"Need of Only One Thing" 16th Sunday Ordinary Time

“There is need of only one thing,” Jesus tells us. “One thing.” Sounds like Curly the trail boss in “City Slickers”. And like Curly, Jesus doesn’t tell us what the one thing is. Only that Mary has chosen it and Martha somehow missed it. One thing. Sometimes we need a little mystery and intrigue to be open to the simplest of truths.
Our readings today focus on the burdens and chaos of hosting VIP’s. God in the case of Abraham and Sarah, and Martha and Mary. Doesn’t get much VIPer than that!
Anybody who has ever hosted a party, or family gathering knows hosting is hard. Lots of preparation. People to invite, menus to plan, food to buy, food to cook, food to time so hot things are hot, cold things are cold. Do we worry about who sits next to whom? What if Uncle Joe is still mad at Aunt Sally, they can’t sit together!
Barbara and I used to have 15-20 people over for Thanksgiving and Christmas. We loved the large gatherings. We even loved hosting. Of course we lived in a townhouse at the time and trying to squeeze 20 people around one table first involved asking everyone if they needed to use the restroom. You see, once everyone sat down there was no room to get to the bathroom. Each person then received their folding chair, single filed to their place and had to puzzle out how to maneuver themselves and their chair into meal position. After the meal, no one could escape until their girth had receded somewhat. And yet, despite all the challenges, we have wondrously fond memories of those meals. The simple joy of being together, of breaking bread, celebrating life and abundance. I’d like to think we celebrated the “one thing”.
Some 4,000 years ago Abraham called himself a servant of his guests. His hosting involved dashing about getting a steer chosen, slaughtered and cooked and having Sarah make her famous light and flaky dinner rolls. And God, present in the three visitors, seemed pleased, announcing that the barren Sarah would have a son within a year.
Poor Martha dashes about in chaotic service much like Abraham and Sarah. She’s “burdened, anxious, and worried about many things.” And Jesus chastises her for missing the one thing! What causes her guest to respond so harshly? What is different about how she hosts compared with Abraham and Sarah? The clue lies in her question to Jesus. I can picture her, hair frazzled, apron askew, flour streaked across her face, and with a fiery glare of despair she proclaims just how much she has sacrificed and here no one is helping her. “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?”
Why do we host? Why go to all that trouble? We do it to put people at ease so they are free to enjoy each other. Martha has forgotten this. Mary is basking in the gift of leisure and experiencing Jesus, God with her. Then Martha goes and plays the false martyr. Doing so puts at risk the very gift she had been giving — the chance for others to experience Jesus. Jesus responds in the only way possible to salvage the gift Martha has become too burdened to give freely. “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.” The better part?
It is easy to see only the surface of this Gospel. Mary is sitting in leisure with Jesus and has chosen the better part. Perhaps Martha should have left everything undone and joined Mary. But this isn’t what Jesus is saying at all. It is entirely possible that Martha could serve, be doing all the details and chaos of hosting, and also have chosen the better part. “There is need of only one thing.” Right relationship. If Martha had somehow been able to pause, take a deep breath, and recognize that the gift of her service was allowing Mary to freely enjoy being with Jesus, she may have been able to enter into the moment and also freely enjoy being with Jesus, in spite and because of her sacrifices. That is part of the gift of hosting. That is the one thing. Right relationship. The ability to recognize God present in each other, to celebrate the abundance of gift we each have been given. Martha could have hosted AND chosen the one thing. Abraham and Sarah did.
