2018.03.25 Why Wave Palms? Fake News?

We wave palms for the same reason we wave placards and posters and signs: to protest massive political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the smallest among us—our children.


In 1988, I was ordained priest, on March 25th. Thirty years ago my day as was the Feast of the Annunciation: Mary’s big day. She is remembered in biblical tradition and in the hearts of women of faith for her decision to listen to God’s request for help. Her assent destined her to a life of agonizing pain, heart-wrenching sorrow, and love.  She is often remembered with roses.  On my day roses adorned the sanctuary.

This year in 2018 her day and mine, March 25, is Jesus’s big day: Palm or Passion Sunday, often called The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. We wave palms—green, supple, fresh—and shout Hosannas. Like Mary’s day, this day was for Jesus his willingness to risk his life to confront  political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the least among us, especially children. His decision would mean spiritual betrayal, wrenching disappointment, and agonizing death.

On the surface, all three days were celebratory, triumphal. Great victories were cheered: Mary’s safe birthing and rearing of a Messiah; Jesus’s entering Jerusalem to confront the imperial powers with the need for justice and peace; my ordination after eleven years of rejections, in part because of my being a woman—in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each apparent victory was incomplete, shadowed by ambiguity at best—how monumentally paradoxical:  The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.  Or, the more triumphal we act the less triumphant we really are.

My ordination procession looked and sounded triumphal but . . .  I was scared witless and a bit numb—worried that the bishop, who strode behind me with his huge long crozier (ersatz shepherd’s crook), would reach out, crook my neck, and toss me out of the fold. My other worry was that the bishop might have to leave suddenly because he had a ghastly, sniffly cold. Would he sneeze in the middle of his crucial lines, without which I would not be a priest: “Therefore Father, through Jesus Christ, your Son, give your Holy Spirit to Lyn; fill her with grace and power, and make her a priest in your Church.”

I’d struggled through a long, hard, painful process to get to this day. The personal triumph was that I had not given up when I felt defeated. I had stayed the course against significant odds—my own flaws and the church’s prejudices.

I never blamed God. In fact I felt that God’s Spirit was present in the slow ongoing process of healing and reconciliation between my broken heart and the Church’s broken rules.

The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.

Did Jesus feel triumphal as he entered Jerusalem? He knew that his vision had stirred up crowds. He knew this was a life-threatening protest with a small number of believers. He knew this was a public political protest punishable by execution. Was it divinely ordained?  God does not desire the death of anyone. Jesus’s death was nothing to wax triumphal about. So where’s the triumph and when?

It would be an act of sheer Divinity that Mary’s motherhood would be remembered, lauded and written into holy scriptures as  a miracle to reverence. It would be an act of sheer Divinity, one that took many restless years to take root in the hearts of crestfallen followers, to turn Jesus’s actions into a triumph, a miracle of truth called Resurrection.

And my ordination? It made me a priest.

It also began a process of many restless years—discerning the fullness of my priesthood, with God’s help. The traditional track for priests, to be a parish rector, was not the way for me to be a priest. Rather, I was to be a non-stipendiary Sunday-only priest of Word and Sacrament in parishes. This sacramental ministry remained central.

But full triumph?  I continued to feel like a failed priest, as if my whole vocation was “fake news” until I saw that I was a priest at the altar and in my office. The three sacramental functions of a priest —bless, consecrate, absolve—transferred easily, sometimes formally, into people’s ordinary lives through my profession as a pastoral counselor, spiritual director, and writer. Occasionally, the traditional route for priests feels alluringly triumphal, but not the realized triumph.

May the triumphal massive March For Our Lives, led by teens all over the world, come to full triumph in unlocking the prideful partisan resistance of adults that we all may work together for life-saving change. Will this be an act of sheer humanity/divinity miracle?  I pray so.  Amen.

2015.12.20 Nativities Everywhere

Nativity means birth, plain and simple, full of labor and pain, and the emergence of a tiny new life, entering the world with gusto.  It's a story fundamental to all human life. It is also a mystical story, fundamental to divine life—always calling us to See the New!

Traveling this season to see beloved family, we also took two days to visit old and cherished friends, all of whom well into their 80s and all in more advanced stages of decline since our last visit. I felt overdosed, overwhelmed, afraid for my own future, and sad. I called a friend to make sure she was still 61! This is the first time in my 77 years I've thought: Shoot me first.  

