In commenting on Benedict’s Rule, Joan Chittister (The Rule of Benedict:  A Spirituality for the 21st Century) talks about creating a “habit” or “delight” in virtue.  Our humility (knowing ourselves as God knows us — how little we are) is the foundation of our relationship with God.  If we are honest about who we are, we will come to know God.  We will never be flawless, and “earn” God.  But if we recognize the presence of God in our lives, we will become more perfect.  Not in the sense that I bring with me of being flawless (impeccable).  But “in the biblical sense of having become matured, ripened, whole.”

The idea seems to be that in recognizing God’s presence in our life, by habitually welcoming God’s presence in our life, we grow into being what God created us to be.  We ripen.  We mature.  We become whole (in my mind, a synonym for holy — complete as God intended us).  A wonderful (perfect) garden tomato can be ugly and buggy.  But it is truly what it is meant to be (and it will work wonderfully in my salad).  This seems to connect in my mind with God’s (“kairos,” or completeness or fullness of) time (as opposed to our “chronos,” or by the clock or calendar measure of time).  Garden vegetables and people grow and ripen in God’s time — not by the calendar.  Perfection doesn’t mean we are without fault.  It means we have become whole.  It means we are who we are meant to be in Christ Jesus our Savior.  It means that God is so much a part of our life that we live in that awareness habitually — it shapes how we live.

I’m trying to put this together in my mind with Norvene Vest’s (Preferring Christ: A Devotional Commentary & Workbook on the Rule of St. Benedict) suggestion that we turn to Christ and put Jesus ahead of everything else because Jesus is desirable (“a matter of almost erotic loving”) and not out of a sense of duty or oughtness.  And in my mind that takes me back to Capon’s idea that God draws us, attracts us, by the “beauty of holiness” (The Third Peacock: The Problem of Good and Evil – which I read back in seminary). Living life in Christ is beautiful and rewarding.  It is what makes us whole.

So, anyway, at least a glimmer …

This morning, with my prayers, I read two things I believe are both true. And there is, to say the least, real tension between them.

I read an excerpt from Harry Emerson Fosdick’s The Meaning of Prayer that talks about helpful prayer only being possible because of the development of character. “[Our] iniquities have separated between [us] and [our] God.” I find myself thinking about Hauerwas when he talks about character: how we live in the ordinary course of our lives determines how we will react, without even thinking about it, when defining choices must be made. Most of the time, anyway, when real choices have to be made, we will follow the pattern (character) of our lives without taking time (or having time) to really ponder our choices. We learn to see the world and act in the world in a certain way. We develop a character. That’s how we live our lives. And, according to Fosdick, that’s how we pray.

The choices we make to see and act in the world apart from God blind us, and prevent helpful prayer. Like, he would suggest, a frivolous American in the Rembrandt room of the Amsterdam Gallery wondering “if there is anything worth seeing.” Or like the hiker on an Alpine summit wondering where the view was. He talks about a man telling Mr. Turner, the artist, “I never see any sunsets like yours.” And the artists grim reply, “No sir. Don’t you wish you could?” We have to learn to see, to act, to pray … This requires discipline and character.

This morning I also read with my prayers an excerpt from The Monk of Farne. He says, “… precisely because I am a sinner, I have fled to Thee; since there is nowhere I can flee from Thee save to Thee.” Even my shame at my sinfulness and impurity, he says, cannot separate me from the love of Christ. “I will gladly run to Thee albeit a sinner, albeit unclean, for with Thee there is merciful forgiveness.”

In other words, it’s not about me. It’s about God’s gift of grace extended freely to me, regardless of what I am able to see and what I do. Jesus stretches out his arms to me, wherever my life is, whatever my character.

So there is a tension. Maybe just the ongoing tension between grace and works … The tension that seems, to me, to lie at the heart of the gospel. The mystery at the heart of being in love. Love, if it’s real, changes your whole life. It takes everything you have. And it’s an unearned, undeserved, unexpected gift. Why me?

Part of me wishes there were simple, clearcut answers.

But then, maybe, the richness and fullness of life as I know it would be gone. This tension, this mystery, draws me out and moves me deeper into my relationship with my God, and, indeed, my relationship with all God’s creation: people, creatures and all the rest I have been given in my life.

