It’s seems like spring in the Bay Area today. The air carries a lovely lightness, as though the cold had been somehow heavy. The cherry and plum trees have blossomed, as they often do in late February, and new growth is working through the shrubbery about our house. We’ve had plenty of rain this year, and the hills are the green of Tuscany in May, a soothing green of promise, happy to the eye.
And Lent calls us, even as the days do truly lengthen, calls us to prepare for Easter.
I’m working slowly on my additional memory work for the season, John 1:1-14, allowing the words to move into my soul, become part of me. In him was life, and the life was the light of the men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. I love that this is the Gospel for Christmas Day, when the word did indeed become incarnate. I’ve revived earlier pieces learned in other Lents, golden melodies heard more clearly each year: Psalm 139, the Ash Wednesday Collect, the Te Deum. We move through Lent, out of the dark and into the light.
Darkness and light. Today at Saint Peter’s the Epistle (Ephesians 5:1) was about walking as children of light by obeying God’s commands, that with Christ’s light this is possible. The pairing Gospel story (Luke 11:14) tells of Christ casting out demons, a true exorcism. Our good Father Pomroy explained that in the early Church, the Lenten season was a period of instruction for catechumens leading to their baptism on Easter Eve. Only after baptism could they partake in the mysteries of the Mass. On the first and third Sundays of Lent, evil spirits were cast out as part of this formation. Remnants of those days of exorcism remain in today’s baptismal liturgy when the priest asks: “Do you denounce the devil and all his works…” This slow revelation of the mysteries of the Mass was called disciplina arcana, or secret teaching.
Exorcism, demons, darkness. Do demons exist today? I believe they do, taking many forms, and always seeking a secure place in my own little heart. How do I exorcise them? How do I shine light on them to make them scatter? I cannot do it on my own. I can only say yes to Christ, allow him to wash me clean; allow him to live within me.
And to say yes is to receive him in the Eucharist, a mystery those catechumens knew so long ago. Through the communion of believers, baptized into the Church over two thousand years, we all partake of a great host of light.
I left Saint Peter’s this morning, renewed, cleansed, en-lightened, having swept and brightened the dark corners of my soul. I stepped out into the nearly spring day, the sun warm, the newly green leaves rustling. The world, once again, had been reborn. I had been reborn.
Saturday, February 27, the sirens wailed at six a.m. all across the islands, we later learned, but to us in rural southern Maui, in a cottage too close to the sea, the alarm came from a low flying plane along the coast.
The sun was just coming up over the eastern horizon, where the sea meets the dawn. It was a remarkably clear day, and the dome of blue would have meant blistering sun, but we knew the weather would change. Our hotel had informed us by letter and visit with a rap on the door early in the dark of that morning, so we were warned. We had planned to fly home, so we were busy packing, and now we wondered where or when we would fly, if at all. Perhaps we would be evacuated with the others, who had been told to move to higher ground, to, indeed, Fagan’s Cross, the lava cross on the promontory on the side of Haleakala.
The uncertainty weighed heavily as I looked out to sea that early morning, out to the bright sun, the rugged lava coast, the green fields. My novel, Hana-lani, set here, celebrates the setting and the culture of this traditional community, its peaceful and friendly way of life, its embrace of family, both near and far, and writing the story had deepened my love for these folks. Everyone here is ohana, family, and everyone is cared for. I prayed for these people who had given us so much over so many years. I prayed they would be spared this terrible wave that was rolling through the seas from distant Chile. I prayed for those in Chile too, who had been victims of these terrible rages of nature.
Not for the first time, the fragility of life danced before me, as though the earth of my own world shook a bit, became less stable. I could be a person living in Chile. I could be a resident here in Hana as the waters rose. One day it could be me.
And would we be able to return home? Would the roads be blocked, the planes grounded? Would utilities and basic serviced be shut down?
We moved ahead, one step at a time. The old red fire truck, now the hotel shuttle (a ‘39 Packard) delivered us to the Hana airport, where, in spite of everything, the propjet arrived from Kahului. We boarded and strapped ourselves in, and lifted into the air, flying low along the coast, amazed at the clear day, the absence of any signs of trouble over the waters. Cobalt blues rushed against the black cliffs, and the deeply green flanks of Haleakala rose to the blue dome of a sky. Paradise.
Arriving at the Kahului airport, so quiet at 9 a.m., we joined the waiting lines to check in, slowly moving through the minutes of the morning, praying for Hana. The wave was due to hit Hilo at 11:15. The airport lights dimmed, the water, we were told had been shut down, the restaurants closed.
TSA still screened us carefully, and by 11:30 we had reached our gate in the terminal. Folks peered through the wide windows toward the sea, anxious. Would a wave engulf the airport for surely we were sea level? They said no, but how did they know? Images from movies and news footage passed through my mind, Southeast Asia a few years ago, the Titanic. The tension in the air was tangible, and we made small talk with others waiting, glancing toward the horizon, which we were sure was growing darker and darker. As noon approached, we began to feel safe again, as we heard reports of mild waves, nothing unusual. The world began to right itself around us. Now we worried – would there be a plane? Would there be crew and pilot, for the roads to the airport had been closed.
The plane arrived, the pilots arrived, and we headed home for San Francisco, thankful that Hana had been spared, and now praying for those in Chile.
We hiked up the long trail to Fagan’s cross this morning, taking a chance on the rain. Dark clouds hovered mistily over Haleakala, but patches of blue sky emerged over the sea. We walked between two weather worlds, up through the pastures, grateful the cattle were peacefully distant and not commanding the trail as they sometimes do, their dull forceful eyes challenging you to continue.
