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It was cold and clear as we drove to church, following the highway through the green watered hills of Contra Costa under a dome of blue, the sun bright.  The crispness of the day was welcome after storms during the week, and I entered our parish church with a lighter heart.

I have long been fascinated by the nature of truth, how we know what is true, how we can avoid lies, how to live a true life.  My four novels (Pilgrimage, Offerings, Inheritance, Hana-lani) deal with these themes.  My current novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery, is a quest for, essentially, New Testament truth, how we know what really happened on that hill outside Jerusalem around 33 AD and the years after.

The Church is in the season of Pre-Lent, the few weeks before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent, the forty days leading up to the great festival of Easter.  As I read the Epistle (II Corinthians 11:19-23) and the Gospel (Luke 8:4-15) for today (I missed hearing them for I was late to the liturgy, setting up in the Sunday School) I was reminded of the Christian’s obligations regarding the truth he or she has received.

Paul lists the many trials he endured for the sake of telling the truth of Christ and Luke recounts Christ’s parable about the sower.  The parable tells of the differing places the seed can land – trodden and devoured on the wayside, withering on a rock, choked by thorns, bearing fruit on good ground.  The seed is, of course, God’s word, that is, the truth about man and God.  The lessons are meant, I believe, to encourage us in our witness to truth, that we must tell things as they are with charity, with “eyes to see” and “ears to hear.”  We must be “they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience.”

An honest and good heart.  Patience.  Ah, these were words that soothed my soul.  For it has been a week of personal testing and there shall be more days and weeks of testing.  It has been a time of breaches of trust, of ensnaring lies, of crooked paths not yet made straight.  As I find my way through this jungle of untruth, I will try and recall these words of Christ, these true words, that with an honest and good heart, I must tell the truth with patience.

I mentioned last week T.S. Eliot’s phrase, “only the trying.”  These words reflect this truth, that we must be patient, we must be honest, we must be of good heart.

I knew as I gazed upon the purple-tented tabernacle this morning, that it was really that simple.  There was no need to worry, to over complicate these words given to me.  At all times, in all places, I would be as true as best I can, I would be honest with a good heart, I would try to act in love.  And when I fall, Christ will pick me up, and I will try again.  For in the end, it is this witness, this seed sown in my heart, that must bear fruit.  And it must bear fruit honestly, trying to be true, with no breach of trust, with no fraud.  It must spring up from the watered soil of my heart and mind.

Trust.  Truth.  Such powerful words when linking people, when linking the body of Christ and the folks we meet day to day, week to week.  Have I broken trust with anyone?  Have I remained true?  These are questions asked in daily confession, hourly reflection, minute to minute thoughts, as I walk the path of my life.

Human beings are naturally seekers.  We long for something greater, something more holy, something truer than ourselves.  We know we are bent, and we know we don’t always do the right thing.  But we want to, and we seek to.  We long to be true, to be whole, to be holy.

I had the joy this week of reading Susan Prudhomme’s debut novel, The Wisdom of Ambrose.  For a few days this author transported me into a world less bent, where the creatures also tried to do right, to live true lives.  For a few hours I walked with a wonderful bear named Ambrose through the redwoods of Northern California, alongside a protagonist who also sought for the truth about herself, wanting to understand who she really and truly was.  It was a better world, a sweeter world, and I am grateful to have lived there for a time.  The story reminded me of Milne’s Pooh, Lewis’s Narnia, and Tolkien’s Hobbits, and I felt some of the innocence of another time in my life, before the jungles, before the lies.

We must remain true, and as we try to share the truth we have learned and known, share the immense love of God who is all truth, we are encouraged and comforted by his word, not only in Scripture but in the Eucharist, for indeed, Christ himself is the Word present in the bread and wine.  As I received this bread and this wine this morning I knew once again, that joy of truth.  I knew I could re-enter the world.  I knew I could continue trying, with an honest and good heart, with patience.

Deo Gratias

We flew home from Maui last night.

