Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thanksgiving. A time of giving thanks.

We gather together as a family, a family of cultures forming America. We give thanks for our country, its founding, and the diversity of its peoples, a rainbow promising many pots of gold.

We gather together in order to gather up all of our peoples to celebrate this remarkable land – its fields and forests, streams and lakes, seas and bays, cities and towns, large and small. Our peoples are many, and of many colors, of many races, of many generations, of many beliefs.

In a way, our Thanksgiving holiday echoes our Independence Day. But the Fourth of July recalled a pulling away to protect defensively who we thought we might be, an identity we groped to formulate, two hundred years ago. But since that time of our founding fathers, our nation has matured and we have come to know ourselves better. We know how rich and prosperous and talented we are. We appreciate, even honor, our differences. We have learned humility as well in as we mourn our mistakes, our fallen heroes, our false prides.

Our nation has been called a melting pot. And indeed we are – a melting pot in which we still savor each flavor of this aromatic blend, stirred again and again.

If we were born here, we count ourselves fortunate.

If we immigrated here, we count ourselves blessed.

If we desire to come here, we pray for the chance.

But all of us Americans, whether by birth or immigration, must agree to a common rule of law to keep the common peace. We must take seriously our freedoms which demand certain civic responsibilities. We must educate ourselves, learn the native language, read about the issues. We must respect democracy’s demands.

Granted this, we are a great people. And it is for these people, the American people, I am supremely thankful. We came from Europe, fleeing prejudice and tyranny and most of all, religious persecution.

Let us recall on Thursday as we feast upon turkey and pie, stuffing and cranberries, to not forget the settlers who came before us and the tribes who first lived in this fair land. Somehow, the pilgrims and the Indians, through war and peace, have merged and melted into the broth, making us a stronger people.

My family has American Indian blood running in its veins. We also have Irish and English, Norwegian and French ancestry, even a touch of German. We share in this multi-ethnic stream, and we are stronger for it. We are more creative for it. We are more interesting, more multi-faceted. We have a more promising future.

America is a country of inter-marriage. Marriage – where two unite sacramentally to produce a third – is something we take for granted. But such an equation stirs the genetic pot. Rather than cloning, reproducing the same, each child is a new uncharted genetic universe, a world of infinite possibility. Each creation is thus a grandiose miracle.

So nations and race do not matter. We came together, indeed, continue to come together, in this land to form a new peaceful union, one in which we may freely practice what we believe, freely travel where we wish, freely buy and sell goods. We continue to grow into who we are meant to be.

This nation is different from all that have come before, and all others today. We celebrate our differences, respecting them, honoring them, encouraging them. We only require one rule – the rule of law, the rule that ensures peace among us.

So, after our recent national elections, we pause to give thanks for our founding fathers. We pause to recall their hardships and challenges. We pause to give thanks for a roof over our heads and a meal set before us. We gather as families and friends around our tables, in halls or homes. We are Americans.

And those of us who believe in a God of providence and grace, we give thanks especially to God, for the grace to believe, for this great land we call America, and for the glory of our freedom.

Deo gratias.

We, the People, have spoken.

In our great national elections this week, we chose more government, less military, more dependency, less self-reliance. We chose not to change things, but to go with the flow, wherever that might lead. We chose image over reality, propaganda over truth. We were lazy. We did not study the issues, but relied on demagogues and vicious sound bites, lies corrected too late to matter. The course of the national debate reached new lows and I fear will motivate future debates. The nastier the blow, the better, we said with our votes. If it was said on TV, we stated, it must be true. There are no rules of civility, our choice proclaimed. Fact-checking doesn’t count, We the People decided.

Perhaps the losing side learned their lessons; perhaps not. Perhaps the losers will fight differently next time, with more attention to image and propaganda, sound bites, slander, vicious blows. Either way, we lose to this lowering of the bar.

After all, our great democratic experiment where the average citizen reads at a fifth-grade level, and mostly newspapers at that, has had a miraculous run for two hundred plus years. There was a time when we voted for national interest above personal, but that is clearly changing. As Alex de Tocqueville observed in the mid-nineteenth century:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.   (italics mine)

Ours is a great country. We have sacrificed much to protect our land, our freedoms, our faiths, and our families, and today, Veterans Day, we recalled the immeasurable debt we owe to those who have fought for America. To veterans and those who have died for this country we pay tribute and give our deepest thanks. We honor you. You sacrificed to keep us safe. And you continue to sacrifice to keep us safe.

