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The service was over. The clergy and acolytes, the crucifer with the crucifix, the torchbearers bearing their torches, recessed down the red carpet to the narthex doors. The six giant candles on the high altar still burned brightly. The Sanctus lamp remained lit as well, a red beacon hanging from the ceiling where the nave steps into the sanctuary.

The hymn ended, the organ fell quiet. In the silence one of the red-robed acolytes returned, striding seriously up the side aisle, entered the sacristy, and emerged with a long pole to snuff out the altar candles. He began at the far left, maneuvering the pole so that the snuffer sat gently over the flame, depriving it of oxygen and extinguishing it. In the silence I watched him, and in the silence the congregation watched too, still, unmoving, breathless.

It had been a pensive morning. Today was the last Sunday of the Children’s Summer Program and I was sad it was ending. But I was also glad to have had the remarkable blessing of another summer to sing and talk about God’s great love for us. I was glad to see the children laugh, as they learned about the Apostles’ Creed and the Church Year. And I was glad simply to be small part of God’s working in their lives.

Now, as the regular staff returns to teach, I look forward to more time in the liturgy, more time to pray, more time to adore. I look forward to God’s working in my own heart, straightening me out where I am crooked. I will anticipate this hour each week with great gladness, an hour to pause in a quiet and holy place, away from the political turmoil that is heating up with the coming elections, away from the challenges and threats to our way of life as Americans, away from the reality of laws that maim us and kill us and threaten our freedoms. As a Christian I cannot ignore these things as they swirl about me, bumping into my consciousness, for I must bear witness to the truth, but it is good to pause for an hour once a week in a quiet and holy place and to be fed by God.

I’ve been thinking lately about the miracle of prayer, especially intercessory prayer, how we hold a name up to God through the Cross (as Raymond Raynes says). We pray for people by name and we pray for those who cannot pray for themselves or do not pray for themselves. We pray for those mentally infirm and those who do not believe in God. In the back of our Prayer Book there is a section called Family Prayer. Here I am given the words to pray even for the spirit of prayer itself. There are special prayers for the morning, for the night, for Sunday Morning. There are prayers for “Quiet Confidence,” and guidance, for trustfulness, for “Joy in God’s Creation,” for children, for those far away whom we love, for those nearby whom we love, for the sick, for a birthday… and many more. These are words to help me say what I want to say but can’t find the words. They are delightful and lovely prayers. They are useful prayers.

I’m going to try to memorize a few, beginning with the Sunday Morning prayer. Other prayers I have learned through the years – the Lord’s Prayer, bedtime and morning prayers, psalms – and these have bridged the divide between myself and God, pulling him close. And it is good as I go through my day, my minutes and my hours, that he is close by. It makes all the difference in my day, my minutes and my hours.

Ask and ye shall receive. Behold I stand at the door and knock… Prayer opens the door. Prayer invites him inside. Prayer encourages conversation before the hearth of my heart, the flames warming me with his love.

This morning I watched the acolyte snuff the last candle on the high altar, and the sanctuary grew suddenly dim. As the organ burst out in a joyous final postlude, my eyes rested on the red candle that remained, in the Sanctus lamp.

The red candle flamed still, would always be kept lit. Just so, I thought, our prayers will light up our culture when the last candle goes out, as it may one day. Our prayers will always burn with the oxygen of God’s breath. Our prayers will breathe upon our nation, flaming brightly.

God’s light can never be snuffed out.

The six confirmands rose from the front pew and took their places at the altar rail for Holy Communion. They were the first to receive these “creatures of Bread and Wine,” for this was their great and triumphant day of Holy Confirmation.

Three children and three adults were confirmed in our parish church. They confirmed, renewed, their Baptismal vows – or those vows made by their godparents – the Apostles’ Creed, the earliest statement of belief formed by the first-century Church. In Baptism, the person is made clean of sin. Sins are washed away through the waters poured, and the person is made an organic part of the Body of Christ, the Church. In Confirmation, the action of Baptism is completed. The person is now of an age to choose whether to believe or not to believe. He or she understands these creedal statements and can now confirm, complete what was begun in Baptism.

And in return, the confirmand is given defenses to live out those beliefs, the grace and strength of the Holy Spirit. As the bishop laid his hand upon each of one of them, he prayed,

Defend, O Lord, this thy Child with thy heavenly grace; that he may continue thine for ever; and daily increase in thy Holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom.

I often think of the phrase in Baptism, that we must “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.” These are fighting words! These are words that challenge many assumptions in our culture today. It is no wonder we need to be defended and strengthened in Confirmation.

Sin is an unpopular word. Evil is an unpopular word. Yet man’s history is bloody with sin – the massacres of Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao. Closer to home, gunmen shoot in neighborhood theaters and supermarket parking lots. Disgruntled employees murder co-workers. Is this not sin? Is this not evil? Do we really believe that with more education or more income or whatever… that these things will not happen?