The path rises steep and straight at first, dividing the grassy lands, then turns gently to the right, to circle and skirt a promontory emerging from the hillside. You can see the cross there, atop the cliff, its simple lines strong against the mountain and sky, formed from giant lava blocks, a massive creation.
When Paul Fagan from Oakland replaced the sugar fields of Hana with cattle lands and created a working ranch, he slowly revived the failing economy of the area, for Hawaiian sugar could no longer compete with other producers around the world. When he died in 1960 his wife erected this cross in his memory. It stands as a witness to faith and family on the side of the volcano, between the sea and the sky.
We drew near the cross as we followed the path around the hill, then approached the sanctuary, an open porch area before the cross where Easter sunrise is celebrated. Torches line on either side of the massive cross, and I tried to imagine their flame lighting the dark of early dawn, the huge cross in the center, my gaze on the distant horizon over the sea where the sun would slowly appear.
In my novel Hana-lani, Nani-lei comes here to pray for Hana and her people, her family, her children. When I visit Fagan’s cross, I think of old Nani, her wisdom, her sacrificial life. Soon, I hope, Nani’s voice will be heard by others as well, for her story will hopedully be published this year. As I looked over Hana today, standing next to the thick base, and protected by the broad arm of the cross, I prayed for my family too, and this lovely town spread below me, nestled between land and sea. I prayed for those I knew were struggling with life-changing decisions, that they would bravely choose life in the face of a dying and despairing culture. I prayed for our parched world, that our dry bones would be healed, that our culture of life and freedom would be renewed.
And I thanked God for Mrs. Fagan’s cross, it’s witness.
As we descended the steep hillside through the meadows, the rain began to fall, lightly, blown from the sea by a strong warm wind, pushing the clouds back up the mountain. I knew that, in the end, the cross would not be defeated. God would breathe his life into our death.
We headed for Hamoa Bay this morning, following the cattle path through the pastures.
Careful of the meadow muffins, we meandered along the flanks of Haleakala, often pausing on the grassy slopes to gaze down to the sea – the town of Hana nestling around Kauiki Head, the promontory of rock said to have been Queen Kaahumanu’s birthplace. It was a lush, green view, the forests of hau and hibiscus, the palms tall and straight and gently waving, the Cooke pines steepling the sky. All was green and more green, from light to dark, down to the blue sea that stretched as far as the eye could see to a distant horizon curving the edge of our world as we turn so slowly.
The path led us through an arbor of shade, along a recently repaired bridge, and over a dry riverbed, too dry, they say here. In November, the gully was a torrent of water running to the sea, but today there was nothing.
Finally, we turned down toward the cove called Hamoa Bay, following the paved road through a seaside neighborhood, to steep stairs descending to the beach. Waves crashed on the black sand, and surfers rode the glassy surface, racing the foam to the shallows. A few folks stretched out on lounge chairs, others unpacked picnics on blankets. We listened to the roar of the sea meeting the land, caressing it, retreating again, meeting, caressing, retreating…
I watched the water and the land dance to the rhythm of the tides, and recalled the line from the Psalm, “The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land….” Here in this dramatic, poetic world, one is full of the mystery of creation, the mystery of the greatest dance of all.
This last Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, we flew along the coast in a Cessna ten-seater, low and hugging the rugged cliffs, the foam crashing against the black rock. Haleakala, the dormant volcano, rose above the cliffs, its green flanks sloping to the sea. Beyond Haleakala an unusually blue sky filled the heavens, and now, at 4:30 in the afternoon, shadows began to form as the sun moved down toward the horizon. The plane droned on, its engines whirring, the occasional bleep signaling information to the pilot.
Kahalui to Kona is about a fifteen-minute flight, and we had the plane to ourselves. We had checked in by phone from the airline counter, and the pilot had weighed out luggage and loaded it into the hold. We climbed up the folding steps to the low door, found the row of single seats, each by a window. The seatbelts strapped across the shoulder and the lap, clicking together. We taxied and slowly lifted, watching the the town and farmlands diminish and heading south over the sea. I peered out the window, under the wing, to the verdant green, the white-capped sea, and the amazing coastline cliffs zigzagging to Hana.
My fourth novel, Hana-lani, awaits release by the publisher, OakTara, and as my husband and I flew to the rain forest village in southern Maui, nestled along the coast with a sunrise over the sea and a sunset over the volcano, I heard in my mind many familiar lines, seeing the poignant scenes that form the novel: the plane ride of the young woman from San Francisco, the passage from city to rural, a movement that changes her life forever.
We have, like Meredith in Hana-lani, retreated to another world, a simpler world of land and sea, of sky and mountain. The trade winds seem to own this earth, and we watch the sky for signs of change – clouds moving in, clouds moving away, the sun out, the sun covered, the shades of light coloring the sea and the mountain in infinitesimal shades of greens, grays, blues. For indeed, all takes part in the sea, the mountain, and the forest in between. We, as humans in this lush, both wild and gentle, landscape, are part of it but at the same time are observers from outside. And such a world to observe.
We have settled in to a cottage on a hillside of grass sloping to black cliffs and pounding surf. Wind and weather surges, rain pounds our roof at night, sun burns through the moist air of day to blister our thin city skins. We watch and wonder, in a world of mysterious and marvelous color and movement.
