Lowell's Blog

Readings for the Next Two Weeks

2012-01-23T06:49:00.000-08:00

I’ll be away from Morning Reflections for a couple of weeks while visiting my new grandson. Here are the upcoming readings for the Daily Office.

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

Ordination of Florence Li Tim-Oi, First Woman Priest in the Anglican Communion, 1944

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)

Psalms 45 (morning) 47, 48 (evening)

Genesis 15:1-11, 17-21

Hebrews 9:1-14

John 5:1-18

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Wednesday, January 25, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

Conversion of Saint Paul the Apostle

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)

EITHER the readings for Wednesday of 3 Epiphany, p. 945

Psalms 119:49-72 (morning) 49, [53] (evening)

Genesis 16:1-14

Hebrews 9:15-28

John 5:19-29

OR the readings for the Conversion of St. Paul, p. 996

Morning Prayer: Psalm 19, Isaiah 45:18-25, Philippians 3: 4b-11

Evening Prayer: Psalm 119:89-112, Ecclesiasticus 39:1-10, Acts 9:1-22

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Thursday, January 26, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

Timothy, Titus, and Silas, Companions of Saint Paul

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)

Psalms 50 (morning) [59, 60] or 118 (evening)

Genesis 16:15 – 17:14

Hebrews 10:1-10

John 5:30-47

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Friday, January 27, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

Lydia, Dorcas, and Phoebe

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)

Psalms 40, 54 (morning) 51 (evening)

Genesis 17:15-27

Hebrews 10:11-25

John 6:1-15

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Tuesday, January 24, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two

Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)

Psalms 41, 52 (morning) 44 (evening)

Genesis 14:(1-7)8-24

Hebrews 8:1-13

John 4:43-54

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Monday, January 30, 2012 -- Week of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 56, 57, [58] (morning) 64, 65 (evening)

Genesis 19:1-17 (18-23) 24-29

Hebrews 11:1-12

John 6:27-40

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Tuesday, January 31, 2012 -- Week of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

Juan Bosco (John Bosco), Priest, 1888

Samuel Shoemaker, Priest and Evangelist, 1963

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 61, 62 (morning) 68:1-20 (21-23) 24-36 (evening)

Genesis 21:1-21

Hebrews 11:13-22

John 6:41-51

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Wednesday, February 1, 2012 -- Week of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

Brigid (Bride), 523

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 72 (morning) 119:73-96 (evening)

Genesis 22:1-18

Hebrews 11:23-31

John 6:52-59

For Evening Prayer: Eve of the Presentation

Psalms 113, 122; 1 Samuel 1:20-28a; Romans 8:14-21

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Thursday, February 2, 2012 -- Week of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

The Presentation of Our Lord

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)

EITHER the readings for Thursday of 4 Epiphany (p. 947)

Psalms [70], 71 (morning) 74 (evening)

Genesis 23:1-20

Hebrews 11:32 – 12:2

John 6:60-71

OR the readings for The Presentation (p. 997)

Morning Prayer: Psalms 42, 43; 1 Samuel 2:1-10; John 8:31-36

Evening Prayer: Psalms 48, 87; Haggai 2:1-9; 1 John 3:1-8

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Friday, February 3, 2012 -- Week of 4 Epiphany, Year Two

The Dorchester Chaplains: Lieutenant George Fox, Lieutenant Alexander D. Goode, Lieutenant Clark V. Poling, Lieutenant John P. Washington, 1943

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 69:1-23 (24-30) 31-38 (morning) 73 (evening)

Genesis 24:1-27

Hebrews 12:3-11

John 7:1-13

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Monday, February 6, 2012 -- Week of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

The Martyrs of Japan, 1597

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 80 (morning) 77, [79] (evening)

Genesis 25:19-34

Hebrews 13:1-16

John 7:37-52

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Tuesday, February 7, 2012 -- Week of 5 Epiphany, Year Two

Cornelius him the Centurion

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 947)

Psalms 78:1-39 (morning) 78:40-72 (evening)

Genesis 26:1-612-3326:1-6

Hebrews 13:17-25

John 7:53 – 8:11

Helping Someone Suspicious

2012-01-23T05:57:00.000-08:00

Monday, Janaury 23, 2012 -- Week of 3 Epiphany, Year Two
Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massachusetts, 1893

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 41, 52 (morning) 44 (evening)
Genesis 14:(1-7)8-24
Hebrews 8:1-13
John 4:43-54

Word of Jesus' return to Cana in Galilee reached Capernaum, a town on the lake, about eighteen miles from Cana. A royal official traveled from Capernaum to Cana to see Jesus. This royal official would have had a position in the service of Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee who ruled there for forty-two years, including throughout Jesus' ministry. It was Herod Antipas who arrested and executed Jesus' cousin John the Baptist. John had publicly condemned Antipas for his marriage to his half-brother's wife. There is a place in Luke's gospel where a group of Pharisees warned Jesus that Herod Antipas was plotting to kill Jesus as well.

The encounter between the royal official and Jesus is interesting. One wonders if the official might have taken some risks in approaching Jesus on behalf of his dying son. Some among Jesus' group might have suspected some sort of trap. Is this official up to something that would lead to Jesus' arrest? Don't follow him back.

It turns out to be a legitimate request. The man's son is ill. Jesus honors his request, telling to him, "Go; your son will live." It is important to John to say that the man "believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way." During the eighteen mile journey home, he was met by servants with the news that the child took a turn for the better at the hour of the conversation with Jesus.

Jesus does good without recourse to the relative merit, or lack of merit, of the royal official. He did not reject the man because he was a servant of Herod Antipas, despite the cruel treatment to John. Jesus did not lecture or correct the man, or demand that he cease his service to Antipas. Jesus did not refuse the heal the child because of the questionable status of the father. (That might be something to reflect on the next time a Christian legislator introduces a policy recommendation to restrict public medical or educational funds to children whose parents have immigrated here without having gone through the nearly impossible business of being legal about it.)

Amazing generosity. Jesus offers compassion to the royal official of Herod Antipas. He heals the man's child. How might that instruct the way we relate to those who misuse their power and authority? How might that inform us about our attitude toward our enemies?

Lowell

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About Morning Reflections
"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at missionstclare.com -- Click for online Daily Office
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html -- Click for Divine Hours

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church
is to explore and celebrate
God's infinite grace, acceptance, and love.

