As you leaf occasionally through your beloved copy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP), you may have noticed mention of “Ember Days.” These observances turn up on the liturgical calendar four times a year, and each consists of three days: the Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday after St. Lucy’s Day (December 14), Ash Wednesday, the day of Pentecost, and Holy Cross day (September 14). As you may have deduced, we are currently in the vicinity of the Ash Wednesday Ember Days….
C.S. Lewis’ book titled The Great Divorce is a parable about the cavernous gap between heaven and hell. Lewis presents hell as a place filled with people who can’t let go. They carry the things they disliked about other people while they were alive, or they find new ways to be righteously indignant with those around them. As they hold on to these resentments and express their annoyances, they move further and further apart.
The story focuses on a small group of people on a bus that takes them to the very edge of heaven. Before they can go on, each of them meets a person from their past that they wish they could avoid. An artist meets a competitor and doesn’t want to give up his insistence that his school of training was the best. A woman has manipulated those closest to her and doesn’t want to give that power up in the afterlife….
In our world we want to know things. We want Google at our fingertips to tell us everything about anything, and we want Facebook to instantly tell us everything else.
As Christians, we are no different in our quest for answers about our relationship with God. We want to know specifics about God, and our relationship with him. Moreover, we want to know why we are here, what is the meaning of life, where is God.
In the story of the transfiguration of our Lord, which I like to refer to as a mountaintop experience, I ask the question, can we be transfigured on a mountaintop, or do life-changing moments of mystery and wonder not happen today?
Life is full of mountain experiences. They are the times when we find healing, or unexpected love, when we suddenly have an ‘aha’ moment and clearly know the answer to a problem or an important life decision…..
When I first learned that my office was going to move to the nave of the church during the reconstruction of our Mission House, I was hesitant. I love my usual office. It is a perfect size for working alone and for 2 or 3 people to gather. There are trees outside all the windows, and I can hear the rotating activities on the Penn South asphalt outside throughout the year. I have most of my meetings in that office and I do most of my writing there, as well. It is the perfect combination of accessible and set apart….
However you are spending this Valentine’s Day, you may have the vague wondering: how did a tradition of focusing on romantic love come from St. Valentine? And then you might also have another question as well: who exactly was St. Valentine?
On February 14, the Church commemorates a Christian named Valentine who was martyred some time before 312 CE, but there were several Valentines in that category. One was a priest in Rome, another a bishop in what is now Terni in central Italy (who is possibly the same person as the Roman priest), and a third is unknown except that he was martyred in Africa. Whether February 14 was meant to honor all the Valentines or just on of them is not clear….
Back in April (which seems like a very long time ago, now!), a new initiative was launched in our Pantry Program. The Pantry Program was born six years ago, soon after I started at Holy Apostles (which seems like a long time ago, too!). In its early days, we called it the Backpack Pantry Program. It served about 50 families with children at the public school across the street from the church who struggled with food access on the weekends. Every Thursday, each family in the program would get a backpack filled with enough food to make meals for a family of four on Saturday and Sunday….
In the time of Jesus, the Law of Moses required certain rituals to be performed after the birth of a child. This was a significant part of Jewish culture and religious practice. It was a way of dedicating the child to God and also a way of purifying the mother after childbirth. Joseph and Mary, being devout Jews, followed these laws faithfully. They took Jesus to Jerusalem to present Him to the Lord and to offer the required sacrifice. This act of obedience to the Law of Moses was the first step in fulfilling God’s plan for Jesus. It was a declaration that Jesus belonged to God and was set apart for His purposes….
My college aged nephew was visiting from Maine last weekend. One of the stops on his tour of NYC was the Museum of Modern Art. He wanted to see Van Gough’s Starry Night (which we did, after making our way through a sea of other people with the same desire!). And as is always the case in museums, beyond the famous works there were unexpected treasures that caught our eyes.
For me, one of those treasures was a grouping of photographs from a series by photographer Aaron Siskind titled “The Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation.” One of the many images in this series is included above; singular moments of individuals caught in mid-air. Each person is posed differently against a blank backdrop. Are they rising? Falling? Suspended? The details are left to the imagination of the viewer….
When we think of monasticism today, we might think of Benedict of Nursia (6th century), or Theresa of Avila (16th century), or Thomas Merton (20th century). But the man who perhaps started the monastic movement in the first place is much less well-know. Antony of Egypt (356) lived a few hundred years earlier than Benedict, and his feast day is today, Friday, January 17….
n this week’s written meditation, I offer some words from a guest poet. Hamza Mohamed is an eighth-grade writer from Minneapolis. He is a member of the After-School writing lab and the Young Author’s council program at his public middle school. As we move closer to Inauguration Day and as we continue to discern how to respond most faithfully to a new political administration, here is written work and some explanatory words from one of our younger citizens. Titled “If I Was President,” this poem was published recently in the book Let This Be Our Anthem: Call to Action from Young Writers to the Next President….