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“It is our whole faith that by His own death Christ changed the very nature of death, made it a passage – a ‘Passover,’ a ‘Pascha’ – into the Kingdom of God, transforming the tragedy of tragedies into the ultimate victory.”  Alexander Schmemann

Tall palm fronds – twelve feet? – rise on either side of the high altar, reaching up the brick apsidal wall.  They are signs of hope, as green often is, amidst the swathes of purple.  For Lenten purple still drapes the crucifix, the tall candlesticks, the Madonna and Child.  The processional cross too is hidden, and as the clergy and acolytes step toward the altar amidst clouds of incense, we recall the donkey stepping toward the gates of Jerusalem, the City of David, two thousand years ago, a humble animal carrying our humble God, parting the sea of humanity, the ocean of welcoming palms, heading toward the proud gates of the proud city.  The crowd would soon change, Christ knew.  Soon they would would condemn Him, acclaim His death before Pilate, taunt Him along the Way of the Cross, as foretold.

Today, Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, is a day that begins the recalling of the great action of God among us: the conquering of death, the transformation of death to passover, pascha (Easter in the West), to a passing into the Kingdom.  Death vanquished by death; Christ is the Paschal Lamb, the Passover Lamb.

Stacks of smaller palms are blessed and given out, and we process around the church, singing All glory, laud, and honor/To thee, Redeemer King!  To whom the lips of children /Made sweet hosannas ring…, waving our palms, led by our children.  We walk the aisles, together, a family of God, linked by time and eternity, as we move toward our own passovers, our own crossings into the Kingdom.

Are we ready for our own paschas, our own Easters?  We examine our hearts, confess our sins, forgive our brothers and sisters, ask their forgiveness.  We have done things we should not have done and left undone things we should have done.  We say these words together, into the air of the nave, and the incense carries them to the tabernacle.  Our priest, imbued with the authority of two thousand years of Apostolic Succession, gives us absolution, frees us from our mortality, grants us our own passover into the Kingdom.

The Palm Sunday liturgy continues.  We hear the words of Scripture, incarnate with Christ himself.  We hear the words of the sermon, the interpretation of those words, a clarifying based on the promptings of the Holy Spirit weaving through the Church.  We offer the Mass, and in the sacred liturgy are forgiven, freed of ourselves to become ourselves now offered, souls and bodies to God.  Soon, we see, He offers Himself back to us, as He does in each Mass, as He becomes a mystical part of the bread and the wine, and we consume Him.  In the Eucharist itself we pass over, we experience pascha.  We enter His Kingdom, part the veil of the tabernacle and unite with God through Christ.  The Kingdom is now, not of this world, but granted through the matter of this world.

We enter Holy Week, a time of reflection, and of participation in the greatest drama of all history. We fast and pray.  We recreate that history in these hours and days as we move toward Maundy Thursday and the Last Supper.  We follow Christ to the Garden, to the trial, to the Way of the Cross.  We pause there on Good Friday and mourn for ourselves, our world.  Holy Saturday is silent with waiting.  In this way we, His Body, prepare for Easter, for Pascha.

The giant candlesticks framing the tabernacle were draped in purple, like funereal palls.  The tabernacle too was tented in purple, and the crucifix above was veiled in purple as well.  I looked to the left of the chancel, and there, also, the sweet Madonna and Child were covered, but the bank of votives still burned bright.

The honest morning light fell through skylights upon the violet swathes and the red carpet as though saying, “See what is happening. Pay attention.  Do not turn away.”

Today is Passion Sunday, a day which reminds the Church that the Body of Christ is entering the last weeks of Lent and the coming of Holy Week.  It is a time to recall, as part of His Body, His Passion, the last weeks before His death and resurrection.  Passion comes from the Latin passio, meaning suffering, and Christ’s passion is often defined as the union of love and suffering.  As I gazed on the purple drapes, I wondered about suffering.  And I wondered about love.

For it was God’s immense love that redeemed us, continues to redeem us.  Today it is God’s immense love that visits us through His Body, the Church, in the sacraments and in the parish family.  It was that love, and the suffering inherent in love borne out in willing sacrifice, that walked the path to Calvary so that we might live.

And not only live in eternity, but live today.  Live in the Resurrection by living in His love in the here and now.  How do we do this?  Through the Church.

I looked about the nave at my sisters and brothers kneeling in the pews.  We, like every family, and all of mankind, are a dysfunctional lot, full of petty jealousies, sullen secrets, and powerful egos.  But a sacramental river runs through us, washing us clean as we confess our sins, receive absolution, and partake of the Eucharist.  With every Mass we are redeemed again, to love one another better, with greater humility, with greater sacrifice of our own wills.

