29 august: the beheading of john the forerunner

john is the only person other than jesus and the theotokos whose day of birth and day of falling asleep are celebrated. because his birth is midsummer's, and comes six months from christmas, it is seldom missed. his beheading is less important in the western church. indeed the story was skipped a few weeks ago in the new revised common lectionary.

but if one notices the great importance of john in the gospels as the last of the prophets, the head of the old testament, as it were, then it is hard to pay too much attention to the story of his beheading.

p.s. to augustine of hippo

the collect from the 1963 lesser feasts and fasts of the episcopal church is such a wonderful piece of writing that i had to include it. i think professor enderby would approve:

"o lord god, who art the light of the minds that know thee, the life of the souls that love thee, and the strength of the hearts that serve thee: help us, after the example of thy servant saint augustine, so to know thee that we may truly love thee, so to love thee that we may fully serve thee, whom to serve is perfect freedom; through jesus christ our lord. amen.

sts. augustine and pelagius: 28 august

i very much liked that the northumbrian community in their excellent celtic daily prayer take the 28th of august for the commemoration of pelagius rather than austin. as one who has been encouraged by karl barth's complaint that all english (he may have said british, which more accurately describes my ancestry) theologians are pelagians, i joined in their commemoration.

to the daily office's reading of the book of job, therefore, i added anthony burgess's the clockwork testament. it seems to me that a careful reading of job requires one either to agree with pelagius or curse god and die.

augustin was, i'm, afraid, simply too clever for our own good. and how wonderfully convenient to be able to say, as we accept the "benefits" of low prices for consumer goods that accrue to the empire, that "there will always be wars and rumours of wars [or whatever sin it is that we don't want to avoid--lust and gluttony being among the more popular]." pelagius reminds us that jesus also said, "go, and sin no more." what sort of god would ask us to do the impossible? an augustinian god, perhaps, a god who was severely misunderstood by martin luther's reading of paul, but who is very useful if we want to think we can be the slaves of two masters.

enderby, the protagonist of the clockwork testament and several other of burgess's mostly autobiographical novels, is certainly not a saint by most of our standards. but if we cannot accuse him of saintliness, neither can we accuse him of sloppy thinking. as a caricature of an englishman, he has horrid taste in food, although he never descends so low as hamburgers and coca-cola but an educated taste in words: why waste time on hip-hop in the wasteland that is modern mall "culture." and he takes seriously the problems of behaviour that augustinians, either roman catholic or lutheran, sweep under the rug of grace.

rather than quote lengthily from burgess, which is a temptation, i will instead point to a delightful short piece from a review of geez magazine. it reminds me of the complaint lodged against the disciples on pentecost, that they must have been drinking.

"we don't live in houses"

francis of assissi said, and at first i thought he meant that the little brothers didn't live in houses because they were too poor for them. but as i have experienced, over the past several years, living outside or in a tent, i now know the "we" is bigger and the truth is we don't live in houses.

i've been trying a compromise this summer, living in a slight bit of a house, with a deck hanging over a creek. but last saturday i bought a new tent, and i'm thinning my accumulated anchors this week, giving away pottery and books, to move back into the world, where i can listen to the wind words again.

this song of bruce cockburn's seemed a gift for the occasion.

st. louis of france, in an election year

as the american political conventions start their circuses, i thought this quote from t. ralph morton's the household of faith might be appropriate:

"the place where we are free to choose and the place where our freedom of decision is most effective in in the use of our money. many of us are not free to choose how we use our time. the use of most of it is determined by the work we do and few of us are our own masters there. the use of the rest of our time--our leisure time, so called--depends ultimately on the use we make of our money. for the most determining thing in our lives is not our opinions but the way we use our money. it's the way we spend our money that determines the kind of life we live and not, or at least not in the case of most of us, the choice of a particular kind of life that determines how we spend our money we may think at the start of our adult lives that we decide the pattern on which we are going to live but very soon we find that it is determined by the things we think we need. that was, presumably, what jesus meant when he said: 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'" (p.114)

of course the theology of the collect for the feast of st. louis,

"o god, who called your servant louis of france to an earthly throne that he might advance your heavenly kingdom, and gave him zeal for your church and love for your people: mercifully grant that we who commemorate him this day may be fruitful in good works, and attain to the glorious crown of your saints; through jesus christ our lord, who lives and reigns with you and the holy spirit, one god, for ever and ever."

