Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

It has been a stunning week and in many respects I am catching my breath, before breathing normally again.

We have returned to the Big Island of Hawaii for a few days to read and write and rest.  Here, along the Kohala coast, the sea rustles the shore, and moist air kisses our aging skin.  It is a gentle world to all appearances, and one might think it was indeed the first paradise, the Garden of Eden.  Sights and sounds and scents and flavors and soft breezes cosset us in a sweet cocoon and for the time being we can hide from the real world, the world we have left.

Appearances can be deceiving, I fully know.  The sea can pull out and under, the sun can burn and devour, the rain and wind can flood and destroy.

Just so, I thought, appearances are often deceiving in the world we left – the world of wars and rumors of wars, of lawsuits, of greed, of lying, of fraud and breach of trust, of misuse and mismanagement, mis-this and mis-that, the twisting of truths.  The media strikingly knows this full well as it colors stories to their liking.  Right and wrong.  Truth and falsity.  Where is the line dividing them?  Is the gray country in between so difficult to navigate?

Today’s Epistle was Paul’s wonderful passage about putting on the full armor of God:

My brethren, be strong in the Lord in the power of his might.  Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand. Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness; and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace; above all, taking the shield offaith, where with ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of theSpirit, which is the word of God… (italics mine) Ephesians 6:10+

So the full armor is truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and the word of God.  I try to recall these things as I maneuver through the confusing world about us, making my own small choices, thinking how could they possibly matter.

But they do matter.  These choices protect us from the world’s discord and anarchy, from, indeed, death.  How we chose to live our lives counts.

My stunning moment from last week came as a response from from one of my final draft readers in New Zealand.  He is a language scholar and lay theologian for whom I have immense admiration and respect, and God has blessed me with his wisdom and excellent editorial eye, his suggestions after reading the first and sixth drafts of my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery.   He sent me his most recent comments and included a stunning quotation for the book jacket.  I am overwhelmed, and of course, deeply thankful.

My novel is about truth – how we know it, how we use it in our perception of the world, how it influences our choices in life.  In a word, or rather phrase, how truth governs our lives.

As our world discards the idea of truth and embraces relativity, personal taste, subjectivism, each of us must take on the armor of God.  Each of us must question our own choices, set them against standards of right and wrong, of righteousness.  But whose standard?  Whose authority?  For Christians, the answer is simple: God’s.  But how do we know his will?  St. Paul gives us guidelines to help us discern.  We learn how to love (the gospel of peace), we keep the faith (in Christ), and we absorb Holy Scripture as interpreted by the Church through which the Holy Spirit weaves.  In this way we are protected from falsehood and the “wiles of the devil.”  We are saved.

I feel more “armored” simply having read the Epistle, more ready to re-enter the real world of twists and turns that lie ahead.  I shall be prepared to choose.

Yesterday, Saturday, was cold, the temperatures dropping, surprising me.  Damp seeped over the hills, sliding into our home through windows and doors, an invisible chill.  I grabbed my winter jacket and headed for our parish’s annual Holiday Boutique.

Red-draped tables were piled high with goodies and gifts – soup mixes, cookies, cakes; country crafts, colorful cottons to hold shoes, paisleys to cosset jewelry, floral prints to keep bread warm with a tiny pocket of rice to microwave and return to the neat little pocket (so clever!).  The hall was full of imagination and color, and I meandered along the aisles, caught in a garden of dreams turned into handiwork that had been loved with each stitch and with each knit and purl.  There were tiny booties and toasty slippers in blues and pinks and colorful jumbled weaves, little caps and big caps for the snow and rain, for the little people and the big people, scarves looping and softly flowing, shawls to drape over chilling shoulders.  The men of the parish had made signs for the busy street corner and had climbed ladders to loop streamers between green wreathes in the hall.  Holiday music swung from note to note, getting us all in the mood.  There were raffle tickets for bottles of wine and gift baskets and even a set of my little books.

My little books looked rather dull next to all of this.  Nevertheless, I set them out and signed and chatted with folks as they dropped by.

This last week was one of my favorites in the Church Year.  The world was silly on Halloween Monday – pretending to be what it was not, wishing for more sugar (who doesn’t?), being someone else for a few hours, someone good, evil, famous, clever, silly, serious.  Goblins and witches roamed neighborhoods and folks gathered to sip mulled wine and answer  doorbells and fill pillow cases with mini candy bars.  Trick-or-treat!  Halloween.  All Hallows Eve.  The night before All Saints Day.  The night when the spirits of the dead roamed the earth, that is, before the belief was vanquished by the Church.  Perhaps those spirits too were unhappy with who they were.

There was a time, before the West was Christianized, when the end of summer was celebrated on October 31.  It was believed that the spirits of ancestors roamed the earth this night, and folks would light bonfires to frighten them away.  They also left food out to appease their terrible tempers.  Christianity dispelled those fears, or should have, for Christians do not believe that the dead roam the earth, but rather that they are with God in Heaven.  We no longer fear the dead or our own death.  The Church, as it did with many of its festivals explaining this wonderful resurrection faith, transformed a pagan festival of fear into a Christian festival of love, All Saints, honoring these men and women of God.

