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The Miracle of Mothers

Posted on May 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

Cover Art v2 (Flattened)Today is Mother’s Day. In two days my new novel, The Fire Trail, will be born. I have mothered it as best I could, and it is time for it to breathe in the public square. 

It has been said that finishing and publishing a novel is like giving birth. It is true, for it is like another child in the family, this book of mine, but it is also like sending a young adult out into the world. I have found that once the novel is written, the year or so it takes to submit and be published is a time in which my characters bounce in my head, anxious to be out, quarrelsome and nagging like children on a rainy afternoon, and when the day nears they grow suddenly quiet, thoughtful in their anticipation. Today they are curiously quiet.

The Fire Trail will be released this Tuesday, May 10, by eLectio Publishing. Soon Jessica, Zachary, Anna, and Nate will join my many other characters from earlier novels that have found their place among readers, have found booklovers who took them into their hearts and homes. Just so, I shall soon release Jessica, Zachary, Anna, and Nate, letting their novel appear on bookseller sites such as eLectioPublishing.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com. These four characters shall be invited to live in laptops and iPads and iPhones with the click of a mouse, the tap of an app. They shall be on view, on lists, and on review by reviewers, celebrated in signings and voiced in readings. They shall people the pages, safe within the fiery cover, napping in the chapters.

My first novels, comprising my Trilogy of Western Civilization – Pilgrimage (Italy), Offerings (France), and Inheritance (England) – as well as my more recent novel of apologetics, The Magdalene Mystery (2013), are more religious in theme and content. Hana-lani, my fourth novel set on Maui, claims secular concerns, albeit embracing traditional family values. The Fire Trail is appropriately my most passionate, born of a desire to give life to our culture. For the history of Christianity that I traced in the Trilogy, a history that formed and continues to form Western culture, is no longer bequeathed in liberal academia, no longer considered necessary to democracy. And without a strong and true foundation of liberty and law, freedom of speech and religion, our unique and revolutionary civilization will crumble. 

And so, ablaze with fearful passion, alight with desire to raise prophetic warnings, I wrote The Fire Trail. On these pages I give life to my concern through the words (and characters) of my characters. My concern appears to be shared by others, for it has been a fiery election year, one of spirited debate and manic maneuverings that have left some of us breathless. Words are fired between candidates and are quickly inflamed by media and gossip. We have left behind us a trail of also-rans who magnificently added their measure to the mix. God bless America.

And we can still those  Godly words. We can still speak and write and worship without fear of reprisal, although the grievance culture threatens to shut us down any day. Speakers are disinvited from college campuses. Eggs are thrown in public forums. Police are forced to force a peace. The Supreme Court legislates, curtailing freedom and legalizing murder in the womb. We are so very close to anarchy that I sometimes want to crawl under the bed with my cat.

But I don’t. I decide to practice an attitude of gratitude rather than of grating grievance, for I am not only a mother of novels, I am a mother of sons. And thus I am thankful for all mothers, those who have offered their wombs to nurture new life, those who have fed their unborn with their time, talent, and treasure, those who care for the children given them. There is no job, no profession, no vocation, more important than being a mother. It is Godly and God-filled.

Mother’s Day is the second Sunday in May, appropriately so since May is the month of Our Lady, Mary our Mother. And Mother’s Day lands this year on Ascension Sunday, the day we celebrate the pulling of Earth into Heaven, the bodily ascension of the resurrected Christ. For God the Father reaches through his Son to us, to Mother Earth, and pulls us up and into Heaven to be with him for all eternity. We ascend with the Son to the Father. And there is more, for soon, we know, the Holy Spirit will come like flames of fire to the disciples at Pentecost, empowering them to change the world.

The Fire Trail‘s release is thus bracketed by Ascension and Pentecost, when that fiery spirit descends upon each of us, transfiguring us so that we can transform our world through transcendence. It is this spirit, this burning love of God, that gives hope to humanity.

It is a rich season of light and of love, this season of May, this season of miraculous mothering.

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Uncovering a Cover

Posted on May 1, 2016 | Leave a comment

Cover Art v2 (Flattened).jpgThis last week I received (and approved) the cover for my new novel, The Fire Trail, to be released by eLectio Publishing May 10. It always astonishes me when I open that email attachment. I am filled with anticipation, then wonder.

Covers cover things, in this case, the interior pages, the real book. I had signed off on the interior galley earlier, having changed a word here and there, having caught some inconsistencies. They say one never finishes writing a book; one merely abandons it. How true. I usually have a sinking feeling when I sign off on a book, for it is like sending one’s child into the great wide world. Twinges of regret will shadow my exuberance over the release, and I shall be nervous to open a copy once published. Like many authors, I am my most demanding critic and shall always see errors to be corrected and changes to be made.

And so as I gazed at the cover of The Fire Trail I asked myself if it was a good representation of the story and its themes, its characters and their arcs, the burning passion that I had seared onto the pages with my words and phrases. The cover shows the sun setting in the west beyond the Statue of Liberty, the orb of fire falling into a dark horizon, with votive candles flaming below.

I suppose it is a truth (possibly trite) universally acknowledged that humans have their own covers hiding their true selves. Does my outward manner reflect my soul or hide it? Is my book to be judged by its cover? Am I am open book, disingenuous, integrated, whole?