We are also traveling through Lent, and have retreated here to a desert of sorts, one away from the hustle of the everyday. We shall walk and swim. We shall dine on a verandah on deck chairs. There is no TV in our room, no newspapers, no easy Internet. I shall say my Lenten collect, engraft Scripture onto my heart and mind, and pray for guidance in this holy time. I shall also work on my current novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Melody, as I hear the notes of my novel in waiting, Hana-lani, echoing around me in Hana.
May God guide us in all things, each in our own way, this Lent 2010, as we prepare for the great festival of Easter.
The colors of sea and sky meet the horizon, and volcanic ash, hardened into lava formations, rises in sharp cliffs and spreads in vast fields. Breezes turn into winds as white caps on high surf pound the gentle shore, thundering, thundering, thundering…
Life merges into death, as the ancient world collapses into ash, and the new world faces middle age, seeing its own aging, its own death, its own new life.
John 1:1-14 - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.” Here, all creation celebrates the Creator, the Word moving over the waters.
We swim, careful not to be pulled out to sea by powerful currents. We walk, careful not to stumble on the sharp rock. We cover ourselves, wary of the sun burning our skin. We know we are witness to the glories of the created world, and testify as well to the deadly. It is a beautiful world but one oblivious to man, a world bent by Adam, corrupted by Eve, yet redeemed by Christ for those who believe.
Our bodies crumble, age, turn to ash as we begin this Lenten season, watching the children play in the shallows.
And on Ash Wednesday my little book, Offerings, was awarded finalist in the Reader Views Literary Awards. We wait now for March 12 to find out the placing - 1st, 2nd or Honorable Mention.
I am immersing myself in the Gospels, those first-century accounts of the Son of God’s time on earth, and reading about Mary Magdalene, as I move slowly through the new words of my new manuscript, The Magdalen Melody. ”The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us…” I pray that His Word will dwell among mine, as I engraft John’s witness on my heart, into my mind.
Ah, St. Valentine’s Day!
This year this lovely festival of the saint and martyr, the celebration of love with roses, cards, and chocolate, coincides with Quinquagesima, the third Sunday of little Lent, the three weeks before Lent. And the Epistle today was about love.
St. Valentine is a figure shrouded in time, but nevertheless a real person who lived in the third century, martyred under Claudius. There were two Valentines of legend – a bishop from Terni and a Roman priest, and his conflated story has become intertwined with legends of mating and courtship in the medieval world. It is said he was imprisoned for helping Christians, in particular blessing their marriages, and for not worshiping the Roman gods. He was martyred for worshiping the God of Love, Christ Jesus.
The Epistle today was the stunning passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, defining love:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
We are out of town for a few days, staying on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii, on our own retreat of sorts, and weaving our own bonds of faith, hope, and charity (love). Today looms with great joy, in its themes of sacrificial love, the beginning of the season of Lent in which we seek to truly understand what love is all about, to understand, to know the love of God and how it weaves through creation.
St. Valentine, I believe, understood that love, was willing to die for that love. He experienced the resurrected Christ, the reality of God with him, and among those early followers. For in the end, I am beginning to understand as well, as I research the first century for my novel-in-progress, that it is the resurrected Christ who is the historical figure, the figure we can say changed the world. From that point we can understand Scriptures and all that happened before.
Ash Wednesday nears and we prepare for Lent with Valentine’s Day, a Pauline festival to be sure, as we enter the greatest of all mysteries, Love, a love that never fails.
Happy St. Valentine’s Day, and Happy Quinquagesima, and may your Lent be a loving one…
We celebrated our twenty-eighth wedding anniversary yesterday, and as I entered Saint Peter’s Church this morning my eyes were drawn to the purple altar hangings of Pre-Lent, that short three-week season in which we begin the journey of penitential sacrifice in preparation for the great festival of Easter.
Marriage too is largely that journey of love, the giving to another, the sacrifice of time and self. In the journey, of course, much is received as well, and I often think where the two overlap – in that land of giving – bliss abounds.
As I mention in my recent novel, Inheritance, set in Lent/Easter, the ancient season of Pre-lent refers to the three weeks before Ash Wednesday: Quinquagesima (fifty days before Easter), Sexagesima (sixty days before Easter), and Septuagesima (seventy days before Easter). While Quinquagesima is indeed fifty days before Easter, the latter two names are not accurate, since they actually fall on the fifty-seventh and sixty-fourth days before Easter respectively. The reasoning is unknown, but it is thought these Sundays were linked to Quinquagesima in a general way. Pre-Lent is a time to consider what I might give up and what I might take on for the forty days of my Lenten discipline, forty days reflecting Christ’s forty days in the wilderness, his time of preparation as well.
And why give something up or take something on? Such a discipline trains us to love, trains us to say yes to God’s life in us, around us, and for us. We are spiritual athletes in training. My usual sacrifice is sweets and meats, and I look forward to Sundays when my Lenten rule doesn’t apply, being a resurrection day of celebration. My Lenten rule is a real sacrifice for me, difficult and never totally successful, so that it leaves me room to grow.
A particularly wonderful rule I have recently discovered is to memorize something from the Psalms or the Prayer Offices in our Book of Common Prayer. The Venite, the Te Deum, and the Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100) from Morning Prayer have become a beloved part of my daily prayers, and during Lent I return to the Collect for Lent, “Almighty and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made…” Last year I added the touching and lovely Psalm 139, “Thou has searched me out and known me…”. I shall return to these now familiar words and this year add something else, not sure what, but I think it might be the first few lines of John, “In the beginning was the Word….” Mystifying, profound, poetic. Perfect words for my heart and soul, particularly as I go deeper and deeper into my fifth novel, researching the first century documents of Christianity.
