Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

It is fall and the leaves are falling, forming golden ponds of orange and yellow upon the paths and roads, the walkways and yards.  The leaves rain down from their lofty branches, dead now, having provided our green shade in the warmer months, having protected us from the sun.  Now the sun enshrines the riot of color splashed against the hillsides in these last bright bursts before winter.

Changing seasons.  Passing time.  The living die, the dead mulches new life, waiting in the womb of the earth, for spring.  We harvest and prepare the land for its slumber.  We prune so that the living may produce new life, trimming branches to stalks, cutting back and throwing out.  All the earth moves and changes, rumbling through autumn like a giant beast.

We too rumble to our deaths, having come from cells uniting, having grown miraculously day by day to this present moment, decaying imperceptibly.  Our days are numbered and we count the years since our birth, celebrating with song and gifts and love.  But we too shall discard our bodies, shall see them decompose into the earth.  We shall fall.  We shall die.

Yet we have a promise, a hope.  We know our spirits shall live on, infused with God’s sacramental grace.  We, in baptism, have already been reborn, have already become united with the eternal.  We are not leaves of autumn, or the plowed-under field, or even our own bodies that shall one day become ashes and dust.  We are immortal, beloved by God.

One day we will be given new bodies, resurrected with God the Son, Christ, pulled with him into glory.  Unlike the decomposing earth, we shall live through him.  This is the great Christian hope.  This is the great Christian victory.

Winter approaches.  The days are short, the nights long.  The dark encroaches upon the light like an eclipse of the sun, and so too our world, with its wars and rumors of wars is caught in the shadowlands of battle.  Our world waits for the light, for the sun to emerge from the shadow of the earth, for dawn to break.  We wait for Christ’s coming.

But in the meantime we have the passage of time, the seasons, the glorious drama of the natural world given for our delight.  We have the Creeds and the law and love of God to keep us straight and true, to place our feet on the right path through the days and weeks and months of the year, through the seasons of sowing and reaping and slumber.  We have Sunday worship and communing with him in the Eucharist so that Monday will be a day of life and love.

As a child I liked to jump in the leaves, hearing the crunch, feeling the crisp collapse.  Now I sweep them aside to prepare a path, and marvel at their colors.  Tomorrow I shall walk between them, through them, as they rain upon me, to new and glorious life.

This last week we celebrated St. Michael and All Angels, the defender of heaven and our defender too.

There was great war in heaven, so Scripture tells us, and Archangel Michael and his heavenly host of angels cast out the angel Lucifer, who had rebelled against God.

Myth?  Dream?  Real event?

While many passages of Holy Scripture are indeed myths, telling greater truths, or dreams, predicting real events, this account of the war in heaven rings true.  I see the war in heaven all around me in our fallen world, and in my own fallen heart.  Good and evil battle continually, and sometimes we see it, sometimes we don’t.

So I love the feast day of St. Michael.  I love that Satan is defeated and thrown out.  For I know God wins in the end.  It is good to remember too that God is not fighting Lucifer.  God and Satan are not equal combatants.  Michael and Satan fight this war in heaven. The angel Lucifer grew too proud, too full of himself, setting himself up as God.

Today’s Gospel was the parable of the lilies of the field, where Jesus tells us to not be anxious about tomorrow, consider the lilies, how they are not anxious. Christ is not telling us not to carry out our responsibilities to society, to one another.  But once these obligations are met, we have no need to worry.  Let God do the rest.  Enjoy him and his creation.

God’s acting in time and eternity, his final victory, his valiant angels, also give me peace of mind.  I know that by believing in Christ and his great redemptive acts, I shall become one with him in the Eucharist, and one with him in eternity in heaven.  This knowledge gives me peace.

The hymns today were all about Michael, and we sang with intense anticipation and praise as the thurifer prepared the way along the red-carpeted aisle, throwing incense into the air, processing to the candle-lit altar and the green tented tabernacle.  The crucifer followed, holding the crucifix high, an extension of himself.  The clergy came last.  They stepped joyously and solemnly, filled with God’s certain love.  The stunning liturgy of the Holy Eucharist began, the immense offering prayer of God’s people, the liturgy of sacrifice repeated again and again since that last supper on Maundy Thursday so long ago, an offering repeated until the return of Christ to earth.

Today we welcomed our new vicar who is also named Michael, and I prayed that he would renew our people, fill them with the golden goodness of God in Scripture and Sacrament, in prayer and song.  I prayed that he would cast out the evil and nurture the good.