See our Web site at www.stpaulsfay.org

Our Rule of Life:
We aspire to...
    worship weekly
    pray daily
    learn constantly
    serve joyfully
    live generously.

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Reconciliation through Faith, Blessing and Spirit

2012-01-20T05:55:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 20, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Fabian, Bishop and Martyr of Rome, 250

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 31 (morning) 35 (evening)
Genesis 11:27 - 12:8
Hebrews 7:1-17
John 4:16-26

Today we begin the great saga of Abraham, the father of nations. In an act of great trust, Abraham follows his sense of God's direction and leaves his family and ancestral lands without knowing his final destination. Throughout Scripture, Abraham is a model of faith.

Faith is active trust. It is the willingness to take the next step in the direction of God, even when you don't know where you are going. This is the dominant meaning of the word faith. A lesser meaning -- "the faith" as in the content of belief or doctrine -- sometimes overwhelms this more relational and deeper sense of faith.

It is promised to the faithful one, Abraham, that God will make of him a great nation. Note the contrast with the story of the builders of the tower of Babel, who sought to make a name for themselves by their own selfish efforts. God says to Abraham, "in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," a sentence that can as easily be translated "by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."

Some in our time have looked to Abraham as a possible source of understanding and reconciliation among Jews, Christians and Moslems. Each of these three great religions look to Abraham as their patriarch.

In today's Gospel from John, we have a story of reconciliation between two people divided by religion. Jesus is a Jew; he is speaking to a woman who is a Samaritan. Their religions and nations are divided by hostile animosity, though they share a common source from Abraham. The woman states one of the issues: Which is the correct mountain for God's worship? Mt. Zion or Mt. Gerizim? Jerusalem or Samaria? She raises a hot-topic question that has consumed political and religious debate for generations. Jesus rejects the framing of the question. The place is irrelevant, says Jesus, for God is Spirit. Worship God in Spirit and truth.

In Hebrews the writer seeks to open up the concept of priesthood beyond the narrow inherited line from Aaron and Levi. His metaphor is King Melchizedek, who in Genesis 14 befriended and blessed Abraham. Melchizedek is of a superior order of priests than Levi because he is not bound by time or by family. Hebrews sees Jesus' priesthood coming from this other ancient order.

All three of today's readings invite Christians and all other religious people to develop creative relationships toward one another in our different religious expressions. Recently some have called on the children of Abraham to unite together in relationships of peace to solve the deadly conflicts between Jew, Christian and Moslem. Those of us who come from the line of Abraham are given to be a blessing to the world, not conquerors and dominators. Wherever we see people walking with trust in the eternal, we are seeing Abraham's brothers and sisters, whether from the blood line of Abraham or from the eternal priesthood of Melchizedek unbounded by family and time. And whenever we see the expression of Spirit or truth from any mountain or from any tradition, we can acknowledge the living water of God that springs up from within all who drink from the water of the spirit.

Today walk in trusting faith like Abraham. Claim your eternal priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. Be open to God as Spirit, filling the whole world with living water, and drink from that Spirit that wells up from within you.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Today's Readings

2012-01-19T06:15:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 19, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester, 1095

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 37:1-18 (morning) 37:19-42 (evening)
Genesis 11:1-9
Hebrews 6:13-20
John 4:1-15

Here are today's readings for the Daily Office. Pretty tired. Slept in. Not writing this morning.

Lowell
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Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Either Progress of Slip Back

2012-01-18T06:39:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 18, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Confession of Saint Peter the Apostle

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)

EITHER the readings for Wed. of 2 Epiphany (p. 245)
Psalms 38 (morning) 119:25-48 (evening)
Genesis 9:18-29
Hebrews 6:1-12
John 3:22-36

OR the readings for Confession of St. Peter (p. 996)
Morning Prayer: Psalms 66, 67; Ezekiel 3:4-11; Acts 10:34-33
Evening Prayer; Psalms 118; Ezekiel 34:11-16; John 21:15-22

I chose the readings for Wed. of 2 Epiphany

The annotation in my Access Bible for Hebrews 6:1-12 is titled "Either progress or slip back." I remember years ago reading an entry from the dairy of Pope John XXIII. I can't find the reference, so I'll just trust my memory. It was a brief note about a day that sounded fairly normal to me. Not much had happened. He had been absorbed in the trivial demands of the day. He hadn't had time to read or study. He was writing in his diary late in the evening. With his simple eloquence, he mourned that he had lost a day, a full 24-hours, without growing or learning. Something was gone that could not be retrieved.

The writer of Hebrews opens this 6th chapter with a grand challenge: "Therefore let us go on toward perfection..." It is so easy in our culture to condone mediocrity with the excuse "Nobody's perfect." The author of Hebrews will have nothing of it. Strive for perfection. Strive for conscious union with God. He writes today, leave behind "the basic teaching about Christ" and be like fertile ground "that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is cultivated." He urges his readers to exercise the three virtues of faith, hope and love: For God "will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we want each one of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

I am reminded of the standard that Paul offers us in our striving. "The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and temperance. There is no law against such things. ...If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit." (Galatians 5:22f)

The testimony tells us that we can live with this fullness. We can practice faith, hope and love. We can produce the fruits of the Spirit. We can live in conscious union with God. In fact, anything else is loss, something wasted that cannot be reclaimed.

More than any other New Testament writer the author to the Hebrews communicates this sense of tragedy when we fail to progress, when we slip back. In contrast to other writers who are sure that access to restoration is always available, the writer of Hebrews believes "it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened... and have fallen away." Whenever we fall away from the enlightened life of grace that we have been given, there is something lost that cannot be reclaimed. The past slips behind us and cannot be changed. It's meaning can be changed, but its facts cannot. Sometimes we find it is simply to late for acting.

I know I've quoted this before, but I can't think of a better expression of that sense of loss than a passage toward the end of Graham Greene's novel The Power and the Glory. As the Whisky Priest anticipates his execution the next day, "He felt only an immense disappointment because he had to go to God empty-handed, with nothing done at all. It seemed to him at that moment that it would have been quite easy to have been a saint. It would only have needed a little self-restraint and a little courage. He felt like someone who has missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place. He knew now that at the end there was only one thing that counted -- to be a saint." (Penguin, NY, p. 211)

Lowell

When We Hear No Response

2012-01-17T06:05:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 17, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Antony, Abbot in Egypt, 356

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p. 945)
Psalms 26, 28 (morning) 9, 15 (evening)
Genesis 9:1-17
Hebrews 5:7-14
John 3:16-21

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." (Hebrews 5:7)

Yet the answer to Jesus' prayer was not accomplished during his lifetime. He was not saved from death. He was crucified and he died.

