One Wild and Precious Life

Feed My Sheep

Oh, I'm so sorry that I haven't written in ever so long.  Lent came, then Easter, then the very brief "post-Easter lull."  Now we're on to preparations for the Strawberry Festival on May 18, and I'm busy with ever so many things:  summer plans, garden-planting, journal writing, and composing a first-person essay on "Hope" for the retreat of the Worker Sisters and Brothers of the Holy Spirit later this month.

Last week Krista Tippett wrote her "On Being" newsletter and mentioned "Thundersnow and Cherry Blossoms."  I misread and thought she wrote about "Thundersnow Cherry Blossoms" (no "and"), and thought, "Oh, yes, that's so exactly right!  That's exactly what my backyard cherry tree looks like this week - thundersnow!"  And now as I glance out the window, the petals are falling in the spring breeze - like very light snow.  Beautiful, pink snow.

I love the Great Fifty Days of Easter.  It's a time of reading John's Gospel, my favorite, in church - and today was my second-favorite of the resurrection appearances - the first also being John's: Mary Magdalen in the garden.  Today was "Feed my sheep, tend my lambs, follow me."  Has anyone read "The Voyage of the Dawn Treader?"  I always imagine the Sea of Galilee looking just like the water Lewis describes near the end of that wonderful, magical book, with the little lamb on the shore saying, "Come and have breakfast."  Lamb of God.  Indeed.  So here is my sermon, which took the form of a kind of guided meditation.  I've known for a week just how I was going to do it, and I did.

Download Easter 3C, April 14, 2013  I hope you read it; I hope you like it.  I just listened to one by my friend and colleague Ginny Wilder on the internet, and it's so much like mine that it's a little scary.  Mind-meld, or something.  Here's a link to hers -- I do love listening to that beautiful southern voice - it's a great storytelling voice.

Spring has truly sprung here.  I have much I want to write to you about, including the aforementioned piece on hope -- coming soon -- watch this space!

Sunday Sermon: Perfect Love Casts Out Fear

Hmmm.  Superbowl Sunday and a whole inch of melting snow on the Cumberland Plateau.  It will probably be a small group at church today.  It's not about making excuses:  when you're elderly, as most of my folks are, and your driveway freezes, you don't go out till it melts (tomorrow, probably).  In these mountains, driveways often are at about a 45-degree slant, so ice makes it pretty difficult.

Here's today's sermon.  I'm incubating another piece that may or may not get written today, and may or may not get posted.  Except for church, Sundays tend to be not-so-productive for me.  I read on Facebook the other day that clergy, often introverts (as am I), are especially "on" on Sunday morning, like "rock star at a concert" on.  That's kind of how it feels for someone who has to push to get outside herself at all.  So I'm pretty tired by early Sunday afternoon.  I wish I were more extroverted, got more energy out of the Sunday morning crowd -- but it depletes me.

Okay, here it is.

Epiphany 4C, February 3, 2013

Psalm 71:1-6; Jeremiah 1:4-10; 1 Corinthians 13:1-13; Luke 4:21-30

You know, there are always themes in our readings, and they usually jump right out at me the first time I read them through, most often on Monday morning.  This, I think, is when the Holy Spirit speaks: showing me what themes God wants you to hear from me this week.  And today there are two themes.  When I first saw them, I thought I had to pick, because I didn’t see any connection at all.  When I say what they were, you may catch the connection before I did.  In the Old Testament reading and the Psalm, the theme that stands out today (other themes for other lectionary years – that’s the way scripture works) is fear.  Jeremiah was afraid to be God’s prophet, and God had to spend some time reassuring him that it would be all right, that God would accompany him wherever he went, whatever he did or said.  Maybe it’s not so much fear as God’s reassurance that there is no need to fear.  There is that assurance of safety and comfort in the Psalm, too:  “In you, O Lord, have I taken refuge…be my strong rock…keep me safe….”  There it is – security in God, and asking for that feeling of reassurance.  There is also that recurrent theme of being known and called or consecrated by God before we’re born in both these readings (see it at the beginning of the reading from Jeremiah, and verse 6 of the Psalm).  God knows us so well that he even knew us before we were born, chose us before we were born.  As I said last week – we must start our ministry from a place of safety and security in God’s love – not a place of resentment or fear.

 The second theme I saw was, of course, love.  You can’t read that passage from Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth without thinking of weddings.  Paul emphasizes that ministry must come from a foundation of love, or it’s worth nothing.  Sometimes we get so earnest in our ministry that it begins to feel like a sense of duty or “should” or “must.”  That’s when the joy goes out of it.  And ministry is always received in the spirit with which it’s given.  You know when someone is doing something because they have to, rather than because they love it.  I know which way I prefer it.  If I’m in the hospital and have a choice (I think I’ve used this example before) between a nurse who loves their job, and one who only does it for the paycheck, I know the one I’d prefer.  Same with wait staff in a restaurant:  I much prefer the person who loves their work.  Without love, any gift, any service, is as unpleasant to receive, as the giver feels about giving it.  Don’t even bother, is how I feel.

 Jesus is also talking about love in the Gospel reading.  He’s talking about inclusiveness.  He’s addressing people who are unappreciative enough to expect that if he’s really someone special, he’d better come up with a few miracles.  And he speaks of Elijah and Elisha, two of Israel’s greatest prophets, and how their miracles weren’t done for the people of Israel, but rather for Gentiles.  He’s warning against feeling entitled, against the feeling that we “deserve” certain privileges (like seeing miracles) because we’re somehow special or “chosen” or “deserving.”  He’s saying that God’s favor is given to everyone, that God’s love and abundance don’t know the same boundaries that we humans construct.  We’re so good at making judgments, so good at setting up fences and walls, at deciding who’s deserving and who’s not, who’s in and who’s out, who’s a member of our special, privileged “club,” and who’s not.  God never asks those kinds of questions.  Jesus didn’t, either.  And if we want to imitate Christ, we need to look at our own expectations, our own sense of entitlement, at what we feel we deserve over and above what others might or might not deserve.  We’re called to be a inclusive as God is, as Jesus was.  We’re called to work at transcending our so-human need to include and exclude, to be a tight-knit little “us,” looking out from safety on the not-included “them.”  It’s just not the way God sees things, not the way God loves.

 But now the connection between the two themes: love and fear.  They’re two emotions that can’t exist at the same time.  Back in the day when I studied psychology (can it really be 40 years ago???), we were taught the basic principle that two opposite feelings can’t exist within a person at the same time.  Therefore we could help people with anxiety by introducing a way for them to relax; this was called desensitization, and it’s still used to treat anxiety.  The same is true of love and fear:  We can’t love well if we’re operating out of fear, and perfect love drives out fear.  I don’t know about you, but hard things are easier for me to face and to do when I know I’m loved.  If we are secure in God’s love, the kind of security that God instilled in Jeremiah, the kind of security in which Jesus lived and moved and had his being, then we don’t fear the things that God gives us to do.  We’re able to step out in faith and live in the kingdom, and bring others into the kingdom, as well.  In fact, if we live and walk in love, we don’t even have to be intentional about spreading the good news – it just emanates from us.  Remember that in John’s letter he says that God is love.  So if we’re “delighting in God’s will and walking in God’s way,” as our confession says, we’re loving.  Everyone.  All the time.  It’s a struggle, but we know what God wants, and when we walk in love, we do it without hesitation.  It’s only when fear creeps in that we begin to doubt and question and second-guess ourselves and others.  When we’re doing that, we need to ask ourselves what we’re afraid of, from where is the fear coming, and take the time for prayer, and to re-center ourselves in God’s love.

