tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-86578902024-02-20T20:29:02.578-08:00Preach One, Purl TwoUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger319125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-16593883373478683242017-01-15T09:00:00.000-08:002017-11-17T22:16:24.569-08:00KKQ 2017: Sunday Morning, Tasting<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2017/01/kkq-2017-friday-morning-seeing.html">Here</a></i> <i>is where I explain this little series of meditations</i>...<br />
<br />
<i>Deuteronomy 8:6-10; Psalm 63; John 2:1-11</i><br />
<br />
One of my favorite cinematic scenes is from the movie, <i>Chocolat</i> - actually, many of my favorite scenes are from that movie - when a table full of people who might not otherwise have sat down together are invited to dinner. A savory meal is served, and there is stunned silence as luscious dark chocolate is poured over the roast on every plate. Slowly and politely, the guests close their mouths around a first forkful, and in a moment as full of mystery and grace as what happens at the altar, the flavors mingle into something more than a meal to nourish the body. It is a strangely intimate scene as deep delight fills their faces, and they look at one another and smile. Their story lines have carried them through loss and longing, sickness and sin, humiliation, loneliness, and despair. But each has also learned that they are loved and capable of more than they ever imagined. That night they become friends. That night they taste communion.<br />
<br />
Our sense of taste has the primal function of alerting us to foods that are energy-rich and foods that are poisonous, but most of the time it is the most <i>luxurious</i> of all our senses, enhancing our experience of the mundane and necessary act of eating. Hundreds of thousands of receptor cells in our taste buds recognize molecules in our food and register them as sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or savory. Then...well, that's actually about all we know for certain about the neurological path from the food we eat to the place in our brains where gustatory information is processed, which means, I guess, I have to accept my son's insistence that he doesn't <i>know why</i> he doesn't like Brussels sprouts, he just <i>doesn't</i>.<br />
<br />
So how is Jennifer going to connect all this to knitting and quilting? She wasn't sure either, at first. "What wonders there are to behold," is the refrain we have repeated in our worship here, morning and evening, like so many psalmists before us in scripture. This world God made, by God's own admission, is very good, and we were given eyes and ears and noses and hands to delight in it, and so to delight in God. We see how beautifully the shades of blue in that quilt shift from dark to light, or how gently that instructor guides a knitter's hands to the next stitch. We hear the rhythmic hum of sewing machines, the soft sighs of an iron. We smell wool and suddenly remember a pair of mittens our grandmother made. We feel yarn flow through our fingers, fabric flow beneath our hands, the weight and warmth of a finished piece. What wonders there are to behold!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj09PHBwiSfhtu6RgRNSlB5cqd2v9C9_SZti-bfCYuct9QEtrS4K9giC81CAI8_RBPJUDo8VAVRFyftm4l2Ts-ho60OH2S3w4gMJHN6W4g10clFVldnlEDuGbx_owIw7miK8-rEqA/s1600/IMG_8711.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj09PHBwiSfhtu6RgRNSlB5cqd2v9C9_SZti-bfCYuct9QEtrS4K9giC81CAI8_RBPJUDo8VAVRFyftm4l2Ts-ho60OH2S3w4gMJHN6W4g10clFVldnlEDuGbx_owIw7miK8-rEqA/s320/IMG_8711.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
We taste...well, here is a wonder. Our physical sense of taste is so <i>particular</i>, so unique for each person, that we have come to use the word to describe our creative preferences, what we wear, how we decorate, what our favorite fibers or colors or patterns are. Quilter Susan Towner-Larsen describes creativity as a <i>juicy</i> process, like eating a Georgia peach when it's just-right-ripe, succulent and sweet, eaten outside or over a sink. We're aware of how the peach looks, how it smells, how it feels, how it sounds when we slurp its nectar in. We taste that peach as it fills us, and just as God in this delicious way nourishes our <i>bodies</i>, so does God also feed our <i>souls</i> a juicy capacity for creative expression according to our taste.<br />
<br />
We are fed through <i>all </i>our senses, writes knitter Susan Gordon-Lyon. "From the first rhythm we hear, our mother's heartbeat, we expand our awareness and comprehension of the world around us, and we seek to duplicate its beauty and fathom its secrets by depicting it in symbols and patterns. Pioneer quilt makers expressed what they saw in their world: flying geese, tumbling blocks, double wedding rings, Virginia reels, as well as stories and myths that lent mystery to their lives, such as the story of Jacob's Ladder. In the intricate knitting combinations used in Aran sweaters, the names of the stitches tell stories of the knitter's world: marriage lines (up and down), honeycomb, blackberry vines, ocean waves, the tree of life."<br />
<br />
What have you tasted? What are we called to create? Our faith is in a Word made Incarnate, who made the blind to see and the deaf to hear, turned water into wine, washed smelly feet, and touched the untouchable. In all the shapes we have cut and seams we have sewn and colors we have chosen and stitches we have knit here this weekend, this, the pattern of Christ, is what we have duplicated. This has been, and is, our best creative work: our listening to one another's stories as we stitched, our offering of helping hands, our seeing and celebrating each other's hard work, our prayers whispered, our laughter shared, our chocolate savored, our gathering here in this chapel.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjC9esWtq3FGLKtpNKWAlbkQU6LS2SZl2xFv0KfTmOUcC09BZheDweohQykKqFQdMxbhZ-Atm_Xa4q51M6dhem9OLOJQeM-T74Q4UceSPyZDmQXVVTDxYBWTsXQqLSJytHoRibg/s1600/IMG_8725.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZjC9esWtq3FGLKtpNKWAlbkQU6LS2SZl2xFv0KfTmOUcC09BZheDweohQykKqFQdMxbhZ-Atm_Xa4q51M6dhem9OLOJQeM-T74Q4UceSPyZDmQXVVTDxYBWTsXQqLSJytHoRibg/s320/IMG_8725.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
At this table, as we celebrate our holy communion, we will see and hear and smell and touch and taste who we are - the Body of Christ, knit together from many and diverse threads, a beautiful patchwork of people, each of us loved and cherished by God. What wonders there are to behold.<br />
<br />
And at this table, we can see and hear and smell and touch and taste who we also are - a community of knitters and quilters and the companions who came with us, women and men with the capacity to create, each according to our taste but all for the purpose of making the world more beautiful and warm and wrapped in love. It's more like a potluck than a sit-down dinner, for each of us brings something different and wonderful to the table - quilts, scarves, hats, humor, wisdom; different shapes, colors textures and fragrances; and many different tastes. Let us feast. What wonders there are to behold! <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-50384579760116331432017-01-14T17:18:00.000-08:002017-03-23T17:29:16.622-07:00KKQ 2017: Saturday Evening, Touching<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2017/01/kkq-2017-friday-morning-seeing.html">Here</a> is where I explain this little series of meditations</i>...<br />
<br />
<i>Psalm 139; Mark 6:53-56</i><br />
<br />
"That's the thing about yarn," a knitter said to me Thursday night, after asking if she could touch the skein in my bag. "That's the thing about yarn," she said. "You have to touch it."<br />
<br />
It's true, of course, as anyone who has ever walked into a yarn shop knows. You have to touch everything, even the yarns you don't intend to purchase in colors you'd never choose. Silk. Alpaca. Merino. Cashmere. Angora. Even the words are tactile. That's the thing about yarn.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHmlGBmzZT45-MO6jJbnLdBTDx_d1fB47jZjiwFfJWMp8lwRhsPCebvn1T-Jwzq_PZ-KNtfKPA7i6oOzhPkqfLyhho7lDKO9k-K22nk-Ieq-fZHYxOO_dVm8FTMoHhWpRToD4og/s1600/IMG_5753.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheHmlGBmzZT45-MO6jJbnLdBTDx_d1fB47jZjiwFfJWMp8lwRhsPCebvn1T-Jwzq_PZ-KNtfKPA7i6oOzhPkqfLyhho7lDKO9k-K22nk-Ieq-fZHYxOO_dVm8FTMoHhWpRToD4og/s320/IMG_5753.JPG" width="286" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
I asked around the quilting room, and I learned it's the thing about fabric, too. "We have to feel the weave and weight," I was told, " even if we'd never use it. How could we not reach out and touch bolt after bolt of smooth batik, or color-saturated cotton, or crisp white linen?" What wonders there are to behold.<br />
<br />
When the yarn and fabric come home with us, we touch every single inch, every single yard, as it becomes something constructed of stitches and intention. The yarn slides through our fingers on its way to be knitted; the fabric slides under our hands on its way to becoming a quilt. And when we're finished, we'll wrap ourselves or someone else in what we have made.<br />
<br />
All the rest of our senses - sight and sound and smell and taste - are limited to a very small area - eyes and ears and nose and mouth. But touch happens <i>everywhere</i>: head to toe, right to left, back to front. Touch is unavoidable, as observed by the children in the movie <i>Despicable Me</i>, who upon being told to <i>not</i> touch <i>anything</i> ask impetuously, "What about the ground? Can I touch the ground? What about the air? Can I touch the air?"<br />
<br />
Our skin is our largest sensory organ, with countless receptors primed for texture, movement, temperature and pressure - the smoothness of fabric, the tickle of a loose thread, the warmth of a wool scarf, the weight of an old quilt. It is a remarkable and vital layer of who we are, the boundary between <i>us</i> and everything that is <i>not us</i>. At the same time, our skin is impermeable <i>and</i> porous, inviolable <i>and</i> immensely vulnerable, protective against <i>and</i> responsive to the touch of others, tough <i>and</i> so very fragile.<br />
<br />
And the world outside of us is textured as we press against us, or as it presses against us. Sometimes life is smooth and even, sometimes soft and warm. Other times it can feel stiff and unyielding, coarse or scratchy, tangled and torn. Sometimes it has worn so thin we're hanging by a thread. I do not have to tell you that sadness and weariness are so real that we can sometimes literally <i>feel</i> them as <i>physical</i> sensations. There are somatosensory receptors not only in our skin but in our bones, our joints, our vital organs. We don't just hurt. We <i>feel</i> hurt. We aren't just sad. We <i>feel </i>sorrow. We don't just mourn. We <i>feel</i> grief.<br />
<br />
So it was that <i>the Word became flesh and lived among us</i>, we read in the gospel of John. Like us, it was only a layer of skin in Jesus Christ that separated <i>God</i> from all that was <i>not God</i>, and what wondrous things happened when Jesus <i>touched</i> us. People were able by his touch to seat hear, to speak, to walk, to stand up straight, to be made whole, and lest we worry that our touch is not so powerful, I submit to you that what he really did by his touch, by his placing of his hands upon another person's skin, was heal their darkness, their isolation, their forced silence, their overburdened-ness, their fear. By his touch, Jesus reminded people they were loved and cherished and that their well-being mattered, and he restored them to community. We can do that with our touch, too.<br />
<br />
We know how what we do with our hands - our knitting, our quilting, our stitching - how it heals us, calms us, renews us, binds us together. Anne Lamott says that in our times of darkness or despair, stitching is "the finger and heart version of putting one foot in front of the other." We also know how what we do with our hands heals others when we wrap them in our prayer, our thoughts, our love, our scarves, our quilts. How touching even the fringe of a garment can make one well in heart and spirit. Anne Lamott goes on to write, "The world is always going to be dangerous, and people get badly banged up, but how can there be any more meaning than helping one another stand up in a wind and stay warm?"<br />
<br />
That's the thing about yarn. That's the thing about fabric. That's the thing about being knit together in love and prayer through Jesus Christ. What wonders there are to behold. <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-36951793982594779532017-01-14T07:30:00.000-08:002017-02-20T15:28:36.147-08:00KKQ 2017: Saturday Morning, Smelling<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2017/01/kkq-2017-friday-morning-seeing.html">Here</a> is where I explain this little series of meditations</i>...<br />
<br />
<i>Psalm 45; Luke 15:17-24</i><br />
<br />
If I told you this was going to be a spiritual meditation on our sense of smell...I know, I'd be a little skeptical, too. Then again, I don't think I'm alone in believing the smell of hot coffee and sizzling bacon in the morning is a spiritual experience.<br />
<br />
It's just that there aren't that many fragrances in scripture, other than a little incense in the temple, a little frankincense and myrrh, and the oil a woman once poured over Jesus' feet. The Ignatian tradition of prayer, from the 17th century, invites us to enter scripture more deeply, to read with <i>all</i> our senses, so that we might <i>imagine</i> the smell of the fruit in Adam and Eve's hands, or the odor of an ark full of animals, of dust and sweat covered disciples, the earthiness of a vineyard or the sweetness of a wheat field, the smell of fish being cooked over a fire on the beach, or the fatted calf prepared for feast when a prodigal has returned.<br />
<br />
It's also an unusual subject for a meditation because our sense of smell is so personal, almost uncomfortably intimate. Unlike seeing or hearing, which can be done at a distance, we have to be pretty close to something to smell it (except, bless them, for skunks and 16-year-old son's laundry baskets). And smells, unlike light or sound, linger - they hover in the air as particles, not waves, entering over and over again into our bodies through our noses as we perform the simple but necessary act of breathing. Odors can be absorbed into fabrics and hair and skin, and so can remain long after the source of the odor is gone.<br />
<br />
So it's a little strange to meditate on how our noses help us notice God. But then again, has the smell of something wonderful ever stopped us in our work, slowed and deepened our inhaling, made us close our eyes to focus on the fragrance? Maybe lilacs or lavender, pine needles or pumpkin spice, that first whiff of sea air, a newborn's head, or warm chocolate cake? We have noses for a reason, and if it is in part to sniff out danger, it must also be for the sake of delight, a gift from God, and a part of how we come to know the world.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdB2jNIu7SoeQ44AEAepD330owiP0AfD5o5qCuxt7Q76rERF2pRvNz3ZzXFz580xGn2X2FRq2UNM-jCRAhM7FFBTZf40gF79NiBIYyu09Qy0opTaZAbbaYTgSz6Ur5dq3ytrzPag/s1600/IMG_8755.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdB2jNIu7SoeQ44AEAepD330owiP0AfD5o5qCuxt7Q76rERF2pRvNz3ZzXFz580xGn2X2FRq2UNM-jCRAhM7FFBTZf40gF79NiBIYyu09Qy0opTaZAbbaYTgSz6Ur5dq3ytrzPag/s320/IMG_8755.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The intimacy of smell is literally deeply physical, far more than just our proximity to something fragrant. Receptor cells are triggered, and the impulses they send travel through our limbic system, the most primal part of our bodies, to which, in our brains, the hippocampus and amygdala are attached. These perform associative thinking and process emotion, and together they make memories. When we smell something, our brains, unbidden, whip that fragrance together with how we're feeling or where we are or who we're with, so that when we smell that thing again, we are immediately transported back to that time or person or place. The oil and heat of a sewing machine smell like our grandmother's house. The wool I bought on Iona smells just like being there. The smoke wafting from a neighbor's chimney back home smells like the fireplace lounge here. The tomato sauce at dinner takes us back to our grandfather's kitchen. Your WindSong literally stays on my mind.<br />
<br />
If all of this isn't enough to convince us to consider our noses as a spiritual gift, there are a few other passages in scripture that speak of smell. From the letter to the Ephesians, "Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us as a fragrant offering to God." And from the second letter to the Corinthians, "For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved." We are the aroma of Christ, the aroma of love, the fragrance of offering and sacrifice. How profoundly intimate. In the movie <i>Michael</i>, the archangel smells like cookies to people around him. What does it mean to smell like someone who follows Christ?<br />
<br />
In some Episcopal Churches it very well may mean to smell a little like frankincense, so thick are the clouds of it hanging in the air. Mostly, I think, carrying the aroma of Christ has to do with letting kindness and mercy and grace waft between us and linger on us, so that anyone who wanders our way senses welcome, as when we smell something that reminds us of home. A blessing in the service of morning prayer we use at the Cathedral says, "Live so that those to whom love is a stranger will find in us generous friends."<br />
<br />
What will we smell today? Please do respect personal space! But amidst the aromas of steam and warm fabric, wooden needles and wool, bread and wine and breakfast and mountain air, perhaps we will also breathe in Christ. What wonders there are to behold! <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-63826012718556778362017-01-13T17:00:00.000-08:002017-02-20T15:05:16.117-08:00KKQ 2017: Friday Evening, Hearing<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2017/01/kkq-2017-friday-morning-seeing.html">Here</a> is where I explain this little series of meditations.</i>..<br />
<br />
<i>Psalm 78; 1 Samuel 3:1-11</i><br />
<br />
"One, two, yarn over...one, two, knit two together...one, two, three...no, wait..." <i>Sigh</i>.<br />
<br />
If I gave my meditations titles, this one would be, 'Things I heard at Kanuga Today.'<br />
<br />
"You mean I have to take the <i>whole row</i> out?"<br />
<br />
"I did it!"<br />
<br />
"Those colors look beautiful together."<br />
<br />
"Seriously, we're eating again already?!"<br />
<br />
I heard needles clicking, sewing machines humming, stitch markers clinking, irons sighing, instructors patiently explaining, people laughing and telling stories, toast crunching, bugles sounding, birds singing, prayers said together, and silence being shared comfortably. All the sounds you would expect at a knitting and quilting retreat. At Kanuga, anyway - I don't know if every retreat center has bugles and special toast.<br />
<br />
What wonders there are to behold, our sense of hearing among them - delicate with narrow canals and tiny bones, hair-like fibers and skin stretched tight as a drum, detecting the movement of sound in the air. Vibrations become nerve impulses, and nerve impulses become thoughts, and the thoughts become...<i>this is my favorite song...my friend is speaking...someone is crying...the wind is howling...will that dog ever stop barking..</i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjobw36Sj7RVf3uX33gbEJ9ZStw-5jq4Wv_nZ9Vua4_-N5zj_INnqI0jpAlVsqTrjLpIChHwGltIlm8IGeave8YoMcGVEYtjI6zHumsJ2wcP-D8LFioWSWVsMg0TW_ivb9SF-BBTQ/s1600/IMG_8721.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjobw36Sj7RVf3uX33gbEJ9ZStw-5jq4Wv_nZ9Vua4_-N5zj_INnqI0jpAlVsqTrjLpIChHwGltIlm8IGeave8YoMcGVEYtjI6zHumsJ2wcP-D8LFioWSWVsMg0TW_ivb9SF-BBTQ/s320/IMG_8721.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Knitting and quilting are relatively quiet pursuits, and at the same time filled with sounds: scissors snipping and yarn flapping and yarn swifts spinning. True quiet, in fact, is hard, if not impossible, to come by in our noisy world of phones ringing and devices dinging; of traffic and train whistles and planes making their final approach; of talk shows, bass lines, videos that start playing when you haven't even clicked on them, experts arguing on the news, sirens, gun shots, car alarms. We've even learned to shout silently when we write a text or email in all caps.<br />
<br />
There's lots of noise out there, and unlike our sense of sight, which we turn off by closing our eyes, our ears are always perceiving the sounds that bombard us, even while we sleep. The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor laments how difficult it is to find true darkness or true silence, so pervasive are waves of light and sound all around us. They come at us with such velocity, she writes, that we have to defend ourselves against them, and may become so calloused that we no longer see or hear, even when our eyes our open and our ears unstopped.<br />
<br />
And even if we could shut out sound, there's lots of noise <i>inside</i> ourselves as well. We can close every door and turn off everything that hums or beeps or ticks and tocks, but then the volume of our thoughts turns up, and while those tiny bones in our ears don't hear them, somehow it still registers as sound.<br />
<br />
How then do we <i>listen</i>, for surely not every sound is an imposition. God did not create a world that stays silent. Waves crash, leaves rustle, bees buzz, people sing. And even God, in so many stories we read in scripture...even God has a voice. How do we listen?<br />
<br />
That's what we asked a seminary professor who was teaching contemplative prayer. We were to sit in silence, he said, and obediently, we tried...in our classroom on 9th Avenue in New York City. It was evening, and outside the open window, people were passing by, talking and laughing loudly. A truck idled at the corner and then began beeping its backing-up-warning. A light must have changed, because traffic picked up, and it was surely a yellow cab that honked. A car alarm was set off as another large truck lumbered by. "We can't do it," we said. "How can we hear God when there is so much noise?"<br />
<br />
