The Gift and Joy of Children

 The Gift and Joy of Children

After my mom remarried in 1956 we moved to Toronto where my step-father worked for the Weston Biscuit Company, Canada’s answer to Nabisco. There, I attended a little mission church called St. Richard of Chichester. Because, even then I sought to be ordained, Fr Hall allowed me to teach Sunday school. Second grade was my favorite. Their minds full of wonder I’d engage them with fanciful stories and tales and not just biblical ones. I’d make them up as I went. 

One day I happened upon a caterpillar on the way to church and brought the little centipede to class. I shared the experience of allowing the little one to climb all over my hand and held the children in awe. Then one by one, those who wished were allowed to experience the magic of that creepy crawly thing to roam about their hands. To round out the wonder of it all I asked the children to imagine that one day this little one would be a magnificent butterfly. 

Then I proceeded to tell the story of the early church and how it used the butterfly to tell of Jesus’ resurrection. I told the children that one day they too would turn into something beautiful for God; something like a butterfly from the creepy crawly caterpillars they were today. We all laughed. 

Being a child with children is a pure delight. 

In College I lived with a family who had two young children and partly paid my room and board in exchange for babysitting. Again I told bed time stories. I’d make up something as I went along. J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling had nothing on me. And just this week I spent a delightful evening with Sara Mato from St Paul’s and her two children with Bob and Anne Barney, thank you very much. I fancy myself a bit of a lovable grandpa. This is how Sara’s children see me. And Cindy is grandma.

The gift of children. The joy and care of children as the Prayer Book puts it. How precious!

All of which makes the events of this past week unbearably and exquisitely excruciating in sorrow and pain. And yet I feel as though I am silenced from what I want to say. So politicized is everything that anything I might want to say will likely be characterized as “political”. And politics should be kept out of the pulpit.

So, I’ll hold my tongue. I will bottle up the pain within me. I will keep a silence. But as I do that, the children’s screams cry out to me from somewhere beyond the grave. In fact the voices are clearly recorded; “Please send the police” a child begs. 

An hour passes before the police breached the barricades.

If it were up to me I’d lock up gun control advocates and NRA leaders into the same room with the children’s voices. I wouldn’t let them out until they agree on something. But I have to hush my mouth. I have nothing to say. I don’t want to be political. 

But I do have to be prophetic. That’s why I ask us to listen to the voice of Jesus. In today’s Gospel; Jesus prayed to God; “that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one”.

I have no voice. No opinion. I have nothing to say. But the children’s voices are haunting me with their screams. They are the prophets now and I will let them speak for me. 

We are told that the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun. Why then did the good guys with guns wait so long?

Alas I have to learn to hold my tongue. 

Maybe Congress can come up with something this time!

Hold your tongue, Bresnahan.

When our children were little, I told them the tales of Fern Hollow, this wonderful fanciful place of thatched cottages in a pastoral setting in a lovely little village.Various and sundry barnyard animals held forth in their homely adventures. 

No longer can I protect my children and provide for them a safe, warm, and affectionate home. All that is gone now. 

I have nothing more to say. 

I must keep a holy silence.

The pain will not go away.

Jesus I pray to you for the children. Make us one that we may protect them. 

“Almighty God, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children: Give us calm strength and patient wisdom as we nurture and protect them. Give us Grace that we may teach them to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.”

A Dialogue

Now, Jesus is glaring at me. 

“Don’t just sit there praying to me while the children die.

Do something!”

“Do what? Anything I do would be political.”

Jesus is increasingly impatient. 

“Am I not the Good Shepherd. 

Did I not lay down my life for the sheep.

What about you?

What about my children?

Did I not say ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me’.

Did you not teach that song to the children when you taught Sunday school?”

“But they keep telling me that guns are not the problem.

These are people I love.

What do I say?

Anything I say will be heard as political.

I just don’t know what to say or what to do.”

“Tell the Truth.” ~Ephesians 4:15

“I did that. They will not listen.

Remember what they did to you Jesus when you told the Truth.”

“I know.

Did that stop me?”

“All right you dragged it out of me. Let the chips fall where they may. Here’s the Truth as I see it. ‘A well regulated militia’ as the Second Amendment says would be one in which guns would be registered, gun owners licensed and insured, based on universal background checks.”

“But my loved ones say that guns are not the problem. Mental Health is. We need to arm teachers.” 

“You see, Jesus we are a ‘house divided’~Matthew 12:25 and as you wrote in the scriptures so many years ago. Such a house cannot stand.”

“All right. Start there. That’s the truth. Now ‘Come let us reason together’~Isaiah 1:18. “It is written.”

In the Name of God the Most Holy, Undivided and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul

The Courage of Christmas

The Church is Beautiful

How beautiful the church is on Christmas Eve. You’ve outdone yourselves. I remember at Easter thinking how much I’d love to see this place at Christmas, but of course we all gave a dismissive chuckle to that notion. Who knew! 

But here we are gathered in this sacred and holy place once again to hear the message of the angels. “Peace on Earth and Goodwill to ALL”. What a wonderful and timely message. Timely and timeless at the very same time!

