Spirit in Action

Eco-spirituality, Justice, and Sexuality

An article on the CVPost.org site announced Visiting theologian brings eco-spiritual approach to Lenten series, and so I discovered David Weiss, a deep thinker, poet, and diligent worker for justice, beauty, and grace in our world, particularly in the way we treat LGBT folks and the Earth.

Duration:: 55m
Broadcast on:: 27 Mar 2016
Audio Format:: other

[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world along ♪ In just a couple minutes, we're going to talk to David Weiss, a twin cities theologian, talking about eco spirituality and welcoming LGBT folks. But first, we're going to visit with Myron Buckholts in a short feature which we'll be sharing on Spirit in Action Weekly into the indefinite future. Myron is part of the monthly peace stand, I take part in regularly, and when he announced a year ago that he would be retiring from his decades as a high school history teacher, I suggested to him a regular podcast knitting together his knowledge of history with the issues we're facing today. In spite of his busy time on the campaign trail as he runs for the U.S. House of Representatives, he's agreed to finally get started on this. So here is Myron Buckholts in his first installment of history and our best future, then on to David Weiss. I know Myron that you support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Why would that be good for us? I have always believed, and I know it is true, that the quickest way to lift somebody out of poverty is to put money in their pockets that may sound kind of simple, but it's true. Had the minimum wage of 1968 kept pace with inflation, it would be at least $15 today. And we know we've heard the cliché that a rising tide floats all boats because you know most people, I suppose almost everybody, spends almost every cent of what they make locally. There's an argument that if businesses are forced to raise wages like this, workers would be laid off, and there are those who say that raising the wage will wreck the economy. Those are old and disproved arguments. Our economy has been really wrecked only twice in modern history, and that is 1929 and again in 2008. And neither of those times were workers' wages, the reason. The minimum wage has been raised 23 times since it began in 1938, and every increase has proven beneficial to the overall economy. We'll be talking to Myron Buckholt's weekly for history and our best future, but now on to today's main spirit and action guest. David Weiss has degrees in theology and in Christian ethics, and his writings have included poetry, hymns, and theology around major issues affecting our lives, like LGBT issues and like the issue that brought him here today, eco-spirituality concerns. David Weiss joins me from the seat across the table from me. David, thank you so much for joining me in person for Spirit in Action. Well, thank you, Mark. It's really great to be with you here today kind of in the middle of creation. And that's because I've invited David to my house, and so we're looking out on the beautiful countryside that I live on with El Creek in my backyard. You've come to Eau Claire for environmental, ecological, and theological reasons. You want to explain about what you're doing or what you've been just finishing in the Lenten season with Grace Lutheran Church? Grace Lutheran Church here in Eau Claire has hosted me for five consecutive Wednesdays, and I was part of the regular Wednesday evening Lenten services. What they've asked me to do is to invite them to join me in thinking about what would it mean to journey with Jesus into, shall we say, the tempest of climate change? So how might we ask the question, does Jesus and the story about him, and maybe even in particular, the story of his final days, the journey to Jerusalem, does that offer us any guidance as we today, as people of faith, begin a journey that asks, how do we acknowledge and respond to climate change? A lot of religious folks, if you put that question before them, what they'll say is, okay, which Bible passages tell us to do that? I am pretty sure, David, that that is not exactly how you approach it. Well, you're exactly right. In fact, I began my very first Wednesday evening reflection there by admitting that I don't think that Jesus ever lost any sleep over climate change. It wasn't a reality that he had to wrestle with the way that we do, and so the way that I framed it was to ask the question, are there facets of Jesus' ministry that will be helpful to us as we face climate change today? It's our issue, it wasn't his issue, but that doesn't mean that there isn't wisdom in his words and deeds that can be helpful to us today. I don't want to let off people easily. If they missed the five sessions, then that's their loss. But would you care to share some of the tidbits, some of the things that you found helpful from Jesus and his ministry in thinking about climate change? So we can get an idea that this is actually relevant. A lot of people, of course, will say, you know, 2000 years ago, climate change was not the big issue. Occupation by Rome might