Intersecting Dimensions of Love

It is interesting to ponder the intersection between the dimensions of the natural world and those of the soul. Of course, the soul inheres in us and we exist in the natural world. But do we inhere in the natural world, or do we only reside alongside it? In the Pacific Northwest now we are enjoying a few days of relatively cool weather, but the rain that was forecast never appeared. The trees are still stressed. Although the air smells clean and moist, we see another heat wave is coming in a few days and we wonder when we can look forward to our trademark rain. Even in Oregon, there usually is some rain in summer. If the trees are stressed, if the air seems thin with heat, are we stressed as well? Yes, of course we are. So, does the longing for rain inhere in our souls or in our minds or in both? And, where is the intersection between the dimensions of the soul and those of the natural world?

Psalm 130 is a lament of the soul longing for forgiveness “Out of the depths have I called to you … hear my voice … I wait …, my soul waits …, more than watchmen for the morning.” My immediate reaction was that at the moment we in the Pacific Northwest are watchpeople waiting less for morning than for rain. But you could say “I wait for rain, my soul waits for rain, more than watchpersons wait for the morning.” Thus, here we find a parallel between the dimension of the natural world and the dimension of the world of the soul. The truth of the dimension of the soul is that the forgiveness the lament awaits already has been given, the redemption, the salvation of unity with God already has been given. It is eternal. It is not that we wait for it so much as that we struggle to align our way of being with the dimension where salvation already exists. As Jesus says in all of the Gospels, the kingdom has come near. The question is can we get on the frequency of that dimension, can we learn to see the truth of our own salvation?

The letter to the Ephesians is clearly not written by Saint Paul, but is thought to embody his Gospel, as set in writing by one of his disciples. The essence of Paul’s Gospel is that we are intertwined by love. Again, it is about intersecting dimensions. Can we live in the dimension where love unites us with creation? In this week’s portion (Ephesians 4:25-5:2) we are given the tools we need to hone in on the dimension of God’s love: do not let the sun go down on anger; put away all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander and malice; be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving. This is how to live in love. This is how to occupy the dimension of God’s love. This is how to occupy the dimension of the soul. This is how the dimension of the soul intersects the dimension of the natural world. Love creates, love builds up, love is the source of all power.

I relish life in the dimension of the natural world, where, when I remember to dwell on the frequency of the dimension of love my soul melds with the natural world. Where my skin reflects the moisture in the air that I see in the trees. Where the flowering shrubs respond as quickly to the motion of the sun and the gentle breeze as does my heart. I am eternally grateful that the trajectory of the dimension of God’s love brought me back to this life in nature. I am even soothed by the new ways in which I see my sibling LGBTQ heirs of creation finding new forms of community, new ways to let our love shine as a light to lead the way to the dimension of living in the love which is ours in creation.

I give thanks for the mornings when the watch of God’s creation brings gentle peace to my soul in the intersection of the many dimensions of creation. I rejoice in the intersection of the dimensions of love.

Proper 14 Year B 2021 RCL (2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33; Psalm 130 De profundis; Ephesians 4:25-5:2; John 6:35, 41-51)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

If we Dare

They say that time and space are one. This actually is a tenet of physics and of theology (which we should remember is the queen of the sciences). The meaning of the union of time and space is that all things happen and have happened and will happen in the space that is. That means that we experience (or maybe perceive is a better word) only tiny portions of reality in each moment, as we pass through dimensions. We experience everything at once, but we perceive things sequentially.

Another way to look at it is to understand that temporality is a human invention that has its purposes, like movie start times, airplane take-offs, and so forth. But, in reality, the life you love already exists and is waiting for you to get onto the plane of its existence.

Thus, when we read of King David committing sin (2 Samuel 11:1-15)(and let’s be clear that the sin is the cutting off of himself from God), we see that the outcome is the loss of love. The power of the anointing of David as King over all of God’s dimension of temporal geography is in the eternity of the connection between God and David and thereby between God and the people. All love and all of heaven always exist. This unity of love can be experienced when we allow ourselves to cross into the dimension of love, when we open our hearts to the love that is all around us, when we remember that love builds up.

