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Today high winds have swept the earth clean, and winter’s luminous light glances off leaves of burnished red and glistening gold.

Another year has passed, I thought, as I gazed at the purple hangings on the altar at St. Peter’s Anglican Church.  We are in Advent, and today is the New Year’s Day of the Church.  The year is swept clean like the earth, and we consider what we have done with the time given to us.  Have we been good stewards?  How can we be better caretakers of the days and hours God has granted us?

Advent is a penitential season, a time to consider these things – death, judgment, Heaven, Hell.  We look into our hearts and sweep them clean too, as best we can.  We take an accounting.

For Advent is a time of preparation, a time of getting ready for His coming, the advent of His birth, the fantastic and nearly unbelievable intersection of the immortal and the mortal, the infinite and the finite, when God became man, became incarnate, in the flesh, one of us in our world of matter. Emmanuel, God with us.  Christmas.

We wait upon the Lord.  An impatient people, greedy, seeking to devour our gift of time, we find it hard to wait upon the Lord, indeed, to wait for anything.  Technology speeds our days and our vision, multiplying the choices, so that surely we shall go mad with such an array of possibility, a panoply of things we cannot possibly have or do, or consume.  Frenzy.

We stand back and pause for a moment, breathe in, and slow down.

We go to church.  We focus.

We look to Bethlehem, to the simple manger.  To Mary who said yes to God.  To Joseph who patiently cared, waiting.  To the shepherds who obeyed the call of the angels in the dead of night.  To the Wise Men, those travelers who followed, wondering, waiting.

And as we wait for His coming, we know we wait with the Church throughout time – time past, present, to come.  We wait with the Communion of Saints, all those who have waited and watched, and those who will wait and watch tomorrow.  We wait now through December for the great festival of Christmas.  As we clean out our hearts, we prepare too for the Second Coming when Christ will return in glory to judge the living and the dead.  In Advent we recall we must wait and watch for that Coming as well.

This morning I looked up the red-carpeted aisle to the violet tented tabernacle.  I knew that soon I would partake of Christ’s coming today, His coming to me, as I received His body and blood, as His Real Presence became part of me.  There was no frenzy here in this sanctuary, only sanity, only truth, only love.  My heart and mind would be healed of the world’s craziness for another week.

I will make my Advent wreath this afternoon, arrange the greens in a circle, light my first purple candle, say my prayers.  I will move into the season slowly, focusing on Bethlehem, and looking forward to the next Mass, the next Advent of Our Lord right here in Oakland.  I will prepare for Christmas.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass and Church School, 10 a.m.; http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

The day is cold and wintry, the skies heavy with dark cloud, the moisture in the air hinting of rain.  We bundled up and headed for Saint Peter’s Oakland this morning, to once again be part of the great Eucharistic sacrifice offered.  Coming in from the cold, the smiling faces of the friendly folk in the narthex greeted us warmly, and we entered the great sanctuary, the ark in which we travel through time on this earth, the Church.

We call today “Stir up” Sunday because of the opening prayer, the Collect, prayed today, this Sunday Next before Advent:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people…”

And we do indeed need some stirring up, for I often think we sleep through much of our lives.

The words are a warning, before we begin the season of Advent, the preparation for the great coming of God-made-man, Emanuel, in the manger outside Bethlehem.  Be ready! the prophet cries.  Christ is coming.

The Incarnation, the coming of God to earth, that we celebrate at Christmas is, of course, not the Second Coming, but an advent that prepares us for that Judgment Day, redeems us to face that accounting, gives us an Advocate, Christ himself, to defend us in the bright light of perfection.  Christmas reminds us time is passing.  Christmas reminds us time means something, counts.

Stir up the wills of thy faithful people…!  In-spire us, breath into us thy life. I gazed upon the tabernacle holding the Real Presence of Christ.  I sang with the congregation our hymns of supplication, thanksgiving, praise.  And I knew that Christ would stir us up, in his own time, each of us and all of us together, for we are his Body.  We await to see what he will do among us this Advent, as we await his coming, our hearts and souls open wide to his will, to his love.

Receiving the Eucharist, I was fed, inspired, breathed into.  With his grace, my will will be awakened to his.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com

I love church bazaars!  Shopping with the added benefit of giving to outreach programs and seeing old friends.

