after Emmaus

Christ appearing to his disciples at the table, Duccio, 1308-11
(http://edgeofenclosure.org/easter3bfish.html)

After Emmaus… the disciples had heard from the two on the road about the mysterious encounter they had had, but they were still huddled in the upper room, bewildered, anxious, and afraid, wondering what all this would mean. And then there was Jesus, in the midst of them, assuring them he was real: Go ahead, touch me, I am not a ghost, I am flesh and blood. It’s me!

And then he ate a piece of fish. It really is him. Here and now.

Living God, your Son made himself known to his disciples after his resurrection: open the eyes of our faith, that we may see him in all his redeeming work; who is alive and reigns, now and forever.

To see him in all his redeeming work. That may mean the risen Jesus and it may mean his work in us as well. We are known to be Christians by our love for one another, for God, for all people, and indeed for all of creation. Our love for creation may come out of our love for God; our love for God certainly comes out of God's love for us. How do we manifest that love? 

We show the love of God for creation and our share in that love when we enjoy and love the natural world around us, in its natural state, in how we interact with the world as we modify it with our buildings, our landscaping, our gardens and farms, our roads and bridges and water lines and utility poles and cellphone towers; and we show the love of God in joyful fashion in how we walk through the world alongside our Lord. 

In our fellowship together, and our welcoming of others, we show the love of God. We show the love of God, we share the love of God, when we reach out beyond ourselves to the people around us, and when we welcome them inside our walls (real and figurative) as friends.

In "Contemplative Renewal and New Monasticism" an interview in the Lent/ Easter 2021 issue of the New Camaldoli Hermitage newsletter, Fr Adam Bucko wrote that:

"One thing that is clear to anyone who's listening is that young people are leaving our churches not because they are no longer interested in lives of meaning, purpose, and significance, not because they are no longer interested in God, but because, from where they are standing, it is increasingly difficult to meet God in the church. They tell us that, even if we do have a corner on the truth, the church resembles--in too many ways--every other broken system that organizes itself around power, wealth and privilege, rather than offering itself as a radical alternative to the status quo."  

And yet, as Herb O’Driscoll points out in his commentary on this gospel, “We need to be wary of much contemporary Christian spirituality that is unwilling to acknowledge the validity and necessity of the church. We live in a time when spirituality is suspicious of structure and form and institution. Yet any spirituality, if it is to last through the vicissitudes of time and history, must take on form. It cannot remain a kind of ghost, but must assume a structure like ‘flesh and bones’”. 

‘A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.’ 

There are several useful and specific things that people of faith, connected to traditional religions, have to offer "spiritual but not religious" seekers who are less attached to a faith tradition.

Theological understanding, spiritual practices, reliable mentors and spiritual guides, and faithful communities, are among the gifts we have to offer the seeker, the bereft, and even the occasional and ancillary member.  

Yet even more than our structures and traditional practices, whose external aspects, memories or associations may act as barriers, we have something to offer to people seeking a way to truth and sane living in an uncertain world, that is much more precious than the institutional containers we have used. 

It is the all-embracing love of God.

When I was back in Tombstone last week, I looked for Mongo, who drove the old stagecoach. I didn’t see him. But then after all, when he met me somebody said, “Hey Mongo! He’s from your church.” And he said, “It’s my church - when I go.” “So it’s your church.” “When I go.” 

Someone who knows us as "my church - when I go!" is a member. Someone who returns to bury a family member, or seeks to be married or to be baptized, is a member. 

And someone who knocks on the door when they seek a light may find us to be a lighthouse, and a homeward beacon, is becoming a member.

What we have in the Gospel for today is a sense of the patience of Jesus, as his followers - cradled, converted, or seekers - slowly come to a sense of the new reality, the new life of Jesus that opens up new life for themselves and all to follow and learn what has happened. Resurrection, as Bishop Marian Budde pointed out on Easter morning, is for us who experience it in the risen Christ not a moment but a process. 

Conversion turns out to be that way too, a process not just a moment (though there will be moments!): for it can be defined as a lifelong turning toward home, or to taking responsibility for an area of one's own growth and development. That can mean emotional, or intellectual, or ethical and moral development. In this case it means the development of our spiritual and yes religious life - life in Christ and in the Spirit.  

What we have to offer is our experience of God, not just in ourselves, but in communities, through the aid of pastors and teachers, through prayer partners and anam cara (soul friends), through practices of prayer handed down to us within familiar structures and sometimes in surprising ways.

Resurrection, like conversion, is something we experience not just alone, once, but together, continually. 

We know that resurrection is more than a momentary event; it is the first day of God doing something new. God is not resuscitating what was before but leading us into a new future with a new hope.

