As we continue this journey in the wilderness of COVID 19 I find myself looking for signs of grace, signs of hope.  Our parish spontaneously began sending pictures of spring to each other! Gardens, flowers, birds! I realized I was looking at Easter books to read to the grandchildren! Bunnies and colors! I found myself smiling, a sign of grace in itself! These are "shimmers" of something! Shimmers of a holy creativity which resides within and is in these times being shown without in new ways! Calls and notes and waves have become benedictions once almost forgotten. Music has aroused old and new meaning, witness to new mergers in time. And so as I pondered these firefly fleeting moments and desired to catch them, I let go and prayed them travel to my loved ones. The shared experience still being more profound than the isolated one. And I found myself remembering one of my favorite proems by Brian Doyle. I am re-membered as I do so! We too are in that liminal space be...

Dear People of God: The image attached speaks to me of undifferentiated grace. It was taken by my dear friend Judith on the occasion of Gracie's (!) baptism at Christ Church Episcopal. It speaks of grace and love and beauty! One of the most memorable phrases I took away from seminary was the notion of "undifferentiated grace" which was gently presented by Stephen Burns. Undifferentiated points to the unlikely and often unfathomable quality of God's grace poured into the world. We spend so much time parsing and dividing and ranking that it is hard to grasp this characteristic. But when you do, or when you come close, I imagine things like absolute freedom come to mind, boundless generosity, unconditional love, complete justice, and unqualified mercy. Undifferentiated means boundless, unrestricted, and full.  I think of a river with no diversions or dams. I think of an ocean with no end, accessible to all. I think of floating in that river or that ocean.  An...

Dear People of God: I have been avoiding the subject but today God has called me to face it. Fear. I am very good at quoting Scripture and citing that over 125 times some form of "be not afraid" appears in the Bible. I am not as good at letting that idea soak into my bones.  I don't want to say anything trite. I don't want to say anything hypocritical.  So like Jacob wrestling with the Angel in the night, I came face to face with fear in my dreams, in my restlessness, and in my insomnia last night. At some point I remember a feeling of surrendering, I thought it was to fear, but upon waking I realize it was to Love. The arms of God held me and my fear melted. Fear is not gone; it is just not controlling. And while it may be in the wrestling ring corner waiting for the next round, I am waiting in God's corner with Christ anointing my bruised not broken soul.  I also awoke to this Scripture and Brueggemann's commentary on it: But now thus says the...

I am missing the Eucharist! I am missing the prayers, the gestures, the music. I am missing your faces. I am missing placing the body of Christ into your cupped hands. And as soon as I say that; it and you are here! What might I ask is going on? We have adopted a poetic sacramental language not to mention a eucharistic faith which transcends the physical, the actual. In this imposed exile we have been accompanied by a Spirit which calls us to a new intentionality. It whispers through the fear in the dark, I AM here just listen for the poetry, look for the beauty. And when you realize it, pause, mark, digest. I came across a story the other day told by Gerrit Scott Dawson, a pastor, who offered his young daughter soup: Leah would you like soup? And she responded: And also with you! He was called up short by the rhythm of the sursum corda, the opening of the Eucharistic prayer which then calls us to lift up our hearts! The supreme open gesture to receive light and hope and grac...

Whenever I feel despair or extreme anxiety, besides lying down in the peace of wild things, I turn to my friends who have created in books and picture and music signs of love and light, reassurances of emotion. Of course I turn to the Bible and its poetry and to the rhythms of the Book of Common Prayer; and this morning, when yesterday was gloomy and today starting bleak, I grasped Bless the Space Between Us by John O'Donohue! I need blessing; I need the space between us which has seemed attenuated to be encouraged.  And here is what met me: "There is a quiet light that shines in every heart. It draws no attention to itself, though it is always secretly there. It is what illuminates our minds to see beauty, our desire to seek possibility, and our hearts to love life." This quiet light is transmitted through blessing, intentionally turning with attention to gaze at a beautiful moment, a beautiful landscape, a beautiful face. It is to recognize, re-cognize, holiness...

I have been thinking a lot about hope. I have spent a great deal of time with Paul's letter to the Romans and have been reassured there by "hope does not disappoint". In that letter we learn from the epistle writer that hope is kindled by character which comes from endurance which comes from suffering. God knows we have moved backward and forward through that sequence too many times over the last few weeks! Hope is also found in the Hebrew Scriptures and in the prophets, albeit in less lovely language but no less creatively?! And so I have been wondering a lot about the hope in exile, the hope in famine, the hope in floods? This morning in my Lenten meditation from Brueggemann some interesting ideas on hope were offered: Hope might come from memory!  That makes some sense to me in these dark times. I have noticed we cull our memories for better times; we cull our photograph drawers for signs of love and beauty. We are buoyed by smiles and cakes and family laughter...