Our ninety-three year old deacon wore his army jacket to church today. Another veteran wore a navy cap. I thought of my father who served as a chaplain in the South Pacific under General MacArthur in the Second World War, ministering to the sailors on board the USS Phoenix as kamikaze pilots dove into the waters around them. “The boys I cared for were so young, most of them only eighteen,” he would say, as though his own age of twenty-seven was so very old. But he didn’t say much else about those years, not wanting to relive them. Like many veterans he returned home glad to have protected his country, glad to marry and have children, glad to be alive, glad to be safe.

Some of these men returned whole, some returned maimed in soul and body, some didn’t return. We the People rebuilt our country, and we were not attacked again on our own soil until September 11, 2001. Today this date seems far away, and considering the vote on Tuesday, mostly forgotten.

Indeed, we ordinary folks soldier on here in our own land, as we fight the battle for literacy, for honesty, for law and order. And we must not take our privilege of voting lightly. If we do not have the time or desire or capacity to understand the issues at stake, to examine the candidates, then we must choose carefully those authorities who do, who share our views about life. We have another two years to make such choices, another four to listen to the authorities we have carefully chosen to learn from.

I recall the first time I voted, around age twenty. I thought I knew all about the Presidential candidates from the opinions of adults around me, teachers, parents, and the occasional news headline. I entered the voting booth and with increasing dismay saw all the other choices I needed to make. I felt sick. I had no idea who the candidates were, let alone what they would do or what they stood for. I didn’t know a bond from a proposition from a measure. I guessed.

I’m not proud of this – but I fear I am not alone. The world is a complicated place and we are largely uneducated voters, nor do we have the time or inclination to become educated.

One of the news columns spoke of how the election was like a game, everyone taking a side and rooting for a winner. A game? (How sports reflect life and certainly not vice-versa is a subject for another day).

This is not a game. This is real. Nine-eleven was real. The last two world wars were terribly real as was Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. Iran is terribly real.

We the People will speak again, but perhaps not many more times if de Tocqueville is correct. Many of our thoughts and opinions already have been tranquilized if not euthanized, taken over and redirected by powerful cultural forces of image and propaganda. The next time that we voice our choice we must use an educated voice, one formed by those who know something – the economists, the generals, the clergy.

Perhaps, with God’s grace, we will form a more perfect union, as we announced ebulliently in 1787:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America…

Perhaps, with God’s grace, we will after all provide for our future peoples, our Posterity in this remarkable and generous nation, our grandchildren and their children, and the great experiment will no longer be so threatened by how We the People have spoken.

They say it is darkest before the dawn. Perhaps it is the contrasting rays of light that bathe the heavens as our curve of earth turns toward the sun. But we use these words to describe more than planetary events. We use these words to describe ourselves, our lives, our daily struggles trying to see.

We all know the darkness of loss, of fatigue, of illness, of heartbreak. When the lost is found, the tired rested, the sick healed, hearts mended, we sigh with relief, happiness, as light pours into our souls.

This last week the dark night of All Hallows Eve, or Halloween, was lit by the dawn of All Saints. On Thursday in our historic chapel we sang together the stalwart hymn, For all the saints… in which the story of the saints is told by William Walsham How (1864), set to Vaughn Williams’ stalwart marching tune (1906):

For all the saints, who from their labors rest,
Who Thee by faith before the world confessed,
Thy Name, O Jesus, be forever blessed.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

O may Thy soldiers, faithful, true and bold,
Fight as the saints who nobly fought of old,
And win with them the victor’s crown of gold.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

But lo! there breaks a yet more glorious day;
The saints triumphant rise in bright array;
The King of glory passes on His way.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

These are fighting words. These are words of praise, of joy, of glory, of light. Through the music we catch sainthood, we catch a vision of God, the God who banished the darkness from man’s heart.

Today, the Sunday in the Octave of All Saints, saints’ hymns filled my ears, a joyful part of the Holy Liturgy. We sang the lilting hymn by Lesbia Scott, I sing a song of the saints of God, faithful and brave and true… and the children from the Sunday School processed up the red carpet, each dressed as a saint. Babies and toddlers and grade schoolers, dressed in capes and crowns and armor, stepped solemnly, witnessing to the next generation’s witness, their confession of faith in God’s love pouring over us.

After praying for our country, our church, our families – after scripture, sermon, sacrament – the clergy and acolytes recessed down the red carpet, and we sang one of my favorite hymns of praise, Ye holy angels bright…, tune by John Darwall (1770), words by Richard Baxter (1672) and John Hampden Gurney (1838):

Ye holy angels bright,
Who wait at God’s right hand
Or through the realms of light
Fly at your Lord’s command
Assist our song
For else the theme
Too high doth seem
For mortal tongue….