It was a long trip, up early in Hana, and home late in California.   Our bags were picked up as the sun rose over the sea through silvery clouds, as I said my morning prayers.  It was going to be a warm day, the sun conquering the clouds, the palms barely moving in the early air.

We boarded the small propjet waiting for us at the little Hana airport and soon were flying low along the coast to Kahului for our flight home to San Francisco.

As we flew low along the Maui cliffs, the sun turning the greens greener and blues bluer and the mist slipping lazily around the volcano, the sea this morning quietly lapping the red and black rock with it white foam, I thought about my week in Hana.

It was a great blessing to return to the scene of my novel, Hana-lani, and the folks in Hana greeted us like family, ohana, as, indeed, they always do.  There had been some changes to the Hotel Hana Maui, for they no longer have the weekly dance show, featuring the many generations of talented men, women, children of all ages, dancing the stories of their people.  Perhaps one day they will offer this again, a lovely warm outpouring of song that captures the melody, color, scents, moods, of this beautiful land.  The hula, when it is danced by these many generations, becomes a poem that I have always loved.

I was happy to leave copies of my novel with Neil Hasegawa of Hasegawa’s General Store in Hana, and to soon see it on display near the entrance (check for photos on my site soon,http://www.christinesunderland.com/).  Hasegawa’s is part of the American tradition of the general store with everything, so very necessary in a small community such as Hana.  Hardware, tee shirts, books, groceries.  I featured a scene here, as my characters stock up for a picnic.  I am also pleased to announce that the Hana Cultural Center (http://www.hanaculturalcenter.org/) and the Hotel Hana Maui (http://www.hotelhanamaui.com/) will be carrying copies of Hana-lani.  All author proceeds will be given to the community of Hana.

This morning was clear and cold, and Mount Diablo behind our house was covered in snow, which was strange since I could still hear the Hana surf pounding the black cliffs of Hana, the tumble, the roar, the glistening water rising and crashing.  Nevertheless, we donned our winter clothes and headed for church.

After checking on the children in the Sunday School, I soon realized it was Septuagesima Sunday, and “Little Lent” was beginning, those three weeks before Ash Wednesday.  The Epistle was one of my favorites, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which he speaks of “running the race” for the “incorruptible crown.”  Corinth, in Paul’s time, was a center for the Roman games, so Saint Paul’s metaphor was particularly appropriate.  He goes on to talk of bringing his body into subjection, controlling his impulses, disciplining his behavior.  The Gospel, always connected thematically, included one of the “hard sayings” of Christ, that the last shall be first and the first last, that those who find God in the last days of their lives are counted the same as those who find Him in the early days.

So we run the race, we follow the law as best we can, we control selfish impulses.  Then our neighbor who has done none of these things, sails right into heaven at the end of his life.

Of course, as our preacher explained, we have the rewards of heaven immediately, and so we do.  We enjoy paradise now, we experience joy now, we have the certainty of the Holy Spirit weaving through us now.  I wouldn’t trade that for anything, and as I received the Eucharist, I knew how true this was, this present joy.

The lessons today were a fitting cap to my week in Hana for Hana-lanitalks about these things, the question of goodness, how can we know right from wrong in a world of unbelief.  How can we inform our public square with its many faiths, including no-faith, with the oughts and shoulds of the Judeo-Christian ethic?  The oughts and shoulds, the laws of our Founding Fathers, embedded in our Constitution and Bill of Rights?  Many folks are asking this question, for many are concerned.  We are a culture of freedom, of freedom to believe or not to believe.  But to preserve that very freedom, we must rely on a faith that embraces freedom, and not all do.  A true conundrum.

We run the race, and as T.S. Eliot says in his masterpiece, Four Quartets:

There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

Only the trying.  As a Christian, I welcome Little Lent and soon to come, Lent proper.  It is a time to run the race, to exercise discipline of mind and body, to be one of the early laborers in the fields of our own lifetimes, so that we can know joy here and now, and not put such bliss off into the future.  I shall embrace the trying.

Aloha from Hana!

