We will return to dust... Meanwhile

Placing the ashes on the foreheads of friends in the congregation had me thinking about our mutual journey.

On Ash Wednesday, we tear the veil that keeps us sane. We acknowledge that we all must die eventually and return to the dust, the stardust, the heavens of which we are made. Will this grand unmasking leave us in an existential void?

Or, can we use this great reminder for something else? Can we, must we take this humbling reality and use it as a salve to heal those around us, as they journey through life? Our voyage will one day land on inevitable shores, but it's in caring for those who walk with us and after us, like those who walked before us, that we pry open the heart to share the grace that is there for us to accept.

The life we must one day surrender is not a life without ramification. We are in a symbiotic relationship with every creature on this earth. We are in a symbiotic relationship with the earth itself. A life without that interdependency is a life not lived.

And, like all relationships where one feeds the other and vice versa, the removal of one of those lives not only does great harm but can endanger or imperil the other. We mutually rely on each other. It's in our successful, healthy living that we can flourish. Together.

So yes, we will return to dust... And yet, meanwhile....

The Christ we follow asks us to be in relationship with each other, in families and in communities. When it was time for him to die, he instructed John to take care of Mary. That's our charge as well. We're to take care of each other as though we are taking care of the mother of Christ, for Christ.

And throughout the Gospels, almost every parable and story talks about His care for the needy and the sick. That's not a coincidence. There would be no miracles if Christ left the sick to fend for themselves. Miracles arise out of caring for the life of the other.

So yes, we face a mortality on Ash Wednesday that weighs on us heavily throughout Lent. We see and acknowledge that our loved ones as well as we ourselves will no longer be able to share an intimate laugh or tear some day. But we must be the healing love that binds our past joys and pains to our future joys and pains. With a little care and perhaps some stitches, the wound of death can still connect the living, breathing tissues left behind.

May we all on this day of dust also remember to be the grace and healing for the our families, for the human family, for the earth.

http://letallwhoarethirstycome.com/2016/02/we-will-return-to-dust-meanwhile.html

Footsteps of the Flies

Some times of our lives or of the year, we seemingly seem to be bumped by death from the left and by the dying from the right. We hear our mortality creeping up behind us, and we see tears and pain in front of us.

It's easy to let loose, go full on emo and drown ourselves in the sorrows of nihilism and fate. We drift alone on an island, fearful of what life has in store for us next.

Last Friday I saw the staged version of Lord of the Flies for the first time. My niece performed in an all-girl production, where they changed the characters from Ralph, Simon, Jack, and Piggy to Rachel, Simone, Jackie, and Piggy. It added a new dimension to see young girls in a classic modern story.

The broad themes stayed the same: the natural tendency for order and rules vs the natural tendency for tribalism and war, the Christ-like lover of peace being misunderstood by all, the innate criminality in some, the futility of intellectual blindness. But the use of girls ensured that these themes were understood to be truly across the human race, and not just among men. The cast was not allowed to lean on a simplistic boys-will-be-boys crutch. And the emotions felt ever more raw.

I bring it up because this show preceded a weekend that also included a memorial for a family member who passed on. That loss of innocence described in the book often times accompanies the departure of a friend or relative. It's part of our nature to question life and our natural place in it.

Lord of the Flies as a title arises literally from Beelzebub, or Baal-ze-bub. That deity is now viewed as a demon or devil. It's as though the devil arises when we're adrift on an island alone. The book implies that the devil is in us, and we hear the footsteps of the devil when left to our own devices.

But we aren't alone on an island. We have each other and most importantly, we have those who brought us here. Unlike the story, we weren't left here by accident. Our ancestors and friends paved a way for us in ways small and large.

Which brings me to this All Saints and All Souls day prayer that I've been saying for the past few years. It's obviously a slight reworking of Hebrews 12 and the prayer attributed to Saint Francis. But it merges them into a journey of hope.

We aren't adrift on an island, cast away to fend for ourselves. We have footprints in the sand that we can follow. And we can lay a path for those who come after us. So yes, like the beast in Lord of the Flies lurking in the shadows of our darkest night, we may find ourselves crawling in fear. At first. For now.

And then we can awake to a dawn, strengthened by the sunlight, supported by those clouds of relationships new and old, walking on the paths that were paved to bring us to this place of beauty. We may not be on this earth for very long, but we are not alone. That sound we hear is not the Lord of the Flies buzzing out of death. It's the prayer of hope that willed us into being. We exist because the love of others brought us here and we too can bring life to those who follow.

