circle of prayer: epigrah

a wheel was shown to me,
wonderful to behold . . .
divinity is in its omniscience
and omnipotence
like a wheel,
a circle,
a whole,
that can neither be understood,
nor divided,
nor begun nor ended. --hildegard of bingen

st. thomas day/winter solstice/o dayspring

st. thomas' feast comes on the winter solstice, the 21st of december, a date i always find quite appropriate. thomas is usually called "doubting thomas," but if matthew's gospel is to be credited, there were others doubters (matt. 28:17), so i think it is more helpful to look at the witness of thomas as proof that the resurrected jesus is the same as the crucified jesus, that this is an event in the body and not only in the spirit.

in the same way, remembering thomas at the darkest time of the year, just on the edge of the commemoration of the incarnation of our lord, also witnesses to the physicality of our salvation, that it is brought about as much by the incarnation as by the resurrection, that indeed these are parts of the same event which continues through the assumption to this very day.

i am delighted to find that western white man protestantism is beginning to pay more attention to the worldliness of salvation. brian mclaren's latest book, everything must change seems an important move in that direction. i hope it is not just condemned. in it mclaren pointed me to an old jackson browne song that unfortunately we who call ourselves the church would do well to remember, not just at this season.

december 17-24: the great o's

the magnificat* is the song of the church at sunset, as the new day begins. for each day there are antiphons to give it particular meanings for changes ofthe cycle of the year. few of us know these antiphons unless we live in a monastic community, but most of us know the antiphons for the last week of advent, because they are the verses of the popular hymn "o come, o come, emmanuel

each verse is a title of the messiah from one of the prophets, especially isaiah. the hymn has been recorded and sung many times, but one of the most surprisingly moving renditions i have found is by a primarily rhythm and blues group, boyziimen. i hope you enjoy it as much as i do.

*The Song of Mary Magnificat
Luke 1:46-55a


My soul doth magnify the Lord, *
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded *
the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold from henceforth *
all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me, *
and holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him *
throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with his arm; *
he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, *
and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, *
and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, *
as he promised to our forefathers,
Abraham and his seed for ever.

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: *
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

circle of prayer postlude: getting started, or don't try this at home

one never knows where the path will lead.

it is 6:00 in the morning on the third sunday of advent, still dark and eighteen degrees. i light a candle, pull a blanket around my shoulders, and begin morning prayer. "o lord, open thou our lips, and our mouths shall show forth thy praise." because it is advent, i start with venite (psalm 95:1-7, 96:9,13), which ends with
"for he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth,
and with righteousness to judge the world
and the peoples with his truth."

next, because it is the sixteenth morning of the month, follow psalms 79, 80, 81, beginning
"o god, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple
have they defiled, and made jerusalem a heap of stones."

psalm 81 concludes
"i would have fed them also with the finest wheat-flour;
and with honey out of the stony rock would i have satisfied them."

then comes a reading from isaiah, promising the desert will bloom (ch. 35), and because it is sunday, the te deum. the new testament reading describes the birth of john the baptist (luke 1:57ff), and by the time his father zecheriah is singing that
"the dayspring from high has visited us,
to give light to them that sit in the darkness, and in the shadow of death . . ."
a cold winter sunrise is reddening the south-east horizon, showing through my frosty plastic window a hundred-acre wood dusted with snow.

i sing christina rossetti's "in the bleak mid-winter" softly.

i am very cold, and most people would think me very alone, and i am very happy.

how did i get here? did the circling path that led to this cold hermit's morning begin the early fall morning my kayak took me around a bend of the st. francis river to find a huge bald cypress becoming dozens of great blue herons in the sunrise? yes.

did it begin the morning in the season of epiphany when i walked cautiously through the red doors of all saints' episcopal church to enter the daily office? yes.

or did it begin when i moved to santa fe to watch sunsets? yes.

by the grace of god when there has been a fork in the road, at least for the past thirty years, i have taken it. gradually the curves had led me back to the place where i had begun, to find it for the first time.

