Joy in the Morning: Speaking to the Soul for June 30, 2022

This Sunday we will hear Psalm 30, which contains one of my favorite images and reminders in the psalter. It is this: “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Besides being a most necessary reminder as many of us have been battered by the rough winds of public events these last many weeks, this verse also has a literary association I love. One of my favorite humorous authors from the time I was a youngster was P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote a series of hilarious short stories about a young British man in the 1920s and his valet. These two characters were known as Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Bertie was always getting into some kind of scrape, being a young man with a superfluity of money and a paucity of intelligence. Jeeves, Bertie’s “servant” although his intellectual superior, was aways getting Wooster out of one scrape or another, often involving a girl or an aunt, often quoting great British literature just for good measure, all the while maintaining a firm line on the young master’s fashion experimentation.

One of the first collections of these short stories I ever read by P. G Wodehouse was entitled Jeeves in the Morning, a punning reference to that verse in Psalm 30. The stories in its pages were hilarious, the use of language and imagery masterful. I was hooked.

And I was fascinated by something so hilarious being associated with a psalm that portrays such honest anxiety and grief. At first it puzzled me. But years later I learned that this Bible verse may have held special significance for Mr. Wodehouse. For all of his genius, he could be a bit of a bumbler too—and in the early days of World War II he bumbled right into the hands of the Germans as they seized large swaths of Europe, and he was held in custody for some weeks.

These were, as one can imagine, dark times in Mr. Wodehouse’s long life. To distract himself while in custody, he got permission to work on his ideas for some humorous short stories—and when he walked free at last, he had written the bulk of the collection known in the UK as Joy in the Morning. I imagine working on this collection of madcap tales kept his mind from dwelling on the dangers of his situation in Nazi custody.

Weeping may indeed spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. If you are feeling grief or sorrow, feel that grief or sorrow. But you can also make your way through that pain because you have assurance that all of what we ourselves have experienced of tragedy in our lives, Christ himself also experienced—and emerged victorious. Weeping spending the night as part of our anxieties and our griefs—that time of day so accustomed to great emotion that one of the precious prayers in our tradition asks God to be with those “who work, or watch, or weep this night” (BCP, p. 134).

Weeping spends the night. But this night, and its weeping, WILL pass, as Psalm 30 assures us. And it will pass in the presence and companionship and protection of our Creator and our God, who accompanies us in all our ways.

Joy comes in the morning because of the assurance that faith provides, even when it is that darkest hour before the dawn, even if no way out is discernible in the moment. Because the sun will rise, and everything is more clear in the light of day.

An altered version of this essay was published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 1, 2022.

Summer Lights: Speaking to the Soul for June 23, 2022

The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
your lightnings lit up the world… -Psalm 77:18


The commonplaces of our childhood
still shimmer freshly in memory: the ozone tang
borne on the wind, petrichor
of a prairie thunderstorm boiling up on the horizon,
coral, vermilion, lavender backdrop
alabaster clouds blooming like smoke, heat
lightnings dazzling, dust cyclones dervishing
before the cooling rains drive them to ground.
The cottonwood leaves turn their leaves over in supplication,
a prayer for rain, the sizzling rattle
of willow leaf and branch bent in faithful contemplation over arroyos
tracing a line through fields of grain,
dancing before the cooling breeze.

And O as twilight approaches
the sudden blaze of fireflies rising from the freshened earth, reversing
the fall of Lucifer from heaven,
bearing light upward in the call of love—
our dad’s ever-present pocket-knife
would punch holes in mason jar lids
and we would dance through dewy grass,
chasing beetles swirling and eddying in our wake
now here, now there.
We’d gather our golden treasures
and throw ourselves down under the locust tree
rasping cicadas sirening a song of summer joy,
watching the semaphores of luminescence,
as we ate dinner outside in gauzy nightgowns and dusty feet,
then released with gratitude to continue their courtships,
drawing our eyes upward
to the lightshow of the Perseids
as we tumbled into bed.

Holding hands, my sister and I
would breathe our prayers to the God of the overlooked,
as we drifted off to sleep, sighing, “Jesus
loves the little children,
and the lighting bugs,
and the turtle’s red eye,
and the monarch butterfly,
and God’s wonders strewn across the night sky,”
and so to sleep, safe and sound,
summer lights flashing under the heart-shaped leaves
of redbuds, grace, and gratitude
jeweled with dewdrops.

And now we plead with monarchs
to reverse their decline, planting milkweed
as a treasured contribution
rather than a weed to be uprooted, stem and branch,
and holding fast to a faith,
and rejoice at the wonder
of a resurgent summer symphony
of fireflies defying
the dying of the light, knowing
that God walks among us in morning dew,
calling us to guard the precious summer light

that lights our way toward the heavenly mansions.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 23, 2022.

