Preach One, Purl Two

Preach One: Epiphany 1B

2012-01-29T20:53:00.000-08:00

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

"Oh, ketchup!"

I don't know why that's what we would shout, my dad and me. Sometimes we called out other condiments, "Oh, mayonnaise! Oh, mustard!", as we crested another wave with splashes and giggles.

Dad must have started carrying me out beyond the breakers when I was very small, and he didn't stop until long after I was old enough to remember riding out to sea on his side, my arms encircling his neck, his arms holding me up and out of the way of the rise and fall of saltwater and foam.

I remember the thrill of feeling waves crash around my feet as we moved farther from shore. I remember the lightness of floating together over the rolling rounded tops of waves in what seemed like the middle of the ocean to me. I remember the relief of shouting out silly words every time we made it over, somehow aware that even though my dad was a grown-up and his feet could touch the bottom, and even though the waves weren't really as big as mountains, the water was powerful and could be unpredictable.

I remember the feeling of fear as every once in a while a wave was going to break just before it reached us, and we would have to go under instead of over, and we would hold our breath and duck our heads, and for a moment that seemed forever there was no sight or sound but only water and my dad. And I remember the security of knowing I was always safe, because dad was always there and he would never let go.

Is there anything in the world more essential to our lives than water? Our bodies are made up of mostly water, every cell a tiny sea in which our essence floats. Thirst threatens our lives long before starvation does. Rain nourishes the soil that supports the plants at the bottom of the food chain in which we are at the top, dependent on everything below us for life.

Is there anything in the world more destructive to our lives than water? Surely we are especially sensitive to that here in Mississippi, where just south of us on the coast waves have more than once rushed ashore unchecked, pulling people from their homes and even homes from their foundations out to sea. Just north of us in the Delta too much rain has often flooded fields full of crops, uprooting or rotting or ruining a season's investment of seed and labor. But it doesn't have to take a flood for water to be destructive - it is said that even the strongest swimmer can drown in even the shallowest water.

It is no wonder, then, that some of scripture's most dramatic and familiar stories take place around or in water. In the beginning... The very first sentence of the very first story on the very first page is about the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Noah and his menagerie would spend months at sea as forty days and nights of rain made the waters rise and cover all the earth. Moses and his people would walk safely through the waves of the Red Sea - oh ketchup! - before those waters came crashing down on Pharaoh's army.

Jesus would go down with John into the Jordan River to be baptized, the story at the heart of the first Sunday after the Epiphany. He would ride - and sometimes walk - through fierce storms on the Sea of Galilee, stilling the water with a word, saving his friend Peter from sinking in foolishness and waves - oh mustard!

Water, for us, means refreshment and relief and nourishment and life, and it means risk and danger and drama and death. Too much water, or not enough, can hurt us. Our way of baptizing errs on the side of not enough as we sprinkle just a hint of water over a person's head and wipe it immediately away before it causes any discomfort or drowning, or, heaven forbid, threatens to damage any clothing. It is not at all like the baptismal story we hear in Mark's gospel - Jesus is still waist deep and dripping all over in the waters of his baptism when the heavens tear open and a voice tells him, you are my beloved.

Listen, though, to what we say as we pray over the water we will use so sparingly in our baptismal liturgy: We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Though it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit. The image of the waters of baptism are not just about waters of life, but waters of death. In baptism we claim that we die with Christ so that we might live with him. Baptism is about going all the way under before it is every about coming up out of the water.

Please understand that I love our liturgy, and that baptism is my sacrament to participate in as a priest. But while it is possible to drown in two inches of water, I don't think anyone every went under, let alone drowned, in one of our baptismal fonts.

I wonder if that is why it is so hard for us - for anyone, even if they are baptized by immersion - to truly die to sin, to die to self, to die to the fears and anxieties that wash over us in waves. We never go deep enough with Christ. We are so afraid of losing control, of losing our lives, that we never go to the place where there is no sight or sound or security except for Jesus, his arms wrapped around us, never letting us go.

And so we sprinkle a few drops of water, a sweet little sacrament in which we oooh and aaah over the lace on the gown more than we do over the significance of the death and resurrection that have just taken place at the font. All of our sacraments seem somehow miniature - a drop of water, a wafer of bread, a sip of wine... My liturgics professor in seminary said the occasion of God's grace at work in us is so significant that the symbols we use in worship should be as well. Use enough water to drown in, he said. Serve as much bread and wind to feed a multitude, with leftovers. This is the nature of God's grace.

Baptism, for Jesus, was the moment at which he knew precisely who and whose he was. You are my beloved. It was the moment after which all moments were lived in and for God, in and for the good news that God loves, that God saves, that only God can quench our thirst for meaning, that only God can pull us from the waves of sin and doubt and fear that threaten our becoming who we were created to be.

What impact has baptism had on our lives? Most of us in the Episcopal Church don't remember the moment of our baptism. But we renew the promises made on our behalf over and again on feast days like today. We remember the promises Christ made to us, that if we will die to ourselves and be buried with him we will also rise with him. Far from being a sweet and safe sacrament, baptism is full of risk and danger and drama, as is a life truly lived not for ourselves but for the gospel. What impact has baptism had on our lives?

We cannot help but wade out into a world in which wave after wave of obligation, need, fear, envy, temptation, sin, and grief threaten to sweep us off our feet and carry us out to sea. By our baptism, though, we come to know precisely who and whose we are, beloved children of God, sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ's own for ever. By our baptism we come to know that if we are willing to trust him, Christ will carry us and never let go, even when for a moment the waves overpower us. By our baptism we come to know that we can cling to him and boldly confess, "Oh, Jesus! Oh, Christ! Oh, Savior! Oh, Lord!" Amen.

Artwork: Various photographs; "Baptism," by Eliz Kim; "Stormy Blue Waves," by Trine Meyer Vogsland.

Birthday Hat

2011-12-17T06:59:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was my birthday. A big one. Or not so big - I can't decide. Either they all are, or none are, and I am beginning to think that all birthdays are big, every new year a blessing both in its celebration of what has been and its anticipation of what will be.

A friend knit me a hat.

It is knit from the softest, squishiest, warmest yarn you can imagine, in the most beautiful shade of frosty blue, and it fits perfectly.

Another friend knit me a scarf.

This one wasn't a birthday gift. She gave it to me a few weeks ago at our annual Knitting and Needlework in Advent retreat (yes, the one I haven't blogged about yet!) after we had all ooo'd and ahhh'd over it as she knit. It is knit from Yarn Bee's Chrysalis (in lots more colors at Hobby Lobby stores), in the most beautiful shade of purple, and it fits perfectly.

Like birthdays, all knitted gifts are big, no matter their size. Hats and scarves, afghans and sweaters...they all grew from nothing more than a single cast-on stitch. They all represent the intentionality and effort and creativity and perseverance of the knitter, and they all hold the promise of joy for the recipient.

Thank you, friends!

Preach One: Advent 3B

2011-12-11T12:13:00.000-08:00

Preached at St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral, Jackson, MS, and St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Forest, MS. I actually sang the song in the sermon and haven't been able to get it out of my head all weekend...

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

I know it is still Advent. There is yet one candle left to light. Shadows are yet growing longer, although lessened somewhat on this Sunday known as Gaudete, which is Latin for rejoice. Even if we lightened our liturgical color to rose today, as many churches do, there is yet another Sunday of deep purple and blue. Our scripture readings do not yet tell of mothers mild or mangers, only prophets, warnings, and promises. The air is yet expectant.

It is still Advent, I know. And while we are faithfully tending our wreaths and talking about hope at St. Andrew's Lower School, you must understand...there are nearly 500 children there...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. In Big Chapel an angel has already visited Mary at her house, and in chapel class the angel has returned with friends to give shepherds good tidings of great joy. Handmade ornaments hang in every hallway, elves sit on every shelf, glitter covers EVERY surface, and children fill every day with cheer.

So it was that I lingered longer than I needed to in the copy room last week, because from just next door in music class came the sound of Christmas carols, and I couldn't quite tell if the singing belonged to herald angels or third graders. They were heavenly either way. As one song ended, though, and a new one began, I thought for a moment that they were finished caroling. The new song was one we used to sing at summer camp as we hiked through the hills in the heat. Children, go where I send thee. How shall I send thee? Well, I'm gonna send thee one by one...

And suddenly, as they sang, I realized that the song I learned at camp really did belong at Christmas. I had never thought about it before - we just sang it to pass the time on the trails. Well, I'm gonna send thee one by one, one for the itty bitty baby, wrapped in swaddling clothing, lying in a manger, born, born, born in Bethlehem.

It's an old spiritual, a counting song that builds on itself as you sing it, like "The Twelve Days of Christmas," so that by the end you're being sent twelve for the twelve apostles, eleven for the eleven that got into heaven, ten for the ten commandments...and so on, all sent finally for the itty bitty baby born in Bethlehem.

Advent, of course, is about the coming of that itty bitty baby; but it is also, it seems, about sending. At least, that's what our gospel readings for the first three Sundays in Advent have been about. On the first Sunday, Jesus spoke of when angels would be sent to gather the elect from the ends of heaven to the ends of the earth. Last week, and today, it is John the Baptist who is sent to prepare the way of the Lord. For that matter, next Sunday an angel will be sent to Mary, who will be sent with Joseph to Bethlehem. Christ's coming is itself a sending...for in these last days you sent your Son to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world...

There I go again, looking a lot like Christmas when I know it is still Advent, when our gospel reading is not about Mary or Joseph but John. There was a man sent from God, our reading begins as this evangelist picks up the story of salvation in exactly the same place Mark did last week. Luke and Matthew also tell us about John the Baptizer, so that we have a remarkably full account of him. We know his momma and daddy, and the circumstances of his birth. We know what John looked like, where he lived, what he wore, what he ate. We know what John did, how he went about preaching and baptizing and crying in the wilderness. We know that John always had a flair for the dramatic, his passion palpable, like a child leaping in its mother's womb.

And yet, when John was questioned by priests and Levites, who came demanding to know who he was and what he had to say about himself, he told them mostly who he was not. He was not, as some supposed, the messiah, and I suspect they were relieved, for they wouldn't have known what to make of a messiah who wore animal skins and ate bugs. Nor was he Elijah, as others thought, whom many believed would return to announce the messiah's advent. Nor was John a prophet, although for all the world he looked and sounded like one, shouting words like "repent" and "prepare" and making those in authority nervous.

What then? Who are you? What do you say about yourself? they asked. And about himself, John answered, I am a voice. I am a witness. I am a testifier. I am a preparer of the way for the One who is coming. Who John was, by his estimation, had nothing to do with himself and everything to do with who Jesus was. Although, by some accounts, he was not yet sure who Jesus was.

Surely they had been childhood playmates, as cousins often are. Surely they had grown up together, gotten into mischief together, played make believe together, learned about God and faith and doubt and fear together. By the time they stood together in the Jordan River, waist deep in the waters of baptism, John sensed there was more to Jesus than he had realized, but until then John only knew that Someone great was coming, and that nothing would ever be the same again. He trusted that the God who sent him to prepare the way was up to something, that something wonderful was going to happen, indeed, had already happened, but we just did not know it yet.

Prepare! Get ready! Make straight the way of the Lord! John shouted, and in another gospel, someone asks him how. How does one get ready to welcome the One who will come speedily to help and deliver Israel? Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, John answered. That's how you get ready. Whoever has food must do likewise. That's how you prepare. John may not have been sure who the messiah was, but he knew what the messiah would be about, how the anointed one of God would change everything, and John wanted everyone to be prepared.

How marvelous it is to imagine that John and Jesus might have been together when, as boys, they learned the words of the prophet Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me, the prophet wrote. His words were addressed to God's people at a time when their hope had been reduced to rubble. They were desperately in need of a messiah, someone to help them build up the ancient ruins and repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

This building up and repairing, though, according to Isaiah, would not be about replicating in bricks and mortar what had been before. The new community would be built on a foundation of justice and mercy. God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners...to comfort...to provide...to give...these would be the building blocks, stone upon stone. The spirit-filled anointed one of God would change everything, turn the world upside-down and inside-out. The new kingdom would be characterized not by power but love, not by darkness but light, not by ashes but garlands, not by mourning but - gaudete - rejoicing. It would be nothing short of a revolution. A revolution, John knew, whose time had come.

There was a man sent from God...another who, like John so very many generations before, cried out in a wilderness of injustice and devastation. The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King preached at our own National Cathedral in March of 1968, the last Sunday sermon he delivered before his death. Like John's message of repentance, it was a sermon he had preached many times, with increasing urgency. In it, Dr. King recalled the familiar short story of Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep a subject of King George, III, and awoke, twenty years and a revolution later, a citizen under President George Washington. "One of the great liabilities of life," Dr. King concluded, "is that all too many people find themselves living in a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands. They end up sleeping through a revolution."

Jesus would not have us sleep through the revolution he has begun. Keep awake, he instructed us at the beginning of Advent, for you do not know when the time will come. And yet we do know, for he has come, that the time is now. Indeed, after his baptism by John and upon reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah about the one sent from God, Jesus would say in the synagogue, Today - today - this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Are we prepared? For surely not even John knew how the revolution would take an unexpected turn early one morning at an empty tomb when everything changed again with the rising sun. The evangelist tells us Jesus came to the place where his followers were hiding and said to them, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'. So have we been Spirit-filled. So are we anointed. So are we sent as Christ's body to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim release, to comfort, to provide, to give... So do we tend to the broken-hearted of the world in this season, not because it is Christmas, but because it is the only way to make sense of who we are. "Our world is a neighborhood," wrote Dr. King. "For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way God's universe is made."

There was a man sent from God... And there is another, and there is another [pointing to members of the congregation]. And there is a woman sent from God. And there is another... Just as John, Christ's forerunner, knew his whole identity to be bound up with the One who was coming, so do we, Christ's followers, know our whole identity to be bound up with the One who has come, who is coming again, who comes day after day with bountiful grace and mercy. Indeed, this is what we will celebrate - what our Lower School is already celebrating, bless their hearts - at the great Feast of the Incarnation, how heaven and earth were bound up together in the person of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Spirit-filled anointed One of God, the Revolutionary.

It is still Advent, I know. But I can't get that Christmas song out of my head. Children go where I sent thee. How shall I send thee? I'm gonna send thee one by one...by one by one by one by all of us together, and always sent where Christ himself is going before. We are voices. We are witnesses. We are testifiers. We are forerunners in a kingdom that has already come. We are followers of an itty bitty baby who has yet to be born. We are sent, both to prepare the way of the One who is coming and to proclaim the good news that he has already come, Emmanuel, God-with-us. In this season, on this day, in this Advent, who are you? What do you have to say about yourself? Where is God sending you? How will you prepare the way for God's coming? How will you proclaim the good news that God is here? Amen.

Artwork: "Epiphany Triptych - The Baptism," by Katherin Burleson; "The Voice of One in the Wilderness," by Gwen Meharg; "Prepare the Way of the Heart," by Gwen Meharg; "Rhythm (redo)," by Brian Zahnd.

Preach a Little One: Advent 3B

2011-12-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

Preached at my last Lower School Faculty Eucharist at St. Andrew's Episcopal School. Every Friday morning, a few of us gather in the Jean Jones Downey Chapel for a brief and quiet service of Holy Eucharist before the children descend upon our day. Still, the best part of the service for me is when the early-arriving children put their hands and faces against the narrow glass windows of the chapel to see what's going on...

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Do you remember nights at summer camp, when all the lights were finally out, and all the giggles were finally quiet, and you were finally falling asleep?

Perhaps you were cuddled under a quilt or snuggled inside a sleeping bag, already half-dreaming and yet still half-hearing the wilderness intone its evening prayers...a rise and fall of the cadences of crickets and bullfrogs and owls...

...and the shrill, high-pitched buzz of a mosquito in your ear. The one you shoo away with a flick of your hand, but that returns, hovering directly over your eardrum. Over and over you brush it off, pull up your covers, hide under your pillow, try to get comfortable with your hands over your ears, but still somehow the buzz pierces every defense.

With apologies to John the Baptist for comparing him to a pesky insect, that's what I thought of when I read this Sunday's gospel reading. Perhaps his voice wasn't shrill (who knows?) but it certainly is strident in this quiet season of dreaming and listening, watching and waiting. Like a mosquito that won't go away, John is back for a second week in a row, a voice crying out in the wilderness of Advent, keeping us awake with his buzz about the One who will come after him. Prepare. Testify. Bear witness. Make a straight path...

Shoo, the authorities tried to tell him, but John just cried out all the more.

In the wilderness and wildness of this Advent, I wonder what we are only half-hearing? What voices are we trying to shoo away? Whether shrill and strident, or soft and silent, what words from God keep buzzing in our ears, piercing every defense? Keep awake. Be not afraid. Prepare. Rejoice. What is God trying to say to you?

Amen.

Artwork: "Dabar," by Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman. 'Dabar' is Hebrew for 'word'.

By the way...

2011-11-21T15:26:00.001-08:00

...I finished a few things I haven't really told you much about. In the wake of three failed attempts to knit a sock, I thought now would be just the right time to ~~save face~~ show you some projects that worked out just fine.

You saw my unfinished Five Hour Baby Sweater this summer. I really did knit it in something like five hours, alongside my mom who was also knitting one. The pattern was simple and the yarn oh-so-soft (mine is the blue one).

Mom incorporated a few buttonholes to close her sweater with the sweetest little pink buttons. I wanted mine to tie closed, and had seen a cute example on Ravelry of a sweater with a crocheted tie that encircled the yoke of the sweater. My poor sweater waited patiently for weeks for me to decide to attach a simple i-cord instead.

The Spartanburg Knitting Guild was collecting the sweaters to donate to one of several children's ministries they support. It was fun to add my sweater to the collection on display at the guild retreat in September.

You also caught a glimpse of my No-Fuss Mitts just before the retreat, in another softest yarn ever (Louisa Harding Thistle). I learned so much knitting these sweet little mitts, from the knitting instructor that never sleeps and is ever patient and repeats instructions as often as I ask it to (yay, YouTube!): provisional cast-ons, picot edges, folded hems, and thumb gussets...

...and embroidery! At the last minute (in fact, in the car on the way to the retreat!), worried that despite the sweetness and softness of the mitts they would look plain amidst the many other mittens and gloves in the annual retreat contest, I decided to add a little detail. I found instructions for a little embroidered lamb and (yay, YouTube!) learned how to do a duplicate stitch, a chain stitch, and a french knot.

The contest was indeed packed with the most beautiful, warm, soft mittens and gloves I have ever seen. Of all things, though...my mitts won first place!

I received a one-year subscription to Knitter's Magazine and the fun of being able to say I am an award-winning knitter!

Definitely way more fun than saying I am can't-seem-to-get-this-sock-to-fit knitter...

Preach a Little One: Last Pentecost A

2011-11-18T18:41:00.000-08:00

Preached at the Lower School Faculty Eucharist, St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Matthew 25:31-46

The end times are upon us.

No, really. This time, the end is actually near. We are almost at the end of a liturgical year. We are almost at the end of a calendar year. We are almost at the end of a semester. Advent and exams are in the air.

My tenth grade world history final exam had one question on it, and one question only. Aliens have just landed. Tell them the history of the world. I stared at a blank sheet of paper for who knows how long, not knowing how to begin. An hour and at least two sheets of paper later, full of names and dates and places and ideas, I had no idea how to end.

The end times are upon us. Really. At least, that is how it has seemed these past several Sundays as parable after parable has ended in outer darkness, where there sits a guest without a wedding robe, ten bridesmaids with no oil for their lamps, and a servant with a hidden talent. Be ready, Jesus has warned us over and over again, for you do not know the hour or the day.

This Sunday, the last in the long season after Pentecost, the end is here. The Son of Man in all his glory sits upon the judgment seat with all the nations gathered before him, and on the final exam there is one question, and one question only. What did you do for the last of those who are members of God's family?

Did we feed the hungry? Clothe the naked? Visit the sick? Take care of others? Were we good neighbors? Yes, sometimes. And...no, sometimes. Sometimes we are generous, selfless, and brave. And sometimes we are self-absorbed, full of excuses, and fearful. Sometimes we are sheep. Sometimes we are goats.

The end times are upon us.

Not really. The time that is upon us is now, this moment in time, and the next, and the next, and then the one after that, each now a new beginning, a new opportunity to do for God what God loves best - doing for others. The exam has begun, but we have quite literally all the time in the world to finish, and even then the one who sits upon the throne is the one who will leave the ninety-nine to find a single strayed sheep. Or goat. Or guest. Or bridesmaid. Or servant. Or me. Or you. For sometimes we are the least of those who are members of God's family...

The beginning times are upon us. The question is before us, and the answer is within us. What will we do at this moment, and the next, and the next, for God by doing if for another? Amen.

The Third Time...

2011-11-16T19:19:00.001-08:00

...is not a sock.

It is a ball of yarn. Again.

It was almost a sock.

The pattern is Twisted, and I love it. It is perfect for this yarn, little rivulets of slipped stitches crossing purly waves of blue and purple and gray. I don't think I have ever purled so much in one project before. In fact, by the time I got to the heel...again...I had purled more than 125 rows of cuff.

That would be 125 rows that don't fit.

But the third time is a charm (this is what I'm telling myself to keep from crying). I've learned a few things. I've learned that purling isn't so bad - in fact, I'm sort of fast at it. I've learned that I can pick up dropped stitches (and then I can pick them up again...). I've learned a new way to knit a heel flap.

It's flatter than the heel flaps I've knit before, and I'm not sure how it would hold up to wear and tear. But it's pretty.

