December 30, 2006

Silence redux

Christmas 1

Once upon a time near Christmas, a  teacher asked a group of first-graders what love means. A seven-year old answered: “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

I can hardly think of a more exciting time, especially when I was a youngster, than opening presents on Christmas morning. The larger the family, the noisier, the more laughter — the clatter of new things, the music, the shouts of joy. Think of the contrast if everyone stopped for a moment, everyone in the house and especially around the tree. The electric train at a standstill. The horns set aside. The dollies not crying. Remember the song, “The Sounds of Silence”? Such silence as this does indeed make a sound.

When the teacher asked his students what love means, one said, “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.” When we listen to that silence, maybe we can hear all the thought, all the shopping, the wrapping, the cooking, all the pleasant remembering of friends and loved ones, for now and in other Christmases past. Perhaps someone may realize in the silence that there’s a reason we call gifts “presents.” They are certainly not “pasts.” They are not “futures.” They are presents. They are gifts in the “now,” not in the “then” and not in the “when,” but in  the “now.” They are presents.

Ever so often, you’ll remember that in the liturgy, in the words we say and hear, the music we listen to and sing, there’s a time for silence. That short reminder usually comes after a reading or after a sermon or in the prayers of the people. It says “Silence may be kept.” It does not say that silence shall be kept. It says that silence may be kept.

One meaning of that is that silence — here and now — us yours to keep. You can do with it what you will, what you wish. Silence is a gift, a present, for you. You can even take it with you and use it whenever you need it. For most of us, there’s always a time when silence, even a little silence, will be welcome. It can be a time to remember, maybe even to remember love, that God loves us right here and now in the present. Every time we gather here in this place, silence is given and silence is kept. We take and keep these silences. One time, a visitor here was so surprised by the silences that they thought the priest had   somehow lost the place. 

There are gifts here and presents every time we come together. They are God’s gifts of bread and wine and story, of sound and music, bells and horns and violins, of our choir, of words, of signs and symbols. When we are reminded that silence may be kept midst all this, as with the first-grader’s answer about love, perhaps if we stop “opening” all these gifts, love may be, love can be especially noticeable. The love of your family, of your friends, of your neighbors, if we will but listen for it. 

And remember midst all this that God is love. God is the love in the Christ child whose birth we remember as God’s present to us. God is the love in our hearts as God’s presence with us. God is love in Mary’s and Joseph’s puzzled joy. God’s love in this place is yours. With the silences, it, too, may be kept. Of all the gifts in this life, said St Paul, love is the greatest, the one that lasts forever, the one that you can take with you, that you can keep.

Please take the silences. When you can, fill them with love. And one day, perhaps, you may bring them back. You are always welcome here…  and loved. 

December 29, 2006

Habits

Canon P D Quirk called to tell me he had just returned from his annual Advent eccentric prayer retreat. It was part of a growing fellowship in the church, he said, to counteract all the papist fuss over centering prayer, and to put it to the end it deserved. That the movement  chose Advent for this purpose was but a part of their usual in-your-face attitude about whatever, even so delicate a matter as the way one prays.

The sisters over at the Community of Constant Concern for whom Quirk was the chaplain-visitor, had been worried silly for some time over his penchant for always speaking in ellipses and leaving conversations at sea. They felt to a nun that this had driven him now to a similar practice in his prayer life that would only inevitably begin to affect theirs. 

The Abbess was especially disquieted. She had  long wanted to find some way to retire the Canon and to replace him with a more dependable priest, preferably a woman, and particularly a younger one whom she thought she could control by the commanding dignity of sheer presence if nothing else. She’d never much favored the ordination of women, but having years of experience in successfully managing them, thought she’d probably like to spend her waning years in the convent at least without having to fret over the incomprehensible vicissitudes of another male.

Quirk seemed oblivious to all this and I’m sure had no idea that the Abbess trusted me with her confidences about it. I felt a duty to her and our friendship somehow to help get his attention to consider some changes, at the least to begin by finishing his sentences. After all, the sisters reminded me, they should be able to help him, for they, of all people, should know something about how difficult it is to change habits. 

December 28, 2006

Place

Christmas 1C / Jn 1.1-18

T S Eliot suggested that the real meaning of exploration is to get back to the starting point “and know the place for the first time.”

His counsel seems altogether appropriate for Christmas. We always know, of course, or think we know exactly how this exciting story turns out. But it is still always an exploration into the unknown of ourselves and of tomorrow, for we really have never the foggiest notion about how all that will turn out.

Most of us heave a sigh of relief when Christmas is “over.” But Christmas is never over. It remains the most profound mystery for the life of faith and it is always a starting point to which we return and risk knowing “the place for the first time.”

