ash wednesday and easter sunday

lent, which seems to be the favourite season of the year for many of us, has come again. lent means, simply, spring--the time of the year when the days lengthen.

but it is also the time when we are brought back into our lord's journey to jerusalem, for his exodus, as the greek of the account of the transfiguration in the gospel according to luke says literally.

our lord asks us to take up our cross daily and follow him. we say, oh my, that's a little harsh. i'll give up refined sugar.

our lord says we must die to self, that unless we are willing, as a grain of wheat, to fall to ground and die, there will be no life in us. we say, that is of course metaphorical. i don't have to die, not really. i'll give up chocolate.

our lord invites us to leave everything and follow him. we recognize that would require us to completely reorder our lives, so we say, oh, i'll read a few more psalms during lent.

we make these decisions, and we invite ourselves to miss the glory of the resurrection. we reduce the resurrection to getting to eat a nice, sweet, chocolate easter bunny, and returning to a shorter time of prayer.

i invite you to consider this poem by scott cairns.

adventures in new testament greek: metanoia

Repentance, to be sure,
but of a species far
less likely to oblige
sheepish repetition.

Repentance, you'll observe
glibly bears the bent
of thought revisited,
and mind's familiar stamp

--a quaint, half-hearted
doubleness that couples
all compunction with a pledge
of recurrent screw-up.

The heart's metanoia,
on the other hand, turns
without regret, turns not
so much away, as toward.

as if the slow pilgrim
has been surprised to find
that sin is not so bad
as it is a waste of time.

incarnation.2

to commemorate st. john of damascus i read dom gregory dix's the image and likeness of god which contained these wise words:

"it would not be an adequate expression of the truth to suppose that, in the actual circumstances of [jesus'] life, there was first to be an incarnation and then a redemption followed. rather there is a redemption by incarnation, or perhaps better still, a redeeming incanration. (pp. 39-39

the joys of the flesh

we forget the wonderful mysteries of incarnation to our considerable danger. especially in the west the church as tended to focus on the cross, as if this were the moment of redemption. but it is the incarnation that starts the process, as we note with our own bodies in the long tradition of bowing or kneeeling at the words in the creed, "incarnate of the holy spirit." jesus died because he was born. he died on a cross between two theives because this is the way our institutions, deluded by their own understanding of power, always respond to truth.

and the church has tended to follow augustine in his continuing manichaeism, and to be secuded by the brilliance of the platonists, in relegating the flesh to a place of unsalvageable evil.

john o'donahue in anam cara puts it very well: "religion has often presented the body as a source of evil, ambiguity, lust, and seduction. this is utterly false and irrelevent. the body is sacred. the origin of much of this negative thinking is a false interpretation of greek philosophy. the greeks were beautiful thinkers precisely because of the emphasis they placed on the divine. the divine haunted them, and they endeavoured in language and concept to echo the divine and fine some mirror for its presence. they were acutely aware of the gravity of the body and how it seemed to drag the divine too much toward the earth. they misconceived this attraction to the earth and saw in it a conflict with the world of the divine. they had no conception of the incarnation, in inkling of the resurrection." (p. 46)

lo, he comes, with clouds descending

today in the east, and in the celtic tradition, preparation begins for the feast of the nativity, the incarnation, christmas. call it advent, call it st. martin's fast, call it the nativity lent. as we read in the daily office from joel, we are called to "rend our hearts, not our garments."

of course for many of us the feast that approaches is the great american overspending consumer day. we are not concerned with rending our garments, but in buying new ones. once again it seems appropriate, as the prince of peace is closer than when we first believed, to lament, "oh that they knew the things that make for peace."

but it is also an opportunity for us to consider whether we might come to know the things that make for peace. where to begin? with the beatitudes, of course, recognizing that there is, as jim forest has so well written, a ladder of the beatitudes. we are only able to become peacemakers if we are also willing to start with our poverty of spirit. forty days is hardly long enough. but it is certainly long enough to begin.

all hallows day

coming up quickly is one of my favourite holidays, and the fifthteenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood: all saints day, or all hallows in the olde language, remembered by most of us these days i'm afraid only in the rather banal activities of the hallmark holiday of halloween.

