Morning By Morning

Who Was Nebuchadnezzar and What Did He Learn?

2011-05-16T07:06:00.000-07:00

Nebuchadnezzar has had an unsettling dream and consults Daniel for an interpretation. Daniel tells him that the dream is a warning against arrogance, but Nebuchadnezzar does not heed the warning. When ancient kings had dominion they ruled over everything they saw, and they owned everything they ruled over. This is not a matter of having sway or influence, but of absolute ownership and authority.

The desire to control is a strong temptation for most people. Even though we don’t have the absolute ownership and authority of ancient kings, we try to control the varied circumstances of our lives. One of the most threatening things about storms, tornadoes, and floods is that they reveal our essential helplessness before the forces of nature.

In our relationships we at times try to control those whom we love, and those whom we don’t love. We sometimes get trapped into trying to control those we work with, or those we worship with. We then discover that when control comes in the door, love goes out the window. Sooner or later our attempts to control create problems in our families, our circles of friends, and in the Church. In short, when we are attempting to control, we often become a nuisance, or worse.

Twelve months later Nebuchadnezzar, walking on the rooftop terrace of his palace, brags of his accomplishments, of his mighty power, and the glory of his majesty. While the words were still in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, "O King Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: The kingdom has departed from you, and you shall be driven from among men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field. And you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven periods of time shall pass over you, until you know that the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will" (Daniel 4:31-32). Nebuchadnezzar who thought he had absolute control, ownership, and authority, loses his mind, and loses control of his kingdom.

Nebuchadnezzar has to swallow the bitter pill that God alone is Sovereign, that God alone has absolute control. Then comes his great confession, “At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honoured him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth” (Daniel 4:34-35).

Nebuchadnezzar has learned a fundamental lesson that is essential for every Christian. Our desire to control people, places, and things, needs to be surrendered to God. The due exercise of authority can only be safely exercised by those who know that God is in control, that God alone is Sovereign.

On Making Mistakes

2011-05-12T05:26:00.000-07:00

I noticed, with some amusement, a mistake in my article in last Sunday’s bulletin insert. Apparently I quoted the Western “Dessert” Fathers, Instead of the Western “Desert” Fathers, saying, “If you have a snake or a scorpion, put it in a box and put the lid on it, and sooner or later it will die.” I take it that the Western Dessert Fathers wore powder blue leisure suits and lived primarily on cheesecake and mimosas; while the Western Desert Fathers wore coarse garments, spent their time praying and fasting, and also recorded a few of their pithy sayings.

Everybody makes mistakes and even Spellcheck can’t catch them all. Mothers and fathers make mistakes, old and young make mistakes, smart people and not-so-smart people make mistakes. Lay people make mistakes. Bishops, priests, and deacons make mistakes. Pharisees and Sadducees make mistakes. Making mistakes is a normal part of life.

Did I say, “Pharisees” make mistakes? Here we have a problem. Pharisees don’t accept a fact that is obvious to everybody around them, that is that even Pharisees make mistakes. They also don’t accept that others are allowed to make mistakes. The result is that they spend an inordinate amount of time correcting other people’s mistakes. They live for the adrenalin rush that comes when they can point out the mistakes of everybody around them.

I once had a prominent and very devout church member who felt that it was his spiritual right, every Monday, to present the Office Staff with a list of their mistakes in the Sunday bulletin. Those who knew him knew that he had a few glaring flaws of his own, notably a lack of love and common courtesy, and a serious problem with shaming and blaming. His attitude was like painting a “correct” smile on the Mona Lisa; it spoiled his reflection of the image of Christ.

The problem we face is that while some are blatant Pharisees, there is a little streak of the Pharisee in the best of us. It is so very easy to cloak our own anxieties and feelings of inadequacy by critiquing others.

Two things will help. The first is the simple acknowledgement that everybody makes mistakes. Second, we need to lighten up and develop a sense of humour. Who knows? There may actually be some Western Dessert Fathers who wear blue leisure suits, and live entirely on cheesecake and mimosas.

What Do We Learn from History?

2011-05-08T18:30:00.000-07:00

My brother, who is a history teacher and a union organizer, loves to stir the pot. He says, “The only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.” That is both true and false at the same time. Around this time of year twenty-five years ago three significant things happened: The Chernobyl nuclear crisis, President Reagan ordered air strikes on Kaddafi in Libya, and Trinity Episcopal Church was founded. This year we have the Japan nuclear crisis, President Obama has ordered air strikes on Kaddafi in Libya, and Trinity Episcopal Church is starting all over again. The question becomes very important, “What did we learn from history?”

The church of my childhood started as a mission in Aldershot, Ontario. We met in a school gymnasium for over a year before we called our first minister and a couple of years later we built a wonderful church building, but there was a serious flaw right at the beginning. The minister had declared that he would accept the call if he received a 2/3 vote. When the ballots were counted it was a few votes short, but nevertheless he accepted the call. Immediately those who did not vote for him became extremely angry and never got over it. The church members spent the next fifty years battling with each other even though many of them new nothing of the unhappy beginning of the congregation. Eventually the church doors closed and the building was sold. What they didn’t learn from history, but I did, is that if you start a church in anger it won’t succeed unless you deal with the dynamics effectively.

Drawing on the lessons from history let me share with you seven principles for restarting a church that has run into a spiritual brick wall.

1. Acknowledge and understand the past. There is an old saying from one of the Western Dessert Fathers, “If you have a snake or a scorpion and put it in a box with a lid on it, sooner or later it will die.” First you need to recognize that it’s a snake or a scorpion, then you actually have to put it in the box and keep the lid on.

2. Forgive and be forgiven. Forgiveness is not an emotion. Neither is it blind. It simply before God makes the decision let go of the past, and put it aside.

3. Recognize the dynamics of conflict. Conflict in churches occur when people try to control things that are not theirs to control. It occurs when the behaviour of some members makes other members feel helpless. It occurs when the authority structures break down.

4. Recognize conflictual behaviour and speak to it. Gossip and backbiting destroy the relationships within the body of Christ.

5. Warfare is part of life, even Christian life. When it happens it needs to be dealt with as soon as it’s recognized.

6. Renew your Baptismal Vows and your personal relationship with Jesus Christ who is the Head of the Church. The Baptismal Vows are on page 302 of The Book of Common Prayer.

7. Renew your Confirmation and affirm the Lordship of the Holy Spirit in your life. Your Confirmation calls you to active participation in worship, fellowship opportunities, and service.

If you learn from history and follow these seven principles the promises of God are yours. He says, “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13). Then he asks, "Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jeremiah 32:27).

There is an amusing mistake in this article. Did you spot it?

Transitions

2011-04-15T16:32:00.000-07:00

This is a week of wild transitions. We move from the Palm Sunday procession, to the Passion and Death and Burial of Jesus, and then to His Resurrection in power on Easter Sunday. In a way this reflects the spiritual and emotional journey of all of us, with our own triumphs, our celebrations with families and friends around the table, to the issues of grief and dying, to the sure and certain hope of eternal life. Jesus leads us through life, through death, into life everlasting.

As I think about these things one of my professors in my doctoral studies comes to mind. David Watson (1933-1984) was an ordained priest in the Church of England, starting his ministry in Gillingham, Kent among the dock workers. Gillingham is where Diana’s cousin lives and I’ve had the privilege of preaching at St. Matthew’s, Gillingham. I studied Evangelism and Church Growth under David Watson at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California.

David Watson moved from Gillingham to York where he became Curate-in-Charge of St. Cuthbert’s, a congregation that was attended by no more than twelve people at any service and was a year away from being closed. Eight years later his congregation of several hundred had outgrown the buildings and had moved to a larger facility. What was central to the growth of St. Cuthbert’s was David Watson’s understanding that our Anglican heritage is grounded in a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, who is our Saviour and Lord; and in a commitment to power and guidance of the Holy Spirit.

What I did not know at that time was that David Watson was in the process of writing Fear No Evil, a book about his struggle with the cancer that eventually killed him. Why I remember him at this time is two specific things that he had said. First, if there is no pain, there is no palm, if there are no thorns, there is no crown, if there is no death, there is no resurrection. Second is David Watson’s way of stating his own personal commitment to the God whom he served. David said of himself, “Not looking back. Not going back. No further plans of my own.”

The truth is, that while we might make the mistake of looking back, it really isn’t possible for us to go back. There is something further. Too often we look at the past, whether with satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and make our plans for the future without the guidance and grace of the Holy Spirit. David Watson was clear, not only in his understanding of Church Growth, but in his understanding of the course of his own life; that plans for the future are plans that are best made with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is a proverb that says, “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established,” and again, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:3,9).

The Law of Undulation

2011-04-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

C. S. Lewis’s character Screwtape, the Senior devil in The Screwtape Letters, has an interesting take on human nature. He observes that our lives have a natural rhythm, an ebb and flow, a series of troughs and peaks that affects every area of our lives—our interests, our loves, our work. We go through times of spiritual insight and responsiveness, and times of dryness and dullness.

That shouldn’t surprise us; the rhythm is written into nature. In simpler times I have sat by sea and watched the waves, not just the rhythm of the waves breaking on the beach, then retreating to break interminably upon the beach again, but the long ebbing of the tide, its flowing back, a rhythm governed by the cycle of the moon upon the earth.

The rhythms of our lives are part of the dance of life that all God’s creatures dance. The dance becomes un-rhythmical, disharmonious, erratic, when the dancers fail to move with the dance and try to force their way unnaturally. This often happens when the dancers fail to notice that they are dancing the dance, and that the law of undulation is a natural law.

Some of God’s children try to force their way into perpetual spiritual highs, others surrender to the lows and allow depression to govern all their days. You can’t live on the heights, and you best not camp permanently in the low valleys of our experience.

The first correction that we can make is the simple acknowledgment that we have highs and lows; that highs and lows are a natural part of life, and that there is nothing wrong with having highs and lows. Barring chemical imbalance, which is a matter for wise doctors and counsellors, having highs and lows is not a call for some pacifying medication to homogenize our days. Bland is not beautiful.

Rather than that, make use of your highs, those moments of greater energy and joy, and rejoice that your God has made you and all things good. In those moments step into the flow of His creativity and dance the dance with confidence.

In the lows, do not condemn yourself or accept Screwtape’s counsel of despair. Instead, use the steady tools of your faith; pray the prayers of Morning Prayer, read Holy Scripture, especially the Psalms, that book of ups and downs. Talk quietly with your friends, give love, accept love, read quietly things that delight the mind, listen to a symphony, and be at peace; the rhythm always returns and every ebb is always followed by a flow.

Getting Something Out of Sunday Morning Worship

2011-04-04T07:31:00.000-07:00

There are some simple things that will enhance your Sunday morning worship experience.

The first thing that affects your Sunday morning worship is what you were doing on Saturday evening, what time you got to bed, or even more recently, what happened as you were preparing to come to Church in the morning.

There may be other things elbowing their way into your Sunday morning; old disappointments and griefs, old guilts and embarrassments, or new conflicts and fears.

When you come to worship kneel and pray. Make a point of presenting those things to the Lord before the service begins.

The second thing that you will find helpful is to make a conscious acknowledgement in prayer that the Lord is here, and that He wants to make Himself known to you. Pray simply, “Thank you Lord that you are here, and that you desire to reveal yourself to me.”

Third, be aware that your style of learning will affect the way you respond to the various parts of the service. If you learn by reading, instead of by listening, that will mean that you will have to be more deliberate in paying attention to the sermon. If you learn by listening, rather than by reading, you will have to take more care in following the written part of the worship service.

Some people are more reserved than others, some are more demonstrative; that will affect the way they respond to the drama of the Liturgy. There is a tremendous variety in our liturgical style of worship but that also demands of us that we make a conscious effort to be open and responsive.

Worship is an expression of love, and love involves time, effort, and a conscious effort to be present with the One whom we love. A fulfilling experience of the Presence of God in worship generally doesn’t happen accidently.

Above all, at the start of worship, pray!

O almighty God, you pour on all who desire it the spirit of grace and supplication: Deliver us, when we draw near to you, from coldness of heart and wanderings of the mind, that with steadfast thoughts and kindled affections we may worship you in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP p. 833)

Church Growth by Invitation

2011-03-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

There is a promise in the Gospel of St. Matthew that applies to you as well as to me. Jesus said, “Whoever receives you receives me, whoever receives me receives him that sent me” (Mt. 10:40). You are an important part of God’s plan to gather his
children together.

Sometimes we make things more difficult by using terms like “Evangelism” and “Church Growth.” These expressions, good in themselves, get worked to death and begin to convey attitudes and methods that seem manipulative or even threatening.

That is certainly not what is on Jesus’s mind when he says, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:18-20). What God wants is for his children to invite home His children who are lost, alone, and need of love. The truth is that we don’t have to go very far to do this. It’s as simple as looking around your immediate environment and asking yourself, “Who do I see that could use a good welcoming hug for our Heavenly Father?” and then taking the risk of inviting them to come to Church with you. True, not everybody you might invite home to our Father’s house will say yes, but there is a good chance that some will indeed gladly respond.

Let me propose to you a new, yet ancient, model for growing the Church. The Church is the family of God, and as a family it grows by adopting new children. The central way that this happens is by invitation. Invite those whom you care for. Don’t just say, “I’ll meet your there,” but bring them to Church with you. If we do our family events, both worship and family celebrations well, they will be encouraged to stay. That leads to the second way that Churches grow, and that is by word of mouth. People are already being drawn to Trinity because our family life here is being restored. As people begin to hear that something good is happening here they will respond.

The third way is by letting it be known out in the broader community that there is new and exciting life at Trinity. Old methods like newspaper ads, broad based mailings, and phone campaigns have had their day. Currently people who are searching for a Church will look for us on the internet. For that reason we are working on our webpage and looking for ways to make it more accessible. Our webpage address is http://www.tecdallas.org/ Send it to your friends with a friendly email invitation. If you have computer and webpage skills give us a hand in expanding this outreach.

None of these things will work without prayer, not just a one-time prayer, but by prayers faithfully repeated. Prayer doesn’t have to be fancy, just heartfelt and to the point. Join me in praying regularly for the grown of our parish family and pray with me,

Heavenly Father, your children, lost and alone, are scattered all over our community. Send forth your Spirit to call them to yourself in our family here at Trinity Episcopal Church; and give us grace both to invite those we care for, and to welcome home those you bring into our family, so that your kingdom may grow in our midst, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Canticle of the Old Man

2011-03-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

Psalm 71: 17 – 21 Deus docuisti me

O God, you have taught me since I was young, *
and to this day I tell of your wonderful works.
And now that I am old and gray-headed, O God,
do not forsake me, *
till I make known your strength to this generation
and your power to all who are to come.
Your righteousness, O God, reaches to the heavens; *
you have done great things; who is like you, O God?
You have shown me great troubles and adversities, *
but you will restore my life
and bring me up again from the deep places of the earth.
You strengthen me more and more; *
you enfold and comfort me.

There is popular myth abroad in the Church that says that we need younger people in order to grow the Church. To quote a lovely C. S. Lewis character, “My uncle, Dr. Duncanson, . . . used to say, ‘Show it to me in the word of God.’ And then he’d slap the big Bible on the table.” The word of God does not say we need younger people to grow the Church. What it does say is that we who have years of Christian experience need to step up and give clear witness to what we have experienced and what we know.

God has taught many of us since we were young. And now that we are old and gray-headed we actually have something valuable to say. It is we who can make known God’s strength to this coming generation and His power to all who are to come. The Canticle of the Old Man from Psalm 71 makes our responsibility clear; we have the long length of Christian experience and we know that God has carried us through, and carries us through even today.

