You Actually Are God's Gift To the World - The 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

There was once a baker who was so fair, he made sure to measure each item so that everyone got exactly what they ordered. He was thought to be so honest - and he was - and a good baker at that, so he was prosperous. This man was very proud of his reputation as a good baker and as a fair, fair man.

One day a woman came in seeking a dozen cookies and when she did not get a "baker's dozen" of 13, she left the bakery angry and uttered some prophetic words.

In the story "The Baker's Dozen", set here in Albany no less, a theme unfolds. That theme is generosity. Our baker, Van Amsterdam, was so honest that no one was cheated. That said, no one got any extra either and that was something he was to pay a price for as we are to find out.

As the story continues, after this woman leaves his store, his business goes downhill fast. It was not until he had a dream in which he gave out extra that his success and his joy, returned to him. The essence of the tale is that there is always enough, but it is also clear that humility plays a role in generosity.

In our first reading from the book of Sirach, we hear:

My child, conduct your affairs with humility,
and you will be loved more than a giver of gifts.
Humble yourself the more, the greater you are,
and you will find favor with God.

Conduct your affairs with humility! Humble yourself the more! These are admonitions that are not exactly in sync with our culture and society. Fairness has an almost excessive value at times... and we see where that got our Albany baker, Van Amsterdam. How do we learn to live this way?

Luke's Gospel for today really cuts to the chase, when Jesus tells us: 

“When you hold a lunch or a dinner,
do not invite your friends or your brothers
or your relatives or your wealthy neighbors,
in case they may invite you back and you have repayment."

That is an example of how fairness can become quid pro quo and anything but justice at that point.

If you listen to today's Gospel clearly, you might feel challenged. I know that I do! Once again, in statements that are completely antithetical to our contemporary culture and society, we are told to take the lowest place. In fact, we should naturally choose this... which is what we would do if we cooperated with God.

I guess the one name that comes to mind most quickly for me when I ponder this is St. Francis of Assisi. There are many others in the Great Cloud of Witnesses that is our communion and our hope, many of them unnamed. How do we make ourselves low without abandoning who we are?

Which brings me back to our baker friend, Van Amsterdam... He was not to simply lay prostrate before God and neighbor saying "I'm not worthy." No, he had to use his gifts as baker, given freely by God, in a most generous way. That is humility.

Sadly we tend to think of meekness or humility as some kind of false piety and selflessness. In fact, it is quite the opposite. We are called and loved to be fully who we are, expressing richly all the gifts which God had given to us with such generous love. And when we stand in the place of who we are loved into being, expressing those gifts, with generosity and freedom - then we know we are all actually God's gift to the world.

That is really the low seat, the last place and we can only progress in our spiritual journey from that very place. At least that is what I am told - this does not come easily to me.

In any event, this week, as you go forth and you think about justice and fairness in regard to who is in and who is out (orthodox versus progressives, liberals versus conseratives), who belongs and who doesn't (Undocumented workers, LGBT folks or Muslims, who deserves something (the poor, unemployed, uninsured) and who doesn't, maybe you, like I, will refer to these readings and prayers from this weekend. And when doing so, maybe we can all give out that extra cookie with joy and wild abandon and see what happens.

I think all sides might benefit from giving an extra something to the other, but that we must remember that God always uses the poor, infirm, the marginalized to show us the way. Remember that whole "fairness" thing?

It is the hardest work - to be who we are and to do it without getting in our own way, and without getting in God's way. It is then and only then that we are God's gift to the world... and to one another.

My Katrina Memories - It is never to late to hope, to help and to change.

(Lately I have posted the same content to both this blog and my parish blog, but today is different. If you want to read some thoughts on St. Augustine on his feast day, visit this link.  I have elected to not post any images with this post - images f my trip or images of what we have seen so often. Let those latter ones move you. Peace.)

Here we are... 5 years after Hurricane Katrina, an event which remains a sad and tragic scar on the body of our country. Nature is nature, so there was no way to stop the hurricane, but what ensued... Well, it would have been a bear to manage (note recent gulf oil disaster), but my personal opinion is that some of the worst came forth via this moment in history. 

