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Birthday Blessings

Posted on July 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

birthday candlesI celebrated my sixty-ninth birthday yesterday, and so I was particularly happy that today I found myself singing with the children in Sunday School, “I sing a song of the saints of God…”

We all love birthdays, ours or others, for they are celebrations of life. Birthdays are markers in time, signposts on our journey from birth to death. Birthdays proclaim birth-years, a twelve month unit man has created to organize his life on earth. When we are young birthdays mean cake and presents. In this way we are taught to celebrate them. As we age, birthdays say, hooray, I’m alive, I made it another year. Birthdays are one way man faces the reality of his existence, life’s transitory span, the fact that our bodies will, no matter what we do, one day turn to dust.

We are creatures bound in time, yet we yearn for eternity. And so we ignore, even deny, that our time is limited with a beginning and an end. We live as though we will live forever, and this denial of our mortality is not only a protection against facing our death, but evidence that eternity lives within us, our very Creator.

There was a time in Western Christendom when days were not divided into hours, and hours not divided into minutes. There were no clocks ticking, no watches with hands counting seconds. Days were observed by sunrise and sunset, and by the ringing of church bells at matins and vespers. In earlier times sundials prefigured clocks, the pointer casting a shadow, and the shadow revealing the movement of the day’s time by the movement of the sun. The longer the shadow, the lower the sun and the coming of darkness, its drawing near, nightfall and nighttime and all that that meant. Night falls, drops upon us with the setting of the sun, blanketing the earth in the sun’s giant and forbidding shadow.

We light the dark with fiery candles, so we can see. Just so eternity intersected time with the coming of Christ, a light in the darkness, gifting temporal creatures with God’s glorious present, Christ, who fills past and present and future with eternal presence, turning we mortals into immortals. But in our journey in this life we are still bound by time.

There are times when I forget time, when I am outside of time in a blessed way. They are moments of devotion, concentration, living outside myself, absorbed by others. Stories, songs, and children pull me out of time, pull me out of being aware of the minutes slip-sliding away, disappearing. Love does this too, with the touch of friendship, the eyes of the beloved. The mysterious bond of marriage that, with grace, time strengthens, is a bond forged in mutual selflessness and sacrifice birthed by vows blessed by God. The love of mothers and fathers for their children opens a door to the eternal. The mystery of love, moving away from self toward the other, pulls us to the shores of eternity so that we can dip our toes in its waters. These mysteries tell us eternity is now.

On the annual remembrance of the day of birth we light birthday candles. We sing to the honoree. We give gifts to bind us together with love. The ritual teaches our children that life is good, to be celebrated, that life shines light upon the world, and that we are thankful for life, every year, day, minute, second. We show our thanks by our love. We sing joyously, triumphantly, carrying a blazing cake into a darkened room. The birthday honoree makes a wish and blows out the candles. In the light we wish for our heart’s desire, and the wishing itself (and all those fairy tales about wishes) reflects our yearning for eternity, our longing for the flames on the cake to never go out. The child blows and the light is gone. We sigh, seeing our future.

The colored wax drips, drowned by the frosting. The cake is cut, and we break bread together. We take part in our common humanity in this celebration of another year of life.

Last night, I dipped my fork into the chocolate brownie cake, with its gooey frosting and melting ice cream alongside. I tasted the dark richness and briefly wondered whether chocolate itself might be a bit of eternity. Thinking back, I’m sure it is.

We are given so many tastes of eternity in life: through our senses, through scripture, sacrament, and song, through the glory of the earth, through our life with one another.

But we are also given tastes of no-eternity, darkness, that other state of being, often called Hell. The two streams, the river of Heaven and the river of Hell, flow through our own time in this world. One stream is love and the other unlove; one selfless, the other self-ish; one sacrifice, the other indulgence; one freedom, the other slavery; one life, the other death. We can choose which stream to follow.

My old bishop loved the hymn, “Shall we gather at the river”:

“Shall we gather at the river/Where bright angel feet have trod,/With its crystal tide forever/Flowing by the throne of God?”

And the refrain:

“Yes, we’ll gather at the river,/The beautiful, the beautiful river;/Gather with the saints at the river/That flows by the throne of God.”

And so my sixty-nine birthdays have flowed like a river through my time on this earth, and I now sail into my seventieth year. There will be swirling currents, still-waters, waterfalls, undertows, risings and floods. But through the Church, and with the grace of God, the stream will lead to the river that flows by his throne. I shall then celebrate a rebirth-day in a timeless time, marked by the singing of saints and angels.

The children this morning sang with gusto, twirling and pointing and folding their hands, showing and telling about the saints of God. It was a perfect birthday gift, a grace-filled birthday blessing and I grinned as we sang the last verse:

“They lived not only in ages past,/There are hundreds of thousands still./The world is bright with the joyous saints/Who love to do Jesus’ will./You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,/In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;/For the saints of God are just folk like me,/And I mean to be one too.”

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The Human Search for Meaning

Posted on October 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

IMG_0044One of the many reasons I like going to church each Sunday is that I am reminded regularly of what it means to be fully human and to live life to the fullest, within a human community, a society.

For I do not live alone. What I do affects others. What others do affects me. With the creed of self, of rampant individualism birthed in the sixties and nurtured by the sexual revolution, one needs reminding regularly what it means to be human, that we are a human community.

And the community is not only a horizontal one in present time, but one which extends back in time and forward in the future. What I do today affects future generations. What my ancestors did, my parents, my grandparents did, has affected me.

