QUARANTINE BLOG # 619

December 9, 2021

When I got up at 5:30 yesterday morning, it was dark, dreary, and raining.  Such a morning always inspires “Rainy Night in Georgia,” a song written by Tony Joe White in 1967 and popularized by Brook Benton in 1970.  

Tony Joe White explained the thought process behind the making of “Rainy Night in Georgia.”

“When I got out of high school I went to Marietta, Georgia to get a job and I was playing guitar, too.  I drove a dump truck for the highway department and when it would rain you didn’t have to go to work.  You could stay home and play your guitar and hangout all night.  So those thoughts came back to me when I moved on to Texas about three months later.  I heard Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe” on the radio and I thought, man, how real, I know that life.  So I thought if I ever tried to write, I’m going to write about something I know about.  I knew about rainy nights because I spent a lot of rainy nights in Marietta, Georgia.  So I was real lucky with my first tries to write something that was not only real and hit pretty close to the bone, but lasted that long.”

While we are playing some tunes, let’s put “Ode to Billie Joe” on the turntable.  Bobbie Gentry said she wanted to show “people’s lack of ability” to empathize with other people’s tragedy.

👉  Some commentary on life and things from the comic strips:

👉  Some pictures to smile about:

👉  Blue Ridge Parkway officials are speaking out after a recent rash of vandalism and graffiti along the parkway.  “While it may seem like just a rock, these natural surfaces provide an important ecosystem for lichen, moss, insects and other important flora and fauna – some that takes decades to grow,” an official said. “Graffiti is extremely difficult to remove and the repair of vandalized sites, if even possible, is costly and time consuming.”  QB says, when caught, punishment for each of the vandals should be 10 broken fingers.

👉  Writing for the Hoover Institute, Stanford University, Lee Ohanian says, “Shoplifting Is Now De Facto Legal In California.”  He says, “Google ‘Shoplifting in San Francisco’ and you will find more than 100,000 hits.  And you will find lots of YouTube videos, where you can watch a single thief, or an entire gang, walk into a store and empty the shelves.”

Here is a video I put together after following Ohanian’s lead showing the rampant thievery that is forcing many stores in San Francisco to close.

Ohanian continues, “In San Francisco, there is no attempt to conceal theft, and there is almost never any effort by store employees, including security personnel, to confront the thieves.  The most they do is record the thefts with their cell phones.

“Why is shoplifting so rampant?  Because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.”

👉  Today’s close, “An Alternative World at Hand,” is from Celebrating Abundance, by Walter Brueggemann.

“For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. May the God of steadfastness and encouragement grant you to live in harmony with one another, in accordance with Christ Jesus, so that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 15:4-6).

Here is good news I am privileged to announce to you. There is a new world available that is here very soon. It is being birthed in the wonder of Jesus of Nazareth. It is a world marked by the stable smell of shepherds and the perfumes of the wise men. It is a world marked by a Friday of suffering and death and by a Sunday of surprise and new life. It is a world that exposes all the contradictions of our present life. It is a world that invites us to move out from here to there in joy, in obedience, in discipline, to begin again.

As Paul spoke of the truthful reliability of God’s promise, he knew about a world of fickle deception and betrayal, as do we. The world of advertising, of ideology, of euphemism offers us endless phoniness that coerces and manipulates and invites into a virtual world that has no staying power. You cannot count on such a world, as it will turn on you and cost you dearly. And yet, out beyond that fickle world there is the world of God’s reliable fidelity, a God who makes and keeps promises, and you can dwell there.

As Paul envisioned welcome of one another, he knew about a world of exclusion that is grounded in fear and anxiety. And so do we. All around now are barriers and gates and fences that draw lines around gifts and possibilities and resources and access. The lines are drawn closer and closer until all are excluded except the blessed, cunning ones, and even they are left nervous about when the next wall will be built and who will then be excluded. And yet, out beyond the world of exclusion and rejection and hostility, there is on offer a world of welcome that sees the other not as threat or competitor but as cohort on the pilgrimage of humanity.

When Paul spoke about living in harmony with one another as a gift of Christ’s new regime, he knew about conflict and quarreling in his churches and all around the empire. And so do we. We imagine now that liberals and conservatives must be in conflict, and Christians and Muslims must be in shared violence with each other, and poor blacks and rich whites must compete with an edge of hate. And yet, out beyond there is a world reconciled between Jew and Greek, between male and female, between free and slave, and all the other alienations that we can name. Because Christ has broken down the walls of separation. In him all sorts of people recover their sanity and their humanity enough to see brother and sister.

Grant us, reconciling God, the imagination with which to see the world coming into being through the wonder of Jesus of Nazareth. May we embrace it and dwell there in joy, in obedience, in discipline, to begin again. Amen.

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