Feed her with love

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

A child went to stay for the first time with her aunt. Her aunt was anxious that the weekend should go well, and she was not made any less anxious by the child’s mother’s insistence that, “You must tell her every morning at breakfast, in detail, what will be for lunch and supper. Otherwise, she will not believe that there will be food, and she will spend the day in frantic fear of going to bed hungry.”

The woman had been the child’s mother for a couple of years now, which begs the question, how many hot meals on the table at six o’clock sharp does it take to untie that terror?

Which raises the further question, how much hot anger must this mother spend before she can embrace her daughter wholly, for all that she is and with all of the history that she brings to lay at the feet of her family?

Which leads to one more question: How in hell does God do it?

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A Mothering Sunday Story

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

When my mother was younger, she worked as a nursery assistant in an assessment unit for children with various educational needs. When I had days off school, I got to go help out, and fall in love with the children.

My mother was adept at falling love with children. She had already fallen in love with my brother and me when we came to live with her as babies. When I was about thirteen, she fell in love with a little boy who went to her school, and she decided that it would do him good to visit our family one weekend, as a change from the group home in which he lived.

We spent a Sunday afternoon together, in the sunshine, on our patio, in our house, playing with our dog, playing at being a family to this little boy whom my mother loved.

Five years later, I volunteered for a summer at a day camp for children whose families needed a little help caring for them through the long weeks away from school. There was a little boy there who came with his social worker and who looked … familiar. And his named matched, too. So I talked to his social worker, who, after a little bit of totally appropriate initial suspicion, confirmed that this was the little boy whom my mother loved.

I went home that day and told her that I’d seen him, and played ball with him, and that the little boy who had left her school at age five unable to walk or talk much was now running and smiling and laughing and teasing his camp volunteers and that he was happy. And she wept for the love of him, with joy and aching loss.

Given her will, my mother would have mothered every child that needed a mother that passed her way. As it was, she made do with loving them.

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Anglican prayer beads: A Lenten cycle

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Revised and updated Lent 2019. A previous version used “Week” to describe the Cruciform beads, and divided those weeks into “Days” for the smaller 28 beads – which is how I was taught the terminology. However, having discovered that this can be confusing to those who learned the (more traditional?) terms of Cruciform and Weeks, I have updated my language to conform. Let us be united in prayer!

Do you use prayer beads, or an Anglican rosary? Those strings of 28 beads divided into four weeks of seven beads, with a pause of a different shape or colour in between? Entering and exiting through the cross and the invitatory bead? Here’s what I mean:

A couple of weeks ago, during our Lenten sabbath time, some parishioners and I spent some time praying with our beads, and making some new strings to take away and pray/play with or to give away.

Usually, to pray the Anglican rosary, one enters through the cross, says an invitatory prayer or sentence at, well, the invitatory bead, then proceeds into the circle, saying three times the same combination of prayers on the 28 beads, punctuated by the same four prayers at the four points of the circle (I know that’s geometrically impossible, but it sort of makes sense…)

For Advent, I put together a cycle of three rosaries, but it was a little too long for our sabbath hour, saying all three thrice, so this time, for Lent, especially as we wanted to have time for our arts and crafts session, too, I divided the rosary into three rounds and we said the whole cycle in one go.

Here is a Lenten cycle you may like to use with your own Anglican rosary or prayer beads. The words all come from either the Book of Common Prayer or the Stations of the Cross in the Book of Occasional Services:

A Lenten prayer cycle

 Cross:    Bless the Lord who forgives all our sins.

Invitatory:   God’s mercy endures for ever.

 I

Cruciform: Your merciful promise is beyond all measure.

Weeks:   You have promised forgiveness to sinners.

 II

Cruciform:   You, O Lord, are the God of those who repent.

Weeks:   Forgive me, Lord, forgive me.

III

 Cruciform:   Show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.

Weeks:   Restore us, O Lord God of hosts.

Closing invitatory:   The Lord’s Prayer

Cross:   Let us bless the Lord: Thanks be to God.

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Labyrinth

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

This gallery contains 11 photos.