So in church I come face to face with the fact that not only do I bear some degree of responsibility for others, that it’s “not all about me,” but that my life has real meaning.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in the Wall Street Journal writes of the vital role of religion in society:

“No society has survived for long without either a religion or a substitute for religion… Homo sapiens is the meaning-seeking animal. If there is one thing the great institutions of the modern world do not do, it is to provide meaning. Science tells us how but not why. Technology gives us power but cannot guide us as to how to use that power. The market gives us choices but leaves us uninstructed as to how to make those choices. The liberal democratic state gives us freedom to live as we choose but refuses, on principle, to guide us as to how to choose… the twenty-first century has left us with a maximum of choice and a minimum of meaning.”

We are creatures who  seek meaning. We are recognizing today that generations have been raised in a largely secular society that has sought to strip serious meaning from the public square, substituting causes, grievances and movements that gather around likes or dislikes. These politically correct “isms” do not tell me who I am, why I am here, how I should live, where I have been and where I am going. There may be meaning on some level in decrying global warming or GMO’s or political candidates but not meaningful enough to ward off depression and it’s offspring, despair.

And there is plenty of depression and despair that has filled the void. Pharmaceuticals and other feel-good drugs have followed suit, re-enforcing the divine monarchy of self and isolating us more and more from one another. The vicious spiral continues downward into darkness.

And so I go to Church where I am told that, as a matter of fact, it is not all about me. Mary Wakefield writes in The British Spectator, “In my twenties… full of self-pity…. I dropped in to see a priest… and poured out my woes. (He) listened quietly, then said: ‘The point of being a Christian is not to feel better, it is so God can use you to serve others.’ Others? It wasn’t all about me! I actually laughed with the relief of it.”

Yes, the relief. And we end up feeling better by serving others. Instead of contemplating my own needs, worship and service pulls me out of myself, towards God and my fellows, and life becomes deeply and beautifully meaningful. Depression and despair will ever be nearby, waiting to fill the void, so I make sure there is no void to fill. I make sure I am full to the brim with meaning, with God, by going to church regularly.

Our preacher today spoke of his heartrending experience as a social counselor to prisoners being released in California. He has come to see that their broken lives do not exist in a vacuum, but were influenced by earlier generations – their parents, grandparents, even great-grandparents. And so the “sins of the father” were indeed visited upon the children. He works to stop the cycle.

Our preacher said how science has given us proof of that legacy in the way drug use is biologically passed on to offspring, so that newborns must undergo a detoxing, shattering the air with their screams.

We are not alone in our actions. No man is an island, as the priest-poet John Donne said.  We are affected by those who have gone before us and we will in turn affect those who come after. We affect one another today.

Douglas Murray writes of the slippery slope of euthanasia, assisted suicide, a topic debated in Britain, passed into law in Holland and Oregon, and recently signed into law by the governor of  California. Mr. Murray traces the acceptance of this shift in our culture to the baby-boomer generation desiring the “full panoply of rights”:

“The right to education and welfare were followed by sexual liberation, which… came with the idea of having total rights over one’s own body, including the right to abort unwanted fetuses… the baby-boomers (are) awarding themselves one last right – the ‘right to die.’ “

The ownership of one’s body is a powerful idea. The fallacy lies in the fact that we are communal beings, with responsibilities to one another today and to the future. In terms of abortion, the fallacy also lies in the right to own another human being by virtue of that person residing within one’s body.

We fought slavery and won, but society will always know the anguish that we allowed it to happen at all. So too, as we kill our children because we own our bodies and claim ownership of the life growing within, we will grieve far into the future. We shall wake up and see the greatest genocide of all, generations of Americans lost, our own children, our own grandchildren, and now our own great-grandchildren, all fellow human beings on this good earth. We know already the grief of Rachel weeping for her children that were no more, the slaughter of the innocents. We are linked together in our humanity.

It has been observed that where euthanasia has become legal, palliative care has lessened. Those in favor of assisted suicide using the euphemism “death with dignity,” point out that I don’t have to choose death by injection. But others choosing assisted suicide may mean that my end-of-life care, my palliative care, will diminish in quality, availability, and affordability. A slippery slope. We are linked together.

There are ways to care for one another that reflect our Creator’s love for us. When we choose death instead of life, at either end of our numbered days, we withdraw from our common bonds, our humanity. Christianity and Judaism has taught for centuries to choose life over death. Doctors have sworn an oath to do so; what do they swear to uphold today? Can I trust my doctor?

I recently watched a good friend meet a good death. I pray, when my time comes, that I die as well as he did. He knew who he was, why he was here, and where he was going. He knew he was passing through a gateway into eternal life, eternal love, eternal joy. Shedding the corrupted body is not easy, but we have many means to palliate and soften the journey.

When I go to church I am reminded of these things, these “higher” things, the difference between truly living life to the fullest, as our Creator intends for each one of us to do (he should know) and slowly dying by degree, inch by inch, slipping into myself, into depression, despair, and eternal death, even while living.

And when I come home from church I come home full of meaning, full of God, nourished and ready to brave the six days until the next Sunday.

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Easter Flowers

Posted on April 12, 2015 | 2 comments

IMG_0485 (2).3The glories of Easter and Eastertide lift me into familiar joy, one that I expect each year. And yet this joy surprises me with its nuances, colors, and music: the lilies on the altar, the flaming candles, the removal of the purple coverings, the triumphant hymns and processions.

