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What is the meaning of life?

This is Labor Day weekend, a time to honor workers, those who give of themselves, their time and talent, to create something outside themselves. We honor work and works, the breathing of life into inanimate things, through design or imagination or usefulness.

We work to earn a living, to provide for our families. We bring home the dollar value of our labor, but in the process we have accomplished two works – the work for which we are paid and the work of caring for our families. And as we do this work for our spouses and children, we find our Heavenly Father close, in our midst, smiling. For he labored to create us, our world, and our universe.

Some work is more meaningful than other work. Some work we choose. Some work we do not. Some work we do out of obligation and duty to righteousness, to God. Some work we do from passion and love of the work itself or the people the work helps, and so we do not ask for pay, for the value is in our heart. We volunteer for these works. We are glad to be a part of something larger than ourselves, and in the giving of our time and talent we find meaning. We find God, our Heavenly Father, and he pulls us into his sacred beating heart.

We all want to find meaning in our lives, to color our daily pages bright and beautiful, carefully filling in the empty spaces, the emptiness, within the holy lines drawn for us by nature and nurture. We desire to know the why of our existence, of our neighbor’s existence, of the world’s existence. We want to find meaning.

Women were once told, and still are told, that meaning is found only in the workplace. While it is true that meaning is in the work we do, whatever it is, wherever it is, women have a unique work that is their crowning glory, for women give birth to new life. And not only is the woman able to give birth, after carrying the child within her own flesh and feeding that child with her own life-blood, she is given the joyous work of caring for the child after he or she is born. So a mother’s great work is her time in labor, as she labors to birth the child. It is a suffering work of love, and out of the pain will come joy. Soon she will labor in the home and this will become her sacred workplace.

If such a woman who has given birth to life does nothing else in her time on Earth, her life will have infinite meaning. And it is truly a precious meaning that she alone can own, knowing that this single moment of laboring for this new life has enlightened all her life’s moments to come with meaning, if she only realized.

Some do not realize, make real, this brilliant star of meaning that anchors and guides all mothers. Some do realize this awareness that they have participated in the greatest miracle of all – shepherding, laboring, bringing life into this world of humankind.

Men have been told that meaning only exists in power and wealth. And yet, just as women can participate in the labor of life, men can too, should they father a child, should they labor to support that child, should they labor to love that child and its mother, should they vow to do so for their lifetimes in the sacrament of marriage and family.

Such men and such women form the true labor union, the family. Such men and such women need never fear their lives have no purpose or meaning, for if they have indeed formed such a union of labor, formed such a family, they have participated in the grandest of Heaven’s labors – the creation of life, the sustenance of life, the miracle of life.

Men and women who do not own the blessed choice to father and mother, to labor for love of new life, even so, are charged with supporting those who have formed these labor unions we call families. Aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors, can all participate in the life of the baby growing in the womb by comforting and encouraging the mother and father in this great labor of love. Godparents come to mind, but any role or title will suffice, will meet the standard for this great answer to the meaning of life.

To comfort and strengthen these parents, these shepherds of life, is to find one’s miraculous meaning, the purpose of existence. From this point of understanding, this still point in the universe of pondering, wondering, and philosophizing, every man and every woman may step into their remaining time knowing all one needs to know to answer life’s great questions. Such men and women inhabit God’s miraculous palace of reality and sanity, and there is nothing more gloriously meaningful than that.

And so, while we celebrate the worker, a celebration that is often associated with labor unions, let us not forget the laboring unions nearby, the families, the creating of the future with the creation of new life. Let us labor to not forget what is right and true and beautiful, and right in front of us. Let us celebrate our daily labors of love, our support and comfort for life itself, that union of male and female to create the unborn child in the womb.

Let us celebrate these great labors of love; let us realize God’s true meaning in such unions and such family re-unions.

The fog rolled in over the night, but dissipated by early dawn, having blanketed our dry brown grass in the hills around Mount Diablo in the SF Bay Area with moisture. The drop in temperatures was welcome, if seemingly a bit early, and yet the shortening days and longer nights reflect our change of seasons.

Weather changes. Climate changes. All the earth, under the loving gaze of our Heavenly Father, rolls through the universe, around the blazing sun, with its moon rotating around us. The heavens declare the glory of God, as do the tiniest of creatures, as does my cat, a longhair from a Red Bluff shelter who was rescued by our local Animal Rescue Foundation founded by Tony La Russa.

We give thanks for the change of seasons, the changing of days, the marking of time with temperature and light. We give thanks for life, born and unborn, every miraculous moment declaring again the glory of God. We give thanks for growth, for the baby that bursts into the world of oxygen and bright light, meeting that brave new world with a startled cry and a slap on the back. What was it like to leave that warm womb and suddenly be thrust into a such a cold and sterile climate? I don’t recall, but I experienced it to be sure, as did you, as did all of us who were fortunate enough to be born.

