Monthly Archives: November 2021

The season of Advent has often been called Little Lent, for it is a penitential season, a time to examine our hearts and minds to see if we are ready to receive the Savior of the World among us.

Over the years I have used this time to memorize or re-memorize the Collect for today, an opening prayer that is repeated throughout Advent. And so as I listened to the prayer prayed before the altar this morning, collecting us together, the familiar words sang to me:

“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor 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 and the dead, we may rise to life immortal…” BCP 90

If I do nothing else this Advent, I shall endeavor to repeat this prayer daily, to forge the words into my heart and mind, my memory a golden home for these words, food for my soul.

For today we begin to think about judgment, law, and love. Paul writes to the church in Rome in the Epistle (Romans 13:8+) about how the law leads to love. “We owe no man any thing, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law.” But there is more; it is not that simple. He goes on to list the commandments, for the commandments are the law of love, commandments against adultery, killing, stealing, lying, and coveting, all which harm others. How do we measure up against this standard given to Moses on Mt. Sinai, burned into tablets of stone?

And so we have our instructions for Advent: to examine, confess, and repent; to clean out our hearts.

Paul writes one of his most beautiful exhortations to his church in Rome, making his words appealing and encouraging, even beautiful:

“Now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we  believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.”

It startled me anew, “put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Christ becomes a garment worn over our souls. It is a garment of light and love, and also law. Christ himself is our armour of light. We wear him.

We don the holy, the sacred, the eternal. And by wearing Christ, a holy light of discernment, we see our way in the darkness of this world. He hallows us, covering our body and soul, protecting us from harm, from the dark.

I will admit, confess, that chambering and wantonness, rioting and drunkenness, are not my usual temptations. But I see them all around me, in our towns, in our schools, in our elections, in our lack of law and order, in the everyday shootings and lootings and chaos nearby. But strife and envying are always hovering, tempting, for it is easy to desire to be someone else, or covet what they have, to be ungrateful for blessings given, for life itself. So I admit to these sins that encourage the darkness and dispel the light, making it more difficult to “walk honestly.”

Tradition appoints four themes, the “last four things,” to be addressed on the four Sundays in Advent: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell, themes of darkness and light. For we all shall die and we all shall face judgment and our final destination. Considering these last things leads us to our means of salvation, Christ himself, born in Bethlehem. Considering these events, we cast our hope on this Child in the manger, the One who will carry us into eternity.

For if we don Jesus Christ, if we cover our souls with his armor of law and love, we need not fear the encroaching dark. We can see the morning light through the trees, as we follow the path through the forest, through the woods of the Cross, and to the river that runs by the throne of God.

In Angel Mountain I was glad to describe some of these events in our own end-times, our own lives on this earth. I was glad to echo the words of Paul and the words of the Prayer Book’s Collect for the First Sunday in Advent. I was glad to glimpse the glowing dawn of his glorious majesty when He judges us, when we rise to the life immortal.

Come, Lord Jesus, come.

Today is called “Stir Up” Sunday because of the prayer at the beginning of the liturgy, which “collects” us together as one body in Christ, hence called the Collect for the Day:

Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, 1928, 225)

And we, the good people of St. Joseph’s Chapel in Berkeley, were stirred up, our wills swirling in a golden bowl, stirred by the Holy Spirit, melding into one single will, to glorify God on this bright Sunday morning.

Our deacon celebrated a deacon’s Mass, since our vicar was away. It was good to see Deacon Longsworth, who attended seminary here at St. Joseph’s and returned today, soon to be ordained to the priesthood. This happens from time to time – former students return to visit, to preach, to pray – and we enjoy the reunions, lovely gifts from God suddenly in our midst.

And so, as my will was being stirred up, I wondered if my creativity was too, if soon I would seek a moment to begin my next novel. Many of its parts are living in my brain, camped out, I guess, waiting. Some bits and pieces have left, probably ready to move on.

After Mass I stepped downstairs into the basement of our student residence next door to work for a few minutes weeding the books stored there for the last forty years. It is a project slowly taking shape. The process of the weeding, pulling dusty volumes from dustier racks, considering the title on the spine, and placing in an appropriate pile, has focused my fragmented mind upon books, libraries, and words.

