Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

My days are bordered by formal and informal prayer, morning and evening, but I look forward to Sundays for the greatest prayer of all, the Eucharist.

This morning, one of the children, after lighting the candles on our children’s altar, asked a question.  It was blunt, but illuminating.  “What are they drinking?” she asked.

After realizing she was speaking of the Eucharistic wine, I said, “The blood of Christ.”  Then I added, “the mystical presence of Christ.  The bread becomes the mystical presence of the body of Christ, and the wine becomes the mystical presence of the blood of Christ.  We receive Christ’s divinity when we take part in his presence in the Eucharist.  We become more sanctified.”

“Wine?”

“Wine containing the Real Presence of Christ.  When you become confirmed, you will receive the Eucharist too.”

She seemed happy with this explanation, and we turned to the altar to sing our hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”  The red roses on the white linen stood a rich contrast to the flickering flames and heavy carved oak of the altar, the gleaming bronze crucifix standing in the center.  The conversation and the Eucharist hovered in my thoughts like a delicious aroma, warm and bright, full of melody.  We said the Lord’s Prayer.

Later in our classroom, as we made paper-plate cats, as we glued foam dog masks, and as we watered our sunflowers in the orange pots and our sweet peas in the green ones, I knew the liturgy of the Mass in the great nave upstairs was moving toward the moment of consecration.  I knew as the children colored and watered and pasted and sang that the priest was saying the sacred words before the high altar, calling God the Son into the “creatures” of bread and wine.  Soon we would pause in the narthex with some anticipation, a slight breathlessness.  Soon we would walk up the red-carpeted aisle.  Soon we would kneel at the oak rail and receive Jesus into our bodies.

There are times when the thought of Almighty God entering little me is so staggering it is nearly unbelievable.  And I suppose this is why the skeptics of our world don’t believe.  It seems literally too good to be true, or perhaps even too frightening. It belongs, they say, as I did once, to the realm of fairy tales.  And since I am one of those unreasonable folks who need reasonable argument to believe, I understand the skeptics.  I was a doubter as well and I find leaps of faith difficult.  I want to know where I am leaping to.  What is on the other side of the gorge?  What if I fall into the abyss?  So I am often reciting to myself those reasonable arguments, often reveling in them, paddling in their lovely waters, often ecstatically shouting to the world:  “See?  It’s all true!  Unbelievable but true.  So believe!  Don’t miss out!  God loves us!  Jesus is here, now!”

In my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery, I return to the many arguments for the truth of Holy Scripture.  I ask how do we know what Jesus really said?  How do we know the resurrection really happened?  How do we trust the Gospels?  This great question, How do we know? is the strong foundation of belief.  It is important.  The answer determines the kind of life each of us lead and will lead.

The claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be God are clear in Scripture.  His resurrection, to my satisfaction, is proven.  His commandments on Maundy Thursday to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood are also clear.  Spoken in the context of the Jewish culture, recorded by those who clearly believed his intent, these commandments have lived through two thousand years.  Every Sunday priests stand before altars and call Jesus the Son of God into the bread and wine.  Every Sunday we receive his divinity into our souls and bodies.

I suppose I’m glad I’m one of those folks who delight in reasonable arguments.  For every time I kneel at the altar part of me trembles.  Every time I hold the Body of Christ in my sweaty palm I am awestruck.  And every time I receive Him into my own body I am astounded.

Every time I leap to the other side, to Heaven with no worries of falling.  Every time I know joy.  Every time I taste the divine.

I am blessed with a husband with a remarkable sense of humor, the kind that suddenly illuminates a moment with not only color but the emotional relief of laughter, or LOL, as we say today.  (And here I thought LOL meant little old lady.)

As we drove to church this morning we left our sun shafted valley and moved slowly into a bank of low fog, creeping in from San Francisco farther than usual.  We entered the fog as one enters a quiet tomb, and my husband said, “Oh, it must be ground fog day.”  I did indeed laugh out loud at the simple pun, feeling rather like the groundhog retreating back into her foggy hole.  Was this really high summer in California?  And had I really lived sixty-four years without ever hearing this pun?  Once said, it seemed so obvious.

The week had been one of great challenge, and the moment of laughter was welcome.  I looked at my cut roses I held for the Children’s Chapel, and I said my prayers as we traveled through the tunnel to church, to worship God on Sunday as he commands us to do.

