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True Fatherhood

Posted on June 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

TRINITY.RUBLEVTrinity Sunday comes late this year, appropriately landing on Father’s Day and adding to the rich texture of June, a month that opens the door to a new season. So as we leave spring and slip into summer, we don the green of Trinitytide. The “extra-ordinary” time of Advent through Pentecost, celebrating the Son of God’s life on earth changes to “ordinary” time, a time of quiet growth and reflection on what that life means to each of us.

They say the Holy Trinity is a great mystery, how three persons can be one. And yet, as one grows in the faith, it seems natural. God the Father expresses himself as God the Son and later as God the Holy Spirit. It is said that love binds the three together, and no doubt this is true, but I would say that the three are all extraordinary expressions of love. Christ, the Son, is God’s loving incarnation, God’s healing and salvific sacrifice for us who brings us home to him. The Holy Spirit is God’s loving presence sent when the Son has ascended. God the Father provides for us, loves us, in all time, through all eternity. So we need never be lost. We need never be alone, afraid, unprotected.

Our culture celebrates Father’s Day to honor those who, on this earth, act to shelter us and love us in the same way our heavenly Father has done for his people since Adam and Eve. Our earthly fathers stumble, to be sure, for they are earthly, but their role as protectors and providers continues to be an ideal. We honor them for their hard work, their sacrifice of time and treasure, to provide for us. When they abandon us, we know they have wronged us. We know they are no longer fathers.  For true fathers, like our Heavenly Father, never leave us. They never stop loving us, never stop sacrificing.

Fathers, like our Father in Heaven, discipline us so that we may learn right from wrong. They teach standards of behavior in an effort to raise us up, transforming narcissistic children into responsible adults. It is no coincidence that crime rises when fathers abandon fathering. In American culture, since the rise of easy divorce and the artificial separation of sex and procreation, too many fathers have run away from their children. Too many mothers have been forced to be fathers as well, and somehow, mysteriously, they can never really be both. In this, American culture has been grievously wronged.

We call the great theologians of history, those men who formulated and protected the creeds and canons of Christianity, our Church Fathers. They too took care of their children, the faithful. They gave them, gave us, through interpretation of Scripture, the words to express the truth of God and his love for man. They protected us from untruth, lies, heresy. Like Saint Athanasius, who fought Arianism with the Nicene Creed, they explained the Trinity to us, the truth of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The words of those Church Fathers, passed from generation to generation, continue to guide this Body of Christ, so that Christians have a great host of fathers to enlighten their dark and help them shoulder the perplexing dilemmas of living.

And, to be sure, the inheritors of those eminent Church Fathers, through Apostolic Succession, are the priestly fathers we know today. These men, through the Laying on of Hands, are consecrated to and with and by these creedal truths, vowing to unite God the Father with each of us through God the Son and by the power of God the Holy Spirit. These priestly fathers are, however, sons of Adam and earthly too, but they strive through grace and sanctification to give us a glimpse of heaven on earth.

The Epistle for Trinity Sunday for Anglicans is the fourth chapter of the Revelation of John. The passage recounts John’s vision of Heaven, and it is this vision that every Christian may glimpse from time to time. Hidden within moments of love, moments of sacrifice and suffering, we see God’s presence weave among us. We sense a glory close by, near enough to know. Angels hover about us, and if we can forget ourselves for a time, we can sense them. We need to be silent and listening, full of the words given to us by the Word, Christ, through Scripture, explained by the Church Fathers through the centuries. So we worship on Sunday, sing the Psalms and listen to the lessons. We hear our priestly father explain the great miraculous mysteries given to us. We meet God the Son at the altar and we sing God the Father’s praises as God the Holy Spirit moves among us.

This is the most Holy Trinity, the ultimate Fatherhood, when Love becomes one of us, dies for us, and gives us his Spirit to be with us always, even to the ends of the earth.

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Holy Spirit Joy

Posted on June 8, 2014 | 1 comment

A friend of mine died this last week. She stepped into the next life, for she was and is a Christian. She knew the way to Heaven for she had spent a lifetime inside the warm ark of the Church. Through joy and sorrow, through health and sickness, she was surrounded by the guidance and love of the Body of Christ.

