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.

Ponder, Rejoice

Have you had a good Advent? I have to say I did, although it also has been a challenging time in my life, somehow I suppose mirroring the world at large. Still, I have learned much this Advent, including how grateful I am for this venue and the revelations it brings to me.

Can we measure Advent? No, of course not. Not really. All we can do is ponder—ponder introspection, ponder revelation, ponder theophany, pondor comfort, pondor joy.

Was it introspective? Did you receive revelation?

Not long to wait now. Christmas will be here in a few hours; perhaps, given God’s space-time continuum Christmas already is with you. Expectation fulfilled once more, joy received in sweet harmony, blessings manifested eternally … in love.

We who are the LGBTQ+ people of creation are called to be hosts of love. We are called to be people of love. When love manifests in our hearts the dimension in which we reside expands with joy. When we learn to walk in love there is no longer any limit for those of us who are connected. And in this way, we perceive the joyous revelation that God is always with us because God is always within us.

Love dwells within, in the soul, it bursts forth from the heart, it finds realization in the Spirit. All we need do is remember to feel the love in our hearts.

The transformative power of love is ours.

All we need do is be present, to ponder all these things in our hearts, to let it be with us according to God’s word.

Our world is indeed a mysterious place. War rages, unrest is all around us like a raging sea.

And yet the truth rises to the surface and love always wins. What greater Christmas present could there be for the LGBTQ+ community than the announcement that the Roman church will join much of the rest of catholic Christianity in welcoming and celebrating and, indeed, blessing, our love.

It is a challenge, a Christmas challenge, a loving joyous challenge, to let our love shine like the star in the night leading creation to the fulfillment of the synchrony of love.

Merry Christmas.

4 Advent Year A 2023 RCL (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16; Canticle 15 The Song of Mary Magnificat; Romans 16:25-27; Luke 1:26-38)

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

Rejoice, Dance, Sing, Love

I have a priest-friend (like me, a gay man) who likes to say that people need ritual. It is a topic that comes up in Anglicanism with regard to the level of ritual employed in worship. Some churches are highly formal about their ritual and others eschew it altogether—except, in those places they always replace it with some ritual of their own. Maybe there is no Great Litany in Procession, but there is likely to be a procession of flowers, or a circle of hand-holding, or some other formality that arises as a community expression of joy.

The same is true in the secular world. If you want an obvious example just look at the Olympic Games. Not only is there a highly stylized ritual procession of athletes—the “opening” ceremony—but there also is ceremony before, during and after each event, from the introduction of the athletes, to the formality of the competition, to the medal award ceremony. It is a formal way of the community giving thanks and rejoicing.

I have been fortunate in my ministry to be involved in ritual from the beginning. I was ordained on a Saturday morning, served at my first mass the next morning, and the morning after that found myself processing into the General Convention of the Episcopal Church with a zillion (ok, maybe 30 or so) other clergy to music by Handel. What could be more grand? I remember the moment because the exhilaration was profound. Later in my ministry I was blessed to serve at a church where the organist was so terrific that, as I mounted the steps into the pulpit to preach, the improvised music had just enough of some music that was individually profound (for me, often the strains of the hymn “General Seminary”) to get me to the point of tears as I reached the lectern. The beauty of it was that it moved me into soul-space from which my sermons then could proceed unfettered by ego (or traffic noise from outside).

In my secular life I was most profoundly moved I think in the gay discos of the 1970s. I loved to dance, I loved the music, for sure. But what was profound was the joy, the happiness, the smiles, the singing along with the dance. The energy on the dance floor was profoundly a ritual of rejoicing, of thanksgiving, of love freely given, of justice even if just for a moment. There are lots of other examples too, of course. What about the ritual of the drag show? Costume, ceremony, formal stylized events—it was my great and profound privilege to be a good friend of Madame Michelle DuBarry, Toronto’s famous drag queen and Empress VI and XXVI of the Imperial Court of Toronto. And, we can’t forget Pride and its parades. The whole point is a ritual of community rejoicing and, well, pride!

It seems the ritual of joy is a responsibility of LGBTQ+ life. It is not just an expression, it is a calling, to create a dimension of love and rejoicing that lifts the whole community.