I’ve found that these phrases learned by heart, far from becoming rote, enter me, making my conversation with God more vibrant, more living. The time and effort are repaid a thousand-fold, texturing and enriching each minute.
Indeed, the love we journey into in Lent, even now in Little Lent, trains and purifies us, but also fills and fulfills us, as we travel into the love of God himself, and meet, as St. Paul says, “the unsearchable riches of Christ.”
Today may be Sexagesima, but it is also Super Bowl Sunday, and well trained athletes compete on a field for a grand prize. We too run the race, test ourselves, train our hearts and minds. We train to love, and in the training, are loved by Love itself.
We missed church today.
We missed the incense, the singing, the glorious praise of God. We missed meeting Christ on the altar. We missed our family of God, the Body of Christ.
Yet God was with us as we gathered with other family members to celebrate my mother’s 90th birthday. He blessed the day, blessed our gathering, and poured His grace into our time together.
We gathered in the afternoon between storms as multi-gray clouds moved across broad skies under Mount Diablo. We moved outside to take a family picture on the wet lawn, the green hills rolling behind us. We laughed as we arranged ourselves, cousins with mothers, sisters with aunts, my mother sitting between her two sisters on chairs in the center. It will be a picture to remember, a day to revisit. One day these children will explain to their children who we are, why we are there, why we were gathered under the mountain.
It is these moments of celebration, I thought, that pull our disparate family together from time to time, as though pulled by a magnet to a center where we all admit our connectedness.
Is the family disappearing, I wondered. Many write that it is, that the family and the Church, the two great pillars of our civilization, are cracked and falling, as though Samson stands ready to pull them down. Without these institutions the State must step in and rule more forcefully, must decree morality, must, in the end, become tyrannical in its power. The family and the Church for centuries have counterbalanced government and that balance is now threatened with the fragmentation of the family.
The cracks are apparent in the pillar of family, to be sure. With the acceptance of birth control, particularly the pill, marriage became divorced from procreation, so that children are no longer intrinsically tied to their biological parents. The effects of birth control were reinforced by fertility treatments and creation of children in laboratories. It is a short step from these immense social changes to easy divorce, multi marriages, same-sex parents, indeed to polygamy and to incest, although the latter are still taboo in our society, probably not for long. These are major cracks in the family, and when conservative folk decry gay marriage, it should be considered there are large issues here, issues affecting the foundations of our democratic culture.
So we gladly gathered together this cold day in January. We planned, cooked, decorated. Balloons bobbed to the ceilings, tied with crepe streamers and foil, and white roses bunched in tall vases alongside white tapers. I watched the children play inside and outside, the adults swirl in chattering groups, sharing their lives with one another, their mingling a kind of incense weaving through the rooms of my house. We nibbled on appetizers, sipped bubbly drinks, took our family photo, lunched from the buffet of chili and crab and salads and sandwiches. We set out the cake and sang Happy Birthday, my mother wondering what to wish for, having forgotten.
We gathered to testify to time, to family, to the miracle of creation, and God’s Spirit wove through us. Soon each of us will reach the end of our time-journey, at least on this earth, and others will gather and witness to these moments of passage. We shall journey on, to the light, to the source of all this mingling and incense, laughter and roses. We shall journey to Love itself, to God.
Entering a church is, as anthropologist Margaret Visser says, “crossing the threshold.” We move from the secular to the sacred, yet in some mysterious way, in that space, the sacred redeems the secular. When we leave, the secular has been infused with the sacred.
Today the Gospel lesson united the two worlds, as sacramental action does, in the water that is turned to wine in the wedding feast at Cana. Thirty-gallon jars, our preacher said, were full of water for the rite of purification before the feast. Christ changes that water to wine and in the changing he purifies matter. Just so, our wine of the Eucharist, becomes his blood. Like those guests at the wedding, we too know the joy of the feast, the great banquet in Heaven, as the sacred infuses the secular, as the divine penetrates the material world.
The union of the Creator with his creation, this ongoing healing of the world, seemed appropriate for this last Sunday in Epiphanytide, this time of manifestation, of vision, of seeing. Soon we shall approach Lent with the little season of Pre-Lent. We shall follow Christ as he journeys through his time on earth, his passion, death and resurrection.
We are in mid-winter, with steely skies and icy breezes. Mount Diablo was dusted with snow this last week, following torrential rains and winds. But the days lengthen, nights contract, and a few flowers have appeared in my terra cotta pots. Time beckons us away from the Christmas crib and the astounding revelation of God come to us. Time pulls us into another year of weaving our lives with God, another year of healing and transformation, another year of discovering who we are meant to be.
During this Epiphany season I have been pondering the nature of truth, how we know what is true and what is false, what is real and what is fantasy. Is everything I see and experience simply my own dream world, my fantasy, my wishful thinking?
Clearly we live our lives as though scientific truth exists, or we could not function from day to day. We count on scientific theories about invisible realities, evaluate our experience, and trust our authorities. Just so, in the realm of faith, we count on religious theories about invisible realities, evaluate our experience, trust our authorities.
It’s been raining steadily today, and the olive trees, still leafy and full, sway in the wind as they drink in the water from the heavens. The old oaks have lost their leaves now, their craggy crooked limbs winding into the steely skies. The wind rises, turning the rain into a storm riding the green hills of the East Bay.
