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Psalm 107 and Pelagius

7/22/2016

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During my prayer today, I rewrote Psalm 107. This took me the better part of two hours--a considerable amount of time compared to what I've spent on other individual psalms. I think it required extra time because what I wanted it to say reminded me of a Christian heresy called Pelagianism, which basically says that we human beings have what we need within ourselves to attain/earn salvation--no extra help from God (via the Christ) necessary.

The difference between Christian and Thean thought here is twofold: first, according to Theanism, salvation is not something that human beings (or Creation at large) need--there is no doctrine of "Original Sin" in Theanism. Theanism claims that we are not now nor have we ever been nor could we ever be separate from Thea, even when we do wrong or commit evil deeds. Thea's love is stronger than any individual's or community's ability to do wrong--Thea's love, which binds all Creatures together as her Sacred Body, can never be torn apart.

Second, according to Theanism, all Creatures are Thea's Incarnation. Whereas Christianity requires God's Word to be made incarnate in a single, sinless man who is sacrificed by death on a cross for the world's salvation, Theanism says that we--all of us--are Thea. Therefore we are individually and collectively all we will ever need to fulfill our ultimate purpose, which is to love and bear witness to one another, particularly by answering the passion that stirs deepest within our hearts, no matter what obstacles lay before or around or beneath or behind us. When we experience fear, doubt, or distress, as the people in Psalm 107 do, we only need to remember who we are: Thea's Sacred Body, capable of fulfilling our destiny to love if we can just turn inward to remember that love is the stuff we're made of.


Psalm 107
 
Give thanks to Thea, for her love is a holy flame
   that burns brightly within her Creatures.
 
Some wander in the desert,
   finding no way to a city where their hearts might dwell.
 
They hunger and thirst;
   their flesh languishes.
 
Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;
 
Thea thus puts their feet on a straight path
   to go to a city where they might dwell.
 
Some sit in darkness and deep gloom,
   bound fast in misery and iron;
 
They are humbled with difficult work;
   they stumble, and find none to help.
 
Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;
 
Thea thus leads them out of darkness and deep gloom
   and breaks their bonds asunder.
 
Some go down to the sea in ships
   and ply their trade in deep waters;
 
Then a stormy wind rises up,
   which tosses high the waves of the sea.
 
They mount up to the skies and fall back to the depths;
   their hearts freeze because of their peril.
 
They reel and stagger like drunkards
   and are at their wits’ end.
 
Then they look within themselves for Thea’s help,
   and their divine fire melts their icy fear;
 
Thea thus stills the storm to a whisper
   and she brings them to the harbor they are bound for.
 
Thea’s love changes deserts into pools of water
   and dry land into water-springs.
 
She settles the hungry there,
   and they find a city to dwell in.
 
They sow fields, and plant vineyards,
   and bring in a fruitful harvest.
 
The wise will ponder these things,
   and consider well the holy fire of Thea that burns within.

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Psalm 78

7/15/2016

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This is a psalm that originally spoke of the stubborn hearts and repeated rebelling of God's people, despite God's goodness and generosity. In the original psalm, God grew angry and finally allowed the people to die off to see if it would make any difference with them.

I believe my rendering of this psalm speaks to a Thean worldview, one in which we as Creatures still rebel and in which God still resists that rebellion, but in which rebellion, resistance, and resolution are imagined in a very different way.


Psalm 78

 
Hear my teaching, my sisters,
   incline your ears to the words of my mouth.
 
I will open my mouth in a parable;
   I will declare the mysteries of ancient times.
 
That which we have heard and known,
and what our foremothers have told us,
   we will not hide from their children.
 
We will recount to generations to come
   the liberating deeds and loving power of Thea.
 
She established wisdom,
   which she gave us to teach our children;
 
That the generations to come might know,
and the children yet unborn;
   that they in their turn might tell it to their children;
 
So that they might discover their divine identity
   and live as icons of her in the world.
 
She worked marvels in the sight of our foremothers,
   in the land where they were once slaves.
 
She split open the sea and let them pass through;
   she made the waters stand up like walls.
 
She led them with a cloud by day,
   and all the night through with a glow of fire.
 
She split the hard rocks in the wilderness
   and gave them drink as from the great deep.
 
She brought streams out of the cliff,
   and the waters gushed out like rivers.
 