Naming Our Demons: Speaking to the Soul, June 16, 2022

We may not think we have any common ground with the story of Jesus’s healing of the man with a multitude of demons in this Sunday’s gospel passage of Luke 8:26-39. Most of us no longer believe in demons, so we think we have nothing to relate to in this story. It’s too pre-scientific. It’s too fantastic. But maybe we shrug off this story due to a lack of imagination, a lack of understanding of the importance of metaphor and analogy that Jesus certainly utilized in the stories he told, and that the gospel writers used in the stories they told about Jesus.

For instance, I notice that Jesus asks the demons—not the man, whose lack of conversation reveals his loss of identity except by his illness—what their name is. And they answer “Legion.”

Those hearing this story from Luke’s gospel at the time of its writing would probably have been interested in hearing another healing story about Jesus, but at that word, I imagine their ears pricked up and they suddenly became very alert. Jesus and his contemporaries KNEW what a legion was. Most of the people in the known world two thousand years ago, from Scotland to Egypt, knew what a legion was. A legion was an invading army—a force of six thousand Roman soldiers, shock troops who would roll over a weaker people and place them ruthlessly under Roman authority and keep them subjugated. Jesus himself would die at the hands of the Roman authorities who held the leashes of the legions.

With the revelation of the name “Legion,” suddenly there is another element mixed into this story to its original audience. Suddenly this is more than simply about uncleanliness or mere illness. It’s about oppression, and suffering to which everyone hearing the story can relate. By naming the forces holding that man captive as “Legion,” the point is driven home as to the helplessness he exhibited in the face of the occupying forces that had seized control of him-- body, mind, and spirit-- and had taken away his voice and cut him off from all that he held dear.

Demons are things that take away our sense of agency, that try to convince us that we are helpless and powerless. So let's name it: Our demons too, even in the year 2022, are legion. Our demons, just like those that afflicted this poor nameless person, are forces of oppression, chaos, and division. Our demons claim power by convincing us we are helpless before them. And just as Jesus demands their name before casting the demons out of the poor man who is held captive, it is important for us, too, to name our own demons as such—to name them, so that we may rebuke them and take up the fight against them in the name of love and community.

What if we understood our modern demons as those dysfunctions, illnesses, and delusions that destroy community? The names we use for these demons may be different; but they are, indeed legion. There’s alcoholism, drug addiction—meth, fentanyl, oxycontin being just the latest scourges-- or even mental illness, which remains stigmatized even as we struggle still to recognize it as a medical condition rather than a personal failure.

But it goes on. Our modern demons also include the institutional demons of gun violence, homelessness, indifference to the suffering of others, especially when it is inflicted in our name. Then there’s grinding poverty and demonization of the poor, racism, xenophobia, dehumanizing or even “demonizing” those who are different from us—and I would argue that another demon is our tolerance or claimed helplessness in the face of those demons.

There is one thing all these demons have in common: they destroy relationships and the ties of community. And putting back on our lens as disciples of Jesus, community is one of the holiest works and tasks that we are called to embody.

For Christians, community does not just mean the group of insiders in each parish or denomination. Christian community is understood as being OUTWARDLY focused. Each group of Christians is tasked with not existing for its own sake, but for the life of the world, to draw all the world into the radical idea that we are all God’s children, all beloved, all worthy of dignity and respect and peace and wholeness—what our Jewish friends encompass in a beautiful and often misunderstood word when we use it: shalom. Another name for God—and for the love-as-action-and-justice that conquers the demons that plague us.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 16, 2022.

Yearning for Peace-- Speaking to the Soul, June 9, 2022

Today, June 9, is the feast day of the sixth century St. Columba of Iona, also known as Colmcille in Ireland, the land of his birth. Born into the clan Neill, some claim that his name originally was “Crimthann,” meaning “fox,” but he comes down to us as “Columba,” which means “dove.” Perhaps this story is told because his life was held in tension as a negotiation between strife and peace, between the necessity for diplomacy as a result of his lineage and station, and his yen for a quiet, monastic life as a contemplative and poet.