My view of what happened during the days of the storm is shaped by where I was while it happened. As some of you know, I was out of the country at the time and I watched it from afar, often in tears and feeling like I could not process what I was seeing.

On Wednesday August 24, I boarded an American airlines flight at JFK airport and headed to Miami where I was to connect with my flight to Lima, Peru. It was my dream of a lifetime trip to Peru and Bolivia. We arrived in Miami on time but our Lima flight was delayed by a few hours as rain began to fall. The one thing I remember about the wait was that I kept seeing rats in the waiting area for the gate.

Finally we boarded and left as the rain continued to pelt the plane and the wind blew hard - the rain and wind that was the leading edge of Hurricane Katrina.

Once we took off I fell into a restless sleep as the overnight flight carried me south and west to my destination. I awoke tired and cranky as we landed on Thursday the 25th. I do not recall having any thought or idea of what Katrina was and how it might impact us all; in fact, I had forgotten it all and was glad to finally be in South America for the first time.

While I am sure that I watched CNN International from my various hotel rooms from Thursday through Sunday,  I have no recollection of hearing about the storm. Honestly, selfishly, I was on a journey that I had dreamed of from the time I was 8 years old... that is what I remember mostly.

Lima left me cold -  I wished that I had skipped it altogether. I was there on Thursday alone and I left for Cuzco on an early morning flight on Friday. My time in Cuzco was magical and surpassed my expectations... which were significant. Again, I know I watched CNN but I recall nothing of the hurricane news.

On Sunday I left Cuzco and headed to the Valle Sagrado, which was sacred and like heaven to me. On Monday, I boarded the luxury train to Machu Piccuh (hah and now I am in a very different economic category!) and the heart of the real dream that called out to me from childhood.

It was an extraordinary day and fodder for a different blog post. What I do remember - vividly - is that I got into my hotel room after a hardcore day of hiking around the ruins and turned on the television.

Oh. My. God.

What I recall vividly was hearing the voice over of Jeanne Meserve as she described the horrific scenes that showed the result of the levees being breached. I dropped back onto my bed, in this super luxury hotel and watched in horror and with a sense of complete dissonance. Meserve's voice kept cracking - she could not keep it together and that truly struck me.

I had dinner with some people I had met and while I wanted to talk about what I saw, I got the impression that they did not. Upon returning to my room I stayed up way too late, watching, struggling to comprehend and crying a lot.

It was such a bizarre experience to be in a place that many people would consider "third world" and to see what I was seeing happen in the US. New Orleans is a place that I had been to many times and I could not imagine that what I was seeing was real... although it clearly was all too real. 

What did this say about the U.S. as a society and culture? My mind and heart were reeling.

With too little sleep I awoke early on Tuesday and headed back to the ruins. What happened to me that day is a story unto itself, not meant for this post. Images of what I had seen on television haunted me however and will always be a backdrop to my dream journey.

Tuesday night had me returning to Cuzco just long enough to sleep. I awoke very early again and so tired from my physical exertion in the high altitude and from too much television late at night and early in the morning. Today I was off to a 10 hour train journey to the shores of Lake Titicaca and I looked forward to the rest and peace of such a trip.

A driver picked me up but we had to pick up another traveler at another hotel and he was running late. My anxiety had me cursing him but he finally got in the van and we started to chat. He was an African-American man in his 30's who had chucked his career in finance in San Francisco for months of South American travel. Unlike me, he was wisely traveling in moderate style.

As we drove to the railway/bus station, we made small talk and I said something about Katrina and how horrible for the dead and missing of New Orleans.

His face went ashy and he looked shaken. As it happened, he grew up there and his mom and grandmother still lived there; he had no access to TV and he had no idea. His fear and anxiety grew as we drove along and the van became silent. I was so sorry that I was the one to tell him and to do so in the way that I had. We arrived at the station and he took off towards the bus area, hoping to make some calls to reach his NO family. I have always wondered what happened.

