Almost Advent

(WARNING: Some readers may think what follows is a rant, and is ridiculously naive and blatantly political. I don't deny their claims.)


Tomorrow in the liturgical Christian Churches, we begin the season of Advent. It is not a way of getting started celebrating Christmas a little early. It is something else entirely. It ties together the comings of God into our lives: the startling and astonishing coming of God into human existence in profound vulnerability as the Child adored by the shepherds, to be sure. But also the coming that we sometimes call the Second Coming, the coming that represents the equally startling and counter-intuitive truth that, in the end, the God of justice, mercy, grace and love wins!

It is this Second Coming that is where our Advent observances begin. In that sense, Advent ties the beginning of each liturgical year to the end of the year before.
We read this year from the Gospel of Matthew, and so we get a "Joseph perspective" on the story of Jesus' birth. We also read during this season, as always, from the Hebrew Bible. And all our readings are from the prophet Isaiah. In each, Isaiah casts a vision of an alternate reality from what his hearers were experiencing. And in each of those visions followers of Jesus have seen his coming expressed as well.

So, in order to get a handle on how I will preach about the Comings of God this Advent, I pulled a wonderful book off my shelf. I’d started it about three years ago, but now is the time for me to read it in its entirety. It’s The Prophetic Imagination by Walter Brueggemann (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001). He writes:

It is the task of prophetic ministry to bring the claims of the tradition and the situation of enculturation into an effective interface (2).

…The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us (3).

Brueggemann writes in this book both about the prophets in the Hebrew Bible and the prophetic elements in Jesus’ life and ministry. He says that the New Thing that God did under Moses’ leadership when liberating the Israelites from Pharaoh is paradigmatically prophetic. God’s radical and absolute freedom always challenges the institutions that kings and emperors put in place in futile attempts to domesticate and control God. In Israel, under King Solomon, God’s vision of justice was co-opted, and in its place there arose Solomon’s vision of a continuing dynasty. To that end, he developed a harem; tax districts; bureaucracy; a standing army; a close court-cult relationship with the Temple--Brueggemann describes them as a religion "in which God and his temple have become part of the royal landscape in which the sovereignty of God is fully subordinated to the purpose of the king" (p.28); and conscripted labor.

The prophet is the one who, in that context, speaks the poetry and sings the songs that allow people to envision an alternate reality. But we can’t even hear until the spell of the dominant culture is broken by the laments of the marginalized folk who know that something is terribly wrong with the way things are now. Out of lament and despair and tears comes, then, God's surprising hope.

About hope, Brueggemann writes:

Hope...is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts. Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk.

So, I got to thinking: what is it that I hope for, long for with intensity, but I'm embarrassed to admit I hope for so much, because it seems impossibly unrealistic? What is it, that when I talk about it to "reasonable and sensible" people, I sense that they think that I've got my head in the clouds and need to quit being such an idealist or such a bleeding-heart liberal?

To be very specific, I hope for a way for my 21 year old daughter, who has Type I diabetes (the kind where your pancreas doesn't make any insulin, and you die if you don't receive insulin via injection or pump), to receive the health care here in the United States, that she needs to stay alive and healthy. She could be on our insurance policy next year if we were going to have insurance ourselves (which we may possibly not have), and if she was in college or otherwise our dependent (she's living on her own and working a minimum wage job without insurance on offer). She has some other disabilities that, despite her high IQ, make her almost unemployable. She's not held a job for more than 3 or 4 months in her life, and she flunked out of college because she refused to avail herself of the assistance she was eligible for under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She's not merely being obstinate: her brain is just wired very differently from the rest of us, and her diabetes, when her blood sugar is too high or too low, also sometimes makes her so exhausted and miserable that she misses more work than a healthy person might. Her insulin, blood glucose testing equipment, and pump supplies would cost us about $500 per month retail. She's been told that, even if she was eligible for medicaid, there would be no coverage for the insulin pump that has made her very brittle diabetes more controllable and has kept her from life-threatening and irreversible organ damage. The provisions of the wimpy, terribly-compromised Health Care Bill that might help (no denial when applying for insurance for pre-existing conditions, coverage on parents' plan for children under age 26) don't come into effect in 2013.

