The Purification, Presentation, and Our Confession of Sin - NOTES

I am a big fan of the liturgical reciting of the Confession of Sin.

According to the rubrics - as I have been taught - of the 1979 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, we stand for corporate prayer. In a practical sense that means that I stand a lot during the service:
We stand for the processional
for the welcome
song of praise
collect.
We sit for the readings
standing to witness as a people the proclamation of the Good News.
We sit to hear the learned response.
We stand to communally affirm that We Believe.
We remain standing so that as a people a representative can petition our prayers.

And then we kneel. From my earliest memories, I have repeated in unison with the gathered body of Christ:

Most Merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your Name. Amen.

I don't remember a time when I thought it was unimportant to recite - not read - the Confession. Reciting allows my mind to wander, to stop on the words that resonate, to think on what I might have done better or not done at all. It does not bind me up in guilt, nor does it make me feel either better or worse. For most of my 38 worshipping years, I have recited and moved on, having made right with myself in order to make right with my neighbor. 

***

Last week was the Feast of the Purification and Presentation, the Feast of Candlemas. Juan Oliver's Preacher's Study for the Feast touches on exactly what that means. According to Jewish rites, Mary comes to pay the temple tax in order to be made ritually clean after giving birth. Joseph and Mary come together to present their first born son, Jesus, as an unblemished offering to Go. We're most familiar with this Festal occasion because it gives us Simeon's graceful personal/political commentary on Emmanuel's birth, the Nunc Dimittis.

***

"Lord, you now have set your servant free
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations,
and the glory of your people Israel.

I urge you to read Juan's pericope. It's thought provoking even though we are now past the Feast. Juan digs into the cultural reasons for placing the Feast when it is and the 1st century implications of Joseph and Mary's actions, as well as the developments to the Feast by the early Church. What does the Feast's placement, so squarely within the season of Epiphany mean for 21st century listeners?

***

I had fully intended to write on the Purification last week. A chorister from my earliest years, I love singing the Nunc and it never fails to comfort in the last moments of Compline. I was struck by the idea Juan presents of a Light that is also a scourge. A Light that like fuller's soap, purifies. He writes, "So Luke stresses that we cannot enjoy the light and warmth of Christ without also welcoming the purification that it brings, a cleansing of the inner clutter of insecurity, lack of focus, deceitfulness, culling favor, and so on."

Daily living go in the way of writing, as it does when I'm not paid to do it. I was okay with setting this aside, allowing the green shoots to mature a while. 

***

Until, that is, Sunday. We knelt to recite the Confession and as we were standing to enact the Peace I experienced an epiphany of my own. 

"Have mercy on us and forgive us, that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways."

Our confession is fuller's soap. If we don't repent of the wrongdoing - petty and insignificant or all-encompassing - we  cannot have room to DELIGHT.

A progressive Christian, I have been told my whole life that God is Love, God loves me, God is still creating, God is willing us to be Love...in other words, God wants us to delight. 

As the member of an extended Jewish family, I have always taken seriously that Jews follow Torah because it delights them. To follow God's will is to offer thanks to God. 

And sot the call to repent, to be purified, to present ourselves scrubbed clean is not because God wants us to be Good - whatever that is. God wants us to have enough room in our hearts to DELIGHT and thus be willing and able to follow God's ways. 

***

A few years ago I taught a family service how to use American Sign Language to recite the Lord's Prayer. My families and I were struck by the word for sin in ASL - using both hands in loose fists but with the index finger of each hooked, make small circles from your stomach outwards. 

What happens in our bodies when we have sinned? When we have not told the whole truth or we have held onto information that should have been shared? When we call each other names? OUR STOMACHS HURT. There is literally no room for delight. We must rid ourselves of the fullness of sin in order to make room for delight. We have seen the Light, set us free. 