have been a big deal, but climate change, environmental issues, though I will comment, by the way, I am almost positive that Jesus ate exclusively organic foods. I'm sure you're right about that. Well, if I think about what are some of the specific places and texts that I find helpful ideas, places that we might gain a foothold for things. And all of the texts that I picked for my reflections were drawn from passages that Luke places as part of his journey to Jerusalem material. So they're all things that Luke reports Jesus doing while he's on this journey to Jerusalem. And there's a couple times when he does healings on the Sabbath, and people are scandalized. Like you've got six other days, why are you spending the Sabbath doing these healings? The phrase that I used as part of the reflection that evening is that what Jesus in effect does is he drags Sabbath through the dirt, that he says that how we spend our day, which for Christians is Sunday, how we spend the day that we set aside for worship should be connected to the needs of this world. And so Jesus invites us in our worship to drag Sabbath or for us Sunday through the dirt. And I suggested, for instance, that I come out of a Lutheran tradition, so we have two sacraments, we have water that we use for baptism, we have bread and wine that we use as part of a Eucharistic meal. And I asked the people there, what would it mean for us when we remember every time that we dip our hands in the water in the baptismal font and we sprinkle it over a baby's head, that that water in the font has a kinship with what today are melting ice caps and warming oceans. The same water that we use as sacrament is part of the water that is imperiled by climate change. And part of what I try to do with things like that is make unexpected connections for people sitting in the pews. Maybe they don't have the answers yet, but they go away scratching their heads because they've been itched in a way that they never expected to happen. I'm pretty clear that there are some specific values that you would define as bedrock that make this kind of issue important. I mean, it's not only the fact that the ice caps are melting, it's also that water is related to the water in Flint, Michigan, with lead in it that by putting it on a child's head, you may be causing neurological damage. Obviously, there's some root values that you carry with you because of your Christian and your Lutheran tradition that are fundamental to thinking about the ecology in our connection to the world. Could you name some of those? Yeah, I tend to try to keep things short and sweet, so actually in the very last reflection that I offered, I used a Trinitarian structure, just kind of a threefold thing. So if we Christians who think of God as creator, as son, as Holy Spirit, if we think in that structure, God as creator suggests that all around us is creation and that therefore we interact with everything that's part of this world with a posture of reverence. I also lift up the idea that in the Hebrew creation story, God fashions Adam, and we hear that as the English name Adam, but God fashions Adam out of the Hebrew word for dirt is Adamah. So God pulls an Adam, an earthling, I even use the phrase dirtling out of the dirt, and we could capture that in English, although we rarely do, by saying that God fashions a human being out of the humus, and even making that linguistic connection reminds us that in the midst of creation, we humans have a kinship with the humus under our feet. So that's the first, I would say the first kind of core value is that everything for people of faith is creation, it's worthy of our reverence. Secondly, that the second person of God becomes incarnate, but the key thing for me is that the incarnation is not about God becoming human in an all powerful way, but that God becomes human in a vulnerable way. So incarnation invites us to become vulnerable in the midst of the world to one another and to recognize that incarnation says God keeps us company in the midst of that vulnerability. And then the third core value or insight is that out of that flows what Christians sometimes think of as sanctification as transformation as new life or renewed life, and that specifically that type of renewal of life when it's combined with a reverence for everything and an invitation to be vulnerable. Renewed life means that we do justice and that we show mercy, and we do it in ways that are vulnerable. It seems to me that those three core values, without getting specific, they set a framework that has a very wide horizon in terms of what we ought to be doing. Again, the way that I got connected with you is in the Chippewa Valley Post and that website, cvpost.org. The headline was Grace Lutheran was bringing a visiting theologian who brings an eco-spiritual approach to the Lenten series. So Grace Lutheran Church here in Eau Claire was bringing you in from the Twin Cities, St. Paul, where you're from. You're bringing this eco-spiritual approach. What do those words mean to you, eco-spiritual approach? I think you were just talking about it in kind of a practical