We submitted our pledge cards at church today, making our financial commitment for the year. We stepped to the altar and placed our cards of promise on a plate which was then offered, in the liturgy of the Mass, to God.
We are commanded by Scripture to give back to God ten percent of our “first fruits,” our income for the year. Some of us do not pay much attention to these commands, but put a few dollars in the plate as it comes down the pew. Some of us pledge a fraction of the ten percent, or what we think is appropriate after all of our expenses, needs and wants, are met. Some of us pledge ten percent. Some of us more than that.
A pledge is a promise, an intention of faith and fidelity. We pledge, or make vows, to one another in marriage, and the relationship between the Church and Christ is considered one of marriage, for Christ refers to himself as the bridegroom in Holy Scripture. The Church is his bride.
Our preacher spoke of these things today, saying that God wants much more from us than belief. God, like a loving spouse, wants a living, loving relationship with us. We do not come to church to mouth words and listen to empty phrases. We come to actively partake in God’s kiss.
God’s kiss! That got my attention, and I listened closely for the explanation. God is not an idea, our priest continued, but a living person who desires union with his beloved, his bride. He wants all of us. He wants even little me. He wants to fill us with himself in the bread and the wine. It is a Eucharistic kiss, a kiss between the bride, the Church, and the bridegroom, Jesus Christ.
So it is fitting that the Gospel today, the story of the Wedding in Cana, is about water turned to wine at a wedding feast. It is Christ’s first recorded miracle. It is the third epiphany that reveals Who He Is in this season of Epiphanytide, of manifestations.
And it was fitting for us to pledge our troth (truth, faith, as is said in our Sacrament of Holy Matrimony) to our bridegroom, to step to the altar and give him our promise. In a marriage we promise to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health. Just so, we as his bride, promised these things, to him and to one another as members of his body.
My husband and I have found that in our thirty years of marriage, pledging to the Church has been important. We have tried to be faithful with at least a ten percent offering, and I believe it is true that miracles happen when we are faithful. When we are steady. When we worship together weekly, and partake of God’s presence weekly. When we do the hard regular duty, honing our consciences with love’s demands, feeding on sermon and Scripture, worshiping in song and prayer and bread and wine, giving of our time to the Body of Christ as well as our means, in sacrifice. Sometimes it’s a struggle to be faithful to God, to family, to anything. Sometimes it’s a joy. But God is always there in the faithfulness, working his miracles.
We filled out our cards and processed with our brothers and sisters to God’s altar. Later, in the parish hall, we celebrated the arrival of our newest member of Christ’s body, Luisa, now two months old, with a shower of food and presents. But we were the ones showered… by the love of our bridegroom, ever faithful, to bring this new life among us.
We pledge our tithe, we are faithful, and God hears us for he is faithful too. Only now can he work his miracles among us, embracing us, kissing us.
I am a simple person. Raised in a bookish home, the daughter of a clergyman, in the long ago past with no Internet, no DVD’s, and limited television, I cherished reading from an early age. Once a week, on Mondays, my father’s day off, we made a trip to the local library. My sister and I carted our loot home, ten books (the limit), that we would cherish until the next Monday. The worlds inside the books became our worlds, so that our growing up reflected many galaxies.
I carried that simplicity into my adulthood and the tumultuous ’sixties. I carried the simplicity into marriage and motherhood and middle age, into what is often called our gentler years. I continued reading, listening to the sound of the words, picturing the people and the places and the problems that threatened at every turn.
Along the way I rediscovered the Church, and began to understand the profound simplicity of her teaching, her practice, her faith. With each year the simplicity has grown in its own deep complexity, and I continue to marvel at how this can be. The creeds that tell of God’s love for Man. Holy Scripture which documents God’s love for Man. The sacraments and the feasts and the seasons of the Church which all act out God’s love for Man. Simple love. Simple Incarnation. Simple Resurrection. Simplicity.
Yet the tapestry, the weave that lies within, inside and behind, these events and beliefs is so very rich, infinite in color and variety. I know that in this life I shall never plumb the depths, never see all the shades of color, never touch all the marvel-ous textures of this faith.
I thought these things as I listened to today’s sermon on baptism. It is Epiphanytide, a time in which we celebrate the manifestation of who Jesus was and is, meditating on the Gospel passage at the beginning of Mark where Christ is baptized in the Jordan by John. As Jesus rose from the water, “he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him: and there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Our preacher said that Christ was baptized to become one of us; God was engrafted onto mankind. Later, Christ tells his disciples to baptize in his name, that only those baptized will inherit the Kingdom of life.
These are strong words, and the early Church took them seriously. Baptism became the first and most important rite for every believer. It was soon understood that with this rite of “water and the Spirit,” being born anew, we become engrafted, become part of the Body of Christ, the Church. A mystery.
I do not believe baptism is only a symbolic act, nor is it only a symbolic result. The Body of Christ is more than a group, but a living breathing body. Baptism is far more than membership in a club, and today I looked at my fellow worshipers in the pews, a part of my body of Christ. I considered how we would soon partake of the Holy Eucharist, another sacrament making us one body. We were engrafted onto each other and into, onto Christ, God the Son. Because we were part of him, his resurrection would resurrect us as well, into the Kingdom of life.
Each of us journeys alone in this life, from birth to death. We reach out to one another in friendship, in marriage, in family, in bonds of every shade of intimacy and distance, in love. Yet we journey alone. We are born alone and we die alone, for no one can make this final journey with us. But the Body of Christ can. The Body of Christ bridges the worlds, sanctifies our time on earth so that we may travel with the saints and the angels. And not only at the time of our death and our passing into new life, but during our earthly journey as well. Each year, day, hour, minute, even second of our time is colored, enriched, made holy by this Body of Christ, the Church.
So we journey with the Church, through the seasons and the feasts and the great acts of God on earth. Through life into death and into life again. With each day we are quite simply made whole, holy, and with each day we step deeper, further and farther, into the glory that God promises us.
My simplicity has become richly complex.
The twelve days of Christmas came to an end on Friday, the Feast of the Epiphany, and we celebrated in our new chapel now called the Chapel of the Holy Innocents.
The events of Christ’s birth, this great God of love coming among us, form a kind of poem or painting that tells the story of the Incarnation and its meaning for us. We prepare for Christ’s coming throughout Advent, decorating our homes and singing carols. We gather for family meals on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, giving gifts and toasting Christmas. We go to church.
For many folks, Christmas ends on Christmas Day.
But in the Church it is only beginning. Throughout the twelve days of, after, Christmas we celebrate this great gift of God, until we come to January 6, Epiphany, the visit of the Wise Men, the Magi from the East, who bring gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
In the Gospels, this visit is recorded, but probably occurred much later in time than twelve days. But the visit is important, so tradition has collapsed time to place Epiphany in the same celebratory frame, the same poem or painting, as Christmastide itself.
For it is the Magi from the East who reveal the light of Christ. They are the ones who follow the star (possibly an angel) that lights their way to Bethlehem. Why do they follow? They want to see, to discover, to learn what this means. They want to be enlightened. And here we have the essence of Epiphany, that light lighting the darkness so that we can see out and in.
Epiphany comes from the Greek epiphaneia, to appear, to show forth, to see. We use this word to mean a sudden realization, a sudden burst of mental clarity, of light shining in the darkness of our understanding. When I have epiphanies it is as though I have tapped into something outside myself, as though the revelation has come from some outside source, suddenly inspired. In-spired comes from the Latin inspirire, to breathe into. To be inspired, to have an epiphany, is to have God breathing his life into me. He lights up my darkness.
This is the light of Christ. It fills all who welcome it so that they may in turn burn with his love and light. They become living flames to others. And this is what it means to be a Christian, to burn each day with love, with this light, and thus to enlighten our world.
