Sometimes it's all in how you look at it!!!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

There’s an saying that was front and center in my mind and reflection after the Holy Week and Easter festivities were winding down today. The saying is, “Perception is reality.” I have to admit that there are times when that is more true for me than I would like it to be. As I thought about it I found that often when I use that saying, it’s not in a positive vein.

However, today, I was struck at every turn about how different things seemed around me than they did just last week. Sure, I’m talking about the spiritual realities of the profound shift from Lent to Holy Week to Easter, but in the temporal stuff around me, I also noticed a real shift in how things appear. It actually started on Good Friday. As I walked down the steps toward the door of the Church I saw a robin for the first time this spring. As I noticed the bird at work seeking a crisp morning meal, I found that I was hearing a cardinal here, and the chirp of more robins there, I could sense that new life was straining to break out all over.

Now I know the next part of this change in perception has largely to do with timing. But daylight savings time notwithstanding, the quality of light on things is just different in the past couple of days. The children are out playing longer after school. They’re also pushing on the limits of whether or not they should wear coats.

I noticed in driving back from a trip to the store this evening that I could hear birds everywhere. There were more than the usual number of folks out walking their dogs. There seemed to be more runners and walkers on the road. The big pile of snow in the turnaround at Flagg Street School is smaller every day. My perception of the world around me and what’s going on in it have a huge influence on my reality.

As Easter people it struck me that simply a shift in perspective can make all the difference as well. Assume for a moment that you don’t experience Lent and Easter knowing how the story turns out. Imagine if you will, what Jesus’s disciples might have experienced, perceived and felt each in their own way as it became clearer and clearer that something really important had happened.

Now move out of your imagination and into your experience and perception of the miracle you’ve been a part remembering and celebrating in the past week. You have a new chance this year, just as in every Easter season, to see the world in a new way as a result of the resurrection of Jesus. Death is no longer the final answer but merely a shift in lives that are eternal in nature. Hope is not merely an attractive idea but confident assurance that God can make good out of bad. Love is a way of life not an emotion. We can come to see people as walking talking images of God instead of viewing others with fear and suspicion.

Sometimes it’s all in how you seen things. Take a look at the world around you in the light of the resurrection and help change the reality of things and you’ll be helping bring in the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Warren+

How Are Things With Your Soul?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

As some of you might know, I have succumbed to one of the latest trends in our increasingly digital and pluralistic world.

I am on FACEBOOK.

For those of you who don’t know of it, Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a social networking website in which folks can make connections with people of similar interests and communicate in real time in a virtual community. As with most of the internet, you have to take the good with the bad, but Facebook lets you choose your content and who has access to that content. But that’s not what I’m really writing about.

Earlier this week, I received a ‘bumper sticker’ on my account from on of my Facebook ‘Friends’. He is a freshman in college at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota and the oldest son of one of my seminary classmates. He still finds it amusing that relics like his mother and me are on Facebook. The sticker he posted on my site quotes noted 20^th Century Anglican C.S. Lewis, saying, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” The implication, at least in part, is “there’s more to us than what you see….WAY more!”

Again last night while I was reading Ronald Rolheiser’s book The Holy Longing a similar claim barreled into my space. It said, to paraphrase, that the soul is what brings the chemicals of the body, the stuff of which we’re made, into animation. In that sense, according to Rolheiser, to lose one’s soul is to cease to live. It gave me pause to reflect. In fact, it’s still giving me that pause.

This morning I asked a gentleman who came to a meeting in my office, "How are things with your soul?" He pondered a moment and thend said, "I don't know, I don't think about it that much." I was taken aback with his honesty and had to admit that though I ask the question of others fairly often, I don't often take stock of how things are with my soul as often as I might. If my soul is that part of me that makes life fully possible, then you'd think I'd pay more attention to its health. After that meeting ended, (a couple of hours ago) I spent some time dealing with the question of how it is with my soul. It seems to me that is entirely consistent with what Lent call us to do. So, having said as much, here's how things are with my soul just ahead of Holy Week...

Thus far this year my Lenten Journey has been, as it often is, about focusing my energies on the things that God is calling me to do and not being concerned so much with those things that I’m told I ‘ought’ to do (either by myself or others). I don’t know about you, but it makes it much easier for me to step out in faith when I sense that God’s desire is my invitation and not that the expectations of another are my compulsion. Make no mistake, some of what we ‘ought’ to do is God’s will, but I invite you to at least acknowledge the possibility that what we ‘ought’ to be spending our time doing might be taking time away from getting into the heart of God in which our souls find their true rest and most powerful inspiration.

