12th Night

Good Sunday morning, good citizens of the last day of Christmastide.

This is the 12th and final day of Christmas. This is the day when every true love gives their true love 12 Drummers Drumming, which is understood by some good Christian folk to symbolize the 12 points of the Apostle's Creed.

In the Bible, 12 is associated with the perfection of order and government. For example, God chose 12 tribes of Israel, and Jesus chose 12 apostles.

In ancient civilizations, 12 represented the completion and integrality of a thing. It's also associated with the heavens, such as the 12 months of the year, the 12 signs of the zodiac, and the 12 stations of the moon and sun.

In some religions, 12 expresses the Divine Mother.

The number 12 is also significant in other ways, including:

In Ancient Greece, the 12 Olympians were the principal gods of the pantheon.
A clock face is divided into 12 hours.
A dozen is a common unit of measurement for items like eggs.
The average human has 12 ribs.
A foot is made up of 12 inches.

Had enough? Yeah, me too.

I love all the symbolism but I also love what the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan dubbed “12 Days of Christmas Diet". She sums up:

"If you ate all of the birds in one day, including the pheasant pie, but not including all the trimmings for the other dishes, and subtracted the energy you expended milking, dancing, leaping, and drumming, you’d have consumed 2,384 net calories. That’s really not bad, considering the average American Thanksgiving dinner adds up to about 4,500 calories."

12th Night means that it's the eve of Epiphany, the official end of the Christmas holiday season, and the day on which many people take down their Christmas decorations or risk bad luck for the coming year.

Poet Robert Herrick wrote: "Down with the rosemary, and so / Down with the bays and mistletoe; / Down with the holly, ivy, all, / Wherewith ye dress'd the Christmas Hall."

There is, of course, Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night, which features many of the traditions of this day which involve pranks, role reversals, and general chaos. Servants dressed as masters, men dressed as women, and people roamed the streets in gangs, decked out in costumes and blackened faces.

In some parts of England, Twelfth Night was also traditionally associated with apples and apple trees. People would troop out to their fruit orchards bearing a hot, spiced mixture of cider and ale for the "wassailing of the trees."

English settlers in the Colonies brought the Twelfth Night tradition with them. In colonial Virginia, it was customary to hold a large and elegant ball. George and Martha Washington didn't usually do much for Christmas except attend church, but they often hosted elaborate Twelfth Night celebrations. It was also their anniversary; they'd been married on January 5, 1759.

It wasn't until the mid-1800s that Christmas became the primary holiday of the season in America, and at that point, Twelfth Night celebrations all but disappeared.

Pity, I think. Christmas Day has become a commercialized event, with the emphasis being on how much Americans spend on gifts for everyone.

Today, in church, we get to celebrate the Epiphany. I'm preaching at 8 AM but at 10 AM, the kids and those members of the congregation who are "young at heart" will present an Epiphany Pageant.

I love this bit of Christmastide best. Maybe because it's the last bit of Christmastide but I love that we get to remind ourselves one more time of the story on which all the other stories of our faith hinge: The Incarnation.

I mean, if we didn't believe that God - the Divine Cosmic Intelligence, the Creator of the Universe - deigned to robe Godself in human flesh and come among us so that we could learn about the Ways of God and God could learn more about the ways of being human, then, well, nothing else matters.

Not all the miracles - because then, Jesus would have just been a clever musician or, perhaps, a skilled physician.

Not all the wise sayings - because then, Jesus would have simply been yet another wise person or a prophet.

Not the resurrection - because then, that would have just been another magic show that lots of people claimed to be able to do at that age and time.

No, the key element in all of the stories of our faith rests right here, on the miracle of the Incarnation.

And, as the tag line goes, The Wise Still Seek Christ.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

Image: ‘Women with Birds’ by Emily Balivet, 2006

https://www.emilybalivet.com/Twelve_Women.html

Stupiphany

 

 The Feast of the Epiphany
January 5, 2025
St. Peter's Episcopal Church, Lewes, DE

I may be dating myself here, but does anyone remember The Car Talk guys? Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, used to broadcast on NPR from WBUR in Boston. (Remember the tag? “Don’t drive like my brother.” “Yeah, and don’t drive like my brother.”)

