I am so very blessed, or that's how it feels this morning as the day tries to work its way into a thoroughly overcast sky-
this inspite of our ever more precarious financial-employment situation,
the life challenges a number of cherished prayer partners are currently facing,
a challenging, and surprisingly stimulating Lent.
This morning's gratitude is particularly conscious of two great gifts within the last twenty-four hours, and with that also a renewed appreciation for the wondrous communities of connectedness which lie behind each of them:
the network of extraordinary minds and grace filled lives who challenge, comfort, inspire and nourish me through their online presence
and at this moment i am thinking most particularly of my fellow Anglican/Episcopalian siblings- you know who you are.
The other source: one of the many gifts and blessings of living in my very dear, but often beleagured country (danged conservatives!): namely the CBC Radio Network, and most particularly Eleanor Wachtel's most recent broadcast on Writers & Company: http://www.cbc.ca/writersandcompany/ . An interview with the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. Absolutely one of Eleanor's best- at times the two of them had me soaring with Eleanor's insightful questions or Heaney's gift of insight, for naming.... for finding the word or image which literally stops time. At others, like a hungry child I found myself scrambling with the need for Heaney to keep talking on a particular point- my spirit calling out 'more, more- go deeper please.
Through the good graces of the Writers & Co website you can listen to Eleanor's one hour interview with Heaney, by clicking on the audio link on the right side of her site: - a veritable feast offered up by one my own country's cultural treasures, 'The Great Wachtel' as we refer to her in our household.
The second great gift still sounding in my being this morning is a single sentence at the very end of a powerful personal statement required by her local diocese for authorization to liturgically blessing gender-harmonious marriages . This by a priest and cherished sister born with the soul of a poetic prophet.
A single sentence:
'To love, as Christ loves us. And when we see it –give thanks to God and bless it.'
whose effect could closely be described as staggering my being with awe when i first read it.
The clearest, most succinct expression of the other, alternative model the early Church had- the heroic path- when in the early days it bought into Constantine's proposal of Church as Empire.
In a nutshell, our margaret is also prophetically holding up the essential call and invitation the Holy Spirit continuously holds out to the Church and each one of us in these times, Her invitation to radical renewal: essentially to recognize the ongoing Christ-process in each other; to embrace the brokenness of a Creation which has too long suffered under the tyrany of dualism, and to leave ourselves open to the risk and adventure of grace at work in aeach our of lives.
In that one sentence I hear the resonance of Heschel's celebration of God's seamless creation, of Bishop Robinson's transformative witness to the 'Love beyond our wildest imagining', to Ed Bacon's 'gift of God to be born gay or lesbian-' to so many of the lives and voices of prophetic wholeness I am blessed to be nourished and challenged by in these 'interesting' times.
'To love, as Christ loves us. And when we see it –give thanks to God and bless it.'
Knowing next to nothing about one of America's favorite summer pastimes- baseball, the only image which comes to mind right now, probably reflects the influence of another cherish sibling- dear Elizabeth.
'To love, as Christ loves us. And when we see it –give thanks to God and bless it,' it bears repeating. And with that one prophetic phrase dear margaret literally hit one right out of the purple-shirted park- she literally stopped time with wonder, here in our tiny house.