St. Peter’s Oakland was warm and inviting this morning, as we came in from the windy wet to the red carpeted nave and chancel, the sweet Madonna and Child with its bed of flaming votives to the left of the welcoming pulpit, the careful steps leading to the gray-and-white marble altar, the vast red brick apse, the tall flaming candles honoring the Reserved Sacrament in the tabernacle. We knelt and gave thanks.
An elderly priest celebrated the Eucharist today, his memory reaching back for each word of the Eucharistic prayers, and as I took part in the ancient liturgy, I thought how ritual helped us with truth, how it ensured the truth was preserved through two thousand years. Seeming dry and formalized to some, ritual sets boundaries on belief, so that the codifying itself passes on a reliable testimony to what happened in Palestine that first century AD. Many would try and change the account of who Jesus of Nazareth truly was, but through creed, prayer, and ceremony, the truth was preserved by the believers, the Church, the Body of Christ, year upon year.
Our preacher this morning spoke of the manifestation of Christ in his baptism by John as told in the Gospel lesson today. Jesus, baptized for and as mankind, allowed all of human nature to participate in His baptism. We partake individually in Christ in our own baptisms, he said, and now it is our turn to make Him manifest to the world. For in Christ, we can do all things, as the Epistle tells us today.
The lessons too were part of the ritual, were designated for this Sunday, and in general the preacher preaches on the lessons. More codifying, discipline, structure. But in the fifty-two weeks of the year, I know I shall hear all of the major lessons, experience the major epiphanies, the truths, the manifestations of God to Man. And I am thankful.
I am thankful once again for the Church, the Body of Christ, that has preserved these truths about the Son of God coming among us. Loving us. Redeeming us. Through time two thousand years ago, year by year, to the present, on the altar.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Eucharist and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; http://www.anglicanpck.org/.
I once took piano lessons. I recall placing my fingers on the white keys, readying myself for the first notes. Now I place my fingers on the black keys of my keyboard and ready myself for the first letters. Notes and letters are both signs, symbols that link us, communicate to us, through our hearing, our seeing, our thinking, our feeling. They are manifestations of something outside ourselves. They are the tools of art, for they manifest and interpret our world and man’s place in it.
I was thinking this week about truth and what it is and how it is communicated and how one discerns the notes, the letters, the meanings. History is a compilation of signs, written accounts, oral accounts, often a mystery to be solved. What actually happened? Why? How? When?
Epiphany is the celebration of Christ’s manifestation to the world, and today, the First Sunday after Epiphany, our Gospel reading was about his manifestation in the Jerusalem temple at age twelve, when he astounded the priests with his wisdom. Wednesday’s reading, on the actual Festival of Epiphany, told of the Wise Men visiting the Christ Child, bringing him gifts. They were the scientists of the day, those who studied the universe, the stars, for signs in the heavens. Heaven reflected earth; the star that appeared in the East was portentous, a sign of a great event. A king was born. These magi brought gold for his kingship, frankincense for his Godhead, and myrrh for his burial. We too honor his royalty and his divinity. But most of all we are thankful for his death, for his suffering and dying could only occur by taking on our humanity. God became one of us in human history; he knows the suffering of the flesh; we suffer too in our flesh. With his resurrection we rise, our own wounds are his.
Epiphanytide includes other manifestations of Christ’s appearance among men: his baptism in the River Jordan by John; the water turned to wine at the wedding in Cana. The portrait of Christ takes shape as broad strokes reveal him.
Such love to come among us like this. And not only two thousand years ago in Bethlehem, but today he comes among us as well, suffers with us, heals our wounds. He lives.
How do we read the signs? How do we interpret history? The evidence is plentiful for those who can see, but why do some see and some remain blind? Why do some hear the music and others remain deaf? I do not know. Free will. The Fall. The activity of evil in our world, blinding us.
We can only witness to our own lives. I know that faithfulness brings vision. Weekly worship and the Eucharist, with all of its marvelous signs and wonders, feeds and strengthens, gives sight and hearing.
Today at St. Peter’s we removed the red poinsettias from the altar. We packed away the crèche figures and the green wreathes and swags. We have been given Christ in the Festival of Christmas. Now we must proclaim his signs and wonders in the Festival of Epiphany.
We joined one another afterwards to celebrate two birthdays in our Body of Christ, signs in themselves of life and death, as we mark our passage through time with these happy yearly rituals. For birthdays are signs of the gift of life and the time given to each of us on this earth. They are manifestations of the love of God, personal Epiphanies.
As St. Paul writes in the Epistle for today, “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.” Indeed. We left St. Peter’s transformed, our minds renewed by the many epiphanies of Christ, by the signs of God’s great love.
Valley fog was slipping up the canyon between flanks of green, soon to surround us. The puffy white mist glistened in the sun and I watched it draw closer, creeping and displacing the colors of the hills with whiteness, dimming the light. The miracle of weather played out before me, the changing of molecules and temperature, as time slipped too, time moving unstoppable just like the fog.
Today, the tenth day of Christmas 2009, the third of January, 2010. We enter another year, another decade, and as I stepped into Saint Peter’s Church I felt the presence of time and eternity, as though they collided in this sanctuary. I sensed the greater Church as well – all those worshiping throughout our world, on this good earth, in past, present, and future – as we gathered to offer ourselves to the Baby in Bethlehem, to receive his gift.
