Monthly Archives: February 2023

It snowed on Thursday night, blanketing Mount Diablo here in the Bay Area. Somehow, it seemed a good way to begin Lent, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The snow will melt, to be sure, just as our bodies will decompose when we make the great crossing into Heaven.

Thursday night our beloved Archbishop entered Eternity after a long battle with cancer. No wonder the world around our house became frozen and cold. He is no longer with us.

Archbishop Upham was in the right place at the right time for those of us who are part of the Anglican Province of Christ the King. God does this again and again, creating individuals with unique talents that, when offered to him, are key players in the battle of good and evil in our world. I have seen so many instances of this occurring, mostly unnoticed, but as I age I notice more and more. Patterns weave into greater tapestries of meaning and sense.

Our Archbishop was a quiet and thoughtful priest with an inner strength that was almost palpable, characteristics that inspired trust in what he said and did. He became a full time priest after a career in music education and happened to be at the right place and the right time to steer our Anglican ark into calmer waters, having been tossed about in recent storms. He was solid and he was faithful. He listened to God and tried to do God’s will. He understood, as one does if one prays, right from wrong, truth versus lies. He had a vision of how things should be and he wasn’t afraid to witness to that vision.

Archbishop Upham had many talents, but one I loved was his singing voice, a deep melodic sound that, when he visited our university chapel in Berkeley, resounded through the vaulted space, soared above the altar and touched the medieval crucifix suspended above. 

It is a curious thing that the afternoon of the day he died I was corresponding with the bishop who was looking after him in Raleigh, North Carolina, about adding a name to our seminary email list, a request that had just come into my mailbox. I ended my email to our bishop/registrar with, please give Archbishop Upham my love. I hope he did. A few hours later John Upham left us, released from his earthly pain and sorrow and struggles. He knows now how we all loved him.

And here, in California, it snowed on the mountain that night, in honor of Archbishop Upham’s life and witness.

Perhaps this is the music of the mountain I am writing about in my novel-in-progress. Perhaps we are the music of the mountain, the voice of love, the deep resonating assurance of God’s love for us. We harmonize together, creating a symphony of sound that could not be sung alone.

What is music? It’s the perfect ratio that brings beauty into our ears, rhythm into our step and beat into our heart. We are musical creatures, you and I, chords joined together to create something larger than any one of us could create.

Our Archbishop knew this, and as he directed his choir of bishops sitting on the Council of Bishops, they saw they could make music too. And so those of us in the pews hear the notes and make them our own. We sing in unison the great and profound words of our musical tradition, telling the story, singing the story of God’s love for us. We face the altar, singing to the Real Presence of Christ, as his Body the Church, and as his Bride.

It seems right that our Archbishop died on the other side of Ash Wednesday. We pick up where he left off, sing the tune he was singing. We join our voices as we travel the road through Lent to the Passion and to Easter. It is a stony road through this season of late winter and early spring, with these lengthening days, and we must learn to avoid the sharp edges, as we sing the words of penance and rebirth.

It is raining now, a steady cold rain greening our hills. As I return to The Music on the Mountain I shall give thanks for the music in my heart, soul, and mind, the harmony of love. For love turns ash into green grass, death into life. It is love that sings to us, calling us to be faithful, to be brave, to witness to who we are and who we are meant to be. It is love that tells us, in the last days, fear not, all is grace.

I’m pleased to announce that American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) published my post today, Living the Story of Faith and Freedom, how Christian novelists tell stories woven with faith and freedom, set in a real world, enlightening our human condition with hope. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, our preparation for the glorious events of Easter. Today is also February 22, the birthday of George Washington and the feast day of St. Joseph of Arimathea, Apostle to England in the first century. It is a time to remember, reflect, and repent so that we may rejoice with the saints on Earth and in Heaven that Easter resurrection is ours too.

I was blind and now I can see. 

