This is William Willis Ayers.

Photo taken after Will’s birth in Presbyterian Hospital Main, Charlotte, NC.

Wasn’t he adorable!  Looks just like his dad.  Hate to say it (Not really, I love to say it), but he looks like his dad.

Here is our second kid, the canine one, Princess.

Princess, named after my wife

Here is my now 22 year old kid holding my 6 week old kid.

Here are some comparisons I’ve been making. When they were six weeks old:

1) They were both adorable.

2) They both pooped and peed and slept a lot.

3) Princess has a biting problem.  Will didn’t have a biting problem.

4) Princess could go up steps.  Will could not go up steps.

5) Will and Princess had a very good set of lungs/crying volume.

6) Both enjoyed playing.

7) Princess licks.  Will slobbered.

8) Both posed for camcorder.

9) Princess puts her nose on her buttock. Will has never put his nose on his buttock.

10) Everyone who sees Princess, and everyone who saw Will, said, “He/She is ADORABLE!”

Reminder.  You are going to compare your children.  Be careful on comparisons.  Always celebrate a child’s uniqueness.  Don’t tell your children your comparisons as if one child is good and the other is less than.

Prayers for kids, canine kids and humanoid kids.  Prayers for parents.

Princess, named after my wife

our for potty time this morning I found this amazing limb.

I bet this limb couldn’t pull off a landing like this again in a million years.  In gymnastic terms, the limb nailed the landing.

May you have an amazing day, and may you be amazed by all of life’s wonders.

Roadrunner at Death Valley hotel, photo taken by Chris Ayers

God, we pray especially for those:

living at Quagmire Lane

listening to Mr. Profundis

cleaning up the messes of Fuddle Dumb

trying to catch Roadrunner.

And we give thanks for:

kids and teens and grown-ups who have not lost the magic of their childhood.

Amen.

How long, O God, must I labor for my wife’s labor?

It sounds like the cry of a Psalmist, doesn’t it?  How long, O Lord?  How long?

My wife was in labor for 48 hours with our only begotten son, but I can’t just count labor hours.  I have to include pregnancy hours.  40 weeks of gestation = 40 x 7 x 24 = 6,720 hours of gestation labor.  Add 6,720 hours of gestation labor to 48 hours of delivery labor and the total payment is 6,768 hours.

It’s now time to inform you of my blissful Mother’s Day weekend ritual/servitude/debt payment plan, which I hope my only begotten son appreciates.  Every Saturday of Mother’s Day I am taken to Rountree Plantation to purchase plants.  Typically, it’s a hot and humid day.

This year’s haul was made up of:

Snowstorm Giant Snowflakes (“Proven Winners”) 3

Rosemary 2

Yellowbells 2

Geraniums 2 pots

Sweet potato vines 2

Superbells Plum (“Proven Winners) 2 flats purple

Also loaded into the SUV were soil mixture (5 bags) peat moss (2 Cubic feet) and some nasty smelling mushroom compost (3 bags).

This labor is done the Saturday before Mother’s Day. I’m going to give myself 2 hours credit for the Saturday before Mother’s Day ritual.

On Sunday, Mother’s Day, and also purportedly a day of Sabbath rest, I go to Home Depot and load every inch of the SUV with premium top soil (15 bags) and Pinebark mini nuggets mulch (20 bags).  When I get home I unload the bags, praying all the lifting does not harm my golf swing back.The Sunday/Mother’s Day ritual takes about 1 hour.

The idea is for all the plants to get planted the week of Mother’s Day Sunday, but it doesn’t always work out that way.  Whenever the job is completed, it takes about 4 hours.  So my total labor for Mother’s Day and beyond labor is 7 hours.

My sonny boy is 22 years old, which means I’ve already put in 154 hours of Mother’s Day related labor.  That leaves me with (6,768 – 154 = ?) 6,614 hours of pay back labor to go.

Imagine having more than one child!

I’m currently 53 years old.  Let’s say I can do garden work until I’m 83.  30 more years of Mother’s Day related labor x 7 hours (yearly average of Mother’s Day related labor) = 210 hours.  That means when I’m 83 I’ll still have (6,614 – 210 = ?) 6,404 hours to go, which proves you can never pay back your spouse for bringing your (plural “your”) child into the world.