Our professor smiled. He knew we'd ask. "Are you sure you can't hear God? Listen differently," he said. "Pray the noise. Those people passing by? Pray for them - who knows what burdens they carry. Those trucks are delivering some kind of goods or services - pray for those who go without. The traffic, the horns - pray for the safety of all who travel. The sirens, the alarms - pray for all who are in danger, and for those who go to their aid."<br />
<br />
Speak, for your servant is listening. God's voice comes in countless ways, even in scripture - there is that still, small voice, yes, but there is also thunder and angel song and the words of teachers, friends, and strangers. Listen differently, it's as if Eli said to Samuel. Are you sure you aren't hearing God's voice? Listen differently, God says to us. What will we hear?<br />
<br />
Needles clicking? Pray for the person whose head that hat will warm. A sewing machine? Pray for the family whose loved one wore the t-shirts that are becoming a quilt. A bugle call? Pray for the staff who cooked our food.<br />
<br />
Speak, Lord, for your servants are listening. What wonders there are to behold! <i>Amen.</i><br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-89250255171593802642017-01-13T07:30:00.000-08:002017-02-20T14:37:59.684-08:00KKQ 2017: Friday Morning, Seeing<i>Here we are again - another series of short meditations on knitting and quilting and toast, because here I am again - serving as chaplain at the <a href="https://www.kanuga.org/our-programs/adult-conferences-retreats/knitting-quilting/">Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Retreat</a>. This year's theme for our morning and evening worship was "What Wonders There Are to Behold," exploring God's creation (which is mostly to say, again, knitting and quilting and toast) through each of the five senses.</i> <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFgZJIgVoNvl2NfkybcoTsl7c6u4RhhDa_iua2LXg1EGKUDZZio1BOP9UBsKtgCgBBgTJDRap7Yau0jKqtmyjQjIzZtO9DHu0q2apkpsr8TM-hD_FdWO0udFsWO_7pxZhK0FYsA/s1600/IMG_0670.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbFgZJIgVoNvl2NfkybcoTsl7c6u4RhhDa_iua2LXg1EGKUDZZio1BOP9UBsKtgCgBBgTJDRap7Yau0jKqtmyjQjIzZtO9DHu0q2apkpsr8TM-hD_FdWO0udFsWO_7pxZhK0FYsA/s320/IMG_0670.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>Psalm 104; John 9:1-10</i><br />
<br />
Sometimes I remember to look for it, and other times I forget that I'll see it - that first sight of real, true mountains somewhere beyond Birmingham along Interstate 20, as we make our way from Jackson, MS, to Kanuga. I love that moment, and whether I've been watching the scenery or not, anticipating their appearance, the sight of those mountains instantly fills me with delight, no matter how much Alabama road construction I'm navigating. I can't help but smile, and breathe more deeply, and relax my grip on the steering wheel just a little, along with my grip on whatever has been occupying my thoughts. And inside the car with its recycled air, I'm smelling evergreens and layers of leaves, feeling the movement of a rocking chair, hearing silence broken only by birdsong, tasting morning's first bite of toast.<br />
<br />
What wonders there are to behold, so many of the psalmists sang, marveling at all God has made, including ourselves, made with eyes and ears and noses and hands and mouths for beholding God's wonders. God could have mountains for God's own delight - do you remember, in Genesis, how very often we are told that God look at what had been made and called it good, very good? - but so great was God's delight that it could not be reserved for God alone. We are created with an extraordinary capacity to experience and be transformed by the wonders of this world.<br />
<br />
Our bodies are filled with and covered in specialized cells, remarkable receptors for light and sound and smells and touch and taste. They take in everything around us and send it as electrical impulses to our brains, where what we experience is shaped into images, memories, knowledge, and insight, a patchwork of color and scent and soft or rough, a weaving of sounds and sweetness and saltiness and wonder.<br />
<br />
What we see makes up as much as 75 percent of what we perceive - it is the sense, when our eyes are healthy and open, that we rely upon most. And our eyes are up to the task, each one made up of millions of working parts. We are so conditioned to respond to visual stimuli that when we understand something, we say, "I see."<br />
<br />
So what do we see? I wonder if, most of the time, the better question is, what do we not see? What are we so focused on that we're blind to everything else, like the people in the gospel story who only recognize the blind man by his blindness, and not by any other characteristic?<br />
<br />
God's vision contained an entire creation, and each individual element in it. So are we, made in God's image, capable of extraordinary sight. We can take in such big pictures as a beautiful lake...and notice any number of details, like the play of light on wind-driven ripples, the perfect reflection of clouds and sky when the lake is still, the infinite number of shades of green among the trees along the shore. A conference room full of people...and the way a smile grows on the face of the person sitting beside us. A finished quilt so large it takes two people to hold it up...and how the quilter cut the fabric in that one square to keep the blue flower intact. A whole row of stitches perfectly (or mostly-perfectly) executed...and the way that knit-two-together leans just a little to the right (don't worry, it's supposed to do that). A pattern we just aren't sure we can master...and the next step in that pattern, which we can.<br />
<br />
Perhaps it does take time to recognize our ability to see, to allow our sense of sight to inspire us and not merely inform us. Here, on retreat, we are given just such a gift. If, and I'm not saying this is likely, but if we get caught up in anxiety over the numbers and words and patterns of this day, in the same way we can so easily get caught up in the to-do lists and appointments and obligations of our daily lives away from here...if all we can see is what doesn't delight us, Leo Tolstoy wrote, "In the name of God, stop a moment, close your work, look around you."<br />
<br />
What will we see today? The hands at work beside us, how they hold the yarn just so, or move their fabric past the needle with such care. The last of the snow hiding in the cool shade of a cottage. The dropped stitch, the crooked seam...and the people all around us who can help. The bird riding a current above the lake. The pink yarn so saturated we can't look away. The dance of flames in a fireplace.<br />
<br />
In the name of God, look around. What wonders there are to behold! Amen.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-81583552004476641082016-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:002016-02-02T18:42:31.060-08:00KKQ 2016: Monday Morning, Season after Pentecost<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/kkq-2016-friday-morning-advent.html">Here</a> is where I explain what this little series of posts is all about.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Monday Morning, Season after Pentecost</i><br />
<i>Psalm 104; John 14:8-20</i><br />
<i><br />
For everything there is a season</i>... On our church calendar, we're still in Epiphany. But in KKQ time...it's the Season after Pentecost. The long, slow season when Easter's alleluias and Pentecost's fires have faded, and we are faced with ordinariness once again. The long, slow season when Kanuga's toast isn't on our breakfast plates and we aren't surrounded day and night with other knitters and quilters, and we are faced with work or school or cooking dinner or cleaning up or whatever else it is that keeps us from stitching.<br />
<br />
The Season after Pentecost, the season after Kanuga, is the longest season of the year. It's where we spend most of our lives, day in and day out, with good days and bad days, long days and whirlwinds, celebrations, distractions, steady progress, standing still. Some days it can seem like we're slogging through, like when we knit a thousand rows and our sweater only grows half an inch, or sew a thousand rectangles on a border that only reachers halfway down one side of our quilt. Other days, though, are the ones about which we've been telling each other stories all weekend. The day a grandchild was born. The day a wedding was held. A house was sold. A surgery was undertaken. A shawl was worn. A quilt was finished. A prayer was answered. A prayer was asked.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_-RDvDId-foUdLcUv-0FMpy7VmzZcie1n__H4xmtiSKpATx4DHwgjJQVBPR9xhmVSUpdpZVQDB5ImkicOX3TMQJftEgWR25133oBDI-oIMnFkij5BUI4FHKYNv66mKoyMEkZSQ/s1600/IMG_6147.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhG_-RDvDId-foUdLcUv-0FMpy7VmzZcie1n__H4xmtiSKpATx4DHwgjJQVBPR9xhmVSUpdpZVQDB5ImkicOX3TMQJftEgWR25133oBDI-oIMnFkij5BUI4FHKYNv66mKoyMEkZSQ/s320/IMG_6147.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
On the Sundays in this long season, as we go about our ordinary days, we will hear story after story about how Jesus went about his ordinary days. The gospel record for us healing and teachings, journeys and resting places, excitement and anger. How might we record, in this slow season, what we have done? One knitter has imagined might pause in our work from time to time, lay out what we have done, look at where we've been and how far we've come. Whether it seems we made progress or none at all, we might pin a note to our work at the end of the day at the end of our last row, on the last piece we sew to our quilt. "My high school best friend called out of the blue today." My neighbor across the street died. I got a new puppy today. Our son started kindergarten. I fell in love again. All of these things, day by day, will be part of our stitching, woven into our hearts and our handwork.<br />
<br />
And Christ will be part of all those things, and part of our stitching, too. His story unfolds in ordinary days, and he promises that the Spirit abides with us, not just on mountaintops like this one but in the long, slow season.<br />
<br />
When we return home, it is not just our everyday work that will be waiting. Our yarn and our fabric are also there - I know you, I know we all have a stash. The season after Pentecost may be long and slow, but that is what growth requires. It is a fertile season, when things take root and unfold and become.<br />
<br />
Saint Elizabeth Zimmerman wrote, "I reconnoitered my wool-room yesterday - it is full of possibilities for the new year... By this time next year some of these will have been achieved and some scorned and abandoned. Some as yet undreamed-of whims will have taken shape. I'm ready for them; my mind is open, my wool-room full of wool, my needles poised, my brain spinning like a Catherine-wheel. My word, such good fortune. I can only hope the same for you." <i>Amen.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG14EtDr-mCd5gOttuR5Ig0jEuaQMLVfP8QLUvXS2SLJq-wTM8G-KURH4TIpG2Msk0xbZDU0kGBW1RW6AZtYhpJl5SkJFt8bZhxudcxhXv3GQPw9mLoRTPo8Tsz32-Qqu2S1d5sw/s1600/IMG_6167.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG14EtDr-mCd5gOttuR5Ig0jEuaQMLVfP8QLUvXS2SLJq-wTM8G-KURH4TIpG2Msk0xbZDU0kGBW1RW6AZtYhpJl5SkJFt8bZhxudcxhXv3GQPw9mLoRTPo8Tsz32-Qqu2S1d5sw/s320/IMG_6167.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tiny felted heart left on the windowsill in the chapel.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<i><br /></i>
<i><br /></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-20726660540302562172016-01-17T10:00:00.000-08:002016-02-02T18:07:38.735-08:00KKQ 2016: Sunday Morning, Easter<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/kkq-2016-friday-morning-advent.html">Here</a> is where I explain this little series of posts.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Sunday Morning, Easter</i><br />
<i>1 Corinthians 12:1-11; Psalm 36:5-10; John 20:1-18</i><br />
<i><br />
Now there are varieties of gifts</i>, wrote Paul, who often said that his gift was weakness. <i>There are varieties of gifts, but the same spirit, the same God who activates them all in everyone</i>.<br />
<br />
I learned, just yesterday in Mimi's class, that one of my gifts is mis-reading a knitting pattern. I am calling it a gift because Mimi's one classroom rule is that you cannot talk down about yourself. Perhaps others of you, whether knitters or quilters, have my same gift. It isn't that we do not understand the techniques we're being taught. It's not that we cannot execute them. It's simply that we have a gift...of not seeing what is right in front of us on the page.<br />
<br />
Many of the projects we tackled this weekend demanded our best efforts. I saw all of you hard at work in your classrooms, sewing curved seams, knitting brioche, arranging quilt squares, making fingers on gloves. I chose Fox Paws for my project, and with the others in Mimi's class I cast on and started knitting.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLi2zoY3eFnakoPsQjkIg1gFHfj969ob36fGuAwgbumTqLxZWpvukOIcAu-YyU4o5jwvs_0IAOOVok2efvxgwCO9JT-ScGVCY71OC1l3msGAICF7i3vXNG0xYFAX_iyMrj-FxCqA/s1600/IMG_6249.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLi2zoY3eFnakoPsQjkIg1gFHfj969ob36fGuAwgbumTqLxZWpvukOIcAu-YyU4o5jwvs_0IAOOVok2efvxgwCO9JT-ScGVCY71OC1l3msGAICF7i3vXNG0xYFAX_iyMrj-FxCqA/s320/IMG_6249.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is my mom's Fox Paws. She has the gift of not mis-reading the pattern.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
So, until you reach row ten of that pattern - row <i>ten</i>, after nine grueling rows of knit-one-yarn-over-knit-one-in-the-same-stitch, slip-back-two, change colors, weave in the ends as you go... Until you reach row <i>ten</i> of Fox Paws, it's a hot mess. There are bunched up stitches everywhere, looking nothing at all like the pattern picture, and the only way to tell if you're knitting it correctly is to count, and then to pray. When you get to row ten, suddenly you see them, those little fox paws, which had been there all along.<br />
<br />
<i>Supposing him to be the gardener...</i> I love this little detail in John's Easter story. <i>Supposing him to be the gardener.</i> Mary Magdalene, alone at the tomb, already grieving and now also anxious to find her Lord...Mary Magdalene turns away from a vision of angels to see a man standing nearby. <i>Supposing him to be the gardener</i>...Mary is gifted, too. She does not see what is right in front of her. <i>She did not know that it was Jesus</i>, John explains, and scholars and preachers have often said it was because resurrection was not a category she knew, that she did not recognize him because it couldn't possibly <i>be</i> him.<br />
<br />
Others, including Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, give Mary more credit than that. Though Jesus clearly knew a little bit about growing wheat and grapes, or so it seemed from the stories he told, he was definitely not in the plant business. Mary thought he was the gardener, Bolz-Weber believes, because he <i>looked</i> like a gardener, which is to say, he was a mess. In icons and stained glass windows, the two of them stand face to face. Jesus is dressed all in white, with flowing hair, his face clean, his halo shining. But if Mary supposed him to be a gardener, he must have looked a little rough, the way we do when we're pulling weeds. Dirt under our nails, on our faces and between our toes; the hem of our pants (or his robe) soaking wet from the grass, maybe wearing a hat or carrying a hoe, with bits of leaves and twigs in our hair.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfL4800V_A5RadK9mmk3ZDiaEtEHyklnXbqLHWEYeREjzn0VIm-DvAWfBnEec0GIpE9S1L8CQRb6Mtt787UCYK4hGkVQZDBOwBvVsPSpuw_v0acHCGWgJwwHAbaVpXLC5Q4438A/s1600/IMG_6255.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZfL4800V_A5RadK9mmk3ZDiaEtEHyklnXbqLHWEYeREjzn0VIm-DvAWfBnEec0GIpE9S1L8CQRb6Mtt787UCYK4hGkVQZDBOwBvVsPSpuw_v0acHCGWgJwwHAbaVpXLC5Q4438A/s320/IMG_6255.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of the knitters at the retreat cares for the gardens at Kanuga.<br />
The heather was blooming while we were there.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It was an understandable mistake, perhaps. God had been a gardener before, of course, in the very beginning, when God planted the seeds of all that would take root and grow and flower into creation. How fitting that on the day of resurrection, when creation was made new, infused not with time but eternity, that God would appear as a gardener again. Mary did not see Jesus until he called her name, and then suddenly there he was, right in front of her all along.<br />
<br />
<i>For everything there is a season...</i> In all seasons, there is Easter. Every Sunday on our church calendar, whether in Advent or Lent or any other time of year...every Sunday is called a "little Easter", when we gather again to remember that Jesus died, yes, but also that he rose, re-creating us, and it is on this side of Easter that we now live - not just every Sunday, but <i>every day</i>.<br />
<br />
Which is not, of course, to say that every day we look our best, as we do for "big" Easter, in our white dresses and pastel ties, lily-fresh. It may be that here, on retreat, we've been more appropriately dressed to find our risen Savior. If Mary, who had seen him face to face, supposed him that day to be a gardener, how many times, on how many days, have we look at Christ right in front of us not knowing that he was there? In the smile of the server in the dining hall. In the patience of our teachers here. In the stranger who has now become a friend. Singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer writes, "God walks round in muddy boots, sometimes rags, and that's the truth. You can't always tell, but sometimes you just know."<br />
<br />
Resurrection is messy. There are scars. There is misunderstanding. There is the business of becoming a new creation. There is meeting Christ on a morning in the midst of grief and confusion. And there is finally leaving the place where we saw him. In the Fox Paws pattern, row one comes around again eventually. And for a time the stitches will once again be all bunched up and difficult to work. But now we know the little paws are in there.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKBFRZVY4ckIjwRPueNBfarsEEqYnPWTwv07buxS8BbUmce_9plTu-2sNv00zgIEyoByqb-mNyLhl2s5ndVvTZcpVXAn6xHe5ji_-C-O9BTvLxgp77NaB6q0gPQN6Ck5GQpfshkQ/s1600/IMG_6254.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKBFRZVY4ckIjwRPueNBfarsEEqYnPWTwv07buxS8BbUmce_9plTu-2sNv00zgIEyoByqb-mNyLhl2s5ndVvTZcpVXAn6xHe5ji_-C-O9BTvLxgp77NaB6q0gPQN6Ck5GQpfshkQ/s320/IMG_6254.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was a jumbled assortment of squares. But there's a quilt in there all along.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Jesus the Gardener sent Mary out to tell what she had seen. And she went, and it very well may be that we have a gospel to read at all because she announced to the others that Christ had risen and that they would see him going ahead of them. And when indeed they did, Jesus said he would be with them <i>always, even to the end of the age</i>.<br />
<br />
Mary was gifted. And so are we. And I don't just mean that sometimes we don't see what's right in front of us. Mary had the gift of courage to tell the story of resurrection, as unbelievable as it sounded. Some of us have the gift of patience to teach. Others listen well, or start good fires in fireplaces, or elicit smiles, or are gifted at encouragement. We are all of us creative, and we all are able to wrap the world around us in warmth and color and generosity - or what else are we doing when we give someone a sweater or a hat or a quilt?<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygm7rJaVK-bNLVHpnjD_GNivUhZGgTMX21Js1JEVXoSXmkD2bGIZV15ozSbsLGvHyjxz0qXiZ_eAnRpTs_SADtdxWAx3NuiXV4XgfkFdmc4p1eaMrhl2Nt838L-fq45-YKj8VAw/s1600/IMG_6165.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjygm7rJaVK-bNLVHpnjD_GNivUhZGgTMX21Js1JEVXoSXmkD2bGIZV15ozSbsLGvHyjxz0qXiZ_eAnRpTs_SADtdxWAx3NuiXV4XgfkFdmc4p1eaMrhl2Nt838L-fq45-YKj8VAw/s320/IMG_6165.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlotta is gifted at quilting.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXzMBGSAAYlIPLCDTlde1szoXaI_Bdm-K_E06U3A7qptvddl_qUZsgj4EOAlPi0FLksZPsFS6xUBs1xWADtwbcnOs7xMPbcIwNcD7oHgOZSlt4zU2JDGEptLqxAo-W82Dm5z7Wg/s1600/IMG_6251.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipXzMBGSAAYlIPLCDTlde1szoXaI_Bdm-K_E06U3A7qptvddl_qUZsgj4EOAlPi0FLksZPsFS6xUBs1xWADtwbcnOs7xMPbcIwNcD7oHgOZSlt4zU2JDGEptLqxAo-W82Dm5z7Wg/s320/IMG_6251.PNG" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trish is gifted at knitting.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdEH13SS8RhXf6dFYICrlhJO2JF4W6ZZUeB_oX_HFBfYe7uBnDWi1GkzTxGPLo9tNJMbzlxFzXO8p4ef-XskGtTTr6TSrGkhgcpscL4rewG2L1804oQZSUB9-dNphvc_m-VsJig/s1600/IMG_6253.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipdEH13SS8RhXf6dFYICrlhJO2JF4W6ZZUeB_oX_HFBfYe7uBnDWi1GkzTxGPLo9tNJMbzlxFzXO8p4ef-XskGtTTr6TSrGkhgcpscL4rewG2L1804oQZSUB9-dNphvc_m-VsJig/s320/IMG_6253.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These knitters and quilters are gifted at music.<br />
They play for our closing service every year.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I hope there is new life in you today, at the end of this wonderful weekend we've shared. We've walked in the shadows of mountains and trees, we've not had to cook even once, we've sat by fireplaces, we've talked with friends, we've napped, we've shopped, we've walked in the snow, we've stitched for three days straight without interruption. Alleluia! Alleluia! <i>For everything there is a season..</i>. Soon we will leave Kanuga, and in 360 or so days return (but who's counting?!). In the year to come, in every season, may we share our gifts, may we keep creating, may we seek and find Christ not in perfection but in all the beautiful messiness of life. He's right in front of us all the time, and with us to the end of the age. <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-73741381077137789912016-01-16T15:39:00.000-08:002016-02-02T16:23:37.560-08:00KKQ 2016: Saturday Evening, Lent<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/kkq-2016-friday-morning-advent.html">Here</a> is where I explain what this little series of posts is all about. This evening service included prayers for healing</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Saturday Evening, Lent</i><br />
