Mariya uMama we Themba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Proper 28 B - November 15, 2015
Daniel 12:1-3
Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
I struggled this week with what relevance our Scripture texts might have for us and our world. And then I opened computer yesterday morning to read about the terrorist attacks in Paris and I began to see the connection for today. But really, almost any day it's the same: wars and rumors of wars, political turmoil, mass migration and displacement of peoples, earthquakes, poverty, famine, illness, drought, climate change... Jesus really wasn't being very supernatural in speaking of such things; he was simply being realistic. It is the stuff of the 24-hour news cycle. And it is precisely in such a world that we live out our faith.
In today's readings, these hard realities are spoken of and about in the language of apocalyptic. It is a style or genre of writing and speaking common in the Ancient Near East both immediately before and after the time of Jesus. The Book of Daniel, parts of the the Gospels, including this whole chapter of Mark, and the Book of Revelation are written in a dramatic story form accompanied by strong, sometimes lurid, images guaranteed to capture the attention and the imagination of the hearer or reader. They are marked by talk of cataclysmic struggles and cosmic battles between good and evil. The figures are often thinly veiled symbols of then current political powers or social forces. And though not always easily understood in our time, they spoke to the oppressed believers of their day, encouraging them to stand firm, to not give up hope. They reassured their hearers—and us—that though history may be bloody and violent, God is the Lord of time and of history, appearances to the contrary not withstanding. God is at the start of time and of history, and God is its author and its end.
Indeed, this kind of biblical literature is much concerned about the “end times” and the end of time. And people have seemed to take a perverse fascination in it, especially when the going gets tough for us, either individually or nationally or as a whole human race. When will this be over, we wonder. How will it end? What are the signs? What, if any, are the grounds for hope?
Today, at the beginning of the 13th chapter of St. Mark's Gospel, Jesus brings his disciples up short. One of them blurts out his astonishment at Herod's Temple. And he had every right to be astonished. Started about twenty years before Jesus and taking many years to complete, the Temple of Herod was one the of the wonders of the ancient world. Breathtaking in its size and architectural complexity and in the sheer amount of wealth that was poured into it, it would make even a contemporary tourist's mouth drop open. Built high on a mountain it was literally covered with gold, so much so that ancient Jewish historian Josephus says that pilgrims couldn't look at it directly in the sunlight. And what wasn't gold was of the finest white marble. The foundation stones, now part of the so-called Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, still astonish. It seems something worthy of, say, a Donald Trump.
But what was also supposed to be the meeting place of God and humanity—the ultimate thin place—had become, as we heard in last week's reading, a place where widows and others were exploited and where a cadre of religious professionals controlled what was, in point of fact, a very big business. Jesus saw this plainly, as did many others: the place was magnificent...and corrupt. And Jesus didn't need to be divine to see that it was also doomed. The gap between the ideal and the real had grown so wide, the disparity between appearance and reality so great, that a violent end seemed inevitable. And it was. Within a generation, the Temple was leveled to the ground.
I wonder if it is that gap between the ideal and the real, between appearance and reality, that is the seedbed of violence and ultimately of the type of extremist terrorism that we saw in Paris.
There is, of course, always a gap. What we proclaim or desire in and for ourselves, what we say we value: this is rarely, probably never, fully realized or actualized. For one thing, we are easily deceived by others. Or worse, we deceive ourselves: we don't know ourselves or what we really want, and so we become prey to what our culture holds out to us as desirable. And because ideals are usually slow in being actualized, it is often difficult to accept the gradual or partial. We become impatient—sometimes with good reason—and push things forward in destructive ways. And finally, we become disillusioned and lose hope. Then anything goes. One Bible commentator noted that perhaps there is so much interest in the Second Coming of Christ among so many people because deep down, they are profoundly disappointed in his First Coming. All that hard ethical teaching, and what do we have to show for it? Though they might never admit it, I wonder if those terrorists who caused such havoc and destruction and murder in Paris yesterday were disillusioned in their religion, in their society, in themselves. Was the gap between the ideal and the real too much for them? I wouldn't be surprised.
What then shall we do? How shall we live in such terrible times? The Bible is not an answer book, but it does offer us some helpful direction.
Further along in Mark's narrative, Jesus goes on to tell his disciples that, alas, nobody knows the time frame for the end of all this turmoil. But in the mean time, he says,
--Be a people of endurance. Hang in there. Persevere. Don't give up.