What this will mean for us in the times ahead, times not simply of a “return to normalcy” but the opening out of a new reality, is that we stand on solid ground, solid ground on which to build. We do not simply look back to 'golden days of yore' - we go forward in the name of Christ as the people of God, ever hopeful, ever renewed. 

You may remember that the Israelites returning from exile in Babylon were some of them brought up short by realizing they were confronted not with an empty home temporarily left behind (like a house left intact while the owners are away for awhile) but with a place that had changed, and people who had changed, and themselves that had changed! The temple was in ruins and so were their houses. 

We don't just build back better. In Christ, in his resurrection life, there is something better beginning.

"I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19a) 

God is at work in us doing more than we can ask or even imagine. What God is up to with us may be less obvious, less familiar, than our expectation. Our opportunity is to be open to it. 

And so the challenge: What does it mean for you to participate in love’s redeeming work? What would you like to take on, or carry forward? What witness, what action? What new thing should be your expectation? Where do you see something better beginning?

Risen Christ, for whom no door is locked, no entrance barred: open the doors of our hearts, that we may seek the good of others and walk the joyful road of sacrifice and peace, to the praise of God the Father. Amen.

J

Post communion prayer  for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year B, from Common Worship, Church of England.

https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/collects-and-post-23

Adam Bucko, https://www.contemplation.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/NCHnewsletter_0421.pd

Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, Year B, Volume 2. Anglican Book Centre, 2001, p. 67.

18 April 2021

Third Sunday of Easter

• Acts 3:12-19
• 1 John 3:1-7
• Luke 24:36b-48
• Psalm 4

https://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Easter/BEaster3_RCL.html

https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/common-worship/common-material/collects-and-post-23 

Celtic reading

With an Eagle's Eye: A Seven-Day Sojourn in Celtic Spirituality by John Miriam Jones, S.C. (Ave Maria Press, July 1998)

The Music of What Happens: Celtic Spirituality - A View from the Inside by John J. Ó Ríordáin CSsR (Dublin: Columba, September 1996; Saint Mary's Press, December 1996)

How the Irish Saved Civilization: The Untold Story of Ireland's Heroic Role from the Fall of Rome to the Rise of Medieval Europe by Thomas Cahill (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, February 1995)

The Wisdom of the Celtic Saints by Edward C. Sellner (Notre Dame: Ave Maria Press, 1993; revised and expanded edition, Bog Walk Press, February 2006)

The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination by Esther de Waal (Doubleday, August 1997)

Every Earthly Blessing: Rediscovering the Celtic Tradition by Esther De Waal (Morehouse, July 1999)

The Celtic Vision: Prayers, Blessings, Songs, and Invocations from the Gaelic Tradition edited by Esther De Waal (Saint Bede's, July 1990; revised edition, Liguori/Triumph, November 2001)

Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O'Donohue (Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins, October 1997)

Celtic Inheritance by Peter Berresford Elis (London: Constable, 1985; New York: Dorset, 1992)

Soulfaring: Celtic Pilgrimage Then and Now by Cintra Pemberton, O.S.H. (Morehouse, October 1999)

In Search of Sacred Places: Looking for Wisdom on Celtic Holy Islands by Daniel Taylor (Bog Walk Press, 2005)

Celtic Threads: Exploring the Wisdom of Our Heritage by Padraigín Clancy (Dublin: Veritas, 1999)

Celtic Christian Spirituality: An Anthology of Medieval and Modern Sources edited by Oliver Davies and Fiona Bowie (SPCK & Continuum, 1995)

Celtic Spirituality edited and translated and introduced by Oliver Davies ; with the collaboration of Thomas O'Loughlin (Paulist Press, 1995)

A Doorway in Time: Memoir of a Celtic Spiritual Journey by Herbert O'Driscoll (Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1985)

Man of Aran by Pat Mullen (E. P. Dutton, 1935; M.I.T. Press, 1970)

George MacLeod: Founder of the Iona Community by Ronald Ferguson (London: Collins, 1990; Glasgow: Wild Goose, April 2001)

Glendalough: A Celtic Pilgrimage by Michael Rodgers and Marcus Losack (Morehouse, February 1997)

I Will Arise and Go Now, memoir by Herbert O'Driscoll (Church Publishing, 2021)

Listening for the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality by J. Philip Newell (Paulist Press, January 1997)

David Adam, The Rhythm of Life: Celtic Daily Prayer (SPCK, 2007)

JRL+

Getting Rid of Stuff

Bighorn Fire, Catalina Mountains.

