New Boxes

I finished three more boxes. They were among the things that I scrambled to move out of the way of the water during the plumbing mishap the other week. I had the various pieces spread out on the floor to dry after applying a coat of paint.

This is Mom's birthday present. Obviously, I didn't finish it in time for her birthday. Since I gave it to her about halfway between her birthday and Christmas, I wrote "Meppy Birthmas! Or is that Harry Chrisday?" in the card. The image is from a painting of the Madonna and Child portrayed as Native Americans. The body of the box is a darker shade of purple, and I chose the colors to fit in her prayer space--not to mention that purple is one of her favorite colors.


This one I made for Lois. I didn't have to tell her that the picture is of Julian of Norwich.


I made this one for my friend Rachel. The picture shows a sacred well in a forest setting.


Each box contained two white tea lights and a fabric square to be used as an altar cloth. There is room for other sacred objects to be placed in the box--portable sacred space.

I have one more started and four waiting for ideas.

Peace,
Jeff

Winter Arrives, Advent Ends, Insecurity Abides

Winter began today, but we've already had two snowstorms, Friday's a major one. We expected more today, but we ended up with rain. If it had been snow, we would have been buried like further north--a friend of mine said they had close to 14" in Danbury.

I'm done with Winter. I'm ready for Spring.

The problem is that there is no Spring without Winter. No Easter without Good Friday. No Good Friday without Christmas. No Christmas without the Annunciation. No Annunciation without... All the way back to the Creation, and no Creation without God.

I've been having a "where is God in all of this" year. Discerning about my job. Discerning about the parish. Discerning about a call to ordained ministry. Everything is up in the air; life is in flux, and yet things seem stuck. As I look at what is going on in the church--the parish, the denominational headquarters, the Episcopal Church, the Anglican Communion, and the larger Church--I find myself asking again and again, "God, what are you thinking!?!? Why me, and why now?"

And yet, every now and then, I get glimpses of the answers. Like this morning during Lois' sermon on the Annunciation:

Saying yes to God's call often means saying yes to Holy Insecurity.

Having hope means trusting that God has not forgotten the recipe for manna.

Of course, glimpses of the answers are more often than not immediately followed by the appearance of more questions. So for now I will work on learning to live in Holy Insecurity and to have hope.

Peace,
Jeff

The Great Water Disaster

Friday morning the 12th, I woke up at about 1:00 hearing dripping. This is not unusual, because I can usually hear dripping from the overhang outside when it rains. It took me a moment to realize that what I was hearing was INSIDE. I thought the storm had forced water into the chimney, so I'd have to get up and get something to put in the fireplace to catch the drips and call the management company in the morning. I turned on the light and saw the ceiling:

I scrambled to move my music bag (flute, recorders, whistles) and music stand from in front of the fireplace. Then I found I had to push the bed over. Followed by moving my nativity collection from the mantle. The dripping got worse, and I disassembled the bed while I phoned the management company's emergency number. Then I called Mom while moving the nightstand and lamp as the dripping spread. I put pots and bowls under the worst of the drips.


By the time Mom and Bill arrived, I was emptying bookshelves and dumping books in the small room. My apartment is 450 square feet, so you can imagine there isn't a lot of space to move anything to. Once the dripping seemed to stabilize, I packed the nativity sets back into the "Christmas Boxes" while Mom tried to organize piles so that we could at least move around a little.

The maintenance person showed up, and he and Bill went to go look where the problem was. The tenant on the second floor wasn't home, but it turned out that the water actually originated from the third floor, where one of the tenants was taking a shower. For TWO HOURS she'd been taking a shower! It turns out that they'd called Roto Rooter (or some similar company) to take care of a clogged drain instead of calling the management company. I've never had a problem with the management company coming when needed in a timely manner, so I don't know what the were thinking! The guy who came punched a hole in the drain, so as she showered.. and showered... and showered... the water drained into the ceiling of the second floor apartment, then poured through her floor and into my ceiling and down between the walls.


I also kept an eye on my clothes closet and the back hall. Good thing, because I saw water start to come through the closet, and Mom and I emptied it into the front common hall. Later I moved the contents of my closet to the back seat of my car.


I spent the next few days with my mother while they made repairs. They thought they'd be done Tuesday, but I wasn't able to move back into my apartment until Thursday the 18th. They had to replace the carpeting and treat and repaint the walls. In many ways, I was very lucky. If this had happened the week before while I was in California for a meeting, a lot my stuff would have sustained damaged. The only thing they will have to replace is my mattress, which I couldn't get far enough away to avoid being splashed.