We give thanks again and again, for it is meet and right so to do. We are made in our Maker’s image, and like our Maker we are called to love. Love can be hard. Love can mean suffering. Love is a mystery. Love has its own climate of hot and cold, its weather that weathers storms and implants life to continue love on our Planet Earth long after we are gone to where we long to be, a place deep in our hearts, a longing that answers the question, “Where do we go when we die?” Somehow we know – we go to the place of our greatest yearning.

We yearn for God and so we yearn for love. Love links us like a daisy chain, all green and yellow and fresh and living for the time in its own time.

Did I tell you about my cat? Gold and white with giant green eyes who lives to eat and to be brushed. She knows what she knows. She knows her purpose, her plan, her daily needs, and the household climate she requires, one of love. She lives with us, a visitor from Heaven, for a short time on Earth. We have been given the delightful task of caring for her while she is visiting. We have been entrusted with her love.

Just so, I sometimes think, we are entrusted with one another, for this short time on Earth that we have been given. We too are visitors, knowing we are made for another kingdom, another climate, a place so golden and brightly white that we will shield our eyes as we adjust to the glory. It will be a moment of recognition, of coming home. We know this now, that we are pulled to God by a golden thread, a thread woven deeply into our soul. And being entrusted with one another, with family and friends that are woven along with us in our time, we are called to love the place and the person and the time that we have been given.

We heard about the Pharisee and the Publican today, a parable told by Our Lord Jesus. It is of course, a story of pride and humility, of vice and virtue. It is a story too of how to pray, how to reach for God in prayer. It is a story of simplicity, of denial, and in that denial of self we find our true selves. When we pray simply and from the heart, repenting our vices, we are forgiven and made new creatures. Our golden thread grows strong and weaves a pattern of joy in our soul. We wait and listen for Our Father’s voice, his tug upon the thread, and having emptied ourselves out before him, we are suddenly filled up.

Have I told you about my cat? She lies curled now, on my desk, sleeping. She knows what she knows. And she knows it’s time for a nap. Soon she will hear me bustling in the kitchen, cooking dinner. Soon she will follow the sound of my voice to the kitchen, the sounds of love, the sounds she has grown to know well.

Will we know our Shepherd’s voice when he calls? Have we listened carefully to his voice in Scripture and Sacrament and Song?

As I made breakfast this morning I watched from my window the fog skirt back to the coast, to the City by the Bay. Tufts of clouds, darkened in shadow by the sun slanting up over the mountain, drifted over the land, this golden land of hills and valleys. I said my morning prayer, ending with, “What will you show me today, Heavenly Father?” I knew if I watched and listened throughout the minutes and hours of the day, I would hear his voice.

Our country is in a strange climate of angst and suffering. Our people are confused by the crying wolves that bay at the moon, that encircle our homes. We watch and listen for Our Lord Jesus. We love those whom we are called to love, those in our midst, those in our hour, those who share these times with us. And thus the climate changes, turns on a tiny axis of care, a humble cry, forgive me, make me anew. Make a new and right heart within me. And thus, in such humility, is born the unborn. In such humility, we reach to our children and teach them to reach too. And the golden thread weaves through time into another time, brightening the lives of those who will come after us. For we have learned to love in our own climate, in our own time.

We suffered a power outage this morning, and once again the fragility of our “grid” and our foundational support systems across America based on electricity became too real, in this third week of August, as we bake through the summer. Threats to our way of life loomed large, not only with energy delivery and fire management here in California, but on many many many levels.

In the wake of the recent military style raid by the FBI on a former president’s residence, with seemingly little cause, or none that has been shown, I’ve been thinking once again about truth and control of the “narrative.”

It has long been a characteristic of Marxist and Communist states that truth (and its cousin, language) is manipulated to suit their ends. As we watch the rise of neo-Marxism in this country we watch the narrative shift to suit those currently in power. With the control of academia, grade school through college, and control of the major media institutions, it is easy for many of us to lose sight of reality, ascertain what is true, and identify what is false.

We were locked down and masked for over two years, isolated, fearful, because of a virus wildly exaggerated, and now these methods have been debunked by real numbers and even the CDC itself. We read our news sources from our phones and laptops and local papers and accepted the new normal, this never-ending state of emergency (at least in California).

The Russian collusion hoax sought to destroy a sitting president, by means of his own government agencies and spies. We saw from muted media that the collusion said to occur with Russia was, indeed, fabricated, and those involved committed serious felonies. We saw that it was all a witch hunt, yet those individuals have not been held accountable, but seem to enjoy their fame. What happened to equal justice under the law?