***

Epiphany 2A, January 15 2017

1 Corinthians 1: 1-9

I've been several places in the past week where security seems to be amped up.
I feel like I am holding my breath. Or perhaps it's more appropriate to say that I am holding my breath, clenching my teeth, and then remembering to take a deeper breath, shrug my shoulders, peel my tongue off the roof of my mouth.

On.Edge.

It's in keeping with this feeling that I read the Epistle assigned for today, Paul's greeting to the church gathered in Corinth. It's a typical introduction: grace and peace to you, who have been strengthened by God and enriched and strengthened by the testimony of Jesus Christ...

Honestly? It didn't say much to me, so I clicked to the following chapter. Ahhh. I imagine the people listening to this letter heard this opening salutation holding their breath. Because - spoilers - the next paragraph is a doozy.

If Corinth were America, security would be heightened. There would be neighbors bunched together, nervous about those on the other side. Corinth was divided.

If we were in Corinth, the Corinth to whom Paul addresses his letter, we would know this. I imagine there would be some followers of Jesus who would be expecting a smack upside the head. Those new Christians would be holding their breath, waiting for their shepherd, their mentor, to rightly admonish them.

And that's where we are, current day Americans, less than a week before a Presidential Inauguration that even the most ardent supporters of our President-to-be are waiting for with bated breath.



In a 2011 essay on this reading, Daniel Clenendin, a contemporary Christian commentator, tells us this about Christian faith, "Focusing only on our faults distorts the true nature of the church." In the same essay he quotes several writers, ancient and new, who have gone to church, participated in worship, precicely because they needed the space to find faith, not because they had faith and needed to express it.

As a denominational entity, the Episcopal Church came to the conclusion some 40 years ago to celebrate Holy Communion every week. I'm not here to tell you what you should or shouldn't find in the common celebration of "our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving." But I will note it is the one time in my week that I find myself in a group of people with whom I have little else in common.

We are waiting, here, almost holding our breath.

Breathe out. Breathe back in. Slowly. Roll your shoulders back down your back. Breathe in again. Breathe out. Scrape the tongue off the roof of your mouth. Breathe.

The world is a frightening place. We all have worries about what will happen in the next few years; many of us worry about changes already enacted by our House & Senate. We are waiting to be scolded from one side or the other.

But we are HERE. NOW.



The Psalmist writes,
I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry.

He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my
feet upon a rock, making my feet secure.

Come and see.

²He drew me up from the desolate pit, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure.

NOTES: Baptism of our Lord, January 8th, 2017

Or maybe it's the Feast of the Epiphany, celebrated?

I feel like I am in an old timey cartoon, watching Jesus' life speed by like a train. We got glimpses this year of his childhood: there's goes the birth and an angry Herod, sending out the troops to massacre the Holy Innocents. Maybe we can wave to Anna and Old Simeon at the presentation? Woohoo, circumcision! Somewhere we passed the Magi and their foreshadowy gifts and the flight into Egypt...

And now the train has stopped. Catch your breath, we get a panoramic view of the Baptism of our Lord.

Head's up: Jesus is now an adult.

Our readings for this week are descriptive:
Isaiah tells us what God will do.
Psalm 29 describes the actions of a mighty God - "Lebanon skips like a calf."
Acts succinctly retells the story from a distance of some years, to a new audience - and importantly, what Peter tells them (and us!) what actions we should take with that information.
And Matthew's Gospel gives us the actual interchange between John the Baptizer and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, speaking God's words. (My co-editor at Building Faith, Matthew, has a handy explainer for this occurrence.)


Unlike viewing the world through the windows of a speeding train, reading God's story in Scripture isn't linear. We loop and double back more like a roller coaster, often ending up in the same physical space as when we started. Surely, it is the journey that makes the difference. This same reading from Acts is also read at Easter in all three lectionary years. It is the story, if you read just a few more lines, of a massive baptism by the Holy Spirit to a group of non-Jews. We read it at the same time we read the story of Jesus' baptism...at the start of a new year.

