Christine Sunderland

There is something about a cold clear day, washed with a night’s rain rattling the drainpipes in the roof, that speaks of winter facing spring. Today was such a day, as the clouds parted for our journey into Berkeley to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel for Lent 2. We entered the space, still cold from the night, but feeling the heater pumping up through the side vents. Soon it was warm, and amidst swirling incense and sacred words, we gathered together to ask the Lord’s blessing upon us, as we travel to Easter and Resurrection Day. We few, happy few as it were, rode the melodies of the morning, confessing, chanting, celebrating, and receiving the Real Presence one more Sunday on this good Earth.

Our good preacher reminded us (as he does each year) that we must consider our Lenten Rule, what to add, what to give up. I often fall back on the welcome advice given by the British Anglican mystic, Evelyn Underhill, who said the true Rule is to face and inhabit God’s will in our lives. Fortified with this thought, along with our good preacher, I decided to memorize another prayer from our poetic 1928 Book of Common Prayer. But what am I giving up? My own desires as I face God’s will in my life. Also, I give up minutes and hours to add the prayer to my memory. But what prayer?

I had already returned to my yearly Lenten Collect, saying it daily, reinforcing a former Lenten prayer rule:

“ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (BCP 124)

Then I considered my life and the last year and all those who have gone before me into Eternity. There was Shelley, Scott, Beth, and John. And others… I cannot recall, but it seems like so many. There were little deaths too, little losses, where hope seemed unredeemed, where truth was difficult to face. And yet there were moments resurrected, moments of grace, where wounds were healed, sight restored, paths once unknown now known.

There would be more friends and family making the great journey in the year to come. What better prayer than the prayer, “For a Sick Person.” It seems dauntingly long, but I’m going to give it a try. It might prove useful one day, when I am at a loss for words in the face of loved ones leaving me:

“O FATHER of mercies and God of all comfort, our only help in time of need; We humbly beseech thee to behold, visit, and relieve thy sick servant [N.] for whom our prayers are desired. Look upon him with the eyes of thy mercy; comfort him with a sense of thy goodness; preserve him from the temptations of the enemy; and give him patience under his affliction. In thy good time, restore him to health, and enable him to lead the residue of his life in thy fear, and to thy glory; and grant that finally he may dwell with thee in life everlasting; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”  (BCP 45)

I placed an e-copy of the prayerbook in my Kindle for easy access. For, as the Collect for today reminds us, we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves. This is also a good prayer to memorize, and much shorter (!):

“ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.” (BCP 127)

And so, as we prayed the prayers and sang the songs and listened to our Cantor’s amber voice sanctify the moments, the organ holding time in each note, soaring over and around us and up to the clerestory windows – as all these graces danced within and among us, weaving us together, we were healed, made whole, holy, for another week in Earth time, until Lent 3.

It is a curious thing about Earth time, temporal time, our time. It feeds somehow on Eternity. It grows in the midst of the heavens declaring the glory of God. It takes on a beauty that is indescribable, like a golden ball on a Christmas tree. Hence we have poetry, music, and not least of all, love, the three beauties given us as we dance on our journey of grace, three graces leading to faith, hope, and charity, the Holy Spirit weaving among us and within us, brightening our lives, beckoning us to Easter morning.

It snowed on Thursday night, blanketing Mount Diablo here in the Bay Area. Somehow, it seemed a good way to begin Lent, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The snow will melt, to be sure, just as our bodies will decompose when we make the great crossing into Heaven.

Thursday night our beloved Archbishop entered Eternity after a long battle with cancer. No wonder the world around our house became frozen and cold. He is no longer with us.

Archbishop Upham was in the right place at the right time for those of us who are part of the Anglican Province of Christ the King. God does this again and again, creating individuals with unique talents that, when offered to him, are key players in the battle of good and evil in our world. I have seen so many instances of this occurring, mostly unnoticed, but as I age I notice more and more. Patterns weave into greater tapestries of meaning and sense.

Our Archbishop was a quiet and thoughtful priest with an inner strength that was almost palpable, characteristics that inspired trust in what he said and did. He became a full time priest after a career in music education and happened to be at the right place and the right time to steer our Anglican ark into calmer waters, having been tossed about in recent storms. He was solid and he was faithful. He listened to God and tried to do God’s will. He understood, as one does if one prays, right from wrong, truth versus lies. He had a vision of how things should be and he wasn’t afraid to witness to that vision.

Archbishop Upham had many talents, but one I loved was his singing voice, a deep melodic sound that, when he visited our university chapel in Berkeley, resounded through the vaulted space, soared above the altar and touched the medieval crucifix suspended above. 