Our experience has included great troubles and adversities and time after time God has restored our lives and brought us up from the deep places of the earth. We know the truth the Psalmist testifies to when he cries, “Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me” (Ps. 42:7). And we know that time after time we can testify to the truth that we know that our Redeemer liveth! (Job 19:25). We are called to share that long experience of grace with the coming generations. Through joy, through sorrow, through meadows green and rocky valleys God has sustained us. We have every expectation that He will sustain us still.

We know and experience the truth that he strengthens us more and more, that he enfolds and comforts us. There are many who have not yet begun to walk with Christ who need to hear that testimony from us. There are many young in Christ who need to hear that God does carry his people through. We have a testimony to share.

We need to share in words spoken and written, in words gentle and kind, in words bold and forthright, “in season and out of season.” And we need to pray that God Himself will open doors for us to share our faith in words of grace filled the wisdom garnered from long experience.

The Overwhelming Sea

2011-03-08T20:06:00.000-08:00

I have seen the sun lie low upon the sea,
All the swelling waters, hammered molten gold.
I have seen God’s fiery light on surging waters bold
Crashing on the rocks that hem the sundering sea.
I have ridden the waves of the roiling sea
When the night was stormy dark, the waters bitter cold.
Up I rose to heaven as the mighty waters rolled
And plunged to the depths of the overwhelming sea.
Deep calls to deep at the roar of your waterspouts,
All you breakers and waves have rolled over me.
My sails are stripped away, I am laid bare for You to see.
The angels danced over me with loud cries and shouts.
At last in sweet surrender I am at perfect peace.
As I rest quietly in You, all my strivings cease.

There is a danger swimming in the overwhelming sea. The danger is the desire to struggle on gasping for air as the waves and billows crash against you. Surrender is a gift that can, and often is, refused, and so, Judas went and hung himself kicking at the end of the rope until the very end.

Surrender once accepted is a tremendous relief. The truth is that the first complete surrender is the worst to endure, so many fears, a dread of abject helplessness; but once received, what peace, what joy, and as one finally catches one’s breath, what jubilation. Who could ever have thought that sweet surrender could be so grand!

All subsequent surrenders harken back to the first surrender, and surrender becomes a delight and not a dread. Of course there are moments of stupid, even sluggish, resistance. But the memory and the joy of surrender calls you back to the beginning and you find that surrender itself is a foundation stone that lies upon the Bedrock who is Christ Jesus.

If Only the Moon Was Made of Green Cheese

2011-03-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

"If only” the moon was made of green cheese, but it isn’t. Rather it is a glorious ball of rock whose chief attraction has been that it reflects the light of the sun waxing and waning as it wends its way across the heavens. It is what it is and it can never be anything else. That is also true of your past and my past. It is what it is and no amount of worrying or whimpering will actually change it.

It is a common trait of humankind to say “if only.” “If only” I had done this, or not done that then everything would have turned out differently. By differently I of course mean better, as though in some illusive past Neverland I had powers that I still don’t have today. “If only” gives voice to our sense of inadequacy and guilt when we review what we regard as the mistakes of the past.

True, some things we did or failed to do changed the direction of our lives, or horror of horrors changed the direction of someone else’s life. There are some obvious problems with that. I once asked a physicist what constituted scientific proof. He remarked that that if you set up a vacuum system and ran your experiment in it one hundred times and eleven of those trials gave the answer you were looking for, then you could publish a paper on that in some scientific journal. What I wanted to know was where in nature you could find a vacuum system to validate that “proof” in real world experience? The point is that we don’t live in a vacuum system. In the past, and I might add in the present, we lived and even now live by the light we have. Some times that light was at best partial. In that light we did this or that and whether or not we did it well it is done.

“If only” in the past we could have acted on the basis of acquired wisdom that sometimes is only earned by difficult and sometimes painful experience. “If only” in the past we could have made better decisions, but of course, like it or not, we lived by the light we had then! True, the light we had in the past may have been a little murky, or to be perfectly frank our light may actually in the clear light of today appear to be darkness. There is absolutely no point in asking if we had done things differently, would things have turned out differently.

There is another factor. In the past as well as in the present we were and are social beings whose actions cannot be evaluated apart from the people we interact with at any given period of time. Just because we might have done things differently (an impossibility) doesn’t mean that those around us would have responded constructively. It doesn’t work that way. We don’t, and never did, have that kind of power. Usually when human beings say “if only” they are looking for ways to blame themselves, or others. The blame and shame game is not one that Christian’s can afford to play.

This is where the dear Christ enters in to this land of woe and sin. It is not for nothing that He is called the Redeemer. He became incarnate in human flesh in order to make an exchange with us, His precious life for our past, even for our past decisions as well as for our sins; His precious life for our inadequacies, our sorrow and our sin. He has the power to redeem the past, not take it away, but redeem it, draw its fangs and transform it. He has the power to restore the years the locusts have eaten.

Quoting Alice

2011-02-28T07:09:00.000-08:00

You don’t know Alice, but I did. Long ago she went to meet her Maker Who I am sure had some incisive questions to ask her. In the early nineteen seventies I was in a small parish, 80 to 100 people, in Watertown, Massachusetts. Alice had been a bishop’s secretary in a diocese in Pennsylvania. That is to say her church experience was extensive, which is not quite the same thing as having a living faith. She had now reached her seniority and that point in life where she felt that neither tact nor courtesy should govern her words.

The encounter happened in the center aisle of the nave immediately after the Sunday morning service. She was fuming.. She started, “Young man . . .” and I knew immediately for a reason soon to be apparent that I was in trouble. “Young man. You not only talk too much about Jesus, you even make the mistake of praying to him.” She didn’t realize that what she considered to be a stern rebuke I received as a compliment.

What else is Christian faith about if it is not about Jesus the Christ. Take “Christ” out of “Christianity” and all you are left with is “ianity,” which is close to inanity. From the viewpoint of the Theologian Hans Kung, the question at issue is basic” “The wholly personal decision for God and for Jesus is the properly basic Christian decision: It is a question of Christian existence or non-existence, of being a Christian or not being a Christian” (Hans Kung, The Christian Challenge (New York: Doubleday, 1979), p. 260.)

There is a difference between being with people and consciously being with people. Take the Cocktail Party Syndrome. Two people are excitedly talking face to face, but neither is listening to what the other is saying, merely waiting for the chance to fire another brilliant conversational salvo. There is no true meeting here, just self-imposed isolation in the midst of the crowd.

True worship is intentional not accidental. To worship one must know what one is doing. Sunday morning worship is about being with Jesus Who brings us hand in hand to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. He says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them" (Matthew 18:20). In our prayers we confess: “You alone are the Holy One, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit, in the glory of God the Father. Amen” (Gloria in excelsis). That is a prayer of adoration to Jesus.

When you come to worship open the eyes of your heart and acknowledge that Jesus is here waiting for you, that God the Father is calling you to Himself in love, and that the most gracious Holy Spirit is here ready to open for you deep fellowship with the God Whom you love.

7 Basic Principles Governing Parish Life

2011-02-21T19:21:00.000-08:00

There are a number of basic principles that govern parish life. These principles are simple, straightforward and universal.

1. God the Father Himself knows each of us by name and has called us into community through the redeeming work of God the Son. This is the deliberate intention of God the Father who wants you to be in His family. Each parish family is an expression of the universal “The Kingdom of God.”

2. The Church is the Body of Christ, and Christ Jesus Himself is the Head. This means that He is the Lord of the Church and will not willingly surrender control of the Church to his members; after all the foot doesn’t tell the Body where to go, the Head does.

3. The power of the shared life of the parish congregation flows from the Head in the Person of the Holy Spirit. This is not mere theory. The Holy Spirit brings to us every experience of the Presence of God our loving Father, and every experience of the Presence of Jesus.

4. There are certain personality characteristics that identify the members of the Body of Christ. The two central personality traits are Love and Holiness. Holiness without Love is ferocious and inhumane, and Love without Holiness descends into the sappy and tawdry.

5. Love is an action verb rather than a descriptive noun. Love is what you say and do before it is an emotion. In this we know love in that Jesus died for us; by this we demonstrate love in that we give our lives for each other in ways both small and great. Love also includes reaching out to others to bring them into the Kingdom of God.

6. Holiness includes not only basic commandment keeping, but also justice which means doing the right thing, giving a fair deal, be willing for honest give and take, and all that sort of thing.

7. The seventh principle is the fundamental acknowledgement expressed clearly in this collect from the Book of Common Prayer: “Grant to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do anything that is good without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

The Red Carpet

2011-02-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

This is a true story. Steel Valley in Western Pennsylvania runs along the banks of the Mononghela and Youghiogheny Rivers south east of Pittsburgh. In one of those smoky grit grimed cities was an Episcopal Church that needed a new carpet for the Nave. The Rector, being empowered by the Vestry to oversee the purchase of the carpet had an eye for joy and had a beautiful red carpet installed. The carpet was wonderful and brought that joy and grace to the interior of the Nave. The Senior Warden was horrified when he saw the red carpet and cried out indignantly,“But . . . but . . . but, this is supposed to be the House of Sorrows!”

That great Scot’s preacher Robert Murray M’Cheyne observed, “Some people are afraid of anything like joy in religion. They have none themselves, and they do not love to see it in others. Their religion is something like the stars, very high, and very clear, but very cold. When they see tears of anxiety, or tears of joy, they cry out in fear, “Enthusiasm, enthusiasm!”1

As I write this there is a chill in the air; it’s 23ᵒ F outside, but that’s not what I mean. By Sunday it will be in the mid-sixties. No, the chill in the air is deeper and more pervasive than mere fluctuations in temperature. This chill is a spiritual chill that characterizes the Church in the West. On one end of the spectrum it flows logically from the shallow mirth and sensuality of old tired liberalism and is evenly matched by the chill that flows from rigid conservatism; be it Anglo-Catholicism or English Evangelicalism. What is missing is the joy and fire of the Holy Spirit!

Recapturing the joy of the Holy Spirit is a simple matter and the secret is in our own tradition. What if we were to not only sing the words of Hymn 508 from the 1982 Hymnal but actually pray them as we sung them? “Breath on me, Breath of God, till I am wholly thine, till all this earthly part of me glows with a fire divine.”

By nature the roots of our faith are not cold and formal, but warm and personal; filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit.

1 Robert Murray M’Cheyne, “Sermon 2”, in Memoirs and Remains of the Rev. R. M. M’Cheyne, ed. Andrew Bonar, (Edinburgh: William Oliphant, MDCCLXV), p. 316-317, (contemporized by Robin P. Smith).

Complexity

2011-02-02T14:39:00.000-08:00

People often feel that life is very complex. But is it? The reality is that life is only complex when we borrow from the future and the past and complicate the present with things beyond our control. Life comes at us moment by moment and we can only deal with the present, and often enough we have no idea what is on the other side of the next wave rolling towards us.

A week and a half ago the weather forecasters were saying that we were going to have some cold weather but it would warm up in time for the Super Bowl and its parties. Last Tuesday the big party tent in the Cotton Bowl collapsed because of the wind and ice. There was an interesting spin in a news release, “It didn’t collapse, it just came down faster than we expected.” For the last several days the media has been showing video clips of crowds gathering for the big party celebrations; unfortunately the clips showed almost empty streets and only a few hardy Green Bay fans bundled against the cold.

James in his Epistle warns, “Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit"- yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. (James 4:13-16).

How do we plan for the future, both as a congregation and as individuals? A few basic principles will help. First, and most basic, God is still on His throne, and He isn’t willing to surrender control to us. Second, He loves us, and intends the best for us. Third, He has given some clear directions. “Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5-6), and lest we think that counter-intuitive He has also said, “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Fourth, and perhaps most difficult; we need to not only to pray for wisdom, we have to listen.

God’s Providential Care

2010-08-27T20:04:00.000-07:00

These are difficult times for many people, partly due to the realities of our economy, and partly due to our aspirations. The news media tells us that this is the first generation in which our expectations for our children are less than what we have enjoyed in the past. Be aware that the news media is always selling something, toothpaste, Alka-Seltzer, beer, or whatever. On one of those deplorable morning shows the “news” commentators were expressing great empathy for the father of two daughters who had lost his job and turned to bank robbery in order to support his two daughters in the life style to which they were accustomed; in this case posh and pricey private schools. Before we can actually understand the Providence of God it is necessary to clear out the mental fuzz and get a fresh grasp on reality and the way things work.

Here are some axioms. First, we won’t get everything we want. Second, its actually not good for us to get everything we want. This is trickier; third, we won’t even get back everything we think we had. A cold hard look at the good old days will quickly convince us that those days were for many people often very cold and very hard. We are jaded by the affluence of the post-World War II generation and have forgotten that our periods of untroubled affluence were often followed by periods of depression.

God’s providence operates in real time in a real world and it operates on two levels; the general level in which He upholds all creation, and the level of His special care for people who put their trust in Him. The Westminster Confession of Faith gives the following definition, “God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.”

I hasten to point out that His Providence operates “according to his infallible foreknowledge.” There is an unavoidable mystery in the operation of His Providence in which the gift of our freedom of will operates in tension with His foreknowledge and Providential care. This incomprehensible mystery is the result of trying to jam the Infinite into the limited scope of finite human minds. What we do know is that the Transcendent God stoops to our level and in an act of sublime humiliation actually answers our prayers and provides for our needs. That is why He has taught us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The fact that He does so is a demonstration of His Providential Care.

In one of the great prophetic passages in the Old Testament we find a marvellous teaching about the nature of God’s Providence in the midst of a situation that must have seemed like an outright unredeemable disaster. The best of the people of Judah have been taken into exile and it is clear that they will never return to Jerusalem. They cry out, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! (Psalm 137:5-6). Retrospectively they are the fortunate ones. Those who remain in Jerusalem will suffer the full extent of the savagery of Babylon.

To the exiles the Lord gives the following advice, and it must have advice that was very hard to hear. “"Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).

The message is clear. God’s Special Providence will rest upon them, and as they trust in His provision and take initiative He will provide abundantly for them even in the midst of captivity. I can almost hear one of them saying, “But that’s not what I want!” We don’t always get what we want. We sometimes don’t even get back what we think that we had. The truth is that Jerusalem before the exile was a mixed blessing, and a spiritually dangerous place to be. What were the good old days like in Jerusalem? Hear the word of the Lord, “You have eyes and heart only for your dishonest gain, for shedding innocent blood, and for practicing oppression and violence” (Jeremiah 22:17).

In the midst of their misery in Babylon the Lord says to the exiles, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me. When you seek me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:11-13). Here is a simple truth, we are all exiles in Babylon and we seek a City yet to come, the New Jerusalem, our heaven, our home, our alright place, where the Lamb is the Light. While we are in Babylon we are to seek the welfare of the city in which we dwell, for even here in this strange land the Providential Care of God reaches out to us and says, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for wholeness and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

God’s Providential Care has to do with bread and butter, with the real and simple needs that all of us have, but He would not have us worry. Instead He says, “Do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys” ( Luke 12:29-33). The promise of God’s Providential Care is eschatological, that is it has eternal dimensions that will be realized in the Kingdom yet to come. Yet, the promise of God’s Providential Care is practical, it is care for today in answer to trust and prayer. He cares for each of us and delights to provide as we put our trust in Him, and that care is to be expected in the ordinary things of everyday living.

Those Days Were Days of Dross

Those days were days of dross,
These days now are golden days.
The former days I count as loss
Wandering on forbidden ways,
But there came One in radiant light
Whose smile did my heart amaze
And all my darkness put to flight,
And clothed me in a robe of white.

A Birthday Reflection

2010-07-31T21:43:00.000-07:00

Seventy-two trombones led the big parade
With a hundred and ten cornets close at hand.
They were followed by rows and rows of the finest virtuo-
Sos, the cream of ev'ry famous band.

Seventy-two trombones caught the morning sun
With a hundred and ten cornets right behind
There were more than a thousand reeds
Springing up like weeds
There were horns of ev'ry shape and kind.