My anxiety shared and expended, I began to see the new in the very old. Each circumstance was different, yet each beloved friend shone with some peculiar newness within the clear, and new, advancement of the diminishments of age. One friend had even had had a new cancer which turned out not to be cancer—medical error or miracle? No matter, there was renewed rejoicing!

I listened to one 89-year-old friend speak about how grateful she is to be able to pick up the phone and order an egg in the morning if she's feeling "collapsed." What does collapsed mean, I shouted, because I knew she'd lost one hearing aid, and the other is "somewhere in the bed where I spend most of my time." Despite several reminder calls, one just 20 minutes before our arrival, she didn't remember we were coming when we arrived. Still, she appeared, after another 20 minutes,—downstairs, out of bed, not collapsed, and full of toothless cheer to see us.

A Nativity.

My friend chattered on as we ate sandwiches in the dining room of the residence where she lives. I listened, interjected some queries, and struggled mightily to make sense of all the pieces of roaming story my friend related—until I gave up and, without reason, felt sweet all over. It was terrifying and exquisitely tender all at once. The many intriguing unhinged tidbits, loosely strung together and unbound by requirements of time and space mattered as much as anything ever could. Like the Bible, I thought, mercifully free of facticity yet full of grace and truth. Whether you believe or understand a story or not is not what matters.

Take Mary, mother of Jesus, full of grace and truth we are told. Her story is a whopper. She is the most famous woman in the world, making it onto the cover of the current National Geographic magazine. But in the New Testament her story doesn't get much play, and only four times does she speak:
1) To ask an angel, who delivers terrifying news about pregnancy and the birth of a son called Son of God: "How can this be since I am a virgin?"
2) In the wake of the angelic elaboration, Mary hears the punch line: Nothing will be impossible with God and utters her brief acceptance speech of the the angel's proclamation and her role in it: "Let it be to me according to your word." (In other words, Ok I'm in!)
 3) Mary rejoices and delivers her lengthiest oration, the ancient hymn, Magnificat, to her cousin, Elizabeth, also miraculously pregnant, though in her old age.
4) Mary's last speech is to an adult son, Jesus, something like "We've run out of win, son. Time for a miracle."

A Nativity.

All this is a very long way to say that in this 21st century world so full of violence, war, terror and genuine inhumanity, the best stories to notice, and to praise as signs of divine presence, are those which intrigue us, hold our attention, are new to us, have beauty, no matter how strange, make us exclaim in wonder and joy, and infuse all life with hope. All Nativities. Here are three more.

Urban Sacrament:  This week across the street, construction workers are building a house. We have watched from our windows as it evolved from foundation to rooftop. It has come in pieces, all ready and put in place atop the sturdy foundation. Today we saw the crane. I'd seen cranes before but never up close. This one was enormous and bright orange-gold. Wonderstruck, we watched as the crane, manipulated by a skilled operator, himself coached by many men shouting and swarming to make sure things fit right in their proper places, module by module, slowly descended without knocking down trees in the way. The crane did the heavy lifting and never dropped its charge until the exact right moment into the right place. In one day a whole house was born, while people gathered about gawking, craning their own necks to look up at the splendid machine, pointing and exclaiming with joy at this "miracle"—something completely new in our neighborhood.  





Nativity: Unto us a child is born............

 

The artist who created this beautiful image of human birth within groves of evergreen trees—ever green—is MaryKay Eichman, RSM  You can see more of her work at www.mkaycreations.com

Little Reader:   Dylan Robert Brakeman, age 16 months, loves his books even more than stuffed animals. He is the youngest of 12 in our brood of grandchildren from our blended family group.

Nothing will be impossible with God. Nothing therefore is ever new to God. Nativity everywhere. Just notice. See the new. 

2012.12.23 Mary, Mary, Mary

MAGDALENE POEM
        by John Taggart

Love enters the body


enters

almost

almost completely breaks and enters into the body


already beaten and broken


peaceful if breaking if breaking

and entering the already broken is peaceful


untouchable fortunately

untouchable.



This poem almost broke and entered my heart.  Some Christians will say it’s the “wrong” Mary. We should be honoring the Blessed Mary Mother Virgin Divine on the fourth Sunday of Advent, just before Christmas.  But no.  There are multiple generic Marys—all sacred, all blessed, few virginal, all bursting with love to give and to receive.  

Who this Christmas will break and enter your battered and yearning heart—peacefully?