Talked about how we all have had bad experiences of being evangelized that color how we think about what many Episcopalians refer to as the “E’ word.  I shared how in college some guy came on campus talking about the pigs and the Christians (are you a Christian, or are you a pig?) …  After a couple of minutes of this I left.  But not before telling the speaker that I considered myself a Christian.  And for the first time in my life he had made me embarrassed to admit it.  (Two people in the congregation had had good, as well as bad experiences of being evangelized.  Everyone had bad experiences.)

I suggested that in our bad experiences, however well intentioned, it was not about us at all.  It was about converting us to their beliefs and fitting us in their theological boxes.  It had nothing to do with our spiritual life.

I suggested that what we saw in the beginning of John’s gospel was a different model.  Folks (like Andrew) out on a spiritual quest (with John the Baptist) were pointed in Jesus’ direction.  (“Behold the Lamb of God.”)  And they shared their excitement with those they knew (like Peter) on a similar journey.  And then other folks from their home town heard about it.  And when Nathanael was less than enthusiastic in his response (“can anything good come from Nazareth?”) instead of putting him down or condemning him, he was invited to come and see for himself.  Did this fit in with his spiritual journey?

I suggested that you might think of John (the Baptist) as being a spiritual friend to Jesus — someone traveling the same path who might have insights to share.  And that Jesus’ (to me) puzzling response to Andrew’s question (“where are you staying”) actually sounded like a spiritual director’s sort of question (i.e. why are you asking this?  what’s at stake for you?)  It was all about the spiritual life of the other person — on their on terms, in their own frames of reference.  Maybe if we talked about being spiritual friends (rather than evangelists) we might do the task appointed us without carrying a lot of unnecessary baggage?

Because God is active in all our lives all the time.  And we and God are the authorities in our own life.  God is developing a relationship with us — not the one’s who might want to shape and direct us!

That’s kind of the point of this morning’s story where Eli finally realizes that God is talking to Samuel (and that Samuel needs to hear what God has to say, not what Eli has to say.)

It was a lot more developed in church.  But I rather like where God sent me this week as I prepared this sermon!

Today I read an excerpt from Aelred of Rievaulx’ “On Spiritual Friendship” which might speak to folks at St. George’s (where we are interested in forming spiritual friendships):  ”What happiness, what security, what joy to have someone to whom you dare to speak on terms of equality as to another self; one to whom you need have no fear to confess your failings; one to whom you can unblushingly make known progress you have made in the spiritual life; one to whom you can entrust secrets of your heart and before whom you can place all your plans!”

And then I read an excerpt from Urban T. Holmes III’s “Spirituality for Ministry” in which he talked about “acedia” (“the devil of the noonday sun” or simple spiritual laziness) as the besetting sin (as seen by the desert fathers).  He saw this as the root of what he saw as the besetting sin of pastors:  a refusal to heed the calling to be the instrument of spiritual growth.  Too often, he said, we become (in Carlyle Marney’s words) a “hand tamed by the gentry.”  Many ordained people quickly lose a sense of the excitement of the spiritual quest.  He suggests that we are obsessed with “warm sins” like sex and gluttony, but that the sins that should really concern us the “cold sins” that are the product of apathy.

I realize this is rather scattershot, all over the place (inclusive and love based religion, partners in the spiritual life and the dangers of a passionate calling becoming just a job to be done), but the themes resonate in me.  I think this is why I continue to read about and from the lives of the saints.  Their lives, at least in some part, overlap my life and speak to my circumstances.  They speak to me and they feed me.

I know that I could easily find much more in their lives that (at least at this point in my life) does not speak to me or seem to feed me.  But these are people who, at least in part, are walking the same path I am walking.  And even their failings speak to my journey.