For, as our preacher said this morning, the Christ Child is the great gift of Christmas. God became man that man might become God, participate in the Divine. God became a child so that we might become children of God. God gives himself to us so that we might become His children by becoming one with the Babe in the manger. God acts. God gives. We respond. We receive.
We offer ourselves, this hour, this day, this year, this decade, so that we might partake of eternity with him. So that time disappears and at yet also, mysteriously becomes more real, more intense, more full of the pulse of life. God gives himself in Bethlehem. He gives himself on the altar today.
This is the mystery and miracle of Christmas. This is God with us, incarnate, in us. Such joy.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; http://www.anglicanpck.org/.
St. Peter’s Anglican Church is a Christmas church. The center aisle and chancel are carpeted in red. The altar is white marble. The apsidal wall is red brick that rises to a peak above the altar. The side walls are dark wood with stained glass panels. It is a warm church.
Gone today were the Advent purples; gone the wreath and candles; gone the quiet waiting. Today we celebrated Christmas! Red poinsettias banked in a row on the altar, framing the white tented tabernacle. White roses were arranged at each end of the white draped altar, and candelabra flamed with seven candles on either side. The altar candles stood tall above, burning brightly. The crèche on the Epistle side remained, nestled in the greenery, and the Child Jesus lay in the manger.
We were not able to attend Christmas Midnight Eve Mass or the Christmas Day Mass, so as we stepped into the sanctuary today, the blaze of color filled me with a warm thankfulness. I dropped to my knees, thanking God for this church and the freedom to worship. I thanked Him for Himself, His coming to us, His revealing, His love.
Our own Christmas Day had been filled with family, aged seven to nearly eighty – gathering around two long tables, sharing turkey and trimmings, pies and chocolate, as we caught up with one another’s lives. We each brought to the table a year of joys and sorrows, of successes and failures. I knew many of the private heartaches and many of the public joys – I experienced both in this year of 2009 – and it was good to have a few hours to link hands, tell stories, exchange presents, to encourage, listen, and love. Somehow in this gathering Christ mingled with us as well, encouraging us, loving us, for it was His birthday we truly celebrated, and we were thankful.
St. Stephen’s Day followed Christmas. We drove the last guests to the airport and returned to the quiet house, the tree still laden with memories. Leftovers waited to be heated. Laundry needed to be done. Full of voices of loved ones in my head, I moved through the hours, carrying Christmas Day into St. Stephen’s Day, the day we remember the life of the first Christian martyr, the first to pay the price for his belief in the Galilean carpenter.
Today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, we recalled at St. Peter’s this eloquent writer of the Gospel that opens with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Our charming Father Hauge climbed slowly to the pulpit and explained that John’s Gospel was meant to be more of a commentary on the other three Gospels, and for this reason John does not include the Nativity story. John was interested in who this Jesus Christ really was, and his Gospel does indeed portray Christ as God, part of the Trinity, part of the Creation of the world itself, having always lived, outside of time. It is in John’s words that we find the answers to our more profound questions. It is in John’s testimony that we clearly see the meaning of the Eucharistic celebration, as it was in the first century of secret house-church ceremonies. These first Christians believed that the bread did indeed become the Body; the wine did indeed become the Blood. We receive Christ into ourselves, John explained.
So just as Christ mingled through the rooms of our house on Christmas Day, pulling us together with love, he mingled today in the creatures of bread and wine. He found his way into our hearts, our minds, our bodies.
I gazed at the bank of red poinsettias, the flaming candles surrounding the white tabernacle. My eyes rose to the twelfth-century crucifix hanging against the red brick wall. I received Christ in the Bread and Wine.
And once again, I gave thanks for Christmas!
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; http://www.anglicanpck.org/.
Four candles burned warmly above the evergreens wreathed on a stand to the left of the altar, the Gospel side. On the Epistle side, below the lectern, nestled the nativity scene in a bed of pine cones and fir branches. There, the shepherds waited with their sheep, Mary and Joseph waited in the manger, and the cows and oxen waited.
We draw close now, closer each day to the miraculous, stupendous, festival of Christmas, when Christ came among us in his great humility, almighty God becoming a baby. Words cannot say what this means for us, for He is the Word itself. Let Him speak to our hearts of this incredible mystery, this fathomless love.
During Advent St. Peter’s has slowly layered the story of Christmas with candles, color, crèche. Even the nave seems to have grown rich with warmth and presence as the weeks have passed. We do not want to rush this – we want to get it right – for we do not want to miss one second of joy, one minute of memory, one hour of holiness. We want what God is offering, Himself.
We draw close now. We watch and wait and listen.
Good Father Pomroy preached about the momentous themes of Advent: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. We like to hear about Heaven, not so much death, judgment, and Hell. Yet, he said, death is inescapable, and, I thought, gives great meaning to life. Judgment, he explained, is the formalizing of the choices we have made. When Christ judges us, as He will one day, He sees where we have chosen to go. And, of course, those choices are clear: Heaven with God or Hell without God. We face our judgment with a final choice, to be sorry for those times we chose wrong, to accept Christ’s saving acts on the Cross for those moments of darkness.
And our choices define who we are. As children of God we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, and it is in this Body we discover our true selves. In fact, as we give ourselves to God, he gives us back a thousand-fold, and we learn who we are meant to be. He molds and forms us; He sanctifies us. But we must choose Him, and choose the way of his Body, the Church.
