haiku for Sunday, February 7

Ice clouds at sun-up,
a radiant path
above beech trees traced with snow.

“Beyond Words” – Deborah Pender Hutchison’s Christmas Day 2009 sermon

Christmas Day, St. David’s, December 25, 2009
Isaiah 52:7-10 / Psalm 98 / Hebrews 1:1-4,(5-12) / John 1:1-14

Beyond Words

Last night our worship was woven of the earthy textures of straw and wool and swaddling cloths. We didn’t ignore the cosmic. But we did anchor it in the context of things we have long known and named – a manger, a mother, a Middle Eastern city that still houses hope and human suffering side-by-side as it did two thousand years ago. Heavenly hosts glorifying God, yes, but doing so for the benefit of common shepherds and their very ordinary sheep.
Funny, that in the mysterious candlelit atmosphere of a mid-winter’s night we engaged through scripture so specifically with things material, yet in this morning’s forthright light our gospel presents us with concepts we can barely contain in language.
The Holy as experienced by the human is all about balance. The holding together in exquisite tension what the human heart perceives as ethereal and the human mind perceives as physical. Spirit and flesh. The eternal tied to the transitory. Too much spirit and not enough flesh and we come untethered, of little use to this hurting world. Too much flesh and not enough spirit, and we forget why we are here.
The writer of Luke, who gave us our gospel last night, comes at the question of balance from the “carne” side of “incarnation”. From the flesh and blood reality of physical birth to the intimation of death prefigured in the Magi’s gift of myrrh, the nativity story uses the things of this world as window into something that knows no beginning nor no end.
The writer of John’s gospel, the prologue of which we just heard read, comes at the question of balance from the side which is brought “in” in “incarnation”, from the other side of that window through which something inexpressibly large is being squeezed into the boundaried chamber of the human body and mind.
The writer of John’s gospel calls that Something Logos. “Word”, we translate it, stripping off much of its meaning in the process, as we try to pull it in through the narrow window of our particular language. English really doesn’t have an equivalent. Chinese versions of the Bible translate Logos as “Tao”, that is “Way”, a word which represents for the Chinese reader a vast and venerable wisdom tradition.
We can get a little taste of that wider deeper meaning because for us “Way” is certainly richer, more layered…‘bigger’ somehow than “Word”. And because Jesus describes himself elsewhere in John’s gospel as “the Way”, all that we associate with him becomes folded into that term. Try it: “In the beginning was the Way, the Way was with God, and the Way was God.”
But there is more to Logos than Way. There is more to Logos than Word. Logos is the path and the walking of the path and the destination. Logos is the invisible stuff of meaning which is – in a very real sense — incarnated in our words. Logos is what the Way leads to, that which lies outside of flesh and time and yet holds both in being. Logos is the Word that is beyond all words. Try it: “In the beginning was Logos, and Logos was with God, and Logos was God.”
This is what came into the world, according to the writer of John’s gospel, to restore balance to human nature, that exquisite tension of heaven held to earth. We had forgotten and we continue to forget why we are here. That our mortal flesh is meant to be a container for the immortal. That we are meant to be words for what is beyond words and ways for the One who is the Way to be anchored here, where the love that heals and the power that makes new is always needed. AMEN.

Deborah Pender Hutchison, Lay Pastoral Associate
Saint David’s Episcopal Church, Bean Blossom, Indiana

Jan’s Brother’s Gingerbread Cookie Recipe

3/4 C sugar
3 C flour
2 sticks butter (I used salted)
2 eggs
1/3 C dark molasses/sorghum (I used blackstrap molasses for the deep, dark flavor)
2 t baking soda
3 t ground cloves
3 t fresh ginger, minced. (I think next time I’ll leave some larger bits for the surprise)
5 t dried ginger
5 t cinnamon
1 t salt
1 t orange zest (I used a tangerine)

Preheat oven to 325.
Cream sugar and butter
Add egg and molasses
Mix dry ingredients
Blend all
Refrigerate 15 minutes. If dough is sticky, add a little more flour
Shape into nickel-size balls. (I was undisciplined here.)
Bake 7 mins, says the recipe. It took closer to 12.

