Notes for the Week Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost August 30 2020
Dear friends,
Last Sunday, I preached on Jesus’ question to Peter, “Who do you say that I am.” I invited you to discern who you are, your truth and who God knows you to truly be. As I well know, I have still much to learn about who I am, God knows. Maybe you feel the same way, as you consider your own perspectives on the world or, as you ask yourself, “Who am I, really.”
As one who is ready to learn more about self, perspective, personal truth and what has shaped the way one thinks, I invite you to join me on a holy journey. We are experiencing, what might be called, a pivotal year of change in many of our traditional ways of being and doing life. Indeed, we hear so much about change on so many fronts that to acknowledge that change is happening becomes almost cliché. Change isn’t easy and yet some change is for the better, and when we look back at this time, we will be able to point to positive improvements made possible in our lives through the changes that are happening now. This is especially true in the current conversation about race, gender, the preservation of respect and dignity for all persons and all sentient beings. I’m ready for a way toward change if it means we can collectively improve our perspectives about all of these.
Sacred Ground provides such a way. It allows each of us to explore the way we view race, how we view our historical perspective about race and how those perspectives might change over the years and generations to come. It is an exciting moment, a challenging moment, an introspective moment and, as we have seen, a volatile moment in our country.
Several people have already committed to take this journey with me and I would like to think there will be more. We will be together every three weeks on Wednesday evenings for conversation and will experience, I hope, revelation and insight about who we are and why, deepen our love of neighbor and, expect share some tears and laughter. This is not a series for the faint hearted, but it is not designed to deliver “shame and blame” either. I don’t want to be judged, and I’m sure you don’t either. I just want to understand more about why and how I perceive this changing world. I would like to learn and grow, and I’d love to do that feeling safely secure with people who want to do the same.
I invite you to take this journey with me
Read all about Sacred Ground on the website: The Episcopal Church
Click on Racial Reconciliation and scroll to Sacred Ground to learn all and more you need to know about this dynamic series.
https://episcopalchurch.org/racial-reconciliation
We’ll view film clips and read prepared works on our own and, grounded in faith, we will bring our personal stories, our reactions and curiosity to our Zo0m meetings. I am sure these will be enlightening, vitally dynamic meetings and, by the time we reach the end, my guess is, if only in a small way, we will each be changed.
Please, let me know you would like to join me on this holy journey,
We’ll start in two or three weeks.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
Your word is a lantern to my feet
And a light upon my path (Psalm 119:105)
Notes for the Week Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost August 23 2020
Dear friends,
During this COVID-tide, we hear people echoing our own thoughts more and more: one day seems like another……what day of this week is this? At the same time, each day brings with it the same old anxieties, confusion and mixed up messages, as we continue to keep on keeping on with all our normal worldly challenges, expectations and challenges, expected or not.
We look around and realize that we are not alone. No matter what part of he world we call home, or our circumstances, our lot is shared. We wear our masks, we long to see, hold and hug our loved ones, we miss sitting around a table, sharing a meal with old friends. And we miss sitting in our favorite pew at church, temple, mosque or synagogue, simply being together as one.
All this thinking that we share about our current existence and the constant awareness we carry as part of our subconscious recognition of its reality, leads us to find outlets for relief. Our gardens have never looked so beautiful or so bountiful. Various piles of this and that which have accumulated over the years are being sorted out (or being re-created!) Closets are being cleaned. Rooms are being painted. Our masks are becoming more elaborate and creative, and if we’re still stuck with wearing them at Halloween, one can only imagine how much!
So, we do not lose heart. We are learning to live into a new way of being, beginning with each day as it unfolds anew. A new day brings with it new possibility and a fresh start with fresh perspective, if we choose to receive it that way.
One poem that I love, speaks to the coming day, and all that is held within it. John O’Donohue, an Irish poet with a Celtic heart, wrote a poem that I shared with the Vestry earlier this week, and I have received a request to share it here. It is the kind of poem that one reads slowly, to settle one’s mind before sleep at the end of the day. If ever I feel myself becoming a little too caught up in my own anxieties, frustrations, or concerns, I turn to this poem, and find spiritual renewal through the poet’s words.
I can sense the Spirit softly offering hope, curiosity and thankfulness with which to greet the coming dawn. I pray it may provide the same uplifting, peace-filled contentment for you, as you journey through the days ahead.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word. (1982 Hymnal #8)
Notes for the Week Tenth Sunday after Pentecost August 9 2020
Do you remember when it was cold and snowy and we wondered whether we would be snowed out of our Christmas Day service, and we were? That was a couple of years or so ago, and then last year, there really wasn’t much snow, but it was cold enough. It was Christmas-tide, snow or no snow, and people put up lights and decorations, and businesses painted their windows with snowy winter scenes, reminiscent of what everyone thinks Christmas should be: snow-covered fir trees among the streets and in the woods, and in living rooms, to be festooned with memories and under planted with gifts.
Little did we know what was coming.
Just weeks later, doors were shut. “Someone’s knockin’ at the door; somebody’s ringin’ the bell…” and that is as far as the lyrics can go for now. Who is that masked stranger knockin’? Don’t open the door and whatever you do, don’t let it in!
The world still wonders, like an innocent child, if the days of opening doors, and receiving with open arms, will ever be real again. It wonders why its way of being, its deeply felt longings for welcome expression and recognition of self and other, is being turned upside down, emptied out of all the way things are expected to be. As if it half expects to wake up from a bad dream, finding all as it was before.
But the painted Christmas scenes, still looking at us in August, force us to stare back at the reality of our once-innocent unknowing of what the future would hold. The innocent one waiting patiently at the door is small and delicate and in a very different place than it expected the world would allow it to be, and we begin to realize that a little bit of innocence is alright. Just like a little bit of creation, we too can plant ourselves firmly in a doorway of expectation and hope, as if waiting patiently and innocently for it to open up again to life as we knew it.
Then was then, and now is now. Looking back, we were innocent of understanding then what we deem now as a much more innocent time. We wouldn’t have thought so at Christmas. Then, we might have looked back fifty years in search of our innocence. But now, we’re looking back just a few months, and we find there that measure of innocence that existed even in our desire for a more innocent time. It makes one wonder if, fifty years from now, people will look back on this time and deem it far more innocent than 2070 could ever hope to be again. I think they will, and so innocence must be here, somewhere.
Perhaps, deep down in each of us, there is an emerging knowledge about our common humanity, no matter who we are or where we are, or how we got here. To know that we are still learning, still discovering, still finding ways to bring loving support amid the chaos, means that we are not yet too jaded to have hope and trust in the way we might yet need to go. Hope begets renewed dedication and determination to grow, no matter what. Be it COVID, calamity, chaos and confusion, here there and everywhere, each of us has the capacity and the inward desire to keep calm and carry on, no matter the measure of how good we are at it. To carry on is to keep moving forward with hope and with courage and with humor and humble grace-filled confidence in our ability to find a small way to light up the world with a simple presence, powerful enough to throw into the mix that will help us all survive.