is completely politically incorrect these days. religious thinking, in the sense that religion means binding things together--re-ligio--is out. separate categories of political thinking and economic thinking and appetite-fulfillment thinking leaves a little time left over for what it's popular to call "spirituality thinking." but if jesus is telling the truth, our hearts are likely to be found in some strange and nasty places.

proper 15a: "who do you say that i am?"

yesterday's gospel was matthew 16:13-20, in which jesus asks his disciples an all-important question, "who do you say that i am?" peter's answer, sometimes called "the confession of peter," is "you are the messiah, the son of the living god." this is the foundation on which jesus says he will build his church.

i do a little volunteer work in the library of my local parish, often checking books in, so i get to see what people have been reading. if best-seller lists and discussion groups on the internet are any indication, what our parish reads is fairly typical of early twenty-first century christian fare. i am not encouraged by what i find. books by authors arguing that jesus only "became the christ" years after his death (and without any faith in his resurrection) are very popular. very rarely does anyone check out a book such as, say, n. t. wright's the challenge of jesus: rediscovering who jesus was and is or even wright's book with john dominic crossan, the resurrection of jesus.

now of course, there are many people who faithfully read daily the gospels with their firm proclamation in agreement with peter that jesus is "the messiah, the son of the living god," and that he is risen from the dead. but i suspect that if we are serious about being built into the church, we will leave aside the pop-christology that denies peter's confession. is it any surprise that the church in this country is so powerless to do anything except look for scraps from the emperor's table? if that seems a harsh observation, i ask you to consider if the church in the united states today is really any more powerful witness to the risen christ than was, say, the church of germany in the late 1930's. we read a lot of bonhoeffer's books, but we seem rarely actually to follow jesus, especially knowing what next week's gospel will be.

the lost chapters of the lectionary

i admit that it's partly my fault. i am famous for giving folks copies of the book of common prayer. in fact, my friends now send me their friends with their requests, knowing i will provide. (i also have a little private gideon-thing going on the side with the jerusalem bible..)

i introduce people to the prayer book because jesus told his disciples, of which i consider myself one, if a faltering one, "to make disciples," and the prayer book is really an exercise program: a discipline of spiritual body building, building up the body of christ. if christian television were really christian, at 2:00 a.m. there would be gnarly old ladies and men testifying to the way their lives had been changed by praying the psalms daily, and reciting the holy scriptures, of how their lives had been completely rebuilt in just two 15 minute sessions a day, all with a book that fits conveniently on the bed-side table.

one of the things i point out to folks is that the prayer book lectionary leads us through the new testament twice a year and the old testament in two years. (back in the day--1549 or so--it lead us through the old testament in a year, and the new testament twice a year, but as one can tell from the before pictures on late night television, we've gotten soft.) but, the problem is, it doesn't.

now we are lead to read less each day now, which i think is probably a good thing in many ways. the smaller portions make lectio divina with the daily readings easier. and they make it easier to take in and digest even if one doesn't chew very slowly. unfortunately, we also are led to leave parts out, and sometimes they are very important parts indeed.

the problem is that the church (pecusa, producer of the daily office lectionary, which is used by most denominations in america) has adopted modern critical study of the bible, and such a study doesn't know how to make useful such stories as the 19th and 20th chapters of the book of judges, so they are just left out. and these two chapters are the climax of the bible up to this point, and they are quite important to at luke's understanding of the coming of the messiah. (compare what happens to mary and joseph in bethlehem to what happens to the ephraimite levite's concubine. and consider the geographical places involved in the story, remembering that galilee is ephraimite territory.)

these two chapters are stories of our lack of hospitality ("we do not love our neighbor as ourself") and our inability to "fix" things on our own ("and there is no health in us." the tribes of abraham, chosen to be a blessing to the whole world, have become no better than sodom. and there is no forgiveness; the other tribes follow their own oaths, but ignore the commandments of the holy one. these are juicy if horrible chapters, quite accurately describing the world in which we are ruled by our own desires. ("there was no king in israel. each man did what was good in his own sight.")

so, if i have coerced you into following the daily office from the book of common prayer, i encourage you to check ahead and make sure you read any parts our enlightened editors have edited out. if i have not encouraged you into following the daily office, please consider this an invitation. i have, as always, a stock of books to give away.

you can also sample the readings of the daily office on line, of course.

church architecture and little us

last month i visited seattle university, a jesuit school, with a friend who was considering one of their courses of study. while there i of course visited their famous chapel of st. ignatius. since then i have been thinking about what the architecture of the places in which we worship says about us as the people of god, the laity, which although we don't often think so, includes "ordained" people as well as "unordained" people.

