An Easter Journey

One Easter appearance of Jesus is recounted in the Gospel of Luke (24:13-35) as two of his disciples (not of the twelve) were making their way to the village of Emmaus. As they are walking along they are talking about all that they had witnessed and heard regarding their Lord who had been taken captive, tried, executed and buried three days earlier. They are sharing with each other their grief when suddenly a stranger joins them and accompanies them. Over the course of the rest of their journey as they discuss their hopes and disappointments, this stranger opens their minds to understand the scriptures. It isn't until they sit down to a meal with him and he blesses and breaks the bread that they recognize that it was the risen Jesus who had been with them all along.

Our lives, like the disciples, can be full of ups and downs. We experience great hopes, sometimes fulfilled, sometimes dashed. We all experience loss and grief. This story of the disciples on the rosd to Emmaus speaks to me of the fact that we need to share our journey and our experience with others. We need to be in a community of faith. Life is not a journey to be travelled alone. Sometimes in our journey, in the sharing and the supporting of one another and in the breaking of bread together, we will have but a glimpse that Jesus has been there with us on the journey.

Through Water and the Holy Laughter

There is a wonderful Anglican tradition which we only do on special occasions, such as at the

Easter Vigil or at the installations of bishops and things like that. It makes me glad to be an
Anglican. The liturgical act is called asperging. The celebrant takes an evergreen branch - yew
works best - and dips it into water from the baptismal font and sprinkles it on the congregation.
The response from the people is always laughter.

Water intersects our liturgy with surprise: it stops us short and brings us back to the beginning of things. Our bodies remember. Drops of water spray across the side of my face and I remember
the long trek in the desert. We thought we would die of thirst. Then the rock was struck and
water gushed out: bubbling and gurgling: we heard the noise of it and drank in this water which
saved our lives. We filled our canteens. Women and children, waiting in line before the stand-
pipe. It’s the only clean water around. Each one takes their portion and hoists it up to rest on their head. They will carry their heavy burden along the dusty road in Tanzania to their home because this water means life.

A drop of water clings to my eye-glasses and rests there, bending light. The colours from the
stained glass windows turn and curl, repenting. I remember the line up of people waiting before
the Baptist: turning their path, changing their direction, aligning with God’s will. We must
return: get back to our beginning: our creation. And everyone was there: the wealthy, the poor,
the mean, the lowest and the lame: the worst sinners you could imagine. The pastor, the naval
officer, the drug user, the prostitute. They were all there to be made clean, to start again, to be
recreated.

The water sprays across the Cathedral hymnal opened to “From the Falter of Breath.” It will
leave its mark on the onion-skin paper: curling it, bubbling it, marking this instant for hands to
feel in some future moment: perhaps at a funeral. It is like my prayer book so marked on the
pages of the service of committal, from so many burials performed under rainy skies. So many
holy moments. Yes, this water also means death. It is going down under the surface; it is
drowning. It is Jesus descending down into the darkness, feeling the river-weeds close around his face, seeing his life-breath bubble away; choosing this, to risk what is beyond. It is my friend
who cannot swim running out across the cracking river ice, trying to save me.

Water sprays on the ancient woman opposite me. She knows it’s coming, shuts her eyes and
braces for it. She is so wrinkled and frail: is her Order of Niagara medal heavy on her neck?
Perhaps the cold will shatter her. How will she react? After the splash she straightens, her eyes
open, and there it is, the corners of her mouth curl up and she joins in the laughter. They never
did this when she was a girl. Who could have imagined such an indignity? Nor could she have
imagined herself laughing this way in Church. How much longer does she have in this world?
Yet, her laughter proves she is already living beyond it. Her laughter unites with the kid’s behind
her, with the tattoo and the hardware in his face.

The space is well-watered. We have all been touched. We have all remembered. We have
resealed our baptismal covenant. We believe in God the Father. We believe in Jesus Christ, the
Son of God. We believe in God the Holy Spirit, the breath of God which blew over the water at
the beginning of everything. Again we have committed ourselves to worship and repentance and
returning. Again we have committed ourselves to Christ: to proclaiming his way and his hold on
us; to searching for him in the people around us and to striving for justice and peace among all
people; to respecting the dignity of every human being. We are doing this together and we
represent all people, whoever they are. God made us all: the proud, the broken, the pure the
sinner, the lost. We all belong here. We can leave out no one. We have remembered what water
means to us. The scenes of our lives have flashed before our eyes as they do just before our
death. We have descended with Jesus under the surface.