Hosting is a lot like life, isn’t it? It may be possible to experience the chaos and frenzy of life and choose the one thing, but that doesn't mean it is easy or that we automatically know how to do it. As much as I try not to let my disability drag me down to the point that I feel sorry for myself, that all I feel is the burden of what I can’t do, sometimes life is just too heavy and cruel. Sometimes I bellow to Jesus “Lord, do you not care that I carry this heavy burden and others just go about their lives?!” Perhaps we’ve all felt like Martha at times. When we do, how can we pause, take a deep breath, and shift our choice from one of burden and woe to one of gift and love?
When I feel like Martha, there are two prayers that help me.
First, naming three things I am grateful for and saying a prayer of thanksgiving for each. One, even two things can be easy. Family: Barbara and our two daughters. Thank you, God, for the love and support family gives me day in and day out! Needs met in abundance: love, shelter, food, clothing. Thank you God for the abundance you provide. Two’s easy. Three can be hard. Yet there is something glorious about finding that third thing. Somehow my soul shifts from seeing the burden and pain to seeing the gift and love. Despite all my brain damage and limitations, I am still able to read, write, play with ideas, and help support others who experience similar challenges. Thank you, God, for the parts of my brain that haven’t been damaged! The power of this prayer isn’t that it removes the obstacles of life. No. The challenges remain the same, but my attitude somehow shifts, the burden no longer matters, and I am able to carry it with joy.
The second thing that helps me enter into God’s presence, the gift of right relationship, is that I ask God to bless those who seem to be causing me burden. Most often the result is the same. I come to realize that they aren’t causing me burden intentionally if at all. They’re simply struggling with their own burden. This is a wonderful prayer for family life! In our family, we each end up with a LOT of blessings! And in traffic, school, home, or at work it really comes in handy. “Lord, bless that sass-a-frass-a-frick-a frack who irritates the heck out of me. Help them have a fulfilling day and help us each become who you created us to be.” Then, if the opportunity comes along and I’ve managed to reach a place of gratitude, I try and host them in some small way, give them a bit of freedom from their cares. Because one of the odd realities of being human is that when we fall, by reaching sideways to help others, we find it much easier to get up ourselves.
Let’s take a few moments to try these prayers out. Think of a time you felt like Martha, where the world just seemed heavy. Now, silently name three things that are gift in your life. (brief pause) What is the first one? Thank God, silently now, for the gift. The second one? Thank God for the gift. The third one? Thank God for the gift.
Now think of a time someone burdened you. Maybe it’s something from last week, or perhaps a test or review, or meeting coming up this week. Who knows, it could even be a family member! I can likely guess who Barbara’s about to pray for. Hold that person in prayer. “Lord, bless this person. Their choices and actions burden me. Help them have a fulfilling day and help us each become who you created us to be. Amen.” Now, think about how you might be able to help free them of some of their burden this week. Is there something you could do that might free them from their cares? If there is, wonderful! And if not, then you’ve forgotten you can pray for God’s blessings on them — sometimes we can’t do something directly for any number of good reasons, but prayer is always one of the best gifts we can offer. If you can help remove their cares, no matter how briefly, please — make a commitment to do so this week. Something as simple as a smile in passing, or a kind word can lighten someone’s load.
Life offers us each different challenges at different times. And at times we each feel like Martha — heavy with burden, jealousy, anger — because of the burdens we carry that other’s don’t. Can we remember the “one thing”? Each person we meet is a VIP, made in God’s image and having a unique aspect of God to reveal to the world. Can we remember to seek Jesus our Christ in each moment, each person, and host them with love and gratitude?