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John 3:16

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

For God so loved the world

he came between a mother and the

baby at her breast

so that each saw the image of love

reflected in the other’s eyes

God so loved the world

that he sat at the street corner

and begged for our attention

For God so loved the world

he sang

and the children laughed and danced

and clapped their hands

God so loved the world that

he danced in the child

and the grown-ups laughed

in astonishment

For God so loved the world

he whispered through the blood of the dying

See how our hearts speak

the same language?

See what happens when

our hearts stop talking?

God so loved the world

that he flew with the birds

for the sheer joy of it

and rested in the rustling leaves

of an oak

For God so loved the world

he streamed through the man’s tears

until the woman could no longer bear the vision

and she wiped them away, reverently

First published in Trinity Cathedral’s Lenten Meditations, 2005

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Serpent

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Fashion your fear in all its detail.

Make your sin shiny, sleek and dangerous.

Fill its fangs with all the venom you can muster.

Gaze upon it, and know that you are greater

than the thing which you create.

 

Imagine God.

Know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made

in the image which escapes imagination.

Live: leave the serpent cast in bronze behind you.

God, your God, will not abandon you in the desert.

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Year B Lent 3: Superstitions and the first commandment

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

The rest of the sermon:

God spoke these words: I am the Lord your God … you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol … you shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God… (Exodus 20, extract)

The writers who reported this commandment to us were not describing people who prefer to play than to pray; and they were not talking about making idols out of our addictions. No; according to the commentaries:

“It was not self-evident to people in OT times that there was only one God; the demand to worship only one God had to struggle against a polytheism which to many people seemed more natural, reflecting the complexity and unpredictability of the world.” (Oxford Bible Commentary, Oxford: OUP, 2001, p. 81)

So do we really need to be reminded still to worship one God, and one God only, forsaking all others?

I posted this week on facebook a request for people’s “favourite” superstitions. The results could be divided roughly into three types:

1. Beliefs that portents or signs in nature tell us something about the way that the world is working. Examples include the “red sky at night” rhymes, which forecast the weather, and one from a friend and mentor, “a green Christmas means a full graveyard,” predicting the effects of a mild winter on the spread of viruses and other maladies. These are less superstitions than “folk wisdom,” with their basis in observation and extrapolation, they aim simply to inform and warn.

2. Beliefs and practices that promote good luck, sometimes by capitalizing on good fortune already achieved, sometimes by buying luck: finding a four-leaf clover or picking up a penny; wearing inside-out pyjamas for a snow day; winning the wishbone, or throwing a coin in a wishing well. I don’t for the life of me know how getting bird poop on you ever became lucky!

3. Beliefs and practices that ward off evil or malign influence: avoiding certain numbers; holding breath when passing a graveyard to keep out ghosts; touching wood to avoid “tempting fate” when relating good news; avoiding stepping on the cracks in the pavement in case of breaking one’s mother’s back (or, in some rare cases, jumping on them!); throwing slipped salt over the left shoulder. Other evil portents – frogs in the house, magpies, black cats – simply bear witness to the malignancy of the powers that be that are already in effect.

There are also a few fond beliefs that, to my mind, seem to come out of common sense practice: if you walk under a ladder, you undertake a certain amount of risk that something/one will fall on you. And if you break a mirror, you will probably be picking up broken glass for at least seven years.

The fullest category, at least anecdotally, seems to be the third: warding off evil or malign influences. How far away really is that from an ancient practice of mollifying, courting or appeasing the polytheistic gods?

Does it matter, or it is it an indication that we have yet fully to trust that “the Lord your God” is the one, the true, the living God who holds all things in the hands that created them, and loves all that those hands have made?

The online dictionary at merriam-webster.com defines “superstition” as

a) belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or b) a false conception of causation an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition.

That definition has some slightly derogatory tones, and I really don’t wish anyone offence here, but I did notice that, put together, the two aspects of this definition came surprisingly close to describing a polytheistic belief map in which certain forces or gods were to be propitiated out of fear, and some to be courted to provoke magical good luck.

