Tag Archives: Sunday

All Hallows

Posted on November 1, 2015 | Leave a comment

all saintsHallowe’en comes from the contraction of All Hallows Eve. To hallow is to make holy, and October 31 was (and is) the eve before All Hallows Day, or the All the Holy Ones Day, All Saints, honoring Christian saints. The celebration is followed by Allhallowstide, in which all of the Christian dead are remembered. This coming week churches all over world will remember their dead, their loved ones, calling out their names on All Souls Day and, in this ceremony of love, hallowing them. The evening before, Halloween, sees the last of the unfriendly spirits roaming the night, for they are vanquished by the light of Christ in the morning, and fear is vanquished by joy.

Sometimes fear is good. It is an intuitive instinct that signals danger. Gavin de Becker, an expert who evaluates potential threats to famous people, titled his invaluable book on safety, The Gift of Fear. And in this sense, fear is a gift, a survival signal, a warning that lights the dark.

Children are afraid of the dark. And we should be too. Novelist Jake Halpern writes in the Wall Street Journal about fear of the dark:

“Since the dawn of man, night has been a time when we were in danger, when we were vulnerable – to lions, club-toting men and giant chasms into which we could fall… it was evolutionarily advantageous for us to be afraid of the dark. Those of us who feared the night and cowered from its dangers, survived. Those who went for strolls in the dark ended up as snacks for lions.”

Today with electric light we laugh such fears away. Yet we are ambivalent about fear itself, sometimes denying it, sometimes welcoming it. We flirt with it, tease it, to see what happens when it draws near, for we have banished most survival fears from long ago such as hunger, shelter, wild animals. We are curious, enticed by darkness.

A friend of mine once claimed that she liked the feeling of fear, of being on the edge of danger, secondhand fear experienced in a book or movie. There are many words for this feeling of excitement. We shudder and shiver, chilled to the bone. A frisson gives us goosebumps. A ghost walks over our grave. We are on the edge of our seats, waiting to be safe again. What is the lure? Why flirt with the dark, with falling into the abyss? Are we rehearsing our future? Our death?

Halloween has in many ways become a rehearsal as well, as children (and adults) don costumes and pretend to be someone or something else and venture into the dark. For some the choice is innocent role playing, choosing to be princes and princesses, musicians or athletes. Still, others choose to be witches and goblins. Some choose the light and some the dark. Some choose life and some choose death: skeletons, ghosts, and grim reapers, desiring to scare.

Our nation too seems on the edge of darkness, in the dusk of its day, playing dangerous games with life and death, slaughtering generations of unborn innocents. We survivors look away, pass on the other side of the road, just as we do in the world theater of wars and rumors of wars, withdrawing and allowing the dark to swallow the light, whether in Moscow or Tehran or the borderlands of the West.

Light and darkness, life and death. The line between them is not often clear, sometimes smudged into dusk and dawn. And so it is in our hearts, where good sheds light and evil darkens.

And so I’m grateful that the dark of All Hallows’ Eve is banished by the light of All Hallows’ Day and the light of Sunday resurrection. This morning I gazed upon six thick white candles on the stone altar of St. Joseph’s Chapel near U.C. Berkeley. The candles flamed brightly, the fiery wicks drinking in the air above, flickering their tips toward heaven. A roughly carved crucifix rose above the tabernacle, beyond the suspended Sanctus light. We stood and turned toward the entry as five student acolytes processed in, carrying torches and crucifix, followed by the white-robed clergy. The organ bellowed through the vaulted domed space and echoed over the russet-tiled floor as we joined in songs of praise to God for his saints.

Halloween would not exist if it were not for All Saints, the holy-day that gives the costumed evening its name. After the night of darkness, a weak sun broke through this morning and bathed our world in light. We sang as one people, giving thanks for those men and women who chose the light and turned away from the dark. Martyred for their choice, and today still being martyred, we honor them. History has known a world without Christ, a world of impenetrable darkness, one rightly feared. We peer through the dusk of our days, keeping our candles lit, sharing the love of God, the light of Christ, looking to the morning of resurrection.