My soul, bear thou thy part
Triumph in God above
And with a well-tuned heart
Sing thou the songs of love
Let all thy days
Till life shall end
Whate’er He send
Be filled with praise.

A well-tuned heart. From darkness to light, as the dawn breaks, we tune our hearts. We teach our children the ways of God, his immense love. We grow together through prayer, scripture, sacrament. Our hearts, like the planet, turn toward the light, to be bathed in the dawn, to listen for the song.

We tune our hearts, our children’s hearts, the hearts of our families, communities and country. We listen for the perfect pitch of the Creator, for the song that will lift us on angels’ wings into the realms of light, flying. In this way light triumphs over dark.

The last song lingers in my ears even now as I write this and I know it shall linger throughout the week, coloring my time. It is a great gift, this music given us, notes and words exploding from the well-tuned hearts of the saints that came before, those men and women who knew how to fly with angels.

As we approach our national election it is appropriate that we who follow the Church Year find ourselves celebrating the Feast of Christ the King today, All Saints’ Day on Thursday, and finally All Souls’ on Friday.  Further ahead, we look forward to the “real” holiday season, in America one bracketed by Thanksgiving and Christmas.

On Wednesday this week we pretend to be someone else, as we don costumes on Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saints Day. As Christianity took root in the West, the Church transformed druidical and other pagan celebrations into Christian ones. Just so, it is thought that the end of summer was observed on October 31, a long dark night in which it was believed the spirits of the dead roamed the earth. Villagers lit bonfires to frighten the ghosts away or left food out to pacify them. “Trick-or-treating” probably evolved from the poor begging from house to house, lighting the way with a candle in a hollow pumpkin. The Church created All Saints Day to drive away these fears with the love of God witnessed in the saints. It was and is a day of hallowing, making holy, these men and women who taught us how to live, alight with the love of God.

We all need to look up to someone, to admire, to emulate. Every culture has their saints of sorts – those who inspire, who set an example, who chart the course. Sports, movie stars, rock stars, artists, leaders, builders, become role models, both good and bad. We call them stars because they rise above us, bright and twinkling in the dark of night. They light our way or at least the circuitry of our minds. Some stars are more obvious than others, some bright, some dim. Some sneak inside our souls through advertising and subtle fashions, harmless at first, dangerous later. We all want saints in our lives. We all want kings.

In our country we do not have a king because we have seen bad kings. We do not have noblemen. We do not have lords and ladies, barons and baronesses, princes and princesses. We make up for monarchy and aristocracy by creating our own sort of kings, hopefully a meritocracy – our congressmen, our judges, our presidents, vice-presidents, military leaders. In this way we raise our own royalty onto pedestals so that we can see them better, so that we can emulate them. We want to tell our sons and daughters, you can be President, you can be great, if you act like this man.

I looked up noble, which comes from the same root as knowledge. To be noble, to act nobly, is to have knowledge as to what is right and what is wrong.

But where does that knowledge come from? Where does nobility or kingship come from?

God’s People of Israel had no king for many generations, from Abraham to Moses to Samuel. But after a series of judges, they demanded a king. Others had kings – they wanted a king too. God gave them Saul, and Samuel, God’s prophet, anointed Saul with God’s wisdom to do right. From that time, Western kings have been anointed by the Church in some fashion, an admission of their dependence on God’s authority.

Of course, King Saul, being a descendant of Adam, didn’t always do right, and all kings and those in authority can never be perfect, never live up to God’s law. The Old Testament is largely the story of this doing right, then doing wrong, of listening to God, then not listening, of obeying, then not obeying, with resulting blessings and curses.

So finally when God became incarnate, took flesh upon him, a true star shone over a true king come to earth in Bethlehem. Here was a king who would be perfect, who would be an absolute standard of right and wrong, who would embody ultimate love and its defining sacrifice, one who would guide, defend, heal. One who, through the Cross, would give life eternal to the children of Adam and Eve. Here was the Christ, the King, the anointed one, the long awaited messiah. And as king, he would demand obedience to his law of love.

Rightful and saintly kings are gladly obeyed. The feudal contract in old Europe was (and I simplify with abandon) protection in battle (knights, lords, kings) in exchange for a portion of the bounty pulled from the earth (serfs). Lords acted as judges as well, keeping the peace, and serfs were expected to obey the laws of the kingdom.