Our own hearts aren’t always so clean, so good. We envy, hate, misrepresent, slander. We neglect one another and grow hard in our selfishness. We make excuses, we cover-up, lying to ourselves. We do not love enough, or we love in the wrong way, beyond the boundaries of marriage, against the law of God, and our loves begin to look like lusts, like avarice, like greed and gluttony. We do not obey the Ten Commandments. We do not keep Sunday holy. We worship false gods… we are lazy. The list is long.

So in Baptism we were told to fight against this stuff we call sin, the world, and the devil. But we need help to do this, and in Confirmation we are given it. We are given the graces of the Holy Spirit: wisdom and understanding, counsel and ghostly strength, knowledge and true godliness, the spirit of holy fear. This last gift is another unfashionable phrase: holy fear.

A friend of mine once said he couldn’t believe in a God that caused fear. And yet, should we not fear judgment and justice? We desire others to be judged, especially those that hurt us, wrong us. We expect judgment and justice for others, but somehow, we want our God to judge others but not ourselves. We escape.

I believe that holy fear is the recognition of reality, the way things are. A child is taught the reality of fire, of falling, of hurting himself. We want our children to be afraid of these things and to take precautions so they won’t get hurt. Just so, we should not shy away from defining sin and recognizing evil. Only with such wisdom, such clarity, can we take precautions, can we see that which hurts us. Holy fear is a healthy and sensible fear.

And once we can say these words, admitting they exist – sin, evil, holy fear – we can defend ourselves from these assaults. If we deny them we are open targets.

But going against cultural assumptions is not easy. So we Baptize our children and we Confirm them. We give them the armor of God. We state and restate the reality of our world, that there is darkness and there is light. We shine the light on the darkness to find our way through this time on earth, as we journey to see God. And of course the light that we shine is Christ’s light, one of love and mercy and salvation.

God through his Church, through his Body of Christ, shines these beams of light, penetrating the fog that covers the earth. Baptism and Confirmation are two of those rays that allow us to see, to recognize the reality of our world.

This morning, I knelt at the altar rail and received Holy Communion. I held sixteen-month-old Izzy, and she turned her head from side to side, watching, entranced. Her eyes were full of the scene – the priests in their robes of red, their knowing and quiet words as they fed each one of us, the Body of Christ, the Blood of Christ, the Host placed on the tongue or in the palm, the chalice raised to the lips, the soothing notes of the organ, pacing the dance of the liturgy that had led to this moment of union with God. She watched and listened as though absorbing every sight and sound, like a sponge. She knew this was good. She knew the reality of being in the center of God’s beating heart of love, his Church.

We toasted our confirmands later with champagne and chocolate cake. They shook hands and received congratulations, for this was their day of strengthening and making firm. This was their day of the completion of their Baptisms.

Deo Gratias.

Little Natalie, nearly three, grinned at me. I was holding a giant Church Year Wheel and we were pointing to the seasons and naming them together. We had gone through the circle several times, but she was having trouble saying Christmas. Finally, I pointed to the long white triangle poised between purple Advent and green Epiphany. “Christmas,” I said slowly. “Kismas,” she replied, grinning. Then she clapped her hands with delight, her dark eyes wide.

I’ve kept her face before me all day, thinking of seasons. We are still in the middle of the long green Trinity season, but in the secular calendar the summer is ending, the autumn soon to come. In our culture we mark this transition with Labor Day. School begins, football begins, days shorten, nights lengthen. At times in September and early October an “Indian summer” pushes the temperatures up in a last surge of heat, but for the most part the air hints of a crisper season, a season opening a door to winter.

I am in the autumn of my life. My summer years are largely spent, having slipped into the past. They were years of growth, I believe, in many ways, and years of faithfulness, I hope and pray. The spring of my life seems long ago now, and I am glad to be past those tumultuous and anxious tears of youth. And yet, I know, that around the corner of my coming winter, lies another spring, a new and glorious spring.

This last summer held many challenges. Tragedy and heartbreak visited, bringing along their siblings grief and near-despair. I looked them in the eye and showed them the back door, sending them on their way. I bound up the broken and I prayed the psalms, crying to God for help. And God heard me.

I know he heard for there were many victories and many joys this last summer, triumphs that at first I didn’t see, being surrounded, as they were, by the tragedies. Yet I did see them finally, and as I take stock of June, July, and August of 2012, I find myself stepping through a field of lilies, born of the seeds I faithfully planted in the months before, the years before, that suddenly sprouted through the dark loam and into the light, reaching for the sun. So today I breathe deeply and am thankful.