consciously or unconsciously, our buildings are ourselves built large or the cosmos built small. indeed from ancient times they have been understood as describing our proper place in the cosmos. in israel the tent and then temple-on earth was a copy of the heavenly pattern, which jesus interpreted as a model for a church built with living stones, his body. christian architecture then has traditionally been as much a teaching method as merely a place to house worship. the teaching, however, has been in the interaction of the people within the space. it has been a theater space, where the liturgy is performed by all the people of god, and which at its best facilitates that performance, itself a practice for our lives when we leave the building. (indeed the word mass comes from a the same root as mission. it is the going forth to which the whole rite leads.)

this ancient understanding of the uses of buildings has been kept, at least until very recently, by most of the church. orthodox churches are still modeled in part on the pattern of the temple in jerusalem. in the west the anthropomorphic nature of the church building is widely recognized, with the building in plan replicating the form of the perfect man, christ crucified, his head in the sanctuary, outstretched arms forming the transepts, the nave his body. there have of course been many variations, but this essay could quickly become very long, so i won't begin to go into even those i do know, except to point out a quite wonderful one, the syrian and anglican two-room churches. it, whether consciously or not, replicates the two-room plan of the temple, with the whole people of god acting out the priestly function. a wonderful modern interpretation of that idea is san francisco's st. gregory of nyssa.

recently in the west, all this has changed. with the reformation's emphasis on the word in its mostly restrictive and literal sense, church buildings became auditoriums. even many of the older buildings were remodeled with a central pulpit. the unity of the whole people of god making up the body of christ, each in his own order, was replaced by the preaching pastor, the parson (person), with a congregation who listened and consumed.

with the emergency of post-modernism--whatever that means, it is certainly a reality in our lives--the singular role of the preaching pastor becomes a multi-media experience. indeed i know one young pastor of an "emerging" congregation who suggests that it is time for the sacred cow of the sermon to be killed off. in eureka springs there is a congregation whose building has no cross or other overtly christian "symbolism," nor a pulpit, nor a holy table, but a scattering of music stands on a stage, peveys, and a trap set. the pews for the audience are still firmly in place. most of the body of christ having reduced to "laity" who are entertained, the "minister" has now been deconstructed as well.

it seems, and here sadly is where the chapel of st. ignatius was helpful to me, is that we have reduced the church even further, and our buildings once again both represent and inform that reduction. on the seattle university campus there is this great piece of art. we as the church have become another consumer market. this fact was well pointed out to me this week by a friend of mine who described his discomfort with the various "evangelical" and "missional" portions of the church in bellingham who are trying to "minister" to him--i.e., sell him their product--for as he said, he is trying to remain only a potential consumer of religion.

alas, our buildings now have nothing to do with the kingdom of god, which jesus came proclaiming, which the early church understood quite immediately as they took over the basilicas (kingdom halls) of the empire and made them halls of the heavenly king, but are all about shopping in the market place of religion, in which as my same potential-consumer-of-religion friend said, we are comparing apples with apples. no longer are we encouraged to become christians. we are merely to buy chritian swag.


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a note on william wilberforce

ah, yes, two weeks late. i am the victim here of the wonders of the modern world, since i wrote this on youtube, which promises to post quickly to my blog. two weeks really is quick publishing, compared to the good old days, especially. but i am a little spoiled, and like all good 'muricans, expect instant. it's a good thing wilberforce was patient.

commemoration of william wilberforce (30 july)

i can't help but find it a bit ironic that william wilberforce, m. p., is on the calendar of american episcopal church given our temerity to become involved in "political" issues, leaving war to the generals.

there is a poster at one of the local save-the-earth-by-buying local/organic/expensive grocery storesthat i think illustrates the double-speak of these times. it speaks against slave-made merchandise, being a thinly-veiled ad for the cottage schlock for sale next to it, and it contains the serious untruth that "there is today no powerful economic force backing slavery." hah!

i recommend, if you haven't already found it, a wonderful book by a 15-year old boy, zack hunter: be the change

the dormition of the mother of god (15 august)

i love this feast, partly because i love mary and what she has done, but also i love it because it has no hallmark card associations, no protestant abasements such as the confusion that makes the feast of the incarnation jesus's birthday, complete with hats and cake and the happy birthday song. (if you know of such abuses, please don't tell me.) yet the feast has a lot of wonderful vagueness, since it is a celebration of an event that is quite mysterious and about which there has not been such doctrinal fighting as surround events in the life of our lord.