<i>Psalms 42 and 43; Isaiah 43:16-21</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Last year at KKQ, which was celebrating its tenth year, someone suggested we thank Varian for her ministry among us by making something for her out of pieces or yarn or fabric from every participant there. I wandered from class to class, asking knitters for scraps of the yarns they were using - soft wools, sturdy cottons, lustrous silks and alpacas, in a rainbow of colors even Crayloa hasn't named, light and dark, lofty and sleek, from balls of working yarn and piles of yarn that had been unknit or worse.<br />
<br />
Finally I went to the quilting room, uncertain whether what I was going to ask was even possible. We had decided to tie the yarns together end to end to end, and thought perhaps we could use narrow strips of fabric as well. I explained this to the quilters, and asked them, "So, from the fabrics you're working with this weekend, do you think there might be scraps?"<br />
<br />
Cue the laughter.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfZUHM679FPp3ipdpg5al2Aa0nISYt3CfQTTHoDeSSYmuUOc6JV_aHlOF7TtIs0Y1NLrYeKJHy1HSVGUCBSYvXGRH8PCzxuQkptuhTiN0U9VbVDSRUnmFtHs0JRIo_k59lyP60w/s1600/IMG_6245.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrfZUHM679FPp3ipdpg5al2Aa0nISYt3CfQTTHoDeSSYmuUOc6JV_aHlOF7TtIs0Y1NLrYeKJHy1HSVGUCBSYvXGRH8PCzxuQkptuhTiN0U9VbVDSRUnmFtHs0JRIo_k59lyP60w/s320/IMG_6245.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Apparently, one of the many mysteries in quilting is not only that there are <i>always</i> scraps, but that as you work your way through them, piecing them in ever smaller strips and shapes into new quilts, the scraps multiply. Exponentially. Every quilter keeps a bag or box at his or her table to collect the fragments of fabric cut away but not discarded, for there may be life and purpose in them yet. Pink from a quilt for someone's daughter. A musical print in memory of a musical friend. An orange that was chosen for the color of a sunset.<br />
<br />
It isn't hard to see how like life our handwork is. How we start fresh and new, how all things are possible on the threshold of a project, a year, a job, a journey, a relationship. How we work eagerly and carefully with all we have been given, whether yarn or fabric or the ability to do math or a gift for teaching or a call to medicine or a chance meeting with someone we grow to love. How we create something at once beautiful and useful, cutting away what we don't need.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU7iaAxa3xo4pugOEnGbqHA92UXIbnV-uS248SmPUB6VhsjSonKEVhKQnVCoBsI3i0pGsnZ3NSVLt7zBvRqHr_bBIDU2S1KqxnyF_Xjlncs2ajkX_P0kJ7VVs26j1N2e4Tl_CvA/s1600/IMG_6155.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuU7iaAxa3xo4pugOEnGbqHA92UXIbnV-uS248SmPUB6VhsjSonKEVhKQnVCoBsI3i0pGsnZ3NSVLt7zBvRqHr_bBIDU2S1KqxnyF_Xjlncs2ajkX_P0kJ7VVs26j1N2e4Tl_CvA/s320/IMG_6155.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
And then...a stitch gets dropped. A pattern gets misread. A seam doesn't line up. We run out of yarn. We cut the fabric in the wrong direction. We receive a diagnosis. The phone rings in the middle of the night. Someone moves away. We lose a job, our health, our hope, a loved one. We hurt someone, whether we meant to or not.<br />
<br />
<i>For everything there is a season...</i> In the liturgical season of Lent, we acknowledge how dark things can get, how tangled, how disordered, how discouraging. We sift through what seems a pile of scraps and lay them before God. <i>We have not loved you with our whole hearts</i>, we pray at the start of the season. <i>We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We confess our unfaithfulness, our pride, our impatience, our anger at our own frustration, our envy of those more fortunate. </i>For whatever reason, whether we make a mistake or something happens that impairs us in some way, we lose sight of the pattern, of the possibilities that <i>are yet there</i>. We are vulnerable, heart, mind, and body, and we need God's help.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RbLfxa1CA8PPjM7Iwr_UOq35XqThyphenhyphengJLY0Iurk92gQRg_Iwbnj2-iNod623dfquH7YQ5dn8qbFBELhdxUyO1p8NGkepLGGQrefr-k6qHWsUJHC_Tmuk9PoKwq6pNm_zEog7xFw/s1600/IMG_6244.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8RbLfxa1CA8PPjM7Iwr_UOq35XqThyphenhyphengJLY0Iurk92gQRg_Iwbnj2-iNod623dfquH7YQ5dn8qbFBELhdxUyO1p8NGkepLGGQrefr-k6qHWsUJHC_Tmuk9PoKwq6pNm_zEog7xFw/s320/IMG_6244.PNG" width="180" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>I am about to do a new thing, </i>God spoke through the prophet Isaiah. <i>Do you not perceive it? Even <u>now</u>, in <u>this</u> season of darkness and doubt and discouragement, it springs forth</i>. For the scraps in the quilters' bags, for the tangled thoughts and feelings in our hearts, it might seem that we are finished. But there is, quilters know (and knitters, too - or how many tiny balls of scrap yarn are in your stash?) there is infinitely more that yet God can and will make of us.<br />
<br />
That extra yarn becomes a lifeline so that the next time you rip back you don't lose everything. That scrap of orange that was a sunset in your quilt becomes a goldfish when you give it to the quilter at the next machine. Or perhaps the scraps remain simply scraps, retaining the stories and experiences that made them what they are, as we retain the stories and experiences that made us who we are. Darkness <i>and </i>light. Ragged <i>and</i> smooth. Bright colors <i>and</i> neutral grays. There is always, <i>always</i>, another piece that can be placed somewhere we did not know it could be beautiful. Perfection, muses another knitter, is <i>wholeness</i>, not the absence of error or darkness or mistakes. It is the holding together of all the scraps and threads and making something new.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaGD1Pm-J5oxVWLFtdBSjqxeEwkGfU_FABTW96Kqn4I6DFKbFSFRoe1a2lZ7PlPP6lSfMZKRRKyYfUCRj8ARsbxQuIcR8NJg5zQOCn02wg7S-zdk4kzx5J4FMamAs8-xivb6F20A/s1600/IMG_6177.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaGD1Pm-J5oxVWLFtdBSjqxeEwkGfU_FABTW96Kqn4I6DFKbFSFRoe1a2lZ7PlPP6lSfMZKRRKyYfUCRj8ARsbxQuIcR8NJg5zQOCn02wg7S-zdk4kzx5J4FMamAs8-xivb6F20A/s320/IMG_6177.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yarn scraps can make tiny trees.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsUXd7twGTzMa2Fkaxn-dehzPRkBJM8qwR_Uv08qFyCpWw7y9EMLrhnf7o_TCaXhdOliJnFdP84xHG6AmlTMb_Mmcbmb0vqKxgPytIolh2XCBDBVRGH7AjnrYUiDliSAi4bockjA/s1600/IMG_6193.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsUXd7twGTzMa2Fkaxn-dehzPRkBJM8qwR_Uv08qFyCpWw7y9EMLrhnf7o_TCaXhdOliJnFdP84xHG6AmlTMb_Mmcbmb0vqKxgPytIolh2XCBDBVRGH7AjnrYUiDliSAi4bockjA/s320/IMG_6193.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fabric scraps can make tiny quilts.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
From start to finish, really, that we can bundle up in shawls and quilts and scarves and woolen socks at all is nothing short of a mystery at least - a miracle more likely. Most yarn and the threads that form fabrics start out as living things, or part of living things - wools and silks and cottons, tangles of fibers that have to be washed and brushed and spun and plied, or woven and cut into bolts. We take those single long strands or strips of fabric and mix them up again, connecting loop after loop, piece after piece, until they become a new whole, made up no longer of something unbroken but of partial skeins and cut pieces of cloth. <i>I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, </i>God says to those who had only remnants of life left. So will God make a new and beautiful way out of us. <i>Amen</i>.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL70yF7TbXRbwLlQsZwcSwt4ZPx7aeH-bkBs89iWGfNmVDhDQp4n1F09nKlgABkyo2cxWLUvXYmisdG87Eh57C9CQRETStZcz3TutCMIW90Qu6U7HKa02Mt07vrj1WOT_f1FUG5A/s1600/IMG_4795.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiL70yF7TbXRbwLlQsZwcSwt4ZPx7aeH-bkBs89iWGfNmVDhDQp4n1F09nKlgABkyo2cxWLUvXYmisdG87Eh57C9CQRETStZcz3TutCMIW90Qu6U7HKa02Mt07vrj1WOT_f1FUG5A/s320/IMG_4795.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The God's Eye we made for Varian last year, with our scraps of yarn and fabric.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-46821033197575405202016-01-16T10:31:00.000-08:002016-02-02T15:37:09.175-08:00KKQ 2016: Saturday Morning, Epiphany<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/kkq-2016-friday-morning-advent.html">Here</a> is where I explain what this little series of posts is all about</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Saturday Morning, Epiphany</i><br />
<i>Matthew 2:1-12</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
We know they're going to ask before they do. We're sitting there, knitting - quilters, I'm not sure whether this happens to you also, as I think you're less likely to pull out your sewing machine in the doctor's waiting room or in line at the DMV; but perhaps you do experience this here at Kanuga when we knitters visit the quilting room - so we're sitting there, knitting, working away at something that does not demand our full attention, and we become aware that someone nearby is watching. Just stolen glances at first, but they get longer and longer, until it can only properly be called staring. Finally the question comes, "What's that gonna be?"<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1dOdJCR7eduVG_fDMcXND-jodfc7bOgscAyOLS2LHkwIlzlvmFFeQ_Ha_CpyIh1qunQjlDGMj1_SKWWklHAW3V0hUS3OjurqpDB_Kgig54TZJuAUsFoGosmtLw4STO6QomzZlqg/s1600/IMG_6151.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1dOdJCR7eduVG_fDMcXND-jodfc7bOgscAyOLS2LHkwIlzlvmFFeQ_Ha_CpyIh1qunQjlDGMj1_SKWWklHAW3V0hUS3OjurqpDB_Kgig54TZJuAUsFoGosmtLw4STO6QomzZlqg/s320/IMG_6151.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is gonna be a sweater (the fair isle yoke part).</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
It is a pivotal moment. Potentially powerful. For the question, though sometimes mere courtesy, is often genuine curiosity. A little wonder, even. A mystery. A spark. "What's <i>that </i>gonna be?"<br />
<br />
"A scarf," we say. Or a hat. Or a shawl. Or a quilt to fit a cradle. We work more slowly for a moment or two, exaggerating movements we usually make without effort, to spark more interest, to keep the wonder alive, to fan the flame. Do we tell them the scarf is for a grandfather who has a hard time keeping warm? That the hat is for a friend who will soon lose her hair? That the shawl is made with yarn we bought last summer on our family vacation? That the quilt is for our first grandson, made with fabrics leftover from his mother's or father's baby clothes? "What's that gonna be?" A scarf is only half the story.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cs4kyT8EGu2WZKKlhkxeb3rJkqMxu9cmol8tPX0g36EdWCs9gsq5Jr8270kh9_CNvp5xsu1yRHylawgAPQVTGrswAPS6Tcxnldbph3TMHZuxs3D2Hzb6JAU9EzFebtqZlstp8w/s1600/IMG_6164.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6cs4kyT8EGu2WZKKlhkxeb3rJkqMxu9cmol8tPX0g36EdWCs9gsq5Jr8270kh9_CNvp5xsu1yRHylawgAPQVTGrswAPS6Tcxnldbph3TMHZuxs3D2Hzb6JAU9EzFebtqZlstp8w/s320/IMG_6164.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is gonna be yarn.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<i>For everything there is a season...</i> In the season of Epiphany, we remember how sparks of recognition flew at first like stars in the night sky and finally burst in transfigured glory. "What's that gonna be," people murmured as Jesus began to be known. At first they just stole glances, and then they stopped and stared, not fully recognizing the shape of his words and actions but aware they were seeing and hearing something new and wonderful and of God.<br />
<br />
"What's that gonna be," they asked as he turned water into wine, or cast out demons, or said <i>blessed are the meek. </i>"This is going to be salvation," Jesus might have said. This is going to be forgiveness. This is mercy. This is love. This is justice. This is grace. This is welcome. And then he'd tell a story about vines and branches, wheat and chaff, baker women, shepherds and sheep. What was happening was extraordinary, the eruption of heaven on earth, but it happened in ordinary time, in the course of ordinary days. Like us on our ordinary days, Jesus went here and there, he worked hard, sometimes he rested. He met with friends, at his meals, said his prayers, noticed the people around him and asked him how they were.<br />
<br />
"What's that gonna be" Our quilters know the question because I myself have asked it after <strike>staring</strike> stealing glances as pieces become a whole, as patterns are revealed that I had not seen before, each an epiphany all its own. I know it's a quilt, but if I linger long enough, I learn the rest of the story, or some of it...it is a sunset over a mountain, or a gift for a golden anniversary, or a prayer for someone who is grieving, or a cover for a college-bound kid.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBMtHspa9c289YD_GVLaNFxyyUz8KjAZafeE_U_TOuI04cVn8QFJ77JV3W2i1GU7DVi57xPXGzYvD-0BOH0yvilFJqryhB8GSK_JE6RRld-lxygwPA4B0EDG3UW5zGjCMQUjxUuA/s1600/IMG_4797.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBMtHspa9c289YD_GVLaNFxyyUz8KjAZafeE_U_TOuI04cVn8QFJ77JV3W2i1GU7DVi57xPXGzYvD-0BOH0yvilFJqryhB8GSK_JE6RRld-lxygwPA4B0EDG3UW5zGjCMQUjxUuA/s320/IMG_4797.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the sunset over a mountain, before it got quilted.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I suppose <i>any</i> moment, whether we are stitching a garment or a blanket or a life, <i>any</i> moment can be pivotal and powerful when we use it to show and tell how we make meaning, to let someone know, because they have asked, who and whose we are. And the light, like the work in our hands, grows as someone else now knows something about warmth, about love, about grace. Then we go back to our work, back to knitting, back to quilting, back to living, as though it is the most ordinary thing in the world. Which, of course, it is. And of course, which it isn't. It's extraordinary. That's why they stare. That's why they ask.<br />
<br />
It is fitting, perhaps, that we have this retreat in the <i>actual</i> season of Epiphany, when every Sunday tells the story of how someone who stared suddenly sees. The gospel story for this morning does not say so, but surely the wise men wondered, even worried, when the star they followed stopped not above a palace but a place where peasants lived. They must have stared at the child who seemed far more the son of the carpenter in the corner than a king, let alone the son of God. Who knows what happened there that night at Joseph and Mary's house that finally helped them see just who he was. "What's that gonna be?" Maybe Mary told the story of the angel who came to announce what God meant to make possible. Maybe Joseph told the story of his dream. But like that moment when stacked stitches become a fox paw, or when bow ties emerge from an arrangement of fabric, the wise men saw the light, saw everything differently than they had the moment before.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6wXV4oREjhWo4DLs4Iej8Sq2ONN2ax8wjJlyFa8fdXzhOSGM3M_MnUnpA4FjG54ogNwCRGrCBElSt9rjWvXr9VCYxJ4Mh-IJCwDbiiyx9XmbR_DF14cJq2TRfyj3aDYqrM-8kYA/s1600/IMG_6243.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6wXV4oREjhWo4DLs4Iej8Sq2ONN2ax8wjJlyFa8fdXzhOSGM3M_MnUnpA4FjG54ogNwCRGrCBElSt9rjWvXr9VCYxJ4Mh-IJCwDbiiyx9XmbR_DF14cJq2TRfyj3aDYqrM-8kYA/s320/IMG_6243.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These are the stacked stitches that became a fox paw.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
"What's that gonna be" Perhaps the best answer of all would be to say that we aren't sure yet, even if we know it is, minimally, a hat or an art quilt or a shawl. The truth is, it's a story that is still unfolding, with epiphanies around every corner, revelation in every row, stories in every stitch. In the gospel, Jesus had years yet to grow, the wise men had miles yet to travel, the star had light years yet to burn, our own stories were yet dreams in our ancestor's hearts. So also our projects are works in progress, as we are.<br />
<br />
What if, today, we shined a light for every moment of recognition, every time we saw the pattern - in our projects, yes, but better still every time we saw in one another the pattern of heaven on earth as we go here and there, working hard, resting, eating meals with friends, saying our friends, and telling each other our stories. May this day be blessed and bright. <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-8378146835921510742016-01-15T20:46:00.000-08:002016-02-02T10:28:46.412-08:00KKQ 2016: Friday Evening, Christmas<i><a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2016/02/kkq-2016-friday-morning-advent.html">Here</a> is where I explain what this little series of posts is all about</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Friday Evening, Christmas</i><br />
<i>Psalm 96; Luke 2:15-20</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
For three years I sang in the children's choir at Otey Memorial Parish in Sewanee, Tennessee. I loved our black and white choir robes, and the paperclips marking what we would be singing from our little red hymnals. But most of all, I loved Lessons and Carols. Every December we joined the University Choir - or were they angels? - in the cathedral-sized chapel for a service of scripture and music celebrating the coming of Christ.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfEacsJaSc7t6LUh2iJWJQGOHtqh1bp1Ktv3uhTFWawzLFyrghlye9SYiX51ONBDjuOCiYm8cTcvL9yQyu-vDzU0i10qo-UQDGx-3z9429nmNutxFSPrY1gICb20NmwykFCLUKGw/s1600/IMG_6242.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfEacsJaSc7t6LUh2iJWJQGOHtqh1bp1Ktv3uhTFWawzLFyrghlye9SYiX51ONBDjuOCiYm8cTcvL9yQyu-vDzU0i10qo-UQDGx-3z9429nmNutxFSPrY1gICb20NmwykFCLUKGw/s320/IMG_6242.PNG" width="180" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My dad and me when I was in the junior choir.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We practiced our little anthem - <i>tu-ra-lu-ra-lu, pat-a-pat-a-pan...</i> We practiced sitting still for the long readings from scripture. And we practiced and practiced and practiced processing up and down the aisles, singing while holding a lighted candle. I will never forget the first time I heard, in that enormous candle-lit darkness full of people and evergreens and anticipation, the first time I heard a solo soprano voice begin, <i>Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed..</i>.<br />
<br />
So it was that God, in the words of one of the collects of Christmas, <i>joined earth to heaven and heaven to earth</i>, casting on what had until then been only a dream, only a possibility, only a prophet's hope. Many of us have made incarnate today something that didn't exist when we woke up this morning. A pile of cut fabric, a cast-on row, a stack of increases or decreases. With even the first two stitches the yarn or thread is stronger than it was as a single strand, the foundation for all that yet will be.<br />
<br />
<i>For he is our childhood's pattern, </i>my favorite Christmas hymn continues. <i>Day by day like us he grew. He was little, weak and helpless; tears and smiles like us he knew.</i> Our hymnal calls it our <i>lifelong</i>, not just childhood's, pattern, which feels more true, or aren't we growing all the time, sometimes up, sometimes out, sometimes deep inside ourselves. And don't we sometimes feel little, weak, and helpless? Aren't our days filled, like our Savior's were, with tears and smiles? The pattern is always this...we've held it in our hands today...the pattern is always this: something starts small. A single loop in knitting, the first piece in quilting. It will have to grow for rows and days and sometimes years before it grows up into a glove or a shawl or a quilt or a Savior. But every stitch matters. Every block counts toward what will be a new creation.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtuvJnFbGde1jezpV3SNC3C2rjiaFvMA9oD018ttJX4hyphenhyphenVNYSREk2DYX78iEWmsdNAlotBLdbQL7IMysVYWAz1_3goKxvCVISeKDcNIEoSVuHvFo-BD_Jgw5UwfVCErWeJAGCPgQ/s1600/IMG_6237-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtuvJnFbGde1jezpV3SNC3C2rjiaFvMA9oD018ttJX4hyphenhyphenVNYSREk2DYX78iEWmsdNAlotBLdbQL7IMysVYWAz1_3goKxvCVISeKDcNIEoSVuHvFo-BD_Jgw5UwfVCErWeJAGCPgQ/s320/IMG_6237-1.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A quilt in progress at KKQ</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If our works in progress look like nothing yet, we are doing just fine. Did the baby in the manger look like a messiah? Did he sound like a son of God? If angels hadn't appeared with their startling announcement, would the shepherds have noticed there was anything different about his tiny toes and fingers and his cry that melted his momma's heart? First stitches, first steps, first breaths are humble and delicate and fiddly, like a baby, and we have to handle them carefully.<br />
<br />
Nothing at all happened as that solo voice rang out at the beginning of Lesson and Carols. Nothing, that is, except the perfect stillness that precedes beginning to move. On the second verse, the choirs joined in, softly at first, so as not to wake the one who had come so far to his birth. And we walked slowly, a slender thread of candlelight and harmonies processing through the chapel. At the choir stalls, we filed in, one row behind another and another so that, looking back now, I see how the lights became a fabric, like so many stitches and stories in a quilt, like so many years and stories in a life, day by day.<br />
<br />
