Borrowed Air -- For Thanksgiving

In preparation for Thanksgiving a week from today, I have Thomas Troeger's homage to the old hymnThis is My Father's World running through my head. In his poem, Troeger, who is the J. Edward and Ruth Cox Lantz Professor of Christian Communication at Yale Divinity School and an ordained clergy person in both the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches, centers of the "nature" theme of Maltbie Babcock's poem (the guy who wrote This Is My Father's World), while at the same time recalling James 1:17, a pretty perfect text, as far as I'm concerned, for Thanksgiving: "Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of light."

Try this:

Sing a verse of This is My Father's World in your head (or out loud if you want!), and then sing Troeger's poem Borrowed Air" to the same melody, and see if it doesn't evoke something more than turkey and football (both good things!) for this Thanksgiving.

This is my Father's world, and to my listening ears
All nature sings and round me rings the music of the spheres
This is my Father's world, I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees and skies and seas, His hands the wonders wrought.

Each breath is borrowed air, not ours to keep and own;
And all our breaths as one declare what wisdom long has known.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

The sea flows in our veins, the dust of stars is spun
To form the coiled encoded skeins by which our cells are run.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

From earth and sea and dust arise yet greater things,
The wonders born of love and trust, a grateful heart that sings.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days.

And when our death draws near and tries to dim our song,
Our parting prayers will make it clear to whom we still belong.
To live is to receive and answer back with praise
To what our minds cannot conceive, the Source of all our days

(Borrowed Air (C) 2002, Oxford University Press)

From a Different Angle

Delwin Brown is dean emeritus of Pacific School of Religion and former professor of Christian Theology at Iliff School of Theology. A Methodist layperson and the author of many books and articles, Brown published What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? just last year. In a chapter that deals with evil and suffering that he titles "Sin: Failing and Hiding" Brown summarizes the discussion with these bullet points:

• Modern discussions of sin have not been very useful. Sin-talk has been anti-world, anti-sex, anti-female, anti-pleasure, and opposed to equality and self-affirmation, just to mention a few of its drawbacks.

• In classical Christian theology, sin takes two forms, pride and sensuality. Already our hackles are raised! We are all very supportive of pride, and why should anyone think sensuality is a sin?

• By "pride" the tradition meant excessive self-regard in relation to others, assuming for oneself more than that which one is entitled. ""Sensuality" meant the opposite failure, thinking of oneself less highly than one ought to think.

• Viewed in terms of the two great commandments, sin is loving too much or loving too little any part of the inter-connected web of life, from God to all of those whom God loves and in whom God is incarnate.

• The more insightful Christian traditions ask, "Why is our failure to love as we ought so persistent and pervasive?" The answer it gives has to do with self-deceptions, hiding the truth from ourselves.

• Sin is not simply the failure to love properly. It is that failure, accompanied by the pretense that we have loved as we should. We hide our failure, even from ourselves!

• The doctrine of "original sin" is not a denial of human goodness, and it is not about sex. It is about layers of evil -- racism, sexism, consumerism, egotism, etc. --structured into our existence. We begin our lives in the midst of these.

• Christian tradition "suspects" that we rather happily acquiesce to the evil structures in which we find ourselves. Our failings build into unjust and self-serving structures....and we find them to be quite comfortable!

from Delwin Brown, What Does a Progressive Christian Believe? A Guide for the Searching, the Open, and the Curious (New York: Seabury Books, 2008).