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Still here?

Oh my!  This blog is still here!

Still getting used to new surroundings but ...

... with packing cases everywhere... and .

http://lifos.blog.com/

Of Endings and Beginnings

This Blog has now been wound up, but the e-address (URL) of the new incarnation of Life is Full of Surprises! will be posted here shortly....

A Short Month?

Here we are on the first of February, the eve of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, and there is a strange sense of excitement in the air. Nothing to do with lectionary or liturgy I’m afraid to say, but a popular celebration that we have made it through the month of January without any severe weather. A brief five inches of snow fell ten days ago, but that melted and was washed away within a short time, confusing both the birds and the daffodils (which are sprouting in my driveway.)

To many people this may not be the most exciting of topics, but for a small east island community that this time last year had had its third major snow storm it is cause enough to celebrate. By Candlemas 2011 there was a foot of hard snow on the ground, much of which was to remain until middle March. Last winter the line “earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone” was never more apt.

Of course all that could change in the weeks ahead, but even if Mother Nature decides to send a storm we can take it – for spiritually and psychologically we will be ready for it. After all, Easter is only some eight weeks away!

"February makes a bridge and March breaks it." (George Herbert)

Ego sum ...

To claim that a car service waiting room can be the source of revelation would be a bit of an exaggeration, but my visit to the Toyota sales building last week did teach me a thing or two about a cultural change in the English language. My car was due for its first tire and fluid level check-up, so I had booked a service appointment at 10:00 a.m. and dutifully showed up on time. I was greeted by Bonnie, the duty sales manager, who cheerfully took my details and told me that the wait would be about an hour in length. Not a problem, I replied, armed with my iPad. I’ll just take a seat. And that I did.

Sure enough, at near the stroke of eleven, Bonnie’s loud voice called my name and I reported back to her desk like a schoolboy collecting homework. All was well, I learned. And the work carried out? “I rotated your tires and checked brake fluid and coolant levels – and all’s fine. Oh, and I also checked your wiper blades. You’re good to go!” Remarkable, I thought, as I wandered off in search of my serviced car. How did she do all that without ever leaving my sight? Is this a new understanding of the active verb? Or some modern corporate expression?

I suggest it is a hybrid of many things, for in this part of the world I have heard many active expressions that when analyzed turn out to be anything but active. I recall a man telling me that he had planted hundreds of daffodil bulbs in his garden, whereas in reality he had paid a work crew to do just that for him. And a couple announcing that they were redesigning their garden – whereas in truth they were paying someone to do just that.

I think I’m preaching this Sunday …

"He Spoke with Authority:" Thoughts delivered on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 29th, 2012

Oh to have been a fly on the wall of that synagogue in Capurnaum. Some sermons ought never to be recorded for posterity, but this one should have been!

They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority.

And again: They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching – with authority!”

Notions of, metaphors of authority are very difficult to pin down. It’s fair to say that we all recognize authority, but when it comes to describing exactly what it is we find it very difficult.

Perhaps a weakness we share from time to time is confusing authority with rank or office. When a naval chaplain I would occasionally preach this message to congregations that included admirals – and always took delight in ruffling their feathers. I would ask questions such as: When a ship’s weapon is broken, who has the greater authority? The Commander who gives the order to repair, or the Petty Officer who knows how to swiftly and effectively carry out that repair?

Shortly before I was ordained I was taught that as a priest I would have the gift of authority. This was to trouble me for many years, as I have not at any time in my ministry felt authoritative, but came to understand it as an authority bound up with celebration of the sacraments and the sharing of those sacraments with the people.

That’s not to say that some clergy don’t like to play the game of rank. The sub-culture of self-importance (more than) occasionally raises its head within the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican tradition. It was an English Bishop of Worcester who, in my father's study, was heard to say, “The Duke of Edinburgh and I both agree that we dislike name-droppers.”

And a few years ago a couple wished to celebrate their marriage vows in a prominent Manhattan church, and requested of that church that I preside over that celebration. The request was denied, because, in their own words, “We do not entertain provincial clergy.”

