Calendar

Dear all,

Next week, after celebrating the sweetness and decadence of life with pancakes, bacon, syrup, and king cake on Shrove Tuesday (or Mardi Gras, depending on your provenance), we will enter the quieter, more solemn season of Lent on Ash Wednesday. These two holidays go back to back, and together they move us from one extreme to another: sugary sparkle and revelry to sackcloth and ashes. But at their heart I hear the same pulsing beat of life: what it means to be alive – what it means to live.

My own theological spin on Shrove Tuesday is that it is an invitation to focus on pleasure and fullness and sweetness of God’s gift of life. We are eating up the sugar, fat, wheat, eggs, and meat in the larder to prepare for a more austere Lent – and in doing so we can lean in to their deliciousness. (If pancakes are not your feast food, I encourage you to enjoy what is!) “The glory of God is a human person fully alive” said Irenaeus; pleasure and enjoyment are parts of life’s fullness, parts of what God desires for each of us, part of what we seek as we work for the flourishing of all God’s creation. To be alive should not just be survival, but delight. For too many people today it has become just that.

Ash Wednesday is also about what it means to live, for it reminds us that we are alive – which means that we will someday die. In a world where we are tempted to play God, where we are taught to worship youth and to believe that we are in control of the world around us, Ash Wednesday reminds us that we are creatures made from dust, and that to dust we will return, finite. This does not excuse the actions we take in the world; we come before God asking for new and contrite hearts, lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness (BCP 264). We are creatures, and no matter how we may strive to follow God we fall short. We sin. And so we repent, coming before God aware of the gift of our life, and turn our hearts and minds towards God, and fullness of life in God.

The calendar of the church year offers us both of these days as moments to deepen our relationship with the God who made us, calls us good, and loves us; the God who came to live and die with us; the God who calls us to live in and out of that love in the world today. I hope to see you as we mark each one: at the Pancake Supper from 5-7 pm on 2/13 and at Ash Wednesday services at 7:30 am, 12 pm, and 7:30 pm on 2/14.

Love,
Rebecca+

 

There’s a blessing by The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, that we’ve been hearing at the conclusion of some of our weekend services, that goes like this:

May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short;
Grace to risk something big for something good; and
Grace to remember the world is now
too dangerous for anything but the truth and
too small for anything but love.

I’ve had the privilege recently of witnessing so many different grace-filled people, in so many different ways, “risking something big for something good”, including:

• A middle-aged woman who has always felt comfortable with acts of charity as a way to express her faith risked something big for something good yesterday by going to Annapolis for the first time to engage with state legislators around our BUILD-City-GBC strategy to solve our city’s crisis of vacant and abandoned houses.
• A teenager, who was gregarious and outgoing as a child and/but “not so much” as a middle- and high schooler, risked something big for something good when she tried out for and got a leading role in our youth group musical.
• A young parent risked something big for something good when he accepted a new employment opportunity, which will entail moving and starting over in a new place with his family.
• A person battling cancer risked something big for something good by beginning to walk the journey of surrender, in trust and in faith.
• A person in recovery risked something big for something good by accepting an invitation to share her story of experience, strength and hope with other human beings.
• An individual who has carried anger and grief over things that happened a long time ago risked something big for something good by making an appointment with a therapist.

How about you? Do you know someone who risked something big for something good recently? Or someone who needs just a word or two of encouragement, to try?

Perhaps that person is you …

May God give you the grace never to sell yourself short;
Grace to risk something big for something good; and
Grace to remember the world is now
too dangerous for anything but the truth and
too small for anything but love.

~Cristina

Right off the bat, the question the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III asked intrigued me in his brief meditation for the Center for Action & Contemplation called “CONSECRATING THE CHAOS.”  Describing the chaotic milieu in which we are currently living, he asks: “Do we have the spiritual audacity and the practical means to turn chaotic energy to our own purposes?”  THAT stopped me in my tracks.