In the dominant culture of Solomon's day, there were quite a few people with significant affluence. But their affluence, their full banquet tables, meant that others went hungry. In our day, the inequality between the richest Americans and the rest of us is greater than at any period since the Gilded Age. It is greater in the USA than in Nicaragua or Honduras, places we sometimes hear disparaged as "Banana Republics." My question then becomes: Who benefits from a system that allows my daughter to fall between the cracks? So many people out there would say (behind my back, if not to my face):

"Well, too bad! She has a pre-existing condition."
"No insurance company should be compelled to lose their competitive edge or fail in their fiduciary responsibilities by being forced to take clients with serious chronic disease."
"It's not MY fault, and MY taxes or access to health care shouldn't be affected by HER problem, or problems of other people like her."
"Don't bring Jesus or justice into this conversation. It's strictly a business decision."
"We don't need to have a nurse-maid society that takes care of people. That is their own responsibility."

How many millions of other people are there out there, who are either being bankrupted or being denied health care because the people of the United States can't see a way to do what the Europeans have done, and make health care available to everyone?

My hope, my deep yearning, is for a day when everybody here in the USA can get the care they need to be as healthy as they can be. When people won't have to decide between making a house or rental payment or paying for their medicine. (And just because my hope is specific to the USA in 2010 doesn't mean that I don't long for all the hungry, the sick, the poor, the imprisoned.. to be made whole and free.)

So what does this have to do with Advent? The coming of God, the fact that God entered our world as a fully-embodied human being, means that we may have hope for a time when justice will prevail. Bodies matter to God. Hungry bellies and sick people and the blind and the lame and the deaf all don't need to have their suffering ignored. Jesus proclaimed that healing was a hallmark of the coming Kingdom of God. The coming of God at the Eschaton, the culmination of all things, doesn't let us off the hook for doing what we can to live justly, to work for justice now. Rather, it allows us to do justice fearlessly, because there are no threats, not even the threat of death, that can shut us up.

Advent is about hope. Ridiculous, enormous hopes, however counter-cultural they are.

Dear Mom and Dad,

It's a cloudy "soft" day here in Orlando, and some rain fell earlier. This is a novel and wonderful thing after 42 sunny days without a drop of rain. It smells different now, more like it did when I first came down to visit Wayne on New Year's Eve last year. It's quite a subtle change, not nearly as dramatic as the coming of autumn in the North. But there it is! Even the Starbucks where I'm sitting has switched to its "holiday theme" cups with red trim and stylized snowflakes.

This is the week of All Saints and All Souls in the liturgical churches, including the Episcopal Church that has been my spiritual home for the last 30 years. This isn't your tradition. But it is the place where I have landed. You gave me a precious gift when you prayed with me, taught me to pray, told me Bible stories, showed me lives that were founded and centered on God. You raised me to trust that God is good, that God loved me more even than you did, that God created this beautiful world for us to explore and learn about, to live in in ways that were loving and generous. What a foundation! I have taken this foundation and carried it into my "new" spiritual home, the Episcopal Church. But it was in the Covenant Church of my girlhood, from Pastor John Wiens that I first was pointed to the Communion of Saints, surrounding us as a "great cloud of witnesses." So I am writing you a letter. It's a little act of pleasure. I loved writing letters to you when we lived far away from each other. It was a way of drawing near to you when I missed you. It was a way of sharing what was going on in my heart.

The last substantive, hand-written letter I received was from our cousin Joy. It was more than a year and a half ago. I have it in front of me, and I owe her a response. So much has happened in our lives in the last couple of years that every time I thought I would write, something big was in flux or changing, and I delayed until there might be some sort of resolution. It was also such an anticipated pleasure to respond to her letter with a hand-written letter of my own, written at leisure, that I waited (in vain!) for a good time to respond. Maybe this weekend???

