Advent

Advent = Coming Towards. In church, Advent means a season of preparing for the One who is coming. And why should we not also come towards God? What are our known ways and what new ways might be shown? Do you think you're "there"/("here"?). Come closer still.

"Meditate on God day and night."  Psalm 1 represents the ingenuity of new ways to approach God when old--sacred, holy, adored--ways are taken away. When the Jews were driven into exile and could no longer sing the Lord's song in the Temple, they found a new way to come closer: DAILY songs within the soul, DAILY meditation on Torah. That exile became a productive time for priestly writing; when taken from the closeness of the altar, God's beloved ones found ways to come closer still.

The opening of the Second letter from Peter counsels our own soul's nourishment in lonely exile here. "Be ever more zealous to confirm your call and election." [2 Peter 1:1-11] Make extra effort in your known ways and new ways shall be revealed.

So my Depths Might Sing Out!

Psalm 30 is the perfect Thanksgiving Psalm with power to move us and teach us. The psalmist reports not just restored to the former life, but praising from a RE-orientation, the new beginning. This psalm, speaking of security, threat, and recovery, was chosen for the dedication of the Second Temple in the time of the Maccabees.  Jesus may well have recited this Psalm at the lighting of Chanukah candles.
         
Psalm 30 opens with thanks, then reports the distress, and closes with "You changed my mourning into dancing...." What a wonderful story, as Walter Brueggemann shows us, of orientation: "I thought in my secure days, 'I will never stumble...'; disorientation: "When you hid your face, I was stricken!"...; and re-orientation: "So my depths might sing out..."!  We're not put back the way we were, but we find new joy, with a new song, from which, "my depths sing."

A new translation* says "depths" for Hebrew word "cavad." "Cavad" has variously been translated, "heart," "liver," or "glory," putting one in mind of St. Paul's "glorify God with your body!"

The idea of "my depths" praising God resonates because so often have we psalmists cried out from the depths of suffering. Today, in a God-given new life, I praise You from my heart, from my liver, yes, from my kidneys and my deepest desires, from all my depths!

"Let all that is within me praise the Lord!"

*Greenberg, Pamela, "The Complete Psalms: The Book of Prayer Songs in a New Translation." NY: Bloomsbury, 2010.

The Good Shepherd

at Ravenna c. 450

 Mid-third century catacomb
painting

In John Chapter 10, Jesus makes two of his "I AM" statements.

"I AM" the door;"I AM" the Good Shepherd."

Jesus is the true shepherd of the sheep who comes in by the door (v.2), and he calls his sheep by name (v. 3), and he goes before them and they know his voice; Jesus continues "I lay down my life for my sheep" (v. 15) "I know my own, and my own know me" (v. 14).

The shepherd images of the 23rd Psalm that this statement evokes--a loving, strong, searching and saving Lord. The Lord's protection is our favorite association with the Good Shepherd, a serene, even sacramental, image to calm and reassure. The Good Shepherd in John 10 is saving, but also challenging us God's people, into an alertness of listening and following.

Because Jesus' purpose, and the evangelist's, and the prophet Ezekiel's, and might we add God's, center on distinguishing the false from the true shepherds. We are hearing about distinction and separation.

David and the Lion by Marc Chagall

In Ezekiel chapter 34, the most important Old Testament source for this challenge, the evil shepherds are kings of Israel who did not strengthen the weak, nor heal the sick, nor bind up the injured, nor seek the lost. Ezekiel prophesies the flock will unite under King David (shown right, defending his flock from a lion). In the Gospel of John, the evil shepherds are the false religious leaders of Israel who have turned God's house into a den of robbers.

Hear Jesus call to us: Don't listen to thieves and bandits; listen to me. Know my voice; follow me. Under my leadership you will have safe comings and goings, and I love you enough to die for you. And have the power to rise and ascend and transform your life unto eternity.

Please, people, don't listen to the false leadership of today. Don't listen to the self-proclaimed Christians who spew hatred and exploit the ignorant. Don't listen to the so-called educated who think they have intellectual "courage" to renounce the fake god of their own imaginings. Jesus calls us, to safety, and enjoyment, and alertness to truth.

"

The Sadness of Mortality

15You would call, and I would answer you; you would long for the work of your hands. Job 14:15

Instead of the usual way we think about prayer, calling out to God and hoping for God’s response, in his agony Job is envisioning a time when God would call out for Job, because God would be lonesome for his creature.

