Tag Archives: spiritual

Memorials to Remember

Posted on May 29, 2016 | Leave a comment

Memorial DayTomorrow is Memorial Day, the American holiday that honors all those who died while serving in the nation’s armed forces, defending our borders at home and abroad.

And yesterday was the first anniversary of the death of our Archbishop Morse, a man who died while serving in the Church’s armed forces, defending our borders of life and death, loving us to his last breath.

Today, this Sunday in Trinitytide, connects the two, and my memory remembers these borders of human life, of our nation, our great experiment in democracy, and of our Church, the Body of Christ on earth.

I am editing Bishop Morse’s sermons to be published by the American Church Union. One of the recurring themes is that religious belief begins when we accept our own death. This acknowledgement prompts us to consider the meaning of life, asks us to question who we truly are. What makes us human? Are we any more than a collection of molecules thrown together randomly?

Many have written intriguing answers to these questions. The Christian answer, of course, lies in what we call apologetics, the making a case for belief in a loving God who created each of us with and through love. In fact, as St. John (and my bishop) writes, God is Love. His breath breathed over the waters, created day and night, stars and sun and moon, breathed life into dust to create Adam, en-livening him with Himself. And so the Christian answer is that we are made in God’s image. We will not die, but through union with Christ, God in human form, we will enter eternal glory.

Another theme in Bishop Morse’s sermons is that if you don’t like being in love you won’t like being in Heaven. Falling in love with God is a magnificent journey that never ends.

I’ve been reading a book about this recently, The Romance of Religion, Fighting for Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, by Fr. Dwight Longenecker, a Roman Catholic priest. Father Longenecker invites skeptics to view faith from new perspectives, to live dangerously with an open heart and mind. His blog at Patheos.com is called “Standing on My Head,” titled thus to encourage a new way of looking at Christianity, a more adventurous way, a romantic way.

I often feel guilty that many of my extended family, whom I love dearly, are missing out on life’s most beautiful, good, and true journey. They are, quite bluntly, being left behind. They are not living the great romance between man and God, the falling in love on both sides, the enjoyment and pleasure of knowing their Creator who so loves them.

As a writer I particularly appreciate Father Longenecker’s  apologia, for he explains the role of language and how words themselves link the physical world of matter with the spiritual realm of sharing ideas. He explains the historical roles of heroes and quests and storytelling, of fantasy and fiction and fairy tales. All of these core elements of our humanity, our history, define us as human, and for a reason. They tell us we are creatures greater than our material bodies, more than our lifespans. We are meant for something beyond, something glorious.

When we face our own death (the truth we know to be universally acknowledged, at least in the middle of the night), we become more interested in those spiritual realms, in man’s spirit, in that something beyond the present.

As an English Literature major at San Francisco State in the sixties, I was required to read the existential works of Sartre, Camus, and others. I wish I had been required to read more Dante and Shakespeare, but this was not the fashion. As I absorbed existentialism, the belief that all we have is the present and what we can see, I became keenly aware that I would one day die and that would be the end. The awareness threw me into a deep depression. But in 1967 pills to cure sadness weren’t as ubiquitous as they are today.

I asked the question that awaited in the dark corners of those pages: why bother to live if you were going to die? I considered suicide, for life had no meaning. What pulled me out of the depression was love, the love of a friend who encouraged me to read C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, which provided a logical foundation for belief. Then I crossed the threshold of St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in San Mateo where I found the tools needed to build upon that foundation: Scripture and sacraments, prayer and song, actions and words that defined the glorious worship of this loving God. I fell in love with Love, and with its cousins: beauty, truth, and goodness.

The borders of life are not birth and death but something far better. And like those brave men and women who lived and died defending our nation’s borders, our faithful clergy and laity live and die defending our spiritual borders. In America the two kinds of borders are vitally connected, for without freedom to worship and speak, believers will be silenced.

Memorial Day reminds us that borders preserve a way of life, indeed, preserve life itself. Our laws create borders, lines that we citizens must not cross over, lines drawn by all of us, together. As a culture we draw these lines between other behaviors as well, between the civil and the uncivil, between the mannerly and the unmannerly. Such borders are not legalized but they are protected by social sanctions – applauding and lauding, shunning and shaming. These are borders rooted in Judeo-Christian belief and practice, and should we cease to acknowledge America’s vital history, our borders (both national and social) will collapse.

