By George Clifford

Luke’s gospel ends with an unidentified force or actor carrying Jesus up into heaven (Luke 24:51); in John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of his impending ascension (John 20:17), and the book of Acts begins with a retelling of Jesus’ ascension (Acts 1:9). Based on those New Testament passages, the Church annually commemorates Jesus’ Ascension into heaven on the fortieth day after Easter. This year, the feast fell on May 1.

From a scientific perspective, the concept of Jesus’ ascension into heaven as depicted in Scripture is nonsensical. If Jesus ascended into heaven, then given the right information an aerospace engineer could calculate heaven’s direction, but not its distance, from earth. The accurate data needed for that calculation includes the geographic point at which the ascension occurred, the hour and minute, day of the year, and year in which the ascension occurred, Jesus’ trajectory into the sky, and the relative location of the solar system and universe within the cosmos at the time of the ascension.

Some might ridicule a literal reading, contending that heaven – the place where Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father – surrounds the cosmos, lying outside space and time. Yet the New Testament ascension narratives presume a flat, three-tiered cosmos consisting of heaven above, earth in the middle, and hell below. Before dismissing my claim that the New Testament presumes a three-story cosmology as wrong, remember the words of the Nicene Creed we Episcopalians (like many other Christians) often say at Holy Eucharist, “he [Jesus] ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” Those who have personally circumnavigated the world know that the earth is round. For others, video and photographic evidence from outer space provides convincing evidence that the earth is spherical. In other words, a basic presumption of the New Testament versions of the ascension is scientifically wrong.

Presupposing that one rejects a literal interpretation of Jesus’ ascension, what better options do twenty-first century Christians have for understanding Jesus’ ascension?

The first option, already mentioned, consists of spiritualizing the ascension, postulating the existence of a spiritual realm that lies outside the space-time continuum. Increasing numbers of people, however, find the idea of a supernatural deity, a deity who exists not only in but beyond the cosmos, unbelievable. Scholars and spiritual leaders like Bishops John A. T. Robinson (Honest to God) and John Spong (Jesus for the Non-Religious) have helpfully articulated why such a belief seems incompatible with other elements of our modern worldview.

A second option is to ignore Jesus’ ascension and hope that others do so as well, an approach that Ascension always falling on Thursday aids. After all, Christianity emphasizes God's presence not absence in the world. Historically, one of the important functions of the ascension was to explain Jesus’ physical absence to people who believed in a physically empty tomb and Jesus’ bodily resurrection. The New Testament specifies that Jesus appeared amongst his disciples for forty days after rising from the dead. When people stopped encountering Jesus, what had happened to him? Novelists and others have imaginatively answered that question, producing a wealth of material. Jesus went to India; he disappeared unknown among peasants elsewhere; etc. Those explanations typically undercut Christianity’s premise that Jesus was not resuscitated but resurrected, receiving a qualitatively new form of life. Thankfully, the feast of Pentecost quickly follows Ascension and ecclesial attention shifts from the absent Jesus to the now present Holy Spirit. This overly facile and dishonest option describes what many contemporary Christians do, especially in Churches without a liturgical calendar or lectionary that forces one to pay at least annual lip service to the ascension.

A third option, my preference, begins by acknowledging the theological difficulties that Jesus’ ascension poses and then re-examines the data. Biblical numerology provides a helpful starting point. The Bible – Old and New Testament alike – associates the number forty with a theologically significant period of extended duration. For example, rain fell for forty days and nights while Noah was in the ark (Genesis 7:4). The Israelites who fled Egypt ate manna for forty years (Exodus 16:35). Moses was forty when he visited his Israelite relatives (Acts 7:23) and then sojourned in the wilderness forty years before his experience of the burning bush (Acts 7:30). Moses spent forty days and nights on the mountain before receiving the Ten Commandments from God (Deuteronomy 9:11). Jesus fasted forty days and nights in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2). Perhaps the forty days the risen Jesus spent with his disciples points to an indefinite but considerable period of time following Jesus’ crucifixion in which the disciples experienced Jesus’ presence with them. They experienced Jesus in a new, radically different manner, a manner that the disciples did not know how to describe, a manner that transformed their despair over his death into the hope that built the Church. So the disciples grasped the metaphor of resurrection as a way to speak about their new experience of Jesus (see my earlier Episcopal Café essay, “Resurrection, Not Resuscitation”). In time, the disciples’ experiences of Jesus in this new way diminished in frequency and dimmed in intensity. Ascension became the accepted metaphor for explaining why that had happened.

Metaphors and other figures of speech are the only way in which humans can speak of God because our language, by definition, is human language and God is not human. Our perspective as humans is perhaps equally or even more limited than language. Twenty-first century Christians need offer no apologies for finding first century metaphors highly problematic. The first century metaphor of resurrection presumes a worldview in which gods often have or assume human form, an idea common to both the Greek and Roman pantheons. Similarly, the three-storied cosmos ascension presumes was intrinsic to the dominant first century worldview.

The note that I hear most clearly and loudly in the New Testament ascension narratives is that the disciples, post-resurrection, were utterly convinced that the Jesus story had not yet reached its end. They believed that God would write at least one more chapter in the Jesus story. Our Eucharistic prayers affirm this belief in a story for which the conclusion has yet to be written with some form of the proclamation that “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.”

The Rev. George Clifford, a retired priest in the Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years.

By Greg Jones

With the birth of our third girl this month, surprisingly early, we were able to experience the miracle of life at close hand again. We believe that the birth of a child is testimony to the Glory of God and a sign of God's marvelous handiwork in creation.

Seeing the hand of God in nature is hardly some new-fangled thing of course. John Calvin said that there is "by natural instinct, a sense of divinity." Indeed, Scripture itself proclaims that God may be perceived in nature. As the Psalmist says, "the heavens are telling the glory of God." Paul writes: "Since the creation of the world His eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made."

Life itself is a wondrous thing of course, and you don't even need to believe in God to agree. Popular author Richard Dawkins – a convinced atheist – upholds biology as the most complex and fascinating of all sciences. Before Dawkins, George Gaylord Simpson, the famous paleontologist and evolutionary scientist, argued that biology alone "stands at the center of all science, and it is here, in the field where all principles of all the sciences are embodied, that science can truly become unified." Simpson recognized, studied and reveled in the majesty of life in all its diversity – yet he didn't believe in God.

For Christians who believe in a particular story (that God is creator of all things visible and invisible who loves His Creation and especially His children – and who has become one with Creation through the incarnation – and who has faced all we face as mortal beings – and who has defeated death in resurrection) we must careful. For seeing God in nature is fine – but seeing nature as God is not.

Consider the Easter 'holiday' as it now exists in the English speaking world. Like Christmas, Easter has taken on a number of symbols which have a lot to do with fertility and nature – but not necessarily anything to do with God in Christ. The word Easter – first of all – derives from the name of a pagan goddess associated with the rising of the sun. In ancient Britain, the pre-Christian folks of Northumbria venerated this goddess ('Eastre') at the vernal equinox.

Yes, life is important – supremely so – whether one believes in Jesus Christ or not. For those of us who do, it is even more important that we make sure not to see life as the same as God or in the place of God. For those of us who believe, life is not God, but rather the gift of God. Life is not in the place of God, but is rather the place where God pours out his love most fully and completely. Life is not to be worshipped, but rather God who gives life is to be worshipped and adored.

In the Fourth Gospel 'life' is central to the Johannine vocabulary. More than any other book in the New Testament, John talks about 'life'. And it takes on a double meaning. The word 'life' means not only life as you and I normally speak of it. It refers to the indwelling presence of God in the universe – it refers to the presence of the living God in our midst – it refers to the fact that God is not the same as us, but God is with us, and in us, and around us. It refers not only to biological life – as amazing as that is – but also to eternal, spiritual, divine life. Quite plainly, it refers to Resurrection life – the life which includes but goes beyond fleshly life – and extends eternally in full communion with the God of all. Interestingly enough, the Greek word for resurrection does not appear in John's gospel very much. But, in its place, the Greek word for 'life' appears many times as a synonym for resurrection.

What I'm saying – what I've learned from John – is that Easter is not just about the miracle of natural life. It is not really about Spring, and fertility, and eggs, and hatchlings, and sweet little babies. No, it is about those things, and infinitely more. Easter – or Christian Passover – or the Feast of the Resurrection – is about the kind of new life that only Jesus Christ can offer. It is about resurrection life – eternal life – life beyond biology and its undeniable but limited majesty.

This Easter season – remember – that Christ died for you, and rose from the dead, and took on the fullest possible kind of life in his resurrection. It is that kind of life that you and I are called to share, and have begun to share, for when we died with Him in our baptism, we have been given that kind of life to put on – from now on and forever.

