Christine Sunderland

Today Christ entered the gates of Jerusalem and last night my son Tom arrived safely home.

It has been a watery week, the third week of drenching storms in the Bay Area, yet this morning I woke to a dome of blue sky, the clouds whipped away by cold winds. The sun brightened my world and my heart, parched with worry, was warmed.

My son turns forty this year.  Two weeks ago he journeyed to Nepal, leaving his wife and two young children in Boulder, leaving for the time his landscape architecture business.  He traveled with a ten-person mission team from his Presbyterian Church to help the orphans and widows of this war-torn country in the Himalayas. Children have been devastated by civil war that has raged intermittently in this poverty-stricken land. Many have been orphaned, many sold to traffickers. Orphanages have been founded and they gather these children in, providing some kind of safety and sanity. Tom’s team was there to help, to love, to help rebuild. And of course to share God’s immense love. I’m so proud of him.

I suppose, in a sense, in a mother’s eyes, her child never really grows up. Tom will always be my little boy, even though he is well over six feet and a father and husband. But I shall always worry about him, always pray for him, always feel I have never done enough. While Colorado is two states away from California, which in itself is difficult, Nepal is so much farther, and so much farther in culture, not to mention safety.

But my son came home last night, praise God, and as the days unfold I hope to hear more of his time in Nepal. Did Christ pull him close, as I prayed he would? Did Tom learn to love more deeply? Was a veil of this world pulled back, so that he could see God working in and around him? These were my intercessions for my son.

And today as we processed up and down the aisles of the nave waving our palms and singing All glory, laud, and honor, to thee redeemer King… I gave heartfelt thanks. I passed the high altar and tabernacle and crucifix above and gave thanks. I passed the purple-draped Madonna and Child and gave thanks. I processed, following the children who followed the clergy and acolytes with the draped crucifix raised high between two flaming torches, and the congregation followed us. We circled the nave and returned to our pews. Christ entered Jerusalem on a donkey and we welcomed him.

Soon, as we move through this coming Holy Week I know that the welcoming crowd will change to a killing mob: “Crucify him!” Soon our joy will be drowned in the tears of Good Friday. For as mankind we we carry the seed of Adam only redeemed by the wood of the Cross. The children of Nepal know this seed of Adam. They have known suffering; they bear the wounds of the Fall in the Garden.  But with my son’s visit, they may have glimpsed the dawn of Easter where God banishes all fear and darkness from their hearts. This team of faithful folks from this affluent university town in the Rockies have perhaps shared their God of light and love, a God who overflows with goodness and mercy. Hindu gods hold far less power over these children of Nepal, we pray.

I think our Blessed Mother Mary was nearby when her son entered the gates of the Holy City and the hopeful crowds shouted hosanna to the Son of David. She was nearby when he instituted the first Eucharist at his last supper. Outside Pilate’s palace, she watched the crowd turn on her son, winced at the crown of thorns and the lash marks. She was near as he picked up his cross and she felt its weight as he stumbled to Golgotha, the place of the skull. She knew the piercing nails, the thirst, the sword in the side. With all gentleness she helped carry him to the tomb and watched as the stone rolled over the entrance, covering it. She was his mother. Did she know that he would become that Eucharist that he instituted on that first Maundy Thursday? That he was the passover lamb? Did she know that he would rise on the third day, that first Easter, and complete man’s redemption?

My spiritual director often reminds me that to love is to suffer. To love is to sacrifice, by definition, for the beloved. Our God did that; our God does that; we must do that.

I pray the gentle people of Nepal experienced some of this amazing grace, these last two weeks. I’m sure they did. The sick were nursed, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, mourners comforted.  God was praised.

We enter Jerusalem, walking alongside the donkey. Yoked with Christ, with him we die to our old Adams, and with him we rise on Easter Day.

Did I mention that my son came home?
Thanks be to God.