I think the maintenance person was surprised at how calm I was--at least by the time he arrived I'd finished panicking. And that I wasn't flying off the handle at him. Sometimes a little respect and professional treatment goes a long way. It wasn't his fault, and he did get up at 1:30 in the morning to drive through a nasty rain storm to come and take care of the problem as much as he could. And he was back before 9:00 a.m. with other workers to start cleaning up and making repairs.

I still have to order the new mattress, the winter storms really messed up delivery schedules, so I said I'd call back after Christmas. I'll be at my brother's for the week, so it won't be a major problem. I have almost everything put away, and except for the lighter carpet, you can't really tell I had an indoor rainstorm.

A couple of interesting things appeared in the water stains. This one on the ceiling


and this weird one on the wall:


Once the new mattress is here, and the last of my stuff is put away, I'll ask Lois to come and do a house blessing.

Peace,
Jeff

I AM The Children's Formation Officer

So much for the "year of discernment." So much for mentoring. So much for our input. The Associate Program Officer Trainees have pretty much settled into the positions that will be ours when the "Trainee" gets dropped from our job titles.

Actually, they've pretty much dropped it already. Note the two versions of my job title, here (and where, I would like to know, is the new picture I submitted to replace this 6 1/2 year-old one?) and here.

So, if I am the the Associate Program Officer for Children's Formation, and I'm being held accountable as an Associate Program Officer, then I'm just going to operate accordingly. The Center Director freely acknowledges that she knows virtually nothing about Christian Formation, which means she relies on me when it comes to children and the Church. I AM the subject matter expert.

Peace,
Jeff

Election Humor

These three pictures have been circulating around the Internet over the last week, and probably longer. The bottom one I saw for the first time last night. I'm surprised someone didn't forward it to me earlier, knowing my interest in all things Oz...

Peace,

Jeff

Point-And-Click Eucharist

On Friday I picked up this week's copy of Newsweek at a newsstand in Grand Central Terminal to read on the train home. Some weeks I pick up Time. As I started to peruse the issue, I was stopped by the title "Click in Remembrance of Me," with a picture of a priest holding up a communion wafer as if before an altar. The focus of the article is "communion on line," and it highlighted one web site.

The Rev. Thomas Madron's holycommunionontheweb.com features a service that can be done at any time.

The other celebrant named in the article was Zeph Daniel. I googled him and looked at his pates. I thought they were just plain weird. Nor was his site the only one I found that I thought was weird.

That doesn't mean I don't think there might be some merit to exploring the concept. Nor will it be the only blending of ceremony and technology that our culture looks at, if Phyllis Tickle's concept of the church re-forming itself has validity, which I think it does. More about that when I've finished reading her The Great Emergence.

In the meantime, go take a look for yourself.

Peace,
Jeff

Preaching At The Church Center

Vigil of All Saints/Halloween
Chapel of Christ the Lord, Episcopal Church Center, New York, NY
Luke 14:1-6

The last time Miguelina asked me to preach, I got sick, so last week I started taking extra doses of Vitamin C. When she invited me to preach today, we both commented on the irony and the appropriateness of the staff person for Children’s Formation preaching on Halloween.

I grew up unchurched, for many reasons that aren’t particularly important here. Halloween was always a big deal. We planned for weeks ahead of time, because we always made our own costumes. There was no discussion in our house, or our neighborhood for that matter, about the origins of these customs or the appropriateness of participating in them. It was simply a time to dress up and run around the neighborhood collecting candy.

Flash forward a few years, when I had just started putting my foot back into church, and we started learning about the pre-Christian roots of All Hallows’ Eve and how the Celts believed that at this time of year—their festival of Samhain—is one when the borders that separate our world from those of the faerie and the dead become very thin. We also began seeing the pattern of how the Christian hierarchy renamed and took over many pre-Christian celebrations to aid the spread of their faith. And so Samhain and All Hallows’ Eve became All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

A handful of years later, after coming back to the Episcopal Church, and every year since then, this season brings conversations about the secular culture’s commercialization of Halloween and discussions about whether or not we should be promoting participation in what is essentially a non-Christian festival.

So when the question finally comes around, “Does dressing up and going trick-or-treating endanger our children spiritually?” My reply is often, “Does bringing an evergreen tree into the house around the beginning of Winter and decorating it endanger our children spiritually?” That usually brings the conversation up short.

Ultimately, however, we should be listening to our children. Children are innately spiritual, and children are not stupid. As they leave the shelter of the family home and enter into the neighborhood, the community, and the world, they see and hear things. We cannot shelter them forever. And they will ask questions. It is their questions we should be listening to and discussing. And frequently, as Jesus does in today’s Gospel reading, the best way to answer a question is to pose another question.

So today, my question to all of us is: Do we teach our children to be rigid like the Pharisees, or do we teach them to follow Jesus?

Amen.