Tag Archives: Holy Spirit

June Journal, First Sunday after Trinity

Posted on June 22, 2025 | Leave a comment

There are times when truth hits forcefully (gob-smacks? or perhaps God-smacks?), as though you always knew it but had buried it and now it appeared like a long lost coin or memory or friend. God’s truth is like that. The Trinity is like that. Love is like that.

Our Bishop Morse of blessed memory often said that the Trinity – the remarkable union of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit – is the love between the three persons of God. It was a confusing idea for me until recently when I thought about our parish churches.

For it is the Trinity that lives in our churches (or should). God the Holy Spirit welcomes folks into his home. Through an usher, He opens the door, greets us warmly, hands us a bulletin, and leads us to our pew. He will inspire us, fill us with his spirit, as we pray and sing together. God the Father presides as Host of the banquet, insuring order and peace through ceremony and ritual. God the Son awaits on the altar – that banquet table – in the species of bread and wine.

It is this Love that we enter as we step into a church. And as we settle in, we are aware of great beauty – the beauty of an organ playing a Bach prelude, the beauty of flaming candles on a linen-draped altar, the beauty of cleanliness suffused with old incense, the beauty of symmetry, the space pointing and leading to the Lord of Lords and away from the self of self, you and I. We know, dwelling in this house for an hour, the beauty of holiness. We know love. We know the Holy Trinity.

The beauty of holiness. What is that? Amazingly, such beauty is by design and not difficult to create with the help of imagining first impressions as the stranger becomes our sister or brother. It is Worship 101, my compilation fron fifty-seven years of Anglican Eucharists in many parishes with many Families of God, my dear brothers and sisters:

  1. The porch and front doors must invite, be in good shape, with clear and attractive signage nearby. In this way the church family introduces who they are and what they offer, good information for the visitor.
  2. The entry or narthex also welcomes, is clean and orderly, and provides information and direction.
  3. Greeters and ushers welcome the visitor personally, creating a human bond with strangers entering a sacred space. The usher is the visitor’s first contact and must be Christlike in caring and concern as folks find refuge from the secular without, entering the sacred within. The bulletin he offers contains the service with hymns and prayers as well as welcoming words, inviting all to stay for coffee.
  4. The interior’s first impression: what we hear, what we see. The organ plays preludes to settle the mind in beauty, to prepare a quiet mind to worship; the sanctuary is alight with candles lit on the altar, a Sanctus lamp burns before the tabernacle; the hushed holiness is tangible.
  5. The space is clean and tidy – brochures, hymnals, and prayerbooks neatly placed in the pews, readily available.
  6. The Family of God is on time: the church is open and all is ready at least 15 minutes before the scheduled liturgy so we may prepare our hearts and minds for worship and to receive visitors. The service begins promptly unless there is an exception for good reason. The visitor’s time is precious. The church must respect that. He will judge this family of God in many ways, some clear, some not. He may not bother to return. Most do not. We are marketing the Family of God and we must think of first impressions.
  7. The Family of God sings and prays together, involved in the Work of the Liturgy, standing to sing, kneeling to pray, sitting to listen to instruction (exception is the Holy Gospel, when we stand). We contribute our voices in prayer and song. The words we say and sing together teach us about God and Man, Salvation and Love.
  8. Sermons are concise and well crafted (ten minutes); they are scriptural and doctrinally sound. Announcements reveal our family life together – invitations to coffee after the service extend our hospitality; practical matters as to receiving the Holy Eucharist are explained. Can all receive? How do I receive? What is the custom here? Can I just receive a blessing? How?
  9. The Holy Eucharist is intoned by the priest with reverence, without drama and exaggeration, but heartfelt, each word a call upon Almighty God; it is not a recitation, but the celebrant says the words as if for the first time, standing on holy ground, the burning bush on the altar. He faces the altar representing us in the pews, offering the Holy Mass for us, his Family of God.

With these guidelines we create beauty – ordered beauty. We also create love – the love of family, the Family of God, the Bride of Christ, the Church. Within this love we meet our salvation, now and in Eternity.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger recently said that immigrating is like being invited into someone’s home. I arrive on time. I knock or ring the bell to let them know I am present, having been invited. The host opens the door (freely). I cross the threshold – the border – and enter the home, this personal space. They are the host. I am their guest. I follow custom and courtesy, respecting their rules. I wear proper garments. I take the seat shown to me. I bring gifts to show my gratitude – my time, my talent, my treasure.