I thought about how much we mostly struggle between hopelessness (when we open any social media outlet or tune in to the news) and hopefulness when we worship together or share something of our lives with each other and those whom we love.  The key for me is recalling the Tao or the natural harmony and balance that is a component of LIFE and how I can co-create this harmony in my psyche and in my personal life.  Knowing that harmony is who I AM inviting me to re-think thoughts or behaviors that do not align with my I AM-ness.

So, do I have the “spiritual audacity” not to be undone by the swirling chaos around me?  I do when I realize the I AM-ness of my nature and when I am clear about my choices in life and what I am banking my life on.  Sometimes, it takes a hot minute while I am being a hot mess before I realize that I am a sovereign spiritual being.  I have the capacity to claim what I desire in life.  I am convinced that when I have the courage to stand, it allows the practical means of my stance to fall into place.

I am reminded of the story of King Ahaz and the prophet Isaiah when the King made an allyship with the Assyrian royalty as protection against his enemies (Judah’s enemies).  The word of GOD, through Isaiah, warned him against the alliance.  The words were: “If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all.”  (cf. Is 7:9) Of course, Ahaz ignored the warning with disastrous results for his kingdom and for himself.

Having the courage to stand in what I bank my life on is the spiritual audacity that I need to walk through the chaos, weather the storm, remain hopeful, and do my part to hold the LOVE-LIGHT that is required to transform this present darkness.

Rev. Moss ends his reflection hearkening back to the creation of the cosmos, and he says, in effect, that “God consecrates the chaos, giving it form…as an act of creativity and choice.”  This important note raises an equally important question.  Will I allow G-D within me to consecrate my agitation or reaction to the chaos so that it can be alchemized into something greater for the highest good of all?  I only have to concern myself with my own circle of influence even though my circle of concern is much greater.   Can I surrender and trust the Christ-Light within another to affect their circle of influence where they are?   I can when (and if) I begin to trust I AM within me.

Storms come and go, and our ability to weather the storms in life or to be subsumed by them might just be connected to our ability to know the truth of WHO we are and the practical ways in which we live out of that truth.  The realization of our I AM-ness, the divine power, presence, and knowing within us can catapult us beyond chaos and even, depending on our personal circles of influence, alter the conditions of such chaos in unimaginable ways.  We just have to IMAGINE it for it to be so. What kind of day, world, or life are you imagining?  Do YOU have the spiritual chutzpah to imagine something better—for EVERYONE and EVERYTHING?

Imagination is a holy thing.

With Love,
Freda Marie+

It was Mrs. Brizendine, my English teacher in seventh grade, who first introduced me to the concept of paradox, when two things or concepts that are contradictory to one another are nonetheless found or experienced to be true at the same time.

Take for example the truth that something that happened years ago can also feel like it happened just yesterday, as a friend and I recently were remembering what it felt like to hold our then-newborn-babies, who are now teenagers and young adults. Or how something can be both joyful and heartbreaking at the same time; or how an end is also a beginning.

The apostle Paul talks about followers of Christ living in the tension between “the already” and “not yet” of Christ’s reign. And in his sermon last Sunday, Rev. George Hopkins spoke of both the joy and agony of responding to and living into your call, living into and following through on what God is inviting you to take part in.

In his daily meditation today, Franciscan priest and spiritual writer Fr. Richard Rohr quotes Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, from a sermon preached in the fall of 2014 after the shooting of Michael Brown and weeks of protests in Ferguson, Missouri:

“There is nothing more confusing to the postmodern personality, to the millennial sojourner, than to have to exist between the strange life of dealing with your Blues and Gospel all the time. Madness and ministry, chaos and Christ. My father heard an elder in Georgia say it this way. When he asked her, ‘How are you doing, Mother?’ she said, ‘I’m living between Oh Lord and Thank you, Jesus.’

For the most part, many of us are living in between, not quite at ‘Oh Lord’ and not quite at ‘Thank you, Jesus,’ but somewhere in between.”

The Gospel and the Blues cac.org

I wonder if this truth resonates with you, at all, on this freezing cold January day? Might you also be living in the paradox, living the tension somewhere in between “Oh Lord” and “Thank you Jesus”?

If you are, let me know, and know you are not alone.

