A Meditation for Good Friday: A Blank Page

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. I hate a blank page. I love having words to edit, lots and lots of words. I hate having to write a lot to begin to feel creative. I love when the river of prose is flowing. It hate that what I write never seems finished. I love it when I actually like something I've written. 

I have a love-hate relationship with gardening. I hate the fallow plot in early spring that so closely resembles a blank page. I love planting seeds and young plants and watching them grow. I hate weeds. I love mulch. I hate dead plants that didn't winter over like the label promised. I love to see the bushes and trees with buds bursting with renewed life and vigor. I hate killing frosts in late spring. I love cold hardy plants and perennials.  I hate that by mid July, with little time to tend it, my garden will have gotten away from me. I love the growers market where I can buy the things I wish I'd been able to grow.

I have a love-hate relationship with Good Friday. I love the liturgy for this day. I hate that so few people participate in it anymore. I love the drama and music that sweeps us up into the story and makes it real again, even though we've heard it a million times. I hate that is has the longest reading of the church year. I love that God was willing to go to such lengths to claim us as his own. I hate that once Jesus has died, for at least a time, we're left with a blank page.

Blank pages: empty, stark, white, wide-open pieces of paper that hold nothing, they reveal gardens not yet planted, plans unfulfilled, and make pronouncements of death - the ultimate blank page.  Blank pages stare back of us, and can, ever so briefly and in the oddest way, have power over us. They simultaneously hold both the promise of what could be, but is not yet, and the dread of our deepest fears.

Still, the blank pages of our life are gifts from God. They were given to be filled, read, torn, crumpled, retrieved from the garbage, filed, folded, sent, received, returned, buried or burned, read, pondered. They can be vessels of promise as much as devices of demise. The possibilities are endless. On this day, Jesus has left us with only a single blank page; and the possibilities for it are both ended and endless. His death reminds us of things that we do not wish to be reminded. And the absurdity of the events that drove him to the cross seem bizarre to us: Do they not? How bizarre that Jesus' acts of mercy and kindness, healing and restoration, his proclamations of truth and wisdom, could end in this way. Isaiah frames it this way: "By a perversion of justice he was taken away. Who could have imagined his future? For he was cut off from the land of the living.... although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth."

We are vexed, stunned; bewildered by the speed at which injustice is dispensed. And yet, we, ourselves, by our inaction and muted voices, insure the proficiency of various machinery of injustice in every quadrant of the earth: child labor, human trafficking, modern slavery, torture, false imprisonment, bigotry, political corruption, environmental rape, preventable illness, hunger and thirst.  The silent role we play by our direct and indirect acts of co-mission, and more often, omission, is a blank page we dare not fill with the ink of truth, lest we be crucified.

At the time of the veneration of the cross, during the Good Friday service, the weight of our guilt and the depth of our dependence on God for redemption is blatantly apparent.  The Rev. Vicki Hesse observed the following regarding this ancient practice: “….the [veneration’s] physical and social awkwardness can sharpen one’s experience of spiritual gratitude and self-offering in a way that remaining seated [in] one’s pew cannot.” She recalls the first time she attended an Easter Vigil at an Episcopal church: “I had no idea what was going on. I found myself standing up and being swept along with the others toward the front of the church, where two acolytes were holding a wooden crucifix. I could see people ahead of me bobbing and kneeling in front of it. But then—to my horror—they kissed it too! I had never witnessed such behavior in the Evangelical churches of my childhood or adolescence and was not quite sure how I felt about this spectacle. But the prospect of stepping out of line was even more uncomfortable than that of going forward, so I stayed where I was and surreptitiously noted the number and style of bows, genuflections, and kisses of those ahead of me. [She concludes by saying] “[I]t is precisely this physical and social discomfort that conveys the painful reality of our inescapable spiritual ambivalence.”

