I spent this past Sunday as a heathen of sorts, again, not in church building worshipping at the appointed hour, singing with others, praying that our silent words make it to heaven, or wherever God is these days.
I spent the better part of the day in a different sort of church, or better, a different sort of cathedral, in the Redwood forests of Northern California. It felt like worship.
”How lucky are we to be in this place today?” I kept asking my daughter, my companion for the day – and that is exactly how I felt. Privileged, and blessed, and maybe a bit unworthy of breathing in the air emitted from thousand-year-old trees, carefully walking the dirt paths, tsking at those who dared to carve their initials in the trunks of some of these fallen giants.
I might have done that when I was sixteen, eighteen, oblivious to my own short span of life when compared to these trees. “I was here!” I might have said, carving my rough initials. So I judge these folks lightly, and hope that someday they will feel something different should they come upon these forests again.
”Do you think our necks will be sore tonight?” I asked a couple who, like us, were staring up to the tops of the trees. Because it’s hard not to do that – stare up to see where they end, to marvel at all of that. Some of the trees are dead but still upright, barren, but still pointing upward like a church spire. God makes a pretty good architect, all in all.
At one point along the trail, we were marveling once again at the trees and the forest and the beauty, and I said ‘thank you, trees.’ I hadn’t noticed a woman walking by, and would not have said such a ridiculous thing had I known I would be overheard. But she smiled at me and said, “Exactly.” Grace upon grace.
When the trees made a little room in the canopy, the ferns took over, presenting their unfurling fronds in a dance of praise and gratitude, or so I imagined. Once in a while I’d see a wild rhododendron peaking through, a bit of pink amid the browns and greens. Perfection.
If anything magical were to happen, I am convinced it would happen in a forest. And maybe magic does happen there, every day – the ordinary magic of nature renewing herself, the magic of people becoming aware of their own insignificance and their own part in the ecosystem, the magic of gratitude to receive this holy beauty when our first impulse is to carve into it.
How lucky were we to be in that place on that day? So lucky. And so blessed.
I wrote this several years ago, and am preaching it again this Christmas Eve. I hope it might bring some solace to those who might need it. Peace, friends.
There once was an old man whom we will call Joe. Joe was single, never married, didn’t date much. He was an only child, his parents were gone, and he was a bit crotchety, which is to say he was all alone in the world. He had long since retired from a job which brought him a modest income, a few acquaintances, and no friends.
In his retirement he spent his days as he pleased – checking the morning headlines, washing up the coffee cup and cereal bowl. He’d run the few errands he had, get the daily special soup at the diner counter, run a few more errands. Late afternoon would find him on a park bench, alone. It was always the same bench, in the northwest part of the park, near a sidewalk but blissfully far away from the children’s playground. He would sit there, all alone, and with a fair amount of disinterest, he would watch the world go by.
And most days, that was enough for old Joe. Once in a while he would break his routine – he’d give a smile to the cashier as she handed him his change, or he’d bark at the server who overfilled his coffee cup. Most days his routine was enough. But every so often as he’d sit all alone on that park bench, a terrible melancholy would overtake him. That happens sometimes at dusk – babies instinctively cry and the colic worsens, or harassed parents, home from work, stress out as they try to transition from employee to chief cook and bottle washer.
Every so often, as he sat on that bench at dusk, Joe would be overcome by a sadness he could not name, and all he wanted was for someone to come sit next to him. They didn’t have to talk, process feelings, make a plan to have dinner. All he wanted was company, a companion to sit with at dusk after years of going through life all alone.
As the seasons changed, Joe would change his routine ever so slightly and unconsciously so that he was always on the bench at dusk, be it a winter’s 4:00 or summer’s 8:00. The years passed, and the spasms of melancholy grew a little more frequent, and Joe, already so miserable in his aloneness, became all the more brittle, and a little desperate.
He tried ways to make the bench inviting. He’d move the newspaper he’d been carrying around, as if to say, this seat isn’t being saved for anyone. He’d brush off the leaves. Once he even wiped off the residue from the pigeons – all to no avail. For whatever reason, no one ever sat by Joe.
Maybe passers-by feared that his loneliness was contagious, and they hurried past him so as not to catch it. Maybe after years of trying to smile and say hello only to be rebuffed, people stopped trying. Maybe after years of sitting on that same bench in the same park at dusk, year after year, Joe became invisible, the way the guy on the corner with the cardboard sign “Will work for food” becomes invisible. Whatever the reason, no one ever sat by Joe.
