St Francis

(there are two reflections on St Francis here, one is for me and one is for Peace Mass, but I thought I would stash them together.)

St. Francis of Assisi

Jeremiah 22:13-16

Psalm 148:7-14

Matthew 11:25-30

St. Francis day was actually yesterday. So I am a day late, a dollar short as they say. Yet, I still have too many dollars to be a companion of St. Francis. In truth I have spent the last month with St. Francis, using one of those ‘spend a month with a saint’ guided meditations. I have started a new budget during this new time in the life of my family, and am helping with the stewardship campaign at church. And since I was feeling a bit poor to begin with, I thought Francis might be just the guy to help me with my perspective.  

It turns out, I was wrong about that. You see, Francis had something that I can admire, especially from afar. He walked the walk. Every day. And by choice, not by necessity. He was embracing a path to God, making a free choice of this, every day. Francis wasn’t just trying to feel better about his poverty; he wasn’t poor. 

Francis knew that joy was the key to poverty. The key to the kingdom as it were. And Francis spread joy so far and so wide and so infectiously, that he founded a whole monastic order, spun off a women’s auxiliary group and inspired Pope Gregory IX, a former patron, to build a great basilica to his honor. And all of these things caused Francis no end of grief. I expect that for whole swaths of time, his joy had a ‘fake it till you make it’ quality. 

 Holy Women, Holy Men has assigned Matthew 11:29-30 to Francis. “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” I can never read this passage without thinking, this is some piece of used car salesman truth. And I wonder if Francis struggled with it as well; when people wanted to walk the path with him in over engineered high tops and carrying an extra coat for when the wind picked up. I wonder if our fascination with Francis is that he keep choosing poverty, long after we would have said, that’s a good show, but what about health care? Vision and dental? 

I don’t think that I will ever approach Francis’ commitment to follow Christ, and I expect that I will miss out on some of the joy that he knew in companionship with God. But I will miss out on those extreme highs and lows that he experienced as well. I think I can be ok with that. Because there are joys that I have been given, and they require me to make choices every day, opportunities to turn towards, rather than away, from God every day. Like Francis, I am being asked to bring myself before God, exactly who I am, and so are you. 

(second)

St. Francis of Assisi

Jeremiah 22:13-16

Psalm 148:7-14

Matthew 11:25-30

My daughter is named Francis, with the ‘i’ not the ‘e.’ I didn’t name her for a saint, I didn’t go to church then and I wasn’t raised in a church that acknowledges saints. But now that we do, she often received tokens from loved ones about St. Francis. We have several books about him and his life. Invariably, these books start with his boisterousness and generosity, then tell of his conversion in the road, coming face to face with a leper. They tell of his parents shame and embarrassment at the life of poverty that Francis chose after that fateful meeting. 

We probably know quite a lot about Francis in our family, thanks to all these wonderful gifts. But I wonder what everyone else knows about Francis. Why does he wear that brown robe? Why is he surrounded by all those birds? What’s the story with that wolf?What was it really like to choose poverty? 

The key, I think, to understanding Francis was his infectious joy. He did absurd things because he was blown away by the wonder of all creation. And for Francis, the way he chose to come close to God, and let God come close to him, was to embrace poverty. Many people were drawn to that joy and voluntarily joined Francis in his poverty, his generosity, his joy. 

The gospel for today comes from Matthew and ends with these words, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (11:29-30). I wonder what it means to voluntarily embrace poverty? I wonder how these words might be an enticement or a comfort in that choice?

September 30, 2011

I am so sorry to take so long to get back to you. I hope that you will infer that I am both busy and thoughtful. Probably, the equation errs towards busy, but I have been using your inquiry to ponder what I have been up to, and how God is working in my life.

We are back in Portland and back at ---. I have a discernment committee that begins meeting the Sunday after next and we will meet for several months until the next COM. I have spoken with everyone on my committee and they seem to be both honored and excited to journey with me as I discern what God is calling me to next. My understanding of my call to work sacramentally with congregations remains clear to me, but exactly how that call sets itself out is more open to pondering than it was before school, if only because I know a lot more about the ways we come together in communities. That’s fancy for, I’m thinking about interim work as the work I am called to do, rather than the available work between longer calls. 