Love,
Cristina

 

Hopkins 1-14-24

Dear all,

In our youth Bible Study last night, we talked about the prophets. There are 15 prophetic books in Hebrew Scripture (called the Nevi’im in Hebrew): the three major prophets of Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and Isaiah (Christians add two more, Lamentations and Daniel), and the minor prophets, consisting of Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. This is a diverse and opinionated cast of characters, who do not shy away from forceful rhetoric, pointed criticism, and extreme behavior to get their points across. Isaiah, for example, walked around naked for three years to make his point – or rather, to make God’s point. Because for each of the prophets, the message they were trying to get across was God’s.

While the prophets each have their own story and style, there are a few things that connect them all. Each has some experience of God, a call. This call leads them into a life focused on mutual partnership between God and God’s people.* This sometimes means calling people to cause when they are not living in mutual partnership with God, when they are not living the way God has called them to. Micah 6:8 offers a pithy summary: “[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

The prophets frequently accuse Israel of idolatry, of getting too cozy with other gods, and of allowing or enacting injustice towards the vulnerable. After making their accusations, they call on the people to repent, emphasizing more or less God’s merciful nature to those who confess and change their ways. Unfortunately, people being what we are, change is often temporary (shout out to the people of Ninevah for listening to Jonah!). And when change fails to come or is inconsistent, the prophets announce the consequences: the coming judgement of the Day of the Lord, which would real and felt consequences in the world.

This pronouncement of coming judgement was not just far away in the future. Many of the prophets were active during times of exile and occupation of Israel, when their people were suffering, their cities destroyed, and their communities displaced. Announcing the downfall of Jerusalem wasn’t abstract: it happened. Cosmic events were local; local events were cosmic.

Last night as we talked about the prophets, we wondered together about the tension between warning and hope that the prophets offer, and the role prophets still play today. Not only the Biblical prophets but our own contemporary prophets. Greta Thunberg, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were each offered up as prophetic voices of our time, demanding that we change the way we live together on our planet and with one another, warning of the consequences if we do not, and offering us the possibility of a different future.

As we remember Dr. King’s life and legacy this weekend, I wonder what prophetic voices you are encountering? What are they agitating for? What are they warning against? What hope do they offer? And reflecting on our own lives, how might the prophets call us to live differently? What idols do we worship (power, control, fame, youth, money, and desire were a few we came up with)? What injustice do we tolerate? And how might we be called to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God?

Love,
Rebecca+

*A quick (or not so quick) contextual note: Throughout Hebrew Scripture, or the Old Testament, God’s people are often called the people of Israel, or simply Israel. This gets confusing, since there is also contemporary nation state called Israel. In the Bible, the people of Israel derive their name from Jacob, son of Isaac and Rebecca, son of Abraham and Sarah. When Jacob wrestles with God at the Jabbok river (Genesis 32:22-32), God blesses Jacob and gives him a new name, Israel, which means “one who struggles with God.” Jacob’s twelve sons become the twelve tribes of Israel, who go on to inherit their parents’, grandparents’, and great grandparents’ faith, springing from Abraham’s covenant with God (Genesis 17). In the liturgies of the Episcopal Church today, you may here a phrase like “The calling of Israel to be your people” (Eucharistic Prayer B, Rite II). This is refers to the Biblical people of Israel, tracing their faith through Jacob all the way back to Abraham and Sarah. As Christians, our understanding of what it means to be part of the people of God is different because of Jesus (the arguments about this get thorough treatment in Acts and the Epistles), but we, too, trace our religious family tree back to Genesis.

 

As I sit looking out my bedroom window, evergreens stand at a distance like ballerinas, arms swaying, spines straight. Closer to the window is a naked, disease-ravaged tree that will be put out of her misery next week.

The evergreens and naked tree have caught my attention because of the reflective mood in which I find myself — post-holidays, four days into 2024.

All that I had just recently been anticipating — Christmas Eve services, family gatherings, gift giving and receiving, meals and treats prepared and shared — is now in the rearview mirror. Angels and shepherds have appeared and disappeared. Baby Jesus has been swaddled and rocked. Good tidings of great joy, delivered and received.