Just so, we the people create and recreate a government of laws to be obeyed, and in exchange for our obedience, the government protects us from invasion and ensures the peace at home. But because the government is made up of sons and daughters of Adam, leaders and laws, like kings, will never be perfect. How then are we to choose those leaders who will make those laws?

Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian morality, looking to the authority of God to set the course. But today, as we drift from our founding, we drift from our authorities as well. We drift from God; we drift from Christ the King. We have become, in many ways, becalmed, waiting for the next wave to engulf, the next riot to destroy, the next massacre to horrify, the next nine/eleven or Benghazi to be etched on our national memory.

As we approach November 6 and the election of our President, we must ask the question, even in this democracy, which candidate is the more noble? More kingly? Who has the greater knowledge of right and wrong? Who, in the end, has the character to lead us, to articulate the course for us, to pull together the threads of history into the present moment of choices? Who has the experience that ratifies that knowledge, that directs judgment? Like the days of lords and serfs, who can protect us in battle? Who can protect us in our towns, in our public squares, theaters, offices, homes?  Who can protect our individual freedoms to life, liberty, worship, and the pursuit of happiness?

We the People will gladly support such a man, a kingly and noble-man, perhaps even a saint. We will gladly point to such a man when he strides onto the dais and we say to our children, “That’s our President. A great man. Be like him, be noble-knowing. Be wise and learn to make the right choices. Be strong. Be brave. Be kind, loving, sacrificial.”

We will gladly anoint such a man. Indeed, we long to.

I recently asked a friend why folks don’t like to use the word “sin.” They are comfortable saying “mistake.” But in common conversation it is awkward to say “I sinned.”

My friend answered with a profound statement. “It’s too big a word.”

I’ve been thinking about that. We use the term “freighted” sometimes when speaking of words that have huge connotations. I suppose “sin” and it’s cousin “forgive” are freighted with implied judgment, God’s judgment. And yet we all admit judging ourselves and others by some kind of standard. Wouldn’t God’s judgment be more reliable than yours or mine? He was after all author of the Ten Commandments and the Beatitudes and a few other refinements on basic behavior. But such authority is no doubt part of the bigness, part of the freighted baggage that modernity wishes to throw off the train. But where does that leave us? Without bigness and only smallness.

We sin against God and against one another. When we do this we actually are sinning against ourselves, according to Raymond Raynes, late Superior of the Community of the Resurrection in England. Father Raynes argued that since God is our Creator and has set up the system of natural laws that govern his creation, when we break those laws we actually break ourselves. Sin destroys. Sin pays wages we may not want – including death.

A baby was baptized in church today. She was washed clean of the sin inherent in our broken human nature, sin passed through generations from Adam and Eve to the present. And she was given a means to deal with future sins, future times of brokenness, by being grafted onto Christ’s Body the Church in baptism. Through water and spirit she has been made new, renewed, made whole. It was a miracle and we were a part of it.

We honored this miracle with a special hymn as the Sunday School children gathered around the font and sang, “Dearest Jesus, We Are Here,” and as the Bach tune lilted through the air we prayed for our little Ka’alayah in her long white gown. We prayed as the priest poured the holy water over her tiny head and said her Christian name, Christening her.

She has been Christened. She has been made a part of Christ’s Body. These too are large words, big words. We still speak of a person’s “Christian” name, the individual name given at baptism. It is a unique name for a unique person created by a loving God, a God desiring to heal our brokenness again and again.

The priest marked her forehead with a cross as he said:

We receive this Child into the congregation of Christ’s flock; and do sign her with the sign of the Cross, in token that hereafter she shall not be ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified, and manfully to fight under his banner, against sin, the world, and the devil; and to continue Christ’s faithful soldier and servant unto his life’s end. Amen.

Words. Not ashamed to confess the faith of Christ crucified… We have banished big holy words from our discourse because we are ashamed. We are Peter as he denied knowing his Lord in the courtyard that dark Maundy Thursday night, or perhaps the early graying dawn of Good Friday. We don’t want to be different from others in our culture; we want acceptance. We are ashamed of the Cross, the naked bloody way he died, publicly, humiliated, for us. We have tried to sanitize the Cross through the centuries, removing the corpus, forging it in gold, but it returns and reminds us, nudging us. We are ashamed to confess Christ crucified.

Words. It seems okay to say God, but not Jesus. It’s okay to say church, but not Christ. (Unless cursing.) It’s okay to speak of going to church but not what we believe, as though church were some kind of hobby one chooses or not. We make church small, for the word is too big if it is really the Body of Christ. We dance around the big words. They are fiery and dangerous, embarrassing and offensive.