My brother used to talk a lot about getting rid of stuff. After his death, we went through his apartment. We found his clothes and his excess vitamin supplements, his training equipment and his furniture, and eventually opened the top drawer of his dresser. The Lord of the Rings DVDs were in the drawer under the TV. We found a double rack of six storage bins with his personal papers. In the closet were his hiking hat, green pullover pile sweater, and fancy walking stick. On the wall hung our grandfather's campaign hat from the forest service or the first world war. 

Up front as we entered the apartment had been an organizer bin propped on a dining room chair, full of photographs. In the trunk of his car were a bunch of road flares. All we took was a box of things that seemed practical at the time. A Pendleton blanket. I don't know what else. What happened to his lifetime of photographs -- he was a pretty good amateur photographer -- or anything else, and it doesn't matter. What really mattered was gone.

In the early days of the Bighorn Fire, from the evening we watched the lightning strike the Catalinas, and the next morning's first smoke, I remembered the smoke rising over the Oakland Hills on the Sunday morning when hot dry winds fanned slumbering embers into flame that consumed a neighborhood. Among the parishioners were a man named Bob who lost everything and another man who already had, in a divorce. The second man shrugged and said he'd sleep at the hospital where he worked for awhile. Bob was devastated. I hope he's okay. 

And I'd remember longer ago, the family memory of 1906 in Cow Hollow, San Francisco. Aunt Carol said, "When I was eighteen years old there was an earthquake. My father said, 'Carol, stand in the doorway, and I did!" The Japanese art student living with the family asked, "Do you have these here often?" And, we learned, the family evacuated to Golden Gate Park, or perhaps the closer Presidio, where "Mama cooked in a big black pot over an open fire" and they slept in a tent until the all-clear.

Early in the past month I recalled the picture of Gandhi's personal effects assembled after his death: two pairs of spectacles, sandals, a dhoti, and a rice bowl. And what was found in the coffin of Saint Cuthbert of Lindisfarne, when they opened his tomb in Durham Cathedral five hundred years ago: his episcopal ring and pectoral cross (the latter often copied), his comb, and his portable altar with its mica top (for a stone surface) and inner drawer for the bread, the wine, the oil, the sacraments.

I thought of aunt Em's last possessions, as she waited death in a convalescent home in Millbrae. Just a wall bulletin board pinned with family photographs, and the latest copy of TV Guide, which I sent her. What she remembered were the visits of aunt Diane. Her own sister Virginia had predeceased her by years.

And I thought about the stuff in my house after the Loma Prieta earthquake, how I'd gotten home from San Francisco late that evening (at 5:04 in the office hallway I'd remembered Carol's words and stood in a doorway) to a house full of light and the cats with their eyes wide. And I could step outside and shut the door behind me and walk around that house and everything I had was in it. But nothing mattered, not so much as friends and family and life itself. But sometimes we lose even those.

What then shall we save? What will be preserved? Left behind? What will matter then? To us, to those who remain?

Habit, William James would tell us. Habits of behavior - ‘how you wind your watch, how you pack your pipe’ - and habits of mind, that ‘set like plaster’ by the time you’re thirty. 

Ben Weir told me that what he remembered during the months and years in captivity, held as a hostage in the dark by militants in Lebanon, were the words of Presbyterian hymns. And since then I’ve made a practice of daily devotions, taking in words and phrases, prayers and psalms, from the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer. So those are the habits of mind and heart I build in myself. 

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” (Acts 2:42)

When Herb O’Driscoll came to visit my anxious congregation, he had me move the baptismal font front and center. He reminded us that as long as we have the story, and the water and the oil, the bread and the wine, each other - and the Spirit - we’ll be alright. What we have in these anxious days may not be the daily or weekly gatherings we cherish but we do have the story, each other, and the prayers. Those remain.

Patrick

Ellen Sasahara sent me a copy of a book she had designed: St. Patrick of Ireland: A Biography by Philip Freeman (Simon and Schuster, 2005). Together with the sermon by Herbert O'Driscoll given at Saint Alban's Church, Edmonds, Washington, January 31, 2010, it was the primary resource for this day's preaching. I did not stick to my notes. These are the notes I walked away from:
 

When the world came to an end, it was the summer of the year 410. Rome fell – civilization was erased. A century and more before, Roman officials had executed a Christian martyr in Britannia, one Alban. Then Constantine took legions to the continent and won the imperial throne. But now a century after these events Rome crumbled before the onslaught of a Visigoth horde.

Arthur held together some promise of hope in Britannia. He called it Logres – kingdom of the Grail. And Ninian set sail for the north, Galloway in Caledonia. On the shores looking west and north to Hibernia, however, Irish pirates came across the water and they brought chains. They came for slaves.

One son of a patrician house, now we call him Patrick, was too near the shore, and he was taken. He found himself far across on the other side of a strange island and it was not until he was a teenager (and more) that he left the sheep he’d been set to herd – and walked away, across the island and back across the sea – but to a new future.