He could’ve died on that bench, so deep was the melancholy, so deep the despair, so piercing the loneliness he could no longer avoid. He wondered if that’s how he would end up – forgotten and ignored, sitting there one minute and dead there the next without a soul to notice that his life had ended. He wondered if there would ever be anyone who would care. He wondered if he would live out however many days he had left sitting alone at dusk on that park bench.
There may be some here tonight who have felt like Joe at some time in their lives, who feel like Joe every day. There may be some here tonight who know someone like Joe, who have passed him by, who realize that for all his ordinary loneliness he has become invisible. There may be some here tonight who wonder how this story will end, and some who believe they know how it will end.
Tonight, on this holy night, this is what I know.
Our world has been like Joe, battling melancholy. The children of our world have known isolation; they have known what it’s like to be ignored or forgotten; they have felt, deep in their bones, what it is like to be alone.
Our world has been like Joe, going through the same routines day after day without reason or purpose. The people of the world have known what it is to live by rote, to live in that routine of work and play and rest, of work and shopping and rest, of work and shopping and entertainment, confusing shopping and entertainment with godly play and holy rest.
Our world has been like Joe, desperately trying to make that park bench a little more palatable, aching to have someone simply sit down next to us.
Tonight, on this holy night, this is what I know:
The miracle of the incarnation is like God coming to sit down next to us on our park bench. Because while the world might have forgotten or ignored all the Joes of the world, God hasn’t forgotten. God cannot ignore this world that was created by deep love. God will not forsake this world so plagued by fear and greed and pride.
Ours is a visited planet, it’s been said. Ours is a visited planet, and God is no theist watchmaker kind of God, setting the world a-ticking and then moving on. Ours is a visited planet, but not in the way you or I might want to visit Tuscany or the Grand Canyon. Our is a visited planet, the way we might want to sit and visit one more time with a beloved grandmother who died, whose advice and date pinwheel cookies we still crave; the way we might want to visit with our best friend who is doing his best to beat cancer; the way we might want to visit forever with a child or parent or sibling who is wedged deeply in our hearts.
That is how God has visited with us: with the love a Creator has for his creation, with the love a mother has for her child. Why God would choose to do this is beyond my ken, and all that I know on this holy night is that it has something to do with love.
This love transformed God from being a mere visitor to being an inhabitant of the world, like we are. God visited us, and came to us, and became one of us so that you and I and all the Joes of the world would know that we are not alone.
On this holy night, it is as though Joe is sitting on the park bench again. He has put his paper in the recycling can; he has brushed away the pigeons’ offering. He has waited for the light to dim, once again, alone. But this dusk, this time, this holy time, Someone sits down next to him. He just sits down with Joe, and Joe is not alone.
On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful that love exists, that there is this invisible connection among the creation that desires bounty and kindness and acceptance, that there is this force that is not easily broken, that withstands attempts at cheapening it.
This is what love looks like for me today: texts from old friends that remind us that when we met forty years ago, we had no idea we just might become friends for life; a scone and a chai delivered by my friend and pet sitter, which I received happily and in joy because the dog was over-the-moon ecstatic to see her. The guy with the pronounced limp walking his sweet Frenchie named Echo, a pet that he obvious adores with every wobbly step he takes.
I am sad not be with my family this Thanksgiving but I’m nursing an impressive cold and no one needs me to bring these germs to the dinner table. I am sad, but not depressed; Thanksgiving is one day, and I know an embarrassing amount of love in my life, and given that, I cannot be more than just a wee bit sad.
Many years ago when my grandparents were still living, they loved to go fishing, not only because back in those days they could easily catch their limit of rainbow trout but also because after standing in the cold creek water for an hour, their toenails softened up and they could give each other a rudimentary pedicure. That’s the kind of love that abides after fifty-plus years of marriage.
My sister has moved into an ADU in our backyard and she graciously – and maybe even happily – welcomes the dog and me to come for a visit so I can pet her cat and so that the dog can lick the trace amounts of food left in the cat’s dish. She also graciously acts surprised when my husband and I come over after dinner, and with all the sincerity of a nun, asks if we would like a bite of chocolate, which was the whole reason for our showing up but she acts as if it weren’t. That is love.
