"Let There Be Light" - A place for conversation with the Rector of St. Paul's Memorial Church, 1700 University Avenue, Charlottesville, Virginia, 22903 http://www.stpaulsmemorialchurch.org/
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The time of the deep blue indigo sky: Advent
Welcome to the season of Advent, the time of the deep blue indigo sky just before the dawn, the time of waiting for the One who comes, the Christ who is to dwell with us. This is the season to stop and look at the spectacle of creation all around you.
You may notice at St. Paul’s we are beginning to display blue for Advent, not purple.
Blue is a very old traditional color for Advent, the color marking the four weeks leading to Christmas. Blue has been used for Advent at Salisbury Cathedral in England since the 11th century. No one is quite sure why this blue came to be used at Salisbury – some think it is the color of Mary, and that is probably as plausible an explanation as any, and others say it is “royal” blue – the color of Norman kings.
The color is called “Salisbury Blue,” or “Sarum Blue” – Sarum is the Latin name for Salisbury. And the blue spread from Salisbury and beyond.
I like to think of this blue as the color of the sky just before the dawn, as the stars shimmer before the sun rises. To me, the blue symbolizes the hope of Advent – the time of waiting for the birth of Christ’s promise of hope and healing into our world.
The color marks a subtle but important distinction between Advent and Lent, the time before Easter, the season of purple. Lent is a time of confession and penitence and looking inward for the God within us. Advent, the time before Christmas, is a time of looking outward for the God around us. The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive – yes we should be looking inward for the God within us. Consider this more a degree of emphasis, just as purple and blue are related colors.
Looking outward for God’s presence is at the core of Advent. Be awake – it is almost dawn before a new day. You don’t have to travel far to find what you seek. Look around you – look for the dawn of Christ’s light in all you do, in all whom you meet, and everywhere you go. What you seek is right in front of you.
The name “Emmanuel” means God is already dwelling with us – and this God comes to us, living with us as a human being, Jesus, to show us that death has no power over us.
It may look like night now, but it is the time of the blue indigo sky, the time before the dawn, the time of Advent. We live in a troubled world, and it is sometimes difficult to see that the dawn is near.
I am reminded of the words of a great Jewish poet, Yehuda Amichai, who saw much tragedy and conflict in his lifetime. He wrote: “Behind all this some great happiness is hiding.” That is at the heart of Advent.
Under the night sky, a happiness is hiding, the outbreak of God’s grace into our dark and difficult world. A light will soon shine, a great happiness is hiding: Jesus comes into this world to show us that salvation is ours right now, right here, we don’t have to wait to find what we seek. He comes to show us a way to live without fear, in the here and now.
Yet we need to sharpen our eyes to see the dawn.
How to sharpen our eyes? I would like to invite us this Advent to enter a time of radical welcome to those in our midst who are new or in great need. Let’s go out of our way this Advent to be kind to each other, and to help those who are in the greatest of need. Let’s take a few risks.
That is why we are doing special in-gatherings in Advent, beginning next week with toys our children will bring to church to give away. The week after that, Dec. 7, we are asking you bring blankets, hats and underwear in unopened packages for the homeless who are served by PACEM. On Dec, 21, bring food for the food closet for the poorest in our community.
My prayer for each of us this Advent is that we will be awake for God’s amazing grace everywhere we go, and in everything we do, and in everyone we meet, and that we will see God’s blessing in how we live and act. It is Advent, the time before the dawn, the time of the deep blue sky. The One who walks among us as the Christ is with us, blesses each of us, and fills the world with love and grace and salvation. Be awake!
Friday, November 28, 2008
What is more generous than a window?
It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they're supposed to be.
I've been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Giving Thanks
by Rafael Jesus Gonzalez
Thanks & blessings be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
this fruit, this meat, this salt,
this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessings to them
who share it
(& also the absent & the dead).
Thanks & Blessing to them who bring it
(may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
(may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
& blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want - for their hunger
sours the wine & robs
the taste from the salt.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & work of justice, of peace.
Amen.
