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Rejoice Sunday

Posted on March 30, 2014 | 1 comment

I continue to be astounded by the richness of our Anglican liturgy, the way the colors and seasons weave into one another to create a fascinating and beautiful tapestry of time. 

It is a liturgy shared, of course, with Roman Catholics and to an extent Eastern Orthodox: the love of symbols, saints, and sacraments; the dramatization of deep and joyous beliefs; the pleasure taken in incense, song, chant, processions, and common prayers we know by heart so we can pray in common together. 

We call our sixteenth-century prayer book The Book of Common Prayer, for it provides prayers learned by rote for those of us in the pews so that we can pray as one voice. It also provides assurance that the prayers prayed at the altar are theologically true, for they reflect words chosen carefully through the centuries. We call this catholic in the sense that it represents what is true for all time in all places for all people. 

I read recently that new education studies show that children are better prepared to succeed in life if they learn the old fashioned way, that is, by rote, by memory work and drill. I learned the old fashioned way and while it took effort and patience, I was rewarded with a strong sense of accomplishment. We learned poems and times tables and history dates. Often boring, but usually productive. I think I also learned how to accept boredom, how to not expect constant entertainment, how to go the distance, how to, in essence, work. I learned how to meet goals set by teachers so that later I would learn how to meet goals set by myself or employers. 

Our liturgy is full of these small and large milestones. It is not meant to entertain (although it often does in a glorious way, suddenly, unexpectedly), but rather it is meant to meet certain goals. “Liturgy” is the “work of the people.” We call the Holy Eucharist an action in the phrase the “Action of the Mass.” Something truly happens, and we, with God’s help, help to make it happen. We add our unified, voiced prayers, memorized (eventually through repetition), to those of the priest who celebrates the Mass. As the priest stands before the altar he stands before God, representing us. But during the Action, he represents Christ, consecrating the bread and wine into body and blood; Christ is made manifest in the “creatures” of bread and wine through this action.

To be worthy of receiving Almighty God into our hearts and bodies, we examine our lives for deeds done and undone, those things separating us from God. We need to be perfect, washed clean, to meet him at the altar rail. And so we confess together, as one and as many, and are absolved. We are made perfect in that moment.

Today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent. It is called Laetare Sunday, meaning “Rejoice,” named for the traditional Introit, “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem; and be ye glad for her…”. It lands midway in Lent, and is meant to be a lighter brighter more joyful Sunday than the others in Lent. Rose vestments and altar cloths sometimes replace the somber purple, and flowers are allowed on the altar (not so the other Sundays in Lent).

We draw closer to Passiontide, the two weeks before Easter, and so it is as though we are refreshed today, before we return to the road to Jerusalem and the way of the Cross. We consider our Lenten rules – our self-discipline of time and desire. I for one am not midway through my memory work: First Corinthians 13. I have the first few verses down, sort of, but it has been a struggle, as is anything worth doing. It may take Lent and Advent and another Lent for this old soul to learn it by heart. Nevertheless, I keep at it, the passage printed out, handy for the odd moment of time. Perhaps it is discipline that, in the end, forms disciples.

Today’s Gospel is the account of the feeding of the five thousand, the multiplying of the loaves and fishes, one of many feeding miracles recorded in Holy Scripture. But John’s Chapter Six account is followed by Christ’s stunning announcement that one must eat his flesh and drink his blood to attain eternal life. It is not surprising that many followers left him after that statement, confused and probably overwhelmed at the very least.

Christianity is not a religion for the faint of heart, although our God mends broken hearts. It is not for the lazy, although our God empowers us with his own life. It is definitely a faith for those who admit helplessness in these matters, for with steady slugging along, we are rewarded with stunning joy. Not a bad exchange. It is an exciting journey with God to God, full of miracles and happiness. I’ve had more Road-to-Damascus moments than I could possibly count. 

So it is with great delight that I am certain that all I have to do is show up at church on Sundays. All I have to do is pray with the Body of Christ, the Church, and be part of the great Action of the Mass. All I have to do is repent and be forgiven. I do these things every Sunday and everything else falls into place, as though angels rain grace upon my life. I don’t need to see and understand everything all the time. All I need to do is go to my little parish church and be faithful.

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A Bobcat in My Yard

Posted on March 24, 2014 | Leave a comment

The Fire Trail, my novel-in-progress, is about the borders between civilization and the wilderness, so it has been with some interest that I witnessed a bobcat appear in our backyard three times in the last two weeks. He shows up around four to five o’clock in the afternoon, slipping silently up the hill below our house, through the rosemary and lavender, where he pauses on the edge of the patio and stares at me.

He is small, not much larger than a big cat, and I hoped that he was a cub and could not fit through our iron fence once he was older. But after Googling (hooray for the Internet), I have learned his full size is about twice the size of a cat, which means the fence will not bar him, will not protect us. We have not fenced out the wilderness.

I love animals and especially cats, so I was intrigued with the catlike face as our eyes locked. He had substantial whiskers, powerful hind legs. He loped confidently across our patio into the bushes on the opposite side, a graceful animal. But we have domestic cats, Lady Jane and Laddie, and we fear this wildcat would make short work of either of them. I saw the bobcat’s photo online, spotted in Mt. Diablo State Park nearby last week. The comments were all about how cute he was. Cute?