I have to admit the purple drapes took me by surprise, although they shouldn’t have. Every year on Passion Sunday our parish drapes images of Christ, the altar and tabernacle, the tall candlesticks, the Madonna and Child to the left of the chancel, and even the lectern to the right – they are all draped in deep purple cloths that flow gently to the floor. We are beginning the last two weeks of Lent, called Passiontide, in which we draw closer to the Crucifixion, but see beyond, to the Resurrection.

I was late, having duties in the Sunday School, and as I entered the nave I took a deep breath. At the head of the carpeted aisle, the sanctuary glowed with the purple drapes and the red carpet. The candles flamed, reminding us of victory, the  hope of Easter. Even the immense medieval crucifix over the altar, was fully draped, turning a large portion of the red brick to purple. I padded softly up the aisle and  knelt alongside my husband, praying my usual opening prayer of thanksgiving for the clergy, the people, and the freedom to worship, as the last few lines of the processional hymn echoed in my ears, sung to the Pange Lingua.

I had much to be thankful for this morning. There were little things, such as the dry respite from the rain so that I could carry the giant attendance board, taken home to re-glue after having come apart, into the Sunday School without it getting wet. I was thankful for having finally remembered the milk for the parish kitchen and the new toys for the children’s prize box, items which I had forgotten the week before.

There were larger things, though, that filled my heart, not least the surprise itself. I thought how the liturgical re-enactment of our faith brought such sudden delight. We told the story, month after month, season after season, the same story of redemption, marking each year in our own span of life. This Lent 2012 was different than last year’s, as it would be different from next year’s Lent. Each day, each hour, each minute were unique moments of choice, moments in which we chose to draw closer to heaven or chose to pull away. The liturgy helps us to face the choosing and to choose.

As I gazed upon the unseen images I reflected, as I often do this time of year, upon a world without Christ, a world in which nothing made any sense. Was American culture drawing closer to such a world? A world of dark rituals and life sacrifice?

The movie Hunger Games, just released, is based on a disturbing premise. Young teen girls fight to the death in a reality TV arena for the entertainment of the public. Surely, this is a world without Christ, without respect for life. I am reminded of cock-fighting, of dog-fighting, of bear-baiting, of Roman gladiators. It is a cruel world of death, of brutalized hearts and souls. And to up the ante, Hunger Games depicts teenage girls, adding a sexual element to the violence.

What has become of us?

But this morning the candles flamed on the purple altar, throwing light on the purple tabernacle. The flaming fire reminds us that Easter dawn draws near, that the sun will rise.

Another movie, October Baby, tells the story of a survivor of abortion, and how valuable her life is, regardless of her handicaps. Curiously the two movies enter our culture at the same moment in time, so that we may compare the dark and light. We may choose.

So the rich and royal purples in the sanctuary pull us into those last days, into the days of Christ the King’s suffering. We are called into reality, into the way things are, and we are told to pay attention.

“Pay attention,” the purples say. So much of what we do in the liturgy demands our attention, calls our hearts and minds to listen, to offer, to love, to enter the story. Bells ring. Sacred words are said over the creatures of bread and wine. Body and blood meet body and blood, and we unite with our creator. We are called by the actions of the liturgy, into the true story. We are called into love itself, into light, into life. We chant, we kneel, we make the Sign of the Cross over our head and hearts. We pay attention.

And occasionally we are caught by surprise, by sudden bursts of purple joy.

Today was a joyous day.

The rain came this week, finally, drenching our parched hills and turning them March green.  It was for the most part a week of steady downpour, sometimes weakening to drizzle, occasionally pushed by gusty and surprising winds.

But this morning the skies brightened, and an icy wind blew, clearing out the rain, at least for a day. We trundled to church pulling our jackets tight about us, reminding ourselves that yes, California is sometimes cold. There was no snow capping Mt. Diablo to the east, but it sure felt like there should be.

Perhaps I imagined that I was in a bit of Ireland, with the cold and the rain and the green hills, and St. Patrick’s Day having been yesterday. So of course today we celebrated St. Patrick, singing the hymn he is said to have written about the Holy Trinity, St. Patrick’s Breastplate: I bind unto myself today the strong Name of the Trinity… The tune is a strong one, reminding me of a march, and indeed it was part of a collection used for travelers embarking on a journey.  But the music shifts at the end to the part I have always loved, a lyrical chant: Christ be with me, Christ behind me, Christ before me… Christ in quiet, Christ in danger…  For the great mystery of the Christian God is just this, that he loves us so, that he wants to be with us always, outside and inside, in and around, as Father, Son and Spirit.