As I continue working on my novel-in-progress, The Music of the Mountain, I am often tempted to turn down unexpected yet rewarding paths that I pray don’t blind me to where God wants me to go, to see what he wants me to see, to tell a tale he wants me to tell. The most recent path has taken me to Vienna in 1938 and the Anschluss (annexation), the invasion of Austria by Hitler in March and the following Kristallnacht (night of broken glass) in November. Over this horrific time period over 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to camps.

The question is often asked, why didn’t they see this coming? Why didn’t more escape, immigrate, hide? Vienna posed one of the classic answers, that with their wealth and perceived assimilation, their conversion to Catholicism or simply becoming secular Jews they thought they were immune. Many, to be sure, didn’t think of themselves as Jewish. They had intermarried and had provided the Vienna community with the greatest art and music, intellectuals and writers, Europe has ever known and probably will never know again.

I became intrigued with Vienna when a friend gave me a calendar of Gustav Klimt’s paintings. Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter (1862-1918). The story of his painting of the Viennese Jewish socialite Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881-1925), “The Lady in Gold,” using icon-style gold leaf, ushered me into fin-de-siecle Vienna, a time of the great literary and music salons. I was intrigued, particularly since I would be including in my novel a Holocaust story. Would this be the tale I would tell? There were many to choose from.

So I read the book that tells the tale of Adele by Anne-Marie O’Connor (The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, New York: Vintage, 2012). I then saw the movie based on this story of the fight for ownership of the painting (featuring Helen Mirren), involving a dispute between Adele’s heirs and the Austrian government, finally settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. I wasn’t as interested in the court case and effort to recover Nazi stolen art as I was with the early chapters in the book describing Viennese society at the turn of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and banking. Adele’s father was head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire and head of the Orient Express. Her husband is Ferdinand Bauer, a sugar-beet baron. They were significant patrons of the arts. She was an early feminist, desiring to be educated as men were (!). She posed for the well-known painter Klimt, and reigned over the grand salons in her palace.

While she was not directly affected by the Holocaust, her world was. I suddenly realized why they didn’t see it all coming. They had become decadent, assuming that society needed them, considering all they had given to society, so very true. Recall that Vienna was home to Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Strauss, Freud and Adler, to name a few. Vienna must have seemed like the center of the cultured world, glittering and golden, brilliant and artistic. 

Just like Americans today.

We too, have become decadent, seeing the greater world as dependent upon us, our talent and wealth, and so it has been in past and for the most part still is. But we don’t want to be blinded by our creature comforts and most of all, our pride. We have become soft, used to modern conveniences, used to being entertained, used to supermarkets laden with food and dry goods, used to doing little for our world and contributing less. Today, I read, people have the “right not to work,” to be paid by those who do work.

Then came the pandemic and lockdowns and shortages, the escalating gas prices and homelessness, the rising crime and mass shootings, the brainwashing of our children, the takeover of major institutions by the radical left, and yes, the unsurprising rise of anti-Semitism, the traditional scapegoat for burgeoning inflation and general unhappiness.

The Gospel lesson today was the healing of the blind man on the road to Jerusalem. He is healed because of his faith: “Receive thy sight,” Jesus says. “Thy faith hath saved thee.” (Luke 18: 31+, BCP 123). This third Sunday of Pre-Lent, as we prepare to receive the ashen cross on our foreheads this Wednesday, as we begin our own journey to Jerusalem, our own passion, our own healing and salvation, following Christ’s footsteps to the Cross – as we prepare to step alongside him, we pray to see the truth of our world and our own souls. Heal us, we cry, have mercy upon us, that we may see. We are told by our censors to be silent, to not cause a disturbance, just as the blind man was told. But we, like him, speak out, crying to Our Lord that our world may see, may be awakened.

