June 24: The Nativity of John the Baptist

First, a quick shout-out to the Community of St. John Baptist in New Jersey, New York, and England.  And to all those celebrating, including the city of Genoa (this is for you, Dario) and the province of Quebec.  Happy patronal festival to you all.

What a great day!  We get the story of John’s birth and naming, and Zechariah's song.  In the office readings we hear Malachi promising/threatening the people that God is coming.  We hear John's famous line, made for the solstice: “he must increase, but I must decrease.”  All powerful pieces of the story of Jesus among us.

But today, what really stood out for me was the verse before the “solstice sentence.”

“He who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. For this reason my joy has been fulfilled.” (John 3:29)

I don't think of John as joyful.  I think of him as passionate, zealous, fierce.  I hear the warnings to repent, the accusations against the comfortable religious leaders.  I admire him.  But joy?  No.  But today I get it.

John gave his life to calling the people back to God.  He knew that the Holy One was coming.  He knew his job was to prepare the people.  He was not the main event; he was not even the warm-up act.  He was the one who comes to clean the arena before the big event.  Well, maybe he was the cleaner and the warm-up act; certainly many of his disciples thought he was maybe even the main event.  But he knew he wasn't.  He was waiting. 

Then, one day, he meets Jesus.  He knows he's the one he's been waiting for.  He rejoices, because he sees that his life and ministry have not been in vain.  I imagine that for many years he might have wondered: is this call from God, or am I nuts like so many people think?  Then his doubts are ended.

I hear the song of Simeon here.  Simeon, the ancient one who prayed in the Temple and believed that he would see the Anointed One before he died, also rejoiced when Jesus appeared.  “Lord, you now have set your servant free to go in peace as you have promised.  For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, whom you have prepared for all the world to see.”(Luke 2:29-31).  I imagine John might have said the same thing.  

Have you ever wondered if you were wasting your time, your life?  Have you ever known the joy of finding that your dream is being fulfilled?  

I have given years now to the quest to know God, to see God.  It can look crazy to people.  There's not much to show for it.  But I do know that joy, in glimpses and glimmers, and I know that I will know it more deeply in time to come.  And I know that in order for that to happen, I need to give way to let God be God, Jesus be Jesus.  S/he must increase, but I must decrease.  And when I fade away to nothing, my joy will be complete.

May you know that joy.  May we all know that transforming joy.  Amen.

P.S. I’ll be gone for the next eight days in silent retreat.  Please pray that I let myself be found by God.  Thank you!

June 22

Gospel for the Eucharist: Matthew 6:7-15

“Lord, teach us how to pray.”  The disciples ask Jesus how to pray, and he begins by telling them how not to do it.  Don’t pile up empty phrases.  That part makes me wince, when I think of some of the collects (prayers that open or sum up our worship) that my branch of the Church uses.  Jesus says, keep it simple.  God knows what you need.  Remember that when you ask.

Then he tells them how to pray.  First, give glory to God.  Name God, honor and reverence God.  Ask for God’s will to be done, rather than all my desires.  Let me be on board with your purpose.  That actually sounds like enough.  But we need more, we divine/human animals.

We need food, physical sustenance.  (And we need shelter and other basics, which I suspect Jesus would include in this phrase.)  We don’t need to store it up; we just need enough for today.  So ask for that.  And remember, we’re asking for “our” bread; not just mine.  Give us, all, what we need for today.

And wipe our slate clean.  Help us start over every day, with one another and with God.  Let us remember that if we forgive, we will be forgiven - by you, if not by the other person.  Help us open to your healing grace.

And save us!  With all our good intentions, we are prone to temptation and confusion.  Deliver me, keep me safe from myself as well as “outside” threats.

Notice what’s not here: the closing that we say in church, giving power, glory, and honor to God forever.  Jesus doesn’t include that (although I was horrified to see that our Spanish Bible inserts it - talk about alternate facts!).  It’s been said at the beginning, simply.  The closing is a lovely phrase, not empty but not really simple either.

