Palpable Real Joy

Beauty is everywhere in God’s creation. Beauty is the physical manifestation of the love that is God, that is the breath of God, that is the power and glory of God. Beauty is the love that made us and is within us and that propels us into loving synchrony with each other and with all of creation. Beauty is the power of love spinning the wheels and meshing the gears that move all of us constantly forward toward God’s dimension of love.

And Christmas is the annual celebration of this beauty, the ritual feast when we not only prepare for beauty but we express beauty in every way we can, from weird sweaters to fruit cakes to special cookies to the love expressed in every gift.

Thus, the message of Christmas is that God is inviting us to palpable real joy, the kind that comes with the reality of babies and immigrant journeys and meals and wonder and the joy of feeling warm and feeling loved. God is inviting us to feel loved.

God is inviting us to invite each other to feel loved. God is inviting us to love, to give love, to “build up the highway, clear it of stones” to make the way of love the way of joy and gladness.

God is inviting us to rejoice that we, too, are loved. God is inviting us to listen to the earth give thanks to God, God is inviting us to rejoice in the snow and the ice and the bitter cold and the relief that comes after in the gentle rain and the cool crisp air and in the beautiful colorful lights in the night.

God is reminding us that we are already, by our creation in God’s own image, heirs of God’s eternity.

Yes, all of us– gay men, trans folks, lesbian women, bisexual and queer and nonbinary and questioning people and all who wish they did not have the curse of being who they are in a society that is often oppressive in its homogeneity—yes, all of us: God is inviting us to rejoice in our creation in God’s own image. God is inviting us to rejoice in the persons we now are and always are becoming. We all, always, are becoming. That is the grace of the life God has given us.

“Do not be afraid.” To fear is to give yourself over to the absence of love with which God created you. When you can set aside fear you too will see the multitude of the heavenly host and you too will sing “Glory to God in the highest heaven and on earth peace.” And then, like the shepherds of yore, you must “go” to “see.” Because life is to be lived on a forward trajectory.

The message of Christmas again, is that God is inviting us to palpable real joy.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas 2 All Years RCL 2022 (Isaiah 62:6-12; Titus 3:4-7; Luke 2:(1-7)8-20; Psalm 97)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Sustaining, Connecting, Present Prayer

We are asked to pray. In Luke 18:1-8 “Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

We tend to think of prayer as “asking.” We forget, that prayer, really, is about “connecting.”

I remember one particularly sweet moment in my ordained life, after 15 years or so of regular prayer at specific times, after 3 years of seminary with prayer at regular specific times throughout the day, after my ordination as deacon and then as priest … I took a break.

You know, you get to have a break once in a while.

And one morning, I was sitting at my computer, it was a sunny day and I was looking out the window and there was suddenly a unitive moment.

Now, these are the moments when you “know” God is with you. Usually, they happen when you ask for them. Sometimes they happen when you are in a time of trial and God just wants to let you know you are not alone. But this was different, and as I pondered what God wanted I realized it was prayer time and I had not prayed in over a week. God missed me!

I laughed out loud. And then I said “thank you.” And then I learned at last to pray, not in “gimme-gimme” style, but rather in “I’m here” style.

This is what God wants—God wants us to be present not only with God but also with each other. In other words, love, always.

LGBTQ people are particularly good at this; it is our call after all, it is why God created us so we might be witnesses to love. And the best way we can be witnesses to love, which is God, is to live fully, at all times, into God, which is love.

In Jeremiah 31:33 God says “I will put my law [of love] within them, and I will write it on their hearts.” In Psalm 119:97 the psalmist responds “Oh, how I love your law!, all the day long it is in my mind.” In 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Paul preaches to “continue in what you have learned and firmly believed” and “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”

In other words, pray always and do not lose heart.