We were not close friends, but we were longtime friends. Somehow the years (thirty-seven) sharing a pew in our parish church, kneeling and praying and singing together, created a mysterious, miraculous bond. Our sons served together as acolytes, and oddly enough both boys ended up in Colorado a few hours away from one another, with their own families. When my friend began working in the small publishing office where I work too, it gave me great joy to see her more often. We compared our Rocky Mountain sons and counted the days until our next visits to see the grandchildren. We compared photos and shared Facebook postings. Now, as I write this, I see her smile and I hear her laughter.

Now she is gone, or rather, she has gone ahead of me.

It was not a surprise, for she had been dying slowly of cancer and the treatments were no longer working. Yet it was a surprise, a shock, and I still can’t really believe she is not on this earth, that she has moved on, to be with Our Lord in Heaven and sing with the angels and saints. There will be an emptiness in the office now.

I’m so glad we have the Holy Comforter, the one who strengthens us in times like this, the Holy Spirit of God given us at Pentecost. And in the many churches we visited in Italy last month, this strengthening sense of God was present. Italy is full of haunting, beautiful, intoxicating churches alive with God’s Spirit, sometimes dating to the fourth century and earlier. They teach me about Heaven and earth as I enter and cross the threshold into the sacred. I gaze up the central aisle, focusing on the high altar with its potent tabernacle. Everything in the church points to the Blessed Sacrament reserved in that tabernacle, the Holy of Holies, even the domes dance above, linking Heaven to earth through this church rooted in the ground, whether the church be small or large, humble or grandiose.

I find history fascinating, at least history that explains my present, helps me with the riddle of me, so the history of the Western world in particular is the underpinning, the foundation for our American life today. It is useful history, events and people that formed us as a culture molded our thought patterns, directed our assumptions. It explains, solves the mystery of life.

The Magdalene MysteryAnd so it is even more so with the history of Christianity, particularly visible in Italy’s churches. It was this fascination that led to my novel, The Magdalene Mystery, for the mystery of Mary Magdalene is the mystery of history, how we know what we know, or do we know anything? Is life meaningless, are we dumb beasts, and is all of life merely chaos spinning into a void? What did the Magdalene see that Easter morning two thousand years ago? Was it just the gardener after all? Were the early accounts of the resurrection of Christ true?

I cross the threshold of a church and I know I can know. I know I can find the answers if I want to. All of the imagery explains what happened and what it means to me today on my own journey. All of the faithful who have gone before have added to the great wealth of knowledge we have concerning exactly what happened in those first decades of the first millennium.

The churches speak to me, again and again. They speak of God’s love, what our lives mean, who we are meant to be, where we are going. Through the churches, God speaks to all of us. We need only listen.

Today is Pentecost Sunday, the festival of the Holy Spirit descending upon the disciples and baptizing them with fire. Thus today is the Birthday of the Church. It is a day to watch and listen, for as our preacher said, God’s Spirit weaves through us in spectacular ways. We simply need to pay attention.

I agree. In Rome, as I chatted with other Christians on fire with God I sensed the Holy Spirit weaving among us. Sister Emanuela at St. John Lateran was alight with God’s love as she recounted her experiences sharing the Christian art of Rome with English visitors (you might recognize her joy in The Magdalene Mystery). Father Paolo of La Maddalena, an exquisite golden Baroque church, included us in the celebration of the birthday of San Camillo, the founder of his Order of the Ministers to the Sick, the Camillians. We met Camilliani pilgrims from Great Britain, from the Philippines, from northern Italy, each alight with God’s love, each dedicating their lives to easing suffering and giving hope to the dying. Father Paolo blessed their hands, for their hands are healing hands.

Christians the world over carry the Holy Spirit within them, for they say yes, they are open to God working in them, weaving them together into a beautiful tapestry. The Holy Spirit bonding is greater than kinship, greater than friendship. It is a quiet bond, for we are linked by the still small voice of God. But it is strong and it is faithful, and it is intoxicating.

And one day, I shall join my friend and we shall share our stories and our lives. We shall sing alleluia with the angels and the saints, praising God for all he has done for us.

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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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Resurrection Flowers

Posted on April 21, 2014 | Leave a comment

The great festival of Easter is the pivotal point of Christianity, and indeed, the history of the world. 