One lily came in the form of a lovely Foreword from Lord Ravensdale (Nicholas Mosley) to be included in the new second edition of The Faith,retreat addresses given by Father Raymond Raynes in Denver in the late 1950’s. Lord Ravensdale knew Father Raynes, Superior of the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, England, and had edited the first edition of this work (pub. 1961). It was such an honor and so personally enriching to edit The Faith for the American Church Union (a bouquet of lilies right there) and now I have Lord Ravensdale’s charming story of his experience with Father Raynes to include in the book.

Another lily in my summer field was finding a new home for my mother after her fall in late April. It was a challenge, overseeing her healing, her spirits, her move from her old home to her new. But it is done, and she is content. The stacks of paperwork have slowly diminished, been reshuffled, signed, sent on, sorted and shelved as necessary, and believe me, there were stacks. I can almost see my desk now, almost.

Then there were the deaths of two cousins. One died the same weekend my mother fell, so I was unable to attend the memorial. But I was able to attend the memorial of the second cousin. With other family members in Sonoma we spoke of this lively Irishman, his vitality, his humor, his energy. In this shared time of memory, we could see him sitting on a cloud and watching us, lighting a cigarette, a martini at the ready, his eye twinkling, his grin infectious. I think I saw golf clubs nearby. He was so high-spirited that it was difficult to believe he had really left us, but his death formed new bonds between the living, something I think he would have appreciated.  Later, around a kitchen table, I listened to my aunt tell stories of her childhood migration from Denver to Spokane to Los Angeles. I learned what my cousins were doing in their lives. I shared my own joys – my novel scribblings, my cats, my children, my adventures in London, Paris, and Rome this last spring (see earlier posts).

I turned sixty-five in July of this lily-strewn summer. Soon my son turns forty, and one of my stepsons turns fifty, milestones on our pilgrimages through each span of time. My husband gave me a lovely gold cross for my birthday and I’ve kept it close to my heart, warming me. For in truth, the cross enclosed all of my years, my spring years, my summer years, my autumn years. The cross will guide me through my winter years coming soon, should I wake to travel them.

Then there were the lovely lilies of friendship, of gatherings after long separations, when our church family met to consecrate our bishops. The faces come to me now, eyes bright, smiles earnest. I recall lines mapping speckled skin and children now grown who pressed their palms into mine and kissed me on the cheek. We told our stories back and forth, weaving a new one in that moment together, mingling one another. In that space between us a starry light lingered like fairy dust swirling in the air. We had all passed through our many seasons of faithfulness and here we gathered, joined once again by Christ, in his body the Church, joined by love.

Such friends do indeed flower a field and, I thought, such faithfulness greens our years. In truth, it was weekly faithfulness that sprinkled my field of lilies over this past summer, each Sunday singing with the children, telling stories about the love of God, crafting door knob hangers with creedal phrases on popsicle sticks, coloring Church Year Wheels and naming the seasons, cutting and pasting prayer banners with graces and Lord’s Prayers. We made magnet verses to take home to place on refrigerators. We watered our plants, their green shoots promising.

So I look back as the air turns a bit crisper and the sun sets earlier each evening. And I look ahead to autumn, beginning with the Sacrament of Confirmation when our older ones will confirm their Baptismal vows, reciting that very Creed we pasted on the door knob hanger.

It is a good time, a good crossing of seasons, this end of summer and beginning of autumn. It is a time of renewal and growth, of anticipation, always remembering the cross worn close to my heart. It is a green time as we move toward the dark winter of Advent and the stunning light of Incarnation. It is a time to point to a large Church Year Wheel and wait for Natalie to name the season, Christmas.

August 15, 2012, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

The three priests in their brilliant purple vestments lay face down on the red sanctuary carpet, arms stretched out like a cross, before the tabernacle. The cantor began chanting the litany, facing the altar, and we in the congregation joined him.

This image, an intrinsic part of every consecration (and ordination), haunts and touches me. These men offer their bodies and souls to God. They show this by taking on the shape of the cross, bearing the sacrifice. Yet at the same time they appear like birds in flight. They take on the humility of prostration so that they can carry their flock, their people, with them as they soar to Heaven.

On Wednesday, our Anglican Province of Christ the King consecrated three bishops, adding these men to the line of apostolic succession begun by Christ. As Christ’s chosen apostles formed the earliest church communities in the first century they began the two thousand-year line of bishops, as each of those twelve chose another to replace him, who in turn chose another, down to the present.

The day before we gathered to hear our Archbishop Morse, most senior and most revered, speak about the history of the Province, begun in 1977. In truth the Province was a continuation of the traditional, orthodox American Episcopal Church. Thus, many call us “the Continuing Church,” continuing steadfast in the faith of the ancient creeds, Holy Scripture, and sacraments within the Anglican tradition.

