are the lyrics to the Arcade Fire’s “We Used to Wait.”
I used to write,
I used to write letters I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain

But by the time we met
By the time we met the times had already changed

So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart I never wrote it down
So when the lights cut out
I was left standing in the wilderness downtown

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

It seems strange anekatips
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what’s stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive

We used to wait
We used to waste hours just walking around
We used to wait
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown

oooo we used to wait
oooo we used to wait
oooo we used to wait
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Still moving through the pain
(oooooo)

I’m gonna write a letter to my true love
I’m gonna sign my name
Like a patient on a table
I wanna walk again gonna move through the pain

Now our lives are changing fast
Now our lives are changing fast
Hope that something pure can last
Hope that something pure can last

oooo we used to wait
oooo we used to wait
oooo we used to wait
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Still moving through the pain
(oooooo) anekatips

we used to wait (x3)
www.lyrics-celebrities.anekatips.com

We used to wait for it
We used to wait for it
Now we’re screaming sing the chorus again
We used to wait for it
We used to wait for it
Now we’re screaming sing the chorus again

I used to wait for it
I used to wait for it
Hear my voice screaming sing the chorus again

Wait for it (x3)

Change and Boats

April 26, 2011 / Doug Floyd / 4 Comments

Dlubanka swidnica dugout (from Wikipedia)

As I was driving by Concord Lake the other day, I watched the speed boats, fishing boats, and jet skis moving through the waters. This influx of activity helped to focus some of my thoughts on change in one specific area: boats. Here is an ancient form of transportation. According to Wikipedia, boats have been found, dating back somewhere between 7,000 to 10,000 years old.

This form of transportation that dates back to a variety of early civilizations, and yet, it’s still here. The category of transportation has changed over time and changed rather dramatically in the last two hundred years, but the boat is still here. The change didn’t eliminate the boat, but it has led to changes within the boating category.

Different types of boats emerged at different times and places within history. A variety of cultures have used some form of a canoe made from a dugout tree. Ancient canoes have been discovered in Africa, Europe, America, the UK, and even the Pacific Islands. Even those this form of boat is ancient, we still have canoes today. The material may change or the way the canoe is made may change from place to place, but we still have canoes exploring our waterways and for rent at our parks.

The canoe may fit with a category of human-powered boats, which could range from one man vessel to large sea-going Viking ships. Over time, other types of boats emerged such as air-powered boats and motorized boats. Within these three large categories of human-powered boats, sailboats and motorized boats, changes continue to take place that may improve specific features of boating, may address certain challenges of the user or the region, or may simply improve cosmetic aspects of boating.

Now this highlight is cursory. But as I think about change within the boating category, I might detail a few observations.

Dramatic changes in size, capacity and power have not eliminated older forms of boats. So in spite of change, the old and the new co-exist, serving different applications.
Just as major changes have occurred in size, capacity and power, other changes continually occur in small details of a specific boat such as shape, paints or other type of protectant, and so on.
Change in boats has led to changes in non-boating areas. From winning or losing wars to spreading culture to solving environmental challenges, one change has led to other changes that may be good or bad.
Change has sometimes resulted in specific environmental challenges such as shallow waters, rough seas, navigation, and so on. (Solving one aspect of the navigation challenge led to a change in maps (use of true north) and eventually to the introduction of wristwatches.)

I’m not through thinking about change but by thinking about boating certain aspects of change come into focus that may be relevant in other areas when we thinking about change in our lives and our cultures.

Pilgrim Notes

Reflections along the way.