We walk with Christ the Way of His Cross, for it is a familiar path.  Each day of our lives is barbed with the little pains of love.  To escape these is to withdraw from life, to hide from others, to be alone.  Our Way of the Cross lies in the minute minutes of our time here, in the everyday bits of our hours.

The Church, I have found to my utter delight, integrates all of this – our way through time with His Way of the Cross.  It pulls together the disparate strands that threaten to unravel our souls, and weaves a fine fabric.  In the pulling, in the weaving, we become resurrected creatures, creatures of the morning light, unafraid of seeing.  We pay attention as never before.

This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday.  We shall listen for His knock as he enters the gates of Jerusalem, as we begin Holy Week, the Way to Resurrection.

Visit us at Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, 8 & 10 Mass, 6013 Lawton, Oakland; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/
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Today, crimson roses, indeed blood-red, framed the purple-tented tabernacle on the purple-draped altar in St. Peter’s Church.  Today is Rose Sunday, a break in the somber tones of Lent, a day also called LaetareSunday, meaning Rejoice Sunday.

Recalling that this week we celebrate the Feast of St. Patrick (387-493), we sang “St. Patrick’s Breast-Plate,” a vigorous and moving hymn based on Patrick’s prayer, beginning with the line, “I bind unto myself today/ The strong Name of the Trinity…” and ending with the intimately delightful “Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me . . .”.   We sang, the organ booming, as the procession, led by the thurifer throwing out clouds of incense, followed by the torchbearers and crucifer, then the celebrant, acolytes, and assisting clergy, moved up the aisle confidently, joyously, steadily to the altar where Christ was mysteriously, mystically present in the Reserved Sacrament.

The Epistle and Gospel brought us back to Lent and its true nature, lessons themed with God’s grace, our reliance on him.  Our Lenten disciplines, our rule, our fasting and abstinence, our assigned tasks, our good preacher explained, are nothing without grace.  We do not earn points, but rather prepare ourselves to receive God’s grace.  As we prepare to receive him in the Eucharist by taking part in the liturgy, the “work of the people,” just so we prepare for Easter with our Lenten discipline.

Two sacraments, we believe, are necessary for salvation: Holy Baptism and the Holy Eucharist.  In each, God’s grace pours upon us.  We are healed of our wounds, forgiven our sins, and given life eternal.

Time passes and we journey through Lent.  This morning we moved our clocks forward, watching time disappear before our eyes.  Our own lives move forward as well, to their inevitable death, to a passage to a greater life, the fulfillment of this one.

We journey toward the blood-red cross and the rose-filled resurrection.  We prepare for Grace to be poured upon us, now and then.  We are transformed by Love, the love of the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.  We give thanks for St. Patrick, who speaks to us today, sixteen hundred years after he brought the good news of salvation to Ireland.

For Patrick’s original prayer, see:http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11554a.htm
For the hymn (#268, The 1940 Hymnal, Church Hymnal Corp) see:http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/i/i024.html

It’s seems like spring in the Bay Area today.  The air carries a lovely lightness, as though the cold had been somehow heavy.  The cherry and plum trees have blossomed, as they often do in late February, and new growth is working through the shrubbery about our house.  We’ve had plenty of rain this year, and the hills are the green of Tuscany in May, a soothing green of promise, happy to the eye.

And Lent calls us, even as the days do truly lengthen, calls us to prepare for Easter.

I’m working slowly on my additional memory work for the season, John 1:1-14, allowing the words to move into my soul, become part of me. In him was life, and the life was the light of the men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.  I love that this is the Gospel for Christmas Day, when the word did indeed become incarnate.  I’ve revived earlier pieces learned in other Lents, golden melodies heard more clearly each year: Psalm 139, the Ash Wednesday Collect, the Te Deum.  We move through Lent, out of the dark and into the light.

Darkness and light.  Today at Saint Peter’s the Epistle (Ephesians 5:1) was about walking as children of light by obeying God’s commands, that with Christ’s light this is possible.  The pairing Gospel story (Luke 11:14) tells of Christ casting out demons, a true exorcism.  Our good Father Pomroy explained that in the early Church, the Lenten season was a period of instruction for catechumens leading to their baptism on Easter Eve. Only after baptism could they partake in the mysteries of the Mass.  On the first and third Sundays of Lent, evil spirits were cast out as part of this formation.  Remnants of those days of exorcism remain in today’s baptismal liturgy when the priest asks: “Do you denounce the devil and all his works…”  This slow revelation of the mysteries of the Mass was calleddisciplina arcana, or secret teaching.