I gazed upon the purple draped altar now being sweetly censed by the celebrant swinging the thurible in circles about the holy table, above and below, around the sides, preparing the space with billowing clouds for the great offering of the Mass.
And with the offering of the Mass, I knew I would once again offer myself. I would choose this offering, with His help and grace.
We draw close. We choose to travel to Bethlehem. And we see our true selves in the Holy Child in the manger.
Merry Christmas!
Deo gratias.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; http://www.anglicanpck.org/.
It was raining steadily when we entered the church, crossing the threshold, moving from the secular to the sacred, from the cold outside to the warm inside.
Today, Rose Sunday, is a Sunday of color and light. We light the third candle on our Advent wreathe, a rose one, and we move from a penitential mood towards one of rejoicing. We are closer now to Christmas, to the brighter colors of Christmas. The altar is still draped in purple, but there have been roses added on either side of the violet tented tabernacle. We announce to the world the joy of the coming of our Redeemer.
Indeed, the Gospel for today is the passage about John the Baptist when he asks his followers to go to Jesus, ask him who He really is. Jesus answers the question with the deeds he will do publicly, actions that will proclaim him as the Messiah, will fulfill the prophecies of old. He will heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers. He will preach good news to the poor. He will proclaim publicly who He is.
And just so we proclaim publicly each Sunday who He is, as we portray the season in song and litany, in prayer and liturgy, in the great actions of the Mass. Now, in Advent, we act out the coming of God among us, Emmanuel. We sing together,
Visit then this soul of mine! Pierce the gloom of sin and grief!
Fill me, radiancy divine; Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day.
Just so, more and more of God is displayed.
And we proclaim in the secular world too, outside the threshold of the holy, in the many practices of Christmas: the tree of lights and sparkle, holding memory in each ornament; the carols of Christmases past, a liturgy in their own right; the cards we send to friends and family, pulling folks together with love; the presents we give from the heart and perhaps from habit as well. We might attend a concert, as I was fortunate enough to do this Rose Sunday afternoon, where an assortment of songs and singers gathered around trumpets, piano, guitar, and flute, the space full of warmth and melody, of sharing the joy of music, of anticipation. We might tell tales of Santa Claus, stories of Saint Nicholas, the giver of gifts to children, who flies through the night on a magical sleigh, with graceful reindeer. Mystery. Miracles. Not far from the truth of Bethlehem.
We wait for His coming in the dark of winter, in the rain and snow, in these shortened days. We wait for the light, and on this Rose Sunday, as we see glimmers and flashes of the brightness, we begin to rejoice in His nearness.
Our good Father Pomroy preached quietly today, thoughtfully. As we wait, he said, we draw toward Christ, learning more about Him, knowing Him better, understanding the answer to the John’s question. We ponder these truths of Christmas, of Advent, of the great mystery of the Incarnation. As our understanding increases, He loves in us, we love in Him, and we know joy. A joy that transcends time, uniting past, present, and future on the altar.
We wait for and in “the perfect day,” as time collapses into joy in the Bread and the Wine.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/; http://www.anglicanpck.org/.
Sun streamed through the stained glass, lighting on the Madonna and Child, splashing the pews, warming the cold winter morning at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church.
The Litany in Procession moved up the red carpeted center aisle – the thurifer swinging the sweet incense into the air, the torchbearers carrying the flaming candles, the crucifer raising the crucifix high over us, the celebrant in his purple cope, the clergy following solemnly. We sang together, Good Lord, deliver us, and We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord, as the prayers were chanted. The procession moved around the nave and up the center again to the high altar. As we prayed for ourselves and the world I sensed the darkness of winter, the waiting for spring, as the dancing patches of sun gave us hope.
In Advent we wait and we pray for our redemption in the manger in Bethlehem, and our redemption when each one of us dies. We pray for our redemption today, this minute, this hour. Death to life, dawn to day.
And our Deacon preached on time. God outside time, giving us the gift of time. Fascinated by the mystery of time, I thought how when we love, we lose ourselves in another and time disappears. When we give of ourselves, literally give ourselves away, we lose sense of time as well. Yet time continues to pass, marked by digital numbers changing silently, by clocks ticking, by bells tolling, by the setting and rising of the sun, night into day.
In Advent we wait in the deepest dark before dawn, the dawn of Bethlehem. We approach the end of man’s calendar year, yet begin God’s calendar year. The overlap of time intrigued me, as though our ends overlap our beginnings. We move through this life and into the next seamlessly, in Christ.
The Child in Bethlehem bridges death and life, night and day. The Christ Child is our dawn.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/
Today high winds have swept the earth clean, and winter’s luminous light glances off leaves of burnished red and glistening gold.
Another year has passed, I thought, as I gazed at the purple hangings on the altar at St. Peter’s Anglican Church. We are in Advent, and today is the New Year’s Day of the Church. The year is swept clean like the earth, and we consider what we have done with the time given to us. Have we been good stewards? How can we be better caretakers of the days and hours God has granted us?
Advent is a penitential season, a time to consider these things – death, judgment, Heaven, Hell. We look into our hearts and sweep them clean too, as best we can. We take an accounting.
For Advent is a time of preparation, a time of getting ready for His coming, the advent of His birth, the fantastic and nearly unbelievable intersection of the immortal and the mortal, the infinite and the finite, when God became man, became incarnate, in the flesh, one of us in our world of matter. Emmanuel, God with us. Christmas.
