Nearly Advent, Thanksgiving

Hoping for Advent, getting through too much food and excess of Thanksgiving. Not how it should be maybe.

Am losing sleep with the same old feelings of inadequacy and questioning: Does God really mean me, is God really calling me? And the same answer: Yes. Get over it. (well maybe not the last part--that sounds like me).

At diocesan convention last weekend, I heard about using parishioner spiritual autobiographies as a tool for evangelism. They showed some videos of autobiographies. I rememberd how spiritual autobiographies affected us in EFM. To know someone's spiritual journey is to be allowed into the depths of the person's greatest pain and sorrow as well as their greatest joy. A person's depths are reached by God as they open themselves in vulnerability. Without that vulnerability, we are not reaching our very humanity, our humbleness and humility before God and are not open to God's grace. When one refuses to feel sorrows, griefs and challenges, and feels nothing, one cannot feel grace either. When we touch our very depths, that open space allows mercy to flow into us.

So, hearing a person's autobiographical journey with God helps us know them deeper than before. As they talk about those places of vulnerability where they have met God, we see them as fully human, without the mask of anonymity for the general public, but with the grace of God as a beam of light suffusing their very self before us. What a transformation we have of understanding. Where before we saw a two-dimensional human being, now we see God's created spirit coming through this person whom God loves unconditionally. We want this for ouselves, we want to love this person as God has loved them, and we do because they are now purely themselves.

Before we see the full human being, we have perhaps seen a person who seems perfect. When you don't know a person's story, you only see how they appear at church, at work, in the grocery store--put together for public faces. We begin to "judge our insides by their outsides": we certainly can't feel perfect like that person is perfect. But then we come to really know their struggles. We find out their challenges, the problems of their family and home life, their growing up, their personal demons. We find they are like us in every way, flawed yet loved by God.

Knowing another is to reach into God's spirit a little more. It is to break out of the self-pity, or navel-gazing we may be doing about our own problems, and to see ourselves as part of God's created world and of God's own hand, along with all of humanity. We are special in our unique selves. but our challenges and foibles are not unique--we share them with all the world. When we know this, we join humanity and join with God in seeing the grace of God walking before us. We begin to see the face of Christ in the suffering we all have undergone and to see how loved we are in our struggles.

Tomorrow give thanks.

FALL

The leaves are prematurely falling here in the north. Today is equi-lichtal--equal light (is that a word?). My dad always said that it rains around the equinox and sure enough there is plenty of rain in the air. I like fall, the growing sense of inward journey, of internalness and the beginning of nesting for cooler weather.

Nesting is a particularly happy thing for us introverts, who like navel-gazing in quiet times, writing in our journals, and being contemplative in a noisy way in front of TV. Is fall a gift for good introverts?

Refiner of Silver

Malachi 3:3 says: 'He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.'
This verse puzzled some women in a Bible study and they wondered what this statement meant about the character and nature of God. One of the women offered to find out the process of refining silver and get back to the group at their next Bible Study.

That week, the woman called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining Silver.

As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest as to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: 'He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver.'

She asked the silversmith if it was true that he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed. The woman was silent for a moment.. Then she asked the silversmith, 'How do you know when the silver is fully refined?' He smiled at her and answered, 'Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it.'

This was passed on to me via email from an attorney friend of mine, who got it from her sister. I usually don't engage with this kind of spam, but the story intrigued me and meant a lot to me and my own life and wanted to share it with you.

Faith

Thomas Merton says there are two types of faith. The faith that we bring to church to us, that looks over our shoulder to see if we are conforming to what is going on around us. The second type is the faith that lies deep within us, close to our hearts, and grounds our lives.

Clearing the temple

I believe Christ is asking us all to enter into our grief and loss, whatever dark places are within us and come into a place of unconditional love, so that we can be healed.

When Jesus enters the temple to drive away the money changers and declares that the house of God will not be made a marketplace, he is doing something prophetic. He says he will tear the temple down and raise is again in three days. This is perhaps a scary aspect of the Christ that we want to think is all love.

Christ is telling the authorities that his body is the temple that will die and be raised in three days. To them this is unbelievable. To the disciples, who remembered these words of his, they then understood their meaning after his resurrection.

