Terrapin Station

Word for the Day

Learned at the Eleventh Hour Preacher Party:  Eisegesis (isogesis): which appears to be the opposite of exegesis.  If I understand correctly, the first is explaining scripture through the world, and the second is explaining the world through scripture. 

(Is that the same as art imitating life vs. life imitating art?)

According to one site I found, those who practice eisegesis are heretics.  Wow.  I'll never forget the first time that someone told me that a living person was a heretic.  Really!?  you think that!?

***

Preachers on the lectionary Gospel are working with Matthew 15:(10-20) 21 - 28 (AKA "Cranky Jesus.")

Pondering this, and further to my thoughts on it earlier this week, I was suddenly reminded of one of my favorite "Episcopal printed prayers," the Prayer of Humble Access.  It's said during Eucharist, immediately before the Invitation:

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

It's just occurred to me that the underlined phrase comes right from this Gospel (who needs seminary...I can just sit around having flashes of inspiration on my own!)

Come to find out (Googling it) that darling Kathryn wrote about this back in 2005 - probably before I knew her.  Seems that the English church has moved the position of this prayer in the order of worship, and it's not ringing true where it goes now. 

And we, in the American church, only use it in the BCP (p. 337) Rite I services...which are not so very common any longer.  Going to Rite II regularly, as I do, means that I do not get to say it at all as part of corporate worship.  I miss it.  I also think it is very easy for people who have a "God is mad at me and I'd better be afraid, I am a worm" attitude to really "waller" in this.  That's not so great.  Here is an alternative Prayer of Humble Access

Most merciful Lord,
your love compels us to come in.
Our hands were unclean,
our hearts were unprepared;
we were not fit
even to eat the crumbs from under your table.
But you, Lord, are the God of our salvation,
and share your bread with sinners.
So cleanse and feed us
with the precious body and blood of your Son,
that he may live in us and we in him;
and that we, with the whole company of Christ,
may sit and eat in your kingdom. Amen.

No wallering, please.

Henri Nouwen says:

Healing Contradictions

The many contradictions in our lives - such as being home while feeling homeless, being busy while feeling bored, being popular while feeling lonely, being believers while feeling many doubts - can frustrate, irritate, and even discourage us. They make us feel that we are never fully present. Every door that opens for us makes us see how many more doors are closed.

But there is another response. These same contradictions can bring us into touch with a deeper longing, for the fulfillment of a desire that lives beneath all desires and that only God can satisfy. Contradictions, thus understood, create the friction that can help us move toward God.

The amazing RevDrKate turned me on to the online Henri Nouwen Society, from which I now receive a daily meditation.  This one for today spoke deeply to me.  I will be thinking on this thing today. 

St. Francis, College Station

I often talk about the first place that became church to me as an adult...St. Francis Episcopal, College Station.  I love and miss it, even though I love and am devoted to my current church home. 

Often in my path I have thought, "Ah!  This is just where God wants me to be!  THIS is the pinnacle of what God's got for me, it couldn't get any better." 

Hee hee, says God, and shows me differently. 

I am featured in a "where are they now" article in the St. Francis Dance this month.  This link will take you to their website, and if you click "newsletter" on the lower left side of the page and then go to page 7 of the pdf file, you can see the story about me. 

But I am not what is so cool!  What is so cool...is what is going on there now.  Don't miss page 4, which reports on Children's Joy and the Catechesis of the Good Shepherd...a Montessori based program that formed my own spirituality to great extent. 

I have moved on, and they have moved on.  Yet their corporate life is still so crucial to me.  The Great Cloud of Witnesses only grows as we move along in life.  It is not always an easy path...there were about 8 years after I moved here that I grieved for my church home and could not find another.  Sometimes things are difficult; relationships get broken and people get hurt.  I am especially praying for a pastor friend in such a situation.  But...we keep on because that's our call. 

I just received an e-mail from Sally Williams, who was a leader in my (Houston) childhood church and a friend of my parents', and who had read my story in the St. Francis Dance...because she is now a member of that community! 

I truly believe God had me read in the local paper about the marvelous new organ at Church of the Annunciation in order to get me and Ken to head down the highway and check it out. 

Our Blessing of the Animals in honor of the Feast of St. Francis will be this Sunday at 2:30 p.m.  Josie and Boudreaux are excited and so am I! 

Thanks be to God!

All Things Come of Thee, O Lord

Sunday was our Pledge Ingathering Day, and for the first time (since I've been there) we invited folks to come to the front of the church and place their pledge cards on the altar.  I wrote about wanting to do this here. 

I had already put my card on the altar a month ago, when the Stewardship Team was commissioned.  So I was not going down for that.  However, I HAD been down to the altar immediately before, when the Lay Eucharistic Visitors were officially commissioned.  I heard the invitation from Father David for people to bring their cards up, and I was climbing back up to the choir loft for part of it. 