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Focusing on God

Posted on June 22, 2014 | Leave a comment

I’ve been sitting in my home office looking out the window, meditating on the sun glancing off olive tree leaves, considering what to focus on this afternoon in this space, this First Sunday after Trinity and this Octave of Corpus Christi. I’ve got multiple projects on my desk – pieces promised  (two posts, two reviews), the final draft of Father Raynes’s Darkness No Darkness (an ACU reprint), a booklet reprint for one of our parishes, copies of The Magdalene Mystery to be sent to the Filipino priests I met in Rome, and lastly, my novel-in-progress, The Fire Trail, which I have returned to, determined to give it a couple of hours each day, but alas, not succeeding. Oh, and did I mention the brochure the Bishop asked me to help write and the Facebook site we will be setting up for our seminary chapel, St. Joseph of Arimathea?

I could write in this space about any of these things that clutter my little brain, but which one or two or three? Suddenly, across the lawn loped a coyote, at least I think he was a coyote. He was slim, the size of a midsize dog. Long narrow snout. Darkish gray, like a deer. Clearly wild and headed across our front lawn and down the hill toward the base of Mount Diablo. Clearly focused.

I suddenly realized how important choices were. I thought of all the ideas roaming in my head and how this coyote banished them in an instant. He focused my attention on his swift run through the plowed golden grass of the hill. He focused my attention on focusing. I wanted to run swiftly, on target, like he ran.

We are bombarded with choices every day, ways to spend our time, ways to waste our time, ways to kill our time. With each choice, we move in a certain direction and are then bombarded with more choices. How does one choose?

St. Joseph's 002compWe attended St. Joseph’s today, our seminary chapel in Berkeley a block from campus. It was easy in that domed and tiled space to become focused, to not waste any of the hour given. The organ thundered as we sang, Alleluia, Sing to Jesus. The acolytes and clergy processed in with flaming candles and crucifix held high. The stone altar was alight with six white wax pillars framing the tabernacle. Soon we were praying together the familiar words of the Anglican Mass, poetic language going back to the sixteenth century. We listened to Holy Scripture and the preacher preached on the Feast of Corpus Christi celebrated this last week, the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ, the Real Presence of Christ in the bread and the wine of our Eucharistic celebration.

We were focused in that hour. We had made choices this day, decisions not to go to the park, not to go shopping, not to have a late brunch or lunch, not to sit here and work on projects at my desk. We didn’t have to choose to get up early since the service was at 11:30, for which we were grateful. But we did have to choose to take a couple of hours out of our Sunday to worship God with his Body of Christ in Berkeley.

And that choice made all the difference. It will make all the difference in my life this week, and it made all the difference in my life last week. Our preacher said that there was a time in his life when he he didn’t choose church, he didn’t choose to have God in his life. He chose other things to do with his time given. But soon he felt a deep emptiness in his soul. Soon he was hungry for God and it was a hunger that he couldn’t fill with other choices. So he returned to church, and I am glad for that, for he is a powerful preacher, bringing the intimacy of God’s love to each one of us.

Choosing is like carving, with careful attention given to each shaving of the soul. We whittle away at our lives to create a sculpted image, the person that God intended and intends us to be. We need to be careful to carve in the right places, to choose no sometimes and to choose yes other times. So we need an educated soul, as well as a fully fed soul. We need God’s Word through Scripture and sermon, and we need God himself, through the mysterious miracle of the Real Presence in the Holy Eucharist.

The coyote was heading for food and water, I am sure. Our choices are more subtle and yet just that simple too. For choosing God, choosing to worship and be fed and watered by him each week, lightens our darkness, and makes all the other choosings easy.

I became, have become, focused, for life has come into focus, at least until my next encounter with God.

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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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Healthcare of the Soul

Posted on December 8, 2013 | Leave a comment

I’ve been exercising more and feel the better for it. I have chronic low back pain and exercise helps a great deal, stretching and strengthening those tiny but crucial muscles around the vertebrae. 