it is a little odd that fundamentalists so completely ignore mary. since the acceptance of the virgin birth as a historical fact is one of the first of the "fundamentals," one might expect some rather developed mariology coming out of geneva or grand rapids. but, to my knowledge, it has not happened. here is a link to the orthodox understanding of the feast.

a part of my practices for the feast concerns food, of course. i'm about to go to some friends' house for a domestic dormition feast, and i'm taking basil ice cream; basil because one of the traditions surrounding the end of the theotokos' life on earth is that her dormition, her falling to sleep, and whatever happened next, occured in a field of basil. our word basil is from the greek basileus, meaning king. our lady fell asleep in the field of the lord. (basil was also found growing over the remnants of the true cross found by helena, according to the legends of its finding.)

the readings for the feast are an interesting lot. the eastern lections tend to be metaphorical descriptions of the virgin; the western tend to suggest parallels between christ and his mother. what is wonderful about the whole lot of them, and about the feast in general, is that they celebrate that what happens to the christ, happens to his mother, as representative of the church, and therefore to all of us, but the exact details remain a bit of a mystery, something we shall discover "when we shall see him face to face."

11 august: patron of television (i couldn't make that up something that outrageous if i wanted to.)

we folk are odd critters. i read bart ehrman's book, god's problem: how the bible fails to answer our most important question--why we suffer yesterday, on the feast of st. clare of assissi. i sat in the bright sunshine beside the bay, and i smoked two cigarettes. i know that i might get skin cancer or lung cancer, but i did it anyway. i hope that if i do "develop" cancer, as we say so interestingly, that i do not blame it on god, and say, "now it's your problem." i had just finished reading brett grainger's in the world but not of it: one family's militant faith and the history of american fundamentalism: odd reading, perhaps, for the feast of a very roman catholic saint.

but clare was, to say the least, a bit "against culture," and i perhaps humour myself that i am, too, and i was trying to understand a bit better that part of american culture that we call "fundamentalism." the grainer book therefore seems obvious, and it was very helpful, reminding me of things i had more or less forgotten from american history and church history, things which many fundamentalists have perhaps never known or choose to ignore. for instance, i had forgotten the close connexion between the first vatican council (1869) and the niagra bible conference (1878), at which biblical literalism in its modern form was birthed. (when earlier christians spoke of the literal meaning of the bible, they were not speaking of the same sort of thing as 19th century american protestants at all, as anyone who has read augustine's confessions in book nine of which he discusses the "literal meaning" of genesis, knows.)

grainger ends his largely autobiographical story with his returning to anglicanism, from which his grandfather had strayed. his chapter about his new/old faith is short, but very insightful. it is about christology, and how the early church wrestled with whether jesus was man or god, and how it decided both, as expressed in the nicean creed. for grainger christianity is about christ, not about a book. the word of god is a person.

ehrman's trip has been from early episcopalianism through just about every bible-centered part of american christianity there is. his school connexions start with moody bible college and end at princeton and chapel hill, both of which i suspect are considered rather different from moody. but i suggest that he has remained a fundamentalist, even in his present "non-believer" stage from. he looks at the bible as an answer book, one which fails to give him a satisfactory answer. in this he continues the sort of struggle with a book which has been at the center of fundamentalism.

but christianity is not about a book, it is about christ. clare and francis are famous, and influential far beyond "christianity," because they took christ jesus seriously, accepting the words of the gospel as his, and actually trying to follow them rather than argue about them. jesus said, "blessed are the poor," so those who follow along with clare of assisi are still called "poor clares." simple. radical. entirely anti-cultural.

there is nothing counter-culteral about erhaman's book, which probably explains his popularity among readers who would like to avoid the claims of jesus. his introduction includes celebrating ". . . long evenings . . . drinking scotch, smoking fine cigars, and talking . . . .does it get any better than that?" (p. x) after this introduction i find it rather fascinating that he then quotes amos,

"hear this word, you cows of bashan,
who are on mount samaria,
who oppress the poor, crush the needy,
who say to their husbands,
'bring me something to drink." (amos 4:1)

"every time i read this passage i imagine an heiress to millions sitting in a lounge chair by her outdoor pool, asking her 'dawlin' husband'for another daiquiri." (p. 98)

