In 2007, El Centro Hispano de Todos los Santos had moved into our first storefront.  As December approached, we began to plan how we would celebrate Christmas.  Already, a good part of our congregation was from México and Guatemala.  There was no way not to stop to celebrate the feast of “La Guadalupana”.  We hired us some Mariachis.  In a tiny plot of dirt in the middle of concrete we planted plastic roses and we made a banner of Guadalupe.  We processed down Davie Blvd for a block and half while people looked on quite confused–a woman priest, deliciously sweet acolytes, Mariachis. Then, we placed the banner in the middle of that beautiful dollar store garden of roses; we sang and prayed for a while longer and rejoiced at what we were discovering about who we were.

Last night found us at St Ambrose with 75 people–children, babies, members of All Saints and St Ambrose and  El Centro.  Again, we processed, and celebrated and had wonderful tamales and hot chocolate like they’re prepared in México. We are still our ragged, lovely, faithful and struggling selves.

The loveliest moment of the evening came when just about everyone was in the parish hall, feasting on tamales and hot chocolate the women of El Centro had prepared earlier in the day.  I was doing a few last things in the sacristy.  Unlike other years, we did not hire a group of Mariachis to play for the serenade.  Instead, two young men, relatives of one of our parishioners, came to play the music of this feast day.  Now, the two stood in front of the altar at St Ambrose, almost alone, singing their hearts out, continuing their serenade to the Guadalupana.

I haven’t quite figured out why I was so moved.  Maybe it was the simplicity.  Maybe it was because after all the words have been said and all the rites observed, there is something essential about song as our expression of faith.  Their harmony was not sophisticated but it was earnest and careful.  They were not singing for an audience, they were singing from the heart.   In the quiet of a busy evening in December, I stood for a little while and allowed myself to listen with gratitude to the voices of angels singing in the sanctuary of the little church I have been so blessed to pastor.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

On a sunny, gorgeous afternoon in June of 2011, my brothers, dad and I drove up a mountain road in Panama, through the exuberance of a tropical rainforest. We stopped at a particularly lush area, next to a river that runs wild and fast down towards the Pacific Ocean.  My mother had died two days before.   The day before, we had accompanied her remains to the crematorium and it had taken every ounce of self-discipline not to let my mind go with her into what followed next.

Now, my brother gently opened the urn and tipped it over.   The ashes danced and twirled with the sunlight as they scattered into the river.  My mom, who had a playful spirit, who loved to dance, had spent years in a wheelchair, cancer taking even her playfulness away.  Though there was so little of her left that afternoon, fire allowed us to see my mom once last time as she truly was.  That day, I lost some of my fear of fire.

One who is more powerful than I is coming after me…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

Last Christmas, it seemed as if an infinite abyss had opened between our daughter Maria and us.  She was already living at BARC, her intermediate care facility, having a very rough time.  Plans to have her home to help prepare for Christmas kept getting cancelled.  We were advised we should only plan to spend a little while with her at BARC on Christmas Day.  I took long walks each night almost overwhelmed by grief.

One evening on one of my rambles, I got to listen to the brand-new Christmas álbum that Seraphic Fire had recorded right here at All Saints.  The fourth piece, Hymn to the Etrernal Flame, began to play and I had to stop in my tracks.  I wish I had a voice decent enough to sing even one verse to you because the melody is stunningly beautiful.  But it was the words, the words that held me.

Ev’ry face is in you, ev’ry voice, ev’ry sorrow in you,
Ev’ry pity, ev’ry love, ev’ry mem’ry, woven into fire.

In the fire of God’s love, nothing had been lost.  Neither she, nor I, nor all the exquisitely beautiful moments we had as a family when she was still able to live with us.  There was no abyss.  What’s more, that same fire had burned away the chaff of fear we all had lived with, always waiting for the next time she lost control and became dangerously aggressive.  In the holy darkness of that night and many that followed, I found consolation and redemption as I repeated the words,

Ev’ry breath is in you, ev’ry cry, ev’ry longing in you,
Ev’ry singing, ev’ry hope, ev’ry healing, woven into fire.