There is no point to such faith, and indeed, to life itself, without Easter’s celebration, the resurrection of Christ. Everything depends upon it. Without the resurrection, we are left with an itinerant preacher who might have healed, might have walked on water, might have fed the five thousand with a few loaves and a few fish. We are left with a self-styled prophet who told us how to live but who lied about who he was. We are left with a delusional beggar who gave us false hope. 

But there is ample evidence that the resurrection occurred. The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, “King of the Jews,” is chronicled in accounts of the time. More importantly, we have witnesses to the empty tomb, and scores of witnesses to the risen Christ as he walked the earth before his ascension to heaven. 

So on Easter morning, as the children and teachers placed the colorful freshly cut flowers in the straw baskets and waited in the back pew for the right moment, I thought of the small but immense part we played in this great drama. After the triumphal procession (Hail thee festival day…), after the Epistle and Gospel readings, after we affirmed the Nicene Creed as one voice, we stepped up the aisle toward the white wooden cross.

The cross had been placed at the foot of the chancel steps. Beyond, under the thirteenth-century crucifix, I could see the white-tented tabernacle in its garden of lilies and flaming candles. As the congregation sang Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia… the children shoved the green stems into the deep holes on the cross, clothing the whiteness with brilliant color. The cross now glowed with life, life sacrificed in our gardens. The sign of salvation was peopled with petals glorifying this Son of God who gave himself to us for us.

Spring is our season of resurrection. Gone are the cold dark nights of winter. Born to us is the flowering life of spring. Everywhere we see creation budding, birthing, mating, and mothering. Easter distills this rebirthing, this life-banishing-death into a few hours of incredible – credible – beauty. The Church pulls us into this intense beauty as she portrays and celebrates this drama of redemption. 

Scripture tells us that after his death, Christ went into Hades, the place of sleep for all those who had died before his incarnation. He opens the gates and rescues the prisoners, so that not one would be lost who desired to be saved. Then on Easter morning, robed as a gardener, he greets Mary Magdalene who came to the tomb with precious oils to anoint the body of her Lord.

This is the real Magdalene mystery. This is the pivotal point of our history, upon which everything depends. Have we solved the mystery? Is her account true? Do we trust the witnesses and those who recorded their testimony? Is it all a hopeful dream, a great leap of faith? We must consider the sources, examine the accounts, and most of all, read the testimonies of those who gathered in that first century to celebrate Christ Jesus’ resurrection. How did they behave? What happened in those early gatherings? Were these early followers, the first Church, changed by their belief in Christ? Was the world changed by them? 

These questions have been asked and answered, again and again, and all point to the historicity of the resurrection of Christ. The accounts, recorded on codices and handed through the centuries to our present day in the form of Gospels and Epistles, reflect a high degree of probability, the same degree we apply to other historical accounts we assume to be true.

But then, if Christ rose from the dead, we must listen to him. We must take him seriously. We must follow his commandments, and those of his people, the sons and daughters of Israel. We must believe in judgment day, and we must believe that our sins can be forgiven, if we choose to repent.

And if it is indeed true that he with the wounded hands and feet and side conquered death to give us life, we are the most happy of men, the most blessed of women. For we, through this suffering act of love become part of the resurrected one, part of his divine nature. His spirit infuses ours, and we become his body as we eat and drink in the supper he ordained for us.

So as we flowered the cross with the new life from our gardens, we knew Christ flowered us as we became one with him, filled with his risen life.

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Rejoice Sunday

Posted on March 30, 2014 | 1 comment

I continue to be astounded by the richness of our Anglican liturgy, the way the colors and seasons weave into one another to create a fascinating and beautiful tapestry of time. 

It is a liturgy shared, of course, with Roman Catholics and to an extent Eastern Orthodox: the love of symbols, saints, and sacraments; the dramatization of deep and joyous beliefs; the pleasure taken in incense, song, chant, processions, and common prayers we know by heart so we can pray in common together. 

We call our sixteenth-century prayer book The Book of Common Prayer, for it provides prayers learned by rote for those of us in the pews so that we can pray as one voice. It also provides assurance that the prayers prayed at the altar are theologically true, for they reflect words chosen carefully through the centuries. We call this catholic in the sense that it represents what is true for all time in all places for all people. 