In the middle of his life, it is said that Columba became embroiled in violent disputes between his kinsmen and King Diarmait, the high king, concluding with a relative of his accused of murder being dragged from his protection and slain by the High King’s men. The responsibility for both deaths weighed heavily upon Columba, it is said, and so he and twelve followers left Ireland in a reed boat covered with leather, and set out to Scotland, eventually making landfall on the tiny island of Iona, off the coast of southwestern Scotland in the Inner Hebrides. There he lived the rest of his days, founding a monastery that was his home base as an apostle to the Scottish Picts as well as a center of learning. He was said to be happiest in his simple cell there, near a cross dedicated to St. Martin, himself a soldier who turned to peace. Although Columba made his home on a remote island, he nonetheless remained engaged with the world around him.

Many poems and prayers are attributed to St. Columba, including this one:

Let me bless almighty God,
Whose power extends over sea and land,
Whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul:

I pray for peace,
Kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work,
Gathering seaweed, catching fish,
Giving food to the poor.

Let me say my daily prayers,
Sometimes chanting, sometimes quiet,
Always thanking God.

Delightful it is to live
On a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell,
Serving the King of kings.

This beautiful prayer lays out in its five stanzas five actions of the life of a disciple: blessing, study, work, prayer, and service, all dedicated to God, but in service to the world. In all we do, we start by blessing God, by opening our hearts to holy learning, by laboring for the least and most vulnerable among us, by seeking God’s presence and guidance daily in our prayer lives, dedicating all our effort, even our resting, to the inbreaking of God’s reign within us and over us.

The prop upholding all is a longing for peace, and this is where perhaps we can hear Columba’s prayer resounding in our own hearts today, as we ourselves have been awash in repeated news of violence, war, and division all about us in the last few weeks.

In thanksgiving for the life of St. Columba, may we all make our prayer a prayer for peace—peace we are willing to back up by action to protect each other from the scourge of violence. May we remember that silence in the face of evil is not, and never can be, considered peace.

Beloved Savior, settle your peace upon us,
peace beyond our ken,
peace that drops soft and slow
like the rays from the sun at the clouds’ parting.

Light us from within, Lord Jesus,
with the beauty of your gospel of grace and mercy,
that we may radiate your love
as a beacon to the world.

Help us be truly present
in each moment with You, O God,
that we may be filled with the wisdom
of compassion and charity,
walking in truth and integrity with each other.

Breathe upon us your Spirit, O God,
that we may be utterly at peace
and grounded within your love.
Trusting in your unfailing goodness,
we commend to your care those we lift before You.

Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 9, 2022.

Prayer 3407: For Courage and Determination Against Violence, III

O Eternal Wisdom,
that fashions all creation in love,
we bow before You
in gratitude and praise,
in trust and faithfulness.
Your Spirit has breathes life into each living thing;
even the trees and rocks declare your glory.

You have called us to be a priestly people,
to minister to the world
in the redeeming reconciling Name of Christ.
You have called us to judge ourselves by your law of love,
and to repent of our failures
of the times we have ruptured relationship
with You and each other.

We confess our wrongs
by our actions and by our inactions,
by our words and by our silences
by our betrayal of your call to us
through claims of weakness
or helplessness before violence and evil.
.
Help us to turn our feet into pathways of peace and justice,
to commit ourselves to testifying to your power
working in us through faith,
taking our share in your kingdom
through our love and determination to embody Christ.

Grant us courage and strength
to work as your disciples in the world:
to heal the breaches within our society,
to unite in love in the face of the forces of division and prejudice
and shine with the light of your truth.

Grant the favor of your blessing
upon all who call upon You, O God,
and rest your hand of comfort and healing
upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 3406: For Courage and Determination Against Violence, II

O God, your embrace has brought us safely to this new day;
may we rest ourselves within your mercy and love.

Forgive us, Lord, our headstrong and selfish ways
that lead to violence, exploitation, and cruelty.
Give us the wisdom and will
to lead ourselves into righteousness and peace,
as You have called us repeatedly
through the lips of prophets,
even at last
by sending your only Son,
whom we put on a cross,
himself a victim of our violence and fear.

Yet love is stronger than death,
and hope is stronger than fear,
and still we rise,
seeking to turn again and live by your will.

Awaken our hearts to receive your light
that we may instead dwell in hope, charity, and wisdom.

Give us the courage
to stand up to the forces of fear and hatred,
who profit from the bitter harvest they reap.

Comfort the mourning, O Holy God,
and, as our shepherd, gather the lost in your arms.
O God, our cry is to You and each other;
Send your healing Spirit over us, and all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

June 1, 2022: Four are killed in the Natalie building at St. Francis hospital in Tulsa, where a gunman aggrieved by his lingering back pain opened fire and killed his surgeon, another doctor, a patient, and a receptionist. He bought his AR-15 on the way to the shooting. It was the 233rd mass shooting of the year, coming a mere week after 19 children and two teachers were gunned down at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.