St Paul's Episcopal Church Parish Blog

Ready for Christmas Even

2011-12-24T09:15:00.000-08:00

Installation of font and altar December 22, 2011 at St. Paul's

2011-12-23T07:07:00.001-08:00

Just in time for Christmas! New font and altar!

2011-12-22T12:53:00.000-08:00

As promised the new font and altar have arrived, just in time for Christmas!

2011-11-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

Greetings everyone Our building renovation work is picking up pace.

The following important progress has been or is being made:

The painting of the wall behind the altar is in process. It's now a silvery color that will be highlighted with touches of bronze/gold in places.
Our new font is complete and awaits installation in mid-December.
The wood for the top portion of the altar is being prepared, and, I might add, is rich and beautiful. Julie is preparing the reliquary box (a bronze inset piece) that will hold our relic and a small portion of Father Ralph Carksadden's ashes.
The new entryway is fully enclosed, giving us an idea of just how large that space will be--and it will be large!
The pews are being repaired and stained a warm walnut color.
The new bathroom is enclosed, ready for finishing.
All the side windows have been removed.*New lighting is being installed.
Our furnaces are being replaced.
We're still planning on being back in the space on Christmas Eve. Most everything but the interior colored glass will be complete (the outside clear safety glass that "seals" the space will be in place).

All my thankfulness to you and to God as we make this journey together,+Melissa

Catharine Reid's Ordination 10/19/11!

2011-10-24T17:27:00.001-07:00

Wood for New Altar

2011-10-19T14:46:00.001-07:00

A group from the Building Renovation Team along with artistJulie Speidel went to O.B. Williams in Seattle where the new altar wood isbeing finished. We got to see the slab of Walnut before final work onit.

The slab is now just shy of 6 inches thick has come through thecuring process well (it was drying in a kiln for 5 months!). The team atO.B. Williams said it was the thickest piece of walnut they have ever workedwith.

The portion to be carved out for the bronze reliquary boxwill be about 5 inches by 14 inches so we will have a roomy space for Gregorythe Great and some of the ashes of Father Ralph Carskadden.

Mother Melissa Skelton at O.B. Williams

Sidewalk and entry slab pour

2011-10-19T14:31:00.001-07:00

Attached are a few pictures of last week’s sidewalk and entry slab pour. This week we will begin erecting steel at the front entrance, as well as start the wood framing for the interior walls, which will also initiate the electrical and plumbing rough in. Enjoy the pics!

Remembering Father Ralph Carskadden

2011-10-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

By Lynn Adams

I am sitting in St. Mark's surrounded by echoes of many voices, just louder than a murmur, swallowed up in the great timbers of the high space. Voices in the distance are as soft as old linen. Voices nearby are cheerful.

Fr. Ralph Carskadden's funeral will begin sometime soon. I came early to get a seat. St. Paul's is the host parish, but our sanctuary is torn up for remodeling. Even if it had been available, Fr. Ralph is so widely loved, we would still need St. Mark's to hold his mourners.

Up near the altar is a processional banner honoring St. Mark, a skinny winged lion with his ribs showing. There is a border of fabric squares, luminous jewels surrounding the lion, whose curled tail is humorous with its tapestry tassel. Though probably based on an ancient image, it is Ralph's take, in loving detail from pointed red tongue to tassel at the other end.

Fr. Ralph made many vestments and altar textiles of surpassing beauty, designed the interiors of churches, formed us in a deep need for liturgy and showed us the way, and helped us fittingly celebrate St. Lucy's day. He radiated the love of God.

He seemed always on his own uniquely grace-filled path as an artist-priest, and was able to give so generously from his spiritual abundance. Remarkable smile. Gentle humor.

I remember, in contrast, deep burning outrage in a letter he wrote to the editor of a Seattle paper. A young girl had disappeared, a child of his parish, St. Clement's, and the police did not show much persistence in pursuing the case. I heard the authorities assumed that she ran away. This assumption would not be made about a white child. No, this happy girl did not run away. I may be mistaken in recalling that her body was found many months later.

I pray for comfort for his partner Steven. I hope that we who knew Fr. Ralph will be able to keep a reservoir of his spirit and continue to be formed by it. Bless God's Holy Name for the life of Ralph, our friend.

Building Renovation Continues

2011-10-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone

Progress on the building renovation is visible these days: equipment digging upthe old sidewalk in the front of the church, wood and carpet samples in thenave, more and more of the old windows removed, and the beginning outline ofour new expanded entryway in progress. In the meantime our liturgies in theparish hall continue in vibrancy and numbers.

Some building renovation progress highlights for you:

After much conversation, the City decided that they could trim the roots backon our trees, work with us on safe sidewalks and retain the current trees wehave at the front of the church.
The fabrication of the font is complete. All that the Julie Speidel'sworkshop now needs to do is to add the patina.
The wood slab for the new altar is either en route or in Seattle as I writethis. Once in Seattle it will be finished off and Julie will see how thick itis so that she can adjust her work on the altar base so that we achieve theproper height for the overall altar.
Julie has generously agreed to design and donate new candlesticks and a newPaschal Candle stand that will work harmoniously with our new altar.
.I've begun some conversations with Julie about helping us with our newtabernacle (the idea being to have a wall-hung piece for this).

I'll send you more information as it becomes available.

Please continue to pray for those working on the renovation and for St. Paul'sduring this important time of transition and renewal.

In Christ,

Melissa+

St. Paul's Building Renovation Update: August 19

2011-08-19T18:44:00.000-07:00

Greetings, everyone

The work of the renovation continues slowly but significantly.

This last Monday a group of about twenty-five of us gathered in the Chancel area with Bishop Cabby Tennis for a liturgy of the secularization of our marble and bronze altar. The liturgy, which I have included at the end of this posting, allowed each of us to speak about what the altar has meant to us, to kiss or touch or reverence the altar as we chose, and to pray for our community as it continues to send us out as food for the life of the world.

The next morning the altar was removed and placed into storage as we try to find an appropriate placement for it with another church.

In the meantime, the ceiling in the entryway and the ceiling in the portion of the nave below the choir loft have been removed as well as the cement wall on the right as one enters the entryway.

The children of the parish, ages 3-8, were able to see all of this as well as the bareness of the nave when they were with me in the space on Sunday during my time with them between our 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM Sunday services. You cannot imagine how much they care about what's happening! They quickly noticed what had changed in the space, with one child even taking notes so that she could tell her father exactly what was going on.

Offsite, the crafter of the framework for the new windows is working on how the frame will fit in the space (not easy) while Julie Speidel continues work on the new font and begins work on the new altar.

Please continue to pray for this project and for the many people who are working on it. Special thanks this week to Daryl Schlick, Prue Kluckhohn, Mark Taylor, and Bishop Cabby Tennis for all the work they did and to the children of St. Paul's who inspired me in their connection to our space, even in its bareness!

In Christ,

Melissa

_____________________________________________

The following liturgy was written by The Rev. Melissa Skelton, drawing on the Book of Common Prayer and the Book of Occasional Services. Special thanks to Gary James for his good comments on the draft and the Rev. Morrie Hauge for his suggestion--now added--within the liturgy, itself!)
_____________________________________________

The Secularization of the Altar at St. Paul's Episcopal Church

All gather around the Altar, with the Bishop, Rector and Bishop's Chaplain standing behind the Altar.

When all are ready, the Bishop says the following:

Peace be to this house, and to all who enter here: In the Name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Bishop continues

Through the ages, Almighty God has moved his people to build houses of prayer and praise, and to set apart places for the ministry of holy Word and Sacraments. With gratitude for the history and witness of St. Paul's, we are here to give thanks for the community that has gathered here in this church and to acknowledge that this Altar will no longer serve as the Holy Table for this parish.

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you have made us in your image and knit us into one body. We give you thanks for the breaking of bread and the sharing of wine at this Altar and for those who have been sent forth from this place as food for the life of the world; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

A Reading from the Gospel: Mark 6:30-44

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while." For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." But he answered them, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?" And he said to them, "How many loaves have you? Go and see." When they had found out, they said, "Five, and two fish." Then he ordered them to get all the people to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. Those who had eaten the loaves numbered five thousand men.

Lector: The Word of the Lord.
People: Thanks be to God.

The Rector invites the people to share remembrances of the Altar, after which those wanting to reverence the Altar are invited to do so.

The Bishop then says:

Let us pray.

We praise you, Almighty and eternal God, that for us and for our salvation, you sent your Son Jesus Christ to be born among us, that through him we might become your children.
over

People: Blessed be your Name, Lord God.

We praise you for his life on earth, and for his death upon the cross, through which he offered himself as a perfect sacrifice.

People: Blessed be your Name, Lord God.

We praise you for raising him from the dead, and for exalting him to be our great High Priest.

People: Blessed be your Name, Lord God.

We praise you for sending your Holy Spirit to make us holy, and to unite us in your holy Church.

People: Blessed be your Name, Lord God.

The Rector removes the relic from the Altar. The Bishop then lays a hand upon the Table, and continues:

Almighty God, we thank you for this Altar: Table of renewal, place of pardon, Altar of the sacrifice of your Son Jesus Christ, sign of that heavenly banquet where your saints and angels praise you forever. Though no longer set apart for your service, may this Table and the remembrances we have shared enliven us to be your Body in the world; through our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery; by the effectual working of your providence, carry out in tranquility the plan of salvation; let the whole world see and know that things that were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

All: Blessed be your Name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; now and for endless ages. Amen.

Rector: Let us go forth in the name of Christ.

People: Thanks be to God

Renovation as of August 9, 2011

2011-08-13T11:57:00.000-07:00

Greetings everyone,

Renovation activity in the church has begun!

The abatement of entryway is underway (the removal of any hazardous materials that will be disturbed in the construction process, and should be completed by the end of the week. Likewise, the preparation of the area behind the accordion wall downstairs for new columns that will support our new baptismal font is also underway.

Simultaneous to this, a group of us will be traveling to Vashon Island today to see the progress Julie Speidel is making on the baptismal font (see the photo below.)

You are all invited to a liturgy of the "secularization" of our current altar on Monday, August 15th at 6:00 PM. Bishop Cabell Tennis will be with us for this liturgy. If you wish to attend, please enter by the red office door (up the stairs off the parking lot). We will gather in the office area and enter the church by the door near the sacristy.

Also be aware that AA meets in the parish hall that same evening, so you may want to park somewhere other than the church lot to avoid being blocked in.

My best wishes to you during this time leading up the our celebration of the Feast of St. Mary the Virgin.

In Christ,

Melissa+

The Incomplete Restoration

2010-11-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

by Robin Allan Jones

In a time when both sea levels and unemployment are rising, as we come to the end the church year and we are regaled by Luke with imagery of the End of Days, it is easy to turn one’s thoughts to the eventual demise of the human race, however that might come about. Recently, my wife and I watched a fascinating production of The History Channel titled Life After Humans. We saw it on NetFlix , and if you haven’t seen this yourself, you really ought to, because the folks at History Channel, through the magic of computer graphics, depict a marvelous world of replenished seas once again teaming with life, of lofty forests growing on the towering skeletons of skyscrapers, populated with songbirds and flying cats—something not improbable; actually there’s a lot of evidence flitting about the Internet that your common house cat contains genetic and evolutionary potential for, among other things, bipedalism, and gliding flight similar to that of flying squirrels. And of course, the rain forests and the redwoods and the chestnut trees reassert themselves, and in a few thousand years, planet earth seems to have healed itself from the short-term, self-limiting disease of infection by Homo sapiens. The air starts to clear of all the toxins and particulates, and above the skies now musical with the return of songbirds, the heavens, once again visible with stars so long masked by artificial light, sparkle in the night sky. It’s all heart-explodingly beautiful--except for one thing:

There are no humans to appreciate it.

Now, most of you didn’t see it, but right in the basement of St. Paul’s Episcopal, back in the spring of this year, in the play Sam: An Original Comedy About Unoriginal Sin, I depicted a rather frustrated Satan refusing to let humankind completely die out lest her collection of souls become no more than a museum piece. In fact, I got the idea from a Facebook group, The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose goal seems to be the gentle hastening of all that the History Channel describes in Life After Humans. In fact, when we started rehearsals, I really
didn’t have a very good ending for the play, and Voluntary Human Extinction inspired what I think is a pretty clever ending, and endings, as we know, are really important.

But The History Channel rightly points out that the natural world is pretty good at coming up with clever: chimpanzees, dolphins, velociraptors . . . cats . . . But humans, a species capable not only of building great cities, inventing medicine and flying machines, quite capable of its own destruction, but also of music and poetry, and marveling at the sheer magnificence of towering mountains, conceiving with morbid fascination the lethal power of a shark, and peering into the heavens and casting imagination beyond the stars, beyond one’s own lifetime, well that is something unique. For all our shortcomings as a species, we at least have the imagination to conceive of beauty. Thus, this heartening, gladdening restoration, which can happen only without us, with no one to perceive it, is incomplete.

What I think this means for us as Christians is that what we do beneath our steeples, what we carry into the world at large from our places of worship, is an expression of that very human-ness. It is thought by some scientists that there may be some sort of genetic material that compels us as a species to—for the sake of convenience, let’s make it a verb—“to religion.” Now, I pulled down only middling ‘B’s in college genetics, but I’d suggest that there likely isn’t one gene or chromosome for this, but rather it’s the complex neuromuscular structure we call
being human itself that is responsible for that compulsion. And while there is the notion flitting about in scientific circles that the conception of God is simply an imaginative human construct, I’d suggest that that hypothesis overlooks the very existence of humankind. What this means, is that what we do beneath our heaven-aspiring architecture is real; for us at St. Paul’s our simple, graceful liturgy—which takes into account squalling, bored children—goes to the very
core of what it is to be uniquely human.

But this uniqueness carries with it the seeds of discontent: Your cat, however clever, likely does not perceive the inevitability of death while not accepting its finality, and it really doesn’t think much about whether there may be cats in other countries, but we, as part of our intrinsic humanness have trouble accepting our uniqueness, and so, in 1977, NASA sent out two space probes with gold-plated copper discs bearing record of what can only be tidbits of our civilization. Granted, there have been statistical predictions that there are enough stars out there that there are probably several thousand planets where they not only have intelligent life but
intelligent life that speaks English and argues over who has control of the TV remote, but when you consider the vastness of space and dinkiness of Voyager probes, we speak here of hard scientists with incredible faith. Voyager I slipped the solar system in 2004, and by August of last year the two probes, cruising at about 38,000 miles an hour, were on separate courses between 13 and 16 billion miles from the sun. In about 40,000 years the two spacecraft will each come within two light-years of two separate stars.

And then what happens? Well, let’s just say, hypothetically, somewhere between here and there, sometime between now and then, some extraterrestrials—my personal Advent wish is that they resemble the Klingons in the more recent Star Trek movies, such Barbarian vigor, at the same time, so Shakespearean--perhaps inspired by having received broadcast signals of I Love Lucy, are out cruising space, looking for “extra-extraterrestrial” life, and they snag one of the Voyager probes. At last! Our human voice can be once again heard; we can tell our story however many thousand years after our demise and intellectually inoculate undreamed-of species from only-
imagined worlds, and the restoration may then be said, at least in a manner of speaking, to be complete.

So they find this record—which, by the way, for all its sophistication, resembles an LP, the sort of thing that pretty much went extinct on this planet in about 1990—and now they have to figure out how to play the damned thing. Now, I know people who have trouble getting their DVD player to work right out of the box from Best Buy, so, while I admire the faith of the NASA scientists of 40 years ago, I must confess to some doubts about the plan. The Episcopalian in me, the part of me that likes a simplified, graceful liturgy that takes into account bored children, thinks we should have put the whole thing in box with a bunch of buttons, any one of which
activate the player if our aliens in any way accidentally touch one of them . . . Then the restoration will be complete.

Taking a break

2010-08-11T13:10:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Crippen

For the last six years or so, I've been in discernment and formation for the vocation of deacon in the Episcopal Church. These years have been demanding in many ways: discernment meetings, classes, internships, ember letters, a highly challenging chaplaincy, weekends away from partner, profession, and puppy dogs, and the expenditure of many thousands of dollars. I even went to New Orleans.

And now, I am one exegesis exam and one candidacy review from ordination. I've been working this summer with Bishop Greg Rickel as he discerns where he might send me to serve as a new deacon in November. I feel excited. I am eager to serve in the order of deacons.

But I'm tired. I want a break. I noticed this first in early June, when I finished my chaplaincy internship at Harborview, a Christian ethics class, and an internship with the Millionair Club, all in the same week. Since then, I've found it very hard to focus on things Church. I've upped my workouts, started reading the Stieg Larsson novels, focused on my private practice, and yes, Facebooked a lot more. Meanwhile, I'm being told by deacons in the formation program that I'm supposed to pull back from St. Paul's as I prepare for my diaconal assignment later in the fall.

All of this reminded me of something Bishop Greg said at a Convention one year. He was talking about his high interest in the under-35 age group, and his belief that the Church ignores the under-35 group at its own peril. But he also said this (not a direct quote): not only is it normal for teenaged and early-20's men and women to step away from the Church for a time, but if they don't, he thinks...well, he thinks it's kind of weird. You should take breaks from time to time. It's a mark of a healthy spiritual life to go through periods of withdrawal, inactivity, even frivolity.

And I admit it: I was one of the weirdos. I moved through high school, college, and my young professional life without missing more than one Sunday in a row. I worked a dozen years as a church musician, then almost immediately began discerning my diaconal call. I've never pulled back.

And that's not healthy. I asked my partner what he thought about a fairly significant pull-back in September and October, as we prepare for my ordination around Halloween. "That'd be great," he said. (He's pretty tired, too, since he has supported me so fully through all of this.)

Will we not go to church at all? I really doubt it. But even sitting in the pews would be a major step back for me. And I think Bishop Greg is right. Like Jesus himself, who often wandered off by himself or into the wilderness to get away from the burdens of his ministry, we too are invited to let it go for a while, watch the grass grow, and rest.

Let's see if I can actually pull this off.

Stephen Crippen is a couples counselor and member of St. Paul's. His professional blog is here.

Tribes

2010-08-02T10:08:00.000-07:00

by Robin Allan Jones

He stands with quiet dignity in his remarkable regalia, face painted white, almost like a mime’s, his clothing accoutered with claws and a lush abundance of feathers; here and there, regular ranks of small polka dots stud his garb, reminding me of a Japanese samurai warrior. His name is Mickey Mason, of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma. His voice has the gentle drawl of the wind over the Midwest prairie. It is a hot day at the Seafair Pow Wow, the air redolent with the scents of sweat and Navajo fry bread. We will come back to Mickey very shortly.

A pall of dust is kicked up by the wildly-costumed dancers. It sort of hangs there at about ankle height, and against the throb of the drums and whine of, to me, incomprehensible Indian songs, I am reminded of the incense that hangs in the ceiling of St. Paul’s on a Sunday service. I have heard somewhere, probably not here, that Native American dance is prayer with the body, and I can’t imagine engaging in that sort of dance on a day like this without it being some kind of delirious religious experience. Just watching it can get you halfway there. And I am caused to remember something I heard Melissa Skelton say some years ago, that what we do at St. Paul’s, the repetitive standing, crossing, bowing, the chanting, the courtly cadenced steps of the altar servers, is prayer with the body. Somehow, perhaps only in my imagination, we Episcopalians, we “frozen chosen,” share parallel patterns with these remarkable, astoundingly energetic people.

These days, within the bounds of U. S. federal law, Native Americans exist as members of a startling variety of tribes. To those who live amid the monumental structures of modern states and worldwide religions, tribalism has its appeal. It’s smaller, more personal. The half-Native-Alaskan fictional character Ed Chigliak once remarked on Northern Exposure that tribes make sense because it’s hard to have a personal connection with (insert the 1990 U. S. census figures here) people (obviously this isn’t an exact quote). But there is a dark side to tribalism: Street gangs are basically tribes. For all the Aquarian ideals, tribes are often violent, cut-throat, top-dog societies that exist primarily for the good of the leaders of that tribe and nothing else, very much like the petty kingdoms of early medieval Europe, only on a smaller scale and with not nearly as good a music.

But all along, we have had, within the bounds of U. S. federal law, a very positive kind of tribalism—with excellent music. You could, with some slight elbow-shoving of the imagination, say that I am a member of the Episcopalian Tribe, more particularly, the St. Paul’s, Seattle, band of the Episcopalian Tribe. We’re a small band; using the latest parish directory for a count, it looks like we number about 350. I have a personal relationship with many of my fellow tribe members; I am on a first-name basis with many of them. I am one of the ceremonial something-or-others in the tribe. I also seem to be the tribe’s playwright. Our tribe makes its living by hunting, fishing, gathering berries, and live theatre. Naw, I just made that last part up. Actually, by no stretch of the imagination, I and a couple of other tribe members who are responsible for creating comedy around here are the equivalent of the clowns in Navajo and Hopi societies. I won’t go into why we are the equivalent of that, for the very simple reason that I kinda like being in this tribe, and I’d like to not get run out of it, but it brings me back to Mickey Mason, standing patiently, the picture of stoicism, while people stand next him to have their pictures taken. He doesn’t charge them for the privilege, and he doesn’t lecture them on etiquette, being thoughtful, or on the dignity of Native Americans.

It turns out that that Mickey and some other Indians go to prisons and do Indian dances for the prisoners as an act of healing. Dance as healing. Kinda like our liturgy. I find this remarkable because I personally can’t look at an inmate without at least asking myself what he did to get himself incarcerated. But Mickey and the others see past all that—which, when you think about it, is rather what Jesus would do. Mickey says that the rig he wears is that of a sort of medicine man, and for as long as he wears it he cannot feel insulted in any way.

I have known Mickey Mason for only a few minutes, and I already think he’s one of the finest human beings I have ever met.

Robin Allan Jones is a tribal liturgical minister, and tribal comedic playwright. He’s also one of the tribe’s most insufferable wiseasses.

The Feast of Pentecost: The Gift of the Holy Spirit

2010-05-22T13:38:00.000-07:00

by Jay Rozendaal

In former times men, seized by madness, wanted to build a tower to reach heaven; but the Lord, by dividing their tongues, divided their evil purpose. So now the Holy Spirit descends upon them in fiery tongues to unify a divided world. The result is something new and strange. (St. John Chrysostom)

Some years ago (well before seminary!) I was asked in an interview why I had been drawn to opera as a career. One of the things I singled out was language. I love words. I love the sounds of different languages. I love it that every language has unique nuances, cultural influences - its own character, its grammar and syntax. I love it that some things just cannot be translated. I love the flavors of languages - they are all distinct in your mouth or on your tongue, just like different foods.
I love it that when I work with singers we get to work with great music - and with great poetry.

And I know that there is much that cannot be said, that cannot be contained in language.

St. Ephrem of Edessa spoke of God being "clothed in language" - the Word made flesh. And yet, certainly God cannot be contained by words. We may speak OF God - but can never finish describing God in language. The word "mystic" is derived from the Greek muein, to close the mouth, or keep silent - not in order to keep a privileged secret - but because some things simply cannot be expressed in words. The intimate encounter with the living God is beyond the power of language.

As St. John observes, words have the power to divide and to reconcile. Power to break down and to build up. Power to wound and to heal.

At Babel God exercised a creative power that stopped a community in their tracks, and sent them their separate ways.

On Pentecost the power of the Spirit flowed out in an abundance of language that drew people into the community we know today as the Church - capital C - the one that transcends polity, architecture, liturgies, membership rolls, collection plates, canons, confessions, catechisms, books of order, conventions, synods, curia, and whatever WE think Jesus would do.

May God light us afire with the passion to speak words of reconciliation, healing, and building up among all God's beloved children throughout the community of this world... whether or not they look like a church to us. "The result is something new and strange..."

Fr. Jay Rozendaal is a Priest Associate at St. Paul's, and a musician on staff with Seattle Opera and at Western Washington University

Not Yet Out of the Lenten Wilderness

2010-04-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

by Barb Levy

During Lent this year I found out that my father has lung cancer. His surgery was scheduled for Good Friday.

My Lenten wilderness took me to places of not knowing what would happen to my father, not being well-acquainted with grief, and not knowing how I would cope with his illness and possible death.

On top of this, I felt sad that I would miss my first Triduum at St. Paul’s in 20 years. This is the only place where I've experienced the love mingled with grief on Maundy Thursday, processed into the chapel to watch at the altar of repose, heard the sung Good Friday passion, helped with the lighting of the paschal fire and watched it spread throughout the congregation in the pre-dawn vigil, heard the litany of saints, rejoiced at the great Alleluia, and been transported by the music that Gary James infuses this (and each) season with.

Yet I also sensed that going somewhere else this year could lead me through a new type of Lenten and Holy Week journey.

So what did I find back home in Rochester, NY? Since I wanted to be with my family the evening before my father’s surgery, I went to a noon Maundy Thursday service at a beautiful old church with tall spires, intricate stained glass, and high arched ceilings. But no one bowed, genuflected, or made the sign of the cross. Corinthians (the institution of the first Eucharist) was read in great haste. There was no pause in the Eucharistic prayer, or elevation of the elements. And to top it off, the good news that the priest shared about what was to come on Easter morning was a promise of chocolate-covered strawberries.

I prayed the entire time (only a 30-minute service) that God would forgive me for being so judgmental and snobbish. Then I went across the street and sat in a stone building at the George Eastman House garden, trying to conjure up Gethsemane.

My Good Friday vigil was 11 hours spent in hospital halls and waiting rooms during my father’s surgery. After spending time alone in the interfaith chapel, I later attended a 12:30 Roman Catholic service. I kept my eyes closed much of the time—partly to keep away tears, and also so that my face might not reveal how shocked I was that they read the Passion at record speed with no emotion. The veneration of the cross consisted of people scurrying up the aisle to kiss or bow to two crosses, perhaps eight inches tall, which I would describe as tchotchkes. I decided to call that 35-minute service “galloping through the crucifixion.”

Yet, even as I spent those two holy days enduring these truncated services, I had a vague sense that some underlying meaning would be revealed to me.

And, without a doubt, in these parched places—of exile from liturgy, music, and my familiar parish community—I heard faint, familiar biddings day and night.

I heard what we learn each Maundy Thursday and Good Friday: that we are here to act out the great commandment—to love one another as He loves us. I was able to channel God’s love, by serving as a privately mournful, yet upbeat, devoted daughter. And I was carried through doubt to do what needed to be done in each moment.

Like the women at the cross or the beloved disciple, I bore witness (to my ailing father) and kept watch (with my steadfast and worried family). Just as we read of the blood and water that poured out of Jesus’ pierced side, I thought of my father’s body being incised in order to be healed. And I tried to look bravely at his appearance after surgery, when he seemed so marred, beyond human semblance (Isaiah 52:14).

For the next eight days I was graced with the ability to act most often with caring and compassion, to wait patiently and glimpse occasional optimism, despite being drained of all human strength. My fortitude must have come from that great, unseen source of all being—Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.

So despite how any of us “do” liturgy—how flustered, reverent or dignified we appear, how many people are in the pews, whether our liturgy borders on theater rather than worship, we are taught in these Great Days that things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new. We experience through the agony of the cross how Jesus is the link between God and humanity, heaven and earth, and that there is nothing we will grapple with or attempt to flee from, which he has not also endured.

Finally, I need to share how wonderfully my Triduum ended. I attended the Saturday night Easter Vigil and Easter Compline services at Christ Episcopal Church. This old stone-clad building near the Eastman School of Music has a glorious music program and the most spectacular organ I’ve ever heard. In that place I found another parish home, one that I would love to attend again and again. In it I experienced what drew me into the mystery of Christian faith at my first Easter Vigil. I was transported through light and shadows, Word and response, despair and faith, to the soaring grandeur that breaks through at the Easter Acclamation.

Turning on the lights

2010-04-05T20:38:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Crippen

Okay, so this is frustrating. For the second year in a row, at the Great Easter Vigil (which truly is great at St. Paul's!), when the lights came on and the bells rang and the organ sounded and everyone shouted "Alleluia", I felt ...

Meh.

What's the matter with me? Last year, my household had just bid a tearful farewell to our beloved dog Hoshi (his first feast day is tomorrow). Because of that fresh loss, I thought my flat emotional response to the dawning of Easter made sense. But why this year?

Maybe it's because I'm pretty tired. I'm doing a chaplaincy internship, a social-agency internship, diocesan exams, grad school, and my private practice. That's a pretty full load. But somehow I don't think that's it.