We don’t want to offend. But in the process of banishing big meaningful words, big beautiful powerful, exciting and adventurous words that speak of the meaning of life and death, love, marriage, and family, why we rise in the morning and how we spend our short span on earth, how we care for one another, how we organize the pivotal relationships of society and social intercourse – in the process of banishing these words – we step into a dangerous universe. In this dancing around and covering up the bigness we enter a void of meaning, we drug our language, make our speech comatose.

I don’t want to live in the shadow-lands, somewhere between reality and fantasy. As I embrace these big words, I am thankful that some sixty-five years ago, I was, like little Ka’alaya, reborn with water and spirit, and since that time have been nurtured with the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Christ, being regenerated and made whole again and again. I have learned hopefully to recognize sin when I see it in myself so that I am able to confess it. Once seen and admitted, I repent these thoughts, words and deeds. I can then turn once again toward the light.

Father Raynes says the beginning of eternity is now. We follow our Creator’s plan and desire to grow in him, to grow into our resurrection bodies.

So we are baptized with water and Spirit, we are given the sacraments, and we are given his son to nourish us along the way. Through this lifelong  process of renew-ness, we step toward heaven, another huge word and one of which I am not ashamed to confess.

Early Sunday morning the fog nestled in the valley below our house, its fingers creeping up the canyons. But the early morning sun shone through the moist October air, promising.

I see this view from my kitchen window and am always stunned. I say my morning prayers gazing upon this valley, and all the changes of seasons that it holds through the year. I watch the red tails and the black hawks soar and dive, following the wind currents. Swallows nest in an ancient oak nearby and their young fly from the leafy branches in spring and summer. Bobcats visit from Mount Diablo and we’ve seen a fox and a mountain lion intently cross our driveway. Turkeys run rampant over our garden and the deer grace us with their beauty, nibbling with abandon. We are situated on a low crest, just high enough to be above, and yet below the vast dome of the heavens.

These days mid-October teases us with winter, a cold night followed by a warm day, low temperatures suddenly vanquished by warmer ones. The harvest is over (I think) here in California, but we celebrate its bounty as we head toward pumpkins and Halloween.

Just so, I found myself in an October celebration, Oktoberfest, on Sunday, after Mass. We filled our plates with sausage, kraut, potatoes, applesauce, strudel with cream, and of course beer. We danced the chicken dance, stepping in a circle, hands clasped, making curious gestures with our hands and arms to quick-stepping music, imitating, I believe, chickens soon to be dinner. Some of us wore costumes – Bavarian hats, shorts, suspenders. Long graceful country dresses. As we circled, it seemed to me a moment of silliness, of gathering together, of fun. We spanned one year to ninety-three, and those closer to ninety-three enjoyed the chance to be closer to one, the chance to dance.

Our parish is a colorful one. We have Scottish, Hispanics, Irish, Bahamans, Germans, English, Norwegians, Swedes. We have folks from Belize, China, Japan. And many other countries. It is a parish of every age and skin color and we celebrate our differences. We all contribute to the wonderful American melting pot here in our parish hall. We celebrate our differences because we have our common faith in God.

I Googled Oktoberfest, and was interested to learn that it began with a royal wedding on a Munich field on October 12, 1810. The townspeople celebrated the following anniversaries as well, and soon fair booths showcasing beer and other local items were added. The booths became halls.

As we danced on Sunday it seemed we danced through fall and into winter, traveling into new times, new hours, days, weeks. The crisp tease of autumn will soon leave us, and the real cold will chill us to the bone, a real rain will sodden our lands, and we shall wait long dark nights for the sun to bring us day.

So too we Americans will dance together in the coming weeks. We will take one another’s hands in this highly charged world of wars and rumors of wars, of demagogues and saints. We will pause and try to read the signs. We will enter our voting booths; we will mail in our ballots; we will choose our new leader for the next four years. We will pray that our freedoms, especially our freedom to practice our faith, will be protected.

As I stepped in time in our Oktoberfest circle on Sunday, I was grateful for the warm hands that held mine. I was thankful that we were joined together in this moment of song. We knew the fog enshrouded our church, but we also knew it would burn off by afternoon. We knew winter was coming, but we were safe in our church, loved by God, a love that wove through us.