So it was well under way when I stepped back into the loft...and the image absolutely took my breath away.  People walking up, laying their cards on the altar, coming back down.  Slightly awkward, stepping aside to give each other access, smiles. 

From up high, it looked like many individual grains of wheat pouring up to the altar, and then back down.  Streams of blessing...

The scripture that came to mind was Luke 6:38:

Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

Next it was time to sing the anthem, which I found difficult as I was still all verklempt.

Seeing into the Future

I never want to take participation in the Eucharist for granted.  In my tradition, a great mystery happens at the Altar.  Of the bread and wine it is said, "Sanctify them by your Holy Spirit to be for your people the Body and Blood of your Son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him" (BCP 363).

As a cradle Episcopalian, I started taking communion at about 7 years of age, and I clearly remember the day (I was about 15) when I really listened to the liturgy and realized that, um, we were participating in commemoration of a human sacrifice.  !!!

Typepad won't make an exclamation point big enough for how I felt that day!  Took me a while to make some kind of peace with that.

Last night at the Thursday evening Eucharist, Fr. David reached the Communion and went over to put on his red chasuble.  I have seen that done any number of times, but he was close enough for me to touch him.  The effect on me was a bit like, "SHAZAM!!"  He went behind the altar and continued, and My Favorite Seminarian went to serve at the altar.  I had not seen her do that before in the chapel...again, very close up...and as the service continued, I could so see her celebrating the Eucharist in his place.  I had "for real" chill bumps. 

We don't get to see a lot of women priests at this time in the life of our diocese.  I am ready for that to change. 

Here, for your enjoyment, is a photo of eleven women bishops at the 1998 Lambeth Conference:

Knit Camp - Part II, The Thinking

I knit pretty infrequently and wish I did it more. 

The thing I loved most about camp was the opportunity to sit and knit, with like-minded people, and just BE.  We talked, of course; but there were quiet times too (Mallory has become less incessantly chatty since last year).  In the quiet moments, I found myself praying for various people...if you read this blog, you are probably included in the list.  So each of you is knit in some way into the work I did. 

The power at the lake was off Sunday morning, from the time we arrived at 9 until about 11:00 (? - I wasn't paying attention to time!)  Instead of sitting in the air-conditioned lodge, we sat outside on the porch.  It was very pleasant...occasional breezes, good company, children running 'round to increase the breezes.  Nice to be in nature doing what we came to do. 

I got to talk with a perfectly delightful woman who had been at the camp last year, wearing a scarf and clearly having just been through chemo.  This year...she has gorgeous curly hair and a clean bill of health!  what a joy and answer to prayer.

She says she is part of a knitting group that meets in the Barnes and Noble in her home town.  I got to thinking, wouldn't that be cool, to have a knitting group here?  All the knitters there were so very different, but all had this thing in common. 

So, I came home and looked it up on www.Meetup.com - the closest one to me is in Plano, which is NOT close - a good 40 miles.  Meetup.com also informed me that 360 people had inquired about a knitting group in my home town!  Wow!  So I'm thinking about that. 

My new friend Angela was working on mittens, which were the "advanced" project for the camp.  I had intended to do them, but the pattern they were using was for "Family Mittens" knitted from 2 wools at a time and "thick and durable for Maine winters."  Texas winters do NOT generally cause us to need such items, and I doubt that my one and only friend in Maine needs me to knit her mittens...she is a much better knitter than I am!  One of these days I will get to that sort of project. 

So I stayed with my final project, a "trellis scarf."  Here it is in progress:

you can't tell from the picture, but on the fifth row in, I did a pattern of *YO K2tog K2* which left holes in that row.  The rest is straight knitting.  When I get to the 5th to last row, I just drop those same stitches and the whole column (as opposed to row) of stitches will unravel down the length of the scarf.  Like a run in a stocking. 

Like so much of knitting, I don't see how this is really going to work, but I am proceeding on faith.  That's actually like a lot of life, isn't it?

We are in the midst of God

I believe that I hear things God wants me to hear through songs...that come into my head at odd times. 

For instance, I am up at 4:19 a.m. stewing, and here is the song lyric that came to me...It's a real song, probably by the Fisherfolk, but I can't give proper attribution:

We are in the midst, we are in the midst,

We are in the midst of God

We love God, we love each other,

We are in the midst of God.

God loves us, God loves us, God loves every one of us

and we love God. 

We love God, we love our neighbors, we are in the midst of God. 

It is immensely comforting to me to think of it this way: not just that God is in our midst, but that we are in the midst of God. 

God is surrounding and enfolding us in time of pain and stewing.

