Speechless: A sermon on December 16, 2012

Advent 3 C                                                                                         December 16, 2012

Luke 2:28-39                                                                                       St. Alban’s, Austin

There are times I don’t know what to think. Let alone what to say. I have to tell you that it is daunting to stand up here before you on a Sunday morning and feel responsible for helping you to make sense of something that makes no sense.

Imagine you were with me yesterday morning at Torchy’s Tacos grabbing a quick breakfast with my sister. The man at the next table, who was sitting with a darling little boy about seven years old, stood up to put his trash in the bin, and I saw that he was wearing a black T shirt with a white assault rifle on it. It took my breath away. I didn’t know what to think. My jaw dropped, and I was speechless. I’m glad we didn’t actually have eye contact because anybody who would wear such a T shirt on the day after twenty children the same age as his were slaughtered was clearly looking for someone to pick a fight, and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction. He could even have had such a weapon in his car. But the sight of him haunted me all day long. I don’t like believing that there are people so utterly insensitive in the world, let alone people who would actually murder first graders and their teachers. If you need me to make sense of Sandy Hook for you, I am sorry, but I will let you down.

If I had kept with the lectionary this week we would be talking about John the Baptist again,

and he would be calling people a brood of vipers. But I just spent the fall in Florence and while I was there I spent a great deal of my time and attention on images of the Annunciation to Mary, and that was not one of the offerings for this year, so I snuck it in. Apparently when I played fast and loose with the lectionary a couple of weeks ago and joked that the liturgical police were coming to get me, just that minute a couple of helicopters flew over the church, which caused some degree of hilarity in the choir. Trust me, it is legal to do this.

And so today we read the story of the Angel Gabriel coming to an unsuspecting young girl and, without giving her ample time to think about it, announcing that God has decided that she will bear his son. Mary is startled and confused, but she quickly accepts the invitation. The angel departs, and that is that. The world is changed forever

It is a scene we can easily get all sappy and sentimental about, and some artists over the years have done exactly that. The angel can look like a belign fairy godmother,

and Mary can look so sweet it will make your fillings ache, but those paintings don’t take into account the world into which the angel is bursting forth. They don’t consider the cost of this consent to Mary. And they don’t stop to think about the power of the Incarnation, that even though this precious little baby is Jesus, this is in fact God incarnate coming to live among us

as innocent and helpless and vulnerable and hopeful as those twenty first graders who got on their school buses on Friday with their Hello Kitty lunchboxes looking forward to playing with their best friends and running around in PE and pleasing their teachers and coming home to a weekend to houses magically decorated for Christmas or Hannukah.

There are many stories still to be told. Much is still not clear at all, and I’ll have to admit to you

that I have not spent every hour since it happened glued to the TV or even to Facebook, so you may well know things I don’t know. One story, though, is about one of the teachers, Kaitlyn Roig, who had fifteen children in her room when she heard the shooting begin. She shoved a bookcase against her door and got all the children into the bathroom and told them they had to be quiet so the bad guys wouldn’t know they were there. She told them that there were bad guys out there right then and that they had to wait for the good guys to come. (See interview with Diane Sawyer: http://now.msn.com/kaitlin-roig-sandy-hook-teacher-recounts-saving-her-students-during-shooting)

You’ve probably heard the wonderful quote from Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’ Ms. Roig was assuring the children that there are helpers.

She told them that she loved them, which she does, because she thought they were all going to die, and she wanted the last thing they ever heard to be that they were loved. And the children said that they wanted to go home, that they wanted Christmas.  She told them they would have Christmas and Hannukah and that if their family believed in prayer to pray, and if they didn’t believe in prayer to think happy thoughts. The police came,  but she refused to open the door, thinking it might be a trick, and she said that if they were really the police they would be able to get the key. What an amazing young woman.

Little children, six and seven years old, facing trauma they could not comprehend but which will haunt their lives from here on out expressed that what they wanted in that moment of terror and darkness was Christmas.

I remember being six and feeling like Christmas would never come. Looking back, we had pretty average Christmases. We didn’t go to church. My parents always went to a party on Christmas Eve and we were left at home to hang our stockings with the babysitter, who might or might not read us The Night before Christmas, but definitely not Luke’s gospel.

In the morning my father would be the first one downstairs and without fail, as he got his movie camera ready, he would announce that Santa had forgotten to come. We’d get our presents, which were rarely over the top, we’d go to dinner at my grandparents’ apartment, and we’d go home to bed, but it was all magical. That’s what the children held onto when they were afraid. That’s what their teacher promised them when she honestly believed they were all about to die.