In my experience, the blank page of the cross compels me to cross the line of liturgical perfection and enter the realm of unpredictable chaos. The only other time I have experienced this sensation was at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.  As I stood facing the wall, my face inches from it, I could hear the weeping of many of the women around me, some had their hands against it, some or the sides of their faces pressed against the cold stones, some knelt in front of it with their foreheads leaning into it, some were pushing small white pieces of tightly folded paper into the rough edged crevices, many stood facing it bowing rhythmically, reverently, almost trance-like, while praying the scriptures aloud from an open book of Hebrew text. I was overwhelmed by presence of every soul who had stood where I was standing.  In my imagination their translucent residues passed through me and around me. Millions of souls were there.  Likewise, when I kneel before the cross on Good Friday I am no longer aware of myself as an object of others curiosity but am enveloped by the millions of faithful Christians who for centuries have knelt, or stood, or fallen or prostrated themselves at the foot of an empty cross.  I am humbled to acknowledge the way their eternal presence has filled the vacuum of history.

On this day, in this moment, from this place all we have is a fallen hero, a victory for the wicked, an empty cross, and an occupied tomb; a blank page. We must do with it what we can: love it, hate it, ponder it, wonder about it, use it to scheme, to justify, to get real, to get a new perspective, to be inspired, to start over or use it as a starting point, write upon it a letter or plot a garden, embellish it with lovely drawings or silly doodles, sit with it and hear what we had not heard before.  Dare to touch it and know the anguish of God.

A tribute Bill Cuneo in the Spirit of Psalm 23

Of the 150 psalms is the Bible, the 23rd psalm is the best known and most loved by far. Most adore it for the comfort it imparts.  On a deeper level it paints a picture of the intent of the covenant that has lain between us and God for some 5000 years, from the time in our common history when we moved from the worship of many gods, from idols and mythological supernatural beings that controlled the rain and the harvest, fertility and death, to a centralized belief in one God; the great I AM.  Psalm 23 is simple in its arrangement and yet complex in its implications.  It’s first words seem a benign sentiment of faithfulness but they are some of the most powerful words in the bible.  It is an oath of allegiance:  The Lord is my shepherd.   In speaking these words one pledges to trust solely in God for all things necessary to life. This is immediately followed by an expectation: I shall not be in want. This is not a hopeful expectation but the unwavering certainty of its fulfillment.  One of the great judges of Israel, Joshua, put it this way:  “As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

Psalm 23 tells a story of a simple life of a faithful soul:

a soul willing to be guided through the winding path of a long and eventful life;

a soul trusting in God to be revived when it is weary,

a soul that neither fears evil nor the deeds that spring from it;

a soul that understands the whole of life in terms of the covenential bond between God and those whom God has created;

a soul that understands death not as a lone journey but as a passage from one world to the next undertaken in the companionship of Christ;

a soul trained to see abundance as a constant; the glass as perpetually half full and never half empty;

a soul who leans heavily into the letting go of things worldly in order to satisfy one's inner life with things other-worldly. 

To live this kind of life is not a complicated scheme. It requires little; there are no upfront costs, no terms of compliance. There are no prerequisite classes; no tests to qualify.  And we all begin at the same place with these simple words:  The Lord is my shepherd.

Bill understood this completely.  The Lord was his shepherd.  And throughout his life, the Lord led him to the green pastures and still waters of a simple and correct faith.  In circumstance similar to that of Joshua, the prophet Micah confronts the people of God and asks: And what does the Lord require but that you do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.  These are the requirements of being led by a shepherd instead of presuming to lead.  In Bill’s devotion and commitment to his family, his country, his employer, his community and his church, he consistently, quietly lent support of both secular and religious efforts to address injustice and human suffering.  He was an icon of uncommon kindness. And through his graciousness and profound gratitude for those who were privileged to know him, he provided a model of what it means to walk humbly with one's God.  

But for most of us, these things do not come easily.  When our efforts at justice fall short of the mark, we hope that God’s justice will somehow serve to bridge the gulf between right and wrong.  We have to practice how to be kind, reminding ourselves that it is a virtue – because its no longer a cultural expectation.   We pick up popular books by the Dali Lama instructing us on the ways and means of being kind.  And we find that a walk with God is no walk in the park – we are too much in the way of ourselves. Too often we understand humility as a weakness and not at all the first requirement of a strong and vibrant faith that it is. Bill was raised in a time in which the development of faith was as much a part of life as Doe Day after Thanksgiving.  He grew up in time in which the church was as much as institution of daily life as public school.  But for good or ill, or perhaps a bit of both, that is not the world we live in any longer.  And there are now thousands upon thousands of people who long to understand how to live a simpler life, who long to have faith in something that is bigger and more powerful than they are.  The church, overall, has really not been terribly helpful in my estimation, but there have been numerous attempts by secular voices to speak to these things.  One of the better attempts is a song from a Southern Rock band my youth, that is now pointing a whole new generation at least in the general direction of what it means to live the kind of life Bill lived, a life to which we would all be wise to aspire, a life marked by a simple pledge we give with all of our heart: The Lord is my shepherd. 

