Pilgrims of the Consonance of Love

The sun is shining brightly, which makes it easy to forget it actually is getting cold out there—it isn’t frost territory yet (this is Oregon after all) but the nights are cold enough now that it’s time to add another blanket to my bed and to keep an eye on the lemon tree on the patio.

One of the wonderful things about life here is the way most of society lives in harmony with nature. We even are proud of our reputation as folks who care about the trees (and the sky and the rivers and, well, everything in creation). One of my friends talks about the thick forests by describing how the tall trees hold each other up. We measure the seasons by keeping a close eye on all of the ways in which nature gives us constant cues. We were pretty much blindsided by the wildfire crisis in September, which threw everybody but also, apparently, cost some vegetation (holly in particular) new growth. I laughed at the time that I hoped my lemons weren’t going to taste smoky—we’ve been gorging ourselves on ripe figs (at least when we can get them before the squirrels do) and they are delicious and not the least bit smoky I’m glad to say.

Harmony in general is a wonderful thing. For instance, consonance brings a sense of peace and contentment. It’s absence, dissonance, leads to an enormous sense of relief when resolved. When I was a music student decades ago we all laughed at the idea in our history books of a “Doctrine of Affections,” but it clearly is reflected in the music of the Baroque, and has become an important clue to music information retrieval in the 21^st century (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections). I have been playing Bach on the piano most evenings through the pandemic because I find it is a wonderful tonic at the end of the day. It is no surprise to me that guest musicians from the Oregon Symphony interviewed on local classical radio have all chosen something by Bach to perform in this time. The harmonies of the universe are reflected in music, just as they are in nature.

Indeed, the harmonies of the universe are reflected in relationships as well. We might consider consonance as an expression of love and dissonance as the expression of the need to recover love. I am trying to word this with care—dissonance is important in relationships because it helps us find places where we need to bring more love, just as it is important in music because it helps move from point to point on the harmonic spectrum. The point is that love is the core commandment from God because love is the glue that brings harmony to all of creation.

Of course, just as God is always pointing us to the truth that love is everything, so it is that we often refuse or are unable to see love, even though it is all around us. We might ask why love is so difficult? I always have thought that some of it has to do with an innate preservation instinct. It is hard to resort to love when running from a predator after all. But in this day and age I think more of it has to do with emotional walls that we throw up to protect ourselves. Unfortunately, those walls protect us all right, they protect us from any love at all. The less love we express the less love we perceive and so on in a spiral away from the harmony of creation.

But God’s grace, which is eternal and atemporal is always with us, always near, always was and always is and always will be. When we are able to express love, to give love, to love, then we are able to experience grace. Indeed, when we can love we can build up grace.

Jesus sums it all up in Matthew’s Gospel (22:37-40): “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” There is little that can be added. God is love. Love is God. Loving God is just loving. And loving is loving God.

It is our ability to see love that is the key, it is our ability to resolve dissonance with love that is the gateway to grace. Like Moses standing on Mount Nebo (Deuteronomy 34:1) we are enabled by God to see the landscape of love. The question is whether we can muster the courage to embrace life’s dissonances and respond with love and nurturing (1 Thessalonians 2:1-8).

There was much attention paid this week to comments by a Christian leader about the humanity of equality for LGBT people. Followers of that denomination live in a veil of oppression and thus hang on every utterance for a scintilla of grace. Anglicans, especially in North America, have embraced not only equality but love itself by empowering the love shared by LGBT folks in our logical families (https://rpsplus.wordpress.com/2020/07/26/the-majesty-of-love/). This grace builds up the love we share, which in turn builds up the love we give to creation, which makes us critical pilgrims on the pathway to grace, to consonance, to harmony. We walk in love because we must. And when we walk in love the sun shines from our hearts.

