New Year, Yearning for New Prophets

I have spent this Christmas break going to my seminary's website, looking to see if my grades were posted.  So far, so good.  

I got mixed feedback for my final exam in Hebrew Bible, mixed meaning that I got compliments for some work well done, along with suggestions for improvement, even though we are at the end of class.  I am always happy for the feedback of that teaching team, especially since I am taking the second half of Hebrew Bible in the spring.  I particularly liked this feedback, since I wasn't sure of that writing:  "Good, thoughtful reflection on the 2 tasks of a prophet."

That last chunk of final exam seems a worthy post for New Year's Day.  

"Like those during the reign of Solomon, we here in the 21st century yearn for something different, a better world that isn’t breaking the backs of so many of us, a world where everyone has enough, a God who comes to live with us again. We yearn, even though we may not be able to articulate what our hearts truly desire.

A good prophet can articulate our yearnings. A powerful prophet can inspire us to be brave enough to make our yearnings take flesh and shape and meaning--and by doing so to transform society."

Happy 2022!  And here's hoping for prophets that can call us to our better selves and better societies!

New Year's Eve Morning: "Leaving the House that Held the Asylum Seekers"

 I have never been a stay up until midnight kind of gal.  I want to be.  I like the idea of dancing until the wee, small hours of the morning, but I have also never been a dancing kind of gal.  There are years that I want to stay awake to make sure they leave, but I do realize that time is an artificial construct in so many ways.

The Omicron variant reminds us of this essential life lesson, along with others, like a society can only be as healthy as its least healthy members, which is true of health in terms of disease, in terms of stratification, in terms of violence, on and on I could go.

I started this New Year's Eve morning by reading this article in The Atlantic, a piece by a neuroscientist who seems fit and healthy only to discover that he has a cancerous mass too close to his heart to operate.  It's a sobering realization that we may not have as much time here as we think.

In the past, I might have made lists and thought about goals and plans, but I wrote a post yesterday that explains why I'm not doing that this year.  It's hard to break away from that pull, though, isn't it?  I've traditionally spent the time around the turning of the year thinking about what I did right in the past year, what I did wrong, what I want more of, what I want less of.

This year, let me focus on the what I want more of that I can do.  I want to get back to writing more poetry.  While I would like more publications, I am aghast at the submission fees that seem fairly regular now, but I would like to keep submitting here and there, especially to outlets that have been important to me.

My happiest publication this year was being included in the Syracuse Cultural Workers Women Artists Datebook, which is sold out right now.  Two years ago, they accepted a poem of mine, and the fact that they accepted another one made the whole process seem less like a fluke.  

This poem seems perfect for this hinge moment as we move from 2021 to 2022, so let me repost it here.  Once that poem was called "Exercising Freedom."  Along the way, I changed it to "Leaving the House that Held the Asylum Seekers"; I wrote about its origins in this blog post.   Many thanks to Dave Bonta and Luisa Igloria for their inspirations along the way to this poem's 2021 publication:

Leaving the House that Hid the Asylum Seekers

Once again, you find yourself
on the old revolutionary road
with the houses that once hid
the asylum seekers.

The long road stretches
before you, overgrown
with brambles and struggling seedlings.
You see the fires
ahead, burning cities
or perhaps the lights
of fellow travelers.
Smoke hides the mountains.

The road is lined
with the suitcases of immigrants
who abandoned all the essentials
they once lugged to a new country.

You have kept your treasures
sewn into your hemlines, heirloom
seeds and the small computer chip
that holds your freedom papers.
Your grandmother’s gold hoops dance
in your earlobes and twinkle
around your fingers.

You hear the voices of the ancestors,
colored with both reason and panic.
Go faster, they urge.
You are needed up ahead.

Feast Day of the Holy Family

 Today we celebrate the Holy Family.  This feast day is relatively recent; we've only been celebrating the Holy Family for the past 300 years or so.  Our idea of family, especially a family unit separate from multiple generations, after all, is really rather modern.

It's interesting to take up this feast day after all these days where we've celebrated Mary, and her decision to be the Mother of Jesus.  It's a great counterpoint to remember that fathers have a role in the family too.

I always wonder if these kind of feast days bring pain to people who grew up in dysfunctional families.  I know plenty of people who have been scarred in ways that only family can do.  What do they take away from these feast day?  Despair in all the ways that families can hurt each other?  Hope that families can really be a sacramental rendering of the love of God?

