Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

I recently had the blessing of taking part in our annual Anglican synod, a gathering of clergy and laity that meets to discuss and decide many issues relating to this part of the family of God, the Body of Christ.

We see old friends and make new ones. We propose and dispose and encourage the discouraged. We listen to one another and support one another, disciplining urges to gossip or belittle. We guard our tongues and speak in charity. All the while, as we mingle as an ecclesial family of many generations, we listen to the voice of God, his promptings. We pray and worship together in a holy communion, allowing the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn bright, inflaming our love for one another and for God’s holy Church.

These synods are times of unifying the disunity that threatens any society of human beings, be it religious, political, or cultural. We come from small and large parishes, separated by space not spirit, and it is good to see this greater network of traditional Anglicans from all over America. It is good to spend time with our leaders, both clergy and lay, who sacrifice their time on this earth for us. They give themselves freely, all for Christ’s flock, all for love of him and he in us.

Time is a terrible thing, an awe-full thing, an awesome thing. It is God’s gift, falling through the hourglass without thought to person or place. Our lives begin. All too quickly, they end. What are we to do with this precious window, this time of our life? Time passes, ticks, slips by, gone. Irretrievable.

Smell the roses, some say. Notice everything and forget nothing. And yet, with time our bodies age and our minds retreat. And so we look to the young, the next generation. What gifts can we leave for them? What can we bequeath them? What is our legacy, their inheritance, that we joyfully pass on?

At the synod last week, I watched the generations mingle. I could see the young absorbing the gifts of the old. I could see that what we elders did mattered immensely. I could see that I could be a part of this great golden chain linking us all, a rosary of souls redeeming the earth. I could mentor as I had been mentored. I was pleased that the Bishop Morse Youth Camp would be held once again, linking the generations, for Bishop Morse founded and nurtured these gatherings, bringing in young people from far and wide.

One of my mentors was the late Archbishop Morse (1923-2015). He was simple Father Morse of St. Peter’s Oakland when I first met him in 1977; I have spoken of him often in these pages. He carried the cross of Christian sacramental orthodoxy through the second half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. He bore it as a shepherd bears a lamb, its weight balanced over his shoulders, safe. His vision never wavered, or never appeared to, and I often thought he was listening to the voice of God, a prompting as to where to go and what to say in that time, that moment, given to him. He was ever-present in the present, and people loved his total, undivided attention. They basked in it. He taught me this – the virtue of time, the power of now.

I try and do this today, to listen, listen, listen. Distractions abound and will always dilute our present. So we practice the discipline of listening, paying attention. We are open to change, to pivoting, if required, but always within the orthodoxy of Christ’s Church.

Archbishop Morse’s spirit wove among us in the meetings last week. He was a great blessing to us in some miraculous way. Memory of his mentoring, his shepherding, embraced us. I could see him carrying his cross, his gentle and strong hold on the wooden beam resting lightly on his shoulders. I recalled how he kept his eye focused on the road ahead, a path untraveled by us but well traveled by the saints. It was a path, he knew, rocky with boulders and prickly with thorns. It was a path frequented by hungry lions and venomous snakes. We too, I thought, must do as he did. We must carry this same cross up the road, a bit further into time. We must keep our eye trained on the straight and narrow path, listening for the shepherd’s voice calling us home.

Early Friday morning, we worshiped together in the Synodical Mass at St. Joseph of Arimathea Collegiate Chapel in Berkeley. In this barrel-vaulted space, the red floor tiles shine from decades of kneeling, decades of seminarians praying for discernment of vocation, of choice, of paths forward. The tiles gleam with this devotion; the white stucco walls reflect the clerestory light from high above. On this Friday, as the clergy processed through the doorway on Durant, I was thankful. In the packed space, we sang and celebrated the gifts of Robert Sherwood Morse – this chapel, our faith in Christ, the vision of God that he showed us. The organ boomed. The people sang. Candles flamed before the St. Vladimir icon of Mary and her Son. Candles burned too on the sanctuary altar between white roses, before the simple wooden crucifix on the wall high above. The Paschal candle to the side testified to resurrection, Easter’s and ours, the flame burning not far from Bishop Morse’s episcopal chair, a chair empty since his passing into eternity.

We are all witnesses to love, to the love of God, the love of our good bishops, priests, deacons, and laity, the love of our mentors in time. This is the miracle and mystery of life in the Body of Christ. We carry our crosses along the path of love, singing with all our hearts and souls.

Read Bishop Hansen’s sermon here:  The Power of Place, Synod Sermon St.Joseph’s

See video clips of the Synod Mass at St. Joseph’s: St. Joseph’s Chapel Facebook

Northern California had a good drenching these last few weeks. The hills are an incomprehensible shade of green. When the winds blow billowing white clouds across the skies, I understand what God meant when he said, “It is good.”

It is good indeed, and in a time of division and heated words between neighbors, family members, and friends over propaganda spewed by the press, the natural world reminds us of our common roots as humans. The hills and the skies proclaim the glory of God, and we all share this good, earthly home together.

