An Expectation of Advent

'Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.' -- Luke 21:34-36

 

This year, one that has been so fraught with anxiety, fear, anger, and hopelessness, is finally coming close to its end.  Tomorrow marks the beginning of Advent, the start of the liturgical year, and a season of anticipation, preparation, contemplation, and plain old hope. It comes around every year, but this year it seems more welcome than ever.

Advent helps us to get ready for the coming of the Christ child at Christmas, visits of angels, shepherds, and eventually magi to that child, and several other celebrations during the period between Christmas Day and Epiphany.

This year, Advent brings us hope in the form of the easing of hopelessness on the political front, at least for a majority of people. While the pandemic still rages and strikes back just as people were beginning to believe its end was in sight, Advent will be more critical than ever. It seems that a season where quiet, meditative spiritual practices are most encouraged seems like an antidote for four weeks of fighting crowds in retail stores, overspending on gifts, more struggles at airports, bus stations, and trains, and party after party.

Heaven knows the pandemic hasn't been easy, especially on the elderly who live in care centers now sealed off to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to a most susceptible population.  Sometimes the Advent and Christmas seasons are the only ones where distant relatives can visit their elders. Still, now the closest they can come is perhaps standing on the outside of a window to their family member's room. Same for those hospitalized with COVID and other diseases. Small children, newborns, and those with impaired immune systems are also severely at risk. Parents and guardians bear a heavy burden of watching without the ability to help. They must have faith and trust in the caregivers who are entrusted with their charges.

It seems that this year, the verse "Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man" is truly applicable. We've had to be alert for so long already, but the things for which we have to be vigilant are still present. There is some hope on the political front. The COVID pandemic is worsening; however,  but increased use of masks, attention to social distancing, and avoiding crowds, plus the potential of vaccines being available in the reasonably near future, are also subject for hope.

We need to be increasingly prayerful for those we usually remember – family members, friends, the sick, the grieving, those in prison, those who are addicted or mentally ill, first responders, the medical personnel who treat the sick and injured, the police, ministers, and so on. We also need to pray that we will have the strength to continue to face those things that come our way every day. We have to learn to care for ourselves before fully helping, caring for, and supporting others.  We should also ask for patience, inspiration, and faithfulness to do the work God asks us to do. Besides prayer, we need to look for ways to make the world a better place for everyone, not just ourselves. One day we will stand before God and Jesus and will need to give an account of ourselves – a report they already know but will be testing our truthfulness in our own reporting.

Advent is my favorite season. While I don't have an Advent wreath, and I do put up the tree very early (an old family tradition), I think about the various stories that make up the journey toward Christmas, the meanings of Advent traditions, the songs of hope and expectation. This year the songs will be from YouTube or my iPod, but they will be welcome nonetheless. The stories and traditions will come from various religious sources and blogs and devotionals that give me new insights.

I will try to use this Advent to lift my heart from the depth of depression that it has been in for so long and pretend this Advent is like every other, just with small modifications. I will practice thankfulness and do what I can to help others. Like every year, I will wish it lasted a bit longer at the end of the season.

A Blessed Advent and Happy New Year to you all.  

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, November 28, 2020. 

Telling the Story

In our Education for Ministry (EfM) group, one of our members presented us with a theological reflection (TR). TRs are studies based on objects or metaphors representing things we encounter in our lives and ministries (and we all are ministries, a job we inherited upon our baptism). The person who presented the subject is a great storyteller, and he began with a story as told by M. Scott Peck called "The Rabbi's Gift."

The story starts with a group of monks who left their home country to seek peace, silence, and solitude. They found a place and began to build a new monastery. New people found the monastery and grounds to be full of serenity and sanctity. New postulants also came, increasing the numbers of the monks. For years, the place grew, but the monks noticed that fewer new people were entering the order over time. Fewer pilgrims were coming to their monastery. It puzzled them for so long that finally, they took their problem to the Abbot, who confessed he didn't have an answer either. Then they remembered a wise rabbi who visited occasionally, and they sent the Abbot to ask the rabbi for wisdom. I'll leave it to you to read the rest of the story.

How many stories do you remember from your childhood? I'm sure there was a lot that you still remember and probably have told to your own children and grandchildren.  Robin Hood, the Easter Bunny, Mary and her little lamb, Jack and Jill, King Arthur, Harry Potter, Luke Skywalker, and so many others are parts of childhood. When we share them with the next generations, we pass along not just the stories but often our responses to them and what we gained from hearing them ourselves.