Below you see a huge sculpture, made from a tree that toppled in a storm, of the Holy Family fleeing Herod's murderous intent.  I think of the Holy Family as refugee family, fleeing danger, with only the clothes on their back.  I think of all the families torn apart or torn away from their homeland because of terrible dictators.  I yearn for the day to come when we will not experience these fissures in the family.

Here is a prayer I wrote for this day:

Parent God, you know the many ways our families can fail us.  Please remind us of the perfection in family that we are called to model.  Please give us the strength and fortitude to create the family dynamics you would have us enjoy.  Please give us the courage to minister to those who have not had good family experiences.  And most of us, please give us the comfort of knowing that the restoration of creation is underway, with families that will be whole, not fractured, when all our members will be accounted for, when no one will go missing.

Meditation on This Sunday's Gospel

The readings for Sunday, January 2, 2022:

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:7-14

First Reading (Alt.): Sirach 24:1-12

Psalm: Psalm 147:13-21 (Psalm 147:12-20 NRSV)

Psalm (Alt.): Wisdom of Solomon 10:15-21

Second Reading: Ephesians 1:3-14

Gospel: John 1:[1-9] 10-18

When I was younger, the Gospel of John confounded me. What kind of nativity story did John give us? Does he not know the power of narrative, the importance of a hook in the beginning?

I missed the Nativity stories. Where were the humans responding to the good news that the angels gave them? What happened to the baby Jesus?

Look at verse 14, which may be familiar: "And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father." As a child, I'd have screamed, "What does that mean? How does word become flesh?"

If we've been alive any length of time, we understand this passage in an intuitive way. Words become flesh every day. We begin to shape our reality by talking about it. We shape our relationships through our words which then might lead to deeds, which is another way of talking about flesh.

Think about your primary relationships. Perhaps this coming year could be the year when we all treat the primary people in our lives with extra care and kindness. If we treat people with patience and care, if we say please and thank you more, we will shape the flesh of our relationships into something different. Alternately, if we're rude and nasty to people, they will respond with rudeness and cruelty--we've shaped the flesh of the world into a place where we don't want to live.

In the past few years, we've seen this passage and the ideas behind it playing out on all sorts of larger stages. We seem to be living in a much uglier world. How can we begin to reweave this frazzled and frayed fabric of our lives?

It's time to think about the New Year, and some of us will make resolutions. What can you do to make your words and beliefs take flesh? How can we do more to make a reality from the wonderful visions that God has for our lives? How can we make God's word flesh in our lives?

All the Herods, both Inner Ones and On a World Scale

On Dec. 28, we remember the slaughter of all the male children under the age of 2 in Bethlehem in the days after the birth of Jesus. Why were they killed? Because of Herod's feelings of inadequacy, because of his fear. The magi tell him of a new king that has just been born, and he feels threatened. He will stop at nothing to wipe out any rival, even one who is still a tiny baby.

We like to think that we wouldn't have reacted that way. We like to think that we'd have joined the band of wise men and gone to pay our respects. We like to think that we'd have put aside our worries of not being good enough and our doubts.

But far too many of us would have responded in exactly the same way, if we had the resources at our command. You need only look at interpersonal relationships in the family or in the office to see that most of us have an inner Herod whom it is hard to ignore.

If you're old enough, you've had the startled feeling when you realize that the next rising star at your workplace or your congregation or your social group is a generation younger than you. It's hard to respond graciously.

Many of us are likely to respond to our feelings of inadequacy in unproductive ways. If we hear a good idea from someone who makes us feel threatened at work or in our families, how many of us affirm that idea? Instead of saying, "How interesting," we say, "How stupid!" And then we go to great lengths to prove that we're right, and whatever is making us feel inadequate is wrong.

So often I feel like I will never escape middle school, that particular kind of hell, where the boundaries were always fluid. Kids who were acceptable one day were pariahs the next. Many adolescents report feeling that they can't quite get their heads around all the rules and the best ways to achieve success.

Adult life can sometimes feel the same way. We fight to achieve equilibrium, only to find it all undone. Most of us don't have the power that Herod had, so our fight against powerlessness doesn't end in corpses. But it often results in a world of outcasts and lone victors, zero-sum games that leave us all diminished.