This has been my problem, I think - pretty. I have pretty yarn that brings back pretty memories, I have found pretty patterns that knit up prettily. But I haven't been ~~carefully reading yarn labels~~ ~~carefully reading patterns~~ ~~paying attention to the suggestions of wiser knitters~~ knitting a pretty sock that fits.

The yarn and the pattern are taking a break from me while I think things through.

The fourth time will be more than almost a sock.

Fall Back

2011-11-05T20:58:00.000-07:00

This year's fall is every bit as brilliant as spring, filled with colors more vivid than the crayolas that bear their names - orange red, maize, gold, burnt sienna... I'm using my extra hour tonight to post pictures.

Every day is new. Little Charlie and I watch the trees as we drive to school, and the one that was aflame yesterday is nearly bare, while another nearby that was all green has suddenly turned golden.

He may have inherited something of my love of autumn. Cleaning out his pockets at night I've found red and yellow leaves stuffed inside...

When I was not much older than Little Charlie, there must have been another brilliant fall. We had hiked around the lake at a local state park, inhaling autumn and collecting leaves to press between pieces of wax paper. It became something of a mission to find one perfect red leaf... I do not remember if we ever did. But a song was written later that day, and I do remember it...

Falling leaves are autumn's treasure,
We can laugh with simple pleasure,
Watching sunbeams dancing above our heads.
As the leaves swirl gaily 'round us,
Orange, gold, and brown surround us,
While somewhere there's one leaf of red.

And we search for what we know is
Just beyond here where we have been led,
For the greatest treasure we will find today
Is one leaf of red.

Folk who have less time than we do
Follow clearer paths that lead to
Answers to their questions of here and now.
On this wooded path we follow,
Mysteries need not be unraveled
As we look for truth here within.

And you and I will seek our
Answers in this world that doesn't ask how.
We're content to count our leaves as
Treasures without questioning how.

And we search for what we know is
Just beyond us here where we have been led,
For the greatest treasure we will find today
Is one leaf of red.

Third time's a...

2011-10-30T06:23:00.000-07:00

...well. I'm hoping it's going to be a sock.

The first time was going to be a sock. Knitting a pair of fingerless mitts (I haven't told you much about those yet, but I will!) on double points made me remember how much I like the fiddly feeling of double points and so I settled on socks. Out of my sock yarn stash leapt the skein of Opal I brought home from Scotland more than three years ago, because the colors reminded me of the stones and sea there.

I searched for a pattern that could also remind me of the sea, and picked Jaywalker (sorry - Ravelry link!) with its pointed chevron waves. The pattern actually called for Opal yarn on the exact size needles I planned to use and so I skipped the gauge swatch (not that I would have been inclined to knit one anyway). I had read on Ravelry that the pattern didn't have much give, but all yarn gives, right?

I cast on and found the pattern perfect for the yarn. It was easy to memorize and before I knew it I had turned the heel and was well on my way through the gusset. No matter that it seemed a little narrow. All yarn gives, right?

Finally I had knit enough to try the sock on, and I pictured my toes sticking out from between the double points as I happily slid it on.

All yarn does not give. Not when you knit it in patterns that don't give.

And yet I kept knitting, because surely all yarns give after you've washed and blocked a garment, right? I kept knitting, because even if the socks didn't fit I could give them away to someone with smaller feet. I kept knitting, because the thought of ripping out socks knit all the way to the gusset...

Which meant that when reason finally prevailed (or it may have been selfishness - I really wanted to keep the socks) there was all that much more sock to rip out.

So the second time was still going to be a sock, still using Jaywalker, still using the same yarn and needles - I just went up one size in the pattern. I cast on again, and because the pattern was now so familiar, the sock went quickly. I could tell it was larger, and was certain that this time it would fit just fine.

Just after knitting the gusset, I tried my sock on...

...so, the third time I am really, really, really hoping this is going to be a sock. No more Jaywalker, even though I love how the yarn looked knit up in that pattern. Now I'm going with Twisted, which reminds me of the ridges of stones and sand and shallow ripples of water along the seashore in Scotland. The yarn called for and needle size are comparable, so I skipped the gauge swatch (I learn slowly) and cast on.

They say the third time's a charm. I just hope the third time gives.

Preach One: Proper 25A

2011-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

Preached at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Crystal Springs, MS, and St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Forest, MS.

Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46

"Do not let the cabin door slam." It was always a rule at the summer camp where I worked as a counselor. One of our first-day-of-camp traditions, after everyone had made up their bunks and taken their swim tests, was to work together on a list of cabin rules. "Do not leave food in the cabin," someone would add, perhaps remembering a mouse incident from the summer before. "Do not talk after lights out," we had to put on our list, but everyone knew it really meant, "Do not talk loudly-enough-for-the-counselor-on-night-duty-to-hear-you after lights out." Of course another rule was always, "Be kind and respect each other."

It was a pretty good list of eight or ten rules that would help us live together at camp. Which of the rules do you think was most important? I know the answer should be, "Be kind and respect each other," but I was partial to the rule I always contributed to the list, arachnophobe that I am: "Kill your own spiders." I could start a fire in the rain, comfort a homesick camper, sing countless bedtime songs, and inspire my campers to win the most cabin inspections, but if someone found a spider in their bunk, they were going to have to take care of it themselves.

Our ancestors in faith had a few more than eight or ten rules to help them live together in community. Hebrew scriptures list 613 laws in all, 613 commandments: 248 "thou shalts" and 365 "thou shalt nots," covering every imaginable courtesy, every imaginable quarrel, every imaginable way one might help or harm another.

It had all started, of course, with the commandments Moses copied down on stone tablets and carried across deserts and rivers and mountains to the very edge of the Promised Land. We just wrote our cabin rules on poster board and hung them beside the not-to-be-slammed door. Eventually, the commandments came to be kept by religious authorities who studied them rigorously and applied them vigorously so that, by Jesus' day, the commandments seemed to set people against one another rather than binding them together.

It was impossible to follow all the rules at camp. Racing out of the cabin after rest period, swimsuits and towels in hand for free swim, someone always let the door slam. There was always a secret stash of candy or homemade cookies. Late night whispers would always give way to giggles and loud shushing. Someone was always more afraid of spiders than I was.

If our eight or ten rules couldn't be faithfully kept, surely it was all the more impossible to follow all the commandments of God. In the wilderness God's people broke the rules before the rules even made it down the mountain, worshiping a golden calf instead of God, and while God forgave them time and time again, the religious authorities were less lenient. So it was that they took issue with Jesus, who seemed intent on breaking the rules left and right. He touched people who were unclean. He worked on the Sabbath. He ate with sinners. He called himself God.

When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem, the religious authorities grew even more alarmed. The people loved him, showing him all glory, laud and honor as they waved their palm branches and shouted their hosannas. But at every turn and with every word, Jesus seemed to disregard both the law that ordered Jewish life and the leaders who ordered Jewish law. He had torn down tables in the temple courtyard, shouting something about unfair sacrifices people were forced to make there in order to make the faithful sacrifices commanded in the law. In parable after parable he had claimed God's kingdom not for those who carefully guarded its gates but rather for those who slipped in through its cracks. Furious, and frantic to preserve the order they worshiped, the authority they enjoyed, the commandments they kept, Jerusalem's religious leaders sought to reign in this rabbi.

Which of the rules do you think is the most important? a lawyer among the Pharisees asked Jesus, and there was no way for Jesus to answer correctly. Rabbinic teachings interpreted the law in a variety of ways, counting and ordering and weighing the commandments differently, sot hat no matter how Jesus answered, no matter which commandment he chose, the lawyer could claim a different interpretation and prove Jesus wrong.

And so Jesus did not choose a single commandment. He chose all of them. And he named them all, Love. 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

There wasn't a single commandment, Jesus answered, that wasn't about love - which is to say, about God - at the center of life in community, at the center of all our relationships, of all our encounters with one another, with our neighbors, and with our deepest and truest selves. Love - which is to say, God - is at the center of it all. Not the feeling kind of love, the warm fuzzy kind of love that makes us weep at weddings or at the sight of spectacular sunsets, but the kind of love with which God loves, the kind of love that God is, the kind of love by which God created us and called us into community in the first place.

Scriptural scholar Douglas Hare writes, "The primary component of biblical love is not affection but commitment...stubborn, unwavering commitment," no matter how many times the rules are broken. I will be your God, and you will be my people, God promised, and God has kept that promise, loving us thoroughly and unconditionally and not at all warmly and fuzzily, although assurance of God's love deeply comforts our hearts and souls and minds. God's love is fierce. It is active. It is forgiving. It is redeeming. It is reconciling. It is welcoming, healing, nurturing, embracing, seeking, celebrating, weeping, aching, leading, longing love. God loves with all of who God is. God is all Love.

And God, with every rule God gives, commands us to love, to be committed to God and our neighbors and ourselves with all of who we are, with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our mind. Not just with the part of ourselves that feels affection. Not just with the part of us that is afraid. Not just with the part of us that is tolerant. The rules say to love with all of who we are.

But all of who we are knows all sorts of other rules, too, written and unwritten, more even than the 613 laws of Hebrew scripture. Rules like, Nice guys finish last. You get what you deserve. We can't all be winners. Winning is everything. Skinny is beautiful. Real men don't cry. Time is money. Money is everything. There are rules for success, rules for fitting in, rules for standing out, rules for getting what we want. There are rules for what families should look like, what jobs are acceptable, what assistance is sufficient, what differences are tolerable. There are so many rules that make demands of our time, our energy, our resources, and our attention. How can we possibily give all of who we are to love, sharing as Paul and his helpers did not only the good news of God in Christ but our own selves, heart and soul and mind?

There is hope. God chose us, God called us, God saved us, God loved us long before there were commandments carved in stone, long before Moses ever climbed that mountain. In the beginning, God created us. In God's own image, God created us. And as Thomas Merton writes, "To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name." God does not ask us to do or be what we are not - in commanding us to love, God commands us to be who we are. We are people made to be in community. We are people made to be forgiving. We are people made to heal, to nurture, to embrace, to weep, to ached, to seek, to reconcile, to love. Sometimes we break the rules. Sometimes we are afraid to keep them. Sometimes we are braver than we realized, defeating spiders, or braver still, letting them live.

What rules are we living by today, in our lives, our communities, our church? What rules shape our relationships, our encounters, the way we regard ourselves? How would it be if we lived by only one rule? What if that rule was Love? Amen.

Artwork: "Thoughts on Communion," by Barbara Desrosiers; "God's Love," by Lee Ribal.

Preach One: Proper 23A

2011-10-09T21:34:00.000-07:00

Preached at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Forest, MS.

Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14

From time to time at St. Andrew's Lower School I get comments on my clothes. Sometimes it is a compliment. I like your skirt, a child says, tugging on it. I like your bracelet. I like your cross. Most of the time, though, the comments are about my blouse, especially about the white collar at the top. What is that? they ask. Why do you wear that? I got a new question about the collar a few days ago, from a kindergartener: How do you get that off? I didn't tell him that every priest wonders exactly the same thing by about 1:30 pm on Sunday afternoons.

I usually tell children the collar is like a uniform, something I wear to work every day, something that helps people know what my job is. Whey they see someone dressed like me, they can know that person is probably someone who leads prayers and talks about God. People who do other jobs wear different kinds of uniforms, like nurses, firemen, soldiers, and chefs. We can tell what people do by what they wear.

So it is also, it seems, for those who are called and chosen by God. I don't mean clergy; I mean all of us, for we are all of us invited by grace to be part of God's best plans for the world. In the parable we have just heard Jesus tell, the King gathers everyone who will come, until the great hall prepared for a wedding feast is filled. The kingdom may be compared to this, Jesus says.

It is not a favorite parable among preachers, who would gladly exchange their uniforms for just about any other on the Sunday this story is read. One more Jesus spoke to the people in parables, Matthew begins, but already we are anxious. In the last parable we heard, an angry landowner took terrible revenge on the tenants who refused to give him his harvest, who killed his servants and even his son. We much prefer parables about scattering seeds, working the fields, tending sheep, and finding lost things.

This parable, though, is uncomfortably like the last. An angry king takes terrible revenge on the townspeople who refused to come to his table, who killed his servants and dishonored his son. Still, we might make sense of both stories by supposing that all who choose their own gain simply cannot live in a vineyard or a kingdom ruled by grace. It would utterly destroy them.

And yet there is a vineyard to lease, this time to tenants who will gladly give first fruits to the landowner. There is a wedding feast to share, this time with guests who will gladly come to the table. The King sends out another round of invitations, instructing his remaining servants to go out into the streets to tell everyone they can find, both good and bad, that the King is waiting to welcome them.

What do you wear to a royal wedding? Dress blues? Glittering gowns? Extravagant hats? Long white gloves? A collar? It is important to wear the right thing, for the King can tell what we do by what we wear. And, apparently, by what we do not wear.

He noticed there a man who was not wearing a wedding robe... Neither Jesus nor Matthew describes the missing garment or tells just what it means, leaving us to stare into our own wardrobes and wonder whether we, too, will be thrown into outer darkness. We have been invited to the wedding feast. Are we properly attired?

From start to finish, our holy scriptures are concerned with what we wear. Why do you wear that? God asks Adam and Eve in the garden, and soon they are clothed not just in fig leaves but animal skins and whatever else they can find to hide their shame. One day, though, marvels the writer of Revelation, those who have risen above living for themselves alone will wear white robes washed clean as a lamb.

"We are naked, literally and metaphorically, before the living God," writes Garcia Grindal, scholar and poet. "We need to be dressed, not with the sartorial choices of our own will, but with the grace of God." And so we are urged in scripture to put on Christ (Romans 13:14), to robe ourselves in righteousness (Ephesians 4:24), to clothes ourselves, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

Each of us, all of us, good and bad, are invited by grace to be part of God's best plans for the world. We are entrusted with the care of the vineyard. We are invited to the wedding feast - not just a one-night affair, but a lifetime, even an eternity, as guests at God's groaning board. What will we wear?

Our closets are full of clothes we have chosen to make ourselves look good, to make ourselves look successful, to make ourselves look important, to make ourselves look worthy, or at least like we're worth more than others. We put on whatever we can find to hide our shame, our doubt, our anger, our selfishness, our weakness, our sin, our vulnerability, our nakedness before God.

But the invitation to kingdom life asks of us a willingness to garb ourselves in kingdom qualities, to wear love and mercy and forgiveness and humility and forgiveness and vulnerability and welcome on our sleeve. Without that garment, even grace cannot keep us in the door, although perhaps the glimmer of good news in this parable is that grace will search the streets for us again and again until we are dressed and ready. For even the disgraced guest is called friend...

The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his servants, saying, "Tell those who have been invited, which is to say, everyone, the good and the bad: Look, I have prepared my dinner...and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet." We are invited. We are called. What will we wear?

May God's grace precede and follow us to the table, urging us to put on Christ, to wrap ourselves up in a life like his, loving and serving with gladness and singleness of heart, gaining not ourselves but a kingdom. Amen.

Artwork: "The Party," by Jim Janknegt; "Waiting," by Nancy Stoller; "Claiming Table," artist unknown.

Preach One: Proper 21A

2011-09-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

Preached at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Crystal Springs, MS, and at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church in Forest, MS.

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16, Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

I never took the ERB exams when I was in school. I never took the ISEE, or the MCT2, or the ACT. But I've taken the SAT, and several AP's, and the GRE and the GOE's. We know our educational system's standardized tests by their acronyms, by rows of letters like a scantron sheet full of answers waiting to be bubbled in.

It was ERB week this week at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, where I work. As I peeked in on classrooms full of children busy with exam booklets and answer bubbles, I was suddenly a student again, waking up early on test day, eating a healthy breakfast, and arriving at school armed with number two pencils and scratch paper. I remember the flimsy booklets filled with columns of math problems and reading comprehension questions, analogies and synonyms, formulas and definitions. But what I remember most about taking standardized tests are the directions.

Do not begin until you are instructed to do so. Go on to the next page until you see the word "stop". Erase stray marks completely. Fill in the circle, and make your mark dark.

I learned a little bit about psychometrics, the art and science of creating tests, in graduate school. But I have forgotten why and how it is sometimes better to guess when you do not know the answer, and sometimes it is better to leave the answer blank. In this evening's gospel reading, we hear both approaches, and neither gets a very good score.

We do not know, the chief priests and elders respond, leaving the answer blank when the question of John the Baptist's authority arises. Is it of divine or human origin? Either answer would get them in trouble with the crowds whose respect they crave, and so they choose not to answer at all. Neither will I tell you by what authority I am acting, Jesus replies, and while it sounds like leaving the question blank, he will go on to explain that he has shown all his work. Hadn't they seen? Hadn't they heard?

Maybe they would do better on the analogy section, so Jesus tells a parable of two sons ordered by their father to work in the vineyard. What do you think? Which of the two did the will of the father, Jesus asks, and the chief priests and elders correctly guess that it was the one who said no, but who later changed his mind and went to work after all.

But still they did not understand. Still they did not see. They did not hear that the question wasn't about authority. It wasn't about right and wrong answers. It wasn't about pleasing God by getting a perfect score on some test, although the religious leaders of Jesus' day loved nothing better than scorekeeping. If they were keeping score, they would have noted that neither brother in the parable deserves full credit for his answer. The one who agreed to do his father's will didn't end up going into the vineyard at all, and the one who went to work at first refused.

If we were keeping score in our reading from Exodus, we would have noted that the Israelites' scantron is also full of stray marks, half-erased answers, and second guessing. Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst, they complained, perhaps forgetting how they once thirsted not for water but for freedom and a future.

For that matter, if we were keeping score, how would we in our own lives measure up? Would we merit the credit God gave us in Jesus Christ, whose perfect obedience to the Father is the only reason we pass the test at all? On test day, which is to say every day (for when do we not find ourselves faced with multiple choices) how often do we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, skip a healthy breakfast, forget to follow directions, guess wildly, or throw up our hands in defeat and say we just don't know?

If we were keeping score... It turns out none of us are very good at psychometry, at creating tests, writing questions, and making out answer keys, precisely because we do keep score. God does not. Is the Lord among us or not, the Israelites asked, but it was the wrong question. Hadn't they seen? Hadn't they heard? God was there as pillar and cloud, leading them from slavery to salvation. God was there as manna, feeding their hunger. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock, God promised from the place where water would gush out, quenching their thirst. The people questioned God's authority. But the real question was about their faith, their response to God's power and presence, their willingness to go on to the next page, the next stage of their journey through life's wilderness, trusting that God was with them.

Is the Lord among us or not, the chief priests and elders are truly asking when they question Jesus' authority, but it was the wrong question. Hadn't they seen? Hadn't they heard? God was there no longer just in the words of prophets but as a living Word of hope and promise and forgiveness and grace. Even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe, Jesus said. The real question was about their faith, their response to God's power and presence, their willingness to go on to the next page, the next stage of their journey through life's wilderness, trusting that God was with them.

Is the Lord among us or not? Paul tells us we are still asking the wrong question. God is with us. It is God who is at work in us, enabling us both to will and to work for God's good pleasure. What the Israelites and the chief priests and elders and we all fail to realize is that, if we must look at life as a test, it isn't about right and wrong answers at all. The son who went into the vineyard to work didn't give the right right answer - he told his father no. He didn't give the right answer, but he did live it. In the end, he didn't let a hasty response, a mistake, a stray mark, keep him from doing his father's will. That son changed his answer from a disobedient word to a faith-filled way of acting, and for showing his work he got full credit.

Thank goodness life is not a standardized test. There may be rules to remember. There may be choices to make. There may be right and wrong answers, easy and hard ways to work things through. But God sees and hears more than our multiple choices, more than our true and false, more than our yes and our no. Our response to God's authority in our lives is not contained in a little bubble. Our response to God's authority, God's will, God's invitation, in our lives is how we live them, day in and day out, mistakes, stray marks, and all. As we work out our salvation, if we will but believe that God is among us, that indeed it is God who is at work in us, saving us all along, if we will but believe, then God will erase our stray marks completely and give us full credit simply for trying.

The vineyard to which we are called, the world out there, might as well be a wilderness. But we do not journey there alone, nor do we face life's daily tests without a study guide. Is the Lord among us or not, we have always asked, and God has answered with fire and cloud and bread and water and, finally, with Christ himself, God's divine yes to our human no. Haven't we seen? Haven't we heard? Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, Paul encourages us, and so our questions of how to do our Father's will, how to see, how to hear, how to work, how to live, how to love, are once and for all answered.

Let us take out our pencils. Let us go on to the next page until, one day, we see the word "stop", and let us answer this question to the best of our ability, being certain to show our work: Will we go into the vineyard today? Amen.

Artwork: "Vineyard Gold," by Jennifer Vranes; "Moses Striking the Rock," by Marc Chagall; "Jesus Icon Painting," by Alpha Shanahan.

Because I Need a New Hobby

2011-09-16T11:05:00.000-07:00

I only signed up for one workshop at this year's Knit-a-Way Retreat in Little Switzerland. I know I said in my last post that all I planned to do was sit on a porch, look out at this,

and knit, but the workshop I signed up for didn't call for needles. Or patterns. Or yarn. I suppose we could have met on the porch, but it was quite cold all weekend. Good thing we were surrounded by wool.

A big, soft, squishy pile of chocolate and gray wool roving, to be exact (I don't know just what kind of sheep it was, but it must have been the softest, squishiest sheep ever). It took me two days and lots of guidance from instructor Teri Gabric, but I learned how to spin that beautiful roving into...

yarn! I made yarn!

From the moment Teri sat me down at the wheel I loved spinning. Now, everything I tell you about the experience must be prefaced by the disclaimer that I now know enough about spinning to know that I hardly know anything at all. Except that I love it...

