Heating up?

Adelie penguin and chicks at Cape Royds. Currently, Adelie penguins at Cape Royds are doing well — the melting ice has even made life better for them. But researchers are keeping a close watch, knowing that climate change is making their future unpredictable. AP Photo/Australian Antarctic Division

This story was broadcast on NPR ATC this evening.

Penguins Helped and Hurt by Changing Climate
by Daniel Zwerdling

[Audio for this story will be available at approx. 7:00 p.m. ET]

All Things Considered, March 31, 2008 · We take off by helicopter from America's main research base in Antarctica toward Cape Royds, where exactly 100 years ago, in 1908, scientists started studying the local penguin colony. It takes only 20 minutes to get there, but it's one of the most spectacular trips of my life. The Earth is blinding white in every direction. We pass a white wall of mountains off to the left and, on the right, an active volcano with steam curling out of the vent.

Then the helicopter drops us in a small clearing. We climb a snowy ridge, and there at the top are thousands of noisy penguins. They're crowded together on a mound of black volcanic rock, and they're squawking and cooing their hearts out.

These penguins are called Adelies. They look like emperors, which were showcased in the hit movie March of the Penguins. Only Adelies aren't as big — they barely come up to my thighs. Most are milling around; some are flopped on their stomachs on nests which they make out of stones. There are fuzzy chicks that look like toys.

Our guide is David Ainley, one of the most respected penguin researchers in the world. He says he loves studying Adelie penguins, partly because they're so out there. Literally.

"There's no bushes here; they don't dig burrows. They just sit out here in full view and they don't really care if we're around. They have no secrets," Ainley says.

It's surprising to hear him talk this way, because researchers don't usually ascribe human emotions to animals. But when Ainley talks about these penguins, it sounds like he's talking about friends.

"Penguins have no self-doubt," Ainley says, adding sheepishly: "Which I have lots of, for myself."

Ainley has a thick white mane and a white mustache which spreads across his rugged face. He seems more comfortable with penguins than people. He's been studying penguins over the past 40 years, and he says he's still amazed what Adelies can do. As we're chatting, penguins are filing past us like a line of wind-up dolls. They're heading to the sea, a couple hundred yards away, and they're leaping in, headfirst.

"They are good examples of how we all should live. They're the epitome of the word dauntless," Ainley says.

These Adelies dive up to 400 feet, dodging giant ice floes the size of cars which bash around in the surf. Some of the penguins are already coming back, shooting straight out of the water like a circus trick. Ainley says they can leap nine or ten feet, popping out of the water like corks.

Finding Answers

Scientists say penguins are providing some of the first clues of how global warming is changing the planet. And Ainley has come up with evidence by asking very basic questions: Is this penguin colony growing or shrinking? Are the penguins finding plenty of fish to eat or are they hungry? To get the answers, Ainley arms himself with a syringe loaded with tiny computer identification chips. Then he and his colleagues grab a penguin and hoist it like a squirming dog.

"We put them under our arm and hold them tightly. They're extremely strong. They're very aggressive, and they're very territorial," Ainley says. "And they definitely aren't used to being touched ... They don't even want to be touched by another penguin."

Still, the researchers inject a chip in every angry penguin's shoulder. Then they take a computerized scale, which looks like a rubber mat, and they place it on the path so the penguins cross it. This system lets Ainley track all kinds of information. For instance, what time does each penguin go fishing and when does it come back? How much weight does the penguin gain or lose?

An Unpredictable Future

Scientists have been doing similar studies in other parts of Antarctica. They've plotted their findings against the climate. The results are striking. During the past few decades, as climate patterns in some parts of the continent have changed dramatically, Adelies in some regions have almost disappeared. Their numbers have plunged 80 percent. But the Adelies where Ainley does his research are doing better than ever.

"These penguins are definitely being helped by climate change," Ainley says.

Ainley and other researchers think they know why. Most types of penguins go fishing only in open water, so they're all competing with each other to find food. But Adelies catch their fish by diving deep under the ice. In fact, they're just about the only penguin that can physically do that. So, when there's plenty of ice over the sea, Adelies hardly have any competition and they can get all the food they want.

Now the changing climate is shaking things up. In some areas where most of the ice has melted, Adelies can't survive. But Cape Royds used to have too much ice, and now it has just the right amount. So penguins here are doing great.

Ainley says here's the moral: Global warming is making life unpredictable. Early this year, he was studying another penguin colony, and a glacier was melting.

"There were huge rivers running off this glacier, running through the penguin colony, and the rivers were engulfing these penguin nests. And the penguins just kept collecting rocks to try to make their nests bigger, raise them up out of the water. And for many of them, they couldn't collect rocks fast enough. And so their eggs were just washed away," Ainley says.

"I thought it was really unfair, that humans a long way away were oblivious to what they're doing to the Earth, to these penguins' home," he adds, looking over his shoulder at the Adelies waddling by.

Ainley's radio crackles, and we get word that our helicopter is arriving soon. We make our way toward the landing site. But Ainley will return soon — he's coming back to Cape Royds next season, to kick off another hundred years of learning from the penguins.

Produced by Peter Breslow

+++

The best book I have ever read about Penguins, written by someone who clearly loves them despite their messiness and smelliness, is Ron Naveen's Waiting to Fly: My Escapades with the Penguins of Antartica (New York, NY: William Morrow and Co, Inc., 1999).

+++

And for an essay that appeared in Louie Crew's 'Do Justice!' pages in 2002, check out the Rev'd Dr Robert Stiefel's Holy Penguins! Taking Risks in the Episcopal Church. It has nothing to do with global warming but does with penguins and sounds strangely familiar even six years later.

No kidding

It is NOT April Fool's Day. That's tomorrow.

Here's today. We weren't supposed to get this snow.

The photo is of my postal carrier telling me (yelling across the street as cars go by) that she thought we were going to get rain today. She normally wears shorts throughout the year but still, today's snow took her by surprise and not happily. She is mushing through greased potato consistency slush.

Tomorrow it's supposed to be in the 50s, warm enough to support thunderstorms.

This is springtime in Vermont!!!

+

The April Fool's reference reminds me of how on April Fool's 1980, as I was flying back from my father's in London, the pilot announced two things over the PA: first, it was snowing in New York City and second, there was a transit strike, and he ended the message with: And I am not kidding! Sure enough, there was snow and ay, ay, ay, the traffic mess because of the strike was incredible.

+

And so it goes.

Easter 2A

Every year on the Second Sunday of Easter, we hear the story of Jesus and the disciples in the upper room and Thomas’ proclamation of faith that comes after his initial moment of doubt. It seems rather paradoxical, doesn’t it, to turn immediately a story about doubt and faith the week after our grand proclamation of Christ’s resurrection? Yet if we reflect on this juxtaposition, we will see that it makes all the sense in the world because quite frankly, the week after Jesus’ resurrection, I am not too sure the disciples really understood what this resurrection business was all about either. Rather than be flummoxed by this juxtaposition, I find it comforting to engage in a formal yearly reflection on faith, questioning, doubt, and fear. They all go hand-in-hand and it’s a question of how much power one gives to each element and when.

The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, written after the fourth gospel, writes, ‘To have faith is to be sure of the things we hope for, to be certain of the things we cannot see.’ These words frame much of my thinking as I consider Thomas’ initial expression of doubt and his subsequent proclamation of faith.