Deborah’s Advent 3 sermon – Love Will Give You What You Need

Third Sunday of Advent December 13, 2009
Zephaniah 3:14-20 Isaiah 12:2-6 Philippians 4:4-7 Luke 3:7-18

Love Give You What You Need

This is Gaudate Sunday, the Advent Sunday when we get to light the pink candle and lighten up a bit from the more somber penitential purpleness of the rest of this season of waiting and preparation. “Gaudate” is the Latin for “rejoice” and our readings are full of gladness. At least, Zephaniah and Isaiah and Paul communicate great good cheer.
“Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
O daughter Jerusalem!” “Cry aloud, inhabitants of Zion, ring out your joy…” “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”
But the Holy One of Israel, of planet Earth, of the created universe, of whatever lies beyond time and place, is all about truth. The truth is, we’re not there yet; “there” being that state of union with the Divine of which all the gaudate-ing in scripture is only a pale reflection. And so, we have our Collect: “Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us.”
And we have John the Baptizer. Oh, do we have John the Baptizer. Nothing pink about John. We stumble and stagger through his rant, wincing at his accusations and dire predictions. We attempt deflection – surely the brood of vipers is the Pharisees, not us – surely he’s talking to people who lived two thousand years ago, not us – all the while keeping our hands over our mouths in case there be forked tongues and poisonous fangs, all the while suffering the tree’s mute fear of axe blade and fire.
And that’s only the beginning. John is just God’s forerunner, God’s ‘heads up’. The One who is to come that he invokes is a far cry from that sweet little manger baby we tame into our Christmas cards and carols. “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
And then the writer of Luke’s gospel has the audacity to comment, “So, with many other exhortations, John proclaimed the good news to the people.” Axes at our roots? The wrath to come? Fiery baptism? Winnowing forks? This is good news?! Apparently it was to the huge crowds who flocked to hear John tell it. We are sorely hindered by the limiting fact that all we get are John’s words written down in a language that was not his long after they were first spoken, and read or heard by us after translation into yet another language.
What we need, to know the whole truth of what he communicates, is his whole presence. He must have been more than just another loony-tune street corner preacher to have drawn so many to him and to have been granted the grace of baptizing his cousin, Jesus. What came through the vibration of his voice, I wonder? What looked into the world through his gaze? For what was his manner, his aura, a doorway? Surely a great power, something magnetic and convicting. Something life-changing.
Allow me to share with you a story. Some of you have heard this story, or parts of it, before. It’s not the first time I’ve told it. But it is a good story, a good news, and good news bears repeating.
Once, years ago now, towards the beginning of my work as lay pastor at St. David’s, I had the honor and privilege of companioning an adult member of our congregation through preparation for baptism. All during Lent we met regularly to pray together and explore the implications of a closer and more committed relationship with God. This person was a very passionate seeker and, at her lead, we went deep.
As the day of her baptism approached, she sensed that there were certain aspects of her character that needed to be released into God’s transforming care in order for her to be truly ready for her initiation. So, early in the morning on Holy Saturday, we met here in this space as it was then, to engage in the prayer book’s service of Reconciliation of a Penitent, or one-to-one private confession. She said what she needed to say, offered up what she was ready to let go, accompanied by the kind of tears that come with deep cleansing.
As I spoke the prayer book words given for a layperson to assure a penitent of God’s forgiveness, the strangest thing happened. A door opened, maybe in my head, maybe in the space inhabited by two gathered, I’m not really sure, as the usual boundaries and rules of engagement with reality were rapidly disintegrating at that moment. However, wherever, a door opened and through it came a Power and a Presence that was…well, beyond words.
It had something of the 50 mile per hour gusts that roared through here a couple days ago, but it was not cold. It had something of the fire that has pulsed and crackled in our woodstove since that great wind came through, but it was not hot. Nor did it consume. It had something of the stillness that comes after great suffering. But it was not sad. It was much much bigger than those things. And it was wild, as in untamed. Not so much fierce, as clearly and irrevocably beyond anyone’s capacity to domesticate or control.
It was so bracingly real and so utterly alive that it made everything else seem like a facsimile. Including me. Or at least what I thought was me. It made me feel…simplified, reduced to essentials, suddenly aware of being physically a loose collection of sub-atomic particles and mostly empty space. Only that empty space wasn’t empty. It was full. Full of whatever was coming in through that door.
I wish I could say I welcomed it. I wish I could say I ran full tilt toward it and dived into that opening. But I did no such thing. I was terrified. This was something that could, that would, unmake me. Exposed to such power I, or what I believed was “I”, would simply cease to exist. In that moment, it never occurred to me that this power could also make me, had, indeed, knit me together in my mother’s womb. It never occurred to me that what is destroyer is also creator. It never occurred to me that you have to break eggs to make an omelet. It never occurred to me that after the dreaded disassembly would come a new thing, a “me” more consonant with the power that formed and re-formed it.
No. Those thoughts came much later. Right then I was too busy pushing that door shut with every ounce of will and mental might I possessed. All this that has taken me many minutes to describe took place in a flash. I looked around the sanctuary half expecting to see broken windows, chairs toppled over, my companion’s eyebrows singed. But all was as it had been. All, that is, except my companion. Her face was suffused with an expression of relief, release, a new serenity. I asked her what she was feeling. And she said, “I feel forgiven. I feel loved.”
It was then that I remembered something that had happened during whatever had just happened. In the split second when I stood engulfed in that immense inbreaking before fearfully pushing it away, the constant voice that narrates all my experiences like an annoying news anchor had actually fallen silent, and another voice had spoken, out of the wind and fire and immense calm. It had said, with great authority, “This is Love.”
I had shut the door on Love. Not love as I imagined it to be or even hoped it was. I wanted the love received by my companion, love in the form of healing and forgiveness. But you see, she had already broken apart. It was her time to be made new. I, on the other hand, was scheduled for deconstruction. So, I got winnowing fork love, axe to the root love, unquenchable fire love, John-the-Baptizer-tough-love love.
There’s a song I like to sing that has the line in it: “Love can’t give you everything but it gives you what you need.” I needed to give up control. I needed to surrender. I may have gotten that door pushed to, but not before all that power had shaken the house of my self-delusion to its foundations. Renovations were underway.
Renovations that might have been effected a good deal sooner if I’d flung that door wide. But love has more ways of coming to us then we have defenses. It comes to us in a mother’s comforting embrace, a lover’s devotion, a child’s trust. It comes to us through the many threads and intertwining fibers of community. It comes to us in the valley of the shadow of death, sometimes wrapping us so closely that we do not even know it was there until we have come out the other side. It comes to us mysteriously and unsettlingly as the power that transforms, the laser-like precision of the Holy to unmake us and make us new.
After many years of slowly learning to open doors when I would have shut them, this is what I know. God is Love. We are here to learn to love as God loves. Knowing us better than we know ourselves, Love gives us what we need in order to do just that. And that is good news. AMEN.