Our flesh, our clothing, and our behavior cover and protect us. We are born with bodies and live within them a lifetime. Body and soul are at once separate and united. And yet we have a yearning to reach out, to experience something other, transcendence beyond ourselves. Some of us make this journey with drugs. Some travel into prayer. Some are absorbed by the beauty and truth of music and art, some lost in work and some in play. In fact, being absorbed in anything, be it work, books, movies, or love of another, pulls us out of ourselves. The movement away from self is a relief, a rest, a relaxation. Self absorption is exhausting. This is why, I am told, that a good sleep is more about the rest of the mind than the body. We need a break from ourselves.

As I peer at these words through the windows of my eyes I know that I desire such escape from self. I am blessed to have found rest in God, in worship, in prayer and praise and sacrament. I’m also re-created through beauty, in music, and in nature when it is friendly not deadly. I have found rest too in books and movies that pull me into another world.

As I gaze at my new cover for The Fire Trail, I ask myself, do the images invite me inside? Just so, our outward demeanors sometimes belie rather than reflect our inward states. Sometimes they protect the inner person with layers of sophistication, sophistry, fads, political-correctness, the zeitgeist of today. Sometimes it is frightening to drop the mask, the public persona, to be open, honest, and loving.

The Fire Trail referenced in the title of my new novel is a firebreak in the Berkeley hills that many walkers and runners enjoy for the panoramic views of San Francisco, the bay and its bridges. It’s a path that safeguards civilization from the wilderness, that protects Berkeley and its university from the firestorms that rage through the dry brown grass of the East Bay hills in late summer.

The Fire Trail considers whether the sun is indeed setting over Western civilization, ushering in a new dark age. But the fire of the setting sun is also the fire of burning votives, those prayers that lighten the dark. And the fire of prayer is lit by the burning love of God.

And so today, this last Sunday in Eastertide, Rogation Sunday, we pray for our world. Rogation comes from the Latin rogare, to ask, and we petition God for peace in the world, and the freedom to pray. In prayer, we unite with God’s sacred heart of burning love.

One of the appearances of Christ after his resurrection was on the road to the town of Emmaus. The two disciples who walked with him did not recognize him as Jesus who was crucified and risen from the dead. It was only when Christ breaks bread (recalling the last supper and the Eucharistic body broken) and vanished from them that they knew who he was. They wondered at their own blindness, saying: “Did not our hearts burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”

It has been said that when we face the last judgment, we shall either burn with the love of God or be burned by it, for mankind cannot bear too much reality. He must cover himself with anything that will distance himself from real life, from truth and even beauty. C.S. Lewis in The Great Divorce, a story about the irreconcilable distance between Heaven and Hell, describes the blades of grass in Heaven that will cut our tender feet if we are not made more real in our earthly journey, more full of the love of God.

And so we uncover our hearts and minds and souls, open them wide to God’s love – in history and in the present – so that we may infuse our culture with his law and liberty, peace and transcendence. Such experience of truth and beauty will make us more real, faith warriors able to protect our culture from the barbaric and deadly, so that that fiery setting sun will rise again, revealing a new day.

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The Tapestry of Memory

Posted on April 24, 2016 | Leave a comment

IMG_1326 (5)Perhaps it was the gold vestments against the crimson carpet at St. Peter’s Pro-Cathedral in Oakland that made the Mass of the Holy Ghost one of such deep beauty. Certainly the chanting from the choir loft behind us enhanced this sense of heaven and earth, the light angelic descants swirling over and around our mortal flesh in the weighty oak pews. It was both solemn and joyous, for we were thankful for our archbishop’s careful care over the last year and were happy to witness the installation of our new bishop. 

Saturday’s Mass was one of those moments in history that unites the political and the spiritual. Man has long organized his doings with one another, an activity we call politics, and in this national election year we are keenly aware of this process. We desire freedom and peace, and our national conversations as to how to achieve this in the most equitable manner with the most noble result, occur at set times. We hope and pray that the conversations – the debates, the reportings, and the elections themselves – lead to answers that most of us can live with, peacefully, in community with one another. 

Just so the Church, that Body of Christ on earth, must organize its “political” life within the Church in much the same way. We meet yearly to elect and legislate and found and order anew. But we also protect what has gone on before – those things we have found to be good. We conserve and preserve and build upon the old to create and re-create the new.  

Man is naturally conservative in this sense, that he must build upon his past for good or ill, and that is why change is often difficult, even painful. Instinctively he holds on to his biography, his ancestral beginnings. Intuitively he honors memory, the recording of history whether it be personal, public, or institutional. Today hundreds of years and thousands of photos and documents can be stored in a tiny chip of metal, retrieved with the flick of a finger, so that flexing the memory muscle is not as needed. Or is it? 

It has been observed that we are losing our ability to memorize, losing memory itself, for we have instant access to information. If this is true, then our rituals and storytelling grow even more vital to both nation, church, and temple. Those who have thrown out their past will find their future rootless, their lives or countries or churches built upon sand. 

