ADVENT 4 In the Episcopal Church and many other churches, the weeks leading up to Christmas are called Advent. It is a time of turning inward and preparing a place in our hearts for God to be born once again in our hearts just as Jesus was born over 2000 years ago in Bethlehem. This week we celebrate Mary and Elizabeth. Mary - a young woman chosen to be the God-bearer and her cousin Elizabeth pregnant in old age who will give birth to John - the one who points the way to Christ in the Gospels. Click here for the reading. I ran across a wonderful painting depicting the meeting of these two women. The joy of the Spirit filling both women, strengthening them for the days to come. This is the amazing thing about Christianity - it does not promise every thing in life will be wonderful but it does promise that God is with us. That is the meaning of Incarnation - God in Flesh - in the "meat" of life, the fat and the lean, the juicy and the stringy.

On another topic - today my husband and I went on our annual "tree hunt." It is our tradition to cut our own tree in the nearby forest. He used to take the children and they would help him (depending on their ages). Some years it was slogging through chest deep drifts of snow, coming home triumphant and exhausted. Now they have moved away from rural Lander to the big cities. In the meantime, the Forest Service has opened up cutting in a place that is only a short walk from end of the road - so we were able to get our tree in about an hour - including buying the permit. Christmas is not my favorite season of the year - see my breaking of the ornaments blog for more on that. I put off getting ready until the last minute - good thing it lasts through January 6 - Epiphany - so I can get everything done. My Christmas letters are likely to be Valentine's Day letters at the rate I am going. Tomorrow we will decorate the tree. The best thing for me are the church services. This year we will do an Instant Christmas Pageant at Eden, Wyoming, then off to Rock Springs and a Midnight Mass. On Sunday we will have a 9 a.m. Christmas Day service. My Christmas began this year with a Service of Lessons and Carols where a young boy soprano began the service singing Once in Royal David's City. The BBC will have Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day for those who have not heard it this year.
Another fun thing to do is Advent Calendars - found online in several places. Here are some that I like (click on them to link):

Tate the Cat

Washington National Cathedral

BBC Bach Advent Calendar

So Blessings of the Season be with you whatever spiritual path you have chosen. May the love that is at the heart of the universe fill your life and the life of the world.

BIRTHDAY PRESENTS -- today is my birthday and I received 2 great presents (more to come, no doubt!)
One is a down filled robe from my husband, which will surround me with warmth through the long Wyoming winter. And the other is "MY BOOK:" Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.. Click here to see all about it. It is the culmination of several years of reflections on the Daily Office readings found in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer and a year of editing. Thanks to the encouragement of friends and our daughter's work of editing plus many others looking at it and offering corrections and ideas. Although I wrote the original reflections, it came from all the people who have influenced my spiritual journey and it is now a product of a whole community of people. Thanks to everyone who made it happen.

THANKSGIVING: off to the Oregon Coast to eat, nap, walk on the beach and reconnect with the Pacific Ocean. I grew up by the ocean, spending summers with my grandparents and brothers while our parents worked in the city. The ocean most represents the Holy to me - the beauty, the danger, the peace, the storms, giving and taking. When I set out for a walk on the beach I never know what will find. Sometimes it is hard to know what one sees, sometimes it is a banal piece of material culture and sometimes a massive tree that has been ripped loose from a distant forest. The best thing to find is glass Japanese fishing float. I don't think they are still used. When I was a child we would always find them after storms - blue green globes traveling from across the sea. Now they are rarely found. A common thing to find are sand dollars. They come in many sizes but most are about 3-4 inches in diameter. Gifts to be found and carried home to remember sandy, sunny, stormy days and nights near the great sea. Most sea life needs to be protected and admired without touching so that it will live on. So off we go to get sand in our shoes and find the rhythm of waves and tides, nights and days, wind and sun.

