Done

Hunter College Library

After 40 radiation treatments, or more specifically, 7200 doses of CGY, I've completed my time under the lights with Sloan Kettering's Radiation Oncology Department. This has not been a sacrifice to sabbatical study but a testimony to the creativity of the Holy Spirit. From Sisters Jenny and Rita, Jacqueline, and Father Dick of the Desert House of Prayer, to Harry and Monique of the Hunter College Library staff, to David, Nelson, Stephen, Monica, Kathleen, Sally, and Dr. Marissa K. of radiation suite # 425, to the Faithful at St. Catherine of Sienna Church, and to Julio of the 45th Street gym I have felt God's sometimes subtle and always abiding care and presence.

All the while, Gerry, Babs, Terry, and Meghan continued to nobly sort, cull, and value each item in the perpetual flow of business into our office. Bless them.

My intended work was to be assessing the character and life of congregations adjacent to federal facilities and it still will be. But what we often intend outright God answers with something much simpler and profound. The friends I have made along the way underwrote these days..the ones with cancer, especially, their journeys remain in my prayers.

But all of them are in my prayers, as are you, really. I agree with what Susan Sontag wrote about the disease, "it's a metaphor." There will always be something which presses on the edges of our finitude reminding us of life's fragility and sweetness. Perhaps we can peek around the corner of uncertainty, value the bond we have with each other, marvel at the mystery of coincidences God compiles in our days, and venture forth bravely from there in Christ's Name.

At the end of each cold day I went home to a fire, a glass of wine, to my wife Brook and to my children. I toast my wife's patience, especially. How could anyone sum up these days as anything but a blessing? +gep

His star at its rising

St. Catherine of Sienna Church

It's really all right there...the whisper in your ear and maybe the still, small voice of your nightmare poking not with assurance but in judgement. That's one way to read the familiar Daily Office Old Testament reading last week of Elijah in the cave. It got me thinking of that lone figure waiting as the whirlwind passed by and how he perceived God. Left to our own devices--often rightfully--God is saying, "the jig is up." God's voice, as St. Augustine puts it, is "deeply hidden yet most intimately present" and He may have reason to be critical. Augustine continues, "you are wrathful, yet tranquil." There is an eerie reality to that statement for as Jacob Marley admits to Scrooge, "I forged this chain in life, link by link." God's anger is not so much summoned as he watches, in pain, our wiggling and silly demise. After all, we have all this "freedom." Sooner of later, though, there has to be a bottom line to our behavior. Praise God, but wait.

Our God is a god of mercy and He sends Jesus Christ to plead for us, standing between that divine accusation when our backs are up against the consequences. At the Desert House of Prayer the Taize service ends with kneeling alongside a life size cross on the ground. I remember the service leader saying, "you may now join your afflictions with that of Christ." He made this cosmic and eternal announcement as perfunctorily as a track change in a train station. For an Episcopalian expecting the soothing Taize chants and nothing more this was a jolt for me. Did I (or those I knew) have some afflictions that were too big for me (us) to handle? Sure, I could think of plenty. It may have been the only worthwhile thing I could do that week.

Every weekday at noon I attend the Mass at St. Catherine of Sienna Church. Catherine is the patron of those who care for the sick and the white coated employees of the neighboring hospitals make good use of her petitions. Telltale stethoscopes dangle from pockets and necks as the congregation cues up for the sacrament. Father Gorman moves the liturgy along smartly so lunch hours and shift changes aren't disrupted but it is the non-liturgical sequel in the narthex which is of special interest.

It is as if the Faithful having partaken of Christ's presence in the Eucharist now seek to touch the true priest. As Augustine addresses God, "For us before you he (Christ) is a priest and sacrifice, and priest because he is sacrifice. Before you he makes us sons instead of servants by being born of you and being servant to us. With good reason my firm hope is in him. For you will cure all my diseases (Ps. 102:3) through him who sits at your right hand and intercedes with you for us (Rom. 8: 34)."

And so after Communion at St. Catherine's a line forms to touch the foot of giant a crucified Jesus hanging on the wall. Because he is suspended so high only the paint on his metatarsals is worn bare but that intensifies the point.

We cannot live in this world without serious help. If we are true to our confessions, like Augustine, "(we) are terrified by (our) sins and the pile of misery raked in (our) hearts." We confess our brokenness and mourn the divine estrangement.

I heard a new emphasis in Sunday's gospel lesson of the Epiphany story. The Wise Men saw the star "at its rising." I had never really thought about what these travelers did during the day...but at night they waited for this dynamic celestial body to rise. And that prefigured what the man Jesus would do. We must ask for Christ to rise in our hearts if we are to understand the fullness of what is before us. Otherwise the weight of sin never lets us raise our chins to look at the next horizon. +gep

St. Augustine's "Confessions", Books I and X.