We arrived in the small eight-seater plane, flying low along the coast.  It was a gray day, the skies heavy, but even so the flanks of the mountain Haleakala were a rich green, falling into the blue sea.  The coastline here is rugged, with red-earth and black-rock cliffs pounded by the surf.  The white foam races to the land, crashes, spills and spouts and spews, then recedes to gather momentum for another run.

Soon we taxied down the short strip of asphalt, turned and found ourselves in front of the one-room Hana Airport.  The young pilot unloaded our bags and we stood watching the palms waving, then stepped inside to phone for a ride.

It’s been a great blessing to be back in Hana, the setting of Hana-lani, and as I walk through the grass my characters walk with me, now born, now on their own.  Meredith is here, along with Henry, and of course Nani-lei and little Lucy.  The dogs run at my side, Eli and Alabar.  Dr. Sammy meets us at the top of the slope, with his calm and steady manner.  Even Maria haunts this place, her home.

Hana.

We noticed changes from earlier times, and noticed those things that had not changed.  The people are as friendly as ever, welcoming us with their charm and family spirit.  We feel part of the ohana here, and although we shall always really be outsiders, visitors, transgressors into this seeming paradise, it is lovely of them to treat us as family.  We are grateful.

We look out to the sea from our cottage and hear the ocean roar and pound the cliffs at the foot of rolling green grass.  One day we will hike the trail through the pastures to Hamoa Beach, the curved bay Michener called perfect.  It’s about forty-five minutes away by foot, ten minutes by shuttle.  We shall walk down to Hana Bay, on the other side of Kauiki Head.  We shall climb the mountain to Fagan’s cross.  We shall watch the surf and the white foam from our deck, and allow the sounds of ebb and flow to massage our senses through the day and into the night.  We sleep with the windows open to feel the moist air and the sea and float on its gentle tide.

The sky changes, the clouds scudding over the silvery sea up to the mountainside, pushed by the winds.  They gather and open suddenly, sending heavy rains upon the earth.  It poured the first night here and we woke to a drenched and sparkling land.  Hana.

Yesterday I watched a skillful tree trimmer shinny up a palm trunk outside our window. The knife he wielded looked like a machete.  Held by a belt at a forty-five degree angle, hanging away from the tree and high up beneath the lower palms, with hefty arms he smoothly hacked at the boughs, using two swift strokes above and two swift strokes underneath, and a last one on top.  The palm branch flew off and to the ground.  He worked his way around the trunk hacking swiftly, his feet braced.  Within minutes the job was done, the coconuts in their clustered nest released as well, and he climbed down, his boots finding footholds I could not see, and once on terra firma, he released the chain and belt that held him.  He wore loose clothing and a bandana, and moved to pick up the leafy debris with his fellow workers, shouting back and forth, chatting and conferring.  Their voices came through the window light and soft and full of good humor. They loaded the white pick up and moved on to the next tree.

“Don’t take my trash can,” one man said, laughing.  “Without my trash can I am nothing.  Without me, my trash can is nothing.”  They all laugh.

They moved on down the grass toward the sea, pruning the palms, and I heard the light chopping sound, the hack of the machete high in the branches.

There is no television in the hotel, no cell phone service, and Internet only in the lobby and then sporadic.  We don’t mind, but as these connections are pruned from my day, I consider it a good thing, to be pulled into a slower pace, to hack off some of the gluttons of my time and perhaps sway with the palms in the air, closer to heaven.  The simple things loom with great importance – the men working, the horses grazing in the nearby pasture, the changing skies, the passage of the sun and moon, mealtimes, saying my prayers.  We walk half a mile to breakfast and dinner where we sit on a verandah overlooking the sea.  We swim and we read and we write.  Folks talk about Hana being a spiritual place, and it is true, that when we prune our lives, we can pay attention.  We can hear God.

God is good.  I’m so grateful, this Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, in this season of manifestations, for the blessing of returning to Hana, the setting of Hana-lani, and to have the chance to share my little novel with those folks who inspired its creation.  Mahalo to each of you, to all of you.

Hana.

