Mary Oliver Knows...

...she knows what I'm talking about in my last posts:

The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

A quality of attention

I was thinking about listening hearts, and young people longing to know how to listen to, and to know God, when I heard this story on NPR (its originally from the Washington Post): Violin virtuoso Joshua Bell plays his violin in the subway station for change, and no one stops, no one recognizes him, no one realizes they are hearing a world class performance live, on their commute. It's worth listening to the story.

It's not surprising to me, although some of the organizers of this scenario were disturbed this could happen. What is interesting is their reflections on beauty and the sublime inspired by the occasion. It seems that people often fail to notice beauty and the sublime when they aren't expecting it. When our brains are full of what we have to do when we get to the office, for example.

This gave me a fresh understanding of two things:


1) This is what we are doing in worship. We are carving out a chunk of the week to say now is when I will pay attention to the divine, the sublime. In a world that makes so many demands on my attention, I want to fully devote myself in this hour or so to paying attention to God.

Amen, I can get behind that.

2) And yet, I am interested in paying attention, as much as possible and all the time. With listening ears and listening eyes that make a listening heart, I want to be awake to what God is doing in the whole world, and not just inside the Epiphany sanctuary. Working with kids is a great way to learn how to do this.

And a listening heart of this sort becomes more tolerant of when the rest of the world breaks into the sanctuary, when a child cries, a microphone doesn't work. Because the rest of the world is holy too.

Listening Hearts

This year, in the season of prepartion for easter, many members of Epiphany have been studying the book “Listening Hearts.” A mother shared with me that the other day she was in the church with her 5 year old Jack dropping off some food, when this groups was setting up. Jack asked someone “What are all these chairs in a circle for?” And someone from the listening hearts groups told him “We are learning to listen to God.” Jack was captivated—he wanted to learn how to listen to God too. He asked “Can kids come?”

About a week earlier, one of the Junior Seekers came back after our meeting in tears, because she was feeling like she couldn't feel God is there with her anymore. I talked to this young woman about how paying attention to God is something we have to learn, it doesn't come easily or naturally to many of us. I suggested that its something we have to practice, and gave her examples of how we practice this at youth group. We practice centering prayer and silence as ways of tuning in to God around us, and also the Buddhist practice of loving-kindness, a way of becoming aware of [I would say God's] love through the love we receive from others, and thereby becoming more loving for others. We also talked about how God might be manifest to us in normal things in daily life-- like this young woman's sister, or a really beautiful thing in nature.

This young woman, whose family is not religious, found her way to Epiphany because of her innate spirituality-- God would not let go of her. Now its our job to nourish that spirituality, that awareness of God's presence and love that makes us agents of God's transformation in the world. Both she and Jack remind me that human beings are born with that intimacy with God, and that church should be a place where intimacy with God is developed as a skill to last a lifetime.

How wonderful is it that a group of people at Epiphany are learning to develop listening hearts. May we have ears that hear, eyes that see, the holy and living God. And hearts that are full of that love and spreading throughout the world!

God has a sense of humor!

How cool is this: A cat who rides the bus.

An Easter Weed

The Weed

by Elizabeth Bishop

I dreamed that dead, and meditating,I lay upon a grave, or bed,(at least, some cold and close-built bower).

In the cold heart, its final thought stood frozen, drawn immense and clear, stiff and idle as I was there;and we remained unchanged together for a year, a minute, an hour.

Suddenly there was a motion, as startling, there, to every sense as an explosion.

Then it dropped to insistent, cautious creeping in the region of the heart, prodding me from desperate sleep.I raised my head.

A slight young weed had pushed up through the heart and its green head was nodding on the breast.(All this was in the dark.)

It grew an inch like a blade of grass; next, one leaf shot out of its sidea twisting, waving flag, and then two leaves moved like a semaphore.

The stem grew thick.

The nervous roots reached to each side; the graceful head changed its position mysteriously, since there was neither sun nor moon to catch its young attention.

The rooted heart began to change(not beat) and then it split apart and from it broke a flood of water.

Two rivers glanced off from the sides,one to the right, one to the left,two rushing, half-clear streams,(the ribs made of them two cascades)which assuredly, smooth as glass,went off through the fine black grains of earth.

The weed was almost swept away; it struggled with its leaves, lifting them fringed with heavy drops.

A few drops fell upon my face and in my eyes, so I could see (or, in that black place, thought I saw)that each drop contained a light,a small, illuminated scene; the weed-deflected stream was made itself of racing images.(As if a river should carry all the scenes that it had once reflected shut in its waters, and not floatingon momentary surfaces.)

The weed stood in the severed heart."What are you doing there?" I asked.

It lifted its head all dripping wet(with my own thoughts?) and answered then: "I grow," it said,"but to divide your heart again."

(Elizabeth Bishop: The Complete Poems, 1927-1979. Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1984.)

The Waters of Baptism & New Life

At the Easter vigil this Saturday we will baptize a teenager and her father-- I was thinking about all the imagery of Water...the Red Sea, the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan, and also the images of Good Friday, of Christ's passion. In the baptism prayers, we describe baptism as a dying with Christ and rising to new life.

Last week three people very close to me and my husband gave birth. Now we have a nephew, a new cousin, and an almost-nephew.

On the way home last night I heard this amazing radio documentary of women talking about their experience of giving birth. How it's dangerous AND natural, pleasurable AND painful. I know all this goes together with what Christians say about death and life, dying and rising in the waters of baptism, but I haven't assembled the pieces yet. Let me know your ideas! Here is a description of the documentary:

BIRTH is a one-hour public radio and audio documentary about the practices and perceptions of birth in America.

Starting with early perceptions, we move through the process of birth beginning before labor, continuing during labor, and following the actual event. With a multiplicity of voices woven with sound we examine the process of birth from an emotional, physical and philosophical perspective.

As we move back and forth through time and from person to person, we discover how stories from our lives, history, media, and the medical institution enter into the culmination of the actual birthing process.

Birth is a rite of passage through which all human beings pass. Is it the same as it ever was? Why do some women feel deeply empowered by their birth experiences and others feel stripped of their motherhood? Where do our expectations about how we give birth come from, and how do they play out when we approach the event? What is the baby’s experience? And what about the father’s role?

Turn on the television or watch a movie and you're likely to see birth portrayed as an emergency medical procedure. Is this a true depiction of what happens? Perhaps, and yet there are many ways in which to approach the experience. Above all else, we are biologically predisposed to be interested in this topic. Quite simply, when it comes to birth everyone can relate.

Through the Red Sea brought at last

Last week at Junior High youth group, the middle schoolers continued to think about how to present the story of the Exodus to the congregation at the Easter Vigil. I highly recommend attending if you can (7pm, Sat April 7 @ Epiphany).

It seemed that in reading and thinking about that story for a month, the youth formed a deep understanding about God's continuing work of liberation in the world. They suggested we include pictures from the civil rights movement, including MLK Jr, the Holocaust, the South African struggle for freedom, the underground railroad. This is the kind of stuff that makes a priest and youth minister proud! I love my job ...

Keiskamma Altarpiece from South Africa.

When Bishop Marc blessed the anointing oil at Grace Cathedral yesterday, I was astounded by this beautiful altarpiece as it continued to unfold during the prayers. My breath was taken away-- the colors and stitching gave me a taste of the reign of God. And the pictures in the middle reminded me about the personal nature of that kindgom, the unfolding lesson of my new friendships in South Africa.

Read more on the Diocesan website.

South Africa Sermon

Here is my sermon reflecting more on my trip to South Africa.