 Paul says that the things that last are “…faith, hope and love, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”  Faith and hope can’t really exist, apart from love.  Love is like trust.  The very same.  It’s what gives us the courage to believe, the courage to persevere, the courage to hope.  Without God’s love, we’ve got nothing.  It’s all, as Paul says elsewhere, rubbish.

 So it seems to me that the very best thing we can do (as usual) is to look to Jesus.  Look to Jesus for an example of the kind of courage that perfect love can give.  Jesus had the courage to speak the truth to power, the courage to love those that others considered unlovable, to take his ministry wherever he felt God called him.  Jesus (and the angels, and Godself) spent a lot of time, a lot of breath saying to us humans, “Fear not,” knowing that where fear existed, the good news couldn’t be truly heard and felt and given away.  It’s resting in that divine love that allowed Jesus to do the things he did, and finding and resting in it ourselves that will allow us to do the work we’re given to do by God.  Amen.

Sermon: Don't Forget to Party!

Below is today's sermon.  I hope you're able to look up and read the scriptures that I use to prepare the sermon, because it's harder to really "get it" if you don't.  But in any event, I'm just glad when you bother to read!

Psalm 36:5-10; Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11 

Well, we have a lovely little map for ministry in our readings today; I hope you all take note.  We hardly ever see a group of readings that walks us so systematically and sequentially through the process that Christians must go through in ministering to a world that can easily overwhelm us with all the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs out there.  All those hungry hearts.  Sheep without a shepherd.  Just looking at all that’s wrong with the world is enough to make any of us just want to go crawl into a comfy little cave somewhere and not even try.  But look!  Today we hear how it can, should, must be done.

 First, look at the Old Testament reading, from Isaiah.  How does it sound to you?  “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord….you shall be called “My Delight is in Her…for the Lord delights in you…so shall your builder marry you….so shall your God rejoice over you.”  Do you hear the promise in this?  Do you hear the joy?  Do you hear the intimacy with which God wishes to love and join with us?  God wants to be closer to us than a husband; God delights in us.  And that’s exactly where ministry has to start – from a foundation of intimate connection to God, surrounded, enveloped by love and gratitude, from a place of abundance, a place where we can get ourselves filled up to overflowing with the love and abundance and good news that we’re to take out there to that hungry world.  That’s where we start from – the only place that effective, enduring ministry really can start.  If we don’t have it to begin with, that sense of love and abundance, we’re not going to be able to give it away; you can’t give away something you don’t have to begin with.

 And the Psalm reinforces this by reassuring us of God’s strength and protection, as well as abundance:  “They feast upon the abundance of your house; you give them drink from the river of your delights.  For with you is the well of life.”  Do you see how in the Gospel today, Jesus acted out that promise of abundant drink (literal drink, with the wine!), of more and better refreshment than we could ever need?

 So in the first reading and the Psalm, we get promises.  God won’t leave us alone to do this.  We get strength and love, joy and refreshment as we set about doing God’s work in the world.  That’s a promise.  And Paul continues with the promises, with his usual words of wisdom, as well.  “No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.”  Whenever we’re ministering, whenever we’re proclaiming the good news, whether through our words or our actions, we’re empowered by the Holy Spirit.  Whether we feel anything special or not, we can take it for granted that if we’re doing good, the Holy Spirit is with us, strengthening and empowering us.  Furthermore, Paul gives us this great passage about the varieties of gifts we bring to ministry.  We’re all different; we know this.  And we’re good at different things.  And God will make use of whatever we have to give.  It’s not for us to judge our own gifts, and especially not to judge the gifts of others, whether they’re good or not, whether they’re appropriate for ministry.  God’s much more creative than we are, and can use whatever it is we bring.  We may not see what good a particular skill set is, whether it’s ours or someone else’s.  But we need to trust God, and that God will find a way to use it all, to waste nothing, to use it all to bring more and more of the world into relationship with God and with one another.  God’s will is love and peace and abundance and joy, and we are the means by which that love and peace and abundance and joy gets spread around in the world – and there are endless ways to do that, all empowered by the same Holy Spirit.  And we’re really not capable of judging which gifts are good and which are not, which ones God will use and which God will not use – not use just yet, anyway.  Paul says, “To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”  These varieties of gifts and services that we possess – what we need to understand is that they are what Paul is calling “manifestations of the Spirit.”  The things he names in our passage are examples, not an inclusive list.  Varieties of gifts, he says.  Whatever we bring to ministry that is good (and again, not for us to judge its goodness) is given to us by the Spirit, and given “for the common good,” Paul adds.  Our gifts are not ours to hoard for ourselves, only for our own private enjoyment and edification (though if we do get enjoyment, that’s okay, too, as long as we’re also sharing).  They are given to us in order that we give them away, “for the common good:” the good of ourselves and our loved ones, certainly, the good of the church, the body of Christ, and also for the good of the whole world.  Even when we can’t see how our particular gifts could possibly contribute to the common good, to the betterment of the world, we’ve just got to trust God on that one.  It’s not our job to figure it all out, but to accept the abundance and love that God so wants to give us, and to allow that love and abundance to overflow right back out of us and into the world – that’s what God intends.  That’s how God works, and how God’s economy, God’s system, God’s household is intended to work.

 The last thing I’d add to this “road map for ministry” is the Gospel reading.  How I love this reading, all for my own set of reasons.  I love how Jesus’ mother says to him simply this:  “They have no wine.”  That’s all.  If they had eyeglasses in those days, I could almost see her looking at him over the top of hers:  “They have no wine.”  And then Jesus kind of has his little rant, and she doesn’t argue, but simply turns quietly to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”  She knows.  I can almost hear him sigh and roll his eyes as he says, “Fill the jars with water.”  It’s just such a great story!  But that’s not the point I want to make today.  What I want to say about this part of the “road map for ministry,” is that I think God wants us to party!  Honestly.  I think that God wants us to work hard, just as Jesus did, no doubt, and also work joyfully, to wear ourselves out with ministry, and then to kick back and kick up our heels and drink a little wine and have a little fun.  God wants us to party, yes.  And even when we’re partying (and that’s what God’s refreshment has to offer us – think of the stories and images Jesus uses of banquets and weddings and the hard work and great joy of abundant harvests, which always were followed by parties and celebrating) -- even in the course of the party we may end up doing some good we hadn’t planned, hadn’t intended, hadn’t anticipated.  You never know when the chance will arise to make someone’s day – as I’m sure those huge jars of wine made the day of the bride and groom at their wedding reception (and likely their parents, who would be more likely to be paying attention to such things).