The surf is high on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island in Hawaii.  The waves rear like stallions reaching for the sky.  They rise proudly, knowing their power and showing their glassy underbelly.  They spew banks of furious foam and crash down into the soft sandy beds, churning the sludge into the whirling white froth, browning the aquamarine brilliance.  Then, as though spent from such fierce motion and drive, the waves ease gently upon the half moon of beach, caressing the buffed and print-less shore.

We walked along the edge of the sea, marking the sand with our bare feet, feeling its cool wetness, its packed density.  The ocean roared and thundered under a huge steely sky and a pale sun filtered through, here on this ancient Hawaiian Island, home of kings, queens, and volcano fire.   Today is a soft day playing upon the border of rain and sun, with palms dancing, beckoning to the skies, praying for the light.

We walked to the edge of the cove and I stumbled on a rocky lava outcrop, bruising my heel.  It was so easily done, here in this sensory paradise of seeing and hearing, so easy not to look at my feet, to look beyond to the roaring surf, to misstep.  It is a mesmerizing world, a world of beauty laced with danger.  It is a land where not all is as it seems.

For we do indeed live in a beautiful, fallen world.  Just as we, as human beings, are at once beautiful and fallen from grace.  These islands remind me of this paradox, and today I recalled the importance of watching where I step.  The water was shallow where I slipped, and the bottom seemed sandy, but in fact was a churning eddy masking the hard rock.  The eddy swirled into and over and I didn’t see beneath the surface.

And indeed, today, this Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, I can feel Lent approach and my mind begins to turn to my falls and scrapes of the past year, when I stumbled, righted myself, and got back on track again.  I recall those moments when I didn’t see beneath the surface.  Lent is late this year, hinging on a late Easter which is in turn set by the moon’s journey.  Some years we have two Sundays following Epiphany and other years up to six Sundays.  This is a six-Sunday year.  Little Lent begins in two weeks, February 20, and Lent proper is five and a half weeks away.  Easter is not until April 24.

The path is not always clear, and eddies often stir up the sands, muddying our vision.  And to stretch the metaphor, I often feel I am walking on the edge of two worlds, much like where the sea kisses the land, where the land embraces the sea.  They are the worlds of the seen and the unseen, the world of time and of eternity, earth and heaven.  The roar of the surf is my heartbeat and I walk through time stepping carefully, looking for the path, watching for sharp shoals in muddy eddies.

Yesterday, as day turned to dusk, the sun descended slowly through a heavy cloudbank and emerged from the gray mass of sky as a giant red ball balancing on the horizon.  Our earth turned slowly in a backwards arc, away from the fiery disc on the edge of the sea.  It looked to us as if the sun had set into the sea, but we know better.  We know we are the journeying planet, not the sun.  Planet Earth rolls on, orbiting through dizzying space, through starry time.

We are small in this vast wondrous land of power.  We try and make ourselves big with our building and our taming of the land, with our self delusions.  But the natural world, the earth, is far larger than our population, and, it seems, what numbers we have are diminishing.  The natural world is also far more powerful.  It took man many centuries to feel safe, and we hold onto that safety by a thread.

When I think these things, and feel these moments of insignificance in this land of sea and sky, I think back to Christmas and the great hope of the Incarnation.  I consider God’s immense love to come among us little folks whom he created so many years ago.  I marvel that the creator of this incredible world became one of us and took on our flesh, with all of our temptations and burdens.  And I give great thanks that with his coming to us he gives us his own life, himself, his Spirit.  No longer are we little.  We are Sons of God.  We are Children of God.  We have God with us, in us. We have the promise of eternity.

Epiphany is the drawing out of the stupendous and powerful meaning of the Incarnation.  When we catch a glimpse of what God has done for us, when we begin to sense his immense love, when we ask this great God into our little hearts, only then can we continue the journey to his cross.  For it is his path on earth that we shall follow in the coming months, his healings and his miracles, his teachings about the kingdom.  We shall prepare ourselves for his death with our Lenten rules of prayer and fasting so that we can share in his resurrection from the tomb on Easter morning.

