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Soon we will be in London.

As I said my prayers in church this morning, I pulled together the past week, the past month, the past year, and wove them into the present, to create a new cloth to become tomorrow.

For it has been a year of prayer and waiting in many ways, waiting on God.  I have known, as the Psalmist says, that God has “searched me out and known me” and as I repeat the lovely words of this psalm-song in my Lenten prayers morning and night I trust that his will for me, since he knows me, is good.  This trust has in turn given birth to patience.  So my waiting has not been too difficult.

One of my great desires has been to see our Children’s Chapel revived. This morning as I checked on the children in the back rooms, I heard the sounds of a piano and followed the notes.  Sure enough, one of our teachers was playing Hymn #61, “The Glory of these forty days”, upon our old upright piano in the newly decorated chapel.  Such joy to hear those sounds once again!

Light streamed from a high window upon the carved wooden altar, laid out with white linens and candles.  Many-sized chairs have been ordered and Stations of the Cross are framed and ready for the white walls. A lovely carved statue of a Madonna and Child stood on a pedestal in the corner.   I smiled as I looked at the children gathered today, noticing a former student of mine, now grown and married, who sat in one of the tiny chairs with her own baby Natalie.  Natalie was blowing kisses to our leader, and we all laughed.

Today the year came together in that small chapel.  Twenty years ago I prayed with the children in that same place, and today, once again we sang our songs of praise.  I thought how I would soon be leaving them for a short time, and I would bring this memory, this picture, with me: the draped altar, the golden cross, the flaming candles, the carved wooden frontispiece, the sweet Madonna and Child, the old piano played by my dear fellow teacher, and the children, aged one to twelve, the new generation.  I would travel with this picture in my heart, take it with me to England.

What will London show me?  What would God’s will be for me there?  What is his desire?  We shall return to T.S. Eliot’s Anglo-Catholic church in South Kensington, St. Stephen’s Gloucester Road.  We shall perhaps drop off a copy of Inheritance, my novel set in England, at the local public library. We shall drink tea in the afternoons and walk through the neighborhoods when weather permits.

And I shall wait on God.  I shall trust that he knows me, that I am truly searched out and known, and His will is good.  I shall be patient, and wait each day in wonderment as the minutes and hours unfold.

Lent is a time of watering.  A time of feeding and preparation.  A time of being watered and being fed.

The days are lengthening, the root of the term Lent, and as the sun travels in a greater arc, giving us more light in our day, we travel toward Easter, the source of all light.

Here in Northern California we have been blessed by an abundance, or so it seems, of rain on our green hills.  The land drinks, soaking the waters from the skies to create new growth, new green.  We too pause during this time of absorbing the meaning of God come among us, the meaning of our human condition, the meaning of our individual lives.  We pray and we fast, training and disciplining our bodies and our wills to lead truer lives.  Perhaps we watch less TV, engage in less Internet chat.  We consider what is important and what is not.  We absorb the words of God in our prayer life and our Sunday worship.  We seek His will.  We drink it all in like water in the desert, this time of nourishment.  We feast on this abundance of love found in the Church in this most penitential and holy season.

A new book was recently released about clouds, the many kinds, the many names, each bundle of moisture traveling at its own altitude, each having its own, if ever-changing, shape.  There is even a Cloud Appreciation Society, and I gather that they search for and identify clouds as birdwatchers do birds.  I recall many childhood summers, stretched out on the grass, looking up at the clouds, finding animal and people shapes, which soon moved into other fabulous creations as the wind carried them off.  I share with C.S. Lewis a love of “weather,” but would probably add, as long as I can be protected from its force.  Still, clouds are lovely.

The clouds today spun through the sky, opening and drenching us as we ran into church, then moved on to another landscape.  Soon the sun burned through the moist and freshened air, and the garden courtyard blinded us as we emerged from Saint Peter’s this morning.  Such drama.  Such a world of contrast, color, beauty.  Such a world of feeding and nourishing.

But nature hurts and maims as well.  We grieve for those affected by earthquakes and tsunamis, and we question why such things happen.  We are reminded that we are not in control of such simple things as weather.  And this reminder too is a part of Lent.  We move through our days thinking we are, but we simply aren’t.  This is the reality of our world.

And so in Lent we become humble, knowing there will be times of great suffering and sorrow, times of flooding or drought, times that reflect the changing shapes in the heavens.  Yet we know there is more than this randomness, we know that there is a greater order, a greater plan, and best of all, we know it is a plan of Love.  We move toward Easter, aware of our neediness, our hunger, our thirst, knowing we will be comforted, fed, and our thirst will be quenched.  The days lengthen, the storms pass over, and one day we find ourselves helping the children flower a large white Easter cross.

Soon, soon, the day of resurrection will come, and the land will blossom.  We too, rising from our ashen selves, from our feeding and watering, will rise like the phoenix.  We have this promise, as Christians, and we are glad.

Lent began this week on Ash Wednesday.

I have had mixed feelings about Ash Wednesday over the years, but have always appreciated the reminder of my physical frailty coupled with the glorious power of God.

It is on Ash Wednesday we are told “Remember o man, that dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return.”  It is on Ash Wednesday we consider our falling aways, our errors, those times when we have not loved enough.  Ash Wednesday reminds us of who we are as though we looked in a mirror and really saw ourselves.