Giving Thanks
Based on a prayer by Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)
Holy and gracious God, we give thanks for the gift of this gathering; for the food before us; the loving hands that have prepared it; and the blessings we share together. Kindle our hearts and awaken hope, that we may know you always as our companion along the way. Forgive us where we have fallen short with each other and with ourselves; heal our wounds, restore our health, strengthen our souls, and help us to be ever mindful the needs of those near us who have so little. Teach us to believe that by your grace all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well. Amen.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Order of the Holy Cross - Prayers on their day
P.O Box 1296
Santa Barbara, California 93102
Welcoming Mary: Si se puede!
I wrote here yesterday of making this Advent a time of radical welcome. This Advent, I’d like us to welcome Mary, and all the Marys and Josephs and their babies with no room at the inn. Here’s how:
First, tomorrow evening we will host a Thanksgiving dinner. Lori is cooking the turkeys. Come join us at 6 p.m. and bring a dish, and bring a guest. This is our gift to you and your friends.
And then I’d invite you to come to St. Paul’s on Dec. 12 to meet Mary in a way maybe you have not met her before.
On that day, millions of people will celebrate the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe – an apparition of Mary who appeared to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoastzin on a hillside in 1531 near Mexico City. It is quite a story to tell.
At 5:30 p.m. on Friday Dec. 12, on her feast day, we will have a simple Eucharist in our chapel. We will tell the story of Juan Diego and Our Lady of Guadalupe. Some of our prayers will be in Spanish. Bring a Guadalupe candle if you have one.
And then come to dinner in the parish hall. We will have simple Mexican fare. And we will ask for a donation of at least $15 to PACEM, which is our shelter ministry for the homeless in Charlottesville. Come enjoy the feast and help give shelter to the Marys and Josephs and their babies.
Si se puede!
Monday, November 24, 2008
Advent Conspiracy
Saturday, November 22, 2008
Journey of Faith: A special invitiation
This course is open to all adults but is especially designed for any adult who would like to be confirmed, received as an Episcopalian, or reaffirm her or his faith commitment with Bishop David Jones on Feb. 8. This course is open to all who wish to join us on this journey of exploration into the deepest mysteries of life. We won’t find all of the answers, but the road will be full of wonder and amazing grace.
Let me explain a little of how we will do this: Sometimes in class all we do is communicate facts, content, history, dates, events. We will do some of that – but more importantly we will try to give you a place to explore the meaning of faith in community and “equip the saints” with tools for exploring our faith and putting it into practice in daily life and work.
Each evening will open with prayer. I will then give a presentation on the topic of the evening, and we will then divide up into small groups for discussion. We will close each evening with prayer.
I have set up a blog for this course, called Journey of Faith. I will post on the blog the outlines for each evening’s talk and any handouts, and I hope we can continue the conversation outside the classroom on the blog. You can access the course blog through this blog, Fiat Lux, which will have it as a link on the left, or by bookmarking: http://journeyfaithstpauls.blogspot.com/
Also, anyone who lives far from Charlottesville is invited to join us on this journey through the Journey of Faith blog, and by entering into the conversation through the “comment” section on each topic. All I ask is that you identify yourself.
Topics each week include how we interpret the Bible, the creeds and how we live out our lives as faithful people living in tension with the modern world. The course is structured in the classic Anglican way of “Scripture, Reason and Tradition.”
The course will have eight Wednesday evening sessions (with Christmas and New Years Eve off)
On Saturday, Feb. 7, the day before the bishop’s visit, we will spend time together in retreat, but not just any kind of retreat. It is my hope we will use our time on that Saturday – maybe only a few hours – working together in simple service to our community.
To join us, please call the office 434.295.2156, or leave a comment on this blog entry with your name and email, or just show up on the first night, Dec. 3 at 7 p.m.
Jim+
Friday, November 21, 2008
There will be music despite everything
By Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafes and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
Catching up
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
More on dancing bishops: Celtic spirituality
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Seasons in Charlottesville in words and pictures
We are enjoying the change of seasons in Charlottesville, and the seasons are distinct. It is definitely turning colder. It feels to me like we are on the cusp in between autumn and winter.
After the Rain
by Anthony Hecht
The barbed-wire fences rust
As their cedar uprights blacken
After a night of rain.