What might we learn from these instructions?

Prayer is pretty simple.  Just show up.  Don’t worry about fancy words.  Don't make a whole laundry list for God, who knows what we need already.  Prayer is more about getting in tune with God’s purpose than it is about telling God what to do.

I’d love to have something brilliant to say about this, but it would seem to betray the very point that Jesus is making.  It would be empty phrases, aimed at bringing me glory instead of God.  So if I am to be faithful to Jesus’ instructions, I’ll close here.

Here’s the version we use among the Companions, borrowed from the Order of St. Helena:

Our loving God in heaven, holy is your name.  May your reign come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.  Give us today our daily bread.  Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.  Save us from the time of trial, and deliver us from evil.  

May your prayers be simple, and your life be a sign of God’s power and love.  Amen.

June 20

June 20

Happy summer solstice to you!  In four days we will celebrate John the Baptist, the polar complement to Jesus.  Traditionally born six months before Jesus, “the light coming into the world,” John is reported to have said, “He must increase, I must decrease.”  From today until Christmas the natural light will grow shorter.

It's a good day to think about the passion of acedia, known to the desert monastics as “the noonday demon.”  The day is long, the work routine.  Isn't there something else I can do?  Maybe I should visit a sick friend.  Maybe I should cheer someone up with a phone call.  Maybe I should cook something, or eat something.  Maybe I should play solitaire, or go for a walk, or surf the Web.  Just please, don't make me sit here!  Don't make me face the ordinariness, the unglamorous task in front of me!

The next several weeks are quiet for me.  I've had some quiet days, and in a week I go for an eight day retreat.  When I come back there's reading and preparing for fall events, but no rush or pressure.  That sort of time can make me uneasy.  Is reading a worthwhile activity?  What sort of reading?  Am I contributing, earning my way, justifying my life?  Others tell me that God wants me to rest and recharge, but I notice they struggle with it too.

And in the next months, as we look for a new place to live, temptations arise.  Where will we make a difference?  Where will we look good, again justifying our common life?  Where can I avoid the hard work of staring into my soul and finding something worth sharing?

Along with the command to flee the world, the first monastics were keen on staying where you are.  Stay, not only in this physical place, but with these people, and above all with yourself.  Stay, and encounter all the emptiness that is filled only by God.

I'm pondering what it means to stay in my life today.  On this longest day, when the sun seems to stop, what am I to do?  I'm doing what there is to do: writing letters of reference, paying bills, blogging.  Later I will cook.  Then I'll go to a county council meeting.  I'll talk to some people who need to talk, and I will reach out myself.  I'll read.  And in all of that, I'll pray.  I'll pray at noon, at 5, after the meeting tonight, as I've prayed twice today with Elizabeth.  I'll pray in the car, and I'm praying now.  

It's nothing big.  It's just the site of our incarnation and our redemption.  Just another day.

Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6)

I’ll invite you to look up the readings; there are too many choices now!

Here’s the link:  http://www.satucket.com/lectionary

Today I need to write about something else.

Last week the New York Times reported on the “historic” occasion of the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Newark receiving a pilgrimage of LGBT Catholics and welcoming them as a “brother,” a “disciple,” and a “sinner who has found mercy in the Lord.”  People cried with relief and joy.  Others have written hate letters to the Cardinal.  As an appointee of Francis, Cardinal Tobin signaled the possibility of a real shift in the Roman Catholic Church.

Among the Companions this generated some conversation.  The key question is, on what terms are LGBT people being welcomed?  As brothers and sisters?  As disciples?  Or as sinners?

I don’t mean the sin that is common to us all.  What concerns me is the residual thinking that suggests that queer desire is “intrinsically disordered,” and that “homosexual acts” are sinful.  It may be progress to say that they are no more sinful than, say, polluting the environment or getting rich exploiting others, but it’s not where I live.