The rest of the trip contains blurred images of seeing the places of my dreams colliding with the scenes of horror and despair that I would see on TV. It continued to remain surreal and sad that I was watching this unfold from so far away and I could not comprehend the enormity of suffering and tragedy along the Gulf coast.

We all know the rest of the story. It was awful and not much has changed. The people of the gulf deserved better then and they deserve better now.

80% of New Orleans was under water. 1800 people died. Every life in that city and in that region was changed. 18,000 people lived in the 9th Ward; now 1800. Wow.

What has this taught us?

I guess this post does not have a point other than to talk about my own recollection of this event, the strange backdrop and the enduring heartache.

That enduring heartache is however combined with enduring hope. It is never to late to begin.

What Have We Become?

What have we become? I am most astounded by the 22 people who did nothing. Silence does equal death. Imagine a Muslim shopkeeper refusing service to a Christian or a Jew? The outcry would be loud, swift and overwhelming. What have we become?

The Narrow Gate, The Holy Mountain - A Different Viewpoint on the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

"Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." Matthew 22:36-40

Have you ever climbed a mountain? Or at least taken a hike through the hills? The path is often very narrow. I am a bit obsessed with mountain climbing although I have not really done it; I have read so much about Mount Everest, I can't even begin to tell you. I guess what strikes me is that so often the climbers go single file, but they are frequently tethered to one another in some way and completely interdependent.

More simply put - such a journey is not an solitary independent act. Yes, we may go one before the other, but we must remain connected.  I climbed a small mountain once, part of the path is pictured above... It was so hard and while I tried to do it alone, I quickly learned that I simply could not do so.

Back to today, yes - I am aware that the Gospel passage that I begin with was from Friday and that today's Gospel is from Luke. Like our own journey, connected to one another, the Gospels too are interconnected.

Today Jesus tells us about the narrow gate; Isaiah tells us about God's holy mountain. And these matters are not unrelated to Friday's Gospel in which Jesus reminds his disciples of the greatest commandments. This, by the way, is also known as the Shema or the Sh'ma Yisrael . The Shema is at the heart of Judaism and we must never forget that Jesus Christ was born as a Jew, lived as a Jew and died as a Jew, despite the fact that His legacy is Christianity.

So what does this have to do with the narrow gate?

Perhaps everything.

The narrow gate is a way that we can turn things around in our broken human state and justify excluding people. Now it is one thing when Jesus' admonishes us, but it can be another when we use Jesus' name to admonish others.

This all leaves me wondering about how to climb the Himalayan heights of God's Holy Mountain. It cannot be done alone and it requires surrender to the grace to be lifted to the mountain and the humility to both drag and be dragged by all brothers and sisters.

Surrender. Humility. Grace. Community. Service.

So maybe the narrow gate is not the "who is in, who is out" statement that it appears to be, but rather a call to unity and love. Acting as if we have done something righteous to get in might be the first and most deadly trap of ego; it is done for us, save our response. All is response to God's loving and persistent call and embrace.

Whose hand will you hold on the way up the path to the narrow gate on the holy mountain? Whose hand will hold yours?

The Realization of What is Hoped For, Evidence of Things Not Seen - the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time

"And Isaac brought her [Rebecca] to the tent of Sarah, his mother. All the days in which Sarah lived, there was a cloud attached to the entrance of her tent. Since she died, the cloud ceased; and when Rebecca came, the cloud returned. All the days in which Sarah lived, the doors of the entrance [to her tent] were open to the wind (ruah)….  And all the days in which Sarah lived, there was a blessing sent through the dough [with which she baked]…. All the days in which Sarah lived, there was a light burning from one Shabbat evening to the next Shabbat evening…." (Genesis Rabbah 80:16 on Genesis 24:67).- From Stories of our Ancestors at MyJewishLearning.com. 