but even halloween remembers the glory of the day, it being one of the major feasts which is still celebrated in the ancient hebrew (and celtic) manner beginning with the evening. (see the first chapter of genesis: "the evening and the morning were the . . . day.")

unfortunately each year there is a silly struggle between rather fundamentalist christians and neo-pagans about who "owns" the holiday. the fundies saying that the feast should not be celebrated by christians because it is pagan, the pagans claiming the catholics (hated fairly evenly by both sides) have "stolen" it. as if we all inhabited different planets, as if we could, as we so easily assume we do, create the creator according to our own principles.

but of course our understanding of creation and creator are closely linked, and that is why i find the longevity of this holiday so fascinating and exciting. everyone finds it one of the "thin spaces." here at the turn of the year, whether that year begins in september (for the orthodox) or on the first of november (for the celtic crew) or with the first sunday of advent (for the western church), is a time when the veil, the difference between kairos and chronos, even the space between augustine's city of man and city of god, is very small.

and it is a wonderful fulfillment and reminder of the gift of the holy spirit that we celebrate just six months away at pentecost. these two days, pentecost and all saints, are the antipodal feasts of the holy spirit, of the breath of the universe, of the wind which blows where it will, sanctifying "all sorts and conditions of men" (and women), often as much to their surprise as anyone else's. and it is a time for all of the rest of us to be reminded that we should "not dream it, be it." when else do so many wonderful paths of our fumbling seeking after the holy cross so wondrously?

earth momma vs. queen of heaven

we have just celebrated, or are about to celebrate if one is on the old calendar, a feast the official recognition of which by pius xii c. g. jung called the most important spiritual event of the twentieth century: the dormition of the theotokos or the assumption of the blessed virgin mary.

it is one of my favourite days of the year. because one of my favourite sentences in the gospel according to luke is "mary treasured all of these things, and pondered them in her heart." (2:19) (perhaps it's where her son got the idea that "wherever your treasure is, there you will find your heart." (matthew 6:20)) for me the day was a time of treasuring my friends, of sharing coffee and lunch, letters and postcards.

butsurrounding this feast of the blessdd virgin are as complicated a group of thoughts, feelings, and beliefs as one can find about any person (or about any idea, as some think of her not so much as a person as a principle or a concept. i was struck by this way of thinking last week when a good friend asked me what i thought of the concept of wisdom. i don't think of wisdom as a concept, but as a person). at one extreme are my pagan friends who claim that the church has somehow "stolen" the great mother, pointing for instance to ancient depictions of isis and osiris as some sort of proof of the theft. and there are other, rather evangelical sorts, who find any marian devotions to be pagan idolatry.

this complication, this controversy, is a way, i think, that we can begin to understand some of the complications of thoughts and feelings and beliefs that the church tried to resolve at nicea. this is important because nicea is controversial all over again following the hooplay around the da vinci code .

how can a woman give birth to the messiah, whom we have come to experience as the holy one, as god? also at stake is the historicity of the birth of the messiah, by which i mean that in contrast to what is usually taken for granted by the historical jesus scholars so popular these days, the actual second person of the trinity, god the son, eternally begotten of the father, was indeed born from a virgin woman, mary of galilee, without sexual intercourse. those who find this impossible to accept, like the jesus seminar folks, simply discount it. those who do accept it find it difficult to accept that mary was not herself somehow unique not only in her actions but in her ontology. this difficulty finds expression in the roman catholic church's dogma of the immaculate conception.

it seems helpful to consider what is gained, what ideas are guarded, in both views. if mary is primarily queen of heaven, if she is ontologically different from other women, then she likely gives birth to a jesus whose feet never quite touch the ground. this idea was proposed by the docetists. if she is the earth momma, then she and jesus are completely human. mary, as an ordinary woman, flesh as are we all, gives space for the holy spirit to take on flesh as we all do.

approaching transfiguration

for the churches that use some form of the post-vatican ii three-year lectionery, these past few weeks have been touring the gospel according to mark's amazing chapters starting with jesus' return to his hometown where he "was amazed with their unbelief" and working towards the transfiguration, the readings for sunday. it is, i think, unfortunate that the lectionery doesn't follow all of mark's narrative, which is subtle and packed with meaning. instead, we will read luke's account of the events on mount tabor, and then go to john's sixth chapter to hear what he has to say about the bread that the twelve didn't understand when they were in the boat and jesus had planned to "pass them by."