We cannot know the interior psychology of Jesus. So we don't know what he understood or thought or hoped as he died. The church has always insisted that Jesus was fully human. The death that he endured, he experienced as any human being would.

Mark's gospel indicates that part of what Jesus felt as he died was the experience of complete abandonment from God -- "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!" (15:34) Jesus had placed his hope in God for deliverance, and he realized that he was not going to be saved from death. Very likely he also felt the loss of the intimate relationship with God whom he called Abba; God had been the motivating center and energy of his life. For Jesus on the cross, God was absent. Jesus was suffering extreme physical torture; there was no escape; there was no answer; he was dying a humiliating, painful, public death; there was no promise that anything good would come out of this.

"In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries of tears to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." We know the rest of the story. Jesus was vindicated. Jesus was raised from the dead. Jesus lives. But the living did not happen until after he experienced the pain and abandonment and death.

How often do we pray, and we experience no answer. We pray to God that God would save us, and we experience no sense of response, escape or deliverance. Yet the story of the resurrection reminds us that God brings life out of death. God can accomplish what is beyond our imagination. God surprises us. The scope of God's response is beyond our horizons.

So often when I see the grotesque suffering and senseless killing that fills our globe I feel like my prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who is able to save them from death are futile and hopeless. Nothing is changed. People die daily. Injustice abounds. For so many there is no escape; there is no answer.

Yet I cling to the hope of resurrection. God brings life from death. And I hold on to the conviction that the central reality of creation is God's love for the world. We hear that again from John's gospel today. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." (John 3:16) I've never been convinced that this was merely a trivial formula for punching a ticket to heaven -- believe and get eternal life; don't believe and go to hell. That notion turns God into such an arbitrary monster.

The word "believe" comes from the same place as the word "belove." I think of those who do not know Jesus, but do know some form of love. Maybe they are somewhere in Sudan or Yemen or Afghanistan today. Maybe they are being caught up in some form of horrible violence, some terrible threat or torture from which there is no escape. Their love cries out with prayers and supplication, with loud cries of tears to the one who is able to save them from death. Regardless of their "belief," Jesus is with them. Jesus is one with them. Jesus knows and understands their experience. Their blood is their water of baptism. They will be heard, because of his reverent submission.

"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:17)

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Psalm 25

2012-01-16T06:19:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 16, 2012 -- Week of 2 Epiphany, Year Two
Richard Meux Benson, Religious, 1915
Charles Gore, Bishop of Worcester, of Birmingham, and of Oxford, 1932

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 16, 17 (morning) 22 (evening)
Genesis 6:1-8
Hebrews 3:12-19
John 2:1-12

Psalm 25 is such a fine psalm. It is one of my favorites.

It is written by one who is beset by enemies and troubles. Unlike the psalmist we do not dread invasion, occupation and exile from the army of a mightier empire. We are the empire. We live in a relatively secure nation and time.

But there are those who regard our nation as enemies. Though they are small and so weak that their only weapon is fear, they can make us reactive, and some of us, including our leaders at times, have succumbed to their campaign of fear. "Fear not," the scriptures remind us.

When I read in the Psalms of the threat from enemies, that threat is usually much closer to home than the threat of invading foreigners. It is the threat we bring upon ourselves when we live as enemies of our highest aspirations. When we let fear, greed, and power motivate us, we become our own enemy. Sometimes the enemy comes from among our friends and neighbors. There are political movements who define themselves by fear, greed, and power. Sometimes the enemy is our own internalized fears, our greed and exaggerated needs. We have to triumph over enemies that are not only other people, but also the part of ourselves that works against our highest values.

"Show me your ways, O God, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; in you have I trusted all the day long." We pray with the Psalmist, asking God to renew our commitment to God's way. And what is God's way? The next verse names it beautifully. "Remember, O God, your compassion and love, for they are from everlasting."

Compassion and love. These are our highest aspirations and values. Compassion and love -- the antidote to fear, greed and power. "All your paths are love and faithfulness," the Psalmist remembers. "You guide the humble in doing right and teach your way to the lowly." Love and compassion, exercised humbly, with special attention toward the lowly -- the path God invites us to walk.

The Psalmist asks for forgiveness for the times he has not followed in this way, the times when we succumb to our fears, our greed, our pride. "Remember not the sins of my youth and my transgressions; remember me according to your love and for the sake of your goodness, O God. ...For your Name's sake, O God, forgive my sin, for it is great." With reverence for God restored, we reassert our trust that God will teach and lead us.

The Psalmist looks at his troubles. He has sorrows and miseries. He has enemies. He asks for help. "The sorrows of my heart have increased; bring me out of my troubles. Look upon my adversity and misery, and forgive me all my sin. Look upon my enemies, for they are many, and they bear a violent hatred against me. Protect my life and deliver me; let me not be put to shame, for I have trusted in you." He closes with a recommitment to integrity and uprightness, and he grounds his hope in God.

Then he prays for the nation. May God deliver us from our troubles.

When I think of our nation, indeed we are beset by enemies -- by fear, greed and power. We are not a nation that is living by the divine vision of compassion and love, exercised humbly, with special attention toward the lowly. Deliver our people, O God, out of all our troubles also.

Psalm 25 is a good psalm for us and for our day.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

A New Birth for the World

2012-01-12T08:12:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 12, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two
Aelred, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 18:1-20 (morning) 18:21-50 (evening)
Genesis 4:17-26
Hebrews 3:11-18
John 1:43-51

We were up late hearing word of the birth of a son to our daughter Allison and son-in-law Deron. They had not wanted to know the gender of the baby, so "It's a boy!" had some drama to it. They also had not settled on names -- presumably waiting to see the little one to know what to call it -- but since Allison has been mostly asleep since the delivery was by c section, we don't have a name for the little fellow. I've been calling him Froggy for a while (since he grew bigger than the first "tadpole" sonograms), so this morning, he's still Froggy.