I read recently that new education studies show that children are better prepared to succeed in life if they learn the old fashioned way, that is, by rote, by memory work and drill. I learned the old fashioned way and while it took effort and patience, I was rewarded with a strong sense of accomplishment. We learned poems and times tables and history dates. Often boring, but usually productive. I think I also learned how to accept boredom, how to not expect constant entertainment, how to go the distance, how to, in essence, work. I learned how to meet goals set by teachers so that later I would learn how to meet goals set by myself or employers. 

Our liturgy is full of these small and large milestones. It is not meant to entertain (although it often does in a glorious way, suddenly, unexpectedly), but rather it is meant to meet certain goals. “Liturgy” is the “work of the people.” We call the Holy Eucharist an action in the phrase the “Action of the Mass.” Something truly happens, and we, with God’s help, help to make it happen. We add our unified, voiced prayers, memorized (eventually through repetition), to those of the priest who celebrates the Mass. As the priest stands before the altar he stands before God, representing us. But during the Action, he represents Christ, consecrating the bread and wine into body and blood; Christ is made manifest in the “creatures” of bread and wine through this action.

To be worthy of receiving Almighty God into our hearts and bodies, we examine our lives for deeds done and undone, those things separating us from God. We need to be perfect, washed clean, to meet him at the altar rail. And so we confess together, as one and as many, and are absolved. We are made perfect in that moment.

Today is the Fourth Sunday in Lent. It is called Laetare Sunday, meaning “Rejoice,” named for the traditional Introit, “Rejoice ye with Jerusalem; and be ye glad for her…”. It lands midway in Lent, and is meant to be a lighter brighter more joyful Sunday than the others in Lent. Rose vestments and altar cloths sometimes replace the somber purple, and flowers are allowed on the altar (not so the other Sundays in Lent).

We draw closer to Passiontide, the two weeks before Easter, and so it is as though we are refreshed today, before we return to the road to Jerusalem and the way of the Cross. We consider our Lenten rules – our self-discipline of time and desire. I for one am not midway through my memory work: First Corinthians 13. I have the first few verses down, sort of, but it has been a struggle, as is anything worth doing. It may take Lent and Advent and another Lent for this old soul to learn it by heart. Nevertheless, I keep at it, the passage printed out, handy for the odd moment of time. Perhaps it is discipline that, in the end, forms disciples.

Today’s Gospel is the account of the feeding of the five thousand, the multiplying of the loaves and fishes, one of many feeding miracles recorded in Holy Scripture. But John’s Chapter Six account is followed by Christ’s stunning announcement that one must eat his flesh and drink his blood to attain eternal life. It is not surprising that many followers left him after that statement, confused and probably overwhelmed at the very least.

Christianity is not a religion for the faint of heart, although our God mends broken hearts. It is not for the lazy, although our God empowers us with his own life. It is definitely a faith for those who admit helplessness in these matters, for with steady slugging along, we are rewarded with stunning joy. Not a bad exchange. It is an exciting journey with God to God, full of miracles and happiness. I’ve had more Road-to-Damascus moments than I could possibly count. 

So it is with great delight that I am certain that all I have to do is show up at church on Sundays. All I have to do is pray with the Body of Christ, the Church, and be part of the great Action of the Mass. All I have to do is repent and be forgiven. I do these things every Sunday and everything else falls into place, as though angels rain grace upon my life. I don’t need to see and understand everything all the time. All I need to do is go to my little parish church and be faithful.

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Thanksgiving for Families

Posted on November 24, 2013 | Leave a comment

It has been said that you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. We don’t always get along with our siblings, our parents, our children. But we know they will always be our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. Family bonds, however fragile, bear stress better than other bonds, but even these can break when hearts are broken.

Just so, we speak of our parish family, using similar words. Here too, the bonds are stronger than friendship, or perhaps different than friendship, more like family bonds. Common beliefs run deep like underground rivers, not always seen, but necessary to the watering of roots. As sacramental Christians, we believe that when we partake of God at his altar, he unites us with one another, past and future. God joins us, and he enjoins us to love one another in a special way. He enjoins us to invite all and everyone into this holy family. All are invited to his table; we are siblings, with one God the Father and one Mother the Church.

