2011.12.28 Truth and Fact

A huge ceiling to floor oil painting of a rose, painted by Mary Daly RSM, hangs in the chapel of Mercy Center in Madison, CT. It serves as a reredos.

I have often gazed at its multi-petaled beauty and thought it an icon of the sacred heart, roomy enough to enfold the cosmos into its soft velvety bosom.

On one retreat I decided to dissect a real rose I had picked from the garden. I operated on it with caution, care and respect, as an good autopsy-ist would. I wanted to know how many petals there actually were in my cosmic image of divine love.

There were a disappointing 53 petals in my big fat red rose. I laughed to think how easy it is to align truth and fact as if they were the same phenomenon.

Of course I didn’t expect the number of rose petals to be infinite but I’d hoped for more than 53. The fact was this rose had 53 petals. The truth for me was its appearance of petaled profusion suggested something much more than its parts.

Fact is material knowledge. Truth partakes of a transcendent dimension, pointing beyond its literal manifestation. Facts, however, are the necessary vehicles of truth.

When I used to read Goodnight Moon to my young children we all knew the facts: bunnies don’t talk, have bedtime stories read to them, or sleep in beds.

Beyond facts lay truth: a good story well told makes everyone feel hopeful, can fill us with love and respect for all things, from a large glowing moon to a simple soothing bedtime ritual. Truth can replace fear with peace. Truth comes through facts.

ONE baby is born in a measly manger and kings think he’s a messiah in the making. All mothers think that of every babe, but the Magi? Story is fact + truth.

TRUTH AND FACT NEED TO STAY TOGETHER THOUGH FOR THEY ARE AS LOVE-MAKING AS TWO IN A BED...OR ON AN ARK. THEY LOVE EACH OTHER INTO LIFE.

Fact gives truth a leg to stand on. Truth puts a bloom on the cheek of fact lest its concrete gray complexion fails to inspire.

2011.12.25 Every Baby is God

Sharon's Christmas Prayer
by John Shea
 
She was five,sure of the facts, 
 
and recited them 
 with slow solemnity, 
 
convinced every word 
was revelation. 
                            

She said they were so poor
they only had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat
and they went a long way from home 
 
without getting lost.

The lady rode 
 a donkey,
the man walked,
and the baby 
was inside the lady. 
 

They had to stay in a stable 
 
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee) 
  
but the Three Rich Men found them 
  
because a star lited the roof. 
  
Shepherds came and you could 
  
pet the sheep but not feed them. 
Then the baby was borned. 
 

And do you know who he was? 


Her quarter eyes inflated 
to silver dollars
 
The baby was God.    
 
And she jumped in the air, 
 
whirled round, dove into the sofa, 
  
and buried her head under the cushion 
  
which is the only proper response 
  
to the Good News of the Incarnation.

2011.12.24 Shepherd's Carol

WE stood on the hills, Lady,
Our day’s work done,
Watching the frosted meadows
That winter had won.

The evening was calm, Lady,
The air so still,
Silence more lovely than music
Folded the hill.

There was a star, Lady,
Shone in the night,
Larger than Venus it was
And bright, so bright.

Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady,
It seemed to us then,
Telling of God being born
In the world of men.

And so we have come, Lady,
Our day’s work done,
Our love, our hopes, ourselves
We give to your son.

THE SHEPHERD’S CAROL
Words, ANON.
Music, BOB CHILCOTT
Oxford University Press

This carol was written for the Choir of King’s
College for ‘Carols from King’s’ in 2000.

And then one day they discovered there was also a girl in Christ, a daughter, and that the Messiah needed no surgery or counseling to be "transgendered"-in-the-flesh. Faith invited more room and a change in excluding attitudes. Grin with me and be a blessing.

2011.12.23 Christina Rosetti on Christmas

Christina Rosetti on Christmas

CHRISTMAS hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Earth, strike up your music,
Birds that sing and bells that ring;
Heaven hath answ’ring music
For all Angels soon to sing:
Earth, put on your whitest
Bridal robe of spotless snow:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.

Words, CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Music, TANSY DAVIES
Faber Music

2011.12.21 Every Day Salvation

Just the other day I was exiting my favorite bookstore Porter Square Books having bought my 1-millionth book, an activity tantamount to starting a fund to bring back dinosaurs, when I hear the familiar Christmas season tingle of bell.

I followed the sound and sure enough there were two old men dressed in red, looking Santa-ish and ringing little bells. They stood next to the Salvation Army kettle into which they hoped generous people would toss coins, maybe bills.

Moved by a force not quite my own I put a $20 bill into their kettle and said “The Salvation Army saved my nephew.” The old man bell ringer’s eyes filled up and so did mine.

There we stood on a crowded shopping street in the city of Cambridge MA. weeping for salvation and for my nephew Sam who had been brought back to strength and health and sobriety, not once but many times, by this gently militant crusading for Christ organization that has been “saving people in Christ’s name for over a century.

I moved on lugging my book cache and he resumed his bell ringing. Somehow it sounded different.

I told my sister of the encounter and I bet she cried too. Today is the Church’s calendar date for Thomas the apostle known by some as the one who doubted the resurrection good news. Neither my sister his mom or me his aunt have ever doubted Sam, the boy, now man, of countless life chances and countless salvations.