Trinity Sunday

Good morning! My wife, Barbara and I are delighted to be joining you and Our Lady of the Woods! As you may have gathered from hearing the introductions — I’m a bit of an odd bird. On top of that, I have my brain injury. For those of you who haven’t seen the introduction bulletin insert, I received my 8th concussion at the end of 2002 and have a variety of deficits because of it. Aside from my walking sticks, my deficits are invisible — which often brings up a lot of questions from folks. Depending on the day, I can hike mountains or trike for miles, so some folks wonder “what’s this disabled thing all about?”. Please, whatever your questions, I’m happy to answer them. The only way for us to understand each other and work together to build God’s kingdom here and now is to face the challenges of life head on. Or is that how I got to be brain bludgeoned, facing too many things head on? Please know I’m delighted to meet and talk briefly after Mass, but email is the best way for me to be able to respond to you. Thank you for your wonderful welcoming openness to trying out this “quiet” Mass. Perhaps the silence may even invite us to experience the gift of Christ in a new way.
The Trinity. (Sign of the Cross) May God bless us, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Today is Trinity Sunday — a time to reflect and explore who God is. Intellectually we understand the Trinity. Three in One. Esoteric, bizarre math. The three leafed shamrock. A non-existant 3-dollar bill. Those images give us a picture of three mostly identical parts. That’s not how we experience the different person’s of the Trinity. We experience them very differently. God the Father saves us through his son Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.
We live in the shadow of Pikes Peak — the lone, grand mountain seen from all sides — sides which look vastly different from one another. There are numerous tales of the Ute Indians finding safety from those who pursued them around the mountain. They would get disoriented, looking for Pikes Peak. You see, it’s very distinctive as seen from the East, a lone peak among the foothills. As seen from the North, near Green Mountain Falls or here at Woodland Park, it looks very different, a tall peak on the left with a long sloping tail drifting off to the right. Move around to the West, to Cripple Creek or Victor - the peak disappears. It’s just a bunch of high rolling hills clumped together. Different faces — one peak. That’s a lot like how we experience God.
I came to see and understand Pikes Peak this way because of experiences I had hiking the Grand Tetons. Three tall, majestic peaks bursting out of the plains — that’s how most of us have seen them. But backpack around them and they become one peak from the South — until you see them as three distinct peaks once again from the West side. “The Grand Breasts.” One of the Hebrew names for God is “The Breasted One” — El Shedai. Somehow, I doubt the French trappers who named these majestic mountains bursting out of the flat plains had El Shedai in mind when they dubbed them “The Grand Tetons!” and yet that earthy imagery brings me to another way for us to begin to grasp the vast mystery of three in one. Marriage.
The fullness of marriage – what marriage is meant to be – is nothing less than the image of God – the Trinity. The Eastern Orthodox Church offers us a new, very old, understanding of who our creator is. Here's a poem I wrote on marriage, based on this mystical understanding of the Trinity as Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share:

Before the beginning
was the Lover,
Ever present, infinite reaching,
with a love so strong, powerful, and deep,
reaching out, demanding a response!
So the Beloved,
who had always been,
rushed into the arms of the Lover.

Lover and Beloved,
Embracing in a wild passionate dance eternal.
The Love they share
pours forth in abundance –
as the first winds over every new creation.
We know them as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share.
We are their creature,
Made in their image.
Their incarnation,
we yearn to live as
Lover and Beloved,
to change the world by the
Love we share.