Maybe it's the fact that for the last three years, I've been the one who actually turned on the lights at the big moment when Melissa sings "Alleluia, Christ is risen" and the congregation sings "The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia." When that mountaintop liturgical moment occurs, I'm in a back hallway, timing the flick of each light switch to be sure the lights come on just right. I'm like the man behind the curtain in "The Wizard of Oz": I know what the operation looks like from the perspective of the control room.

But I want to dig a little deeper on this. Here's what I suspect might really be going on: Easter is no longer, for me, the sudden outburst of joy that it was for so many years. Easter has become a developmental process, a gradual unfolding of grace and joy in my life. One reason for this might be that in my chaplaincy work, I've seen more death by far than I ever have before. And I'm seeing the many intense and diverse forms death can take, from a deadly stroke to a car accident to a gunshot wound. In Easter I hear that death (and the deathward drift of so much of our human experience) does not have the last word: "We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him...So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus" (Romans 6:9, 10b). Death in all its forms does not have the last word.

But it is one of the words.

Somehow, on Easter Day, in my own small way, I hold on my heart all who have died, and particularly all who have suffered despair and anguish, since last Easter Day. Our new paschal candle bears the letters MMX--2010. Another year of grace, certainly. But also another year of vulnerability, risk, loss, and crisis. I don't do this to be maudlin: I sing alleluia--I really do!--but I also have empathy for the first witnesses of the resurrection, the frightened and confused women and men who didn't have it all figured out right away. It took them a long time to make sense of the fact that God, in Christ, invites us into a life-filled future, even though in our present time we so often feel the sting of death.

Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O LORD, I lift up my soul. You are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. --Psalm 86:4, 10

Put Your Hands Together

2010-03-30T20:43:00.000-07:00

by Robin Allan Jones

If you take both of your hands, hold them before you, palms-down, then bring the tips together at, oh, I wanna say, 60 or 70 degrees, you will mimic the A-frame roof of Saint Paul’s Episcopal. Not surprisingly, you will also look like you are praying.

Any piece of architecture is the work of many hands: those of the dreamer who first conceives of a need for a particular structure, finger-painting ideas in mid-air, the master architect who, with sketching pen and keyboard, turns that vague dream into a viable creation, the people who, with fervent hand gestures following even more fervent voices raise the funds to set in motion the breaking of the ground, the builders, with shovels, jackhammers, and paintbrushes, the people who put their hands together beneath the completed roof in the work for which it was intended, and finally, the nearly invisible maintenance man who pushes the broom and squeegees the windows that are part of the building’s essential housekeeping functions.

Architecture is a form of prayer, and everyone involved in the life of a building is an expression of that prayer, fingers, if you will, of God.

With that in mind, somehow, the word “renovation” seems cold, dead, distant Latinesque; what we are doing right now at St. Paul’s is nothing less than adding our hands and our voices to the prayer that is St. Paul’s.

Robin Jones, a liturgical minister at St. Paul’s, is not related to St. Paul’s renovation architect Susan Jones—but he wishes he were.

Don't just do something. Sit there!

2010-03-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

The reflection group on homelessness and our homeless neighbors gathered again yesterday, and we had another lively discussion of the issue of homelessness, how we're responding to it at St. Paul's and elsewhere, and where to go from here.

One member of the group talked about her experience with Real Change vendors (a mix of positive and negative) and how it led her to reflect on how privileged most of us are, and the tension that inevitably arises when people interact across socio-economic lines. We welcome this tension because we want to follow Jesus, a poor peasant who doubtless would be much more skilled walking the streets of our own neighborhood than many of us are.

This led to a discussion of guilt, a common feeling that arises when well-intentioned (yet economically privileged) people try to make a difference in an economically unjust society, and find their own limitations and blind spots getting in the way. I offered the idea that Jesus is a model for many things--radical equality, love for the most vulnerable among us, self-giving love for all, a prophetic voice for justice--but he never modeled guilt. He didn't show us how to be guilty, or feel guilty. We could say that this is because he was without sin, and therefore had no reason to be guilty. But we could also interpret this to mean that following Jesus means pushing past guilty feelings and getting back to work!

Another member of the group talked about his work with another agency in town that serves a specific ethnic group, and how race and culture--not just economic status--can be a barrier that's hard for people to cross. He is a white volunteer in a setting that understandably does not trust white people, so he had to be in the community for quite some time before he was welcomed as a safe companion.

Finally, the threads of our discussion led us to reflect on the importance of simple relationship: that the relationships we develop are more important than the services we provide. I said that in my work this year at the Millionair Club, my mantra has been, "Don't just do something. Sit there!" This is because it would be all too easy for me to stay focused on the task at hand--collecting socks for a sock drive, cooking breakfast, handing out food coupons, and so on--and neglect the relationship I might develop with another person who happens to be homeless. There is everything good and nothing wrong with sock drives! But I am mindful that Jesus was a companion of his poor friends, not a social worker who had them on his caseload. I can't focus on the socks to the exclusion of the human beings in my midst.

And one last thing--we talked about small efforts, and the frustration that many of us feel when we see how little we're actually accomplishing. This is often what leads to the guilt I mentioned above. It's the sense that yeah, I'm volunteering X number of hours a week, but the problem is huge, and sometimes I can't shake the thought that all this work is not really doing much to change the situation and improve people's lives.

The group reflected on this by again discussing the stories in the Gospels in which Jesus, using just a few loaves of bread and a few fish, somehow feeds thousands of people. These stories suggest that small efforts can lead to major change, even if we can't see how. One of the men I worked with last week was much more cheerful than me about his job prospects, and I thought, "What do I know? Maybe we really can help him find a job!" And the interaction we had--just two people spending a half hour together--can resonate far beyond the two of us. Small efforts by a few can lead to abundant life for many.

The Meaning of Mardi Gras

2010-02-16T22:28:00.000-08:00

By Barb Levy

I’m writing this on Mardi Gras, the day before the season of Lent begins. Mardi Gras means Fat Tuesday in French, and evidently comes from the tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last day of Carnival. Carnival comes from the Latin words carne vale, meaning “farewell to the flesh.” People the world over take the opportunity to live it up, perhaps getting drunk or acting outrageous, before putting on their sackcloth and ashes and giving up something for Lent.

Of course, another word containing carne is incarnation, which literally means embodied in flesh.

During my five months as a catechumen, including my first Lent, I remember our beloved rector Fr. Peter Moore telling us that “Lent is not a self-improvement program.” What I took him to mean was that the meaning of Lent is not found in fasting from chocolate or alcohol, talking about our sacrifice for forty days, wearing our furrowed brows in public, but rather entering with Christ into the wilderness, embracing and learning from life’s temptations, and taking up our own crosses in daily life. This was preparation for Holy Week and Easter, not getting on the scale at the end of forty days.

I just re-read some of the St. Paul’s blog postings from last year, and found Fr. Torvend’s description of “the social context in which the practice of fasting emerged among Christians” very insightful. The post was entitled Why Fast, Who Cares?:

“When Lent emerged in the agrarian populations of western and eastern Europe, the practice of fasting was rooted in human necessity. The warming weather of spring would spoil foods kept in storage. Thus, it was important to eat the foods before they were no longer edible. At the same time, late winter and early spring are the birthing season for herds of animals. By refusing to eat beef, lamb, and pork, Christians helped the next generation of animals survive and so replenish the herd.

“But of course this form of fasting, rooted in the desire for human and animal survival, was shot through with biblical overtones. Christians saw themselves in solidarity with Noah and all the animals saved in the ark as they refused to eat animals during Lent, their fasting a gesture toward a new creation. And they were well aware of the Jewish and Christian practice of fasting—but fasting in order to set aside food for those who were chronically hungry. In other words, fasting allowed one to save food or money that could be given to the poor. … Yes, fasting focused on the hungry poor, not on simply ‘giving up something’ because ‘that’s what we do in Lent’ or refraining from delectable foods because it makes us pleasing to God or is simply a test of our endurance.”

So how might words and traditions rooted in flesh, atonement, sharing with those less fortunate, and taking care of creation inform our Lenten discipline?

Obviously giving up meat, or eating more meatless meals, is no longer a necessity in the sense of replenishing the herd. But animal agriculture in our day and age, though mostly hidden from view, has gone to the opposite extreme: 10 billion animals are killed each year in the United States—99% of them on factory farms where they undergo extreme suffering and degradation that would be illegal if it were done to our pets. And the degradation to our earth is closely tied with factory farming as well.

A Lenten discipline can include some degree of fasting from these horrors—eating more humanely by reflecting on how and what we consume and making more compassionate choices. This doesn’t need to be all or nothing. For instance, there is currently a movement called Meatless Mondays. Or, others eat vegan until dinner time. Learning more about the realities of the food industry and then choosing to eat what is better for us and for the environment (let alone animals) instead of eating something because it tastes good and is easy to come by is a challenging daily discipline.

Last year a woman who was preparing for baptism at St. Paul’s told me that in preparation for taking her baptismal vows, which include renouncing “the evil powers of the world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God,” she was becoming a vegetarian.

She knew that her interpretation was not typical, but felt that in knowing about the horrors of factory farming she could no longer partake in meat eating after taking those vows. She reached out to me because she knew I was a vegetarian. I was inspired by her perspective and her determination.

And it had just been dawning on me, after 30 years as a vegetarian and 17 as a Christian, how the two are connected.

This Lent, I offer these thoughts not to judge or sound self-righteous, but to urge us as a community to make this place a better world not just for one another, but for all God’s creatures.

“Animals are God's creatures, not human property, nor utilities, nor resources, nor commodities, but precious beings in God's sight. ... Christians whose eyes are fixed on the awfulness of crucifixion are in a special position to understand the awfulness of innocent suffering. The Cross of Christ is God's absolute identification with the weak, the powerless, and the vulnerable, but most of all with unprotected, undefended, innocent suffering.”
—Rev. Andrew Linzey, Anglican theologian

More links of interest:
Episcopal Network for Animal Welfare
Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians
Humane Society—Lent: Planning Your Menu

Barb Levy is not 100% anything, but tries to eat consciously. She welcomes your thoughts, and offers more of her own on her healthnik website.

Feeding the multitudes

2010-02-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

Today I met with several members of St. Paul's for the second time to reflect on the issue of homelessness and the relationships we have (or do not have) with our homeless neighbors. It's a great group--lots of robust discussion, thoughtful insights, and even some good humor!

We reflected today on stories from the Gospels (or elsewhere in our faith tradition) that inspire us to reach out to the homeless. People mentioned Matthew 25--the chapter where Jesus says that when we feed the hungry, we're feeding Christ himself. Some of us think about the whole 'gestalt' of the Gospels--and how Jesus talks and behaves in the Gospels--and respond to that by reaching out to our homeless neighbors.

We then talked about the healing stories in the Gospels, stories where Jesus performs a four-dimensional healing: he heals the person's physical infirmity, but also the person's religious wound (diseased persons were considered ritually unclean and not allowed to participate in the liturgical life of their people), the person's social wound (diseased persons were considered socially unacceptable and were forced to live as outcasts), and the person's psychological wound (it's hard to feel good about yourself if you have to shout "I'm a leper!" when people approach you, so that they can avoid you and walk in the other direction).

Finally, the group patiently listened to me as I talked about the Gospel stories that inspire me personally to reach out to neighbors of mine who are hungry or homeless: Jesus fed the multitudes. This is recorded in all four Gospels. Using just a few loaves and fish, somehow Jesus provides a full meal for everyone, all the thousands of dusty, hungry people surrounding him, and with plenty left over. To quote my Lutheran heritage, "What does this mean?"

I think it means that life with Jesus is a life of abundance. Everyone has enough. Perhaps no one has too much--certainly, if I have too much but want to live a life with Jesus, I would give some of my food to my hungry friend. There is enough to go around. Our group talked about the outrage of homelessness and hunger. In a world of such vast abundance, how can people be hungry? In a country of such vast wealth, how can people not afford housing?

Our tradition demands that we wrestle with these questions. One way our group did that is by thinking about our own relationships with particular homeless (or near-homeless) Seattleites. Many of us support Real Change, a program that increases awareness about the issue of homelessness while helping people get back on their feet. Our group talked about how, when we support a Real Change vendor by purchasing a newspaper, we help him transform from a beggar into a merchant. This can be one way in which we--in our own place and time--follow the example of Jesus and restore not only physical health to our neighbor, but also social and psychological health.

We're going to keep asking these questions, and more questions after that. And we're also reflecting on the good work being done here at St. Paul's by our volunteers and staff in the office, who, more than anyone in the parish, are on the front lines in our interactions with our homeless neighbors.

Would you like to join us? We're meeting on first Sundays at 9:00 a.m., in the Gallery (the former library). Even if you can't make it to our meetings, I invite your comments and reflections to this post.

"Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted." --John 6:11

Life at Sea Can be Hazardous

2010-01-19T18:23:00.000-08:00

By Robin Jones

A couple of Sundays ago at St. Paul’s we baptized three kids—the narthex did somewhat resemble the YMCA pool for a few minutes. Mother Melissa’s sermon centered that day around a discussion she had had with various members of the parish about whether baptismal water should be warm or cold. Now, be assured, at St. Paul’s it’s always going to be warm, for all kinds of good reasons, but among the notions that came from those discussions and which found its way into the text of the homily was that of the water being warm as evoking the waters of the womb, or the warmth of the baptismal water representing the gentle caress of God, for just a couple of examples.

I think I was in on one of those vesting room conversations, and those in the parish who are acquainted with me know that I spent many chapters of my life as “Satan’s Cabana Boy,” so it came easy for me to play Devil’s Advocate and suggest the water be cold, because, as I put it, “the person baptized needs to be reminded that ‘life at sea can be hazardous.’” Well, naturally, that smart-alecky seeming non sequitur didn’t get replayed in the sermon, but I stand by what I said.

I don’t remember my first baptism, but I remember my second: I was on a Navy cruiser bound for Australia as I approached my 22nd birthday. I remember bloodying my knees on the hot main deck to have a mop-headed King Neptune order cold seawater poured over me, declaring in a round-toned alcohol-sodden gravel that I was no longer a “’wog” but a Son of Neptune. Most of humanity still resides in the northern hemisphere, and there is still, even in the 20th and 21st centuries, a mystique to crossing the Equator. Young sailors are always patently aware of the mass of ocean surrounding them that diminishes the proportion of the floating arks on which they live and labor, and the ever-present immediacies of drowning and dehydration, sharks and tsunamis make them cling to such life rafts of camaraderie and tradition as ceremonies of crossing really an imaginary line around the waist of a planet, lonely for its uniqueness in precipitating enough water to harbor life. Life at sea can be hazardous, and there is safety in being part of a crew.

I won’t tell you the sea story of how I returned to the Church after an extended odyssey of self-exile, because when I do, people seem to no longer suffer insomnia, but I will tell you that I when I made the decision to do so, it wasn’t the proverbial lifting of a weight off my shoulders. Nooo, I know exactly why I came back—but the reason is utterly illogical because I at that moment had for so long worn my loneliness, cynicism, and profane rascally-ness like comfortable sneakers, and coming back to the church meant that I was scrawling my signature to all the attendant responsibilities of feeling, and caring for other people. It was more like shouldering my end of a massive canoe for a long portage. And over these last ten years, when I have winced at the sense of my heart about to explode for that feeling of belonging that comes definitely with every Christmas Eve and Easter, and when I think about it, every day; when I have stepped solemnly in funerals and said good by to souls cast to eternity, people whose lives I would neither have intersected with nor given a second thought to had I not returned to the Church, and for whose loss I may feel so alone again, I do sometimes find myself leaning at the rail and looking longingly over the horizon for that desert island of cynical self-containment.

But I’m a member of the crew nowadays, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. To the three pollywogs last week I say “Welcome aboard.” Welcome to the crew. Welcome to being a Human Being. And remember, life at sea can be hazardous.

Robin Jones is an altar server at St. Paul’s.

Mae West was right

2010-01-09T18:45:00.001-08:00

When Andrew and I stayed at my sister Sarah's house in St. Paul, Minnesota, last October, I saw a great quotation she posted on the wall of her main bathroom: "When in doubt, take a bath" --Mae West.

How wise!

Tomorrow, Sunday, January 10, the parish community of St. Paul's will recognize and celebrate God's creation of three new Christians in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. One of the three is my goddaughter, Jubilee. Alleluia!

An event like this gets me thinking and reflecting on water--that fundamental, monumental substance that makes all life possible. Tomorrow, little Jubilee (and her two friends) will be immersed in water, and when they come out of their watery bath, they will be marked by the cross of Christ.

To quote the eponymous founder of my former (Lutheran) communion, "What does this mean?"

I think it means that we meet God in water. All the water that surrounds us: the water of the oceans, the rushing rivers, the crystal mountain lakes... but also the water that fills my bath, the water that nourishes all who thirst, and the water that washes your homeless neighbor so she can look presentable for a job interview. God as Water.

But there's a dark side to all of this: water nourishes, but it also drowns. Water washes, but it also floods. To submit to Christian baptism is to say "Yes" to a life that leads to self-giving death. Just look at the Baptismal Covenant in the Book of Common Prayer:

--Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?

--Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?

--Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?

--Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?

--Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

These are tough questions. Jubilee can't answer them just yet, but she is fortunate enough to have parents (and a godparent, and a parish community) who will answer them on her behalf, and promise to bring her up in this matrix of faith, love, and service. But she would be right to rebel against this covenant from time to time. It's not neutral. Being baptized is a daunting thing. I'm planning on telling her--in about fifteen or sixteen years--that her reluctance and ambivalence makes a lot of sense!

Meanwhile, I want to sing a song of the watery Trinity, a poem that imagines the Trinity not as Father, Son, and Spirit, but as Sea, River, and Rain. And I will hold my little goddaughter--and my goddaughter Audrey, and my godson William--in prayer, asking God for the waters of justice and righteousness to fall down upon them all. (And after church tomorrow, I think I'll take a bath!)

Here's the trinitarian poem:

O Sea, Mystic Source

by Susan Palo Cherwien

O Sea, mystic Source,

relentless and fathomless,

all streams run to you.

O River, fair Spring,

O earth-bounded wanderer,

you seek the low place.

O Rain, soaring Mist,

osmotic and life-giving,

your form, the vessel's.

O Water, O Life,

O Fountain and Origin,

have mercy on us.

Rejoice, rejoice!

2009-12-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

(Not sure what this is? Click here for more.)

December 24

Rejoice, rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to you, O Israel.

Glad feast: roasted seasonal vegetables, red wine, warm bread. Glad guest: on Christmas Day, our homeless neighbor takes the chair set out for Elijah. Glad host: each folded napkin and each perfect morsel give voice to an elegant "I love you." Glad tidings: this year, the citizens of Washington state affirmed the civil rights of same-sex couples. Glad peace: from Tacoma to Tikrit, we will never forget those who lost their lives in pursuit of justice and peace, and we will build a better world in their memory, year by year. Rejoice! And blessed Christmas.

O Emmanuel

2009-12-23T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

(Not sure what this is? Click here for more.)

December 23

O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, who mourns in lowly exile here until the Son of God appears.

God-with-us: an infant nurses at her mother's breast, both of them so luminous that even the baby wipes are caught up in the Holy. God-with-us: a night chaplain sits with a family as they stagger under the weight of tragedy. God-with-us: a young father, a modern Christ-bearer, shades his newborn daughter's face from the bright sun as he rushes her to the car. God-with-us: a woman in detox awakens from her nightmare and discovers that she is not alone. God-with-us: "O great mystery, that farm animals witnessed the birth of the Christ child!" God as God-with-us.

O Keystone

2009-12-22T00:01:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

(Not sure what this is? Click here for more.)

December 22

O Keystone of the arch of humankind, come, bind in one our riven hearts and minds; bid now our sad divisions cease, and be our Sovereign of Peace.

Keystone that binds my conscience to my neighbor's plight. Keystone that binds a murderer to his victim's family in a terrible yet redemptive connection. Keystone that binds a married couple in a tense yet creative intimacy. Keystone that binds us with our so-called enemies on one green earth. Keystone that binds living and dead together in one communion of saints. God as Keystone.

O Dayspring

2009-12-21T11:57:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

(Not sure what this is? Click here for more.)

December 21

O come blest Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by your advent here; disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death's dark shadow put to flight.

Dayspring returns: starting today, a couple of minutes each day, the sun strengthens and lengthens. Dayspring dazzles: a masterful musician, a skillful surgeon, a discerning sage. Dayspring enlightens: a radical idea, a brilliant discovery, a life-changing question. Dayspring burns: an angry prophet, a painful moment of truth, a vigorous argument. Dayspring warms: a neonatal heat lamp, a roaring hearth, chili simmering on a cooktop burner--and there's enough for all. God as Dayspring.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Advent Antiphons

2009-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

The liturgy for evening prayer (Vespers) includes the singing of the Magnificat, St. Mary’s song of victory and praise. Antiphons are appointed to be sung before and after the Magnificat, usually tailored to the feast day or season. In the last seven days of Advent, the appointed antiphons are the beloved “O Antiphons,” seven short verses that borrow images of God from the Hebrew scriptures to pray for Christ’s coming.

One of my spiritual disciplines is to write very short reflections on an image. I like to train myself to write sparingly about a theme, idea, or metaphor. For each O Antiphon, I searched for five ways to open up the image and shape my prayer during these late days of Advent.

I’ll post further reflections in the coming days, but here are the first four. Blessed Advent!

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December 20

O come, O Key of David, come, and open wide our heavenly home; make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path to misery.

A Key that opens a barn for a pregnant mother and her anxious husband. A Key that opens doors for immigrants so they can find work and dignity. A Key that opens minds and hearts to unfamiliar and frightening ideas. A Key that explains the symbols on a map so I can find my way home. A skeleton Key that opens everything, even the door of death. God as Key.

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December 19

O come, O Branch of Jesse's tree; free them from dreadful tyranny who trust your awesome power to save, and give them victory over the grave.

A Branch that shades living creatures from the noonday sun. A Branch that holds and hides the nest. A Branch that returns oxygen to earth's atmosphere. A Branch of fragrant flowers and nourishing fruit. A bare Branch that buds with life. God as Branch.

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December 18

O come, O Adonai of might, who to your tribes on Sinai's height, in ancient times once gave the law, in cloud and majesty and awe.

Adonai to powerfully overthrow our oppressors. Adonai to powerfully challenge our own oppressive behaviors. Adonai to powerfully defend the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Adonai to powerfully confront our internal demons of anxiety. Adonai to powerfully overcome perpetrators of terror, torture, and genocide. God as Adonai.

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December 17

O come, Sophia from on high, who governs all things tenderly; to us the path of knowledge show, and teach us in your ways to go.

Wisdom to remember that human lives depend on quality health care. Wisdom to notice what our culture wants to hide from us. Wisdom to care about the ethical dimension of what we cook for dinner. Wisdom to ask more questions than we answer. Wisdom to hold our beliefs in a matrix of healthy doubt. God as Wisdom.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

A Christmas Angel

2009-12-19T17:21:00.000-08:00

by Ellen Hill

I grew up in Boston, where snow and the holidays were always synonymous. The first snow was always exciting: how little, how much, no one seemed to be able to predict. It could hit hard in mid-afternoon, and if you were lucky, school closed, buses stopped to chain up, and you secretly wished you had worn all the bulky horrible things your mother made you wear last winter. Within days, the snow would become black with city dirt, or worse yet, melt and refreeze into sidewalks of sheet ice.

Yet in those first hours how lovely it was. Each flake unique as it slid lazily down the warm glass of the window into oblivion, and a new one taking its place. The air was icy and a Christmas tree could stay outside on the porch for days – its powerful scent casting a Christmas spell around the yard. Once inside, it filled the house. First came the lights, and then the ornaments, and last, the angel. How beautiful she was! Soft gossamer wings, golden hair surrounding a sweet face: everything my Victorian grandmother thought an angel should be. I keep the angel in a box now, wrapped in tissue, too old to top any tree. Each Christmas she fades a little more yet still evoking all those Christmases where she shown so brightly in the center of out family.

That gorgeous, radiant angel of memory is made of paper and prickly, shedding spun glass. It probably came from a five-and-dime, and certainly wasn’t a major expense for whoever bought it. Memory can invoke beauty, as well as enhance it. I keep the angel now for both the memory of the past, and a realization of how time alters and enriches. Not a fine porcelain face my adult self might desire, but a poor cardboard one made beautiful by love.

We choose our memories, good and bad, and the best seem to come complete with color, sound, and scent. Driven by these images, we work all the harder to achieve those perfect memories for our children. Yet, individual as a snowflake, each child will pick their own memories, their own traditions and even their own past. As hard as we may work during the holidays, it is reassuring to reflect that our children will probably remember us, like the little cardboard angel, a good deal better and more radiant than we see ourselves.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Advent: Purple or Blue?

2009-12-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

In my quest to be named the Weirdest Dog Owner in the World (and that’s a hard get!), I have purchased dog collars for all the liturgical seasons. We have a variety of collars for summer and fall (green), Lent (purple), and high days/seasons (bright colors, since white is not a good color for dog collars). But Advent—that’s a problem.

In my home, the color of Advent is hotly disputed. Andrew: “It’s purple!” Stephen: “It’s blue!” Who’s right?

As much as I want to say I’m right, I know that reasonable people differ. For time out of mind, the color of Advent has been purple, in keeping with its identity—like that of Lent—as a penitential, solemn season. (Christmas and Easter are solemn too, but joyfully so.) In the ancient world, purple dye was highly expensive, so it was associated with wealth and royalty. A commoner like you or me simply couldn’t afford it. In Lent, this added layer of meaning—royalty—evoked Christ’s identity as the sovereign figure at the center of our salvation story. That Christ ironically was not an earthly king but a poor peasant only added to the significance of purple as a liturgical color. And since Christ is central in both the Incarnation Cycle (Advent/Christmas/Epiphany) and the Paschal Cycle (Lent/Easter/Pentecost), beginning both cycles with royal purple seems fitting.

But I like blue. Indigo, really. In recent decades, the use of deep, rich blue in Advent arose to differentiate Advent from Lent as a season of hope and expectation. Advent blue, at its best, reminds the eye of the deepest blue of the night sky just before dawn. As we await the dawning of Christmas, we drape ourselves and our altar in deep blue. Every Advent I like to sing the hymn, “As the Dark Awaits the Dawn,” by Susan Palo Cherwien. Here’s a stanza from her lovely text:

As the blue expectant hour
before the silvering skies,
we long to see your day arise,
whole and wise, whole and wise,
O lucent Morning Star.

So…how did we resolve the dog-collar dispute? Naturally, we met in the middle: since we have two dogs, we have two opportunities to clothe our beloved charges in the color(s) of Advent. May your Advent draw you ever closer to the dawning light of Christ.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T14:43:00.001-08:00

by Ellen Hill

As someone who loves to cook, Thanksgiving is an opportunity to incorporate the tried and true family favorites with some new innovations. I use my mother's recipes for stuffing and sweet potatoes. I start cooking the day before and get up early Thanksgiving to put the turkey in the oven, which was also my mother's routine for the day. When my son Michael was teenager, I taught him how to make everything on the table and over time his own innovations appeared on our table. I wanted simply for my son to be a good cook. My other goal was that he could replicate what he liked and no future wife would be held hostage to a memory she was unable to duplicate.

Personally, I always get rather annoyed when someone says, "anyone can follow a recipe" because it doesn’t begin to cover what cooking is really about. My own mother's recipes included pinches, splashes, skoshes, smidgins and various spices that were never measured. Her menus were based on how to put food on the table from paycheck to paycheck. She shopped in season, bought on sale, and tried to make everything pretty on the plate. Some weeks were leaner than others but seven days a week we sat down together for dinner as a family. We shared, not just the meal, but all the happenings of our day. Our conversations were always spirited and often the food became secondary. Dinner laid the foundation of our family. So it was with my own children. In a different, more complicated world, dinner became movable. Our dinnertime shifted from day to day but we always ate together and the tradition of lively conversation was passed on to the next generation.

Michael lives in DC now. He makes the Thanksgiving meal, from turkey to pie. Then he fills his home with friends and co-workers. Michael creates his own traditions using recipes not only from his grandmother and me, but new dishes of his own creation. It is hard not to have Michael and his sister Megan with us, but somehow we are still together. Everyone is at the table.

We are all present in the memories served in every dish.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Communing with Kale

2009-09-18T21:43:00.000-07:00

by Barb Levy

I've decided to call these last few months My Summer of Kale. When I planted kale from seed, for my daily green smoothies, I had no idea that I would be harvesting its lush curly leaves for months. It is now mid-September, and I'm still picking leaf after leaf from tall, hearty stalks. And beyond providing me with tangible benefits—chlorophyll, protein, antioxidants, fiber—the kale in my humble garden has provided me with a steady diet of spiritual nourishment.