Proper 25 Year A 2020 RCL (Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 Domine, refugium; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46)

©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Theophany of Love

I am blessed to live in one of the most beautiful corners of creation. In fact, I consider myself doubly blessed because, having lived in Oregon as a college student many moons ago and then headed off to points east to make my way in the world, I have been called back to this magnificent cathedral of sky and forest and mountain and sea and powerful river. A favorite meditation pastime for me has become “what called me back,” and “why am I here again now?” There are, as you might guess, many answers to those questions. But I keep coming back over and over to the deep comprehension that there is holiness in the beauty of this creation. This very holiness moves my soul to deep expression of love. Indeed, all of my life I have had the charism of responding physically to the revelation of great beauty. Anything of immense beauty—from the chords of mighty music to the blood-red sunset on the Aegean to the vast fields of tulips in The Netherlands to the smiles from the hearts of those I love—any manifestation of beauty produces in me a dual physical and spiritual response of the outpouring of love from my soul. While it is entertaining to regale friends (and readers) with stories of having to pull over to the side of the road when I am reduced to tears of joy at the vision of Mount Hood, there is at the same time a powerful explanation. As a priest I am called to lift up holiness as both an offering and a sacrifice. It is crystal clear to me that this life I now lead in this splendiferous environment is intended to plug my soul into the Holy Spirit the better to allow me to serve as a conduit for love. The more love I experience the more love I can give, the more love I can give the more love there is in creation, the more love there is in creation the more love all of us can tune into for healing, and (of course) for love.

Part of the job of the calling to spiritual leadership is the job of discerning the presence of holiness in the mundane all around us. Like most people I experience this in the very simplest expressions of love—a grin, a sneeze, the flick of a wrist, a facial expression—all of those things that are the electricity of love between people. I know when I see a smile on the face of my beloved that God is with us.

I find it in nature too, of course, as I often convey in this blog. Sitting here writing this listening to music I have to chuckle at the way the sun keeps breaking through the cloudy gray skies each time my heart begins to sing. This is no accident, this is the revelation of God’s presence, which is always with us but which, unfortunately we too often forget to realize. It is only when we remember to walk in the dimension of love that we can see clearly that we are in the presence of holiness. It is exactly when we remember to walk in the dimension of love that we know we are in the presence of God, especially when we bask in a loved one’s smile.

Theophany is the theological term for the manifestation of the divine in human cognition. The word means roughly “the appearance of God” and it is a wonderful description of the surprise we encounter when we experience holiness. The surprise at the appearance is the wonderfully tender chuckle of the Holy Spirit at the simple beauty of the moment when any one of us remembers to walk in the dimension of love and “bingo” there is our theophany, there is a glimpse of sunlight in our hearts.

In Exodus (33:12-23) we see Moses bargaining yet again with God. God makes two promises, first that “my presence will go with you and I will give you rest” and then that “I will make all my goodness pass before you” and that, indeed, as Moses will see the retreating presence of God so will all of God’s faithful people know mercy and grace.

In 1 Thessalonians (1:1-10) Paul sums up what it means to respond to holiness by walking in the dimension of love. It is to give love as the very work of faith, it is to grow and expand the giving of love as the blessed labor of faith, and it is to be steadfast in hope. To be steadfast in hope is to be secure in the knowledge of love given and received and grown and expanded. To be steadfast in hope is to know in your heart the power of those simple grins and sneezes that are the signs of the presence of God’s love within and among us always.

What does it mean to see God? How can we see God? We can see God when we see glory pass across the smiling face of another. We can be steadfast in hope when we understand that it is in and through each of us that holiness becomes theophany in the simple expression of love.

In Matthew’s Gospel (22:15-22) Jesus tussles with his adversaries about what seems to be a coin for paying a tax to the emperor: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” In reality the challenge is to understand the power of temptation to draw us from the holiness of love. It is easy enough to become ensnared in the embrace of irrelevancies that seem too real, when the reality is in the giving of love, the reality for us must always be found walking in the dimension of love.