The organ showered golden notes over our substantial congregation and we sang with gusto. Soon the children processed up the red carpet for their blessing at the altar, having had their annual sleepover in the parish hall the night before (God bless those teachers). We, the rest of their family of God, stepped to the altar rail, pulled by the Blessed Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit. We received that which he promised. We became His Body, one with him and one with each other.

Sunlight danced through the stained glass, playing with shadows, dappling the nave, and purer sunlight poured through skylights over the altar, illuminating the medieval crucifix. Time was suspended in that hour of worship. I wanted to hold the moment in my palm as I would a precious jewel. I wanted to own it. In a way, I thought, I did, for my life was a necklace of such moments, worn close to my heart. I was baptized. I was confirmed. I was a member of this mysterious Body of Christ, breathed upon by the Holy Spirit, created by God the Father.

We gathered downstairs to feast on Irish corned beef and cabbage and many many other things and cake and brownies and champagne too.  The children landed at their own table, now clubby and grown-up and good friends, having weathered a cold night in sleeping bags, having prayed together, and having sang together in the candlelit chapel.  We women of gentler years held the babies, holding them close, rocking them, watching a child’s enchantment with her world.

In addition to celebrating St. Patrick, we feted our good vicar, Father Mautner, who would be leaving us after Easter. A stirring and poetic preacher and a heartfelt celebrant of the Mass, we shall miss him terribly. But his home parish is in Napa, and alas, he must go home.

I was glad we sang St. Patrick’s Breastplate, this hymn to the Trinity on this day of leave-taking. The Trinity will keep us together, comfort us, guide us, lead us as we too travel into the next hours and days and weeks and months of our life as a parish. We bind unto ourselves, like a breastplate of armor, God himself, no less, a God who waters our parched souls and makes us Irish green.

Time change reminds me of my human frailty.  The alarm on Sunday morning woke me to the dark, pulling me out of a deep sleep.

I’m told we go on Daylight Savings Time because of the farmers, because they needed more daylight in the later hours rather than the earlier.  So we rob the first light to add to the last light.  We save electricity this way too, I’m told, although it seems we still rise at the same hour and need to use electricity.  And in warm climates, folks run their air conditioners longer at the end of the day.

Nevertheless, whatever the reason for this custom, we have retained it, and my body and mind are pulled from their winter habit to be molded into a summer one.  Soon it won’t make any difference, of course, as the days lengthen, and we slip into spring, the earth turning slowly toward the sun, orbiting in its gentle arc.

The moon has been full and bright as the sun, turning the night to day… “for darkness is no darkness with thee, the night is as clear as the day…” I repeat the words of my Psalm 139, branding my heart.  But in the light we can see, and others can see us.  In the light we cannot hide.  “Whither shall I go then from thy spirit… whither shall I go then from thy presence?”

Will heaven be so light-filled that we shrink, searching for shadow?  Will we be forced to see the whole truth about ourselves?  The light of truth?  “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.”  Only in this light can we truly repent, and only when we truly repent, can we live.

Purgatory makes sense.  We see ourselves as we truly are.  We are washed and scrubbed to be suitable for Paradise, made ready to see the Face of God.  We are purged.

A friend died this week.  She was ninety-four and bedridden for some time, but I have known her for some fifty years.  We were not close but long time acquaintances, as members of the Body of Christ, and I thought how time, the accrual of many greetings and concerns and Sunday conversations and ladies’ teas and boutiques had drawn her close to my heart.  Her smile was broad and welcoming; she lent a quiet air of elegance to our gatherings; she laughed a lot.  I loved her.

She must now be in Purgatory, and praying for those of us left behind on earth to sort things out as best we can.