Some early, innocent lust
Gets me outdoors to smell
The teasle, the pelted bracken,
The cold, mossed-over well,
Rank with its iron chain,
And takes me off for a stroll.
Wetness has taken over.
From drain and creeper twine
It’s runnelled and trenched and edged
A pebbled serpentine
Secretly, as though pledged
To attain a difficult goal
And join some important river.
The air is a smear of ashes
With a cool taste of coins.
Stiff among misty washes,
The trees are as black as wicks,
Silent, detached and old.
A pallor undermines
Some damp and swollen sticks.
The woods are rich with mould.
How even and pure this light!
All things stand on their own,
Equal and shadowless,
In a world gone pale and neuter,
Yet riddled with fresh delight.
The heart of every stone
Conceals a toad, and the grass
Shines with a douse of pewter.
Somewhere a branch rustles
With the life of squirrels or birds,
Some life that is quick and right.
This queer, delicious bareness,
This plain, uniform light,
In which both elms and thistles,
Grass, boulders, even words,
Speak for a Spartan fairness,
Might, as I think it over,
Speak in a form of signs,
If only one could know
All of its hidden tricks,
Saying that I must go
With a cool taste of coins
To join some important river,
Some damp and swollen Styx .
Yet what puzzles me the most
Is my unwavering taste
For these dim, weathery ghosts,
And how, from the very first,
An early, innocent lust
Delighted in such wastes,
Sought with a reckless thirst
A light so pure and just.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Dancing bishops
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Aftermath of the fire: Remembering the monastery, the people
P.O Box 1296
Santa Barbara, California 93102
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Santa Barbara monastery fire update
Sad news from Santa Barbara
We received some very sad news last night: the wildfires sweeping through the arroyos of Santa Barbara claimed the Mt. Calvary Retreat Center; the monastery burned to the ground. Mt. Calvary is the West Coast home of the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross, which until recently also had a priory next-door to All Souls Parish. The retreat center has long been a popular refuge and place of prayer for Episcopalians in California (for you Virginians, think of this as Shrine Mont). The photos are from the OHC website in earlier days; the other photo is from the Los Angeles Times yesterday.
Please keep in your prayers Br. Roberts, Superior, and Br. Tom, former chaplain to clergy of the Diocese of California; Br. Raphael; the Sisters of the Holy Nativity, particulary Sr. Abigail, SHN; for the students, faculty, and staff of Westmont College, especially Candace and Tim Taylor; and for the people of Santa Barbara.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Charter for Compassion - Part II
Worth hearing: TED & Charter for Compassion
Thursday, November 13, 2008
California's Proposition 8: What happened? What's next?
Why did gay-marriage ban pass? 'No' campaign was in turmoil
- Story | California court mulling validity of gay marriage ban
- Story | Black turnout for Obama doomed gay marriage in Calif.
- Story | Gay-marriage backers, defeated at the polls, head to court
- Story | Churches make final push in California's gay-marriage fight
- Story | Gay-marriage opponents gaining in Calif. vote, poll finds
By Aurelio Rojas | Sacramento Bee
A week after California voters approved Proposition 8 and decreed they wanted to end same-sex marriage in the state, details are emerging of an opposition campaign that was in disarray.
Key staff members – including the campaign manager – were replaced in the final weeks as polls turned dramatically against the No side. Their replacements say they found an effort that was too timid, slow to react, without a radio campaign or a strategy to reach out to African Americans, a group that ultimately supported the measure by more than 2 to 1.
Gay marriage supporters are looking to the courts to overturn the decision. But if another political campaign is waged, said Dennis Mangers, co-chairman of the No on 8 Northern California Committee, "we'll have to do better."
No on 8 campaign manager Steve Smith was shoved aside three weeks before Election Day, after he was slow to counter TV ads in which the measure's supporters claimed that same-sex marriage would be promoted in schools if the measure failed.
Two Sacramento political consultants – Joe Rodota, a Republican, and Gale Kaufman, a Democrat – were brought in by the No campaign. Republican consultant Rick Claussen was asked for advice.
The campaign's public relations firm, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, was replaced by Sacramento-based Perry Communications Group.