With little paid work and a lot of unstructured time, I've had the opportunity to create a daily routine that emphasizes silence and solitude, time with my animals, and reverential bows to my little patch of Eden.

When concerns about my own well-being, the state of the world, or the secret brutality of factory farms start to overwhelm me, I set aside my books, articles, and to-do lists, and try to listen instead—to birds twittering, guinea pigs cooing, the wind fluttering through the leaves.

Many of my best moments have involved sitting down to meditate with the kale. My gaze might rest on the glint of sunlight on a drop of water, or a bee working in earnest, before my vision melts into the kaleidoscopic pattern of the leaves and stems. I've discovered that this marvelous coalition of rich soil, tiny seeds, abundant sun, buzzing bees, wiggling worms, and careful tending by my own hands draws me to reflect upon all that I have, rather than on what I think I need.

In this summer of hot sun and drought, with fear and sadness riding tandem in and out of my thoughts, I simply marvel at the continual harvest of kale in my garden. When I do this, what slips away, even for a few fleeting moments, are the idle and anxious thoughts, reactions and distractions that vie for my attention throughout the day. I learn better how to observe rather than get caught up in my mind's incessant chatter, to turn aside from the distraction of technology and the daily broadcast of bad news.

Observing the secret life of kale teaches me that stillness can be more enlightening than ceaseless activity, that anxiety can be neutralized with reflection, that into a quiet mind can flow sure evidence of a thousand separate miracles. I know, in the core of my being, that we are all one, and that each moment is a new creation.

Barb was the only Girl Scout in her troop to earn the observation merit badge. She has six small animals who help her eat her vegetables, plus two cats. You can find out more about green smoothies on her website .

Happy Saturday

2009-05-23T12:04:00.000-07:00

This is your editor speaking. My husband Andrew found this link to a rather amusing debate between two southern churches, carried out through the medium of the signs posted in front of their buildings.

Click here to see.

The topic is one near and dear to us at St. Paul's, and it's worth a good sunny Saturday afternoon giggle.

Enjoy! Keep an eye out here for more interesting and lively original content, coming soon..

-Alissa

I remember Mama

2009-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

by Ellen Hill

Mother's Day arrives this Sunday surrounded by the usual blitz of advertising. As a mother, apparently, this observation of Mother's Day means I will be using my new Kitchen Aid while wearing my diamond bracelet but only after dabbing any number of expensive scents behind my ears.

As a family growing up we didn't even think those ads applied to us. My mother usually asked for and received a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were drawn in crayon, and as I grew older, in watercolor. The drawings tried, in my childish hand, to recreate all her favorite flowers. My mother was an incredible gardener. She had a rose garden that she had started from cuttings, bright beds of lilies and irises. And lilacs, the scent of lilacs in spring, that is my mother.

My mother would probably be called an abused child in today's vernacular. From what I learned from my father she was also an ignored child. After rheumatic fever left her with a damaged heart she was largely of no value to her family. A quiet child she tried to hold on to own sense of self in the face of unrelenting verbal abuse. Her one sole act of defiance was eloping with my father, who not only was not Irish Catholic, but worse still, a Protestant Englishman. My father loved and cherished her until he died suddenly of a heart attack. After his death, she became more reclusive and I became the parent.

When you are seventeen you can welcome responsibility. As the years passed I often felt weighed down with the role I had once happily assumed. So this is not the story of some strong, stoic mother who challenged the world. Not the happy, cake baking, fun mother that is portrayed on a Hallmark card.

It is the story of a person who faced down cruelty and never, never passed it on. A woman who loved her family above all else and allowed her children to be themselves. When she placed responsibilities on my shoulders it was accompanied by a firm belief that I would manage things and do a really good job. How many adolescents have someone who believes in them to that degree?

It has been years since her death, and in that time I have gotten the very best of her back. I remember her excitement when a rosebud opened, early mornings walks, and checking her flowers until her shoes were soaked with early morning dew. The exquisite embroidered tablecloths she made. I remember her abiding love. Her courage to accept each new illness. Her kindness to others. Her humor about herself. And ultimately the incredible gift of allowing me to be me. To which I can only say, thank you Mama.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

The Light of Christ

2009-04-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

by Alissa Newton

When the alarm goes off at 3:30am Sunday morning I turn it off without even waking up. I have this habit, honed through the many middle-of-the-night phone calls from the road when Andrew was touring early in our marriage. I developed the ability to answer the phone, even talk to my husband, while continuing my sleep uninterrupted. I would have no memory of the event. Since I know this about myself, the second alarm goes off at 3:35, followed by Andrew's alarm at 3:45. That's the one that does it, because it's on his side of the bed and I am not able to reach it without sitting up and climbing over him. At that point, I'm up.

And glad to be - I was due at church at 4:15. I am there by 4:30.

As a child and young person growing up in an evangelical church there was always an Easter sunrise service. And, seeing as my mom was the choir director, we were always there for it. I have dim memories of being loaded into our green van half asleep in the morning darkness, and trudging up the hill behind our church building wrapped in blankets. We would sit in the rows of folding chairs that had been placed outside next to the giant tree overlooking the plot of land our congregation hoped to build on someday. And we faced toward the sunrise. It was never a long service, being as it was outside and people were cold, but it was timed so that the sun would come up as Pastor Rick was preaching, or maybe as we were singing. Wrapped in my blanket, perched on the edge of my cold metal chair, it was always the sunrise that thrilled me. Though the music and the preaching was fine, the goosebumps and that tight, holy feeling that spread though my body as we said "He is risen" to each other wouldn't have been there without the magic of that rising sun. That is what I remember about Easter mornings as a child.

Now that I'm an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian in Seattle, I don't have Easter morning outside. For one thing, the sun makes fewer appearances here in the Pacific Northwest than it does in Sacramento, CA where I grew up. Most Episcopal churches participate in a liturgy called the Triduum , which is one service that takes place on three days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and a service that is either late in the evening on Holy Saturday, or early on Easter Sunday, the Easter Vigil. I've done the Vigil both ways - when I was confirmed at St. Mark's it was a Saturday evening. Now at St. Paul's we are fairly hardcore about liturgy. So, of course, our Vigil is on Easter Sunday, and it starts at 5am.

I am there at 4:30, putting on my alb and enduring a gentle ribbing from my friend Kate, who managed to be there on time. The only thing better, in my opinion, than attending the Vigil is serving in it. While our 5am, heavily choreographed, ancient, three hour long liturgy is a far cry from the 45 minutes huddled under a blanket outdoor experience of my childhood, I feel a similar anticipation and excitement in this service to what I felt watching all those sunrises, years ago.

The church is dark as people file in. We wait in our white robes, holding our sturdy candles, unlit. Outside is Seattle, drizzling rain and for the most part fast asleep. But there is a steady stream of pilgrims coming in, getting their tapers at the door, finding places in the dark sanctuary, settling children on the wooden pews. The little Nelson kids are wide eyed, electrified with the rush of being awake when they are usually asleep, the novelty of total darkness in a place where there is always at least one candle burning.

The Vigil is like a sunrise, but longer. From the darkness a tiny light comes - a fire, lit at the back of our space, blessed, and then spread to the hundred or so handheld candles that fill the pews. Songs are sung, and we listen to many stories of the People of God, their readings punctuated by psalms and sung prayer. About 45 minutes in ushers quietly move down the aisles, offering replacement candles because most are dangerously close to burning out.

Then, still in darkness, a baptism. Kate and I are left back at the altar while the rest of the servers process with the baptismal candidate back towards the font, where our new fire began some hour ago. We wait until backs are turned and then tiptoe towards the altar rail that separates the congregation from the servers up front, so we can see. Baptisms always make me cry, like seeing someone married or born or dying does. It's something I cannot quite explain.

The sun is almost up now, not outside but in here, where we are. After the baptism Melissa, our priest, takes a bouquet of rosemary and dips it in the waters. She walks around the entire place, flicking water on everyone, letting each of us share in the sacrament of joining that has just taken place. The choir sings a long, chaotic recitation of all our saints, and we remember. Or maybe we just listen in awe. When she returns to the altar we servers face the congregation and all wait for the moment.

This is where Lent makes sense to me. This moment wouldn't be what it is, if we had not been avoiding the word "Alleluia" for the past six weeks. It wouldn't be what it is if our space had not been bare of flowers for the past six weeks, if our priests had not been in simple, spare vestments, if our altar had not gone unadorned by silver, if our Bread was not coarse wheat instead of the usual honeyed white. If we had not just spent ninety minutes in heavy candlelit darkness, if we had not listened again to the Old Testament stories of Creation, Flood, Dry Bones and promises this moment wouldn't hit with the weight that it does. And, this is key to me, if we were not together, a community of faith, all sorts of people who have been doing all of this in union these past six weeks.

"Alleluia Christ is Risen," she sings it. And the lights fly on (not all together, but choreographed, like a sunrise).

"The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia!" we sing it back, and the pilgrims reach into pockets and purses for bells of all shapes and sizes and begin to ring them vigorously. The organ is playing something familiar and triumphant, and we can see for the first time the explosion of white flowers on both sides of the Table, the gold vestments adorning our sacred ministers and the matching cloth adorning our table.

The sun is up. And we proceed to celebrate an entire mass, basking in the glory of our new year, our new hope, the silver cups and plates, the white bread, the Alleluia, the Mystery of Easter that we can come close to in a sunrise, in a dark liturgy that ends in explosions of gold and light, in all these symbols and sacraments saying with their shapes, lines, and colors what our words cannot express.

"Whew!" My friend who works at the coffee shop down the block from St. Paul's says to me when I stop in after the Vigil for my americano. "That's commitment!"

But it isn't. It's Easter. It is the sun coming up, the trees turning white and pink, and the earth warming. It is a new fire inside me and hope burning so strong that my eyes water. It is a Mystery, and I would set one hundred alarm clocks if I had to, to make sure that I got to be there and hold my small piece of the Light.

Alissa is St Paul's Lay Pastor for Children and Young Families, a postulant to Holy Orders, and the editor of the parish blog. This post was originally published on her personal blog.

Yet Even at the Grave…

2009-04-15T12:36:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Crippen

“All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”—Book of Common Prayer, Burial Rite II, page 499.

I’m not a big fan of Lenten disciplines (is anyone?) but one discipline I’ve cottoned onto is the omission of ‘alleluia,’ not only from the liturgy, but from the regular conversations of my life. That’s why when I blogged about it this Lent, I couldn’t manage even to type the word out on my computer! It’s a weirdness I have. I admit it.

So imagine my excitement every year when Melissa sings it for the first time, punctures the power of another alleluia-less Lent, breaks the rule because on Easter Day the rule becomes its opposite: “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” she calls. And we sing back, “The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia!”

But this year, I didn’t get very excited. To be honest, as the lights flashed on and the bells rang and we sang the Gloria and we once again filled the liturgy with countless ‘alleluias,’ I didn’t feel glad. I felt a little manipulated. I thought, “I’m supposed to be chipper. Too bad I’m not.”

The biggest reason of course is that our delightful dog Hoshi ran off with our hearts on Holy Monday. His own heart gave out, and he died, poor baby, on a table in a clinic in Lynnwood, around 4:30 a.m. Nowhere in Scripture or our tradition do we hold that non-human animals receive the gift of eternal life. Yet I wonder: Hoshi’s premature death was so outrageous, so palpably sad, so unnecessary, so impossible to explain or interpret or justify…why can’t I hold out a little hope, childish though it might be, that I’ll see him again, that the line in Revelation about tears being wiped from our eyes means—for me at least—that Hoshi himself will greet me one day and lick my eyes (one of his weird but delightful pastimes)? That would take care of the tears, let me tell you.

And there are other reasons not to sing ‘alleluia’ with enthusiasm. I am not so self-focused to think that the grief of our family eclipses the grief that haunts the countless billions on earth who know death, live in the midst of death, call death by many names—many familiar names.

So here’s how I’ve worked it out, at least this year. This year—and every year, to some extent—I can’t sing ‘alleluia’ on Easter without thinking of All Souls, that holy day of black vestments, that day when the Church stares death squarely in the face and sings, “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

If I made an ‘alleluia’ banner, I would weave strands of crimson and black into it. If I typed the word out, I would punctuate it with a period, not an exclamation mark. If I rang an ‘alleluia’ bell, I would let some of the soundings clang and clatter. If I sang the Great Alleluia—which we all did at the Vigil—I would drop out here and there. It’s not because I doubt the Good News of Resurrection, though often enough I do. It’s certainly not that I’m mad—at God, or the Church, or anyone in particular—that despite Christ’s redemptive work of salvation, humanity still contends with death, grief, injustice, and despair. (Seriously. I’m a therapist and I’ve had some therapy: I’m sad but I’m not angry! ;)

No, I would color my ‘alleluia’ crimson because I might be singing ‘alleluia,’ but I’m also—no joke—standing by that grave. I might rejoice in Christ’s presence, but there is still those aching absences. Hoshi. My mother. My friend Richard. The grief felt by those I love. The silent prophetic voices of all the innocent dead.

I’m not chipper this Easter. But I am singing…when I can. And when I sing, I eke it out, that great and terrible word, that song of joyful life in the midst of death:

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

To Bee or Not To Bee: Why there is a bee on the Paschal Candle this year

2009-04-13T10:22:00.000-07:00

an illustration from a Medieval Exsultet scroll (lots of bees)
by Ralph Carskadden

Once a year, at the Great Vigil of Easter, sometime between sundown on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter Day, Christians in the Western liturgical tradition gather in churches and cathedrals to kindle a new fire from which a great candle representing the Risen Christ is lighted. That Paschal candle is carried into the midst of the faithful, and there a deacon or cantor sings an ancient prose hymn praising Christ the Light who dispels the gloom of sin and banishes darkness. This hymn, called the Exsultet, from the Latin “rejoice,” is one of the poetic treasures of the Church, dating back to at least the 4th century. The chant begins with an invitation for the heavenly host, the entire creation, Mother Church, and finally our own assembly to share in the rejoicing.

Most—but not all—of the ancient sources include several lines giving thanks for the bees who made the wax from which the candle was made, and by which the flame is fed: “In the solemn offering of this wax candle, made out of the work of bees;” fire “nourished by the melting wax which the mother bee produced for the substance of this precious light.”

In southern Italy, by the 10th-11th century, the text of this hymn together with the musical notation was written on long illustrated scrolls. As the deacon stood in the ambo (pulpit) elevated above the people and sang the chant, the scroll unrolled over the desk of the ambo and the gathered faithful could see paintings which illustrated the text. While the verses regarding bees were sung, those standing near the ambo saw a picture of people harvesting the wax and the honey from bee hives and nests.

When the Roman Catholic Church restored the Great Vigil in the 1950’s and translated the official texts from Latin to English, the sections of the poem regarding the bees were retained. With revisions in 1970 the bees were dropped. Episcopalian scholars working on the current prayer book followed the Roman lead and when the Book of Common Prayer came out in 1976 the bees were not to be found. The latest Lutheran revision of the liturgy now includes the bees, and the new Roman Catholic translation in English of the Exsultet appears to have restored them once again. Many Episcopal parishes who celebrate the Great Vigil have used a form of the Exsultet chant published by Nashotah House, one of the seminaries of the church, which retains one of the lines from ancient sources regarding the bees.

To bee or not to bee has obviously been a question amongst liturgical scholars.

In late February I was in Oak Harbor to take my 98 year old mother out for lunch. While passing a nature store I noticed a poster in the window which read BRING BACK THE BEES. On it were illustrated a number of the species of bees which are so very important to the pollination of crops and the production of honey. The current bee-colony-collapse disorder is threatening agriculture and food production on which our daily life and the economic health depend. I am delighted that for just this year we depart from the Prayer Book and “bring back the bees” in the Exsultet at the Great Vigil. The added line is this: “We sing the glories of this pillar of fire, the brightness of which is undiminished even when its light is divided and borrowed, for it is fed by the melting wax which the bees, your servants, have made for the substance of this candle.”

If one knows ancient Greek mythology, the restoration of bees to a chant at St. Paul’s is particularly appropriate. The name Melissa means “honey bee” in Greek! The word for honey in Greek is “mel” and it is from this root that we get the word mellifluous, meaning sweetly or smoothly flowing, honey-like.

There is profound theological significance to the mention of bees. At the beginning of the Exsultet the whole creation is invited to rejoice. The celebration of the Resurrection occurs at a specific time of year in which (at least in the northern hemisphere) the natural world is undergoing rebirth and renewal. As sacramental Christians, we know that the “outward and visible” can be a sign of the “inward and spiritual.” The creation itself is a form of proclamation, visible evidence of God’s power to bring life from death! For too long humankind has abused and ignored so much of the creation. In every way possible the Church needs to assist her members in reconnecting with the earth and reclaiming a sense of responsible and caring stewardship for all living things. I believe that including a creature as small as a bee in our Easter rejoicing this year is a good thing, a tiny step toward making our prayers and faith more “green”.

The Paschal candle which I ornamented this year includes a small sturdy bee - a token of all the creatures, great and small, who in their own ways share our rejoicing and make life on this planet possible and wonderful.

Ralph Carskadden is a Priest Associate at St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: A Good Friday sort of poem

2009-04-10T16:16:00.000-07:00

By Sharon Cumberland

I was inspired to write this poem two Lents ago when we chanted the “Kyrie Pantokrator” at St. Paul’s. I was so taken with the phrase “I bend the knee of my heart” that I went home and developed another set of phrases that were similar, and this is the poem that resulted. It seems like a Good Friday sort of poem to me.

KYRIE PANTOKRATOR

The world was not for me, but for my brothers,
the horses, the science kits, the classrooms,
the rough training for the world, which was not
for me, but for my husbands, the work, the money,
the camaraderie over drinks and waitresses, which
was not for me but for my fathers, the wives, the tidy
homes and waiting children, the warm bed,
which was not for me.
           I beat the chest of my soul.

The clear path was not for me but for the scions,
the boys of promise and grace, their football fields,
the locker room and all its promises, which was not
for me but for the scholars, their tutors, the books
and allowances, the mighty potential, which
was not for me but for the junior partners,
their swaddles of opportunity, the slap on the back,
which was not for me.
           I bite the tongue of my mind.

The audience was not for me but for the speakers,
their podiums and printing presses, the bull horns which
were not for me but for the soldiers, their flags and taxes,
the guns and petroleum, their certainty of righteousness
which was not for me but for the kings, the popes, the presidents,
their parades and treasure, their chest of ribbons,
which was not for me.
           I brandish the fist of my bowels.

The Church was not for me but for the Adams,
the ones who look like You in their secret bodies,
like the Father and the suffering Son in his ribs
and rags, which were not for me but for the saints,
their faith and miracles. Only the martyrs,
their persecutions, their resistance, the hopes
of forgiveness for their jealousy, their cowardice,
their despair, Pantokrator, are for me.
           I bend the knee of my heart.

Sharon Cumberland is a member of St. Paul's and an Associate Professor of English at Seattle University.

Lenten Voices: Small Deaths

2009-04-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

By Ellen Hill

When my son Michael was a little boy, he underwent several operations for his heart. I read him many stories including those about his patron saint, Saint Michael The Archangel, who in the Talmudic tradition translates as "One who is like God". His name is the battle cry of the angels in their heavenly battle against Satan. Could there be a better saint for a small boy in a scary situation? Michael saw an angel that was bigger and better than "He-Man", his favorite toy. Larger than life, with bigger wings and followed by an army of angels, who better to surround you in the operating room? How does a child find the courage to confront the pain and fear that he is too young to communicate? Michael went through many operations with all the grace and dignity that a small child could manage. I do believe his faith was there sustaining him in those mighty images.

We all search for role models for ourselves and our children. As a child, I sought out strong women who battled adversity and survived. While I searched, I found something completely at odds with what I was looking for, not a woman, not bigger than life but someone who failed and failed terribly.

Three times Peter denied Christ. Three times. As the years go by and I grow older, more and more I take Peter to my heart. Peter, the fisherman who answered the call to follow. The rock on which the early church was built. The cock crowed and Peter faced his darkest moment. How did he confront that enormous unknown filled with the pain of betrayal?

Each day we make choices, decisions, actions. We make promises to ourselves and those we love. We take actions that succeed or fail. Each day we change by those choices. Sometimes life holds insurmountable pain as surely as it holds joy. And, we stumble along carrying our failures and vulnerability with us. And like Peter we manage to keep going. Surely, the third denial was an insurmountable moment, but belief carried Peter into a life of proclaiming the gospel and building the church. In the end it was his choice to be crucified upside down. Every day brings each of us moments of pain and beauty illuminated by faith.

Michael entered his operating room many, many times. Perhaps it is my conceit, that it was that belief of a child that enabled him to walk out.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Beyond Salvation and Resurrection

2009-04-08T10:34:00.000-07:00

By Jayme Hegelson

I was sick with the flu earlier this week. For two whole days I was a weak inhuman blob. I couldn't even find much enjoyment in my standard being-sick pleasure regime - hours and hours of entitled TV watching. There was a certain desperation that came when neither the TV nor the medications could improve my misery. Everything just sucked for two whole days.

What I usually like about being sick, and what I particularly enjoyed this time, was the part after being sick - when I felt well again. The relative absence of life for two days made the life I was now experiencing exquisite. Normal everyday lunch fare became nirvana incarnate. The taco truck's tacos were more than orgasmic. My morning two sugars and cream in black coffee was crack-cocaine with none of the disagreeable side-effects. Colors had more color, time had meaning, pain became bliss. And I swear my vision was sharper than ever.

That got me to thinking more on the subject of what it is to be human. Humans are unique animals, I believe, in their ability to be both less and more than a mere mammal. Other animals, like the squirrel, just are what they are. A squirrel is just a squirrel. A sick squirrel is a sick squirrel and it cannot deviate from this certain reality determined by it's genetic code and parental conditioning. Humans are profoundly different in that we can choose to be inhuman or to be extraordinarily human. I have the ability and gift to evolve well beyond my programming, to spurn my genetic code and traumatic upbringing, to truly become more than what Fate had destined for me to be. I am in my deepest essence a creative being who can be profoundly affected by the actions of creative beings. So too am I uniquely able to self-destruct or be outwardly violent well beyond any inherent genetic or character defects dealt to me by heredity or history. If I embrace the human legacies of depravity I can reduce myself to an existence equivalent to a duck in Central Park begging for trash and stale bread crumbs.

I have what would some would rightly proclaim to be a profound set of character defects. Until recent years I lived as a slave to these defects; a life of utter and total dis-ease. There were many reasons for this putrid state of affairs both in my control and out of it, but suffice to say a set of vital interventions have conspired to teach me what it is to be more human than I ever was in childhood or young-adulthood. Just reaching this point of feeling human again, in its most basic animal sense was itself like a revelation. To not be sick with the flu, to not not feel so horribly like nothing, indeed to feel something safe and good again feels like a salvation of sorts.

And so I am saved by Christ by the action of his example, by realizing my inherent design and goodness. It is a point of some debate within my psyche whether I have truly changed or whether I have merely shed all the filth the world and I pasted all over me. But one might very well ask what is the point of this redemption, this salvation, and this Love if I don't get to enjoy it forever? I like being alive, human, and I am eager to do so much more with my life! If I follow a parallel (though hopefully less violent course) to my end as did the Christ (i.e. to my certain and undeniable death) in what can I rest my hope? In merely that I did good works, loved well, and helped the world become a better place? Honestly, I find life to be a less than satisfying story no matter its quality and length if I just go back to being dirt. I felt like dirt last week, and that was no fun. Actually being dirt can't be that fun either.

If we are to embrace the facts of the history of the Christ, of his birth, life, and his violent death and then consider the claims he made about himself (that he was God), then he better be more than dirt now too. And what do you know! Our text gives us hope in a bizarre and truncated story about this Christ who reverses 3 days of decomp, comes to life slightly less solid than before, orders some of his old heavenly work-hands to get the rock door out of the way, and then appears to thousands and doesn't bother with the physics of solid doors, walls, and walking any great distances anyway. He appears and then is just gone and there are no bones and no trace of him beyond a host of manic stories about a super hero who wasn't, a God who didn't save the Jewish nation from its own quick and violent end, and a God who promised us to come back in some nebulous future and make everything OK. Apparently a good many, including our patron Saint Paul, saw this God-man come back to life, believed him and ditched marriage "normal" life to tell the good news to many nations. But they never stopped looking over their backs to see if the fire and emanate wrath were striking down the evil Romans as promised. In the end I suppose Paul died lonely and at least a little disappointed somewhere in the bleak deserts of Spain.

So we are left with Love, Faith in the example of His-Story, and Hope for a good ending. Like all the school girls watching the recent blockbuster "Twilight" over and over again, we read our favorite story over and over again, year after year, and hope for a good ending, that all we have seen so far is not the end of the story, that there will be another installment, that there is another better episode in preparation, and that we will live and breathe the air of a new creation as yet shrouded in unknowable mystery. Even Jesus, the one and only God-man Earth has ever known, powerful enough even to overcome death didn't know the timing or nature of this eschatological mystery. The time, it turns out, wasn't as short as originally proclaimed and hoped.

Jayme is a is a 30 year-old St. Paul's parishioner hailing from Montana who loves skiing and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

Lenten Voices: On losing the rituals of loss

2009-04-05T12:00:00.000-07:00

by John Sutherland

Two weeks ago, my laptop blew up, and with it, all of my notes for my next three Lenten blog entries. Since I’m over 40, and forgetting is just what I do, I can’t recall even the general subject matter of any of them. I just have the vague sense that they were brilliant, beautiful, and perhaps gone forever.

This blog has been a wonderful Lenten discipline for me, so this small loss is still a loss I feel. More importantly, I see it as a dot within a larger pattern. There’s a recurring theme in my spiritual journey seems to go like this: just when I form a ritual to deal with life’s hardships, small or large, so I can be all peaceful and joyful about it, something happens to the ritual itself. The world runs it over with its virtual truck.

And I think I sometimes recognize the driver of that truck, and it’s God. (It’s almost as though God and religion are two different things. Ya think?)

I have wildly ambivalent feelings about religion. It most often seems to be focused on people, not at God. It’s an attempt to codify reality, and reality is too complex to be codified. This is why I’m part of a religious community that’s not very dogmatic: dogma shoves God into a box, and God will not be so shoved. Here, at least, God stands a chance of getting some focus, even with all this religion around.

I could use this argument to judge my fundamentalist sisters and brothers, but that would be ignoring the huge plank in my own eye. The point I’m getting to is, God takes care of me by not letting me get attached to anything too much, even my religion. As soon as I fall in love with Lent, it’s prone to blow up. And it’s probably for my own good.

And so, I’m in this cycle: I think I learn something, I make a little progress, and then I get a hard lesson that I still have more to learn. But that cycle, ironically, is why I need a religious community, a regular religious practice. In this flux and uncertainty, I need a place of continual renewal, somewhere I can scrape myself up off the ground and carry on. And yes, it does focus largely on people. And one of those people is me.

I guess I’ll have to keep coming back.

John Sutherland has been a member of St. Paul's for twenty years. He is sometimes a member of the choir, has done time on the Vestry, and generally tries to bake enough communion bread to keep his hands from idleness.

Lenten Voices: Rejoice and Be Glad Now!

2009-04-04T09:24:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Crippen

One of my Lenten disciplines this year has been singing the Exsultet most days throughout the season. I take my pitch (e-flat), breathe, and start singing it, usually in the kitchen where the granite countertops create a fairly live acoustical space.

The Exsultet technically isn’t about Lent, so maybe it’s odd that this is one of the things I’m doing to keep the season. But then, it all hangs together: the wilderness of Lent, and the Easter proclamation of deliverance from the wilderness, from bondage, from death. The Exsultet is sung during the Service of Light at the beginning of the Easter Vigil. After we’ve entered the church and lit our tapers from the new paschal candle, which in turn was lit from a new fire, we hear in the Exsultet an exhortation to rejoice.

And we’re not alone. The song begins, “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels…” Then, “Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth…” Then, “Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church…” And finally, us, you and me: “All you who stand near this marvelous and holy flame…” All creation, all the cosmos, is encouraged to rejoice.