ALL THAT JAZZ - this Sunday in Rock Springs we will worship with a Jazz group - Ronnie Kole.
Click here for the readings for Sunday.
This week we have the famous story of the landowner who entrusts his property to his slaves. Thanks to William Loader's thoughts at Textweek instead of seeing this as one more stewardship, how to get money out of people so we can pay the bills sermon - I am challenged to see the giving away of property as the giving away of Godself. The gospels tell us that in Jesus, God came among us and gave away all. The talents were an amount of money -we have taken the word into English to mean our gifts, our abilities. Looking at these talents as pieces of the Holy given out freely - the question becomes more than just about our money or even our personal abilities. The parable becomes a challenge to clinging tightly to our little bit of understanding of the immensity of the Holy - try to protect it from others and their understandings. Hiding our bit of God under the mattress. Trying to contain the uncontainable.
I am not a musician nor do I play in a jazz band so I should probably call for a testimony from someone who does but here is my impression. Trying to keep the Holy buried and contained is sort of like not being willing to risk the interplay of music that makes up jazz. A player who holds too tightly to his or her tune cannot reap the benefits of what happens when one lets go and lets the music take over the life of the group. Of course there is study and practice with one's particular instrument. There is learning the music so well that it creates a freedom to take off and know we will return. But when it all works - the wild applause tells us - Well done - good and faithful servant.

ALL SAINTS: This is the week we celebrate All Saints and All Souls. I like to think of them as capital "S" and small "s" saints and souls. Those whose names we know and about whom stories have accumulated (more and less legendary) and those who have changed the world but whose name we will never know or who are known only to us personally. Famous Saints: like St. Francis - who by his actions called the church back to holiness of life, Martin Luther King, Jr who had a dream and died for that dream, Mary Magdalene who became the first witness to the Resurrection and Apostle to the Apostles, (as she is called in the Orthodox tradition), St Patrick, who learned the love of God while enslaved and came back to his captors to witness to that love. The less well known saints like the teacher who said the word that encouraged us when we thought we couldn't learn something. A neighbor who took us in when we came home from school and no one was at our house. The coach who taught us the "trick" that helped us understand how to catch or hit. The Sunday School teacher or church camp leader who showed us the wonder of God, not just the rules. Many of the more well known saints changed the course of history by being willing to stand up or in the case of Rosa Parks - sitting down. She was tired - not from a hard days work but tired of being told she had to give up her place because of the color of her skin. Her action came at a time when others had been arrested and humiliated before her - but suddenly every one was tired and joined the bus boycott. It was that critical moment in time when she made her choice.

Our readings, click here include a picture from Revelation of all the saints gathered around God, sheltered and cared for by the Holy One, with all their tears wiped away by God. It is an image to sustain those who work for justice and resist oppression, like the images that can be heard in the song Lift Every Voice and Sing.

Lift every voice and sing, till earth and Heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise, high as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod, bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat, have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered;
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years, God of our silent tears,
Thou Who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou Who hast by Thy might, led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee.
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee.
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

The first letter of John speaks of being children of God in the here and now as well as the future. Our lives show whether or not this is true. It is the actions not the words that are the proof. St. Francis says our lives may be the only Bible someone ever sees. Gandhi said he believed in Jesus -it was Christians that disproved Christianity.
And our Gospel is the well known beatitudes or Sermon on the Mount. It reveals our true state - blessed. Created in the image of God and with the potential to reveal God. The brokenness of our true state - poor in spirit, mourning, meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness (right relationships), comes in the first 4 lines, yet we are still blessed and will receive a way to return to the fullness of our creation. Shocking when you think our usual use of the word "blessed" - as in, God blessed me when I was saved from the wreck, or when we are rich and happy -we are blessed. Here it is in our brokenness we learn that we are also blessed.
Sainthood - to which we are all called - the early church called all Christians - saints, is our created being - mercy, pureness of heart, peacemaking, are signs of this whenever we act from our image of God self.
Living out our call is not without a price - as most saints discover, put downs, social ostracism, and even death have awaited those who follow the crucified one. Does not really sound like Good News - but our end is not in death - social death or real death. We are promised life and that promise carries us through to stand or sit to make this world all that God desires. AMEN

REMEMBERING ROSA PARKS

The invocation offered at the Pasadena NAACP Annual Dinner on October 26th


O God of love and justice, we remember this night the life and witness of our sister, your servant, Rosa Parks. We remember that by her act of courage on a bus that afternoon 50 years ago, she injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization. We remember this night that she sat down in order that others might stand up We remember this night that she refused to cooperate any longer with unjust laws. We remember this night that she said, "The only tired I was, was tired of giving in."


