The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 3,600 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 60 trips to carry that many people.
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Flight into Egypt, Giotto, 1311
Today, the fourth day of Christmas, is also the day we remember the Holy Innocents, the children slain by King Herod.
The story of Christmas is a story of love, joy, and peace, but woven through it is also deep malice, murder, fear, and escape. In this sense it is a classic human story. It is a story that includes each of us, weaves us into its joy and pain. We experience Mary’s confusion when she learns she will be with child, without a husband in a culture that stoned women for this offense. We hear her faithful and mighty “be it unto me…”, her assent. We follow her to Elizabeth’s and know the joy of her holy child moving in her womb. Then we travel with Mary to Bethlehem for the tedious business of government taxation. We follow her, as she follows God. We hear the innkeeper send the holy family to a hillside cave, to give birth among the straw, among the animals, like an animal.
The story of Christmas is our story, our human story of redemption, and each of us is woven into it through the miracle of time. A glorious king is born in a humble stable. Angels appear to shepherds and announce the birth in song. The shepherds listen and follow. Wise Men from the East follow a bright star to worship the Christ Child. They too, listen and follow.
But this is not fiction or fable. This is history, the real world of the first century in the Roman Empire, where passions burn, where bad things happen. Herod plots to kill the newborn king, a perceived threat to his own throne, and slays children under two years of age in Bethlehem. As Jeremiah prophesied, “there was a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” And we weep too for these children. We weep for our own children lost each year.
And so we remembered them today, on a clear crisp day in a parish church in Oakland, California. We remember this violent loss of innocent life, these holy innocents. Even in this great event, the birth of the Son of God, human will is not circumvented but allowed its freedom. Herod may act, just as others have acted throughout history. What God offers his precious children is a way out. He sends angels to guide us, to point to the right path. We have the choice to listen and follow, or to turn away.
It is, of course, an angel who warns Joseph in a dream to flee to Egypt to escape Herod. And it is an angel who tells Joseph to return to Israel after the death of Herod. Joseph listens and he follows. “And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel…and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.” (Matt. 2:21-23) And so another prophesy was fulfilled, that He would be called a Nazarene.
The drama of the Christmas story has been cloaked with sweetness and light, an iconic beauty that is not unfitting. Yet the world of the Holy Family was not so unlike our own today, as we watch young martyrs die in Iraq, and allow holy innocents to die in the womb. Our story is the same story, one of choice, to listen and follow or to turn away. We can be part of God’s story or be part of chaos and death. We must choose, and these are the only choices. There is no middle way.
And in order to hear the angel’s voice, we must be part of Christ’s Body, the Church. We must follow the commandments given, to love one another, to worship God on Sundays. Only within this world, this baptismal font of life, can we hear God’s voice. And through sermon, Scripture, and Sacrament, in time we come to understand what we are hearing. We approach the vision of God. We enter the vision.
We are part of this Christmas story and we must tell it again and again. We gather our families on this holy day to tell the story. As my own family read, in turn, from Luke 2, each person taking a part, I was filled with a joyous peace. God was with us there in that small gathering of fifteen, from Aurelia, 9 months, to Rudy, eighty-four. The tree twinkled, and a grandson, age fourteen, began, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed…” God smiled on us as we told the story of his birth in Bethlehem. The angels sang with us, “The First Noel, the angels did sing…”
This story of God’s love is a story that is being proved by science, more and more each year. Eric Metaxas, author of Miracles: What They Are, Why They Happen, and How They Can Change Your Life, recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that science is now making the case for the existence of God, an Intelligent Designer. Mr. Metaxas writes that “the odds against life in the universe are simply astonishing.” And that includes our own good Earth. The predictions of Carl Sagan in the sixties that life might exist on other planets have been discredited by scientific numbers. What happened? Where did we come from?How does life exist? Atheists are reconsidering.
If we are wise men and women who seek the truth about our created world, we will look to Bethlehem. We will see ourselves there, caught in the drama of existence, the struggle between good and evil we know so well. We will listen to the angels and follow the star. For the story of the journey of Mary is the story of Christ in us, with us, as he was in and with her. It is the good news that the Intelligent Designer is this same God.
The baby born in Bethlehem on that starry night is God’s love letter, his Word incarnate, written on our hearts. “Be not afraid,” he says, “I love you… I am with you always, even unto the ends of the earth.”
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Tagged Angels, Bethlehem, Christmas, creation, Holy Innocents, Intelligent Design, Joseph, martyrs, Mary, Metaxas, miracles
I was thinking about the weaknesses of the flesh, especially the aging flesh, as I realized I had driven off to church and the Christmas pageant, without my glasses. I turned around and retrieved them, so all was well, and I could read my lines and music, gold halo on head, white robe donned, even wings yearning to fly. After all I was an angel, a key role in the Heavenly Host.
But now, this afternoon, reflecting on this morning’s beautiful Fourth Sunday in Advent, it is fitting to consider our decaying bodies. It is fitting to tell the story of Christmas with every generation present, to tell the story of the glorious Incarnation. It is fitting to include the prequel of Adam and Eve and their tragic decision about that apple long ago. Our flesh, after all, is what incarnation is, a word meaning literally, in the flesh. The Incarnation itself, that moment in history two thousand years ago when God took on our mortal flesh to reverse that choice in the Garden of Eden, is an event we have come to know as Christmas, derived from the Old English Cristes moeses, “the Mass of the festival of Christ.”