We also tell stories of our own lives, descriptions of what we did or said, or some accomplishment we had reached. Sometimes we exaggerate just a little or leave out bits that don't make us feel good about our selves. Our stories began when we were born, with the tales our parents and grandparents told us about what we did and were like before we had any conscious memories of them. Family gatherings are generally story-fests, because everybody has a favorite story of what family members had done that was funny, odd, adventurous, or informative. We incorporate these stories into our life story just as we continue to add to that process with each year that we live.

We learned stories in Sunday School too. There were heroes like David the Shepherd, Noah's ark, Moses, Joshua, and Elijah. Sometimes we heard of Miriam, Delilah, Bathsheeba, Deborah, Esther, Sarah, Rachel and Leah, and Rebecca. We learned of them at various stages of our lives and were often taught to understand the stories as truth and as lessons we should learn from each one.

Many of us subsequently learned that there was truth and being true.  We learned that a story could not be entirely true yet contain a lot of truth from which we could learn. We learned the lessons of Jesus, often told in stories (parables). There were specific teachings and truths that the listeners could hear and understand without needing the information to be 100% true. It's only been in the last 200 years or so that we've added a layer of literalism to stories that the original hearers (and Jesus) never meant. The story of the Good Samaritan probably never happened. Still, nonetheless, Jesus used it to illustrate helping someone, even someone of another grace, religion, group, or whatever, because it was the right thing to do. The story of the Pharisee loudly praying in the Temple or synagogue was a contrast with a man who stood quietly in a corner, offering his prayers to God without trying to impress anyone. Jesus used masters and servants, women, children, the rich, the sick, and the workmen with whom the neighborhood would be familiar with the work they did as subjects of tales that conveyed messages and lessons he wanted them to get, lessons about trusting God, doing good, loving justice, and caring for one another more than ourselves.

Often, we illustrate the stories we have learned by how we act to one another. If we have been taught love, then we see the world as a place where love is abundant. If we learned to be wary of others if they try to get more than their share of something, then we will be suspicious and greedy to make sure our own share is bigger and better.  Suppose we understand that we are different from another group and that the other group is somehow inferior. In that case, we don't learn to treasure diversity and attempt to understand the differences and respect those who are different.

What is the story your life tells about you? What stories from your childhood and youth still linger in the way you see the world and react to it?  Where are the examples of Jesus and his words in how you live your life? What do others see in you that would lead them to seek what you have, faithwise?

I think this week, I have to work on how I portray my story, especially the part where Jesus should be present. I should remember the early church's account of how new converts sought out the underground church because of the stories told about how they showed their love of one another through care, concern, and obedience to God's will.

Think about your story this week. Where does it go from here?

God bless.

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café, Saturday, November 21, 2020.

Sleepless Nights and Earworms

Ever have one of those nights where the body desperately desires sleep, but the mind decides to act like a hamster on a wheel, endlessly running, running, running, but never getting anywhere?  It happened to me the other night and was thoroughly aggravating, frustrating, and exhausting. It wasn't helped by an earworm I got from somewhere. Through my hamster-brain, my head was running an old hymn, "Standing on the Promises." It was a great favorite in the Baptist church of my childhood and youth and was a rousing hymn I had learned by heart early on. Still, it wasn't exactly welcome with its exuberance when I tossed and turned, trying to sleep.

 

1 Standing on the promises of Christ, my King,
Through eternal ages let his praises ring;
Glory in the highest, I will shout and sing,
Standing on the promises of God.

Refrain:
Standing, standing,
Standing on the promises of God, my Savior;
Standing, standing,
I'm standing on the promises of God.

2 Standing on the promises that cannot fail.
When the howling storms of doubt and fear assail,
By the living Word of God I shall prevail,
Standing on the promises of God. [Refrain]

3 Standing on the promises of Christ, the Lord,
Bound to him eternally by love's strong cord,
Overcoming daily with the Spirit's sword,
Standing on the promises of God. [Refrain]

4 Standing on the promises I cannot fall,
List'ning ev'ry moment to the Spirit's call,
Resting in my Savior as my all in all,
Standing on the promises of God. [Refrain]*

 

I certainly had been going through some times when "[T]he howling storms of doubt and fear assail." I think I probably had several million companions in that feeling. However, even though the election was over, the pandemic was still here, finances were always tight, the allergies were going nuts, and I felt like the weight of the world had been lightened but not removed entirely. I hadn't slept well the past several nights, and along comes this hymn that I hadn't thought about in decades but which popped up unexpectedly and repetitiously.

Then my mind took a turn. Just what promises had I not been standing on?  It made me think of promises I'd learned about in Sunday School about God promising Noah that God would never again destroy the whole earth with floods.  God didn't promise that there wouldn't be floods at all, just not one to cover the planet with water and destroy everything on it. We still have surges of water that decimate populations and destroy towns, cities, and whole countrysides. But still, we stand on that promise to Noah every time we see a rainbow.

