Author Archives: Christine Sunderland

Valley fog was slipping up the canyon between flanks of green, soon to surround us.  The puffy white mist glistened in the sun and I watched it draw closer, creeping and displacing the colors of the hills with whiteness, dimming the light.  The miracle of weather played out before me, the changing of molecules and temperature, as time slipped too, time moving unstoppable just like the fog.

Today, the tenth day of Christmas 2009, the third of January, 2010.  We enter another year, another decade, and as I stepped into Saint Peter’s Church I felt the presence of time and eternity, as though they collided in this sanctuary. I sensed the greater Church as well – all those worshiping throughout our world, on this good earth, in past, present, and future – as we gathered to offer ourselves to the Baby in Bethlehem, to receive his gift.

For, as our preacher said this morning, the Christ Child is the great gift of Christmas.  God became man that man might become God, participate in the Divine.  God became a child so that we might become children of God.  God gives himself to us so that we might become His children by becoming one with the Babe in the manger.  God acts.  God gives.  We respond.  We receive.

We offer ourselves, this hour, this day, this year, this decade, so that we might partake of eternity with him.  So that time disappears and at yet also, mysteriously becomes more real, more intense, more full of the pulse of life. God gives himself in Bethlehem.  He gives himself on the altar today.

This is the mystery and miracle of Christmas.  This is God with us, incarnate, in us.  Such joy.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/;http://www.anglicanpck.org/.

St. Peter’s Anglican Church is a Christmas church.  The center aisle and chancel are carpeted in red.  The altar is white marble.  The apsidal wall is red brick that rises to a peak above the altar.  The side walls are dark wood with stained glass panels.  It is a warm church.

Gone today were the Advent purples; gone the wreath and candles; gone the quiet waiting.  Today we celebrated Christmas!  Red poinsettias banked in a row on the altar, framing the white tented tabernacle.  White roses were arranged at each end of the white draped altar, and candelabra flamed with seven candles on either side.  The altar candles stood tall above, burning brightly.  The crèche on the Epistle side remained, nestled in the greenery, and the Child Jesus lay in the manger.

We were not able to attend Christmas Midnight Eve Mass or the Christmas Day Mass, so as we stepped into the sanctuary today, the blaze of color filled me with a warm thankfulness.  I dropped to my knees, thanking God for this church and the freedom to worship.  I thanked Him for Himself, His coming to us, His revealing, His love.

Our own Christmas Day had been filled with family, aged seven to nearly eighty – gathering around two long tables, sharing turkey and trimmings, pies and chocolate, as we caught up with one another’s lives.  We each brought to the table a year of joys and sorrows, of successes and failures.  I knew many of the private heartaches and many of the public joys – I experienced both in this year of 2009 – and it was good to have a few hours to link hands, tell stories, exchange presents, to encourage, listen, and love.  Somehow in this gathering Christ mingled with us as well, encouraging us, loving us, for it was His birthday we truly celebrated, and we were thankful.

St. Stephen’s Day followed Christmas.  We drove the last guests to the airport and returned to the quiet house, the tree still laden with memories.  Leftovers waited to be heated.  Laundry needed to be done.  Full of voices of loved ones in my head, I moved through the hours, carrying Christmas Day into St. Stephen’s Day, the day we remember the life of the first Christian martyr, the first to pay the price for his belief in the Galilean carpenter.

Today, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, we recalled at St. Peter’s this eloquent writer of the Gospel that opens with, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  Our charming Father Hauge climbed slowly to the pulpit and explained that John’s Gospel was meant to be more of a commentary on the other three Gospels, and for this reason John does not include the Nativity story.  John was interested in who this Jesus Christ really was, and his Gospel does indeed portray Christ as God, part of the Trinity, part of the Creation of the world itself, having always lived, outside of time.  It is in John’s words that we find the answers to our more profound questions.  It is in John’s testimony that we clearly see the meaning of the Eucharistic celebration, as it was in the first century of secret house-church ceremonies.  These first Christians believed that the bread did indeed become the Body; the wine did indeed become the Blood.  We receive Christ into ourselves, John explained.

So just as Christ mingled through the rooms of our house on Christmas Day, pulling us together with love, he mingled today in the creatures of bread and wine.  He found his way into our hearts, our minds, our bodies.

