Spirit and Practice

For the Gospel Grapevine, Lent 2013:

Spirit and Practice

by the Rev. John Leech

Let me be clear: I’m talking about the Holy Spirit and Christian Practice – how do we make real in our lives the truth of our faith? How do we live out the call of conversion?

This Lenten season, between Pancake Tuesday and Easter morning, we are invited, as always, to step back and reflect on our life with God, with each other, and with our selves. Lent is a time, often, of sacrifice: that is, of offering something of our own choosing as a testament and dedication, an instrument, to symbolize our devotion to a holy and spiritual way of being.

Sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? So we begin simply, with small practices – omitting something tasty from our diet, trying on a new habit or behavior. It’s almost like a New Year’s resolution – at first.

But this will not satisfy. We’ve got to know there’s more to it.

Lent is a time to lay groundwork, to make preparations, to learn what it is, in a renewing way, to be a Christian. We know – we know, don’t we? – that Easter is coming.

Something new, something unbelievable, is just over the horizon, just beyond our seeing, our field of vision. We live in hope, but we live in the meantime, the not-yet, of expectation.

To make this a season of renewal and not just waiting we take on spiritual practices. These are ways spirit can express itself in activity. Singing, praise, prayer, worship, silence, almsgiving, charitable volunteering – the list of actions we can take personally and together is always growing.

The point is, we are growing too! Growing together in Christ, toward Christ, through and within Christ: that is what Lent is all about. As you decide what to take on or cast off for Lent, give it some prayer: that our Lent together will be one of solemn worship building into joyful celebration.

The greater mystery is ahead: it isn’t the darkness of Lent – it’s the dawning of the new life. What lies beyond Good Friday? What does Easter mean for us? Can we live as resurrection people throughout the year?

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God's holy Word.

[See elsewhere in this issue for an announcement of Lenten Evening Prayer .]

2013 Lenten Worship Series: Spiritual Practices in Our Lives

Once again we'll be partnering with Edmonds Lutheran Church and Bethel Lutheran Church for our Lenten worship services, but this year's version will have a twist: services will rotate across all three sites.  The overall theme for the season is "Spiritual Practices in Our Lives," and each Wednesday's service will focus on a specific theme both in its message and in its worship style.

Schedule:

February 20 7pm at Edmonds Lutheran Church: Listening & Prayer

February 27 7pm at Bethel Lutheran Church: Study & Scripture

March 6 7pm at St. Alban's: Song & Silence

March 13 7pm at Edmonds Lutheran Church: Hospitality & Fellowship

March 20 7pm at Bethel Lutheran Church: Journey & Pilgrimage

Additionally—and regardless of which site is hosting the service—you are always invited to participate in Annie's Kitchen, the weekly community meal at Edmonds Lutheran Church at 5pm before worship.

Bethel Lutheran Church, 17418 8th Avenue NE, Shoreline
Edmonds Lutheran Church, 23525 84th Avenue West, Edmonds
Carpooling from St Alban's at 6.30pm.

Click on these links for more insights:

• The value of silence (http://www.taize.fr/en_article12.html) 
• Meditative singing (http://www.taize.fr/en_article338.html)

http://stalbansedmonds.org/2013/01/lenten-evening-prayer-2013/

FOR THIS MUCH THANKS

Mona Carter, for editing and producing the Gospel Grapevine, our parish newsletter, since July 2009. John Kistner, for serving as parish Treasurer this past year, and to Morrie Tugby and Penny Curtis, for working with him on the finance committee. To ongoing, outgoing, and continuing vestry members, for their leadership, and our delegates and alternate delegates to diocesan convention, for representing St Alban’s to the wider church. To Lee Forsberg and Jim Nichols for taking the lead on keeping up the church buildings and grounds – and to many hands, including Evie Arneson, Chuck Hagen, Al Walker, and Ron Sodetani, for joining in the work.

Trustees of the Future

 

A generation ago the sociologist Peter Laslett reported to a committee of Parliament on the concerns and needs and challenges facing a cohort of British subjects: those approaching, reaching, or living in retirement. Based on extensive research he identified a new “Third Age” of life: after childhood and youth, younger adulthood, and before old age. (Awkward terminology is a sign of the freshness of his ideas.) These older adults he called, in their potential, “trustees of the future.”

What he saw was an era of, potentially, personal fulfillment, after the work of earlier adulthood – its responsibilities, demands, and rewards – a time of freedom to pursue goals broader in scope and longer in vision than the immediate tasks of career and household.

Older adults, especially those in retirement, gain perspective based on not only longer experience of the past, but on the possibilities of the future. They may have the ability to contribute uniquely to a vision of a hopeful future. That is the challenge of a generation.

As we all affirm, children are the future. How to make that the best future possible is the job of all of us, the whole family, the whole community, and, the whole people of God.

Indeed, we will be welcoming two young new members into the household of God, when we celebrate the sacrament of baptism on the feast of the Baptism of our Lord, January 13, 2013. 

When we affirm, at Baptism, that we will do all in our power to support these persons in their life in Christ, we are taking on this task, as a community, in the power of God.

We cannot affirm, without God’s help, that we will be able to see this through. But with God’s blessing upon us and the presence of the Holy Spirit among us, we should be able to take on this challenge.

This is one, concrete, immediate way that we the people of God can respond to the calling to act, think, and pray as “trustees of the future.”

As we move into a new year in the secular calendar and in the life of the church, let us also move forward into a new sense of our unity in faith and action, our common mission.

The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ: to restore all people to unity with God and each other – and to aid all people in living into the fullness of life in abundance.

Peter Laslett, A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991) 7, 196.

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash. (Epiphany 2013)

JRL+

I can hardly wait for Christmas … but I’ll try.

 

I can hardly wait for it, for all it means to me: festivities, family, friends, now and remembered, here and far away. I want Christmas morning to arrive. But – it is not here yet; I am still waiting, waiting for more than Christmas presents can provide, more than wassail or caroling.

I am eager in anticipation for something greater than these – deliverance (and not just from holiday sales and canned Santa songs). Deliverance into the new kingdom Jesus comes to begin – the new order of the ages John told us was just around the corner.