And like biological families, we do not always get along. Sometimes I think that because the belief and altar bonds are so deep we trespass on kindness, we assume assent and approval. We might push one another too far, for we sense things will all sort themselves out in time. I hear many such stories of other parishes, and witness such events in our own parish life. Because we love one another, we are close, and because we are close we have more to gain and more to lose, just like a natural family. Our hearts and souls are exposed for all to see.

We are all in training for Heaven, to sing with the family of God and the angels, the white-robed martyrs and the great prophets and apostles, with our ordinary, extraordinary brothers and sisters who have made the journey ahead of us. Our time on earth is a testing time, a time of trial and formation, of growth, of sanctification.

Ideally, within the natural family we learn discipline and delayed gratification. We learn to look out for one another. We learn work habits – beginnings, middles, and finishings. We learn to pass the potatoes and share a meal with one another. We learn to converse, to lace words into phrases so that we can touch the person alongside, to bring our minds and hearts together for a brief moment, like dancing. We learn the liturgy of the family, the morning rising and breakfasting and heading out for work and school, the coming together in the evening, lighting a supper candle, holding hands and saying grace, the washing up, the struggling through homework, the shared moments of recreation in the time left, the evening prayers, the slipping into sleep. It is a dance in which we never lose touch never let go of one another, as we follow the notes and the rhythm of family life. We learn to love by learning the law of love – the Ten Commandments: Thou shalt not murder, lie, steal, covet; thou shalt honor God, honor parents, honor husband and wife. The law of love is straightforward, simple. The law of love is crucial, the center of the Cross.

In this daily dance we may not always get along, but the rituals pull us through anger and frustration, through selfishness, greed, envy, and other mishaps of our souls. We might fight with one another, spar, test, lash out or “vent” as is said today (as though we were machines), but with God’s grace, we apologize, we make amends by amending ourselves in humility, by repenting and reforming, by turning around. The family, hopefully, teaches us how to do this, or tries to, and in this daily hymn of life, we school our children to be part of larger families: the community, the town, the nation, the world. 

So we give thanks this Thanksgiving not only for families but for our national family, for the United States of America. We give thanks for this incredible experiment in democracy. Earlier this month we gave thanks for those who fought for our country to preserve her freedoms. Now we give thanks for those who founded her, who birthed her. 

Will America need to be re-found, re-born? Will she survive these challenging times? Will she crumble as the family crumbles under the weight of easy divorce, easy sex, easy abortion, easy love? Without the school of the family, this remarkable training ground in the law of love, will we find ourselves in a wilderness, a wild-ness, a human jungle in which an elderly woman is punched out by a heartless teen or a tourist is shot for the fun of it, a jungle in which girls and boys die from binge drinking, drugs, and Internet bullying, in which babies are slaughtered, thrown out, before they breathe their first breath?

As Americans, our beliefs in freedom run deep like a river, unseen, assumed and unquestioned. Do we take these freedoms for granted? Do we exercise our rights without considering the accompanying responsibilities that support those rights? Are our American roots in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, roots that tap the deep waters of freedom of speech and religion – are these roots shriveling underground and unseen? Are we paying attention to their dying?

This Thanksgiving week, as we gather together the fragments of of our families, those from near and far, those members whom we like and those whom we don’t, we give thanks for this a-gathering, in church and at home, before altars and hearths. We give thanks for our freedom to gather in the squares and legislatures of our land. We give thanks for law and order, such as it is. We give thanks for family life that trains us for participation in a greater American life. 

And we pray that we, a nation founded under God, will preserve and protect those institutions that water liberty and a love for one another: the family and the church.

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Passages

Posted on October 13, 2013 | Leave a comment

It has been a season of passages for my ever-widening circle of friends, and since we love one another, I have walked alongside them, mourning and celebrating with them. 

The deaths – those passages from this world to the next – mark time and remind us of time. We don’t have steeple bells in our neighborhoods anymore, but the tolling is heard just the same. And in the Church, these passages are not just mourned, but are framed by births, Baptisms, Confirmations, and weddings. The dry grass of our elders is replaced by new growth, greening the soil of our parish. New life replaces the old; bells ring for the new just as they toll for the old. 