Tomorrow is also the Solstice, a day when the sun returns its face to give us a scintilla more daylight. Such a welcome gift as we enter the bleak of winter.

My sister told me that Sam had asked for the Bible on CD for Christmas. Too hard for him to read but not hard to listen to. At the Salvation Army shelter where Sam again is trying to chose life, he is steeped in recovery program and goes to church every day. He is Christ-soaked and Christ-doped,which is better than being alcohol-soaked or heroin-doped.

Sam had told his mom that there was some guy in the Bible, Zeph-something who told him God would give him a new heart and a new spirit.

That biblical guy was Ezekiel who, along with other prophets, delivered the divine promise: “A NEW HEART I WILL GIVE YOU, AND A NEW SPIRIT I WILL PUT WITHIN YOU; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezek. 36:26)

Sam heard words that articulated exactly what he needed, an entire full-body transplant—new heart, soul, flesh, mind body, the works. The odd irony of this connection the kind Spirit makes is that Ezekiel in his day, and to many biblical interpreters in modern day, was thought insane because of his strange images and visions.The ancients said possessed; moderns said schizophrenic or manic-depressive.

Yet Ezekiel became one of the major prophets in the Bible. You could die laughing. But that kind of thing happens often. It’s the work of the God of reversals. Sam is one of those reversals. Let it hold.

My sister and I decided to split the cost of the Bible on CD for Sam this Christmas. The rest is up to Sam, the Salvation Army, and God-in-Ezekiel.

2011.12.18 Anyone Noticed Santa/God?

The wondrous Christmas figure of Santa Claus as many know was based on the generosity of an early Church Bishop Nicolas of Myra (ca. 342 CE) who gave without condition—and NOT exclusively to those in need, but to all, most especially children.

His behavior was so strange that he became Saint Nicholas aka Santa Claus. He’s all around this time of year.

My grand daughter Phoebe screeched last year at the idea of sitting in the lap of this bearded and red-suited stranger going HO HO HO. But now she’s 3 and very sophisticated. She was silenced into awe when a Santa squeezed her shoulder. Told it to anyone who would listen.

Now that’s just how the ancients felt about God and Christ through their spiritual experiences. They told it all over, spreading the good news: He touched me. He touched me.

There’s a BUT to this joy, and that is that many faithful people have projected onto God the same conditional perspective we put into our ideas about Santa: IF you’re nice you get a gift BUT IF you’re naughty you get coal, or nothing. AND of course both MEN are omniscient so they know. Spooky dooky!

Do you think kids believe that threat? Probably not or no one would ever give Santa or God a chance, because they both always comes through with something without needing to be bribed by goodness.

So why, in heaven’s name literally, do some Christians have so darn much trouble adjusting their theology to allow for the central value of their faith, which is unconditional love or grace through forgiveness? Repentance isn’t, in my unhumble opinion, required. Rather it’s a byproduct.

That’s the free grace of divine nature. We may not know it or care about it. We may not be able to be that way ourselves. And we may not be able to receive such unconditional grace. Does that make it unreal?

Hell, if God is any old benign conditional parent in the sky, then I’m an a-theist.

PS An old friend who couldn’t resist just sent us some cocktail napkins with a cartoon on them depicting a mother with a small girl in a line waiting to give Santa this year’s demands, read transactional grace. The caption reads: “You should go and talk to Santa, dear, even though you feel he screwed you last year.”

2011.12.14 Occupy and Organize

Let’s get organized! I think I shouted that to my young family or if I didn’t I thought it loudly.

I wonder if Godde conjured that divine thought just the second before the firmament split-seconded out of control and Creation burst through.

It seemed to me that in our family of six we needed to find a way to go in the same direction at the same time at least once a day—other than to bed.

So I have admired the Occupiers very much, for their cause, their zeal, their endurance, their shear voicing of truth, and their non-violent ways. AND I want them to get organized so their truth-voice will not fade out and whoosh away like so much sage brush in the desert.

So I say to Occupiers: Don’t get lost. Don’t lose your vitality. OCCUPY YOUR IDEA. Get organized and take your voice to the halls of executive and legislative power. Politics is a hard go, but GO.

At Christmas Christians celebrate anew the God who OCCUPIES human flesh in Jesus, and in you & me too! This idea took hold and held on in spite of many attempts to evict and convict it.

A five year old named Sharon told the old story to her poet father John Shea who wrote a poem about his daughter’s solemn retelling of the ancient story. Sharon’s response is the only possible one to such a gloriously preposterous idea:
“Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars.
The baby was God.
And she jumped in the air,
whirled round, dove into the sofa, 
                            
and buried her head under the cushion 
                            
which is the only proper response 
                            
to the Good News of the Incarnation.”

This Occupy movement may hold hope for what is currently thought heinous to so many: ORGANIZED RELIGION.

The early seekers and followers of divinity realized there was more to this messy life than human effort. In time they organized themselves and drew a community together to worship a Mystery they couldn’t know except by faith.

Religion’s journey began in relationships of mutual caring among human beings who shared inklings of intuitions of the Beyond, the More. They were intimately connected by their fears— and their awe. Wonderstruck they “dove into sofas” and uttered prayers. It began with astonishments and a vision. Only later did they get organized in writing and practices and, heaven forfend, structure.

Of course the impulse to organize can go awry but not if the people keep hold of the vision: love, peace, justice for all earth— because of an OCCUPYING GOD.