We will be beginning with the #1 Best Selling (in Heaven!) novel Forgiving Ararat by Gita Nazareth. That’s Ararat, the mountain where Noah’s Ark landed after the Flood.

This post-modern novel was voted “Best Summer Devotional/Religious Read” by readers at Oprah.com.

In it, “A young lawyer dies unexpectedly and, arriving in heaven, learns she has been chosen to join the elite lawyers who prosecute and defend souls at the Final Judgment.”

Rev. Deborah and I have both finished reading the book and agree it is a book you will want to keep picking back up. Books will be available for purchase for approximately $10 – $12 each depending on how many people sign up for the group study. We will touch base with each other in September and begin discussion on October 7th.

Please look for a sign-up sheet downstairs on the bulletin board, call the office at 330-928-2139, or email theeaglesword@sbcglobal.net to add your name to the list.

- Tom Hopton

And kids wonder why their parents don’t pay any attention to them!

As you know, the word why used in this context is a subjective word. In other words, depending on the person asking, the answer may require many different answers based on the asker’s background.

I know our children used to ask “why” just to do one of two things: either to see how far they could carry the whys out or to just get our goat! Ornery little kids!

Yet I can remember doing the same thing to my parents. Mostly my dad! He had a diverse amount of knowledge. He was well read and could expound on many subjects. In fact, he encouraged reading!

When I was bored, I used to read the dictionary. Not just the definitions of all the ”dirty” words but just read it for knowledge. Then I would start asking questions. When I ran out I would start with the “whys” until Dad got disgusted and walked away.

The reason I am writing on this topic is kind of simple! I had lunch at Royal Buffet on Buchholzer Blvd. in Akron. When I was finished, my server brought me a fortune cookie. The message inside said, “Every wise man started out by asking many questions.”

Now you know it is not advisable to argue with a fortune cookie but darn it, I thought the quotation was a giant step from the truth! lf I had the opportunity I would have written, “Every smart man started out by asking many questions!”

In my humble opinion, there is a huge difference between being smart and being wise. You know the type of person I am thinking about! A person very   knowledgeable about many subjects on paper yet cannot express his/her understanding of what had been read!

In the Bible, many people were smart yet not wise. Jonah, David, Simon Peter, Thomas and Saul to name a few I can take from memory. I am sure you could add to that list with many more! People who were smart yet not wise!

God sent Jonah to Nineveh, yet he protested every step of the way! King David had it all but lusted after another man’s wife. Had him killed to get her! Simon Peter didn’t become wise until after the resurrection of Christ! Thomas had to shove his hand into the side of the Risen lord and only then did he acknowledge Jesus as God’s Son. It took the removal of blindness for St. Paul to be created!

Today, the national Episcopal church is in the throes of agony! WHY? Because we, as a loving denomination, are attenuating to be, not just smart, but wise! Wise! We are inviting any and all to become the best Christians we can be! Empowered to rise as far as an individual can go!

WHY? Because we believe like the bracelets said, WWJD. What would Jesus do? He invited everyone!

I know a couple churches that study the Bible to reinforce their belief that some of God’s human creation is an abomination! To me, that is not wise! It is not even smart! And most importantly, NOT TRUE!

From what l see and hear, St. John’s, Cuyahoga Falls, is on the right path toward being wise. I feel one day the rest of the church will begin the journey like St. Paul when he was Saul of Tarsus. I just pray it doesn’t take being driven to the ground and blinded before it happens!

Deacon Bill

God leads us and feeds us in the wilderness. Manna is a symbol for God’s provision. Manna falls overnight (when we aren’t looking), is good for one day only, and rots if we try to keep it over. We can expect that when God is leading us we will have to wait upon God’s generosity. Full satisfaction is not part of the package.

In the Wilderness we face our fears. Fear of being thirsty led to the first encounter. The people of God demanded water and later food. God delivered water from the rock, then manna, later still quail was given for food. Always there was enough provided for each day, nothing for tomorrow, except to cover the Sabbath. Fear for tomorrow is not part of a faithful life. We are asked to be aware of and thankful for today’s gift. Awareness brings with it the hopeful expectation that God will provide.

For more than ten years I prayed for and received all that l needed in order to grow in such a way that I was eventually chosen and ordained. In all that time there was no assurance that I would be ordained. Six years of undergraduate and graduate school in religious studies, then seminary. It was in that time that I looked at Exodus and the stories of wilderness walking for the first time, and came to terms with my fear that I was wasting my time. What looks like a done deal now, ordination, was an open question for a decade at least.