<i>Not in that poor lowly stable</i>, sings the last verse. <i>Not in that poor lowly stable with the oxen standing by - we shall see him but in heaven, set at God's right hand on high.</i> I'm not so sure we don't see him in humbleness and lowliness and first rows and fiddly bits. For all the tenderness of the Christmas story, the starlight and angel song, don't you know Mary and Joseph must have had to swaddle their baby a hundred times before they got it right, growing as they were into their new role as parents. He was, after all, God incarnate, all flailing arms and tender skin. Perhaps no one could see it yet, but in those dark infant eyes was the light of the world, in his tiny frame God's embrace of all the world.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigm8Dzat9JxylohbZlJqjJzR0iqE7DK9McCyrDyBBqXpkUy_CsqWjPf-lm-eaj3G_N5-nlw2SlrDNWnMK3NbLr8r1KOkF813P9Sn5o3PIlJA6mPCxA3gliIBzRUP0EmAis-B-7Dg/s1600/IMG_6221.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigm8Dzat9JxylohbZlJqjJzR0iqE7DK9McCyrDyBBqXpkUy_CsqWjPf-lm-eaj3G_N5-nlw2SlrDNWnMK3NbLr8r1KOkF813P9Sn5o3PIlJA6mPCxA3gliIBzRUP0EmAis-B-7Dg/s320/IMG_6221.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our evening prayer altar at KKQ.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i>For everything there is a season... </i>The Christmas season when grace such as we had only dreamed of as a distant light in the darkness became something we could touch and feel, a pattern revealed in sight and sound and the smell of newborn baby. The first small step in the growth of the body of Christ, which is to say, the growth of who we are. First stitches of scarves and sweaters and quilts and friendships and other possibilities have been cast on today. Maybe what we are working on, with our hands, in our lives, in our faith...maybe it has been born and born, again and again and again, already. If what we are doing feels fiddly or small or weak or helpless, I wonder if we might remember that's how salvation started, too, in the shape of our lifelong pattern of growing day by day, story by story, stitch by stitch? <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-49160689628399777252016-01-15T08:00:00.000-08:002016-02-01T20:20:18.943-08:00KKQ 2016: Friday Morning, Advent<i>Yarn and Jesus and mountains. Y'all, for a retreat, it just doesn't get any better. Unless you throw in 100+ knitters and quilters, the best toast you'll eat anywhere, and snow on Sunday morning. Then you've got the Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Retreat, at which I have had the privilege of serving as chaplain for the past few years. The posts that follow are the "homilettes" (so, a homily is a short sermon; a homilette...) I shared at our morning and evening worship services.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>The theme was officially "Turning and Re-turning," a lyrical thread from the Appalachian tune, "Simple Gifts." I had been thinking about the liturgical year, which had begun in Advent, and we were only just in Epiphany. And it had been a year since we had seen one another, and so many things had been begun and ended between when we had last been at Kanuga and when we returned. In our stitching, we turn and re-turn to the start of rows or strips of fabric; in something of the same way we turn and re-turn to the start of the story of salvation every time Advent comes around again, always building on the story with another year of our own lives, of new experiences and perspectives and rows or strips of faith.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>What ended up being the "unofficial" theme, because it was the refrain I kept returning to in my reflections, was "For everything there is a season." Some of what is here will have made more sense if you were there, but I hope it is still enough familiar that you might turn and re-turn to similar seasons in your own years and projects and faith journeys. So we begin with Advent...</i><br />
<br />
<br />
<i>Canticle 15 (Luke 1:46-55); Luke 1:39-45</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And blessed is she who believed...</i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzKZZewDWpwTQtBjecsMQmgXz6YU1VMj5b-9xzUa7S364Feu_kQPZFmguUYha9Wsr_UJPIOYr2LGXHHn8H6EO7yqW76yjDRBt1xYbYh3SoGrPpVzWAOGDiKMN_kJwikVOOddJ6A/s1600/IMG_6220.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigzKZZewDWpwTQtBjecsMQmgXz6YU1VMj5b-9xzUa7S364Feu_kQPZFmguUYha9Wsr_UJPIOYr2LGXHHn8H6EO7yqW76yjDRBt1xYbYh3SoGrPpVzWAOGDiKMN_kJwikVOOddJ6A/s320/IMG_6220.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Seredipity Needleworks, Tuscaloosa, AL</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
We stopped at a yarn shop yesterday, on our way from Jackson, Mississippi, to Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, North Carolina. We actually stopped at two yarn shops. Now, this is problematic for several reasons.<br />
<br />
First, perhaps you have not seen the car in which the three of us, sometimes four, travel to this retreat. It's not a small car. There's plenty of room for plenty of things, and yet with all the yarn, and books about yarn, and things for working with yarn, and things made out of yarn...and suitcases, if they fit...there's only just enough room for people, if we hold yarn in our laps. The last thing we need is <i>more yarn</i>.<br />
<br />
Second, perhaps you have not heard about <i>how</i> we travel. Someone said yesterday that we always manage to squeeze a nine-hour drive into around thirteen hours. Sometimes it's because of where we eat on the way. Sometimes it has something or other to do with the car or its gas tank.* There's really not time to stop for yarn even once, let alone twice.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE_RpjrTGA0-sy4yfb3GlDu5jPij6Vv95ftKyZTzFc4vz0UNB34C-hrLeEYzZPDwslWR4lOOc_vWPorQP5K5voCdMhX_qzSvu1VL1wT3um2GNVEQvwIEG6pCTdqtbFEzK-QsJQNg/s1600/IMG_6131.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE_RpjrTGA0-sy4yfb3GlDu5jPij6Vv95ftKyZTzFc4vz0UNB34C-hrLeEYzZPDwslWR4lOOc_vWPorQP5K5voCdMhX_qzSvu1VL1wT3um2GNVEQvwIEG6pCTdqtbFEzK-QsJQNg/s320/IMG_6131.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">*We may or may not have run out of gas on the way last year. Twice.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I think one of the reasons we stop for yarn anyway is because we know what will happen when we open the door and step inside the shop. It has happened to all of us, I'm certain, walking into a yarn shop or a fabric shop. Or don't <i>you </i>have to pause for just a moment on the threshold to catch your breath, overwhelmed, even if you knew exactly what you came there to fine? All that color! All those textures! All those patterns! All those possibilities! You could make <i>anything</i>!<br />
<br />
Perhaps, like me, you wander among the displays, touching with reverence the fibers or fabrics, smiling with involuntary delight at a particular print or at a color more saturated than any we have every seen. Can it really be <i>that yellow</i>? Perhaps we pick up a skein or a bolt, or see a shop sample, and begin to imagine something we might make something beautiful, something bold. But then reality sets in, whatever it is about our daily lives that makes us too busy or too tired or too fearful, whatever limits our possibilities, and we put it back down and walk away.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqA8oJxlEzOf3Sdhrt10JZy8He1GKeEJj6BDKvwfW3veT9JrHa0aCqstDPpQdVKP7T9w9cUTWqC8hA0k347-7wFZRfvVZqyHLco1OU9UExO0lrLaab5eKSdFCGo-_uhyIcpWmvLg/s1600/IMG_6236.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqA8oJxlEzOf3Sdhrt10JZy8He1GKeEJj6BDKvwfW3veT9JrHa0aCqstDPpQdVKP7T9w9cUTWqC8hA0k347-7wFZRfvVZqyHLco1OU9UExO0lrLaab5eKSdFCGo-_uhyIcpWmvLg/s320/IMG_6236.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In the Making, Birmingham, AL</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
But <i>what if.</i>..<br />
<br />
In the season of Advent, we pause for just a moment on the threshold of what some have called the greatest story every told, the story of how God opened the door from heaven to earth, stepped inside, and became <i>Emmanuel</i>, God-with-us. The possibilities were endless, as in a yarn shop or fabric store. But not every yarn works for every pattern; not every fabric can take every shape. You wouldn't knit something with scratchy wool to go around your neck, or quilt with flannels or thick batting for a Mississippi bed. God could have picked any pattern for the Savior of the world - a blue whale, a dogwood, a cumulus cloud, a warrior, a king. But God chose humility and a sense of humor (Jesus could tell a joke!), ordinariness and passion, calloused fingers and dusty feet, and devotion as a shepherd to his sheep.<br />
<br />
It was not a new pattern. God had made a person before, with the same hands and feet and shoulders that sometimes get cold, with ears and a mouth and an eye for color, and bearing God's own image. But there would be a new thread this time, the perfect yarn for God's pattern of salvation. This person would not simply <i>bear</i> God's image. This person would <i>be</i> God from God, light from light, true God from true God, love from love...<br />
<br />
...<i>if</i> Mary would believe it was possible, <i>if </i>she wasn't too busy, too tired, too afraid, <i>if </i>she wouldn't put down God's invitation to do something beautiful, something bold, and just walk away...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLUG6QxRlOJmIrOhCOZCSlmE7qPkNylnn_mJnZJ2JUAjl0KZpsfj9r_vjivfdtzpmpyJiTKjTpLgiGXe4G2sshmsXwrAVFxLTYn7xC2a9sm77JQaOGJ45S5UnQeJm4UtJTTaJBw/s1600/IMG_6235.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRLUG6QxRlOJmIrOhCOZCSlmE7qPkNylnn_mJnZJ2JUAjl0KZpsfj9r_vjivfdtzpmpyJiTKjTpLgiGXe4G2sshmsXwrAVFxLTYn7xC2a9sm77JQaOGJ45S5UnQeJm4UtJTTaJBw/s320/IMG_6235.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More In the Making...</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i>
<i>Blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of all that God has spoken</i>, Elizabeth said when she embraced her cousin. That God would do something as extraordinary as becoming as vulnerable as we are. That God would choose reality - our busy-ness and weariness and fears - as the place where God would do more than we could ask or imagine. That God would piece salvation together from humility and humor and ordinariness and passion and kindness and community and welcome and relationship and prayer and creativity...from the kinds of things that will be happening right here at our retreat...<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWnHuPWFnF8YazulmePB0X3nMt1xabPPlAGAhtew_P-WBJc1MZy4C1oKUR08zhQKQ5VI47IF4maZkTmDudJelARJHxIbs7fbMBpsSh3LoaJxFrl9YZOOf7verpuNfjzPduMPr5A/s1600/IMG_6234.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWnHuPWFnF8YazulmePB0X3nMt1xabPPlAGAhtew_P-WBJc1MZy4C1oKUR08zhQKQ5VI47IF4maZkTmDudJelARJHxIbs7fbMBpsSh3LoaJxFrl9YZOOf7verpuNfjzPduMPr5A/s320/IMG_6234.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More In the Making... This yarn may or may not have come home with me.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i><br /></i>
<i>For everything there is a season. </i> For believing that anything is possible, for preparing as best as we can, for waiting for the marvelous things that have been promised, that season is Advent...and the first morning of the Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Retreat. We're waiting for the warm scarf or yoked sweater or bowtie quilt that will soon be born. The patterns and yarns and fabrics are chosen. What if, today, we believed that God will fulfill all that God has spoken? What if, instead of putting down what we think cannot be done, we believed that God-with-us will be with us? What if reality is as full of color and texture and promise as a yarn shop, or the quilting room, or heaven? <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-50154629809997823132015-07-05T15:04:00.000-07:002015-07-06T15:04:50.994-07:00Preach One: Proper 8B<i>Preached at St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral...no images with this one, just words...</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15, 2:23-24; Psalm 30; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>And in this matter, </i>Paul wrote, <i>I am giving my advice: it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something - now finish doing it.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Last month, I began to do something...well, to <i>desire</i> to do it anyway. I attended a conference on clergy wellness, about holistically and prayerfully examining spiritual, vocational, health and financial matters in order to better engage in the life and ministry we are given. By the end of the conference we had all written a small rule of life, an intentional rhythm of activities and practices to help us notice and honor and abide in God's presence day by day. A rule of life might include setting aside time for prayer or reading or writing; or learning a new practice that helps to center us, at a loom or in a garden or with a fishing pole in hand. Perhaps we intend to spend more time in community, to encounter God in others; or in solitude, to encounter God in ourselves. Perhaps we intend to eat more healthfully, or sleep more soundly.<br />
<br />
For a rule to become a daily practice, two things must be true. First, it must be realistic, not an ideal toward which we are striving. <i>Memorize the Book of Psalms</i> is a lovely if lofty goal. <i>Read one psalm every morning</i> is a very good rule of life. Second, a rule should include some form of accountability, preferably a person, someone to help you remember your rule when you forget it, to pray for you as you practice it, and to discern with you when it might be time to make changes to your rule.<br />
<br />
If you make Jody, our Canon for Parish Ministry, your accountability person for the part of your rule of life in which you have stated your intention to exercise regularly, this is what you will hear every day at the office: <i>Did you walk today? How about today? Did you walk yet? Are you walking?</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It is one thing to commit to doing something... But somewhere between <i>I will walk an hour every week,</i> and lacing up my walking shoes...it is another thing altogether to follow through. <i>It's kinda hot today. I'm really tired. There's just not time. I have to get this, or that, or a thousand other things, done first. I'll just walk tomorrow.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>I am giving my advice, </i>Paul wrote, <i>what you began doing, what you desired to do, now finish doing it.</i> He was writing, of course, to the faithful in Corinth, with whom he had corresponded before, his first letter filled with moral instruction, and teaching concerning the purpose of spiritual gifts and the practice of Christian love (you know, how it is patient and kind, how it bears all things, how of faith, hope, and love, love is the greatest). Paul had also in that letter urged them to offer financial support to the poor in Jerusalem, and the Corinthians had agreed to do so, desiring to do so, for though they were Gentile and the believers in Jerusalem were Jews, they understood from Paul that in Christ all are baptized into one body, Jew and Greek, slave and free. <i>If one members suffers, all suffer together, </i>Paul had told them. <i>If one is honored, all rejoice.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
But that was a year ago. And now, though the Corinthians had followed Paul's teaching and Christ's example in loving one another, they had failed to follow through on their financial commitment. Who knows what happened between, <i>I will give to those in need,</i> and sending the money to Jerusalem. <i>I don't have enough. Someone else will do it. There is this need, and that need, and a thousand other needs right here. It won't help that much anyway.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
So what does happen to us in that space, the space <i>after </i>we acknowledge our intention to act, to move, to love, to extend ourselves, to give...and <i>before </i>we actually do it, or fail to do it? Why does <i>now</i> suddenly become not the right time? Why are <i>we</i> suddenly not the right people? Why is our offering suddenly not the right one? What keeps us from walking? What keeps us standing still?<br />
<br />
We have witnessed in the past few weeks the devastating results of failing to follow through, to finish what has been begun, to effectively and decisively end racism and gun violence. And even as the members of Mother Emmanuel AME responded to the horrific tragedy on their grounds with indeed amazing grace, we have watched as many others across our nation instead descend further into division, arguing about race and rights while significant gaps remain between black and white Americans in many ways, such as education, income and access to healthcare, and while gun-related incidents claim thirty American lives every day. And then decisions rendered by the United States Supreme Court in the name of justice for all revealed still more division, our newspaper opinion pages and Facebook feeds filled with both elation and anger, deep gladness and confused grief. In the midst of all our division, we are hemorrhaging community.<br />
<br />
"The truth is," said the Rt. Rev. Michael Curry, elected and confirmed yesterday as our new Presiding Bishop, "The truth is, we are brothers and sisters of each other. The hard work is to figure out how to live as beloved community, the family of God." We have brothers and sisters who live in fear every day, who live in isolation, who live with prejudice, who live without equality or safety or enough to eat. We have brothers and sisters with whom we live in disagreement, in our nation, in our neighborhoods, even in our Church. We have our own fears, or pride, or self-righteousness, or doubts, or a thousand other things that make us linger in the space between desiring and doing. How can we move forward as beloved community, as the family of God, when hate, oppression, busyness, pride and division crowd our way?<br />
<br />
Paul pointed the Corinthian community toward Christ as the example of fearless giving, of generously and radically transforming love. Jesus touched us, entered into relationship with us, built a beloved community out of us. Following through means following him, giving whatever it is we give, both individually and as a church - whether it is financial resources, or bags of lemons, or a few hours at the front desk, or a lunch break serving at Stewpot, or a willingness to listen, really listen, to another's pain...we give whatever it is we give, according to what we have to offer, because Christ gave himself for us, to us; gives himself with us, through us.<br />
<br />
Poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes writes of the reasons we list for why we cannot give of ourselves, why we stay stuck and isolated in the space between desiring and doing," There is not enough time... You don't have the power... Of course you don't. It's not yours. Time does not belong: it flows. Power does not sit: it flows. It is not your time, not your energy, but God's. You enter the river and it flows through you."<br />
<br />
So I walked on the treadmill Friday morning - I can't wait to tell Jody! - and I watched as the week's headlines scrolled across a television screen. And it struck me...in the midst of all we have experienced as a nation and as a church in these past few weeks, we as people of faith, as family of God, have an extraordinary opportunity to follow through. To do what we have said we would do, to finish what Christ started, perhaps not expecting, as President Obama said of Reverend Pinckney, pastor of Mother Emmanuel Church, perhaps not expecting to see in our lifetimes complete transformation, but not accepting any reasons or excuses not to act anyway. To love our brothers and sisters, <i>all of them</i>, with patience and kindness, not jealous or boastful, not arrogant or rude. To live as beloved community, in eagerness and gentleness. To bear witness to amazing grace.<br />
<br />
After all, we named our desire and decision to do something in our baptism, when the covenant we made as water dripped down our necks became our first rule of life. Will we continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers? Will we persevere in resisting evil, and whenever we sin repent and return to the Lord? Will we proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ? Will we seek and serve Christ in all persons - <i>all persons</i> - loving our neighbors as ourselves? Will we strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being - even those who differ from us, even those who disagree with us? In this commitment we have begun in baptism and are called to continue in community, our accountability person is none other than the one who made us and who loves us and keeps us. <i>I will, with <u>God's</u> help.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Brothers and sisters, let us finish what we have set out to do, which is to say, let us do love, let us be kind, let us welcome grace, until what Christ started is complete. Let us live in real community, as God's family, with God's help. "We are part of the Jesus movement," Bishop Curry proclaimed, "and nothing can stop the movement of Christ's love in the world." <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-2708492520687262592015-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:002015-07-05T21:57:04.466-07:00Preach One: Lisa and David<i>My first wedding sermon, preached for Lisa and David at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Dallas, TX. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>1 Corinthians 13:1-13; John 15:9-12</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCEBKCaa701-nI5YfoNzOWCkBR7wnEsKtzpuNv1qzUKF2ujd70sZhTuUVRLRNkF1mRtuj-r20SvLZwVgC6Je9oV0eJ9EbwVJD7R71dVLDZpjWmzmyZCCl0NhmCypRz_YfBCBjag/s1600/IMG_5347.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwCEBKCaa701-nI5YfoNzOWCkBR7wnEsKtzpuNv1qzUKF2ujd70sZhTuUVRLRNkF1mRtuj-r20SvLZwVgC6Je9oV0eJ9EbwVJD7R71dVLDZpjWmzmyZCCl0NhmCypRz_YfBCBjag/s320/IMG_5347.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
In the name of God who has made us, and who loves us, and keeps us. <i>Amen.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I was delighted and honored to say <i>yes</i> when Lisa and David asked if I would be the preacher at their wedding. In the days and weeks that followed their invitation I thought of them often, remembering times and places we have shared. Chapel bells, refectory meals, Father Wright's icons, and Frank's Deli when Lisa and I were both at General Seminary in New York City. Wake-up bells, canteen snacks, capture the flag and mum-ba-yah when David and I were both counselors at Camp Kanuga in western North Carolina.<br />
<br />
I remembered it was actually at Kanuga that I met both Lisa and David, maybe even in the same summer, but almost two decades before they would meet each other there. None of us knew it back then, I think, but on hiking trails and cabin porches, around campfires and in outdoor chapels, in playing fields and at dining hall tables we were being shaped and formed for the calls we have answered, and at one dining hall table in particular, Lisa and David were being shaped and formed for this very day.<br />
<br />
So I was delighted and honored to say <i>yes</i>. And then I remembered two more things. First, I have never preached a wedding sermon before. I have been the celebrant, I have read the gospel, I was a flower girl twice, I've been a bridesmaid, and I've been a bride. But somehow never the preacher. It suddenly seemed an intimidating task for a worship service already so filled with important and beautiful words: <i>Arise my love, I take you, with all that I have, with all that I am, I pronounce, husband and wife. </i>The entire liturgy and the way we move within it preaches itself, lifting up a relationship between two people as an outward and visible sign of our relationship with God through Jesus Christ. <i>Love one another as I have loved you. Abide in love...</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