As we left, I recalled that this Tuesday is the Feast of Saint Francis, a poor beggar filled with the same confidence as Archangel Michael.  Francis had no worries, padding the trails of thirteenth-century Italy, walking through the fields, talking to the birds, at one with God and his creation.

I gave thanks for the poetic symmetry of the lessons and feasts, Michael yesterday, the lilies today, Francis tomorrow.  It is harvest time, and we offer thanks for our crops, for sun and rain and wind.  We are at once a part of it and not a part of it, somehow the same but different, with our creator binding us together.  In time we will understand this mystery.

For now, the Archangel Michael defends heaven and Saint Francis celebrates earth.  Creator, we the created, and creation, are one.

It is a quiet, gentle day, a light rain having watered the night and a weak sun working its way through filmy strips of stratus clouds, the temperatures coolish.  Somehow church was like that too, quiet, gentle, thoughtful.

Yet our celebrant and preacher stirred our souls with greater understanding, both of head and heart.  He spoke of the Body of Christ, how we are one with one another, sitting at the same table, in union with Christ in the Eucharist.  We are his bride the Church.  As Paul tells us, we are one body, one Spirit, and we have “one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.” (Ephesians 4:1+)

Heady stuff.  Mystery and miracle, the intersection of the eternal in time, the union of the immortal and the mortal, the raising from dead to life.  All through baptism.  All through sitting at the same table of the Lamb.

I’ve just finished my nearly final draft of my current novel, The Magdalene Mystery.  I say nearly for I’m still tinkering and receiving input from reader friends.  My Magdalene icon hangs nearby.  Her golden hair flows over red robes and she holds a small white canister, presumably containing the oil she carried to the tomb that Easter morning, or perhaps recalling the story of the anointing of the feet of her Lord.  It is an image from a church in Biot, southern France, not far from Cannes.  A sculpted image stands alongside, colorless, with flowing robes.   She holds a perfume bottle, in a graceful pose, waiting.  Both gaze peacefully, knowingly, as though having become full of fullness itself.  They encourage me to tell the tale.

In the writing, I’ve journeyed to those early years after the Resurrection, when it is said that Mary Magdalene arrived on the southern shores of France with Lazarus, Maximin, Zaccheus, and others.  They say she preached in the Marseilles region, and probably in Marseilles itself, then a Greco-Roman port.  She told the news from the East, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

Astonishing news it was then, and not yet illegal to be a follower of the Christus, the anointed one.  She probably preached in the shrine that would have been in Marseilles, Diana’s, as Paul did in Ephesus around the same time.  She may have gone into the surrounding countryside which still is dotted with hermitages said to have been from the Cassianites of the early fifth century.  Why did they choose this place in such numbers, these monks sent out from the Abbey St. Victor in Marseilles?  It is likely because of the earlier presence of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus and Maximin (the latter two became bishops of Marseilles and Aix).

I’ve written in previous posts about the grotto in the ancient forest where they say Mary Magdalene lived her last years.  There has long been a Magdalene shrine there, today kept by Dominican friars and sisters.  As I walked with my characters in my mind through the forest of beeches and oaks, up the switchback stairs, past the crosses and the etched Beatitudes, up to the terrace on the side of the mountain, I was so thankful for her witness, thankful for her speaking the truth.  Indeed, truth, and how to know and find it, is one of the themes of the novel.  How do we know what happened?  What is history?  Are the Gospels historically true?  Others have said they are fairy tales, but in researching I was pleased to find real evidence to support them.  There may be a leap of faith involved, but the leap is a short one, the probabilities of Gospel truth so high.  It might be better to call the leap a baby step of faith, a step that changes everything for the stepper.

This morning I thought about the Magdalene and her life as our energetic and dynamic preacher spoke of the one Body of Christ to which we all belong.  Two thousand years telescoped to nothing.  Saint Mary Magdalene is a part of us and we are a part of her, part of the long procession of saints and sinners who seek God.  We sit at the same table, partake of the same body.  For we have found him and he has found us and we are all one in him.

Astounding.

We woke to fog blanketing the house this morning, cocooning us in a cold, quiet, damp.  It was as though we were in the middle of a cloud, feeling it seep against the windows, obscuring the early light.  Where was the garden?  The olive tree in the front yard?  The drive was obscured, the foliage, the sky.  All was white nothingness.  But by the time we set out for church, the sun was trying to burn through, turning the white to colors and shapes, our familiar world.