Many things bind us as a human family and it is good to be reminded of this. We all are born (the lucky wanted ones). We live. We die. We arrive at the portal of Heaven, knock on the door that is Christ (as the preacher said this morning), and the door opens. Does Christ know us? Do we know him? The shepherd knows his sheep we are told, and the sheep know the voice of the shepherd.

Christ binds us together. He gathers us, heals us, and teaches us to love one another as he has loved us.

One of the remarkable aspects of the two parishes my husband and I alternately attend – St. Peter’s Oakland and St. Joseph of Arimathea in Berkeley – is the varied ethnicity and  multi-generations that form our congregations. The Anglican churches I have been a part of have always had this colorful cross-section (no pun intended) of worshipers, but it is particularly reflective of our urban churches. I have come to take it for granted that these varied identities unite in worship, that we all become sisters and brothers, a family. When we have our divisions, and we do, we are gathered back together at the altar, hearing the voice of our shepherd calling us in for supper.

And with the Supper of the Lamb, the Body and Blood of Christ, we commune together in a single communion.

Identity politics is washed away; ageism is denied and children precious; gender and race is cause for celebration. We teach our young the way of acceptance and love by singing together, praying together, worshiping God together. We form processions, singing hymns our ancestors sang, and time disappears. We genuflect and we kneel.

When our natural families fragment and reform, we depend on Sunday worship to give us not only identity, but meaning, purpose, and peace. Priests counsel and forgive. The sisters and brothers of our parish family uplift one another in prayer, sometimes with names on lists, names laid at the altar to be spoken. We pray for those who suffer, here and outside our parish. We pray for the unborn who never had a chance, and for the mothers who mourn them. We pray for the students who study, the teachers who teach, the speakers who speak. We pray for peace and freedom. We give thanks. We worship our Creator.

The sufferings of today are no worse than other times, just colored differently by culture, freedom, and choice. We have been, and always will be, selfish creatures, shunning sacrifice, lazy and dishonest in our confession of sin. But one day a week we are redeemed. We are given a chance to start over. And we don’t have to be alone in this re-birthing, for we have the family of God, no small thing.

This morning, as the contralto sang “Ave Maria,” and her voice soared in amber arcs through the russet barrel-vaulted dome over the altar, I returned from my communion, thankful. The notes were like rain on my parched heart, greening me like the hills. Having received the Son of God in the form of bread and wine, I knew my soul was greened too. I was ready for the week to come and all of its challenges.

Our individual identities are many, each one of us so unique, so very different from one another. But our creator calls our names, and having been baptized with water and spirit, we know his voice. When we look to the hills and up to the skies, we find others are looking too, answering his call. They are all around us. We join hands in a dance of joy, this family, this earthly and heavenly host.

And our Creator says, “It is good.”

Christ is born, God incarnate, in flesh, lying in a manger.

Our Christmas tree, twinkling and tinseled with glittering decorations, remains in the corner of our living room. The presents have been unwrapped, the carols sung, the tables no longer crowded with laughter and joy. For a few hours on Christmas Day, we forgot our disappointments and squabbles. We loved one another a little better. The baby in the manger taught us how to do this, gave us the way toward the light in the darkness, towards love, towards peace. He continues to lead us to that star in the heavens. He does this through incarnation, through baptism, through sanctification.

I have come to see that the Church, the Body of Christ on earth, is called to sanctify the secular world, to baptize the culture with Christ.

As Christians, we are strangers and sojourners in a strange land. Yet we are called be witnesses. We are called to tell our story of Incarnation and Resurrection. As a military friend said recently, “We signed up for this.” Indeed. At our baptisms we received the Holy Spirit through the pouring of water, and incarnated in that water, the Holy Spirit was resurrected in our flesh. At our Confirmations, we were received into Christ’s flock and signed “with the sign of the Cross, in token that thereafter (we) shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, to manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant until (our) life’s end…” The Holy Spirit came to us through the hands of the bishop and with the anointing of holy oils. We became adult Christians. We became one flesh with the Body of Christ, a family of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, by adoption, through Grace.

Since the first century, the Church has baptized the secular world with love. Being composed of fallen men and women, this Body of Christ has also done harm. But the Church admits this, and invites our secular world inside, through the open doors of its heart, into the nave, up the central aisle, to the high altar. The Church invites the world to come inside, to repent, to change, for her rites are birthed by penitence, so that mankind can sing a new song.

To repent is to change, turn around. To repent is to confess and take stock of the truth about ourselves. To repent is to look in a mirror and admit flaws. To repent is to choose a different path, a path of love.

New Year’s resolutions are actually diluted penitence, a thin, watery version, yet at the same time impossible to fully implement. We seem to have an innate desire to better ourselves. At the end of the year we consider again how to improve ourselves – diet, exercise, relationships, success, screen time, education. Just so, repentance considers improvements, but with a difference.

Secular resolutions demand that we make these changes by ourselves. Repentance – sanctified resolutions – requires that we make these changes with the help of God. We recognize we cannot do this alone, we cannot perfect ourselves alone. We need spiritual help. The Church provides this help. It provides a way, the only way, that it can actually be done.

