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Much has been written of late, with implied hand-wringing and dire glances, that we have no presidential candidate worthy of the contest, that we may as well give up, that American politics have become a sham. The whining and squirming, the blame game and character assassination, the robust (to put it kindly) reportage on page and screen, has distorted and darkened this election year.

It is as though a cloud lies over the land. We are discouraged.

And yet, in this time of unprecedented peril at home and abroad, emotions running high may be just the medicine required. For voters don’t read much. Schools watered down history and civics generations ago. Patriotism, citizenship, and freedom are no longer mentioned. I heard that a few schools still say the Pledge of Allegiance, but far more do not, and an uncounted number of schools shame America, slinging mud upon her history of “oppression.” But America is not the oppressor.

In this time of the very real, clear, and present danger of nuclear threat from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran, it is time for Americans to wake up. The United States has become a sleeping giant on the world stage, and when a giant sleeps, others move in and take up residence. We are perceived as uninvolved, desiring illusionary peace at the expense of true peace. Will we wake in time? We have disarmed our military, weakened our intelligence. We have drugged our children with shallow entertainment – movies, Internet, games. We have dumbed down public education, causing a great divide between those who vote and those who rule.

While I do not agree with all of Mr. Trump’s policies, and I will admit he was not my first choice in the primaries, I do see a dire need to shake up Washington D.C. And I believe that this hands-on businessman will assemble the requisite team of experts to advise him in areas he realizes he is not an expert. He understands, whether or not articulated perfectly, the threats to our nation at home and abroad. And he is not afraid to face what must be faced for our country’s survival. I admire his courage and savvy in his remarkable race for the presidential nomination over the last year. He has shown he has the ability to study and master new challenges. He has the drive, energy, and will to protect us. And he loves America, and he loves Americans.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former prime minister of Denmark and a former secretary-general of NATO, wrote in the Wall Street Journal recently that the United States must be the world’s policeman. We are the only nation that has the capacity to deter the forces that threaten democracy, the only nation with the moral fiber to effect this:

“It has become a cliche to talk about the ‘global village.’ But right now, the village is burning, and the neighbors are fighting in the light of the flames. Just as we need a policeman to restore order, we need a firefighter to put out the flames of conflict, and a kind of mayor, smart and sensible, to lead the rebuilding.”

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson writes of the explosive threats throughout the world coupled with a disengaged and tired United States: “War, unlike individual states, does not sleep.” He compares this quiet to the summer quiet before the storms of 1914 and 1939.

George F. Will states that “Modern tyrannies depend on state control of national memories.” In other words, they rewrite history, erasing unfriendly facts. Just so, the study of true history, the past not filtered by political correctness, is necessary for modern democracies to survive. Voters must face what is truly at stake in this time of national forgetting. They must understand so much – and they have not been taught what they need to remember.

And so we consider the candidates and their parties and who is best qualified to engage honestly the problems besetting our nation and our world. For the two – nation and world – are interconnected. If the world goes wrong, we will be part of the resulting firestorm. We will be oppressed by tyranny. Freedom will be something in the far distant past, a word we have erased from our national memory, having refused to teach it to our children. We have refused to face who we are and what we must be as citizens in a free country, a country still governed by a rule of law, a country still striving to honor the dignity of every citizen.

The first presidential debate is tomorrow evening, Monday, September 26, 9-10:30 Eastern. Each of us must see through the media circus and hype. We must judge wisely, adding these words of debate to the tabulated evidence we have accumulated over the last year. We must be our own experts, seeing with unfiltered vision, clear lenses. We must consider the candidates.

Political parties are about policy. Candidates are about character. We vote for the candidate who has the character necessary to truly lead, not from behind, but ahead, with the means and wisdom to study the issues, to assemble a fearless team of experts to advise him, and who is unafraid to confront the realities of rogue states on the march into the power vacuums we have created. We must, above all, vote for honesty and integrity. We must vote for someone to stand up for us against the bullies, whether they be in Washington D.C., Russia, or Iran.

Death is all around us, in nature, in our families and communities. In my own circle of family and friends we have been visited by death way too often over the last few months. Some friends died after living long lives, but others succumbed to illness much too soon. When our sweet black-and-white longhair cat, Lady Jane, died suddenly on Tuesday morning, I held her in my arms and cried. I cried for all of them, I think, all the lives gone, at least from this world. Lady Jane helped me write my novels as well as this blog, sitting on my desk or in my lap (a challenge), purring loudly, finally slipping into a silent happy snooze. Life and death, I thought as I held her, are so very close to one another.