The archbishop, who in a real and true sense founded this continuation, spoke seriously of the historic thirty-five year journey we have made, the angels who helped us, urged us, encouraged us, and those men and women of faith who brought us to where we were this day. The archbishop, in his black clerics, sat behind a table, glancing at his notes, the microphone close. He spoke with a hoarse voice as though slightly short of breath, and one could see his eighty-eight years had imparted a parchment glow, a kind of translucence to his skin.  He sometimes appeared sad, then joyful, then fierce and daunting, as he recalled these times. He reflected quietly, his manner full of wisdom and grace and understanding. His eyes burned with love, love for God and love for each one of us. He was a good shepherd, leading his flock to this moment in time. Each of us leaned forward, waiting for the next word, eager not to miss anything, transfixed.

And so, in the morning, my husband and I drove to St. Peter’s, Oakland, out of our sunny valley and into the fog enshrouded San Francisco Bay. In this warm week of August, the cooler temperatures were welcome. We entered the packed nave, walking up the red-carpeted aisle and knelt in the pew as the choir chanted their preludes.

Soon we heard the organ’s first chords of Hymn #220, God of the prophets, bless the prophets’ sons… and we turned to see the beginning of a long procession forming in the wide-open doors to the narthex. The procession began the measured walk up the aisle. The thurifer swung the sweet puffs of incense, preparing the way. Then came the acolytes, the torchbearers with their flaming candles and the crucifer with the crucifix raised high. The clergy followed, solemn with folded hands, and filled the first two rows of pews. The bishops with their attendants were last, stately in their robes and miters, and they continued up the steps and into the sanctuary, passing under the red Sanctus Lamp. They took seats along the sides of the chancel before the altar with its tented tabernacle.

The congregation soon came to the last lines of the stately and moving hymn,

Make them apostles, heralds of thy cross;
Forth may they go to tell all realms thy grace:
Inspire of thee, may they count all but loss,
And stand at last with joy before thy face. (Denis Wortman, 1884)

The next hour was full of hymns, chants, promises, and instruction by the bishop chosen to preach.  Soon came the presentation of the new bishops to the archbishop, when each man vowed obedience to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church. Then they lay prostrate before the altar and we sang a litany of supplication, we beseech thee to hear us, good Lord….

We turned our pages to Hymn #217, the Veni Creator, a ninth-century chant, a cry for the Holy Ghost to descend upon these men…

Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
And lighten with celestial fire.
Thou the anointing Spirit art,
Who dost thy sev’n-fold gifts impart,
Praise to thy eternal merit,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And so, each new bishop knelt before the two archbishops and two bishops in our Province. Eight hands rested on his each man’s head, bringing into the present two thousand years of Apostolic Succession.

Each new bishop heard the words, Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands… And remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is given thee by this imposition of our hands; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and soberness…

Each new bishop received a ring and a pectoral cross. Each was anointed with holy oils. Each was exhorted to read, study, and preach Holy Scripture:Be to the flock of Christ a shepherd, not a wolf; feed them, devour them not. Hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind up the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost…

We listened to these powerful words and we prayed for these men who would lead us, sail this ark of the Church through the waves of the sea that rolled around us. We rose on the swells, slipped into the hollows, and were touched with the sea spray of angels that flew among us. The choir chanted from the lofty heights of the choir loft, beneath the brilliant stained glass of the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

I knew these men, these men who had been transformed from parish priests to bishops. Each was good, kind, knowledgeable, and devoted to the Church and to God. They were devoted to us. I prayed for them, that they would be protected from the usual temptations of power, for they would, I knew, be terribly tempted. I had seen bishops change over time, as though consumed by themselves, by lies.  Even so, the good ones, the holy ones, the ones who survived the temptations, were the stronger for it. They remained true to God, and to us. The good bishops shepherded us and protected us, and led us to the door to Heaven. There are few men who are better and more loved than good bishops.

The Mass was celebrated, and we became one with the Communion of Saints, and we sang our joyful recessional, as the acolytes, clergy, and bishops processed down the red carpeted aisle:

The Church’s one foundation
Is Jesus Christ her Lord;
She is the new creation
By water and the word:
From heav’n he came and sought her
To be his holy bride;
With his own blood he bought her,
And for her life he died… (#396, Samuel John Stone, 1866)

We followed the procession through the narthex, and gathered downstairs to share a festive lunch. We greeted old friends and met new ones from all over this great country. We were and are a family, part of the remarkable family of God, and God’s spirit wove among us. We shared our lives since we had last met. We laughed, we cried, we hugged.

It was accomplished, this great moment in our history. Our Apostolic Succession was secured for the span of time given. The Continuing Church continues.

Deo Gratias.

I’ve been thinking about bishops, particularly suffragan bishops. Our Anglican Province of Christ the King will be consecrating three Suffragan Bishops-elect on Wednesday at our parish church of St. Peter’s in Oakland.