In Advent as we experience the changing seasons around us and are reminded of the solemnity of the Christmas experience we also are called on this Sunday to step back a bit and rejoice, to give thanks, to experience love in community. Gaudete Sunday it is called (or Rose Sunday, if you will). We light the rose candle on the Advent wreath, rose vestments appear, we give thanks for grace and mercy. We know that grace is love freely given, that mercy is justice freely given, that love and justice are the same thing, because justice is love in action. And in the relief of the rose vestments and the lighting of the rose candle we know from the ritual of rejoicing that Christmas is coming. We know that love has indeed come to help and deliver us.

Isaiah [61:1-4, 8-11] prophesies that God’s good news takes the form of being “clothed with the garments of salvation … the robe of righteousness.” A ritual metaphor of righteousness, which is right-living, walking in love. The robe of righteousness is the glory of love worn as adornment. Creation’s glory springs up with thanksgiving, as the earth brings forth its shoots, as the rose candle symbolizes hope. The Psalmist [126] responds in praise. “Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy.” Praise is joy expressed with the body, laughter, shouts, happiness endorphins are released physically; it is something God gave us in creation. We are intended to be joyous, to stir up love. We are called to rejoice.

Paul reminds us [1 Thessalonians 5:16-28] to “rejoice always, [to] pray without ceasing.” Part of joy is prayer, remembering to give thanks to God; remembering to feed the Spirit with joyousness; remembering to use joy to feed the body—no wonder we create ritual.

John’s Gospel [1:6-8, 19-28] tells us (as Mark did last week) about John the Baptist, who “came as a witness to testify to the light.” John quotes Isaiah when he says “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘make straight the way of the Lord.’” We all are called to witness to love, to testify to the joy God has given us. The wilderness is the noise of the world. Our voices of joy call love into our presence, making clear the pathway for the coming of God into our midst. It is in the rejoicing to which we have been called that we find the pathway into the dimension of love.

3 Advent Year B 2023 RCL (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28)

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

Rejoice

Happy New Year!

It is such a time of hope, the new year.

I find that in my own life it is the love my husband and I share that is the most important source of life and hope at the new year. Every year now we joke we should toast it early and pretend—“it must be the new year someplace!”—and every year we sit by the fire and listen to music until the magic hour. And then we toast the new year. We wake up to music from Vienna on our favorite radio stations and then we work on our hoppin’ John and collards and corn pones (my husband grew up in the south).

As I give thanks for the love we share, I remember that there was a time in my life when I could not have imagined that I could be married to a man. I recently shared in an online forum that back in the day it wasn’t so much that I was in the closet hiding, it was more that I didn’t know what it was or that it had a name or that it could actually “be.”

LGBTQ people all have some version of, some variation on, this sort of story. For many there is not so much a muddle as the face of oppression and the search for the dimension of love, in which it is blessed to be who we are, created as we are in the image of God, who after all, is all, who is love.

No wonder we enter each year with hope of the fulfillment of the realization of the manifestation of our own creation as God’s LGBTQ heirs.

And so the hope we carry all of our lives is rooted in the love with which we were created and nurtured, it is borne with the love that is in our hearts, it is the hope of the fulfillment of creation. The New Year is a good time to look forward, with hope.

In the church this year this Sunday is the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which means roughly “God is salvation.” It is this idea, that the manifestation of salvation eternally is being born among us, because after all, love is our salvation and love is our creation and love is all eternity within and through us. In Numbers 6 God teaches us that blessing comes from joy that love brings into our lives. In Galatians 4 we are reminded that we are heirs of God’s loving creation. And in Luke 2 we have the continuation of the story of the shepherd’s on the hillside tending their flocks when the angels appear to tell them of the birth of Jesus, who is salvation come among us. We forget these shepherd’s were at work, at night! And yet the story is full of the forward motion of the action of their response to the angels’ news—they went to Bethlehem, they saw, they proclaimed what they had seen and heard, and then full circle they returned to their work where they loved and rejoiced—they carried salvation with them in their loving joy.

Christmas is the certainty of the hope of God’s love for all of creation, The new year is a reminder to manifest, to fulfill, to realize, to see, then to “return,” to “proclaim,” to “rejoice,” to love.

The Holy Name of Jesus Christ (January 1) RCL 2023 (Numbers 6: 22-27; Psalm 8 Domine, Dominus noster; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:15-21)

©2023 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.

