Headline: Christmas is Not Cancelled for Christians

The first Christmas came to a young teenager who gave birth to her first-born in a shelter. Her mama wasn't with her. Her aunties weren't there with the clean blankets and newly embroidered layette. She was far from home because the government required it.

Not her government. Not a government trying to protect her life and that of those around her. No, this was a foreign government who cared not a whit for her life, just wanted to make sure they could keep track of her husband.

Rejoice.

When the British headline declared Christmas is Cancelled on account of the lockdown called in the face of a new even more contagious strain of COVID, it replaced Dewey Wins as the most inaccurate headline of all time. Can you just see a grinning Joseph holding that newspaper over the heads of his wife and the sleeping babe?

Rejoice.

Rejoice in the Lord, always. Again I say rejoice. Paul was in prison when he wrote those words. Christmas will come this year as it always does.

Christmas will come to prison and to shelters. Christmas will come to families on Zoom who say I love you, I wish you were here. Christmas will come to essential workers in convenience stores, selling cigarettes and candy canes. Christmas will come to CNAs wiping dirty bums. Christmas will come to ICUs and cops on the beat. Christmas will come to church buildings that stand empty. Christmas will come to those at whom I am angry because they won't wear a mask. Christmas will come to maternity wards where they do.

Christmas will come. Because it means more than what is cancelled.

Rejoice! 

How to Fix My Wonky Internal Compass

Everybody has an internal clock that regulates the daily variations of temperature, blood pressure, hormones, hunger, sleep patterns, all manner of internal activities. One of the main features of bipolar, a feature that most people outside the field don't even know about, is that people with bipolar have wonky internal clocks. We're hot when others are cold. Our cortisol levels are slow to rise in the morning and once risen, don't know when to go down. Our sleep patterns are all over the place.

Social Rhythms Therapy treats bipolar by regulating the timing of key external events, effectively resetting our wonky clocks several times a day. Up at 5:30, conversation postponed until 7:00, breakfast at 7:30, work at 9:00... I have been stable (more or less) ever since I began to live by the hours. I approach cross-time zone travel with fear and trembling.

The first step in the Way of Love is turn. Turn to Jesus. Set your intention to follow him. Why is this part of a weekly practice? Didn't I make that choice on a windy hilltop above Reed College in Portland, Oregon fifty years ago? 

In addition to a wonky internal clock, do I also have wonky internal compass?

There are so many things that knock me off course every day. People who watch crime shows overestimate the true crime level and develop a higher distrust of their neighbors, particularly their neighbors of a different race. Facebook posts of misinformation, bot-generated from Russia, some designed to reinforce the prejudices of the left, some the prejudices of the right, have nearly destroyed civil discourse. Conversations with friends so easily turn into a ain't it awful spiral.

So, yes, every morning I reset my internal compass. I have decided to follow Jesus. I have decided to follow Jesus today. I won't be surprised if I am knocked off course by noon. I should pay attention to what knocks me off course and better prepare for it.

In any case, I will decide to follow Jesus again tomorrow morning. At 6:15.

How Does a Red Box Become a Blessing

Just in time for the first lockdown, we got our Blessing Box installed. Three feet by three feet, two shelves filled with food stuffs behind a glass door in a red box. The red door of our little church cannot be open, but the Blessing Box is available 24/7, when all other sources of food aid are closed. We put it on a post, so that people using it would not have to bend over. It's right next to our Little Library.

Immediately, it began to bless the neighborhood, bless our congregation, and bless our town. A sign invites people to give and to receive. And many do both.

The thing quickly filled up with dry beans. The cans were more beans, a salt-free variety. The secretary kept taking the beans to St. Vincent de Paul. Our lay leader who keeps an eye on the box kept telling us, No more beans! But they kept coming.

I think what is happening is that people get food packages that include dry beans from Vincent de Paul. Either because they are homeless, or don't have adequate facilities, or don't have time to cook beans between work and home-schooling children, or are sick to death of beans, these beans are just not useful to them. So they bring them to us. They have something to give, beans.

My wife and I started including tuna in easy-open pouches, stew in flip-top cans, and protein bars in our grocery order. Then we'd trade. We really need to eat more vegetable-based protein and have no idea where to find those salt-free beans. So we are blessed to receive - beans.

Somebody out walking found our blessing box and told everybody about it on a local Facebook page. Food was soon flying in and out of the thing. But nobody ever sweeps it clean. I once put two $5 cash cards for a local grocery store in the box. The next day, one of them was gone. The other remained.

A woman, not a member of our church, regularly drives by on her way to the store to check out the contents and add what might be needed to her grocery list. No beans!

Our church is in an area visited by homeless people. So we focus on what they can use. Nowadays that includes hand warmers and space blankets. It's Christmas. Our next grocery order should include some candy, don't you think?

Ours is a Mutual Ministry congregation. So it seems no surprise that when we do a blessing box, it's only partly about what we do for others. Mostly it's about offering an opportunity for all to engage in ministry. The nation is in a sorry state. The healing begins by reweaving the web of care within our communities, our neighborhoods. That little box with its glass door and red walls signals sanctuary, a safe place for us all to find each other again. It is a blessing.

Oh, and one person decided we needed to install a bench between the books and the food. It has since been used for a nap.

How Does the Mind Learn? The Neuroscience of the Way of Love

In the Way of Love, Learn refers to learning about the faith, reading the Bible, studying the teachings of the Church. It's not that academic knowledge makes you a better person. But learning itself might. Stick with me here.

I have been learning about learning in a larger sense for a number of years, trying to figure out what happened to my brain and how to fix it. The Way of Love is a formation process for the mind. It changes the way the mind works, forming it after the mind of Christ.

One thing I have come to understand is how the brain and the mind are connected. The mind is the brain transcending itself, but not separate from it. The brain is the mind incarnate.