that walking-on-water account is pivotal to the unfolding of jesus' identity and the disciples' recognizing it. some context: moses and elijah will be with jesus on the mountain; they are the ones who saw the holy one pass by, and recognized him. (one of the meanings of hebrew in hebrew and aramaic is one who passes by: see the gospel of thomas , logion 47). and of course there is that wonderful line in psalm 140 (hebrew 141) which in the septuagint reads "i am alone until i pass by."

limestone

although not much has happened on the old blog these days, much has happened in my life. i've come to the place where limestone is born, the ozark mountains, to try a time as a hermit. ok. hermits don't really have access to computers. a semi-hermit, living on the edge of eureka springs, where there is a library.

why would i do such a thing, leaving the quite cozy community in mild bellingham for a place with extreme weather and ticks and chiggers (and lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!)? because the world is just so very noisy. because the church, at least the public church, has put all its hope in horses, although they are now horses neatly contained in internal combustion engines, with what passes for theology reduced to bumper stickers.

because i wanted to, as the message translates the revelation to st. john, "to listen to the windwords, to hear the spirit blowing through the churches."

so now i'm discipling myself to be less noisy. it's easy to get away from television and cars. now to clear the clutter that lodges within.

pray for me, brothers and sisters, that i might hear.

entering lent

last week i went up to vancouver and visited the bookstore at regent college, where a new industry has emerged around dietrich bonhoeffer. and now most of my friends are talking about lenten reading and stuff, lent being to christianity as christmas is to the mall in terms of commercialization.

my own preparations for lent are being formed mainly within the context of that odd passage in the gospel according to john, chapter 12, vv. 20 ff.: "among those who went up to worship at the festival [i.e., the passover] were some greeks. these approached philip, who came from bethsaida in galilee, and put this request to him, 'sir, we should like to see jesus.'[i love that it is philip they come to, since it will be peter who asks jesus to see the father] jesus' "reply" hardly seems like a reply at all: "now the hours has come for the son of man to be glofiried. in all truth i tell, you, unless a wheat grain falls into the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest. anyone who loves his life loses it; anyone who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. whoever serves me, must follow me, and my servant will be with me wherever i am."

how little i am willing to follow, because of course i know where jesus is going. jerusalem my happy home is happy, and my home, because of calvary and good friday. so i play at being christian, letting myself be distracted by the big issues of today's church, such as whether gay men should be allowed to wear pointy hats and capes. meanwhile, my greed is torturing and maiming and killing people all around the world, and destroying their homes, even while i type this.

can this be the fast the lord requires of me? is this the witness i'm called to be?

did you forget this week

we are just passing the middle of the week of prayer for christian unity, which began with the feast of the confession of st. peter, the 18th. of january, and which ends with the feast of the conversion of st. paul, the 25th. of january. these dates are, i believe, quite significant, and have much to say about how we should be "churching" these days.

first,the confession of st. peter: i was at a coffee shop last week when a friend was discussing the difference between the episcopal church and i'm-not-sure-what-part of the church. he described episcopalians as "more liberal." i did not mention how odd i found that description of a communion which has often been described as the republican party on its knees. but i did suggest that his was a very inadequate and perhaps even anti-evangelical way of talking about the church. the episcopal church, i suggested, has tried to embrace the continuing reforms of the church while maintaining orthodox christology and liturgy. what is important, the readings for the feast of st. peter remind us, is who we say jesus is. this is the experience upon which the church is built.

then, the conversion of st. paul: paul gets knocked off his horse. he has been on his way to damascus to clean up the heretics to proper pharasaic judaism there, a bunch who call themselves something like followers of the way. "why are you persecuting me?" jesus asks him. in this powerful experience of the risen lord the identity of jeshua, the messiah/jesus, the christ is made clear to be found in his body, the church.

what this says to us, i think, is that when we easily get very excited about what seem to be major divisions within the church, and spend a lot of time condemning those parts of the church with which we disagree, we are doing a very good job of misrepresenting christ to those who do not yet know him, of making him seem divided, of reducing what can be a powerful experience, if we do not hide, into a set of intellectual propositions. rather we should open ourselves to the experience of god, who is just as anxious to walk with us in the cool of the evening now as he was with our first parents. and we should listen carefully to who we say christ is, both as we proclaim that experience ourselves, and as our brothers and sisters share their own experiences. this listening, i have come to believe, is one of our most important spiritual tasks.