I thought how life was probably as simple as that pun.  Probably as obvious as well.  I also considered that living a good life, a joyous life, was just as illusive.  The fog does surround us, blanketing the good, the true, the beautiful.  Blanketing the road signs.  There are many distractions in our world that chill our bones, eat at our souls, pull us to not see, to not hear, to not believe, to not obey.  Yet goodness, truth, and beauty are all around us.  God is with us, waiting, listening, watching our every choice, deeply loving us regardless, and at times I would guess, deeply heartbroken.  We need to cut through the fog.  We need to worship God at least on Sundays, follow his simple rules if we want to see him, if we want to hear his voice, know his love.

Saturday was the Feast of the Transfiguration, one of my favorite holy days.   It is a story of a cloud descending and covering.  It is a story of the voice of God.

Saint Luke tells us that Christ takes Peter, James, and John to a mountain to pray (Luke 9:28+).  As Jesus prays, “the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistering.”  Then Moses and Elijah appear and Jesus foretells his death.  Peter, in his usual boldness, jumps into the conversation and suggests making three altars so that they could hold onto the moment, keep it with them.  Then the cloud descends “and they feared as they entered into the cloud.”  They hear God’s voice, “This is my beloved Son: hear him.”

I have always loved this vision of prayer – the altered countenance, the shining raiment.  But as we entered the fog this morning I thought of the descending cloud and the fear. ”This is my beloved Son: hear him.”

Simple instructions heard through the fog.  A voice remembered when the fog lifts.  Hear him.

In the Epistle for this Feast of the Transfiguration, Peter writes to the churches not to forget: “keep… these things always in remembrance. For we have not followed cunningly devised fables… but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1.13+)

Indeed, he was an eyewitness on that mountain.  He entered the fog and heard God’s command.  He feared.  This was no cunning fable.

There are times in our lives when confusion seems to reign, when the right choice is not always clear.  Yet I have found that when I pray for help with the choice, when I look at the choice in light of God’s commandments, the path becomes clear.  Confusion continues to swirl, blanketing me like the fog.  But God’s voice is clear.

Then the ground fog melts, watering the earth, and the sun shines, white and glistering.

It is good to be around children.

My grandchildren live a distance away so this summer is turning out to be a special blessing.  I’m overseeing the Summer Program in our Sunday School.

Our numbers are small, so that all ages gather together to sing and read stories and color, cut, and paste.  The older help the younger.  I have found that watching the interaction between children of different ages to be particularly enchanting, and this morning I was reminded again we are indeed a parish family.  Even as I write this, the color and laughter and high spirits linger with me.  I smile, float, on the buoyant melody of our singing together, of our working together around the yellow table, and the red and blue chairs.

Earlier I cut five thorny red roses from my garden and added three thorn-free pink ones from the local grocer’s, wrapped them in a wet paper towel, slipped them into a baggie and ran an elastic band around them.  This has been my Sunday ritual, bringing in the flowers for the Children’s Chapel.  Holding them carefully in the car in some way prepares my mind and heart for worship as we drive the fifteen minutes to church.  Today as I touched the thorny stems and the smooth stems I thought how I held the real and the ideal, life with all its sufferings and life with the sufferings stripped away.  The thorns reminded me of my own haphazard heart, my true self, full of waywardness and wrong turns.  Today these wrongs would be stripped away, my stem would become smooth again.  The sufferings and confusions, the wars and the waywardness, would all come right in the absolution and the communion in the Mass.

We gathered in the Children’s Chapel.  Mothers and babies and primaries today, along with aides and teachers.  We sang “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” raising our arms and twirling and pointing to lips and eyes and heads to show “all things wise and wonderful.”  We stood tall for the “all creatures great” and bent down to the floor for “and small.”  We sang with our bodies in the Children’s Chapel, so that all of our parts could praise God who made us all.

The lessons are about creation, the amazing world around us that given to us by God.  I glanced at the red and pink roses on our carved oak altar draped in white linen.  I watched the children twirl and sing, their eyes large, the music joyous.  I knew soon we would plant sunflowers, sweet pea, and lavender in colorful pots and set them to grow on a box under the tall windows in the classroom.  Some earlier plantings are shooting already, green and strong and reaching for the light.  Soon we would color and cut and paste.  We would put our stars on the attendance chart and hear a story from one of the teachers.  We would laugh together and play bumble bee with the babies.

