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This Week
This week at praxis...Stormy Season
Here is what we are reading and discussing June 25, 2000
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them,
"Let us go across to the other side."
And leaving the crowd behind,
they took him with them in the boat,
just as he was. Other boats were with him.
A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat,
so that the boat was already being swamped.
But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion;
and they woke him up and said to him,
"Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?"
He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea,
"Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased,
and there was a dead calm. He said to them,
"Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"
And they were filled with great awe and said to one another,
"Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"
-Mark 4:35-41
We are precisely nowhere,
sinking on an entirely imaginary ice floe,
into entirely imaginary seas themselves adrift.
Then we reel out love's long line alone
toward a God less lovable than a grasshead,
who treats us less well than we treat our lawns.
Of faith I have nothing,
only of truth: that this one God is a brute and traitor,
abandoning us to time, to necessity and the engines of matter unhinged.
- Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
After awhile, as I lay there,
I became aware of someone with me,
hunkered down in the corner,
and I just assumed it was my father,
whose presence I had felt over the years
when I was frightened and alone.
The feeling was so strong that I actually
turned on the light for a moment to make
sure no one was there-of course, there wasn't.
But after a while, in the dark again,
I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus.
I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this...
I felt him just sitting there on his haunches
in the corner of my sleeping loft,
watching me with patience and love,
and I squinched my eyes shut,
but that didn't help because that's not what I was seeing him with.
Finally I feel asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.
This experience spooked me badly,
but I thought it was just an apparition,
born of fear and self-loathing and
booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went,
I had the feeling that a little cat was following me,
wanting me to reach down and pick it up,
wanting me to open the door and let it in.
But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time,
give it a little milk, and then it stays forever.
So I tried to keep one step ahead of it,
slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.
-Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies
Great storm: the Greek says that there was a great lailaps of wind.
This word is defined...as "whirlwind, hurricane".
It is obviously a very strong word...
Now Full: a better translation is "already filling up" (NASB)
or "nearly swamped"(NIV). If the boat had been "now full" (KJV)
it would have been at the bottom of the lake!...
Pillow: the Greek word proskephalaion is compounded
of kephale "Head," and pros, "toward"-so,
the place where one lays his head.
In the stern of the boat this would be an oarsman's
cushion on which Jesus rested...
Ceased: The verb kopazo literally means "grow weary".
This is brought out well by the rendering "died down" (NASB, NIV).
The wind gave up its furious blowing when its Master spoke.
-Word Meanings in the New Testament, Ralph Earle
As if God were an old man
always upstairs, sitting about
in sleeveless undershirt, asleep,
arms folded, stomach rumbling, his breath from open mouth
strident, presaging death...
No...
-Denise Levertov, "The Task"
Questions:
- Why do you think Jesus could sleep in the boat,
while it was filling up with water?
Should the disciples have trusted him, or awakened him?
Why should they think he could calm the seas? Would you?
- Have you ever felt at sea in your life? At what sort of times does this happen?
- Have you ever felt, or experienced, God in your boat?
Is that helpful? Or God asleep in your life? How do you try to wake God up?
- What help are the "other boats" in the story? In your life?
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