i began to notice what was happening, that i was becoming an accidental hermit, during a three-year long exploration of the waters of north-west washington and south british columbia in a red folding kayak named brendan. i cautiously cast off from a dock in anacortes one may morning, weighted down with all the gear the fear-and-gear mongers want to sell paddlers, and with the expectation of seeing a lot of beautiful "nature." three septembers later, i pulled up on an afternoon beach in bellingham, wearing only shorts, carrying a single cooking pot and a century-old copy of the holy bible, authorized version.

i knew i did not want to move back into a house, or to return to a career. as francis of assissi said, we do not live in houses. and as i've been told tom robbins said, " a career is a totally inadequate response to life. asked what i had learned, i was surprised to find the answer was easy. what i had expected to be many parts of nature had proved to be one whole creation.

a neighbor in the ozarks is shocked and a bit worried that i live without what she calls creature comforts, but i find that what i have found are the comforts of the creature, that, as annie dillard wrote, we are all created.

if you decide to take the path, do not expect it to lead to my little hut in the ozarks. do not be afraid that you will end up cold and alone on a snow morning. but do pay attention. what the holy one has in store for you is more than we can hope for or imagine.

pay attention. stay awake. put an axe in your television and watch the sunsets and the sunrises instead of listening to morning edition. sing with mary in the evening and zechariah in the morning instead of listening to mp3's. read the daily office instead of the new york times.

i'm alive serious here. there is a great pearl in that field, but if you are not willing to sell everything that you hve to buy it, you will die with the stuff for a good yard sale, but you will miss living in the kingdom of heaven.

commemoration of brother louis (thomas merton)

blessed are the peacemakers. and likely to have a difficult time in 1968, when opponents to the war (there's only one, which the empire now admits it wants to make endless) tended to die in rather mysterious circumstances.

i was in college in 1968, only tangentally connected to the church, which seemed to me to have failed to live by the standards it had taught me. occasionally i participated in worship and activities of centenary united methodist church in memphis, which was active in the civil rights movement. my knowledge of things catholic was quite limited, but ramparts magazine published very insightful essays by this monk called thomas merton.

i have always assumed that the cia was involved if not directly responsible for merton's death. i was one of the students picked by the cia to attend national student association activities to see how radical we might become, and to keep under surveilance.

merton's effective opposition to the war began to open to me the understanding that contemplation is action. the most effective action. i still have great respect for the work of centenary united methodist church, and especially of the rev. j. m. lawson, the then-young pastor. if i had not had the experiences i had at centenary, i might have abandoned the church entirely.

but, i can't help but believe that much of our "action" today lacks the foundation of prayer that is necessary for the real work of the kingdom, the kingdom headed by the one we so lightly call at this season of encouraged greed, the prince of peace.

advent and st. nicholas

i could not resist sharing this post.

circle of prayer 30. reconciliation: lent (spring)

"give them grace, when they hurt each other, to recognize and acknowledge their faults, and to seek each other's forgiveness and yours." (prayer from "the celebration and blessing of a marriage," bcp 1979)

i was reared in a baptist church in a small southern town where we were convinced that roman catholics were followers of the whore of babyon. one of the proofs was that all catholics had to do to have their sins forgiven was to confess to their priest. little did we recognize how difficult true confession is. the closest we came was "revivals," at which just about the only sin confessed was drinking, although there were occasional mentions of "that jezebel."

the difficulty of making a good confession has a long history. in the baptismal covenant we are asked "will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the lord?" adam and eve should have had the advantage of such a question. when they fell into sin, the holy one, who if omniscient knew they had eaten the forbidden fruit, came to walk with them in the cool of the day as usual. rather than repenting and returning, they dissembled and blamed whomever was convenient except themselves. (genesis 3:8-13)

although we tend to agree with crosley, stills and nash that "we've got to get back to the garden," most of us have no clue how to do so. we remain in the ignorance from my childhood, maybe convinced that creation was originally good, maybe even believing that in baptism our sins are forgiven and our innocence restored; but we look around at a world that seems deeply mired in hopelessness.

