St. Patrick's Day

St. Patrick's Breastplate,
A more literal translation, by Kuno Meyer,

I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of
Christ's birth with His baptism,
Through the strength of
His crucifixion with His burial,
Through the strength of
His resurrection with His ascension,
Through the strength of
His descent for the judgement of Doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of
the love of the Cherubim,
In the obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In the hope of the resurrection
to meet with reward,
In the prayers of patriarchs,
In prediction of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven;
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendour of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak to me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me,
From snares of devils,
From temptation of vices,
From every one who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in a multitude.
I summon today all these powers
between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless
power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom,
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of women and
smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge
that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poising, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So there come to me
abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of
every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of
every one who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye of
every one who sees me,
Christ in every ear
that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength,
the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.

From the Mission of the St. Clares

Lent Day One

"But then I do not put much stock in "believing in God."  The grammar of "belief" invites a far too rationalistic account of what it means to be a Christian.  "Belief" implies propositions about which you get to make up your mind before you know the work they are meant to do.  Does that mean I do not believe in God?  Of course not, but I am far more interested in what a declaration of belief entails for how I live my life."
Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah's Child

For Ash Wednesday

God of the desert, as we follow Jesus into the unknown,
may we recognise the tempter when he comes;
let it be your bread we eat,
your world we serve and you alone we worship.

Portion of the collect for Ash Wednesday
New Zealand Prayer Book

More words to afflict the comfortable

More words to afflict the comfortable...

From Joe

African Supper at Ascension

We've been developing a new Sunday school curriculum for our senior kids at Ascension using materials from Peace Jam. We've been integrating Bible study and discussion with a study of a number of issues like clean water and now AIDS. As a part of it we took the kids to a benefit concert for the Harambee Grandmothers last month. The Harambee Grandmothers are the local chapter of the Grandmothers to Grandmothers campaign of the Stephen Lewis Foundation. Over two hundred groups have formed across Canada to raise support for the grandmothers of Africa raising their grandchildren orphaned by AIDS. Since they've formed the Harambees have raised $30,000 in our community as well as making many groups more aware of the issues facing the millions of children orphaned in Africa. They are one kick ass group of women!

Every lent our Sunday School chooses a project to work on and this year they decided that they would do a fundraiser for the Harambees and then collect bottles and do a garage sale for the Canada Foodgrains Bank. So Saturday night we put on an African dinner at the church, decorated the hall, played African music and listened to a presentation by Maureen Ebel, one of our Harambee grandmothers. It was a blast! The middle school kids decorated and the senior kids cooked and a grand time was had by all!

Maureen told us that the Stephen Lewis Foundation is talking about how to connect to young people and that our little parish was cutting edge!

Words to make us uncomfortable

Lamenting that the great, flowing milk of divine beneficence had all but dried up in the hands of the church, Hildegaard said, "Woe to those who are given a voice and will not shout, woe to those who have breasts and will not nurse God's children!"

Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace

Another One that Blows Me Away

I've said it before and I'll say it again. I love this blog!

New Blog

Front Porch Republic, a new blog by a group of writers is going to look at how we might rethink ourselves in the midst of this economic crisis. It has just started but already I'm interested. This posting reflecting on Lent really grabbed me.

In the end, we are all exiles here below held captive by our fallen state and desires, and we are remembering that state of exile during this Lenten season and calling to mind our true home in the Heavenly City. Yet in our earthly existence we have accomplished another very strange thing, which is to exile ourselves voluntarily from the places we have called home and to condition ourselves to think of this cycle of repeated exiling as normal and even desirable. Not only do I suspect that most Americans would find this hymn strange, but for a great many of us there is no longer a Jerusalem for us to forget, for it has already been forgotten if it was ever there at all. In this, we have not renounced our own wills, as monastics do, but have increasingly cut ourselves off from others for our own sakes in almost inverse proportion to our ability to communicate with them.

Read the rest here.

Facing our own violence

I'm reading Frances M. Young's book Brokenness and Blessing: Towards a Biblical Spirituality as a part of my Lenten reading and I'm really struck by these words of Youakim Moubarac connecting the experience of working in L'Arche and the desert fathers:

In as far as I understand Jean Vanier, daily dealings with people who have handicaps makes those involved face their own violence. Confronted by the irreducibility of the other, the one whom they mean to serve but whose condition they cannot ameliorate, they discover with horror that they are capable of striking them, or even wanting to do away with them. It is this, then, that I call a privileged desert place. The ancient anchorites took themselves off to the desert, they said, to fight with Satan on his own territory. We know now that is is enough to pay attention to the most defenceless people among us to find ourselves given up to our interior demons. But if only we force ourselves not to lose heart, if only graces comes to the aid of our weakness, we apprehend that to spend time with the poorest of all is not to do them charity, but to allow ourselves to be transformed by them and to apprehend God as gentleness.