The wheel I used was an Ashford Kiwi, easily the most affordable of wheels across a range of the most common brands, and great for beginners. Of course I've never used any other wheels, but I'd happily work with this one again. The workshop began with treadling, and as our feet got used to the rhythm, Teri gave us a vocabulary lesson. I love all the new words! Flyer. Scotch Tension. Treadles. Maidens. Footmen. Bobbin. Niddy noddy. Mother of All.

The hardest part for me was getting the wheel going in the right direction (to the right to spin, to the left to ply), and it's still a little bit of a mystery to me how I got it to go at all.

The other hardest part was finding the balance between holding on to the roving and letting it go, pulling it apart and spinning it together, making it twist and making it not twist too much...There will surely be a "preach one" post about the theological implications of spinning one of these days.

The other hardest part (there were lots of hard parts, but I still loved it!) was stopping. I mean, I wanted to keep spinning and spinning and spinning, but all good workshops come to an end. My new yarn has been resting, and all that is left to do is soak it and block it, which may take out a little of the overtwist I spun into it. Thank you, Teri, for your patience and instruction!

By the way, Teri and I weren't the only ones spinning in Little Switzerland this weekend...

Photos with watermark "Robert Kanavel" were taken by Robert Kanavel, spouse of one of my new favorite knitting friends! Thanks for letting me use your photos, Rob!

On the Road Again...

2011-09-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

Momma J and I are back on the road, heading with my mom to Little Switzerland, NC, for the Spartanburg Knitting Guild's annual Knit-a-Way Retreat! Two and a half days of knitting, mountains, mom and me! And a bunch of other amazing, talented, funny, generous knitters...

This is my third year to go to the Knit-a-Way at the Big Lynn Lodge. I can't wait to see our little cabin with rocking chairs on the porch, to taste the hot oatmeal in the morning and the delicious homemade desserts after dinner, to hear the sound of knitting needles clicking away, and to feel to cool mountain air.

Last year the workshops I signed up for were canceled because the instructor was sick. That was okay, though, because I had hauled some preaching work up the mountain and spent several lovely late afternoon hours on that front porch reading and writing.

Mom and I took a side trip to Mountain Farm, an organic lavender and blueberry farm. They also raise sheep, goats, chickens, and fluffy bunnies. Everything was out of season, but it was still just beautiful, especially in the lavender labyrinth.

In a little shop between the lavender and blueberries, they sell soaps and teas and sachets filled with lavender, and when its warm out they provide ice cold lavender lemonade (it was chilly when we were there). They also send fleeces from their goats and sheep and bunnies out to be processed and spun into yarn.

I didn't get much knitting or purling done last year, what with all the preaching I had to do. But I loved being at the Knit-a-Way all the same. This year my bag is full of needles and yarn - no books or Bibles or commentaries! Just tuck me away on a porch, spread out a mountainview in front of me, and let me start knitting!

Preach One: September 13

2011-09-13T17:18:00.000-07:00

Preached in Middle and Upper School Chapel at St. Andrew's Episcopal School, Ridgeland, MS

Isaiah 35:5-7; Psalm 103; Romans 12:9-21

I can't believe I'm old enough to even consider starting this sermon with the words, "Back when I was in school..." Things were a little different back then, though. We used big books called encyclopedias to write research papers, danced all night to Duran Duran, and the bigger we could get our hair, the better.

Change is good, right? Things change so fast these days, though, that even you are old enough to say, "Back when I was little..." Just ten years ago, in your lifetime, the world was a much different place. There was no Face book. No Twitter. No texting. In fact, lots of people didn't even have cell phones. I didn't.

If I'd had a cell phone ten years ago, I probably would have called home the moment I realized I was not where I was supposed to be. It was September; we had moved to New York City in August for me to begin my seminary studies. We had just started getting used to the sounds that surrounded the quiet seminary close - city buses braking at the corner, subway cars rumbling deep below, taxi cabs honking at pedestrians, airplanes on their low approach to La Guardia, sirens and car alarms and shouts in every language.

We knew that something was different, though, when on our first day of class the sirens became more constant, more urgent, drowning out all other sounds as emergency vehicles began rushing down to Lower Manhattan. We knew that everything had changed when, by the time the sun set on that awful day, the city that never sleeps was completely still.

In the days and weeks that followed September 11, we returned to class, and traffic returned to the streets; airplanes wouldn't return to their flight path over the city for months. One afternoon, I tucked my ten-month-old in his stroller and headed for the Hudson River, just a few blocks west of our apartment. We walked along the river for a while, watching the boats to our right and the Westside Highway to our left, where the median was still full of handwritten signs thanking firefighters and other first responders for their heroism.

It was later in the day than I realized, though, and getting dark quickly. I wasn't sure how far we had walked, but knew I couldn't get home before light was gone. I didn't have a cell phone, and anyway, ten years ago cell phones were just...phones. They weren't smart. I knew that the subway line back to the seminary was nearby, and as the streetlights flickered on, I turned down the next street.

It was Canal Street, the farthest south one could go without security clearance in those days. Police cars and fire engines lined the street, now a staging area for those going on to do recovery work at the World Trade Center. Red and blue lights flashed everywhere, workers were moving gear and equipment between vehicles, crates of food and water spilled out of Red Cross vans, and hundreds of rescuers waited to start their shifts.

In the midst of all the activity, I couldn't find the entrance to the subway, and now quite anxious, I asked a police officer if he would point me in the right direction. He did. In fact, he walked me to the subway entrance. And then he carried my son, stroller and all, down the stairs to the turnstile. And then he pulled two subway tokens from his pocket and sent us through. And then he waited until the train came. And then...

...And then what? I went home. But that officer...did he then go take his place sifting through the still-smoldering debris? Did he report back to his precinct, from which who knows how many others had been lost? Did he go home to wash the dust and ask from his clothes and hair?

It feels strange to tell you this story, this single small moment of kindness extended from one stranger to another, one neighbor to another, when there are so very many other far more extraordinary stories from that time to tell. Soul-gripping, awe-inspiring stories of courage, compassion, sacrifice, generosity, endurance, and grace. And yet, though small, this was a moment of kindness, of taking time not simply to point someone in the right way, but to walk with them in it, even if just to the end of the block, or the bottom of the stairs, even if just to wait with them until the next train comes.

So it is, I believe, that every moment holds for us just such an opportunity. Every moment, every encounter, holds opportunities to not just speak kindness but to do kindness. Not just to offer comfort but to be comfort. Not just to show compassion but to be compassion, to live compassion, one single small moment at a time. After all, it's how we were made, in the image of God who is, we just read, full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and of great kindness. We were made in just such an image. How would it be if moment by moment, encounter by encounter, we chose to let that image shine through rather than letting our shadow side show, full of fear and anxiety, quick to judge, and of sometimes great cruelty? Those are choices we can make, too...

Compassion - Love, which is to say, God - was chosen by the police officer on Canal Street that night. It was chosen over and over in countless moments throughout the city in those days, and in Washington, and in Pennsylvania. It has happened overseas in countless moments where women and men still serve in the name of ending terrorism. It happens every day in this city when volunteers like you prepare meals or donate clothes or provide tutoring or clean up a street. It happens right here at school when we choose in any single moment, no matter how seemingly small, to be how we were made to be, full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and of great kindness. Our small moments add up, and before we know it, the whole world has changed. "Only the smallest part of humanity wishes and acts upon the destruction of others, "writes Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core. "Those of us who believe in a world where we live together, are far larger. The problem is we just haven't made our case compelling yet."

If it feels strange to hear that your story is so deeply a part of the story of September 11, I submit to you that our ability to make the kinds of compelling choices people made on that day begins right here and now. Practicing that kind of compassion is the best way we can honor their soul-gripping, awe-inspiring heroism. Our ability to choose love and kindness and courage begins in the classroom, at our lockers, on the stage, on the field, on the sidewalks, in our city. Two days after September 11, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer wrote a new song, prefaced by the words, "Courage, friends - the world is still filled with the finest of people." To those people, including, I believe, you and me, she sings, "So don't tell me hate is ever right or God's will - these are the wheels we put in motion ourselves. The whole world weeps, and is weeping still. Though shaken, I still believe the best of what we all can be. And the only peace this world will know can only come from love."

Ten years from now, when you're almost old enough to say, "Back when I was in school," what stories will you tell about how things are different than they used to be? What stories will you tell about when everything changed? How will you by your stories, your choices, your moments, your encounters, make the case for love more compelling than the case for fear?

Let your love be genuine; hate what is evil, and hold fast to what is good. Love one another, and outdo one another in showing honor... Take care of God's people in need, and show kindness even to strangers...

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep. Never repay evil for evil... If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Amen.

Artwork: Photographs of banners outside St. Paul's Chapel, New York City, 2001

Preach One: Proper 19A

2011-09-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

Preached at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Forest, MS

Exodus 14:19-31; Psalm 114; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

It's true, what they say. It couldn't have been a more beautiful day. The sky was blue. The sun was shining. The air was crisp with the first hints of fall. It was the kind of morning that makes you pause when you walk out the door, that makes you breathe deeply and smile involuntarily, that make syou glad to be alive. It's true. That's the kind of morning it was.

How the sky stayed blue, how the sun kept shining, I do not know. Only the air changed, grew heavy with ash and astonishment, and how we kept breathing it, I do not know. Only the air changed that day. The air, and everything.

We were gathering in small groups to discuss a book by Rowan Williams, not yet Archbishop of Canterbury, but already a theologian of note. "They think a small plane hit one of the World Trade Center towers," someone said, pausing in the door of the room where my group was meeting, and after a brief prayer for the pilot and whomever else might have been hurt or killed, we continued with class. By the time we learned how immeasurable and unimaginable the loss really was, everything had already changed.

So is our gospel reading tonight is about something immeasurable and unimaginable, something that would change everything. Jesus has just spoken with his disciples about how to handle wrongs committed within the community of faith. Try to resolve it between the two of you, he said, and if that does not work, take one or two others along with you as witnesses. If that fails, take the matter before the whole community, and if you still cannot be reconciled, treat that person as a Gentle or a tax collector.

Already, though, things were different, the disciples knew. All eyes turned to Matthew, the one who tells us this story, the one who had collected taxes from them all. The way Jesus treated Gentiles and tax collectors, the disciples knew, was not to turn them away but to welcome them, and embrace them, and forgive them, and invite them to follow him.

Rabbinic teaching at the time was that the one who had wronged another could be forgiven three times before exhausting all available forgiveness. But things were different with Jesus, friend of Gentiles and tax collectors, and so Peter generously suggested that perhaps they ought to forgive as many as seven times, a number not only greater than three but also divine in nature, signifying wholeness and fullness.

No, Peter. Jesus replied to everyone's astonishment. You must not forgive seven times, but seventy-seven. In Hebrew reckoning it was immeasurable. Unimaginable. Everything. How many times do we forgive? Always...

How we can keep breathing, I do not know, hearing such words on this day, the anniversary of that day when the air and everything changed. It is all the more breathtaking for me when I recall that in the pages we were discussing ten years ago today, as the occasional siren of an emergency vehicle on Ninth Avenue became an unsettling steady wailing, Rowan Williams was reflecting on seeing the face of Christ in all persons who are victims of fear and violence, for Christ himself was a victim of our fear. We nodded, thinking ourselves generous when we came across a passage in which Williams suggested that even the death of a terrorist (or a Gentile or a tax collector...) is a breach in which fear and violence have created a victim, and so, though the thought of it offends us, in that terrorist we must see the face of Christ. Would we have nodded if we had known what was happening just three miles south of our ivory tower, and in our nation's capitol, and in the skies over Pennsylvania?

Today is not the first time this gospel reading has coincided with an anniversary of that beautiful, crisp, terrible, ashen morning, and it will not be the last. Over and again on this day we will hear Peter ask how many times we must forgive, and over and again Jesus will answer, always. And if that isn't hard enough, over and again Jesus will tell a parable to teach us that forgiveness does not end with the cancellation of some debt or injury or wrong-doing. Forgiveness changes everything and demands that our lives be different. It is the beginning of something new, or how else are we to understand Easter morning's empty tomb? Life was different. Everything changed.

Over and again when it coincides with September 11, we will have to remember that this gospel reading is not about what happened ten years ago. This gospel reading is about what happened two thousand years ago, when God's immeasurable and unimaginable grace changed everything. This gospel reading is about what is happening right now and in every present moment when those whom Jesus has welcomed and embraced and forgiven and invited to follow him gather together. At this table we remember that our human condition makes us liable to fear and suspicion and wrong-doing...when we had fallen into suffering and death... We remember that by way of the cross, the victim, the Son of God, we are forgiven and so also liable to acts of amazing grace.

Forgiveness and grace, even resurrection itself, cannot undo. Even as Christ bore scars of his suffering and death, so do our lives, our hearts, our minds, our spirits, and even our bodies show evidence of the ways we have suffered and have caused suffering. Forgiveness does not deny this harm done. It is not a condoning of sin, or an indifference to wrong. It does not remove consequences or insist that the wrong be forgotten. Forgiveness does not erase injury or restore what has been irretrievably lost. Forgiveness cannot undo, but powerfully, immeasurably, unimaginably, forgiveness by God's grace remakes us from the ashes, breathes new life into us even when the air and everything changes. For long before we were changed by September 11, long before we were or are or will be changed by any experience of grief or pain or terror or sin or violence or fear, we were changed by Christ, who even from the cross said, Father, what they do, forgive.

The forgiveness we offer, like the forgiveness we receive, allows us to move forward, to live again, to leave the tomb of our woundedness. Forgiveness allows us to move forward unburdened by attention to what has injured us, unburdened by hate, unburdened by fear. The forgiveness we offer, like the forgiveness we receive, frees us, remakes us, resurrects us. Amen.

Photographs are all of the General Theological Seminary, New York, NY

Forgiveness

2011-09-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

Well. I have been preaching. And I have been knitting. But I haven't been blogging...

In tomorrow's gospel reading, Jesus will tell Peter that we are to forgive one another not once, not twice, not seven times, but seventy-times seven. Which means, roughly, always. Dear readers, I beg your forgiveness for my absence.

I'll catch up on the sermons later (if you come here for those, please come back soon!). For that matter I'll catch up on knitting details later, too. Forgive me! But I'll catch up on knitting pictures now!

My Cedar Leaf Shawlette is blocking, soon to be featured in the fashion show of the Spartanburg Knitting Guild at their annual Knit-a-Way Retreat. Mom is a member, and invites me every year to this wonderful weekend in the mountains of North Carolina. Mountains plus yarn equals bliss.

This yarn, Manos del Uruguay Silk Blend in the Wildflowers colorway, is also bliss. I loved it the first time I saw it as someone's Clapotis shawl, and while I have knit with lots of lovely yarns lately, this remains my favorite. I actually finished this shawl back in February, and am just now getting around to blocking and showing it...forgive me.

These No Fuss Mitts in Louisa Harding Thistle are technically finished, and are also on their way to the Knit-a-Way. Every year we are invited to make a certain kind of garment of knitted object - my first year it was dishcloths, last year it was hats, this year it's mittens or gloves - for a contest. I love seeing them all displayed together in all their variety and creativity and color. I may enter these just as they are, or I may try to add a little embroidery embellishment. Depends on how the sermon writing goes. Forgive me.

The Kudzu Shawlette I started on summer vacation, hopes to be blocked before I leave as well. Again, the sermon thing. Forgive me. It will come with me either way - I've worn it once unblocked, and the drape of the bamboo blend yarn is lovely just as it is.

In the end, Jesus will tell us that forgiveness isn't about numbers at all - not even the number "always". Forgiveness is about unburdening the heart so that healing can set in and we can set out in hope. My hope is to return a little more often to this space, just as I have returned a little more often to my knitting lately. My hope is to retreat faithfully so that I can work more faithfully. My hope is to forgive with grace even as I have been graciously forgiven!

Preach One: Proper 12A

2011-07-24T19:40:00.000-07:00

Genesis 29:15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Have you understood all this? As a school chaplain and as a parent, I have become very familiar with this question. I have also become very familiar with the facial expression that conveys a lack of understanding. And so my students and my child have become very familiar with the sound of my sigh as my brain attempts to figure out a different way to explain whatever it is I am trying to teach. You see, it's like this...well, how about, it's like...have you understood all this?

Moments like these take me back to my own childhood as my teachers and parents tried to explain things to me. There are plenty of lessons it took me a while to learn, especially, as you know about me by now, if it involved math. Listening to kids at school talk about their math classes, trying to help my son with his own math homework, flipping through pages of the SAT and ACT practice test booklets in the hall outside my office door...suddenly I'm in high school again, staring at a blackboard, staring at a test, staring at questions I was not at all sure I understood about the hypotenuse of a triangle and two trains traveling at different speeds and the point on a graph where the line approaches infinity. Have you understood all this? Well, maybe...

I was always better at reading and language and writing. I remember those classes and practice tests, too, and can hear the voices of my English teachers asking, Have you understood all this? Yes, I could answer confidently. I could write a poem, I could find the main idea, I could do reading comprehension and sentence completion and analogies. A carrot is to a vegetable as an orange is to a...

Have you understood all this? Jesus asked his disciples, searching their faces for the slightest sign of comprehension. Yes, they answered, but the Greek word Matthew uses here can mean everything from absolutely to um...unh-hunh. Elsewhere in the gospels we read how slow the disciples were to understand anything that Jesus said or did, and how slow they were to realize they didn't understand.

Have you understood all this? The kingdom of heaven is like... Over and over again Jesus tries to explain what it is his whole life and ministry have been about. The kingdom of heaven is like... Okay, a mustard seed is to a tree as the kingdom of God is to... Yeast is to dough as the kingdom of God is to... (sigh)... Have you understood all this?

Remember that parables are not really metaphors or analogies, but they are like them. Two Sundays ago we heard theologian Walter Wink describe parables as "tiny lumps of coal squeezed into diamonds...that catch the rays of something ultimate and glint it at our lives." The light that shines through a parable challenges us to see in new ways, to move in new directions, to consider new facets, to leave what is comfortable and familiar, to encounter God where we did not expect God to be.

This evening's parables seem quite simple at first, filled as they are with ordinary, everyday images and actions. The kingdom of heaven is like...a mustard seed, yeast mixed with flour, a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, a net thrown into the sea. In all of these stories, the kingdom of heaven - the kingdom of God - is revealed to be working in the world right in front of us and beneath us and all around us, with or without our understanding. The Reverend Barbara Brown Taylor writes, "Why else would [Jesus] talk about heaven in terms of farmers and fields and women breaking bread and merchants buying and selling things and fishermen sorting fish, unless he meant somehow to be telling us that the kingdom of heaven has to do with these things...right here, right now, in all the ordinary people and places and activities of our lives."

Ordinary things, like a tiny seed that grows up into a broad and mighty tree that holds in its branches all the birds of the air. The kingdom of heaven is like this, Jesus says. Do you understand all this? And we can say with confidence, yes, absolutely, yes. The kingdom of heaven begins small, and grows to fill all the world.

Ordinary people, like a baker woman who mixes yeast into dough. The kingdom of heaven is like this, Jesus says. Do you understand? And, after a little review of the process of leavening, by which the dough is filled with thousands of tiny pockets of air that expand when they are heated, we can say, yes, absolutely, yes. The kingdom of heaven is worked into the world, and spreads to fill it and expand it and raise it up.

The kingdom of heaven is like... Again, the kingdom of heaven is like... Again... Jesus repeats the lesson three more times, covering the material from different angles, different perspectives, different facets, so as to glint as much light as he can on the subject of how God is at work in the world. Then, having taught us, having trained us in the kingdom of heaven, Jesus places the parables, themselves priceless treasures, in our hands. Therefore every scribe who has been trained in the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out treasure that is both old and new... Jesus invites us to turn the treasures, the parables, like diamonds in our hands and see how their facets reflect something deeper and more ultimate and more challenging than what appears on the surface.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed... Jesus' disciples, whether or not they had ever sown a field, would have known that mustard seeds grow up not into trees but, at best, large, scraggly bushes that spread like weeds, which, in fact, they are. Mustard is humble and ordinary and persistent, and not at all welcomed by those who are attempting to grow a pure crop. The kingdom of heaven is like this. The marvelous and powerful and transforming kingdom of God is like a stubborn weed, uninvited, unwelcome by some, but determined to grow despite all efforts to uproot it.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast... Jesus' disciples, whether or not they had ever baked bread, would have known that other scriptural references to leavening are far less favorable than this one. Over and again in the scriptures they knew, yeast was used as the image for that which corrupts whatever is clean. The kingdom of heaven is like this. The marvelous and powerful and transforming kingdom of God is expansive, making one bread, one body, out of many...clean and unclean...

Jesus' parables aren't so simple after all. They are challenging, revealing a kingdom that is not pure and clean and pristine, like a prize-winning orchid in a greenhouse. Rather, the kingdom of heaven is found deep in the dirt, where mercy makes a mess of things. The kingdom of heaven is inseparable from earth, where once God stooped and breathed life and called it good, where the breath of God still moves and searches our hearts and makes our spirits rise.

It is a difficult lesson, but one that should come as no surprise if we have been watching closely, if we have had ears to hear. Every moment of his life was lived among the weeds and the leaven of society, inviting them to the table, healing their hurts, forgiving their sins, and calling them to follow. Jesus was himself a living parable, revealing a kingdom, unlike the kingdoms of the world, that one writer has suggested "was more pervasive than dominant...like a pungent weed that takes over everything and in which the birds of the air can nest."