hence the strength of the little bombshell embedded in the marriage liturgy and quoted above, a prayer for grace to recognize our faults and to seek forgiveness, knowing we will hurt each other. it is too simple for us to accept. we are like naaman, who came to elishah to be cured of leprosy and expected some elaborate ritual. he was told to wash seven times in the jordan. his response was like my childhood distrust of the roman catholics. how could healing, how could salvation, be simple? (2 kings 5:1-12) how could spring, with its thousands of blossoms, follow the dead of winter?

lent means spring. (because the days lengthen then).although the lenten practice of repentance began as a method to restore "notorious evil livers" to the communion of the church, it has become popular for anyone as a time of annual repentance, often leading to a renewal of baptismal vows. this reflects the understanding of the early church, and the continuous understanding of the eastern church, that repentance serves as a second baptism.

in many ways the traditional service of reconciliation is a recapitulation of our whole lives and of the sacraments of the church:

"The Penitent says:
Holy God, heavenly Father, you formed me from the dust in
your image and likeness, and redeemed me from sin and
death by the cross of your Son Jesus Christ. Through the
water of baptism you clothed me with the shining garment of
his righteousness, and established me among your children in
your kingdom. But I have squandered the inheritance of your
saints, and have wandered far in a land that is waste.
". . . I confess to you [the priest] and to the Church. . .
. . .
"Therefore, O Lord, from these and all other sins I cannot
now remember, I turn to you in sorrow and repentance.
Receive me again into the arms of your mercy, and restore me
to the blessed company of your faithful people; through him
in whom you have redeemed the world, your Son our Savior
Jesus Christ. Amen.
. . .
"The Priest concludes:
"Now there is rejoicing in heaven; for you were lost, and
are found; you were dead, and are now alive in Christ Jesus
our Lord. Go (or abide) in peace. The Lord has put away all
your sins.

"Penitent: Thanks be to God."

circle of prayer 29. healing: christmas

"mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth,
born to give them second birth.
risen with healing in his wings,
life and light to all he brings,
hail, the sun of righteousness!
hail, the heaven-born prince of peace!" (charles wesley)

nothing said above about advent should be understood as acceptance of death as "normal."

"christianity is not reconciliation with death. it is the revelation of death, and it reveals death because it is the revelation of life. christ is this life. and only if christ is life is death what christianity proclaims it to be, namely the enemy to be destroyed and not a 'mystery' to be explained. religion and secularism, by explaining death, give it a 'status,' a rationale, make it 'normal.' only christianity proclaims it to be abnormal and, therefore, truly horrible."
(alexander schmemann)

in christ is fulfilled the prophecy that death will be swallowed up in victory. (isaiah 25:8; romans 15:54). often we think of that victory's being won only at calvary, by the crucifixion. but all of human life is transformed by the incarnation. everything that god the son assumes in his humanity is healed, which is the usual meaning of the greek word often translated "saved." eternal life is possible for human beings because the eternally begotten son of the father entered time as the son of mary.

"o that birth for ever blesssed,
when the virgin, full of grace,
by the holy ghost conceiving,
bare the saviour of our race;
and the babe, the world's redeemer,
first revealed his sacred face . . . ." (a.c. prudentius)

"what child is this . . .?
this, this is christ the king,
. . .
the babe, the son of mary." (w.c. dix)

"for he must be king until he has put all his enemies under his feet, and the last of the enemies to be destroyed is death." (1 corinthians 15:24-25)

circle of prayer 31. eucharist: at all times and in all places

"thanks be to god!"