She has joined the vast Communion of Saints that have gone before us, to whom we pray for their prayers, that in this Lent in the year of Our Lord 2012 we can face our true selves and repent, that we can move out of the dark of night into the light of day. We pray that we may be purged, and in the scrubbing, we may grow strong, donning new habits of light, so that we can embrace the cross and run to the empty tomb, so that we may rise with him on our own Easter mornings.

I’ve been thinking about habit.  Habitual.  Habitat.  Inhabit.  All related words, reflecting something worn as in clothes, or something worn as in behavior, sometimes repeatedly (habitual), or something we live inside of as in houses, or the action of living inside something, as inhabiting a house (or behavior). We wear it; we live in it, it protects us (from what?); in some intangible way it becomes part of us.

We put something on when we develop a habit, or depend upon a habit, or are dependent upon a habit.  Habits can be good or bad or neutral.  They can be welcomed and worked on, or bravely thrown away.

“It’s a bad habit.”
“I want to make it a habit.”

We carve our behavior patterns with habits.  We choreograph a dance in which we know the steps by heart.  Habits are the rituals of our lives.

I read recently that habits allow us to use our brains for more important things.  If each day we had to figure out how to brush our teeth, or shower, or start the car, we would have no energy for those events we cannot predict – the slick freeway after the rain, the weaving driver, the challenges of work, parenting, marriage, the unknowns that enter our vision throughout the day that barrage our brains, forcing new, sometimes swift, decisions and maneuvers.

So we create regular patterns for the routine events to free our attentions for the unexpected and the challenging. We clothe ourselves with ways of behaving.

Manners are social habits, in which we construct agreed-upon ways of interaction.  We acknowledge one another’s presence with a nod, a greeting, a handshake, a hug.  We express desire with please or gratitude with thanks.  We bracket our social intercourse with words and phrases that allow us to explore or to not explore friendship and possible intimacy, from meals to meetings to games to discussions to any gathering of human beings from two to two thousand.

But what of interior habits? Habits that form our lives, how we see, how we choose our paths?

In Lent I examine my habits.  I take on a discipline, a rule.  To take on a discipline is to become a disciple, one who learns the ways of another, one who wears the habits of another.

I look at my habits of prayer.  I add prayers to my library of memory to be recalled at will, and it is in Lent I connsider what I have on my shelves and what needs to be dusted off and examined again, what new prayers I should add.  I revisit Psalm 139:

 O Lord, thou has searched me out, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting and my up-rising; thou understandeth my thoughts long before. Thou art about my path, and about my bed; and are acquainted with all my ways. For lo, there is not a word in my tongue, but thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether…

I set aside a few more minutes in the morning and the evening to read the lessons appointed for the day in the Daily Offices, lessons read throughout the world, so that I am praying with the universal Church in real time. In those daily prayers I examine my heart and confess my sins. I petition for others, for myself. I offer praise. I give thanks for the blessings of the day and the night, for breath, for life.  I follow a discipline of prayer, learning the habits of God.

I abstain from certain foods or fast during certain times so that I may discipline, or teach, my body that it is subject to my soul, so that I might learn, as our preacher said today, what my body can and cannot do.  I experience my body’s limitations when hunger hits, but I also find that I am stronger than I thought I was.  I learn how difficult it is to resist temptation, but I learn also that I can resist, I can control my impulses.  I fail, but I cantry again.  I stumble, but I can rise.  Abstinence – and fasting – helps my mind control my body, encourages “mind over matter.”  I discover those borders of the country of my desire and will, and as I stretch my soul to control my body, new habits are born, and I am stronger than before.  I also learn to ask for help from God.

Christ said that only prayer and fasting can send certain demons out of a man.  Whether those demons be real devils or the demons of destructive habits, Lent is a time of scattering them, of driving them out and far away.

So we houseclean during lent, sweeping our souls clean and making room for the good, for God. We fill our-selves with good habits and open the windows of our new clean interiors so that we can see clearly.  Raymond Raynes said that often our widows are dirty from the slow accumulation of dust and dirt.  We cannot see through them; they block out the light.  We didn’t notice this slow build up, the smudges and splatters and layers of lifelong habits.  We got used to the dark, to the dim rooms of our souls.  We were in the habit of living in the shadows.