And she said to them, “This!
   This is what I want you to do for your fellow Creatures!”
 
But they strayed from the path she had given them,
   rebelling in the desert against her.
 
They tested her in their hearts,
   demanding food for their craving.
 
They railed against her and said,
   “Can you set a table in the wilderness?
 
True, she struck the rock, the waters gushed out, and the gullies overflowed;
   but are you able to give bread
   or to provide meat for her creatures?”
 
When Thea heard this,
   a fire ignited in her heart,
 
For they had no faith in Thea;
   how could they possibly have faith in themselves?
 
So she commanded the clouds above
   and opened the doors of heaven.
 
She rained down manna upon them to eat
   and gave them grain from heaven.
 
So mortals ate the bread of angels;
   she provided for them food enough.
 
She caused the east wind to blow in the heavens
   and led out the south wind by her might.
 
She rained down flesh upon them like dust
   and winged birds like the sand of the sea.
 
She let it fall in the midst of their camp
   and round about their dwellings.
 
So they are and were well filled,
   for she gave them what they craved.
 
But they did not believe in her promise,
   that her power to work miracles was also their power.
 
They remained steadfast in their stubbornness
   and had no faith in her wonderful works.
 
Then Thea woke as though from sleep,
   like a warrior refreshed with wine.
 
She set her eyes on her Creatures,
   whom she had always loved;
 
And she whispered in their hearts once more,
   that they might recognize their true calling, their deepest yearning,
   and become her miracle-working hands and feet and heart in the world.

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Spirit Whispers: Dark Night

10/20/2014

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This morning my spiritual director sent me Richard Rohr's daily meditation e-mail. He wrote of John of the Cross' dark night of the soul:
You can’t go forward by “knowing” in the usual way, but only by experiencing. At some time in your life, I hope you are so ambushed by God, that God catches you by surprise. If you try to go by what you already know—John of the Cross makes it clear—you will pull God back into your pre-existent categories, and you won’t get very far. That is why most people stay with their childish faith.

When God leads you into a dark night, it is to deepen and mature your faith—which, by its very definition, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) The gift of darkness draws you to know God’s presence beyond what thought, imagination, or sensory feeling can comprehend. During the dark night the tried-and-true rituals and creeds of religion no longer satisfy or bring assurances of God’s love. (So you might get bored with church services for very good reasons too, but that is not the same as mere spiritual laziness or a lack of faith.)

God is calling you into deeper and closer intimacy, beyond anything you could achieve with your most sincere attempts, closer than you could even dream.  But you must learn to proceed without any guarantees from your feelings or your intellect. That’s the only real way to grow in faith and divine love.
I wonder if that dark night isn't where my soul has made its nest over the last three months. For a long time--years and years--I have sought my life's value outside of myself. And I wonder if it hasn't been within me all along, in that deep place within which God's fiery life flickers. 

I wonder now if I would find comfort in this dark night by writing not to or for or about others, but simply to God, my life's source. In intimate communication with God, could there be any doubt of my value? What would I discover?

Perhaps I, the expert in liturgical prayer, have been praying in the wrong way, with the wrong words. Perhaps my own words were the ones God beckoned from me. It is one thing to pray the psalms, and another to pray the psalms of one's heart. Is one thing to read God's word, and another to enflesh it.

Maybe what God is bringing to birth in me is not what I can do for others, but the birth of God's name for me: "Beloved."
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Spirit Whispers: The power of story

8/17/2014

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The following is the text of a homily I preached this morning at St. Augustine's Episcopal Parish in Tempe, Arizona.
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I’d like you to pause for a moment and think about your favorite book. Think about the title, the story, and the characters. Think about the actual copy or copies of the book that you’ve read, and where you were when you last read it. By a show of hands, how many of you have read your favorite book half a dozen times or more?

I reread one of my favorite books this week. My copy of Lawrence Thornton’s Imagining Argentina has yellowing paper, a splitting spine, and some of the most compelling characters I’ve ever met in words. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve read and recommended Imagining Argentina to others. It’s a hard book to read, but the vision of hope it presents is powerful precisely because the heart of the book is so difficult. I find that lots of books and stories are great to sink my teeth into, but then there are those precious books whose stories sink into me, and my life is different—more thoughtful, more considered, more virtuous—for it.