The Incarnation of God in human flesh, Christmas, while certainly overladen and hopefully not disguised with modern excess, still celebrates the kernel of this festival of love. Gift-giving is about love. Hospitality is about love. Christmas concerts celebrate love. The story of Saint Nicholas, fourth-century Bishop of Myrna known today as Santa Claus, is particularly about love. We delight in love when we light the fir tree to honor the Tree of Life, the Cross, for indeed, the tree that bore the tragic fruit becomes the wood that holds the loving sacrifice for mankind. Mary is the new Eve, Christ the new Adam and the bearer of the fruit of salvation, the giver of incarnate love.
So the other day, when the huge fir tree worked its way through the small backdoor of our home and the needles flooded our living room, making quite a mess, I embroidered the event into my tapestry of Christmas. When I climbed the ladder to string the lights and run the garlands glittering and dancing through the greens, I embroidered the moment into my tapestry. When I crouched under the lower branches and poured two jugs of water into the bowl (a thirsty tree) I wove this action, which has become over the years its own ritual, into my Christmas tapestry. These are the small ones, the blessed ones. There are so many other rituals and symbols, far more famous: the evergreen wreath with its symbols of life, the candles with their flames of light and hope, the glorious music (Handel, Bach, Vivaldi, to name a few) and the charming carols that retell the story again and again. So rich a season! So rich a tapestry! The beauty may be too great to bear.
But I shall wait for Christmas Eve for the ornaments, collected over the years, to be hung by one of our grandsons. And I shall wait for many more moments like this, this week of Christmas, and shall weave them into my life.
All the rituals of Christmas, and they vary from family to family in details but not essentials, express this stupendous miracle, one we can’t find words for: love come down among us. C.S. Lewis said that there is a difference between believing in a god and believing in this God. This God, this specific God, makes it clear that there is nothing vague about Christian belief, and who this God is, what he is like, what he does for us. It is as though the sensory details of our physical world, our bodies, are part of this God, this Creator. He knows us; we reflect him in some mysterious way. He became one of us to know us better. And since that moment outside Bethlehem when eternity intersected time, the world has been changed. We saw love incarnate. We saw truth and we saw beauty and and we saw goodness.
Christ, the Son of God, taught us how to be changed. He gave us ways to heal our corrupt flesh, our destructive selfishness, our hurtful pride. Love one another, he said, as I have loved you.
But, many ask, how do we know this child in Bethlehem, this carpenter from Galilee, is the Son of God? Wasn’t this all made up by fanatics?
We know this because of the resurrection stories that refused to die. Because Jesus the Christ (Greek for the anointed one, messiah in Hebrew) conquered death, and thus he was divine, outside mortal time, with power over mortal flesh. Because he did these things, and we trust the accounts, we listen to him. His words speak deeply to us about our lives, our world, and how to love one another. He perfects us through simple belief, repentance, and intention to follow him. He raises us with him through his own death and resurrection, for that wood of the Cross bridges Heaven and Earth, God and Man, Love and Un-love. But we must experience our own “little deaths” of self to find our true and beautiful and good selves.
We know this carpenter was the Second Person of God because of the foolhardy yet loving behavior of his followers, the first Church. These were ordinary folk who changed dramatically, caring for the poor, protecting human life, irrespective of age, gender, race, born and unborn. He preached that the poor in spirit will inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, the mournful will be comforted, the meek will inherit the earth, those who hunger for righteousness will be filled, the merciful will be shown mercy, the pure-in-heart will see God, the peacemakers will be called the children of God. The two “Beatitudes” that follow are warnings to his followers about their future martyrdoms. And it is these martyrdoms, beginning with Nero in 67 A.D., that powerfully witness to this Galilean carpenter being the Son of God. These saints believed he was divine, and in this sense were in love with him, and they died painful deaths to witness to their belief, and to their love. They changed our world forever.
And so, as I took my little place with the other angels and shepherds in the chancel of our parish church, and as I gazed upon Mary and Joseph and the baby (we had a real baby this year, three months old), I gave thanks. I gave thanks for another year of life, but more importantly, another year as a Christian. For my Christmas tapestry is growing, as I added another pageant to my weave. My fellow Christians dance among the threads, singing and praising God, Gloria, Gloria, Gloria in excelsis Deo, the heavenly angels’ song to the earthly shepherds that starry night, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, goodwill to men.
Deo gratias and Merry Christmas!
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Tagged Angels, Christmas, eternitiiy, God, Incarnation, Joseph, Mary, Messiah, pageant, praise, rituals, time
The heavens opened early Thursday morning, and rain poured upon our California soil, slaking the thirst of the earth but soon bursting gutters and filling low places with floodwaters. In drought-plagued California, we didn’t dare complain, but were thankful.
We live in the foothills of Mount Diablo, and while our house is on bedrock, our northern hillside falls steeply into a ravine. Friday morning we noticed part of the fence was missing, and it had taken some of the landscaping with it as it slid to the bottom of the hill. I thought, as I have thought many times, how suddenly nature makes short work of man’s efforts to tame her, shattering our pride.