He is wild and he is hunting in my backyard. The wilderness has encroached upon the small space of safety we call home. The bobcat, I reflected, is a timely reminder of our helplessness in the face of nature. I recalled reading that Canadian wolves re-introduced to the northwest have multiplied beyond desire and safety. We cannot control the natural world.

In The Fire Trail, set in Berkeley, a trail runs east of the university between the town and the high dry grass and the flammable eucalyptus. Fire trails, like fences, are designed to keep the wild of the wilderness away from our domesticated and safe communities. They create a break between death and life. Fire, like the bobcat, has uses. Bobcats are excellent pest controls. Fire is useful too: it warms us, lights our way, cooks our food, runs our industries. Yet it burns, maims, devours, kills when not held in check.

And so it is a short way from the border between wilderness and civilization and the border between freedom and responsibility. How does a culture set its boundaries of behavior? How does an individual limit his own actions, impulses, desires? What are the limits, if any, in a democracy that cherishes the individual over the community, the minority over the majority, and oddly enough, those who cross the boundaries of accepted mores and suffer for doing so. These last – those who see freedom as the right to self-fulfillment at any cost – are lauded in our culture, as though our commonly held assumptions mean nothing. How do we protect free speech and the practice of religion in an orderly and civil manner?

Civil society has long looked to history to draw its boundaries, to tame the wild, to define its very self. It has long looked to its institutions – churches, temples, schools, community organizations – to tame the beast in each of us. Within the church, structured rituals tame our raging hearts, our untamed desires, our envy, anger, greed, gluttony, pride. We follow the Church Year faithfully, Christmas incarnation through Easter resurrection and see that we are fallen creatures who need help to rise from the earth, to stand. We cannot pull ourselves up on our own.

The bobcat paused and stared at me. I do not think he reflected, considered, that he was trespassing. He was hungry and thirsty. He hunted to survive. He was deadly.

It is Lent. It is a time to consider, like St. Therese of Lisieux, the “little flower,” our littleness, our helpless selfishness, our incivility, without God. In the still small moments of quiet that appear without warning during the day, in the sudden wakefulness that touches us in the dark of night, we pray, Our Father who art in heaven… We embrace little denials, here and there, unseen and unknown, and we pray, You are all I need… We learn to discipline our hearts so that we can truly love.

This week we celebrate the Feast of the Annunciation, that remarkable and glorious moment when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary that God had chosen her to bear his son. Mary sings a song of praise, My soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my saviour… God used her littleness to enter our world. He can use yours and he can use mine.

Our world is slip-sliding, it seems, backwards, away from the way forwards as the jungle encroaches upon us like a roaring lion. But like Mary we can say, Be it unto me according to thy will. Through sacrament and worship, through little gestures of listening and love, through our own self-denials, God magnifies us and strengthens us. We fall again and again. He reaches for us and pulls us up so that we can stand. He shows us the way.

And the bobcats will return to the wilderness as we rebuild civilization.

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A Chapel in Berkeley

Posted on March 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

On this Second Sunday in Lent, my husband and I worshiped at St. Joseph of Arimathea Chapel in Berkeley, a block from the University of California campus.

It was not our first visit to the chapel, for our publishing group, the American Church Union, is headquartered in the adjoining building (where I spend considerable time…) along with our Anglican Seminary, St. Joseph of Arimathea Theological College. It is also the seat of our dear Archbishop Robert Morse.

It was the first time, however, that we arrived on a bicycle race day. After finding on-street parking, still free on Sundays (!), we stepped around the roadblocks, watching the cyclists fly around the corner of Durant and Bowditch. This particular corner was our destination as well and, as we approached St. Joseph’s Chapel, working our way through the gathering race-watchers, we heard the happy thunder of the pipe organ.

It was a traditional English hymn that poured out the open doors and onto Durant Avenue. Many race-watchers on the sidewalk paused, wondering about the music. “An Anglican church,” I heard someone say, approaching the sign near the front door. “Hmmm, interesting,” he murmured, and moved on to the corner’s edge and the flying cyclists.

The day was bright, a glorious spring day. The hills in my East Bay neighborhood have turned a velvet green. Balmy weather has returned as though last week’s welcome rain was a distant memory. Berkeley buzzed with the energy of youth enjoying a sunny Sunday morning.

We left the bright energy of the flying cyclists and their watchers and followed the music. We entered the chapel’s softly lit space and paused in a small foyer. A Madonna and Child opposite the doorway caught the light, glowing. Turning, we stepped into the barrel-vaulted church, a “collegial” church, meaning one with a choir and sanctuary but no large nave. The space, twenty by fifty, thirty feet high, reminded me of chapels we have seen in Europe, medieval parish churches dating to the seventh and eighth centuries. But I knew St. Joseph’s was built in the mid-twentieth century, designed by William Dutcher, who clearly had a good sense of history and acoustics as well as holiness. In this chapel, the eye is drawn first to the altar – the simplicity points there – then above to the sixteenth-century crucifix, and higher to the vaulted ceiling.

We were early, the first to arrive, and I appreciated the time to gather my heart and mind into prayer. Sitting on wooden benches, we listened to the organ. The music spilled onto the red-tiled floor, winging to the altar, the crucifix, soaring beyond. A hanging sanctuary lamp glowed before a rustic altar, and soon a gentleman entered from the side of the sanctuary and lit six candles on either side of a purple-draped tabernacle. The white stucco walls, unadorned, added to the simplicity, and I recalled a Cistercian abbey (much larger) we visited in Provence: Senanque, where the empty space channels vision, and thus heart, mind, and soul to the altar and its tabernacle.