I am a lesbian.  My vow of celibacy does not change that.  Sexuality is not an “act," but a way of being, a cluster of responses and sensibilities.  I’m as much a lesbian today, writing and teaching about God, as I was when I wrote and taught and spoke about queer politics.  And my desire is not sinful.  My relationship with my partner was not sinful.  It was part of my deepest human need for connection, expressed in that way.

Sex can be sinful, of course.  If in our sex we deny the dignity of the other, if we make the other into a tool for our own desire, if we ignore our relational obligations in the pursuit of pleasure, sex can be sinful.  But it is no more sinful for being between men or between women than it is for other encounters.

Our covenant says this about sexual relationships: “We hold love for others to be a window into God's love.  We see incarnation as a gift, and acknowledge our sexuality as holy.   For those called to it, celibacy is a gift from God rather than a deprivation, a doorway into deeper relationships of loving and being loved.  Those of us in sexual relationships endeavor to honor our beloved with body, mind, and heart.”

I’m pleased to say that many other branches of the Christian body already get this.  If you aren’t sure where your denomination stands, go find out.  If you aren’t LGBT but want to be an ally, ask questions.

Thank you, Cardinal Tobin, for a beginning.  I welcome you as a brother, as a disciple, as a sinner.  Now let’s move on to growing together into the stature of Christ.

June 15

Today the Episcopal Church remembers Evelyn Underhill, the author and retreat leader who brought the mystical tradition to so many people beyond academic circles.  She was not ordained, but she taught and advised many clergy.  She had a spiritual authority that was extremely rare for a woman in a patriarchal church and culture.

I wonder whether she would have been ordained, had she lived in a time and place where women could be.  In our age of professionalization and credentialing, it would be easy to think she would have; easy to think that the Church missed out by not having her as a priest, and that she missed something vital by not being ordained.  But the monastic tradition has always gone in another direction, a direction that’s increasingly important for our churches.

The desert tradition advises against ordination, and the early monasteries often refused entry to clergy.  The problems with ordination are many.  Most obvious, perhaps, is the problem of status and hierarchy.  Ordination literally means “numbering,” ordering, setting in a sequence.  Ordination enters one into a hierarchy, from within which one is always looking up or down.  It’s hard to square that with the community of persons who seek God as companions, rather than shepherd and flock.  Benedict advised that priests had trouble becoming good monastics.  Tales abound of monks fleeing bishops to avoid ordination as deacons or priests.

But there are other problems.  Rowan Williams points out the word-centeredness of ordained ministry.  Clergy have “license . .  to talk - to instruct, explain, exhort, even control.”  And talk can be a screen or a distraction, a rationalization, an obstruction to encountering God.  Add to that the encouragement to “do ministry,” to “be relevant” that is so much a part of contemporary clergy life, and you have a real temptation to abandon the quest for knowledge of God and oneself in favor of words, gestures, even community and comfort - none bad in themselves, but not the final goal.  (And that applies to this blog, too!)

It’s a commonplace that the Church depends on lay ministry.  And it’s common that lay ministry is treated as less than, less demanding or important or unique in the variety of gifts.  And in traditions where “religious” assumed a canonical status “above” that of the laity, the gifts of the laity were obscured even more thoroughly.  But the desert tradition, the monastic tradition especially of women, holds out another possibility.  In the church of the future, we will be more ‘monastic’ - less focused on authorized sacramental leadership, less divided between congregation and clergy, more focused on the quest for God together.  Those who have been excluded from ordination, and those who have avoided or suspected it, will be ahead of the rest of us.  

If you feel called to ordained ministry, go for it.  But bear in mind the monastic caution: flee from words!  Flee from the world!  Share only what comes from your own encounter with God, and only when asked.  (Here am I, exhorting!  I stand condemned.)

If you don’t feel so called, congratulations!  One less distraction.  What is God calling you to do with your gifts and your connection with God?  We need them.  God needs them.  Thank you for sharing them with the world.

June 13

Matthew 5:13-16

“Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your [Mother] in heaven.”