When Fr. Gil announced several months ago that I would be preaching on August 17, I looked up the lessons of the day and practically jumped for joy. The stories of the Bible we hear today from the Old Testament and the gospel are two of my favorite stories from scripture.

Fast forward to earlier this week, when I read an e-mail containing a message from our Presiding Bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori. She wrote to ask the entire Episcopal Church to make today, August 17, a day of prayer for those in Iraq.

It would be pretty hard not to pay attention to all the stories of what’s going on internationally these days. The Gaza Strip has been a focal point of terror between Palestine and Israel. Iraq is in the news for its highly visible genocide of Christians, among others. Thousands of militants who believe war is the only way to end war are ending the lives of innocent people, while they simultaneously inspire the uprising of new war-mongerers on every side. The desire to maintain the purity of one’s own land is the driving force behind much of this violence and prejudice. Even in our country, young unarmed men and women are being shot and killed by those who only seem to see that these young people are on the wrong side of the American color divide. Children are being detained like prisoners on our borders, in limbo between a land they cannot thrive in and a land that treats them as chaff among amber waves of grain.

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t slept well for weeks. These stories echo painfully in my heart. They force me to acknowledge that that simmering hatred becomes a blazing rage in manifold ways each day among people both far away and here at home, people who claim to be driven by the call of the law, or the call of God—people like me.

On this day of prayer for those innocents who are dying in Iraq, I see in today’s lessons stories that are less interesting than urgent, more deep than obvious.

The story of Joseph is an epic--we first meet him as a boy, Jacob's son. His many older brothers, in a fit of collective jealousy, throw him into a well, leaving him for dead. Then they change their minds, pull him out of the well, and sell him into slavery instead, figuring they ought to get something out of him. Joseph ends up in Egypt and endures prison and other grave hardships, with no hope but God's promise to help him. Eventually he becomes Pharaoh's most trusted advisor. When we encounter him in today's lesson, his brothers have just arrived, desperate for mercy from Pharaoh’s advisor in the midst of famine. They don’t know that the powerful man before them is their brother. As Joseph prepares to reveal his identity to his brothers, he sends everyone else away. In the end, all of Egypt, even the Pharaoh's household, hears his cries when he is alone with his brothers for the first time in years.

Next, in the gospel story, we hear about a Canaanite woman, a foreign woman, who comes to Jesus begging healing for her daughter who is possessed by a demon. At first Jesus ignores her, as if she weren’t even there. Then his disciples get antsy and ask him to send her away. To appease his friends, he gives her an excuse. She persists. He gives another excuse; she persists again, but this time she refers to him as master of the story that they’re creating through their dialogue, and it’s at that point where the story turns.

The difficulty with these stories for me comes when I try to put myself in them. I'm not powerful Pharaoh. I’m not wise, faithful Joseph. I’m not the woman begging on her knees for her daughter's life, and I’m certainly not Jesus.

When I put myself in these stories, the characters that resemble me most are the jealous, grudging brothers and the possessive, anxious disciples. I live a comfortable, privileged life. I don't easily relinquish my comfort, particularly for someone I don't like or whom I have no direct connection to. With all the horrors I read about in the news, whether in Gaza or in Iraq or in the United States, I perceive the selfishness of my fellow humans keenly, because it is that same selfishness on a grand scale that I practice on a micro-scale. I see in middle-eastern war-mongerers, as well as white-skinned insiders screaming at and threatening brown-skinned outsiders, unholy icons of the many ways in which my heart is hard and impenetrable. I cry over what I read in the news and in these scriptures, because I know how hard my heart is to break open, and I know it can't be any easier to break open any of theirs.

But here's the thing: Joseph's brothers, who sent Joseph to his doom, watched as God's grace broke through their evil deeds. God’s grace revealed not only their brother who had saved all of Egypt and surrounding lands from famine, but revealed their brother who loved them more than ever.

And then there’s the foreign woman from the gospel. By calling Jesus “Master,” she forces him to pay attention to her. Not only does he pay attention to her, but his understanding of what it means to be Lord is subverted by her. Through this woman’s unflagging persistence in the face of blatant rejection and humiliation, Jesus—God’s own chosen one-- perceives that his power as Lord is not just for the sake of “his people,” but for all who call on him for saving help. Through this foreign woman, God's grace breaks through the walls Jesus and his people had built against this woman, this outsider.