So here are words of that song written in part by Ronnie Van Zant:

Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son and listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this it'll help you some sunny day.
Oh, take your time... Don't live too fast, troubles will come and they will pass.
You'll find a woman, you'll find love,
And don't forget son, there is someone up above.

Forget your lust, for the rich man's gold, all that you need, is in your soul,

And you can do this, if you try.

All that I want for you my son, is to be satisfied.

Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.

Follow your heart, Lord, and nothing else.

And be a simple, kind of man.
Oh be something, you love and understand.
Baby be a simple, kind of man.
Oh, won't you do this for me son, if you can? 

Food and God: Eating our way back to wellness

Food is a very personal issue. We tend not to like being told what to eat or what not to eat.  We like to believe that our food choices are personal, and the benefit or damage from those choices is limited only to ourselves.  But we do not live in a vacuum. The food that is produced for our consumption comes with a very high price with far-reaching and devastating long-term consequences for all of us. But there is a flip-side according to John Robbins who writes, “Few of us are aware that the act of eating can be a powerful statement of commitment to our own well-being, and at the same time the creation of a healthier habitat. Your health, happiness, and the future of life on earth are rarely so much in your own hands as when you sit down to eat.”  So what we believe about food, and the ways in which we act upon those beliefs is both, and at the same time, highly personal and undeniably communal.  

With this understanding there are any number of ways in which we could talk about our personal food choices and the communal consequences of those choices. With one billion people starving and one billion people who are obese, worldwide, we could talk about food as an issue of social and economic disparity. As the rest of the developing world adopts the standard American diet as well as it’s correlating high rates of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and obesity, we could discuss food in terms of what the World Health Organization identifies as a world-wide health epidemic. From a political angle we could discuss how farm subsidies have outlived their original, intended purpose, and are now an integral part of as a very dysfunctional food management system.  In light of the damage being done to air, land, and water to meet the high demand for beef, chicken and pork we could look at the industrialized farming in terms of the environmental crisis that it is. Given that Americans eat more meat than any other country on earth and our compliance in the widespread inhumane treatment of animals we could rightly discuss factory farming on moral and ethical grounds. With the vast majority of our food coming to us in one form or another from genetically modified soy, corn and wheat, we could discuss the ethical as well as judicial issues regarding the loss of control we now have over our food supply.  As for the effect of agribusiness on small family farms and the near extinction of sound and sustainable farming practices, we could discuss food as an economic issue, an ethical issue, as well as a stewardship issue.  These are but a few of the ways we could discuss the way we all share in the problems of our society just by what we chose to put on our plates. Each of these is valid avenues of discussion.  But I don’t know a whole lot about any one of those areas.  It could be said that I know just enough about each one of them to be dangerous.  But I do know a bit more about spiritual matters. So here are a few thoughts about food – and the wellness a healthy reconnection to food can bring.

Truth #1:  We are meant to have dirty hands. We were meant to stay close to the earth, to work the soil, to nurture seedlings and tend our crops, and in due time to harvest what we have sown. The soil itself is a living organism home to an endless variety of microbial, botanical, insect and animal life. All human life is wholly dependent upon it for survival.  I believe that there is a connection, a spiritual connection between us and soil.  Our subjugation of others to labor in the sun and soil at great personal costs so that we might consume cheap, mass produced food without getting our own hands dirty is a witness to the distance we've traveled from mere separation to the wholesale rejection of God's holy nurture of us through the soil.  I am never as thoughtful, or prayerful, or forgiving, or open-minded, curious, or as well, as I am when covered in dirt, dirt stuck to my sweat, dirt ground into my jeans, dirt under my nails, dirt in my hair. Kneeling in the dirt of my garden I can feel the groundedness of God.  I can smell the earthiness of God.  I can see the wonders of creation and the small role I am privileged to play in it.  After winter's healing work, there is unequaled joy in seeing the first bold green leaves emerge from their refreshed brown, grainy nests, leaning skyward to be warmed by the sun.  We are co-creators with God and that requires getting our hands dirty.

