Monthly Archives: January 2023

January is the month of Life conquering Death. It begins with resolutions to change, to be better, to do this, to not do that. For some it is a “dry month,” purging alcohol toxins from the system and hopefully purging bad habits as well. We all want to live, not die, to savor every minute of the life we have been given. We have emerged from a time of holiday gatherings and festivities, of giving and receiving, of singing to the baby in the manger, “silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…” We have considered the miracle and mystery of Christmas, God incarnate, come to save us from ourselves.

And so in January we are ready to save us from ourselves with resolutions to be better in some way. Christians do this weekly, with confession and repentance, or even hourly, saying to Our Lord, “Forgive me for that, forgive me for this, forgive me… I am sorry.” Whether once a year or once a day, we innately know we are under judgment in some way; we innately know we are sick and need healing. Our souls need saving.

As I putter along with my novel-in-progress, The Music of the Mountain, my decision to set it in January 2023 has produced some interesting discoveries about this month in our present day. The Feast of Epiphany led me to light and dark, vision, seeing, knowing. That the January 6 protest in Washington D.C. was on this day has struck me with some force since the event happened. Coincidence? Don’t know. I try to look at all sides, and make up my own mind about truth and lies. This rally, to my mind, was a demand to delay the counting of the electoral votes until further investigation could be made. It was not an effort to overturn the election, but to question certain electors and to re-certify them to everyone’s satisfaction. There appears to be clear evidence there were FBI instigators in the crowd, urging them on. No protestors used firearms, and the only death was one of the protesters at the hands of the police (will there be justice for Ashley Babbitt?). Nothing burned down. One thing for sure, these rather foolhardy trespassers wanted more light shed on what happened over the previous year 2020 in terms of the election. Numerous irregularities needed bright sunlight. News stories were buried that needed to be aired in the light of day. Questions needed answers. We are still unraveling what happened, two/three years later.

January 6 and the light of Epiphany – the desire to see reality for what it is – coincided with this march on Congress by citizens who desired to shine light on their beloved country. 

This year, Epiphany fell in the midst of rainstorms and flooding here in Northern California. Power outages from fallen trees left us in the dark for days in cold temperatures without heat, light, and without warning. The storms darkened the skies through the 15th, and we began to see sunlight once again. 

Soon we were recalling the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade – January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court federalized the right to abortion, overturned in October 2022, and given to the States to decide. As of now it is thought that 11,000 babies have lived that would not have lived since this 2022 decision. Life won over death. But the tragedy continues, as State by State work to settle the question, when does life begin? Science says conception. Death says whenever you want, you decide. 

And so folks marched for Life in Washington D.C. on Friday, in San Francisco on Saturday (crowd estimated at 30,000), and in cities across the country over the weekend. Sunday the 22nd was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, coinciding with the Third Sunday in Epiphanytide, recalling Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, a moment when Christ celebrates marriage and the joy of family and friends, and of course, children.

This weekend of Life was soon overshadowed by a week of mass shootings in California. On Saturday the 21st, eleven were killed in a dance hall in Monterey Park in Southern California. On Monday the 23rd seven were injured and one died in a mass shooting in Half Moon Bay in Northern California. There was a mass shooting in Oakland as well.

As we moved through the week, mourning the many murdered, the skies dried and an icy wind cleared the air, culminating in Friday the 27th, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was stunned when I realized this fell in this same month, a week after the Roe v. Wade anniversary. The two holocausts remembered within a week. In January.

The Jewish Holocaust remembrance – January 27 – recalled the freeing of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on this day. In all, some 1.1 million people were killed in this concentration camp in Poland. Friday, January 27, 2023 was the 78th anniversary, a commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005.

These twin horrors – holocausts – must not be forgotten: the children lost through abortion (2 million a year in the U.S. since 1973) and the genocide of six million Jews, five million Slavs, three million ethnic Poles, two hundred thousand Romani, two hundred fifty thousand mentally and physically disabled people, and nine thousand homosexual men by the Nazi regime.

I was reminded of this anniversary by my friends in Kentucky who run Nazareth House Apostolate, a retreat and prayer center. Vicki and Father Seraphim Hicks send a daily prayer email that includes significant meditations on our times. Vicki quotes the author and survivor Elie Wiesel who describes Holocaust survivors as those who had “emerged from the Kingdom of Night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering, and not to share them would mean to betray [the dead].”