Since creatures are mortal, Job first says, why do you have to bother them. Let them at least enjoy their short lives before they pass away.

But then Job envisions a time of God’s protection “Oh that you would hide me in Sheol… conceal me until your life is past… appoint me a set time, and remember me!...

“All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come….”  God would seal away all Job’s sin, protecting Job from God’s own anger. That God, too, would long for their former closeness is Job’s passionate hope.

But right now all he knows is his own pain, so intense he is trapped in it and can’t even think about his own children.

(Job’s children of course had all just been killed by God in Chapter 1, Verse 19).

This wistfulness is found in Psalm 42 “These thing I remember, as I pour out my soul/how I went with the throng…a multitude keeping festival” (Ps 42:4).

I also find this sadness for mortality in the phrase “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) at the tomb of Lazarus. Jesus knew he was about to raise Lazarus from the dead; but he wept for the sheer mortalness of our existence. 

I like this stuff!

A New Yorker cartoon years ago showed a man in a suit with briefcase
in a museum looking at pictures of martinis, a telephone, a memo pad;
and commenting, "Hey! I like this stuff!" That's how I feel about madonnas,
pictures of saints, stained glass, and liturgical designs. On the piano I
play hymns, and I really like reading the Bible.

This madonna in red icon was given to me by a Russian woman who stayed with us one summer while working on her research. She wrote that the third
hand meant the Virgin could help people.

We also have an expression in religion of seeing with the third eye,
listening with the third ear. Our devotion to God gives us expanded
consciousness and conscience. I also have religious dreams. So in addition to loving God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, I also love the Bible, religious art, architecture and music.

They nourish my faith the way food nourishes my big fat body!

My Fingers Do Battle

"Blessed be the LORD my rock! *
who trains my hands to fight and my fingers to battle! (Ps. 144:1)"

Yes! Sitting at the control panel here, fingers flying over the "instrument," I think I should pray this every day when I sit down to WRITE. Who knew it would always feel like climbing up the high dive and launching forth. Who knew you wouldn't even have a lump of rock to start with. Who could explain it's wrestling with the angel and you can't give up till the blessing is bestowed.

After the above I got distracted looking up other psalm passages to go with it. "The Lord will accomplish his purpose for me" (in Hebrew, "will finish towards me" (Ps 138:9; and "Commit your way to the Lord, and he will do this" (Ps 37:5).

So we'll see won't me (yes me will).

Things are the Way They Are

In daily prayer I hold up everyone in my family. I try to cover them with God's protection and give thanks for each one. This is a memory feat because I have a big family. Plus we have to cover the friends, the enemies, the pictures in newspaper. You pray for that beautiful young family fleeing Kyrzykstan (sp?) Remember that Flannery O'Connor story where a woman goes to the woods and falls down upon the newspaper praying? That's one kind of coverage, because it all gets a bit much and could go on forever. As a child I solved where-do-you-stop dilemma by "...and God bless everyone in the whole world."

As an adult I learned there is a Buddhist meditation called metta, where you issue blessings intentionally and unconditionally. The practice takes away my need to judge, to parcel out love in proportion to someone's goodness. Simply put, praying makes me feel better. There were times in life I got away from God and if you read my diaries from those days (which I sincerely hope you never will), you find the same sturms and drangs as now, only lacking the consolations of prayer. Prayer also alleviates that sense of powerlessness. When you see a picture of a blue heron trying to shake off BP's oil, when an old friend of youth dies unexpectedly, or when you can't do anything about someone you love who is depressed-- even if you can't do anything else you can still pray; then you feel less ineffectual. Even if you can't write, if you're lacking topic sentences and conclusions, you can pray.

Some say prayer doesn't change anything external but only the person praying. Well that is so not true. I look around and give thanks to see so many answers to my prayers. An African song, which is on a CD in this cluttered study somewhere, goes "Things are the way they are because our grandmothers prayed."

I assume that means things would be worse if g'mas didn't. Go, grandmas, you have a lot to do.

All in My Power to Support This Young Person

I have the honor to be invited to be a mentor for a confirmand, a young woman I have not met before, and this means so much to me. At baptism, we who sponsored and witnessed promised to do all in our power to support this person in her life in Christ, and Confirmation mentoring is a way of doing that.

Confirmation began when early Christian communities grew too big for the Bishop to baptize each new member. The presbyter baptized and then when the Bishop came around he (always he, of course, until the 20th century) laid hands on the new Christian and "confirmed" the baptism. In the early church, baptism was something you came to after three years of instruction.