I looked up suffragan, a term I knew meant a sort of assistant. The roots are Middle English from Old French from Medieval Latin, suffragari, meaning supporting or voting. That made sense – suffrage, the right to vote, is a more familiar term. So these men will be made full bishops who will play supporting roles in their respective dioceses.

Now curioser and curioser as Alice in Wonderland says, I looked upbishop. This term comes from the Old English biscop, from Late Latinepiscopus, from the Greek episcopos, watcher, overseer.  So that explained why we are often told our bishops are shepherds of their flocks. They even carry a shepherd’s staff.

The Anglican Church, sometimes called Episcopal in the United States, is a church of bishops, a church with an episcopacy. We trust our bishops to watch over the Faith in terms of both doctrine and governance. We trust them to watch over us, to shepherd us closer to God.

Our Anglican bishops, like the Roman Catholic and Orthodox bishops, descend from an unbroken line that reaches back to the first apostles. We call this Apostolic Succession, and there is a kind of family tree often seen in our parish churches, showing this passing down of authority. For each time a bishop is consecrated, he receives this authority to safeguard and watch over what he has received, this great Christian inheritance.

The inheritance is hugely important to us. It is a guarantor of truth as far as such a thing can be possible in a fallen, fallible world. We show this importance by requiring that three bishops co-consecrate one bishop. As they lay their hands upon the bishop-elect’s head, the apostolic line of succession is secured. So our episcopacy, our system of bishops, is important. It ensures orthodoxy going back to the first apostles, the first bishops.

Bishops are of course fallible human beings. There is only one true shepherd of our souls, Christ the Good Shepherd. There is only one whom we can truly trust and he alone is the door to Heaven. It is his voice we will recognize when we cross into that glorious world (John 10) when he calls each of us by name, our Christian name given in Baptism, when we wereChristened, made part of his body.

We do not expect our bishops to be perfect, in spite of their great lineage and in spite of the power of the Holy Spirit acting in this moment of consecration. But we do expect humility. We expect them to do their best in this most difficult of jobs, and we pray for them each Sunday in the Holy Liturgy of the Mass.

I looked up consecrate. Bishops-elect have been ordained and now they are consecrated. The term comes from Middle English consecraten, from the Latin consecratus, meaning con, with, + secre, to make sacred, from the Latin sacrare, to set apart as holy. These men are being set apart, chosen by God.

Sunday afternoon I sat down for dinner with other family members, and as we held hands around the table and thanked God for our meal, I sensed I was part of another flock, a smaller flock, the family flock within the greater family of God. There seems to be a comforting natural order in it all, the shepherd, the sheep, the flock gathered. There were two sets of grandparents so I suppose there were four shepherds. It was not a special occasion, a birthday or anniversary, Christmas or Easter. We simply gathered to share, to touch one another’s lives, to say, I love you. We gathered also to teach our children and grandchildren that this is what families do. Someday the grandchildren will do the same. They too will gather their flock together.

Sheep from many parish folds across this great country will gather on Wednesday, August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Recently one of our bishops told me how the Blessed Virgin had interceded for him at times in his life, how she had answered particular prayers for particular sheep in his care, how she responded to the candle he lit each evening in the chapel, how she heard his daily cries of love for one of his own. So too, we pray for Our Lady’s intercession this coming Wednesday, a day when we celebrate her ascent to Heaven. We ask that our new Suffragan Bishops be filled with the power and grace of her son, and that these shepherds will protect their sheep from all evil. We pray that they will lead us, feed us with Scripture and Sacrament, and that they will bind our wounds. Our Lady understands these things. She understands families, flocks, feeding, care, binding of wounds. She understands what shepherds must do.

And we give thanks for our apostolic bishops, our episcopacy.

Deo gratias.

How quickly things can change.

It was drizzling, or perhaps a heavy condensation was forming, on the windshield as I drove to church this morning. The famous San Francisco summer fog had crept farther east than usual. It formed over the broad Pacific waters, floated over the city and the bay, slid over the hills and the Caldecott tunnel. It blanketed with a damp chill the usually warm valley I call home.

I turned on the heat in the Nursery and the Sunday School. California summers still surprise me and I was born and raised here. I shivered.

There had been considerable dampness and chill in my life in the last year, many challenges to face. Two cousins died and three friends were diagnosed with cancer. My ninety-two-year-old mother fell, was hospitalized for six weeks, then moved to assisted living. The daughter of another friend died in childbirth, leaving a baby girl motherless (the hospital’s carelessness). What would be next, I thought to myself. Who would be next?

Then there are the tragedies too painful, too confidential to talk about, and are ongoing it would appear. So I can’t speak of them, except to say they involve deep betrayals of trust.

