Kirkepiscatoid

(Home Icon courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
(This post originally appeared in Daily Episcopalian, September 28, 2011)

If someone were to ask me to sum up the entire theme of the Bible in a single sentence, my answer would be, "The Bible is a story of humanity constantly searching for a place with God that they can call home."  We see the non-permeability of "home" for the Hebrew people and their need to create a home with God despite being slaves in Egypt and aliens in Babylon.  We see Jesus trying to bridge our physical and spiritual home through his life, death, burial and resurrection.  We see the tension of "families" working out their homes in the early church through the Epistles.  We hear the promises of home in the Psalms and assurance, particularly in Psalm 84, that we sparrows will find a nest with God.  The Bible is about finding home when home seems most elusive, and not as a luxury--we are called to find it.  Our Anglican theology, particularly in the words of Eucharistic Prayer C, reminds us that God calls us again and again to this place called "home."

Until very recently, I hadn't really thought much about how we re-enact that journey on the Internet.  What does it really mean to get on one's computer, open our browsers, and click on a button called "Home?"  What are we looking for?  What do we expect?  What seems to be expected of us? 

The recent changes in Facebook, and my friends' various reactions to it, created some interesting windows through which to view the reality of "home."  Notice I am not saying "cyber-home," or "virtual home."  We have moved to a place in our ability to incorporate connectivity to each other in a way that the Internet has become an extension of our body, albeit a less-than-fully-functional one.

I've mostly found myself more irritated than incensed about the various rounds of Facebook changes and find the people angry enough to want to leave Facebook somewhat bewildering.  Yet, I empathize with their anger, hurt, and frustration.  But what has been more illustrative to me is I believe I am getting glimpses in how each of us sees that elusive thing called "home" differently.

I am a tail end baby boomer.  I did not grow up with the Internet.  When I first discovered it, it was not a home at all--it was a mysterious foreign land that I felt called to strike out and explore.  We were pathfinders and explorers then, and having a computer in our homes carried some degree of being electronically and mechanically facile.  We preferred using handles to using our real names, and it felt exotic and cutting edge.  We were explorers, pathfinders, and risk takers--and yes, we did our share of sinning along the way.  (Literally, the day Napster came out, I had filled an entire outboard hard drive full of music.)  I've certainly had to come to grips with my own forms of Internet repentance.  There were a lot of things we did back then that we suspected weren't quite kosher, but until someone told us "no" we were not going to worry much about it. 

For me, in some ways, now that the Internet is pretty much a utility, like our light bill and phone, and social networking has created a living room within our living room, I feel a little bit like Jeremiah Johnson, the fur all trapped out, and the wagon trains becoming settlements, knowing a certain way of life I enjoyed was over.  Civilization came to the Internet.  Like the Wild West, we are in a place where the boundaries and rules are still being worked out.  Yet I have also lived here in the Internet long enough that I have experience and knowledge in what used to be foreign territory, and perhaps understand its nature of "home" in a unique way.  My own Facebook wall has seemed to become this safe and mostly welcoming place where people talk and interact and make new friends with each other--I only provide the context, the hospitality.  Dare I say "I am in the world but not of it?"

In short, my Facebook wall has become, for me and my online community, not so much my private home, but an abbey, and it's clear I am the Abbess.  I don't seem to go looking for people, they come looking for me.  It's the atmosphere and the company that people look for on my wall, and I am not so worried about the "furniture," i.e. the platform that drives the engine of Facebook.

Likewise, my physical home is in the midst of a remodeling project that has taken eleven years for me to formulate "how I wish it to be."  Only three rooms of my house are physically liveable at the moment.  I spend a lot of time outside by my chiminea in the evenings.  Privacy becomes relative when contractors show up at 7:00 a.m. on a whim.  Finding contemplative space in my own home has become a priority.

It goes even deeper.  I've discovered through making timelines of my spiritual life for my online Education for Ministry class, that I grew up accepting that my physical home was a tumultuous and rather unstable place that could very easily be affected by job loss, death, divorce, alcohol, drugs, and personal despair.  Yet I became rooted--literally embedded--in the geography of northeast and north central Missouri.  I learned early on not to depend on people and a physical address to provide me a home.  "Home" had to be something bigger and more enduring--which is why my lifelong desire has been to seek a relationship with God.