I began this letter to you, as I usually did, with a description of the weather and the place I am sitting. It situates me concretely in one place, and invites you to imagine yourselves here with me. It invites or evokes communion, one might say. Dad, I remember all the letters you used to write on Sunday afternoons to your brothers and sister. There was lots of talk about weather in the letters from Norquay that you received, and in those you sent. I suppose that's because farmers are so affected by weather and attuned to its subtleties. You can take the man off the farm, but you can't take the farmer out of the man. (I remember a birthday card that said you were a man "out standing in your field"!) You used carbon paper before the days of easy photocopying. Over the years you would occasionally write me, too, more often with a word processor. Your writing got a little bit shaky at the end. Mom, your little letters on smaller pieces of stationery were also precious. Even though we could talk on the phone regularly and easily, there was something about a letter, arriving in an envelope, that lent gravitas and importance to the communication. I miss your letters, perhaps even more than the phone calls. I have a bunch of them in files.

You are now in a place beyond where letters can reach. I am counting, however, on time operating somewhat differently from the perspective of the heavenly realm than it does from my more limited perspective here and now. My prayers to God of love for you continue, and perhaps your prayers to God for me continue,too. After all, the scriptures say that the prayers of the saints rise like incense, and they do not specify whether those saints are in heaven or on earth. There were many days when the children were younger and my life was supremely challenging that your prayers, which I knew you prayed each morning at breakfast for all your children and grandchildren, sustained me.

Now, in my mid-fifties, my life seems--what? Becalmed, perhaps. I am not in the work force. Actually, I loved being the parent at home when the kids were younger. There was much to do and I loved having more time to devote to making meals, keeping the house more organized, being available for the children, etc. It seemed that I was adding value to the family by my contributions. Now, not working a regular "for pay" job, I feel guilty and unproductive. Yet I enjoy the rhythms of my present life: having time for regular exercise, prayer, and meditation; being able to read more widely and deeply, having time to travel to see the grandchildren, being able to make meals and entertain friends more frequently.

So, if you still pray, will you pray for me not to succumb during this time to laziness, passivity, or disorganization? to frittering away this less-structured time that is, in some senses, a gift? Will you pray that I not waste this precious time worrying, but will trust that the right work will come along for me AND that I will devote an appropriate amount of time to looking for that work?

Salmon Cakes

I sent my Kansas cousin Paula a copy of one of Paula Deen's cookbooks, because so often, in my previous parish in Georgia, I'd discover that Paula Deen was the source for the recipes I'd liked the most at a covered dish supper or a luncheon. Of course before I sent the book I had to sneak a peek. And I soon ran to the library to pick up more Paula Deen cookbooks. The one that caught my eye was Paula Deen's The Deen Family Cookbook. A recipe for crab cakes inspired me to do something similar with salmon. Furthermore, I had this new bottle of hot sauce from my friend Carolyn. Called "Dat'l Do-it Datil Pepper Hot Sauce," it is the perfect combination of sweet and hot--plus it's got a very cute picture of a dragon wearing a pink baseball cap on the front! And it is from St. Augustine, Florida.

So this is what I came up with:

Poach 12 oz wild Sockeye salmon. I bought mine frozen and the skin was already off.

Meanwhile, combine:
1 egg
1/2 Vidalia onion, finely chopped
1-2 leafy stalks of celery, finely chopped
1/2 large tomato, finely chopped
3 Tablespoons of Dat'l Do-it
2 Tablespoons Grey Poupon Coarse Harvest Mustard
1 Tablespoon curry powder
Flake the poached salmon into this mixture.
Add enough Italian bread crumbs to bind the mixture so it can be formed into 6 patties.
Fry the patties in oil until nicely browned on each side.
Drain on paper towels.

Serve on a bed of greens with tomato slices, avocado cubes, and sea-salted almonds.
Drizzle with Lemon-soy mayonnaise*. (2 patties per person for a meal, 1 per person for a salad course)

*Stir zest and juice of 1/2 lemon and 2 Tbsp. soy sauce into 1/2 cup mayonnaise.