There may be parts of each of us that are crying out for resurrection. Parts that we have made a marketplace where we look for exchanges to take place, but not for a real relationship with our God. We see signs of resurrection around us—the green shoots beginning to show from the soil, the red wing black birds coming to make their nests, the sun staying with us a little longer each day. These signs give me hope, as does the gospel, that whatever Jesus is here to tear down within us will be built up with resurrecting life and light.

It is scary to enter into the places inside that Jesus wants to come and we are sometimes afraid to let him enter.

Jesus may challenge us to risk being vulnerable, to lose our composure; Jesus may challenge us to be real when we would rather be right, or at least to cover up our insecurities.

The Jesus who would tear down a temple and raise it in three days is one of action,
this is the Christ who destroys what is old and getting in the way of our faith
and also the Christ who is ready to give us life and give it abundantly.

Do we need to be destroyed in order to be given new life? I don’t think so. But sometimes we may need to give up control over some things, to let go, be able to lose something so that something more wonderful can be given to us by God. That is the cycle of death and resurrection—one of letting go of some things so that new things can be born in us.

This may be one of the most difficult things we humans have to let God do for us. The losses I have felt were able to be given to God in exchange for new life in Christ—new faith, new spiritual friendships that were right there waiting for me, giving me a sense of God’s presence with me and for me. I felt my own resurrection through the love around me.

Going through traumatic experiences is not a piece of cake. But we are never alone. God is giving us Christ, and Christ’s love through spiritual friends. Christ is asking us to trust that his love can enter our dark places and drive away our fear. We are being loved whether we know it or not, or can accept it or not. Christ is near at hand loving us. Christ is near at hand to help us, the love of Christ here to give us resurrection.

Ash Wednesday

“Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting with weeping, and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing. Return to the Lord your God for God is gracious and merciful.”

Are you looking for a way to return to God? Joel writes that we should rend our hearts.

Rend our hearts—what an image—an opening of our very center. A tearing apart of what beats in us with life, risking losing our life for the sake of eternal life.

Rend our hearts—a kind of tearing open what is most secret and fearful inside us. The things we are keeping deep and dark within, the things that scare us about ourselves. Rend those, take them and give them a little tug to open them up for God’s healing mercy.

Rend our hearts—an emotional upheaval maybe, causing us to listen to the deep urgings inside us to find God, not by fearing that God will really know who we are. God hates nothing God has made, there can be no hate of us, only a wish that we would return to God by giving up what does not belong to us, what is jealous, or mean spirited, what does not belong to God the center of our being.

Rend our hearts—give up what is causing us to want to be the major mover and shaker of our soul and give that job back to God. Return our very self to God’s love and protection and quit trying to make everything something we think we can control.

Can you rend your hearts this Lent? Enter deeper and be ready for the love that will take your broken heart and mend it as it returns to God?

Inviting God's participation in the healing of the world

Asking for the participation of God in healing individual parishioners, in healing our parish system and in healing our communities is the job of all communities of faith. Asking for God’s healing and then being engaged in that healing are our particular callings. Doctors can use medical science and art to heal our bodies, counselors can use psychological techniques to heal emotions and psyches, economists can use principles of finance to heal our communities, but only we of faith can enlist the healing powers of God.

How do we do that?

Prayer--for ourselves and others. Intercession especially for those for whom we have been asked to pray and for the people close to us, and the people we have never met but whose stories have come to us and invite us to closer relationship with them.

Action--donations to social service agencies whose support has decreased while their demand has grown in this economic downturn. Even small donations of food and money are gratefully accepted and needed, but big donations can do a world of good for the people served by food pantries, homeless shelters, job agencies, and other social and medical services.

Direct work with the homeless, the jobless, those who are dealing with hard times--make time to be with homeless people or work with those trying to get their resume in order. Being close to those who can use a leg up helps our spiritual journeys, as we give of our time and talent, and learn to know people intimately and make relationships with them.

Be watchful--for the inbreaking of God's love, wherever you may find it, whether in families, churches, communities, and let it be known that God loves every person God has made.

Things are not people

I am listening to Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture, a popular book about a professor who gives a last lecture--a program where the professor talks about the wisdom they have accumulated over their career, as if it were the last talk they would ever give. Except in his case, Pausch really does have only a few months to live, so the lecture takes on a much more real urgency.