It's interesting as I observe other people's reactions to Facebook's changes.  For some, changing the platform of Facebook has been literally like someone breaking into their house and rearranging the living room furniture.  For others, there's an immediate move to tighten down their privacy settings--to "hole up."  Some of the folks younger than me, who have always had social networking, and had come to Facebook from MySpace some time back, are simply eyeing Google+ as "the next place they'll move."  Still others grouse a bit, roll with it, and discover new things in their being faithful and staying put.  Frankly, there are about as many reactions to it as there are personality types--and we are all still trying to adjust to these changes "in community."

I have this sense that changes in Facebook mimic something we've never quite discovered in ourselves about how we feel about our physical homes.  Likewise, how we feel about changes in our family homes, our worship homes, and our work homes mimic something in our stories of finding our home in God's Realm.  Perhaps all these changes in social networking are simply an invitation to explore our relationship with God and our relationships in "God's social network"--both in our life and actions, and through the Bible as our Frequently Asked Questions site.  Perhaps that icon marked "Home," is not a home--but a gateway to one we never imagined.

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

--Collect, Proper 20, p.234, Book of Common Prayer

Now, I have to tell you a little story before I go on with the original story.  Blogger ate my original post last week.  That's what I get for giving it the title "Non-Anxious!" Of course, I can't remember all of the original, so now you get the reworked version.  I apologize I'm discussing the proper for the week, one week late.  But here we go...


The photo above is of my latest visitor to my chiminea.  I was sitting out by my fire and what should I notice but this little fellow.  He was not in the least bit shy.  He hopped around near my chair, as I was making a fire, and once the fire got going, he hopped back under the chiminea where there was about a 6 inch space that most certainly had to be warmer than the chilly night outside.  He looked at me with half closed eyes, seeming to be for the most part, happy to share my company.


I had a bit of a conversation with him. ("Found any good bugs lately?  Shouldn't you be scoping out a place to hibernate soon?")  He was decidedly, quite non-anxious.


Now I realized I probably had not inherited a pet toad.  More than likely, this little fellow was my companion for that evening only.  I haven't seen him since.  Maybe I'll see him again, maybe not.  I hope he doesn't become dinner for some turkey or hawk or raccoon any time soon.  But I was quite struck at how comfortable he was sharing space with me, and that I was not a threat.  Perhaps it was because I was rather non-anxious myself.


But I thought about my new-found toad acquaintance, and the collect, and the notion of the "things that are passing away."  We tend to think of "companionship" as a rather long term and semi-permanent thing.  The reality is the companions we mostly meet in our life's journey are not very permanent at all.  After all, how many of us are still best friends with our 2nd grade companions?


The truth is companionship is more fleeting than we want to admit.  For most of our companions, we will have to navigate a period of loss.  When close friends move away, more often than not, even if we stay in touch, our relationship changes.  I've thought about that lately a lot.  One of my closest friends around here moved away some time back.  We stay in touch, but it is not the same, because we don't have the shared experiences in the same community from week to week.  We could always count on us having an important set of shared experiences each week.  Now there are new names and new people in each of our lives and we are going, "Who's that?"


I remember this same person telling me about a time in a certain work environment.  "I've never had an easy a time with a bunch of co-workers, before or since.  A couple of them had already moved away or changed jobs before me, and by the time I moved away, we already knew that this magic time we had at work was over.  It was okay, but it was never quite the same."


I've found myself grieving the loss of this particular friend, off and on, at the oddest times.  I never had a friend quite like that--one that was brutally honest, yet at the same time, incredibly sympathetic.  I have some wonderful friends, and this is not a slam at them at all.  It's just this one was different in some way--easier, free of social discomfort, much more transparent.  Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever have a friend like that again.  I guess the answer is, "Maybe, maybe not--but I also have to be open to what I have in my present friends."


I also think about, now and then, people I used to hang the moon and stars upon, and something went cold or sour.  There's only one of those relationships I ever got back, and I consider it somewhat miraculous.  How can we be so close to some people and then drift so far apart?  It's not like my little toad pal, whom I had no expectations that it would be a long-term companionship.  These are people who, at the time, it felt like nothing could come between us.  But the reality is all kinds of things can come between any of us.


