light. chalk. blessing.

One of the books in the reference section of my home library sits with a broken spine and a bulge in the center of the book from something that’s been stuck in-between the pages and left for sometime.

I use this book infrequently, as its title may suggest:

The book is The Book of Occasional Services and the lump in my copy is a piece of chalk, stuck in the leaves at page 47.

The service that I’ve been following in this book since the early ‘90s is the "Blessing in Homes at Epiphany” and the chalk, in our house, is an integral part of the rite as we perform it.

At our house, we've combined the Episcopal rite of the Epiphany house blessing with the ritual of Chalking the Door in which the horizontal frame above the door is inscribed with the letters C+ M+ B with  the date of the year surrounding the letters. This year it will look like this:  20 C+ M+ B 17.   The letters C, M, and B come from the traditional (9th century) names for the three kings, or Magi: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Another idea is that the letters also signify Christus Mansionem Benedicat, which means "May Christ bless this dwelling."

Years ago, when we first started this, I gathered our children around me on the day of Epiphany (that's today, by the way, January 6)  and had them read, as best they could, the Collects and the Magnificat (the assigned canticle for this rite.)  And then they grew… and became less interested in wading through a bunch of prayers before getting to the good part of defiling the house with chalk. (This, from a mother who refused to let them crayon on the walls or put stickers on the wallpaper!)

There were a few years when we breezed through the Lord’s Prayer and got to the fun stuff.

And then there was the year when I stood alone on a dreary January afternoon and chalked it on my own, praying not just a blessing on the house but on all those who lived within who, at the moment, were scattered and chasing their own Epiphany dreams.

Any ritual that brings our faith traditions alive in the home is special to me.

I remember the twinge of jealousy that I felt when our youngest returned on Saturday morning after a Friday night sleepover- she came through the door murmuring the Shabbat blessing that they had said the night before at her friend Emma’s house:

 Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam…

(Blessed are you, Lord, our God, sovereign of the universe)

asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu

(Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us)

l'had'lik neir shel Shabbat. Amein

(to light the lights of Shabbat. Amen)

I wished for that kind of home-faith-tradition… but even in a religiously oriented house like ours, the best that we could do was a grace at dinner time and an occasional verse of “Away in the Manger” during tucking-in-time, a tradition started by my mother when I was the one being tucked in.

I love Epiphany.

It is one of the principal feast days of the year but, for a festival that is all about light, it tends to stand in the shadow of its Merry cousin, Christmas.

By the time Epiphany rolls around, most folks have taken their trees down (we often left ours up until the 9^th so as to celebrate my stepfather’s birthday on the 8^th with holiday decorations still in place) and, even for those hearty folks who keep the party going for the whole 12 Days of Christmas, by Epiphany, there is often a collective sigh and an attitude of “let’s get back to it.”  Back to work. Back to school. Back to the treadmill.

Not I.

I like to imagine the steady shining of the star that brought the Magi, persistently, on their long trek to the house of Mary, Joseph and (by then) the toddler Jesus.  I like to imagine the sustained excitement and curiosity that kept them going on their long journey until, at last, they saw “it”-  The Savior- for themselves and were brought to their knees.

I like to think about Jesus, later in his life, standing knee-deep in the Jordan, submitting to the ritual of his cousin John, accepting the Baptism of Repentance, and the sudden, shining light streaming through the parted clouds …and the Dove… and the Voice.  Scripture Scholar John Dominic Crossan, says that the Early Church found Jesus’ baptism to be an “acute embarrassment” for its homeliness (mud, water, the humility of the Son of God)… but I like to wrest my gaze from the muddy water and look, instead, towards the  sanctifying light breaking through the clouds. It is a moment of manifested glory.

And the third story that we connect to Epiphany is the changing of Water into Wine at the Feast of Cana.  This, Jesus’ “first miracle, ” is a good one, alright,  and as the water blushes into wine, we can see Jesus’ ministry beginning to open up and ripen and make his holiness manifest to all those around him.