Perhaps that’s why God didn’t want Adam and Eve to go near the apples hanging so temptingly from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. To keep our innocence is to allow ourselves to discover life as it is, with all its possibilities for hopefulness and as we find ourselves filled with hope within it. It was Stephen Hawking who coined the phrase, “Where there is life, there is hope.” St. Paul said, “Not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint…..”
All we grownups think we need to know it all, and indeed, we do need to keep a grasp on what’s happening and the way things are going. But we guard fiercely against being jaded or grasping at anything that will give us instant answers, right or wrong, helpful or dangerous. Rather, by relying on a little patient innocence, born of hope, faith, love, and a little beauty, might just lead us into whatever bit of new creation God really does want us to find knocking at our door.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“He will make your innocence radiate like the dawn,
and the justice of your cause will shine like the noonday sun. (Psalm 37:6 NLT)
Notes for the Week Eighth Sunday after Pentecost July 26 2020
Dear friends,
Albert Einstein said that logic will get you from A to B, but imagination will take you anywhere. Just as one might be loathe to dare to enter into either of these, given our current world situation, a gift of hopeful possibility appears without warning.
So it was during my morning walk, be-masked and doing the six-foot dance with another walker encountered along the way, a little ray of hope for the future appeared before us. Into the midst of a mutual grownup awareness of our current world reality, this fairyland creation offered up a different kind of world. A world filled with attentive care, patient intention and inclusion of all, regardless of age or condition and regardless of whether one might be animal, mineral, human or something of another world. All these and more are included as part of this miniature world that looks rather like a cross between Narnia and Alice in Wonderland.
Seeing this world through a child’s eyes brought all the adult fatigue, the impatience and querulousness about the day-to-day condition, down to size. One’s mind, heart and soul felt its invitation to let go, felt its message of uncomplicated acceptance, as joyful discovery eased away the angst that works so hard to possess them.
Just as you might, I can remember creating similar scenes as a child, making miniature houses, grand castles, little roads, valleys and making up stories to go with each addition. It was not an unusual pastime in an era which knew no indoor phones, no television, no internet. For children there were chores, school, and there was time for play. Time for imagining wonderful worlds where all works together. Worlds that are deemed too beautiful to mar with war, murder and mayhem, and should any occur, no one ever left the front lines unreconciled before bed. These worlds are set apart and deemed inviolate by their creators.
Perhaps this garden reveals, not only the same capacity for a child’s imagination to take flight, but also the need to create from the chaos a dream of a better world, a different world, without fully realizing how very important that is. Perhaps dreaming of a world put to right which encapsulates all our wildest dreams, is one way to cope with the reality of a world far more at odds with anyone’s inmost desires. Don’t we all long for an opportunity to embrace all that is beautiful in the world, rather than to simply long for it?
Perhaps that’s what God had in mind when God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in it. A place of wonder, of beauty, for all to enjoy regardless of age, condition, or persuasion, whether animal, mineral or human. A place to capture one’s limitless imagination with its endless intricacy, infinite complexity and vastness that reaches far beyond all that human imagination ever could.
COVID or no COVID, every living creature and every living thing God created out of nothing, God expects to assist God in continuing to create, build up, expand, explore and take delight in seeing that it is good.
It seems we might have somehow lost the knack of how, but God never stops wanting us to try.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)
Notes for the Week Sixth Sunday after Pentecost July 12 2020
Dear friends,
Sometimes you think you’re walking in the right direction and, suddenly, you’re caught up short and feel the need to examine the direction you thought you were following, but in reality, need to adjust.
So it was for me, as I was out on my early morning walk a few days ago.
You probably saw a story in the daily paper about this enormous piece of work, BLACK LIVES MATTER, painted on a road in St. John’s.
Each letter speaks to a period in time, from the 1800’s to the present. Within the space of each enormous letter, are written facts about the lives of black people during particular periods of the last two hundred years: less desirable living conditions, less educational opportunities, less bank loan possibilities, less work opportunities that lead to a fulfilling and respectful sense of self, and many more glaring facts reflecting human neglect bereft of caring.
Facts are facts. Truth is truth. And here, they are laid out neatly, unemotionally, without bias, blame or shame. Within each letter, facts serve to educate, inform and attempt to move whomever stops to read them, to make adjustments in one’s thinking, to shift gears, back up a bit and re-think one’s whole perspective on race, which may or may not have been previously in tune with what has been going on for the past few hundred years. The artwork is made more powerful by its absence of accusation and its stark reality reflected through simple facts.
When we are faced with facts, we can begin to form understanding based on reality. So why is it that we allow ourselves to be shielded from them? Is it because we think that, what we choose not to know, must have nothing to do with us? How easily we are duped. How easily we close our doors to problems that are so systemically wrong that we must be shocked into facing their existence.
It’s time to change direction on so many fronts. The old directions have led us nowhere fast, and simply subduing the noise by closing the doors of our minds tight and pulling heavy curtains to hide the problem, hasn’t worked for anyone.
Black lives do matter. The systems that have failed them need to be tossed out to be replaced by systems that lift up rather than tear down, so that people can, at last, simply get along; so that all people may feel safe and secure in knowing that they are beloved, simply because they exist; so that we can finally understand our common responsibility in building up this thing we call life, rather than allowing ourselves to be swept into warring hatred due to misunderstanding, misinformation or man’s inhumanity to man.
Perhaps we can try out directions for positive change that have been suggested since time began: listening to voices that deserve to be heard, entering one’s own story into the world’s endless roads of stories, and to have the courage to hear answers to questions that never occurred to one to ask before, may lead us to a destination of mutual love built on recognition of our amazing mutual humanity.
Which brings us back to where humankind began and when the direction was made clear to all God’s people: to love God with all one’s heart, soul and mind, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Maybe it’s time to paint this phrase in the middle of a road somewhere. It points us toward the powerful direction we should have been following long , long before the 1800’s.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
Set up road markers for yourself, make yourself guideposts; consider well the highway, the road by which you went. Return, O Israel, return to these your cities. —Jeremiah 31:21
Notes for the Week Fifth Sunday after Pentecost July 5 2020
Dear friends,
I’ve never been much inclined to festoon my porch with banners or pepper my lawn with signs, or to stick a placard on my fence, but sometimes things must be said. Hence, my new garden flag, meant to send a strong message to all those who pass by. Don’t be easily fooled by the mask!
Who is that masked stranger up yonder? Friend or foe? Don’t get me wrong, I always give the masked stranger the benefit of the doubt. I like to think that anyone who wears a mask is not only caring for themselves, but caring for me, and that makes me feel pretty good.
Unlike people, however, squirrels feel no urge to protect me, the birds, or even the trees they live in; witness the half-eaten walnuts laying at the foot of my English Walnut. They are pretty much in it for themselves, which is why people spend fortunes on finding bird feeders with squirrel deterrent baffles and the like. Brilliant bird feeder engineers keep coming up with more and more complex designs in an attempt to keep ahead of the little furry rodents, all of whom must hold advanced degrees in bird-feeder entry methodology. My most impenetrable feeder still allows seeds to fall out, leaving a smorgasbord for the four-legged furry ones waiting patiently below.