Oh, I know there is supposed to be seventy-six trombones, but four of them haven’t turned up yet and I really am not going to rush out to find them. As the years roll by with the always incipient threat of mortality I have a contrary opinion, “I'm gonna live forever/I'm gonna learn how to fly/I feel it coming together/I'm gonna make it to heaven/Light up the sky like a flame.” (Pop song edited)

I am rather of the opinion that the fate of Menelaus is mine, but for very different reasons than Homer would recognize:

But about your own destiny, Menelaus,
Dear to Zeus, it is not for you to die
and meet your fate in the stallion-land of Argos,
no, the deathless ones will sweep you off to the world’s end
the Elysian fields . . .
where life glides on in immortal ease for mortal man;
no snow, no winter onslaught, never a downpour there
but night and day the Ocean River sends up breezes,
singing winds, of the West refreshing all mankind.
(Homer, trans. Robert Fagles, The Odyssey, (Penguin Books: New York, 1996). p. 142)

For a Christian by the death and resurrection of the Christ, this life is contiguous with the next, there is no break. We travel through the wonder and of this middle earth with measured pace and in a twinkling of an eye we are transformed and walk through Elysian fields of splendour in the glory of God’s heaven bright. But not yet, not yet.

Rather my lot, a gift from God, is the continuing journey through this lovely realm wherein we dwell. I love being here amongst those whom I love. In particular I treasure being with my wife Diana from I have learned so much of love. All our loves are a blessing of His love. From time to time the darkling forests grim may seem foreboding, but that is a matter of perspective. My old father-in-law Archie had the right view. Every morning I would greet him, “Morning Archie, how are you?” He would reply succinctly, “I got up.” Every day is a gift, and even the darkling forests are just part of the rhythm of the journey. There is a wonder in the woods that I would be loath to miss.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
(Robert Frost: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening)

CHRYSOS CHRYSTUS CHRYSALLIS

2010-07-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Chrysos.
Chrystus.

Shell Chrysallis
I shed thee
Spreading golden wings
For him to see.

Poor pupa
Golden pain
Springing joyous
Christening me.
Death’s baptism
Into life,
Into love,
In the midst of life.

Christo sunestauromia
Shedding only shell
My being ever living.
Chrysos,
Christus
Ever living
Lives in me.

Sanctifica me,
Salve me,
Inebria me.
Christen me
with thine own self,
For thou dost know me
for what I am.
Thou knowest I need thee.

Deep-laid in a soft red womb,
Absconde me
Ne permittas me
Separari a te,
Intra tua vulnera!
Bring to me
third birth
beyond death,
Spreading golden wings
for Him to see.

He died,
Chrysallis.
He lives,
Chrysos
Chrystus.
I died.
I will die again,
I will ever live.

Deo gratia!

Notes:

Chrysos. Gold
Chrystus. Christ

Christo sunestauromia: I am co-crucified with Christ

Sanctifica me, Sanctify me
Salve me, Save me
Inebria me. Inebriate me

Absconde me Hide me
Ne permittas me Do not permit me
Separari a te, To be separated from Thee
Intra tua vulnera! In your wounds!

Deo gratia! Thanks be to God!

Blessed Art Thou

2010-05-31T19:17:00.001-07:00

Blesséd art Thou Lord God of the silences
When all the world lies hushed and the heart is still,
When the weary soul has given up its will
And the busy mind has lowered its defences.

Blesséd art Thou Lord God of the dewlapp’d morning
When the lark trills his joy to the golden sun
That leaps exultant his daily course to run
While the meadows and the trees break forth singing.

Blesséd art Thou Lord God of each breaking day
When your whispering voice thunders forth your love
To all who are open to your descending Dove,
Who recognize your voice and gladly pray.

Blesséd art Thou Lord God my heavenly King
As the world awakes, to Thee with joy I sing.

Pentecost Revisited

2010-05-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

The time has come for a refreshed application of the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. I know all the relevant verses; I know them well, and perhaps you do also. I know the Pentecostal and Charismatic views and also see that a “second blessing” doctrine seems to be implicit in Baptism and Confirmation. I also believe the principle: “A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace”, and I believe that grace has to be understood and accepted by each individual for Baptism and Confirmation to be lived experiences in the lives of believers. It is well to bear in mind the caution, “For good news came to us just as to them; but the message which they heard did not benefit them, because it did not meet with faith in the hearers.”(Hebrews 4:2 RSV) The challenge for today is to restate the teaching of the Holy Spirit so that people can be assured that they not only have some understanding, but also have know that they have received Him.

The Charismatic Renewal of the 1970’s has petered out, an example of the second law of thermodynamics; yet I, and others hunger and thirst for a fresh unction of the Spirit of the Living God upon the Church. In the seventies most of those on whom we laid our hands received “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” with the accompanying sign of Glossolalia. That is after all what we were taught and what we expected, but Charismatic Renewal and its leaders were poorly taught. One of the central difficulties was that there was an inadequate foundation laid in systematic theology and in the classical theology of prayer and worship. Dennis Bennett once said to me that the Charismatic Movement was recreating all the ancient heresies as though Church history hadn’t happened. The movement was increasingly polarized by the crash between its untutored enthusiasm and excesses and the strong dislike of an increasingly rationalistic and faithless church that was threatened by the intrusion of a personal God.

When I examine my own initiatory experience of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, it was an encounter with the Spirit Himself as the Spirit of overwhelming love; He himself was the content and the sign of His coming; and the most evident gift or charism was a new and marked facility of teaching. The experience of some of the nine “sign gifts” was to come later.

Those gifts are validated in the Second Book of Homilies (1562-1563) where we read: The holy Ghost doeth alwayes declare himselfe by his fruitfull and gracious giftes, namely, by the worde of wisedome, by the worde of knowledge, which is the vnderstanding of the Scriptures, by faith, in doing of miracles, by healing them that are diseased, by prophesie, which is the declaration of GODS mysteries, by discerning of spirits, diuersities of tongues, interpretation of tongues, and so foorth. All which giftes, as they proceede from one spirit, and are seuerally giuen to man according to the measurable distribution of the holy Ghost: Euen so doe they bring men, and not without good cause, into a wonderfull admiration of GODS diuine power (1 Corinthians 12.7-11). The Anglican Reformation document, The Second Book of Homilies was largely written by John Jewel and the clergy of that period were required to preach its homilies to their congregations.

There are several principles governing the doctrine of the Holy Spirit that need to be stated:

1. The first principle is the Sovereignty of the Spirit.

2. The Holy Spirit is Himself the content of the baptism of the Holy Spirit; after all it is not for nothing that the event is called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. The central mark of that experience is the Love of God. There is in God a continual motion, an interchange of love that is ceaseless in the tumultuous adoration of the Persons of the Trinity for each other. In its infinitude this interchange of love cannot be contained within the Godhead, but flows out through all creation, even as it flows in ceaseless motion within the Trinity and flows out to us in the experience of the Holy Spirit.

3. A third principle is the resulting persistence of His presence. Every time I “turn back” to Him, He is here.

4. He distributes a variety of gifts (charisms) according to His sovereign will. Those gifts include the nine sign gifts, and a number of other gifts, approximately 26 gifts if you include celibacy and martyrdom among them. The gifts of the Spirit are not limited to the gifts clearly mentioned in Scripture but are probably broader than we can imagine, however all gifts must be in harmony with the overall intent of the charisms in Scripture.

5. There is a clear record of the encounter with God the Holy Spirit in the writings and lives of the mystical writers like Teresa of Avila. That record is unmistakable, including various stages of experience common to praying contemplatives even though the language that expresses it is variable. This record also includes the charisms mentioned in the New Testament. The encounter of the Holy Spirit and his accompanying graces and gifts are also marks of the periods of revival with which God blesses His Church.

6. There is a transparency to the Holy Spirit; it is His joy and office to reveal the Father and the Son.

7. The Athanasian Creed gives strong foundation for an understanding of the Person of the Holy Spirit: And the Catholic Faith is this: . . .

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son,

and another of the Holy Ghost.

But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,

is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

Such as the Father is, such is the Son,

and such is the Holy Ghost.

The Father uncreate, the Son uncreate,

and the Holy Ghost uncreate.

The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible,

and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible.

The Father eternal, the Son eternal,

and the Holy Ghost eternal.

And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal.

As also there are not three incomprehensibles,

nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.

So likewise the Father is Almighty, the Son Almighty,

and the Holy Ghost Almighty.

And yet they are not three Almighties, but one Almighty.

So the Father is God, the Son is God,

and the Holy Ghost is God.

And yet they are not three Gods, but one God.

So likewise the Father is Lord, the Son Lord,

and the Holy Ghost Lord.

And yet not three Lords, but one Lord.

8. Our rationalistic age and mindset blocks and hinders the appropriation and experience of the Holy Spirit. This is not a new experience but one that Jesus Himself encountered: “He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them” (Mark 6:5).

9. Chapters 14 through 17 in the Gospel of John contain the great teaching of Jesus on what we should expect from the Holy Spirit when He comes. Among the highlights are the following: John 14:15-20 ¹⁵ "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, ¹⁷ even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. ¹⁸ "I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. ¹⁹ Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. John 14:26 ²⁶ But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. ²⁶ "But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me. ²⁷ And you also will bear witness, because you have been with me from the beginning. John 16:7-11 ⁷ Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. ⁸ And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: ⁹ concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; ¹⁰ concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; ¹¹ concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. John 16:13-15 ¹³ When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. ¹⁴ He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. ¹⁵ All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

10. The record of His coming in Acts and the instruction of Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 through 14 give guidance in understanding how the Spirit reveals the Father and the Son through the exercise of the charisms. The charisms are not given so much for edification so much as they are part of the proclamation of Christ by the Spirit in actions, deeds, ministries, and charisms. The paramount gift is the gift of prophecy, 1 Corinthians 14:1 “Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy.” Prophecy is speaking forth with divine inspiration, and the central content of New Testament prophecy is the testimony of Christ” (Revelation 19:10).

11. The limitation of the Charismatic Movement in the seventies was the focus on how charisms were of use to us in our individual lives. Of course they are; but that is peripheral to the main purpose of charisms which is to reveal Christ.

12. In the varying nuances of the Spirit’s title as “Paraclete” (Comforter, Helper, Counselor, Advocate) is the expression of our subjective experience of Him as He equips us to proclaim Christ.

13. The Holy Spirit is the Promise and Gift of the Father given to us through the intercession of Jesus the Son. In this gift of the Spirit both the Father and the Son come to make their home with us.

14. The primary hindrance to the experience of the Spirit is Adam’s sin; we prefer ourselves to Him.

One of the distinctives of the Anglican Reformation is the return to the Holy Scriptures and the teachings of the Early Church St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s teaching on the Holy Spirit gives us a helpful context for the formulation of our own theology. The following excerpt is from the Universalism website for Monday of the 7th Week after Easter.

“The water I shall give him will become in him a fountain of living water, welling up into eternal life. This is a new kind of water, a living, leaping water, welling up for those who are worthy. But why did Christ call the grace of the Spirit water? Because all things are dependent on water; plants and animals have their origin in water. Water comes down from heaven as rain, and although it is always the same in itself, it produces many different effects, one in the palm tree, another in the vine, and so on throughout the whole of creation. It does not come down, now as one thing, now as another, but while remaining essentially the same, it adapts itself to the needs of every creature that receives it.

In the same way the Holy Spirit, whose nature is always the same, simple and indivisible, apportions grace to each man as he wills. Like a dry tree which puts forth shoots when watered, the soul bears the fruit of holiness when repentance has made it worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit. Although the Spirit never changes, the effects of his action, by the will of God and in the name of Christ, are both many and marvellous.

The Spirit makes one man a teacher of divine truth, inspires another to prophesy, gives another the power of casting out devils, enables another to interpret holy Scripture. The Spirit strengthens one man’s self-control, shows another how to help the poor, teaches another to fast and lead a life of asceticism, makes another oblivious to the needs of the body, trains another for martyrdom. His action is different in different people, but the Spirit himself is always the same. In each person, Scripture says, the Spirit reveals his presence in a particular way for the common good.

The Spirit comes gently and makes himself known by his fragrance. He is not felt as a burden, for he is light, very light. Rays of light and knowledge stream before him as he approaches. The Spirit comes with the tenderness of a true friend and protector to save, to heal, to teach, to counsel, to strengthen, to console. The Spirit comes to enlighten the mind first of the one who receives him, and then, through him, the minds of others as well.

As light strikes the eyes of a man who comes out of darkness into the sunshine and enables him to see clearly things he could not discern before, so light floods the soul of the man counted worthy of receiving the Holy Spirit and enables him to see things beyond the range of human vision, thing hitherto undreamed of.”

Illusions

2010-03-02T18:56:00.001-08:00

Illusions, we live with many illusions, a veritable fog, wisps of fog, shifting mists, low ceiling clouds, sometimes even a spiritual incense rising defensively from the soul to protect it from too much exposure to reality. Even the brightness of creation’s light, the sun low on the horizon casts a bright glare that hinders plain sight.

The old Kafir greeting, “I see you,” parroted recently in the movie Avatar invites us deeper in, but we don’t always want to see or be seen. Our pseudo-scientific mind set throws up an unrealistic expectation. What is it that makes us think that what we see is what actually is, and that seeing is believing? Presuppositions, expectations, old mental habits, old defences all block the clear light of the reality of what is, what was, and what is to be.

“Do you not know me,” asks the King, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” But the humbled soul replies, “How can I know you? I do not know myself.” The King replies, “Know me, and the truth shall set you free.” Part of the truth is that humankind cannot bear very much reality, that is why the Lord God bids us burn incense in the temple to mask the Shekinah Kabod, the cloud of Abiding Glory that hides from sight the direct vision of the Uncreated Light that is God Himself, and equally important gives us the illusion of being hidden from the very Light we profess to love.

Living with illusion is to some extent a gift of mercy, the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; and yet the trembling soul throws up its own malign mists that prevent the breakthrough of the Coming of the Light. Pre-eminent here is the fear of being seen, a fear born of pride and shame and a resulting timidity that keeps us walking gingerly around the edge of what is, lest the bogeyman of truth spring out from the bed of false repose and allows us clearly to see and be seen.

Observe that link between pride and shame. It is shame that at once drives and masks the pride. We experience three basic types of shame: projected shame, that unfriendly pointing of the finger; internal shame, heaped and layered by many experiences in our past life; and that shame that springs forth instantly at the threat of exposure, the threat of being seen, of being weighed, measured, and found wanting. Shame itself covers wounded pride; it is the dust thrown in the air, the tearing and ripping of our garments when we face the fact that we are fallen. It is the discovery that we are not just a part of fallen creation in a general sort of way, but that we personally have been weighed, measured and found wanting in our own right; it is the horrible knowledge that we, by of our own volition have erred and strayed, that there is no health in us. It is the embarrassment of being seen for what we truly are long before we are ready to be seen. That embarrassment is the dreaded failure of the mists of illusion.

The only resolution for the discomfort of the failure of illusion is to face ourselves squarely before the God who knows us best and loves us. That is the gift of keeping a holy Lent, of acknowledgement, of confession, of absolution, and the gift of being received by Him who loves us without the necessity of illusion.

Original Sin or Original Guilt?

2010-03-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

This article is a reponse to a friend who asked the serious question: "Are people born bearing original sin (guilt for Adamic sin)? If so, what are the consequences of this doctrine?How does all this relate to infant baptism?And to infants who die?"

Let’s start first with a clarification of the Reformation doctrine which is often misunderstood by the “Detached Church”. (Detached Church in the sense that they are cut off from the main stream of Christian Theology and Tradition (Paradosis I Cor. 1:1; 15:1-11 et. al. Many of these groups find their origin in the teaching of one man, or a small group that knows better than the rest of Christendom, which of course is going straight to hell; which according to them we probably don’t believe in. By the way, their doctrine of hell may have some biblical deficiencies, but that is for another occasion).