I gazed at the bank of red poinsettias, the flaming candles surrounding the white tabernacle.  My eyes rose to the twelfth-century crucifix hanging against the red brick wall.  I received Christ in the Bread and Wine.

And once again, I gave thanks for Christmas!

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/;http://www.anglicanpck.org/.

Four candles burned warmly above the evergreens wreathed on a stand to the left of the altar, the Gospel side.  On the Epistle side, below the lectern, nestled the nativity scene in a bed of pine cones and fir branches.  There, the shepherds waited with their sheep, Mary and Joseph waited in the manger, and the cows and oxen waited.

We draw close now, closer each day to the miraculous, stupendous, festival of Christmas, when Christ came among us in his great humility, almighty God becoming a baby.  Words cannot say what this means for us, for He is the Word itself.  Let Him speak to our hearts of this incredible mystery, this fathomless love.

During Advent St. Peter’s has slowly layered the story of Christmas with candles, color, crèche.  Even the nave seems to have grown rich with warmth and presence as the weeks have passed.  We do not want to rush this – we want to get it right – for we do not want to miss one second of joy, one minute of memory, one hour of holiness.  We want what God is offering, Himself.

We draw close now.  We watch and wait and listen.

Good Father Pomroy preached about the momentous themes of Advent: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell.  We like to hear about Heaven, not so much death, judgment, and Hell.  Yet, he said, death is inescapable, and, I thought, gives great meaning to life.  Judgment, he explained, is the formalizing of the choices we have made.  When Christ judges us, as He will one day, He sees where we have chosen to go.  And, of course, those choices are clear: Heaven with God or Hell without God.  We face our judgment with a final choice, to be sorry for those times we chose wrong, to accept Christ’s saving acts on the Cross for those moments of darkness.

And our choices define who we are.  As children of God we are grafted onto the Body of Christ, and it is in this Body we discover our true selves.  In fact, as we give ourselves to God, he gives us back a thousand-fold, and we learn who we are meant to be.  He molds and forms us; He sanctifies us.  But we must choose Him, and choose the way of his Body, the Church.

I gazed upon the purple draped altar now being sweetly censed by the celebrant swinging the thurible in circles about the holy table, above and below, around the sides, preparing the space with billowing clouds for the great offering of the Mass.

And with the offering of the Mass, I knew I would once again offer myself.  I would choose this offering, with His help and grace.

We draw close.  We choose to travel to Bethlehem.  And we see our true selves in the Holy Child in the manger.

Merry Christmas!

Deo gratias.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/;http://www.anglicanpck.org/.

It was raining steadily when we entered the church, crossing the threshold, moving from the secular to the sacred, from the cold outside to the warm inside.

Today, Rose Sunday, is a Sunday of color and light.  We light the third candle on our Advent wreathe, a rose one, and we move from a penitential mood towards one of rejoicing.  We are closer now to Christmas, to the brighter colors of Christmas.  The altar is still draped in purple, but there have been roses added on either side of the violet tented tabernacle.  We announce to the world the joy of the coming of our Redeemer.

Indeed, the Gospel for today is the passage about John the Baptist when he asks his followers to go to Jesus, ask him who He really is.  Jesus answers the question with the deeds he will do publicly, actions that will proclaim him as the Messiah, will fulfill the prophecies of old.  He will heal the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers.  He will preach good news to the poor.  He will proclaim publicly who He is.

And just so we proclaim publicly each Sunday who He is, as we portray the season in song and litany, in prayer and liturgy, in the great actions of the Mass.  Now, in Advent, we act out the coming of God among us, Emmanuel.  We sing together,

Visit then this soul of mine! Pierce the gloom of sin and grief!
Fill me, radiancy divine; Scatter all my unbelief;
More and more thyself display, Shining to the perfect day.

Just so, more and more of God is displayed.

And we proclaim in the secular world too, outside the threshold of the holy, in the many practices of Christmas: the tree of lights and sparkle, holding memory in each ornament; the carols of Christmases past, a liturgy in their own right; the cards we send to friends and family, pulling folks together with love; the presents we give from the heart and perhaps from habit as well.  We might attend a concert, as I was fortunate enough to do this Rose Sunday afternoon, where an assortment of songs and singers gathered around trumpets, piano, guitar, and flute, the space full of warmth and melody, of sharing the joy of music, of anticipation.  We might tell tales of Santa Claus, stories of Saint Nicholas, the giver of gifts to children, who flies through the night on a magical sleigh, with graceful reindeer.  Mystery.  Miracles.  Not far from the truth of Bethlehem.

