Let Your Heart be Light

One of the wonderful things about being Episcopalian is the true and lengthy celebration of Christmas for the entire twelve days from the feast of the Nativity through the feast of the Epiphany. It is a gentle reminder that all of that joy and warmth is intended to persist, that Christmas is to be the beginning, that the critical turning point is the epiphany, the celebration of the moment of realization that this is not a beginning in linear time, but rather, a beginning of an opportunity for eternally ongoing renewal in our hearts.

And yes, we get to sing that wonderful music for two more weeks. Not to mention keep our Christmas trees!

Over the decades, because of my liturgical responsibilities my husband and I have evolved a sort of modified extended Christmastide. We cannot celebrate the feast of the seven fishes most Christmases because of my schedule so we moved that to New Year’s Eve. We have a leisurely dinner, then sit by the fireand listen to music and watch the sparkling light of our amazing Christmas tree (and each year’s is always the best one ever) as we welcome the new year with a moment that is as profound as it is calm. Then, we spend the next day doing mostly nothing and turning from my Italian roots to his southern roots with Hoppin’ John, cornbread and collards!

And then we still have five days left to celebrate Christmastide.

The profound quiet comes from the light of the incarnate Word “enkindled in our hearts,” like a candle just lighted, the flame growing and the light spreading ever outward to “shine forth in our lives.” [Book of Common Prayer collect for First Sunday after Christmas p. 213]. With this flame set alight in our lives, God has decked us with “garments of salvation,” the harbingers of “righteousness and praise” which will shine from us ever outward as the light that “shines out like the dawn” grows into “a burning torch” of love. [Isaiah 61:10-62:3]. And we sing “Joy to the World” and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”—we sing “with thanksgiving.” [Psalm 147].

For now we see, now we know, that the light enkindled in our hearts is also the eternal connection with God and with each other that all of us share as heirs of creation [Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7]. We are freed in this eternal action of God to lead our lives in the dimension of love. We are eternally children of creation, not child-like, but rather, heirs and siblings, always connected one to another and to God through the love we share. It is no metaphor that in the celebration of the Nativity of Christ we renew and build up the love in our hearts with cards and gifts and meals and hugs and forgiveness and warmth and joy and singing. This is our call.

God is love, love is life, life is light, light prevails as, indeed, love prevails. And love is among us and we have seen the glory of love “full of grace and truth.” “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” [John 1:1-18].

In Meet me in St. Louis (1942) Judy Garland sings “Have yourself a merry little Christmas.” The lyrics tell an incredible human story from a time of great human tragedy. War was on all over the world, millions were displaced, soldiers went abroad, many would never come home. Shortages were everywhere. I just baked another batch of my grandmother’s Christmas cookies; her recipe from that time is full of what to do in the event you can’t find ingredients. Food was scarce. Life was precious. The future was, as Paul might have said, visible in a mirror dimly. Here are the lyrics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Yourself_a_Merry_Little_Christmas):

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year, all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year, all our troubles will be miles away

Once again, as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends, who are near to us
Will be dear to us
Once more

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we’ll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

The composer/lyricist Hugh Martin was a man of faith. The lyrics capture the moment in time perfectly:

            Let your heart be light … Fear not.

            The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

            Let all the faithful gather to sing to the Lord a new song.

Longing, uncertainty … these are unfortunately ever part of the shape of human experience. LGBT+ people, God’s created LGBTQ+ people, have a place of pride in God’s pantheon, because we are called to embody love.

First Sunday after Christmas all years RCL 2023 (Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147 or 147:13-21; Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7; John 1:1-18)

©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

It finally snowed*

This week it finally snowed. It was Monday midday through until early Tuesday. In the afternoon Monday I went to the gym, which was curiously busier than usual, then on the way home as the sleet started pelting my car I thought to myself “go straight home.” But I didn’t. My husband had asked me to pick up something at a store and I wanted so much to please him that I diverted to that store. So an hour later when I started home again the sleet and snow had had their effect and the streets were like a well-tended skating rink, nice and firm icing with a good bit of slush as an extra tweak. I got on one long thoroughfare and it was like a parking lot for some reason. After sitting through several traffic light changes without moving we finally got to start up and of course my car at first wouldn’t go at all and then slid from side to side until I could get it into a higher gear and get some traction going on. I decided to take the first alley I could to get off of that street. I got home pretty easily after that. But as I approached my driveway, which begins with a slope up, I saw that the village had plowed and left a slush-drift at the foot of my driveway. Cleverly I gunned the motor and shifted down and immediately got stuck in the slush. It took about another half hour to get out of that, drive around the block, gun it better and get up onto the slope of my driveway, then another fifteen minutes of gunning it to get up the hill and into the garage. I could smell my car’s over exertion but I skated into the house and decided to ignore it.