The Anglican Reformation doctrine of Original or Birth-Sin is clearly stated in the Thirty Nine Articles, more formally called “The Articles of Religion.” In this the Anglican Reformation merely translates into English what the Continental Reformers believed.

IX. Of Original or Birth-Sin

Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk;) but it is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from the original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the Spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in Greek, fronama sarkos, (which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire of the flesh), is not subject to the Law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized; yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.

First note that it is not “Original Guilt” but Original Sin, which refers to our predisposition to screw up (with which I have no personal argument from sad experience), and that predisposition we inherited from our ancestors, and ultimately from Adam, : “Behold I was brought forth in iniquity [aw-vone' (2 Ki 7:9, Ps 51:5 ,7] meaning: 1) perversity, depravity, iniquity, guilt or punishment of iniquity), and in sin did my mother conceive me.) While the main thrust of aw-vone is perversity, depravity and iniquity, it does mention guilt as a fourth interpretation (You can see where some might pick up the misunderstanding that it is Original Guilt), nonetheless the main thrust is that aw-vone refers to our bent and twisted nature (“Yet they tested and rebelled against the Most High God and did not keep his testimonies, but turned away and acted treacherously like their fathers; they twisted like a deceitful bow” [Psalm 78:56-57]). The entire thrust of Article IX however is not on inherited guilt, but on the inherited predisposition to sin, which this Article refers to as an “infection of nature.” All this shows that you are a true child of the Anglican Reformation when you say, “that people are born self-centered and lacking holiness and that therefore there is a corruption in their natures that gives them a natural inclination to sin - making sin essentially inevitable”.

As to your second question., this does have an effect on infant baptism. A popular misconception occasionally taught by inadequately educated clergy is that unbaptized children will go to hell, and that makes the mistake of thinking that Original Sin is Original Guilt, which is incorrect. In the Anglican Reformation of Doctrine is dependent on an understanding of the catechetical doctrine that “that sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace” (BCP p. 857). That grace administered at baptism is affirmed by the parent and godparents who pledge to bring the child “up in the Christian faith and life” (BCP p. 302), which in turn is affirmed by each individual at their Confirmation when the Bishop asks, “Do you renew your commitment to Jesus Christ?” (BCP p.415).

The interpretation of this is stated by the Bishop on BCP p.416 when the Bishop says, “Let us join with those who are committing themselves to Christ and renew our own baptismal covenants). Quite evidently this does not support baptismal regeneration without faith on the part of the individual. The heresy of baptismal regeneration actually makes the mistake of removing freedom of will from the baptized child who has no choice in the matter. The outward and visible sign must be competed by the willing acceptance of inward and spiritual grace which was offered in baptism and leads the individual to the acceptance of Jesus Christ. Infant baptism breaks the bond of Original Sin, but does not entirely remove it; but what is does do is give the freedom to choose life to each baptized individual.

That, as succinctly as I can state it, is the Anglican Reformation position on Original Sin. As I expect you are, when all is said and done, a closet Anglican, a true child of the Reformation rather than the Restoration.

In brotherly love,

The Rev. Canon Rob Smith

Courtesy in the Animal Kingdom

2010-01-08T14:47:00.000-08:00

In descending order of age, we have our Golden Retriever Cara at eight years, Guinness, the black kitten just under a year old, and our white English Golden Retriever at four months. Annabella used to be the smallest but now is twice the size of Guinness and growing rapidly. Guinness hasn’t really figured out that he is now the smallest, but he is beginning to catch on.

At the beginning Cara, at 75 pounds was very careful with Annabella as a little puppy, but in the last two weeks with Annabella’s growth the two have begun some vigorous tussling, although you can still see Cara holding back and pacing herself. Guinness isn’t that wise but goes full bore into battle with Annabella, indeed he usually starts the fracas but mostly ends up on the bottom of the pile. More and more he resorts to guerrilla warfare ambushing Annabella from under a chair then fleeing back when things get too rough. Annabella is just pure unrestricted, unabashed puppy joy and just keeps going until she needs a rest.

There is evident affection going on between the three of them. That affection is storgay, the first of C. S. Lewis’s four loves. Most of this has been generated by the irrepressible intrusion of Annabella’s joyous puppy nature in the life of the family. Is this affection “natural”? All three are junior members of our family pack, and Diana and I are the alpha dogs, but we ourselves are led and informed by the love of God in Christ Jesus. We are governed in our affection (storgay) by agapé, the highest of the four loves which itself flows directly from the heart of God.

Our affection is infused with agapé and the courtesy of the animal kingdom in our household is courtesy ultimately under the love and lordship of Christ. His love incarnate in all forms of loving catches us up to God with deifying light, and in turn that co-inherence with Him spills into all forms of our own loving. Our storgay (affection), our phileos (brotherly love for one another and others), our eros (that essential intimacy that is so important and so often needlessly sexualised), all alike are shot through with the agapé of God. God’s agapé, His love, is incarnate in all of our experiencing of loving and is at once the source and motive power of all expressions of love.

It is even evident that our governing of these three is a form of paideia, of discipline (training), an expansion of the divine discipling that we ourselves experience, embody, and inevitably pass along. The courtesy of the animal kingdom within our household is an outworking of the Incarnation of Christ, of His co-inherence with us, and as such flows from the wellspring of belonging to the One whom we all serve within the microcosm of our family.

Upstairs, Downstairs.

2009-09-15T20:00:00.001-07:00

As a little child I lived in an upstairs, downstairs, world. “Upstairs” was our small patriarchal and Scots- Canadian family; my Grandfather the patriarch, my Grandmother and me. Downstairs was Millie the housekeeper and cook. Later she was followed by Aida. Aida was the one I remember, dour, with a servanthood and sense of place you didn’t transgress upon. She was appreciated, and by the daughters-in-law of the clan, somewhat feared. “Stay out of Aida’s kitchen!”

At home among our favorite entertainments is the Dorothy Sayers “Lord Peter Wimsy” series in both book and film. Noteworthy is Bunter, manservant, valet, butler, cook, confidant, friend, with a sense of appropriate servanthood and a sense of place that we servants of the Lord have much to learn from. Bunter knew how to serve, how to keep his cool in difficult circumstances, how to rescue Lord Peter from certain difficult situations, and how to speak up with deference and obvious affection for the man he served.

An English model is better than no model at all. The American model of slave or hireling only complicates things. From a Christian and practical perspective we are reborn downstairs, not upstairs. We are reborn as servants, the intention is that we serve as Aida served, that we serve as Bunter served. That is unwelcome news to most American Christians who tend to despise servanthood in part because of the models we have. To be a servant is not to be either a slave, or a hireling. To be a servant is to be one who willingly serves our Lord and others with the love and humility that we see in Jesus, Who himself is the suffering Servant. He serves us even to the extent of spending His own life on our behalf.

We Americans have a complicated and many layered defacto class system: old wealthy, nouveau riche, the educated intelligencia, the pseudo-educated intelligencia, the techies, the geeks, upper, middle and lower management, waiters, waitresses, and the Starbuck barristas, among a horde of others. Menial tasks are for Mexicans, or whatever new wave of immigrants comes along. Dig in anywhere you like and you will find that we all think we are nobility, or will be as soon as we are Americanized. We actually think that we are equal. We are not. C. S. Lewis points out that while we have equal value, we don’t have equal gifts or equal functions. We do have equal rights before the law, but even there the affluent expect more equal rights than anyone else.

It also affects the church with our contemporary versions of Pharisees, Sadducees, the wealthy, the founding members, and all the rest. The truth is that the servants of Christ are picked almost exclusively from the hoi polloi, a biblical Greek phrase meaning the many, or the common people. The common people are the ones who know they have need of Him. St. Paul reminds us: “Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God (I Corinthians 1:26-29).

Americans carry a nominal illusion of being a classless society, hence the idea that we should not accept knighthood. That is a joke. The real problem is that we all think we are nobility. It’s just that some of us think we are more noble than others. One manifestation of this is in the incredible sense of entitlement we have. Take for instance the truly ignorant among us with the bumper sticker that says, “My drop-out can beat up your honor student,” and the counter bumper sticker that says, “My honor student can fire your drop-out.” That carries directly over into the church. Where is the “servant” church that emulates Him who came not to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a servant for many?

The model of servanthood is in Christ Jesus Himself. “When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them (John 13:12-17). There is a long distance between resentfully slamming the foot-washing bowl down before one’s brother and angrily doing one’s duty, and the kind of humble, loving service that Jesus does for us in washing our feet in the daily forgiveness of sins. That is a distance that we must learn to travel in Him.

The Gospel and the Rational Man

2009-08-23T20:05:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting conversation today with The Rational Man. Let me say at the outset that I like him, that he is an educator of educators, a man of principles and an interesting conversationalist. I have just returned from a short term mission working with the Anglican Church in Uganda and we were discussing the application of Maria Montessori’s method of education for young children and the difficulties of applying that in an African country.

Traditional education is teacher centred. Montessori education is child centred and the teacher acts as a guide and helps the child discover the enriched environment in the classroom through the child’s own choices. In traditional education the teacher says, “Learn this.” In Montessori education the teacher acts as a guide asking, “What would you like to discover? and gently presents the child with options, respecting the child’s choices, and also the difference between good choices and wrong choices. In that setting the environment provides a multiplicity of interesting choices and options. The Montessori method relies on carefully developed Montessori materials that children enjoy using. Children love to play, and play at its best is a form of learning.

The problem in an African setting is that the Montessori materials are generally unavailable and have to be produced using those things that are available locally. Maria Montessori developed the bead bar in Italy using brightly coloured beads for learning how and why mathematics works. My friend, the Rational Man said that when Maria Montessori was in India she used different coloured beans strung together to produce the Montessori bead bar and that many of the materials could be produced by local craftsmen.

For the Rational Man this was a spring board for his views on religion. Religion, he said, was irrational because it relied on the supernatural and not on rationality, and he spoke disparagingly of his own Italian religious background with it emphasis on angels and devils, and a variety of other “superstitions.” It is his contention, and contention is the right word, that morality, and indeed all of life should be based on rationality. The foundation of his personal philosophy is that every man should do only what is constructive for him and for others, those two things being linked in his own mind. What the Rational Man did not grasp was that there was no objective standard to give meaning to what he considered constructive. In short the Rational Man was himself the measure of what was constructive, he was in isolation the source of his own standards. For him The Rational Man is the measure of all things. That in itself is perilous.

Being by nature an apologist for the Christian faith I quoted Jesus who said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and I pointed out that truth always deals with reality and that truth is the issue. The Rational Man obviously didn’t care much for the quotation but he agreed enthusiastically with the importance of truth and reality over against superstition. I shared with him that HIV/Aids came into Uganda along the truck routes and spread initially from truck drivers to the prostitutes along the route, and that HIV/Aids was initially viewed as a curse related to witchcraft and that it was the Church with its clinics and hospitals that pointed out that it was a disease. My Rational Man did at this point a modest amount of back peddling, and he agreed that the work of the Church in this instance was rational and realistic. I made the remark that the ten commandments reflected a number of principles that are strongly rooted in reality. To break the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” is to put one in peril of a variety of diseases including HIV/Aids. He objected, saying that the Church’s reliance on the supernatural was an unrealistic basis for ethics and morals, and instead he resorted to “The Rational Man” as the only real source for constructive behaviour. It was also his strong contention that all that was necessary was education, especially Montessori education, and that alone was adequate to transform society and provide a rational basis for people to make decisions.

What is noteworthy about this is that Maria Montessori was a faithful Roman Catholic and provided a strong religious component in her educational methods, and that the methodology itself draws strength from her own appreciation of the Benedictine monastic tradition in the Church. The Rational Man irrationally ignores this very central fact in Montessori education, but given the context of many Montessori schools in the United States that is a common omission.

I chose not to pursue this any further knowing from experience that I had provided enough challenge for the time being and I trust by grace that I have given him something to chew on. Certainly his affirmation of the constructive work of the Church in relationship to HIV/Aids was a step forward for him. We parted with a humorous story and I hope to have more opportunity to talk with him.

A Religious Pilgrim Who Wandered from the Path

2009-08-17T21:07:00.000-07:00

My step-grandmother was a religous pilgrim. In the old country she was born and baptized Lutheran but there was something about the formal liturgical church that didn't give her that sense of power she strove for all her life. She wandered from Lutheranism through Pentacostalism being re-baptized through the ice in a river, through astrology and fortune telling in a Chicago Tea Room, to the older forms of New Age religion, those cults of American gnosticism that we know of as Unity Truth and Christian Science, eventually becoming a Christian Science Practitioner. I remember her telling me that my allergies were all in my head. I knew what she meant. My unspoken retort as a teenager was "Of course they are. They're right in my nose and my sinuses!" but with her one didn't mess around.

We always referred to her as Bestemor, which is the Norwegian word for Grandmother. She and her husband and her daughters immigrated to Canada, and her husband promptly abandoned them and returned to Norway. She loved personal power and thrived on intimidation, but she also conveyed some personal charm and and magnetism which served to honey coat what was really going on. She was formidable in appearance, picture Brunehilde at 275 pounds with a brass brassiere, trident, and horned helmet. The family story was that during the Great Depression she lived in penthouse suites, had male visitors for a living, and put her daughters out in the hall while she pursued her activities. She said of that period of her life, “Built for comfort, not for speed.”

If she had stayed within the spectrum of Christian religion she would have continued to pursue power and enjoy the fruits of intimidation as she bounced through a variety of denominations, spouting Scripture, invoking the fear of the devil, and claiming special revelation from God in ways that elevated herself and put others down. She would have made an awesome "Church Lady," and would have innoculated many against the discovery of the love of God. But by grace she wandered far afield.

If Bestemor were alive and hip today she would be wearing crystals, pentagrams, channeling ancient beings from the spirit world and still intimidating people. She loved that stuff because it gave her an illusion of mastery and control over life. But she was a tragic figure and all her mastery and control was robbed by a stroke that took from her the honey coating charm she wore like a cloak and all her recent memories. She muddled through the next thirty years of her life little better than a confused, self-willed, very large child.

All that journeying is counterfeit Christianity, a mockery of the real power Christians find through surrender to a loving God. Jesus Christ is alive. He can be known through the experience of receiving forgiveness and accepting Him as Saviour. Oh, I know that Bestemor probably mouthed the words. That's probably what her brief sojourn in Pentacostalism was all about. On that rests her only hope of salvation, but she didn't want that kind of power. She wanted control much more than she wanted surrender.

Mouthing the words isn't good enough. There is a difference between compliance and surrender that she would never have understood. She wanted to leap on the power promises of God. She would have loved controlling the devil by injudicious commands. But true power is closed to those who seek power instead of seeking the love God and dying to themselves. For those who surrender, humble doors open into realms of majesty and joy. His strength, the strength that is made perfect in weakness, becomes reality in lives of the needy for whom alone He came as Ransom.

Wandering

2009-07-13T02:27:00.001-07:00

We were born wanderers, or at least some of us were, some others are so lost they don’t even know that they are wandering. Chesterton says, “according to Christianity, we were indeed survivors of a wreck, the crew of a golden ship that had gone down before the beginning of the world” (Orthodoxy, Ch. 5). Like the Wanderer of old we roam the turbulent seas seeking a comitatus, a lost band of brothers, and a home to call our own. No place quite fits. I felt like a lost child of king that was somehow stranded in a peasant’s hovel amid the dank and gloaming hollows of druid wood. Again Chesterton says of this discovery, “I had heard that I was in the wrong place, and my soul sang for joy, like a bird in the spring” (Ibid).