In my Lenten discipline, I clean my windows so that I can see the light and allow the light to illumine my life.  I work on my habits, to add good ones and give up bad ones, to learn control of self, so that I can inhabit a new home, with bright sunlit rooms, donning behaviors that will smooth my way, light my path through my own span of time on this earth.

My friend was baptized this morning. She is not a child – she is of “riper” years, as the prayer book says, so this was an adult baptism, and the words spoken, the heartening vows, rang through the vast nave and were carried to the tabernacle on the altar.

With this sacrament she has been engrafted onto the organic Body of Christ, the Church, with water poured, the Holy Spirit descending.

Our baptismal font is in the back of the church near the entrance doors on the north side of the central aisle, and when the procession of acolytes and clergy, the torchbearers and crucifer, moved down from the chancel to the font, my husband and I, as sponsors, stood with Cathy before the huge marble shell that would hold the holy water. Our priest donned a white stole, and blessed the water in the large silver pitcher set out on a small table alongside.

The children and teachers came in from the Sunday School, the babies cuddled over shoulders and the older ones standing nearby, their eyes wide. The congregation turned in their pews as the procession moved past, until they faced us, following the Elizabethan service in our Book of Common Prayer. For the parish members were a vital part of this sacrament of water and spirit. We all prayed the prayers together and heard Cathy’s vows, her belief in the creeds, her belief in Jesus Christ, her desire to be washed clean of sin and be baptized in His Church.

The moment came, and Cathy stepped forward to the font. My husband and I stated her name. Our priest poured water from the silver pitcher over her forehead and into the font, saying, “I baptize thee In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”  With these words and with this water, she was washed clean of all sin and joined to the Christ’s Body, the Church.  She was given a flaming candle, passed from the priest to myself to my husband to Cathy.  “Receive the light of Christ,” the priest said.

There are many beautiful moments and stunningly profound phrases spoken in this ancient rite, and I thought of all those before us and all those that would come after us, all those who had said and would say these words with family and friends and parish brothers and sisters, with water poured and spirit descending.  But my favorite words are these, spoken by the priest:

We receive this person into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign her with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter she shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified…

So many believers today seem to be ashamed of the Cross.

On this First Sunday in Lent we enter the world of the Cross. During the week the Sign of the Cross was marked upon my forehead with Wednesday ashes. I walked Friday’s Stations of the Cross, following the fourteen colorful depictions of Christ’s way to Golgotha, recalling these historic moments when eternity intersected time and God acted among men. I prayed for myself, my family, my parish, my community, my nation, my world. I considered my Lenten rule, and decided to try to give up meats and sweets, and try to pray the morning and evening offices.  I knew that if I was faithful in these small things, God would be faithful to me in so many things, both small and large.

And so today was a great gift, a large thing, an incredible blessing, a time when God’s faithfulness was abundantly real. I was given a new sister today – we all were, those of us in our little flock – and this Sacrament of Holy Baptism fed us like manna in the desert. We entered into a deeper, richer communion with the holy, and with one another as well.

Even now, writing this, I am stunned by it all. I am in awe of this great gift of God, this sacrament in which my friend became my sister.

As Ash Wednesday of the year 2012 approaches, I am reminded again of time, its passing, its significance, its insignificance.

“We are all passing through,” a friend said once, and the phrase took hold, for it appears in my mind at random moments, more and more frequently.

To the Christian, the world is a way station, a place through which we pass.  We are born, we love, we suffer, until death takes our body and our souls move on.  Where we go – to sleep, to purgatory, to paradise – we conjecture.  But Christians are promised, they know, that their souls will not die and they will be given new, resurrected bodies.