The host has worked to prepare for my arrival – cleaned the house, welcomed me warmly, ushered me to a place of comfort, rest, and nourishment.

Just so, when I cross the threshold of a church and enter into this beauty of holiness, I experience hospitality and know I have come home. For the church connects our two homes – Earth and Heaven. It is a bridge, or path, or tunnel. It is the outspread arms of Christ welcoming me. I leave Earth behind when I cross the threshold. I step up the aisle toward Heaven in the tabernacle on the altar. In the next hour I will dwell in God and He in me. I will be changed.

The Family of God loves the stranger and opens the doors early, just in case. As mentioned, the organist begins early. The healing beauty of music pours out the doors onto the porch and pavement, calling all to come and see.
At one time – before the locking of churches – I could drop in unannounced like a beloved family member. I could step through the doors and enter a hushed and holy place and dwell for a time in the love of the Holy Trinity. I might be alone for a time in this peaceful beauty, a precious time in the quiet, kneeling before Christ in the tabernacle, signified by a red lamp burning. The silence quiets me, surrounding me with prayers of the faithful through the years – my soul family – in this space and time. I open a prayerbook, turn the pages, pray the prayers and psalms, and thus add my own heart’s desires to the weave of time past and time future, now contained in time present.

If we are faithful with the basics of being good hosts and welcoming the stranger (Liturgy 101) we may not see a great difference in growth or it may be slow and steady. But we will know we have laid the foundation to build upon in our parish life. We know we have done what is required. We must not neglect these routines of caretaking or we will grow inward, become a closed funeral society, a family perhaps but not a Family of God. We will become blind and deaf and mute.

And so we keep the faith by practicing faithfulness in all these little things, making a home for the Holy Trinity in our neighborhood, a home where He can be Host and welcome the stranger.

In that spirit of welcome, I’m pleased to announce another Goodreads Giveaway, this time my seventh novel, Angel Mountain (Wipf and Stock, 2020), in celebration of Western Civilization, libraries, and literature. For more information visit Goodreads Giveaways.

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Notes from Paris

Posted on May 24, 2015 | Leave a comment

IMG_0697 SMALLWe have settled into a historic Left Bank hotel not far from the Seine’s Pont Neuf, having traveled from London on the Eurostar train, via the Chunnel. 

As we sped underneath the waters of the English Channel (do they call it the French Channel on this side?) I marveled again at such technology and tried not to think of the seas above us. Security had been increased at the London St. Pancras Station, and as we edged step by step in line with too much luggage to drag and hoist onto the belt and the x-ray machines and then maneuver through passport control, I tried not to think of terrorism in crowded public places. 

Our modern world has paid a price for its modernity. Village or neighborhood risk has expanded to world-wide risk. We read of tornadoes and hurricanes and earthquakes far away and we mourn the victims. We follow wars and genocides and beheadings as though they were close by. The world has shrunk to our phone or laptop or TV. 

No wonder some are depressed, angered, and grieved. No wonder the suicide rates rise and euthanasia even considered. We feel for the planet, its peoples. Their sufferings are ours. While it seems at times too much for one person to bear, perhaps it is good to know these things happen and can happen; perhaps it is good that we are forced to look and see, to pull our heads out of the proverbial sand. But history attests that disaster is not new, whether natural or manmade; what is new is that we are aware of such horrors, we watch them unfold, sometimes on live media. 

IMG_0688 SMALLBut then, for Christians, we have our annual festival of Pentecost, the breath of the Holy Spirit breathing upon the disciples in Jerusalem. The disciples are given the wondrous power of language, to speak to those of differing tongues about the wonderful works of God. And such language, such speech, was repeated again and again in sermons and holy suppers that first century of the Church. These words, forming at first an oral tradition, were finally written down, first in St. Paul’s letters and St. Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, and then in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those codices, thought by many to have been the first use of the codex (leafed book) as opposed to scrolls, were again copied and recopied through the centuries down to the present day. 