And so as we convened together in meetings and gathered together for meals this last week, our diocese was charged to remember, to build upon our history as we step into the future. We did this through word and sacrament, prayer and praise. We acted out the great drama of our life together kneeling in pews and sitting on folding chairs. We told our stories, giving life to the memory of who we were and are and who we will be. It was rather like weaving a beautiful tapestry, with each one of us adding a thread to the design. Soon we could see the image we had woven – one of faith, hope, and charity. 

At St. Peter’s on Saturday the archbishop knocked on the narthex doors. The doors flung open, and thirty clergy processed up the red carpet to the altar, two by two, lead by the thurifer, the torchbearers, and the crucifer. The archbishop came last, shepherding his sheep, regal in gold and holding a shepherd’s crook. The gilded robes looked heavy, the miter pressing, and just so his duties must weigh upon his soul, for he must feed and protect his sheep. 

And so the Mass began, and we told our story of God’s great love. We sang our song of confession and absolution, of offering and receiving, of uniting with the eternal in the bread and the wine of the Eucharist. We told our story as we recited creed and read scripture, how God took on flesh to become one of us, to die for us, to live again for us and bring us with him. We told the story again and again, and especially on this Saturday morning in the slanting golden light that fell upon the red tabernacle and white altar, as our archbishop installed our newly elected bishop. We told the story as the bishop received the pectoral cross of our late Bishop Morse, a gesture reminding us to remember our journey to this moment. And we told the story as our bishop received his crozier, to remind him to remember that he must protect and feed his sheep. 

As Ruth R. Wisse writes in the Wall Street Journal, “All that has been earned and won cannot be maintained unless it is conserved and reinforced and transmitted and celebrated.” She is speaking of an “optimistic conservatism” seen in the observance of Passover, seen in the American rituals of Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July. As individuals, citizens, and believers, we can lose it all if we don’t remember, if we don’t celebrate our stories, if we don’t remember to remember.

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Making America Great Again

Posted on April 17, 2016 | Leave a comment

voteI find it troubling how the media exaggerates and condemns discord stemming from political debate.

For discord is the bedrock of democracy. Silence is democracy’s opposite, and should be feared, for it means a drugged populace, whose speech has been taken from them.

As we watch both political parties engage in heated debate, I see the heat as healthy. We should be celebrating the candidates’ right to speak, their passion. To be sure, there are degrees of civility and incivility, lines we don’t like crossed, a continuum that can be slippery, but that is the rough-and-tumble nature of freedom. “Sticks and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” Not entirely true, but true enough. We have laws governing the degree of hurt, of slander, of libel, and when dealing with public figures the laws stretch to accommodate the free speech necessary to the public square.

I celebrate the fierce rivalry displayed over the last year between our many candidates. But I also celebrate those who bemoan the incivility, the name calling, the “tricks” played with “rules” regarding delegate selection. Let those who bemoan continue to be the brave watchdogs that report the crossing of lines and the slipping down the slope of unmannerly dialogue.

All this is good for our country, healthy for America. And there are other kinds of dogs in our political arena – underdogs, those who have been surrounded and bullied by both the left and the right and the media. While it is difficult at times to view Mr. Trump as an underdog, he is clearly beset by his own party powers-that-be, as well as his opposing party and the media both left and right. It is difficult not to root for such a knight clanking clumsily about in his rusty armor, such a strange American hero disguised in rich man’s clothing. For our knights since the time of Arthur and Lancelot are supposed to be gallant and polite. Our heroes are supposed to be in rags. The riches are ordained to come later, after the conquest, like trophies. Mr. Trump is a curious hero appearing on the American scene. He is rich and he is unpolished. Upper classes call such persons “boors.” They are embarrassed by him.

America is not a monarchy and because her people are fighters in both word and deed, they have saved the disintegrating, nominal Western monarchies from foreign occupation. Essentially, America has fought their wars, rescued them. And so when I see the upper crust in Britain and France bemoan our gutter candidates, looking down at such American roughnecks, I wonder at their grasp of reality, their knowledge of history. Remember World War II? Remember the London bombing? Remember Dunkirk? Remember the Holocaust threatening Britain?

The world is affected by America’s national elections. We make a difference in the balance of power, and how we structure our elections matters immensely. While I’m not a fan of the electoral college, I understand its history and the place of state’s rights. As a conservative in California my vote has rarely counted in Presidential elections. I would like to see more enfranchisement and less disenfranchisement. I would like to see, as Mr. Trump would like to see, a complete overhaul of the electoral system.

I would like to see a more honest media, both left and right. I have read again and again allusions to Mr. Trump’s invective against Muslims, Mexicans, and women. The “invective” as I recall regarding Muslims, while poorly stated, called for a temporary ban on non-citizen Muslims entering our country until the borders were better secured against terrorists. Makes sense to me. The “invective” regarding Mexicans, again poorly stated, called for building a wall to keep the drug traffic out and to require all immigrants to enter legally and obey our laws once here. Makes sense to me. The “invective” regarding women, while again poorly stated, concerned a reaction to the slurs against his wife by the Cruz campaign. Makes sense to me.

Mr. Trump does not yet have my vote, such as it is. I am concerned, as many are, as to whom he will nominate to the Supreme Court. I am concerned about religious liberty and compromises he might make with Congress, in his deal making. But then, candidates promise all kinds of things and don’t deliver. This we know. At least he isn’t making specific false promises.