As we waited for Hunter Biden’s laptop to reveal its serious secrets in 2020, we saw big media ignore the crucial story so close to the election. Had this story been reported, I firmly believe that Mr. Biden would not be president today. And had there been election integrity at the state level that fall, Mr. Trump would have won by a significant margin. I say this, having read reports from both sides, having made up my own mind, now labeled a “denier” and “domestic terrorist” in keeping with the manipulation of language and silencing free speech.

As we tried to protest peacefully on January 6 these criminal practices on the part of our government, as was our right and has been done by both parties historically, we were demonized and targeted and jailed. Some conservatives are still imprisoned, their livelihoods destroyed. The protest at the capitol, while unruly, with some guilty of trespassing, was not violent. We did not burn and loot and kill as others do frequently. And yet we were portrayed as doing this by the mainstream news outlets. Hooray for phone footage that revealed the truth.

We watched with the nation the January 6 show trial, camouflaged as an investigative committee, with one-sided testimony to destroy Mr. Trump, with a prosecution and no defense, the panel holding one pre-decided verdict, guilty.

I attended school in a time when we learned to debate issues. We learned to argue both sides, to understand the heart and reasoning of those with whom we disagreed. But it became obvious in 2014, when a conservative speaker met with rioters at UC Berkeley and was forced to leave the hall, things had radically and dangerously changed. Other speakers at other universities were cancelled if they didn’t meet the Left’s approval and narrative. I set my novel, The Fire Trail (eLectio 2016), in the midst of this startling violence.

I could see I would have to find authorities I trusted to tell the truth. I would listen to both sides and decide for myself what to believe. But this is more and more difficult for most folks. With a one-sided social media and one-sided tech corporations, news is largely controlled by the narrative of the Left. Even so, we can seek out the other side: The Epoch Times is at the top of my list, along with conservative think tanks that have created an online presence of their own. But it takes some effort.

Go to YouTube (or Rumble) and watch Victor Davis Hanson, Andrew Klavan, Eric Metaxas, Dinesh D’Souza, and the Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Read George Leef’s The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale, an honest and true novel I reviewed in these pages. And my most recent novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock 2020), continues the current debate about freedom and free speech.

And what if I discovered I might not be as woke as my neighbors, my friends, and my family? I am pressured to self-cancel and keep quiet about my views, and thus support tyranny with my silence.

This is not healthy for America. Free speech is too easily cancelled and costly. Anarchy, fed by open borders and drugs and absent policing, is frightening. Our highways are frightening. Economic policies, public health policies, education policies, foreign affairs policies, all support this anarchy. We must be allowed to speak, if any are left to listen, or who will be kind enough to listen.

Let us hear both sides, or multiple sides. Let us welcome other viewpoints than our own. Let us respect one another. And let us cast our votes honestly without rancor, knowing that our vote counts finally.

Our power outage is over, and with a high-pitched screech, the system roared back after a four-hour down time. The lights came on, the fridge purred, the AC hummed, my phone charged, my Wi-Fi blinked, and all is right with the world. For now.

In the meantime, between emergencies, we pray for America. May she truly wake from her long slumber and once again ring her bells for freedom, for free speech, for equal justice under the law, for civil civility. And most of all, for truth, true truth, distilled in respectful debate.

A family friend, Scott Gallagher, died this last week in Durango. He was bicycling home in the early morning dark, when he was hit by a car (https://gofund.me/0f2971aa)

He worked for the Fire Department and was highly regarded and well loved by many in this town in southern Colorado. Scott and my son grew up together in the Bay Area in those formative years of early teens and on. Scott had a wonderful spirit about him, as if he were too good for this world, giving, cheerful, smiling. I looked him up in some old photo albums and found a few images I sent to my son Tom to be added to the collection they were creating for Scott’s Memorial service. The photos brought back memories of Tom in those days and the powerful and wonderful influence the Church had upon us.

There is a photo of the boys with our Bishop Morse in Tahoe one summer. Another was taken in the Berkeley Seminary Library. I know they went on an Outward Bound adventure at some point but couldn’t find an image of that rugged trip. They loved the outdoors and as adults gravitated to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, probably among the most rugged of God’s mountains, rising to 14,000 feet. They hiked, skied, snowboarded, and earned enough to get by to snow camp the next day.

Along the way, my son Tom married and today has a beautiful family in Boulder. He knuckled down in school – even with the mountains calling him outdoors – and earned his Landscape Architecture degree. Today he has a design-build business, a perfect fit for his natural talents. Scott joined the Durango Fire Department, married Karen, and they had a beautiful daughter, Gwen. My heart aches when I think of them now, along with his mother, Sue, and sister, Lisa.