So not only do we have the horizontal present-day knowledge of events worldwide, but we have vertical timeline knowledge, memory connecting the past to the present, coloring it. This timeline forms a historical highway leading to a crossroads where these two paths of knowledge meet. And of course, the road to the past also travels into the future, and we look ahead to the next minute, hour, day, week, year, and to our final passing into another, better world. We look back to our personal past and forward to our personal future; we look back to humanity’s past and forward to humanity’s future. And all the while we absorb the events of the world in the present day, surrounding us and demanding our constant attention. 

IMG_0685SMALLWe have in a sense eaten of the tree of knowledge, and we suffer for it. I am happy to have modern medicine and hygiene and the comforts of today, central heating and plumbing and running water. But science goes further than basic comforts; it allows us to design babies and kill those left over or unwanted. Such knowledge is godlike and without God’s help, we are lost in a sea of facts, data, with no good way to make sense of the jumble. The tree of knowledge, without God, produces poisonous fruit, deathly fruit. 

And so God gives us that help if we desire it. I love this Pentecost scene in Acts 2, when the disciples receive the power of the Holy Spirit. This breath of God comes upon them as a “rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house… there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire… upon each of them.” They are empowered by God; they have been given the means to express the profound events of the Incarnation and Resurrection that they have witnessed. Until this moment they had hid, timid, afraid, waiting for a promise made at the Ascension. After this moment they knew what to do; they knew what to say; they knew to whom to say it, where to say it, and above all how to say it. And of course, in time they confessed to what they had seen with their lives, as martyrs, with the exception of St. John. 

Pentecost is the union of God and man. It is the filling of man with God. And soon, as the disciples broke bread as Christ instructed them to do, consecrating the bread and wine to become his body and blood, taking and eating, and re-membering (re-forming) him, as they met together for these holy suppers of thanksgiving, eucharists, they became more and more filled with God, through his Spirit and his Son. 

God made sense of the marvelous works he had done on the Cross and in the empty tomb. He had made sense of it all and of all of us and our wars and our disasters. We too can enjoy this making-sense; we too can take and eat and re-member; we too can find answers to the disturbing tumult around us. We need only head for our local church. 

Paris is tumultuous and full of tourists this late in May. But on Sunday mornings it suddenly becomes quiet. The streets are silent, some empty. Families gather for brunch or bask in the parks. Lovers stroll. Cats scrounge for scraps in the open cafes. But the balmy weather is edged with sudden chill and brisk breezes and clouds scuttle over an ever-changing sky. The river rolls under the many bridges, and plane trees, lushly green, are happy with the end of winter. 

IMG_0691SMALLWe stepped through the quiet lanes this morning to say prayers with other faithful at the ancient church of St. Severen (13th C), and we followed the French Messe on the handout as best we could. The church was packed; candles flamed, stained glass glittered over high gothic double ambulatories; children in white capes and headbands with Holy Spirit paper flames, joined the procession. The songs and the singing echoed up and over us, swirling into the vaults. 

At peace with the city, with ourselves, and with God, we made our way to the Bateau-Mouches, the riverboats, to see Paris from the Seine. I thought how, at least for a time, everything made perfect sense, this Pentecote Sunday in Paris.

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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 Saints and Souls and the Breath of Life

Posted on November 3, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’m working on my next novel.

In developing my three major characters, I want to hear them speak to me. So I’m having them write their life stories up to the moment of the first page of my newly created plot. I’ve collected over the last year aspects of their personalities and the crises that have formed them, and these lists of attributes and events will hopefully mold a character that rings true. 

This early stage often stuns me with its necessary intricacy (and intimacy), as I also look around me to observe friends and family more closely (watch out). For each one of us is deeply complex with infinite layers of experience, feeling, thought. I often wonder at creation itself, God forming Adam from the dust of the earth, then breathing life into him. It is, of course, the breath of life that makes Adam live, transforming the clay figure with transcendence. It is the breath of God.

No wonder developing my characters’ characters is a complex undertaking, for in this way it is holy, nearly unreachable, untouchable. At times I move through a foggy darkness, reaching out to touch the next detail, character-istic. I pray. I ask for guidance. And I listen to what the characters say to me. And what better way to listen than by reading (and writing) their own biographies? It is a fascinating exercise. 