The earth is drying out now, and this morning we headed for church, bundled up for temps are in the low fifties (cold for us). The skies had changed from threatening to sudden beauty, with white clouds scuttling against brilliant blue patches, the low sun clarifying the air as though trying to fit more light into shorter days.
And in this winter-scape we prepare for the light of the Incarnation, to me always a stunning event, one repeated in a different way on humble altars in glorious Eucharists. It is Advent, and we prepare for Christmas, the coming of the Christ Child, God becoming one of us, with us, Emanuele. We celebrate the love, sacrificial and humble, of a God who loves his creation so much that he would do such a thing, that he would be born in a manger-cave, among animals, to a poor, devout Jewish couple who believed in his angel messengers and obeyed them.
And so, stepping into the warm nave of our parish church, the symbols of the space textured this story of miraculous birth. The Virgin Mary and her holy Child stood to the left, Gospel side, a bank of votives flaming at her feet. Three of the four Advent candles in their bed of greens had been lit (two purples and one rose). The American flag stood proudly, a testimony to our freedom of worship. Against the red brick apsidal wall, the white marble altar was draped in purple, and six tall tapers burned on either side of the purple-tented tabernacle. A crèche set in greenery, to the far right, Epistle side, told the humble story of glory, this huge contradiction, one of many fascinating ones in our faith, of glorious humility. Somehow true glory can only be found, we are told, in true humility. Somehow true joy can only be found in true sacrifice. Somehow the Creator must become part of his creation to save it from itself.
I love Advent III, called Rose Sunday, Gaudete Sunday. We light the rose candle along with the first two purple candles. Today is Gaudete Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Introit: Gaudete in Domino semper, or Rejoice in the Lord always… Rose Sunday is a break in the penitential purple of Advent, and this is the only Advent Sunday we have flowers on the altar. We emphasize the joy of anticipating Christmas rather than the penitence of preparing for Christmas.
In the daily readings of the Morning and Evening Prayer offices, the mood is definitely one of penitence and preparation. Most of the readings have been Old Testament prophecies, warnings, and judgments in Isaiah and the Psalms. We read the early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, of the beginnings of Christ’s ministry, but not the Christmas story, not yet. But most fascinating are the chapters in Revelation, or The Apocalypse, the great vision given to St. John on the Island of Patmos, detailing the end-times, the last days, the Second Coming of Christ.
We have been immersed in these daily prayers, not reflecting the coming of Christ to Bethlehem but reflecting the Second Coming of Christ in Judgment. We are “woken up” with these future realities, these warnings and visions, given a “heads up.” Are we ready for Christ to come? How will we fare when judged? Have we loved enough? Have we cleaned out our hearts to receive him? For he will not enter a cluttered heart fettered with sins, the detritus of selfishness and pride, envy and greed. There will be no room for him in such a heart. We need to make room for him.
So Advent, often called “Little Lent,” reminds us of the four great events, the adventures, to come to us: Death, Judgment, Heaven, Hell. How will we – our lives – be measured?
This morning I entered the nave of our warm parish church and knelt in a pew, giving thanks for the clergy, the people of the parish, and the freedom to worship. I asked God to clean out my little heart, to remove all the obstacles to his advent in my soul. My gaze fell on the purple-draped tabernacle and knew that this weekly ritual, this rite, would set me right with God. I knew that the habit of confession would serve me well in the time span of my life, would ensure that I have the time of my life, ride the waves of glory in this great adventure. I knew that, encouraged by the words of the liturgy – confession, absolution, the great action of the Mass, Holy Communion – I would unite once again with Christ, in bread and wine placed on my tongue. I knew that each Eucharist prepared my heart and soul, mind and body, for the great Feast of the Lamb that would await me in Heaven. And I wanted to be ready. I wanted as many Eucharistic feasts as I could manage before then, readying my heart and soul. I want to sing with the angels and the saints.
I also love Advent III because we usually practice (after Mass) for the Christmas Pageant. Young and old gather together to portray our story of redemption, beginning with the Fall of Adam and Eve and ending with the Nativity of Our Lord, the beginning of our salvation, the antidote to the Fall. Lessons are read and carols sung. We rehearsed today; next Sunday we don costumes and prayers and wings (I get to be an angel, and yes, even with wings…) We have a five-year old Mary and an eleven-year old Joseph.
The days are wintry and short. We prepare to celebrate Christmas, the year of our Lord, Anno Domini, A.D. Some of this sense, this pairing of season with humble glory, has been captured by the poet Christina Rossetti:
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.
Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.
Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.
What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.
Christina Rossetti (1830-1895), “In the Bleak Midwinter”
Yes, Advent is a time to give him our hearts: clean, ready, and open.
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Tagged Advent, Apocalypse, candles, Christina Rossetti, Christmas, end-times, Eucharist, flooding, hearts, Incarnation, light, Mass, revelation, souls, winter
I was greatly saddened to hear of the death of P. D. James at the age of 94 in her home in Oxford.
I discovered James’s detective novels many years ago in my quest to find literary mentors, authors who could teach me, mentor me, in the craft of writing. I read everything she wrote, some works several times, studying her phrasing, her metaphors.