--Don't be naive. Don't believe every new messiah, every new scheme, every news flash or internet posting. Be wise. Be people of discretion.
--Be awake, be alert, be aware. You may not be able to do anything right now, but you can see what's going on around you and you can name it. And that truthful naming will be infinitely more powerful than anything the Father of Lies or the powers of darkness can do.
And then that strange Letter to the Hebrews exhorts us:
--Have confidence in God, for in Jesus Christ, God has in fact broken open a new and living way through his own life and death.
--Be people of hope, for “he who promised is faithful.”
--Be people who do not neglect to meet together...that is, be part of and live in community. We will, none of us, get through these days—whatever they are—alone. This is not a solo journey. It is a pilgrimage we make together. And as is often said of pilgrimages: the important thing is not to get there first but to get there together. Live in solidarity with each other, with all others of good will and who act in good faith.
--And finally, be agitators. Be those who “provoke one another to love and good deeds.” Encourage one another. Challenge one another. Irritate each other...though only when necessary. But when necessary, be that holy gadfly, the irritant that leads to holy action.
St. John's Gospel would simply say: Let us love one another. And let us do it now, for : “...you see the Day approaching.”
Even when the world is falling apart and the the center seems not to hold, there is work for us to do. Sometimes big, more often small, but always of great value. Let us provoke each other, challenge each other, encourage each other, support each other, nurture each other, love one another. Let us be church.
Let us live into what we pray: You kingdom come. Your will be done. Your dream become.
So be it. Amen.
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Proper 28 B - Nov 15, 2015
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Joseph Wallace-Williams, n/OHC
Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 15, 2015
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
In the very early stages of my discernment as to whether or not God was calling me to ordained ministry, and well into my time in seminary, I found myself faced with that dreaded question that inevitably any young seminary student who is not married or partnered is faced with on a date. Yes! That great dreaded question: “So tell me, what do you do for a living?”
In an attempt to come up with some witty response that would not be a flat-out lie I did a non-scientific survey of clergy I knew. I asked them for their response to the question “what do you do for a living?” Here are some of the responses:
• I’m a teacher.
• I'm in the service industry.
• I am a firefighter.
• I am a museum curator.
• I am into antiquing.
• Oh me? I work for a really old nonprofit.
• Oh, I am in the insurance industry.
• I do weddings.
• And a Rabbi friend said: I'm in the funeral industry.
But here is the one that jumped out to me: “I am a consultant. My specialty is helping to get people out of bankruptcy.” I asked my friend to explain why she used this. She said, “Think about it. As clergy we help individuals and the Church get out of a type of spiritual bankruptcy. Like a good consultant, you speak the truth to your ‘clients’ about how they got to this place without judging them. You empower them to develop, implement, and carry out a plan that will help them immediately to begin to find their way out of un-health, and you help set them up for success in the days and years to come.”
I think my friend was spot-on. You and I, as the body of Christ, are a royal priesthood, and we are to encourage each other to live more fully and boldly our commitment to Christ.
In the letter to the Hebrews we hear, “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love, and good deeds, encouraging one another.” (Heb10: 25)
You and I know all too well that there is no such thing as life without struggle. I have met it, from one end of life to another. Over and over again, what I thought were the foundations of life have shifted and slid away from me, sometimes only changing my mental and emotional typography a little, and at other times completely shattering every given I've ever assumed into a kind of kaleidoscope of deep pain, despair, and hopelessness.
I have come, like you, through the death of loved ones, life-shaping disappointment, and rejection. When tragedy strikes, when trouble comes, when life disappoints us—as Jesus reminds us that it surely will—we stand at the intersection of hope and despair.
To go the way of despair not only colors the way we look at things and makes us suspicious of the future and those around us. It also makes us pessimistic and downright negative about the present.
It is this pessimistic, distorted view of reality that leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, and worse, it leads us to want to inflict pain and hurt as we have been hurt ourselves.
But when I am in my right state of mind and can think more clearly, I realize that when I say that I am in despair and feeling a sense of hopelessness, what I am really saying is that I have given up on God. That I really don't believe that with God all things are possible. And that God really doesn't care.
Think about it—despair at its core says that I am God and if I can't do anything about this situation, then nothing and nobody can.