The reading from Genesis is full of fine Biblical names they might consider. Mehujael or Irad or Methushael or Adah. You could go short or long. We read of Enoch, the founder of cities. Jabal who is the patron of wandering shepherds. Jubal is the father of developers of culture, "all those who play the lyre and pipe." And Tubal-cain was the founder of toolmakers in bronze and iron. So I wonder, what gifts and skills will litlle Froggy embody? What skills will inspire him? What acts of creativity will motivate him to make his contribution to the whole?

With every new birth is new hope for the world. What might God accomplish through this new life?

A new birth is a reminder of our responsibility and stewardship for the future. It is up to us, the growups, to provide a healthy world for every child to live in so that each child may grow into the fullness of his or her potential.

I'm reminded of a thought experiment of John Rawls. In his 1971 book A Theory of Justice he invited everyone to imagine how we might go about creating a just society. Imagine first that you don't know ahead of time how you (or your grandchild) will be positioned in that society -- you do not know your gender, race, ethnicity, or your educational and economic advantages or disadvantages. Given that "veil of ignorance" -- what social contract would you choose? What principles of governance and economics would you propose?

He suggested that there would be two principles of justice: (1) equal basic liberties for all -- such as freedom of speech and religion, and (2) a form of social and economic equality. He suggested we promote only those social and economic inequalities that simultaneously work to the advantage of the least well-off members of society.

We can justify higher pay for doctors who deliver life-saving services because it encourages more people to become doctors and increases health care access for the poor. But it is hard to justify a system of health care payment that only produces more cosmetic surgeons in Beverly Hills and a lack of care in Appalachia.

He encouraged social programs that would produce equal opportunities for all -- early childhood education that would allow children from poorer families to compete on an equal basis as the privileged. Job training to help all live into their potential. A recognition that the successful have a responsibility toward the whole. A progressive tax system that would underwrite a "politics of the common good" -- producing public institutions and services that rich and poor would want to take advantage of, such as our federal interstate highway system. A politics for the common good would create public schools to which rich and poor alike would want to send their children; public transportation systems reliable enough to attract upscale commuters; public health clinics, playgrounds, parks, recreation centers, libraries and museums that would draw people out of their gated communities into the common spaces of a shared democratic citizenship.

As I think of the kind of world I want for my new grandson, I want an equally promising world for the other innocent children who are coming to life today. I want them to live in a society that we grown-ups can make as just as possible, so that every child will have a similar opportunity for security, education, creativity and achievement as my little Froggy.

It is our choice whether we promote a more just and fair society or one that is less so. There is a familiar shadow toward the end of today's Genesis reading about the various descendants of Cain. Lamech, the father of several of those earlier mentioned patrons, obviously grew in power. He chose to use his power selfishly and violently. This fifth-generation son of Cain bragged to his wives -- "I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy-sevenfold." Lamech is a patron of abusive power. It takes legal institutions and intentional structures for a society to limit the potential for abuse of the powerful.

Will we live in a world that intends to create opportunities for social and economic equality, or will we live in the world of Lamech, where power is all determining? Will every child have a full chance to live into its potential -- whether male or female, rich or poor, dark or light, gay or straight, gifted or challenged, documented or undocumented? For all of the little ones who share birthdays with my grandson today, it is up to us grownups to make choices to provide a just and suitable foundation for their futures. None of them should be born with two strikes against them. It is society's responsibility to create the structures and institutions that create the opportunity for liberty and justice for all.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Jealousy & Violence; Blessing & Community

2012-01-11T06:54:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 119:1-24 (morning) 12, 13, 14 (evening)
Genesis 4:1-16
Hebrews 2:11-18
John 1:(29-34)35-42

Today we begin with the story of Cain and Abel, two brothers. It is a story that ends in bloodshed, the first murder. Cain resents God's greater acceptance of Abel's offering, and reacts with violence.

John's gospel also gives us a story of cousins and brothers.

John the Baptist sees the Spirit descend and remain upon his cousin Jesus, and John recognizes that this is "a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me." Even though John is older than his cousin, John blesses the greater blessing that God gives to Jesus, and calls him Lamb of God and Son of God.

In our gospel story we also have two brothers, Andrew and Peter. Andrew is with his teacher John the Baptist when John points out Jesus, the Lamb of God. Andrew follows Jesus, who invites him to "Come and see." After being with Jesus for the day, Andrew seeks out his brother Simon Peter and brings him to Jesus, who names him "Cephas," Aramaic for "rock" (i.e. Rocky). Peter will become the leader of the early church. Andrew, the brother who brought him to Jesus, will continue in harmony with his brother and the community of disciples.

Jealously and violence. Blessing and community.

Some have said that the Cain and Abel story symbolically represents the conflict between herdsmen and agrarian farmers. Besides the prejudice that so regularly occurs between peoples of contrasting lifestyles, there was true conflict when these different groups competed for the same resources of water and land. If the herdsmen allowed their cattle to stray into fields they would damage the farmers' crops. If the farmers fenced the land they inhibited the herds from traveling to green fields and water. It makes me think of the Broadway play Oklahoma, and lively song that starts, "Oh, the Farmer and the Cowman should be friends" -- a tame representation of a bitter feud.

We have in today's story the first use of the word "sin" in scripture. When Cain becomes angry that his offering of the fruit of the ground is not accepted, God says, "Why are you angry...? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it."

But Cain broods and does not master his afflictive emotions. He lures Abel to the field and kills him. In a powerful moment, God tells Cain that he cannot hide his act. "Listen; your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground!" God hears and knows the secret violence and injustice of the earth.

Cain's curse is a profound one. He is a farmer. A settled man of the soil. Now he must become a wanderer, and the soil will not yield to him. For a farmer to become a wanderer is a bitter curse indeed. As a wanderer, he has no rights or protection of tribe or belonging. He would be vulnerable to blood revenge for his act of murder.

God places a mark upon Cain as a warning, to protect him from death. The mark of Cain has a terrible history. During much of Christian history the mark of Cain was believed to be his black skin. The tradition justified racist theologies that saw the darker races as cursed by God and therefore destined to slavery and oppression. The Southern Baptists split from Northern Baptists using the curse of Cain as justification for their defense of slavery and their opposition toward the education of slaves. How ironic that the story of one brother's violence toward another became a justification for centuries of oppression and violence of brother upon brother.