A chapter of his book talks about what he inherited from his parents. One thing that struck me was the ability to separate the importance of people from the importance of things. He tells a story about a time he has come to take his niece and nephew in a ride in his new convertible. His sister admonishes the kids to be extra careful in the new car, not to get it dirty. When he hears this, Randy does not agree, and expresses his own idea about the convertible being merely a thing by deliberately pouring a soft drink all over his new car's seat in front of the children. In another story, his wife has hit one of their cars with the other car, thereby denting both cars. She is nervous about telling him when he gets home, but after she cooks his favorite dinner, she nervously breaks the news. When he hears about both cars being dented, he reacts very little. He tells his wife that as long as the cars run, there is no reason to fix the minor dents. He believes in the utility of automobiles, is not captured by the general use of cars as status symbols.

Both these stories captured my imagination. I have been tied to the sex appeal of particular cars I have owned, and I am not alone among my siblings in this tendency. I liked Randy's lack of using ownership of things as a means to bolster social class and standing. If more of us were like Randy, the auto manufacturers would have a hard time selling anything more than the basic vehicle to get us from point A to point B with the least amount of gas.

But it cannot be blamed on industry, they are merely tapping into our tendency to use things as social status indicators.

I have no fix for how to counter this tendency to trap ourselves in our stuff. I do know that Benedictine spirituality would help us learn how to live more simply, which seems part of what is needed. More important, teaching our children the importance of people over things, as Randy's parents did, probably is the best way to do it. And as we know, it's not what our parents say but what they do that inculcate the right values into our children.

Girls Camp

Wow, a week with 70 girls who just graduated from 5th and 6th grades. I thought it would be hard, but it was truly a joy.

I heard the laughter and singing of girls coming down a trail from an afternoon hike, their shouts in the pool, their laughter and singing in the meal hall, and in the assembly room after breakfast. The sound of their laughter was like music, the silly songs like joy bubbling over.

One night was set aside for open questions with the priest (me). Who wrote the bible? Who created God? Is God a person? Why do people commit suicide? What should I pray for when someone is sick? What happens when a person dies? Can you still go to heaven even when you do something really bad?

These are the basic questions of living, of being human, and they are being asked by girls who are 11 and 12. They are wrestling with their humanity and the ills of society, the grief and sadness in everyone's lives. I was heartened to hear their questions and tried my best to answer them openly and honestly. It was like theology 101!

It gave me hope that our children are not just stuck in front of TV and video games and the internet, but are questioning life and God and death. They are truly engaged, if they have been thinking about these things.

They liked the open question time very much and so did I. During the questions and answers they were very quiet and I could tell they really wanted to discuss these issues. I was glad I offered a forum for their thoughts, and was honored I could be part of their lives for this week.

Back to the Blog

Its been a few weeks. Many things have happened, but the most profound has been the loss of a family member in very rapid decline.

The shock of losing someone is still with me. Just yesterday I was able to write in my journal again, to feel up to a long walk in the sun, to breathe deeply. Grief is not handled well in our society, not given its due. We don't seem to want to acknowledge the emotional toll, we want everyone to buck up and move on.

I was watching a World War II era movie last night about the home front. One of the main characters, the grandson and fiance' of two other characters, dies in the war. The grandfather wears a black arm band in memory of his grandson. Another minor character loses his son and also wears a black arm band.

This was a good idea--the arm band signified that the person was still in the grieving process. Others could be signaled to respect them and to know that they perhaps were not going to "be themselves" during this time. It was helpful, I am sure, to all involved to have this sign of grief given publicly.

I have no black arm band, only dark circles under my eyes. I have no signal to give total strangers of my not being totally myself these past weeks. I have only a far away look, a tear that sneaks up on me unannounced. There are no signs alerting others that I am in a process of intense emotional energy. So, in some ways I feel I owe it to the world to hide my grief from them. Not to bother them with my tears and sadness, with my stares of disbelief, even my rants of anger at the person who didn't take as good care of himself as we, his family, thought he could have: Could he have survived this illness if he had taken precautions?

Some of the family are mad at God. I don't know what God had to do with his death. I ask questions of God, and am mad that our family seems to have had more than its share of death and grief. What is any family's share of death and grief, anyway? I can't answer that. It may not even be a question, it may only be a rant of anger and holds no real meaning. It is real nonetheless.