In fact, the parables glint at our lives a kingdom that is very much alive, very much growing and expanding and reaching, more of a verb, really, than a noun. In them Jesus is not talking about things but action, movement. He is not talking about love as a feeling or idea but love in motion. The kingdom is not simply a mustard seed but a mustard seed that someone has taken and sown, a mustard seed that grows and spreads. The kingdom is like yeast mixed in and rising. The kingdom, like treasure, is hidden and found, inspiring joy. The kingdom, like a net, is thrown into the sea, catching fish, catching people, catching lives of every kind.

The kingdom has always been at work in the world and is inseparable from it. It may be hidden from our sight, but from time to time we catch the glint of its ultimate reality. The Reverend Robert Farrar Capon writes of his favorite of this evening's parables, "Just as yeast enters into the dough by being dissolved into the very liquid that makes the dough become dough at all - just as there is not a moment of the dough's existence, from start to finish, in which it is unleavened dough - so...the kingdom enters the world at its creation... There is not, and has never been, any unkingdomed humanity anywhere in the world."

And so we ourselves are not unkingdomed. As Paul teaches us, nothing in all the world can separate us from God's love-in-motion. And we are called to be living parables, to reveal God at work in and through our own lives, loving others - all others - as Jesus taught us. Have we understood all this? Maybe, or maybe not, but then is it really possible to measure the area, or the circumference, or the volume of the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of our seed-planting, fish-catching, pearl-hunting, bread-kneading God? We are not called to understand these things, thank goodness, but to live them. How will we, as kingdom people, catch rays of ultimate things and glint them at the world? How will we, as kingdom people called to search and sow and love and rise and save, say to God, yes, absolutely, yes? Amen.

Artwork: "World's Smallest Seed," by Jim Janknegt; "A Little Leaven," by Jim Janknegt; "The Lost Money," by Jim Janknegt; "Discovering the Pearl of Great Price," by Daniel Bonnell; "Treasurefield #3: Buying the Field," by Jim Janknegt.

Preach One: Proper 10A

2011-07-10T09:42:00.000-07:00

Genesis 24:19-34; Psalm 119:105-112; Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

In my nearly seven years and counting of ordained ministry, I have discovered that one of the most difficult tasks of a preacher (well, of this preacher, at least) is finding that hook, that fresh angle or engaging story or perfect turn of phrase that will make a sermon interesting, and maybe even memorable. How many hundreds of sermons have a written by now, how many hundreds of hooks, so that some Saturdays I sit staring at a blank screen for ages trying to think up something that hasn't already been said.

It's not a new problem for me, really. Back in high school and college I wrote pretty good essays and term papers, complete with concise yet comprehensive thesis statements on the first page. We weren't supposed to, but after writing the thesis statement, I always saved the rest of the opening paragraph for last, because I always seemed to get bogged down in trying to craft a masterpiece of an introduction that would entice the teacher in and make her want to read more.

It was at the same time a relief and a bewilderment, then, when in seminary by church history professor instructed us to begin our papers something like, "The purpose of this paper will be to show that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire," and then get on with it. No flourishes, no hooks, just the facts, ma'am.

If we had more time, and if our space were arranged a little differently, I'd have the perfect hook for you today, a masterpiece of an introduction that would entice us all into the gospel text. So what if my church history professor wouldn't approve! Christian dramatist Tom Long wrote a version of the parable of the sower in his book entitled, The Art of Holy Backrub. See? You want to learn more, don't you!

It's a wonderful adaptation in which a narrator reads the parable (with a few flourishes) while the listeners, seated in a circle, "acts" out the parable with hand motions on the back of the person in front of them. The sower sows the seeds, the birds peck at them, the thorns entangle them, the sun scorches the ground, and some of the seeds grow...

Not a bad way to introduce the story, I think, especially if your week has left you weary and worn. Whether it's the economy or the weather, the emails that need to be answered or the errands that need to be run, the parents or the children or the grandchildren that need to be tended to, the work that piled up while we were away on vacation, the illness or the grief or the anger that just won't go away...we could probably all use a nice backrub right now.

So how does Jesus introduce his story this morning? Listen!

Listen! That's it. No flourishes, no hooks, no holy backrubs. Just Listen! And then he starts right in with, A sower went out to sow...

This morning, and for the next few Sundays, Jesus will be speaking to us in parables about the kingdom of God. We think we've got them all figured out, of course, but in his day Jesus was using parables to teach something new, something no one had ever heard before. Let anyone with ears listen, Jesus enticed those around him. Listen, he entices us. Next week he'll add another line to his introduction (and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out my church history professor was actually there in Jesus' day to suggest this one): The kingdom of heaven is like... As if he said, the purpose of this parable will be... Let anyone with ears listen...

We think we've got these parables all figured out, but the thing is, the moment we think that, we've probably completely missed the point both of what parables are and of what the kingdom of God is. So here we go. The purpose of the remainder of this sermon will be to show that the kingdom of God is like a parable...

Volumes have been written about the nature and purpose of parables as used by Jesus in his teaching. Preachers remind us, every time Jesus begins speaking this way, that most things we think parables are - metaphors, illustrations, allegories, explanations, riddles - they're not. Remember that the Greek word for parable means something like "to lay beside." In his parables, Jesus laid ordinary images and actions that his listeners would understand beside images and actions of God so extraordinary they couldn't even begin to imagine them. One of my favorite hooks for preaching on parables was written by theologian Walter Wink, who wrote, "Parables are tiny lumps of coal squeezed into diamonds...that catch the rays of something ultimate and glint it at our lives."

Very early in the life of the church, parables were interpreted as allegories. Each character or object or action in the parable stood for something else. For example, in the parable of the sower, the birds are the evil one, the rocky ground is a person with no depth of faith, the thorns are the cares of the world that choke new growth in the word... Many scholars, though, suspect that this interpretation, while placed by Matthew in the mouth of Jesus, actually belonged to the early church in Matthew's community. And it is by no means a bad interpretation - indeed, it is a careful and considered way to read the parable, consistent with other things Jesus said. Listen...be good soil, be receptive to the word of God planted in you, be a place where the kingdom of God can take root and grow and be fruitful...

The problem is, this sort of allegorical interpretation is really inconsistent with Jesus' use of parables in general. Jesus used parables to talk about God at work, not us at work, although there are implications or how we are to live in response to God. In the parable of the sower, as Jesus tells it, the main actor is the sower who scatters seed liberally and indiscriminately, apparently unconcerned about wasting good seed on supposedly bad soil...let anyone with ears listen... The allegorical interpretation, however, gives the lead role to the various soils, and suddenly it's all about us.

Listen! A sower went out to sow. Jesus chose the ordinary image of a farmer (probably many of the people listening that day were farmers) whose farming method was extraordinary. Most farmers took great care in sowing their precious supply of seed, sowing only in soil that they knew would support and nurture and yield a growing crop. A yield of four or five times the amount of seed sown was about average. A ten-fold yield was remarkable. But listen. This farmer, this foolish, careless, extravagant farmer, scatters seed anywhere and everywhere, and though it seems at first that birds and thorns and scorching heat will consume and destroy the crop,t he harvest turns out to be a hundred-fold at best, thirty-fold at worst. Extraordinary.

In much the same way, the kingdom of God is about God's work, not ours, although there are implications about how we are to live in response to God. In his life and work, Jesus scattered compassion liberally and indiscriminately, apparently unconcerned about wasting good salvation on supposedly bad people, making it abundantly clear that the gift of life and growth in the kingdom of God is free to anyone who desires it. Though it seemed at first that we would consume and destroy that gift on the hard wood of a cross, the harvest turned out to be...well, how much more than a hundred-fold was the yield of Easter morning?

A strictly allegorical interpretation of this parable, then, limits our access to the truth the parable reveals, the glint of something ultimate it reflects, the truth that nothing can, in the end, deter God's extravagant purpose for creation. Again, Walter Wink writes, "Parables participate in the reality which they communicate... They can never be exhausted; they always contain more than we can tell." Parables are more than a metaphor, more than an allegory. They reveal truth by inviting us to respond to and participate in God's work in more ways than our "this equals that" imaginations have considered.

We have been invited into this morning's parable as soil, as ground that may or may not be ready to receive and nurture the good news of God's extravagant and boundless love. But a parable has far more facets than just one. We are also invited in as seeds. On our faith journeys, have we ever felt like we landed on rocky or thorny ground, or felt withered up and dry? Have we every experienced a time of rich and vibrant growth, aware that our faith was being watered and fed abundantly?

We are invited, as we turn the parable yet again, to see ourselves as sowers. Do we scatter our witness of God's compassion with abandon, or, for fear of rejection or failure or loss or fear itself, do we reserve our witness for those in whom we know it will produce fruit? Do we nurture the wild, abundant growth of life in God's kingdom, or do we inhibit that growth in ourselves or others? How often are we not sowers or seeds or soil at all but rather birds or rocks or thorns or scorching heat?

Just as a parable reveals its truth when we allow ourselves to sink deeply into its soil, when we participate in its life and allow ourselves to grow in ways we had not expected, so is the kingdom of God revealed when we participate in its life. This morning's parable reveals to us that even a single seed sown in faith, a single moment of indiscriminate compassion, has the potential to grow abundantly.

What of the seeds that, for whatever reason, do not grow? What of the dangers, the setbacks, the obstacles, the stubborn, stony ground? Jesus tells us, and in his death and glorious resurrection he shows us, that God's purpose is not buried forever by these things. God's purpose is shown, and it will grow, as the prophet Isaiah describes, For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout...so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose.

The kingdom of God is like a parable; they are both like seeds that grow, and grow abundantly, even in the most extraordinary and unlikely of places. There are, after all, flowers in the desert, trees that cling to rocky cliffs, dandelions that grow in the cracks of a sidewalk. When we dare to scatter with abandon, so that the world calls us careless with out kindness; when we dare to sow with indiscriminate compassion, new life can begin to bloom anywhere and everywhere.

Let anyone with ears listen. A sower went out to sow... Amen.

Artwork: Unknown; "The Sower," by Vincent Van Gogh; "The Parable of the Sower," by Miki de Goodaboom; "Sower with Setting Sun," by Vincent Van Gogh; Unknown.

Homeward Bound

2011-07-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

We had a few souvenirs to bring home from South Carolina to Mississippi... yarn... "gemstones"... peaches... a bazillion pictures and memories... and a new friend. Meet Momma J.

Momma J was waiting for us in mom's guestroom. Mom wrote about her here. Momma J apparently heard a call to lead a new flock in Mississippi, so she's heading home with us.

She is already shepherding me through the start of my Kudzu Shawlette. I love this pattern, even though the cast on was a whopping 253 stitches. The yarn, Twilley's Freedom Gorgeous DK, is a little splitty, but that's generally not a problem. I can tell it will live up to it's name, giving this shawlette/scarf a gorgeous drape.

Welcome home, Momma J!

What I Did, Day Seven...

2011-07-04T20:43:00.000-07:00

The last day of summer vacation! The List was complete, and I think we even did a few things that were added to the list and crossed off after the fact. All that was left to do was enjoy being together, take last minute pictures, play last minute games, and top off a great week with Fourth of July fireworks.

In between rain showers we scooted outside to photograph a few finished objects... Here is the Chevron Scarf, blocked a few days ago. It's so light and airy and soft, but wrapped a time or two I think it will keep away fall's first chills. I found a pattern (and a lovely sample knit) for it here.

It was fun and so simple to knit, and I still have about a third of the skein of Malabrigo sock left.

And here are our Five-Hour Baby Sweaters. Mom's is pink (Caron Simply Soft) and mine is blue (Cascade Pacific). I altered the pattern a teensy bit to reduce the width of the cuffs and the hem along the bottom. Although we used needle sizes indicated by the yarn, mom's turned out larger than she expected and mine is much smaller...probably just the right size for a teddy bear or doll. Mom's has buttonholes; I plan to crochet a tie out of a contrasting yarn for mine when I get home. There are tons of versions of this sweater on Ravelry, with lots of ideas for trims and alterations.

I would definitely knit this pattern again, but instead of seaming the sleeves I would knit them in the round. I don't like the ridge the seam creates inside the sleeve. Still, it's an interesting pattern as written, allowing you to knit the entire sweater (and even do the seams) without breaking the yarn.

Oh say can you see how the colors of the sweaters are exactly the colors of the sunset as we waited for the 4th of July fireworks to begin!

Tomorrow we head home...but there's still plenty of summer left!

What I Did, Days Five and Six...

2011-07-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

The weekend of summer vacation included a few day trips, which were lots of fun in and of themselves, but even more fun for all the car-knitting-time they allowed! I finished the Five-Hour Baby Sweater and started the Kudzu Shawlette on the road. Pictures tomorrow, I promise!

On Day Five we drove down to Columbia, SC, to visit my brother and his family. The ten-year-old got to spend the afternoon with his cousins, all of whom share the same passion for Legos and Star Wars that my mom and I share for knitting.

On Day Six we drove up to Linville, NC, to see Linville Caverns, an active limestone cave (which means don't touch the walls, they're still forming). The tour guide was both brilliant and funny in a Blue Ridge Mountains sort of way, and gave us an excellent tour even though it was his first day on the job. When the tour was over, we all had to spray our shoes with bleach to keep from spreading some kind of disease that's killing bats, which keeps bats from killing mosquitos, and, well. You didn't have to tell us twice.

Back outside we stumbled upon butterflies bathing in creekwater flowing out from the cave. And of course, because it's my weakness, I had to take pictures of some flowers growing near the gift shop.

We drove toward Little Switzerland along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and had lunch at a little cafe just a few miles away from the Big Lynn Lodge, where mom and I go for her knitting guild retreat every September. That would be in exactly 72 days. This year, I'm taking a spinning workshop, taught by Terri from Day Two. Because I need another hobby to fill all my free time.

After lunch, we followed the signs to Emerald Village, where we mined for gems scooped out of the mountains and strategically loaded with lots of dirt and regular old rocks in plastic buckets for ~~suckers~~ tourists like us. It was hard to tell what some of the colorful stones were, but I think we did leave with at least a few emeralds and rubies, a lot of garnets and amethysts, and all sorts of other stones...citrine, sodalite, unakite, moon stone...

Finally we wound our way back down from the mountains, past peach orchards and pastures...ready for one last day of vacation!

What I Did, Day Four...

2011-07-01T12:22:00.000-07:00

Some summers we are nearly done with vacation before we get to the end of The List of everything we want to do. Other summers we get through most of The List early on and just turn lazy for a while. This is one of those vacations.

On Day Four we went back to Flat Rocks. This time we walked a trail on the side of the falls we don't know as well.

Oh, ice cream is definitely on The List. Chocolate for the grandson, chocolate raspberry for the grandmother, and birthday cake (complete with chunks of blue frosting and rainbow sprinkles) for the mom taking the picture.

Late in the afternoon we went to Hatcher Gardens. Once upon a time it was simply a wooded backyard full of gullies and streams and garbage. But the elderly couple living there saw its potential and began cleaning and digging and planting. One flower, one pond, one sapling at a time, and with the help of local garden clubs, the garden grew and quietly attracted visitors seeking sanctuary along its shaded trails. When the Hatchers died, Mr. Hatcher at the age of 96, the gardens were given to the city and are now a woodland preserve. Signs along the trails teach about the many things growing there, and benches along the way invite visitors to stay as long as they desire.

There was knitting between all the hiking and ice-cream eating...but mostly there was just being lazy!

What I Did, Day Three...

2011-06-30T19:44:00.000-07:00

Day Three of summer vacation dawned early...but hooray, we slept late! We didn't even tackle The List until after lunch, when we went to the movies to see Cars 2. Speed. I am speed...

Late that afternoon, the Malabrigo (yay!) chevron scarf finally had its bath...

...and was blocked.

It was interesting to see how the color went from a little more yellow-ish to a little more dark green-ish down the length of the scarf. It was knit out of one skein (well, two thirds of one skein) without any knots, so the gradation was just part of how the yarn was dyed I suppose. My favorite are the occasional flecks of bright periwinkle blue, no more than a few stitches long whenever it showed up in the skein...

The pattern was so simple.... Cast on...hmmm. Well. I don't seem to have written that down, but it looks from the pattern that you cast on a multiple of 15 plus 2...does that sound right, looking at row one below?

Row One - K1, *K2tog, K5, YO, K1, YO, K5, Slip 1, K1, psso; repeat from * to last stitch, K1
Row Two - Purl

At the beginning and end of the scarf, work 2 rows reverse stockinette. Bind off on right side (in knit). The ends will be a little different from each other, since they draw up according to the pattern, but probably only a knitter would notice...

I had a Day Two peach with every meal, and may have had an in-between meals peach as well. Summer vacation is a good thing.

What I Did, Day Two...

2011-06-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

Day Two of summer vacation had lots in common with Day One. We were still working on The List, which included an outing to another yarn store.

This is North Woods Farm, owned by mom's friend, Teri. If it has to do with making yarn available, Teri does it.

The alpaca, freshly shorn, greeted us as we arrived.

A fourth of the shop is where Teri processes fleeces.

I had never seen all that amazing equipment before, and have a new and deep respect for the amount of time and effort it takes to turn this...

Into this...

There may not be any kind of yarn that Teri doesn't carry. Well, except for the one kind I was looking for, Classic Elite Cotton Bam Boo, to make this. But Teri took time to show me lots of possible substitute yarns, and I finally settled on Twilleys' Freedom Gorgeous DK (75% bamboo, 25% nylon, 100% gorgeous indeed) in the Bamboo colorway (a neutral).

Mollie ~~distracted~~ entertained the ten-year-old, who to his credit was supremely patient with his second yarn shop visit in two days...until the visit dragged on past an hour or so...

North Woods Farm is in Inman, SC, which is right in the heart of peach country. Georgia may pride itself on its peaches, but South Carolina peaches are perfection, especially at this very time of year. They're beautiful and soft and sweet and so juicy you have to eat them over a sink.

Peaches were on The List. We stopped at a roadside stand to buy a basket, and were tempted by lots of other fruits and vegetables as well. The woman who sold us the peaches (and some fabulous zucchini) said she arranges the produce by color because she thinks it's so lovely that way.

By the end of the day, the Cascade Pacific from Day One was being turned into my first sweater big enough to be worn by an actual human being, if that human being is a very tiny infant...the Five-Hour Baby Sweater. It may have really only taken five hours, over the course of the next couple of days, if you don't count the holes under the arms I still haven't sewn up. Unfortunately I don't have any in-progress pictures.

I do have a picture of Sam, who lives at my mom's house (along with Belle). He hopes you'll tune in next for Day Three.

What I Did on Summer Vacation...

2011-06-28T17:42:00.000-07:00

Every summer we drive halfway around the world to South Carolina to visit my mom. It's really only three states away, but oh my goodness...Alabama. Is. So. Huge. And while this means we get the "Are we there yet?" question a billion times, it also means plenty of time for knitting!

But more about that in a moment.

One of the first things we do when we get to South Carolina is make The List of all the things we want to do while we're there. Certain things always make The List.

Flat Rocks, also called Glendale Shoals, is just a couple of miles from mom's house. Water from Lawson's Fork Creek (I preached about it once) falls over an old dam that once helped power a textile mill, and then rushes over exposed bedrock and smaller falls before becoming a humble creek again. Every summer, depending on how much rain has fallen, the falls look different. And we always meet new friends there, like blue herons, or crawfish, or tadpoles, or butterflies.

This year we met turtles. Lots of them.

We always find Treasures. Beautiful black and white granite pebbles, generous wisps of mica, feathers, twigs, memories...

Another outing that always makes The List is a trip to a local yarn store. Or two. This year we visited Robin's Bead Nest, a local bead store that also carries beautiful, beautiful, beautiful yarn.

They have every imaginable kind and color of both Cascade and Spud and Chloe.

They also have a cat, named Purl. Genius way to ~~distract~~ entertain ten-year-old boys while their moms and grandmothers shop for yarn. I bought two sky blue skeins of Cascade Pacific (40% superwash merino wool, 60% acrylic, 100% soft and squishy).

Also on The List is the Spartanburg County Public Library, where my mom works. We check out a few books to have on hand for rainy afternoons and late bedtimes.

Or whenever.

We also make plenty of times for games. Grandmother's houses have great old games around, like Battleship, and decks of playing cards, and Chinese Checkers.

I won the first game. The ten-year-old won all the rest.

Never on The List because it is simply A Given is knitting. I finished a simple chevron scarf I had been knitting out of some scrumptious Malabrigo Sock. There are no words to express how deeply I loved knitting with this yarn. The scarf is intended as a gift for a colleague who's moving to Virginia.

But first it needs to be blocked.

That will have to wait for Day Two of summer vacation.

Preach One: Proper 8A

2011-06-26T06:22:00.000-07:00

I had forgotten that the last Saturday in June is the Tomato Festival in Crystal Springs. "Peace, Love, Tomatoes" was this year's t-shirt! I came home from Holy Trinity with a box full of fresh tomatoes and two jars of homemade muscadine jelly.

At St. Matthew's in Forest that evening, the talk was all about fresh South Carolina peaches, which a couple had just brought back from a car trip. We had homemade peach ice cream after dinner (not with the fresh peaches, but still...yum!).

They brought my sermon to life, just by living as they always do...

Genesis 22:1-14; Psalm 13; Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:40-42

When it comes to hospitality, Miss Manners takes her cue from us. No one welcomes a guest like a Southerner, always ready with a cake or a glass of sweet tea or a really good story about way back when. Our front porches are wide like the branches of our magnolias, and our speech is slow and deliberate, every syllable savored. We love our graciousness as dearly as we love our grits.