Read the full story at sacbee.com.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Las Ofrendas: Breath, Wind, Spirit
The response at St. Paul's to building our ofrendas is huge. We now have two ofrendas in the nave, and one more upstairs in the hallway outside in the children's Godly Play classrooms. I am very moved every time I walk by the ofrendas, and I go upstairs a few times a day to look and meditate. What amazing gifts!
I leave you today with a few photos of our ofrendas, and with a fitting poem by Birago Ishmael Diop (1906-1989), a native of Dakar, Senegal, who is a much noted African poet and folklorist of the last century. The original of this poem is in French, and I have come across quite a few translations. I like this one best. By the way, the title can be translated either as "Breaths" or "Spirits," which is the same word-play used in the Gospel of John 3:5 and throughout Paul's letters (for example, Romans 8:9) whereby the Greek word pneuma means breath, wind, and spirit. The Hebrew scriptures (Old Testament) have similar word-plays. Here's the poem:
Breaths
By Birago Diop
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees,
It is our forefathers breathing.
The dead are not gone forever.
They are in the paling shadows,
And in the darkening shadows.
The dead are not beneath the ground,
They are in the rustling tree,
In the murmuring wood,
In the flowing water,
In the still water,
In the lonely place, in the crowd:
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees.
It is the breathing of our forefathers,
Who are not gone, not beneath the ground,
Not dead.
The dead are not gone for ever.
They are in a woman's breast,
A child's crying, a glowing ember.
The dead are not beneath the earth,
They are in the flickering fire,
In the weeping plant, the groaning rock,
The wooded place, the home.
The dead are not dead.
Listen more often to things rather than beings.
Hear the fire's voice,
Hear the voice of water.
In the wind hear the sobbing of the trees.
It is the breathing of our forefathers.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Veterans Day: The Cenotaph and Holy Saturday
Veterans Day began as a commemoration of the end of World War I, a war both of my grandfathers fought in. In Britain the day is still called Armistice Day, the day of the truce that ended the brutal “Great War to end all wars.” People wear red or white poppies to honor veterans and those who died in the catastrophes of war.
And that bring me to the monuments with origins in the deepest mysteries of Christianity. Stay with me awhile on this:
The most famous of all monuments of the World War I era is outside of Whitehall, in London: A concrete monolith, which is still the focal point every November 11 of ceremonies remembering Armistice Day. The concrete memorial is called the “Cenotaph,” and its simple design was copied extensively throughout Britain and the United States (see photo at right).
In the years following World War I, cenotaph monuments to the dead sprang up throughout Europe and the United States. Now, nearly a century later, the enormity of the catastrophe is still hard to imagine: Nine million dead, 28 million wounded, 3 million widows and untold millions of children left without one or both parents.
Nearly every World War I-era monument in the U.S. is a copy of the cenotaph; many Civil War monuments that were erected in the 1920s, including in Charlottesville (the Stonewall Jackson monument near City Hall sits atop a cenotaph). The best known cenotaph in the United States is in Arlington National Cemetery, commonly known as the “Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”
The word cenotaph comes from the Greek: ceno for empty, and taph for tomb: The Empty Tomb of the Great War.
The symbolism of the cenotaph has its origins in Holy Saturday, the day following Good Friday when Jesus dies on the Cross. On Holy Saturday, Jesus descends into Hell, breaks open the gates and defeats the devil. On Easter, Jesus takes everyone with him to Heaven. Without Holy Saturday, Easter has very little to do with us. With Holy Saturday, we are part of the Resurrection. The cenotaph is the monument to the emptying of Hell itself.
How much easier it is for people to believe in death. We use death as the final solution to so many of our problems. We execute murderers and we send young men and women off to die in wars to settle differences among nations. We argue endlessly over abortion and assisted suicide, as if laws about those issues would somehow settle our deep-seated anxiety about death.
So why are we so shocked by the death of Jesus so long ago? Why care about one Jew who the world saw as a troublesome mystic who healed and preached and claimed to be “the son of God”? How is it that two millennia later the death of the One still holds us and transforms us? If all we get is one more death on Good Friday, it is not a very good Friday.
But we get two more days – the day of the Cenotaph and the Day of Resurrection: Easter.