St. Peter’s Oakland had their Harvest Festival yesterday.  The church hall was laid out with tables covered in red cloths forming a long rectangle, and the sellers stood inside the space while the shoppers cruised around the outside.  We all paid as we left, having filled our baskets with goodies.  I liked the system, not having to pay individual vendors.

This bazaar was a real bargain for those who enjoy country crafts, but aren’t too crafty themselves (me).  I fell in love right away with the aprons and their handy pockets, the baked potato gloves to use in the microwave (do they really work?), the homemade jams.  Ah, yes, then there were the packets of “Outrageous Brownies,” incredible indeed, packed with chocolate chips and walnuts.  Oh my.  Then I found the wreathes.  The ladies of the church had made wonderful holiday wreathes from wine corks and I added one to my home collection as well as a most unique wreathe (”We’re trying this out for the first time.”) made from – you won’t believe this – men’s ties.  Into the basket immediately.

Next headed for the sale table and picked up Christmas ornaments – two quilted conical trees (Styrofoam peaked out beneath), two wine-cork hot pads.  One more round about the rectangle and saw wisteria ornaments made from the twisted pods which have a natural velvet when they dry (who’d guess?) and turn a sage green.  There were also lovely beaded organza bookmarks that jumped into my basket.

Feeling lightheaded from such exertion, I headed for the tea-and-sandwich counter and for $3.50 was handed a plate of sandwiches and cup of tea, but somehow I got there too late for the soup on offer as well.  Those who got there in time said it was amazing – next year I shall keep track of the time, or maybe they will make more.

Then I got to chat with friends, catch up on grandchildren, and listen for the raffle numbers being called every hour.  No luck there.

At 3:30 the grand prizes were drawn.  We all gathered around our hostess.  I won!  A lovely baby basket beautifully lined, containing a hand-knit receiving blanket, a picture frame, and a large pink and white quilt.  I’m still debating who’s going to be the recipient of these treasures… there are many possibilities.

Those were just the goodies I left with.  Many other items I painfully resisted – soup mixes, breads, kitchen handcrafts, and more… but I’m pleased that my home this Christmas will have a few additions, for very little expenditure, and for a good cause.

Oh, and did I mention I had a table too?  Yep, selling my trilogy of novels,Pilgrimage, Offerings, and Inheritance (with proceeds to the church’s outreach programs), signing as I sold, and thanking God for the fellowship of friendly church folk on a crisp sunny Saturday.

We visited St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Oakland today.

Today is a sunny Sunday, here in the Bay Area, but this time of year the night slowly absorbs the day.  We rise in the dark and dine in the dark as winter moves in, robbing the light.  The air carries a crisp chill and the trees turn russet in the valley below our house.  The brown hills of summer are greening and all is golds and reds under a dome of blue.

As Anglo-Catholics, we follow the Church Year, the celebrations of our belief through the seasons. We are between All Saints and Thanksgiving, pausing before Advent and the Feast of the Incarnation, Christmas.  We are finishing up the long season of Trinitytide, a time of learning and growth, a liturgical green season linking Easter and Christmas.

And the Scripture lessons in church today reflected this pause; the hymns were sober, quiet hymns, feeding the mood.  We rest in our journey through time, through the mystery of the year given to us, and listen to the Epistle where Saint Paul writes to his friends in Philippi:

“And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent.” (Philippians 1:9-10, Book of Common Prayer, 220-1)

We listen to the Gospel lesson which tells of Christ’s command to Peter to forgive “seventy times seven,” in other words, to forgive forever.

As our good Father Pomroy preached on these words, I thought how closely these things were linked: love, knowledge, judgment, excellence, and forgiveness.  That to love as we should we must learn to discern the good from the bad, to strive for excellence.  When we fail, we forgive one another, but we always strive to become what God wants us to become, that his will be done.

Such a desire – to know what to approve and what not to approve.  To judge correctly in today’s complicated world.

So I go to Mass with its own excellence, its beauty expressed through two thousand years of liturgy.  I absorb the words of our priest as he leans towards us earnestly from the pulpit.  I say my prayers.  I partake of Christ in the Eucharist.  Day by day, through quiet hours and busy weeks, I pray that I see what is excellent and what is not.  I pray that I have enough love to forgive so that I too may be forgiven.  God, in time, will layer his grace upon my soul through his presence here on earth in Church, Scripture, and Sacrament.  One day, all will be excellent.