A video of a flash mob performing the last movement of Beethoven’s Ninth will always get me crying. In it I see a love of music, a love of performance, a love of giving this utterly unexpected gift that costs not what penny and is only meant to be received as love should be.
There are so many loves – love of a person, love of a pet; love of the creation and of the Creator, love of a country, even love of self, when taken in measure. To be loved is the greatest gift, and that sounds so terribly trite that I should give up writing this very moment, but I’ll still claim it. Though sick, I am loved. Though alone, I am loved. For me, a bad cold and some loneliness are temporary things but love, as the apostle wrote, never ends.
On this Thanksgiving, I hope that you too are grateful for the love that surrounds your living. I hope that when you start to count your blessings you run out of fingers and toes. I hope that you are able to pass along some of that love, because when you do, who knows what might happen?
I normally don’t like to think about Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but… I’m very excited that this year I have not one but TWO calendars to offer you! I have reprinted last year’s Matron Saints calendar for 2026, AND, having created six new Matron Saints this year, have also made a Matron Saints and Friends calendar.
How can you order? Just send me a message here, and we will get the ball rolling. The cost is $20/calendar, and shipping is usually around $10.
There are also notecards available for all these saints, so let me know if you’re interested in those too.
Thanks for considering this! And peace be with you.
It’s been seven and a half years since my dad died, and while I don’t really think about him every day, I do think of him often, and occasionally dream something that he’s a part of, and laugh about something I know he would find funny.
So Father’s Day is different now. Mostly I encourage our daughter to remember the day is coming; I also thank my husband and my brothers for being such great dads. If I’m in a mood, I will say to my husband, “Well, I don’t have to do anything for Father’s Day because my dad is dead.” Like I said – when I’m in a mood.
But today, Father’s Day, I’ve been thinking about my dad and a few memories stand out.
The first is when he taught me to ride a bike. It is a visceral memory, full of emotion, which must mean something since it happened 55+ years ago. We went to the parking lot of my elementary school in Morristown, New Jersey, my hot-pink, banana-seat bike in the back of the station wagon, just me and Dad. He did not believe in training wheels (later, when I was an adult, he would say that training wheels were for candy-asses.) He ran along side me as I wobbled along, holding the handlebars, not letting ago until I found my balance, and then he let go, still running beside me. I don’t know why this has stayed with me all these years. Maybe it has something to do with fear and courage and encouragement and protection and love all wrapped around the asphalt pavement of Hillcrest Elementary School.
The second memory is from my teen years, which were not the smoothest in terms of our relationship. We’ll leave that there but perhaps you can fill in your own blanks about rough patches with a parent. This story is not about that.
When I was eight we moved from New Jersey to Houston – the flatland of humidity and flying cockroaches. There are good things about Houston, but this story is not about that. Anyway, we had not had flying cockroaches in New Jersey and let’s just say they terrified me. Spiders? Bring ’em on! Flying cockroaches? More correctly, palmetto bugs – I would not enter a room where I could see one. It was my habit, when entering a room where there was a cockroach, to get my dad to come kill it, which he did. One night, after he had gone to bed, I went to the bathroom to wash up for the night. There, on the wall behind the toilet, was a big ol’ shiny cockroach. Dad had gone to bed. He hated being woken up. I knew I would not be able to brush my teeth, much less sleep in my connecting room, knowing that roach was just waiting to crawl all over me. So I went in to my parents’ bedroom, woke up my dad, told him the problem. He got up and told me to get a magazine or newspaper, which I did. He strode into the bathroom, whacked the cockroach which fell straight into the toilet, flushed it away, and wished me a goodnight.
He loved to tell me that story. I’m not sure if it had to do with my trusting him to take care of things or with his amazing aim, but it was one of his favorites.
The last memory is from my young adulthood. My parents had moved back to New Jersey and I was living and working in New York City. I had landed what I thought was my dream job – assistant to the artistic director of an arts organization, the perfect jumping-off spot for someone who wanted to go into arts administration, which I did at the time. After five months, my dream job had become a nightmare. I would wake up at 2am on Saturday nights worrying about it, wondering what I had forgotten to do, wondering what my boss would yell at me about on Monday.
I had gone to my folks’ house for the weekend and we talked about everything. Dad finally said to me, with all the wisdom of someone who had had his own career ups and downs, “No job is worth this, honey.” Not long after that, I quit as my boss was firing me, and while my future became less certain, my heart was much happier.
