Barricade putter-uppers, ayuh

A few days before Christmas, that time when we look and see the sacred in life around us, Henri Nouwen notes that  Quite often out of an intimate encounter with God, encounters with other human beings become possible...If you are the beloved of God, and if you start thinking about other people's lives, you start realizing that they are as beloved as you are.

Hmmm. Another reminder that Jesus didn't come to leave us alone.

Jesus did not come just to tell us that we are doing such a great job that no adjustments are necessary. While he came to tell us that God loves us as we are, he also revelaed that God does not leave us as we are. Jesus came to make a difference in our lives.

And one place where that difference is struggling to be made has to do with the barriers that people like you and I erect between ourselves and other people...those other beloved people Nouwen invites us to think about today. We like those barriers we build. They give us some measure of control. They tell us who we are and who we are not. They tell us that we are separate from each other, maybe a little better, which makes us feel good. They also simplify our lives by not letting others get too, too close.

We like the barriers and so we keep erecting new ones. We're good barricade putter-uppers. But God is just not into barriers, including barriers between us and him. Jesus's life was about removing our separation from God's hopes and God's beloved people.

If we would welcome the Christ child, then let us remove the barriers and boundaries that divide us from one another. Look around, you might see a few that could come down. God in our lives and homes and parish and community loves us as we are, but does not leave us as we are.

Before We Were Born...

Today marks a week since the hideous events in Newtown, Connecticut, and at 9:30 this morning many churches across the country, including St. Alban's, will be ringing bells to remember those who were killed on that tragic day.  I have read that there is some controversy over how many times the bells should be rung - 26 times, for the little children, still babies, really, and for the brave teachers and administrators who tried to save them? 27 times, to include the mother of the killer? 28 times to include the killer himself?

As I read Henri Nouen's offering for today it got me thinking about love, and about forgiveness, two words that ring out during Advent and that ring out in the gospels.  We are told of God's extravagant love for his creation, of God's willingness to forgive those who lose their way.  The prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah remind us that God knew us before we were born, and saw the potential in each of us, that God loved us even then.  How we human beings have struggled over the centuries with this notion of God's love and forgiveness!

Could God love Adam Lanza, with his hideous deeds of last Friday?  Could God possibly forgive such horror?  I think the answer is yes, God loves this young man, but abhors, as do we all, what he did.  Can God forgive him?  I think the answer to that is yes, as well.  Do we struggle with that?  Yes; I think if we are completely honest with ourselves, yes we do.  Right now I am so shattered with sadness, so agonizing for the families of all those who died, so angry at Adam Lanza, so angry at our country's lack of strict control of automatic weapons, so angry that we do so little for those suffering from mental illness, that forgiveness for any of it seems far off to me.

But we are called to forgive, aren't we? We are called to love.  We may feel precious little of either love or forgiveness right now, but our task is before us: to try.  We may not understand God's ways; we may not even like God's ways sometimes, but we can at the same time thank God for those ways.  We none of us, pray God, will ever do anything close to what that troubled young man did last Friday, but we all, each and every one of us, stand in need of God's love and of God's forgiveness.  Maybe that is what we need to hold before us today even as we remember those lives that were lost a week ago.

God's blessing be with you,

Audrey

Cooking Up Some Clarity

In mid October, my mother came to stay with me to await the birth of my niece.  My mom is an excellent cook, but this is not a trait that has traveled down the family line to me.  Somehow, some folks are able to make tossing a meal together look like the easiest, simplest thing in the world.  I always get frazzled while cooking, unable to multi-task in that particular forum, and by the end of it the kitchen looks like a warzone and everything is slightly overdone.

So on the day my mother arrived, she offered to cook dinner, and I gratefully accepted.  She was making something relatively simple, and she handily improvised every time she needed a piece of basic kitchen equipment that I didn’t own.  All of this was humming along smoothly, until she asked me for the salt.  I pointed to the pinch bowl on my counter.  Empty.  I went to the cabinet where I thought I remembered storing a box of kosher when I moved in.  Nothing.  My mother looked at me somewhat mournfully.  “You don’t even have salt?”

I tried to explain that cooking was complicated and took up a lot of time and I was really very busy running around between two congregations so most of the time I’d just pick something up on the way home because there was always something else to do.  It all sounded like a good excuse in my head, but my mom pointed out to me just how unhealthy these habits are.  She also pointed out that I wasn’t going to be any good to anyone at either of my congregations if I got sick because I eat poorly or was overly stressed because I was broke.  She was trying to give me a lesson in putting first things first.