Today we celebrated the Feast of All Saints, thanking God for those who said “yes” to his love – in the past, present, and future, the Communion of Saints, the sanctos, those set apart, those chosen, Christ’s own.  The thurifer stepped soberly down the red-carpeted aisle, swinging his thurible full of incense, the clouds rising over our heads sweetly.  He prepared the way for the torchbearers with their flaming candles and the crucifer with raised crucifix.  Finally, lastly, came the celebrant, our good Father Pomroy, his white and gold chasuble flowing royally.

We sang “For all the saints…” and later “I sing a song to the saints of God . . .” and finally “Ye holy angels bright . . .”, all happy and glorious, a great celebration.  The first was a hymn I sang in my high school chorus back in the days when it was permitted to sing Christian songs in a public school.  It is a thunderous song, a marching song, a great hymn to victory.

The second hymn tugged at my memory with color and poignancy, for “I sing a song of the saints of God, faithful and brave and true …” was a song we taught to the children in Sunday School, with hand movements and twirling, a true dance-of-a song, but today at least, although it was difficult, I kept my feet planted firmly on the floor.

The third hymn soars with lyrics that wing high, looping around bright stars, riding on angels wings, with the last two verses settling  nicely on the theme of All Saints, saying it all:

Ye saints, who toil below,
Adore your heav’nly King
And onward as ye go
Some joyful anthem sing;
Take what he gives
And praise him still,
Through good or ill,
Who ever lives!

And then, refocusing on my own tiny heart:

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

(No. 600, Richard Baxter, 1672, and John Hampden Gurney, 1838)

I like the idea of a “well-tuned” heart.   Tuned by coming to Mass and singing praises with my fellow believers, “saints in training.”  Tuned by the words of the Gospel, Epistle, prayers, sermon, indeed the liturgy itself.  Tuned by the reception of Christ in the Eucharist.  Well-tuned, we left St. Peter’s, the anthems filling our ears for hours to come, prepared for the week ahead, for each day given to us.

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com/

Yes, indeed, today is the Feast of Christ the King.  Christ our King.  Christ the King of all of us.

And this week the offer of the Bishop of Rome to traditional Anglicans.  On Tuesday Cardinal Levada stated there would be a forthcoming “Apostolic Constitution” which will outline provisions for an Anglican Ordinariate, with an Anglican leading it, to be part of the Roman Catholic Church.  The Catechism and Papal Primacy would need to be accepted.  Clergy would be re-ordained, implying invalid orders which also implies past invalid sacraments for the laity.

Christians would like to be “one body” with “one King” and while the terms of this offer seem to me difficult, I am pleased with the effort made by Rome, in particular Pope Benedict, who, I understand, went around his liberal Cardinals to respond directly to requests made by groups in the worldwide Anglican Communion.

As I listened to the debate of the Forward-in-Faith bishops via podcast (still online) this weekend, I sensed the historicity of this moment.  We await the “Constitution” to fully understand the ramifications of Pope Benedict’s offer to heal Christ’s Body.

And we pray to Christ, our King.

The churches in Europe are so filled with art, not just visual (sculpture, painting, mosaic, architecture) but aural (chanting, liturgical settings, organ) as well as the art of worship itself – the design of the Mass, the shape of the liturgy, as Dom Gregory Dix titled his great work on the Eucharist.  After three weeks, I am filled, full, fulfilled, satisfied, after visiting cathedrals and parish chapels in Venice, Florence, and Paris.  Along the way I was able to leave a few copies of my novels as gifts to those who inspired me in their creation, also a kind of art in the form of thanksgivings – Offerings in France and Pilgrimage in Italy – and thankful too for my newly released  novel, Inheritance, completing the Trilogy of Western Europe.

Now, our first Sunday home and we are celebrating St. Luke, the artistic evangelist.  His Gospel provides the more poetic scenes and stories, visually rich (the nativity narrative is his).  He is also thought to have painted a number of images of Mary. Bologna claims one which is housed in a shrine on a hillside out of town and each May on the Feast of the Ascension the people process into town carrying the icon to St. Peter’s Cathedral, where healings have occurred before the image.  Mary Maggiore in Rome claims one as well; the Madonna and Child is a haunting, rustic image high over the altar in the north transept.   The Black Madonna of Czestochowa in Poland is also thought to have been painted by Luke, on ebony, darkening it.  The first two images I have included in my novel Pilgrimage; the third I would like to learn more about one day.