It is a curious thing that the afternoon of the day he died I was corresponding with the bishop who was looking after him in Raleigh, North Carolina, about adding a name to our seminary email list, a request that had just come into my mailbox. I ended my email to our bishop/registrar with, please give Archbishop Upham my love. I hope he did. A few hours later John Upham left us, released from his earthly pain and sorrow and struggles. He knows now how we all loved him.

And here, in California, it snowed on the mountain that night, in honor of Archbishop Upham’s life and witness.

Perhaps this is the music of the mountain I am writing about in my novel-in-progress. Perhaps we are the music of the mountain, the voice of love, the deep resonating assurance of God’s love for us. We harmonize together, creating a symphony of sound that could not be sung alone.

What is music? It’s the perfect ratio that brings beauty into our ears, rhythm into our step and beat into our heart. We are musical creatures, you and I, chords joined together to create something larger than any one of us could create.

Our Archbishop knew this, and as he directed his choir of bishops sitting on the Council of Bishops, they saw they could make music too. And so those of us in the pews hear the notes and make them our own. We sing in unison the great and profound words of our musical tradition, telling the story, singing the story of God’s love for us. We face the altar, singing to the Real Presence of Christ, as his Body the Church, and as his Bride.

It seems right that our Archbishop died on the other side of Ash Wednesday. We pick up where he left off, sing the tune he was singing. We join our voices as we travel the road through Lent to the Passion and to Easter. It is a stony road through this season of late winter and early spring, with these lengthening days, and we must learn to avoid the sharp edges, as we sing the words of penance and rebirth.

It is raining now, a steady cold rain greening our hills. As I return to The Music on the Mountain I shall give thanks for the music in my heart, soul, and mind, the harmony of love. For love turns ash into green grass, death into life. It is love that sings to us, calling us to be faithful, to be brave, to witness to who we are and who we are meant to be. It is love that tells us, in the last days, fear not, all is grace.

I’m pleased to announce that American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) published my post today, Living the Story of Faith and Freedom, how Christian novelists tell stories woven with faith and freedom, set in a real world, enlightening our human condition with hope. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, our preparation for the glorious events of Easter. Today is also February 22, the birthday of George Washington and the feast day of St. Joseph of Arimathea, Apostle to England in the first century. It is a time to remember, reflect, and repent so that we may rejoice with the saints on Earth and in Heaven that Easter resurrection is ours too.

I was blind and now I can see. 

As I continue working on my novel-in-progress, The Music of the Mountain, I am often tempted to turn down unexpected yet rewarding paths that I pray don’t blind me to where God wants me to go, to see what he wants me to see, to tell a tale he wants me to tell. The most recent path has taken me to Vienna in 1938 and the Anschluss (annexation), the invasion of Austria by Hitler in March and the following Kristallnacht (night of broken glass) in November. Over this horrific time period over 30,000 Jews were arrested and deported to camps.

The question is often asked, why didn’t they see this coming? Why didn’t more escape, immigrate, hide? Vienna posed one of the classic answers, that with their wealth and perceived assimilation, their conversion to Catholicism or simply becoming secular Jews they thought they were immune. Many, to be sure, didn’t think of themselves as Jewish. They had intermarried and had provided the Vienna community with the greatest art and music, intellectuals and writers, Europe has ever known and probably will never know again.

I became intrigued with Vienna when a friend gave me a calendar of Gustav Klimt’s paintings. Klimt was an Austrian symbolist painter (1862-1918). The story of his painting of the Viennese Jewish socialite Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881-1925), “The Lady in Gold,” using icon-style gold leaf, ushered me into fin-de-siecle Vienna, a time of the great literary and music salons. I was intrigued, particularly since I would be including in my novel a Holocaust story. Would this be the tale I would tell? There were many to choose from.

So I read the book that tells the tale of Adele by Anne-Marie O’Connor (The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt’s Masterpiece, New York: Vintage, 2012). I then saw the movie based on this story of the fight for ownership of the painting (featuring Helen Mirren), involving a dispute between Adele’s heirs and the Austrian government, finally settled by the U.S. Supreme Court. I wasn’t as interested in the court case and effort to recover Nazi stolen art as I was with the early chapters in the book describing Viennese society at the turn of the nineteenth century, with the rise of industry and banking. Adele’s father was head of one of the largest banks in the Hapsburg Empire and head of the Orient Express. Her husband is Ferdinand Bauer, a sugar-beet baron. They were significant patrons of the arts. She was an early feminist, desiring to be educated as men were (!). She posed for the well-known painter Klimt, and reigned over the grand salons in her palace.