the feast of st. john: the old wine

i have been a bit disappointed to have read again this year so many "christian" complainers about how we mess up christmas. if the "we" is the same old empire, whether we call our emperor augustus or herod or george, of course we mess up christmas. it is our bounden duty so to do. if we are unwilling to let go of all the diversions that come to us wrapped in tinsel paper and lying beneath the tree, we will never open our hands and hearts to receive the gift that the holy one gives us again and again, eternally, world without end.

and yet christmas is upon us again, this miracle. i look around and see the mess, and once again i am amazed that our lord sees a world he loves so much that he strips off his eternal glory and is wrapped in scraps of cloth. it is of course popular for us evangelical sorts to want to jump to the cross, and i was tempted in the previous paragraph to make some illusion to the one who hangs on the tree we are beneath. but for a while it is enough to ponder in our hearts the wonder of the incarnation. of course we know this baby will die. all babies will die. jesus died because he was born. his eternal life he laid aside, putting on our death.

"in the midst of life, we are in death; from whom can we seek help?
from you alone, o lord, who by our sins are justly angered."

the familiar words of the burial office continue:

". . .
o worthy and eternal judge, do not let the pains of death turn us away from you at our last hour."

the amazing thing we celebrate at this time is that the pains of birth turned him not away from us at his first hour. who noticed? not the emperor, the pretender to the role of shepherd of israel. that one was herod, holed up in his palace in royal david's royal city, jerusalem.

no. the songs of the angels, which still fill the skies these christmas nights for those who have ears to hear, were first heard by the good shepherds, the ones "abiding with their flocks in the fields by night." the good news has heard by the ones out in the cold doing their job, doing the same thing the first david had been doing when samuel came around with the horn of oil to anoint him.

but this time the messiah was more than the shepherd of israel. he was that. the angels did say that "unto you is born this day a saviour, christ . . . ," that is a saviour, messiah. but also "a saviour, christ, the lord." to the title of the shepherd of israel is added the title of the true emperor of the whole earth, of all creation.

a friend of mine who was in london on christmas day was happy that she saw hugh grant, not five feet from her. but good friends of mine, i saw a far larger miracle christmas eve and christmas morning. i saw the very body of the saviour, christ, the lord, who was wrapped in swaddling clothes, handed to me as the bread of heaven in the hands of a woman from wyoming; i drank the very blood which made that babe's cheeks blush, poured out for me in a chalice held by a poet of some renown, but who will never do anything more important than to hold that cup.

but ah, it gets better. well, not better. it's just that there's even more: every morning the church prays, after reading the new testament: "blessed be the lord, the god of israel, for he has visited his people . . . ." this year the lord has gifted our little house with a visit from two of the people whom i am sure most of us would consider among the least. but somehow there was room for them, and they brought the presence of christ, the incarnation of light from light, god from god, the word eternally begotten of the father, with them.

it is good.

long time no write much happen

in which i notice that it's been almost a month since i posted anything here. it has been a very insightful month, and that's probably why i've written nothing. through the good grace of finding a celtic daily office from the northumbria community, i found catherine de hueck doherty's poustinia: christian spirituality of the east for western man (notre dame, indiana: ave maria press, 1975) which describes the kind of solitude-in-community that seems to be what i'm trying to do with space i call beatus, and which i now call beatus, an urban poustinia.

one lime, two beers, three friends, six cats

dan phillips asked one his blog, "when do you pray?" the wednesday morning discussion group i'm priviliged to enjoy, usually josh and jeff and bradley and me, have all been on trips of some sort or another the past week or two, so this week we were sipping around the question of how we maintain our spiritual disciplines, such as they are, whilst trippin'. not a new question, granted: "how shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land?' do we just hang up our harps?

but sometimes the trips are little, or so they seem. i have been in babylonian captivity this week in a very small but effective way. i'm housesitting for a friend who leads a very cluttered life, with televisions in every room, computer moniters galore, and six cats. so last night, into the midst of this confusion (i'm easily confused), come ryan and josh, to share a cheap mexican beer with an expensive co-op lime and to catch up, while keeping the cats company. josh is allergic to cats, so he skipped the beer.