Gary James rehearsed the Exsultet with me yesterday. I say this with deep respect for Gary, but rehearsing with him can be a character-building experience. He knows that he needs to be honest about what he’s hearing, that if I’m going to improve, he can’t spare my feelings. This year he said, “You know, it sounds pretty good, but I have to say you’re not really sounding like you’re getting anyone to rejoice about anything. Remember, they are hearing this at five-o-clock in the morning! You need to exhort them to rejoice.”

Point well taken. And…maybe that’s my general problem, not just my problem as an occasional cantor. How often do I exhort people to rejoice? My mother was always better at this than me. When she planned her funeral, she picked Philippians 4:4-7 as her second reading (“Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, Rejoice!”). She had a lifetime of health problems and suffered an untimely death, but when she exhorted people to rejoice, it worked. You could tell she meant it.

So back to Lent, that season of (non?) rejoicing. Singing the Exsultet over the last six weeks has helped me understand better that God is inviting us into a life of rejoicing, a life in which we say Yes to God’s vision of justice and mercy and peace for all people—and for all the round earth herself—and rejoice as we see that vision realized. Indeed, God’s salvific work has already begun, and has already been glorious. Rejoice now, rejoice and sing now, rejoice and be glad now! I am exhorting you!

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Lenten Voices: Empathy

2009-04-01T14:50:00.000-07:00

by Ellen Hill

Every night the media brings more grim stories of houses foreclosed and families made homeless. It seems the businesses thriving in these times are auctioneers who place the houses back on the market and the people who empty them. Many families hope against hope that they will somehow be saved. Until at the last minute they are forced to leave with only a bag or two of belongings. The belongings, furniture, clothes, pictures are all discarded. Nothing is saved, resold or given to someone who could use it.

Entire lives are placed in a dumpster. From kitchen to back yard, from clothes to toys, everything is turned into trash. One cleaner said its the family pictures and the toys that are the most disturbing. The family shelters are overwhelmed as are the food banks. It is the lucky family that can find a shelter that will keep the family together

I grew up in family where you put back the things you couldn't afford. My father turned a budget into a math problem and even made it fun. We had a certain amount to spend and a list of groceries to buy. My father taught us how to find a ripe tomato, how to thump a watermelon and to buy in season. He taught us to love food and respect the money we had by living within our means. We were never embarrassed at the register because we had already done the math. If the math was wrong something went back. It was as simple as that. We were in control of our lives and we had still the ability to share with others. If you asked me to define my childhood, I would say ideal. Two loving parents who had dreams for their children but supplied the skills to function in the world. Sometimes people refer to children as free spirits. Children are taught kindness, social skills, and conversely, all the negatives. Hopefully, when we send them out into the world they will not define that world only in terms of their own needs.

My mother always said, "There but for the grace of God go I ." She lived it. A simple idea that everyone needs help at difficult times and difficult times come to everyone. Everyone is hurt or can be. Grace and kindness, it seems so simple, so straightforward. The ability to have empathy and pass it on in a meaningful way.

My mother never gave a beggar a dollar without asking what exactly was he going to do with it. If the answer involved alcohol then she would buy him a meal and sit with him to be sure he ate it. My teenage self varied between wanting the earth to swallow me up or pretending not to know her. Her compassion made me intensely uncomfortable. It took me years to realize that she too was outside her comfort zone. My mother was an intensely private person who shared little with anyone outside her own family. She was a woman who moved slowly throughout her world. Yet I once watched her dive into a crowd to help a man having an epileptic seizure. Following the first aid directives of the time, she shoved her wallet into his mouth and held his hand until help came. With my mother it was never about religion, for hers was an unforgiving God, it was simply the inability to look away.

"Jesus answered, "You shall love the Lord your God with your whole heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself."

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: What’s Behind Door #2?

2009-03-30T12:54:00.000-07:00

By Stephen Crippen

Late last fall, Fr. Mike Raschko told our Christian Anthropology class what he planned to preach about on Christ the King Sunday. The Gospel was from Matthew, the day of judgment when sheep will be separated from goats, the righteous from the unrighteous.

Fr. Raschko’s vision of judgment day is a lot different than the one in Matthew, the one illuminated by Michelangelo’s terrifying Sistine Chapel frescoes. It goes something like this: when we die, we will find ourselves in a comfortable room, and God will be there. God will offer us a glass of warm brandy and invite us to sit down. And then God will show us two doors, one of which we must walk through. One door leads to separation from God; the other leads to a closer relationship with God. (Hell and heaven, then.)

But by the time we arrive in that room, we already will know which door we’ve chosen, time and again, throughout our lives. We will have walked through one of the doors many hundreds of times, so when the moment of truth comes, it will actually be a little anti-climactic.

I like this image, and appreciate the theology behind it. I think it was C.S. Lewis who wrote, “The doors to hell are locked from the inside.” I know that in my own life, hell is a chosen state of existence, chosen by me. And being in heaven is as simple (and difficult) as saying Yes to God.

And Lent is a time to be in that room, to be more conscious about the choices we make. The precise meaning of ‘repentance’ is to turn, or turn around, and in Lent (or at least in my Lent) it’s all about turning. I see the door I’m choosing in my life, and, in response to God’s invitation, turn and look at the other door. Will I walk through that door instead?

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Lenten Voices: Understanding St. Patrick

2009-03-27T09:45:00.001-07:00

by Ellen Hill

When I was growing up, I never understood Saint Patrick's Day or as they say in Boston, "Saint Paddy's Day. As a little girl it meant drunks on the subway and public drunkenness on the streets. If you watched the coverage this year from Ireland to New York, it remains the same. Well, except for Seattle, which seems to incorporate all of the above matched with a second soaking of rain.

I didn't understand it then and I don't now.

Especially since Saint Patrick's Day falls in the middle of Lent. Does this mean everyone has an exemption? My Irish grandfather told me the Irish did. It took me years to appreciate anything about March 17. I later learned that March 17 is thought to be the day Saint Patrick died and thus became his feast day. However in Boston, the story goes that March 17, 1776 is the day the British evacuated Boston during the Revolutionary War. General George Washington's password to his troops was "Saint Patrick". Today, March 17th is referred to as Evacuation Day in Boston and is an official holiday.

We learned in school that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland and that was about it. Upon further reading, I found the biography of an interesting man who lived as a slave in pagan Ireland. A vibrant scholar who by force of character preached Christianity and in thirty years converted Ireland. He was an outspoken critic of slavery in the fifth century, something the papacy did not weigh in on until several centuries later. And one of the earliest advocates for women, he showed an unusual empathy toward the downtrodden. His building and support of monasteries where tolerance and learning thrived, was essential in the growth of civilization. It seems there was a whole wealth of information other than the snake story.

The first Saint Patrick's Day parade was in New York and was soon followed by Boston. The parades were a proud answer to the prejudice of their day when "Irish need not apply" signs were openly posted.

I'll try to remember that next year. I will recite the prayer for protection taken from the Druids, chanted by Saint Patrick against evil and spells,

"Be Christ this day my strong protector:
against poison and burning
against drowning and wounding,
through reward wide and plenty.
Christ beside me, Christ before me;
Christ behind me, Christ within me........."

-Saint Patrick's Breastplate

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Why Fast? Who Cares?

2009-03-25T09:16:00.000-07:00

By Rev. Samuel Torvend

As we left the restaurant, my sister, Rebecca, reminded her six-year-old son, Rex, that he had “given up” candy for Lent. Though raised in a Lutheran home, my nephew attends a Roman Catholic parochial school where the Lenten practice of fasting is lived out as doing without something special for the Forty Days. My sister’s reminder was not met with much happiness. Her son’s face scrunched up and in an irritated voice he asked why, JUST THIS ONCE, he couldn’t have a piece of candy. After all, he said, it’s grandma’s birthday! His mother, not wishing to entertain exceptions to this Lenten practice, replied that there was ice cream and birthday cake waiting for him at home. Disaster was averted. His face softened and he happily jumped into the car.

Observing this rather brief interchange, I thought to myself: What is he being asked to do? Does he know why he is “giving up” something in late winter and early spring? For a young boy who absolutely loves sugar, does he think this practice an annoyance foisted upon him by his own mother and holy mother church? Are we intended to fast for only Forty Days and then return to eating as usual, much feasting, too much feasting?

And so I wonder if it is helpful to be mindful of the social context in which the practice of fasting emerged among Christians. When Lent emerged the agrarian populations of western and eastern Europe, the practice of fasting was rooted in human necessity. The warming weather of spring would spoil foods kept in storage. Thus, it was important to eat the foods before they were no longer edible. At the same time, late winter and early spring are the birthing season for herds of animals. By refusing to eat beef, lamb, and pork, Christians helped the next generation of animals survive and so replenish the herd.

But of course this form of fasting, rooted in the desire for human and animal survival, was shot through with biblical overtones. Christians saw themselves in solidarity with Noah and all the animals saved in the ark as they refused to eat animals during Lent, their fasting a gesture toward a new creation. And they were well aware of the Jewish and Christian practice of fasting – but fasting in order to set aside food for those who were chronically hungry. In other words, fasting allowed one to save food or money that could be given to the poor. Thus, in many medieval churches, a hunger cloth – which pictured those in need – was hoisted up on the wall throughout Lent as an instruction for a fasting people as to where their alms should be directed. Yes, fasting focused on the hungry poor, not on simply “giving up something” because “that’s what we do in Lent” or refraining from delectable foods because it makes us pleasing to God or is simply a test of our endurance.

Let us be mindful of these words which also resonate throughout Lent:

Is this not the fast which I choose, To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke, And to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke?

Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry And bring the homeless poor into the house;

When you see the naked, to cover him; And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Isaiah 58: 6-7, 10

Father Samuel Torvend is Associate to the Rector for Adult Formation at St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: The Last Word

2009-03-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

by Stephen Crippen

The Last Word

Behind our young dog Hoshi
lurks Death
watching hungrily the beatings
of Hoshi’s ill-formed heart

occasionally looking us in the eye
as if to say
I’ll come to collect your other dog too
and if you let me
drain all delight from your house.

***

Behind every joyous baptism
lurks Destiny
recalling soberly how some children
drowned in Katrina’s fetid waters

occasionally looking us in the eye
as if to say
I have some ideas about what awaits your beloved
even if I can’t be entirely sure.

***

Behind every newlywed couple
lurks Discord
counting his chits
keeping his lists

occasionally looking one of them in the eye
as if to say
if you like I’ll help you ‘to have and to hold’
all those things that can only be served
in a portion for one.

***

Behind every Easter
lurks Death, Destiny, Discord

looking us squarely in the eye
proudly saying
we have won many battles.

And you and I, we huddle together
long before dawn
ignite feeble flames
sing The Light of Christ
and hail the One who defeats even
foes as formidable as these.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Lenten Voices: Part II. "Because it works"

2009-03-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

By Jayme Hegelson

If my first two blog posts have been overly negative toward the Christ it is because I believe faith demands it. Faith is entirely dependent on history and history's atrocities thus need to be acknowledged and scrutinized. This history of God's bloody role in the human narrative simply should not be ignored.

But while I have focused on these essential issues of justice I would be out of balance not to acknowledge that my form of justice just doesn't seem to get the results I would hope for. In my every day life, my form of justice doesn't seem to generate much hope at all! So there is another history I want to look at and that is the history of this thing we name 'love'.

I have only recently come to learn more about what love is like and it has come by experiencing the love of many ordinary people in my present day life. My best friend brought me soup when I had the flu, my best friends from St. Paul's joined me to usher in the rein of our Lord and Saviour Mr. Hussein Obama. I believe I can live a life of love and abundance because I have seen others live such a life. So I've tried to live my life similarly and lo-and-behold, my life got better! It started working! It became enjoyable! I even get a natural high from the thing. I have seen love work to my overall betterment and good. My understanding of the gospel has changed with my everyday powerful experience of love.

Similarly, the story of Jesus and his passion have been passed down generation after generation precisely because the truth and power of his love. We don't read the 'Good Spell' because it came from God but because it works, because it is effective. Because our lives get better from reading and living it. The chief reason that Jesus' life came to such a violent end is because the workings of human justice came into direct conflict with this 'new way' that Jesus effectively introduced to us. That way is love. Jesus loved us literally to his death. Think of that: He went to his bitter end on the cross and never quit his annoying habit of loving the crap out of everyone around him! Jesus and a great many other prophets have long held that love is more powerful than the sword but in Jesus' time as in ours we seem to be stuck in an 'eye for an eye' mentality. My first two blog posts of this series are testament to my attachment to this form justice. And while I believe a passion for justice isn't misguided the simple fact of the matter is demanding justice for every wrong, indeed for any wrong, just doesn't end up working very well. We see this debate still working itself out on the world stage of politics as Bush and now Obama try to figure out just what kind of retribution we need to dole out in the interests of national security. World and national governments still believe that justice in the eye-for-an-eye ethic is necessary if not very wise. Is it?

I would challenge the reader that our politicians' and our governments' ethics are direct reflections of our own. It is a Seattle tradition to distance ourselves from government and from those evil people in Washington. But I believe we have no one to blame but ourselves if Bush decided to invade Iraq and Obama continues the tradition by shooting the hell out of Afghanistan. While it may be naive to believe that killing and war in any form are carte blanch wrong/ineffective for a government to engage in, still it is we who enact this killing even if we are a few steps removed from the action in Iraq or the shenanigans of Gat-Mo. I am reminded of a Presbyterian pastor's sermon in Scotland not long ago when I there studying Philosophy for a semester. He and a bunch of his blokes joined hands in some icy bay in the N. Sea to symbolically block an American nuclear sub from docking at a British naval yard. He believed in Jesus ethic of love over the eye-for-an-eye mentality and went swimming. I thought he was stupid but the fact is this man had great integrity when it came to living out the actions that love required of him.

For whatever faults I personally find with what I think Jesus did NOT do during his life, these faults pale in comparison with the mission and singular focus of Jesus' life: to introduce this 'new-way'. It is a way that can and does transform the world and ourselves. And it's functionally easy to achieve. We just need to follow and copy those more experienced than us in loving well. Those people do exist and thankfully are found in abundance. Also, there's plenty of dead ones to read about and look at too; they line the walls of our church and our babies love to touch them when they're acting up at Mass.

Jayme is a is a 30 year-old St. Paul's parishioner hailing from Montana who loves skiing and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

Lenten Voices: Learning to Love Hypocrisy

2009-03-20T09:41:00.000-07:00

By Laura Onstot

I spent a year in a small Southwestern town dotted with great Mexican restaurants, a bar where the devil supposedly showed up once for tequila, several gas stations catering to tourists passing through, and, of course, a giant Wal-Mart. When I first arrived I made a promise to myself—I would not shop there. And for a few months I didn’t.

Not shopping there was kind of tricky but doable. At least twice a month I’d make the drive to Santa Fe to stop at Trader Joe’s (those cheesy Hawaiian shirts were a great help in times of great homesickness). But in the meantime, the town had two smaller stores of the “grocery” persuasion. Both had food stuffs that had not been processed into something else. You could get produce, milk and uncooked meat—the basics.

It wasn’t exactly an uplifting shopping experience. Both stores had a weird smell that always hit with an accompanying wave of nausea when walking through the sliding glass doors. The lettuce leaves were inevitably wilted and the tomatoes too squishy. And then one day I got home with a jar of Alfredo sauce only to realize the expiration date had passed months ago.

The sauce was in a jar and I’m sure it was fine—but I already lived in a place where heroin needles dotted my yard and one kid shot another kid in the leg outside my apartment within a week of my moving in. Did I really have to suffer expired Alfredo sauce too?

And that’s how I found myself at the sliding glass doors of the Wal-Mart. Walking in, I found a small but fresh produce selection. A manager did once suggest that maybe there is no such thing as “polenta” but I could get a steak to grill and it would come out alright. A friend and I even picked up live lobsters there once.

It wasn’t long before I was buying other things there that I normally would have saved for a Santa Fe trip—a four cup coffee maker, laundry detergent, cases of Tecate (best beer in a can!). And just like that, I became a Wal-Mart hypocrite.

That word creeps up a lot in my head when I think about my faith. Last week I attended a service at a friend’s church. It was the kind of no-girls-allowed place that gives me a knot in my stomach and makes my throat close off a little. I believe down to my core that so many of the messages of those churches are wrong, completely at odds with the message of Christ, and frankly dangerous. But so help me I stood up with the woman next to me and sang my heart out through the worship songs, bowed my head when the pastor prayed (sneaking in a quick cross of myself at the “amen”) and sat quietly contemplating the sermon—a meditation on miracles that I actually resonated a little with right up until the second the pastor took a shot at rationalism.

I still don’t know how I feel about the whole experience. Was I playing along for show, hoping to avoid causing a scene or embarrassing a friend, and is that fair to him, his church, and the people that worship there? And I got a little chilled at one point during a worship song (complete with, horror of horrors, electric guitar!), actually feeling a little in touch with this God I understand so poorly—does that mean I betrayed myself and the things I believe about the meaning of Jesus? I don’t know but I suspect that much cognitive dissonance about your words and actions and feelings, you’ve definitely entered hypocrite territory.

The thing is I don’t think the fact that I shopped at Wal-Mart means I can’t keep being angry when the company busts attempts at unionizing the staff. And I don’t think the fact that I walk around in this hazy realm of being a pretty crappy Christian and a crappy progressive all at the same time means I shouldn’t keep trying to do right by both. And I don’t think the fact that I’m a hypocrite means I should stop clinging to the one thing I feel certain of—grace.

Laura attended her first St. Paul's mass on Ash Wednesday 2004 and now sings in the Parish Choir. She is a staff writer for the Seattle Weekly (online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/), a novice knitter, a lover of mountains, and is always up for communing over an aged scotch.

Lenten Voices: The Three Temptations

2009-03-19T10:40:00.000-07:00

by Sharon Cumberland

I’ve been writing poems based on the life of Jesus (Yeshua in my poems) using a variation of a form called “bout rime”--French for “end rhymes.” In my practice I take the fourteen end-rhyming words from a Shakespearean sonnet and work them into my poem as interior rhyme (i.e. not on the end of lines). You shouldn’t be able to notice the rhyming words but they cause me to take the poem in different directions than I otherwise would, and they hold the poem together. They even relate to Shakespeare’s sonnet in an oblique sort of way. This one is based on Sonnet 144.

THE THREE TEMPTATIONS

He was not only hungry, but lost. The desert
is the same in all directions. Despair set in.
He could neither walk nor sit still.
At this impasse a man approached him,
so fair, so graceful,
that Yeshua believed he was an angel.

You look ill, the man said. Let me share my meal.
With that a banquet--not just bread, but leg of lamb,
mint sauce, nectarines, honey and figs--
was spread on the desert floor.
Yeshua felt a rush of relief:
The evil is behind me!
He thanked God and reached toward the manna.
But the man with saphire eyes handed him a stone.
Look! he said. It's so easy!
He rolled it in his hands--
instantly the stone was roasted goat,
charred, mouthwatering, fragrant.
Yeshua felt the scratch of danger down his spine,
then turned from the devil
to face the wilderness again.

But the man with the delicate hands was beside him.
Come, now, your pride will kill you!
He spread his arms and the desert
became the world--glittering, needy-- so many
souls to love. They hunger for you!
The fiend said this in a voice that rang like cymbals.
Yeshua rubbed his eyes, sat down in the hot sand.
It's true that they need me, he told his Father.
Tell me what to do.

But the man whose feet were like ivory
spoke again: Look, friend!
A chasm fell away. They were on the Temple roof
and the desert below was Jerusalem.
Go to them, he said. Fly down to your people.
(The press of his sinuous fingers on Yeshua's back).
The Son of God can do anything!

And suddenly Yeshua could see it all,
like a pageant spread over the sand.
He turned to the beautiful man, and said

Yes, you're right, I can.
He embraced the demon who was, he realized,
as needy as any. Go to Hell, said Yeshua, kindly.
I'll be there shortly.
First it was rage, then doubt,
then a squint of anticipation
over the devil's golden brow
before he led the Rabbi out.

Sharon Cumberland is a member of St. Paul's and an Associate Professor of English at Seattle University.

Lenten Voices: An Aspiring Guilty Bystander

2009-03-18T13:31:00.000-07:00

by Ellen Hill

Lent is usually viewed as a journey leading up to Easter. A time to fast, meditate and look inward. A penitential period that hopefully leaves us bathed in the light of Easter. We often refer to Lent as entering the wilderness. It’s a dark and scary place where we might actually encounter our own weakness and an awareness of sin.

The world is a scary place in the best of times. This Lent carries the baggage of an economy in trouble, families left homeless, and growing numbers of unemployed. Thousands ruined by the greed of a few. How is this new? Was the world kinder to our parents or grandparents? With such turmoil swirling around us, can there be any better time to step back and examine how we live our lives? Is this not the best time to work for change? Is this not the best time to share what's in our cupboard both physically and spiritually? Is this an opportunity to examine our values? Our lifestyle? Our priorities?

Our life in community teaches that loss is an ever-present fact of life.
Each of us experiences these losses in their own way, and may or may not find profundity in contemplating those losses. That which is deep may also be dark, but darkness itself should not be mistaken for depth. The point is the journey. If this journey ends in an open heart, what could be more profound?

"Lent and Easter", Wisdom from Thomas Merton is a little book of reflections. Edited from his writings for Lent and Easter with text supported by scripture and prayer, it is a lovely companion in the Lenten journey.

"The function of penance and self-denial is then contrition, or the "breaking up" of that hardness of heart which prevents us from understanding God's command to love, and from obeying it effectively." --from Seasons of Celebration

"There is a time to listen, in the active life as everywhere else, and the better part of action is waiting, not knowing what is next and not having a glib answer." --from Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Thomas Merton

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Lessons of Saint Homer the Glutton

2009-03-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

By John Sutherland

One of my favorite Lenten stories comes from "The Simpsons."

Homer, whose gluttony is so painfully arresting in every episode, happens upon a soft drink vending machine. No one is nearby, so he decides to "stick it to the man" and just reach up the chute to grab a can for free. His arm gets stuck.

He hollers in agony for help, but while he's lying there, he sees another vending machine a short distance away, and in a moment of delightful comic overkill, he reaches up that one, too, and gets both arms stuck.

His cries finally draw a crowd, including the rescue team from the fire department. But after they've tried all the normal procedures, they conclude that they're going to have to amputate his arms.

As they're starting up the chain saws for this draconian operation, one of the firemen thinks of something: "Wait a minute, Homer. You're not holding onto the can, are you?"

I have my own things I'm hanging onto, things I'm trying to let go of. My disciplines this year involve dust, clutter, and VISA cards. If I am even partly successful, I will feel the blessed relief.

Lent has a reputation for being a season of heaviness, but I'm convinced it should be just the opposite. It's meant to lighten our lives, to let us walk away from the things that are holding us back.

It's a return to the concentration on who we really are. And we are all beautiful creatures of God.

Lent is not a chore; Lent is a gift.

John Sutherland has been a member of St. Paul's for twenty years. He is sometimes a member of the choir, has done time on the Vestry, and generally tries to bake enough communion bread to keep his hands from idleness.

Lenten Voices: Part 1 - He deserved to die

2009-03-16T10:56:00.000-07:00

by Jayme Hegelson

My only critique of the other blog postings thus far is that some are far too sunny in their disposition for my current mood. I'd argue that on the whole there is little to be sunny about in this season of Lent...at least not yet...not for me anyway.

Jesus deserved to die. If he hadn't appeared to ancient Palestine and instead to a modern day world full of people like me, I am convinced we'd still kill him and I think we could be just in doing so.

For the better part of Jesus' life, he did many good works and he told many good stories. As a man he led a life of integrity and genuine love that I use as an example of how I want to live my life. And if Jesus were truly just a man, then I can't believe I could find anything wrong with his conduct deserving of any charge, much less one involving the sentence of death. Here then is my chief rub and the scandal of this man we call a God: That Jesus was and is God and changes everything.

Consider the things this Jesus-God did and more importantly the things he didn't do during his life: Jesus cured the blindness of only a handful of humans during his short stint on Terra Firma. What of the thousand or million other blind men and women he chose NOT to heal in nations he never bothered to visit? Jesus favored a prostitute, honored and showed her a great love by accepting her gifts and conversing with her. But what did he do to address the pervasive system of human sex trafficking that occurred at the time? What was her life like after he left? Was she beaten after her protector and lover left? How much did she bleed in the political chaos and upheaval that have characterized such radical movements in the 20 centuries since? Jesus cast out demons and forgave many their sins. And yet what happened to these poor and destitute afterward? Were they saved only to go on and live a life of slavery in the slums of Jerusalem?

I bring up these things because I truly believe Jesus needs no defense. I don't think he had one or has one to this day. Maybe that's why he let himself be crucified. There is simply no excuse for not saving a life when you had the power to do so. There is no excuse for allowing the generational atrocities the he's allowed to happen in my family and other families in our Parish either. How is it that I bear the marks and consequences of my grandfather and great-grandfather's sins? One of my grandpa's pulled a gun on his family and I'm going to therapy today as a result...even though I wasn't even born when the incident occurred. No, Jesus didn't stay around to better the world enough to prevent such atrocities and abuses. He did enough to prove he was God, even got resurrected to give us this concept of hope, but then he left.

I've heard and know by heart all the counter arguments to what I've said, but I'll still say them. I got a Bachelor's in Theology and Philosophy and am an expert in all the arguments about the 'economy of Grace' and that what Jesus-God did was necessary for our growth and the preservation of our precious human free will. As far as they go, these arguments have much merit. I have great hope in my life precisely because I have experienced the great economy of God's grace. There can be no doubt of this! One might say that my life, marked by the brutal consequences of sins of others and yes even myself, have shaped me into the man I am today. I have gifts of counseling and empathy and love I would have never developed had I not been dealt the cards life and fate and dealt me. But Jesus-God still isn't off the hook no matter what the end result ends up being. No one would dare wish a young child get abused even if one could with foresight and great power transform that ruined life into something special or spectacular. Of course, more often than not abuse and sin don't end up improving any of us. I don't know about you, but I would have never traded a theoretical healthy family for an unhealthy one just so I could experience God's great powers of redemption that i have in fact experienced. That's why grace and the hope found in the resurrection can be no balm for our hurts and our sins. And it must never be an excuse for more violence. This is why God must die; this is why he had to be killed. At some point he would have to answer for the things in his great might and wisdom he did NOT do. He didn't protect me. He didn't shield me from harm. He had the power do to so and didn't. Doesn't matter how good the reasons or intentions were, it is a part of our human DNA, our good human DNA to require justice from any powerful being or agency that doesn't fulfill their responsibility to do no harm and to prevent harm if we can help it.

It is our human duty in the full dignity of our station in Creation to do no harm and to help if we have the power to do so. In his power Jesus failed to do all he was capable of and for this he must be held accountable. It is my belief that this failure of the Jesus-God played a part in the bloody outcome of ancient passion narrative. And so it is that I believe the cross calls us to fulfill our duty to make this world a better place. But more on this later...

Jayme is a is a 30 year-old St. Paul's parishioner hailing from Montana who loves skiing and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

a word from the editor

2009-03-13T09:09:00.001-07:00

We want to encourage comments and discussion here on the St. Paul's parish blog! However, there are a couple guidelines we request that people follow.

No anonymous comments. All of our contributors post under their real names, and so we ask that those who wish to comment return the favor. Anonymous comments won't be accepted.
Discussion is welcomed, but please be courteous. We really do hope that the posts here are thought provoking, and welcome comments that engage the material. If you disagree with something that is posted, feel free to discuss it in the comments. However, comments that are disrespectful and/or rude will probably be removed.

If you have posted anonymously and not seen your comment show up, please post again. If you have any questions about this feel free to contact me. And if you want to comment but do not know how, catch me at Coffee Hour or shoot me an email! It's a cinch once you get the hang of it!

Thanks!

Alissa

Lenten Voices: Unplugged

2009-03-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

by Laura Onstot

I recently found myself discussing the down-for-repairs organ with a friend and music director for a large Baptist congregation in southern California. “So are you using a piano then?” he asked.

“No, just the choir.”

“Couldn’t you at least get a keyboard or something?”

“Yeah… We don’t believe in worshiping with things that plug in.”

His church has a rock band. And I have to admit, I kind of judge him for that, which I’m pretty sure is something Jesus wouldn’t do.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about lines and where we draw them when it comes to faith and worship. Believing someone’s faith is somehow less “right” because they use electric guitars and no hymnal seems pretty obviously wrong. But what about the ordination of women or a strict Calvinist view of salvation, complete with the requirement to be a confessing Christian? Two very dear family members attend churches with very conservative stances on both of those things. And much as I love them, I’m not sure this is the kind of place where we ought to agree to disagree.