But yesterday I held my great granddaughter, four months old, in my arms. She was warm and soft and smelled of baby, a unique fragrance, a hopeful aroma. Death seemed far away as I looked into her bright inquisitive eyes and felt her legs push, her fragile fingers grab onto mine. Here was life, a child of love, and a child of the future. She would see the next millennium.

The stakes are high for America and her future. The price of freedom is often the willingness to fight for it. Fighting sometimes means dying. But we are a nation of brave warriors and true-lovers. We have fought for liberty before and will again. We will fight for those whom we love, for our families, for our nation, and for the world. We will wake, watch, listen, and we will decide our future.

There are times when words carry so much weight the burden is either overwhelming or empowering.

Words filled with pride, arrogance, and contempt build walls that often cannot be breached. They are words that intend separation from the hearer, as though by building a barrier of disgust and derision, the speaker is somehow sanitized. True believers of any persuasion, political or religious, are tempted by this desire to be clean, and history has shown this to be true with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and earlier in the religious purges of both Protestants and Catholics. Perhaps every era could own to these times of scorn and cleansing. 

At an LGBT event in New York City (September 9?), Mrs. Clinton pulled out those weighty hate words when she said:

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric. Now some of those folks, they are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

According to recent definitions of hate speech, where the listener or reader defines such speech by his (or her) degree of disagreement and offense, would I qualify to file charges against Mrs. Clinton for making me feel wronged, slandered, or offended? I certainly do feel wronged, slandered, and offended. Or perhaps I simply need a “safe space” with nice music and soft pillows such as universities now offer students to escape words that trigger their disagreement and nurse their wounded feelings.

But then, thanks to Dr. Ben Carson and many others have challenged the heir apparent. For many highly esteemed Americans found Mrs. Clinton’s words deplorable and irredeemable. Dr. Carson used words that make sense and unify, rather than divide. He appealed to reason, not emotions:

“I believe in expanding opportunity, not welfare; that’s not racist. I believe every life is worth protecting, particularly the unborn; that doesn’t make me sexist. I believe marriage is between one man and one woman; that’s not homophobic. I believe in borders, the rule of law and our sovereign right to decide who to let into our country; that’s not xenophobic. I believe radical Islam is a mortal threat to America and Western civilization; that is common sense, not Islamophobia.”

I agree with Dr. Carson and do not consider myself racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, or Islamophobic. I also consider myself an American and, just to be clear, quite redeemable.

It is the glory of these United States that our states are still united. Sort of, loosely. But that is how federalism works – a give and take, a respect for honest debate, never forgetting respect for other points of view, the right to speak peacefully.

I thought of this suddenly as I was speaking about my new novel, The Fire Trail, at Orinda Books yesterday. I wondered if free speech was truly dying, that liberty was no longer protected by law: When a baker is forced to go against her beliefs and take part in a forbidden ceremony; when schools are forced to go against their creeds and support forbidden “health” procedures; when preachers are jailed for preaching their beliefs, when climate change deniers are sued by climate change supporters; when “politically incorrect” speakers are targeted by the IRS.

When the executive and judicial branches of our government take over the legislative branch, it certainly appears like tyranny, downsizing to one branch.

The trends are clear, and it remains for every voter to judge the outcome in the next election, which may be our last. For speech is no longer free. Debate is silenced in the name of a morally superior oligarchy, an elite network of wealthy pundits in media, academia and government who desire to silence America through intimidation, derision, and contempt.  

But yesterday, free speech was alive and well at my local bookstore. I enjoyed introducing my characters to a few readers who encouraged me with their rapt attention and complete silence. No one shuffled. No one glazed over. I could almost hear their minds ticking and their hearts beating. I introduced my characters: Jessica and Zachary, grad students burned by unintended consequences of the sexual revolution and the fragmentation of American culture. I introduced Father Nate and his five cats and his crippled brother Nicholas in the upstairs bedroom. We entered Laurie’s Fine Books on College Avenue, the bells jangling, to meet the proprietress from Kenya and bask in her dazzling smile. And lastly, we heard Anna, fifty-seven, Comerford House docent, recount her memories of Nine-Eleven as she gazes at an American flag, rippling in the breeze at half-mast on the front porch of the house museum.

My guests at the book reading were quiet and attentive, because they were free to roam within my language, characters, and scenes, without thought of punishment. And I was free to speak.

But I feel fear is silencing America. We fear being thought unfeeling, unkind, mean. We want to be good, we want to see ourselves as good. Perhaps we are proud and should repent, but that is between each of us and our God, not Washington D.C. Regardless of our state of goodness, we are afraid we will be placed in the camp of the Evil Offenders, put in the village stocks or sentenced to exile by family, community, and nation, all for our deeply held beliefs.