But if we go the way of hope, and take life on its own terms, we come to know that whatever happens God lives in it! Hope and hopefulness come from the knowledge that we do not belong to ourselves. I think the Heidelberg Catechism puts it well when it says, “Question: What is your only comfort in life and in death?" The answer begins: "That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
You see, contrary to popular belief, hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. Hope is all about getting better on the inside about what is going on outside. It is about becoming open to the God of Newness. It is about allowing ourselves to let go of the present, and believe in a future that is soon to be but not quite yet, trusting in a God whose power working in us and through us can and is doing greater things than we can ask or imagine. It is about holding on when life seems pointless and perhaps even a little absurd.
Yes, it is hope in things not yet seen that will bring us to the point of personal transformation, which is found at the intersection of maturity and stagnation.
Every dimension of the process of struggle may in fact be an invitation to draw from the well that is God’s deep love for us. Hope is not grounded in the future. Christian hope—our hope knows at the core that God did not look down from a distant heaven and say, “There, there, it's all right.” But, in Jesus, God entered into the full range of our human suffering and tragedy. Jesus walked right into the fire of pain, while we ordinary human beings allow the troubles of life to twist and distort us into victims, oppressors, or a combination of the two. Jesus’ suffering shaped him into a perfect offering. And so we hope, because we have His hope.
An ancient people tell the story of the elder who was talking about struggle. The elder said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." And the disciples asked, "But which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" And the holy one answered, "It depends on which one I feed." The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. To wrestle with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities, and to allow our creating God to go on creating in us.
Now if you have found yourself squirming and uncomfortable with my words this morning or the thought has crossed your mind, “What does he know?” Or “how sophomoric or naïve of him.” Or “how overly simplistic of him. My situation is so much more complicated than that.” Perhaps you are correct and perhaps you are actually standing at the intersection of hope in God's abundance and the darkness of despair and hopelessness. Perhaps you are in the very place right now where you need to make the decision to change your perspective and live in the abundant life God invites each and every one of us to.
Some days and long nights we cannot see the victory of Christ with the naked eye, but we can hear it with the naked ear. Beloved, the psalmist says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear, for you. O God, are with me.”
In other words, if you want to know the truth, pay more attention to the Gospel you hear than to the obsolete evil you and I see.
Br. Joseph Wallace-Williams, n/OHC
Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 15, 2015
Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25
Mark 13:1-8
“Let us consider how to provoke one another to love, and good deeds, encouraging one another.” Heb10: 25Morning-by-Morning faithfulness.
 |
| Hope in God |
In an attempt to come up with some witty response that would not be a flat-out lie I did a non-scientific survey of clergy I knew. I asked them for their response to the question “what do you do for a living?” Here are some of the responses:
• I’m a teacher.
• I'm in the service industry.
• I am a firefighter.
• I am a museum curator.
• I am into antiquing.
• Oh me? I work for a really old nonprofit.
• Oh, I am in the insurance industry.
• I do weddings.
• And a Rabbi friend said: I'm in the funeral industry.
But here is the one that jumped out to me: “I am a consultant. My specialty is helping to get people out of bankruptcy.” I asked my friend to explain why she used this. She said, “Think about it. As clergy we help individuals and the Church get out of a type of spiritual bankruptcy. Like a good consultant, you speak the truth to your ‘clients’ about how they got to this place without judging them. You empower them to develop, implement, and carry out a plan that will help them immediately to begin to find their way out of un-health, and you help set them up for success in the days and years to come.”
I think my friend was spot-on. You and I, as the body of Christ, are a royal priesthood, and we are to encourage each other to live more fully and boldly our commitment to Christ.
In the letter to the Hebrews we hear, “Let us consider how to provoke one another to love, and good deeds, encouraging one another.” (Heb10: 25)
You and I know all too well that there is no such thing as life without struggle. I have met it, from one end of life to another. Over and over again, what I thought were the foundations of life have shifted and slid away from me, sometimes only changing my mental and emotional typography a little, and at other times completely shattering every given I've ever assumed into a kind of kaleidoscope of deep pain, despair, and hopelessness.
I have come, like you, through the death of loved ones, life-shaping disappointment, and rejection. When tragedy strikes, when trouble comes, when life disappoints us—as Jesus reminds us that it surely will—we stand at the intersection of hope and despair.