I believe that if America is made strong again, both militarily and economically, many problems will be solved or slowly dissolve. But without a strong military and a robust economy we will not be able to survive the many invasions across our borders that will destroy our culture, silencing our freedoms. Tyranny will reign, and those polished monarchies across the seas with their good manners will not send us aid, for they will have been silenced by sharia law.

It might be the time to elect a bumbling bear of a fighter, an unpolished knight in rusty armor. Perhaps he can improve his manners, polish his act. Perhaps he can be more “presidential” as his wife has urged him to be.

It might be the time to elect a strongman to protect the weak, a strongman who celebrates law, freedom, and the rule of the people. Ineffective leadership at this crossroads in our nation’s history will invite an even stronger regime from outside or from within. Americans want peace at home and abroad, but do they want marshal law, curfews, and a police state? History tells us, in the midst of anarchy, such an answer lurks in the shadows.

Let us celebrate and honor all of our candidates, for America truly has an embarrassment of riches, so many highly qualified men and women of varying ethnicities. The debate has been enriching, informing, and has awakened a sleeping giant, millions of voters paying attention. We are showing the world our greatest strength is our people. We are showing the world we are unafraid of confrontation, of free speech, and of searching for the truth. We may stumble and bumble and even be unmannerly but we will always fight to keep our Camelot democratic and free.

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Drenched by Christ

Posted on April 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Rain on hillsIt’s been raining here in northern California and our happy earth drinks in the spring drenching, this gift from the heavens. Perhaps our rolling greens will not turn to golden browns quite yet.

It is often these quiet things, these gentle tears of the skies, that delight human senses. We pause and watch and listen. We turn off phones and radios and TVs and ponder, seeing new life birthing in buds and babies, feeling our own beating hearts dance to the rhythm of our breathing.

We are beautiful creatures both infinitely complex and varied, composed of miraculous maps within, historical maps, biological maps, genetic maps. We look to the heavens and see the miraculous maps of the universe, God’s stardust. We are small, tiny parts of a whole, and yet we are giants, of tremendous worth to our loving Creator.

As I stepped through the Holy Liturgy in our parish church this morning, I gazed at the high altar covered with white Easter lilies. I was flooded with wonder. There we were, ordinary folks, sailing in this old ark of a church, taking part in eternity intersecting time. With raspy voices we sing our hymns and the organ pumps out jeweled notes. We are an integral part of the great thanksgiving, the Sunday offering, the Divine Liturgy, the “work of the people.” We hear the silence too, moments of prayer, quiet seconds linking words of confession and absolution, sacrament and scripture. We watch tall tapers flame behind white lilies, a garden holding the tabernacle of God’s Real Presence.

I have found that the Eucharistic liturgy is both earthy and heavenly, uniting our two natures. For the duration of this hour our bodies and souls sing as one, married, united by love.

I’ve been typing up my late bishop’s sermons, and when asked to offer word suggestions for a dedication plaque, I thought of the love of God. Our bishop showed us the love of God, that it was real and living, that it was ours for the asking. And of course, when we are showered with such love we can shower others with such love. It is who we are meant to be, why we were created, to love and be loved.

It is all a mystery. St. John writes that God is love: “He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love” (1 John 4:8). But love is far more than a feeling, just as God is far more than wishful thinking. Love is complex and simple, demanding and sacrificial. Just like God. 

So God the Father loves us through God the Son, Jesus, whose very name is holy, one to be breathed in and out with a sacred sense of life and living. It is a name beyond all names, and with the naming of God we pull Him into our hearts and minds and souls, enlivening our bodies with His very breath, the breath of His Holy Spirit.

We have a church conference coming up, an Anglican Synod, and the days together with parishes from many states will be days of mingling the heavenly and the earthly. We shall sit on hard chairs and listen to speeches and reports, but we will also pray together, sing together, and love one another. We shall weave a tapestry of the Body of Christ, so that we may unite as one breath of love, at one in the breathing in and out of the Holy Spirit, the Name of Jesus, to show our world that God is love.

Christ the Good ShepherdToday is called Good Shepherd Sunday. I have a beloved icon that shows Christ in red-and-blue robes carrying a lamb over His shoulders. A wooden crossbeam stretches behind Him. Christ is the Good Shepherd who loves His sheep. He knows them and they know Him. The lamb He carries is like the lamb carried into the temple for sacrifice. We know, of course, that Christ is the sacrificial lamb. He replaces the lamb once sacrificed. For love of us.

I have a recurring nightmare where I am hiking along a steep mountainside in the dusk of evening. I must reach safety before dark and I must watch where I step or I shall fall far into the caverns below. Waking from these nightmares I recall thankfully that Christ will find me wherever I am and bring me safely home with Him. I will not be lost, for not one of His sheep are lost. He is the Good Shepherd.

And because of the Church and its liturgical dance of love, I know His voice when he calls my name. Like Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, I recognize Him by his voice. Like the disciples at Emmaus I see Him in the breaking of the bread. He is real. He is love.

I also have a recurring dream in which I am flying like a bird, low over green hills, arms outstretched like wings. I can sense in the dream that my arms must push downward through the air so that I can rise, as though I am swimming. It is a beautiful dream, a soaring dream, and one beating with love.