Every January, they would announce their own list of suggestions for new dictionary entries. I had two favorites: “Inoculatte” ( IN-oc-U - latte - to consume coffee intravenously) and “giraffiti” (GIRAFF-iti -vandalism spray-painted very high). But the best, for me, is the invented word “stupiphany.” (STU-pifany). Not to be confused with “epiphany”, according to Click and Clack, a stupiphany is to realize, suddenly, that you’ve been real idiot.

Let me give you a modern example: 

There was an episode of that classic TV show that ran during the 1970's, "All in the Family," when Edith and Archie were attending one of Edith's high school reunions. Edith meets an old classmate who over the years has gained a lot of weight. They have a delightful conversation, catching up and remembering old times. Later on, she remarked to Archie about the classmate, in that high, thin, voice and Astoria, Queens, NY accent, "Ain't he a beautiful person?"

Archie, of course, had a different opinion and, obviously disgusted by his obesity, says, "Edith, you're a pip! You and I look at the same guy, you see a beautiful person and I see a blimp."

Edith responds, "Yeah, ain't that too bad.”

I’d like to say that the look on Archie’s face was one of stupiphany, but Archie, well, Archie wasn’t the most inciteful bulb in the pack. Archie’s real gift, however, was to reveal to us our own moments of stupiphany about our own biases and prejudices.

Sometimes, in an instant, we can be called up short and realized that we have missed seeing Christ in others precisely because, in our arrogance, we have missed knowing the Christ within us. It’s not an epiphany so much as it is a forehead-slapping moment of stupiphany.

Here's another which I learned from Walter Brueggemann: For centuries, noble scholars of Torah, Talmud and Mishnah thought that the prophecy of Isaiah 60 meant that the King of the Jews would be born in Jerusalem. However, there was another, smaller, less significant and hardly elite school of thought that remembered the prophecy of Micah 5:4 and thought it more accurate that Bethlehem would be the place.

Bethlehem is 9 miles south of Jerusalem and it is as humble and lowly a town as Jerusalem was a large, busy city. Turns out, the elite scholars were off by only 9 miles, but might have been worlds apart for what that meant in terms of expectations about The Savior - as well as the nature of that salvation.

I wonder how long it took before the larger school of scholars slapped their foreheads and said to their friends, “Bethlehem! Of course Bethlehem and not Jerusalem! How could we not have known? Why did it take us so long? What were we thinking?”

It was, I imagine, a real Tappett Brothers “Stupiphany”.

At the 10 o’clock service, the children and a few members of the congregation who are “young at heart” will present an Epiphany Pageant. It will be, I have no doubt, a grand retelling the Epiphany story with a sense of awe and dignity and wonder befitting the occasion. And costumes. Lots of costumes. With earth-toned towels. And, colorful striped sheets. And, maybe an angel or two with tinfoil wings and a tinsel halo.

I am remembering a Christmas Eve pageant when I had a Stupiphany. I was in Baltimore. It was the late 80s.  The church I was serving did not have a “Midnight mass” which made me very sad. One of my colleagues was a Jesuit priest who, hearing my lament, invited me to St. Stanislaw’s, an old Polish Catholic Church over in SoWeBo – or  Southwest Baltimore– for, he promised, “a Midnight Christmas mass unlike any other you’ve ever experienced”.

 

Oh, my but I could not have known how right he would be.

That part of SoWeBo had been initially settled by hardworking Polish immigrants, who built their homes in the typical “Row Home” style well-known to the city of Baltimore. They built a magnificent church and, of course, an elementary school to accompany it which was staffed by Polish nuns who taught the children in their native Polish. They all learned English together as the nuns taught themselves and the children and the children helped the nuns and taught their parents.

Horrified and deeply scared by what had happened to them during WWII and the intentional extermination of the Polish people in the Warsaw Ghetto and Concentration Camps, they wanted to insure that succeeding generations knew and understood the heritage of the Polish people. They clung fiercely to the language and foods and customs of their homeland.

As happens with the second and third generation of immigrant families, their children got a fine education, went on to college, moved away from home to the suburbs and then, moved to different states, and never came back, except, perhaps, for Christmas and Easter. Or funerals.

As they left, there were still jobs at the factories and warehouses and ship building in the harbor that needed to be filled. However, the new wave of immigrants to that neighborhood did not come from Eastern Europe but rather, from Southeast Asia. Specifically, Cambodia.

The Polish were a proud, hardworking people. They admired the hardworking, industrious nature they saw in the Cambodian people and rewarded them by teaching them and their children to be Good Polish Catholics in their church and in their church schools.