Easter often signals the arrival of spring, and the natural world reflects the supernatural with sunshine. This Easter in the Bay Area a long desired rain descended from the heavens, splattering our dry California soil. It was a too-short rain that came and went quickly, but it peaked Easter morning. Still we were dry inside the ark of the church.

After the Scripture lessons and Creed, and before the sermon, the children flowered the thick white Easter Cross placed at the foot of the altar steps. They shoved bright blossoms into the deep holes, and watched the wood of the cross come alive. Just so, I thought, Mary Magdalene came to the empty tomb and found the living Lord walking in the garden.

The Gospel appointed for Easter Day, the highest holiest day of the Christian Year, details Mary Magdalene’s visit to the empty tomb in a manner found in histories, not myths or legends. These specific details had been passed from one generation to another orally in the early Church, and were recorded decades after the event. So it is not surprising that the accounts vary a bit, but in the essence they are the same: Jesus, their Lord, had risen from the dead.  

The accounts agree on another key fact, that the women, not the men, made the discovery. Had these resurrection stories been invented, those who found the empty tomb would have been men not women. And yet, remarkably, the apostles did not find the tomb first; they didn’t even believe the women when they ran back to their hiding place and told them. It is Mary Magdalene who makes the discovery, and at first she doesn’t understand what has happened either, thinking the body has been stolen, a detail that could not have been invented. 

In John’s account, Peter and John return with her to the tomb and see the linen cloths lying to the side. John understands: he remembers the scripture foretelling his rising from the dead. Peter does not understand and they return home, leaving Mary Magdalene to encounter the “gardener.” 

Picture 089Unique to John’s account is this moving conversation between Jesus and Mary Magdalene: 

But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, and looked into the sepulchre, and seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

         And they say unto her, “Woman, why weepest thou?”

She saith unto them, “Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.” And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

         Jesus saith unto her, “Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou?”

She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, “Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.”

Jesus saith unto her, “Mary.”

She turned herself, and saith unto him, “Rabboni.” (Master)

Jesus saith unto her, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God.”

Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and that he had spoken these things unto her.        (John 11-18, KJV)

The risen Christ makes numerous appearances on earth before his ascension to Heaven, but even with these accounts, many today do not believe in the resurrection of the Son of God. Some of us need help, it seems. I was one of those. 

I was converted by reason, arguments I read when I was twenty, made by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. I made that first step of faith (I didn’t feel I was leaping) and found an Anglican church (Lewis was Anglican) to find out more. Experiencing my first Anglican liturgy in the spring of 1967, I was entranced, overwhelmed by beauty. I began the dance of a lifetime, weaving Heaven into my earthy world. 

I am still dancing, learning new movements and new steps, and enjoying the many other dancers in the Body of Christ, the Church, who dance with me and alongside me, helping and teaching me. 

And so, each Easter as the dead wood of the white cross comes alive with reds and blues, greens and yellows, pinks and purples, flowered by the children of our parish, I am thankful. I am thankful for Mary Magdalene and her faith and her witness to the glorious Resurrection of Christ; I am thankful that I could tell her story in my novel, The Magdalene Mystery, and in the telling understand how truly historical those resurrection accounts really are, deepening the belief I found forty-seven years ago, strengthening Lewis’s reasonable reasoning.

But most of all I am thankful for the Son of God among us, having risen on Easter morning, having walked the earth to appear to many, and with us today in the Eucharistic gifts of bread and wine. I rejoice in God’s great love: to be born among us, to live, die, and rise again, to take us with him into eternity in this world and the next.

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Waving Our Palms

Posted on March 29, 2015 | 1 comment

palmsundayWe sat in the front pew, the children and the teachers, waiting and watching. The purple-draped altar, the purple-draped candlesticks, the purple-draped medieval crucifix all stood solid and royal and richly beautiful.

We have been waiting throughout Lent, waiting for this momentous week, considering our hearts and our lives and our habits of love or un-love. Yet Palm Sunday is the day we end our waiting and begin our acting. As Christ entered the gates of Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, so we enter Jerusalem too, as we take part in the stupendous drama of the Son of God’s last week before his crucifixion, the week that Christians, all over the world, call Holy Week. 

Holy Week marks the days leading to Easter. The last three days, the Tridium, begin with Maundy (commandment) Thursday when we remember the Last Supper and Christ’s commandment to “love one another” as he gave himself to us in the Holy Eucharist. That same evening we strip the altar and turn out the lights, reflecting Christ’s arrest and abandonment in the Garden of Gethsemane. We even create a garden of flaming candles to honor the reserved Sacrament that has been removed, and some of us will “keep the watch” all Thursday night, undoing that desertion in Gethsemane.

On Good Friday, remembering God’s good death that saves us from ourselves, we watch as eternity intersects time and the earth quakes. The Son of God is crucified; the tree of Eden becomes the tree of Calvary, reversing Eden.

Some of us keep the Holy Saturday vigil, entering a darkened church and lighting it with flaming candles as the new day of Easter approaches. Some of us, like Mary Magdalene, will rise on Easter morning to find the tomb empty and to celebrate the risen Christ – and our own resurrections – with colorful flowers on a white cross and lots of happy singing.

But today, Palm Sunday, we waited and we watched in our pew, for soon, soon, we knew we would be given our blessed palms. As the Gospel was read, describing what we were soon going to act out, I entered into the liturgy, this moment of meaning created by time and tradition and creedal belief over two thousand years. I entered the story and walked alongside that colt carrying Our Lord through the gates of Jerusalem. 