2023 is also now a thing of the past, and 2024 (a year that sounded futuristic and impossible to imagine, as a child) is what I’m remembering to write and type in notes and messages.

Yesterday during our weekly 8 a.m. Wednesday Embodied Prayer service in the chapel, we took a moment to imagine what a “new year” really is — another revolution of our planet earth circling around our sun in the cosmos— and tried to tap into the conscious awareness and wonder of it all, that we even get to be a part. Perhaps you already know this, but — as passengers on planet Earth — we are orbiting around the sun at 67,100 miles per hour (30 kilometers per second), which is like traveling from New York to London in about 3 minutes!

And so my friends, as we move forward together — hurtling through space on our planet Earth at 67,100 mph — with all that each of us is carrying in our hearts and experiencing in our lives on this 11th day of Christmas (the last “official” day of Christmastide is actually tomorrow), I offer these two poems below, on which to reflect and linger briefly. Neither of them are “new”, in that they’ve appeared in e-Redeemer before; and yet, they feel right to share and be reminded of again today.

Love,
Cristina

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among the people,
To make music in the heart.
― Howard Thurman

*****

as you walk
across the threshold
behind you — what has been
before you — what has yet to be
be mindful
of what
you carry with you

like one
who is packing
a bag
to go
on pilgrimage

take time
to be still
to reflect
to envision

choose with intention

and take special care
that your compass
orients
to the voice
of the One
who calls you forth

to be
to become
to embody
more fully
who you really are

Beloved

Beloved

Beloved

‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the nave
The people had gathered
‘Midst the cold that they’d braved

The garlands were hung
On the walls with great care
Shim’ring trees ‘hind the altar
Poinsettias on stairs

Families and relatives
Friends old and new
Children and elders
The faithful and true

Had come once again
For a tale that’s beloved
Of a babe in a manger
From heaven above

The children post-pageant
Sat hopeful and restless
Envisioning treats that
St. Nich’las might gift us

And I and my colleagues —
this time, we’re just three
(That’s Cristina, Rebecca,
and Freda Marie) —

Extend a warm welcome
To old-timers and new
Rector David on sabbatical
Sends well wishes too

Here in Charm City
There’ve been marvels to cheer
Let’s start with our O’s —
Oh my, what a year!

And while young people swoon
Over Taylor and Kelce
We’re over the moon
‘Cause Lamar has stayed healthy!

But ‘midst all the joy
And excitement, my dears,
There’s also been heartbreak
Terror and fear

The Holy Land weeps
As war rages on
Russia, Ukraine
Still don’t get along

And here in our town
Our neighbors still long
For a city that’s whole
A Baltimore that’s One

Loved ones have passed
Anxiety’s high
Global warming continues
Threatening res’voirs to dry

And AI is abound
Writing papers and such
Sometimes, I wonder,
Is it all just too much?

But hark, can’t you hear?
The trumpets that sound!
Those angels, they herald
A love that’s unbound!

A light that shines bright
‘Midst the darkness and gloom —
Love Incarnate Is Come
In your hearts, make ye room!

For hope is alive
Don’t let headlines fool you
Breathe deep and exhale
Let God’s vision renew you

May singing and prayer
And scripture remind us
What’s lasting and real:
The love that does bind us

One to another
As part of God’s dream
That all be made well
Be made whole and agleam

So tonight cast your care
Christ’s Spirit set things right
Merry Christmas to all
And to all a good night!

Love,
the Paglinauan-Warner family

I was ordained to the priesthood on the Feast of the Annunciation at the beautiful Church of the Annunciation in the Diocese of Dallas almost 14 years ago.  So, various artists’ paintings of the Annunciation have held special meaning for me of Our Mother’s encounter with the Divine since that time.  Imagine my shock, however, when I discovered that the one I was so powerfully drawn to and had meditated upon many times was actually painted by a Black man. I NEVER knew…and I’ll bet you didn’t either.