Someone on the political left stated recently that words were a sign of white supremacy. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal (November 13/14, 2021, “Democrats Need to Face Down the Woke”) recently quoted George Packer in his Atlantic article, “When the Culture War Comes for the Kids”:

“In New York City’s public schools, which Mr. Packer’s children attended, the battleground was ‘identity.’ Grade-school ‘affinity groups’ were formed ‘to discuss issues based on identity – race, sexuality, disability.’ The city was spending millions in ‘antibias’ training for school employees. One slide was titled ‘White Supremacy Culture’ and included such traits as ‘individualism,’ ‘objectivity’ and ‘worship of the written word.’ “

I’ve read that also under the white supremacy label is discipline, responsibility, and achievement. Other identity groups, the Left claims, do not think in these terms and thus students shouldn’t be held to these standards.

What really struck me was “worship of the written word.” Hence, books, libraries, and as we have heard, history. For how is history transmitted from generation to generation? Through words, written and oral. Will these folk let us keep oral words? According to cancel culture, speech is forbidden as well.

And so as I examined the dusty, faded, spines of these many volumes published over the last fifty+ years, I recalled that such basements full of books might indeed be banned one day. Would libraries be burned down? It was thought a remarkable and fortunate turn of fortune that the great Alexandrian library in North Africa was spared the looting and pillaging of the vandals in the raids of the fifth century. Libraries – of word, print, or mind – exist to share ideas and times, plottings and plannings between people and cultures and ages. Libraries attempt to ensure that we do not make the same mistake as our ancestors did, that we learn from history and not repeat the failures.

Indeed, these very words, my thoughts worked out on a keyboard, appearing on a screen, on a sunny Sunday afternoon after being stirred up in a sacred chapel a block from UC Berkeley, would be banned too.

So another idea for a theme in my novel emerged. Deep within the caves of Angel Mountain is the last, lost library. Far down, below ground, and farther down than that… where hidden wellsprings bubble and moisture seeps and drips through sandstone… are the last books of Man, his lost words, forgotten and abandoned and left in the dark during the terrible terror, the silencing of speech, writings, communications. It is a time when we no longer sing the song of humanity to one another, to the next generation. We no longer tell stories to children about life, death, and love. One character recalls church bells, though, and sings the tones as she goes to sleep. Another recalls poetry. Another recalls a mother’s lullaby. But these are deep interior memories, silenced by the great levelling, the equalizing of humanity into a gray stream of sameness.

At some point in the past, one character recalls, the lights went out, electricity fizzled, plugs were pulled, and the world went dark. Along with modern conveniences that depended upon the power grid, the internet shut down, for batteries needed feeding. It didn’t take long, he remembers, only a few weeks, maybe less. Fuel was banned to save the planet from climate change and cars sat still and silent where they were abandoned, or kept as museum pieces. The last-minute hording was ugly, with many dying in the crush of stampedes. Yet the hording didn’t last forever either, just extended the pain.

Another character recalls that at one time they heard news of other places and events. The news came through screens and phones, generally propelled by those in power in Washington using carefully scripted words. But now, with the silence mandate, which criminalized writing and most other communication as racist and therefore hate speech, and therefore a sign of domestic terrorism, news was broadcast once a month by a town crier, who read a carefully scripted and word-barren paper he unrolled in the village square. Some wondered if he was human, and perhaps he wasn’t, for he sounded like a digital recording from a bygone age. Others listened, but learned little about human affairs in other places.

It was said in hushed voices that at one time art was celebrated – pictures and stories invented by the imagination – but that the mind needed words and images to dream, and the desire to tell or draw or listen slowly disappeared.

But another whispered that Angel Mountain had a secret deep within, far below in the bowels of the earth. It was a secret library. They spoke the word library as if it wereZ precious gold, a gemstone of rare brilliance. What was a library, the young asked. Ah, the elders replied, you wouldn’t believe it if you saw it. What is believe, the young asked. Ah, the elders sighed, something from long ago, something bright and beautiful and full of joy…

And so I pulled books from the metal racks in the basement of St. Joseph’s student residence, Morse House. There were classic paperback novels, yellowing and brown. There were theological tomes from various decades. There were cataloging how-to books, that listed order and numbers and classifications that all librarians abided by. There were large glossy books of places and things with color photographs and few words that delighted the eye and fed dreams of travel. There were hymnals and prayer books and sheet music in binders.

And many others…

And so the libraries of my mind, those collections of images and words and ideas, loves and hates and dreams, were reorganized as I studied the spines and chose the destination of each book. The books and the words of my mind, those phrases and feelings that formed foundations of my life, joined and separated in a kind of dance, or a painting, or a poem.

The stirring up had stirred me up indeed. And I was grateful, even joyful, that I was a part of Our Lord’s faithful people plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, at least trying to bring forth such fruit. The fruit, I knew, lived in our words, in our hearts and minds. The fruit was ripe for the picking.