In another big loop, here we find Peter in Joppa, the same city where Jonah fled to avoid God calling him to preach to non-Israelites. Peter is being called into Cesearea, to share daily living with, and to preach to, non-Jews.

As Christians we are called to repeat the holy cycle year after year, sometimes, as in this reading from Acts, repeating the same scripture verses within a year. But as Sir Terry Pratchett notes, "Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." And we can see this! We know that this January is not like any previous one. As we look with some trepidation to the big changes ahead of us a country, as communities, as congregations, we can also reflect upon the words of the Psalmist, written some 3,000 years ago, calling us to witness to God's terrifying acts, not simply to scare us, but to testify that this God is our God of strength and a blessing to us.

DRAFT: The Feast of The Circumcision, January 1st, 2017

2016 has been an awful year. Sure, there were individual moments that shone like the magi's star. In our family, there were births of wonderful babies, Wylie got his driver's license, Beatrice survived her first year at college, and Joe made Captain. But by and large, most people - all the people? - I talk to are ready to shut the door FIRMLY on 2016.

And the Church is ready to move into 2017, as well. Christ is born! The Nativity has happened and we are in the great pivot, waiting for the magi to show their obedience to a baby king, waiting for the grown Jesus to signal he is God-with-us, waiting for the signs and symbols of Epiphany.

BUT WE ARE STILL IN THE NATIVITY. In a weird twist of God's calendar, we actually celebrate Christ-the-baby for a solid 12 days. And so, this 8th day of Christmas, the 8th day after Jesus' birth, we find ourselves in the Temple with Joseph and Mary and the squalling, squirmy Christ child. We find ourselves here because Joseph and Mary and the baby Jesus were 1st century Jews. In accordance with the custom of their faith, they had come to the Temple to name their baby and, as a son, for him to be circumcised. The bris, as Jews today call this ceremony, is the enactment of a covenant between man and God that stretches back to Abraham. In Genesis 17, God changes Abrams name to Abraham...but the sign of the covenant with which he does that is in circumcision (Genesis 17: 9-14). 21st century American Christians call this the Feast of his Holy Name, but it is more properly the Feast of the Circumcision, because while the name is important, the act of blood-letting is more important.

As a culture, we've moved beyond circumcision. When Wylie, who is almost 17, was born, parents who chose not to have their boy children circumcised at birth were on the fringe. There are now more parents who choose genital integrity over circumcision.

So why does it matter? Why not simply refer to this day as the naming of Jesus? His name is pretty important: Jesus, a derivative of Joshua, means "he saves." He is also to be called Emmanuel, "God with us." Those names appear to his parents in dreams from Gabriel. Hebrew scripture tells us that God cares deeply about names and naming. But we also know that God cares deeply about covenants.

*As we pivot into Epiphany, into the miracles of Jesus that portend who is really is, it's important to remember where we came from.
*As we swing into the New Year, with so many changes on the personal, family, and societal levels, it's important to remember where we came from. We cannot simply shut the door on 2016. We cannot have made it to 2017 without 2016 and we would be wise to remember the year as we move bravely into the new one.

So many things to do, so few photos - let's eat!

I even thought, as the cornstarch-slicked jewels of rhubarb and strawberry filled the dish, "I should take a photo."

Um, yeah.

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crisp-like Sweet Casserole
(can't be a crisp, topping didn't, well, crisp)

Preheat oven to 350, grease baking dish

Dice 7 cups of rhubarb and strawberries - attempt to keep in the same general size family
Gently fold in:
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp lemon juice
zest of one lemon
1/2 tsp large-grain salt


Let sit while you make the crispy-like topping.
Mix together:
1/2 cup oatmeal
1/3 cup oat bran
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon* oops, I forgot this
1/2 tsp large-grain salt
**I also added 1/2 cup sliced almonds and some more oatmeal
Add 8 Tbps cold butter, diced small
Cut in butter as though making pie crust - you're done when you can squeeze a handful and the mixture stays together

Pour fruit into baking dish.  Gently cover with topping.