God promised Moses and the Israelites that they would have their own land. Although it took some centuries, God watched the Israelites (with Moses looking on from afar) move into their new home. It was taken away several times in Biblical times, but the people now called Jews found their way home again. Even though strife divides the land and rockets and bullets are frequently heard and felt through the ground, Jews hold on to and stand on that promise.

God has promised to be with us and protect us, but God also expects us to help with those promises. God never promised that we would be without troubles and worries. Still, we have the responsibility to help ourselves and others.  If we knowingly build a house in a flood plain or area where avalanches are expected, then we must make plans for contingencies that floods or avalanches will occur, and we will be in danger. Making plans for evacuation and the like are necessary, just as watching the weather forecasters or paying attention to the ground shaking more often than usual.

We learn to stand on our own feet, yet we have the hands of God beneath us to hold us up. We believe that, and we trust that those hands will never let us fall. I think my earworm was my reminder of that and that God won't let me down. Now I have to remember my share of the deal is to not let God down by not doing what I can for the earth and its peoples, as much as my single, solitary self can do.

I have to remember to stand on the promises, rely on Jesus, and listen to the Spirit. I think that's what my earworm wanted me to hear, as after a few repeats and some meditation and prayer, I went peacefully off to sleep for the remainder of the night.

God bless.

Originally published on Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café Saturday, November 14, 2020.

Can Mountains Move?

 When they came to the crowd, a man came to him, knelt before him, and said, 'Lord, have mercy on my son, for he is an epileptic and he suffers terribly; he often falls into the fire and often into the water. And I brought him to your disciples, but they could not cure him.' Jesus answered, 'You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him here to me.' And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly. Then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, 'Why could we not cast it out?' He said to them, 'Because of your little faith. For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, "Move from here to there", and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.' – Matthew 17:14-20

 

I'm not sure what brought this passage to mind today, but it has stuck in my mind. When that happens to me, it generally means there's something in there that I need to think about or "get."

I don't think I can be a part of healing a person with epilepsy. I know what to do if someone around me begins a fit, but beyond that, it's a matter of waiting for the seizure to be over. I learned that in EMT training decades ago and am reminded of it with every emergency medicine episode I watch on TV.

I'm sure Jesus was upset, not just at the man asking him to cure his son, but at the disciples who, after all their time with him, should have gotten it by now. Suppose a person wants to be a pilot on an airplane. In that case, that person can't push control off to the First Officer when a mountain suddenly appears in the windscreen. If ever there were a time when one would literally want to move a mountain, I'd say that would be the time. Yet no one has succeeded in doing that yet.

Mountains are both literal and figurative. We love looking at the literal mountains, rough and rugged or old and smoother, topped with snow or sides covered with the multicolored leaves of fall. There's something substantial about a mountain. Granted, rocks roll down the sides from time to time, or mudslides or avalanches can come roaring down to smother everything in their path. Still, we look at mountains as stable things, and sometimes even sacred places, such as Moses found on Sinai.

The mountains Jesus is referring seems to me to mean mountains of another sort – the rough places and challenging climbs we have to make in our individual lives. There are times when life seems to be nothing but a sheer cliff with no way to get up except to free climb using our hands and toes to find crevices in the rock and slowly and carefully make our way from one toe- or hand-hold to another until we reach the top or fall backward to our detriment.

For me, I know that most of this year has been a slog through an almost impenetrable swamp or a trip up Mount Everest without Sherpas or supplementary oxygen. The pandemic was bad enough but still manageable if I obeyed the rules about masks, distancing, and staying home as much as possible. Then came the folderol and fiddle de dee about the election races and their subsequently increasing violence, name-calling, finger-pointing, and accusations.

I refused to turn on my computer or watch any news this past Tuesday night and all day Wednesday. I spent the day reading, knitting, and watching streaming videos of favorite programs plus getting some housecleaning done. Thursday morning, when I got up, I did turn on the computer for the news and to see where we were in the madness. I realized that I felt a lot more cheerful, a lot more relaxed, and a lot more able to handle things that morning simply by having stayed away from the contention for those two days. Issues still weren't resolved, races were still not entirely resolved, and talking heads were still talking. Still, it was easier to pass them by and look for pictures of cuddly kittens and the like. Perhaps the mountain I had created about all the negative stuff had gotten moved simply by not looking for them or feeling I had to climb them by myself.

If faith can move mountains, why can't we do it?  The disciples couldn't, but perhaps it was because they were looking for mountains they could see instead of interior mountains (or perhaps molehills that seem to be mountainous). Maybe they were trying to move the wrong things?