God gives us love, God asks us to walk in love and this is God’s due that we not only see the presence of God in and among us but that we maintain the realization of holiness by the constant giving of love. We give God God’s due when we look into the hearts of all of the children of God where we will, indeed, see God’s face.

So then where is theophany for LGBTQ people? In our hearts of course. We especially are called to the realization of the presence of God in and among us and in the love we share. We especially, who are created by God in God’s own image as people of love, are called to remember to walk in love.

LOL, the sun just came out again.

Proper 24 Year A 2020 RCL (Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Stand Firm in LGBTQ Love

It is raining in Oregon. This is a good thing on many levels. It was a very dry summer, so the lawns and trees are relishing the water. Also, it is helping to wash away the smoky dust from the wildfire haze. Humorously I guess, it is nature’s way of preparing us for the real rainy season, which won’t come for awhile yet, by giving us these short two-day rains just to remind us what it is like when it rains for weeks. Oh well. I’m not complaining (too much, yet) because I cooked out every day last week and tomorrow it will be sunny and warm enough for me to get back to the grill.

It has been a month now since the high winds came, followed by the wildfires in central Oregon that chased us away for several days and then, even when we came home, filled the skies with smoke for days and days. During that time a mysterious probably motion-activated light came on on the north side of our house. There is no way to switch it on or otherwise control it, and I hadn’t really noticed it before, except this time it would not go off under any circumstances. I tried everything I could think of, including trying to hire a neighborhood helper to climb up there and unscrew the bulbs (couldn’t reach him, unfortunately). Yesterday my landscaper was here and I asked him to take a look at it, but when we walked around the corner it had gone out! I laughed—it must have been that the sensor was coated with smoky dust that caused it to come on, and now that it has rained for two days and nights the sensor must be clear again.

As I said it got a laugh out of me, and then some head shaking. It would be difficult to really convey how obsessed I had been for so long with the problem of this one tiny light fixture and then, suddenly, in a single moment the whole problem vanished. The problem disappeared as though by grace. Nature followed its own laws and brought rain, and because I left him alone the landscaper took care of lots of other things and by grace a silly bothersome problem vanished. It is a reminder to have faith in God’s grace, a reminder to feel love for the knowledge of God’s ever present grace. It is a reminder that love given builds up more love. Grace is love that follows and builds upon the love we give. But, for grace to follow us we must love first. There is no benefit to obsessive clamping down on problems, to attempting to control by grit rather than giving love and letting grace in.

Scripture appointed for this Sunday begins with the story from Exodus (32:1-14) and Psalm 106 (19-23) about the creation of the golden calf. When God calls Moses on the proverbial carpet about it God says “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.” It is a good description of the kind of non-loving controlling obsession that arises when we let situations overwhelm our faith in God’s grace. It is an excellent example of how easy it is to replace God in our hearts with self-made objectifications that are easy to worship. It is a reminder that we must be vigilant about loving and letting God’s grace in.

That this is a universal problem of human nature that requires deliberate love (see “Deliberate Sustainable Love”) is confirmed by Paul’s letter to the Philippians (4:1-9) where the theme is to “stand firm in the Lord … Rejoice in the Lord always … Do not worry … but [pray] with thanksgiving “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” We must be firm about love and and firm in the knowledge that the path to love comes from rejoicing in God’s eternal grace.

In Matthew’s Gospel (22:1-14) Jesus tells a parable about a wedding banquet for which invited guests will not come—Jesus lists their excuses, all forms of controlling obsession instead of rejoicing in grace. The message again is that we ignore God’s grace at our own peril, that we must learn to rejoice in God’s grace and share God’s love.

These are tough times all over. The pandemic is in its tenth month (or so, depending on where you might be on the planet), we are still separated from each other by circumstances so bizarre we could not have imagined them. We are asked to love God and rejoice in God’s grace at the same time we are asked to love each other by computer video. We are asked to have faith in God’s grace at the same time we are asked not to touch each other or even come within ten feet (3 meters more or less). In the United States we are asked to rejoice in God’s grace even as we watch our reality show government outshine anything a Halloween movie producer might have dreamt up. We who are God’s LGBTQ children are asked to rejoice as we watch attempts to push back the paths to equality that have only recently been ours.

