Carbon Fast

I promised to post the daily guide to taking part in a Lenten Carbon Fast. Here is the installment for Day 24:

Counsel your local council. Thank them for 

their recycling facilities but ask them if they could 

provide any more. 

Daily Lenten Meditation

Each day in Lent, I post a meditation from one of our parishioners. Their names are not listed to protect their privacy

Lessons for the Day:  Genesis 47:1-265;  1 Corinthians 9:16-27;  Mark 6:47-5

Today's Gospel is a story of doubt. In these days of Lent, it is sometimes hard to see Jesus in our lives, even if he is right there. When he makes his presence known, we may sometimes recoil, acknowledging our sin and unworthiness of his presence. However, Jesus tells us today: "Be of good cheer: it is I: be not afraid." Jesus entered the world not to scold us for our wrongdoings, but to save us and show us the light of truth. While we must take this season of Lent to prepare ourselves for the great Easter feast, we must also remember to look on Jesus not only as our Judge, but as our Savior and greatest friend. When we have faith in his friendship, our spiritual selves will be healed and we will be made whole.

Carbon Fast

I promised to post the daily guide to taking part in a Lenten Carbon Fast. Here is the installment for Day 23:

Turn the taps off. In one day a hot 

dripping tap could fill a bath. 

Daily Lenten Meditation

Each day in Lent, I post a meditation from one of our parishioners. Their names are not listed to protect their privacy

Lessons for the Day:  Genesis 46:1-7,  28-34;  1 Corinthians 9:1-15;  Mark – 6:30-46

43 -And they took up twelve baskets full of fragments, and of the fishes.

44-And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men.

One of our most pressing needs as Christians is to have Faith. To accept Christ as our Savior.

The meaning for me is not that Jesus physically fed thousands with five loaves of bread and two fishes. It means that if we have Faith and truly believe, we shall have eternal life.

Carbon Fast

I promised to post the daily guide to taking part in a Lenten Carbon Fast. Here is the installment for Day 22:

Find one way to save paper today: 

re use an old envelope or print double sided. 

Daily Lenten Meditation

Each day in Lent, I post a meditation from one of our parishioners. Their names are not listed to protect their privacy

Lessons for the Day:  Genesis 45:16-28;  1 Corinthians 8:1-13;  Mark 6:13-29

  As I write this, today is the deadline for my meditation to be sent in. I just typed out a whole meditation based on the lessons. I then tried to save it (to come back and read one more time), but accidentally hit the "Don't save changes" button--and it was gone.  I still have a huge pile of homework, way too much to get done in one night. Outside it is raining, and it is February--supposedly the middle of winter.

  But it's really okay! I'm happy to be writing a meditation, and it's all going to work out, and on the larger scale, it's definitely okay.  During Advent, my mom found a series of meditations called "inward/outward," and one of these meditations seem to somewhat apply to my situation. It is titled "And" by William Stringfellow. He says:

  It is worse than you think it is and you are freer than you think you are.

  The powers are raging beyond your control and they are already overcome in Christ.

  The division is an uncrossable spiritual chasm and it's been crossed.

  To me, the second line stands out the most, and it all basically says (though hard to rephrase)--it's okay, it's out of your hands. You can trust that it will turn out, that something you can't see or understand has it under control, so do your best...and then let it go (to God).

  I have a loud, clanging, bright pink alarm clock that I keep on the opposite side of my bedroom, so I have to get up to turn it off in the mornings. One day at 5:45, when it went off as usual, I had been having a dream that must have confused me...so when I jumped out of my bed, which is pushed against the wall, I jumped out the wrong side! Literally, I hit my head on the wall and fell back on the bed. I got up and tripped over a laundry basket, finally got to my dresser and fumbled the alarm off...it was not very graceful.  At that point, I surprised myself because all I could do was laugh! Exhausted, way too early in the morning, and I had just crashed into every crash-able thing in my room, but I still found it hilarious, let the awkward start go, and I think I actually had a great day. I found that moment very instructive to myself, which is why I mentioned it, so I guess...

  Whether it is something as completely unimportant as bumping your head, or if it's something much more important and serious, all I can try my best to remember is that:

  The powers are raging beyond my control....

                            and they are already overcome in Christ

Carbon Fast

I promised to post the daily guide to taking part in a Lenten Carbon Fast. Here is the installment for Day 21:

Only run your washing machine when you 

have a full load. 

Daily Lenten Meditation

Each day in Lent, I post a meditation from one of our parishioners. Their names are not listed to protect their privacy

Lessons for the day:  Genesis 45:1-15;  1 Corinthians 7:32-40; Mark 6:1-13

Genesis 45:1-15: Joseph is Reunited with His Brothers

When I was talking to my family about writing my Lenten meditation, Laurel immediately wanted to help. Although she knew the story of Joseph, we reread it, and this is what she wrote:

The story tells me that Joseph was nice to others when others were mean to him. Joseph gave his brothers and father food. He was very generous to his brothers and father because they did not have food. He wanted to be with his family so he gave them a place to stay in Egypt, where he lived. It is a story about forgiveness.  It means to me that we should always be nice to

one another. If someone is mean to you, you should be nice to them.

Well, that just about says it all, I think! But, not only is this story

about forgiveness,it is also about God’s plans for us. As Joseph said, “God sent me before you to assure [your] survival . . . so it was not you who sent me here [when you sold me into slavery], but God.” Isn’t this something we all need to keep in mind as we go about our daily lives, following its twists and turns, its highs and lows? “God, let us delight in your will.”

Carbon Fast

I promised to post the daily guide to taking part in a Lenten Carbon Fast. Got a day behind.  Sorry.  Here's 18 & 20 which brings us up to date.  

