Rejoice... Seriously.

Salvador de Bahía, Brasil

[This is a slightly adapted form of what I preached informally earlier this week as a final assignment in my preaching class this semester. I drew upon the readings for the Third Sunday of Advent this year: Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; Luke 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28. As my sidebar disclaimer indicates, the views below are entirely my own, with some influence from the signs of the times, the prodding of the Spirit, and a few helpful edits from good friends.]

Rejoice! Proclaim the good news! Prisoners are released, the hungry are fed, the Almighty has done great things! The Spirit of the Lord God is upon you! Rejoice always!

The rising tide of goodness and cheer abounds in the Scriptures, and in the cult of holiday marketing, as we draw ever closer to Christmas. We may find ourselves warmed by the anticipation of holiday parties, family visits, reunions with friends, the end of the semester’s work, and countless other blessings. It is a time to rejoice, in what we have, and in what we hope to receive.

But, wait… let’s be serious for a minute. Not all find cause to rejoice these days. The poor are still with us, as Jesus said they would be, and they’ve become more visible these past few weeks. The scourges of war, violence, and disease continue to plague far too many nations and peoples around the world, from Syria to Ukraine, from Liberia to Mexico, from South Sudan to the Holy Land. The evil of racism has welled to the surface of our national discourse, playing out in deliberations and demonstrations from Ferguson to New York City to Cleveland. How can we rejoice… when the brokenhearted cry out for justice, for peace, for healing, for a day of vindication? What are we to say to them? What are we to do? Is there any joy to be found here?

Do not quench the Spirit, Paul tells us. Test everything; hold on to what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil. This is not done easily, when light and darkness, privilege and prejudice, profit and exploitation twist together so tightly. We need guidance if we are to make straight the way of the Lord. We must look away from shallow joys, empty promises, and veneers of security to hear the voice of one crying out in the desert. Who is that voice? Where is that desert? Are two-thousand-year-old answers still relevant?

Among many signs we’ve seen in our streets these past few months, there are these: “I am Michael Brown.” “I am Eric Garner.” With all due respect, not quite. John tells us: “I am not the Christ.” Who is he? “I am the voice of one crying out in the desert.” Who am I? I am Chris Ryan. Who are you? You are Laura, you are Peter, you are Vanessa, you are Henry. You are the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, a wilderness that has traced a path from the periphery of our consciousness, from the overlooked neighborhoods of our cities, and now cries out to be heard in our communities, in our cities, in our nation, in our world.

In this we can rejoice. God anoints, empowers, and sends each of us to bring glad tidings, healing, and liberty. God does the same for others who might liberate us from the captivity of our ignorance, our distraction, our detachment. The Spirit of the Lord is upon us all, to make straight the way of the Lord. Our collect prayer invited us to celebrate the joys of the Lord’s Nativity “with solemn worship and glad rejoicing.” Far too many people have experienced 2014 as anything but a year of favor from the Lord. Their suffering and pain is grave. The call to genuinely notice and firmly acknowledge the evil visited upon them, and to take up a mantle of justice alongside them, is both a solemn undertaking and a great joy. You have been called to go out to those who cry out. Rejoice in this mission, and believe in the provision of the grace to fulfill it. Delight in the company of those who carry it out with you. Pray for guidance, testify with courage, give thanks with humble delight. Join in the difficult, anguishing, yet hopeful labor of making straight the paths that we have all allowed to become far too crooked. The one who calls you, who calls me, who calls us all, is faithful, and will accomplish it. Rejoice.

Sources of Light

These little machines appeared on the field that I pass daily on my walks between home and school. With the semester drawing to a close, and the late autumn weather bringing an end to the season of nighttime outdoor sporting events at Boston College, I figured that these mobile "night sun" lamps were being staged for storage until the spring. Sure enough, as I walked home yesterday after turning in two final papers, a pair of flatbed trucks were parked on the field, and a forklift was methodically loading these generator-fed lamps for their journey back to a rental company's warehouse.

Our human society has developed so many sources of illumination. But do they all shed light on our path? Street lights are one thing, but not all lights that glow forth from the façades of our cities and towns are above questioning. Holiday advertising campaigns stress all that could make us merry and bright, but do they invite us to consider where that materialistic glow might fade into shadow? A variety of voices competes to address the issues of violence, prejudice, injustice, and political tension that have filled so many days and nights these past few months, but how many of them truly shed light on our own complicated involvement in these vexing social ills?

