Month: December 2019

Making Space for Hope

“In the beginning…” seems like a solid place to start. It’s how both Genesis and the Gospel According to John get going. Genesis opens with “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” and John with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

That’s not an accident or coincidence–John knew Genesis and sends the reader back to it in our minds, at the same time revealing something new to us.

A number of churches use a common lectionary, a common set of readings, so that the readings are prescribed and the same for a given day, and they change each year, rotating through a three-year cycle. This year, on Christmas Eve, we read/heard the birth story from Luke, the one that Linus used when explaining the meaning of Christmas to Charlie Brown. And on Sunday, Dec. 28, the first Sunday following Christmas, we read/heard the “In the beginning” prologue of John’s Gospel. If you are curious, here are the readings laid out for the Christmas season.

A number of years ago, I sat down to read the New Testament on my own, to see what the fuss was about. It was all fascinating (it must have done something, I work for a church now) but it was the beginning of John’s Gospel that gave me goose bumps–it sent me somewhere in the way that poetry and Scripture is designed to do. And as timing would have it, at Christ Church Easton, we currently have three classes in the middle of a chapter-by-chapter study of John’s Gospel. As we listened to yesterday’s reading, I found myself wishing everybody there had the perspective of a slow read and discussion of the Gospels, making them relevant, making them personal, giving you more to reflect on, and opening you up.

Scripture is one thing, inspired words meant to point us to something bigger–to God, to community, to each other. What we do with Scripture, how we relate it and relate to it is equally as important. In his sermons and discussions, Fr. Bill Ortt has been pointing us toward hope.

Earlier this month, Fr. Bill talked about how it getting dark so early in the evenings affects him, throws him into a funk, and that a slight, almost imperceptible turning point, the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year,is a game-changer for him. That after that day, he knew that each day after it was light out for just a little bit longer. The change is “imperceptible, but real,” he said.

“Learning to find the signs of hope is my spiritual discipline during this season. As long as there is any light in the world, there is hope.”

Fr. Bill Ortt

The Christmas season is a thin place, a place where the Holy Spirit is close and also a place where memories, heartache, pain, family, stress–you name it, are all right there. For me, it’s a time where my emotions and my psyche are on a roller coaster–from high highs to low lows and back again.

Yesterday, Fr. Bill walked us through connections from Genesis to John. He walked us through the creation narrative:

“…the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light;” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness…” (Genesis 1:2-4)

The biblical Hebrew word for chaos, the formless void is “Tohu wa-bohu,” which is a word that has stuck with me since first hearing it a few years ago. So when dealing with this chaos, this formless void, this tohu wa-bohu, the first thing God does is shine light on it. The second thing He does is create space, separates light from darkness, day from night. This is key.

And it’s something we can do as well, when faced with chaos–we can shine a light on it, and create space around it. Fr. Bill points out that “chaos is the condition for new creation.” Shine a light, make space, create/start something new. God can help us use the chaos in our lives to begin something new.

“Allowing for this new creation that He will make in our hearts and our lives. It’s the same truth, the same love, the same hope for us today in our lives as it was then. It’s something we can see, feel, and know; that we might become what God intends us to be: just children on earth.”

Fr. Bill

This isn’t always easy. I saw friends on Christmas Eve who are going through their first holidays without a family member who was a huge light in their lives, and in the life of our community. Yesterday a friend was found dead in his car, who leaves behind a young son. There is pain and heartbreak everywhere we look. And sometimes it’s too much.

And at the same time, there are weddings, births, people in communities reaching out to help others. There are days getting longer. There are chances. There is light. There is hope. This morning, as I sat down to write about hope, there was an e-mail in my inbox with the subject, “The Wild Hope,” from the Frederick Buechner Center. As often happens with me, Buechner’s words give voice to my mind and my heart. So we will finish with him:

“TO LOOK AT THE last great self-portraits of Rembrandt or to read Pascal or hear Bach’s B-minor Mass is to know beyond the need for further evidence that if God is anywhere, he is with them, as he is also with the man behind the meat counter, the woman who scrubs floors at Roosevelt Memorial, the high-school math teacher who explains fractions to the bewildered child. And the step from “God with them” to Emmanuel, “God with us,” may not be as great as it seems. What keeps the wild hope of Christmas alive year after year in a world notorious for dashing all hopes is the haunting dream that the child who was born that day may yet be born again even in us and our own snowbound, snowblind longing for him.” – From “A Room Called Remember.”

Need & Seek

Jesus digs questions. He likes to ask them to us and I think he likes us to ask them of ourselves. Rev. Daniel Groody points out that in the four Gospels, Jesus is asked 183 questions, only directly answering three. On the other hand, he asks 307 questions.

Groody put together a devotional booklet, “Daily Reflections for Advent & Christmas: Waiting in Joyful Hope 2019-2020.” He suggests daily Scripture readings and then provides reflection, meditation, and a prayer. It’s a cool and meaningful way to guide us through Advent. A perfect coffee companion in the mornings.

Groody quotes Martin Copenhaver and then adds something of his own:

“‘Jesus is not the ultimate Answer Man, but more like the Great Questioner.’ And through these questions Jesus holds a lantern to our hearts.”

In studying and discussing the Gospels and reading commentary, one of the first things to become clear is that God, through Christ, is after our hearts, first and foremost. Everything else follows. Our hearts function best when they are full of joy, wonder, and they/we are after the right things. Groody goes on to say, “Answers can foreclose new discoveries, but questions open up new possibilities.”