Icons – colorful saints’ images painted against a golden background – lean against the crowded books on the shelves in my home office, shimmering in the shuttered half-light. They are a pleasant company, glowing, seeming interested in my doings, full of beauty, truth, and I know from their own biographies, full of goodness, Godliness, God.

As we celebrated All Hallows Eve (Halloween), All Saints Day, and All Souls Day this last week, I have been thinking about the layers of saints’ lives, the “Acts” recorded in the many hagiographies handed down to us through the centuries. The lives of the saints are often written with carefully chosen (or recalled) details that become enshrined, but what about the other fragments of their choices, their loves and their hates, their struggles with the everyday challenges of living with one another in a fallen world, a world not very hallowed, holy.

And I wonder about the rest of those departed, those remembered on All Souls Day, thinking perhaps the two groups merge together, that many of the Souls are Saints and the line between the two isn’t clear. I’ve known men and women who I consider to be saintly, definitely inhabiting that borderland. I spoke with several this morning as I sipped tea in the parish under-croft (no names) after church. What has brought them to this moment in their lives when they are so full of God, so full of love for all those around them? So sacrificial, so humble too. And most of all, so joyful. I simply bask in their love; I breathe it in. 

That breath of God that gave life to Adam continues to breathe life into each of us. We take it for granted. We breathe the air around us, into our bodies from outside, and we are told that it enters our lungs and provides crucial oxygen to our blood that then streams through our flesh and muscle, circulating in a tempo we call our pulse. I try and remember to pause and breathe deeply, to appreciate this simple miracle. And in this same way we breathe in God through prayer, sacrament, worship, so that He may circulate through our souls, our lives. And I must pause and remember to breathe Him in deeply too, for both are life itself.

And both kinds of breathing form us, move us towards and away, direct us, influence our choices. Body and soul, air and spirit, we are complex unions of these things. Complex and beautiful, true human beings of the created order.

We live and breathe and have our being in something of our choosing. The saints we honored on All Saints Day chose God. The souls we prayed for on All Souls Day sometimes chose God or never chose Him.

We are characters in the greatest story ever told, the story of our lives. We live and we love. We choose. We act. We move from soul-hood to saint-hood with each breath, if we remember to breathe. 

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Friends

Posted on October 6, 2013 | 1 comment

I am often struck by how unique each of one of us is, and the miracle of this truth occurring again and again and again…. into infinity. 

It is like the prism of color we find in light, the colors that aren’t actually colors, but merging into those on either side. Where is green? Where is red? Where is blue? And yet every shade is there, to an infinite degree. It is like the perfect note soaring into a blend with other perfect notes in a string quartet, notes creating melody creating song, a song that echoes in your minutes and hours and days. It is like beauty, this unique person in a unique body. 

And so when I gaze at my friends, ordinary folks chatting around tables and milling in our undercroft after church I am often stunned by the glory of God’s creative power. I heard in a sermon once that each person is like a universe with its own planets and suns and moons revolving around one another. And yet the universes come together at times to form society, to gather in gatherings, to befriend in friendship. 

Friendship, our preacher said today, is something one works on. It is also a key and valued component of a good marriage. In friendship we look after one another, we sacrifice for one another, we celebrate and mourn with one another. We are not alone when we have friends, and to have friends one must be a friend, one must be-friend.

In our Gospel reading today Christ heals the man with palsy, who is dropped through the roof on a pallet into the crowd. His friends organized this operation, having faith that the Galilean prophet would heal their sick friend. Somehow, they open up the roof of the house and lower him in. They have faith. 

They have faith that the Prophet will respect their friend’s presence, lying on the pallet. They know that Christ will see this man as beloved and unique. They know that Christ will, in effect, see him. They are right.

Christ does see him. He sees inside of him, all of him, every shadowy corner. He says, Your sins are forgiven. He sees the man fully for who he is, good and bad. He loves him. He redeems him.

I have a number of friends who are crippled, or palsied, or maimed in some way. For that matter, everyone I know is maimed in some way, be it spiritual or physical, including myself. Yet the love of God sees us and holds us close, each of us. For we are created in his image, unique and miraculous beings placed in our moment in time. And we are given the power to love as he loves, respecting and cherishing all human life, from the womb to the grave.