And so like these green hills, drenched and quenched by the rain, I am drenched and quenched by Christ. Christ in sacrament and scripture, in song and dance, in the breath of each day. I know that nightmares will be redeemed by dreams, dark terrors turned into bright joys.

As the clergy and acolytes recessed down the red-carpeted aisle toward the open doors of the narthex, the crucifix held high, the torches aflame, we sang the wonderful Hymn #88, “Jesus Lives,” written by German poet Christian Gellert in 1757 and set to the tune “St. Albinus” in the 19th century by Henry Gauntlett. We are instructed in the top left corner of the page to sing joyously and so we do. I particularly like the first and fourth verses, for they sing of the promise of the Good Shepherd:

 Jesus lives! thy terrors now/ Can no longer, death, appall us;/ Jesus lives! by this we know/ Thou, O grave canst not enthrall us. Alleluia!

Jesus lives! our hearts know well/ Naught from us his love shall sever;/ Life, nor death, nor powers of hell/ Tear us from his keeping ever. Alleluia!

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Easter Lilies

Posted on April 3, 2016 | Leave a comment

Easter LiliesIt is a rich and glorious season, this time of Eastertide. 

As I plucked wilting blossoms off my Easter lilies near our front door I inhaled the sweetness of those remaining, taking care to avoid the staining powder of the yellow stamens. I then attended the roses that once sat on my dining table and now are over the kitchen sink. Five buds are left with shorter stems clustered together in a small pitcher between sculpted figures of Mary Magdalene and an angel. As I gaze at these reminders of the season, and especially of Easter Day, I wonder at it all.

The season of Eastertide, the fifty days linking Easter and Pentecost, provide a joyful time of quiet reflection on the meaning of the Resurrection. The immense implications of this historical event, when eternity intersected time, continues to stun me. And the scripture readings assigned for these days reflect as well, considering the meaning of this new world that was created by the empty tomb.

And indeed a new world was created with the death and resurrection of Christ. It is a revolution changing everything. In one of his first resurrection appearances to the disciples Jesus gently explains what has happened. As our preacher said this morning, Christ appears to them in an upper room where the doors have been locked. He has passed through material barriers to be in their midst. He has power over the world of matter in which we live. Is he a ghost? A vision?

St. John’s eyewitness account describes how Christ points to his wounds in his hands and his side as proof he is no ghost or vision. The disciples can see and touch him. He has a material body of flesh and blood. He is real. And yet he has the power to pass through matter.

In much the same way he seeks to enter our hearts, our own bodily chambers, to dwell in us. How does he do this? He gives the apostles power to forgive sins by breathing his spirit upon them. From this time on, the apostles, who give life to the Church, act for God in the forgiveness of sins. Why?

Christ desires clean-swept hearts, hearts of light that have expelled the dark. He can only enter a heart that is full of light, enlightened, clean of sin.

It is a profound mystery and yet it is profoundly simple, just as each of us is a profound mystery and yet profoundly simple. All creation teems with intricate complexity yet delightful simplicity. The day turns to night. The rain falls on the earth. The sun shines. And the layered meanings and conclusions of learned theologians can be summed in one sentence: God is love.

Just as I pluck the dying trumpet blossoms with their staining stamens, I pluck out my own selfishness, greed, envy, pride, my own staining sin. I trundle to Mass and confess. I repent and am forgiven. I can now enter the open doors of the Eucharist through prayer and praise, Creed and Scripture, to meet Christ in the bread and the wine. He enters my body, heart, and soul. I am given life and light and joy, having partaken of the divine.

All this Christ Jesus taught and showed in his life on earth, as he walked among us. The week before his death he gave us the Holy Supper and showed how he would return among us again and again with each Eucharist. After his resurrection, he gave us the Church and the way to forgiveness. After his ascension he gave us his Holy Spirit to strengthen, to comfort us. All told, Christ Jesus gave us himself, the only path to Heaven – the Way, the Truth, and the Life for, as St. John writes in today’s Epistle,

 “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (I John 5:4)

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Flowered by Christ

Posted on March 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Easter St. Peter's with family (2)We have a lovely tradition in our local parish church. The Sunday School children and staff “Flower the Cross.” Shortly before the sermon in our Anglican liturgy, during the “sermon hymn,” we process up the central aisle carrying flowers to the chancel steps where a thick white cross, about six feet tall awaits us. The cross has deep holes that penetrate the beams and we insert the stems into the holes. Soon the white cross is covered in brilliant color.

This year as I helped small hands reach for the cross to add another flower, I thought how each of us was like those flowers and stems and bits of green. We each had our own colors and characteristics and we carried them to the cross. We each had our own talents and treasures and we offered them to the cross. We each had our own joys and sorrows and we slipped them into the deep holes of that wooden cross.

The white cross welcomed us, pulling us into its wood, and in some way we became part of that cross of Christ. And with the flowering we were flowered too, changed, reborn into new life.

For Easter celebrates new life, not only spring and its seeds bursting into blossoms, but our own new resurrected life. For forty days and nights we have been dormant seeds buried in the dark soil of Lent. We waited and we watched and we prayed for this glorious Easter morning when death dies and life lives, rising from the tomb, Christ’s tomb, our own tombs.

