Spaciousness

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone at all familiar with the Episcopal Church that Holy Week is the busiest week of a parish priest's year.  There are five significant services this week - and they are all unusual, once-a-year events that take more planning than usual.  This year at Grace we're having a vigil service - the first vigil that we've had here in a very long time.  The vigil is a fancy and complicated service with all kinds of extras - a bonfire, candles, incense, chanting, lots of different readers, baptisms - the bishop is even coming to celebrate the service with us this year, along with our neighboring clergy.  It is the first vigil I have planned myself and I have been overwhelmed by all the details.  I have been in a bit of a panic, to tell the truth.

Today I finally put the finishing touches on all the ends I considered to be loose around this big service in my own mind, and I feel much better.  And the calm that has come over me has been a reall gift.  Because now I feel ready to travel through Holy Week in a way that I am open to receiving - not just giving.  I don't think it's only priests that can fall into the trap of managing their work, or their lives, in such a way that you become separated from it - almost as if you're watching yourself and what you are doing instead of actually being present and participating in it.  Have you ever had that feeling in your life or work?  I have, and of all weeks, Holy Week is not the week I want to feel that way.

Because the truth is - Holy Week is not primarily the busiest week of the year.  It is the holiest week of the year.  It can be a spiritual portal into new life - if I allow God to work in me.  Why would I want to be preoccupied with what I think my work is when God wants to work through me?  All the preparations we do at a church for Holy Week are not for ourselves.  They are for God.  And God is for us.  So really - what is there to worry about?

So I am glad I was able to get enough details settled today to allow myself the peace and the space to be able to receive - to listen - to rest - to contemplate - to hope - as this week progresses.  I pray the same spaciousness for you. 

If you'd like to experience the beauty of our Holy Week liturgies, you can find the schedule here:

http://gracetrumbull.org/templates/System/details.asp?id=47651&PID=767044

On a Day Late in Lent

Spring officially arrived two days ago, but this year it has felt like spring for a while already.  This picture of our intrepid concrete-defying daffodils was taken two years ago - on about April 16.  This picture proves how early spring is this year because the flowers look like this today on March 22.

A few years ago Steve and I were in San Francisco in early March.  The flowers were blooming, the fields were bright green and the farmer's markets were overflowing with local produce.  We'd flown out from JFK in some pretty dismal winter weather, so the contrast was striking.  My first reaction was to be uncomfortable with it.  "This is not very Lenten!" 

You see, I have lived in New England all my life and I have become accustomed to how Lent falls in the gray and chilly time of year - the time of year when the snow has gotten hard and dirty and the sidewalks are gritty and things just look - well - dead.  When the first crocuses finally start to come out - sometimes up through a late snowcover - and the soft green grass begins to bring life back into the gray landscape it gives Easter an added layer of meaning. 

So while I've enjoyed the beautiful weather lately, I realize I've also been feeling a bit cheated out of the yucky late winter weather that makes the spring so sweet in comparison and gives Easter a literal new life feeling.  And because of this, I can sometimes be a bit like the Lenten version of Ebineezer Scrooge or something. Spring? Sunshine? Daffodils? Bah Humbug!

What is wrong with that picture?  Today it's 75 degrees and sunny with a gentle breeze and I'm sitting in my office resenting it?  So at about 4 this afternoon, I realized I was nursing a stupid resentment and I went outside, took off my shoes and sat on a bench and enjoyed sitting in the sun.  They say it's going to get cooler again soon.  So I'm going to enjoy this day while I can and practice some gratefulness for small things. 

Yet, to add another layer to this onion, there is something very Lenten still at work here.  One of the reasons I know I have a Scrooge-like attitude toward this warm weather is because I know that the bigger picture of this lovely day includes the reality of an overall change in climate and the ominous environmental implications it reveals.  I've noticed many people's discomfort with this obviously drastic change in the weather, and it seems that we all feel powerless to do much about it.  So we say things like, "What a beautiful day!" but then kind of shrug and say, "It's so strange, isn't it?   Weird.  Almost unsettling."  We are hovering on the edge of acknowledging that the root cause of this early spring is perhaps the result of a collective character defect of our society - of our wastefulness as Americans and our disregard for the planet. 