I learned to take the steps that God had for me now, and to keep taking them way past the time when I was afraid that I was wasting my time.

Endurance: Each gift was recognized and enjoyed as it came.

Gratitude: Each need was expressed in prayer that never quit.

Faith: God’s goodness was lifted up to encourage me.

Hope: Wilderness time was a time of rich growth for me.

We choose how we will respond to a situation of absence and loss. In this Wilderness time will we whine, gripe and groan because there is absence and loss? Will we come to terms with the way God does things? Will we learn to be grateful for what God gives even when those gifts do not solve all the problems? Will we pray for what we need?

Deborah†

            I admitted that “Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty“.  In American English, running away in order to have my own way was a sin because it put what I wanted first.  I should have consented to do what you, OH GOD, asked me to do in the first place.  Running away was the sincerest form of idolatry. That was as close to an apology as I could get in a sea serpent’s belly, and my God surely must have known it. 

            Then I got to the other thing she really wanted from me, my consent to go to Ninevah.  I admitted that my true loyalty would be shown by going to Ninevah as God had asked me to at the beginning of this story. 

            To make the sacrifice of Thanksgiving is to give thanks to God for the goodness of God in the midst of a fearful and scary situation.  This Thanksgiving is sacrificial because the events in which the sacrifice is made would naturally cause us to blame and not to thank.  You have heard my griping for several paragraphs now. Up until that moment of sacrifice I had been blaming, you heard me, and when I had accomplished the sacrifice of thanksgiving, I stopped.  By definition the sacrifice of Thanksgiving is made in our own hearts and means giving up whatever it is we want because God has something else in mind for us. 

            We all know that God’s resolve to save would accomplish the salvation of Ninevah, and not my preaching.  At the same time I needed to acknowledge that God was God for my own sake, and do as I was asked.

            I wrapped up my prayer with something that you can’t see in the printed version, not even in the latest printing.  What can’t be seen is the deep love and respect that years of working for God have brought me.  She knows me and loves me;  I know God and love God. I needed time in the great sea serpent to remember that love.  I couldn’t let her down, not when it counts.  I was pretty sure that we would never be the same if I forgot which one of us was God in this relationship.  When it comes down to it, I would face all of those Ninevites, one at a time or all together, because I love her.  It’s all the reason I need.          

            As I suspected true repentance and heartfelt consent seasoned with love were just what she was waiting for.  We’ve been together for decades now, and I know what she likes to hear.  I was wrong; God was right.  The fish spat me up on the shore just outside Ninevah.  Stinking to high heaven of fish breath and rotted detritus, I bathed in the sea and set myself to go into Ninevah.  Three days of fasting moved me along the trail.

So what is she waiting for?  Well, it might have been smelly and smothery, but there was nothing else to do but think in that place.  The last thing I remembered was Tiamat of legend, mouth opened wide.  Slowly it dawned on me that I really didn’t want to follow that train of thought. The belly of a fish?  I’m in the belly of a fish? New all time low.  This is unbelievable!  So I sat and fumed and fussed and griped until I ran out of steam.  There was no way to tell time in that place that was no place.  It occurred to me that moving around too much might cause me to be tossed  right back the way I came in.

When you pray to God regularly and listen for answers you start to wonder whether insights like that come from your brain or hers.  If from her, it is best to pay attention. So I sat and fumed, instead of my usual pacing with mild swearing.  She does not approve of the hard stuff.  So far it had been an unpleasant trip beyond any I had ever experienced or heard of, so I spent some time working my mad off.  By nature I am a grouse, so it took awhile.

When I quieted I went through our considerable history together. God isn’t hard to work for, but she just won’t take NO for an answer when it comes to the care of her children.  No, you do not want to mess with her when her heart is set on saving them.  Ninevites of all people!  She is going to be the death of me, yet.  Heathen, warrior people, those Ninevites. So I worked up another good mad.

My stomach growled loudly.  It occurred to me that 3 square meals were not on the plan for this luxury cruise.  I was not yet hungry enough to try any of the rotted stuff that was lying around me on the floor of that fleshy cell.  It was time to think about getting out of here.  So I laid aside my grousing and got to work.  It came to me after considerable pondering on being in the serpent versus being in Ninevah, that in Ninevah I could probably get a good meal.  Nice roasted lamb with fresh herbs and a browned loaf of bread, cup of wine.  It popped into my mind that a sensible man would talk nicely to the God who saved him, and see if a truce could be arranged.  As I said before, when something pops into my mind I often wonder where it came from, and this seemed like really good advice and rather like her.