So this morning, the children and the teachers stepped to the altar rail and received their palms, then stepped back to their pew. Soon all those in the rows behind us received theirs too. “We’ll follow the cross,” I whispered to the children, and we waited for the clergy and acolytes to step into the nave and begin the procession. The choir sang joyfully the resonant hymn, “All Glory Laud and Honor…” and we followed the cross, leading the congregation, waving our palms and singing too. 

Ritual is an art-form, and art is mankind’s way of expressing the great truths of his existence. Liturgy uses many art-forms: poetry and prose, music and drama, songs and prayers, symbols and settings richly textured with meaning. Ritual is a deeply satisfying way to express who we are, why we are here, where we have been and where we are going. It expresses what God, in his immense love for his creation, has done for us, and continues to do for us. 

The dramas of Holy Week and Easter are part of the greater drama of the entire Church Year found in Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Orthodox traditions, and to a lesser degree in other Christian bodies. But Easter is the culmination of that year. Since Advent and our waiting for Christmas, we have been preparing for Easter’s Resurrection. Christmas means nothing without Easter, for it is the Resurrection that marks Christ as the Son of God. It is Easter that makes us sit up and take notice and ask, “If he did rise from the dead, then who did he claim to be, and what did he command? What does he command today? Who exactly is he? Does he really love us that much to die for us?” 

As someone once said, Christianity is all about the Resurrection. If you believe in the resurrection of Christ from the dead – and there is ample historical evidence to support such belief – then the rest follows easily. And the rest is, oh my, a glorious journey, full of color, meaning, certainty, and the love of God singing to you at night. 

But I am ahead of the story and the week opening before us – we are still at the gates of Jerusalem. The children and the teachers followed the cross around the church, and the congregation followed us. Today being a fine sunny morning, we followed the cross outside into the neighborhood and around the front and back to the narthex doors. Our priest pounded on these gates: Jerusalem, oh Jerusalem! The doors opened and we entered the heart of the ark of the church, stepping up the red carpet toward our front pew. 

And so now we step into Holy Week, prayerfully, awe-fully, watching, waiting, and acting out this grand drama of the love of God, as once again, eternity intersects time.

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Family Deficit

Posted on February 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

marriage and family

The future of humanity passes through marriage and the family. So proclaimed Pope John Paul II. When traditional marriage and family is threatened, damaged, and destroyed, so is humanity’s future. Many have written recently about the severe decline in birth rates that will soon cause a global crisis.

Today the Baby Boomer generation is moving into their senior years. Born in the post WWII boom, they comprise a significant percentage of the U.S. population. They will require massive care as they age. Where will that care come from? And with increased longevity, they will require such care farther into the future.

Since the second world war, we have lauded individual autonomy. In our pursuit of happiness we find we may have taken a wrong turn, have embraced self and mocked the authority of tradition, faith, and family to our peril. We have redefined and weakened traditional marriage through no-fault divorce, as we no longer recognize producing and nurturing the next generation as the primary goal of marriage. Birth control began the winnowing, and abortion killed the others who were unwanted. Children, as well as the elderly, have become inconvenient in their demand sacrifice of time and money. As we have sought our own way and individual happiness, we have been inevitably destroying the family and thus the future of humanity.

The world is soon to face a critical shortage of workers. It is ironic or perhaps an obvious result, that my generation of Boomers who failed to provide a substantial next generation, will now have fewer to care for them as they age. In addition, we have not produced the next work force that will manufacture goods, the next police force that will ensure the peace, the next military force that will defend our borders. For a sneak preview, read P. D. James’ dystopian novel, The Children of Men.

I’ve counted at least five trends that will probably coalesce in the next few decades: a worldwide (and massive) graying population, the destruction of the extended family that cares for the aged, the absence of a younger generation that will care for the aged (due to population decline), the increased longevity of the aged, and the culture of self over a culture of  self-sacrifice.

As Nicholas Eberstadt writes in the Wall Street Journal,

“Our world-wide flight from family constitutes a significant international victory for self-actualization over self-sacrifice, and might even be said to mark a new chapter in humanity’s conscious pursuit of happiness. But these voluntary changes have unintended consequences… by some cruel cosmic irony, family structures and family members will be less capable, and perhaps also less willing to provide… care and support than ever before… (which) promises to frame an overarching social problem…throughout the world. It is far from clear that humanity is prepared to cope with the consequences of its impending family deficit, with increasing independence for those traditionally most dependent on others – i.e. the young and old.”

We’ve been warned about the population deficit, that we will not have the numbers to support our economy or defend our borders. But it may come home sooner than that, as we age and become abandoned by our own society.

Some of us have family. Some do not. Digging into the deeper and better part of our human nature, we want to care for both groups.

It is no surprise that with a national health care system that is economically unviable, assisted suicide is encouraged. What committee will decide who lives and who dies? What pressures will be felt by seniors to end their lives for the convenience of their loved ones? What happens to the mind (and heart and soul) of the physician who has journeyed down that path… one that no longer supports life. And should those in the medical industry who support life be forced to defend themselves?

In the end, I suppose, we do reap (as a world, a nation, a family, an individual) what we sow.

If John Paul II is right, and the future of humanity is indeed passed on through the family, we are in trouble. As marriage and the family dies, so does humanity.

And as the family weakens, the wisdom and culture of the past is not passed on. We are left bankrupt not only in terms of matters of defense at home and abroad, matters of health care. We are left without the moral compass of over two thousand years of Judeo-Christian ethos.