We Wanderers, Given to the Wind, Are Scattered

Frightened and yet soon at peace while in the sky.
Cappadocia Turkey on our Honeymoon - June 2014

"We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered." Kahlil Gibran - The Prophet

I don't think we're intentionally seeking the lonelier way. To me, it happens unexpectedly, naturally. What I seek, what I yearn for, is a closer relationship to Creation, a relationship that's both distant and deeply ingrained inside of me. It's that contradiction that makes it so hard sometimes to stay in touch with the divine. We teeter closer and then farther, ever nearer, ever further. By wandering, we need to leave our safe spaces and head towards areas that can be both exciting and unpredictable, and yet oddly expected. And that journey can feel inadvertently lonely.

The poem says that our wandering occurs even while the earth sleeps. Actually, it implies that our exploration occurs even while we sleep. I find this serenely true. I wake up at times with a peaceful "Aha". I never used to think of epiphanies as calm. But on this journey, I've started to wake up in more quiet states of awareness, of realization. Unlike the Archimedes "Eureka!" of excitement, these are the sort where you sit up and just nod your head in understanding.

So it seems that while the earth sleeps, while I sleep, we all indeed continue to travel. The scientist in me says, of course, we're traveling at a speed of 1,000 mph around the axis of the earth and 67,000 mph around the sun. That's a lot of space to cover and it'd be shame not to discover something after 8 hours of such speeds.

Most exciting to me about this poem is the final statement. We are seeds. When we are ripe, when we are ready, we go out, carried by the wind, held aloft to unknown destinations, and spread life.

Whether you are a young adult, whether you are a postulent, whether you are discovering life in Christ anew, you reach a new form of fullness. And in that fullness, we are released and sent out, by the wind, by the Holy Spirit, by the forces of the community around us, to be scattered.

The scattering is unpredictable.

The scattering can be frightening.

The scattering brings new life.

Finding My Way - Walking the Camino of Discernment

I have begun a vocational discernment process. Vocational discernment to Episcopalians is the seeking, sharing, investigative journey into the mind and heart with members of your church to see if your vocation or calling leads to a path towards ordination. The process has been going on for some time, but it's now in motion with others.

Is this a surprise? Allow me to describe how I got here.

Like many young gays, I left the Church (Roman Catholic) because of it felt that though we weren't to be ostracized, we still were held apart and were also asked to live a life of celibacy. We weren't sinners if we didn't do or touch anything. We were basically told to go into a corner and not say a word. As a teen and young adult, I knew this wasn't feeding me - how could it - so I parted ways. Not fully leaving the Church, but just my home Roman Catholicism. And yet, I still snuck back to try and find God and peace, though to no avail.

Like many in the 1980s and 1990s, my life partner and I would go to parties and dinners on Saturday nights, sleep in on Sundays, and somehow miss that there were other things happening on the weekend that might have been fulfilling. It's a work hard, play hard mentality that I suppose I've always had and there was no room for organized religion.

But it also left little room for grace. For 6-7 years during the 1990s, on Christmas and Easter, we would visit my ex's Episcopal church in Bakersfield or All Saints Pasadena. And although I had received invitations to come and attend, I finally heard a tone that I suppose I never recognized because it seemed implausible: welcome.

So with that welcome, I came back to the Church in January 2000, this time as an Episcopalian (part of the worldwide Anglican church), and I was content to practice in a via media life that resembled my Roman Catholic upbringing. I joined the choir and happily listened to messages of love and justice. It nourished me during times of duress. Well, most times. My separation from my partner, after 18 years, despite 2 years of couple counseling, was devastating and I even took time off from choir. I felt that the Holy Spirit had forgotten who I was. I needed space when what I also needed was grace.

Slowly, though, with the prayer of Taize and contemplative time walking the labyrinth, I eventually healed and renewed. The tiny cracks of hope kept widening and the Holy Spirit took root once more in me. And, through the love and inspiration of friends at church, I was invited to join the labyrinth ministry. I'm not sure what they saw, but it made me realize that I had gifts to share with others, and it didn't have to be a work skill.

Things shifted into higher gear in 2009. I volunteered at the church booth at the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim. I found the discussions amazing. I came to appreciate the depth of commitment that can be shared not only within one's church, but also with the diocese and the Church itself. And I made friends. One priest not only befriended me, he made sure I met Bishop Barbara Harris because I mentioned that I found inspiration in her historic role as the first female bishop in Anglican and Catholic history. I met non-Los Angeles folks from Integrity, the LGBT interest group for Episcopalians, for the first time.

