Matthew 25:35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,

Seeing the pictures of the Ukrainian refugees on the Polish border is heartbreaking. The families with just a suitcase totally reliant on strangers for food and shelter. It’s cold in Poland. Some people just wanted a chair to sit and rest. They don’t know where they are going or how they are going to get there and what will happen once they do. And then the interviews with the Polish people who are thankful that they can provide some help and comfort in the middle of the most difficult situation that the Ukrainians are still trying to figure out how it even happened.

Could this be happening?

It has been happening for a long time. There is an endless list of refugees that have been fleeing worn-torn countries for as long as I can remember. And our job is to welcome them.

I’m on a thread with the knitters I met in the Netherlands and they are readying their homes for refugees. They are busy knitting them blue and yellow hats.

I have first-hand knowledge of immigrants from Central America who fled from their county to avoid being killed at the hands of gangs. These people walked across the desert with nothing and went to work in the fields for next to nothing pay, no rights but still paid taxes and social security.

Refugees have no choice. They don’t want to leave their homes just like we don’t want to leave our homes. But they don’t want to lose their lives either. I’m happy to be the one offering hospitality rather than the one seeking it.

May God give strength to all those who are fleeing for their lives this day and resources to those who can welcome them, comfort them and help them resume their lives.

Maker of Heaven and Earth

There is something special about the night sky even when you can’t see the stars. It seems immense, unknowable, and deep. People ask me why I believe in God. How can you know there is a God? They ask me. They want me to give them proof. I read Aquinas in seminary and studied his theology. I realized that God is not something you can intellectualize. Many people still try.

I was a science major and science is what helped me believe in God. Studying the vast expanse of interstellar space, molecular biology, quantum physics helped me to believe that a greater power than humans exists. The intricacies of nature, the beauty, and vastness of the universe, and the everyday miracles of the human body point to a greater being who orders the chaos and creates the world that we enjoy. I just can’t observe all of this without thinking of a greater power. Not just any power but a power that is love.

Lent is a time to look around at almost everything and see how amazing it really is. Find a microscope or a telescope. Get on the Nasa website, find out what the James Webb Telescope is doing. Try to get your head around the vastness of space or the smallness of atomic particles.

What has been and is being created in stunning!

Do you believe in God, the Holy Spirit?

The Holy Spirit is the pilot light of our spiritual lives. It’s the fire that burns inside of us prompting us to pray, to seek out God, to figure out how to be.

We feed the Holy Spirit when we attend church, when we answer the call to pray, and when we take action to demonstrate the love of God.

I think of the Holy Spirit as that quiet inner voice that consistently calls me back to prayer, that prompts me to take action to help others, that gives me the energy to do what God calls me to do.

In our worship, sometimes we end it by saying “Let us go forth into the world rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit. There is real power available. I have seen people persevere in the most difficult of circumstances because they have drawn energy from the Holy Spirit. They have discerned from that inner voice how to keep on keeping on. Jesus used the power of the Holy Spirit to perservere in the garden when he was left alone to face his certain death on the cross.

Where do I put my energy? Time and energy are limited resources. Am I using them for the right things? What is the best balance of my resources?

I set my priorities in Advent. This year, I am focused on my relationships with my family. If one of my children need help especially with a grandchild, I’m there. This is my top priority in my retirement.

I live into my priestly vocation by helping other priests. I am working to raise money for Rural and Migrant Ministry to help migrants. This is where the Holy Spirit has nudged me.

Each day, week, month and year is a balancing act of priorities. I’m grateful that I have so many choices. Listening to the Holy Spirit is a way to keep on track.

Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

Ukrainian Woman gave tea and food to a Russian Soldier and lent him her phone so he could call his mother.

I believe in Jesus Christ who manifested the love of God to all people during his short time on earth. This kind of love was so shocking and powerful it energized the people and created anxiety for the leaders who were oppressing them.

The Ukrainian woman who offered a Russian soldier tea and her phone so he could Facetime with his mother is manifesting the love of Christ.

When we say we believe in Jesus Christ we are saying we believe in this type of response to violence. The people need to show the political leaders that life is about loving one another and not needless destruction.

Reaffirming our belief in Jesus raises our level of awareness as to how we should treat others.