Our processional hymn this morning was the lyrical and soaring #282:Praise my soul the King of heaven; to his feet thy tribute being; Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, Evermore his praises sing: Alleluia!  We sang with all our hearts as the clergy and crucifer and acolytes processed up the aisle to the altar.  The hammered bronze of the cross glimmered as it passed by.

Our parish is in a time of transition, and we have a new vicar.  He is a short man, dark, with a powerful presence.  He is Jewish, converted to Christ, and now Christ’s priest in his church.  Today he would celebrate the Holy Eucharist, and I felt more anticipation than usual, as though something was coming, a special gift from God.  I wondered what it would be, for God often surprises me and I didn’t want to miss it.  I watched and waited, on my knees, as our vicar moved about the altar, each motion intense with meaning.  He is not a man to do or say anything without fully understanding what he is doing and saying.  Every second counts in this great drama of redemption.

In the sacrifice of the Mass in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, the priest represents Christ and offers himself as Christ offered himself for us (hence we have male and not female priests).  Today, our vicar was even more like Christ, for he is Jewish.  As he intoned the anticipated phrases they sounded particularly Jewish, and I imagined Christ at that Last Supper saying those words, “Take, eat, this is my body given for you…”  He would have said those words just as our vicar did today.

It is human nature to allow ritual to become rote and meaningless.  We have been fortunate in our diocese to have dedicated priests who value what they are saying and doing at the altar, and rarely drone the words of the liturgy, unthinking.  But this vicar woke me up as though I had been sleeping.  Suddenly I was in Jerusalem at that Passover supper two thousand years ago.  I was in the upper room with the other women and the disciples and Christ.  I was watching the bread being broken, the cup being raised.  I was hearing the Mass for the first time.

It was stunning the power of those words, spoken over those ordinary creatures of bread and wine, and as I knelt at the altar rail, I raised my open palms in awe.  Our vicar approached, placed the host in my hands, placed Christ’s flesh on mine.  I consumed God.  He consumed me.  My creator and I were one.

I gave thanks for the man of God who had come into our midst to re-present Our Lord to us.  He carried within him the power and love of Christ, born through the priesthood these many centuries.  I knew he has suffered in his life, so he understands the miracle and sacrifice of the Mass.  He understands what it is to be a vessel for God, to be filled and to fill.  He understands words, their power and their glory.  He understands Christ as God’s Word Incarnate.

Our parish also has suffered and known sacrifice, and this vicar has begun the binding of our wounds.  He helped the healing.  Like the sun, he burned the fog away so that we can see again, can see the colors and shapes of our world.

The recessional was a quieter hymn, reminding me of a country church setting, full of sweet and certain joy, #489:  Lord, dismiss us with thy blessing; Fill our hearts with joy and peace, Let us each, thy love possessing, Triumph in redeeming grace: O refresh us, O refresh us, Traveling through this wilderness.

I left church this morning refreshed, having come out of the wilderness.  The fog had cleared and the sun burned warm upon my face.

We came home to cats who missed us, and as I write, the larger one, a male tabby named Laddie (who is just a tad overweight) has climbed into my lap, demanding the missed hours of attention.

We have come home after being away.  We rested on our vacation, staring at the sea and reading and writing, walking the shoreline, listening to the surf, inhaling the tropical aromas of jasmine and plumeria.  Our world for the last two weeks was all blues and greens with splotches of fuchsia and orange and yellow.  The first week the sun rose from the sea; the second week the sun dropped into it.  Sunrise or sunset, the sky was painted with filmy strips of pink and purple and tangerine.  We became spoiled with sky; we became spoiled with tropical breezes; we became spoiled with fruit and fresh fish. We probably ate too much and will have to eat less now.

Our away was bracketed by home, by real life.  Now on the other side of the brackets we plunge into the minutes and hours of daily routines.  We work through mounds of mail, pay our bills, respond to correspondence, do loads of laundry, do all the things still undone.  We left a network of family and friends, and now return to them, re-entering love as we share their sorrows and their joys.

Our away time allowed for more prayer for there was more time away, time to reflect, time to praise, to give thanks.  Upon return, I thought, I would continue that constant glorifying, keep it in my mind and heart so that Christ would always be with me.