It’s similar to what Nouwen says about placing the urgent before the important, echoing what a mentor of mine refers to as “the tyranny of the urgent.”  How often do we wake up in the morning and think, “ah, today I have to get X important thing accomplished,” and then we find ourself going to bed at night thinking, “Somehow I didn’t have time for that, where did my day go?”  We run around doing a million different things, and we overlook basic but critical tasks like taking good care of ourselves.

Our minds get all cluttered up, and then it becomes hard to see the most important thing in the closet through all the crud we’ve stashed in there.  Somehow we need to be able to get rid of the clutter, to clean things up, to purify our minds so that we can see the important rather than get distracted by the urgent.  The talk of purification in the Bible can sometimes seem so heavy and even judgmental, but I think “purification” is really just about clarity of purpose.  Clarity of priorities.  Getting rid of the clutter to focus on taking care of ourselves and others, “so that you have genuine mutual love, loving one another deeply from the heart.”  

So I encourage you to get rid of some of your clutter today.  Me?  I’m going to release feeling compelled to watch the obsessive news tonight.  And then I’m going to ignore Nouwen’s suggestion to skip the salt, and bust out that pinch bowl of kosher to cook a healthy dinner instead. Any recipe suggestions?

Claiming the Peace of God...in the real and broken world

When I conceived of this little project of an Advent blog about reclaiming the Peace of God as we prepare for Christmas, three words I never imagined using here were “military assault rifle.”

With some conviction I stood with you on the floor of the St. Alban’s nave last Sunday and said in response to the question of “Where is God in this tragedy?” that God is in our response to the hurricane and to the earthquake and to the unspeakable tragedy. I believe that is true. God is in our response of holding children close, of applauding their best efforts, of nurturing them in times of joy and of trouble. God is in our response in reaching out in compassion to the families of victims of violence and in our prayers for the new little angels on the streets of heaven.

And God is in our response to the question that the seekers asked John the Baptist in the lesson for the Third Sunday in Advent. As he preached the need for repentance, those who came to John asked: "What then should we do?"

What then, what now, should we do? What should I do?

I’ve been freshly convinced that I should join the fight, and a fight it will be, to ban the production and sale of military-style assault weapons.

Unexpectedly, this Advent this may well be the most urgent need, and the most fruitful opportunity, if we’re serious about reclaiming the Peace of God. I can’t imagine that God, coming freshly into our midst this Christmas, will be anything but appalled at the arming of our communities with these weapons of destruction. Weapons which again and again have proved, in the hands of the disturbed, to be uniquely lethal to the lives of God’s innocents.

In the days ahead, I won’t claim to speak for you, but I will speak as a parish priest and a pastor to families at risk of these machines-for-death that are of no earthly value. No one hunts a deer with a weapon designed for war. Maine is, per capita, one of the most heavily armed jurisdictions in the world. In our nation of 300 million people there are more than 300 million guns. In some communities is it more difficult to adopt a stray dog than it is to buy an assault weapon with high capacity clips of deadly, rapid firing ammunition. It literally makes no sense.

Our Maine legislators are on the fence. None of them has yet been an effective advocate for common sense gun legislation, including reinstituting the ban on assault weapons. Let’s go see  them. Let’s write to them. Let’s tell them about reclaiming the Peace of God. Let’s tell them about Maine children at risk of exactly what happened at Sandy Hook School on Friday.

The time is right. The time is now. "What then should we do?" We should dedicate ourselves to sensible gun control legislation so that we never again witness the horror and tragedy of the slaughter of the innocents inflicted on Newtown, Connecticut last week.

Henri Nouwen today calls us to read again Paul’s letter to the Philippians, Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…

 

Open to the Love

Today's readings from Nouen ring so very true.  We live in a world that imposes an endless list of "ifs" on us every single day.  If we do this right we will get that.  If we play the game well we will get the reward.  If we behave this way or that we will be loved.  We can drive ourselves crazy trying to fulfill the "ifs" upon which hang the acceptance, admiration and love of the world. Perhaps that is one reason there are so many desperately hurting, unhappy and dangerous people out there - those people who simply cannot or will not live up to what the world expects of them; those whom the world therefore rejects.

We can search this world over and not find truly, absolutely unconditional love -except perhaps in our dogs-  those glorious creatures who seem to love and accept us no matter what! But we human beings have a harder time loving without those "ifs" creeping in.  We impose, however subtly, those "ifs" on other people, and we impose those "ifs" on ourselves as well.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, and revolutionary, if we could truly believe that God loves us without those worldly "ifs"?  We hear all the time that God loves us, that he forgives us, that we are his Beloved Ones.  But oh, how hard it is for us to understand and believe that!  God's ways, we know, are not our ways, but we can't seem to wrap our heads and hearts around the idea that we are loved no matter what.  How can this be? There must be a trick.