I’m not a fan of simple sentences, but prefer sentences textured and layered with phrases, fearlessly long, unafraid to pull the reader alongside its subject in search of a predicate, looping and climbing and decorating and meandering. Reading P. D. James verified that one didn’t have to write in the “modern” way of Hemingway and all the deconstructionists who followed suit. One could indeed write like Henry James or Dickens or Bronte and not be pilloried for it. She wrote literary fiction that happened to be detective fiction, and I wish she had received greater acclaim for her talent.
Nevertheless she was wise to have written within the known and comforting structure of detective fiction, a decision that seemed to bar her from the big prizes but increased her audience. In the process she enriched the genre with layered syntax and language, and created characters with character and depth. Adam Dalgliesh was a modern hero, with all of the complexities of a truly good man. We cared about him and about those he gathered around him.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that I realized she was a fellow Anglican. My third novel, Inheritance (OakTara, 2009), was largely about the history of Christianity in England and thus predominantly the history of the Church of England (set in London, Oxfordshire, and Glastonbury), with many Book of Common Prayer scenes. So I tried to reach Baroness James to send her a copy as a small thank you for all she had done for me. I couldn’t find an address, email or surface mail.
So on one of our visits to London (May, 2011), I dropped off a copy at her agent’s office, not far from Holland Park. I tapped a buzzer alongside a green door and traipsed up narrow stairs to the offices of Greene and Heaton, 37 Goldsmith Lane, where a receptionist welcomed me. Yes, she would be happy to forward the novel to Baroness James along with my letter. A few months later I received a lovely thank you note from Baroness James.
In the note she expressed concern over the changes happening in the Anglican world, with hopes things would somehow work out. She said she didn’t know when she would get to reading my novel, since she was deep into her novel-in-progress, and couldn’t seem to find enough time to write. This turned out to be Death in Pemberley, her salute to Jane Austen. For my part, I was simply delighted, as any fan would be, to have received her note.
I have been greatly in P. D. James’ debt for many reasons. Her writing style validated my own (or so I thought); she wrote long complicated sentences and so did I. She was Anglican and loved the Book of Common Prayer containing the poetic prayer-collects of Thomas Cranmer and the Psalter, read or sung mornings and evenings, in many Anglican churches throughout the world over the years.
P. D. James grew up attending weekly Evensong. I believe that it is the rhythm of the Psalms along with those poetic prayers of Cranmer she memorized in school, that have so defined the rhythm of James’ style as well as my own. Another writer-friend, raised on the Psalms, within the Psalms, writes this way too. We grew up with these rhythms, the meter and melody becoming part of us.
P. D. James, along with a handful of other scholars and writers I have come in contact with, appreciated the beauty and truth of these prayers. They created a moral universe where a just and loving God heard our prayers and answered them. And in her works she sought this ordered beauty and truth, by making order out of disorder. She said she was drawn to crime fiction for it created a moral universe that was disordered by murder, and it was necessary for the hero to return order by solving the murder, and providing, if not God’s justice, a “certain justice.”
Because of her own life’s challenges and sufferings early on, she was equipped to create vivid characters. She was also able to write of the grit and grime of murder, the horror and ugliness of violent death. She wrote with a realism new to detective fiction at the time, unlike Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle. And yet she provided redemption by returning order to the world.
One of the greatest gifts an artist can give to his or her culture is to civilize the barbaric places in the individual and in society. It is this civilization that the Book of Common Prayer has represented, and that P. D. James has reflected in her own way. How do we impose order upon disorder in our hearts and in our communities? Artists, to be sure, have a moral responsibility to civilize us, encourage us to be civil, to love, to light up the dark places. In my own novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, I’m exploring some of the boundaries of darkness and light, borderlands where the barbaric has made alarming inroads in today’s culture.
Thank you Baroness James. You have ordered our disorder in so many ways, civilizing our hearts and minds.
Rest eternal grant unto her, O Lord, and may light perpetual shine upon her.
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Tagged Book of Common Prayer, Cranmer, Detective Fiction, mentor, novels, P.D.James, style, syntax, writing
This Thanksgiving weekend we spent giving thanks for Hana, Maui. We arrived in the dusk of Tuesday evening, flying low along the coast from Kahului to Hana. Darkness was descending quickly and a thick fog enshrouded our small nine-seater plane. I knew that Hana Airport had no radar, and if we could not land due to poor visibility we would turn around and return to Kahului Airport, where we would need to rent a car for the two hour winding trip to Hana.
Suspended in the fog, it seemed we were floating. I began to pray. Then I sensed the plane had curved out to sea searching for visibility pockets, but it was actually making a different approach, coming in from the south. Soon we saw the coastline of land and sea, the gentle green shape of Ka’uiki Head reaching out from Hana Bay, with its lighthouse alight and welcoming, and soon we heard the wheels touch the landing strip. We rolled between the lights flaring along the sides of the runway. Safe. With bowed heads we maneuvered through the exit door and climbed down the rope ladder to terra firma.
The pilot explained he used GPS (I suppose I should not have worried) but when he said that he missed the “twilight cutoff” by one minute I asked what he meant. “I’m not allowed to land at the Hana Airport after twilight.” “Oh,” I said. One minute? My prayers were needed after all.