While she was not directly affected by the Holocaust, her world was. I suddenly realized why they didn’t see it all coming. They had become decadent, assuming that society needed them, considering all they had given to society, so very true. Recall that Vienna was home to Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Strauss, Freud and Adler, to name a few. Vienna must have seemed like the center of the cultured world, glittering and golden, brilliant and artistic. 

Just like Americans today.

We too, have become decadent, seeing the greater world as dependent upon us, our talent and wealth, and so it has been in past and for the most part still is. But we don’t want to be blinded by our creature comforts and most of all, our pride. We have become soft, used to modern conveniences, used to being entertained, used to supermarkets laden with food and dry goods, used to doing little for our world and contributing less. Today, I read, people have the “right not to work,” to be paid by those who do work.

Then came the pandemic and lockdowns and shortages, the escalating gas prices and homelessness, the rising crime and mass shootings, the brainwashing of our children, the takeover of major institutions by the radical left, and yes, the unsurprising rise of anti-Semitism, the traditional scapegoat for burgeoning inflation and general unhappiness.

The Gospel lesson today was the healing of the blind man on the road to Jerusalem. He is healed because of his faith: “Receive thy sight,” Jesus says. “Thy faith hath saved thee.” (Luke 18: 31+, BCP 123). This third Sunday of Pre-Lent, as we prepare to receive the ashen cross on our foreheads this Wednesday, as we begin our own journey to Jerusalem, our own passion, our own healing and salvation, following Christ’s footsteps to the Cross – as we prepare to step alongside him, we pray to see the truth of our world and our own souls. Heal us, we cry, have mercy upon us, that we may see. We are told by our censors to be silent, to not cause a disturbance, just as the blind man was told. But we, like him, speak out, crying to Our Lord that our world may see, may be awakened.

And so, the question remains. Will I be using this Viennese story in my novel-in-progress, the story of why a few escaped because they could see, and why most were murdered because they refused to see? I placed the research in a pile of other stories, keeping the Lady in Gold in my sight. Then I read about “Leopoldstadt,” the brilliant play by Tom Stoppard. An excellent review can be found in January’s Commentary. The play is set in Vienna, from the fin-de-siecle to 1955. While it is fiction, of course, it is based on many stories of the time, including Tom Stoppard’s. It turns out that he is Jewish and his mother and father, along with their two young sons fled Czechoslovakia, from a town near the Austrian border called Zlin. They fled on March 15, 1939, the day the Nazis invaded. His name then was Tomas Straussler, and his father’s employer moved his Jewish employees to Singapore, to another factory. Of course I ordered the recent biography of Tom Stoppard. An interview by director Patrick Marber is excellent and fascinating.

The play opened in London in 2020 and recently in New York. It takes place in a drawing room in a grand palais in Vienna and we see how the families portrayed didn’t see, we see how easily blinded one can become. I’m looking forward to reading the script. Another pathway beckons… but yes, I think the experience of the Jewish community in Vienna will be one of my backstories. Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarter in Vienna produced much of the West’s civilization, and somehow mirrors today’s challenges in eerie and frightening ways.

And I shall pray for healing as we follow the path to Jerusalem. 

At St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel in Berkeley this morning, we entered the second Sunday of Pre-Lent, and I was struck by the light shafting through the clerestory windows upon the crucifix, a reminder to have ears to hear, eyes to see.

Just as Septuagesima’s Gospel was about Time and Judgment, Sexagesima’s Gospel today is about what we do with the time, knowledge, and grace given us, once we encounter Christ in our lives. Our Lord tells the parable of the seed in the soil, and considers what kind of soil and what sort of fruits that will be produced.  Some seed fell upon the way-side, some on a rock, some among thorns, and some on good ground, baring fruit. The seed is the word of God… Jesus explains clearly what it all means. We want to be those who “having heard the word of God, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.” (Luke 8:4+, BCP 121)

The Gospel is paired appropriately with Paul’s long list of all the dangers and challenges he has endured as a minister of Christ. He is writing to the Church in Corinth in an effort to encourage them to be brave and long-suffering. Hence his list (briefly): he works hard, is whipped, imprisoned, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked. His perils are many: seas, robbers, wilderness, slanders, hunger, thirst, weariness and painfulness, fastings, cold and nakedness. He even gets angry. But he glories in his very infirmities. One guesses Paul is answering complaints of the Corinthians, giving them a pep talk (2 Corinthians 11:19+, BCP 120).