I want to hear the story of our savior. The one of whom the prophets sang. The one “Messiah” is all about – wonderful, counselor, almighty God, prince of peace – though I know this is only Part One and we will not get to the end of the story until after Holy Week, after Easter, after Ascension, after Pentecost…

I can hardly wait for the celebrations, the holly, the ivy, (the mistletoe), the wassail, the carols, and the candlelight. I want to walk up the path to church between luminaria and into the hall for song and into the sanctuary for communion and into the stillness of night, stars, hidden or shining, waiting above, signaling…

I would like to see the world released from darkness. I would like to see the dawning of the light. And so I can hardly wait to see the beginning of his promised peace.

Still I eagerly await the coming of the King born at Christmas – because with joyful anticipation I prepare my heart. There is certainly room, if I let him in. And so—

I can hardly wait for Christmas … but I’ll try.

Christmas Season at St. Alban’s

The celebration begins at 5 o’clock on Christmas Eve, just after dark – we couldn’t imagine waiting any longer – with caroling, communion, and, yes, candlelight.

The next service is the next morning, Christmas Day, at 10:30 a.m.

We will have the Eucharist at the usual times (8 & 10:30am) on the First Sunday after Christmas.

The twelve days of Christmas season continue until the Eve of the Feast of the Epiphany – Twelfth Night.

Come join us in celebrating the Nativity of Our Lord – and the birth of the new possibility we find in following the way of Jesus.

JRL+

For the Gospel Grapevine (December 2012), parish newsletter of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, WA.

seasons of the year

Our celebrations as a church follow a pattern - a pattern set by custom and tradition and calendar, but also by the natural cycles of the year, the seasons of the sun and phases of the moon.

You know when it’s fall. You know when it’s winter, and springtime, and summer, and fall again. That is the Earth's natural year, the round of the seasons. It follows the sun, as our planet’s course through the heavens brings us closer and then takes us farther away from that stellar source of light.

Seasons vary from place to place, from time to time: we know them not by clock or calendar but by the rhythms of life and light. There are measurements of course: solstice and equinox, and halfway between these, the quarter days. These have been codified by calendars, to give us a handle on what is happening to us as days grow shorter or lengthen. The liturgical round of the Christian year follows this pattern.

The ancient Celtic calendar was also built around the seasons of the sun. The Celtic calendar included not only the winter and summer solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes but also the days halfway between them, which they called the quarter days. Each is associated with an element of nature.

Samhain, associated with the element of earth, at the end of October and the beginning of November, marks the turning of the Celtic year. Imbolc, the festival of light, comes at the beginning of February. Beltaine, associated with fire, is May Day. Lughnasa, feast of the air and wind, is August 1st.

The year, in this imaging, starts in a gathering darkness, when the seed in the ground, planted earlier, begins in silence to take root and grow. Something is ended; something new has begun. It is like our understanding of death and resurrection. It is a harvest time for past things, looking back, and, looking forward, to what is already but not yet come into our world, a time of hidden new life.

The Christian year, and the Church calendar, reflect the seasonal rhythms of the natural cycle of the solar year – and it shows us that in its own cycle of feasts and fasts. These, too, following the seasons of the sun, are arranged around the solstices and equinoxes and the quarter days between them.

The liturgical year begins with Advent, the season of preparation, for four Sundays before Christmas. Just past the winter solstice comes the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. We celebrate light and life and the incarnation of the holy one of God. The celebration continues through the twelve days of Christmas, and the feast of the Epiphany, into January’s Sundays, including the Baptism of Our Lord. 

The next feast comes around the time of the quarter day at the beginning of February, when we celebrate Candlemas (Candelaria in Mexico). It’s a perfect reason for another party, as we remember the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple, completing the cycle of the birth of our King. In some traditional cultures, the winner of the prize baked into the Epiphany cake brings treats for all to share on this day (let’s see what happens here). 

Seasons and celebrations begin to change; days lengthen. Shrove Tuesday comes; we celebrate with a pancake supper. 

There is a shift now, at Ash Wednesday, remembering the water of Baptism and the coming themes of death and resurrection. We prepare, through Lenten discipline, for the great events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through to Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Eve and Easter Day. Fifty great days later – eight days after the Ascension – is the feast of Pentecost.

Breaking into the midst of the Lent/Easter/Pentecost cycle (which is tied to the phases of the moon well as the seasons of the sun) is the feast of unexpected news, the revelations of the Annunciation, on March 25, just after the vernal equinox.

We celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of baptismal promise, and the growing body of Christ’s faithful people, through summer and into fall. 
 

The summer solstice comes just around the feast of our patron, Saint Alban, and just before the feast of the Nativity of St John, the Baptist on June 24 (six months from Christmas). 

Around the time of the quarter day at the beginning of August we celebrate The Transfiguration (and Picnic Sunday). 

As the autumnal equinox indicates a change of season toward the end of September, so do the feasts of St Michael and All Angels and St Francis of Assisi  (with the Blessing of the Animals).

St John said of our Lord, ‘he must increase, I must decrease’ - and now indeed the days slowly shorten, imperceptibly at first, until the season’s quickening accelerates into autumn, harvest, and the eve of All Saints’ appears on the horizon of our year. At All Saints, we remember and thank God for the saints of the past, celebrate with those present with us today, and pray for those who will join the Kingdom in the future.

All Saints' Day and the Commemoration of All Faithful Departed (in Mexico, el Día de los Muertos), November 1st and 2nd, falling at the quarter day, provide an opportunity to offer thanks for what we have received from what has come before and give us a chance to pray for what is to come.

All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee— words of David, how appropriate they sound, in the season of thanksgiving, as we celebrate the in-gathering of pledges and the offering of our own blessings back to the source of all blessings, God who creates, redeems, and sustains.

The Sundays just before Advent are a season of anticipation – they focus on the Kingdom of Christ. This culminates on the last Sunday of the church year, in the feast of Christ the King.
  

Look back with gratitude, 
Look forward with anticipation, 
In all things give thanks. 

– Christine Sine

What season of the year, you may wish to ask yourself, fits your spirit? Where do you find resonance with your own spirituality? What is the season that speaks to your heart? 