It is not too late to correct the course. But tyranny triumphs when good men (and women) do nothing. Now who said that? Sounds like it might offend someone somewhere.

Today, Nine-Eleven-Sixteen, our preacher preached quietly, soberly, his hands folded, his gestures muted, speaking about America’s history from the head of the central aisle. Behind him the marble altar held the veiled tabernacle centered between the flaming candles. The red Sanctus lamp burned, suspended high, and the medieval crucifix rose beyond, victorious. It is the place where we re-member the sacrifice of Christ in the action of the Mass. We bring him among us in the bread and the wine.

What happens, he asked, when a civilization no longer re-members its history? No longer teaches its history to the next generation through school and family, cultural icons and festivals? Nations who do not re-member, who do not recreate and bring into the present the best of their past, dis-member their present. They pull apart, disintegrate. But civilizations do not naturally remember, he reminded us. Each of us must teach our children and inform our culture or it will be dis-membered. There must be active intent on our part to pass on our faith as well as our culture.

Many are concerned we are flinging apart, dis-membering into warring communities. We live in a culture of the present that is contemptuous of the past. If we re-member our history, we re-member the wounds and the wrongs. We need to re-member the goods and the greats of the past. This is the history we must reweave into our national life story.

Not all cultures dishonor their history as we do. Islam respects its past, re-members it into their present. Al-Qaeda chose September 11 purposefully as a re-membering of September 11, 1683 at the gates of Vienna. Vienna guarded the borders of Christendom. The Ottoman Empire desired to conquer the West. Since Mohammed, the Muslim call to conquer the world has threatened Western Christian states who have, in time, built a legacy of freedom and democracy. On September 11, 1683, the Turks met defeat at the gates of Vienna, and the course of history changed. Vienna was spared, as was the Christian West. A good re-membrance of the importance and nature of the battle (after a 3 month siege and 300 years of warfare) can be found at Islam Watch where former Muslims explain Islam and its character.

And so the battle came into the present, on our own homeland, fifteen years ago today in New York City. The invaders attacked not only our people but our way of life, our beliefs, our freedom, our Judeo-Christian culture.

Our way of life, our culture, is a product of the Judeo-Christian belief in the God-given dignity of each person regardless of race, gender, handicap, age, born and unborn. It is a culture based on respect for one another, and we strive to protect these “natural” rights. But we seem to have forgotten where they come from. John Stuart Mill in On Liberty as well as Susan Nold in the Wall Street Journal agree that democracy will not survive if it is taken for granted.

Assuming democracy will forever structure our way of life, we cherish our differences, for this is who we are. We welcome law abiding immigrants. Most desire to support our democratic freedoms, for our liberty and laws protect and encourage flourishing, turning despair into hope. But it is, to be sure, a single unique culture that provides these benefits – the Judeo-Christian Western culture. It is this single culture that allows the multi-cultures to live together in mutual respect.

This is the great irony, or perhaps the tragic flaw embedded within democracy. Cultures that do not share the Western heritage do not desire multiculturalism. They desire their own to the exclusion of others. If we take Judeo-Christian foundations for granted or, worse, despise and reject them as exclusive not inclusive, we will dis-member our nation and our world.

I attended a fascinating Writers Club meeting yesterday, where a Persian-American author, raised in the Bay Area, spoke about mining our individual cultural heritage. She used the example of objects passed through generations as living artifacts of memory. She spoke of past journeys, migrations, immigrations and emigrations, crucial to character and plot.

She is speaking, of course, of history, its huge importance to us all, to humanity, and most importantly to Americans. For no other culture enjoys peace and celebrates freedom as we do. Through the centuries since Plato and Aristotle, since Augustine and Bede and Aquinas, since Locke and Paine, Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin, it has been this single culture birthed by Britain that defines America. We have this immense legacy, this strong foundation. But without re-membering, we will crumble. There have other systems in the West, of course, but they have been sporadic attempts fraught with revolution and purges. Only England produced Magna Carta, developed common law, trial by jury, representative rule. America improved upon this new Eden, abolishing monarchies, ensuring freedom of religion, and producing a written constitution.

To pretend this is not the case, that all cultures are equal, is foolhardy at best, dis-membering and suicidal at worst. As we embrace many races from multi-nations, let us re-member as heirs of the Judeo-Christian civilization that we will always have enemies who hate our generosity, our freedoms, our respect for one another. There will always be those who desire total surrender and sameness. They will fly captive planes into our centers of free enterprise on historic anniversaries. They will bomb our theaters and public spaces. They will massacre those who express their freedom of dress or manners in public. Their goal has been consistent and clear since the seventh century, desiring annihilation of the infidel. Infidels include peaceful Muslims, Christians, Jews, gays, women unveiled, men unbelieving.