What do we do with our time on Earth? Are we producing fruit, having heard the word of God? Do we keep it? My mother turned 103 last month, a truth that focuses my own attention on our next great adventure, our passage into Eternity. Our numbered days are shrinking, a fact that I find both encouraging and worrisome. The clock ticks. The bell tolls. Judgment awaits.

It has been remarked by many how silent the Christian churches and Jewish synagogues are today, in terms of standing up to some of the totalitarian trends gathering speed. Eric Metaxas recently interviewed Alan Dershowitz about his book, Guilt by Accusation, in which he speaks of the extortion racket that has emerged from the “Me Too” movement. He mentions that in the long process of clearing his name through the courts (he refused to pay the ransom), others continued to shun him, including his own synagogue who “didn’t want to invite trouble.” Mr. Metaxas recognizes the symptoms of turning away from tyranny – that blind eye and silence in the face of the dragon – for his biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer recounts a similar acquiescing in the 1930’s that propelled Hitler and the death camps.

The parallels are frightening. The self-censoring is everywhere. Where are the St. Pauls of our era? Where is the good soil that bears good fruit?

I see a bit of St. Paul in Elon Musk and the Twitter Files. There are others too, brave Davids with slingshots aimed at formidable Goliaths, but I also understand the fear of inviting trouble, cancellation, shunning, destruction of career, loss of family. The anger and loathing I have seen first hand in family members and friends when they find I am not only a Trump deplorable but a Christian deplorable as well is formidable. I can identify to a limited extent with St. Paul. But I have, so far, less to lose, being retired, elderly, and numbering my days, as it were. Even so, the deranged outrage of these folks is palpable.

There are many tentacles to this octopus, to swim with another metaphor. Universities are requiring Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion statements from prospective students as well as faculty applying for a position. It is not enough to be silent, to turn away from the tyranny, but students and faculty must also show their actions supporting the DEI program. They must salute. They must march. And DEI, a racist program, is just one of many incursions upon our freedom and the dignity of merit and character, the sanctity of all human life, from conception to grave.

And so I take great heart in hearing the litany of abuse Paul suffered and Our Lord’s parable fully explained, in case we wanted to censor the meaning. It’s all about hearing the word and believing, then with “an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

I suppose, at the end of the day, we pray we have ears to hear, eyes to see, to recognize the King of Glory when we meet him in Paradise, seated on his throne in glory.

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, the beginning of “Pre-Lent,” the first of three Sundays before Ash Wednesday.

I have long been fascinated by this segment of time carried forward from earlier days, earlier rituals and seasons of the Church. Our present worship of God is thus punctuated by the past, to form a whole in our own time, enriching us all the more with the Communion of Saints stepping into our lives throughout the year.

Septuagesima’s lessons are about time, running the race to receive an “incorruptible crown” (St. Paul, I Corinthians, 9:24+, BCP 119). Our lives are this race through time to the end of our own time and our passage through judgment into Eternity. Just so, Christ tells us a parable in the Gospel appointed for this day, where the workers in the vineyard are paid for the day they work, dawn to dusk, and question those who only work the last hour. Should they receive the same pay? Our Lord says, essentially, it’s up to my goodness and not of your concern. We too, who work in the vineyard from an early age, might resent those who enter the Kingdom at the last minute, on their deathbed. But we learn today that it’s up to Our Lord’s goodness and judgment and not of our concern.

The parable is also about envy, as our preacher pointed out this morning. A right and ordered attitude, formed by an informed conscience, educated in the pew and at the altar rail, tells us not to be envious. Indeed, one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses is, “Thou shalt not covet.” Envy of course is desire to be like someone else; covetousness is the desire to have what they have. Close cousins, to be sure.

We have been given life, a circumscribed length of time on this Earth. This is a wondrous gift, this time from conception to cradle to grave. It is up to us to judge ourselves in preparation for Judgment in Eternity. We are called to clean out our hearts, to make a new and right heart within. This is enough of a challenge, to remove the beam in our own eye. We do not need to remove our neighbor’s beam.

But we can point the way. In love we encourage others to judge themselves rightly, inform their consciences, in the pew and at the altar rail and the confessional. We keep the church doors open, the candles lit, the hymnbooks ready, and we welcome our brothers and sisters traveling through time alongside us.

And so both lessons today are about time and how to see ourselves in this space granted, this time in which we have been placed. The times seem tumultuous to many of us, and it may very well be that we are witnessing a great shift in the world order, as well as a diminishing role for the Church. As Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) wrote in 1970 in his profoundly prophetic Faith and the Future (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009) the Church will become smaller and more spiritual, and this faithful flock will offer something new to men and women who have forgotten God and in their loneliness “feel the whole horror of their poverty.” We are seeing this played out today.