When I think about this collect, I am reminded that sometimes, people are called to intersect in our lives for a season, and that's it.  There's a reason we were thrown together, and the reason ends.  When we try to hang on for a longer period, it doesn't "just not work"--it, frankly, usually gets worse.  More often than not, it gets jealous or contentious.  I'm becoming convinced more and more, when I start to see a friendship cool off, or feel a contentiousness building steam, to just back out and let it go.  Mentally say goodbye, thank God for a good run in a good season, and move on.


What endures, I believe, is not the relationship--it's the thread in the carpet of human nature that continually draws us to other human beings.  One thread ends and another begins, much like coming to the end of a skein of yarn and needing to start another.


I can't change tomorrow, I can't change yesterday.  I can only be non-anxious about today.

(Icon from www.svershinin2.narod.ru)

(This post originally appeared on Speaking to the Soul, Sunday, September 25, 2011)

Readings for the feast day of Sergius, Abbot of Holy Trinity:

Psalm 87
Proverbs 4:1-9
1 John 2:15-17
Luke 8:16-21

When the Metropolitan Alexis felt his life was drawing to a close, he summoned Sergius to him, wishing to bless him and appoint him as his successor. Fearfully, Sergius declined. One of the symbols of authority worn by the Metropolitan was an icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary suspended by gold chains. "From my youth up," Sergius replied, "I have never possessed or worn gold, and now how can I adorn myself in my old age?"

The excerpt in Holy Women, Holy Men states that Sergius was "simple and gentle in nature, mystic in temperament, and eager to insure that his monks should serve the needs of their neighbors." Our readings today remind us of several facets of what makes up a piece of the monastic lifestyle--love of God, a desire for wisdom over "stuff," and a charge in Luke's Gospel that we must seek to be active listeners in the process and to be mindful of what has been bestowed upon us--"Then pay attention to how you listen; for to those who have, more will be given; and from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away."

That part about "from those who do not have, even what they seem to have will be taken away" really sticks with me. I think back to the much more financially lean times of my life. It never failed--when my bank account was getting down to zero/zip/nada, it always seemed like I could always count on something like a flat tire, my furnace gasping its last breath, or a major plumbing leak to be foisted upon me.

In short, it's the mindset of scarcity. When our means feel scarce, we almost expect for things to become more scarce just to kick us to the curb even further.

When we live our lives like there is never enough, guess what? There never will be enough. One of the things I've mused about over the years is it never matters how much any of us make, we get to the end of the week or the end of the month and say, "Where did the money go?"

Yet when we look at the life of Sergius, this monk of very little means influenced an entire country and helped myriad people. The life of Sergius is counter-intuitive to everything our popular culture tells us.

Our culture seduces us with the delusion that our wants, are, indeed, our needs. It confuses us even when we try to do good and live more simply. We have so many choices in our society it's hard to discern what the "good" choice is.

For instance: I really don't care much for certain mega-chain stores. They fill their shelves with things made in places that I can't vouch for their labor policies, and I don't always agree with the labor policies of these stores themselves. But in little old Kirksville, MO, the big box store provides jobs for several people I know personally. It's all good to be high and mighty about our principles, but in small towns that can have tremendous local economic repercussions. My choice to stick to "green" or "fair trade" might cost my neighbor his or her job, because in a small town, I would have to buy those things online sometimes.

The impossibility of these kinds of choices brings us back to this business of "living more simply." What, really, are our needs? How many our wants morph into "needs?" Compared to the bulk of the world, we are the ones who "have," and are probably the ones to whom "more will be given." But why is it so painful to even think about what we could give up so that others can have 1/10th of what we have?

The answer, I believe, lies in that business of changing our life pattern from "a mindset of scarcity" to "a mindset of abundance."

Last time I checked, God's grace is not a finite quantity. God's mindset--one of abundance--frees us from the need to hoard. Hoarding our money, our time, our stuff, and our emotions only sidetrack us from the possibility we have enough. Once we admit what we have is enough, it actually allows us to be lavish and extravagant in our giving with few regrets--and living more abundantly, over time, makes us feel abundant.

What, in our lives today, can we risk doing without, in order to plant the seeds of a real sense of abundance?