Exorcism, demons, darkness.  Do demons exist today?  I believe they do, taking many forms, and always seeking a secure place in my own little heart.  How do I exorcise them?  How do I shine light on them to make them scatter?  I cannot do it on my own.  I can only say yes to Christ, allow him to wash me clean; allow him to live within me.

And to say yes is to receive him in the Eucharist, a mystery those catechumens knew so long ago.  Through the communion of believers, baptized into the Church over two thousand years, we all partake of a great host of light.

I left Saint Peter’s this morning, renewed, cleansed, en-lightened, having swept and brightened the dark corners of my soul.  I stepped out into the nearly spring day, the sun warm, the newly green leaves rustling.  The world, once again, had been reborn.  I had been reborn.

Saturday, February 27, the sirens wailed at six a.m. all across the islands, we later learned, but to us in rural southern Maui, in a cottage too close to the sea, the alarm came from a low flying plane along the coast.

The sun was just coming up over the eastern horizon, where the sea meets the dawn.  It was a remarkably clear day, and the dome of blue would have meant blistering sun, but we knew the weather would change.  Our hotel had informed us by letter and visit with a rap on the door early in the dark of that morning, so we were warned.  We had planned to fly home, so we were busy packing, and now we wondered where or when we would fly, if at all.  Perhaps we would be evacuated with the others, who had been told to move to higher ground, to, indeed, Fagan’s Cross, the lava cross on the promontory on the side of Haleakala.

The uncertainty weighed heavily as I looked out to sea that early morning, out to the bright sun, the rugged lava coast, the green fields.  My novel,Hana-lani, set here, celebrates the setting and the culture of this traditional community, its peaceful and friendly way of life, its embrace of family, both near and far, and writing the story had deepened my love for these folks.  Everyone here is ohana, family, and everyone is cared for.  I prayed for these people who had given us so much over so many years.  I prayed they would be spared this terrible wave that was rolling through the seas from distant Chile.  I prayed for those in Chile too, who had been victims of these terrible rages of nature.

Not for the first time, the fragility of life danced before me, as though the earth of my own world shook a bit, became less stable.  I could be a person living in Chile.  I could be a resident here in Hana as the waters rose.  One day it could be me.

And would we be able to return home?  Would the roads be blocked, the planes grounded?  Would utilities and basic serviced be shut down?

We moved ahead, one step at a time.  The old red fire truck, now the hotel shuttle (a ‘39 Packard) delivered us to the Hana airport, where, in spite of everything, the propjet arrived from Kahului.  We boarded and strapped ourselves in, and lifted into the air, flying low along the coast, amazed at the clear day, the absence of any signs of trouble over the waters.  Cobalt blues rushed against the black cliffs, and the deeply green flanks of Haleakala rose to the blue dome of a sky.  Paradise.

Arriving at the Kahului airport, so quiet at 9 a.m., we joined the waiting lines to check in, slowly moving through the minutes of the morning, praying for Hana.  The wave was due to hit Hilo at 11:15.  The airport lights dimmed, the water, we were told had been shut down, the restaurants closed.

TSA still screened us carefully, and by 11:30 we had reached our gate in the terminal.  Folks peered through the wide windows toward the sea, anxious.  Would a wave engulf the airport for surely we were sea level?  They said no, but how did they know?  Images from movies and news footage passed through my mind, Southeast Asia a few years ago, the Titanic.  The tension in the air was tangible, and we made small talk with others waiting, glancing toward the horizon, which we were sure was growing darker and darker.  As noon approached, we began to feel safe again, as we heard reports of mild waves, nothing unusual.  The world began to right itself around us.  Now we worried – would there be a plane?  Would there be crew and pilot, for the roads to the airport had been closed.

The plane arrived, the pilots arrived, and we headed home for San Francisco, thankful that Hana had been spared, and now praying for those in Chile.

We hiked up the long trail to Fagan’s cross this morning, taking a chance on the rain.  Dark clouds hovered mistily over Haleakala, but patches of blue sky emerged over the sea.  We walked between two weather worlds, up through the pastures, grateful the cattle were peacefully distant and not commanding the trail as they sometimes do, their dull forceful eyes challenging you to continue.