A clergy friend occasionally walks the streets of his neighborhood, full cassock, praying the “Jesus Prayer” – Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner, Amen.  Why, he was asked, was he doing this.  His answer was interesting.  He didn’t say he had certain prayer intentions – that crime be lowered, that this neighborhood convert and come to his parish church, or that his Aunt Martha be healed.  He may have prayed those prayers as well, but his purpose as he walks the streets of this upper middle class suburb is to make present the Holy Name of Jesus.

The Holy Name of Jesus.

I’ve thought about that ever since, and wonder if I could bring the Holy Name of Jesus to public places.  My husband and I have begun saying grace (quietly) in public and making the Sign of the Cross, showing gratitude for every meal given.  It is a small public witness but one I rarely see.  And I am ashamed to say it has taken some courage to do so little.   Are we ashamed of Jesus?  Are we ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, as we are told to do in Baptism and Confirmation?

We have come home to our own crucibles, our own challenges.  And in that movement into real life we bring those prayers, that time spent with God, and allow home to be mended and nourished by our time away.  We listen to the joys and sorrows of friends and laugh and cry, all the while knowing Christ is with us, laughing and crying too.  The God I prayed to on the edge of the ocean is the God I prayed to this morning in my little parish church.  He has not changed, only I have, having drawn closer, closer to the center of his cross, his heart.

And the real center of his cross, where his heart beats, is my real life, my home, not my away.  I can hear his voice and feel his beating heart sometimes better when away and I bring the hearing home with me.  But he is always with me.  His constancy is unbending, unalterable, unending.  He is life, and life without him is death.  He is love, and love is everlasting, eternal.

As home wraps about me and comforts me with its warm familiarities, it is also a hurricane of changing winds and weathers, the doings, the goings, the comings, the business of living and loving.

I woke this morning with severe lower back pain and decided there was no way I would be able to go to church.  Then I decided to take one step at a time.  With each step I prayed, they will be done.  If you want me there, dear Lord, you had better help me.

And he did.  The pain slowly eased enough to move.  I made it to church.  I was able to see friends and check on the babies in the nursery, admire the finished Children’s Chapel with its lovely old carved altar and wonderful tapestry hanging.  In the main church I was able to pray before the Mystical Presence of Christ.  I was able to gaze upon the crucifix, and become one with Christ in the Eucharist.  I gave thanks.

My away and my coming home became one.

We watch the skies, the seas, the land. We look into our hearts. We consider where we have been and where we are going…

Here, along the northwestern coast of the Big Island of Hawaii I can see a royal blue band of sea way out along the barely curving horizon that meets the pale blue dome of sky. The blues change as the sea rolls into the land, gradually turning to turquoise as it caresses the packed sand, the white foam capping the waves. The beach gently curves too, from one black rock cliff to the other, bordered by a broad green lawn. A grove of palm trees command the lawn, their tall straight trunks parting the green of the grass, the blues of the sea and sky, and reaching to their crowns of palm that wave in the breeze like the arms of a dancer.

I say my morning prayers as I walk the beach. “In his hand are all the corners of the earth, and the strength of the hills also; The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land…” (The Venite, O come let us sing unto the Lord…, Book of Common Prayer, Psalm 95). My bare feet sink into the soft dry sand or tamp the firm damp sand rinsed by the sea, my journey joining the two strong hills of black rock.

Indeed, true rest – re-creation – is all about the vision of God, watching the skies, the seas, the land, praising him for his creation, for his goodness, and indeed, his power. In this praise I am re-created. His power is all around me. Not all of nature is beautiful and good. When the Psalmist sings, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord, let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation,” he is describing a God of might, and because he is mighty he can save us from death, ourselves, our natural world.

I listen to the sea and the birds and feel the moist warm breezes. Today all is gentle; tomorrow there may be winds and rains, hurricanes, tidal waves. Tomorrow the natural world may turn violent, maiming, deadly.

I met a lovely Filipino girl who said she likes to fish on her days off work. She lines up along a pier near Kona with friends and family – twenty-five on each side – and works two poles to catch the small Halalo. One day, she told me, she caught 400 fish! She put twelve each into zip bags and sold them. “God is good,” she said, “to give his people such fish.”

I immediately saw Christ giving Simon Peter those two great catches – first, when Christ calls Peter to follow him, and later, on the shore after the resurrection. “Yes,” I said to my new friend, smiling. “God is very good.”

The Epistle for today is about the law and the promises of God, Christ’s coming to redeem us from sin and death. The law, Paul says, is necessary because we sin. The Gospel is about the young man who asks Christ how to keep that law, who is the neighbor that the law requires us to love? Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan. We see that every hurt stranger becomes our neighbor.