way, but so many people, as soon as they think Lutheran, I'm afraid they're going to be thinking, okay, here's our text from the Bible for the day and this is why you have to give to the church. That does not seem to be your mode again. I think you're right. Part of what comes in Grace's invitation for me to come and be with them is an awareness. It's very vibrant among their pastor, Dean Simpson, but also among kind of a core group of the congregation that the changing climate that sits in front of all people today is something that kind of interrogates Christians and says, how are you going to respond to this? And Grace, through their pastor and this circle of leaders within the congregation, has said we need to step up to that challenge. We need to ask the question, what does it mean for us as a worshiping community? What does it mean for us to model a faithful response to climate change? Not just a civic response, not just a human response, but a faithful response. What does it mean for us to look into our own faith tradition and say that that tradition frames the way that we're going to respond to things? So they've invited me in. One of the things that I said from the word go is that I'm delighted, I'm honored, I'm driven to be on this journey and I don't have it all sorted out for myself either. So as a theologian, I've worked on a variety of issues and passions over my life, but I would say a concern for the environment, an interest in how we honor the planet that we live on has probably always been there in the background. For me now as grandfather to eight children, eight grandchildren with a ninth on the way, I begin to imagine time with a longer frame of reference because it's not what's my life going to be like 10 years down the road. It's what's life going to be like for my grandchildren, 10, 15, 20, what's it going to be like when my grandchildren are my age, 50 years out. And as I begin to ask those questions, asking questions about how do we take care of the planet so that 50 years out my grandchildren have a planet that they can embrace with the same enthusiasm that I do today is one of the driving forces for me right now. When I were on very similar paths, we're thinking similar directions. I would say that you probably in your audiences get people who are not on that parallel path. And some of them, depending how they relate to things like scripture to a Christian Bible, they're going to say we don't really have to worry about 10, 20, 30 years down the road. James Watt, Secretary of Interior, 30 years ago, he said we don't have to preserve the national parks because Jesus is coming back. After all, it says in the Bible, there's some of you, you'll be standing when I come again in glory. How do you respond to people who have that point of view? It is very clear that the Christian church exists in a wide tent with lots of variation from one end of the spectrum to the other. So I guess I respond to that dilemma maybe in two ways. One is that I'm certain that there are people who identify as Christian who are going to say that what I'm working on and the way that I approach things doesn't work for them. So one of my initial responses is perhaps to say that's fine, it's a big tent, and there are a lot of people inside that tent who are eager and hungry to figure out how do we make a response. And there's an awful lot of work to do with those people. So I don't necessarily feel like my first priority needs to be reaching out to the people who have the least interest in what I have to say. I'm going to put the best of my effort initially into reaching out to the people who are hungry and eager to listen to what I have to say. I think the second thing that I'd say is that the very nature of climate change is that as the reality of it presses in upon us, I think the number of people who feel compelled to make a response is going to get larger. What we might think of as the moveable middle, the people who aren't in complete denial but haven't figured out that this impinges directly on their life, those people are going to be pushed by shifting realities to the point that they say, "I really need some help and some guidance in this as well." I don't want to sound like I'm saying I don't care or I'm not interested in speaking to the people who are most opposed to me, but I do want to be clear, I'm a finite person. I have limited hours during the day, and if there are people who are eager to hear what I have to say and eager to work on journeying together in a response, that's where I want to put the time and the energy that I have. My voice you're hearing is David Weiss. I have a link to a website where you can find out about him tothetune.wordpress.com. More about that in a moment, but first I want to tell you that you are listening to Spirit in Action. It's a Northern Spirit radio production on the web at NorthernSpiritRadio.org, like organic. You'll have 10 and a half years of our programs for free listening and download. You'll find links to all kinds of our guests over the last 10 and a half years, theologian, social activist, deep thinkers, writers, and