That’s really the end of that story. Nothing terrible happened. The next morning I had to pay Uber twice to go to an early meeting because my snow removal guy was stuck in his own driveway and had to wait for a city plow to get out. During the stuck part I had stopped the engine and got out of the car to try to call said guy. One of my neighbors was snowblowing her sidewalks about 30 feet to the west of where I was stuck and another was shoveling his sidewalk across the street, about 10 feet south of me. I sort of expected one or the other would volunteer to help by pushing me out of the drift. (Oddly, this happened more than once in Philadelphia where snow is relatively rare and always problematic. A couple of times when I had to go out to pastoral crises in a snow storm I backed out and got stuck and whichever neighbors were out shoveling all came and gave me a push. It’s actually easy to push a car with its engine running out of a stuck position like that. I suppose my clerical collar and little black communion kit and stole in my hand probably served as a clue that I could use some help on those occasions.)

I guess I bring this up partly because I keep thinking how odd it is that midwesterners seem so unhospitable and selfish. We have lots of neighbors on this street but we’ve only ever had a hospitable greeting from our neighbors to the east, who are pretty friendly but weren’t around this time. I go back and forth in my brain trying to figure out whether people are just standoffish culturally, or whether they’re letting us know they’d rather not have gay neighbors.

If you’re reading this you probably know what I mean. We all encounter lots of variable behavior in all of life. But sometimes you just have that gnawing sense that what’s going on is really discrimination because you’re gay. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I’m never sure what to think but I do try to keep my eyes more open henceforth.

Those would be the “eyes of your heart” I’m writing about now. That phrase appears in Ephesians 3:18. Paul writes that it is with those eyes that we will know the hope of the Christ child, the riches of our inheritance with Him as children of God and the power of our faith. It is with these eyes of our hearts that we simultaneously see and feel. Did you ever say something off the cuff without carefully considering it’s impact and see someone’s face fall in response? Those are the moments when you’ve somehow sent a message that was perceived by the eyes of the heart. It’s a tricky business, being a person of faith, and being a child of God open to the beauty of full communion with God and with each other, and yet at the same time being both totally vulnerable and totally self-centeredly human.

It is in that vulnerability and openness that we can experience the true power of loving one another. And yet it also is in that space where we can so easily hurt and be hurt, exclude and be excluded.

Our celebration of the birth of Christ is in many ways a feast of vulnerability. Joseph and Mary have to travel on foot when she is nearing term, and they have no choice when labor approaches but to park themselves in a stable. Our Prince of Peace is actually a newborn, totally vulnerable to all of creation. On and on it goes even to this story in Matthew (2:13-15, 19-23) where a very visceral threat causes Joseph to flee with his family and on return to settle in a new and foreign place as they overstate these days “out of an abundance of caution.” As always, the truth of Scripture lies in our ability to comprehend the metaphor as meaningful to our own lives.

LGBT people are living in a new more hopeful time. I am learning to refer openly to “my husband” out there in the real world without worrying what a coming out it is each time I utter it. The hope we live with in our new and relatively more equal lives is closely tethered to those eyes-of-the-heart. As Christians we need always to love actively with those eyes heart-enabled.

We have three more days of Christmastide before the Feast of the Epiphany. Enjoy them in peace.

 

©2016 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*2 Christmas (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23)

Ontological shift*

It has been a curious year.

I had a spell of illness, not serious but temporarily debilitating, earlier in the year. As often happens, like a summer storm, it led to a period of much improved health. As I said, curious.

I continued to work in Europe, making visits to Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Heraklion this year, as well as to Ottawa and Toronto in Canada. Immigration security is tight everywhere—immigration officers in every country routinely meet you at the door of your arriving aircraft looking for passports. But otherwise things are much the same as always. It was a relief to find Crete looking shiny and clean and with business seeming to thrive despite the news we hear in the west about Greek economics. While I was in Heraklion I purchased this icon of the Annunciation. I knew there was a reason, I just didn’t know what it was.