As we start this month of June, the month of weddings, where Lover and Beloved are joined and begin to share their Love, I’m reminded that the marriages among us reveal God to the world in a way far beyond our understanding…
Wait. Marriage can reveal God to us? Yes. Each of us is made in God’s image. Each of us has some unique aspect of God to reveal to the world. In discovering, living, and serving others through who God created us to be, we reveal who God is and help build the kingdom of heaven. This is holiness.
We typically think of holiness as the purview of priests, monks, and others who take vows of celibacy. It is. Holiness is also the purview of married folks, working to balance the chaos of jobs, kids, school, friends, activities, vacations. God is in that chaos. The way we struggle and strive with the hectec and the hustle and bustle can reveal God to those around us.
Marriage is a path toward holiness. Living the sacrament of marriage unwraps over a lifetime. The vows my wife and I took when we were 19 have taken on depth and meaning as we’ve lived our lives together. The many struggles, gifts, losses, and triumphs help us understand more fully the meaning of those simple words “for better or worse, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer, till death do we part.”
Marriage gets a bum wrap in society. Like many things, marriage is becoming disposable. Optional. For many people marriage is a disposable item that can be cast off when it becomes inconvenient — if it’s taken on at all. Angelina Jolie has ruled out marriage to Brad Pit, saying "We've both been married before. Our focus when we got together was family, and we are legally bound to our children. That really seems to be the most important thing." A recent television show of “Bones” depicted a much anticipated bride and groom at the altar, learning at the last minute that she was already married. Oddly, the groom didn’t care and they ran off together. The message? It’s love that matters, not some administrative formality called marriage. How much does this Hollywood mentality toward marriage reflect our society? Hard to say, but there is a growing disillusionment among young men and women that makes them either blase about marriage or leary of entering a commitment they don’t see much hope of being able to keep. In many ways, our culture seems to be moving toward what Pope John Paul II called European secularism — where faith is irrelivant, marriage foolish.
Perhaps we are partly to blame. Do we, as Catholic Christians, strive to celebrate the gift marriage really is? We hear our Church telling us the dangers of gay marriages or unions to the sanctity of marriage, of the need to thoroughly prepare before becoming married, that what God has brought together, no person can tear apart. But do we really understand the true gift of marriage? Do we understand that the joys and sorrows, triumphs and challenges of sharing life intimately with another can reveal Jesus to us? Do we hold up our own marriage and those around us as examples of the Father’s redemptive love? Do we understand that for most of us, marriage, like the Holy Spirit, gives us new life and is our path toward holiness? Do we really get that our gateway to salvation, to becoming who God created us to be, is the flesh and blood man or woman we married?
It’s one thing to decry the current state of marriage in our society. It’s something else entirely to strive to transform ourselves and our society by the power of our faith lived out in the daily fabric our our lives — to celebrate the reality that marriage redeems those who strive to live it and brings new life to all who are near it.
I said that for most of us, marriage is our path toward salvation. How can this be? Just as Jesus our Christ is the bridegroom of the Church, husband and wife are Christ for each other. I don’t know about you, but my wife constantly reveals to me Christ’s patience, temperance, passion, and love. Her daily choices of sacrifice, her intimate knowledge of me, help me understand my own potential of who God made me to be. I pray I do the same for her. By living as Lover and Beloved we both reveal Jesus to each other and are shown how we can become more like him. Our Beloved is our doorway to God.
I also said that marriage offers new life to those who encounter it. Children are the most obvious example of this gift of co-creation. One plus one equals three, or four, or five or…! And children aren’t the only way new life bursts forth from married love. We’ve all encountered couples who exude life — inspiring others to love and live more deeply — the hope and joy of life simply spreading out around them.
How do we celebrate marriage? How do we support those marriages that are part of our community? Marriage vows are powerful promises — and they take on meaning as we live life, face life’s challenges and triumphs. How do we celebrate and support those marriages who are living out one side or the other of for richer or poorer? Or sacrificing in sickness while praying for health? struggling through worse in the hope of better? How do we celebrate and support families new to our parish family, or who have new born life and are delightedly struggling with parenthood?
I haven’t been here long, but already I know that the people of this community have been celebrating and supporting many marriages in many ways — helping families in need financially, facing sickness or injury, struggling to serve each other. These things have been quietly happening through marriage and social ministries, informal networks, and parish friendships. Christ has been and is being revealed in the love and support given to many families within our community.
Lover, Beloved, and the Love they Share. A new, very old way of understand the Trinity. Marriage gives us an understanding of who God is, offers us a path toward salvation in Jesus our Christ, and helps spread new life in the form of children and of boundless love.
I invite each of us this week to think of those couples whose marriages reveal God to us. Be bold and tell them, “I see God in your love for each other! Thank you for the gift your marriage is to me.” Be bold and send them a thank you note.
For those of us who are married, I invite us to recognize Christ in our wife or husband. What is Jesus trying to tell us through our Beloved? When we greet each other after being parted for a day or a week, is our reunion that of Lover and Beloved in passionate embrace? It should be! This week I invite you to share with your Beloved how they are Christ for you, how they invite and challenge you to become more fully who God created you to be. And together explore the Love you share and the various ways it goes forth and breathes live into the world!
Mountains and Marriages. The experience of God, here among us. Tangible experiences of peaks seen from different sides, of husband and wife sharing one love and it taking the form of new life. These very human experiences give us a glimpse of God’s vastness and eminent, intimate presence in our lives. God the Trinity, in whose image we are made, a mystery beyond understanding, yet wondrously jubilant to embrace.
May God bless us as we gaze on mountains and see our Creator. May God bless us as we witness God the Lover, Beloved, and the Love they share in our marriages and those families around us. May we ever be marked and blessed as belonging to (Sign of the Cross) the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Dis-Ability. First Sunday of Lent

“When Life, like the Egyptians, maltreated and oppressed us, imposing hard labor upon us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers, and he heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. ”

Good Morning! I’m Deacon Patrick. I’m going to explore a bit what it means to be disabled, the clarity recognizing our disabilities can bring to our lives, our yearning to be healed, and how Jesus our Christ gives us that healing.