Our actions not only reflect but reinforce our beliefs. If we make God a talisman, we can lose him. If we make a polished idol, it may tarnish. If we look for God only in omens, we might miss  or misinterpret the signs. When we act out of fear, we create for ourselves a false idol of God, one based in fear instead of love. We end up believing that bad things happen to us because we angered God – even that we bring misfortune upon those we love by angering a touchy and prickly god. A mother sits in the hospital grieving over her sick infant, searching her guilty soul for the trigger, the infraction or infringement which she committed which caused God to afflict that baby, when the gospel tells us that God loves us so much that God Incarnate, Jesus Christ, was willing to die to bring us back to God. Our God is a jealous God, not in the petty sense of lashing out when things don’t go well in the relationship, but because God has a passion for us, God loves us steadfastly and single-mindedly, because we were made for God.

It is true that the commandments talk about punishment. They contain consequences. But the promise far outweighs the warning. Love God, the commandments say, and God’s steadfast love will be felt for a thousand generations. Love God, and you will not steal, or murder, or deceive one another; love God, and you will love your neighbour.

Luther’s Small Catechism is a great guide to the commandments because Luther understood all of the commandments as flowing from this first: to love God.  So he explained the commandment regarding murder:

“We should fear and love God that we may not hurt nor harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need [in every need and danger of life and body].”

And the commandments regarding theft and false witness:

“We should fear and love God that we may not take our neighbor’s money or property, nor get them by false ware or dealing, but help him to improve and protect his property and business [that his means are preserved and his condition is improved].”

And

“We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, or defame our neighbor, but defend him, [think and] speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.” (http://bookofconcord.org/smallcatechism.php#tencommandments)

So, love God, because life is better that way. Love God, because God is jealous for you, passionate about you, loving you through the ages; and that love will lead to into righteous acts towards those around you, building up the community of the faithful and spreading the steadfast love of God to all of God’s children.

The Psalmist writes in beautiful poetry, that one day tells its tale to another. Our worship of God has consequences beyond ourselves, and our own generations. If we worship idols, acting out of primal fears of the old gods, our children and our children’s children learn that worship from us, and they continue in fear of bad luck and vengeance. But if we worship the one, true and living God in faith and love, then our worship joins that of the heavens, and its tale is told from one day to the next, for one hundred and seventy-five years, for a thousand generations, forever.

As Lent continues, perhaps we might spend a little of our reflection time taking an audit of our helpful and unhelpful beliefs and devotions. What seeds are we sowing for the future? Do we tell the tale of the old gods of the polytheistic days, or do we sing the gospel song of the heavens, declaring the glory of God? Which story do we want to pass on to generations yet unborn, to the next hundred and seventy-five years of St Andrew’s?

 

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Superstitions and the first commandment

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Looking towards Sunday, I read this in the Oxford Bible Commentary about the Exodus reading (Ex0dus 10: 1-17):

“Modern preachers interpret this [the first] command in a moralistic way: anything which absorbs a person’s devotion is his/her god … But this is not what it means in the OT context. It was not self-evident to people in OT times that there was only one God; the demand to worship only one God had to struggle against a polytheism which to many people seemed more natural, reflectign the complexity and unpredictability of the world.”  (OBC, OUP, 2001, p. 81)

I got to wondering how to translate this polytheism without simply moralizing, and then I got to wondering if we are really that far from a polytheistic way of thinking which seems “more natural, reflecting the complexity and unpredictability of the world” than faith that one almighty, all-loving God created, sustains and redeems us.

The online dictionary at merriam-webster.com defines “superstition” as

 a) belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or b) a false conception of causation an irrational abject attitude of mind toward the supernatural, nature, or God resulting from superstition.

fingers crossed this post doesn't bring me bad luck!