And so, the question remains. Will I be using this Viennese story in my novel-in-progress, the story of why a few escaped because they could see, and why most were murdered because they refused to see? I placed the research in a pile of other stories, keeping the Lady in Gold in my sight. Then I read about “Leopoldstadt,” the brilliant play by Tom Stoppard. An excellent review can be found in January’s Commentary. The play is set in Vienna, from the fin-de-siecle to 1955. While it is fiction, of course, it is based on many stories of the time, including Tom Stoppard’s. It turns out that he is Jewish and his mother and father, along with their two young sons fled Czechoslovakia, from a town near the Austrian border called Zlin. They fled on March 15, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded. His name then was Tomas Straussler, and his father’s employer moved his Jewish employees to Singapore, to another factory. Of course I ordered the recent biography of Tom Stoppard. An interview by director Patrick Marber is excellent and fascinating.

The play opened in London in 2020 and recently in New York. It takes place in a drawing room in a grand palais in Vienna and we see how the families portrayed didn’t see, we see how easily blinded one can become. I’m looking forward to reading the script. Another pathway beckons… but yes, I think the experience of the Jewish community in Vienna will be one of my backstories. Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarter in Vienna produced much of the West’s civilization, and somehow mirrors today’s challenges in eerie and frightening ways.

And I shall pray for healing as we follow the path to Jerusalem. 

At St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel in Berkeley this morning, we entered the second Sunday of Pre-Lent, and I was struck by the light shafting through the clerestory windows upon the crucifix, a reminder to have ears to hear, eyes to see.

Just as Septuagesima’s Gospel was about Time and Judgment, Sexagesima’s Gospel today is about what we do with the time, knowledge, and grace given us, once we encounter Christ in our lives. Our Lord tells the parable of the seed in the soil, and considers what kind of soil and what sort of fruits that will be produced.  Some seed fell upon the way-side, some on a rock, some among thorns, and some on good ground, baring fruit. The seed is the word of God… Jesus explains clearly what it all means. We want to be those who “having heard the word of God, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:4+, BCP 121)

The Gospel is paired appropriately with Paul’s long list of all the dangers and challenges he has endured as a minister of Christ. He is writing to the Church in Corinth in an effort to encourage them to be brave and long-suffering. Hence his list (briefly): he works hard, is whipped, imprisoned, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked. His perils are many: seas, robbers, wilderness, slanders, hunger, thirst, weariness and painfulness, fastings, cold and nakedness. He even gets angry. But he glories in his very infirmities. One guesses Paul is answering complaints of the Corinthians, giving them a pep talk (2 Corinthians 11:19+, BCP 120).

What do we do with our time on Earth? Are we producing fruit, having heard the word of God? Do we keep it? My mother turned 103 last month, a truth that focuses my own attention on our next great adventure, our passage into Eternity. Our numbered days are shrinking, a fact that I find both encouraging and worrisome. The clock ticks. The bell tolls. Judgment awaits.

It has been remarked by many how silent the Christian churches and Jewish synagogues are today, in terms of standing up to some of the totalitarian trends gathering speed. Eric Metaxas recently interviewed Alan Dershowitz about his book, Guilt by Accusation, in which he speaks of the extortion racket that has emerged from the “Me Too” movement. He mentions that in the long process of clearing his name through the courts (he refused to pay the ransom), others continued to shun him, including his own synagogue who “didn’t want to invite trouble.” Mr. Metaxas recognizes the symptoms of turning away from tyranny – that blind eye and silence in the face of the dragon – for his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer recounts a similar acquiescing in the 1930’s that propelled Hitler and the death camps.

The parallels are frightening. The self-censoring is everywhere. Where are the St. Pauls of our era? Where is the good soil that bears good fruit?

I see a bit of St. Paul in Elon Musk and the Twitter Files. There are others too, brave Davids with slingshots aimed at formidable Goliaths, but I also understand the fear of inviting trouble, cancellation, shunning, destruction of career, loss of family. The anger and loathing I have seen first hand in family members and friends when they find I am not only a Trump deplorable but a Christian deplorable as well is formidable. I can identify to a limited extent with St. Paul. But I have, so far, less to lose, being retired, elderly, and numbering my days, as it were. Even so, the deranged outrage of these folks is palpable.