Join the Advent Conspiracy!

You might like to look at the web site for the Advent Conspiracy, which proclaims:

CHRISTMAS CAN STILL CHANGE THE WORLD!

The story of Christ’s birth is a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love.

So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists.

And when it’s all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling of missed purpose. Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again?

“I Need More Money, Lord!”

By Lauren R. Stanley

PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti – I need more money.

Every single day that I live here in Haiti, that’s what I think: I need more money!

I must think that at least 10 times per day, sometimes more often than that: I absolutely, positively must have more money!

Yet even as I think this, even as I pray this – I really do need more money, Lord – I know that there’s not enough money out there. No matter how much money I have, it won’t be enough.

The money I want is not for me. It’s for the young mother living on the street with her three children, one of whom is an infant not more than six months old. I give her money every time I see her, and when I have fruit, I give her that as well.

I need money for the young men who struggle to sell art on the streets so they can go to school, or send their young children to school.

I need money to take care of the Haitians are sick and can’t afford medicine.

I need money for every single child here who is homeless, who doesn’t have enough to eat, who has no place to sleep.

I need money for the women who wash themselves in the street where the water line has broken, literally squatting down in the road, defying the crazy traffic, just to wipe their faces with “clean” water.

Everywhere I turn in Haiti, I see such desperate need. The poverty here is ubiquitous, the need overwhelming. So many Haitians come to the capital hoping to find a job, only to discover that there are no jobs here, either. They end up on the streets, sleeping in doorways, begging for food, washing in dirty pools of water.

And there simply is not enough money to take care of them. It wouldn’t matter how much money anyone gave me, I couldn’t do enough. I can’t rescue everyone here. The problems are bigger than me, they are bigger than my wallet, heck, they’re probably bigger than Bill Gates’ wallet.

Which leaves me in a dilemma on a daily basis.

How can I help? Who do I help? Do I choose the homeless mother with her infant and children? Or the children who seem to have no families? Or the young men and women on the streets who have befriended me?

How do I say “Yes” to some, and “No” to others? What do I do when I’ve given all the money I have to the first three people I see, and then come upon a fourth, a fifth, a sixth … who need my money just as much?

I give away a lot of my income, some months up to 50 percent of it. I make a point of carrying small change to distribute as I walk to and from work, to and from the store (where I spend money on myself, and then feel guilty for having done so). Sometimes, I pay for schooling; sometimes for medication; sometimes for food; sometimes for water. I try to help as much as I can.

And yet, every single day, multiple times every single day, I hear myself say, I find myself praying, “I need more money, Lord!”

There are economists and sociologists who argue that giving money to the poor to take care of their immediate needs will not solve their problems. I believe them. I know that to be true in a macro-economic sense.

But what I know intellectually doesn’t do anything for me – or for the poor – when I am confronted by them daily. Children with reddish hair and bulging stomachs that attest to their malnutrition can’t afford to wait for some grand new plan that will train them at some point when they are older. Mothers with sick children cannot wait for a hospital to be built 10 years from now. Widows lying in the street, praying for any kind of help at all, cannot wait for a future they may not live to see.

They need help now. They need to eat now. They need clean water now. They need medicine now.

So I pray as best I can. I work as hard as I can. I give as much as I can. And I try to believe that my prayers, my work, my help makes a difference.

