1-2-3- Go! - Lenten Meditations 2017

Little Rascals episode "1-2-3-Go!"

There's a Little Rascals episode that I remember to this day. In it, the young Robert Blake of the 70s TV show Baretta played "Mickey". Mickey was playing baseball with Spanky, Buckwheat, Froggy, and the gang when he chases a ball out into the street and gets hit by a car. He's hospitalized and as he recovers, the children come up with a plan called "1-2-3-Go!" that they promote to encourage street safety. Whenever you get to a place of danger such as a street, you don't just run out blindly. Instead, you stop and 1) look to the left 2) look to the right 3) look behind you. Then, when all is clear, do you go.

I'm not really sure why I remember this episode from childhood. Perhaps the self-help of the children appealed to me. Perhaps the fact that they all worked together to make their lives better and safer resonated deeply. Or may the slogan itself is something that makes sense even today, or, perhaps, even more so today with everyone walking with their faces buried in their smart phones.

These thoughts came to me this week as I was reflecting on this journey through Lent. I began to wonder about the journey itself. You see, one of the things I help do is help prepare the prayers and music for the worship in the style of Taize at All Saints Episcopal Pasadena. During the 40 days of Lent as we approach Easter, I have to remember not to include the Alleluia but to sing a different hymn instead. We don't sing it because during the liturgical year, this is a time of reflection and penance, and Alleluia isn't consistent with that theme. And yet, sometimes, like last week, I forget that a hymn has an Alleluia buried inside the lyrics. I've had to think about being more focused and not in auto-pilot as I put together the liturgy.

Because yes, Lent is a penitential season. Now, any of us think of penance as punishment for our sins. When we seek penance, many believe that we repent so that we can seek to be absolved of sin. In some faith traditions, an intermediary like a priest absolves us. In others, the repentance needs no intermediary and Christ is present to absolve us directly.

It's hard for me to think of repenting without understanding sin. In the Episcopal tradition, we confess to sin with a confession. Here's a standard confession in the style called "Rite II" from the Book of Common Prayer.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

It's a spiritually meaningful prayer to me,  as is the similar Roman Catholic confession, because it makes sure that we acknowledge that sin is both in the act and in the omission of acts (what we have left undone, or what we have failed to do). Even more so, it helps make it plain what sin is. It's directly related to the Great Commandment. Here's the Gospel of Matthew version.

Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. — Matthew 22:35-40

Given that these are the two commandments that Christ gives in the Gospels, that all the commandments hang off of these, we can see how the confession takes shape. Forgetting the first commandment leads to the confession that "we have not loved you with our whole heart"; forgetting the second leads to "we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves".

Unlike the popular view that sin is an evil act, sin is more extensive. Sin in the Gospel isn't about intrinsic evil It's about what you say, do, think. There can be sin in both what we do and what we do not do.

But how can we possibly love God all the time? We experience tragedy and pain. War and politics. Racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia. It's so overwhelming that we forget to pray. We forget about the sick and the old, the prisoners, the lawyers and the tax collectors. How do love God, how do we love our neighbors as ourselves, how do we stay out of sin when we so easily, well, sin?

Sin makes more sense to me and is easier to work on when I think of it as separation from God. Whenever we sin, whenever we don't love another as we are loved, we move ourselves further from God. So penance is more about coming to a stop. Standing still. Assessing where we are. Looking to the left, looking to the right, looking behind us before we proceed. And, if necessary, changing directions on our journey. "1-2-3-Go!" We repent when we see the sin and change our trajectory. We repent when we fully acknowledge our misdirection. We choose to go towards God.

To me, that's the beauty of Lent. It's a pilgrimage towards Wholeness that fully appreciates that we will often wander away into the desert, further from divine unity. We get lost, out of intention. We get lost because of our habits. We get lost because of a lack of commitment to the path towards God.

And we acknowledge during Lent that this happened, is happening, and will happen again.

And we say "1-2-3-Go!"

We heal our relationship with God. We heal our hearts. We choose to be made whole.

Advent Meditation - Reading the Leaves

I've always walked and hiked a lot, especially in the past few years. I've realized that I notice more in the world and have more opportunities to reflect on things going on in my life when I go outside, putting one foot in front of the other.

The other day, during this cool December month, I was walking just after sunrise, noting the whiff of firewood from the night before, and found myself gazing at a large maple tree down the street from my home. I know this tree well, as it stands in front of a small house and is naturally decked out at this time of year with exhilarating autumn colors. I stared at the shimmering golden maple leaves, and the unraked layers scattered around the base. As I got closer, feet crunching on fallen foliage, I was struck by an odd vision. Two or three leaves were spinning wildly as they clung to the branches. They were twirling in the wind, trembling, vibrating on the bare twigs.

What made me take notice of these particular leaves was the obvious contrast to the other thousands of others on that tree. The other golden forms were perfectly stationary, as though in a painting. Motionless. Oblivious to those two or three quaking ones just a few feet away. I thought, "Oh, I actually might be able catch these spinning leaves just as they fall away to the ground - a perfect autumn moment on my walk." So I stepped towards the tree and gazed at the shivering ones hoping to catch them in the act of falling. I came to a stop on the lawn below the leaves. I watched and waited to see a spectacle that admittedly is repeated millions of times a day this time of year, but would be seen only by me, at this moment, at this place.

But it didn't happen, at least not in the way that I expected. As it turns out, as I was staring at the twirlers, I saw out of the corner of my eye an unexpected movement. I turned my head, and one of those motionless leaves broke off and started to drift downwards, wafting this way and that, before gently landing on the damp ground below. It was one of the stronger leaves that fell. I looked up, and the spinning leaves still quivered manically in the wind. I looked up and the stationary ones still remained motionless.