 So – remember and receive the abundant love, refreshment, strength, and protection God has to offer.  That means you have to go “back to the well” regularly.  That means taking a little quiet time every day to ask, to receive, to be grateful.  Get yourself filled up and then get out there with whatever gifts God has given you.  Don’t hoard your gifts, but spend them freely, trusting that abundant replenishment that God promises.  If you use them all up, God will make jars and jars more for you.  And then, take the time to party.  Know that God wants you to have fun and relax sometimes – that’s what helps you minister all the better, all the more abundantly the next day, and the next.  Drink a little wine and kick back with your friends.  Accept the blessings.  Remember who is the founder of the feast, the true Host of the party.  Believe the promises.  You’ll be glad you did.  Amen.

You Never Expect the Call

This fell out of my head this morning shortly after I woke up.  I took it to my writer's group and read it.

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You never expect the call when it comes, in the middle of an ordinary workday:  on your supper break, for instance, or midmorning.  It always jars – or that’s how your memory retains it, at least.  Everything that has gone before the call tends to fade to ordinary in retrospect; the sound of the phone changes everything, makes everything so extraordinary.  They never say exactly what’s happened, never use plain language:  “There’s been an accident,” they say, “Come quickly; be careful.”  the location is often “Hospital,” they say, or maybe “Firehouse.”  “Be careful,” you remember, as you drive, most often alone.

Getting there, wherever it is: that’s the first step.  Then you’re given a place to sit and wait – sometimes in a small, private room, sometimes a plastic chair in a huge public waiting area.  You still don’t know much; they may not know all that much to tell you.  Usually someone will come and say something unmemorable to you, and then you’re left alone again.  The book you inevitably brought goes unread – your mind can’t focus.  Maybe you make some phone calls: a spouse, an ex-spouse, your mother, your best friend, your workplace.  And after a little more time sitting alone, people begin to come.  It’s what you see on their faces that activates your own emotions, that tells you what you’ve been feeling all along, but were too afraid to feel when you were alone.  Now you begin to feel frantic yourself, not knowing, not hearing, still in shock, still half-unbelieving.  But nobody comes to tell you anything.  Not soon enough, anyway.

Eventually, sooner or later (it always feels like later) someone does come.  Often it’s a doctor, face mask askew, inevitably clean but maybe a bit rumpled, eyes worried.  He tells you things aren’t looking good, not promising, probably fatal.  Or perhaps the denouement is slower: perhaps there’s a slow matching of parents and children, and at the end, like the one not picked for the school sports game, you stand alone, or nearly so.  As the Newtown school Superintendent said, “We realized we didn’t have enough children.”  Others have taken their children safely home, and you stand alone, still not knowing what to think, what to feel.  The truth is slow in coming, slow to sink in.  You won’t be taking her home.  No, not ever again.  She’s gone, they couldn’t save her, she didn’t suffer.  She’s gone.  Dead.  Only child, youngest child, oldest child: does it really matter?  Wife, mother, daughter, sister: does it really matter?  Isn’t it the surprise of the call, the suddenness of the absence, the last words you said the last time you saw the person?  Isn’t it that muffled, cotton-wool shock that envelops you?  Isn’t it that absence, that eternal, forever absence, that absence that suddenly strips you of what you are, what you know about yourself, what you do, what you’ve always done?  It’s that moment that comes to define you for a very long time – in the heart’s void that a new identity takes root: victim, bereaved one, brave survivor, one-who-is-left-to-go-on.

How do you get home?  How do you tell others?  Who goes to the airport to collect incoming beloveds?  If you’re very lucky, you’re surrounded with friends who hold you close, answer your phone and the ringing doorbell, pick up tranquilizers from the drug store, hold your hand as you walk through this unfamiliar territory of death.  If you’re lucky, you’re alone maybe only when you sleep.  If you’re lucky, the child who died comes to you in your dreams and tells you that she really is okay, really isn’t gone at all, that it’s what you’re walking through in those first few days – that’s the  illusion.  Given that worst luck in the world you’ve just experienced, it’s those little things, those vital things that you count important, that keep you alive.

What you don’t know then is that it all passes.  Almost passes.  It will be days and weeks that pass at first, and that inevitable journey of grief.  It will be worse after six weeks than it is after six days.  You will do what you need to do to get through; you will eventually go back to work.  For months, maybe years, the loss will be the first thing you tell people when you meet them.  “Hi, I’m Ann.  I have a daughter who died.”  After a time you will stop telling people this.  You will make friends who never knew that other person who died.  You may move away and live in a community that never knew them.  You will have crazy thoughts like, “If I move away, how will she find me?”  The first day comes that you don’t cry.  The first day comes that her death isn’t the first thing you remember in the morning and the last thing you remember at night.  The day even comes that you can function on the birth day, on the death day.  Some year you will not even remember what day it is when you wake up on that day.  But it takes a long time.  It takes a really, really long time.

And then someday something comes on the television.  You realize someone, maybe several someones, are getting that call you got so long ago.  It hits you suddenly and hits you hard, and it’s like you just got that call yesterday.  You fall down the rabbit hole and you stay there for quite some little time.

Sunday Sermon: "Sealed by the Holy Spirit and Marked as Christ's Own Forever

There are so many things I'm reading, so many things I'm thinking about, so many things I have to say.  I do hope I get a chance to write them out for you here.  But not tonight: the Golden Globes are on, and I'm having such fun watching them and planning my home video viewing for the next year!

But here is the sermon.  If you have a Book of Common Prayer, it will help you.  If you don't, we've got some old, bedraggled ones here at the church that we'd be willing to share -- let me know.

Psalm 29; Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Today is all about baptism.  Today, when we celebrate the Baptism of Christ, it’s obviously about baptism.  I remind you that it’s seldom we get to celebrate this feast, this festival of the Church separately from Epiphany – usually on the second Sunday after Christmas we celebrate both Epiphany and the Baptism of Christ, all together.  And they’re not unrelated:  at Epiphany we observe the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles – represented by the three kings.  It was then that those three non-Jews recognized the unique, special nature of this infant they came to visit.  It was then that Herod (a Jew, but only nominally so – there’s nothing to indicate that he was an observant Jew) came to recognize that a very special child had been born in Bethlehem.  And it was at his Baptism that Jesus for sure, and in one Gospel, John the Baptist, also recognized the special call, the special relationship to God the Father that Jesus had.  It’s interesting that we always imagine these baptismal manifestations – the clouds parting, the Holy Spirit as a dove, the voice from heaven – as public spectacles that lots of people witnessed.  But if you read very carefully, you’ll see in all four Gospels (and the baptism is mentioned in all four – that means it’s seen as a very important event to the writers of the gospels) that only Jesus (and John the Baptist, in John’s Gospel) saw this parting of the heavens; only Jesus heard the voice.  It was really a rather private event, not the public “manifestation,” or Epiphany, that we always imagine.  But, as I said, it was a seminal, defining moment in the life of Christ and in his ministry.  Perhaps it was at that moment that he knew he was born for something very, very special.  I’m not sure he knew the fullness of just how special his birth and life, his death and the aftermath would be, but Jesus was, after all, fully human – and the fullness of things tends to come gradually to us humans – and sometimes we don’t understand the fullness until it has already happened – sometimes long after something has happened.  Then we look back and see the size and scope of something that has occurred, and we have that awakening – “Oh, now I see!”  In any event, whether Jesus knew the fullness of his call all his life, or at the moment of baptism, or gradually over the course of his discernment and/or his ministry, or only afterward, when he was seated at the right hand of the Father – his baptism was a defining and revealing moment for him.