Are you in a season of anticipation – of the Advent of Christ? Does the Incarnation fill your heart with quiet longing, with loud rejoicing, with the sureness of peace, the future of hope, the promise of love, represented by Christmas? Have you welcomed the new into the kingdom of your heart, giving due obeisance, like the three kings of Epiphany, to the presence of the true ruler of the universe – however humbly he appears now to our eyes? Are you embarked upon a journey of preparation – the long desert trek of Lent? Are you in Easter, full of the reality of the risen life in Christ? Are you in the middle of summer days, in the long green season of Pentecost, watching things grow and helping them along, anticipating the fullness of fall’s harvest celebrations? Are you celebrating the kingdom season, the end of days after Pentecost, and the in-breaking (already-but-not-yet) reign of God?

All these seasons are filled with possibilities; meanings that may speak to you each in their turn.

You are invited into relationship with God, in each season of the year, and in each chamber of your heart.

You are beckoned by God, through Christ, into relationship with the eternal Word and holy Spirit, who together with the Father, the source of all Being, are the One true home, the One true light, the One true timeless reality that lies beneath and beyond all our days.

Come into celebration – come in quiet or in laughter, in sorrow or in delight; come to Christ at harvest and planting, breathe in the Spirit in summer’s air and winter’s, and walk with God in every season of your life. 

Come with us on the journey together. We are one family – the household of God. And you are always welcome under His roof.


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sources

Marcus Losack, “Celtic Spirituality and the Pre-Christian Tradition”, Lecture in the Chapel of the Ascension, Markree Castle, Co. Sligo, May 22, 2007.

Herbert O'Driscoll, Prayer Among Friends (Toronto: Path Books, 2008).

Hugh Stevenson, "The Secularization of the Calendar", St. Patrick's Grapevine, Newsletter of St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, Kenwood, Calif., July/August 2010.

David Marshall.

Tom Cashman.

Nora Chadwick, The Celts.

Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Book of Days.

Christine Sine, "Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart", http://msainfo.us/2012/07/31/grateful-heart/. Accessed October 1, 2012.

Adapted from "the year's turning", an article for the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash., November 2010.

Listening to your Elders

Student: What is the difference between just getting old and being an elder?

Teacher: An elder sees a vocation.

An elder, then, is a person who has perceived a calling – a calling related to their place in life, of not merely the passing of the years but the gaining of experience.

Congregations embrace the future in a variety of ways and through all their people: through the youngest members, all the way through to the oldest. Congregations embrace a multitude of generations – and of vocations. What God calls us to be – and how God calls us – may take different shape at different times in our lives. In later years, that calling may take the shape of an active wisdom – of elderhood.

Since the fall of 2008 I have been engaged in study toward the Doctor of Ministry degree. Currently I am working on my dissertation/project. Part of that project is understanding the nature of elderhood for men within the context of a multigenerational congregation – like Saint Alban’s.

How are they aware of the vocations of elderhood? How they are embraced by and within the context of congregational life?  

But – best to ask for elders’ own perceptions.

And so I have been asking older men active in the congregation a few questions.

·      How has your faith developed as you have gotten older?

·      How has the congregation participated in this growth?

·      What calls you now as a vital way to live out your faith?

·      How does the congregation embrace or celebrate it with you?

Having now listened to a dozen and a half of the older men active in the congregation, in leadership, worship or service. I am aware of how grateful I am for their participation and their presence in the congregation. As I prepare to evaluate what they have said to me, both common themes and unique perspectives, I look forward to honoring their voices.

—Father John

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash., October 2012.

What is the mission of the church?

 

The Mission of the Church is the mission of Christ.

In its discernment of its worldwide mission the Anglican Communion has articulated Five Marks of Mission:

To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.
To teach, baptize and nurture new believers [that is, to make disciples].
To respond to human need by loving service.
To seek to transform unjust structures of society.
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth [that is, to take care of the earth that God has made].

Recently an Episcopal church in Berkeley boiled down its mission to a handful of words: to be the Good News of Jesus Christ.

Because we are the body of Christ – we the followers of Jesus – we are the heads and hands, hearts and voices, he has to continue his mission. And that mission is to proclaim the coming of the kingdom of peace, that peace that is the reign of God, and to begin to live it out and show it, witnessing in our words, and in our lives, our worship and our work, to the presence of God.

How do we fulfill that mission here, locally, as God’s people, called together in Edmonds? To whom is God sending us? And whom is God sending to us?

These are the people of God’s sending: people who hunger, with the same hunger we have, for a taste of the living bread, the communion of the kingdom, people who thirst for righteousness, that is, for a right order of things.

Who are our neighbors? We know that the 40,000 residents of Edmonds have an average age of just over 45 (2010 U.S. Census), and we know that people come here to live, work, and raise their families – and to enjoy their retirement.

What do we have to offer them? First of all and most of all we have the presence of the redeeming gift, the living Lord, who is present in the word proclaimed and understood, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers, and in our going forth to the world God made, and, having made, saw was good. We invite people to join us in the rest of the Sabbath, and in the rest of the week to carry forth with them the joyous news of our Lord.

Creating, redeeming, sustaining, God is at work in the world.

We are sent – to proclaim. We are charged – to serve. We are invited – to rejoice.

Let us rejoice together in the gift of life. Let us celebrate together in common worship. Let us go forth together in the one Spirit, with a common purpose: to bear the word and be the good news of Jesus Christ, in this time, in this place, to the people whom God has gathered here around us.

Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus for ever and ever.  Amen.  (Ephesians 3:20, 21)

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash. September 2012. 

A Heart of Wisdom

Our elders are growing in numbers. In the United States and other developed countries, the population is aging. In the 2010 U.S. Census, the number of people age 65 and over was 40.3 million persons (13.0 %) and grew at a faster rate (15.1 %) than the population under age 45. In 2010, the median age increased to a new high of 37.2 years, from 35.3 years in 2000, with the proportion of the population at the older ages increasing similarly. The population is growing at a faster rate in the older ages than in the younger ages.

In southwestern Snohomish County, the average age has increased from 36.1 in 2000 to 38.6 in 2011, with a projected increase to 39.8 in 2016.

Aging and caring for the aged is a growing concern for all Americans. For the churches the problem is not simply ministry to aging persons – it is ministry of and with our elders.

The future of the church is not just with the young - indeed as the population of America gains in elders we will be given the gift of many years of wisdom, experience, and care.

And so we seek insight into the spiritual issues and gifts connected with aging and later life – the later stages of the human life cycle. We want to help each other find the blessing – to come to a truthful understanding of what we are receiving – as we experience aging.