True authority remains elusive. A story goes that Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert, once had a major argument. Albert stormed out of the room and went to his private quarters. Victoria followed, found the door locked, and began pounding on it. “Who’s there?” Prince Albert asked. “The Queen of England,” was the reply. But the door remained locked. More pounding followed, but then silence. The next sound was that of a gently tap. “Who’s there?” Albert inquired. The Queen replied: “Your wife.” Prince Albert opened the door immediately.

Jesus taught them as one having authority.

What does this mean, and why were the people astounded?

Well, small amounts of anecdotal humor may teach us a few things, but when it came to the religious leaders and teachers of faith in the time of Jesus there was little reason for the people to smile.

From the corrupt High Priest and his entourage, to the scribes and most of, but not all of the Pharisees, the religious life of Israel was asleep. Rituals continued on high days and holy days, of course, and the Sabbath observance was a part of the rhythm of weekly life, but there was no energy. No dynamism. No voice that echoed the radicalism and power of the Hebrew prophets of old.

Until that Sabbath day in Capernaum, that is.

But it was not only on that occasion. Wherever he went, from Galilee to Samaria, and all the way to Jerusalem, Jesus woke up the people by his teachings. And the people recognized in him that authority that had been missing for generations, and which their settled religious leaders and teachers did not have.

It is a divine gift that we have many of those words – many of that teaching. Witnesses passed them on. People remembered them. Writers put them on pages. And that is good news for us. Literally good news, for it is Gospel.

There have got to be moments in the lives of every single one of us when faith and belief seems dry, routine, unexciting, empty. (How many negative adjectives do we need?) And although it’s not a panacea for all spiritual ills and doubts, I recommend that we return again and again to the words of Jesus.

And to approach them with an open mind and heart, leaving our personal baggage behind. Hear them afresh – and allow them to address us.

In a time and society where there appears to be no clearly-defined voice of authority, and where so many people rail against the very notion of authority, the teachings of Jesus remain. And they continue to astound!

A Flurry of Activity

Against all our optimistic hopes it seems that our small part of the world will receive the first snowfall of the winter over the next twenty-four hours. Not that much. Perhaps an inch or three. Very seasonal, given that it is January on Long Island. Of course the snow will fall on the wrong day, for no child or teenager wants snow at a weekend. And it will melt very quickly, for which the birds will be grateful. All in all a mere passing shower.

Epiphanies of Long Ago

No, nothing to do with mysterious magi arriving, sand weary, on ships of the desert, but with my own personal memories of this season and time. You see, Epiphany has never truly been a highlight of my church life. Then and now. Then, and by that I mean the days of my childhood, it was something that my father did in church on a weekday; now, even though I hear of some parishes celebrating and processing on the feast of the Epiphany, it seems to have been relegated to a “Sunday After” category. Just as we have “All Saints’ Sunday” and mid-week patronal festivals are transferred to the Sunday before their actual date, so we celebrate the mysterious strangers on a day that is much more convenient to the modern churchgoer.

Yet my boyhood Epiphanies were exciting events because they involved gifts. Not gold, frankincense and myrrh – but chocolate! Each Epiphany night, when my father returned from the sung eucharist, he would set out a large plastic and cardboard snowman (named “Piff!”) in the middle of the room, from which extended a dozen or so coloured and numbered ribbons. We would take it in turns throwing dice and depending on our score would tug on a ribbon as the snowman was lifted up. Our prizes, usually large bars of Cadbury’s chocolate would be on the other end!

Simple pleasures, probably frowned upon in today’s health-correct society. But what a sweet way to end the season of Christmas!

A New Year

Over twelve days since Christmas, and six days into this year numbered 2012, and my pen has been frozen. There has been simply so many other distractions, other tasks, other plans and thoughts on which to focus that even sermon writing has suffered! (Could they get worse, I hear some think!)

Now that the dust of the season has settled and we move into the weeks of the Epiphany it is time to regroup.