There is a phrase we pray in our Anglican liturgy: “Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof, but speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.”  We say this three times as the host is elevated, just before communion.  We say this because it is true.  We are not worthy that the Almighty God should come under our roof, into our souls and bodies.

Today the Gospel account was the healing of the centurion’s servant, the source of this remarkable statement. The Roman soldier asks Christ to heal his servant at home, and the centurion’s faith is so great that he believes the miracle can be done from a distance. ”Speak the word only and my servant shall be healed,” he says.  “I’m not worthy to have you under my roof.”

The scene has always touched me.  I marvel at this man’s faith and I often wish I had that degree of faith, as I maneuver through the sometimes cloudy days and weeks of my life, not always sure of God’s will for me.  Here and now, in the twenty-first century, we must believe in the unseen, know that an invisible God acts among us, be certain Christ is present in the bread and wine, because he said he would be.  So we say like the centurion, we are not worthy, but even so speak the word and we will be healed of our confusion, of our foggy vision, of our lack of seeing.

It’s a cold rainy day here in the Bay Area, with the kind of damp chill that seeps through windows and doors, and the kind of rain that pours from gray skies without warning.  We entered the warm church and I checked on the nursery and Sunday School.  Lights on, heat on, teachers ready.  Then I entered the red-carpeted nave lined with glimmering stained glass and gazed at the glowing marble and brick sanctuary.

I soon realized it was going to be a quiet, intimate Mass.  There was a hush about it, a listening, for the organist had been called away, and we did not sing together as we usually do.  While I missed the hymns and the exquisite Anglican settings, I did not entirely mind.  Today’s Mass was one of words, the Elizabethan poetry of our Book of Common Prayer quietly bringing God among us.  The words gathered us together like a close family.  The words offered up our confessions, our goings astray, our unworthy moments of the week.  The words through our priest absolved us, washed our souls.  And the words brought Christ himself to us to complete the healing, so that we could return to the cold outside.  We said the words together that we were not worthy, but please, Lord, do come under our roof.

I love the image of a roof: protection from the wet and the cold, a womb-like covering, the lap of a loving father.  To come under one’s roof is to enter one’s home, to be a guest, and in our liturgy it is fitting that that home is our hearts, souls, minds, bodies.  The tabernacle on the altar is like a roofed house where we invite Christ to dwell.  Then we invite him into own hearts, our own homes, our own selves.

Yes, I thought, as I left the warm church for the cold and the wet,Lord, speak the word only and my soul shall be healed.  And he did just that.

It is the annual Pro-Life weekend, when those who wish to protect the unborn gather together to march, to express their love of life no matter the age.

Marches are part of our culture.  They were probably encouraged as an alternative to revolution, a useful venting of group opinion, and have evolved, it would seem, from civic or sports parades.  These in turn find roots in military marches of conquering, victorious armies through city gates.

As a peaceful democracy, Americans encourage such free speech.  We protect the right of people to assemble peaceably and to share opinions publicly.  Cities close streets to traffic to aid these demonstrations.  They are important vehicles of social discourse, important to our national conversation.

I considered this as the acolytes and clergy processed up the red-carpeted aisle of St. Peter’s this morning.  Processions are a kind of parade, perhaps with a more focused destination.  Like parades and marches, processions tell a story, act out a viewpoint.  In the Church, they gather us together as we sing hymns and the organ plays and we make a joyful noise to the Lord.  As the acolytes and clergy move up the aisle to the high altar, in a wonderful sense, they bring us with them.  The procession says to all of us in the pews, let us give thanks, let us rejoice and celebrate the Eucharist.  Let us prepare to meet God in the Mass.  He is our God and we are his people.

Just so, yesterday hundreds of thousands gathered across our great land to say something as well, to speak publicly in our democratic, peaceful country.  Their message was simple.  The unborn, they say, are the same as you and I.  The unborn, they say, are human beings.  We, as a civil people, need to protect these little ones, just as we protect others in our society.  We need to allow them life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, just as we are guaranteed these things.