Among the joys of life in a multi-generational congregation is the mutual enjoyment of people of different ages and backgrounds. One of the things that we all enjoy is the presence of children and young adults in the congregation. Another is the presence of our elders.

What is the difference between just getting old and being an elder? I asked a mentor of mine.

His prompt reply: An elder sees a vocation.

Among the challenges of life is finding a calling for the changing circumstances we face over the years. Even in the gentlest of retirements or other life shifts, there is a faith shift to accompany it.

A new understanding of God may come with a change in one's place in life. Something new may be calling us; something old may be affirmed.

One thing we know: God is our companion and guide on the way, on the journey of life, through pain and plenty, sorrow and joy.

So teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12)

Human Trafficking

Human Trafficking

 An Article by Sarah Leech

Each year, criminals around the world collect billions of dollars in profits by compelling the service of other human beings through fraud, force and coercion in order to exploit their labor. Their victims are slaves, who today number somewhere between 10 million and 30 million people across the globe. The victims include people like Tola, a toddler in Southeast Asia who was sold to beggars to redeem a debt his father could not pay, and forced to beg on the busy streets of a Cambodian border town at the age of two; freckle-faced, blonde, blue-eyed American teenagers who’ve run away from bad home situations, only to find themselves pimped out at truck stops and street corners across America; Latin American families hoping for work who get tricked out of their property rights back home, transported to “el Norte” and trapped by debt into working for no pay in construction companies, in domestic servitude, on farms or in factories.

Worldwide, slaves harvest and process the cacao that goes into much of the chocolate we eat. They mill rice, bake bricks, mine precious metals, assemble electronic devices, labor on fishing boats and farms. They are domestic slaves, sweatshop workers, and restaurant workers. Some have been forced to become child soldiers, mail order brides, even organ donors. And multitudes have been forced into prostitution.

How did these who bear God’s image become enslaved?

Some were abducted – snatched from their families or schools. Some were deceived. A reliable-seeming stranger – or even a trusted relative or friend - came with a job offer, a promise of education and better life. They took that offer, and found themselves trapped. Some were sold or sent away to help their family survive. Many were lured or taken from their own country or region by recruiters, deprived of identification papers, sold, isolated from family and community support, kept under constant watch, trapped by ever increasing debt for their food, transportation and lodging, and forced to work under threat of injury or death, for no pay and with no way of escape.

All of these people were enslaved through human trafficking, which the UN defines as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of a person by such means as threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, or fraud or deception for the purpose of exploitation.”

Global Scope of Human Trafficking

Each year traffickers smuggle 600,000 to 800,000 people across international borders and traffick millions more within their own countries. Approximately 80 percent of those trafficked trans-nationally are female, and half of these are children. The majority of these victims are forced into the commercial sex trade. Forced or bonded labor awaits most of the males and females trafficked within their own countries’ borders.

This tragedy is happening in every country in the world, including the United States. The United States is a destination country in the slave trade. About 17,500 people get trafficked into the US each year. They come largely from poor countries, mostly from Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe, with a smaller percentage coming from Latin America. There are US citizens trafficked within US borders as well. Worldwide, trafficking typically moves people from poorer countries in the global South and East, and Eastern Europe, to richer industrialized nations in the West, the Pacific and the Middle East.  Within countries, traffickers typically move their victims from poor rural areas to prosperous urban areas.

If it is illegal, why does it persist?

Trafficking is illegal in every country of the world, but it persists because it is profitable. The UN estimates the slave trade generates $32 billion in profits globally each year, bringing in more than the illegal arms trade. Because human trafficking is so profitable, there is a huge black market in human beings. They are cheap, in ready supply and endlessly renewable. Slaves cost the traffickers very little – about the price of a pair of athletic shoes. They can be resold many times, and everyone who handles them profits. Potential slaves are in ready supply because so many people around the world are desperate for work and opportunities to improve their lives. Such people are likely to migrate, and their desperation and naiveté feed the trafficking industry.

Trafficking is part of the economic systems of the countries where it operates. This is especially true of Southeast Asia, where tourism accounts for 8.2% of GDP and sex tourism is an openly promoted part of the industry. It’s also true in consumer cultures like those in the West. The goods slaves make are in high demand because they are cheap. Things consumers eat and use every day, from coffee to cotton underclothing to electronics, may have involved slave labor. The demand for cheap products fuels the demand for cheap labor, incentivizing traffickers to trade in human beings.

Other factors that enable human trafficking to persist include: cultural attitudes toward girls and prejudices about minorities that make it a low priority to protect victims; community tolerance or ignorance about trafficking, and government corruption, or ineptitude - or simply lack of resources - that make it easy for traffickers to operate with impunity.

Who is vulnerable, and why?

People from all walks of life are vulnerable, but overwhelmingly it is people who are poor, desperate, undereducated and marginalized, who are in the most danger. Poverty and lack of economic opportunity make parents and young people susceptible to offers of jobs or education in faraway cities. Gender discrimination plays a role, for girls are less likely to be educated than boys and first on the list to be sold or sent off to earn money. Marginalized ethnic and religious minorities, who often live outside the protection of the law, and can’t gain access to services, are easy prey for traffickers. And youth suffering from domestic abuse, parental drug use and alcoholism who are desperate to get out of a bad situation, are vulnerable as well. Such people are easy targets for traffickers. Their lives can be destroyed, and chances are high that nobody will notice, or do anything to stop it.

What can we do?

There is a great deal faith communities can do to combat human trafficking and the damage it causes its victims. Grounding our actions in faith, we can:

·      Educate ourselves about the issue of human trafficking, how it plays out in our own communities as well as around the world, what the red flags are that indicate a possible trafficking situation, how consumer choices may support trafficking, and how to report a suspected trafficking case or obtain confidential help and information (contact the National Human Trafficking Resource Center Hotline, 1-888-3737-888).

·      Advocate for laws that protect and restore victims and make it easy to apprehend and prosecute traffickers; urge corporations to adopt policies and practices to keep slave labor out of their supply chains; boycott products produced by slaves; use websites and smart phone apps to empower justice-based consumer choices.

·      Serve trafficking victims directly or through local agencies to provide medical advocacy, translation, counseling, housing, job placement and similar services; reach out to migrant communities in our area; educate doctors, nurses, hospitals and schools in our area about the signs of trafficking, and raise community awareness through op-ed pieces, events and campaigns.