Mothers never cease being mothers. And I suppose it is true that fathers never cease caring for their families, perhaps in a different way. And so today’s parable rung true this morning in our chapel, the Prodigal Son, told by Our Lord Jesus. It is a story of wrong turns and a story of backtracking and finding the right path to be on. It is a story of confession and repentance and forgiveness. And it is a story of sibling rivalry and jealousy exhibited by the older brother. All very human temptations. All familiar wrong turns. But the father welcomes the son home in the end, just as Our Heavenly Father will welcome each one of us. I can see Bp. Morse of blessed memory welcoming Scott, wrapping his arms about him.

And tomorrow is the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, the celebration of her rising bodily into Heaven, rather than her body dying as happens to most of us. It is a lovely belief, not supported by Scripture but by tradition and the many stories of Mary in Ephesus, where she spent her last days, finally in a cave in the mountainside. We visited the site once, where a lovely order of nuns run the shrine that looks down upon the old port of Ephesus and its amphitheater, where St. Paul preached to the goldsmiths (and they didn’t like what he said). Today the port has been renamed Kusadasi and is part of Turkey. In his incredible novel, Father Elijah: An Apocalypse, Michael D. O’Brien, tells the story beautifully.

Mary falls asleep and is carried into Heaven. Some traditions call it the “Dormition of Mary”, her falling asleep. One tradition says that since no one ever claimed her bones as relics, her body has never been found. But there are many other traditions that also affirm her entering Heaven body and soul. In our Anglican tradition, it is what we call a “pious opinion”, something we may believe or not.

Mary is our mother. She knows what it is to lose a son, a beloved, and probably only, son. She shares our worries and sufferings, the loves and fears of mothers everywhere. She is our humanity in holy form, reaching out to us, knowing as she knew what it is like for a sword to pierce the heart, for a son to die.

At times like this, I look to the Church, and I am thankful I have her prayers and support to make sense of things. I enter the hymns so rich in poetry and I understand a bit better what it means to love. For to love means to deny oneself in a certain way. To love is to suffer.

But it’s all worth it. In the end, at the last days, when we gather by the river that runs before the throne of God, we will know and we will understand what Love truly is.

Rest in Peace, Scott, and may light perpetual shine upon you.

It is a rich time, an unfolding time, a time full of fullness, a time when we pause and wonder at the world about us and how we came to be here, to live each day in beauty, truth, and goodness, to love and esteem one another, each as a child of God.

Yesterday was the Feast of the Transfiguration, and I learned something in church today about the light of God, the light that transfigured the face of Christ as he spoke in a cloud with Moses (the Law) and Elijah (the Prophets). The scene has always dazzled me with its many surreal qualities, a scene that no one could possibly make up who hadn’t been there. It’s puzzling at first. Did it really happen? But the Church has expounded for us for centuries, helping us understand the short narrative we find in the Holy Gospels.

What struck me today was the light. The light of God can be blinding, our preacher said today. To look into the face of God – too bright for us, unless we have been transfigured ourselves, unless we have grown through repentance, have chosen the right path through our time on earth. “Fear not,” the angels say when they visit. Shepherds cover their eyes as they look to the heavens to see the choir of angels on the eve of Christ’s birth. The light is so bright, so blinding. So bright to be burning. So bright to be a fire that consumes. And so our path leads us to Heaven, prepares us to choose Heaven. For those on the wrong path will be blinded by the light, burned by the flames.

Is this where we recognize the flames of Hell? The light of God will either burn or transfigure. C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce envisions Heaven as a place too real for the wraiths of Hell to endure. Blades of grass are sharp and cut through them. But those prepared for Heaven are real enough to walk on this same grass.

And so the light transfigures us, changes us, for we have been transformed.

There is a darkness over our land today. It is a darkness that makes it difficult for many to see their way to the path that will lead to Heaven. The darkness beckons, enshrouds, clouds. How do we know to turn away from the dirge we hear, the deadly wail of grievance and despair?

It’s easy. We turn away from the darkness of death and toward the light of life. We turn to the light of Christ found in our local church. We enter the doors and step inside. We learn to lean to the light by sitting alongside others seeking God and the path to Heaven. We learn we are not alone on the path. We learn we are sisters and brothers, children of God. In fact, St. Paul tells us today, we have received “the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father… we are the children of God: and if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ…” (Romans 8:12+)

In the nave we sit together, sing together, speak together as one voice. We form a family, where many become one in Christ. Each one of us is unique, never created before and never to be created again. The Master himself made us, a glorious creation, each adding to the seamless garment of many colors. We face and embrace the light of Christ on the altar in the tabernacle, alit by flaming candles, and sunlight shafting from above. We step into the aisle and walk in line with our sisters and brothers to receive the Real Presence. We become one Body, the Church, the Bride of Christ.