We try but fail to keep the law. We are like the land, sea, and sky – today gentle, tomorrow not so gentle, or worse. We trespass, and we fail to forgive those who trespass against us. Our hearts are too small for God. They need to grow large like the sea and the sky and the land.

We are part of the created order, greatly loved by the Creator. Loved so much he sent himself to walk among us. Loved so much he died for us. Loved so much he wants us to share in his joy of creation.

I look at the skies, the seas, the land. I look into my heart. I confess my sins. I receive forgiveness. I forgive others. I slowly in time learn to love. Only then can I live up to the law. Only then can my heart stretch to make room for God.

Our week in Hana was restful as intended, and we moved from breakfast to lunch to dinner in a dream of walking and waking and reading and writing and watching the surf crest and pound the rocks below the lawns.  The warm moist air slowed us down.  We rested.  In fact we never hiked up to Fagan’s Cross or cross country to Homoa Beach.  We did revisit Hana Bay and the Cultural Center where Meiling takes good care to keep my novel available, Hana-lani, which is set here in the Hana area.

The sun was hot, and the air sweetly moist, the scuttling clouds brilliantly white, the days surreal in their beauty.  The moon grew full and lit the sky of white shapes traveling over the star speckled darkness, the palm fingers waving their silhouettes into the canvas of midnight blues.  We walked across the lawn in the evening light, following the path from dinner to bed and climbed wooden stairs to our bungalow.  The whir of ceiling fans and the roar of the sea lulled us to sleep, then we woke when rain suddenly poured upon the tin roof.

It is a soft way of life, gentle and soothing.  No air conditioning.  No TV.  No radios.  No clocks.  Internet in the hotel library.  We listen to the surf and the winds and we inhale the intense aromas of watered flowers and grass, the plumeria and jasmine.  We watch the sun rise up from the sea, a thin red band bordering the cumulus, and later set behind the volcano’s green flanks, shooting rays into the heavens.  The staff is friendly and remembers us.  We remember them.  They have become our friends from far away, friends that help us to rest. Michelle, Jay, Laura, Bryan, Styles, Kim, Joan.  Lei was home with a new grandbaby and we sent our best wishes but missed her sweet winsome welcome.  Landa and Keo and Kepaka.  Patrick.  Kim’s husband who has more jobs than I can count and plays a mean ukelele.  Mark the Manager and his lovely wife.  Hoku.

But we had to say goodbye and flew to another island early Saturday morning as a rain storm cleared and marathon runners were descending on the Hana Highway. Today, on the Kohala Coast, we gaze out to a gentle bay, sweetly curved with its manicured sand and umbrellas, a lawn shaded by towering palms.  No ceiling fans here.

But today is September 11, a national day of mourning which our nation has turned into victory of sorts.  Wanting to remember this day, to honor it, I followed some of the TV coverage, heard some of the stories once again, saw some footage I had not seen, as writers and producers pull together timelines and time and the ten years that have elapsed.

We try to understand, to make sense of the tragedy.  We look for meaning so that we can bear the pain.  The attack on the Twin Towers by terrorists was a horrific tragedy but was not nearly of the proportions of the Holocaust, not nearly of the proportions of the million innocents aborted each year.  Yet somehow this attack, being so intentionally symbolic, strikes especially dissonant and heart wrenching chords in our national spirit.  For the planes hit our economic center, the twin towers of trade.  They hit our military center, the Pentagon.  They aimed at the symbolic center of government, the White House.  Not understanding our balance of powers, they probably didn’t think of the Supreme Court and Capitol Hill.  This orchestrated effort was a clear and powerful message.

We were hurt deeply.  We need the conversation to continue, to retell and remember with the telling, certainly so that we do not forget, but also to create our own intentional symbols of victory.  This is happening, and as I listened to the stories of the firemen and the tapes of the downed plane in Pennsylvania heading for the White House, the testimony of civic leaders, the wise handling of the crisis by our President, I could see a new tapestry emerging, woven from the shredded threads of that horrible day.  It is a tapestry that must not be left in a forgotten room but woven into the weave of the flag.  The Twin Towers memorial remembers, and it testifies to the future, and soon we will see the new towers rise higher than those that fell.  Everywhere in the memorial are the symbols of freedom and rebirth.  We too can use image to proclaim our way of life, our way of freedom.