The Rev. Samuel Gregory Jones ("Greg") became a member of Christ's Body at St. Columba's in Washington, D.C.. He was educated at the University of North Carolina and the General Theological Seminary, where he is on the Board. Rector of St. Michael's Raleigh, and author of Beyond Da Vinci (Seabury Books, 2004), he blogs at fatherjones.com.

By Donald Schell

The Easter Gospels (like the Christmas Gospels) are shot through with fear. Why do angels keep telling us not to be afraid? Don’t they know there’s danger out there?

In the early darkness after San Francisco’s 1989 earthquake, my wife and I stood on the roof of our house looking out over the Marina district. Our son and daughter huddled against us. We were very quiet, and the city was in blackness. The power had failed. In the darkness we watched a five storey apartment building explode and collapse in on itself. Huge flames from the fire lit the dark evening. Just as in San Francisco’s 1906 earthquake, where wildfire destroyed much more of the city than the earthquake had, broken water lines rendered fire hydrants useless. Old photos of San Francisco’s ashes after 1906 haunted me.

We sighed our relief when an arc of water shot up from a fire truck. High-arching plumes sparkled red in the firelight. Generator-driven searchlights lit the building and the water. From our battery-powered emergency radio we heard that firefighters had run hoses from a fireboat ashore to a pumper truck. The newsman said this was what they’d done in 1906, but confidently claimed that this time the seawater would make it easy for the firefighters to beat the fire. We watched and listened. As the newscaster’s calm voice assured us the Marina fire was under control, the arc of water faltered and stopped. The searchlights went dark. Flames surged higher. For a few minutes the newsman talked on of other disaster response areas.

Abruptly he stopped what he was reporting; perhaps someone had handed him a note. We heard his tight, measured voice say, “The Marina fire appears to be out of control again.” Twice, then three times, we heard the same premature announcement and each time the resurgent fire’s threat felt bigger.

Our nine-year old son, until that moment the bravest and most stubbornly independent kid I’d ever known, leaned into me for safety and took my hand. “Dad, is the fire going to come this way?”

“I don’t know.” I answered. I didn’t know. It was a still evening, a moment of dead calm in our windy city. But the weather could change quickly. What else could I say? “We’ll watch after you’re in bed. If the fire stays out of control, mom and I will take turns, and if we even think it might spread and come this way, we’ll get us out of here.”

“Will the house burn down?”

“It could.”

We watched quietly for an hour as firefighters got the fireboat to truck connection working. Gradually with plenty of water, they really did contain the fire. We couldn’t see flames any longer, just a glow from where the building had been. It finally seemed safe enough to kiss the children good-night, to hope for another day, to sleep in the stillness and listen for the Spirit telling us that we were not alone.

In the long nightmare after 9/11 we didn’t know how to stand together as leaders’ voices told us how very alone we were, that our lives and homes and way of life were all in danger, that we could lose everything and needed to be afraid. To hold fear at bay, our country needed to unleash carpet bombing on Afghan and Iraqi villages, we sent over thousands of American troops and have now lost more Americans fighting the war than were killed in the terrorist attacks, and we’re not counting Iraqi dead. Our safety has been the rationale for using torture to gather intelligence of coming terror threats from all those frightening places outside our borders where people hate us and want to destroy our way of life.

By 2008 Franklin Roosevelt starts to sound like a theologian or a prophet, ‘We have nothing to fear except fear itself.’ In fact Roosevelt’s words make a decent summary of the Resurrection Gospel. The resurrected Jesus returns to deliver us from our double addiction to fear and to safety.

A day or so after 9/11, an Israeli friend who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area said several people asked him how he managed to make his commute across the Bay Bridge – didn’t he know that it might be the next target? My friend’s simple answer? “I grew up in Jerusalem.”

My friend had it right. After 9/11, I heard familiar Bible texts challenging us in a new way. They were inviting us all to grow up in Jerusalem. Jerusalem of two millennia ago, like today’s Jerusalem, was a loved holy place with constant threats, fears, and frequent experience of death. After 9/11, bald, brazen voices of the prophets assured the people that life was more than death, pillage and famine. The prophets spoke their hard comfort to people who had lost everything and wondered where God was, to frightened people who had survived imperial armies’ raping and murdering rage, to survivors who had seen their homes and fields burned, their livestock slaughtered and left to rot -- people who had lost everything and wondered where God was.

The prophets’ message was beyond politics. They saw the threat to their nation and called the people and rulers to justice, to care for the poor, to loving mercy and to walking humbly with God. Our leaders (like the royal leaders of ancient Israel) caution us that safety comes at an inevitable cost: in extraordinary times our historic commitments to freedom and human dignity demand holding prisoners indefinitely without charges and torturing suspects to protect us from terrorist threats. Then they assure us that without their leadership terrible things would have happened. It’s no stretch to hear biblical prophets (who rejected the power of chariots to keep people safe) jeering at metal detectors and border walls, just as they would have ridiculed President Clinton for insisting after the Oklahoma City bombing that we should, ‘tell the children of America that this will never happen again.’

Denial and wishful thinking aren’t what we need to hear. Angels and Jesus don’t tell us “Do not be afraid because nothing bad will ever happen again.” Our Easter Jesus appears to disciples hiding in a locked room in fear for their lives. After he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit,’ the world was still dangerous, but Jesus sent his friends into that dangerous world to preach and share forgiveness. Like the prophets, like my friend who grew up in Jerusalem, like the disciples, can we listen for a simpler promise? God stands by people, unwaveringly faithful, still blessing life. Jesus says to his disciples, “I am with you always, to the end of the ages.”

The Rev. Donald Schell, founder of St. Gregory of Nyssa Church in San Francisco, is Creative Director of All Saints Company, working for community development in congregational life focusing on sharing leadership, welcoming creativity, building community through music, and making liturgical architecture a win/win for building and congregation. He wrote My Father, My Daughter: Pilgrims on the Road to Santiago.

By R. William Carroll

This year, our junior warden made a wooden cross with some chicken wire for our children to decorate with flowers. That’s an Easter tradition that always moves me to tears, and I’m glad we were able to start it in our parish. Take a minute to think about what it means. The cross, an instrument of death, has become for us a thing of beauty—a sign of new life and forgiveness. So too, God renews the earth each spring, as everything comes into bloom. As we sing in one of our hymns, “Now the green blade riseth from the buried grain.” Christ is that grain. He is the seed that dies to give life and bread to us all. Another symbol, much beloved to our ancestors, was that of Christ shattering the gates of hell and leading Adam and Eve by the hand into paradise, with the whole human race in tow. We can use these images and others from our liturgy as we wrestle with the meaning of Easter.

Several primal symbols come together as we celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ. We must also contend with the story itself, which comes to us broken and fragmented, both in the chaos of mob-violence and the unthinkable joy of Jesus alive. Symbols and stories are important. They help us to find our bearings in a confusing world. They convey truth that cannot be given in any other way. They say and show more than we can ever comprehend. The best symbols and stories, “classics,” have what David Tracy calls a “permanent excess of meaning.” And they give rise to a never-ending process of interpretation.

I say this, not because I doubt the truth of the Easter story. Rather, I say it because of the kind of story it is. The Gospel redefines us, as well as our world and our God. I believe the tomb was empty. I believe that Jesus appeared to his friends. I also happen to believe that this story creates as many problems as it solves.

Like any story worth reading, the Easter Gospel defies definitive interpretation. As Christians we stake our lives on this tale of earth-shattering terror and joy. Its subject is Jesus himself, one of the faceless thousands the Romans tortured and crucified, who irrupts onto the historical stage proclaimed as Savior and Lord. (Both titles, incidentally, were claimed by Caesar.) Jesus is the victim who won’t stay dead, but returns to judge and forgive us all.

The four Gospels tell us many versions of this story. They conflict in detail, but it’s not worth the effort—and is, in any case, beside the point—to try to harmonize them. It’s as if we’ve stumbled upon a crime scene, or the aftermath of some tremendous battle or natural disaster. And now we have to reconstruct what happened—from the accounts of witnesses and traces the event itself has left behind.

It’s not just that Jesus was dead and now is alive. He is the Living One, who forever conquers death and sets creation free. Easter is the beginning of God’s new world—a world still struggling to be born. None of the Gospels records the resurrection itself. That lies shrouded in the depths of the earth, until the stone is rolled away. All we have is stories about an empty tomb and of Jesus appearing—ALIVE. Sometimes, when he shows up, his friends touch him. Or he eats and drinks with them. The point here is that he still has a body. Jesus is no ghost. Other times, his risen body is clearly free from the limitations of time and space. On the Sunday after Easter Day, we hear how he came to his disciples through locked doors. That’s a good thing too, because it means we can meet still meet Jesus today. There’s no wall anyone can build to keep him at a safe distance. Jesus is free to show himself to us whenever he chooses, wherever we may be.