My novel, The Fire Trail, speaks of these things, reminding us to remember who we are, to memorialize the many Memorial Days that honor our nation’s borders and those men and women who defend them throughout the year. For when we honor those who have died for our freedoms, we turn death into life.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Giving Thanks

Posted on November 23, 2014 | Leave a comment

prayerToday is the last Sunday of the Church Year and the Sunday before our national Day of Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is the best antidote to selfishness and the best prescription for selflessness and thus leads naturally to the First Sunday in Advent.

Melanie McDonagh in the November 1 issue of The British Spectator makes the profound observation that the “cult of mindfulness” is largely a cult of self. It may or may not bring peace, alleviate stress, even heal depression, but it is an isolated lonely cult in which the focus is on one’s inner self. She is correct that the idea of living in the moment is pure Buddhism, and like Buddhism, the idea encourages us to escape suffering rather than face it, wrestle with it, and create meaning from it.

I have found that Christianity and Judaism pull the believer out of himself. It is through being self-less not self-ish that we find peace, and indeed, it is an inner peace that we find. How does this strange contradiction work? It works because in prayer we are focusing on the God who made us, and yet who also lives within us. Without belief in this objectively real God, we are merely wallowing in our own selves. Christianity brings the believer into community with all sorts of folks unlike him or her, different in age, gender, race, class, interests. We rub shoulders, we share tea, we are solicitous of one another. Most of all, we worship God (not ourselves) together, sharing this common outward vision, as we act out and re-present the great liturgical drama of church or temple.

And so Christianity and Judaism urge the believer to look around and, yes, smell the roses and live in the minute, for every minute is a precious gift. But these religions do far more. They urge the believer to face and interact with the real world. We call this interaction love, brotherly love. It is the sacrifice of that precious minute given by God, for the minutes are numbered, in order to give that minute to another, a stranger, someone unlike us. We pray for others; we visit the sick, shut-in, and lonely; we support charities that support life in all its facets, joyful and sorrowful. The history of the West is the history of this urge to better our world, to care for our communities.

Within this urge, this still small voice directing us to love, lies judgment. Judgment is not popular today; we are told we must not point fingers. And yet if we do not see clearly the true nature of what is happening around us and within us, we cannot better the world, and we cannot better ourselves.

God has spoken to his creation through his chosen people over many centuries. He has clearly marked the path to glory. The path takes us outside of ourselves so that God can enter those same selves. By shedding “me,” I miraculously find “me.”

One of the ways God has shown us how to do this is through simple thankfulness. The psalms are full of thanksgiving to God. To pray the psalms is to leave no room for depression. To offer oneself up is to know joy. It’s as simple as that. The Lord’s Prayer opens with praise that pulls us heavenward: Our Father, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come… Thanksgiving lives inside every word of praise.

And so this Thanksgiving Day, I look around me at my world, my nation, my community, my own heart. I try to see honestly, and I see generations of children raised in the cult of mindfulness. I see them highly mindful of their self-esteem, prone to take offense, demanding and self-righteous. They have lost themselves in themselves, as though whirling downwards, pulled into a vortex where depression imprisons them.

But on this Sunday before Advent and before Thanksgiving, I also look around me and see churches and temples where true thanksgiving is offered to a very real and loving Creator. I see voices raised together, not always in tune, singing thanksgiving and praise. I see love weaving among these communities of true believers who thank, not the stars, but the living and Almighty God for their very breath. I see islands of faith that show us how to be free from ourselves, not enslaved by ourselves. We do this by giving thanks to God for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Today is called in our Anglican tradition “Stir-up Sunday,” named after Thomas Cranmer’s powerful Collect, the collecting or gathering prayer for this day, written in the sixteenth century:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may by thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

This is one of the many prayers that have formed the Western tradition. In this prayer we are called to act, to care for those around us, and through the caring itself we are interiorly rewarded. We will be changed.