Still, I needed a little help when it came time to welcome a guest of my own into our home. My mom was coming to visit, and I wanted to be hospitable. I found an old Martha Stewart magazine article about getting guest rooms ready. Martha may be from New Jersey, but she knows a good thing when she sees it, and I studied the pictures in the article carefully. I washed all the linens and fluffed the pillows. I stacked extra blankets and towels on a chair in the corner. I cleared the bedside table of everything except a few books I thought my mom might like, a new box of kleenex, and a clean glass for water at night. There was a space for her suitcase at the foot of the bed, empty hangers waited in the closet, and new lemon soap sat by the bathroom sink.

It was a lot more work than just making the bed and cleaning the bathroom, but I didn't mind - it made me happy to imagine ways to welcome my mom...my guest...ways to help her feel at home away from home. My mom was delighted when she arrived, and being a good Southerner, she both thanked me for my hospitality and at the same time declared, "Oh, you didn't have to do all this!"

Southerners didn't invent hospitality, of course. It is an ancient art. Some of the oldest stories of our faith are about hospitality, about welcoming guests and extending kindness even to strangers navigating the deserts of the Near East. Over and again, God urged our Hebrew ancestors to treat guests like family. The stranger living with you must be treated as one of your native-born, we read in Leviticus. Love the other as yourself, for once you were strangers in Egypt.

Even long before Torah commanded compassion for travelers and other vulnerable persons, Abraham welcomed three strangers to his tent in the heat of the day, offering them food and drink and shade. He did so not knowing that they would offer him the fulfillment of Gods promise that he and Sarah would have a child. Host and hostess, opening their arms to traveling strangers, became recipients of God's amazing grace.

Long after Abraham and Sarah set the standard for hospitality, such that even Martha Stewart would have been impressed, Jesus prepared his disciples to go out with God's promise that the kingdom of heaven was near. Proclaim the good news, heal the sick, raise the dead, he instructed them in verses at the start of the chapter we heard from today. Cleanse the lepers, cast out demons...bring God's amazing grace everywhere you go...

They would be vulnerable; the disciples would need food and drink and shade; they would be utterly dependent on the kindnesses extended to them as strangers in guest rooms and households and communities not their own. And while Jesus warned them that some people would not receive them with open arms but rather closed fists, he still expected his disciples to keep proclaiming all that they had come to know about God's kingdom. It was the gracious thing to do.

And finally, Jesus said to them, Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet, a righteous person, even one of these little ones in the name of a disciple... In the three verses of today's gospel reading, the word welcome appears no less than six times, so that perhaps the disciples were heartened after hearing Jesus speak of the hospitality they might not be shown.

Still, the hospitality that Jesus considered sufficient must have seemed meager. Whoever gives even a cup of cold water will receive their reward. It's hardly a stack of fresh towels or clean sheets or a dish of fancy soaps. Here in the South, though, we know, especially this blistering hot summer, just how extravagant a cup of cold water can be, how beyond merely refreshing it is, how it is life-giving, liquid grace. In fact, acknowledging the significance of a cup of cold water, the Camp Bratton-Green t-shirt a few summers ago feathered a picture of the ice machine, the hum of whose motor in the heat of the day is the most hospitable sound I know. Perhaps it would have been so in the deserts of the ancient Near East as well.

When it comes to hospitality, even Southerners have nothing on Jesus, the incarnate compassion and grace of God. He did not simply offer the fulfillment of God's promise of life renewed and restored - he himself was that fulfillment. He turned water into wine. He fed thousands at a time. He tended wounds. He sat at bedsides. He comforted weariness. He invited strangers to follow. He welcomed outcasts and sinners and all manner of guests who had been turned away at every other door, opening his arms that they might be recipients of God's grace, too. Where Jesus was host, there was no stranger, no other.

"Oh, Jesus, you don't have to do all that," many would say, although without the grace and good manners of my mother. "In fact, stop it. Don't even bother," they would say, refusing to be welcomed, refusing to welcome him. I have everything I need. I can take care of myself. Receiving hospitality can reveal our vulnerability, our dependence, our grief, our sorrow, our hurt, our sadness...whatever it is that makes us hunger, thirst, or long for shade. If we admit our need, we admit our weakness.

But it is God's nature to be hospitable, no matter how we resist. God provides, Abraham learned when atop Moriah God's grace proved more powerful even than Abraham's obedience. God provides, the disciples and all who have since welcomed Jesus learned when atop the cross God's grace proved even more powerful than our sin, even than darkness, even than death. God provides, we learn, if we are willing to open our arms and be provided for, when we welcome the hospitality of another and find that in doing so we have been recipients not just of a casserole or a cup of cold water but of God's amazing grace.

Or do we, like the disciples before us, need a reminder of how it is out there in the world, where we, too, are sent to proclaim the good news of God's kingdom? Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, Jesus said. Wherever we go, whomever we encounter, however wide we open our arms, whatever gestures of kindness we make, large or small, whenever we gratefully accept the kindness of another, Jesus is with us. Remember, I am with you always, even to the end of the age, he promised us in last week's gospel. So it is that, as people received into the household of God, welcomed into Christ's body, marked as Christ's own forever, we bring Jesus with us, we offer Jesus to others, simply by bringing and offering ourselves.

"Every guest is Christ," mused Saint Brigid of Kildare, fifth century founder of monasteries in Ireland, known for the hospitality especially toward pilgrims and other wandering strangers. Joan Gale Thomas, twentieth century author of children's books, wondered what it would be like to receive Christ as guest in a book I would place on any guest's bedside table. "If Jesus came to my house," muses Thomas, writing in a child's voice. "If Jesus came to my house and knocked upon the door, I'm sure I'd be more happy than I've ever been before... I'd run downstairs to meet him, the door I'd open wide, and I would say to Jesus, 'Oh, won't you come inside?'" The story goes on to describe all the marvelous things Jesus and his host would do together during that visit...have tea, play with toys, pick apples, explore the hallways of the house (especially the ones that are scary at night...with Jesus the host can be brave). The child's imagined hospitality toward his guest is generous and joyful.

Every guest is Christ. So is every host, for Christ is both. So do we all bear Christ within us, revealed in acts of hospitality, of welcoming the other, of receiving welcome, and discovering not a stranger but a fellow traveler in God's kingdom, in need, as we all are, of food and water and shade. In need, as we all are, of healing and forgiveness and salvation. In need, as we all are, of love and mercy and grace. Hospitality is an ancient art, but ever since God in Christ came to our house, it is an art we are invited to practice not out of obligation but, rather, gratitude. How will we extend the welcome that we have received? How wide will we open our doors? How vulnerable will we make ourselves both in giving and in receiving? How will we see Christ even in those we only know...yet...as stranger?

"I know the little Jesus can never call on me in the way that I've imagined, like coming in to tea," Thomas writes. "But I can go to His house and kneel and say a prayer, and I can sing and worship Him and talk with Him in there. And though He may not occupy my cozy rocking chair, a lot of other people would be happy sitting there. And I can make Him welcome as He himself has said, by doing all I would for Him for other folk instead."

The question, then, is not what would Jesus do but rather what will I do because of all that Jesus has done for me? Because of amazing grace? Some days it will be all we can do to offer a cup of cold water to another, but in doing so, we will have shared Christ. Some days it will be all we can do to receive a cup of cold water from another, but in doing so, we will have received Christ. Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. When Jesus comes to our house, as friend, as guest, as host, as vulnerable, as wounded, as generous, as compassionate, may we have the grace to say with gratitude, "Welcome home." Amen.

Artwork: (paintings only) "Glass of Water," by Kellie Marian Hill; Unknown; "Glass of Water II," by Jorg Zenker; "Water Glass," by Laurel Daniel.

David's Blanket

2011-06-24T06:02:00.000-07:00

(Formerly known as baby blanket number one)

David Henry was born nearly a month ago, our son's best friend's new baby brother. His blanket went through several pattern changes along the way, but I finally settled on Mirbeau, by Brenda Lewis.

It's a slip stitch pattern that looks impressive but is really so easy! For me, the hardest part was carrying the colors up the side. I really, really, really don't like weaving in ends. That side looked so messy I decided to crochet a little border all the way around to hide the edges.

The yarn is Caron's Simply Soft. I wanted the blanket to be easy to wash and dry - this is the third little boy in that house! When I washed the finished blanket, it came out of the dryer even softer than when it went in. Our littlest boy approves.

Welcome to the world, David!

Preach One: Take My Yoke...

2011-06-02T15:50:00.000-07:00

Saturday Evening at KKQ 2011, Evening Prayer
Psalm 46, Matthew 11:28-30

We learned lots of important things in seminary. Things like atonement theory and Eucharistic theology and biblical criticism. Things like centering prayer and Reformation history and ecclesiology. Things like do whatever the altar guild and the secretary tell you to do.

Indeed, the secretary at the first church I worked in after I was ordained was a wise and gracious woman. Her first words to me when I stepped into the office were, "As long as you're not perfect, we'll get along just fine." It was a standard I had no trouble meeting, although the lesson has always been a difficult one for me to learn.

Another important thing I learned in seminary was how to knit. I had no idea at that time how significant it was that my local yarn shop was Purl Soho, but there I was, purchasing a pair of wooden needles and a skein of colorful wool (it was Noro Kureyon, but again I had no idea how significant it was...the colors just made me giggle). Through the loop, wrap, bring the needle back, pull the loop off...I repeated the instructions over and over again as I knit my first...strip of knitted fabric.

Of course all this means that in seminary I also learned how to make mistakes. I added stitches. I dropped them. There were holes, and not the on-purpose kind. The knitting mistakes came quite naturally, actually, and quite frequently. I still make plenty of knitting mistakes; so many, in fact, that for Christmas a few years ago my then seven-year-old son gave me a book titled How to Fix Knitting Mistakes. Apparently he had heard one too many uh-oh's, and perhaps saw that time the knitting fly across the room.

Thanks to the book, my mom, and other patient knitters, my still-frequent uh-oh's are more likely to be followed by a fix (instead of flying yarn). Some mistakes require you to go back one stitch at a time. Sometimes you have to frog the whole thing. Sometimes the knitting (and, perhaps, you) just needs a time-out. Sometimes, and this is the hardest fix of all, you just have to embrace your ~~mistake~~ creative design element and keep knitting.

I've heard a few "uh-oh's" today. A few "ummm's... " A few sighs. A few words anxiously spoken to an instructor, "I tried to fix it, but I think I made it worse..." I've seen stitches picked up and seams ripped out. I've seen fabrics and threads rearranged and then rearranged again.

Never once, though, have a seen a knitter or quilter here alone in their efforts to heal, restore, renew, redeem, or fix. At every turn, at every mistake, we have been surrounded by the wisdom, comfort, and encouragement of other crafters who have made the very same mistake we just did. Apparently, not one of us is perfect, and so we get along just fine.

Again, then, our knitting and quilting is a metaphor for our lives. Mistakes, problems, and challenges are natural as we go about stitching one day to the next. We struggle, we get frustrated, we expect perfection, and we push ourselves. The patterns of life are sometimes tedious, sometimes difficult to read, sometimes demanding skills we have not yet learned.

Never once, though, are we ever alone. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, Jesus says to us. He is not just beside us - we are yoked to him, so that he shares our burdens and lends us his strength. You will find rest for your souls, he tells us. You do not need to be perfect. Be who you are. I will help you, and I will make you holy, hole-y-ness, dropped stitches, crooked seams and all.

Where are there hole-y places in your work and in your life? Where are there holy places? Where are there spaces created by accident, and where are there things dropped or added with intention? How does God bless those spaces?

Preach One: This is My Beloved...

2011-06-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

Saturday Morning at KKQ 2011, Holy Eucharist
Psalm 143:1-10, Matthew 3:13-17

When I was a high school senior trying to narrow down my college choices, I had several non-negotiable criteria. A pretty campus. Engaging people and classes. No math.

Emory University met my needs perfectly. It is indeed a beautiful campus, with lots of green spaces and white granite architecture and the most brilliant tulip beds I've ever seen. I still treasure the friends I made there, and value the education I received. And I never had to take math.

At Emory, at that time anyway, math and foreign languages were in the same category of core requirements, so that you could choose one over the other if you wished. Three semesters of Spanish later, I met the requirement.

It turns out, though, that most everything I do in life involves a lot of math, and only un poco Espanol. Priests have to do much more math than they tell you about in seminary - counting out communion wafers so that there's enough for everyone, but remembering that each wafer breaks into four pieces, and some people won't take communion, but some people will get their babies from the nursery...

Moms have to do more math than I realized, too. I don't mean balancing checkbooks or counting coupons. I mean math homework that your children really do differently than you ever learned how, so that all of a sudden your fourth grader knows more about percentages and probability than you do.

Knitters have to count stitches, consider multiples, and tally repeats. Quilters have to measure and assemble geometric shapes. Fabric and yarn are sold by yardage or weight, and you'd better count it right, or you are as likely to run out before the last row as I am to run out of communion wafers before the last pew.

Then again, if math is such an integral part of life, maybe I've been approaching it all wrong. Perhaps math is not so much difficult as it is mysterious, a thing filled with wonder. After all, math has a language and a poetry all its own. It is full of patterns and rhythms and predictability, but it is also full of ideas and concepts that defy description, that surprise, that spark imagination. Or what else are irrational numbers, inifinity, and pi, "that vague pipe dream that we've chased to 51 billion places and still don't know exactly" in the words of poet Michael Gillebeau.

Math's mysteries and patterns are part of us, at the core of who we are as people and as people of faith. They are part of how we are marvelously made, and part of One in whose image we are made. Or what else is the Trinity, three-in-one and one-in-three? In the great mystery of how we are made and re-made, we in all our great diversity and variety become one body together in Christ, irretrievably bound together with him in baptism when we are marked as Christ's own forever and called to take up the pattern of his life.

Much of that pattern is quite visible to us, quite clear as we look at the way in which Jesus lived. Seek. Serve. Persevere. Proclaim. Strive. Love. Care. Embrace. Give. Other parts of the pattern are more mysterious, difficult to grasp with our human minds and hearts. Love as Christ loved? Can we? And so we say at our baptisms, "I will, with God's help."

That's all God asks. So it is in this season after Epiphany, as we recall Jesus' own baptism and the words God spoke on that day, we humbly hear the same words echoing in our own lives, for we are the body of Christ. This is my child, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.

Preach One: Be Still and Know...

2011-05-31T08:41:00.000-07:00

Friday Evening at KKQ 2011, Evening Prayer
Psalm 139:10-17, Isaiah 30:15

"This is NOT a conference. It is a RETREAT," Varian told us last night as we gathered, winter weather weary, in the Fireplace Lounge for our first event of the Kanuga Knitting and Quilting ~~Conference~~ Retreat. "Take your time," our instructors have said. "It's okay," they tell us, even as we frog a row of stitches or rip out a backwards seam. "Just enjoy..."

Indeed, how often do we get to sit all day by a crackling fire with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, in the company of such fine friends? How often do we get to spend the whole day arranging wonky circles or knitting (and re-knitting) swirls? How often do we get to stop and really notice what we're doing, rather than rushing to get it done? How often do we get to stop and notice what others are doing, listen to stories, be attentive to laughter, watch shadows move across snow?

Too often our attention is turned in at least a thousand other directions, usually all at once. Letters to respond to, emails to send, bills to pay, errands to run, meals to cook, plans to make, phone calls to return...and all this in the midst of working, parenting, volunteering, traveling, cleaning...

How often do we get to be still and know? We are here, blessedly, on retreat. We are here to notice. To be attentive to the patterns we see. Where are there threads and textures and colors in our work? In our midst? Where is there light? Where is there dark? Where is there busy-ness? Where is there spaciousness? Where are there stories?

Our stories, our lives, and our loves are linked together in the sacred time and space of this weekend. We are here to learn together, and not just from the remarkable instructors in our midst. Be still and know, God says, know that I am God...don't we need to learn this, too?

This is not a conference, it is a retreat. Even as we are attentive to the works in our hands, let us not forget to take time also to be still, to retreat into the patterns of our own hearts and spirits and be attentive to what is there. Where are there threads and textures and colors deep within us? Where is there light within our hearts? Where is there dark? Where is there busy-ness? Where is there spaciousness? Where are there stories? Where is God?

In Made for Goodness (And Why This Makes All the Difference), a book he co-authored with his daughter, Mpho, Archbishop Desmond Tutu imagines that if we were still, if we listened God speaking in our hearts, we might hear God say:

My child, I made you for myself...I delight in you...
My heart aches...when you smother joy under the onslaught of busyness...

You run everywhere looking for life,
Searching for the life of life.
All the while I am here.
I am as close as a prayer.
I am breathing in your breath...

Preach One: In the Beginning...

2011-05-30T08:26:00.000-07:00

We were just a few days into the season after the Epiphany when we gathered at Kanuga for KKQ 2011. There were indeed many epiphanies in store for all of us as we learned new techniques, saw patterns and shapes emerge, told stories as we worked, and made dear new friends. Every morning we held a brief and quiet service of Holy Eucharist; in the evenings, we held Evening Prayer. My joy and delight as chaplain was to weave our prayers and practice together in short homilies, humbly offered.

Friday Morning, Holy Eucharist
Psalm 139:1-9; John 1:1-16

In the beginning...

In the beginning, this is all we have...yarn, needles, fabric, scissors...and somehow they become in time a beautiful creation. We heard a podcast on the way up here in which Melynda Bernardi, designer of the French Press Slippers, was marveling over this miracle. It starts with a single line, she said, a strand of yarn working its way toward and through your needles. Even then all you have is a piece of flat fabric. A few more stitches, a trip through the washer, and suddenly all the empty spaces are linked together and that flat line becomes three dimensional, warm, soft, and delightful - a pair of felted slippers.

In their book The Knitting Way: A Guide to Spiritual Self-Discovery, Linda Skolnik and Janice MacDaniels put it this way: "Loops, bumps, color, smoothness, and roughness are all formed from one line, joined together as the construction material for countless objects of beauty and utility."

In the beginning...the possibilities are endless. How did it happen for God, in the beginning? Did God start with a pattern? A plan? Or as American poet James Wheldon Johnson imagines, did God create according to whim and whimsy and the deep wishes of God's heart?

In Johnson's poem, God steps out on space and says, "I'm lonely. I'll make me a world." God flings the sun and moon into place and spangles the heavens with stars. Where God steps, valleys sink in and mountains rise up. God bats his eyes to make lightning and the cooling rains that fall. God curls rainbows about his shoulders. "I'm still lonely," God says. And kneeling by a stream, "like a mammy kneeling over her baby," God scoops up mud and breathes over it and makes...us.

We will all be creating today - it is one of the graces upon grace that God has given us, to be creators of things, imaginers of beauty, capable of whim and whimsy and deep wishes for things to be. Some of what we create will be according to the patterns put before us. Indeed, the patterns are sometimes our lifelines in the beginning. But some of what we create will be as free and poetic as God flinging stars and batting eyelashes. In addition to creating knitted and quilted things we will be creating friendships. We will be creating community, according to our deep wish and true joy in making connections.

We will be weaving threads and colors and textures. We will be creating spaces and we will be linking those spaces together. We will be weaving stories and laughter and learning. In the beginning all we have is this...yarn, needles, fabric, scissors, and one another...but in the beginning there are countless options and opportunities and a beautiful common thread, how we are joined to and with God in the act of creation.

What will you create today? What is God creating in and through and all around you in the beginning?

Let us pray. Holy God, In the beginning, on the very first morning, you said "Let there be light," and there was light, and you saw that the light was good. So fill us with your light this day that we might see your creating Spirit still at work around us, through us, and within us; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who was in the beginning with you, the light of the world. Amen.

Remember when it was cold?

2011-05-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

Just a few weeks ago I added a blanket to the bed on a chilly night... Today, and for the forseeable future, the high temperature is more than twice what the temperature was that night. We'll be in the mid- to upper- 90's and more from here on out...

So pour a glass of sweet iced tea or pull out a popsicle, sit back, and cool off with a long overdue blog post about snow and ice and yarn...

It all started last summer, when my phone rang while I was on vacation. The only place I could get reception was out in the steamy southern sun, and so there I sat, listening as Varian Brandon described a knitting and quilting retreat held every January at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC. She needed a chaplain for the event, and as the thought of holding either wool or piles of fabric in my lap made the summer sweat fall even faster, I couldn't wait for winter!

The first part of January of saw more snow fall in the South than we usually get in a dozen winters. Schools closed, roads closed, and airports closed, but Kanuga was blessedly and blissfully open, ready to welcome nearly 80 knitters and quilters for the retreat. A friend from Mississippi was one of the instructors, so we loaded up her car with suitcases and yarn and headed east.

By the time we got to Atlanta, the icy interstate was down to one lane in each direction. Things were better nearer the mountains, where they know a little more about salt and sand and scraping, but still we risked life and limb to visit The Needle Tree in Greenville, SC. The steep driveway was sheer ice, but inside, the shop was cozy and bright and warm. And when you buy yarn from them (which we happily did) they tuck it in fabric bag complete with pockets on the side for needles and notions.

The retreat was amazing. The knitting instructors were masters at their craft, teaching such advanced techniques as intarsia, fair isle, mosaic knitting, and lace. My mom took a class on knitting the swirl shawl from an instructor as patient and kind as she is brilliant (mom just finished the shawl last week, and it is stunning!). I floated from class to class, getting to know participants and picking up bits and pieces of techniques, but mostly marveling at the skill and perseverance and good humor of everyone there.

The quilters were equally talented and even more dedicated, spending nearly every waking hour in the room set aside for their class. They loved visitors, and I loved visiting, learning as much about colors and shapes as I did about some of the steps involved in making a quilt. Many of the quilters finished an entire quilt top in the two and a half days we were there.