The organ is on loan from the university in a happy collaboration with St. Joseph’s. It is, according to the website (www.anglicanpck.org/seminary) a “twelve-stop, two manual and pedal, mechanical-action instrument,” built by Herr Jurgen Ahrend of Loga-Leer, Germany, renowned for his work in Europe and America. The organ is especially tuned for liturgical music of the medieval and early modern periods, so that we enter history as we sing.

I’m not a professional musician but I am drawn into beauty, and especially beautiful music, and if I am allowed to sing hymns I know and love in an intimate space like this, I think I am in heaven and not Berkeley at all. If an organ such as this one leads me through the music of beauty, a mere fifteen feet away from my ears, I am sure I am flying with the angels, and my feet couldn’t possibly be planted on terra firma.

The Anglican liturgy, with prayers dating to the seventh century, with words translated from the Latin to Elizabethan sixteenth-century prose, is especially beautiful and stunningly poetic. Over the years the words have become part of me, as the beauty has soaked into my five senses. I hear the song, see the procession of acolytes and flaming candles, smell the burning wax and the billowing incense, feel the host upon my tongue, and taste the eternal as I receive Christ into my body.

But the liturgy in this small soaring space, the organ thundering its notes upon our ears, is intimate. It is the intimate experience of God among us, touching us, loving us. Outside, the watchers shouted and bicycles buzzed. Inside, we flew as well, soaring into the chapel vaults, winging with the music, the chants, the prayers.

It was a good morning, this Second Sunday in Lent. As I saw the Cal Crew process in as acolytes (one of their duties as residents in the chapel’s neighboring house), I smiled. The young men carried their flaming candles, stepping seriously, holding the crucifix with care. As the liturgy of the Eucharist began, we all stepped into time, past, present, and future, with ancient prayers and future glory.

And we left the chapel with a holier sense of the present, and our place in time, this Second Sunday of Lent 2014.

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On Protecting our Children

Posted on March 9, 2014 | 4 comments

I’ve been pondering children’s beauty pageants, why it is that I recoil from them, what it is that troubles me? One of the themes that I am weaving through my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, is the early sexualization of girls in our culture, a concern I share with many mothers and grandmothers and fathers too. The boundaries of permissiveness have been redrawn, the taboos redefined. Wrong has merged into right; deviancy has blurred into the new norm. Ah, freedom! And without responsibility! The great sixties legacy. But is it a coincidence that crime is up, out-of-wedlock births more common, single parent families a larger portion of the population. Delinquency is clearly related to fatherless and broken homes. 

Many women, seeking their career as they have been urged to do, never find Mr. Right (don’t count on a man to support you, they are warned, and probably correctly so). Their biological clock races forward and soon test tube babies are the answer to their natural longing for motherhood. Adding to this, and a result of this as well, many men never grow up, take sex where they find it, sex being so available, are never held accountable for their actions,  never become fathers to their children or breadwinners to their families. They drift through life, suddenly finding themselves, well, adrift, and perhaps slightly depressed.

The traditional family, with all of its imperfections, has tried to protect women (and men) from exactly this situation. Sex within marriage ensured two parents raising children, or at least if did not ensure, won the prize for the best chance we had and have today to create stable homes for the raising of the next generation. And why must we have stable homes? Because broken homes are just that – broken – and do not provide the environment in which children can grow to become healthy adults, reach their God-given potential. This brokenness also puts tremendous stress on the single parent raising a child alone.

Full disclosure, I was divorced and a single parent. The pain involved in the breakdown of a marriage and the brokenness of a family is enormous. The guilt, the fear, and the sheer exhaustion all take their toll on mothers (and it’s usually the mothers) who try to be all to the child and at the same time provide food and shelter. There are not enough hours in the day to do both adequately, and usually food and shelter come first.

So as I see more and more of this brokenness in our culture, due largely to easy artificial birth control and casual sex that lead to casual marriage or no marriage that lead to casual families holding together until falling apart in casual no-fault divorce. These are serious, sacramental events – sex, marriage, childbearing – that have serious consequences for our children and for our society. 

This coarsening is somewhat reflected in child beauty pageants. But wait. Am I against spelling bees involving ten-year-olds? How about my church Christmas pageant with the cute preschool angels? Are all stage competitions and productions involving the young something we should worry about? I think not. While adoration and fame may create a false impression of the real world, it is a good thing for children to experience success and be recognized for it. I played in a piano recital when I was ten, as did my son when he was ten. Folks listened and clapped. We sang in choral concerts, church and school. My husband played solo violin and even sang a few solos as he was growing up (until his voice changed), performing with adults in the Oakland Symphony Orchestra.

So what is it that bothers me? Where is the line crossed, the fire trail breached by the flames? We all recall Jean Benet Ramsey of Colorado and her tragic death at the age of six. What troubles many of us is the sexual aspect to some of the pageants: the adult makeup, the adult costumes, the pouting lips, the luring looks, the posing and flirting and acting the part of a Hollywood ingénue or a Las Vegas stripper. In these instances, the children are molded in a strange (even dark) way to value skin-deep beauty and to see sexual manipulation as a good thing. They are also taught that it’s okay to be treated as an object, to be objectified, and in the end, to be used.