(Enamel Plaque of Naaman washing in the River Jordan courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

2 Kings 5:1-19:

Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, “If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.” So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, “Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.” He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, “When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.” When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, “Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, “Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.”

So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, “Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.” But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, “I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?” He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, “Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, ‘Wash, and be clean’?” So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel; please accept a present from your servant.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will accept nothing!” He urged him to accept, but he refused. Then Naaman said, “If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt offering or sacrifice to any god except the Lord. But may the Lord pardon your servant on one count: when my master goes into the house of Rimmon to worship there, leaning on my arm, and I bow down in the house of Rimmon, when I do bow down in the house of Rimmon, may the Lord pardon your servant on this one count.” He said to him, “Go in peace.” But when Naaman had gone from him a short distance,

Naaman has a hard time believing his cure for leprosy could be that easy.  He almost blows it.  Really, he comes pretty close to letting his temper get the best of him.  "Whaaaa?  I could go wash in any of the nice rivers in Syria all I want, and he wants me to go in the Jordan?  That's crazy!"

I don't get a clear message from the commentaries whether the Jordan was physically dirtier or not.  Some imply it is.  It's physically possible that there's more clay in the Jordan than in the neighboring rivers.  The Jordan ran through a more fertile area of the region than many other rivers, so there would be more soil.  Also, there was more habitation along the Jordan, and to this day pollution remains a problem there.  But I think we also have to consider there is a "local pride" aspect to Naaman's reticence.  I think about if I were told to bathe in the Des Moines River as opposed, to, say, the Missouri River or the Chariton or the Little Fabius.  "Whaaaa?  I have to go bathe in some river in Iowa?  Why can't I bathe in some nice river in Missouri as opposed to one where Iowegians live?"  (We characters from the northern stretches of Missouri tell Iowa jokes all the time.  Of course the people in southern Iowa tell Missouri jokes.  In the southern reaches of the state, it's the Arkies and Okies they all make fun of.)

The medical detective in me also remembers that what we call "leprosy" in the Bible often refers to several skin diseases that, in those days, were grouped together by appearance, and all infectious.  It was a larger-encompassing diagnosis but the practical solution was to separate the victim from the community, all the same.  Clay treatments--particularly clay from regions with alkaline soil--such as places with salt flats--have been known since ancient times to relieve some of the symptoms of many itching, crusting, oozing skin lesions.

So when I read this story, I know there's probably one part ancient medicine and one part human nature in this story, and the focus is on the latter.

There are so many things in this world that we let "stupid pride" get in our way.  Especially when it comes to shame and guilt.

How different is Naaman, really from many of us?  How many of us hide behind our image as a "whatever?"  I think about how sometimes, our woundedness drives us to being overachievers and hyper-perfectionists.  We create an unreasonable image of ourselves to live up to impossible expectations.

I can just see Naaman hollering, "Does he not get who I am here?  I'm an important person!"  (It's been my experience that most times I am yelling, "Who do they think they are?" or "Who do they think I am?"  I am thinking I'm not worth a hell of a lot at the moment.) 

Even the backdrop to the story itself has a wonderful incongruity to it.  Naaman is a great man--the commander of the king's army.  I'm sure his walk, his tone of voice, his demeanor almost yells respect at anyone who gets a glance at him.  But he has a shameful secret--a skin disease that, for most people, means being cut off from the community.  His power gets him nowhere, there.  Anyone taking a look at him discovers his flaw.  So his secret really isn't that secret, and I'm sure little has been left unsaid in the commuity about it.

When are we Naaman?  When are we too stubborn to do something that's incredibly easy, if we just get over ourselves and do it, will find healing?  When do we walk with the swagger of the powerful, when, in fact, we are powerless?  What changes in us when we finally break down and do that easy thing that's been placed before us?  Good questions!

(St. Luke Displaying a Painting of the Virgin,  Guercino Barbieri, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

"I used to feel the dissonance whenever I heard Mary described as both Virgin and Mother; she seemed to set an impossible standard for any woman.  But this was narrow-minded on my part.  What Mary does is to show me how I indeed can be both virgin and mother.  Virgin to the extent that I remain "one-in-myself," able to come to things with newness of heart; mother to the extent that I forget myself in the nurture and service of others, embracing the ripeness of maturity that this requires.  This Mary is a gender-bender; she could do the same for any man."
--Kathleen Norris, "Meditations on Mary," p. 22

We've heard it thousands of times.  The Blessed Virgin Mary, or "the BVM," for short.  We say it in that same way we roar through the Lord's Prayer, almost a mumble.  "Theblessedvirginmary."  We literally call her name by rote, yet we Episcopalians have a hard time figuring out where to put Mary in our minds and hearts.