That is the context for the Midnight Christmas Eve Mass at St. Stanislas Church, SoWeBo, Baltimore. Even so, I don’t know if I can convey the experience I had there.

First, the sanctuary – oh, dear, what shall I say? It was supposed to be a replica of St. Stanislaw's in their home village but there was just no comparing the carved marble of home with the  . . . um . . . I'll just say that it was a marvel of art and architecture in plaster of Paris. It was compounded by the fatal flaw of “trying to do too much.”

It would have been enough to have the wall behind the very large altar a magnificent mosaic of the Resurrection. It would have been enough that under the large, wide, hand carved wooden altar was a plaster of Paris replica of the burial tomb of Jesus – a bright yellow light filling every corner of its emptiness – complete with a large stone moved to one side.

It would have been enough that, on the side of the tomb under the altar, in the shadow of the mosaic Resurrection on the wall, was painted the images of Mary Magdalene running to tell Peter, and Peter and James and John standing there and pointing to the empty tomb with disbelief on their faces.

Oh no, but tonight, this very special night, in the bright yellow glow of the empty tomb, was (you guessed it) the Nativity Scene.

Yes, complete with large, carved, statues of a very white, Western European Mary and Joseph, attired in beautiful clothing that were high fashion in the Middle Ages, along with statues of oxen and donkey, shepherds and lambs and three Wise Men, with their camels.

There it was – the whole story of Jesus – from birth to sacrificial death to resurrection. My Jesuit friend could hardly contain his giggles as he told me that this was an exact replica of St. Stanislaw’s church from their village in Poland.

“Isn’t this just the BEST?” he snorted. I had to agree, it was, as my mother would say, trying to be polite, “Quite something.”

But, wait! There was something missing. There was a manger right in front of Mary and Joseph. But, where was Baby Jesus? Ah, our question was about to be answered. The houselights went down, tapered candles were lit, and the voices of little children singing “Silent Night” in Polish were suddenly and rudely interrupted by the very loud sound of a rope and pully. A rusty pully and a frayed rope.

My Jesuit friend was holding his sides trying not to laugh as he pointed upward to the choir loft. There. A great spotlight shown in the darkness. There. The Baby Jesus, strapped into a sling, making a slow but steady descent from the choir loft.

 . . . as the pully wheezed –

Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo –

. . . . . and the spotlight shown its blinding light –

Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo –

. . . . .  and some of us spotted a place where the rope was frayed and gasped at the thought that Baby Jesus might be dropped –

Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo, Wee-hoo.

. . . . . and the sweet children’s voices sang Silent Night in Polish –

Until finally – miraculously, actually – the Infant Jesus landed with amazing, precise accuracy into the manger in front of Mary and Joseph, who were in front of the empty tomb, which was under the altar, which was in front of the mosaic of the Resurrection.

Honestly? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Until . . .

. . . .  until I looked over at the choir loft and saw there a most miraculous sight. There they were, row upon row of beautiful olive-skinned, round-faced children, with straight, jet black hair and beautiful almond-shaped eyes, singing Silent Night.

The choir was made up of beautiful Cambodian children.

They were singing Silent Night.

 In Polish.

And, right then and there, I had a “Stupiphany”. I didn’t slap my hand to my forehead, but I got it. I got the message of Christmas and the Epiphany. (Of course! What was I thinking?) Which is this:

You are most likely to find the Incarnation of God in the least likely places.

Of course, I said to myself, SoWeBo, not Jerusalem or even Bethlehem. St. Stanislaw’s, not the Vatican or Canterbury, or Constantinople. No. A little Polish Catholic Church in SoWeBo.

We are most likely to find the Incarnation of God anywhere people try to tell the story of the miracle of salvation – of finding and having been found by Jesus, the Body of Christ, in foreign places, far, far from home.

We are most likely to find the Incarnation of God whenever one person sees another person’s exterior as disgusting but another person sees past the exterior to the beautiful person they are, inside and out.

We are most likely to find the Incarnation of God whenever people wisely ignore the expected, traditional route, mapped out by the establishment and, instead, choose the unexpected, the small, the humble, the insignificant, just 9 miles away.

We are most likely to find the Incarnation of God whenever a person misses the humility of the Christ right in front of them because they have ignored, with no small amount of arrogance, the Christ within.

Because, sometimes, the only way to get to the Epiphany is by experiencing a few Stupiphanies.                       