I bet you could make this recipe into little balls and fry them and serve them with Lemon-soy dipping sauce for an appetizer.

Wayne said "Remember this recipe. It's a keeper!" Between Friday night's pound cake and these salmon cakes, we're going to have to get more serious about exercising.

Moving On

I am at a Starbucks in Calhoun, Georgia.
I am houseless, but not homeless.
I have a check in my car to deposit.
I found a branch of my bank in Dalton, and I will soon get on the road.
I don't yet feel the sense of relief and closure I'd hoped I would feel when I left Jasper. Mostly I feel kind of blank and tired.
I could not have done this without the help of daughter Simone and friend Jo (aka Trixie)--or the vacuum lent me by Claudia and Sandy.

Here is a list of stuff that the moving van did not take:
Blender
Sponge mop
3 flashlights
suitcase in the corner of a closet in which I put:
Anna's 3 Billy Goats Gruff vase that she made when she was 8 years old
HEPA vacuum cleaner bags
2 saucers for espresso cups my mom bought the kids when she was in France
1 Ginsu-type knife that belonged to my dad
1 Apple Mouse child's plate
1 quart of North Dakota honey from the hives on Wayne's family's farm
some mail that should have been forwarded
a sheepskin duster on a long handle

The "flotsam and jetsam" at the end is what always wears me out when I move. We have had many corporate moves in our day, which are great in the sense that you just sit there and watch the packers pack until they say, "We need to put that chair on the truck now, Ma'am." You can move really quickly with a corporate move. But any disorganization that was in your life before you moved is there, waiting on the other end when movers unpack all those boxes, or stack them in the garage or basement.

This time, I had the leisure, for once, to sort, give away, throw out, file, organize as I moved. In a decade we've downsized from 5 kids at home in a 4000+ square foot house, via our house in Jasper, to 1 adult child at home with us in a 1000 square foot apartment. It feels really good. The one thing I could somehow not manage to downsize much was my library. I only managed to take about 4 boxes over to the Thrift Store in Jasper. There is a whole wall of books from home and office in our storage unit in Orlando.

I am grateful to God for the privilege of journeying with the people of Holy Family and the residents of Pickens County for a time. Now it is time to move on. I admit to envying people who have been able to put down permanent roots in one locality. It has not happened in my life. I am still confused when someone asks me where home is.

I am on a (very literal) journey to Ohio, Kansas, Denver, and San Antonio before I return to Orlando. It is wonderful to discover that our friendships seem to be standing the test of time and distance.

Christmas in June??? Marveling even now at the mysteries of the Incarnation

I am on retreat, staying with the Sisters of the Community of St. John Baptist whose convent is in Mendham, New Jersey. It is a cool, breezy summer day.

While I have been here, just since Tuesday, some things have happened in my life that are likely to open many more options to me. It looks like I have a contract on my house, which has been for sale in a pretty sleepy real estate market. I wasn't expecting, though I was surely hoping, to sell so quickly. And Tuesday evening, my husband called, exultant, because the verdict on the jury trial he had endured two years ago had been upheld on appeal.

These both are items of really good news. In thinking again about the way these two events are likely to open up possibilities for me, and in seeking to use my time wisely to discern next steps in my life, I turned again to my hand-written spiritual journal, re-reading entries from the past year.

In the month before Christmas last year, I was struggling mightily to discern what actions I was to take as I sought to be obedient to God in a very difficult time in my parish ministry. On November 30th, I'd written:

"So what am I supposed to learn from all this?

Here's what I'd like to learn:

1. How to talk people down from polarized positions in ways that will enable us to move forward in a better way, with a minimum of shame and embarrassment.

2. How to persevere. I have (in my mind) a history of quitting when things get tough. I'm still ashamed that I had to leave my doctoral program after Paul was born. The truth is, I might have found a way to stay in if it hadn't been for that crazy logic course.

3. 'Know when to hold'em, know when to fold'em.'

4. Know how to be unabashedly myself and to do my best at being me, while enlisting help from people who have interests and talents that fill the gaps where I have weaknesses.