The temps have been on the cool side even for this rain forest on the eastern shore of Maui in the middle of winter, but in spite of winds and gray skies, rain has been mostly at night and we have been able to walk a bit. But the loveliness of Hana isn’t just the tropical temperatures, the palms, the roaring surf, the little drinks with umbrellas, but rather the people. Over the years we have come to appreciate this village that nestles under the volcano Haleakala, that is protected by Fagan’s Cross standing like a beacon on one of the green foothills.
And so I wrote Hana-lani, a love story set here, and in the dreaming and the courtship of words and phrases and sentences, as I married language that reflected the many colors, sounds, and fragrances, with the family and faith of Hana, I’ve been blessed by the warm hospitality of the folks that live here. We return to Hana, it is true, to rest, relax, and listen to the surf (and sip a few Mai Tais) but also to enjoy the people.
We are in our gentle years and not quite as active as we once were, but the paths that meander over the lawns of our hotel are kind and beckoning, with views of the sea and the spewing white foam. And from our veranda we can see Ka’uiki Head, the same scene that’s on the cover of my novel. At night, surf pounds and rain rattles the roof. In the day, we read and rest, and I create my next scene in The Fire Trail. And all the while, I say my prayers of thanksgiving as we slip into Advent and the marking of a new Church Year.
Our time in Hana has been appropriately bracketed by Eucharists celebrated on Thanksgiving and today, Advent I. We climbed the white stairs to St. Mary’s and entered through an arched portal into the airy space where prayers mingle with breezes wafting through open windows. It is a white church, set on a green hillside, Fagan’s Cross higher up, and the volcano behind that, and today the chancel was splashed with purple hangings for Advent. Four Advent candles nested in their greens and the Lady altar had been lovingly decorated with flowers (we joined in a Rosary before Mass). The polished wooden pews have comfortable kneelers, and for this I am grateful, because I like to kneel when I pray.
They say that gratitude is a good cure for depression (and drug-free), forcing one to turn outward and less inward, becoming a bit more selfless and a little less self-centered. I think there is truth in this, and it is also true that it is a good preparation for penitence, a cleaning out of the heart. For when I am thankful for the blessings of each day, beginning with the blessing of waking to the day itself, I am humbled. And in the humbling I see places in my heart that need cleaning out… dark corners where envy, pride, idolatry, sloth, gluttony, wrath, and all their many many relatives, have hidden. It is good to give my soul a good sweeping, to let the fresh air in, just as the breezes blow through the windows of St. Mary’s.
In this holy season I will re-learn the Advent collect in the Book of Common Prayer:
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
I will re-memorize these words and place them in my newly swept heart. I shall hold them close, so that I may retrieve them at any moment in any place during this holy season. They are words that sum up our hopeful faith and faithful hope, these sixteenth-century phrases of Bishop Cranmer. I would like to have that armor of light. I would like to rise to that life immortal.
So we trundled up the stairs to St. Mary’s and worshiped God with the lovely people of Hana. Many ages formed the congregation, and while I was pleased to see so many children, I was equally pleased to see the respect paid to the elderly. No one was left out, and we visitors were greeted with vine leis, a sweet kindness.
Sometimes we sang together in Hawaiian, sometimes in English, as we accomplished the “work of the people,” the Holy Liturgy, joining together in the great action of the Mass, with Scripture, sermon, creed, confession, consecration of the bread and wine, communion. In this huge prayer we took part in a drama enacted throughout the world and throughout time, and we sang with the angels and saints in Heaven. I think God was pleased with the offering of his children in Hana.
We have entered Advent, the season of the coming of Christ Jesus among us, humbly as a child who donned our flesh and shared our sufferings, so that he could unite with us and carry us to Heaven. We now look to Christ’s coming again, his second advent, in glory to judge the living and the dead. Will we be ready? We are told it could happen now, tomorrow, the next day. So we practice penitence, as we wait for that glorious advent; we cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armor of light.
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Tagged Advent, candles, Christ, Christmas, church, Fagan's Cross, Hana, Hana-lani, Incarnation, liturgy, St. Mary's, Thanksgiving, the Fire Trail
Today is the last Sunday of the Church Year and the Sunday before our national Day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the best antidote to selfishness and the best prescription for selflessness and thus leads naturally to the First Sunday in Advent.
Melanie McDonagh in the November 1 issue of The British Spectator makes the profound observation that the “cult of mindfulness” is largely a cult of self. It may or may not bring peace, alleviate stress, even heal depression, but it is an isolated lonely cult in which the focus is on one’s inner self. She is correct that the idea of living in the moment is pure Buddhism, and like Buddhism, the idea encourages us to escape suffering rather than face it, wrestle with it, and create meaning from it.
I have found that Christianity and Judaism pull the believer out of himself. It is through being self-less not self-ish that we find peace, and indeed, it is an inner peace that we find. How does this strange contradiction work? It works because in prayer we are focusing on the God who made us, and yet who also lives within us. Without belief in this objectively real God, we are merely wallowing in our own selves. Christianity brings the believer into community with all sorts of folks unlike him or her, different in age, gender, race, class, interests. We rub shoulders, we share tea, we are solicitous of one another. Most of all, we worship God (not ourselves) together, sharing this common outward vision, as we act out and re-present the great liturgical drama of church or temple.