We wait upon the Lord. An impatient people, greedy, seeking to devour our gift of time, we find it hard to wait upon the Lord, indeed, to wait for anything. Technology speeds our days and our vision, multiplying the choices, so that surely we shall go mad with such an array of possibility, a panoply of things we cannot possibly have or do, or consume. Frenzy.
We stand back and pause for a moment, breathe in, and slow down.
We go to church. We focus.
We look to Bethlehem, to the simple manger. To Mary who said yes to God. To Joseph who patiently cared, waiting. To the shepherds who obeyed the call of the angels in the dead of night. To the Wise Men, those travelers who followed, wondering, waiting.
And as we wait for His coming, we know we wait with the Church throughout time – time past, present, to come. We wait with the Communion of Saints, all those who have waited and watched, and those who will wait and watch tomorrow. We wait now through December for the great festival of Christmas. As we clean out our hearts, we prepare too for the Second Coming when Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead. In Advent we recall we must wait and watch for that Coming as well.
This morning I looked up the red-carpeted aisle to the violet tented tabernacle. I knew that soon I would partake of Christ’s coming today, His coming to me, as I received His body and blood, as His Real Presence became part of me. There was no frenzy here in this sanctuary, only sanity, only truth, only love. My heart and mind would be healed of the world’s craziness for another week.
I will make my Advent wreath this afternoon, arrange the greens in a circle, light my first purple candle, say my prayers. I will move into the season slowly, focusing on Bethlehem, and looking forward to the next Mass, the next Advent of Our Lord right here in Oakland. I will prepare for Christmas.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/
The day is cold and wintry, the skies heavy with dark cloud, the moisture in the air hinting of rain. We bundled up and headed for Saint Peter’s Oakland this morning, to once again be part of the great Eucharistic sacrifice offered. Coming in from the cold, the smiling faces of the friendly folk in the narthex greeted us warmly, and we entered the great sanctuary, the ark in which we travel through time on this earth, the Church.
We call today “Stir up” Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Collect, prayed today, this Sunday Next before Advent:
“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…”
And we do indeed need some stirring up, for I often think we sleep through much of our lives.
The words are a warning, before we begin the season of Advent, the preparation for the great coming of God-made-man, Emanuel, in the manger outside Bethlehem. Be ready! the prophet cries. Christ is coming.
The Incarnation, the coming of God to earth, that we celebrate at Christmas is, of course, not the Second Coming, but an advent that prepares us for that Judgment Day, redeems us to face that accounting, gives us an Advocate, Christ himself, to defend us in the bright light of perfection. Christmas reminds us time is passing. Christmas reminds us time means something, counts.
Stir up the wills of thy faithful people…! In-spire us, breath into us thy life. I gazed upon the tabernacle holding the Real Presence of Christ. I sang with the congregation our hymns of supplication, thanksgiving, praise. And I knew that Christ would stir us up, in his own time, each of us and all of us together, for we are his Body. We await to see what he will do among us this Advent, as we await his coming, our hearts and souls open wide to his will, to his love.
Receiving the Eucharist, I was fed, inspired, breathed into. With his grace, my will will be awakened to his.
St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com
I love church bazaars! Shopping with the added benefit of giving to outreach programs and seeing old friends.
St. Peter’s Oakland had their Harvest Festival yesterday. The church hall was laid out with tables covered in red cloths forming a long rectangle, and the sellers stood inside the space while the shoppers cruised around the outside. We all paid as we left, having filled our baskets with goodies. I liked the system, not having to pay individual vendors.
This bazaar was a real bargain for those who enjoy country crafts, but aren’t too crafty themselves (me). I fell in love right away with the aprons and their handy pockets, the baked potato gloves to use in the microwave (do they really work?), the homemade jams. Ah, yes, then there were the packets of “Outrageous Brownies,” incredible indeed, packed with chocolate chips and walnuts. Oh my. Then I found the wreathes. The ladies of the church had made wonderful holiday wreathes from wine corks and I added one to my home collection as well as a most unique wreathe (”We’re trying this out for the first time.”) made from – you won’t believe this – men’s ties. Into the basket immediately.
Next headed for the sale table and picked up Christmas ornaments – two quilted conical trees (Styrofoam peaked out beneath), two wine-cork hot pads. One more round about the rectangle and saw wisteria ornaments made from the twisted pods which have a natural velvet when they dry (who’d guess?) and turn a sage green. There were also lovely beaded organza bookmarks that jumped into my basket.
Feeling lightheaded from such exertion, I headed for the tea-and-sandwich counter and for $3.50 was handed a plate of sandwiches and cup of tea, but somehow I got there too late for the soup on offer as well. Those who got there in time said it was amazing – next year I shall keep track of the time, or maybe they will make more.
Then I got to chat with friends, catch up on grandchildren, and listen for the raffle numbers being called every hour. No luck there.
At 3:30 the grand prizes were drawn. We all gathered around our hostess. I won! A lovely baby basket beautifully lined, containing a hand-knit receiving blanket, a picture frame, and a large pink and white quilt. I’m still debating who’s going to be the recipient of these treasures… there are many possibilities.
Those were just the goodies I left with. Many other items I painfully resisted – soup mixes, breads, kitchen handcrafts, and more… but I’m pleased that my home this Christmas will have a few additions, for very little expenditure, and for a good cause.
Oh, and did I mention I had a table too? Yep, selling my trilogy of novels, Pilgrimage, Offerings, and Inheritance (with proceeds to the church’s outreach programs), signing as I sold, and thanking God for the fellowship of friendly church folk on a crisp sunny Saturday.