We must never forget all holocausts – the genocide of babies and the genocides of peoples. In my novels, I try and include not only immigrant stories, but survivors of genocide. We must not forget.

Being absorbed by these events over the last few weeks, I failed to remember one last commemoration in January, one that captures my heart, for January 28 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Denver consecrations. After leaving the Episcopal Church for matters of faith and practice, some would say heresy, four bishops were consecrated in Denver, Colorado in 1978. This event solidified the foundation of the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Our Bishop Morse of blessed memory was consecrated bishop with three others, thus ensuring the apostolic line of the episcopacy for our Anglican province. We have traveled a long road together through the decades since 1978 and have been blessed to speak truth to lies, love to hate, bringing many into the ark of the Church and her promise of life eternal.

And so this month of January 2023 has been full of light and dark, in great need of more epiphanies, in great need of Christ’s light in the darkness. We see why he came to us as a baby in a manger-cave outside Bethlehem, why we celebrate him in all we do, for he brings the light of truth, the light of love, and the light of life into our tragic world. He truly saves us in our Time for all Eternity.

And of course this is the music of the mountain, a tune that calls us all to love, light, and life eternal.

It’s been a week of awakenings, epiphanies, which is appropriate given my review of The Awakening of Jennifer Arsdale by George Leef was published yesterday on the VoegelinView website, a fascinating library of erudite articles on culture, history, music, Western Civilization, and more. My little review was a bit nervous about the company it was going to be keeping, but I gave the review’s heartfelt words and lines a pep talk and all seems fine now. Sometimes you have to venture forth into the wider world, I explained patiently to my creation. Just like Jennifer Van Arsdale.

Epiphanies are awakenings, perhaps more focused. Epiphanies are re-creations, new creations, sudden sight, sudden hearing, sudden knowing. Sometimes they heal, warn, advise. And so as I listened to the Gospel for today in the stunning St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel in Berkeley, I had an epiphany about epiphanies. For Christ’s first miracle is recounted, the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast in the town of Cana. But of course, I thought, our Creator can turn anything into anything. He knows how to do it, the water was created by him as was the wine. On this altar in our chapel, He will become present in the bread and the wine. And just so, I thought, daring to venture forth into the wider world of seeing, understanding, even knowing, Christ can do the same with us. He can change us from water into wine, if we desire it, if we will it, if we say yes as Mary did all those years ago.

I’ve been working on the backstories for my four characters that will inhabit the pages of my next novel, The Music of the Mountain. When I approach these things, early on when the task seems so gigantic that I fear I shall freeze in trembling apprehension of all the details that must be either remembered or recorded – when I approach the creation of my characters, I pause, wait and listen. I want epiphanies to help me create the characters. I want, no less, God to give me a nudge or two. A sign. An arrow pointing somewhere. So I wait, empty-handed as it were, for I have found approaching Our Lord empty allows Him to work his own miracles in my heart, soul, and mind, allows Him to fill the emptiness.

So over the week, details began to emerge, confirmed by others with whom I conversed about the storyline. Pieces fell into place. And again this morning, on this bright sunlit morning, sitting on my folding chair and gazing at the medieval crucifix over the altar with its tented tabernacle and up to the vaulted dome and its slanting rays of sun (sun!), I had two more epiphany ideas for the story, ideas that will create a stronger foundational structure for the novel.

My old vicar in the story is living in an abandoned (UC Berkeley) residence hall next door to this chapel. He is going to have regular conversations with God in the chapel, as one would have with an old friend one counts on. We shall hear what ails him – and why – and learn, perhaps, a bit more about the spiritual life, the Christian pilgrimage through Time into Eternity. His bishop of blessed memory lies beneath the altar, and perhaps these ashen relics will work their own epiphanies in those who worship in this incredibly sacred space.

My second epiphany I had this morning regards my youngest character, Molly MacRae, who desires to teach children real history, true American History, in a school she will run, either online or in person. I’m thinking she will have regular reflections on fairy tales told in her childhood. Once upon a time, not so far away, lived a princess… Princesses are out of favor in our world of dumbing down and persecuting merit or rank. Molly is concerned and knows she has a princess heart if only she can find her prince.