There is no point to Christianity if one does not believe in the resurrection of Christ and its revolutionary effect upon us all. In the resurrection, suffering and sorrow change into love and joy. Darkness becomes light, and the words of the psalmist are fulfilled: 

“If I say, peradventure the darkness shall cover me; then shall my night be turned to day. Yea, the darkness is no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day; the darkness and light to thee are both alike.” (139:10-11)

Today we are covered by darkness. We hear of wars and rumors of wars, of new horrors, new terrors. Brussels, Paris, London, San Bernardino, Boston, New York, Fort Hood. Evil robs youth of innocence, prompting massacres in schoolyards or classrooms. Darkness spreads across the face of the earth.

And so we reach for the light in the darkness that enshrouds our world, entombs our people. We look to God, the author of love and life. We look to the only man who claimed to be God, who rose from the dead, the one whom St. John describes as “the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” (KJV, 1:9)

Why I believe in the resurrection and its challenge and others do not, I do not understand. For the evidence is there, clear as the light of day. But I suppose one must seek it, desire it, even long for such belief. For believing costs us. Believing means turning toward the light of love and away from the darkness of self. My bishop often said, “all doubt is moral.” I’m not sure if all doubt is moral, but I’m beginning to agree that belief requires a change of heart, an honorable discipline, a code of ethics that challenges us to change our ways. It is sometimes tempting to doubt, when belief accuses and demands our time, talent, and treasure. Demands our hearts and souls and bodies.

And so Easter’s resurrection message is a radical one. It says to our world, as Father James Martin writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Listen!” Listen to what the resurrection means for us! For the resurrection demands that attention be paid to a man who conquered death. Attention must be paid to his words, his deeds, his miracles of healing and feeding and calming storms and walking on water. Attention must be paid to his claims to be God, and to his Church’s claims after his ascension to Heaven. For the Church he founded, a stepchild of the Jewish temple, witnessed to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, again and again, in word and deed. Christians died tortuous deaths for their belief in Jesus Christ and who he was. They did not invent him. They knew him. And the witness continues.

Today Christians die daily for their belief in this God-made-man. They cannot deny Christ, cannot deny his light, his joy, his glory. They have been changed, reborn. They cannot go back to the darkness of self.

On Easter morning I thought of these things as I handed a flower to one of the children and helped her shove the moist green stem into the deep dry hole, into the wood of the cross. In that moment, she was part of the cross. She stood back and smiled, satisfied, and reached for another. Our baskets empty, we recessed out to the Sunday School.

We had given ourselves to Easter’s resurrection cross, and Christ had returned the gift a thousand fold. The dead wood had been reborn. So had we. For each of us had been flowered by and with Christ.

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Gates of Time

Posted on March 20, 2016 | Leave a comment

palm-sunday-globalAs creatures bound by time, we have long been fascinated by the idea of traveling back in time and changing history, be it public or private. Books and movies explore this phenomenon. What if… we ask plaintively. If only… we proclaim hopefully. Regrets can be mended, hurts healed, love renewed, if only. 

Christians are keenly aware of such regret, remorse that leads to penitence. We are schooled in self-examination and confession and repenting, to refuse the evil and choose the good. We look forward because we have looked backward and dealt with our past. In this sense we have traveled back in time, rooting out those weeds in our soul-gardens so that the healthy plants can flourish into the future. We are forgiven. The weeds are burnt to ash. The debt is paid. We start anew with a clean slate so that we can truly love as God loves. 

Today, Palm Sunday, we processed through Berkeley, waving our palm fronds. We re-enacted the drama of Christ riding a donkey through the gates of Jerusalem, the crowd waving their palm branches in joyous greeting. On Good Friday this crowd would shout condemnations not salutations, but today we recalled their happier cry, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Their messiah had come to free them. 

And of course Jesus of Nazareth did come to free them, but free them from the slavery of sin rather than the emperor. Jesus would pay the price, atone, and with repentance, with re-turning to God, our pasts would be forgiven. Christ would act out God’s huge love for us, act in suffering and sacrifice, to heal our time past, present, and future.

So today, turning the corner of Bowditch and Durant, we followed the cross and the acolytes in their red robes and white cottas, and we followed the thurifer swinging his thurible of frankincense into Berkeley, waving our palms, recalling Christ’s approach to Jerusalem. And just so, we approached the entry to our chapel. As we entered our Jerusalem, St. Joseph’s Chapel, the organ thundered Hymn 62, “All glory, laud, and honor/To thee, Redeemer, King! To whom the lips of children/Made sweet hosannas ring,” and we joined in song, returning to our pews. Looking back, it seems we acted two parts, the apostles following Christ (the cross) into the city (the chapel), and the people who greeted their Messiah-King so joyously.

We moved from the public to the private, from the unprotected outside to the protected inside, a movement from wilderness to civilization. For cities are built to band men together for reasons of mutual safety and comfort. Today countries serve this purpose with guarded borders much as cities once had fortified walls.