Can we look through the door of Holy Saturday – into the Cenotaph – and see there is more than death but life? Can the death of the One help us to touch the death of millions? Can we truly find a way to end wars and bring heaven to earth? Where does the cenotaph bring us?
Monday, November 10, 2008
On the border: Baptism at the center of our life
You may have noticed that we’ve moved the baptismal font to the center of the aisle in front of the first row of pews, a few feet away from the Eucharistic Holy Table. The location is at the geographic center of the church building and at the place that can be called “the crossing” of the church.
Credit Alice Fitch with making an observation that got me thinking about moving the location of the font. The baptismal font has been off to the side, near the base of the platform holding the Holy Table. We last used the font on All Saints Sunday when we baptized five small children. Alice brought to my attention that when we invited all of the children to come forward to see the baptisms they couldn’t see much. With the font off on one side, and the children off on the other side, all the children could see were the legs of the people standing between them and the font.
That is when it struck me that we should put the font in the geographic center of the sanctuary – not just so everyone can see a little better – especially children – but also to symbolize the centrality of baptism in our walk of faith.
In the architecture of ancient churches, the baptismal font was placed at the entrance of the sanctuary, or “nave,” symbolic of how baptism is the entry point into the Christian community and points toward the Eucharistic table at the front of the nave. Many contemporary churches are now designed that way, including All Souls Parish in Berkeley where I previously served. The font at All Souls is a few feet inside the doorway, and when we conducted baptisms at All Souls, we moved the baptismal parties and the clergy en masse to the back of the church. Everyone in the pews had to stand up and turn around to see. The nave was small enough that it generally worked, and we invited all of the children to the back of the church to watch the baptisms.
St. Paul’s, however, is not designed for placing the font at the entrance, at least not without removing much needed seating. Even if we did that, to make everyone stand and face backwards in such a large nave would be awkward at best, and few would see much of anything.
Placing the St. Paul’s baptismal font at the “crossing” gives us the symbolism of baptism leading to Eucharist. Even when we are not conducting baptisms, the font remains visible to us during our worship. The font remains an enduring reminder of the centrality of our baptism, and a powerful symbol of our communion with Christ and with all who have gone before us who have been baptized in that font.
Why, though, do we baptize children and babies? Isn’t all this symbolism lost on them? Those are good questions, ones that have sparked much conflict among Christians over many centuries. That conflict, though, need not be so.
In the view of the Episcopal Church, baptism is an “outward and visible sign” (i.e., a sacrament) of the inward reality of the Holy Spirit working in each of us. It is also the initiation into the church. Why would we wait to initiate people into the Church? Does it matter if we understand all of this fully? Do any of us understand this fully?
If we are all truly the arms and feet of Christ in the world, and if Christ needs all of us, then children must be included, too. Daniel B. Stevick, in his book published by the Episcopal Church, Baptismal Moments; Baptismal Meanings (1987), puts it quite eloquently:
“Baptism is a sacrament of beginnings, of newness, of grace, of a fresh start with history, and in the depths of individual life. It is the beginning of life in Christ and his people. It is the sign of the new life which is always coming into being within the old but ever young Church. It is the Christian Gospel in action, declaring and effecting the new age in Christ. Baptism is the ritual side of the mysterious way by which world passes over into church and church reaches into the world.”
Stevick also notes (p. 31) that our baptism puts us in tension with the society in which we live. At its root, baptism is counter-cultural. In our baptismal covenant we pledge to “respect the dignity of every human being” and “to love our neighbors” and to “work for justice and peace.” Those pledges, if we take them seriously, will put us at odds with the culture of greed and violence that surrounds us. Stevick writes:
“Being a good member of the society does not necessarily support being a good Christian. Being a good Christian may set one against society at crucial points.”
Our baptismal font in the center of the church is an enduring reminder, I believe, of our baptismal covenant, and of the tension in which we live because of our baptism. We are different because of our baptism. Stevick writes:
“Christian Baptism is a border rite. It marks the boundary between Church and not-Church… To be marked with the sign of the cross may make one a marked person.”
Welcome to the border – the border of the Holy. Welcome to baptism into the life of Christ.
Blessings,
Jim+