Today at church, as I gazed on the crèche arranged in its bed of greens near the altar rail, I saw the three Wise Men kneeling before this humble baby, this king. Something new and miraculous had come to the earth, a being that would lighten their dark. The Gospel account in St. Matthew states that the Wise Men presented gifts, but we don’t really know how many. Tradition has made the gifts part of the poem and painting: gold for the child’s kingship, frankincense for his priesthood, and myrrh for his burial.
This visit completes Christmastide, for these foreign travelers represent us, those not part of the People of Israel at the time of Christ. All of us, the world, may now be part of this huge epiphany that happened two thousand years ago in a cave outside of Bethlehem, this real historical event.
Epiphanytide continues for four Sundays, and during this season we will see the other epiphanies of Christ. Today the Gospel spoke of the child Jesus speaking with the doctors in the temple, revealing his divinity. Soon we shall hear how his baptism revealed his divinity. We shall follow him to Cana, where he turns water into fine wine, revealing his divinity. Each Sunday shall be another epiphany of light, a burst of inspired understanding.
So God becomes man, lighting the darkness. St. John writes, “And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not,” so the church celebrates the poem and painting of Christmas, splashing the season with lots of light-filled epiphanies.
Happy Epiphanytide!
I was not proud of something I said this last week, in an uncontrolled outburst, and even after apologizing, repenting, and receiving forgiveness from the injured party, a cloud still hovered over my heart. My heart was torn. Was I carrying false guilt?
I carried the cloud to church today, and when I left church, the cloud was gone. My heart was mended.
How did that happen? I feel reborn.
Did the priest’s absolution really cause such a miracle to occur? I believe it did. When I sinned, I sinned against God as well as man. And while I had confessed to God privately, his Church had not absolved me. Today God absolved me through the Church, sacramentally. The tear around my heart was mended with this blood, and I received Christ in the chalice as though receiving a blood transfusion.
Today is New Year’s Day. It is also, in the Church Year, the Octave (8th day) of Christmas and the Circumcision of Christ, a day when we consider the meaning of this seemingly foreign and strange act. And the meaning wove through my heart and soul, for it was all about blood and sacrifice and, yes, transfusion.
Our preacher spoke of these things. He spoke of Christ’s circumcision. Man from the earliest days sensed an innocent, blood sacrifice was needed to appease the gods, and a firstborn child was often offered in those ancient cultures of Mesopotamia. When God called Abraham out of this world, he ordered a substitutionary sacrifice, an animal sacrifice, as well as the rite of circumcision, the sign of his covenant with his people. In this covenant God regulates the sacrifice to become the paschal sacrifice, the Passover Lamb, and finally himself, entering the world in the Incarnation, taking on our flesh. He became the final and fulfilling blood sacrifice, poured into the chalice, so that we may be fulfilled, full. Christ becomes the fulfillment of the law, not a denial of it. All that went before prepared the way for him, prepared for this blood to be shed for us. All of those generations, all of those centuries, prepared mankind for this one great redemptive act of God. Circumcision, our preacher said, is an evidence of the Incarnation, God coming among us for a reason. The law of Moses is a tutor that brings us to Christ.
My redemption this morning was real. I was set free, at least of my selfish acts to this point in time. They had no more power over me, could no longer weigh upon my heart and mind, no longer hover over me like a dark cloud. And I was given a way forward, a way to handle my selfish acts in the future. For we all fall short of perfection; we all sin. We all say what we regret, do what we shouldn’t, don’t do what we should. We are fallen creatures, but through penitence, forgiveness, and Christ’s blood sacrifice, the tears in our hearts are healed. We partake of his Body and his Blood.
When, in Jewish tradition, the child was circumcised, he was named. The blood offering became one with the identity of the child, now a child of God. When Christ came in history, when he took on our flesh and blood, circumcision was no longer needed. Christ’s blood sacrifice is enough for our covenant with God. So Christians are named in baptism, not circumcision. They are offered to God, becoming a part of his Church body in a bloodless rite of circumcision.
Who are we, what are we, as human beings on this earth, this spinning planet? We are creatures who belong to God, and he brings us back to himself with each sacramental offering – Baptism, the Eucharist, Confession, Absolution – through his Church. With each offering he fills us with his own lifeblood.
We begin a new year, 2012. We consider the last year and plan the next. I am full of thanksgiving that God loved us so that he came to us as he did, as a child in a manger, that he gave us a way out, a way forward, a way to truly love. He makes the crooked straight; wrong turns are righted; clouds no longer hover over us; torn hearts are mended.
Incarnation. Circumcision. Offering and re-offering. Penitence and absolution. The Holy Name of… Jesus.
Happy New Year!
He came to us, Emmanuel, God with us.
We gathered together around the Christmas buffet, twenty of us, three sons with their wives and their children. We held hands and thanked God for being together this day. We thanked him for the food laid before us, and we thanked him for his great gift of himself. Alleluia.
Each of us had known both joy and suffering during the year, had met our own challenges, private and public. Each of us had become a slightly different person, formed by the choices we had made, the path we had taken. The changes in some were subtle – some of us were triumphant, some were weary, some were in love. Some had grown wise. Some had grown foolish.
I thought about my own year as I looked into their faces. I too had known all of these things – love, suffering, joy, the challenge of choice at each turning. And I was thankful that Christ was in the choices, in the choosing, at least for the most part. When he wasn’t there, I generally chose wrongly, and most often became aware of sin taking hold of my heart. Then another turning, a repenting, a new beginning again with more choices.
And so I was thankful that Christ came among us as he did, that he too suffered, that he too made choices and experienced our human-ness. He knew the love of his disciples and he knew betrayal in the garden. He knew how to serve, to wash the feet of his friends. He knew our hearts then and today, in each minute of our choices. He knew the love of the Father was so great that we would be brought home through himself, the Son, that we would be raised on the last day.
Incarnation. God in the flesh.
We attended a local church for Christmas Eve Mass, an afternoon service so that our grandchildren (six and nine) could attend. It is a historic mission-style church with dark wooden rafters and white stucco and vivid stained glass. The sanctuary blazed with lights from two giant Christmas trees. The Bethlehem manger scene was set out in front of the trees and I looked forward to the children’s Christmas Pageant. The church was packed – folks stood along the side aisles and wedged into the pews. We sang carols and listened to the Gospel accounts of Jesus come among us, born to Mary, watched over by Joseph in a humble stable. A bright star appeared. Shpherds knelt. Kings offered gifts. We welcomed Christ into our world and our into our own hearts with great fanfare, drums and song.
On Christmas Day, those golden moments hovered as I stirred gravy and heated potatoes, tossed spinach with candied walnuts and mandarin oranges. They lingered as I spooned cranberries into white ceramic pitchers. A platter of shrimp was set in the next room, an offering before the Christmas tree and as the guests arrived, their laughter and greetings flavored the dishes of brown-sugared yams and sausage stuffing. The turkey lay sliced in its bed of parsley alongside platters of yeast rolls and cornbread squares.
We gathered around the buffet in the kitchen and prayed our thanksgivings. We took our places at two long tables. We toasted family and Christmas, Christ among us. And I knew as I looked at the faces of three generations pulled to my table this Christmas Day that Christ was indeed among us.
Emmanuel. God with us. Merry Christmas!
We brought our Christmas tree home this last week and set it in the large bay window in the family room. I poured hot water into the trunk’s basin, and stood back to look. The tree tilted, but I thought it would be fine once it was decorated. I opened boxes of last year’s decorations, and pulled out the mini-light string, trying to recall how it was that I had twirled them through the branches. Slowly, with the help of a ladder, I began at the top and laced the tree with the lights, moving the ladder in a circle. I plugged the two prongs of the cord into the wall socket.
I stood back and gazed at the colored lights, now lit, seeming so delicate against the heavy fir. The lights would shine brighter in the dark, I thought. They would light up the dark.
I pulled from another box a green and silver garland which was today’s version of the tinsel I painstakingly hung as a child. My mother would dole single strands of silver tinsel to my sister and me, and we would choose a spot to let it dangle like an icicle. One strand at a time. It seemed to take forever, I recall, but by the end of the tinsel hanging ceremony we and the tree were one.