In John’s gospel we read, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

That is the gospel. That is what we hang onto today even as we continue to hear this horrific story unfold. Yes, evil has invaded our beloved season of holiday cheer, but evil will not overcome it. This is the gospel. This is why God sent the angel to Mary. This is why God broke into time and history. This is why God came to live in this broken world, to show us, to prove to us, as St. Paul writes, that neither death nor life nor rulers, nor things present,  nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

There are a lot of songs we love to sing at Christmas, and if you stop to listen, you will hear that quite a number of them are the songs of people whose situation is not all holly jolly. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” implies that the singer’s Christmas will fall short of his dreams. “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” is the song of someone who is lonely and stuck far, far away.

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was sung by a tearful Judy Garland to her even sadder little sister when their world seemed to be falling apart. But the song I remembered on Friday

was from the musical Mame:

So climb down the chimney;
Put up the brightest string of lights I've ever seen.
Slice up the fruitcake;
It's time we hung some tinsel on that evergreen bough.

For I've grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older,
For we need a little Christmas
Right this very minute,
Candles in the window,
Carols at the spinet.
For we need a little music,
Need a little laughter,
Need a little singing
Ringing through the rafter,
And we need a little snappy
"Happy ever after,"
Need a little Christmas now.

I know it’s secular, but it is the truth. We do need a little Christmas now, not just because of the tragedy yesterday, but because we live in a world in which that tragedy is possible. We live in a world where hearts are broken every day, where people with mental illness can get multiple assault rifles, where families are broken and jobs are lost, where people suffer from depression and betray each other’s trust, where good people and not so good people get ill, where wars continue and refugees are cooped up in camps for years at a time. This is the world that needs Christmas. This is the world into which God sent an angel to a young girl in Nazareth, where God’s own self broke into time and said, “I’m on my way.”

We get our hearts broken again and again. And we get Christmas. And the Christmas we get is way more than the stockings hanging on the mantel, the turkey roasting, the presents we give and receive, or the songs we sing. The Christmas we get, which is the Christmas we need and the Christmas that the angels announce is the redemption of this world  begun with the unexpected arrival of Gabriel and the unimaginable acceptance of Mary.

It is the song of angels, and it is the blessing of angels.

Let us pray:

May the angels in their beauty bless you.

May they turn toward you streams of blessing.

May the angel of awakening stir your heart

to come alive to the eternal within you,

to all the invitations that quietly surround you.

May the angel of healing turn your wounds into sources of refreshment.

May the angel of the imagination enable you

to stand on the true thresholds,

at ease with your ambivalence

and drawn in new directions

through the glow of your contradictions.

May the angel of compassion open your eyes

to the unseen suffering around you.

May the angel of wildness disturb the places

where your life is domesticated and safe,

take you to the territories of true otherness

May the angel of justice disturb you

to take the side of the poor and the wronged.

May the angel of encouragement confirm you

in worth and self respect

that you may live with the dignity

that presides in your soul.

May the angel of death arrive only

when your life is complete

and you have brought every given gift

to the threshold where its in its infinity can shine.

May all the angels be your sheltering

and joyful guardians.

Amen

(Prayer adapted from John O’Donohue, To Bless the Space Between Us)

Bridge Time

I guess you could say I've been back at work for a week now, but this is just the beginning of my fourth day in the office. So far I'm managing to retain the peaceful energy of my sabbatical. It helps to keep revisiting the images on my iPhone and iPad. They open my memory to the sights and sounds and smells of a place that is still very real to me. I've seen pictures of the Duomo Piazza with its big Christmas tree and narrow streets with Christmas lights and store windows. Oh, how I would love to be at Mercato Centrale right now.

In my imagination I can be there in an instant and tell myself that I'll be going back to Florence again and again. I hope that proves to be true. But when I go back, even if I make a bee line to Osteria Giovanni or to the convent at San Marco or to the little bar where we stood for our morning cappucino, it will be a new day and a new experience. That is as it should be. As Herclitus said, you can't step in the same river twice. Time remains such a mystery to me.

There were three bridges in Florence that I crossed on a fairly regular basis. The one in the picture is Ponte Vecchio. Until the time of the Medicis the shops were butchers and fishmongers and greengrocers. The river, in addition to being a source of fish and a means of delivery, was their waste disposal system. The shopkeepers would toss their scraps and trimmings overboard to hungry creatures below and the currents that carried them away.

But when the Medicis built the Vasari Corridor -- those are the little windows along the top of the bridge -- their 'secret' passageway from the Palazzo Vecchio to the Pitti Palace, they were offended by the smell of the shops and used their muscle to displace the food market in lieu of the silver and goldsmiths who have their shops there to this day. Some of the jewelry was nice, but it was all so glitzy and much of it tacky and ostentatious that it wasn't very tempting.