The transition back to Portland has been somewhat challenging. My children have first claim on my attention these days because they have had to wait so often while I was in school. They believed me when I said, after I get done with school I will pay you more attention than you want. I haven’t been able to do that yet, but they are both in middle school right now, and middle school is hard, hard work, both academically and socially. They go wherever I go these days, which might not have been true at this age if our family had a different experience up to this point, but there are certainly worse relationships I can imagine with my children than their desire to have me around all the time as they go through the difficult transitions of new school, new home, old friends who have changed as much as they have. We have the added challenge that Shannon is still working in California 3 weeks of the month and is home with us 1 1/2 weeks. 

I am slowly falling back into the swing of life within the context of a parish rather than a school. I feel quite blessed that I have no doubts that my call to ministry is not within academia. My friends in school who loved the parish but were really drawn to the rhythm and flow of school as well had a more interesting time of discernment in school as they wondered if they should look into school chaplaincy or, for some, the academic context. I continue to breathe the rhythms of parish life, where most of the work of the church is work out in the complexity of the world. In particular, I have taken over the Liturgy of the Word for a Wednesday evening Eucharist. If you like, I can send you the weekly reflections I do in preparation, we have a discussion so it isn’t actually a sermon, from Holy Women, Holy Men. They are quite short but they often better reflect how I am thinking about God these days than update letters. I am also serving on the altar on Sundays and on the stewardship committee. I am thinking about starting a small group for theological reflection, but that will be Portland wide, not just at ---. But that is still in deep thinking about phase. 

I continue to pray and my interest in reading is coming back to me. Some days I am antsy like the squirrels my dog loves to chase, trying to settle in for the winter. Other days, I rejoice in lounging on the couch for 3 hours reading a novel that has no pretense to redeeming values at all. I am blessed. 

Margery Kempe

(my wednesday morning was too busy and I forgot to post this before I headed out for the day. Peace Mass was wonderful this evening, and we had some good discussion about Margery.)

September 28, 2011

Feast of Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, and Margery Kempe

Job 26: 1-14

Psalm 63:1-8

Matthew 5:43-48

I’ve never been quite sure what to do with mystics or monastics. I have such a ‘let’s go build something together’ (thanks Lowe’s) attitude about my faith that I am unsure what to do with people who want to go off by themselves. It seems anathema to what Christianity is about. Mystics fare no better with me. Either I am sure that they are getting some special communication from God that I am not or I blow them off with the sure and steady knowledge that they are to be pitied as sufferers of something out of the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. 

This attitude has been shifting in the last year. I have spent some time exploring my unmediated relationship with God. Not God and me and a soup kitchen, or God and me and an academic assignment, not God and me and my children, but God and me and me. The first thing I got was a dark night of the soul. I interpreted this as an absence of God, then I decided it was an absence in me. Eventually, I heard the noises that I make to fill the spaces of my silence. Some of them were quite unpleasant. Until finally I found the place that gets called “still small voice.” And I discovered that there is almost no point in trying to write this down. It is truly a place beyond words and the words don’t make any sense at all until after the experience. Of course, having been to that borderland, as William Countryman calls it, I am searching out and spending time with all the mystics I can find in order to find some words that resonate with my time there.

So, I am pleased to have discovered Margery Kempe today. This is a woman I can relate to. A woman who didn’t lock herself into a monastic community or a room off of a church. This is a woman who had to negotiate a husband and children and social strictures with that still small voice. This, and if you know me you will laugh, is a woman who was “gifted with tears.” This is a woman who just kept doing what she was called to do no matter how awkward that looked to the rest of the world. I would call her a first class fool for Jesus. 

And the question Margery helps me answer is this. How can mysticism or monasticism counter the tendency to “do something” FOR the kingdom of God rather than “be someone” IN the kingdom of God? I think that perhaps, whenever we belong to God while we are doing nothing at all, we are well on our way to living in the mystery. 