From the audience’s standpoint, men are gazing upon children who are striking sexual poses. It’s supposed to be “cute” but, in the words of Dan Rather, it’s really “kiddy porn.” And Internet porn has become an international pastime. It says, hey, it’s okay to look at these children this way. And Facebook encourages the uploading of “selfies” by wannabe teens in response to “modeling” calls. The culture tells the children and the adults who look that it’s okay.

But it’s not okay. 

In researching these pageants across the country I’ve noticed that many have two “types,” one called “natural” and one called “glitzy.” The natural ones require modest clothing; the glitzy ones do not. The natural ones require no makeup; the glitzy ones encourage makeup. So perhaps the industry is policing itself to a degree. The murder of Jean Benet Ramsey spotlighted child beauty pageants in the 1990s, and perhaps things are changing on their own.

Probably not soon enough. I’m all for free enterprise and as little government regulation as possible, but I was pleased when I read that France was banning these pageants for young children. The role of government is a proper one when it protects children in their younger years. We have laws against child pornography, Internet and otherwise. We have laws against parents abusing their children and even parents who neglect to protect their children from harm.

In our highly sexualized culture, with the power of the Internet setting things on fire, let’s discourage children from growing up too fast. Let’s give them, at the very least, a chance to grow up.

Today, this First Sunday in Lent, we cry “Lord, have mercy.” We weep and we cry out, not only in repentence for our own selfishness, pride, envy… but for our families, our nations, and our world.

 

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Darkness no Darkness

Posted on March 2, 2014 | 3 comments

It has struck me lately how separate we human beings are from other creation. And we are so small. The world was here before I came, and it will be here after I leave. We have little impact upon nature, although we like to think we control it and even harm it. In the end nature shall have the last word, and we can see its random and unfeeling power in hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, drought, fire, tornadoes. But man is proud and self-deceiving.

We anthropomorphize the natural world  giving flora and fauna human qualities. We think of a lion as a big sweet cat, yet he mauls and destroys. Nature gives us joy; we love the mountains and the seas, and we want our love to be returned. But it isn’t, except for, of course, by some domesticated animals, and it is uncertain what sort of love they have for us.

That I find myself in this world, so foreign and so lovely and so dangerous, points to a master of design. That I delight in its beauty and power, its awe-fullness, is not by chance. That I long to walk its forest paths and sleep under its stars and feel the sun on my skin is not by random design. I think we love creation as a reflection of the Creator. We are drawn to him through his works; we yearn, we long for him, and thus his world. The good news is, of course, with the coming of God the Son among us, we know that our Creator loves us in return; he yearns and longs for us.

Sometimes I sense another, an “other,” world alongside ours, as though separated by a sheet of glass. St. Paul writes that he sees God “through a glass darkly,” glass thought to be more a mirror or reflection as well as a window to God – not our kind of glass window. We do see, sense, God around us, if we have eyes to see. We are children, and when we grow up we shall see clearly. But for now, God is here, present, and I know that his spirit, through my Baptism, dwells within me.

But he is not just a God within, an idea that grew into heresy in the last century. He is outside us as well, working in our world. He exists apart from me. He is not conjured by my imagination, my desires, although he has planted such desires in my heart. 

But seeing and knowing isn’t everything, and the Epistle for today, St. Paul’s definition of love, says it perfectly, poetically. I tried to shorten it, but just couldn’t, every word being of immense importance and beauty:

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (I Corinthians 13)

St. Paul brings me back to the heart of the matter: love. We long to know, to see, but we are nothing without love.

Today’s Gospel, on this Sunday before Ash Wednesday, Quinquagesima, tells how Christ healed a blind man who was begging on the side of the road. The man had great faith, and he cried out to Jesus to have mercy upon him. Jesus healed him because of his faith.

There is a link between faith and seeing through the glass, seeing the reflection of God in the world around us. In Raymond Raynes’ Darkness no Darkness, hopefully our next American Church Union release, he speaks of giving oneself up to Christ, allowing him to remold and redirect us. It is this kind of free-fall faith that allows us to be healed. We stand with the blind man on the side of the road and we cry, Lord have mercy upon me. Our Lord turns and heals us because of our faith. When our eyes are opened, what do we see? We see love.

The title of Father Raynes’ book of meditations, Darkness no Darkness, comes from Psalm 139, one of my favorite memory passages: 

O Lord, thou hast searched me out, and known me. Thou knowest my down-sitting, and mine up-rising; thou understandest my thoughts long before.
2   Thou art about my path, and about my bed; and art acquainted with all my ways.
3   For lo, there is not a word in my tongue, but thou, O Lord, knowest it altogether.
4   Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
5   Such knowledge is too wonderful and excellent for me; I cannot attain unto it.
6   Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit? or whither shall I go then from thy presence?
7   If I climb up into heaven, thou art there; if I go down to hell, thou art there also.
8   If I take the wings of the morning, and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea;
9   Even there also shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
10 If I say, Peradventure the darkness shall cover me; then shall my night be turned to day.
11 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.
12 For my reins are thine; thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb.
13 I will give thanks unto thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well.
14 My bones are not hid from thee, though I be made secretly, and fashioned beneath in the earth.
15 Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy book were all my members written;
16 Which day by day were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.
 

Again, I could not condense this, for here the Psalmist so long ago saw that knowing and loving are linked together by God in his love for us, in his intimate knowledge of each of us. He knows and loves us in the womb. He sees our hearts. Darkness is no darkness, for the night is as clear as the day. And we see. We see Love.