·      Pray for trafficking victims & survivors, perpetrators, law enforcement, corporations, and governments, and for abolitionists, grassroots organizations and NGOs that work to prevent, protect and restore victims or to prosecute traffickers.

·      Team up with others in our communities and denomination who are working on the issue of human trafficking; work together and share resources; develop relationships with organizations doing global and / or local anti-trafficking work, including those providing services to victims; find out what their needs are, and explore partnership with them

·      Give as generously as we can and raise funds to support local & global projects that combat trafficking.

·      Believe that God cares and is already at work, and that we are invited to join God in proclaiming release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and in letting the oppressed go free.

Resources

Human Trafficking: Freeing Women, Children, and Men, a booklet from Anglican Women’s Empowerment that provides a concise overview of human trafficking, suggestions for a Christian response, and information about trafficking-focused initiatives and resources across the Anglican Communion. www.anglicanwomensempowerment.org

Trafficking in Persons Report 2011, US Department of State – a snapshot of what’s happening related to human trafficking in 184 countries around the world, including the United States. http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2011/index.htm

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center (NHTRC), a service of Polaris Project, is a national, confidential, 24-hour, toll-free hotline, available to answer calls from anywhere in the United States. 1-888-3737-888 The hotline is not a government entity, law enforcement or an immigration authority. It is a safe place to call and report a tip, access resources, request training, or receive referrals. The resource center website offers downloadable materials to help individuals and groups learn how to identify, prevent and combat human trafficking in the United States. Items available include educational handouts and presentations, information on legislation, materials for public awareness raising and direct outreach to potential victims, educators, professionals, and public servants. http://www.polarisproject.org/resources

The Not for Sale campaign offers and creates tools to engage grassroots groups (including churches), businesses, and governments “in order to incubate and grow social enterprises to benefit enslaved and vulnerable communities.” One of these tools is the Community Abolitionist Network. http://www.notforsalecampaign.org

The Freedom Registry, a web resource to “share and discover what advocates and organizations are doing to address human trafficking and exploitation across the United States.” http://freedomregistry.org/

World Concern’s Women of Purpose Human Trafficking Resources, a list of books, films, discussion guides, training resources, prayer resources about human trafficking, its causes and solutions, and of some organizations working to combat human trafficking. For a free copy of the resource list, email womenofpurpose@worldconcern.org.

Sarah Leech, volunteer, is Director of World Concern’s Women of Purpose program, Shoreline, Washington.

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, WA

Spreading Flames

Wow! Those are two scary words. For anyone growing up in the arid West they are reminders of the increasing threat of wild fire through the long hot dry months of summer. They speak of a spark taking off, becoming a flame and tearing apart hillsides and fields, green grass gone blonde gone black. What is left but seed for next year, a few stalwart trees, and a saving remnant of verdure passed over but scorched. A few bushes grow, here and there. Seed spreads across the blackened earth. And still the summer waits.

The breath of a cool change in the air, the trembling hope of a monsoon with its violent release of water: these are coming – but when?

In the church, too, there is the hint of spreading flames – but it is a hopeful fear, not anticipatory dread, that draws us in fascination. What we are seeing are fields gradually ripening, the “flame” the spreading word of the gospel, which catches spontaneously and lights new lights in dark places.

Sometimes like ivy “it sleeps, it creeps, then it leaps!” (Gradually, gradually the word is spreading.) Sometimes suddenly it is evident all around us: “Why didn’t I see that before?”

God’s kingdom is all around us, coming into being, drawing us into fullness. God is at work in the world: how do we share in it? The Sundays after Pentecost (beginning with Trinity, the first Sunday in June, and extending all the way through All Saints to Christ the King) are all about this challenge.

How do we take part in God’s work in the world? Or, how are we to be the body of Christ? How do we share it? How do we show it?

We pause for a moment of stillness, after the sermon and after the Eucharist, to allow spaciousness in our spirits, to allow the Holy Breath to breathe through us. And in the stillness, we wonder. What would God say if we stopped and listened?

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, June-July 2012, Edmonds, Wash. JRL+

The shortest ending of Mark

And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid. (Mark 16:8, rsv)

The shock must have been great. Greater than the shock of any day before. They stood before the empty tomb.  And they knew. They knew it was true. He was not there. He had gone before. He had gone before them, into the night. And through it, and beyond it. He had gone into the morning of a new day. The day he promised. The day he told them about. The day of the Lord. It was his day. And it was theirs. They did not know what to do with it. They did, they did know, they knew some things: they knew to go and tell every body all about it. They knew to proclaim it from the rooftops. They knew: they were women. What did they know? Who would believe them? What were they, after all? Who were they to know, to tell, the terrible secret? (He was alive.)

He was alive and everything must change. Everything must be different from now on. They ran down the street. No one knew. No one but them. But soon, that would be different too. As the day begins. Early morning sounds began to rustle around them as they hurried home. Ordinary sounds, the sounds of the first day of the week. The first day. You said it, brother. The first day of everything. What would finally happen was in the future. This was the hinge point – or just past it.

Wasn’t the shift really something that had come in the dark of the night, after the full moon had come and gone? Just a day before?

After the Passover, after all the noise, the sounds too loud for human ear, after the violence, came the quiet— the quiet, the mourning. Saturday. Nothing moved. Nothing stirred. It was the Sabbath: nothing worked that day. Nothing and nobody. He was gone. For ever. And then. They went on the morning of the first day of the week. Not just morning yet, perhaps not even dawn, as they began to leave their separate homes and go out. When they met in the street, you could just tell a black thread from a white, if you held them up together before your eyes, or a friend’s eyes.

And very early on the first day of the week they went to the tomb when the sun had risen.

It was day. But what would it bring? They went. And they saw. They saw nothing where something should have been. And they knew. It was all over. And it was just beginning. What would the future bring? All they knew was it was a future with hope. But it was a wrenching, strange future, and one being born in hard labor. What had happened was beyond human hope. Beyond the wreckage of their lives, ones they knew. (He was alive.)

He was not there. What are you doing here? What are you looking for? Whom do you seek? We seek Jesus. And will you find him here? Will you find him in the morning, where the stone has been rolled away, and the tomb is empty? Where the gardener’s helper’s discarded cloak has gone missing? Some one needed it. Some one went away. And where he has gone, you should follow. Into the future. The future with hope. A hope in what has begun to be fulfilled. (He is risen.)