In many of the stories, when Jesus first appears, no one can tell it’s him. Then he intervenes, revealing himself, and his disciples believe in him. Finally, he commissions them for service, and sends them to tell others—often the whole world. Thus, on the road to Emmaus, a stranger explains to the disciples what the Old Testament says about Christ. But only when the stranger breaks the bread are their eyes opened to recognize him. Before that, grief and shock blind them to his identity. After all, with their own eyes, they have seen him put on trial, tortured, and crucified.

Something similar is going on this morning with Mary Magdalene. Early on the first day of the week, she arrives at the tomb, while it’s still dark. She finds the stone rolled away and is perplexed. She calls Peter and John, but they can’t help. So, numb with grief, she stands outside and weeps. And, while she does this, Jesus comes to her. Now, she thinks he’s the gardener. She even suspects he may have stolen the body. And she begs him, if he knows where it is, to show her, so she can take care of Jesus and give him a proper burial. Only when Jesus calls her by name does she recognize him. Then she turns around to face him. Jesus reaches out to Mary, and she is converted. As he says in another place, “the hour is coming and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and live.”

Many of us have been there. We have been among the living dead. Often, the Gospel makes sense to us only when we are at the end of our rope. When the last tear has been shed, and we find no strength to go on. Maybe we have experienced loss or betrayal. Maybe we are frustrated by our own weakness or moral failings. Or perhaps our hopes for the future have been crushed by forces beyond our control. Maybe it’s the economy…maybe it’s the failure of those whom we love to change. Perhaps we are feeling worthless, or the chains of memory and anger have us stuck and unable to move forward. At these moments, Christ comes to each one of us and calls us by name. For he is the stone that the builders rejected. And, if we but turn around, we discover new life in him.

Without denying the brokenness and violence we suffer (How could he, after what he’s been through?) Jesus comes to us, forgives us, and makes us whole. The things that silence and imprison us are real, yet in his presence they lose their power. He gives us life, because he’s tasted death and broken its dominion forever. He gives us hope by showing us how love conquers evil. He sets us free, by making us servants of one another.

And so today, we gather, celebrate, and sing songs of freedom. With all the music, flowers, and feasting—with all the light, joy, and laughter we can muster, we tell the story of Easter. Brothers and sisters, may we be filled with joy this happy morning. For, in the ancient words of John Chrysostom:

Christ is risen, and death is overthrown! Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life reigns!

Happy Easter! The Lord is risen indeed.

The Rev. R. William Carroll serves as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio (Diocese of Southern Ohio). He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He co-edits The Covenant Journal with Lane Denson and blogs at Anglican Resistance. He is a novice in the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

By Ann Fontaine

Today the word is Silence. All the chaos and noise of Holy Week is stilled. Palm Sunday with its hosanna-ing where even the rocks cry out in praise is past. Tenebrae is over with--an earthquake of sounds in its last crashing cymbal. Maundy Thursday’s slopping of water on bare feet of resistant Peter, and its sharing a meal ended with the betraying Judas leaving in a flurry of shame. Good Friday has come and gone with its whipping and wailing and pounding of nails and last words. The sounds of the week resound through our souls. And now – silence.

Holy Saturday brings a Sabbath from noise. We sit in the stillness of grief wondering. Where has he gone? What has happened? How can this be?

Is it a time of rest as the Holy Saturday collect from the Book of Common Prayer proclaims?

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Or is the Holy One working in Hell as the Apostle’s Creed states:

suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell.

Is Jesus harrowing hell as it is sometimes called? Was he freeing those who died in slavery of mind, body, or spirit?

Holy Saturday is my favorite day in Holy Week. It is like a walk on the Oregon coastal beaches in early Spring or late Winter, a time of solitude. All the people are gone. The tides and waves are fierce and dangerous. The detritus of storms is scattered on the sand as high as the floods can rise. I walk in the rain and wind. Mostly it is gray and more gray – gray sand, gray clouds. The beach tells its own story of love and loss. The ocean called the Pacific is rarely safe. Sudden sneaker waves can sweep the unwary off their feet or worse. Once in a rare moment a flash of blue green glass proclaims a glass fishing float. It has traveled for years across the ocean from Japan. A glass ball blown by its maker years and miles ago reveals life beyond my little bit of beach.

This is Holy Saturday – a silent yet wild and fierce day of unknowing with hints of what has been and what is yet to come.

The Rev. Ann Fontaine, Diocese of Wyoming, keeps the blogs Green Lent and what the tide brings in. She is the author of Streams of Mercy: a meditative commentary on the Bible.

By Sara Miles

Every Sunday, at my church, I carry a plate full of fresh bread, the body of Christ, to feed the crowd around the altar. Every Friday, around the same altar, I run a food pantry that offers free groceries––bread, spinach, potatoes, oranges, Cheerios, beans and rice––to about 500 hungry families. Both gatherings are matter-of-factly open to everyone: on both days, we feed people without asking them what they believe, how much money they make, or if they’re “good.”

The food pantry, especially, can feel almost trippily Biblical. Every week there are hundreds of people milling about; women working and arguing and feeding each other; men embracing; someone singing, someone crying, someone washing dishes. It isn't hushed and pious; it's loud and holy.

But on Good Friday––a day in Christian churches that’s traditionally been devoted to private penitence and collective binges of anti-Semitism––everything falls quiet. The church is stripped of ornament, and hung with black; at night the congregation gathers to chant a funeral liturgy, laying flowers on an icon of Jesus’ tomb and leaving in silence, taking hot cross buns to break their fasts.

As evening fell, Paul Fromberg, our priest, was setting up for services. A long-haired homeless guy, kind of sweaty and intense, strolled in looking for groceries, and Paul explained to him that the food pantry was closed for Good Friday.

“But don’t you have anything to eat?” the stranger asked.

Paul turned and saw the trays of hot cross buns on the stove, and handed him a couple. The man paused and lifted them up.

“Baruch attah Adonai...” he said. “Baruch attah Adonai eloheinu.... oh, man, it's been a long time since my bar mitzvah.” He was saying the Hebrew blessing for bread: 'Blessed are thou, Lord God, king of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.'

Paul stood there in his black cassock trying to recite the prayer, as the homeless guy smiled and took a big bite of the first bun. "Baruch attah Adonai eloheinu melek ha-alom....” Paul began. He couldn't remember it all either.

"Well, bless this bread," Paul said.

The stranger nodded, took another bun, and walked out. "OK," he said. "Thanks. Good Shabbas."

Or, as we say in church, Amen.

Sara Miles is the author of Take this Bread: A Radical Conversion. She is the founder of the food pantry at St. Gregory's of Nyssa in San Francisco.

By Luiz Coelho

For I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me." In the same way he took the cup also, after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me." For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be answerable for the body and blood of the Lord. Examine yourselves, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died. But if we judged ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world.
1 Corinthians 11:23-26

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, "Lord, are you going to wash my feet?" Jesus answered, "You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand." Peter said to him, "You will never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no share with me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you." For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, "Not all of you are clean."

After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord--and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, `Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

“Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner...” This Bible passage has always been one of the most striking to me in my whole life. I recall not receiving communion several times, when I felt not able (or willing) to allow God to free myself from a certain sin, whether it was a personal one or even a collective one. And I know this might be a very countercultural behavior, especially at a time sin has been apparently forgotten by many, and confession has become a rare event in peoples' lives.

However, it is my firm belief that there is no other way of behaving with respect to the magnificent care expressed by Jesus on that night right before he was betrayed, than with utmost respect and awe for his unconditional love towards us.

Acts of love are usually enhanced by unpredictable circumstances under which they happen, and the events that happened on that Thursday night were no different from that. The first of them was the washing of the feet. I imagine how shocked the disciples were to see their master, the Messiah, humbly washing their feet. Yes, the one who had taught them so much, was acting as if he were a simple servant. What they did not know, however, was that Jesus, on that night, was teaching them the most important lesson of all... a new commandment that resumed and consolidated his message so far.