Not the freedom to steal, murder, cheat, abuse, threaten.  We want to protect freedom of speech, religion, race, gender.  We want the freedom to worship as we choose, to decide our own government, to build and to create.  We want the freedom to live in safe neighborhoods, to protect the law-abiding from the lawbreakers, to raise our children ourselves, to support marriage and family.  And we want a world like this for our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren.

I missed church today.  It was not only Nine-Eleven, but it was Grandparents Day, and I am a happy grandparent of eight.  But even more importantly, it was a great day of celebration in our little parish.  Our Church School was opening and our Archbishop was visiting.  On this occasion he would bless our new Children’s Chapel.  Afterwards, everyone was going to enjoy an Old Fashioned Ice Cream Social.  All my favorites – Sunday School and the children, a glorious Mass with our beloved Archbishop, our Children’s Chapel Blessing, after many months of preparations and renewal over the last year.  And I love ice cream sundaes.

I looked out to the sea and the crashing surf and I prayed for our parish and its lovely celebrations on this Sunday, today, September 11.  I considered how the two were so vitally related and appropriately sharing the day – for it is these gatherings of faith, it is these times when we meet God in the Mass, it is these moments when we celebrate the generations and pass our heritage on to our children, it is in these communities that our victory over the terrorists is won.

It is family, community, and faith that we shall fight for.  It is the freedom to live our lives as we choose that we shall fight for. We are stronger for having done battle for these things.

I hear the surf and walk and read and write.  I say my prayers.  I give thanks for these brave men and women who give their lives for us all, so that we may hear the surf, walk and read and write, and say our prayers.

When we really need to rest we come to Hana, Maui.

After a five hour flight from San Francisco to Kahului, my husband and I arrived Saturday evening around seven, flying south along the coast in a small ten-seater plane.  The sun had set behind Haleakala and a dark rainy sky hovered over the gray green land.  The dusk was darkening and soon it would be night.  Weak late light struggled through clouds, but as we flew low over the rich rain forest, I could still see white caps kissing the lava rock, rolling in, caressing the shore.  I could see cars on the road below, and I could chart their winding path through the forest by following their headlight beams.

Fifteen minutes after take-off we descended to the dark runway, landing and rolling a bit, taxiing down and around the loop of asphalt to the warm light of the one-room Hana Airport.  Patrick from the hotel greeted us, a familiar and friendly face, and we bundled into his van.  We pulled up to the lobby and he moved our bags from the van to a golf cart.  Son we bumped and rolled over the lawns to our cottage.

I had bridged the gap between home and away, our roots pulled out and replanted in a different soil for a short time.  Memory struggled to adapt, pulling images in and out, re-creating thought patterns and making room for this new place, this away-from-home place.  My mind stretched to encompass more, to absorb difference.

Now from our verandah I look out to the sea where a black rock coast divides green lawns and blue waters, white foam slides in and pulls out, massaging the shore with lacy fingers.  Horses graze in an adjacent pasture and birds chatter a curious conversation, calling, singing, celebrating. The palms rise straight and tall, their branches reaching in gentle arcs out and up as though embracing heaven with their frond-arms, urging the sky down to the land.  Indeed, as the sea greets the shore, so these coconut trees desire the sky.  The trees sigh, the sea sighs, I sigh.

Saturday’s rain transformed yesterday’s Sunday landscape into a painter’s canvas of color.  The air was fresh, washed clean, the sun warm, the skies brilliantly blue with a few white puffy clouds moving in from the sea.  We hiked up to Hasegawa’s General Store for lunch things for the week – apples and peanut butter, an edam wheel and wheat crackers, strong ground coffee beans and a quart of milk.  Near the entrance one last copy of Hana-lani was displayed, well thumbed.  Perhaps I shall give Hasegawa’s a few more copies while I am here.

On the way back to our cottage, I heard singing coming from the Wananalua Congregational Church and decided to join the folks for Sunday worship.  Only about twenty-five gathered in the historic church this day, many having gone to the baseball tournament in Fagan’s park nearby (the “Church of Baseball” as some say).  The people were standing and sharing their concerns – prayer requests – and soon the pastor rose to preach on conflict.  As I looked to the white chancel with its large white cross, I thought of Nani-lei, the character in my novel who loved the cross, the cross of this church and the cross on the hill.  I wondered, somewhat amazed, that my characters had become so real to me.  It is as though they live here, and I am visiting.  I turned my thoughts back to the preacher and his methods for dealing with conflict in the church.  In the end, he concluded, Jesus was the only one that could resolve our conflicts, so we had better include him at the table.  He was right, I thought, for while he didn’t talk about a fallen world and Christ bridging the gap between man and God, between earth and heaven, I think this is what he meant.  Nani’s cross did the bridging, and it was as simple as that.  Conflict resolution.  I left with a happy sense of being a part of this living organism, being baptized into the great body we call the Church.  One can never be lonely, alone, with such a baptism.  One is always loved.