Confirmation is thus bound up with baptism; but over time the rites grew apart. By the time I came along some 1600 or 1700 years later, you got baptized as an infant but did not receive the communion or certain instruction until getting confirmed as an adolescent or adult.

As an aside, I remember one beautiful woman, a parishioner at St. John's in Arlington, Mass., who reached the stage of needing pastoral visits and eucharist in her home. One day when I was there she told me of her Confirmation day sometime in the 1920s.

"I wore a white dress," she told me, "and when the Bishop laid hands on me such a Spirit came down that I was overcome with bliss and unable to speak to anyone for the rest of the day. Everyone was having a big party for me but I felt apart; I was going around in this blessed state."

Around the time Elizabeth was getting confirmed in the old tradition of white dress and veil (which she still had in her closet--the veil, that is--and showed me), the Episcopal Church was going through liturgical renewal and debate about Confirmation, a debate was still continuing in the 1980s when I was serving at St. John's:

"If Baptism is your entry into the Body of Christ, why is communion withheld until Confirmation?" one side asked.
"Because," the other side responded, "the young baby doesn't understand the sacrament."
"And at home," the renewers asked, "do you withhold food until the child understands nutrition? And besides," they continued, "who can claim to fully understand this mystery?" The outcome of this debate: all baptized Christians are welcome to receive the sacrament.

Confirmation now becomes not your entry into communion, but your own affirmation of the vows that were made for you by others at your Baptism. The church's Christian education is now begun in children's Sunday School continues in special instruction and mentoring to confirmands. Baptized Christians participate in parish ministry from childhood on up and regard religious study as our lifelong endeavor.

I give thanks to God for the invitation to this ministry to a confirmand and pray for the power to carry it out.

This is the Prayer Book's Collect for Young People:

"God our Father, you see your children growing up in an unsteady and confusing world: Show them that your ways give more life than the ways of the world, and that following you is better than chasing after selfish goals. Help them to take failure, not as a measure of their worth, but as a chance for a new start. Give them strength to hold their faith in you, and to keep alive their joy in your creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."

Ephrem of Edessa

Edessa (now Urfa), a city in modern Turkey about 100 kilometers from Antioch (now Antakya), was a an early center for the spread of Christian teaching in the East. It is said that in 325 Ephrem accompanied his bishop, Jacob of Nisibis, to the Council of Nicea, where the question of Christ's nature and personhood was settled by the adoption of the Nicene Creed. That is, Jesus Christ is "begotten, not made, of one being with the Father." Although fully human, Christ is not a creature among creatures of God's creation; He has been with the Father from the beginning. He is fully divine.

Ephrem's writings are an eloquent defense of the Nicene faith in the Deity of Jesus Christ. He countered a Gnostic practice of spreading their message through popular songs by composing Christian songs and hymns of his own, with great effect. He is known to the Syrian church as "the harp of the Holy Spirit."

From God Christ's deity came forth
his manhood from humanity
his priesthood from Melchizedek
his royalty from David's tree:
praised be his Oneness.
He joined with guests at wedding feast
yet in the wilderness did fast
he taught within the temple's gates
his people saw him die at last:
praised be his teaching.
The dissolute he did not scorn
nor turn from those who were in sin
he for the righteous did rejoice
but bade the fallen to come in:
praised be his mercy.
He did not disregard the sick
to simple ones his word was given
and he descended to the earth
and his work done went up to heaven:
praised be his coming....
by Ephrem of Edessa, translated by John Howard Rhys, adapted and altered by F Bland Tucker, (Episcopal) Hymnbook 1982.
Parts of the above come from http://www.missionstclare.com/english/people/jun10.html.

Note how this fine hymn interweaves theology, teaching about Jesus' prophesied Messiahship, his ministry and might acts.

Ephrem retired to a cave outside Edessa, where he lived in great simplicity and devoted himself to writing. A picture of him shows a serene white-beard sitting beneath a tree holding manuscript papers. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove beams down on him, and he has an angel on either side.

Would that this be so here in my messy office today.

My Secret Life

There is a wonderful site called Mission of St. Clare; you can click on and read Morning Prayer. Morning Prayer is a habit I try to keep to even though it lapses from time to time. Today, sitting here singing hymns and reading Scripture at the computer, learning the rugged holiness of St. Columba, I thought this is something I would not be doing if not a Christian. There is something about doing something that a non-Christian would consider a complete waste of time that made it especially nice. It's like a secret of some kind.