I’m reading Rowan Williams’ Where God Happens.  His theme is “discovering Christ in one another,” but he gets there through the Desert Fathers and Mothers.  This morning I read from a chapter on “fleeing,” a theme that runs through the desert experience.  Williams describes what it meant to flee, and how “fleeing the world” in fact opened the early monastics to seeing Christ in one another and in those who came to them.  They left “the world,” only to find that “the world” sought them out for their light!

Then I went down to Eucharist, and the Gospel for the day was this passage from Matthew (we follow the Episcopal two-year daily lectionary).  I pondered how the command to let our light shine goes with the call to flee.  I remembered when I first entered religious life.  I didn’t have a vision of service or ministry, beyond wanting to be with people as they prayed and discerned God’s work in their lives.  All I knew was that I had to leave what I was doing and who I was being, not because they were bad but because there was more.  I went to a community that let me focus on prayer.  After a while I noticed that something was growing in me, a desire to serve and share the love that was coming to me.  I began to engage in ministry.  It was rewarding, but in a different way than my prayer-focused life.  I struggled with balancing these two parts of my life, two locations.  Ministry took me into “the world,” with its values and priorities; convent life centered me in Christ, but brought its own challenges and problems.  There is no simple refuge.  Wherever we go, there we are.

Most of you live in “the world,” as the desert monastics would put it.  You live and serve there, you let your lights shine there.  So I’m not telling you anything you don’t know about the challenges.  Instead I wonder, how do you “flee” in place?  Where do you find that inner desert that sustains you, that community of other sojourners who support you in the quest to discover God?  Do you have a corner of your home dedicated only to prayer and reading?  Do you have times during the day devoted to renewing contact with the Source?  How do you keep your lamp lit?

If you don’t have such practices or such a community, let me invite you to begin.  Even the most extroverted disciple needs quiet time to hear the chatter in her head and to turn again to God.  As we breathe in and out, we receive Spirit and we return it.  

May you discover God in communion with others, and in your prayer, this day and always.

June 9

The retreat was amazing.  No other word for it.  Those women blew the lid off the place.  I cried for days, just releasing energy that was in that room.  It’s taken me all week to recover!  Thank God, thank you God, for a retreat day and a quiet week.  Thank you for brave women.  Now that’s what I call Pentecost!

And now, as we move toward Trinity Sunday, I’m reading Bede Griffiths.  In his search for points of commonality with all religions, he also touched on what is distinctive about Christianity: not, for him, the place of Jesus, but rather the Trinity.  The awareness of plurality and movement in the heart of the Godhead struck him as the unique gift of Christianity to the world.  I don’t know enough about other religions to know if it’s true that this is so unique, but his words made me sit up and look again at the power of the Trinity.

God is love: not merely the love that God sends into the world, the love we share with God, but the love within the Godhead itself.  God loves, in an endless flow.  God’s love for us is like the meteors that shower us; it is the overflow, the scattering, of a love that is perfect within itself.   And our love in return is the bounce of that same love, like light bouncing off a mirror.  But it’s not just a reflection of one thing: it is authentic, distinct, and yet one with the greater light.

This brings me back to forgiveness.  Henri Nouwen wrote, “Forgiveness is love practiced among people who love badly.”  Forgiveness repairs the gaps and the tears in the fabric of love.  In our daily lives we experience ourselves as not only distinct but as separate, even opposed, and so we hurt one another.  Forgiveness clears the ground for the dance of love to begin again.

I’m asking forgiveness more and more.  I’m granting forgiveness more and more.  My life is richer because of these.  And that is what God desires, what Jesus promises: abundant life.  In that abundant life I am free to dance with the One in Three, to find myself in God and God in me.  May you, may we, share that life today and always.

Pentecost Sunday

Acts 2:1-21 or Numbers 11:24-30; Psalm 104:25-35,37; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13 or Acts 2:1-21; John 20:19-23 or John 7:37-39

Interesting how much choice is given in the readings, isn’t it?  I wonder what’s up with that.