Earlier we had worshiped God in the nave above. We had prayed side-by-side on our knees. We had received him in the Holy Eucharist, palms raised at the altar. We had taught our children in the Sunday School about Solomon and his great temple built to the glory of God – just like our temple – and the children had rehearsed a Bach tune to sing for next Sunday’s baptism.

The tease of October filled us with joy, and we danced God’s seasons, hands clasped, in his Church.

We moved from a tame sea sliding upon a manicured shore on the Kohala Coast to a roaring surf crashing onto a steep incline of beach on Kauai. Both waters were clear, sparkling in the sun. The calm bay was painted in deep to bright shades of blue. The thunderous bay was more gray-blue aquamarine, shaded by black rock formations on the ocean bed, hinting of danger.

The shoreline of Poipu, Kauai drops steeply and suddenly and as we walked in bare feet the waves rose and rolled and descended upon us, at times catching us off balance with their force. Then we would turn and face the sea, legs apart to brace our bodies, sinking into the churned sand, and watch the surf rise, roll, and crash once again upon us.

We were protected from the sea at Kohala. We were exposed at Poipu. The tides pulled and ripped, dramatic but dangerous.

It made me think of the upcoming elections and how we see our world.

Americans are largely protected from the dangerous waters that seethe and pound our shores. We have not been attacked on our own soil since 2001, and the attacks on foreign soil, as recently as last month in North Africa, seem far away, tragedies enlivening the evening news and providing material for campaigns. The economy is not good. Prices are up and unemployment has remained high, higher than reported according to many, as high as 20% in parts of the country. Yet our food and water and gas are not yet rationed, we do not have anarchy in our city streets (yet), police and fire services still appear with sirens screaming, keeping us safe.

Americans will be choosing soon the kind of government we desire. How do we choose it? Most of us do nothing to prepare to vote. Most do not read about the issues, let alone study them. Many of us do not read or speak English. We rely on second hand reports from biased reporters or newspaper recommendations. We enter the polling booth and we study the names and propositions – who are they and what will they do? We don’t really know. Yet we vote, randomly it seems.

The waters of tyranny rage against our shores. How do we brace ourselves as the shoreline wears away, as the floodwaters pour in?

Many of us do not see the crashing surf, but rather see a calm bay. We are soothed by the media, told that all is well, we can slide along, the government will care for us. We need not worry. We do not need to make educated choices, choices that require work, study, even learning English. We are told we do not need to save, to practice self-restraint. We are told that we have the right to do as we wish. The government will provide our bread and perhaps tickets to the circus. The government will choose our date of death. It will ensure that the unwanted will be unborn. We do not need to worry. We do not need to choose.

It is easy, when looking out to sea, to see calm, friendly, soothing waters that undulate in the sun, that foam and slip softly onto the sand. But in the neighboring harbor, the sea churns and crashes onto the shore, devouring the coast and spitting it out.

Now is a time to see with both eyes, to study, to learn about our upcoming choices. It is a time to face the reality of our world, a world with no common authority, no common belief in God, the author of all authority.

We talked about the Ten Commandments in church today – the simple rules of life that help us to live with one another peaceably, etched in stone and given to Moses so long ago. There was a time when this list provided a common authority, but no longer. We, by God’s grace, have not yet been destroyed by the riptides, but if we pretend they are not there, that the sea is calm – if we look away from the realities of our world – we may be pulled under.

I believe it was Alexis de Tocqueville who called America “the great experiment in democracy.” It was and is an experiment to allow universal suffrage, to allow citizens who may be uninformed, uneducated, or illiterate to determine our future. The issues have become complex and even the informed, educated, and literate cannot be experts in their intricacies. So we have learned to vote for character, candidates whom we trust to know, experts in governing.

In the end this may be our best solution – to admit the ocean is dangerous and to hire a trustworthy captain to sail our ark.

We flew to this Garden Isle on Friday, having hopped, skipped, and jumped islands – from the Big Island at the southern tip of Hawaii, then flying over Maui, connecting to another flight on Oahu, and up and down again to the northern tip of Hawaii, the “Garden Isle” of Kauai.

Kauai, being the island farthest north, receives the brunt of storms. With more rain, there is more growth, and over sixty movies have been made here making use of the rain forests and waterfalls. Yesterday the folks celebrated fifty years since Elvis made “Blue Hawaii,” the wedding scene filmed at the Cocoa Palms, a historic resort now closed. “South Pacific” was filmed at Hanalei near Princeville.