Marriage equality became the law in the United States this year, allowing same-sex couples in the US to join those in much of the rest of the developed world. It has been interesting to watch this evolution over a period of about a decade and a half. Once we all said routinely that we didn’t need marriage, we had our own loving approach to partnership. But once the possibility existed in reality we thirsted for equality. Many of us who were long-partnered were among the first to wed. Many of us were surprised to discover it does, in fact, make a difference. My own experience was that it shifted the manner of being in our relationship as we became literally each other’s family. It was reminiscent of the famous ontological shift priests experience in ordination. It is an awareness that something is radically different along one dimension even as everything else stays the same. My husband and I now in the 39^th year of our relationship and the 8^th year of our marriage are ever more deeply in love and ever more connected spiritually.

Elsewhere terror and violence have spread around the world. Politics seems to have run amok everywhere. And yet the scripture speaks to us as always. “In those days” the story of Mary’s annunciation begins. “Consequently” is the opening of today’s appointed passage from Hebrews. God’s mercy and compassion are eternal and timeless. The world exists in many dimensions—chaos along one intersecting with peace and joy in another. It’s tough to be human, even in these days. Just as it was then. When the angel came to Mary to bring her the news that she would bear the prophesied child it was into a moment of grace in a chaotic life. This is how God always comes to us it seems. It is up to us to embrace the news, to allow God’s grace to work in and through us. It is up to us to live through the ontological shift.

For God a heartbeat is a thousand years long and a millenium is but a second. Micah (5:2-4) prophesies the advent of a child of Bethlehem “whose origin is from of old” but who will “stand and feed his flock” forever, and this flock, that would be us, will “live secure” because this child will become “the one of peace.” It is not a prediction, it is a prophecy. It is not a bet or a riddle, it is the story—the narrative—of the reality of the coming into each human heart of a moment of ontological change that takes place when we realize we are the children of God. This is the meaning of Christmastide, which is now upon us.

Prepare, once again, for the ontological shift that is Christ’s birth within and among us.

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

*4 Advent (Micah 5:2-5a, Canticle 15 Magnificat, Hebrews 10: 5-10, Luke 1:39-49 (50-56))

 

Snow and convergence*

 

The second Sunday of Christmas is sort of a last gasp reminder that the season of hope is still with us. We woke up to snow this morning in Milwaukee. It finally looks like Christmas doesn’t it? It is yet another reminder that life takes place in multiple dimensions. Nature’s time line is different from ours. Coincidence can lead to wonderful moments of inspiration as doorways to new dimensions are opened. Tonight also will bring a full moon introducing the motion of a celestial dimension into this party of inspiring coincidences. Tuesday will be the feast of the Epiphany, and as we celebrate the arrival of the wise men from the east, Christmastide will come to an end.

The scripture appointed for today all points toward the story of the Holy Family fleeing into Egypt after angel apparitions in Joseph’s dreams guide them. Although the story is quite condensed it must cover a fair bit of time before the angel comes back and sends them back to Israel (Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23). Of course it all is couched in prophetic terms, as the author of Matthew’s Gospel was concerned with making explicit parallels between the prophetic literature and the life of Jesus. Still, one wonders what they did during that time. We see couples with infants on airplanes all the time; it rarely occurs to us to wonder about the circumstances that compel them away from the bosom of their home. The Old Testament reading from Jeremiah (31:71-4) is the proclamation of Israel’s return from exile. We think of it as a joyous moment but look at the text: “among them the blind and the lame, those with child and those in labor … with weeping they shall come ….”

It is a reminder that God is in the details in every dimension of life. It is also a reminder that our very real lives take place alongside the time lines of parallel or diverging or converging dimensions of nature, society and culture. Some would interpret this as randomness, but: a) that isn’t what “random” means; and b) to see life that way is to miss the importance of understanding how God is in all those points of convergence. The opposite misinterpretation is what I call the “God as puppet-master” theory, that somehow God is in the sky pulling all of our strings to manipulate us. But the truth is that the hallmarks of our lives are these points of convergence where who we are meets where we are and in what truth we live. Well, that’s all rather cerebral.

What I mean is the same thing as the dichotomy St. Paul frequently presents between spirit and flesh. We are here, no matter how we choose to interpret that. We can choose to see ourselves as the center, deciding who or what to allow access to our internal living spaces. Or, we can choose to see ourselves as the children of God, inheriting God’s creation, and residing at many crossroads. Crossroads bring opportunity; opportunity is the spirit enlivening us as the dimensions around us converge. Like the people in scripture all of us are leading prophetic lives at the convergence of the dimensions of creation and society, the crossroads of spirit and flesh, of God and humankind.