Today’s garland that replaced the tinsel was much easier to handle, and again I circled the tree, moving the ladder and laying the long band of green and sparkles gently the bed of fragrant needles. I found the Styrofoam star from an old Christmas pageant – one we had covered with glittery paper and ribbon – and placed it gently at the top.
I stood back and gazed at the lights and the garland. So far so good. The rest of the decorations would be hung on Christmas Eve by the grandchildren.
The decoration of the Christmas tree, or trimming the tree as it was once called, marks the passage of time in our family. I think of other trees and other lights and other garlands. This year I had just finished writing our Christmas cards, and the names and faces lingered as I layered the lights through the greens. Babies had been born, elderly friends had died. Some of the names were new, some changed due to marriage or divorce. Children had graduated, gone to college, left home. Each name was a light on the tree, on its own journey. My list of names was ever-changing, forming new garlands weaving through my life. But the names that were removed from the list – those who had passed on to the next life, remained in my heart, enriching my memory as they had enriched my own passage through time. And with joy I added new names, babies born to these blessed friends and family.
The Christmas tree is the tree of life, an ancient evergreen symbol of Christ and his body. Christ is the star shining on top. He is the vine and we are the branches. It is a holy wood from the Tree of Life in Eden and a holy wood from the cross on Golgotha. The roots run deep. Life pulses through the greens.
And so Christmas is just such a celebration of life, new life today, new life to come in Heaven, for, of course, the greatest gift of life is the birth the holy child in Bethlehem, who will come to us in the Eucharist, and who will come to us in the future to judge the living and the dead. And as he gives himself to us, so we give to each other at Christmas. We light candles to light the dark, as God lights the darkness of our world, now in the dead of winter.
Advent. The advent of Our Lord among us. In church today the children told the great story of his coming. They processed slowly down the red-carpeted aisle and took their places to sing carols and read lessons. They told the story of Adam and Eve’s fall from grace and the need for a Savior. They told of the prophesies of the coming Messiah. They told of Angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she would bear this child whom she would call Jesus, and of Joseph, and of the shepherds and the angels. As the last shepherd stepped slowly up the aisle to join the living crèche, the youngest babies, Izzy (six months) and Luisa (seventeen days), followed, cradled by grateful women. It was a joyous moment, a time when all the children and parents and congregation joined together to praise God for his great gifts, his gift of himself, and his gift of these children to us.
And soon we received him in the bread and wine, kneeling before the high altar, uniting, aged seventeen days to ninety-five years.
Incarnation. Birth. Eucharist. Miracles among us. Christmas!
The temperatures have dropped and rain is forecast. Will there be snow on Mount Diablo tonight?
It is the Christmas season, a time of bustle and buying, of gathering with friends and associates to share a meal, exchange gifts and greetings. Happy Holidays we say more often than Merry Christmas, not wanting to offend other traditions. Yet the holidays still center on Christmas Day. The school vacations lead up to and fall away from this festival. We as a nation still honor and live out in our culture this time of hope.
I give thanks that this remains so, although as Christians we must not be ashamed of our faith, not, as Christ said in today’s Gospel lesson, “be offended” by him. We must live out our faith, respecting others, loving others. We must not hide our light. We must share the great hope of Christmas to all who have the ears to hear.
It all depends, I suppose, on who we claim Jesus Christ was, is. In today’s lesson, St. Matthew (11:2+) describes how John the Baptist, now in prison, sends two of his followers to see if Christ is indeed the long-awaited messiah. Jesus answers with a catalog of miracles: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up. This is, of course, exactly what the prophets prophesied. What did you expect to see? he asks. Look at what I do.
In the Advent daily prayer offices we are immersed in those prophecies, and now see Christ reminding us that he truly is this long-awaited messiah. We are also immersed in the terror of the apocalypse, the wrath of God upon the corrupt, the lawbreakers, those who hurt, lie, steal, kill. We see a God who divides the wheat from the tares, the weeds. We wait for our redemption, a way to be saved. We wait for the way, the truth, and the life, the messiah who bridges this huge gulf between prophecy and judgment, this gulf of Advent.
And of course the Incarnation, Christmas, bridges this great gulf. God provides a way out of ourselves and into his kingdom. He provides this long-awaited messiah, Jesus Christ, who saves us from sin and thus from death.
Another time Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say I am?” Peter answers, “You are Christ, Son of the living God.”
Today is Laetare Sunday, which means “Rejoice,” called this for the Latin introit, Rejoice in the Lord always… (Philippians 4). Today is also Rose Sunday. We light our pink candle and the two purple ones on the Advent wreathe, a lighter-themed day in our penitential season of purple. Today the theme is Heaven. Advent one and two were themed Death and Judgment, Advent four, Hell. Not many pastors preach on these traditional topics today, for some folks might be… well, offended. But without facing death and judgment we have no need for Christ to give us the way to Heaven and not Hell. And whether or not we face these things, they will face us.
Who is Jesus Christ? Did he do the miracles recorded? Did he fulfill the prophesies? Was he born to a virgin in a cave outside Bethlehem on a cold starry night? Did he live a life of miracles and die a shameful death, fulfilling even more prophecies? And most important, did he rise from the dead as he foretold?
I believe he is indeed the messiah, long-awaited by the People of Israel. I believe he did all these things described by the prophets and in the Gospels, all these astounding deeds which would, one would think, convince us that he was who he claimed to be. Yet even after two thousand years, some believe, some don’t. They never find the way.
Who is Jesus Christ? The evidence, I believe, is clear and compelling. I hold this faith close as I return to Isaiah and St. John’s revelations, as I too await the coming of God to a manger in great humility. I hold this faith close as I sing with fellow believers, Come, O come, Emanuel, to ransom captive Israel… on this cold Laetare Sunday in the dead of winter. I hold it close as I share meals with friends and family and wrap special gifts and decorate with pungent greenery and colored balls of glitter. I hold this faith close as the day turns dark early and I light the fire in the fireplace and listen to calling-carols and watch the heavy gray skies hover over the mountain.
Come, O come, Emmanuel, to ransom us. Come, O come, Emmanuel… come and ransom little me.
The high winds sweeping northern California lessened today, and we woke to crystal clear skies, the bright sun shining this Second Sunday in Advent, a sun warming the cold air of December.
And so we bundled off to church to worship in our warm sanctuary. The Advent wreath stood Gospel-left, near the chancel steps, and two purple candles flamed. We listened to the poetic Collect (the opening prayer), written five hundred years ago by Thomas Cranmer and part of our Book of Common Prayer:
Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick (living) and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal….
It is a prayer said in every Advent service, and each year, as part of my Advent rule, I try to re-memorize this wonderful summary of Christ’s coming to us.
We are a historical church, going back to Christ’s advent two thousand years ago. Through the centuries we have kept what is true and thrown out what is false, looking to the authority of Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church year in and year out. Part of that keeping is the keeping of words, for words are how most of us pray, how most of us touch God and hear his voice. Words are how we make sense of our lives. We call that keeping of words, our memory.
Much has been written recently, mourning the scarcity of memory work required in grade schools. I recall memorizing poems, and working to root the words and phrases in my mind. I would repeat and repeat and repeat, until finally the words became part of me, automatic. Perhaps it was this automatic, “rote,” aspect that educators found to be without meaning, but, since I have returned to memorizing prayers and psalms, I find that the words become more meaningful, not less. They become part of me. And they are always there for me to hold onto, to remember, to light up the dark places in my life.
If poets and writers, prophets and preachers, from the past have captured truth with meaningful words, shouldn’t we memorize those expressions of truth? We need to keep them close, engraft them onto our hearts and into our minds.
The children practiced the Christmas pageant today. They are memorizing lines so that they can speak and sing the words, so that they can tell the miraculous story of Christmas to all the congregation. God will work through our children, speaking through them to us. Such a marvelous experience – to bring God’s words to his people.