And of course now there are artists selling 'original' watercolors of the Florence streetscapes, Nigerian boys with their knock-off Guccis and Pradas spread out on blankets so they can swoop them up and run when the caribinieri show up, and throngs of tourists being informed by guides holding furled umbrellas overhead. And everybody on the bridge is either eating gelato or smoking a cigarette. At night musicians play there and their music floats up the river.

The bridges of Florence have been destroyed a number of times by floods, which are not all that infrequent, and by war. The Santa Trinita Bridge was designed by Michelangelo, blown up by the Germans, and rebuilt from the pieces they found in the river.
I'm thinking about bridges today, the beautiful, magical bridges of Florence and the utilitarian highway bridges of Austin that take me to and from work every day. My father's family were literally bridge builders. I have a photograph of my great grandfather and my very young grandfather at the ribbon cutting of the Arlington Bridge in Washington, DC, which they built. But I'm not an engineer, so my call to bridges is more poetic and theological.

I'm aware of being in a bridge time. The very sacred gift of sabbatical is on the other shore of the river now that I am back at home and at church, but I hope I can keep the access open, that I can travel back to the realities I experienced on both banks of the Arno, the little wine bar right at the stoop of the Church of Santa Felicita, the sandwich shop where we ate and balanced our wine in the street as motorcycles and cars wove among the crowd, the steps of the Convent of San Marco, where I conversed for hours with Fra Angelico's Annunciation, the window of our flat, where I'd watch the bells of Santa Croce swing as they rang the Angelus. I don't know how to keep it all alive until I go back, but I'm clinging to the bridges right now to be my help and my access.

Bells

The bell of St. Deiniol's tells me,

as if I didn't know,

that I'm awake at three in the morning.

This old building whispers,

and I feel the hum of someone, a man I feel certain,

who is asleep in a nearby room.

I check my pulse for anxiety, obsession,

old pals, who are not pestering me in this night.

I rest, wide-eyed in sweet intimacy with those I love,

no matter that an entire ocean divides us.

I sense the shifting infant in my daughter's womb

and can hold on my hand and to my cheek 

my sister's new grief

and the aches of my husband's chores.

And the bell of St. Deiniol's assures me

that I am still awake at four,

and that my neighbor is still snoring

and that a sip of water was not what I needed to put me back to sleep.

The bed is cozy,

warm in a chilly room,

and I know, with the certainty of peace,

that in the sea of Alaska,

where I would never have gone without my love,

the great whales are rising in the pale winter sun for breath,

and that in Florence, where I slept last week,

the bells of Giotto are ringing their different hour,

and that at the top of the steps of the monastery 

Angelico's Gabriel whispers the question to Mary

and waits, with God himself and all creation,

to hear her answer.

This may not be an accident...

Part of me regrets that I could not have anticipated the tech issues I'd have outside the US. Part of me recognizes that it is at least partially user incompetence and partially misplaced user trust in a six year old laptop, which will be blessed and retired as soon as I get home. Part of me acknowledges that internet connection at the library, which is nothing short of miraculous and such an anachronism (in reverse dynamic to how I typically use that word) in the gorgeous, musty library filled with real paper books, is spotty and unreliable.

But what I find I am dealing with, and what I was acutely aware of in Florence, is the choice I must make between living the moment and analyzing and recording it. Yes, I meant to blog more, but I found that I'd rather be present to the person with me than the computer and to the beauty that confronts me rather than the page on which I attempt to offer my pale reflection. I do have time to write here, and I find myself getting lost, in the very best way, in the library, which has resulted in some poetry I didn't mean to write (and which doesn't mean it is worth more than what I got out of writing it), and some lovely rabbit trails I've wandered down only to find unexpected treasures.

In Florence one day I watched a group of darling young students, sent there at great expense by their parents, sitting on a curb in the presence of nothing less than the miracles of the baptistry and Duomo and the bell tower built by Giotto, each of them in their own private world of texting. So many people, wherever we go, more attentive to email and facebook than to where they are and who they are with. And I'm fully susceptible to this. But much of my interior dialogue has been concerned with this dilemma, but also the poignant awareness that I cannot possess even the most magical moment by loving it more fiercely.

(An aside from my perverse imagination...picture Mary with an iPhone in her hand letting the angel cool his heels while she texts her BFF "OMG...") Yes, indeed, OMG!

