How do we know there is such a thing as time?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Christmases past, friends near and friends far away, and dear friends departed this life. Sometimes it seems as though only yesterday I was going on my first date, taking my first college exam, looking for my first job, filing my first newspaper story, quitting my first job, getting married, moving from this place to that place.

We've been in Virginia almost four years, but it seems like yesterday we arrived (and, yes, there are still a lot of boxes yet to be unpacked). Another New Years Eve arrives in a few days, another year marked gone on the calendar. I behold each day with thanks, for each day is truly an irreplaceable gift. May you have many blessings, abundant health, and beautiful memories in the coming year.

Barbara Crafton penned this the other day about time and Christmas, and I leave it with you today:

+ + +

HE'S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS
By Barbara Crafton

How do we know there is no such thing as time, you ask?

Ah -- I can document it for you: cast your mind back to the Christmases of your childhood. Remember the afternoon of the great day -- the wreckage of toys and wrapping paper, the ruin of the Christmas feast still littering the table, the exhausted adults surveying it all listlessly. Remember your lust for the toys you received, remember the carefully-selected gifts you brushed aside, so entranced were you with whatever gift it was that seemed to you to be the star. And remember, then, the despair that clung to the edges of your orgy: it would be a whole year until next Christmas. A YEAR! A YEAR, do you tell me? How on earth would you make it through? A year was as good as a century in those days. A year was an eternity.

Now think of last Christmas. How long ago does it seem? About a month? Me, too.

Time is not constant. It is relative. It speeds up -- and not just the human experience of it, either. Time itself is intimately paired with location. It's why there are time zones -- it's already tomorrow in India. And yet I can pick up the phone and speak with someone there: he will answer right away: real time intersects with elapsed time when I do that. If that's the case in India, on the other side of the modestly-sized earth from where I sit and write this, imagine what time it is on Alpha Centauri.

Did I mention that this train of thought can be confusing?

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."
Just when we think we might have overdosed on Nativity scenes, the gospel reading in church this Sunday will feature this austere reminder: that which is, always has been. It IS. Jesus of Nazareth was born in a time and a place, but Jesus the Christ is not contained in a moment. The moments of Christ are all now.

Don't worry if this isn't coming together for you yet. Sit with it for a few decades and it will. When it does, its implications will, too: if there is no such thing as time, nothing is lost. What was still IS. The sad parade of loss we know as history is only a parade on this narrow stage of earthly life. It stretches out only here. The God's-eye view of our life is not linear. It is all now.

He's got the whole world in His hands. Bet you never thought of it as a Christmas song.

The sacredness of friendship, the blessings of compassion

On Saturday I will be preaching a homily at a memorial service for a young man, Jeremy Pinkerton, who was killed in an car accident last weekend. The service will be held at a Baptist Church which has graciously opened its doors to accommodate the large number of people expected to come.

Jeremy did not go to my church, and I never knew him. I just met his parents on Wednesday when they came to ask me to conduct this service for their son. They did not know me, but they came to my office because they were brought by close friends who are members of St. Paul's. I am honored to be a part of this for them, and I am honored their friends brought them to me.

This tragic event has me reflecting once again on the importance of friendship. Not just importance, but the sacredness of friendship. True friends are there with us in the joyful moments and the times of great pain. They know how we feel without asking. They are there for us, not with unsolicited advice but with their presence, their laughter, their tears. Friends are truly the reflection of God's boundless love, no-strings-attached. True friendship has no strings attached.

We don't do anywhere near enough in the Church to bless and honor friendships.

In this morning's Daily Office reading, from the Book of Job, three friends hear of Job's terrible suffering. His children have been killed in an inexplicable accident, and he is has a physically painful disease. The three friends -- Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite -- do the greatest thing they can do for Job. They show up:

"When the saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him in the ground for seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great."

-- Job 2:12-13

No one spoke a word. No one needed to. The friends lived with Job in his pain, and that was the greatest gift of friendship imaginable. Yet it is so hard to do. Later in the Book of Job, the friends start offering all sorts of trite advice and become a burden to Job. But for now they sit with him and suffer with him. That kind of friendship, I believe, comes only as a gift from God.

I came across this quote yesterday from Henri J.M. Nouwen that I think captures this well, and I share it with you:

"Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it."

