Archive for December, 2019

Hope has teeth (Letters from the Coast)

The season of Advent is my favourite season of the church year. The music is great, the darkness and length of the nights highlights the beauty of the approaching light, and we look forward to the pageantry of Christmas.

Each week traditionally focuses on a theme, and they usually run in the following order: hope, peace, joy, and love.

For hope, I paged through an old journal and found an entry from my ordination retreat in the summer of 2016. While pretty far removed from the dark of Advent, I am struck by the memory of the despair that visited the world that week. We woke on the first full day of the retreat to the news that a colleague’s brother had been murdered, and the horror of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.

The other ordinands and I sat and stared at each other. So, I remember thinking, this is the world that we’re being called to serve.

It seemed like a pretty tall order. And frankly, I didn’t know if I could handle it. I was dealing with some pretty debilitating despair of my own at the time, mostly due to burnout and buckets of anxiety about this ridiculous thing I had decided to do with my life.

But despite my memory of that feeling of terrible fear and weight, I also found this:

“What does it mean to live as an incarnate and aggressively visible sign of hope? Hope for today, hope for tomorrow, hope in the unthinkable, the outright nonsense of resurrection? Hope for the justice we are promised, the justice at the end of the arc of the universe? Hope for the best humanity has to offer when so much more often we are left with the worst thorns of hatred and death?

There is an ancient statement of belief that may be ridiculous but sometimes I wonder… The idea that the crucifixion was like a lure, a fish hook to catch the devil.

A tragedy should never be colonized by empty, futile optimism.

Hope, like joy, has teeth.

In the cyclones of the world, in the whirling noisy mess of our heavy grieving lives, perhaps if we are foolish enough, the rage, fear, and anger of the world can become a fish hook.

A fish hook for God.

A fish hook for good, for sacrifice, for peace, for joy, for love.

A brutal thing that ensnares and draws out, a tool for torment and death, an alarm for the sleeping cynic, a kick in the pants, a chance to scream, “This shall not stand,” a way to reach up into totally foreign and vulnerable territory in order to give refreshment to others.

A lure for the God held within each heart.

A spark to light an inferno of compassion.

Not for the devastated. For us, who hug and cook and cry and sit in silence, cradling all of the shitty gorgeous mess of a shattered spirit, blood and water spilling over the brim, out of our tiny arms – so small, too small to hold it all, but someone has to.

Because why the fuck else are we doing this? What’s the point if not to embrace the agony and explode it with our own brokenness?

What’s the point of mockery if the scorned laugh back?

What’s the point of desecration when the rich lay down their cloaks for a beggar?

What’s the point of calling someone worthless when they keep giving away everything they own?

So turn cartwheels in the ruins and treat paupers as princes. Sit and allow futile silence to be the third friend at your meeting of grief.

Do not do as the world does and fill it with platitudes, or attempt to avoid contamination, as though we could avoid our own decaying, beautiful flesh.

Cook casseroles and see.

Bake biscuits and be.

Sow seeds of life without words.

Crosses on a hill are for watering.

Garden tombs are for opening.

While it is still dusk…

expect the dawn.”

Panagia Track #1: Violet Blue

Some of my long-term followers may know that for the last three years I have made a devotional practice of recording songs and releasing them week by week in the seasons of Advent and Lent.

This year’s Advent offering is called “Panagia,” which means “All Holy,” an Eastern Orthodox title of the Virgin Mary.

The first track just dropped today! It’s called “Violet Blue.” This was written in the middle of summer, but on a cool night with many layered clouds. It struck me then and strikes me still that every human culture has a wintertime ritual, and it makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. All of these rituals tend to focus on the endurance of light and the coming of spring, but also a more general tendency to tell stories – perhaps merely a natural result of being in close quarters with one another for an extended period of time, but by its very nature bonding us, weaving us closer together. Winter might be a difficult time for many folks, but I will always love her for holding us within her womb until the light returns, and helping us to remember our roots.

I’ll be posting the rest of the album here regularly. :) Enjoy!