What speaks to me about the message of Jesus is grace. Grace is that crazy circular logic where God just accepts you, warts and all. And as a result, you can and should love others. Again the warts thing applies. And finally, when you screw up and treat other people like dirt, because of your warts, you get to forgive yourself, even if they don’t. And why is that you ask? Because God forgives you. I love how that works. (And Lord knows I’ve needed my share of grace.)

But when people are suddenly pushed into boxes (that coincidentally always seem to reflect some kind of social norm—there was a time when Blacks had to sit in a different section of the congregation) it seems to tip that whole elegant grace cycle off its axis. Something about telling one half of the population that because of their genitalia at birth (or sexual orientation for that matter) they can’t use potential vibrant gifts for ministry seems completely counter to the message of grace. So does deciding who is and isn’t saved by virtue of their spiritual path.

And I’m not sure that two Christians, one who sees Jesus’ message as one of grace and one who sees the message as one of grace with a whole lot of caveats, really both have the same religion. I attended a Unitarian solstice service once and came away realizing that while I disagree with them on some things, at least if they’re wrong they’ve erred on the side of seeing Godliness in everyone else. It feels sometimes like if my family members are wrong, they’re erring on the side of putting people into tiny boxes arranged in a hierarchical pyramid of salvation. And I’m just not sure that’s something we should agree to disagree on. Then again, maybe that’s where I fall away from grace.

Laura attended her first St. Paul's mass on Ash Wednesday 2004 and now sings in the Parish Choir. She is a staff writer for the Seattle Weekly (online at http://www.seattleweekly.com/), a novice knitter, a lover of mountains, and is always up for communing over an aged scotch.

Lenten Voices: Giving Up Lent

2009-03-10T14:12:00.000-07:00

By Ellen Hill

Why are there so many songs about rainbows 

And what's on the other side? 

Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, 

And rainbows have nothing to hide. 

So we've been told and some choose to believe it 

I know they're wrong, wait and see. 

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, 

The lovers, the dreamers and me.

Most of us start Lent with the usual question. What am I giving up for Lent? We gather our children to explain the next six weeks and involve them in a meaningful way in an expression of their faith.

So it was, many years ago that we sat around our dinner table to discuss what we could do individually and as a family for Lent. Our eight-year-old, Meg, said with a mischievous smile. “I’m giving up Lent for Lent.”

Meg had a wicked sense of humor, which often made keeping a straight face and any attempt at discipline difficult. She liked church for the people but found the service rather long. We tried to convince her that giving up something no matter how small made her a part of our Lenten community. We talked about all the things parents might when you want your children to have a spiritual life. We talked and talked to no avail.

Then as Easter approached, Megan devised her plan. Meg knew there was a shelter for children right near St. Paul’s. She gathered her stuffed animals and some Easter baskets. Then enlisted her older sister to help in collecting from the neighbors. Anne, of the more practical bent, asked our dentist for toothbrushes and toothpaste. They put a book in each basket. They both found out exactly how many children would be there on Easter morning so no one would be disappointed. Together, they discovered Lent and had a wonderful adventure.

Meg found her own path. Not in the giving up but in the giving.

If the Easter journey is about the light of Christ, perhaps joy should light the way.

Who said that every wish would be heard and answered 

When wished on the morning star? 

Somebody thought of that, and someone believed it, 

And look what it's done so far. 

What's so amazing that keeps us stargazing 

And what do we think we might see? 

Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, 

The lovers, the dreamers, and me.
--Kermit the Frog

To Meg, always a stargazer.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Q&A - the A-word

2009-03-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

By Stephen Crippen

Q: How come during Lent we can’t say Alle—

A: Don’t say it!

Q: Sheesh. Calm down. Why can’t we say Alle—

A: I said don’t say it!!

Q: Okay okay! What should I say instead?

A: I don’t know. How about watermelon.

Q: Fine, have it your way. Why can’t we say [watermelon] during Lent?

A: Because Lent is partly about fasting.

Q: What does this have to do with food? It’s just a word.

A: In Lent we eat more simply, but we also fast the eyes, and the ears…and we fast in a more general, spiritual sense. We stop saying [watermelon] because it’s our most joyful song of praise.

Q: But every Sunday is a celebration of the Resurrection. Aren’t we supposed to be joyful? Isn’t this just a dour, stern old rule that we can throw out?

A: Well, lots of people only have time to come to church on Sundays, so even though Sundays are not technically part of Lent, most people would not participate in Lent very much if we didn’t make changes on Sundays too. And even if you’re keeping Lent in an intense way, it won’t feel right to have Sundays stand in such stark contrast. And there are at least two other reasons to stop saying [watermelon] for a while.

Q: Do tell.

A: For one thing, to stop doing a thing increases your appreciation of the thing. If we shouted Watermelon! any old time we wanted to, it would be less special.

Q: But—

A: Don’t interrupt.

Q: I will if I want to! But the problem is that when you tell me I can’t say it, I think it a lot more. It’s like telling me to not think of the color green. If you tell me not to, I’ll start thinking about green like crazy.

A: Right. But that just proves my point. By the time Easter Vigil comes around, you’ll be bursting with desire to say [watermelon].

Q: Okay fine. So what’s the other reason?

A: The other reason—and probably the best reason—is that everyone, at one time or another, goes through a period when they don’t want to say [watermelon]. Our spiritual life needs to make room for grief, for waiting, for quiet reflection, for time and space to turn our lives around. And time for remorse, if that’s what’s called for.

Q: But won’t visitors come to church and think we’re having a funeral?

A: I don’t know. Maybe. But if they watch and listen more closely they’ll also discover that we are practicing an adult spirituality—often enough with children as our best teachers—that makes room for darkness, silence, sobriety, and solemnity. And if they hang in there with us, in a few weeks they’ll get to ring bells and shout Watermelon! to their heart’s content.

Q: (whispering) Alle—

A: Knock it off!!

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Lenten Voices: Music is the Logic of God

2009-03-07T17:51:00.000-08:00

By John Sutherland

I grew up the son of a Lutheran pastor. Lutherans, as you may know, consider themselves among the theological heavyweights in Christendom. They don't just have dogma; they have argument, logic, explications. The admirable Doctor Luther wrote many, many volumes of every idea he had on God, the human race, and everything they had to do with one another. And these volumes spawned more volumes in the centuries that have passed since his life.

I grew up surrounded by these volumes, by these arguments, by this logic. But for me, the greatest Lutheran theologian, the one who gave me the deepest understanding of matters divine, was Johann Sebastian Bach.

I am not alone in this. Bach is sometimes referred to as "the fifth evangelist," after the authors of the fourth accepted gospels.

Luther, a fine musician himself, might have approved. And while I stand in awe of the bold audacity of his 95 theses, it's his "Ein feste burg" that hits me right in the heart.

Music is the logic of God.

I wake up to the elegant clarity of Bach's "Goldberg Variations" every morning, part of my attempt to create my new day.

I had the pleasure of playing the double bass in a production of Saint Matthew's Passion when I was in college, that bass part being the throbbing heartbeat of God that was the foundation of the entire work. That throbbing stays with me to this day.

I remember my Lutheran choir singing the cantata "Come, Sweet Death," and thinking, yes, even death makes sense to me now.

Music is the logic of God.

I've been listening to the other Bach Passion oratorio, Saint John's, this Lent. I feel it, carry it with me, even when I can't hear it. On my way out of the Ash Wednesday mass, Mother Melissa wished me a peaceful and holy Lent. Perhaps because I was having exactly what she wished for me, I just smiled soberly and nodded back to her, finding myself wordless.

But it's okay. At Saint Paul's, we live on music as part of the rich tapestry of worship. Music isn't merely pretty. It's the throbbing foundation of what we do when we reach out to God and to each other. It's how God explains God's self.

We all know how each liturgy seeks its own unity: it's common for the sermon, and then the communion motet, to reflect the day's Gospel text. And so often I have the experience of hearing the Gospel read (wonderfully), and the explicated in the homily (even better), and then sung. And it's in the singing that I really get it, down to my bones. Because music is the logic of God.

John Sutherland has been a member of St. Paul's for twenty years. He is sometimes a member of the choir, has done time on the Vestry, and generally tries to bake enough communion bread to keep his hands from idleness.

Lenten Voices: Recovering the Early Church

2009-03-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

By Rev. Samuel Torvend

The Lent of my childhood was devoted to a sustained reflection on the suffering and death of Jesus of Nazareth -- forty days which drew us toward the Holy Cross of Good Friday. Indeed, forty days of thinking about the crucifixion seemed to balance fifty days of Easter rejoicing. Truth be told, such a focus during Lent emerged in the late Middle Ages (1350-1500) when European Christians desperately wanted to know that God shared with them the terrible suffering of the Black Plague and its ensuing social chaos. This intense focus on the suffering of Jesus seemed a source of solace for many. God is not aloof from our pain and bewilderment. God is with us in our suffering. Indeed, the Jesus of Mark’s gospel cries out in his death, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Is that not how many medieval Christians experienced life?

In the twentieth century, Christians began to see Lent in a new light, one that was recovered from the early church (50-600). Rather than focusing on human depravity and the terrible “price” of Jesus’ death, early Christians saw the Forty Days as a time of intense preparation for the Three Days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday/Resurrection Sunday. That is, they experienced Lent as a journey leading to the celebration of Christ’s dying and rising in the community of faith. Indeed, the Forty Days focused on the community’s preparation of people who would experience the dying and rising of baptism at the Easter Vigil and during the Fifty Days of Easter.

Yet the work of preparing those who would “die” to an old way and “rise” to a new way of living in the world prompted early Christians, and now contemporary Christians, to ask challenging questions: How have we ourselves been faithful to the baptismal covenant? What calls out for conversion or renewal in our lives so that we might more clearly and faithfully serve the reign of God among us? If late medieval Christians experienced Lent as a time to reflect on the power of personal sin and its forgiveness in the death of Jesus, early Christians experienced the Forty Days as a communal journey of renewal toward the Holy Washing and the Holy Meal – those places where Christians are born anew in the font and nourished with food and drink for courageous living in the world.

This early Christian emphasis is alive among us today as we consider the Forty Days a retreat – a time set aside – to prepare for Easter’s baptism and its renewal in our lives; a time to reflect seriously and patiently on the flow of God’s grace within us and our world; a time to ask if we might take a risk, a risk in our service to the reign of God’s justice, peace, and joy. During the Forty Days, I return to the questions asked of those about to be baptized and those who intend to renew the baptismal covenant: Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people? Will you respect the dignity of every human being? I sometimes think that Forty Days are insufficient in length to think about and answer those challenging questions which push Christians from the sacred liturgy into the liturgy of living in the world. Perhaps it is good, then, that we have more than one Lent to return again and again to the questions and the mercy of God which surrounds our Lenten questioning.

Father Samuel Torvend is Associate to the Rector for Adult Formation at St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Shoeboxes

2009-03-05T16:37:00.000-08:00

By Kate Rickard

On Tuesday I sat on my bed eating a Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Truffle Bar and feeling slightly sorry for myself. And so, like any other American woman who is feeling down on a Tuesday afternoon, I turned on Oprah. The screen flickered to life and there was Oprah, listening with her mouth hanging open in incredulity to a woman who claimed her life had been utterly changed. I stopped eating and leaned closer, feeling in that moment such desperation for change that I surprised myself.

The woman shared that her transformation began one day when she opened her closet door. Her shoe boxes, stacked 7 rows high above her on closet shelves, came crashing down on top of her and she crumpled to the ground under their weight. She was literally buried underneath her last-minute, must-have, already-forgotten purchases. This avalanche caused her to re-think her priorities and simplify her life.

I decided this story was a sign that I had been avoiding my own “shoeboxes” long enough. So I turned off the TV to take a few minutes to stop and reflect on my life.

I finally listened to the inner voice of truth that had been whispering to me. I, too, feel buried in possessions, striving and covetousness. It is easier to keep buying and to keep going… and accumulating… and working… and consuming… and driving… and deciding… and moving… and watching… and saying yes...than to stop and tend to my soul and what is truly of value in my life. Having been so constantly in motion, the stillness and silence moved me to recognize my bankruptcy as one who invests in insignificant, forgettable things that literally trap me beneath their weight.

Barbara Cawthorne Crafton* writes the following about this state many of us find ourselves in: “How did we come to know that we were dying a slow and unacknowledged death? And that the only way back to life was to set all our packages down and begin again, carrying with us only what we really needed?”

I came to recognize this death in myself as I watched a woman share her story on Oprah. This Lent, I once again set aside my need to consume and this frantic living that threatens to bury me. I choose to stop and sit a while. And I will take my time selecting those essential things that I need for the journey ahead.

Crafton finishes, “We travail. We are heavy-laden. Refresh us, O homeless, jobless, possession-less Savior. You came naked and naked you go. And so it is for us. So it is for all of us.”

*From Living Lent by Barbara Cawthorne Crafton

Kate Rickard has attended St. Paul's for over 2 years and is in discernment for Holy Orders. She loves hiking, eating chocolate, and spending time with her husband, Jordan, and shiba-pug, Henry.

Lenten Voices: I remember sky

2009-03-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

by Ellen Hill

I remember sky
It was blue as ink
Or at least I think
I remember sky.

I remember snow,
Soft as feathers.
Sharp as thumbtacks,
Coming down like lint,
And it made you squint
When the wind would blow

I remember seven. I loved the entire world. I loved the crunch of snow. I loved building snow forts with my Dad. I welcomed the lilacs in spring and homemade ice cream in July filled with fat blueberries. I loved my parents I loved second grade with Sister Margaret Agnes. Sister Margaret Agnes had soft blue eyes and a warm hug for everyone her class. She told me I was the best reader in the class. I think she probably told that to everyone in the class because everyone looked forward to school. I loved reading, school, and Sister Margaret Agnes. I especially loved church.

In Catholic school, we were encouraged to go to morning Mass. I was a sponge for all of it – the music, the incense, the statues – everything. Life was indeed very good.

Until we started preparation for Holy Communion. Then the world darkened to sin (original, mortal & venial), confession, penance, and Lent. The Lenten journey was Stations of the Cross, giving something up, and receiving the innate knowledge that you were a sinner. My seven-year-old self still loved it all. Starting with the ashes on Ash Wednesday, I wore my ashes proudly. I knew that had I lived in the Roman times I would easily face the lions, surrounded by my fellow Christians. And, since the time was Boston in the fifties, I didn't really understand that I was in the middle of a truly homogeneous community. Everyone wore ashes, everyone crossed them selves passing a church and every man placed hat over heart even on a train when passing a church.

The transition is quite clear in my school pictures. Grade 1: sunny smile, face to the camera. Grade 2: less smile, face positioned downward. Grade 3: trying to smile, head down, wearing the worried expression that I still carry, and so on and so on.

Yes, we were taught we all were sinners, really bad sinners. Why, even the Pope went to confession every morning. Why should my seven-year-old self feel anything but being covered in sin. Somehow, that overwhelming sense of sin and guilt eradicated everything else. And as the years passed, the school walls seemed to grow higher and higher until finally I began to question, to read and seek answers outside those walls.

At seventeen, after my father’s death, I discovered Thomas Merton. His writing opened both mind and heart. Here is his description of Ash Wednesday.

“And yet Ash Wednesday is full of joy. …the great sorrow of mankind is turned to joy by the love of Christ, and the secret of happiness is no longer to see any sorrow but in the light of Christ’s victory over sorrow. And then all sorrow contributes somehow to our happiness. Thus I sit here and look out the window at the bare trees and the grey guest house wall and at my own happy corner of the sky.”

I remember days, or at least I try.
But as years go by, they’re a sort of haze
And the bluest ink isn’t really sky.
And at times think I would gladly die
For a day of sky.

-----Stephen Sondheim

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lenten Voices: Happy Jesus Day

2009-03-03T17:00:00.000-08:00

by Jayme Helgeson

Let me admit that my concept of "blog" these days is as a digital forum for my angry transference issues...or projection issues. It's a place to rant and not generally a place to do good research. Good research bloggers end up writing for bigger online publications and thus graduate to write for Slate Magazine or some other organic, non-profit, NPR-like organization. So it's only fitting that I started my research for this blog by checking out Lent on Wikipedia where I learned (surprise surprise) absolutely nothing. So on with the rant:

I hate Lent. I imagine also that many jaded folks who grew up in any sort of Bible-belt share my sunny disposition. Right on the heels of another horrible tradition, making and breaking New Year's resolutions, comes Lent - another resolution of sorts. By February, having barely endured the darkest days of the Winter, Christmas creditors after their first dues, and pangs of doom from a fast approaching tax season, I've already lost my taste for resolutions of any kind. My self flagellation only escalates to pure emasculation come the advent of Valentine's Day. Hungry, tired, heart-broken, beat up and bruised, depressed as hell and medicated to the hilt, next comes a happy Jesus on a flannel board shouting, "Give up coffee for 40 days. And you'll save lots of money too!" Keep reading to hear more about the happy Jesus.

I've grown up giving up on just about everything that ever felt good and pleasurable. Sex, sexuality, candy cigarettes, cussing, and the Democratic Left, it was all bad Bad BAD! The indoctrination started in Good News Club where a hunched over old woman taught us pre-pubescent boys the Bloody Passion narrative on a sparkling white flannel board with Happy Jesus, Happy Peter, and Happy Paul all herding around a bunch of silly sheep. At age 7, I already instinctively hated sheep and everything they stood for. And I basically sucked at Bible verses and never got as many Oreo cookies at snack time as my so-called "best-friend" Leif. After class my good buddy Leif would quiz me about words he knew and I didn't from the dictionary he'd obviously studied for hours before. Then he'd whip me at Super Mario Bros. I was just a dumb idiot loser.

And that's basically the Protestant story. We immediately succeed at failing at our freshly ground-out Lenten resolutions. We sit there and drool on our favorite blouses whilst we peer over at those impossible people that succeed at resolutions and goals and the like. And then we continue another favorite Protestant habit, one we engage in year-round: we hate on ourselves for how much we suck. "Oh, so you only ate rice today. Wow, I couldn't do that..." And then to add to the madness this: deep down we suspect that Mr. Perfect Fasting Guy has got to be the most miserable of all. So Sunday Mass comes around and we flock to church and promptly get stuck between the madness of a good God who allows evil, sets up a religion based on flogging and cruel cross hanging, and bunch of boring desert meditation. I've been taught to look at Jesus' fast in the wilderness and his temptation by Satan to be some sort of test. And then I practice and fail that test over and over again. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, What's the great meaning of a fast to a god anyway? If he dies he'll just be resurrected...or in any case he knows with certain and confident foresight that Daddy won't actually allow him to be killed or harmed anyway. How human really can you be when you already have all these super-powers? What's a fast to a man with ultimate endurance?

I am not without hope however. I have hope because I've discovered that the God of the Bible isn't really all that different from me anyway. God's a big cheat. Take away resurrection powers and let's see how good the Jesus would be at taking on Satan face to face. He can't win a wrestling match with a human either, not without cheating, not without turning his mighty opponent into a half-paralyzed gimp. On the intellectual side, Jesus wasn't all that much better as far as godly integrity goes. Taking on the mantle of a God, he naturally appointed himself authority over the meaning of all scriptures. Suddenly somehow all the scriptures were all about him (save the psalms...I love the psalms...they are...thank God still about me). Getting drunk and feasting on fast days? Sure! I'm God! We should celebrate because now I'm here and soon I won't be! (Throw in a reference from Isaiah somewhere or mention Elijah in passing). Pour expensive perfume on me? Sure! I'm God and very special at that! Never mind those poor drunks down at the social services clinic that could really use a hefty cash donation....

God is good, God is great, thank you for this food, Alllllmen. More to come soon....

Jayme is a is a 30 year-old St. Paul's parishioner hailing from Montana who loves skiing and hiking in the Pacific Northwest.

Lenten Voices: Self-indulgence By Lenten Observance

2009-03-01T17:00:00.000-08:00

by Laura Onstot

For my first Lenten observance, at the tender age of 19, I gave up chocolate. This resulted in a frantic midnight phone call to Kazaa, the now defunct uber-delivery service, for a liter of Breyer’s Dulce de Leche. Scarfing it down in my dorm in the early morning hours, it occurred to me, this probably isn’t what God had in mind.

I’ve gone through several iterations of Lent since then—a few times I gave up meat for the duration, ending with a steak and lobster tail dinner. There’s really nothing quite like finishing a month and a half of self-denial in the name of faith with a meal centered on gluttony—like Mardi Gras in reverse.

Once I thought about giving up making fun of the batty receptionist at a job, but given the inevitability of failure (she thought the fax machine teleported paper, seriously) that seemed a task too steep.

So last year I decided to do something different. I wanted to really examine my life, find something that didn’t fit with a grace-filled existence, and do my darndest to let it go and let God, or whatever. Last year, I gave up anxiety.

My anxiousness isn’t paralyzing the way it is for others. Mine has always been more a kind of constant companion that often results in a few hours lost sleep and heart-pounding moments of panic every time I get an e-mail from my boss, certain that this time, it’s to say I’ve been fired.

When you get right down to it, I think my anxiety is rather selfish. I’ve been incredibly blessed—my vocation and my job are one and the same, I have intelligent, compassionate friends who are far more adept in the kitchen than I and happy to share those talents. My roommates are inspiring, my family is supportive, and my income enough to keep up a travel habit. I’m terrified of losing all that and I don’t have a faith strong enough to sustain me if I did. Enter anxiety.

So for Lent I wanted to tell God that even though I know I’ll always be anxious, that faith in God’s love will never truly be enough, I do desire to live more fully as a person of grace. Of course, how one actually gives up anxiety is another trick entirely. I tried jogging and maintaining a better diet. And in the spirit of Lent, really for the first time, I made a serious commitment to praying.

That last part was especially difficult. I’ve never been one to do it as a life style. I repeat prayers in church, and I mean them. I thank God every Friday after Thanksgiving when family and friends gather at my home for giving me so much. But daily, thoughtful, prayer just hasn’t been something I’ve felt comfortable doing. Unsure how to go about it and not being one to just start talk about my feelings with anyone, let alone mysterious entities I can’t see and don’t really understand, I started at the beginning.

“Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

I still have anxiety, and I’m still a very awkward communicant with God. But I kept using the prayer, long after last year’s Easter vigil. I still do. And you know, it kind of works.

Laura attended her first St. Paul's mass on Ash Wednesday 2004 and now sings in the Parish Choir. She is a staff writer for the Seattle Weekly (online at www.seattleweekly.com), a novice knitter, a lover of mountains, and is always up for communing over an aged scotch.

Lenten Voices: Stepping out onto a cloud

2009-02-28T17:00:00.001-08:00

by John Sutherland

I went to the evening service on Ash Wednesday. Everyone was aware that we had given up our organ for Lent. It's a coincidence, mostly. The organ needed to be down two weeks for repairs at some point, so why not now?

I'll be glad when that wonderful, quirky instrument is back, but I had no doubt we'd be okay, supported by the choir and all the quality voices that hold up this parish every Sunday.

In fact, one of my favorite moments, even when the organ is in good repair, is when it drops out.

Normally, this happens during a robust hymn with solid four-part harmony, during the third or fourth verse. Gary lets go of the keyboard and conducts from the bench with both hands, and the choir responds to the challenge with gusto. It's like we're stepping off the edge of the loft and onto a cloud that somehow supports our weight.

(Yes, I know: the incense smoke is so thick some times, it just might support us.)

But it's a wonderful moment. It's a very spiritual moment. It's filled with hope and promise, assuring us of the good things that will happen if we just step forward bravely, and sing.

John Sutherland has been a member of St. Paul's for twenty years. He is sometimes a member of the choir, has done time on the Vestry, and generally tries to bake enough communion bread to keep his hands from idleness.

Lenten Voices: Drowning into Newness

2009-02-26T17:00:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

In the church of my childhood, it didn’t take long to notice what Lent was all about. All you had to do was walk into the sanctuary and behold the large rough-hewn cross, usually constructed from the trunks of last year’s Christmas trees. You wouldn’t necessarily notice that on the left, right near an exit door, was the tiny baptismal font. Lent was not about Baptism, or preparation for Baptism, or reflection on Baptism. It was all about the cross.

The hymns were dark, sometimes bloody: “Alas, and did my Savior bleed…” “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide; the darkness deepens…” “Beneath the cross of Jesus I long to take my stand…” Every Wednesday in Lent the church would hold dramatic retellings of the Passion story from the perspective of various characters: one week, a parishioner dressed (with full makeup and lighting!) as Mary Magdalene would tell us what it was like to be with Jesus in his last hours. The next week, a disciple would talk about his fear, his impulse to run away from Jesus.

I realized only later that the original purpose of Lent was to prepare people for their Baptism at Easter, and encourage all the baptized to reflect on their own baptismal identity. What does it mean to be “baptized into Christ’s death?” What does it mean to “grow into the full stature of Christ”? (That’s a line from the Baptism liturgy.) Lent is a way to decode some of this mysterious language. It’s about Baptism.

Okay…but let’s not forget the cross. The mystery of the cross can even help us delve more deeply into the mystery of Holy Baptism.

At St. Paul’s, our art and architecture seem to be forcing us in the direction of my childhood parish: our crucifix is huge, rising dramatically above the whole space. We’ve improved our font—it is now a deep pool, a round earthenware vessel of abundant water—but the cross still looms, that mysterious and sometimes frightening and (especially for children) eternally fascinating symbol. What does it mean? What am I supposed to do with it? And, is that what they mean by being baptized into Christ’s death?!

Well, yes, but like all rich symbols, the meaning is always more than we imagine, more than we can grasp. The symbol leads us further into the life of God. It’s not supposed to offer a neat and tidy (or simply scary!) explanation.

But for those like me who need help with this, I share with you a poem written by my favorite poet and hymnwriter, Susan Cherwien. She opens up—though never completely!—the symbol of the cross. With her as a guide, we can walk a little further toward the garden of Easter, with both the fountain and the Tree of Life at its center.

Bright Joining
by Susan Palo Cherwien
Bright joining of godly and human
eternity coupling with present
embracing clear light and thick darkness
blest cross, star announcing the Savior.

Blest union of evil and holy
absorbing and willing transforming
embracing the pain of the cosmos
blest cross, outstretched arms of the Savior.

Grand juncture of dying and living
a drowning deep blue into newness
embracing Christ’s death and arising
blest cross, sign anointing our forehead.

Great fusion of body and spirit
in exile yet living the promise
embracing life’s daily small dying
blest cross, faith traced hand upon body.

Bright bonding of matter and power
enfolding, expelling, igniting
embracing deep space and small fragment
blest cross, cosmic arms of the Savior.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog here.

Lenten Blogging Project

2009-02-25T10:31:00.000-08:00

Keep an eye here on our blog throughout Lent, as we have several parishioners (and one clergy person) who have committed to making blogging a part of their Lenten discipline this year. Each of these people will be posting about once a week from now 'til Easter, which means there will be a lot of material here to help the rest of us have a thought-provoking, connected Lent.

Thanks to all who are participating, and stay tuned!

-Alissa

Alissa Newton is St. Paul's Lay Pastor for Young Children and Families, a postulant to Holy Orders and the editor of the parish blog.

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul's from a Jewish Background

2009-02-23T22:15:00.000-08:00

by Barb Levy
I grew up as a secular Jew, simply defined as “a person of Jewish heritage, but not observant of Judaism.” My mother always said that there were four types of Jews: orthodox, conservative, reform, and unaffiliated. We were unaffiliated Jews. But even though I didn’t study the 613 commandments, my Jewish identity was not simple to define:

My father’s mother spoke Yiddish and witnessed one of the Kishinev pogroms before fleeing to America. (The anti-Jewish riots in Kishinev, Bessarabia [were] a well laid-out plan for the general massacre of Jews on the day following the Russian Easter.)
Some of my Jewish friends felt I was “not really a Jew,” since I didn’t go to Hebrew School or have a Bat Mitzvah.
My father was a navigator in WWII; Jews were not allowed to be pilots.
He and my mother were both turned down for jobs because they were Jewish.
A family member on my mother’s side became a Christian and was never spoken of again.
Most of my family’s friends were Jewish. They were passionate, political, intellectual, caring, and funny.

My idea of a Christian was an amalgam of a televangelist, Jehovah’s Witness, Anita Bryant, and the WASPs at my prep school. (A WASP was, to me, a privileged white person who could trace their ancestry back to the Mayflower, or to some country of fair-skinned people. I never would have guessed that I would spend almost every Sunday with Anglicans!)