Amen. 

 

Gift: Symbols, Chalk and Epiphanies

Good Saturday morning, good citizens of Christmastide. Today is the 11th (of 12) Days of Christmas. It's the day in the Christmas song when we sing about "eleven pipers piping".

"Eleven pipers piping" reportedly symbolize the eleven Apostles who remained faithful after the betrayal of Judas Iscariot. However, the number 11 has other significance.

In numerology, 11 is a master number, which means it has a high vibrational frequency and deep spiritual significance. It's considered a bridge between the physical and spiritual realms, and a symbol of intuition, enlightenment, and personal growth. People with 11 in their numerology charts are said to have a strong connection to the universe.

In China, 11 represents the union of the sky and the earth. In African esoteric traditions, it's related to the mysteries of fruitfulness.

Seeing the number 11 frequently is sometimes called an "angel number". It can be a sign from the universe or guardian angels to pay attention to your intuition and spiritual journey.

So, there it is, then. You get to pick the significance of the symbol when you sing it. Just please do try to remember that there are 12 whole days to Christmastide. So many of the same people who sing that song with enthusiasm still throw their Christmas tree to the curb on December 26th. Makes me so sad.

We take down our Christmas Tree on the Epiphany but we keep our house lights and multiple Creche (Nativity) Sets up through the Feast of the Presentation. Because, you know, that's just how we roll here at Llangollen.

We are fast approaching the Feast of the Epiphany - January 6th - when the "Three Intellectuals from the Orient" came to pay homage to the Newborn Jesus. I'm preaching at the 5 PM tonight and the 8 AM tomorrow but the Epiphany Pageant will be the sermon at the 10.

I understand that the children and a few adults who are young at heart will tell the story with word and song. And, costumes. There must be costumes. Lots of old, plush, earth-toned towels and colorful striped sheets. And, walking sticks, small boxes and Burger King crowns. There might even be a few tinfoil angel wings and tinsel halos.

I love Epiphany Pageants even more than Christmas Pageants.

We'll also have The Chalking of The Doors tomorrow which I think I love even more than Epiphany Pageants. The boss is away with his spouse on Christmastide break, so I'll be blessing the chalk and handing it out to folks, along with a copy of a liturgy they can do in their own homes.

There are lots of resources out there to guide you through it. Here's a lovely one from The Table, an Episcopal Church in Indianapolis, IN., which you can download https://www.thetableindy.org/epiphany-tradition-chalking-of-the-door/

If you don't have "blessed chalk" it's fine to use regular chalk. And if you chalked your door last year, you really should take a moment to wipe it down and start fresh. I think there's something symbolically important about that.

Here's a little something about The Epiphany which I learned years ago from Walter Brueggemann:

For centuries, noble scholars of Torah, Talmud and Mishnah thought that the prophecy of Isaiah 60 meant that the King of the Jews would be born in Jerusalem. However, there was another, smaller, less significant school of thought that remembered the prophecy of Micah 5:4 and thought it more accurate that Bethlehem would be the place.

Bethlehem is 9 miles south of Jerusalem and was as humble and lowly a town as Jerusalem was a large, busy city. Turns out, the elite scholars were off by only 9 miles but might have been worlds apart for what that meant in terms of expectations about The Savior - as well as the nature of that salvation.

I've been thinking that it is inherent in the very nature of epiphanies that we get to them by unexpected routes. I think we have to get lost a few times and we sometimes have to travel a few miles off a road well-traveled before we get to see or experience what it is we need to see or experience.

As my friend of blessed memory, Jonathan Haggar AKA "Mad Priest" used to say, "Of course, I could be wrong." But, I think that, too, is inherent in the very nature of epiphanies. You really don't know you're not wrong until you discover that, in fact, you're right.

Or, vise versa.

Problem is, that the process could take years. In the case of the Three Intellectuals from the Orient, it took approximately 33 years until the events unfolded in such a way that the ancient prophecies were revealed to be true. That's an entire generation. It took a few more generations for it to be revealed just what kind of Sovereign and salvation this particular Messiah would bring.

Meanwhile, we retell the story and chaulk our doors and wait expectantly for Jesus to return. In the process, it might do us well to look in unexpected places and listen to still, small voices and be very wary of directions given by people with great power who say they mean to do us good.

It's the seeking that's even more important than the finding. As Paulo Cohelo writes in The Alchemist, “The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

 

Gift: Turning a phrase

 Good Friday morning, good citizens of Christmastide.