And so, we look to the season of Advent, the four weeks that proclaim the advent of God becoming man, the Incarnation, the Christ child born in a stable. How do we prepare ourselves for this great coming? We give thanks, and in the giving thanks we receive God, we know joy. It is his chosen path. The way is clear.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Crossing the Courtyard

Posted on September 7, 2014 | Leave a comment
St. Peter's, 1913

St. Peter’s, 1913

Our parish church, St. Peter’s Anglican in Oakland, is building a new courtyard. Over the summer we have entered the church through side doors and back doors. We have peered over broken-down walls and into churned-up soil and rock. Along the way we unearthed our original cornerstone, laid in 1913. Somehow it was buried when a new church was built alongside the old in 1957. 

There has been much discussion, weighing in, rethinking this and deciding on that, in the process of executing the architect’s vision for our courtyard. Are the colors compatible with the existing buildings? Should there be a lych-gate or just a gate? How high will the brick walls be exactly? Did we really have to remove the palm tree? When will it be finished? In time for our organ concert? When will the elevators for the handicapped be done?

There has been much sighing and wringing of hands and raising of brows, then chuckling and open palms and leaving it all to God. Somehow we have weathered the great questions and agreed upon sensible answers. God has been good.

Today, finally, we could see how it all might turn out. Planting beds are marked. The brick wall (not too high) is finished, an inviting border. Soon the patio will be laid. Soon the front doors will be opened, their chains broken, and soon we will once again cross the threshold of our church, leave the secular behind and enter the sacred.

The sun came out this morning as we peered over the low brick wall. The heavy fog that settles upon the Bay Area this time of year had burned away. The earth, its gravity holding our church fast on its rim, was turning slowly, away from summer into autumn in this part of the world, away from winter into spring in other parts. For us here, on this part of the planet, daylight shrinks as the dark of night expands.

I’m glad to have a sacred space hugging the edge of the earth so firmly, and I’m glad to have a courtyard that links the secular with the sacred, that points to the light in the darkness.  Crossing such a space is a preparation, a time to quiet the mind and heart before kneeling in a pew to worship God. It is a time to bridge two worlds – that of God and that of man.

In the end, that is what Christians do, or are called to do. Each of us is a kind of courtyard, a linking and a joining of the secular and the sacred, of earth and heaven. We have experienced the transcendent, God become man, God giving himself to man in the Eucharist, God living within man through Eucharist and Spirit. But we are all only partly finished courtyards, I fear, for each of us has a long way to go for our gardens to flower, for our patios to be solid enough to bear much weight.

But we open our gates, and we invite those outside to come inside, to leave the noise and enter the quiet. We say, come, look and see what we have seen! Come, know the peace of God. Come, be healed. We witness to transcendence, here in our earthy world, an increasingly dangerous and barbaric world.

The Gospel for today was the healing of the man who cannot hear and cannot speak. He was deaf and dumb. Christ charges him and the witnesses to tell no one, but they do anyway, “beyond measure astonished, saying, ‘He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.’ ” I too am beyond measure astonished when I enter our holy space and gaze at the altar and its tented tabernacle resting in its garden of fiery tapers. I too want to tell about it, for my ears have been opened and my tongue loosed. I too have been healed of apathy, despair, depression, heartbreak, fear… to name just a few demons. I too have been forgiven my sins. Once, long ago, I was invited to enter through a gate by someone, like me today, grinning and beckoning from a courtyard, calling me to cross the threshold and enter the church. And once I entered, I knew, from the beauty that engulfed me, that I had left the secular and stepped into the sacred. And I was beyond measure astonished.

Soon our courtyard will be finished. Soon it will invite the halt, the lame, and the blind to enter this holy home of God and be healed. Soon it will witness to the world the incarnation of God, to Emmanuel, God with us. For the 1913 church and the 1957 church are now joined by the 2014 garden court, the child of a century of worship, a century of incense, candles, and song, a century of transcendent beauty.

http://www.saintpetersoakland.com

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

A Chapel in Berkeley

Posted on March 16, 2014 | Leave a comment

On this Second Sunday in Lent, my husband and I worshiped at St. Joseph of Arimathea Chapel in Berkeley, a block from the University of California campus.

It was not our first visit to the chapel, for our publishing group, the American Church Union, is headquartered in the adjoining building (where I spend considerable time…) along with our Anglican Seminary, St. Joseph of Arimathea Theological College. It is also the seat of our dear Archbishop Robert Morse.