My role as chaplain was to offer worship services every morning and evening. We met in a lovely space with a fireplace in the back and great glass windows behind the altar, revealing the myriad ways sun illuminates snow as the day wears on. For the next few days, I'll post the little homilies I preached while I was there...

It's in the mid-90's today, and only getting hotter... Thank goodness the Kanuga Knitters and Quilters Retreat is only eight months away!

All God's Critters Got a Hat

2011-05-01T20:14:00.000-07:00

The song actually goes, "All God's critters got a place in the choir, some sing lower, some sing higher..." and the children's choir at St. Andrew's sang it this morning as part of the annual Youth Sunday service. And of course it was adorable as they sang and clapped their hands and shook their paws and flapped their wings. All these critters - well, children, but is there really that big a difference? - also had a hat.

The choir director enlisted the help of various knitters and crocheters to create a zoo's worth of animal hats for the children to wear. Most were crocheted, and were absolutely precious!

My son got to be a lion. There was a tiger, too. And a bunny, a dog, a cat, a chick, a duck, a horse, a reindeer, a ladybug...all God's critters were there!

I tried to crochet a cat hat, and while I know the very, very basics of crochet, I quickly realized I didn't know enough to make a hat. I chained and joined and crocheted the first round, but after that I kept losing my place in the stitches. It was fun to try, though, and I'd love to get better at crochet.

I ended up knitting two hats - a cat and a polar bear. The knit patterns came from The Hat Menagerie on Etsy, which included patterns for a lion, a bear, and a frog. I'm not sure where the crochet patterns came from.

These were my first hats to be seen in public (the only other one I've done hasn't been outside my front yard). They were fun and quick, and a great stash buster!

Elijah's Blanket

2011-04-30T18:24:00.000-07:00

(Formerly known as Baby Blanket Number Two)

Elijah David Bunting is six weeks old now - how time has flown! In every picture I've seen of my newest nephew, he is either smiling, sleeping, or rockin' and rollin' (that would be his dad's influence!). Perhaps I am biased, but I think sweet Elijah is adorable and brilliant (that would be his mom's influence!).

I love my step brother and his wife, and wanted to make something special for their first child. By the time I had chosen the pattern (the Cotton Ease Baby Blanket) and the yarn (Spud and Chloe Sweater), I knew I probably wouldn't finish in time for Elijah's big day, and indeed I have only just woven in the last end.

As always, I learned a thing or two knitting this project. I learned how to pick up stitches for a no-seam blanket - if I had to seam sixty-four mitered squares Elijah might not have gotten his blanket until he graduated from high school!

I also learned how to do an i-cord edging, which I absolutely love. Kelly Petkun of KnitPicks helped with her video tutorials. I do wish the edging didn't roll in quite as much as it does, and wonder if knitting it more loosely would have helped. I think I'll try it again on baby blanket number one.

Apparently stockinette mitered squares aren't really squares - they turn out to be some kind of rhombus-y thing. That means they don't lay perfectly flat when they're knit together. But washing and drying the blanket seemed to help with that.

Welcome to the world, Elijah!

Preach One: Easter A

2011-04-25T19:49:00.000-07:00

Five times I arrived at the tomb to learn that Jesus was not there... Twice on Sunday (in Crystal Springs and in Forest), twice on Monday (for Middle and Upper School Chapel - this is the version of the homily I'm sharing below, and if you read it, remember that there I preach to a congregation that is 15% non-Christian) and once on Friday (for Lower School Chapel). Jesus and I are both a little weary. But alleluia, he is risen!

Jeremiah 31:1-6; Psalm 118; Matthew 28:1-10

It's all about the bunnies at our house. Not just at Easter, but all year long. It started at Easter, though, when our son was four of five years old, and we were playing the "I Love You More" game, which went something like this.

I love you... I love you, too... I love you more... I love you more... I love you more than...and here is where it got interesting. We would each pick something we really liked, or had lots of, or something clearly huge, something too many to count, and compare our love to that. I love you more than macaroni and cheese. I love you more than the universe.

The game took a turn for us that Easter, when our son looked around his room for something to love us more than, and declared as he reached for the pile of stuffed rabbits on his bed, "I love you more than bunnies." It's still, to this day, the only way to win that game in our family, topped only by "I love you more than a million gazillion bunnies, "or "I love you more than all the bunnies that ever lived," or the insurmountable, "I love you more than infinity bunnies." That's a lot of bunnies. That's a lot of love.

I have loved you with an everlasting love, we just heard God declare through the prophet Jeremiah at a very dark time for God's people, when they would soon be defeated in battle and carried into exile. Their whole world would come crashing down around them, but again I will build you, God promised. Again you will dance. I love you more.

I have set you an example; love one another, we heard Jesus declare to his disciples just last week, as he knelt to wash their feet. It was a dark time for Jesus, when he would soon be betrayed by one friend, denied by another, and abandoned by all the rest. Their whole world would come crashing down around them when Jesus was defeated and carried into the stone-cold exile of a tomb, but your sorrow will turn to joy, Jesus promised. I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. I love you more.

Jesus' friends would tell that story over and over again after the resurrection. There were so many stories they could tell about all that they had seen and heard in his presence. Stories about healing; stories about welcome; stories about justice and mercy and hope and invitation and forgiveness. Stories about suffering and death...and seeing him again. Stories about love.

In time, some of their stories would be written down and become what we now regard as holy scripture. Some of those stories are quite long. The gospel of John spends an entire chapter - forty-one verses - on one man born blind. The full story of Jesus' birth takes nearly three chapters in Luke's gospel. The gospel of Mark, shortest overall, still spends almost two chapters telling of Jesus' passion and death.

Other stories in scripture are startlingly brief, perhaps none more so than the story we hear today. There are twenty-eight chapters in Matthew's gospel. The resurrection is told in fewer than ten verses. But then, what is there to tell? There were no witnesses in that stone-cold darkness, no one to tell just how or when everything turned from death to life. The gospels only say that when his friends arrived on the morning of the third day, the tomb was empty and Jesus was not there. He has been raised, and you will see him, an angel says, and with that, the story ends. Or begins...it depends on what you believe, how you tell it.

We see crucifixion, or something like it, every day. We see betrayal, denial, abandonment, defeat, death. We see it in the world around us, when children are denied access to education or health care, when citizens are at the mercy of ruthless governments. We see it in poverty, racism, violence, intolerance and injustice. We experience it in grief and pain and fear and hatred and loneliness. The world comes crashing down around us. It is a dark time all the time, it seems.

But that is, for Christians, precisely where the whole story begins, in the darkness, in the void, in the place where there is no life. Just as God, for love, once said, "Let there be light," and there was light, so in that tomb did God, for love, say, "Let there be life," and there was life. The whole account of God and God's people, the experience of women and men like you and me, has been that God creates. God saves. God loves. God lives. This is the story Jesus told, not only with his lips but in his life and in his death.

And in his resurrection. While no witnesses can tell us just what happened in that dark exile, we believe that somewhere between Good Friday and Easter's dawn, the game was finally won as God said to the world once and for all, No. I love you more. I love you with an everlasting love. I love you more than bunnies. My love is bigger than your sins, your shortcomings. My love is bigger than you doubt, your disappointments. My love is bigger than your faithlessness and fear. My love shines in your darkness. My love is stronger than death. I love you to infinity. That's a lot of love.

In the end, at the beginning, somewhere in the story of God's love for us, we come to realize, as perhaps the gospel writers did, that words can never fully convey just how much God loves us. Love like that can't be counted. It can't be described. It can't even be imagined. It can only be experienced. No one stays at the empty tomb; in all the stories they go out into the world, plunge back into their lives, and that is where they encounter miracles of life and love. That is where they see Jesus Christ.

We see resurrection, or something like it, every day, not just once a year surrounded by lilies and bunnies and alleluias. We see it in schools built in impossible places. We see it in language barriers transcended by kindness. We see it in cans collected, bricks laid, games played, meals served, medicines given, friends made. We experience it in the invitation to question, the challenge to serve, the call to live with honor and integrity. Whatever our faith, whatever our belief, what account can we give of life and love?

I leave you with an account given in the 14th century by Julian of Norwich, who longed, as she wrote, to comprehend the endless love that was without beginning, is, and ever shall be. In this, Julian marveled, our good Lord said most blissfully, "See how I loved you!" It was as if he had said, "My darling, behold and see your Lord, your God, who is your maker and your endless joy! See what delight and endless bliss I have in your salvation! For my love, enjoy it now with me." Amen. Alleluia!

Artwork: "Summer Fields Little Rabbit," by Claire Wright; "Footwashing," by Father Bob Gilroy; "Good Friday," by Tim Norwood; "The Beginning of God's Creation," by Mark Lawrence; "God's Love," by Lee Ribal; "Easter 2006," by Eugenie.

Preach One: Earth Day/Faithfulness

2011-04-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

From time to time I am asked if I can weave school events into my Lower School homilies on Friday mornings. We've been studying the fruits of the Spirit all year - a different fruit each month. In February, I was preparing my first homily on love, when I was asked if I could weave in something about our support of the MS Gulf Coast wetlands...by the time Friday rolled around, I had also woven in our observance of "Power Down Day."

So here we have faithfulness...and Earth Day (which is on Good Friday this year, so we had to do it a little early). I have notes with me when I do these homilies, but try to refer to them as little as possible. The result this time was that I nailed all the Earth Day stuff, but completely forgot to even use the word faithfulness!

[Next week it's Palm Sunday (on Friday)...with threads of an arts festival fundraiser and the 3rd/4th grade writing awards thrown in. Hosanna, Lord, save us!]

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them to you, and write them on your heart. Proverbs 3:3

Do not run at the swimming pool.
Keep your socks on in the McDonald's play area.
Keep your arms and legs inside the roller coast ride at all times.
Raise your hand when you want to speak.
Eat all your vegetables before you have dessert.

There sure lots of rules, aren't there? Rules at home, rules at school, rules at the swimming pool... There are even rules at Disney World! You must be 44 inches tall to go on Space Mountain...

A lot of the time, we complain about rules - it seems like rules make things less fun. But our moms and dads and teachers help us understand that rules really make things more fun, because they keep us safe and healthy and happy. If you run at the swimming pool, you could slip on the wet pavement and break your leg, and then there would be no more swimming for the rest of the summer. Not much fun.

If you and everyone else in your class talked without raising your hands, there would be so much noise that no one would be able to hear the wonderful things you were saying. Not very happy.

Did you know that there are hundreds of rules in the Bible, too? I'm sure you know about the ten commandments - love God, do not steal, honor your mother and father - but there are lots more rules that God has given us to help us be safe and healthy and happy. God asks us to be faithful, to always stay close to God by following God's rules even when we don't really feel like it, even when following the rules is hard.

One of the very first rules God gave us is this: Take care of the earth. In the very beginning, when God made the world, God scooped up some of the brand new earth and breathed into it and made people to look after all the plants and trees and birds and fish and animals and flowers and bugs. Take care of this world, God said.

Here at St. Andrew's, we do a pretty good job of following that rule (and all our other rules, too!). We learn all about the world God made in our science classes, where we even get to grow plants from seeds and take care of classroom pets. In our classrooms we recycle our paper. Middle and Upper School students also recycle plastic water bottles and soda cans.

Sometimes following God's first rule is hard, or takes a little extra effort when we really don't feel like it. We have to pick up all the trash on the playground instead of just playing all the time. We have to remember to recycle when it would be easier just to toss paper or cans in the garbage. We have to scoop up bugs in a cup and carry them outside instead of just squishing them and moving on. But if we didn't take care of the earth, our land and our oceans and our skies might get sick. Not much fun.

Earth Day is coming up soon. People all over the world will remember how important it is to follow God's first rule - take care of this place. God loves the world and everything in it, and God loves us.

So let's be faithful to God. The rules aren't so bad after all - they keep us and our earth safe and healthy and happy. Let's take care of this world, and love it just as much as God loves us! Amen.

Preach One: Lent 3A

2011-03-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

Preached this morning at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Crystal Springs, MS.

Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 95; Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42.

When I was little, we spent summers at my grandparents' house in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The road to their house climbed up and down rolling hills, wound through wooded neighborhoods, and crossed a creek. That creek was our favorite part of the car ride, because as we drove over the little bridge, we would look out at the slow muddy water, wrinkle our noses in delighted disgust, and saw "Ewww! Yuck!" For all I knew, that was the creek's name - the Ewwyuck River.

Many years later, I would learn that the Ewwyuck is actually named Lawson's Fork Creek. Who Lawson was has long been forgotten, but the creek is indeed a fork of the Pacolet River, which flows nearby. A little downstream from the bridge to my grandparents' house, the water slides over an old mill dam and tumbles across exposed bedrock, splashing and churning and swirling as it falls down the shoals, no longer muddy water but white water, no longer stagnant but living.

Bodies of water often bear the name of the first person who stood upon the banks or the shoreline, or the person through whose property it flowed, or a person of some significance of status or station. A body of water might be named for its qualities, like the Ewwyuck. Perhaps Crystal Springs got its name this way, and Calling Panther Lake. Ferdinand Magellan, the great explorer, saw ahead of him a vast expanse of peaceful blue ocean, and named it Pacific. The Chippewa Indians, awed by the size of the slow-moving water that boundaried their land, named it Mississippi, or "Big River." The people who settled Louisiana, itself named for King Louis XIV, called their great lake Ponchartrain in honor of the king's minister of finance.

The Hebrew people encountered one body of water after another in their escape from oppression in Egypt. The Nile River received its name from the Greek word for "valley," but ancient Egyptians called it Ar, meaning "black," for the black sediment the river's frequent floods left on the land. Their own mighty and muddy Ewwyuck, wild and beautiful and living water. In the first of the plagues with which God struck the Egyptians on behalf of the enslaved Hebrew people, the waters of the Nile turned to blood, making it undrinkable.

Nine plagues later and finally free, the Hebrew people fled into the desert. They were stopped at the shore of the Red Sea, the origin of whose name is widely disputed among scholars but may come from the color of the desert sand or the color of the seasonal bacterial blooms that fill the water. With the Egyptian army closing in behind them, the Hebrew people were certain they would either drown or be slaughtered. Moses prayed to God, who parted the waters of the sea so that they could pass safely through. How wild and beautiful and living the towering waves must have appeared as the people made their way across the sea floor.

On the other side of the sea, though, out in the wilderness, bodies of water became farther and fewer between, until finally Moses and the whole congregation of Israelites, on their journey toward the promised land, came to a place where there was no water at all. Perhaps it was about noon when, in the heat of the day, their feet blistering and their skin burning and their tongues thick with desert dust, the Israelites began to notice that they were thirsty. They were tired and uncomfortable and cranky and afraid. They were beginning to lose hope that they would ever see the end of this journey, and they complained to Moses, who in turn complained to God, They think that you don't care, and they are ready to stone me!

But the wilderness, although dry and barren, was far from God-forsaken. I am with you, God would remind the Hebrew people over and over again. Strike the rock where I will be standing, God said to Moses, and water will come out of it. And so with the staff that had made the waters of the Nile turn sour and the waters of the Red Sea recede, Moses struck the rock, and sweet water gushed out, and the people drank.

When it came time to name the place, Moses might have chosen names that described the gift of the water, or even the water itself. Relief. Sweetness. Our-Thirst-Is-Quenched. God-Is-With-Us. Instead, though, Moses chose names that described the people who had been thirsty, calling the place Massah and Meribah, meaning "Quarreling" and "Testing," reflecting not faith but doubt, Is-God-With-Us-Or-Not.

It was noon when, in the heat of the day, his feet blistering and his skin burning and his tongue thick with desert dust, Jesus began to notice he was thirsty. He sat down beside a well hewn from solid rock - did he know it was named Jacob's Well? The gospel writer claims that Jews shared nothing in common with Samaritans, but it was not so - just as Jesus and a Samaritan woman would share the well that day, so did their ancestors share a reverence for the spring-fed pool of water deep below where, according to legend but not to scripture, water bubbled to the surface so that Jacob did not have to labor to drink there. I am with you, God had reminded Jacob and his ancestors and his descendants over and over again. Behold, I am with you, and will keep you wherever you go...

We listen with delight as the gospel writer tells the story, as the woman and Jesus descend deeper and deeper into knowing one another as though descending a well, drawing ever nearer to the wild and beautiful and living water within. We know, when as yet the woman does not, that the one perched upon the rock at Jacob's Well is none other than the one who stood on the rock at Massah and Meribah, the one who is named I AM, who once moved across the surface of the deep, hovered over the waters, and created the heavens and the earth.

Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. So it is that the woman leaves behind her now superfluous water jar and rushes into town, gushing good news and wonder, wildness and beauty and aliveness. Come and see! Come and see this man...he cannot be the Messiah, can he? The townspeople drink in every word from the spring of hope that has welled up inside of her, and in turn they, too, will gush good news. We know that this is truly the Savior of the world.

All of us have been thirsty. We know the heat of high noon. Perhaps we have even been dehydrated, so desperate for water that our mouths and our minds, our limbs and our lives seem muddy and slow, dusty and dry. We must have water to survive, to keep our bodies, themselves more than sixty percent water, alive. There is nothing so satisfying or sweet or literally salvific - life-saving - as a cool drink of water.

But, like the Hebrew people in the desert, like the Samaritan woman at the well, we thirst for more than water in life - we thirst for security, for acceptance, for comfort, for worth, for love, for hope, for knowing we are not alone. We live all the time in something like a wilderness, perhaps even sometimes in something like a desert, searching for a promised land, uncertain of whether we will make it there or not. We have all the water we need at the turn of a tap, but still our hearts are parched, our souls dehydrated. Our thirst drives us to seek relief from whatever sources we can find. Thinking that we can draw enough of whatever we have chosen to drink, we seek to fill ourselves, to quench our thirst, with things that are not God. Addictions. Work. Success. Status. Unhealthy relationships. Money. But we always come up thirsty again. We become uncomfortable and tired and afraid and cranky. We doubt. We lose hope. We quarrel with God in our prayers. Are you with us or not?

And yet God always stands on the rock before us, ready to call forth living water, bucket after blessed bucket of hope, wave after wave of grace, cup after cup of love overflowing. Theologians and preachers have long suspected that far deeper than any thirst we have ever experienced in body, mind or spirit is God's thirst for us, God's wild and beautiful and living desire for us. The gospel writer does not tell us whether the Samaritan woman ever offered Jesus a drink from Jacob's Well, but we can be certain she satisfied his deepest and most divine thirst when she become a container, a wellspring of living water gushing up for others, inviting them to encounter Jesus, the rock of their salvation. "I am the vessel," wrote Dag Hammerskjold. "I am the vessel. God is the draft. And God is the thirsty one."

In the stories we heard this morning, God does not condemn the Hebrew people for the crankiness, nor does Jesus condemn the Samaritan woman for her doubt. Water is offered freely, and keeping and caring for them both outwardly in their bodies and inwardly in their souls. Paul, always so acutely aware of his sinfulness, marvels that God does not condemn him; instead, he writes in his letter to the Romans, God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. Our bodies may be sixty percent water, but buried with Christ in our baptism and drinking our fill of him at this table, our spirits become one hundred percent living water, springs of hope and life and love. And God names us, God-Is-With-You. Even when we wander in a wilderness, even when we thirst, even when life is muddy and slow and ewwyuck, even in our sin, our hearts may be wild and beautiful and buoyant and our hope bubble up and endure. Amen.

Photographs: All photos are from Lawson's Fork Creek in Glendale, SC.

Sheep to Shawl

2011-03-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, the Mississippi Craft Center and Chimneyville Weavers and Spinners Guild held a Sheep to Shawl event. It could not have been a more beautiful day outside, and whole families flocked (heehee!) to the Craft Center to enjoy the event. I met several friends and their daughters there.

We met sheep, alpaca, goats, and rabbits. I learned that alpaca get lonely easily, and so if you're going to have one, you really need two. I also learned that the sheep we met (and watched as one was sheared) are specially bred to live on the Gulf Coast, and even with all their wool can withstand temperatures up to 104 degrees. They are hardier than I am - I wilt much sooner than that!

At different tables we could watch as fleece was carded, wool was hand-felted, and yarn was spun and dyed and woven. Guild members eagerly and graciously explained their craft. Everything was hands-on, including special weaving and felting activities for children.

I wonder how many new hobbies I can take up?! I'm thinking there may be a drop spindle in my future...

Baby Blanket Number Two

2011-03-10T19:24:00.000-08:00

You saw Baby Blanket Number One here, and it's come a long way since I posted that picture. But the baby to whom it will go isn't due until May, and the recipient of Baby Blanket Number Two is due any day now. He'll be my nephew, and I wanted to do something really special for him.

I don't know how many patterns I searched on Ravelry, and I even googled "knitted baby blankets". I bookmarked blogs and flipped through every knitting book and magazine on my shelf. The Vogue Knitting Page-a-Day calendar came to my rescue on February 28th with the "cornflower rows" stitch pattern, a sweet little series of stockinette rows and garter ridges with alternating colors.

A generous gift certificate allowed me to choose Spud and Chloe Sweater, a worsted weight blend of cotton and superwash wool, in blue, orange, yellow, green and white. Or, according to their website, Splash, Pollen, Firefly, Grass, and Ice Cream! I found matching crayons and a sheet of graph paper, and got to work deciding in what order the colors would appear.

After a few rows and color changes, however, I worried that the curling stockinette sections would actually make the blanket shorter in length, so I ripped it out and searched yet again... I settled on the Cotton Ease Baby Blanket, mitered-squares with picked-up edges so that you don't have to do any seaming. You do, however, have to weave in a bazillion ends, which one Raveler who made this blanket described as "soul-crushing"... The crayons came back out, and the yarn was cast on, and I'm loving this pattern!