The idea of a cloud at the entrance to Sarah's tent intrigues me. Are you reminded of the mystery of God and the power of the unseen and transcendent when you consider this? I know that I am. 

We are celebrating the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time this weekend - with themes of ancestors and of faith in the readings. And we do specifically hear about our ancestors, Abraham and Sarah!

In the First Reading from Wisdom we are given a short reminder of the faith of our ancestors. Each generation, from one to the next, is connected and interdependent. We stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us. Someday we may be giants or at least regular sized ones, whose shoulders are the standing ground of the future. It is communion - we are all connected and it matters.

In the Hebrews reading from St. Paul gets straight to the point:

Brothers and sisters:
Faith is the realization of what is hoped for
and evidence of things not seen.
Because of it the ancients were well attested.

Faith and our ancestors... always intertwined, connected. This reading is pretty long but the point is clear if we pay attention. Abraham and Sarah were called out to places that they had no information about. And what did they do?

Off they went! Paul says: "By faith Abraham obeyed..." I am always on about the etymology of obedience, which tells us that obedience is rooted in listening.  As I understand faith and the journey of Abraham and Sarah, listening would have been required. Yet it is something that it is hard for us to do as humans, isn't it?

The focus is on Abraham but it is Sarah that captivates me today. It was one thing for Abraham to listen but clearly they were in this together and she had to have her own faith. I love the imagery of the cloud before her tent. It reminds me that we have to enter into the mystery with faith in order to gain the wisdom.

The midrash in the first paragraph reference reminds us of ruah - or wind. Wind and wisdom are often symbolically connected in Scripture, think Pentecost! See this, from that first source:

These characteristics of Sarah’s (and later Rebecca’s) tent are parallel to characteristics of the Tabernacle and Temple. Sarah’s bread is like the shewbread, the light prefigures the Menorah, and the wind resembles the Holy Spirit, ruah hakodesh. In particular, the cloud mentioned in the midrash alludes to the cloud of the Shekhinah, the personified aspect of God that is imminent. The Shekhinah is an aspect of God specifically associated with the Tabernacle and Temple. The book of Exodus ends with the completion of the Mishkan and the Israelites witnessing a cloud descending upon the tent (Exodus 40:34-38). Linguistically, the word Mishkan (literally, a dwelling place) has the same root as Shekhinah, and both of these terms draw on the idea that God can be experienced as close-by, not only as transcendent. 

Our faith invites us into the cloud and we, like our ancestors, can experience God as close-by... with that very faith and promise that has been offered to us over the ages.

The very long and powerful Gospel from Luke offers us many things to consider.  First of all - following our theme of faith - real faith, Jesus says what he so often says... "Do not be afraid..."

Do. Not. Be. Afraid.  Sit with that, listen with obedience.

We are told using many metaphors, to be ready, be prepared, have faith. And we are also told this:

"...Much will be required of the person entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”

This is a reminder for us all- we have been entrusted with much by the virtue of being Christians. It has been given to us and much will be required. This does not mean constant suffering, it means many things, not the least of which is the obedience and faith that is demanded of us who have enjoyed every fruit of grace.

So where does this leave us?  What is required? Perhaps it is as simple as it is complicated. We need to listen, we need to be obedient, we need to have faith, we need to go where we are called - which puts our obedience, faith and listening into action. And we must know that the cloud of mystery and wisdom will guide us to where we are called and that we must not be afraid.

As with most things we are invited to by God, it is easier said than done. With faith in that which is unseen but yet most evident, let us go forth.

Devotions and Other Matters - A Meme

My friend, Catholic writer Paul Snatchko of Between the 'Burgh and the City tagged me for a meme that has been working its way around the Roman Catholic blogging circles. Then a short while later, another fine Catholic writer, Kim Luisi of Faith, Fiction and Flannery tagged me as well. The gist of the meme is to reveal your favorite devotions. Now I do not consider myself extremely devotional, but I do have some regular practices and you are about to learn what they are!