And yet, it is exactly that faith born of rejoicing in God’s eternal grace that is the door to the salvation that is already ours. And we who are God’s LGBTQ children are spiritual leaders in this—it is precisely up to us, children whose identity is defined by love, to build up love by rejoicing in the love we share. We must remember to revel in the love we have for each other, because in so doing we build up God’s love. Stand firm in LGBTQ love that is God’s gift to us in our creation in God’s own image. Then rejoice and pray with thanksgiving.

Proper 23 Year A RCL 2020 (Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 Confitemini Domino, Et fecerunt vitulum; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Deliberate Sustainable Love

We are on a roller coaster of some sort. I used to see a wonderful spiritual director—a priest in NYC whose ministry I had observed from the back pews; one  day I saw the way she lifted up the fear and anxiety of the entire parish and offered it to God and the result was holy relief; I stood in line to shake her hand on the way out and she eventually led me not only through my own ordination but also through more than a decade of wilderness. We used to have a metaphor that when we could let go and let God we were on a roller coaster—the trick was not to be afraid, but rather, to enjoy the ride.

Well, I hope you all are enjoying this ride.

I think, as she would have said, we should remember that when the ride ends we all walk off, back home, back to work, back to whatever sustains us.

Of course it is love, God’s love as known through creation and especially in our own hearts, that sustains us. Sustainability has become a byword in recent times. We think about sustaining the environment, we think about sustainability in social terms. Have we thought about sustaining love? It is important to embrace deliberate loving if we hope to achieve sustainable love. This means we must remind ourselves constantly to love. Here is a simple, almost silly, example: all last week at the end of the day when I finally got dinner in the oven and sat down to relax while it cooked I turned on my television and there was nothing I could bear to watch! One night was that (well, never mind, it was vaguely political I suppose …). Most evenings not even the news was on because of some sports event. I was irritated, I channel surfed looking for anything acceptable, I vowed to write nasty emails … I was not deliberately loving. It was only when I remembered to take a deep breath, relax, and look for something enjoyable that I was able to get on with my evening, and my life. This might seem, as I said, silly on the face of  it, but we do this sort of thing thousands of times each day, and when we forget to love, our lives devolve until we lose our connection with God and with each other, residing only in our own self-made abyss. In Exodus (20:20) after receiving the Ten Commandments, “Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” It is a reminder from God, through the prophet, that God calls us to deliberate loving. After all, it is the absence of love that is the only sin.

The message is built into all of creation; even the creation itself speaks wordlessly of the love that brings it forth. Like a volcano building a mountain, love burns like the sun as it builds up creation. Nothing in creation, not even us, can hide from love. In Psalm 19 the psalmist reminds us that “one day tells its tale to another, and one night imparts knowledge to another;” that the “sun … rejoices … to run its course … nothing is hidden from its burning heat.” It is a metaphor for love, of course, that is the deepest knowledge of creation, that rejoices, that runs its course, that is the only way to prevent sin.

Of course giving love requires deliberate attention; the building up of love is work, hard work. Paul writes of it in Phillipians 3 as “straining,” and “pressing,” as a “prize” to be won. In Matthew’s Gospel (21:42) Jesus reminds us that “the stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.” It is a reminder that even the weakest among us can become deliberate about love. Even the weakest who gives love becomes the strongest pier. This is god’s awe-some creation in which the whole is dependent on care—love–those who inherit the kingdom are those who create the love that builds up the foundation from weakness to strength. love builds up.

Here is the message for people of oppression, here is the rallying cry for LGBTQ people, to remember that we are children of God’s love, that our very identity is created by our love, and that we especially are called to be deliberate in love.

Proper 22 Year A 2020 RCL (Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19 Caeli enarrant; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46)

©The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.