Don’t get me wrong. I like squirrels and don’t often refer to them as rodents, even though they are, as are rats with less endearing tails. In fact, I’m quite attached to the pair who live in my walnut tree that I enjoy viewing outside my study window. Each year, I am privileged to see baby squirrels emerging from their nest and watch with delight all their antics in the tree branches as they play chase and try to push each other off. I don’t get much work done during those moments.
Thus. learning valuable lessons from my resident birds, I’ve adopted a “live and let live” philosophy, having come to the conclusion that I will never be able to outwit the squirrels when it comes to any of my bird feeders. The birds all happily chomp down their seed, with nary a care about a squirrel posted underneath, waiting for scraps. Minute, unafraid hummingbirds seem to enjoy buzzing around them up close and personal, feeling sorry for them, I expect, what with the lack of wings that can beat 1,000 times a minute or more.
Hence my yard banner. I am making a statement for all those without wings who exist only at the largesse of others, relegated to foraging for themselves and being grateful for other creatures’ leftovers. Surviving is a serious issue. Pride has long since left the squirrel scene. It’s every furry one for oneself and God knew when God created squirrels that they would survive just fine, and yeah, multiply, with a little ingenuity, patience and being exactly who they were meant to be.
In a world beset by serious issues for humankind, announcing a little amused tolerance in the front yard for issues in Mother Nature’s world, might provide a welcome change for human and beast alike. If humankind and beast can manage to build a bridge or two toward positive solutions in that world, maybe there’s hope for this one. God never said there should be any difference.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“However that may be, let each of you lead the life that the Lord has assigned,
to which God called you. (1 Corinthians 7: 17)
Notes for the Week Fourth Week after Pentecost June 28 2020
Dear friends,
This reminds me of how the world seems on COVID-19; somewhat contained by the rules, but all haywire on how to keep them. All on the inside of the bin? Or, maybe OK to let it all hang out. It’s a gamble. Maybe the yard debris will be gone in the morning, or maybe there will be a bit of a pile pointedly left behind, leaving it for you to deal with it anew.
It reminds me of the mask wearing game: wearing your mask if you see someone approaching from 100 yards away or throwing caution to the wind and leaving it off as they pass by with less than 6 feet between you. Rules? What rules? If one doesn’t know that one is a possible carrier of a deadly disease, or just can’t believe that such a phenomenon could exist, then one opts to leave the mask off. If, on the other hand, one counts oneself vulnerable to catching the plague, for a variety of reasons, one surely opts to leave one’s mask firmly in place.
Over the last several weeks, during my daily walks, I’ve passed lots of friendly people, out for an early walk with the dog, running with earphones, riding their bikes. We share a common bond that wraps itself around the early hour of the day. Regardless of the apparent age and circumstances of each and the activity level each displays, we are all members of an early bird community. We belong to the quieter, fresher part of the day, and as fellow members, familiar or not, we acknowledge each other as we pass by, with a wave, a nod, or a smile of welcome recognition here and there. Sometimes we say things as we pass, like: “Nice day,” “Nice dog,” “Good morning,” or just simply, “Mornin,’” with nothing more than a twitch of the head, or a slight raise of the hand. Usually, we give each other wide berths, acknowledging mutual respect for appropriate space.
But more recently, I’ve noticed there seem to be more and more apparent risk takers entering the early bird club. These are the mask-free ones, who venture much closer, especially if passing by quickly on a bike or running. They are gambling that no little coronavirus droplet will gleefully ride the wind and land on us slow goers. So, I wear my mask, taking it up and down, down and up, depending on who’s coming or going. Much as I hate messing with the darn thing, my gambling days are over, and I prefer to stay alive a little longer.
What brought the yes-to-mask rule home to me was a recent article I read about the reason for wearing the mask: compassion for another. For a long time, I thought I was merely protecting myself, and that much remains true. However, the writer explained that the important part of wearing a mask has to do with my responsibility to protect someone else, be that person family, friend or stranger. So, one’s mask is doing double duty by not only protecting its wearer, but protecting all those very nice, unsuspecting people and keeping them safe from potentially germ-ridden me! Each mask-less person that passes me by offers me yet another opportunity to practices a random act of kindness. By the time I reach home, I feel as if I’ve accomplished double-duty as I walked my thousands of steps. Maybe, just maybe, one of the early bird club, including me, was spared the coronavirus infection this morning.
Just like most issues that cause dilemma, we ask the question, ‘What would Jesus do?” My guess is that he would wear his mask and he wouldn’t wear it just to protect himself. That was always the least of his concerns. No. It would be to protect the other, to keep the other safe, and in doing so, love one’s neighbor as one’s self. Even when they fly by you barefaced on their bikes at 6:30 in the morning.
My prayer is that everyone will read an article that speaks to the good will of protecting someone else as well as themselves and they will realize that it always takes more effort, time and often, if more of a nuisance, to opt for playing by the rules, than to leave a bin filled with a bunch of branches out there for someone else to arm wrestle, or worse, leave a breeze filled with deadly germs out there for someone else to fight off.
We journey together.
Mother Esme+
Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.
(Philippians 2:4)
Notes for the Week Third Sunday after Pentecost June 21 2020
Dear friends,
It takes all kinds. All manner of folks to make up a community. Walking along the streets of my neighborhood, I came across this wall community. Each member must have spoken to an artist’s heart and, as a result, found welcome to become part of this community in particular.
Perhaps the artist knows the story that belongs to each member. Are they friends of the artist or each an artist’s discovery? Are they neighbors, members of the family, or simply strangers, now bound together on a communal wall, perhaps waiting to see who will next join them, maybe bringing about the need for a grand re-shuffling for position of prominence. Or, maybe there is no prominence. Where you land is where you were meant to be. It could be that newly arriving faces simply join in at the end of the line, which must soon be turning right or left with a different landscape to view.
Maybe there was simply a plain fence before the coronavirus crept along its side. Maybe the virus touched off a need for the artist inside the fence to find people, even if they had to be painted. Maybe, if you can’t have a dog, you paint one and you put him in the place of prominence, always on guard against other dogs who might wander past the fence gate. Or an inordinate number of delivery people.
Maybe the artist simply ran out of room inside the house, and what we readily see of the community on the outside is just part of the story. All the rest might be living on the walls of bedroom, bathroom and hall. These days, we don’t usually know much about who lives in the houses we walk by, or what keeps them going, or how they view the world. We tend to think all perceptions of the world should somehow match our own, and we tend to keep our own communities behind the private gates of our acceptance. We don’t hang them out on a fence for all to see. We’ are rather afraid of judgment.