Truth #2:   There is a finite amount of water on the earth.  Rain is simply recycled water, it is not new water.  The earth does not have the capacity to create water, so whatever is destroyed by pollution or waste does not get replaced. Water is not a renewable resource.  From a spiritual point of view, water is a gift from God. It figures in our biblical story repeatedly; with the grandest of Godly drama's taking place at wells and wadies, and in rivers and on riverbanks, gushing from rocks, and being parted by rod, carried in jars and mingled with wine. All life on this planet is dependent on water. Water in some parts of the world is more valuable than gold and for good reason. It is imperative that we use the water we have wisely.  It always seems that there is too much water in some places and not nearly enough in others - all depending on geography or extreme weather events - both out of our control.  But much of the water given into our care is well within human control.  Yet we waste far too much of it in the present systems of food production, mainly for livestock but also for industrial produce farms for whom water waste is simply part of the cost of doing business. Millions of gallons of water are lost through irresponsible agricultural and farming practices each day. Nobody owns water; rights to water yes, but the water itself is part of the natural world and belongs to all who inhabit this planet. We have a common claim on it, because it is the most powerful element on the planet. Where it is plentiful there is life, where it is lacking there is death.  The votes we cast with our food dollars speak louder than any organized lobby.  Cast a vote for companies who are careful with the precious water we have left.

Truth #3:  We eat too much.  Every fast food meal can be super-sized.  Serving sizes in most chain restaurants have reached grotesque proportions as they compete for what food companies refer to as stomach-share. We consumers want the most we can get for our dollar – and food is at the top of the list.  We in the U.S. spent less on our food than any other nation.  With the advent of industrialized mass production food is cheaper than ever. And we have gotten exactly what we’ve paid for. Ironically, the incidences of gout, a disease generally associated with gluttony in years past, is now commonplace.  In years past, it was only the very wealthy who could each enough high fat animal proteins to warrant such a diagnosis. But now even the very poor can easily eat various forms of highly processed, fat-laden meats and dairy products at every meal. Sadly, now only those with higher incomes can afford the nutrient dense foods that are absolutely necessary to sustain wellness in healthy human bodies:  fresh, brightly-colored, organic, non-genetically modified, minimally processed foods with no added colors, artificial flavors, additives or preservatives.  And so we eat and we eat, and we are left starving.

Truth #4: We don’t have to be sick or fat, or a victim of bad genetics, or powerless over the aging process.   The human body is one of the most amazing creations of all God’s efforts. From the moment we are born our body has but one purpose: to maintain wellness. The human body works to heal and renew itself continually and with no direction from us.  Despite the damage we do to it, knowingly and unknowingly, our bodies work at maintaining wellness without ceasing.  It’s nothing short of miraculous actually.  It’s a witness to the ongoing work of God’s created world: to think that every seven years we are literally recreated at a cellular level.  And so the question we must ask is: what foods are the most helpful to the body to help it maintain wellness and to heal itself when necessary?  What foods hamper the body’s ability to prevent illness?  Our body cannot do what God intended if we repeatedly disregard its basic need for real food that is nutrient dense, preferably in its whole form.  How ironic it seems to me that it was Hippocrates who wisely said:  “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food.”

Truth #5:  We waste far too much food. A recent study concluded that 40% of all the food produced in the U.S. for human consumption ends up in landfills.  40%.  When I was a child my mother used to shame me into cleaning my plate by saying: "Just think of all those starving children in China."  I remembering thinking that I would like to say, "Well, they can have this."  Waste is not just an ecological and environmental issue but as much a spiritual issue.  According to Michael Schut, editor of the book Food and Faith, “If we are to live and eat compassionately, with care, then the most fundamental shift we must make is a spiritual one.  The essence of that shift is to live as if the Earth ‘is the Lord’s,’ not a treasure chest for human plunder. Put differently, we must remember and act as if our home is a sacred place, and that God is not only transcendent but also immanent, very near.”  To plunder and to waste tend to go hand in hand.  We only waste that which we give little consideration; cheap food from boxes and cans or what comes through the drive thru window, food from which are divorced of any relationship, food that promises much and delivers little.  But for anyone who has grown their own food, or baked their own bread, or has spent hours canning vegetables or making jam from hand-picked berries in the early morning hours – there is no thought of waste. The precious raw materials of soil, water, sunlight and time yield simple fare for people who are happy with simplicity, people such as you and I who want for nothing but to know the fullness of God through the seasonal tides of planting and harvesting; waiting and watching, fully tied to the moodiness of late frosts and dry days on end. The work of the garden is holy work that produces sacred food, and those who are enmeshed in the process of its development are deeply assured of the immanence of God.