She is more than the wholly Protestant version of Mary to us, yet she's not quite the same as the Roman Catholic version of her, In a way, she defies categorization.

I totally hear where Kathleen Norris is coming from.  It's been decades since I've been a virgin, and I'd say my chances as a mother these days are slim and none. Historically, I had always been, at the least, troubled by Mary.  For one thing, from the moment I found out what a virgin was, I was pretty sure "perpetual virginity" was an awful lot to ask for.  Oh, sure, it's possible, but it's not exactly a high finite number.  The "motherhood" thing has always been lost on me, not being a mother.  Yet she is a revered figure in our church, and not to be treated trivially.


I couldn't imagine her as statuary and art shows her--the eternally youthful, eternally demure, eternally beatific beautiful young woman.  (As much as I love Michelangelo's Pieta, I still look at that statue and think, "You are way too young looking to have a 33 year old son.")  I can't figure out as much from the Bible about her as I'd like.  She speaks volumes in the Magnificat, but then she pretty much clams up from then on, Biblically speaking.  We hear about her more or less in the third person from that point on.


So how do I learn to render my own picture of Mary, when I have so little fact to go on, and so much cultural iconography?  


One way I do this is think of her as the theotokos--the God-bearer.  But that doesn't help so much in terms of really exploring that virgin business and this mother business, and what that means to me.  This is where Norris' words are the most helpful thing I've seen yet.  


Hmmm.  Virgin as "being able to start over again and again with newness of heart."  Now, at first glance, I am not Little Miss Newness of Heart.  Most of the time, I am a little on the jaded and skeptical side.  Not very good Mary-like qualities.


However, the longer I sit with Mary (or more accurately, with images of her in front of me,) the more I come to realize I am selling myself short on my abilities to have newness of heart.  I do that more than I let on.  I try starting over with a sense of awe, in the possibility that all things are made new.


When I believe all things can be made new in the Realm of God, I find I become more forgiving of myself.  Mary calls us to be open to the possibility of change within ourselves and to be receptive to that change.  When these changes are new, they take on a timelessness to them.  Mary calls for us to be a part of that timeliness.  To enter into that timeliness brings a sense of naivete with it.  In that sense, we all can be made new  We can be part of helping others be made new, through our changed lives.  The seemingly impossible can happen.  In that sense, we can begin to believe in miracles again.


But what about that "mother" business?


I think of what is common to all of us when we take care of babies.  We become so engrossed, so attuned to that baby's needs, and so understanding of its helplessness, that we literally lose ourselves in the process.  Any perceived danger, any untoward noise, we are all over it.  Our needs become less important and the baby's become sacrosanct.


How often do we ever lose ourselves in anything else, in quite that way?


To become like Mary is to lose ourselves that deeply, where we don't even notice and it doesn't even matter.  This is far different from being a "helicopter parent," a codependent, or an enabler.  An infant is truly helpless and vulnerable, and needs our care.  Helicopter parents hover over children who need to experience things on their own.  Codependents need other people to fulfill their needs in the name of giving themselves to that other person, and desire to control another person who doesn't always need our care and should be caring for themselves.  Enablers always stop people before they are about to learn a life lesson.  No one wants to stop a baby from growing, or rolling over, or crawling or walking.


Becoming a mother in the Mary sense means to give ourselves away without fear, expectations, resentment, or guilt.


I discover when I can trust God to handle the time frame and the process, when I can give myself away to a true need in a broken world, I begin to "get" Mary--her iconic visage begins to flesh out and grow real skin and have real expression on her face--but the minute I get away from that place, she ceases to be a real person in my mind and slowly morphs back to the painted statue with the beatific wooden smile, whom I can never be like because I'm simply not good enough.  She's like trying to tune in a distant TV station by twisting the antenna.  Yet I discover the longer I can hold my focus on her as a reality, the easier it becomes, and the further I lose myself in the art of finding Heaven on Earth, the easier it becomes to depict Mary as real.