So, I am back with this blog. I ask your prayers--again. This time for me and my family as we enter this journey of grief and loss, and learn to live without our dear loved one. Not for just a year, but for the rest of our lives, we enter this grief. Every day the loved one is gone, we remember...

In Transition

Not one of my favorite things, transition, but here I am in the middle of one. I just finished my job as campus missioner for the diocese and am now seeking a full-time parish. Some opportunities are there, and I await their fruition.

Waiting is hard. I want to be gainfully employed, even if not remunerated, so I am engaged in several tasks: Working on ideas for health care initiatives for people of faith; writing, especially writing sermons and reflections; reading, especially all the books and journals that piled up during the busy-ness of everyday priestly activities with a parish and several college and other young adults; and finally, discerning the next place God is calling me to be.

That last one is obviously the hardest. Where do my talents belong? Who needs what I can give? How will I know when it is the place and the people with whom I am being called to serve? I think these questions have been the most difficult of my priestly formation. In my previous jobs, there was a job description that was fairly cut and dried and I knew by comparing what I had done and how I had trained whether the job would be a fit and I would enjoy doing that work. It was partly a matter of special academic interests in specific areas of the health care system.

I thought this would be how the deployment of a priest would go too, but alas, not with the same type of visible and discrete discrimination. Or at least not the obviousness with which I had perceived my talents fitting previous jobs in academia and health care.

I don't know why this is particularly--but I suspect there is lots more going on with parishes than they are able to put into a profile that is used to match my talents and their hopes and dreams for their future. If you think of it, you are asking a parish to make concrete what may be foggy to them, or may seem concrete but is layered with multiple hopes, fears, and dreams, some of which may conflict, about their future as a community of faith and the leadership they seek.

Discernment in this context is coupled with much mist and wavering images. The images seem to change and morph, on what basis I am not sure.

The discernment process calls for others to journey with you, in companionship, certainly, but also in advising, listening, helping you hear. So, I am asking several to accompany me on this journey. If you are kind enough to read this blog, and inclined to prayer, I do ask your prayers for me during this time of discernment.

May God lead me into light and the knowledge of God's will for me and for a parish who is looking for the talents I have been given.

The Power of Community

Yesterday I celebrated at a Eucharist for a group of Episcopal women I am a member of, at the end of a three-day conference on empowering women for social justice work. I asked all the women (about 75 who were present) to come stand up at the altar with me during the prayer of consecration.

As I was praying, I felt like superwoman--a feeling of great power and a kind of empowerment beyond myself. The spirits of all those women ringing the altar were extraordinary. There were more than just my prayers being said at the altar, there were the prayers and power of all those women with me. I felt as if I were floating a little above the floor, that the words of prayer were being sent into God's own mind at that moment.

This is the most powerful and wonderful, and awe-filled moment I have had as a priest. The community surrounding the altar were truly the consecrators of the bread and wine.

I believe this is how Eucharist was meant to be--the community praying together to bring the Holy Spirit in our midst. We all were co-creators with God at that moment, we all made the bread and wine Christ's body and blood to us--we all as an entity, not our separateness, but our oneness, were conduits of the Holy Spirit.

May all of you reading this today be able to have this kind of community where you can go--a place of such love and power, of oneness in Christ.

Christian community

This week our lection from Acts gave us a model of the first Christians living in community.

They broke bread, shared in the apostles' teaching, fellowship and the prayers. They held all things in common. They rejoiced and brought many new members into their fold. The did signs and wonders.

How does this model look next to your community of faith? Where can you take a page from the first Christians' community to learn how to be in communion with your fellow Christians? Does your community of faith look anything like this?

Meeting the Risen Christ

As we continue to meet the risen Christ in our readings during Easter, be mindful of the risen Christ meeting you on the street, in your office, classroom, home. Wherever people are on the margins--the poor, the outcast, the homeless, those in the throes of addictions—all are the face of Christ crying out for the gospel that promises that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This “scandalous gospel of Jesus”, as it is termed by Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes in his latest book of this title, makes us uncomfortable because it challenges our own place at the table. It takes us out of our comfort zone, to reach out to those whom Christ cried for, healed, loved. Love is never diminished when given away, paradoxically, it grows. Jesus’s love for “the least" showed us the way. And his power over death made death nothing to fear, so now we have nothing to fear by giving away our love.