actually a lot of those come together in David Weiss, who's my guest today. So follow the link to thetune.wordpress.com. When you visit, also remember to post a comment. That is how we know that you're hearing us and we love to hear your voices too. Make it two-way by posting a comment when you visit. On our menu you'll see Donate. That is the way that this full-time work is supported. But even more important than supporting Northern Spirit Radio is the support of your local community radio station. We so need the kind of alternative voices, thoughts, and music that you get nowhere else, certainly not from the mainstream media. So remember to start out by supporting your local station with your hands and your wallet. David Weiss is here again. I got in touch with him because I saw an article linked on the Chippewa Valley Post website, CVPost.org. On that site they have all kinds of local news, and David Weiss brought to the folks of Grace Lutheran Church for the past five weeks on the eco-spiritual approach to the Lenten series. This isn't the only issue that David's explored in his writings, including Poetry and Songs. And there's enough to talk to David about that you'll want to come to NordSpiritRadio.org to listen to some really choice conversations about issues that I'll have posted as bonus excerpts. Sorry we can't fit them all in this broadcast, but we've only got 55 minutes, and David has much more value to share than that. So look for the bonus excerpts on the NordSpiritRadio.org site. The other major issue that you put a fair amount of passionate analysis into David is LGBT concerns. You put out a book and a CD called "To the Tune of Welcoming God," the hymns that are on that CD are mostly on LGBT issues. Why this focus and what, if anything, does it have to do with your eco-spiritual concerns? It's like that's a huge question, but it's an important question. In some ways, my connection with LGBT issues begins probably as a fifth-grade Sunday school kid, Lutheran Church in Michigan City, Indiana. I didn't know it at the time, but my Sunday school teacher was a gay man, very closeted gay man, but he led our weekly prayer with something that struck me intuitively as an authentic spiritual hunger. And to this day, I would say that my prayer life has been shaped more by the prayer that Dale modeled for me as a fifth-grader than anything that I've read than any other influence that I've had. Fast-forward, maybe a decade or so, and I become aware that Dale actually went away to seminary, and he was kicked out of a Lutheran seminary when he was outed by a classmate as gay, and fast-forward another decade or two after that. I'm in graduate school at the University of Notre Dame. I'm about 30 miles from my hometown, and my mom calls me to tell me that Dale has suffered a massive stroke. He's in his early 40s at the time, but deeply wounded by the church's rejection of him, finding himself without the ability to pursue the vocation that he's convinced that God has called him to. Dale, we would say today that he's self-medicated through a mix of food and alcohol over eating and binge drinking, and he suffered a massive stroke. He never recovered, and while I'm in graduate school studying Christian ethics, in fact, engaged in a PhD seminar where I'm looking specifically at Christian responses to same-sex loving people, I'm driving every two weeks, 30 miles, to sit next to Dale in a nursing home where he's now paralyzed on half of his body, and he spends the last, I think it's the last year and a half of his life in a nursing home bed. When Dale dies, he sees his impending death a couple months before it happens. I think he can feel his body giving out, and he asks me to preach the sermon at his funeral. He knows that I'm not a pastor, and when I begin to protest, Dale's response to me is to say, "His speech is slurred, but he says unmistakably to me, 'No, you preach because you know all of me.'" So I preached a sermon after Dale died, in which I knew that about half of the people at his funeral were his gay friends who couldn't understand why Dale couldn't just write off the church because it had wounded him so deeply, and the other half of the people were Dale's family and church friends who couldn't understand what was driving his overeating and over drinking because he'd never been able to come out to his family or to the church, and I had to figure out how do I offer a funeral message that gives hope to both of those sets of people, neither of whom are able to see the wholeness of who Dale was, even though it's a very wounded wholeness. When I think back on it now, there was something that shifted in me in being asked to preach that sermon and being engaged in graduate work in Christian ethics that said, "I need to somehow leverage what I know about Christian ethics to make sure that I never have to preach a sermon like that again." It was never on my bucket list of things to do, but it blossomed into some of the most rewarding and fulfilling work of my life. I fashioned myself as an essayist, but it became natural for me as one way to invite people in the