And during this holy season, these holi-days, of Advent, I exercise both body and soul and feel the better for it. 

We all know that we must fight fat and cholesterol and carbs and calories and sugar in order to be healthy. We must do thirty minutes daily of aerobics so that our heart rate will rise and our blood move freely through our arteries to feed our flesh and return through our veins and into our pumping heart to begin again the journey of circulation. We know now, in this modern world of ours, through words on pages and in media of all kinds, lots of “how-to’s,” lots of self-helps. We know that “natural” is good (although the definition of natural remains elusive), that fish is better than meat, that baked is better than fried, that fresh is better than frozen, canned, or cured. Dark veggies and bright fruits should fill our plate. We must avoid fries, hamburgers, hot-dogs, and pizza. I fear that we what we really want is white rolls rather than brown, white rice rather than whole grain, fast food rather than slow. We know a great deal about how to have healthier bodies. 

As I rolled along on the elliptical machine, pushing and pulling, I thought of these things. I thought how lopsided our society had become, as though we walked with one leg instead of two, dragging the weak leg, the spiritual leg, behind. We seem to be unaware that we limp, listing to one side. We don’t notice the odd rhythm of our step, the scraping noise of our sick soul pulled along, for we are used to being unbalanced. Then we wonder why we feel a sad pain in the ignored area of our souls, our hearts and minds, why we get depressed, why life seems overwhelmingly meaningless. We look to pills and other self-help mantras, rather than diet and exercise suitable for souls. 

We ignore our souls as we exercise our bodies. We starve the spirit and feed the body. We are unbalanced, undernourished, weak. Just as we feel physical pain, we feel spiritual pain. How do we exercise and feed our souls to assuage that pain, that longing for something (or Someone) greater, that anguish that weaves through life, ambushing us unawares? I for one want to walk straight and tall and without a limp. I want to assuage my spiritual pain. I want a soul regimen, one with good diet and exercise. 

Exercise and feeding of the soul, of course, must be practiced with as much care as that of the body. There are exercises that help and those that hurt. There is healthy food and unhealthy food. How do we know? 

Just so, the Church defines and illuminates how to exercise and feed souls. She shows us, like a good mother, the healthy way, the care-full way, the diet to grow our souls. Our spirit-muscles strengthen with her commandments as we feed at her table, God’s altar. As we follow her teachings, we learn to love.

And this learning to love is what Advent is about. We await the coming of Love Incarnate in Bethlehem and as we look to Christmas Day 2013, we feed on Scripture, learning that love does indeed have a definition. Love is doing good – not doing harm – to our neighbor. Love is the summary of all law, the distilled essence of the Ten Commandments. For the Ten Commandments give us love’s recipe, guidelines to nourish us. The Ten Commandments, given by God to Moses so long ago on those clay tablets on Mount Sinai, are the prescription for how to love and how to heal our spirits. 

It has often been said that if mankind followed the Ten Commandments, we would live in a peaceful utopia. Probably true. We would worship only God and keep Sundays holy. We would honor our parents. We would not kill one another, we would not sleep with another’s spouse, we would not steal, we would not lie, we would not desire what is not ours. In a sense the last five – those commandments about how to love one another – are largely about taking what is not ours to take, are all forms of theft, whether taking life, illicit sex, another’s goods, another’s good name. And we are not supposed to even desire these things for that transgresses the commandment, thou shalt not covet. 

A friend once told me that when he couldn’t think of things to confess, he would confess that he hadn’t loved enough. For me I can always confess covetousness, a sure sign of not loving enough. I don’t often covet other’s material goods, but other odd and not-so-odd things I often covet – clear skin, thick hair (I have mottled skin and little hair); energy (I am slow-moving); good vision (always a problem even with thick glasses). I covet more serious things too, more painful things. I envy women with many children, although I am not childless. 