Who are these people, why are they out on the fence, are the paintings a boast of someone’s talent, or does the artist decide if they are good enough to hang outside? We will never know unless we ask. The next time I walk into that part of the neighborhood again, I’m going to search for the wall of community. There’s a story to be told, and by asking to hear it, I well may find myself becoming part of the community, too. If I’m hung out on the fence, I hope I’ll be next to the dog. Or I could be told, in so many words, to get lost again. That would be too bad. If there is no story to be shared about a community, well, that leaves it simply hanging on the fence. It just doesn’t get anywhere.
When a community makes itself visible, filled with untold stories waiting for the telling, then people tend to come knocking on its door, wanting to hear them. When they do, they might recognize a bit of themselves in each, and they want to hang out with the wall of stories, too. It’s the way Jesus told us to build His Church. And you can read all about that in Matthew 28.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“Oh how good and pleasant it is
When brethren live together in unity. (Psalm 133:1)
Notes for the Week Second Sunday after Pentecost June 14 2020
Dear friends,
I’m not sure what compelled me to put my rose alongside the other assorted flowers placed in the ageing chain link bridge above the St. John’s railroad cut. God knows, I am missing close camaraderie, missing sharing worship time with the faithful, confused about the outcomes of emergent Phases 1, 2 and 3. I’m confused about the before, during and after of protests in the streets, and how easy it seems for hatred to continue to exist when so many people simply want to get along.
As one who, like many of us, have seen my share of suffering due to war, civil upheaval, despicable acts, political assassinations, out and out murder of mind, body and spirit, unspeakable animal cruelty, have seen finger pointing, judgement and accusation of guilt in the face of innocence, and the other way around. We have all experienced misunderstanding, miscommunication, misplaced belief and eventually, there comes a time when one just has to place a rose in a chain link fence to express something that’s too hard to put into words.
Maybe that’s why people do it. Lay flowers at the tombs of what might have been beautiful but somehow turned ugly. Be the tombs of the fallen be ever so simple, or be they mighty monuments, they express a common human desire to bring some hope into what seems hopeless. Some possibility into the seemingly impossible. Some calm into the chaos and balm for wounded hearts. Some expression of universal human compassion for all humankind, regardless of mistakes that have been made and will be made again. People are just like roses or any other part of God’s creation. Well-tended, we flourish; neglected, ill-treated or counted as expendable, it’s hard not to simply perish.
But God didn’t design any part of Creation to just give up and die when the going gets tough. Roses will keep on blooming in the middle of a long-forgotten garden, sending out a message that they still offer grace, even amid a sea of weeds. All life will find ways to grow between the hard rocks within which it finds itself, determined to hold on, finding a way to flourish, no matter what. Even if we don’t always quite understand why, how, or in what way we are to continue growing, no matter our age, circumstances or heritage, we just know we must. To stop growing, to stop working toward understanding, to stop examination of oneself and one’s actions, is a freeway toward discord rather than discovery. To put one’s head in the sand in order to ignore one’s own contribution to disorder, or to not realize one’s need to mend what is broken, is to sacrifice gratitude for the creation of one’s own life itself, along with all its possibilities to bring honor to the One who created it.
Perhaps that inner knowing is why we put our flowers out in the public places. They are a testament to all that has been sacrificed, all that has been longed for, all the possibility that seems discarded, but most of all they are a testament to the hope that we will continue to seek the beautiful and that we will continue to endure, will keep on keeping on in faith and hope. We do not run away from what seems undone and impossible to overcome, we look at it all to see where it is we are called to find possibilities for rebuilding new possibilities.
It is all Jesus asks of us. To express love of God and neighbor in whatever way we can, even if it is merely threading a rose on a chain link fence. To be open to growth in our understanding of ourselves. To be open to growth in our understanding of others. Above all, to understand that God continues to create, with us or without us. It is simply ours to notice and participate.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“…. we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand……………. knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5)
Notes for the Week Trinity Sunday June 7 2020
Dear friends,
Sometimes you just feel paralyzed. You don’t know what to do…..what you, me, I….can do. We know things are very seriously messed up and need fixing, but we keep coming back to the same question, what can I do to make it right? We feel small, inconsequential, unable to make even a small impact or difference. It’s why humankind in the thousands upon thousands around the world take to the streets to join bodies and voices in one long, loud lament. It takes courage and passion to be there. It takes dedication to the cause for change. Above all, it takes a willingness to make a statement for all of us who were there in spirit, if not physically present. Most of us feel the same need to join in the collective statement, and we give thanks for those who helped raise our voices sounding at home, with theirs.
Maybe the year 2020 will go down in history as being one of catalytic change due to jolting global awareness of human vulnerability, where warring over national borders suddenly had to take a back seat, if only for a moment. Maybe it will be remembered as the year an unseen virus which stopped the world was juxtaposed with a last straw of systemic racism finally breaking the proverbial camel’s back.
If so, we can only pray that maybe one day, teachers will tell their amazed students about 2020, and how it became the year in history when change actually happened, and that the reason all people of color, all white people, all women, all different faiths, all different personal identities and all sexual preferences feel totally safe to be who they are, wherever they are is because humankind finally figured out what and which are really important priorities.
Instead of our priorities continually circling around ourselves, our nations and our superiority, maybe we will begin to understand the simple but hard lesson Jesus taught: to love God with all our hearts, minds and souls, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Even if people have never heard Jesus’ words, or care to, perhaps there is a universal primal longing for something like his words which sends those thousands out into the streets in protest against injustice and cruelty. Like us, they don’t have the capacity to find the words to express their collective anger, hurt, and helplessness. Those of us who do know about the greatest of all the commandments, can thank God Jesus had the words we are all trying to express and hopefully act upon.
If the year 2020 could teach us all that simply lesson, the rest of the mess really would be history and the world, coming after our time in it, would be a very different place.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“The Bible teaches us that “God is love.” Jesus of Nazareth taught, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ The prophet Micah taught that the Lord requires us to ‘do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with our God.’”(From a June 1, 2020 statement from The Most Reverend Michael B. Curry, Presiding Bishop and Primate of The Episcopal Church.)
Notes for the Week Day of Pentecost May 31 2020
Dear friends…
As a child growing up in England, I used to play in bombed out buildings, climb over old, decaying bunkers still staring out to sea, and step onto specially marked places that might once have been homes to large artillery, and partly caved-in foxholes, homes of young men defending the beachhead. None of these possibilities in history ever registered in my young mind. They were just leftover markers of other lives, at another time, leaving it to me to make up my own imaginary adventures as I played in, on and around them.
Most of these childhood memories have lain dormant until today, when it was my turn to step into an orange circle. The circles are all lined up, six feet apart, and one must stay in an available circle, until the circle in front of it becomes empty and one is free to step six feet forward.
As I shuffled forward, with others shuffling at least six feet away from me me, the leftover markers from WWll, which had provided me with so many contented hours of play, slipped quickly back into memory. I wondered if, a long time from now, when we are free to simply walk into a store, clumsily bumping into people coming out as we are going in, and exchanging pleasant apologies as we fend for our way, if children, who are still very small, will find the fading orange circles and play games in and around them. Perhaps they will hop from one to another, judging each other’s ability to not step on the circle’s outer white ring, yelling “Out!” if one does. I wonder if the history of COVID-19 will register in their minds, or if they will know much of anything at all about the pandemic of 2020, as they play on.