Christ entered the city gates of Jerusalem, and he continues to enter our soul gates through the bread and wine of the Holy Eucharist and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in prayer. For our hearts are gated, being homes of both the uncivil and the civil, the dangerous and the safe, the bad and the good. It is only when we repent, weed out selfishness and pride, that God can enter the gates of our hearts. When this happens we become a haven to the Heavens themselves. We allow God to live in us and through us. He becomes the true saving Messiah.

But we know too that just as the crowd changed their mood on Good Friday and the disciples denied and fled, so we will deny and flee. We will allow other people and other idols (time, treasure, talent) claim our allegiance and our love. We will take the easy way, the mistakenly safe way, forgetting that there is no safety outside the Heavenly gates. 

We cannot change these denials and these wrongs that form our yesterday, our history, but we can repent, turn around, be forgiven because of those Good Friday events two thousand years ago, because of the King who rode a donkey through the gates of our hearts. For he will always be waiting to re-enter those gates. He will always stand outside our doors, waiting, holding his lantern high. 

When he enters and redeems our past, be it yesterday’s past, last week’s or last year’s, he reconciles us to himself. We have changed time, rewritten our lives. Our histories are redeemed if we cry Alleluia on Easter morning. when all history, all time, paused to breathe, when death was conquered. 

But before Easter, and after Good Friday, Christ entered more gates, the gates of Hell. In his love he redeemed every one of us, every lost sheep,  BC and AD. 

For the King of Heaven loved and loves us so deeply that he suffered and died in order to vanquish death. He redeemed us, brought us home, so that we could live forever with him, so that we would no longer travel in time but live and love in all eternity.

 

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Passionate Passiontide

Posted on March 13, 2016 | Leave a comment

440px-Kruis_san_damianoWe are entering Passiontide, a time when we consider the great sacrificial love of God.

As I watched the passionate protesters at the huge Trump rally at the University of Illinois last week, I was struck by their hatred, not only of Mr. Trump and his supporters but far more importantly their dismissal of his right to free speech. Their own speech was all that mattered to them. They were all that mattered to them. No-one else could speak. Their world was small and dark, turned in upon itself, devouring itself, like cancer or gangrene. Such a world, such a place, Christians call Hell. 

For without God (and Hell is the absence of God), passion is uncontrolled and undirected. It becomes misplaced and dangerous. Whatever our passion might be, if it is not God directed and Christ-filled, it turns inward upon itself. It seeds destruction, including the source of the passion, the individual himself or herself. 

The word passion, as my bishop often said, is the union of the words love and suffering. For God became man to bring us close to him. By taking on our flesh and suffering with us, as we suffer, he redeemed and continues to redeem our suffering, our mortal flesh. We join him on the Cross and we join him in his Resurrection. This is called the atonement, the at-one-ment, for we are pulled into God by his becoming one of us. 

And so today on Passion Sunday the Church pauses and reflects on the Passion of Christ, the last two weeks of Lent – Christ’s painful path to Golgotha, the hill of the skull. All images of Christ in our parish church are hidden behind purple cloths, and we feel a visceral loss of love, to sense in some way what the world would be like without Christ. In the next weeks we will follow Christ on his path to Calvary as best we can, some of us better than others, depending on age and infirmity, time and desire, and most of all, depending on our love, our passion to follow him. 

I have come to believe, in my sixty-eight years, that we cannot experience goodly, Godly, passion without God. And we cannot experience God without the Church, his Body. We are not meant, as creatures created by a loving Father, to be alone, to meet our life’s challenges alone. We are meant to be loved and to love, and we can only do this through Christ and his great gift of himself.

The gift of Christ, the Son of God, was given to us two thousand years ago in Bethlehem and then on the Cross on a hill outside Jerusalem. In those moments, history breathed once again, as the fresh air of God’s love blew upon the world, changing it forever. Mankind turned up another path toward love, learning the meaning of true passion, God-filled love. Those who accept the gift never look back to the dark days of un-love. Those who accept the gift look forward to a lifetime and an eternity of glory and unearned love.

The gift of Christ, the God-Man, the incarnated Son of God, is, as they say, a gift that keeps on giving. With every Eucharist, God the Son is re-membered, made newly present in the Real Presence. With every Eucharist, God the Son mystically enters our bodies and re-members us. As Christ becomes one with our flesh, he dwells within, renewing, inspiring, with his love. His prayer becomes ours, and our prayer becomes his. Every day is an Epiphany, a day of manifestation and seeing. Every day is a day of becoming like the Wise Men at the manger, a day of understanding the manifold works of God. 

For as Christ became at-one with Man, he gave us a means – through his Body the Church – to become at one with him individually. Love is personal, tender, touching. God loves us, each and every one of us, each with our unique personalities. We are precious to him. He loves us personally, tenderly. He reaches out to us and touches us in every Eucharist. 

Only God can order our passions, whatever they may be, to be goodly, to be Godly. And with the ordering of loves, comes the ordering of our sufferings and sacrifices. Nothing is lost. All is offered up to the Cross, and all is returned a thousand fold. 

And so we enter Passiontide, a vigorous ride in and into our life with God. We ride confidently, knowing we are riding high and on to Easter’s resurrection.

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Americans and Mr. Trump

Posted on March 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

voteIn considering the remarkable Trump phenomenon, I watch and I wonder, trying to understand his massive appeal. He seems trumpeted by those outside our nation’s elites – academia, media, politics, wealth.