But there is no trick.  As we move through Advent and toward Christmas, as we hear the age-old story of Christ's birth, as we look into that manger we see a manifestation of love that is really beyond our comprehension, but which calls us to open our hearts to it, to rest in it, to trust in it.

Nouen asks us to try, for today, to try to believe in God's unconditional love.  Let's do that together.  Let's open our hearts to the kind of love that is hard for us to understand, but which can transform us in ways we cannot even imagine.

God's love and peace be with you this Advent season,

Audrey

Victory Wreaths

I have really enjoyed sprucing up my new home for the holiday season.  I have my advent candles, some poinsettias, what my family keeps calling a “Charlie Brown Christmas tree,” and two wreaths...one on the door and one above the mantel.  I love the fragrant smell of those greens, but I have to admit that I had no idea until today’s reading from our Nouwen book the history of Christmas wreaths.  A quick google search confirmed it.  Wreaths were used as a sign of victory in the Roman empire, and early Christians co-opted this tradition to proclaim the victory of Christ.

It’s hard to sit with the image of Christ Victorious right now, especially as the nation continues to mourn the tragedy in Newtown.  Nouwen tells us that the heart of Christ is a human heart, one that is big enough to hold all human loneliness and anguish.  There is no doubt that Jesus’ heart is anguished in these days.  Nouwen lists a series of contrasting things in order to illustrate that Christ does not distinguish between the two.  I found myself wishing that he had listed “healthy and unhealthy” or “well and unwell” in that list.  Particularly, the tragedy in Newtown has put the mental health crisis in our country on my heart and mind.  There are millions in America (and around the world) who struggle with anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, personality disorders...the list goes on and on.  And we’re not talking about it enough.

Parents and grandparents and really anyone who cares about kids may be asking themselves how they can best support their young people in the wake of this tragedy.  You may have been able to shield them from some of it over the weekend, but today they’ll be back in school and may hear other things.  Here’s a link to a website with helpful, age-appropriate tips on how to respond to your kids’ questions or concerns.  And if they ask you about God’s presence or absence in times like these, point to your wreath.  Thousands of years ago, a persecuted Christian minority with no obvious reason to hope for the future hung their wreaths to proclaim the victory, authority, and power of Christ in the midst of devastating times.  These days, we do the same.

At Advent ...looking for the healing

 

There is nothing in the wounds of the human condition that cannot be healed by the power and love of God.

I hope these words can give some comfort to all those hurting so deeply.

It may not seem so on some mornings, but our God created us good to share with him in shaping and reshaping creation, in bringing some sense of harmony, in reconciling people and families, and in making whole that which is deeply broken.

This morning at St. Alban’s, our thrilling Christmas pageant was presented with all the life and joy that forty-one angels and shepherds and wise men and a holy family can offer.  

Today was all about our children …those who are here with us and those who are not.

Somehow the healing that’s so needed will come. In Advent we talk a lot about looking and waiting for God in our midst. Well, healing is a first manifestation of God’s presence. The basic premise about healing, the first thing to know, is that all healing comes from God.

We are imperfect and often broken things who inhabit an imperfect and broken world. One of the genius traits of the human heart lies in its God-given capacity to know this brokenness and yet generate insight, energy and new life. 

Healed life. 

Our faith is not a protective shield against trouble. We will have moments of real loss, moments of being those lost sheep in deep need of a good shepherd.

The nation feels such loss these days following Friday’s tragic chaos at Sandy Hook School.  And through tears, I have been asked where God is in this trouble?

I pray that God is in our response when the hurricanes come, when the earth shakes and the tragedy is unspeakable.  At these times what God does promise and what God does deliver are strength and hope and healing, those very same things that with their simplicity and dignity and humility the children show us we need.

We are given God’s strength to deal with the harshness of life. We are given God’s healing when the way is unclear or is full of deep trouble. And we are given hope for the final peace-filled gathering of all things and all people in the arms of God.  This is the peace, the promise and hope of God for us and for all families that is coming at Christmas. It is what we await at Advent.

This world and our living in it do not always make sense to us. Wonder, mystery, confusion and even chaos and cruelty are our frequent companions, so we need God’s guidance. And no life is complete in and of itself, so we need somehow to know God’s hopes for us.

That, in reality, is what we need and that, thank God, is what we have been given.

I so wish I could explain the tragedy that numbs our hearts, but I cannot. I wish I could affirm that secret desire we all have for complete protection from suffering, but I cannot. What I can confidently do is promise you those things that the lives of children remind us we need, God’s strength, guidance, healing and hope.

Our pageant gave us again a remarkable story, told freshly by our remarkable young story-tellers, each of whom continues to learn (with us) their place in the story, their place in the healing and illuminating touch of God.

Today is all about the children…and us too.

Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still, small voice of calm.