I have been watching the video, War and Remembrance, a TV drama which reenacts the horrible holocaust of World War II. Here we see individuals who did not respect human life, who did not cherish each and every person created by God. It is a chilling reminder of a slippery slope.

To say we are part of the human race is not enough. We are much more than that. We are brothers and sisters, befriended and cherished by God Almighty, and we go through our time on earth breathing his breath, the power of his Holy Spirit.

My sister, the poet Barbara Budrovich, sent me one of her delightful poems, which, while this one is about punctuation, it is also about friendship, for our language reflects our deepest desires:

Who Am I?
Barbara Budrovich
 
I’m Comma’s identical twin.
 
With s by my side
I make others multiply.
 
Like our Ellipses
I stand for the missing.
 
I dwell in the sky
And bring–to the lonely–companions
Worth holding.

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Sunday Surprises

Posted on August 4, 2013 | Leave a comment

It’s been a day of pleasant surprises.

As I checked my email this morning, before leaving for church, my picture flashed up on Catholic.Ink, a newsletter of CatholicFiction.net and Tuscany Press showcasing Catholic authors and books. The interview was a while back, and I had forgotten it. What a surprise! I read it with fear and trembling, thinking occasionally, is that really me? It was one of many seeds planted in the last year. Many seeds I plant never sprout, let alone flower. So it was a pleasant surprise. 

I had forgotten about it by the time we arrived at church in a bitter, numbing fog. I turned on the heat in the Sunday School rooms (heat in August? I asked myself, shivering). The balloons and welcome sign were already by the entrance and I set out the materials for the crafts, the cloth for our circle time, the storybook, the snack, and the poster board attendance chart waiting for its sticky stars to shine like a rainbow. Our sunflower plants had emerged from the black loamy soil in their little pails and there were even some green leaves. Natalie (3 ½) will be happy with that, I thought. 

Summer Sundays are often quiet and predictable, for folks go on vacation, attendance is lower, and today our rector was gone as well, and it, well, it just seemed like it would be quiet, slow. 

The children arrived and we stuck our sticky stars on the chart and gathered together around the circle, praying, talking, and singing about the saints of God. We worked on our crafts and watered the plants and lined up in the narthex for our blessing, then stepped solemnly up the red-carpeted aisle to the altar rail where our senior priest blessed us and gave the teachers Holy Communion. We padded back to our classroom and finished our projects.

We were beginning to put things away when I saw, standing in the doorway, a gentleman from the past whose uncle had been a dear friend, now in Heaven, probably one of those saints we were singing about. What joy it gave my husband and me to chat with Tim, mid-forties I guessed but looking much younger as he spoke of God in his life (“I’ve been reborn,” he cried at one point), what memories he brought back, as though Father Gilman were right there with us, chuckling and rubbing his chin, and saying I told you so. 

Happy with this turn of events, we headed toward the stairs to go down to the hall for coffee. Swimming in a current of memories of Father Gilman, I was surprised by the approach of my good friend Edwina. She introduced me to her pretty granddaughters, seventeen and eighteen. “They want to be baptized,” she announced quietly, her face alight as though she had discovered a great secret or was planning a coup. “When can we do it?” she asked me. I led them to the baptismal font in the back of the nave and we spoke a bit about baptism, the action of God through water and the Holy Spirit, the becoming part of the family of God, the Body of Christ. I gave them some materials to look over and promised that the rector would call them soon. By the time we all trundled down to have our coffee, we had become family, soon to become God’s family, a close connection indeed.

Downstairs in the parish hall I rejoined my husband and Tim. We chatted about Father Gilman, the old times, sharing the many stories of this robust man of God. Father Gilman was tall, a hefty man, once an engineer (he built tunnels through the Rocky Mountains, he told me), who had found his priestly vocation upon retirement. He loved to laugh, but what many recalled was his discipline. He ran the Bishop’s office like a Marine another once said (I for one appreciated this aspect, working in the office from time to time). He barked at acolytes who were late to Mass. He was a practical man and a spiritual man too, an effective combination. He knew when to be quiet and he knew when to act. He was thoughtful and watchful. He wasn’t afraid of warning people they were going to step off a cliff. As we chatted with Tim, I thought how the past linked us together like a great fishing net, or wove us into a huge tapestry. Seeds sprouted, full-flowered, within minutes in my soul. “As you get older,” Tim said, shaking his head and smiling (just as his uncle once did), “you look back and see connections.” How true, I thought, and how good it was to have such blessings travel with us as we age. 

