...your household, the Church

Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion; for the sake of our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way: A Poem By Mary Oliver

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way: A Poem

By Mary Oliver

If you're John Muir you want trees to 
live among. If you're Emily, a garden
will do. 
Try to find the right place for yourself. 
If you can't find it, at least dream of it. 

                                             •

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain, 
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow. 

Anything that touches. 

                                             •

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite
understandable. But holiness is visible, 
entirely. 

                                             •

Some words will never leave God's mouth, 
no matter how hard you listen.  

                                             •

In all the works of Beethoven, you will 
not find a single lie.

                                             •

All important ideas must include the trees,
the mountains, and the rivers. 

                                             •

To understand many things you must reach out 
of your own condition. 

                                             •

For how many years did I wander slowly 
through the forest. What wonder and 
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!

                                             •

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still
it explains nothing. 

                                             •

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

---

This poem is excerpted with permission from Mary Oliver's latest collection of poetry,Felicity, published by Penguin Press in October, 2015.

A holy Lent, a whole Lent?

We pray that we might lead a holy Lent.  A holy Lent.  Holy.  Lent.  Holiness has to do with being whole; that to live in a whole way, we must consider our sinfulness, but also consider our blessedness.

All too often, the church has been a reminder of our sinfulness, of the ways that we don’t live up to God’s gift, of the ways that we fall down, and the church has all too often only been a source of reminding us of this sinfulness.  All too often, I find myself encountering people who are in some sense “recovering” Christians – be they Episcopalians, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Presbyterians or whatever room of the great mansion they may come from.  They are, in some senses “recovering” from the baggage laid on them, and perhaps also, I am sorry to say, abuse. 

Speaking of sin is important, because it can help us to really live in such a way that we know that we can’t “do it” all on our own.  As Paul said, he “sees the good, but can’t do it.”  We may know in our hearts and minds what it might mean to live well and good and lovingly and morally, but sometimes, we just can’t quite make it happen.  Speaking of sin is important for the Church because it is a helpful antedote to arrogance and narcissism.  Speaking of sin is important, in order to help us to focus more on God and our neighbor than on our self.

Speaking of sin, however, can’t be all that the church does. . .  we also need to remember that we are blessed!