And so today I am disciplining myself to recording as best I can the moments I would like to possess. Words are all I've got, and they are inadequate. I took enough photographs of the things I could photograph, given that most museums and churches forbid them, not that that stopped a lot of people. But JB and I acknowledged that we are at heart a couple of goody-two-shoes when I found a guard and asked permission to go into a roped off area of a chapel at Santa Croce to get a picture of an Annunciation while other people tromped around wherever they wanted to go and snapped away as the guards shouted 'no photos!' Actually most of the art works I want to deal with are available online in much better form than anything I could get with my camera or iPhone or iPad. There is one I haven't found, though, the third Andrea del Sarto at the Pitti Palace, the one with the warrior angel.

One moment I'll hang onto forever. Betsy and I walked to the convent at San Marco, which is pretty far from our flat. The minute you get into the cloister it is as if all the traffic and bustle of Florence is miles away, and you feel as if you are out in the country, which it was when it was built for the Dominicans in the 12th century, when they were a new order dedicated to preaching orthodox theology to combat the Albigensian heresy that all matter is evil, hence a repudiation of the doctrine of Incarnation.

If there is one reality I've been in touch with on this pilgrimage it is Incarnation. It is that holiness can and does indwell matter. It dwells in people and places and works of art and Italian food, for sure.

And if you know me, you know how I feel about the ministry of preaching. So, here is this magical place, this open, green space just inside the walls that face one of the busiest bus hubs of the city, a square that is filled with beggars and gypsies, and directly across from one of the best focaccia shops in Florence. Holiness in all of it, replete with noise and dirt and deliciousness. You walk into the cloister and the first thing you see is Angelico's crucifixion with St. Dominic. San Marco is all about Beato Angelico. His sweet theology is the essence of its presence.

We loved the paintings -- his delicate Virgins, the compassionate Christs, his vision of heaven and even hell, and the musician angels, two of which have hung on golden boards in the stairs of my house for as long as I can remember. We start up the stairway to the monks' dormitory, my sister half a flight ahead of me, due to my recently unreliable knees, when she stops at the turn and looks back at me with an aghast look on her face, which I read to mean that there are more steep flights of stairs to climb.

But no. When I arrive on the landing I see that it is that the Annunciation is right there, only half a dozen steps away, as unexpected a confrontation to me as the angel's arrival must have been to Mary. It is huge, painted right on the wall, this moment frozen in time. This is the sermon preached to dedicated monks every night last thing before they go to bed. I imagine that like anything they became accustomed to it, that it wasn't always  shock to their psyches that it was to mine first seeing it.

But I see it as a call to presence. To attention to the moment in front of me. I'm going to be doing a lot of writing around the Annunciation. Actually, I have begun, and have had some surprises of my own. For now, though, I'm still wrestling with the dilemma, and I'm going out for a walk because the morning is beautiful and chilly and the trees have turned and I am actually in Wales, and along my way I'll meet lots of dogs running happily along the trail. I'm asking all their names because I'm in the market for a good dog name.

Pontormo's Annunciation

This is the Annunciation I wrote about yesterday. When I wrote my proposal for this grant, I suggested that the story of the angel's annunciation to Mary would be an informing metaphor for this liminal space, this odd and wonderful time of not only rest and recreation but of allowing myself to be open to God's invitation for the next phase of my life.

I had no way of knowing 1. that in Florence you cannot take more than a dozen steps without encountering an Annunciation or a gelato shop, 2. that the story of the Annunciation is in many ways not only a favorite biblical story but a defining metaphor for the creativity that is Florence especially during the early Renaissance, or 3. that the Annunciation is included as an element of an enormous number of other paintings. It is as if the artists feel the need to acknowledge that without this one terribly raw and pivotal moment the project of God's salvation would not have proceeded as it did. It is as if the entire weight of the Christ event rests on this one angel and this one eighth grader. It did.

I'm not an art historian, so as I write about my encounters with the Annunciation, as I intend to do with greater focus and attention once I get to the library in Wales, it will not be with academic expertise. I do hope to be able to read enough and research enough not to be entirely ignorant, but I am approaching the Annunciation as a lens for enlightenment rather than as an object of study.

As I've spent a little over three weeks now meandering around Florence on my private treasure hunt, it feels to me as if God is a couple of steps ahead of me planting an Annunciation everywhere I turn. There was a dear one above the doorway of a flat in Fiesole yesterday, not to mention 13th century statues in the museum in San Gimignano and a precious pair of panels by Filippo Lippi, so different from and so much easier to fail to notice than his important painting (which I adore) in the Church of San Lorenzo. I've found I have favorites, which is a good thing since I cannot possibly write about all of them.

And so here it is, Monday, and basically we have no big plans. We were going to go to San Gimignano but maybe we'll do it tomorrow. It is a luxury to have the latitude of time that we've had, time to meander and discover treasures we don't have the good sense to know that they are waiting for us. Time to look and time to listen and time to reflect and ponder. Grazie mille.