Just making this list is bitter for me, for I know the other side, the true side, to these complaints. My mottled skin reflects my many years outside in glorious sunshine, lucky me! My thinning hair means that I have been graced with a long life. My low energy allows me to reflect and write. My poor vision has been balanced with acute hearing and miraculous attention to aromas, breezes, conversation, melody and song. And my few children? I have a wonderful son with a wonderful family. I’m a step-mom to three more sons and their wonder-filled families. I have eight grandchildren, with a great-grandchild due in April. How can I complain? I can’t. I am ashamed of my covetousness.

So coveting is a nasty thing, a tightening of the heart, a blinding of the soul to blessings. It is un-love for it treats others as objects to be owned. Perhaps it is the opposite of thanksgiving. 

But my sins against God’s law of love are forgiven in the sacrament of confession, through the Incarnation of God’s (only) son, through this redeeming intersection in human time on the Cross, through his glorious resurrection. And with confession and forgiveness, my own pain and shame vanishes. I am washed clean. I often leave church with a happy smile on my face. Joy has replaced the pain in my heart; I know true happiness. 

So I try to exercise my soul at least as often as I exercise my body. I want to walk straight and tall, with no limp, balanced. I want to be pain-free, full of hope, to learn to truly love my neighbor as myself.

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The Adventure of Advent

Posted on December 1, 2013 | Leave a comment

This morning in church I thought how rich a season this is, this season of Advent, this season of coming, these four weeks in which we prepare for the Feast of the Incarnation, the festival known as Christmas.

I continue giving thanks, thanksgiving that our culture still recognizes the feast of Christmas. There remains among us a spirit of giving, of love, of sharing. True, we are bombarded by ads and the commercialization of this pre-Christmas time, but even so, the ads enjoin us to give, to buy gifts for friends and loved ones. St. Nicholas with his bags of gold for the maidens who wanted to marry returns as Santa Claus in the malls to question children as to their gift lists. His presence (and presents) assures them this is a magical, a mystical, season.

True also, we as a culture seem to have lost the reason for the magical mystery that weaves through these twenty-five days. Yet weave into our hours and days it does, and we buy fir trees to festoon with lights and hang sparkly, memorable ornaments on bits of wire. We light our trees and stack our gifts, mysteriously hidden beneath wrappings and ribbons. These traditions pull us through an unbelieving desert, a parched time, hopefully to a time of belief once again.

Those of us who believe already in the Incarnation of God in Christ in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, a historical intersection of eternity with time, sometimes become impatient and critical of the mania that seems to possess the rest of us, according to the media, as though their madness pollutes our holy time. But perhaps we should be grateful that folks want to buy gifts for others, and that retailers offer discounts so that they can do just that.

Those of us who believe already in this God of love and joy and salvation and eternal life need not pay much attention to the crowds storming the stores. We begin a lovely and sensitive time, a delicious time, this time of little Lent, a time of waiting for the great Advent of Our Lord, the coming of this child born to a young virgin in a manger-cave. Today, on this first Sunday in Advent, we begin our prayers fitfully, each evening, saying the assigned Collect, a prayer that gathers us all together, collects our minds and hearts:

ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.

We wait and we watch. We put upon us the armour of light. We lighten, enlighten, our homes to prepare for this great coming of Christ. We teach our children the meaning of the twinkling stars on the sweet smelling branches and the four Advent candles we light in turn each week, as we count the days and wait and hope and pray for our redeemer to come to earth. It is a dark time in a sense, a time of watching for the greatest light to appear among us, a light to banish the dark, a glorious light.

We sing carols to tell the ancient story, a story renewed each year, one that settles into our souls like seeds planted in fertile ground, seeds sprouting from our watering. The carols are part of the watering. Worship in church in Advent is part of the watering. The seeds feed too upon our prayers and the words we commit to our minds and hearts in these holy weeks.

Advent is a great reminder. It is a season set apart from the rush of shopping and decorating, or perhaps a season overlaying this rushing busy-ness. Somehow Advent intersects our time, just as God intersected all time and became one of us. Advent reminds us of the great truth, the great reality, the great love of God for each of us. For a few days and weeks in the cold of winter and the long dark of night we are reminded that our lives have meaning, that each of us is a star in God’s heart. We are reminded that “he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, (and that) we may rise to the life immortal…” We are told once again that God loves us… that he loved the world so that he gave his life so that we might have everlasting life. And it all began in Bethlehem on that first Christmas night. It all began beneath a starry sky as angels sang and shepherds knelt and kings offered their gifts.