We approach the ashes of Lent, the burning of the Palm Sunday palms and the marking of the charred cross upon our foreheads, a cross that will burn our minds and hearts for forty days. We recall that our flesh came from dust and will return to dust.

This Lent 2014 I shall try to memorize Corinthians 13, engrafting the words onto my mind and heart. Hopefully, faithfully, I shall sound less like a sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Hopefully, faithfully, I shall see through the glass to Our Lord himself. Hopefully, faithfully, I shall be healed and shall see… God.

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On Sowing Seeds

Posted on February 23, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’ve been researching Beethoven since I’m including his Piano Concerto No. 5, the “Emperor Concerto,” in my novel-in-progress. I learned Beethoven studied with Haydn to master the skill of “counterpoint.” The lyrical second movement in the concerto is a perfect tribute to his mastery.

The melody haunts me. It lives, dancing in my aural memory, much as Beethoven must have experienced as he composed it, for he was losing his hearing in this year of 1809. He never performed the concerto, but left it to be performed by others. The notes are tender, calling one into their beauty. I thought it was sad that he didn’t hear it performed, but then, I suppose, he did in a way. I also learned that he didn’t name it “Emperor,” that others named it, and that he would not have appreciated the title. Alas.

So it was with great interest that I read in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal a review by T. J. Reed of Not I, Memoirs of a German Childhood, by Joachim Fest (1926-2006). The complacency of good Germans during the rise of Hitler has troubled many: If it could happen in Germany, why not anywhere? After all, Germany was “a culture that produced Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Lessing and Beethoven.” Hitler’s rule, was, to many “good” Germans merely a “Nazi phase.” Things would change soon, surely. They had great pride in their culture, great faith in their own people.

But of course, we know things got worse, a lot worse. As I listen to Beethoven’s piano concerto and am filled with such exquisite joy, I understand how some Germans slid into complacency, thinking they could wait it all out, because of their strong culture. But “high culture,” art for art’s sake, brilliance, excellence, man at his greatest and most noble will never tame the beast within each of us. We shall always have a dark place, a shadowy corner, where something isn’t quite right, where cancer grows. For what happens in a society, happens first in each person’s heart.

Joachim Fest’s family were Catholic dissidents. How did they read the times? What gave Joachim’s father the vision to see what was happening as early as the 1920’s, when his Catholic Centre Party joined with Social Democrats against Communists and Nazis? By 1933 the father lost his headmaster’s job; soon the four children were removed from school; soon friends deserted them. And even with his vision, what gave Joaquim’s father the strength to risk everything to not be complacent, to not look the other way?

I believe (and I hope to find out more in the memoir) that the answer was his faith, his God. The title, Not I, refers to St. Peter’s reply to Christ, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.” Just so, Joachim’s father refused to go along.

Excellence, perfection, talent, beauty, accomplishment, achievement. We all want these, whether we are born with talent or not, whether we are born with beauty or not. But their price is often pride, a natural (and deserved, we say defensively) flowering after a budding success. And a great pride means a great fall. As is often said, the higher you are, the farther you fall. Perhaps this pattern occurred in 1930’s Germany, and in the appeasing nations of the West as well, who didn’t want to risk their own peace, and trusted in their own “civilized” European world.

The glories of man – Michelangelo’s sculptures, Rafael’s paintings, the music of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Handel, the stunning canvases of the Pre-Raphaelites, the poetry of Shakespeare, excellence in sports, theater, finance, medicine, or any other human endeavor – all carry the temptation of pride, the temptation to sit back and congratulate oneself, a temptation to be complacent. What corrects, prevents this? What pulls us down from the that peak in time?

Only God can correct, prevent, protect our world, humankind. Only seeing ourselves through our creator’s eyes. Only looking deep into our own hearts and shining a light into the shadowy places to see what lurks there. It is a good exercise of the soul – daily self-examination. What was my attitude today? Was I thankful or complaining? Was I judgmental or forgiving? Was my anger turned to love? Was I lazy? Was I envious? Was I gossipy and perhaps worse, enjoying the gossip?

The list goes on, a well-known catechism of sins the Church helpfully provides from Scripture. And today, on this Pre-Lenten Sexagesima Sunday, we are reminded, through the parable of the sower and the seeds, of our many choices each day, hour, minute. Is the soil of our hearts rich enough to receive a single seed of goodness (Godliness), from God? If yes, do we choose to water the seed with worship, Scripture, sacrament? Do we allow the seed to take root in our lives, in our families and communities?

And when the seed flowers, reaching for the light, and we see that it is good and beautiful and Godly, do we credit ourselves? Do we credit our culture? Or do we credit the sower of the seed? Do we admit our dependence, our powerlessness without the sower?

I think that Joachim Fest’s father knew the sower. Joachim’s father could see into the heart of man just as his creator sees. His heart was rich, loamy, a bed to receive the gifts of vision, strength and courage.

It is tempting, with even the smallest success, to preen like a peacock, feathers in glorious array. But such a temptation is the perfect and necessary time to reflect on sowers and seeds and fertile ground. This is the time to examine, confess, and repent, before climbing any higher. This is the time to conquer false pride with true humility.

We draw closer to Lent. We pray for humility so that we may truly see who we are and who we are meant to be.

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True Love

Posted on February 16, 2014 | 1 comment

It rained this last week, alleviating only slightly the California drought. More rain is promised for later this week, more watering our dryness, the ground drinking thirstily and thankfully.