Encounter the risen Christ this week, live the scandalous gospel in your little corner of the world.

Richard of Chichester

On April 3, we commemorate Richard of Chichester, bishop, who died 1253.

You may remember the prayer attributed to him, basis for a song in the rock opera Godspell:

Thanks be to Thee, my Lord Jesus Christ
For all the benefits Thou hast given me,
For all the pains and insults Thou hast borne for me.
O most merciful Redeemer, friend and brother,
May I know Thee more clearly,
Love Thee more dearly,
Follow Thee more nearly,
Day by day.

The Passion

A few words meditating on the passion—

The passion—central defining action of Jesus of Nazareth—his trial as an innocent man. His trial for our own humanness, where his divinity waits to show the glory of God. Was his suffering because of us? Are we the Jews who put him on trial? Are we Pilate who wash our hands of his death?

The terrible suffering and death of Jesus was the culmination of all his acts of love for us. He time and again has risked his life by healing on the Sabbath, questioning the leaders of the Jews in their temples, and raising Lazarus from the dead in a way that incites them against him. He is taken like a thief. He is treated like a criminal. Is this for all our thieving ways? For our criminal behavior toward each other?

Jesus’ death is for us. Jesus’ death is more than the snuffing of one life. His death stands for the death of sinfulness and the power of death over us. His death snuffs out death, not life. His death is our own death if we let it be. The death of mean-spiritness, the death of jealousy and greed. The death of working so much we don’t have time to love. The death of trying to control all our world out of anxiety.

Jesus did not die without purpose.Jesus did not suffer without first loving all the world and calling each of us to him in love. Love conquers jealousy and greed, and anxiety, if we accept this gift from Jesus.

The terribleness of this death that Jesus died carries the weight of the world with it so that love may have the last say.

Nearing Holy Week

Closing in on Passion Sunday and Holy Week, the last week of this season of Lent, we pause for a moment and remember what we have been through.

The woman at the well is told by Jesus that she is one of the kingdom. A man born blind can now see, while the leaders of the Jews are still blind. Lazarus, who has been grieved four days in the tomb, is called forth and lives.

Jesus gives us a love that is personal, one on one. A love that know no boundaries of country, of sin, or death. Jesus brings a love that has power over death and the things that kill us, and brings us living water to slake our thirst for true relationship.

In this last week of Lent, look around you. Where is Jesus calling you to love as he has loved you? Where in your life has the love of Christ manifest itself in personal, one on one relationship that gives life?

Thirsty?

The Gospel of John pericope about the Samaritan woman at the well is about thirst. A woman’s thirst for authentic relationship and love. She had been “through the wringer” of marriage, having had five husbands and now living with a boyfriend. We are not brought into a story of condemnation of her situation, but of her encounter with living water at the well, with Jesus. He offers her water that will quench her thirst, for eternity. He tells her about her life, without judgment, but with insight into her soul, and a piercing knowledge of her needs.


The metaphor of water speaks to a desert community in first century Palestine. It speaks to us also in the Southeast, who so recently were in drought conditions.


Lent is a time of entering into drought, coming face to face with our thirst for something more real, lasting, deeply satisfying. A taste of the water that does not require us to keep returning to the well to quench our desire.


Thirst is a natural, inborn response of our bodies to the lack of hydration. I have heard it said that by the time we actually feel thirsty, we may already be entering dehydration. We are encouraged to drink water throughout the day, to improve our health.


Are you drinking enough living water?

Our hiding place

Yesterday we read from Psalm 32:
You are my hiding place;
You preserve me from trouble;
You surround me with shouts of deliverance.

God is indeed our hiding place, where we go for Sabbath time of quiet, contemplation, and forgiveness. Lent is a time that is especially appropriate for finding the hiding place that God has prepared for you. Like the wilderness Jesus encountered, it may be a place where God supports you in the tests challenging you. It may be a place where regrets are offered up to the compassionate love of Christ. It may be a place where God alone attends your thoughts and offers the peace that passes understanding, to "preserve you from trouble".


Wherever your hiding place with God is, come to that place in Lent. Know the shouts of deliverance upholding you.