Fortunately, it's Spring Break, so there will be plenty of time for knitting and mitering and weaving and waiting for Baby Number Two to make his appearance!

Hints...

2011-02-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

What is coming around the corner...

What is in my knitting bag...

What is keeping me from sharing any more than these few pictures and words...

Ingredients

2011-01-22T23:00:00.001-08:00

2 friends
2 bread recipes
1 lesson on baking bread
2 socks on 2 circulars
1 lesson on knitting socks
1 pot of soup with homemade noodles
2 loaves of homemade bread

Combine all ingredients.
Serves up one fine Saturday.

Snow Day!

2011-01-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

Well, strictly speaking, there's not any snow here... Not far north of us, though, there's about six inches of it! We got enough ice to close our schools, but not enough to make us lose power, which means I get a lovely day of sitting inside and drinking hot tea and staying in pajamas and knitting...

This is the Potato Chip Scarf that I've seen over and over again on blogs and on Ravelry and in person. Someone was knitting it at a retreat I went to in September.

(Oops - I thought I had a picture of it! It was red, I think, and definitely lovely!)

Someone else was knitting it at a retreat I went to in December.

And I'll be knitting it, out of Rowan Kidsilk Haze on size 7 needles, at the retreat I'm going to this week.

I know, that sounds like a lot of retreating...but again, strictly speaking, two of the three have also been work for me. I helped coordinate the retreat in December, and this week I'm off to be the chaplain (which means to lead worship and to be an available ear and shoulder) at a knitting retreat at Kanuga, where they're having a real snow day today - a good six to eight inches!

Feast of the Epiphany

2011-01-06T21:23:00.000-08:00

"Who knocks tonight so late," the weary porter said.
Three kings stood at the gate, each with a crown on head.
The serving man bowed down. The inn was full, he knew.
Said he, "In all this town is no fit place for you."

A light the manger lit; there lay the Mother meek.
Said they, "This place is fit. Here is the rest we seek."

Come. Come.
They loosed their latchet strings; so stood they all unshod.
"Come in. Come in, ye kings,
And kiss the feet of God."

Words: Laurence Housman
Music: Healy Willan
Art: Henry Siddons Mowbry

On the Tenth Day of Christmas...

2011-01-03T21:07:00.000-08:00

Back to school = no knitting to show.

But it does mean I have a story to tell. Today, in the midst of pastoral visits, sermon writing, chapel planning, and both answering and asking a thousand times "And how was your holiday?...", I taught our three year-olds about the visit of the wise men and their gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

They were off to a fast and furious start, learning all about the letter "L" on their first day back from break. One class was having a show and tell when I got there, sharing toys from home beginning with the letter "L" (a lizard, a lamb...) and then getting a piece of Laffy Taffy to take home. Another class was playing with short and long sticks to make letter "L's" on the floor. The third class was playing "London Bridge," laughing, laughing until they all fell down.

I tried to play along as I told my story about the Little Lord Jesus, the Light in the sky, the Lambs Lying down by the manger, and the Long, Long journey the wise men had to make. The children Love these stories about Jesus, and they Listen so attentively.

At the end of the story, I asked what special gifts they would like to give to Jesus. One little boy's eyes grew wide and his hand shot up, and before I could call on him, he whispered eagerly, "I would give him a tiny motorcycle!"

I Love my job.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas...

2011-01-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

I'm still not crazy about the colors.

Although tonight's sunset (and I was in the car without the camera, so you'll have to take my word for it!) reflected off ribbons of cloud contained nearly every shade in the scarf, in almost the same order.

I love the weight and the drape, light enough to be picked up by the wind, soft enough to not itch, long and wide enough to be warm wrapped in layers around my neck.

And, now that I look at these pictures, it is certainly prettier than my backyard in its winter attire of drab browns and...browns...

Maybe. Even if it goes to live with someone else, though, I am very happy to have knitted it. It was fun to memorize a lace pattern, and to discover such a lovely use for sock yarn.

School starts back tomorrow, and it took every ounce of willpower not to mope with my son. Tomorrow morning we get up early, bundle up (hmmm, I do have a new scarf...) and return to our routines. But it is still Christmas, for three more days anyway!

On the Eighth Day of Christmas...

2011-01-01T17:27:00.000-08:00

A warm bath and a good stretch - what a wonderful way to spend New Year's Day! That's exactly what my finished Colorful Waves Scarf has been doing. After soaking in the sink for a while, I laid it out to block in the guest room, closely supervised once again by Chloe, who was, it turns out, far more interested in the shiny pins than in the yarn. She must not like the colors, either.

She kept nibbling on the pin closest to her, and looking at me reproachfully whenever I tried to shoo her away.

I wasn't sure if the scarf would block or not. It's Patons Kroy Sock, which is 75% "washable wool" and 25% nylon. I tested a few inches of it yesterday. It still curls in, but more gracefully, as a piece of lace instead of a tangle of stitches. I was amazed by how wispy and drapey the blocked fabric is. So now, nearly every pin I have is helping to hold it down to block the rest.

Every pin except for one. Which I know I stuck in there.

Chloe is looking smug.

Meanwhile, it's still Christmas! And while I'm already getting to work on my Epiphany sermon for next Wednesday's Middle and Upper School chapel services, I am doing a little knitting on a prayer shawl that has been in progress for... Well. I resolve to finish it this year.

On the Seventh Day of Christmas...

2010-12-31T22:45:00.000-08:00

We rang in the new year a little early this evening at the home of one of my husband's parishioners. Back home, and up much later than I intended to be, I'm listening to an odd combination of fireworks and rain and thunder. Mother Nature is ringing in the new year, too...

I don't have resolutions yet, but think that I would like to make some. I would like to remember people's birthdays and anniversaries. I would like to try some new recipes. I would like to finally paint the bathrooms and the kitchen. I would like to be more patient and take deeper breaths and read a few more books. I would like to knit a sweater.

For now, I resolve to enjoy this last weekend of my break, and to remember that it is still Christmas! (I found that having a candy cane today helped tremendously...may need to try it again tomorrow!)

A Collect for the New Year, by Josh Thomas
Holy God, you have brought us in wholeness to a new year: Make us aware of the needs of others, determined in our efforts to meet both their needs and ours, and joyful in our gratitude for all that we have; that the passing of time may bring us ever closer to you in this life, even as we look forward to your nearness in the life to come, with Jesus Christ our Savior and your Spirit of blessedness and peace. Amen.

On the Sixth Day of Christmas...

2010-12-30T18:49:00.000-08:00

I thought this post would announce good tidings of great joy about a finished scarf, but I think I'm still about 5 inches away. I'm hoping that a nice glass of wine and a good movie will help move that along.

I'm still determined to find a pattern for the Best Buy scarf. The closest I've come is a leaf lace pattern and the candle flame pattern (couldn't get link to work - there are several scarves and shawls that use this pattern), but all the examples I've seen are only one color. I can't imagine how to alternate colors like the scarf on the lady with mobile broadband.

In the meantime, it's still Christmas! Charlie 3 (formerly known as Little Charlie, but since his 10th birthday he prefers not to be called "little") designed his own stationary for his thank-you letters, with a tree made out of Bakugan.

And here's my little thank-you letter... Dear Reader, Thank you so very much for taking the time to visit my blog this year. What a joy it is to have a space for knitting preaching and purling (and planting and picture-taking and...) threads together. I have not been as faithful in writing as some of you have been in stopping by, and hope that in the new year I will not as quickly forget how much I treasure this space. Thank you again for being here! May your Christmas continue to be merry and bright, and may your new year begin and continue in happiness! Peace, Jennifer

On the Fifth Day of Christmas...

2010-12-29T17:34:00.000-08:00

F-i-ii-ive go-o-olden moments...

1. Sleeping in! I love early mornings if I can be up by myself, with a cup of coffee and a book or a journal. It's such a quiet, gentle time. But in that mysterious way that children who are impossible to wake up on school days are awake before dawn on vacation, our house is active before the coffee is even brewed. So I may as well sleep in!

2. Leftover soup! Even better the second day...

3. Crafting with friends! Sarah was hand-quilting a gorgeous queen-sized quilt in blues and reds and browns. I wish I had taken a picture of her beautiful work. Julie knitted a little and worked on a few more of the felt birds her family gave as gifts this year. The pattern is from Purl Soho. We love the bird on our tree!

4. A ten-year-old with a room full of toys choosing to read instead! He's been busy with new Legos and Bakugan the past few days, but today he picked up a new book and hasn't put it down. My favorite part is when, out of the blue, he starts laughing aloud at something he's read!

5. Yarn! But not for me, even though I have gotten a lot more work done on my scarf today (see #3). This year's "surprise ball" from Nana was once again a Christmas treat. What a fun way to ~~use up scrap yarn~~ hide little treasures and trinkets for your grandson to discover...

...and to give your grandcats a gift at the same time! Chloe supervised the unwinding of the surprise ball on Christmas day, and Zach has napped on the pile of yarn every day since!

On the Fourth Day of Christmas...

2010-12-28T17:55:00.000-08:00

Curried cauliflower and sweet potato soup is simmering on the stove, and the house smells divine!

We've almost finished all the Forget-me-nots, cookies that, in my family, mean Christmas is very near.

And we finally ventured out in hopes that the post-Christmas crowds were getting weary of shopping. They weren't. We found ourselves at Best Buy, and while my guys were oohing and aahhing over all kinds of computer-y things, this is what caught my eye:

The model in this picture in the computer section was smiling, and I'm sure the store wants us to understand she's delighted because she can get on-line so quickly and easily with her new netbook. But I know she's happy because of the beautiful scarf she's wearing.

Millions of dollars of high-tech equipment, and all I want is that scarf!

On the Third Day of Christmas...

2010-12-27T11:37:00.000-08:00

One way to be absolutely sure you won't have time to knit is to decide to knit two scarves by Christmas. I started about three weeks ago on Gryffindor scarves for my guys, thinking that they'd be pretty easy to finish since they were entirely done in garter stitch. I looked at pictures of knitted Gryffindor scarves and planned my own, not following any particular pattern (I now wish I had done them this way - perhaps next Christmas!).

I carried those scarves everywhere I went, and began to think I needed my own time turner in order to get them wrapped and under the tree. The last ends were woven in on Christmas Eve. So. Many. Ends. Both were knit from Vanna's Choice in Cranberry and Honey on size 9 needles. I cast on 21 stitches and knit and knit and knit...

Now that Christmas Day is passed and I don't have a deadline, I have all the time in the world to knit! I'm finishing up a sock yarn scarf (the yarn is Patons Kroy in Fern Rose Jacquard and the pattern is Red Heart's Colorful Waves Scarf) that began as a simple project to carry on an airplane back before Thanksgiving. I don't really like the colors, but the pattern is fun.

As soon as I finish this scarf, I'm casting on the Cedar Leaf Shawlette by Alana Dakos. I love her podcast and her blog, and have looked forward to knitting this pattern since she first published it! The green is beautiful, but I think I'm going to use some yarn Santa brought...

On the Second Day of Christmas...

2010-12-26T11:35:00.000-08:00

Perhaps today Joseph finally slept. Two nights before he had stayed awake worrying about and tending to his laboring wife. He had cleaned out the manger and gathered fresh hay. He had called for the midwives and stood by anxiously until he heard the baby's first cry, a holy sound for any new parent.

Yesterday he had spoken softly to curious visitors who, passing by pastures outside Bethlehem before dawn, had heard remarkable stories of angels and stars and saviors from shepherds keeping watch over their flocks. To you is born this day in the City of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord... Joseph gratefully accepted the few fish and olives and loaves of bread the innkeeper's wife had brought out, the skin of water she left beside the new mother, the clean swaddling clothes left by the midwives. He carefully followed their instructions for easing Mary's discomfort and keeping the baby warm. He watched as they slept, exhausted by the miracle of birth, the immeasurable miracle of that birth...

Last night Joseph had stayed awake, helping every few hours when the baby cried, singing lullabies he thought he had forgotten from his own childhood, wondering what lay ahead for his little family. The angel hadn't said anything about how to be the adopted father of God.

Soon, all accounted for and assessed, most others would be leaving Bethlehem to return to their homes. Perhaps they could move into the inn. Until Mary could travel again, Joseph would be rooted here, back in the place where he had been born, where he, a newborn so long ago, had lain upon his own mother's breast as they slept, exhausted by the miracle of birth. His father had stayed awake....

Today, Joseph finally slept, and perhaps his dreams were of good tidings and great joy, holiness and heavenly peace. Before long, his rest would grow fitful and he would dream of kings bearing both gifts and grief... But today, Joseph slept.

Today we wore our pajamas all day long in his honor.

Saint Nicholas

2010-12-01T19:15:00.000-08:00

Preached in Middle and Upper School Chapel at St. Andrew's Episcopal School.

1 John 4:7-14; Psalm 145:8-12; Mark 10:13-16

It's a scene many of you know quite well. There he is, sitting just a little apart form the crowds. Parents bring their children, although sometimes the children are shy to meet him. He gently lifts them up into his lap, and smiles as they settle there in his arms. Believing in him, they whisper to him the desires of their hearts, and he nods to let them know he has heard every hope-filled word...

So. Who do you think I'm talking about?

In chapel, the answer is supposed to be Jesus, right? We just heard Mark's story of the time people brought their children to see him. The disciples were sure he had better things to do than babysit, but Jesus told them in no uncertain terms that children were his business, and that they had better be the disciples' business, too. Or didn't they remember how to be wide-eyed and filled with wonder, how to trust with all their hearts, how to giggle on God's knee?

Maybe I'm talking about Jesus. There he is, sitting just a little apart from the crowds. Parents bring their children, although sometimes the children are shy to meet him. He gently lifts them into his lap... Who do you think I'm talking about?

Santa? Maybe... We haven't been to see him yet this year, but every December children whisper to him the desires of their hearts, and Santa nods to let them know he has heard every hope-filled word.

Jesus? Or Santa? Sometimes Christians worry that we get so wrapped up in stories of reindeer and rooftops and sleighbells that we forget the story of how angels sang and stars shone and a baby was born on a silent and holy night, how God became Emmanuel, God-with-us, Love-with-us, love all lovely, love divine, in the words of one old hymn.

Every year on December 6th (we're just a few days early!) we remember the story of someone who was grateful for the gift of Emmanuel, someone whose heart's desire, whose deepest hope, was to love God's children. All of them. His name was Saint Nicholas, and he lived in the 4th century in what we know as Turkey. Nicholas was the child of a wealthy family, with enough gold to impress even a Gringott's goblin. But he climbed into Jesus' lap at a very early age, preferring to settle there than in the lap of luxury. Nicholas became a priest when he was nineteen, and a bishop not long after that. He devoted his life and his inheritance to acts of kindness toward those who were most vulnerable in his communities, most helpless, most neglected, most preyed upon by those who insist on taking every toy under the tree for themselves.

We all become children again, wide-eyed and wonder-filled, when we hear of his legendary compassion. How Nicholas, when a devastating famine struck, fed his people from a small sack of grain that never emptied. How Nicholas, returning by sea from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, prayed during a violent storm and calmed the wind and waves. How Nicholas, having learned that a poor man could not afford to pay his daughters' dowries, tossed sacks of gold through the open windows of the poor man's house. He tossed sacks of gold down the chimney as well, or so the story goes, where they landed in the girls' stockings hanging there to dry overnight...

Years ago, I heard someone say how wonderful it would be if Santa Claus was a verb as well as a noun. Then, whenever we felt the urge to do something really kind, something really generous, we could say, "Hey, let's go Santa Claus today." It could be fun...but what are we really talking about? Because the thing is, we already have a word for doing something really kind, something really generous. That word is love, which we heard no less than fifteen times in the short reading from First John a moment ago. Beloved, dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God. God is love...

This isn't the sentimental kind of love we feel for our favorite ornaments on the Christmas tree, but love that is fierce and relentless and hope-filled, love that is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger and of great kindness. The Lord is loving to everyone, the psalmist sang, and his compassion is over all his works. Since God loved us so much, the writer of First John said, we also ought to love one another.

We Santa Claus pretty well around here. We bring our dollars for dress-down or dress-up days. We collect pennies for peace. We're even bringing sacks of toys for children whose Christmas trees would otherwise be bare. We volunteer down the street, up the road, and halfway around the world. We love. We show compassion. Peter Gomes, a Baptist preacher and theologian at Harvard's Divinity School, defines compassion as "kindness in the face of the opportunity to do otherwise."

Whatever our faith, whatever lap we choose to climb into, Saint Nicholas stands before us in this and in every season when we have the opportunity to choose how we will treat God's children - which is to say, everyone - and he urges us to choose love. Nicholas reminds us that in even our smallest acts of generosity and kindness and compassion, God's saving presence comes into the world, not just at Christmas but each and every day.

Sometimes we can give a sack full of gold or grain or toys. Sometimes we can find the cure, erase the debt, create new public policy, right the wrong, correct the injustice. Sometimes all we can do is climb up into God's lap and whisper our heart's desires and trust that God hears every hope-filled word.

How will you Santa Claus today? How will you choose kindness, especially when choosing otherwise would be easier or safer or more convenient? How will you show compassion? How will you love?

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Amen.

Artwork: "Jesus and the Children," by Michael D. O'Brien; "Bishop Nicholas," by Emanuele Luzatti; "Saint Nicholas Wonderworker," by Laura James.

What I am (Un)Knitting

2010-11-14T20:36:00.000-08:00

My knitting life very nearly resembles my actual life these days... Lots of projects, none of them complete, never enough time. That's partly why this blog has been tossed into the corner like a half-finished blanket that's fun to knit but it just takes so long to get through even a single row...

My knitted afghan and a prayer shawl have had a few stitches added here and there over the past few months, and I am still wrestling with gauge on the clerical collar. The announcement of a new baby in the family finally pulled knitting into a higher priority than, say, mowing the yard, and I searched Ravelry and several pattern books for the sweetest baby blanket pattern I could find. I chose Pocket Dreams (Rav link) from a tiny little collection of Vogue patterns. (Now that I look at the Ravelry link, it has universally bad reviews, but so far I think it's cute...we'll see how I feel when I'm knitting those 500+ stitch rows at the end...)

And so now I am...unknitting it. I know that technically it's "tinking," but that makes it sound like so much more fun than it is. Especially because the reason I have to unknit all these stitches is because I didn't read the pattern all the way through before I began. Increasing every other row is, clearly, much different than increasing every row. Sigh.

There's a mistake even nearer the beginning, too, but I think it may stay as a "design element". Again, reading the instructions all the way through ahead of time would have been a plus. The blanket has a precious little pocket in the middle of all its stripes, into which a little knitted toy bear fits perfectly.

The red strip is a life-line, just in case... Once I get going again, I think it will be lots of fun to knit, a nice easy pattern with regular color changes and increases to keep it interesting. I'm using Caron Simply Soft on size 6 needles.

Now that I think about it, perhaps I need to unknit a little bit of life, too. Tink back a few rows, a few obligations, a few pattern repeats that have me frustrated and tired. I've been trying to give up a few tasks and activities and responsibilities in order to make room for a little more faithfulness to my ~~knitting~~ other jobs, like writing those sermons and mowing the yard and getting some sleep and keeping a blog and, best of all, spending time with my family.

Vocation

2010-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

According to Presbyterian pastor Frederich Buechner, vocation is "where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet." If that is so, then I've found the perfect project for this purling preacher... May I present to you, the knitted clerical collar by Naomi Miller!

A friend emailed me the pattern and gifted me a hank of creamy linen yarn from her stash so that I could give it a go! I'm not sure if it really looks all that much cooler than the plastic version I've worn for the past six+ years, but it's so fun I just have to give it a try! Of all things, one of my plastic clerical collars split down the middle the day after this pattern arrived in my inbox...

It's not so bad to wear one of these (it is kinda silly to say "clericool" though) - they're less uncomfortable than they might seem. The really challenging part, to be honest, is designing the rest of your wardrobe around them. Is it okay for women clergy to dress like, well, women? Or should we stick to suits and jumpers? I prefer a style that's classic and simple and feminine - if I had a million dollars I would shop exclusively from JJill (heavily supplemented with hand-knits, of course!). Here's some of the best I've been able to do...

I absolutely love PeaceBang's Beauty Tips for Ministers, and check regularly to be sure I'm fighting frump, showing poise and decorum, and faithfully representing my vocation. She writes, "This is the gospel of Beauty Tips for Ministers: if clergypeople believe religious life is vital, relevant and beautiful, they should look the part." Of course it's not about the clothes, but with a hearty dose of humor, PeaceBang (herself a minister) gives thoughtful and tasteful permission to enjoy prettiness and a little femininity.

Time to work on my vocation (I'll let you decide whether that means I'm knitting or writing a sermon)!

New Socks!

2010-07-17T07:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier this week I made the final decreases, kitchenered the toes, wove in the ends, and slipped my feet into my new socks!

The pattern is Anne's Magic Stripes (which really only has to do with the self-striping yarn) from Antje Gillingham's Knitting Circles Around Socks. From start to finish the directions were clear and easy to follow, although my friends and I all found that perhaps the measurements for the size we chose were a little off. I had to stop long before the recommended length for the foot.

The yarn is Premier Yarns' Serenity Sock Weight in the color Aquamarine, one of the many Iona-inspired yarns in my stash that I wrote about last spring. It's 50% merino superwash, 25% bamboo, and 25% nylon.

My socks are fraternal rather than identical twins, but that's okay with me - they're soft and warm and, best of all, finished! I've already cast my now trusty two circulars on for another pair, this time for my husband (but shhh, don't tell him yet!).