I love re-memorizing the Collect for Advent each year. We throw out the dark and arm ourselves with the light. We are mortal and call upon the immortal, Jesus Christ who visits us in great humility. We welcome this humble child born in a cave outside Bethlehem, so that when he returns in his glorious majesty, we will rise with him to life immortal. This child wipes away our tears. He saves us from ourselves, banishes the darkness. Learning these words help me to hold these truths close. They light my darkness.
I shall also keep Advent by reading Evening Prayer each night. The Scripture lessons pair Isaiah’s prophecies with Revelation’s apocalypse. The readings steep me in Christmas, the meaning of the Incarnation, the light transforming the darkness, no less than the redemption of man.
My new memory work this year, however, is found in our Morning Prayer office. It is called the Benedictus, recorded by St. Luke. It is Zacharia’s prophesy, spoken after his time of not being able to speak, after the birth of his son, John the Baptist: Blessed be the Lord God of Israel who has visited and redeemed his people, and has raised up a mighty salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouths of his holy prophets which have been since the world began…
As I commit these words to memory, I shall pray them, engrafting them, calming the raging winds, warming the chilly air, lighting the dark. As Christmas draws near, I will carry these words in my heart, just as Israel carried their hopes for the promised messiah. The words shall be calling words, first spoken by Zacharias so many hears ago, words now spoken by little me, bringing Christ among us in this Year of Our Lord, Christmas 2011.
We call him and he comes. We hold onto our memory, carried into the present with words.
In this time of war and rumors of war, of government intrusion into our lives on so many levels, it was good this week to pause and give thanks for our country, for our freedom of worship and speech.
I gave thanks. I considered those who fled religious persecution to forge a new nation under God, guaranteeing each of us life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The United States of America remains that nation as we struggle to protect life and ensure liberty so that we may indeed pursue happiness. I gave thanks that I was lucky enough to be born in America. I gave thanks that I am blessed to still be living, at the gentle age of sixty-four, and living in this exceptional nation.
I thought about liberty and its corollary, responsibility. And with responsibility, I thought, comes a standard by which we measure our lives, define our duties to God, family, community, country. With responsibility, comes self-examination. With self-examination, hopefully, comes penitence and repentance, a turning.
The “I’m okay you’re okay” culture will not support liberty. “That’s just me, just my thing, just the way I am” will not protect freedoms. We must, as individuals forming culture, return to an acknowledgement of guilt, make our confessions – if I may be so bold to use the unpopular word – of sin. Without this examination, we have little hope of ensuring life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And so we enter Advent, that marvelous, mysterious, miraculous season of hope. A four-week preparation for the great intersection of the eternal into the finite, the immortal into the world of the mortal. The Incarnation. In the flesh. Christ-mas. We recall that two thousand years ago God took on flesh and walked among us.
We celebrate with rich symbols: an evergreen tree laden twinkling with lights and fantastical ornaments, candles aflame, gifts expressing our love for one another, holy-day foods and drinks that sweeten the tongue and warm the heart. We sing the stories of Christ’s coming so long ago so that we will not forget. To prepare for his coming we sing calling-hymns, in minor keys, “O come, o come, Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel….” The Messiah is coming… the one promised to the prophets! As we draw nearer to Christmas Day we tell the story in our pageants and Gospel lessons.
Keeping Advent prepares us for Christ’s coming to us again and again in the Eucharist and coming to us in our daily prayers. We prepare for his bodily Second Coming to earth, when a new world will be formed under his rule. How do we prepare our hearts? We clean them out to make room. We examine our lives and throw out the clutter.
We simplify. Not easy to do in our commercial culture of noise and bluster and busyness. But we try. We increase our daily prayer life; we go to church. We pause in the stillness to hear him speak to us.
Even in our secular culture the great story of the Incarnation rises from our common consciousness in symbols, rituals, and stories. Good Saint Nicholas, the fourth-century bishop of Smyrna, appears to us as Santa Claus. He drives a sled through the starry heavens full of gifts. He brings hope and cheer, and a sort of justice, a rustic memory of God the Father. His steadfast reappearance each year is, I think, for the most part a good thing. In Santa we honor laughter, love, and sharing, not to mention responsible behavior. Santa is making a list and checking it twice. He is keeping a moral scorecard. Examine and repent, Saint Nicholas reminds us through our children. Will we listen? Perhaps we are too grown-up to believe… too grown-up to bear freedom as it must be borne. Perhaps we are not grown-up enough.
Because I am so very thankful for our freedom, I take this holy season of Advent to examine my heart, to turn to the light and away from the dark, to prepare for the child born in Bethlehem, the child that will save my soul.
O come, o come, Emmanuele.
I just finished Abby Johnson’s astonishing account of her move from being Director of a Planned Parenthood Clinic to a Coalition for Life spokesperson. I treasure so many moments in this book. I heartily recommend Unplanned.
I did not plan on encountering such a sympathetic, understanding portrait of the pro-choice, pro-abortion movement coming from one who had chosen to leave it. Abby clearly knows what it is to love your enemy. Or perhaps that is going too far – for she wouldn’t use the word enemy.
Since she was once on their staff, she can truly empathize, and she does. In this way Unplanned is a different kind of pro-life apologia. And, I think, she is on the right track, just as the prayer vigils outside abortion clinics are a better approach than showing graphic photos of aborted babies and name-calling.
One of the remarkable insights I received from Abby’s book, and there were many such flashes of sudden understanding, is how language is used to promote a viewpoint. As an avid reader and novelist, I have been long attuned to the use of language. But the power of word substitution such as fetus for baby, or termination for abortion, struck me forcibly. When we call that person growing in the womb a fetus and not a baby, a mindset change takes place. When we call the taking of life a medical procedure solving a disease-like problem, a mindset change takes place.
I considered how we all lie to ourselves, how we all avoid some of the hard truths of life. We avoid thinking about our own deaths, for we might need to examine our own lives. We avoid examining our own lives, for we might need to admit fault, an admission that suggests, even demands, change. We avoid God, sliding away from proofs for his existence, for we might need to obey his commandments, beginning with regular Sunday worship. We slip and we slide, many times without being aware of it. And often our culture encourages the sliding.
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates said. While I would argue that every life is worth living, I see his point. Man needs meaning and direction, and such meaningful direction comes from an examined life. We become whole when we understand where we are going and why. We experience joy when we come to know the author of that path. Without God, we wander and we wonder. Eventually, we despair.
The Church’s season of Advent approaches, the four weeks that prepare us for the coming of Christ, Christmas. Some call it a “mini-Lent,” although our culture discourages such observance, particularly in the December frenzy of shopping and parties. Even so, it is a time to examine one’s life. It is a time to return to God, to seek order and meaning in our choices each and every day. It is a time to go back to church to find him.
I find that Advent and Lent pull me into reality, return sanity to my life, particularly if my time on earth has not been recently examined. They are seasons of preparation for the great acts of God among us – the Incarnation in a cave outside Bethlehem, the Crucifixion and Resurrection on a hill outside Jerusalem. Advent is a time to examine my life, hold it up to God’s standards and repent of the slips and slides that I may not have recognized during the year.
As I read Abby Johnson’s powerful and sympathetic first-person account, I gave thanks to God for his working among us. I was reminded that each of us can be manipulated by words, propaganda, and societal pressure. Do we want to be blown about by others? I think not. Only God can give us the strength and wisdom to live a true life, an examined life, a life-welcoming life, a life planned by God, if perhaps unplanned by us.
Thank you, Abby Johnson.
It has been a stunning week and in many respects I am catching my breath, before breathing normally again.
We have returned to the Big Island of Hawaii for a few days to read and write and rest. Here, along the Kohala coast, the sea rustles the shore, and moist air kisses our aging skin. It is a gentle world to all appearances, and one might think it was indeed the first paradise, the Garden of Eden. Sights and sounds and scents and flavors and soft breezes cosset us in a sweet cocoon and for the time being we can hide from the real world, the world we have left.