Leaving aside for a moment the slightly derogatory tones of the definition, I noticed that, put together, the two aspects of this definition came surprisingly close to describing a polytheistic belief map in which certain forces or gods were to be propitiated out of fear, and some to be courted to provoke magical good luck.

black cats are unlucky if you want to get work done

Do we really need to be reminded still to worship one God, and one God only, forsaking all others?
I posted on facebook a request for people’s “favourite” superstitions. The results could be divided roughly into three types:

1. Beliefs that portents or signs in nature tell us something about the way that the world is working. Examples include the “red sky at night” rhymes, which forecast the weather, and one from a friend and mentor, “a green Christmas means a full graveyard,” predicting the effects of a mild winter on the spread of viruses and other maladies. These are less superstitions than “folk wisdom,” with their basis in observation and extrapolation, they aim simply to inform and warn.

pretty sky in the morning = probably ok ...

seeing the bride/'s dress before the wedding = unlucky

2. Beliefs and practices that promote good luck, sometimes by capitalizing on good fortune already achieved, sometimes by buying luck: finding a four-leaf clover or picking up a penny; wearing inside-out pyjamas for a snow day; winning the wishbone, or throwing a coin in a wishing well. I don’t for the life of me know how getting bird poop on you ever became lucky!

3. Beliefs and practices that ward off evil or malign influence: avoiding certain numbers; holding breath when passing a graveyard to keep out ghosts; touching wood to avoid “tempting fate” when relating good news; avoiding stepping on the cracks in the pavement in case of breaking one’s mother’s back (or, in some rare cases, jumping on them!); throwing slipped salt over the left shoulder. Other evil portents – frogs in the house, magpies, black cats – simply bear witness to the malignancy of the powers that be that are already in effect.

There are also a few fond beliefs that, to my mind, seem to come out of common sense practice: if you walk under a ladder, you undertake a certain amount of risk that something/one will fall on you. And if you break a mirror, you will probably be picking up broken glass for at least seven years …

The fullest category, at least anecdotally, seems to be the third: warding off evil or malign influences. How far away really is that from an ancient practice of mollifying, courting or appeasing the polytheistic gods? Have we yet fully to trust that “the Lord your God” is the one, the true, the living God who holds all things in the hands that created them, and loves all that those hands have made?

It is bad luck to open an umbrella in the house. If it's a frog umbrella, you're probably doomed.

It is bad luck to open an umbrella in the house. If it's a frog umbrella, you're probably doomed

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Lent-check

Posted on March 7, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Matthew 20: 17-28

Jesus predicts his suffering and death – and the disciples’ response still leaves a little something to be desired. They have got past last Sunday’s denial of the whole horrible thing – they can, perhaps by now, bring themselves to envision the coming crisis as a sign of God’s work in the world rather than as a defeat – but they are still (as we heard on Sunday) thinking in human terms instead of in the radically new ways of the kingdom of God.

Without getting into the whys of the twins’ mother asking on their behalf (the story is told differently elsewhere, anyway – cf Mark 10: 32-45), it seems that they still think that this is a competition for high honours and rewards to make a mother proud.

Do we sometimes fall into the trap of treating Lent as a competition to be the best, the most pious, the “fastest,” most disciplined disciple? (Aside: yes, sometimes I do.) Instead, that is, of seeing it as an opportunity to serve God’s children, to serve God, to humble and quiet ourselves in prayer?

After all, Jesus did not go to the cross to glorify himself but the one who sent him, and to save sinners. So we, walking in the way of the cross, might wish to reflect upon for whose benefit it is that we fast and pray this Lent.

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Vote!

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Rosalind C Hughes

Those of you who’ve read this blog before may remember that I became a US citizen remarkably recently – just in time, in fact, to register to vote today. Some friends who have become disillusioned by the political process are bemused – and maybe amused – by my enthusiasm.
I get how disheartening political engagement can be. Trust me, I’ve been there.
But there’s nothing like an enforced sabbatical from voting to make a person appreciate the really quite remarkable freedom that we ordinary folk have to tell the government who we want and what we want them to do. Look around. Not everyone gets that opportunity …
At my local polling station, disillusionment and cynicism were noticeable by their absence. Poll workers who had been setting up since before daybreak were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and excited to assist a first-time voter.
Go ahead, make their day. Vote!

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