Christians experience a miracle many times over in the consecration of bread and wine. But they also receive a miracle many times over in the many becoming one. We who have been divided by race, abilities, genders, beliefs, know this is true. We know this is how we should be – not divided, but undivided, united by the love of God our Creator, united by adoption, united as his children, each unique, each a part of this family of God. We know this is how it should be, how it is meant to be. And we are reminded by Scripture, by song, creed, and prayer, that we are one body before our Father in Heaven. We sing with one voice, Gloria.

We are reminded how to see the path, how to turn toward the light, how to listen and to learn and to love, for such a path transfigures and enlightens and leads us to Heaven, as one Body, the Bride of Christ.

American Fiction Writers (ACFW) has published my post today, “Worthy Words: Creative and Compelling Characters,” how Christian novelists develop compelling and creative characters transfigured by truth, beauty, and righteousness, linking Earth and Heaven, the third in a series on writing from a Christian perspective. Thank you, ACFW.

We are in the long, green, growing season of the Church Year, a season that is seasoned with Paul’s letters to the first Christian churches, and the miracles and teachings of Christ. We heard today in Paul’s Epistle that the wages of sin is death, that as servants of sin we were free from righteousness and without fruit; we were paid with death. But as servants of God, our fruit is holiness and everlasting life through Jesus Christ (Romans 6:19+). In the Gospel (Mark 8:1+) we hear of Christ’s miracle when he fed the four thousand, those traveling to hear him preach from the hillside, turning seven loaves and a few fishes into many, a witness to his divinity and a precursor to the institution of the Holy Eucharist on the night before he was crucified.

It is a time of learning and listening, this green season of Trinitytide.

And so I reflected on the last two weeks and the graced chance to attend daily noon Mass at St. Joseph’s during their seminary residential session. Each morning I decided whether I would go that day, for I have many home commitments that require my presence. But the Real Presence waited for me on the simple altar in our chapel, urging me with that still small voice, nudging me to be present at all ten of the weekday Eucharists.

The daily feeding enriched me beyond measure, in a way that I find miraculous and precious. Each day I asked, “What will you show me today?” “What part of my soul needs healing?” so that the effort seemed to work out – the scheduling, the lack of planning, the spontaneity. Ten great gifts for me at the altar. Ten meals for my soul. Ten fruits harvested. Ten seeds planted to flower with faithful watering.

A friend of mine, the vicar of our chapel, showed me a website a number of years ago. There were boys singing in a cathedral a lyrical song I wasn’t familiar with, since it wasn’t in our hymnal. They sang “Great Is Thy Faithfulness.” Their voices soared in the space, and they sang as though they too soared, flying into the domes and beyond into Heaven. I never forgot that, those voices and those words so plaintive and grateful, and I looked up the song later and learned it. It has become one of my favorites, and from time to time we sing it from printed sheets in our chapel.

For it is faithfulness that teaches us about righteousness and the Kingdom of Heaven. It is daily prayer, daily song, daily ritual morning and evening that brings us into God’s presence. Most of the time, the routine is just that, routine, but I have found that as I memorize the words they come from someplace deep inside my heart, and my conversation with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit becomes more real, feeding me, so that I am better able to recognize sin and to know righteousness. The daily conversation gives me the sight that is needed to see, the nutrients needed to flower.

Faithfulness can be boring, to be sure, and even with this slight annoyance we learn discipline and fortitude. A bit at a time, a still small voice at a time, so that compiled in years upon years (my threescore and fifteen as I write this) the whisper becomes a chorus of angels. Along the way are many dry times, and faithfulness bridges these deserts in the heart. Faithfulness says, go to Mass even if you don’t feel like it.

Faithfulness means getting off the couch and stepping out the door and traveling to Sunday Mass, often at a cost to our immediate comfort. Perhaps it is the cost, the discipline, that feeds more faithfulness, for in time it becomes easier and easier to keep the feast and observe the fast of comfort.

Faithfulness means recognizing and responding to the gifts others have given you – an invitation to teach Sunday School, a chance to sing in the choir, a sign-up for the local mission and its food drive or soup kitchen. We open our hearts and minds to these sudden moments, evaluating if they are sent by God to help s grow green and fruitful and righteous. An elderly friend of mine at the age of 82 faithfully tidies the pews, putting books back, each Sunday. She will be rewarded.

Faithfulness multiplies just as those loaves and fishes multiplied on the hillside. Christ as our creator is not challenged by creating more out of his own creation. And so he multiplies the loaves and the fishes. Just so, he multiplies the graces and blessings in our lives as we open our hearts to his will. Our faithful attendance, seemingly a little thing, begets others to be faithful as well, and then they beget others’, so that many sheep hear the Shepherd’s call, and many seeds are sown in the desert.

Today my heart is full because I took those little baby steps each day to go to the noon Mass. I shall remember these two weeks for a long time, and I shall magnify their presence in my soul with each Sunday eucharist, all the while looking forward to our Seminary Summer Session 2023.