The beginning of the new world – a world where God raises from the dead, makes alive again – or better, makes new – what calls us into being ourselves. (The Lord is risen.)

He is risen indeed.

The end is where we start from. —T. S. Eliot

On my bookcase is a paperback New Testament. It was the first part of a new translation and when my great-grandfather got his copy, he wrote the date inside: Dec. 21, 1948. There was something slightly controversial about this translation, the Revised Standard Version. It was in contemporary English, modern English, and it contained the best modern scholarship of its time. So in the text it gave the shortest ending of Mark. The Gospel of Mark, the translators determined, may originally have just ended like this:

And they went out and fled from the tomb; for trembling and astonishment had come upon them; and they said nothing to any one, for they were afraid.

Back up a sentence or two. The women had come to the tomb, where Jesus was laid, on the first day of the week. They came with spices, to anoint him. But they asked each other: Who will roll away the stone that covers the mouth of the tomb? Only to find: it was already rolled back. Inside they found a young man sitting, all dressed in white.

“Do not be amazed; you seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has risen, he is not here; see the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you.”

So they knew what to do, what to say.

And it terrified them.

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash., April 2012

JRL+

Marked for Life

Marked on the forehead. That is what we see Ash Wednesday on fellow parishioners – and some people on the street. They are marked with a cross, made of ashes, drawn with a thumb, by a priest or minister. As they were marked they heard words like these:

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

The imposition of ashes serves as a reminder of mortality – and a reminder of eternal life, for at death, to God’s faithful people, life is changed, not ended.

How can this be?

In Baptism you are sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own for ever.

You are marked as Christ’s own forever. You are no longer your own; you are bought with a price. (1 Cor. 6:19-20)

The life we live now we live no longer for our selves or of our selves, but we live in Christ, for Christ, as Christ’s own people, as the ones of his own fold whom he protects – and whom he guides – and whom he calls.

And he calls us not only into safety and refuge but also into a life that is fully alive – with threats, joys, sorrows, sheer boredom, hard days and soft hours, excitement and pain, and ultimate delight. For ultimately we delight in him and we are his own, brought into his company and welcomed home.

This home is ours – not at the end of time but now, ours from the moment of our baptism. At baptism we are welcomed into the home of faith, received into the household of God.

This household is God’s domain, the Kingdom of Christ. How to see it? How to live it? How to carry it out among ourselves? How to carry it out and make it real in our lives – and the lives of our neighbors?

Who is my neighbor? (Just checking.)

Hmm… maybe a demographic profile of my community will help. Maybe… a parable? (Substitute some stereotype unsavory and challenging for “Samaritan.”)

Or it may be that we encounter our neighbor when we find ourselves helping someone in need, or rejoice with someone in celebration, or simply share a meal.

And it may be that in encountering our neighbors we encounter something of ourselves. It may be something familiar and comfortable – or something familiar and uncomfortable!

And yet somehow Jesus welcomes us all – so that, at the last, and in the first instance, Jesus is able to say to us, with conviction, you are my own, singled out, marked for life.


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For the Gospel Grapevine (February 2012), newsletter of Saint Alban's Parish, Edmonds, Wash. http://stalbansedmonds.org

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Are all saints scary?

On the eve of All Saints you might well ask, are all saints scary?

Saints certainly are full of awe – and many of them are full of flaws – but are they scary?

What might make us frightened of saints is not Halloween terrors but something more challenging. They remind us of something beyond fear, even beyond death. They remind us of God’s awesome might and absolute holiness. It is enough, if you think about it, to bring you to your knees. And it is enough to bring you to your feet. In darkest night, in coldest dawning, in brightest day, saints remain witness that love is stronger than death. Hope and faith and love, these three abide; and it is saints who testify to that truth.

Could we be saints?

Do we think of ourselves as saints or sinners? For surely, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) but is that the final answer?

We “are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Roman 3:24). But do we think of ourselves that way? When the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Rome he did not greet them as sinners. He addressed them as “God’s beloved … who are called to be saints”. And he said, “Grace and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 1:7) That’s more like it. But wait.

Did you see that? He said, “…who are called to be saints!” What are we getting into?

Who can possibly be a saint?

Nobody – and everyone.

Who are saints?

They are people called by God. The Torah, the Law of Moses, says: “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” (Leviticus 19:2) Is that even possible?

Paul also calls the church the people "who are sanctified (made holy) in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, ... who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:2) Becoming holy is not our doing – it is God who gives the gift of grace.

What is a saint like?

Saints are people full of joy – through darkness and light they live under the mercy of God. “Their delight is in the law of the Lord and they meditate on his law day and night. They are like trees planted by the water that will bring forth their fruit in due season.” (Psalm 1:2-3)

What do they do?

Saints are people who show their faith in their lives. They are messengers of the good news, “approved by God to be entrusted with the message of the gospel,” not to please other people or show off, but to please God who knows our hearts. (1 Thessalonians 1:1)

God calls for his people to be impartial and just in judgment, to speak healing words, and not to trade in rumors or speak ill of others. Saints do not hoard hatred in their hearts; they do not bear grudges or take comfort in revenge. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Leviticus 19: 18)

Saints are people who are given a gift – the gift of the joy of knowing God’s grace – and a task: to share the good news of God with the people around them and to take delight in the sharing. To show, in word and deed, here and now, in the place and at the time God has given us, the love and mercy and grace and peace that we know as God’s beloved.

Saints are people – well, as the song says, “just like you and me.”

Maybe it is a foolish thing to do, to try to be a saint; but to accept as a gift God’s love and mercy – that makes total sense. We are God’s beloved people, who are called to be saints.

Almighty God, you have surrounded us with a great cloud of witnesses: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their testimony to your power and mercy. Make us your holy people, called according to your purpose. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, be with us all. Amen.

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, November 2011.

JRL+

Joyous transparency, or: God illumines my aunt

One day at work some years ago my friend Lydia leaned over to me and whispered, “Do you know what this means?” She pointed to the motto on our corporate logo. (Our company, Oxford University Press, used the university coat of arms in its logo.)

I looked at it and read it as, DOMINUS ILLUMINA TIO MEA.

Giving it half a thought I said, “God illumines my aunt.” Lydia laughed.

