Everyday Blessings

It seems like forever since my last post. So much has happened, and we are coming to terms with Tristan's upcoming deployment to Afghanistan. I never realized the intensity of the impact our military service has on those who love us. I find myself telling myself what I have told others so many times: don't listen to the news so much, stay away from related internet sites and support group sites, you must get on with your normal life-that is what he is fighting to protect. All of those things make so much sense until it is your own son or daughter down range. Do pray for my boy and his fellows. They serve to defend us all.

Aunt Dorothy and MC came from Skiatook, Oklahoma for a visit this last week. We overate until our stomachs hurt and then laughed until we thought we could laugh no more. Good memories flowed like fine wine, and all of our lives were enriched yet again. Families are amazing things.

A couple of weeks back, I was running a bit ahead of schedule, and decided to take a side trip to the home and pond of a lodge brother and wet a line. For the first hour or so, I cast more times than I care to remember and received narry a bite. I fished two or three different spinners, a Kelly's green worm (with black stripes, usually a sure thing on a clear-sunny day), and two or three varied patterns of wet flies and poppers. Finally, at the bottom end of the property, I landed a large hybrid bluegill about two and a quarter hand widths in length. With this success in my immediate past, I put down the spinning tackle and the #1 Mepps Aglia spinner with the white and red blade, and returned to the purity of the fly rod. I tied on a small green hand tied frog popper, dropped my line on the dock, and twitched it off into the water. Immediately, there was a flash and a swirl, and my first fish was on. My next cast was a side cast which landed about two and a half feet under the dock. Again, the strike was immediate and dramatic. For the next ten or fifteen minutes, every cast netted a scrappy gill; and then it was over as quickly as it began. This was the sort of action which initially attracted me to fly fishing, and the lesson is always the same. When God sends a blessing into your life, live it with all of your passion and all of your being, because it might end tomorrow. Laugh with an eighty year old aunt until it hurts, for you may not have the opportunity again. Cherish every moment with your children and spouse, for no one knows what the near future might hold. Give thanks to God for every blessing on every day, and don't worry about whether it will be there tomorrow. It is in God's hands, and he has given it to you to enjoy today. And finally, as Forrest Gump so often said, :That's all I have to say about that!"

A Hunt To Remember

There have been days when Rawley, our Cairn Terrier, has been the bane of our lives. He is such a friendly little guy, but his propensity to run on instinct and impulse sometimes makes him a difficult housemate. Even his playmate Quincy, the West Highland White, has developed a remarkable strategy for obtaining just a few minutes rest from the younger and smaller dog. He trots up the stairs into the loft, knowing that Rawley will follow him. And then, knowing that Rawley cannot or will not come down steps, he returns to the main floor for a couple hours of sweet respite from the small brown tornado.

But this weekend, Rawley redeemed himself. In my experience, there are few things more glorious than working animals doing what they are bred and trained to do. Draft horses, packs of hounds on scent, and seeing eye dogs have always held my rapt attention. The drug sniffing beagle in the Miami airport was one of the high points of my lay over time there (she even had a little blanket coat with her agency and badge number.) A couple in our parish, the Churchfield's, have long kept a pack of working Jack Russell terriers, and Glen is even a certifying judge for the terrier association (www.therealjackrussell.com or www.terrier.com.) This weekend, Rawley made a guest appearance as a novice with the other dogs. After a great hunt breakfast, complete with fresh eggs from parishoner Mary Oehler's flock and Glen's signature pressed coffee, we loaded into the truck and headed for a farm below Bremen. After a lot of walking, and watching what terriers usually do, one of the dogs scented a fresh hole, and we saw what terriers are really made to do. The details are not for the faint of heart, but suffice to say that the farmer's crops are safe from one more groundhog, which is what terriers are really made to do. Rawley, the new guy, did a good enough job to get himself invited back on some future occasion, and suprizingly, I found myself feeling a lot like I did the night Tristan made his first tackle in a varsity football game at Fisher Catholic High School.

And so Rawley, Mom and Dad are really proud of you. You have, so to speak, "earned your spurs," and once again demonstrated that all of nature fits together in God's great plan, and that everyone has an important job to do. May we all figure out what God's job for us is, and may we have the instinct and courage to do it well. AMEN!