First, I’d like to briefly share with you my journey to becoming a deacon. Nine years ago I entered diaconal formation. Upon completing formation, a four year personal, spiritual, and academic journey — I was too young to be ordained and was thrown back into the whisky barrel to age further. Then 20 years of living unknowingly with the effects of concussions caught up with me. Apparently the brain is like the vast and intricate road system of a large city, and concussions are a lot like earthquakes to that city. My first 7 “earthquakes” weakened my brain infrastructure but I’d managed to unknowingly work around it. What I didn’t know is that my bridges, overpasses, and roadways were cracked below and even a minor earthquake could have catastrophic effect on my brain. A little over 4 years ago I had my 8th “earthquake” and became disabled. These last four years have been extremely challenging and rewarding as our family has learned to live with my disability. A few weeks ago, Bishop Sheridan ordained me a deacon, even though my service looks quite different from what other deacons are able to do.

Thank you for your prayers and support these past years. Your gift of strength, love, fortitude, and joy has helped make our family’s journey possible. Thank you.

Dis-ability. An inability to do something the way I ought to be able to. There are all kinds of disabilities. We typically think of disability as the physical ones we can see: like someone who can’t move their legs and is confined to a wheel chair. Or who is blind and needs a cane to get around. Many disabled people, however, fit into a different category. The invisible disability. Our deaf community likely knows all about meeting people who don’t know they can’t hear. Brain injured people usually look fine and no one suspects anything is wrong. Reality is vastly different. Living with Traumatic Brain Injury, I wake up each morning not knowing if I’ll be able to have breakfast with my wife and daughters or if I’ll need solitude away from the chaos of family life. Will I be in my recliner all day or will I be able to hike for miles on the North Slopes of Pikes Peak and play games with my family? When disability comes, it changes our lives and it changes us.

Each of us is disabled in some way. Somehow we’re not yet the fullness of who God made us to be. The first stage of learning to live with a disability is denying it. I went for over 20 years not recognizing that something was wrong — even though looking back I can see that the world sure seemed to be harder for me than it was for others or then I remembered it being. Even though my own disability was invisible to me, there were signs of it in my life. I think that’s true for everyone’s disabilities. Yet recognizing our own disabilities, those ways we fall short of who we could be, helps us clarify what is important — out of the clutter of busy lives comes a focus of purpose and personal calling. This Lent, I’m asking God to show me where I’m disabled that I don’t yet know about and to gift me with clarity of who I am called to be from amidst the clutter. I invite each of us to do the same.

(Please kneel.)

Shortly we’ll have a minute of silence. In that minute of silence ask God to show you your disability. God often does this through the voice of those closest to us. Is there something I am not able to do in the way I ought to? Show me where I am weak, Lord. Maybe, like Jesus being tempted in the desert, I too am tempted. Maybe, unlike Jesus, I give in to the temptation. When am I afraid? What am I afraid of losing? What do I cling to? How am I disabled?

Lord speak to us in the silence. (1 minute of silence.)

(Thank you. Please be seated.)

When we’re disabled, we recognize that we aren’t the way God intended us to be. We’re broken. And we have a choice. We can mope about it and feel sorry for ourselves — which we all do occasionally. Or we can decide to lean on God, trust that despite our disability God can somehow use us to make this world more like God’s Kingdom, and we can seek the gifts all around rather than dwell on the pain.

Once we realize we are dis-abled, we yearn for healing. After I was disabled many people lovingly shared with me ways to place myself at God’s feet and ask for healing. With time, one very simple, profound healing prayer has come to carry deep meaning for me. It happens at every Mass. Did you know that every Mass is a healing Mass? "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed". “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you (because I often put ambition, image, piety, or something else I want as more important than you), but despite my failures and blindness, only say the word and I shall be healed.”