As we eat this meal tonight, O Lord, and enjoy the fellowship at our tables, we pray that you will bless this food and this fellowship, God, by making us, like our sister Rosa Parks, tired of giving in.


Make us tired of giving in, Lord, to the classism and racism in our country exposed by the winds of hurricane Katrina.


Make us tired of giving in, Lord, to this unjust war that has now taken the lives of over 2,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqis, and which rewards corrupt corporations, takes away civil liberties, and sets Christian against Muslim.


Make us tired of giving in, Lord, to tax cuts for the super wealthy that steal food from the poor and steal schools and health-care from everyone else.


Make us tired of giving in, Lord, to a life of timidity and insensitivity that does not live for liberty and justice for all.



Make us tired of giving in, Lord, to leadership that does not ask us to sacrifice so that the human race can become the human family.


For in living for others and in prayerful awareness of our dependence upon You and of our interdependence on one another will we truly be blessed.


All these things we pray in your holy name. Amen.


--The Reverend J. Edwin Bacon, All Saints Church, Pasadena

SUNDAY October 16. We are celebrating St. Francis Day a bit late this year. For the readings click here.
I read an article in The Living Church, by The Rev. Larry Harrelson of Sisters, OR, about Francis that gave me some ideas about how Francis, before his conversion, symbolizes our lives in this day and time. Weighed down with burdens of maintaining our place in the world, our status, we live our lives out of relationship with our true selves, our neighbors and God. We put up masks of "making it." We spend our days busy with activities that in the long run will not matter to us. We don't leave time for that which produce joy. We live in fear that there will not be "enough."
Francis was a wealthy young man, full of himself, his power, his abilities. He rode into battle looking for glory but ended up in prison, abandoned in a crowded cell, in the dark. We cruise along thinking our might as a nation, or our individual abilities will carry us through. It seems only when we find ourselves in disaster do we have to face our true selves - our ultimate powerlessness and hunger, our emptiness of life. Francis heard a call from God "As you go, proclaim the good news, 'the kingdom has come near.' Cure the sick raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment. Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics. or sandals or staff, for laborers deserve their food." Matt 10:7-10. He gave up everything and found everything.
Once Francis came upon the wolf, Gubbio, who was terrorizing a village - he spoke to Gubbio about how he could feed his hunger without endangering the villagers. How often our hungers turn us into people that terrify others. Will we find food for our spiritual hungers?
He would carry worms across the road so they would not be injured by the wheels of the vehicles or careless feet. Can we find that kind of tenderness toward the creation and our planet that sustains us?
His father wanted him to return to the family business and said he would cut him off from his inheritance if he did not. Francis stripped off all the clothes that had been purchased by his family's wealth and stood naked rather than give up his sense of what God wanted of him. Can we strip off all that does not make this world a better place? Stand open to God and God's call on our lives? Share rather than hoard? Give up power to empower others?
Today we bless our animal friends, those who are with us and those who are absent. It is a symbol of our care for creation and the gifts that the creation gives us. St. Francis is honored all over the world with ceremonies such as this one. But St. Francis is also more - a person who challenges us to live in truth and witness to the power of God's love for us and for all creation.

Something for fun:

You are Julian of Norwich! It's all about God, to
you. You're convinced that the world has a
happy ending. Everyone else is convinced that
you're a closet hippie, but you love them
anyway.


Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

This week I am actually watching the tide and seeing what it brings - we are at Cannon Beach. Took a long walk around the "bird rocks" - usually surrounded by water - tonight while the tide was out. Stopped by the local grill for salmon, lovely. Not thinking things theological this week - just enjoying the grandchildren. Tomorrow I meet by phone with the publisher of my book. It is a compilation of my "poems" on the Daily Office. What a lot of work goes into the final editing of a book - I have more admiration for published writers now. More when we surface from the coast.