The second thing I realized, which helped considerably with the first, was that I don't remember a single thing the preacher at my wedding said. Not one single word. So, Lisa and David, no expectations from me that you'll remember these words, either!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjllh-8ek_NwuLiswGW2ViUzT_7VpvFfkYJ_-irDmCVIJfgtheA71t2SuC0T-jl3_QZwUmUQI-6qZup8pZpFz2pS9xJtmjQp7oXchvVGE-2XXvM-0HctIYEQC5nJuruynfxbHotkQ/s1600/IMG_5362.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjllh-8ek_NwuLiswGW2ViUzT_7VpvFfkYJ_-irDmCVIJfgtheA71t2SuC0T-jl3_QZwUmUQI-6qZup8pZpFz2pS9xJtmjQp7oXchvVGE-2XXvM-0HctIYEQC5nJuruynfxbHotkQ/s320/IMG_5362.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The thing is, expectations are already pretty high. We're asking a lot of Lisa and David, of anyone willing to say so publicly, <i>I do, I choose love. </i>Not some sentimental affection, but love that is reflective of the love of God, which is to say, love that is creative and intentional and active. We don't have to remember because even Episcopalians can quote from scripture the words Paul wrote about love, how it is patient and kind, never envious or boastful. It does not insist on its own way, nor is it irritable. Are you up for all of that, from this day forward? For better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health? I don't have to tell you that the worse days are out there.<br />
<br />
Love is not easy. Though we are all of us made in love's image, for the purpose of love, Paul is right: we so often see only dimly, through shadows of anxiety, or grief, or fear, or frustration. We lose sight form time to time of what love is in its fullness. Sometimes we just forget to see. We are too busy to be patient, too tired to be kind. We insist on our own way. In the prayers we will say for Lisa and David we will hear an even harder confession, that it is not a matter of <i>if</i> but <i>when</i> that they will hurt each other.<br />
<br />
And so in our prayers tonight, in your vows, there are still <i>more</i> words that preach themselves as we hear them, and even more so when we practice them in our relationships with others, especially in our worse and poorer moments. Words like <i>mercy, forgiveness, help, </i>and <i>grace</i>. Words like <i>overcome, heal, grow, comfort, strengthen, </i>and <i>transform</i>. Words like <i>reach out in love and concern.</i> Perhaps it is when we practice these things that our love most resembles the love of God in Christ.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZzxdot1zHghH2lXnytVpvGUDpGhVXaWx-aSSE9-aZ3Iuydzcy7OTOj0bkhYNkT19hevlMTKhi4w9Un7d4WPVPJ5wjhXrAkIPmFFIuvwJTDXEdCS-QrGwj6I7V5o_aWagh_ttoXQ/s1600/IMG_5354.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZzxdot1zHghH2lXnytVpvGUDpGhVXaWx-aSSE9-aZ3Iuydzcy7OTOj0bkhYNkT19hevlMTKhi4w9Un7d4WPVPJ5wjhXrAkIPmFFIuvwJTDXEdCS-QrGwj6I7V5o_aWagh_ttoXQ/s320/IMG_5354.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
We are celebrating Lisa and David's life together tonight, but not for its own sake - we are celebrating them as a living example of loving one another as we have all been loved by God. Not for how to stretch a single moment of happiness into a lifetime of bliss, but how to love daily and fiercely and deliberately. Abiding in love isn't about being <i>perfect</i> but about being <i>vulnerable,</i> about asking for forgiveness, about needing grace, about confessing our inevitable failures and our fervent hope, and our faith that God is the one from whom all love proceeds and the one to whom all love points.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDd8eTYIOWnLQ4Y_GcNgQPWlGqjO6TCy0qIPODfPFfrFmN4enuKGBlCwDdblWtgSXuAfeuQkE54N7noJkO9etQpTIL-bHHXK-_NBEQSqETiMTufA7hZbn5JXmubw_egtcrhy4u5g/s1600/IMG_5359.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDd8eTYIOWnLQ4Y_GcNgQPWlGqjO6TCy0qIPODfPFfrFmN4enuKGBlCwDdblWtgSXuAfeuQkE54N7noJkO9etQpTIL-bHHXK-_NBEQSqETiMTufA7hZbn5JXmubw_egtcrhy4u5g/s320/IMG_5359.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Lisa and David, you don't need a preacher today. Your lives, your love, your smiles, your solemn vows, your words will preach to us for a lifetime about what it means to abide in love, to have faith that there is in God through Christ a love divine, all loves excelling, shaping and forming and filling and forgiving our dim and daily efforts. In your turning to one another, we see love face to face. Remember, and we will remember too, that we have said we will do all in our power to support you. Remember that after choosing one another, after all the vows you make, promising <i>to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, </i>we will say at the last that it is God who has joined you together, God in whom you both abide as the individuals you have become and as the union in heart and body and mind that you are becoming together. God's love for you and in you and through you is stronger than death, fierce as the grave, bigger than Texas (can I say that here?!?). God's love makes all things new, even those worse and poorer days, bears all things, even what we think we cannot, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. "May God's love then be the pattern for ours," writes Brother David Vryhof of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. "May God's wide embrace, God's boundless generosity, God's reckless mercy, God's steadfast and unfailing love be our rule and guide, today and always," so long as we all shall live.<br />
<br />
What did the preacher say at our wedding?!? Only remember this...these abide: faith, hope and love. And our prayers for you. And Kanuga toast. But the greatest of these is love. <i>Amen.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Artwork: All photographs taken at St. Michael and All Angels.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-74099638319215695222015-04-03T19:34:00.000-07:002015-04-05T19:40:04.461-07:00Good Friday: How Can These Things Be...<i>Preached at the evening Good Friday liturgy, a combined service of St. Andrew's Cathedral and Galloway United Methodist Church.</i><div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>John 19:35-41</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tYIKB5J41roTSmxGhi6oS_T6FezcbuxQ1P5lmSM-q4-dNQnIpPMj4Q0i3UmJaNlU9GVZcoVALTx-HQJcgnWV8mr3575mQHDfHCIeh7kL6NDChPjd8IQ4udyrBkojvtmeV_QMrg/s1600/Fourteenthstationsimoncarr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1tYIKB5J41roTSmxGhi6oS_T6FezcbuxQ1P5lmSM-q4-dNQnIpPMj4Q0i3UmJaNlU9GVZcoVALTx-HQJcgnWV8mr3575mQHDfHCIeh7kL6NDChPjd8IQ4udyrBkojvtmeV_QMrg/s1600/Fourteenthstationsimoncarr.jpg" height="320" width="292" /></a></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>How can these things be? </i>As the Sabbath descended with the setting sun, the body of Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus the Pharisee. The lengthening shadows made it all the harder to tell where the garden ended and the tomb began, dark as though the day had never dawned. Even when the sun was at its height, at noon when Jesus was lifted up on the cross, it had illuminated only the world's fear, hardness of heart, and unbelief. But now the light was lost, and with it...with him...the hope of all who had followed him this far.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>How can these things be? </i>It is the last question Nicodemus asks Jesus in the gospel account of their first meeting, shrouded under cover of night when he knew no one would see them together, a member of the religious establishment and this man from Galilee who was presenting God in an entirely new light. Nicodemus, accustomed to his own authority, had the first word, at worst a compliment for Jesus...<i>you are a teacher who has come from God...</i>at best, a glimmer of recognition. But then Jesus spoke...<i>No one can see God's reign without being born from above...</i>and Nicodemus was left in the dark. <i>How, </i>he asked. <i>Can one enter a second time into the mother's womb and be born?</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
The gospel does not tell us how they parted ways that night, only that Nicodemus never seemed to understand what Jesus went on to say about being newly born, about having new life. We don't know when Nicodemus slipped back out beneath the stars, still wondering, <i>how can these things be. </i>If he did linger just a verse or two longer in the gospel account, then he heard Jesus speak also of light and darkness and salvation, and how <i>God so loved the world </i>as to give God's Son, that all, that <i>all</i>, might live.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>How can these things be? </i>Nicodemus would utter these words again, or words very much like them, some time later before members of the high council on which he served. They had tried several times to arrest Jesus, but had failed for fear of the crowds of people drawn to his life-giving light. <i>They do not know the law, </i>these leaders murmured to one another, <i>how Jesus disregards it, </i>and that is when Nicodemus spoke, fanning into a flame a spark perhaps even he did not know was there, hidden in his heart, in the dark. <i>Are we not also disregarding the law, </i>he asked the council. <i>How can we judge him without giving him a proper hearing?</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
The council would go on to convict Jesus, before he even was arrested, and the trial before Pilate would condemn him to death. Betrayed, denied, beaten, mocked, crucified...<i>how can these things be? </i>It was finished, they all thought, his followers, his friends, his foes, at the foot of the cross in the gathering gloom.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I wonder if Nicodemus was there. He may very well have been, by virtue of his position, or perhaps because of that flame in him, because of the light that ever since that secret night had been changing how he saw everything. <i>You must be born from above...</i> He had watched Jesus from then on, from the shadows of course, from the distance of his remaining doubt, from his fear of a world that was different than he had ever imagined...Nicodemus would have watched and listened as Jesus went about healing broken hearts and lives, restoring the lost and marginalized, and revealing God's living and loving presence in the midst of our hunger and thirst and vulnerability and darkness. <i>I AM, </i>Nicodemus would have heard Jesus say, and he would have recognized the name. <i>I AM</i> <i>the true bread...I am living water...I am the Good Shepherd...I am the light oft he world.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
So it was, perhaps, when the cross was raised with Jesus upon it that Nicodemus finally saw the light, which in the poetry and wisdom of the gospel of John is to say that Nicodemus finally <i>believed</i>, remembering how Jesus had told him once in the dark, <i>So myst the Son be lifted up, that all who believe may live, </i>which is to say, that all <i>may abide, </i>even <i>now, </i>in the presence of God who <i>so loved. </i>In that moment, Nicodemus saw. Nicodemus believed. Nicodemus came alive.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>How can these things be? </i>In the face of such abuse of power, such denial of justice let alone mercy, such blindness to truth; in the midst of such fear, such loss, such grief; in the horror of such a brutal death? How could there be any light at all? How could there be any life? Nicodemus finally knew that it was because <i>there, </i>lifted up for all to see, was <i>such Love, </i>God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. If, as Jesus had said, it was the work of God's incarnate Son, with hands and heart and and bones and breath and blood, to bring light to dark places, love to despairing places, even life to dead places, then here in this darkness, on this day of despair, in this death, Christ performed the most light-giving, love-giving, life-giving act of all, <i>for </i>all.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Nicodemus was born anew. And the first act of his new life was to use <i>his own </i>hands and heart and bones and breath and blood to take the human body of Christ and bear it, and wrap it tenderly in cloths and lay it...how like what Mary did when Christ's body was newborn...and lay it now in a tomb, dark as night...which was where Nicodemus had first seen the light, where he had first heard new life and such love were possible. What happens when we, too, bear Christ into dark and despairing places and wrap them tenderly in light, in life, in love?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Perhaps it was Nicodemus, our newly-born brother in Christ, who years later conferred with the gospel writer and offered an opening verse: <i>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.</i></div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<i>Artwork: The Fourteenth Station, by Simon Carr.</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-62089139149294991772015-04-03T12:13:00.000-07:002015-04-05T16:14:12.883-07:00Good Friday: It Is Finished...<i>Preached at the noon Good Friday liturgy at St. Andrew's Cathedral.</i><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42</span></i><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGaqFFQcczU7F92lLdPhuOUPlaMsIilcCgSoyKpqES5rxSN5tDvGfeN4hMvbxj9yJFdMT9WE0BR3NS43qBcDrMRAAFdpLhXBEzOqRWWxhr8rN59a0DUa9lAkwudLpVStJ_Z5dyPQ/s1600/acrylic-cross.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGaqFFQcczU7F92lLdPhuOUPlaMsIilcCgSoyKpqES5rxSN5tDvGfeN4hMvbxj9yJFdMT9WE0BR3NS43qBcDrMRAAFdpLhXBEzOqRWWxhr8rN59a0DUa9lAkwudLpVStJ_Z5dyPQ/s1600/acrylic-cross.jpg" height="320" width="254" /></a></div>
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jesus said, “It is finished.” <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On Good Friday, it is always John’s account
we read of the passion and death of our Savior Jesus Christ.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On Good Friday, then, because John does
not include them in his telling, there is no Passover meal, no agony in the
garden, no prayer for the passing of this cup, no cry of forsakenness from the
cross, no earthquake, no darkness, no curtain of the temple torn in two.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On Good Friday, it is finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is no longer how we got here that
matters. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we must confess our
complicity this day, it is with the help of the prophet Isaiah…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
all turned to our own way, and God has laid on one the iniquity of us all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>We know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ve been trailing ashes and dust behind us all the long
season of Lent, remembering and repenting the countless ways we deny and betray
God’s will for us, God’s image in us. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forgive us, </i>we have
prayed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On Good Friday, it is finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is not even exactly what happened
there that matters, the heartbreaking, heartstopping details of sweat and
anguish and pain and grief.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If we must this day recall the suffering
of Christ himself, it is with the psalmist…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I
am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; my heart within my
breast is melting wax; my mouth is dried out, my tongue sticks; I can count all
my bones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What matters today, on Good Friday, the way
John tells it…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> that matters is knowing
who this Jesus is, and who we are because we followed him here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I
am…</i>Jesus has said throughout the fourth gospel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am…</i>he has said,
echoing the ancient and unspeakable name of God.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am the bread of
life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am the good shepherd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am the way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am resurrection, and I am life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>When they come to arrest him and ask for Jesus of
Nazareth, he answers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I am he, </i>and
John tell us they fall to the ground.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did they hear in his voice God from God, Light from
Light?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For just a moment, did they
know that they were laying hands on the maker of heaven and earth?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">From the first words of John’s gospel to the
very last verse, we know that Jesus, for all the blood in his veins and breath
in his lungs and bones in his body, that Jesus is the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">living</i> God, who knows all that will happen to him and still chooses
to heal the sick and love the sinner and confront injustice and show mercy and
go to Golgotha – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">having loved his own who
were in the world, he loved them to the end</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The story of his passion – and if the word means suffering,
it also means a fierce and active and intentional and abiding love – the story of
all Jesus ever did and all he ever suffered and all he ever loved begins, in
that gospel, long before our denials and betrayals, long before Bethlehem, long
before, well…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the beginning</i>, John
writes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">In the very beginning was the
Word, and the Word was God, and through him all things were made.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In him was light, and the light was the
life of all people.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the Word
became flesh and dwelled among us, full of grace and truth.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“The first word,” another preacher has
written of the passion of our Savior Jesus Christ, “The first word was
Love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then the mistakes, the hurts
done to us and to others, every good thing, every lost love, every good
intention ended badly, every bad choice redeemed, every step in the dark toward
an unknown destination: Love had already arrived.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the last word is Love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s all there is.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s all that matters.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On Good Friday, it is God, the great <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I AM</i>, the maker of heaven and earth, in
whose image even we are made…it is God in Jesus Christ who has followed us
here, through all the ashes and dust of our failure, through the pain that is
sin’s consequence, to the cross, where love was meant to be defeated, but
instead it is finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not “it is
ended,” not “it is over,” not “it is done.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Love, the first and last word, has finished revealing its
fullness and faithfulness and fearlessness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is fulfilled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is consummated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
known this day for all its breadth and depth and width.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jesus
Christ, </i>we say in our morning prayers, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you
stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that the whole
world might come within the reach of your saving embrace.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>The work of the cross is
finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is not, sisters
and brothers, ended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">For God so loved the world as to give God’s Son, that all who
believe in him should not perish, but have eternal life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>On
Good Friday of all days, new life begins, a life of outstretched arms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>An empty tomb will be the sign soon
enough, but our salvation begins right here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love as I have loved, </i>Jesus
asked of his friends, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">love, </i>he asks
of us, and if we thought washing feet would be hard…on Good Friday we know,
deeply and painfully and powerfully, that love does not stop with a basin and
towel but goes to where life and light and love and grace and truth seem for
all the world to have come to an end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>On Good Friday, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> is where
God is, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">this</i> is where love is, and
that’s what matters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is how,
trembling, we begin to pray for this ashes and dust and beloved world as Christ
prayed for us in the hours before his death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is how on this day of all days our prayers end with this
one…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">O God of unchangeable power and
eternal light…carry out the plan of your salvation, let the whole world see and
know that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had
grown old are being made new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>It
is finished.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it is not ended.</span><br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /></i>
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love as I have loved, </i><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Jesus has
asked of us, his living body.