The path rises steep and straight at first, dividing the grassy lands, then turns gently to the right, to circle and skirt a promontory emerging from the hillside.  You can see the cross there, atop the cliff, its simple lines strong against the mountain and sky, formed from giant lava blocks, a massive creation.

When Paul Fagan from Oakland replaced the sugar fields of Hana with cattle lands and created a working ranch, he slowly revived the failing economy of the area, for Hawaiian sugar could no longer compete with other producers around the world.  When he died in 1960 his wife erected this cross in his memory.  It stands as a witness to faith and family on the side of the volcano, between the sea and the sky.

We drew near the cross as we followed the path around the hill, then approached the sanctuary, an open porch area before the cross where Easter sunrise is celebrated.  Torches line on either side of the massive cross, and I tried to imagine their flame lighting the dark of early dawn, the huge cross in the center, my gaze on the distant horizon over the sea where the sun would slowly appear.

In my novel Hana-lani, Nani-lei comes here to pray for Hana and her people, her family, her children.  When I visit Fagan’s cross, I think of old Nani, her wisdom, her sacrificial life.  Soon, I hope, Nani’s voice will be heard by others as well, for her story will hopedully be published this year.  As I looked over Hana today, standing next to the thick base, and protected by the broad arm of the cross, I prayed for my family too, and this lovely town spread below me, nestled between land and sea.  I prayed for those I knew were struggling with life-changing decisions, that they would bravely choose life in the face of a dying and despairing culture.  I prayed for our parched world, that our dry bones would be healed, that our culture of life and freedom would be renewed.

And I thanked God for Mrs. Fagan’s cross, it’s witness.

As we descended the steep hillside through the meadows, the rain began to fall, lightly, blown from the sea by a strong warm wind, pushing the clouds back up the mountain.  I knew that, in the end, the cross would not be defeated.  God would breathe his life into our death.

We headed for Hamoa Bay this morning, following the cattle path through the pastures.

Careful of the meadow muffins, we meandered along the flanks of Haleakala, often pausing on the grassy slopes to gaze down to the sea – the town of Hana nestling around Kauiki Head, the promontory of rock said to have been Queen Kaahumanu’s birthplace.  It was a lush, green view, the forests of hau and hibiscus, the palms tall and straight and gently waving, the Cooke pines steepling the sky.  All was green and more green, from light to dark, down to the blue sea that stretched as far as the eye could see to a distant horizon curving the edge of our world as we turn so slowly.

The path led us through an arbor of shade, along a recently repaired bridge, and over a dry riverbed, too dry, they say here.  In November, the gully was a torrent of water running to the sea, but today there was nothing.

Finally, we turned down toward the cove called Hamoa Bay, following the paved road through a seaside neighborhood, to steep stairs descending to the beach.  Waves crashed on the black sand, and surfers rode the glassy surface, racing the foam to the shallows.  A few folks stretched out on lounge chairs, others unpacked picnics on blankets.  We listened to the roar of the sea meeting the land, caressing it, retreating again, meeting, caressing, retreating…

I watched the water and the land dance to the rhythm of the tides, and recalled the line from the Psalm, “The sea is his and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry land….”  Here in this dramatic, poetic world, one is full of the mystery of creation, the mystery of the greatest dance of all.

This last Sunday, the First Sunday in Lent, we flew along the coast in a Cessna ten-seater, low and hugging the rugged cliffs, the foam crashing against the black rock.  Haleakala, the dormant volcano, rose above the cliffs, its green flanks sloping to the sea.  Beyond Haleakala an unusually blue sky filled the heavens, and now, at 4:30 in the afternoon, shadows began to form as the sun moved down toward the horizon.  The plane droned on, its engines whirring, the occasional bleep signaling information to the pilot.

Kahalui to Kona is about a fifteen-minute flight, and we had the plane to ourselves.  We had checked in by phone from the airline counter, and the pilot had weighed out luggage and loaded it into the hold.  We climbed up the folding steps to the low door, found the row of single seats, each by a window. The seatbelts strapped across the shoulder and the lap, clicking together.  We taxied and slowly lifted, watching the the town and farmlands diminish and heading south over the sea.  I peered out the window, under the wing, to the verdant green, the white-capped sea, and the amazing coastline cliffs zigzagging to Hana.

My fourth novel, Hana-lani, awaits release by the publisher, OakTara, and as my husband and I flew to the rain forest village in southern Maui, nestled along the coast with a sunrise over the sea and a sunset over the volcano, I heard in my mind many familiar lines, seeing the poignant scenes that form the novel: the plane ride of the young woman from San Francisco, the passage from city to rural, a movement that changes her life forever.