As a child I felt this yearning as a wish almost strong enough to be a prayer, albeit a prayer to a yet unknown God; I did not know that I was indeed a lost child of a King and that my Father was seeking me down the nights and down the days, down the arches of the years, down the labyrinthine ways of my own mind, down the dismal grey paths of this tangled world, lost and tossed up like flotsam on the shores (Apologies to Francis Thompson). If only I belonged to another family than the family where an apparent accident of biology had stranded me. I did not yet know that I was wanted, I knew only an internal sense of longing and desire. Either all the world was wrong, or I was wrong; or perhaps all the world was wrong and I was right; or more horrible still, perhaps all the world was right and I alone was wrong. But there is something buried deep within the soul that speaks of that golden ship sunk before the beginning of the world.

Like Mole I sensed a faint yet distinct sense of a home long since forgotten if hardly known at all. “ It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while yet he could not clearly remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood. Home! That was what they meant, those caressing appeals, those soft touches wafted through the air, those invisible little hands pulling and tugging, all one way! Why, it must be quite close by him at that moment, his old home that he had hurriedly forsaken and never sought again, that day when he first found the river! And now it was sending out its scouts and its messengers to capture him and bring him in” (The Wind in the Willows, Ch. 5, Dulce Domum).

Home, my paradisial home was beckoning, and I yet I knew it naught but sensed born on the air the faint aroma of elysian blossoms and the green green fields of heaven, the faint but distinct hope that love was possible, a foretaste that Love Himself sought me, and had come to find me lost and tangled in the briar bushes of this shadowland where now I dwelt.

A Letter to a Friend Under Distress

2009-07-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

The question raised in the letter by a friend raised the issue of the relationship between spiritual healing, psychological counseling, and medication. My friends search took my friend into alternate “new age spirituality” which was already complicating the search for mental health.

My Dear Friend:

When we read Holy Scripture there are variety of ways that the relationship of soul – body – spirit – heart – mind are viewed. The truth is that no exact analysis exists in the Bible and perhaps for a good reason. We are very complicated beings. You, yourself are complicated, but no more or less complicated than any other person.

The common thread that runs through your personal story and your question is that of Grace desired and received. What can be directly to attributed to God, to your physical and biochemical makeup, to intellect and emotions is not clear in what you have written. What is clear is that the health that flows from God flows gently through the storminess of your experience.

There is the additional complication of new age involvement with crystals and other new age approaches to spirituality. Your participation in those things obviously clouds the grace that flows from God, but does not have the power to eradicate it. Light is always more powerful than darkness.

There is an interesting passage in the Apocrypha which reads:

Honor the physician with the honor due him,
according to your need of him;
for healing comes from the Most High,
and he will receive a gift from the king.
The skill of the physician lifts up his head,
and in the presence of great men he is admired.
The Lord created medicines from the earth,
and a sensible man will not despise them.
Was not water made sweet with a tree
in order that his power might be known?
And he gave skill to men that he might be glorified
in all his marvelous works.
By them he heals and takes away pain;
the pharmacist makes of them a compound.
His works will never be finished;
and from him health is upon the face of the earth. Sirach 38:1-8

The healing of our soul – body – mind, that complex of what we are is a work of grace, and by grace also a work of medicine. Our experience is not purely biochemical, or psychological, physical, or spiritual, but all of those things in combination. Medication, prayer, exercise, and sometimes forgiveness, all in varying combination bring health. Do not be afraid, but be instead faithful both in your spiritual discipline and in your medications, and in your general management of your physical well being. All of us, under grace, are in the process of getting better.

Affectionately in Christ,
Canon Rob +

Shadow People

2009-06-21T19:19:00.000-07:00

George MacDonald observes, “There are those who in their very first seeking of it are nearer to the Kingdom of Heaven than many who for years have believed themselves of it. In the former there is more of the mind of Jesus, and when He calls them they recognize Him at once and go after Him; while the others examine Him from head to foot, and finding Him not sufficiently like the Jesus of their conception, turn their backs and go to church or chapel or chamber to kneel before a vague form of mingled tradition and fancy” [C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald An Anthology, (New York: Macmillan, 1947), p. 126-127].

These latter are the Shadow People who flee reality and live on a plain of half-life. It is not just that they reject the real Christ, the Christ that is, in favour of “tradition and fancy” but that this rejection is in part the result of living all of their adult lives in the shadows. What they may have been in their childhood is another matter. They have developed a habit of rejecting the real whenever it begins to impinge upon their consciousness. They embrace and accept no pains and therefore have no capacity to accept love, nor the Author of Love Himself. They live life mocus and out of focus. (Urban Dictionary: Mocus Adj. A state of unconscious, consciousness. Conducting business on auto pilot.) They admit no sharp edges, no sharp tang of reality to disturb their surface equanimity. But that is just the surface of their lives, an ever thickening rind of denial that will eventually lead them to deny life itself, or should I say, Life Himself. They are the Shadow People whom one tradition refers to as the “earth people, because they are no heavenly good.”

But of the former, those who recognize the call of Jesus and follow Him. Let it be known that they are the ones who know that they are the poor and needy, they are the lost; and in the spiritual realm only those who know they are lost can truly be found. It is not that the breaking in of the piercing light of Reality is a comfortable thing. Indeed it is not! Theirs is a mingled pain and pleasure that comes from self-discovery and relief, like the pulling of a splinter in the soul. Once one acknowledges, “Oh, I have a splinter in my soul,” it becomes possible to have the splinter pulled. The true tradition calls that confession and absolution. Oh the pain of having a splinter in the soul, and the absolute joy of having it pulled out!

The Shadow People fear both the discovery and the relief. They would much rather limp along, and bandage, and cushion the splinter until it works its way into very center of the soul. Then not only are they Shadow People, they are also Splinter People whose very lives are determined and driven by the very splinter they have refused to acknowledge. When there comes the inevitable twinge of pain they jerk themselves back from the threat of reality and take refuge in their tradition, and in their fancy, and look with distaste on the sons of Light who wish to live in Reality, acknowledging the pain and accepting the love and the relief that comes along with it.

Have You Had A Good Soak Lately?

2009-06-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

In his letters C. S. Lewis frequently refers to a custom he shared with a few select friends. They would find a quiet place in a sylvan glade and rest awhile letting the beauty and the peace of such a place wash over them. The second entry before from Wordsworth is much the same. We are often to busy to soak, but a good soak was part of the genius of both Lewis and Wordsworth. Now that the busy Sabbath is over some of us need a good soak, and what about the rest of you? Creativity needs soaking time, but it also needs play time. Do something you really enjoy and take a break from the rest of the “stuff”.

A Letter To His Brother: from Hillsboro 26 April 1927

We came down the side of that hill over a big spur called the Giant’s Grave and lunched admirably in the village of Ocue – beer and bread and cheese followed by a pot of tea, and then a game of darts: you know the apparatus for that game which one finds in pubs. Shortly after lunch we had the best “soak” I’ve ever had in a walk, by turning out of a little grassy lane into a wood where the grass grew soft and mossy, and there were soled clumps of primroses the size of dinner plates: not to mentioned a powdering of those little white flowers – wood anemones. We laid ourself flat on our back with packs under our heads for pillows (for it is in the beauty of a pack that it can thus convert into a regular bed a flat ground otherwise useless for soaking): some rash attempts at conversation were ignored and we spent an our with half shut eyes listing to the burring of the wind in the branches, and an occasional early bumble bee.

William Wordsworth: The Prelude Book One

Whereat, being not unwilling now to give
A respite to this passion, I paced on
Gently, with careless steps, and came, erelong,
To a green shady place where down I sate
Beneath a tree, slackening my thoughts by choice,
And settling into gentler happiness.
. . .
Thus long I lay
Cheared by the genial pillow of the earth
Beneath my head, soothed by a sense of touch
From the warm ground, that balanced me, else lost
Entirely, seeing nought, nought hearing, save
When here and there, about the grove of Oaks
Where was my bed, an acorn from the trees
Fell audibly, and with a startling sound.

Thus occupied in mind, I lingered here
Contented, nor rose up until the sun
Had almost touched the horizon; bidding then
A farewell to the City left behind …

Rosa Mystica in Outlines of Romantic Theology by Charles Williams

2009-06-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

Charles Williams held that the principles of Romantic Theology can be reduced to a single formula: which is, the identification of love with Jesus Christ, and of marriage with his life. This again can be reduced to the single word—Immanuel.” That is to say romantic love between a man and a woman carried out to its normal end in the rite of marriage and married life is a participation in Him who is Love himself. Such love is not the only incarnation of Love, but it is in our experience the most central one. In working the principle out he turns to the very act of the Incarnation and the enfleshment of Love in the womb of the young Virgin. Here he finds the root understanding of Love in human experience.

“We begin then with the Birth and with the Mother of God. And it is with her that the parallel becomes first apparent….It is in its earliest moments rather a delight of contemplation than a desire of union; being its own satisfaction and asking for nothing more. And though this desire is probably necessary, in order that contemplation may become ever more rich and full, the heart is often so shaken by the mere contemplation of the beloved that it is not conscious of anything beyond its own delight. The whole person of the lover is possessed by a new state of consciousness; love is born in him. “They have changed eyes,” says Shakespeare. But in this state of love he sees and contemplates the beloved as the perfection of living things: love is bestowed by her smile; she is its source and its mother. She appears to him, as it were, without human ties of any sort, for she is before humanity, the first-created of God. To her, for example, may be decently applied all the titles of the Litany of Loretto (and it is the business of Romantic Theology to urge and prove that they may justly be so applied). She is the Mother of Love, purissima most pure, inviolata inviolate, admirablilis admirable; she is the Maid, virgo veneranda venerable virgin, potens powerful, Clemens merciful, she is the mirror of all mystical titles—speculum iustitiae mirror of justice, sedes sapientiae seat of wisdom, causa nostrae laetitiae cause of our joy, domus aurea house of gold, stella matutina morning star, salus infirmorum health of the sick: Unless the identification of marriage love with Christ be accepted, to press the similarity farther would seem profane. But any lover to whom the application of the titles we have quoted seems natural and right may believe from that in the Godhead of Incarnate Love, and may so dare to apply in a very real sense the titles which remain—Mater divinae gratiae Mother of divine grace, Mater Salvatoris Mother of our Savior, Rosa Mystica mystical Rose, Refugium peccatorum refuge of sinners, Regina Prophetarum Queen of Prophets. Not certainly in herself is she anything but as being glorious in the delight taken in her by the Divine Presence that accompanies her, and yet is born of her; which created her and is helpless as a child in her power. However in all other ways she may be full of error or deliberate evil, in the eyes of the lover, were it but for a moment, she recovers her glory, which is the glory that Love had with the Father before the world was. Immaculate she appears, Theotokos God-bearer, the Mother of God.”

Williams presses the idea to its logical conclusion is saying that Dante, speaking of the beatific gaze of Beatrice that her eyes are “the eyes from which Love shot her earlier arrows, the eyes which … have the power to clear his blindness, the eyes which are in heaven so full of love for him, the eyes in which the two-natured Gryphon of Christ is reflected, the eyes of the Florentine girl—there are the eyes which in the end change only into the eyes of the Mother of God. This is the unique and lasting Mystery of the Way.”

Williams carefully retains the humanity of Mary saying “in all other ways she may be full of error or deliberate evil, in the eyes of her lover, were it but for a moment, she recovers her glory which is the glory that Love had with the Father before the world was.” This is in effect an acknowledgement both of her humanity and of the fact that her glory is a derivative glory that comes from Love Himself. The same theme is picked up in his discussion of Dante and Beatrice. Of Beatrice he says, “in the end it is he only at whom her eyes gaze before they plunge into the mystery of God himself. She is a divine thing, but she is also, still and always, the Florentine girl.”

It is important to bear in mind that when all is said and done that Beatrice is still and always the laughing Florentine girl. It is that understanding that reveals that this Love is Incarnate Love revealed in very human form. It is in fact Romantic Love enfleshed. Ultimately through the eyes of the Florentine girl Beatrice the eyes of the Mother of God looks, and in and through her the Divine Presence of Love Himself gazes. But this is not a distant, nor even a peculiar thing, but rather the heart experience of every lover who so beholds his love and marvels at the brilliance of her gaze. Through the gaze of my own true love, Mother Mary smiles on me, and through her eyes, the Christ in love beholds me.

The Trumpet

2009-05-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

What glad trumpet shall my soul awaken
When the pillars of the earth are shaken?
What resonating tones will sound
Gathering all my moldy bones around?
What ringing cry shall tear asunder
Heaven and Earth in awesome wonder?
Shall I be glad? Shall you be sad?
When the angels come to sort the good, the bad?
Surely, clearly, when all is said and done,
When eternity’s new day has now begun,
Naught of human evil shall endure
But only those whose humble hearts are pure.
He seeks the poor, the maimed, the halt, the blind,
He calls home the ones whose tender hearts are kind.

That Ancient Longing

2009-04-20T07:04:00.000-07:00

What is that vague desire that niggles away at the edge of consciousness, a fleeting consciousness that slips through the fingers of memory like the mists of the morning blowing through elysian fields?

There have been moments: the Old Warsaw Restaurant in Dallas and the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston; a very cheap student basement restaurant in Amsterdam and in a museum near Rotterdam, the Vermeer painting “The Girl with a Pearl in Her Ear;” the Boston Pops and the Dallas Symphony; mid-day music at St. Martin’s in the Fields in London and fish and chips and mushy peas in a London restaurant; Elizabeth Elming singing “My love is like a red, red rose” at the Robbie Burns night at Herstmonceux Castle; Julian Onderdonk’s blue bells and Camille Corot’s fields of poppies; prime rib at Durgin Park in Faneuil Square and a ride on the Harbour Ferry.

Some paintings speak out of a different wellspring, a soul sickness slathered on with a heavy pallet knife. Other painters evoke a beauty and penultimate joy beyond words. Nothing is neutral. I keep reaching for those ephemeral moments … what echoes of history, light, culture and beauty lie behind them?

Some books stir my heart, and in search for that fleeting touch of the numinous other I read them and re-read them; authors like C. S. Lewis and The Narnia Tales, and That Hideous Strength; Charles Williams Descent into Hell or War in Heaven; J. R. R. Tolkien’s epic hobbit tales, and translations of poetry from the Poems and Prose from Old English by Burton Raffel.

So often the melodies of heaven flow fleetingly through classical music, but some composers, artists, or writers speak out of an inner angst that conveys a deadly message I don’t need to hear. Just because the composer is having a bad day, or even a bad life there is no reason for him to afflict that on me.

What is it that I miss? There isn’t enough art, music, and history to satisfy those longings of the soul. Why? Is it actually sparse? In some places culture and history are only a thin veneer. On the other hand, is it that I don’t always take the time and effort to look for it? Or is it that in all these fleeting things the images of beauty and depth are only pale reflections of an eternal beauty seen only in the vision of the face of Jesus Christ who is the icon of God?

“Oh my Lord, there is in everything I love a shadow of You and shadows of my heavenly home. Too often I search among the paler reflections what can be seen most clearly in You. Where You are there is life, art, beauty, and true culture.”

Chimney Pots

2009-04-05T20:12:00.000-07:00

We stood upon the hill that day so very long ago by Stirling Castle. Obedient to our guide, cameras at the ready, click, click, and click again for fear that the first two of three identical pictures would not turn out. I faced the other way. I may have taken a picture of Stirling Castle, I don’t know. What captured my attention lay in the opposite direction. Click, click, and click again in utter fascination. Before me slightly below eye level stretched an apparently endless sea of grey slate roofs and chimney pots. Chimney pots! Chimney pots! Glorious chimney pots in serried ranks upon the endless roofs of slate. At least now in memory the sea of grey slate roofs and chimney pots stretch on forever.