“Love one another as I love you.” The strength of such a commandment goes far beyond our typical understanding of love. Jesus' love is so deep that it reaches even the one who would betray him hours later. His humility is so impressive that he does not care to wash tired and dirty feet, probably full of wounds and scars. Are we really following Jesus' new commandment and this new vision of love? It is easy for us to say that we love our neighbor, and in fact, many of us repeat those verses every Sunday. It is easy to strike our chests and claim we have given a certain amount of our money to the local shelter, a hospice in Guatemala or even for the Millenium Development Goals, but would we be willing to leave the ease of modern life and share all we have with the miserable? Would we live a simple life and truly be brothers and sisters of those who have no more than rice and beans to eat? Would we go to the slums and proclaim the Gospel to those for whom life has become a source of constant pain? Would we reach those who we should hate (and who hate us), whomever they are, and yet tell them we love them as Jesus loves all of us?

No, we would not. During Lent, we were theoretically called to fast, and give up on simple things that are important to us. However, how many times have we caught ourselves complaining about how hard it is to do that. How many times have we almost failed? It is difficult, it is very difficult to leave our comfort zone and realize that, for many people around the globe, our lenten fast is much fancier than what they will have in their whole lives. Do we really care? Do we really manifest this love Jesus has commanded us to show?

The apex of this love is expressed in the simple meal Jesus shared with his disciples shortly after he washed their feet. More than a memorial supper of bread and wine, more than a simple act of thanksgiving, the institution of the Holy Eucharist became a way through which Jesus' disciples could recapitulate his final act of self giving love for humankind. By giving his body and blood, he offered himself in sacrifice for us, and made us part of his own body. He shared our pain, and even in spite of all the suffering that was about to come, he was still able to love unconditionally.

The Eucharist should mean more to us than a weekly ceremony. It is the spiritual food that nourishes us and prepares us truly to be Jesus' disciples. When we take part of Jesus' body and blood, we commit ourselves to follow him with all our heart, live according to his commandment and flood this world with Christ's love. The same meal he instituted that night is a continuous reminder that, even not being perfect, we ought to struggle to be worthy of such unconditional love.

Maundy Thursday, more than a simple ceremony or a light meal, is a calling. As we remember Jesus' last moments with his disciples before his arrest, we are called to be worthy of such a wondrous love. We are called to truly love all humankind, sacrificing our own selfish desires for the common good. We are called to go to the slums and proclaim Jesus' message to the outcasts of society. We are called to embrace our enemies and to love them with all our heart. We are called to love the sick, the hungry and the needy. We are called to make a difference, and show to the world what Christ's love is about.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By Derek Olsen

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

I wasn’t focusing on the words of the Ash Wednesday liturgy as closely as I could have. Rather, I was trying to keep an energetic toddler from bouncing up and down the aisles of the cathedral, shrieking joyfully, at one of the more somber moments of the Christian year. We returned to the narthex after the imposition of ashes to color and have snacks. Then, after her sister and I joined in the Eucharistic prayer from there, we once again braved the central aisle, the sisters walking hand-in-hand. The smaller one was awed by the approach to the high altar where we communed, but the moment passed and we beat a hasty retreat to the parking lot before more gleeful yelps sounded, trailing collects as we went. With that, my Lent was off to a distracted start.

The whole family rose early on the morning of the First Sunday in Lent for we were all trekking out to the western edge of the diocese to hear my wife chant the Great Litany at her parish, one of our favorite Lenten traditions. My right foot hurt; I figured I’d kicked something in a nocturnal ramble. By Sunday evening, my foot was swollen a bit and there was a short dark mark on one edge I thought might be a bruise or a blood blister. Rising in the night for a drink, I found my foot would no longer support my weight. The next morning, my wife noticed that my foot had swollen to an angry red and was marked by a rash that headed up my leg. By the time we were seen at the urgent care clinic, the rash was up both legs. By the time I left the clinic by ambulance, the rash had spread to my chest and back, and my body was in sepsis—toxic shock—giving me a roughly 50-50 chance of survival.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The season of Lent calls us to do something that none of us likes to do willingly—to consider the fact of our mortality. Humans have never liked considering it, and I believe that modern American culture has taken this avoidance to a whole new level, insulating us whenever possible from the realities of life and death. St. Benedict’s monastic culture took the opposite approach and, as one of the ramifications of the monastic life as a perpetual Lent, Benedict exhorted his monastics to keep death daily before their eyes.

Me, I’m not so good at that. I find I prefer to focus on the acknowledgment and amendment of my sins in Lent and let the mortality issue slide. But this year, that was not an option: what I had mistaken for a minor foot trauma had been the bite of a poisonous brown recluse spider that had injected an aggressive bacterial infection into my bloodstream. I had not yet taken up the Lenten call to contemplate my death when I found myself staring into its very face.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Two and a half days in the intensive care unit of the local hospital as they struggled to stabilize my vitals and hold down my soaring fever followed by another five days on a medical floor as I received course after course of antibiotics gave me some hard time to think about what I had been through and what it all meant. Of course, I have no pat answers—and would be concerned if I did—but do have a couple of initial thoughts and reflections.

Every time I think about what has happened, my initial response is gratitude: I’m grateful that I was the one in the house that the spider found. Had it been either of my daughters, the story would have been shorter, more tragic, ending with a too-small coffin and that archetypical affront to the natural order: parents burying their child. Too, had the creature found my petite wife with the proclivity to ignore injuries and ailments to the last possible moment, I fear the story might have ended with another grave. So I am grateful. For though still sick, I live—and so too does the rest of my family.

I think the most important thing my brush with death granted me was a rediscovery of love—in an entirely practical sense. Thanks to flexible daycare arrangements, an understanding rector willing to give my wife time to be with me, and a few local friends who could take the girls overnight, my wife and I were able to spend much of my time in the hospital together—and I found that a treasure beyond compare. Instead of the insidious cycles of sniping and second-guessing, competing demands of work, housework, child care, and personal time that inevitably build up over eight and a half years of marriage, we simply rejoiced in each other’s presence. In the death-shadowed room the scales fell from my eyes and I encountered again the woman I love. And I marvel at how easy it is for the daily grind to efface the important—the truth of that love—by means of the merely urgent. Is that not death-in-life? To be surrounded with the promise and potential of love yet to get so trapped in our own games that we refuse to see and experience it?

Death has taught me of life, and reminded me of the love that lies at the heart of life. Now, I find myself wondering, having once lost this simple insight, how not to lose it again. Perhaps keeping death daily before my eyes is not an exercise in morbidity but a reminder that everyday I have the opportunity to choose love over pettiness, strife, and selfishness. I resolve to heed the words of the Preacher: “Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life which God has given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun.” (Eccl 9:9).

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

When I step outside of myself and examine my thoughts in connection with this brush with death, I find myself bemused. My encounter didn’t focus me on my sinfulness—although I’m certainly aware of that truth—nor on my immeasurable need for God’s grace—also entirely beyond dispute. Rather, I find that my experience with death has caused me to contemplate the importance of life and the simple joys that lie so close at hand—my wife, my daughters, and our wider family of friends. I am dust and I shall return to the dust. But for now, I am dust at dance within a shimmering, sunlit, cloud of dust, interacting with hundreds and thousands of other frail beings on the same trajectory as mine. St Augustine once reminded us that we are called to love all people but, since sheer volume makes the practical acts of love for all impossible, to care for those most closely bound to us by place, time, or opportunity. I have been reminded not to overlook those who dwell in the same house with me.

This Lent I continue to contemplate death and the facts of my own mortality. The spread of the infection into my bones reminds me that my apparent improvement may prove illusory and that I may again stare into death’s face sooner than I think. I continue to work on contemplating and getting in touch with my feelings surrounding these issues. But a primary task is to hold onto the gift that death has given me, the secret of her weakness, a weakness we shall celebrate come Easter: Love is stronger than death (Song 8:6) and the promise of the resurrection is that love, not death, will have the final word.

Derek Olsen is completing a Ph.D. in New Testament at Emory University. His full-time calling of keeping up with two adorable preschool girls and his wife, a priest in the Diocese of Atlanta, is complicated by his day-jobs as a database programmer and an adjunct professor at Emory’s Candler School of Theology. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc. Haligweorc.

By Peter Pearson

Over the last few days I have been one busy priest. The deanery in which I serve has held meetings for its delegates, for its priests and yesterday we had a liturgical workshop. I attended each of these along with leading the Sunday worship and vestry meeting at my parish, visiting some folks who can’t get out, doing some necessary paperwork, attending our mid-week evening prayer and discussion, connecting with the folks who were responsible for some of the parts of our Lenten observances, answering phone calls, meeting with my spiritual director, walking the dog, chatting with friends on the phone, attending my own 12-Step meeting schedule, talking to my sponsor, and hitting the gym when possible. (Please feel free to add the hyperventilating sound effects for added punch.)

