Refractions

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...

I am trying to find a way into the parable of the wise and foolish bridesmaids, something that doesn’t end with a door slamming shut in my face and an impossible moral. I’m wondering if there is any place in this story where the foolish can touch the hem of hope, as we stand outside the feast with our lamps and our too-late oil.  The Star Word I received at Epiphany is “Wisdom”, but as for so many others, so it is for me – more aspiration than accomplishment. So my question isn’t exactly disinterested. I wonder if there are others who, like me, think that our wise (now-former) companions are pretty hard-hearted, the bridegroom’s expectations unreasonably high, and the consequences drastic.  There were ten of us, and five of us brought extra oil for our lamps. The point was to have a lamp going when the bridegroom arrived, but he wasn’t about to be pinned down about when, exactly, that might be.  So what’s the problem? Is it that we foolish five didn’t plan ahead and bri...

Here’s the end of the gospel portion read at Valerie’s funeral: “Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said, ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me.’”  It’s a tough text for a preacher in a multi-faith world. It can easily seem as if Christians are claiming unique access to the divine homecoming based on having chosen – or inherited – the right religious beliefs. But Jesus isn’t talking about Christianity. He’s not talking about beliefs. He is talking about the human embodiment of the Friendship of God as the way home to God.  In the preaching moment, there was lots of material for a homily without venturing into those difficult waters. So it  was not until a few days later that I realized the way the text and the occasion might have worked together. You see, I was preaching at the funeral of a friend. Not just my friend, though she was that. But a friend . Friend was w...

In "What Am I Without You?", (New Yorker, June 12, 2023) Jiayang Fan writes of her relationship with her mother in its different eras. She tells the story of a Jehovah's Witness visitor her mother calls "Missionary Lady", whose mission is her mother's salvation. Jiayang finally asks her mother, "Did Missionary Lady accomplish her mission?" Her mother replies, "It's a good story, but a story can't save me." What if a story, a good story, is the only thing that can save me, save you, save us? What if the story is all we have? It started, after all, with stories: Adam, Eve, Abel, Cain, Noah, Sarah, Abraham, Isaac (barely), Esau and Jacob tumbling in the womb, a blessing, a limp, Rachel and Leah (it's complicated), Joseph and slavery, Shiprah and Puah, Moses, Miriam, Aaron, Joshua, judges, kings and prophets at loggerheads, exile and return, Ruth and Boaz, Samuel, Jonathan, David, Bathsheba, Uriah, Solomon, Song of Songs, Herod, ...

Like a triumphal return  but without the needy anxious edge  of vanity.    The truth of me known,  yet you welcome  as if there were none better.  Forty years’ worth  of dreams of the place before,  of going back there,  now I dream my return  to this place I have never been.  Weeks of vivid nights, dreams of this place and that,  of every place I have spent my heart –  and now, this dream,  this vivid night, this warm welcome home  to this eternal place,  this new,  this now, this I, this Thou.

Mist makes silver light –  at the shore,  in the trees –  the ancient breath of angels  muting the noise of colours  into silent black and greys,  softening silhouettes  of limb and leaf,  a frosting of early summer’s silver light  astride the inland sea.  Lake Superior, June 2023

Where is the robust Story, strong enough   to bear the weight of bodies and of souls,  to touch millennia of wounds and scars  softly, with healing,  to feel a billion billion muscles strain towards life?  Where are the benedictions that we crave   when blessings seem in short supply?  Will we, like Jacob, smelling like the hunters we are not  and wearing the skins of deception,   steal from an unseeing one   the blessing for which we thirst?  Or will we live our un-narrated lives,  and say as Esau says, “I have enough”,  set out for the margin, known from that moment on    not as ourselves but as our children?  Where is the story that will catch us  as we plummet from the brink,   pushed off the page  by our own bare adequacy,  by our having enough and no more?  Will we wrestle  with a Stranger in our dream,  seize our blessing and receive our limp...

For no reason that bears scrutiny I have, on my side of the window, food –  food you seek with “Please”,  food I pass to you, and you say “Thank you”  (then our smiles), and then I say, “You’re welcome.”  The script of charity assigns your lines:  "Please." “If it pleases you."  “You can give or withhold.  I hope to please you with my ‘Please’.”  (Of course there’s no withholding – I’m here to give.  But I can have attitude, be impatient, grouchy, rough –  and still give lunch, feel “helping”  and get thanked.)  You say, “Thank you.” “I hope my gratitude means  I can ask again tomorrow, ‘If you please.’”  And my line, also assigned:  “You’re welcome” says, “Yes. You can.”  It’s the script of charity – the default of good people,  but not innocent.    Even less innocent, someone says,  “Beggars can’t be choosers.”  But isn’t it our choosing makes us human,  isn’t agency our ...

You don’t have to carve the wreckage out to make yourself someone that someone can love. You include the wreckage; it is part of all of you – and loving less than all of you's  not loving you, it's shopping Some of the wreckage is the cold remains of something warm –  like hope, like promise, even love. Sometimes you wrecked it, sometimes someone else, and sometimes it just happened; you were there and...               W hump! It happened. You were there for all of it; it is yours now; bear it: All the deep good stories bear wreckage without shame. People might tell you  that carving out the wreckage makes you better. (It doesn’t.) It makes you someone smaller, someone else, and hides you from your lovers, (all but One). April 26, 2023

Two things are true. The first is that I have many conversion stories, some of them taking place within days of each other. The other is that my entire life’s journey is a conversion story.  Conversion – from the Latin, “with” and “turn” – “turning with”. And, implicitly, turning from and turning towards. But it’s this “with” that is the hinge of all my turnings. I wonder if that’s true for you as well.  As Adam and Eve leave the garden, as a cherub with a flaming sword stands to remind them that there is no going back, only going forward (and not easily), what we might not notice is that God does not stay in the garden, relishing a calm Eden like a grandmother tidying a quiet house after the mayhem of grandchildren has departed. God appears to have decided, in chapter two, to become what we will hear a name for, many books and chapters later, “Emmauel” – “God [is] with us”. God turns and goes with our first ancestors from paradise to the danger and promise of whatever is next...

The young man stands on the far side of the river, waiting within a waiting crowd, eyes fixed on his cousin as he leads one person after another from east to west through the ancient waters. Who could not hear the echoes of Joshua and Elisha as the prophet leads the people through the brackish water to inhabit the land in a renewed and renewing response to the way of the Liberator. (No wonder it draws hostility from the temple and the court.) Joshua led a nation through this water to a land in which – they promised – they would follow the way of the Liberator. Elijah and Elisha crossed out of the land, and Elisha returned alone, both of them part of a long struggle against prophets of other gods who made shiny promises to that nation, to that people.   And now the young man watches as his cousin takes his turn in the witness of the prophets. The shiny idolatrous things are on offer from the religious establishment, the temple (the cathedral). Temple and cathedral share a comm...