For great is thy faithfulness, O God my father. Call me to be faithful too.

This last week I’ve been attending the St. Joseph of Arimathea Seminary (SJATC) residential summer session weekday noon Masses, in Berkeley, at our St. Joseph’s Chapel, open to the public. Each Mass is celebrated by a different priest, and yet the liturgies are the same. The result is a colorful, fascinating, and enriching experience of the Holy Eucharist.

The long wooden benches are lined up against the side walls, as in a chancel where the seminarians sing facing one another in monastic fashion, as in the old abbeys. The acoustics in this barrel-vaulted space are excellent, allowing for chanting, singing of the Mass, and thundering organ.

The sun slants in through clerestory windows high above and there are moments when the crucifix is lightened as the sun travels through the skies. The tiled floor gleams and shimmers, reflecting the movement around the altar and the kneeling of the worshipers. Abp. Robert Morse (1923-2015) of blessed memory oversaw the building of this chapel on the corner of Bowditch and Durant in the 1970’s and was wise, considering all the turmoil then, and now today, not to have street level windows. Those church windows that were street-level in those days were often destroyed by rioters, and the parishes forced to rebuild.

While the chapel was designed as a chancel without a nave that would seat a congregation, even so, a small parish assembles here on Sundays, and we often set up folding chairs, turning the choir space into a small nave. But it is good to see the chancel return to its original purpose, even if only for two weeks.

And so we sang praises to God all week and received His Real Presence, again and again, in the consecrated elements of bread and wine, to fortify our souls, our minds, our bodies. Daily Mass draws you deeper into Our Lord’s love, His compassion for his people, and opens your eyes to those around you in a new way. The Mass says, “He in us and we in Him.” And so it is, and is compounded each day, so that by the end of the week, we have been enriched beyond measure.

On the weekend between the two weeks, today, the clergy and seminarians are assigned various churches in the Bay Area to assist in the Holy Liturgy. When our Bp. Ashman is here he often confirms at St. Peter’s Parish, Oakland, our sister parish in the East Bay. And so I attended St. Peter’s today, and witnessed the glorious descent of the Holy Spirit upon the confirmand, the joyous hymns, the majestic processions, all a part of reaching for the Eternal on Earth, reaching for the resurrection of Christ and thus, of our own bodies and souls.

In our parishes of traditional Anglicans (Anglican Province of Christ the King) we face the altar, and we honor Our Lord with music that transcends time, going back to St. Ambrose of the fourth century. Our hymnal is a poetic treasury of history, a history of the love of God expressed in song.

I stepped out of the week, down the steps of St. Peter’s, a bit giddy, not on wine, but on the love of Christ for us, that our Creator has blessed us so abundantly with His own Presence, His own Holy Spirit, so that one day we will appear before the throne of God the Father, in judgment, defended by Our Lord Jesus. One day we will be together again, all those who went before us and after us, bound by the love of God, gathered together at the river that runs by the throne. I’m hoping for a place in the heavenly choir or at least near them to hear them sing. But I’ll be happy just being there. It will be magnificent.

In the meantime I’m looking forward to another week of noon Holy Eucharists at St. Joseph’s.

For videos of the processional and recessional of the St. Peter’s Confirmation today, please visit our Facebook page, St. Joseph of Arimathea Chapel.

Our university chapel near UC Berkeley, St. Joseph’s, on the corner of Durant and Bowditch, is looking forward to hosting two weeks of our Anglican Province of Christ the King (APCK) Seminary Summer Session, beginning tomorrow. One of the students had already arrived and helped us out with this morning’s liturgy.

With the exaggerated pandemic scare, the annual residential summer session for this online program was cancelled, and we have not had a summer session since 2019, so it is with particular joy that we look forward to assembling in person once again.

While I don’t attend the classes due to other commitments, I try and go to the weekday noon Mass, open to the public at 12:15, as often as possible. To see the seminarians and deacons and priests and bishops sing the liturgy together is richly rewarding. Some of the students are testing their vocations and haven’t decided whether God is calling them to this form of discipleship. Some are middle aged, retired from secular careers. Some are young. But all enter the vaulted domed chapel knowing it is sacred ground.

We have a history with the chapel going back to 1974 when the first shovel entered the ground to build this unique church. 1976 is the date of the consecration to St. Joseph of Arimathea, the Apostle to England. Scripture tells us he is the rich man who gave his tomb for the body of Christ. He helped bury him. Legend tells us that he received the Holy Grail from Christ, the cup of the Last Supper before his death. As a tin merchant he traveled to the southern coast of France, worked his way up to the Channel and into the marshy coast of England. He planted his staff where he chose to evangelize, Glastonbury, and the staff flowered. There are other marvel-ous tales about St. Joseph, and today you can see the outline of a cathedral in the tall grasses.