There's a nice prayer in the prayer book.  I think it expresses the better intent of those Biblical words, "dominion over," which has always given me some measure of discomfort. 

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth,
you made us fellow workers in your creation:

Give us wisdomand reverence so to use the resources of nature,

that no onemay suffer from our abuse of them,

and that generations yet to come

may continue to praise you for your bounty;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen

I guess that through pondering all this, I'm coming up with a new way to describe what Lent is all about.  It's a time when we intentionally invite our discomforts to lead to more than just resentments or denial.  It's a time when we have a chance to allow our discomforts (and life gives us no shortage of those...) to lead us to a deeper discovery of God's will for us.  May you have a blessed Lent which brings you deep into the heart of God and prepares you for a new and transformed life this Easter.

Swimming against the tide

Garrison Kiellor said in a recent "News from Lake Wobegon" that the Episcopalians have ADD - Advent Denial Disorder.  He means (and he's right) that Episcopalians want Advent to be Advent, not Christmas, and therefore we pretend like the Christmas rush everywhere around us isn't really happening. 

Advent is the season of the church year that begins at the end of November and includes the four Sundays before Christmas day.  During the season of Advent, we do not sing Christmas carols in church - we sing Advent carols which are fairly formal and quite Anglican.  We don't put up lights or decorations until Christmas eve.  So unlike the rest of the country, which has been celebrating Christmas for weeks (or in the case of retailers - have been pushing Christmas since October or even late September) we stubbornly struggle to remain in Advent - insisting that it's a quiet season of preparation and anticipation.  We tend to look down our noses at those who put up their Christmas trees right after Thanksgiving.  Don't they know it's not Christmas yet?  But, as Garrison Kiellor points out, other than giving a token nod to Advent with Advent calendars or Advent wreaths, pretty much everyone thinks of the month of December as the Christmas season - rather than the Advent season.

I think this is too bad because I like Advent a lot.  So I had a strong case of ADD this year.  And in many ways, it was great.  I avoided the Christmas rush - choosing instead to take some quiet time to rest and prepare and take care of myself.  We didn't even buy our tree until Dec 23 - a practice we might repeat again because it was quite festive and joyful and we got a beautiful frasier fir for only $20.  And we had a lot of fun decorating it together as a family on Christmas eve.  It is still glowing brightly in our living room today, the fifth day of Christmas.  It will remain there until the 12th day of Christmas - January 5th. 

I really like honoring the church calendar rather than succumbing to the commercial calendar.  But this year I've found it to be rather a struggle to honor the Christmas season.  In Advent, it was easy enough to be counter cultural.  But this week, as I say "Merry Christmas!" to people, I've noticed the strange looks I get.  "Yes.... um .... Happy New Year," people mostly respond.  What's wrong with her?  Doesn't she know that Christmas was last weekend?  I've been posting a different Christmas song or video on the church facebook page each day of Christmas, and I notice I seem to be the only one still talking about Christmas at all.  And I bet it'll seem even stranger when I'm still saying Merry Christmas to people next week.  After New Year's Day, it'll be right out!  People have become Christmas weary - and who can blame them?  We've all had enough tinsel, Jingle Bells and Rudolph to last another year for sure!  People are ready to take the tree down and be done with it.  Time to move on to 2012.

So I'm left to wonder what it means to want to honor a calendar that is no longer normal.  What does it mean to want to stick to traditions that are no longer known, let alone fashionable?  And this leads me to ask: as fewer and fewer people consider church an important part of their lives, what does it mean to be a faithful churchgoer?  A person who professes a particular religious faith?  A disciple of Jesus?   Although sometimes it feels like a struggle, I'm not sure this struggle is all bad.  Because these days, I have to consciously choose my faith, to consciously decide to learn to swim in it and to really work at claiming it as my own - instead of just being swept up in the tide of what everyone else around me is doing.  I have to intentionally choose my own priorities when what's important to me seems counter cultural to most others - whether that's something as small as calendar traditions or as large as choosing my basic priorities in life.  I have to learn what it means to stand up for something even when it makes me stick out and seem strange to others.  I simply can't be smugly comfortable in my religious faith as some of my recent forebears had become, and I think it is a good thing.  I take heart that Jesus himself did not have a smugly comfortable life of faith, either.