To go the way of despair not only colors the way we look at things and makes us suspicious of the future and those around us. It also makes us pessimistic and downright negative about the present.
It is this pessimistic, distorted view of reality that leads us to ignore the very possibilities that could save us, and worse, it leads us to want to inflict pain and hurt as we have been hurt ourselves.
But when I am in my right state of mind and can think more clearly, I realize that when I say that I am in despair and feeling a sense of hopelessness, what I am really saying is that I have given up on God. That I really don't believe that with God all things are possible. And that God really doesn't care.
Think about it—despair at its core says that I am God and if I can't do anything about this situation, then nothing and nobody can.
But if we go the way of hope, and take life on its own terms, we come to know that whatever happens God lives in it! Hope and hopefulness come from the knowledge that we do not belong to ourselves. I think the Heidelberg Catechism puts it well when it says, “Question: What is your only comfort in life and in death?" The answer begins: "That I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”
You see, contrary to popular belief, hope is not a matter of waiting for things outside of us to get better. Hope is all about getting better on the inside about what is going on outside. It is about becoming open to the God of Newness. It is about allowing ourselves to let go of the present, and believe in a future that is soon to be but not quite yet, trusting in a God whose power working in us and through us can and is doing greater things than we can ask or imagine. It is about holding on when life seems pointless and perhaps even a little absurd.
Yes, it is hope in things not yet seen that will bring us to the point of personal transformation, which is found at the intersection of maturity and stagnation.
Every dimension of the process of struggle may in fact be an invitation to draw from the well that is God’s deep love for us. Hope is not grounded in the future. Christian hope—our hope knows at the core that God did not look down from a distant heaven and say, “There, there, it's all right.” But, in Jesus, God entered into the full range of our human suffering and tragedy. Jesus walked right into the fire of pain, while we ordinary human beings allow the troubles of life to twist and distort us into victims, oppressors, or a combination of the two. Jesus’ suffering shaped him into a perfect offering. And so we hope, because we have His hope.
An ancient people tell the story of the elder who was talking about struggle. The elder said, "I feel as if I have two wolves fighting in my heart. One wolf is the vengeful, angry, violent one. The other wolf is the loving, compassionate one." And the disciples asked, "But which wolf will win the fight in your heart?" And the holy one answered, "It depends on which one I feed." The spiritual task of life is to feed hope. Hope is not something to be found outside of us. It lies in the spiritual life we cultivate within. To wrestle with life is to be transformed into the self we are meant to become, to step out of the confines of our false securities, and to allow our creating God to go on creating in us.
Now if you have found yourself squirming and uncomfortable with my words this morning or the thought has crossed your mind, “What does he know?” Or “how sophomoric or naïve of him.” Or “how overly simplistic of him. My situation is so much more complicated than that.” Perhaps you are correct and perhaps you are actually standing at the intersection of hope in God's abundance and the darkness of despair and hopelessness. Perhaps you are in the very place right now where you need to make the decision to change your perspective and live in the abundant life God invites each and every one of us to.
Some days and long nights we cannot see the victory of Christ with the naked eye, but we can hear it with the naked ear. Beloved, the psalmist says, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will not fear, for you. O God, are with me.”
In other words, if you want to know the truth, pay more attention to the Gospel you hear than to the obsolete evil you and I see.
Monday, November 2, 2015
All Saints B - Nov 1, 2015
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Will Owen, n/OHC
The Feast of All Saints - Sunday, November 1, 2015
Isaiah 25:6-9,
Revelation 21:1-6a,
John 11:32-44
⧾ In the name of God our Mother, who sings the universe into being and calls it beautiful. Amen. ⧾
"All things
are too small
to hold me.
I am so vast
In the infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there"
That’s from Hadewijch of Brabant, a 13th-century Flemish beguine who wrote a cadre of mystical love poems to God that boldly convey the union with the Uncreated that is the birthright of all creation. The oneness of creation with the Uncreated is the heart of holiness and the goal of the sanctified life.
It’s quite the task to speak to the glory and witness of all the saints, by which I mean those people, known and unknown, living, dead, and yet to come whose lives, like Hadewijch’s poetry, hold up for us a model of holiness. To speak of all of the saints is really to speak of the huge and incredible—really the impossibly innumerable—ways that God’s grace moves through and in each of our lives to draw us and the world toward a more perfect wholeness and unity. To speak of all the saints is to speak of the vast and glorious work of redemption—not only of humanity but of the whole creation.