Jealousy, prejudice and violence is healed by blessing and community. John the Baptist and Andrew are models for us. They see God's blessing upon their brothers and they rejoice. When Jesus accepts his death on behalf of the sin of the world, he becomes the Lamb of God who takes away our sin, heals our division, and consumes our violence with peace. The farmer and cowman, the settled and the wanderer, the black and white, the conservative and the liberal should be friends.

Our reading in Hebrews says that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers and sisters. It says that Jesus destroyed the power of death and freed us whose lives are "held in slavery by the fear of death." "For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father... Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested." We are called into the universal community that restores peace to the human family.

This is a day of much political pronouncement. I want to hear leaders who acknowledge our relationships with one another -- our fellow human beings are our neighbors, and we are responsible toward one another. I do not want to support politicians who create fear and division. I want to support politicians who create blessing and community. Will we live as Cain and Abel or will we will live like the disciples of Jesus?

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Stories

2012-01-10T05:22:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 10, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1645

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 5, 6 (morning) 10, 11 (evening)
Genesis 3:1-24
Hebrews 2:1-10
John 1:19-28

Some questions are compelling and mysterious: Why is there anything rather than nothing? Why do we exist? Why is life so hard? Why are we the way we are? Before such questions the sciences meet their limits. Science does a wonderful job answering the "How" questions: How did creation happen? How do we come to birth? How do things grow? But we need to know more. We a compelled to ask "Why?"

Science yields to story. It is our great myths that speak to the most compelling and mysterious questions. When we speak of Mystery itself, when we speak of the Divine, it is story and dance (liturgy) and prayer that communicates most deeply.

Today we read our story of temptation and fall. It is everyone's story. Why do we live in a state of alienation? Why do we long to be who we are, free and uncovered? Why is there enmity between human and animal? Why is birth so painful? Why must we struggle so to survive? Why do we feel in exile from our true home? Why do we do the terrible things we do?

An anthropologist and psychologist can tell us that the fall into consciousness, the awareness of the self as a separate being, is inevitable in order for one to become truly human. As our consciousness develops, we begin to discover the knowledge of good and evil. Only we discover it before we have the wisdom to know what to do with it, before we are mature enough to choose the good rather than the evil. But a story tells that better, doesn't it?

Our experience of the fall is every child's experience: We are born beloved of God, created in God's image and in an innocent union with the divine. But we do not retain that union. We do not come to self-consciousness with our oneness with God intact. We do not experience unqualified love. Instead, we have frustrated and exaggerated needs and desires, so we take things into our own hands to get what we want. And we are exiled from the garden, from that simple existence of intimacy, openness and trust. We suffer.

The letter to the Hebrews shows us the way home is the way Jesus has shown us. "It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings." And John the Baptist cries out from the wilderness to "Make straight the way of the Lord."

The biblical meaning of "repent" is not to feel bad about what you've done and promise to do better. In the Hebrew Bible, to repent means primarily to return to God. Return from exile; reconnect with God; walk in the way through the wilderness from Babylon to the Garden. That's the way home to God. And in the Greek New Testament, the word "repentance" has an additional meaning. The Greek roots combine to mean "go beyond the mind that you have." Go beyond the mind you have been given, shaped by our fallen human family, and turn to the mind that you have in Christ. Go beyond fallen human consciousness into union with divine consciousness. But theological words are a dry vehicle. Deep truth travels best in stories.

When we tell the story of what went wrong, we tell the story of Adam and Eve. When we tell the story to heal that injury, we tell the story of Jesus.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Beginnings

2012-01-09T06:30:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 9, 2012 -- Week of 1 Epiphany, Year Two
Julia Chester Emery, Missionary, 1922

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 1, 2, 3 (morning) 4, 7 (evening)
Genesis 2:4-9(10-15)16-25
Hebrews 1:1-14
John 1:1-18

Beginnings. Today's readings initiate our next few weeks of successive readings in Genesis, Hebrews, and the gospel of John. All three open with words of beginnings.

The Genesis reading begins our great myth of creation and fall. God takes up "dust from the ground" (adamah in Hebrew), breaths the "breath" (ruach, spirit) of life into it, and it becomes a man (adam in Hebrew). Or, trying to retain the Hebrew linguistics in the English -- God forms from the Earth, "Earthling" and breathes the life of spirit into his being; or God forms from Humus, and breathes "Human" into being.

The gospel of John and the epistle to the Hebrews are concerned to proclaim that we are in relationship with this beginning through our life in Christ (who elsewhere will be called the second Adam, the second "Earthling.") John says, "In the beginning was the Word," (the Logos), the actualization of God's activity within creation. Hebrews is eager to connect this originating work with the "Son, ...the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word."

Through the Word, God's Spirit breathes into Mother Earth and creates a new life that can be conscious of God. The rest of history is the dance of the love story between God and humanity, a story of unrequited love and betrayal from the creatures, and steadfast love and compassion from the Creator.

Today, I want to live in that creative Trinity. I want be conscious of God, breathing me and the whole of Earth into being. I want to be awake to the never ending activity of the Word whom we name Jesus, constantly forming being from the dust of the ground. Today may my words, my breath, and my being be one with the divine consciousness for which I was breathed into life. May I be fully Human; a Spirit-breathing Earthling, awake to the ever-present Son which dwells within me, "the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, [sustaining] all things by his powerful word."

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Universal Epiphany

2012-01-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

Friday, January 6, 2012 -- The Epiphany of Our Lord Jesus Christ

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 943)
Psalms 46, 97 (morning) 96, 100 (evening)
Isaiah 49:1-7
Revelation 21:22-27
Matthew 12:14-17

In a darkened church a dozen evenings ago we sang "How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given." Out of the darkness comes light. And just as the mysterious twinkle of a star or the energizing light of the sun falls on all humanity without distinction, so this light is given for all, not just for those who have known themselves to be chosen.

In his 12th chapter Matthew narrates the unfolding character of Christ's light breaking through the artificial barriers of religion and law, tribe and geography, theology and family, gently bringing God's good news of healing, blessing and compassion. He insists that Jesus is acting universally, yet gently, remembering Isaiah's words "he will not break a bruised reed or quench an smoldering wick." One of the gifts Jesus brings is the gift of justice.

Epiphany is the day when we celebrate the vision that Jesus is for everybody. We who are Gentiles benefit from his manifestation just as surely as those who are Jewish do. Just as the particularities of the sabbath laws could not contain his boundless compassion, neither can any Christian laws we may erect falsely in his name. At the end of chapter twelve, Jesus reinterprets the meaning of family, expanding it universally. Radical words in a patriarchal and tribal culture.