But what kind of mystery is it? “There are mysteries which you can solve by taking thought. For instance, a murder mystery whose mysteriousness must be dispelled in order for the truth to be known.

“There are other mysteries which do not conceal a truth to think your way to, but whose truth is itself the mystery. The mystery of yourself, for example. The more you try to fathom, the more fathomless it is revealed to be. No matter how much of yourself you are able to objectify and examine, the quintessential living part of yourself will always elude you, that is, the part that is conducting the examination. Thus you do not solve the mystery, you live the mystery. And you do that not by fully knowing yourself, but by fully being yourself.

“To say that God is a mystery is to say that you can never nail God down. Even on Christ, the nails proved ultimately ineffective.” (Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking, Harper & Row, p 64, 1973)

For this “light shines in the darkness,” John wrote of Christmas in the prologue of his great gospel, “and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1.5).

When he wrote this about Jesus, it’s safe to say he probably knew from nothing about light in the terms we call the quantum principle. [It is also safe to say that neither do I. Homiletic license, however, is often a sure route into indeterminacy and arrives there with the very best of them.]

Light, say the astrophysicists, can be either particle or wave, but never both at the same time. It always depends on the way you look at it. So does Christmas. So does Jesus. Both are always a matter of the mystery, an altogether holy ambiguity. One cannot stop Jesus and make him into a bangle on the Christmas tree and also follow him as Lord at the same time.

This Jesus Light shines, as well, into the darkness of our own uncertainties, our own mysteries. We can bring that dark path of our experimentation with life, disappointed as we often are, and even lay it before the bedecked and garnished Christmas altar. Standing there, we are free to look away from the often blinding light into another year of resolutions, another year of planning, another year of expectation… and only find more darkness.

Or we can embrace that Light to lead us forth into this new year, exploring with love and faith and all those other great risks of grace. We well remember in these days that questioning apostle Thomas, the one whose faith and doubt made him something of an amalgam of himself, and perhaps a mirror of ourselves. Jesus confronted him not as some orthodox system of thought or doctrine, nor some attempt to freeze and manipulate reality, nor some institution, but that he was, instead, “the way, the truth, and the life,” the very pattern for being human as God imagined all of us to be.

Christmas allows us and sometimes even inspires us that in returning to it again and again, we might quite possibly come as T S Eliot reminded us, to “know the place — and even know our Lord — for the first time.” Perhaps we will. And then may we discover how awesome, indeed, is the gracious and mysterious ambiguity of the holy set down here in our midst.

December 27, 2006

Swear

It is more or less common that when we people take vows, we often use some symbol — an item or a phrase — that is apparently of importance and value to us, perhaps in order to validate the vow-taking. It may be casual, just a few words, such as “I swear by my sainted mother’s grave…” Or it may be of covenantal significance, such as, “With this ring, I thee wed…” 

Often, this is done by placing one’s  hand on a copy of the Holy Bible and making a vow, something like, “so help me God.” Witnesses at a courtroom trial are asked to do this when they promise to testify and to tell the “whole” truth, not, I suppose, just a convenient part of it. Elected or appointed officials usually do this when they are installed into office.

One can never really be sure whether “so help me God” may be a plea for divine assistance in the keeping of the vow or just an effort to convince the audience of the vow-taker’s sincerity or possibly both. Actually, one cannot be certain at all whether the person even believes in the God from whom they seek help, whomever that may be. There’s not usually any exam to find out, although the subsequent behavior of the oath-taker can frequently suggest some kind of answer about the degree of sincerity. 

I don’t recall anybody when taking an oath ever being asked whether or not or how much they believe in the Bible or what translation or whatever the Bible stands for or whatever parts they might exclude. I don’t recall anybody being asked whether they practice either of the religions the Bible represents or how much or how little if they do. It’s just done, that’s all, and then we observers can presume, if we presume, whatever we choose about their keeping of the promise. 

So along comes an elected congressman up in Minnesota who says he is a Muslim. It is reported that he plans to take his oath of office with his hand on the Holy Qur’an. So what else might we expect? Now this doesn’t mean necessarily that he is a practicing, dues-paying member of Islam or not, and since we never seem to ask that question of people who swear on the Bible it seems altogether consistent that we not ask such a question of the Muslim in Minnesota. Like the people who swear on the Bible, so far as we’re concerned, he can actually believe whatever he chooses. It’s the Cowboy Way. 

On the other hand, a lot of people have for some reason got their nose out of joint that this Minnesotan wants to swear into his elected office on the Holy Qur’an. I’m not exactly sure why they’re all the sudden so concerned. What if it were the Manhattan telephone book? It sure might get a smile out of Ma Bell, for one can always check the veracity of that symbol and how widespread is our agreement about it and the sincerity of our practice. 