That’s why I find it particularly appropriate that we hear the apocalyptic readings from Isaiah and Revelation today. Apocalypse, as most of you probably know, simply means “unveiling,” in the case of the apocalypse in today’s texts, the unveiling of the reality of the new creation. Narratively we conceive of this unveiling as something that will happen in the future when Christ returns to make all things new. It is then, as John says, that the first things will pass away and that the heavenly Jerusalem will descend to earth. And although narratively it makes sense to speak of this unveiling as something that will happen sometime in the future, it would be more accurate to say that the new creation is a reality at all moments in time.
All creation and all redemption are one eternal movement of God’s Spirit, a movement that exists and has existed in every moment—from the creation of the universe at the beginning of time; to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord; to the new creation at the apocalypse—all are part of one eternally present movement of God’s Spirit. Revelation and unveiling—these are the moments when this reality announces itself to us in the midst of our human lives, when we can see, if only for a brief moment, the luminosity of our own selves and of all the created world—the shining garment of God’s body that is present in all people and all things, if we only have eyes to see.
With God’s help, those we call saints unveil this new creation in their bodies and their lives. They themselves are an apocalypse. And they show us that the new creation is born in us, not in spite of our struggles, shortcomings, and sins, but—unbelievably—through them. For the saints did not become holy despite their humanity. They became holy through that humanity. To put it another way, struggle, pain, limitation, finitude, and sin are not barriers to grace—they are gateways to new life. For our struggles connect us with our need for mercy and grace. They remind us, often painfully, sometimes humorously, that we are not self-created or self-sustaining. The more we engage our shortcomings with integrity and contrition, the more room we create for God to flood our lives with her love. The painful places in our lives are the places from which we cry out to God in longing for new life. And because of this movement, it is specifically from our so-called vices that our virtues are drawn out of us.
Saint Augustine strikes me as a poignant and powerful example of this dynamic. He struggled his entire life with his sexuality. It was the means he used to resist the influx of grace into his life. And ultimately it became the doorway to his salvation. By struggling with his sexuality Augustine came to see that below the craving for sex and companionship was a powerful, aching longing for union with God. As he allowed himself to inhabit that longing more and more fully, he allowed God to draw out of him extraordinarily moving descriptions of union, wholeness, and love. His longing, which seemed like the absence of God’s love, was actually the seed of that love’s presence. For longing contains within it a foretaste of its own fulfillment, and it draws that fulfillment nearer.
In her first novel Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson offers a scene that reads like a contemporary gloss of the biblical apocalypse:
Luminous moments of apocalypse occur all around us and within us, all the time. The saints themselves are such moments. They are the living stones of a New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven to declare that God’s place is among and within her creation. We are those stones, too. With Hadewijch and Augustine, with Holy Mary and Benedict, with Blessed James our founder and Alan Whittemore, with you, and you, and you, and all of you—with the whole of creation we reach out to the Uncreated. She undoes us. Wider than wide. Everything else is too narrow. We know this well. We who are also there.
Br. Will Owen, n/OHC
The Feast of All Saints - Sunday, November 1, 2015
Isaiah 25:6-9,
Revelation 21:1-6a,
John 11:32-44
 |
| All Saints Day candles in Poland |
"All things
are too small
to hold me.
I am so vast
In the infinite
I reach
for the Uncreated
I have touched it,
it undoes me
wider than wide
Everything else
is too narrow
You know this well,
you who are also there"
That’s from Hadewijch of Brabant, a 13th-century Flemish beguine who wrote a cadre of mystical love poems to God that boldly convey the union with the Uncreated that is the birthright of all creation. The oneness of creation with the Uncreated is the heart of holiness and the goal of the sanctified life.
It’s quite the task to speak to the glory and witness of all the saints, by which I mean those people, known and unknown, living, dead, and yet to come whose lives, like Hadewijch’s poetry, hold up for us a model of holiness. To speak of all of the saints is really to speak of the huge and incredible—really the impossibly innumerable—ways that God’s grace moves through and in each of our lives to draw us and the world toward a more perfect wholeness and unity. To speak of all the saints is to speak of the vast and glorious work of redemption—not only of humanity but of the whole creation.