Reflections on a Few Days Off

A Sabbath it was not. The death of a dear friend and parishoner, hospitaliazations, and family emergencies prevented my scheduled days away from qualifying as a total time apart. But it was good to have the flexibility to spend time with the kids before they began their great adventures. Ashley, Matthew, and Margaret, together with Jack the Border Collie, are now at "The House" preparing for the next phase of life and ministry together. Tristan, newly promoted to Lance Corporal, leaves this week for desert training in anticipation of his deployment to South Asia later this year. This was our last time together as a family for some months to come. We laughed much and cried some. God has given us so much together, and now the next stage of our lives begins in earnest. As Rebecca and I sit on the back porch on sultry summer evenings and consider it all, we are compelled to give thanks. In spite of ourselves, He gave us relationships filled with love for one another and for Him. He has used us to instill in our children a sense of duty and purpose, and has sent them forth to serve God and those among whom He deigns to place them, wherever and whatever that may mean. He has given us a home that is as much like paradise as any of us are likely to experience in this world. And He now calls us to face this new situation together, ever growing closer to each other, now that the kids are off and on their own.

It seems strange to be less busy. There are no more afternoons sitting at the school waiting for football practice to let out. Extra jobs that helped to pay for tuition are things of the past, and weekends and evenings are now spent cultivating this little bit of heaven that God has sent our way at Briarwood. With the kid's lives and issues so many miles away, our conversations (if not our thoughts and prayers) are less dominated by their needs, and we are learning once again to listen to and appreciate each other in deeper and more considerate ways. Silence is more the norm now, and we can explore the voice of God in the chirp of the crickets, and experience the aroma of holiness in the smell of ripe grapes clustered on the poultry-yard fence. Small considerations become ever more significant as we learn to serve God by serving each other. Sometimes I wonder why it takes so long to understand certain things that seem so elemental.

The joys of my vacation were memorable: holding Margaret Rose close to my breast, going fishing with Tristan and my Dad, spending the day at the USAF museum in Dayton and listening to my Dad, the old wood-deck sailor, remember the War, and baptizing my grand-daughter, with my son as her god-father. And now the new world is upon us. All has changed, and we move to our next posting. In a very real sense, the torch is passed. It is true that the Devil, that great adversary of our souls, stalks abroad, seeking whom he may devour, but as my children go forth, I am filled with an abiding conviction that our faith, along with this Republic, is in good hands.

Thanks be to God!

Pulling Weeds- Thoughts on last week's gospel

The Gospel for last Sunday was the parable of the wheat and the tares. For intellectual honesty's sake, I also included the two parables of the kingdom which are recorded between the parable of the wheat and tares and Jesus' explanation of the same. Pastoral experience has taught me that attempting to "pull weeds" in an institutional setting, be it in the church, in the military, or in the schoolhouse, is extremely difficult and generally prone to failure. Institutional inertia and personalities and relationships are just too firmly entrenched. Efforts at "compulsary reform by removal" are just more trouble than they are worth as a general rule. The distract us from our true mission and create animosities that can last for years. At the end of the day, control of property, or people, or power is just not worth the effort. It is best that we leave the Lord's work to the Lord, and get about carrying out our own commission, namely to serve Him faithfully in such a way that others are drawn into this relationship which we know in Jesus Christ.

The ongoing hubub in global Anglicanism in general and in the Episcopal Church in particular is a wonderful example. As a traditionalist and a pietist, it sometimes seems very apparent that my "side" (if one may be permitted to use that term) has lost this game long ago. In my lifetime, the majority of the clergy and laity of the Episcopal Church will never employ the rule of thumb that Biblical injunctions ought to be taken literally and at face value unless there is overwhelming textual or traditional evidence to the contrary. For several years, I lost a lot of sleep over this situation. And it made not one bit of difference. It merely distracted me from fulfilling my mission to live as a Christian in a fallen world, and to live in such a way that people are drawn to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