Thinking about next Sunday's readings for September 18.
It is sort of a complaining Sunday. The Israelites are complaining about being bored with manna and the workers are complaining about the landowner's unfairness. Even Paul is of two minds about living or dying. He seems kind of tired of being an itinerant preacher, suffering, and trying to build up the faith.
For those who have escaped with their lives from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina or any other disaster, war, or famine - manna, or any sustenance seems like a bounty. Once the immediacy of the tragedy gives way to the day to day awareness of loss of home, identity, photos, not to mention all the other possessions and items that make a place one's own, then complaining about something that is handy, like the food, follows as an outlet for all that grief.
The parable of the landowner had puzzled me for many years until I was confronted by a classmate in seminary with the question "look at it from the point of view of the day laborer." Thinking back over my days as a teen picking beans and strawberries in the Portland, Oregon area - I began to see it in a new way. The strong are chosen to work early - the field owners buses would come by the corner where we stood hoping for work. Later as it became clear they needed more pickers - others would be chosen slowly gathering at last the weakest of us. For me it did not really matter because I would have a home and dinner to go to at the end of the day but for those dependent on these jobs - each day would begin in hope that they would be able to provide for their families, have food for another day, see their children sleep in a bed. As the day wore on - hope would die and families would not be fed more than meager rations. What a parable of the kingdom - the last, the weak, the hopeless, all receive a day's wage - all are given hope.
I was both sad and hopeful when I read this eyewitness account of the days after the hurricane. Sad at the terrible response of those who were supposed to be trained to help and hopeful at the community that formed and how ordinary people reached out to each other to care.

Sunday thoughts. Click here for the Readings
The readings this week seem difficult in light of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and on this anniversary of September 11 destruction of the Trade Towers and the Pentagon. The reading from the Hebrew scriptures is the drowning of the Egyptians so that the Israelite people can be free. The Epistle is on judgment and religious laws and the Gospel is on forgiveness.
There are several ways to approach the Exodus story. One is that we are both the Egyptians and the Israelites. Our care for the poor as a country, in health care, education, and steady employment has been shown in this tragedy to be far short of the standard of the prophets and Jesus. They have been trapped in this event by the lack of choices available. Without funds, transportation, a place to go, and/or a plan for keeping up the levees or for disaster, people were doomed. A 2004 article in National Geographic sketches a scenario of a hurricane hitting New Orleans that is eerily similar to what happened. Like the Israelites asked to make bricks without straw - the Gulf Coast was asked to protect itself without funds.
Another idea that comes to mind is that all journeys begin with birth. The crossing of water is symbolic of new life. We have to leave the womb that protects and feeds us to enter into the wilderness that is our life. With family and community gathered around us - we can launch into life and make the journey. Death of the old and birth of the new are a part of each other. If we can take the disaster that has occurred and turn it to a new life and a new spirit for our country we can in some small way redeem a terrible event.
When Jesus talks about forgiving he shares a story of the one who owes so much and is forgiven but when it comes to others he is hard hearted. This not a story of letting people off from abusing others or forgiving and forgetting. It is one that calls for accountability.
This is the point Paul is making in his letter to the Romans. He is discussing religious laws on diet and worship and our judgments about who is acceptable in the community and who is not. Paul says that we are all brothers and sisters and need to work for one another instead of against each other. Accountability but also compassion for our human failures and our human abilities.
I have heard that "we should just stop talking about who is at fault and get on with the work" after Hurricane Katrina. But it is in the learning and accountability that true forgiveness can happen. Mistakes in judgment, greed, things done and not done are all apart of what happened and we need to bring these things into the light. It is only then that true repentance can occur. This does not mean we get so bogged down that we don't act. Mother Jones said "Pray for the dead and work like hell for the living." I hope for us there is a quality of "working like heaven" - working as Jesus would have us care for our neighbor as we would care for ourselves.
The Psalmist sings of earthquakes and floods - natural disasters. They are the reality of our life on earth. There are many things that can be done to mitigate the effect on life but they will occur. We are God's hands and heart here in this time and this place, we are called to share our gifts and talents in whatever way we can. Some are working on the front lines, some are offering homes to those displaced, some are sending money through relief agencies. Episcopalians are giving through Episcopal Relief and Development where you can be assured that most of your gift goes to help and not for overhead. We have the structures in place to make it happen.
At the end of the day, though, it is only in God that we really "move and live and have our being," who will be with us through fire and flood, bearing us up on eagle's wings when the journey is too difficult. We need only ask for that strength and peace that passes understanding.