pews to reimagine themselves as welcoming people to write hymn texts that would let them sing that story of welcome, and kind of almost like rehearse it in themselves because I am musically challenged. I can barely carry a tune. I can't write music. I can't read music. I was limited in a providential way to writing hymn texts that sit nicely on familiar tunes. So, for instance, one of them that I wrote, it's titled Hearts on Fire. The title comes from the two disciples on Easter evening who are walking to Emmaus, and they can't recognize the risen Jesus until he breaks bread with them. And then they say afterwards, "We're not our hearts on fire as he spoke." And in the words of this hymn, I imagine what is it like for those of us in worshiping communities today to find our hearts on fire as we begin to hear the spiritual journeys of LGBT people as they have walked with us. And the other thing that's very fun for me to do in this hymn is I take pieces of LGBT history, like the Stonewall riots, and I bring them into a hymn text that could actually be sung in a church community. And so, it's a way of setting up unexpected fireworks within Sunday morning hymn. So, David Weiss' song performed by Sarah K. Hearts on Fire. As if in the upper room, as if in God's holy womb, as we celebrate this meal, as God's welcome, we reveal. Hearts on Fire, Christ's desire that our faith be born anew, and the kingdom of our God be ever true, ever true. Here we gather, glad we say, Christ is with us here today. In the stories that we tell, hear the holy wind know swell. Hearts on Fire, soaring higher comes the dove on flaming tongue. Dreams and visions for our old and for our young, for our young. Once our people lived in fear, once our hope was hard to hear, once our lives were framed by fright, till that pentecostal night, hearts on Fire, holy choir of a most surprising tune. In the Stonewall cries of pride that distant June, distant June. From the alleys running scared, from the brutal, hate-laid bear, to a sanctuary to space, to the claiming of our place. Hearts on Fire, we aspire, find our missing body parts, and remember, every member whose we are, whose we are. From the moment that we dare ask another's life to share, bid the people gathered round as our lives in love are bound. Hearts on Fire stapled spires, tolling loud for lifelong love, witnessed by the church below and got above, got above. Now the one who knows all needs, on good soil so's good seed. From the ground some grain is lured to the table and the word. Hearts on Fire, Christ desire that this body be made whole, in the calling and the placing of the stall of the stall. The beautiful voice you heard singing is Sarah Kay, I've got to get her on my song of the soul show pretty soon. Hearts on Fire is the song The Lyrics, written by David Weiss, who's my guest here today for Spirit in Action, Thine, or Thine the Amen, Thine the Praise is the Tune, which I'm sure all of you knew off the top of your head. What about that hymn? In addition to hearing reference to the Stonewall riots as kind of the unexpected in breaking of the spirit, you'll see that this hymn text, written probably seven or eight years ago, it also in its last two verses, it lifts up this longing for churches to bless same-sex relationships, now their ability to bless same-sex marriages, and also God's luring of LGBT people into ministry, and those verses were written before either of those became reality, words hungering for the day when those things might happen, and here in 2016, they're not happening everywhere, but we see them beginning to unfold in front of us. That song is from To the Tune of Welcoming God, but there's a book, a collection of David's essays that goes with it. What I found particularly interesting, and what you were just pointing out, is the evolutionary change that's happened in our society since then. The first essays in this book are some 20 years ago, the world was a very different place, it was the time of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, it's still a very strong influence of AIDS, and there's still a evangelical decrying of the evil of homosexuality. So coming out at that time, as a gay person, was a very risky thing for people to do, you took your own risk by declaring yourself as an ally, and I understand that that had consequences for you. Yeah, I certainly wouldn't want to say that the consequences for me, they're not in the same ballpark even as the consequences for an LGBT person to come out and truthfully, fully name who they are in the midst of family and friends, but it is very clear that even as an ally, being willing to identify yourself right in the midst of an unfolding social movement involves risks. It involves possible, maybe not even active repercussions, but less advantageous opportunities in a career path. It involves, at different points in my life, members of my family, members of my church community, not knowing whether or how to continue to affirm the work that I was doing because it was significantly beyond where their comfort zones were at the time. And yet, as I said, this work