The Rosary - If I were to retrace my steps of return to the Roman Catholic Church over 20 years ago, you would find the path of the Rosary. (In fact I have retraced some of those steps, you can check that out right here.) I usually pray the Rosary once a day and often in my car on the way to work. I have many Rosary beads, but I usually pray with the very beautiful ones pictured below. They were made for me by Episcopalian blog friend, Kirkepsicatoid (aka Maria Evans) who I have had the pleasure of meeting in person. I'm pretty ecumenical!

My Morning Prayers - I don't know if this counts as a devotional in the truest sense of the word, but I am listing it here. God has given me many gifts, but consistency or a sense of real discipline is not among them. I have trouble with regular patterns, what can I tell you. The one thing I do daily, almost without fail, is to awaken with words of thanks to God on my lips and then I spend some time in prayer. I read The Magnificat (where the aforementioned Paul Snatchko works!), Richard Rohr's Radical Grace, I spend some time just being quiet and I write in my journal. At various times of the year, such as Advent and Lent, I might add something else, but the other things are my daily acts.

Now for what it is worth, I found that when I was in the hospital recently, I could not touch one of those books. I had Mark bring them to me... they sat right on my table, unopened. For some reason, I turned to my phone and decided to use the iBreviary app that I had downloaded.  Each day, I did use that to pray instead of my books or journal. As it happens, the day after I got out of the hospital, Dennis Poust interviewed me for an Our Sunday Visitor article about Catholic apps - what timing. You can read that right here if you wish.

Novenas - For various feast days, I do write my own novenas and pray with them. For those who might not know what a novena is, it is a 9 day prayer.  Right now I am making a novena to St. Dominic, his feast day is August 8 and he is very special to me.  This is a famous painting of St. Dominic and St. Francis meeting. They were contemporaries, but I am not sure that there is evidence to support that they really met.

Sharing Faith Online - Like Paul, I am listing this as a devotion. When I first started blogging with my old (long gone) personal blog, I inched into faith posts. Then I did more and more. I began my church blog and that was another outlet. Now I often cross-post on this blog and my church blog... I am fully outed as a person of faith.

This has been a rich 3+ years of blogging and I have made many friends of faith, Roman Catholic and beyond. In particular, I have a number of Episcopalian blog friends - I actually connected with them first, way back in 2007. There are also people of other Christian denominations along with folks of many other traditions.

It has been a great blessing to meet many of my faith blogging friends. The support and love and prayer that comes from this is a gift beyond measure and important part of my faith life and practice. I present some photographic evidence of such meetings...

Paige and Mimi meet the day before Paige's wedding, May 2009.

That's me with Grandmere Mimi, Rev. Tobias Haller BSG and James Teets, February 2007.

I went to mass at Fr. Austin Fleming's (The Concord Pastor) parish in May 2009.

The top photo is of Jane, Paige and Paul, May 2009. The lower one is of me with Diane Roth in November of 2007.

In September 2009 I got to meet Deacon Greg Kandra (above) and the next day I met Mike Hayes(for the 2nd time) and the many-times-mentioned Paul Snatchko (below).

Ah, here is another shot from Paige's May 2009 wedding - Mimi, Laura, PJ, Jane and Paul.

At this point I have met and attended mass with Rev. Lee Crawford. This was the first time, when she was still in northern Vermont, summer 2009.

Rosary maker, Episcopalian, pathologist and blogger Maria Evans with me.

When Maria was visiting, Laura Lewandowski came over from Vermont for a visit. She also was here in April and then Laura kindly drove over to visit with me while I was in the hospital.

My beautiful and beloved Lindy. She visited NYC from Texas last summer and I got to meet up with her at the Cloisters. Now she lives in China!

I think I made my point about faith blogging and being devotional!

OK, that's a lot of photos and tags. Phew - I am done in. In any case, the whole idea of forming an online faith community really means something.

Who will be next? I tag Mary DeTurris Poust, Peace Garden Mama, Paul Brian Campbell SJ, and Not A Virgin But Occasionally A Martyr. 

Or anyone else who might like to take this on!