This Christmas Life

When Ian, our son, was quite a bit younger, he was intrigued by the way our cats could quietly settle under the Christmas tree and become virtually invisible. When you're under the age of ten, it is completely conceivable to become a cat yourself. Invisible. Under the Christmas tree. I was in the back of the house when I heard the crash. Shards of broken ornaments were visible among the unbroken ones when we righted the tree. In a flash, Ian retreated to his bedroom anticipating the impending doom. After taking a moment to inhale and regroup, I calmly called him out and asked him to help redress the tree and clean up the broken pieces. As we righted the tree, I explained to him that for years the cats had been knocking over our trees by leaping up their trunks; if we spared their lives, surely we could spare his. As I helped him clean up the pine needles and glass fragments, I was relieved to discover that none of them were really of great value to me - until I found the ballerina. It was one of a matched set. Just a few years before I had given the cream-colored porcelain figures to my daughter and her cousin when they were both taking ballet during the time that I was in seminary. It reminded me of a time in our family's life that was precious to me and there was a discernible sting as I put away the broken ornament.

As with fragile porcelain, the boundaries of this life are pretty clear. We live life, make life, save life, give life,
take life, spare life, and negotiate life.  And the material stuff that we surround ourselves with either brings us joy or makes us miserable, creates energy or uses it, enriches our life or limits it, promotes life or causes it damage. And whatever events comes our way in this life either feeds us, entertains us, intrigues us, threatens us, teaches us, thrills us, challenges us or threatens to destroys us. But only for a little while; because of the fragility and shortness of life, both we and all the rest, either wears out, corrodes, gets lost, breaks or perishes.

And so it is on this night, and tomorrow in particular, while are enjoying a brief respite from of our routines, that we tend to reflect on these things, and more-so on the things that really matter in this life. It must be said that for many, Christmas is a painful time that cannot pass soon enough. For others, especially those with small children and the means to provide for them, its a time of pure happiness and delight – the mortar and bricks that build the memories that will be recalled in the years ahead. But for most of us, especially those of us with a little mileage, its a mixed blessing for which the words, “O tidings of comfort and joy,” best sums up the hopes and fears of all the years.

Regardless of how we experience the Christmas event, it provides a place of clarity from which we can see, really see, the imperfection of human life that exists in tension with the perfection of the rest of God's creation. For instance: White lights draped on trees are lovely to see in the darkness; but they cannot compare to star-filled skies on a clear night here in the rural northeast. Ice sculptures can be breathe-taking; but none can compare with a simple, solitary icicle fractured by early morning sunbeams. Handel’s Messiah is timeless and powerfully majestic; but it cannot compare with the first Robin’s song in spring. These are but small reminders that there is nothing that comes from the work of our hands, or the inspiration of our thoughts, or the wars we wage or the even the peace we make that can accomplish what has done for us by the birth of Emmanuel, a name which means; God who is with us.

The birth of Jesus is God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves; and it is well beyond the limits of life as we know it. That is what the word salvation means: God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Salvation provides for redemption. These are big words that have very simple meanings. You might not find redemption if you’re looking for it, but I guarantee you’ll know it when you see it. To be redeemed is to be brought back from the edge of our own private little hells, or the darkness abyss of our guilt or shame, or the hand that catches us as we fall down that bottomless well of regret. It is not something we can work out on our own, or work to get over, or work to make right.

God doing for us what we cannot do for ourselves is comfort and joy by another name, and can only come from outside of our selves. Grace and mercy, comfort and joy, salvation and redemption – different words that all point to the same cure; the same healing balm; the same resolution of everything that has no foreseeable solution; the same terms for cease fires and reconciliation.

