Daily Word of Grace # 139 (September 25, 2020)

In her 2008 memoir A Freewheelin’ Time Suze Rotolo (the lady walking arm in arm with Bob Dylan on the iconic album cover of his classic 1963 album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) recounts her fascinating experiences in Greenwich Village during the 1960’s.  During the 50’s and 60’s Greenwich Village was the epicenter of avant-garde artistic creativity, where geniuses like Edna St. Vincent Millay, e. e. cummings, Allen Ginsburg, and yes, Bob Dylan, produced some of their greatest works.  Near the conclusion of her book she observes, “Greenwich Village became a destination because of its bohemian history, which encompassed…revolutionary art, music, poetry, and prose.  It was a community of people and ideas that soldered and welded itself together into odd structures pointing every which way yet maintaining a solid base with common beliefs in the validity of the voices of the outsider and the underdog” (363).  Sounds a little like the church to me, centered on the “common beliefs” of God’s unconditional love for the world demonstrated definitively in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Throughout his earthly ministry Jesus continually listened to “the voices of the outsider and the underdog”, including the ostracized woman at the well (John 4), the despised and diminutive tax collector Zacchaeus (Luke 19), lepers (Mark 1), on and on.  And today the Risen Jesus still has a special place in his heart for outsiders and underdogs.

Love and Prayers,

Dave