It is a rich watered land, and we arrived to sun and warm temperatures, trade winds whipping the palms and pushing clouds across the skies. The seas are rougher than on the Kohala Coast – high aquamarine swells rear and crash into white foam. The sea roars day and night, and surfers bob and paddle the glassy surfaces, as they work their way to the perfect wave. Black lava reefs from the land, fingering the sea and breaking the waters as they pound and spew. These are not gentle meetings of sand and surf, and the beach drops suddenly, angling and desiring the ocean depths.

Poipu is, they say, the sunny side of Kauai. The resorts touch one another, making a shoreline chain of old and new and re-newed. There seems no recession here – the pools filled with children, the lounge chairs lined with sunbathers. Many locals have come out today, being Sunday, to enjoy the sea and sand and sun before returning to their real lives tomorrow.

I watch them from the safe shade of my balcony. The young wear less each year, barely enough to pass social codes, a thong, a band across the bosom. The old have grown fat, sedentary beings lolling about like great white whales. Those in between the young and the old pause and watch, mesmerized. They are heading toward fat and sedentary and whale-like. The men wear trunks not Speedos, the women one-piece swimsuits not bikinis. They sit on the edge of the pool, dangling their feet, holding a tropical drink, shaded by a broad-brimmed hat, feeling perhaps a bit tired, the first sign.

For all of us, the humid air, the breezes, the pounding surf, have pulled us out of our real lives and into a place from where we can see those lives better. Our routines are broken, our habits left at home. We are forced to meet new situations and grapple with new problems. We consider the time we left at home, our pasts, and wonder about the time we will re-enter when we return, our futures. We may repent. We might make some changes. We renew promises and embark on resolutions. We may even be inspired, having breathed in through a forgotten door suddenly thrown open, the mind of our maker, God. We breathe in his thoughts and his gentle pushings toward his will. We begin to see the angels, to see dreams.

I just finished a remarkable true story, To Heaven and Back, by Dr. Mary C. Dean, recounting the author’s drowning, death, and return to life. Many of her images are encouraging about the reality of Heaven, but what has remained with me is her sense of angels working in our world. The Church just celebrated the annual feast of St. Michael and All Angels, and their presence was reinforced by yesterday’s Scriptures. They are powerful presences all around us. They cannot interfere in our free will, but they can nudge and guide and point. When we pass from this life to the next we will be carried by them, held safe in their wings.

I am now reading a novel by Julian Barnes, the Booker prize winner, The Sense of an Ending. This too seems to be a meditation about death and life, but I fear has a darker theme and a despairing ending, having begun with a suicide. God is far away in this account, religion relegated to a far shore, unreachable. It makes me sad.

I reread my notes and note their meanderings. I meander, riding the sea swells, sliding onto the beach. Soon I will catch the trade winds and soar with the birds. I sit on the edge of the world, of many worlds, feathered by angels, nudged by my maker who beckons earth into Heaven.

We are spending a few days on the Kohala Coast on Hawaii’s “Big Island,” Hawaii. The slow pace, the humidity, the balmy breezes, make us pause and look about for a time and enter another world of greens and blues and orange blossoms shooting from giant leaves.

Everything seems larger – the tree trunks, the tall palms, the umbrella fronds shading the pathways. The lawn outside our room stretches forever to meet the sea, a long strip of azure painted across the middle of the canvas. Above the infinite horizon, a giant dome of sky, today slightly hazy, covers our world. We are in a verdant garden and birds chirp their own language, chattering, cawing. The sea rushes in and out rhythmically to the beat of my heart, a gentle shshsh-ing sound, soothing.

I have grown small amidst this glory. My weakness slips and slides through my meandering, sleepy thoughts.

Yet I did plot a new novel yesterday, and now I play with the characters in my brain, drawing on folks I know and images that have struck me recently. The real writing, the phrasing and word choice and delicious arrangement of paragraphs, won’t come for a time. First I must slog through the hard work of structure, theme, and over-arching symbols. I must read and read and read, filling my mind and heart with words.

I just finished Vladimir Lossky’s Seven Days on the Roads of France, a remarkable book, recently released by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press and translated from the French by Michael Donley. It is a journal of a week in June 1940, when the great Orthodox theologian leaves Paris to enlist, as the Germans draw near the capitol. He journeys on foot, knapsack and blanket over his shoulders, moving further and further south as French towns evacuate before him. Finally, he simply joins his family in the south, for France has surrendered. Marshall Petain has formed a new government under Nazi authority. In these seven days Vlossky trudges the roads with other evacuees, sleeping in barns, getting rides perched on running boards or in the back of trucks. Planes strafe, bombs explode in towns and fields, babies calmed by terrified mothers. Storms thunder; the sun scorches. They are a fleeing people exposed to the elements, leaving their homes, seeking safety. The account is a unique window into a time in history, a time when the innocent were chased by evil.