It had to be a good prayer.  I know what she likes to hear after all these years in service.  After chewing on my mustaches for inspiration, I decided that what this prayer really needed was repentance, true repentance.  Can’t put anything over on the God of the mountains and the sea.

The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”

But Jonah ran away from the LORD and headed for Tarshish. He went down to Joppa, where he found a ship bound for that port. After paying the fare, he went aboard and sailed for Tarshish to flee from the LORD.

Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. All the sailors were afraid and each cried out to his own god. And they threw the cargo into the sea to lighten the ship.

But Jonah had gone below deck, where he lay down and fell into a deep sleep. The captain went to him and said, “How can you sleep? Get up and call on your god! Maybe he will take notice of us, and we will not perish.”

Then the sailors said to each other, “Come, let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.” They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah.

So they asked him, “Tell us, who is responsible for making all this trouble for us? What do you do? Where do you come from? What is your country? From what people are you?”

He answered, “I am a Hebrew and I worship the LORD, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the land.”

This terrified them and they asked, “What have you done?” (They knew he was running away from the LORD, because he had already told them so.)

The sea was getting rougher and rougher. So they asked him, “What should we do to you to make the sea calm down for us?”

“Pick me up and throw me into the sea,” he replied, “and it will become calm. I know that it is my fault that this great storm has come upon you.”

Jonah’s Prayer

“Throw me overboard.” What was I thinking?  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.  The boat was sinking and everyone was so frightened.  Throw me overboard, and the storm will cease.  I didn’t think they would actually do it.  Well, I certainly underestimated their desperation.  It really did seem a good idea until I remembered I can’t swim.  Not that it mattered.  Every time my head broke water, waves splashed into my mouth.  My choices were fight it and drown slowly or let go and drown quickly.  Let me think…

About that time the boat rolled over me and I lost all sense of up and down and sank like a stone.  The sea was quieter the further I sank, and I looked all around me taking in what surely were my last sights.  The tops of the long, trailing weeds were tossed by the storm and they swayed gracefully on my way down, clutching at me.  At last I settled in the relative quiet of the rocky bottom with weeds cradling my head in slimy fingers.

That was when I saw IT swimming toward me with its maw opened wide.  Fish hardly describes it. “What a life!”, I moaned. “Lightly drowned and served up for dinner to Tiamat, great Serpent of the deep.” Note to self, “Never argue with your God.  It is nice to have someone to pray to in your final hour.” My last thought before I passed out cold was, “Ninevah or Tiamat.  Lord, what kind of choice is that anyway?”

- Rev. Deborah Rankin

• Broom and large dust catcher
• Mop
• Windex and lintless cloth
• Pledge and soft cloth
• Heavy duty toilet cleanser
• Bleach and scrub brush

Broom to get into the corners of your soul and under the furniture to go after dust doozies of old hurt, bad memories, ill will and dreck in general with a dust catcher to haul them out.

Windex is useful to clean the windows of your soul so that you can see what goes on around you with more understanding and compassion for others.

Pledge makes the surfaces of the furniture of your life – what makes you – clean and bright. A soft cloth brings out the shine.

Heavy duty toilet cleanser – everyone has stains from close encounters with grime that require a bit of elbow grease and powerful cleaning action.

Bleach and scrub brush are needed for stubborn soap scale. Isn’t it odd that getting us clean makes the shower so stubbornly dirty? As we cleanse our souls we leave the place where living water flows bright and clean.

Lenten prayer: Dear Jesus when you help us wash, we are clean indeed. Be present with us in Lent and make it a time of shining light. Amen.

Deborah +



February 2010

The other day I was talking to a couple of my grandchildren. They had been sledding on a hill near their house. They both said the sledding was fun but the walk pulling a sled back up the hill was hard work! Apparently the day in question was very cold and the snow was dry and fluffy making it difficult to walk, let alone pull something like a sled uphill!

They also spoke of how there was a post at the bottom! First one grandchild, Sarah, then the other, Matt, said to me these words, “If you just let the sled go its own way, you would run into the pole!” I said, “A steel pole?” They both replied it was indeed steel but to keep people safe from banging into steel, someone dropped old tires over it! Matt and Sarah both replied those tires were not soft in the cold weather so you would get a bang when you hit it! I said it sounded like the hill had created a rut and everyone who sledded was in that rut unless they did something to get out of it!