Looking back in my own life I see patterns form, remarkable connections made, and I often think the saints in Heaven pull the strings this way and that as though we were part of a great drama, but of course it’s so much more than that. I do wonder, though, at times, if one day from my Heavenly perch I might be able to nudge or prod those I love who are still on earth, nudge them toward God, since I would be surrounded by the power and glory of the Father, Christ would be beside me, the wind of the Holy Spirit would be at my back, the angels would be whispering and fluttering. The temptation, it seems, would be to forget those on earth when one is so transfixed with God himself. One day I shall see; one day I shall know.

In the meantime I watch and wait for these amazing surprises, these moments of sudden joy, of the sun coming out. C.S. Lewis once said (and Father Raymond Raynes said this as well, so I’m not sure who was first; they were contemporaries, both saintly men) that belief in Christianity was like belief in the sun rising. When the sun rises, we know it has risen not because we can see the sun clearly, but because we can see everything else. Just so, God lights up the world and we can see.

I suppose the greatest surprise of all is that I’m still surprised, surprised by joy, way more than pleasantly surprised, but stunningly, excruciatingly, sweetly surprised. Today I have added a few more bright sticky stars to my own chart of Sundays. My chart is sprouting color like crazy, this sudden Sunday, the Tenth after Trinity in the year 2013, with all these rainbows weaving through my time, here and in eternity.

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Trinity Song

Posted on May 26, 2013 | Leave a comment

I had hoped on the drive to church, as I raised the posy of red and pink roses to my nose, inhaling the sweetness, that we would sing two of my favorite hymns today. For today is Trinity Sunday in our Anglo-Catholic parish and we often include the robust I bind unto myself today the strong name of the Trinity… (St. Patrick’s Breastplate) and the stunning Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, early in the morning our song shall rise to thee….

It was a colorful, crisp day, unseasonably cool, the air brushed clean and clear by the breeze. The sun shone bright upon this gentle portion of earth that we call home. I clipped the five roses from my garden – ripe and full with edges browning. A few petals fluttered off as I hurried out the door, and we headed for church. I rushed downstairs to the parish hall to place them in a vase before a small statue of Our Lady and set them on the refreshment table.

I checked on the children in the Sunday School and realized they were sitting in the main church with their teachers. They were going to join the Trinity Sunday procession. Soon, the organ thundered the commanding notes, “I bind myself…” and we followed the thurifer swinging the sweet clouds of incense, preparing our way, the torchbearers with their flaming candles lighting our path, the crucifer with his crucifix held high, leading us. We took our places behind the celebrant in his golden cope and the deacons. The hymnbook said to sing this hymn “in unison, with energy,” and that we did, as we processed up the red-carpeted aisle to the chancel steps and turned right to the side doors.

We stepped outside to the sidewalk of Lawton Street and continued alongside the church. It felt good to be singing to the Trinity in a public space, traveling through the neighborhood, somehow linking us together. Was God smiling? I think so. It was a short distance – half a block – but it was a huge journey from inside to outside, from inside sacred space to outside secular, from the dark ark of the nave to the open sea of Lawton. We turned into the parish courtyard, following the crucifix above us, the choir booming as we marched, and up the front steps and inside once again. We did indeed bind ourselves as we walked the walk and sang the song. We bound ourselves to the Trinity and to one another. We also invited our neighbors to be a part of our world, to be with us.

We are liturgical sacramental Christians. We love song and we love the dance of liturgy, of parade, of expression through movement. It is difficult for us to remain still for long – we stand to sing, kneel to pray, make the Sign of the Cross over heart and mind. We voice Scripture in our verbal responses, and we pray together learned prayers that grow more dear with each saying. Our actions grow within us. They grow us. They texture us with God.

And so, as I knelt after receiving my Communion, singing with my brothers and sisters Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty…, I thought how the Trinity was like that too – an active love between the Father and the Son, a love we call the Holy Spirit, a spirit weaving us all together as we partook of God the Son and sang to the Three-in-one.