 And for us as Christians, it’s really all about baptism, too.  Our baptism is the moment that we know (or others know for us) that we’re adopted fully into God’s family.  We make certain renunciations and take certain oaths (or others make them and take them on our behalf) – those can be found on pages 302-305 of the Prayer Book.  Let’s take a look at them (the renunciation of Satan, the evil powers of this world, all sinful desires; the turning to Jesus, putting our whole trust in his grace and love, following and obeying him; continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and the prayers; persevering in resisting evil, repenting and returning to the Lord, proclaiming by word and example the Good News, seeking and serving Christ in all persons, striving for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being).

And just like Christ, baptism is our defining moment, as well.  We are fully adopted, fully members of the family, and we also are called.  We are called by our baptism to be ministers, just as surely as Christ was called.  “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  And with membership in Christ’s body, there are expectations and responsibilities:  ministry.  Read the catechism if you don’t believe me – it’s right in the back of the prayer book.  Just as Jesus went into the wilderness – to be tempted, but also to discern the shape that his ministry would take, we are also called to give some thought to what sort of ministry God might be calling us to do as members of God’s family.  Jesus kind of outlines them in the parts of the Gospel we’ll get to as we go on this year, but the simplest way is to remember:  “Love God, love your neighbor.”  We spend our whole lives as Christians figuring out what that means for us individually, and reading and studying scripture for more details on the subject – but that summary of the law is a neat little “cheat sheet” reminder, when we get unclear on things.  Love God with all that you are and all that you have, and your neighbor as yourself.  Easy to remember; very, very hard to do.  Also a good guide for a review of the day (remember how I’ve been saying that’s a great thing to do?), to ask yourself, “How does everything I did today stack up against the summary of the law?  Did I reflect love of God and love of neighbor in everything I did today?”  That means the way we drove, the way we spent our money, the way we dealt with the cashier at the store and the stranger in the parking lot, the way we cooked and served our meals – did everything we do reflect love of God and neighbor?  If not, then we can ask God to help us make course adjustments the next day.  There’s always another chance with God (“repent and return to the Lord,” our baptismal covenant says – and if we invite God in to work on us, God will accept the invitation!

Lots of folks think you must be ordained to be a minister; surely you know by now that this simply isn’t true.  Anyone who is baptized is a minister and has a ministry as defined in the catechism.  First of all, back on page 855, the list of the ministers of the Church begins with lay people, not ordained persons.  What comes first in any list in the prayer book means something, just as it does in scripture.  So non-ordained people are the first and most important ministers of the church.  And the ministry of the laity is defined thus:  “…to represent Christ and his Church; to bear witness to him wherever they may be; and, according to the gifts given them, to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world; and to take their place in the life, worship, and governance of the Church.”

Now, as the prayer book says, based on our gifts, how that ministry of proclamation, reconciliation, and participation in the church looks will be different for everyone.  But those three things:  proclamation (or representation – when we represent Christ, for better or worse, we are proclaiming the gospel – and that’s supposed to be good news!), reconciliation (how often we bring division and conflict, rather than reconciliation!), and participation in the Church, are part of our ministry.  What shape might that take for you?  As I said earlier, we Christians spend our lives discerning and defining what our ministries are; but ministry is something we can’t really escape, if we take our Christian walk seriously.  Just as Christ went from baptism to the desert for discernment, so we must proceed from our baptisms to discernment of our ministries.

If we’ve not thought about it before, it would be an eye-opening experience.  Some of what we’ll discover is that we’re already ministering, even if we haven’t ever called it that.  We are already representing Christ (proclaiming the gospel through our behavior, if not through words), already doing the ministry of reconciliation – between people with one another, with the world, and with God (or not doing that ministry), and participating in the life of the church (or not).  We’ve been doing those things without even intentionally doing so!  But if we become more aware of our call to ministry, might any of those things change?  At the very least, what we already do becomes imbued with the awareness that we do it for God.  Sometimes what we actually do might change, when we come to view ourselves as ministers; and sometimes it’s simply the quality of what we do that changes when we realize that we represent Christ to others, and that we’re doing something holy, something true to our call as Christ’s ministers.

So:  baptism, call, and ministry.  All part of the same package.  All part of that package we call being Christian, following God, being part of the body of Christ, the family of God.  Holy things, we’re called to do.  Holy things, we do.  Amen.

Sermon for Epiphany

Here's my sermon for today.  Day after tomorrow I celebrate 13 years as a priest.  Amazing.  It feels like forever; it feels like no time since I stood before the Bishop at Calvary Episcopal Church in Williamsville, NY, and felt his hands on my head, and those of my colleagues, as well.  The hands felt very heavy; I remember that.

Many days I tie my cincture (the rope "sash" that goes around the waist of my alb, the white liturgical garment I wear), and remember Jesus saying to Peter, "...when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and go wherever you wished,  But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go." Lots of times I feel I'm being told where I must and must not go, and what I must and must not do.   I'm about ready to start fastening my own belt again.  It feels like another great adventure.

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Psalm 72:1-7, 10-14; Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

It’s Epiphany!  We only get to celebrate this day on Sunday once every seven years – or is it eight, because of leap year?  But it’s lovely to celebrate the very day with you – usually we combine our celebration of the coming of the Magi with the first Sunday after Epiphany, the baptism of Christ.  This year we get to celebrate each of those festivals on its own day.

Today, Epiphany, we celebrate the manifestation, the appearance (Epiphany comes from the Greek root for “manifestation”) of Christ to the Gentiles, represented by those wise men, those Magi from the East – who were Gentile, not Jewish.  “Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you….Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice….”  The Psalm tells us more specifically what the rule of the King’s Son will bring:  righteous and just rule, prosperity, defense of the needy, rescue and deliverance for the poor and oppressed, abundance of peace.  Read it – it’s all right there; we just chanted it.  Since we’re all aware that the fullness of those things are not present here in our world, we know the fullness of the kingdom is not what we’re living – not yet.

 In the Epistle, Paul describes his commission, his ministry, his call by God to bring good news to the Gentiles.  This Jesus, who was considered a heretic by the Jews, a dangerous revolutionary by the Romans, is the Messiah, the bearer of God’s “mystery,” a Messiah who intended his message for the Jews, who then rejected it.  But the hungry-hearted Gentiles – they were the ones, the ready harvest that Paul found, and to whom he brought the good news, “…the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God….”  Very good news, indeed, the news and promise that we are adopted as full members of God’s family, heir to all the mysteries and promises contained in scripture, co-heirs with this Messiah, Jesus Christ. 

 And the Magi, those wise men from the East – they brought good news, too.  All of their calculations, all their figuring and pondering, probably over months and years, culminated in this news of a king born in Israel.  Did Herod know where he might be?  Of course they expected this new king to be born into the house of the current ruling king.  But no, Herod knew nothing of this newborn king.  The Jewish priests and scribes studied their own texts and found that Bethlehem was where the child would be born – and Herod, on receiving this good news, heard it as a threat, as very bad news, and sent the wise men to find the child, the threat to his rule, whom he, Herod, would then eliminate.