Speaking to a friend about her baptism a few days ago, I prayed for wisdom in explaining the remarkable phenomenon of the Body of Christ.  For she would be engrafted onto that organic Body, the Church, when the priest pours the water and says the words, “I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”  We are told by Christ we cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless we are born again, baptized, by water and the Spirit.  Since we desire eternal life with this God of love, we are baptized in His name, engrafted onto His Body the Church, to be one with God and one with us, the Communion of Saints.

This Wednesday I, with my fellow believers, will kneel before the altar.  The priest will say, “Remember o man, that dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return,” and he will mark my forehead with the Sign of the Cross, using ashes made from burning last year’s Palm Sunday palms.  We are a people marked with the Cross.

Just so, in baptism I was signed with the Sign of the Cross, “in token that hereafter (I) shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto (my) life’s end.”

Ash Wednesday is a time when I remember, recognize, and anticipate.  I remember the earlier marking of my flesh with holy oil, the marking that engrafted me onto Christ’s Body.  I recognize that my own flesh is aging, that one day it will return to ashes, to the dust of the earth.  I anticipate my new and resurrected body, as I rise with Christ on Easter morning.

When I spoke to my friend about baptism, I began by saying, “It all begins and ends with the Resurrection.  All history led to this moment, and all history falls away from it.  If we believe in the resurrection of Christ in history two thousand years ago, all other belief falls into place.  And there is ample evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and walked among men.”

We are indeed all passing through, to the day when we will rise from the dead as well.  God became Man to take us home with him.  We are engrafted onto him, and we rise with him.  We bear his Sign of the Cross.  We are in him and he is in us.

I’ve been reading a small volume called The Faith, by Raymond Raynes, C.R., possibly an Anglican saint.  The book is a transcription by Baron Nicholas Mosley of retreat addresses Father Raynes gave at St. Michael and All Angels, Denver, Colorado in October of 1957. Father Raynes had been Superior of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, England, for fifteen years, and was to die a few months later.

A number of years ago I was introduced to Raymond Raynes’ remarkable life and work by my bishop, who knew Father Raynes and who encouraged me to read Nicholas Mosley’s biography of him.  I was so stunned by Father Raynes’s description of what it means to be a sacramental Christian that I included some of his reflections in my third novel, Inheritance, about Christianity in England.  I owe Father Raynes a great deal.  I owe Baron Nicholas Mosley as well for having written down his words.

Unfortunately, these works are out of print.

So I was pleased when the American Church Union asked me to read an old tattered copy of The Faith with a view to its reprinting. As I read, once again I was enriched, entranced, and brought closer to God.  Once again I caught the exuberance and joy of what it means to be a sacramental Christian.  Hopefully we can obtain permission to reprint this work.

In the meantime, I’d like to share a few of Father Raynes’ words, particularly on this Sexagesima Sunday, in which the Gospel is the parable of the Seeds and the Sower. The seeds fell on rich soil when they fell into life of Father Raynes, and they are seeds we do not want to lose.

On believing in Christ:

People label themselves Christians and will talk about Christianity as if it were some kind of philosophy or some theory… yet the fundamental question which we must face is ‘What think ye of Christ? Whose Son is He?’   (9)

Indeed.  Who is He?

We come to the second question – what shall I do with Jesus? – and there is no kind of half-way house about this. We have either to receive Him as He is or to reject Him…. You cannot separate a person from what he does and says and thinks and endures… (26)

So I ask myself, what does this mean for me?

On the sacraments:

The whole of God’s creation is sacramental because the creation is the outward and visible expression, in various forms, of the life and love of God… a flower is an outward and visible sign of the beauty of God… (69)

The sacrament of Baptism… has the outward and visible sign of water… water cleanses. So the effect of Baptism is to cleanse the person baptized, the whole of the person, from their fallen nature… we are made a member of Christ, the child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven. That is a fact which cannot be undone… what our Lord is by nature – the Son of God – we are by adoption through Baptism – the sons of God. (72)

The other Sacrament of the Gospel is the Lord’s Supper… The outward and visible sign is that which our Lord gave us, bread and wine, which are taken, offered, blessed, broken and received. The sign effects what it signifies. So when I receive the Sacrament of the Lord’s Body and Blood, I receive our Lord Himself. (72)

The sign effects what it signifies.  This is a phrase I want to learn, for in a sacrament, through the Church, God enters our world.  The cleansing and adoption of Baptism.  The receiving of Christ into my body and soul in the Eucharist.