Where you are and where you would like to be

The Duomo is the center of Florence. Except in a few places where the streets are close together, you can see the dome from just about anywhere. The Church of Santa Maria dei Fiori, St. Mary of the Flowers, is your reference point, with the Campanile, or Bell Tower right beside it. They tell you where you are and how to find where you want to be.

I was wakened this morning by the bells. It was a little before seven, and one of the myriad of churches in the neighborhood was summoning the faithful to early mass. What enthralls me is that these bells spill their beauty and disturb the sleep of the faithful and unfaithful alike. Sundays are the best, with bells going off from every direction all morning long. I wonder how many churches there are within half a mile of us. I imagine a dozen would be a conservative guess. They don't coordinate their bells. They just ring them when it is time to go to church and again at the moment of consecration and some, I suspect, to announce that worship is finished.

As far as I'm concerned, the bells don't need a reason. They are beyond reason. They break into my consciousness and call me to attention. Of course, because I am a Christian and a clergy type at that, they carry with their wild ringing not only the narrative that defines us...stories of creation, incarnation, forgiveness, salvation...but kinship with all the people who have listened to their ringing for all the centuries that people have lived and worshiped here.

There is a church next door to our flat, Santa Felicita. We heard its bells ringing from the little wine bar we like to stop at late in the afternoon. From the outside it is a plain jane parish church. Flat stucco with steps where kids sit and smoke. But then I learned that it was founded in the third century by Syrian Christians. Inside, not only is it exquisite, but it has what may be my favorite painting of the Annunciation I have found so far.



It is a quatroccento fresco painted by Pontormo. The angel and Mary flank the altar. What is fascinating me as much as how each artist has chosen to paint each of the characters is how he has chosen to deal with the space between them. These figures are soft and flowing as if painted in water color. Mary is in motion, as if the greeting of the angel has caused her to pause and turn just as she steps up to go indoors from the garden. There is none of the usual paraphernalia...no candlestick, no lily, no book...just an angel on the other side of the open space. And this angel floats. We don't see his eyes because his head is turned away. He has blond curls and a high forehead. This is not a confrontational angel. I imagine he announced his presence with little more than a whisper. It would be enough.

We know how the story will go. We know that this girl who is barely beyond childhood will say yes. We know she doesn't have time to think it over. In this painting she is wide open. I'm not sure the question has been asked. It is a moment in time interpreted by someone who had to have been touched by that moment, who must have felt the immediate presence of that holy moment in the time it took him to paint the scene. I wonder how long it took. I wonder how his life was touched by it. I cannot imagine that he could have gone home to supper untouched by the grace and generosity of it. I cannot imagine that he was not tinged by its holiness.

There is lots of paradox in this city. I don't know what to do about the beggars, who we are told are pros taking advantage of tourists. Thank God I haven't had a Gypsy mother throw her baby at me, but I am told it is done so they can grab your purse. Old women kneel in the street with scarves over their heads and their faces on the pavement. Young African men sell knock-off designer bags and scatter when a pair of caribinieri appear. The scarf that is thirty euros in a main market is three off the beaten path. I'm not under the illusion that everything is made holy by the presence of the churches or the profligacy of the bells or the legacy of faith that built this city. And, yes, the legacy of power and greed. The Medicis are everywhere as well.

But still the Duomo rises over all of it, an architectural incarnation of faith and human intelligence, which is of course a gift from God, which can be used for good or for evil. And still the bells ring and some of us accept their gift in a full sense of mystery and gratitude. For some of us, at least, they are as profound a call as the sound of an angel whispering your name.

Surprises...or why letting go of Plan A should have been Plan A in the first lplace

The brochure for the Lilly endowment sabbatical grant proposal simply said, "What will make your heart sing?" I took that as an invitation to let my imagination go wild, so I spent the next several weeks, with the counsel of wise friends, dreaming up a five week trip to Florence. It was a warm Texas May, and I was imagining a cool Tuscan autumn.

To have received this wildly generous grant is an incredible privilege. I am grateful beyond words to the Lilly Endowment and to my parish for their support, but what I imagined and what is real have turned out to be two different things. Not to worry...my heart is definitely singing.

First of all, there was the time at home before I left. Well, suffice it to say that it turned out to be a mite busier than plan A. There were three good trips in that time...two to see sons and their families, and it doesn't get better than that, and three days in Minnesota, which were admittedly work days. Add to that our home remodeling, aka chaos.

But as I reflected with my spiritual director, it is all so right. I had no idea that the first creative step for this time had to be a dismantling of the old order. And since the kitchen and my study are the symbols of creativity for me it is entirely appropriate that they are both being recreated in this time, and it's ok that they took up some of the energy I thought I'd be using reading books at a lakeside coffee shop. It was too hot to sit outside anyway.