We wait for His coming in the dark of winter, in the rain and snow, in these shortened days.  We wait for the light, and on this Rose Sunday, as we see glimmers and flashes of the brightness, we begin to rejoice in His nearness.

Our good Father Pomroy preached quietly today, thoughtfully. As we wait, he said, we draw toward Christ, learning more about Him, knowing Him better, understanding the answer to the John’s question.  We ponder these truths of Christmas, of Advent, of the great mystery of the Incarnation.  As our understanding increases, He loves in us, we love in Him, and we know joy.  A joy that transcends time, uniting past, present, and future on the altar.

We wait for and in “the perfect day,” as time collapses into joy in the Bread and the Wine.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/;http://www.anglicanpck.org/.

Sun streamed through the stained glass, lighting on the Madonna and Child, splashing the pews, warming the cold winter morning at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church.

The Litany in Procession moved up the red carpeted center aisle – the thurifer swinging the sweet incense into the air, the torchbearers carrying the flaming candles, the crucifer raising the crucifix high over us, the celebrant in his purple cope, the clergy following solemnly.  We sang together, Good Lord, deliver us, and We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord, as the prayers were chanted.  The procession moved around the nave and up the center again to the high altar.  As we prayed for ourselves and the world I sensed the darkness of winter, the waiting for spring, as the dancing patches of sun gave us hope.

In Advent we wait and we pray for our redemption in the manger in Bethlehem, and our redemption when each one of us dies.  We pray for our redemption today, this minute, this hour.  Death to life, dawn to day.

And our Deacon preached on time.  God outside time, giving us the gift of time.  Fascinated by the mystery of time, I thought how when we love, we lose ourselves in another and time disappears.  When we give of ourselves, literally give ourselves away, we lose sense of time as well.  Yet time continues to pass, marked by digital numbers changing silently, by clocks ticking, by bells tolling, by the setting and rising of the sun, night into day.

In Advent we wait in the deepest dark before dawn, the dawn of Bethlehem.  We approach the end of man’s calendar year, yet begin God’s calendar year.  The overlap of time intrigued me, as though our ends overlap our beginnings.  We move through this life and into the next seamlessly, in Christ.

The Child in Bethlehem bridges death and life, night and day.  The Christ Child is our dawn.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

Today high winds have swept the earth clean, and winter’s luminous light glances off leaves of burnished red and glistening gold.

Another year has passed, I thought, as I gazed at the purple hangings on the altar at St. Peter’s Anglican Church.  We are in Advent, and today is the New Year’s Day of the Church.  The year is swept clean like the earth, and we consider what we have done with the time given to us.  Have we been good stewards?  How can we be better caretakers of the days and hours God has granted us?

Advent is a penitential season, a time to consider these things – death, judgment, Heaven, Hell.  We look into our hearts and sweep them clean too, as best we can.  We take an accounting.

For Advent is a time of preparation, a time of getting ready for His coming, the advent of His birth, the fantastic and nearly unbelievable intersection of the immortal and the mortal, the infinite and the finite, when God became man, became incarnate, in the flesh, one of us in our world of matter. Emmanuel, God with us.  Christmas.

We wait upon the Lord.  An impatient people, greedy, seeking to devour our gift of time, we find it hard to wait upon the Lord, indeed, to wait for anything.  Technology speeds our days and our vision, multiplying the choices, so that surely we shall go mad with such an array of possibility, a panoply of things we cannot possibly have or do, or consume.  Frenzy.

We stand back and pause for a moment, breathe in, and slow down.

We go to church.  We focus.

We look to Bethlehem, to the simple manger.  To Mary who said yes to God.  To Joseph who patiently cared, waiting.  To the shepherds who obeyed the call of the angels in the dead of night.  To the Wise Men, those travelers who followed, wondering, waiting.

And as we wait for His coming, we know we wait with the Church throughout time – time past, present, to come.  We wait with the Communion of Saints, all those who have waited and watched, and those who will wait and watch tomorrow.  We wait now through December for the great festival of Christmas.  As we clean out our hearts, we prepare too for the Second Coming when Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.  In Advent we recall we must wait and watch for that Coming as well.