+

Jean Vanier says of Thomas: O happy fault of Thomas who did not believe, so that our belief may be founded upon his doubts, which called forth this new apparition of Jesus!' (1)

Megan McKenna has a less positive reaction to Thomas’ behaviour. She notes first of all that a week has gone by since the resurrection and the disciples are still locked in the upper room, and they haven’t moved. They haven’t responded to Christ’s great commission and his breathing the Holy Spirit into them. Instead, they are ‘still caught in the grip of fear.’ She attributes this inertia to Thomas whose absence renders the community incomplete. Without his presence, the others cannot move forward in spreading the word of God. She suggests, ‘When people are living in fear and insecurity, many want to be with others and some, who have other options, an alibi, prefer to go out on their own. Thomas had an out. If he was recognized as one of Jesus’ disciples, he could always feign ignorance and say, oh you must mean my twin brother.’ She comes down hard on him, calling his criteria for belief (sticking his hand in Christ’s wounds), ‘very callous, insensitive, and violent criteria, impossible in his mind to fulfill.’

Jesus catches him in his ploy and singles him out, repeating Thomas’ words back to him and almost daring him to do what he has claimed for his criteria. Jesus tells him, ‘Do not doubt but believe.’ In other translations, his words are rendered: ‘Do not persist in your unbelief, but believe.’

McKenna thinks that Thomas’ statement, ‘My Lord and my God!,’ comes not from faith but sight and is hardly an act of faith because he is responding to something he actually has seen. The writer of gospel picks up on this by proclaiming a blessing on those who believe without having seen. It is a call to those who hold back the community from God’s mission because of fear or insisting on having an individual experience of faith rather than trusting in those who have gone before us in faith. (2)

+

While McKenna is harder on Thomas than many other people, I do think that her signalling how one person or group of persons can hold back the body of Christ by their need to define what faith is or what to believe needs further comment.

I have not made much about the formation of an Anglican Covenant because in the larger picture, I do not think its existence would change who we are and what we believe here at Saint Mary’s. (3) Its existence is not crucial to our weekly gathering at this table for communion. I also believe that our life as followers of Jesus is challenging enough: to engage in God’s mission in this town and beyond, to be reconcilers of the world to God in Christ, to love God and our neighbour, and to live out the vows of the baptismal covenant and the dreams of the beatitudes. (It’s no surprise to realise that these statements comprise some of the major tenets of my belief.) So to layer on top of our life together a covenant that would turn us into a confessing church (like the Methodist or Presbyterian or Lutheran churches who sign onto a statement created by their founder), where we assent to something more than the historic Nicene and Apostles’ creeds, to me, is a non-starter.

But you should know that currently there is a lot of attention being paid throughout the Anglican church world, particularly in the Global South, about the formation of an Anglican Covenant. It would be something that would codify just what we (that is, The Episcopal Church) should believe if we wish to be part of the Anglican Communion and then what punishment would be meted out for not complying with the covenant. While the second draft has come a ways in articulating a language of relationship and has restored the importance of our sacramental life to the proposed covenant, its appendix then moves into a legalistic set of rules on how to deal with errant members of the Anglican Communion.

Paradoxically, I am on Executive Council’s Task Force that has been charged to monitor and respond to all drafts of an Anglican Covenant. I have been part of small writing team that drafted the first response and then questions to the second draft. This membership explains why I know about such a creation. We will probably have a third draft on our plates after the summer conference of bishops that takes place at Lambeth.

(If you are interested in reading the drafts or having a fuller conversation about this idea of an Anglican Covenant, let me know.)

Ultimately, I read the need for drafting such a covenant akin to Thomas’ fleeing the upper room and the disciples’ inertia to fear — fear of making all things new, fear of taking on one’s previously held assumptions about the world and letting go of those which might be erroneous, fear of finding what is most frightening or most despised within one’s self and fear of finding Jesus in those people we consider ‘other.’

Too much power has been handed over to fear and its companion, control of the other. For the church to fall back into such reacting is very sad to me. For that reason, I have not focused on this draft covenant in our common life because I wish instead to draw our attention to our service to God and neighbour through a strengthened faith, nourished by worship and sacrament and scripture and enhanced by honest questioning.

+

I find our Anglican grace lies in having the latitude to say, as the unknown Jewish person wrote: ‘I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. I believe in love even when feeling it not. I believe in G-d even when God is silent,’ and not feel condemned for doubting. Sometimes our doubt is our belief and that is the best we can muster. Doubting does not mean the end of one’s faith, rather, it indicates a desire to delve deeper into the questions. Nor does doubting mean fear. If we doubt, we do not have to withdraw from the community, as did Thomas. The community needs to hear our questions and doubts because in wrestling with them, it, too, can learn and be strengthened. The one place not to go either in questioning or doubting, though, is fear. Our faith cannot grow if it is afraid.

+

Saint Teresa of Avila, Spain, a 16th-century mystic, wrote:

Let nothing disturb you;
Let nothing frighten you;
All things pass away;
God never changes.
Patience attains all
that it strives for;
[The one] who has God
Finds [they] lack nothing.
God alone suffices.

As a way of ending this sermon, I invite you to join in singing with me this Taizé song, Nada te turbe, nada te espante; quien a Dios tiene nada le falta. Nada te turbe, nada te espante: solo Dios basta. Though it’s in Spanish, you will hear Teresa’s words echoed: Nothing disturbs you, nothing frightens you, you lack nothing. Nothing disturbs you, nothing frightens you, God alone suffices.

So let us love the questions and not be afraid.

END NOTES
(1) Jean Vanier, Drawn into the Mystery of Jesus through the Gospel of John (NY: Paulist Press, 2004), 345.
(2) Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection (Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 2003), 130-31.
(3) When I asked the 8.00 congregation if they had heard of the Anglican Covenant, no one said yes; at the 10.00, two people knew of it.

Material Gal

Alright, I confess... on Tuesday this week I bought an iPod shuffle (1G — it's reduced because they are just about to bring out a 2G version). The thing is so small and it was only a few dollars more than a full tank of gas ($49). So I have loaded up 190 songs on it and have been using it when I row. It's a total extravagance, I know, but I do like my music gadgets.

It does make me think about the first Walkman I bought back in 1983. It was a tape-AM/FM radio thing that I bought in Hong Kong while on a choral trip. It accompanied me on my first rowing adventures when I discovered the Concept 2 ergs (C2A) at Princeton University. I would row around 7.00-8.00 pm (! after dinner no less) because there was less demand for them at that hour.

So now I have this bitty source of music that weighs so little that if I knew better, I could throw it into my hiking pack. The knowing better is simply recognising that walking is meditational and were I to listen to music, I wouldn't be able to go where I can go when I am listening to the sounds around me.

'We're living in a material world
and I am a material girl....'

Friday cat blogging

So, here are some (poor) home videos. The only one worth having the volume on for is the one of Miss Agatha Birch Funky Paws because you can hear her purr. The one of Young Guy you hear him purr a little but mostly it's the BBC news broadcast in the background.

She is content to nudge against my hand.

Now, here's Orange Guy chasing his tail. That always involves a little, ahem, personal grooming, but that then leads to a new round of tail chasing.

Lastly, Young Guy loves to get up on this ancient bookcase and rub his face against my map of El Salvador. Inside the drawer are toys and bear grass and so he gets up there in the hopes that I will open the drawer for him to poke around.

La Doyenne says she is above all this paprazzi but I will get her in action some day.

How are the roads in your town?

Vermont Public Radio has invited listeners to submit their candidates for the worst roads in Vermont.

Here are a few examples:

• In Strafford, our roads are so bad that it is more efficient to post warnings about the GOOD stretch, the one mile of new road, one-half of the Justin Morrill Highway between South Strafford and Strafford Village. (See attached photo.)