Day 18: Cut the air miles. Don’t consume any food 

that you know has been imported by plane (apart 

from Fairtrade products). 

Day 20: Compost. Put the nutrients from food 

waste back into the soil – not into a methane- 

emitting landfill.

Daily Lenten Meditation

Each day in Lent, I post a meditation from one of our parishioners. Their names are not listed to protect their privacy

Lessons for the day:  Acts 1:15-26;  Philippians 3:13-21;   John 15:6-16

The Orthodox churches have a concept, translated as "deification," which is the process, begun by the Resurrection, by which our human nature is taken up into the Godhead and made divine.  It is the complement of God's taking on our human nature in the Incarnation, and is surely the prize toward which Paul is "straining heavenward."

In the West, we refer to this concept as "holiness" and tend to see it more in terms of the individual rather than of the whole Body of Christ. Whatever word we choose to employ, however, it involves our being set apart and dedicated to God's use, turning our wills and our lives over to God's care.

It is a common temptation to see holiness as a matter of following rules, of obeying a list of do's and don'ts. This is a trap, because it leads us to think that holiness is a matter of exercising the proper amount of will power, whereas true holiness is more a matter of surrender and of educating the will to exert itself towards God's purposes and not our own. The value of the term "deification" is that, first of all, it emphasizes that this is an ongoing process, not a state of being; and secondly, it reminds us that the process operates not just on us individually, but on the whole Body of Christ of which we are members.

We know that we were made originally in the image of God.  The entrance of sin into the world implies that God's image in us has become flawed. Perhaps the purpose of holiness, or deification, is to remold us back into that image.  As Christ's disciples and members of his Body, we find our true purpose in consciously seeking God's will, not our own.  Perhaps this is what living in the Kingdom means:  our true home is not in this world, but elsewhere.

Such total identification with God that we want only what God wants is impossible to sustain, especially by ourselves.  Fortunately, holiness is a process operating on us as much as it is something that we do, and there are things we can do to help that process along.  Lent is the period of the Church year in which we join with our fellow-parishioners to make this process the primary focus of our discipleship.  All the abstinence and all the extra disciplines we take on are not-if we understand them correctly-punishments, but aids.  Like athletes preparing for a competition, we strip ourselves of hindrances, eat a special diet, and take on special exercises, all in order to let the new life work in us to achieve its goal of making us true members of Christ's Body, bearing fruit that will transform the world.

Water, Water, Everywhere - A Sermon

When our sexton, Richard, put the title of this sermon up on the sign board on Friday, he said to me, "Maybe you should change the title to 'Snow, Snow, Everywhere."  But water it is, and water it'll stay.

Now, you may know where that line comes from, but just in case, it's from Samuel Tayor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner."

The verse goes:  

Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink. 

It's the story of a sailor who is cursed for a sin he commits and it forced to sail endlessly with an albatross hanging from his neck.  The Water everywhere that they cannot drink is the first real part of the curse.  They can't move, they are surrounded by water they can see but cannot touch.

Now, think of the Israelites in the desert.  To a degree, they feel cursed, out in the wilderness with no idea where to go or how to take care of themselves.  They see NO water even though it's closer than they think.

Understand that the Isrealites have only recently escaped from Pharaoh after hundreds of years of slavery -- all because this man Moses told them to follow him out.  Now they have no way of making a living and even though God has only recently and miraculously provided them with food, they panic.  They felt every bit as cursed as the Mariner.

The funny thing is, for those who lived out in those parts, they knew that there was water all around -- it's just that the Israelites couldn't see it.  I'm no expert in wilderness living, but the experts say that it is truly possible to strike certain rocks in the region and get water from shallow aquifers just below.  

They had water everywhere but had no idea it was there.  That took a miracle -- God opening Moses' eyes, and in the process opening the eyes of the people.  It did not help them later when they lost faith during Moses' sojourn on Mount Horeb, but for the moment, they were filled with the only water they were interested in -- the stuff they could drink.

It was different for the Samaritan woman.  She had water -- the liquid stuff.  But she was missing a lot more.  She was suffering under her own sort of eternal curse.

This woman was looking for a deeper, sense of connection and belonging than her community could give her.   Apparently, she had not found it in the arms of six men, either.  As the old song goes, she was looking for love in all the wrong places.

Now, she was an outcast within her community.  That's why she was getting water at noon -- that was the time when other respectable women would be at home, and either she wanted to avoid their scorn or they forced her to stay away.  Either way, she was alone even as she was surrounded by her community, and she couldn't see her way past that.

Ironically, like the Israelites in the wilderness, she was closer than she thought to the living water she sought.  All she needed was a Moses to strike the rock, to show her where it was.  Then Jesus showed up.

You might notice that once this woman figures out Jesus is at least a prophet because he's told her everything about her, she shoots off into a theological discussion with him.  Maybe that's why she was an outcast -- a woman looking for deeper meaning, hah!  Maybe, that conversation was like a drink of water for her -- for the first time some man is going to let her talk about God!  It's like she has struck the rock and water is flowing free.  God's love was there all along, she just needed someone to show it to her.

Don't we sometimes feel like that woman?  We're looking for something deep inside, and we can't see it.  We know there's something missing -- but how to get to it eludes us.

What we need is a Moses -- no -- what we need is Jesus.  Because Jesus knows us, knows who we are and what we need.  Living Water.  Not to just know that it's there -- we need to drink from it.  And how do we access it?  

Ask.  Ask God.  Then stop to listen.  This is Lent -- a season of looking within and listening.  

 And then, be open to what God sends.  Maybe -- just maybe -- someone will come and sit by your well and ask for a drink.  

Amen.