Appearances can be deceiving, I fully know. The sea can pull out and under, the sun can burn and devour, the rain and wind can flood and destroy.
Just so, I thought, appearances are often deceiving in the world we left – the world of wars and rumors of wars, of lawsuits, of greed, of lying, of fraud and breach of trust, of misuse and mismanagement, mis-this and mis-that, the twisting of truths. The media strikingly knows this full well as it colors stories to their liking. Right and wrong. Truth and falsity. Where is the line dividing them? Is the gray country in between so difficult to navigate?
Today’s Epistle was Paul’s wonderful passage about putting on the full armor of God:
My brethren, be strong in the Lord in the power of his might. Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield of faith, where with ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God… (italics mine) Ephesians 6:10+
So the full armor is truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God. I try to recall these things as I maneuver through the confusing world about us, making my own small choices, thinking how could they possibly matter.
But they do matter. These choices protect us from the world’s discord and anarchy, from, indeed, death. How we chose to live our lives counts.
My stunning moment from last week came as a response from from one of my final draft readers in New Zealand. He is a language scholar and lay theologian for whom I have immense admiration and respect, and God has blessed me with his wisdom and excellent editorial eye, his suggestions after reading the first and sixth drafts of my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery. He sent me his most recent comments and included a stunning quotation for the book jacket. I am overwhelmed, and of course, deeply thankful.
My novel is about truth – how we know it, how we use it in our perception of the world, how it influences our choices in life. In a word, or rather phrase, how truth governs our lives.
As our world discards the idea of truth and embraces relativity, personal taste, subjectivism, each of us must take on the armor of God. Each of us must question our own choices, set them against standards of right and wrong, of righteousness. But whose standard? Whose authority? For Christians, the answer is simple: God’s. But how do we know his will? St. Paul gives us guidelines to help us discern. We learn how to love (the gospel of peace), we keep the faith (in Christ), and we absorb Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church through which the Holy Spirit weaves. In this way we are protected from falsehood and the “wiles of the devil.” We are saved.
I feel more “armored” simply having read the Epistle, more ready to re-enter the real world of twists and turns that lie ahead. I shall be prepared to choose.
Yesterday, Saturday, was cold, the temperatures dropping, surprising me. Damp seeped over the hills, sliding into our home through windows and doors, an invisible chill. I grabbed my winter jacket and headed for our parish’s annual Holiday Boutique.
Red-draped tables were piled high with goodies and gifts – soup mixes, cookies, cakes; country crafts, colorful cottons to hold shoes, paisleys to cosset jewelry, floral prints to keep bread warm with a tiny pocket of rice to microwave and return to the neat little pocket (so clever!). The hall was full of imagination and color, and I meandered along the aisles, caught in a garden of dreams turned into handiwork that had been loved with each stitch and with each knit and purl. There were tiny booties and toasty slippers in blues and pinks and colorful jumbled weaves, little caps and big caps for the snow and rain, for the little people and the big people, scarves looping and softly flowing, shawls to drape over chilling shoulders. The men of the parish had made signs for the busy street corner and had climbed ladders to loop streamers between green wreathes in the hall. Holiday music swung from note to note, getting us all in the mood. There were raffle tickets for bottles of wine and gift baskets and even a set of my little books.
My little books looked rather dull next to all of this. Nevertheless, I set them out and signed and chatted with folks as they dropped by.
This last week was one of my favorites in the Church Year. The world was silly on Halloween Monday – pretending to be what it was not, wishing for more sugar (who doesn’t?), being someone else for a few hours, someone good, evil, famous, clever, silly, serious. Goblins and witches roamed neighborhoods and folks gathered to sip mulled wine and answer doorbells and fill pillow cases with mini candy bars. Trick-or-treat! Halloween. All Hallows Eve. The night before All Saints Day. The night when the spirits of the dead roamed the earth, that is, before the belief was vanquished by the Church. Perhaps those spirits too were unhappy with who they were.
There was a time, before the West was Christianized, when the end of summer was celebrated on October 31. It was believed that the spirits of ancestors roamed the earth this night, and folks would light bonfires to frighten them away. They also left food out to appease their terrible tempers. Christianity dispelled those fears, or should have, for Christians do not believe that the dead roam the earth, but rather that they are with God in Heaven. We no longer fear the dead or our own death. The Church, as it did with many of its festivals explaining this wonderful resurrection faith, transformed a pagan festival of fear into a Christian festival of love, All Saints, honoring these men and women of God.
And so on All Saints Tuesday we gathered to offer our thanksgivings for the saints, past, present, and to come, those living among us, loving us, sacrificing for us. We met in the great nave and before the white tented tabernacle and offered this Mass of thanksgiving for those who knew fully who they were, who in their life on earth grew more and more full of God. As they journeyed in time, God molded them into their true selves.
Many of us returned on Wednesday for All Souls day, that day of thanks and remembrance for the rest of those who have died and have passed into eternal glory. As Christians we know these souls do not roam the earth. We live with the certainty they are happy and that we shall join them one day. At the Mass for All Souls our priest read the names of those members and friends of the parish who have traveled to Heaven, and I listened to the list tolled in the cool air of the sanctuary, as light streamed through skylights upon the crucifix. I knew many of them. Among them there were Willa and Louise and Jeanine and Kay and Vi and Elizabeth and Dot, women who had mothered me in my single parent days, women who had cuddled my four-year-old son who at the time had no father in his life. There were the men too – Hugh and George and John and Jim. And many more. These are the saints I think of often, the souls in heaven who made such a difference on earth, who knew all about love.
So it was with a heart full of those who had gone before me, those who had once stood in this hall and sold handicrafts crafted with love so many years ago, that I browsed our parish Holiday Boutique. I gave thanks for the men and women who had gone ahead and as I lifted my eyes to one of the ladies selling a calico memo holder with magnets for the fridge, I was overwhelmed by love.
I left the church laden with goodies, and impatiently awaiting the chance to try the freshly made pecan pralines. I also carried in my bursting bag a jar of soup mixings, the same savory minestrone we had with our tea-lunch (excellent) and while I am not much of a cook, this has given me a goal. We shall have soup over the holidays, paired with a nice crusty loaf of whole wheat.
It was raining lightly as I made my way to my car. I pulled my jacket tighter about me and popped open my umbrella, ready to journey a bit farther in my span of time, full of the life and love of God manifested in his people.
The week was a triumphant one. I finished the nearly final draft of my novel, The Magdalene Mystery, which is concerned with the search for truth in a world of lies. I bundled several copies off to readers in Rome, Maryland, New Zealand, Provence, and Sunnyvale, California. Each person will bring his or her unique talents and background to my little creation and I shall listen to what they tell me.
My little creation. Sighing with relief and joy, I considered what I had done. For words on their own are wild things, meaningless collections of consonants and vowels that need to become part of a greater organized whole. Until then they lie fallow, waiting. But we humans harness those words into phrases, give those phrases shape in sentences, those sentences real substance in paragraphs. We fatten the paragraphs into pages, the pages into chapters, the chapters into books. (the books into libraries?… or flash drives?) We create language, and with language we tell stories, give meaning to our lives.
We impose order on chaos. Just like God when he made the world. Just like God when he created us.
Today in church we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. We sang glorious hymns. For the processional we sang the lyrical Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation; O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation…. For the Offertory we thundered Luther’s A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing; Our helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing… And for the recessional joined in All hail the power of Jesus’ Name! Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown him Lord of all! We soared into the music, lifting our voices in praise to our King, who has imposed order on the chaos of our lives. The music shall linger with me through the week, making sense of my minutes and hours.
Our preacher explained how we were created by God and thus impressed with his image, just as a coin is impressed with the figure of a monarch. God’s creative order pulses through us; we need only turn to him, realize his author-ship. Since World War II, he continued, the West has largely rebelled against authority and we find our world today retrogressing to the chaos of the jungle. Yet good – godly – authority is our only guarantee of freedom, our only means to meaning in our lives, our only path to love.