In St. Peter’s, Oakland our good priest, Father Pomroy, spoke about Luke, his life as traveling companion to St. Paul, his erudition, his being a doctor of both body and soul, as physicians were in those days.  His Gospel, indeed, portrays Christ as a doctor of body and soul, emphasizing the healing miracles.  Today, the detail that particularly touched me was the fact that it is likely Luke was the only one left with Paul as he awaited martyrdom in Rome.  The others had left for various reasons, but Luke stayed.

We too must stay the course, our good Father Pomroy said.  We must speak the truth about our world, about the nature of man, about the love of God, about redemption.

I thought about Luke and his many talents offered to God.  That’s really all we need to do.  Just offer ourselves and let God do the rest.  Such a pilgrimage, such offerings, such an inheritance.  Such joy!

St. Peter’s Church, 6113 Lawton, Oakland, CA; Sunday Mass, 10 a.m.;http://www.saintpetersoakland.com

We visited St. Gervais for their 12:30 prayer office, taking seats on the stools that line the long Gothic nave, and looking up to the soaring vaults of stone, the glittering stain glass high above the altar.  The robed nuns and monks entered silently and knelt in the chancel.  Soon they were singing in three parts; the lessons were read; a short homily preached about Saint Denis (was it his feast day?); a nun played an ethereal melody on a flute.

Located on the Right Bank across the Seine from Notre-Dame, the 6th-century church on this site was dedicated to the 1st-century Roman martyrs Gervais and Protais, whose relics were brought to Paris by St. Germaine.  Today’s recently restored church dates to the 17th century.  Located behind the Hotel de Ville (the Town Hall), public trials were held in the square fronting the church in the Middle Ages.

The church is home to the Brothers and Sisters of Jerusalem, a monastic order serving the community, founded in 1975 by Fr. Pierre-Marie Delfieux and Cardinal Francois Marty.  The order seeks to bring the contemplative spirituality of the desert into the heart of the city, particularly for the working populace.  Monks and nuns hold part-time jobs and rent their housing.  They offer daily Mass and sing the morning, noon, and evening offices, chanting through Flamboyant Gothic vaults beneath vivid stained glass.  They follow rules of love, prayer, work, hospitality, and silence as well the traditional ones – chastity, obedience, and poverty.  Lay orders defined by interests, ages, and professions, form the Family of Jerusalem.  The order has communities at Vézeley, Blois, Strasbourg, and Magdala as well.

In the central apsidal chapel behind the high altar the Sacrament is reserved, exposed in a monstrance for adoration 30 minutes before services.

As the noon office ended I followed the nuns to the side aisle and gave them a copy of my little book, Offerings, which has a scene in the church; my thanksgiving, I said.

I left thankful for the grace to return to the soaring white stone of St. Gervais, to join this dedicated community in their praises of God.

Sts-Gervais-et-Protais, The Monastic Communities of Jerusalem
13, rue des Barres, Paris
Open daily; Tuesday – Saturday: Morning Prayer 7 a.m. (Saturday 8 a.m.); Midday Prayer 12:30; Evening Prayer and Mass 6 p.m.; Sunday: Office of the Resurrection 8 a.m., Mass 11 a.m..
All services preceded by 30 minutes of silent prayer and adoration.  No public liturgies are offered on Mondays, but the church is open.

Sources Vives de Jérusalem (bookstore behind the church, northeast exit)
10 rue des Barres
Tuesday-Friday 9:30 a.m. -12, 2-8 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. – 12, 2-8 p.m.; Sunday 10 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.; after Mass to 1 p.m.

We visited St. Germain l’Auxerrois this morning for Sunday Mass, entering the Gothic nave lined with white stone columns and sitting in the caned chairs.

Germain (c.380-448), Bishop of Auxerre in Burgundy, traveled to Britain to preach against the Pelagian heresy.  On his way he stopped in Nanterre where he blessed the young Genevieve, encouraging her vocation.  She would become Paris’s Patron Saint.  He also stopped in Paris, preaching and baptizing.  In 560 an oratory was erected, commemorating his rest stop, and a century later, a baptistery was built.  When not filled with water, catechumens sat in the giant basin to hear instruction, and the first Paris school was founded.