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

I spent sabbatical time in October, making a silent 30-day retreat on the shores of Lake Tahoe.  It was a time of intense prayer and self-examination as well as an opportunity to hike in the Sierras.  There was one trail I hiked on frequently, and on that trail, one elm tree that somehow felt like a new friend.  In early October, the leaves of the elm were just beginning to change.  Almost at the end of my time in Tahoe, I was out on the trail and came to the elm in the late afternoon.  The leaves trembled in a light breeze, and the tree had changed to an incandescent yellow that, combined with the sunlight, made my friend look like it was ablaze.

My thirty day retreat was based on the Ignatian Exercises that were developed in the 1500’s.  The intent of the Exercises is to open us more fully to God’s mercy and God’s call to each of us.  Ignatius of Loyola sums up our work as people of faith in a short and beautiful phrase:  Set the World on Fire.  That tree became the sacrament, the outward and visible manifestation of the inward given grace that gives us all–as individuals, as communities of faith, as the church the strength to go out and set the world on fire with God’s love.

One who is more powerful than I is coming after me…he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

The past three years have taught me a radical new way of understanding this passage, with it’s undertones of accusation, judgment and sentence.  In Greek, Metanoia, repentence, means turning, or bending, or leaning in a new direction, towards something.

What if instead of judgment we hear an invitation from John?  What if we can acknowledge our fear of fire and still bend towards the fire of God’s love?  By its nature, fire is untamed and we will not control what becomes of us or where we will be carried.  There will be loss, some of it bone-crushing loss.  But when we say yes to the invitation, our humanity,  in all its brokenness and limitation–and also, all its glory– becomes available  to the “magnificent enterprise of God’s kingdom” (From prayer attributed to Oscar Romero ).  We become a part of a fire that helps turn swords into ploughshares.  We fuel the alchemy of grace that takes what was bent and broken and discarded and makes it new, healthy and whole again.  And on a dark night of desolation, we make it possible for the fire of God’s love to offer warmth and light to a man, his young betrothed and a teeny-tiny little boy for whom there is no room at the inn.  In that light and warmth, the Christ child is born again.

In these days that are growing shorter and nights that are getting longer, come Lord, Jesus, come.  “Kindle the fire of love in our hearts”(From “Holy Spirit Come to Us”, Taize Community). Baptize and weave us into the flames of your love that we may set the world ablaze with grace and joy…

Conversation 1 (after a bad run of days at school)

Maria:  Mom, I need you to do something for me

Me:  Probably… tell me.

Maria: I need you to call Santa Claus

Me:  Santa Claus?  Why?!

Maria:  Would you call and ask him what list I’m on?

Me:  Really?  Do you think you might be on the “Naughty List”?

Maria: I don’t want to talk about it.  But call and ask, OK?

Conversation 2 (things are going better at school)

Ayanna (staff member at BARC):  Hey Maria, you’re making good choices at school, aren’t you?  I wonder if you are on the “Nice List”

Maria:  I think I’m on the “Waiting List”

Christmas, Christmas time is near,
Time for toys and time for cheer.
We’ve been good, but we can’t last,
Hurry Christmas, Hurry fast.
Alvin and The Chipmunks

These are the nights of holy darkness, when I cannot see but know in faith that the Spirit of creation and redemption continues to do the work of bringing to fulfillment God’s dreams.

Sherod, Maria and I got to spend a couple of hours together yesterday afternoon–that’s all the time we’ll have with each other this holiday weekend. Maria’s behavior and choices come with consequences for us all.  On the way to drop her back off at BARC after our restaurant meal, we kicked off the Christmas music season listening to Alvin and the Chipmunks Christmas Song.  When I was a new mom, driving around with my daughter in the Consumer Reports recommended car seat in my silver Volvo, she and I sang along to this song endlessly, giggling each time Alvin got scolded.  Hearing it again each year is a wonderful celebration of what Christmas came to mean when I became a parent.