5. Know how to pace myself so that I can have time in my life for things other than parish ministry.

6. Know how to hear and respond to and grow from criticism.

7. Learn how to confront people who are angry or disappointed with me in ways that enable us to hear one another.

Two weeks later I had begun to negotiate a severance package with the Vestry. Three weeks later, according to my journal entry, I was struggling to find a way to preach a Christmas sermon that had some integrity about it, knowing that in my congregation that night would be a fair number of people who were coming just to celebrate Christmas, who weren't part of our normal parish family, and knowing that the great wonder and mystery and Gift of the Incarnation trumped, in any case, our parish's internal political issues. I also knew that, while that was true, it was also true that if the Incarnation didn't speak to the very specific pain that many of us were carrying around--and note I said "speak to it", not "fix it"--then we weren't listening properly.

My emotions were very close to the surface. I'd written: "The Pandora Christmas station has just played 'The Little Drummer Boy,' and it is amazing how that romantic (one might say saccharine) little song made tears come to my eyes. It is very hard to imagine what I will need to say to my congregation. The whole enterprise seems futile. Why do I feel a need to justify myself in the eyes/ears of the people who want to see me resign?"

Re-reading that question made me wonder what I HAD written in my Christmas sermon. As soon as I found it, and read the first line, I remembered. Good News of Great Joy!
I needed a reminder today of the same truth that I preached last Christmas.

Good news of great joy for all the people!

Really, really good news!

The profound kind of joy that transcends circumstances!

For ALL the people,
not just people like me,
not just people who live in my neighborhood,
not just people with whom I agree about politics,
not just people who look like me or who think like me,
or whom I like;
not just people who are rich,
not even just for people who need my help .

Tonight we are here to celebrate the truth that
There is good news
of Great Joy
for All the People!

The Evangelist Luke tells us that
that is what the Angel announced
to some herders of sheep on a hill
outside of a small town in Palestine
about two thousand years ago.

We don’t know their names.
But we know their story.

They were just doing their jobs.
Things were winding down for the night.
They were listening to the barking of a dog on a hillside,
and some out-of-season insects,
and the wind in the grass.
They were looking up into the stars.
They were looking across the hills
to the lights in a few windows
of the stone houses of Bethlehem.
They were telling a few jokes.
The grass and the dirt
and the smoky embers of the fire smelled good.
Their fingers were getting cold.
The sheep were settling down for the night,
chomping clumps of grass.

We know the story so well after hearing it for so many years
that we forget just how shocking it was to the shepherds
to have an angel appear before them.

Luke’s story doesn’t tell us how that angel got there.
Did he just appear at the perimeter of their firelight?
Did he fly in like some sort of shooting star?
Did he walk up and down a path on the ridges of the bare hills? However he got there,
there the angel was with the shepherds,
and the glory of the Lord was there with him,
shining like a light.

The shepherds weren’t ready
for this kind of direct encounter
with the God
in whom they believed in principle,
to whom they prayed
with the prayers their ancestors had taught. But here was this …..angel!

The shepherds did what people have been doing
for thousands of years when they meet up with angels.
They were terrified.

Before the angel could get them to listen,
he had to tell them
what angels always have to tell us mere human beings: “Don’t be afraid!”

Then they could calm down enough to hear the message of
Good News
of Great Joy
to all the people.

Here is what the angel said to the shepherds:

“TO YOU is born this day in the city of David a Savior,
who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be a sign for you:
you will find a child
wrapped in bands of cloth
and lying in a manger.”

Bethlehem was not very big, not very fancy.
But the shepherds never forgot
that it was the birthplace of the most beloved king of Israel. Bethlehem was the city of King David.

Prophets often spoke of God’s intervention
in the lives of the people of Israel,
calling it the coming of a Son of David.
One anointed by God as a king of Israel
was anointed with oil
to signify that God was present
and pouring out his blessing on the one anointed.
That’s what “Messhiach” means in Hebrew.
That’s what “Christos” means in Greek:
God’s Anointed One,
drenched in oil
to point to God’s rich goodness and mercy,
specially singled out,
to lead Israel as a nation
founded on justice
and on compassion for the poor,
the widow,
the orphan,
the slaves,
the prisoners.