And maybe move on. I am exploring, with the help of my new iPad, the possibility of relocating this column, and will make that decision within the next few days. You will be the first to be told, honestly.

Are we there yet? I think we are!

What an interesting Christmas Eve! After the children's Nativity Play we returned home to cook dinner, and realised that Moose (five-year-old black Labrador) was anything but well. To cut long story short dinner was abandoned and the family have taken him to the Emergency Room at Riverhead Animal Hospital. I await news, even as I prepare to return to church for the final preparations for the late mass. Not the best of starts for the celebration of the Incarnation. Poor Moosie!

Bethlehem Minus One, and Counting ...

I began last Sunday’s sermon by asking: Does it feel like Christmas yet? And here in the Lewis house it certainly does. Even twenty-four hours makes a difference. Yes, the decorations have been up a week now (although yesterday I felt the need to hang more baubles on my Italian-style garland) and cards are being opened by the dozen every day. But now there are culinary signs: bottles of wine and cognac, lists of cheeses ordered for the morrow, the promise of fresh salmon for the Christmas Eve dinner (wrapped with béchamel sauce in filo pastry) and the delivery of flowers for Kate from her God-mother. Yes, it feels like Christmas today, even if tomorrow, liturgically, we go through the motions of the last day of Advent. And rightly so. The Offices will ground me in that tradition.

In the meantime I have spent three hours wrapping gifts and stocking-fillers (US: Stocking-stuffers) and, as I posted on Facebook, amazed myself in doing all of this before Christmas Eve, possibly for the first time ever!

And I am excited. Why. Because I am looking forward to tradition. And about that I will write a great deal more

BETHLEHEM MINUS TWO, AND COUNTING … Leading to a Complaint Against Some Clergy

In accord with tradition and demand my shopping list for food and drink is on the way to being completed. Checked off. Done. Whatever word or phrase you choose to use. Yet it’s more than Christmas Day. For the second year we are gunning for a Boxing Day party. Last year we had invited some thirty people, but when we woke up on the morning of the 26th we took one look at the weather forecast and decided that we ought to tell those guests to stay at home. Notwithstanding, Messrs Fred and Bob showed up mid-afternoon, brushed a few inches of snow off their shoulders and declared, “It’s just a flurry!” They left three hours later, full and (very) happy.

No, this year’s intended party is bigger, and given both the benign weather forecast and the response to the invitations, it is live and huge. We expect over fifty people. I can’t wait! My cook and catering alter ego is already taking over. There is a battle plan, and it will be so much fun. I will write about the food in a later post.

With twenty-four hours to go until Christmas Eve, and the beginning of the princess of festivals (Easter being the Queen) I am personally content and spiritually happy about this celebration. Yet I have two subjects about which, before this season of goodwill truly kicks in, I wish to sound off.

The first is Christmas cards, and to be precise, photo-cards. Once upon a time I resisted these, thinking that they were too secular. But I have mellowed and adapted, and have grown to appreciate them. As a family we now embrace this form of Yuletide greeting. But! And it’s a serious “but” or objection. To all of those people who create and send these cards: May we please see a photo of all the family. Please? Christmas is not about our children but rather about all of us as a family.

My second bugaboo, which oscillates between irritation and actually being rather cross, is the class of clergy who, on Facebook or other social media, complain of being busy, even over-worked at Christmas. Those posts about the number of services, the production of service bulletins, and the “Oh! I can’t wait until Christmas afternoon, etc.”

Guess what, guys? Don’t be so bloody pathetic. It’s not only what we do – it’s what we are called to do. I may write and sound like an old ordained fart, but I still recall my curacy, twenty five years ago, and the twenty-plus services over three days, bringing carols and sacramental grace to old and young, churched and un-churched. Stop bleating and start posting stuff that doesn’t draw attention to you! No one, in the real world, is in the least bit interested!

