Another conceit of our culture is that it is important always to be “in control.” If there is one thing that our brothers and sisters in recovery can teach us, it is that we are definitely not in control – that we must admit that there are powers beyond us that often determine the course of our lives. As Christians, we believe that this power resides in Christ. There is the paradox: that by giving up total control of our lives, we find perfect freedom. How so? It is when we realize that we are not always in control that we obtain the freedom to make mistakes. When we can admit we make mistakes, we can ask for forgiveness and move on. If we are possessed by the fiction that we are in control, we cannot turn to a higher power for what we need to be free, and thus we become slaves to whatever impulses emerge from the core of our being. By acknowledging that we cannot control everything in our own lives, we also acknowledge our need for others – and eventually for the ultimate Other, which is God.

Our culture too quickly makes judgments about those who live alone. Terms like "aging bachelor" or "old maid" betray a prejudice that many feel that if one is not intimately and uniquely joined to another person, there is something wrong. The person "unlucky in love" is to be pitied. The reality is that no human being is incapable of love or being loved. The divine spark of life that animates us is the supernatural force of love - and that is present in us until we draw our last breath. It is something, like most things in life, that needs to be nurtured so as to grow into full stature. That spark can burn even in those that seem not to have the romantic connection our society presumes should be part of everyone's life. The specific means of nurturing that love is a divine call - a vocation. Some are called into the intense relationship of marriage. Others may be called to love more generally: to live a life in a community of people gathered around a common belief. C.S. Lewis calls this kind of love friendship. We can be religious friends, political friends, work friends. All we need to do is discern where our life passions lie and seek out others who fell, think, and believe similarly. Friendship in so many ways best characterizes the love of which Jesus speaks since it is deepened and increase as it is shared among those of an increasing circle of friends. From this perspective, there is no such thing as "unlucky in love" - there is only the task of figuring out the kind of love to which each of us is called.

Becoming Friends

I know a number of people that believe that they cannot believe in God for one reason or another. Each time I hear this I want to ask (and sometimes do) if they have spent any time with God? I often get a quizical look. What we can know of God, we know through human agency, though our own senses and mind. We can become convinced of a "higher power" when contemplating creation. This still does not lead us to know God as the intimate and personal God revealed to us through Scripture. I offer the model of friendship as a means to know God: to know a friend, you must spend time together, discuss your values and your goals, and just simply "hang together" to get a sense of the spirit of the other. We do not know one another well except after long acquaintance and shared history. Do we do this in our effort to know God? Face to face discussions may not be possible and may not be all that helpful anyway. To the extent that the divine spark exists in each human being, we get to know God by getting to know one another. This is the value of the community of faith-the Church (not the hierachies of ministry, but the capacity to rub elbows with fellow seekers). When you conceive of it this way, it becomes clear that "going to Church" will not be enough to know God. We need to engage God in dynamic conversation and this occurs only when we are in coversation with one another about of personal journeys. The better we know our firneds, the more intimate we become-even to the point of love. Why sould it be different with God?

Familarity: Apathy or Insight?

Does familiarity breed contempt? I don’t think so. Rather, it breeds apathy. Have you noticed how the most familiar things in your life are the things you really care most about – but pay the least attention to? Until, of course, it is lost. Relationships, precious items, special traditions. We often fail to plumb their depths until it is too late. Perhaps our relationship with Sacred Scripture is that way. I know it was for me. At times I thought I knew most of what was important about the Bible for my life – and then I had to start teaching it again. Before long, I fell in love all over again - deeper, newer – discovering an old love – something I thought I knew and now realized I didn’t know the half of it. Layer upon layer, its words delve ever more deeply into the human spirit. Book by book, it tells a story that humans can never grasp fully. Why, because it genuinely is the Word of God – not a manual, handbook, or compendium of law, but the self revelation of the Other. Now when I approach Scripture, I often feel like someone who saw their spouse across the breakfast table as if for the very first time. You can see someone or something daily for decades – and then one moment you look at it and it’s there in a way you never imagined. It’s familiar but new. Familiar and comforting. New and challenging.

“Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen” (BCP, Collect, Proper 28)

Open to Other Worlds

For nearly three years, I have driving up the river valleys of the midstate from Harrisburg to Lewistown and home again - two or more times a week. The hour's journey often seems to pass by unnoticed in part because of the awesome beauty I encounter each time. It's amazing to see how the trips unfold, each one different. Glazed in ice and snow, draped in frozen fog, the rivers and the hilltops beckon. The scene changes every few seconds. It can make you mad with curiosity and transfix your imagination.

I want to tell you how the light changes almost every minute, and how a rock or a formation or a ledge that was in the dark one minute was revealed, brilliantly lit as if from within, the next.　 Sometimes, it looks as if a rock was on fire.　I can believe how Moses saw a burning bush not consumed. Sometimes, clouds that were just above me seconds later were beside and then below me.　Sometimes, the shifting light takes my breath away. I can understand how prophets saw visions of God's glory.

I often turn off the radio and suddenly start having a discussion with myself - no with God, really.　 Who am I in this other world?　 Who are you, Other World?　 What’s important here?　 What have I thought was important that’s not important at all?　 How have my perceptions of God, humanity, and the planet been limited by where I live, what I’ve been taught, and who I hang around with?

I want to tell you how important I believe it is to inhabit other worlds, if only for brief time.　Inhabit the world of someone who is not just like you.　 Ask yourself what’s important in that world.　 Ask yourself how you’ve been limiting yourself and others by not opening up to other realities.　 Inhabit another world by visiting a place you’ve never visited and really paying attention.　 Who are you there?　 What’s important or not important there?　 What didn’t you know about the world that this new place wants to teach you?　 Inhabit another world by taking a trip into your own soul.　 Who are you in your dreams?　 In your unexplainable behaviors and feelings?　 How are you unfamiliar with your deepest yearnings and desires?　 If you were, metaphorically, to step off the cliff of your ego into the depths of God, who would you be there?

What a gift it is to open ourselves to other worlds!　 When we do so we can inhabit the world we do live in fully, with presence, reverence, deference, expanded consciousness, and humility.

Promises, Promises

Happy New Year! 
'Tis the time for resolutions.

Have you been watching television lately?  Have you been struck by the number of ads that have appeared in print media with the barrage of mass mail fliers that focus on "self-improvement?" It is the time of year when organizations like Weight Watchers International, LA Fitness, South Beach Diet, Nutri-Systems and the like spend millions of dollars on media advertising to exploit the holiday indulgence in which most of us participate to guilt us into finding a "new you." Memberships soar in health clubs and diet programs at this time of the year all because most of us know that we need to make some changes in our lives.  The problem is that all these efforts focus on a "quick fix" rather than the real, lasting change necessary to reap the benefits of a truly "new me."

An interesting article appeared the other day in the Patriot News listing the New Years' resolutions for a number of well-known people in the area (including our own Bishop, Nathan Baxter!). What struck me is the number of individuals that deferred making resolutions for radical new behaviors and opted for more value oriented options -- that is, by focusing on elements of their lives that are "works-in-progress."  These options look more toward forming true habits of mind that can result in changed habits of living, some of which, entail simply taking a new attitude toward the continuing life situations that confront us.  In the language of life coaching, they are "value oriented goals" toward which we strive rather than specific targets, which we may or may not reach. They sound more like "make healthy choices" rather than "lose 25 pounds."

Because they are "value oriented" they speak to who we are - and whom we hope to become.