As I said farewell for the week to the others gathered around a table in the Clergy House in the back, I was grateful for this morning, this last Sunday of the Church Year. I look forward to next Sunday, our New Year’s Day, the First Sunday in Advent. For having been stirred up, I look anew to the season of Advent, the coming of Our Lord as a babe in a cave in the hills outside Bethlehem, surrounded by farm animals, adored by his mother, earthly father, shepherds, angels, and wise men. We shall sing of this with words that resound through the centuries. We shall tell the greatest story of all, the story of Christmas.

Today, Veterans Day, in thanksgiving for those who fought for our freedoms, American Christian Fiction Writers published Christine’s post, “Loving Righteousness,” how Christian fiction writers weave stories of righteousness, the foundation of American freedom and character. Angel Mountain, her seventh novel, opens on Veterans Day 2018 and closes on Thanksgiving Day, reflecting upon how America can remain free without righteousness.

A cold breeze pierced the air making way for the sun to light up our green hills in the East Bay, welcome after more light rain this week. For without light, colors fade into grays.

Just so, today we celebrated the saints and the light they have shone upon our world, turning the grays into greens, allowing us to see God and God’s heaven a bit more clearly.

Just so, parents across the land saw more clearly just what their students were being taught in public school – division, hate, and segregation all over again. They saw clearly, and they reacted with their votes. Numerous school boards were reshuffled. This was a victory for parents over the state, for freedom over slavery. Had it not been for the pandemic, these parents would not be any wiser. Somehow the clouds of lockdowns had silver linings, for parents saw with their own eyes through Zoom classes exactly what the teachers were teaching their children. God writes straight with crooked lines, as they say.

And just so, the unborn have been given a voice, a tiny voice, barely a whisper, but still light has been shone once again upon the genocide of the unborn. When I reach the pearly gates, what will I confess to St. Peter, or indeed Our Lord himself, about my silent role, my collusion, in this fifty-year genocide? Granted I have voted against this horror. I have supported those who marched against it. I have written and spoken. Will that be enough? It is a huge pandemic of life, of our nation, of the world, each day, each hour; a giant condemnation of America; a Holocaust, but of far greater numbers and time span.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, a radiologist, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal (October 29, 2021) how her “youngest patients are unborn babies, and today’s ultrasounds show they are fully alive and human.” At fifteen weeks they “have all the proportions of a newborn…major organs are formed and functioning… the digestive, urinary and respiratory systems are practicing for life outside the womb… the heart is fully formed.” The baby is active, kicking and arm-waving:

“I watch as babies plant their feet against the uterine wall and stretch vigorously. Sometimes a delicate hand – with all five fingers – approaches the face and appears to scratch an itch. fingernails aren’t visible, but they are present. We can see how the bones of the leg meet the tiny ankles and the many-boned feet… the brain’s frontal lobes, ventricles, and thalamus fill the oval-shaped skull. The baby’s profile is endearing in its petite perfection: gently sloping nose, distinct upper and lower lips, eyes that open and close.”

Is this child owned by the mother it inhabits? Yes, say those who desire to end the child’s life. No, say the pro-lifers – owning someone else is called slavery. No one owns another person, regardless.

These questions are increasingly being raised in federal courts, as more and more Americans begin to see more clearly what we have “legalized” in a more primitive time, before ultra-sounds, in 1973. Soon the Supreme Court will hear a Mississippi case challenging abortions after fifteen weeks.

How did we arrive at this place in our history? Many say the manipulation of language has effected huge changes, the use of euphemisms that prevent seeing the deed as it truly is. Many have said that the “Newspeak” of Orwell’s 1984 has arrived, where the meaning of words are changed and some words are eliminated entirely. And with the manipulation of language comes the rewriting or even erasure of history.

Are we en-lightened or are we barbarians? What has blinded us so? Can we turn around and embrace these little ones, embrace the light of truth about the human condition?

I thought about this and about the light of the saints, their shining a light upon us all, their examples of selflessness and sacrifice, their witness to seeing reality as it truly is – I thought about these things as I worshiped in St. Joseph’s Chapel this morning, and I gave thanks for the testimony of the majestic organ notes that danced into the dome above the white-linen covered altar, above the candles burning bright, above the white tented tabernacle, and above the crucifix itself.

And I gave thanks for the beam of light streaming through the high clerestory windows, piercing the wood of the cross.

The love of God was in that space, with us, leading us, and teaching us through his humble priest bringing Christ in our midst. I was thankful for this moment of clarity.