Surely the shepherds thought
that such a King would be
a mighty,
wealthy,
noble,
royal figure.

Yet here the Angel says
that the newborn Child
is like the shepherds,
is one of them.
He is poor.
He is transient.
He doesn’t have a home of his own.
He doesn’t even have a bed of his own.

Before this amazing, even bizarre, truth
can even sink in for the shepherds there in the countryside, the angel is not alone.
You know the words of Luke the Evangelist:

Suddenly there was with the angel
a multitude of the heavenly host
praising God and saying
“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

We owe a lot to William Tyndale,
whose 15th century translation
of the Greek New Testament into English
remains largely intact
even in the New Revised Standard Version
of the late 20th Century.
The words have such majesty
and such a familiar cadence
that they lull us into forgetting
how explosive the image is that they present.

This “multitude of the heavenly host”
is a whole heavenly army
of bright and terrifyingly holy beings.
They look,
with their fierce and bright glory,
more ready to slay the wicked
and knock any enemies of God to their knees
than to be praising God
and singing about peace on earth.

A whole heavenly army
is praising God
and singing about peace on earth




-- and entrusting the news
to some nomadic sheep herders on the hills of Judea.

How like God to do the unexpected:
To come into the world as a baby,
totally dependent and powerless.
To depend on uneducated,
naïve,
nomadic peasant shepherds
for the proclamation of this good news.

They came to Bethlehem.
They found a newborn baby
wrapped in rags and lying in a manger.
They met his mother and Joseph.
They saw the tiny, miraculous, new life.

And then they went back to their sheep.

What kind of a crazy scheme was that
for God to come into the world?


Thirty years later,
Jesus had become an itinerant teacher,
preacher,
and healer.
He mentored a dozen disciples, uneducated peasants all.
He said strange, paradoxical things
that attracted crowds
and irritated the supposed movers and shakers
of Jerusalem.
He talked about God’s kingdom and its topsy-turvy values, the same values his mother sang about
when she was pregnant with him.
God’s kingdom is the kingdom
where the hungry finally get enough,
and the rich are sent away empty-handed.
It is the kingdom
where the prisoners are set free,
where the widows and orphans have a home.
Jesus was caught in the currents of Jerusalem,
its religious leaders,
and the occupying Roman governor.
He became the victim of a political assassination,
His broken body was put into a tomb.
But it did not stay there.
On the third day, God raised him to life.

What kind of a crazy religion is that??

It’s not a religion; it’s a way of living.

Here we are in Jasper, Georgia.
From that fragile start, here we are,
two thousand years later,
still intrigued,
still mystified,
still drawn by this story
of the Baby who was God coming to be with us.

Like the Baby’s mother, we ponder.

Like the angels, we sing his praises.

Like the shepherds, we go back home.

There are still all the ordinary responsibilities,
the bills to pay,
the children and elderly family members to tend to,
the houses to clean,
the jobs to go to—or to hunt for.

Yet if you and I, like the shepherds,
have been to the manger
and suspended our cynicism long enough to look,
we will be changed.
We will begin to hope.
We will start to see God’s hand at work
in small and wondrous ways.
We will notice that great joy is welling up in us
even when circumstances could hardly be called joyous.
We will find that God sets us free
to let go of old hurts and disappointments.
We will laugh and sing and dance
for the joy of being loved
by a God whose love is so powerful
that he can risk taking human form
as a tiny and vulnerable baby.
We will delight with the angels
for the joy of serving a God whose goodness and mercy
are so indomitable
that we can risk
loving even those who would wish us harm.

This is the story of Mary and Joseph,
of the Baby in the manger,
of the shepherds,
still dazzled by the glory of the angels,
bending over to see the sleeping child
in the dim light of a lantern
hung on the stone walls
of a stable in Bethlehem.