New Years' resolutions tend to be self-oriented.  They tend to focus on me alone (e.g. losing weight) rather than on how my choices have an impact on those around me.  Perhaps that is why they are so popular -- they are promises to myself rather than promises to others.  It is much easier to break a promise to myself since no one will hold me accountable -- except me.  And therein is the rub.  While it is much easier to break a promise to myself, finding forgiveness for breaking that promise is much more difficult that asking another to forgive me.  As these broken promises-to-self accumulate over the years, they begin to chip away at the self esteem that is so important for a healthy life in relationship to God.  We increasingly begin to think less of ourselves with the passing of time and sometimes reach the conclusion that we are unworthy of God's love and esteem.  Consequently, when Jesus tells us that that we must "love our neighbors as ourselves" we have so lowered the bar that we are unable to rise to that level of love which God in Christ has shown to us.  We are no longer genuinely able to "love one another as I have loved you."

Perhaps, just perhaps, this is a reason why our collective self - our society - finds it increasingly difficult simply to do "the right thing" and instead opts for an ethic (a habit of thinking) that dictates first and foremost, "do what is right for me." 

I truly believe the Church has the answer to this conundrum: Christ. A truly Christian ethic (habit of thinking) turns outward rather than inward; places others first before our selves.  Resolutions for a new year in Churchspeak should focus our habits of mind, to paraphrase President Kennedy's Inaugural Address, on asking not that we can do for ourselves, but what we can do for others. This is the beginning of real community.  This is what tell the world who we are -- and whom we hope to become.

Happy New Year!

Just In from Diocesan Convention

I just returned from State College, PA where the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania met in Convention for the 142^nd time.  It was a whirlwind experience.  What had been an event that occurred over the better part of three days has, over the year, been winnowed down to what we had this year: a single day packed with all the necessary business of the diocese.  Some Conventions in the past had been contentious ones where very controversial issues were debated with great conviction.  This year was not one of those.  Instead, the delegates gathered in a genuine sense of godly respect for one another, which testified to the unity of the diocese in essential things. 

I know that the bishop has been working toward this spirit for quite some time.  In his address to the Convention, Bishop Baxter called us to a spirit of revival.  He asked us to turn away from a way of thinking that sees only decline (members, finances) to examine and discern what we have in our possession – all gifts of God given for the work of God.  He called us away from an attitude of apology where we are unsure of our Episcopal traditions and teachings toward a spirit of pride that recognizes the unique gifts we have as an Episcopal Church in the Anglican Tradition: particularly our unique way of discerning God’s call for us in the work of evangelizing a world that still awaits the full revelation of Christ.

As part of this call, Bishop Baxter outlined his intended response to the Resolution C056 from General Convention 2009 that called for a “generous pastoral response” to those persons in our congregations who are gay and lesbian and who have chosen to enter into a life-long, mutual, faithful and faith-filled commitment to one another.  He told those gathered that should General Convention 2012 approve a liturgy for the Blessing of Covenental Relationships as proposed, we would approve its use for the parishes and clergy of the diocese under certain guidelines.  He wished to emphasize, however, that because there is not unanimity on this matter, that all persons would be respected and honored, whether or not they agreed with this decision.  No parish would be coerced or forced into implementing the trial liturgy and he would approve its use in a parish only after petition from the clergy and vestry of a given parish.  Once General Convention takes action (an affirmative vote is most likely), he would publish guidelines that would guide the implementation of the liturgy and guide its pastoral application in parishes of the diocese.

The Convention took another positive step for inclusion in the daily life of the Church by approving a resolution calling for a formal “youth representation” to be seated at future Conventions in the diocese.  The resolution called for the Canon for Children & Youth and Development to create the process for selecting the representatives and offer appropriate training.  As one delegate commented, “For a long time we have heard how our youth are the future of the Church.  They are not the future of the Church, they are the Church TODAY!”  At that comment, the entire assembly broke into applause. 

Other business included the approval of the operating budget for the diocese for 2013, the election of officers for the diocese in the coming year, and election of members on various canonically required bodies (Standing Committee, Council of Trustees, Disciplinary Board). 

There was much more – it was a packed schedule – but we ended as we began, in prayer.  Bishop Baxter led our closing Eucharist and bid peace and safe travels to all who had gathered.  Next year’s Convention will be held at State College on June 8^th.