In 1898, Henry Osswana Tanner completed the image here that is currently displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.  Born in Pittsburgh to a father who was a pastor and a mother who was formerly enslaved, Tanner, as an artist, sold and became known for several non-religious paintings before making religious art his primary passion.  After a visit to the Middle East, including Egypt and Palestine, he returned to paint the image here.

I LOVE this image.  Mary is so-o young and innocent here.  Her clasped hands and demure half-look at the numinous energy appearing before her make her appear beautifully fragile with a sense of “Are you sure?” or “Oh my….” simultaneously.

Yet, from the biblical story, we know she had only two things to say.  First, “How can this be?” and then, “Let it be….”

The angel Gabriel doesn’t appear with the typical angel wings either.  Gabriel is first and foremost light—pure, unadulterated, white light.  It has been said that Mr. Tanner had a gift for his use of light and color.  I feel as if I am in this room of Mary’s, perhaps in a corner, hearing the words she heard for the first time, too.

We are preparing to celebrate unmanifested Be-ing choosing to become manifested (or expressed) in and through its Creation.  The beauty of what we commonly call The INCARNATION is our own invitation to allow the birth of the DIVINE within us.

As far as I am concerned, we are each Mary, and we are each given the opportunity to say, “Let it be…” to all that G-D desires to reveal in and through us.  Indeed, Richard Rohr has said that Mary’s “yes” is to G-D’s request to be present in and to the world through us.”  It is time to stop struggling and to trust and surrender.  I’m excited at the possibilities of G-D in and through me. What about you?  Are you ready?

Christ-mass Love & Peace,
Freda Marie+

 

Dear all,

During my first year of seminary, while we trimmed the tree at our annual Advent party, two friends and I came across four ornaments, clearly homemade, that said “Death,” “Judgment,” “Heaven,” and “Hell.” Laughing, we held them up to look at — I had never seen these words next to a Christmas tree before. Our dean explained that these were the Four Last Things: themes that, somewhere and sometime during the Church’s history, it had been topical to preach on the four Sundays of Advent. Gathered together that evening, my friends and I were delighted by the seemingly transgressive take on a season that often overflows with cheer. The ornaments added a little punk rock flair to our decorations.

There is another set of themes for the four Sundays in Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love. I didn’t grow up with these, either, but as an adult (and now a Professional Church Person) I’ve found them and used them in prayers for lighting candles on an Advent wreath, or in children’s or family formation materials for the season. While they may not seem as hardcore as the Four Last Things on the surface, at their heart, underneath the layers of sweetness we (or at least I) can sometimes apply, I think they are. In particular, in this moment, during this Advent, I’m reflecting a lot on hope.

In the midst of death or despair, hope is hard to hang on to. The act of claiming it when others might dismiss it as naïve takes incredible determination: hope is an action. Think of peace advocates, standing in front of soldiers, or of climate activists again and again sounding the alarm about our warming planet. Hope is no easy thing. In its deepest form it requires us to confront death and despair, rather than hiding from it, and to look beyond it, for it is not the end. Standing for peace in the face of violence, crying out for change to help prevent disaster – to me these are deeply hopeful actions, rooted in a desire and a belief for a different kind of world. As a Christian, it is the hope for a world free from death and its suffering: which is what Jesus promises us and offers us in and through his birth, death, and resurrection. (Rev 21:3-5)

I don’t mean to imply that we all have to be hopeful all the time, keeping our chins up and putting on a grin. There are moments and seasons of life that find us in the pit, surrounded by lions, or walking with Job as we question all that we have known. Telling anyone simply to have hope in such circumstances would feel empty. The gift of the Body of Christ is that in those moments we can journey with others who can hold our hope for us, who can remember for us that death is not the end, and that there is something more beyond it, even when we can’t.

This Advent, the world could use all of our fierce and persistent hope in the face of deep suffering and division. I wonder, how can you embody it? How can you live it, offer it to others and the world? What are the prayers you can make, the steps you can take? Whatever the form it takes, may you encounter hope’s radical presence in your life, in yourself or in another, in the weeks to come.

Love,
Rebecca+