Looking in the mirror or into our hearts, we reflect on the last year, and we consider the seven deadly sins, Christian versions, baptized versions, of common human failings, and their opposites: lust/chastity, gluttony/temperance, greed/charity, sloth/diligence, wrath/patience, envy/gratitude, pride/humility.

These are simple beginnings, broad categories of wrongdoing. If we practiced this simple list – turned the seven deadly sins into their respective virtues – our secular resolutions would be covered and then some. Within the Body of Christ we are urged to practice this resolving on a regular basis, weekly at minimum. We confess our sins in the Mass and are absolved so that we can resolve to do better. We enter the new week as though it were a New Year.

But we make our resolutions with the help of God through the Church, not on our own. Steadily, slowly, confessing and repenting, resolving to do better, be better, receiving forgiveness for daily failures, we might even lose weight, become healthy in both body and soul. We will learn to love as we are meant to love. And through patience and diligence we will work hard and produce bountifully for the glory of God. Depression is dissolved through gratitude. Ambition is anchored by humility. Lust is lost in temperance.

We Christians are a resolving people. We resolve many things with words we recite in our liturgies and hear in our sermons and lessons. We resolve, by God, to be better people, with the help of God, not alone. For without Him, we can do nothing. With Him, we can do anything.

We are a new creation living in this New Year 2018. Our newness is again and again renewed, reborn, through self-examination and turning around. Our culture speaks of second starts, second chances. We as the Body of Christ are given an infinite number of beginnings, turning-arounds, re-turnings to God. With our heavenly Father’s help, with the Incarnation of his Son in human flesh, and with the ongoing incarnation of the Holy Spirit working in us and through us, we are reborn again and again.

And so the Church improves upon the secular resolutions of the New Year. The Body of Christ sanctifies, through repentance, every day, week, year. The Church promises the help of God to make this happen, so when we pass into Eternity, we will see the face of God, the burning light of Christ. We will be perfected in love.

Christmas Day is passed, and our fir tree will soon be gone. But Christ Jesus is with us, Emmanuel, God with us. We celebrate this union of Heaven and Earth, this incarnation of love among us, for when we do not love enough, Christ shows us how to love more. Through holy-days that punctuate our time on earth, we tell the wondrous story of mankind: who we are, and who we are resolved to be, baptized children of God, on the way to Heaven.

Merry Christmas and blessings in the New Year to you and your families.

In my next novel, I would like to explore thanksgiving – giving thanks – so I’m setting the story in November, the thankful month that turns away from Halloween and is born on All Saints Day. November gives thanks for our veterans – all those who keep us safe from those who would harm us. And finally, November celebrates our national holiday of Thanksgiving, a time of giving thanks for the founding of America, for those who fled tyranny in foreign lands and came to our shores to found our great land of freedom with its liberty and law, its celebration of human dignity.

November is a time of seasonal changes, the passing of summer and harvest and the coming of winter. Leaves change color. Days shorten and nights lengthen. Temperatures drop. We give thanks for our delicate and complex natural world, and its moments that please our sensitive senses: light slanting through clerestory windows, hovering over a medieval crucifix, and bathing a wall in golden sun; a crisp apple; billowing clouds; a child’s laughter. We give thanks for every breath, however labored, for every baby, however unwanted, for every prayer and every praise, however ridiculed, for the miracle of life from womb to grave, however threatened.

We count our blessings, seeing them all around us. We know we are frail and tiny creatures in a gigantic universe, and yet we are loved by God our Creator. That in itself is unfathomable, one of the unfathomable riches of Christ, mentioned by St. Paul and extolled in the hymn, How Great Thou Art (words from a poem by Carl Gustav Boberg, 1859-1940).

And when I think that God His Son not sparing / Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in / That on the Cross, my burden gladly bearing, / He bled and died, to take away my sin.

Then sings my soul, my Savior God, to thee, / How great thou art.

Music, that perfect harmony of song and dance and poetry. But music reflects our souls and in the last century became dissonant, atonal, war-like, full of angst. We understand from history that after the Second World War, man became disillusioned with “civilization,” questioning why we could not prevent the slaughter of six million under Hitler, and close to one hundred million under Stalin and Mao and Castro. Our music and art reflected this angst, this nihilism, this despair and still do.

We distrust. We become cynical, spiraling into hopelessness and despair. We forget to give thanks, the greatest antidote to depression.

Our human story tells of a man and woman in Eden long ago who rebelled against God. Their pride desired power; their greed needed feeding; their covetousness laughed at love. They chose their own way and were exiled from Eden, following a path into the dark forest of sin and and death. For it is sin that causes death, little deaths and big deaths, according to this human history.

Thankfulness. How can we be thankful. How can we hope for faith and have faith in hope when we are surrounded by death, when we recall the carnage of Nine-Eleven, when we witness the massacre in Las Vegas, when we read about the methodical brutality of a shooter in a little church in Texas, an atheist driven by hate toward Christians. There have been so many tragedies entering our homes and settling in our hearts that we grow numb to their number, else our hearts would shatter.

Thankfulness. But the floods, the hurricanes, the tornadoes? Where is God?