Let us renew life. Let us fight for every unborn child. Let us revere and care for our aged as long as we can. Ancient societies understood this and so should we if it is not too late.

Let us support marriage and family life whenever and wherever we can.

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Fragile Freedom

Posted on January 18, 2015 | Leave a comment

Sunday SchoolIt is a truth universally acknowledged that we don’t truly appreciate what we have until we lose it or we are threatened with its loss. Why does it take drastic events to urge us to cherish something or someone?

I was reminded of this truth in recent weeks with the increased threats to our way of life as I learned of the Paris massacres. Suddenly the freedoms we take for granted in the Western world seem so precious, so precarious, so fragile that the wisp of a breeze could blow them away, never to be known again.

I am often reminded of this truth as I age, as time disappears and my future shrinks. Suddenly days, hours, minutes are beautiful, treasured. No two days are alike, no two hours, no two minutes. All time is glorious and beautiful. All time is full of life, God’s life in us, every one of us, regardless of age, race, creed, handicap.

I was reminded of this truth when a friend died. I miss her. Did I appreciate her enough when she was living? And later in the year a young man passed into Heaven, a boy who gave us great joy in church. The texture of the present has changed and become something it wasn’t before; their absence is felt.

So I give thanks more often for time given, friends and family given to me. I give thanks for a great-granddaughter born last spring and for the babies born in our parish this past year.

Freedom of speech and of religion remain precious rights, although precarious ones, and we exercised those freedoms in our church this morning. As I sang with the children “Advent Tells Us Christ is Near,” “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” and “All Things Bright and Beautiful” (all verses!) I cherished the time. Natalie, age five, was eager and adept. She knew how to twirl and how to growl like a beast and how to flap her wings. My thanksgivings turned into true happiness as we embarked on “Jesus Loves Me.” We rounded out our concert with a boisterous “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.” By this time I was deep into abundant joy.

In a sense, the taking for granted of these freedoms is part of freedom itself, so that we create a way of life that slips by easily, one we don’t need to think about much. We assume we can elect our officials, choose our laws, select the patterns of life that will enhance our culture and encourage “peace on earth and goodwill among men.” And yet, suddenly, those assumptions are challenged by attacks on our Western world, its very culture of freedom. It appears we may have to fight for these rights if we want our children to grow up in a free society.

My college years landed in the sixties when patriotism was considered plebeian by the academic elite. Since then, civic education has nearly disappeared in our schools. But the beheadings last month, the Paris massacres, the many barbarian attacks on our civilization in the last few years, have prompted reconsideration of patriotism. There is another way to live with one another, a better way than this, we say, and perhaps we had better teach it to our children. Perhaps we had better fly the flag and make value judgments about our culture versus other cultures. Perhaps one purpose of public education is to create an educated electorate, a citizenry that understands how exceptional Western culture, a citizenry that speaks a common language and who flies a common flag, one that encourages uni-culturism over multi-culturism. Perhaps it is time to allow the peoples of our glorious nation to merge so that the melting pot forms a more perfect union.

So as we sang “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” I prayed for the world God holds in his hands. I prayed for our children and their time on this earth, that they would be ever free to clap, to sing, to speak, to dance. And I prayed that they would value that freedom enough to cherish it, to one day pass it on to the next generation in song and speech. For there will come a time when those of us who were shaken by the Paris killings, who mourned the Pakistani children massacred, who were horrified by the Nigerian kidnappings and the bombings, will one day travel home to God.

There will come a time when the children we are teaching in church and in school will need to remember just how fragile freedom really is, so that they can teach their children our heritage, our way of freedom and peace.

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Flying the Flag

Posted on October 5, 2014 | Leave a comment

american-flag-2a2My novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, is progressing. But little did I know, when I set this novel in Berkeley in September of 2014 (a decision made at least a year ago that almost seemed arbitrary), that so many events would collide in this month that illustrated my themes.

I’m not sure why I didn’t focus on the Nine-Eleven tragedy to begin with, but I didn’t. I was thinking of the time of year, time of sunset (and thus daylight versus darkness). I was thinking of temperature and dryness, and well, naturally, fire hazards. I wanted school to be in session, so that sort of ruled out the summer months, and while dry it needed to be beautiful with a trail that students would run. September seemed the answer. I plotted the month out, day by day, wondering how many weeks the plot should encompass. How long does it take for two strangers to fall in love?

The story begins on September 3 and my characters appear in the next few days. In real life, wars around the world had been escalating over the summer. Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, becoming a “ghost” plane, never found. Russian fighters shot down a passenger airline over Ukraine. Islamic terrorism was rising and homegrown terrorists from Britain had usefully dangerous passports into the West. Journalists were beheaded and their killers boasted. Events, again and again, and seeming ongoing, verified that the Western Civilization’s borders were being breached by fire.

The President addressed the nation on Wednesday, September 10, the night before the Nine-Eleven memorial. His words seemed too little too late, but indicated a more forceful course in military action. Many Americans hoped and prayed that a clear message would be sent, that we would fight for our peaceful world, we would die for our freedoms. We were still the power that defended liberty and representative government.

So I finally realized my story had placed the September 11 memorial of the Twin Towers attack at its very heart. The story’s action would rise to this point, and then fall away from it. For in our own American history, September 11, 2001, will remain a watershed moment. It is an event that changed us as a nation, woke us up. Some have gone back to sleep, but, thank God, some have remained awake, watching and listening, if not always alert. Those who see the threat for what it was and is – an attack on our way of life as Americans – turned to examine our culture to understand how to be better prepared. Those who recognize the flames coming toward them are sounding the alarm. They are working hard to keep the fire trail clear, retain a true fire break.