All of which brings me to yesterday's garden chore. At the entrance to our farm is a rather longish bed planted with red creeping roses and backed by dwarf alberta spruce. With the recent rain and heat, the weeds had shall we say, triumphed. My task was to remove said weeds. The particular type of rose in question is noted not only for mounds of blooms all summer, but for innumerable short, razorlike thorns. Weed removal is a rather painful exercise in blood donation. From fingertips to elbows, red slashes, often with a slight hint of infection, cover my arms today. Creeping roses, unlike young wheat, are not bothered in the least by weed removal. Their roots are deep and well established. And as a result of my rather painful labours, the bed looks pretty nice, almost the way I had originally envisioned it. As I considered Jesus' admonition about letting the tares grow with the wheat, his admonition about taking care of the beam in my own eye before worrying about the speck in my neighbor's came to mind. I don't really know where my neighbor is spiritually. Perhaps he is well established like the rose, or perhaps he is fragile and delicate, like early wheat. I must respect him and trust God to work in his heart. But I know my own strengths and weaknesses, and the tares in my life, tares which if left unpulled, may well cost me my soul, must be removed if I am to prosper with God. And so, with His help and by His grace, I go about the hot, and difficult, and dirty, and sometimes painful work of weeding my own garden, that my life might be of encouragement to those around me as they enter into the same tasks.

To be a priest is to represent not only the people to God, but to represent God to the people. May our Saviour give me wisdom to constantly work on the weeds in my own life, and to lovingly and consistantly provide an example which will encourage others to do the same in their own.

Thoughts on the birth of my grand-daughter

Yesterday, on the feast of St. Margaret of Antioch, my lovely daughter Ashley bore Margaret Rose Canter to my son-in-law Matthew. I am of all men most blessed. In a little over a month, they will move to Nashotah House, where Matthew will continue his formation to, God willing, become a priest of Christ's one, holy, catholick, and apostolic Church. Some weeks back he said to me, "I've never been in a place where so many people my own age and akin to my own situation share my faith and values." Looking back on it all, I think that it is no accident that Matthew was accepted this year and reccomended for the House by +Shaeffer. God knew that it was time for this family to move to their next level of preparation for ministry, and to enter such a setting where their own daughter might be formed at the beginning of her life to serve Christ faithfully all her days.

Over the years, Ashley and I have talked much about how God might have her to serve Him as a Christian woman. Like many traditionalists, I have serious reservations about the tendancy of modern culture to see the roles of men and women as interchangable. I suppose I have set the stage for my daughter's questions about what our Lord might be calling her to do. When I would go to military drills, and when Matthew and Tristan went off to serve the Republic, or when the stories were told about how grandparents and great-grandparents had rallied to the colors, Ashley seemed to want to serve so very much, but felt uncomfortable working outside traditional roles. We would often talk, sometimes tearfully, about God's will for us, and of the vocations we receive that ultimately are seldom of our own choosing. We spoke of Penelope and of the Matrons of early Rome, and how there was no greater calling than to bear children for God and the Republic, and to rear them to love God and honor their fatherland. When I saw the joy on her face at the hospital last night, I knew that she had found her place, as the wife of a good and strong Christian man, who loves his family and his home, and has offered himself in service as a citizen, a soldier, and a priest. There is no greater joy than to know that one's values have been passed on to one's children, and that God's Holy Word has borne fruit in one's own family.

Every sermon should, they say, have three points, and this musing would be incomplete if I did not comment on the miracle of life, and the beauty of God's design which is so evident in little Margaret, and in every child. Few things are more moving than the picture of the interdependence and love between mother and child. Few things are more noble than the strong example of a man both tender and strong as he commits himself to the protection and nurture of those with whom God has blessed him. God alone is capable of taking us fallen human beings, and bringing us into a sacramental unit where He causes us to love so deeply. Perhaps that miracle of human relationship, lived out in the Christian family, is more wonderful even than the gift of biological life itself. But in any event, a new child, parents so filled with love and thankfulness, tearful grandparents, and the sharing of the Holy Communion and the blessing of the newborn within hours of her birth, all seemed a fitting testimony to God's work among us. I will never understand the ability of so many in our world today to destroy this sacramental work of God through abortion, selfish acts of criminality, or war designed only to coerce others and control their property. And yet even in the midst of these horrible sins and evils, every time a mother holds her child, every time a father adoringly looks on the miracle of their love, God is glorified, and we are reminded by a loving heavenly Father that He has for us a better way.

O God, bless Matthew and Ashley and little Margaret. Lead Tristan, her uncle and godfather, to provide for her an example of constancy, strength, and faith. Pour out Thy Holy Spirit on all of these I love that they might find strength and courage to face life's difficulties, tenderness and compassion to comfort and encourage each other, and grace to serve Thee faithfully all their days. Be with Chuck and Cathy, and with Rebecca and me, that we might support them and love them by our prayers and our actions. And help us all so to live in this life, that in the life to come, we may have life everlasting. Through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, who lives and reigns with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. AMEN!

