Blessed be God who animates our lives and calls us to remember on this Pentecost the holy flame and life-giving breath which the Holy Spirit brings to all creation in fulfillment of God’s divine plan. AMEN Throughout this Lent and Eastertide and Ascensiontide and now Pentecost, I have felt a strange likeness to the season of isolation and imaginative worship we have been experiencing during this time of COVID19. It is not just the coincidence of time but rather the coincidence of theology. Beginning with ashes and ending with fire, looking for resurrection signs and welcoming the ultimate liberation from time and space which the Ascension brings, have we not been living every moment, every emotion, every doubt, every fear, every joy?  And like the aftermath of the crucifixion and resurrection when people gathered in different ways to ponder and console, to pray and to listen, to worship, have we not been deep into imaginative ways of pondering and consoling, praying and...

It is Saturday. The Saturday preceding Pentecost. And things do not feel right. A week ago I thought it might be because of the pandemic and celebrating the birthday of the Church virtually. But then George Floyd was murdered! I cannot breathe! The words now haunt me and cause tears to well up just upon their reading. Terror, atrocity, racial hate. But breath. It makes terror tortuous and atrocity unspeakable and hate unfathomable.   Breath, Holy Breath, is the life which is breathed into us on Pentecost. There has been an attempt to desecrate but we must resist because the Holy Spirit breathes life even after we take our last breath.   So I offer this blessing by Jan Richardson which was poignant with the lung incapacities of COVID but is now essential as we gather ourselves yet again to weep together and breathe together. Jesus weeps as well... When We Breathe Together A Blessing for Pentecost Day   by Jan Richardson This is the blessing we cannot s...

The Truelove by David Whyte There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides I remember an old man who walked every morning on the grey stones to the shore of the baying seals, who would press his hat to his chest in the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent Jesus hidden in the water, and I think of the story of the storm and everyone waking and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them, and how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking, and that calling, and that moment we have to say yes, except it will not come so grandly, so Biblically, bu...

Dear People of God: During the pandemic many of us have engaged in new opportunities for gathering and for enrichment. Essentially we seem to recognize that no matter what isolation we inhabit we humans will find creative ways of living fully and into some wholeness even when deprivation seems to prevail.  One of my new practices has been to meet people on Zoom on Tuesdays for Bible Study. We have been slowly moving through the mystical Gospel of John and each week I offer thanks for the communion, the worship, the faithfulness.  I also have found myself marveling at the depth and insights. The Gospel and the interaction seem to be feeding some kind of starvation and more importantly uncovering hope. Yesterday we engaged the story of Jesus healing the paralytic at the pools of Bethsaida (or Bethzatha depending on the translation). Jesus chose this “invalid” off to the side with other “invalids” yearning for the healing which might come from the waters stirred by ang...

I realize I am on a bit of a liturgical roll this week, perhaps because we are in the midst of thinking about worship differently and how to BE church as we emerge from pandemic isolation.   I confess I was a bit of a liturgy nerd in seminary and really had no idea how that happened. I think the creative aspects of shaping worship while remaining faithful to God and God’s desire called me. I found that by the time third year rolled around I was looking at all things theological and liturgical through two lenses: sacramental and discerning. Discernment was fascinating to me because it took preciously learned disciplines like law and psychology and refracted decision making through the prism of prayer. Essentially I learned that life is more than cognitive information data driven decisions and was lived more fully when prayer was the beginning and the end. We speak of discerning a call and discerning momentous shifts in life circumstances. We come to a fork in the road in the Ro...

  The persistence of memory by Dali Yesterday I wrote about the sursum corda, the invocation recited at the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer as we open our hearts to give thanks to God. Another essential aspect of the Prayer is the “anamnesis” which while not a word commonly used or known, is a word which carries crucial importance. The anamnesis is the part of the Prayer which invokes memory, specifically of salvation history.   Yesterday was also Memorial Day and it occurred to me to spend not only time in prayer but time in anamnesic prayer. When we memorialize someone we remember them and all they have done. Memorial Day is at least a day to remember all who have given their lives for our country but more broadly it is for all who have given their lives for something greater, something which represents liberty and freedom for all. Somehow on Memorial Day this year the space between secular and spiritual became very thin. Somehow in remembering those who have ...

The other day I was reminded of how our faith and its language permeate our lives, albeit differently these days, in the following story: When a serving of soup was offered to a family member with the words: Sam let’s have some meatballs. The response was And also with you! These struck me as paraphrases of the sursum corda which begins our Eucharistic prayer:  The Lord be with you; and also with you; lift up your hearts; we lift them to the Lord.  And so it is in these times when our hearts are weighed down we might intentionally lift them (it helps to physically lift our arms and open our chest and stretch toward the heavens) and in so doing remember spiritual communion which is boundless.  The first time I was able to celebrate a Eucharist and offer the sursum corda, I wept. The power of the memory and conveyance of all salvation history was released in that moment. The wafers were a bit salty and soggy!  It was and is a timeless moment; the sursum ...

Blessed be God who animates our lives and send us the Spirit of Glory that we too might live in holy union. AMEN Scripture is saving me during this pandemic. And while the Gospels are always salvific, I am finding new life in the psalms, the first testament especially the prophets, and letters. Letters or as we know them epistles seem to meet me where I am and perhaps where we all are in this radically strange time! They are personal and direct. I am reminded again and again that this time of isolation and anxiety is not unlike the time after Jesus walked on this earth and people began to organize what we know as religion. In many ways we too are involved in reorganizing religions! Or as the word religion suggests: re- ligamenting.   Anyway, when we find ourselves in times like this and the ground beneath us seems to shake and wobble, it is often consoling to be written to by wisdom itself. Letters from our ancestors often evoke memories of the central tenets of life...