Testify With Your Smile to the Light

When I started seminary one of the professors kept telling us to memorize the Psalter. We all thought she was nuts, of course. But then, over time, as we prayed the psalms not just daily but many times daily we began to understand them as hymns of faith and grace. One of the tests future priests go through is a period of hospital chaplaincy where you meet life and death head on. There we were reminded repeatedly of the power of the Psalter. It was the best way to soothe, it was the best way to feel soothed. Well, it turned out our professor was right.

Psalm 126:1 “When God restored our fortunes then were we like those who dream.”

Indeed. This is maybe the first time in my life that Advent has seemed grounded in reality to me. It is as though we descend deeper each day into the autumnal darkness metaphorically as well as in nature. The pandemic grows more powerful even as our ability to cope with isolation and deprivation and borderline (or not so borderline) despair weakens. And yet we dare to hope. We dare to smile at each other and say “this will all be over one day.” And into this moment comes the soothing of the growth of hope that the season of Advent brings. When has buying a Christmas tree or a wreath been a greater sign of faith and hope? When have the masked smiles of tree sellers and the expressions of “Happy Holidays” been sweeter? Dare we dream? Dare we look forward to a moment of restoration? Verse 6 of this psalm has the answer: “Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Indeed.

The purpose of the season of Advent is the expectation. It is even the purpose of the culture of Santa Claus, to teach not only little children but everyone else too what it means to expect, but to expect not only miracles but also reality. Through this experience we learn to know that what we expect is the annual rebirth of joy in our hearts, and that the joy must arrive in the midst of reality. It is where we learn to dream, to greet each other with a smile, to pray for the moment when we will reap joyous songs.

When I was a boy WWII and the Great Depression were still very real memories for my parents and grandparents. We were taught that our joy was important to hold onto, that our love for each other was critical. I was surprised to inherit recipes from my maternal grandmother that were full of substitutions necessitated by shortages and hard times. I am strengthened now by grace from my grandmother to face our own pandemic-substitutions, to see that we have the best Christmas we can manage in lockdown.

Paul gave the church at Thessalonika a straightforward set of instructions. These are (1 Thessalonians 5:16): “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances.” It is as tough a list in these times as any I suppose. I have found it both more necessary and more critical to pray without ceasing through this time. I have found rejoicing in the simplest places, especially in my interactions with the beauty of the world around me. It is in these small glimpses of joy that my heart is opened and I can truly give thanks. And it is in giving thanks that I find the strength to greet the dawn, to smile through my mask, to appreciate the simple gifts of a society that is trying to learn to walk in love through the midst of this valley of the shadow of death.

Is there a special message for LGBTQ people in this mid-Advent time? Only that we must remember that we are God’s children who are created to love, that to love is our identity, that the love we have to give is critical.

Christmas is coming. Christmas brings the light. We are to testify to the light as we experience it in our hearts. Rejoice, pray, give thanks, and testify with your smile to the light.

3 Advent Year B 2020 RCL (Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8,19-28)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

Stand Firm in LGBTQ Love

It is raining in Oregon. This is a good thing on many levels. It was a very dry summer, so the lawns and trees are relishing the water. Also, it is helping to wash away the smoky dust from the wildfire haze. Humorously I guess, it is nature’s way of preparing us for the real rainy season, which won’t come for awhile yet, by giving us these short two-day rains just to remind us what it is like when it rains for weeks. Oh well. I’m not complaining (too much, yet) because I cooked out every day last week and tomorrow it will be sunny and warm enough for me to get back to the grill.

It has been a month now since the high winds came, followed by the wildfires in central Oregon that chased us away for several days and then, even when we came home, filled the skies with smoke for days and days. During that time a mysterious probably motion-activated light came on on the north side of our house. There is no way to switch it on or otherwise control it, and I hadn’t really noticed it before, except this time it would not go off under any circumstances. I tried everything I could think of, including trying to hire a neighborhood helper to climb up there and unscrew the bulbs (couldn’t reach him, unfortunately). Yesterday my landscaper was here and I asked him to take a look at it, but when we walked around the corner it had gone out! I laughed—it must have been that the sensor was coated with smoky dust that caused it to come on, and now that it has rained for two days and nights the sensor must be clear again.