The Advent season invites me to live more by the forms of natural light that, while I can neither purchase nor possess them, are most fully my own. At Boston's 42-degree northerly latitude, Advent coincides with the shortest days of the year... bottoming out at just over nine hours of daylight on the winter solstice. Not long past three in the afternoon (or in the early evening, if one is overly cynical), the sun is clearly diving toward the horizon, generously spilling its fiery glow throughout its steady descent. The deep blue sky that chases sunset or precedes sunrise somehow retains sufficient light for walking, running, or reading by a window. The calmness that it instills brings a hush to the disquiet and anxiety, inviting me to turn away from the immediacy of rented light, and instead to contemplate and welcome a subtler, holier glow that arises from within as well as from without.

Advent readings describe Jesus as the light of the world. In a period when the cosmological dance of light and dark gives the latter its deepest lunge, and at a time when our nation and many others seem more deeply caught in the murky swirl of sin and discord, perhaps we can consider anew the lights by which we live, and the source of the true light that is ever coming into the world.

Scar, Stump, Sprout, Shelf

Just under two weeks ago, I accidentally cut one of my fingers while chopping vegetables. Working at a quick pace with a great knife, the blade had sliced in and out of my flesh before I realized that it had missed the leek braced against my fingertips. Thankfully, I didn't need stitches, but I did take a few minutes to sit on the floor and let waves of adrenaline and shock roll through me, lest I pass out. New skin has now filled in the gash– a quarter-inch in both depth and width– in a wonderful testament to the body's capacity for healing. Yet my amateur bandaging caused the edges of the wound to line up imperfectly; the new growth preserves a sign of the knife's damage.

Today's first reading (Isaiah 11:1-10) opens with the image of a new sprout growing from a stump, the remnant of a mighty tree felled at some point in the past. In these last days of the semester, my brothers and I are metaphorically felling trees as we print out our final papers. We're devoting considerable energy to removing any obstacles that stand between us and winter break, knocking out the last round of assignments from our to-do lists. It's as if we're more invested in the work of cutting down than the process of building up.

Yet just as Isaiah praises a blossoming bud, personified with a range of spiritual gifts, we too can take stock of our own growth over the past months as this calendar year draws to a close. In what ways does the Spirit of the Lord rest upon me? What new wisdom and understanding have I received? What counsel have I offered, what strength have I extended, what knowledge and reverence of the Lord have I developed? What wounds and pains have given way to healing, perhaps with some slight reshaping of the contours of my life?

Although I'll soon return the library books that fueled my research throughout the semester, I've already acquired several more to read over the break. Volumes on the history of Catholic parishes, spirituality and secularism in urban settings, and pastoral efforts to address racism nestle against the latest novels by Marilynne Robinson and David Mitchell, and a collection of short stories by a young veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Not quite wolves and lambs laying down together, but certainly a study in contrasts, at least judging by appearance.

This stretch of time between Thanksgiving and Christmas can be so frenetic, it's hard to see the forest for the trees, or even the trees, if we're rushing, overworked, or too obsessed with clearing a path, let alone following one. Advent invites us to consider the jagged edges of our lives, and to explore the deeper truth of growth, integration, and grace at work even, and especially, there. I suspect that much of what's on my shelf will tell me this story in novel fashion. Scars indicate not only a cut, but also a seam. Stumps bear a legacy of past growth from which life sprouts anew. The Spirit of the Lord rests upon us.

A Month and A Season

After a long absence from the blogging realm, I sense that it's time to make a return. As each new month opens, and I take stock of the previous month's memories, journal entries, and other mementos of daily life, I attend to what I've done well, what I've neglected, and what calls me to grow. As this new month coincides with the opening of the Advent season, I'm sensing a synergy between my return to greater intentionality in prayer and contemplation on the one hand, and on the other, nudges toward creative writing I've experienced since the end of the summer. Both aspects of my life were sometimes diminished by the responsibilities, activities, and general pattern of another instructive, insightful, and life-giving semester of theology studies. Writing about joys and blessings, struggles and fears, and the people who helped me to live into them more fully seemed so weak and empty compared to the experiences themselves.

Advent, with all its powerful imagery, likewise pales in comparison to the mystery of the Incarnation toward which it points. These weeks offer countless reminders of that original experience of awaiting the moment of God taking on flesh and dwelling among us. The words of prophets and evangelists that are read at liturgies over the next four weeks tell us that Christ is coming; the mood of prayers and reflections upon these texts invite us to consider our own levels of readiness, desire, and openness with respect to this divine-human arrival. For a season, we are invited to trust in the future, and to recall the blessings of the past, while being rooted in the present.

It's my hope to gradually delve back into this blog by way of slowing down and carving out space for creative reflections on life, with the lens of Advent to sharpen my focus. Unlike the narrative in the lectionary, the ending of this newest stretch in my life's journey remains unwritten. Yet I enter it with hope, curiosity, and faith that it will, like each year's Advent journey, lead to a new beginning shaped by a timeless truth.