I am often asked, when I say I am an Episcopalian from a Jewish background, ‘But were you a religious Jew?’ as if becoming a Christian is not such a big deal if you aren’t leaving the religion of your people. On the contrary, reactions I’ve had from relatives and friends (whether Jewish, feminist, or both) made coming out as a lesbian seem like a picnic.

Notwithstanding the reactions of those around me I felt drawn, with the help of clergy and spiritual friends (who later became sponsors) at St. Paul's, to wrestle with my many intellectual, historical, and emotional barriers to Christianity. I began to question, resist, surrender, and journey—at my own pace—amid the stumbling blocks.

I witnessed other adult baptisms, endured a long catachumenate, and was fully immersed in baptism at the 1992 Easter vigil. To this day the memory of my baptism, along with the extraordinary music, liturgy, and breathtaking sense of awe and mystery that can be experienced at St. Paul’s on any Sunday, keeps me coming back to a sacred home I never imagined I would enter. St. Paul’s, with its remarkable assortment of family members and customs is a profoundly blessed community.

Christianity is still rife with anti-Semitism, and the patriarchal language and images of God still trip me up. I still struggle with split identities. When the sign of the cross is made on my forehead with ashes or anointing oil, it traces the crosses carved into the foreheads of Jews during pogroms. I can’t hear the lyrics “keep them from the strangers’ ways” from Fiddler on the Roof without desperate sadness.

But somehow when I close my eyes and pray, bow, kneel, genuflect, and participate in the Eucharist, I know that my prayers are rising upon clouds of incense or wings of song to the same One Holy God beyond definition who loves us all beyond our comprehension.

Lent (which I describe as “a six week Yom Kippur”) is almost upon us. During these forty days in the wilderness, we recall Jesus’ temptations and agony, act out the disciples’ fear, denial, and betrayal, watch or sleep in the Garden of Gethsemane, and ultimately experience another wondrous Easter. In my own way, I will connect once more to first-century Jewish Christians, whose roots lie tangled somewhere with my own.

This is a place like no other. Thanks be to God!

Barb Levy is webmaster at St. Paul's, and owner of Stepping Stone Graphics. Her blog entry on Gay Pride and the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul may be found here.

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from a Lutheran Background

2009-02-19T11:56:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

My parents brought me up in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church in rural Minnesota. Our parish was progressive by Missouri Synod standards, but it didn’t stray too far from the minimalist style and robust (and stern!) theological tradition of German Lutheranism. Nevertheless, my mother had been a Roman Catholic before marrying my father, so every once in a while she would turn to me in the middle of a church service and say something like, “You know, they could engage all of the senses if they wanted to. They could use incense. Worship is best when it engages all of the senses.”

Years later, I began to understand my mother’s motivations. She never expressed regret about her decision to become Lutheran, but she cultivated in me a love for beauty in liturgy, and I suspect her whispered comments to me were an expression of longing for what she had left behind. Her influence inspired me to join Lutheran parishes that embraced a rich liturgical tradition and a sacramental vision. Before I left the Twin Cities for Seattle in 1997, I was a happy member of Mount Olive Lutheran (ELCA) in Minneapolis, a parish replete with glorious music, graceful liturgy, and yes, incense. More striking still was Mount Olive’s location deep in the heart of south Minneapolis, an urban area marked by poverty and urban blight. At their best, Mount Olive proclaims a vision of justice in a neighborhood that cries out for it.

In Seattle, following a five-year stint on the staff of a Lutheran parish, I visited St. Paul’s on the strength of its reputation as a good “liturgical” church. When I first arrived here, I was attracted to the fine music and splendid liturgical life, but also challenged to adjust to some unfamiliar things. I remember struggling with the sung Nicene Creed, which seemed long and labored for me, at least at first. (Now, of course, a spoken Creed sounds odd and awkward to me, like we’re skimping on something important!) And as a borderline extrovert, there were times when St. Paul’s felt a little too quiet and solemn for my taste. But I made a good decision: I told myself to settle down, keep coming back, and keep opening myself up to this interesting and entrancing little parish community.

Now, more than five years later, St. Paul’s is not as quiet, much larger, and (it seems) about as extroverted as I am! But my parish home has retained—and even greatly enhanced—its ability to draw me into awe and wonder, ravish and challenge me with fine preaching, and take me out of my everyday life—not as an escape, but rather for the purpose of transforming my life, clarifying my call, and sending me back into my home and workplace with a renewed sense of meaning and purpose.

A Lutheran church like Mount Olive in Minneapolis offers a similar culture and community, a similar setting in which the assembly draws ever closer to the heart of God, a similar parish in which both justice and beauty are found in abundance. But I am glad to be at St. Paul’s, centered as it is in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, and moving as it is into a time of renewal and growth. At St. Paul’s, I find myself excitedly emailing my dad to tell him about the great preaching (for it was my dad who taught me to listen for that!), and also drawing close to my mother (who is now among our beloved dead) to whisper into her ear, “You were right. And it’s lovely!”

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find other entries by Stephen on our blog, and his most recent sermon here.

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from a Roman Catholic Background

2009-02-15T14:49:00.000-08:00

by Debra Sequeira
When my husband and I first entered the doors of St. Paul’s at a 10:30 Sunday service twelve years ago, our senses were fully engaged. As a former Roman Catholic, I was immediately transported to my youth at the first whiff of lingering incense. I surmised that this church had experienced several decades of liturgical processions, with heavenly smoke permeating the walls and rafters. It was a part of my past that I missed. The people present who were waiting for the service to commence were praying on their knees or sitting quietly or talking softly with neighbors. I noticed what appeared to be a homeless man, as his clothes were in tatters and his overall appearance disheveled. He walked up the aisle and lay prostrate below the altar. I could hear him speaking and crying and I wondered if this was his first time at St. Paul’s as well. Those sitting in the pews did not reveal any alarm at this act of contrition and I was filled with a flood of peace—“Yes,” I said to my husband, “these truly are the people of God.”

The Episcopal service had a rhythm, a flow, and each part of the service glided into the next. At times I followed along in the prayers and the singing; other times I listened to the voices surrounding me. It seemed apparent to me that congregants felt free to worship in the manner that was most comfortable for them, whether sitting, standing or kneeling; reciting or keeping silent vigil. And the choir! This church is blessed, I thought, with its own heavenly host!

The sermon for that Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent, was about the pains and joys of waiting—active waiting. Could one parish have it all, I thought—celestial music, graceful liturgy, and transformative preaching? The only break in the flow came in the form of “greeting one another with the sign of peace.” Though never one of my favorite moments in any liturgy, I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the people. We both felt genuinely welcomed and one couple took it upon themselves to introduce us to others. Not only did we return after that first Sunday, but within three months we were both involved in the liturgy. We have been delegates at the Annual Convention for the Episcopal diocese and I was honored to serve on the “search committee” for the new rector, Mother Melissa Skelton. I was quite certain that I would never see a woman priest in my lifetime as a Roman Catholic! Another one of the many joys of being an Episcopalian! And, yes, I am a proud Episcopalian, as I was received by the bishop into the church six months after first visiting St. Paul’s. So, after joining and/or participating in seven different Protestant denominations since leaving the Roman Catholic Church, I can finally say I am home.

Debra Sequeira is Associate Dean in the College of Arts and Sciences at Seattle Pacific University.

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from an Evangelical Background

2009-02-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

by Kate Rickard

My life has taken many twists and turns I would never have imagined, but then again, whose has not? One of the more significant turns for me has been the journey away from my evangelical upbringing toward Anglicanism. This pilgrimage has led me to a new landscape with different traditions and practices that reflect the passion of my heritage but better meet the deep desires of my heart for spiritual meaning and relationship with God. While I continue to have great respect and love for my evangelical heritage, I felt disconnected to the ancient traditions of our Church and the stories of men and women who had gone before us. For me, there was no sense of mystery surrounding the Godhead; nor was there room for faith that earnestly questioned God rather than only defending Him/Her. As I often found myself in the 'questioning God' category, I wondered if there was a community that would provide a new context and lens through which I could worship God and continue to mature in my faith.

When I experienced the Eucharist for the first time at St. Paul's, I was drawn in like a cold wanderer to a warm home. There was something in that experience I still fail to put words to and to be honest, I don't feel a strong need to compeletely understand it. Since attending St. Paul's, I've encountered a mysterious, loving and incarnate God who is real to me in the faces of my neighbors and the wine and bread of Eucharist. The Anglo-Catholic tradition has opened me to new ways of seeing our world that are "sacramental;" the world is infused with the holy and all life is sacred. I also feel freed up to be in relationship with others in a way that is mutually transformatitive and honoring to Christ.

This pilgrimage has not always been comfortable. At first, attending St. Paul's was a little bit like travelling to a foreign country. I wasn't sure how I fit in among the "locals" and I often didn't understand the language. When should I bow? Should I make a deep bow or just a little bow? Ooops! I missed a bow! Are people looking at me? When should I sing? What should I sing? Which book are we using and what page are we on? Why are we making all these gestures in the first place? And why is Mother Melissa flinging water onto me with a branch?!?

I found that when I let go of worrying about understanding and perfecting my role with all the Anglo-Catholic bows, genuflections, smells and bells, I began to experience the heart of the liturgy. And I started to enjoy myself! I realized that the physcial movements of bowing and genuflecting along with chanting and pausing for silence pull my entire being into an experience of God's presence. The liturgical practices also connect me in a tangible way to my brothers and sisters as we all move and sing together.

When I attend evangelical churches now, I am amazed at how different my new Anglo-Catholic home is from the tradition of my upbringing. There are times that I miss the spontaneity of the evangelical church and the earnest, simple way the Holy Spirit is sought. However, within Anglo-Catholicism, I've found room to grow and expand the horizons of my faith in new and energizing ways. Quite frankly, my faith is infused with more hope than I ever imagined possible. And I have found that there is just as much passion and Spirit within the ancient liturgies, use of the daily office, and symbols of my new tradition - it is only expressed in different ways. This wanderer is glad to have found a home to settle down and grow old in.

Kate Rickard is in discernment towards Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church and works at Seattle Pacific University. You may also read her lay homily here.

bowing quietly

2009-01-14T16:42:00.000-08:00

by Alissa Newton

Last week Andrew and I took our niece, Sophia, to the Epiphany mass at St. Paul's. Sophia will be three in April, and some might question our decision to take someone at such a tender age to a long anglo-catholic mass at 7pm in the evening. (her usual bedtime is around 8, I think.) But Sophia's parents were at a childbirth class for baby #2 and we were feeling adventurous, so we went for it. Sophia has been a fan of St. Paul's since visiting on Thanksgiving with her parents, and whenever she talks about her experiences there she brings up "people in robes" and "how we bowed quietly!"

Sitting in the hushed and sacred space of the sanctuary I realized yet again something I've known deeply for years, but often forgotten superficially: worship is many things, but it is not boring.

I should qualify, perhaps. If one is paying attention - and few adults pay attention the way that a toddler does - mass is not boring. There is too much going on! I watched my niece take it all in with wide blue eyes: the lofty vaulted ceiling, the lit candles, the robed liturgical ministers, and the smoke rising from the thurible as it swung, incense burning inside. I watched her take it in with her other senses as well - the smell of the incense, the feel of the smooth wooden pew beneath her hands, and the softer cushion under her small knees when we went to the communion rail. The feeling of Mother Melissa's hand on her forehead as Sophia received a blessing with a shy smile and pleased eyes. The warmth of the candles at the Mary shrine, where she insisted on stopping to kneel after we left the rail.

This is not to say she spent the entire hour and a half riveted to the service. Few of our children, do! But Sophia noticed the things that are easy for me to forget about. She was captivated by the elements of our worship that are our truest attempts to capture the mystery of our relationship with God, to express the inexpressible about the Divine one incarnate in the world, with-us. We use incense and candlelight to augment our response to that mystery. We dress our priests and other liturgical ministers in brightly colored vestments in an attempt to celebrate the sacrament we experience together in bread and wine, because while there is much that we don't understand or cannot adequately express about that feast, the one thing we do know is that it is a celebration.

Sophia got it. She was thrilled by the smells, the colors, the candles, and the movements. She stood and sat down and bowed quietly. She also drifted a bit during the homily (though it was lovely) and the prayers. Those were just people talking, and what's so thrilling about that? Grown-ups are always talking. The magic is with the mystery, the unexplainable parts of the mass.

I think the same is true about faith (and prayer) itself - there is something unexplainable about it. Many people try to put it into words, and their attempts can be illuminating, even transformative. But the essence is a lot more like incense or candlelight - sweet and wonderful to behold, undeniable when experienced, and somehow cheapened by description.

I think one of my goals for the coming year is to pay attention to the world the way a toddler would. There's a lot of mystery and wonder to be found - both outside and inside of me, my family, my church, and my religion. I want to keep an eye out for the unexplainable, and my heart open to see and wonder at mystery when it can be found. I also need the reminder that there is much pleasure to be found in the simple routines of life - in this case standing, sitting, experiencing the smells and sights and, when appropriate, bowing quietly.

Alissa Newton is a postulant to Holy Orders from St. Paul's and the editor of the parish blog. This entry was adapted from her personal blog, which can be found here.

Finding Your Ground In A Strange Land

2008-12-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

by Matt Markell

At the moment I’m writing from my new home in Fort Worth. Moving from Seattle to this place has proved to be a huge transition for us, and continues to be so. I am so proud to have found a new home in the Episcopal congregation through St. Paul’s while we were in Seattle. It continues to remain my church home until I have found a congregation where I feel called to make my new home. This task, however, is proving to be difficult because of where I live.
Recently, I visited a parish in the Fort Worth diocese here, a diocese that has recently left the Episcopal church of North America over the election of Gene Robinson as the first openly gay bishop. As the service began, I leafed through the bulletin and found an announcement of this recent decision. In it was printed, “This week the Fort Worth diocese voted and elected to leave the Episcopal church of North America and realign with the Anglican province of the Southern Cone.” It went on to say, “this historic vote was a stand for the historic faith and practice of the Christian church.”

So, now the tone was set. During the prayers of the people, juxtaposed against this announcement was, “for our communion, that you will raise up instruments of healing and reconciliation, that we may maintain constant love for one another and be connected to that larger community where Christ most fully is to be found, let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy.” I openly wept. I felt like crying out loud, “are you all blind?” How do you achieve reconciliation, when you clearly don’t believe in it? The message was clear about whom was in and who was out of the “larger community where Christ is most fully to be found.” I left before the Eucharist. I could not participate in the hypocrisy.

I lament the Fort Worth diocese’s decision and find myself rather spiritually homeless in this land. The temptation for me is to allow my soul and spirit to succumb to confusion and grief. I am working hard at not allowing this to happen. Yes, I need to mourn and experience the grief, but I am determined not to let it govern my future. I’ve found throughout my life that these kinds of desert experiences are initiatory times. If anything, this experience allows me to reflect on how lucky I was to have found a parish like St. Paul’s during the brief time that I had there. I’m not sure what that means for me personally, but I am trusting that God has a purpose for our family here in Fort Worth. In the meantime, be thankful for your community, and continue to pray for the wounded church. At the moment, I am busy shaking the dust off of my feet, and looking to move forward.

Matt Markell was baptized on January 13, 2008 at St. Paul's.

My Burning Question

2008-11-15T21:23:00.000-08:00

by Lynn Adams

Whenever we come to the parable of the ten bridesmaids, perhaps better known as the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25:1-13, I get all weirded out over how self-righteous and just plain mean the wise bridesmaids are toward the foolish bridesmaids. You probably remember other parables where some hapless person gets thrown into the outer darkness by the God figure, which is always unsettling.

In this case, the bridegroom is in sight, so surely the girls can share the oil on hand among all the lamps. Go to the merchants? How disingenuous! It's midnight, for gosh sakes. And then the bridegroom praises the prigs and makes the featherheads miss the wedding. If this bridegroom is God's spokesman in the story, then I don't get it. I thought we were supposed to do everything in love, be generous and kind-hearted. Why would God commend causing someone else embarrassment?

As you may recall, last Sunday, Melissa preached on this parable. (Please read her sermon of November 9th -- to which I am responding.)

Melissa started out her homily by recounting how several clergy were comparing notes for the task of preaching on this reading. She said their ideas began to home in on one question… At last! I thought. This will give me my answer. But it was some other question. At the end I almost raised my hand. This is interesting because the parish is now planning a new Sunday evening service where the congregation will be encouraged to respond to homilies! I'll be there.

Down at coffee hour I mentioned my burning question to several wise people. Why would (God) the bridegroom welcome self-righteous people and banish goof-ups?

Mark gave me a meaty and satisfying response, and I hope this is faithful to the original: Matthew was writing in a time of great uncertainty in a deeply divided Jewish community after Jesus' death. Matthew often frames the ideas of Jesus in parables that emphasize the importance of vigilance, attention, and being ready, since the opposite traits may permit the newborn worldview to be reabsorbed into religion as usual. Mark cited Melissa's insight -- it's about waking up and being ready.

Reminding me not to be so literal, Richard offered a koan-like answer: Because it's a story.

Bob, experienced in the ways of families, said: They were probably sisters.

Melissa said: I don't know, but isn't that just like a bunch of teenage girls on a sleep-over?

At the end of a delightful coffee hour, I had the cozy feeling of sharing Thoughts About Important Things with a bunch of my friends. If anyone else has ideas about (1) staying awake and being ready, or (2) My Burning Question, please write in!

Lynn Adams is a longtime member of St.Paul's.

Blogging Lectio Divina

2008-10-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

by John Forman

Lectio divina on Matthew 11: 25—30

[Lectio divina, an ancient art once practiced by nearly all Christians who could read, is a technique of a slow, contemplative reading primarily of scripture that enables a deeper union with God. The practice is one of the precious treasures and defining characteristics of Benedictine monastics, together with the daily liturgy and manual labor. The technique has four basic steps. In the first step, lectio, we read slowly, attentively, gently listening to hear a word or phrase that is God's word for us this day. Once a word or a passage speaks to us in a personal way, we "ruminate" on it. Consider the example of Mary in Luke’s Gospel "pondering in her heart" what she saw and heard of Christ. In the second step, meditatio, we take in the word and allow it to interact with us. The third step, oratio, is prayer understood both as dialogue with God and as the offering of ourselves to God. Here we allow that which has touched our hearts and upon which we have pondered to merge with our deepest selves. The last step is contemplatio in which we simply rest in the presence of God. In this wordless, quiet rest we return to the silence that began our session.]

[Lectio] “I thank you, Father…because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and have revealed them to infants…”

[Meditatio] This passage seemed especially appropriate as I anticipated taking my daughters to St Paul's to help out with the people gathering to learn about Godly Play. Not just because it talks about children, but because I think it describes an essential approach to learning for all of us.

Jesus makes a distinction that is very similar to one made by researchers in adult development between a “knower’s” mind and a “beginner’s” mind. Adults become intelligent “knowers” over time as we learn about and become good at business or nursing or teaching or raising children. Being a “knower” is not a bad thing by itself. It’s just that when we are so certain of what we know, new patterns or approaches become hidden from us…we overlook them. That tendency is why magic tricks work for adults, but is usually lost on children. Sleight of hand relies on the audience “knowing” that a silk scarf can’t disappear or a coin can’t pass through a sheet of rubber. Adults are astonished when a magician does exactly what we “know” can’t happen…little children are less than impressed with the “magic” because they simply trust that the magician can do what they say they can do.

Part of the intent of Godly Play is to work with children’s natural tendencies toward their God-given openness to possibility. I also don’t want to romanticize the mind of an infant…these are people who are still learning how to walk and use a toilet after all. So it’s not their “smarts” that Jesus is referring to….it has more to do with trusting, curious openness …the “beginner’s mind” that we all have. When adults look at the world with “beginner’s mind,” we can assume that what we know is only part of the story and that allows us, as the founder of Godly Play, Fr Jerome Berryman says, “to move forward imperfectly into the unknown,” which includes seeing setbacks as just part of the creative process.

There’s a story about a village in India where people were living in poverty. They did have two things in abundance: a large number of women who could carry heavy loads and a lot of unused land. Taking on a beginner’s mind, they decided to combine the two. The women dug a huge catch basin and used the dirt to build a dam around it. When the monsoons came, the dam caught the rains and filled the catch basin, which kept the village’s wells from going dry. They had enough left over to sell to irrigation water to farmers outside the village.

I think Christ is inviting all of us to, first, adapt a similar “beginners mind” that is less focused on what we know or lack and one that is more open to possibility…to exchange our heavy burdens for light…maybe even the light of illumination or the insights that are hidden until we ask: “what if?”

[Oratio]

“What if you slept,
And what if, In your sleep,
You dreamed?
In your dream,
You went to heaven
And there plucked
A strange and beautiful flower?
And what if,
When you awoke,
You had the flower in your hand?”

Samuel Coleridge

[Contemplatio]

John Forman is a member of St Paul’s who serves at the altar, leads St. Paul’s intercessory prayer team and is a Eucharistic Visitor. Outside of St. Paul's he is a Benedictine oblate of Mt Angel Abbey and an organizational development consultant and executive counselor. John is the managing partner of Integral Development Associates.

The Sighing

2008-09-26T14:12:00.000-07:00

The Sighing

by W. Thomas Edwards

I think today I may have seen the Breath of God.
It moved across the mirrored lake in little
Waveletines – a tiny ruffling puff
That shook the image of the cloud-shot morning sky
Reflected in the crystal plate-like face of polished lake.

The ducks could feel it, turning heads
To face the little whiff
And breathing in the subtle little stirring thing.

If my shy soul is like that lake
Reflecting back the grandeur of the Godhead’s face,
Then when the Holy Breathing moves across it
Why is that image blurred?

It has to be the livening force of living grace
That stirred those twelve to speak in tongues
And change the shape of God’s creation’s knowing of
The Breath
That ruffled up and blurred all human time
And life.

Feast of the Holy Innocents 2006
Oakham, Massachusetts

Tom Edwards came to St Paul’s In 1990 first as a long term visitor and later as part of the community. He sings in St Paul’s Choir and is leader and founder of the Schola Cantorum Sancti Pauli, our Gregorian chant group. Tom is a devotee of the works of Thomas Merton and is an Associate of the Order of the Holy Cross. He is also a practicing physician.

September 11, 2008

2008-09-16T07:58:00.000-07:00

by Lynn Adams

On September 11, 2008, I am in New York City (Brooklyn, technically), occupying Grumpy's Coffee House, corner of Meserole and Diamond. I have been hearing, then listening, for at least 20 minutes to a recording: two chords whose outer voices never change, a synthesized reverberating organ tone, slowly undulating back and forth. Feeling myself wrought up with pathos, poignancy, and a pressure presaging poetic utterance -- I wonder if this great OhhhhhMmmmmm of a track evoked my heart-state, or Nine-Eleven did, or Philip Yancey.

I am reading Yancey's "Soul Survivor," (Doubleday, 2001), a collection of essays on religious thinkers who helped Yancey salvage his faith from a bad religious childhood. The opening essay on Martin Luther King Jr. and Yancey's moral awakening kept me near tears. Now I am reading about how G. K. Chesterton helped him begin to retrieve the generosity and love of God.

My thoughts shift to the tragedy seven years ago and the worldwide tragedies that followed. I remember my fear when TV showed fireballs melting two skyscrapers. My daughter, who had just arrived at college in lower Manhattan, was witnessing the shattering event up close. How far was the World Trade Center from NYU? On my map the dots were less than an inch apart.

I write a paragraph on the maturing that has continued in my daughter since that time. I turn my head sideways to squint at it, and conclude I'm a mom in rose-tinted glasses. Oh, well. Parents, aunts and uncles, I ask you, can anything beat the thrill of seeing your child emerge as a reasonably healthy young adult?

Two pages back, I opened my journal to copy in a quotation I liked, and went happily off on the tangent you have just read. I'll be delighted if there is some tie-back between the quote and what I have just written.

Yancey, Soul Survivor, p. 46
Albert Einstein once articulated the most important question of all: "Is the universe a friendly place?" ...
p. 49
Loren Eiseley tells of an event he calls the most significant learning experience of his long life. Caught on a beach in a sudden rainstorm, he sought shelter under a huge piece of driftwood where he found a tiny fox kitten, maybe ten weeks old, which as yet had no fear of humans. Within a few minutes it had engaged Eiseley in a playful game of tug-of-war, with Eiseley holding one end of a chicken bone in his mouth and the baby fox pulling on the other end. The lesson he learned, said Eiseley, is that at the core of the universe, the face of God wears a smile.

Sages say we are made in GOD's image and that could either be very good or very bad news. On an anniversary of hatred and calculated violence, in a moment aware of mother love, I ask myself Einstein's question.

I'm going to try this assertion and see if it works. The heart-states of pathos, poignancy, eloquence of experience, being maternal, and being playful: these are some of the signs in the human image of God that, in spite of everything, on the whole, point to an answer. Yes. The universe is a friendly place.

Lynn Adams is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

**editor's note** We are about to begin our fall Foundations Course at St. Paul's, and the topic is Picturing God: Exploring Images of the Holy One. Keep an eye here for more reflections on the various images of God we discover through our conversations together, and if you are connected to St. Paul's and have something to contribute to the blog in this theme, feel free to send it to me for consideration by clicking here. -Alissa.

Reflections on Matthew 7:15-29

2008-07-02T14:27:00.000-07:00

by John Forman

In one of our recent lectionary readings, Jesus says: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are ravenous wolves…” It got me to thinking: we live in an age full of prophets. We are surrounded by people who want to encourage us to do something; to buy their product or program for happiness or to vote for their candidate. But I don’t think those are the folks Jesus is warning us about. Seems clear to me that his warning is about the wolves that have gotten into the sheepfold…people, to be blunt, that are in the house of God.

I’m fairly adept at keeping an eye on those outside the church offering less than nutritious fruit. It gets a little trickier when dealing with other Christians, but I can usually manage it by remembering that there’s a difference between an opinion, an offer or a request, and the person holding it. It’s a good practice for me to judge the offer without being judgmental about the offerer.

But there are “false prophets” that are even harder for me to watch, and those are the “false prophets” with myself. We all have many aspects of our selves: some of us are parents or partners; a person can be a woman or a physician; an Episcopalian or a Democrat; a heterosexual or a person of color – in fact, one person could be all of those things. And depending on what we are doing and the circumstances, we can find ourselves speaking a slightly different voice as we lean into one of these aspects of ourselves. My “daddy” voice, for example, is substantially different than my “husband” voice and Jennifer lets me know right away when I’ve confused them!

There are other parts of us that also have voices. They may or may not speak out loud, but maybe you’ll recognize some of these: the inner critic, the controller, the rebellious son or daughter, the voice of reason, the playful child, the fixer, the protector, the doubting skeptic, the seeking self.

Each of these parts of us can serve a fruitful purpose…they might protect us from our own gullibility or push us to greater achievements or protect us from harm or help us keep our sense of playfulness alive. They can help us to stay in bounds or break us out of them. But sometimes, these same voices can hold us back. Voices of caution can become the voices of fear. Voices of freedom can become voices of disregard for others. Voices of protection or certainty can become voices of stagnation. Over time, these voices can begin to persuade us that we should be living in fear – which is substantially different than momentarily alarm or concern.

Fortunately, one of the other voices we have within us is the voice of Christ – or in scripture, the voices of God, apostles or angels – saying over and over again: “Do not be afraid” or “Do not fear.” We can listen again for the voice of our shepherd…the voice that loves us…telling us not to live in fear, but to live in hope, because when the inevitable storms come and go, Christ will be standing with us.

John Forman is a member of St Paul’s who serves at the altar, leads St. Paul’s intercessory prayer team and is a Eucharistic Visitor. Outside of St. Paul's he is a Benedictine oblate of Mt Angel Abbey and an organizational development consultant and executive counselor. John is the managing partner of Integral Development Associates.

June 29, 2008: Gay Pride and the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul

2008-06-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

Today I thought to myself, “What’s a nice Jewish Lesbian like me doing in the pews instead of the streets for the Pride parade?” Until today I hadn’t taken a conscious look at my dwindling interest in the Pride parade. I knew it was partly based on not being able to stand the crowds and heat. But when I woke up today and chose Church over Pride, I had to wonder what else was going on. As usual, Mother Melissa’s sermon struck many personal chords. When she described Peter and Paul as “the one who denied Christ and the one who persecuted Christians” and asked “how we allow their stories to inform our stories,” I started to scribble down my thoughts.