(And "midst" is sounding like the craziest word, ever.)

Today in Church...

Today in church...

• Heard an awfully fine sermon from My Favorite Seminarian, one which has convicted me that I need to seriously consider and pray about going on our annual mission trip to Navajoland next summer.  Oh, my, there are so many reasons why I haven't gone along on this trip.  In the meantime, as she preached I remembered an uncomfortable conversation I had with God as a teenager, "I want to be a Christian, and all, but I don't want to be a MISSIONARY."  (Trust me, I know that one week in Bluff, Utah does not a missionary make!)
• We had a visiting priest - a woman!  I think she was there because our rector had planned to be out of town.  I had the delight of seeing a woman deacon and a woman Gospeller, two separate people serving AT THE SAME TIME.  Such visions are few and far between around here. 
• My friend S. was there!  She is scheduled to deliver her third child by Caesarean tomorrow.  This is a sweet baby girl who we initially feared would come very early...like, at 32 weeks.  But she has gone to full term and that is a great blessing!  She had baby Emma with her (9 months) and looked great. 
• My friend C. and her family were there, too...my first time to meet her newly adopted daughter from China.  A darling baby! 
• The announcements took for-freaking-ever
• Fr. David carried on the conversational tone from the announcements to the Eucharistic table by going off on a long riff about when or whether we should kneel or stand during Eucharistic Prayer C, and why.  Mercy!
• As I left the loft for communion, our wonderful organist signalled to me to pass her the hymnal she needed for the Eucharistic hymn.  Since she was improvising with one hand, I offered to open the book for her.  "What page?" I hissed.  "861," she said.  I took about forever to get it open and place on the rack in front of her.  (She was improvising all this time.)  She looked puzzledly at the music, which was an arrangment of "In Paradisum," the part of the funeral service that is chanted at the committal.  Then she started flipping back to get to the CORRECT piece, numbered 816.  Much more appropriate for a communion hymn. 
• I had to stop on the stairs and laugh hysterically at the idea of folks wondering why they were hearing "In Paradisum" at the Eucharist. 
• Sally (organist) didn't need my help, clearly.  She could improvise for hours while finding her own page number plus cooking a full Italian meal and diapering a baby.
• After church we went into the chapel and tied knots in a flannel prayer blanket for my friend Janet.  You have probably seen this done...each knot contains a prayer.  Here's a photo of some folks knotting one...ours will have to be washed and sterilized before it can be given to her, because the chemo is going to wreck her immune system.  But the prayers will certainly not wash out. 
• 
• On the way to church I cross the Lake Lewisville bridge.  That lake - is 9 feet above its "full" level.  That lake - was very, very close to that bridge. 
• It's starting to rain again.

Mindfulness

Ken is getting better, and thanks to you all for your thoughts and prayers.  What a scary time that was. 

Here is a concept I am exploring:

doing one thing at a time...

It started with eating and not doing anything else at the same time - reading, watching TV.  That's a whole 'nother story.  It's very very very hard for me to do this.  I'm not kidding, it is a real struggle.  But I am trying.

It has made me aware of how much I do that is layered on top of other things I am doing.  What about:

• listening to voice mail while reading email?
• reading while blow drying my hair, getting dressed, cooking
• watching TV or listening to radio while cleaning up the kitchen
• driving while doing anything besides driving...even listening to the radio
• exercising while thinking about what is currently aggravating me

What would it be like if I concentrated fully (as much as possible) on exactly what I am doing?

Here is what is making me smile with my whole heart today:  Josie Lineberry, playing with a lid in her new mama and daddy's hotel room.

Back Home

I went to church this morning, for the first time in a few weeks.  I've been feeling raw lately, I guess since Maundy Thursday and Easter.  And kind of used up.  I know that the best way to get through that is to get back into the community. 

But, having been so busy with candidates and other things, I have also not been able to go to choir rehearsal on Wednesday nights, and then I feel guilty about showing up on Sunday morning...etc. 

This morning I was considering whether to go on and go, and reading Widening Circles' blog.  And something she said, about being in community, convinced me to get my fanny down there. 

I'm glad I did.  We sang this: 

I come with joy to meet my Lord,
forgiven, loved, and free,
in awe and wonder to recall
his life laid down for me.

I come with Christians far and near
to find, as all are fed,
the new community of love
in Christ's communion bread.

As Christ breaks bread and bids us share,
each proud division ends.
That love that made us makes us one,
and strangers now are friends.

And thus with joy we meet our Lord.
His presence, always near,
is in such friendship better known:
we see and praise him here.

Together met, together bound,
we'll go our different ways,
and as his people in the world,
we'll live and speak his praise.

The Eucharist was such a blessing.  I'm grateful to be back.