 Of course, we know the end of this little story of Matthew's:  the dream that sent the wise men home by another road, the dream that sent Joseph and his little family into Egypt until Herod died, and the dream that brought them back home.  We know that despite the slaughter of the innocents, that child, that newborn king, survived and thrived and became the anointed of God, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God With Us.

 But the whole point of this sermon is this:  Herod heard the good news, but he couldn’t receive it.  It sounded like bad news to him.  He couldn’t imagine that he might also be heir to mysteries and promises, and to a kingdom greater than any he would ever rule, and that this newborn king had no intention of displacing him, but only saving him, rewarding him, Herod, with riches greater than he could conceive.

 And now, of course, we are the heirs, the recipients of the good news.  And just like Paul, it is our commission, our ministry, our call from God to take that good news out to a world that is hungry to hear it – that part is no different than it was in the First Century.  Unfortunately, we don’t all know just what that good news is.  We can’t hear it as something so truly good that it can transform our lives.  It’s only that kind of good news that’s good enough to share.  And of course, when we do share it, there’s no guarantee that the world can receive it.  Unlike the First Century, there are many, many more distractions to prevent us from knowing just how hungry our hearts are for these mysteries, this good news.  Like Herod, there are those to whom the very good news of God With Us and our inheritance of the mysteries, the wisdom, the kingdom of God sound improbable at best, and like very bad news, at worst.  Yep, there are lots of people out there for whom Christianity’s good news sounds very much like bad news.

 And that may be because of who they are, as it was for Herod.  It may be because they are damaged in some way, as Herod was – and unfortunately, sometimes today they are damaged by Christianity itself.  There are some brands of Christianity that can do some serious damage to the minds and hearts of people who get in the way.  There are kinds of Christianity that judge and accuse and exclude, and that actually are very bad news.  There are Christians that judge and accuse and exclude, and who bring bad news wherever they go.  Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard brain scientist who had a massive, disabling stroke, and recovered to write about it, says that we must take responsibility for what we bring into the world.  That people perceive who we are and how we are at some level that is below words, below consciousness.  And we are responsible for how people perceive us.  Do we bring good news or bad?  What do people perceive, on that subconscious level, about us?

So we all need to think about ourselves.  Have we received the good news?  Have we been able to hear and understand just how good the news we’ve been given really is, just how great the gift we possess really is?  Do we feel the commission from God that we’ve been given (and oh, yes, we have been given it, by our baptism, by our membership in God’s family), to carry this good news to the hungry world, to share the gift, the promises, the inheritance we’ve been given?  Have we given serious thought and prayer to how we might do that, to how we might be while we’re doing that, whether we’re aware of it or not?  And the news we bring into the world – is it good, or not?  The things we say, the things we do, the ways we give or not give, are kind or not – these are all what we bring to the world – and is that good news, or not?

 At the start of every single day it would behoove us to spend a little time meditating on what we’ve been given through Jesus Christ.  And to think and pray on how we personify, embody, incarnate that news in the world.  It wouldn’t hurt to spend just a little time centering and preparing ourselves each morning, and then at the end of the day, praying and reflecting on how we’ve done – for good and for ill.  That’s something, just those few little minutes, twice a day, that can transform our lives.  We invite God in to work with us and work on us, and God With Us will come in.  That’s a promise.  And it’s really good news.  It’s light in what can sometimes be a pretty dark world.  Amen.

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Monsters Among Us?

This is my sermon for today.  I finished it Saturday night, but this morning something wouldn't leave me alone - a conversation with a friend that I had last week.  You'll see if you read it.

Lectionary Readings for Christmas 1, Year C:  Psalm 147; Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

Well, I know I say this a lot, but these are definitely the best lectionary readings we get in the total three-year cycle of readings!  These readings are full of all the best – the love and promises in Isaiah and Galatians, the grandeur of the Gospel, the images from nature in the Psalm:  mountains and grass, birds, horses, snow and frost – and the Psalm’s beautiful promises, as well, of the gathering up, healing, and rebuilding of God’s people, with the refrain that Mary sang to us last week, of lifting up the lowly and casting down the wicked.  Beautiful.  Consoling.  Great cause for ongoing celebration in this ongoing festival season of Christmas (today is the 6^th day).

And yet….and yet.  Probably not many Episcopalians know what day we observed on Friday.  Anybody here?  And if you do know what day Friday was, did you know before you read your Episcopal Calendar?  On Friday, we Christians who observe such things marked the day that commemorates the Slaughter of the Holy Innocents.  It’s that day when Herod, in a paranoid rage about the birth of the “new king,” sent his troops in to slaughter “all the children in or around Bethlehem who were two years old or under.”  You can read about that in Matthew, Chapter 2, verses 16-18.  It’s when an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream (I love the way Matthew includes so many dreams) and told him to take Mary and Jesus into Egypt, to escape the slaughter.  I’m not sure why we celebrate it before Epiphany, before the coming of the Magi, since it was that occasion on which Herod learned of this “new king” and sent the Magi to find him.  The Magi, having also had a dream, “left for their own country by another road,” and that’s when Herod, in his paranoid rage, slaughtered the innocents.  Perhaps we celebrate it now for the very reason of seeing the shadows in the light of Christmas, and the light of the miracle amidst the horror.  Herod, from the distance of 2 millennia, seems pretty much like a monster.  Who would slaughter innocent children?  And this year when we commemorate Holy Innocents, many of us can’t help but think of Newtown Connecticut, two weeks ago.

 On Friday I had a conversation that I can’t get out of my head.  A friend of mine was insisting that Adam Lanza, the shooter of those children, is a monster – a mysteriously malformed, mutant human being who we can never understand.  And I kept insisting that he was a human being, not so terribly different than the rest of us human beings.  I guess I was too steeped in my thoughts of how God would see Adam Lanza – pretty much like God sees the rest of us – a terribly flawed sinner, for sure – but also a soul to be loved and saved, a lost sheep in need of being found, a poor, beaten soul in need of a Good Samaritan – a Samaritan helper that Adam Lanza never was able to find.  I argued that if we insist on classifying the perpetrators of these terrible crimes as “monsters,” and the solution as simply identifying and locking up or killing these monsters, then we never solve the problem.  We never ask the next question:  How has our culture helped for mis-shape and mal-form these monsters?  God’s creation is very good.  God didn’t create a monster.  If he is a monster, then I say that monsters are made, not born.  And we seem to be making more of them, because these crimes keep happening more and more often.  What can we do to stop ourselves from making monsters?  Those are questions worth asking.  And I believe that it takes some empathy, some compassion (some com-passion – some feeling with) in order to solve the problem.  I think if we as individuals and a culture can’t be aware of and in touch with our own darker, shadow side, we have little hope of solving the problem.  You know what I say about our shadow, our dark side – if we don’t face and admit it head-on, it will sneak up behind us and bite us when we least expect it.  I made a list for myself that night – ways in which I am like Adam Lanza, experiences I may have had that are similar to his. Of course I can't possibly know -- I never knew Adam Lanza.  But I can make some pretty good guesses; I’m going to share that list with you.