My recent novel, The Fire Trail, a literary suspense set at UC Berkeley, re-members September 11, 2001 in its central chapters. I will be reading from the novel this Saturday at Orinda Books, 3 p.m., unveiled, in public, my speech, so far at least, free. Hope you can come by. It is a time of recognition and gratitude for what we have been given: this glorious nation with its precious heritage to preserve for the next generation. It is a time to remember and not dismember who we are.

Man is a curious combination of opposites, desiring both community and isolation. The distance we keep between one another is a function of many factors, but our relationships have always been complicated. Even that closest connection – mother and child – is fraught with distance varying in time, in place, beset by darkness, illumined by light.

What closes this distance between one another? Love. Selfless, sacrificial love. How do we know this? Christ came among us and showed us how. He bridged the distance between us and God, so that we could do the same between one other.

This morning in the Sunday School the sunflower seeds planted last week had sprouted in their bright pails. Tiny green leaves had pushed through the dark soil toward the light of the window. A new creature had been born from the loamy cocoon just as a child is born from the watery womb. New life had appeared from those simple seeds.

As we sang our song in our circle about the saints of God, the children had an attack of the giggles. I watched as the condition spread like contagious happiness from one child to the other. The joy grew and colored the air as they laughed at silly things, small exaggerations of hand movements as we sang. Finally as we collapsed in hysterics, I eyed my trusty ten-year-old assistant. She snapped her fingers and all slowly grew calm, the giggles subsiding to happy ripples of contentment. We returned to our song with added energy.

Now, as I remember that laughter and its contagion, I know the little distance, such as it was, between each of us, collapsed. We were close as close could be in the shared silliness of the moment. And in the shared hour to come we laced ourselves even closer. It was like tightening a shoe so that it wouldn’t come off, so that the canvas was one with the foot. Other Sunday morning hours had begun the lacing. And so we would continue in the weeks to come, weaving our lives into one another’s, into God’s heart, to produce his seamless cloak of love.

Our Lord and his saints bridge distances. We learned about St. Martin of Tours today, the fourth-century Roman soldier, baptized Christian, who came upon a poor man in rags, freezing in the cold of winter. Martin took out his sword and cut his own cloak in half and gave half to the man. That night Martin dreamed that Christ appeared to him wearing the half-cloak. What Martin had done for the beggar, he had done for Christ.

The story reminded me of a program my son is involved in in Boulder, Colorado called the Reverence Movement. Offering temporary shelter to homeless women and helping to provide meals to both men and women, volunteers offer their time to bridge the class distance, to show Christ’s love. The name Reverence struck me, for reverence is the child of respect. Once we become arrogant and proud toward one another, we cannot love, we cannot revere, we cannot respect. We increase the distances.

Peggy Noonan recently wrote about the increasing separation she has observed between the ruled and the rulers, between ordinary folk and the elites. The distance is enforced with ridicule, shaming, ostracism, and physical attacks against those who differ in opinion. The distance is found throughout the political spectrum. Such distance, such contempt, such pride, will destroy us.

Our country was founded on the basis of equal opportunity for all, free association, free speech, freedom of religion. It was founded on the Judeo-Christian idea of the dignity of the individual, for every man and woman is created and loved by God. It was a revolutionary idea, fraught with challenges as diverse races entered the population. Could these distances be bridged? Could slavery be abolished? Could opportunities be equal? Could the work place and the community reflect a rule of law determined by the majority with respect for the minority? Could each and every one of us be treated with reverence?

We are human beings and live in semi-darkness. Evil exists. Bad things happen and men turn away from the light. It has been a great challenge. And yet America has survived by bridging the distances between her citizens.

Our shared humanity means we share one another’s sufferings. We know we must admit our failings, clean out our hearts, if we are to respect others. We know we are equal in the eyes of a loving God. We know that the beggar in the cold is Christ.

This morning, having watered their sunflowers and colored a picture of St. Martin, the children trooped with balloons flying high downstairs to the parish hall for hot dogs and chips and cookies, their love lacing them together and sending them into the future, a future of hope and laughter, closing all distances in a gaggle of giggles.

The children were eager this morning to be photographed with their pink and green pails under the window in our bright Sunday School room. Natalie, age six, stood on one side of the planting tray, her head tilted like an elfin faerie, and Luisa, age four, stood on the other, devoutly serious.