The open secret wisdom of Ecclesiastes (9:11-18) notes that one poor wise man saved a city but afterwards no one remembered him. The Teacher notes wisdom is better than war, but that one bungler can undo a lot of wisdom (my paraphrase). The Teacher knows his own work will fall into the hands of fools and bunglers, and it has; but his wisdom still endures. These wordsbring hope to the terminal uniqueness of our own centuries.

After reflecting on Eccl that you can accomplish a lot of good if you don't care who gets the credit, I then prayed Psalm 72 for the president, that his reign may prosper and his mercy to the poor come down like rain on the mown field. Then also I prayed for all the terrorists and bad guys. Jesus said to do this, and some things you just have to take on faith.

In Galatians, Paul cries, "For freedom Christ has set us free; stand fast...!' (Gal 5:1: Tei eleutheria oun hei Christos heimas eileutherowsen, steikete!) "Stick to it." The verb steiko means both stand in the attitude of prayer (Mk 11:25) and stand firm, persevere. Of course, Paul was speaking of Galatians, set free from observing the Mosaic law, backsliding into trying justify themselves by observances.

Rather than freedom from sin, we're looking at freedom from our former ways of trying to overcome sin on our own (and I'm not saying observance of Torah is a way of trying to make oneself righteous; only for the Galatians Paul thinks this is their way of doing so). We have been set free, if I may take Paul's idea one step further, to understand our powerlessness and the grace of having an Advocate with the Father. In fact, Paul whole warning to the Galatians is to stop listening to bad teachers.

I wonder what Paul would write to me if I need to be chid. Probably, if he had read my latest "Musings" blog, Paul would tell me that obsessing about failure is to fall back in thrall to the "bitch-goddess Success" (William James?) Paul would say, Persevere in Prayer and pursue Love. Um, actually he did say that. I'm sure Paul would write me a lot of other things too; like think how you're leavening your lump (Gal 5:9 and Mt 16:11-12). To whom should I be listening?

For one, the Mission of St. Clare. http://www.missionstclare.com/ Good teaching there.

Copernican Self

The Mission of St. Clare, composed by James Kiefer, honors Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) today.

Kiefer writes that the notion that medieval scientists believed the earth was flat is a hoax; it was the notion of an unmoving earth that formed the basis for scientific calculations. "The geocentric model had been interwoven with other theories in chemistry, physics, music, natural theology, and other disciplines, into one unified theory of nature, so that it seemed that rejecting any single part (such as the stability of the earth) imperilled [sic] the whole theory. However... it became an increasingly awkward theory. Copernicus proposed to simplify it by supposing that the sun, not the earth, was at the center."*

It doesn't surprise that Copernicus figured it out so much as that for thousands of years we got it wrong; especially the patching together of scientific theories to fit the incorrect model. Don't we do that with our narcissistic selves. Does not my psyche insist that I personally, and our own nation and our own species stand at the center of things? We continue to experience the world this way in spite of scientific observation to the contrary.

This is where faith comes in. My own experience continues to inform me that the sun rises in the east and moves across the sky. But we moderns believe the scientists, and acting on this belief has changed our experience. In ultimate reality, God is at the center, and if we continue to behave as if we don't grow towards God, our beliefs and behaviors will get increasingly skewed. If we base our behaviors on belief in God's way we shall be "like trees planted by streams of water, bearing fruit in due season..." (Ps 1:3). In fact, if our Lord tells us, "...As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me" (Jn 15:4b).

I want to make a parallel about the Copernican basis of astrophysics and astronauts viewing the beautiful earth from space, and our discovering our true place in God's creation, but let any commentator fill it in.

*www.missionstclare.com/english/May/morning/24m.html

Weaving Light from Light

Bring grandson to children's choir in church
blinding with pure white light
reflected off the frontal,
I please myself to take the same chair--practical, padded blue, and plush--
where I spent the morning
With Episcopal Church Women and
Now sit same here hear the children slide down Schumann
scales like bannisters while I
read Ruth for Friday Disciple class
Anthem "Child of the Light meets Ruth gleaning Boaz' field
crossing Miss Julia Emery a saint of January 9
who taught us to glean our United Thank Offerings
These intersections form a net lightly woven to
lift you up draw generations on.