I thought I'd be blogging daily as well. Up to now that hasn't happened. Why? It turned out that sister time trumped blog time. Score another point for things turning out just right. Betsy just turned sixty (she's my little sister) and in all these years we have never before had ten days together without parents, husbands, or children. It was quite a bit of Lucy and Ethel do Italy. We laughed and walked and ate and drank cappuccino and just a bit of wine and laughed and cooked and read and looked at a lot of art (I think I overdid that for her) and totally enjoyed each other's company. I do not regret the posts that didn't get written. There is still time.

I also envisioned wonderful pictures both here and on Facebook. Well, my tech arrives on Saturday, so they will be coming. I have been taking wonderful pictures, just can't figure out how to get them posted. What worked at home is not working here.

So it's Tuesday and I woke up to rain, which is an invitation to stay home for at least a while. Home is a delightful flat on the fourth floor of a building that ovlooks the Arno, where rowers row in the morning and evening. The Ponte Vecchio is just to the left, very photogenic but sort of the Bourbon Street of Florence, lined with junky jewelry stores and crammed with tourists. At night various sorts of musicians play there, and since our air conditioning is our open window, we'd rather they didn't. But our neighborhood is quirky and full of treasures. I'll walk maybe a quarter of a mile to the Pitti Palace in a while to hang out with a couple of Annunciations I want to see. Pay a little extra for my cappuccino so I can sit at a table all afternoon if I want to, stop by the wine bar for a focaccia or a salad. Or maybe I'll find that there is another plan for the day.

...Mother Mary Comes to Me, Speaking Words of Wisdom, Let It Be...

(written on Sunday, September 30)

It is 5:45 in the afternoon and church bells are ringing. They ring all over the city to call the faithful to worship and to announce the hour of the day. They ring at different churches as the same time, different pitches, different tempos, they start and stop and punctuate the air of the town as tourists and residents go about their business and motorcycles swarm and cars and taxis and buses vie for position in the narrow streets, which were not made for machines.

After three days we are beginning to get into the rhythm of things. The church bells help me to locate myself in time and space and remind me that I came not as a tourist but as a pilgrim. I felt very much a tourist yesterday as we waited in line to get into the Uffizzi with our guide. We decided it would be wise to have someone with experience take us for our first visit. I expect there to be many more visits to this incredible museum. Nobody told us that yesterday was the Italian equivalent of the Susan B Komen race for breast cancer and that 35,000 people would be coming to participate, every one of them in a blue T-shirt, nor that the museum would be open to the public for free. It was hot and it was crowded, but once we got inside I was reminded why I wanted to spend time in Florence.

Earlier in the day we had watched the runners and walkers and strollers from the sidelines at the edge of the Piazza della Signioria. And then we went to the Duomo for church. It is Santa Maria de Fiori, Saint Mary of the Flowers. A sign announced, "Crossing the threshold of this building in effect means penetrating the mystery of the mother of God." I'll bet a zillion people pass that sign and maybe even read it without letting it stop them in their tracks. This is not something to be done lightly. To penetrate the mystery of the mother of God.

The mass, of course, was in Italian. As I stood and sat and was bathed in words and music, I remembered the first poetry class I ever took. I'm not a poet. I haven't taken many. My teacher was Dana Gioia, an amazing poet and a brilliant teacher. The blackboards were filled with poetry, but this was an experience I'd never anticipated. We began looking at Sappho, written in ancient Greek. It was a purely visual experience, yet recognizable as poetry. We couldn't say the words or hear them or comprehend what they meant, and yet we were impacted by them, as we were with the poem in Cyrrilic on the next board. Eventually we were given increasingly familiar languages, words we could sound out even if we didn't know what they meant, and only finally a poem in which we could participate in the various sensory experiences that comprised the poem.

Familiar as I am with the shape of liturgy and the language of the prayers, my experience in church was something like that. I let the words and music wash over me, and they were real and left their impact on me. I noted with sadness that the one thing the bulletin was clear in communicating was that if one was not a member of the Roman Catholic Church, one was not welcome to take communion. The mysterious mother of God must be sad that her beloved offspring express anti-hospitality to each other. But I feel sorry that they are threatened by what it might be to invite others to their table.

The city is chaotic, but there is something holy in this chaos, where churchbells ring at every hour of the day and night and where Jesus and Francis and Peter and sweet Mother Mary are everywhere just waiting with their mysteries to penetrate our illusion of reality.

New post later today

Sorry for my silence. I've been having issues with blogger. With a little more work his afternoon we should be up and running. Rest assured that my sister and I are thoroughly savoring life in Florence.