Blessed be God who forgives all our sins; God’s mercy endures forever. I was reminded this week, among so many reminders!, of new rhythms being established. I began to ponder these new rhythms against the old ones and found myself seeking eternal everlasting rhythms. Or should I say looking for reassurances of them. or perhaps resurrections... And then I remembered spring, March 20, and I let that hope, that eternal assurance sink into my bones, into my soul. Seasons, and sure enough green shoots became sacramentally visible. I am fortunate that March 20 is also my wedding anniversary and besides giving thanks to God for David, I also give thanks for the memory of that day in 1976 in Baltimore when the first day of spring came to us with blue sky, sunshine and 85 degrees heat! Needless to say we did not use the heaters dispersed on my family home’s porches; what I needed was a different dress!!! Yet somehow those sweaty inconveniences gave way to love and light and deliciousnes...

On this Saturday I am hoping to spend some time in prayer and composing a sermon for tomorrow but realize how important it has become to me to reach out and touch you virtually at least. So I offer a poem and a prayer and a promise: the poem: T his is the time to be slow, Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, Time will come good; And you will find your feet Again on fresh pastures of promise, Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning. JOHN O'DONOHUE the prayer: Lord of the Feast, we thank you for gathering us as your people. We call to remembrance the many times we have been fed at your table and we lament our distance now. Be present Lord Jesus as you were present with your disciples, be known to us in the breaking of the bread, and may your Holy Spirit sustain us and all your Church until we ca...

Time is an interesting thing. I reflect often on the difference between God's time and ours, kairos and chronos. And usually when I do I feel myself relax into a loving unknown over which I have no control but in which I believe to be grace-filled. So many times in the Gospels we hear The time is now or the time has come. Usually it is in reference to the Kingdom! The Kingdom is here and yet to come. That is the numinous notion of kairos. It is both reassuring and a call to follow and become part of the mission of God. As Mr. Rodgers' mother told him: look for the helpers in times like these. We are those helpers; we are Kingdom bearers! I do not say these things in an apocalyptic way; rather I say them to promote or kindle hope. God is with us in the now. God is with us in the call to pray and care.The important part whether looked at from current chronos or mystical kairos is not to delay. One of my favorite "helpers" is Bishop Charleston and here is one o...

It is still about love. Always. We are in a time when stress and fear try to cloud our divine lens, the lens which sees everything with the eyes of love. Just as we sanitize and wash our hands with soap and water, we need to keep checking our love lenses for germs of selfishness and greed. I am reminded constantly in this new time that things are not just on hold. We are not supposed to hold our breath. We are breathing in and breathing out the cleansing breath of God, the Holy Spirit breathes in us. We are to breathe that breath more deeply and touch that place which cares for others, that place of divine agape. Instead of being on hold and waiting for things to get back to normal we might be called to imagine new normals. Instead of holding our breath we might breathe so deeply and broadly that we draw into our souls all who are at risk, all who are suffering, all who not only never knew our normal but may never know what we call normal. What might the other want or need? My...

As I move through these different days differently, I hear words like eerie, anxious, stressful. I observe my own feelings of imbalance and uncertainty. My prayer life seems to be offering words like new, change, opportunity, restoration and equanimity. It is this last word which is new to me. It seems to resonate with my quest for compassion and contemplation not to mention to satisfy my endless curiosity for the creative. It stimulates my imagination.  And so imagine my surprise when I came across this paragraph in my readings for next Sunday and generally for recognizing the opportunities in this time of stress and imbalance:  Wallace Stevens says:  Music which falls on the silence like a sense  A passion that we feel, not understand.  Morning and afternoon are clasped together  And North and South are an intrinsic couple  And sun and rain a plural, like two lovers  That walk away as one in the greenest body.  In thi...

Today I am vowing to turn these challenging times into creative ones, not just by bingeing on Grace and Frankie or Law and Order, but by communicating, which has the same root as communion and is closely aligned with compassion. In other words, finding ways to hold us together, to be together. Essentially this is a time to pray with! A gem of our faith and the title of its codification is The Book of  Common  Prayer. I, and perhaps you, am taking some time to gently hold it and use it differently in these days, not only by praying the daily office but by pondering collects and prayers less often used and by realizing that there might never be a better time for the pastoral offices. I already cannot imagine falling asleep without praying Compline. Coronovirus may have altered our ways of living physically but it has not limited our prayer, our love nor our imaginations. I am not sure I have ever prayed the Lord's Prayer with more hope and longing; I know the Prayer...