Perhaps we see molehills as mountains. People can move molehills with shovels and a bit of hard work. Moving interior mountains can be a lot harder, simply because much of the time, it's hard to judge the mountain's size because our imagination inflates it to Godzilla-like proportions. Maybe we too are trying to move the wrong things in the wrong ways?

Things I learned from my brief sabbatical from network and print media are that it wasn't as hard to do as I had thought. I had more time to do other, more productive things, and it gave me a much-needed breather.

I also noticed I had more time to listen to God. I think I've come to the decision that when it comes to media news, I'll take God every time.  God helps make the mountains manageable. I can deal with that, and besides, I don't feel like throwing a shoe at the TV or launching a tirade when there's something I can't entirely agree with.  God never lies or makes me want to punch something or someone. Now that is a providential mountain-mover.

God bless. 

Originally published at Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café, Saturday, November 7, 2020.

Halloween Then and Now

Halloween is a child’s holiday. Little folks from mere infants to preteens seem to love dressing up one night a year and going through their neighborhoods asking for treats. Some go to church parties instead of house-to-house, and some have parties at school. Some celebrate at home, helping their parents give out candy to those who ring the doorbell or knock on the door. Many go to neighborhood parties to duck for apples, eat peeled grapes (representing eyeballs), candied apples, and other ghoulish snacks provided by their hosts. It was always fun when I was a child.

I remember getting dressed as a gypsy in a costume Mama made, loaded with strings of colored macaroni stars, with cheeks and lips emphasized by applications of Mama’s cosmetics. I didn’t have to go far as the neighborhood was small, and everybody knew everybody else. If I went up the street, a neighbor went with me, and we picked up kids from other houses as we went. We didn’t get a lot of candy, but the apples we got were fresh and crisp. It was a carefree time, quite unlike now. Now people lace apples with razor blades, spike candy with drugs, and shoot guns randomly. We also have to contend with haunting images of a ghostly pandemic. The term “Halloween mask” has a whole different meaning this year.

 I honestly wish today’s kids could have the kind of Halloween I enjoyed as I was growing up. There was no fear of kidnapping, drug deals, or crime on the streets of my small town. It was an excellent time to be a kid.

The word Halloween is a contraction of the Scottish term for the eve of All Saints’ Day, namely All Hallows Evening, which became All Hallows Even and then Hallowe’en. It is said that the commemoration of all the saints was the Christian way to cover the pagan celebration of Samhain, which was very popular as a marking the end of the harvest and the turning of the season. Christians replaced other pagan festivals, such as Christmas and solstices like Spring and Fall, with their own commemorations and feasts. Samhain became for them the two days of celebration of holy people, sainted or not.

Once the evening has gone quiet, I go outside to experience something that doesn’t often happen in my experience. As the night goes on, it feels like I find thin spaces when earth and heaven are very close together, and I can almost feel long-dead loved ones around me. I can also do the same on the evening between All Saints’ and All Souls’ when the various cultures celebrate as El Dia de Los Muertos. Families visit cemeteries where their dead relatives lie and spend lengthy periods between All Saints afternoon and All Souls morning visiting their loved ones and celebrating by decorating the tombs, offering food, flowers, and drinks to the deceased, and singing favorite songs. They feel the thin space, and treat the dead as if they were alive and partying with them.

The time around Halloween is special to me. Fall is coming to this part of Arizona. I see gorgeous pictures of places with trees with colored leaves on various websites and magazines, and I miss being where there are actually four seasons. There’s a tang to the air early in the morning, even if the temperature will be relatively warm during the day. Carved pumpkins (or plastic representations, or air-filled balloons shaped and colored like jack o’ lanterns) appear on porches, steps, and lawns. Baskets of colorful chrysanthemums and wreaths of colored leaves, nuts, and seasonal fruit decorate the houses, reminding us that the year is growing old and that winter will be not far behind.

Still, we have a little time to enjoy it all. For me, it’s an easy time to be thankful for many things, including memories of happy celebrations during this season, people I have loved and who have loved me, and that I am alive to enjoy these times. An old friend once called this season “Hallowthankmas,” because the three holidays are somewhat run together like water spilled over damp watercolor paintings.

I’m thankful for Halloween because it reminds me that all those who have gone before me. I try not to judge whether they are saints or sinful souls, but with the hope that hell is empty and the mansions of heaven are full and expanding rapidly. I read my list of the dead I wish to remember, especially this year, add a few names, and at the end of All Souls’, put it back in my prayer book for next year – or next time I want to remember them all.

I’ll never be a gypsy on Halloween again, as I was for so many years as a child, but I’m thankful for the memories. I hope everyone has happy memories to remember this Halloween.

God bless.

Originally published on Speaking to the Soul on Episcopal Café, Saturday, October 31, 2020.