Democracy requires patriotism, a civic devotion instilled in school. Classical societies knew this. Our founding fathers knew this. Many have recognized that a good society must cultivate good citizens, men and women educated according to a value-laden curriculum, instilling virtues that allow them to live peaceably together in pursuit of the common good and individual happiness. Instead, the last sixty years has seen a steady erosion of this foundation. Academia has grown cynical and elite and out-of-touch with what actually produces the culture that allows them the liberty to speak, to be cynical and elite and out-of-touch. The ivory towers, like Babel, have risen higher and higher, the windows darkened with ivy, the rooms dim. Patriotism has not been fashionable. Inclusiveness has prevailed. The American way, the way of Western Civilization, these elite say, is just one way among many. We are not exceptional.

Alas, it is not one among many and we are indeed exceptional. America is truly a shining city upon a hill, as was Athens and Rome and Paris and London to the degree that they allowed democratic values to thrive. Over two millennia the development of free thinking peoples and their systems of governing has been unique to the West. So what happened? How did freedom and the flag become something to look down upon from on high? How is it that our homegrown intellectuals sneer and deride the stars and stripes?

Yale historian Donald Kagan writes in the Wall Street Journal:

“Jefferson meant American education to produce a necessary patriotism. Democracy – of all political systems, because it depends on the participation of its citizens in their own government and because it depends on their own free will to risk their lives in its defence – stands in the greatest need of an education that produces patriotism. I recognize that I have said something shocking…”

Indeed. Too many schools haven’t taught love of country for generations, and battles continue to rage in school boards over teaching patriotic curriculum, American history that explains who we are, what we stand for, and what we have to lose if we don’t fight for those ideals.

These are urgent matters for our country. So as I tell the stories of Jessica and Zachary, two grad students at U.C. Berkeley who have come of age in this world and question some of its assumptions, I marvel at how these events have supported my September themes. For Berkeley celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, and this last Wednesday crowds gathered at Sproul Plaza around the corner from my little publishing office. Aged speakers reminisced how they defended free speech by standing on top of police cars with bullhorns.

Today, political correctness reigns at Berkeley and those speakers have become faculty. It is their turn to squelch opposing points of view, promoting those professors who agree with them, isolating those who do not tow the party line. As they preached their creed around the corner from my office, I was meeting with a committee dedicated to establishing a Center for Western Civilization on the corner of Bowditch and Durant. I didn’t realize it at the time that we were huddled and planning quietly while the free-speachers were calling for free tuition and telling tales of sixties sit-ins. I read about it later in the paper and I smiled.

I have reached September 11, 2014 in my manuscript and have written Zachary’s reflections on this horrific day, for reflections on history reflect my character’s character. Soon I shall write the reflections of his mother Anna, and lastly, the reflections of Jessica. And so I shall weave American history into their stories, to enrich what it means to live in this exceptional land of liberty.

And I’m going to place an American flag on the porch of Comerford House, the center of the action. It shall ripple in sunlight and in shadow, high above the bay, looking out over shadowy Berkeley and the shimmering San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate. It shall mark the fire trail that runs behind the house.

To read the first six chapters of The Fire Trail, go to www.LibertyIslandmag.com, click on Open Range, or find my Creator page.  

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With a Song

Posted on August 3, 2014 | Leave a comment

035“Once we came before God’s presence with a song; now we come before his absence with a sigh.” So writes Anglican philosopher Roger Scruton in his beautifully written memoir, Gentle Regrets. The first reference is, of course, to Psalm 100, O be joyful in the Lord, all ye lands: serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a song… Dr. Scruton’s second reference, that to sighing, is to the sadness that seems to permeate our culture of unbelief, the most prosperous and “advanced” culture in recorded history.

Psalm 100, also called the Jubilate Deo, is part of our Office of Morning Prayer, in the Book of Common Prayer prayed by Anglicans worldwide for centuries. I wondered, what happens to a person’s attitude toward life if he or she repeats this prayer psalm every morning upon rising? Is there a change in the way he sees the world, or even a gradual restructuring of the soul?

I’ve been thinking about this the last few days, having dipped deeply into Dr. Scruton’s words of wisdom. He rightly values the Prayer Book with its Elizabethan English, so suitable to worship God. We sing the words of these prayers, sometimes in melodies, sometimes in chants, sometimes in our hearts and minds, following the rhythm of the phrases like a dance.

I first crossed the threshold of an Anglican Church (then Episcopalian) in 1966, at the age of 19: St. Matthew’s, Burlingame, California. Raised Presbyterian, turned collegiate agnostic, I was unfamiliar with the ritual, the set prayers, the kneeling, the making of the Sign of the Cross, the processions, the candles, the incense. Yet I felt as though I had entered Heaven. I was sure I had; I was totally smitten. I sat in the back pew and drank in the liturgy like a traveler in the desert. I was thirsty and didn’t know how parched I really was until then, didn’t fully understand what I deeply longed for, but here it was, all around me, the sights, the sounds, the smells of Heaven.  It was as though I was being held in the palm of a loving God, one who had created me in great joy and was so glad I had come home.