Seven and a half years ago, as Dad was nearing the end of his life, the time came for me to say goodbye to him. That remains the most excruciating thing I have ever done, and if you’ve had to do that, you understand. I told him I loved him, and I thanked him – for teaching me how to ride a bike, for killing cockroaches, for letting me know it was okay to walk away from something; for encouraging me never to carry a credit card balance and to set aside ten percent of every paycheck for savings (that didn’t happen); for being pleased as punch when I told him I was pregnant, for welcoming my husband and then our daughter into the family; for pointing out, every time we sat on the deck of the cabin, how beautiful the cottonwoods were shimmering in the breeze.
Now when I sit on the deck of the cabin, and look at the cottonwoods shimmering in the breeze, I laugh a little, and look up at the sky, and say thank you once again.
I’ve been on a tree kick lately, art-wise. I think they’re birches, but they may be aspens. They’re not exactly accurate.
I was inspired to make my own trees (paper collage) after seeing the beautiful liturgical banners my friend Nanette created of birches – or aspen – after our clergy group met at Rocky Mountain National Park, where the dining room is decorated with images of aspen (probably not birches.)
To be honest, usually my art reflects something that’s going on inside, so as I’m currently working on my fourth tree picture, I’ve wondered why trees are speaking to me right now, beyond the inspiration from my friend.
A few years ago I had the pleasure of reading The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate by Peter Wohlleben. He opened my eyes to a world I had never known and I was struck by the way trees not only live in community, but thrive in community. As Tim Flannery writes in the foreward, “…the most astonishing thing about trees is how social they are. The trees in a forest care for each other, sometimes even going so far as to nourish the stump of a felled tree for centuries after it was cut down by feeding it sugars and other nutrients, and so keeping it alive. Only some stumps are thus nourished. Perhaps they are the parents of the trees that make up the forest of today…. The reason trees share food and communicate is that they need each other. It takes a forest to create a microclimate suitable for tree growth and sustenance. So it’s not surprising that isolated trees have far shorter lives than those living connected together in forests.”
Then I understood my current fascination with trees. Community is not only fun, and wanted, it is utterly essential for our thriving. I write this three days after the presidential election, at a time when my communities, my circles, are feeling as though they have been clear cut. Devastation. Death. Disregard. All in the name of profit or greed or power. A tree cares about none of those things. I would say a tree is amoral, except that we assign moral value to community and trees are communal beings.
The other thing that struck me about trees is that they have muscle memory of a sorts, wood memory. We see it in the rings they make after they have died or we have chopped them down. We can tell what sort of year it was by the width of the ring – a year of growth, maybe, or a year of drought or some other calamity.
If you cut us in half, right above the belly-button, you won’t see rings. But we carry muscle memory, and gray hairs, and wrinkles in our brow that won’t go away. We carry bags under our eyes, and extra flesh around our middle after indulging in necessary comfort food and drink. We carry stressed-out hearts, and headaches that won’t go away, and are not all that surprised when our blood pressure, like our weight or our bad cholesterol, goes up and up.
Well, then, what are we to do. A sentence, not a question, because I’m not sure anyone is really in a place to answer that yet, and I have a sinking suspicion that any answer would be premature. So for now, I will be like a tree. I will give thanks for my many communities, and however I can, be a resource, a friend, a helpmeet to all those. I hope that my community grows larger, like a forest that is untamed.
If you can, in the next few days, go wander among the trees for a bit. Breathe deeply. Listen to them. Smell their mid-autumn scent. Kick up their leaves. Be inspired. Be like a tree, and take care of your forest.
“Chronos time is how we measure our days and our lives quantitatively. Kairos is the qualitative time of life.” (Josep F. Maria, SJ)
I’m thinking about Holy Week, and worship services for Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter. I’m thinking about palms and azaleas and stripping the church. I’m thinking about despair and hope, short-term and long-term wins, and whether or not to invite folks up to the sing the “Hallelujah” chorus this year. In other words, I’m a pastor three weeks out from Holy Week.
On Holy Saturday, our group of dedicated volunteers will decorate the sanctuary for Easter: butterfly banners, white paraments, real azaleas and fake lilies, as the organist and this pastor are allergic to the real ones. The problem is that the flowers get delivered on Good Friday, and must be hidden away lest one preparing for the solemnity and sadness of Good Friday be confronted with the hope and life of Easter.
