Preach One: Be Still and Know...

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...

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?

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

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

(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

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

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.