Our preacher mentioned how our Nicene Creed describes the Trinity, paragraph by paragraph. He said to also consider the Te Deum, a prayer that is part of our morning prayer office. It also describes the three natures of God. And lastly, the lovely Gloria which we sing at every Mass (except during Lent, I believe). So through words spoken we engraft this mystery onto, into our souls, to be reborn through memory again and again.

Ah, memory. And it is Memorial Day weekend, a time of memory, of thanksgiving for lives given so that we might worship today as free citizens in America, the land of the free. For without the sacrifices of these brave men and women we would not be free, would not be allowed to worship. Without their lives given we would not be processing up Lawton, singing to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

As we left church for home, I smiled. It was a good Trinity Sunday indeed. Not only two of my favorite hymns, but a glorious procession as well, singing to the Trinity.

And everyone thought the roses were lovely.

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The Miracle of Words

Posted on May 19, 2013 | 2 comments

Words are miraculous. Formed from letters, they grow into sentences and paragraphs. While usually letters alone do not represent thoughts, a single word does. So it is a big jump, a stupendous growth spurt, from letters to words.

Letters make sounds when spoken, spurted into the air, breathing upon the hearer. Letters don’t have to be heard, however, they may be merely seen on a page or screen, but even then they are heard silently in the mind and sometimes even in the heart and memory.

You could say all expression begins in the mind. I have a thought and I desire to share it with you. So I look for words, not letters – the letters are assumed, whole language is so automatic – to string together so that I may express my thought. “Pass the box of chocolates.” In addition to my simple expression of desire, I have learned to soften statements with please and thank you. I have been encouraged, through the social mores that have raised me, to couch arguments in pleasing phrases, perhaps even more cogent phrases. “Please pass the box of chocolates.” or “Could you possibly pass the box of chocolates? Please have one first… I would be ever so grateful… many many thanks…”

Language grows, is supplemented with leaves and tendrils and flowery shoots. Sometimes it is pruned back to brutal stalks. Language changes with social desire. And then, there are many language gardens in our world, each with its own landscape plan, varying beds of flowers and herbs, each with its own history of planting and fertilizing and harvesting.

Today we celebrated Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples:

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind and if filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language…the wonderful works of God. (Acts 2)

I love this passage in Acts, written by St. Luke. The rushing wind. The cloven tongues that looked like flames of fire. The sudden speaking in other languages. The devout in Jerusalem understanding them, learning of the love of God in the ultimate Word made flesh, their Messiah come.

The Holy Spirit, promised by Christ when he ascended to Heaven, gave them the power of miraculous words, of expressing the news of God’s coming among men to those who spoke in other languages. This was a practical gift. As a reversal of the dispersion in Babel centuries earlier, here in Jerusalem, the people are brought together.

How does God bring us together? How do we share, console, encourage, love? Through words. Through action and touch, to be sure, but through words, a divine and miraculous form of action and touch.

It is interesting that it is the devout in Jerusalem who come together and understand the disciples when they speak. It is those men and women who listen for God’s voice who hear and understand. It is those men and women faithful in prayer and synagogue, who have tried to keep the law as given to Moses, who hear God. True today as well.

Words. From the mind and through the lips, ideas birthed to breathe the air, breezing if not rushing into the ears of the listener, into the heart and mind. I have read that there is a listening component in the effort to hear. There must be a degree of attention paid, of mental effort. Growing deaf and not trying to hear causes a person to slip in the mind as well as hearing. The deaf often retreat into their own worlds. So words, like the seeds in the parable of the sower, must fall on listening ears, ears hearing, minds minding. Those devout men and women in Jerusalem were listening. They were mindful.

The Spirit descends and rushes upon us like a mighty wind. It reforms our minds with new words, new expressions, new ways of seeing the world and God the Father. And yet they are the old words, the old expressions, the old ways, rebirthed uniquely in each of us in the Church where this Spirit lives. Rebirthed in those who listen, who have ears to hear, who pay attention to words on a page.