We have, like Meredith in Hana-lani, retreated to another world, a simpler world of land and sea, of sky and mountain.  The trade winds seem to own this earth, and we watch the sky for signs of change – clouds moving in, clouds moving away, the sun out, the sun covered, the shades of light coloring the sea and the mountain in infinitesimal shades of greens, grays, blues.  For indeed, all takes part in the sea, the mountain, and the forest in between.  We, as humans in this lush, both wild and gentle, landscape, are part of it but at the same time are observers from outside.  And such a world to observe.

We have settled in to a cottage on a hillside of grass sloping to black cliffs and pounding surf.  Wind and weather surges, rain pounds our roof at night, sun burns through the moist air of day to blister our thin city skins.  We watch and wonder, in a world of mysterious and marvelous color and movement.

We are also traveling through Lent, and have retreated here to a desert of sorts, one away from the hustle of the everyday.  We shall walk and swim.  We shall dine on a verandah on deck chairs.  There is no TV in our room, no newspapers, no easy Internet.  I shall say my Lenten collect, engraft Scripture onto my heart and mind, and pray for guidance in this holy time.  I shall also work on my current novel-in-progress, The Magdalene Melody, as I hear the notes of my novel in waiting, Hana-lani, echoing around me in Hana.

May God guide us in all things, each in our own way, this Lent 2010, as we prepare for the great festival of Easter.

The colors of sea and sky meet the horizon, and volcanic ash, hardened into lava formations, rises in sharp cliffs and spreads in vast fields.  Breezes turn into winds as white caps on high surf pound the gentle shore, thundering, thundering, thundering…

Life merges into death, as the ancient world collapses into ash, and the new world faces middle age, seeing its own aging, its own death, its own new life.

John 1:1-14 – “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God.” Here, all creation celebrates the Creator, the Word moving over the waters.

We swim, careful not to be pulled out to sea by powerful currents.  We walk, careful not to stumble on the sharp rock.  We cover ourselves, wary of the sun burning our skin. We know we are witness to the glories of the created world, and testify as well to the deadly. It is a beautiful world but one oblivious to man, a world bent by Adam, corrupted by Eve, yet redeemed by Christ for those who believe.

Our bodies crumble, age, turn to ash as we begin this Lenten season, watching the children play in the shallows.

And on Ash Wednesday my little book, Offerings, was awarded finalist in the Reader Views Literary Awards.  We wait now for March 12 to find out the placing – 1st, 2nd or Honorable Mention.

I am immersing myself in the Gospels, those first-century accounts of the Son of God’s time on earth, and reading about Mary Magdalene, as I move slowly through the new words of my new manuscript, The Magdalen Melody. ”The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us…”  I pray that His Word will dwell among mine, as I engraft John’s witness on my heart, into my mind.

Ah, St. Valentine’s Day!

This year this lovely festival of the saint and martyr, the celebration of love with roses, cards, and chocolate, coincides with Quinquagesima, the third Sunday of little Lent, the three weeks before Lent.  And the Epistle today was about love.

St. Valentine is a figure shrouded in time, but nevertheless a real person who lived in the third century, martyred under Claudius.  There were two Valentines of legend – a bishop from Terni and a Roman priest, and his conflated story has become intertwined with legends of mating and courtship in the medieval world.  It is said he was imprisoned for helping Christians, in particular blessing their marriages, and for not worshiping the Roman gods. He was martyred for worshiping the God of Love, Christ Jesus.

The Epistle today was the stunning passage in St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, defining love:

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

We are out of town for a few days, staying on the Kohala Coast on the Big Island of Hawaii, on our own retreat of sorts, and weaving our own bonds of faith, hope, and charity (love). Today looms with great joy, in its themes of sacrificial love, the beginning of the season of Lent in which we seek to truly understand what love is all about, to understand, to know the love of God and how it weaves through creation.

St. Valentine, I believe, understood that love, was willing to die for that love.  He experienced the resurrected Christ, the reality of God with him, and among those early followers.  For in the end, I am beginning to understand as well, as I research the first century for my novel-in-progress, that it is the resurrected Christ who is the historical figure, the figure we can say changed the world.  From that point we can understand Scriptures and all that happened before.

Ash Wednesday nears and we prepare for Lent with Valentine’s Day, a Pauline festival to be sure, as we enter the greatest of all mysteries, Love, a love that never fails.

Happy St. Valentine’s Day, and Happy Quinquagesima, and may your Lent be a loving one…