We don’t begrudge the late converts but celebrate and give thanks for their new life within.

And as we look ahead to Ash Wednesday and the full realization of our mortality, we begin to consider where we may have gone astray, in thought, word, or deed, where we need to repent and clean out our hearts, to make them right with God. We consider what rule we might keep, what to add to our hours on Earth and what to remove. Fasting and abstinence apply to all of our doings – perhaps less TV, more Psalms; less this, more that. A spiritual fast as well as a physical one. A fast that mysteriously becomes a fulfilling feast.

As we move through Pre-Lent and into Lent, then into Passiontide and Easter, we educate our souls by informing our consciences. We do this by our own faithful presence before the Real Presence, so that we see ourselves as Our Lord sees us. Only then can we approach the mystery, majesty, and miracle of Christ’s death and resurrection. Only then can we fully partake of Eternity in Time today, the Word made flesh among us, now and always.

January is the month of Life conquering Death. It begins with resolutions to change, to be better, to do this, to not do that. For some it is a “dry month,” purging alcohol toxins from the system and hopefully purging bad habits as well. We all want to live, not die, to savor every minute of the life we have been given. We have emerged from a time of holiday gatherings and festivities, of giving and receiving, of singing to the baby in the manger, “silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright…” We have considered the miracle and mystery of Christmas, God incarnate, come to save us from ourselves.

And so in January we are ready to save us from ourselves with resolutions to be better in some way. Christians do this weekly, with confession and repentance, or even hourly, saying to Our Lord, “Forgive me for that, forgive me for this, forgive me… I am sorry.” Whether once a year or once a day, we innately know we are under judgment in some way; we innately know we are sick and need healing. Our souls need saving.

As I putter along with my novel-in-progress, The Music of the Mountain, my decision to set it in January 2023 has produced some interesting discoveries about this month in our present day. The Feast of Epiphany led me to light and dark, vision, seeing, knowing. That the January 6 protest in Washington D.C. was on this day has struck me with some force since the event happened. Coincidence? Don’t know. I try to look at all sides, and make up my own mind about truth and lies. This rally, to my mind, was a demand to delay the counting of the electoral votes until further investigation could be made. It was not an effort to overturn the election, but to question certain electors and to re-certify them to everyone’s satisfaction. There appears to be clear evidence there were FBI instigators in the crowd, urging them on. No protestors used firearms, and the only death was one of the protesters at the hands of the police (will there be justice for Ashley Babbitt?). Nothing burned down. One thing for sure, these rather foolhardy trespassers wanted more light shed on what happened over the previous year 2020 in terms of the election. Numerous irregularities needed bright sunlight. News stories were buried that needed to be aired in the light of day. Questions needed answers. We are still unraveling what happened, two/three years later.

January 6 and the light of Epiphany – the desire to see reality for what it is – coincided with this march on Congress by citizens who desired to shine light on their beloved country. 

This year, Epiphany fell in the midst of rainstorms and flooding here in Northern California. Power outages from fallen trees left us in the dark for days in cold temperatures without heat, light, and without warning. The storms darkened the skies through the 15th, and we began to see sunlight once again. 

Soon we were recalling the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade – January 22, 1973, when the Supreme Court federalized the right to abortion, overturned in October 2022, and given to the States to decide. As of now it is thought that 11,000 babies have lived that would not have lived since this 2022 decision. Life won over death. But the tragedy continues, as State by State work to settle the question, when does life begin? Science says conception. Death says whenever you want, you decide. 

And so folks marched for Life in Washington D.C. on Friday, in San Francisco on Saturday (crowd estimated at 30,000), and in cities across the country over the weekend. Sunday the 22nd was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, coinciding with the Third Sunday in Epiphanytide, recalling Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, a moment when Christ celebrates marriage and the joy of family and friends, and of course, children.

This weekend of Life was soon overshadowed by a week of mass shootings in California. On Saturday the 21st, eleven were killed in a dance hall in Monterey Park in Southern California. On Monday the 23rd seven were injured and one died in a mass shooting in Half Moon Bay in Northern California. There was a mass shooting in Oakland as well.

As we moved through the week, mourning the many murdered, the skies dried and an icy wind cleared the air, culminating in Friday the 27th, the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. I was stunned when I realized this fell in this same month, a week after the Roe v. Wade anniversary. The two holocausts remembered within a week. In January.