Those of us who have been given the treasure of this manifestation are also invited to recognize Christ outside our boundaries. There are still foreign wise men following other stars whose light draws them toward goodness, beauty and truth. How gently can we affirm our common journey toward the light that heals and brings blessing and compassion to all the earth.

On this feast especially, we confess the darkness of our acts to box up and possess the light for ourselves and to cast the other part of the world into a darkness made of our own shadow -- the darkness of "them." Our language of saved and unsaved, believer and unbeliever, redeemed and doomed, Christian and non-Christian. What an irony that in the name of Jesus we have created divisions. What a blasphemy that we have called on the name of Christ and made war on the "others". Forgive us.

The light still shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Let there be light. And let those of us who follow the light of Christ not be blinded to its manifestation beyond our nearsighted barriers.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

The Whole Armor of God

2012-01-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

Thursday, January 5, 2012 -- The 12th day of Christmas , Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 2, 110:1-5(6-7) (morning) ----- (evening)
Jonah 2:2-9
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 11:17-27, 38-44

Eve of Epiphany
Psalm 29, 98 (evening)
Isaiah 66:18-23
Romans 15:7-13

When I was in my teens, someone taught me a morning spiritual exercise based on today's reading from Ephesians 6. Each morning, before I lifted my head from my pillow, they said, put on the whole armor of God. The underlying text was essentially one of fear. If you don't, they implied, the evil spirits could attack and harm you, even before you got up from the bed. They emphasized that "our struggle is ...against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." (Ephesians 6:12) So I was taught, do this first thing when you wake.

I was to use my imagination as I physically pantomimed fastening the belt of truth around my waist and covering my chest with the breastplate of righteousness. I was to reach to my feet to put on the shoes of peace. I was to make the sign of the cross starting at the top of my head to the bottom of my feet and reaching from fingertip to fingertip across my body as the shield of faith. This would "quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one." Then I was to place the helmet of salvation upon my head and take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. Now I was prepared to rise from bed, fully defended against the attacks that would surely be directed toward me. I was prepared for spiritual warfare which, I was told, is our condition and calling.

I found it was a practice that did not work for me. First, it seemed silly to me to imagine that there were legions of demons out there in some other sphere just hoping I wouldn't put on this imaginary armor so they could fire away their flaming arrows at me because I was unprotected. It was hard to imagine that there were "rulers" and "authorities" and "cosmic powers" and "spiritual forces of evil" who just couldn't wait to jump on me, but who would be completely neutralized if I only did my little imaginary dressing before getting out of bed. I didn't have any trouble seeing that certainly there is spiritual struggle in life, but most of that struggle I found was with my own self, not legions of demons. There was something that felt superstitious about the whole exercise.

Instead, a simple, gentle entrusting toward God seemed completely sufficient for me.

I think I was put off also by the implied militarism of the imagery. It seemed that those who taught this practice were into spiritual warfare in a way that seemed unhealthy to me. Some imagined that they were fighting and defeating all kinds of spiritual warriors over all sorts of things. They got pretty excited about it. I can still see the bright-eyed-look, a bit demented in my view, as some of these fought to bind demons and cast out spirits with the fervor of a comic book hero. There was something self-aggrandizing about it that bothered me. And I didn't trust that they knew what they were fighting or whether what they fought for was really what God in God's divine mystery might actually want. It's easy to see the misguided interpretation of a similar tradition in Islam, the spiritual struggle of jihad, so tragically distorted by militant Islam. I worried about the militant certainty that these whole-armor-of-God Christian practitioners seemed to assert.

The healthy part of the exercise is the pure defensiveness of it. There is something appealing about the simple trust of the command to "stand firm." There is nothing that must be accomplished, because God in Christ has already accomplished it. There is no battle to be won because Christ has already won it. All is accomplished. We don't have to go anywhere or do anything to be within the life and love and grace of God, for that has already been given to us. We simply stand firm, bulletproof with the divine protection of truth, peace, faith, and salvation.

The only offensive weapon given to us in this passage is "the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God." We are not to strike with weapons but only with words. Our only offense is the Good News of God in Christ. There is similar non-violent imagery in Revelation where the battle is waged with a sword that comes from the mouth, and the blood shed is obviously the blood of the Lamb who gave himself for the life of the world.

As non-violent as the imagery may be, I still am bothered when aggressive Christians use scripture like bullets, loading up a verse and firing it at you to prove some point they may be attached to.

This section in Ephesians concludes with an admonition: "Pray in the Spirit at all times..." For me, the most powerful prayer in the Spirit is usually one without much content. It is a prayer that gently consents to God's presence and activity within, and then allows the Spirit to intercede for us with sighs too deep for words.

Something from T. S. Eliot's East Coker seems to work better for me than does the imagery from Ephesians 6:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Lowell

Blindness

2012-01-04T06:40:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, January 4, 2012 -- The 11th day of Christmas , Year Two
Elizabeth Seton, Founder of the American Sisters of Charity, 1821

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 85, 87 (morning) 89:1-29 (evening)
Joshua 3:14 - 4:7
Ephesians 5:1-20
John 9:1-12, 35-38

"No good deed goes unpunished," according to the old maxim. Jesus heals a man born blind. You would think that all would rejoice. Instead, an argument ensues. The officials get involved. They've got institutions and rules and traditions to uphold. It is necessary that the blind man who now sees be excommunicated from the congregation. Jesus finds the exiled man, and extends both kindness and wisdom. Jesus tells them all, "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Reinhold Niebuhr was a theologian adept at seeing the ominous sub-text in our good intentions. Our pride, self-preoccupation and self-illusion is so prevalent, he said, that "even the best human actions have some sin." His sermons invite us to the kind of self-analysis that will lead to repentance, and then he intends to inspire enough courage for us to take some kind of action to advance the cause of justice, even as we recognize the ambiguity of our own best actions.

Niebuhr sensed that our proclivity to perpetuate sin and injustice is even greater when we act as groups or institutions than it is when we act as individuals. We are less moral in groups and nations than we are as individuals. He writes:

Individual men may be moral in the sense that they are able to consider interests other than their own. ...But all these achievements are more difficult, if not impossible, for human societies and social groups. In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.

