Concentric Spheres of Love

Christmas has come. The key is to make it permanent in our hearts. Christmas is not one day a year, but an eternal epiphany in our hearts. Christmas is the manifestation of the love that is always near us, always within us, always in our grasp, always coming anew into our hearts. Christmas is the joy of loving, of giving, of knowing that our love is building up in concentric spheres outward from our hearts.

This is why we pray that the light of Christ’s love “enkindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives.” Our response is to rejoice with singing and feasts and gifts, mostly gifts. A jar of homemade preserves, a box of cookies, a warm shirt, a good book. The gifts we give at Christmas are manifestations of loving care. Not just presents, but love given and received—love built up in concentric spheres outward from our hearts.

We celebrate the birth of a child who is God who is incarnate among us, who is love within us. What we have to remember is that each of us was born a manifestation of love and loving. Christmas is about reminding us that “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!'” (Galations 4:6). We are to retain this childlike love forever, building it in concentric spheres through life. Christmas is the celebration of the manifestation of love in life forever. This is why (John 1:5) “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Christmas, the coming of love incarnate, not only was, but is, always has been and always will be.

It is snowing in the Willamette Valley today. We will have to hurry out to run an errand before it gets more intense, because, as I keep reminding my husband, we’re not in Wisconsin anymore! Still, it will be a great day for a roaring fire and a big pot of chili. Not only as good eats, but as a loving antidote to our Christmas feast of smoked salmon mouse and roasted goose with fruit stuffing and apple-cranberry pie.

We will wear our new warm shirts, gifts of love and caring. We are warmed not only by the fabric but by the knowledge they were given with love. We will celebrate with our new tv (Santa had to save us when the old one went the day before Christmas!). We will hug and keep warm together because that’s what families do. We will celebrate the joy of our 44^th Christmas together. We will revel in the love that life in the 21^st century has brought to LGBT couples and their logical families.

We are sharing our love with our friends as best we can in pandemic mode. We send you our love. We wish you a joyous Christmastide. We embrace you with the love God has incarnated in us, building ever outward in concentric spheres.

Amen.

First Sunday after Christmas all years RCL 2021 (Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147 or 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7; John 1:1-18)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Making Room for Love

I now declare it officially Christmas; Advent has ended, the expectation is fulfilled. Go ahead, light up your lights, power up the Christmas tree, knock yourself out with Christmas music.

The solstice is imminent, soon there will be more daylight than dusk in our days, soon love will blossom.

The Jeopardy professor’s tournament is over, Amy Schneider, trans-glorious champion will be back tomorrow.

Love will blossom this week, its power growing day by day until we reach Christmas Eve on Friday night and then Christmas itself on Saturday. We will sing “Joy to the World” and we will feast and we will hug and kiss. We will exchange gifts, because they are symbols of our love. My husband put all the ornaments on our enormous tree himself last weekend, and yesterday eagerly piled wrapped presents under it, his smile ebullient, his joy permeating the whole house. It made me love him even more, if you can imagine such a thing. Love builds up. We are so blessed.

It’s Christmas. Christmas is all about making room for love. God has prepared a mansion of love in which God has called us to dwell. God has prepared the path for love into our hearts and from our hearts into the world, a synergy of love building up joy and peace and righteousness and justice. Our souls proclaim God’s greatness and our spirits rejoice. In God’s love we are blessed, and with God’s love we bless each other.

The pandemic surges again, but this time we are prepared, we know how to take care of ourselves, we will not let even this suppress the love God has called us to live into, to share, to build up.

Go ahead, embrace joy.

4 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 15 Magnificat Luke 1:46-55; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-45 (46-55))

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Smile, Hug, Laugh, and Rejoice

We are surrounded by love, we are the creatures of love, we are born to love, the greatest gift given to us is the power to love.

It is half-way through Advent, Christmas is coming. This week we broke out our Christmas stuff and started slowly decorating. We usually don’t get it all done until a day or two before, but that’s ok. It’s our version of that whole Advent expectation thing.

Like everybody else we are beginning to learn how to live through the pandemic, as opposed to living alongside it or hiding from it. The best thing for us is a beloved friend who now is able to be with us from time to time. After a separation of a year and a half it is nice to be together, loving each other, again, even if the travel is complicated and the things we can do together are limited. Still, we all have learned to revel in the love that surrounds us, to manifest the love inside us, to share the love among us.

We are meant to remember always to “rejoice and exult with all” our heart (Zephaniah 3:14). To smile and hug and laugh, to share, to be filled with the “peace … which surpasses all  understanding” (Philippians 4:7), even just sitting by the fire, walking in the rain.

If we can remember to remember, if we can keep our minds focused on our role in creation, which is to love, we will reap the inestimable joys offered to us by a grateful creator (Canticle 9; Isaiah 12:3), like drawing water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.

In Luke’s Gospel (3:7-18) we see John the Baptizer preaching repentance and baptizing the crowds of seekers who quiz him. We see his anger. We see their expectation. And then we learn the prophecy of the “one who is more powerful than” John, who “will baptize … with the Holy Spirit and fire.” Jesus, of course, who is God, who is love, will baptize with the Holy Spirit, which is love, which is the very fire of creation.

Expectation is powerful stuff. But not as powerful as the love we are called as the LGBTQ heirs of creation to bring to the table. Expect, of course. But love, revel, smile hug and laugh, and rejoice.

3 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9: The First Song of Isaiah (Ecce Deus  Isaiah 12:2-6); Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Prepare the Way of Love

The sun is shining today in the Willamette Valley. When I went outside to get my newspaper this morning the sky was hazy with fog but the sun’s rays were pointing brilliantly in a fan shape through the stately Douglas firs all around. It was heavenly.

This past week we had arborists here. We had an old silver maple that had slowly been dropping its branches on our house and our neighbors’ backyards over the past year and a half. It took months to figure out what to do and finally get someone here to do it, but this week the tree was trimmed. Now there is a lot of fresh firewood in our woodshed and there is no possibility any branches will fall on anything. It is that last bit that I am noticing each morning as I look out where the cracked branches used to be. I had grown so accustomed to worrying about when they might fall that I find it difficult to remember, now, that that problem is resolved. We are prepared for ice storms and winter winds, whenever they might come.

Preparation means change, and change means both working past the former reality and accepting the new.

Advent is a season of preparation. We are called to look inward, to work past former realities, to generate new realities and to accept the change.

Love is the path to the dimension where change is not just accepted but embraced, cheered with joy, accepted with grace—dare I say (?) it is the dimension where change is loved.

Love, of course, is the “robe of righteousness that comes from God” (Baruch 5:2), the “diadem of the glory of the Everlasting.” It is the love of creation making those heavenly rays of sun shine through the trees to remind us not only that we are all part of something larger than us but also that we and all of creation are loved. It is the love that comes to us in this way that is the robe of righteousness and the diadem of glory. It is the love to which we are called that is the manifestation of our blessing. This call to love, that our love might “overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight” (Philippians 1:9), is the affirmation of the certainty that we are called to love. It is our sign as LGBTQ people that we are called as God’s loving children who are defined by the love we share, to love.

We are called to “prepare the way” (Luke 3:4).

We are called to embrace the love in our hearts as the instrument of change, of new reality, of preparation. Why, it is just like the new reality that Amy Schneider, a trans woman, is still an on-going champion of Jeopardy. The brilliance of her smile shows that love that fuels her. Her gentle embrace of her identity, her proud posture in the world, is a sign to all of us that we, too, can find the dimension of love.

Prepare the way indeed.

2 Advent Year C 2021 RCL (Baruch 5:1-9; Canticle 16; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.