But feelings of inadequacy can have lethal consequences, especially when played out on a geopolitical scale, the powerful lashing out against the powerless. We live in a world where dictators can efficiently kill their country's population by the thousands or more. Sadly, we see this Herod dynamic so often that we're in danger of becoming jaded, hardened and unaffected by suffering.

Now as the year draws to a close, we can resolve to be on the lookout for ways that our inner Herod dominates and controls our emotional lives. We can resolve to let love rule our actions, not fear. We can also resolve to help those who are harmed by the Herods of our world.

Thinking of Herod might also bring to mind the flight into Egypt, the Holy Family turned into refugees. We remember the Holy Family fleeing in terror with only the clothes on their backs -- and we remember that this story is so common throughout the world.

As we think about Herod, let us pray to vanquish the Herods in our heads and in our lives. Let us pray for victims of terror everywhere, the ones that get away and the ones that are slaughtered.

The Feast Day of Saint John

The day after we celebrate the life of the first Christian martyr, St. Stephen, we celebrate the life of the only one of the original 12 disciples die of natural causes in old age. Tradition tells us that John was first a disciple of John the Baptist, and then a disciple of Christ, the one who came to be known as the beloved disciple, the one tasked with looking after Mary, the mother of Jesus.

There is much debate over how much of the Bible was actually written by this disciple. If we had lived 80 years ago, we'd have firmly believed that the disciple wrote the Gospel of John, the letters of John, and the book of Revelation. Twentieth century scholars came to dispute this belief, and if you do scholarly comparison, you would have to conclude that the same author could not have written all of those books.

Regardless, most of us remember St. John as the disciple who spent a long life writing and preaching. He's the patron saint of authors, theologians, publishers, and editors. He's also the patron saint of painters.

Today, as many of us may be facing a bit of depression or cabin fever, perhaps we can celebrate the feast of St. John by a creative act. Write a poem about what it means to be the beloved disciple. Write a letter to your descendants to tell them what your faith has meant to you. Paint a picture--even if you can't do realistic art, you could have fun with colors as you depict the joys that God has to offer.

Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: "Shed upon your Church, O Lord, the brightness of your light, that we, being illumined by the teaching of your apostle and evangelist John, may walk in the light of your truth, that at length we may attain to the fullness of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."

The Feast Day of Saint Stephen

Today we celebrate the life of St. Stephen, the man who is commonly known as the first Christian martyr. What does it mean that we celebrate the life of a martyr so soon after we celebrate the birth of Christ? After all, it's not like we know the birth day or the death day of St. Stephen. Our ancient Church parents could have put this feast day anywhere. Why put it here?

If you pay attention to the Lectionary readings, you will see that the issue of death is never far removed from the subject matter. Time and time again, Christ is quite clear about what may be required from us: our very lives. And we'd like to think that we might make this ultimate sacrifice for some amazing purpose: rescuing the oppressed from an evil dictatorship or saving orphans. But we may lose our life in the midst of some petty squabble; in some versions of St. Stephen's life, he is killed because of petty jealousy over his appointment as deacon, which triggers the conspiring which ultimately ends in his martyrdom.

Many of us live in a world where we are not likely to die a physical death for our religious beliefs. What does the life of this martyr have to say to us?

We are not likely to face death by stoning, but we may face other kinds of death. If we live the life that Christ commands, we will give away more of our money and possessions to the destitute. We will end our lives without as much wealth and prosperity--and yet, we will have more spiritual wealth. If we live the life that Christ commands, we may have uncomfortable decisions to make at work or in our families. We will have to live a life that's unlike the lives we see depicted in popular culture. That's not always easy, but in the end, we can hope the resistance to the most damaging forms of popular culture will have been worth it.

And history reminds us that events can unfold rather quickly, and we might find ourselves living under an empire that demands us to live a life different than the one Christ calls us to live. We may face the ultimate penalty. Could we face death? Could we pray for the empire that kills us? As Christians, we're commanded to pray for our enemies, to not let hatred transform us into our enemies.

Let us take a moment to offer a prayer of thanks for all the martyrs who have come before us. Here's a prayer for the day, from Phyllis Tickle's The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime: "Almighty God, who gave to your servant Stephen boldness to confess the Name of our Savior Jesus Christ before the rulers of this world, and courage to die for this faith: Grant that I may always be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in me, and to suffer gladly for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen."