It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right, it’s
ChristmasOne Priest's Thoughts About God, the Episcopal Church, Life, and Lawn Care
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! That’s right, it’s
Christmas
Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. - Matthew 6:26I feed the birds in my backyard. Year-round, they get seed, but in the winter, they also get their favorite: peanut butter suet. When I go out to refill their feeders, I like to pretend I'm St. Francis. Of course, over the years, I think I have blurred the historical St. Francis and Disney’s Snow White. I have these images of St. Francis sitting at the wishing well, singing, and the little birds land on his outstretched finger and sing with him. That has never happened for me. I thought eventually the birds would get used to me, but whenever I come out, they scatter in panic as if to say, "Aaah! The monster comes!” They never seem to make the connection that I bring them food, and so I talk to them quietly and gently as I imagine St. Francis would… it doesn’t help. They continue to fly away as if they are saying, “Aaah, the monster speaks!" I somehow expect the birds to be grateful to me, but they’re not. They seem to know Whom they really should thank; not the clumsy human who carries the blessing to them.
“It has been said that gratefulness is the very heart of prayer, and so to truly observe Thanksgiving is to engage in fervent prayer. Gratefulness, however, cannot be manufactured. It is a grace, a gift that God bestows and not anything we can create in our own hearts. True gratitude bears little resemblance to the forced optimism underlying the admonition to count your blessings. Gratitude is not a denial of real pain and loss. It is not a stoic effort to concentrate on the good things in life. It isn't the power of positive thinking. ... We cannot attain a state of gratitude by presenting God with a list of things we think we should feel grateful for, but by presenting our selves and our desire to know God more closely.” - Kris Haig, "Grateful Hearts", Presbyterians Today, November 1999, 7.
ves, when we follow the theology of the birds and simply rest and trust in God, slowly sometimes, the gratitude comes. We begin to notice the fall colors. We start to appreciate the love we do have in our lives. We become grateful that we are blessed materially far more than so many in this world. We even are able to give thanks for the brokenness in our lives since it is that very brokenness that makes us recognize our dependence on God. We rest near God’s heart, and in our hearts, Thanksgiving has truly begun.
A preliminary report commissioned by the nation's Roman Catholic bishops to investigate the clergy sex abuse scandal has found no evidence that gay priests are more likely than heterosexual clergy to molest children, the lead authors of the study said Tuesday…Read complete AP story here.
… many experts on sex offenders reject any link between sexual orientation and committing abuse. Karen Terry, a John Jay researcher, said it was important to distinguish between sexual identity and behavior, and to look at who the offender had access to when seeking victims.
“Backing Starts to Grow for the Anglican Covenant” trumpeted a rather inaccurate headline appeared in the Church of England newspaper blog last week. When you read further, this alleged growth comes from not particularly surprising quarters:The Church of Ireland, the American dioceses of Western Louisiana and South Carolina and the New Zealand dioceses of Christchurch and Nelson have endorsed the Ridley-Cambridge draft of the Anglican Covenant, joining Central Florida in backing the Archbishop of Canterbury’s plan for creating a structure to manage the divisions over doctrine and discipline dividing the Anglican Communion.Any one of us could have predicted support from the fundamentalist diocese of Sydney. Those particular American dioceses named are naturally going for a draft containing the kind punitive mechanics that might give a vague patina of respectability to their attempts to dismantle the Episcopal Church and remake it in their own reactionary image. A groundswell? Not really. I am reminded of my favorite movie, Casablanca when Captain Renault says, “Round up the usual suspects.”
Walking alone in amber light,
Premier Episcopal blogger Father Jake attended our Diocesan convention at Lake Tahoe last week. It was exciting to finally meet him in person! As he told the story of his own journey through an almost impossible childhood and youth into faith and service, there was a profound stillness in the large convention room. I found myself wanting to reach into the past to the boy he was and tell him everything was going to be alright. He brought closure to the past by speaking of how he found the blessing in what he had gone through. A very wise friend once told me that healing begins when we can find the gift in pain we have experienced.

Paradox – A statement or proposition that seems self-contradictory or absurd but in reality expresses a possible truth.Often, God's truths are presented to us in paradoxes.
"We speak in paradoxes because we have to speak in a way the keeps a question alive... If we lose sight of the beauty and terror of Job's God in the whirlwind, we are taming the vision to the scope of what we can cope with, pretending that our language has caught up, and we no longer need paradoxes of confusion and subtlety to speak of (God)."Jesus didn't settle the question of who my neighbor is; I must remain on the lookout for my neighbor because it could be anyone.
"What is real?" asked the rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made" said the skin horse. "It’s something that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the skin horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are real, you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the skin horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all; because once you are real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"Even in absurdity, sacrament.
Even in hardship, holiness.
Even in doubt, faith.
Even in chaos, realization.
Even in paradox, blessedness."