As Christians, we believe that death is a temporary parting. Something greater awaits us, something glorious, and one day we shall see those we love and who love us. Yet we remain here, rooted in time and earth, housed in flesh not yet transformed to glory. 

In this time we have been given, we have one another to cherish, and as I gazed upon the newlyweds in our church undercroft this morning, I shared in their joy. Their eyes were full of one another, as though each had sunk into the other’s heart and desired nothing more. Earlier we had worshiped together as a family. We had sung together, prayed together, and with one voice boldly proclaimed our beliefs together. We had taken part in the Eucharistic supper of the Lamb.

Baptism, our preacher explained, was our invitation to this holy supper, this wedding feast of the Christ and his bride, the Church. We are baptized near the entrance, for this is the beginning of our path. We enter the Church through Baptism and are invited to journey in time to the altar table. We reply to this invitation in Holy Confirmation. We say yes, and now we don our wedding garment – our spirit of penitence and worship – to take a seat at the festival table, to take part in the great celebration, the Eucharistic feast. 

So the Bride of Christ becomes the Family of God, as God enters each of us, and we are linked with one another in a deeply satisfying and sacramental way. We cherish one another and we partake, take part, in one another’s joys and sorrows. The newlyweds I congratulated this morning hopefully will be blessed with children, the incarnation of their love. So too, our Family of God shall share this blessing with them; we shall welcome each child through the open doors of our parish church. We shall baptize them and through water and spirit shall invite them on the journey to the altar, to their Confirmation, to their taking part in the wedding feast of the Lamb at the Eucharistic table.

We live in a dark and nihilistic age. And so, it seems to me, that the light within the Church shines even brighter, in contrast. But each of us must accept the invitation to enter the light, so that we may truly love one another, so that we may fully see the path ahead, the choices we will  need to make along the way. We must don the wedding garments of Baptism and Confirmation. We must wear the robe of penitence and sing the songs of praise, as we mourn and we celebrate our sisters and our brothers.

We have been invited to love, to share incarnation on earth, to journey with one another, to ring the chimes and toll the bells as we pass through these remarkable and holy passages of life.

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On Angels and Devils and Holy Confirmation

Posted on September 29, 2013 | 1 comment

I recently finished a book called Raising a Modern Day Knight: A Father’s Role in Guiding His Son to Authentic Manhood, by Robert Lewis. One of the many valuable suggestions in this unique and compelling work is the creation of ceremonies that celebrate stages of maturity. These ceremonies are not merely for father and son, but for communities of fathers and sons. They serve to give the young man self-knowledge, ideals, and support.

Ceremonies marking rites of passages are not new to mankind, but with the disintegration of American culture, ceremonies are often overlooked. It seems that there was a time when the many cultures that formed our union melted into the pot we called America. Not so much anymore, as we shift to encourage multi-culturism, which whether intended or not, affirms division rather than union. It is true that our many ethnic threads strengthen us and richly texture our nation. But being a naturally inclusive and friendly people, we have chosen a celebration of division, so that what defines America – both internationally and domestically – has become increasingly difficult to state.

This morning when we celebrated Holy Confirmation in our parish church, I was thankful for this moment of definition. The bishop laid his hands upon the heads of the confirmands as they knelt on the steps leading to the altar. As Anglican-Catholics, we believe that Confirmation marks publicly the moment when children become adults in the Church. For adult confirmands it marks a new adulthood in the Church, as they witness to their beliefs. The younger confirmands are asked to confirm the promises that were made for them as infants in Baptism. They are of an age of reason, no longer children, and they can promise with understanding. “Do  you promise to follow Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour?” the bishop asks them. The bishop then prays that they be strengthened by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, and that they be given the Holy Ghost’s gifts of grace: wisdom and understanding, counsel and ghostly strength, knowledge and godliness, and lastly, holy fear.

They will need these knightly gifts, I thought, as they live out their faith in a world often hostile to Christianity. They shall don the shield of faith and the armor of righteousness, and the Church, the Body of Christ, shall comfort and nurture them throughout their lives, through marriage, childbirth, sickness, even in their dying. God shall never abandon them. As a shepherd he shall lead them beside still waters. He shall restore their souls.