Like you, I’m a busy Christian. For some reason, this morning I thought of Linus Mundy’s statement in his book A Retreat with Desert Mystics: Thirsting for the Reign of God about how the Desert Fathers and Mothers recognized that the greatest enemies of leading a spiritual life are: speed and noise. Perhaps I thought about it because this is the first day in a week that I haven’t over-booked, over-extended, over-done, and, as a result, I am completely over myself. I have no one to blame here; I ‘m nobody’s victim. It’s me. The problem is me.

Maybe this momentary slowing down began when I got home last evening and got a message about the lunar eclipse that was happening through the evening. I grabbed my binoculars, ones given to me by someone I love and admire who died last year, and went out to watch. Did you ever notice how s-l-o-w lunar eclipses are? It was especially apparent because it was pretty cold last night up here in Pennsylvania. Maybe it began when I built a fire in the wood stove and lay on the couch with my dog to warm up and found myself delighting in the dance of the flames. Maybe I helped it along when I turned the phone off before heading to bed so I would get a good night’s sleep. And maybe I am missing Lent along with lots of other wonderful moments in my life due to the rapid fire speed at which I live. Maybe I should slow down.

Along with all my business, I have loads of noise in my life too. First, there’s the cell phone and you already know how that goes. I can be reached anytime, anywhere, by anyone and it all seems urgent. When I am not on the phone, I am at the computer (like I am now) getting all the news and weather and commentary about all sorts of vital things. When I am in the car, I like to listen to public radio or books on tape so I can keep up with the whole Hillary vs. Obama thing and The New York Times’ picks of good books to read or listen to. Oddly, I don’t have a television and wear that fact as a badge of honor around my poor, unenlightened friends who watch mindless things like “Project Runway” and “Survivor” and talk about these programs like they’re important. Funny but I seldom realize how mindless my noise can be at times. Still, have you ever really listened to a deep, thick silence? I have and I loved it but somehow I forget that fact every time I reach for the phone, the radio, the ear phones, or the computer. I guess you could say there’s a great deal of noise in my life.

Reflecting on the amount of speed and noise in my life makes it apparent that I am not as attentive to my spiritual life as I sometimes think I am. Heck, I’m not even good at just being still and silent whether it’s a spiritual thing or not. I suppose I could go to town beating myself up for what I am NOT doing here but it just occurred to me that even the simple fact that I am attending to and reflecting on my need to slow down and be quiet is itself a beginning. Years ago my therapist said that, “Problems are seen leaving.” Let’s hope she’s right.

So, if you find that you can relate to my life, my insane addiction to speed and noise, perhaps you can just spend some time honestly looking at the truth of your life and see the insanity of it all. Breathe it in and sit quietly for a few moments. That’s a beginning.

Just breathe.

The Rev. Peter Pearson is priest in charge at Saint Philip’s Church in New Hope, Pa. He is a former Benedictine monk and icon painter.

By Peter M. Carey

“It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
It’s the end of the world as we know it
and I feel fine….(time I had some time alone).”

REM, It’s the End of the World as We Know It

As I enter this Lent, the pounding beat and the prophetic words of the REM song “It’s the end of the world as we know it” run through my mind. I yearn to cultivate a Holy Lent, but there is much to do, and many to-do lists seem to stand in the way. However, listening carefully to the song, one hears the reply, “and I feel fine” and then, very quietly, toward the end of the song, “time I had some time alone.” There is a hope in the song that even in the midst of a busy life that feels like the end of the world, one can find solace; perhaps finding a bit of time alone is a key to unlock the door to a Holy Lent.

And then I say, “If only I could get through all this “stuff,” then I could have a Holy Lent! I could pray more, read more, take a class, go to church more, be more holy, give up caffeine and sweets, and meditate more. If only I could get through my to-do list, if only I had not so many commitments, maybe I could lead a Holy Lent!”

I wonder, if we are already feeling overwhelmed with projects, could Lent be a time when we just try to do one thing?

I have used this concept of “one thing” in my life as a teacher and coach and found it to work pretty well when people are feeling overwhelmed. In the midst of coaching a junior varsity soccer team after a terrible first half, when we were already down 3-0, I asked my team to agree to one thing that we would do better in the second half. I asked them to think of only one thing to concentrate on, such as communication, or movement off the ball, or pushing hard forward on the counter-attack. One thing—we had something to find unity around, and we had a goal on which to concentrate as we crawled out of a deep hole. In that case, we found a way to struggle back into the game, which ended in a tie that felt like a Super Bowl victory.

For this Lent, for those of us who are in the midst of multi-tasking, email flooding, blackberry buzzing, children running, bosses calling, grocery shopping, doctor visiting, there may be just one thing that we can do.

For that one thing, I would suggest “attention”.

That one thing is to strive to be attentive to the now and the here of our lives. If we have the courage to be where we are, we can cultivate awareness, we can cultivate attention. Attention to what, one might ask. Well I would make the claim that when we cultivate attention, when we turn aside from our to-do lists, from our cell phones, from our multitasking, even for a moment or two, several times a day, we are offered the gift of knowing God’s presence. God does not “come to us” only in times of calm reflection, but is ever present, what theologians call “prevenient grace.” God is with us always, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear.

I take wisdom from the words of the deranged prophet figure in the 1984 film, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai across the 8th Dimension: “Wherever you go, there you are.” And, so, here we are. It is here and now that God breaks into our lives, not in some other place or time. It is here that God is, not only in mountaintop experiences, not only when we go away on retreat, not only in the midst of nature, not only in the midst of a concert hall, not only in the exhilarating rush of endorphins when we exercise. One of the Desert Fathers said: “Your cell will teach you all you need to know.” This does not mean that we all have to become monks. For the monk, the cell was his everyday place; it was his place of work. This going to one’s cell was not a retreat from the work of the monk, but was encouragement for the monk to go to his place, to seek God in the everyday place.

Rowan Williams claims in his book, The Trial of Christ, that “hardest place to be is where we are,” for if we want to turn our selves toward God, we must first work to be fully present, which can be hard when our minds leap forward and back, and we multitask ourselves away from where we sit. Cultivating attention may offer us a deeper sense of beauty, if we have eyes to see. As Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hahn claims, “The present moment is a beautiful moment.” And if we truly embraced the present moment, we might, indeed see the beauty of this place, and even see God.

So in the midst of the messiness of raising three children under 5, God is there. In the balancing of the checkbook, God is there. In the waiting room of the hospital, God is there. In the boring meeting, God is there. In the frustrating traffic jam, God is there. Lent might be a time when even in the rush of our appointments and commuting and to do lists we can be attentive to the place where we are, and attentive to God.

As we cultivate a greater sense of attention, we might experience frustration, we might have to acknowledge our fears and our anxieties, we might be confronted with thoughts of the past, and our worries for the future. However, taking the time to turn and cultivate attention may give us eyes to see the beauty of nature, the wondrous diversity of people, and God’s presence even in those interruptions.

To be where we are, in the present moment, means that we cannot deny the cries of the outcast, that we cannot ignore economic injustices, that we cannot ignore the sin of racism that not only surrounds us but is also within us. And it is our practices of being where we are, and in the present moment, that move us to take on the challenge of the brokenness and sinfulness of the world, as it is, in this place, in our own time. We are empowered by Jesus Christ to be agents of reconciliation, to forgive and to ask for forgiveness. We are given the strength to be reconciled with each other, to seek peace.

However, before we take on all of these projects, we can claim the gift of attention to the here and the now of our lives. God is with us always, so we do not need to recover some past glory, or hope for some future rest. God is with us where we are, so enormous journeys are not needed to know God in our lives. In the messiness of the stuff of our lives, in the feeling of “the end of the world as we know it,” we can find “some time alone,” and cultivate attention to this moment, to this place, for this is a beautiful time and place. Do we have eyes to see it?

The Rev. Peter M. Carey is the school chaplain at St. Catherine's School for girls in Richmond, Virginia and is also on the clergy staff at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Richmond. He blogs at Santos Woodcarving Popsicles.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

You'd think by now I'd have recovered from the Lent of my childhood. The problem wasn't about fasting or giving up chocolate; it was bigger than that. Ordinarily I liked most things about church -- the gleaming vestments and the stained glass and the soaring music -- but during Lent the whole place turned weird. On Ash Wednesday, I was somehow convinced, the priest rubbed the charred remains of dead people on our foreheads. I'm sure no one had ever told me that, but it seemed to fit in with the big, gloomy picture: Jesus was dead, everything was draped in purple, and it was all our fault. During the Stations of the Cross, O Sacred Head droned through the sanctuary, where the incense fog was so thick I'd get woozy. Head between my knees in the pew, not sure whether I was about to throw up or pass out, I wondered where God had gone and why he was letting all these crazy things happen in his church.