It's not that either precedes or dictates to the other. What happens in one happens in the other, on its own terms.

How does the mind learn? It makes connections among previous knowledge, bits of new information, experience, and emotions. At the same time, the brain is physically doing the same thing, making connections.

See that drawing of a brain cell at the top of this post? (It always reminds me of a reggae dancer.) Two cells connect when a strand of "hair," or dendrite, on one dancer approaches a "foot," or nerve ending on another. An electrical charge passes between them. What fires together wires together, as they say in neuroscience. You repeat a connection, the electrical charge, often enough, it becomes a habit of the brain. When a charge is looking for a direction to follow, it goes in the direction it already knows.

You repeat a connection often enough, it also becomes a habit of the mind. Say An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth often enough and you become a certain kind of person. Say But Jesus said, Turn the other cheek or Forgive us our sins as we forgive each other often enough and you become a different kind of person. The brain and the mind learn together.

Choose what kind of person you want to be. Then practice it. Repeat the things that will form your brain and your mind into that kind of person.

Christianity is not about a one-time declaration of faith. It is a way, the Way of Love.

How Does a Priest, Who Cannot Pray, Pray?

Once when I was severely depressed, I had a psychiatrist who did not return calls. She had an answering machine, which led me to believe that she would answer my more and more desperate calls about the more and more dangerous side effects of the meds she prescribed. But she did not. She later acknowledged that she did not listen to her answering machine.

She didn't answer the frantic requests for a call back that I left with her secretary either. Several requests. She expressed surprise that I did not trust her. She explained that she did not do relationships.

I would soon leave what I had thought was a relationship with her. I am talking about a doctor/patient relationship. Meanwhile, I changed my behavior accordingly. As I got even sicker, I did not go to my psychiatrist for help.

I drew a sketch of a telephone receiver. I drew words going into the mouthpiece. I drew scissors cutting the cord. I drew words falling onto the floor from the cut end of the cord. I realize that this sketch dates me.

During that time, I wasn't doing so well with my relationship with God, either. I stopped going to God for help. It may seem natural to draw a connection between the two, but I wouldn't say that one caused the other, nor that they had the same cause. They simply shared the occasion.

I have come to trust other caregivers since, though I generally have laryngitis in any first session. As far as God goes, let's call it a truce. When I anthropomorphize God, I imagine that God laughs at that word truce. I have simply stopped arguing. Maybe I still have laryngitis. I have concluded that I just don't know as much about God as I used to.

Waiting and Watching refers to an old acronym, ACTS. It stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. The traditional teaching is that a healthy prayer life includes each of these in turn.

I know some master pray-ers. I have a friend I call on when the need for supplication is dire. When my wife had cancer, Nell hounded heaven. She had camino pilgrims praying as they walked. She went to a holy well and bid the old women say the ancient prayers in Gaelic. She knows the words, she said, but doesn't have the spiritual authority to say them. She wore out her beads. Who could be surprised that after surgery, the doctors said, We got it all?

But me, I just smile and nod when people ask me to pray for them.

How does a priest, who cannot pray, pray? Well, not in the ways we are traditionally taught to pray. 

I do pray, in a sense. I guess it's like being present.

• Adoration - It's a political act for me -- against all that is wrong in the world, the injustice, the degradation of creation, the corruption of power and idolatrous claims of politicians to God's favor, I am present to both the vastness of creation and to what lies beyond it, what makes human beings puny. God is God, and everything and everybody else is - not.

• Confession - I am present, I sit, to the extent that I am able, with my failings, my limitation, my regret. I am mindful that I simply am not as wonderful as I like to think I am.

• Thanksgiving - What on earth does thanksgiving mean? That I give credit to God for giving me stuff that other people don't have? Thanksgiving is theologically treacherous. Nevertheless, even people who don't bring the God-thing into it feel gratitude. Again, I am simply present to what I have, aware of it, mindful that I have everything that I need.

• Supplication - I remember those who have asked for my prayers. I hold them, I sit with them in my heart. I do lift them to God and I leave it to God.

Are my ways helpful to others who also don't know as much about God as others seem to? Are they helpful to you?

Do you find it ironic that a person who has a gift with words cannot seem to turn those words into a gift of prayer? Well, it is what it is.

Bottom line, I guess, is that the telephone line is not cut. When I pray, at least I am at the other end of it. I am present.

If Worship Is Not About Me, Why Do I Do It?

Here's a hot take: Worship is not about how I experience the holy. Worship is what I do to demonstrate that my holy experience is not the goal, that there is something more important than my personal experience, and that I submit to that greater power.

Sure, I have worshiped in all kinds of places. My little church with the lovely wood paneling and the stained glass windows. In a conference center with thousands of people. The crypt at Canterbury Cathedral. Around a campfire. At the edge of the Crooked River at Smith Rock. Next to a hospital bedside. Over the phone. On Zoom. In a bar.

Sometimes I am caught up in the moment. The Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Peter's Cathedral fairly shimmers with spiritual energy. Sometimes the choir is magnificent, and sometimes the baby is throwing up in the pew. Sometimes my mind wanders. Yes, I have written my grocery list during a sermon. Yes, I have perseverated on a past injustice during the Prayer of Consecration. While I was saying it.

All of these are worship.

But honestly I think the most worshipful thing I have done is pull myself away from the Sunday paper, get out of my pajamas and into "Sunday clothes," drive somewhere I'd rather not be, and present my mind and body, such as they are, to whatever is going to happen that day at church. Precisely because I don't want to do it.

Worship is about how there is God and not God, and I am not God. I am not the center around which all things are judged. Whatever the experience is like, worship trains my mind into that perspective. And yes, I do get something out of it.

What I get is sanity.