Of course DOMINUS ILLUMINATIO MEA is not a fractured mixture of Latin and Spanish. It is a perfectly good Latin motto: “The Lord is my light.” The motto is drawn from Psalm 27, which begins:

The Lord is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?
the Lord is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

What this psalm reminds us, truly, is that as believers in God, as Christ’s church, we are called to a joyous transparency, with light shining in and light shining forth from us.

Let the light shine in – illuminating us – and let the light shine forth from us – as a beacon proclaiming to the world God’s peaceful sovereignty.

The light of Christ – we open ourselves to it; it lightens our hearts.

The light of Christ – we open the shuttered windows of our souls and let it shine out to bring the good news of salvation to those around us.

The light of Christ – we receive it as a gift at Baptism.

The light of Christ – we celebrate it at Easter and regularly in the Holy Eucharist.

The light of Christ – we carry it with us from birth to death, through the darkest tunnels and on the brightest hillsides.

The light of Christ – which reveals God’s glory and banishes the shadows of sin.

This is the light that came into the world in the person of Jesus. This is the same light that was in the beginning (FIAT LUX) and at the fulfillment of creation.

This is the light of which Jesus spoke when he said:

“I AM the light of the world” (John 8:12) and “You are the light of the world” (Matthew 5:14).

And – you do not put a lamp under a basket but put it on a lamp-stand to illuminate the whole house. You build a beacon bonfire not in a pit but on the highest hill around. You want to get the word out! You want that light to shine afar: the good news – Christ is risen! – And he is Lord indeed.

The breath of God that moved across the face of the deep on the first day still is moving, moving where it will. Through the open doors of our lives and churches a fresh breeze is blowing: it is the Spirit, enlivening us, and filling us – filling us with the light of Christ.

The light of Christ illuminates us – you and me, and, yes, my illumined aunt – and we in turn let our light shine before all people, that they too may rejoice in the power of the Spirit, and join in the work of God, Love’s redeeming work, begun in Christ and carried forth by his people.


Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.’ (John 8:12)

‘You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.’ (Matthew 5:14, 16)

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For the Gospel Grapevine (July/August 2011), parish newsletter of St Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Washington.

JRL+

“What do we do now?”

You can imagine them saying it.

The disciples of Jesus have witnessed everything – he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he died and was buried, he was raised again on the third day, and, now, he has been raised to the right hand of power. Before their eyes, he was carried into heaven.

So – the question is before the disciples of Jesus: what do we do now?

And how? How are we going to accomplish that purpose, God-struck as it is? Is it possible?

We, his disciples today, find ourselves facing a daunting task – and a daunting series of questions.

How are we to carry on the work Christ has begun in his earthly ministry?

How are we to carry forward the work he has called us to? How shall we embody the hope of the resurrection and the joy of everlasting life?

How are we to stand in the world and witness to all we his people have seen in the life of Jesus, and all we have experienced of his presence in our own lives?

How are we to proclaim in his name to all nations the forgiveness of sins – and the coming of his kingdom?

In ourselves, it is not possible; in Christ and through the Spirit it is inevitable.

He promises, on the day of his Ascension, that he will not leave us comfortless. And so we call upon the Breath of Jesus, the Spirit of truth:

Come, Creator Spirit, Father of the poor. Come, light of our hearts. Come, source of all life. You are our only comforter. Come! Give us your peace.

Guide our steps with your light.

When in stress you support us, in trials you give us strength, consolation in the midst of grief.

Eternal light, visit the hearts you have created and fill our innermost being.

Heal our wounds and renew our strength, quench our deepest thirst. Fill us with your grace.

Come! Fill us with your gifts. Give us comfort. Give us life. Give us joy that never ends.

Come! Come! Come Holy Spirit! Alleluia. Alleluia. Amen.

(Veni Creator Spiritus, Taizé)

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For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, WA

JRL+

Jesus shows up

Epiphanies are showings, revelations, appearances, times God showed up - notably, in the person of Jesus. These are times the Holy Spirit revealed that God is present in Christ. These are the ‘God sightings’, the times God shows up and transforms lives among us.

The season of Epiphany, or Epiphanies if you will, begins with a visit from magi - wise people from the East. Three wise men, generally, are what we see in pictures: and they are visiting three ordinary-looking people, a father, a mother, and a tiny infant.

Around them may be shepherds and angels - at least in the manger scenes. The essence is three beholding three, and finding in that beholding a revelation of the mystery of Christ: that God has come down to us and become one of us, in order to bring us salvation.

The season of Epiphany ends with three beholding three again. On a mountaintop Peter, John, and James witness the meeting of Moses, Elijah, and Jesus. The disciples see Jesus’ face shine: he is clothed in white, radiant, transfigured; bathed in the light of the glory of God. A voice proclaims: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I take delight: listen to him.” (Matthew 17:5) These words hearken back to the beginning of life – and call us forward to the fulfillment of time.

The next Sunday we remember and celebrate the Baptism of our Lord. When Jesus came up out of the water a voice from heaven was saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I take delight.” (Matthew 3:17) Soon Jesus himself proclaims the words of the prophet, come true: “The people that lived in darkness have seen a great light.” (Cf. Isaiah 9:1-2) It is then that he begins to call disciples to follow him. (Matthew 4:19)

In the middle of the Epiphany season there is a special celebration, which recalls our Christmas festivities. It is the feast of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple (Candlemas or Candelaria). As the Christ Child is dedicated, Anna and Simeon look on and praise God for sending salvation to his people.

In the first few weeks of Epiphany the focus of the gospel is on Jesus, and discoveries of who he is. In his sermon on the mount, Jesus himself begins to turn the camera around. He shows the people God is at work in the world around them – and, as they begin to live as citizens of the kingdom of heaven, they begin to see Jesus at work in their own lives.

Somehow in the very struggle, the pain, even the persecution, that believers endure in this life, God is present - he is there, he is here, God is with us. In the middle of darkness there is a light shining that it cannot smother; in the middle of despair there is hope; in the middle of doubt, faith; in the middle of sorrow, joy. How can this be - unless God reigns?

At the last, the season of the Epiphanies comes to another mountaintop and the experience we have related above: the Transfiguration. It’s a strange, strange moment. It’s a moment when a man they thought they knew becomes, before his friend’s eyes, a living, visible revelation of God’s glory. Moses saw it; Elijah proclaimed it; Jesus - is it!