A Concert for One (Hundred)

It's not every day that one of the nation's best musical ensembles puts on a free lunchtime concert to celebrate the occasion of turning in your last papers to close out the semester. Then again, it's not every day that the same group offers the same gesture to the tourists who happened to notice the sign on the sidewalk in front of Boston's oldest churches, or a job candidate who just had a tough interview, or the elderly gentleman who looks like he knows his way around the sanctuary. In reality, the Handel and Haydn Society's splendid performance of works by Corelli, Handel, Pisendel, and Vivaldi wasn't prepared for us specifically, yet for 45 minutes on a finicky spring day, the hundred of us gathered in King's Chapel relished this intimate gift.

Handel and Haydn Society musicians
King's Chapel, Boston MA

As the stone walls and relatively unadorned interior of this 18th-century house of worship hushed the myriad stimuli of Boston's Financial District, the musicians filled not only the space, but also our ears, hearts, and souls, with truly delightful music. In my developing career as a practically experienced but rather unschooled connoisseur of the classical genre, I regularly encounter moving wonders in both new and familiar compositions. I can still recall the first time I noticed the swelling progression in one of my favorite sections of Beethoven's repertoire– the second movement of the seventh symphony– as it made its way through the orchestra, section by section. With only four musicians at today's concert, it was easy to see– and no less remarkable to behold– the gestures of eyes, hands, chins, even bows, that communicated the various elements of each piece. Surely there was much more that I missed.

Boston Public Garden

While having a quick lunch in the Boston Public Garden before the concert, I thought I'd have time afterwards to return and enjoy its glowing splendor of budding trees blooming tulips, and a nesting swan. But a thick bank of clouds and a cascade of tightly confined showers swept in just as the music ended, urging me to pedal my bicycle back to Boston College at a fierce clip. Apparently I had taken for granted the gift of celebrating the fruits of sacrificial discipline throughout the semester that allowed me to finish my work before the first day of finals week. The cost of procrastination suddenly struck just as I stood poised to profit from months of its opposite.

These hours reminded me that God offers me gifts such as these every day, regardless of my workload, the weather, or my knowledge of who's performing where. (Thanks, H&H, for last night's email about today's concert!) Now that the semester's academic tasks are behind me, I have fewer excuses for putting off the choices that would focus my gaze and my actions upon recognizing, receiving, and sharing the blessings that can seem sent specifically to me, but are meant to touch many lives.

Boston Marathon 2014

It's been eight days since this year's Boston Marathon, my fourth time in five years to make the adventurous trip from Hopkinton to Copley Square on the third Monday in April. Coming in the midst of a hectic semester, and just after the intense and deeply moving liturgies of the Easter Triduum, the activity of Patriots' Day seamlessly blended into the pace and emotion of the adjoining days. Yet it also stood on its own as a day of culmination, renewal, celebration, and transition.

Boston Fire Department, Boylston Street, Boston MA
Memorial banner for Boston Marathon 2013 bombing victims

After logging nearly 600 miles in fifteen weeks, I haven't run at all since I crossed the finish line eight days ago; my transition from training to recovery is almost immediate. Whether or not people were conscious of it being Easter Monday, they were well aware of the invitation to breathe new life into the marathon after recalling the anniversary of the 2013 bombings the week before. The crowds along the route were larger, more vocal, and more engaged than I can recall from any of my previous marathons here. Even the noticeable, but not overbearing, security presence suggested a sense of collective stewardship for a tradition that embraces more than the run itself, but unites volunteers, families, students, and citizens from a few medium-sized towns to the largest city in New England.

On the bus out to Hopkinton, I sat next to a pediatric medicine resident from Pittsburgh who was running his first Boston; we bumped into each other again three hours in the portajohn line just before hopping into the corrals. The athletes' village was noticeably busier and fuller with an extra 9,000 runners, but everyone was friendly and made room for one another. By the time we were lined up, there were no clouds in sight and the temperature was edging toward 50 degrees. I tried to roll a relaxed pace through the early miles, but I couldn't get myself any slower than 6:55 after I passed mile 5. My pace stayed between 6:44 and 6:49 through Wellesley (where the Scream Tunnel was longer, louder, and lovelier than ever), passing the halfway mark in 1:29. Then, just after mile 15, I felt something turn within me, and I could tell it was the heat of the sun sinking in. Later I learned that the temperature went up five degrees in about 30 minutes right around that time. By the time I hit the firehouse turn and scaled the first of the Newton Hills, my pace was a few seconds over 7:00, and I was concentrating on making it to the finish, rather than regaining negative splits. I eventually prepared myself to take 10 to 15-second brisk walking breaks each mile, which I started when I hit Beacon Street. But before that, I stopped and hugged one my old training partners (all the way from Maine, where she and others got me to run my first marathon in 2006) at the top of Heartbreak Hill, caught high fives with my parents and a bunch of friends from school on the way into Cleveland Circle, and shared two more hugs with school friends who were right where they said they would be at mile 24. My pace crept a little higher, and when I passed the mile-to-go mark in Kenmore Square at 2:57, I half-shouted "Uh Oh!" and threw all the energy I had left into the Mass Ave underpass and the final stretch down Boylston, finishing in 3:04:26, just good enough to qualify for next year.