The present church (the fourth) is a jewel box of Gothic and Renaissance styles.  Across the street from the Louvre Palace, the church has witnessed royal baptisms, marriages, and burials from the 14th to the 18th centuries and has opened its doors to the many artisans who built and rebuilt the palace.  Today the parish prays especially for artists.

The thirty-six bells in the tower, while being the grandest in Paris, have the unhappy history of having signaled the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of the Huguenots.   Even so, festive occasions have been celebrated by these bells.

I knelt and prayed my thanksgivings for this church with its long history of witness and fervor, pride and intrigue, celebration and mourning.  It seemed to encapsulate humanity in all of its frailties and all of its strengths.  I looked about the immense stone sanctuary, so full of light on this dim day, and waited for the beginning of the great offering of the Mass.

Soon the procession approached, stepping up the aisle at a quick pace, two torchbearers (couldn’t have been older than eight) holding thick candles in heavy candlesticks that must have come from the High Altar, the young crucifer carrying his bronze crucifix, the celebrant in his green chasuble.  They took their places near the modern altar covered in white linen, set up in the transept before the choir.

A dapper middle-aged man in a jacket and tie approached the lectern on the Gospel side, to the left of the altar, and began to conduct the small choir sitting in the front rows.  He waved his hands enthusiastically, punctuating the musical phrases, opening his palms to God with the Alleluias.   He would appear before the lectern from time to time as the Mass progressed for the sung responses and prayers – the Gloria, the Lord’s Prayer, the Kyrie Eleison.

The Mass danced through the liturgy, so familiar in spite of the French – the lessons, the offering, the sermon, the Canon of the Mass in which the bread and wine would be transformed to Body and Blood in the Consecration.  Then the little torchbearers, their gigantic candlesticks flaming, led the small procession down the aisle to the wide open doors.

We joined in where we could, basking in the fellowship of Christ’s body of believers, these moments of worship linked by Grace.  We looked up to the melodious pipes in the western wall, then to the opposite eastern apse where the red candle glimmered on the High Altar, on and up to the white columns of stone leading to the jeweled stained glass, all soaring to the heavens in vaulted splendor.

We rose, and after visiting the stunning 13th-century Lady Chapel off the south aisle, we stepped outside to the bright porch with the medieval carvings of saints around and above us and into the quiet bustle of Sunday in Paris.

St-Germain l’Auxerrois
2, Place du Louvre, Paris
Open daily; Weekday Masses: 8:20 a.m., 10:30 a.m., 12:10 p.m., 1:00 p.m., 6:30 p.m. Sunday Masses: 8:30 a.m., 9:45 a.m. (Organ), 11:30 (Organ), 5:45 p.m., 9:15 p.m.; Weekday Divine Office (chants with choir): 8 a.m.; Laudes,12:35 p.m., Mid-day Office,7:10 p.m.; Sunday Vespers: 4 p.m. with the St. Germain Quartet; Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament: weekdays noon-2 p.m.

On the Left Bank, nestled behind shade trees, set back from the busy Quai de Montebello near the Petit Pont crossing the Seine in front of Notre-Dame, is the venerable English book store, Shakespeare and Company.

The first store named Shakespeare and Company was begun by Sylvia Beach in 1901 and served as a center for writers and artists for many years, finally closing in 1941 with the invasion of the Axis powers.  In 1951 a new store was opened by George Whitman in a nearby location, and, with Ms. Beach’s permission, he named it Shakespeare and Company.  In honor of the first owner of that name, he christened his daughter Sylvia Beach.  Today Sylvia Beach Whitman runs the popular enterprise and hosts writers workshops and readings.  She has retained the tradition of resident writers who work in the store.

After visiting St. Severin around the corner (Gothic, double ambulatory, venue for musical events in this university area), we stopped in at Shakespeare and Company.  The lovely young woman, Jemma, who organizes the readings and events, was pleased to include my novelOfferings, partially set in Paris, in the store’s inventory, so Offerings is now available at Shakespeare and Company in Paris!  I hope to send her copies of Pilgrimage and Inheritance as well.

We crossed the Seine, and headed toward St. Germain where the Daughers of Jerusalem would soon be singing the noon office.

Shakespeare & Company,37 rue de la Bûcherie,75005 Paris
Open daily 10am – 11pm, except Sunday, 11am – 11pm.
http://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/