Yet it is because of these horrors that we search for answers and find those answers in Christ. We have reason to give thanks because this Son of God lived, died, and rose in real time, in a real place, in real history. We give thanks there is a way beyond ourselves, beyond our warring, a path to peace, to eternal life, to the conquering of sin’s death. We are sorry and we repent. Our shattered hearts are healed by God’s touch. We give thanks for God’s great and loving entering of our history and living among us today. We give thanks for all those who protect our freedom to choose or reject this loving God. We give thanks for so many things in this fallen world.

We reach for His hand that reaches for us, pulling us out of the mire of sin and suffering and death, raising us from the quicksand of our world.

There would be little hope in humanity without hope – and faith – in God. There would be little reason to give thanks and many reasons to despair.

But we can be of good cheer, for the myriad perfection of nature, tiny and grand, the intricate interweaving of our world to produce all manner of beauty and delight, reflect a magnificent design, a story of glory that is to come and that is here now. That we should think and ponder and consider these things is proof of a God who thinks and ponders. That we should love is proof of a God who loves. That His Son lived, died, and rose from the dead is proof that we will live, die, and rise to glory.

And so November with its thanksgivings looks to December’s greater drama, when God enters history as a baby born in a stable on a starry night in Bethlehem of Judea. He enters our hearts and minds and souls. And we give thanks.

The fierce firestorms that have devoured our beautiful North Bay counties and blanketed the Bay Area with smoke remind us of our helplessness in the face of the natural world.

Since man first discovered fire by rubbing stones together, he has tried to tame the wildebeest called nature. We are a part of nature, yet somehow apart. We think, reason, argue, debate. We create and we protect others with our creations. We are masters of nature, if not the universe, or so we believe, at least until hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, and fire remind us of our helplessness, and our huge hubris.

Why did this happen? we ask. Indeed, the fires in the North Bay feasted on forest, protected open space. Unlike the East Bay, where a few oaks survive the parched grassy hills, the North Bay has many trees, protected, as though saved to feed the next firestorm. Because we loved the natural world – its beauty, its tranquility, even its so-called spirituality – we safeguarded it from humans, but could not safeguard nature from nature.

We are reminded that the world is a wilderness, tamed in places by human civilization, by communities of people banded together to safeguard one another from the wilds. But if we let down our guard, we are no longer safe. We are not as powerful as we think.

So we seek meaning in the face of natural disasters, asking, Why?  Is this the end of the world?

All week I was reminded of the prophet Elijah and the “still small voice” of God. Elijah had retreated to a cave for safety:

“And, behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but the Lord was not in the wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the Lord was not in the earthquake: And after the earthquake a fire; but the Lord was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice… And, behold, there came a voice unto him, and said, What doest thou here, Elijah?” (I Kings 19:11-13, KJV)

We are still, small creatures with a few tools, some shelter, and smartphones. Yet we do listen to God’s voice of love.

For it is love that makes us different from this violent natural world surrounding us. And it is freedom, the freedom to choose love, that breathes into us that divine spark. The voice of God is not in the redwoods or the vineyards, so beautiful at harvest. The voice of God is in his words to us, his words to us in Scripture, Sacrament, and prayer. We hear the voice of God when we see how small we are, and from this place of humility, confession, and repentance, we learn to love one another better.

While there is no God in the firestorm or in the hurricanes or in the floods, we hear his voice and see his love in the many who care for one another in these times of crisis. They knock on doors. They carry the elderly to safety. They feed, clothe, and shelter.

They fight these fires that rage according to nature’s rules, not ours. As they quench the torched earth with water, they show they are different from nature. Creatures spurred by love, they hear the still, small voice within.

We bury our dead. We rebuild. We make a wider firebreak around our homes. We restore civilization and civility. Do we remember what we have learned? If we do, if we have learned a lesson, we turn to God, to his still, small voice in Scripture, Sacrament, and prayer. We follow his law of love – the Ten Commandments – and know he will drench the wildfires in our hearts. Only then can his own fire be lit within, his own controlled burning of love. Two of the disciples knew this divine fire as they walked to Emmaus with Christ. “Did not your heart burn within you?” they later asked one another.

We tame our own fires, until we burn with the love of God. God’s fire gives life; it doesn’t consume. God’s fire clears the air of smoke and debris. We can see and we can breathe deeply. We no longer feel quite so helpless in the wilderness of this world.

Berkeley was quiet as we drove through its leafy streets to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel on the corner of Durant and Bowditch, one block from campus. Once more, we would join others to pray for peace and freedom in Berkeley.

We parked, and I carried red roses from my garden to freshen the vase beneath St. Vladimir’s icon of Our Lady. I replaced the candles and lit a few, saying a prayer of thanksgiving for the week. I opened the front door and set out a foam-board sign announcing the Mass. I replaced a small notice, missing, announcing, “Singers Wanted.”

