Be Angry (But Do Not Sin)

Be Angry (But Do Not Sin)

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

My mind works in strange ways sometimes. I have been to seminary, have an M. Div., am ordained, etc. There are times when I read scripture and I think about the layers of context behind the words. Of civilizations long past and centuries of theological wrestling with the text.

And there are times when I think about a cartoon character. We’ll get to that in a moment.

I have never really been comfortable with the emotion of anger. I don’t know if I internalized the teaching from the Sermon on the Mount that being angry with someone is akin to murder. Or maybe it’s because I am a fairly even-tempered person who was raised to treat others with kindness. All I know is that it has always felt wrong to be angry.

Yet anger is a natural emotion. You cannot avoid it. And honestly if you don’t get angry about certain injustices in the world, then you might come across as uncaring. For example, if a follower of Christ was not angry when a person was dehumanized or treated like crap then what are they even doing? Even Jesus, who preached that line about anger and murder got angry at times so there is obviously more nuance to this whole anger thing.

Peace in the Valley

Peace in the Valley

Chris Cox
Western Sketches

“I hope I see a bear!” This is what our youngest exclaimed as we wound our way down into the valley on our first evening at Yosemite National Park. His wish was granted ridiculously fast; like so fast that we would have tried to get him to wish for something even more grand using his heretofore unknown power of conjuring.

Before we even parked the car, we noticed that the two cars in front of us had stopped in the middle of the road. EA noticed one of the passengers was pointing at something in the tall grass to the left. I threw the car in park and the car practically tilted as we all looked left. Sure enough, there was a bear about 15 or 20 feet away. He appeared to be a little guy with his head just poking above the grass.

Yosemite Valley is wild. It is like no place that I have ever been before. There are bears and waterfalls throughout. Trees reach to the sky only to be dwarfed by massive rock formations like El Capitan. Words do not do Yosemite any justice. Pictures succeed better, but only by a little. You need to be a speck in the midst of that creation to truly grasp it.

11,096,000,000 Miles

11,096,000,000 Miles

Chris Cox

In a single year, the earth makes a 584 million mile journey around the sun. That number staggers the imagination and also provides some perspective. For the person who feels like they never go anywhere, the reality is that they travel over half a billion miles per year. It also let me come up with a fun number to celebrate the incredible woman to whom I have been married for now 19 years.

We have traveled 11 billion 96 million miles around the sun together. You have heard of “I love you to the moon and back”? That’s a 477,800 mile trip, so we are talking about to the moon and back 23,223 times. I’m throwing out these ridiculous numbers because it difficult to convey how much I love and appreciate E. A. Cox.

We have known each other since we were college kids. If you count our time dating, we have been with each other over half of our lives. Surprisingly she is not tired of me (I ask periodically just to make sure) and I have only grown more enamored with her.

Overlooks and Giants

Overlooks and Giants

Chris Cox
Western Sketches

I don’t know about you, but most of the time when I am trying to get from Point A to Point B, I want to get there as quickly and efficiently as I can. I want to take the fastest route. I want everyone to utilize bathroom stops so that we don’t need to needlessly take another one. That’s how I operate even when I walk. My then-girlfriend/now-wife kept encouraging me to slow down by adorably saying “Don’t be Point A to Point B. Be Point EA.”

All of which is why we made an official statement of travel to our boys at the beginning of our roadtrip: We will not let our ultimate destination dictate the day but will allow ourselves the freedom to stop and chase whatever we come across. If there is a beautiful sunset then we are going to pull on the side of the road and enjoy it. If there is an intriguing billboard advertising a destination, we might go see what it’s about. If there is a scenic route, we’ll likely opt for that over the quicker interstate.

This strategy naturally flies in the face of the question that natural law demands every child to ask of their parents: How long until we get there? There was an ETA, but we were holding that ETA loosely.

Grace for Catastrophes Big and Small

Grace for Catastrophes Big and Small

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

This is what happens virtually any time we are watching diving, gymnastics, or any Olympic sport scored by judges. The athlete will twist or flip or turn or do any combination of things that I could never have done at any time during my life.

Me: That was pretty impressive.
Commentator: Argh! Just a devastating mistake!

Usually the catastrophe is a toe not quite pointed the right way. A little bobble. A bit too big of a splash. It is often not anything blatantly obvious, but the judges’ scoring indicates that, yes, it was a devastating mistake. It is one of the reasons why the Olympics make for such riveting television (and why my heart goes out to almost every person competing): years of training come down to a moment when the difference between success and failure teeters on a razor’s edge.

What does that do to a person? Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip? (I did that solely because I have made some of you reading this think “mom’s spaghetti”) Seriously though, I wonder what happens to the person who messes up and lets that moment slip away. I would hope that they have people who comfort them and let them know they are more than that one moment. I hope that they can forgive themselves.

Getting Props from Paul Bunyan

Getting Props from Paul Bunyan

Chris Cox
Western Sketches

On our way through northern California, we stopped in a random CVS in Crescent City. I don’t remember why. We probably needed a charger for an iPad or something because that was ongoing issue throughout our trip. Regardless, thank goodness we did because of a super helpful cashier that I want to say was named Linda and so I will. Linda not only helped us find what we needed to in CVS, she more importantly pointed us to an excellent local joint that served seafood (Fisherman’s Restaurant) and randomly asked EA this tantalizing question: “So are you going to the Trees of Mystery?”