And so Christianity and Judaism urge the believer to look around and, yes, smell the roses and live in the minute, for every minute is a precious gift. But these religions do far more. They urge the believer to face and interact with the real world. We call this interaction love, brotherly love. It is the sacrifice of that precious minute given by God, for the minutes are numbered, in order to give that minute to another, a stranger, someone unlike us. We pray for others; we visit the sick, shut-in, and lonely; we support charities that support life in all its facets, joyful and sorrowful. The history of the West is the history of this urge to better our world, to care for our communities.
Within this urge, this still small voice directing us to love, lies judgment. Judgment is not popular today; we are told we must not point fingers. And yet if we do not see clearly the true nature of what is happening around us and within us, we cannot better the world, and we cannot better ourselves.
God has spoken to his creation through his chosen people over many centuries. He has clearly marked the path to glory. The path takes us outside of ourselves so that God can enter those same selves. By shedding “me,” I miraculously find “me.”
One of the ways God has shown us how to do this is through simple thankfulness. The psalms are full of thanksgiving to God. To pray the psalms is to leave no room for depression. To offer oneself up is to know joy. It’s as simple as that. The Lord’s Prayer opens with praise that pulls us heavenward: Our Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come… Thanksgiving lives inside every word of praise.
And so this Thanksgiving Day, I look around me at my world, my nation, my community, my own heart. I try to see honestly, and I see generations of children raised in the cult of mindfulness. I see them highly mindful of their self-esteem, prone to take offense, demanding and self-righteous. They have lost themselves in themselves, as though whirling downwards, pulled into a vortex where depression imprisons them.
But on this Sunday before Advent and before Thanksgiving, I also look around me and see churches and temples where true thanksgiving is offered to a very real and loving Creator. I see voices raised together, not always in tune, singing thanksgiving and praise. I see love weaving among these communities of true believers who thank, not the stars, but the living and Almighty God for their very breath. I see islands of faith that show us how to be free from ourselves, not enslaved by ourselves. We do this by giving thanks to God for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Today is called in our Anglican tradition “Stir-up Sunday,” named after Thomas Cranmer’s powerful Collect, the collecting or gathering prayer for this day, written in the sixteenth century:
“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
This is one of the many prayers that have formed the Western tradition. In this prayer we are called to act, to care for those around us, and through the caring itself we are interiorly rewarded. We will be changed.
And so, we look to the season of Advent, the four weeks that proclaim the advent of God becoming man, the Incarnation, the Christ child born in a stable. How do we prepare ourselves for this great coming? We give thanks, and in the giving thanks we receive God, we know joy. It is his chosen path. The way is clear.
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Advent, Christ, church, depression, God, mindfulness, peace, prayer, selflessness, spiritual, temple, Thanksgiving
Last week we celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. This week we worry about building a wall along our southern border high enough and in time enough to stop the flood of illegal immigrants. And we worry about a president who disregards our laws.
Walls wall people out, and they wall people in. The Berlin Wall, a part of the “iron curtain” separating the Communist East from the free West, walled people in, imprisoning them. The purpose of the border is key. The quality of freedom and the degree of tyranny on either side is key.
America, as a free society, allows freedom of travel, albeit with the legal documents to do so, documents that protect not only the traveler, but the citizenry at home and abroad. We cross borders and checkpoints, and walls seem to disappear for legal American citizens. Those of us fortunate enough to be born here must never take this for granted. Those of us who have come here legally will, to be sure, never take it for granted. Those who crossed our borders illegally however have harmed both themselves and us, for the rule of law, our justice system, is integral to America’s very definition. Illegals would not be coming to America if it were otherwise. But their breaking of our law has also harmed those legal immigrants who have waited in line patiently. Their breaking of our law has harmed the millions of law-abiding workers whose wages are challenged by an influx of a low-cost and illegal labor force.
I have found in my sixty-seven years on this earth, that personal walls are useful parameters in my life. We call such walls self-discipline. I build walls around my time, boxing in an hour to write this blog post on a Sunday afternoon, imprisoning an occasional day to write a another scene in The Fire Trail, my novel-in-progress, or fencing in a morning to worship God in church.
I don’t always feel like going to church. I confess there are often other things I would rather be doing. But my time wall tells me it’s time, it’s Sunday, and since this wall is one of the Ten Commandments, I had better have a good reason for breaking this commandment. I don’t always feel like writing this blog, but see it as a good discipline, an exercise in words, rather like my stretching exercises each morning. Who wants to exercise? We do it because we know we will feel better, that we will prevent injury by strengthening muscles and pumping the heart. If we ignore this time wall, we hurt ourselves.
Likewise, when I skip Sunday worship I don’t feel as happy as when I honor the Sabbath. A friend once said to me that there are no mentions of happiness in the Bible. I wondered about that. It turns out that each time the word blessed is used, it can be translated as happy. The difference seems to be that blessed means that the happiness is a gift from God, rather than happiness self-induced through drugs or a good dinner or any of the short-term highs we laud today.