Today is the 10th Day of Christmas. It's the day when every true love brings their true love ten lords a-leaping. These are, reportedly, a symbol of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Then again, to paraphrase Freud, maybe a leaping lord is just a leaping lord, unless, of course, you're a stereotypical gay man and then 10 leaping lords is a little glimpse of heaven.

Roman Catholics celebrate The Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, which commemorates the naming of the child Jesus; as recounted in the Gospel read on that day, "at the end of eight days, when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb."

There are lots of things on today's calendar of note. Today is the birthday of women's rights reformer and abolitionist, Lucretia (Coffin) Mott, one of the organizers of the Seneca Falls (New York) Convention of 1848.

Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Catholic Church on this date in 1521. The church started formal proceedings against Luther in 1519 for his 95 Thesis. It took some time for the commission to agree on whether his writings were heretical or not. Eventually, they decided that Luther was indeed guilty of heresy, and Pope Leo X issued a bull giving him 60 days to recant. Luther reacted by throwing the bull on a bonfire, so the Pope excommunicated him.

I am amazed that no one has done more with that turn of phrase "throwing the bull on the bonfire". I like it almost as much as the British expression, which could have been said in response to Luther's throwing the bull on the bonfire, "Well, and that really set the cat amongst the pigeons." Watch for its appearance in a future sermon. You have been duly warned.

It was on this day in 1882 that the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde docked in New York. Customs asked him if he had anything to declare. Oscar Wilde replied, "Nothing but my genius."

Herman Melville, age 21, set sail aboard the whaling vessel Acushnet on this date in 1841 from the port of New Bedford, Massachusetts, bound for the Pacific Ocean. He was at sea for four years, and his experiences gave him material for Moby-Dick, which begins, "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."

Today is the birthday of J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien (1892). Tolkien was a professor of Anglo-Saxon and, later, English Language and Literature at Oxford University. One day, while grading exams, he discovered that a student had left one whole page in his examination booklet blank. Tolkien, for reasons unknown even to him, wrote on the page, "In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." This single line turned into a bedtime story that he told his children, and from there, a book: The Hobbit (1937).

Today, the New Congress will be sworn in which may take a while because the House of Representatives will first elect the Speaker of the House. The POTUS-elect has thrown his support behind the incumbent but gave him a lukewarm "Best of Luck!".

The math is complicated - he needs 218 votes but there are different possible scenarios as to how he might get there. The Democrats are 100% behind Hakeem Jeffries (that's 215 votes).

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) declared yesterday that he would not vote for House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to serve another term under any circumstances, even if his fingernails were pulled out.

According to reports, there are at least 16 Republicans who have refused to commit to voting for Johnson. Massie, however, is the only Republican member in the House who has publicly stated that he will not vote for the current speaker.

The margin is so slim - reflecting the less than 1% win of the POTUS-elect (Note to the MAGA-DOGE faction: Definitely NOT a mandate) - that we could see a repeat of the 2023 Kevin McCarthy Show, which lasted 15 ballots over 4 days for 215 votes. McCarthy lasted 10 months.

Meanwhile, by practice, the House can conduct no business until it elects a Speaker, meaning the chamber will be paralyzed until it does so.

Welcome to The New Reality MAGA-DOGE Show, which features throwing bull on the fire and setting a cat amongst the pigeons.

See? Tole ya.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

Gift of the Day: Choosing Gratitude

 Good Thursday morning, good citizens of Christmastide.

It's the ninth day of Christmas when every true love gives their true love, nine ladies dancing. Someone has actually figured out that if you hired nine women to dance for your true love, it would cost $8,308.12 (+10%).

"Nine Ladies Dancing" is symbolic of the Nine Gifts of the Holy Spirit - or, as described in some places, "Nine life principles -(Love, Joy, Peace, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, Self-Control, and Patience.)

The Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts is empty for TEC but the Roman Church celebrates the Feasts of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen, both fourth-century bishops.

It is also traditional in some cultures to make a 9-day novena to Our Lady beginning on Christmas Day, so if you did that, your novena would be ending today.

And, the countdown begins. There are 4 days to the ratification of the election by the Electoral College, and 18 days before the inauguration.

We've already had two violent acts that have taken lives and destroyed property: the truck incident in NOLA, which injured 26 and killed 10, and now a TESLA cybertruck explosion in front of Trump Tower in Los Vegas, which left 1 dead and several injured. Both are being investigated as domestic terrorist attacks.