As I said it got a laugh out of me, and then some head shaking. It would be difficult to really convey how obsessed I had been for so long with the problem of this one tiny light fixture and then, suddenly, in a single moment the whole problem vanished. The problem disappeared as though by grace. Nature followed its own laws and brought rain, and because I left him alone the landscaper took care of lots of other things and by grace a silly bothersome problem vanished. It is a reminder to have faith in God’s grace, a reminder to feel love for the knowledge of God’s ever present grace. It is a reminder that love given builds up more love. Grace is love that follows and builds upon the love we give. But, for grace to follow us we must love first. There is no benefit to obsessive clamping down on problems, to attempting to control by grit rather than giving love and letting grace in.

Scripture appointed for this Sunday begins with the story from Exodus (32:1-14) and Psalm 106 (19-23) about the creation of the golden calf. When God calls Moses on the proverbial carpet about it God says “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are.” It is a good description of the kind of non-loving controlling obsession that arises when we let situations overwhelm our faith in God’s grace. It is an excellent example of how easy it is to replace God in our hearts with self-made objectifications that are easy to worship. It is a reminder that we must be vigilant about loving and letting God’s grace in.

That this is a universal problem of human nature that requires deliberate love (see “Deliberate Sustainable Love”) is confirmed by Paul’s letter to the Philippians (4:1-9) where the theme is to “stand firm in the Lord … Rejoice in the Lord always … Do not worry … but [pray] with thanksgiving “And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” We must be firm about love and and firm in the knowledge that the path to love comes from rejoicing in God’s eternal grace.

In Matthew’s Gospel (22:1-14) Jesus tells a parable about a wedding banquet for which invited guests will not come—Jesus lists their excuses, all forms of controlling obsession instead of rejoicing in grace. The message again is that we ignore God’s grace at our own peril, that we must learn to rejoice in God’s grace and share God’s love.

These are tough times all over. The pandemic is in its tenth month (or so, depending on where you might be on the planet), we are still separated from each other by circumstances so bizarre we could not have imagined them. We are asked to love God and rejoice in God’s grace at the same time we are asked to love each other by computer video. We are asked to have faith in God’s grace at the same time we are asked not to touch each other or even come within ten feet (3 meters more or less). In the United States we are asked to rejoice in God’s grace even as we watch our reality show government outshine anything a Halloween movie producer might have dreamt up. We who are God’s LGBTQ children are asked to rejoice as we watch attempts to push back the paths to equality that have only recently been ours.

And yet, it is exactly that faith born of rejoicing in God’s eternal grace that is the door to the salvation that is already ours. And we who are God’s LGBTQ children are spiritual leaders in this—it is precisely up to us, children whose identity is defined by love, to build up love by rejoicing in the love we share. We must remember to revel in the love we have for each other, because in so doing we build up God’s love. Stand firm in LGBTQ love that is God’s gift to us in our creation in God’s own image. Then rejoice and pray with thanksgiving.

Proper 23 Year A RCL 2020 (Exodus 32:1-14; Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23 Confitemini Domino, Et fecerunt vitulum; Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

The Majesty of Love

I think we are living in a critical time. I think this is one of those times in the history of creation that we can actually make a difference because the gates of heaven are open. Did you ever think what that might mean, that the gates of heaven might be open? It would mean that angels are moving among us, protecting us as they can, comforting us as they must, and moving us as necessary safely across boundaries. It also means that we can move into their realm. How do we do that? By learning to love.

We all know what it feels like to feel love; it’s kind of warm, it’s comforting, it’s tender. As wonderful as it is–and it is wonderful and should be rejoiced–it isn’t what God asks of us. What God asks of us is to give love, which is quite different. Giving love means many things. It means constant outward awareness not only of ourselves but of all around us—all of creation and especially all of God’s people. It means securing justice and maintaining righteousness. It also means thinking always of love, which means not giving yourself over to the absence of love. There should be security and comfort in the knowledge that love builds up, love persists, love grows into majestic beauty.

Do you think about majesty? I had almost forgotten what it meant until I returned to Oregon where I am surrounded by majestic beauty.

Majesty is the immensity of love realized in the eternality of promise and hope. Majesty is the healing power of love given.

Jacob, we are told, had such majestic love for Rachel that he worked and waited seven years to wed her and then apprenticed for seven years more in return for union with her (Genesis 29: 15-28). It is just one example in the Old Testament revelations of God’s manifestation in the world of the majesty of the dramatic power of love that persists above everything.