I wasn’t instructed and Confirmed until the following year, but in the meantime I entered, knelt, imitated the others. Since many of the prayers were the same each week, and there were Prayer Books in all the pews, I learned the words quickly and was soon part of the miracle happening around me. I learned how to dance with the Church, a universal dance stretching back two thousand years and celebrated all over the world. Since then, I have come to understand the meaning behind the rituals and the prayers, the Scriptures that ordained the words, the actions, the steps in this dance of worship. I came to understand what happened in what was called the great Sacrifice of the Mass, when the wine became blood and the bread became body in the Real Presence of Christ. I understood how the Liturgy of the Word led to this pivotal moment of bell-ringing and happy holiness – the Collects, the Scriptures, the Creed, the Confession and Absolution, the Sermon. And since then, I have traveled deeper and deeper into the mystery of worship and into the heart of God.

So it was with great joy that I discovered this Anglican philosopher who is also in love with the Book of Common Prayer, who “gets it,” as is said today. And he is right when he profoundly observes that our culture, having trouble finding God, has become sad, “morose.” Many no longer sing to the Lord a joyful song with gladness for they have lost him in a kind of slippery sophistry. Instead, they look to one another, and to themselves, to create gods from their own kind, longing for but not finding true worship. The resulting attitude is one of un-thankfulness, of grievance and complaint, of never having enough, of striving, of racing, of consuming, all in hopes of finding. The old adage, “Count your blessings,” is just that, an old adage and rarely practiced. Today curses are counted rather than blessings.

And so it was that this morning when I entered our parish church I was especially thankful for the words of our Prayer Book, the poetry of the prayers and psalms and liturgy, and most of all for the belief that backs and binds it. I addressed some “proofs” for the historicity of the Resurrection in my recent novel, The Magdalene Mystery, arguments of the mind if not the heart. And in the end, if one can argue the Resurrection, the rest falls into place, at least for me. But here, this morning, in my parish church and recently in the words of my new philosopher mentor, I find argument for the heart and soul. Human beings long to sing to God because we know deep down he exists, that he loves us, and that he has provided a path on earth to Heaven, to one day, see him face to face, no longer through a glass darkly. We long to experience what we suspect is waiting for us, true joy.

And as we sang with the children in Sunday School “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” prayed an “Our Father” together, and led them up the central aisle to kneel at the altar rail for their blessing during the Mass, I knew we had taught them well this day. They had experienced the bright and the beautiful, to be sure, when they entered that hushed space, as they padded up the red carpet toward the tabernacle set amid the flaming candles, as the robed clerics drifted by. “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be upon you, Natalie, this day and always” the priest said, touching her head lightly with blessing. We each made the Sign of the Cross, and with folded hands we processed out, back to the Sunday School, where we made more animals from paper plates.

It is good for us to pray, to develop an attitude of thankfulness for what we have been given, beginning with life itself, another day on this earth. I recommend an “Our Father” followed by the “Jubilate Deo” each morning, even if it’s in the rush of the early hours, driving to work, waiting for the bus, readying the children for school. Say it regularly and your life will be filled with joy, the jubilate of God, and far less sighing. I know mine has.

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Watering Seeds

Posted on July 13, 2014 | Leave a comment

flowersThe sunflowers that the children planted last Sunday, pressing the seeds into the loamy soil in miniature clay pots, sprouted during the week. This morning we gathered around the shiny yellow table and marveled at the green shoots. Natalie, age four, carried the teapot (our pitcher) to the bathroom next door. She stood on the step-stool and turned the faucet, then watched the water gush into the pot. With great attention and care she grasped it with both hands, balancing her walk back to the yellow table with its new life. Together we tilted the spout and watered some sprouts, then passed the chrome pot to Luisa, age two, to give it a try with another teacher’s helping hand.

Earlier we had tied bright colored balloons to our welcome sign outside. We filled a basket with animal crackers. Soon we would read the story of creation with its many hued watercolors of rainbows and rivers and flowers, yellows and blues and greens and reds, and all things bright and beautiful. I was looking forward to singing this hymn – “All Things Bright and Beautiful” – together. 

As I watched the children and the teachers in this precious hour in the back of our parish church I thought how this scene had become and would become a part of my history. I have been involved in teaching children in church for thirty-seven years now, and as I share with them the creation of the world, I know that even in this small way I am contributing a few drops to the great stream of Western civilization. For the children will grow up believing in a rational God who not only created order out of chaos, life and light out of death and darkness, but loved, and continues to love, his creation. This is marvel-ous news.

There has been much outcry in the last few years about the loss of Western Civilization courses in major universities. How will we understand who we are? How will we move forward, creating and inventing and ordering the chaos around us if we do not understand how we created in the past? As many have written recently, this creating and inventing and ordering – this steady progress, was the product of belief in a rational God. Without the Judeo-Christian civilizing stream none of this would have happened. Progress happens within a linear view of history, not cyclical. When Abraham left Ur, at the command of the One True God, he left the pagan cycles of fatalism and reincarnation. He gathered his people and stepped forward in time to a destination. One action built upon another. Prophecies encouraged the journey, angelic visitors explained the future. He and his tribe were a part of something far greater, even in his old age, something building and progressing, something sacred led by God. Abraham looked up to the stars and found a God who cared, and he looked forward to the path he would follow to his destination.

So as I watched the children, I considered how my own history, my country’s history, my culture’s history, that of the Western world – all the past that has brought me here – is vital to the next generation. And values of freedom, democracy, respect for one another, heroism and sacrifice, personal responsibility, the sacredness of life itself, must all be cultivated just like these Sunday School seeds in order to flower.