Now, about this coming party…

Cutting Comments

Haircut day, and since Leo has completely disappeared into the Russian mists (or more likely permanently moved to his condominium in Miami Beach) I now drive to Sag Harbor, where April opened her barber shop some five years ago. She first cut my hair ten years ago when I had just moved to this area and she and her father ran the barbers in Jobs Lane, Southampton. Cruelly increasing rent forced them out, but eventually they found a new opportunity where they now are. Even in Sag Harbor they battle rent increases, interestingly enough by Chinese conglomerates who apparently own more and more commercial real estate in the East End of Long Island.

Today was a real treat in that the father, Charlie (the original “Choppin’ Charlie”) was there to cut my hair. April had decided to take a day off, and so her father had stepped in. The phrase is “slow precision.” With great conversation. Plus clergy discount. And the best of haircuts!

Bethlehem Minus Four, and Counting …

Hear we are, December 20th, and once again I have failed to pay attention to the traditional calendar of the Church. For we have already reached the mid-point of the O! Antiphons (which began on December 17th,) and I forgot all about them. Ancient sentiments, praising the names of Jesus and reflecting the messianic prophecies of the prophets of Israel, their origins are rooted in the Middle Ages but their words are none the less potent today. And today’s Antiphon is:

O Key of David and Scepter of the House of Israel; you open and no man closes; you close and no man opens. Come, and deliver from the chains of prison those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Yet my mundane mind is cluttered with less prophetic things such as Kate’s school concert, the continuing basketball season, the re-wiring of some tree lights and the menu for our Boxing Day “open house.” And I have just read the Christmas Message from the Presiding Bishop and feel once again that the cosmic power and glories of the Incarnation have been reduced to a welfare and social action agenda.

O! Dear.

Bethlehem Minus Five, and Counting…

I am exhausted today. Monday is usually my day off and today was no exception, but the final items necessary for this family feast called Christmas had to be addressed. Plus the routine tasks that every family demands. My weekly trip to the dump. (For UK readers that is the “skip.” The local recycling center for glass, cardboard, cans and paper.) Then the grocery shopping, and a visit to the vet to pick up some phenobarbitol for Bela, our epileptic, abandoned-adopted cat. How many other local clergy get to pick up a controlled substance every few weeks? I’d rather not know!

There is certainly a seasonal excitement in the air. While in the Bridgehampton Commons I called by the “bird store” to wish Michael Mackay a very happy Christmas. Michael not only is the morning presenter on WPPB, our local public radio station, but also a devout Roman Catholic and a cantor at the Sacred Hearts of Jesus & Mary in Southampton. We mused for a while that apart from the obvious fact that Mary and Joseph were there, the primary witnesses to the birth of our Lord were animals. Yet let’s be realistic. Even the Victorian carol In the Bleak Mid-winter’s line, “The ox and ass and camel which adore,” was only two-thirds correct. There were no camels in Bethlehem.

I have baked a cake with five dried fruits and mixed spices. It is only seven inches in diameter (unlike my mother’s huge Christmas cakes) but now drenched in a certain holy spirit and wrapped, I will ice it on Christmas Eve and maybe find a traditional decoration or two. A snowman or candy holly sprig. Who knows?

And I have learned a new word today. “Giftables.” Heard in a conference call in a local retail store. Hmm. What does that actually mean? Can it improve the Epiphany scriptures?

And they opened their giftables of gold, frankincense and myrrh.



As if to balance the somewhat western expressions of the birth of Christ, I am reading All the Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer (Wiley 2003.) It was a gift to my late and dear friend, (U.S. Ambassador) Heyward Isham, and inscribed:

With admiration to another world citizen. Best wishes, Stephen Kinzer.

And it is a brilliant description of how the present stresses, strains and alleged threats in Iran are entirely of America’s making and engineering.

In the beginning was the word…

Thoughts Delivered on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 2011

Does it feel like Christmas yet?

It does! Even though, as Andy Williams once sang and wished, there’s not yet much mistletoeing, hearts are not yet glowing, and loved ones are not yet near. Thank God! I hear some say.