The class well cared for by our teaching team, I stepped into the nave of the main church to say my prayers with the congregation as the Canon of the Mass began.  The Collect prayer for today is one of Thomas Cranmer’s finest,

“O God,who hast prepared for those who love thee such good things as pass man’s understanding; Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises, which exceed all that we can desire…”

It’s a lovely prayer, this request to love God above all things so that God in turn gives us even more.  It is all about love, learning to love.  It is all about stripping those thorns and giving our new selves away.  Giving ourselves to God and to one another.

As the congregation chanted, “O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us…,” I rose and returned to the Sunday School.  Soon we formed a line in the narthex and processed up the red-carpeted aisle, our hands folded, for our blessings and communions.  We joined our parish family at God’s altar and received God himself.  We were one, the young and the old, those learning to walk and those using walkers.  We formed a kind of bouquet there, kneeling, our smooth stems touching in the vase of the church.

As adults we grow old and dull and gray.  We need children to remind us of the glories of creation, of “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful….”  We need children to love and to live to the glory of God.

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Trinity and we are well into the long green season of the Church Year in which we are nourished by Christ’s life and teachings.  In a world of greed and self, these Scriptural passages come to us like water in the desert.

Much has been written of late about the unease and yearning in American culture, that we have become an increasingly coarse society, assaultive and sexualized.

I believe this is largely because folks don’t believe in God, and by God I mean the God of Abraham, the Jewish and the Christian God.

It is a disturbing world, a world which my generation – those born fifty to seventy years ago – finds alien.  Perhaps we yearn for the simpler world of our childhood, but we also long for that which is truly disappearing: the Judeo-Christian moral code.

How can a religious code influence a people that no longer believe in the author of that code?  Certainly American foundations are built upon the code – our democratic system, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, the rule of law.  But our founding fathers assumed the culture would reinforce those values.  Today the culture does not.  Can government do it all?

And what exactly are those Judeo-Christian values?  The Ten Commandments – honoring God, honoring parents (and those in authority), not stealing, not killing, not lying, not committing adultery, not coveting another’s goods.  Other parts of that tradition speak to loving one’s neighbor, caring for one’s family, not divorcing, not having sex outside of marriage, the giving of one’s self to others (to family, community, the poor).  While some of these are appropriately enshrined in law (stealing, killing, some types of lying such as fraud and libel), the others must be bolstered by social pressure through media and institutions such as the family and the Church, those who teach these values.

It is easy to see in looking at the list that we are encouraged by our culture to do all of the opposite.  In our cult of “self (esteem)” we are told to take what we can (stealing), to kill those who are burdensome (abortion, euthanasia), fudge a little on taxes and resumes and our own sins (lying), sleep with whomever we desire (sex outside of marriage), and hoard our own resources and time (selfishness).  We are asking a great deal of the government to police what we do not support, what we, as a society, do not laud.

It is no surprise our culture has become assaultive and sexual.  The institutions of family and Church, the transmitters of the Judeo-Christian ethic, are being attacked.  We must support and encourage these institutions to ensure future public safety and civility.

There are many of us who feel alienated, who feel strange in this new society, I am told.  We Baby Boomers are one third of the population and are increasingly lost in this brave new world.  We plug our ears and shake our heads and worry about our grandchildren.  In the sixties we thought we were so independent, so knowing, so spiritual.  We rejected our parents’ materialism.  We rejected their blind obedience to authority.  We were our own gods, followed our own tune, dreamed our own dreams, created our own reality.  We dodged the draft and we took drugs.  We had a good time.  Now, the inevitable extension of that rejection (i.e., the hangover after the party), has become our worst nightmare: anarchy, a nation of autonomous individuals living for themselves, for their own self esteem.

As a nation we still have some time.  There is a little capital left from the account of Judeo-Christian ethos.  But it is being spent quickly and will soon be gone.  It is not being renewed, not being taught to our children.  On the contrary, our children are being taught just the opposite.  We are nearly morally bankrupt.  We still hear the words “goodness” and “bravery” and “sacrifice” and “truth”. But this language is not a part of our art, literature, or theater, which largely reflect violence, sex, loneliness.  We must encourage the heroic language that gives mankind hope.  We must encourage love not lust, bravery not cowardice, respect not derision, honesty not deception, chastity not promiscuity, selflessness not selfishness, giving not grabbing, the list could go on… We still have some time.

I pray that the family and the Church redeem our culture.  The tide is against them, and the currents are strong, the undertow powerful.  I pray that those who do not believe in God might still see the vital importance of the Church and the traditional family in keeping our culture civil.  I pray that those folks who are not religious may see the importance of sexual restraint and need for children to be raised by their parents and not the state.

As for the believers, they may be inspired by today’s Epistle in this green season of the Church Year: “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open unto their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil.” (I Peter 3:8+)  We do not hear the word “righteous” very often today, at least not to mean “good”.  These are heroic words.

And then there is the Gospel for today, which tells of the great catch of fish and Christ’s calling of Peter, James, and John as disciples.  It struck me forcibly that the account does not dwell on the fact that Jesus was teaching from the ship or even what he said.  The story is about the miracle.   It is about Christ’s giving these poor fishermen a great catch of fish, when they had fished all day and caught nothing.  It is about Simon Peter trusting Jesus when he said to let down the nets again. The story is about Christ’s power (the act definitely got their attention), but it is also about his taking care of his own.

And the opening prayer, the Collect: “Grant, O Lord, we beseech thee, that the course of this world may be so peaceably ordered by thy governance…”

As Christians we are a hopeful happy people.  We can leave our unease and yearning at the church steps.  Our nets will always be full.

This week a procession will take place to Mary Magdalene’s grotto, La Sainte Baume, in southern France.  The pilgrims will follow the “Way of the Kings,” a path well trod in the Middle Ages, from a broad plateau through an ancient forest, ascending high into a limestone massif.  The porous stone has for centuries provided caves for hermits, and legend says that Mary Magdalene spent the last years of her life there.  This Friday is her feast day, July 22, and folks from the nearby villages will honor her life and holiness.

Mary Magdalene’s last years is one of the subjects of my novel-in-progress,The Magdalene Mystery.  I am deep into my fourth draft and recently edited the chapter on the grotto chapel.  I recall visiting two years ago on a crystal clear day, the air washed by the rain of the day before.  The forest was silent except for a few bird calls, and sunlight slipped between broad leaves.  We walked the switchbacks, broad at first and graveled, soon turning to rockier going, passing small oratories and the Stations of the Cross, and finally arrived at the cliff face.  We then climbed stairs to a monastery gate.

Dominicans have cared for the shrine for centuries, and before that Cassianites from Marseilles.  We passed a sign showing a monk with his finger to his lips, imploring silence.  We continued to climb to a broad terrace that overlooked the valley below and as far out to the horizon as Mount Victoire, the mountain Cezanne painted.  Opposite the edge of the terrace we saw the chapel grotto carved from the mountain. We entered the dim and damp space.

The grotto is rough – the walls and ceilings craggy and shimmering with moisture.  I could hear a drip drip drip into a pool of water somewhere.  The cave is dark and smells of wet stone.  To the left of the entrance is a small sanctuary and nave in white marble with stairs that wrap up and around behind the high altar.  A sculpted image of Christ on the cross with Mary Magdalene kneeling rises over the altar.  The monks say a daily Mass here in this dark cavern.  They celebrate Midnight Mass at Christmas and the candle light must be stunning.  This coming Friday they will process again, to celebrate Saint Mary Magdalene.

Each time I have visited Mary Magdalene’s cave I have sensed I have visited my own heart with its own darkness and damp, its places that need cleaning out, its pools of tears.  I pray before the altar where the Reserved Sacrament is kept, knowing Christ will light these dark places.  He will dry my tears.

Mary Magdalene has been considered many persons in the New Testament.  Most agree that she is the woman from Magdala possessed by seven demons and the woman who saw the resurrected Christ in the garden.  Some say she was the sister of Martha of Bethany, the woman who washed Christ’s feet with her hair, and even the woman stoned for adultery.  Regardless of the debate, we know Christ healed her of those seven demons.  We know she was changed forever.

It is this image of change, of turning away from the dark and toward the light, that captivates me when I see Mary Magdalene, the penitent, in my mind.  She is sometimes shown carrying a jar of spices or ointment, but occasionally we see her carrying a candle, lighting the way.   The favorite scene for many is in the tomb-garden when she tries to touch Christ, and he says, “Noli me tangere,” often translated as “Do not touch me,” but more accurately translated as “Do not hinder me,” i.e., do not keep me from doing what I must do.”

I thought about her today at church.  The lessons were about judging and forgiving, about the blind leading the blind, the mote in your own eye that needs to be removed.  “Be ye therefore merciful as your Father is merciful,” Christ tells us. (Luke 6:36+)   And St. Paul writes to the Church in Rome about our human condition, that of corrupted goodness seeking the light:

“…the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.”

The glorious liberty of the children of God… I love that phrase. To move from corruption to glorious liberty!

And then there’s that poetic and touching passage about the natural world of which we are a part:

“For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” (Romans 8:18+)

Anyone who has seen a sweet and innocent cat go after a sweet and innocent bird understands this passage.  Or a hawk circle a nest.  We are a fallen world indeed.

And so too is mankind as part of that fallen creation, with dark dripping caves that need light and love.   Mary Magdalene, pray for us, priez pour nous, for you understand who we are and who we want to be.  You knew the darkness and you know the light.

Our Sunday School summer program began this morning. The theme is the hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” One of the children stated at one point, “All things aren’t always beautiful.”

I’ve been thinking about the comment, for children have a way of cutting to the truth. She was right. Not everything is beautiful. Cancer is not beautiful. Pain is not beautiful. Death is not beautiful. Losing loved ones is not beautiful. Whether we speak of outer or inner beauty, there is much in this world that is not beautiful.

But this student had something simpler in mind. She pointed to a drawing she had done months ago and was now posted on the wall. “That’s not beautiful,” she said. Relieved, I assured her I thought it was extremely beautiful because she had created it. She laughed.

But I continued to think about what she said. The hymn does clarify, stating that “All things bright and beautiful, all creatures great and small, all things wise and wonderful, the Lord God made them all.” It doesn’t actually say everything is bright and beautiful. It says that everything that is bright and beautiful was made by God.

Still, I thought, the implication is that creation is beautiful. But is it? Then I considered the great disobedience of Adam and Eve, the entrance of sin and death into our world. With this evil came the corruption of the good, the disfiguring of the beautiful. Man became mortal, subject to death because of his wrongdoing.

We are beautiful, but corrupt. We are bright beings tainted with darkness. Yet we long for the light. St. Paul says to “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour…” Evil prowls the world, but good – God – redeems and restores it. We know God wins in the end, but even so we want to know goodness and beauty on our journey in time, in this world as well as the next.

I sang the hymn with the children, and we twirled and moved our hands to dramatize the words. As I watched the children join in, I saw beauty. I saw minds and hearts transported into music, a kind of perfection, to dance within the melody of a joyful song. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord,” the Psalmist says. In so doing, we emerge from our corrupted selves to become our beautiful selves. We step closer to God.

Our beautiful selves are present in each of us, waiting to become bright, to throw off the layers of dust and ash our latest sins have covered them with. So we go to church and throw off those layers, clean out our hearts, souls and minds. We sing, we pray, we worship, we repent, and we receive Christ in the Eucharist, beauty incarnate. With this great liturgical action, we too become beauty incarnate.

This Third Sunday after Trinity I stepped into the bright and beautiful, the created order as it was meant to be. The glimpse was stunning.

I have been immersed in my fourth draft of The Magdalene Mystery and came up for air this morning to attend church.

And so many celebrations to witness at church today, such freedoms to celebrate on this glorious Sunday!  Not only did we honor our patronal festival, St. Peter’s Day (June 29), but the conclusion of Church School and Independence Day as well.

For indeed, if it wasn’t for the latter we would not have the former.  We would not have the freedom to worship at all.  But freedom requires responsibility.

The freedom to worship is a freedom I do not take for granted, for history gives witness to the extreme rarity of our system of government.  History emphasizes the fragility of this great “American experiment” (de Tocqueville?) in democracy that continues today in our land.  Our system may not be perfect, but it (still) grants folks the freedom to worship as they wish, to follow their hearts and minds and souls.  I celebrate this with great thanksgiving for all of those who protect this freedom and have protected our many freedoms through the years, those who have given their lives for our country and those who today fight for our right to believe and worship publicly.  Such a list includes our martyred saints, chief of all, Peter the Apostle, that forthright fisherman whom Christ chose to found his church.

So our parish family gathered together this warm July 3 in the great nave of Saint Peter’s Oakland.  We sang our thanksgivings and we prayed our thanksgivings.  We offered the great sacrifice of the Mass, the Eucharist, a word actually meaning thanksgiving.

I looked over the assembled faithful.  We are a multi-generational church, one where many ages gather.  We look to our elderly for guidance and example.  We look to our young for energy and life.  We try and incorporate all stages of life in all of our gatherings, but especially at the Mass, where families worship together, and even the very young take part in processions and blessings each week.  In our coffee hours afterwards the old look after the young and give those young parents a bit of a break.  We shower our babies with love and babies-to-come with showers.  We honor life, no matter the age.  We practice little courtesies, or try to, opening doors for those shuffling with walkers, serving the less fortunate, cooking and cleaning and fussing.  We try to practice our love, to practice responsible freedom.

Our culture for many reasons has separated the generations, and most reason stem from this desire for freedom, but a freedom without responsibility.  Matthew Shaffer writes persuasively that this separation is a result of six factors: the American desire for autonomy, our transient society and loss of the family home, the weakening of multi-generational institutions (churches), the welfare state which removes our need to care for one another, the lauding of youth and the dislike of old age, the isolating effects of digital technology.

I speak to some of these issues in my recent novel, Hana-lani, in which a character laments the loss of traditions (and history) being passed on through the family, a broken and threatened institution.

These are big ideas, real concerns that tear at the fabric of our freedoms.  And the Church seems to be one of the last places where we see these “vertical” associations, these multi-generational gatherings.

Yet even churches do not see how important these associations are.  Mega-churches separate the Sunday School from the congregation, and even in the Sunday School, separate the children by narrow age bands.  They separate the adults as well by age.  I thought of our Sunday School, which is rather like a one-room school, where children age three through twelve are in one class, the nursery next door, with folks moving back and forth all the time.  I hope that as we grow we do not lose this sense of multi-ages, of family.

Evelyn Underhill wrote in The School of Charity (The School of Love) that it is in the family that we learn to love the unlovable.  We move out of ourselves and are forced to care for those near us.  This is true also of the parish church family.  In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis describes hell as a place where personal autonomy reigns.  Everyone lives alone, unconnected.  No-one has learned how to love. They want to be free to be alone, the ultimate lie of self.

So today I gave great thanks for the Church, and in particular, our little parish church, our little school of love.  Here may be one of the last visions of responsible freedom, of loving the unlovable.  As a seed dropped from a dying plant, perhaps it will be one more seed that will help rebirth our Western culture.

And so we celebrate the freedom to water the seed, the freedom to learn to love, the freedom to honor the family, the freedom to worship God together at any age.

Hopefully I shall water a few of those seeds in my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery, honoring the woman who saw the resurrected Christ, who saw love incarnate, who saw perfect freedom.

She was young, perhaps early twenties, with dark hair and a familiar face. She appeared to me in my dream-before-waking this morning. As I woke slowly, surfacing into the morning, I thought about the dream, holding the image and trying to recall all that I could. The odd thing about this dream was that I felt partially awake, looking to the foot of my bed where this woman smiled at me. I don’t recall ever having the experience of dreaming where I thought I was awake, lying with the covers pulled up, peering out.

She was part of a line of others who filed past me, right to left, but her face was the only clear one, and in full color. The others were gray tones. She turned to face me with her wide white smile. She was beautiful, in her prime years. And she was happy. Her face was filled with joy.

As we drove to church this morning I thought about the dream and suddenly realized who she was. She was a close relative. I will admit that I have been working on old family pictures the last few days, scanning them for posterity, for my son and his children, my sister and her children. The woman I saw as the sun filled my room with piercing light was an early image of this family member. It was one of the photos.

I could dismiss this as the experience of working with these images the last few days. I could dismiss this as my own mental projection, and I probably would, for I accept that many dreams are a working out of recent experience. But my partial wakefulness fights this interpretation. I literally watched her from the bedcovers. I watched her turn, smile, and move on in line. If she hadn’t been so happy, and somehow her happiness made me happy, I would indeed have been unnerved.

This woman I saw is still living and of advanced and frail age. Today she is not a believer in God, although at the time of this photo she was a born-again Christian. She lost her faith many years ago and when she lost her faith, it was my sense that she lost her joy.

This morning was the Sunday after the great feast of Corpus Christi (Thursday), a feast celebrating the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. It is an incarnational sacramental day, a day in which we give thanks for God working among us in and through creation. I considered this amazing miracle of the Eucharist that occurs on altars everywhere, Christ becoming present in the bread and wine. And I considered the woman who still hovered in my vision, as I listened to the Gospel reading, Christ’s fearful parable about the rich man and Lazarus. The parable tells how the rich man ignores poor Lazarus who begs at his gate for crumbs. The rich man dies and goes to hell. Lazarus dies and is carried to heaven by angels. The rich man, tormented by flames, begs Abraham to send Lazarus to him with a little water, but Abraham refuses, explaining that the gulf between heaven and hell is too wide and cannot be breached. The rich man begs Abraham to warn his five brothers still living on earth, to warn them about heaven and hell and the terrible breach, the fearful flames. Abraham says Moses and the prophets have already warned them.

This parable is often interpreted as Christ warning the Jews to pay attention to Christ’s life and words. But the story also paints a vivid picture of heaven and hell, a greatly divided heaven and hell (an idea C.S. Lewis explores in The Great Divorce). Christ clearly believed in hell and hell’s great divorce from heaven. A fearful story indeed. But the Epistle answers the fear with Saint John’s wonderful ode to our God of love (I John 4:7+). In this poetic passage, John begins with “let us love one another for love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God…” And later, “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love…”

I thought about my dream. I thought about the Gospel and the Epistle. I thought about the torment of hell and this God of love. I thought about my many unbelieving family members and friends. Then I recalled the words of a priest who told me once that he thought that God evaluated the whole life of a person. God, being out of time, collapses that life into the best of the person, the faithful years of the person.

I have often wondered about the new bodies we will be given in our own resurrections at the end of time, in the Last Judgment. Which body will they be? Young or old? What about babies who die in the womb? It seems to me that it would make sense that our resurrected bodies will be the perfect body of our peak years, the form we were intended to be, without blemish or handicap. Beautiful. Just so, our souls will reflect our best years, our faithful years.

I see now once again the face of the woman in my dream, and again see such beauty. Was she asking something of me? Was she asking me to pray for her? Was she not only the woman still living whom I love, but also the eternal woman she is to become, walking toward heaven? Did eternity meet time this morning in the early dawn at the foot of my bed?

I cannot wrap my mind around these ideas and shall consider them mysteries. But I am glad for God’s mercy. I’m glad for this God of perfect love that casts out fear. I’m glad for Corpus Christi, for since Christ is present in the bread and wine at each Eucharist, all is possible.

And I shall pray for this close relative of mine, seeing her in my mind as she was and ever shall be: beautiful.

As we drove to church this morning I happily looked forward to two of my favorite hymns, the robust hymn by St. Patrick, “I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity…” and “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” For today is Trinity Sunday in our glorious Church Year.

Summer has come to the Bay Area, but the nights are still cool, the hills green from our late rains. The brilliant blue arching over us seemed to rain sunlight upon the earth, through a glistening shimmering air, brightening the foliage and the flowers. I held my red-and-white roses cut from my garden for the Children’s Chapel, kept moist with dampened paper towels. I thought how beautiful the world could be, smelling the roses and drinking in the sky, gulping the joy of creation. And soon we would sing to the Creator himself.

The Holy Trinity – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – is a difficult concept for most of us to fully grasp. Thus we call it a mystery. I have heard it explained in many ways – the love between the three persons of God, the uniqueness of the three persons yet all being of one substance, the eternal reality of these three persons of God. But today as I gazed upon the white-tented tabernacle on the altar, it struck me forcibly that this second person, Jesus Christ, was the God of our created world. He, the Son, became and is one of us, taking on our flesh, and in the Eucharistic elements is again one of us, our flesh, to become one with us, in our flesh, in a consuming co-union. For the Eucharist is indeed the Eternal Supper given to us by Christ in the Last Supper and the days following, days which formed the new Christian Passover, the means of our own journey, the new exodus, to Heaven.

All of the Church Year pointed to this moment of realization.

I’ve been reading Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, in which Brant Pitre effectively makes the case that we must consider the Last Supper, that Maundy Thursday before Good Friday and Easter, from the Jewish perspective. For Christ was Jewish, and only by considering the Jewish context can we understand what he intended when he said, “This is my Body” and “This is my Blood.” Did he intend these words as merely metaphor?  Dr. Pitre’s conclusion, after looking at the Passover rituals, the role of heavenly manna in the Exodus, and the Jewish relationship with blood itself, is that Jesus did indeed intend that this new supper, done in “re-membrance,” to be an actual re-offering of his body and blood, a gift to us of his Real Presence.

And this Real Presence, I thought, was not merely spiritual, the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. It was the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ.

We sang “I bind unto myself today…” and the thurifer processed up the red-carpeted aisle swinging incense into the still air of the nave and the sanctuary. Following the clouds of smoke came the torchbearers with their flaming candles, the crucifix raised high by the crucifer. The clergy followed, stepping solemnly to the High Altar to offer the Mass, to consecrate the bread and wine to become Christ’s Real Presence, so that his flesh would become ours.

We sang “Holy, Holy, Holy! Lord God Almighty/Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee/Holy, Holy, Holy! merciful and mighty/God in Three Persons, blessed Trinity.” The tune is one of triumph and joy, a true song of worship, and as I sang, other times of singing this beloved hymn sweetly telescoped into my present moment.

As we left the church and stepped into this crystal clear day of mid-June, I recalled it was Father’s Day, a lovely overlay of festivals, a chance of the calendar. I gave thanks for my father, may he rest in peace, for he taught me about our God of love, and for my son, now a father, who teaches his children about our God of love. I gave thanks for the many fathers-in-God, the clergy, who have challenged me with the remarkable mysteries of the Holy Trinity, the three-in-one God, and the amazing power of the Holy Spirit to give life and strength in our passage through time.  And most of all I gave thanks to God the Father for himself, for sending us his son Jesus the Christ, to be the new Passover sacrifice so that death would pass over us, and to be with us again and again on Sunday mornings (and many many other times) in Mass in our local parishes.

Holy, holy, holy… I bind unto myself today…

Our family settled in for a few days along the coast near the quaint seaside town of Carmel, California, named after the holy mountain where God spoke to Elijah in his “still, small voice.”

A low ceiling of gray hovered over the sea and the land, the winds cold, the sun weak. The sky held the earth close, breathing upon it like the Holy Spirit, as pelicans flew in formation, dancing for our pleasure. The world was all grays – gray greens of the cypress dotted gentle hills that rose along the sea, darker shades of gray waters rising and crashing upon the ashen shore, the white foam bordering steely crests, the lighter airier grays of the heavens above that carried the birds and bore the sharp breezes against our cheeks and stung our uncovered ears.

We wrapped our jackets tightly about us, in this unseasonable June chill, and looked out to the sea to Bird Rock where otters and sea lions gathered. My son led his family down the steep dunes along the cliff to the black tide pools to look for crabs and shells and other ocean treasures. I watched from above, as they stood stiff legged for balance, leaning forward and staring into the quiet mini-bays of life, soon returning with pockets full of shells.

Other days we visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a remarkable city of glass windows and vast waters and rainbow colored fish of all kinds in their own homes and habitats. We petted turtles and wondered at jelly fish with their filmy parachutes of pale colors floating open, then closing, with the tides. We entered another world of ocean yet pleasantly remained dry, marveling and then marveling again. There were feedings and fights among the fish, as the strong devoured the weak. There were otters on their back tending their babies or cracking shells with stones. There were waterfall canyons where we stood and watched the foam arc over us. We wondered and we watched, moving silently in some kind of awe-some trance, as though we too swam with the fish, we too were surrounded by the oceans of otherworldly miracles.

In this time together, away from our ordinary lives, together once again as family, we visited old friends from my son’s school, friends now parents, with their own children. My son’s generation tended to their next generation, and I watched, removed from the old immediacy of parenthood, living in the world of grandparenthood. Someone once said it was an amazing thing to see your child become a parent, and it is true. I watched my son as he fathered his children. I watched with pride as he listened to them and corrected them, as he loved them and led them. It made me so very glad.

And it made me grateful and thankful for God’s blessing of this time together. The children, eight years and six years now, a boy and a girl, bounced to me with new joys and new discoveries and shared experience, their eyes full of the excitement of childhood innocence. I could see through their eyes this new world unfolding, and I was thankful. We created stories together as we shared lunch at a small restaurant in Pacific Grove, about a lavender seahorse named Lucy who searched for lilacs in an eatery in a town on the shore. We laughed and we created and we loved.

But most of all we spent time together. We shared meals, we walked the shore, we considered the fish and the oceans.

Today is Pentecost, the great festival of the Holy Spirit descending upon Christ’s disciples, and I thought how the Holy Spirit, this third person of the Holy Trinity, the spirit of God upon the earth, had descended upon us in the last few days, had united our family, knitted us back together. We formed a new garment with a tighter weave. We were renewed, as God breathed his spirit of life into us. We would not forget his fire and his love and the wind of the waters upon the land… even under these cold gray skies. Yet tonight, at supper, the sun came out, bathing the ocean with brightness and we shielded our eyes as it set into the sea of silver.

We watch and we marvel at the world about us as God transforms our love to be more like his own. Just like Elijah, God spoke to us. And just like the disciples at Pentecost, we knew the fire of his love.