Both Jesus and Groody are speaking my language. In 47 years, I have more questions and fewer answers than ever. But also more than ever, I’ve come to love the questions, the seeking in and of itself. It (the seeking) gets me up in the morning, sends me into Scripture, sends me into nature, connects me to people, and opens me up to wonder and mystery.

Groody quotes theologian Bernard Lonegran, who said, “There are two kinds of people in the world: those who need certainty and those who seek understanding.” I’m not big on anyone who tries to reduce the world to two kinds of people, but I like the distinction between needing certainty and seeking understanding. Probably there is a bit of both in each of us.

In his book, “Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems,” Gary Snyder writes:

The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
…
A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.

Gary Snyder, still seeking. Photo by John Suiter. Great audio and photo essay over at Poetry Foundation.

Snyder strikes me as a seeker, not of certainty, but of experience, wonder, beauty, and understanding. Discovery is not about certainty.

Advent is a time of waiting, of staying awake, of readying ourselves. It’s a time of hope, and just finishing a study of Brene Brown’s book, “Daring Greatly,” she points out that we can’t know hope without struggle.

Part of our struggle as people, is the need to know for sure, the need to be certain–and yet, certainty precludes faith and mystery.

So on a gray, sleety, rainy Monday morning, I am going to sit in the questions, take a cue from Groody, and try to stay open to new discoveries.

Making Minutes into Moments

“To take a minute and make it a moment is a holy thing,” Fr. Bill Ortt said in a sermon at Christ Church Easton earlier this month. It’s a message he’s been working to get across for a good part of the year. Minutes pass endlessly, but how many of them become moments for us? How many feel like time stops or alters and they become touchstone experiences, ingrained memories, part of our DNA.

I’ve been reading Tim Kreider‘s book of essays, “We Learn Nothing.” In the incredible essay, “The Czar’s Daughter,” he talks about the life, stories, death, and memories of a friend they called Skelly. Kreider remembers he and Skelly driving to the author’s cabin after a blizzard, where a grove of bamboo had bent under the weight of the snow, forming an archway.

“We walked down through that icy arcade tugging on each bamboo tree until we’d shaken loose enough weight that it would spring back up into the air, flinging its load of snow glittering fifty feet in the sky. It was so beautiful, and so much fun, that we both got giddy, laughing like kids on a snow day. Only he and I were there in that moment; now he’s gone. If you do not know someone by sharing such a memory, then you cannot ever know anyone at all. If that moment was not true, then nothing is.”

That’s a moment. I know those snow moments. Reading that took me back to the winter of 1995-96, snow blasting Oxford in a time where everyone just opted to stay home and maybe walk through the snow down to Schooner’s Llanding to sit by the fire, day drink, and eat seafood chowder out of bread bowls. But my memory, my moment, was walking through town and all the way out to the cemetery, in the middle of the night, with a long-time friend, lost in conversation, laughter, memories, and occasional deep thought, completely unaware of the cold or the time passing. I can’t recall a single thing that was said, but the moment is as strong as if it happened yesterday.

Another snow moment (snowment?) happened in December 2009 (pictured above), when we got snow dumped on us like crazy and Anna and I went exploring Easton, taking in the town in an almost white-out. We thought we’d get out and hit the playground at Idlewild Park, but the wind was whipping and snow was pelting our eyes so we stopped and opted for a photo, before continuing our exploring. It’s a photo that stands out in my mind–one I will always picture when thinking of Anna, and the experience of driving through town in the snow stands as a daddy-daughter moment.

What is it that helps create those moments for us? Mindfulness or awareness would be one thing. Being able to look around and take things in and not miss what’s going on around us. Most of us don’t count sunrises. They happen every morning–nothing momentous, right? But what if you make the time to take a few breaths and let the taste of coffee linger on your tongue while you watch the horizon. Or better yet, on a morning that you are blown away by the colors, throw your arms up and drink in the experience fully. Moments are there to be made.

In his book, “The Experience of Place,” Tony Hiss talks about simultaneous perception. He says there is our everyday perception, which allows us drive to places, accomplish tasks, times where we aren’t really dialed in to what’s going on around us. Hiss says that shifting to simultaneous perception:

“let’s me gently focus my attention and allows a more general awareness of a great many things at once: sights, sounds, smells, and sensations of touch and balance, as well as thoughts and feelings. When this kind of general awareness occurs, I feel relaxed and alert at the same time… I notice a sort of unhurried feeling–a feeling that there’s enough time to savor all the sights and sounds and other sensations coming in.”

Maybe we’ve all had those experiences, where we become keenly aware of a smell, and sound, and sight–maybe it’s spurred from tasting something off the grill outside, or ice cream near the river. A time when all of our senses are engaged and time seems to move differently. Mindfulness has a way of helping us be fully in the moment. Maybe being in the moment helps us create more moments?

When I think of the different moments I can call up from memory–some recent, some as far back as I can remember: I can remember my grandmother (my dad’s mother) who died before I turned five, she used to pretend to be the Terrible Tickler from a Sesame Street book we would read together, I must have been two or three–and I can see her, remember her, lovingly and jokingly coming to greet me, even though I can’t picture what her face looked like. Maybe the moments that are etched into our memories, that have become a part of who we are; maybe those moments are like lights in our minds, and as we look back on them, as we recall them, call them up, maybe those moments help light our way, through the everyday, to the place where we can look to, and be more open to, experiencing moments, making minutes into moments for today.