For me, I suspect, the challenge is not so much a loss of passion for what I do (though I do recognize this challenge in my own life and that of colleagues) as the discipline needed to actually move forward in my spiritual life (and not just be excited by the possibilities).  And outward actions, though needed, do not always reflect real spiritual movement or growth.  But I remind myself:  all of us fall short of the good we wish and all of us choose to do things we know we should not do.  That’s why we cannot rely on ourselves.  We need God and spiritual companions and community.  But the spiritual life is less about what we fail to do than it is about what we actually do manage to do.  God is probably less concerned about the prayers I fail to say than about the prayers I actually do pray.  I’m sure I miss countless opportunities to act for God every day in my life.  But God is probably more focused on how to help me move forward through the opportunities and I see and take every day.

They set out in bright approving summer:
flags, gold, imagination attending
down charted roads, the star like a sun of night,
and at earth’s end, the unique King awaiting.

Autumn too was lovely and novel:  weather temperate
and the star mellowing slowly as a moon.
Then winter on them:  the light snuffed out:
hearsay, frontiers, men inimical to dreamers –
and what direction in iron snow? — a hind’s track
diminished in ivory, a white birch stricken to ground
and the sky tolling its grey dispassionate bell
upon age, upon infinite heart’s weariness.

So the great came, great only in need,
to the roof of thatch, the child at knee awaiting.

[To order An Almanac for the Soul contact the Iona Center, P.O. Box 1528, Healdsburg CA 95448; ionacenter@comcast.net; or 707.431.7426]

The angel said to them, “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people; for there is born to you this day a savior, who is Christ the Lord.”  [Luke 2:10]

“… [The angel] does not simply say, Christ is born, but to you he is born.  Neither does he say, I bring glad tidings, but to you I bring glad tidings of great joy.  Furthermore, this joy was not to remain in Christ, but it shall be to all the people.  …Christ must above all things become our own and we become his.  This is what is meant by Isaiah 9:6  ”Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”  To you is born and given this child.  … The Gospel does not merely teach about the history of Christ.  No, it enables all who believe it to receive it as their own, which is the way the Gospel operates.”

It might surprise you to learn that our ideal person of faith is an expectant, unwed twelve year old …

and

Having the magi recognize Jesus’ birth is like having palm reading astrologers give him their seal of approval …

My father named me Jacob, after the patriarch — for all the good that does!  What good is a name like that to a shepherd?  People today forget that Jacob himself really was a shepherd.  They refer to their leaders as shepherds.  But they mean it figuratively.

They look at real shepherds with contempt, and go out of their way to avoid contact with us.  They call us thieves behind our backs — and even sometimes to our faces.  But they wear our wool and eat our meat all the same.

Shepherds live hard lives in some ways, exposed to the hot summer sun and the cold winter winds, fighting off wild animals, working throughout the day and night when necessary.  I’m told we also smell.  I wouldn’t know.  But they say we pick up the odor of our charges, and people of breeding turn their noses up when we are near.

We do have a great deal of freedom.  Our flock is a family business.  It allows us to spend time together.  Sometimes, frankly, more time together than we really want.  But it also allows us time apart by ourselves.  And we all know our sheep could not survive without us.

Over time, the sheep come to trust us.  We lead from up front.  We call to them, and they follow when they hear our voices.

There is a rumor that in some places shepherds actually drive their sheep — even using dogs for this purpose!  I can’t imagine why the sheep don’t just scatter in all directions!  What silly shepherds.  And why would they want to work so hard when the sheep will simply follow you if you treat them well.

Still, it’s a hard life, and not that great a living.  In the time of the patriarchs, owning flocks of sheep was a sign of real wealth and substance.  Today we are marginal members of the community.  They won’t even accept our testimony in a court of law.  About all you can say is that we won’t go hungry so long as we can keep the flock healthy.  No one would ever ask for our opinion, or invite  us to participate in a religious event.

No one, that is, except God and his angels!

Let me tell you what happened to me — to all of us, out in the fields that night.  I doubt you will believe me.  But it’s true, non the less.  In all honesty, I would never have believed it myself.  But I lived it, along with my brother, Isaac (my father really did have a thing for those patriarchs).  We’ve never forgotten what happened.

It was a night like many others.  Winter had started.  But it was not the end of winter, when a season of slim pickings would drive predators to recklessness in their hunger.  So we were on watch, as always, but not overly concerned.