The Jewish Holocaust remembrance – January 27 – recalled the freeing of Auschwitz by Soviet troops on this day. In all, some 1.1 million people were killed in this concentration camp in Poland. Friday, January 27, 2023 was the 78th anniversary, a commemoration established by the United Nations in 2005.

These twin horrors – holocausts – must not be forgotten: the children lost through abortion (2 million a year in the U.S. since 1973) and the genocide of six million Jews, five million Slavs, three million ethnic Poles, two hundred thousand Romani, two hundred fifty thousand mentally and physically disabled people, and nine thousand homosexual men by the Nazi regime.

I was reminded of this anniversary by my friends in Kentucky who run Nazareth House Apostolate, a retreat and prayer center. Vicki and Father Seraphim Hicks send a daily prayer email that includes significant meditations on our times. Vicki quotes the author and survivor Elie Wiesel who describes Holocaust survivors as those who had “emerged from the Kingdom of Night. We know that every moment is a moment of grace, every hour an offering, and not to share them would mean to betray [the dead].”

We must never forget all holocausts – the genocide of babies and the genocides of peoples. In my novels, I try and include not only immigrant stories, but survivors of genocide. We must not forget.

Being absorbed by these events over the last few weeks, I failed to remember one last commemoration in January, one that captures my heart, for January 28 was the fiftieth anniversary of the Denver consecrations. After leaving the Episcopal Church for matters of faith and practice, some would say heresy, four bishops were consecrated in Denver, Colorado in 1978. This event solidified the foundation of the Anglican Province of Christ the King. Our Bishop Morse of blessed memory was consecrated bishop with three others, thus ensuring the apostolic line of the episcopacy for our Anglican province. We have traveled a long road together through the decades since 1978 and have been blessed to speak truth to lies, love to hate, bringing many into the ark of the Church and her promise of life eternal.

And so this month of January 2023 has been full of light and dark, in great need of more epiphanies, in great need of Christ’s light in the darkness. We see why he came to us as a baby in a manger-cave outside Bethlehem, why we celebrate him in all we do, for he brings the light of truth, the light of love, and the light of life into our tragic world. He truly saves us in our Time for all Eternity.

And of course this is the music of the mountain, a tune that calls us all to love, light, and life eternal.

It’s been a week of awakenings, epiphanies, which is appropriate given my review of The Awakening of Jennifer Arsdale by George Leef was published yesterday on the VoegelinView website, a fascinating library of erudite articles on culture, history, music, Western Civilization, and more. My little review was a bit nervous about the company it was going to be keeping, but I gave the review’s heartfelt words and lines a pep talk and all seems fine now. Sometimes you have to venture forth into the wider world, I explained patiently to my creation. Just like Jennifer Van Arsdale.

Epiphanies are awakenings, perhaps more focused. Epiphanies are re-creations, new creations, sudden sight, sudden hearing, sudden knowing. Sometimes they heal, warn, advise. And so as I listened to the Gospel for today in the stunning St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel in Berkeley, I had an epiphany about epiphanies. For Christ’s first miracle is recounted, the turning of water into wine at the wedding feast in the town of Cana. But of course, I thought, our Creator can turn anything into anything. He knows how to do it, the water was created by him as was the wine. On this altar in our chapel, He will become present in the bread and the wine. And just so, I thought, daring to venture forth into the wider world of seeing, understanding, even knowing, Christ can do the same with us. He can change us from water into wine, if we desire it, if we will it, if we say yes as Mary did all those years ago.

I’ve been working on the backstories for my four characters that will inhabit the pages of my next novel, The Music of the Mountain. When I approach these things, early on when the task seems so gigantic that I fear I shall freeze in trembling apprehension of all the details that must be either remembered or recorded – when I approach the creation of my characters, I pause, wait and listen. I want epiphanies to help me create the characters. I want, no less, God to give me a nudge or two. A sign. An arrow pointing somewhere. So I wait, empty-handed as it were, for I have found approaching Our Lord empty allows Him to work his own miracles in my heart, soul, and mind, allows Him to fill the emptiness.

So over the week, details began to emerge, confirmed by others with whom I conversed about the storyline. Pieces fell into place. And again this morning, on this bright sunlit morning, sitting on my folding chair and gazing at the medieval crucifix over the altar with its tented tabernacle and up to the vaulted dome and its slanting rays of sun (sun!), I had two more epiphany ideas for the story, ideas that will create a stronger foundational structure for the novel.

My old vicar in the story is living in an abandoned (UC Berkeley) residence hall next door to this chapel. He is going to have regular conversations with God in the chapel, as one would have with an old friend one counts on. We shall hear what ails him – and why – and learn, perhaps, a bit more about the spiritual life, the Christian pilgrimage through Time into Eternity. His bishop of blessed memory lies beneath the altar, and perhaps these ashen relics will work their own epiphanies in those who worship in this incredibly sacred space.