It was particularly fitting, on this bright Sunday morning as September gives way to October, that we celebrated these Confirmations, these confirmings of faith and receivings of the Holy Ghost, on the feast day of St. Michael and All Angels. As the lector read from Holy Scripture, we heard the account of the great war in heaven when Michael the Archangel threw out Lucifer and his angels. “The great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him… And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony… Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” (Revelation 12:7+)

Angels and devils are not common beliefs today. We might speak of angels whimsically as though reliving the fairy tales of our childhood. But devils are definitely not the stuff of acceptable conversation. Yet Scripture affirms their existence. Demons are said to be angels – pure spirits created separately from mankind – who have rebelled against God and now are given a span of time to scurry among the people of the earth, wreaking havoc where they can and undoing the good that is being done.

The good angels, however, are with us too, and we can call upon them. They are all around us, if welcome. And Confirmation – that affirmation of faith in Jesus Christ – welcomes them. These angels help us to be modern-day knights. They guide us on our journey on earth as we head to heaven. At times, I believe, they protect us from bodily harm. Dear friends of mine recently survived a rear-end collision, emerging from their totaled sedan shaken but, it turns out, having suffered only minor wounds. Angels were there, I am sure, as the drunk driver slammed into their car, stopped at a red light. Angels took some of the brunt of that crash.

So with ceremony and prayer and song, with ritual and the dance of the Eucharist, we re-affirm who we are, what we are, where we are going. We re-affirm to whom we belong, and with the company of the angelic host we are given our own wings to heaven. With the gifts of the Holy Ghost we are embraced by the Body of Christ.

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Shattering Time

Posted on September 8, 2013 | 1 comment

An elderly member of our parish journeyed to Heaven this last week. Her photograph was in our church’s narthex this morning – bright eyes, red hair, full of life.  It had been many years since I had seen her like that, for she had been weakening for a good and Godly while, and I smiled in recognition. She was younger then. (So was I.) 

I carried her image in my mind as I entered the nave and took a seat alongside my husband in the long oak pew. Now, thinking over the morning and my friend’s celestial journey, I am grateful for this great ark of the church that cradles each of us in this world. We the faithful sit in the nave, a word derived from the Latin navis or ship, and our own church is shaped rather like a boat, this one sailing the seas of Oakland, California. One day I too, like my friend, will journey out of this world and into the next, but for the time being I am protected by the Church. And not only protected, but in this womb I am fed by the Church, until reborn in Heaven. And what is the heavenly food that I feed upon in this womb of an ark?  I feed upon prayer, worship, scripture, and God himself in the Mass.

Today was fittingly a day of rebirth in our parish, celebrating the opening of the new Sunday School year with our annual Ice Cream Social. The children trooped up the red-carpeted aisle for their blessings and trooped out to their class. Soon they skipped downstairs for ice cream and home-made hot fudge. There were many smiles as we indulged, and more smiles as we were quizzed on Bible story facts and figures. There were prizes too.

Our children represent a new generation being raised up that replaces those, like my friend, that have journeyed on. So we teach (and show) our children the love of God. We tell them the stories of his great acts among us, those great acts that led up to the Incarnation in Nazareth two thousand years ago and those great acts since the Incarnation. Our preacher said today (and now I paraphrase, reaching into my rough memory) that the Cross intersected time and space; the Cross made past and future all new, re-newed. It shattered time. And I saw in my mind as he spoke the fissures of an earthquake crackling and cracking through time and space, in every direction. The Cross and the Resurrection changed everything. The Cross vanquished time by vanquishing death, giving us eternity.

We teach our children these stories of before the Cross (B.C., Before Christ) and after the Cross (A.D., After Christ, the Year of Our Lord). We call these eras Old Testament and New Testament (literally the old and the new testimony or witness or history) and we cradle our children in the ark of these stories, each account true in different degrees and ways, so that the new generation may know and be protected by the love of God. We teach our children God’s commandments so that they may experience God’s loving forgiveness. We teach them to sing and celebrate and offer themselves to God in the great liturgy of the Mass, so that they may receive God back in the bread and wine, and so be inspired, full of the Spirit, as they travel through the hours and days of the week ahead.