So building that wall around Sunday morning, i.e. reserving that time for worship of God with his people, the Body of Christ, makes me blessedly happy all week. I’ve also found that morning prayers bless each day, and evening prayers bless me with a good sleep. I often tell insomniacs to try reciting the psalms… the rhythm, the worship, the letting go of oneself in the pool of God’s love is very relaxing. The best way to sleep is to let go of your self.
When I ignore those daily and weekly boundaries of time, I find a curious unease settling around my heart, as though I have starved my spirit. Studies have recently shown that church-goers are less likely to be depressed. How true.
Since the sixties, our culture has torn down boundaries and mocked moral discipline, has destroyed all kinds of walls. Deviancy has been defined down; crime has risen. Standards of dress, behavior, academics, work, and many other areas of social interaction have sought to be inclusive so that no one be offended by beauty, truth, goodness, excellence or wealth. Our culture has mainstreamed variation, including everyone in one main stream. When this happens, when walls no longer define excellence, when borders no longer define truth, goodness, and beauty, their edges smudge and we find ourselves living in a tepid gray area along with everyone else… wearing the uniform of sexless comrades in a steely city, a dystopia growing more familiar each day.
It is as though we have mistaken inclusivity and warm-heartedness for love. But God’s love, true love, loves the uniqueness of each created being, warts and all. He sees into the dark corners of our hearts; he wants to teach us how to love as he has loved and will always love; he wants us to clean out those dark places and let his light in. And so he arranged for each one of us to be created through an act of love, a union of two unique persons, complementary in gender and unique in genes, and thus we are wondrously born to be only ourselves. We can be no other. Love rejoices in these differences, doesn’t deny and merge them, hoping they will disappear in a gray land without borders.
And as we rejoice in our human differences, whether they be race, gender, beauty, or talent, let us also rejoice in the borders defining our nation, a land that is just and free, boundaries that celebrate legal crossings and prosecute illegal ones. This is the America that immigrants desire. This is the America we are proud of. This is the America we are honored to fight for in a world of shadows and merging grays.
In Robert Frost’s poem “Mending Wall,” the narrator repairs a common-border wall with his neighbor, who states, “Good fences make good neighbors.” The poet considers what this means, asking,
Why do they make good neighbors… Before I built a wall I’d ask to know What I was walling in or walling out And to whom I was like to give offense.
His neighbor doesn’t consider why, just repeats his slogan. But Mr. Frost is right, it is good to answer where and why we build walls, consider who’s outside and who’s inside and possible offenses caused by our defenses, for there are good reasons.
Let us build a just wall along the borders of our nation that will no longer invite illegal entry. Let us encourage those already here illegally to become legal through due process and to stand in line like everyone else. And let us keep the wall repaired to protect us all. Let us be good neighbors.
Today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today is also two days before Remembrance Day, which recalls the signing of the World War I armistice, and Veterans Day, honoring all military men and women who have served our country.
Remembering these soldiers and these wars, recalling our defense of freedom and defeat of tyranny reminds us of the fragility of peace. Evil flies in planes across our borders, bombing our cities. It creeps through the jungle into our civilized world. But it is also deep within each of us, lying dormant, or not so dormant, asleep or not so asleep. A wall runs through each heart, a wall not so unlike the one that divided Berlin. On one side, the bestial; on the other, the celestial. One side is self-preserving and tyrannical; the other is self-sacrificing and honorable. Most of us do not see the border, for we are used to it and the territories merge. It is a smudged line at best, and we ignore it.
Similar blurry lines run through cultures. Parts are barbaric and others civil. One side recognizes the law of the jungle, might makes right; the other upholds the law God gave to man, life is precious, love one another, the common good is good. In some countries the boundary is clear, a geographical periphery bordering the nation, defined by democratic institutions. In some communities it is hazy and lazy, as law-abiding neighborhoods slip into law-breaking ones. Inner cities, once “gentrified,” blur into crime-ridden communities, where politically correct policies encourage the criminals.
Other lines are more clear. We can see clearly the border between the Trade Center Towers and the terrorists who destroyed them. We see the border between the peaceful shoppers in a mall and the terrorist who beheaded the coworker. We can see also the border between the innocent runners in a marathon and the terrorists who maimed them.
We fought two World Wars so that free peoples could live freely and peacefully. How ironic and tragic that we must go to war to ensure peace. It seems to be the way of man, that one side of his heart must triumph over the other in order to protect the good from the evil. The free must triumph over those who seek to enslave them. This is a just war.
The Berlin wall was hugely symbolic and terribly effective. Many lives were lost in attempts to flee Eastern Germany and the shackles of the Communist Soviet Union, to the safety of the West. But even with the wall finally down, and even with our rejoicing in its fall, we know there are still five countries imprisoned by Communism. For them the wall has not fallen; they do not remember victory on this day or any day; they mourn for the daily victims.