After Mass we gathered to share coffee and snacks and words. A new family from Nigeria has joined our parish and I asked them how they pronounced their names, hoping beyond hope that the g in Igbonagwam was silent. And, praise God, it was! But still the sounds were foreign to my American ear. The sounds were foreign but so  beautiful, like the deep blue of the sea and the rich green of grass. Like a coral sunset. Like a melody in a major key, lilting, dancing. I asked about another name, Ikeme. My new friends explained how the e sounded like an a, and the i sounded like an e. From their culture into their minds through their lips to my listening ears, into my mind. Then, miraculously, I exhaled the names through my lips into the air, not creating a mighty rushing wind, but definitely a sweet breeze.

A miracle indeed. Come, Holy Spirit, come.

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Pope Francis

Posted on March 17, 2013 | 2 comments

They said the Holy Spirit would decide the election outcome of the new Pope. I wanted to believe this, but if truth be told I fully believed the Cardinals in conclave would decide. I did pray that the Holy Spirit nudge those Cardinals in the right direction.

Now, having heard and seen Pope Francis on television, I believe the choice was a good one. The Holy Spirit did indeed nudge those Cardinals and have the final say. This Pope is a saintly man, a humble suffering man, with a clear vision of rebuilding stone by stone the Church of Saint Peter. Young Francis Bernadone of Assisi heard God speak through the crucifix in the rundown chapel of San Damiano: “Rebuild my church which is falling to ruin.” And so seven hundred years later, a new Francis will answer the call again, will begin the rebuilding, the reforming.

I was deeply touched by the drama of Francis’s first twenty-four hours, particularly his sense of symbolic public act even at this early stage. He stands to meet the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel, rather than sitting on the papal throne. He leaves them before finishing these ritual greetings to step out on the balcony to see his people, who must not be kept waiting any longer. He dons a simple white cassock. He stands on the balcony, his hands at his side, reminding me of Christ before Pilate. Here I am, take me, his body seemed to say. Then there were his first words to his flock. Good evening, brothers and sisters. He asks the packed square to pray for Benedict XVI, Pope Emeritus, and the entire throng say together with one voice their beloved Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Glory Be. Finally, he asks his people to pray for him. The square becomes silent in the damp night as they pray for their new Pope.

He is a man of the poor, pastoring the slums of Buenos Aires. He rode the bus, gave away the mansion, rented rooms where he cooked for himself and turned off the heat. He will rebuild his Church with the stones of poverty and humility, of obedience and discipline. He will expect those alongside him to do the same, as they gather such stones for a stronger foundation.

He is also a man of intellect, understanding. He knows what is true and what is not. He knows God, and he knows God’s Son. He is filled with the Holy Spirit. He is filled because he has emptied his self. He has a big job ahead of him, and with God’s help he can do it.

I wonder if Catholics fully recognize what has happened this week in the Church. I wonder if Christendom fully appreciates the man that will steer the course for the largest body of Christians in the world. This man will make a difference for all of us. He will carry on the work of those before him, but he will do it in a powerful way, a different way. He will straighten the paths with his humility and map the future with his discipline.

Today is Passion Sunday, marking the beginning of Passiontide, the way of love and suffering of Our Lord. These two weeks before Easter are a time of deep Lent, when we draw closer and closer to the Way of the Cross, the path to Golgotha, the hill of the skull. We act out the drama of Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection. We consider what it all means.

I am always startled on Passion Sunday, taken aback as I enter the nave. Everything in the sanctuary is draped in purple – the six tall candlesticks, the tabernacle and altar, the crucifix, the sculpture of the Madonna and Child to the left. All that purple, all that draping of the physical and dear expressions of our faith, stun me each year, again and again. These shrouds of mourning remind me of a world without Christ, a world where we cannot know God, a world without God.

For it is only through Christ that we can know God, who he is, what he is like: just but merciful, a God of love. Because of the living, breathing, temples of God – we Christians, the Body of Christ – his Holy Spirit weaves through this world, through them, through us. Each one of us is a tabernacle holding Christ, depending on the space we have emptied for him. He lives in each of us. He in us; we in him.

As I look at Pope Francis, and recall his namesake, I see a man whose bodily tabernacle has been emptied of pride, of self, emptied so that God can fill him. And I see hope for all of Christendom in this man, in this temple of the Holy Spirit. I see hope for each of us.

And I know, although deeply and profoundly saddened by those purple drapings, that Easter is soon to come. For the Holy Spirit is moving among us.

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