 You can climb up to Glastonbury Tor and see the surrounding countryside. I wrote about Glastonbury and St. Joseph in my third novel of a pilgrimage trilogy, Inheritance (OakTara 2009). We have visited many times and been entranced with the sacredness of the place even today. The book cover is the view from the Tor.

And so our little chapel in Berkeley is an Anglican chapel seeking to evangelize the West all over again, since in many ways it has lost it’s compass. Speech is cancelled. Parents are branded terrorists. Churches are set on fire. Civil civilization seems a thing of the past, and now even the past is cancelled to create a new truth, a new “narrative,” an indoctrination of our young.

I have read and am told by a brave and honest pediatrician I respect that children are being torn from their families, programmed in woke schools, essentially setting the children against their parents. When the parents object the parents are branded domestic terrorists. She has offered her own expertise in testifying, should these parents go to court to defend their rights. She is Dr. Monique Robles and her recent post about being a medical expert witness can be found on her blog.

Our culture has reached a new low. As an early Baby Boomer (born 1947) I recall the riots in the Bay Area in the sixties. This is far worse. For the Woke have swallowed our institutions of freedom: free and fair elections, a free press, an honest academia, an impartial judiciary, equality under the law, respect for police and other enforcement, the teaching of the past to understand the present, particularly in terms of national history and pride in country, and borders defining our nation.

And so it was with a deep sigh of thankfulness that I listened this morning to our priest speak of St. Peter and how Our Lord formed him into a true and strong and faithful apostle, one that would bear the Great Commission (Go into all the lands…). We know it took some forming, this fisherman who was told to catch a different kind of fish. We know the stories of Peter, and there are many in Scripture, how Christ tested his faith and his stamina, again and again, until he was forged in the fire of God’s love. He had a big heart, and this heart became sanctified with this forging. Our seminary seeks to do the same, forging priests who can bear their times, teach to their times, sanctify their times, the age to which they are called. The chapel welcomes others as well, parishioners, worshipers of all ages, some students for a short time come to us, some local residents attend, yearning to touch the holy.

We are small in numbers compared with the mainline churches, but the smallness keeps us humble, and one could say, more intimate and endearing. We know we are needed, every one of us, in this great mission, this co-mission, to spread the net of love over our land and bring in souls to sanctify. For Peter did this, our priest said today, he spread his net of love, and the net keeps growing, held firmly by Our Lord and his people.

Welcome, St. Joseph of Arimathea Anglican Seminary! Welcome to St. Joseph’s Collegiate Chapel.

APCK Seminary Summer Session, July 18-29, 2022

Weekday liturgies open to the public: Morning Prayer, 9:00 a.m.; Noon Mass, 12:15 p.m.; Evensong, 5:15 p.m. All welcome.

Reaching for the Resurrection, A Pastoral Bioethics: Essays on Loneliness, Aloneness, Euthanasia, Meaning, Anorexia, Brain Death, Conversion, and the Death and Resurrection of Christ by Francis Etheredge (St. Louis, MO: En Route Books and Media, 2022) 145 pp.

Reviewed by Christine Sunderland

Francis Etheredge begins by considering his title: “We are reaching for the resurrection because, in all humility, we are in front of human freedom and the mystery of God’s dialogue with us in His word and in our prayers… the dialogue that leads to life, whether life lived fully here (cf. Jn 10:10) or the fullness of eternal life” (14). And so we enter the conversation as well, listening and learning.

Human freedom allows suffering, and yet God is with us in that freedom and in those sufferings. So we reach for Christ in His sufferings, for they not only inform our sufferings, giving them meaning and purpose, but transform them, allowing transcendence. By realizing that even our death informs our life, we reach with “outstretched gratitude” to meet the Lord of Life. Celebrating life, we look forward to seeing those who have gone before, and “accompanied by our guardian angel we come into the presence of the all enflaming God” (22).

Most of us have been touched by suffering. Francis Etheredge helps us reason our way through the woods of who and what we are as human beings, created by a loving God. The author knows suffering too, in the past without meaning and purpose, at one time suicidal. God reached for him and touched him through a picture of Christ’s Holy Face (the shroud of Turin) and later through Christ’s crucifix. In time, he began to see how faith and reason, religion and science, were complementary to one another, indeed, elucidated one another. His conversion to Christianity was a resurrection to new life, and he entered the mystery of God’s dialogue with us, in His word and our prayers. He invites us to do the same, to enter the mystery of life and of suffering.

For while freedom allows sin, and sin causes suffering, there is hope: “God created everything out of nothing so He can make a new beginning for the sinner” (36). God enters our humanity, our very flesh, because he is Creator of all, for “as He is true God and true man He is… the living intersection of all relationships: both with God and with the whole of creation” (65) (italics mine).