But the sun broke through today, Sunday, bluing the sky and glistening the land, and a hesitant, wondering, breeze nudges the silvery leaves of the olive tree outside my window as I write. The oaks are greening too and the grassy hills are waking up to new life hesitantly here and there. The cherry trees in our neighborhood blossomed their Valentine’s gift of big pink bouquets, giving us far greater hope than any February groundhog. 

The incredible beauty and the horrible devastation of nature continues to astound  me. Blizzards kill in the East as sun shines in the West. Yet the four seasons repeat regularly, we count on them, and we assume spring will one day replace winter. Just so we yearn that the darkness in our hearts will be enlightened, that hate will turn to love, that judgment will be banished with forgiveness. We yearn for peace, yet we cannot pacify ourselves.

We look to spring and we hope for love, and perhaps this is why we embrace Saint Valentine’s festival in mid-February, a season of reaching for the greater light of Easter, the longer daylight of April. It is thought that Valentine did truly exist, that he suffered martyrdom for his witness to the love of God. But the many legends of the many Valentines woven into present day are not as verifiable. The medieval court of love loved St. Valentine, defining this love as the romantic sort, and it is this Valentine that we recall with hearts and flowers and romantic dinners. 

The secular has adopted the sacred, for all people recognize truth, the core and kernel of truth, of who we are. We desire to love; we desire to be loved. Courtly love, with its rituals of honoring and respecting the woman for her womanhood, for her ability to carry and birth life, for her female beauty as dazzlingly different from rough masculinity, tried to tame the bestial nature of mating. Courtly love grew and flourished through the years, fed by Shakespeare and sonnets and the Romantic poets. It has faded in our time and our world, but still we yearn to celebrate the love between a man and a woman, to celebrate something more than the power of lust, to remember true love on St. Valentine’s Day.

It is fitting that such a day in February points to spring, to hope, to love. Such a day reminds us to honor one another, regardless of race, gender, creed, handicap, temperament, age, whether in the womb or near death. Such a day points to Easter, for resurrection day is the ultimate holiday of love, when God the Son, the crucified one, gives us the grace, indeed the ability, to love one another.

This last week I wrote another scene in my novel-in-progress, a story about the coarsening of love in our culture, the jungle encroaching upon the civilized world. Mankind has striven for centuries to civilize the jungle, to tame his own animal within as well as the wilderness without, but we seem to be undoing all that has been done. The working title is The Fire Trail, that boundary between the civil and the uncivil, between safety and danger. It is a love story searching for a way to love in a world of un-love. My recently released novel, The Magdalene Mystery, sought the truth that Mary Magdalene saw in the garden that first Easter morning two thousand years ago. The Fire Trail considers what that vision means to us today.

Today is Septuagesima Sunday, three weeks before the beginning of Lent, the forty days in which we prepare for Easter, April 20, 2014. Today we look into our hearts to root out all un-love. We pray, “Lord, show me every sin, every particle of un-love, that darkens my heart. Show me each time I dishonored or disrespected others, when I coveted, lied, stole, killed, in thought, in word, and in deed. Lighten my dark places, so that I may see, repent, and learn to love.”

Like the breeze nudging the leaves outside my window, my heart is nudged too. With Lent and its lengthening of days, I shall grow towards the light, toward the sun. The dry places shall be watered and my heart shall blossom.

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Living the Christian Year

Posted on February 9, 2014 | 1 comment

I love the Christian year. Many have written about it and for good reason. Living out the year, Sunday to Sunday, season to season, orders the chaos of our souls in the same way secular rituals gather together, and perhaps heal, communities. 

Human beings are creatures of liturgy, ritual, and ceremony. We use these means to express who we are as a people, not only as a church but as a nation. States, cities, clubs, all manner of civic and social gatherings use these means to define themselves, to organize their times together, to ensure justice and democracy, to ensure free speech, to create order. We “call the meeting to order” with a gavel meant to silence the many, so that the few – the single speaker, one at a time – may be heard in an orderly manner. 

Both secular and sacred bodies create time liturgies which we call seasons and calendars. Within the twelve months organized in our solar Gregorian calendar we celebrate winter, spring, summer, fall. 

Inside each season, Americans gather to honor national heroes, presidents, soldiers, peacemakers, the birth of our nation. We reflect on each old year and celebrate the beginning of each new one with New Year’s Eve and Day. We parade, marching and trumpeting down Main Street, we give speeches, we fly flags, and we sing songs we learned by heart so that we could sing as one. In school we once pledged allegiance to the United States of America, one nation under God… a ceremony that bound us together. At ball games we sing our national anthem and place our hands over our hearts. We memorize words and actions, by rote, by ritual, so that we may say and sing and do these things together. We form a national circle and dance America’s story through the year. 

Sacred bodies, churches, also express themselves through seasons and calendars, through song and dance, through processions rather than parades. The Christian liturgical year has, over time, been divided into nine seasons in which the life of Christ and its meaning for each of us is acted out. We step deeper into this meaningful life, immerse ourselves in the love of God in these seasons. Christianity is sacramental, meaning that God is involved in our world, his creation. He desires an intimate conversation, face to face, and we call this prayer. As we portray his mighty acts in history, he acts among us in our own time, drawing us close to him. God responds to our song, and we call this Grace. So it is natural that we act out our faith through the year; it is natural to use all of our senses to express who we are; it is natural that we follow the music of the spheres, both heavenly and earthly. 