• The worst road in Vermont is VT 114 from Island Pond to Norton. I defy anyone to find a road in worse shape anywhere. It is so bad the beer trucks have breakage of bottles just getting there. It is actually dangerous 12 months of the year, not just in springtime. You are taking your life in your hands driving a motorcycle on that road. I drive it every day and have seen some scary near-accidents.

• After replacing two tie rods and four ball joints I'd say our local roads are aggressive. Wolcott Road [VT 14 in Hardwick] gives new meaning to erratic driving. Several autos have been towed in with bent wheel rims and ruined tires. For five miles north of Hardwick on VT 14 the beautiful scenic drive is replaced with a game of chance whose odds are in favor of the roadway.

• Everybody is grousing about the roads in Vermont these days. Perhaps this is the time to turn a negative into a positive. So, here goes:

You know the skiing in Vermont is great but now we are offering another exciting sport.....Pot Hole Slalom. Anyone can join in. All you need is to strap on your car or SUV (or truck if you come from here) and hit the road. To
meet your level of skill we can offer bunny roads all the way to black diamond roads. If you're new to this sport start with a beginner road like 103. Then you could graduate to a intermediate road like 133 between West Rutland
and Pawlet. Then you could go for the Black Diamond of Pot Hole Slalom, 140 between Middletown Springs and Poultney.

If you think down hill skiing is exciting you will love Pot Hole Slalom. Weaving back and forth between pot holes is demanding but wait, there's an added challenge, oncoming traffic. Yes, here they come, also weaving back and
forth to miss the pot holes, something you just can't get on the ski slopes. Come to Vermont. Join in the fun even before you get to the snowy slopes. Yes, it's Vermont for the real thrills in the hills.

Get your prayers going

As Kris Carr author of Crazy, Sexy, Cancer would say, Get your posse going.

So, you all, you are Naomi's prayer posse. She needs your prayers. Spread them far and wide. Put her on whatever prayer list you know. Just pray. Pray for her, her mother, father, four sisters and brother.

She wrote tonight on her website:

So, not so great news. I’m going to finish radiation and try a chemo for two weeks. The chemo wont cure it but we’re hoping that it’ll slow or shrink it a little. It is Ewings and it is growing and being very aggressive. After radiation and chemo they will do an assessment but after that they said that there is nothing else they can do. After the assessment they will be labeling my case as terminal. My parents and I have talked about it and decided to try eveything out there to fight this beast. We’re going to research alternatives and holistic approaches. If anyone has suggestions or knows anything please let me know. I’m hoping things work out but now I really begin my fight.

I can't believe they told her that they would be calling her case 'terminal.' It's so harsh.

If you all know of anything that might help, write me in the comments and I will pass it along.

Our prayers can make a difference. I don't know for what to pray but God knows. Thanks.

What has the world come to?

I am so jealous. Not of the job. Not of the people with whom the press gets to hang out but the fact that they get to stand up and wander around in an airplane and get out of those hopelessly too small seats.


First, the barking dog plane


next the Clinton plane


And finally the Obama plane.

They are behaving like adults! They can get out of their seats and not be reprimanded. They can stretch their legs. And they can get into their stuff in the bins... instead of feeling like a prisoner in a cattle car.

I am so jealous.

Easter Tuesday

I took a day off and went over to Mad River Glen, thanks to a parishioner who gave me a VIP pass (i.e., free ski pass).


They've just finished rehauling the 1949 or whatever single chair from a smelly diesel engine to something far kinder to the environment. MRG also prides itself on not having snow making — while that drives away some folks, it saves a bundle in energy costs... and, yes, MRG is therefore less crowded.

I didn't take my camera, which I regret, because it was a 110-mile view day: I could make out Mount Washington and the Prezzies quite well. Camel's Hump was magnificent and while the mountain had undergone a severe coating of ice, the ice-encrusted trees looked gorgeous, like sparkling diamonds in the sunshine. This photo, taken on Easter, is snagged from the MRG website.

It being Easter Tuesday, a day when I usually am catatonic and tired, I took it easy. I couldn't have done more than I did — 10 runs and not all on the black trails, in fact most weren't though an advanced intermediate here is a black trail elsewhere — I haven't skied since last year and last Thursday I gave blood. That combination made for tired legs though they seemed to get stronger as the day went on. While I didn't do a lot of moguls, the few I did felt good.

Most of all, it was wonderful to be outside on a spring-like day (in the high 30s-low 40s) in the sun.

The roads are beginning to get interesting — the short-cut over to the Mad River valley is getting a little gooey.

+

The whole point of the day was to 'get out in the world,' like other people, get out of the church and just go and do something. It also is a way of connecting with my family because my father taught us all how to ski. He won't ever go skiing again, something that makes me very sad, so I do it for him. As he emailed me today, ' It's been many a year.....'

+

As a point of comparison, here's what I wrote about MRG last year.

4000

Don't forget the uncounted number of Iraqis who have died in this fiasco.

Click on the image for more detail and for a much better resolution, go to the Huffington Post and Nico Pitney

Easter Monday cats

OK, here are the three in the front part of the house... no new photos of Miss Agatha because first, I wasn't visiting as much and second, how many photos of her sleeping can I take?


Orange Guy decided to attack my braid so I decided to get him in action.


Cats in the sun... and you can see the cage I put around the orchid to keep the flowers from becoming delicacies.


Poor Orange Guy — I got him with mouth wide open in a yawn. Wish I could say he had pearly whites, but he doesn't and probably is due a cleaning but I can't afford that right now.


There was a minor altercation but La Doyenne held her ground.


Look at that tail in upward swing, a flappy tail.

Many happy returns

Yesterday in the midst of our Easter celebrations, we also celebrated some very special birthdays.

First, there's Phoebe, who was born on Easter Sunday, 23 March 1913. She has waited 95 years for Easter to land on her birthday again. As you know, she broke her hip on Last Epiphany and, so, spent Lent recovering. But as you can see, she made it to church. She received a letter of congratulations and blessing from the Presiding Bishop as well as from our bishop.

And then Peter (l) and Brett (r), also had birthdays -- Peter's is also 23 March and Brett's is the 22nd. This is their one chance to have an Easter birthday. In this photo, I am reading our bishop's letter because he writes in it that he hopes Phoebe can share with them her lessons of patient waiting.

After reading the letters, I blessed all three parishioners.

And, at the end of the service, as Phoebe entered the parish house, people blew bubbles at her. We had birthday cakes but no candles (after all, even if you kept them down to the decades, it still would have been 14 candles to blow out). The birthday people were all very pleased.

It was a grand Sunday.

[photo: (c) 2008 James Proctor]

San Romero de las Américas

God’s reign is already present on our earth in mystery.
When the Lord comes, it will be brought to perfection.”
That is the hope that inspires Christians.
We know that every effort to better society,
especially when injustice and sin are so ingrained,
is an effort that God blesses,
that God wants,
that God demands of us.

24 March 1980

+

Twenty-eight years ago San Romero de las Américas was assassinated while celebrating a requiem mass in the small chapel at La Divina Providencia, San Salvador.

Twenty-eight years later, Rome still dithers, trying to decide if Archbishop Romero's death was political, which would mean that he could not become a saint.

Twenty-eight years later, The Episcopal Church observes his Easter day.

And twenty-eight years later, Romero's words still speak to countless numbers of people including this pilgrim who, whenever she is in San Salvador, goes to his tomb, to touch it so as to receive grace and power from Romero para seguir en la lucha.