It was fully night, but still early night when it happened.  Some of us were gathered around the fire.  I was patrolling the perimeter of our encampment.  Quite a few of us were gathered that night, and our flocks were mixed together.  We would call them to us to sort them out in the morning.

One minute I was looking out into the darkness, carefully not looking towards the fire, to preserve my night vision.  The next, an angel appeared, shinning a brilliant white in the darkness.  It was blinding!  Within minutes, everyone was gathered around.  For once, we completely forgot about the sheep.  None of us had ever seen anything like this before.  All of us were awestruck in amazement.

The angel spoke to us:  “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people:  to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.  This will be a sign for you:  you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”

And suddenly there was a great host praising God and singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”  and then it was dark once more.  When we recovered our sight, we were alone with our sheep.

Everyone was talking at once.  No one made any sense for a while.  Finally order prevailed.  Several of us who were just short of adulthood, ten, eleven and twelve year olds, were sent into town to scout out this wonder — if it could be found.

As luck would have it, it was my brother and me who found them:  a couple, with a baby shivering in a manger, an animal feeding trough, drawing what warmth they could from the animals among them.  I went running back to camp.  A few people were left to guard our flocks.  But most of us went down to the stable together.

One man, seeing the baby shiver in the manger, gave his parents the remains of an old blanket to warm the baby.  You could see how grateful they were.  They told us his name was Jesus.  We told them what we had seen and heard.  I’m not sure even they believed us — though his mother looked thoughtful when we finished our story.

We stayed for a while.  Then, when nothing else happened, we went back to our sheep — still praising God for the wonder we had seen, even if we didn’t know what this all meant.

I heard later that some foreigners came, with gifts for the baby.  And some time later (though we had moved our flocks by then) I heard that soldiers came, slaughtering all the newborn boys in town.  That was a horror to match the wonder we had seen.  But isn’t that the way of the world?

Shepherds and foreigners see the most amazing things, and no one believes them.  People in power are so full of themselves that they believe and yet they see nothing — except a threat to themselves.  They certainly don’t want their world to change.  For us, things could definitely be better.

Many years have passed since that night.  Many years.  I’m considered an old man now.  I’ve been hearing stories about a rabbi name Jesus, who sounds like he might be our baby, all grown up.

My brother thinks I’m crazy.

But I’ve got to know.  I’m leaving my flock in his care, and I’m going to find this Jesus.

What I saw was truly amazing.  It was the most remarkable event in my life.  And I simply have to know, before I die, what all the fuss was about.  Who is this Jesus?  How is he going to save us?

All I remember is a baby, shivering in the cold.  And that amazing angel, shining in the darkness.  And the heavenly choir, singing music like none I’ve ever heard.

Frankly, the baby was the least impressive thing about the night.  But it was all about him.  That’s what the angel told us.  I nee to know why.

Something wonderful has happened.  I want, I need, somehow, to make it part of my life.

The word “incarnation” has been on my mind this past week.

It means something like “in the flesh” or “given flesh” – as in Jesus was born in the flesh on Christmas Day.

But I’ve found myself thinking that we, as Christ’s mystical Body, give flesh to Christ in our own community today.

Our hands are not just our hands:  they are God’s hands.

Our eyes are not just our eyes:  they are God’s eyes.

We act for God today.

We represent God today.

What we do puts flesh on God for the people around us today – just as Jesus puts flesh on God for us as Christians.

And this idea carries over from the season of Christmas (that runs through January 5^th – Twelfth Night) into the Epiphany (January 6) and the season following, which is about what Jesus did in the world.

Jesus wasn’t just born.  Jesus acted.  Both are necessary parts of God’s incarnation in this world.

In our baptisms, we are reborn (by the power of the Spirit) in Christ.  And we are called to act, to incarnate Jesus’ presence, in his Name.

Merry Christmas to you and yours.  May we live out the spirit of Christmas in the year ahead.

I did a lot of driving, birding, in college, with Frosh.

But I did a lot of hitching (and some picking up) in college too.