So too we offer gifts to one another at Christmas. So too we kneel before the manger and before the altar where Christ is rebirthed with each Mass. So too as we receive him in this purple penitential season, our hearts are washed clean and our souls watered anew. So too we sing our praises with the angels on high.

Some call these stories myths. But myths are true. They tell the greatest truths of all, who we are, who we are meant to be. They answer the great questions why and how? They tell of God our creator, of Christ our redeemer. They tell us of love incarnate. These myths tell a glorious truth.

We light our Advent candles, the single purple one this first evening. Slowly, as we learn our Collect by heart, engrafting the words onto our souls, we change into something slightly different than we were before, something slightly more glorious, something slightly closer to heaven, something holy, as we taste a bit of heaven in this holy season.

This is the adventure of Advent, the coming of Our Lord upon earth.

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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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Sunday in Hana, Maui

Posted on July 14, 2013 | Leave a comment

Learning the Lord’s Prayer in Hawaiian may now be on my to-do list. I have picked up French and Italian “Our Father” phrases through the years, but Hawaiian is particularly foreign to my western ear. Even so, the prayer song this morning in Hana’s St. Mary’s Church was lilting and lovely and I think God smiled upon our efforts. 

On our way to St. Mary’s, we passed the Wananalua Church, the historic Congregational Church which is featured in my novel, Hana-lani (Nani-lei’s church with the big white cross), and continued the half block to the historic Catholic Church. St. Mary’s is a white church, inside and out. It’s whiteness is like entering a soft cloud, airy and arched, and its curved windows along the side aisles open onto a sea of green grass. At the door we were greeted warmly with leis of vines and leaves and wide smiles and kisses on the cheek. We found seats in a pew. Others came in, some greeting friends and family, some looking about for the first time, wondering at the airy interior, visitors like us.

The Mass danced through the white space. Hawaiian phrases sailed alongside English as though the temperate breezes blowing through the windows winged and paired them as they flew to the high altar. I felt as though I too had been borne up high on the “wings of a prayer” to a holy aerie. Yet, I knew that we the people anchored the pews as all around and above angels dived and soared in their airy dance.

It was a good thing to worship together here in Hana once more, and again I sensed the Body of Christ united before God’s altar, partaking of God himself, allowing God to weave through each of us as we stood in song or knelt in prayer. The hymns weren’t our classic Anglo-Catholic hymns from our home parish, but the beat was easy and the words profound, and as I found myself tapping my toe lightly on the hardwood floor, I sensed that we the people were pulled into the experience of worship itself. This is a good thing and not to be considered lightly – to be pulled into prayer and praise, singing together with one voice to God our creator. And it is not a good thing, I think, to be pushed away from joining in worship, to be watching as spectators, as sometimes happens in evangelical or even high liturgical productions, silencing the voices of the people in the pews. 

The Mass, the great prayer given to us by Christ, is meant to be a sacred shared supper, one that never loses sight of God’s presence in the bread and wine, always points to whom we worship with every fiber of our being, every intention of our soul. When we cross the threshold of a church, we step into the home of God and the home of his people. We become one in him and through him one with each other. We are in this place, this sacred space, to worship God, and to receive him into our hearts and bodies. We are God’s family, his dear children.

Hana, Maui is a small gentle town sloping to the sea. The green flanks of Haleakala rise to the west and the blue waters undulate to the east. The sun appears early, erupting from the curved horizon separating sea and sky, traveling up and turning slate to silver to deep sapphire. The trade winds soften the burning sun and the sky is an ever-changing drama of cloud formations.

And near the center of town, where Hasegawa’s General Store offers snacks and tackle and the Post Office connects with the rest of the world, a white church stands in the grass, with its doors open and welcoming. “Come on in,” the church says. “We love you.”