This is a chapter in God’s love story for us.
It is our story.
It is the story we take into the places
of greatest sorrow
and greatest fear in our own lives.
As we remember and ponder this story,
God begins in us a work of transformation.

This is Good News
of Great Joy
to you and to me, and
to ALL the people!

The Cost of Discipleship

Most mornings I pray the Daily Office of Morning Prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer as it appears online at the website of Mission St. Clare (www.missionstclare). In a sense, it is a lazy way to pray the prayers, because you don't have to bookmark passages in the Bible, or find the psalms and prayers appointed for the day in the prayer book. The selections (where there are options) are made by the editors at Mission St. Clare.

Today as I prayed the Office, the appointed readings included the marvelous Ecclesiastes passages about there being a time for everything. "...a time to speak, a time to remain silent..." In one of those strange and wonderful comings-together of Hebrew Bible, the writings of St. Paul (to the Galatians), and the writings of the Evangelist, Matthew, we have amazing and scary examples of the consequences of speaking. Paul speaks out, in Galatians, about what he perceives as the hypocritical behavior of his fellow apostle, Peter.

Peter had been talking a lot about the freedom of the Gospel. He had had a formative experience early in his apostleship. He'd been napping before dinner one day, and, perhaps under the influence of hunger and good smells wafting up from the kitchen, dreamed that, lowered down from heaven, foods that were ritually unclean and therefore forbidden to an observant Jew were being offered to him. "Rise, Peter, kill and eat!" said a voice from heaven. How could a voice from heaven possibly command him to break the rules that God had commanded in the Torah? Yet, the dream continued, and, folklorically, he was three times offered the food that he would never have considered eating. And a voice came again and said, "You must not call what God has cleansed 'unclean'." While he was trying to figure out what this dream could possibly mean, a couple of emissaries from a God-seeking Gentile, Cornelius, had arrived at Peter's door. It wasn't just about food. It was about table fellowship and all the cultural baggage that goes with it. The story in Acts says that Peter invited Cornelius's emmisaries in and they ate together. Peter "got it," and his behavior there in Joppa and Caesarea showed it. Something he would never have done before Peter now did without hesitation, welcoming into the fellowship of the Body of Christ a whole category of people, Gentiles, who he'd never imagined could become his brothers and sisters in Christ.

It was a time to speak. Peter spoke by words and actions. But it must have cost him something. Not all of his Jewish-Christian friends understood or appreciated what he was up to. When Peter was in Gentile Antioch, he was happy to eat with gentiles. But when Peter's Jewish friends came from Jerusalem, he didn't want to offend them. He suddenly became a lot fussier about keeping Kosher. And Paul, observing that behavior, called it hypocritical. It was Paul's time to speak. Paul spoke out, even though the man whose behavior he was questioning was one of the key leaders of the Church. Paul wanted to make it totally clear that God's grace obliterates distinctions between Jews and Gentiles that would keep them from sharing meals and fellowship. It was a time to speak. If Paul hadn't spoken, the power of the Gospel would have been compromised.

Then, jumping back in time to the days of the earthly ministry of Jesus, we read in the Gospel of Matthew today the grisly story of the beheading of John the Baptist. John was a courageous prophet, and he sensed that it was time to speak against the hypocrisy of the regime of Herod. Herod was essentially a puppet king of the Roman Empire. He was a Jew, but his behavior was not righteous. His court was famous for excess and depravity. What Herod wanted, Herod took. Even his brother's wife Herodias. For John, this was a time to speak. If he hadn't spoken, if he had remained silent, he would have tacitly been giving approval to Herod's total disregard for Torah. It cost John. He was put in prison. Then, in this reading today, we have the story of how he died. It is a perfect example of wretched Herodian excess, wrong on so many levels. Beyond the horrific killing of this righteous man, what would it do to that young girl to have allowed her to witness that terrible violence, to have some kind of indelible link between violence and young sexuality forged in her psyche?

A time to speak, a time to remain silent...