Job 14:1-6: 

A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble, comes up like a flower and withers, flees like a shadow and does not last. Do you fix your eyes on such a one? Do you bring me into judgment with you? Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one can. Since their days are determined, and the number of their months is known to you, and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass, look away from them, and desist, that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days.

We are in the time of year in Northeast Missouri where the days are winding down faster and faster, and I am waking up in the dark (at least until the time change, and then I'll be waking up in the dark again for "the duration" until the winter.)

Something that happens this time of year, when I walk along the dirt road past my house, is there is this last ditch explosion of color before the landscape fades into the browns and grays of late fall and early winter.  Just a walk down my road reveals brilliant gold from at least four different varieties of sunflower, vivid red from the turning of the sumac leaves, and little hints of purple from three or four flowers.



The one i enjoy the most is ironweed.  Ironweed is an interesting plant.  It gets its name because it's nigh onto impossible to tear out of the ground.  Yet in early fall it sprouts these delicate but complicated little flowers like you see in the picture.  It's a weed close to my heart because of its paradoxical combination of toughness and delicate-ness.  When my grandmother died, and I had to order the spray of flowers for her casket, I had cultivated ironweed as the background flower in the spray.  I thought for a woman who had lived through the depression and WWII, lost a son to a hunting accident, outlived a husband seven years her junior, and looked forward to the millennium simply "to see if the world really was going to hell in a handbasket at midnight" (she was secretly disappointed it hadn't)...well, I thought it was a fitting flower.


Well, and there's no doubt I take a bit after her, myself.

As I take these walks, I find an interesting combination of exhilaration and sadness accompanies them.  I am exhilarated because these days are, in some ways, the most perfect days of the year--blue skies, green trees just barely starting to turn, hinting to salmons and yellow, a palette of colorful weeds, gently warm temperatures with a cool breeze.  The last warmth of summer combined with the cooling down of fall.  They are wonderful evenings for sitting by my chiminea and making a fire, watching the sun ebb at an angle that produces gorgeous purples, pinks, and orange.  I can hear crickets and coyotes, birds and bugs.  These are great sleeping nights, as well.  There's no need for the heat or the A/C, as long as one doesn't mind a cozy blanket on the bed.  It's an exhilaration of a brief, but very palpable perfection.

This exhilaration, however, coexists with twinges of sadness.

In that cool breeze, the smell of winter wafts up.  The world will be colder and darker.  Night will come too soon for a spell.  The green things will die.  The colors I am enjoying so much will be gone.  My pasture world will sport dullness instead of a rainbow of hues and smells and sounds.  The silence I hear in the air at the end of fall is perhaps the heaviest silence of the year--even the "dead of winter" doesn't sound as dead as the late fall silence.  Not to mention the months of September through November have not historically been the easiest months of my life.  It seems that my life carries a lifelong pattern of stuffing the most tragic events into those three months for some reason in a way that in more than one year of my life, I got to December 1 without a major death, crisis, loss, or change befalling, and went, "Whew!  Dodged the bullet THIS year!"  There's a pervasive apprehension that I have to navigate each year at this time, and some years I have not been terribly successful at it.

As a near-lifelong resident of Northeast/north central Missouri, I am attuned to the changes and the seasons here in an almost innate way.  It's almost like I feel them day by day.  I think it's why I love the liturgical calendar so much.  I think there is a cluster of cells in my pineal gland that create a peace inside of me simply by being outside and aligned with the seasons.  The liturgical calendar does this same kind of thing to my prayer and worship life.  I've said many times, the tail end of the "long green season" (Ordinary Time after Pentecost) creates a restlessness in me.

But the last few years, I have learned to look forward to Advent in a new way.  What once was a season for me filled with secular holiday baggage is now a season of expectation and surprise.

The Scripture I posted out of Job is a very real reminder to me that, for all things to be made new, it requires something rather difficult--to watch the old things pass away.  As much as I love the colors in these weeks, I am reminded that their brilliance is de facto evidence that these things are simultaneously living and passing away.