In Psalm 14 we hear about “fools”— people who do not embrace love—they are said to have no “knowledge.” Knowledge, of course, is the eternal wisdom about love and loving God and loving each other, wisdom that is written on our experience and in our genes through our creation in God’s loving image.

The letter to the Epehsians (3:14-21) asks us to strengthen our inner being—our soul—which is where we are in direct contact with the Holy Spirit. It is in our souls that we dwell in the dimension of love, if we dare. There we are “rooted and grounded in love” in a dimension so wide it is “the breadth and length and height and depth” of the “love that surpasses knowledge.” There we may attain the fullness of God, if we dare.

In John’s Gospel (6:1-21) we have two stories—Jesus feeds thousands with bread and fish, and then he calms the sea. To the nascent church of the years after Jesus’ resurrection these were stories that sustained the believers. The main point of the first story is that the miracle comes from the love in the boy who gave all he had (“five barley loaves and two fish”). The main point of the second story is how people (even the disciples) are loathe to recognize God in their midst (notice the way that Jesus says “It is I”, as in Exodus God says God’s name is “I Am”). The moral of the story is the last line, that once they recognize God in Jesus in their midst, their boat lands on dry land and their trial is over.

Such is the power of love, if we dare.

If we dare to be who God created us to be, if we dare to be fully loving LGBTQ people created in God’s own image to love, if we dare to look up and see the love in the faces of those around us, we too can experience the breadth and length and height and depth of the eternity of God’s dimensions of love.

Proper 12 Year B RCL 2021 (2 Samuel 11:1-15; Psalm 14; Ephesians 3:14-21; John 6:1-21)

©2021 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

We are all born blind*

When I was about 11 or so, my dad had a terrible car accident. I remember it was the 4th of July and he had just shipped into Long Beach from Taiwan. We’d greeted him at the pier, and we’d had a great reunion evening, and then early that morning he’d taken the car in to the ship to get the stuff he’d bought in Taiwan, including some magnificent rosewood furniture. But, the main thing was, he’d brought Chinese fireworks for the 4th. So all day we waited for him but he never came; some time in the late afternoon Mother got “the” phone call—he’d been in a wreck and had been taken to San Diego where there was a better military hospital. (You know, right, that this is a fifty page story, so I’m doing my best here to cut to the chase.) Mother had to buy a new car [!] with the money in her purse … it was a horrid chevy station wagon. She paid for it off the used car lot, then she and I drove to San Diego to see Dad. She got a neighbor to babysit the kids (my much younger siblings). Dad was in traction with broken hips. But let’s just cut to the chase. Three months later, Dad is home, and they sit me down in the living room after the kids are asleep, and they explain to me how bad men will try to touch me. It took me years to figure out that really nice Navy nurse (a young red-headed guy) had put the moves on Dad, and Dad had ratted him out.

So, let’s see, I was 11. And it was 13 years later before I could let the eyes of my soul, “born blind” open up and realize it was okay to love another boy.  And this is the value of today’s Gospel for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people everywhere. Because we are all born “blind” my friends. And we have to let our eyes be opened if we are going to experience the beauty of life God has made for us. In the story you might notice that there is a lot of chatter about how Jesus made the blind boy see, but there isn’t any detail about the process. Okay, a little bit of mud. But, it isn’t the mud that opens the boys’ eyes anymore than it was mud that opened my own eyes when I finally came out. One day I just realized I was gay, and I just wanted to stop playing blind. You know what, in 1975 it was harder than you might think to come out. It took the blink of an eye to come out to myself; but it took months to find a sympathetic gay person to take me by the metaphorical hand and show me how to find the community into which I had been born. All jokes aside, his name was Billy, and I’ll never forget the joy and laughter with which he welcomed me into the reality of my own self, and drew me toward the community where I could and would be nurtured.