In return we are to give thanks by which we continue to give love back to creation. Psalm 105 reminds us to give thanks, sing praises, experience glory and rejoice—all ways in which we build up love to ever more majestic heights.

We have help when we need it, not just from those angels sweeping among us, but indeed from God. Paul reminds us (Romans 8:26-39) that God helps us when we are weak, that God’s Spirit intercedes between our cries “with sighs too deep for words” carrying our prayers to God, that God constantly searches our hearts.

Jesus’ string of parables of mustard seed, yeast and hidden treasure (Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52) reveal the same truth—that no matter how tiny a bit of love we manage to give, it will yield majestic results.

For we who are God’s LGBT children, created every one of us in God’s own image, our hearts searched constantly by God, for us the manifestation of love is the way we generate love that switches creation into new dimensions. Iconic author Armistead Maupin, a hero of the LGBT community, nailed it: “Sooner or later, though, no matter where in the world we live, we must join the diaspora, venturing beyond our biological family to find our logical one, the one that actually makes sense for us. We have to, if we are to live without squandering our lives” (Logical Family: A Memoir). It is in the living out of this search for and building up of our “logical families” with love pure and simple that we walk with angels through that gate into a new dimension of the possibility of the majesty of love.

 

Proper 12 Year A 2020 RCL (Genesis 29: 15-28; Psalm 105:1-11, 45b; Romans 8:26-39; Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52)

©2020 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

It must be Christmas*

It must be Christmas because: a) everyone keeps saying happy holiday to me; and, b) it keeps snowing, and snowing, and snowing.

And school is over at last. Time for rest, time for peace. Last night was the longest night of the year; the night in which we sleep, deeply, to prepare, to purify, to be ready for the coming of innocence into our hearts. The solstice is upon us indeed.

Thus this is the moment of the coming of light. From this moment forward the light increases, not just in real terms in the daylight, but in our hearts and souls as well, as the warmth of this season, nurtured with God’s love, grows into fulfillment of God’s kingdom, in and through us. What more can I say?

It is not anybody’s generic “holiday.” It is going to be Christmas.

God just wants all of us to be one. Decorate, light, give, rejoice.

*4 Advent (Isaiah 7:10-16; Psalm 80: 1-7, 16-18; Romans 1:1-7; Matthew 1:18-25)

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

Still Advent*

It is still Advent isn’t it. Christmas encroaches but has not quite overwhelmed us. You have to sort of give the world some credit for that. Just as the “holiday” rises up to sink our ship, reality settles in. I don’t know about you but I vote for equilibrium. Who knows, maybe one day, we could go back to having Christmas on Christmas. What a concept. Christmas. Period. End of it. Meantime, as I said, reality wins. Reality trumps everything. Just look around you, I don’t need to supply examples Except, did you notice that this was the week marriage equality erupted in the state of Washington?

Do you remember RoadRunner cartoons? I was really excited about a year ago while visiting the Warner Brothers archives in Los Angeles to get a look at a score for a RoadRunner cartoon. There it was, the characteristic “BLINK” meaning disaster was at hand …. (I won’t spoil it for you, but it is delicious knowing how that sound was made!). Do you remember Foghorn Leghorn? He had a particular way of talking, repetitive … look here it is in Philippians:

Rejoice in the Lord always,

again,

I say,

rejoice!

I can just hear Foghorn saying that. Rejoice! Again I say, Rejoice! (It’s really okay to find humor in reading scripture, especially if it helps you grasp the point.)

And, again, again I say, rejoice!

That is the purpose of this season of Advent, to remind us to prepare to rejoice. Indeed, the purpose of Advent is to remind us to rejoice. One of the nice things about Philadelphia’s gayborhood is how seriously it takes Christmastide. Decorations everywhere, yes, but especially smiles and hugs and holiday kisses. Everyone lets go of their famous attitude ust a little. And that’s all it takes, just a little letting go, to create a spirit of rejoicing. And in the act of rejoicing among us we stir up  God’s Spirit among all of creation. This is our role at this time.

Now, take a look at the text of that lesson from Phillippians (4:4-7) … be gentle, don’t worry, pray, and rejoice and rejoice. There you have the message of this messy season. Rejoice! God’s love for God’s children is the glory that fills the whole earth. Rejoice!

3 Advent (Zephaniah 3:14-20; Canticle 9 Isaiah 12:2-6;  Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:7-18

©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.