Memory is such a wonderful thing, editing out things seemingly unimportant, cropping, focusing, perhaps even mending a broken pot or two. How many years have passed? Forty-six! The picture lies buried, I hope in a storage tray with other slides, in some box, I remember where exactly three houses ago when last I saw that tattered dusty box. But the sun shines bright on the cold grey slates and marvelous military chimney pots standing in position in serried ranks before the castle beneath the Scottish sun. I have loved chimney pots ever since this first time when I saw them brave bright, in my memory now, to be pulled out and viewed in living color any time I so desire.

Were the chimney pots there? Of course they were. I can ask my friend Earl who pastors a church in Connecticut. He stood beside me taking pictures of grey slate roofs and chimney pots. Knowing Earl he probably also took a picture of Stirling Castle just to show where all these chimney pots were standing marshaled before the Castle walls. I am also aware that I am playing with the memory picture out of sheer joy, but I know that in fact I saw them with my very own eyes, and their presence standing upon the grey slate roofs was no myth or manufactured happening, but a real thing although forty-six years have come and gone.

Now skeptics can say that this pleasant memory was manufactured whole cloth under the pleasant anointing of some traveler’s bonhomie. What do you think? Shall I call Earl and ask him what he saw that summer day? Do you join the naysayers? Be careful now, I am sure that tattered box is actually in my study closet just a few yards away. Be careful now before you mock. I have told that story before when the events were more recently in mind. The chimney pots have not changed at all. They actually stood upon the grey slate roofs. Whether you believe me depends upon your opinion of whether I am an honest man or a liar.

This whole event, this precious memory, is firmly recorded in my artist’s mind, a characteristic of all my family. I know a chimney pot when I see a chimney pot! I can pinpoint the time fairly closely to the first days of that European Seminar college trip. And I know that I saw them that summer trip in 1963, because although I had never consciously focused on the marvel of chimney pots before, they are not uncommon in the commonwealth colony where I spent my youth.

And what of other memories recorded a few short years after the events by those who even died before they would deny the truth of what they had seen? Listen to one of them, one witness to an amazing event seen by over five hundred witnesses at one time, not just by Earl and I. Here is the account, “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).

These appearances of the physically resurrected Christ stretched out over a forty day period in the thirty-third year of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, some 2000 years ago. The date can actually be calculated. The events of the resurrection were recounted countless times among those who cherished this common wondrous event. Within a few years after the event those witnesses began to write the truth of what they saw. They wrote the resurrection accounts for others who in their community who could either correct their memory or testify to the truth of what they saw. Those memories of the resurrection were clearer than my memory of Scottish chimney pots. There were so many eye witnesses of the resurrection of Christ that no insurance company would ever have paid off on a policy on His life.

The Apostles and countless martyrs have died in the firm faith that they would live again because the Christ rose from the dead and even though so many honest men saw the events with their own eyes, I cannot prove it to you. The resurrection of Christ and my poor little memory of chimney pots are both finally matters of faith. And what is faith? St. Peter of Damaskos says rightly, “A person is said to have faith when, on the basis of what he can see, he believes in what he cannot see” (Philokalia Vol. III). I behold the apostles and martyrs whose blood is the seed of the church, and seeing them I believe.

Non-Productive Anger

2009-03-26T13:52:00.001-07:00

“Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness that God requires.” – James 1:19-20

Be absolutely clear! God does require righteousness, but the anger of man does not produce it, so zip the lip, learn to listen on that deeper level and be slow to anger. When one is quick to anger often other things are going on that have nothing to do with God’s righteousness; but rather a whirl of emotions within the soul have caused the soul to become turned in on itself. There are several soul irritants that stir up the problem: guilt, helplessness, the desire to control, and in our society frustrated entitlement. Someone has stepped on the toes of our precious self.

In the pop-psych movement of the nineteen-seventies it was in the vogue to quickly give vent to anger, to let it be known in a veritable spew of emotion that tumbled out on the self-help shelves of American bookstores. That fortunately faded along with bell bottom trousers and peacenik jewelry. Anger does need to be expressed from time to time, but judiciously and calmly, never as a clumsy catharsis at the expense of others.

When you are angry the first place to look is within. What possibly could justify your anger? There is such a thing as just anger but it is more rare that we would like to think. There is frequently about our anger more than a tinge of self-righteousness, and like anger the self-righteousness of man does not produce the righteousness of God. And there is also, just as often, about our anger more than a tinge of self-centeredness. When one is angry it is helpful to ask, “What is going on here?” “Why am I angry over whatever it is?” Often a day or two later the surface cause has faded and just left us with ourselves. On the surface giving unrestrained vent to our anger is more comfortable than being left with ourselves. The problem of course is that after the anger is over we are still left with ourselves.

What I Saw in the Secret Place.

2009-03-25T20:20:00.001-07:00

I have seen the edge of your golden crown
Rich gold against the skin tones of your flesh,
and from beneath that edge
at your right temple
a single rivulet of blood
red against your skin
flowed copiously down,
a reminder that beneath the golden crown
you yet wear the crown of thorns for me,
but not for me alone.
I am one.
I am one of many.

Our union,
the communio peccatorum,
common bond,
reminds me
You are one with us.
Forgive us our trespasses.
Mine alone.
Mine as one of many.

Our union,
the communio sanctorum,
common destiny,
uncommon aspiration.
Make pure our hearts and wills.
Your gift to humankind:
We thirst and hear you say,
“Come beloved of My Father.

I see transposed upon my hands, my feet, my side
Your gaping wounds.
My brow is circled with your piercing thorns.
Rivulets of blood flow copiously down.
Through me you suffer for your body,
the Church that you redeem.
I am crucified with Christ.
I am one of many.

Body of Christ
inseparable from the Anointed
even in His crucifixion.
I am crucified with Christ,
Nevertheless I live,
yet not I.
Christ lives in me,
yet not I alone. I am one of many.

Do You Believe in the Physical Resurrection of Christ?

2009-03-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

It shouldn’t be that difficult? Life, and death, after all is serious business. At the very beginning of my Christian life I was abruptly confronted with the “problem” of the resurrection. I had gone to a college age group at a large downtown Baptist Church in Toronto, Canada. In the middle of the meeting the Youth Minister came into the room and announced his amazing discovery: Jesus wasn’t resurrected physically; he was only resurrected spiritually. I had never thought about the resurrection but somehow his declaration didn’t measure up even with my subjective experience of Jesus as my Saviour and Lord. Jesus was too real to me for that to be true. That launched me into my first serious bible study and I immersed myself in the biblical records of the resurrection of Jesus. It was quite clear that the apostles believed that Jesus was physically resurrected. They saw him, touched him, handled him, and he stood in their midst and ate fish and wild honey.

Some years later at seminary I, and my peers were taught that Jesus didn’t rise physically from the dead, but after his death his gathered disciples had an experience of his presence and in their excitement read back into the gospel accounts all the stories of the resurrection, and all of the miracles. Our professor led a Lenten series in one of the local parishes. The rector of the parish told me with great distress that the professor’s teaching had destroyed the faith of a woman dying of cancer.

After graduation I accepted a call as a curate in a parish near Boston, Massachusetts. There was a story circling around in the parish that was quite refreshing. The previous rector, a Father Lou, had a custom of having talk back sessions in coffee hour after his sermons. In a recent Easter sermon he held forth the brilliant but not exactly novel idea that Christ wasn’t resurrected physically, but only spiritually. The parish drunk, Homer, could hardly wait to ask a most pressing question: “Father Lou! Father Lou! If Jesus wasn’t resurrected physically how did Thomas stick his finger in the wounds?” The end result was that the Easter testimony to the resurrection of Christ came from the parish drunk of blessed memory.

Once more around the barn. I was a young priest in my first church, and as junior man in our Clericus I was stuck with organizing the deanery meetings. In our deanery we had staff from the diocesan office in Boston, and clergy from the churches in and around Cambridge. On the Monday before Easter ten or twelve of us sat around a long table. We had decided to study together, on a once a month basis, the lections for the upcoming Sunday. The rector of a large Cambridge parish started the discussion by saying that he tended to believe in the resurrection but couldn’t get excited enough to preach about it. From there the discussion flowed swiftly down a slippery slope until it reached the Canon to the Ordinary who sat directly across the table from me. With great seriousness he confessed that the closer he got to death the less he believed in the resurrection. The discussion limped around the end of the table and finally got to me. What I said in effect was that once I had been dead in alcoholism and that I had been raised to sobriety and newness of life, and as a result I had no doubt in God’s ability to raise Christ Jesus from the dead. Now I know that arguing from experience to theology is not good theological method, but sometimes where theology won’t do, testimony might. With that the Canon to the Ordinary leaned across the table and said, “You’re young. you’ll learn!” That was the first and last of our deanery clergy bible studies. After all what’s the point? If Christ is not raised from the dead we are of all men most pointless.

In contrast, as Christians, we actually believe what has been believed always, everywhere, and by all. We Christians actually believe that Christ rose physically from the dead. Believing this rests on some serious theological understanding that is at the core of Christian faith. John Donne, the great metaphysical poet and sometime Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, preached a sermon on Easter Day 1623 that is quite helpful in getting at the core of the issue. What Donne stressed was the proper understanding of the relationship between the soul and the body. “Never go about to separate the thoughts of the heart, from it’s context, from the fellowship of the body.” “All that the soul does, it does in, and with, and by the body.” “The body is washed in baptism, but it is that the soul might be made clean.” “The body is anointed, that the soul might be consecrated.” “The body is signed with the Cross, that the soul might be armed against temptations.” “The body receives the body of Christ, that the soul might partake of his merits.” “These two, Body, and Soul, cannot be separated for ever,” because in earthly life they are united in all that they do. Christ became incarnate, enfleshed in a human body. Christ suffered in that body, died, and was buried, and in that body he rose again physically from the dead. Christ is born in the flesh that our humanity with him might be crucified, die, and rise again; that our humanity, our human fleshly nature in all its physicality might be taken up into God. It is after all our flesh as well as his that must after all die and be raised again.

To tear apart the soul and the body is the old heresy of dualism. Christ’s body, as well as his soul, has eternal value and once incarnate in the flesh cannot be discarded as irrelevant to the soul. While it is fashionable, and to some extent practical, to talk about body and soul as two separate entities they are in fact a present and eternal unity. To separate them is to make nonsense of the Incarnation as well as of the Resurrection. Let me present you with the key question of St. Paul. “Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? . . . if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Cor. 15:12, 14).

What Does it Mean to Belong?

2008-08-07T09:44:00.000-07:00

On Prince Edward Island the shore fields roll away down the hills to the edge of the sea. Queen Anne’s Lace graces the margin of the roads, along with goldenrod just beginning to bloom, and clusters of wild pink bramble roses. The shore fields themselves are a patchwork quilt; squares of variegated green, hay, oats, barley, wheat, yellow canola too bright to look at, endless fields of potatoes; patches of purple heather and untamed fallow fields resting now for the season.

The fields are marked out with hedgerows and the hedgerows themselves are dominated by island pines. The trees, some in the shape of Christmas yet to come, march down to the red rocky shore line. Here and there a single pine stands majestically silhouetted by the sea. As the light begins to fade into darkness the moon rises quickly over the Northumberland Straight casting a broad swath of hammered silver along the rippling waters.

Small farm houses decked out with hollyhocks and orange tiger lilies are set well back from the road. The road itself wends its way gently down towards the harbour. The beacon of the lighthouse shines brightly against the encroaching night. The warm lights of homes clustered together like bramble roses speak of the warmth of families, food, and of refuge from the lonely dark. These are the harbour lights along the shore.

Approaching the Island from the sea the reflected light of the moon rising in the sky casts a silvery sheen on the water off the starboard side of the ferry. Ahead of us the water is smooth and black as we draw close to the shore line. The coast line itself appears only as a humpy rise of deeper black barely distinguishable from the black of the sky and the sea, but there are along the shore some lights at its edge. One light higher than the others is brilliant and blinks on and off with its designated rhythm. If you know this coast and count the rhythm you will identify this lighthouse as the Wood Islands Light, and the lower lights around it as the small cluster of buildings marking the Wood Island ferry landing. We are in fact seeing a visual illustration of an old hymn.

Brightly beams our Father’s mercy from His lighthouse evermore,
But to us He gives the keeping of the lights along the shore.
Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave!
Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.

Christ Jesus Himself is our Father’s Lighthouse. He is the light of the world. From far away those who are lost on the sea of many peoples, nations, and tongues, see His light shining in the distance long before they see the lights along the shore. Lighthouses serve several purposes. Some say “Stay away! Stay away! Here rocks and wreckage will be found.” Other lighthouses mark the way home. It is the lights along the shore that say, “Come home! Come home! Here warmth and refuge will be found.” We are the lights along the shore.

Not all seaside villages are equally hospitable. Those who fish the coastal waters of the Northumberland Straight will tell you there is a difference. In some places you can set your lobster traps and fish in peace, in some places a malicious few will steal from your traps and make life difficult for people of whom they don’t approve. In some very few places bad blood stirred up by an unhappy few makes hospitality vanish altogether.

Islanders have a sense of belonging to the land and to the sea that is enviable. Those who come to the Island “from away” seek the peace and companionable sense of quiet that marks belonging to the Island and to each other. Some will never be able to belong, whether or not they born here, or how long ago they settled here.

Take Mabel, a “Herring Choker” from Nova Scotia, a loud dominating woman with a wooden leg. At dinner with the neighbours the other night she held forth; she would never have Venetian blinds in her home, only curtains. Our hostesses home has blinds in every room; but to Mabel blinds are dirty. According to her, Reggie, the fisherman she has just moved in with, will have to get rid of his blinds. Reggie says with an odd smile that he just paid fifteen hundred dollars for the blinds, to which she retorts that they will have to go out in the trash. Reggie’s response was missed by some in the room, “The day the blinds go in the trash there is going to be a wooden leg poking up from the middle of the trash!” Mabel was not at all daunted and began to loudly obsess about how she was going to clean Reggie’s place. “I’ll wash the walls and the ceilings three times a year.” An old Irish expression comes to my mind, “O, she laughs and she smiles and she shakes her wooden leg.”

Later, as the party thins out, a few quiet bets are offered. “She won’t make it to the next summer!” “No! By the end of winter Reggie will have had enough.” “She won’t make it to the spring fishing season!” What is the problem? She is “from away.” She will always be from away because she can’t really accept what being here on the island really means. She knows everything. She is right. Islanders, many of whom like blinds, need to conform to her standards and she will bloody well make them, starting with Reggie. She will always be “from away” and she is too tough an old dog to change. After all, she has been right all her life.

By spring she will be gone and wherever she goes she will tell others “from away” about the dirty Islanders with Venetian blinds, who are inhospitable and un-accepting because they won’t do what she knows is right. As long as she stays, this little harbour village will be in minor turmoil; but I give her only until next spring.

Let the lower lights be burning! Send a gleam across the wave! Some poor fainting, struggling seaman you may rescue, you may save.” What does it mean to belong? To belong on the Island one has to accept the Island for what it is, but some people, wanting to change the Island to fit their expectations, will always be “from away.”

The Invisible Knight: A Deadly Narcissist

2008-04-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

In the realm of King Arthur there was a knight called Garlon; a dangerous and murderous man who rode invisible. Many a knight he slew as he rode with the thunder of unseen hooves approaching furiously, his invisible lance piercing the body of his victim, and occasionally leaving the broken spear, now fully visible, behind, as he rides away unseen. The stories of Garlon appear briefly in Sir Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.

The knight Sir Balin rides from King Arthur’s court in the company of a fair damosel whose only love has been slain by Garlon, this despicable knight who rides invisibly. As they journey they are joined by another knight. “As they came by an hermitage even by a churchyard, there came this knight Garlon invisible, and smote this knight, Perin de Mountbeliard, through the body with a spear. Alas, said the knight, I am slain by this traitor knight that rideth invisible.”