Love, fiercely and actively and intentionally, and just see what happens
when love meets failure, meets sorrow, meets pain, meets even death. Sisters and brothers, it is
begun. </span><i style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Amen.</i></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-55312068113831520592014-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:002014-08-18T06:01:09.108-07:00Take Notice<i>Third of seven homilies preached at the 2014 Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference in Hendersonville, NC.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<u>Saturday Morning</u><br />
<i>Psalm 139:1-5; Mark 2:13-17</i><br />
<u><br /></u>
It was late in the afternoon, and cold, and I was tired, when I left St. Dominic's hospital last Monday. I was in a hurry to get back to my car. At the first blast of icy air, I pulled my scarf closer around my neck, buried my hands in my pockets, and turned my head down against the wind. I knew I was passing other people, but I just didn't have the energy to look up and smile, instead channeling my New York City survival skills from when I went to seminary. And I had almost made it to the sidewalk that led to clergy parking, just past an evergreen tree still filled with white Christmas lights glowing in memory of loved ones lost.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17L574m-O2fzXF6_xPuioa22_jyvr1I88eA-m5DF2Fpud8wdogiOMifX5Zd7vychOP-eUWB-y5Ro1HR-3QgsPysjarhWdJ4RUxzx3qLXEk3J9bfbwz4BaonHKqsMpCYjm1RzkvA/s1600/IMG_4125.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17L574m-O2fzXF6_xPuioa22_jyvr1I88eA-m5DF2Fpud8wdogiOMifX5Zd7vychOP-eUWB-y5Ro1HR-3QgsPysjarhWdJ4RUxzx3qLXEk3J9bfbwz4BaonHKqsMpCYjm1RzkvA/s1600/IMG_4125.JPG" height="320" width="265" /></a></div>
<br />
As I passed by the tree, a bird was chirping, and I thought nothing of it at first, fumbling for my keys in my coat pockets. But then a fluttering movement startled me, and I looked up. There I was, eye to eye with a bird in the evergreen, so near I could see the reprimand in his eyes and hear it in his chirps: <i>Notice me!</i><br />
<br />
Notice me! How often do we rush through our days, or move through them with our heads down against the rush of life, intent on just getting to where we want to be next, and we fail to notice the holiness right in front of us, all around us? Sometimes it's so big or loud or visible that we cannot help but notice we are in the presence of something sacred - a sunset smeared across the sky, the trumpets of a pipe organ, the presence or prayers of a friend at exactly the moment we needed them. Most of the time, though, holiness is bird-sized, or smaller even, and it is hard to see when our thoughts are filled with louder, bigger, more pressing things.<br />
<br />
We're offered an epiphany when we hear the story of Jesus walking along the lake and noticing the people there - what they are doing, who they are. Jesus notices Levi, and right then and there, in the midst of Levi's bigger and louder and more pressing - things, Jesus calls him. Jesus noticed Levi, crowded as Levi was with doubt and loneliness and deceit, a Jewish tax collector for the Roman government. Jesus noticed him, and so it was a holy place. Holiness does not mean perfect - it means being loved and chosen by God.<br />
<br />
Jesus noticed everyone gathered around Levi's table later that day. Everyday, ordinary people, sinners, imperfect people, hurting people...we could have been at that table, too. Jesus noticed them and loved them and claimed them for God. He had come precisely for them, to make them holy.<br />
<br />
God in Christ noticed us, and taught us to notice holiness in ourselves and in others, to see holiness where we might not have ever seen it before, so blinded are we by our busyness and burdens. Contemplative writer Esther de Waal suggests we take a magnifying glass with us everywhere we go, for holiness can be even smaller than bird-sized. She remembers being astonished by the beauty of a daisy, and then even more astonished when she knelt to the ground and looked at it up close.<br />
<br />
We practice noticing holiness in the common things of life - most of them bird-sized or smaller - right here at our retreat. Sure, we marvel over expansive quilt tops and exquisite beaded scarves and sweeping shawls. But remember my friend Rita, the giggling knitter? It was the <i>stitches</i> that made her laugh, that filled her with wonder and delight. Simple, little knit stitches.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2axETBB_TVB94E6cZ2C318gZ8XER8auFKR6DghBwEY22Q0O8bj2psrjEQjDIcJx4cPys-1XCxr8x_l4SiQv_h5Hw5FPWRNJsUMV5wkgdGa0qc6YykvGNrthHoKr_cxA4qjeMQg/s1600/stockinette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhm2axETBB_TVB94E6cZ2C318gZ8XER8auFKR6DghBwEY22Q0O8bj2psrjEQjDIcJx4cPys-1XCxr8x_l4SiQv_h5Hw5FPWRNJsUMV5wkgdGa0qc6YykvGNrthHoKr_cxA4qjeMQg/s1600/stockinette.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Look at your work. Look at the seams, the edges, the undersides (these were Jesus' favorite places to look, after all). Look at the twist of the yarn, the weave of the fabric, the way colors play off of one another. Look at someone you don't know well, and the care that they take with their work, or the kindness they show, or the pain that they carry. <i>Notice...</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiaMGmo6tsSSsP7u1wvjoLMpFbMiWftjYSWtJlkMu8-igMcVhmC9kH1eggl5W4hsbNbtyfqvfqXzMPdq1mAXJVOnyFvrrI8oYPFxtmG7d1peMRrV7fkSJ-OknfE705aCJa9X3xaw/s1600/IMG_7805.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiaMGmo6tsSSsP7u1wvjoLMpFbMiWftjYSWtJlkMu8-igMcVhmC9kH1eggl5W4hsbNbtyfqvfqXzMPdq1mAXJVOnyFvrrI8oYPFxtmG7d1peMRrV7fkSJ-OknfE705aCJa9X3xaw/s1600/IMG_7805.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
If we have lost sight of holiness, lost sight of wonder, we can look all around us here and begin to see again - not just to <i>see</i> but to <i>notice</i>, and to discover holiness in every small thing. Brother David Steindahl-Rast, a Benedictine monk, wrote, "The more alert we become to the blessing that flows into us from everything we touch, the more our own touch will bring blessing." So it is with holiness, with wonder, with giggle-inducing mystery - the more we notice it, the more it is noticeable in us.<br />
<br />
<i>Notice me</i>, God whispers in the holy things and holy people all around us. What will we see today? <i>Amen.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-77603770475732587472014-01-17T19:10:00.000-08:002014-08-17T15:06:06.320-07:00Starting on Empty<i>The second of seven homilies preached at the 2014 <a href="http://www.kanuga.org/conference-calendar/conference-calendar-details/kanuga-knitting-quilting-retreat">Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference</a> in Hendersonville, NC.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<u>Friday Evening</u><br />
<i>Psalm 3:3-5; John 2:1-12</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
Wouldn't that be a great trick to know, quite a charism we could receive at our baptism into the Body of Christ? And why stop at turning water into wine? We could turn cotton into cashmere. Or burlap into silk! That would be amazing...<br />
<br />
My knitting friend Rita believes we do work miracles - knits and purls and magic loops - and it makes her giggle with amazement how just a little yarn and effort can become mitts or socks or contiguous sleeves. A quilter told me this morning there are miracles where they are meeting in St. John's, too, when a jumble of triangles or squares or strips suddenly becomes a pattern. Our empty hands take up needles and pins and fabric and yarn and beads and slowly sometimes, but surely, in the empty space in front of us, a garment or blanket or quilt appears where there wasn't one before.<br />
<br />
This evening's gospel tells of Jesus' first miracle, when he turns water into wine. But there is so much more to the story, more miracles than just the one. Not only was there no wine left with the wedding party in full swing, but there wasn't even water in them, for Jesus asks for them to be filled. The jars were entirely empty.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDivobCvuMX9e1HdWL6EwMk0mJFDf7nibuzKL3EFjfxqyLTxxiygbV-ITva3aicZmkaHwKnRKHdWaQZjtwcOQE5m73-s-nurelvPFKwxVFZtKdBd3tU1jEpS0a_Y5Gnx3Rx1V48Q/s1600/water-jars.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDivobCvuMX9e1HdWL6EwMk0mJFDf7nibuzKL3EFjfxqyLTxxiygbV-ITva3aicZmkaHwKnRKHdWaQZjtwcOQE5m73-s-nurelvPFKwxVFZtKdBd3tU1jEpS0a_Y5Gnx3Rx1V48Q/s1600/water-jars.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
We think of emptiness as nothing, but there is, I think, something there - there is space. A place waiting to be filled, a place waiting to be transformed, a place waiting to become wine or a knitted felt bowl or a quilted wall hanging or holy. Turning water into wine is impressive, but the real first miracle begins with the empty jars themselves, waiting to be filled by Christ, willing to let Christ use the space, to use the jars, to use us. Jesus makes things holy by using them, filling them, and then they become not just full, not just transformed, but more than enough.<br />
<br />
This morning we reflected on how we're not so empty, but rather filled with worries and fears and grief and frustration and busyness. A preacher friend of mine has likened this kind of fullness to a sprawling subdivision devouring fields and forests. Nothing can grow in an area completely covered with manmade things, she writes, just as a relationship with God cannot grow - we cannot see how we are made holy - if every moment is paved with our manmade concerns, manmade in the sense that is seems to be part of our human nature, and not God's to worry and fear and grasp.<br />
<br />
But there is always, isn't there, a crack in the pavement, an unexpected flower, a place in the ceiling where something has dug through to the center where Christ is, a place of emptiness waiting to be transformed into new life. In the season of Epiphany, in a weekend of retreat, we are invited to see how God in Christ has filled all the cracks, all the empty places, whether as small as a sliver in a sidewalk or as big as an ancient wine jar, with himself, blessing that space, transforming it, hallowing it, making it holy. "Christ with us, within us, behind us, before us," sings St. Patrick's Breastplate.<br />
<br />
The miracle, I think, is less about the water becoming wine than it is about the nothing becoming more than enough. Less about it being wine that fills the jars than it is about Christ's invitation to fill them and his willingness to transform them. Writer (and knitter!) Molly Wolf imagines what is in that wine in those wedding jars, in our communion cups. "Who knows," she writes, "what happens in that space, when it mixes together, grace and complex carbohydrates, esters and alcohol and acids and love, inseparable."<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwhPabgZQAz-GxZvlU1ip_oEdF922CaKbYpbISmNGEHkFK7FD_KrXQbG-mghPeUypazceyC3leotud-PNQX2DF8NbbL1EOgChVwueTwDcoPEXihyphenhyphenCuFud2agS51QEAw_5hIh6PcQ/s1600/P1010544.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwhPabgZQAz-GxZvlU1ip_oEdF922CaKbYpbISmNGEHkFK7FD_KrXQbG-mghPeUypazceyC3leotud-PNQX2DF8NbbL1EOgChVwueTwDcoPEXihyphenhyphenCuFud2agS51QEAw_5hIh6PcQ/s1600/P1010544.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
We have surely been filled today, even as we empties our worries and distractions and busyness when we arrived. We have been filled with new techniques, skills, stories, laughter, hot cider, inspiration, the help of friends, grace and complex carbohydrates (or didn't you have your Kanuga toast this morning?). There is something in front of us - even if it is just a few knitted rows, or a few stitched together hexagons or triangles, or a new friendship, or a new perspective - that wasn't there this morning. Maybe it is, as Rita believes, something like magic, something like a miracle, like turning water into wine, like making common things holy...yarn and fabric and friends and prayer, inseparable.<br />
<br />
Remember that the miracle begins with our willingness to be empty, our willingness to be filled. Christ behind us, Christ before us, Christ waiting to fill us, Christ within us... <i>Amen</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-51786709431184279582014-01-17T07:30:00.000-08:002014-08-02T17:36:03.252-07:00Getting Here<i>The first of seven homilies preached at the <a href="http://www.kanuga.org/conference-calendar/conference-calendar-details/kanuga-knitting-quilting-retreat">2014 Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference</a> in Hendersonville, NC.</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<u>Friday Morning</u><br />
<i>Psalm 19:1-4; Mark 2:1-12</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
How did we get here?!<br />
<br />
The last few days, for me anyway, are a blur. I preached on Sunday, but it seems so long ago I can't remember a word of what I said. I made hospital visits, went to nursing homes, met with parishioners, attended staff meetings. There was laundry, and grocery shopping, and bill paying, and science fair project supervising.<br />
<br />
How did we get from all our demands and deadlines, our to-do lists, the drudgery that fills our day-to-day lives...to here, to <a href="http://www.kanuga.org/">Kanuga</a>, where the only thing that's demanded of us is that we be on retreat? Where our only deadlines are the bugle calls that summon us to meals? Where the only things on our to-do lists are knitting, quilting, massages, hikes, prayer, wine, or, if we choose, nothing? Where our only drudgery...well, our meals are cooked for us, our dishes are washed, our beds are made...I've been weaving in countless ends in my knitting, but here even that seems like fun.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPNNqzoX0heOPjlOw2zb0nLk6lKbExAyxXsHNAnnh7-5vzIwy1EQ_SPw01EJAKkiOX5qlMOYaE9eNUxhJuPJkICWFpxn3XzzkqBQPWBMGJJZ3s3LOjl-ttypWUxGus9qFqnksLwg/s1600/Knitting_and_Quilting_2014_pageheader.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPNNqzoX0heOPjlOw2zb0nLk6lKbExAyxXsHNAnnh7-5vzIwy1EQ_SPw01EJAKkiOX5qlMOYaE9eNUxhJuPJkICWFpxn3XzzkqBQPWBMGJJZ3s3LOjl-ttypWUxGus9qFqnksLwg/s1600/Knitting_and_Quilting_2014_pageheader.jpg" height="72" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
How did we get here, from our daily, ordinary lives to this once-a-year place of uncommon beauty, of uncommon peace, this place so far removed from our everyday experience, this place where we know God dwells? The closer we get to a time of retreat, whether it's our lunch break or a day off or the weekend, or getting away together in the mountains...the closer we get, the further away it can feel, crowded out by ordinary life so that we have to dig down through all our stuff just to get out the front door.<br />
<br />
Here we are, though. How did we get here? I got here with the help of friends. We helped each other get here, in fact, strategically loading up four knitters' worth of luggage and yarn into our car, driving all those hours from Mississippi to North Carolina. And before that, my colleagues helped me clear space in my work calendar at the Cathedral, taking on some tasks that are ordinarily mine. And my family told me to go, my husband and my son, certainly because they know how much this weekend means to me but also, I think, because with me out of the picture they get to eat pizza and watch <i>Tron </i>all weekend.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmyPuC1PZBdjQeICQamXtJnGnGKCnJM45oTEzcAYtat3ahleLWBWemlBXbjcum-woUr-VKht6f2U-bMboKyAUv8_hm1ArMtfH7mOVMFW-Eda_X2nm_FJH2wffWv-BUz9Hh-PSKbg/s1600/IMG_1194.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmyPuC1PZBdjQeICQamXtJnGnGKCnJM45oTEzcAYtat3ahleLWBWemlBXbjcum-woUr-VKht6f2U-bMboKyAUv8_hm1ArMtfH7mOVMFW-Eda_X2nm_FJH2wffWv-BUz9Hh-PSKbg/s1600/IMG_1194.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Here we are, then. We have all arrived, and indeed, we are on retreat. This is a holy, hallowed, set apart place and time. In the Church, of course, this time is set apart as the season of Epiphany, of the world coming to see God not in extraordinary experiences of burning bushes and angel choirs but in the person of Jesus Christ, walking around in people's ordinary, everyday lives and revealing in them remarkable things.<br />
<br />
The gospel readings in this season tell stories like the one we hear this morning. Someone who is paralyzed, perhaps by illness, or maybe for us it's work or worry or fears or grief or anxiety or whatever keeps us so busy or so weary or so worn down that we can barely move...someone who is paralyzed meets Jesus, not in heaven or at church but in the manger, on the road, by the sea, in a house, in the midst of common life, and there, in the middle of it all, of the drudgery and the day-to-day, he invites them to move again with purpose and peace and joy.<br />
<br />
Here's what I think. The paralytic's friends were so determined that he be free from what kept him from living fully, to uncrowd him from what paralyzed and pained him and pushed him to the edges of life, that they lowered him into the center of where Jesus was, where Jesus was already at home. Epiphany is precisely about that center, that place where God dwells, about Christ's home being here. Not just here at Kanuga, not just anywhere we go on retreat, but here in this world, in the midst of our days crowded with people or obligations or sorrow or illness or work or whatever binds us, paralyzes us, pains us.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixls_ZCkrsPmKzPHrY_wJK-y1-BKz0ht8FD1Sb3-Kyw1dsfa5EoSQz8WfInqarE7hs-zqvBNXCraeby71vLjB3YORjyTB_gi3LGKFotOZHmoU0dlzzpB0JbZoRKt4PBZb_BdMDvg/s1600/IMG_7881.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixls_ZCkrsPmKzPHrY_wJK-y1-BKz0ht8FD1Sb3-Kyw1dsfa5EoSQz8WfInqarE7hs-zqvBNXCraeby71vLjB3YORjyTB_gi3LGKFotOZHmoU0dlzzpB0JbZoRKt4PBZb_BdMDvg/s1600/IMG_7881.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Christ dug through all of that to meet us where we are, at our center, to make his home in the same places where we are busy, where we are weary, where we are distracted, where we are hurting. I don't mean that a time of retreat, and certainly a place like Kanuga, isn't holy - of course it is. It's just that, everything and everywhere else is, too. "There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred," wrote Madeleine L'Engle, who deeply loved Kanuga. "There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred, and that is one of the greatest messages of the Incarnation."<br />
<br />
Christ came to hallow not the places that were already holy - temples and churches and retreat centers - but the places that didn't seem to be, to make the common holy, to make our everyday lives holy. "Christ be with me, Christ within me," sings St. Patrick's Breastplate, that great Celtic hymn, and indeed the house where Jesus dwells is right here, in our hearts. He is that close. That near. That common.<br />
<br />
However we got here, may we, in the presence of so many faithful friends, see Christ in the beauty of this place of retreat, in the luxury of time, and in the absence of drudgery. May we also begin to see, because as knitters and quilters and their companions we know something about how fabric is made, how the smallest stitches become something large enough to enfold...may we also begin to see that the thread that binds this time and place to the places we left, and the places we are going to when we leave here, is Christ's loving and redeeming and patient and healing presence in it all, Christ's presence in the home of our hearts. Together, helping one another, let us dig down through all that crowds out our peace and our hope and our joy, and here let us begin to move again. <i>Amen</i>. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-36638998413309894542013-06-15T19:59:00.000-07:002014-08-01T20:00:51.268-07:00Postcards from Florida<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
It has been ten years - <i>ten years!</i> - since we went to the beach, a wonderful whirlwind trip with family when C3 was just 3 years old. So when a parishioner offered a beachfront condominium for just the three of us to spend a whole week in Destin this summer, we started packing. Swimsuits, goggles, sunscreen, boardgames, bucket...done.<br />
<br />
And yarn, of course. <a href="http://www.jimmybeanswool.com/knitting/yarn/Plymouth/Jeannee.asp?gclid=CIj07czx8r8CFaVZ7Aod2msAYQ">Plymouth Jeanee</a> cotton in brown and blue and a soft light gray to make hand towels as a thank you to our hosts (I just chose a few stitch patterns I liked, and added a seed stitch border). I mostly knitted on the balcony, but a little on the beach, stitching a little sand and sunscreen in for good measure.<br />
<br />