 

All Saints and All Souls

I had breakfast with a colleague this morning, who recommended that I take a look at the eulogy Steve Jobs' sister's delivered at his funeral.   A eulogy about Steve Jobs?  Really Janet?  I have to admit that I've secretly resented all the attention Steve Jobs' death has gotten in the media and how his words of wisdom are now so often now quoted on facebook as if he were a wise philospher and not just a businessman.  I have generally judged this as a sad commentary on our culture - turning a wealthy entrepreneur into a kind of consumerist society saint - which has seemed to me to canonize wealth and influence and rugged individualism as our highest ideals.

But my conversation with my colleague has opened me up to a different viewpoint.  She spoke admiringly of Steve Jobs' creativity, his commitment to excellence, his love of his work, his ability to risk and to change, and his search not just for function but for beauty.  She pointed out that it is no mystery why people have paid so much attention to his passing is because he and his company and his products have really changed life as we know it for almost every individual in the US.

So I got off my high horse and took a look at the eulogy.  Mr. Jobs' sister obviously loved him a whole lot, which her words clearly show, and according to her, his last words were, "Oh Wow, Oh Wow, Oh Wow!"  Such final words would endear me to anyone, no matter what I knew or didn't know about them.  So I decided that perhaps I will let go of my resentment about the press coverage of Steve Jobs' death and instead choose to focus on how sometimes it is only through another person that we can manage to see something bigger than our human selves, and how just a few very human words can somehow fully express the power of love, the adventure of death and the mysterious presence of God in and among us.

Open Hands

Fall is traditionally pledge drive time in churches, and we are having our Commitment Sunday today. As I write parishioners are travelling all over town visiting each other, talking about the church, sharing why it's important to them, and making their 2012 financial pledge by filling out their pledge cards. Later today, we will gather for a special service at 4:00, at which we'll gather all the pledge cards and dedicate our commiment to God and share in the bounty of God's abundant feast around the communion table. Then we'll enjoy a great supper together downstairs.

Pledge time can be an uncomfortable time for people in the church, because whenever you start talking about money, anxieties show up. Gertrude Stein said, "Money is funny," and I couldnt' agree with her more! But this year I have come to understand in a newly deep way how important it is for us to talk about money and to be generous in giving. I will be sharing at our service later today a quote from Bishop Mark Andrus of California, who wrote these words on his blog while attending the recent Bishop's Conference in Quito, Equador:

I was part of a group that stayed in Quito but journeyed a long distance in culture and economics, to Sector Comité del Pueblo, a community of poor and working class people who squatted some thirty years ago on a large swath of a valley that absentee landowners had left fallow. They finally received recognized land rights, and they have created a vibrant community, which has a wonderful Episcopal mission in it, Mission Cristo Libertador, Christ the Liberator. ... It was there I attended a worship service, and the opening song had this refrain: “May we always have hearts without doors; may we always have open hands.”

Immediately I remembered what I learned this past spring about the Guarani people - they call themselves the people with open hands. What that means is that as they receive something –money, material possessions, emotional investment, ideas – they are thinking about how they can enhance the gift, and pass it on.

The Guarani, through several centuries of experience with colonizing Western culture have learned to call us the people of the closed hands; people who immediately invest energy in how to hold onto possessions of all kinds.

I felt a sting of recognition when I was referred to here as a person of closed hands. And I have since been imagining how my life would be transformed by becoming a person with open hands. And I believe that is what Jesus calls me to be - even with my material possessions - even with my money -even though a voice inside me tells me I don't have enough and I'd better hold onto it just to be safe. I've been imagining how our church would be transformed by becoming a people of open hands - and how our community, our economy and our world could be transformed. This is a dream of no less than the kingdom of God - a vision of the gospel in action - this becoming and living as a people with open hands.

So I am grateful this year for our pledge drive, which reminds me in a kick-in-the-stomach kind of way that everything in this life is a gift, not a possession - and that as a disciple of Jesus I am called not to store up possessions, but to steward them, enhance them, and then give them away for the sake of God's love - in response to God's abundant love for me and for the whole world.

So I am praying this morning for Grace Church and for all our parishioners, out there talking to each other right now about the sometimes uncomfortable topic of money. And I'm praying that we may truly develop hearts without doors and become a people with open hands.