The Church Year begins with the purple (penitential) season of Advent, which prepares us for the coming of Christ in Bethlehem. Then we live out the white season of Christmas, particularly rich with symbol and song, announcing the incarnation of God in human flesh. Epiphany trumpets, manifests, this good news to the world, lighting the darkness. 

Soon we enter Lent, a time of self-examination and penitence, to follow the Way of the Cross to Golgotha, acting out Christ’s last days and his crucifixion. Easter morning we walk with Mary Magdalene to the empty tomb and share her wonder and awe. The following weeks, Eastertide, reflect the resurrected Christ’s appearances to many before his ascending to Heaven on Ascension Day. Ten days later we join the Apostles as the Holy Spirit descends upon them (and us), birthing the Church on the day of Pentecost. 

From the beginning of December (Advent) through the end of May (Pentecost) we have acted out the greatest drama ever told. These six months, half the year, tell of God’s redemptive acts among us, two thousand years ago, in the ancient lands of the Middle East, the land of Israel. From Pentecost to Advent, June through November, the second half, we enter the long green season called Trinity, a growing time, a season of learning what all of this means to us, a time of celebrating the many mysteries and miracles only touched on earlier, a time rich with saints and angels and transfigurations, a time of growing, a time of pondering our three-in-one God, the Trinity. 

The colors we see in the church reflect the seasons: purple for penitence (Advent, Lent); white for purity (Christmas, Easter, saints); red for fire and blood (Pentecost; martyrs); green for growth (all other times). Vestments and altars coverings reflect these colors and these seasons. The songs we sing, the hymns, reflect the seasons as well, as do the processions, pageants, and even plantings. We bake pretzels (praying hands) and hot cross buns. We form processions, waving palms. We flower the white Easter cross. We light candles to witness to the light lighting the darkness, and we swing sweet incense up the aisle to remind us of heaven and the winging of our prayers. The words we hear in the readings tell the story too; the sermon amplifies those readings. 

As with all ceremony, these rituals can be greatly gratifying, artful, poetic expressions of our hearts and minds. But they can also be empty and dead. We must choose whether they be full or empty, alive or dead. Liturgy is the “work of the people” and the Liturgical Year is our great dance through seasons of darkness and light, penitence and resurrection. We weave God into our years, our months, our weeks, our days, our hours. As we genuflect,  as we bow, as we make the Sign of the Cross over our heads and hearts, we intersect eternity, kneeling in our Sunday pew. As we step to the altar, we receive more than bread and wine; we receive body and blood; we are fed, filled by God; his time is one with our time.

Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphanytide. Next Sunday we begin three Sundays (“Pre-Lent”) that usher in Lent, a season that prepares us for the great festival of Easter, a time of spring and rebirth, resurrection and new life.

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The Light of Candlemas

Posted on February 2, 2014 | Leave a comment

It was with some surprise and great thanksgiving that I received word yesterday that my novel The Magdalene Mystery received First Place in the Feathered Quill Book Awards for 2013. 

I was surprised again when I woke this morning, recalling this bit of news, and when I saw that it was raining, however lightly (our first real rain in California for months), I became deeply grateful, thinking that perhaps the drought was lessening. But later as I entered the warm sanctuary of our parish church, leaving the cold outside, and stepped up the thick red carpet of the central aisle, I sighed in wonder. 

I knew today was the Festival of Candlemas, the celebration of the presentation of the baby Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem. I knew it involved candles and I even recalled we in the pews held white tapers that would soon be lit by acolytes, and we would light our neighbor’s, fire catching fire. But I wasn’t prepared for the brilliance of the candles on the altar as I entered: two large candelabra, each bank holding seven flaming white tapers, framed by eight giant candlesticks aflame. I had entered a holy home, this bright house of God and his fiery love. I was cradled by the warmth and light of the space, as the clergy and acolytes processed in, swinging incense and holding the crucifix high before the burning torches, the celebrant gliding royally toward the high altar with his royal gold and white cope. We sang with many voices joined together as one, “As with gladness men of old/Did the guiding star behold; As with joy they hailed its light, Leading onward, beaming bright; So most gracious Lord, may we/Evermore be led to thee…” (52).

The nave and sanctuary shimmered in the candlelight, a contrast to the dim and wet cold outside. And so we celebrated this moment in history, when God the Son moved from the private space, the home, and entered the public space, the temple. The light of heaven entered the darkness of our world. And thus we celebrated with light, the flame from the altar lighting our tiny wicks, the candles held so carefully, so hopefully, and we turned to light the next. 

We held our flaming candles as the Gospel was read from the central aisle. In this passage, Luke 2:22+, the elders Simeon and Anna witness the appearance of their Messiah. They had waited and prayed; they had been promised this moment. Simeon took the child in his arms, blessed God, and said, 

‘Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel…’

These words, “Simeon’s Song,” have become a treasured part of our Evening Prayer Office. We re-affirm that we too have seen this salvation, we have seen this light that enlightens, we too know this glory that came to us from the People of Israel.

Today we ended the season of Christmas, forty days after this most holy birth-day, a time span set by Jewish law, the “law of the Lord.” Today we re-affirmed that the light of the world has come and continues to dwell among us, with us, enlightening us.

The Magdalene Mystery is largely about affirming that light. How do we know this remarkable God-story is true? How should we treat those first-century documents we call the Gospels? How do we know that the account of the empty tomb is an accurate witness? Did Mary Magdalene even exist, let alone see the risen Christ?