This morning I looked up the red-carpeted aisle to the violet tented tabernacle.  I knew that soon I would partake of Christ’s coming today, His coming to me, as I received His body and blood, as His Real Presence became part of me.  There was no frenzy here in this sanctuary, only sanity, only truth, only love.  My heart and mind would be healed of the world’s craziness for another week.

I will make my Advent wreath this afternoon, arrange the greens in a circle, light my first purple candle, say my prayers.  I will move into the season slowly, focusing on Bethlehem, and looking forward to the next Mass, the next Advent of Our Lord right here in Oakland.  I will prepare for Christmas.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

The day is cold and wintry, the skies heavy with dark cloud, the moisture in the air hinting of rain.  We bundled up and headed for Saint Peter’s Oakland this morning, to once again be part of the great Eucharistic sacrifice offered.  Coming in from the cold, the smiling faces of the friendly folk in the narthex greeted us warmly, and we entered the great sanctuary, the ark in which we travel through time on this earth, the Church.

We call today “Stir up” Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Collect, prayed today, this Sunday Next before Advent:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…”

And we do indeed need some stirring up, for I often think we sleep through much of our lives.

The words are a warning, before we begin the season of Advent, the preparation for the great coming of God-made-man, Emanuel, in the manger outside Bethlehem.  Be ready! the prophet cries.  Christ is coming.

The Incarnation, the coming of God to earth, that we celebrate at Christmas is, of course, not the Second Coming, but an advent that prepares us for that Judgment Day, redeems us to face that accounting, gives us an Advocate, Christ himself, to defend us in the bright light of perfection.  Christmas reminds us time is passing.  Christmas reminds us time means something, counts.

Stir up the wills of thy faithful people…!  In-spire us, breath into us thy life. I gazed upon the tabernacle holding the Real Presence of Christ.  I sang with the congregation our hymns of supplication, thanksgiving, praise.  And I knew that Christ would stir us up, in his own time, each of us and all of us together, for we are his Body.  We await to see what he will do among us this Advent, as we await his coming, our hearts and souls open wide to his will, to his love.

Receiving the Eucharist, I was fed, inspired, breathed into.  With his grace, my will will be awakened to his.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com

I love church bazaars!  Shopping with the added benefit of giving to outreach programs and seeing old friends.

St. Peter’s Oakland had their Harvest Festival yesterday.  The church hall was laid out with tables covered in red cloths forming a long rectangle, and the sellers stood inside the space while the shoppers cruised around the outside.  We all paid as we left, having filled our baskets with goodies.  I liked the system, not having to pay individual vendors.

This bazaar was a real bargain for those who enjoy country crafts, but aren’t too crafty themselves (me).  I fell in love right away with the aprons and their handy pockets, the baked potato gloves to use in the microwave (do they really work?), the homemade jams.  Ah, yes, then there were the packets of “Outrageous Brownies,” incredible indeed, packed with chocolate chips and walnuts.  Oh my.  Then I found the wreathes.  The ladies of the church had made wonderful holiday wreathes from wine corks and I added one to my home collection as well as a most unique wreathe (”We’re trying this out for the first time.”) made from – you won’t believe this – men’s ties.  Into the basket immediately.

Next headed for the sale table and picked up Christmas ornaments – two quilted conical trees (Styrofoam peaked out beneath), two wine-cork hot pads.  One more round about the rectangle and saw wisteria ornaments made from the twisted pods which have a natural velvet when they dry (who’d guess?) and turn a sage green.  There were also lovely beaded organza bookmarks that jumped into my basket.

Feeling lightheaded from such exertion, I headed for the tea-and-sandwich counter and for $3.50 was handed a plate of sandwiches and cup of tea, but somehow I got there too late for the soup on offer as well.  Those who got there in time said it was amazing – next year I shall keep track of the time, or maybe they will make more.

Then I got to chat with friends, catch up on grandchildren, and listen for the raffle numbers being called every hour.  No luck there.

At 3:30 the grand prizes were drawn.  We all gathered around our hostess.  I won!  A lovely baby basket beautifully lined, containing a hand-knit receiving blanket, a picture frame, and a large pink and white quilt.  I’m still debating who’s going to be the recipient of these treasures… there are many possibilities.

Those were just the goodies I left with.  Many other items I painfully resisted – soup mixes, breads, kitchen handcrafts, and more… but I’m pleased that my home this Christmas will have a few additions, for very little expenditure, and for a good cause.