I’m leading a recovery retreat focused on forgiveness this weekend, so my readings are Acts, 1 Corinthians, and John 20.  I was tickled to see the John reading especially: “Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  I love that this instruction is given to all the disciples, not only to Peter (and I imagine there were male and female disciples in that room).  We all receive that Spirit at baptism, and we all have this power.  But what does it mean, to have the power to forgive or to retain sins?

This is a dense passage.  If you aren’t up for a slog, you might stop now.  But we’re going someplace important.  I’m following Gail O’Day’s commentary here, as best I can.

For John, “sin” is not a moral category so much as a theological one.  Sin is the state of separation from God, not by our bad acts but by our failure to see God in Jesus.  When John’s Jesus accuses the Pharisees of being “sinners” he is not calling them morally bad, but he’s saying they are blind to the presence of God among them (John 9).

“Forgiving sins” for John is not about removing a stain from our character, but is about revealing God at work in Christ.  If the faith community does not “forgive” this blindness by proclaiming and witnessing, then people will be left in their state of separation - their “sins will be retained.”  This is not then about penance and confession and absolution, as the Church later developed them (based on a passage in Matthew, very different); it’s about manifesting God and giving people a chance to see what we have seen.

Why use the word “forgive” here?  It doesn’t sound like the way we use it at all.  And because of that, it might open a new window on forgiveness.  When I forgive someone for particular violations, that’s a good thing; but if I’m really about new life, I don’t want to leave it there.  If I want release for myself and others, release from the past that so easily becomes the future, I need to find another way forward.  How about turning to God, turning to Jesus, seeing the glory that awaits us all?  Not so much about turning like “have mercy on me, a sinner” (which is still all about me), but turning like “Wow!  I never knew how much beauty and love are here all around!”

What if forgiveness is sharing the “Wow!” and letting the anger and regret of the past heal itself?  What if gratitude is the key to forgiveness?

If I retain your sin, I do my part to leave you in the dark.  I don’t really think I can claim to live in the light and do that.  I can’t make you live in the light; I can’t always even be sure I’m there!.  But I can do my best to let the light shine through me, so others might see what I’ve glimpsed.  Jesus isn’t authorizing the disciples to withhold or judge the “sins” of others; he’s commissioning them to do their best to let the light shine.  Peter’s speech on Pentecost is an example.  He doesn’t walk around forgiving people; he announces God at work in Christ, and opens the door for others to experience what he has experienced. 

Let’s do that.

June 1

Feast of the Visitation (transferred from yesterday)

1 Samuel 2:1-10; Psalm 113; Romans 12:9-16b; Luke 1:39-57

We had some chaos at home that made yesterday not a good day to celebrate this most blessed among feasts, so we’re doing it today.  I hope you all celebrated, but if not, you have another chance!

Today we remember Mary’s visit to Elizabeth after she’s learned she’s pregnant.  She arrives alone, likely afraid and confused about her future.  She may have encountered Gabriel, the angel of God, but I imagine a part of her wondered if she just made it up.  Elizabeth immediately changes her context and validates her faith.  She affirms that Mary is carrying a holy child, that she has been blessed.  Mary in turn sings the song of praise and power that has meant so much to so many (in fact, the Magnificat has been banned in Latin American countries where the rulers knew it was too empowering to be safe!).

So today we remember the power of community, of companions, to sustain us in our times of uncertainty.  Today I remember those, women and men, who saw something in me and called me blessed, or gifted, or beloved.  Thank you Mr. Rifkind and Mr. Wilhite (high school teachers); thank you Alan Garfunkel (college professor); thank you, faculty of the department of Political Science at UMass Amherst; thank you, Kaile Goodman; thank you, Bishop Beckwith; thank you, Don and Susan and Jim and Bob and all my coaches and mentors and sponsors.  Thank you, Elizabeth, for taking this journey with me and calling me blessed.  All of you are in the song I sing today.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord; my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

Who sings to you?  Who calls out your song?  Thank them today.