December 11, 2024
Recently, we celebrated the Feast Day of Nicholas Ferrar, born in 1592, who was the founder of a religious community that lasted from 1626 to 1646. In this season of Advent, we are called to focus on both watchful anticipation, and prayers of reconciliation, repentance, and koinonia…or community. I am so very grateful for this Holy Family parish!
Perhaps Nicholas Ferrar can be a role model for each of us, in ways both unique to us, and in our common life of prayer and fellowship. After Nicholas had been ordained as a deacon, he and his family and a few friends retired to Little Gidding, Huntingdonshire, England, to devote themselves to a life of prayer,
fasting, and almsgiving (Matthew 6:2,5,16). They restored the abandoned church building and became responsible for regular services there. They taught the neighborhood children and looked after the health and well-being of the people of the district. They read the regular daily offices of the Book of Common Prayer, including the recital every day of the complete Psalter. (Day and night, there was always at least one member of the community kneeling in prayer before the altar, that they might keep the word, “Pray without ceasing.”) They wrote books and stories dealing with various aspects of Christian faith and practice. They fasted with great rigor, and in other ways embraced voluntary poverty, so that they might have as much money as possible for the relief of the poor.
December 4, 2024
I have too many books, and while I am finally able to say this out loud, it’s doing something about it that is so very challenging. So, I have taken this on as an Advent discipline of “letting go.” After many years as a professor, psychotherapist, and priest I have books that I no longer need, and others might be able to use. For reasons I need not go into here, books were my friends growing up, and they provided comfort and direction to me in times of discernment, and uncertainty. As a “bookish” football player in high school, I was sometimes teased about this by my teammates. And a supervisor in the welding department at Atlantic Steel company once said to me “William, I see you reading these books during lunch. Where will this get you?” I did not know.
So, among my Advent disciplines are letting go, and giving away, and being open to what may eventually live in those empty spaces. You may wonder as to the almost penitential aspect of this, but it is not misplaced. We sometimes forget that traditionally, Advent has had this penitential, almost Lenten thread, and it can be instructive.
Consider the collect appointed for the Second Sunday of Advent: Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer;
November 27, 2024
Happy Thanksgiving! This is a season of transition, and we are in what some would call “liminal” or “threshold” space between seasons, election cycles, and in our liturgical calendar, between Pentecost and Advent. The etymology of “threshold” is from the Latin, “Limen.” It describes states, times, spaces, etc., that exist at a point of transition or change—a metaphorical threshold—as in “the liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness.” The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott focused on what he called the “transitional, potential spaces” between the developing infant and mother as the infant grows out of the state of psychological fusion with the mother, and discovers a sense of self, and the ability to symbolize, and create meaning. This includes our theological musings.
During threshold seasons such as Advent, something addresses us, prompts us, calls us, pushes us, pulls us into a relationship with itself. Transitional, liminal space is where we experience life in a lively way that feels real to us and where we discover new ways of seeing our lives. I would suggest that this includes those aspects of our lives that are dissonant and where we may be in conflict. It is from and within this space that we encounter each other, in our common finitude, and we bring forth a sense of wonder about all of those who inhabit that space with us. Indeed, liminal space in this sense is given meaning through the broader community, such as therapeutic spaces, and yes, our own beloved Holy Family parish,
November 20, 2024
Last Sunday was Pledge Consecration Sunday, and I am so very grateful to all who gave so generously. Thank you! And if you are considering making or renewing your pledge, thank you! Let us continue to give of our time, talents, and financial pledges with gratitude, and imagination as to who, and whose we are, and who we are becoming!
Of late I have been wondering; how might telling our stories of Divine generosity and mystery energize our common life at Holy Family? When we have been surprised by joy, how do we give in response to this? As we approach the Advent season with hopeful anticipation, how might we pay attention to even the smallest blessings on our daily walk? This past Sunday I arrived at church in the predawn darkness and sat in silence in the nave of our beautiful parish. I offered a prayer of gratitude for all the lives who would gather that day, and all the Saints who have come before, and are to come.
In his wonderful book “The Embers and the Stars,” Erazim Kohak asks this very question of each of us, and of himself… how might we respond out of gratitude for the gifts we have been given? To speak for example of the gift of the presence of God in nature—and of the creatures who live in it, may at first glance seem challenging. Kohak writes, “Nature appears dead to us in part because we have come to think of God as “super-natural,” absent from nature and not found therein.” This is,