(from Moral Man and Immoral Society, quoted by Richard Crouter, Reinhold Niebuhr: On Politics, Religion, and Christian Faith, Oxford, 2010; p. 48)

Like a diocesan committee, the Pharisees gather to investigate Jesus' healing of the man born blind to determine whether it meets diocesan guidelines and policies. An individual cleric outside the institutional glare might have embraced the goodness, but the group has an institution to defend. And they do so, unjustly. As the American major said over the ruins of Ben Tre, Vietnam, "It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."

"Surely we are not blind, are we?" chant the officials. Jesus answers, "...Now that you say, 'We see,' your sin remains."

In the middle of his treatise The Irony of American History, Niebuhr offers this:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness. (Ibid, p. 62)

The Psalmist speaks for us and for our nation again today:

Restore us then, O God our Savior; let your anger depart from us. Will you be displeased with us for ever; will you prolong your anger from age to age? Will you not give us life again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your mercy, O God, and grant us your salvation. (Psalm 85:4-7)

Lowell

Food that Endures

2012-01-03T06:07:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, January 3, 2012 -- The 10th day of Christmas , Year Two
William Passavant, Prophetic Witness, 1894

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 68 (morning) 72 (evening)
1 Kings 19:9-18
Ephesians 4:17-32
John 6:15-27

"Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you." (John 6:27a)

The turning of the new year invites us to examine at our lives. Where do we place our priorities? How do we use our energy? What do we worry about?

Although it was more than 35 years ago, I still remember the last sentence of the first talk at my Cursillo weekend. "If your thoughts, your money, and your free time were a comet, and you were attached to its tail, where would it be taking you? That is your ideal."

Where is energy and motivation of our thoughts and time directed? The language of John's gospel contrasts the "food that perishes" with the "food that endures for eternal life." I think it is significant that Jesus speaks that way following the feeding of the multitude. Using the modest resources of two fish and five barley loaves -- the food of the poor -- Jesus has given to hungry people the food for the day that nourishes the body. He does not ignore their basic material needs. Yet he points beyond that material feeding toward the more significant "food that endures for eternal life." I also think it is significant that Jesus speaks that way following a terrifying journey with the disciples in a rough sea with strong wind.

I sense a similar theme in today's story from 1 Kings. Elijah has been fighting in the political arena, and though he has profoundly defeated a party of his enemies, his life is threatened now, and he has been forced to flee. In the wilderness, God feeds him and takes him to a place of encounter. Elijah experiences the great wind that splits mountains and breaks rock. He feels the earthquake that shakes the foundations. He sees the fire that burns all that is before it. Although these are signs that elsewhere are manifestations of God, God is not in the wind or earthquake or fire. It is not in the dramatic and demonstrable expressions of power that Elijah knows the divine presence. It is in the "sound of sheer silence" that Elijah knows himself to be in the holy presence.

From that quiet center, Elijah is renewed. Again he is given a political task with a religious dimension. He is charged with the anointing of two kings and a successor prophet.

From the quiet center comes the food that endures for eternal life. Out of that place of union and renewal we are charged to move into the world to address such material needs as hunger, poverty and the exercise of political power.

John's Jesus knows how easy it is to be distracted by the feeding, even when the mission is successful -- to see primarily the material significance of the work. All of us are so easily caught up in the dramatic and powerful -- the wind and earthquake and fire -- even when there is no presence within the power. There is so much that can distract us -- especially the quantifiable, and whatever confronts us with its great power.

Below the rough sea and daily bread, and beyond the wind, earthquake and fire, there is the food that endures for eternal life. It is food that is often given to us in the sound of sheer silence.

Where do our thoughts, our resources, and our free time tend to collect? Is is the material worries of daily life or even the structural evils of hunger and poverty and politics? Is it today's peculiar dramas wherever the winds are blowing, the earthquakes and fires that fill our headlines or threaten our securities?

The new year invites us to turn toward that place where the food that endures for eternal life feeds us from the infinite silence of God. Be still, and be fed. Then turn to feed others, and to face the elements fearlessly.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

New Year -- New Beginning

2012-01-02T05:55:00.000-08:00

Monday, January 2, 2012 -- The 9th day of Christmas , Year Two
Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah, First Indian Anglican Bishop, Dornakal, 1945

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 941)
Psalms 34 (morning)        33 (evening)
1 Kings 19:1-8
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:1-14

It is a good thing to make a new beginning. We can feel so haunted, encumbered and bound by the past. Sunrise, like resurrection, gives us new birth, new life. Every experience of confession and forgiveness relieves the burden of accumulated guilt and bestows a fresh start.

There is something especially renewing about the turning of the year. It is a time to let go of the past and to embrace the possibility of a new future. We make resolutions. Some create goals for the year. We reclaim our birthright to live a full and wholesome life.

Last January our friend Philip Zweig who volunteers for our Community Meals feeding program made a new year's resolution to ride his bicycle every day -- a commitment to a growing practice of sustainability, letting go of dependence upon the automobile and embracing a healthier form of travel. He invited others to join him in his discipline by pledging a small donation to Community Meals for each mile he would ride. Two days ago at the end of the year, Philip rode a leisurely victory lap with friends, having accomplished his goal of riding every day -- include days of rain, snow and ice -- riding over 10,000 miles in 2011.

If he can do that, what might I do? I'm thinking of the disciplines that bring balance, health and wholeness to my life. I'm thinking of the habits that derail and waste my life. The new year offers an opportunity to let go of the latter and to embrace the former.

The morning psalm (34) offers encouragement:

1 I will bless God at all times,
       and praise shall ever be in my mouth.

5 Look upon the Most High and be radiant,
       and let not your faces be ashamed.

6 I called in my affliction, and God heard me
       and saved me from all my troubles.

8 Taste and see that God is good;
       happy are they who trust in the Most High!

12 Who among you loves life
       and desires long life to enjoy prosperity?

13 Keep your tongue from evil-speaking
       and your lips from lying words.

14 Turn from evil and do good;
       seek peace and pursue it.

18 God is near to the brokenhearted
       and will save those whose spirits are crushed.

19 Many are the troubles of the righteous,
       but God will deliver them out of them all.

22 O God, you will ransom the life of your servants,
       and none will be punished who trust in you.

Let us offer our resolutions to God with brokenhearted trust and radiant faces. Today is a new beginning -- the dawn of new hope. Behold, the past is gone and the future is nigh. What can I do to help bring life and light to to this new year?