Maybe the best prayer we can say for our friends who are suffering is ask for the strength to set aside our need to control so that we can be there with our friends no matter how painful or awkward it becomes for us. And may each of us accept the blessings of our friends in our own times of joy and pain, for when we do we will be looking into the eyes of God.

A Collect for Fridays

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but
first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he
was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way
of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and
peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

An unexpected gift from an unexpected corner

I received a gift earlier this week. I've been looking for the words to explain this. A little background first:

Last Sunday, Lori and I went to the Diocese of Virginia Roslyn retreat center in Richmond for annual training to lead our Education for Ministry (EfM) groups. This was my 14th EfM training, and Lori has been to at least that many.

This may sound like an excessive number of trainings, but we enjoy going every summer. EfM offers the best small group training there is.

I always learn something, and I enjoy meeting others who are involved leading EfM groups. And with EfM, I have long since learned to expect the unexpected.

So it was that the unexpected hit me in the first 10 minutes when an elderly gentleman walked into the room to join our training group. I didn’t pay this gentleman much notice at first; I didn’t notice his name badge until Lori nudged me and whispered “that’s Jerry Warren.”

I did a double take. Years ago I had once worked for a Jerry Warren – yes that Jerry Warren.

Gerald L. Warren had been the editor-in-chief of The San Diego Union in the 1980s when I was a reporter there. I knew Jerry then as an affable guy with a dry sense of humor, but like all editors-in-chief I worked for, not someone I would call close. True, I had brought him cigars from Havana after having chased a story to Cuba for his newspaper. But mostly reporters and senior editors don’t travel in the same circles, at least I didn’t. He had a glass office, I had metal desk in a newsroom.

Besides, we had very different backgrounds. Before he was editor-in-chief at The Union, Jerry Warren had been the chief spokesman for President Richard Nixon in his final months at the White House. My resume was more modest. I had been an executive intern in the Nixon administration in 1973, but someone must have checked my voter registration and they had put me as far from the West Wing as possible: assigning me to the home office of the Peace Corps.

I had not seen Jerry Warren in 25 years. And now here he was in my EfM training group.
We are not supposed to break confidentiality from EfM training groups, and I won’t here. But I mention all this because sometimes years do make a difference, and life’s journeys can be filled with unexpected turns that bring us back into the same room again. I was privileged for the next three days to share our life stories, read Scripture together, and pray with my old editor, and I feel enormously blessed and enriched by the experience.

Jerry, who now lives in Northern Virginia, gave me a great gift of insight this past week. This insight may seem obvious to you, but it hit me over the head like a ton of bricks. The insight is this: It is worth it, very worth it, to keep up with the circle of people who mean the most to you in life.

We may move from place to place (I never thought I’d be in Virginia, after all), but we are so much richer by going the extra mile to be with those people who mean the most to us. Our experiences together don’t end just because we are thousands of miles apart.

Since moving to Virginia Lori and I have made many new and wonderful friends here, people I pray will be with us for many years to come. Yet, as many of you know, we have devoted considerable time and expense to periodically go back to California to be with family and friends there.

This past week, I know better why that is worth it to do. It took seeing someone I hadn’t seen in 25 years to get it. Our stories continue to shape each other no matter where we live. We are still supported and transformed by our communities even when those communities are spread across time and space. I left Sacramento two years ago, the community of journalists 13 years ago. I've worked for three newspapers in my career, and since leaving San Diego 25 years ago, I’ve been in six church communities; all three papers and all six churches, and the people in them, remain deeply imbedded in me.*

No one is left behind.

The people who have been the most important to me are still important to me now. It is crucial to be with them from time to time; to share a meal, swap stories, go to a high school graduation, catch up and go fishing. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is with many, many wonderful loving people who I will treasure always. Friends matter. Even old editors.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12:34).

Art by Sandra Braznell.

*Since you asked: The Riverside Press-Enterprise (twice); The San Diego Union; and The Sacramento Bee. Churches: St. Timothy's, Danville CA; Trinity Cathedral, Sacramento CA; Faith Church, Cameron Park, CA; St. Luke's, Auburn, CA; All Souls Parish, Berkeley, CA; St. Paul's Memorial Church, Charlottesville, VA.