Sometime during lunch which had nothing much to do with Thanksgiving (Sherod had a NY strip steak, I had lobster, Maria had filet mignon), Sherod and I told each other some ‘remember when’ stories and stopped at one point to acknowledge that the circle of our life has become awfully small, especially since Sherod’s hip and back pain became so acute.  Even one of our favorite things to do–to sit out on our dock–is not an option right now.  I’ve been up since a little after 4 this morning, so I went out a while ago and sat with my camera. It is chilly for Florida standards, and the light was still indirect and beautiful.  Sherod is still sleeping after a pretty long night of pain, from what I gather (I woke up several times and reached out to touch him only to find his side of the bed empty).  I was out there for both of us.

There is much about the way our life has closed in  that’s pretty awful and I don’t want to pretend otherwise.  On the other hand, it brings the unexpected into sharp focus. Getting to ride down a nearly empty interstate on Thanksgiving Day, my two favorite people with me, and Alvin and his buddies crooning Christmas into our life once again, was almost unbearably sweet and lovely.

A new friend, Fran Rossi Szpylczyn, has a wonderful quote in her email template that reassures me that there is much grace to be found in small spaces:

“In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain
alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.” -Edith Wharton

Today will be filled with sewing, knitting, a quick dash to put up a pair of new banners at church because our service schedule for Sundays is changing again, and time to enjoy the gift of sabbath with Sherod.  That’s the other thing–it’s sort of like the good vessel TARDIS– the circle is so much bigger on the inside than the outside suggests…

• The process of change is grinding, it grinds along slowly, grinding as in painful, in some ways, grinding as in, wearing one down, smoothing the edges, creating new spaces that will one day be filled. There is still too little in place to be able to post anything more than that for now.
• Our girl has been on a rollercoaster. Some great days. Just amazing days, when I marvel at the miracle of her being and am tempted to think that we’ve crossed a threshold. But that is largely a measure of magical thinking–we should know by now that it ebbs and flows. We aren’t sure yet if she will be able to be with us for Thanksgiving. It looked briefly like she would be able to sleep over tomorrow and have the whole next day at home. I went out and got the fixing to make a big breakfast on Thursday morning to be followed by a long, lazy morning watching the Macy’s Parade. But I got ahead of myself and it won’t happen that way. As of now, the plan is lunch at a restaurant in the middle of the afternoon.
• Sherod needs hip replacement surgery. That’s actually good news because we had been preparing ourselves for back surgery and we were filled with dread.

Not holly jolly happy kind of stuff, and also real. The holidays mean something else now. The empty spaces allow for grace to show up in unexpected places and I am very, very grateful. May your Thanksgiving Day be filled with good food, good joy and merry warmth.

One of the most lovely hikes I took in Tahoe was into Desolation Wilderness. For the first hour or so, it was almost a straight-up climb. In the 80’s the trail I was on got a working over so it’s basically a rock staircase hewn into the side of the mountain that goes up inexorably. Many of the ‘steps’ are high and rough and uneven. I huffed and I puffed and I felt like an old fat woman who should know better than to do something like this. My right knee hurt. But I was also determined that I would keep climbing.

There were moments of exhilaration, when I’d look up long enough to catch something like this

Because there are mainly evergreens and so much granite in this part of the Sierras, it can become almost monochromatically boring. And then there’d be vistas like this. I have just about decided to get a flame tatoo, the notion of “set the world on fire”–the call and invitation of Ignatius is so layered with meaning and hope for me these days. I saw what that looked like so vividly all around me during my retreat. A tatoo would be the outward and visible sign of the inward given grace I received — a sacrament.

At any rate, the climb was arduous and filled with the paradox that a desolation wilderness can be so stunningly beautiful.