It was the first time, however, that we arrived on a bicycle race day. After finding on-street parking, still free on Sundays (!), we stepped around the roadblocks, watching the cyclists fly around the corner of Durant and Bowditch. This particular corner was our destination as well and, as we approached St. Joseph’s Chapel, working our way through the gathering race-watchers, we heard the happy thunder of the pipe organ.

It was a traditional English hymn that poured out the open doors and onto Durant Avenue. Many race-watchers on the sidewalk paused, wondering about the music. “An Anglican church,” I heard someone say, approaching the sign near the front door. “Hmmm, interesting,” he murmured, and moved on to the corner’s edge and the flying cyclists.

The day was bright, a glorious spring day. The hills in my East Bay neighborhood have turned a velvet green. Balmy weather has returned as though last week’s welcome rain was a distant memory. Berkeley buzzed with the energy of youth enjoying a sunny Sunday morning.

We left the bright energy of the flying cyclists and their watchers and followed the music. We entered the chapel’s softly lit space and paused in a small foyer. A Madonna and Child opposite the doorway caught the light, glowing. Turning, we stepped into the barrel-vaulted church, a “collegial” church, meaning one with a choir and sanctuary but no large nave. The space, twenty by fifty, thirty feet high, reminded me of chapels we have seen in Europe, medieval parish churches dating to the seventh and eighth centuries. But I knew St. Joseph’s was built in the mid-twentieth century, designed by William Dutcher, who clearly had a good sense of history and acoustics as well as holiness. In this chapel, the eye is drawn first to the altar – the simplicity points there – then above to the sixteenth-century crucifix, and higher to the vaulted ceiling.

We were early, the first to arrive, and I appreciated the time to gather my heart and mind into prayer. Sitting on wooden benches, we listened to the organ. The music spilled onto the red-tiled floor, winging to the altar, the crucifix, soaring beyond. A hanging sanctuary lamp glowed before a rustic altar, and soon a gentleman entered from the side of the sanctuary and lit six candles on either side of a purple-draped tabernacle. The white stucco walls, unadorned, added to the simplicity, and I recalled a Cistercian abbey (much larger) we visited in Provence: Senanque, where the empty space channels vision, and thus heart, mind, and soul to the altar and its tabernacle.

The organ is on loan from the university in a happy collaboration with St. Joseph’s. It is, according to the website (www.anglicanpck.org/seminary) a “twelve-stop, two manual and pedal, mechanical-action instrument,” built by Herr Jurgen Ahrend of Loga-Leer, Germany, renowned for his work in Europe and America. The organ is especially tuned for liturgical music of the medieval and early modern periods, so that we enter history as we sing.

I’m not a professional musician but I am drawn into beauty, and especially beautiful music, and if I am allowed to sing hymns I know and love in an intimate space like this, I think I am in heaven and not Berkeley at all. If an organ such as this one leads me through the music of beauty, a mere fifteen feet away from my ears, I am sure I am flying with the angels, and my feet couldn’t possibly be planted on terra firma.

The Anglican liturgy, with prayers dating to the seventh century, with words translated from the Latin to Elizabethan sixteenth-century prose, is especially beautiful and stunningly poetic. Over the years the words have become part of me, as the beauty has soaked into my five senses. I hear the song, see the procession of acolytes and flaming candles, smell the burning wax and the billowing incense, feel the host upon my tongue, and taste the eternal as I receive Christ into my body.

But the liturgy in this small soaring space, the organ thundering its notes upon our ears, is intimate. It is the intimate experience of God among us, touching us, loving us. Outside, the watchers shouted and bicycles buzzed. Inside, we flew as well, soaring into the chapel vaults, winging with the music, the chants, the prayers.

It was a good morning, this Second Sunday in Lent. As I saw the Cal Crew process in as acolytes (one of their duties as residents in the chapel’s neighboring house), I smiled. The young men carried their flaming candles, stepping seriously, holding the crucifix with care. As the liturgy of the Eucharist began, we all stepped into time, past, present, and future, with ancient prayers and future glory.

And we left the chapel with a holier sense of the present, and our place in time, this Second Sunday of Lent 2014.

Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,