Bake 40-60 minutes until fruit is bubbling (you might want to put a baking sheet under your casserole), topping is crispy, and rhubarb submits willingly to a skewer.

Devoured in less than 5 minutes, piping hot and all.
Is that because the boy was hungry or because it was that good?  Does it matter?

See where I am now?

I'm not sure if writing for somewhere else will make me more likely to write here?  Promises, promises, right?

But please come see my curatorial work at Building Faith, a place to converse, critique, and keep working on Christian formation and a mission of the Center for the Ministry of Teaching at Virginia Theological Seminary.

Why I love the internet

Our Father and Mother Who Art.

Our Father and Mother,
Who are present in the world and in history,
Hallowed be your name
in all languages and religions.
May the message of your reign come to each of you
indigenous peoples, the humble peoples,
in the language of gospel
and not of the domination systems.
Let your will be fulfilled,
your will of sharing and peace,
for your indigenous peoples,
for the humble peoples,
even for our own society.
Let us live each day in the sisterly solidarity
that produces abundance
and living joyfully together
that all may have bread.
Forgive our massacre of cultures,
and our colonizing evangelism.
And let us not fall into the temptation of fearing to be engaged,
of fearing to offend, of fearing to suffer,
But deliver us from the violence of consumerism,
and the violence of the forces of power and domination.
For Yours is the Future, Yours the Reign
that is Coming,
Yours the Glory and Goodness for ever and ever.
AMEN

(Translated from the Spanish & doxology added, by the Rev. Grant Mauricio Gallup, Casa Ave Maria, Managua, Nicaragua, 1994)

I'm just going to stumble through this

How you celebrate Mothers' Day is not just about how your mother parented (or not), but also about how you perceive and receive your mother's parenting. Too wordy? What I mean is, my mom is probably a great mom to lots of other people, and I actually really like that. But she was not a good mom for me. I love that there have been other young women in my mom's life that she has been able to competently mother. Be that as it may, I have a difficult relationship with her. I struggle with her. She forgets that she struggled with me. I repeat the same mistakes with my daughter, but I try to be a little more aware. I am certainly more vocal. We talk A LOT in our house. As a mother, you cannot be all things to your children. As a mother inadequately mothered, sometimes I think you have no way of knowing what's adequate and what's not.

There are memories that I absolutely treasure of my mom. She was fantastic in the middle of the night when I retched with coughing. She allowed me to follow my whims and she pushed me to keep swimming, even when I hardly had time for it. She drove me everywhere, or if not everywhere, she found someone to take me.

But my mother lacked boundaries. She lacked perception about other people. She asked too much of me.

I know how to drive now, I know how to drive my kids to do what they need to do and how to allow them do what they want to do. But knowing boundaries, self-awareness, where I end and they begin...those are places where I do not have an adequate template. Maybe none of us do.

So, as we approach this mom-tacular weekend, I want to do what I do every mothers' day. Make a quick call to my mom, preferably an email. And then ignore the whole thing.

A Field Guide to American Houses

My week is full of silly stuff like fixing the broken strut on the car and coloring my hair and taking kids to the doctor's.

Free of encumbrances, I would set off, brave explorer, for the wilds of Bay St Louis. I'd flip expertly through these pages and tag each Craftsman, Prairie, Double-Shotgun, Dog-Run, Queen Anne, Greek Revival house as I passed by.

Assuming no wild weather had set me from my path, I would take myself off for a cup of coffee, a toast to myself, a nod to no one in particular. "Merci, chere Bryn Mawr, de me permettre, enfin, de profiter de ma langue vernaculaire!"

I have a confession to make.

When David announced this morning that Clelie will be ordained on June 4th and that she will subsequently no longer be on our prayer list as "our seminarian" and moreover, she will be the curate at St Timothy's Southaven, I just about screamed. I did clench my hands. I made myself take a deep breath.