My second epiphany I had this morning regards my youngest character, Molly MacRae, who desires to teach children real history, true American History, in a school she will run, either online or in person. I’m thinking she will have regular reflections on fairy tales told in her childhood. Once upon a time, not so far away, lived a princess… Princesses are out of favor in our world of dumbing down and persecuting merit or rank. Molly is concerned and knows she has a princess heart if only she can find her prince.

And now I’m thinking the would-be prince will be considering what it means to be a hero, to be a man, to fill a role that Western Civilization has honored for millennia, for heroes sacrifice themselves for a greater good, or perhaps to protect a princess, and must be rewarded with honor and high esteem. Bravery needs to be honored, else who would dare to be brave?

The fourth character, my Ethics Professor, will have a past of suffering. How she has suffered – what she has done that becomes to her unforgivable – will be visited as a story within a story, slowly, tenderly, with great care not to open the wounds too wide, too suddenly.

For we are all stories within stories within stories, as our Dear Lord knows, having written us, each one of us unique, trembling figures of passion playing out our own passio, our own Way of the Cross. Epiphanytide teaches us this, teaches us to listen, to see, to open our hearts to Our Heavenly Father. He manifests himself to us, but only if we say yes, as did our Blessed Mother Mary so long ago in a town called Nazareth.

We are all epiphanies, manifestations of our loving God, and just as Christ was baptized by John (today’s Gospel), just as the Holy Spirit came upon Christ as he rose from the waters, just as Heaven touched Earth and God the Father spoke his words of love, just so we too are bathed by the Heavens and touched by the Holy Spirit. Just so we hear the voice of God our Heavenly Father.

It continues to rain and flood in the Bay Area, but in spite of the power outages and closed roads we are grateful for the watering of our hills. You can see the green grass drinking the rain, quenched. And we are told that our drought might be over, at least it would be if we had built enough reservoirs and didn’t let the excess run into the sea. Evidently there are environmental concerns in Sacramento that worry about a fish.

Epiphanies. With these epiphanies, these drops from the Heavens, I build my characters that will live inside my next novel, The Music of the Mountain, layering them with unique personal histories so that I can get to know them and understand how they will react when when the page is turned. The foundations must be solid and extensive for each one, just as we have our own histories too, making each one of us unique, each one an epiphany.

The novel is about history in a way, or rather its importance, and the devastating consequences of erasing our past, be it national or personal. For we are today the choices we have made in the past. We have our own foundations, given to us by our loving Creator. To cherish our pasts, warts and all, sins and all, joys and fears and sufferings – all of it – is to cherish our Creator. As my bishop of blessed memory often said, “Nothing is lost, nothing is wasted.” And I have come to see that each moment in our time on earth counts in the divine realm of Eternity. Each moment counts in the accounting of each one of us.

And so we repent, clean out our hearts of all the bad choices, the sins. We bathe in the baptismal waters of rebirth, daily, moment by moment. In this way we are continually renewed, our sick insides healed and healthy once again. We can breathe once more, deeply, breathe the name of Jesus and know that God is with us.

So who will be inhabiting these pages of my novel to come?

Molly MacRae is a young woman, 25, grade school teacher, American History, who leaves her job because of the false history she is required to teach. She desires to go back to school, possibly Hillsdale, to earn a Masters in Education, and set up an online school. She is Evangelical.

Winston Adams is a young man, 30, a journalist, who is fired for telling the truth. He went with the political program, silencing stories, promoting false narratives, until he had had enough. He told the truth. He was soon out of a job, but now he considers honest ways of earning a living, perhaps even starting his own newspaper or journal. He is a Catholic.

Fr. Thomas Adams is Winston’s grandfather, 80,  who is Anglican vicar of the now boarded up university chapel, south campus. After the riots and the lockdowns and his own bout with the pandemic, he returns to the property now in ruins, no longer open. He lives in the abandoned student residence next door and plays the organ in the chapel. He prays.

Dr. Patricia Norton, 50, has been fired from her prestigious university position as Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, for refusing the vaccine and masking requirements, which she maintained were unethical demands. She is agnostic. She lives in the old Villa Tilifos at the base of Angel Mountain (from my last novel). She bought the spacious house for back taxes, since the owners had not returned after leaving on an extensive pilgrimage to pray for the world.