So I got to see a leaf fall. What I saw was what I wanted to see, what I waited to see, but it wasn't how I expected to see it. 

And as I took a couple of steps back towards the street, one last shape caught my attention. I saw pigtails and two large blue eyes. It was as though a young child - straight out of central casting to play the role of Cindy Lou Who, the tiniest tot on the Grinch Who Stole Christmas - was gazing out the front window of the modest home. Her head was propped on her hands, her elbows planted on a sofa, her big round eyes staring at the tree. It seems she hadn't noticed me.

I'm not certain what she was looking at, what she was waiting for. Did she want to see the leaves fall as well? Was she wondering where her Mom and Dad had gone to at this hour? Perhaps she was wondering what was for breakfast. But she was waiting and watching up towards the tree. But as I started my departure, she moved her head suddenly, surprised to see someone else there with her. Of course, I was concerned that I had startled her. But she just tilted her head slightly and smiled. She smiled broadly, with innocence and gentleness.

Advent is a season where we often run around madly, racing from one store to the next store, or from one e-store to the next e-store, staring at our phones as we wait in line. We do it because we want to make Christmas special for the ones we love, those who are planted in our lives. We do extra shopping, decorating, cooking on top of our normal chores, with work and family commitments. We spin around the city and it's a wonder we just don't collapse. That we don't fall to the damp ground below. Yet we somehow hang on. And our joys almost always come from unexpected ways. 

We're asked to spend Advent waiting for the baby Jesus. We're asked to be alert, to be watchful, with childlike innocence and wonder. It can often be challenging, if we let our attention drift in the wind to this mall and that concert, to this show and that party.  

May Advent keep us all awake at the sunrise, alert, in a state of wonder, head in our hands, staring out the window for something that perhaps only we can see, perhaps something we all can share. And may it surprise us with meaning far greater than we ever expected.

Advent Meditation: Soft vs Hard, Natural vs Man-made, Love vs Fear.

Cloud and Chichenitza pyramid, Mexico. Mel Soriano 2014-11-30

I've been contemplating why this photo struck me so strongly as I took it last week while I was traveling in Mexico. It's basically a corner of the main pyramid at Chichenitza and the cloud behind it. I took many photos that day, but I focused on this one in part because it highlighted an interesting contrast to me. At that time, it was just the difference between soft vs hard materials. But more than that, it meant something deeper, and I gazed at it in wonder. It attracted me more than I understood at that time.

This morning, a comment by one of my best high school friends on Facebook gave a clue as to why I liked it so much. Glenn pointed out that it was also a contrast between the natural and the man-made. Finally, it all started to make sense.

Juxtapositions like this happen all the time but do we really pay attention to the contrast as it happens before our eyes? What might seem simple and direct might actually be connecting at a deeper level, yet we sometimes move on before we have a chance to fully appreciate and understand what is before us. In this instance, the cloud and pyramid weren't just material textures that contrasted, but represented much more, especially during this troublesome Advent season.

The natural is floating so gently in this photo, with elusive, indefinite boundaries. The edges in fact change constantly: it's a cloud after all. The pyramid has striations laid out by man. Strong lines mark every step with heavy burgeoning stones. The soft versus strict lines are as disparate as, say, the concept of justice to Jean Valjean compared to Inspector Javert in Les Miserables. One is difficult to define, the other easily precise.

In addition to the lines, you also have a temporal contrast. Clouds are ephemeral, transient, elusive. They float by and change shapes while you stare at them. What might look like one thing can transform and suddenly you realize it looks like something else. The pyramid, however, is permanent and unchanging. It's ancient. Really ancient. It's so unchanging that the Chichenitza pyramid was lost and forgotten in the jungles for centuries before it was re-discovered. And of course, it hadn't changed during that time.

You also have a marked contrast in origin. The cloud is a gift from God, the source of life, a sign of nourishment, a spigot of life-giving water. It shades from the sun and recedes after it gives of its gift. The pyramid on the other hand is wholly man-made as a gift TO the gods. It's a way to reach towards the heavens, but not to inspire connectivity with gods. Instead, it perpetuates fear of the gods and was a way to make sacrifices to those angry gods. Rather than affirming life, the pyramid was the site where lives were taken to placate and appease. By dispensing with a few, the larger masses felt better, safer, shielded from wrath.

I already had my morning prayers today, but they were focused on the troubling state of affairs in our country in regards to police and ethnic minorities.  My prayers were also on the horrifying revelations found in the torture report regarding the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques. In my name, I feel sin is committed every day. In my supposed security (unfounded as the report shows), people were tortured and minorities are killed without due process. As a way to appease the fearful, our government high priests have deemed it acceptable to maim, intimidate, threaten, terrorize. Where is the Holy Spirit when you need Her? How do you prepare for Christmas with this stain?

So thank you Glenn for digging out of the jungle of my mind the reason the photo struck me so strongly. I prayed, pray, and will pray for a day when we reach out to our God of love and no longer need to build temples of fear. I prayed, pray, and will pray for a day when we no longer need to sacrifice our own to appease the gods, as a cover for the fact that we are just appeasing our own human fears. And I prayed, pray, and will pray for a day when we can look at these monuments of injustice we see today as mere stepping stones to a heaven filled with grace.

May your Advent be lit by the candle of light and life.

Praying for the sacrificed at Chichenitza pyramid, Mexico.
Mel Soriano 2014-11-30