And, they say, our law should not allow any of us to take these rights from them.  For they, the unborn, the tiny babies growing in the womb, are living human beings, just like you and I.  But I fear many do not believe this.  Many do not agree.  Many talk of convenience and lifestyle and let my will be done, thank you very much.

These are difficult days, dark days, I thought, as I gazed at the tabernacle on the altar, home of the Real Presence of Christ.  Today we celebrate the third week of Epiphanytide, this time of revealing the true nature of Jesus.  The Gospel today told of the Wedding in Cana, when Christ turned the water into wine.  It was a gloriously abundant miracle, our preacher said.  The water jugs contained nearly thirty gallons!  And there were a number of jugs.  It was also a gloriously upscale miracle, for the wine was of the best quality.  This miracle, celebrating marriage and wine, revealing God’s son to us, is encouraging, a light in our darkness.

The folks marching in Washington D.C. and across this nation pray for such a miracle, pray for such a light.  They pray that our nation will turn away from killing the helpless and vulnerable and walk into the light.  They pray for an end to the bloodshed.

As I considered all that excellent wine created from ordinary water, I knew that God could work such a miracle here, in this country.  So we process, we parade, we march.  We continue the national conversation peacefully, expressing our hopes and prayers, and our love.  We pray that in this expression that God will change hearts just as he worked that abundant miracle in Cana all those years ago.

We joined the line of communicants and received Christ, for here, in this very sanctuary, another miracle had occurred, that of turning wine into his blood, into his Real Presence.  I left Saint Peter’s full of hope, full of miracle.

How thankful I am to live in a country in which we march, parade, process, and where civil, peaceful, free speech is protected by law.

And how thankful I am for all of those marching yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

I’ve been a bit “under the weather” with a bad cold and used the time to re-immerse myself in my novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Mystery.

The characters are coming to life on the page.  I’m sending them to Rome and Provence, in pursuit of a legacy as they try to avoid danger.  In this draft I’m complicating the journey, increasing the stakes, fanning the fires of conflict and romance.  At the same time I’m searching into their past and getting to know them better.  I’m hoping that in this way you will too.

Today is the Second Sunday after Epiphany, and as I croaked my way through the hymns during Mass and tried to focus on the great Eucharistic prayers, I thought how I loved this season in the Church Year.  It is a time of epiphanies, and the Gospel lessons all reflect manifestations of Christ, who he is: last week, the story of the boy Jesus in the Temple; today, the story of Christ’s baptism by John; next week, the story of the Wedding in Cana.  In each account Christ is revealed.

Today, the sermon touched on another aspect of this manifestation, the work of the Holy Spirit in us.  Just as the Holy Spirit descended on Christ at his baptism, he descends upon each of us in our baptisms as well. We are indeed temples of the Holy Spirit from that moment on, a hopeful and strengthening thought, a thought I sometimes forget.

So we are all inspired, in this sense, in-spired, breathed upon by the creative spirit of God.  He is within us, prodding us, guiding us.  We, in our more holy moments, make God manifest by our lives, our loves, our sacrifices.

I came home thinking about this amazing gift, God in us.  Christmas was God with us, Emmanuel.  Epiphany is God in us, God himself baptizing our souls.

And waiting for me at home were the first reviews of my recently released novel, Hana-lani, something to encourage me as I dive back into The Magdalene Mystery, as I pray for epiphanies and manifestations, hoping God will work through me in some little way, will manifest himself in me, through me.  It seems so presumptuous to even think such a thing, and yet that is what Christianity is all about, God coming to us to be one of us, to be with us, to be in us.  Deo Gratias.

Reviews will soon be posted on my site, and now are posted on:

http://readerviews.com/ReviewSunderlandHana-lani.html

http://www.bestsellersworld.com/2011/01/16/hana-lani-by-christine-sunderland/

Epiphany means manifestation, a sudden seeing, a revealing, an understanding of truth.  The three Wise Men from the East followed the star to the Bethlehem stable where they saw and worshiped the Son of God.  They recognized him. Our Lord Jesus was made manifest to the greater world in this moment we celebrate as the Feast of the Epiphany.  God revealed himself on this day, and continues to reveal himself.

