Letters On The Page

The Sixth Wednesday and Thursday in Lent – Genesis 50:15-21 O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.  In Book 6 of Homer’s  Iliad,  Hector returns briefly from the battlefield to his City of Troy and stands with his wife Andromache and infant son. Hector will shortly return to the battlefield with his brother Paris. Hector says, “ Andromache, dear one, why so desperate? Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to earth, against my fate. And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it, neither brave man nor coward, I tell you – its born with us the day that we are born .” I begin our reflection on the Gospel promises in Genesis with this quote because Hector states a common belief, then and now, that we are all fated to a particular end and destiny. Fate cannot be changed, or so it is often believed. The Fates determined that Hector must die at the hands of Achilles. Fate determin...

Joseph Epstein. Fabulous Small Jews: Stories . Houghton Mifflin Company.  2003.  I learn from Epstein's long  and short essays. I enjoy and am entertained by his stories. Most of these stories are set in the Chicago area. These stories cover a wide range of situations and issues. All informative, believable, realistic. No violence or explicit sex.  The stories have a range of characters and story lines that include addressing gaining material wealth, professional success and failure, education, death of a spouse, new love gained and lost, becoming a grandparent, divorce. There are seventeen stories in this collection and they are all original. No story connects with another. Epstein's imagination and creative writing capabilities are on full display here. The only constant is that almost all of the characters in these stories are Jewish or connected to a Jewish heritage in some fashion. The challenge of navigating anti-semitism is present but understated.  I fou...

Katherine Johnson Martinko. Childhood Unplugged: Practical Advice to Get Kids Off Screens and Find Balance. New Society Publishers. 2023. I learned of this book from Tsh Oxenreider's Weekly Letter .   If I ever have an opportunity to hand a parent or a soon to be parent that is wondering how to navigate bringing up a child in our modern North American context, I would, without hesitation, hand him or her Martinko's book. Martinko and her husband have three boys and send them to public school. However, they are both alarmed about the increasing presence of and reliance upon "screens" in private and public life. They are also concerned about the short and long term effects of abundant screen usage. Martinko convincingly offers another way to raise and educate the children. If you want children that are creative, inventive, imaginative, empathetic, have sustained focus, deeper comprehension, emotionally regulate themselves, and are physically fit, then she has some solid...

    Divine Service at St. Luke, Rensselaer, IN  Fifth Sunday in Lent     Isaiah 43:16-21          Philippians 3:(4b-7) 8-14                 Luke 20:9-20 O Lord, let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, my rock and my redeemer. Amen.  Several of my Bibles provide useful titles to each section to help me, the reader, know what is coming in the text. All these Bibles identify today’s Gospel as the  Parable of the Wicked Tenants.  That title gets no argument from me. The tenants are indeed wicked. They refuse to pay what they owe the owner. Somehow, they became confused about their true position in the vineyard. They actually think that just because they work there, they are entitled to own the place. They forgot that there is a world of difference between being an owner and being a w...

Jacob's Dream by William Blake (c. 1805, British Museum, London)       2025 Fifth Wednesday/Thursday of Lent - Genesis 28:10-22  As I reflected on Joseph’s dream and the power of dreams, I was reminded of an episode from the TV show from yesteryear, MASH. In this particular episode, the Mobile Army Surgery Hospital is inundated with wave after wave of wounded soldiers for multiple days because of a sustained multi-day battle. The surgeons and nurses and everyone else are exhausted. Even though everyone was exhausted and a half step from collapsing, no one wanted to go to sleep because of the dreams. The episode focused on Hawkeye’s dreams in which he was a chronic failure because he didn’t pay sufficient attention in medical school.  The bodies of the soldiers and their severed parts were coming so fast that he knew he could never be good enough, fast enough, smart enough, to save them.  He was wracked with feelings of guilt, anger, and helplessne...