Where do we see the face of Christ around us? What are we called to do for the people of Ukraine? For the people of our community?

Prayer is one answer and some kind of action is another answer. We have the power to do something. It may seem like a small thing – like a one-time donation to help refugees but imagine if every adult in the US took one small action?

Do you believe in God, the Father?

This is the first question of the Baptismal Covenant. It seems like a simple question but I want to give a more complicated answer. I believe in a creative energy that I call Love with a capital L. This Love is what created the universe and keeps calling us to love one another and ourselves. I believe in a greater force than ourselves that we have called Father. This Love is what Jesus referred to as Abba, a good father that loves all of the children.

Being on the edge of lava that is still red hot, oozing out of the mountain demonstrated for me the power that comes from creation.

I say yes to the God of love that continues to create a world using the energy that is also available to us. We are invited when we say yes to be a part of bringing about a world where there is peace, love, and appreciation for the creation and all people.

What does this mean for me? How do I create a better world? Where can I make a difference and demonstrate this love? Lent is a time to ponder these questions.

Repent, Reconciliation, Reasses

Lent is an opportunity to repent, reconcile, and reassess our lives. It’s a process we can use to get ourselves back on track. So each year, I take some time to pause and look at what I want to change about my life. I ask myself, what is working well and what is not? I look at the way I spend my time and compare it to what I say my priorities are. I look at my baptismal promises and my ordination promises and figure out where I am. All this happens in the context of prayer.

Except I’m having trouble praying. I was on a beautiful routine that had me reading scripture and knitting while praying every morning. Then my husband retired and he wanted to have coffee with me in the morning. This is a routine now that I love as well. We wake up, have coffee, watch a little news then off we go to start the day. By this time, the dog needs to go out, I have a meeting to attend, a grandchild to care for, or a myriad of other things that need my attention. So I stopped my prayer routine.

In my book, Contemplative Knitting, I write about how to get back on track but none of my own strategies were working for me. Then I remembered, I needed to compress the time. Even reading one verse of scripture was better than not reading it all. Praying intentionally for sixty seconds was better than not praying at all.

I set Lent as the time when I would engage my prayer life again. Yesterday, I woke up and prayed for the first time in a while. I know that I need prayer today more than ever. I need to discern where God is calling me, what is it that I can do to help heal our broken world in my part of the vineyard.

Ash Wednesday

Forest Lawn PIer – Lake Ontario

Psalm 51:10

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
    and put a new and right spirit within me.

Psalm 51 is used in the Ash Wednesday liturgy. The story goes that King David wrote it after he got another man’s wife pregnant. He saw her and took her against her will. When she discovered she was pregnant, he tried to cover it up by bringing home her soldier husband, Uriah the Hittite. Uriah felt guilty about being home and sleeping with his wife so he lay outside the door each night. Since David could not blame the pregnancy on Uriah, he decided to order him to the front lines of battle where he was killed. David moved Bathsheba into his house and she bore him a son. (2Samuel 11). The story continues and it’s worth reading. I use this story to get High School age youth interested in reading the Bible. They can’t believe that the “Good Book” contains narratives where people behave so poorly.

Everyone has moments in their lives where they make poor decisions, hurt others, and sometimes act in an evil manner. Ash Wednesday is a time of reflection when we consider those moments in the light of our mortality. And like David, we beg God to create in us a clean heart.

I knew a woman who was beyond asking God for forgiveness. She felt she had committed a sin so awful that even God would not forgive her. Her priest tried to tell her that God was merciful but she did not believe him. In spite of her shame, she kept going to church because she liked singing in the choir.

The music director asked her to chant psalm 51 at the Ash Wednesday liturgy. She agreed and while she was chanting “create in me a new heart, O God” she felt a wave of love wash over her like she had stepped into a warm shower and she knew her sins had been forgiven. It was such an overwhelming feeling that she stopped chanting and just stood there in front of the congregation in disbelief at the intensity of the feeling. With the prompting of the music director, she picked up the chant and continued to the end.

This woman’s life was transformed during that chant. She made it her mission to proclaim God’s mercy and forgiveness. It’s available, it’s undeserved, and it’s transforming.