On the Communion of Saints:

The one fellowship which doesn’t depend on any manmade rule, the eternal fellowship, is our fellowship with one another in Christ. Of course on earth it centres on the Altar. For when we come to the Altar not only are we renewing our one-ness with Christ, but we are strengthening and renewing our one-ness with one another. This fellowship is the eternal fellowship, the Christian society called in the Creed the Communion of Saints. (84)

The work of the Holy Spirit in the Church, as St. Paul tells us, is the building up of the body of Christ and the sanctification (the making holy) of the people of God that they may see God; because it is only the pure in heart who shall see God. (84-5)

I have long enjoyed my communion with fellow believers partaking in the Holy Eucharist.  As Father Raynes goes on to say, this communion includes those who have come before and who will come in the future.  And of course there are those who are so pure of heart, they are closest of all to God, those men and women we may consider capital-S Saints.

On prayer:

You cannot pray as a Christian except as a member of Christ’s body, the Church…it is the Holy Spirit that prays within us… we the Holy Spirit within the Church and it is the Holy Spirit that not only prompts us to prayer but informs our prayer. We pray within the Communion of Saints. So when a Christian prays, he never prays alone… Prayer has been called the breath of a Christian; and if I don’t breathe, I die. (95-6)

On taking up the cross:

Taking up the cross isn’t a kind of dreary acceptance of some kind of burden, under which we are going to be so good and patient and resigned… That’s all nonsense. For what is the cross of Christ and why were you marked with it in your baptism?  It is not only the sign of our redemption, it is the source of it. And we are marked men; we are crossed men. And we have got to grip the cross and realize it and not think that it is just concerned with suffering and sorrow, because that’s not true… There is [also] power, light, strength, beauty, radiance from the cross of Christ… It’s terrific. And it redeems the whole of our life if we live under it… it is concerned with everything… your work, your pleasure.  For it is through the cross of Christ that we can only truly enjoy ourselves. (104)

How true, and how unrealized by many, believers and unbelievers alike.

On Holy Scripture:

I don’t derive my religion from the Bible, I derive it from Christ. Christ was preached and I was baptized and became a member of Christ. Within the body of Christ I find certain treasures given to the Church by God. One is Holy Scripture, which is a lantern unto my feet; and the other is the Sacraments of the Church… Now the Holy Spirit which was given to me in Baptism and in Confirmation is the inspirer of Holy Scripture, and He is the interpreter of it. It is not a private interpretation.  Through the Scripture under the inspiration and operation of the Holy Spirit, the Word of God speaks to me.  (108)

And finally:

Life for a Christian is meant to be… a love-song sung unto God… When the sun rises, it brings colour to things and they spring to life… so with our Holy Religion, it isn’t some kind of addition to life. Our Lord is the Light of the World, and as the children of light we begin to see all things in the light of Christ, including our own lives… [we] walk in the light. (113)

And so much more.  Thank you, Father Raynes.  Thank you, Nicholas Mosley.

With straw hat and dark glasses, I went for a walk along the beach, breathing deeply the fresh air.

We have carved a few days from our home life to live our away life.  The change of routines, the change of scene, the time to read and reflect, give us new visions, new ways of seeing the world in which we live.

This Septuagesima Sunday, the sea-washed sand, packed hard and dense, gleamed, mirroring the morning sun.  I stepped with bare feet upon the packed-down shore, following the edge of the shallows slipping in, then out.  I walked on the border of sea and land and soon my flesh was washed by the rhythmic action of the waters.

It was a glistening time, an hour of clear skies and unbroken sunshine, the air moist and sweet, and I felt as though I was carried along the shoreline by invisible wings.  As I walked I glanced out to sea, to the deep royal blue horizon, where a few cumulus could barely be seen, hanging low, hovering over the waters.  Between me and those distant deep blues, variant shades of turquoise painted the cove with wide brush strokes, until, nearing the gleaming sands under my feet, the water grew light and clear, and the twinkling diamonds of the sea that bathed the land danced a hymn to God.