that I've done, the writing, the interacting with people, helping to build this movement for change most directly within the Lutheran church, but I've worked in a whole variety of church settings around this. It's been, without question, the most rewarding work in my life, I have received far more than I have given. I have been blessed far more than I have experienced any consequences as a result of this. Are there concrete, specific kind of impacts that it had on your life to come out as an ally of LGBT folks? When you put the question pointedly like that, I can think of a couple concrete places where I have, I've experienced significant pain because of choosing to stand with these people and among them. Early on, when I was in graduate school, so this would be shortly after all, these are alongside the experiences with Dale in the nursing home, I was working on a PhD in Christian ethics and I was really driven and committed to writing a dissertation that engaged in conversation with how do we, as Lutherans, look at the LGBT people in our own communities and how do we think about that? And it became a huge source of conflict within my marriage. It certainly was not, it was a marriage that ended and it was not the defining reason that the marriage ended. But I was married to a person who, while very liberal in her own leanings, did not want to see me or our family become a lightning rod for being identified as a public ally. And she was convinced that it would make my career path very difficult. And I guess I can confess my piece in that is that I chose to write a different dissertation, one that I never finished because I decided that the conflict in the marriage would not be worth it at that point. Now ironically, what ultimately happened, so the marriage ends and the conflict over my being a public ally was one piece of that, but I eventually set aside that other dissertation. And I would say in many ways, the book to the tune of a welcoming God, this collection of essays that was written over probably 15, 16 year period, that collection of essays became my substitute dissertation. That's what I poured my passion into. And of all things, that book was published. While I was doing campus ministry at a Catholic college in the Twin Cities, I was given clear instructions not to talk about my work in campus ministry. If anybody invited me to speak at a church forum about this new book that I had out, I was told that I had to remove the name of the college off of my website so that I was no longer identified as teaching there. Ultimately, I would say I was squeezed out of employment in that setting because even though I'm Lutheran, it was viewed as too dangerous a thing to have a theologically articulate public ally working at a Catholic school. And that was back in 2009, so two examples of personal relationship and a career path that got bumped in a markedly different direction. And I have no regrets, but both of those were painful moments for me. So there have been real consequences for you. And, you know, we choose some of our consequences because we're doing the best that we can. And sometimes that means we're a bit timid and sometimes that means that we go crashing through the China shop like a bull. But I sense that you've taken a middle path in general, not being too timid and not trashing other people. You want to have conversations as opposed to lectures, I think. But there are places in the world where the consequences have been dire, have been crucial. You know, it's not only the original Christians who got martyred a lot all along the way. People who stood up against slavery got martyred, and those who were in slavery, of course, were being martyred. For gays in the United States, we don't think of too many of the deaths that happened, although, as you already mentioned, you have a mentor who essentially in his 40s died because of he was guilty of being gay. Not any harm you did to anyone else. One of your songs is about Uganda. I understand that Uganda has gone in a problematic direction. I try not to be too judgmental, but the judgment's there. Well, yeah. Thanks for that question, Margaret. Of all things, right now, as we sit here in your dining room, this is the three-year anniversary of a trip that I made to Uganda. I was actually in Uganda during Holy Week of 2013. My current congregation, St. Paul Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, we've had a vibrant, active, cutting-edge ministry to and with LGBT people for probably 30 years. But several years ago, I want to say it was maybe 2012, 2011, we began making overtures to try to partner with LGBT organizations in Uganda. Right now, homosexuality is illegal. There were efforts starting maybe five, six years ago to actually institute the death penalty in Uganda for acts of homosexuality. It hasn't come to pass, but it has stirred up cycles of outrage and scapegoating of LGBT people. So my congregation sent me to Uganda for about two weeks to meet with LGBT persons and to make some connections with a very tiny sliver of faith leaders who are willing to stand up on behalf of LGBT people