He is changed – but still their friend, he is awesome and intimate in one. No wonder they are astonished, no wonder they are afraid, no wonder they are for a moment demobilized: but Jesus comes to them, gently calling: “Stand up; do not be afraid.” (Matthew 17:7) And together they descend the mountain, to the world’s ordinary time.

Jesus exhorts us: Be that light; be the presence of God. Be the Good News of Jesus Christ - in your neighborhood, your city, and your school; in the desert or on the mountain; in your solitude and in the community. You cannot hide a city set upon a hill; let your light shine before people. Rejoice and be glad! “You are light for all the world.” (Matthew 5:14)

Let that light shine in all you do – as Jesus shone on the mountain. Don’t be afraid: God will turn fear into courage. All you can do is this: “Put first in your mind God’s kingdom and his justice; the rest will come.” (Matthew 6:33)

So we, showing Jesus in our lives, are sharing in these moments of Epiphany, these God-sightings in troubled times when God is mostly likely to show up, and come to us, gently calling, “do not be afraid”, and helping us get onto our feet again and walk with him.

Christ extends his hands to us as he did to those frightened men - and bids us rise. Let us, then, come to know and share God’s love with all people.

JRL+

For the Gospel Grapevine (January 2011), parish newsletter of Saint Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash.

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the year's turning

You know when it’s fall. You know when it’s winter, and springtime, and summer, and fall again. That is the Earth's natural year, the round of the seasons. It follows the sun, as our planet’s course through the heavens brings us closer and then takes us farther away from that stellar source of light.

Seasons vary from place to place, from time to time: we know them not by clock or calendar but by the rhythms of life and light. There are measurements of course: solstice and equinox, and halfway between these, the quarter days. These have been codified by calendars, to give us a handle on what is happening to us as days grow shorter or lengthen.

The ancient Celtic calendar included not only the winter and summer solstices and the spring and fall equinoxes but also the days halfway between them, which they called the quarter days. Imbolc, the festival of light, comes at the first of February. Beltaine, associated with fire, is May Day. Lughnasa, feast of the air and wind, is August 1st, and last – and first – quarter day is Samhain, associated with the element of earth. Last, and first: because Samhain, which occurs over All Saints’ Eve and the first of November, marks the end and the beginning of the Celtic year.

The year, in this imaging, begins in darkness, when the seed in the ground, planted earlier, begins to take root and grow. Something is ended; something new has begun. It is like our understanding of death and resurrection. It is a harvest time for past things, looking back, and, looking forward, to what is already but not yet come into our world, a time of hidden new life.

The Christian year, and the Church calendar, reflects the seasonal rhythms of the natural cycle of the solar year – and it shows us that in its own cycle of feasts and fasts. All Saints Day and the feast of All Faithful Departed (in Mexico, el Dia de los Muertos), November 1st and 2nd, give us a chance to give thanks for what we have received, from what – and who – have come before. They give us a chance to pray for what is to come.

All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee— words of David, how appropriate now, as we celebrate the ingathering of pledges and the offering of our own blessings back to the source of all blessings, God who creates, redeems, and sustains.

At the beginning of the liturgical year, four weeks before Christmas, we move into Advent, the season of preparation. Just past the winter solstice comes the feast of the Nativity of Our Lord. We celebrate light and life and the incarnation of the holy one of God. The celebration continues through the twelve days of Christmas season, and the feast of Epiphany, into January’s Epiphany Sundays, including the Baptism of Our Lord.

Things begin to change when we celebrate Candlemas (Candelaria in Mexico). It’s a perfect reason for another party, as we remember the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, completing the cycle of the birth of our King. In some traditional cultures, the winner of the prize baked into the Epiphany cake brings treats for all to share on this day (let’s see what happens here).

There is a shift now, remembering the water of Baptism and the coming themes of death and resurrection, as we prepare through Lenten discipline for the great events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through to Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Easter Eve and Day. Fifty great days later – eight days after the Ascension – is the feast of Pentecost.

Breaking into the midst of the Lent/Easter/Pentecost cycle is the feast of unexpected news, the revelations of the Annunciation, on March 25, just after the vernal equinox.

We celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, the fulfillment of baptismal promise, and the growing body of Christ’s faithful people, through summer and into fall. The summer solstice comes just around the feast of our patron, Saint Alban, and just before the feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist on June 24 (six months from Christmas).

St John said, ‘he must increase, I must decrease’ - and now indeed the days slowly shorten, imperceptibly at first, until the season’s quickening accelerates into autumn, harvest, and the eve of All Saints’ appears once more on the horizon of our year.

What season of the year, you may wish to ask yourself, fits your spirit? Where do you find resonance with your own spirituality? Are you in a season of anticipation – of the Advent (the coming) of Christ our King, of preparation – the long desert trek of Lent?

Does the Incarnation fill your heart with quiet longing, with loud rejoicing, with the sureness of peace, the future of hope, the promise of love, represented by Christmas?

Have you welcomed the new into the kingdom of your heart, giving due obeisance, like the three kings of Epiphany, to the presence of the true ruler of the universe – however humbly he appears now to our eyes?

Are you in the middle of summer days, in the long green season of Pentecost, watching things grow and helping them along, anticipating the fullness of fall’s harvest celebrations?

Are you in Easter, full of the reality of the risen life in Christ?

All these things are possible to you – and may come in their turn.

You are invited into relationship with God, in each season of the year, and in each chamber of your heart.

You are beckoned by God, through Christ, into relationship with the eternal Word and holy Spirit, who together with the Father, the source of all Being, are the One true home, the One true light, the One true timeless reality that lies beneath and beyond all our days.

Come into celebration – come in quiet or in laughter, in sorrow or in delight; come to Christ at harvest and planting, breathe in the Spirit in summer’s air and winter’s, and walk with God in every season of your life. Come with us on the journey together. We are one family – the household of God. And you are always welcome under His roof.


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sources

Marcus Losack, “Celtic Spirituality and the Pre-Christian Tradition”, Lecture in the Chapel of the Ascension, Markree Castle, Co. Sligo, May 22, 2007.

Herbert O'Driscoll, Prayer Among Friends.

Hugh Stevenson, "The Secularization of the Calendar", St. Patrick's Grapevine, Newsletter of St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, Kenwood, Calif., July/August 2010.

David Marshall.

Tom Cashman.

Nora Chadwick, The Celts.

Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Book of Days.



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For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds WA

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