And so on All Saints Tuesday we gathered to offer our thanksgivings for the saints, past, present, and to come, those living among us, loving us, sacrificing for us.  We met in the great nave and before the white tented tabernacle and offered this Mass of thanksgiving for those who knew fully who they were, who in their life on earth grew more and more full of God.  As they journeyed in time, God molded them into their true selves.

Many of us returned on Wednesday for All Souls day, that day of thanks and remembrance for the rest of those who have died and have passed into eternal glory.  As Christians we know these souls do not roam the earth.  We live with the certainty they are happy and that we shall join them one day.  At the Mass for All Souls our priest read the names of those members and friends of the parish who have traveled to Heaven, and I listened to the list tolled in the cool air of the sanctuary, as light streamed through skylights upon the crucifix.  I knew many of them.  Among them there were Willa and Louise and Jeanine and Kay and Vi and Elizabeth and Dot, women who had mothered me in my single parent days, women who had cuddled my four-year-old son who at the time had no father in his life.  There were the men too – Hugh and George and John and Jim.  And many more.  These are the saints I think of often, the souls in heaven who made such a difference on earth, who knew all about love.

So it was with a heart full of those who had gone before me, those who had once stood in this hall and sold handicrafts crafted with love so many years ago, that I browsed our parish Holiday Boutique.  I gave thanks for the men and women who had gone ahead and as I lifted my eyes to one of the ladies selling a calico memo holder with magnets for the fridge, I was overwhelmed by love.

I left the church laden with goodies, and impatiently awaiting the chance to try the freshly made pecan pralines.  I also carried in my bursting bag a jar of soup mixings, the same savory minestrone we had with our tea-lunch (excellent) and while I am not much of a cook, this has given me a goal.  We shall have soup over the holidays, paired with a nice crusty loaf of whole wheat.

It was raining lightly as I made my way to my car.  I pulled my jacket tighter about me and popped open my umbrella, ready to journey a bit farther in my span of time, full of the life and love of God manifested in his people.

The week was a triumphant one.  I finished the nearly final draft of my novel,The Magdalene Mystery, which is concerned with the search for truth in a world of lies.  I bundled several copies off to readers in Rome, Maryland, New Zealand, Provence, and Sunnyvale, California.  Each person will bring his or her unique talents and background to my little creation and I shall listen to what they tell me.

My little creation.  Sighing with relief and joy, I considered what I had done.  For words on their own are wild things, meaningless collections of consonants and vowels that need to become part of a greater organized whole.  Until then they lie fallow, waiting.  But we humans harness those words into phrases, give those phrases shape in sentences, those sentences real substance in paragraphs.  We fatten the paragraphs into pages, the pages into chapters, the chapters into books.  (the books into libraries?… or flash drives?)  We create language, and with language we tell stories, give meaning to our lives.

We impose order on chaos.  Just like God when he made the world.  Just like God when he created us.

Today in church we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King.  We sang glorious hymns.  For the processional we sang the lyrical Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation; O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation….  For the Offertory we thundered Luther’s A mighty fortress is our God, A bulwark never failing; Our helper he amid the flood Of mortal ills prevailing…  And for the recessional joined in All hail the power of Jesus’ Name! Let angels prostrate fall; Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown him Lord of all!  We soared into the music, lifting our voices in praise to our King, who has imposed order on the chaos of our lives.  The music shall linger with me through the week, making sense of my minutes and hours.

Our preacher explained how we were created by God and thus impressed with his image, just as a coin is impressed with the figure of a monarch.  God’s creative order pulses through us; we need only turn to him, realize his author-ship.  Since World War II, he continued, the West has largely rebelled against authority and we find our world today retrogressing to the chaos of the jungle.  Yet good – godly – authority is our only guarantee of freedom, our only means to meaning in our lives, our only path to love.

As I gazed on the realistic wooden crucifix over the altar, with its dying body on the cross, I recalled a Christ the King crucifix I have at home.  A king on a cross!  A king dying a criminal’s death, a shameful death, a vagrant’s death.  A king with his crown and red robes, the robes of resurrection, the robes of victory, the robes of loving and sacrificial authority.  A death that overcomes death.

As Christians we have a king with authority.  As Christians we are given the power to create as God once pulled light from the dark.  We have the means to order the chaos around us.  We need only turn to him, obey his commands, allow his life to run through our veins.

Just as I harnessed my 88,000 words into sentences in The Magdalene Mystery so Christ harnesses our lives into sanctity, into love, into becoming creators.

And so it seems appropriate that tomorrow is All Hallows’ Eve, popularly called Halloween, the night before the Feast of All Saints.  On All Saints we thank God for all those men and women who have allowed God to write his story on their hearts and in their minds, to recreate their lives, to impress them again and again with his image.  We pray that we may be impressed, recreated, sanctified, that our chaos may be ordered by his authority.

We give thanks for Christ the King of creation.

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.