There are many tentacles to this octopus, to swim with another metaphor. Universities are requiring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements from prospective students as well as faculty applying for a position. It is not enough to be silent, to turn away from the tyranny, but students and faculty must also show their actions supporting the DEI program. They must salute. They must march. And DEI, a racist program, is just one of many incursions upon our freedom and the dignity of merit and character, the sanctity of all human life, from conception to grave.

And so I take great heart in hearing the litany of abuse Paul suffered and Our Lord’s parable fully explained, in case we wanted to censor the meaning. It’s all about hearing the word and believing, then with “an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

I suppose, at the end of the day, we pray we have ears to hear, eyes to see, to recognize the King of Glory when we meet him in Paradise, seated on his throne in glory.

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of “Pre-Lent,” the first of three Sundays before Ash Wednesday.

I have long been fascinated by this segment of time carried forward from earlier days, earlier rituals and seasons of the Church. Our present worship of God is thus punctuated by the past, to form a whole in our own time, enriching us all the more with the Communion of Saints stepping into our lives throughout the year.

Septuagesima’s lessons are about time, running the race to receive an “incorruptible crown” (St. Paul, I Corinthians, 9:24+, BCP 119). Our lives are this race through time to the end of our own time and our passage through judgment into Eternity. Just so, Christ tells us a parable in the Gospel appointed for this day, where the workers in the vineyard are paid for the day they work, dawn to dusk, and question those who only work the last hour. Should they receive the same pay? Our Lord says, essentially, it’s up to my goodness and not of your concern. We too, who work in the vineyard from an early age, might resent those who enter the Kingdom at the last minute, on their deathbed. But we learn today that it’s up to Our Lord’s goodness and judgment and not of our concern.

The parable is also about envy, as our preacher pointed out this morning. A right and ordered attitude, formed by an informed conscience, educated in the pew and at the altar rail, tells us not to be envious. Indeed, one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses is, “Thou shalt not covet.” Envy of course is desire to be like someone else; covetousness is the desire to have what they have. Close cousins, to be sure.

We have been given life, a circumscribed length of time on this Earth. This is a wondrous gift, this time from conception to cradle to grave. It is up to us to judge ourselves in preparation for Judgment in Eternity. We are called to clean out our hearts, to make a new and right heart within. This is enough of a challenge, to remove the beam in our own eye. We do not need to remove our neighbor’s beam.

But we can point the way. In love we encourage others to judge themselves rightly, inform their consciences, in the pew and at the altar rail and the confessional. We keep the church doors open, the candles lit, the hymnbooks ready, and we welcome our brothers and sisters traveling through time alongside us.

And so both lessons today are about time and how to see ourselves in this space granted, this time in which we have been placed. The times seem tumultuous to many of us, and it may very well be that we are witnessing a great shift in the world order, as well as a diminishing role for the Church. As Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) wrote in 1970 in his profoundly prophetic Faith and the Future (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009) the Church will become smaller and more spiritual, and this faithful flock will offer something new to men and women who have forgotten God and in their loneliness “feel the whole horror of their poverty.” We are seeing this played out today.

We don’t begrudge the late converts but celebrate and give thanks for their new life within.

And as we look ahead to Ash Wednesday and the full realization of our mortality, we begin to consider where we may have gone astray, in thought, word, or deed, where we need to repent and clean out our hearts, to make them right with God. We consider what rule we might keep, what to add to our hours on Earth and what to remove. Fasting and abstinence apply to all of our doings – perhaps less TV, more Psalms; less this, more that. A spiritual fast as well as a physical one. A fast that mysteriously becomes a fulfilling feast.

As we move through Pre-Lent and into Lent, then into Passiontide and Easter, we educate our souls by informing our consciences. We do this by our own faithful presence before the Real Presence, so that we see ourselves as Our Lord sees us. Only then can we approach the mystery, majesty, and miracle of Christ’s death and resurrection. Only then can we fully partake of Eternity in Time today, the Word made flesh among us, now and always.