... A Joy Forever

Lots of my friends have been sick of late. Over the last two weeks, both of my parents were added to the list of "sick and infirm" in the prayers of the people. Matthew, sensing what was going on in my soul, suggested that perhaps on Tuesday afternoon, we could shoot some clays at his club below Athens. I arrived at Casa deCanter at about 2:15 EST. After a bit of liquid refreshment, we loaded into the Cherokee and headed for the range. About half way over the rain started- one of those torrential downpours that only lasts for thirty or fourty minutes, but which swells creeks and does all sorts of strange things to the feel of the woods.
When we finally approached the firing line, we carried two of my "lightweight" shotguns: a Mossberg 500 pump action, and a Stoeger Uplander side by side, both in full choked .410 bore. I switched to the diminutive .410 a few months ago when I finally realized that I am too old to continue hobbies that cause pain, or even mild discomfort. A grown man can shoot a .410 all day and never suffer from the recoil. Many who consider themselves real men consider such small guns as toys, fit only for kids. But both guns are beautiful in their own way. The Mossberg pump represents all that is best about classic American ingenuity, with its ever so mechanical slide action, moving parts, and form to function design. The Stoeger side by side has all of the lines and style of an older world, and whispers the beauty of gentelmanly tradition. And both are real tack drivers.
In the midst of our shooting, I noticed that Matthew lowered his gun and stood looking pensively downrange. I paused and realized what had caused his hesitation. We were witnesses to one of those rare and magnificent moments when the storm front passes. Colors seemed to glow from within, and trees and sky took on an almost magical glow. Whisps of mist hung in the distance, and nature seemed alive with a primitive savagery. In such moments, game fish become ruthlessly aggressive and true sportsmen marvel at the glory of God who has made us all, and sustains us for His own purposes. It was good to share such a moment with my son-in-law.
Later that evening, we passed a brother to the degree of Fellowcraft at Lancaster Lodge. The temple is a stately and ordered place, with symmetrical columns all around, and furniture which could grace the hall of a chieftan or a tribal elder. As our brother passed through the shadowy perambulations, the storm struck again with all of its primitive fury. The thunder and lightening, and the driving rain on the tile roof reminded us all of the mystical nature of those things we were about, and called us to acknowledge the majesty of the Great Architect of the Universe.
This morning, at about ten o'clock, I realized that I needed to stock my Communion set. I was alone in the sanctuary at St. John's. As I opened the tabernacle to attend to my duties, I was struck by the holiness of that sacred place, and of the presence of God who loved me, and sent His only begotten Son to die for my sins. In the stillness, with the dark wood and the beautiful stained glass around me, I sensed the witness of those who had done the same thing before me, and anticipated those who would follow me in the sacred office. God indeed sent His Spirit to bear witness with my own, just as He promised to do in the Epistle lesson for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity. For a third time in as many days, I had witnessed the beauty of the holiness of God, and I could not but stand in awe of Him who saved me.
I thank thee Lord, for favouring me with thy presence, and pray thy forgiveness and mercy for myself, and for all those I love. through Jesus Christ our Saviour, who lives and reigns with Thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and forever. AMEN.

Aftermath

Independence Day in Lancaster was wonderful! The US Marine Corps Band from New Orleans marched in our parade and performed before the fireworks at the fairground. As always, friends and family from St. John's Episcopal Church gathered on the Church Steps to watch the parade. During and after the fireworks, we gathered with brothers from Lancaster Lodge #57 F&AM and their wives at the Martin's home just behind the fairgrounds. And now it is a fond memory. Son Tristan has returned to Camp Lejeune to resume his duties with the Corps. Daughter Ashley and Husband Matthew have returned to Athens to await the imminent birth of our first grandchild. Rebecca and I are here with the dogs, trying to keep cool and finishing up those last few chores before the baby is born.
Words never quite seem adequate to describe the blessings that God has showered upon us here at Briarwood Farm. And yet, when I consider such things as liberty, family, friends, plenty, and salvation, I realize that I am called to receive and pass on His blessings, not to define them. To live simply and responsibly with those around me- To give thanks in all things- To submit to Him who loves me with the full confidence that He will never desert or betray me, surely this is the path to true happiness.