The Mass is mystical. It grabs us and takes us where God needs us to be. Right now we are transcending time and space. Right now we are united with the Israelites as they mark their doors with lamb’s blood so God will spare their first born sons. Right now we wander in the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan, Jesus at our side reminding us how to respond. Right now we are united with Jesus, his Apostles and disciples in a small room in Jerusalem, the aroma of rich wine and roasted lamb tantalizing our pallets at the Passover meal, which we know as the Last Supper. Right now, we are united with the eternal Mass of Heaven: Choirs of angels, all the Saints, and the Lamb who gives himself for us. The Mass is mystical. Every part of the Mass has the potential to grab us and take us exactly where God needs us to be.

I love the healing that happens every time I enter into this timelylessness of the Mass -- it prepares me for that time when we are to be fully healed (what a delicious and awful experience that will be!). I feel a powerful juxtaposition of anguish and elation each time we say that prayer -- anguish at the chasm between where I am and full healing, elation in knowing that God does say the word and I will be healed.

Our first reading reminds us that God delivers us out of bondage, out of disability, into a land of abundance! The Gospel reminds us that we will experience hardship and temptation, but that God is with us and we have only to choose to be with God. God loves us beyond understanding! God will say the word and we will be healed! We will become the fulness of who God created us to be! Some of that healing may happen here and now, before we die. But when we die, striving and struggling to run toward Jesus our Christ, then we will be completely healed — we will become fully human.

Fully human. I don’t think we understand very well what that means. Jesus shows us what it means. The union of divine with human. Jesus came to show us our full potential. It doesn’t lie in the temptations of power, importance, or wealth as Satan tempts us with every day. By his answers to these temptations, Jesus shows us that to be fully human we need God. We do not live by bread alone. We should worship the Lord our God and serve only Him. And we shall not put the Lord our God to the test. To be fully human, we need to make God’s will our own, taking on divine qualities and characteristics. Rather like water mixed with a carafe of wine.

Common, ordinary water, blessed by the Trinity through the vine, sun, and wind, is transformed into ripe succulent grapes. Grapes are tromped, mixed and aged to become rich robust wine — the wine soon to be placed on this altar. In preparing the table for our meal of Jesus, I’ll pour three drops of water into the wine, three drops which represent each of us, with the prayer "By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

Being less able to do what we ought to be able to, we are much like those drops of water. Dropped into the divine life of God all around us and blessed by God’s grace, we take on the qualities and characteristics of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father, fulfilling our potential.

Disability is built into our journey, just as it is built into the journey of water as it enters into the wine and is transformed into the Blood of Christ, surrendering itself to embrace its full promise. God loves us so beyond measure that he sent his only Son to show us our promise. We may each be disabled in various and sundry ways, but our potential is no less amazing than water which through time, crafting, and grace becomes wine, placed on the altar and through prayer, faith, and grace becomes the Blood of Christ. May we come to share in the divinity of Christ!

This Lent, I invite and challenge each of us to figure out how we are less than human, how we are disabled, and place our disabilities and ourselves on the altar along with the bread, the water, and the wine, that we may be transformed into the fullness of who God created us to be. Lord, only say the word and I shall be healed.

Eleventh Day of Christmas

January 5
Realization of self leads to the choice to be taken, blessed, broken and shared – by our Beloved spouse, our family, our work, our ministry, ourselves. This is the eleventh gift of Christmas – the penetrating mirror that shows us ourselves as only a harrowing journey can upon reflection from the warm safety of a welcoming inn. Having lost ourselves, we find ourselves and realize there is safety only in abandonment. We come to realize we are holy fools striving to live out our unique aspect of divinity. We learn to laugh at ourselves and make merry, for as goofy as we are, we are cherished and loved and have a divine expression to whisper loudly through the living of our lives. Merry Christmas, fools!
Patrick

Tenth Day of Christmas

January 4
Having entered the land of despair, embraced it, placed it at the foot of the cross, witnessed it and ourselves transformed so that we see others as God intended them to be, set our priorities through right relationship discovered through grit and sabbath we become more and more capable of experiencing delight in the world around us. The everyday ordinary somehow becomes the holy extraordinary. Rather, we recognize the holy extraordinary as having always been there. This is the incarnation. Emmanuel, God is with us. This is the tenth gift of Christmas – seeing wonderment in all about us. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Ninth Day of Christmas