Soon, I felt comfortable, even drawn, to helping and serving others in whatever ways were needed. Whether asked to tote that barge or lift that bale, it now seems right to serve others in the name of God. By 2012, when I helped out at the next General Convention in Indianapolis, I distinctly felt an urge or voice if you will to not just serve but also to lead.

I don't know if it's because of my natural affinity to leadership situations. I've been placed in such situations or put myself into those roles as far as I can remember. But I began to feel that I can serve, must serve, the Church with these skills I've been granted. And rather than just offering my hands and feet, I began to feel called to also offer my voice.

Like many who fear change, I did a something rather common: I ignored this voice. Well, that's really too passive. I pushed it away.

I'm a tech geek.

I'm running a business.

I'm speaking in public about technology, not God. God and technology don't mix, do they?

So I rejected these feelings and went about my way. The funny thing is, though, people kept asking me, in person and online, if I was on a journey to ordination. 

I would laugh and say heavens no. I was raised in a Roman Catholic tradition where you had 1 priest, 6 or 7 masses in 24 hours, for one or two thousand of people. If lay people were not involved, church wouldn't happen. The laity must serve if they want to be fed by the Church. My parents serve at their church 5 days a week, and my 76yo Mom and 80yo Dad would be baffled if asked to slow down. 

But such questions from others persisted and my feelings persisted. One of the primary reasons I went on my pilgrimage to the Camino de Santiago was to help understand these feelings and to find in my spiritual center, in my quiet place, an answer to what this all meant.

I didn't find the answer by looking inside. I didn't find the Holy Spirit under the brim of my hat. No, I kept to myself during the first many miles but eventually began to chat with others. And to my foolish amazement, I found the Holy Spirit calling to me from within the tired but passionate people I encountered.

The first person I talked to at length thought I was a minister. In fact, perhaps five people on the walk or at the dinner table eventually made comments as though they thought I was a minister. I was not quoting the Bible when this happened. I did what I feel has been my habit for the past few years: I listened, I asked, I shared stories, I tried to reach out. 

And I ended that journey living out the lessons. I mentioned on my post-Camino presentation and in this blog that on the long flight from Madrid to Dallas, I just wanted to sleep, rest, and read. And yet this young man in a suit beside me wanted to talk for much of that flight. Now, if you've flown enough miles, you know how it can feel to be trapped in a conversation on a plane. I tried at first to politely shift to my reading but he kept at it. So I thought about the many lessons I learned on my journey, and I gave in and listened. And talked. And shared. And he grew content. Finally, as we were deplaning, an older woman in a business suit, came across from her seat in Business class and asked him if he's ready for the next meeting. And then she said, "I'm sorry you had to spend your birthday on a crummy plane, but maybe you got some good rest."

I didn't know if I sensed his sadness or loneliness directly, but realized in a concrete fashion that he somehow needed me, that I was expected to help, and that my journey wasn't ending on this flight. I was to continue this pilgrimage, connecting with others in a healing way, every day.

So eventually I talked with our priests at All Saints Pasadena. And I've started the ball rolling to see if I really am called to ordination to be a priest or deacon.

For those who attend All Saints Pasadena, you may recall that on Sunday January 25, our Rector (head pastor) Rev. Ed Bacon gave a sermon about vocation, or calling. He described some important aspects of vocation, which a discernment process helps discover and confirm. If you wish to listen to that sermon on YouTube, as well as his comments on the late Marcus Borg, watch the video below.

How does this play out with work and home life? I don't fear school or work when my vocation at home is the greatest blessing and strength for me. After all, my marriage to Stephen is in itself a vocation. I couldn't do this without his support and love. And I've come to realize that much as I have a competency at work, it's not my calling. I was originally a pre-med student specializing in gerontology. Perhaps because it was too soon and too close to my grandmother's decline, I couldn't emotionally stay in medicine, as the tears flowed to freely for me. Now, decades later, I understand and manage these feelings more effectively.

So that's how I got here. 

As I begin this process with a committee at church, I will keep this prayer by Thomas Merton ("Thoughts in Solitude", 1956) in my heart:

My Lord God,I have no idea where I am going.I do not see the road ahead of me. Nor do I really know myself,And the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. And I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this,You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust You always though, I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, And You will never leave me to face my struggles alone. Amen.

I pray that you will walk and sit with me, sing and pray with me, hold my heart and my hands with me on this journey. I have always felt called to the table, but for reasons that I can't explain, I now feel that I am asked to set that table, maybe even prepare the nourishment for that table, and invite others to join. May we break bread.together at this table in the next few months, in grace and love.