On my first journey to the United Kingdom, I found myself at a Bed and Breakfast in the Lake District in a town called Kendal. The local parish church was a lovely Norman structure over 1000 years old. My traveling companion and I were treated to an evening beverage and we discovered that the proprietor of the B&B was a member of the vestry. He and I got into it. He was interested in the American church’s liberal views on the ordination of women, a matter that perplexed our English cousins. Then, out of the blue, he asked me this question; 

“Father, you’ll never guess what time of year our church comes alive with decoration and music. It is a time that really touches every heart in the town. You’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

“Christmas!”, I said imagining what the old stone church would look like decorated in greens, poinsettias, a creche, and lit by candlelight. 

“How in the world did you know?” said he.

“Every Anglican church the world over is precious this night. In fact, so are Lutheran, Methodist, and Roman Catholic Churches.”

It is the night of the Incarnation of God. Emmanuel. God with us. And the whole Christian world, bows to this holy night with awe, reverence, and a profound and affectionate love.

Many there are who travel the world around in search of the holy. In one of the better movies I’ve seen this year, “The Way” with Martin Sheen, there is the story of a man, who, after the untimely death of his son, goes to Spain to walk the “Camino de Santiago”. It is a fine movie. After much soul searching this rather secular businessman and golfer discovers that there really is something holy within him. His heart learns of the healing touch that comes from a close encounter with his traveling companions and with the living God whom he discovers in their midst.

More recently, Cindy and I saw “The Life of Pi”; another pilgrimage of a sort in which a young Indian boy and a ferocious tiger share a life boat after a shipwreck and the boy discovers God in ever deepening discoveries of the life within himself and his encounter with the tiger. 

I’ve been to the Holy Land twice and walked in the footsteps of Jesus, Moses, and so many others written about in holy scripture. I took a bus load of high school students. What we learned together! What goodness I’ve experienced in these pilgrimages.

There is something about all these journeys filled with their own spiritual intentionality that has the potential to bring us into a close encounter with the Living God, or that sense that within us something very holy resides.

Your journeys to Kanuga, the Cathedral, to the annual “Shackathon” or to “Crop Walk” are all of a piece. They are instances where we might discover God walking with us. 

But whether your quest for God takes you far away to distant lands and different cultures, or whether that journey takes you deep within your own heart, what we always come to discover is that God has been with us all the way. This is especially true when we come to do battle with doubt, despair, danger and evil. We didn’t have to travel far away to find it. It has been here all the while. 

That fact becomes clear to us on Christmas Eve, I think, in a way no other time of year can do, no other festival quite celebrates. Christmas brings with it a a joy and a wonder that brings both a smile and a tear to the same countenance.  The radiant light that comes from a child in a manger evokes profound responses when we think of the journeys we’ve been taking throughout our lives. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight”, Phillips Brooks, that great Boston preacher wrote one night when he was on pilgrimage in Bethlehem. All my joys and all my sorrows are reflected in the face of the Baby.

This year, of course, we are reminded of the Holy Innocents. Herod in a pique of paranoia ordered the killing of the male children under the age of two in Bethlehem when the Wise Men refused to tell him where to find this Baby King. More children, in recent weeks have been taken from us at the hands of yet another deranged mind. Every day in America inner city neighborhoods we must undergo similar heartaches. 

And the Holy Child requires me to remember that right now. It will take courage to speak up for the children who now have no voice. Our own children are vulnerable in a dangerous world. I do hope and pray that you and I will speak up for them. There will be plenty of time for that in the New Year.

For now, the Baby also wants my heart to sing with the music of Christmas. Not only is our church beautiful, it is also filled with such lovely music. The music brings to my soul a tearful smile when I greet Christmas, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is why I love Christmas so. 

What more precious gift can there be but to see the sleeping Jesus in his cradle? Or the smiles and laughter of our own children, or the beaming faces of their proud parents, grandparents and friends? How refreshingly joyful it is to see our annual Christmas pageant. How precious are these children!

In the luminous night a star shines down from heaven, and our hearts and the whole world over are filled with this amazing music. Shepherds quake to see this sight. Kings and Wise Men go to the manger and discover there by the cradle, where the cattle are lowing, even as the world stands dark and cold; this Child radiates a profoundly bright warmth. 

The Love of God made flesh and blood in that Holy Child comes down to dwell among and within us at Christmas. Jesus is God-with-us; our “Emmanuel”. Not only is God with us in the flesh and blood of Jesus, but in the flesh and blood of all those who love the Child. Those of you with the courage and the imagination to enfold him in your hearts may also begin to radiate his warmth. 

This is the challenge of Christmas. Do you have the courage to create like God creates? Can you join Jesus in saving a fallen world? Can you discover the inner Way to make holy everything your life touches?

Christmas is a season of hope. We end one difficult year and soon we begin another. Living into Christmas and living into a New Year will take courage, creativity, and eagerness to bless and defend our children. 

We are here tonight in this very beautiful, sacred and holy place, as millions are doing around the world hour by hour. I extend to you my prayers for all the blessings of Christmas. How wonderful that we can share this moment together. In the immortal words of one who knew what is means to discover God in the here and now; “God bless us every one”.

Merry Christmas!

Fr Paul