OPINION
WILMINGTON NEWS JOURNAL
Mary Thomas Watts
September 6, 2005
mtwatts@cinci.rr.com

754 WORDS
It’s time to pull over and let some people out.
We’ll need a disembarkation manifest, so here’s mine.

Earning the top spot on the list of chuckleheads we gotta lose is Michael Chertoff, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, swiftly followed out the tailgate by FEMA Director Michael Brown.
The magnitude of Katrina’s destruction was surpassed only by the blundering incompetence of these two Bush-crony bureaucrats who were supposed to know how to respond to a national disaster.
Maureen Dowd, of the New York Times, understated the case when she called Brown, of FEMA, “a blithering idiot,” and Chertoff deserves to go down in historic infamy alongside Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, and President George W. Bush, who was photographed gaily strumming a guitar on Tuesday, August 30, while the deadly waters rose in New Orleans.
Attention! Will the following high-profile persons please step up and take your exit pass as your name is called:
Vice-president Dick Cheney, who, as of Labor Day, hadn’t uttered the first peep about the cataclysm in the Coastal Southeast.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who took in a Broadway musical comedy and shopped for designer shoes, in Manhattan, while thousands perished.
Rush Limbaugh, who is running lower on the milk of human kindness than the Hattiesburg BP is on regular unleaded.
Karl Rove, who stayed behind in Crawford so he could party with the anti-Cindy Sheehan people.
Next off, any-dadgum-body who ducks, dodges and makes lame excuses for the shameless performance of Homeland Security, FEMA and the White House. We all saw what happened that shouldn’t have and what didn’t happen that should have, and we’re not about to forget it.
The duck, dodge, lame excuse rule goes double for Bush 41 and Bill Clinton, who need to stick to fundraising for the relief effort and leave defending the administration to Karl Rove, who hasn’t met a human tragedy he couldn’t exploit to boost his president’s approval ratings.
I’m also particularly anxious to deposit on the roadside members of the press--print and electronic--who commit the following offenses against our collective sensibilities:
1. Professing shock at the poverty they see in New Orleans and on the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coasts. Matt Lauer, et al., are way too sheltered for their--and our--own good.
2. Telling us how great President Bush is one-on-one. The president hugging hurricane victims is to this unfathomable disaster what his turning up in Baghdad with a plastic Thanksgiving turkey was to the War in Iraq. Save your film.
3. Anointing a super hero prematurely. As inspiring as it is to hear Lt. Gen. Russell Honore cuss in a Cajun accent, barking at the National Guard to put down their blankety-blank weapons, “You’re not in Baghdad,” we’ve just begun to see the faces of true courage, and heroes will be legion.
You gotta hand it to Lt. Gen. Honore, though, he’s already given us some great sound bites, like, “We’re not stuck on stupid,” which somebody ought to put on a bumper sticker. (Or maybe they already have, and that’s where he got it.)
We’ve made a pretty thorough sweep here, so re-assigning the vacated seats is the next order of business.
Everybody responding to the immediate crisis with sacrifices of time, talent and money, come aboard.
Politicians and disaster management experts with the will and expertise to fix what’s so obviously broken at FEMA and Homeland Security, hop on.
It’ll be a squeeze, given how many countries have offered help (Canada, Cuba, Iran, Germany, Kuwait, Great Britain and Afghanistan, to name just some), but nations traveling together is the world’s best hope.
Journalist and author William Greider said, “Everyone’s values are defined by what they will tolerate when it is done to others.”
I don’t know about you, but my hair is still on fire over what my fellow Americans suffered in their darkest hour.
Enough, already, from the White House about “an army of comfort” and “the armies of compassion.”
As Wilmington High School Hurricane Editor Michael DiBiasio asked, “Why does everything always have to be an ARMY with him?” Why, indeed.
We’re way short on competent leadership in this country, and it’s our own fault. It’s also up to us to change the situation.
I guess you might say we’ve got openings for drivers.
How about we give the wheel to somebody with the spirit of that 14-year-old boy, in New Orleans, who sized up the situation, found himself a school bus and drove people to Houston?

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Mary Thomas Watts lives in Wilmington and writes for “The Gary Burbank Show,” 700 WLW-AM, Cincinnati.