Garlon rides off seeking another victim. He is an example of deadly, arrogant and cowardly power. Some in churches sit in the saddle in place of Garlon, riding invisibly, piercing their victims with the lance of their tongue and thundering off unseen into the knight seeking another victim; or perhaps, in repeated heinous acts they circle around the same victim piercing them again and again. One of the characteristics of Garlon is that he is oblivious of the pain that follows in his wake. He is a law unto himself. Everything in his world circles around himself and he takes pleasure in being the arbiter of life and death. He is quick to take offense. His deadly invisible attacks are a manifestation of the lie. He is the worst kind of backstabber in the most graphic kind of way. Garlon has a severe form of narcissistic personality disorder, or to be quite blunt, he is evil. Some who sit in the seat of Garlon ride side-saddle. Garlon, and those like him, will continue to ride invisibly until they are clearly seen in the cold light of day.

The death of Garlon is instructive. Sir Balin encounters him at a great feast provided by King Pellam. Garlon, and others like him, can always be found quite visible in the midst of our celebrations. Where else are they going to select their victims? Garlon is arrogant and seeing Balin’s sudden interest in him he smites Balin on the face with the back of his hand and tells Balin to do what he came for and eat his free meal. Balin replies, “this is not the first despite that thou hast done me, and therefore I will do what I came for, and rose up fiercely and clave Garlon’s head to his shoulders.”

Garlon was found enjoying himself at a banquet and even though others know who he is, and what he does, no-one has the courage to intervene until Balin comes on the scene. There are those who are in thrall to Garlon and vicariously enjoy his exploits; and there are others who participate in his evil by not resisting it. Those who support Garlon actively or passively have made “self” the center of their lives and are afraid of anything that will threaten the needs of the self. Give Garlon a chance and he will continue to ride unseen, circling round again and again thrusting his hapless victims through. For Garlon, each unconfronted secret attack is a power trip that feeds his ego and reaffirms for him that he is the center of the universe. He lives to control, and enjoys it best when he can do it unseen.

Why is Sir Balin successful? Balin has not made self the center of his life. In fact his whole quest is a quest to gain King Arthur’s favor. His power is drawn from his desire to please his king. The most noble of the Knights of the Round Table live for another.

The lesson here is obvious. Once Garlon is uncovered he is vulnerable. Thinking himself invulnerable he is even arrogant enough to launch an attack on Balin in public. There is only one way to deal with Garlon. If you fail to meet his attack when he is seen, he will attempt to slay you when he is invisible. Turn your back and there will be the thunder of unseen hooves approaching from the distance. Garlon cannot be reasoned with and the only solution is a power encounter. Garlon must be publicly identified, confronted, and vanquished, before he has a chance to disappear and do his deadly work again.

Lethe & Eunoë: Memory & Forgetfulness

2008-03-02T22:49:00.000-08:00

Remember the Dying Thief! “Today you shall be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). What a grievous life the man must have led; his sins had weighed heavily upon him and he rebuked the other dying thief saying, "Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23:40-41)” The weight of his sins had nailed him to the cross and nothing could atone, not even his own death. Mercy is his only plea, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” It is surrender and hope in Jesus alone that brings him into Paradise.

And what is Paradise? Paradise is that walled garden where in the cool of the evening the Lord God walked among the trees, and the trees of the garden lifted up their leafy arms rejoicing in His presence.

O let the Earth bless the Lord :
yea, let it praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Mountains and Hills, bless ye the Lord :
praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O all ye Green Things upon the earth, bless ye the Lord :
praise him, and magnify him for ever.
O ye Wells, bless ye the Lord :
praise him, and magnify him for ever.

There, in the midst of the paradise of God, the tree of life still stands and the dying thief with his terrible memories and guilt is the first to eat of that tree as a result of the immediate self-sacrifice of the Christ who hung on the cross beside him.

There are two rivers flowing from Paradise: One is the River Lethe, the river of memory, the remembrance of our sins, and of purification through the blood of Christ. One must drink of the River Lethe before one is prepared to drink from the River Eunoë, the river of forgetfulness and kindly thoughts. He who drinks from Dante’s rivers Lethe and Eunoë, remembers his sins “only as an historical fact and as the occasion of grace and blessedness” (Dorothy L. Sayers, introduction to the translation of Dante’s Purgatorio).

Teresa of Avila, like many of her contemporaries drank deeply from the River Lethe and the remembrance of sins. Do all do that today? Some drink not at all and mistakenly think that they can drink from the River Eunoë and repress and forget the realities of their lives. It doesn’t work that way. Drink from Lethe first and from Eunoë second. When one drinks from Lethe, the river of memory and purification, then one is ready to hear the words of Teresa, “He guilds my faults.”

As miserable and imperfect as my deeds were, this Lord of mine improved and perfected them and gave them value, and the evils and sins He then hid. His Majesty even permitted the eyes of those who saw these sins to be blinded, and He removed these sins from their memory. He gilds my faults; the Lord makes a virtue shine that He places in me—almost forcing me to have it.” (The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. One, The Book of Her Life, (Washington: ICS Publications) 1987, p. 69.

It is not that sin is any less sin, but sin must be seen through the eyes of grace. Never underestimate your sin, nor the work of grace in your life. God Himself almost forces us to live by grace, rather than by self-accusation.

Similarly Catherine of Genoa observes:

“I then saw others who were fighting against their evil inclinations and forcing themselves to resist them. But I saw that the more they struggled against them, the more they committed them . . . You cannot defend yourself and I cannot defend myself. The thing we must do is renounce the care of ourselves unto God who can defend our true self” (“Life and Teachings”, ed. Foster, Devotional Classics, p. 213).

The psalmist says, “Protect my life from the fear of the enemy” (Psalm 64:1b). There is a common thread. Fear and compulsive flight from sin don’t help. Let Him gild your faults. Rely on grace, not only for the past, but also for the present. You cannot defend yourself. Relax into His hands. Catherine also speaks of the gradual unfolding of self-awareness. We are only shown what we need to see, and are accepted even with our imperfections and limited self-knowledge. He protects us from complete self-knowledge, which is more than we can bear. Transformation is a process.

Drink deeply from both of the rivers that you may be cleansed, restored, and made whole. In drinking from the River Lethe know for certain that you come to the God of love who has already provided the sacrifice, who Himself draws you, in order to restore you. “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Hebrews 9:14 KJV).

Drink deeply from the River Eunoë. God never intended that you live with old guilts long since cleansed. “As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). There is such a thing as Divine Forgetfulness, “12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. (Hebrews 8:12 ESV). He who drinks from Dante’s rivers Lethe and Eunoë, remembers his sins “only as an historical fact and as the occasion of grace and blessedness”

Rising Early

2008-02-20T20:09:00.000-08:00

Rising very early in the morning
while it was still dark, he departed
and went out to a desolate place
and there he prayed. ~ Mark 1:35

O to be with You in the midnight hours
when all is dark within, without.
To be with You in perfect peace
my resting place, my heaven, my all right place,
my shelter in the midst of storm.
Life in the daylight hours spins around
with dizzying pace, sun rise, sun set,
and you are here with me within, without.
How small, how petty all the daily trials
when at night I rest myself in Thee,
my heaven on earth,
my heaven in the midst of life,
my heavenly Lover and my King,
my resting place in the midst of storm.

TEMPTATION AND THE GREEN KNIGHT

2008-02-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Let the high praises of God be in their throat *
and a two-edged sword in their hand. ~ Psalm 149:6

There is a centuries old story that sheds light on the true nature of most of the battles endured by the knights of our Lord Jesus Christ. That is the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. So often we, the people of God, are immersed in a battle of one kind or another and Sir Gawain has much to teach us.

The story briefly told is this: King Arthur and Court have met for the fifteen day Christmas Feast. It is Arthur’s custom not to dine until some unusual tale has been told, or some marvel has been presented, either in deed or in song. The Green Knight enters, huge, with skin and hair all green. No armor has he, but only a large and vicious axe. He presents a challenge to the court and presents his axe, saying “Take it, and keep it, my gift forever, and give me a well-aimed stroke, and agree to accept another in payment when my turn arrives, but not now; a year and a day will be time enough.”

After some discussion Sir Gawain, a nephew of King Arthur, rises to the challenge and cuts off the head of the Green Knight. The Green Knight does not even sway as his head rolls among the feet of the Knights of the Court who are scrambling to get out of the way, but rather walks over and retrieves his head and holds it up and swivels it around to behold the stunned and frightened knights. Gawain is told to seek the Green Knight chapel and fulfill his end of the bargain in a year and a day.

In the fall of the year, Gawain prepares to ride off on his quest as the court watches. The author tells us “they watched that lovely knight riding away. And he never delayed, Rode on his way; And books say That he rode where men go astray.” Here the first note of the actual danger is sounded. Very briefly with minimal description the story of Gawain’s battles and adventures are recorded, nine lines in all. The story is not about those kinds of battles. On Christmas Eve Gawain arrives at the castle of a “worthy knight, tall and strong and experienced, in the prime of life.” The knights of that castle give us the second clue as to the nature of Gawain’s true battles, “God has been good, Truly, to grant us a guest like Gawain, in this season when men sing and rejoice In His birth. This knight will lead us to the meaning of manners, will work miracles for us to see In the soothing of lover’s hurts.” What kind of battles does Gawain excel in?

Towards the end of the evening’s festivities his host offers a challenge, “Whatever I earn in the woods will be yours, Whatever you win will be mine in exchange. Shall we swap our day’s work, Gawain? Answer Me plain: for better or worse, an exchange?” What exactly does Gawain expect to earn as he relaxes in the castle of this worthy knight?

As the dawn of the next day breaks the lord of the castle goes out to hunt deer in the forest and Gawain lolls around in bed. The author says, “So the lord plays at the edge of the wood, and Gawain lies in a lovely bed.” By now the alarm bells should be ringing. The latch of the bedroom door is lifted and the comely wife of the lord of the castle enters and quite passionately offers herself to Gawain. She observes that the door to Gawain’s chamber could be locked with a bolt. One wonder’s why Gawain wouldn’t have locked it to start with. At his courtly best he graciously wards off her advances allowing her only a single kiss. When the lord of the castle returns they make their exchange. He gives Gawain the carcass of the deer, and Gawain gives him a single kiss.

On the second morn, once more Gawain’s door is unlocked, and once more the beautiful and apparently adulterous wife of the lord of castle enters and intensifies her temptation. Her husband in the meantime is off doing battle with a wild boar. Gawain is adept at exchanging flirtation, but yields only two kisses. When the lord of the castle returns the exchange is made, Gawain receives the boar, and the lord receives two kisses.

The third morning arrives. The lord is off chasing the wily fox. Gawain, once again with unlocked door, receives the lovely and licentious lady of the castle. Why does he leave the door unlocked a third time? Surely it would have been safer to lock it. Once again with grace and humor he manages to exchange three kisses and nothing more. All this time he has been playing with fire, and it’s obviously a game he enjoys. If nothing else the process of being tempted by a voluptuous woman, and the challenge of walking that close to the fire has awoken in him his own lust, not for her, but for life itself. As she is repelled with the three kisses, she makes Gawain another offer. She takes a green silk belt from her waste and offers it to Gawain, saying, “any man bound with this belt, This green lace locked around him Can never be killed, here under God’s Own heaven—no blow, nor trick, nothing Can hurt him.” The one condition that comes with her offer is that this gift be hidden from her husband and that “She and Gawain would share the secret forever.” After she leaves Gawain arises, dresses and goes to Confession, and confesses all his sins, at least the one’s he knows, but fails to understand that he has, by accepting her secretive gift, lost his honor in order to preserve his life. The lord returns and they exchange what they have earned. He gives Gawain the fox, and Gawain gives him three kisses only. The green belt is secretly tucked away. Here at this point we should note that the belt is after all colored green, and that is a deliberate hint.

The coming of the next morn heralds the fateful promised encounter. Gawain arises, girds on his armor, wraps the green silken belt around his waist, and rides off to seek the chapel of the Green Knight which he has been told is nearby. A guide leads him to the edge of a vale and warns him of pending doom. He makes an offer which is essentially, “Run away, and I won’t tell anyone.” Gawain descends into the vale and finds an ugly, gruesome chapel, all overgrown, a place “where the devils of hell Could say their prayers quite well.” He hears the sound of a great grindstone sharpening the axe with a whirring roar. The Green Knight comes professing to be impressed that Gawain has come. He swings his axe, and Gawain flinches and he stops the stroke to chide Gawain for his cowardice. Gawain screws up his courage. Again the Green Knight wields his axe. Gawain stands fast. The Green Knight holds it back before he strikes the blow. The third time the Green Knight swings his axe but only nips the skin of Gawain’s neck. Now comes the interpretation from the Green Knight. He is the knight, the lord of the castle, that has played host to Gawain. The strokes that missed were for the kisses Gawain received from his wife, but passed on to the Green Knight in his guise as the lord of the castle. But, ah, the nick on the neck that drew blood. Says the Green Knight, “That belt you’re wearing: it’s mine, my wife Gave it to you—I know it all, knight. . . . You failed a little, lost good faith—Not for a beautiful belt, or in lust, But for love of your life. I can hardly blame you.” Gawain is shamed. His cowardice is uncovered. Gawain laments the fate of Adam, Solomon, Samson, and David, “These were the noblest knights of their time, the best, the very best, who walked The World In those days—and women tied them In knots, whirled them In circles. I’ve been beguiled, As they were: this excuse should be heard.”

Gawain has played the courting game and entertained lusts where he never intended surrender. What was quickened him was the love of life, perhaps the love of the chase, and the vicarious entertainment of titillating lusts, but that was not the real temptation. Receiving the green belt begins a process of self-discovery. He would sell his honor to preserve his life. He returns to Arthur’s court wearing the green belt and confesses his weakness with grief and sorrow, but the court relieved that Gawain yet lives, laughs, and each of the knights of the Round Table resolve to wear a green belt around their waist to keep company with Gawain. The belt becomes the glory of Arthur’s Round Table.

The story uncovers a truth that temptation is many layered, and the surface temptation may not be the most important. Remember that the devil is a liar, an evil charmer, a master of half-truths and intrigues, of wiles and subtlety. He doesn’t care how he destroys you, only that in some way or other, on some level or other, he can fulfill his fondest desire for you, your death; the death of your joy, the death of your peace, the death of your love, the death of your relationships, your very own death, physical and spiritual, now and forever, amen.

A Randy Stonehill song gives the proper perspective:

oh, satan is an evil charmer
(shut de dó, keep out the debil)
he's hungry for a soul to hurt
(shut de dó, keep the debil in de ni-eet)
and without your holy armor
(shut de dó, keep out the debil)
he will eat you for dessert
(shut de dó, keep the debil in de ni-eet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yuBgu_Vxuw&feature=related

Just because the devil is an evil charmer who wants to eat you for desert doesn’t at all mean that you have to just sit back and allow it to happen. Gawain may not be an enviable character, but we have to admit that he was quite willing to enter into the fray and face the challenges that the Green Knight offered to him. Part of Gawain’s problem is that he attempted to meet the challenges alone, or often in the company of those as corrupted as he. We however belong to the militant and glorious Body of Christ and none of these battles are either new or unique. The Preacher speaks the truth, “There is nothing new under the sun.” We do not go forth to battle alone, but in company with others. More than that we do not go forth into battle unaccompanied by a Commander, the Lord of Hosts manifest in human flesh, crucified, risen, glorified, riding on a white horse wearing the banner, “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty.” And Almighty He surely is. We go forth armed in holy armour, with the high praises of God in our throats and the two-edged sword of the word of God in our hands.