Our organist warmed up, the altar candles were lit, and the pews filled. A procession entered as we sang from our hymnals, incense swirling, tapers tall and flaming, crucifix carried by a young acolyte. The Mass began, weaving song and sacrament and prayer through the vaulted dome, through our hearts and minds, settling in. My own heart was grateful for the last few weeks. My friend, who had lay dying, had entered Paradise, carried by Jesus; I witnessed two bishops consecrated in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a setting of beauty and promise and pageantry; our little chapel had survived the Free Speech Week, peaceful speakers stonewalled, freedom denied by cowardice.

So much had happened in three weeks. It seemed that if we blink, our lives pass by and we are gone. We must not blink, but watch and wait and pray each minute of each day, eyes wide open to truth, our hearts bravely seeking. We guard our time, so that our time is not stolen by the darkness of the night. We offer this time to God, so that it is sanctified by the light of the day. Some say “be present” and it is good advice, that in all of our hurrying and worrying we forget who we are, that we are holy children of God. We are loved by the Infinite One, touched by the Eternal.

My thoughts wove through the dance of the liturgy, and when our preacher spoke of the healing miracles of Christ, how he brought the dead to life, gave sight to the blind, healed the lepers, all with his touch, I saw how the Christian’s time is also touched by God. The Christian’s time, those days on this good earth, is reborn in the present moment, weaving past and future, creating a fine cloth. We look to our past to repent. We offer our leprous hearts to Christ, in confession and Eucharist. Only then can we freely look to our future.

Arms outstretched, our preacher explained how Christ lay his hands on the ravaged flesh of the lepers. He touched the untouchables. We, too, he said, are untouchables, for our hearts are cancerous and in need of healing. Yet, here, in this chapel, before this altar, Christ touches our hearts and makes them whole. The Lord of Life breathes life into us and resets our heartbeats.

Michelangelo’s famous painting of Creation that covers the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome shows the finger of God reaching to touch Adam to give him life. Whether this is myth, allegory, or literally true is of no matter. It explains the truth of our beginnings, our holy beginnings, the sacred nature of our humanity. We are touched in the womb, enlivened, quickened. We are touched in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, with water and with wine, with the bread of Heaven in the Mass.

My friend who lay dying three weeks ago has been touched and reborn to new life in Paradise. Each one of us awaits that touching, in the meantime biding this time of redeeming. For in this mean-time, this middle time between birth and death, between the womb and the grave, we touch the precious, present time given to us. We hold it in our palms. We finger its seconds. We listen. We pray. We pay attention to God’s voice in Scripture and Sacrament, his voice spoken by others in the Body of Christ who are also touched and listening. And we go to church to be touched by Christ, to be cleansed, to no longer be untouchable.

In Tulsa, four bishops “laid their hands” upon the heads of the two priests. The priests had risen from a prostrate position on the carpet before the altar, where they formed crosses, their fingers touching one another, gravity pushing their bodies into the carpet that touched them. We sang a litany, invoking the Holy Ghost to touch these men, to fill them with discernment, humility, and holiness. The Holy Ghost came, and through the fingers of the bishops, through this laying on of hands, the Spirit pulsed through the centuries, from Jerusalem to Tulsa on this twenty-first day of September, touching them. Holy oils touched their heads through the hands, rings encircled their fingers, and pectoral crosses pushed against their hearts. They were touched by God.

And our chapel, during this week of Free Speech in which there was little speech and freedom, and a great cost to the community, was untouched by trouble, touched and protected by the love of God, and by the stalwart presence of police.

This morning, in church, St. Paul touched me as I listened to the Epistle for today, with these beautiful words, written in a letter to the Church in Ephesus (today in Turkey):           

I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God. (Ephesians 3:14+)

Rooted and grounded in love, strengthened by the Spirit, touched so tenderly with such power and beauty and truth, knowing the breadth, length, depth, height, love of Christ beyond knowing, filled with the fullness of God. These are no small things. These things tell us who we are and who we are meant to be. These are indeed, wondrous touchings, the hands of God touching our hearts and making them whole.

Someone touched the little sign asking for singers in our chapel porch. What did they do with it? Will they touch the one we put up today? Will these bits of paper and print float down Durant to Telegraph, or perhaps over to Bancroft and Sproul Plaza? Will someone else wonder? Will they touch the scrap from our chapel? Will this touch their heart and soul?

Today, after the service ended, we locked the chapel doors securely. I knew as I switched off the lights, the Sanctus Lamp burning steadfast, that this morning, like every Sunday morning, our songs and prayers and incense and processions had spilled out onto Durant Avenue to the passersby. We, having been touched, touched Berkeley with peace and freedom, with the unsurpassed fullness of the love of God.

I’ve been praying for a friend in the hospital. He lies unconscious, his family watching and praying. We too, his parish family, pray for him. He is a strong, larger-than-life man, who always has a smile. His eyes were bright with laughter. He has been an active member of our local parish church, a parish that reminds us that we are both sinners and saints, that what we do with our time given matters.

For every minute of our time on earth counts. It is all weighed and measured. All of us will be found wanting when we return home to God, when we gather by that great river that runs by his throne, but God will supply the difference with our tears, our confessions, and our repentance.