Part of why it is remarkable for me to choose church hymns over political chants is that I have been a Lesbian/Feminist, Leftist and Jew long before I dreamed of stepping foot into church. My ancestors fled the Eastern European pogroms, and crosses were almost as scary to me as vampires. I grew up with no knowledge but many prejudices—about the Christian faith and the people who I thought were strange enough to believe in it.

Hearing Carter Heyward speak in 1980s Boston was for me a huge cognitive dissonance. She was a progressive, a lesbian, and… a PRIEST! But I didn’t think of her again until years later. I thought she and the nuns who lived among and were murdered along with the poor and oppressed in El Salvador were exceptions to what I perceived as monolithic, narrow-minded Christianity.

In 1991 or so I visited St. Paul’s with my partner Marilyn. While I still had barely one toe in the door, the music, mystery and warmth here began to slowly wear down those steel gates around my heart and imagination. I soon realized that I was not welcomed at St. Paul’s in spite of who I was, not judged or made an exception for. Rather, I was invited to bring every facet of myself, and to become—at my own pace and with all my insecurities and misgivings—an integral member of the patchwork community of faith. Feeling at first like a foreigner, I began to humbly realize that, just as I knew that Jews are not a homogeneous group, Christians came in many stripes (even rainbows), and that the ones at St. Paul’s had open minds and welcoming hearts! The scales fell from my eyes.

As mental and spiritual barriers began to dissolve, I realized that my politically correct community in college, always on the alert for ways to overcome prejudice and make a better world for all, was far more scrutinizing and narrow-minded than the folks at St. Paul’s. To this day, being out as a Christian is far more difficult among lefties, liberals and other Jews than being out as a Lesbian. And I understand where they’re coming from, since it’s where I came from. (And the mainstream image of Christianity is still something I’m loathe to associate myself with.) There’s my Peter.

And how does this relate to Gay Pride, and prejudice? So often society bases its fears and judgment about the “gay lifestyle” on the images we see in the media from the flamboyant Gay Pride Parade—the most over-the-top expression of who we are as a people. Just as the images of scantily clad leather daddies with whips, or drag queens dancing in high heels at Pride do not describe most GLBTQ people, what I thought I knew of Christianity was also the most extreme and superficial expression of it. Many of my assumptions about Christianity were learned from observing televangelists, Anita Bryants and Jerry Falwells. Just like Paul, I severely judged the very people I ended up breaking bread with.

We are all much more than our sexual orientations or belief systems. Being a Lesbian, a Christian AND a Jew means I end up feeling pulled between alliances and unsure how to blend my identities on Sundays (and every other day of the week). But what continues to astound me is that I know with deep certainty that coming to this church grounds me in who I am and connects me with a loving God more than being anywhere else.

Today, after church and the Parade, I went to the Pride Festival with Denise Minard, who I met on Palm Sunday many years ago. She coined the description “EpiscoJewLesbian” for me. As we pinned on rainbow crosses with pink triangles, I half-seriously said, “But people will know we’re Christians!” We visited information tables, sat in the sun, then walked back to the parking lot at St. Paul’s, where acceptance is so taken for granted that it’s barely worth mentioning.

Being all of who we are, sharing our joys, longings and struggles with one another, and not limiting our identities with names or assumptions may well help usher in an age of liberation that surely disciples of all faiths (or no faith) would welcome.

Barb Levy is webmaster at St. Paul's and has her own graphic arts business.

Prologues

2008-06-10T10:04:00.000-07:00

by Robin Allan Jones

I love prologues. “Two houses, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona, where we lay our scene . . .” “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York . . .” I love prologues so much that I wrote one for myself. In our recent production of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church’s Umbrella Theatre Company, Noah Way Out, the play begins with a prologue that tells of the nearness of heaven to the medieval imagination. And so, I enjoyed the exquisite pleasure of uttering the opening lines, savoring that surge of adrenaline that ignites the story: “The medieval era, the centuries in the wake of the fall of the Roman Empire . . .” It does seem awfully full of brass and tympany for what was purported to be a “screwball comedy,” but were it humanly possible, I’d make a career of reciting prologues. Because for a moment, I was cast a quarter of a century back into my youth as a college theatre student, reliving the ineluctable joy as the lights would fade up, the opening lines were declaimed, and the fluttering off-stage visceral nervousness would be pushed aside as I anticipated my first entrance.

Equally, I suppose, I love the beginnings of novels: “Call me Ishmael . . .” “It was the best of times and the worst of times . . .” The beginnings of novels and plays are like those magic words on old maps: Terra Incognita “Land Unknown.” “What country, friends, is this?”

Beginnings are always loaded with potential, with promise; beginnings are always the undiscovered country; beginnings always have implied ellipses trailing them because we keep close to our hearts the promises of the imagined what-could-be.

What’s not so hot are the words “The End.”

In the period that we rehearsed and launched Noah Way Out I, as one of St. Paul’s liturgical ministers, shared the honor and joy of serving at the baptism of possibly one of the most beautiful children I have ever seen. This child took to the baptismal water like a baby dolphin. One suspects a mermaid in the pedigree, and this baptism had all the thrill of “Once upon a time . . .” But in that same rehearsal course of time I also served as a liturgical minister, this time at the Cathedral, for the funeral of a friend. This was a thudding, sad, emptiness-leaving, too-soon “The End” for a woman loved by just about everyone who ever knew her, leaving a story of unfulfilled potential without a denouement. I am certain my own sorrow over this still bleeds along the courses of the cracks in the concrete floor of St. Mark’s.

Endings are like that. Rare is the movie that ends as well as it begins; common the novelist who will tell you that the book on which he tapped out “The End” was not the book he intended to write, and there is always a part of us that wishes Romeo and Juliet could live for eternity happily ever after.

But life in the Church is about funerals, not just baptisms, and it’s about everything in between. It is as much about “death do us part” as it is the delectable seduction that leads to “I do.” While I may find that endings make me ache with hollowness, the fact is, we as Episcopalians celebrate every minute of the human experience. We ceremonialize all the landmarks as we recapitulate the terrifying steps to the Cross, and by this celebration, this reliving of the ages of humankind, we honor those landmarks, and we warrior-like look our endings in the eye.

My bedraggled cast and crew, beset by weather, desertion, and delay, eventually brought Noah to his rainbow ending—it would seem our Episcopalian God is not content to have us simply ride the flood; He insists we row and hoist a tattered sail. But as Carlos Castaneda has Don Juan Matus point out: “The warrior laughs and laughs.”

Robin Allan Jones wrote and directed the Umbrella Theatre Company’s Noah Way Out

Thoughts on the Trinity

2008-05-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

by Nancy Jago Finley

My Irish aunties were wonderfully superstitious. They knew that good things (and bad) come in sets of three. They were first generation Americans and kept to the “old ways” from Ireland which I now see as a delightful mix of Roman Catholicism, Celtic mysticism, and folk wisdom. I suppose I can attribute my appreciation for Trinitarian theology to them. It forms the foundation of my belief in God and without it I don’t think my faith would stand up very well. The more I learn about the Trinity, the more my appreciation of it deepens and broadens so that now it is informing my understanding of what it means to be human.

God, the Father as ALEPH

The first word of the Torah – BERE’SHIT – starts with the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet. As I understand it, this is intentional as the first letter – ALEPH – represents the uncreated Creator, the eternal One whose energy is timeless and beyond measure. ALEPH is the silent letter that symbolizes the silence of Spirit from which all sound flows. In ALEPH lies the potential for all that has been, is, and will be.

God, the Son as BET

The name of the Hebrew letter BET means house. BET ALEPH means home for the Spirit. Creation is where we, as part of creation, are home for the Spirit. My interpretation of Bet Aleph points to the embodiment of the Divine in all that is. Matter matters. As Christians, we look to the model of Jesus to help us understand God’s presence in the human experience. The embodied world becomes the medium through which we search for and hopefully experience God.

God, the Holy Spirit

Without energy, the creator and the created are dull, dead, frozen. The Holy Spirit represented by the Chinese letter for “chi” at left symbolizes the energizing force that surges through all of creation binding it with the creator and with itself. We are alive and in communion with each other and with the creator because of Spirit. As Christians, we regard Love as the force that unites, allowing us to realize that everything is connected with everything else. Being is also dependent on movement and change.

So, the Trinitarian model reveals God as uncontainable but at the same time the container, the contained, and that which enlivens and is the source of the unifying power of Love. God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

IMAGO DEI

The Creation story in Genesis tells us that humans were made in God’s image. So, if God has three aspects, then so do we. We have the capacity to recognize that we contain and are contained by the ultimate mystery of God “the Father.” We also are able to allow our sense organs to become God detectors by our interactions with other elements of creation. And we have the capacity for enormous love of God, each other, and all of Creation. I believe that our goal as humans is to allow these three Holy aspects of ourselves to be experienced in balance.

LOSING OUR FOOTING ON THE GROUND OF BEING

Many of us tend to ignore the 1st “person” of the Trinity, God “the Father.” To the degree that our attention is absorbed by the material world, our awe of the Holy Mystery is diminished. As our awe diminishes, we can become inflated with pride at our God-like qualities. When our egos become so inflated with the idea that we are God-like, then we may begin to believe that we are Gods! We might believe we’re in control and that we don’t need to humble ourselves to any power greater than ourselves.

Further, when we act on the belief that we humans are like Gods but that the rest of Creation is not, then we set ourselves up for participating in many ecological evils. Abuse of animals and other growing things, water, sky, and land are consequences of anthropocentrism. Add to our excessive pride the cultural ideal of individualism at the expense of collectivism, the scale becomes even more unbalanced. We lose sight of our place in nature.

THE ANSWER IS BLOWING IN THE WIND

Ego inflation is one danger of an overblown 2nd “person.” Ego alienation is another. Both are consequences of imbalance. If we become alienated from the Divine within us and from one another, the 3rd “person” of the Trinity is stifled. The Holy wind dies down to stillness. The “third person” of the Trinity can also become obscured when we refuse to die and be reborn. The Holy Spirit is fluidity itself, the antithesis of stagnation. If we stubbornly hang on to a rigid idea of the Holy and of Truth, including truth about ourselves, we knock the wind right out of us! And when the movement of Spirit is inhibited, habits of the heart, mind, and body take root and our suffocation is usually so slow and insidious that we aren’t even aware of how stuck we’ve become. The nature of Spirit is to move in freedom.

THE FORCE IS WITH US

This snapshot of my current understanding of God and Humankind suggests that we are vulnerable to ego inflation as well as ego alienation when our Trinitarian nature is out of balance. If we think we’ve got God figured out and become so fascinated by our own powers of knowing, we become inflated and the grace that flows out of humility is diminished. On the other hand, if we become alienated from God and/or our God-Selves, we may become dispirited and feel like we’re all alone in a stagnant pond. It’s our freedom exercised in humility that allows us to receive God’s self communication in Truth and Love. The three aspects of God within each of us are in dynamic and life giving tension. This tension provides the energy to fuel our ongoing journey to know Truth and Love in our relationships with God and with others while gracefully adapting to change. Even though we might be unbalanced, God is not. God is like a gravitational force that attempts to pull us back into balance and closer to God. Seeking, receiving, and maintaining that balance is our ultimate spiritual challenge, both individually and collectively.

Nancy Finley is a long time member of St. Paul’s and is currently a graduate student at Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry studying to be a spiritual director. She also is on the faculty at North Seattle Community College and teaches lifespan developmental psychology online. Her course website is: here.

A Report from the Press Conference with the PB at St. Paul's

2008-04-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

by Robin Allan Jones

Our presiding bishop, Katharine Jefferts Schori, is known for her remarkable achievements and her formidable intellect. In person, she wins you over in a very few seconds with her quiet alto voice. She spoke at St. Paul’s Episcopal in Seattle for a press conference she held on Friday, April 11, on her way to an environmental event at the Seattle Sculpture Garden. The reason for her visit had to do with the environment, but most of the questions put to her really had to do with leadership, and on that she spoke eloquently.

In response, for example, to one of the first questions posed, she said that she hoped Episcopalians would rise to leadership in saving in the environment because we are called to leadership by our baptisms.

Leadership is sometimes revealed in the ability to grasp the essence of a problem. St. Paul’s parishioner Mark Taylor asked the Presiding Bishop to respond to an assertion voiced by one of his professional colleagues that environmental activism is not really the concern of people of color. Bishop Schori’s response was, simply, that first of all, the environment is very much the concern of Native Americans and always has been, and, moreover, by the best evidence, the impact of pollution is and will be felt disproportionately by people of color.

Bishop Schori was trained as an oceanographer, and she points out that the ocean cannot be studied in isolation. Neither, really, can people and the fulfillment of their needs be apprehended except by consideration of humanity as a body. When part of the body of Christ suffers, she reminded us, we all suffer. Certainly that applies when considering the impact of our industry and technology on the environment and our fellow human beings, and it also applies as we deal with some of the storms besetting our church. While on one hand, the church in general and we at St. Paul’s in particular are upholders of cherished traditions, we find ourselves re-examining what the church means to society as a whole, and Bishop Schori pointed out that leadership is all about motivating change; it’s rarely about staying where you are.

I’m afraid the arrival and presence of our presiding bishop was perhaps overshadowed that day by that of the Dalai Lama, and as press conferences go, this one may have lacked the drama that goes when a political office finds itself under fire. But under the high-peaked roof of our little church, won over by this alto voice that speaks of listening, I found myself wishing it weren’t a press conference at all but a Eucharist, that all of us, under the rain-dappled skylights, could just take communion together.

Robin Allan Jones is a stagehand, scenic artist, and theatrical designer in Seattle. A member of St. Paul’s since 2005, he serves the parish as a liturgical minister and as co-director of The Umbrella Theater at St. Paul's.

FYI - Sharon Cumberland Readings in May

2008-04-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

Sharon Cumberland is giving two readings in the month of May:

Seattle University Writer’s Reading Series
Thursday, May 8, 2008 at 7:00PM
Campion Chapel, Seattle University
with volunteers from the Seattle University Choir

Jack Straw Writers in Residence Series
Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 7:30
4261 Roosevelt Way, Seattle 98105
with fellow writers in residence
Judith Skillman, Michael Spence, and Rebecca Hoogs

Thursday, May 8th at 7:00 in Campion Chapel in Campion Tower at Seattle University: I will read new work, including a chanted plainsong poem,“The Death of Thomas Merton,” to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Merton’s death. The main attraction will be a plainsong for multiple voices entitled “Holy Innocents,” commissioned by choir director Joy Sherman, and chanted by volunteers from the Seattle University Choir. Free admission. There will be a reception following. For the link to directions to the chapel in Campion Tower (the chapel is in the lobby of the dorm) click here.

Thursday, May 29th at 7:30 at the Jack Straw Studios on Roosevelt Way: As a Jack Straw Writer in Residence for 2008, I will perform with fellow writers in residence. I was selected for a plainsong project, so I will chant as well as read. The Jack Straw Writers Anthology in which my work appears will be given out free at the reading ($5.00 suggested admission). For directions click here.

Please email me at slc@seattleu.edu if you have any question. I hope to see you in the month of May!

Sharon Cumberland is a member of St. Paul's and an Associate Professor of English at Seattle University.

What’s with all the incense?

2008-03-30T20:39:00.000-07:00

by Samuel Torvend

As we were finishing the entrance hymn on Easter Sunday, my sister, her husband, and their five-year-old son slipped into the pew next to me. My nephew, Rex, stood on the pew so that he could see his friend, Stephen, twirling the thurible, the metal container filled with a burning coal and heaped with incense pebbles. “I can see the smoke,” whispered Rex, “but, Uncle Sam, where’s the fire that makes it?” Well, this was a great question from a curious soon-to-be kindergartner. If there’s smoke, there must be fire. I whispered in his ear that a coal, much like one of his father’s barbeque briquettes, is set on fire with a match that makes it sizzle and turn into a hot ember. The incense that is added to the coal creates both the smoke and the smell. His eyes widened and he said, “Oh, that is way cool … and it doesn’t fly out and hit us.”

While his son found the use of incense fascinating if not wonderfully dangerous, Frank, his father, seemed less impressed. At dinner that afternoon he said: “You all at St. Paul’s really like to do it up big; you know: lots of ceremony.” Let’s be clear: there was no condescending tone in his voice, but I did wonder, Does he think it’s just silly: the bowing, the genuflecting, and, then, those many clouds of Easter incense? And then he asked, “I thought it had something to do with your prayers rising to God … Isn’t that right?” Big point to Frank who could have been quoting Psalm 141: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands an evening sacrifice.” On smoke rising from burning incense as symbol of prayer “rising” to God, he was right on the money.

And yet at St. Paul’s on this Easter Sunday, the altar table, the bread and wine, a newly-baptized baby, the Easter candle, the worshipping assembly and the ministers of the Mass were all incensed. Why all that incensing of food, candle, and people? The answer rests in the ancient past of Christianity. It was not until the fourth century that Christians began to incense people and significant objects in their worship. While one reads in the Bible of incense being burned during worship, the practice of incensing people probably derives from the Roman imperial practice of honoring political elites, such as the emperor and his court, with burning incense. Where you see and smell incense, a bigwig is not far behind. Oh, but here is the interesting twist that begins to take place in Christian worship: the pagan imperial practice of using incense was welcomed by Christians but turned on its head: what honored only the elites who sat at the top of the social pyramid was now turned toward ordinary people and ordinary things. Infants, deacons, women, widows, priests, the poor, men, children – anyone and everyone who enters into the Christian assembly is honored with a practice that had been reserved only for social VIPs. In essence the Christian practice proclaimed that each and every person was worthy – worthy to be honored with incense – since each one is a child of God, marked with an eternal dignity, and joined to the body of Christ, the great high priest. Thus, the incensing of all the people, their table, and the food they receive as the Body and Blood of Christ would now proclaim a status-reversal: all these – not just a few – but all these are holy. And so, here, in this place, each person is to be honored with fire and fragrance at one’s birth into the Christian community (baptism), as one is nourished weekly in the Christian communion (Eucharist), and at one’s death in the midst of the community (the Christian funeral).

I would agree with my nephew: that is way cool.

Samuel Torvend is a member of St. Paul's and professor of the history of Christianity at Pacific Lutheran University.

The Umbrella Theatre Company at St. Paul's

2008-03-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

I am proud to direct your attention to a new St. Paul's affiliated blog, Umbrella Theatre Company. Umbrella Theatre is the drama group at St. Paul's and has quite a few delicious projects going on at the moment, the next one being a puppet show at our Spring Family Potluck on April 19th.

A short description:

Well, folks, as everyone knows, it’s the Year of the Mouse, and here at St. Paul’s we don’t take that lightly. On the afternoon of April 19, as part of the Godly Play Potluck, the Paramouse Players, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Umbrella Players, will perform their first one-act play—well, actually, it’s only half an act, but there’s nothing half-act about these rodents. They’ll be performing Creation, an original retelling of Aesop’s fable, The Belling of the Cat, combined with the Bible story of Creation. It’s a clever mouse tale that the whole family will enjoy, parents and rugrats alike.

For more info and photos of the puppet players, head over to the Umbrella Theatre Blog. See you at the show!

Rebirth

2008-03-24T09:15:00.000-07:00

by Auntmama

Mary Anne Moorman

Mama and I were diametrically opposed on most things Easter. Spring tumbled over itself in fields of warm sun made for play but mama had clothes to sew, decorations to make, new recipes to conquer. I had balls to throw, baby rabbits to watch, new clover to string into halos. I was everything outside. Mama was everything in. But we met in the middle when it came to the egg and found forgiveness over a rabbit.

Nothing says new life like an egg. Mama drilled us on redemption during Lent but when Palm Sunday came it was all about life. Right after we stored the palms from the annual pageant we raced home to begin egg production. All week Daddy brought home dozens and dozens of eggs from the railroad commissary.

Mama sorted them for baking, boiling and blowing. We spent the rest of Palm Sunday, blowing. Mama took her favorite long sewing needle and poked a tiny hole in each end of the egg. Then just like she was blowing bubbles, she’d squich up her lips and begin to blow.

She’d puff the tiniest little pillows of air into the hole and hope the contents would slip out the other end. This was tricky and it sometimes took a few eggs to get it right. Daddy’s job was to cheer her on when an egg cracked and all the goo ran over her finger like melted butter.

“Its okay honey, they’re perfect for scrambling,” he’d say and pick shells out of Monday’s breakfast. My brothers tied circles of green ribbon to hang the finished egg and mixed the paints.
We used all kinds of coloring on account of brother Shack’s artistic pursuits. Whatever he was painting with wound up on these eggs. This was mama art.

The colors had to be festive and bright , for mama’s egg tree. We could use anything we wanted on our boiled eggs. Those were for the egg rolling contest and the Easter egg hunt. They’d be broken in minutes. But the tree was different.

The tree was like mama’s own thank you to Jesus. Mama blew until she had about two dozen clean white, empty shells all laid out like a canvas. Then she’d dip her dime store brush into water colors, or food dye or even oils if Shack had any, and paint the most marvelous eggs.

By suppertime the kitchen table was a gallery of spring. There were crosses and lilies, faces of the main characters, and baby lambs grazing on new grass. Eggs had to dry overnight but when we came down for scrambled breakfast, the beautiful eggs dangled from their green ribbons on a stick tree.

The exquisite hand painted eggs guarded our front door and welcomed us home as the tension mounted during Easter week. Mama baked every day and sewed. She was determined her children would each wear something new for Easter Sunday even if it meant she had to stay up till dawn sewing a blouse or a new shirt or dress. One Easter she made me a yellow and gray striped suit.
The stripes were hard to match and I had to stand still forever for fittings.. Mama raced the clock on Saturday to finish my skirt hem.

“Mama, it is straight enough,” I’d whine. Mama pinned and tucked while I fidgeted in front of the egg tree.

”Which is your favorite egg,” she asked to distract me. This had gone on for a week and I was tired of egg stories.

“Mama the boys don’t have to come inside and get pinned up,” I complained until she’d finally beg me to hold still before she turned me into the pin cushion.”

I could not stand still. I did not want to stand still and I did not understand why my Lord and Savior needed me wearing new clothes on Easter. Mama said it was the least I could do and told me about Judas as she knelt to re-pin the hem.. I knew she was exhausted. I knew she was just trying to do something for me but I was down to my last raw nerve.

I was about to explode when daddy opened the front door with A newborn brown bunny tucked in his jacket.

“Oh Daddy , daddy daddy let me see” I whirled around to pet this adorable creature and when I did, I smashed right into mama’s egg tree. Painted egg shells flew in all directions. A little lamb face crumbled on the floor.
Palm leaves mounted in crushed bits. Mama burst into tears as Virgin Mary shattered before us. Daddy mumbled unmentionables in my directions. The bunny ducked in fear.

I figured this disaster might prevent Peter Rabbit from leaving chocolates and got to sweeping right away. It was the least I could do for mama. Daddy tried to comfort mama and I scooted out to find the broom at lightening speed. Brothers opened the door to find me crying and sweeping and were so astounded they couldn’t even tease me. This was terrible. No one had ever broken the egg tree not even Ken with his eternal yoyo. They boys almost looked sympathetic as they made peanut butter sandwiches. Mama and Daddy and the rabbit disappeared. This was highly unusual as our parent hung over us most of the time.

As I was falling asleep and wondering if the Easter bunny would cancel his annual appearance, Mama slipped into my room. She had the new bunny in her arms and put him on the pillow. I was about to wail all my sorries to her but mama just gave me a huge hug and crawled in next to me and the bunny.

“It’s almost Easter,” she said “and forever more, we all get a new chance by light of day.”

Mary Anne Moorman is a regular attender of St. Paul's.

Christ in Salmon, Salmon in Christ

2008-03-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

By Nancy Jago Finley

I rode into Christianity riding on the back of a salmon. It was the salmon’s life cycle that gave me a window into the Jesus story. It opened the door to the church. Here’s how it happened:

Many years ago I visited the fish ladder at the Ballard Locks here in Seattle to watch the salmon returning from the sea to their spawning grounds. They were eagerly going home to die for the sake of future generations. As I watched them struggling against the current, swimming upstream with great effort, I cried at the beauty of it. I learned that their dissolving corpses served as nourishment for the new life they had created just before they died. I made no connection to Jesus at the time as I was defiantly unchurched. Christianity wasn’t even on my radar.

About 10 years ago I cautiously approached the idea of institutional Christianity and took the sacramental bread and wine for the first time in maybe 30 years. I heard the stories about Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection and remembered the salmon. Soon I came to understand those stories as representing the same process revealed in the salmon life cycle. Jesus sacrificed his life as all living things do so that others may live. But, by dying, we become immortal. It’s part of the nature of things. Dead flowers and leaves become humus out of which new life emerges. We eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood to symbolically nourish us as we journey through our lives toward union with God.

Concerned that my equating Jesus with salmon might be considered irreverent or even heretical, I did not speak of this until attending a retreat on Celtic Christianity where I learned that the salmon is a symbol for Jesus among the Celts. I now proclaim that as embodied beings, Nature is where we encounter God.

Nancy Finley is a long time member of St. Paul’s and is currently a graduate student at Seattle University’s School of Theology and Ministry studying to be a spiritual director. She also is on the faculty at North Seattle Community College and teaches lifespan developmental psychology online. Her course website is: here.

Feet

2008-03-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

By Alissa Newton

Today is Maundy Thursday , the beginning of the end of Lent and the beginning of the Triduum, the time when we remember and liturgically re-live the three days before the death of Christ.

I've always loved Maundy Thursday, even before I knew that some people used that name for it. Growing up in an evangelical non-liturgical tradition the Thursday before Easter was simply "The Foot-washing Service." There is something undeniably intimate and vulnerable about the washing of feet, and as a child I found this both moving and sort of thrilling. In the church of my childhood this was a segregated service, women in one room and men in the other. I don't know what happened for the men, but in the women's group we would all sit in a circle and sing hymns. Every year sometime before the foot-washing service my Mom would tell me a story about one of the first times she attended, when she was a young woman. She might have even been a teenager. After the singing of hymns began, each woman would wash the feet of the woman sitting next to her, and so on in a circle until everyone had both washed and been washed. My mother, the young woman, happened to be sitting next to one of the matriarchs of the church, an elderly lady whose movements were slow and hands shook. Mom was slightly horrified to realize that this woman would be washing her feet. I remember listening to my mother tell of how she sat and had her feet washed by someone so much older than her, wiser, and much more frail, and how that moment both humbled and exalted her. Sometimes when she told the story her eyes would brim with tears, remembering. I loved to hear it, and I loved to be a part of the whole ritual. The church I grew up in had little in the way of formal ritual, but what we had I reveled in. At the Foot-washing I felt connected to the Church, even as a child, in a way that was unique to my experiences in church at the time.

Now I still love the footwashing ritual. Set within an Anglo-Catholic mass, with choir and Eucharist, robes and incense, men and women together - the washing of another human being's feet remains one of the most intimate and powerful experiences of community that I have ever been exposed to. It is an act of service that is equally humbling for both recipient and the one who washes. Feet are so often a neglected body part - they do so much of the work of getting us around, but in our culture are seen as dirty and sort of private. It's rare to have someone else touch them. And even more so in the context of the Sacred. We Anglo-Catholics are so in love with Beauty and Mystery, two qualities rarely discovered in feet.

I hope today can be a reminder to me that in the context of Eucharist, in the Kingdom of God, the neglected and dirty can be part of what is Holy and Beloved and Beautiful. Jesus' feet were washed by the tears of a shamed woman who brought him perfume. Jesus washed his disciples feet before he gave them the first Eucharist. Humility and vulnerability are powerful and important, these stories tell us, and Christ proves to us as he embodies both in order to bring us through Maundy Thursday and tomorrow's Good Friday, to Easter.

Alissa Newton is Jr. Warden at St. Paul's and the editor of the parish blog. This entry is cross-posted to her personal blog, which can be found here.

Later in Lent

2008-03-07T09:12:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

Later in Lent

I’m out of breath. I’m panting, even.

I thought I was in better shape than this.

This isn’t a desert. It’s a forest wilderness.
I can hardly see everybody else.
I keep getting tangled up in branches,
branches with annoying little thorns, ivy, bramble.
I keep tripping on rocks and roots.
I think I hate that most of all.

No, I hate the heat and humidity down here.
My socks are around my ankles.
My pants are dragging and sagging.
I’m disheveled.
I feel like maybe I’m making progress,
but who knows.

They say forests need to burn every few years
to restore the ecosystem,
to keep the whole thing healthy.
I say, pass me a match.