I returned to the cottage, following the path parting the grass.  The landscape here is many-greened: lime green, avocado green, olive green, the grass now bright green, now emerald green, now golden green.  Red ginger with conical flowers and sturdy leaves border the lawns and orange-blossomed hibiscus trees throw shade upon the grass.  All the while the birds sing.  All the while trade winds scatter aromas of fresh mown grass, plumeria, jasmine.

There is much to do in Hana, but we will do little.  We will not be riding horses, or surfing, or driving upcountry to hike the trails to the falls.  We shall not return to Lindbergh’s grave this time, although the white church with the green door on the cliff over the sea carries many memories.  We shall not visit the Seven Sacred Pools, commonly called Oheo Gulch.  These are settings in my novel, Hana-lani, and shall always be close to my heart.

My husband and I are in our gentle years, as they say, and we shall take shorter walks through the meadows to the sea.  We shall hike to Fagan’s enormous lava cross on the flanks of Haleakala, climbing the trail through the pastures, watching for curious cows, especially those with horns.  We shall visit Hana Bay and the old pier that once received goods and people, that once was the only entrance to this remote village.  We shall swim, feeling our muscles stretch, welcoming the gentle ache of exercise.

We shall breathe the fresh air, listen to the birds and the sea crashing below.  We shall read and write.  We shall say our daily prayers to the God who made all of this glory.

We shall enjoy re-creation.  We shall rest so that we may come home restored, our roots well watered.

Christ was not very nice in today’s Gospel.  He weeps over Jerusalem, predicting its destruction.  Then he enters the temple and throws out the moneychangers, crying “My house is the house of prayer: but ye have made it a den of thieves.”  (Luke 19:41+)  He is not always sweet and kind.  Do the right thing, he says.  Follow the rules and you will be happy.  God’s house is for worship.

The Epistle (I Corinthians 12:1+) explains the gifts of the Holy Spirit – wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment, tongues – which enable us to do God’s will, to be happy.

How do we live our lives?  How do we choose what to do with our time?  I’ve been thinking about work and play, labor and rest.  Much has been written to define work, but most definitions seem to circle and never really land.  It is often said, and it is true for me, that work “keeps you out of trouble.”  In other words it guides my time productively.

The most obvious definition of work is a paying job. We need a job to earn dollars to pay for our daily needs.  We need food for our bodies to live another day.  We need shelter to protect us from nature and from lawbreakers.  We need clothing to protect us from weather. But beyond these needs we want added comfort, toys to entertain us, experiences to enrich our lives, but these are not needs.

But work is more than putting in time and receiving a paycheck for our needs.

I believe work provides meaning, and man needs meaning in his life.  Work could be said to be a meaningful activity that is also productive.  At the very least a job provides food and shelter, but it also provides a sense of accomplishment.  I spent many years typing and filing.  While the hours were tedious, boring, and seemed forever, I always had the sense that I had accomplished something, turned chaos (the stacks of paper) into order.  And the work paid the rent and put food on the table for my son and I.  This was productive too.  This was satisfying.

What happens when we don’t have work to do?  What happens when we don’t have a job?

Welfare recipients have something in common with retirees and with young people whose parents pay their way through life.  They have free time.  They do not work. How do they use their free time?  Are they engaged in meaningful productive activity?

Some are.  Some have disciplined their days and hours, are self-starters.  They volunteer in church and charity. They offer their talents and time to others.  But many fall into depression with time on their hands.  They don’t want to work, but they don’t seem to enjoy idleness.

One of the commentators on the London riots mentioned that these young thugs have been raised with government support.  The jobs they have been offered pay less than the checks they receive from the good people of Britain, so why should they work?  So they have lots of time and limited income and they cannot buy what they want.  Interviews with rioters revealed that they viewed the burning and stealing as fun, not as a protest to government cutbacks.  They could take what they wanted and not be punished.  Where were their parents?  Most had only a mother at home, terrified of her child.

And then why do middle and upper class young people who have parents who pay their way through life fall into despair, become victims of drug and alcohol?  They have the material extras, they have shelter and food. But they have lots of time and no purpose.