Violence begets violence. Project 2025 is a political platform with violence baked into every line. There is already a war between the racist MAGA and the elitist DOGE over the H1B visas. The MAGA folks are hoarse but still screaming "Mass Deportation" and the DOGE folks, immigrants themselves like Musk (Ramaswamy was born in Cincinnati, OH), argue that H1B visas help bring "smart" people to this country who work for lower wages and are grateful for the opportunity.

But, they aren't racist, they argue. Or, elitist. They're businessmen. Entrepreneurs who understand more about The Spirit of America than most people who were born here.

I don't think you need special glasses to see where this is going.

I've been meditating on the Nine Gifts of the Spirit this morning. I've also been thinking about the 18 days before the Inauguration. If I'm going to make it through the challenging days ahead, I think I need to get myself into a 9-day cycle of a Spiritual Novena that has a daily focus on one of those gifts.

If I lose sight of the gifts of life that are available to me, I am sure to lose my deep sense of gratitude. And, if I lose that, it's just a short drop down to sarcasm and cynicism during which a strange kind of darkness will begin to drape itself around my shoulders like an old, worn-out sweater. Hope will be harder to find. I've traveled that road before, which always leads to a bumpy ride down to the pit where despair awaits my arrival.

When that happens, I am certain to lose the essence of my relationship with God and the people of God. And, you know, if I've lost that, I might as well just pack it in.

If this is beginning to sound like that sappy old song, "Count your blessings, name them one by one," well, maybe that's not such a bad thing, eh?

No, counting one's blessings isn't going to dismantle MAGA or DOGE but it will change MY attitude about "Life in These (Barely) United States." And, if I can do that, and inspire others to do the same, violence has a far less chance of taking hold.

A wise person once said that, in this life, all you really need is love. And, a tiara. And, maybe a cupcake. But, most definitely a piece of dark chocolate.

It's all about attitude, which is always about choice. It has ever been thus. The greatest gift is choice, which is why so many people want to take it away or control it or explain why you can't have it.

For me, it starts with choosing gratitude. For me, that means being committed to living a sacramental, Eucharistic life - a life of sacrificing my tendencies toward arrogance and sense of entitlement for the humility of gratitude.

I am so grateful for this cup of coffee. I am so grateful that I live in a cozy, warm house, driving two dependable cars that we can afford, without debt, sharing it all with someone I love, who, for some wild and crazy nonsensical reason knows me well and loves me still.

And, two dogs who love nothing more than to cuddle and snuggle, when they aren't doing zoomies, and are so grateful to be loved - even though they are fed the same thing at almost the same time every single day of their lives - that they return that love unconditionally.

And, family and friends, some of whom drive me right 'round the bend as well as inspire me to be a better person - sometimes for not the best of reasons - and because some of them are so generous it takes my breath away.

And, I am so grateful for my ability to still find joy in the smallest things: White lights around the roof of our home in the darkness. The way a new home is coming together for friends who are homeowners for the very first time.

A slice of homemade apple pie lovingly made by a dear friend which helped celebrate the first day of the New Year. The new mint tea which my beloved found which we enjoy together almost every afternoon.

A huge bag of Ghirardelli chocolate which was a gift from friends I hadn't seen in six years, and from which I take one piece and enjoy as dessert every night. A Christmas present of two small homemade refrigerator magnets bearing the art of a dear cousin.

I'm feeling better about 2025 already. Cancer? Radiation? Chemotherapy? Okay, no, I'm not exactly ready but I can face them with the strength I'm going to need because I am filled with gratitude which allows me to know joy. And, with joy comes a commitment to justice Justice and Joy are inseparable companions in the enterprise of being human in community.

I hope you are inspired to do the same. Oh, 2025 is not going to be easy. But it can be better. One day at a time. One Beatitude at a time. One Gratitude at a time. One joy at a time.

Together.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.

The Gift of the Day

 Good Wednesday morning, good citizens of the cosmos. Today is just chock-a-block full of notable details that make the day itself a gift of the season.

Today is the eighth day of the miracle of light celebrated in the Festival of Hanukkah - which actually ends tomorrow, so I think I've been counting incorrectly. Hmmm . . .