Young relates this to her own experience of caring for her disabled son. I'm finding the book engaging and challenging and look forward to reading more.

Words that resonate with my experience

Authorities I trust, from Wendell Berry to Sri Ramakrishna, all remind me that the particular is the only means we have for touching the universal. We arrive at what is true for all by committing ourselves to particular beliefs, tasks, persons, and places that are true for us.

Garret Keizer, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of a Ministry

What the Fathers Sought most of all was their own true self, in Christ. And in order to do this, they had to reject completely the false, formal self, fabricated under social compulsion 'in the world.' They sought a way to God that was uncharted and freely chosen, not inherited from others who had it mapped out beforehand. They sought out a God whom they alone could find, not one who was 'given' in a set, stereotyped form by somebody else.

Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert

Looking to Ash Wednesday

I love the blog The Painted Prayerbook. I love the way Jan Richardson sees the lectionary readings with a fresh eye and the connections she makes with art. And I love her art. Her posting for Ash Wednesday again prompts me to think in new ways about the day.

Here is a taste:

Ash Wednesday beckons us to cross over the threshold into a season that’s all about working through the chaos to discover what is essential. The ashes that lead us into this season remind us where we have come from. They beckon us to consider what is most basic to us, what is elemental, what survives after all that is extraneous is burned away. With its images of ashes and wilderness, Lent challenges us to ponder what we have filled our lives with: habits, practices, possessions, ways of being that have accumulated, encroached, invaded, accreted, layer upon layer, becoming a pattern of chaos that threatens to insulate us and dull us to the presence of God.

You can read the rest here.

Weekend Activities

Sunday evening always comes too fast although I'm enjoying having my first Sunday evening without a service in months. This was a really good weekend with a couple of movies, Over the Hedge (a delight) and Stranger than Fiction (really interesting and a great cast). I got a lot of work done for the chaplaincy, the parish and my class. And I got to got to the park with a bunch of friends yesterday. There were three adults and four kids and a couple more kids joined us for bocce. Our team picked up a five year old ringer who bowled better than the rest of us - mind you that wasn't difficult. I actually swung in a swing for the first time in years - I have photographic proof but discretion might be wise. I'd hate to have blackmail evidence out there on the net. It was a really fun afternoon.

Today we had a baptism out at Ascension. He was beautifully behaved, even when I poured water in his eyes. Having short arms is a disadvantage for a priest. It makes coordination of water and baby a bit more of a challenge. It also looks like we've raised enough money for a cow, a half dozen goats and half dozen pigs, a variety of mosquito nets and some literacy training this Lent. Gotta love it!

Choked Up and the Sound of Silence

Aaron's right - he's had a couple of posts about the hymn My Song is Love Unknown and how hard it is to get through it without choking up. I chose it for last night and then my colleague at Ascension chose it for this morning so I had a double dose of it. And choked both times. It is one of my favourite hymns and the last verse always gets to me. Like him I'm also having a hard time finding the energy or time for blogging lately. This week I was doing my regular chaplaincy stuff, teaching my course, guest lecturing in my friend Paul's class, and doing Holy Week prep for the parish. There hasn't been a lot of time to write (just ask my family).

I do want to write a little bit about the last couple of days though. This is my favourite season of the church year and last night's service was really lovely. We were only eleven and there is something very intimate about gathering with a group that size. I preach differently when we are such a small group. It isn't just that I am more informal, although I am that, but I feel comfortable sharing more from my heart. I know all the debates about using personal experience in sermons but I'm not really talking about that. I don't know that the ideas or basic content are different. But I think I take more risks with what I reveal of what is in my heart.

This morning's service was a real treat for me. Michael Ebsworth, the other priest in the parish, leads a small choir called Cave Cantemus. They are a wonderful accapella choir and they sang some beautiful pieces while taking us through a meditation on the seven last words from the cross. I got to sit in the pew and participate in the prayers and allow the music to carry me away. Afterwards I trained a new altar server who will assist me on Sunday.

This evening a friend and I watched the newly released Into Great Silence. It has been getting a lot of buzz and it was interesting. It is a documentary on a monastery considered the most austere in the world. There is no narration and almost no dialogue. Essentially it is two and a half hours of beautiful photography of the simplicity of life in the monastery. There are lots of shots of dust floating in sunbeams and drips of water. I must confess that I fell asleep for a bit in the middle but I still really liked it nonetheless. There is a delightful scene of the monks, who are allowed to go out and talk on Sundays, climbing up a mountain so that they can slide down in the snow. As beautiful as the setting is though it isn't immediately evident why someone would want to take on this solitary, silent life. And since there is no narration you have to figure it out through reflecting on the recurring texts inserted in the documentary. The film opens and ends with the passage from 1 Kings where Elijah hears the voice of God, not in the earthquake or the fire but in the still silence. There is a scene of two men being received as novices and from that and the recurring texts, 'unless a man gives away everything he can not be my disciple' and 'o Lord, you seduce me and I am seduced' one is given some insight into what draws men into such a severe life. I've spent some time in monasteries on retreat but I can't living there permanently. I can do silence for a few days but every day, no way!