But, of all miracles, we, with Jesus, burst back up through the surface of the water and catch a
deep breath. Breath of the Spirit. We are alive! Hair wet, beard wet, shaking the water off like a
shaggy dog - asperging everyone around. What else is there to do? There are no rubrics at this
point in the prayer book. It is too obvious, it is the natural response of a people filled with life.
But, if they were there, those red italicized letters would print out simply one word: laughter.

Asperging: what a wonderful way to remember Jesus’ resurrection: what a wonderful way for
bishops to begin their new ministry. Hallelujah!

(This article was published in the April 2008 Niagara Anglican and was written following the installation service of our new Bishop, + Michael Bird)

Evensong Sung

I just returned from our Palm Sunday Evensong. St. Andrew's is participating in Lincoln Region's Lenten Evensong Series. Tonight's was the last in the series. We hosted the Rev. Canon Dr. Cathie Crawford Browning who preached on the Psalm. A sermon reminding us of the gift of gratefulness and of the attitude of gratitude which can transform our lives.

I am grateful for colleagues like Cathie and for her encouraging and positive vision of hope. I was reminded as I heard Cathie preach, of a website which also gives me such positive experiences of hope and vision. It is www.greatfulness.org and I would encourage you to bookmark it in your web page browser.

As we enter into this most holy of weeks, may your journey be sustained with hope and greatfulness.

Wear Red

On Sunday, 21 October 2007, many churches, including St. Andrew's, prayed for the people of Burma in their struggle against the military junta which has ruled with violence in Burma since 1988. It being a family service, we showed a presentation on the current situation in Burma and on the the lives of the Buddhist monks and nuns of Burma. Their courage in the face of oppression is a witness to us all.

One courageous Buddhist woman in Burma is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who won a landslide victory leading her National League for Democracy Party in an election in 1990. She has been largely held prisoner ever since. The military junta has never let go of power. In 1991 Suu Kyi was given the Nobel Peace Prize and she used the prize money to form a Health and Education Trust for the people of Burma.

What can you do to help? Sign the AVAAZ petition by going to http://www.avaaz.org/en/
Petition for Suu Kyi's release by going to Amnesty International's site here: http://www.amnesty.ca/indiv_at_risk/takeaction.php

Wear red in solidarity with the people of Burma - the colour that the Buddhist monks wear. And tell people why you are wearing red.

And pray for the end of oppression in Burma

God's Slow Pace

It has been a while since I've blogged. I have started to write a couple of times, but was interrupted and never finished. Somehow Spring has folded into Summer while I have been too busy to be interrupted.

I steal moments on the veranda and pretend to be lazy as the world rushes by in car and motorcycle. I want the buzzing of insects to lull me into stillness so I can just be, and be reminded that the spirit can be quickened when the body slows down. Stillness can sink in like the heat and the humidity enters with each breath. God moves with the grace and majesty of the earth pushing forth green life. Sometimes I can slow my body down enough to catch up with God's pace - and be struck - and experience what I am too busy to see.

Silence is golden

I just returned on Saturday from a five-day silent retreat at the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusets, just step away from Harvard U. We were eleven clergy from all over N. America led by two of the brothers, Geoffrey and Eldridge.

It is hard to put the experience of holy silence into words. I felt supported by the old stones and blue stained glass of the Chapel. I felt included into a community of faith as we prayed with the brothers in the chapel and sang the psalms and canticles of the daily office. During my times of meditation in the Holy Spirit chapel I felt the ethereal presence of the Divine. This place is holy, I thought.

I am so grateful for the lives of the brothers who make this place possible for me and for any who would take some time apart to be still and know "I am". These brothers give their lives over to prayer, teaching, mission work, and creating a space for people to experience the holy.

I know that this monastery of the SSJE will remain a place of pilgrimage for me: a pilgrimage which I hope to do every year.

Easter is an attitude

Happy Easter! What?, you say, Easter was ages ago! But Easter is a season - it lasts for six weeks until the Ascension. But even more important than that: Easter is an attitude. Easter is the time and the place and the realization that God's love reigns over death and despair. No matter the circumstances which might try to entomb us, God's love has broken through that tomb, and won for us life and freedom.

There are all kinds of voices telling us that death wins. Voices (sometimes interior ones) which cut down and stomp on and choke off growth. Voices that tell us to get real, or get with the program. Voices that ridicule our naivte.

Easter tells us that the deepest, truest voices are the ones which are noblest: the voices which shout the glad shout of joy at the perfect love which God has for us. Such a love that he could not bear to be apart from us, and so came among us to be with us: to be us.

Knowing this, how can we be anything else but Easter people from now on?