Earlier we learned about the saints and sang the hymn, “I sing a song of the saints of God…” First we gathered in a circle and invited Our Heavenly Father to join us by praying, Our Father, who art in Heaven.… Next we sang our thanksgiving song and shared our snack. Then came the story-lesson, and we learned about Joan of Arc, how she was a shepherdess on the green who listened to God speaking to her, and led an army and saved France from the enemy. After all, as the hymn says, One was a doctor, and one was a queen, and one was a shepherdess on the green. They were all of them saints of God, and I mean, God helping to be one too.

Today was also our planting day, and just as the story of listening to God had been planted in our ears and hearts, we planted sunflower seeds in pails of soil. But they needed sun, light from the skies. We contemplated the tall windows and how to place the pails on the tilting sills. We would have to build a structure for our seeds to reach the light. We placed a chair under the windows, still too low. Then I spied the cardboard building blocks and we built a tower on top of the chair. It reached high enough. The tray of pails was placed carefully on the top of the blocks. When the sun comes slanting through the glass in the coming days, the seeds will feel the light and sprout, escaping the dark. They will be born again, emerging from their loamy cocoon, green stems growing tall.

This reaching for the light, this moving outside ourselves to something greater and more wondrous is an innate human longing. We long for God, in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17).

The saints understood and named this longing. They recognized the voice, heard the melody, obeyed the commands. They knew the light of love, the vision of eternity. They knew Christ.

In Sunday School we say the Nicene Creed, for it states what we believe about who we are and who we are meant to be. It is the creed we say in our grown-up service, and Sunday School is largely about preparing for the day when the children grow up, become adults in the Church. On that day they will re-affirm, confirm, their Baptismal vows with their own Confirmation vows. And as we learn the Nicene Creed, we come to know our God of love, our God who became one of us, to bring us home to him.

As we said together the first lines of the Creed, I understood suddenly that the words made me reach for concepts up, up, and away, stretching high. These are grand theological statements, formulated to quell fourth-century heresy and settle unsettled doctrine. And so, there in that Sunday School room, sitting on tiny chairs, we pondered and stretched our minds and hearts to fully understand the mystery of the Incarnation (God in flesh), the Trinity (God in three persons), and Love (God is Love).

When one of my assistants asked what “begotten” meant, I paused, reaching for the light that would fully explain what great theologians have pondered for thousands of years. I gazed at the words again.

“I BELIEVE in one God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, And of all things visible and invisible: And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God; Begotten of his Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of very God; Begotten, not made; Being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made…”

“Good question,” I said, stalling. Then I realized the answer was in the next phrase. “Our Lord Jesus Christ was one substance with the Father. He was and is the Logos, the Word, the expression of God the Father, expression in human flesh. So Christ was fully human and fully God.” I think my young assistant understood, at least as well as any of us understand this miraculous mystery of love. “The Son is the only way we can truly know the Father, the God of all creation, heaven and earth, the Lord of all.”

Little Luisa asked, “God made everything?” She opened her palms matter-of-factly.

“He did,” I said.

“Even houses?” her older sister said seriously.

“What are houses made of?” I asked, tossing the question back.

“Wood.”

“Where did the wood come from?”

Natalie grinned. “Trees! God made the trees!”

I nodded. “And who built the house with the wood?”

“People!”

“And who made the people?”

“God!” Natalie shouted.

Luisa had grown thoughtful. “God does all the work.”

I laughed. “He does indeed. Through you and me. But we have to say yes first. It’s our choice.”

As we sang  I sing a song of the saints of God, faithful and brave and true, I realized the saints were those, like Mary our Mother, who said yes to God. They longed for him, just as our sunflower seeds longed for the sun coming through the window.

And now, the colors of the morning, the music and joy of our dance together in the Sunday School room, return to me like jeweled sunlight. For we stepped outside ourselves. We touched grace. We reached for the light and were warmed by the sun. Our hearts, like those seeds in the soil, embedded in the darkness of our human flesh, flowered.

In a sense we had climbed those cardboard blocks stacked on the chair under the window sill. They were like the Body of Christ, the Church, providing a way to reach for the sun, to touch the Son, to touch God.

I focused on the children standing in the light, framing their pails. I tapped the button on my camera. The panes of the window formed a cross above them, and a green leafy tree shimmered beyond.

It was good to touch God on this blessed Sunday morning.

Today traditional Anglicans celebrate the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.

The Greek spelling of the Holy Name begins with the letters IHS: ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, IHSOUS in Latin. And so, like the Chi-Rho abbreviation for Christ, IHS has come to be the symbol for the Holy Name of Jesus.

I have long been fascinated by the power of the Name of Jesus. It is used often by those who do not believe, unthinking, even shortened to “Jeez.”  And yet in my own faith-pilgrimage, the name has grown precious to me. So I wince when I hear it sworn, used lightly, in vain, and I often add to their invocation, “be praised,” turning the curse into a blessing.

Even referring to Jesus casually seems flippant, harsh on the ear. Lord Jesus, or Our Lord, sounds better, sounds more appropriate when naming the Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, both imminent and eminent.

We name our children in Baptism, sometimes calling the service a “Christening.” For in Baptism the child is made a part of Christ’s Body, the Church, through the power of the Holy Spirit in the pouring of water. He or she is Christened, brought into Christ. Adult Baptisms do not include this naming, but nevertheless these men and women are Christened, brought into Christ’s Body.

What is in a name? Nothing and everything. I am identified by my name. I am called, chosen, loved, with this name. I sign my name, and my signature is my bond, my contract to be true and faithful – in marriage, in business, in law, even in giving birth. “Sign here.”

We capitalize our names to add emphasis. But we want to blend in as well, so we simplify spellings as we move between cultures. We change our names to reinvent ourselves, to avoid the law, to hide from the press.

And so, as the years go by I have wondered about the Holy Name of Jesus and its power. Even before Christ came to earth, we were commanded not to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. When God the Son comes among us, New Testament testimony repeats again and again the power of the name of Jesus.

When Gabriel appears to Joseph in a dream, the angel announces, “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Luke 1:21).  St. Paul writes, “in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those that are in heaven, on earth, and under the earth” (Philippians 2:10). Those who “call on the name of the Lord” will be saved (Romans 10:3). 

St. John quotes Jesus: “If you ask the Father anything in my name he will give it you” (John 16:23). So we conclude our prayers with the phrase, “Through Our Lord Jesus Christ” or “In the name of Jesus.”

The Name of Jesus drives out demons, baptizes, performs miracles. The invocation of the Holy Name protects us from evil. We pray the name of Jesus, breathing in and breathing out as we move through our days, travel through our time given.

We celebrate this Holy Name of Jesus on August 7, the day after the Feast of the Transfiguration. The closeness of the festivals is appropriate, for it is on Mount Tabor that Jesus reveals himself as God’s Son once again, reflecting his own Baptism:

“And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, and was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light. And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him… behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.  And when the disciples heard it, they fell on their face, and were sore afraid. And Jesus came and touched them, and said, Arise, and be not afraid. And when they had lifted up their eyes, they saw no man, save Jesus only.” (Matthew 17)

On the mountaintop, Jesus, Son of God, bridges heaven and earth, the New Covenant with the Old Covenant. We climb His Body into Heaven, like the angels on Jacob’s ladder. His Holy Name is our cry, perhaps our hymn to Him. We are transfigured in Him, by Him, with Him, and so our faces shine as the sun, our clothing white as the light. He shares it all with us, freely. Because God – Father, Son, and Spirit – is Love, is community, is touching and arising, unafraid.

A beloved parishioner passed into that white light this last Tuesday. She was elderly and her journey here was long and faithful. She came to Church every Sunday, easing her ’66 Chevy gently into the parking lot. She dressed up to worship the Holy Name of Jesus. She wore color-coordinated skirt and jacket, hat, gloves, polished pumps kept in good condition through the decades. She kept her soul in good condition too, and she would pause to chat with the Sunday School teachers and laugh with the children. The place in her pew is bare now, empty. It will never again hold such a lover of Jesus. But then every lover of Jesus is unique, unrepeatable, unforgettable. But she glowed, transfigured. She is greatly missed already.

And so we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus, and as we sing our songs, we partake in that name, transfigured too.

Something happens in the Mass.

It has been a long time since I attended daily Mass for two weeks. True, I missed one Monday, and both Saturdays, but my grand total for the period July 17-31 was 12. Not that I was counting.

I’ve often thought that the Mass changed a person, outside and inside, body and soul. We are taught in the Anglican tradition that the bread and wine are the mystical body and blood of Christ. We are told that Christ enters the body when we receive the Eucharist. And with his entering of all the communicants at the altar, we experience a family forming the Body of Christ, one that is both physically and spiritually real. Even so, after fifty years of Eucharists, in some ways I believe this more, and in some ways I take this miracle for granted.

Many churches have liberalized and diluted this belief, as though embarrassed, as though Christ’s words in John, Chapter 6, verses 53-58, don’t exist. But our own Anglican Province of Christ the King (traditional Episcopalian) believes those words:

53: Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
54: Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55: For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56: He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57: As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
58: This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.   (KJV)

Many left him then because of those words, and many leave him today. They are, to be sure, revolutionary, astonishing words. Hard words. But our Anglican Church believes them, believes he meant them to be true.

And so we teach our postulants for Holy Orders that this is true. We act out this belief with daily Eucharists offered in residential programs at St. Joseph of Arimathea Chapel in Berkeley, the most recent session having just ended. The Noon Mass was open to the public, so I went.

I didn’t always feel like going. I had to give up my time. But to be fair, my time isn’t mine. It’s a gift, a loan from God. I have no regrets that I attended daily. My only regret is that I missed one – for a good reason – but nevertheless I missed it.

Sometimes I look back on my sixty-nine years and wonder how much of it I wasted, not listening to God’s promptings, but plunging ahead with my own ideas, my own plans, my own use of my own time, my, my, my….

So each day I arrived early to this beautiful, haunting, intimate chapel, one block from UC Berkeley. I set out a sign announcing the special Mass that day. I lit candles before the Virgin Mary icon, so that bright flames led the eye upward, up to her comforting image, holding the Christ Child. I prayed an Ave Maria. Occasionally visitors peered in, exclaiming they didn’t know this stunning chapel was here, right on the corner of Durant and Bowditch. Some stayed for the Mass. Some lingered, then moved on. Would they recall the powerful peace in this sacred space of red tiles and barrel-vaults, the austere beauty of the chancel and the white-draped altar, the primitive wooden crucifix above, the massive pipe organ in the back?

The organ is played on Sundays. It wasn’t played in the weekday Masses, but then we had melodious singing. The postulants, discerners, and clergy, robed in black, entered in silence, into the silence, and took places along benches lining the walls. Rug squares served as kneelers on the polished tiles. As the Mass danced its way through the Lessons, Creed, Absolution, Offering, Consecration, and Communion, the congregation sang responses, sang the Gloria and the Creed, sang hymns with one voice or in harmony. There were quiet “said” Masses too, spoken only, Masses mourning recent Christian martyrs, words full of reverence and love, and longing for a world at peace not war. And each Mass, celebrated by a different priest, was unique, reflecting the celebrant’s unique manner and character.

Looking back at all those liturgies, I don’t believe I noticed a great change in myself, body or spirit, until the two weeks drew to a close. But toward the end of the second week, I found I slept more deeply, prayed more clearly, and best of all, was filled with a curious bright certainty. I had spent an hour each day outside myself, offering myself, more self-less, allowing God to heal me by living within me. It was and is as though there was a change in my body and soul, perhaps producing St. Paul’s immeasurable riches of God’s grace, bringing to mind the last line of the Te Deum Laudamus.

The Te Deum Laudamus, an ancient prayer praising God and part of our Order for Morning Prayer, is said to have been sung by St. Ambrose in the Milan Cathedral as he raised St. Augustine from the baptismal pool, Easter 387 AD. Augustine sang too. The last line reflects my heart: “O Lord, in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.”

I don’t like the feeling of being confounded. Nobody does I suppose. Confusion, disorder, and division are not the works of light, not the ways of God. They cause us to “groan and travail in pain” (again St. Paul). They cause insanity, war, and hate. But in the Mass, all is sane, orderly, and united in love. The beauty is seamless like the garment at the foot of the Cross. We enter the church’s sacred space confounded by the world and leave no longer confounded. We enter with divided hearts and souls, and leave as brothers and sisters. We enter as many and leave as one. We enter, propelled by duty and commanded by love, and leave trusting God once again. Why is that? Because we leave with him in us. We pray in the Mass, that “our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us.”

We are cleaned and washed, made ready for Christ’s indwelling presence.

A friend of mine is confined to a wheelchair. He arrived at the Noon Mass confounded by the works of the City of Berkeley who had removed the sidewalk in front of our chapel in preparation for repaving. He waited on the street, barred by the disturbing curb, and looked around. I stepped outside, keeping watch. Two workers eyed the wheelchair. I eyed them, then eyed a pile of plywood. “Could you make a ramp for him with the plywood?” I asked as nicely as possible. They looked slightly confused, but then jumped to it. Soon they had laid a bridge over the river of churned dirt. My friend drove his chair to the door, grinning. “I don’t give up easily,” he said. “I noticed,” I replied happily. I think we will call this the “Miracle of the Bridge over Troubled Sidewalk.”

With his broken body imprisoned in his chair, my friend is a walking, er, rolling, testimony to the power of faith. He rings the Sanctus bells in the Mass. He prays the Our Father, the Gloria, and the Nicene Creed as though he means it, distinctly, proudly, forthrightly and righteously a part of Christ’s Body. For Christ does indeed dwell in him, in me, in all of us who partake of the Eucharist.

Thinking back on these two remarkable, miraculous weeks, I give thanks that a bit of my self was offered, a bit of my time sacrificed, all now redeemed. And I shall continue to partake. I shall continue to not be confounded, for in him have I trusted. And it is a glorious way to be.

To view video clips and photos of the Noon Masses, visit St. Joseph’s Chapel Facebook page. 

This last week I spent in seemingly alternating universes, attending daily Mass at our Anglican Seminary Summer Session at St. Joseph’s Chapel in Berkeley at mid-day, and then watching the GOP convention in the evening.  The former was quiet, focused, purposeful, and passionate. The latter was lively, energetic, excited, and passionate. The convention was the body politic that exercises freedom of speech and assembly, a gathering of devoted delegates to nominate the next President. The Seminary Summer Session was the body ecclesia that exercises its freedom of religion and worship, a gathering of devoted clergy, postulants, and men discerning their vocation.

The week was crowned with an ordination in our parish church, St. Peter’s Anglican in Oakland. It was a glorious crowning, with soaring and thunderous organ and enthusiastic hymn-singing, with a majestic and humble bishop leading our flock, with a sermon that gathered past, present, and future and made sense of them. It was glorious as the sun streamed through skylights, illuminating the medieval crucifix and the red-draped tabernacle, red to signify the Holy Spirit weaving among us. In this sacrament of ordination, God the Holy Spirit enters the heart and soul of the ordinand when the bishop, in an apostolic line dating to the original apostles, lays his palms upon the ordinand’s head, continuing the line into the future.

I brought the Sunday School children in, to witness parts of the service, and they were sometimes bored, sometimes wondering, sometimes enthralled. They will one day bring their children in to witness sacramental ordinations and those children will bring theirs in to give witness to God’s working among us.

Now, looking back, all of the hours that made up the days and formed this third week in July of the year 2016 reflected this movement of history. The convention brought the past and present together and ordered the future. The seminary did the same. And today, all was distilled into an hour of music, light, and God with us, Emanuel. 

It is good to recall, as the second convention begins this week, and as we enter the second week of the Seminary classes, that the vision of America is a religious vision. It is the dream of pilgrims escaping religious tyranny. It is the dream of equal opportunity, human dignity, free speech, and freedom of religion. It is the dream of every American and rooted in Judeo-Christian ideals. To thrive, America must encourage church and temple to inform state and society. To thrive, America must engage Christian and Jewish voices in our national conversation.

And to thrive, we must recall simple good manners, simple civility, proper and improper conduct. These mores, going back to Moses and the Ten Commandments, and probably to Abraham, are the foundation of our culture. So I was gravely disappointed in Mr. Cruz’s speech at the convention. He had been graciously invited, in the hopes of unifying the party. But by not endorsing Mr. Trump, he tried to divide. At the celebratory moment of Mr. Trump’s triumphant acceptance speech Mr. Cruz chose to oppose him in the public spotlight. For three days the convention boisterously enjoyed the give and take of the nominating process, the roll calls, the yays and the boos, the pumping of signs into the air. But Mr. Cruz wanted to grab what wasn’t his and hurt the winner, a poor sport at best. He was dishonorable, mean spirited, and ill mannered. As Peggy Noonan writes in the Wall Street Journal today:

“If you can’t endorse, good for you and stay home. That isn’t politics, it’s basic human comportment. If someone you’re certain is awful invites you to a party, you politely decline. You don’t go, walk in to the room, and punch your host in the head.”

Basic human comportment. Mr. Cruz crossed the line that civility has drawn to protect civilization from barbarians. Mr. Cruz isn’t loud or grandiose. He is polished and articulate. But he doesn’t seem to have a sense of right and wrong. He scares me.

But Mr. Trump gives me hope. His family and fellow workers love him and testify to his character and his huge heart. Mr. Trump’s acceptance speech was grandiose and loud (he needs to modulate), not so polished, but pointed and powerful. He fleshed out plans for our country, giving us a vision that was both caring and bold. He speaks for those who feel they have no voice, are not represented, are not allowed to have an opinion without facing ridicule and riot.

It’s nice finally to have someone stand up for us, even if that person is sometimes awkward, bullish, and straightforward. I could get used to that kind of president, that kind of leader, someone who cares about the rest of us, someone who will allow us to worship as we choose, who will allow us to pass our great American culture of freedom on to the next generation.

And so, as I witnessed our devoted ordinand kneel before our wise bishop, the children intently watching, time stood still. The chapel Masses mingled in my memory with the cheers on the convention floor. Priests had spoken; politicians had orated. We continued the dream of America, on our lips and in our hearts, a dream for our children one day to dream too.

To see and hear video clips of the Seminary singing and the ordination processions, visit our Facebook pages for St. Joseph’s Chapel and St. Peter’s Anglican Church. Seminary noon Masses at St. Joseph’s this next week are open to the public; limited seating.