All four characters notice a disturbing trend: large sections of the Internet have been erased, books have disappeared, and libraries have empty shelves, where the Classics once resided, alongside great literature, history, all supporting and defining Western Civilization. American founding documents can no longer be found, but have been replaced by less “offensive” materials.  Theology and philosophy shelves are bare. My valiant heroes set out on a mission to retrieve the physical copies that still exist and put them somewhere safe, at least for the time being.

Fr. Adams shows them his hidden basement, a musty, dark place full of books not yet found. They begin their Great Work of Freedom in this space…

And somehow it all leads back to Angel Mountain… where they can hear music, familiar chords, dancing with one another. What is the music? It leads them to where they must go, these melodies of meaning, chords christening a new world to be born, formed on the foundations of the Old World.

Of course all of the above may be tweaked by more epiphanies, more reaching for the Heavens, more sudden sight, seeing the way it must be, how Love moves among us, creating us to love one another as we rise from the waters of Baptism.

We were startled to wake up to the New Year with a two-day power outage. Portent? Sign? Who knows?

Major storms hit Northern California over the last few weeks (with more to come), endangering all in the greater Bay Area, as flooding and falling temperatures (and trees) reminded us of the fragility of modernity, so dependent upon the power “grid.” As we entered the second day, I told myself it was good for me to see just how dependent we actually were upon electricity. No light. No hot water. No cooking. Limited cell phone use. No WIFI (!)

It was also a reminder of Christmas and Epiphany, the dark stable with the bright star shining upon the Son of God born this night, the light of the angelic choir singing to the shepherds and pointing the way to Bethlehem, the stunning cosmic appearance of the large star cluster in the sky noted by magi (early astrologers/astronomers). They would see this cosmic appearance heralded a major event. Astrophysicists today have noted that an unusual conjunction of planets and stars occurred around this time that could have been the bright star of Bethlehem.

Mystery and miracle abound. The heavens declare the glory of God as a child is born to save mankind, born in a lowly manger cave to swaddle each one of us, keep us safe from the cold and the dark.

I took advantage of the mini-lockdown that continued all week and wrote the first scenes of my new novel, The Music of the Mountain, working title. The lights and heat came back on with a screech but flood warnings encouraged us to stay put. The star of the heavens had entered our dark cave of a home to shine light on our souls, healing our blindness. A light shone in our darkness, for as St. John says, “That was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world” (John 1:9, KJ V). And with this little light of mine I tapped my keyboard, creating characters and sculpting scenes with my words.

The words spilled from my heart through my fingers onto the page just as they are doing now. This, I believe, is a miracle in itself, that Our Lord continues to shine the light of Heaven upon Earth, through each one of us, if we desire it. Eternity enters time and we glimpse starlight. When we look up into the night sky, we see stars forming perfect patterns, mathematical ratios singing the music of the spheres, and we realize the glory of our loving God surrounds us. Nature may not be so loving, with winds and floods storming our land, but there is an order behind it all, and we know by the light of Christmas that it is a loving order. We are the renegade ones. We are the rebellious children who worship idols. We are the shepherds and we are the magi in the cave on that dark, light-filled night. Our fear becomes wonder. We fall to our knees in penitence and worship. And a little child born to us over two thousand years ago in real time, in real history, forgives us from his manger-throne.

We are made whole by this holiness. Earth sings to the glory of God, reaching for Heaven. It is this conjunction of Heaven and Earth that is heard on Angel Mountain in my new story. It is this touching, the finger of God touching each one of us, recreating us, again and again, that is the music we hear, the perfect harmony of the Creator and his creation.

In this sense all of my stories are about Epiphany, this sudden sight, this sudden healing of our blindness. This child Jesus comes to us today, enters our hearts and lives there. Miracle and mystery abound, and we sing this song of love to one another, for there is nothing greater than the Heavens touching the Earth.

The Church celebrates Epiphanytide for six Sundays this year, the number varying with the date of Easter which is set by a cosmic calendar of the moon’s appearance (“the first Sunday after the full Moon that occurs after the spring Equinox” and relating to Passover.) Each Sunday the Scripture lessons will shine a light on the manifestations of Christ to the world. Today we are told by St. Paul in the Epistle to be “transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:1+, BCP 110).  And the Gospel story tells of the boy Jesus in the temple, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions” (Luke 2:41+, BCP 110). In this Epiphany, the boy Jesus reveals who He is, for he says to his worried parents,  “I must be about my Father’s business”. 

And so we awake to a new dawn, to who Jesus is and his saving grace as the Son of God. We allow our minds to be renewed so that our hearts will know what is good, acceptable, and perfect, what is, at the end of the day, the will of God for each one of us.