This last week I signed up as a contributing “Creator” to a newly launched website, LibertyIslandMag.com, founded by Adam Bellow. Here “conservative, libertarian, and contrarian” authors of fiction may post their pieces and excerpts, blogs and comments, adding to a growing national conversation. I know I’m conservative, probably libertarian to a degree, and most likely considered contrarian by major publishers (and some of my family) so I was glad to find this island of sanity. 

I’ve also recently had the privilege of being part of the first steps taken to establish in Berkeley a Center for Western Civilization – library, faculty residence, lecture hall – one block from the U. C. campus. The St. Joseph of Arimathea Foundation sees this as a means to plant more seeds in the fertile ground of this major university area, to teach founding principles of Western Civilization to this coming generation. Joseph of Arimathea was the trader who provided the tomb for Christ’s burial; he sailed to Glastonbury to plant the seeds of Christianity in Britain. It is said that he planted his staff and the staff flowered. This same thorn tree, replanted over the years, still flowers in winter.

Many folks across our land are cultivating Western ideals, planting seeds for the future generations. They need our support, both financial and spiritual, to rebuild our broken culture and reap a good harvest.

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On Mothers

Posted on May 11, 2014 | 1 comment

It’s crystal clear, the skies windswept and bluer than blue, here in the Bay Area this Mother’s Day, the second Sunday in May, Mary’s month of May. The proximity of the two celebrations each year always touches me, for it is a time to consider the very center of human life, the miracle of birth.

Mothers, like our mother Mary, have strong ties to their children. In some sense, after the season in the womb, after the dramatic entrance into our world, after the great first gasp of air, the cord is never cut, but holds fast throughout life. Some cords are stronger than others, some ties are formed in spite of little desire or intention, some are never formed through tragic circumstances. Some mothers early on have the sword of love pierce their hearts; some know that piercing later. Mothers who adopt, God bless them, may not have given birth, but in their hearts they did, and they swaddle that baby close, cheek against breast, nearly one flesh. Love is like that. It weaves a strong cord, entwining, holding, feeding, eyeing, singing.

We know that our mother Mary, the new Eve, grinds her heal on the ancient serpent, Satan, destroying him. She gives birth to the Son of God, incarnate in her womb. She loves, she suffers, and she watches her son die a cruel and humiliating death. She is full of grace and blessed among women. She prays for us just as we ask her to. She has appeared to many of her children through the centuries, sending them fountains and wells of healing waters. She loves us so; she is our mother.

As a mother I for a time housed my child within me. My body was his home, his very life blood. It is easy to think that he was literally a part of me, so close were we, but that is the great mysterious miracle. For the child was separate, a genetically unique human being, unique in all past, present, and future time, fully known only by God. When labor is accomplished, and the unborn is born, mothers know they have been part of the greatest miracle on earth. Gather any group of mothers together and mention the birth of a baby, and each will remember what happened to her on that day. She will recall the hugely important part she played in this great drama, for it is seared in her memory. Mothers tell their stories to one another as though reciting heroic ballads upon which the world depends – all history, all humanity, all love. The hours and minutes of giving birth are alive, fresh and real, eager to be shared.

The anguish and the pain are forgotten in the joy of new life. Circumstances may not have been perfect – perhaps the mother was alone. Perhaps she didn’t want the child. Perhaps she thought her life would be ruined or simply changed. Perhaps she gave birth in a back room, or in a cave, or in a stable. But with the telling, each mother chooses the joyous bits to remember. The infant placed in her arms. “Hello,” she says. “What shall I name you?” Then, “I love you… don’t worry, it will be all right.” She vows to protect that child forever; to feed, clothe, and teach this son or daughter to become loving and responsible. Of course her life is changed. How could it not be? She will never be the same. But she has no regrets. She is a mother now. She has learned how to love.

But most of all mothers remember how close we were at that moment to the heart of life, the beating heart of God, in this stunning miracle, how in that place at that time in each of our lives we touched eternity.

Today, as we drove to church this morning, my thoughts returned to a moment nearly forty-two years ago in Grace Hospital in Vancouver, Canada. My son was born, big and strong and healthy and a little pinched around the head. He was bald. He squinted up at me as I held him in the crook of my arm, neatly wrapped in cotton flannel. Today he is bigger and stronger and still healthy, a father of two. He shall always be my little boy, even at six foot three, and I shall always love him, always worry about him, always want to shelter him from life’s sufferings such a part of love. That’s what mothers do.

So on this Third Sunday of Easter when the preacher spoke of Mother Church holding us in her womb, gathering us all together, protected by her seamless cloak woven from the golden threads of sacraments, I understood what he was saying perhaps better than he did. The Church is many things – an ark in the sea of life, the Bride of Christ, the Body of Christ, Mother to her faithful children. I thought of icons depicting the Madonna holding the Church within her cloak, for Mary was the first Christian tabernacle, her body the home of God’s Son, and today, the home of His Body, the Church, the Body of Christ.

The images danced in my mind, weaving, joining, coming together again. Words cannot fully explain what is unexplainable. Mysteries are mysterious. But image and symbol and story and art and song can connect the dots of God’s love for us so that we begin to see a shape, an outline, for we recognize reality when we see it. And the Church nourishes and protects us just as mothers nourish and protect their unborn. The Church teaches us and shows us the way, just as mothers do their born children. We need only say yes to her. 

And when we do say yes, when we listen to her and worship within her and remain faithful to her, suddenly we see. We are no longer squinting; our eyes are opened. The skies are bluer than blue, the air windswept and crystal clear.

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