Epiphany-  it’s about light.  And, as I see it, it is about light dawning.  About our realization of who Jesus is, dawning, developing, becoming brighter and brighter, as the season wears on and as we become closer and closer to this God-become-Man, Jesus.

So, get out the chalk.

Read some of the prayers-  or none of the prayers-  but mark up the door good.

Tell God that “this house (and all in it) be blessed for this year.”

Bless us enough, God,  to see the light of Christ in all that enter our doors.

Bless us enough, God,  to find Jesus when we pass through the door and enter the big, busy world.

Keep us focused on the light and the message of peace and justice and love that extends to us in its heavenly rays.

#

 P.S. There are lots of good house blessing ceremonies and rituals for Epiphany that you can perform in your own home, asking God’s blessing on the place where you dwell.

Here’s a web address for a Chalking of the Doors rite that I like from Bishop Kirk Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona:http://www.azdiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3163149  

feast of the nativity

Diocesan offices are closed beginning today,

 Dec. 23 through Tuesday, Jan.3.

Best wishes and blessings for a wonderful Christmas and a Joyous New Year celebration

Compass Points, the blog, will be back on Friday Jan. 6.

two dozen rules of Christmas (at my house)

1. Always a blue spruce

2. Colored lights on the tree
3. Dad’s aluminum hand-made angel on the top

4. White lights on the house

5. Neighborhood pajama rides to see the lights

6. King’s College Lessons and Carols on the kitchen radio on 12.24

7. Eggnog in ruby red glassware while trimming the tree on Christmas Eve

8. Cookies for Santa on the hearth

9. No going downstairs until Dad has shaved and dressed and Mom has had her coffee.

(my childhood)

10. No looking in the living room until we’ve all had breakfast

11. Grapefruit, sour cream coffee cake, sausage and eggs at Christmas breakfast

12. Stockings may be opened at the breakfast table

13. Off to quiet Church as a family on Christmas morning

14. Someone plays “Santa” and distributes the gifts in an orderly fashion

15. One gift opened at a time

16. Recycle boxes, string, brown wrapping paper

17. Someone keeps a list of gifts for the purpose of writing thank you notes

18. Creamed herring and pate
19. A rib roast, Yorkshire pudding and currant jelly

20. Brussels sprouts, chestnuts and cream

21. A Christmas pudding, with hard sauce
22. An afternoon brisk walk

23. No kings in the crèche until Epiphany

24. The tree remains until Epiphany

An embarrassment of riches, as I reflect.

These days, it’s different.

Few rules remain.

And there is no snow in California.

Someone else is making the rules.

And I am glad.

smart or not?

                                       (Credit: PixelEmbargo via iStock/Salon)



Why is it that everything that is good... becomes bad, after a while?

Why is it that, sometime, a product, idea or movement that begins as a novelty, offering an innovative and exciting new way to do things, becomes the enemy, after a time?

Why is the line between what’s good for us and what’s bad for us so... slippery?

In the world of nutrition, think of the roller coaster, for example, that dietary fat has been on for a while:  good fats, bad fats.  Yes, butter. No, butter.  Coconut oil in coffee.  Avocado toast.  Deep fried Twinkies.  Which is it?  Is good fat going to save us?  Are deep fried county fair treats going to kill us? (Well, actually, on that last one, yes.)

  What I am on about, today, is the shifting cultural tide on the use of smart phones-  the mini-computers that we carry around with us that give us access to everyone we know and all of the information that we need, whenever we want it, at the tapping of a touchpad.

I read an article this week that described the effect of the smartphone on  (1) our ability to relate, one-to-another as social beings;  (2) on the expectation that we have, now, of instant-gratification and our growing inability to sit in the place of not-knowing; and (3)  the shortening of our attention spans.  These are just three of the detrimental effects of regular smart phone use.  I have experienced all three:

1. I notice that when I am in a public place waiting in line,  like the post-office or the grocery store, my tendency is to pull out my cell phone and catch up on my email.  I used to spend that time just observing others, sometimes talking with others in line or (best of all) making eye contact with the toddler, if I was lucky enough to have one in the line in front of or behind me.  I used to have a spiritual practice in which I would study the folks in line with me and try to see them as Christ in our midst.  Now, I see how many emails have piled up in the time that I’ve been doing my grocery shopping.  Mostly, I just look to catch up, but sometimes, I’ll even type a quick response (often with plenty of typos and autocorrect errors) and... because of this multitasking, I might not even recall, later, the details of that e-exchange.