1.  I know what it’s like to feel like a weird misfit.  I've lived there.
2. I know what it’s like to be made fun of.
3. I know what it’s like to ask for help, to really need help, and not get it.  On the other hand, I also know how it feels when I need help and someone reaches out and helps me.  It's mostly emotional help I'm talking about here.
4. I know what it’s like to be so enraged that I want to hurt and/or kill people.
5. I know what it’s like to feel desperate to escape some crisis or life circumstance, even if it means dying.
6. I know what it feels like to want to fit in and be like everyone else, and not be able to figure out how to do it.
7. I know how it feels to be imprisoned in my own introversion and my own perceptions and misperceptions.

 I made that list in about 5 minutes.  I bet if I took some more time, I could double it.  Now, I don’t want you to worry about me.  I have the psychological strengths not to follow through on any of those shadowy, dark feelings.  And I’ve only felt or experienced most of them for moments at a time, or a few hours -- or even a period of a few bad days -- rather than as a way of life, the way Adam Lanza must have.  All I’m saying is that those dark feelings have all lived inside me – and by the grace of God, I’ve had the strength and sanity to resist them, to wait them out till they passed, to get help with them, to know that things get better.  Adam Lanza didn’t have the strength and wisdom that I do, by the grace of God, or by my upbringing, or good genes, or whatever gives me what he didn't have that lets me survive and thrive.  I do believe that it’s from a place of some understanding, even if it’s partial understanding, and a place of empathy and compassion, that we can begin to love our neighbor, and to help solve our neighbor’s problem – which often has a way of becoming our own problem, too – we’ve learned that, writ large, lately.

 And now, and yet, we’re still in the Christmas fetival.  Even remembering those Holy Innocents long ago, those Holy Innocents more recently, we’re called to rejoice and hear the good news.  We’re called to revel in Isaiah’s words, to hear them as though we are saying them ourselves – not as Isaiah’s words, but as our own – as God’s children, God’s heirs, as Galatians reminds us.  Isaiah says, “…I will rejoice…My whole being will exult…he has clothed me with garments of salvation, as a bridegroom decks himself… as a bride adorns herself….You shall be a crown of beauty…”  I shall be…we shall be, for Isaiah is addressing Israel.  A crown of beauty, and a royal diadem in the hand of our God.”  Wow.  This part of Isaiah that we read today was written when the exile was over, and the people felt that God’s promises to Israel were once again flowering to fulfillment.  It’s a big mistake if we read scripture only as an old, dusty, historical story.  Scripture is talking to us now – and not just in the waning hours of 2012, but in this Christmas season – this season of wonder and miracle and the time when God has come to live with us.  It’s the time when God’s promises are being fulfilled for us, too.  This is the time for us to look at our own lives and see how God’s promises are fulfilled for us.  This is our job as Christians.  This is not an abstract process – just like solving our contemporary societal problems cannot be done in the abstract.  We start, when we study scripture, from the assumption that the promises of scripture, that God’s word is true, and it’s our job to figure out how that takes shape in our lives.  We start from the assumption that it’s our perception that may be faulty or incomplete, and that our life task is to continue to hone and clarify our perception -- to get to see our life and our world through something a little more like God's eyes. It’s up to us to figure out how the promises have been fulfilled in our own life.  Some people can do it alone; most of us need help.  We need to study and read; we need to work in groups; we need a spiritual director.  All of these are tools that can help us see God in our life.

 Paul tells us (I love Galatians -- “foolish Galatians,” he says elsewhere in the letter.  “Who has bewitched you?”) that before Christ, we had the law to tell us how to live.  Now we have a model, a brother.  Now we have been adopted into God’s family.  We are no longer slaves to the law, obeying blindly.  Now we’re children, heirs.  We’re part of God’s family, and we learn by watching our big brother, Jesus, just like most kids learn.

 Then we have this Gospel.  Oh, you’ve gotta know I love this Gospel.  John is the most difficult of the four gospels to understand, but this passage, right at the beginning, is so beautiful.  And we know who the Word is, but do we know what that means?  “The Word” is the shorthand for God’s wisdom.  Jesus is the Wisdom of God.  Much more than that, of course, because God’s words were also things like “Let there be light.”  A Creative Force.  God spoke it, and it came into being.  So Jesus is God’s Creative Force, God’s Wisdom.  We also know that Jesus is a clear or pure reflection of God, the essence of who God is.  You know I tell you, if you want to know what God's like, look at Jesus.

 And here’s the promise – the good news in this Gospel – this is the family we’ve been adopted into!  This is the one with whom we are co-heirs of the kingdom, of all that is God’s!  That’s pretty amazing!  We’ll never figure out what all that means, for sure.  What might it mean to be adopted into the family of the Word?  To be co-heirs with the Word, the Wisdom, the Creative Force of God?  What might God have in mind for us?  What gifts might God just be waiting to give us?  And importantly, how are we called to share those gifts?  How can we use our knowledge and experience of God’s gifts to share good news and love our neighbor, to reach out with compassion and make the world a better place?  It’s part of what God wants us to know this Christmas, part of what God wants us to ponder and dream about.  Amen.

Christmas Sermon

St. Raphael's Episcopal Church, Christmas Eve 2012

Psalm 96; Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-20

This hasn’t been a normal Advent-preparing-for-Christmas season for lots of us.  I think it’s Newtown:  Newtown cracked open our hearts and for many of us, myself included, it was like opening something that’s a combination of a great treasure chest and also Pandora’s box.  Wonderful things came up – childhood memories I’d forgotten for years, fierce love for the people in my life, huge, aching compassion, and a vulnerability and imperfection that doesn’t always feel very good, but which seems to have allowed people to love me more, even as they roll their eyes in frustration with me.  But of course, Pandora’s Box didn’t contain much good stuff.  Remember when she opened it, all the demons and ills and evils of the world came flying and slithering out.  And that’s what happened when some of us had our hearts cracked open.  Bad stuff slithered out, too, our depressions and pains, our tempers, all the emotions we try so hard to keep hidden from others, to keep under wraps and maybe, just maybe, we let them loose on the pages of our journals or cried into the coats of our dogs.  Our demons were harder to contain this year, with our hearts cracked open.  Just when we thought we were safe, something else would come slithering out, and surprise us – and the ones who love us.

When Newtown cracked open our emotional “Pandora’s box,” lots of things went unattended:  I forgot to light the Advent wreath for Lessons & Carols.  My tree, though lighted, still isn’t decorated, and I’m okay with that.  I have gifts that are still unwrapped under that simply-lighted tree.  My packages didn’t get mailed out in time for Christmas Day.  But other things did get attended to: my painful heart cried out with other hearts in pain, and I was more aware than ever of how it can sometimes be a “Blue Christmas” for lots of us, me included.  Yep, life cracked itself right open and came to lay right in front of us, in this manger.