January 3
Sabbath. A day of rest. The key to creating and maintaining right relationship. One day a week set aside for nothing other than entering into relationship with those closest to us. It makes no difference that we’re busy and have no time for a whole day without anything scheduled – we don’t have time not to. Here’s why. When one day is set aside with nothing planned, the purpose and proper proportion of the doings of the rest of the week become clear. Not right away. Over time. Get out your calendars right now. Decide on a day of the week that works for you. Cross it through for the next three months, rescheduling or canceling anything in the way. Live it for three months – discover what it is. Keep it sacred and the rest of your week will become sacred also. This is the ninth gift of Christmas and the key to right relationship. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Eighth Day of Christmas

January 2
Having emerged from the depths of despair, we yearn to help others. Yet afore we can minister outward we must first and always see to our primary vocation – marriage. Our first responsibility is always to our Beloved spouse and our children. Our Beloved spouse and the love we share (children, in part) are the eighth gift of Christmas. Our work and ministry mean nothing if they create ministerial widows, widowers, and orphans. Only by seeking the depths of right relationship with our Beloved can we have any idea what it ought to look like in serving others. There is a hierarchy of service: Spouse and family, work, then ministry. Right relationship must be seen to in that order of priority. Society tends to fall short in its support of these priorities and they must be fought for, as is required, for right relationship. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Seventh Day of Christmas

January 1
I’m not convinced we ever truly leave the land of despair once we’ve been there. But the very fact that we’ve been there prepares us to minister to others. For it was someone else who showed us the way out. We couldn’t find it on our own. They found us and just by being with us they gave us hope. They walked with us through the carnage, acknowledged the horror of it all and yet still had that spark about them, unquenchable. They somehow knew victory was already won, that life is stronger than death, and hope conquers despair. And they gave that spark to us afore they departed. They showed us the power of community. We do not journey alone. They showed us the power of hope. They showed us how to see with God’s eyes. For what in despair appears naught but caked mud and clotted blood is, in reality, the embodiment of God infused into all of creation and just slightly covered by our inhumanity. Our humanity awaits underneath. And despair no longer holds any power over us. The seventh gift of Christmas is seeing all creation, particularly all people, as what God created them to be rather than just what they’ve thus far chosen to be. Merry Christmas!

Sixth Day of Christmas

December 31
Whatever caused us to enter despair, the specific circumstances which gave us our ticket beyond the comfortable and known, something is certain – we feel helpless, and rightly so, in the face of such atrocity. How can we possibly go on? How can we ever see beauty in the world again? What we have seen has revealed to us just how tainted the world really is. We are right. We cannot stand alone in the face of such injustice. No one asks us to, except our own false ego. Here, at our realization of helplessness against the tide, is where we give up. We die. Rather, our false self dies and we are left with the person God created us to be. Sounds so simple, so “Oh, I’ve done that now, let’s move on.” It’s not. It’s painful and cyclical as we spiral ever upward and deepward on our journey. And every time it reminds us more fully how much we need the cross. The cross is our sixth gift of Christmas, for at its feet we place our failings and inadequacy and they are transubstantiated into gifts of community and hope. Merry Christmas!
Patrick

Fifth Day of Christmas

December 30
Despair comes when the mind can no longer martial into order and sense the absurd grotesqueness about it. When the mind does thus feel, as it is doomed to, for it was never designed to grasp the infinite, it is the heart that must come to our aid. While the mind’s gift is the ordering of chaos, collecting of knowledge and setting into expression and memory our experiences, it is the heart that embraces the infinite, enters the mystical. The heart needs no understanding; it sees what is beyond understanding and knowing. It accepts the mystery and enters into the experience and shows us more than we’ve ever imagined existed. Then the mind’s simple job is to somehow interact with the ungraspable and inexpressible and find expression for it. Herein lies our hope when despair swallows us down – the heart is the fifth gift of Christmas for it helps us explore the land of darkness and despair and find Jesus there, ministering to those abandoned and lost, including ourselves. Merry Christmas!
Patrick