As I gazed on the realistic wooden crucifix over the altar, with its dying body on the cross, I recalled a Christ the King crucifix I have at home. A king on a cross! A king dying a criminal’s death, a shameful death, a vagrant’s death. A king with his crown and red robes, the robes of resurrection, the robes of victory, the robes of loving and sacrificial authority. A death that overcomes death.
As Christians we have a king with authority. As Christians we are given the power to create as God once pulled light from the dark. We have the means to order the chaos around us. We need only turn to him, obey his commands, allow his life to run through our veins.
Just as I harnessed my 88,000 words into sentences in The Magdalene Mystery so Christ harnesses our lives into sanctity, into love, into becoming creators.
And so it seems appropriate that tomorrow is All Hallows’ Eve, popularly called Halloween, the night before the Feast of All Saints. On All Saints we thank God for all those men and women who have allowed God to write his story on their hearts and in their minds, to recreate their lives, to impress them again and again with his image. We pray that we may be impressed, recreated, sanctified, that our chaos may be ordered by his authority.
We give thanks for Christ the King of creation.
It is fall and the leaves are falling, forming golden ponds of orange and yellow upon the paths and roads, the walkways and yards. The leaves rain down from their lofty branches, dead now, having provided our green shade in the warmer months, having protected us from the sun. Now the sun enshrines the riot of color splashed against the hillsides in these last bright bursts before winter.
Changing seasons. Passing time. The living die, the dead mulches new life, waiting in the womb of the earth, for spring. We harvest and prepare the land for its slumber. We prune so that the living may produce new life, trimming branches to stalks, cutting back and throwing out. All the earth moves and changes, rumbling through autumn like a giant beast.
We too rumble to our deaths, having come from cells uniting, having grown miraculously day by day to this present moment, decaying imperceptibly. Our days are numbered and we count the years since our birth, celebrating with song and gifts and love. But we too shall discard our bodies, shall see them decompose into the earth. We shall fall. We shall die.
Yet we have a promise, a hope. We know our spirits shall live on, infused with God’s sacramental grace. We, in baptism, have already been reborn, have already become united with the eternal. We are not leaves of autumn, or the plowed-under field, or even our own bodies that shall one day become ashes and dust. We are immortal, beloved by God.
One day we will be given new bodies, resurrected with God the Son, Christ, pulled with him into glory. Unlike the decomposing earth, we shall live through him. This is the great Christian hope. This is the great Christian victory.
Winter approaches. The days are short, the nights long. The dark encroaches upon the light like an eclipse of the sun, and so too our world, with its wars and rumors of wars is caught in the shadowlands of battle. Our world waits for the light, for the sun to emerge from the shadow of the earth, for dawn to break. We wait for Christ’s coming.
But in the meantime we have the passage of time, the seasons, the glorious drama of the natural world given for our delight. We have the Creeds and the law and love of God to keep us straight and true, to place our feet on the right path through the days and weeks and months of the year, through the seasons of sowing and reaping and slumber. We have Sunday worship and communing with him in the Eucharist so that Monday will be a day of life and love.
As a child I liked to jump in the leaves, hearing the crunch, feeling the crisp collapse. Now I sweep them aside to prepare a path, and marvel at their colors. Tomorrow I shall walk between them, through them, as they rain upon me, to new and glorious life.
It is a quiet, gentle day, a light rain having watered the night and a weak sun working its way through filmy strips of stratus clouds, the temperatures coolish. Somehow church was like that too, quiet, gentle, thoughtful.
Yet our celebrant and preacher stirred our souls with greater understanding, both of head and heart. He spoke of the Body of Christ, how we are one with one another, sitting at the same table, in union with Christ in the Eucharist. We are his bride the Church. As Paul tells us, we are one body, one Spirit, and we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Ephesians 4:1+)
Heady stuff. Mystery and miracle, the intersection of the eternal in time, the union of the immortal and the mortal, the raising from dead to life. All through baptism. All through sitting at the same table of the Lamb.
I’ve just finished my nearly final draft of my current novel, The Magdalene Mystery. I say nearly for I’m still tinkering and receiving input from reader friends. My Magdalene icon hangs nearby. Her golden hair flows over red robes and she holds a small white canister, presumably containing the oil she carried to the tomb that Easter morning, or perhaps recalling the story of the anointing of the feet of her Lord. It is an image from a church in Biot, southern France, not far from Cannes. A sculpted image stands alongside, colorless, with flowing robes. She holds a perfume bottle, in a graceful pose, waiting. Both gaze peacefully, knowingly, as though having become full of fullness itself. They encourage me to tell the tale.
In the writing, I’ve journeyed to those early years after the Resurrection, when it is said that Mary Magdalene arrived on the southern shores of France with Lazarus, Maximin, Zaccheus, and others. They say she preached in the Marseilles region, and probably in Marseilles itself, then a Greco-Roman port. She told the news from the East, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.
Astonishing news it was then, and not yet illegal to be a follower of the Christus, the anointed one. She probably preached in the shrine that would have been in Marseilles, Diana’s, as Paul did in Ephesus around the same time. She may have gone into the surrounding countryside which still is dotted with hermitages said to have been from the Cassianites of the early fifth century. Why did they choose this place in such numbers, these monks sent out from the Abbey St. Victor in Marseilles? It is likely because of the earlier presence of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus and Maximin (the latter two became bishops of Marseilles and Aix).
I’ve written in previous posts about the grotto in the ancient forest where they say Mary Magdalene lived her last years. There has long been a Magdalene shrine there, today kept by Dominican friars and sisters. As I walked with my characters in my mind through the forest of beeches and oaks, up the switchback stairs, past the crosses and the etched Beatitudes, up to the terrace on the side of the mountain, I was so thankful for her witness, thankful for her speaking the truth. Indeed, truth, and how to know and find it, is one of the themes of the novel. How do we know what happened? What is history? Are the Gospels historically true? Others have said they are fairy tales, but in researching I was pleased to find real evidence to support them. There may be a leap of faith involved, but the leap is a short one, the probabilities of Gospel truth so high. It might be better to call the leap a baby step of faith, a step that changes everything for the stepper.
This morning I thought about the Magdalene and her life as our energetic and dynamic preacher spoke of the one Body of Christ to which we all belong. Two thousand years telescoped to nothing. Saint Mary Magdalene is a part of us and we are a part of her, part of the long procession of saints and sinners who seek God. We sit at the same table, partake of the same body. For we have found him and he has found us and we are all one in him.
Astounding.
We woke to fog blanketing the house this morning, cocooning us in a cold, quiet, damp. It was as though we were in the middle of a cloud, feeling it seep against the windows, obscuring the early light. Where was the garden? The olive tree in the front yard? The drive was obscured, the foliage, the sky. All was white nothingness. But by the time we set out for church, the sun was trying to burn through, turning the white to colors and shapes, our familiar world.
Our processional hymn this morning was the lyrical and soaring #282: Praise my soul the King of heaven; to his feet thy tribute being; Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, Evermore his praises sing: Alleluia! We sang with all our hearts as the clergy and crucifer and acolytes processed up the aisle to the altar. The hammered bronze of the cross glimmered as it passed by.
Our parish is in a time of transition, and we have a new vicar. He is a short man, dark, with a powerful presence. He is Jewish, converted to Christ, and now Christ’s priest in his church. Today he would celebrate the Holy Eucharist, and I felt more anticipation than usual, as though something was coming, a special gift from God. I wondered what it would be, for God often surprises me and I didn’t want to miss it. I watched and waited, on my knees, as our vicar moved about the altar, each motion intense with meaning. He is not a man to do or say anything without fully understanding what he is doing and saying. Every second counts in this great drama of redemption.