in Uganda. And so I wrote this, "Him, preserve Uganda's future hope in response to that." And one of the things that you need to understand is that much of the rampant homophobia that afflicts Uganda today has come to them from the United States, from very conservative fundamentalist-driven preachers who don't find a very receptive message for their anti-gay rhetoric here in the United States, but they're able to fuel lingering colonial prejudices into very active flames of hatred in Uganda. In the hymn text, I talk about how kind of the potentially good missionary impulse was perverted, and I very intentionally picked a hymn tune because this text rests on the tune of America the Beautiful. It's a tune that Americans cannot hear without feeling all kinds of warm, fuzzy feelings, rightfully so rising up inside ourselves of pride and gratitude for what our country is to us. I link these words to that tune because I want us to feel both as an act of penance but also as an act of prayerful hope. I want us to feel that warmth for the people of Uganda, in particular for the LGBT people there. The song is "Preserve Uganda's Future Hope." David Weiss, written, performed by Sarah Kay. Beneath these bright and gracious skies, where hope is freely lent. Yet children watch through vacant eyes, as families are rent. The merciful bring justice now. Oh, hear our urgent plea. Preserve Uganda's Future Hope, and set her people free. By missionary zeal first sown, as hearts for Christ were claimed. But now against its flesh and bone is hatred thus inflamed. The merciful bring justice now. Oh, hear our urgent plea. Preserve Uganda's Future Hope, and set her people free. Oh, gracious God, take back your word from preachers on our shores. Whose lust for blood goes undeterred. And on your children pores, be merciful bring justice now. Oh, hear our urgent plea. Preserve Uganda's Future Hope, and set her people free. In Africa, your soul delights. So make her leaders brave, and guide the path toward human rights. And all your children save. Be merciful bring justice now. Oh, hear our urgent plea. Preserve Uganda's Future Hope, and set her people free. At last made on the day we seek, where love has not to fear. And every lover truth may speak, and find your kingdom near. Be merciful bring justice now. Oh, hear our urgent plea. Preserve Uganda's Future Hope, and set her people free. That song is from a CD called To the Tune of a Welcoming God. David Weiss wrote the words for that tune, for the hymn performed, sung by Sarah Kay. I get a sense from you that you see creation, and the gospel is being written daily. It isn't done and over with. I have to tell you about something just wonderful. I got a packet of things in the mail from David, including the book, and the CD To the Tune of a Welcoming God. Also included in there was a children's book called When God Was a Little Girl. Folks, it's great, and I would like you to say a little bit about that, David. Thank you. So this book, which is a pride and joy for me, really began kind of at the intersection of being parent to my daughter Susanna, and teaching introduction to Bible courses in a college classroom, and occasionally, more than occasionally, coming across a student who was determined to take the creation story, a seven-day creation story, with a sort of physical literalness, and going through mental gymnastics to make that story work as geological fact, rather than as spiritual truth. At the same time that I'm facing that challenge in the classroom, I'm raising a little girl, now three, four, she was five years old when I spun this story, who's going to grow up in a church where all of the pronouns are going to be stacked against her. That every time that God is mentioned with reference to a pronoun, it's going to be he. How does my daughter Susanna claim the full goodness of what it means to be in the image of God, if she is always a she, and God is always a he? And so in this story, I imagine Susanna asking me one day for me to tell her a story about when God was a little girl, and I respond by saying that when God was a little girl, she loved to do art projects, because Susanna at age five loved to do art projects, and so Susanna hears God with a she pronoun, and that God loves art the same way that Susanna loved art, and she's immediately able to see, that's how I'm in the image of God. Well, we retell the rest of the story of creation through this metaphor of God as a little girl doing an art project, Susanna kind of playfully joins in in unfolding the story with me. I'm able in that story to have God fashion human beings out of humus so that we feel our kinship with the earth. I'm able, because it's my story to craft, I'm able to imagine that when God creates the first human beings, it isn't one man and one woman, and then however they were, become the measure of how the rest of us are, but that God creates bunches of us, and some of us are lighter, some of us are darker, some of us are taller, some of us are shorter, so I build diversity into the goodness of creation from the very beginning, and I place us, we as humans, into