I related to them the hill I used to sled on when I was their age. Yes, I saw the skepticism in their eyes as l talked about being young. Neither child had ever seen me younger than a senior citizen! But l went on, telling them of the hill from the old East school on the east side of Cuyahoga Falls. It had a sidewalk that led to School Street at Germaine Street. We sledded down that hill, through the intersections of Stone Street and Newberry Street, winding up in the field next to a coal company on the other side of Newberry. And there was an old sycamore tree that would get you if you didn’t watch out! I ran into it more than once! It was kind of like a rut that took hold of the sled and pulled it right into that old tree. Actually we worried less about any traffic on those cross streets than running into the sycamore tree. You see the years I sledded that hill ran from 1939 -1947. And during those years there was not a lot of traffic on the roads. We might see 2-3 cars in the several hours we were sledding.

So what sort of spiritual learning can we derive out of sledding down a hill? The liturgical year is rapidly moving toward Lent. Lent is the perfect time of year to look at the ruts we have gotten ourselves into over the past year. The ruts in our lives can come from every part of who we are. Lent gives each of us an opportunity to try something new! To take a new direction! To look at the old with brand new eyes! The 40 days of Lent can be a time for change. It can take us out of a wilderness, so to speak, and set us on a road that can lead us closer to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

The ruts we face as adults are different than the ones we faced as children yet they can be just as important to our growth as Christians. So maybe l will join you in the rut that carries us closer to the Cross of Christ. Just watch out for the old sycamore or the steel post wrapped with tires! God bless us all!

Deacon Bill



One story he told was of a poor man with three daughters. In those days a young woman’s father had to offer prospective husbands something of value — a dowry. The larger the dowry, the better the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry. This poor man’s daughters, without dowries, were therefore destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home-providing the needed dowries. The bags of gold, which St. Nicholas had tossed through an open window after he learned of the poor man’s plight, landed in stockings and shoes left before the fire to dry. This led to the custom of children hanging stockings or putting out shoes, eagerly awaiting gifts from St. Nicholas. He said that sometimes the story is told with gold balls instead of bags of gold. That is why three gold balls, sometimes represented as oranges, are one of the symbols for St. Nicholas, the gift-giver.

St. Nicholas dedicated his life to serving God and was made Bishop of Myra while still a young man. Bishop Nicholas became known throughout the land for his generosity to those in need, his love for children, and his concern for sailors and ships. In fact he is the patron saint of sailors, merchants and children!

Before he left, he gave each of the children three gold coins, which tasted just like chocolate when unwrapped. The children had left their shoes in the back of the church before the service and when they retrieved them after the service, they were stuffed with gifts!

We look forward to St. Nicholas visiting us again next year.

Advent is a powerful season for me. All   the jumbled images of Jesus in Advent invite me to think of Jesus’ coming as Baby, as Savior, Redeemer, Son, Risen Lord, and Judge in no particular order. Last week John the Baptist was a grown man telling us about the one coming after him. This week Jesus and John are still in the womb, Advent leads us to meditate on the whole story, just as the cycle of the story begins again with a Mom, Dad and Baby in a stable. Beginnings and endings tumble over one another, a sampling of chaos preceding the act of creation that brings us a Son. Jesus comes to us this season in whatever role we require.

I imagine Jesus coming in every kind and decent act done in His name. This practice has a powerful effect.   My experience of God with us is built in moments of   time, when grace is revealed. My faith stands on the firm ground of hundreds of kindnesses done to me, done by me. I experienced the love and care of the living God. Faith gains substance in reality through the simple practice of kind and decent acts.

In this   season there is so much to do that it is easy to become a human doing. We have a little list and are checking it twice. Heaven help us if I hold up the line. I have been cursed and cussed roundly this time of year for the sin of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stop.. Breathe. Do a   kindness in the name of Jesus. In that moment the spell of human doing is broken. I’m free! As we practice human being in the name of Jesus, Jesus comes. Not only do we gain strength by these acts, we are becoming something wonderful, a human being exactly as God intended.

This time of year the readings offer a variety of images of Christ coming to us. They shift again and again, from one to the next like slides in a show of summer vacation with little attention to their sequence in time. In the time we wait for the baby, we are also awaiting the healer and the judge. The multiplied times of visiting for Christ overlap one another like waves coming to the shore. This week two pregnant women meet with good news to share. The time for waiting is almost ended. Which means that the time for the revelation of Christ has come. A child is born; a Son is given. Do a kindness in the name of Jesus. Make it possible for others to see Christ revealed in you.

Merry Christmas!

Deborah+