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

The Dawn of Peace

2011-12-23T05:40:00.000-08:00

Friday, December 23, 2011 -- Week of 4 Advent , Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 939)
Psalms 93, 96 (morning)        148, 150 (evening)
Baruch 4:21-29 *
Galatians 3:15-22
Luke 1:67-80 or Matthew 1:1-17
                   *found in the Apocrypha

Note: I'm taking a break from writing Morning Reflections during the week after Christmas. Next MR will be Monday, January 2, 2012.

Merry Christmas (Lowell)

Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, speaks at the circumcision of his son. The words from Luke's gospel are familiar ones -- used as a canticle in worship for centuries, available in the liturgy of Episcopal Church both for the Daily Office and for the Eucharist.

I'm struck by the words, "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace."

It seems a powerful prayer for this time of life. I find it resonates with my deepest yearnings for our nation and people during dark times of fear, division and abuse of power. I am looking for the dawn from on high to break upon us and show us light and direction toward peace. Not just peace that is the absence of conflict, but the wider peace that is expressed so evocatively by the Hebrew word "shalom."

The need for God's dawning light is a daily need in each life. We all sit in some form of darkness. We all live in the shadow of death, not only the inevitable end of our earthly lives but also all of the ways life is threatened, diminished, minimized.

Part of the church's invitation to the discipline of Daily Morning Prayer is the experience of joining centuries of dawnings through the word of scripture, canticle and prayer, bringing light from on high and guiding our feet into the way of shalom.

We join Zechariah in prayer this day. "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace." May this Christmas be the dawning of that light in the darkness which guides us into the way of peace.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Thomas

2011-12-21T05:53:00.000-08:00

Wednesday, December 21, 2011 -- Week of 4 Advent , Year Two
Saint Thomas the Apostle

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer)

EITHER
the readings for St. Thomas (p. 996)
Morning Prayer: Psalms 23, 121; Job 42:1-6; 1 Peter 1:3-9
Evening Prayer: Psalms 27; Isaiah 43 8-13; John 14:1-7

OR
the readings for Wednesday, of 4 Advent (p. 939)
Psalms 72 (morning) 111,113 (evening)
2 Samuel 7:1-17
Titus 2:11 - 3:8a
Luke 1:39-48a(48b-56)

I chose the readings for St. Thomas

There is something satisfying about the fact that the Church's feast of St. Thomas happens on or near the winter solstice for us in the northern hemisphere. At the end of the longest night, there is a turning point. The darkness will go no further. Light, warmth and new life renew their promise. It is still dark, but the progression has changed. Hope arises. We will continue to live and grow.

It is a holy moment. Wikipedia lists 39 various winter celebrations that have some connection with the new light, new life, or some form of reversal. The Newgrange prehistoric monument in Ireland was built around 3200 BCE oriented toward the rising sun on the winter solstice, and Stonehenge was begun not too many years afterward.

The story of Thomas is a story of darkness turning to light. Thomas did not participate in the Easter visions of his friends. While the other disciples rejoiced because they had experienced something that convinced them of Jesus' resurrection, Thomas remained traumatized by grief. His consciousness was haunted by the very real memory of the wounds of nail and spear. He could not be soothed from the stories of others. In order to be healed, he needed something as real as the tragedy he had experienced.

Jesus honored Thomas' grief and his authenticity. Jesus gave to Thomas a special visitation, offering to Thomas just the kind of experience that he needed so the meaning of those traumatic wounds would no longer be painful, but inspiring of worship.

The reading from 1 Peter assigned for Morning Prayer on Thomas' day is a glorious exultation of the hope of promise Christ gives us through resurrection. "By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials." (3b-6)

We also read Job's response to his encounter with God in the whirlwind. "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you." (42:5)

In the darkness of grief and trauma, when nights are longest and life is cold, we ask of God some hope that is as real as our pain and loss. We wait -- like Thomas; like the cold, dark earth -- for the sign of hope. Thomas is our patron when we are in that lonesome place.

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas

Listening

2011-12-20T05:21:00.000-08:00

Tuesday, December 20, 2011 -- Week of 4 Advent , Year Two

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (Book of Common Prayer, p 939)
Psalms 66, 67 (morning) 112,115 (evening)
1 Samuel 2:1b-10
Titus 2:1-10
Luke 1:26-38

Traditionally many religions including Christianity have used feminine imagery to speak of God's Spirit and God's Wisdom in the world. The Hebrews used the word Sophia to personify the creative, active presence of God's Wisdom-Spirit within creation.

Some people will imagine the presence of that Spirit within us, at the center of our being, a few inches behind our belly button -- in a place that is deeper than thought, close to the heart yet even deeper than emotion. Spiritual directors have encouraged those on the spiritual journey to listen and to be open to God's direction within, to the prompting of Sophia, Wisdom, Spirit. That prompting is often accessed through another feminine resource, our intuition. Intuitive openness and acceptance of the Spirit's yearning for us is an ancient path for God's creative activity. God honors us by inviting us into cooperation with what God is doing, allowing us to be co-creators with God's Spirit in the new birth of God's blessing.

One of the things people will say over and over is that God is full of surprises. What God is up to is truly unpredictable. Another thing people will say is that God comes to us through our weaknesses, often using our most frightening life-events to announce a new beginning.

We look at what happened to a young peasant girl in Galilee. She found herself inconveniently pregnant. It was a pregnancy that could cause scandal and would probably ruin her plans for her future. But she experienced a message from God so powerful that it seemed personified. The messenger first told her that she was not condemned, but favored; that God loved her and blessed her, as odd as that seemed under the circumstances. And something about the messenger and the message took away her fear. Perfect love always casts out fear. She listened from deep within her. "God favors you. Do not be afraid."

From her depths she answered: "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word."

When I imagine the Annunciation to Mary, I imagine something happening right below the belly button, in the very center of her being, in that intuitive place where we experience Sophia-Wisdom-Spirit, and where God invites us to be co-creators to cooperate in what God is doing.

Mary is not the only one pregnant with the gestating birth of God's being in the world. Each of us carries God's work within us. God's Wisdom speaks gently at the center of our own vulnerability saying, "You have favor with God. Do not be afraid. Listen."

Lowell

Lowell Grisham, Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, Arkansas