It is also the 8th day of Christmas. On this day, every true love gives their true love eight maids a milking. The number EIGHT has a great deal of spiritual symbolism. Here are just a few: the eight Beatitudes, the eight ancient Breviary or Divine Office prayer times (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline.), the points of the compass: N, S, E, W, NE, NW, SE, SW.

Today is the seventh and last day of Kwanzaa when the last green candle is lit and the principle of Imani, or faith, is celebrated. "That means honoring our best traditions as a family and community. We look within and above to strive for a higher level of spirituality and a better life for ourselves and for those around us."

Today is also the Feast of the Solemnity of Mary, which honors Mary's role in the birth of Jesus Christ and as the mother of God. The celebration also highlights the importance of Jesus' nature as both human and divine It is a day of Holy Obligation for Roman Catholics, which means they must attend mass. As I recall - and someone can correct me on this - a solemnity holds a higher liturgical rank than a feast day because a solemnity celebrates a mystery. 

Episcopalians, of course, celebrate today as The Feast of the Holy Name, formerly known as The Feast of the Circumcision when it was traditional for male infants to be circumcised. The feast reflects the significance of the Holy Name of Jesus, and the emphasis of the Gospel of Luke on the naming of Jesus rather than his circumcision, because, well, we're Episcopalian and circumcision is just a tad too . . . graphic, if it's all the same to you, thank you very much. (Our Roman friends celebrate the feast of the Holy Name on January 3rd) 

Today, of course, is New Year's Day, a day famously known for the Rose Bowl Parade and football games. It's also famously known as the day to suffer from a hangover, and lots of people will be taking all kinds of silly quack home remedies to ward off the headaches, GI upsets, and queasiness that come with a hangover, all so they can start drinking again while eating chicken wings and chips and dips and drinking alcohol, which is part of the ritual of watching football.

We humans are the source of most of our own misery.

Speaking of which, there are also two more notable occasions on today's calendar. Today is the Anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, changing the legal status under federal law of more than 3.5 million African Americans in the secessionist Confederate states from enslaved to free.

By lovely coincidence, today also marks the first time the great song Amazing Grace was presented at a prayer meeting in Olney, Buckinghamshire, England, on this date in 1773. Vicar John Newton had jotted down the verses in the attic room where he wrote his sermons.

Which brings me to consider, in my time of prayer and meditation, the gift of the day: The way we measure it from sun up to sun down. The way humans can fill a day like today with amazing significant events over the history of days. Or, the way we can allow a whole day or an entire string of days to float by like the silent shift of the tide, changing only itself and perhaps a tiny bit of the landscape invisible to the eye.

Jesus said it was important to let the day be sufficient unto the day, which was his antidote to anxiety and worry. It is why, in part, I include looking over what happened in days past as part of my prayer and meditation. It reminds me that whether or not something great happens today, history will record it and provide a lesson or two about how to use the gift of this day, today, these moments, which will become "a day in the life" of a person, a family, a neighborhood, a community, a state, a nation, the world.

I've spent part of my morning just considering the lessons of the past year and what it is I want to make sure to bring forward to the year 2025. We are sure to be challenged in ways that we would never have asked for or imagined.

If Project 2025 is any indication, the cruelty will be stunning.

Somehow, we have to figure out, as individuals and communities, how to find our better angels and rise up against the forces of cruelty and oppression and violence.

We're already off to a challenging start this morning with the tragic events that happened on Bourbon Street in NOLA. Twenty-six people were injured. Ten people are dead. Two police officers are wounded. The city is in lockdown only hours before the Sugar Bowl. The perpetrator is dead.

What would lead a person to intentionally drive a truck through a crowd of people who had gathered to celebrate the New Year? What terror must he have been feeling to want to recreate terror? Was the death of the perpetrator "suicide by cop"?

This event has already made its mark on the calendar of days. History will record it and future generations will note it. What we will learn from it has yet to be revealed. Clearly, the religious, political, secular, and spiritual significance and past events of this day had no impact on the person who committed this heinous act. Would it have changed anything?

The sixth chapter of Matthew's gospel, in its entirety, is a good meditation to take with us into the day. It begins with the admonition to give to the needy and includes the Lord's Prayer. It continues with instructions about fasting and how we can not serve two masters. It ends with my grandmother's favorite passage about the lilies of the field, and with these words from Jesus, “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day." (RSV)

I think that's exactly how we'll get through Project 2025. One day at a time. And, together. Kindness will help.

I hope something good happens to you today.

Bom dia.