I am jealous.

More than jealous, I am covetous.

Once again, woman in the wilderness.

The night before...

the first day of Sunday School.

Yes, it is the first Sunday in Lent. Yes, we have offered other formation programs, but not very well.

Yes, it is also daylight saving time.

Yes, I am totally screwed and will need an iv drip of java.

However, I know three things:

Nothing and no one is ever too late for God.

I have 2 rocking teachers along with my fine, if somewhat lame, self. They are just as loved and loving of God as I and equally okay with jumping in somewhat half-assed.

Tomorrow afternoon will involve wine and sunshine.

Shalom, ya'll!

Miserable misery me

Well, not really. BOY have I been slacking in the blogging department.

Slacking everywhere, really.

I am going to endeavor to do better.

Nothing of note at the moment, but even logging back on is a start :)

Aarrggghhhh!!! or, my Oscars rant

SHOULDERS BACK LADIES!!!

A little bit of lipstick won't hurt you, neither would a smile.

Skinny legged tuxedos are fab, but gentlemen, please. Facial hair must be groomed. Keanu Reeves, hello?

I so do.not.do nude colored clothing.

Thank you, Zoe Kravitz, for giving my daughter a perfect example of how to be daddy's girl.

found poem

in cleaning out my gmail (because procrastination takes many turns)

The Bright Field
~R.S. Thomas

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

from my class for further thinking

I hope I never stop growing in my understanding of the Gospel. God has always been the same, and the Gospel has always been with us--what changes is my understanding of the impact it has on me, my life, the people around me, etc. Perhaps 'emerge' is the backward way of seeing it. The Gospel exists and we enter into it. It 'emerges' to us as we learn to navigate through it--as we discover new doors and new hallways. What it has to reveal is waiting for us to discover. It's exciting, really, isn't it??
I think this was from Kevin Kinsey, week 1 question 1

kids and fooling around with picassa

Ack! I actually looked at the date of the last entry and am SHOCKED to see it was in April!!
I don't even have a very good excuse for my laziness. Just bein' a slacker...

why in tennis is zero called love?

Because love is more than zero, it is the opposite of zero, it is everything. When you love the world loves with you. Didn't someone famous say that? At any rate, I found something else to love. (Perhaps fickleness is a detrimental side-effect of love? And do you notice, as I did because I had to use spellchecker, that word det-ri-mental? It actually comes from the middle english/latin and means "loss" but as an adjective it looks more like a state-of-being, a place inside your mind.)

So here is where my fickle heart resides this morning:

Okay, my blogging skills are a bit thin - click to read this NYTimes blog

You rock, Maira Kalman.

I'd like to interview you and ask your favorite dessert and peek in your closet and run my hands over your paints and brushes.

Next Stop, Grand Central was a favorite of Wylie's for years. How could it not be? Rhyming, trains, New York?

Maira Kalman has an ear for the outrageous and a heart for the disenfranchised. There is nothing of loss and everything of mental spark.

Maira Kalman is the opposite of zero.

**I had forgotten that she redid The Elements of Style.

Is it possible to be in love with the comments on a strange man's blog?

Well? Is it?
Head on on over to the Postulant's site and scroll down to "On not immanentizing the eschaton" and read the comments.

Swooning.

Come on, he had me at "immanentizing"...

Poetry schmoetry

It fits the bill and we're goin'


Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Now it's Turkish delight on a moonlit night

Every gal in Constantinople
Lives in Istanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've a date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul (Istanbul)
Istanbul (Istanbul)

Even old New York was once New Amsterdam
Why they changed it I can't say
People just liked it better that way

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

So take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works
That's nobody's business but the Turks

Istanbul

Istanbul (not Constantinople) can be found on the They Might Be Giants album "Flood"

Didja know that They Might be from Lincoln, Mass?