St. Matthew the Evangelist

(for Peace Mass, Wednesday September 21, 2011)

Psalm 119:33-40

Proverb 3:1-6

2 Timothy 3:14-17

Matthew 9:9-13

In that particular way that tradition builds up around things until we don’t know the truth from the facts anymore, we really can’t be sure that the St. Matthew associated with the Gospel of Matthew is the same Matthew that is the tax collector in the gospel reading. Whether or not this is the same person, we do know that the tax collector did answer the call to “follow me” by getting up and going.

And we know that it wasn’t the done thing to hang out with tax collectors. Or fishermen, really, if one were intent on being an up and coming in the religious institutions of the day. But these are some of the people we know Jesus was hanging out with. And we know what they were talking about, too. Money. Jesus spent most of his ministry talking about economics and I imagine that with tax men and fishermen and women, there were some really interesting conversations.

I suspect that for some, those conversations weren’t the done thing, either. In some circles, they still aren’t. We often have a hard time talking about our deepest values and money. We really don’t want to look at our debit card statements and see, in black and white, what our deepest values really are. Because where we spend our time and where we spend our money are the showing forth of our respect and care for our incarnation and all of creation.

There are a lot of opportunities in the next few months to think about how we spend our time and money as a reflection of our deepest values. The stewardship campaign is coming up soon here at St. David’s (stay tuned for Celebration Sunday) and the holiday season, with it’s overeating and over shopping are coming along as well. For myself, I have the debt servicing of my student loans coming up to take a big dent out of what I now consider “my money.”

What are some of the ways you spend money that reflect your deepest values? What are some of the ways you don’t? Who do you have those conversations with? Do you have them at all?

Elie Naud

(Peace Mass reflection for September 7, 2011)

Daniel 6:10b–16,19–23

Psalm 30

James 1:2–4,12a

Matthew 15:21–28

The gospel reading for today is most notable for its insults. This woman comes bursting onto the scene demanding healing for her daughter. Jesus does what I consider his most amazing miracle, he thinks before he speaks, but the disciples immediately decide that shouting lacks the proper respect due to a Messiah. Then Jesus and the woman exchange this bit of dialogue.

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says.

“Lord, help me,” she pleads, on her knees.

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says.

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

It isn’t the dialogue itself that interests me in this exchange; it is the clever wordplay that they engage in, the quick comeback worthy of a 1940’s comedy. This is a way of communicating that we hardly ever engage in at church. To be a good Christian is often to engage in a very particular set of manners that most of us would sum up under the word, ‘polite.’ It is often about letting people meet us where we are rather than going out and meeting them where they are. It’s almost never about clever comebacks and witty repartee. It certainly doesn’t dish insult for insult.

Jesus and this woman aren’t being very polite to each other; they aren’t engaging in the proper exchanges expected by the disciples or us. But they are definitely in relationship, they are definitely communicating.

Elie Naud, our saint of the day, was definitely in the business of relationships that meet people where they are. Elie, a French Huguenot, fled persecution and ended up at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York. He never let what was considered right or proper get in the way of the Gospel. He became an Anglican catechist to black slaves and Native Americans, eventually founding a school for the children of slaves and Native Americans.

I wonder, when we engage with people outside our social groupings, when we encounter people who are perhaps defensive from the start about our Christian identity, do we stay in relationship, do we communicate, even if it doesn’t sound like “good Christian behavior.” I wonder, when someone needs our help, and doesn’t expect us to give it, do we back away from the forcefulness of their defenses or do we give it right back, with love.

Holy Cross Day

(Peace Mass Reflection from September 7, 2011)

Galatians 6:14-18

John 12:31-36a

Have you ever noticed a shrine on the side of the road? They often begin with a framed photo, a candle and a bunch of flowers. Some become quite elaborate and some last for many, many years. The thing about them is, no one really knows who started it, no one really knows who set out that first candle. And it isn’t any particular persons job to start a shrine, or maintain it. 