The Variegated Beauty of the Treasure

2008-01-18T01:09:00.001-08:00

The Great “I AM”
~ St. Simeon the New Theologian, 10th C, edited by Father Rob+

“Christ Jesus
who Himself is the Treasure hidden in the field
has said, and still says:
I am the Word,
I am the Light of the world,
I am the Lamb of God,
I am the Lion of Judah,
I am the Ladder ascending into heaven,
I am the Mustard Seed,
I am the Seed sown by the sower,
I am the Pearl of great cost
I am the Door of the sheep,
I am the Good Shepherd,
I am the true Bread of Life,
I am the Resurrection and the Life,
I am the true Vine,
I am He who makes the lame to walk
and the blind to see,
I am the Kingdom of Heaven
that is hidden in your midst,
I am the Kingdom to Come,
I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,
I am He who takes the place of the physical Paradise,
I become the spiritual Paradise for My servants,
I am in all who believe in Me and are born again,
I am stronger than all,
I am that I am,
I am the God who sees, and
I am seen by the eyes of the soul,
I am seen by those who have sought and found me,
I am shining even now,
I cannot be contained,
Though I am invisible I become visible,
I remain entire while I am being seen,
I am the leaven that the soul receives,
I am the luminous source
of the immortal stream and river,
I am the sun who rises in them as in the morning,
I am seen by the mind,
just as in times past I manifested
myself in the prophets
When they saw me
they sang My praise and called on Me,”
As the sweet psalmist of Israel says,
“In the morning hear my voice,
in the morning I shall stand before Thee,
and Thou wilt look upon me” (Ps. 5:3 LXX).

In Days of Death and Poetry and Awe

2008-01-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

In days of death and poetry and awe,
Not in the flesh but in the soul I saw
A scaly thing clutch the dying as he fell
With shrieking curse, midst stench and brimstone smell.
It’s course was rudely stopped by golden wing.
The man sprang free and soaring rose on high.
The roaring demon fell earthward with a cry,
The man released from bonds began to sing.
Christ’s blood had interposed and set him free,
That gracious blood was shed for you and me.
Released from shadowlands we will be,
To stand in light beside a golden sea,
And walk in flesh upon a golden shore,
And with our King rejoice for evermore.

Are You At Peace?

2007-12-31T19:26:00.000-08:00

Are you at peace? Peace is a quality of life long sought after and too seldom found. One of the ancient names of God is “Yahweh Shalom”. It means “The Lord is Peace!” Peace is not a quality that can be squeezed out of human circumstances, nor conjured up by finite and mortal minds. Peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but rather it is a quality of life that emanates from God Himself. Peace is not bovine placidity. Peace is the tranquility of spirit that rests upon the Rock that never moves.

Isaiah the prophet says, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee: because he trusteth in Thee” (Isaiah 26:3). Peace comes from relationship with the God of peace. Peace comes from resting in Him who is Peace Itself.

Several things destroy peace. An unwillingness to forgive, or an unwillingness to love either yourself or another, stand out as peace breakers. Fear, guilt, and control issues also block the entrance of peace. The first step towards resting in the God Who is Peace often starts with the action of surrender, the willingness to let go, to relax, to let drop, to be still. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Experience teaches us that such surrender is often beyond our grasp, but experience also teaches us that when we crack open the doors of our hearts and say to Him, “You know I am not willing, but I am willing to be willing”, that the miracle of inner healing begins. It is a principle of Divine grace and love, that He comes down to our level and meets us where we are, not where we think we ought to be. That in a very real sense is why the Living God became Incarnate in the flesh of humankind.

The classic Anglican understanding of true peace, true tranquility of spirit, rests on a three-fold foundation: The Daily Offices (Morning and Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer), Habitual Recollection (The practice of the presence of God, and informal prayers), and faithful attendance at Holy Eucharist. Peace is an acquired grace that comes from a spiritual orientation carried into action in prayer and worship. When you are intentionally with the God of peace, peace will be yours. Peace is a grace from God that comes as the fruit of spiritual discipline.

Our desire is often for instant results: “I want peace, and I want it right now!” Peace doesn’t often come that way, rather it is born and nurtured in our hearts. There is a necessary process. We become at least willing to forgive, and willing to love, even though for the life of us we can’t artificially drum up either willingness. We begin to pray and read Scripture, at least taking on ourselves one of the Daily Offices; and we persist day after day in humble, quiet discipline. The process is much like planting a seed; once planted don’t keep pulling it up to see if roots are developing. Plant the offices within your soul and water with persistence, keeping your soul in the light of the Word. Peace most often steals upon us unawares. Looking back we say with some small surprise, "Well, well, it seems I have been at peace now for some while." So quiet is the coming of peace. Would you expect it to be any other way?

Simeon’s Song

2007-12-29T22:58:00.000-08:00

The pure Word of Israel’s God
Sprang whole cloth woven in my mind,
A Word that could not be denied.
With it came the certain knowledge,
“I have been anointed with fresh oil.”

One day when I was younger,
Decades have slipped away,
I stood at Sabbath reading,
Tasseled tallus o’er my head,
His Word leaping from the scroll.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,
Speak ye tenderly to Jerusalem:
‘Thy long warfare is ended and
Thine iniquity is pardoned!’”
The Word burned within my soul.

I cried: “These words are now my words
God’s true Word spoken unto me.
I shall not die until I see
The comfort of God’s Israel.”
Pious skepticism meets such words,

“There is no Word
save only a famine of the Word.”

His Word I buried very deep,
A heavy burden from my Lord,
Where too often Words that challenge
Our precious lives are stored.
Today that Word has come again.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye my people
Speak comfortably to Jerusalem
Cry out to her, her warfare has ended,
Her iniquity is pardoned;
Now is the acceptable time,
Now is the day of salvation.”

Now I stand within God’s temple,
His Word a burning flame within.
“I have been anointed with fresh oil.
The time has come to cry aloud,
This day is the day Messiah comes.

"Lord, you now have set your servant free *
To go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Saviour, *
Whom you have prepared for all the world to see;
A light to lighten the Gentiles, *
And the glory of your people Israel.”

The Christmas Day Death of a Friend

2007-12-27T09:28:00.000-08:00

Dear Apostles Members and Friends:

Concerning the passing of our dear friend Debbie this Christmas Day.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” In these words of Charles Dickens, his Anglican background was clearly evident. Life is sometimes very complicated and there are many things that we do not understand. Last night a few minutes before the service Debbie was laughing with us in the Vesting Room. She vested in her robes for Chalice Bearing and walked through the sanctuary smiling and waving to her husband Greg. A few moments later she collapsed by the bench at the front door and was taken to the hospital by the paramedics. She was taken by Care-Flight from Baylor, Grapevine and transported to Zale Lipshy Hospital in Dallas. Testing showed that Debbie was in a coma and completely unresponsive. Sometime this morning she went home to be with her Lord.

Debbie died doing one of the things she most liked to do, serving our Lord in the midst of her friends. She was wearing her white robes. “One of the Angels addressed me saying, ‘Who are these that are arrayed in white robes, and where have they come from? I said to him, ‘Sir, you know.’ And he said to me, ‘These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.’”

Her vitality, energy, and distinctive personality will be greatly missed by me, by Cyndi, and by everyone who loved and served with her. She was very conscious about her Christian faith and her personal dedication to Jesus Christ our Lord. In the sermon at the Midnight Mass, I quoted the final words of Brithnoth, another Christian warrior many centuries ago. At his end in simple faith he spoke to his Lord, “I thank Thee, Lord of all peoples, For all those joys that on earth I have known. Now, my Maker mild - I have most need That thou should grant good to my spirit. That my soul may journey to Thee. Into thy kingdom - O Lord of the Angels, May I pass with peace.”

Christ Jesus was born and died for moments like these. The poet and sometime Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, John Donne wrote, “His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.”

Our friend Debbie is absent from the body, and present with our Lord. She has joined that great cloud of witnesses that surrounds us all. Please keep Greg, Vincent, and Gabbie and all of Debbie’s family in your prayers, and be assured that I also hold not only them, but also you in my prayers and love.

Affectionately in Christ,

Father Rob +

Footnotes in order, but not numbered:
Revelation 7:13-14
The Battle of Maldon
John Moses, One Equal Light, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 208-209

Jesus Resurrected

BELLS RINGING

2007-12-23T18:13:00.000-08:00

Bells ringing!
Bells singing!

In simple joy,
Love's own alloy,
God's babe is born
this happy morn.

Bells ringing!
Bells singing!

The infant's tear
Cries God is here.
He’s come at last,
Now life will last.

Bells ringing!
Bells singing!

The Habitation of Dragons

2007-12-19T13:32:00.000-08:00

There are several verses in Scripture regarding dragons that create a problem for translators. The problem is that translators are too enlightened to believe in dragons so they have to find more acceptable ways of translating the Hebrew word “tan-neem.” One of these verses is in Psalm 44:19. The Book of Common Prayer translation paraphrases the text as “Though you thrust us down into a place of misery, * and covered us over with deep darkness.” Here “tan-neem” is paraphrased as “misery.” In a similar text in Isaiah 34:13 the New King James Version translates the word as “jackals.” The King James Version translates the word “tan-neem” as follows: “And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.” The word means “monsters” and includes large sea-monsters, large land monsters, and in a some contexts apparently “jackals” although jackals are a little small to be included as monsters. The message of the various Old Testament texts is that the world we live in is a “habitation of tan-neem”, or to put it quite simply, a habitation of dragons. But what does that mean?

The translators have a harder time re-interpreting the New Testament Greek word, “drakon” as anything other than “dragon.” One primary text where the word “dragon” occurs is in Revelation 12:1-12 where the devil is depicted as a fiery red dragon who is cast down from heaven to earth by Michael and his angels. The Book of Revelation goes on to add, “woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”

That is indeed the problem! Humankind tends to operate on the assumption that we live out our lives in a neutral zone where most of our spiritual struggles are with ourselves or with other people. In reality the place where we live is a habitation of dragons, and in specific, one most unhappy dragon. This particular dragon has discovered to his chagrin that he is not as lofty, as beautiful or as powerful as God. Not only that, but he has discovered, to his great wrath, that his time is short. In his wrath the dragon has resolved to rob everybody of the life, joy and vitality that he has lost himself when cast from heaven by Michael and the angels of God.

What does that mean in practice to the average Christian? Some limitations of the dragon's ability needs to be acknowledged; Unlike God, he is not Omniscient, Omnipotent, or Omnipresent. In plain language, as a created being, he doesn't know everything, he isn't all-powerful, nor is he present everywhere. Unfortunately the passage in Revelation tells us that when he was cast to earth in great wrath he took his “angels” with him. The New Testament refers to these entities as “devils,” “demons,” or as “unclean spirits.” What it means is that we play out our moral and spiritual struggles on an uneven playing field where unseen malicious enemies are doing their very best to make us as unhappy as they are. The old saying, “misery loves company” is remarkably true in this regard.

That doesn't mean that the old Flip Wilson character Geraldine was correct when she said, “the devil made me do it.” It is not as simple as that. While it is clear that the Tempter successfully tempted Eve, and unsuccessfully tempted Jesus, James 1:14 testifies that “each person is lured and enticed by his own desire.” The devil and his companions don't bother wasting time tempting us where we have no vulnerability. St. Anthony, one of the founders of desert monasticism, pointed out that wherever we have a weakness, “there the devils love to leap.”

The result is that we do not have the luxury of operating without regard to the unnatural hazards of the spiritual terrain in which we live our lives. Neither, we, nor our children live in neutral world. Quite the contrary. St. Paul says, “Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” On the other hand living in paranoia and fear only serves the dragon and his fallen angels. James 4:7b also says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you.” John the Apostles adds, “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4). Another way of putting it is in the modern proverb, “To be forewarned is to be fore-armed.” In Texas terms, if you are walking through a field with vipers in it, wear a good pair of cowboy boots.

What Do You Want For Christmas?

2007-12-19T01:57:00.000-08:00

Christmas lists pose a problem for many of us, but the problems vary according to our age. When we are very little it doesn’t matter what we get for Christmas, we are probably going to find the wrapping paper and the box much more interesting. Sooner or later we catch on to making a list for Santa Claus. The taller we grow, the longer list. But for many of us there is a break point when it becomes increasingly difficult to think of anything we really want for Christmas.

Many adults are notoriously difficult to purchase Christmas gifts for. One of the more irritating ads banks on this underlying difficulty. Outside the home in the drive sits an expensive luxury car with a large ribbon on top of it. The neighbors sit in lawn chairs across the street to witness the coming celebration. The husband leads his blindfolded wife out to the front door of the house and removes the blindfold from her eyes as she beholds with joy the marvelous gift. In our family we have noted that if either of us were to spend that kind of money on a gift without consulting the other there would be serious consequences. Then again, our discretionary cash doesn’t register in the tens of thousands, so maybe we are just in the wrong demographic group to appreciate the ad.

The first Christmas came to a very specific demographic group. What demographic group are you in? Christmas is the story of the Incarnation; the Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient God was born a babe to a Jewish craftsman named Joseph and his wife Mary. The Roman census had required that they move from their home in Nazareth of Galilee to Bethlehem of Judah. It is probable that the only thing they actually owned was Joseph’s carpentry tools. The infant Christ was born in a stable. When the Wise men appear, perhaps as much as well over a year later, they bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. What happened to those expensive gifts? The probability is that Joseph and Mary sold them in the market in Bethlehem and that the proceeds eventually helped fund the flight to Egypt.

We should bear in mind that there was no middle class in Judah at the time of the birth of Christ. There were the wealthy, there were the desperately poor; but the majority of people were farmers, fisherman, craftsmen, small tradesmen, and others who fit into the broader group of what we would call working class people. To put it most simply; Jesus was born into a blue-collar family. There was food on the table, but no Lexus in the driveway.

So what is the problem when somebody asks us what we want for Christmas? It often is revealed in a simple dynamic. My mouse pad on my laptop has been creating all kinds of small difficulties when I work on tasks like writing a newsletter. Someone points out that what would help is a wireless mouse. Do I put it on a Christmas gift list? No! If I need it, and at the moment the family budget will stand it, I go and buy myself a wireless mouse. What do I want for Christmas? Most of us adults are like Dumbledore the Wizard. When he looks into the mirror of Erised (Desire backwards) his fondest hope is revealed. The one thing he wants is a really warm pair of socks. The things we actually want are so mundane it’s often hard to think of them. For us one of the great joys of Christmas is what we give rather than what we receive.

There is another side to this. For a long time I have known with my heart that Christmas isn’t about getting and giving gifts, but about having already received the One Christmas Gift that far outshines all other gifts. The gift that has thrilled my heart is the Gift of God’s love, and in that most precious gift, the gift of receiving with an open heart gift of love that comes through my family and friends. That Gift is not abstract, but concrete in the person of Jesus Christ my Savior, my Wonderful Counselor, my Mighty God, my Everlasting Father, my Prince of Peace. Jesus came to “save his people from their sins,” not just his people, but me myself as one of his people, a sinner in the midst of other sinners, no better, no worse, but loved like all the rest. What an incredible gift it is to be received by God, to be accepted, to be forgiven, to be adopted, to become part of the family God present now, and extending through the centuries. It is the gift of belonging.

What Do You Really Want For Christmas?

Tarry Now My Lord Awhile With Me

2007-09-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

Tarry now my Lord awhile with me, in
The midnight hours when all is dark within
And silent spins Your wide world all around,
The ticking, chiming, clock its only sound.
There is no hiding place, dark is light to you.
No midnight fears are truly fears when you
Stretch forth your loving Spirit and enter in
Quietly cleansing, covering, healing, every sin.
From the fear of the enemy you preserve, my
Soul; in the dark You enfold and comfort me
Bringing peace, bringing calm, that I may know
That you are within, around, above, below,
Defending me as the apple of your eye.
Your freely given grace possessing me.