Easter Sunday

With Easter coming as early as it does this year — second only to March 22nd (which won’t happen for another 280 years or so), it means that the signs of spring that we normally associate with Easter are that much more difficult to find. The forsythia bush in front of the rectory is buried under two and a half feet of snow — not a bad thing though since it insulates the bush against the cold — but it’s hard to believe it will ever re-emerge. Instead, I have a lone sprig of forsythia given to me when I was down in Massachusetts two weeks ago that sits in my south-facing kitchen window. It bloomed on Maundy Thursday. Likewise, I have some pussy willows that I got at the same time. An orchid that has done nothing for three years finally decided to bloom last week. And I do see that the buds on the lilacs are beginning to set. I will take those small signs of spring as I can.

At the same time, I also look for those signs of resurrection that happen in our midst, those signs that remind us that Christ has risen and the powers of death — be they spiritual or physical — will no longer have dominion over us.
That search sometimes requires more effort. It’s an effort that requires us to look in places where there seems to be no life to find it again.

As a Japanese haiku says:

Ah, the fragrance of new grass!
I her His footsteps coming —
The Lord of the Resurrection!

+

The women knew the drill. Up early in the morning with ointments to prepare the bodies of the dead. Taking something precious and dear to restore dignity to those who had been executed by the Roman authorities. Perhaps they take nard, that sweet fragrant oil, ready to anoint the bodies. In the other gospels, a group of women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body.

Mary, though, in the gospel of John, does not seem to come prepared with oil. She comes alone, not in the company of women. She walks in the dark of the morning, that vulnerable time of day when the earth is still waking up, when the day’s potential is but a dream. For her, coming to mourn her teacher, Jesus, surely the day holds nothing but sorrow.

And then she sees the great stone rolled back. Maybe she was the Mary who, along with Martha, stood at the stone in front of Lazarus’ tomb a little while earlier. Her sister, Martha, well aware that Lazarus had been dead four days warned Jesus, who was about to roll the stone away, that there would be a stench. So Mary Magdalene, seeing the stone rolled back, must have recoiled instinctively.

But only for a second. She knows. She does not even need to see. And she runs, runs as fast as she can go back to Peter and the other disciples, telling them Jesus’ body is not there. Peter and the other disciple, presumably John, not trusting a woman’s words, run to the tomb, racing one another. They look in, see the linens on the ground, no corpse and believe, though they do not understand exactly what they believe. Then they leave trying to outrun one another.

Mary Magdalene remains, weeping. Her posture of grief ultimately leads her to a revelation the men do not receive in their haste to get back to the others. The second time Mary looks into the tomb, she sees two angels, one sitting where Jesus’ head had been; the other where his feet had been. They ask her why she is weeping. She answers that her teacher’s body is gone. She then turns around and sees Jesus. In her grief, she does not recognise him at first. He asks her the same question, with tenderness: Woman, why are you crying? Her grief blinds her to his identity but she is insistent in her task: I must find Jesus’ body.

Then Jesus calls her by name and she answers, now understanding that she is speaking to the risen Christ. Not only does he restore her identity, but he gives her a new one: that of an apostle, the first apostle to witness to Christ’s resurrection. He tells her to go tell the others he has risen. Then she runs off.

+


As these things take place, new words break out of the silence of Holy Saturday and touch the hearts and the minds of the men and women who have known and loved Jesus. These words are: ‘He has risen, risen indeed.’ They are not shouted from the rooftops or carried around the city on big placards. They are whispered from ear to ear as an intimate message that could be truly heard and understood only by a heart that has been yearning for the coming of the Kingdom and has recognized its first signs in the words and deeds of the man from Nazareth.

All is different and all is same for those who say ‘Yes’ to the news that is whispered through the ages from one end of the world to the other. Trees are still trees, rivers are still rivers, mountains are still mountains, and people in their hearts are still able to choose between love and fear. But all that has been lifted up in the risen body of Jesus and placed at the right hand of God. The prodigal child is placed in the loving embrace of the Father; the little child is put in its mother’s arms; … brothers and sisters invited to the same table. All is the same, and all is made new. As we live our lives with a resurrection faith, our burdens become light burdens and our yokes easy yokes because we have found rest in the gentle and humble heart of Jesus that belongs for all eternity to God. (1)

+

‘Woman, why do you cry? Man, why do you cry? Child, why do you cry?’ The risen Jesus asks that question to each one of us this Easter morning. In his gentle asking, he invites us to let go of what makes us ache, what weighs us down.

There is plenty in this world that causes us to tremble. We watch the continued deterioration and escalation of violence in the Middle East, and find ourselves in the sixth year of a ‘war’ with Iraq that seems to have no end. We know that even two years later the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina continue to influence heavily the lives of our sisters and brothers in Louisiana and Mississippi. Racism sadly still is alive and well in our country. And then there are the personal burdens that many of us carry with precarious family member’s or friend’s health, job insecurity, and even the sense that there is plenty enough snow now, thank you very much.

There is plenty in this world to make us want to hide, to say ‘no,’ to live in a world of deadened possibilities, to live in a state of fear.

But that is not how we, as people of the resurrection, are called to live. On this Easter morning, we can rejoice that those deaths in our lives have been resurrected with Christ. Jesus calls us by name, dries our tears, and invites us to believe in the God of Hope.

+

Rather than live in a world of ‘no’s, this Easter morning we are invited to say, ‘Yes.’ To say ‘Yes’ is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Not being quite sure of what we are doing, or where it will lead us, we try on the ‘Yes’. In a world that is so marked by ‘no’s, we are called to say ‘Yes’ to the good news of restoration, reconciliation, and resurrection. Like Mary Magdalene, Jesus calls us to say…

• ‘Yes’ to understanding that part of our identity is a child of God, marked and sealed as Christ’s own through the sacrament of baptism
‘• Yes’ to proclaiming the gospel, participating in the prayers of the church, seeking and serving Christ.
• ‘Yes’ to recognising Christ in one another
• ‘Yes’ to change, to possibilities, to growth, to new birth.
• ‘Yes’—to whatever Christ calls us to do.
• ‘Yes’ to trust in God’s ways, though they are not always clear to us.
• ‘Yes’ to be people of faith, of hope, of the resurrection.

Bishop Barahona of El Salvador writes in this year’s Easter message:

‘The resurrection is the hope of the Christian community. With the resurrection, Jesus invites us to a project of hope and to change our lives. It is time of the resurrection; the third day has arrived, Easter has arrived. What have we done for our brothers and sisters, for our own lives? What have we done with Jesus’ project? It is time to re-examine ourselves and act so that leaders and the led are filled with hope in order to offer hope in others.’

That is what the resurrection means for us. We have been raised to new life! And that new life resounds with abundant ‘Yes’s! We, too like Mary, can run off to proclaim to others how the risen Christ has touched us, wiped away our tears, changed us, and given us hope.

As people of the resurrection, let us be those who raise things that have been cast down; make new things which have grown old; and be those who proclaim out with loud voice, ‘Yes! Christ has risen, the Lord has risen, indeed! Alleluia!’


END NOTE
(1) Adapted from Henri Nouwen: Modern Spiritual Masters Series, ed. Robert Jonas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 56-57.

Easter message from the Most Rev'd Martín Barahona

(en español aquí abajo)

A Resurrection Message by the Most Rev. Martín Barahona
Bishop of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador and
Primate of the Anglican Church of the Region of Central America

Easter Resurrection: Another opportunity to be born anew

The Easter Resurrection signifies for Christians a new life: almost every world religion in its conception or spiritual dynamic of relationship with God has in its calendar festivals to renew life or creation. In this context, as Christians since the life of Jesus of Nazareth, we invite all men and women of good will to renew creation.

The resurrection is the hope of the Christian community. With the resurrection, Jesus invites us to a project of hope and to change our lives.