Am I ready?

We are here to witness the creation and abet it. We are here to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach but, especially, we notice the beautiful faces and complex natures of each other. We are here to bring to consciousness the beauty and power that are around us and to praise the people who are here with us. We witness our generation and our times. We watch the weather. Otherwise, creation would be playing to an empty house.

According to the second law of thermodynamics, things fall apart. Structures disintegrate. Buckminster Fuller hinted at a reason we are here: By creating things, by thinking up new combinations, we counteract this flow of entropy. We make new structures, new wholeness, so the universe comes out even. A shepherd on a hilltop who looks at a mess of stars and thinks, ‘There’s a hunter, a plow, a fish,’ is making mental connections that have as much real force in the universe as the very fires in those stars themselves...Annie Dillard, with thanks to David Lose.

.Am I ready? If you wonder whether my bags are packed and the house is cleaned and have I dealt with all my anxieties...well, pretty much. I'm realistic. There is undoubtedly too much of one thing and not enough of another. I do want my ducks in a row. And it is a sure thing one of them will be waddling out of line.

But what does it take to be ready? I mean, isn't 'ready' a state of mind? A willingness to be present to what pops up in front of us? Is it something we can go looking for?

Actually, I've not planned as much as I usually do. I'll have five weeks in Florence, so what is really important to me is the open time, the wandering time, the paying-attention time. In my application for the grant I kept coming back to the line from Eliot's "Little Gidding," "You are not here to verify,
                                                                              Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
                                                                              Or carry report. You are here to kneel
                                                                               where prayer has been valid."

I know I'll have to keep reminding myself that this time I'm not a tourist (though of course I'm a tourist! We are all tourists except for where we live.) but a pilgrim. I chose Florence because it is the birthplace of the Renaissance and because of all the art. And needless to say, we'll spend plenty of time in the museums and churches, but I'm going to be looking for what is off the beaten path, for what is not reproduced on post cards. And I'm going to be looking with my journal, my blog, and my camera.

I love what Dillard says about creation playing to an empty house. I'm not going to Florence to absorb it as much as to converse with it. I'm sure Florence will go on unscathed by my presence, but I have something to bring to it as well, years and experience and my own quirky way of seeing things. And the blog is my way of bringing you into the conversation as well.  We are all creators and co-creators. I'm so eager to be open to this incredible experience. So the answer is yes, I'm ready.

The Water Between Here and There

It was rush hour, and either of my alternatives was going to take some time. I landed in Seattle and needed to get to the Olympic Peninsula. I could have taken the puddle jumper to Port Angeles, but for some reason I like to take my time getting there, and more flying is not taking my time. My first spiritual director said that it takes our souls a full day to catch up with every time zone we cross when we fly. I needed some ground time...or water time. I needed some soul time.

My son and his family moved to Port Angeles eleven years ago, and by now I do not know how many trips I've made. If we are counting time spent with his family the answer is not enough. In addition to visits to them, we have also spent time in the San Juan Islands, on Vancouver Island, and sailing in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. I've grown to love the area.

There is something sacred for me in riding the ferries. I understand that for most people they are simply functional. And most of those people sit in their cars, maybe even work in their cars or talk on their cell phones or check Facebook or play Bejewelled to pass the time. Maybe you need to be from somewhere else, somewhere hot and dry, to experience the ferries as mystical, but I get out of my car as quick as I can and get the best seat I can to watch from the window for something magical to appear. And water is magic enough for me, so the seals who watch and the birds and the point of Mount Rainier are all added blessings. And the time is blessing, a pause between here and there, between one highway and the next, to look and wait and take the time it takes. 

Happy birthday, Mary Oliver

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst for the goodness I do not have.
I walk out to the pond and all the way God has given us such beautiful lessons.
Oh Lord, I was never a quick scholar
but sulked and hunched over my books past the hour and the bell;
grant me, in your mercy, a little more time.
Love for the earth and love for you are having such a long conversation in my heart.
Who knows what will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things away,
expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst, I am slowly learning.

Report from Day Five

I’ve spent much of my sabbatical so far in my study, which is very much a work in progress. The timing of our renovation, which seemed so wrong, I think has turned out to be so right. What was disassembled is becoming reassembled, and to believe that this could happen without disorder was a delusion.

I had a complete meltdown one night when it became evident that the delay in construction on the new kitchen – which has resulted in chaos in the whole house – was going to eat into my sabbatical. I was resentful that this very special time was going to turn into a time of work. That I’d be forced to stay home to meet the sub-floorers (who have not shown up, by the way) rather than roam free with my creative self. And that preparing meals, which is one thing I truly enjoy, would be a chore rather than a delight. Well, it is a chore when all you have is a laundry room sink, a microwave, and a grill. But it is also an invitation to a different sort of creativity.