 There’s a poem I found this year among my books and papers; I’m sure I read it years ago, when I bought Denise Levertov’s book, The Stream and the Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes.  But I don’t recall it from years past – it shone like brand new when I found it last week.  It seemed just right for this particular year:  some light, some shadow.  I put it on my Christmas card this year, and now I share it with you, my Christmas card to all of you:

It’s when we face for a moment

the worst our kind can do, and shudder to know

the taint in our own selves, that awe

cracks the mind’s shell and enters the heart:

not to a flower, not to a dolphin,

to no innocent form,

but to this creature vainly sure

it and no other is god-like, God

(out of compassion for our ugly

failure to evolve) entrusts,

as guest, as brother,

the Word.

“When we face for a moment the worst our kind can do…”  That’s part of what Newtown did to us, did for us.  Because we all need to face the shadow side of ourselves, the darker side of our nature.  If we don't face it, the shadow will sneak up behind us and make a mess.  And now we have shadows again this week, in Webster, New York, a small town right outside Rochester.  Four firemen were shot, two killed, when responding to a terrible fire.  What is it about us humans that can do these terrible, ugly things to one other?  We’d like to think it’s monsters that do these things, people who are incredibly different from us, broken beyond redemption – not anyone even vaguely resembling us.  And that’s true, to some extent; these killers are incredibly broken.  But deep in our hearts, we know there are broken parts of us, too – and who’s to say those broken parts of us might not do something terrible and crazy one of these days, if we’re pushed far enough?  We might just “shudder to know the taint in our own selves.”  It’s times like that when some of us pause to wonder why God even bothers with us, when God might just get sick of us, sick enough to leave us to our own devices, our own messes, our own crazy terrors and outrages.

And then comes Christmas.  Then comes awe and wonder.  Then comes the reminder that, despite it all (and God had millennia to think about it all), despite all that is horrible and depraved about us humans; perhaps, as Levertov says in her poem, out of compassion for us, God entrusts the Word into the form of a tiny, vulnerable human being.  Into one of us.  Jesus came, as our Eucharistic prayer says, “To live and die as one of us, to reconcile us to [God]….”  Imagine that.  No wonder we feel wonder at Christmas.  All of this for us.  As the hymn says, “Love came down at Christmas…”

 I’m going to read you one more thing, something written this week by my ex-husband in his blog (that’s a web-log, a kind of public journal), and published on the internet today.  Now, he calls himself an avowed atheist, but he’s talking about the wonder of Christmas; his piece is entitled, “Waiting for Wonder.”  Here’s just a little bit of what he says:

 “With or without God, Christmas is the hope that each new morning heralds the dawn of a new age of peace and goodwill for all.  Christmas is the dream that we can yet be the people we yearn to be, and that we can somehow remake this world according to the whispered counsel of the better angels of our nature.  For me, Christmas combines childlike wonder at the very fact of existence with childlike trust that, against all the evidence of history and our own lives, all will somehow be well.  Christmas is the flickering hope, like a candle in the window or a distant star that we follow, that we can all of us yet be saved from ourselves—even if, from an atheist’s perspective, we can only be saved by ourselvbe he is an atheist; I guess we’ve got to believe what he says about himself.  But this, somehow, smacks of Christianity to me, of our faith that nothing is beyond redemption, that God does look on us with compassion, not as the impossible, headstrong (“stiff-necked,” the Bible often says), destructive creatures, but rather as dear, beloved souls to save, sheep to shepherd, as children in need of more and more love and teaching and living example.  Maybe, like many of you have done with me, God sees us at our worst, rolls his eyes, takes a deep breath, and loves us anyway.  Maybe even loves us because of our imperfections.  Maybe God knows that our imperfections are what keep us working, keep us praying, keep us hoping and trusting in God for the healing and wholeness we know we need, and that we long for.  Maybe it’s our imperfections that make us the creatures that are, in the end, worthy of bearing God’s dreams.

So yes, this Christmas of 2012 is different from some of the “only-merry-bright-and-cheery” ones we’ve all had from time to time (maybe those all-merry ones are rare, and that’s why we cherish them so).  It’s a time of light and shadow, of joy and hope and grief and tangled, confused emotions.  This year Christmas is a hoping for heaven while living squarely on earth, looking toward the light, while still standing partway in the shadow.  This Christmas contains the fullness of what it means to be human: sadness and all, hope and all.  My Christmas prayer for you is that you experience it all as richness and joy, even amidst the mixture, chaos, and confusion of it, and that you can feel gratitude for this mixed-up, Pandora’s box life that sometimes happens to us, even as we continue to dwell in the palm of God’s hand, in the corner of God’s heart, being brothers and sisters, as Levertov has said to us, to the Word incarnate, Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Christmas is Coming!

Not that I mind saying "Happy Holidays" -- I'm not one of those Christians!  I can very happily live in a world with religious and non-religious people of "all flavors."  My bumper sticker is this one:

But for me, of course, it's all about Christmas.  Ever since Advent started, I've felt as though I'm dancing as fast as I can and still not getting enough done.  But the Christmas Calm has settled in a little early this year.

And my mood is better: I'm off the sofa and back into life.  I'm still not at 100% (but then, when I stop to self-evaluate, I'm never at 100%), and my heart is still very tender from all those broken hearts on the eastern coast of the US.  If grief could cause literal seismic shifts,  it would be Connecticut that would just break off and fall into Long Island Sound.

But you know what has helped me?  People.  People.  When things are going well, I just get myself so terribly isolated, humming happily along here on the Plateau, doing my thing, everything running smoothly.  Yes, I have people all around me, some of whom love me fiercely, I know, and most of whom wish me well -- but it's not the same, working in a parish of loving, generous folks, and having that tight circle of intimates who can help make everything better.  And who are the people who help me?

Well, there are my two best friends, Cheryl and Jack.  They've been in touch mostly by facebook and by commenting on this blog, also by email -- but they remind me there are people who know me, warts and all, and still love me.  That has been important in this time of self-doubt, self-castigation, and never-getting-enough-done.

I also work with a coach, Will, who has been, for several weeks, encouraging me to be gentle with myself in this post-sabbatical season of darkness.  I do tend to need reminding to settle down and relax with myself.

I have my parishioners, and the opportunity to open my own heart with my preaching.  Wednesday as I knelt at the altar rail during our healing service, I found myself sobbing over Newtown and the pain I've also heard from those closer to me during this season when all is supposed to be "merry and bright."  The weight of laid-on hands and the tears of my fellow-congregants reminded me that there are those who recognize my pain and who feel with me (com-passion).

Finally, I work with a lovely spiritual director, Pat, who holds what I tell her in her big, compassionate heart, who reminds me that my life this week, this month, this year, is one unique part of my own much larger life journey, and the journey of all creation.  She helps me realize the value of my story when my life is going well, and when my life is painful.

So, as I said earlier, much of the turmoil, both without and within, has settled.  My gifts for family and friends are most wrapped, and all my big mailing is done.  Now I can write Christmas cards to a few people, light a few candles, and listen to some Christmas music.  Now I can write my blog.  Now I can begin to relax into the miracle that Christmas is every year for me.

Yes, I still have 3 sermons to write and deliver in the next 3 days.  But I love writing and preaching sermons.  It's a great privilege to feel as though I'm in direct communication with the Holy Spirit when I receive the words I'll write and preach on any particular occasion.