If God can accomplish mighty, gracious deeds through possessive, jealous, rebellious hearts like those of Joseph’s brothers, and if God's grace can break through the walls that Jesus' disciples and even Jesus put up to guard their selfish interests--then perhaps God's grace can break through right here in our midst.

What if the stories of war-mongerers and privileged insiders were subverted by stories more persistent and enduring than theirs? What if they were to see that they are indeed called by God--not called to hate and shut out strangers, but rather to love and to welcome and uplift them? I wonder, if we each take a moment to remember again our favorite books and stories, what we might discover about ourselves from them. What do we find most compelling? Do we embrace the bravery and outrageous kindness and selflessness that we encounter in our most beloved, imperfect characters?

What if we were to embrace Joseph’s love of those who had utterly betrayed him? What if you and I embraced Jesus’ humility in accepting that we, as citizens of the most powerful nation on earth, are accountable to more than just the people we call our own? What if we listened not to our own wisdom, but the wisdom that inspires us to become who we are called to be? Maybe the Word of God, Holy Sophia, would become incarnate in us as it did in Mary when she made her bold, unwavering, all-embracing “Yes.”

Perhaps, if each of us said yes to the wisdom in the stories that are most precious and compelling to us, we, like Mary, would become God-bearers in the world.  Perhaps then, beginning with you and me, God’s peace would spread to all lands and peoples, and then perhaps the peoples of the world, both here and elsewhere, would come at last to dwell in the everlasting peace of God.

Amen.

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Spirit Whispers: Israel or Palestine?

7/21/2014

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Does God take sides?
Does God cheer for Israel's victories,
or cheer for Israel's losses?
Does God pump his fist when Palestine succeeds,
or weep when Palestine stumbles?
Is God on the sidelines of Gaza, rooting for his team to win?

If God were mere man
perhaps the Gaza Strip would be one great football field
and God's whole life would rise and fall
according to the victory of his team.

The Christians say
God became flesh and dwelt among us
They say God became mere man.

They also say the God-Man's great victory was accepting death on a cross
that others might live.

But if Israel and Palestine's men keep taking one another's lives
in God's name
who will be left to bear his cross?

Perhaps the Second Coming
that the Christians await with bated breath
(as smart phones offer updates about their team)
will
be another Incarnation,
a child born in the midst of blood and turmoil and rage.


Maybe the Second Coming
will be
a child born of love spilling over
between a child of Israel and a child of Palestine

Maybe, instead of a cross
there will be
a stand
silent and gentle and unwavering
Palestinian hand in Israeli hand

the fruit of their living bodies
God's own child, swelling the mother's belly:
an invitation to end life no more.

What will it take for the beloved children of God
to perceive that the people they murder
are the beloved children of God
to understand that the people they hate
are their sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers
and daughters and sons
?

What will it take for Jews
and Muslims
and Christians
and other religious people
and anti-religious people

to
quit

taking
sides
to say
"It is done"?


Will it take a new Yeshua?
A new martyr?
A new cross?

Will it take a wise mother among many wise mothers
who learned long ago that only love can yield a victory?
Will it take a woman among many women
who has seen the futility of this fight all her life

to rise up and teach the foolish men what they refuse to learn?

God, how long before you touch the hearts
of the children who think you take sides?

How long before you assure them that they are equally,
infinitely loved?

How long  before they cease their fire
and offer open arms of
sorrow, repentance, forgiveness?

What do you mean
to whisper that
this assurance
this peace
this love
this transformation of the hardest of hearts in Gaza
begins
with my own heart?

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Easter: Day 49

6/7/2014

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PictureThe Rev. Br. Chad-Joseph Sundin
This morning my Benedictine brother, Chad-Joseph, is ordained as a transitional deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona at Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix.

As I reflect on my brother's call and ministry, I hear the music that God plays through his life, as God played the music of Jesus through Mary. He is a good and faithful servant; he empties his life so God's life might live in him, saying yes to the impossible as Mary did, protecting and up-lifting God's faithful servants without regard for his own image as Joseph did, becoming God's life-giving, light-imparting, nourishing presence in the world as Jesus did.  I am one of many blessed witnesses to the working of God through Br. Chad-Joseph's life, because I am one of the many people who has looked at him and beheld God's gentle, undemanding, welcoming presence.