There are many memories that our cluttered mind needs an external reminder for. Too often, important, life changing memories are crowded out by grocery lists and appointment reminders. “I will never forget,” has a way of losing its urgency in the life lived. Some things are good to remember for a time, and to let slowly fade away. There is a gift in the way our minds can lose the urgency, sometimes captured in the phrase “time heals all wounds.”  

But what about the cross? On the one hand, it is very natural for us to shy away from the trauma of the crucifixion. On the other, the resurrection doesn’t really make sense without it. This rather horrible, yet miraculous story is our good news. It is our never forget. It is the sort of thing that we build shrines to.

Constantine and his mother Helena certainly did. In 335, they dedicated several buildings  that Eusebius describes as being “on a scale of imperial magnificence” at Calvary, to mark the place of the crucifixion and resurrection. In the way of shrines, this one is no longer standing and has been replaced. In its place now stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

I wonder if our shrines need to be buildings? I wonder how we might maintain an external reminder, a sharable reminder, of the memory of the cross without creating a shrine, which sometimes becomes a tomb. 

How do we live out our lives as shrines, as sharable memory? How are our jobs, be they within or without the church, paid or unpaid, a sharing of the memory of the cross and the resurrection? 

Ember Day Letter Two

Feast of Ninian of Galloway, 2011  (September 16)

Dear Bishop ---,

I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and hope that this letter finds you well. I was pleased to hear how well your Mutual Ministry Review went and that the leadership of the diocese seems to be transitioning well in all aspects. I hope that the Pacific Northwest is becoming home for you in the way that it quickly did for me when I first moved here in 1994. These last two weeks in particular have been a kafuffle of settling in, which the rain yesterday capped of nicely.

As I pray and discern my vocation as a Christian and as a beloved child of God it becomes clearer to me that this is my highest calling and deepest commitment. For many years, perhaps as long as I can remember, I have had an intellectual understanding that I am a beloved child but it seems that this season of my life is about moving that head lesson into my heart and seeing how my life intersects with creation from this new anchor.

It is through this heart, then, that I will be exploring my calling to ordained ministry with my parish discernment committee this fall and winter. The committee has formed and have begun meeting to discuss how they will proceed as a team. I admit to some anxiousness that they begin their work so that I may begin to meet with them. I know even better now that I did last month, that I have not been settled enough to begin meeting with them in any case.

While I will begin this formal discernment and continue to express my love of liturgy and the leading of gathered communities in prayer with the Wednesday Peace Mass at ---, most of my energy will be devoted to my family at this time. Both of my children are in middle school this year and there are multiple transitions happening for us. My husband is still working in California and will be for perhaps as long as next summer. While we have come home, life is not static and relearning friendships and ways of being in Portland that are different than Berkeley are hitting them at a different cognitive age than when we left. It was a shocking transition for them to have me as a full time student alongside them for the last three years and refocusing my attention towards them without the filter of my own schooling is both blessing and not. My daughter has started therapy because of her own identified difficulty in focusing and coping with the transition and we are doing some assessments to see if she has a learning disability.

Thankfully, God always provides companions along the way and this time is no exception in my life. --- is quickly becoming a beloved colleague on the Commission to End Racism and a dear friend who has also been through the gauntlet of middle school as a parent. She has offered a great deal of love and support and Christian perspective in this process. I have also settled into a direction relationship with ---. I am still seeking a therapist in the Portland area, which is complicated by a necessary but unexpected change in health insurance at this time. I am trying to decide between a basic 24-Hour fitness routine and joining the rock climbing gym. I seem to have unpacked enough boxes and built enough furniture that I feel the lack of regular exercise. Not the least of which is the ways in which my body has conformed itself to slouching over the computer to read or type in the last few years.

And so on that note, I close this letter, hunched over the laptop some more, yet grateful that on the other side of it lies a long walk with my dog in the sunshine now peeking through the clouds and a weekend free of homework with my son and daughter during which we may, with God’s blessings, simply abide in the love of God and in each other. I pray you, too, the peace of an unstructured day of play.