And so we see that both physical and mental illness is often caused by a lack of meaning and purpose. Yet when we reach for Christ, we can live life fully with meaningful purpose. We embrace life, all human life created by Him and loved by Him, from life in the womb to life in Eternity. Physical death becomes part of the great arc of life, another kind of living in another time and space, what we are meant to become.

I came of age in the mid ‘sixties in the San Francisco Bay Area, when the cult of self, drugs, and sex entered mainstream culture, a culture divided by Vietnam War protests and UC Berkeley riots. So-called science and well-intended feminism gave us the birth control pill which led to the celebration of promiscuity and the disintegration of the family. As women, we were told to be thin, indeed social-pressured to be thin, which led to anorexia, the anti-life starving of women and girls. We were objectified, told to have multiple partners with meaningless hookups. We were mere flesh to be used and to use others. Feminism gave men a gift some cherish today, easy sex and legal abortion and no responsibility. We were told motherhood was for simpletons and careers for the bright ones with purpose. This cult of lies spanned decades to the present day, erasing God, mocking authority, celebrating deviancy, and raising generations of loners who express despair by shooting innocents in churches, temples, schools, theaters, and parades. Our cities have become scenes of riots and burnings.

As I write this, the demonic belly of this amoral cult of death seems obvious, as if I could trace the path of destruction leading to today’s anarchy. But many Christians, myself included, didn’t see the red flags along the way. Etheredge notes that Pope St. Paul VI warned us in 1968 in Humanae Vitae, addressing birth control and its mortal and moral significance to our culture. Looking back, how right he was, and looking back, many of us wish they had been Catholics and avoided the health risks attendant upon hormones and invasive surgery. We watched the culture slip away through books, movies, music, the fine arts, all reflecting and encouraging the cult of self and nihilistic materialism, and pronouncing the death of meaning, goodness, truth, and beauty. How can we return to a culture of life amidst the scientific advances that threaten life?

In this volume of bioethics for today, Etheredge calls for scientists to reclaim their consciences, for “the law in us by nature commands whatever conserves human life and opposes death” (149). He asks, “where is the judgment of others about his [the scientist’s] conduct?” (52). He warns that “society imperils itself as it departs from the heart of morality: that good is to be pursued and evil avoided… so the law in us by nature commands whatever conserves human life and opposes death” (187).

He questions what doctors call “brain death,” even when a heartbeat is present. We must consider the good of the whole person: physical, mental, spiritual. And what is the scientific definition of life? Life begins, Etheredge affirms, at the moment of fertilization, and this moment of conception entails the unfolding of the whole human person, and all that this means. For we must protect that life, if we are listening to our consciences, our natural moral law.

Insightfully, the author writes that we are a people of relationship. In fact, we were conceived in relationship to our parents and to God who has ensouled us: “Thus, the human loss, whether through miscarriage or abortion, is a suffering in an existing relationship; and, therefore, death entails relationship, just as life does” (64). And we recall that Christ is the living intersection of all relationships.

Conversion is another resurrection, for we are called to live life fully. Our penitence requires a change of heart, for if our suffering is to be purposeful and meaningful, it must be joined to the Cross to be resurrected with Christ. And a change of heart must be “expressed in a change in behaviour” (70). We must sin no more.

Francis Etheredge recounts how he learned to reach for the resurrection, to change, and this account as well as his professional credentials gives authenticity to these beautifully written meditations on the mystery of freedom and God’s dialogue with us in His word and our prayers. Even so, he warns that “it is not automatic that the door of Christ’s suffering opens so that we begin to discover the significance of our own suffering too; indeed, it has taken many years of listening to His word and understanding that it both uncovers who we are and who He is” (78).

The seven chapters and epilogue weave similar themes together to create a work that is good, true, and beautiful, a seamless robe of many colors. This is the way with truth. It is reaffirmed again and again in varying accounts of human life. And the truth of Christ’s incarnation and resurrection, and what that means for us in this dialogue of love, answer profound questions we ignore to our peril.

Highly recommended for book discussion groups, schools, and parishes.

Francis Etheredge, Catholic husband, father of 11, 3 of whom are in heaven, is author of 13 books on Amazon. He holds a BA Div, an MA in Catholic Theology, a PGC in Biblical Studies, a PGC in Higher Education, and an MA in Marriage and Family. Visit him at LinkedIn and En Route Books and Media.  

Christine Sunderland is author of seven award-winning literary novels about faith, family, freedom, and the sanctity of human life. Her most recent novel is Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock, 2020), set east of UC Berkeley about a Jewish holocaust survivor who becomes a Christian hermit living in the sandstone caves of Mount Diablo and preaching from the mountainside.