In the sacrifice of the Mass in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the priest represents Christ and offers himself as Christ offered himself for us (hence we have male and not female priests). Today, our vicar was even more like Christ, for he is Jewish. As he intoned the anticipated phrases they sounded particularly Jewish, and I imagined Christ at that Last Supper saying those words, “Take, eat, this is my body given for you…” He would have said those words just as our vicar did today.
It is human nature to allow ritual to become rote and meaningless. We have been fortunate in our diocese to have dedicated priests who value what they are saying and doing at the altar, and rarely drone the words of the liturgy, unthinking. But this vicar woke me up as though I had been sleeping. Suddenly I was in Jerusalem at that Passover supper two thousand years ago. I was in the upper room with the other women and the disciples and Christ. I was watching the bread being broken, the cup being raised. I was hearing the Mass for the first time.
It was stunning the power of those words, spoken over those ordinary creatures of bread and wine, and as I knelt at the altar rail, I raised my open palms in awe. Our vicar approached, placed the host in my hands, placed Christ’s flesh on mine. I consumed God. He consumed me. My creator and I were one.
I gave thanks for the man of God who had come into our midst to re-present Our Lord to us. He carried within him the power and love of Christ, born through the priesthood these many centuries. I knew he has suffered in his life, so he understands the miracle and sacrifice of the Mass. He understands what it is to be a vessel for God, to be filled and to fill. He understands words, their power and their glory. He understands Christ as God’s Word Incarnate.
Our parish also has suffered and known sacrifice, and this vicar has begun the binding of our wounds. He helped the healing. Like the sun, he burned the fog away so that we can see again, can see the colors and shapes of our world.
The recessional was a quieter hymn, reminding me of a country church setting, full of sweet and certain joy, #489: Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing; Fill our hearts with joy and peace, Let us each, thy love possessing, Triumph in redeeming grace: O refresh us, O refresh us, Traveling through this wilderness.
I left church this morning refreshed, having come out of the wilderness. The fog had cleared and the sun burned warm upon my face.
This last week we celebrated St. Michael and All Angels, the defender of heaven and our defender too.
There was great war in heaven, so Scripture tells us, and Archangel Michael and his heavenly host of angels cast out the angel Lucifer, who had rebelled against God.
Myth? Dream? Real event?
While many passages of Holy Scripture are indeed myths, telling greater truths, or dreams, predicting real events, this account of the war in heaven rings true. I see the war in heaven all around me in our fallen world, and in my own fallen heart. Good and evil battle continually, and sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t.
So I love the feast day of St. Michael. I love that Satan is defeated and thrown out. For I know God wins in the end. It is good to remember too that God is not fighting Lucifer. God and Satan are not equal combatants. Michael and Satan fight this war in heaven. The angel Lucifer grew too proud, too full of himself, setting himself up as God.
Today’s Gospel was the parable of the lilies of the field, where Jesus tells us to not be anxious about tomorrow, consider the lilies, how they are not anxious. Christ is not telling us not to carry out our responsibilities to society, to one another. But once these obligations are met, we have no need to worry. Let God do the rest. Enjoy him and his creation.
God’s acting in time and eternity, his final victory, his valiant angels, also give me peace of mind. I know that by believing in Christ and his great redemptive acts, I shall become one with him in the Eucharist, and one with him in eternity in heaven. This knowledge gives me peace.
The hymns today were all about Michael, and we sang with intense anticipation and praise as the thurifer prepared the way along the red-carpeted aisle, throwing incense into the air, processing to the candle-lit altar and the green tented tabernacle. The crucifer followed, holding the crucifix high, an extension of himself. The clergy came last. They stepped joyously and solemnly, filled with God’s certain love. The stunning liturgy of the Holy Eucharist began, the immense offering prayer of God’s people, the liturgy of sacrifice repeated again and again since that last supper on Maundy Thursday so long ago, an offering repeated until the return of Christ to earth.
Today we welcomed our new vicar who is also named Michael, and I prayed that he would renew our people, fill them with the golden goodness of God in Scripture and Sacrament, in prayer and song. I prayed that he would cast out the evil and nurture the good.
As we left, I recalled that this Tuesday is the Feast of Saint Francis, a poor beggar filled with the same confidence as Archangel Michael. Francis had no worries, padding the trails of thirteenth-century Italy, walking through the fields, talking to the birds, at one with God and his creation.
I gave thanks for the poetic symmetry of the lessons and feasts, Michael yesterday, the lilies today, Francis tomorrow. It is harvest time, and we offer thanks for our crops, for sun and rain and wind. We are at once a part of it and not a part of it, somehow the same but different, with our creator binding us together. In time we will understand this mystery.
For now, the Archangel Michael defends heaven and Saint Francis celebrates earth. Creator, we the created, and creation, are one.
We came home to cats who missed us, and as I write, the larger one, a male tabby named Laddie (who is just a tad overweight) has climbed into my lap, demanding the missed hours of attention.
We have come home after being away. We rested on our vacation, staring at the sea and reading and writing, walking the shoreline, listening to the surf, inhaling the tropical aromas of jasmine and plumeria. Our world for the last two weeks was all blues and greens with splotches of fuchsia and orange and yellow. The first week the sun rose from the sea; the second week the sun dropped into it. Sunrise or sunset, the sky was painted with filmy strips of pink and purple and tangerine. We became spoiled with sky; we became spoiled with tropical breezes; we became spoiled with fruit and fresh fish. We probably ate too much and will have to eat less now.
Our away was bracketed by home, by real life. Now on the other side of the brackets we plunge into the minutes and hours of daily routines. We work through mounds of mail, pay our bills, respond to correspondence, do loads of laundry, do all the things still undone. We left a network of family and friends, and now return to them, re-entering love as we share their sorrows and their joys.
Our away time allowed for more prayer for there was more time away, time to reflect, time to praise, to give thanks. Upon return, I thought, I would continue that constant glorifying, keep it in my mind and heart so that Christ would always be with me.
A clergy friend occasionally walks the streets of his neighborhood, full cassock, praying the “Jesus Prayer” – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner, Amen. Why, he was asked, was he doing this. His answer was interesting. He didn’t say he had certain prayer intentions – that crime be lowered, that this neighborhood convert and come to his parish church, or that his Aunt Martha be healed. He may have prayed those prayers as well, but his purpose as he walks the streets of this upper middle class suburb is to make present the Holy Name of Jesus.
The Holy Name of Jesus.
I’ve thought about that ever since, and wonder if I could bring the Holy Name of Jesus to public places. My husband and I have begun saying grace (quietly) in public and making the Sign of the Cross, showing gratitude for every meal given. It is a small public witness but one I rarely see. And I am ashamed to say it has taken some courage to do so little. Are we ashamed of Jesus? Are we ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, as we are told to do in Baptism and Confirmation?
We have come home to our own crucibles, our own challenges. And in that movement into real life we bring those prayers, that time spent with God, and allow home to be mended and nourished by our time away. We listen to the joys and sorrows of friends and laugh and cry, all the while knowing Christ is with us, laughing and crying too. The God I prayed to on the edge of the ocean is the God I prayed to this morning in my little parish church. He has not changed, only I have, having drawn closer, closer to the center of his cross, his heart.
And the real center of his cross, where his heart beats, is my real life, my home, not my away. I can hear his voice and feel his beating heart sometimes better when away and I bring the hearing home with me. But he is always with me. His constancy is unbending, unalterable, unending. He is life, and life without him is death. He is love, and love is everlasting, eternal.
As home wraps about me and comforts me with its warm familiarities, it is also a hurricane of changing winds and weathers, the doings, the goings, the comings, the business of living and loving.
I woke this morning with severe lower back pain and decided there was no way I would be able to go to church. Then I decided to take one step at a time. With each step I prayed, they will be done. If you want me there, dear Lord, you had better help me.
And he did. The pain slowly eased enough to move. I made it to church. I was able to see friends and check on the babies in the nursery, admire the finished Children’s Chapel with its lovely old carved altar and wonderful tapestry hanging. In the main church I was able to pray before the Mystical Presence of Christ. I was able to gaze upon the crucifix, and become one with Christ in the Eucharist. I gave thanks.