Then, as the Mission St. Clare editors publish Morning Prayer, what follows is the canticle known as the Song of Zechariah. It is what Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist sings, after the birth of his son, and practically the first words he speaks since nine months earlier he met the angel who announced that he would have a son. The canticle is full of hope and joy.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel;
he has come to his people and set them free.
He has raised up for us a mighty savior,
born of the house of his servant David.
Through his holy prophets he promised of old,
that he would save us from our enemies,
from the hands of all who hate us.
He promised to show mercy to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant.
This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham,
to set us free from the hands of our enemies,
Free to worship him without fear,
holy and righteous in his sight all the days of our life.
You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High,
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his way,
To give his people knowledge of salvation
by the forgiveness of their sins.
In the tender compassion of our God
the dawn from on high shall break upon us,
To shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,
and to guide our feet into the way of peace."

The contrast between the joy of this Canticle and the tragedy of John's death is indeed jarring. The amazing thing about the Christian faith is that the Canticle of Zechariah expresses our hope, and events like the death of the man who had been the little baby held in Zechariah's loving arms are still the result of the clash between the radical liberty of the Kingdom of Heaven and the fearful "bread and circus" of Rome, the fearful "get enough for me" of our day.

We who follow Jesus long for Paradise--and in our eucharistic fellowship we get tiny hints of that deep and lasting joy and peace.

Comfort Food

My 19 year old son is sick. Paul is a guy who loves motors and motorcycles and dirt bikes. For the first time in his life he is attending a school that he loves. The Motorcycle Mechanics' Institute schedules classes so people with full time jobs can study at night. He attends class from about 6pm to 11:30. That's when his brain works the best. The classes are taught in short (2-3 week) segments. There is lots of hands-on lab work on real motorcycle engines. The work is practical and the theory parts of the courses are closely tied to real-time application. Paul is usually in his element. But this week he's come home dragging from his job at Sears repairing small engines for yard machines. His throat is so sore that he doesn't want to swallow, his nose is plugged, his ears have fluid in them. Finally this afternoon(Friday) he cried "Uncle" and had us schedule him in for a doctor appointment at the clinic at a nearby hospital where you get seen on time and the front office staff are as good and competent at their work as the physicians are at theirs. Paul was so tired that I drove him. He was seen promptly, and tested negative for strep. The doctor wants him to get blood drawn tomorrow to see if he's got mononucleosis. I asked him if he'd mentioned to his doctor that he left home soon after 6 am and returned from class at night just before midnight, with an hour to take a quick nap between work and school. That might explain the exhaustion. Hmmm. (Paul failed to mention it.)

I can hardly begin to say how nice it was to be able to step in and take care of him without having to juggle work responsibilities. When we got home, he climbed into bed and we didn't see him for about 3 hours. I bought his nasal spray, throat lozenges, applesauce, ice cream, popsicles, and ingredients to make him things that would slide smoothly down the throat.

Like this custard that I improvised, that is perhaps the best custard I have ever made.

Ghirardelli White Chocolate Custard

3 1/3 cups milk
2/3 cup heavy cream (nothing sacred about these proportions, but I had 1% milk and wanted something richer)
1 pkg. Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

3 eggs
2/3 c sugar

Heat first 5 ingredients in a heavy saucepan, whisking vigorously as the white chocolate chips melt.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs vigorously with a whisk. Add the sugar and beat some more.

When the milk mixture is just beginning to boil, turn the heat way down (gas stove) or off (electric stove).

Add the egg-and-sugar mixture in a thin stream, whisking continually. Add heat VERY GENTLY if by now the custard is not coating a spoon and thickening. Quit while you're ahead.

Pour into dish, and cover surface directly with parchment paper or plastic wrap to prevent development of a "skin."

Spoon over fresh sliced strawberries or raspberries.

Paul almost didn't wake up in time to get any because I had some ("just to see if it was okay") and Wayne had two helpings. It is VERY sweet, and really needs some fairly tart fruit for the contrast. When Paul did wake up, he thanked us for getting "all that stuff" for him. I hope he feels better soon, but I admit to having had fun mothering him. Maybe 48 hours of rest will help.