December 26, 2006

Boxing

I don’t remember ever hearing of Boxing Day until a few years ago from one of my more erudite associates, who is something of an Anglophiliac, as it has some British connection which I’ll explain shortly. He’s a good friend and keeps me abreast of things like this, patiently.

In most places that bother with the appropriate calendars, today is also the Feast of Stephen upon which Good King Wenceslas looked down, whether from a superior perspective or merely in disdain, I’ve never been quite sure. Stephen, later named a saint by any measure, was the first Christian martyr and also a deacon, an order with an already built-in martyrdom complex. I take it there were neither Boxing Days nor Feasts of Stephen at the time. Nor, for that matter, my parents’ anniversary which is also December 26. Not being keepers of any liturgical cycle that I know of, they may well have never heard either of St Stephen’s or Boxing days, an absence of venue that could, perhaps, help explain that gap in my history.

Boxing Day, according to my abridged dictionary, is “the first weekday after Christmas observed as a legal holiday in parts of the British Commonwealth (sic) and marked by the giving of Christmas boxes to service workers, such as postmen.” It doesn’t mention whether the boxes were presents in themselves to be treasured or whether they also contained sugar plums and the like. (I had a senior warden once, a lawyer, who handed out silver dollars to cops on the beat in his town during Christmastime, but never spoke of the practice as having anything to do with Boxing Day, only with his maintaining peace and good will with those who enforce the law.)

It is a great and wondrous season that somehow in spite of ourselves we continue to maintain. If only we could each year extend it a bit longer. For now maybe for the twelve days we sing about?

December 25, 2006

Silence

Near Christmas time, a teacher asked a group of first-graders what love means. A seven-year old said, “Love is what’s in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.”

Here and there in the liturgy we celebrate, we find a short note. It says “Silence may be kept.” It comes after a reading or after a homily and in the prayers of the people. It says “may,” not “shall.” And it says that the silence may be “kept.”

One meaning of that is that it’s yours to keep. You can do with it what you will. You can take it with you and use it as the occasion arises. Most of us can rest assured that there’ll be such occasions over the next few days when silence will be welcome, and though we can remember any time that God loves us just as we are, we can surely remember that especially at that moment.

We’re careful to observe that suggestion about silences in the liturgy here. We take and keep them. So much so that one time someone wondered if we’d lost our place. When these intentional silences occur, as with the child’s notion about love, I hope that if we stop opening all these Christmas gifts of bread and wine and story, of brass and string and chorus, of word and sacrament for a moment, love may be especially noticeable. If we will but listen for it.

And remember midst all this that God is love. God is the love in the Christ child whose birth we remember as God’s present to us and as God’s presence with us. God is love in Mary’s and Joseph’s puzzled joy. God’s love in this place is yours. With the silences, it, too, may be kept. Of all the gifts in this life, said St Paul, love is the greatest, the one that endures, the one that you can take with you, that you can keep.

Please take. And one day, perhaps, you may bring it back. For here, you are always welcome… and loved.

December 23, 2006

Person

The picture of Time magazine’s Person of the Year is usually on the front cover. It may be somebody from the Dark Side, or maybe somebody from the Light, or maybe from a side that’s not all that clear. This year, the front cover is a mirror. The Person of the Year is us.

All those wannabes who thought for sure they’d get the honor, got it anyway. Maybe not the way they’d have liked, but mirrors never lie. There they/we are, smack dab in the middle.

It’s good that the honor comes at Christmastime. For though the grafitti says Jesus is the reason for the season, he’s also the reason for us. It is through him that God makes us a new creation. One of our Baptismal Covenant vows affirms that we will seek and serve Christ in all persons. You can’t beat Christmas for a time to remember that and to look always into that mirror in the other and also find ourselves, if only through a glass darkly.

December 22, 2006

Mall

CP and I got lost for a while in our town’s big monster Opry Mills Mall this morning. Never been there and done that. We’d already walked ourselves silly at seven-ayem rehab, done strength training (she, six pound bells, me, four, barely), and dodged the following Merry Cholesterol party with our fellow campers. 

We’d actually borne some inordinate pride that we’d never been to this mall-that-replaced-Opryland, thought it was not a very bright decision for the Chamber of Commerce. But we finally had to make this trip. For guess where is the only outlet for our mutual Christmas present?

So what do we know? Opry Mills is super, fairly well balanced between redneck and snob, and resplendent with everything, even a kiosk with Lebanese soap powder and chamois cloths. There must be several of these dispensaries or else we passed Lebanon three times trying to find the exit we entranced.