He fetched up in a monastery started by Martin of Tours, and he learned a new depth of Christian hope and practice. He was going to be a priest.

Strangely enough it was, then, that this trafficked human, enslaved by the Irish, saw in a dream his calling: to serve those who’d enslaved him, to free his captors. “Come here and walk among us!”

So to Ireland Patrick sailed. He even sought reconciliation with his old master. And he became a champion, confronting the evil of the slave trade, human trafficking.  When in turn Irish Christians, ones he himself had baptized, were captured by British Christian slavers, he wrote an excoriating letter, naming and rebuking one Corocticus, making a plea (a strongly worded one) that the slave-master set his fellow Christians free.

Patrick and other mission bishops brought the gospel to fertile soil in Ireland. They were a people ready to receive the word, and it quickly grew, in part because of the form, or lack of it, he used to carry it.

The world had come to an end, the Roman world, and there was little left to hold onto, few elements of the sacred, clad lightly in poverty – not wealth.

But he embraces that poverty, poverty of worldly means, as he taught people to embrace the only things that mattered, that remained (and as long as we have these, Herbert O’Driscoll taught us, we’ll be all right).

These are just a few things – look at the postcard – six words to define the church – and here are six: story, water, oil, bread, wine, people.

We are the water oil bread wine story people.

We have the gospel – the story of God’s love for humankind, the Spirit’s restless seeking for our souls.

We have the baptismal waters and the oil of Chrism (“you are sealed as Christ’s own for ever”).

We have bread, the bread we need, and wine – sustenance and reminder of the Godly provision of Christ our Savior.

And we are the people imbued by the Spirit, called and gifted to tell the story, immerse and bless, share the Table’s abundance, and – gather others in. For these gifts are not ours to keep to ourselves – they take us, break us, transform us, and make us ambassadors for Christ.

And we love to tell the story, and spread the news. He whom Mary wept over and anointed and served is the One who shed more than tears for us, who died indeed and rose to new life, that he might take us with him, and with us others, that all may be reconciled to God, all be freed.

Working for the simple physical liberation from slavery of trafficking victims, we work also for the liberation of souls – even of those who enslave.

May we live into this costly freedom, heed God’s call, and follow the dream of our own calling, that we may come over and bring Jesus even to those once separated from us by far more than a sea. May we be one in Christ, reconciled to one another God through the power of the Spirit, and the work of our Savior, in whose name we pray, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8
Fifth Sunday in Lent

Herbert O’Driscoll – 10:30 Service January 31, 2010

JRL+

a place of your abiding

What is it that we have to pass on? What is it that really matters? What is it that will last beyond ourselves into the future of the promise of God?

On vacation last summer, as Sarah and I were resting by the riverside, we saw coming up the river a young woman in a large-brimmed straw hat, standing in the middle of a canoe, with a pole in her hand. It was our cousin Mary and she was poling her canoe upriver. She looked, Sarah said, like a picture that could have been out of the 19th century - had she been wearing a long dress instead of a more modern boating costume.

And it was true; Mary was poling up the river just as she had been taught by her grandmother, whose own mother had indeed, pole in hand, in long tweed skirt, a Liberty print blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and a cardigan sweater - and pearls, traveled up that same river, standing in a canoe, propelling herself with a pole.

The skill was taught them by an Ojibwe river guide and canoe builder named Laroque. Great grandmother learned, then grandmother learned; then Grammy taught her daughters and grand daughters. And the knowledge of the river and the skill of the pole were passed along, a living tradition, from generation to generation.

A living tradition is something we pass along, something that gives strength, something that gives skill and even power, to those coming along.

The first disciples, the witnesses to the life and death and resurrection and ascension of our Lord, passed along what they had seen and what they had heard, what they had touched with their hands and embraced in their arms, to those who came along after them. And what they received they also passed on. To you.

What we have received we must also pass along. And we must decide what matters, what matters most, and that is what we must make sure to share with the new generations that are coming along.

What is it that matters most to us? What is it that will last?

Herbert O’Driscoll spoke to us about this in the middle of winter last year: What we know, what we have received, as church, as the family of God, always sustains us –through these several elements: the sacred Word, the story of the love of God for humankind; the water of Baptism, in which we receive a sign of new life in Christ; the wine and the bread, transformed for us and, received in faith, transforming us into the body of Christ; and then the gift of each other, that Body of which we are all members; and - the Holy Spirit, in which all this lives and moves and has its being.

These are things that we have received, that we live by, that we pass on to the next generation. These things are all gifts given us to give others, to share with them the grace and peace of God.