And tomorrow evening is Lessons & Carols, a service we did last for Advent, 2006.  Services that don't happen often are pretty nerve-wracking; and the choir (and guest musicians and a guest conductor brought in for the occasion by our organist) have been laboring long and hard to make beautiful music that will help to glorify the occasion, and most of all to glorify the Incarnation of Christ.  We're not grand, we're not a cathedral, but it will be beautiful, nevertheless, and part of our small offering of ourselves to God.  And liturgy means "work of the people," and this particular liturgy has been and will be work.  Joyful work, sometimes tearful work -- but I recognize the work it takes.

So here I am, settling into the poignancy of a holiday away from my best friends and family.  I will be well-loved, and I actually enjoy the solitude.  I'll be having dinner with parishioners who are also good friends, and there will be lots of journal-writing time, time to reflect on my life at the end of this most amazing year.  I honestly don't mind the shape of my Christmas holiday -- but I will be thinking of my loved ones, living and dead, with a full heart, even as I relish the restful hours alone.

Holiday Despair - or Something

Well, just in case you've never known anybody who suffers at the holidays, here I am!  Now, this hasn't happened in a long time, so it's kind of new -- or very old, but not recent -- for me.  The first few Christmases after my daughter died really sucked; but for a lot of years now, I've been pretty fine, whether I spent holidays alone (I work on religious holidays, so I don't get away much for Christmas), or whether I've had friends or family close by -- I tend to be of pretty good cheer, and make my own party or join others for theirs on the holidays.

But this year has been a little different.  Coming back from sabbatical has been hard, I think.  Initially, it felt great to be back: I loved being back at church, loved being with the folks at church, loved preaching and celebrating the Eucharist.  I loved the sermons I preached, and all was well.  Then Advent came, and Christmas, Lessons & Carols, and reading for my book group.  It all kind of snuck up on me and whacked me from behind.  Suddenly I felt like I was dancing as fast as I could, and still not getting nearly enough done.  People were mad at me from every direction because I hadn't attended to their particular project or problem as soon as I got home.  My computer went on the blink, so I didn't do as much work at home, either.  I'm using my little notebook now, but it's not nearly as easy as the big desktop with a fine, flat-screen monitor.  I've also got a lot of documents and pictures on the big computer that I can't access just now.  I think I need a new video card in the desktop computer, but I just don't have the time and/or energy to get someone to check it out.  Tonight I've locked my keys in the church (left them and other people left), so I can't do some of the evening things I thought I might do over there.  I can get them tomorrow morning, but still -- and I'm left feeling really stupid and forgetful, on top of everything else.

Then, with sabbatical letdown and holiday planning and lots of other stuff, right in the middle of it all, Newtown came.  I was feeling rotten already, and then there was that great grief, that great yawning darkness coming at me from the eastern edge of the country (Connecticut, where I went to seminary).  There are the faces of those little angel children -- too young to hate (or, as someone else said, also too young to hate adults!).  Sometime Friday as I lay crying on my sofa, I was hit with the realization that I know that feeling those parents had -- the phone call, the rush to wherever (I went to the Hospital ER), the interminable, helpless wait for news, and the learning that your child wasn't coming home from school that night, or ever.  Oh, it has been nearly 30 years since my daughter died, and it feels like last week just now.  And twenty of those babies -- I can't imagine how that town must feel, not to mention those 20 families.  It breaks my heart.  It breaks everyone's heart, I know -- and it should.

I particularly liked this picture, which I also posted to my facebook page:

I don't know who made this amazing drawing -- so simple, so evocative -- I didn't.  Facebook might have that info.  All I know is that perhaps the red figure was supposed to be a Sandy Hook parent -- but it feels like me.  And I have this communion of saints, living and not living, that I can feel with their hands on my shoulders, and other hands on their shoulders, and on back, and back, and back, clear to God or infinity, or whatever.

This is more black madonna work, in case you were wondering.  Being in this darkness when the rest of the world is in light, or just going on with its own business -- that's dark work, shadow work, black madonna work.  It's not a scary place for me, and it's pretty familiar, but I can't say I like it much.  I've been standing in the light for a long time -- sabbatical, work going well, my big weight loss, everything pretty bright and sunny.  Being back in the shadows isn't much fun at all.

Here's a little madonna that consoles me, though.  I took her picture at the Louvre in September:

She's a lovely little nursing madonna -- I took lots of pictures of sculptures and paintings like this.  They're so human, so homely -- not in the sense of ugly -- but domestic, comforting, cozy, even.  This one will lose a child -- but not yet.  Still, she knows the dark: that unplanned pregnancy, that long trip to Bethlehem, that cold birthing-place, the mystery of the signs and strangers visiting.  She lives with mystery very well -- with great grace.

Several really good things have happened in the last couple of days, however.  My good friend and ex-husband Jack has sent me several wonderful links -- one a beautiful panorama of time-lapse photography on a mountain, another a very thoughtful piece about "the end of the world" and some thoughts by Dietrich Bonhoffer.  Maybe he'll have the links on his blog, which I've linked here.  The pieces themselves, as well as his thoughtfulness, have helped my mood.

I also got an email from a friend who scheduled an Advent Quiet Day about the black madonna in Knoxville for me, and she says people are asking if I have notes or written materials from that presentation, nearly 2 weeks ago.  No, I don't.  I had jotted a few words down on some index cards, which I forgot to take with me.  I did have my figures, photographs which I laminated, and this trusty little notebook computer on which I had selected some photos to show on a bigger screen.  I mostly stood around and talked to them about the black madonna and told stories and made associations to real life -- about darkness and waiting and carrying God's dreams for the world, and being pregnant with something that was about to be born, and living in mystery or darkness or grief or illness.  It was a wonderful day for me, and hearing that others want to see and read and hear more has inspired me again.  The last time I scheduled a time to talk to my parish about the black madonna, after my trip to Italy in 2009, not a single person showed up.  At this big church in Knoxville, over 40 women showed up (including a handful from my parish -- I'm very grateful to them).  It was so wonderful to know that others are interested in this odd thing that has become a passion for me.  I feel inspired to maybe put together a little self-published book or something.  That sounds like a fun winter project, once the holidays are past.

Today at the healing service I had a wonderful experience.  After I anoint and pray for everyone who comes forward, then my usual practice is kneel at the altar rail myself, and they all lay hands on me and say prayers for my requests.  Today I wept -- for Newtown, for myself, for all those that I know are hurting during this happy, shiny season.  And I felt the love and compassion that flowed from and through those people -- it lifted me up and made the load feel lighter.  I came home and had the energy to finish the service leaflet for Lessons & Carols on Sunday, and even design the cover, which has this woodblock on it:

If you're close to Crossville this Sunday at 4, be sure and come.  The choir has been working hard, and it's a beautiful program of Christmas Lessons and Music -- my musician's handbook said Christmas music was OK for 4th Advent, so we're going for it.

So feeling down as I do, I'm a little disappointed to realize that most folks don't really think the world is going to end in 2 days.  I guess I'll have to get those service leaflets and sermons done, gifts wrapped and mailed, bills paid after all, and continue to pay my student loans and taxes, too.  Oh, well.  I was kind of excited about the adventure of it all.

Watch this space.  I've got lots more to say.