The hymn of sparkles swirled upon the shallows and a chorus of surf gathered and rolled and tumbled.  The tide pulled the waters out and the surf pounded, matching my own tempo, my bare feet arcing, cradling the sand, my heels bearing down, the balls of my feet moving me forward, my toes propelling me on.

I passed children playing in the waters, screeching with delight as they eyed the teasing surf, some held by parents also mesmerized by the sea, its beauty, its calling pull, its pulling call.  Watchers stood in wonder, gazing upon the ocean kingdom, touched by another realm.  Man and the sea met as though for the first time, tentatively, yet with recognition.

I stepped along the edge of the sea, glancing now over the land, the beach rising to the lawn, the lawn spreading to the hotel that rested under an azure sky stroked by palms crowning tall bare trunks.  I moved through a painting of color and sound and soft scents borne on breezes, and watched the sun mirrored on the gleaming sand.

The golden spot moved with me, just ahead, and I followed it until, as I turned with the curve of the shore, it disappeared into the sands.  I padded on, slipping through the foamy shallows, to the black lava bordering the cove, the rush of the sea upon my ears.

I turned to see the half-moon of the beach bordering the cove, joining the sea and the land.  From there at the far edge of black rock, the ocean reared and crested and dashed.  I could not see the gentle sliding of the waters, the caressing of the shore.  A red flag waved in the breeze, warning swimmers of powerful undertows.

The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land.  What would God show me here, nestled in this gentle bay with these roaring winter waters?  I prayed for ears to hear and eyes to see.  I prayed, take not thy Holy Spirit from me.

We are ending Epiphanytide and soon to begin Pre-Lent. We have known the light of Christ and will soon have the light shine into our souls, revealing who we are.

Who we are is a good question, an important question, and one we all yearn to have answered. So we trundle through the Church Year, seeking and finding out. Christ comes to us in the Incarnation at Christmas, beginning the Church Year.  He reveals himself throughout Epiphany – in the temple, his baptism, his miracle of water into wine, today his healing of Jew and Gentile alike. “Lord, let it be according to thy word. Speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”

The word only. Indeed. We listen for the word and when we hear it we laugh for joy. We listen and when we hear it we are healed. Healed of self, of sin, of all the cancers that slowly corrupt and kill us, robbing us of him. We listen, throughout the year.

The end of January in California is a waiting time. Chilly, sometimes rainy, but dry this year and today clear with a haze that covered the evening sky. The days are longer and we wait for the lengthening, the Lent that will mark our next season of listening and watching and learning who we are. We ponder the meaning of God coming among us, becoming one of us.

Candlemas is this Thursday and we celebrate the presentation of the Christ child in the temple.  We listen to the prophetic words of the aged Simeon as he and elderly Anna recognize who the child is – an epiphany.  He has been waiting for this child that was promised to him: “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.”  Now Simeon has known the coming of the Messiah.  Now he can go to God.

Candlemas appropriately has become a time in our Church when we bless the candles that will be used for the year, bless the flaming light that will not be put out.  It is the end of Epiphanytide but the beginning of the Word made flesh among us.  It is the beginning of Heaven on Earth.

I’m reading a book about a boy who went to Heaven and returned to tell us all about it. Remarkable. Encouraging. For we are made for Heaven, and we all know and feel this deep down. We are made for, meant for, something wonderful, something good. The world pulls us away from this great desire and knowledge, but also tells us it is true – in the sunsets, the quiet at dawn, in the blade of grass covered in glistening dew. The world tells us about Heaven when we search one another’s eyes, when we pet the rich fur of our cat and hear the purr. And we know, as we worship on Sunday week after week, year after year, that there is something greater, something wonderful waiting for us.

So in this time of lengthening, of light, we travel from Incarnation towards death on a cross and joyous Resurrection. We travel into God, into who we are, into Heaven itself.