Proper 8C

2010-06-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

I Kings 19:15-16, 19-21; Psalm 16; Galatians 5:1, 13-25; Luke 9:51-62

I'm going home tomorrow, back to Spartanburg, South Carolina, where I went to high school and where my mom still ives. My friend Sherry and her family still live there, too, and I hope I'll get a chance to see her. Or at least to pass her a little note.

We were skilled note-passers in high school, filling sheets of notebook paper with giggles and gossip, hopes and heartbreak, doubts and teenage drama. Then we folded the paper in that time-honored fashion, tucking one corner in to make sure it didn't unfold accidentally, revealing it's sacred contents to just anyone. In the hallways or at our lockers or at the end of lunch, we passed the notes to each other and hurried to our next class so that we could read them before the bell rang.

Now, a traditional feature of our notes was the question. It could be any question, but it was usually something like, "Do you think he's cute?" or "Would you ask him out?" followed by three empty squares drawn in pencil with the instructions, "Check one: yes, no, maybe." And you thought very carefully about your answer before you checked a box, folded it back up, and returned it to your friend because after all, it was important - it was about relationships, about love.

I don't pass notes anymore. Sherry and I keep up through email and Facebook and the occasional phone call or visit. But I think about those boxes often - every time, in fact, that I update my computer or download a program or create an on-line account and a window appears with the words "End User License Agreement" followed by a long, long, long note filled with...well, to be honest I've never read one all the way through. It's the contract that states you'll use the software appropriately, and at the end is a question: "Do you agree to these terms and conditions? Check one: yes, no." We should think very carefully about our answer because after all, it is important - it is about a relationship, and if we agree to it, we'll be asked to exit all programs and restart our computers before we can run the new program.

Papyrus was harder to fold than notebook paper, I suppose, and anyway Jesus much preferred to ask questions in person instead of in a note, to meet people face to face. So it is that Jesus met three would-be disciples on the road to Jerusalem and he presented to them the terms and conditions of following him. Turn away from your home. Turn away from your family. Turn away from your work, from whatever your livelihood is. Exit all programs. Restart. Then follow me.

If it sounds harsh to us now, imagine how it must have sounded in a time and place when no one ever did anything new. Most people never left home but instead worked the same land of labored at the same skill their parents had learned from their parents. Wages earned were solely for the care and keeping of one's extended family, often including multiple generations dwelling under one mud and straw roof. The ancient law given to their ancestors, once a breathtakingly new expression of relationship, of love, between God and God's people, had become in practice rigid and rote, binding and brutal.

How drawn they were to Jesus, a breath of fresh air they would come to know as Spirit, a rabbi, prophet, and - dare the hope? - messiah who spoke of things like life and love and healing and a magnificent kingdom of God in which the blind would see, the deaf would hear, the lame would walk, and the poor and lowly would be lifted up. I will follow you wherever you go, someone exclaimed, overcome by the wonder of it all.

Long before the days of Facebook, which also has boxes you can click in response to things other people say - "Check one: like, ignore" - long before the days of Facebook allowed us to express our enthusiasm for things without actually acting on them, Jesus needed to make sure this would-be disciple understood that the box he was checking was important, that it was about relationship, that it was about love. Not the "Do you think he's cute, would you ask him out" kind of love but, rather, love that is resolute, love that is fierce, love that is generous and unwavering and free. Love that restarts everything.

In fact, while this gospel story has long been read as a strong statement on the difficult demands of discipleship, demands that disciples devote themselves without remainder to following Christ, that they check "yes" knowing that they are choosing everything he stands for, everything he loves, everything he lives for, everything he dies for...while this gospel story has long been read as concerning discipleship, some have suggested that it also reveals something of the kingdom of God that disciples are called to proclaim, something of the reign of God's love, something of the relationship between God and God's people. Scholar Richard Shaffer even wonders if the heart of the story, underneath all the terms and conditions, all the questions and boxes, if the heart of the story might be "Jesus' singlemindedness of purpose that is prompted by God's profound love for humanity and all the world."

It has sounded harsh ever since that day on the road when Jesus set his face toward Jerusalem. What is it that in ever age has lured would-be disciples into a singlemindedness of purpose that serves only ourselves, our desires, our needs, our wants? That makes it difficult to choose a singlemindedness of purpose that serves love, which is to say, that serves God, and serving God, serves others? Some say it is self-indulgence that causes us to hesitate over these boxes, wondering which to check. Some say it is greed, some say it is evil, some say it is fear. Fear of scarcity, fear of finitude, fear of limitations. Sometimes, overcome by the wonder of it all, we say to Christ, I will follow you wherever you go. And sometimes, like the townspeople in our gospel story, we refuse even to welcome him. Sometimes, like James and John, our first choice is destructive anger. Sometimes, like so many other would-be disciples, we give up, we procrastinate, we make excuses, we get distracted, we turn back, we check "maybe," or maybe "no."

But if Christ's singleminded purpose is God's love for all the world, then the kingdom is not lost; indeed, it is among us before we even know to choose it. Listen again to the gospel story, how Jesus reveals himself and God's kingdom to those on the edge of discipleship. Jesus, love incarnate, in whom God's reign has come, has no place to lay his head because love cannot be contained in a fox hole or a bird's nest or a building of any kind. Love's home is everywhere, and indeed it is so vast that all things are at home in it. Jesus, through whom all things were made and who made the earth a new creation, cannot be stopped by death or its trappings. He has overcome the power of death to consume us, and bids us lay aside our fear. Jesus, who for love set his face toward Jerusalem and never once looked back, in every miracle and parable and teaching and touch showed that God's reign is gracious and generous and vast and lovely, such that even those things that seem most important to us and demand our attention pale in comparison to it. We would-be disciples are urged not to let anything in all the world delay us or weigh us down or hold us back from our "yes" to relationship, our "yes" to love, our "yes to following everywhere Jesus goes.

And so we, when like so many disciples before us we trembling check that box...yes...we become part of the good news, part of the kingdom unfolding. He meets us on the roads we walk, in homes we keep, in the families we have, in the livelihoods we lead, and there he calls us to a singlemindedness of purpose - his purpose. The terms and conditions are these, that in all the relationships in our lives, all the places we inhabit, all the work we do, all the roads we walk, all the strangers we encounter, all the courage we muster, all the hope we humbly hold...that everything we are and everything we do derive its meaning and joy and mission from God's profound love for humanity and all the world.

Perhaps the apostle Paul was baptized according to the Book of Common Prayer, for he writes often of the choice to follow Christ, and never once does he presume that he can meet the demands of discipleship alone. I will, with God's help, it is as if he says over and again in his letters to the disciples and would-be disciples of his day. Of course that's what following is, right? We go not be ourselves but in relationship, we go with the one who goes before us, each step bringing us further into the knowledge and experience of God's reign all around us. When left to our own devices, bound to our fears in a world where love and life's resources appear scare, finite, limited, we choose such things as lust, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, factions, envy...Paul's list is long and accurate. Living by the Spirit, though, understanding that God who cannot be contained in any dwelling yet dwells in our hearts, we are able to choose love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, kingdom fruits.

Thomas Merton, 20th century monk, priest, poet, scholar, and disciple, knew as did Paul, as do we when we are honest, that we find ourselves still trembling and hesitant on that road to Jerusalem, desiring in our deepest hearts to follow, knowing that it is important, that it is about relationship, that it is about love. I offer you Merton's prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following you does not meant hat I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire for all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always, though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me. Amen.

Artwork: Image from eHow.com; "Pilgrimage," by Grace Collins; "Thoughts on Communion," by Barbara Desrosiers; "Looking," by RaRa Schlitt; "A Cloud of Witnesses," by Mary Melikan.

Two by Two (by Three)

2010-06-25T19:31:00.001-07:00

I am so tired. Maybe it has something to do with Friday night's sleepover when my son and his friend woke up to save the universe from evil clones at 4:45 am. Maybe it has something to do with Saturday night's last-minute sermon writing. Maybe it has something to do with Sunday's church services, one in the morning and one in the evening, each an hour away from home. Maybe it has something to do with this.

I can't stop knitting.

My friends Julie and Sarah picked two socks on two circular needles as a summer project, and patiently helped me get started on the cuffs of mine when they were nearing the heels of theirs. I've knit two pairs of socks on dpn's but at this point I'm having trouble remembering why anyone would ever choose to do that when you could knit them on two circular needles. I love this method!

My yarn is Deborah Norville's Serenity Sock in blues and greens. The superwash merino, bamboo, and acrylic content creates a wonderfully soft texture with just a hint of sheen.

Not only am I learning how to knit two socks on two circulars (really, is there any other way?!), but in the process I've also learned how to do the long tail cast on, how to slip slip purl, and how to pick up dropped stitches. Well, that last one isn't exactly in the pattern...

Now, just a few more rounds of gusset decreases before I go to bed...

I do still preach...

2010-06-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

In fact, this blog originally began as a place to save my sermons against the possibility of my computer literally melting inside. Which it did. Twice.

Back then, my sermons were the most important things saved on my computer. I labored hours and hours on each one, delivered them in congregations I deeply cared for, and rather than dismissing them at "thanks be to God" I wanted to hold on to them like photographs of a growing vocation, snapshots of an evolving priesthood.

Surely you backed up, you say. Surely, I should have. And as surely as I didn't, I lost many of my early sermons somewhere inside those two melted laptops. Surely you began backing up then, you say. Surely, I should have. But blogging was taking root and growing and evolving, and I thought that saving my sermons to a blog would be a way not only for me to archive them but, if I were ever bold enough, to easily share them with others beyond the pews of my own parish.

Some of the first blogs I read were knitting blogs, and I as much as I enjoyed seeing the yarns and patterns and projects displayed in them, I was also amazed by the writing. It seems that knitting and writing go hand in hand, as Christian journalist and activist Dorothy Day wrote, "Knitting is very conducive to thought. It is nice to knit a while, put down the needles, write a while, then take up the sock again."

Writing and knitting are very similar, at least in my experience. When I'm writing a sermon it feels very much like choosing threads and patterns and weaving together something that can be worn as comfort or as adornment (like a sock or a scarf), or something that can carry or contain a piece of life (like a bag), or something that can be useful in tending to life's needs (like a wash cloth or a blanket). The stories of our faith traditions and the stories of our lives are closely knit.

Sometimes my sermons come unraveled, just like life and even faith can. Knitting has helped me imagine that a garbled pile of words and images, like a garbled pile of yarn, can be picked up again and knit more tightly or perhaps more loosely, combined with another thread, or placed in a pattern more suited to its color and texture and drape. Sometimes sermons flow onto the page (or the computer screen) with ease, like garter stitch, and speak through their simplicity. Other times they are a challenge and must be woven together slowly and deliberately, every word carefully placed like stitches in a lace shawl, to create a text that speaks to the complexity and mystery of God.

Lately, my sermons have felt more garbled than graceful, and I haven't posted them. But I snuck one in just before this post, and perhaps will return to sharing them from time to time as photographs and snapshots not only of my vocation and priesthood but also as echoes of how knitting, picking up threads and creating out of them garments and gifts, has woven its way into my life and faith.

Artwork: Photo of my desk at home (a little straightened up for my dear readers); "Trio," by Marilyn Green.

Proper 6C

2010-06-13T12:51:00.000-07:00

2 Samuel 11:26-12:10, 13-15; Psalm 32; Galatians 2:15-21; Luke 7:36-8:3

Summer officially begins in just about a week, a fact that hardly needs noting with the heat index already climbing over one hundred degrees. I've lived all my life in the South, and while I love ice-cold lemonade and fresh peaches, I really don't like hot weather or sweet tea, and so I spend my summers searching for and sitting in the shade.

Some of my favorite summers were spent at my grandparents' house in Spartanburg, SC. May brother and I were little then, and we spent nearly every hour of every long summer day playing together, even when we were supposed to be resting after lunch, that hottest part of the day when our shadows disappeared beneath our bare feet and even the blue sky burned in the sun. Summer was the season when the afternoon shadows grew impossibly long and daylight lingered in the air well past bedtime. We played then, too, chasing fireflies round and round the shadows of trees and grown-ups. We played after we were tucked in the two giant-sized beds in the spare room we sometimes shared upstairs. A nightlight bathed one wall of that room in a soft glow, making just enough light for us to create an entire arkful of shadow animals with our fingers.

The shades and shadows of summer were always part of our play...except when they didn't seem playful. On rainy days we played inside that big old house, from the attic all the way down to the basement. The staircase to the basement turned several corners before it reached the cool damp bottom, and every flick of a light switch illuminated just enough of the long way down and around that you could almost see the next light switch in the shadows. Piles of forgotten old books and rolled up posters and maps and dusty pillows became spooky shapes in the dim basement light. At night we laughed at the shadow animals we made with our fingers, but the shadows behind the closet door or under the bed were no laughing matter.

These are the sorts of shadows, in which lurk real and imagine dangers, that we borrow when we speak of having shadow sides, when we speak of being shady. They are the shadows we wrap around ourselves to hide the real and imagine parts of us that hurt and that cause hurt. Like piles of old books and posters and pillows, perhaps if we shove these parts of us into the shadows, they will be forgotten.

This morning's readings flip a light switch on for us, challenging us to see an all too real part of ourselves that cause all too real hurt - we are challenged to see our sinfulness. Individually and as a community of faith, we prefer to sweep the reality of our sin into the shadows, to politely say the confession and receive our absolution and then say no more about it. But this morning we are asked to face our fear of sin's darkness and learn how to walk in the light. In our readings this morning we hear the stories of a man and a woman who have done just that: King David, and the unnamed woman of our gospel story, sinners who overcame the shadows of their wrongdoings and welcomed the bright sunlight of God's forgiveness.

As king, David should have protected the lives of his people. Instead, David gave orders that poor Uriah be killed, and then took Uriah's beautiful wife, Bathsheba, as his queen. Of course none of this dark plan was hidden from God, who sent the prophet Nathan to confront the terrible shadows of David's life. As king, David recognized immediately the sin of the rich man in the story Nathan told. As a sinner, David couldn't see that the shadow cast by the rich man was, in fact, his own. Do you see this man? Nathan demanded. You are the man! The story is about you, David! You, upon whom God has lavished such gracious care; you, whom God has always protected. The story is about you, to whom God gave the responsibility of caring for and protecting others. You are the man!

And David saw the light. I have sinned against the Lord, he acknowledged humbly, and though he would still suffer the consequences of his actions, he would not suffer the darkness of separation from the Source of his life, the Source of all life and illumination, who lavished forgiveness upon him not for the first time, and not for the last.

As a Pharisee, a keeper of God's law, Simon should have known that the law was given to teach people how to live in relationship with one another and with God, who had long ago promised, I am the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. Instead, Simon used the law as a lens through which he could see shades and shadows, judge the depth of darkness in a person, and crop them out of his picture of salvation. When a woman began weeping at the feet of one of his dinner guests, Simon saw through his trusted lens a sinner at the feet of a fool. As a Pharisee, Simon recognized immediately the picture in the story Jesus told - the greater the debt that is canceled, the more gratitude the debtor displays. As a debtor, not in denarii but in sin, Simon couldn't see that the story's shadow was cast, in fact, over himself. Do you see this woman? Jesus demanded. Do you really truly see her? Do you see yourself, Simon? Do you really truly see yourself?

Perhaps the presence of light and shadow in that room was as uncertain as a child's nightlight lit bedroom, filled with playful shadow animals and scary dark corners. Do you see? Jesus demanded. Simon sees a sinner, a woman whose life is unclean and so whose touch would make others unclean. When she takes down her hair to wipe Jesus' feet, Simon sees also a fool, a man who could not possibly be the teacher and prophet he is reputed to be. In both Jesus and the woman, Simon sees the shadow side of the law that is his guiding light.

Do you see this woman? Do you see? Jesus also sees a sinner. He sees two sinners. He sees the woman, who knows she has nothing to hide, and just as his forgiveness has washed her clean, so she now washes his feet in a generous and loving act of gratitude. Jesus also sees Simon, who is blind to the light of the world at his own table, who has cast people like the woman into the shadow and, though he cannot see it, has shuttered himself from God as he brandishes his own righteousness like a torch and works his own way to salvation.

Do you see this woman? Do you see? The woman sees a savior. She sees the one who has already invited her to God's table, who has welcomed her as an honored guest, and forgiven her before she ever knew to ask. She sees the one who loves her despite her sins and shades and shadows. She sees the one who has shown her how to be in relationship, how to invite and welcome others, how to forgive, and how to love. Another preacher writes, "The woman's extravagance is a picture - [a bright reflection] - of the extravagance of God's grace."

Do we see? Do we really truly see? With God, our sins are forgiven before we ask, even if we never ask, even if, like David and Simon, we never realized we needed forgiving in the first place until we were shown the light. God has let our sins go. And yet, our sins will continue to overshadow us if we are not able to confess them, to acknowledge our inability to stay in relationship with God and with others without God's help and grace and love and forgiveness. Do you see? Jesus demanded. The woman's sins, which were many, have already been forgiven by God's love and grace; therefore she is able to show great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, who is blind to his own need for forgiveness, he shows little love. Our sins are forgiven, we are washed and anointed and given a seat at the table. The only thing required of us is the openness to receive this lavish gift of grace, God's cancellation of every debt, God's forgiveness of every sin, God's welcome of all people. You. Me. David. The unnamed woman. Even, bless his heart, Simon.

Or do we, too, suffer, from time to time, from something of the same self-righteousness - I mean, blindness - that afflicted Simon? Do we judge him? Do we think ourselves better than him? Do we justify our dislike of him by his dislike of others? Do we distance ourselves from him? Do we see this man? Do we see? Jesus, charged by the Pharisees of being a friend of tax collectors and sinners, sees Simon the sinner, and in showing him what grace and gratitude look like in the life and actions of the woman, he shows Simon the light. So also Jesus, friend of tax collectors and sinners, sees us. Jesus, to whom all hearts are open, all desires are known, and from whom no secrets or shades or shadows are hid, really truly sees us.

When we open our eyes and see the grace that bathes us from head to our own weary feet and toes; when we face our fear of the dark and reach deep down inside ourselves to offer up our shadows and shades, our sins, our hurt, and all that separates us from God and from one another, then we are saved. And yet salvation is not so much a prize we earn or a destination we can ever reach as it is a way of living that may be perfected beyond our life in this place but is lived in part right here and now when we allow God's grace to illuminate our lives and all the lives and all the world around us. Salvation is lived in part right here and now when we in turn carry that light into the world, not to cast shadows around others but instead to see how they, too, shine. For forgiveness is not restoration to what we were before - it is newness of life, and it carries with it an invitation to walk with Jesus, through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the reign of God - a reign in which the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the sick are cured, the deaf hear, and dead are raised, and the poor are raised up.

As we are willing to receive forgiveness, as we are willing to receive grace, as we are willing to love in response, as we are willing to welcome all people to the table, as we are willing to live and work not for salvation but because we are already saved, so then will we be able to say with Paul, It is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. Amen.

Artwork: "Vesper Light," by Angela Wales Rockett; "David and Bathsheba," by Marc Chagall; "The Allabastar Jar," by Daniel Bonnell; "Gracious Spirit," by Anne Randolph Rechter; "The Center of Everything," by John C. Little; "Elemental," by the Reverend Caroline Kramer.

I do still blog...

2010-06-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

Well.

Over and over again I told folks that the end of the school year was, for the chaplain, not nearly as busy as it is for students and faculty. What I had forgotten was that it is actually overwhelmingly busy...just not in a creative way. I didn't have to write any sermons or craft any new prayers, but I did have to attend a bazillion rehearsals and pray a bazillion graduation prayers and offer a bazillion blessings to students and families and faculty moving up or moving on or moving out...

The only sermon I did work on was for Trinity Sunday, and if it was possible to make the doctrine of the Trinity even more complicated than it already is, I did it. Somehow I ended up weaving together Alice in Wonderland, poetry about math, the Athanasian Creed, particle physics, and perichoresis (the divine dance of the persons of the Trinity in unity...see? Ugh...) in one overly long sermon. Not one of my finer moments in the pulpit.

What kept me sane through these weeks was this.

White. Garter stitch. Utterly and completely and extraordinarily simple. Knit in cotton to become a soft little washcloth to be given with a pretty bar of soap as a gift. The mindless knitting was such a relief, even as I ended up having to rush to finish it on time. At the last minute, not to complicate things but just to add a little fun, I added this:

With this:

It turns out, after years of only knitting, I do still crochet! I found this wonderful video that explained how to do the scalloped border, and if you'll please pardon the pun, I'm hooked!

I do still knit...

2010-05-28T20:02:00.000-07:00

In fact, I even finish things once in a while, although I wasn't sure when that would happen with this one. The ruffled edge border of my finished Citron shawlette (designed by Hillary Smith Callis) has a whopping 600+ stitches per row! I was a little worried it wasn't big enough, and contemplated adding another section, but couldn't bear the thought of how that would increase the stitch-count of the ruffle. After washing and blocking, it turned out to be just the right size!

The shawlette is designed to keep your shoulders warm on a cool night, or to be scrunched up a little and worn more like a scarf or cowl when it's cooler still.

The yarn I used is mostly wool, so it's a little too warm for a cool Mississippi summer night (when the temperature drops just below 85 degrees). It seems like more of a fall color, anyway, unless you're standing right in front of the daylilies blooming their little hearts out in my front yard - like the shawlette, they're full of tones somewhere between yellow and orange and they keep multiplying...)

Citron was a really fun knit, and relatively quick, and I'm sure I'll do it again. This shawl is going to Gray Center tomorrow to be entered in a silent auction. I'm a little nervous, except that my sweet mother-in-law is going to be there and already declared she will bid on whatever I make.

Goodbye, Citron, and good luck!