2. My husband and I spend a lot of our weekend time on the road.  Pennsylvania is a big place and my Sunday visitations often find us in the car for a few hours at a time early on Sunday  morning, or even, heading out on Saturday afternoon, to hole up in a hotel not too far from the next morning’s visitation site.  As we drive, we talk-  about all sorts of things under the sun.  Because we are new to Pennsylvania, we see new things all the time:  watercourses, land masses, Amish buggies, coal mines, unharvested corn still standing in fields way past what we thought was harvest- time, giant metal silos, trail markers, museums, factories, etc.  Rather than note these new things and wonder about them, together, one of us will say, “I wonder what that is all about...” and the other of us dives onto our phone (usually me) to gather the wisdom of our friend Siri and her cousin Wikipedia, which reveals all, leaving no doubt in our mind, that there is an answer for everything.  We’ve learned a lot on these drives, but sometimes I am called back to that central question that we use in Godly Play, in which the storyteller says, “I wonder...” and the children engage their imaginations and their hearts in discovering God’s truth for themselves.  Sometimes, wondering and imagining is a good thing and the textbook answer is less helpful, particularly, from a spiritual perspective. Do we really need to know the answer to everything?

3.  How long can you sit still?  I’ve never been very good at sitting still, but with a smart phone, I’ve noticed my attention span is decreasing due to cultural shifts in the way that information is offered to us:  tweets with limited characters, instagram pictures that deliver one-image ideas, news flashes and notifications that run across my screen like a ticker tape, giving me just the surface story of what’s really going on.  It’s tempting to think that we get complete information in these tiny bites and to allow ourselves to be satisfied.  But there’s always more, and we are losing the cognitive ability to sit and dig deeper, to find the complete, whole, round truth.  I’ve been trying to re-train my brain by reading books.  Remember them?  Hard copy, hold-in-your-hand books.  Reading whole books again is a good practice that has stretched out my shrinking attention span.


Now, we know that nothing is all bad.  Or good, usually.

The best answer is usually in the middle.  The Benedictine ideal of balance.  The Anglican ethos of both/and.

I won’t give up my smart phone.  It is too valuable a resource for me.  But I might try to leave it in my pocket more often-  to engage the toddler in some peek-a-boo in the long grocery line.  I might allow myself to spend more time down the rabbit hole of imagination instead of allowing wonder to drive me to an instant answer and, yes, I’m going to keep lugging books around with me. Who doesn’t love the heft of a weighty tome and the world of ideas in between the front and back covers?

Here’s a link to the article that got me going:

https://theamericanscholar.org/saving-the-self-in-the-age-of-the-selfie/#

forks, spoons and knives together.

Once upon a time, my husband and I went to a dinner party at the home of a new friend.

We were excited that we'd been invited-  our host was someone new to our church and we really liked him.  He was a bachelor, living in a quaint cottage (an old carriage house, I remember) on the edge of town and, from the handful of interactions we'd had with him, he seemed really smart and really fun. We looked forward to the party with great anticipation.

On the evening of the party, we all arrived with various dishes in hand.  The cottage was just perfect-  cozy with deep couches, a small fireplace in the corner, exposed beams and brick, a long dining table laid with a simple linen cloth the color of cream, broad floorboards and intriguing pieces of art- abstract paintings and a few pieces of sculpture- placed here and there.  The conversation was easy, the combination of guests just perfect, and the different offerings of victuals  that had been brought along smelled delicious.  I don't remember what I brought to share, but I know that it needed a serving spoon.

The host motioned to the single drawer in the tiny kitchen.  

"You can find a spoon in there, " he said, and nodded by lifting his chin in the direction of the drawer.

I crossed the room and opened the drawer.

It looked just the like picture, above.