And now I’m thinking the would-be prince will be considering what it means to be a hero, to be a man, to fill a role that Western Civilization has honored for millennia, for heroes sacrifice themselves for a greater good, or perhaps to protect a princess, and must be rewarded with honor and high esteem. Bravery needs to be honored, else who would dare to be brave?

The fourth character, my Ethics Professor, will have a past of suffering. How she has suffered – what she has done that becomes to her unforgivable – will be visited as a story within a story, slowly, tenderly, with great care not to open the wounds too wide, too suddenly.

For we are all stories within stories within stories, as our Dear Lord knows, having written us, each one of us unique, trembling figures of passion playing out our own passio, our own Way of the Cross. Epiphanytide teaches us this, teaches us to listen, to see, to open our hearts to Our Heavenly Father. He manifests himself to us, but only if we say yes, as did our Blessed Mother Mary so long ago in a town called Nazareth.

We are all epiphanies, manifestations of our loving God, and just as Christ was baptized by John (today’s Gospel), just as the Holy Spirit came upon Christ as he rose from the waters, just as Heaven touched Earth and God the Father spoke his words of love, just so we too are bathed by the Heavens and touched by the Holy Spirit. Just so we hear the voice of God our Heavenly Father.

It continues to rain and flood in the Bay Area, but in spite of the power outages and closed roads we are grateful for the watering of our hills. You can see the green grass drinking the rain, quenched. And we are told that our drought might be over, at least it would be if we had built enough reservoirs and didn’t let the excess run into the sea. Evidently there are environmental concerns in Sacramento that worry about a fish.

Epiphanies. With these epiphanies, these drops from the Heavens, I build my characters that will live inside my next novel, The Music of the Mountain, layering them with unique personal histories so that I can get to know them and understand how they will react when when the page is turned. The foundations must be solid and extensive for each one, just as we have our own histories too, making each one of us unique, each one an epiphany.

The novel is about history in a way, or rather its importance, and the devastating consequences of erasing our past, be it national or personal. For we are today the choices we have made in the past. We have our own foundations, given to us by our loving Creator. To cherish our pasts, warts and all, sins and all, joys and fears and sufferings – all of it – is to cherish our Creator. As my bishop of blessed memory often said, “Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted.” And I have come to see that each moment in our time on earth counts in the divine realm of Eternity. Each moment counts in the accounting of each one of us.

And so we repent, clean out our hearts of all the bad choices, the sins. We bathe in the baptismal waters of rebirth, daily, moment by moment. In this way we are continually renewed, our sick insides healed and healthy once again. We can breathe once more, deeply, breathe the name of Jesus and know that God is with us.

So who will be inhabiting these pages of my novel to come?

Molly MacRae is a young woman, 25, grade school teacher, American History, who leaves her job because of the false history she is required to teach. She desires to go back to school, possibly Hillsdale, to earn a Masters in Education, and set up an online school. She is Evangelical.

Winston Adams is a young man, 30, a journalist, who is fired for telling the truth. He went with the political program, silencing stories, promoting false narratives, until he had had enough. He told the truth. He was soon out of a job, but now he considers honest ways of earning a living, perhaps even starting his own newspaper or journal. He is a Catholic.

Fr. Thomas Adams is Winston’s grandfather, 80,  who is Anglican vicar of the now boarded up university chapel, south campus. After the riots and the lockdowns and his own bout with the pandemic, he returns to the property now in ruins, no longer open. He lives in the abandoned student residence next door and plays the organ in the chapel. He prays.

Dr. Patricia Norton, 50, has been fired from her prestigious university position as Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, for refusing the vaccine and masking requirements, which she maintained were unethical demands. She is agnostic. She lives in the old Villa Tilifos at the base of Angel Mountain (from my last novel). She bought the spacious house for back taxes, since the owners had not returned after leaving on an extensive pilgrimage to pray for the world.

All four characters notice a disturbing trend: large sections of the Internet have been erased, books have disappeared, and libraries have empty shelves, where the Classics once resided, alongside great literature, history, all supporting and defining Western Civilization. American founding documents can no longer be found, but have been replaced by less “offensive” materials.  Theology and philosophy shelves are bare. My valiant heroes set out on a mission to retrieve the physical copies that still exist and put them somewhere safe, at least for the time being.