So we did just that this Sunday morning in Hana town, and I’m so glad we did.

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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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Infinite Complexity

Posted on January 27, 2013 | 1 comment

The infinite complexity of each human life is extraordinary.

It has been said that each person’s story is a novel or novels or perhaps countless encyclopedias. As a writer, I have come to see that a character, to become real on the page, must reveal many layers – experience, likes and dislikes, loves and hates, joys and sorrows.

Just so, it has been said that each person carries within himself his own universe, with many worlds orbiting one another, many planets, many suns and moons all in relationship, affecting one another with their movements.

With each choice I make I add to my own character in the finite span of time on earth, so that I am continually changing as I continually choose, each minute in each hour.

A bit mind-boggling and even numbing. Certainly humbling.

Habit of course encumbers or aids each choice, and we examine our habits from time to time, evaluating their goodness, necessity, and effect on our souls. Habit is often unseen, as though we live and work within a powerful frame, an architecture of habits, that isn’t always acknowledged. As Lent approaches, I shall consider my habits – which to celebrate and strengthen, and which to curb or deny.

We are the sum of our choices, it is said, just as are characters created in fiction. The author develops a “backstory” for each person, as detailed as possible, a history that may only appear in fragments on the page, but will fully appear in the choices that character makes.

Yesterday, tens of thousands made the choice to march for life in San Francisco. With each step they testified that even before our first breath we carry a universe in our genes, in our bodies, in our minds, and in our souls. With each step, these marchers testified that our country has made a habit of killing its unwanted children, and we must break that habitual horror, overturn the case our court chose to uphold, forty years ago. For such a decision, such a law, will destroy us. It already has destroyed several generations.

This morning in church we celebrated a new life, a child in the womb that will soon emerge into the bright air of our world and breathe oxygen into his lungs for the first time. Oddly, this is the requirement in our culture for protection by law: breathing.

So today, after the anniversary and birthday blessings, a young mother, heavy with child, stood and stepped to the center of the red-carpeted aisle where our priest blessed her and the child in her womb (a son). With these words of comfort and hope and strength, he affirmed the preciousness of the life within her body. He affirmed that we believe in a Creator God of love, not of death. He affirmed that the Church through this priest gave mother and child God’s blessing.

Today is Septuagesima, seven weeks before Easter. We call this three-week season “Pre-Lent,” a time to ease gently into true Lent when we examine our lives and consider our habits. St. Paul in the Epistle reading today exhorts us to “run the race,” a wonderful image of running through our life-time to the finish line. Christ in the Gospel reading gives us the parable of the laborers, how the first were paid the same as the last. Our preacher explained that the Gospel tells us how we must run this life-race: we do not covet others’ relationship with God, for our primary concern should be our own relationship with God. This is our focus. This is our story. In this narrative we shall live and breathe.

I am the central person in my story, in the miraculous universe of life given me, and this God loves me infinitely and intimately and individually, and I must add, uniquely. This is the prize I seek in my running-race. In a sense I have already reached the finish for, through the Church, I already have God with me. But in another sense, God helps me run the race, following the track through this fallen world, a world of pitfalls and temptations. He coaches me through sacrament, prayer, and Scripture, through the lens of the Church. As long as I am faithful, He leads me on the path of righteousness, beside still waters, restoring my soul. As long as I worship Him on Sundays as He commanded His people so long ago, and as long as I keep the other nine commandments (including thou shalt not kill and thou shalt not covet) I shall win the prize of Heaven, the next world. And when I stumble in the dark on the rocky path, He shall pick me up and set me a-right again, and guide me to the light. I shall confess and be absolved. I shall receive Him in the Eucharist and give thanks.

So, as I witnessed the blessing of the child in the womb, this universe of complexity, I smiled. Here was true hope for each of us, for our parish, for our community, for our nation, for the world. This child shall be born, shall be allowed to breathe. This child shall be our future, infinitely complex and glorious, just as our Creator intended.

Deo Gratias.

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