One jumbled, jangled, mess of silverware.

I dug through and found a serving spoon.

So what. Hardly a mic drop, right?

The party was lovely, we stayed until all hours of the night, singing and talking and eating and having fun.  We made new friends.

But ten years hence, I can still see that jumbled drawer of silverware in my head.

Now.

If you've ever been to my house, you know that housekeeping is not my gift.

I married someone, thank God, who enjoys cleaning and who learned from his mom how to do domestic chores with  great proficiency.

After more than three decades of married life, we have a good system worked out where I cook and he cleans.  I straighten things up (pens and pencils in the mug on the counter, magazines in the basket on the coffee table, shoes paired and lined up near the door, sofa pillows plumped and set upright, against the back of the sofa,) and he does the deep cleaning- floor washing, vacuuming, hands-and-knees with a spray bottle on the bathroom floor.  We get it done.  But most important for me is that  there is a certain order to things.  Now-   my own silverware defies obsessively neat nesting, but the pieces  mostly cooperate and lie in their appropriate column of the red Rubbermaid divider that keeps order in the drawer.

Some of us crave order and organization.  We function best when the little details are ironed out, order is evident and there is some symmetry to the bits and pieces of our lives.

Others of us prefer an unharnessed environment and are more productive and creative when freed from the strictures of organization.

As a leader, I feel compelled to offer both to those whom I serve.

In a couple of days, we will be meeting as the newly expanded Council of Trustees in our diocese.

Changes to our canons at our fall convention increased the size of this group by three members and gave vote to another seven members who, previously, had not had the privilege of voting and, consequently, were not in the habit of attending each meeting.  There has been some small amount of concern that this group, in its larger size, might be difficult to manage or at risk of being unproductive.  I look forward to helping this group understand the organization of its body, offering new guidelines for participation, creating clean lines of accountability and inviting a process of orientation so that each person has a grasp of their place and role.  We need this body to function well- for the sake of our diocese and for the sake of the mission of God.

I also hope to leave room in the structure of our organization to allow for creativity, the breath of God's Holy Spirit, for laughter and joyfulness and for building relationships.  Following the theme of our diocese for this year, "Know Your Story, Live it Boldly," we will be spending time reflecting God's Holy Word and connecting stories from our own lives to the stories of salvation.  We will be generous in the  time needed to build relationships,  listening to each other and making space for the spark of new life and growth in God.

I wonder, then, how it is with you?

This season of Advent can be a time of ordering our lives in new ways; for some, it is a letting down or letting go of habits, patterns or structures. (I practice contemplative prayer in this season which is so different than the regular pattern of the Daily Office that I normally read in its ordered form) and for others, it is a time to take on new patterns, rules or gentle guidelines to lead us to a more holy life.

Some of us practice Advent devotions that call for a different deed each day, some participate by reading a new spiritual book, others are intentional about keeping a journal or lighting a candle, night by night, to mark the days in an ordered fashion as we wait, hoping for the coming of Christ.

Which is it for you?  And what does your soul need.... this year?  In this moment?

Encouragement, from here, to do something different... to try on a new practice.  Heck, go and dump out your silverware into the bottom of the drawer... and dare to live in a new way, as, together, we wait in the advent of our Lord.

on the road again.... finding quiet with clergy

a vlog for this week’s entry... filmed in my car (while parked).

Compass Points: Mapping the Way will be on hiatus next week as we celebrate Thanksgiving.

See you in Advent!

And now, for something completely different (sort of).

The election of our new President has been forefront in our minds in these recent days. For those who had been waiting for Tuesday to come and for the campaigning, the rancor, and the vitriol to end, there’s been, perhaps, some disappointment as instead, there has been a new wave of violence and unrest through public protests, incidents in schools, and social media blowing up with every individual on Facebook offering their own response to the election results (including me). There are those who are feeling very vulnerable, disconnected from their communities, fearful and sad.  And, safe to say, there are those who are rejoicing that their candidate prevailed and that it is time to get on with reforming the country.  