In our liturgy, the Pascual Triduum, as its name indicates, consists of three days — Friday, Saturday and Sunday — three eloquent days that unite the accusations against Jesus in the tribunal and the testimony of a witness who said, “This man [referring to Jesus] will destroy this temple and I will rebuild it in three days” (Matthew 26).

It is time to arrive at the third day, to change our patterns, and transform our lives in order to change others’. El Salvador is a small country, with a big population and plenty of social problems. It needs to be resurrected. Just as El Salvador needs to be resurrected, so, too, does the entire world need to be resurrected. The Call is to change lives in this global village.

Our social fabric is torn each day: in general, citizens live with anxiety, and vulnerability, facing the possibility of being a victim of crime, and being overwhelmed by the economic situation. Easter comes into our lives, but what are we to leave aside in order to be born anew?

We need to leave aside social sin — sin that is called corruption, ambition, lack of love of one’s neighbor, lack of actions for plans that favorize a dignified life with education, health, employment and security for each and every single person without excluding anyone.

It is time of the resurrection; the third day has arrived, Easter has arrived. What have we done for our brothers and sisters, for our own lives? What have we done with Jesus’ project? It is time to re-examine ourselves and act so that leaders and the led are filled with hope in order to offer hope in others.

The word, ‘resurrection,’ means ‘to come to life,’ the hope that we will have life after death. It is necessary to come to life out of this death of anguish, anxiety and insecurity.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!
A blessed Easter.

Mensaje de Resurrección por Reverendísimo Martín Barahona
Obispo de la Iglesia Anglicana de El Salvador y Primado de Iglesia Anglicana de la Región Central de América (IARCA)

Pascua de Resurrección: Otra oportunidad para nacer de nuevo

La Pascua de Resurrección significa para los cristianos una nueva vida; casi todas las religiones del mundo en su concepción o dinámica espiritual de relación con Dios tienen en sus calendarios de festevidades renovar la vida o la creación. En este contexto como cristiano desde la vida de Jesús de Nasaret hacemos una invitación a todos los hombres y mujeres de buena voluntad a renovar la creación.

La Resurección es la esperanza de la comunidad Cristiana. Con la resurrección Jesús nos invita a un proyecto de esperanza y a cambiar nuestras vidas.

En nuestra liturgia, el triduo pascual como su nombre lo indica consta de tres días; viernes, sábado y domingo, son tan elecuentes estos tres días que una de las acusaciones de Jesús en el tribunal, fue que un testigo dijo: "Este hombre, (refieriendose a Jesús) dijo: destruid este templo y yo lo reconstruiré en tres días". Mateo 26.

Es tiempo de que llegue el tercer día, cambiar los esquemas, transformar nuestras vidas para transformar a los demás. El Salvador es un país pequeño, con mucha población y suficientes problemas sociales, necesita resucitar y así como El Salvador también el mundo entero necesita resucitar. El Llamado es para cambiar las vidas en esta aldea global.

Nuestro tejido social se rompe cada día, el ciudadano promedio amanece con la zozobra, la vulnerabilidad ante la posibilidad de ser victima de la delincuencia y agobiado por la situación económica. Llega la Pascua de Resurrección en nuestras vidas, pero ¿qué debemos dejar atrás para nacer de nuevo?: Debemos dejar atrás el pecado social, pecado que se llama corrupción, ambición, falta de amor al prójimo, carencia de acciones y planes que favorezca una vida digna con educación , salud, empleo y seguridad para todos y cada uno de los seres humanos sin excluir a nadie.

Es tiempo de la resurrección, llegó el tercer día, llegó la pascua y qué hemos hecho por nuestros hermanos y hermanas, por nuestras propias vidas, qué hemos hecho con el proyecto de Jesús?. Es tiempo de revisar y actuar, que gobernantes y gobernados se llenen de esperanza para brindar esperanzas a los demás.

La palabra resurrección significa volver a vivir, la esperanza de que tendremos vida después de la muerte.- Es necesario volver de esta muerte de angustia, de zozobra y de inseguridad.

Aleluya Cristo ha resucitado

Felices Pascuas de Resurección

Great Vigil of Easter

Just yesterday morning during my watch I sat in the empty church over by the side altar. The sacrament that we blessed on Maundy Thursday, that we later consumed just last night, sat in the middle of the altar, surrounded by seven eight-day votives, and four ten-hour votives. The candles in the short blue holders flickered, both on the altar and in the stand to the right of the altar and, as the two hours went by, went out one by one. The smell of incense disguised the fragrance of the hyacinth, tulips and tête-à-tête flowers behind the candles that now accompanied last Sunday’s palms. It seemed hard to reconcile this oasis of springtime with the ten-degree weather and snow falling outside.

Casting my eyes off to the left from my spot in the front pew, I saw the other vestiges of Good Friday, the empty tomb. The most powerful reminder of the death of Jesus lies in the aumbry door left wide open with its white linen interior there for all to see. The votive next to it on the left wall no longer has a candle nor even the red holder. That corner is utterly bare, void of Jesus’ presence. It is heart-breaking.

Save the rattling of the furnace turning on and shutting off, the church is utterly still. Tomb-like, quiet. Empty.

+

Just this morning, a few of us, like the women, came back to the tomb, in the stillness of the morning, in the darkness of the day. We prayed:

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

And then we said together the second anthem that is prayed at the beginning of the burial office:

In the midst of life we are in death;
from whom can we seek help?

Holy God, Holy and Mighty,
Holy and merciful Savior,
deliver us not into the bitterness of eternal death.

+

And now… we have journeyed a very long way to reach this point wherein we, too, like the women, stand in front of this empty tomb. We don’t quite know what it means for us. Confronting the mystery of the resurrection should leave us wordless because it doesn’t make sense. How can we be happy about an empty tomb when we want to see our Lord again?

Perhaps putting ourselves back into the place of the women who gathered that first morning at the tomb in the early light of morning might help.

Elizabeth McAllister writes of this moment:

Imagine the feelings of the women. It is a terrible moment, swirling with apathy, betrayal, overwhelming odds, oppression, and senseless suffering. Jesus had promised so much — where is it now? It seems so long ago.

The weight of the powers of this world and their inertia (or worse) forces us to concede that the world can’t be transformed! It is also a bitter journey for these women…. But the tomb is sealed shut by a huge boulder. Put there by the authorities to certify Jesus’ death, the stone also serves to ensure the women’s separation from him. They aren’t even granted the presence of his corpse to comfort them in their ritual of mourning. It is the final ignominy.

But then there’s an earthquake, an angel, guards frozen in fear! This is the kairos moment, an aperture of hope that the story might have a future after all. Like the tomb, the story has been reopened.… Is it possible that not even the imperial death grip and sealed barricade could put an end to the journey? They are too frightened to think, too joyful to stand still. What is this all about?

Amazingly, it is an invitation to follow him again. Resume the way. And resume it, knowing what the consequences may be…. From within the old human being, guarded and barricaded and securely sealed, a new person is emerging. (1)

+

We, like the women, face a new future tonight, a future where death cannot hold us, where we are made new. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for us from all eternity and tonight we get a glimpse of it as we stand by the empty tomb.

As we look into that empty tomb, realising that Christ has risen, where do we find that kairos moment, that moment of hope that has been offered to us? How do we follow Jesus again? Where are we surprised by joy? And how do we proclaim that Christ is risen?

Each of us will find our way this Easter-tide. Our journey begins anew tonight. Let us proclaim boldly, then, without fear but joyfully, Christ is risen, the Lord is risen indeed — Alleluia.

END NOTE
(1) Megan McKenna, And Morning Came: Scriptures of the Resurrection (Lanham, MD: Sheed and Ward, 2003), 77-78.