Ohhhh

NINE DAYS IN APRIL: VCCA
by Barbara Crooker

I
In Vermeer's paintings, light is always falling
just like here, in sweet Virginia, where spring's
already come, lilacs and phlox, soft air
on bare arms, descending. Peepers are calling
from the trees, there are dogwoods, white
and pink, everywhere, as if a cloud
of butterflies has come to ground. Haloed
in hazy green, the woods are coming back to life.
At twilight, the scent of lilacs drifts
through the open screen, the sky turns lavender,
and this first day's work is put away.
Nothing but false starts today,
first lines begun that simply go nowhere;
filling yellow paper with my erratic script.

II
Filling yellow paper, my erratic script
wanders over the blue ridges and green fields
where cows munch green grass, that yields
rich milk, like Vermeer's maid, whose hips,
wrapped in a thick blue apron, are rolling hills
themselves. The earthen jug, the crusty bread, the buttery
light glazes her face and arms, spills
onto the table and floor. The thing about memory's
that it's a thief, stealing what it should
preserve, the past, stop all the clocks.
I'm trying to remember what it felt like to be five,
first days of school, the smell of library paste, arriving
late, the stomach butterflied, new crayons in their box.
I'm trying to be good.

III
I'm trying to be good, write 500 words a day
even though outside the sun is streaming
like a thousand dandelions gleaming,
and the sky's the blue of washed chambray.
The purple prose of redbud trees is
scribbled and scrawled outside the lines.
Hidden in the grass, violets, buttercups shine,
but gosh, how hard this writing business
is--it's easy enough to just repeat, a slick
lyric, a villanelle or two--
What challenges are there that I've not tried,
that also calls to something from inside,
blends head and heart as Vermeer drew
the light? A crown of sonnets just might do the trick.

IV
A crown of sonnets sure would do the trick,
could capture this experience--away
from home, nine days to see if I could pay
attention to myself for just a bit.And so, today, I took a break and drove
to town, a thrift shop, bought a raw silk
blouse of Chinese blue, a tee shirt swirled in gilt
and glitter, earrings of gears and sequins that I love.
Came back, wrote for hours, went for a massage,
felt all the knots along my shoulder blades untie,
walked down the winding road, the mustard
blooming, thick as butter
spread on bread. All I
know is: a day like this is nothing but a blessing.

V
What a blessing it is, to be in this space,
no cleaning off the desk when school bus comes.
The only sounds, the birds and bees that hum
and dither-which flower should we light on next?
In the woods, light falls, reflects off dogwoods,
rafts of phosphorescence, illuminations, decrescendos
of lace. Each morning, I do yoga, get the blood
moving, then back inside to dig in memory's mine.
Each sonnet's getting harder now to write,
but the challenge has been thrown down like a glove
or crumpled petals littering the ground. I'd like to prove
that I can meet this task, and take delight
as one word, then another, falls in line.

VI
One word, and then another, falls in line
like geese wedging their way down the sky,
a vast scroll of paper yet unwritten. I
roll a sheet in the typewriter, and begin
again, to try and pin down what's elusive,
some insistent bird that whistles from a bush,
"Here, here, here I am," then vanishes,
while I am left to struggle with the narrative.
Like Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window,
I wish the light would flood in from the left,
paint me slickly gold, tell me what comes next.
But I am in the dark, no map, no text,
just following my heart as night falls soft,
covers us with her obsidian wing.

VII
Night covered us with her blueblack wing,
but now it is the morning, the last day--
here, the closest thing to paradise on earth. May
I be truly grateful for this stay, though squeezing
these last lines is getting tougher.
Last night, we had a concert, Brahms
and Currier on grand piano, wine on the lawn,
Caesar salad, grilled tuna, and strawberries for supper.
The lilt of southern vowels, drawling--
But this last sonnet's waiting to be woven,
threading the radiance of spring, memory's snapshots,
pictures at an exhibition, birdsong snippets,
into the poem's loom, the descant of love.
In Vermeer's paintings, light is always falling.