Will they know, or remember that they were told, about when we all wore masks and kept special gloves handy in case we had to pick something up that we weren’t sure had been sanitized? Will they know, or even care, that we couldn’t nudge, touch shoulder to shoulder, hug or kneel together to pray? Will they understand our collective, often unspoken, fear? Our concern that, unknowingly, we could actually be the one carrying a deadly virus that might infect another we love or might never have met? And, that knowing this was as frightening a thought as catching the virus ourselves?
When I was playing in abandoned bunkers, I never thought about who had felt sheltered and protected by them, or how the bunkers helped to mask fear of their own unseen enemy. But today, stepping from circle to circle, under the watchful eye of vigilant staff, the memory of those unseen, unknown defenders came clearly to mind. My thoughts slip from their assigned roles of fighting and defending, to people everywhere, since the beginning of time and history until today, lining up for food, lining up for clean water, lining up for their fair share of flour and fresh vegetables, and shamefully, even now, even in the midst of a world-wide deadly virus, clutching documents to prove their existence so that they might find escape from fear.
All I know is, that once I summoned up enough courage to go to the grocery store to buy some veggies and milk, I was glad of the orange circles that controlled my rush to get it over, to be away from it all, from innocent good people who feared me as much as I feared them, shuffling slowly forward from circle to circle, to be free from risk, free from so much unknown, and to reach the safe walls of a home.
When we can see the whites of the eyes of the enemy, we know what we’re up against. When the enemy is invisible, it puts us all on edge, and we begin to look at each other more intently, ensuring that all safety measures are in place and being adhered to. The orange circles, so familiar to me now, are my silent, if gaudy, protectors, maybe my life preservers in waters that are only just beginning to subside, and like underground bunkers built as barriers between me and the enemy, I give thanks to God for their existence. I give thanks to God for all those who move to protect a world of vulnerability, and for those who put their lives on the line to ensure it stays in place.
One day, I will step across the orange circles, not noticing them becoming scuffed and obscure over time. But I cannot help hoping that their remnants will not completely disappear, so that one day we might see some children jumping from circle to circle, not running in circles in search of an unknown destiny, but intently jumping into the center of each, without going outside the lines for fear of being called “out.” Then, smiling at the irony, we will remember.
We journey together
Mother Esme+
Steady my footsteps in your word; let no iniquity have dominion over me. (Psalm 119:133)
Notes for the Week Sixth Sunday of Easter Rogation Sunday May 17 2020
She’s called a Rose of Sharon. Hibiscus syriacus, when we’re being formal. Although she came into being in Asia, she’s named for the gardens of Syria, where she grew thousands of years ago. It was then her name was lifted up in scripture* and, in time, her name came to be given to the Divine One who would walk among us on earth one day, the One who was and is called, the Rose of Sharon, the Lily of the Valley, Jesus, the Son of God. It seems fitting that Jesus would be named so, since like her, his humble beauty has never ceased to grace gardens, deserts, mountains and valleys and, in time, he became known everywhere and anywhere anyone took time to notice, even though he never asked anyone to.
Like a disciple of Jesus, one of a million birds, flying across tens of thousands of miles, like so many winged apostles flying across the flyways of time, carried the seed of the Rose of Sharon across oceans and spread her beauty across new lands, and she took root where she was dropped and bloomed where she was planted.
Now, she grows softly and silently in every other garden you could come across, and sometimes she’s carefully tended, given fertilizer in spring, and water in summer. Or she grows here on her own, untended, amid wild weeds and trees in a plot of government-owned land, softening the edges of rusty chain link and barbed wire, simply being who she was made to be, available to anyone with eyes to see and ears to listen to her quiet story.
Just like Jesus.
Like Jesus, she stopped me in my tracts. During these days of rising human confusion, isolation, fears, rising protests, and noise, awareness of her was breathtakingly calming. Receiving her message of serenity and her invitation to simply observe her quiet blooming, provided much-needed balm for the soul and a welcome quickening of hope.
Just as it is when you discover Jesus.
Showing up, the way Jesus does; amid the tangled weeds of people’s lives, from the mountains to the valleys, amid the deafening noise of human scrambling need for attention, to the quietly humble of heart. It doesn’t matter to Jesus how he is discovered, by whom, or where. His beauty and grace blooms wherever and whenever he has been sought after and found.
Hibiscus syriacus, like countless flora and fauna we celebrate on this Rogation Sunday, seems to gently offer the meaning of creation itself. One begins to understand why God created and what God so profoundly wants us to learn from God’s creation. To simply be who one is meant to be and to bring beauty into the place where one finds oneself. To discern the truth of one’s God-given gifts in order to identify to the world who one really is and how one is really to serve. To know when to produce and when to rest. When to grow and when to wait. To lower the sound of one’s voice, to lessen the need for attention in order to realize the truth of one’s existence. With grace and beauty, love and peaceful existence, one might already have found it. Like the Rose of Sharon, one can come to know how to serve in place.
Maybe this lone Rose of Sharon is unaware of the impact of her beauty or the depth of her history. Maybe she is unaware that people will stop to admire her as they do. She is invisible, yet visible. Present, but not proud. Magnificent, with few requirements. Teaching us that she is who she is, and that she asks only to be loved because she exists everywhere for all who care to notice along the way.
Like God.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
* “I am a rose of Sharon, a lily of the valleys….” (Song of Solomon 2:1)
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Notes for the Week Fourth Sunday of Easter May 3 2020
Dear friends,
If you think physical distancing is something new, think again. Apparently, the birds figured this out long ago and continue to incorporate the tenets of physical distancing to this day. As a practice, physical distancing has some major advantages. For instance, it can give one time to think before speaking. One can observe another from a polite distance, thereby preventing an off-the-cuff remark one might regret. At least, you can figure out how to say what you really wanted to say before actually saying it, instead of blurting out something you really didn’t mean, only to craft a perfect response later, when you are alone in your room, or on the bus, or in your car, turning on your heel to walk hurriedly away from a particularly tense encounter. A little physical distancing might have really helped in that kind of situation. I have noticed great flustering and fluttering of wings when two or more birds try to land on the same perch at the same time, and how much smoother things go when they simply spread out, leaving each other in peace.
Another advantage of physical distancing is that it allows one two share friendship from afar without feeling guilty about not sharing another hour with someone you see every day. One does not have to always have to sit shoulder to shoulder in order to maintain friendship. I have friends with whom I am in touch every few weeks or even months. We always thoroughly enjoy our catching up and our conversations are never boring. Of course, we would speak more often if there were a crisis at hand, like illness or some other reason for having to be in touch more often, or by necessity needing to lessen the physical distance between us.