And then I think:

Lord, are you listening? I really, really, REALLY need more money! Now!

The Rev. Lauren R. Stanley is an Appointed Missionary of the Episcopal Church serving in the Diocese of Haiti, where she works on the Partnership Program and Development, and teaches at the Theological Seminary in Port au Prince. Her website is http://GoIntoTheWorld.net

“As A Door Nail” by Donald Schell

Donald Schell has given us permission to put this essay in the Reading Room. It was originally posted in the Episcopal Cafe. Donald is affiliated now with All Saints Company, a nonprofit foundation for liturgical renewal. He was a founding rector of Saint Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco, and his heart also belongs to the Global AIDS Interfaith Alliance.
In the six weeks since my dad died, my mind has been wandering a lot. I read the newspaper or an email and think about emptiness and wonder about death. I hear a disturbing piece of national or global news and by some crazy logic of faith or hope, I remember my dad’s death, and feel sorrow for others’ suffering and the uncertainties we face, and then I’m moved to gratitude that we’re all alive and in it together. I try to write something (like this) and sooner or later the act of reflection and listening reminds me of something about him.

When I quit being irritated with myself for being so unfocused, I notice that raw edge of my consciousness feels oddly open to contemplation these days. Driving home to San Francisco after my first visit with mother after dad’s death, dazzling sunlight on the trees and the glistening waters of Crystal Springs Reservoir shone with life like I felt when I was newly and deeply in love thirty-four years before. Each sweet inhalation of breath surged with the contradiction of being alive with my father newly dead.

“Religion and Violence”-A Homily by the Presiding Bishop

A Homily by Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offered at the opening Evensong of the Trinity Institute’s Interfaith Dialogue on Religion and Violence, January 2008

How do we hear those texts – as Jews, Christians, or Muslims? Do we hear only our own tradition? Do we hear with the ears of one who has been liberated from slavery? Then choose this day to serve the God who has done that.

Do we hear what we’ve always heard? Justification for where we are, what we believe, the community in which we live and move and have our comfortable being? Careful. Nobody gets to see the Kingdom of God without being born again.

Do we hear with the assumption that we have the full and final and only truth? Well, God is still at work. Don’t be too eternally certain. In the meantime, be faithful.

At their best, religious traditions have always sought to lead human beings into greater understanding and knowledge of the Divine. Each of the world’s great religions was birthed in a unique context and time, yet each affirms a truth that reaches beyond that initial, limited context.

Ray Suarez’ Speech on the Episcopal Church

Ray Suarez, a writer and senior correspondent for the Jim Lehrer News Hour, gave this address to the 2009 General Convention of The Episcopal Church last July. He imagines what would happen if we Episcopalians gave up all  that make us distinctive – and begs us not to. A warm and witty address from a man who loves this faith tradition…

It is a joy to be asked to speak to this gathering of my brothers and sisters from all across the country and the world. I left a reporting trip in Tanzania to come here in full confidence that these invitations don’t come every day. It’s a privilege to speak to you on this day when we remember [Saint] Benedict’s radical welcome to all who come from what the old prayer book called “the blessed company of all faithful people.” With outstretched arms we take a big, broad, view of what that beautiful phrase means… “the blessed company of all faithful people.” That includes our partners and friends from other branches of the family who are with us today.

At this point in the life of the Episcopal Church, some of us, and some of the parishes we call home, may not be feeling they are in a blessed company right now, and are being forced to think about what welcome means, who is included in welcome. It is a tough time, even if your attendance is good, your pledges are strong, even if you have more baptisms than burials in an average year. We are forced to fight the battles, forced to live out the arguments that history conspired to make converge right now, in our day, in our time.

Steven Shakespeare’s Animal Welfare sermon

Sermon for the annual service of the Anglican Society for the Welfare of Animals
Durham Cathedral, Saturday 26th September 2009
The Reverend Doctor Steven Shakespeare, Lecturer at Liverpool Hope University

I want you to imagine something. I want you to imagine that there is another world above us. I’m not talking about a heavenly or spiritual world. It exists, like ours, in space and time. But it is a world fundamentally different from ours. The inhabitants of this world – because it is not a lonely place – have a rich experience. But their experience of dimensions, of colour and sound, of desire and satisfaction, of communication – all of this is so far detached from anything we might recognise, as to be unrecognisable. We would find it hard – impossible even – to know what it would be like to live in this other world or to be one of its inhabitants.

Let’s say that, somehow we had contact with this other world. We couldn’t talk with its inhabitants or understand their point of view, we couldn’t enter into their experience – but we were aware of them. What attitude should we take towards them? Should we pity them because they are not like us? Should assume that the only way we can understand them is to assume that at some level they really must be like us after all? Should we fear them, try to keep them out of our world? Should we even do what we could to destroy them?