[photos: 17.00 this afternoon/evening, pre-GVE photos of a church in an in-between time]

Holy Saturday morning

While a select few go back and forth about the legitimacy of the HOB vote to depose (to which I say, 'Get a life — what happened to the resurrection?'), I am more inclined to be still today (even as I run around getting ready for tonight, including a flying trip to Montpelier to get bulletins photocopied because our little copier can't handle 8.5 x 14 paper in quantity).


This morning before the Holy Saturday office with the cross where it was placed last night.


Given that we are already on daylight savings and Easter is so early this year, the reflections on the bare altar top are visible before the office.


From an ancient homily on the holy and great Sabbath

Something strange is happening — there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.

[...]

Rise up, let us leave this place.... The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.

[in The Prayer Book Office, prepared by Howard Galley, NY, NY: Seabury Press, 1989, 735-37]

Good Friday

Before going to seminary, I was assigned to work in a congregation other than my own. It was part of what my former diocese called, ‘Ministry-Study Year.’ Aspirants for Holy Orders were asked to leave the comfort of their sponsoring congregation and learn about life in another congregation. I was assigned to one that was an hour and a half away, which greatly limited my full participation.

When Maundy Thursday and Good Friday rolled around, the rector said that I could spend the night in the rectory, rather than drive all the way back home after the Maundy Thursday liturgy. In that way, I could participate in the overnight watch, which took place in the church’s funeral chapel, a small rectangular room off the apse where vigils before burial took place.

The priest, already ordained some twenty plus years at the time, warned me ahead of time that he got ‘weird’ on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I had no idea what he meant but said that it would be OK.

As Maundy Thursday turned into Good Friday and I walked alongside him, I understood what he meant. It wasn’t that he got weird; rather, he clearly was a man in deep grief. I have never meant anyone as Christo-centric as this man. It was clear to me that he was mourning the death of his love, Jesus. Jesus was the centre of his life and every year he had to go through the passion, crucifixion and death of the one he loved more than anyone else in the world. It was wrenching to watch.

Even for myself, Good Friday is more a day of emotions than rational explanations. By the time I reach today, I have spent four days hearing about abandonment and betrayal, as depicted in John’s gospel. It is almost more than the heart can bear because it reaches such core human emotions. Moreover, on Good Friday, our liturgy provides so many visual cues that if one chooses one never needs to reach into the theological whys and wherefores of what Good Friday is about. Sometimes, really, that is best.

Looking around the church here, I am struck by its starkness (I remember the first time I ever saw a church totally stripped; I was in sixth grade and it was our first Good Friday in the church, and not at the elementary school. It frightened me). The marble slab inset in the middle of the altar always looks like a mortuary slab. The aumbry, with its door flung open, exposing the linen lining, always looks like the inside of a coffin to me.

The hardest part of this liturgy comes at the end of our communion from the reserve sacrament. After consuming all that is left over, I blow out the candle that for 364 days a year serves as a reminder that Jesus is present in the form of bread and wine. The wisps of smoke that curl upwards nearly bring me to tears each year. When the smoke disappears from sight, I know there is no more ‘Jesus’ present and my heart breaks. It is a feeling of such desolation that I can barely breathe. The world becomes less for that loss.

Given my heart’s predisposition toward understanding Good Friday and the passion, my mind, usually in dominance, turns off. It doesn’t really need to know why this had to happen; it accepts the cross because it knows the cross leads to the resurrection. The heart believes the mystery of the day and that is good enough.

+

For some, the heart’s acceptance isn’t sufficient. The mind wants to know what the theology behind Good Friday is all about. Even 2000 plus years later, we are still struggling to articulate a theology of the cross.

Last year during Holy Week, there was quite a flap over in England about atonement theology, that is, what was happening on the cross anyway? The British tabloid, The Telegraph, blared in its headline: ‘Easter Message: Christ did not die for sin.’ The newspaper reported that Dean Jeffrey John said in a BBC interview: ‘In other words, Jesus took the rap and we got forgiven as long as we said we believed in him. This is repulsive as well as nonsensical. It makes God sound like a psychopath. If a human behaved like this we’d say that they were a monster.’ The blogosphere went crazy with people supporting or attacking John on these few words cited in the newspaper.

'As we know, headlines and sound bites don’t cut it. What he said further along in the BBC interview is this:

The cross, then, is not about Jesus reconciling an angry God to us; it’s almost the opposite. It’s about a totally loving God, incarnate in Christ, reconciling us to him. On the cross Jesus dies for our sins; the price of our sin is paid; but it is not paid to God but by God. As St Paul says, God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Because he is Love, God does what Love does: He unites himself with the beloved. He enters his own creation and goes to the bottom line for us. Not sending a substitute to vent his punishment on, but going himself to the bitter end, sharing in the worst of suffering and grief that life can throw at us, and finally sharing our death, so that he can bring us through death to life in him...

'...On the cross God absorbs into himself our fallenness and its consequences and offers us a new relationship. God shows he knows what it’s like to be the loser; God hurts and weeps and bleeds and dies. It’s a mystery we can hardly glimpse, let alone grasp; and if there is an answer to the problem of suffering, perhaps it’s one for the heart, not the reason. Because the answer God’s given is simply himself; to show that, so far from inflicting suffering as a punishment, he bears our griefs and shares our sorrow. From Good Friday on, God is no longer “God up there”, inscrutably allotting rewards and retributions. On the Cross, even more than in the crib, he is Immanuel, God down here, God with us...'

+

In this week that is one more paradox after another, we reach the greatest paradox of them all: God so desired to reconcile the world to God’s self that God became one of us, uniting God’s self with us to the point of death so that we, too, might be resurrected. The hard wood of the cross is best for feeding the fire of love. Therein lies the good news on this day of juxtapositions called Good Friday.

[I wrote this last year but never preached it so tweaked it to bring it up to date. Photo: view of the chancel last night]

Is it spring yet?

The current conditions (at 11.00) on top of Mount Washington are:

Temperature -9.7°F
Wind 103.9 mph
Direction 293° (NW)
Gust 120.8 mph
Wind Chill -54.2°F

As for us, we got about 2.5 inches last night (surely more up in the hills). Even at 11.30 it's 18 out, gusting and lightly snowing. I took this photo at 7.00 this morning from the church steps looking north.

At noon a bunch of us will walk the stations of the cross through town. We do it every Good Friday, rain or shine, snow or not. We'll have to negotiate the spot where a water main broke last night in front of the Congregational Church -- have pity on the road crews that are digging up the road and fixing it.

Then back to keep walking the way of Good Friday. (I have already done two hours of watch, a service over at the assisted living place, and laid hands on someone whose congestive heart failure has really gone into overdrive and who is tired of suffering and wants to go quickly.)

This means YOU!

Read the below article and realise that this change will probably affect one person far but dear to many of us who read his blog, nuestro querido Padre Mickey. I haven't cleared posting this with him, so I hope it's OK, but ¡we need to support nuestro compañero de Panamá! If he wants me to take this down, I will but I think all Dance Party afficianandos need to know the realities of being a missioner these days.

Changes in missionary compensation prompted by concerns over equity, budget constraints
One missionary worries about cuts' impacts

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, March 20, 2008

[Episcopal News Service] Missionaries who work outside of the United States under the auspices of the Episcopal Church will soon see major changes to their compensation.

According to a letter from the Rev. David Copley, Anglican and Global Relations mission personnel officer, sent to all overseas missionaries, the church will no longer pay them a monthly stipend (about $500, in most cases) or cover their airfare, relocation expenses, language study, vaccinations, and any health expenses not covered by insurance.