and we're talking all spiritual stuff, being all spiritual guys, and feeling cool and having a good time, and josh is telling ryan about his past year's discovery of deeper and simpler prayer, and i'm telling ryan how pleased i am to have found a friend like josh who is crazy enough to share psalms every morning and evening, when it strikes me full in the forehead that in the clutter of being amongst the cats at 8:00 to drink our beer, we had left out the psalms.

so. we stopped and prayed the psalms together. simple. psalms 141, 16, 62; a passage from the gospel according to luke (4:16-22); the magnificat; the our father.

behold, no longer were we captives, but pilgrims. this morning i found most of the lime on the cutting board by the sink, a little dry from the time in the desert.

"blessed are the peacemakers"

or, if you prefer, "happy are the peacemakers." jesus said it, and it's true, although probably some of us who want to be peacemakers oten thhink that "tired and frustraed are the peacemakers" is more likely true. On the other hand, if there is no peace, perhaps we are really only -eace-wishers, or war-opposers.

if you're serious about becoming a blessed, happy peacemaker, join us for a conversation to help bring that about. we will use jim forest's the ladder of the beatitudes, as well as sharing our own experiences. (The book will be at Village Books at the front desk).

this conversation about peacemaking starts on the 8th of november, a tuesday, at 7:00, at Beatus: the art of prayer, 215 west holly, G-4 (the bellingham hardware building, corner of holly and bay).

antioch, where they were first called christians, or, holy faith

this week i and my good friend josh parrish are in santa fe, new mexico: the royal city of the holy faith of st. francis of assissi. mostly i am visiting old friends, either people or rivers or places. he is finding new friends and checking out st. john's college. we are also vising communities of faith, one of them holy trinity, a parish of the antiochan orthodox church, one of them the church of antioch at santa fe, a parish of the catholic and apostolic church of antioch. josh says they are like second cousins twice removed.

both of them trace their roots back to the first century church in antioch. how they treat, and what they value most, in the tradition they have received from that time are very different. i look at them in terms of paul's analogy of the body in his first letter to the corinthians. the whole, the one holy catholic and apostolic church, is the body, but it "consists not of one member but of many." (12:14, njb).

unfortunately, these cousins don't always respect each other as they should, i'm afraid. we all know that family quarrels are the worst. it reminds me to wonder why antioch was such an important center in the early church, beyond its importance as a market city at the cross roads of the empire. i suspect that the church at antioch fulfilled jesus' prayer in the 17th chapter of the gospel according to john, which condlues with "i have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that i may be in them." (17:26, njb). may we continue to fulfill this prayer, so that the words of the hymn, they will know that we are christians by our love, may be true.

fear not, it's wednesday

and on wednesdays jeff and josh and sometimes bradley and assorted others get together to get together, and we tell people we are a reading group reading something big and spiritual. we started to read the philokalia but that was too big so we moved to the way of the pilgrim which was wonderful but not big enough for us to keep getting together every week for as long as we wanted, so we started reading and discussing the psalms, but jeff throught that was too weird, so we settled for slowly exploring the gospels, as if they were not very big and very weird.

and this morning as usual, jeff brought up the really engaging question/point of entry for being together: fear. he shared a dream in which he kept going down a long hall and opening doors, just with the power of his mind, but then he got to one he was afraid to open, because he knew it was the door behind which was god, and that was good and scary.

jeff is an unusually honest person: when i reach that point, i usually make "excuses in excuses in sin," as psalm 140 reminds me in the septuagint.

all of this was within the context of our discussing the story in the fifth chapter of mark in which a woman was healed of her haemorrage by touching the clothes of jesus, "after [years of} long and painful treatment under various doctors." then jesus and the people arrive at the house of the president of the synagogue whose daughter is presumed dead, and he says, "do not be afraid, only have faith." another, i think better translation, is "do not be afaid, only have trust."

the good news (the gospel) in the words of jesus is that the kingdom of god is at hand. it is the work of the deceiver (satan) which makes us wonder whether we are going to hell when we did. fear not. what is behind that door is good. it is god. we are encouraged to enter the kingdom.

