Binding and Loosing

Praise God!
Sing to God a new song,
sing God's praise in the assembly of the faithful.
Let Israel be glad in its Maker;
let the children of Zion rejoice in their Ruler.
Let them praise God's name with dancing,
making melody to God with tambourine and lyre.
For God takes pleasure in the people;
God adorns the humble with victory.
Let the faithful exult in glory;
let them sing for joy on their couches.
Let the high praises of God be in their throats
and two-edged swords in their hands,
to execute vengeance on the nations
and punishment on the peoples,
to bind their ruler with fetters
and their nobles with chains of iron,
to execute on them the judgment decreed.
This is glory for all God's faithful ones.
Praise to be God!

Psalm 149

Dancing Figurines

1500 BCE

Heraklion Archaeological Museum

Crete, Greece

As Psalm 149 recalls, dancing, singing, and rejoicing were part of the religious practices of the ancient Israelites. This group of clay figurines from the thriving bronze age culture of Crete, are expressive with delight. Although not Israelite, they offer a contemporaneous Middle Eastern context of universal expression.
http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/diglib-fulldisplay.pl?SID=20110903961944580&code=ACT&RC=54271&Row=1

Once the game is over,

the king and the pawn go back into the same box.

~ Italian Proverb

Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers.

~ Mary Tyler Moore

We returned from Michigan last night, but no pictures yet.

My body wasn't up to it.

Well, here are some from when we first arrived …

Brother Jack and Dottie rented a cottage on Lake Michigan

near where we grew up.

Big Red (a landmark lighthouse) is off in the distance.

Someday I really need to paint Big Red.

Jack and Dottie introduced Raffi to swimming in BIG water.

Raffi loved it!!!

Vicki’s doggies were not quite as enthusiastic.

We had dinner with Milt and Marilee.

Milt and Jack

Marilee served wonderful Michigan blueberry pie.

Mending Wall

by Robert Frost

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.

The work of hunters is another thing:

I have come after them and made repair

Where they have left not one stone on a stone,

But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,

To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,

No one has seen them made or heard them made,

But at spring mending-time we find them there.

I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;

And on a day we meet to walk the line

And set the wall between us once again.

We keep the wall between us as we go.

To each the boulders that have fallen to each.

And some are loaves and some so nearly balls

We have to use a spell to make them balance:

'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'

We wear our fingers rough with handling them.

Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,

One on a side. It comes to little more:

There where it is we do not need the wall:

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.

My apple trees will never get across

And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.

He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder

If I could put a notion in his head:

'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it

Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know

What I was walling in or walling out,

And to whom I was like to give offense.

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,

That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,

But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather

He said it for himself. I see him there

Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top

In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.

He moves in darkness as it seems to me,

Not of woods only and the shade of trees.

He will not go behind his father's saying,

And he likes having thought of it so well

He says again, 'Good fences make good neighbors.'

September 4, 2011 Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Previous OPQs may be found at:

http://www.dotjack.com/opq.htm

”If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax-collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them."

Matthew 18:15-20

Agnus Day, by James Wetzstein

Agnus Day appears with the permission of www.agnusday.org

Exodus 12:1-14

Psalm 149:1-9

Romans 13:8-14

Matthew 18:15-20