"surely there's a way to solve [starving people's] problems . . . . i don't much like tohinking about this myself. . . . but maybe i should think about it, and maybe i should try to do something about it." (p.200)

most fascinating is that erhman finally does find his answer within the text of the bible, choosing ecclesiastes, his exegesis of which is his conclusion:

"by all means, and most emphatically, i think we should work hard to make the world--the one we live in--the most pleasing place it can be for ourselves. we should love and be loved. we should cultivate our friendships, enjoy our intimate relationships, cherish our family lives. we should make money and spend money. the more the better. we should enjoy good food and drink. we should eat out and order unhealthy desserts, and we should cook steaks on the grill and drink bordeaux. we should walk around the block, work in the garden, watch basketball, and drink beer. we should travel and read books and go to museums and look at art and listen to music. we should drive nice cars and have nice homes. we should make love, have babies, and raise families. we should do what we can to love life--it's a gift and it will not be with us for long." (p. 277)

these are fine words for those of us who enjoy driving our suvs to mall book stores. but by ehrman's own criterion of how they sound to people starving in ethiopia, they merely express clearly, even violently, how little we love our brothers and sisters. now, you may find me hard on ehrman. actually, i expect no more from an honest apostate. the horrifying thing to me is that his conclusion seems to be the one by which most of those who call themselves christians in bellingham live as well.

8 august: st. dominic

i always tend to accumulate too many books, and to spend a lot of time reading. therefore i have often felt guilty when i read of francis's contempt for books. (you know francis: he's the minimalist saint that all of us who have far too much junk around our houses enshrine as a bird bath, the anti-book dude whom i nevertheless learn about in books.) so. i was very happy to discover dominic, who was also barefooted and poor, but who encouraged his brothers to stay up as late as they wanted to, reading. he had the novel idea that it would be better to talk to--the post-modern wording would be conversation with, heretics and non-believers than to turn them or run swords through them,

off he went to rome, to pitch his idea to honorius iii, bishop of rome. the pope gave him the grand tour, showing him the accumulated riches of the papacy, and bragging that no longer would peter have to say to the lame man, "silver and gold have i none." but neither, replied dominic, can he now say, "rise up and walk."

i love that story, and i have tried to remember it as a guide to what i should read, and how i should use any knowledge i gain from my study. so the rest of this feast day i plan to read about celtic methods of evengelism, particularly of how the celtic monks went to europe to try to re-evangelize areas where the faith had been lost, rather as in the rich, embedded, american church, sitting bare-footed along a creek.

the transfiguration: how the holy one is revealed; how we receive the revelation

this year i have been struck by the cloud in this story. it is high summer, and this is certainly a feast of light, the antipode of candlemass, when simeon and anna recognized the light of the holy one in the face of the infant jesus. peter and james and john are beginning to stay awake, and they see the glory of jesus. then comes the cloud, and they are afraid--terrified is the word the nrsv uses.

ah, how like these three i find myself. it is not the absence of the holy within the cloud which is terrifying, it is the presence, and the voice: "this is my son, my chosen; listen to him." i want the revelation of the holy to be all nice and shiny, in a context i can understand, in which i can celebrate my heritage, my past experience (surrounded by moses and elijah, in other words). this cloud thing scares me wordless. like peter, i don't know what i'm saying, i want to build shrines. but of course it is the cloud that always announces the presence of the holy in scripture.

i find the contrast that paul makes in the second letter to the church in corinth very perceptive: ". . .the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." (4:4) this date, the sixth of august, is also the anniversary of fallen adam's greatest light, the bomb over hiroshima. the god of this world wants to keep us dazzled, to pretend that light is all there is, to deny us the cloud, the sheer silence in which the beloved revealed himself to elijah (1 kings 19:12) we find it hard to take time to keep silence (luke 9:36), to treasure these things in our hearts (luke 2:51).

we read in the eucharist for this day peter's remembrance of the transfiguration (2 peter 1:13-21). but i think we overlook john's reflection on his experience. both peter and john are old as they write, peter explicitly referring to his near death. john's treasured memory becomes part of the prologue to his magnificent gospel, even as his intimate memory of a breakfast on the beach after the resurrection, including jesus' talking about these two friends' deaths, becomes the postlogue. john writes:

"in the beginning was the word,
and the word was with god,
and the word was god.
the same was in the beginning with god.
all things were made by him;
and without him was not any thing made that was made.
in him was life; and the life was the light of men.
and the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
. . .
that was the true light,
which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
he came unto his own, and his own received him not.
but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God,
even to them that believe on his name:
which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of god.
and the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
(and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the father,) full of grace and truth." (john 1:1-5, 10-14)

in but not of the world

few events in the church have spawned so many electronic dances as the just-ended lambeth conference. to me perhaps the most interesting image from the palace is the photograph of ++kalistos on a page from the prayer book society. there is kallistos, grey beard and black cassock, and on his right shoulder is a lad, cropped hair, bike bag, cell 'phone.

now, i'm as big a fan of "the one faith received from the apostles" as anyone. i have a grey beard, and wear black, and don't own a cell phone. but if we continue to reduce the apostolic faith, until it's content is "we don't ordain honest gay men or any women," then there is no compelling reason for the lad with the cell 'phone to consider the church as worthy of consideration as a source for guidance through "this transitory life."

but then, as kallistos admitted in his interview, the last orthodox council was in 787.it was decided that the veneration of icons is not idolatry.

lambeth

as a one-person-in-christ ecumenical movement, i've been following the proceedings at lambeth the past two weeks fairly closely, because i think the anglicans are bravely doing important work for the whole church, work made much more difficult because we have not addressed many issues late from any seriously theological bases, especially human sexuality and industrial capitalism.

there fore i was encouraged to find these words from brian maclaren, posted on terry martin's blog:

" ...i know that most people think the "news story" here is about divisive controversies over sexuality, but my sense is that the real news story is very different. there is a humble spirit here, a loving atmosphere, a deep spirituality centered in bible study, worship, and prayer, and a strong desire to move beyond internal-institutional matters to substantive mission in our needy world.

in every conversation and gathering I've participated in, the spirit has been kind and holy and positive. that sort of good news doesn't attract the media the way a salacious or pugilistic story does ... it will be interesting to see whether the press reports what is actually happening here, or if they need to rewrite the narrative to fit the shape of war-tales they are more accustomed to telling..."

lammastide/ludghnasadh/transfiguration

at the base of many of the great celtic stone crosses is the figure of st. anthony of the desert and st. paul of thebes. anthony has come to visit paul, and they are brought bread by ravens. this image reflects the ancient tradition that celtic spirituality is derived from the coptic desert fatgers, who sent, if legend is correct, seven brothers to the british isles long before st. patrick's slightly more historical mission.

there are many correspondences between the practices of the eastern church and the celtic church which support this legend. one of them is the celebration of the beginning of august, the ancient celtic season of ludghnasadh, as the thanksgiving, the harvest home feast. removed from each other by thousands of miles, the church in constantinople, and now her sister churches, and the church in the villages of cornwall, and her sisters, both rejoiced at this time, in the agricultural harvest, and in the spiritual harvest that results from our understanding of who jesus truly is.

the celtic church looked at the sun god ludgh as a prophecy of the true king of glory, christ jesus, whom the disciples saw at the feast of the transfiguration shining brighter than the sun. many of the saints of the season, such as sidwell of exeter are harvest saints. the second of august is her feast; she "was killed when her pagan stepmother incited the reapers in the harvest fields to cut off her head." (shirley toulson, the celtic year.shaftesbury: element, 1993, p.198.)

it has long seemed to the that the protestant hymn, bringing in the sheaves, written in 1874 by knowles shaw, is not inappropriate for early august.

the first of the month: a new start

for those of us who recite the psalter monthly, today began with a familiar verse:

"blessed is the man that hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners *
and hath not sat in the seat of the scornful."

it makes me wonder how often last month i "walked in the counsel of the ungodly." indeed the psalms can often seem troublesome, and it is probably the most troublesome ones which we should consider most carefully.

for several years i have had the privilege of meeting with a diverse group of christians each thursday to consider the next sunday's eucharistic lectionary readings. for next sunday we considered psalm 17:1-7, 15, which begins,


"hear the right, o lord, consider my complaint *
and hearken unto my prayer, that goeth not out of feigned lips."

one of the members was troubled by these words, saying that her lips are often feigned. if, however, really listen deeply to what this psalms is saying. then implied in these words is the hope that the holy one will ignore our feigned prayers and listen to the right, the true ones.

reciting the psalms is like learning a new language, the language of holiness. we say these words until they are ours, just as we might stumble through french tapes until french words really do express our thoughts. and each month, we get to start over, hopefully with improved pronunciation and comprehension, until there is formed in us the mind of christ, who speaks all these words truly.