He reveals himself to each of us, and I, in gratitude and joy, seek to make manifest what I see.  I want to share the epiphanies granted me, those golden glimpses into real reality.

So I create characters, and in my godlike fashion, breathe upon them life as best I can, praying for help from the great Creator.  Once created, these men and women reside in my brain, waiting to be born onto a page so that others will know them too.

I was blessed to have my fourth novel published last month.  Hana-lani is about a young woman’s epiphany, her seeing into her own life and her seeing those around her.  It is about our culture seeing as well – understanding itself, where it is going.  It is about seeing the signposts along the way, making the right, correct, turns.

So the characters of Hana-lani, like my Trilogy (Pilgrimage, Offerings, Inheritance) have been born, made real upon a white page, and now are seen by readers around the world.  My epiphanies have become my readers’ epiphanies, or so I would hope.  I have had the chance to share my golden glimpses, a great privilege.

And now in the beginning of this year, 2011, I return to writing my fifth novel, The Magdalene Mystery, whose characters are growing and developing, interacting with one another, seeking and being sought, trying to see.  They are anxious to be on the page, to breathe.

I shall move through my days with open eyes and ears, watching and listening, looking for signs that will map my story truthfully.  I shall say my prayers with the great community of believers, the Body of Christ, the Church.  I shall share my epiphanies, hoping they reflect the great Epiphany, the revealing of God in Bethlehem two thousand years ago.

Today, the day after New Year’s Day, I considered the curious tradition of resolutions.  I had not made any New Year’s resolutions this year, 2011.

This morning Saint Peter’s altar was aflame with red poinsettias.  The crèche holding the promised Christ Child nestled in a bed of greenery on the Gospel side to the right of the altar.  The Advent wreath and four candles had been removed Christmas Eve.  We no longer wait for the coming of the Christ, but celebrate his birth during the twelve days of Christmastide.

We celebrate the Word made flesh, the coming of God into our world, becoming one of us.  And with his coming comes his judgment.  As Christians we examine our lives to see what we have left undone, and what we have done that we should not have done.  We look at the Ten Commandments, the Sins and the Virtues.  Have we measured up?  Have we loved enough?  We confess those failings, are forgiven, and, having seen ourselves a little more clearly, we strive to change.  We call this repentance, penitence.

Once a year many folks in our culture take stock as well on New Year’s Eve or Day, a hopeful vestige of this Judeo-Christian heritage of self-examination, of confession before God.  But the Christian does this daily, or at least weekly before the altar, or tries to.  The Christian is continually resolving, repenting, turning away from sin and toward God.

So my resolutions are many and ongoing and not confined to New Year’s, for each morning is new, each evening a time for reflection, resolving.  I know a man who prays without ceasing, and for him his resolving must be minute to minute, living in the presence of God, as God continually remakes him.

This morning I gazed at the faces of the acolytes and clergy moving about the altar.  I know their names, and each person moved with his own characteristic style and grace.  Each face was etched differently, each unique with its own joys and sorrows, its own history of love and unlove.  I looked over the faithful kneeling in the pews and recognized their profiles, the way they held themselves.  I knew them and they knew me.  At least most of them.

In the reading for today, Jesus reads publicly from the Scriptures in the Nazareth synagogue.  In this passage he announces who he is, the long-awaited Messiah, the Savior.  Jesus of Nazareth, about thirty years old at this time, must have gazed at each of them, knowing them, loving them, seeing them.  But they did not know him.

I saw a movie a few months ago, a children’s fantasy, in which the inhabitants of an other-worldly world greeted each other with the phrase, “I see you.”  Those words have settled into my memory, for this is what we all desire.  We want others to see us.  We want to be known.  We want to be loved.

I have learned in my life of sixty-three years that God does this with each of us, through Christ, through prayer, through the Mass.  He sees us.  I looked at the faces around the altar this morning, and I saw them.  They were so very beautiful, each one.