"It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should
at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God, Creator of the light and source of life, who hast made us in thine image, and called us to new life in Jesus Christ our
Lord." (eucharistic preface, rite 1, book of common prayer 1979)

we sometimes forget that eucharist, thanksgiving, indeed the great thanksgiving, is, next to the breaking of the bread, the oldest and even more the most appropriate name for the central act of christian worship. we call it the breaking of the bread, the lord's supper, because of the very special meaning which our lord gave to the jewish communal meal, the chaburah. again and again, he gave thanks. so, we too give thanks.

the first thing for which we give thanks is creation. this we have often forgotten in the past few hundred years, as we have vainly assumed that we are now in charge of creation, which we have abstracted as "nature." but the early church always started with giving thanks for creation. indeed if there had been no "night in which our lord jesus christ was handed over to suffering and death;" if he had only formed us in his image; if he had only made covenant with us; if he had only through the prophets taught us to hope for salvation;, if he had only sent us the only-begotten son to be incarnate of the holy spirit, born of the virgin mary; if he had only lived as one of us, yet without sin; if he had only proclaimed to the poor the good news of salvation, to the prisoners freedom, to the sorrowful, joy; still it would be our bounden duty to glorify the one god, living and true, dwelling in light inaccessible before all time and forever.

our eucharistic gatherings, the great act in which we recognize our true role in creation as priest, offering back to the holy one what has been given to us that we and the whole world might be holy, would hardly be changed. this idea is expressed in the jewish passover song dayenu, which lists the great works of the holy one in delivering his people, and says about each, that if that were all he had done, that would have been enough.

but there is more. that god's purpose might be fulfilled, jesus gave himself up to death: and rising from the grave he destroyed death and made the whole creation new.

and that we might no longer live unto ourselves, but unto him who died for us and rose again, he sent the holy spirit, his own first gift to those who believed, to complete his work in the world, bringing to fulfillment the sanctification of all.

as paul wrote so eloquently in his second letter to the church at corinth, ". . . for anyone who is in christ, there is a new creation; the old creation is gone, and now the new one is here." (5:17) paul describes the nature of the christ to the church at colossae in a beautiful hymn:

he is the image of the unseen god
and the first-born of all creation,
for in him were created
all things in heaven and on earth:
everything visible and everything invisible,
thrones, dominions, sovereignties, powers--
all things were created through him and for him.
before anything was created, he existed,
and now he holds all things in unity.
. . .
as he is the beginning,
he was first to be born from the dead,
so that he should be first in every way;
because god wanted all perfection
to be found in him
and all things to be reconciled through him and for him,
everything in heaven and everything on earth,
when he made peace
by his death on the cross. (colossians 1:15-17, 19-20)

reconciliation and peace: this is the goal of the new creation, and of the new creator.

all of the seemingly contradictory things that are listed in the song of the three young men that we sing on saturday, "heavens and waters,sun and moon, winter and summer, fire and heat and ice and cold, nights and days, light and darkness," (see the appendix for the full text) all these things and more are reconciled and brought to peace, and their nature and purpose as revelation and prophecy of the christ to come is revealed.

the work of the holy one whose beginning was described in genesis as good is brought to fulfillment and perfected in the sacrifice of christ which we celebrate in the eucharist.

and so we finish:

deacon: go in peace to love and serve the lord. alleluia, alleluia.

people: thanks be to God. alleluia, alleluia.

(the eucharistic prayer which is quoted or paraphrased throughout this chapter is the liturgy of st. basil, the most widely accepted eucharistic prayer of the whole church, east and west, catholic and protestant.)

circle of prayer 27: marriage: may

"o father, all creating,
whose wisdom, love and power,
first bound two lives together
in eden's primal hour,
to-day in these thy children
thine earliest gifts renew . . . ." (j. ellerton)

there was a time in england when all of may was kept to onour the virgin mother of our lord. since she is seen as the model of the church, the bridge of christ, may was the most popular time for marriages.

marriage became attatched to may for other, perhaps more mysterious if related reasons as well. the feast of pentecost most often falls in may, when the holy spirit comes upon the whole church, making her a christ-bearer, just as the spirit had come upon mary. paul explored the imagery of the church as the bride of christ and what that image suggests for christian marriage in his letter to the church at ephesus:

". . . christ loved the church and sacrificed himself for her to make her holy. he made her clean by washing her in water with a form of words, so that when he took her to himself she would be glorious, with no speck or wrinkle or anything like that, but holy and faultless. in the same way husbands must love their wives as they love their own bodies . . . . that is the way christ treats the church, because it is his body . . . . this mystery has many implications; but i am saying it applies to christ and the church. to sum up, you too, each of you, just love his wife as he loves himself; and let every wife respect her husband." (ephesians 5:25-33)

there were additionally some pre-christian reasons for the popularity of may as the marriage month. one of the most popular beltane celebrations was the maypole, around which men and women wound strips of cloth, walking in opposite directions. after it was wound they might go into the fields to make love, encouraging the sun and earth to follow their example and be fertile. (beltane is the beginning of summer in the celtic calendar.)

in all of these examples, marriage is seen as a re-uniting or uniting of opposites, either restoring the original bliss of creation, as suggested by j. ellerton's hymn from the english hymnal, or leading to the desired bliss of creation, as in the maypole activities. it is no wonder then that the most powerful image of the relationship of christ and the church is that of marriage. the reading that most powerfully illustrates this is the song of songs, which is read at passover in the jewish liturgy.

for many such a physical depiction of love and life is shocking to find in the bible. but it has been called in the midrash (the ancient oral commentary on the jewish scriptures) the most holy of books. as such, it's association with marriage and the period following easter is another indication of the power of the seasons of the year as revelation of the love of the holy one, and of the holiness of all creation. rather than suggesting that pagan activities surrounding the beginning of summer are mis-placed, it becomes apparent that the desire for reunion is also fulfilled in the mystery of the christ.

circle of prayer 28. death and the world to come: advent

sunset of the eve of the last day of november: st. andrew's day. for the western church this is the beginning of the advent season. the hills all around are dark, cloaked in winter blue, the blue-black of ink. yet they are outlined with a golden dark glow that makes winter vespers the most hopeful times of the year, what the eastern church calls the bright darkness.

of this time gertrude mueller nelson has written, "it is advent, and the whole world is pregnant." we tend easily to assume we know who will be born: the baby jesus, the christ child. we seldom seriously reflect on "what child is this?" but herod knew. this child is the death of the old world, the old regime, the old self. for many of us this is more than we want to bear, so we, like herod, try to deny the birth, to kill the child. (matthew 2:1-18) we cover the bright darkness with watts and watts of "christmas lights." rather than recognize that "light . . . shines in the darkness"(john 1:5), rather than "casting off the works of darkness" (collect for the first sunday of advent), we put on a cloak of pretended joy, as if death did not await each of us.

"yet in the dark street shineth the everlasting light." (phillips brooks)

the death that we would avoid is the only way to eternal life:

"unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies,
it remains only a single grain;
but if it dies,
it yields a rich harvest.
any one who loves his life loses it . . . ." (john 12:24-25)

in the worlds of the mayan creation myth of the first father, "death is the door to awe." in advent we are allowed pass through the darkness of all that is old, of all that is dead, of all that no longer serves our true self, into the light of new and eternal life. this is a great and beautiful mystery. alas, many of us pass through the mystery without ever noticing it.

the eastern church honors and says farewell to the old dispensation by commemorating the old testament prophets at the beginning of december. for all the church the most significant advent saints are john, the great forerunner of the light, the greatest and last of the prophets of the old covenant, and mary the virgin mother, the first to enter the new kingdom, who took the word of god into her very body, giving birth to god the son.

all too often we react to the good news of the coming of the true king, who

". . . comes to judge the earth,
to judge the world with justice
and the nations with his truth: (psalm 96:13)

as did herod. rather than letting go our "carved images and . . . vain gods" (psalm 98:7), our understandings and pretentions and projections, we are willing to kill the innocent. we limit advent to preparing for the birth of the christ child, but we allow no room in our hearts for the child to grow.

but equally available is the way chosen by simeon, who had spent his life seeking not self-aggrandizement but "the consolation of israel" (luke 2:25), and whose song has ever since been the prayer of christians at the end of their days and at the end of their lives:

"now, master, you can let your servant go peace,
just as you promised;
because my eyes have seen the salvation
which you have prepared for all the nations to see,
a light to enlighten the pagans
and the glory of your people israel.: (luke 2:29-32)