Well, enough of the reflection, I ought to get back to work. (he said with tongue firmly planted in cheek).

May the Love of Christ and the song of God in your soul inspire you to hopeful living this Holy Week!!!!

Take a look! Really take a good look!

Okay, now I’m getting closer to having seen everything.

For what it’s worth, we didn’t have weather like the past three days out in the west. Usually when it snows there, it snows. When it rains there, it rains. When it sleets, you know that something’s really wrong!

I have to admit that on more than one occasion yesterday I caught myself looking out the window in wide-eyed wonder. As I found myself in that state, I wondered why I don’t do it more often.

If we open our eyes at any given time to what’s around us we stand a pretty good chance of seeing something that perhaps no one else will see. Sometimes that witness is a happy thing, sometimes not, sometimes it’s neutral, but the fact that we see it is an experience. Much of what the spiritual life is about is experience. We do liturgy in hopes of having a God-moment. At its best, prayer is putting ourselves intentionally in God’s way so that we might have another, newer and deeper experience of the Divine. Looking out the window at falling rain on top of sleet on top of snow was for me a remarkable experience of God’s imagination and the wonderfully Divine complexity of the Creation that is steeped in God’s own self.

As part of your Lenten journey toward the cross, the tomb and the resurrection, I invite you to really look around you in the midst of your business at least once a day. Take note of what you see. Where is God in what you see? How would God in what you see make a difference? How is what you see revealing in your own life the presence or seeming absence of God? It needn’t take long. Just steal a minute or two each day and think of God, the world and our place in it as the people of God. You might be surprised by what you see.

--Shalom
Warren

St. Brigid

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

The icon you may or not be able to see to the left in this week’s reflection is that of St. Brigid a shining light in the Celtic pantheon of Saints. She is known as the patroness of hospitality and helped maintain Christian identity ahead of the celebrated time of St. Patrick on the Emerald Isle. Her feast day is tomorrow, February 1^st.

She was known to be generous to a fault. One story of Brigid is that she was sent to take the family dairy produce (cheese, butter and cream) to the county fair for judging in competition which would mean a great deal in real terms for her family’s dairy business. Her parents were skittish about sending her alone to do this task as she was known to give anything to anyone who she believed needed it more than she. Their fears were realized (though they would not know) when on her journey to the fair, Brigid came across a poor unfortunate. She shared a bit of her fare with him and went along, determined to have at least some of the dairy products to serve at fair. She came across another poor one and then another practicing her signature generosity along the way. She makes the last stretch of her journey to market and fair noticing that she has nothing left for the judging.

She takes her place in the judging line and opens up her basket one last time to see if she had missed something that she might offer for sampling and judging. Miraculously, the basket appears full and with products of a quality superior to that which she had left Kildare with. Her radical and reckless generosity was rewarded with top prize and orders for all the produce that her dairy could supply.

It’s a marvelous story and fun, no question. I believe there is a deeper reality about the nature of our call of God in Christ that we ignore at our own peril. To give without question and because there is need is the action of a faithful life and a mature faith. This last Sunday in my Annual Meeting address, I called the community to a commitment to practicing the Christian Virtue of Hospitality.

As you enter tomorrow, the shortest month of the year, and stand on the threshold of Lent, remember Brigid and her lasting example on a people who have a heritage of hospitality to the stranger. Remember Jesus in Matthew 25, “Whenever you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.” Or Hebrews 13 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Happy St. Brigid’s Day!!!

Preaching the Gospel and Hershey Bars

I ran across the following news item in the ‘Odd News’ section of Yahoo. I was amused and thought it a ‘sweet’ story (pardon the pun) but realized it was something more when Elizabeth Emerson utters this line near the end,

"I couldn't enjoy it if I wasn't able to share."

What if we looked at the love of God and the Good News of the Gospel the way Elizabeth looks at chocolate. Just a thought. Chew on it for a time.

Maine woman, 87, gets a sweet response

Mon Jan 21, 10:36 PM ET

JONESPORT, Maine - When Elizabeth Emerson confessed to a newspaper that her only real indulgence has been an occasional chocolate bar during her 87 years, she wasn't prepared for the sweet response that followed.