Fr. Adams shows them his hidden basement, a musty, dark place full of books not yet found. They begin their Great Work of Freedom in this space…

And somehow it all leads back to Angel Mountain… where they can hear music, familiar chords, dancing with one another. What is the music? It leads them to where they must go, these melodies of meaning, chords christening a new world to be born, formed on the foundations of the Old World.

Of course all of the above may be tweaked by more epiphanies, more reaching for the Heavens, more sudden sight, seeing the way it must be, how Love moves among us, creating us to love one another as we rise from the waters of Baptism.

We were startled to wake up to the New Year with a two-day power outage. Portent? Sign? Who knows?

Major storms hit Northern California over the last few weeks (with more to come), endangering all in the greater Bay Area, as flooding and falling temperatures (and trees) reminded us of the fragility of modernity, so dependent upon the power “grid.” As we entered the second day, I told myself it was good for me to see just how dependent we actually were upon electricity. No light. No hot water. No cooking. Limited cell phone use. No WIFI (!)

It was also a reminder of Christmas and Epiphany, the dark stable with the bright star shining upon the Son of God born this night, the light of the angelic choir singing to the shepherds and pointing the way to Bethlehem, the stunning cosmic appearance of the large star cluster in the sky noted by magi (early astrologers/astronomers). They would see this cosmic appearance heralded a major event. Astrophysicists today have noted that an unusual conjunction of planets and stars occurred around this time that could have been the bright star of Bethlehem.

Mystery and miracle abound. The heavens declare the glory of God as a child is born to save mankind, born in a lowly manger cave to swaddle each one of us, keep us safe from the cold and the dark.

I took advantage of the mini-lockdown that continued all week and wrote the first scenes of my new novel, The Music of the Mountain, working title. The lights and heat came back on with a screech but flood warnings encouraged us to stay put. The star of the heavens had entered our dark cave of a home to shine light on our souls, healing our blindness. A light shone in our darkness, for as St. John says, “That was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9, KJ V). And with this little light of mine I tapped my keyboard, creating characters and sculpting scenes with my words.

The words spilled from my heart through my fingers onto the page just as they are doing now. This, I believe, is a miracle in itself, that Our Lord continues to shine the light of Heaven upon Earth, through each one of us, if we desire it. Eternity enters time and we glimpse starlight. When we look up into the night sky, we see stars forming perfect patterns, mathematical ratios singing the music of the spheres, and we realize the glory of our loving God surrounds us. Nature may not be so loving, with winds and floods storming our land, but there is an order behind it all, and we know by the light of Christmas that it is a loving order. We are the renegade ones. We are the rebellious children who worship idols. We are the shepherds and we are the magi in the cave on that dark, light-filled night. Our fear becomes wonder. We fall to our knees in penitence and worship. And a little child born to us over two thousand years ago in real time, in real history, forgives us from his manger-throne.

We are made whole by this holiness. Earth sings to the glory of God, reaching for Heaven. It is this conjunction of Heaven and Earth that is heard on Angel Mountain in my new story. It is this touching, the finger of God touching each one of us, recreating us, again and again, that is the music we hear, the perfect harmony of the Creator and his creation.

In this sense all of my stories are about Epiphany, this sudden sight, this sudden healing of our blindness. This child Jesus comes to us today, enters our hearts and lives there. Miracle and mystery abound, and we sing this song of love to one another, for there is nothing greater than the Heavens touching the Earth.

The Church celebrates Epiphanytide for six Sundays this year, the number varying with the date of Easter which is set by a cosmic calendar of the moon’s appearance (“the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs after the spring Equinox” and relating to Passover.) Each Sunday the Scripture lessons will shine a light on the manifestations of Christ to the world. Today we are told by St. Paul in the Epistle to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:1+, BCP 110).  And the Gospel story tells of the boy Jesus in the temple, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions” (Luke 2:41+, BCP 110). In this Epiphany, the boy Jesus reveals who He is, for he says to his worried parents,  “I must be about my Father’s business”. 

And so we awake to a new dawn, to who Jesus is and his saving grace as the Son of God. We allow our minds to be renewed so that our hearts will know what is good, acceptable, and perfect, what is, at the end of the day, the will of God for each one of us.