We cradle our children in the Church, just as my friend had been nourished and cradled by the Church in her earthly life. Through the Church God holds us close to him, and we sail on the waves of our sea of earthly time, the way clearly charted and the destination in sight. The bow of our ark cleaves cleanly through the waters, whether stormy or still, our ship directed and driven by the words of consecration before the altar within, where in the glorious song and silence of each Sunday morning (and sometimes during the week), God’s priest re-members (pulls into the present) the action of the Cross and  shatters time in the mystery of the Mass.

Dear Dwan, may your soul rest in peace and may light perpetual shine upon you.

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Meaningful Work

Posted on September 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

My sixty-seventh summer has passed. My sixty-seventh autumn is upon me. And linking summer and autumn is Labor Day. While instituted in 1887 to honor union labor, Labor Day has come to be a celebration of all kinds of work, whether organized into unions or not. 

I believe human beings are wired to work, to produce, to create in some fashion. The Midwest killing over the summer by someone who said he was bored reveals the despairing numbness that comes from lack of purpose, lack of work.

Purpose. Rick Warren speaks of The Purpose Driven Life. We ask one another, what is the purpose of man? What is the purpose of life? We seek meaning, and work is an expression of the meaning we have found.

Of course there are many jobs that seem mindless, meaningless. I filed and typed for long hours and longer days as I cobbled my may through college, and later, as a single parent, as I supported myself and my young son. Not all work is meaningful, but most work is productive, if at least for the boss or the company worked for. At the end of each day, the file cabinet was plump with the filings from my inbox, and my inbox was empty. I had been productive. And when I received my paycheck it felt good to have earned it.

And in a sense every job, including sitting here at my computer in the comfort of my office lined with icons and books, with my cat nearby and my husband’s ballgame heard in the distance, has long periods of routine work, of slugging along. But I have been blessed with meaning in my life, so that no matter what work I do, it is offered to God. I am secure in the knowledge that I have tried to listen to God’s voice, I have tried to understand the next step to take, the next turn in the next crossroads (no pun intended).

Christians are or should be purpose-driven people. They know who they are and why they are and how they came to be. They know where they are going and they know the way. Sometimes we take wrong turns, more than we confess, but God brings us back. Through his Church he gives us road signs and we finally get back on the main highway, the way to home.

This morning we witnessed two young adult baptisms in church. The young ladies, one finishing high school this coming year, the other in the middle of her college years, had been brought home to the Church by their grandparents. I thought how wonderful it was that at this moment in their lives, when so many crossroads would soon appear before them – choices of classes, schools, careers, dating, marriage, family – they would have the grace of God empowering them, nudging them along. They would see signs that would steer them in the right direction. And as they make these choices, they would have a reference point – God’s will, his design for them, as expressed through the Church.

We are forever wandering and forever coming home, every one of us. And the nature of what we do with our lives, how we spend our time each day – our work as children of God on Planet Earth – matters. It matters because everything matters, everything counts. We may not always get it right, but as a member of the Body of Christ, we have signposts helping us along, helping us choose. 

Many baby-boomers will be retiring in the next decade, and they will face these choices, how they will spend the rest of their lives, their hours, their days, their weeks, their years. Some will volunteer at local hospitals. Some will take another job to supplement their income. Some will spend precious time with children and grandchildren, or neighbors and friends. Some will volunteer at church or temple. Some will give their time to spas and saunas, fitness clubs and golf courses. Whatever the trade-off that is made for the remainder of their days, they will choose activity that brackets and organizes their time, and this choice will shape them in the last leg of their journey through time. 

For me, I have the Church, and through the Church I have God. With the Church as my home, with the family of God surrounding me, with the sacraments and hymns and joyful Sunday worship, I have signposts along the way. I need only watch for them. Without the Church I should wander aimlessly, bored, purposeless, without meaning to my work. With the Church I can see; I am given productive years as I travel the last leg of my journey to Heaven. In the Church I am home, and when I stray I know the way back. A good exchange for my working life.

In today’s Gospel, Christ tells of the ten lepers he healed, but only one returned to give thanks. Today, this Labor Day weekend, I give thanks for the meaningful work God offers us, and I return each Sunday to give thanks again and again.

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