Oh, and did I mention I had a table too?  Yep, selling my trilogy of novels,Pilgrimage, Offerings, and Inheritance (with proceeds to the church’s outreach programs), signing as I sold, and thanking God for the fellowship of friendly church folk on a crisp sunny Saturday.

We visited St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Oakland today.

Today is a sunny Sunday, here in the Bay Area, but this time of year the night slowly absorbs the day.  We rise in the dark and dine in the dark as winter moves in, robbing the light.  The air carries a crisp chill and the trees turn russet in the valley below our house.  The brown hills of summer are greening and all is golds and reds under a dome of blue.

As Anglo-Catholics, we follow the Church Year, the celebrations of our belief through the seasons. We are between All Saints and Thanksgiving, pausing before Advent and the Feast of the Incarnation, Christmas.  We are finishing up the long season of Trinitytide, a time of learning and growth, a liturgical green season linking Easter and Christmas.

And the Scripture lessons in church today reflected this pause; the hymns were sober, quiet hymns, feeding the mood.  We rest in our journey through time, through the mystery of the year given to us, and listen to the Epistle where Saint Paul writes to his friends in Philippi:

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent.” (Philippians 1:9-10, Book of Common Prayer, 220-1)

We listen to the Gospel lesson which tells of Christ’s command to Peter to forgive “seventy times seven,” in other words, to forgive forever.

As our good Father Pomroy preached on these words, I thought how closely these things were linked: love, knowledge, judgment, excellence, and forgiveness.  That to love as we should we must learn to discern the good from the bad, to strive for excellence.  When we fail, we forgive one another, but we always strive to become what God wants us to become, that his will be done.

Such a desire – to know what to approve and what not to approve.  To judge correctly in today’s complicated world.

So I go to Mass with its own excellence, its beauty expressed through two thousand years of liturgy.  I absorb the words of our priest as he leans towards us earnestly from the pulpit.  I say my prayers.  I partake of Christ in the Eucharist.  Day by day, through quiet hours and busy weeks, I pray that I see what is excellent and what is not.  I pray that I have enough love to forgive so that I too may be forgiven.  God, in time, will layer his grace upon my soul through his presence here on earth in Church, Scripture, and Sacrament.  One day, all will be excellent.

Today we celebrated the Feast of All Saints, thanking God for those who said “yes” to his love – in the past, present, and future, the Communion of Saints, the sanctos, those set apart, those chosen, Christ’s own.  The thurifer stepped soberly down the red-carpeted aisle, swinging his thurible full of incense, the clouds rising over our heads sweetly.  He prepared the way for the torchbearers with their flaming candles and the crucifer with raised crucifix.  Finally, lastly, came the celebrant, our good Father Pomroy, his white and gold chasuble flowing royally.

We sang “For all the saints…” and later “I sing a song to the saints of God . . .” and finally “Ye holy angels bright . . .”, all happy and glorious, a great celebration.  The first was a hymn I sang in my high school chorus back in the days when it was permitted to sing Christian songs in a public school.  It is a thunderous song, a marching song, a great hymn to victory.

The second hymn tugged at my memory with color and poignancy, for “I sing a song of the saints of God, faithful and brave and true …” was a song we taught to the children in Sunday School, with hand movements and twirling, a true dance-of-a song, but today at least, although it was difficult, I kept my feet planted firmly on the floor.

The third hymn soars with lyrics that wing high, looping around bright stars, riding on angels wings, with the last two verses settling  nicely on the theme of All Saints, saying it all:

Ye saints, who toil below,
Adore your heav’nly King
And onward as ye go
Some joyful anthem sing;
Take what he gives
And praise him still,
Through good or ill,
Who ever lives!

And then, refocusing on my own tiny heart:

My soul, bear thou thy part,
Triumph in God above:
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love!
Let all thy days
Till life shall end,
Whate’er he send
Be filled with praise.

(No. 600, Richard Baxter, 1672, and John Hampden Gurney, 1838)

I like the idea of a “well-tuned” heart.   Tuned by coming to Mass and singing praises with my fellow believers, “saints in training.”  Tuned by the words of the Gospel, Epistle, prayers, sermon, indeed the liturgy itself.  Tuned by the reception of Christ in the Eucharist.  Well-tuned, we left St. Peter’s, the anthems filling our ears for hours to come, prepared for the week ahead, for each day given to us.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/