What we have to pass on is a living faith in a living God. It is renewal, it is new, it is life itself: it is life in Christ, not the old way of law and sin and death, but the way forward into life in Christ, into the kingdom of God that begins now, that indeed is all around us.

Bill Lewellis, a friend of mine, once explained that in the Celtic way of looking at things there is such a thing as a 'thin place', a place where the veil between this world and the next, the earthly realm and the heavenly, is thin and easily passed through. It is as if there were a membrane between the everyday and the eternal, and it is permeable somewhere, sometimes.

Then Bill went on to explain that the 'thin place' is really anywhere we are open to the Spirit, and anytime our hearts are open to Christ. That is where the eternal breaks through to the everyday, and transforms it: where our hearts are open and when we are present to the abundance of grace.

This place, where you and I are now, can be a thin place – a place of God’s abiding.

So is it we have to pass on?

Something that lasts. Something that abides.

We have a pretty good idea, of what lasts: the things we have spoken of, the word, the sacraments, the fellowship, are things that bring us closer to God and carry us forward together in God's mission and God's purpose.

All of these things come to us in the gift of the Spirit. And it is the abiding promise and presence of God that shows us what really lasts, what really gives life meaning. Some things will pass away, good things as they are, for when the time for them is over, they will fade away.

We know that; we look for the things that last, that are our greatest gifts to pass on to those coming along in our midst and coming after us.

What are these lasting gifts?

And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13)

May we live by faith, walk in hope and be renewed in love,
and if it is your will,
grant that this place of your abiding
continue to be a sanctuary and a light.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.



Through Jesus Christ.
Amen

JRL+


http://stalbansedmonds.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Herbert_ODriscoll_20100131.mp3


For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of Saint Alban's Church, 21405 82nd Place West, Edmonds, Washington, 98026 (425) 778-0371 stalbansedmonds.org

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A HYMN IN PRAISE OF THE HUMBLE PANCAKE.

A HYMN IN PRAISE OF THE HUMBLE PANCAKE.

Delicious, delectable, easy to make,
The regular pancake takes moments to bake.
In texture and taste it has instant appeal,
Just eat half a dozen and see how you feel!

Some foods we all cherish, prime beef that we roast,
And some love some jam on their hot buttered toast.
Some strange folk like oysters, and some caviar,
But the plain simple pancake is better by far.

Like us, there are pancakes that put on some weight;
We then call them crumpets and fill up our plate.
If a pancake is slim and is rolled into shape,
We fill it with calories and call it a crepe!

Now when you serve pancakes to some special guest
With pure maple syrup, it's quite at its best.
But even more scrumptious, if you have the nerve,
Take butter, and sausages, and bacon - and serve!

Universal, ecumenical, the pancake unites.
It never provokes theological fights.
The church that serves pancakes, we can guarantee,
From schisms and heresies will always be free!

Now pancakes in history have played a great part,
They fill up the stomach and gladden the heart.
Great armies have marched and great victories won
On pancakes and sausages served up by the ton!

Sing praise then for pancakes, against all the odds,
Their humble ingredients are food for the gods.
We all love a pancake, and though we're aware
They make us quite fat - but WE DON'T REALLY CARE!

Light fare for Shrove Tuesday from Herbert O'Driscoll.
(c) 2011. All rights reserved. Tune: St. Denio.

two futures

Jurgen Moltmann once wrote … that in Latin there are two words for the future.

One is futurum. Futurum, he said, is the future we see stretching out in front us by our brainstorming, trend spotting, number crunching etc. It comes from our wrestling. He calls this the Future of Social Calculation.

But, he says, there’s another future that comes towards us from beyond us, over which we have no control. We can’t fashion its outline or calculate it. We grapple with this future by asking a question. “What kind of X (parish, diocese, state, country, family, etc., etc.) would we like to have in (fill in a date)?” In other words we in a sense “dream” this future. Moltmann says that this dreaming can be very powerful.

When a society starts dreaming of a different future to what it now has, it can produce tremendous energy. Sometimes all the tanks in the world can’t stop it. Walls can tumble. He calls this future the Future of Ethical Anticipation.

He then says that each is incomplete with out the other. Both are needed for future planning.

(Herbert O’Driscoll, email to Fr. John 11/23/09)

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The Highway and the Future

Herbert O'Driscoll sent me a couple of email messages last winter that are very relevant to this Easter Season:

THE HIGHWAY OF CHRISTIAN TIME

We Christians of the late 20th and early 21st century have not only begun to go on many pilgrimages. We have also begun to travel a great deal in time. Past chapters of Christian spirituality fascinate us. One of these chapters - or ways - of Christian experience is what we have come to call Celtic Christianity.

