I have missed a couple of weeks (so sorry). The good news is, I was able to make my triumphant (LOL) return to Amsterdam via Toronto, a route I traveled every few weeks for 25 years. This was my first outing since the pandemic, thus my first air travel and first visits to Toronto or Amsterdam in over 4 years. It was wonderful to see my friends. It was awe inspiring to see how my favorite places were still the same on the surface but changed in subtle ways underneath. It is the natural outcome of the pandemic—like those wonderful globe paperweights that you would shake and then watch the “snow” fall, always the same yet every time also a little bit different.
I was working, so no partying and only one dinner out in each city. I’m not complaining; I find it fulfilling to drop by Albert Heijn on my way home from the office to pick up something to cook for dinner. And while I’m enjoying my repast I can see Amsterdam out my window. This is something that gives me great joy, which means it is something that stirs up in me the love that is within me.
Air travel has changed too, not in good ways. I was startled to hear all the coughing and sneezing going on all around me on all six of my flights. I kept thinking “whatever happened to stay home if you’re ill?” Well, it doesn’t matter now, I’ve got my first rhinovirus in four years. Hallelujah.
A funny thing happened on one flight; a woman seated next to me, on takeoff, crossed herself repeatedly. I wanted to lean over and say “it’s ok dear I’m a priest” but I didn’t. I did have the curious (or humorous) thought, however, that maybe it’s all of us who pray on planes that actually make them work. Years ago I had a dear parishioner who insisted that whenever I traveled I give her my itinerary. She said she had to pray me back and forth. And, of course, I have many times experienced the behavior on Greek airliners of all passengers stopping to kiss a priest’s ring and then everybody crossing themselves vigorously on takeoff and landing, and bursting into applause when the plane stops. See, there is something to connecting to the force of love.
Our continuing journey through Exodus lands us this week on the occasion of God presenting to Moses the Ten Commandments, which Moses says are [Exodus 20:20] “so that you do not sin.” Let us always remember that sin means being disconnected from God, choosing to walk not in the dimension of love, but in the dimension of self. It is confusing that this oral history enumerates ways in which people can walk away from the dimension of love as though it were the acts themselves that were sin. Rather, as we know, it is the intent that precedes the act, the internal mechanism that says “take what you want, do as you will, never mind being connected to creation through God’s other chosen people”–this is sin. Remember, Jesus will later sum it all up with “love God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind and all your strength; and love your neighbor as yourself” [Mark 12:30-31 or Luke 10:27 or Matthew 22:36049].
That said, it was wonderful once again to experience the majesty of the earth from 34,000 feet, to experience the glory of a September full moon from above the canals of Amsterdam. It was magnificent to see how “one day tells its tale to another … and how the earth “Goes forth from the uttermost edge of the heavens” [Psalm 19]. Here is the majestic full moon rising over Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
It was heart-warming to experience the glory of people smiling in the supermarket in Amsterdam and in the drug store in Toronto and to hear the gentle laughter of servers welcoming guests in restaurants on both sides of the Atlantic, each in their own way, each full of joy, each opening a door into the dimension of love. We are blessed to live in this very rich creation. It is incumbent upon us to get up and have a look around at the glory of humanity outside of our own hideout niches.
It is especially important for LGBTQ people, especially for LGBTQ people in the United States, to see that life can be, and is, better, more open, more transformative, more accepting, in the developed world. It is healing to experience the love of being one of God’s created LGBTQ heirs in one of the cultures that get it, because it builds up the joy in our hearts and souls that helps us keep opening those doors into the dimension of love. This is why Paul says “this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal” [Philippians 3:14]. It is why Jesus concludes the parables of the vineyard with a warning: “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruit of the kingdom” [Matthew 21:43].
The fruit of the kingdom, the goal to press on toward, the prize, is the majesty of the opening of the door into the dimension of love.
[But please stay home if you’re sick.]
Proper 22 Year A 2023 RCL (Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19 Caeli enarrant; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46)
©2023 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 