According to Copley's letter, the new compensation package will include:

* health/dental/life insurance;
* pension premiums;
* eligibility for educational scholarships for children of missionaries;
* logistical and pastoral support; and
* all expenses paid for a missionary retreat (to a regional retreat once every three years)

Copley, who works in the church's Office of Anglican and Global Relations, said in the letter and a subsequent interview with ENS that the decision was made in the face of what he called "the realities" of a $50,000 increase in health-insurance premiums for this year, a five percent cut in the current Episcopal Church budget and the $130,000 cost to provide increased pensions contributions for lay missionaries in 2008.

The pension provision was a major factor in the decision, Copley told ENS. Not all appointed lay missionaries have been included in the pension program. "It was a little spotty as to what we promised them" in the past, Copley said.

Now all lay missionaries are offered pension contributions and new lay missionaries will be eligible to participate in the pension plan after one year of service.

Copley said his office believed that pension contributions for lay missionaries should be made on a more equal basis with clergy missionaries. The formula for calculating payments for lay missionaries will be based on the average clergy salary across the Episcopal Church of $62,000, rather than the average lay employee salary of $35,000, according to Copley.

"We wanted to have some equity between lay and clergy," he told ENS.

In addition, the Episcopal Church's Executive Council, during its recent meeting in Quito, Ecuador, accepted a plan to pay $450,644.59 from its pension reserve to make one-time contributions to tax-deferred retirement savings accounts for the past service of 22 lay missionaries. Those missionaries were promised payments which were then not made on their behalf between 2000 and the end of 2007.

"Contributions for lay missionaries were administered on an ad hoc and inconsistent basis," according to the explanation attached to Resolution AF060 said.

In a related move, there will no longer be a distinction between "appointed" and "volunteer" missionaries, in part because "the original distinctions between the two has become blurred," Copley wrote in his letter. One way the lines were blurred, he wrote, was the fact that a number of volunteers have served for more years than some appointees.

"In some sense all missionaries are volunteers in their willingness to serve sacrificially far from home," he wrote.

Copley said the alternative to the compensation changes was to cut the number of missionaries in order to balance the budget.

"For some of you, this will mean an increase in benefits with the addition of a lay pension component, but for others this will mean that there will be a reduction in support," Copley acknowledged in his letter.

The decision affects about 70 missionaries, for whom the new package will go into effect at the next renewal of their Letter of Understanding with his office, Copley said.

"Missionaries will be asked to raise funds to cover other costs," according to the letter.

Copley, who spent seven years as a missionary in Liberia and Bolivia, acknowledged "it is a lot of money" to have to raise, in addition to what most missionaries routinely gather for their work. He added that he hopes the missionaries' sending congregations and dioceses will look seriously at their financial commitment to the people they send out to minister in the name of the church.

"The hope is that people will get even more involved in the lives of the people they're sending out," he told ENS.

The General Convention budget is "finite," Copley told ENS. "We're hoping that parishes and dioceses will step up to fill the gap," he added.

As part of that effort, information about the changes is being sent to "all bishops, diocesan leaders, and other of mission networks to highlight the need for their increased support for the mission program and for individual missionaries," Copley said in his letter.

"We will also continue to petition for the increased support of missionaries as we begin to prepare the budget for the next triennium to be voted on at the General Convention in 2009," he wrote. "There continues to be a growing interest in mission service and in the significant ministry being undertaken by Episcopal missionaries throughout the world. Our hope is that this ministry will continue to grow and flourish in the coming years."

Randall Giles, who has been a lay missionary in India for nearly eight years, told ENS that, while most Episcopal Church missionaries do have some support outside of the compensation Copley's office, he does not. He did not have a well-established network before he was sent by the Diocese of Western Massachusetts to the Diocese of Madras, he said.

His stipend is about $730 per month. The Madras diocese gives him a house to live in and some financial help with living expenses and car insurance, he said.

Giles, who was the choir director at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst, Massachusetts, for about two years before going to India, travels throughout the diocese and the rest of south Asia helping congregations and dioceses improve their choirs, their church music, and their liturgy. He has also been able to record the local use of Anglican music "from parts of the world you are not likely to visit," he said.

"Up until now 815 footed the bill for my getting there," Giles added, referring to the Episcopal Church Center in New York. The places he visited normally covered his "in-country" expenses.

His trips back to the United States to raise funds have not been very successful due to his limited support network, he said. Thus, the cuts in his compensation "will basically change what I am doing," he said, adding "I just won't be able to do this anymore."

Giles also said he worries that the changes in compensation will result in a change in the Episcopal Church's missionary efforts. He doubts that there will be many people who can commit to being "long-term presences" overseas "unless they are of absolutely independent means." As a result, Giles said, there may be more people who can only work as missionaries for a few years and may not have the same commitment to the work.

-- The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is Episcopal Life Media correspondent for Episcopal Church governance, structure, and trends, as well as news of the dioceses of Province II. She is based in Neptune, New Jersey, and New York City.

Maundy Thursday sermon

Ten years ago at this same liturgy, a little further into it, something startling and bizarre happened. Few were aware of the liturgical innovation that was created by accident… a liturgical innovation which, to my surprise as I found out later, some churches do intentionally.

After communion while the congregation was singing hymn 329, Pangue Lingua, the same one we will sing tonight, the chalice bearer and I stood in front of the altar, ready to transport the reserve sacrament to the altar of repose for the overnight watch. In the split second that I reached forward to take the ciborium, I managed to grab onto the veil, which covered the cruet, thereby tipping it over. The chalice bearer reached forward quickly to prevent it from tipping over, but it was too late. Most of the wine spilled over the veils, over the corporal (that large piece of linen that serves as a tablecloth), and onto the fair linens themselves. There was nothing to do but keep on going — we had maybe three verses left to carry the elements to the side altar. With great chagrin, I left the mess on the high altar.

When it came time to strip the church of all its adornments, the chalice bearer and I came back to the altar. Our reactions were similar: it looked as though the wine had coagulated — as if it were blood. We looked at one another — tears in our eyes, a sinking feeling in our gut. We were looking no longer at wine, but Christ’s blood, spilt for us. When the two of us spoke the next day, we both shared how shaken we were.

+

On Maundy Thursday, tradition has it we commemorate two things: first, the washing of one another’s feet as an act of humility and solidarity before God and, second, the institution of the eucharist. At our simple supper before this service, people could wash one another’s feet; now we observe the institution of the holy eucharist, for it is a gesture that transcends time and place, uniting all in the body and blood of Christ.

Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan theologian notes, ‘Jesus celebrated the Eucharist only once, and within forty-eight hours he was dead, killed at the hands of the social structure from which he sought to liberate people. That is the true context for the Eucharist.’ (1) As we gather Sunday in and Sunday out — week-days, too — to celebrate the eucharist, we forget that historical fact. Jesus’ demand that we remember him in the actions of the eucharist comes from that poignant moment when he gathered with his disciples, knowing he was walking to his imminent death.

How must it have been for him? He had washed the feet of his disciples, making himself a servant to them. Poet Michael Moynahan describes the last supper thusly:

So now it
comes down to this:
leave-taking.
What to say?
What to do?
So much to say,
So much to do.
All poured into this last
parting gesture:
a sign,
a prayer.
Relying on
memory’s gift
and what a transformed meal
can possibly recall
celebrated
miles and years
from here and now
with people gathered
in his name. (2)

+

This transformed meal — one borne out of sadness, partings, misunderstandings and conflict — has become that bond which unites us with that first group of people who gathered with their master. The wine, soon to become coagulated blood on the cross, combined with the bread has become the means of our remembering. And remember we do.