It is always important to ask why a period of the past begins to haunt us in the present. To ask that question is to realize that it is because in some sense, unrealized until now, that past period speaks to our present experience.

Frederick Turner on the Faculty of the University of Texas said something I believe to be deeply true. "Sometimes", he said, "the present can free us from the shackles of the past and help us to build the future. But it is equally true that sometimes the past can free us from the shackles of the present and help us to form the future".

This is the reason for us spending some time together exploring the past, but doing so to open for ourselves some gates to the future. To stand at any point on the great highway of Christian experience is to see it emerge from the mists of the past and to disappear into the mists of the future. The point at which we ourselves stand on this highway is the place of our vocation.
(4 DEC 2009)

TWO WORDS FOR THE FUTURE

Jurgen Moltmann once wrote something I never forgot. He said that we have almost forgotten that in Latin there are two words for the future. One is Futurum. Futurum, he said, is the future we see stretching out in front us by our brainstorming, trend spotting, number crunching etc. It comes from OUR wrestling, He calls this the FUTURE OF SOCIAL CALCULATION.

But, he says, there's another future that comes towards us from beyond us, over which we have no control. We can't fashion its outline or calculate it. We grapple with this future by asking a question. "What kind of X (parish...diocese...state...country...family etc etc) would we like to have in (fill in a date). In other words we in a sense "dream" this future.

Moltmann says that this dreaming can be very powerful. When a society starts dreaming of a different future to what it now has, it can produce tremendous energy. Sometimes all the tanks in the world can't stop it. Walls can tumble. He calls this future THE FUTURE OF ETHICAL ANTICIPATION.

He then says that each is incomplete with out the other. Both are needed for future planning.
Cheers
H.
(23 NOV 2009)

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a place of your abiding

Right in the midst of a busy business meeting I looked at the boss and pondered, “Where do you find the silence?”

I was wondering if during all the business of the day, all that it presented, in anticipation, excitement, worry, there were times in that day of activity for reflection.

In the midst of a busy year, we find ourselves dropped into a time of silence.

What kind of silence?

It is easy enough to find the silence of absence – the all-too terrible silence after the departure of a loved one, the empty silence of the waiting room, the hole in time waiting to be filled, the vacancy where once there was activity.

The silence of presence – healing silence, fallow fields for wholeness to root and sprout – this kind of silence is precious.

And often it is hard to find.

We find it in days and hours and places and people where we did not expect to find it.

Or often enough it is the result of careful planning.

The silence of presence comes to us when we make room for it. We capture a moment of time – a moment of the day, perhaps, when we are listening and ready – and then we enter into a quiet space.

There may be interstitial moments, small in-between gaps between activity – prayers suit these crevices, arrows shot heaven-ward with brief petition, thanks, or praise – and like longer prayer-times we let go of what we send. (See Herbert O’Driscoll’s book Prayer Among Friends for more on this.) God will hold it; make it holy.

There may be moments to make holy, ordinary (ordinary-seeming) moments in your day, the beginning of activities perhaps. You may already practice these prayers – a co-worker of mine used to cross himself and say a prayer before he got out of the car to start his day.

The prayer of invocation – calling a blessing as you make a start on some task or practice — is an old tradition. In 1900 Alexander Carmichael published a two-volume collection, Carmina Gadelica, of Celtic prayers passed down by Hebridean islanders. These were the people of Harris and Skye and other Scottish islands, their prayers poems they said or sang as they began such commonplace activities as lighting a fire or milking a cow – and by this making the action holy. You can find samples of these prayers in books by teachers like Esther de Waal and Thomas O’Loughlin.

There may be quiet time set aside in your day, fifteen minutes or an hour – when you read the Bible and pray, or take aside some holy book and get lost in it.

Once when I went on retreat the monk I spoke with thought it was just fine I’d begun by reading a novel – it got me out of my every day mind set as novels may do – but then it was time to make room for the real retreat to begin.

The real retreat is within a quiet space, of time and place, and so is the real Lent.

We hope you can find some quiet time and space this season. In an hour or a day, by yourself or in good company.

During Lent, here at St. Alban’s, we offer evening worship on Wednesdays at 6 o’clock, followed by a simple soup supper (potluck) at 6:30 – at 7pm there will be meetings for some; and we plan to offer a class at that hour for others who wish to delve deeper into their Christian faith. Sunday worship will revolve around themes of preparation – the tremendous events of Holy Week (Passiontide) are not far away, from the false dawn of Palm Sunday to the final morning of celebration the following week.

Here’s a prayer for you and me, for the beginning of Lent, from the prayer book of the Iona Community (2010):

God of all life,
I lay my life before you. I give my life to you
from whom nothing in me is hidden.
You are before me, God; you are behind.
You are around me, God; you are within.