Lead me, guide me along the way,
For if you lead me I cannot stray.
Lord let me walk each day with Thee.
Lead me, oh Lord lead me.

All the Single Maybes (Put a Sting on It)

On Saturday, it will be exactly four weeks to our wedding day. After five decades where I was told, taught, and raised to think that marriage was meant for some but not all, I finally get to have my own partnership blessed in the church. Three amazing priests will be have to keep me from crying the entire hour as I stand, kneel, and walk in a daze.

It's not really a dream come true. A dream is when you imagine something possibly happening. I never had these dreams because I didn't think it was possible. That's how oppressive it felt to me. I was unimaginative and thought that God and society only worked in limited ways. That God wasn't all powerful and all loving because that God was boxed in by our definitions and legalisms. But, like some dreams, the creative mind hits you by surprise and suddenly you find yourself sweating at the all too real possibilities.

My theological and faith journeys have led me to know, just know, that if marriage equality came to my church, my state, my home, I would want to my partnership to be consecrated with the solemnity that such a union merits. I grew up watching priests bless homes, pets, rosaries, schools, plumbing, bibles, and even sewer pipes. Certainly something as important as a loving commitment to another person should receive an important blessing. Until the last few years, this was just not so, and I like others watched inanimate objects receive God's favors, while my love was left behind.

The changes have been all too wonderful for me. But it's not for some gay people.

I've met many couples and singles who aren't rushing to get married or who find the focus on marriage equality discomforting. Of these, there are couples who don't see the need to have a state sactioned marriage in their union. They've worked and functioned as a couple for a long enough time that they don't require the apparent trappings that marriage entails. Some of these couples are even church goers, and they feel satisfied by their current status.

And then of course there's all the single people dream of finding their love but watch as we celebrate gay couple after gay couple. I find it hard to imagine the longing it might bring to them when they attend all their friend's weddings. I know of a few who don't attend weddings simply because it hurts them so much. They feel the sting when we flaunt a ring. They are ignored by the today's media because there are no laws that they're trying to overturn.

Then there's the example from pop-music. Beyoncé's "All the Single Ladies" is sung from the perspective of a woman who wants commitment but doesn't get it from her partner. Furthermore, that partner has hypocritical anger when she goes out to have fun, despite his unwillingness to commit. It's a fun dance number but I always wonder about their conflict in terms of marriage equality. What if one partner wants marriage and the other, because of hurt and anger at society and church, won't marry under any circumstance? I've met a couple like this and they on the surface seem reconciled to their differences, but I do wonder what it means when your concept of unity differs.

I cherish my friends who intentionally or uninentionally remain unmarried. For those who choose to stay unmarried, I pray that they may continue to cultivate the emotional bonds that satisfy them each and every day. Maybe they'll marry some day, maybe they won't. It's the networked loving bonds of family and friends that they value most.

But for those who watch the marriage equality changes and yearn for their role in it, I feel that it's more important to be true to your intended self than simply to be married. The love that can sustain for a lifetime isn't one that magically appears overnight when you find yourself single. It's part looking, part not looking, part intention, part luck. Some think of it as a game that has to be played.

I for one prefer to think of it as a journey. We are all on our individual adventures on this planet. If our trek brings us into communion with God and with another person, then a celebration seems called for, seems appropriate. But the journey doesn't end. It continues.

We're using a unity candle at our wedding. We each will have our own candles and, during the actual wedding vows, we take our candles and light one candle in unison, merging our individual flames into one flame. Unlike other services that I've attended however, we're not going to extinguish the original candles. We're going to keep them lit. I want to think that the spark of life, the magic of the Holy Spirit, as more than a zero sum game. By merging our lives and fire together, we can create more, enlighten more, see more clearly. We spread the Word and the light by sharing our lives and creation both as individuals and as couples.

We merge and create, rather than merge and extinguish.

Singles and unmarried couples have a light to share and I hope my marriage won't mask their joys, their pains, and their journeys. I pray that we all appreciate each other's lives and that our journeys together are of wrapped in beauty, creation, and sustaining love.

Advent Prayer for our Labyrinth Ministry

A little prayer for our Labyrinth Ministry gathering last night at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena.



God of hope and light,
We journey with you,
   to a modest stable
   and a new-born Babe.

May our ears tune
   to the song of angels,
May our eyes open
   to the shining star for guidance,
May our feet dance
   to the rhythms of the Holy Spirit.

May we forge ahead on our shared journey
   Without distraction
   Without fear
   Without darkness.

May our hearts and minds be set on fire
   with the hope of Christmas
   and the promise of our Peace.