It seems like other people are handling this better.
They seem to be walking more freely.
I console myself: I just can’t see some of their branches.
Maybe the others are also bound (and gagged?)
by their own
little demons.

(True confession: I hope so.)

They say we’re going to make a
”new fire”
that will be a festival of
dazzling light
luscious warmth
new life
everyone at the table
everyone pulling a piece of bread
from one warm, fragrant loaf.

I say, I hope I have sense enough
--when the fire is blazing—
to take off my shoes

and breath enough
to stammer out the word—
”Alle—“

I’m out of breath. I’m panting, even…

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog on his website, here.

Humility

2008-03-06T08:49:00.000-08:00

by Martha Wakenshaw

I've been thinking a lot lately about Christianity and Psychology, especially in this season of Lent.
The prayer book talks about penitence and even our own "wretchedness." It talks about confessing our sins and keeping a contrite heart. We fall to our knees in supplication. We ask God's forgiveness. We stand corrected.
So how does this season of penitence fit in with our own self-esteem? How do we bow down and confess our sins before God and still maintain a healthy sense of self-esteem?
I believe that God has given us humility as a way around this conundrum. Humility in the sense of softening our hearts to allow the light and compassion of Jesus in. With the spirit of God internalized we come from a place of strong vulnerability and are able to confess our sins in the all loving arms of Jesus, the great forgiver.

Martha Wakenshaw is a member of St. Paul's, a writer, and a psychotherapist. Her website can be found here.

On the eve of Lent..

2008-02-12T08:56:00.000-08:00

by John Forman

I sat down to write this on Mardi Gras. Well, having spent the evening with my daughters watching an old Star Trek, I can’t really call it a “Fat” Tuesday…more of a chubby Tuesday or maybe a Tuesday who occasionally uses food as an emotional crutch…much like the excess of boyish enthusiasm spilling over my beltline these days.

I guess it came closer to a “carnival”, from the Latin “carne evil,” meaning “the meat’s gone off, so let’s not eat it for a month.” We now, of course, more generously translate the phrase to mean “goodbye to flesh,” in recognition of the traditional practices of dieting (although this Lent is so soon in the year that I haven’t even had time to finish procrastinating on my New Year’s resolution) or the omission of meat from one’s diet.

Now because we live in a largely Asian neighborhood, we’ve incorporated local customs into our own. So, for example, in recognition of the concurrent Chinese New Year – the Year of the Rat – we have sharply curtailed the consumption of all rodents for the entire Lenten season…a practice I have high hopes will stick with us substantially longer.

I grew up, like many people who survived childhood, thinking that Lent was primarily about giving up those things which brought you the greatest joy…chocolate, gin, jazz and hanging around with people of questionable moral fiber, such as clergy. Until, that is, I met a priest who shall remain nameless – although his initials are “Charles Ridge” – who taught me an entirely new way of thinking about Lent.

As we sat merrily doing our rosary with hot coals strung on barbed wire and trading fleas for our hair shirts, Charles also managed to introduce to me the deeper meaning and opportunity of Lent. In all seriousness, it has become a time of increasingly profound joy for me. What Chuck taught me over the course of several years was that it isn’t the things, events or people themselves so much as it’s the reshaping of our relationship to them that we undertake in Lent.

It’s a lightening of the load as we run toward God…a readjustment of our response to the first great commandment. Have we put God first among all our relationships? Do we love God with all our strength, all our minds, all our hearts and all our souls or are there one or two things that have slipped up the priority list for our time, attention and energy?

I was doing some reflection last week on our recent Foundations course on Forgiveness and preparing for Lent (as a Benedictine oblate, I am required to submit my intended Lenten practices to my Abbot each year for his approval). I found one or two encumbrances…situations with two people that I had not yet fully reconciled so that they could take their proper place as lesser than my relationship to God. To that end, I found and adopted a prayer, which I’ll be praying daily on their behalf (and for my own softening and growth) as a part of my Lenten practices. I’ve already sent it to Chalice, our prayer team, but I’ll share it here with you in the hopes that it may be useful to you as well:

“May you be happy
May you be free.
May you be loving.
May you be loved.
May God bring you to the fullest completion that God’s love calls you.
May every fiber of your being resonate to the glory to which God calls you.
May you experience the fullness of peace in body and soul.
May you know God in all God’s goodness.
May you forgive every transgression.
May I forgive you with all my heart and soul.
May you know what it means to be a child of God.
May you experience the glory of possessing the kingdom of God.
May you walk in peace and fellowship with all God’s creatures.
May every blessing be yours.
May goodness and love show themselves in everything that you do and in all that is done to you.

May you be one with all of God’s creation.
May you experience the blessings of God’s grace for all eternity.”

A blessed Lenten season to you all!

John Forman is a member of St Paul’s who serves at the altar, leads St. Paul’s intercessory prayer team and is a Eucharistic Visitor. Outside of St. Paul's he is a Benedictine oblate of Mt Angel Abbey and an organizational development consultant and executive counselor. John is the managing partner of Integral Development Associates.

To Dust You Shall Return

2008-02-06T08:50:00.000-08:00

by Stephen Crippen

I look at Ash Wednesday as a kind of self-absorbed Day of the Dead, or an All Souls Day that’s focused mostly on me. I’m dead, or at least I’m dying. And not just dead or dying in a spiritual way—dying to sin, or dying to a way of life that diminishes me or harms others. I have all of Lent to focus on those deaths. No, Ash Wednesday for me is a day to say, I am someday (2065? Next year? Tomorrow?) going to be dead. My body will cool, stiffen, soften, be consumed by Mother Earth or Father Fire, better get my will ready.

So my first book for Lent this year is “Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers,” by Mary Roach. She’s a journalist, and she approaches the topic with a great blend of thorough professionalism and funny irreverence. And right there in the first chapter is a great Ash Wednesday story. Roach is visiting a medical lab in which plastic-surgery students are practicing surgery techniques using the severed heads of cadavers. Roach is talking to one of the students, named Marilena:

“I ask Marilena if she plans to donate her remains. I have always assumed that a sense of reciprocity prompts doctors to donate—repayment for the generosity of the people they dissected in medical school. Marilena, for one, isn’t going to. She cites a lack of respect. It surprises me to hear her say this. As far as I can tell, the heads are being treated [by her classmates] with respect. I hear no joking or laughter or callous comments…”

Marilena tells the author that she objects to her colleagues’ assumption that it’s okay to photograph the cadavers for journals and research. Since the people who once inhabited these bodies are gone, they can’t sign a release for the photos to be taken, and this is what Marilena finds disrespectful. Roach continues:

“The seminar is nearly over. The video monitors are blank and the surgeons are cleaning up and filing out into the hallway. Marilena replaces the white cloth on her cadaver’s face; about half the surgeons do this. She is conscientiously respectful. When I asked her why the eyes of the dead woman had no pupils, she did not answer, but reached up and closed the eyelids. As she slides back her chair, she looks down at the benapkined form and says, ‘May she rest in peace.’ I hear it as ‘pieces,’ but that’s just me.”

The Irishman in me smiled at the author’s play on words, but I really like Marilena. I hope that when it’s my body’s turn to be a research subject, it will be handled by someone like her. And I hope that by keeping Ash Wednesday and walking through Lent each year, I can become more and more like her, more and more the kind of person who remembers to replace a white cloth over the sacred remains of another human being.

Stephen is a therapist and postulant to the Diaconate. You can find his personal blog on his website, here.

Reflections on the Birth of A Child: Annika Margarette Markell

2008-01-25T08:34:00.000-08:00

by Matt Markell

As I'm writing this, I'm grabbing a brief moment of respite in an otherwise lucid frame of mind. Exhausted as I am, I can't begin to describe what it's like to hear the sounds of my own child's cries and coos echoing throughout my home for the first time. We chose her name well. Annika means "grace" and Margarette means "pearl." I like to think of Annika as a pearl of grace. I think that's how I'm likely to treat her throughout her life. From day one, we've decided that Annika is now our greatest teacher in life, even as it is our job to mold and guide her through hers.

It's been interesting to absorb people's reactions to different events as my wife Kara has progressed throughout her pregnancy. The most visceral reaction both of us got from many people was in response to the news that she had decided to approach childbirth naturally and without pain medications. Some responses I got were surprisingly hostile, as though those who had chosen a different route were all of a sudden feeling indicted. The most common response I got was, "She says that now, but wait till she's gets in the throes of it..." Even though this is our first child, I began growing indignant to this response. I didn't want to write off what the message from experience might be, but I was beginning to realize that it was causing me to second guess my feelings about my wife approaching birth this way. It was my job to believe in my wife and stand by her decision. It was my job to KNOW that she could do this.

I began to realize that a lot of us (myself included) feel obliged to share our most interesting "horror stories" about experiences we've been through in the past in the name of wisdom. All of a sudden we feel as though we have license to share these experiences with the "unexpecting" first-timer. I think we believe that we're actually helping out. What I began to grow irritated with was not the fact that people who had been through this before wanted to offer advice, but that the "advice" was more of a disguise for one-upmanship. "I grew up with 15 siblings in a brown paper sack" "Oh yeah? Well I grew with 20 siblings at the bottom of a lake!"

It's interesting to me how we latch on to this technique as a way to "share wisdom". The deeper wisdom I've learned after watching my wife successfully endure the most painful experience of her life, is that I need to listen and support others expectations about what their role is going to be in the choices they make, even if it's not the way I would do it. I'm not talking about sugar-coating reality for others. My wife went into birth with a lot of help. We had a midwife and a doula to help her work through the pain, and we had prepared well in advance to help my wife know what she wanted to focus on during contractions. It's not like either of us had a romantic view of what was about to take place.

I think we often disguise lowered expectations for what we can and cannot do as "reality." After watching my wife go through what she went through, and to feel Annika's wrinkly head in my hands, I'm convinced that she is a "pearl of great price." My wife endured some intense pain which resulted in one of the most beautiful things we have received in life or are ever likely to receive. My wife needed to believe that she could pull off what some would suggest is the impossible.

This is the first lesson that the advent of Annika's arriving into the world has taught me. I hope to be less skeptical of other's dreams and decisions for their lives. Not at the expense of the tough realities that surround our choices, but at the heart and passion of those who choose to pursue such seemingly impossible tasks. I want my daughter to feel as though she is free to pursue her own dreams. It's my job to make sure she believes in herself enough to find the tools to do so. Annika has begun to teach me to honor my unspoken realities as well. I hope that more of us are apt to share stories of hope and wisdom with each other, rather than trying to best each other with the most horrible disaster stories we can think of.

I'm feeling so many things today, but most of all gratefulness to my wife for knowing and choosing her path, despite the warnings of those who decided that it was their job to share with us the "not likely's." Anyone who reads this has my permission to point out to me when I choose to respond to them this way as well. We should all be bells of mindfulness to each other. We should all be gifts of wisdom to each other.

We also had many wonderful people who were supportive of both of us. Their energy, and prayers were with us in the birthing room. We felt their presence with us. There is no more powerful experience!

Matt Markell is a candidate for confirmation at St. Paul's. He was baptized on January 13, 2008. His daughter, Annika Margarette, was born on January 20th, 2008.

Seasons

2008-01-21T11:54:00.000-08:00

by Ellen Hill

Seasons

I heard a little voice last Sunday.

It belonged to one of our many new toddlers. It was strong, clear, and confident. A comment made about something she found interesting.

Some Sundays, I sit amazed at this influx of little bodies, with strong sturdy legs investigating new spaces. A small face pressed against the glass to experience its rainbow qualities. The tiny hands reverently touching St. Francis. I am sure they are experiencing St. Paul’s in an organic, hands-on way that I am quite envious of.

I remember this journey with my own children, trying to find a path between exploration and adoration. Three little bodies squirming, reading, talking, but still trying to understand what was happening around them. Eventually they did. They followed the service, participated on the altar, read lessons, and served on committees. They grew up in a community where it was safe to be yourself. A community nurturing their spiritual education and growth. A place where difficult questions could be asked, and questions that have no answers could be discussed.

So, at this time in the life of our parish, children are present. We welcome their voices. We look forward with excitement at this new explosion of life. Like spring it holds the promise of unknown beauty.

And sometimes, it takes us back to our own childhood. Sunday in the pew between my own father and mother. My father, young and strong; my mother, unable to stay awake through any sermon no matter how short or long. We were always in our Sunday best complete with hat and gloves. The best part was just the feeling of happiness as we sat shoulder to shoulder. Oh, and of course the trip to the donut shop on the way home.

With all the lessons of Sunday service, perhaps this is the most lasting legacy -- that we can carry these moments of happiness throughout our lives as both the child and the parent.

I remember the beauty of a small hand in mine, tiny and warm, so infinitely beautiful.

Some Sundays it rests in my hand again. Now it rests fingertip to fingertip, palm to palm, all grown up yet still so infinitely beautiful.

Ellen Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

The Burden of Forgiveness

2008-01-14T11:21:00.000-08:00

by John Gordon Hill

The Burden of Forgiveness

When the call came that he had been arrested, time stood still. The charges were indeed heinous, and utterly inconsistent with the man I thought I knew. So much so, that I was indignant on his behalf, and searched for alternate explanations. But the news that unspooled in the ensuing days was all bad. An undisclosed criminal history. Damning evidence. Slippery explanations instead of protestations of innocence.

It seemed clear that he had inflicted great psychological damage on his victims. But he had also inflicted grievous damage on himself. His life, as he knew it, was over. He lost his job and the custody of his daughter. He lost all respect and standing in the community. He may well lose his freedom. What could I say to a man I counted as a friend, but whose apparent actions represented such a massive betrayal of his family, his friends, his co-workers, and yes, of me?

As this was unfolding, the Federal Public Defender asked the production class I teach to make a video presenting mitigating evidence at the sentencing hearing of a crack dealer. The crack dealer was a gentle giant, beloved by his family and friends, but who had an enormous rap sheet stretching back 25 years. He was the product of every hyperbolic dysfunctional cliché you could imagine, but he refused to blame his background or community for his crimes. He clung to a few facts. He had steered his siblings and children away from drugs. He had not been violent. He had cooperated with the police.

The judge noted that while the drug dealer didn’t blame the terrible environment he came from for his actions, his drug selling contributed to that terrible environment every day. The defendant acknowledged that was true. Then he systematically took responsibility for his actions and all the people he had hurt. Admittedly, he was talking to a judge who held his fate in his hands, but there was a true contrition and humility in his demeanor. He seemed genuinely moved by the friends and family who had spoken from the heart on his behalf in the video.

I think about the difference between “inexcusable” and“unforgivable”. Actions may be inexcusable, but no one is beyond God’s forgiveness, no matter how difficult or unpalatable it may be for us mere humans. In the case of my friend, it will take me some time. And if forgiveness is hard to give, it is hard to receive. Being forgiven takes a radical repentance, true contrition, a sincere desire to make restitution, and acknowledgment of the burden of the sin.

The crack dealer seemed to exhibit all these. The judge showed mercy. He sentenced him to “only” ten years.

Stumbling toward Lent, I ponder the burden of forgiveness.

The heft of it.

Its cost.

Pray we find the grace to bestow it.

John Gordon Hill is a longtime member of St. Paul's. He is a director/cinematographer and currently teaches at Seattle Central Community College.

THE TRAVELLERS

2008-01-10T13:06:00.000-08:00

by Sharon Cumberland

THE TRAVELLERS

They appeared on the brink of Judea, like the pluck
of a tuning string: Gatháspa, Melchias, Pudizar,
their shared language astronomy (unscrolling their charts,
gesticulating at the sky). It wasn't luck
that brought them together in the desert,
but the quality of their separate magic.
Truth to tell, the ushering star
was combined with the old constellations,
and when wind whipped clouds through the chilly night,
they couldn't see anything very well.
Until they found each other they had begun to doubt
they would find anyone, much less a monarch
nobody knew about.
But now they were three: a Babylonian mage,
a Persian seer, and from the land of Ind
a wizard who could derive gold from the ores of Malabar.
Now they had their triple art to take them
toward the thing they sought: a Hebrew king
in the nest of Rome.

Then imagine their alarm
when they found the king a newborn
in a lean-to of date fronds and olive branches.
How quickly they erected an incense altar
to ward off the seven evil demons!
How they sang incantations, wove spells against Pazuzu
who brings contagion, and Lamashtu
who poisons breast milk. They tried to explain,
through clouds of myrrh and cinnamon,
which rites the baffled parents should perform.
But the girl and her old spouse seemed as innocent of danger
as the infant son, or the sheep and mules
they sat among. Gatháspa pressed an amulet of gold
into the father's fist: Keep it no matter what
he insisted in his tongue so that Namtaru
will not take him to the underworld!
They left the parents plenty of resins, oils,
and frankincense to burn, though doubted
they'd comply with instructions.
Each magus thought sadly, turning back to the East:
This poor little king will die. May the gods hide his name from the evil ones.

Sharon Cumberland is a member of St. Paul's and an Associate Professor of English at Seattle University.

Resolutions of an Insomniac:

2008-01-08T08:13:00.000-08:00

by Barb Levy

Resolutions* of an Insomniac
Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves, for we shall never cease to be amused.

Mind and Body:

Finish reading books about procrastination.
Get bifocals.
Get hearing tested.
Get in bed by 10:00.
Lose 10 lbs for good.
Eat more vegetables.
Ride my bike more than I drive.
Obsess less, mute the inner critic, try not to should on myself so often.

Seek more moments of pure non-analytical awareness.

Spirit:

Attend Thursday Eucharist 1x/mo.
Walk the labyrinth.
Light candles at home.
Wear a cross in public.
Keep a Holy Lent.
Finish legal paperwork; plan funeral.

Take and receive O Lord, my entire liberty,
my memory, my understanding my will.
All that I am and have you have given to me.
and I give it all back to you to be disposed of according to your will.
Give me only support of your presence and the joy of your love;
with these I shall be more than rich,
and desire nothing more.

Relationships:

Get in touch with old friends.
Get to know my neighbors, then ask them to keep their dog from barking.
Feed the poor, visit the sick, seek shelter from the wicked.
Get the kid to face his issues.
Turn the other cheek until head spins
Detach from the insanity around me.
Buy noise cancelling headphones.

Tell the truth but tell it slant.

Environment: Personal and Political:

Organize clutter.
Frame artwork.
Transfer cassettes to MP3.
Sort stuff in closets and cabinets.
Work on sewing projects.
Clean garage.
Get out into nature.
Coordinate improved workplace recycling.
Attend peace vigils
Help elect Obama.

When all else fails, laugh and lower my standards.

Life’s too mysterious, don’t take it serious.

*resolution, from Latin resolvere, to loosen, release.

Barb Levy has been at St. Paul’s since about 1991, where she serves as thurifer and webmaster.

Gifts

2007-12-31T08:20:00.000-08:00

by W. Thomas Edwards

I got a free banana once.
Some pointed thing had stuck it in my cart,
And when the lady saw its skin
“No need to pay,” she said, and plopped it in
Amongst potatoes, oats and milk.

I took it home, and cut the end off, there,
Just where the skin was pierced.
I sliced the skin and peeled it back to show
The tender fruit within.

And then I thought how like God’s gifts to us
This gift banana was.

The gift of Faith that comes wrapped up
In different colored skins, and shows us how
The meanest broken things can point the way to God.

The gift of sight that Jesus gave
The man who had not ever seen.
A gift like Faith, not asked for - freely giv’n

The gift of God in human flesh
Wrapped up in trappings simple and serene,
The bread and cup Our Saviour gave us - life sustaining.

But then I thought God’s gifts so often have these little strings.
The “Talents” thing, you know,
Where using it should make it grow.
We cannot take the gifts and bury them unseen to be returned,
But use them must, and in the using to be drawn to union
With the One who gives the gift.

Most often we’re not told why gifts are given us.
Nor are we ever asked “Is this a gift you really want?”
I, for one, am not so sure I really want to be propelled
Through healing’s gift to rush about among the sick and weak,
The poor who have so little but their skins
and that not all too well.

Sometimes I wish I had been called to sit upon a pillar Stylite-like
And make pronouncements morn till night
For all to follow and make right the ills of all mankind.
But I must make the small and steady steps to teach
And in the teaching reach both those I heal
And those whose hands I teach to touch the hurting ones.

See, there’s the string. It’s hidden underneath.
The gift is grand, the string is hooked upon the heart.
And if I try to cast it off, it drags my heart away from me
And pulls me once again into the center place
Where gift, the Giver God and I may be as one.

Tom Edwards came to St Paul’s In 1990 first as a long term visitor and later as part of the community. He sings in St Paul’s Choir and is leader and founder of the Schola Cantorum Sancti Pauli, our Gregorian chant group. Tom is a devotee of the works of Thomas Merton and is an Associate of the Order of the Holy Cross. He is also a practicing physician.

Why I say "Merry Christmas"

2007-12-23T09:14:00.000-08:00

By Robin Allan Jones

I heard on the radio the other day—on NPR, as a matter of fact--that someone went to a school Christmas concert, and all the carols had to do with snowmen, and bells and what not, but utterly no mention of the birth of Jesus, because the school didn’t want to offend anyone by utterance of anything religious—and the very people who might think this was a good idea were wondering why it wasn’t really a very good concert.

Switch your radio to AM talk, and you can hear from the religious right: For them saying “Merry Christmas” or erecting a nativity scene is a political statement. “Jesus is the reason for the season,” they say.

When someone says “Jesus is the reason for the season,” it usually comes out with the kind of condescension that makes you want to go home and take a bath in culture. Generally speaking, however, the best Christmas carols are the ones that do mention or have to do with the birth of Jesus. They were written by accomplished composers, they’ve stood the test of time, and they seem to all contain a needed sense of hope. A concert that’s all winter imagery and jingle-bell rock is like a banquet of Big Macs: All bloat and no nourishment. And gee, I hate to be the one to break it to all the mavens of political correctness, but you can’t completely escape, expunge, or censor religious symbolism. Sleigh bells and silver bells hearken to church bells, and snowmen are ancient religious symbols. They’re pagan symbols, but much of our Christmas imagery is.

On the other hand, the baby Jesus as a political statement? Who needs it?

As Episcopalians, we honor and respect with compassion followers of other faiths and people who don’t profess faith or follow mainstream religion, but in attempting to put that ecumenism into practice, many of us fall in to the trap of uttering “Happy Holidays.” Saying “Happy Holidays” is about like saying “Have a nice day.” Silence would be preferable.

Here’s the good news: Jesus spoke to all humankind. He wasn’t speaking just to Jews, and Christians hadn’t been invented when he was around. Christmas isn’t just for Christians. Christmas is a joyous time for all of us to remember our humanity. It’s a time of special generosity, and for Christians it’s a time of hospitality. Around Christmas, people who otherwise don’t attend church often become curious about what goes on in churches; they become intrigued by the mysteries that have become commonplace for us, and the rich symbolism of Christmas is inviting—even tantalizing. And so Christmas is a time for us as Christians to throw our doors and our hearts open in welcome, not with the intent of conversion but in the spirit of brotherhood and in sharing the joys that we have found in faith.

When we say “Merry Christmas” we sincerely mean “Joy to the World.”

Robin Allan Jones is a stagehand, scenic artist, and theatrical designer in Seattle. A member of St. Paul’s since 2005, he serves the parish as a liturgical minister.

The Advent of a Haiku

2007-12-21T09:13:00.000-08:00

By Lynn Adams

“The most meaningful gifts are made by hand.” –Lynn’s hereditary credo

“What can I make for these dozen loved ones requiring minimum expense and time for maximum charm, starting December 10th?”

– thought I had

Five Simple Elements for an Ornament

Circle
Crosspieces
Panes
Dots
Hanger

Supplies & Equipment

Wire
Felt
Circle cutting aid
Glue gun
Beads
Buttons
Thread
Fabric

Instructions

1. …with great enthusiasm
…
11. … anticipating total delight

“This design could be made in quantity for the native journey giveaway next summer.” – thought I had

Went to Joann’s…

Things I learned in the 1st Prototype:

Rotary cutters will not cut felt
Cutting circles causes back strain
My eyes are just barely capable of stringing seed beeds
Beads on wire do not want to lie straight
Wire does not want to lie in a circle
Pearl doesn’t stick

“The overall effect will probably be ‘funky’.” – thought I had

Instructions re-imagined and re-ordered

Things I learned in the 2nd Prototype

Glue is unruly
Wire is stubborn
Tools are noncompliant
Thread is uncooperative
Beads are picky
Buttons are deceptive
Needles are elusive
I need new glasses

“I’ll be lucky to get six done.” -- thought I had

“I think my first prototype is cute enough to give.” -- another thought I had

Instructions irrelevant

“Maybe I should stick to haiku.” – thought I had

it’s all connected
thunderclap and nematode
you dear one and me

Advent blessing to all!

Lynn Adams is a longtime member of St. Paul's.

Lost and Found

2007-12-17T09:12:00.000-08:00

By Martha Wakenshaw

Lost and Found

I lost my faith, but I'll have to check my back pocket
because I may have stuffed it there absentmindedly and
when no one was looking.

I may have put my faith in a file drawer
to be pulled out later or in the dog's bowl
by accident or the old leather messenger bag
hanging on the wall.

I feel faith trying to find me, tugging
at my sleeve like a small child.

I hear faith crying out in the wilderness in
that wild and wonderful place of unknowing.

I see faith shy and hiding in the shadows
afraid to look up.

I smell faith in the incense thrown all around
like a foggy autumn morning.

I can almost touch faith, brush my cheek
against it's warm body.

Faith plays hide and seek with me
now seeking me, now calling out
"you're it."

Martha Wakenshaw is a member of St. Paul's, a writer, and a psychotherapist. Her website can be found here.

St Paul's Episcopal Church Parish Blog

Ready for Christmas Even

Installation of font and altar December 22, 2011 at St. Paul's

Just in time for Christmas! New font and altar!

Catharine Reid's Ordination 10/19/11!

Wood for New Altar

Sidewalk and entry slab pour

Remembering Father Ralph Carskadden

Building Renovation Continues

Hello everyone

Some building renovation progress highlights for you:

I'll send you more information as it becomes available.

Please continue to pray for those working on the renovation and for St. Paul'sduring this important time of transition and renewal.

In Christ,Melissa+

St. Paul's Building Renovation Update: August 19

Renovation as of August 9, 2011

The Incomplete Restoration

Taking a break

Tribes

The Feast of Pentecost: The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Not Yet Out of the Lenten Wilderness

Turning on the lights

Put Your Hands Together

Don't just do something. Sit there!

The Meaning of Mardi Gras

Feeding the multitudes

Life at Sea Can be Hazardous

Mae West was right

Rejoice, rejoice!

O Emmanuel

O Keystone

O Dayspring

Advent Antiphons

A Christmas Angel

Advent: Purple or Blue?

Thanksgiving

Communing with Kale

Happy Saturday

I remember Mama

The Light of Christ

Yet Even at the Grave…

To Bee or Not To Bee: Why there is a bee on the Paschal Candle this year

Lenten Voices: A Good Friday sort of poem

Lenten Voices: Small Deaths

Lenten Voices: Beyond Salvation and Resurrection

Lenten Voices: On losing the rituals of loss

Lenten Voices: Rejoice and Be Glad Now!

Lenten Voices: Empathy

Lenten Voices: What’s Behind Door #2?

Lenten Voices: Understanding St. Patrick

Lenten Voices: Why Fast? Who Cares?

Lenten Voices: The Last Word

Lenten Voices: Part II. "Because it works"

Lenten Voices: Learning to Love Hypocrisy

Lenten Voices: The Three Temptations

Lenten Voices: An Aspiring Guilty Bystander

Lenten Voices: Lessons of Saint Homer the Glutton

Lenten Voices: Part 1 - He deserved to die

a word from the editor

Lenten Voices: Unplugged

Lenten Voices: Giving Up Lent

Lenten Voices: Q&A - the A-word

Lenten Voices: Music is the Logic of God

Lenten Voices: Recovering the Early Church

Lenten Voices: Shoeboxes

Lenten Voices: I remember sky

Lenten Voices: Happy Jesus Day

Lenten Voices: Self-indulgence By Lenten Observance

Lenten Voices: Stepping out onto a cloud

Lenten Voices: Drowning into Newness

Lenten Blogging Project

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul's from a Jewish Background

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from a Lutheran Background

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from a Roman Catholic Background

Journeys of Faith: Coming to St. Paul’s from an Evangelical Background

bowing quietly

Finding Your Ground In A Strange Land

My Burning Question

Blogging Lectio Divina

The Sighing

In Christ,

Melissa+