Those days are over, you're saying. We don't teach Lent that way now. And it's true that I've talked to various clergy and read a variety of spiritual writers who have done their best to convey a more grace-filled understanding. The season's not dreary for the sake of being dreary, they say; it's an opportunity for contemplation or intentional action. In my own parish the Sunday school kids join the rector in the churchyard and burn the palms from Palm Sunday to produce Ash Wednesday's ashes, which should eliminate any macabre confusion.

Sadly, though, there are others who still don't get it. I'm thinking of the priest who proudly told me how she brings her parish children down into the church basement and rubs an iron nail into their palms. And then there's the one who surprised a group of teens with a full-on mock crucifixion: he blindfolded them, scratched their palms with a nail, and pressed a vinegar-soaked sponge to their lips. I wonder how this approach differs from the Halloween hell houses organized in denominations we like to think of as less compassionate than our own. Why don't people recognize that kids have much more vivid imaginations than your average adult Muggle? That children learn through their senses before they can think theologically is one of the great blessings of their spirituality, but it leaves them impressionable; they need our protection, our care. Certain activities are better left to consenting adults. In a culture where kids are already inundated with violent images in videogames and films, we need to be sure our most vivid lessons -- even during Lent -- convey that we are on the side of the angels.

After all, God doesn't observe Lent, or impose it on us. Lent is for people. As religious educators of children or adults, our role is to offer the tools and traditions that will help them experience the season as a time for reflection, as both somber and life-giving. I'm certainly a fan of the carbon fast posted on this site, for example. I've done some experimenting of my own, gone from giving up Lent altogether to trying a hands-on approach that included baking hot cross buns for my family.

Recently I've settled on praying the news and then taking a small step toward change. As I write these words I read the headlines on CNN.com: "Six dead as gunman 'goes to war' with Missouri city," "CIA director: Waterboarding necessary, but potentially illegal," and "Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women." For a few minutes I close my eyes. And then I open my checkbook and write a donation to a new charity and to the Presidential candidate of my choice. For this year, anyway, that's the rhythm of my daily Lenten practice.

How are you observing Lent? What are you teaching the adults and children in your congregation?

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Sam Candler

This week, I will be glad to remember the birthdays of Charles Darwin and Galileo Galilei, Darwin born on February 12 (1809), and Galileo born on February 15 (1564). It so happens that their birthdays occur during the Christian season of Lent this year. We all know how much controversy their work caused the Christian Church (and society!), but Christians should be forever grateful for their courage and their wisdom. In fact, Galileo, Darwin, and Lent have something in common.

Both Galileo and Darwin actually set out to be friends of the Christian Church. Educated in an Italian monastery, Galileo intended to join the Camaldolese Order of the Church; but his father had already decided that he would be a medical doctor. Galileo’s interests, of course, turned from medicine to mathematics and the natural world. With the use of the newly developed telescope, Galileo recorded wonders of the natural world – the stars and the heavens—that no one had ever seen. Of course, these were the observations and interpretations that would also change the world.

Galileo would finally be charged with heresy, for adopting the Copernican view that the earth revolved around the sun. After all, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30 all say something like "the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved." Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that "the sun rises and sets and returns to its place, etc." Was Galileo denying the Bible? Galileo apparently believed in some form of biblical inerrancy, but he struggled with interpretation. He wrote to a friend that the Bible should always be interpreted in the light of what science had shown to be true.

Charles Darwin, at one time, studied to become an Anglican priest. He, too, was in love with the natural world and was convinced at one time in the naturalist William Paley’s argument that design in nature proved the existence of God. Later Christians objected to several elements of On the Origin of Species; the book refuted the notion that creatures had been individually designed by God, it claimed that the Earth was much older than the literal biblical account, and in claiming a common ancestor for apes and human, it denied a certain uniqueness to humanity.

How strangely ironic that many in the Church should be blinded to the truth that these two gentlemen showed the world. For, in essence, both Galileo and Darwin were using science to claim that humankind is not at the center of everything. Our earth is not at the center of God’s creation, and our species is not at the center of God’s creation.

Isn’t this what Lent is supposed to teach us? “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return,” many of us heard on Ash Wednesday. Lent is supposed to remind us of humility. The opposite of humility is hubris, to be so self-obsessed as to think we are at the center of everything.

Galileo, Darwin, and Lent all teach us about truth and humility. A holy Lent is about acknowledging the truth of ourselves, and the truth of this beautiful world, no matter how uncomfortable that truth might be. A holy Lent is also about acknowledging our own humility. No matter who we are, we are not at the center of everything, and we are not at the beginning of everything. May God bless the memories of both Galileo and Darwin, and all who lead us in the paths of truth and humility this Lent.

The Very Rev. Sam Candler is dean of St. Philip's Cathedral in Atlanta. He helped start that city’s interfaith group, and leads regular community bible studies. He is also inspired by playing jazz piano, hunting, astronomy, and poetry. His sermons and reflections on “Good Faith and Common Good” can be found on the Cathedral web site.

By Marshall Scott

"Good fences make good neighbors," so we say. "My rights stop at the end of your nose," we say, or at least we used to. From clinical practice to business practice, from the grand scale of diplomacy to the intimacy of personal relationships, we extol the values and importance of good boundaries.

Boundaries protect us, of course. That's usually the first reason we appeal for them. In current difficulties, there are dioceses that have tried to set boundaries to exclude the Episcopal Church. There are aspects of their lives they seek to protect; not least the sense of control to perpetuate themselves, to raise up bishops and other clergy carrying forward their particular perspective on the faith. In consequence, of course, the Episcopal Church has had to respond, asserting the established boundaries, and defending the integrity of Constitution and Canons and General Convention.

But if boundaries might protect us, they will certainly shape us in other ways. If we feel safer with them, we will also feel limited by them. That's not always a bad thing. In Lent we realize our limitations - both those we choose and those that confront us when our choices fail. Our limits are real, and we can grow from recognizing them.

Or not. In anxious times it’s all too easy to choose the limitations in the interest of safety. But, when we do that we run the risk of defining our boundaries ever more tightly, and erecting new ones whenever there is a problem.

When I was a schoolchild, we lived on (what I think of, at least, as) a typical suburban block. It was long and more or less rectangular. Various configurations of ranch and split level homes looked across modest front lawns to one another’s front doors, separated by quiet streets.

But in back, it was quite different. In back the lawns were large and open. There were no fences, or almost none. Within the large boundaries all the lawns were connected. It was, for a small schoolchild, a vast kingdom – almost large enough to stretch beyond the sound of mother’s voice. And between the vast kingdom and the boundaries of the streets were the resources: houses, and parents in them who could safely monitor us, carry us beyond the boundaries when needed, and evaluate and license our own liberty along those boundaries as we grew. Granted, all parents weren’t equally available, or even interested. However, the assumption was clear (at least in my house): children had largely unlimited access within the kingdom, and all parents were to be respected at the boundaries.

Now, the boundaries were real: nothing brought out parental wrath like playing in the street. And, as the various parents frequently knew one another’s children better than they knew one another, the reality of the resource was pretty solid. But the boundaries were relatively few; and the expectation was that we would indeed take them on and, as we grew, cross them and eventually use them as means to go beyond.

We can grow from recognizing our limitations if we’re also willing to step up to them, look beyond them, and engage whatever, whoever is beyond them. We can grow if we see the anxiety involved in our limitations as opportunities and challenges to grow. If instead we see them as defenses for our vulnerabilities, our limits will in fact grow smaller, and we will grow smaller with them.

In a way, I think this is what can happen in Lent, this growing by facing and challenging our limitations. Many of us take on or add to disciplines of life. We choose to abstain from this, or to take on that. The intent is in fact to make us mindful of our limitations, and of our need for God. That happens, I think, in two ways. The first is the additional effort involved. That incremental change, that measure of extra effort keeps our attention, and calls us to focus that attention on our relationship with and our accountability to God. If we take on discipline, we can’t help but notice; and if we don’t notice, just what did we really take on?

The second and more important way that we can grow from our limitations is precisely when we fail. What can convict us of our limits more profoundly than running into them and falling down? While the extra effort may focus us to some extent on our relationship with God, it is our failure that focuses us on our need for a relationship with God. It is in failing that we fall over the boundaries of our sufficiency, and realize we are in fact dependent, contingent. We cannot will ourselves to perfection, much less to salvation; and when we try we fail. That is when we realize our need for our Parent, for our resource who will indeed challenge us, but will also love us, evaluate us, and encourage us to grow so as to open and expand our boundaries and discover in them pathways to new freedom.

