Refractions

Trapped – in bubbles, not in amber,  watching our partisan cable networks,  talking in code, not language,  antagonist neighbours, intimate enemies,  clutching at pixels and jingos to save our lives.  It was like this before – when one-before-One came to say,  “Repent”,   to say, “change your minds”,  say, “shed your bubbles”,  say, “deep Beauty is so close, so close –  is just a bubble-skin away.”  Leave your bubble, wash it off in water!  Stand in an old – and Ancient – river place,  in a new – and Ancient – way.  Re-enter – like Elisha – the land.  Cross – like Joshua – the river.  Intend – like Amos – justice.  And the Snakes?  The brood of urbane bubble-guardians  protecting the wash-starved world from threats of water?  This one-before-One tells them,  “You can flee the broken future,  and live like washed-off people,  unbubbled and new-minded!”  All these t...

Every Child Immanuel (For Advent 1, Year A )  Odd, how the promise of a later peace  comes just before annihilation –  a tumbling of temple into Babylonian dust .  Odd how the prophet utters comfort  as the reckoning beast approaches.  Odder still, how g ospel frames a writhing, wrecked creation  as a plummet into hope –  there is One-who-will-return ,  who bore violence to a cross,  wore wounds into a room filled with fear,  will portage us to a tree of life for our healing –  for the healing of nations .  Why do You wait so long,  as cities turn to rubble,  bodies to compost,  as the powerful fashion crosses for another and another generation?  This is the world, and if the best the luckiest can do  is cover ourselves with unearned advantage,  or cower into privilege,  what is to become of the unlucky,  with no patina of privilege,  no gospel-racket of divine protection?...

The ashes on our forehead might be last year’s burned palms.   Or wildfires - burned Lytton, LA, Athens.  Or war-blacked cities, Mariupol, London, Dresden, Hiroshima,  smouldering remains of commerce, purpose, neighbours, love.  The ashes on our forehead, horror, memory –  the kilns of Auschwitz, Phnom Penh’s killing fields,  napalm, charred bones of village, burning child.  Caught in the sin of the world, in its leg-hold trap,  gnawing our leg,  self-consuming,  burning our home: making ashes  even of ourselves.

Let us ask God to restore us to a place of Advent waiting.  One:     A gainst the darkness of waiting,  All:        we dazzle ourselves with a garish neon skyline of our own making.                   We are blind to the rising Star of your New Creation.  One:      Against the silence of waiting,  All:        we fill our ears with the clatter of common sense.                  We are deaf to the tone and the tempo of your Song.  One:      Against the uncertainty of waiting,  All:       we hide in the stale air of closed rooms.                  We miss the scent of your Beauty as it passes through our streets.  One:      Against the nakedness of waiting,  All:   ...

This morning it is best to be ready  for the movement of air – to have  a good warm sweater and a sturdy coat.  And mittens. This morning the movement of air is  not-so-obviously-my-friend.  But "not-so-obvious" isn’t "not-at-all",  as a blue fringe of eastern horizon  (that was not there 'til air stirred it and moved it)  inches up morning sky.  Winds trudge across great lake,  airy aqueduct for summer gardens,  sky avalanche to blanket winter fields,  breeze to sweat-soaked faces  in hot sun.  Still, November: the unkind wind shakes branches,  drives rain-sleet-snow into faces, strips off leafy jackets from the trees... We shiver and seek warmth.  November: it’s important  (or in February blizzard) to recall  that where no air moves, nothing lives –  no breathing baby, neighbour, lover, friend,  no blossoms, buds, or bowers  nuzzling horse,  lounging dog,  purring cat,...

Matthew 25. 14-30, November 19, 2023: “Pentecost 25”  Matthew 25. 31-46, November 26, 2023: “The Reign of Christ”  I wonder if we really believe that Jesus is proposing the slaves who double their master’s money as spiritual models, as kingdom-ready exemplary followers of the way of Jesus. Or if, as in the case the wise and ungenerous bridesmaids in the previous parable, their cleverness invites some measure of scepticism towards the idea that we are to emulate them. I wonder if we’re ready to see this as another instance of Jesus telling a story to provoke a probing spiritual and ethical examination of what it means to enter into the fullness of our humanity, to live a “good life”.  All by itself, without the parable that precedes it and the eschatological drama that follows (and if you can overlook the pretty broad smirk in the story when it commends usury as more-or-less “better than nothing”) this could be the story it’s been fashioned into by so many – a story comm...