And here in this tropical paradise all seems innocent. A feral cat comes to my door, begging. He has a little bobbed tail, so the staff call him Bobby. His coat is gray and his eyes green and he wails sadly, expectantly. He works the ground floor rooms, I am told, and I have become one of his mothers. I smuggle smoked salmon and milk from breakfast. He devours his plate and pads into the shade of the bushes to wash and sleep. He is innocent, but will scratch me to get attention, for food. I am wary.

We are in a garden, but a fallen garden, a place where the hunter is hunted, where survival is a challenge, violence hidden in the jungle. The tides are strong and treacherous, the sun deadly. Not so innocent.

My work-in-progress is about innocence, its loss, its vulnerability, its need for protection by the strong. As a culture we seem to be losing those protections, the desire to protect the weak, particularly the young and the old. We are becoming coarse, disrespectful, hard and hardened. We must support those institutions of law and liberty, faith and family, that shore up these protections of civil society. That teach the Ten Commandments. That teach respect for one another and love of God’s law. That teach us how to love.

We must weed the garden and tame the jungle inside each one of us.

It’s all about truth.

Philosophers have worried and argued the great question that Pilate posed, “What is truth?” They have worried and argued for good reason. If there is no objective truth, we cannot function in our daily tasks.

For the most part we live depending on the truth of gravity (I take the stairs instead of jumping), the truth of movement (I see a car coming and I don’t walk into its path), the truth of sensory perception (I do not put my finger in the flame, I know wine tastes different from water, skunks do not smell nice). Granted they are general truths – there are degrees of scientific fact. But on the whole as human beings living in a physical world we assume certain truths to be basically true.

Yet we still worry and wonder about some things. Who is God? Does he exist?

I too wonder about some things. Will I ever control my need for chocolate? Will I ever be a size 8 again? Will my cats ever get along? More importantly, will I ever learn to really love as God means for us to love one another?

But for the most part I don’t wonder whether the sun will come up in the morning. Or the day turn into night. Not yet anyway.

I don’t worry or wonder about God so much, since I learned the historical truth of the resurrection of his son. I don’t worry about God’s existence, since Christ has confirmed not only his existence but his character, what he is like.

Some folks don’t want to know the truth about God. They prefer to follow their feelings rather than their reason, and I understand the temptation. Our culture offers may feeling-options in terms of God belief. “He is love and is inside us and all around us in the animals and the plants and and and and…” I wonder when I hear this if he is in cancer cells, or in deadly bacteria. Is he in floods and earthquakes too? Was he inside Hitler and Stalin and Lenin and Mao? Some folks say we are evolving to higher beings, full of God-ness. We ride a wheel of reincarnation, pulling ourselves up through the cosmos.

But since Christ, since God became Man and walked among us, we know these things are not true. It is true God is a God of love, for Christ shows us this in his life and his death for us. But God, as the God of Abraham (which we know he is because of Christ) is the Creator not the Creation. He is outside us, objectively real, objectively powerful, objectively burning with love for us. His spirit enters our hearts and minds and souls when we ask him in, when we are baptized, when we are confirmed, and each time we receive the Eucharist. This Holy Spirit communes with us in prayer. He loves us and wants to be with us constantly. But we must ask him, for love demands freedom.

Jesus Christ truly lived. He truly died. He truly rose from the dead. He truly claimed to be God, the God of Abraham, the God of each of us in this created order.

How do we know these truths and many others like them? They are all recorded on ancient scrolls and first-second century codices, which became today’s Bible. How do we trust the record, the recorders, the historical accuracy, i.e. its truth? We trust these histories because we have two thousand years of the Church, his organic Body, examining and interpreting.

The Church – its saints and theologians – are of course limited by their own human nature, but we are given enough of a picture of the reality and nature of God to order our lives reasonably. Like praying regularly. Like worshiping regularly. Like beginning and continuing that joyful journey with and into God with the sacraments and Holy Scripture.

I thought about these things as I prepared to submit my latest novel, The Magdalene Mystery, for publication which is essentially about the search for truth. I thought about these things too during the sermon this morning as the preacher spoke of the light of Christ showing us the way as the seas rage around us. And I thought about these things as I watched the Sunday School children open their new school year with a truly wonderful Ice Cream Social.

It was and is definitely true that hot fudge poured over ice cream is soooo good.