We do not love enough. We are full of ourselves, our prides, our vanities, our selves so sensitive to the slightest slight, so eager to brag and swagger. In church we are reminded of this – our poor, inadequate love – so that weekly we have the chance to clear away the debris of our life, the debris of our un-love. The floodwaters are drained from our souls. We scour our hearts. We make a home for God within us. We begin the week on a Sunday morning, as new creatures.

To begin anew is no small thing. To begin anew each week, having thrown out the old and rotting bits, the ugly bits, the cancerous bits, is to grow strong in the rich soil of other sinners and saints surrounding us. This is what the church offers. For the church is the Body of Christ, our means of salvation, our promise of eternity.

My friend in the hospital is a unique person in our parish, but then each one of us is unique. We are a collection of sharply drawn characters, of many races and generations, of every class and talent. We are so very different from one another, and we glory in our differences, as one appreciates the panes of color in stained glass. What we have in common is that we are Christians, members of Christ’s Body, who become one with one another in Holy Communion. After being fed by the Mass, we mingle in the coffee hour, a family to be sure. There are no differences now. We love one another, or at least try as best we can. Christ has made us inclusive and exclusive at the same time by giving us his own identity, his Body.

We learn all of this through the experience of being faithful, faithful to attending church, faithful to our weekly confession, faithful to the instruction found in the sermon and lessons each Sunday, and faithful to receiving the Real Presence of Christ in us. All this teaches us how to love one another. We are told that God is love. We are told that to love is to suffer and sacrifice for the other, as we see in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. Through song and prayer, through word and sacrament, we layer this knowledge of virtue upon our consciences, to inform them.

For only with an informed conscience can we know where we have gone wrong. Only with an educated heart can we know the definition of love. Only with such instruction can we find true happiness.

My friend knew and knows this. He knows that in the giving of ourselves we find ourselves. This secret is known by the saints, for the saints were sinners too. The saints saw the flooding of their own hearts, the damage done by the putrid waters, and they sought remedy. Without diagnosis, there can be no remedy. Without remedy, there can be no recovery. The remedy for unhappiness is Christ. The prescription for happiness is Christ.

I am grateful for the weekly confession in the liturgy we make before receiving the Real Presence of Christ: I have not loved enough. I have been selfish and thoughtless. I have been distrustful of God’s plan for me, and too trustful of my own plans. I have done things which I should not have done and not done things which I should have done, and there is no health in me:

ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.  

And so these moldy growths are cleansed away by the Sunday Eucharist. I am reborn once again, ready to set out for Monday and all that it offers, all the opportunities it provides to love. Then will come Tuesday, a second precious set of twelve hours in my life to practice love, to offer myself for others. And Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, three days of my time, thirty-six more hours to grow in grace. Then Saturday, and finally Sunday, the day of reckoning again, the day of forgiving and feeding, the day of removing the huge weight of the week’s wreckage from my soul.

With the lightening of this burden, I am so much happier.

The fact that self-denial leads to happiness is one of the great contradictions of Christianity and the human condition. For Christianity is all about being human, all about our humanity. It is all about who we are, where we are, and where we want to go in our lives and after. Christ teaches us these things, helps us to understand, lightens the darkness, a true enlightenment.

My friend in the hospital is not alone. He is held close in our hearts as we pray for him. We wrap him in our love, the love of the Body of Christ, his own parish church. And we give thanks for his life now and forever.

There comes a time in one’s life, a time in one’s week, a time in one’s time bracketed by calendars and clocks and digital devices, when the cares of the world seem to weigh heavily, crowding upon one another, demanding attention. The cares of the world – those cares we read in print and view in video – those public cares – layer on top of our own personal cares, until we cry that there is no room for more.

I have found a solution to this problem of crowding: I retreat an hour a week into corporate prayer, that is, praying to God in front of the Real Presence of God, with others beside me, two or three gathered, the priest guiding my meditation. In this way I am praying with the power of the Church, through adoration in the liturgy of Benediction, where the Host is placed on view in a monstrance on the altar.

As Anglo-Catholics, we believe that the Real Presence of Christ is in that Host. It is a mystery, but a reality promised by Our Lord. At our university chapel in Berkeley, we have added a weekday service of noon Benediction (Tuesdays.) It is a time of quiet, a time to contemplate the God who has humbled himself in this way. It is a time to lay before him all those cares of the world, all the burdens of the week. It is a time that trains our inner ear to hear his voice, to receive his blessing, his peace.

Peace is good. But peace is fragile, as we are learning in Berkeley. Peace is not easily found in our public square. Free speech is shut down by threatening violence or violent threats. Conversations are controlled, forbidden, and shamed into silence. So we pray for peace in Berkeley. We pray for freedom to speak, and freedom to think. We pray for peace and freedom, one hour a week in our Berkeley chapel.

We pray for peace in our hearts, that those warring and wearing cares not defeat us. We pray for answers to our problems of the moment, for healing of our wounds and those of our friends and families.