The 87-year-old Emerson was featured in a New York Times story about the impact of soaring fuel prices, generating letters from across the country, some with bars of chocolate inside.

She hit the jackpot in mid-December with an assortment from Hershey Co. that was accompanied by a personal note.

"I couldn't believe it. I laughed more than anything. All that fuss over little old me," Emerson told the Bangor Daily News.

The story about how the low-income elderly endure harsh Northeast winters gave a snapshot of Emerson's life: married for a half-century, grandmother and great-grandmother to 52, former aide at a nearby nursing home, now struggling to live on a $683-a-month Social Security check.

The final line disclosed her secret: "My greatest vice is Hershey bars."

This weekend, Emerson displayed what remains of her chocolate collection at her kitchen table.

"This isn't even all of it. I've given boxes and boxes away," she said. "I couldn't enjoy it if I wasn't able to share."

Besides, she said, "I can only eat so much chocolate."

Peace and Good,

The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602
508-756-1990 (Office)
508-756-8277 (Fax)

Blog Address www.frwarren.blogspot.com

What Gift Do We Bring?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

The dust is finally starting to settle. I’ve gotten at least a few of the boxes that filled the house broken down. The tree’s still up, but hey, it’s not Valentine’s Day yet and besides, it’s artificial. I’m really not ready to move on from the Christmas Season yet, but the calendar says the Epiphany is a matter of hours away!

During Christmastide we spend a lot of spiritual energy (or at least I have) on coming to grips with why God sends such a gift as Jesus to a bunch of folks (we humans) who so consistently seem to miss the bloody point. In fact I usually do so at the expense of forgetting to imitate the Magi in their Epiphany response. Moving between the sacred and profane aspects of Christmas (by profane, I’m not talking about my language) often diverts me from realizing that the new birth of Jesus into my life each Christmas ought to inspire some kind of thankful response. Let’s face it, the Magi were late, talked to the wrong people before heading to see Jesus and weren’t ‘the right sort of folks’, and yet we remember their faithful response to the coming of the Everlasting King by bearing opulent gifts to a poor child who appears to needed a place to stay more than gold, frankincense and myrrh.

As we prepare to Celebrate the Feast of Epiphany and the Sundays that follow before Lent comes (very early this year I might add), I want to invite you to search your experience of God over the past weeks in the liturgy, in your family, in the parish, at work, count some blessings and make an offering to God. Make an offering that may seem insignificant but that nags at you. Make an offering from the heart and see what God does with it. What good is the birth of a King if we just sit around and say how cool it is? Jesus has always called his disciples to reflection AND action. Let us as the people of God do both in hearty measure and with prayerful intention.

Blessed Epiphany!! Jesus the Light of the World awaits your gift. What do you bear for the coming of a King?

On the Advent Way--Just Be

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

Let me begin by thanking you all for your prayers and support as we have been traveling the journey of letting go and grief with the passing of Mary’s mother from this life to the next. There were many challenges and graces along the way and the support of a faith community is the difference between despair and a commitment to hope for me. I think I can speak for Mary in that as well.

One thing I can say for certain is that this Advent season has been a poignant one for me in preparing for new life and the reign of hope in the midst of grief and sorrow. That brings to mind a special event that I want to bring to your attention. This Sunday at St. John’s in Worcester (166 Holden St.) will be having a “Blue Christmas” service at 6 pm. The reality is that for many it is hard to embrace and feel the joy that is so much a part of the holiday and Christmas season. For those who grieve, on whatever level, the images of family, home and hearth are not comforting as much as they are a reminder of happier times. I want to invite you to be attentive to the folks around you during this season. It’s not incumbent upon us to entreat folks to ‘cheer up’ but rather to simply be present with people wherever their life circumstances have led them. What we can do, simply by our presence in most cases, is be with folks. We as the Church, The Body of Christ in the world, are given an opportunity to be with folks just as we prepare and celebrate the coming of Emmanuel, God with us, in the season.

In whatever circumstance you find yourself in this season, be present to the movement of God and to the position of others on their journey. Hold each of the folks in your lives in God’s presence and seek to be that presence for them in whatever way you can.

On the Advent journey, I bid you..

Peace and Good,

The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602
508-756-1990 (Office)