From Dan Brown to the Jesus Seminar to the “New Atheists,” folks have spent a good deal of time and energy trying to prove the Incarnation and the Resurrection did not happen. There must be much at stake. And there is. 

My little novel has been roaming the world since June 2013 when it first was released, when it was born. As an author I feel like a mother who has given birth and sent my child, my words, out into the world to fare one way or another, to hopefully provide a flickering flame to lighten some of the darkness.

So it is a sweet moment of delight that I experience this weekend, a time in which The Magdalene Mystery has been honored on this weekend of Candlemas, when Mary presented her son to the temple, and thus to the world. 

And now, as I glance out my window, I see the sun has burst upon my watered garden, turning the grays to greens. And I believe I see a dusting of snow on the top of Mount Diablo. 

Deo Gratias.

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On Life and Death and Flowery Graves

Posted on January 26, 2014 | Leave a comment

My husband and I picked out our grave plots this last week. 

We have not been diagnosed with terminal illness, nor do we expect to die suddenly. Either of course might happen, but so far God has blessed us with many years of life on this earth and our ailments are part of natural aging, my sixty-six years, and my husband’s seventy-eight. 

But I wanted to know where my body would be lying. I did not want cremation, although many do and I respect their choice. It’s cheaper, to be sure. But I wanted “full body burial” as the Family Service Counselor described it at Queen of Heaven Cemetery in Lafayette, California. I wanted to give witness, after I was gone, to the sanctity of life, even my little life; I wanted to join the many other believers who lay under this flowery field in the East Bay hills. Their graves lay neatly in rows, some with flat headstones, some with upright blocks of granite or marble that caught the light from the morning sun. 

It is curious how long I have put off this trip to the cemetery. It was always something I could do another day, another week, another year. But I didn’t want to leave these decisions to my sons and daughters; I wanted to personalize my sacred journey from earthly life to heavenly life. The word “cemetery” comes from the Greek, “sleeping place,” and I would give witness to eternal life and the immense love of God as I lay sleeping, awaiting the final resurrection. 

We followed our counselor, a young, endearing, and informative guide, across the broad lawns that were browning slightly from California’s drought and the wintry air, up the paths that parted the graves. As I stepped carefully, meditatively, I was reminded of other graves I have visited, in particular that of Raymond Raynes in the Mirfield Monastery in northern England. The monks’ graves in the garden of the Community of the Resurrection had been marked with simple wooden crosses bearing first names. We found Father Raynes’ grave and said a prayer of thanksgiving for his saintly life. Now, walking through the Queen of Heaven garden, I recalled other cemetery gardens: one beloved collection of graves on a hilltop on the Island of Lanai, where Cook pines rustled in the breeze high above, the sea far below; English headstones in the yard of St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford, untended, with high grass obscuring the stone slabs; the many churches we visited in Europe surrounded by their living dead, who waited for that last resurrection.

Here, today, in this country, it seems that churches do not sit amidst their dead, sheltered and sheltering their own past, but send the bodies to be buried elsewhere. There is a fear of morbidity, of corruption, of dying. Gravestones identify our birth-day and our death-day, with our lifetime equaling a long dash. We must admit, in a cemetery, that we are mortal. We must admit that the young and the good die and leave us far too soon. We must admit that cancer ravages and war maims and we mistreat one another. We must admit that we do not love enough. These are hard admissions in a world that values self-esteem, self-obsession. 

Queen of Heaven Cemetery sits in a gentle valley. I looked up to the low January sun and to the hills holding us so sweetly in the cool breeze. We needed to choose our gravesites, and I prayed for guidance even in this simple choice. We had seen the gravesites available and had weighed this and that – the sun, the hills, the trees, accessibility to the path. Should we face north, south, east, west? Do we want a bench? I gazed over the flowery field, the reds and pinks and yellows dotting the grass, the headstones seeming a comfortable and welcoming congregation of hosts.

Where should we be? Which plots? My eye rested finally on a statue with raised arms commanding the heavens and blessing the flowery graves. It was the Risen Christ. I bounded across the grass and stood before it, looking up to the powerful face that looked further up to the blue skies. Yes, I thought. I want to be under the arms of the Risen Christ. If anyone should visit my grave, they would see the Risen Christ alongside and over me and raising me to heaven with him.

And so it was that we found two plots a few feet from Christ’s right arm. And when visitors, if any should come, sit on the bench nearby they will see the Christ silhouetted against the blue sky and the golden hills.

I’m glad I didn’t put this cemetery visit off any longer. A curious peace and delight has settled over me since we drove away, having made the arrangements. For me, my own death makes my life even more meaningful, for the numbered days are just that – numbered. It is tempting to live as though this will never happen and many of us do this, acting as if today will last forever. But this is not reality. This is not the true way of things for humankind. So I am glad to have bracketed my days with this visit to Queen of Heaven so that each moment given me between now and my final visit is not wasted, so that each moment counts, just as it is counted. 

The field of flowers and their stones, winter’s grass waiting for spring’s greening, and finally the Risen Christ, his arms at once embracing heaven and earth, has entered my mind, unbidden, from time to time since then. The scene is a reassuring visitor, a happy moment that colors my days. It is a sudden, surprising burst of grace. For because I am a believing Christian, trying to be faithful, those arms, as they embrace heaven and earth, also embrace little me, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, forever.

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