you know something's happening, but you don't know what it is, do you, mr. jones?

so i went to seattle, to the church of the apostles for a "learning party" on the emerging church. it was a day well spent, meeting lots of cool folks and hearing parts of their stories and particularly hearing the experiences of cool folks who are trying to be church in a way that is understanded by the people who have grown up on mtv and mp3.

it was the dark times of 1966 when i first conciously noticed something was happening which we have very modernly called "post-modernism." i was a junior in college in chicago, and i put together what i hoped would be a conversation to try to understand what this thing was that we were entering, but none of us could really do anything more than notice that we were noticing something, but what it was we couldn't tell.

after saturday i'm still not too sure we have begun to grasp the magnitude of the shift. we were told proudly, adamantly, by a very gifted "abbess" that they of course did not use books in their worship. but of course lap-tops were there, and since they're just the modern--oops, post-modern--cool thing that has replaced books which were the cool thing of the 15th century, i'm not sure we were not just fish not noticing the water.

this morning i started reading the philokalia, and somehow the words of the introduction, by g.e.h. palmer, philip sherrard, and kallistos ware, about "the contemporary reader" seem particularly appropriate: ". . . he may be led . . . to question his own outlook and assumptions and then to modify or even abandon them in the light of the understanding with which he is now confronted. . . . it should be remembered that, however much the external appearances and conditions of the world may change, such changes can never unroot the fundamental potentialities of the human state and of man's relationship with god . . .."

of course we need to speak to our culture. but we need not be overwhelmed by it.

entering the theatre

when i was a young child, back in the previous century, one could enter movie theatres at any time, and stay as long as one wanted. one could therefore come into the ten commandments just as moses were holding his hands up against the red sea and now have any clue that it was moses or what he might be doing dividing all that swirling jello. or one could join john wayne and montgomery cliff's big fight in red river and not have any idea why they loved each other so passionately. one had to stay around for a while, see the whole movie at least until "this is where i came in" to begin to understand what was going one, and for better movies stay for several showings, maybe buy another box of jujubees, to really understand the story.

the liturgy and the church year are like that, too, it occurs to me. dropping into a congregation where someone reads or someones read three passages of scripture, and someone else prays a "collect" or a "megalynarion" can be confusing. but if one stays around for the whole cycle, one not only finds that it makes sense (I'm trying to avoid an awful cliche that it's the greatest story ever told, but that it is a story in which each of us has a leading part, an interactive story that transforms us and leads to transforming the world around us.

one of the church's several new years days is coming up. but one can join the story at any time.

end of the world as we know it

or why tom wright, rem, john dominic crossan, and the international bible society are all in agreement:

all these folks agree, either in song or scholarly writing or on the covers of bibles that it is the end of the world as we know it. but do we feel fine?

visiting several congregations of the church in bellingham recently, i've been struck by the insistance we seem to have to continue the arguments that divided us either from each other or from the world, back when the arguments meant something. so the "orthodox" christians are still insisting on their orthodoxy as trinitarians, but in words which were meaningful to arians but which are mostly merely quaint to people struggling to understand and to experience the trinity today. the "reformed" christians are still arguing against a midaeval understanding of "the mass" as sacrifice which is certainly no longer held by the catholic church, and which is, i am convinced, again merely distracting to those who are sincerely seeking the real presence of christ in their lives but who aren't privy to courses in church history.

so, again and again, let us pray, "lord, have mercy." send us into the world in peace, and give us strength and courage to love and serve you in gladness and singleness of heart. and give us courage to behold the world for which you suffered and died, and speak to it with co-suffering love.

rocky barjonas

it is always a little surprising that the church in her wisdom (allright, i'm being sarcastic here: the church as old men in strange clothes' insecurity) has put so much more attention on peter's declaration that jesus is the messiah that on any of the earlier declarations, often coming from people with less dramatic evidence. remember anna and simeon in luke's gospel? or nathanael's somewhat ironic declaration in john's?

but this week's lectionery gospel (in the revised common lectionery used by most of the parts of the church that speak european languages these days) has what has come to be called "the confession of peter."

i found the discussion at sarah laughed rather insightful on peter's role in the whole process, especially as related to men who consider themselves powerful and who wear clothes proclaiming the same.