And retirees, health allowing, also need to fill their days.  Working as a volunteer gives purpose and meaning to their lives.  Offering hours to church and charity is good for the heart.

Humans are hardwired to work.  We yearn to do right, yet too often grow lazy, and with laziness we become selfish, greedy.  God helps us with that, with his Holy Spirit.  We pray for wisdom to fill our hours as he wills.  We offer ourselves.  We try to keep our bodies and souls clean so that when he returns he will not need to turn over any tables and the cleaning house will not be too painful.  We seek his new Jerusalem, the one he wants for us.

Work, true labor in life, is simply doing his will.  He fills our time and fills us up with himself.

After the London riots, after the Greek riots, after the economic downturns worldwide, after entitlement demands and increased crime, after the many signs of our juvenile culture stamping its feet in temper tantrums, I wondered if finally the sixties revolution was coming home to roost, if we were paying the piper, if we could at last admit that the sexual-moral revolution of those years was so very very very misguided.

Lord Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, contributed an excellent summary of our cultural meltdown in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal.  The surprise, he says, is that we are surprised.

He calls the sixties revolution one of the most “radical transformations in the history of the West.”  The sixties preached against self-restraint, against the Ten Commandments.  We embraced “whatever works for you,” instant gratification, and the “Ten Creative Suggestions.”  But it was all a dream, wishful thinking.  It was a lie to say that all you need is love, if love is defined as casual sex.  It was a lie that if you were spontaneous and artsy and looked out for number one you would be happy and successful.  It was a lie that self-esteem could be conjured by words and phrases and did not require simple hard work and accomplishment.

Sex without marriage breeds instability.  Children without responsible parents active in their lives do not grow up.  Liberty without accountability leads to lawlessness.  Love without willing sacrifice is not love.

Several generations have been taught that if it feels good, do it, to follow their dream and not someone else’s.  They found school difficult, requiring discipline and exposure to failure which hurts self esteem.  So we added more fun programs to entertain them (at taxpayers’ expense) and lowered standards.  Holding a job and going to college didn’t sound like fun – when do we party?  So we gave them student loans (funded by taxpayers) and taught them to delay the day of real work.  Now they can’t find work that meets their dream standards and they are deeply in debt.  What?  Wait tables?

We told them they were entitled to health care, entitled to a job (whether they performed or not), entitled to a dream house.  We gave them credit cards and low-interest mortgages they couldn’t repay.

The governments of the West also borrowed against tomorrow.  Now that they are going bankrupt, now that they can no longer provide the student loans, the free or low cost housing, the health care, the social security, these generations are indignant, angry.

How do we rebirth the work ethic?  How do we encourage sacrifice?  I agree with Rabbi Sacks that the answer lies in religious institutions.  But do our churches and temples have much influence today?  As a culture do we still believe in God?  Do we believe in a greater authority?

I read recently that 90% of Americans believe in God, and I would guess by God they mean the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of the Ten Commandments, the God whose authority was the basis for our Constitution and Bill of Rights.  Can we still turn the sixties around?

As nine-eleven approaches in this year of 2011, the diving planes and the black smoke billowing from the twin towers return forcefully to mind.  The anniversary of this murderous attack on our freedom, on our way of life in the West, will be remembered on a Sunday this year, a day of weekly thanksgiving and worship.  It is also Grandparents’ Day.  We plan, in our parish church, to have a Children’s Chapel blessing on this day, for it is also the first day of our regular Sunday School Program.  In church this morning as we sang in chapel, “All things bright and beautiful, the Lord God made them all…” I gave thanks for our children, our bright hope for the future, our beautiful hope that we can undo some of the sixties damage in time.

Our teachers will do their best to teach our children restraint, delayed gratification, sharing, responsibility, looking out for others first.  We will teach them the Ten Commandments and not the Ten Creative Suggestions.  We will shower them with the love of God, the ultimate source of self-esteem.  We will teach them that work is good and sloth deadly, and that God has a plan for each of them. We will teach them to repent, to say they are sorry, to be forgiven.  To turn themselves, ourselves around.

We will teach them they are entitled to God, for only God can make them happy.  We will, as we did today, sing and pray together, and kneel at the altar in the great nave for our blessings and communions.  We will be part of an incredible parish family that embraces the broken and the hurt, the unwanted and the dying, every baby conceived and every aged person shuffling through our doors.

Through our churches and temples God will renew our culture.
God will turn us around.