On Thursday October 14 Bishop Daniel Gutiérrez (Bishop of Pennsylvania, where I am canonically resident) sent a message to the diocese about beauty asking “What did you see today that was beautiful? Or, what did you hear that was beautiful? Beauty has the power to change our hearts and the world. In that beauty, we find joy ….” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYq1vGxiS0A ). Seeking beauty, recognizing beauty, is itself a form of prayer. Sharing beauty—such as the beauty I see in my husband’s heart—is a form of active prayer, a sustaining, connecting, present prayer.

Proper 24 Year C 2022 RCL (Jeremiah 31:27-34; Psalm 119: 97-104 Quomodo dilexi!; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8)

©2022 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Love Sustained in Beauty

Like most people, I have always been attracted to beauty. I even astonished myself and my spiritual director once years ago by announcing the audacious discovery that I realized I was called to encounter beauty. I suppose I should try to explain that I experience the unitive—the presence of The Holy—in encounters with beauty. Of course, it was not the experience that was a spiritual discovery but rather the comprehension that I have the same manifest physical symptoms of ontological union when I am in the presence of The Holy that I have when I am lifted out of myself by music, or nature, or dare I say it, the sight of those who are by and for me beloved.

I often have written about how it is that we always are in the presence of God but only aware of it occasionally. We tend to perceive that God comes and goes, but it is the other way around. God always is with us. It is we who allow our openness to holiness to wax and wane as it suits our mood or our busy-ness. To be always in the presence of holiness is not only possible, it is the intended reality of God’s creation. It is only our distractedness that gets in the way.

Thus, it is important to celebrate the importance of beauty—however one might wish to define it—in the comprehension of the depth and breadth and presence of love. Love is always ours, if only we can stretch beyond our sense of self to grasp it. And when we can grasp love, then we achieve the grace God intends for all of creation.

Our religious practices, the ways in which we live out our faith, are expressions of joy in the inculcation of love in our souls. We rely on religion the way we rely on hardware stores and pharmacies—they all give us tools we need at specific moments, they all have lots of tools, they all let us choose the tools that will work for us in the moment. Because even with love, the tools are important.

Scripture this week takes us into the forecourts of the metaphor of the beloved with text from the Song of Solomon (2:8-13), that paean to love and its triumph that resides in the Old Testament as the culmination of wisdom. The response is from Psalm 45 (2). Both express the overwhelming passion of the joy of love. Both remind us that the intensity of the love we experience is an exact pathway to the presence of holiness. Love creates passion, which creates more love, which creates more passion. We are called—indeed created—to love God in the way in which we love passionately. This is why I keep writing that LGBTQ people are innately created by God to build up the love in creation, because we are created specifically for the purpose of creating love, our very identity comes from the ways in which we are capable of loving.

We who are defined by our love, we whose families are not biological of necessity but rather, are logical of love, it is we who are the leaders in creation at building up love. This is our responsibility as LGBTQ heirs of creation to keep building up love.

James (1:17-27) reminds us to “be doers of the word.” Love comes from God because love is God as God is love. Giving is the expression of love. Love is action. Giving love brings more love. The proof is in the source of our love, which is God, which is our universality, which is made up of love and loving. And it is only action that sustains and maintains love. Imagine that–sustainable love!

Paul writes of spirit and flesh; Jesus in Mark’s Gospel (7:1-23) speaks of God and human—it is the same dichotomy. We are called to love, to give love, to perceive and sustain the love that comes from within. But the absence of love also can come from within, when we hold too firmly to the walls that protect us from each other, that prevent us from love. This is our solitary confinement, isolation within our own walls of protection. It is a human mechanism necessary for survival but yet it must be overcome to attain holiness, indeed even to allow love. We must learn to tear down the interior walls that prevent us from loving.

That brings us full circle to beauty. Creation, indeed all of life, is filled with beauty, placed there for our pleasure. Yes, pleasure—it is to give us pleasure. But more, it is to remind us that in those instances of pleasure, indeed of passion, we are at the peak of loving, which is where we are called to be. Here is the point of sustainable love.

Proper 17 Year B 2021 RCL (Song of Solomon 2:8-13; Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10 Eructavit cor meum; James 1:17-27; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

©2021 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.