In the U.S. lgbt people are rejoicing at the flowering of marriage equality opening a dimension of fertile life all around us. In my morning news is the story of Egyptian gay men being arrested on charges of debauchery so as to drive the lgbt community into hiding.

The snow outside my window this morning is stunningly beautiful. It reminds me of the creative power of nature and of the timelessness of our lives. Christmastide presents a series of dramatic stories in Christian culture to remind us that the birth of hope in the child Jesus was not a one-off moment but rather, is an ongoing rebirth in the souls of the children of God in the timeless dimension of God’s kingdom. Let us rejoice for the goodness and mercy God has shown to us. Let us pray for the end of oppression and suffering that still continues in too many places.

*2 Christmas (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23)

©2015 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

The Bridegroom’s garland*

Isaiah’s prophecy (61:10 ff.) is rich with metaphor; how else do humans explain the experience of the presence of God but to say what it felt like? I have known God on the prairie sweeping like angels’  wings over acres of corn, I have known God in ascending clouds of incense at the feet of God’s altars, I have known God a million times in the eyes of communicants. God is everywhere for sure, but sometimes metaphor is useful for describing theophany, which is this experience we have of God in human time and space. Christmas is a time of ongoing theophany.

Isaiah has this lovely metaphor this week “God has clothed me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland.” Of course, this metaphor is meaningful in a specific way at a specific time. Still I chuckled thinking about getting ready for our wedding.

Brad and I have been together for almost 36 years. We had a pretty exciting beginning, and then we had all of the usual potholes, and then we got it worked out. And like most gay men of our generation, and unlike most heterosexuals, we assumed we never could get married, so we didn’t even think about it. In our eighth year together we had a house blessing which we chose to think of as a blessing of our relationship. But it was in our 30^th year together that we decided to go to City Hall in Toronto and get married legally, just because we could.

What a shock. So I have been trying to think about how I felt getting dressed that morning. I don’t think that was the biggest thing on my mind. And, like being ordained, it turns out it is the aftermath that is the most important part of a sacrament like marriage. Still, I dressed as an Anglican priest, and I suppose the “garland” Isaiah refers to was my pectoral cross, which I drew on at the last moment as we were ready to go.

It was the cross of Christ crucified and risen, Christ who had chosen me, a gay man, as a priest in His church. Christ, who had chosen us, a gay couple, as an example of righteousness. The robe of righteousness was laid around our shoulders that day, in our aging bodies and in our mature love for each other.

The blessing of Christmastide is the coming of the light into a darkened world. No matter how many times we experience this, it remains a constant. Christ brings light. Christ is the light which is life. And we, gay people, are the candles in which Christ’s light enlightens the world.

I hope you had a merry Christmas. Don’t forget we still have nine days of Christmas left! Happy New Year to you too.

*First Sunday after Christmas (Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147; Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7; John 1:1-18)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Christmas is Back*

This has been a wonderful Christmas. This Christmas Eve was the most blessed Christmas of my priesthood to date. I was surrounded by joy, the light of Christ was visible within and among us, the shared joy was palpable. Of the hundreds of hands I shook, every one came with a heartfelt glance and (for once) an astonishing chorus of “merry Christmas.” The music was magnificent, the kids were filled with life and light and joy and all of the promise that children bring to the whole of creation—how wonderful to watch their pageant of the birth of Christ (not to mention getting on the channel 6 news because of them!). The Lessons and Carols service was also beautiful, and pithy spiritually. As I said, it was the most blessed Christmas of my priesthood.

If you read my Christmas Eve post, then you might remember that I was eager to find the light that might shine in the darkness. Well, I sure found it. Repeatedly during the two liturgies, I nearly “lost it” (that means I was on the verge of tears). It is really difficult to explain this, except to say that when the sacred is most fully active in me, sometimes it seems almost overwhelming. As I write this I remember, of course, the first time that ever happened—at my ordination to the priesthood—when, as the bishop pressed down on my head, and the buzz of babble grew louder above me, and my fellow presbyters pressed down on me from behind, the only thought I had was “I’m going to fall down, I can’t bear the weight”—but I did bear the weight, and I did not fall down. And a moment later I was raised up (interesting phrase there) and turned around, a bit in shock, and introduced as the new priest. Whoa!

