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))

 

You thought it was just about Marriage!*

Last Monday the Episcopal News Service put out a notice that the Bishop of Massachusetts had solemnized the marriage of two female priests. It seemed like a sort of hallmark to me at the time so I made a note to note it here. You can read the story at the ENS site:  http://www.episcopalchurch.org/80263_126369_ENG_HTM.htm. Of course, probably thousands or millions even were married last Monday, and even hundreds by bishops, so we have to pause for a moment to think about why this merits a news release. Our marriages are still rare enough to evoke interest from society. I suppose for us, glbt folks, each one is sort of a marker of progress made.

The next day I flew to Toronto for my annual winter break, a bit of retreat time for writing and sleeping late. As it happened, that afternoon some friends were married at City Hall, in the same place where my husband and I were married two years ago. I was delighted to attend, and it brought up lots of thoughts for me, not the least of which was the simple observation about how absolutely normal it is for same sex couples to be wed in that chapel, or at all, in Canada. Marriage equality is no longer new here, and it has assumed a certain role in society that makes all of the hoo-hah about it in the US seem totally silly.

Then again, there is also my suspicion that it is deliberate that the right to marry is being denied to us. I told my friends they would notice a difference, but that it would be subtle. Just one day you sort of notice that you feel married, you feel like family, because you are. Like ordination or baptism, marriage is a sacrament (even civil marriage), and the people involved experience something theologians call an ontological shift. That means your very being changes somehow. Two really do become one, and not just the mathematical sum of A plus B, but a new and different entity, a family. And we really need to stop letting people make any argument about denying us the right to marry other than an acknowledgment that it is discrimination to set aside a class of people and deny them the right to an essential part of life.

Jesus’ own baptism is the action that assumes hallmark status in this week’s scripture. It is a dramatic  story. Jesus enters into the action in dialogue with John the Baptist by saying “let it be so” and “it is proper … to fulfill all righteousness.”  It is just action, and it is necessary action, for the equilibrium of God’s creation that this sacramental action should take place. And when it does, the simple dunking in the river becomes the gateway to the ontological shift in which the very voice of God becomes perceptible, audible and visible at once as though somehow the dimensions of the very universe were shifted on their axes.

Interestingly enough, this scripture is paired with a reading from Acts that we usually hear at Easter, in which Peter gives a startling sermon that begins “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” For “nation” you could read “society” or “neighborhood” or “congregation” or “family.” The point is, God has given us the grace of unity with God and one another, and our challenge is always and only to “fulfill all righteousness” by “doing what is right.” It is God’s plan that creates us gay, and it is God’s plan that we should be married, so that by establishing our families the axes of the universe can shift to show everyone the glory that is God.

And you thought it was just about marriage!

*1^st Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 42:1-9, Psalm 29, Acts 10:34-43, Matthew 3:13-17)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.