Trees of Mystery. What was it? We didn’t know. It was not on our agenda or even on our radar. But, come on, the place was called Trees of Mystery. What were the Trees of Mystery? Would we find Narnia? A haunted wood once investigated by Scooby-Doo? I don’t know if a place has been better named to pique my curiosity. After EA and I did some research, we decided this fantastical forest would be our first stop in the morning.

When you go on a long road trip, you are going to visit all types of places. There are state and national parks that are brimming with pristine beauty. Then there are the more kitschy tourist trap kinds of places that also contain beauty with a healthy dose of quirk. When you pull into the parking lot, you immediately know that Trees of Mystery is in the latter category.

Right out front, you are greeted by a giant Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. And I mean literally greeted as Paul Bunyan bellows out “WELCOME TO TREEEEEEEES OF MYSTERYYYYYYYY!” and lots of other stuff. There was obviously a guy somewhere who was watching people and talking to us through Paul via a loudspeaker because it sure seemed like he was interacting with the guests. We’ll get back to that.

A Mountain-Sized Table

A Mountain-Sized Table

Chris Cox
Weekly Lectionary

I have heard the story of Jesus Feeding the 5,000 if not five thousand times, then maybe five hundred. What can I say? It is a Children’s Sunday School Greatest Hit; a straightforward story with a built-in snack object lesson (goldfish crackers). Yet it is kind of funny how we can hear the most familiar stories in different ways, which is exactly what happened this morning in church.

If you have been on the internet at all the last few days then you are probably have read something about a scene during the Olympic Opening Ceremonies in Paris. There was a scene on a bridge with a bunch of folks in drag in a pose that looked somewhat reminiscent of da Vinci’s The Last Supper. It was also fairly reminiscent of a painting featuring a bacchanal thrown by the Greek god Dionysus, which given the origins of the Olympics, makes a lot more sense. Thankfully, people on the internet and cable television took the time to understand what was going on and a productive dialogue took place.

Just kidding. That would have been encouraging in this day and age, wouldn’t it? In reality, people got angry. Some thought the Olympics were making an intentional mockery of the Christian faith. The word satanic was bandied about here and there. It was something that the internet algorithms could seize on and amplify to turn an event that is ostensibly supposed to bring the world together into just another rage war.

And y’all, I am sick and tired of rage wars. They are often pointless and provoke people of faith in behaving in some most un-Christlike ways. Reading the responses from some corners of the religious community made me wonder why anyone would want to share a table with a Christian much less go into a church (there were also many Christians and people of faith who responded thoughtfully, alas angry usually gets more traction than thoughtful).

Dune

Dune

Chris Cox
Western Sketches

There are still parts of this country that I am just now learning about. These are places that are so fantastical that it seems like they feel like sprung up from the pages of science fiction. That is the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area: 40 miles of otherworldly sand dunes on the Oregon coast that served as partial inspiration for Frank Herbert’s foundational sci-fi series Dune.

Formed by wind and water and tens of thousands years old, these dunes are huge (some can be up to 500 feet tall) and constantly changing (more on that in a bit). I caught my first glimpse of the dunes traveling up Highway 101 and gasped to the point that everyone else in the car thought something was very wrong. Nothing was wrong. It was just a mountain of sand that I had only seen accompanied by the acting of Zendaya and Timothée Chalamet; except this dune was looming behind a Dollar General.

So what does one do when they are in such a place? Of course, you marvel at its beauty and meditate on the stunning array of creation on this planet.

You also get someone to hurtle you around the dunes at 65 mph in a buggy with a roll cage.

Detour Revisited

Detour Revisited

Chris Cox
Western Sketches

Places speak to us. Whether we are in our childhood home, a beloved camp, the beach, or wherever else, there is something about being in a special place that makes the past burst forth into life. In scripture, people were always erecting altars to remind them of the places in which they felt close to God. They could return to that place and remember. Or they could point to those stones and gift the story of those holy encounters to younger generations. If we’re fortunate, we get to go back to those places.

About a decade ago, EA spoke at a conference that gave us the opportunity to travel to Portland, Oregon. That trip began my ongoing love affair with the Pacific Northwest and introduced me to the glorious wonder that is Powell’s City of Books. It was also an interesting time in my life because I was at a personal crossroads. I had made the difficult decision to leave a vocation that I loved and was uncertain of what was next. This simmering existential anxiety came to a head and a holy place on that trip during a solo hike to the top of Multnomah Falls.

Our boys were little—one and three—when we made that first trip so we left them home with my parents. So it was really surreal when we pulled into the parking lot at Multnomah for the second time ever and so much looked familiar except there was an 11 year-old and 14 year-old piling out of the backseat. I would like to document that in the moment I thought, “Ah, yes, now the time has come to gift the story of this place to our children” but I was probably making sure that our sons had water bottles and hats.

Mixing Up Messages of the Cross

Mixing Up Messages of the Cross

Chris Cox

I have been thinking about the cross a fair amount this weekend. We are in South Carolina to celebrate 50 years of my Dad doing chalk drawings as part of his ministry (it should go without saying that what I write here represents my thoughts, so any beef should be directed at me). The drawing that he has done more than any other—and that he did this weekend—is a scene of three crosses on the hill of Calvary. The drawing is one of the indelible images in my mind.

Yet the cross is an inescapable image in the American South. It adorns churches on seemingly every block. One can find the cross on billboards and bumper stickers on virtually every interstate and highway across the region.

It was a bumper sticker that began to haunt me these last couple of days. And it was one I had already seen everywhere from Nashville to New York state. There is a decent chance you have seen a variation of it too. It is a series of pictograms that typically leads off with a cross, a gun, and a heart with the message “Pro God, Pro Gun, Pro Life” underneath.

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