And I added a prayer to my mountain of requests for change, for repentance and forgiveness.  Lord, teach me to see.  Teach me to honor and respect each person, each individual you have made, to overlook no-one.  Lord, open my eyes to your creation.

I had a New Year’s resolution after all.

We gathered around the sliced turkey, cranberries, gravy, sausage stuffing, spinach salad, green peas, brown-sugared yams, mashed potatoes, cornbread and yeast rolls.  We held hands, forming a circle around the kitchen island, we seventeen individuals from five families, forming one this Christmas Day, age nine to eighty.  We said Grace, thanking God for this bounty and for the great gift of his son in Bethlehem.

The rain had lifted slightly as dusk turned to dark, but most of our guests had arrived cold and wet from the storm.  Our cat Lady Jane, a black and white longhair we brought home from a shelter several years ago, waited in the entry as each person arrived, then rolled onto her back so that her tummy would be available to be scratched.  She loves parties.

Being in the warm indoors, surrounded by family and sharing our Christmas meal, the carols playing, my mind returned occasionally to the crèche in St. Peter’s, where now, I knew, the baby Jesus had been placed in his green manger bed, and beyond the altar would be adorned with red poinsettias.  We had waited through Advent for the empty crib to be filled, waited with Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and the star that rose over the Bethlehem shelter.  We waited with the animals, the other created beings on this good earth.  We all waited for our Creator to come to us.  God with us, Emmanuel.

Soon, around the dining table and sheltered from the rain, we exchanged stories of our lives, and toasted family and Christmas.  We noticed that a granddaughter was looking more and more like a certain ancestor, that a niece had grown up overnight, that a son had put on a few pounds.  We could see a little strain here, perhaps from overwork or over-worry, a little aging there, but renewed hope, for these few hours at least, everywhere.

Christmas, the waiting and the coming, has always carried a certain expectancy, a promise fulfilled.  The gentle Advent disciplines, the tiny twinkly lights strung on rooftops and trees, the harmonies of carolers, the gift-giving, even the frenzied shoppers, all add to this rising crescendo of expectation.  As children we waited for Santa, counting the days with great impatience.  We waited and we wondered if Santa received the list, and if so, what would he bring…?  As adults we continue to wait and wonder, caught up in the swirling activity of the approach of glory.

Some of us attend Christmas Eve services in the dark of night and, in candlelight and hushed quiet we sing carols, praying through the last hours of waiting.  When my son was young and I was a single parent, I sat with him in the first pew of Saint Peter’s before the crèche, hoping he could see the robed priests and the sacred movements about the altar and possibly stay awake, but by 10:30 he usually had slipped down onto the smooth wooden pew, his head in my lap, his five-year-old body stretched out, sound asleep.  As the liturgy ended, I hoisted him over my shoulder and into the car and we drove home through the starry night.  He would usually be awake now, and as one o’clock neared, we wondered if we could see Santa riding his sleigh through the deep blue night above.

Santa of course is a wonderful reflection of God the Father, demanding, loving, giver of great gifts.  In reality he was Saint Nicolas, fourth-century bishop, who not only gave gifts but took part in the Council of Nicaea, which helped to refine the Nicene Creed, the definitive statement of Christian belief. Santa Claus became a derivative of Sant’ Niklaus over the years, and his legend, while seized by retailers and pop singers, reflects in many ways the true meaning of Christmas.

For Christmas is indeed about giving, about giving to one another in love and sacrifice.  It is about God giving us his son, and about our response to that great gift.  Do we give ourselves back?  Christmas is Christ-Mass, the gift given to us in every Eucharist, every Mass, every Sunday.

As we gathered around the table for our Christmas feast, I thought of my Advent memory work, the first fourteen verses of John’s Gospel, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  Yes, I did indeed sort of memorize it, and the phrasing will stay with me forever, a delightful gift.  It is one of the Gospels appointed for Christmas Day and, as we toasted family and Christmas, the last phrase rang in my ears, And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, that of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Yes, I thought, as I looked at the faces around my table, full of grace and truth, full of giving, full of Christmas.