Our priest places the monstrance on the altar, with the golden rays fanning like the sun around the Son, and he takes a seat in the back pew, speaking softly from time to time, helping us in the way of prayer, the words to use, the images to see. He leads us gently as we focus on the golden rays and the white Host in its center.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I was stunned by the soothing silence, a silence that slips sweetly into the soul, a healing silence. As the prayers took form, basking in the Real Presence of Christ, my cares were reborn, transfigured by grace. The hour at times seemed long, and I learned patience. But also, the hour at times seemed short, and I feared its ending.

When the hour of Benediction did end, we sang a hymn of thanksgiving. And all week, the golden rays shone in my mind. As the cares of the world and the cares of my life flooded into my days, the golden rays and white Host poured grace into my time. They were like a lighthouse, a bright point of reference and remembrance, a signpost to my true home, a beacon that warned of danger and led to safety.

A family friend returned to his true home this last week, ending his long journey on earth. He was ready, a faithful servant, and God took him home to be with him, to praise him with the chorus of angels. He no longer needs the Real Presence in the Host. He is with God, our very God of very God, our Light of Light.

The light of our sun was dimmed last week, eclipsed by our moon. As I watched the moon throw the earth into darkness, the sun shimmered from behind, forming a circle of gold. The light could not be put out, could not really be eclipsed. Just so, the stars travel the night skies and the moon rises and falls, waxes and wanes over our little planet, Earth. We tumble through a darkness lit by Heaven.

Our hearts are dark, full of grief and grievance, needing such heavenly light. Such light does indeed shine in the darkness, even though the darkness comprehends it not. For God sent his true light into our world to reveal our true hearts, to open them wide, so that we might see and believe, comprehend and repent.

Spending an hour before the Blessed Sacrament amidst the golden rays does indeed lighten our burdens by enlightening our hearts. And as He shines into our souls, He brightens our days to come, until the next hour of Benediction renews that right spirit within us. 

Noon Prayers and Benediction: Tuesdays, St. Joseph of Arimathea Collegiate Chapel, Durant and Bowditch, Berkeley. Schedule can change – please check for updates on the website. All who come in peace are welcome.

It was a warm sunny Saturday at Queen of Heaven Cemetery where we gathered for the Bishop’s Vineyard wine tasting. Broad umbrellas and old oaks cast shade over a sweeping lawn. A fountain burbled in the center of a patio. The large buffet was inside, the wine tasting outside, the tables circling the patio. Tickets had been placed in wine glasses for those who registered as they arrived, five tickets exchanged for five samples. The glasses were to take home, a nice touch for this free event.

In addition to the food and wine, a Planning Tour table encouraged us to plan our future residence, with both under-ground and above-ground destinations, our last resting place, as they say. Indeed, cemetery comes from the Greek koimeterion, dormitory, a place of sleeping.

But on this Saturday, above ground, folks sipped wine and nibbled from small plates, mingling, chatting, and possibly planning their final rest, gazing over the flowery meadow where some family were already sleeping. In this way the living and the dead danced with one another on this sunny summer afternoon, the linking enlivening the living.

Knowing one’s days are numbered gives those days rare value. Present time is gilded with past and future. We are “present” more fully in our present moment; we value it; we pay attention. It is good to be reminded of winter on a summer’s day. It is good to be reminded in a Christian cemetery that death opens a door to life.

My second chapter in my recently released literary suspense, The Fire Trail (eLectio, 2016), is set at Queen of Heaven Cemetery, and I was honored to be invited to read the chapter and sign copies of the novel. I sat at a shaded table between the wine and the Planning Tours. Appropriate, I thought, for my heroine, Jessica, likes the planning involved in preparing for one’s death. She likes the orderliness, although not yet a believer in the Christian promise of resurrection.

Jessica sits with her mother at the foot of a giant statue of the Risen Christ, and they speak of the dead, her father and sister resting beneath. She has been called to this place and this moment by duty, the discipline of love. For it is love that brings her to the cemetery, that commands her to be faithful to her mother and this monthly graveside visit. It is love that prompts her to pause in her busy life and remember her father and sister.

On this summery afternoon near the splashing fountain, as I read aloud words from the pages in the open book, a wind came up. I pressed my fingers down upon the rippling edges, continuing to read, trying not to pause in this dance of life and death, of love and loss, a dance that skipped and bowed and twirled within the words and phrases. I tried not to disrupt the rhythm, the rhythm of the language beating time to Jessica’s heart, and I hoped my listeners, holding their wine and gazing toward me, could hear the rhythm and join in the dance, now of wind and words and wine.

Speech is such a precious thing – language expressing thoughts and feelings, a sharing with one another, a connection. When speech is spoken between us, among us, conversation is born, and love touches us in the birthing. The conversation between writer and reader, between speaker and listener, reflects the divine, for it draws us close to one another, that is, if our hearts are open and we respect one another’s freedom of thought and belief. It draws us together, if we speak civilly, if we speak with love. And so love begets love.

Jessica’s journey through the pages of my novel follows a path through darkness into light. Just so, our own life journeys do the same, following paths through sunlight and shadow, all the while knowing this life is but a dim reflection of the one to come. We see through a glass darkly, imperfectly. We gaze upon the cemetery meadow and its sleeping forms beneath. We look up to the open arms of the risen Christ, the windswept skies and golden hills. The cemetery speaks to us of life not death, of light not darkness. It helps us talk to God. The cemetery, with its stones and statues, its sacred sacraments, invites us into a conversation.