On this day when my brother receives the sacrament of Holy Orders, the Magnificat resonates in my heart.

John Michael Talbot, my favorite sacred singer from when I was a little girl, offers a Magnificat meditation that honors my brother's response to his call in a beautiful way:

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Living Lent: The Reed of God

3/25/2014

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Caryll Houselander wrote a little book over fifty years ago about the mother of Jesus called The Reed of God. Houselander's idea is that Mary became the reed through which God's Word was played into the world.

When I first read this a few months ago, my old religious context had me shaking my head. I didn't like the idea that Mary was merely a reed for God to play as God chose. Mary is always merely this or that--merely a woman, merely a vessel, merely an obedient human--and it touched a little too close to my own experience as a woman in the Roman Catholic Church, which was an experience of being lesser, lower, and either diminutive or diminished.

Today, however, is the Matronal Feastday of my community, the Community of St. Mary of the Annunciation, and I find myself regarding Houselander's metaphor with new appreciation. In my present context, where to be a woman is not "merely" anything, but rather a strength and a tremendous gift, I can see the reed metaphor with awe and wonder. If Mary was not merely obedient, but radically and willfully obedient, I can get on board. If she allowed God transform her into the most beautiful instrument of music the world has ever known, rather than simply accepting God was going to do what God wanted, then Mary may be the greatest heroine I've ever encountered. I behold myself in her, a woman lifted up and honored fully for who she is and what she brings to the table, and I, like Mary, am choosing to let go of less important schemes so God can act through me. I see myself becoming a reed of God because I trust the music God can breathe into and through me is awesome beyond what I might produce alone.

I see in this book, and in today's feast, a celebration of a strong woman who allowed herself to be made even stronger, a capable woman who allowed herself to become even more capable, a powerful woman who allowed the greatest power in all the universe to take root in her, to become her very flesh.

She could have said no. Her yes wasn't the obvious choice. Her yes, as I understand it, was a considered choice. She perceived that God was inviting her to allow God to be born into the world through her. What an invitation.

Mary is often seen to be extraordinary because she's a nothing who's turned into a something when God deigns to dwell in her. I don't buy this. Mary is no mere Sleeping Beauty, waiting for something to be done to her to give her life meaning. Mary is Merida, brave and bold and primed for adventure--and she is called to this adventure because she cultivated an adventurous life long ago.
God rarely calls people out of the blue. God calls people to do in extraordinary ways what they already do well. Mary was already making her own beautiful music for those around her when she was asked if she would be the instrument for God's music. She was no arbitrary choice. She, a Jewish woman who would never have been chosen for anything important in her patriarchal world, was the best possible choice to bring forth God's Word in a world filled with lesser words. God was calling her to subvert the status quo, and she was ready. All she had to do was say "Yes" for the fate of the whole world to change.

May I give a well-considered, powerful yes when God invites me to allow divinity to make a dwelling-place deep within me, and may I bear God's marvelous, life-giving, death-destroying fruit wherever I go. For I am no mere woman. I am a woman: brave and strong and fit to do God's most important work.

When God asks me to be the key player in God's next adventure, I'll have my Benedictine running shoes laced up and ready to go.

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Nine Months

3/2/2014

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Nine months ago, I gave birth to my second daughter. Nine months before that, I had little idea that I was about to conceive another child.

In each of these nine-month periods, my world changed radically.

Eighteen months ago, I had one awesome child. Then, nine months ago, there were two.

Nine months ago, I had an office job and I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area--my husband and I had no plans in place for anything else.

Now I am living a life that, for all my creativity, I couldn't have imagined. I live in the Sonoran desert. I've published my first book. I've become an Episcopalian in the midst of a beautiful Christian community. I have found greater peace than I ever anticipated in my prayer life as a Benedictine Canon novice.

This evening I am filled with gratitude and hope for the blessings I experience in each moment. And I wonder, with great hope, what shall be brought to birth in my life next.

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Thursday Night Mystagogy

1/26/2014

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PicturePhoto by Thad Botham
A dozen or more holy bodies gather in an oval, looking at and past the sacred, central flame to behold the divine spark in one another.