It’s not always pretty.  But then, God breathes upon us, stirs our hearts to life.  He breathes upon our dust as He did with Adam and gives us life.  We rise into glorious eternity.  We know joy.  We love again.

In this sense Ash Wednesday is one of the most meaningful days in the Church Year.  We see our bodies, turning to ash.  Then we see our new life in Christ, rebirthing us, resurrecting us with him from the ash.  We rise like the phoenix, from our own ash.  This is Lent.

We visited St. Joseph of Arimathea Seminary Chapel in Berkeley this year for the evening Ash Wednesday service and the experience still haunts me with its extraordinary beauty.  St. Joseph’s is not large – perhaps seats sixty if we squeeze in together.  It is built in the Byzantine style, simple with a high vault and an ancient sounding organ.  We took our places on one of the benches and listened to the organ play an introit.  Then the front door opened and twelve UC students processed in, two by two, robed and carrying candles in the dark.  A thurifer prepared the way with incense billowing, and the crucifer carried the crucifix high.  The students are the Cal Crew who reside on the adjacent property and join in the worship services from time to time.  The effect was stunning, in this grotto-like chapel, with the candle light and the medieval-sounding organ.

The acolytes and clergy took places in the chancel.  The ashes were blessed and we stepped to the altar to have the priest make a cross upon our foreheads, dipping his finger in the ash and saying the words Remember o man…  He painted our skin with this gritty black symbol of our joy, the reminder of God’s promises to us.  Soon, we knew, we would celebrate Our Lord’s resurrection, and also our own.  The Mass continued, through the lessons and homily and the offering of ourselves to this Lord of love.  We received our communions, communing with Him, and with each other as the Body of Christ.

We were a mixed group, from babies to ninety-year-olds.  Our Archbishop in his white robe sat in the chancel, gazing upon us thoughtfully, praying his love, as a shepherd cares for his sheep.

Soon we sang the recessional, (was it The Old Rugged Cross?)  and the acolytes and clergy moved down the aisle, holding the flaming candles and crucifix, lighting the way, into the dark of Durant Street and the boom box noise and exhaust fumes and confusion of Berkeley.  We said our prayers, thankful for this refuge of hope on this Ash Wednesday, 2011, and gathered together for lentil soup in the small house behind the chapel.

I was thankful for these moments, this time of beginning the season of Lent.  I was thankful that my topsy turvy world was righted by this beautiful ceremony, a liturgy that made sense of all the suffering, bickering, and trials of life.  For as Christ’s Body, I became new once again.  I was thankful to be a part of this making sense, this truth of our world and of the God who made me, breathed life upon my ashen dust.

It has been a week of finishing up my early draft of The Magdalene Mystery, a story which contemplates truth and lies and love.  Now I must choose what to add and what to take away, decisions I shall need help with, as I hone and refine and hope something ends up readable as well as challenging, a tricky task.

We are moving into Lent, and each year as I live these penitential days of the life of the Church I am reminded of my third novel, in which the time span is a Lent-Easter one, Inheritance.  As we drove to church today I thought of my characters and what they were doing on this day in London… Victoria escaping, Madeleine and Jack visiting Saint Mary’s Bourne Street Church, Cristoforo preaching in the wet countryside.  Each character has become part of me, as I am, to be sure, a part of them, and they give my life a lovely contour and extended family.

I’ve been thinking as well what my Lenten rule shall be, what I shall give up, and what I shall take on.  Psalm 139 is a given, one to return to, as well as the Lenten Collect, a prayer said in the daily offices during this time of preparing for Easter.  I shall return to the first fourteen verses of John which I tackled in Advent, for their beauty still haunts me, and I am grateful for the lingering.  I must choose another memory passage, and I’m thinking perhaps John 6 where Christ talks about the Eucharist.  I shallalso try to give up meats and sweets, always a challenge.  In this way I shall discipline my will so that I shall learn to love as God loves.  I shall be in training.

Our parish is reading The Way of a Pilgrim, a story of a Russian wanderer and the Jesus Prayer.  The Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me a sinner,” is sometimes prayed without ceasing, as Saint Paul tells us to do.  I find it on my lips and in my heart often during the day, not, I must admit, without ceasing.  But it is a lovely way to remain close to God minute to minute, hour to hour, or in moments of suffering, heartache, disappointment.  Someone once asked why this prayer doesn’t pray for others instead of oneself.  The answer was that the “me,” through love, becomes “we”.  I liked that, and when I pray it now, I incorporate all mankind, especially the Body of Christ, in the “me,” through love.

Love.  Ah, that difficult word.  That glorious word.  Today’s Epistle was the poetic and joyous passage, I Corinthians 13, Paul’s great hymn to love, or “charity,” caritas.  His definition of love is not popular today: love is suffering, kind, humble, meek, unselfish, patient, true, bearing, believing, unfailing, and greater even than faith and hope.

And the Gospel for today was the healing of the blind man.  He knew Jesus could heal him, and because of his faith, Christ heals him.  He can see. Because he believed.

So as we approach Lent we are called to love, to suffer, to be true to the truth.   In doing so, we also will be granted our sight.  We shall be healed.  We shall journey on to the time when we shall no longer “see through a glass darkly” but “face to face” with the God who is the source of all love, life, and truth.

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.