Yet a third reason for embracing physical distancing has to do with one’s personal space. I don’t recall Jesus ever have a problem with physical distancing and he always went to the side of his friends when they were in trouble, although, even at that, he didn’t always hurry. Even though Jesus often found himself in a the midst of large gatherings, he rather liked to go off by himself, whenever he could find a way to distance himself. It didn’t mean Jesus didn’t love his friends, it just meant that it was fine to indulge in a little personal space in order to gather one’s thoughts and to pray, after constantly maneuvering through and around lots of people.
Not that physical distancing was a new phenomenon even in Jesus’ time. Just look at the Book of Leviticus (13:46): “And the leper in whom the plague is….he shall dwell alone….” In other words, if you have the plague, isolate yourself. Emperor Justinian had a plague named after him called the Plague of Justinian (!) The emperor enforced a quarantine on the Byzantine Empire, but his impulses, although timely, were less than effective creatively. Dumping sick people and bodies into the sea, just didn’t work out well for him in his efforts to stem the spread of the plague, especially when he blamed everyone and his brother for the plague itself. Thankfully, the World Health Organization must have taken good note of that fiasco.
In fact, the World Health Organization has suggested that during our effort to overcome the current plague, we use the term physical distance, rather than social distance, and for that we can be thankful, too. We may be physically distant, but we are not socially distant. Our pprayer and study together is something else we have inherited from thousands of years ago.
The reason is pretty simple. Take groups of people, no matter the sizes of the groups, who call themselves Christians and they will not only find a way to pray and worship God together with all their hearts, souls and minds, they will also find a way to help their neighbors as themselves.
Thank you, God, for showing us ways to be thankful. And thank you for gifting some of your people, who may worship you in many different ways, or not at all, with brains that can figure out how we can be and see each other, no matter where we are in the world, so that, while we may be physically distant, socially, we are closer than we have ever been before.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection,
and mutual affection with love. (2 Peter 1:5-7)
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Notes for the Week Third Sunday of Easter April 26 2020
Dear friends,
I’m getting a little tired of vegetable soup. Even though it’s homemade and, tastes pretty good. Yet its caloric value and abundance of health benefits are wearing thin. I made a good vat of it as the COVID-19 tide began to turn us inward to shelter in place. My instincts for self-preservation, good planning and preparation for shortages was molded by growing up in post WW2 England and rationing books. So, true to my heritage and good training from my mother, when the time came to stock up, I made enough soup to last us for a week of meals, with leftovers to stock in the freezer. Every time I peer in there, hoping to find something different and perhaps a little indulgent, the neatly lined up plastic containers stare back at me, challenging me not to complain and offering me the opportunity to give prayers of thanks. These humble, practical, life-preserving blocks of frozen goodness greet me with echoes of conversations heard throughout my childhood, “Remember Victory gardens? “Remember when we kept tomato seeds?” which serve to remind me of blessings I have so long taken for granted.
I think about all those who have been without food at any time in our history and especially those in our own country and around the world in our own time, who know hunger well, and now are doubly aware that they may not eat today. They are not thinking about shortage of toilet paper, the lack of bread flour or sugar in the stores, they are thinking about what they could possibly ingest to keep alive. I think about those who are frightened by lack of work and no paycheck coming in. I think about how very afraid they must be for their lives and the lives of their families. And I look at my vegetable soup and find renewed resolve.
Our little congregation of St. Aidan’s cannot feed everybody, but we can feed some. COVID-19 has shown us the way with the help of the Holy Spirit. Our little bags of food disappear, and we make more. Our need for fund raising has been made clear as has our way to embrace compassionate giving. We give thanks for all those whose dedication to feeding the hungry moves beyond mere concern to compassionate. and passionate action. If nothing else, it adds some sugar to the spice, when little or no sugar can be found.
We do not need to feel guilty if we have our share of food, but we do need to remember those who feel the pinch of hunger today and save a little of whatever we can to share with them. Let us all remember to stock up on a few extra non-perishables to be placed at the foot of the Cross. We will fill someone’s empty plate, even if it is one person at a time. And let us remember that living is not just about basic needs. A little extra treat here and there, lifts the soul, even as the canned tuna and the veggie soup strengthens the body. As a child, I remember hearing stories of blessed moments, such as a rare bit of chocolate being carefully sliced up, so that everyone could have a little taste. Something special in a time of scarcity is memorable, just as were those impossible-to-find staples that my family longed for during the war. People never forget the little joys during hardship.
If COVID-19 has taught me anything, it is to remember those who did their part in the past, and to resolve to be one of those to do my part in the present. Some things never change. We have plenty of soup in my house today, and I will be sure to find ways to share something similar with those who are without. Even so, I’m also aware, just as they probably once were, that even though I will do my part and am acutely aware of the blessings in my life, I do still long for a good plate of fish and chips!
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“Some give freely, yet grow all the richer;
others withhold what is due, and only suffer want” (Proverbs 11:24)
Notes for the Week Second Sunday of Easter April 19 2020
Dear friends,
Over the last year or so there has been a recurring prayer in my heart: “Gracious God, show us the way to become more visible, more valued by those who pass our way each day. Lead us out of our wilderness of uncertainty. Should we make a bigger sign? More signs? Colorful signs? Should we install one of those $20,000 digital signs. Please God, show us the way.”
And God did.
Because God knows we didn’t want to be famous. Our desire to be seen wasn’t about pride, or trying to grow or trying to impress anyone, it was about reaching more of God’s people, to bring them a sense of belonging, to allow them to go deeper into themselves, to find a way toward God’s love and renewed hope.
So, we put up a cross for Easter during Holy Week, and on Easter Sunday we covered it with flowers. We acted with faithful sincerity for the betterment of our community and for the community surrounding us. We acted with love, faithfully acting in a way we prayed was acceptable to God.
And God answered our love offering. With a package of seeds. Seeds of Hope.
And after leaving lunch bags at the foot of the Cross during Holy Week, we received these notes in response:
“Thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Because of this blessing my family won’t be hungry tonight
In this troubling time with so much darkness, the Lords light shines brighter than ever! God Bless U!
NMacaks”
And this….
“My kids want to say thank you for the yummy food! They hope this blessing will continue.
My son said, “Mom! This church is doing just like Jesus. He would always help and feed his people (any) people in need.”
We thank you! Love, Macaks”
And this….
Upper left corner:
Hand from a cloud and the statement “God’s Blessing” with “rays” drawn down to the cross.
Upper right corner: Drawing of an angel (and I think the text is “God’s angel”
Lower left corner: Drawing of an adult with two children saying, “Thank you Lord!” and a drawing of food packages)
Lower right corner: Drawing of cross with a spotlight on either side of the base.
God bless you, Macaks, for blessing us with your words and for allowing us to “hear” God’s words and to witness God’s love.
I am humbled by the simplicity of what we have been searching for. It has been here all along. After all our earthly hand wringing about how to become more visible, it took God and God’s people in our community, to show us the way out of our bewilderment.
A cross will be permanently installed at the site of our reader board. It will serve to remind us, as it will remind all who see it, of how and when it first appeared there, and that it was in 2020, during COVID-19, when the doors of the church were closed, but God was still present.