So, once I realized that I was the only one who could make my sabbatical crummy by bringing resentment into it, I got over it and decided to go with the flow. Meaning, as long as we are renovating the kitchen, let’s do my study as well. The painters came and made the walls a ceiling the palest butter yellow, and the carpet people came and put down sea grass that smelled at first like a summer barn. All this was preceded by movers (the same ones who moved us out of the kitchen) carrying about twenty boxes of books down the crooked staircase. I’d already been carrying grocery sacks of books down to the cove in our bedroom for months.

The study was now empty until my new desk arrived. The desk  is white and fits into the corner under the window, where I see the tip of one oak tree and blue, blue sky. Now my work began, but it has been creative work. I’m not taking time to count the books. But the box on the breakfast room table that is filling with more give-away books is #12 that will not return to my bookcases.

I’ve learned something about myself in this, as I’m not letting one thing back in my study that I don’t want to be here. Not one thing that doesn’t feed me in one way or another. I’ve given a new seminarian all my hard-core theology books. Not that I didn’t like them. I took every theology course offered when I was in seminary and relished the brain-knotting process of attempting to articulate what is ultimately ineffable. But as I packed them up I realized that after all these years of ministry I am accepting authority for what I say about God.  I no longer need to look it up in books. I haven’t opened those books in years, so let someone else enjoy them.

Here is what I kept. These are the books I lovingly placed in organized shelves mostly in alphabetical order by author. 

Beginning at my right hand and going clockwise around the room. In a scarred brown wood bookcase that is dear to my heart because one day in the 1950’s it arrived containing the Encyclopedia Britannica. On top of it, between two foo-dog bookends Clay gave me, are books I want to read during this sabbatical.  

Below that are my Bibles, Bible dictionary, hymnal, prayer books, and on the lower shelf all the issues of Image, the journal of theology and the arts. Above the title on the cover are the words Art+Faith+Mystery.  That pretty much articulates what I cherish and what fills my shelves.

In the next bookcase are all my commentaries, neatly arranged by collection. Below them you’ll find the Jungian books, devotionals, and a series of books in which literary writers deal with scripture. I really like those books.

Next bookcase: top shelf is Jesus, second shelf New Testament, third, Old Testament, bottom is pastoral care and congregational development. More of those books are at the church. When I looked at the wall of books in my office there I despaired of ever being able to retire because there will be no place to bring them home. Not that I’m thinking of retiring.

I kept two shelves worth of theology, stuff I will dive back into because I love it or, as in the case of Tillich’s three-volume systematic theology, because I read every single page several times over to attempt understanding and it is a badge of honor. Below theology are spiritual autobiographies.

Then a top shelf of a few favorite authors: John Claypool, Paula D’Arcy, Richard Rohr, Henri Nouwen, Alan Jones, Thomas Keating. And below that a shelf with books about science and religion and about world religions. Then begin the books of poetry and short stories, collections of literature and writing about faith and literature. It says something that there are four full shelves of these books. Downstairs is where most of my ‘reading’ books are, a library full and three floor-to-ceiling shelves in the bedroom. Then books on prayer and resource books for Advent and Lent. Next is the uppity women’s shelf – mediaeval mystics and their offspring. I like to think I belong on that shelf.

In the diagonal corner the entire shelf is taken up by books on preaching. Sermons and how to and why to and why not. 

And then to the immediate left of my desk there are three long shelves of books on spirituality. That’s it. More spirituality than anything else.

The process of cleaning and culling and arranging has given me a clear picture of what I cherish in this tiny little world that serves as the womb of my ministry in so many ways. The process of disassembling it and carefully reassembling it has offered me a liminal entry into my sabbatical. Where it was previously chaos and an ugly shade of aqua with nasty carpet, it is now a haven of peace with a sense of openness and invitation for time of meditation, reading, and writing.

And while we’re talking about creativity, what would you do if all you had was a laundry room sink, a microwave and a grill? Well, you’d have a dinner party, wouldn’t you? That’s what we did on Monday. We could have four guests because we have six chairs. The floor is covered with brown paper, but the table was set with yellow flowers in a blue and white pitcher, and we had a delicious meal with treasured friends. The dining room is a storage unit. The living room furniture is all pushed close in, but we could chat there and laugh at our surroundings. Arthur’s toys take up a lot of it, too.

But in the middle of the chaos we created our little Sabbath, and it was lovely. Dinner was good and the wine was good, but it was all about the people taking time to cherish each other and give thanks for all we do have, which is a great deal. We were all nourished and well blessed.