Comfort and joy are not ours to employ – they are a gift – the gift of life renewed – through Jesus' birth we were born. Our birth in Christ is not a gift we choose, but rather one we choose to claim. The Christmas Story reminds us that it is real and present and eternally available. There is no expiration date, no provisions for purchase, and no trade in is required. It is not for lack of skill or even willingness; it simply is not in our power to provide comfort and joy for ourselves or for anyone else; anymore than we can make water; or soil, or sunshine. These basic elements that are required for the existence of life come from God alone. We do not rule over them, but are ruled by them. Water, soil and sunshine are present to remind us of God’s sovereignty over all life. They keep us in our rightful place, as part of creation, not the masters of us. While water and soil and sunshine provide for our physical requirements, it is God’s mercy, that which we know as comfort and joy – that provides for our spiritual well being. Whenever there is discord in our souls, when we deny, or reject God’s terms of engagement, the potential for comfort and joy does not depart from us, but is merely waiting in the wings for us to change our minds. God is waiting for us to claim the gift of comfort and joy.

See that child in a manger; there lies our comfort and our joy; that which we did not earn, much less deserve, and yet, there is that child in the manger; born to us, for us, because of us; born to save us.

Christ was born for this

On Friday night my son, Ian, complained bitterly about how bored he was. Usually, when he's home on a Friday night he's glued to his PS3; shooting at things and people that have been framed as "the enemy." But on this Friday he was observing a request made by his school not to engage in any video games that involved the firing of weapons in act of respect for the 26 shooting victims of the Sandyfork Elementary School on the previous Friday. Just the day before he asked not to go to school because there was a threat of a shooting made against his school on Facebook and picked up in the local newspaper. There was also a lock-down drill this week in case such insanity should bear fruit in our own small town. The drill was followed by classroom discussions between the teachers and their students. I later ran into one of the high school teachers in Wal-Mart who said that she was amazed at how much the kids had thought through the possible scenarios of what-ifs. Also on Friday morning, at 9:30am, to mark the one week anniversary, our church rang our bells 26 times in concert with all the bells of all the churches in town. It has been a week filled with funerals, and raw, terrible sadness. Despite all this and so much more, it is now two days before Christmas. It seems discomfortingly surreal when our glittery celebration of Christ’s birth runs up against the unflinching, cruel edges of life.

Christmas and its annually repeated litanies of activities seem oddly, artificially fixed in an otherwise unpredictable world. Every year we do many of the same things, though the people we share those events with may come and go, or simply grow up into different people, as the case may be. But Christmas Eve is always on the 24th and Christmas Day is always the 25th. And in its fixedness, it has become statuesque - an inanimate object of sorts to which we give a nod each year through the various rituals and habits that surround it. The result is that these rituals and habits have taken on a life of their own, with a highly personalized and individualized nature. In this way, Christmas itself has become highly personalized and individualized with only the slightest tangential connection to the birth of Christ for those of us who observe it in its enormously secular context. And so we re-enact the sacred event of Jesus' birth every year, not just to remember it, not just to honor it, not just to teach it to our children, but to break it out of its fixedness. To free it from the bonds of the rituals and habits that we have created in order to preserve its delicate sacredness but which has ironically rendered it silent. The sweetly enduring strength of Mary's song, Elizabeth's joyful exclamation and the singing host of angels are now as mute as Zechariah. It falls upon the church, on you and I, to proclaim:  It is for all the Newtowns and for all the Adam Lanza’s in this world that Christ was born.

Much as it warms my heart, our Christmas observance is intended neither for the opening of gifts on Christmas morning nor the discovery of Santa’s generosity; it is not to get an extra day or two off of work; and it is not to ensure the stability of the American economy which depends heavily on the annual average influx of $20 billion holiday dollars. No, Christ was not born in a shopping mall or under a glistening Christmas tree. Jesus was born amid farm animals in a cold barn in the middle of the night. Within days of his birth, upon hearing of it, King Herod ordered the death of all the newborn boys across the land. It was for this that Christ was born. Not for all we do out of the goodness of our hearts to relieve the suffering of the millions from disease, famine, starvation, human trafficking, war, genocide, poverty, random shooting sprees, and the destruction of natural disasters, but for all we do not do. Christ was born into a world of sin, not to reward the righteous, but to save the rest of us.