I remember two pickups in particular.  The first, someone jumped out at me on the highway, standing in the middle of the road.  Turned out to be a high school friend (who’d been dumped there, and was getting desperate.  Only something like 10 or 15 miles from home for him.  The second, in the middle of nowhere, some guy (who was making me nervous from the time I picked him up) who told me, about a half hour later he was a serial killer.  Though I doubted him, it did make me more nervous.  I made it a point, about a half hour ahead of time, to make sure he knew I was going a different direction than he was.  And I really insisted I drop him off when we got to the parting of the ways.  And I got picked up once by an older woman (maybe late 20′s) on her way to Escalon (who told me I was the first clean-looking hitchhiker she’d seen all day — when I’d been on the road, without a shower or a chance to comb my hair, for three days).

Most of the time hitching wasn’t so bad.  I had some interesting rides.  Like the woman who had breasts about five times as large as I’d ever seen before.  (She seemed nice.  And I really tried not to stare.)  And the guy who picked me up who wanted to have sex with me (for money).  He dumped me immediately when I was not interested.  (I really didn’t see why he couldn’t still give me a ride to where we were both going.)

But some rides were scary.  I had one friend (female) who laughed in a guy’s face (and asked him if he wanted and STD) when he threatened to rape her.  He dropped her right off.  But I had another friend who wasn’t so lucky.  She was raped (and had a scar on her face from getting cut with a knife as an added souvenir).  I hear later that another friend, Steve, hitching with another guy, got picked up by some guys in a van — who beat the crap out of them and dumped them in the road without their gear.  Nothing that bad ever happened to me.

I did get picked up by a women and her (I think) young adult daughter in a pickup with a camper in back.  I rode in the camper, where some guy who’d been traveling with them for about a week told me he’d cut me with a knife if I tried to interfere with his action.  Really, I wasn’t interested — though he did make me quite nervous.

But my worst ride ever was on my 21st birthday.

I buried my mom that day.  The guy from the cemetery saw my uncle as the main mourner, and enlisted me as (as afterthought) convenient additional pall bearer.  (He had no idea who I was.  My uncle, kindly, had made the arrangements.)

Then my uncle dropped me off at the SF airport to catch the redeye back to LA.  From where I hitched — ending up in downtown Long Beach (in front of a lighted store window).  I was there a long time.  Some really strange people drove by, checking me out.  And I was hoping to see a cop — until one drove by.  He seemed even more squirrely.  I finally got a ride out of downtown.  Maybe it was only half a mile.  But I was grateful.  Only, I was in the middle of a dead residential area with no traffic.

Finally, a Caddy came by and offered me a ride.

The guy was drunk on his but.  he was driving through red lights (and stopping at green lights).  But it was a Caddy.  And there was no traffic.  So, on the whole, I liked my chances of surviving.

I may have told this story before (though, if so, I can’t find it).  But as we drove, the guy told me he was a mobster from New York, who’d won the car in a card game.  (He had to pull a gun to get the guy who lost the car to actually sign it over to him.)  The part about the gun made me nervous.  The fact that he seemed totally unfamiliar with the car made me believe him.

He stopped at a gas station for gas.  And when we left, the attendant was yelling at him.  My impression was that he not only didn’t pay for the gas, but he stole the guy’s toolkit.  But at that point I wasn’t asking any questions.

Driving south along the coast, he picked up another hitchhiker.  It was maybe ten minutes later that the penny dropped for him.

“Are you a G*dD*mn Mexican?!”

When the guy replied yes, he pulled over to the side of the road and told him to get out of the D*mn car.  I hopped out too with my backpack.  He asked me what I was doing, and when I said I was getting out too, he told me “YOU!  Get in the D*mn car.”

Thinking about the supposed gun (they guy was totally out of control) I got back in.

About the time we got to Newport Beach (where I lived) I figured out he was trying to get to LA from Long Beach — totally turned around.  I tried to give him good directions, as I had him drop me off at a gas station the other side of the highway from where I lived.  But I was sure he wasn’t tracking.  In fact, he seemed to want me to put him up at my place.

So I waited at the gas station (he didn’t want to leave, and he circled back) until I was confident he didn’t see me.  Then I crossed the highway, ready to hide in the bushes if I saw him coming, and walked a couple of blocks to where I lived.  I got home without seeing him — I think it was 5 or 6 AM.  And I wished myself a happy 21st birthday as I tried to fall asleep.