It may feel like Christmas in the stores and on the streets, but in church? Can we be “of good cheer?” There are no signs of decorations, but the candle posts are a hint of things to come! So are the readings. The Gospel reading in particular.

For these verses from Luke’s Gospel, traditionally called the Annunciation, or Announcing. A divine message given to a young girl, and her response. It is a pivotal moment, and a poetic moment - a story that is both moving and mysterious.

A church hymn of the early fourth century sang:

Today is the beginning of our salvation,
And the revelation of the eternal mystery!
The Son of God becomes the Son of the Virgin
As Gabriel announces the coming of Grace.
Together with him let us cry to the God-bearer:
"Rejoice, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with you!"

And so, given the beginning of a new story, and the expectation (literally!) that fills the air, I think it only right to announce that Christmas may now enter our hearts and lives.

Mary’s life had been quiet up to that moment. The moment when she received a message.

What was that scene really like? How did the angel Gabriel appear to Mary?

For two thousand years we have used our imaginations. We have painted, sculpted, engraved, carved and sung about the angel’s visit – and it’s all wonderful fun. So much interpretation and variety – but let’s not take any of it too seriously. Most of these images and ideas belong in Renaissance Europe and not in First Century Palestine. So let’s forget the wings and the haloes!

Mary had an encounter with an angel. An angelos. (Masculine, singular.) A messenger.

And that angelos/messenger would have looked quite normal, like you or me (if that is normal) – but his message was anything but normal.

You will conceive and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.

All of a sudden normality has disappeared, for the significance of this meeting has now become apparent. This is now God’s act. God’s decision. God’s plan to enter into the world and change things forever. For life and faith would never be the same again.

Yet it took a human response to make all this happen. The response of an eighth grade girl who said “yes,” knowing the consequences of her decision. For she risked shame, humiliation and death by stoning.

Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.

This is the traditional image of a servant, echoing the verses of Psalm 123:

As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their masters,
and the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,
So our eyes look to the LORD our God,
until he show us his mercy.

There is so much to do these next seven days. For Christmas comes but once a year, but it always takes us by surprise! And in church and out of church we are preparing for a day, a time, a season of celebration – and yet a time of personal, thoughtful reflection.

For we do more than celebrate a birth of child in humble surroundings, powerful though this event was. We consider our response to God’s astonishing act.

For if an angel (an angelos/a messenger) gives us a message that we know to be divine and in need of an answer, and we are asked to do something that involves obedient risks - what answer do we give?

Will it be that of Mary?

Mary Immaculate,
Merely a woman, yet
Whose presence, power is
Great as no goddess's
Was deemèd, dreamèd; who
This one work has to do--
Let all God's glory through,
God's glory which would go
Through her and from her flow
Off, and no way but so.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins)

As we now enter the Christmas season we are given the story, the question and the answer. That is why it is the most wonder-full time of the year!

Bethlehem Minus Six, and Counting ...

For reasons of time and family I’ve missed a couple of beats on this countdown. But does it really matter? My personal countdown to Christmas seems to be out of synch with most others anyway, the most authoritative being the Christmas tree stand in Bridgehampton whose sign today announced that there were seven days to Christmas. I suppose that in most ways they are correct. My stubborn calculations are founded on the Judaeo- Christian tradition that believes that a feast begins at sundown the evening before the actual date. But who am I to prevaricate?

I suppose that I am also guilty of supporting the belief that Jesus was born at night – the night of the Holy Family’s arrival at the City of David. The Gospel of Luke is unspecific, except to assert that they (Joseph and Mary) had been in Bethlehem for a while, maybe a week or two.

This idea of a late night arrival has created an entire culture in itself. Art , drama and music has echoes the romance of this scene down the ages. But our common and cultural enjoyment is not based on the scriptures but on a second century spiritual novel that goes by the name of the Gospel of James. It is there, and only there, that we read of Mary giving birth at night.

So the date of the actual birth celebration is moveable – especially if you are a Christian of the Orthodox spirituality. This column would therefore be entitled: Bethlehem Minus Nineteen.

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