I bring the faith that is in me and the doubt;
I bring the joy that is in me and the sorrow;
I bring the hope that is in me and the despair;
I bring the hurts that I carry and the hurts that I have caused:

To join these faiths and doubts,
Joys and sorrows, hopes and despairs,
Hurts carried and hurts caused;

To the faiths and doubts, joys, sorrows,
Hopes, despairs and hurts of my sisters and brothers.

Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of your liberation,
and sustain in me a willing spirit.
For you have shown me the paths that lead to life
and your presence will fill me with joy.

Amen.


JRL+

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash., February 2010.

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AFTER THE HARVEST

“It’s getting warm,” we said to each other. We were walking through the desert with friends. It was the middle of the morning and the temperature was rising into the 90s.

We had a drink of water. We sought the shade down in the relative cool of the arroyo. We made our way toward the food and shelter we knew were waiting for us – and the car.

It was a pleasant morning, out for a hike with friends and family. It was beautiful. It was dry and sunny. And it was getting warm.

Imagine walking through such a desert alone, or with strangers. Imagine walking across a desert, jobless and homeless, hoping for something not seen, for a place on the far side. No car waits, no friends or family, just a chance of finding a new way to live.

It happens every summer, in the Sonoran desert. People cross it, heading north, looking for a job, for food and water and shelter, and perhaps a new life. Carrying with them – not much but hope.

Imagine crossing such a desert with someone who has just been family for a little while: a relative by marriage. The two of you have dozens of miles of wilderness to cross, and you are alone in the world. You have left the known behind; there is a famine there.

You have an international border to negotiate. You hope that when you arrive in the new place – and it lies across that border – you will find a little food and water and shelter and perhaps a new life.

Their husbands were dead, and they heard the famine might be lifting over there to the west.

Naomi had said her farewells to Moab and to one of her widowed daughters-in-law, Orpah – perhaps the more sensible of the two, who stuck with what she knew.

Ruth came with Naomi. They were widows now, both of them – the older woman and the younger. They set out together to the west. Somewhere there might be a place for them – with the family Naomi had left behind years ago.

Ruth came with Naomi, offering her a love and a loyalty and faithfulness beyond what was required by any law: “Where you go I will go and where you lodge I will lodge and your people will be my people and your God will be my God.”

With that passionate pledge Ruth began a spiritual journey into a new identity, as one of the people called to be the people of God.

They reached the other side – they came to the neighborhood of Bethlehem, in Judea. They came to fields of ripe grain, and a threshing floor; it was harvest time. Naomi’s relatives were there – and an ending of their journey. They found, as the story continues, after the harvest, a future and a hope.

This November the calendar of the church year carries us from the feast of All Saints, —when we gather together in the presence of all the faithful remembering those past and anticipating those to come, and welcoming those present with us in the Eucharist, — through Ingathering Sunday to the feast of Christ the King and the Thanksgiving holiday and on to the first Sunday of Advent.

All Saints Day assures us we are among friends, the family of Christ that extends its embrace through time and space. Ingathering Sunday provides an opportunity to give our thanks for what God has given us. We rejoice together in Christ the King, proclaiming that our God reigns indeed, that he alone is sovereign. And we come to that first day of the season of anticipation, quietly but joyfully singing as we prepare the way of the Lord.

This month forms a part of the journey of the Christian year, from the hope of the coming king (past and future, in the first coming and his return in glory) to the blessings of the Nativity of our Lord and the epiphanies that herald his presence among us; from the thoughtful preparations of Candlemas (Candelaria) and Lenten tide to the raucous anticipations of Palm Sunday, the humble moments of Holy Week, the gift of Maundy Thursday and the crushing truth of Good Friday, and the scenes beyond dreams of Easter Day; through the revelations that follow that morning and build beyond the Ascension into the long green season after Pentecost, around again to the last days of autumn and the return of the king.

This is where we are now – and shows where we are going, from a known past and gifts we are thankful for, with family and friends (if we are so blessed) into a future with hope.

We do not always know where we are going, we are not always sure of our way, and as C. S. Lewis somewhere pointed out, the Christian faith does not give us a map but a compass.* We are not provided with a chart of what awaits us, just a directional aid.

Faith orients us toward the blessing of the presence of God. Hope assures us we are moving forward toward a future God has prepared for us. Love gives us the way to be with each other on the journey. And we know, that now in the present Christ is here among us, and in the unknown country, yet to come, he will be there to welcome us.

Let us share the welcome of Christ with each other – and those whom God brings to us, and whom we seek out in the world around us. The future beckons us, a future with hope.

May the true and living God who created all things bless us; the eternal Word of God take root in our hearts and the holy Spirit of God bear fruit in our lives. —Fr. John

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*cf. Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, Year B, Vol. 3 (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre, 2001) 130.