It is entirely possible to misunderstand and to fail to grow from our limitations in Lent. It is possible to take on the challenges of Lent in a spirit of defensiveness and fear. Is the extra effort taken on to focus on God, or to make us look good to ourselves or someone else? When we fail, do we ask that God strengthen us to try again, or just that God not condemn us outright? In either case the latter attitude is more about protecting ourselves within our limits than about discovering what might be beyond them. And in those attitudes we will be shaped by our limitations rather than our relationship with God, and we will grow smaller in consequence.

We are struggling now within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion with issues of limits and boundaries. We are struggling now within ourselves with our own limits, and how we can find God at them and in God grow beyond them. I pray that both within and without we may see our limits, our boundaries, not as constraints that make us smaller but as challenges to move beyond with God’s help. I pray that in both spheres we will trust first in God to strengthen us to face our limits, evaluate us as we struggle, love us as we fail, and call us to rise again to discover wider boundaries and pathways to freedom.

The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.

By Kit Carlson

When Lent comes around, it is tempting to think of it as a season of self-improvement, as a chance to lose weight, or stop smoking, or ease up on a treasured habit that is not so helpful, really. Give up one or more of those "bad" things, we think, and we will become better people. So in much the same way that we make a New Year's resolution, we boldly enter Lent committed to give up caffeine or alcohol or chocolate for six weeks ... or, as with most resolutions, until our willpower fails and we give in to the temptation.

Lent, however, is not about resolutions. It is about making a "rule" in the same way that monastics follow a Rule of Life. A Rule orders one's desires and attentions away from the self and toward God, not so that we might be better people, but so that we might draw closer to God. Fasting has been a part of this practice for millennia, not to get us slimmer or more fit, but so that we might experience emptiness and our need of God. Spiritual reading has been part of this practice as well -- again, not to make us wiser or more intelligent, but to open our hearts and minds to God. Prayer has also been part of a Rule -- not so that we can check off our Spirituality Box each day, but so that we can share our deepest thoughts and feelings with God. Rest and refreshment have also been part of a Rule, to remind us that even God knows how to take a break (and surely we cannot be more busy and more important than God).

As I enter Lent this year, I am trying to not just make a resolution. Rather, I hope to make a Rule. I have been asking myself: what is lacking in my relationship with God? Or: how am I failing to honor myself as the person God created me to be? Or: what practice would make me more mindful of the presence of God? Or: what is standing in the way of my being able to love God and love my neighbor?

These are hard questions, and as I have started asking them, my inability to answer them has astounded me. So I have decided that just asking these questions every day for six weeks is going to be my Lenten Rule. Just to ask, day after day, and see what answers emerge.

I think this will be far more challenging for me than just giving up chocolate. I may not end up doing anything that is better for myself spiritually or physically or emotionally, but I may come up with a direction that leads me not just through the annual season of self-denial, but into a deeper and more authentic relationship with God.

The Rev. Kit Carlson, is the rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in East Lansing, Mich. She is a graduate of Virginia Theological Seminary and was associate and interim rector at the Church of the Ascension in Gaithersburg, Md., for seven years.

By Kathleen Henderson Staudt

For the next 6 weeks or so I’ll be teaching a seminary course I call “Contemplative Writing.” This year’s run coincides almost exactly with the season of Lent. It teaches a discipline that can help us “word-people” – teachers, preachers, bloggers -- to let our words take us beyond words, and center our lives more fully in God.

My working definition of contemplative writing is “writing that is for no audience but yourself and God.” That is the hardest part for word-people, since so much of what we think about is how to make our ideas available to a particular audience of readers or listeners. But how do we write when no one else will read what we’re writing? What happens when we say to God: “these words are for me and You only.” They may be “me talking to myself in the presence of God” or they may be words to God. But there is no other audience. The title poem of Mary Oliver’s wonderful recent volume Thirst gives us a glimpse of the contemplative writing experience as we overhear the poet speaking to God: “Love for you and love for the earth are having such a long conversation in my heart,” she writes. Contemplative writing uses words to ground those “long conversations” that go on in our hearts, in the listening presence of God.

I like to distinguish contemplative writing from other kinds of writing that we do in “not for publication” mode especially journaling, creative writing, and now, blogging.

Most of us writers probably practice journaling/freewriting/prewriting in some form. Journaling is “reflective" writing: the audience for it is myself -- I write so as to see myself more clearly, reflected back. This can be an important tool in the spiritual life, but ultimately, self-understanding is not the goal of contemplation, however important it may be as a step toward honesty with God (what the spiritual tradition calls “purgation"). Contemplation in the spiritual life is ultimately contemplation of God, not of oneself. Journaling melds into contemplative writing when we move away from talking to ourselves and find ourselves saying “You” to our God.

Contemplative writing is also not “creative writing.” Again, it’s about audience. Creative writing encourages people to release and explore their intuitive, imaginative side, to see things in a new way, to approach life creatively -- and to shape these experiences into literary form, for a particular audience. The best creative writing shows real respect for the disciplines of poetic form, the properties of language itself as a material, and the best creative writers submit themselves to the disciplines and challenges posed by their materials, uncovering new richness in words that embody and show imaginative insights. Contemplative writing can become “creative writing”—occasionally something will emerge that calls out to be shared. But the disciplines are different.

Some people now use blogging as another way of engaging the spiritual life with words: An online blog, of course, has an implicit audience, but I’ve known of people who blog on a website offline just to have a place to put their private thoughts, and the fluidity of the keyboard-to-screen medium can be freeing. I find, however, that there is a kind of “body prayer” involved in the exercise of putting pen to paper – a groundedness that we lose at the computer keyboard. The very clunkiness and messiness of pen and paper slows us down and forces pause, as the speed of electronic media does not.

The discipline I commend to my students is one that I also intend to take on, this Lenten season: Spend some time every day writing in a journal. Begin by placing yourself intentionally in the presence of God, and attending to what you see, hear, perceive around you – or to whatever conversation is going on in your heart. Let whatever comes, come: fill 3 pages, or spend 20 minutes – whichever frame fits your life better –but write in the presence of God, where whatever you write is acceptable, and spelling doesn’t count. Most important, leave some time after your writing time simply to rest in that loving Presence. On good days you may find that this practice of writing has become a preparatio for prayer: a doorway into the presence of the One who loves us, and always calls us deeper into that loving presence, in every moment of our lives.

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt (Kathy) keeps the blog poetproph, works as a teacher, poet, spiritual director and retreat leader in the Washington DC area, and teaches courses in literature, theology and writing at Virginia Theological Seminary and the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of two books: At the Turn of a Civilisation: David Jones and Modern Poetics and Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture.

By James Jones

Traditionally people have given up things for Lent. Last year in the Diocese of Liverpool many parishes took part in a Carbon Fast. Through it we were able to focus on God’s Earth and its poorest people in whom, Jesus said, we were to find him.

This year, in Lent 2008, we invite as many as can to join us in a Carbon Fast (For details, click Read More at the end of this entry.)

Over the years I’ve been able to visit some of the countries most affected by the changing climate. I’ve sat with village elders in Africa, India and Central America and asked the simple question, “Has the weather changed in your lifetime?” With the answer “yes” has come stories of cyclones, rivers drying up, harvests failing and flooding.

Whatever is happening to the planet there’s no disputing that we’re putting more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before and that this is adding to the blanket that’s trapping the heat around the earth.

On World Environment Day, I was in Tromso in the Arctic Circle for a service in the Ice Cathedral. Desmond Tutu was preaching next to a block of ice that had fallen away from a melting Ice Cap, and reinforcing our responsibility for God’s creation.

St. Paul tells us everything has come into being through and for Christ. This doctrine gives us the ethics of caring for the earth. It is Christ’s environment, not ours. He stands at the centre of all creation – as both creator and redeemer.

As the climate changes and impacts the earth it is clear that the poor are already suffering. The tragedy is that those with the power to do something about it are least affected and those who are most affected are powerless to bring about any change. That’s why there’s a moral imperative on those of use who emit more than our fair share of carbon to rein in our consumption.

It’s estimated that in the U.K. we emit 9.5 tons of carbon per person per year whereas in Ethiopia the average is 0.067 tons and in Bangladesh 0.24. Apparently the earth can sustain 0.8 per person! Reducing our carbon footprint is therefore a matter of justice.

When Jesus fasted in the wilderness he kept company with wild beasts and with angels who ministered to him. He came out of that experience with a clear sense of the Kingdom of God which he preached with passion.

As we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it’s done in Heaven, the Carbon Fast will be a practical step towards a fairer world, a sustainable planet and the earthing of Heaven.

The Rt. Rev. James Jones is Bishop of Liverpool.

Read more »

By Sara Miles

Remember you’re dust, I say to the girl, and press my thumb hard into her smooth forehead. She doesn’t blink. I exhale, turn to the man beside me, and hand him a small ceramic bowl of ashes. “You’re dust,” he says. “Remember you’re dust, and to dust you will return.”