It was the most marvelous trip, filled with waves and walks and seafood and sand dollars and laughter and late nights. We returned only a little sunburned and a lot rested and entirely ready to do it again someday. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwiScfe-b_nKIeY5HXOHvWVcZtlAHbz84N1h9dzDBrT-jDEoC_JaJ35lHsSKy3R4dUHAsdwKMGHUfMGWvQ4ztIRtie3PXTThGsEWEMeA1_bvBIJFRx58ien9aWc-ml0UILqRbOLw/s1600/IMG_1652.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwiScfe-b_nKIeY5HXOHvWVcZtlAHbz84N1h9dzDBrT-jDEoC_JaJ35lHsSKy3R4dUHAsdwKMGHUfMGWvQ4ztIRtie3PXTThGsEWEMeA1_bvBIJFRx58ien9aWc-ml0UILqRbOLw/s1600/IMG_1652.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAsjInnqEgeJ0WMv11vsTwV4peIcVU9HfBwkhh0LjlZImo0rPK-3bFhqHzKZg6r45914wSAG6ENJ73rLNZOb02Yr1keAWxkQ6_IB_Wx3Wo6WFj3ZZW_vzSmxiQT-sWvkMD0VmWdA/s1600/IMG_1498.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAsjInnqEgeJ0WMv11vsTwV4peIcVU9HfBwkhh0LjlZImo0rPK-3bFhqHzKZg6r45914wSAG6ENJ73rLNZOb02Yr1keAWxkQ6_IB_Wx3Wo6WFj3ZZW_vzSmxiQT-sWvkMD0VmWdA/s1600/IMG_1498.jpg" height="320" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnI0xFqlABzAKCpz3hZQJEqjS_bnhWJM_-7rt-EafN4FcO_u-ba2cM_wP7IfboBTxVvRMkl5Dt5-41InL7XUcHBugpc6E_qkR2chADV92RkIX3siJOaTBKjRzJNAOIdyEd7q10g/s1600/IMG_1695.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGnI0xFqlABzAKCpz3hZQJEqjS_bnhWJM_-7rt-EafN4FcO_u-ba2cM_wP7IfboBTxVvRMkl5Dt5-41InL7XUcHBugpc6E_qkR2chADV92RkIX3siJOaTBKjRzJNAOIdyEd7q10g/s1600/IMG_1695.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqhEwTkUlukE93gAPguHURJEDVlVKiaPXiTGB9CPms4SbgvliJeKHKsflfYV5oXL-SHrDp1OlmrANcJ22nSlNS0P45pfOrdD4hm9ZejRG24w3k25gOgpoBFLDRmzLlxS4NWRKnA/s1600/IMG_1722.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzqhEwTkUlukE93gAPguHURJEDVlVKiaPXiTGB9CPms4SbgvliJeKHKsflfYV5oXL-SHrDp1OlmrANcJ22nSlNS0P45pfOrdD4hm9ZejRG24w3k25gOgpoBFLDRmzLlxS4NWRKnA/s1600/IMG_1722.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiezTWTexZfsGlqfdhyphenhyphenEekefwize_Cf5eJrMIGA1E8RrAsFMIoSi24ZDMgKM08eJDbFIZ2Kl7bU6ZBuQlzrh5ruge4kDvEM0gk8E-t9_vl88ozXB9aXMaSlFU2d99nJP6pFe0yJEg/s1600/IMG_1947.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiezTWTexZfsGlqfdhyphenhyphenEekefwize_Cf5eJrMIGA1E8RrAsFMIoSi24ZDMgKM08eJDbFIZ2Kl7bU6ZBuQlzrh5ruge4kDvEM0gk8E-t9_vl88ozXB9aXMaSlFU2d99nJP6pFe0yJEg/s1600/IMG_1947.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ts-Swf76ij7K77Suq5RAiXfI5MZJmRMtSgKNfhgon6Wro_-a_RuwxwR0mSjsBRH9SsaNLFK6DorOE-fbDxn5U1ndedhktaIGp7g9nvyBl8V1TRAx2CJQTjJ6OYABbwbHj44aYg/s1600/IMG_1948.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4ts-Swf76ij7K77Suq5RAiXfI5MZJmRMtSgKNfhgon6Wro_-a_RuwxwR0mSjsBRH9SsaNLFK6DorOE-fbDxn5U1ndedhktaIGp7g9nvyBl8V1TRAx2CJQTjJ6OYABbwbHj44aYg/s1600/IMG_1948.JPG" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-80661685507286277602013-05-26T20:04:00.000-07:002013-05-28T10:38:51.616-07:00Preach One: Trinity C<i>Preached at St. Andrew's Cathedral, Jackson, MS</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; Psalm 8; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
"We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Substance... The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal... And in this Trinity none is afore, or after other; none is greater, or less than another; But the whole three persons are co-eternal together..."<br />
<br />
...Athanasius, fourth century defender of the faith at the Council of Nicaea, has many things to say to us. His words, themselves a creed, a statement of belief about the Trinity and the Unity and the Substance and the Persons are in the historical documents section of our prayerbook. "The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible, and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible... As also there are not three incomprehensibles, nor three uncreated, but one uncreated, and one incomprehensible." Indeed. Perhaps we cannot bear it just now.<br />
<br />
Augustine, in the fifth century, spent a lifetime writing his reflections on the Trinity, having so many things to say to us that he never finished his work. "In this Trinity the Son and none other is called the Word of God, and the holy Spirit and none other the Gift of God, and God the Father alone is He from whom the Word is born, and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds... The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son also. But the Father gave Him this too, not as to one already existing, and not yet having it; but whatever He gave to the only-begotten Word, He gave by begetting Him." Perhaps we cannot bear this, either.<br />
<br />
Perhaps an image would be easier, more comprehensible. The Trinity is like a shamrock, one leaf with three lobes. The Trinity is like water, one substance with three forms. The Trinity is like a triangle, one shape with three points. Or perhaps a formula would be more bearable, some variation on one plus one plus one. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Almighty God, Incarnate Word, Holy Comforter. Primordial Nature, Consequent Nature, Superjective Nature. And yet there are not three natures but one nature...<br />
<br />
There are many, many, many things theologians and scholars and preachers and saints have said about the Trinity, much of which is not easy to bear, either for its obscurity or for its oversimplification. Some of it is orthodox, definitive of our faith, and some of it is not, but then, when we are attempting to capture the immensity and particularity of God in an image or formula or even a creed, as my liturgy professor from seminary said, "Relax. In the most strict and proper sense, it's all heresy."<br />
<br />
Would that Jesus himself had offered us an answer to how God is Three in One and One in Three, but that must have fallen into the category of things he didn't tell us because we could not bear them. His Trinity Sunday sermon was never preached. Well, not from a pulpit anyway...<br />
<br />
In John's Gospel especially, Jesus does speak of Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit, but he doesn't bother with theological words like substance or co-eternal or even Trinity. Instead, Jesus speaks of dwelling, and sending, and empowering. <i>The Father and I are one, </i>he says. <i>If you know me, you will know my Father also...and I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate...the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name. </i>And if, like the disciples before us, we were to try to figure out what Jesus means by this, to argue and answer and try to understand (for we cannot bear the unknown), to treat the Trinity as a riddle to be solved and not a mystery to be embraced, Jesus has one more word to speak to us, a single word at once obscure and simple, mysterious and mundane, divine and deeply human...<i>Love. As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love</i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIz2NkSnJm3sRrc8YLgoHUnyEhzIsVUWAvMILzdMotWi64Cb8HL3hrjdhsEuVlLLQLmjHI2I_TtS2XAHJFJYemC4h9JwYg547zJ5Kr5BYpOhw5J028pK5hrYkpL45opDFzogN2EA/s1600/thoughtsoncommunion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIz2NkSnJm3sRrc8YLgoHUnyEhzIsVUWAvMILzdMotWi64Cb8HL3hrjdhsEuVlLLQLmjHI2I_TtS2XAHJFJYemC4h9JwYg547zJ5Kr5BYpOhw5J028pK5hrYkpL45opDFzogN2EA/s1600/thoughtsoncommunion.jpg" height="320" width="239" /></a></div>
<br />
So it is that a manner of living, rather than a manner of speaking, is perhaps the best and most bearable way of saying something about the Trinity. For beneath all the theological words and creeds and formulas is God, who, somehow, is not just <i>in </i>relationship but <i>is Relationship</i>, who is not just <i>in </i>community but <i>is Community</i>, who doesn't just <i>move </i>toward the Other but <i>is the Motion itself</i>, who doesn't just <i>love </i>but <i>is Love</i>. Jesus' whole life, a life lived in and for relationship, in and for community, always moving toward the Other in and for love...his whole life was a sermon on the Trinity, if a sermon is, at its best, a meeting place of God's story and ours.<br />
<br />
But it can be so much more difficult for us to believe in a Love like that, and certainly more difficult for us to speak of it, than it is for us to proclaim our belief in a doctrine like the Trinity. Our story, after all, is one full of division and fear and suffering and scarcity. Just this week a tornado tore through a town that could have been ours. It was an election that nearly pulled us apart. We buried a long-time member of our community of faith. We are remembering and grieving, this weekend, the impact of war on the lives of courageous women and men. Hurricane season is here. Our lives are full of arguments, sorrow, uncertainty, brokenness, prejudice, pain, power lost, and power found. There is never enough time or money, but there are always at least two sides, and we take them against one another.<br />
<br />
There is more to our story, though. In the beginning, we were made in the image of God, which is to say, in the image of Relationship, in the image of Community, in the image of Movement toward the Other, we were made in the image of Love. When tornadoes and hurricanes strike, when the goodwill of people and nations is threatened, we have a heart to go help, so we go. When neighborhoods are in need of renewal, we have a mind to work together, so we do. When lives around us are in need or trouble, we have hands to hold theirs, and ears to listen, and mouths to pray, so we do.<br />
<br />
Catherine LaCugna, a theologian of our own time, understands the Trinity then as "ultimately a practical doctrine with radical consequences for Christian life," for in baptism our "solitariness and separateness" are transformed into communion, into relationship, into love, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Even those ancient creeds - the Apostle's Creed we say at baptism, the Nicene Creed we say every Sunday, the Athanasian Creed...well, bless his heart, it's incomprehensible... Even those ancient creeds, for all their careful and good theology about a God who is mystery beyond our imagining, cannot help but speak of God always in motion toward the Other, toward one another as Three in One and One in Three, toward us and all creation. <i>We believe in one God, the Father, the almighty, </i><u style="font-style: italic;">maker of heaven and earth</u>...God is Relationship. <i>We believe in Jesus Christ...<u>for us</u> and for our salvation <u>he came down</u>...</i>God is Love. <i>We believe in the Holy Spirit...who has spoken </i><u style="font-style: italic;">through the Prophets</u>...(and if we ever speak of God, aren't we all prophets)...God is Motion. <i>We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church, </i>the creed goes on to say, and so the Church becomes the sign and sacrament, LaCugna writes, of life lived in relationship, of life lived in community, of life lived in love, lived in the image of God.<br />
<br />
There are many more things I could say to you about the Trinity this morning, but none of us could bear it, I'm sure. The Trinity isn't best preached from a pulpit, anyway. <i>You see the Trinity if you see love, </i>Augustine concluded. May our lives, then, our community, our relationships, our hearts and minds and hands, be a sermon today and every day; by our love, let us say something about God. <i>Amen</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Artwork: "Thoughts on Communion," by Barbara Desrosiers</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-22140778544996556522013-04-14T20:25:00.000-07:002013-04-15T06:29:20.370-07:00Preach One: Easter 3C<i>Preached at St. Andrew's Cathedral, Jackson, MS</i><br />
<br />
<i>Acts 9:1-20; Psalm 30; Revelation 5:11-14; John 21:1-19</i><br />
<br />
What do you want to be when you grow up? A famous actor? A fighter pilot? A fairy princess? I wanted to be all these things when I was little. But my acting career peaked around 8th grade when I played the goose in <i>Charlotte's Web.</i> I took some flying lessons, but then I took physics, full of formulas I couldn't figure out. I guess I won't ever be famous, then. And I won't ever fly an F-18. But a fairy princess...I'm still holding out hope!<br />
<br />
In high school, I was voted "Most Likely to Succeed," but really wasn't certain what I would be successful at. I was a youth minister for a little while, and then a graduate student, and then a bookseller, and briefly a stay-at-home mom before heading off to seminary. Department of Labor statistics suggest I'm not alone - these days, people tend to change jobs or even careers between three and eleven times before they turn 40. And we do so for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes we're moving up a ladder. Sometimes we're disillusioned. Sometimes we just want to do something different. Sometimes we have no choice. And then sometimes, Jesus shows up and says, <i>follow me</i>...<br />
<br />
What do you want to be when you grow up? Perhaps Paul wanted to be a soldier, or Peter a scribe; in their time, though, they would probably have been voted most likely to always be a Pharisee, most likely to always be a fisherman. Both had been born into the positions they held, and both were successful in their work. Paul persecuted countless Christians; Peter caught countless fish. Until Jesus showed up and said, <i>follow me</i>...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDU5ULHstfm4vtRvLmpPCe3_Fq1VzXmbRBa4FEZVAUljQhlvTQZShyphenhyphenDw7Pg0JksqSwYNY4KxD65hdUvafzjIDmK4tinEM2SbiPwU8UG5fQAWmGNLeN_By48KJrGIJDZ13PWzzLQQ/s1600/jesusawaitsthedisciplesontheshorelinekristinserafini.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDU5ULHstfm4vtRvLmpPCe3_Fq1VzXmbRBa4FEZVAUljQhlvTQZShyphenhyphenDw7Pg0JksqSwYNY4KxD65hdUvafzjIDmK4tinEM2SbiPwU8UG5fQAWmGNLeN_By48KJrGIJDZ13PWzzLQQ/s320/jesusawaitsthedisciplesontheshorelinekristinserafini.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Peter was fishing that day, with his brother Andrew. We don't know whether he had heard of Jesus, or was already considering a career change. But when Jesus offered him a position fishing for people, Peter leapt at the chance. It wasn't an easy job, though, and while Peter was eager, he often felt like he was sinking in wave after wave of mystery and misunderstanding about just who Jesus was, even after the Resurrection. In the end, weary and overwhelmed, he hauled himself and his nets back out to sea. But Jesus had yet one more job for him to do...<i>tend my lambs</i>...<i>feed my sheep</i>...<br />
<br />
Paul loved his work. He was proud of his Roman citizenship and his Hebrew heritage, both of which revolved around rules. The Pharisees were a religious and political party within Judaism, devoted to the observance of God's commandments and demanding that others do the same; Paul's job was to round up the rule-breakers. He was <i>breathing threats and murder</i> that day against the disciples in Damascus when Jesus decided to bring him under new management. It wouldn't be easy work, but in the end, Paul couldn't see how he could do his old job anymore.<br />
<br />
So the fisherman and the Pharisee grew up to be apostles, to talk and teach about what they had seen and heard, and to lead Christ's followers in creating a community of faith and prayer and practice - the Church. Peter would help it sink its roots deep in the soil of salvation history; Paul would help it spread that story of God's saving love far and wide. <i>All who believed were together, </i>the book of Acts tells us. <i>They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers... They would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need...and day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved</i>.<br />
<br />
Day by day by every single day since Jesus showed up on that shore, saying to his first disciples, <i>follow me</i>, lives have been changed by the inviting, transforming, and reconciling love of God. Jesus went right to work healing the sick, feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, forgiving the sinner, embracing the outcast, companioning the lonely, finding the forgotten, shepherding the lost, comforting the sorrowful, helping the poor, and putting others right to work with him, employing their hearts and hands and feet as his instruments, chosen to bring his name to all the world.<br />
<br />
And not his name only, but <i>new life.</i> For it is Jesus <i>crucified and risen</i> who shows up in our scriptures this day, this third Sunday of Easter. <i>Follow me</i>, Jesus says to Peter once again, resurrecting the rock on which the Church would be fixed. Where once Peter had denied knowing his dying Lord, now he would bear witness to a living Savior. <i>God raised him up, </i>Peter would boldly proclaim, <i>having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in death's power</i>.<br />
<br />
It is Jesus crucified and risen and ascended who appears to Paul, in a flash of light first, and then in Ananias, who was surely Christ to Paul. Jesus had appeared to Ananias, too, and put him right to work loving an enemy, tending a sheep, forgiving a sinner, praying for a yet-to-be-saint. <i>Christ died for our sins, </i>Paul would later write, <i>and was buried, and raised on the third day...and appeared to Peter, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers and sisters, then to James, then to all the apostles...last of all, he appeared also to me</i>...<br />
<br />
On this third Sunday of Easter, we remember that the Church <i>began</i>, and then <i>began to grow</i>, because Jesus, crucified and risen, showed up over and over and over again, day by day by day, in people's lives, and set them about the task of bearing witness to the power of his love to transform despair into hope, darkness into light, blindness into sight, death into life; the power of his love to transform an unlikely collection of followers into a community of faith. Brother David Vryhof, SSJE, writes of that early Church, "they are not alone: countless Christians down through the ages, from every people and nation, have borne witness to their own experience of the Risen Christ. Through him they have come to know God as love, and this love has transformed their lives," and not their lives only, but the whole world, for the best witness to Love is <i>to love</i>...<br />
<br />
Jesus is still showing up. We are every bit as likely to encounter him over breakfast or on the road as ever Peter or Paul were. Or haven't we served Christ eggs and grits at our Tuesday morning meal for the homeless and hungry? Or haven't we walked with him through a South Jackson neighborhood to list all the things a collaboration of church and community volunteers can do to improve it? Or haven't we heard Christ in the voice of someone over the phone saying they just called to see how we're doing? Or haven't we watched him teach a classroom full of students, or carefully start an IV, or paint a canvas in every color of the setting sun? Or haven't we listened to him tell bedtime stories to a cabin full of first-time campers, or speak to someone otherwise alone, or give a speech at a fundraiser for a community center? Where have you seen him? In whom have you heard him? How have you experienced the Risen Christ?<br />
<br />
Jesus is still showing up. And he is still saying, <i>follow me, get up, and you will be told what you are to do. </i>As fishermen or Pharisees, as pilots or fairy princesses, as musicians or social workers or librarians or babysitters, as firefighters or parents or kids or chefs or CEO's or retirees or nurses, wherever it is that we work, whatever it is that we do, whether we're grown up yet or not, Jesus has a new job for each and every one of us - that we would be disciples, bearing witness, day by day, to the unconditional and transforming love of God.<br />
<br />
It's not easy work. The hours are long and unpredictable, for we never know when or where or in whom Christ will appear. The pay is not good; in fact, Jesus tells us that following him costs us everything. The products of a life of discipleship - love and grace and humility and mercy and forgiveness and vulnerability - are not everywhere well received. And sometimes even coworkers quarrel, even Peter and Paul did. It's not easy work, following. But then, by definition, <i>following </i>means going where Christ goes first, where he leads the way, where he already is, where he's just waiting for <i>us </i>to show up and get right to work.<br />
<br />
Not just on this third Sunday in Easter, but on every Sunday, and any time we gather as the Church in this place and around this table, we experience the Risen Christ, in word, in the breaking of bread, and in one another. There is a job to be done, there is a world to be transformed by love. May we then <i>go out to do the work God has given us to do, to love and serve God as faithful witnesses of Christ our Lord</i>. <i>Amen</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Artwork: "Jesus Awaits the Disciples on the Shoreline," by Kristen Serafini</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-78949783965575614502013-04-01T13:04:00.000-07:002014-08-01T20:01:30.241-07:00No bunny 'til some bunny...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
C3, now 13 years old, was just in preschool when it started. Even with only a handful of Easters under his belt, he had accumulated a number of stuffed bunnies. Every year they make an appearance around the middle of Lent (they're so adorable and soft, how can we not let them out early?) and pile up on C3's bed to await the arrival of Easter morning and (the resurrection of Jesus Christ and) another new bunny in C3's basket.<br />
<br />
That preschool year, somewhere around Easter, my husband and I went into C3's room to say bedtime prayers and kiss goodnight. We found him sitting on his bed surrounded by his bunnies, and as we made room for ourselves in the cozy warren, C3, with a particularly fuzzy stuffed rabbit in his hands, looked up at us and said with a precious sigh, "I love you more than bunnies."<br />
<br />
Melt.<br />
<br />