You know, I intended this story to follow on from the gospel about the man born blind. But now that I think about it, it follows too from the story about the selection of David, the least of  Samuel’s sons. Later we will learn that David was “the fairest of men” and that his love for Jonathan surpassed the love of God. So let’s see, sometimes these weird stories we tell about our own lives are pretty much like these stories where God chooses the right one, which is why the Bible is considered revelatory.

“For once you were in darkness but now in the Lord you are light.” You are light. You. Are light. Let your light shine friends, let it illumine the world.

Let me put it more bluntly—BE GAY! Or, REJOICE AND BE GAY! And let your light shine my friends.
*4 Lent (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)

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

Salt of the Earth*

A year or so ago my husband gave me a book about salt. I was a little curious when I opened it (it was a Christmas gift) but I trust his judgment and he was right. It was both interesting and important. It is the sort of book you can read on a long flight, and since I had a few trans-Atlantic flights going on then, that’s exactly what happened. I read about salt as I flew back and forth from Philadephia to Amsterdam.

It was interesting all on its own. And although I had never seriously considered the role of salt in the history of humankind, I began to see its importance emerge from the narrative. This was very well-written history; compelling even. And what’s more, I began to recognize salt I knew! Those salt flats at the southern end of San Francisco Bay for instance. We’ve all flown over them landing at San Francisco International Airport. But those of us who grew up in California have driven past them for decades. When have you flown in there, or driven there? I first drove past them in 1964 en route to Hawaii (on the USS Lurline). Next when we flew back from Hawaii in 1967 and drove south to Monterey. And then over and over en route to San Francisco, but especially when I flew to New York to take conducting lessons when I was 17, and then again, and again, and again as I flew back and forth from Portland Oregon, where I went to college. And then more. So that was exciting. And it turned out I knew other salt flats as well. But the real thrill came for me when I was on the train through Belgium, when I began to think to myself “my, this looks like how the salt flats were described” and then whoa, there they were …..

So this Gospel is great because Jesus is equating being salty with keeping your light shining, and that is exactly correct physiologically speaking. But how else is it correct? Remember, the body is mostly salt and water; if we subtract the water, what’s left is salt. If the water is the electricity that makes the engine run, the salt is the substance on which and from which and within which it runs. Sounds like the soul to me.

Never thought of your soul as salt, huh? Well, take a shot at it. Isaiah says shout out your love of God, don’t think all that posturing with candles and vestments and pretty language is convincing God of your love … God knows better, God sees through you, God knows your salt because God knows you’re salt. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians; he says “we have received not the spirit of the world but the Spirit of God.” He means, we have received our salt—our souls—from God. And that is how we are the children of God. And like orphans everywhere, it is up to us to recognize God our Father as our Creator, and to acknowledge that love that made us and makes us and is in us.

God my friends wants to be with you in your saltiness. I think this is a terrific message for gay people. We’re always being accused, usually by other gay people, of being too gay—“oh my gosh you will mess it up for us if you keep being SO GAY.” Well, my friends, God wants us to be gay, and salty to boot. And God wants us to be gay because it is how we lift the boats, it is how our salty souls provide a place for the whole world to relax and see that sexuality is not freakish, it is of God.

That means of course that sin is irrelevant. How many times have you  been told you are a sinner because you  are gay? Well, that is always wrong, wrong, wrong. Sin is how you disconnect yourself from God. Isaiah’s prophecy is all about how to stay connected to God. Love each other, respect each other, help each other; for heaven’s sake (literally), participate in creating the kingdom in your own midst.  Because you my friends, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, you are the salt of the earth.
*5th Sunday after the Epiphany (Isaiah 58:1-9a, (9b-12); Psalm 112:1-9, (10); 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, (13-16); Matthew 5:13-20)

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