My work is not primarily in the political realm, though the things that I care about- and, more importantly, that Jesus cares about- bring me there, by virtue of my office.  As I said in my Facebook post on Wednesday morning:

And so this morning, our call as Christians to participate in God’s mission has not changed: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the poor. Reach out to the margins and welcome in the stranger, lift up the downtrodden, make free the oppressed. This includes women, LGBTQI brothers and sisters, Muslims, refugees and all those subject to the sin of racism. Pray for peace, strive to end gun violence, bind up the wounds of those who ache. Love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what matters.

As the leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, I am committed to caring deeply for the marginalized and to work to empower others in our diocese to care, in the name of Jesus for the least of these.  This is work that started, for me, more than a year ago in this place and continues no matter who is sitting behind the desk in the Oval Office.

And so.  Let me tell you what I did on Monday.

On Monday, the day before the election, when the nation seemed to be about as tense as a two-inch rubber band stretched to ten feet, I attended the LARC Day of Dialogue. LARC stands for Lutheran, Anglican and Roman Catholics in our Commonwealth who have come together in Covenant Agreement.  The LARC agreement was signed in 1993 to commemorate a movement for “spiritual understanding, cooperation and unity among Christians and their churches. Four local church bodies signed the document with a goal of more visible Christian unity in Central Pennsylvania. The terms of the covenant included prayer said for the other denominations during worship services; joint retreats for clergy and parish leadership; pulpit exchanges in non- Eucharistic liturgies; joint efforts for evangelization and social justice concerns and study of the common traditions of the churches.”(from a 2007 press release issued by the Archdiocese of Harrisburg )

These days, the LARC action in Harrisburg has lagged some, but the LARC Day of Dialogue remains of some interest.    On Monday, the topic was Creation Care.  Our guest speaker was Mrs. Stephanie Cleary of the Archdiocese of Vermont.  The title of her lecture and discussion was “Rooted in Common Ground.”

She spoke eloquently, sharing a recent paper that she had written responding to the Pope Francis’ second encyclical Laudato Si (trans. “Praise be to You”) : On Care for Our Common Home which was released on 24 May, 2015.  Stephanie lifted salient parts of the text to share with us, discussing Creation Care, Climate Change and our call to participate in healing the earth weaving together the areas of Cosmology (our beliefs about Creation), Anthropology (our beliefs about humankind), and Christology (our beliefs about Jesus Christ).  She talked about the fallout of global warming and climate change and how those who contribute most to the problem (that’s us) are the ones least affected.  We saw a video of an island culture whose entire cluster of islands is being compromised and their subsequent immigration to New Zealand where they face the eventual loss of their cultural identity altogether. See http://blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/climate-change-and-the-migration-fallout for an excellent article on the topic.

The same video showed the loss of land mass in Louisiana and the effect on the people there.  We learned about “Differentiated Responsibility” in which those with more resources must lead the change to effect healing.  Stephanie quoted Roman Catholic Eco-theologian Elizabeth Johnson who writes, “Ecological integrity and socioeconomic justice intertwine in a tight embrace.”

It was a stimulating lecture which invited us, then, to share in small groups about our own efforts as Christians- corporately and individually- in Eco-Justice.

I want to know who, in our diocese, is working in the area of Environmental Justice.

This is an area which needs our efforts of education, advocacy and action. 

In a Commonwealth marked by such striking physical beauty and natural resources, who, among us, is working with an eye towards justice and the Common Good?  Who, among us, has grasped the idea of Differentiated Responsibility  and is working to heal our earth-  not just for our own selves, but for people far away whose very homes are disappearing, being engulfed by the sea?

Fill me in if you’re on this already.

Let me know if you want to start something.  We have a Council of Trustees and a Social Justice committee who want to support your efforts.

I am proud of the work that we do, as Episcopalians and as Christians in this place to bring healing and reconciliation in so many ways.  There is no end to the work before us- until the Last Day- when we will all be redeemed.  Until then, we are led by Jesus into the vineyard to do the work, into our churches to be nourished, nurtured and fed, and always, to give praise to our great Creator who fashioned this amazing place that we call home.