Each event I carried (and continue to carry) to the altar. Each person I placed in the arms of Christ. Each heartbreak I relinquished to his eternal love, his sacred heart, the heart that broke for us.  And still does.

I thought about these things as I listened to the sermon today, one that touched on today’s Gospel, the Parable of the Prodigal Son. In the end, our preacher said with a certain and profound joy, opening his palms to us, the story is all about the Grace of God. It is about God’s immense love in the midst of our wrong turns, in the midst of our suffering, in the midst of our fallen world. It is about the Father’s cloak wrapped around our shoulders, welcoming us into his arms. It is about the ring he puts on our finger telling us to whom we belong. We are his dear and precious children, his family. The parable is about coming home after wandering in the fog.

And so we enter the church as broken, cold and damp, tearful prodigals. We leave healed, full of joy, belonging to God. All within one hour. How quickly it happens.

The sun came out this afternoon, and now the sky is a dome of blue. A breeze ripples the olive tree outside my window and the moistened silvery leaves reach toward the sun.  It all changed so quickly.  And I know it will all change quickly again as we tumble through our time.

Each morning I give thanks for the safe night and pray for the day to come. Each evening I give thanks for the day and pray for a safe and good night’s sleep. “If I should die before I wake I pray the Lord my soul to take…” is not a bad prayer to pray.

Things change in an instant. And now, thinking again about the father welcoming home his prodigal boy, I realize that while I can try my best to follow God’s commandments, I often fail. Others fail too, and we sometimes fail each other.  We cannot prevent sickness and death, suffering and heartbreak. So as Christians we give them all to God, leaving every pain before the tabernacle on the altar, before the Real Presence of God the Son. And we pray, “Thy will be done,” a good and powerful prayer to pray.

Only on our knees, in full humility, can God transform drizzle into glorious sunshine, in an instant. Only when we empty our hearts can he fill them with his Grace, in an instant. Only then can we hear him say, “Welcome home.”

I look forward each week to Peggy Noonan’s Saturday column in the Wall Street Journal. This week it was titled: “The Dark Night Rises.”

She spoke of the rise in violence in movies, and while admitting that no single movie will trigger a tragedy such the Aurora shootings, she makes the sobering observation that there has been a cumulated effect of increased violence over the last few decades, desensitizing us. We get used to it. Hollywood ups the ante. We get used to it. Hollywood goes a bit further.

I’ve found this in the publishing world as well, that new frontiers must be braved, new ways of kinky, new ways of anguish, new ways of hurt and abuse, often focusing on children. Young teens killing one another in the games of hunger. Vampires sucking blood. Torture, explosions, rape. We become increasingly desensitized to horror, increasingly accepting of it.

It is a frightening assessment of today’s culture. Parents, Ms. Noonan notices, look exhausted from from their constant concern over their children’s exposure to this kind of media. These parents carry a huge burden no longer shared by society. It seems that they alone must shepherd their children. Where the culture helped them do this once, now the culture poisons them.

In the past, what cultural institutions supported the raising of children so that they would become responsible adults, men and women who don’t pick up a gun and shoot into a crowd? Certainly the government, to a certain extent, finds it in their interest to legislate good law and police the populace. But more importantly the institutions of church and family have provided safe havens, which we have often taken for granted. Perhaps because they were taken for granted, we seem to be about to lose them.

Children need safe havens. They need a family with male and female role models. Boys need fathers to emulate; girls need mothers. They need structure, a clear path laid before them. Behavior boundaries provide security. And they provide love. The boundaries say, “I see you and you are important. I care how you behave. I love you.” Children need a home, a loving structured environment. They need security and safety.

While the home protects, it also molds character so that when the child grows into adulthood, he or she doesn’t act out to get attention. For there has been plenty of attention at home and he or she can always go home for more unconditional love.

And where do families meet other families to encourage one another? Where do they go for support in the huge effort of living a good life, raising children as to be good citizens, to be caring and responsible individuals? The Church provides such support through community: We worship together, we share meals together, we work together giving of ourselves to one another and the neighborhood. We learn to give; we are called to sacrifice. We learn to love those outside our family.

After reading Peggy Noonan yesterday, I smiled when I listened to the Epistle and Gospel appointed for today in our local parish. St. Paul writes to the church in Rome that we as Christians are adopted by God. We are God’s children, his heirs. But we must live within God the Father’s boundaries, i.e., the Ten Commandments, knowing that these rules are for our benefit. His boundaries say, “I love you. You are important to me.” And in the Gospel of St. Matthew, Christ speaks of knowing people by their fruits – every tree that doesn’t bear good fruit is cast into the fire, that only he who does the Father’s will shall enter the kingdom of heaven.

These are hard words! Yet the Church embraces them for they are God’s words, and true ones. The Church equips us to bear good fruit by explaining the boundaries. It says, “You are important to God, listen to him, obey him.”