That is why to shun the soul of Adam Lanza and the hundreds like him is to deny the power of the incarnation. To hate and to reject, even one so deserving, is not our place. Adam Lanza and his mother, whose life he also took, are the neighbors Jesus demands we love as much as we love ourselves. Is it any wonder they nailed him to the cross? The world Jesus was born into was a broken and hard place; and it still is. There is a reason that the glitter and fanfare of the Christmas celebration runs counter to the world we live in – and we would do well to pay attention to its dissonant chord. It rings out the truth that Christ was born to redeem all that is wrong, not to dismiss it or ignore it, but to take it on in a way you and I cannot or will not do. Jesus’ birth is meant to awaken us to God’s ongoing redemptive work –which is not fixed - that can only be perceived by those with eyes to see it. The good news is alive and well but only to those with ears to hear it.

And so may your Christmas be filled with joy, the true and enduring joy of God’s redemption through Christ our Lord, our Savior, born for us.

Prom Date; and other ruminations about the love of God

Next weekend is my daughter's prom. It the first time she spent a chunk of her own change on the dress and drove 20 miles to a good seamstress to have the hem taken up. She's going with her best girlfriend. I, of course, had a few male candidates to suggest. But what does a mother know? I should know better. I remember with such clarity my senior prom. The boy I went with was totally mother-approved. I still have the photo around somewhere: The memory of the velvet dark green dress she made and his totally 70's gray tux is securely etched in my mental time-line. That was the last time he and I spoke, I'm pretty sure. Mom was disappointed, naturally. The lead up mantra to the event went something like this: "But he likes you so much... and he's so nice looking.... just try to get to know him... etc., etc. etc. I know it well, because to my horror, quite recently, I have used these very words myself. My bad.

The same kind of thing tends to happen when well-meaning Christians try to convince non-believers or "the lapsed," that they should try to find a way back to Jesus, who is waiting for them with open arms. There is mother, truly out of a place of love and wanting the best for their beloved child, working every angle to leverage some change of heart. "But he loves you... he died on the cross for you... why can't you see that if you opened your heart to him you'd be so much happier?" etc., etc., etc.
When will we finally understand that we cannot talk people into love - not with their prom dates and certainly not with God?

Aside from the obvious, the prom date approach is ill-fated from the start because it misses the point, completely. Love is not logical. It cannot be planned or reasoned out or scheduled. Love is not within the control of human constructs, nor can it be constrained. With the first spark, the flame of love licks out large and bright before settling down into what is steady and predictable; no longer threatening or alarming to those who are readily prepared to dispense judgment on such things. Sometimes it diminishes for no apparent reason; the charred and fragile remains are humble evidence that something that was once alive is no longer. Sometimes love outlives even itself; its passion for being a part of life's design enables it to smolder for a very long time hidden under thick ash cover, guarded and preserved. These are human experiences of love: whether love for another or love for God. God does not love as we do. Rather God is the full expression of both the love we possess and claim as our own and all that we cannot. By simply being God, love is made known and accessible. When we find that we are bound to Jesus/God in love, we are embracing love itself. It is one thing to know that we are loved by God and to have the knowledge that our return affection is requested. It is quite another to give oneself over to that love, however imperfectly offered. Human love is always constrained by guarded reservations. A mere tear in the fabric of our stalwart defense again the persistent assault of God's love can mean the end for whatever self we had hoped to preserve. To walk this earth with the love of God in one's heart is a powerful elixir for healing the deep wounds this life so randomly inflicts on the body and soul. To know that we can love at all because we were loved first provokes the most divine speculation about what else may be revealed in the course of time and place. Yes, we have been loved from the beginning: our beginning, the world's beginning, even still, at the beginning of this day. And before we awake tomorrow, love will have already arrived.

During the season of Easter, many churches conclude their worship with a formal dismissal couched in Alleluias, which means: "Give praise to God." For the forty days of Lent, observed during the coldest, darkest part of the Pennsylvania winter, this word of acknowledged love was hidden from plain sight; smoldering under the thick ash of what we perceived as ruined. In these great 50 days of Easter, with targeted intention, we fan the embers, throwing off the dead ash and coaxing up the young flames until on Pentecost they boast the height of heaven. The Sunday readings seek to teach us about this love. The pastors expound upon it. And both the earnest and the blind respond: Alleluia! Alleluia! Let us go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Thanks be to God. Alleluia! Alleluia!