This meal of which we partake week in and week out, in the words of Henri Nouwen,

[…] is the most ordinary and the most divine gesture imaginable. That is the truth of Jesus. So human, yet so divine; so familiar, yet so mysterious; so close, yet so revealing! But that is the story of Jesus who ‘being in the form of God did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, becoming as human beings are; and being in every way like a human being, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, even death on a cross.’ It is the story of God who wants to come so close to us, so close that we can see him with our own eyes, hear him with our own ears, touch him with our own hands; so close that there is nothing between us and him, nothing that separates, nothing that divides, nothing that creates distance.

Jesus is God-for-us, God-with-us, God-within-us. Jesus is God giving himself completely, pouring himself out for us without reserve. Jesus doesn’t hold back or cling to his own possessions. He gives all there is to give. ‘Eat, drink, this is my body, this is my blood… this is me for you!’…

In the Eucharist, Jesus gives all. The bread is not simply a sign of his desire to become our food; the cup is not just a sign of his willingness to be our drink. Bread and wine become his body and blood in the giving. The bread, indeed, is his body given for us; the wine his blood poured out for us. As God becomes fully present for us in Jesus, so Jesus becomes fully present to us in the bread and wine in the Eucharist.…

God does not hold back; God gives all. That is the mystery of the incarnation. That too is the mystery of the Eucharist. Incarnation and Eucharist are the two expressions of the immense, self-giving love of God. And so the sacrifice on the cross and the sacrifice at the table are one sacrifice, one complete, divine self-giving that reaches out to all humanity in time and space. (3)

+

On one of our holiest of holy nights, we come together perhaps hesitantly, reverently, and sadly, knowing we gather on this last night as friends to share a meal that changes our lives. The meal we share tonight, the left-overs of which we will consume tomorrow in a bare church become a tomb, is heart-rending. But we are people of memory and even tomorrow on the one day we cannot give thanks the way we normally do, we remember the One who died for us.

So the wine seems to coagulate as we imagine it spilt on the altar because it is the blood of Christ which was shed for us on the cross, the event toward which this evening’s liturgy points us.

END NOTES
(1) John Carden, A Procession of Prayers (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 169.

(2) Cited in Imaging the Word, Vol 2 (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1994), 173.

(3) Henri Nouwen: Modern Spiritual Masters Series, ed. Robert Jonas (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1998), 90-91.

[photo: altar of repose Maundy Thursday afternoon]

On the first day of spring...

the skunks started stinking...

the heavens started snowing (try a couple of inches in the next 24 hours)...

the people kept on kvetching (over the HOB vote)

and it's Maundy Thursday already.

The Day After, Blogswarm III

The New York Times
March 20, 2008
Editorial

Mission Still Not Accomplished

It has been five years since the United States invaded Iraq and the world watched in horror as what seemed like a swift victory by modern soldiers and 21st-century weapons became a nightmare of spiraling violence, sectarian warfare, insurgency, roadside bombings and ghastly executions. Iraq’s economy was destroyed, and America’s reputation was shredded in the torture rooms of Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and the Central Intelligence Agency’s secret prisons.

These were hard and very costly lessons for a country that had emerged from the cold war as the world’s sole remaining superpower. Shockingly, President Bush seems to have learned none of them.

•

In a speech on Wednesday, the start of the war’s sixth year, Mr. Bush was stuck in the Neverland of his “Mission Accomplished” speech. In his mind’s eye, the invasion was a “remarkable display of military effectiveness” that will be studied for generations. The war has placed the nation on the brink of a great “strategic victory” in Iraq and against terrorists the world over.

Even now, Mr. Bush talks of Iraqi troops who “took off their uniforms and faded into the countryside to fight the emergence of a free Iraq” — when everyone knows that the American pro-consul, L. Paul Bremer III, overrode Mr. Bush’s national security team and, with the president’s blessing, made the catastrophically bad decision to disband the Iraqi Army and police force.

Mr. Bush wants Americans to believe that Iraq was on the verge of “full-blown sectarian warfare” when he boldly ordered an escalation of forces around Baghdad last year. In fact, sectarian warfare was raging for months while Mr. Bush refused to listen to the generals, who wanted a new military approach, or to the vast majority of Americans, who just wanted him to end the war.

All evidence to the contrary, Mr. Bush is still trying to make it seem as if Al Qaeda in Iraq was connected to the Al Qaeda that attacked America on Sept. 11, 2001. He tried to justify an unjustifiable war by ticking off benefits of deposing Saddam Hussein, but he somehow managed to forget the nonexistent weapons of mass destruction.

Vice President Dick Cheney was equally deep in denial on Monday when he declared at a news conference in Baghdad that it has all been “well worth the effort.”

Tell that to the families of nearly 4,000 Americans who have been killed — far too many of them because Mr. Bush and his arrogantly incompetent secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, failed to plan for an insurgency that many others saw coming. Thousands more Americans have been wounded and deprived of adequate post-conflict care while Iraqis have died by the tens of thousands. More than five million have been driven from their homes.

Add in a cost to the United States that some say could exceed $3 trillion, the new political opening created for Iran, the incalculable damage to America’s reputation and the havoc wreaked on Iraqi society. Few lament Saddam Hussein’s passing, but the war has left Iraq a broken country, made the United States more vulnerable, not safer, and stretched the American military to a point that compromises its ability to fight elsewhere.

The increase in American forces last year initially produced a steep decline in insurgent attacks. But the conflict has drifted into a stalemate with the levels of violence remaining constant, and unacceptably high, from November 2007 through early 2008, according to a Government Accountability Office report. As Mr. Cheney visited Iraq, a bombing killed 43 people.

•

One of the cruelest ironies is that Iraqis have not taken advantage of the American troop surge, which was intended to create space for them to resolve their political differences. After much foot-dragging, they passed a 2008 budget and a law granting amnesty to thousands of Sunnis and others in Iraqi jails. But a law on sharing oil wealth is stalled and one aimed at allowing former Baathist Party members back into government may actually drive many out. Another bill, mandating provincial elections by October, was passed by Parliament, then vetoed by the Presidency Council of Iraq’s top leaders. Only after pressure from Mr. Cheney was it suddenly revived.

The plight of Iraqis uprooted by violence is further proof of how broken the country is. Some 2.7 million Iraqis are displaced internally and another 2.4 million have fled as refugees, mostly to Syria and Jordan. That’s nearly 20 percent of Iraq’s prewar population — the kind of inconvenient truth the Bush administration would rather ignore.

Although thousands of refugees returned to Iraq last year, most ended up leaving again because they did not feel secure. American, Iraqi and international aid to Iraqi refugees is insufficient, and many refugees, their savings depleted and barred from most jobs, are despairing, aid workers say. No one knows when — or if — they can ever return. Syria and Jordan generously allowed Iraqis in, but the huge numbers could destabilize both countries and fuel anti-America resentment.

The United States agreed to admit a paltry 12,000 Iraqi refugees in fiscal year 2008; so far, only 2,000 have been processed.

Brighter spots — Iraq’s economy is projected to grow 7 percent this year — are offset by problems: millions of Iraqis still don’t have clean water and medical care, thousands are jobless and the Iraqi Army, while improving, cannot defend the country on its own.

•

Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney refuse to let these facts interfere with their benighted notion of keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely and insisting that Iraq — not Afghanistan and Pakistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have gained ground — must remain America’s top priority.

It was clear long ago that Mr. Bush had no plan for victory, only a plan for handing this mess to his successor. Americans need to choose a president with the vision to end this war as cleanly as possible.