We will design a cross that will be a place for prayers to be left, food to be found and that, once a year, will be converted to a flowered Cross to remind us all of the miracle of Resurrection and Hope that never dies. And maybe we’ll put those lights at its base, as a little child imagined.
All these gifts from God. Just love of God and our neighbor. We give thanks to the One who hears all our prayers.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40)
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Notes for the Week Holy Week and Easter Sunday April 12, 2020
Dear friends in Christ,
We have almost arrived at the “Great Three Days,” we call The Triduum. Our grand entrance into Holy Week began on Palm Sunday, as we waved our palms to welcome Jesus into Jerusalem. Holy Week always seems so far away when we begin our journey through Lent, and that seemed especially true for us this year, coping as we are in our fight against COVID-19. We thought of Lent as “Real Lent,” and we will well remember our experience of finding our way through the wilderness in 2020. We came to Palm Sunday and, even though we are still unsure of the future, we felt a sense of relief to see each other again through the miracle of technology, and to know that we have the ability to continue walking together and worshiping together during the Great Three Days of Holy Week.
Although we think of the Triduum as three different services, beginning with Maundy Thursday, entering Good Friday and culminating in our Easter Vigil, we do not think of these moments as separate events. Rather we view them as a single, whole, interconnected total experience. It is difficult to understand one without the other. Something gets lost, some connection seems broken.
Maundy Thursday gives us clear indications of what loving service to others and humility look like and feel like. We don’t “do unto others” to make ourselves look good to our peers. Jesus teaches us that, as Christians, there is no limit to how we express our love for God and our neighbor. As we wash each other’s feet, and as we strip down the altars of worship this Maundy Thursday, we will put away our candles, our icons and crosses, our beads and our sacred cloths. Our rituals of cleansing and stripping down, leave us feeling vulnerable and empty, but that very vulnerability and feeling of emptiness provide a sacred space for our souls and spirits to be laid bare for us to examine. There are no sacred images or articles for us to lean on. Our truth is all we have left.
We carry our truths to the foot of the cross and there we lay one of them down, or two, or more. Each of us knows the secrets of our hearts that we share with God. We come to lay down those parts of ourselves which only serve to burden us, which only serve to worry us, which serve only to deter us from reaching our potential for God and God’s intention for each of us and our interactions with others. We come to lay down those dark parts of our soul which hinder our opportunities to become more loving, more humble, more worthy to call ourselves disciples. We come in faith, seeking and trusting in the light of life to lead us into a new way of being. How can we seek anything less as we realize the meaning of the Cross and Jesus’ invitation to us to lay our burdens down? His death was his invitation for us to allow our sins to die with Him. For His burdens are light and His yoke is easy. Thanks be to God. How can we ever begin to understand the magnificence of that divine gift to us?
Through the darkness of the Great Vigil of Easter, with hope and anticipation, we emerge from the midst of our seeking for renewal. We hear the ancient stories of deliverance and we are suddenly filled with an awakening anticipation and joy as we move forward into the dawn of a new Easter Light. We remember Jesus’ words as he appeared anew to his disciples. He said, “Peace be with you.” If we listen, we can hear His words to us, “Peace be with you through these uncertain and challenging times.” The Gospel of Matthew reminds us to remember all that Jesus taught us, “Do not be afraid….and remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age. “
My heart is full of gratitude that we shall be together for these Great Three Days. Peace be with you.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“I felt in need of a great pilgrimage, so I sat still for three days, and God came to me.”( Kabir)
Notes for the Week Palm Sunday April 5 2020
Dear friends in Christ,
It has been a surreal week for all of us, and it seems strangely fitting that Holy Week is not just “here,” but is actually caught up as part of it all. I have to admit, that for me, it is serving as a lesson in a very real level of helplessness and Ta very real meaning of servitude above one’s own needs. My sense of helplessness came in the form of a giant life-wave which lifted me out of the expected and planned for, and into an unexpected, unplanned MRI, C-Scan, and immediate surgery for a badly dislocated back. A blessing? I have to admit to a less than appreciative dialogue with my Maker at the outset, which has turned into a deeply appreciative, even if not quite understood, prayer of thankfulness for all the gifted medical people who got me in and out of the hospital, with the best of care by the most skillful of doctors and nurses. I am blessed. Humbled. And I well understand what it means for someone to keep on keeping on for the sake of someone else. For them all, and for everyone who keep showing up on the front lines of defense and support for the rest of us, I give most profound thanks. What a way to have us understand that it is just what Jesus did. Keep on keeping on, so that we could be free to keep the faith, to love and to take our turn at keeping on, just for the sake of others.
There is non-stop talk in the church about Holy Week preparations being upended, as clergy work to bring Holy Week worship to their congregations and comfort to all. For all Christians, Holy Week is the deepest and most meaningful time of our liturgical life. As with Ash Wednesday, the Great Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Great Vigil of Easter on Easter Eve, allow us to show, unashamedly, that we are Jesus people. As each Holy Week arrives, we are reminded anew of what true Christian discipleship means: humility and sacrifice, steadfast faithfulness and unending love of God and God’s creative power.
Like many of you, I love the rituals that begin with Ash Wednesday, travel with us through Lent, and carry us through the story of God’s powerful and uncompromising love for us. For me, they carry the core of feeling that is almost too powerful to express.
At first, I began to grieve the loss of them, as the reality of the global grip of COVID-19 was made clear. There are no plans left intact, no events left untouched, no rituals to wrap ourselves in, as we keep on keeping the faith. No parades up to 181st, amid honking horns and thumbs up signals from others of the faithful. No opportunity to get over ourselves and offer our feet to another to be washed or to wash someone else’s feet. No opportunity to feel gutted and naked as the bells, the books and the candles are taken away. No opportunity to sit there, in the half-dark with nothing but the cross, pointing to each one of us, and speaking its truth to each. No opportunity to light the Paschal Fire, to move through the darkness of the Great Easter Vigil into the brightly joyful and triumphant first Eucharist of Easter.
And yet.
Maybe we will find something new in the Holy Days to come. Maybe we will take something away to ponder in a way we never have needed to before. Either way, it will be a Holy Week to remember forever. It will be the Holy Week we will recall as singularly profound and deeply embraced.
We may not be able to enter into every accustomed ritual, or may not celebrate each step of the way in our usual fashion, but we will embrace, and we will celebrate just the same. This is the year when we show Jesus just what his disciples are made of. We will not need the trimmings to help us get to the feelings and understanding that Jesus so wanted his disciples to experience. This year, we will understand loss, uncertainty, confusion, and we will feel Jesus’ suffering on the cross, and we will feel the triumph of His love, all around the world. The world will be celebrating that glorious day, in a thousand different ways, in the face of coronavirus, which will have to take a back seat for just a moment in time, For us, as for many around the world, Holy Week will be simple, profound, humble and close. It is all that God requires of us.