My away and my coming home became one.
We watch the skies, the seas, the land. We look into our hearts. We consider where we have been and where we are going…
Here, along the northwestern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii I can see a royal blue band of sea way out along the barely curving horizon that meets the pale blue dome of sky. The blues change as the sea rolls into the land, gradually turning to turquoise as it caresses the packed sand, the white foam capping the waves. The beach gently curves too, from one black rock cliff to the other, bordered by a broad green lawn. A grove of palm trees command the lawn, their tall straight trunks parting the green of the grass, the blues of the sea and sky, and reaching to their crowns of palm that wave in the breeze like the arms of a dancer.
I say my morning prayers as I walk the beach. “In his hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills also; The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land…” (The Venite, O come let us sing unto the Lord…, Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 95). My bare feet sink into the soft dry sand or tamp the firm damp sand rinsed by the sea, my journey joining the two strong hills of black rock.
Indeed, true rest – re-creation – is all about the vision of God, watching the skies, the seas, the land, praising him for his creation, for his goodness, and indeed, his power. In this praise I am re-created. His power is all around me. Not all of nature is beautiful and good. When the Psalmist sings, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation,” he is describing a God of might, and because he is mighty he can save us from death, ourselves, our natural world.
I listen to the sea and the birds and feel the moist warm breezes. Today all is gentle; tomorrow there may be winds and rains, hurricanes, tidal waves. Tomorrow the natural world may turn violent, maiming, deadly.
I met a lovely Filipino girl who said she likes to fish on her days off work. She lines up along a pier near Kona with friends and family – twenty-five on each side – and works two poles to catch the small Halalo. One day, she told me, she caught 400 fish! She put twelve each into zip bags and sold them. “God is good,” she said, “to give his people such fish.”
I immediately saw Christ giving Simon Peter those two great catches – first, when Christ calls Peter to follow him, and later, on the shore after the resurrection. “Yes,” I said to my new friend, smiling. “God is very good.”
The Epistle for today is about the law and the promises of God, Christ’s coming to redeem us from sin and death. The law, Paul says, is necessary because we sin. The Gospel is about the young man who asks Christ how to keep that law, who is the neighbor that the law requires us to love? Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. We see that every hurt stranger becomes our neighbor.
We try but fail to keep the law. We are like the land, sea, and sky – today gentle, tomorrow not so gentle, or worse. We trespass, and we fail to forgive those who trespass against us. Our hearts are too small for God. They need to grow large like the sea and the sky and the land.
We are part of the created order, greatly loved by the Creator. Loved so much he sent himself to walk among us. Loved so much he died for us. Loved so much he wants us to share in his joy of creation.
I look at the skies, the seas, the land. I look into my heart. I confess my sins. I receive forgiveness. I forgive others. I slowly in time learn to love. Only then can I live up to the law. Only then can my heart stretch to make room for God.
Our week in Hana was restful as intended, and we moved from breakfast to lunch to dinner in a dream of walking and waking and reading and writing and watching the surf crest and pound the rocks below the lawns. The warm moist air slowed us down. We rested. In fact we never hiked up to Fagan’s Cross or cross country to Homoa Beach. We did revisit Hana Bay and the Cultural Center where Meiling takes good care to keep my novel available, Hana-lani, which is set here in the Hana area.
The sun was hot, and the air sweetly moist, the scuttling clouds brilliantly white, the days surreal in their beauty. The moon grew full and lit the sky of white shapes traveling over the star speckled darkness, the palm fingers waving their silhouettes into the canvas of midnight blues. We walked across the lawn in the evening light, following the path from dinner to bed and climbed wooden stairs to our bungalow. The whir of ceiling fans and the roar of the sea lulled us to sleep, then we woke when rain suddenly poured upon the tin roof.
It is a soft way of life, gentle and soothing. No air conditioning. No TV. No radios. No clocks. Internet in the hotel library. We listen to the surf and the winds and we inhale the intense aromas of watered flowers and grass, the plumeria and jasmine. We watch the sun rise up from the sea, a thin red band bordering the cumulus, and later set behind the volcano’s green flanks, shooting rays into the heavens. The staff is friendly and remembers us. We remember them. They have become our friends from far away, friends that help us to rest. Michelle, Jay, Laura, Bryan, Styles, Kim, Joan. Lei was home with a new grandbaby and we sent our best wishes but missed her sweet winsome welcome. Landa and Keo and Kepaka. Patrick. Kim’s husband who has more jobs than I can count and plays a mean ukelele. Mark the Manager and his lovely wife. Hoku.
But we had to say goodbye and flew to another island early Saturday morning as a rain storm cleared and marathon runners were descending on the Hana Highway. Today, on the Kohala Coast, we gaze out to a gentle bay, sweetly curved with its manicured sand and umbrellas, a lawn shaded by towering palms. No ceiling fans here.
But today is September 11, a national day of mourning which our nation has turned into victory of sorts. Wanting to remember this day, to honor it, I followed some of the TV coverage, heard some of the stories once again, saw some footage I had not seen, as writers and producers pull together timelines and time and the ten years that have elapsed.
We try to understand, to make sense of the tragedy. We look for meaning so that we can bear the pain. The attack on the Twin Towers by terrorists was a horrific tragedy but was not nearly of the proportions of the Holocaust, not nearly of the proportions of the million innocents aborted each year. Yet somehow this attack, being so intentionally symbolic, strikes especially dissonant and heart wrenching chords in our national spirit. For the planes hit our economic center, the twin towers of trade. They hit our military center, the Pentagon. They aimed at the symbolic center of government, the White House. Not understanding our balance of powers, they probably didn’t think of the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill. This orchestrated effort was a clear and powerful message.
We were hurt deeply. We need the conversation to continue, to retell and remember with the telling, certainly so that we do not forget, but also to create our own intentional symbols of victory. This is happening, and as I listened to the stories of the firemen and the tapes of the downed plane in Pennsylvania heading for the White House, the testimony of civic leaders, the wise handling of the crisis by our President, I could see a new tapestry emerging, woven from the shredded threads of that horrible day. It is a tapestry that must not be left in a forgotten room but woven into the weave of the flag. The Twin Towers memorial remembers, and it testifies to the future, and soon we will see the new towers rise higher than those that fell. Everywhere in the memorial are the symbols of freedom and rebirth. We too can use image to proclaim our way of life, our way of freedom.
Not the freedom to steal, murder, cheat, abuse, threaten. We want to protect freedom of speech, religion, race, gender. We want the freedom to worship as we choose, to decide our own government, to build and to create. We want the freedom to live in safe neighborhoods, to protect the law-abiding from the lawbreakers, to raise our children ourselves, to support marriage and family. And we want a world like this for our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren.
I missed church today. It was not only Nine-Eleven, but it was Grandparents Day, and I am a happy grandparent of eight. But even more importantly, it was a great day of celebration in our little parish. Our Church School was opening and our Archbishop was visiting. On this occasion he would bless our new Children’s Chapel. Afterwards, everyone was going to enjoy an Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social. All my favorites – Sunday School and the children, a glorious Mass with our beloved Archbishop, our Children’s Chapel Blessing, after many months of preparations and renewal over the last year. And I love ice cream sundaes.
I looked out to the sea and the crashing surf and I prayed for our parish and its lovely celebrations on this Sunday, today, September 11. I considered how the two were so vitally related and appropriately sharing the day – for it is these gatherings of faith, it is these times when we meet God in the Mass, it is these moments when we celebrate the generations and pass our heritage on to our children, it is in these communities that our victory over the terrorists is won.
It is family, community, and faith that we shall fight for. It is the freedom to live our lives as we choose that we shall fight for. We are stronger for having done battle for these things.
I hear the surf and walk and read and write. I say my prayers. I give thanks for these brave men and women who give their lives for us all, so that we may hear the surf, walk and read and write, and say our prayers.