We still say it to this day when we want to emphasize just how strongly we feel. "I love you" is all well and good, but "I love you more than bunnies"...that's serious.<br />
<br />
So, last year as Lent got started, I began wondering whether it was time for <strike>me</strike> my son to grow up a little, whether stuffed animals were still something he would want. His heart has a generously sized soft spot, though, and because I wasn't ready for him to be too old because of that I decided to do just one more bunny. Store shelves had long been filled with Easter rabbits, ducks, lambs all waiting to be chosen to sit among chocolate eggs and speckled jellybeans in some child's basket. But if this was going to be the last bunny, I wanted it to be special. I decided I would make it.<br />
<br />
Knit it, of course. I had already eyed some patterns, precious knitted toys with button noses and cotton tails. I finally chose <a href="http://ysolda.com/patterns/sophie">Sophie</a>, by <a href="http://ysolda.com/">Ysolda Teague</a>, for its long, floppy ears and sweetest face. For you knitters reading along, I couldn't recommend the pattern more highly. It is knit in parts, but there are no seams - beginning with the head, you simply knit, stuff, and bind off, and then pick up stitches for the next part. I used Caron Simply Soft that I've long had in my stash <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsO9-HELQoj-EVJq_st5LHDVv2f1gX4sors22aiGQxA_HmpEWn7PU0Bw9VdBqJU-yzBMv9Xkmk0PhFQPhR7qZ-U0MfXUE_QIhNJaAr1T-B-364iItYp3RSmryWKeWaSryQk9ZsnA/s1600/IMG_1348.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsO9-HELQoj-EVJq_st5LHDVv2f1gX4sors22aiGQxA_HmpEWn7PU0Bw9VdBqJU-yzBMv9Xkmk0PhFQPhR7qZ-U0MfXUE_QIhNJaAr1T-B-364iItYp3RSmryWKeWaSryQk9ZsnA/s1600/IMG_1348.jpg" height="320" width="227" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkhPkrdDslVoaiWHsqB268o7iNzXqF2GtWeoYJ0ZNtHYMmOhWoq1sRytOsD0-7wU7Un4gWkH_0B7pWsfYMub-PLb2tj9DTnMYYJWwgt_0lfSg09w4mSILglc7XjLyoId4sAz-i1Q/s1600/IMG_1351.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkhPkrdDslVoaiWHsqB268o7iNzXqF2GtWeoYJ0ZNtHYMmOhWoq1sRytOsD0-7wU7Un4gWkH_0B7pWsfYMub-PLb2tj9DTnMYYJWwgt_0lfSg09w4mSILglc7XjLyoId4sAz-i1Q/s1600/IMG_1351.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
Much of the bunny was knit right in front of C3, who never asked what I was making, even when it looked a little Frankenbunny-ish as I picked up for legs or arms or ears. I loved the project, and smiled often as it grew, just as C3 has grown. It was ready just in time to nestle in C3's basket - the same one the very first bunny appeared in - on Easter morning.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoG6phoPo_8WoHcx3hKr3DUOzXnM7S7pv-qajWiwDo-FGpSUQeQuf8gZn306c6FlpiTcyLp8C4tXgLQZuCfHD9Na8PYyPsgmxZbOp_L8e9xex7x6FAdGRzrohIdoS3S1p1L_XOrA/s1600/IMG_1383.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoG6phoPo_8WoHcx3hKr3DUOzXnM7S7pv-qajWiwDo-FGpSUQeQuf8gZn306c6FlpiTcyLp8C4tXgLQZuCfHD9Na8PYyPsgmxZbOp_L8e9xex7x6FAdGRzrohIdoS3S1p1L_XOrA/s1600/IMG_1383.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5uu69eaez0I0W24LvDRPMGSZmPiaTIBlq7mrLDjMiVOratLubRU_r69XJ0IFjqfutxfUmmrLEteaVerjNctifs3sOnFMLioZnrcDlZmMwlP-elo5077het0bmql1e2iXrgiRXPw/s1600/IMG_1386.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5uu69eaez0I0W24LvDRPMGSZmPiaTIBlq7mrLDjMiVOratLubRU_r69XJ0IFjqfutxfUmmrLEteaVerjNctifs3sOnFMLioZnrcDlZmMwlP-elo5077het0bmql1e2iXrgiRXPw/s1600/IMG_1386.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
C3 smiled, and perhaps it was just courtesy, but he kept it out when the rest of the bunnies went into liturgical hibernation at the end of the Great Fifty Days. This year there was only a chocolate bunny in the basket. Still, he didn't complain or roll his eyes when all those stuffed rabbits appeared outside his bedroom door, and when I looked later he had brought them into his room.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg24qovH32zLKEOU4TnAhAvzi_Fdf5KrVKm5_ZZMeD6X6l4V2g3LspaFGWO5JF1TFpSVvvu63Upl3556DBFBxaojqbOzxf1JgqChdsDDXRk3_zgeZuFXbbinFLLbTcffphr9KWUg/s1600/IMG_1389.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg24qovH32zLKEOU4TnAhAvzi_Fdf5KrVKm5_ZZMeD6X6l4V2g3LspaFGWO5JF1TFpSVvvu63Upl3556DBFBxaojqbOzxf1JgqChdsDDXRk3_zgeZuFXbbinFLLbTcffphr9KWUg/s1600/IMG_1389.jpg" height="320" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
I know they'll be outgrown, and in some ways so will we as our teenager (wasn't he just that preschooler?!) continues to come into his own. But no matter what, we'll always love him more than bunnies.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-30820467978956738752013-03-29T12:12:00.000-07:002013-04-14T19:03:42.602-07:00Preach One: Good Friday<i>Preached at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Jackson, Mississippi.</i><br />
<br />
<i>Hebrews 10:16-25; Psalm 22; John 18:1-19:42</i><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-0wx1q0PxngNb8nyrzLWwdXq7XBG1bOdJtDhnNFtgj8QuiDD9htXfVBiKohGS6GY1IzjIwF3YJ8v87yfTGatSRR8p9tqfsDuroAyb2p5iORYLSUqUqVgTg5SfQeHBnQqmwwjmQ/s1600/thebeautyofthecrossdanielbonnell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEia-0wx1q0PxngNb8nyrzLWwdXq7XBG1bOdJtDhnNFtgj8QuiDD9htXfVBiKohGS6GY1IzjIwF3YJ8v87yfTGatSRR8p9tqfsDuroAyb2p5iORYLSUqUqVgTg5SfQeHBnQqmwwjmQ/s320/thebeautyofthecrossdanielbonnell.jpg" width="206" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>What a beautiful cross</i>, people comment about the one I've worn for years now, with its soft silver swirls, and they often ask where it came from. I pause, wondering whether I should say it is from some quiet cloister or a cathedral far away, or that it is an heirloom or antique. But it's not. It's from...Cancun, and I thought it was beautiful, too, when I saw it in a marketplace there, displayed with hundreds of other beautiful crosses, some with simple smooth shining surfaces, others more elaborate, many bearing the body of One broken in death, or One triumphant over it.<br />
<br />
<i>What a beautiful cross</i>, people never would have said two thousand years ago, and certainly not on this day. What a horrible, hateful, hideous cross it was when Jesus hung there, when it was used as an imperial instrument not only of death but of terror, to crucify criminals and to kill hope. What an ugly, awful, agonizing cross, rough with splinters and nails, slick with sweat and blood, bearing its victims up into breathless air. What a dark, dreadful cross, on which was fastened flesh and bone, body and blood, life and innocence and conviction and love and light from light, true God from true God. <i>Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.</i><br />
<br />
There was nothing beautiful about that cross. There was nothing good about that day. He was betrayed at Gethsemane, denied at the gate, and most of his friends were gone by Golgotha. He had healing the sick and helping the poor held against him. Love was a liability, kindness a crime. In the end it was easy to nail Jesus down, his arms had always opened too wide. He was despised, rejected, beaten, mocked, stripped, crowned with thorns, and...what a bitter cross.<br />
<br />
Forty days of ashes and dust in the end do little to remove our despair. For all our repentance, we know our sin betrays and denies and abandons him still. He suffers on our account. Looking up at our Lord from the foot of the cross, we would offer one last confession, and hope against hope that he will spare us.<br />
<br />
But that is not why we are here. There is no prayer of confession today, and only once will we call ourselves sinners. We are ever in need of forgiveness, and on this day no less, but that is not why we are here.<br />
<br />
We are here to do something much harder. But it is something beautiful. And it is something good. <i>Dear People of God</i>, we will read in a moment, <i>Our heavenly Father sent his Son into the world <u>not to condemn</u> the world, but that the world through him might be <u>saved</u></i>. Here at the end of the holy season of Lent, walking no longer apart from Christ, but being loved by him and called as servants and friends, we will not only <i>follow</i> him to Golgotha but <i>embrace with him</i> deepest and darkest suffering and death, cross it with heaven, and with God's help raise it up and heal it. <i>Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being made raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new</i>. That, sisters and brothers, is why we are here. That, I daresay, sisters and brothers, is <i>always</i> why we are here.<br />
<br />
We are here, because as Christ entered into who we are even as fully and deeply as death, so did he hallow all of who we are even as fully and deeply as death. Brother James Koestner writes, "It was not because Jesus was oblivious to pain that enabled him to undergo such cruelty. It was because he knew the depth of human grief and loss and despair. And he knew that, because he loved." Today is about how Jesus suffered and died, but it is also about how he <i>lived</i>, with and for and in love that does not measure or weigh or reserve or hesitate or exclude or fear. We are here on this good and awful day, at this beautiful and terrible cross, because we cannot love this way without him.<br />
<br />
If we will go where Christ goes, we <i>must</i> come to this day, we must come to this moment, we must come to this cross, not just to look up at it for our own healing but, trembling, to gaze out from it for the healing of the world he so dearly loves and calls us to love with him, praying for everyone according to their needs, helping and healing and showing what kindness we can. If we will go where Christ goes, we must be willing for our hands and feet to ache, to find no rest, to suffer and be held of no account, to be despised, to be rejected, to be acquainted with infirmity and grief. If we will go where Christ goes, we must be willing to love until it is finished.<br />
<br />
Let us pray. <i>Almighty and Eternal God, so draw our hearts to you this day, so stretch out our arms, so move our feet, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so direct our prayers, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly and always and everywhere you go dedicated to you. And then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Savior, Jesus Christ</i>. Amen.<br />
<br />
<i>Artwork: "The Beauty of the Cross," by Daniel Bonnell. </i> Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-15657634005041594822013-01-19T08:00:00.000-08:002013-02-18T20:00:26.319-08:00Lost and Found<i>The third of five homilies preached at the 2013 Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference</i>...<br />
<br />
<u>Saturday Morning</u><br />
<i>Psalm 23; Luke 15:3-6</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I had to ask for directions the first time I drove alone to our diocesan conference center. It's easy, I was told. Get off the interstate and follow the road through a four-way stop and over a train track. When you get to the place where there used to be a two-story house, turn left.<br />
<br />
It's how we give directions in the south. If you want to know how to get anywhere, you're going to need a history lesson first, or you'll definitely get lost.<br />
<br />
Of course no one asks for directions much anymore. We just type our destination into our phone or the car's computer and follow the little blue dot to wherever we need to go. But sometimes even Siri leads us astray, or we wander into an area the GPS doesn't know. In my mom's old car, the computer would give up and announce we were in "uncharted territory," which gave us a little thrill of adventure as we made our way out into the unknown.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTUcxyfrdt95MbeYkVip7Vg_0lwVky_fD8eQ8P3xoDlSIBkett4iKVfY-Uy_QZWIDBZ5XtyFnUpy5pGmg7O2szDL2ZQ6jH_yhVeNdtYM6DgToNzpcPIDR-shm_oUlGaMUDSC1cw/s1600/P1000895.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicTUcxyfrdt95MbeYkVip7Vg_0lwVky_fD8eQ8P3xoDlSIBkett4iKVfY-Uy_QZWIDBZ5XtyFnUpy5pGmg7O2szDL2ZQ6jH_yhVeNdtYM6DgToNzpcPIDR-shm_oUlGaMUDSC1cw/s320/P1000895.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
Who knows why we, like that poor little sheep, lose our way. Maybe we get distracted as we go about our day, or perhaps we are too focused. Maybe we saw what we thought was a better way. Maybe we are seeking adventure, or, fearful, avoiding it. Maybe we get stuck while the rest of the flock, the rest of the world, moves on without us...however it happens, we find ourselves apart and alone and uncertain of where to turn next.<br />
<br />
It happens in our handwork, too. There we are, with directions and charts and patterns printed out and plain to see, and we think we've followed them faithfully until our stitch count is suddenly off, or a seam has been sewn wrong, or we're holding the wrong color in our hands, and we have no idea how we got where we are.<br />
<br />
<i>God, like a shepherd...you guide me along trusted roads,</i> our psalmist sang, rejoicing that <i>lost</i> doesn't mean <i>lost forever</i>. But God doesn't not stop at providing directions. God does not merely <i>show</i> us the way but <i>is</i> the way, does not merely <i>point out</i> the pattern but <i>is</i> the pattern. <i>I am the way, the truth, and the life, </i>Jesus said when his friends worried they would never find the place where he was going. The right pathway, the most trusted road, is a life lived like his, following such directions as <i>love one another, forgive your enemies, feed my sheep, follow me. </i>Directions like these will seem to take us off the world's beaten path, for the way of Christ winds through side streets and margins and alleyways and through the valley of the shadow of...but we're getting ahead of ourselves.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbd88hMNEHjReuWBA0_Fxms7zO9YJUdSQykz-FWgHZvbSIDB6idP6KZM6oQkDNp5lrlYMzrb1rPXnnb0uCsAtWcACYk7zkS4-Gep36fnmF0tUGIyL3A3jTHILdCHJTGHk1xBelDw/s1600/P1000906_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbd88hMNEHjReuWBA0_Fxms7zO9YJUdSQykz-FWgHZvbSIDB6idP6KZM6oQkDNp5lrlYMzrb1rPXnnb0uCsAtWcACYk7zkS4-Gep36fnmF0tUGIyL3A3jTHILdCHJTGHk1xBelDw/s320/P1000906_2.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
If you find yourself in uncharted territory today, if you feel a little lost, either in the pattern you are working or in the path of life you are walking, perhaps you are not so far from the way. The Lord is our shepherd, after all, and comes looking for us when we stray. As surely as there are people here to help you put one foot (or needle) in front of the other, so does God desire to show us the right path. Who knows, perhaps the <i>right </i>way lies precisely in having gone the <i>wrong </i>way a while and so having learned to look for and trust that our shepherd is near.<br />
<br />
"Follow him," urged poet W.H. Auden. "He is the Way. Follow him through a land of unlikeness, and you will see rare beasts and have unique adventures. He is the Truth. Seek him the kingdom of anxiety. You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years. He is the Way..." <i>Amen</i>.<br />
<br />
<i>Artwork: Disclaimer...most of the knitting and quilting photographs included with these homilies are actually from the 2012 Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Retreat. This year I actually spent more time knitting than taking pictures.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8657890.post-72613895380674655832013-01-18T18:00:00.000-08:002013-02-18T18:45:16.612-08:00Rest(eth) Here<i>The second of five homilies preached at the <a href="http://preachonepurltwo.blogspot.com/2013/01/knitting-and-quilting-and-preaching-and.html">2013 Kanuga Knitting and Quilting Conference</a></i>...<br />
<i><br /></i>
<u>Friday Evening</u><br />
<i>Psalm 23; Matthew 11:28-29</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
There are many faithful translations of the 23rd psalm, studied renderings of the psalm from one language into another, preserving as carefully as possible the intended meaning of the author's original prayer. <i>He makes me lie down in green pastures</i>, we read this morning from the New Revised Standard Version of scripture. Tonight we read the translation we know best, even though we only speak this way when we recite this psalm... <i>He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul</i>.<br />
<br />
Don't we do the same thing sometimes in our quilting or our knitting? We read the pattern, which looks to the untrained eye like a foreign language - K1, P2, K2tog, YO - and translate it directly through our yarn and needles into a garment that matches (well, mostly) the designer's original intent and is (well, mostly) clearly recognizable as a sweater or a scarf or a quilt or a pillowcase.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf38bn4utR2yeysOYjCwEsWsyGKW4PWDCL3XdYJgm1TbKE24r08TbGvoVyE5MfLwtawIlnbEsTL5QQUHMNkG_SxUgEHTSDkbUOngS_kOPtRJ8U9umGCUzQTYUu5uW9OtaR0Kj_Pw/s1600/P1000866.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf38bn4utR2yeysOYjCwEsWsyGKW4PWDCL3XdYJgm1TbKE24r08TbGvoVyE5MfLwtawIlnbEsTL5QQUHMNkG_SxUgEHTSDkbUOngS_kOPtRJ8U9umGCUzQTYUu5uW9OtaR0Kj_Pw/s320/P1000866.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
There are other times, though, when we engage in something more like <i>interpretation </i>than <i>translation</i>, faithful to the original pattern, but using different colors or threads or fabrics than are called for, or going up or down a needle size, or using more or fewer strips for a log cabin block, shaping the finished piece according to the author's vision but also to a little of our own.<br />
<br />
So are there, in additions to the translations we know, faithful <i>interpretations</i> of the 23rd psalm, holding to its meaning, but shaping and reshaping the words and images to express something of how the text speaks to the person interpreting it. <i>My shepherd will supply my need</i>, wrote Isaac Watts, turning the psalm into poetry. <i>In pastures fresh He makes me feed beside the living stream</i>.<br />
<br />
Other have taken the psalm and turned it into...well, you tell me if it's faithful or not. <i>The Lord is my coach, I shall never be defeated</i>, goes the version for athletes. <i>The Lord is my drummer, I shall not rush</i>, is for bass guitarists. There is even a version for quilters, <i>He maketh me to lie down in stacks of fat quarters, he leadeth me to bolts of batiks</i>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOF_InKv1jLbq5raNlk8wb6_Ca3n2PLqLZmrGfgwcZfyv698VX0niudveJMBruycFUlq0Bvf_SOCacx6oPHbP6_8D8CKIrRgj8RXqn-P8OL2RGk2AHvGm2lDJ5t39rsyBpZG9nA/s1600/P1000875.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDOF_InKv1jLbq5raNlk8wb6_Ca3n2PLqLZmrGfgwcZfyv698VX0niudveJMBruycFUlq0Bvf_SOCacx6oPHbP6_8D8CKIrRgj8RXqn-P8OL2RGk2AHvGm2lDJ5t39rsyBpZG9nA/s320/P1000875.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
<br />
In <i>your</i> interpretation of the 23rd psalm, where would Jesus, our Good Shepherd, lead <i>you </i>for rest and refreshment? Into a quiet chapel? Out of doors, beneath a wide tree or in a long row of rocking chairs? Beside a blazing fire in a circle of friends, or down to a room filled with sewing machines, with all the time in the world to knit or stitch before the dinner bugle sounds?<br />
<br />
Sheep are not very smart, some say, because they are herd animals who take no thought of their own except for fear. They wander. They stumble. They panic. They fall over. They are easily and often startled. They must be led to places of nourishment and refreshment, or they will starve from lack of food or gorge themselves on things that are not good for them.<br />
<br />
So is it <i>interpretation</i> or <i>translation</i> when another psalmist says <i>we</i> are sheep, the sheep of God's pasture and the people of God's hand? So vulnerable, so needy, so easily worried and distracted and restless, so afraid of the dark, we need a shepherd to settle us, to send us out, to take care of us, to gather us back in the fold.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCRzNFPBJTSsKfgUgA1NnnXjnJAdE0SiR8ZtMZXg2mUwLBZiD8y2KFVI2hhmQyHSF3FEHnOn1gwgskVNL1RctPdEtzBeVTjoF98LCbNvbCQRXvgQl4U8vsKyrycklausbeBBwDew/s1600/IMG_2147.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="312" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCRzNFPBJTSsKfgUgA1NnnXjnJAdE0SiR8ZtMZXg2mUwLBZiD8y2KFVI2hhmQyHSF3FEHnOn1gwgskVNL1RctPdEtzBeVTjoF98LCbNvbCQRXvgQl4U8vsKyrycklausbeBBwDew/s320/IMG_2147.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<i>Come to me</i>, Jesus says. <i>Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. </i>For sheep, that place of rest that restoreth the soul is in lush green pastures beside gentle, cool, clean water. Perhaps the shepherd leads you there for rest, as well - perhaps just such a setting is a perfect sanctuary for you. But the psalmist means less to tell us <i>where</i> to find rest than simply <i>that </i>God provides it, if we will but follow.<br />
<br />
We have found rest for our souls here this weekend. "Knitting [and, I am certain, quilting] is not just a thing that we do but a place that we go," writes a knitter-philsopher. Knitting or quilting is a place, a space of time and movement and prayer, where we are nurtured, fed, and lulled into a deep knowing that we are securely held, wrapped in love. Let us know more deeply still that it is God who has led us here. <i>The Lord is our shepherd... Amen</i>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1