Boston Marathon Expo, Boston MA
Can't help noticing Cristo Redentor and the Rio de Janeiro landscape

This was the year that taught me how to run a marathon for the distance and the crowds, and not for the speed. Had it been five to ten degrees cooler, or cloudier, I might have broken three hours again, or at least gotten pretty darn close. But I might not have had some surprisingly tender moments when I stopped to hug and thank people whose support got me through this marathon, as well as much of this year. And I might not have noticed how much my running meant to them, and to their grasp of what the marathon meant to this city this year. The greater size and more intense emotion of the spectators this year was palpable. And I can't imagine how wild it was when Meb turned onto Boylston Street with a twenty-yard lead... he's one fast dude, but I'm sure the crowd practically hauled him in to the finish line.

I'm grateful to everyone who took part in this year's Boston Marathon, and helped me to feel a closer connection between my running, my community of family and friends, and this fine city that I've had the privilege of calling home for the past eight months.

Reversal

In my own experience, and that of many friends, March was a long month. The swelling minutes of dusky evening glow often meant little more than some more daylight by which to work before turning on the lamp beside my desk. Freedom from classes during a week of spring break– which featured nothing but winter weather– meant long, interrupted stretches of time that I eagerly exploited to achieve serious progress on researching and writing a 20-page term paper. Once again, the stretch of my Boston Marathon training schedule with the highest mileage– including a grueling 22-miler on a chilly Saturday with some patches of black ice to dodge– fell squarely in the middle of March, and as most of the country knows all too well, a winter that just wouldn't quit. A friend in Michigan told me that March had its metaphorical lamblike departure there today; here in Boston, it managed to rain, snow, sleet, and even hail within a two-hour period. Having seen occasional glimpses of, and halting progress towards, the long-awaited spring on the horizon, it seemed we were instead sliding back down a slippery slope into late January.

On the other hand, this morning I experienced a reversal that, in contrast to the dread and anxiety with which I'd been anticipating it, turned out to be insightful and refreshing. One of my weekday running routes typically carries me westbound through the Newton Hills, then north through a residential neighborhood, and finally back east to my house along a route that features one sharp climb and two long, gently sloping downhills. On good mornings, with gravity as my aid and the fiery predawn glow beckoning on the horizon, I can roll down those hills with delusional thrill. But today, with Patriots' Day three weeks away, I finally worked up the courage to run this route the other way around, thus facing the Newton Hills in the same arrangement that I'll face on race day. I'll admit that I was also nervous about what those long drag-racing downhills would feel like in the other direction. Would it be like a slow trip up the chairlift instead of a quick run down a pristine slope?

I found some surprises in seeing this course from the other direction. For one thing, the 50-minute difference in daylight highlighted differences in streetlight coverage that I'd somehow overlooked during the long months of total darkness. Even with few cars on the roads, I felt slightly more nervous about hugging the curbs for left turns instead of right turns; even in a town with so many runners, most motorists seem genuinely surprised– or not sufficiently caffeinated– when they come across someone like me staking a claim to the shoulder and putting in some early miles before a day of work. And Heartbreak Hill proved even more mystical with a rosy hue at the top that silently heralded a glorious new day.

In this time of Lent, there's an encouragement to turn back to God. I've certainly found the past few weeks to be a welcome– and often uncomfortably prodding– motivation to discern the ways in which my prayer, habits, and relationships might have gone astray. Some of those wanderings have led rather narrowly to dead ends; the logical solution is thus to reverse course and return to the place where I abandoned the proper route for my ongoing spiritual journey. What if I reversed my prayer schedule and made sure that I did this first thing after breakfast... or even my post-run stretching? What if I rearranged my evening work schedule so that after-dinner leisure became a meaningful session of reflection and journaling at the end of the night, and I instead got to work right away instead of closing the books mere minutes before closing my eyes? In what other ways would a turnaround– however daunting and contrary to routine it may seem– be just the thing that this stretch of my lifelong training plan needs?

I can't say that I know any of these answers... only that I'm grateful to have discovered some new angles from which to seek them. And even if I wind up retracing steps I've previously taken, I'll surely see some of the surrounding terrain as if for the first time.