Ash Wednesday begins Lent, the forty days before Easter that many Christians mark with fasting, prayer and penitence. Americans tend to personalize the season with pious gestures of “giving up.” But at the church in San Francisco where I’m a lay pastor, and where I run the city’s largest food pantry, Lent stares into those bare facts of dust and flesh in order to connect our bodies. We mark each other’s foreheads with ashes and admit our common mortality: the kneeling girl, the crackhead who helps me sweep the floor, the stranger at the door. And maybe because I work so much with food––serving bread and wine on Sundays, then groceries from the same altar at the pantry––I think of Lent as an opportunity to admit our hungers.

At the food pantry, those hungers are wrapped in language and in waxed cardboard, as vividly metaphorical as the Psalms and as material as a plate of chicken and dumplings.

“I just want something fresh,” says a woman who lives in one small, airless room and cuts up some raw cabbage for a snack. “Something real.” Another wants the buttery mashed potatoes we cook for lunch, an abundant pile of softness and comfort. A restless twelve-year old wants a cup of coffee, so he can swallow the hot black magic that will turn him into a powerful man instead of a frightened kid. A woman far from home wants mangoes to remind her of the tropics; an aspiring immigrant wants American cereal, a junkie wants more and sweeter sweets. But I crave salt, and bitterness.

I remember a Lent fifteen years ago, when I cooked for my friend Bo until he couldn’t eat anymore, then gave him sips of ginger ale until he couldn’t drink, then watched as the breath went out of his AIDS-wasted body. His mother and I carried Bo’s ashes to Land’s End, where sweet alyssum was blooming on the cliffside and the blue waters crashed and broke far below our weeping group of friends. I reached into the container and tossed him into the sky, and the ashes blew back into my open mouth. They tasted slightly of salt, and of dust.

They made me hungry.

There are moments so purely present-tense, and yet so laden with remembrance, that they become a conversation with God. I look around sometimes during the food pantry, and think about all our bodies, the living and the dead ones, and all the food we’ve shared. There’s a plate of fragrant, cut-up oranges on the altar and suddenly, as the last afternoon light pours into the church, my mouth waters.

Artwork by Paul Fromberg after Andrei Rublev's icon, The Trinity

Sara Miles is the author of "Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion," now available in paperback with a readers' guide.

Second of two parts. Part One.

By Derek Olsen

Yesterday we began talking about fasting, the pre-eminent spiritual discipline recommended by the prayer book for Lent. We got as far as the externals, the nuts and bolts of the discipline. Now we’ll take a step deeper and look into the theology, spirit, and purpose that animates the practice, connects it to Lent, and empowers it as a tool for the Gospel.

Reading what any of the authors of the Early Church wrote about fasting will quickly dispel any illusion you might have that the discipline of fasting is fundamentally about food. Leo the Great proposes that the food should be primarily a symbol of a deeper kind of renunciation. Fasting for him is a whole-person endeavor where we abstain in mind and spirit as well as body. Indeed, the bodily abstaining from food is a reminder that we should be abstaining from a whole lot more. Like what? In a word: sin—and from the habits that give it comfort and growth. The act of abstaining from food reminds us that we should be abstaining from other behaviors as well.

Fasting jolts us out of our regular patterns. As a result, Leo enjoins, it gives us an opportunity to take a step back from business-as-usual. If we’re going to take care about what we eat, why not take care about how we live, think, and talk? Don’t just refrain from food, Leo counsels; refrain from some of your bad behaviors too. (See Leo's Sermon XLII.)

In offering this advice, Leo is doing nothing more than reiterating and recasting the words of the prophet Isaiah whose voice thunders down through the centuries:

Is such a day the fast that I choose,
a day to humble oneself?
Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Will you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
When you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
(Isaiah 58:5-7)

For the sake of this [purity of heart], then, everything is to be done and desired. For its sake solitude is to be pursued; for its sake we know that we must undertake fasts, vigils, labors, bodily deprivation, readings, and other virtuous things . . . so that by taking these steps we may be able to ascend to the perfection of love.

These observances do not exist for themselves . . . what is gained by fasting is less than what is spent on anger, the fruit that is obtained from reading is not so great as the loss that is incurred by contempt for one's brother. It behooves us, then, to carry out the things that are secondary—namely fasts, vigils, the solitary life, and meditation on Scripture—for the sake of the principle scopos (goal), which is purity of heart or love, than for their sake to neglect this principle virtue . . . (Conf. 1.7.1-2)

Acts of piety like fasting are entirely secondary to the real goal which is, for Christians, always the cultivation of love towards God and neighbor. They are means to the end and never the end in themselves—as Jesus himself reminds us in his words on the subject:

And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt 6:16-18)

Jesus—and Matthew who records these words—evidently saw no need to explain to the people why they would want to fast; for them it was self-evident. For us, it's not so clear.

In the Bible, fasting is mentioned any number of times. It's particularly prevalent in the Minor Prophets (Hosea through Malachi) that we know all too often as the biblical equivalent of “fly-over territory.” Preeminently fasting appears as a sign of repentance and sorrow for sins—and here’s our Lenten connection. Whenever I consider the Ash Wednesday imposition of ashes, the words from my Lutheran youth ring in my ears: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return; repent, and believe in the Good News.” This one line collects the two major themes of the day and of Lent: remembrance of our mortality and our need for repentance to hear again God's word of grace. We fast, following the example of the patriarchs, prophets, and martyrs, to feel in our flesh the pangs of hunger—reminders of our embodied-ness and signs of our mortality—and as a sign of contrition for those things done and left undone.

This Lent, I urge you to take seriously Ash Wednesday's invitation—to consider the state of your life and soul in the face of ultimate realities—and to embrace some form of fasting and self-denial. It needn't be something heroic (indeed, it's probably better for your humility if it's not), but I urge you to make it something worthwhile. Furthermore, I commend to you not just refraining from something but embracing the full discipline of the church: restraint coupled with almsgiving and prayer. As Christ fasted these forty days in the wilderness let us persevere in his company. Watching, waiting, hoping, praying, may these days fit us for the joyful Easter morn when we rise to greet that Sun who shall never go down.

Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. He is an adjunct professor at Emory’s Candler School of Theology where he teaches in homiletics, liturgics, and New Testament. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X dad appear at Haligweorc.

First of two parts.

By Derek Olsen

This year, the coming of February brings with it the coming of Lent. The prayer book tells us that we are to observe the days of Lent with special acts of dedication; specifically the “Invitation to a Holy Lent” commends to us the “fasting and self-denial.” I think most Episcopalians aren’t very clear on the practices of fasting. We know what this word means, but there is quite a bit of uncertainty about its boundaries as an actual practice: what is it, why should we do it, and what—if anything—does it have to do with Lent?

Let me begin by clearing up the biggest major fallacy about fasting: Not eating is not fasting. Oh sure, if you look in the dictionary you’ll find that as one of the definitions. Likewise that’s what your doctor means if he orders a fasting blood test, but simply not eating is not a spiritual discipline—and that’s what we’re talking about here, a spiritual discipline. Some folks who want to try fasting fall into trouble because they assume it just means not eating, and that’s not always safe. As a discipline, the Church has historically put strictures around who should and shouldn’t that sound like something at the end of a pharmaceutical ad: it’s not for children; it’s not for women who are pregnant or nursing; it’s not for the elderly, the weak, or the sick. And, in thinking of the maladies of our day, it’s not for those with eating disorders either; there’s nothing holy about self-starvation. For those who cannot or should not fast, an alternative is what we commonly know as “giving something up for Lent.” While I’ll focus on fasting here, both the practices and the theology behind it can easily be applied to whatever you choose to give up during Lent whether that falls into the realms of food, entertainment, or something else that makes sense in your life.

Throughout the scope of Christian history, the practice of fasting has, indeed, involved the regulation of one’s diet. However, another major fallacy is that there’s one right way to regulate it that counts—and that other variations don’t. Again, not true. Christians have used different standards across time and space often modulating between degrees of fasting and abstinence, that is, not eating or reducing food intake (fasting) versus abstaining from certain kinds of foods (abstinence). The Eastern Orthodox, for instance, limit particular kinds of food on certain kinds of days. Their pre-Lenten period includes a gradual paring away of food categories so that by the time Lent arrives, the diet is almost entirely vegan with no animal products in it whatsoever. Some Western early medieval sources speak of similar regimentation. For monks following the Rule of Benedict, Lenten fasting meant no food at all before the ninth hour (around 3 o’clock) and what they received then was sparse. In other times and places fasting meant not eating anything until sun