Practically all the merchants show big discounts, up to 70%, except, of course, the one where we got our present. I plan to connect it up if I can ever rediscover the muscles to get up again out of this chair. It is altogether possible, of course, that I’ll not be able to understand the instructions in the owner’s manual. But if I can’t, I’ll just wait until my son and his family come by for our tree together. 

Fortunately, rehab is closed until after Christmas, but there’s apt to be plenty cholesterol on hand around here.

December 21, 2006

Thomas

The Feast of St Thomas

Thomas, the Apostle, had practically nothing to do with Christmas. But then maybe he had a lot to do with Christmas. Anyhow, it is good that his December 21st feast day comes practically on its eve like it does.

That we seem to remember him more for his doubt than for his faith probably gives him a lot more grief than he deserves. We call him Doubting Thomas. Braveheart Thomas might be more fitting for his enterprise.

While the rest of the disciples were cowering full of resentment and fear that they’d bet their lives and whatever fortunes they had on a loser and that the Romans were breathing down their necks, Thomas was out pounding the pavement, risking arrest, renewing old contacts, checking the want-ads, and looking for work. He didn’t believe the talk about Jesus, and he wanted better evidence than the closeted behavior of his former colleagues.

But then, when he got what he wanted, he signed on for good or ill. There’s a line in a translation of Psalm 146 that fits him to a T, “Praise (God) for what you can fathom; for what you can’t fathom, praise him.”* He accepted his commission as an apostle, wrote a gospel, and, some say, started a new church over in India. “Brother Thomas’s Sawdust Trail.” Sounds like an evangelist to me.

We don’t have the hard evidence Jesus presented to Thomas, like walking through closed doors with holes in your head and your side and your hands and feet. John, the Gospeler, knew that, but he apparently knew something else, as well. Faith is not only always surrounded by doubt and without evidence. Faith creates both doubt and evidence. This Christmas faith we celebrate is like that.

Faith is risk, and risk wouldn’t be risk without doubt. And faith that comes only after evidence is no faith at all. It is trust, yes, but not faith. Faith is that act of the will, that daring commitment that climbs out on life’s limbs and leaps. And that is all the evidence we get. Faith creates trust.

It works two ways. My leap of faith is a kind of evidence for me and maybe also for you. And your leap is a kind of evidence for you and also maybe for me. Our faith as a community — all that touch and go — is what makes church church. The ekklesia — the called — doesn’t even deserve the name if it is not first and foremost a community of this kind of faith — and probably of doubt, as well. And there is no evidence for that — even the kind that moves mole hills, let alone mountains — until there is a pulsing, dynamic, non-judging heart of love at its core.

The disciples in the upper room would probably never have convinced Thomas until he experienced the vision of the risen Lord, himself. Nor if fear is keeping us in the closet will we ever convince those who pass by. Not until we show the world by the way we love one another — one of the greatest risks of all — can our witness ever become a winsome and compelling evangel of and for the Lord.

For it is in that nourishing and healing love that transcends both faith and doubt, the one Paul says endures forever, and wherever such love is found, within or without these naves, that is where the Lord is born. There is Christmas. And it is there that we find church, that we are church, and that we do church. Merry Christmas.
_______________________________________
* Stephen Mitchell, A Book of Psalms, Harper Collins, 1993

December 20, 2006

Trees

We’ve been watching for years a spindly fledgling volunteer oak struggling at the edge of the asphalt on our front street, waiting for an apt time to transplant it. The day came yesterday. Though all its taproot didn’t make the move, the landscaper’s root-nutrients did. Now, it’s wait and see. Does anyone pray for trees?

I suppose there was a time when I never thought much about trees except for to climb and sometimes enjoy their shade. I chainsawed a few dead ones into firewood on the place we had on the Cumberland Plateau. But geriatrophying has a way of changing all that. The older I get, the closer my sense of kinship with nature, the more anger that rouses when I see the way we and our environmentally illiterate leaders constantly insult it.

There’s a beautiful “empty” lot in our hood getting razed just so another oversized duplex (surely with four SUVs) can be planted for what once was a neat little forest with scads of birds and other beasts. The trees felled there will get chopped into fragments for the city dump. The trees that were felled elsewhere and made into lumber will replace them as joists and sills and hardwood floors and on and on and on. Lumber, another word for clumsy, is a quaint word for ex-trees, an insult in my book for what are often the epitome of gracefulness — and grace. One of my dearest friends of time past, from whom I learned much, near the end of his life got into hugging trees as if to identify with the nature of which we’re all an inseparable part. The thought has crossed my mind more than once.

CP and our yard guys just yesterday also planted five brand new shiny tall hollies on our spread and moved some of their sister and brother cedars around. Together with our new baby oak, they were a pleasant in-your-face to the scrapers down the street. I got all smug about it.