And that was a lot of mathematical work to prove something I already knew.

The new beaver looks scarier than the old beaver, but I don’t know about you but I’m not scared of any beavers.

And, for the record, I’m not scared of any pelicans.  Did you hear that the New Orleans Hornets changed their name to the New Orleans Pelicans?

I’d much rather deal with a pelican than a hornet.

Of course, I shouldn’t say anything.  UNC’s mascot is a ram.  Sheep aren’t exactly daunting either.

When I was at UNC back during the time of Moses – well, it was a long time ago, 1976 to 80 to be precise, the Tar Heels mascot looked like it had just gotten off a Disney ride.  People complained and the happy ram became an angry ram.

I’m not scared of angry rams either.

My guess is you, like me, have typically thought of Jesus in terms of gentleness, but in our scripture lesson today, Matthew 18:1-6, Jesus is not gentle at all.  Unlike beavers, pelicans and sheep, this Jesus seems a bit ferocious.  Listen.

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

 ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Sermon:  A Ferocious Love

Today is Mother’s Day and I want to make sure all Wedgewood mothers are happy.  Join me again in saying Happy Mother’s Day!  Better to say it too much than not enough because if mama ain’t happy, ain’t _______ , right, ain’t nobody happy.

I’m sure you know, or if your mother is dead, I’m sure you knew, how to make your mother unhappy.

Two things made my mother unhappy.  She didn’t like kitchen cabinet doors to be left open.  So every time before I headed back to college I opened up every kitchen cabinet.  Yes, I did.

Second thing that made my mother unhappy was not to get a daily email from her children.  You could call her on the phone but a telephone call didn’t count.  To quote her, “Why did you get me to spend so much money on a computer if you weren’t going to email me?”

There’s nothing like a mother’s love!  Amen!

One thing I’ve noticed about most mothers and their love is that if need be – if need be, their love can be ferocious love.

A mother’s love is like the love of God, a God which the biblical traditions give witness to has a ferocious love.  It was a ferocious love that sets slaves in Egypt free.  It was a ferocious love that sent Jonah, unwilling Jonah, to the Ninevites.  It was a ferocious love that made Jesus defend a woman others wanted to stone.  It was a ferocious love that was inscribed in the words of Jesus:   ‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were fastened around your neck and you were drowned in the depth of the sea.

Now you know and I know there are some depictions in the Bible about God which are not true.  God, in places, comes off a tad psychotic and full of wrongful wrath.  But stay with me now those of you who have turned off by churches preaching a hateful God.  Stay with me.  There is also in the Bible a wrathful God that is appropriately wrathful.

Is there anybody in attendance today who was not wrathful last week?

Ariel Castro, a former school-bus driver, kidnapped and raped three women in his home for a decade. Ms. Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were taken to Mr. Castro’s home and chained in the basement. Although the chains were later removed and they moved upstairs, they were all forced to have sex with Mr. Castro. Ms. Knight told police she had become pregnant five times, with Mr. Castro starving her and punching her in the stomach each time until she miscarried.

As a liberal Christian, I have major difficulty with the wrathful God depicted in parts of the Old Testament and the New Testament, but I’m starting to see that wrath, in certain instances, has a proper role in the heart of a Christian and in one’s theology, one’s thinking about God.  Let me quickly add, that such a practice of wrath requires “a thousand footnotes and caveats”.  Any theology that leaves the theologizer all good and “the other” all bad is to be avoided, but a liberal Christianity that does not address inhumane humanity is not sufficient either. The love God has for all of God’s children is a ferocious love, a love that does not tolerate the mistreatment of any of God’s children.

Have you been mistreated?

Do you understand what happened in God’s heart when you were mistreated?

In the book Knowing Jesse, Marianne Leone shares her story of being the mother of Jesse, a child born premature.  Leone faces doctors and physical therapists who want to pigeonhole her son with a ferocious love that will not allow anyone – will not allow anyone to mistreat her son or underestimate his abilities.

Of course, Marianne is quickly and frequently judged to be a mother of a cerebral palsy child who is living in denial, unable to face the facts.  Marianne describes her rage at those who did not see Jesse as worthwhile.