I was also aware that I stayed in the very safe spaces of Desolation–during part of my hike, I watched rock climbers rappelling down from the peak on the other side of the canyon that dropped further and further from me as I climbed. I’m still glad I had my zipline adventure in Panamá and I know for sure that I will never rappel. But if I were 15 or 20 years younger…

Finally, the trail became less vertical. I came into a grove of evergreens. There’s one kind of pine tree–the Jeffery Pine–that has pinecones that aren’t prickly. What’s even cooler is if you get right up to a Jeffery Pine, scratch the bark and put your nose against where you scratched, you can smell this sweet vanilla fragrance that just delights and is about as contrary to the smell of pine I am used to as possible. I am sure a pair of hikers who came by right as I tried that trick must have thought I was some kind of wierd, but part of the joy of my time in Tahoe was the intimacy I felt with creation. I kept going. Until I got here

A small alpine lake. I dipped my hand in the water and crossed myself, another reminder of my baptism. I thought of my friend John Senette who preached a sermon I have never forgotten, about the fact that sometimes in life, we breathe the desert in so it feels like our lungs will fry and our being will wither and die–and that those are the invitations to go deeper still, until we find the springs of living water.

My days are extraordinarily busy now, and Tahoe is far away. But not the fire and the water…

Sherod was named for his uncle who died while flying for the air force during World War II. Sherod arrived in Vietnam on Christmas Eve, 1967, just in time for Tet, and all that followed in 1968. Lynn, his sister, had also married an air force officer, also an aviator, who died in a helicopter crash in Southeast Asia just a couple of years later, leaving behind 4 daughters including Kim. Also a helicopter pilot who served in Kosovo, the first Gulf War, Iraq and Afghanistan, Kim retired as Lt Colonel from the army almost 2 years ago. My family of origin does not have much in the way of military stories to tell–in fact, maybe none. But I have come to know a lot about being part of a family that does. Some of the stories are breathtaking–inspiring, noble, heroic. But the day in and day out of serving or being a veteran: not so much. It is good to observe Veterans Day. It should not tempt us to glamorize military service too quickly or forget the cost of war too easily…

It’s harder than usual to write these days.  I had lots of work waiting for me when I returned.  I also came home to a daughter glad to see me and who is doing well after a couple of very rough weeks right after I left to go on my retreat. She wants to spend lots of time with me and I am revelling in her company.  Sherod’s back is a mess and the medical system an even bigger mess–he has good insurance and even then,  it’s taken two months to get to the point where maybe, in another week, he will have all the test results the neurosurgeon needs to make a diagnosis and do whatever is needed.  Because that pain he’s in has actually become crippling.  I have some new responsibilities as we accomodate the pain in our household these days.

But mainly, it is hard to write these days because the proverbial “winds of change” are blowing.  Some of what that means is getting clearer, though other parts will take a few more weeks to sort themselves out. I need to abide in the change right now without trying to name it and thus define its outcome.  My retreat was life changing in more ways than I dared imagine it could be.   I had often heard about the skies of the West, how much bigger and bold they are.  As I think about my time in Tahoe, it is the sky I keep remembering, the endless deep blue, the way it did not obscure or hide anything, it just stretched on and on and on–somehow an invitation to me that I had been needing for a long time.

In a paradoxical way, this is a time to stretch beyond what is and stay still and quiet right here, right now.  I wonder if others who have made the 30-day retreat exprience something like this?  I have been doing the minimal Christmas shopping I enjoy and I am almost finished with that part of the work.  I’m making the presents for my far-away family–knitting for my brothers and dad, sewing matching flannel pajamas for my niece, sister-in-law and daughter.  I want to wrap up this part of the holiday preparations by the end of the month because I will need to mail out gifts in time for them to get to their destinations by Christmas, and because I want an uncluttered Advent. On Facebook right now, many of my buddies are putting up a daily post about one thing they are grateful for. I am moved reading their posts.  It feels like each stitch, knit or sewn, is a prayer of gratitude for me too and I am perhaps most grateful for another way to express my sense of being graced beyond measure.

I am glad to be alive…

Another surreal day–sometime I’ll write about it but not tonight. My dad had the angioplasty as scheduled–not one but two arteries 70% blocked. He got stents in both and is resting comfortably in ICU. The doctor expects to release him at noon tomorrow and my dad’s new lady friend, Fran, an expat who lives in Boquete, will stay here in PC with him till Saturday. Not out of the woods all the way, but already, Dad’s color is so much better.

As for me, I am wiped out. I have packed, and am heading to bed. Up at 4 tomorrow to catch my flight back to Miami.