The Fire Trail considers these things. It asks where the borders of love lie, where it is we no longer love, where it is we no longer speak to one another. It considers our freedom to speak, not only to one another, but to God. The firebreak in the Berkeley hills (useful a few days earlier in the Grizzly Peak fire) protects civilization from the wilderness. It is a border that protects life and those innate freedoms given to us by God our Creator – freedom to speak, to civilly express our thoughts and desires. It is a border worth defending. For the trail, in turn, defends us. It is a boundary that secures our peace and freedom, that allows us to love one another.

As the wind rippled the pages of my little novel and I said the words printed on the paper, I danced with my listeners. The bodies of the dead were beyond in the meadow, under the grass, but I knew the souls who had once lived in those houses of flesh and bone were no longer there. The bodies were disintegrating, returning to the earth, ash. Those souls who had lived in those houses were beyond, dancing with angels, and touching from time to time the outstretched hands of the Risen Christ.

And from time to time, they touched us all as we gathered together on this sunny summer Saturday.

The booming sound of men voicing liturgical responses, creeds, and confessions has lingered in my memory over the weekend. For St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel was fulsome with the sound of unison chants and prayers these last two weeks in our Seminary Summer Session.

I was blessed to be able to attend the Noon Masses daily in our Berkeley chapel, and the images of those hours are carved into my mind and heart – the men in black cassocks, lined on benches against the cream stuccoed walls in the style of an abbey choir. The russet tiled floor gleamed, drawing the eye to the simple slab altar and flaming candles that framed a tented tabernacle. Above, a primitive crucifix hung near the Sanctus Lamp that burned steadily. All was domed by the massive red barrel vaulting and high clerestory windows that sent shafts of light toward us.

Each Mass was celebrated by a different priest, and his unique person tinted the liturgy – his voice, his manner, his stance, his desire, his love of God. Each day we said the same words, prayed the same prayers, sacrificed the same Mass, but each Eucharist was slightly different, enriched by the man celebrating. The liturgies also reflected the Church Kalendar, honoring St. Vincent de Paul, St. Margaret of Antioch, St. Mary Magdalene, St. James, St. Anne, St. Martha. The acolytes and deacons took turns during the two weeks, and we heard varied voices reading the appointed Epistles and Gospels each day.

Again and again, I prayed for these postulants and discerners. For the students were largely seekers, searching for God’s will in their lives. As bells rang and the Host was lifted high, I prayed for these men who were discerning their future. Did God call them to be priests? Deacons? Laymen? I knew that the discipline of the residential program would test them as they fitted their lives and bodies into the schedule and demands of living in community. I knew that the discipline of their studies would challenge their minds and memory. And in this process of trial, they would hear God’s voice.

The laity that attended classes and liturgies also were seekers. They too, myself included, were listening for God’s voice. For indeed, the Lay Order is a holy ministry, made up of all believers, a kind of priesthood. We have been given the gift of life. How do we honor that precious gift? How do we allow the Creator to live within our gift, his presence in his present? It is not always easy to hear the answer. And the answer can be hard to accept. But God’s voice is present, in Scripture, in Sacrament, in love, in one another in the Body of Christ the Church. It is present all around us if we pay attention. And the Church helps us, trains our ears, so that we can recognize, like sheep, the call of the Shepherd. We can discern his voice. Without the Church we are deaf. Without the Church we live in a silent void.

The clergy came to the Summer Session also to listen, to be renewed. They too were discerners, seeking the next step, the next turn, the next leap of faith that love required. They knew God’s voice could be demanding, could lead to sacrifice and suffering, but they also knew the immense joy of saying yes. They came to instruct and to lead and to listen to their students, but they also came to be led, to be fed, to support one another in this great and grand adventure of holiness.

And so this morning in our parish Sunday School, as the children sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” and twirled and praised and laughed, dancing in the circle, on the edges of my hearing I discerned the lilt of men chanting in a barrel vaulted chapel. I heard their silence linking the words and phases. I saw them kneel on the hard glimmering tiles. I heard them listening.

And this morning, as the children settled into a quiet moment, silently nibbling on raisins, and an older child read a picture book to the younger ones, I knew it was all the same, it was all somehow seamless, the seminary chapel and the Sunday School. The children were discerning too, their eyes large, entranced by the creation that God created, by the pictures of the great heavens, the dark night and the bright day, the sun and the moon and the stars, the infinitely varied birds and beasts, the wondrous making of man and woman. They heard God’s words, “It is good.” The children were discerning their own place in this world created by this God who loves them so. And they will go on discerning as they grow in grace, learning to listen with heart and mind, becoming holy and wise in their choices, as they hear their Heavenly Father speak to them.

I look forward to next summer’s Residential Summer Session, usually held the last two weeks of July. I look forward to a rhythmic, poetic, holy time of discernment. But in the meantime, I shall sing and dance with the children on Sunday mornings and, with them, step into the pictures on the pages that are turned by a small hand, as we discern the divine.