So on Sunday mornings, families rightly fearing the chaos and violence of our culture have a place where they can go, a shelter from the storms. Within each church God works among its members, teaching them his love, his ways, his rules, rules that say, “I love you.”

If we can encourage these institutions of family and faith, we can keep the dark night from rising. We still have time to wake to the light of day and feel the sunshine pour in, for “Darkness is  no darkness with thee, but the night is as clear as the day….” (Psalm 139:11)

Sometimes growth is painful.

I was watching our little Luisa in the church nursery this morning. Luisa is eight months old and has two new front teeth, tiny white miracles protruding delicately from her lower gum. There seems to be a new one coming in, a painful process. So little Luisa, whom every woman in the church wants to hold and cuddle, suffers the aching jabs of this new enamel breaking through her skin.

Since the Fall of Adam mankind feels pain, and it is curious that it is often through suffering that we grow, change, reshape our interior selves. We become molded in some way by the experience, sometimes in a good way, sometimes not. Our souls push, break, into new territory.

Our parish is going through a growing experience as we work through a time without a rector, someone to lead us, to pull us together. We all pitch in, to be sure, with extra tithe, time, and talent. And we all feel the pain of this transition-searching season as we seek God’s will for our church family.

The seeds the children planted in the classroom last week have sprouted. I followed Natalie, age two and a half, to the row of terra cotta pots under the tall window that filtered the sun. Tiny shoots had emerged from their dark beds of soil. Green fronds, so delicate, reached for the light. We tilted the watering can carefully and gave the newborns a drink. Natalie concentrated on the task, fully absorbed.

We are those seeds, moving from darkness to light with God’s grace. We will one day produce leaves and flowers. We will bear fruit. But the process might be painful.

The Gospel today was one of the feeding miracles. Seven fish become enough for a crowd of four thousand hungry men and women and children. They are all fed, with food left over. And once again I am reminded of Christ’s great love for us, for his miracles are pain-relieving miracles – feeding, healing, exorcising demons, calming storms at sea, bringing the dead to life. He does not pull rabbits out of hats or squeeze into tiny cubicles or wave wands or brew potions. He does not perform magic. He engages in our very real and human pain, and pulls us through it and out. We emerge better men and women. And somehow belief is involved in this process.

In many of the miracles of Our Lord, faith is necessary for healing to occur. It is as though belief becomes the medium in which Our Lord works, so that our movement through the pain will be one of growth toward the light and not one of sinking into the dark. Through faith we are given greater hope, strength, and love. Without faith, we meet despair, weakness, loneliness.

Belief. Pain. Growth. Healing. Light. Love. They are all connected in powerful ways.

And as we gathered for a meal after the Mass today, and welcomed the man who might become our new rector, the hope among us was tangible. We had pulled through a painful time together, and God had bound our wounds. In the binding we have drawn close together as a parish family. This good man who preached this morning and visited with his lovely wife may or may not be the one called by God to shepherd our little flock. But we all knew that God was with us in a bright and joyous way as we shared our meal.

Little Luisa cried over her erupting tooth and Natalie played with her balloons (red, yellow, green), pushing them into the air and chasing them, and I knew that we would rise up through the dark loam of our challenges, whether they be family, church, or nation, into the light of day. We need only have faith.

But without faith in Christ, we can do nothing.

The children planted seeds in church today.

At first Natalie, age two, tried to plant her index finger, pushing it into the soft soil. The small clay pot had her name on it and sat on a picture of the flowers that one day would push their way to the surface – white daisies. Natalie drew her finger out and looked at it quizzically, examining the bits of soil clinging to her skin. She looked at me with large brown eyes.

“Soil,” I said. “The soil will feed the seeds. Now let’s put some seeds in the soil and see what happens to them.”

She watched me pick up the miniscule seed and push it into the soil, then cover it lightly. Natalie did the same. Soon all the seeds were in their beds, tucked in, safe.

“Shall we water them?” I asked. “Give them a drink?”

Natalie nodded sagely and I helped her tilt a watering can spout toward the black loam lying in its terra cotta sanctuary. Soon the soil was watered, the seeds drinking in the moisture that would transform them from specks to green and growing plants.

As we sang our Church Year Song and made our magnets to take home with the first verse of the hymn, I thought how this little Sunday School room tucked in the back of the church was like that little pot, a safe place away from the noise and bustle of the world, a place that nurtured and fed us. Here we learned of God, praised him in song, and memorized his words. We were watered and fed, sending our roots deep into eternity.

Later the teachers and children formed a line in the narthex and entered the big church where the grownups knelt in worship. We paused in the back as the priest raised the gleaming white host and cried, “Behold the lamb of God, behold him who takes away the sins of the world.”