It’s like chronos time – the delivery of Easter flowers on Good Friday – collides with kairos time – the holiness and presence of God in despair and in joy. Maybe that’s just what life is: flowers in the midst of mourning.
It’s like all the images of sunflowers in social media, signs of support for the people of Ukraine enduring the horrors of war. It’s like wee flowering weeds pushing up between cracks in the concrete. It’s like that grain of wheat which must fall and die in order to bear much fruit.
To be honest, it’s what coming out of this pandemic (please, God; fingers crossed) feels like. There’s the chronos of fewer and fewer requirements to wear masks, and the declining numbers of hospitalizations and death. There’s the wonder of seeing people’s smiles in real life, and sitting in a restaurant and catching up with a favorite waiter.
And there’s the kairos of our emotional and psychological landscape having been forever altered by the experiences of these past two years. We cannot get back the things that we missed. We cannot say goodbye to the people who died when hospital visits were prohibited and memorial services had to be livestreamed. I can count five people who were dying whom I said goodbye to on the phone. It was awful. The sadness, despair, and anger that hung over us and inside us during the pandemic is not something that can be measured, put on a calendar, given an end date. Those things exist in the kairos time.
Some years when Easter morning dawns, I am still in Good Friday. Sure, I’ve written a homily for the day but it feels as real to me as the fake lilies that don’t make me sneeze. And there have been Good Fridays when I’m just pretending to be sad and solemn but my heart and soul are already at the empty tomb. As much as I like things to be in order, I have finally accepted that I cannot plan out my feelings or schedule my soul. And that is good.
So maybe this year, as I walk by the Easter azaleas on my way to conduct the Good Friday service, I will let all of that be, knowing that while God’s time is not my time, nor our time, God is still present with us all the time.
Yesterday morning, as I was drinking my coffee and going over my sermon, which would be delivered to an online-only congregation, I read a headline and immediately had some thoughts. As of Monday morning, only two parishioners have sent me a link to yesterday’s New York Times editorial by Tish Harrison Warren, “Why Churches Should Drop Their Online Services“.
In case there is a paywall and you can’t access the editorial, in a nutshell Ms. Warren makes the case for dropping online services (which would include livestreamed and prerecorded) and going back to in-person services only. Her theological point is valid: Christians are an incarnational people, and worship is best in person, when it is visceral, physical, when we get to experience the best and worst of being with other people. We can hear their voices and the cry of babies; we can smell our favorite person’s perfume or shampoo; we hear the whine of hearing aids being adjusted, and truly share from a common loaf and common cup. Some of those thoughts are my extrapolation of hers.
But. But but but but but. I fear that Ms. Warren has not taken in the fullness of the Body of Christ into her argument.
Last night, my favorite group of pastors weighed in on the article in a text chain. I trust these people with my faith and with my life, with laughter and with preferences in bourbon. They agreed with me (which is always nice) and here is what we would say in response to Ms. Warren and maybe anyone who believes that online worship should go the way of tokens for communion, male-only clergy, and a publication of what each family pledges to the church.
First: not everyone can manage the physicality of our worship spaces. The congregation I serve has worked hard to make our sanctuary accessible, and it is, but it’s a long walk or wheelchair ride from the accessible entrance (which is right next to the garbage bin enclosure) to the sanctuary. And frankly, for anyone with back problems, our pews are uncomfortable if not excruciating. Some have a hard time wearing a mask for an hour or so. And some can see and hear better online.
Second: some people cannot come to worship. Some live far away. Some are sick. Some are unable to leave their home. Some live with chronic anxiety and public gatherings are terrifying. Some have a napping baby. There might be a winter storm with icy streets. Offering online worship provides a way to get that weekly dose of Jesus that might not otherwise be possible.
Third: computers are not going away. Online events are not going away. Using technology is not going away. We wonder how many of our committees will choose to continue to meet on Zoom, rather than drive to church on a dark and rainy night, going straight from work to a meeting without getting any dinner. Rather than shun the opportunity that online worship offers, we should embrace it.
There are probably more reasons but three seems a good number. Let me add that last night we made the decision to go back to in-person worship and I could not be happier about that.
And as for me and my house, we will continue to offer both in-person and online worship, to the glory of God.
Photo taken by a parishioner worshipping only. She and her husband are unable to attend in person because of health concerns.
Hold Fast to What Is Good 