Conquistador (a Lectionary reflection by Steve Orr)

In the novel, Conquistador, S. M. Stirling tells an exciting and thought-provoking tale of a North America that never saw the arrival of Europeans. Through a clever device, he has his characters travel from 1946 California to another California, one that is filled with various Native American groups, none of whom has ever seen a Caucasian.

Many adventures ensue for these "conquistadors" and the many men and women who followed them from our world to that still unsullied new one. There were no highways, no man-made aquifers, no super cities (LA, for instance). There was no smog.

The early crossovers, these Conquistadors from "FirstSide," made the most of the pristine nature of things; they brought over horse's, camped out, went hunting. Eventually, they hatched a plan to mine precious metals from what they knew, from FirstSide history, to be untouched sources. They used it to build wealth back on FirstSide. Their goal? To establish an infrastructure that would keep that new "new world" (and the gateway to it) secret, to maintain its treasures for themselves and their progeny.

And in time, they succeeded. For that story, and the challenges they faced from FirstSide in the 21st Century, you'll need to read the book.

One of the many aspects that puzzled these new invaders was how the newly discovered "new world" came to be. How could it be that that history contained no European discovery of the Americas? It took many years, but they eventually saw enough of the new world to piece together the chain of events. I won't go into that, but suffice to say it started with Alexander the Great not dying in 323 B.C.E.

One of the twists posited by the author is that this changed timeline led to Christianity never forming. He lays it out quite logically, and without any sympathy that I could detect.

In this week's Lectionary scriptures, there are two resurrections: one facilitated by Elijah and one performed by Jesus. Both involved raising the sons of widows. Both freshly alive young men were returned to their mothers and received with joy. Both acts led to people drawing closer to God.

How strange to think that someone could imagine a world where redemption lay forever beyond the reach of humankind, where salvation was not even a concept, much less a reality, where the conqueror of death never came.

Here on FirstSide, in our real world, Jesus came from another world to walk ours. Over two millennia ago, he conquered something far more important than a country or even a continent. By bringing life in the form of himself, he conquered all that separates us from God.

He is our conquistador.

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READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/

Third Sunday after Pentecost
Proper 5 (10) (June 5, 2016)

1 Kings 17:8-16, (17-24)
Psalm 146
1 Kings 17:17-24
Psalm 30
Galatians 1:11-24
Luke 7:11-17

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We are more than conquerors. Join us Friday mornings for Lectionary Breakfast and find out why. Still meeting at 8:00 at the Waco "Egg and I" restaurant.

Walk-ins welcome.

Enjoy the week!
Steve

Run For Your Life (a Lectionary Reflection by Steve Orr)

The news was bad, about as bad as it gets. His life was forfeit. It appeared nothing could be done to change that. So. Decision time.

Fight, flight, or fold?

Some of us recall the television show, Run For Your Life, where, in the first episode, successful attorney Paul Bryan is told by his doctor that he has less than two years to live. Faced with a hopeless situation, he elects to "take the money and run." For 85 more episodes we follow Paul Bryan (perfectly portrayed by Ben Gazzara) as he travels the globe attempting to do all those things, go all those places that might, in modern parlance, constitute his "bucket list."

This show worked a lot like Route 66; each episode finding the main character embroiled in some situation, but rarely in the same place and rarely with people he had met before. One week he might be stuck in middle America because his car broke down, and the next he might be enlisted by US intelligence to perform some task behind the Iron Curtain (Why, yes, it . . ahem . . . WAS a long time ago).

For those who have never seen it, this is one of the best shows television has offered us, regardless of year. Great writing, great acting, and a who's who of Hollywood stars on their way up. Definitely worth your viewing time.

And that brings me to this week's Lectionary scriptures. In the 1st Kings passage Elijah, coming off the victory at Mount Carmel, suddenly finds his life threatened, and not by just anybody. He has been threatened by Queen Jezebel, a woman who has a reputation of delivering on her threats.

Like Joseph before him (and many others before and after), Elijah elects to run from the confrontation. It seems counter-intuitive, especially following Mount Carmel's mind-blowing victory. But, run he does.

Paul Bryan COULD have chosen differently. He could have stayed right where he was, just accepted the bad hand he had been dealt. "Fold" is always an option. But he chose, instead, to take a different path, to "run for his life." And because of his choice, adventures ensued. Elijah, too, ran from his troubles . . . right into the arms of God.

There are times when we need to press on, but there are also times when the thing to do is run the other way. Or if not run, then walk, or maybe just step off for a bit . . . and seek an audience with the one who is "a very present help in trouble." (Psalms 46:1 NKJV)

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http://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu

READINGS FOR THE COMING WEEK
Proper 7 (12) (June 23, 2013)

1 Kings 19:1-4, (5-7), 8-15a
Psalm 42 and 43
Isaiah 65:1-9
Psalm 22:19-28
Galatians 3:23-29
Luke 8:26-39

My Treasures

My Treasures
By Steve Orr

"My treasures do not ching together or glitter. They gleam in the sun, and neigh in the night." Arabian proverb

I never owned a horse. Which, in all probability, is a good thing. While I had pets (well ... dogs) as a child, I was never that kid who begged his parents for a pet, promising to feed and care for it. Don't get me wrong, I loved my dogs. We got along well. And they knew I was the soft touch of the family. I have a lot of stories about my dogs (like the one where my dachshund slept under the covers of my bed in the winter, keeping my feet warm in a bedroom that had no heat), but they will have to wait for another time. This piece is not about dogs. It's about horses.

So, even though I never owned one, growing up in Kentucky, I was raised with a deep appreciation of horses. Frankly, it was almost unavoidable. Countless times I walked the eight long blocks to the fairgrounds to watch the trotters and their sulkies somehow simultaneously careen and float around that dirt track. All across the counties of West Kentucky, horses could constantly be seen serving on working farms. And it was a rare month when the Junkman didn't ply the alleyway behind our house with his great horse-drawn wagon. Horses were everywhere.

I think I know where my appreciation for horses began. And, of course, it was because of a girl. My first crush (and more, to be honest) was on a girl who lived across 21st Street and around the corner on Harrison. I still remember the first time I saw her; first grade, Andrew Jackson Elementary School; massive smit-down. That crush (or whatever it really was) lasted for many years, long past the point where either of us could have done anything about it. But that, too, is a story for another time. Today is about horses.

It was pretty difficult to not know she loved horses. She wore horse jewelry. Instead of a poodle skirt, hers had a horse on it. The first time I visited her house, I saw she had a model horse on a shelf in her room; it served as one of the book ends for several fiction books involving horses. Because of my feelings for her, I decided to get interested in horses.

The fiscal realities being what they were, neither of us was going to have an actual horse, but we could both enjoy fictional horses. And that's how I came to read Walter Farley's Black Stallion novels, along with other equestrian stories and at least one non-fiction book about Man-O-War. Long before I ever read Stephen King's phrase "fall through the hole in the page," I was doing it. When young Alec Ramsay held on for dear life as the Black raced across desert sands, I was there, clinging to that great back, thrilling to the danger and to the stunning power of the Black Stallion. I loved that fictional world of horses. I heartily recommend those books to you parents for your children . . . and you can sneak a read, too :-)

A wise person once said, "The difference between theory and reality is this: in theory, they're the same; in reality, they're not." In fiction, that girl and I would have ended up spending our lives together, and horses would almost certainly been a part of it. But the reality is that our lives took different paths. I moved to Texas and started a new life. I met the real girl of my dreams, got married, became a father, father-in-law, grandfather.

The reality of horses is not the same, either. Actual horses must be fed, and housed, and cleaned, and cleaned up after (there's a reason one of the labors of Hercules was mucking out the stables). If they are a show horse or a race horse, they have to be exercised. They have to see the vet from time to time; there can be sizable health-related expenses. And, of course, horses are bred.

And here, I believe, is the really dangerous part. A foal, one who is sweet and gentle, can win your heart from one beat to the next. And if, as one of my Texas friends did, you decide, based on that sweet and gentle foal, to keep breeding "babies," there is no going back. Not for your heart. You're in. All they way in.

And so today I write about my Texas friend who did that; who, after getting that first sweet foal in May of 1989, decided along with her sister to breed and raise horses. It has not always been an easy road for them. In fact, it has often been very hard, indeed. And today will be one of the hardest. Today, after almost 23 years of love given and love returned, they lost that first foal.

Sometimes I hear people say something like, "Well, of course it is sad, but it's not the same as losing a person." I guess I would have to admit some intellectual reality to the statement. But our hearts don't usually follow our intellect, do they? Really, how can half a love be any kind of love at all? We love our animals. And it is not unusual at all for us to grieve when they're gone. They lived in our hearts, after all.

Bryn Dar Farm's first foal is gone.
Rest in peace, Dyfan (May 14, 1989 - April 16, 2012)

"My treasures do not ching together or glitter. They gleam in the sun, and neigh in the night."