We made the Sign of the Cross, and stepped up the red-carpeted aisle to the altar rail. The tabernacle, draped in Trinity green,  stood welcoming between the tall flaming tapers. The light seemed to move about the sanctuary as I stepped toward it, Natalie’s tiny hand in mine. When I genuflected, she bent her little knee as well. I folded my hands and she folded hers. We knelt at the altar.

She watched with her large eyes as the priest gave me a Host and gave her a blessing, each of us fed by the appropriate food at that moment in our lives.

We are in the green season of the year, the long season of Trinitytide, stretching from Trinity Sunday, usually early June, to Advent, early December. The Gospel lessons are feeding lessons, instruction that helps us to grow in God. It is a quiet time, this time between the great festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Ascension, this lazy summer time leading into fall.

It is a time of planting seeds and watching them grow in the hearts of these children. It is a time to dance and sing, to hear the music of God’s words as they shower upon us, into our hearts and minds. It is a time to be watered and fed so that new shoots may appear above the soil, pushing up toward the light.

It is the green season of Trinitytide, a time of growing.

It’s my birthday tomorrow.

Birthdays are milestones, rites of passage through time. We look back from this moment given, and we look forward from this moment given, to our future deathday.

I have lived nearly sixty-five years, and will embark on my sixty-sixth. I’ve been given a specific portion of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which to breathe, to think, to laugh, to cry, to love. I have been given a body and a mind for which I have been responsible. Have I been a good steward?

I have known joy and sorrow. I have done good and I have done ill. I have succeeded and I have repented. Have I made peace with my past?

I celebrate another year of life, another gift. It has been a year of unusually difficult challenges, and yet with God’s grace, I have survived, depending more on God each day. So I count my blessings.

When I was born my mother cried out, “Another girl for the mission field!” At the time they all thought the statement odd (so I am told), since I was her firstborn. But on reflection I have come to believe that my mother was the first girl for the mission field, for she in her own way had been a missionary. She didn’t go to China or India or Burma or the African jungles, but she led Bible studies and new member gatherings in her living room, their living room, our living room. My father, a Chaplain who served in the South Pacific in the Second World War, upon return became a Presbyterian pastor, and with my mother worked for Intervarsity, a group that evangelized college students. Later, they founded the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church on a hill overlooking a valley east of San Francisco.

I too, in my own way, became that missionary my mother announced sixty-five years ago, for after a few wrong turns in my early life, I found God.

It is difficult for someone who has God in their life not to share him, for he pushes out, he is too big to keep hidden. All of the prayers offered, all of the Eucharists received, all of the words of saintly men and women read. All through this time, my time given, these layers of minutes and hours and days and weeks, all of it as I look back has formed me, filling me with God.

Other Christians have formed my life as well, in miraculous ways. We are like a garden of many shoots, thorny roses and wild daisies, pungent rosemary and poignant lavender, all growing together in the same soil, watered by the Church, the sacraments, the Word of God. Some are mighty trees and some creeping ivy. We brush against one another as we turn our leaves to the sun and drink in the rain.

Today was the first day of our Children’s Summer Program at church. We are learning about the colorful Church Year. I made a Church Year wheel from tag board, gluing the pieces on thick white foam board. The pie triangles all pointed to the center where I placed a simple cross. Most of the year was Trinity green – June through November – then slices of Advent purple, Christmas white, Epiphany green, Pre-Lent and Lent purple, Easter white, Ascension white, Pentecost/Whitsunday red, and back to Trinity green. It was an orderly division of time, but also rich with meaning, as the year revealed the enormous events in the life of Christ and God’s redemption of man.

In our class we are singing Hymn 235, “Advent Tells Us Christ is Near,” which follows that wheel through the verses. And as we consider each of the nine seasons, or “tides,” we shall also consider the words of the Apostles’ Creed. We shall learn what we believe about God and man.

As I looked at the colorful Church Year wheel, I knew that those seasons, year after year, had woven into my life an indescribable richness. Each Sunday, season after season, I lived out through liturgy and ritual, rich with symbol and song, God’s love for me and all my sisters and brothers in the pews, the Body of Christ. God wove us together to make a fine cloth, a colorful tapestry.

So as I consider my sixty-five years, I see a rough muslin life that slowly became multi-textured, multi-colored, like Joseph’s coat, like my Church Year wheel, like the garden of flowers and herbs, full of sweet aromas. And I am incredibly, or credibly perhaps, thankful.

What will the next year hold, the next month, the next week, the next day, should I be given more time to breathe, think, and love?  Be given more Eucharists, more conversations with God? More time for him to ready me for my deathday and my passage to eternal life in heaven?

I pray that God continue his weaving me, his painting me, his molding me, his watering me. It is so good to be loved by God, so good to be nourished by him.

I pray on my birthday the words of Clare of Assisi on her deathbed: “Thank you, God, for having made me.”