So, we will not grieve. Our love of God in Jesus Christ is not measured by how beautiful our rituals may be, not measured by how many candles are lit at the Vigil, or how many flowers adorn the altar on Easter Day. We love them, to be sure But our love of God is measured by something far more precious to God…..and that is our attempt to show God the extent of our faithfulness. We will read the scriptures and lessons, make our way through the structure of services that have been created through the centuries, and we will experience, perhaps for the first time, what it means to be truly alone and lost in the wilderness, and what it means to let all the meaningless in our lives die, and what it means to emerge better and more faithful than we ever were before.
That was all God wanted in the first place.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
Notes for the Week Fifth Sunday in Lent March 29 2020
Dear friends,
Yes, it’s real. A Real Lent, when all seems dark and without direction and the candles are all out.
We have come to the Fifth Sunday in Lent, a time of deep reflection as we prepare to join the world-wide entry into Holy Week, soon to arrive. We make the walk together, just as the Israelites did so many years ago. We are just as unsure of our direction, uncertain of when we will reach the place when we can dance together again. But we keep walking, trusting that God will lead us to that place of great joy. It is out there, waiting for us to arrive. Lead on Holy Spirit!
For now, however, in this Real Lent, we have been given an opportunity for deep and profound reflection on just what it is we will take with us into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, and what it is to be that we will lay at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. What are our priorities showing themselves to be during this strange and surreal time of isolation and self-monitoring? Have our priorities changed? Why? Or why not? What is more important than self? What about oneself is one able to recognize as a strength or a lesser strength? Where am I contributing to the joy of another and where am I destroying that joy?
What regrets do we harbor deep in our souls that we would so love to lay down forever? What injustices, real or imagined, do we still feel wounded by, or resentful about, that burden our souls without ceasing? Are there thoughts rising up about changes we would make about ourselves now, that we might not have thought about just two or three weeks ago?
These are important questions we must all ask ourselves during this time of Real Lent. While God did not bring the coronavirus to the world, God is probably not surprised that it came in the same way that other plagues and pestilences develop through humankind’s misunderstandings. But, given that the world finds itself in this predicament, I can’t help thinking that God must hope that we will choose to think carefully about how we move forward from here.
We must think on these things, so that we are able to clearly define just what it is we will lay at the foot of the Cross. Jesus was led to the Cross in order to bear them all and when he dies, they die. We will be redeemed. There will be no turning back, no pulling the old resentments or judgments back, no reverting to old attitudes which have had their day and their destructive ways. We will lay part of the dark side of ourselves down on that day to make room for the light of Easter that will surely come.
And, even if we are in total lockdown when Real Lent is over, with our heaviest burdens laid down, we will know Real Easter. The real meaning of rising again with new possibilities filled with joy and hope, whoever and wherever we are. For the Light will surely come, the candles will surely glow, the flowers will surely flourish, God’s world will reveal its glory again and God’s people will sing with joy!
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
“But he was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Notes for the Week Fourth Sunday in Lent March 22 2020
Dear friends,
We have entered uncharted territory and like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, we are going to find ourselves coping with our circumstances in the best way we can. We won’t be perfect. The Israelites certainly weren’t. But we can learn from their ancient footsteps and from the mistakes they made and from the triumphs they celebrated.
First of all, we have to trust, just as they were asked, to trust. Sometimes they did better at this than others, following Moses as he somehow made his way to Canaan, gratefully receiving sustenance from heaven along the way. Then there were times when they lost their trust and let Moses have it (that business with the golden calf, you may recall.) They even got mad because God didn’t provide something else besides unflavored manna. Yet, regardless of their complaining, their dissatisfaction with services provided, they hung in there and finally arrived at their destination, a changed people, a more generous people, and infinitely more trusting in God.
Now it is our turn to face a wilderness that gives us no choice but to walk through it. We Christians should be prepared to do so with trust, faith and plenty of good humor. After all, we have been in training for this for as long as we can remember. Lent is no stranger to us, and as Lenten people, we are no strangers to the wilderness.
Yet, this time Lent is real, not just a liturgical way of having us remember our past. This time, we are the ones being called to make our way through it and it will draw out the best and the worst of us…..who we are and what is the measure of our strength. And, just like the Israelites, it’ll be some time past Lent before we can actually enter Canaan. The arrival time changes daily, just as it did back then, and we are called to make the best of the situation. We are to take whatever lemons we are handed and set up our lemonade stands. We are to take bad news and create some good news for someone who needs to hear it with a smile, a conversation, a little humor and a whole lot of patient understanding with those who are close to us who might be getting a little testy with confinement.
Most importantly, we know that, eventually, we will emerge from this wilderness, an Easter will come. We may not celebrate it in the way we are used to celebrating, but we will emerge into a new way of life, newly aware, newly led to face whatever trial comes our way and back in touch with just how important our relationships are to each other and to God.
Welcome to the real wilderness, we have no maps in this uncharted territory, but we will have faith in the signposts that appear along the way, and we will trust in God to guide us.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+
May we be God’s blessings, and instruments of God’s love. May the words of the Apostle Paul ring loudly and true in our hearts, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4)
Notes for the Week The Third Sunday in Lent March 15 2020
Dear friends,
To be humble is to shine in the most unexpected places with no expectation of being noticed at the moment of one’s magnificence. At some level, known only to our self, we all like to be noticed, and if we are, we’d like to think it is for the joy and contentment we have brought to others, rather than for who or what we are. For when one achieves with humble presence, others cannot help stopping to show respect for it. Some might even fall in love with it, or at the very least, never forget its power to quietly enchant.
Who says that any member of the corps de ballet couldn’t be a prima ballerina if he or she wanted to be? Yet, all manner of situations get in the way of dreams…..relationships, world circumstances, money, our own selves and our foibles. Sometimes, we pine after visons that never enter reality and never will. We wonder about our worth when we see someone else attain them. We watch upward mobility from the wings, wondering what it must be like to attain, to reach the pinnacle, to win. Then we turn back to the task at hand, hoping to be the best we can be in the corps. When we can turn to it with grace, we have achieved the greatness we seek.
Humility, in the face of achievement, is arresting in its simple beauty and powerful in its quiet presence. It bows before bluster, and bluster is bowed before it. It seeks to be the best that it can be, without expectation of applause. It aims only to please when its beauty is discovered. It lives to evoke pleasure and in doing so, it teaches in its most humble way, what is actually important in the world. It grows where it finds itself, and receives its place with gratitude, and sets to work bringing forth all that God intends it to be; gracious, giving, and breathtakingly humble, when it succeeds. It puts braggadocio to shame. It silently proclaims the futility and stupidity of human anger, resentment, judgment, and impatience all to way toward terror in the streets and war. It offers hope to the hopeless, encouragement to the simply shy and more than a little peace amid the crowded chaos.
If God wanted every one of us to be the principal dancers through life, we’d be bumping into each other all over the world stage. How wise God is to give us the opportunity to humbly bloom where we are planted, so that we can thrill and be thrilled simply by being who we are.
We journey together,
Mother Esme+