Of course, my path to spiritual enlightenment has been long and circuitous and often littered with detours. And there is no stilling the power of the Spirit within me when I hear “O Come all ye faithful.” It is as though I were still standing beside my grandmother in the Methodist church in Pekin, Illinois in 1956, holding her hand and singing as loud as I could to join the joyful noise. It was such a wonder to hear the Babel sound of the children in the background and to think of all of the wonderful Christmas memories of the future that were being made in that moment. Isaiah says he will greatly exult, the psalmist says how great it is to sing God’s praises and I couldn’t agree more.

The pith of the readings for this Sunday is found in the letter to the Galatians, where Paul explains how the “disciplinarian” of “the law” (he means Levitical law), was a kind of imprisonment. I picked up my paper yesterday and read about how now that “don’t ask don’t tell” has been repealed, marriage equality is inevitable (except, they still call it, pointedly, “gay marriage”). They interviewed a particularly hateful right-winger, who said something along the lines of ‘gay people want to be respected but we all know they’re disgusting.” How nice to read on Christmas morning. Well, my friends, it reminded me that for many lgbt people, Christmas means being at home with family members who still work with “the law.” The time has come to take them to church, and point them at this reading. Before faith came we were imprisoned, but now we are children of God, heirs of the kingdom. All of us, especially we who are created lgbt in God’s own image.

The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only child, full of grace and truth.

A blessed Christmastide.

*1st Sunday after Christmas (Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Psalm 147, Galatians 3:23-25;4:4-7, John 1:1-18)

©2010 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Dreams

“In your dreams honey.”

It’s a common enough phrase, a hallmark of a cynical interaction. It means, “whatever it is you think is coming your way has no basis in reality.”

Curious isn’t it; because this Christmastide is the season of dreams. I know, I’m all grown up, and I’ve been through a lot in life. But still, at this time of year, I bop along thinking there is good reason to expect the best. And that expectation in the back of my mind turns to hope in my heart, and that turns to “Merry Christmas” on my lips. And I think that’s how this season is supposed to work.

So what about dreams? Dreams are real enough, even though what we dream often is not. The science of dreams is uncertain about many things, including where they come from and why they take the forms they do. But we do know that they are vital to our survival as humans. Dreams come during the deepest part of sleep, the part that heals the body and fortifies it for the next day. Likely, dreams come during the time when the body is completely in “reboot” mode—so the psyche takes a little reboot time too.

But what about this business of expectations? If we are really grown up people—especially if we are grown-up gay and lesbian people—we have a mixed bag of expectations at this time of year. We look forward to sweet moments with our loved ones. We dread those interactions with family where our sexuality might (will) be challenged. But still we hope, still we dream, that there might be acceptance, that there might be more than acceptance, that there might be actual affirming love, in those interactions.

If you want to have a look at the scripture appointed for today, go ahead and do that; you can find it at the Lectionary Page. You will see a reading from Isaiah, in which God cannot get Ahaz to believe. And finally God says “okay, I’m sending you a sign anyway.” And the sign? A young woman will bear a son and name him Immanuel, which means “God is with us.”  In the letter to the Romans, Paul asserts boldly the facts as he knows them in his soul—Jesus was promised, delivered, and exists in flesh and Spirit as the Son of God and the Lord Christ. If ever a dream was fulfilled, that was it. And in the Gospel, Matthew recounts the story of how the angel came to Joseph in a dream, and told him Mary was with child from the Holy Spirit.

Well, we don’t know what Joseph was thinking. We don’t know what this dream looked like or felt like. But we do know that this was the sign God had promised, that a young woman would bear the Son of God, who was, and is, Jesus—Immanuel—God with us.

And by all of this we know that God is with us, now and always. And that is the promise, the expectation, of this season. Presents? Good cheer? Light in the darkness? Yes, of course—that’s the promise God’s creation brings to us in this season. But the real promise is the promise of a lifetime of love—being loved, being created in love, being created to love. That is why God has put us here. That is what God expects of us. That is what we can expect of God.

Okay so have a look at today’s prayer (the “collect”—that’s an old word from English worship meaning literally a prayer that “collects” the spirit of the congregation together). It says we should clean house, so when Jesus comes he will find a mansion within each of our souls. I’d say it means be true to whom God has made you to be, clean out the cobwebs, let Christmastide open your heart and your soul to the promise of being made constantly new. Get ready my friends to let Jesus in.

© 2010 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Fourth Sunday in Advent Year A 2010 (Isaiah 7:10-16, Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18, Romans 1:1-7, Matthew 1:18-25)