Thursday night invites something a little different at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church.  The community that gathers then has many names. St. Brigid's. ECMASU. Young People and Families. The Thursday Night Community.

There are nearly as many children as adults in the community. The adults are powerful, each in their own way: well-educated, thoughtful, driven, accomplished.  They are students, parents, doctors, teachers, professors, and even brain guys. For countless reasons, these people come together to share words, silence, and nourishment with one another. 

It may be those three things--words, silence, and nourishment--that best characterize this community's fellowship. 

~~~

I was asked by the pastor--without advance warning--to be a minister of the holy bread during the eucharist last Thursday.

Surprising things like that happen. A moment of need arrives, and suddenly someone finds herself being called on to serve. Not because she's uniquely qualified to do so, but because she has offered her presence in that community, and her presence is enough. Anyone who shows up can serve, if they are willing.

Anyone who shows up can serve, if they are willing.

Anyone who shows up can serve, if they are willing.

The Thursday Night Community is a gathering of folks who, more importantly than anything else, choose to show up.  If they're called, and if they're willing, they serve.  Their presence is Christ's presence.  Their willingness is Christ's willingness.  Their service is Christ's service. 

The Thursday night gathering is a rehearsal of the reign of God. 

~~~

Time slowed when I stood up to serve the community last Thursday.  I strained my ears to hear the words that I would speak to the others: Body of Christ, Bread of Heaven.
  As I moved around the oval, I looked at each person's face, and a few raised their eyes to meet mine.  What a shock of communion it is to meet eyes and hold another's gaze from mere inches away, while offering a precious morsel of food!  It is as intimate as dancing.  (My best friend, Betsy, would get that.)

I don't know what it all meant to me, or what it may have meant to the others there, but I can say confidently that last Thursday was game-changing.  Perhaps it was initiation--a sort of baptism by fire.

I just know I won't ever be the same.

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Christmas

12/25/2013

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PicturePhoto by Monty and Julie Carson
My daughter danced my parish into Christ's birth last night.  That memory will remain with me for the rest of my days. 

~~~


As part of my Benedictine prayer practice, I read the lections of the day according to the Book of Common Prayer.  A portion of the first letter of John was today's second reading.

This line pealed out like holy bells: "[A]s long as we love one another, God remains in us, and God's love comes to its perfection in us."  Sounds a little bit like the preaching of the new bishop of Rome, no?  Sounds even more like the nudgings of Jesus.  Where two are three are gathered in love, there is God.

There was God last night.  There was God around our Christmas tree this morning.  There is God now as we prepare our Christmas feast.  There will God be as we lovingly greet familiar friends and strangers
throughout Christmastide.

May these twelve days to Epiphany be filled with blessings and your own ongoing, Spirit-ed expressions of sacred love.

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Vigil of the Nativity of the Christ

12/25/2013

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PicturePhoto by Thad Botham
And with that, Advent is over.  God is with us--Emmanuel--alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!

I love Christmas.  I love the radicality of the Christmas message that says God isn't so transcendent that God can't be flesh.  I love the intimacy of this God who is both divine and human at once, and who teaches us--like the good rebbe he is--to be the same.

I am so grateful this night for hope fulfilled in the midst of so much doubt and despair.  Light does pierce shadows, dispelling them.  Goodness is stronger than evil, breaking it down with the power of gentleness.  A godly child does make a worldly ruler tremble, displacing cunning selfishness with its own absolute reliance on the sacred other for survival.

The message of the incarnation is that we desperately, utterly need each other.  Humanity and divinity meet in community and communion, not in isolation.  God can't do this gig without us, and we can't sustain God's divine flame within ourselves without the companionship of others.

That's my daughter to the left.  She is about take flight, one of God's own angeloi, standing before the holy altar at the feet of the infant Christ.  She's just carried in a sheep, practicing for her future role as shepherdess.  Later,
she danced during the offering of the holy gifts, and I had the presence of mind not to stop her.  I look at her and see an icon of the Christ, bearing glad tidings and preaching good news through her very body.  She did tonight what you and I do for each other every day.

Merry Christmas to you, o holy bearers and birthers of God.

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    Rev. M. Kate Allen

    Thean. House church priest. Published author. Mother and wife. Vocal feminist. Faith-filled dissenter in the face of the status quo.

    I address G-d as Thea more often than not.


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