That’s why I find it particularly appropriate that we hear the apocalyptic readings from Isaiah and Revelation today. Apocalypse, as most of you probably know, simply means “unveiling,” in the case of the apocalypse in today’s texts, the unveiling of the reality of the new creation. Narratively we conceive of this unveiling as something that will happen in the future when Christ returns to make all things new. It is then, as John says, that the first things will pass away and that the heavenly Jerusalem will descend to earth. And although narratively it makes sense to speak of this unveiling as something that will happen sometime in the future, it would be more accurate to say that the new creation is a reality at all moments in time.
All creation and all redemption are one eternal movement of God’s Spirit, a movement that exists and has existed in every moment—from the creation of the universe at the beginning of time; to the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord; to the new creation at the apocalypse—all are part of one eternally present movement of God’s Spirit. Revelation and unveiling—these are the moments when this reality announces itself to us in the midst of our human lives, when we can see, if only for a brief moment, the luminosity of our own selves and of all the created world—the shining garment of God’s body that is present in all people and all things, if we only have eyes to see.
With God’s help, those we call saints unveil this new creation in their bodies and their lives. They themselves are an apocalypse. And they show us that the new creation is born in us, not in spite of our struggles, shortcomings, and sins, but—unbelievably—through them. For the saints did not become holy despite their humanity. They became holy through that humanity. To put it another way, struggle, pain, limitation, finitude, and sin are not barriers to grace—they are gateways to new life. For our struggles connect us with our need for mercy and grace. They remind us, often painfully, sometimes humorously, that we are not self-created or self-sustaining. The more we engage our shortcomings with integrity and contrition, the more room we create for God to flood our lives with her love. The painful places in our lives are the places from which we cry out to God in longing for new life. And because of this movement, it is specifically from our so-called vices that our virtues are drawn out of us.
Saint Augustine strikes me as a poignant and powerful example of this dynamic. He struggled his entire life with his sexuality. It was the means he used to resist the influx of grace into his life. And ultimately it became the doorway to his salvation. By struggling with his sexuality Augustine came to see that below the craving for sex and companionship was a powerful, aching longing for union with God. As he allowed himself to inhabit that longing more and more fully, he allowed God to draw out of him extraordinarily moving descriptions of union, wholeness, and love. His longing, which seemed like the absence of God’s love, was actually the seed of that love’s presence. For longing contains within it a foretaste of its own fulfillment, and it draws that fulfillment nearer.
In her first novel Housekeeping, Marilynne Robinson offers a scene that reads like a contemporary gloss of the biblical apocalypse:
Imagine a Carthage sown with salt, and all the sowers gone, and the seeds lain however long in the earth, till there rose finally in vegetable profusion leaves and trees of rime and brine. What flowering would there be in such a garden. Light would force each salt calyx to open in prisms, and to fruit heavily with bright globes of water—peaches and grapes are little more than that, and where the world was salt there would be greater need of slaking. For need can blossom into all the compensations it requires. To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know anything so utterly as when we lack it? And here again is a foreshadowing—the world will be made whole. For to wish for a hand on one's hair is all but to feel it. So whatever we may lose, very craving gives it back to us again. Though we dream and hardly know it, longing, like an angel, fosters us, smooths our hair, and brings us wild strawberries.In the end I believe we will come to see that all is grace. Everything—the heartache, the laughter, the love, the longing, all our sinfulness, all our shortcomings, all our resistance—all are a part of God’s loving call of return to us. Every atom of our lives can draw out of us a yearning cry, like Augustine’s, a song of longing for God that joins with her own song of longing for us, a song that like the song that brought the universe into being, calls forth the new creation here and now. With the saints we will come to know that God’s redemptive work is being accomplished, and has been accomplished, that we are already holy, even and especially in the midst of our humanity.
Luminous moments of apocalypse occur all around us and within us, all the time. The saints themselves are such moments. They are the living stones of a New Jerusalem, coming down from heaven to declare that God’s place is among and within her creation. We are those stones, too. With Hadewijch and Augustine, with Holy Mary and Benedict, with Blessed James our founder and Alan Whittemore, with you, and you, and you, and all of you—with the whole of creation we reach out to the Uncreated. She undoes us. Wider than wide. Everything else is too narrow. We know this well. We who are also there.
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