When Marianne told Jesse’s pediatric neurologist that Jesse had attempted to say “I love you” the neurologist looked at Marianne with distaste.  Marianne obviously was “in denial”, imagining what was not possible.  From his Olympian neurological heights the doctor pronounced his solemn verdict.  Jesse would never be “intellectually normal.”  He said those exact words and then he asked with, as Marianne describes it – he asked with what his lizard brain no doubt thought was kindness, if Marianne and her husband planned to have more children.

Did Jesse say “I love you”?  Well, nobody can say for sure, but this we can be said.  Although Jesse, had severe cerebral palsy and could not speak clearly he was also a straight-A student, a sophomore at his high school who wrote poetry on his computer, aced every one of his Latin tests, and windsurfed in the summer.

Ferocious love.  If Jesse’s mother had not loved Jesse with ferocious love he would have been treated like one more statistic.

How have you been treated in your life?

Do you realize how God feels about you?  Do you understand that Jesus warning applies to anyone who would harm you?  If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of my children, it would be better if a great millstone were fastened around their neck and they were drowned in the depth of the sea.  The God who created you has a love for you that is ferocious.

Before you walk up to The Lord’s Table and experience the ferocious love of God I want you to hear the first poem Jesse wrote, when he was ten.

On the inside, I walk

On the outside, I give

On the outside, I am mute

On the outside, I give

On the inside, I speak

On the inside, I walk

Walk to the Lord’s table and eat the bread and drink from the cup.

It was a very frustrating 30 minutes.  We were on the way back from Yadkinville Fish Camp.  Keep in mind, my parents never ate fish unless they traveled 30 minutes to a fish restaurant.  Well, that’s not true, but it’s almost true.

We were on the way back after a wonderful meal of flounder, oysters, shrimp, fries or baked potato, and hushpuppies.  My mother had boiled shrimp.

Neither my father or my mother had long to live.  We knew it might be the last time they got to go out to eat as a couple.

On the way back to Advance, North Carolina, my Dad sat in the passenger front seat and my mother sat in the back seat with my beloved.  I was driving their Ford Van.  My father, suffering from prostate cancer, was cold.  You would think he was in Antarctica.  My mother, who had trouble breathing was hot.

Ever seen those dual control temperature controls in cars?  They are only so effective.  How do you separate heat and cold?

For thirty minutes my mother said “turn the heater on” and then in a few minutes she would say “I can’t breath”.  Then my father would say, “turn the air conditioner on” and then in a few minutes he would say “I’m freezing.”  Like temperature ping pong.  Hot cold, cold hot, hot cold, cold hot.

Dealing with aging parents trying to love each other can be very frustrating, but what a gift to have parents who loved each other to the very end.

Miss you Mom (and Dad)!

Prayers for elderly parents and the children who love them.

God,

May this day for people who are struggling have:

unexpected humor

clues, where previously he or she didn’t have a clue

abounding grace

the triumph of some justice, even if just a snippet

emotions and expressions that bring new life

the release of what seem like hardwired resentments

Amen.  And amen.

Mario Castro

It’s hard for a liberal Christian like me to admit but I’m finding myself more wrathful these days. There are a lot of bad things that happen in our world that have nothing to do with God and everything to do with inhumane humanity.

Ariel Castro, a former school-bus driver, kidnapped and raped three women in his home for a decade. Ms. Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were taken to Mr. Castro’s home and chained in the basement. Although the chains were later removed and they moved upstairs, they were all forced to have sex with Mr. Castro. Ms. Knight told police she had become pregnant five times, with Mr. Castro starving her and punching her in the stomach each time until she miscarried.

As a liberal Christian, I have major difficulty with the wrathful God depicted in parts of the Old Testament and the New Testament, but I’m starting to see that wrath, in certain instances, has a proper role in the heart of a Christian and in one’s theology, one’s thinking about God.  Let me quickly add, that such a practice of wrath requires “a thousand footnotes and caveats”.  Any theology that leaves the theologizer all good and “the other” all bad is to be avoided, but a liberal Christianity that does not address inhumane humanity is not sufficient either.