Those folks outside these exclusive national clubs may not have succeeded as they hoped they would. The American Dream didn’t happen to them or they didn’t have the resources to make it happen. They didn’t make it (for whatever reason) to the top universities to sail into teaching or law or medicine. They couldn’t compete in the world of journalism and publishing and Hollywood, perhaps because of appearance or opinion or luck. They didn’t run for office because of quiet temperament or lack of desire, or the inability to pivot, preach, or promise with fingers crossed. And lastly they didn’t have the financial backing and courage to go into business and take risks, compete for their market share, broker deals so that others would lose and they would win. In the end, they perhaps weren’t competitive, and were happy to allow others do the competing, fight the fight, and provide products at competitive prices.

What does this group who trumpets Mr. Trump do for a living? I haven’t studied the stats but my guess is that they are proudly working class, sometimes working at several jobs, counting on their spouse to do the same. They watch their children bullied in school and on sidewalks and graduating unable to read and not knowing why America is great. All they want is public safety, good schools, and protection from tyrants at home and abroad. Freedom of speech and worship are taken for granted. They work hard, pay their taxes, and wonder why the schools are on lockdown and they can’t own a gun to protect their families and their pastor is going to jail for preaching from the Bible. 

They don’t have the time to study the issues. They aren’t schooled in the national debt and what it means for our future and our children’s future and even national defense. Many don’t understand that growing government means raising taxes or cutting programs. The nuances of numbers require a degree in accounting or economics or at least the time to study the current issues, none of which the working voter has. They are losing their faith in the media’s lockstep endorsements and explanations and they look to someone who says what they mean and mean what they say in words that make sense.

All the while we are seriously threatened by those who hate our freedom, outside our borders and within. We are not only threatened internationally but by homegrown terrorists in gun-free zones and by fellow citizens who would disallow people of faith to practice their beliefs. We are threatened by the dominant culture of self: selfishness, sloth, lust, envy, greed, gluttony, and arrogance, all vices that encourage self-pitying grievance and frivolous lawsuits crippling our courts. We are threatened by the strong who rob and kill the weak in dark alleys and bright abortion clinics.

Mr. Trump says, enough! And the disenfranchised hear him. They understand his message. And as I watch Mr. Trump in the debates what strikes me is his simplicity. A tad arrogant, to be sure, but clear and compelling.

I worked my way through college when college degrees meant something, and today have the rare opportunity, the time, to study issues and candidates, but I still feel incompetent to judge the complicated questions that will make or break our country. It makes sense that the Supreme Court shouldn’t be legislating new law,  but rather interpreting the Constitution. And it makes sense that our three branches of government serve to check and balance one another so that we the people are protected from tyranny. After all, we fought a revolution about that once, as I recall from fifth-grade Social Studies. The First Amendment is still a good idea, or I wouldn’t be allowed to write this or worship as I choose, at least as of this writing.

What I don’t like about Mr. Trump is his apparent arrogance, but perhaps he hasn’t been coached as well as the others on the art of image. He changes his opinions on the issues, but he says he’s learning as he goes. He often speaks in hyperbole, but the media (conservatives and liberals singing together) treats his simplifications as lies. They seem to enjoy misunderstanding his statements even as they reap huge ratings from them which means, of course, huge advertising dollars. When does exaggeration misrepresent one’s position? When Mr. Trump, for example, said he would like to see worse torture than waterboarding I assumed he meant within the law, that he would work to see the law changed. Many presidents work to see the law changed, some work legally and some don’t. Somehow I trust Mr. Trump to work legally, not like others we all know.

Mr. Trump is unpolished. His words are unpolished like many voters. He is a straight-shooter if it is safe to use a shooting analogy. But he listens and he learns and in spite of it all I trust him.

I’m not sure who I’m voting for. I’m undecided, although I will vote for the Republican nominee in the General Election. By the time the primaries get to California there won’t be too many candidates left standing. I long ago studied the two parties, trusting principles over people, and decided that the greatest good for the greatest number was represented by the Republicans. The greatest danger remains clear and present in the history of the last century when Hitler, Stalin, and Mao slaughtered close to 100 million in their totalitarian regimes. Big government stifles freedom and smothers the poor. It curtails creativity and hampers hope. It rewards those who promote bigger government, a self-perpetuating enterprise.

I will vote for the candidate that will work to keep America safe, ensuring our freedom and our future and our children’s future. I will vote for the candidate that will protect my right to worship, to speak, and to defend myself and my family. I will vote for the candidate that understands the need for an educated electorate, beginning with fifth-grade History, Economics, and Civics.

And I will vote for the candidate that sees America as exceptional, a beacon to the world, so that we can welcome more legal immigrants into our national family. They will, to be sure, add their own time and talent and treasure to our unique land of opportunity. Let’s build that border wall so that our laws can be enforced, so that no-one cuts in line. This is America, a land of liberty and justice for all, not just for some.

I have to thank Mr. Trump, for his energy, enthusiasm, and simple rhetoric, albeit sometimes harsh to the ear, has captured the national attention. Voters are listening. Voters are voting. They are taking their place in our exceptional history.

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