One of the things we are told in the Rule of St. Benedict is to always "keep death before our eyes daily."  This, frankly, is one of the times of year I do that best.  But Benedictine spirituality is also all about "balance" and "stability."  What I am also called to remember is that the Kingdom of Heaven is now.  The Kingdom of Heaven is among us.  Right here.  Right now.  I have written many times about how I don't really understand "the Resurrection," but one thing I do understand about what the Resurrection means is this:  Death never wins.  So in my edginess, my apprehension, my sadness about the death of 2011, and the thoughts that 2011 passing away is just another year closer to my death, whenever it is, I am reminded that the Resurrection transcends every loss, every tragedy, every death we've ever experienced.  I have seen many things die in my lifetime only to be made new in some way, and it all more or less work out in the end.  In nature, the death that comes with fall is simply a reminder that it is a state we must pass through to get to next spring--and in the Kingdom of God, "next spring" is always at hand.

(Drawing of Edward Bouverie Pusey courtesy of the Florida Educational Technology Clearinghouse)

(This post originally appeared on Speaking to the Soul, Sunday, September 18, 2011)

Readings for the Feast of Edward Bouverie Pusey, September 18:

Psalm 106:1-5
Ezekiel 36:24-28
1 Peter 2:19-23
Luke 3:10-14

Several of us in the Episcopal Church self-identify as "Anglo-Catholic" and are not a bit embarrassed to admit that we are drawn to the bright shiny objects of "smells and bells" liturgy like magpies. We have Edward Pusey to thank for much of that. He, along with John Henry Newman, were two of the brightest lights in the Oxford Movement, the period of time in Anglican church history where we first began to grapple with the more catholic roots of our Angican theological heritage. Unlike Newman, though, who packed his bags for Rome, Pusey remained Anglican, despite some serious opposition within his own theological scholarly community.

The end result of his faithfulness in remaining Anglican is now reflected in our 1979 Prayer Book, when we moved to Eucharist, rather than Morning Prayer, being the norm on Sunday mornings. It's hard to conceptualize what seems routine to any of us who came after the 1979 BCP, as once being highly controversial.

Pusey had to feel, at the least, disappointed, and at most, betrayed, by Newman's defection to Roman Catholicism, yet he stayed the course in a time of theological upheaval. His fidelity is reflected in the Collect of the Day:

Grant, O God, that in all time of our testing we may know your presence and obey your will; that, following the example of your servant Edward Bouverie Pusey, we may with integrity and courage accomplish what you give us to do, and endure what you give us to bear; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

The collect, as well as Pusey's story in relation to the Oxford Movement, is a good reminder that many things in the history of the Episcopal church started out as minority opinions but, over time, became the face of the church. Decrying slavery and ordaining women were just as unpopular notions at the time they were introduced. The "three legged stool" of Anglican theological process--scripture, tradition, and reason--is not the fastest way to move the direction of the church, but history has shown us that it is a reliable one. Most of us in 2011 can barely imagine Sunday worship without the Eucharist, but the people of the time of the Oxford movement (1833-1845) went to their grave never seeing what they had brought to the pulse of our denomination. As we moved from a more penitential theology to a more incarnational one, it opened the door for us to "live Eucharistically" in the world outside our red doors.

One of the more striking coincidences is our reading today from Ezekiel is what Claude Akins, as the Rev. Jeremiah Brown, quoted in Inherit the Wind, but with a different tack. He quoted parts of this passage in the scene when he was concerned about "saving" his daughter's soul from the perils of being in love with evolution-promoting Bertram Cates, and her refusal to believe the Stebbins boy died outside of a state of grace:

I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances. Then you shall live in the land that I gave to your ancestors; and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (NRSV)

The fictional Rev. Brown chose to use this verse to justify his self-righteousness, rather than to focus on the healing qualities of being bonded to each other in the waters of baptism. In contrast, Pusey never undercut Newman for his differences in opinion. Instead, he focused on Eucharistic worship being a unifying facet of our varied shared lives.

As we live in the tension of the newer struggles of our denomination with regard to controversies such as inclusivity, or interpreting the vagaries of the Bible in a popular culture that prefers a more literal interpretation of Scripture, let us remind ourselves to keep the focus on the transformational process of our own faith in community. Many a sermon delivered from an Episcopal Church pulpit points to the power the Eucharist can generate in both self and in community; because of the steadfastness of Edward Bouverie Pusey, we can celebrate that Eucharist more frequently.