For the Gospel Grapevine, parish newsletter of St Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash., November 2009.

JRL

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Congratulations! you win the prize...

In the name of God, Merciful Father, Compassionate Son, Spirit of Wisdom. Amen.

Congratulations! After months of searching and careful deliberations the committee has selected you to receive the Servant of God prize… not for anything you’ve done – but for what you’re called to be.

You are called to be – God’s child, what you already are. You are called to be – his partner in service. You are called to be – his disciple, following his way.

You are called to inherit eternal life. You are called to be – a saint.

“The only tragedy is not to be a saint.”— Leon Bloy said it; my teacher Donald Nicholl used to love to quote that.

A saint? How can I be a saint? How can anyone be a saint?

That’s what the rich man wanted to know. That’s what the disciples wanted to know.

Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ (Mark 10:27)

A saint is not a person who is perfect – who has made it on their own – but a person who has trusted God, whatever their life circumstances.

A saint is one who is consecrated, set apart, for the service and worship of God.

A saint is one who dwells in the tabernacle of the holy, who lives within God's love.

And sometimes that is all we are - and all we have.

Job, that righteous man, stood naked before God: like King Lear buffeted by adversities (though not of his own making, Job’s daughters not being Lear’s) he voices his complaint even to the winds of the storm.

“Today also my complaint is bitter; his hand is heavy despite my groaning.” (Job 23:1)

Job feels no presence – just absence – as he tries to get a hearing with God.

“If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left, he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.”

As Herb O’Driscoll pointed out, it’s ironically reverse from a familiar hymn:

Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me.

The psalm too, presents us with a man undone, laid bare to the eyes of all – and most of all, to the one who will be our judge.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1)

It is the cry of the Exile, the cry of the homeless, the destitute; it is the cry of the powerless, the cry of the Holocaust. And it is the cry of Jesus on the Cross.

It is the cry of one utterly bereft of resources, completely unable to make it on his own.

How does it feel to be on your own?

“O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; by night as well, but I find no rest.” (Psalm 22:2)

And yet – we are not alone. God has called us, not to try to make it on our own, not to try even to earn our way into the kingdom of heaven. He has only called us to walk with him.

He has not called us to be perfect: he has called us to follow him on the way.

And he will walk with us, and help us find the way.

Herb O’Driscoll reminds us of C. S. Lewis’s observation that our faith does not provide us with a map for the journey forward; it simply gives us a compass – a directional aid.

So often we expect the future to be simply an extension of the past.

We may picture history, past present future, as like a map spread out before us – or a picture of Earth seen from out in space, turning toward the sun, with some of it already lit, some still in shadow. The line between that moves with the sun is called the ‘shadow line’.

The lit-up part is the past: we can see the roads, the bridges, the mountains and the passes through them. We can see where we have come from. That’s nice – it feels secure. Whatever the road was like, we know what it looks like.

Now – looking to the future is like trying to look past the ‘shadow line’ on a distant planet, or the moon: what is lit up is easy to see – the features can be discerned – but what is in the dark, not yet revealed, because the sun of the present has not touched it yet, is hidden from our view. We do not know what is happening – we do not know the way. We only know we have our guide with us, our faith-compass in our hand, and our road before us. We must step forward – in faith.

Thomas Merton, in his book Thoughts in Solitude, offered this prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.

And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.


We don’t know. That’s the peril of it – and the glory. What must I do to gain eternal life?

What, in effect, did Jesus say to the man who ran up and knelt before him?

You must let go, my friend, and know that indeed you stand naked before God and answer to him, that you cannot make it on your own. Follow him.

Follow Christ.

Follow the one ‘who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’ (Hebrews 4:15-16)

It’s a hard road, but a true one. It leads to life.

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’ (Mark 8:34-35, 37, 36)

Most High, all-powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, and the honor and all blessing.
To You alone, Most High, do they belong
and no human is worthy to mention Your name.

Most High, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart
and give me true faith, certain hope and perfect charity,
sense and knowledge, Lord, that I may carry out
Your holy and true command. Amen.

(Prayers of St Francis of Assisi)


O Christ, the master carpenter, who at the last, through wood and nails, purchased our whole salvation, wield well your tools in the workshop of your world, so that we who come rough-hewn to your bench may here be fashioned to a truer beauty of your hand. We ask it for your own name’s sake. Amen.

(Prayer for our own reshaping, from the Iona Community)


St Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Wash.,
October 11, 2009.


JRL


Sources and inspirations include "The Word Today" by Herbert O'Driscoll (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre) and the Franciscans' website www.ofm.org for Francis' prayers.

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