Maundy Thursday/Good Friday

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
John 13:1b

My Song is Love Unknown

My song is love unknown,
My Savior’s love to me;
Love to the loveless shown,
That they might lovely be.
O who am I, that for my sake
My Lord should take, frail flesh and die?

He came from His blest throne
Salvation to bestow;
But men made strange, and none
The longed for Christ would know:
But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed,
Who at my need His life did spend.

Sometimes they strew His way,
And His sweet praises sing;
Resounding all the day
Hosannas to their King:
Then “Crucify!” is all their breath,
And for His death they thirst and cry.

Why, what hath my Lord done?
What makes this rage and spite?
He made the lame to run,
He gave the blind their sight,
Sweet injuries! Yet they at these
Themselves displease, and ’gainst Him rise.

They rise and needs will have
My dear Lord made away;
A murderer they saved,
The Prince of life they slay,
Yet cheerful He to suffering goes,
That He His foes from thence might free.

In life, no house, no home
My Lord on earth might have;
In death no friendly tomb
But what a stranger gave.
What may I say? Heav’n was His home;
But mine the tomb wherein He lay.

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend, in Whose sweet praise
I all my days could gladly spend.

Samuel Crossman

---

Lent - Day 36

The goal of our life is to live with God forever.
God who loves us, gave us life.
Our own response of love allows God's life to flow into
us without limit.

All the things in this world are gifts of God,
presented to us so that we can know God more easily
and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we appreciate and use all of these gifts of God
insofar as they help us develop as loving persons.
But if any of these gifts become the center of our lives,
they displace God
and so hinder our growth toward our goal.
In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance
before all of these created gifts insofar as we have a choice
and are not bound by some obligation.
We should not fix our desires on health or sickness,
wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in us
a deeper response to our life in God.

Our only desire and our one choice should be this:
I want and I choose what better
leads to the deepening of God's life in me.

St. Ignatius, from the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises
http://norprov.org/spirituality/ignatianprayer.htm

Lent - Day 35

Suspended

I had grasped God's garment in the void
but my hand slipped
on the rich silk of it.
The 'everlasting arms' my sister loved to remember
must have upheld my leaden weight
from falling, even so,
for though I claw at empty air and feel
nothing, no embrace,
I have not plummetted.

Denise Levertov

Palm Sunday

Refrain

All glory, laud and honor,
To Thee, Redeemer, King,
To Whom the lips of children
Made sweet hosannas ring.

Thou art the King of Israel,
Thou David’s royal Son,
Who in the Lord’s Name comest,
The King and Blessèd One.

Refrain

The company of angels
Are praising Thee on High,
And mortal men and all things
Created make reply.

Refrain

The people of the Hebrews
With palms before Thee went;
Our prayer and praise and anthems
Before Thee we present.

Refrain

To Thee, before Thy passion,
They sang their hymns of praise;
To Thee, now high exalted,
Our melody we raise.

Refrain

Thou didst accept their praises;
Accept the prayers we bring,
Who in all good delightest,
Thou good and gracious King.

Refrain

The­o­dulph of Or­le­ans trans­lat­ed from La­tin to Eng­lish by John M. Neale

Lent - Day 31

The Hebrew word for "salvation" means literally "to make wide," or "to make sufficient," and our friend had recognized that the road he had taken was not wide enough to sustain his life; it was sufficient only as a way leading to death. I was glad to learn from The Oxford Companion to the Bible that "the primary meaning of the Hebrew and Greek words translated 'salvation' is non-religious." The Hebrew words usually come from a military context, and refer to victory over evil or rescue from danger in this life. And in the gospels it is often physical healing that people seek from Jesus, relief from blindness, paralysis, leprosy. When he says to them that their faith has saved them, it is the Greek word for "made you well" that is employed It seems right to me that in so many instances in both the Hebrew scriptures and the gospels salvation is described in physical terms, in terms of the here and now, because I believe that this is how most of us first experience it. Only later do the more spiritual implications of salvation begin to make themselves known.

Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith

Lent - Day 30

"Prayer heals. Not just the answer to prayer. When we give up our competition with God and offer God every part of our heart, holding back nothing at all, we come to know God's love for us and discover how safe we are in his embrace. Once we know again that God has not rejected us, but keeps us close to his heart, we can find again the joy of living, even though God might guide our life in a different direction from our desires."

Henri Nouwen, Show Me the Way