Hong Kong, back under Communist China’s control since 1997, recently witnessed thousands of protesters demanding the right to vote in honest elections. The protest was quelled by tear gas, pepper spray, beatings, jailings, in an echo of the Tienanmen Square massacre twenty-five years ago. In Laos, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party, the only party allowed, denies free speech, religious freedom, and property ownership. Like its neighbor Communist Vietnam, the government tortures and imprisons those who disagree. Cuba follows the Communist playbook as well, keeping a tight grip on thought, speech, and freedom. The border between Communist North Korea and Democratic South Korea is a clear geographical boundary, a four-hundred-mile demilitarized zone, separating a people with common language and history. The Communist North tortures and starves its citizens, denies freedom of religion, thought, travel. As Mr. Marion Smith, Executive Director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, wrote recently in the Wall Street Journal:
“To tear down that wall will require the same moral clarity that brought down the concrete and barbed-wire barrier that divided Berlin 25 years ago. The Cold War may be over, but the battle on behalf of human freedom is still being waged every day. The triumph of liberty we celebrate on this anniversary of the Berlin Wall’s destruction must not be allowed to turn to complacency in the 21st century.”
And so remembrance inspires us to rededicate and re-shore our beliefs, our courage, and yes, our military strength as a free nation in a world of shackled peoples. Recent midterm elections recognized this. I hope we will see more clearly the wall dividing freedom and tyranny, so that we may preserve our own scattered communities of peace.
And we give humble thanks to the brave men and women who have kept us free, fighting and dying for our freedoms. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Berlin Wall, borders, boundaries, Communism, democracy, freedom, Remembrance Day, Veterans Day, walls, World Wars
I’m afraid I don’t appreciate falling back an hour so that we can spring forward later in order to move an hour of light from evening to morning. It confuses the body’s natural clock, and I’ve yet to find a good reason to practice daylight saving time today. I’m told it has to do with farmers needing earlier morning light, but the advantage only lasts a few weeks.
And yet, just as when I travel across time zones, the change brings to mind the strangeness of time itself, its movement, its speed usually governed by my own attention. Time speeds up when I am thinking; it slows down when I am not focused. But we all know this is an illusion, a fact that makes the whole process even more strange.
Aging speeds time too. We live a certain life-time, a set span as though we inhabit parentheses or brackets or quotation marks. Perhaps birth is a capital letter and death the period; we are the sentence and we hope we have many clauses and interesting verbs and fascinating, colorful nouns. One way or another we travel a road through time from birth to death, like flipping pages in a book, and the traveling seems to speed up as we move along. Those childhood years stretched out, especially those summer months with no school (at least in my childhood) and those long lazy days of reading and riding bikes into dusk and darkness and someone called you in.
And so it seemed appropriate that the Festival of All Saints landed this weekend, All Saints on Saturday with its extra hour (a sweet gift to be taken back later) and All Souls moved to tomorrow, Monday. All Saints and All Souls is a festival of time, I’ve often thought, celebrating the mystery of human life, and God within each of those human lives. We talk about the Communion of Saints, linking those from the past with those in the present with those to come, all in communion with us when we receive our Communion, communing together on a Sunday morning.
As our preacher explained, when we worship God we take part in the glory and worship of those in Heaven – the souls, saints, and angels, as described in the Revelation of St. John, the Epistle for All Saints Day:
I beheld… a great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, and palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, saying, Salvation to our God with sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb. And all the angels stood around about the throne, and about the elders and the four living creatures, and fell before the throne on their faces, and worshipped God, saying, Amen: Blessing, and glory, and wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honour, and power, and might, be unto our God for ever and ever. Amen. (Rev. 7:2+)
In our earthly hour of liturgical worship, ritual choreographed like a dance incorporating all the earthly senses (hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, smelling), we worship outside of time with those before, those now, those to come. We also worship deep inside time, in its very heart, the kernel of created life, deep within God himself as he enters deep within us. It is a pinpoint moment all pulled together as the Host is placed on the tongue and we sip from the chalice.
Time is telescoped on a Sunday morning in a simple church, so that when we leave the sacred and re-enter the worldly rushing world around us, where time devours seconds on a dial or falls into the abyss of a digital screen, gone – when we re-enter our ordinary comings and goings – we bring that timeless telescopic moment with us. We carry that jeweled moment, and all the jeweled moments of worship, collected in each of us, recreating us to be who we truly are. We become further sculpted and more defined. We have been fed and enriched and changed each time we join this host of witnesses, each time we sing our songs of worship as one voice:
For all the saints, who from their labors rest, Who thee….. by faith before the world confessed, Thy Name, O Jesus, be for ev – er blest, Al – le – lu – ia, al – le – lu – ia! (#126, 1940 Episcopal Hymnal)Our preacher spoke of the tortures of the early saints, their long, drawn-out martyrdoms as they confessed the lordship of Jesus of Nazareth. We look around our world today and see similar Christian martyrdoms, but we feel safe on our own soil. So far. Would we deny our faith? We wonder on days like today, when we recall Tertullian’s “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.” We are thankful for these saints, for where would we be today without them?
Time would be a dull thing, scattered and meaningless, with no end in sight and too many ends in sight. We would be devoured by the noise and rush of the world or simply our own silent pride. We would be blind to beauty, truth, goodness. We would not see God, and so we would not appreciate the life he has given us; life would be cheap.
And so, in a way, All Saints is a prelude to Thanksgiving for, while every Eucharist is a festival of thanksgiving, today is a day in which we give special thanks for that emerald moment of worship promised, that moment we join with the heavenly host in the worship of God with the great Communion of Saints.
Christine Sunderland
Christine Sunderland 