creation as people whose real gift is to perceive the goodness that creation is, so we're not so much in charge of doing anything other than recognizing and referencing creation. The story is illustrated by a woman who at the time that the project started, she was a student of mine at Luther College, Joan Hernandez Lindeman, she comes up with illustrations for the story that are just perfect, and one of the decisions that she made was to image God as a little girl with different ethnic features on different days of creation, so that not only my own daughter, Susanna, but all kinds of little girls are able to catch a glimpse of themselves in the pages of the book. You know, that's underhanded, David, to make us cry, thinking about the beauty of that. It is a wonderful book, and this coming Sunday, I'm going to be taking it to the Quaker meeting to share with, we have three four-year-old girls who are regulars for them to have that story, I think will be powerful, so thank you for that. David's website, and you want to track him down to thetune.wordpress.com, if you go there, you'll find information about this CD, about the book, about when God was a little girl, you'll find it all there, and of course I'm linking it on nordinspiritradio.org. So the last song on your CD is actually about creation. You want to lead us into this song, David? So this song titled "God's Wisdom Calls to Us" is really, it's kind of my first foray, carrying a fresh hymn text into the service of creation. Most of the rest of my hymns have dealt with justice for LGBT people, but it felt to me like it's time to help congregations sing a new way of thinking about creation, and as you listen to this hymn, you will hear the story of creation unfolded in the Word, so we're really singing the Genesis story of creation, but in the refrain, we're hearing that it's that creation, which is God's wisdom calling to us, and then in the last two verses of this hymn, we fast forward from the start of creation to the present challenge in front of creation, and we hear that God's wisdom is not calling simply to us to say we're good, and God made us, but that creation calls to us today with a cry of lament and also with a cry of action. So we're going to end with one more song from "To the Tune of Welcoming God." David Weiss has been with us here today. He is a civilian theologian, maybe, working amongst the people, definitely of Lutheran extraction, lifelong Lutheran, but with his masters in theology and Christian ethics, and his creative bent, his powerful imaging, he does a lot to call us to a better relationship with the world, of eco-spirituality, and justice for all peoples, including LGBT folks. There's so many ways that living out divine will for a better world is wrapped up in what you're doing, David. I thank you for that, and I thank you for joining me for spirit and action. Thank you so much, Mark, for having me for the conversation. Appreciate it. So we end with the song, "God's Wisdom Calls to Us," lyrics written by David Weiss, sung by Sarah K. You'll find some very choice bonus excerpts on the NortonSpiritRadio.org site, really excellent parts that we just couldn't fit into the broadcast. Thanks to Andrew Janssen for production assistance. We end with "God's Wisdom Calls to Us," and we'll see you next week for spirit in action. In the hovering of the spirit or the formless watery, in the word that split the darkness, giving night and day their keep, in the ocean tides and valleys low and mountain ranges steep, God's wisdom calls to us. Through the teeming of the waters, where the fish and dolphin dine, through the greening of the forest, where the winding ivy's vine, through the plants that in their goodness bear both fruit and flower fine, God's wisdom calls to us. Sacred is the earth created. Sacred are the creatures also. Sacred are all peoples even. This wisdom be our cry. On the breezes where the wing it birds with gracious joy to soar. On the grassland where the lion sound the regal mighty roar. In the musty mossy bear cave in its hibernating snore, God's wisdom calls to us. In the whispered word of hope that dirt to kiss the earth and clay, in the breath that filled the lungs where our first kin and waiting lay. In the mystery of our destiny to be a mago day, God's wisdom calls to us. Sacred is the earth created. Sacred are the creatures also. Sacred are all peoples even. This wisdom be our cry. Now the fragile planet cries for help the creatures loud lament. The flora and the fauna fade, the web of life is rent. The waters bleed with oil as their salty spray is spent. God's wisdom calls to us. Comes today the clarion call to claim our kinship with the earth and to stem the rising poverty that marks too many a birth and to tell the money to forces of creation's priceless worth with wisdom let us stand. Sacred is the earth created. Sacred are the creatures also. Sacred are all peoples even. This wisdom be our cry. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. With every voice, with every song, we will move this world along. And our lives will feel the echo of our healing. You