I am in Florida at the Duncan Conference Center in Delray Beach. It is hot and sticky—sort of like Hawaii with out trade winds. The event is the annual gathering of ELCA, TEC, UMC, PCUSA, RCA, ACC (Anglican Church in Canada) catechumenate leaders from all over North America. For almost twenty years, NAAC, the North American Association for the Catechumenate, has offered support, relationship, and resources for church leaders seeking to appropriate an organic and authentic liturgical evangelization. But don’t get any grandiose ideas: we are not here by the hundreds; we are just over three dozen.

It is not surprising that recovery of an ancient pattern of welcoming and forming disciples who are approaching the waters of baptism is a marginal (marginalized?) concern for much of the present-day Protestant churches. This is not a rock concert. Present-day church culture is too addicted to the program de jure approach (as someone recently put it) that offers something to titillate and tease our interest for six weeks without changing our behavior or practices in any serious way. So, try as we might, the numbers are not impressive, but passion and energy is.

Read more: Meeting People with Fire and Imagination

My expectation for this column is that I would always address a significant matter and not sweat the small stuff. I am not sure that this one meets that standard. Yet, as they say, “The devil is in the details.”

For some time Sr. MO and I have been praying morning and evening prayer together as part of keeping the Rule of Life and Service. I will admit that our approach is a “hodge-podge.” Currently we use the Order’s Daily Office, the Psalm selections from the Book of Common Prayer, and the readings from the Vigil section of Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP). The latter because it is both convenient (one has only to turn the pages each day and find the next OT and NT reading printed out) and its selections are well chosen from the full text of the Bible. The approach is semi-continuous reading of biblical books. For example, the current readings are selections from the Book of Job and continuous readings of 1 Timothy. The readings on Sundays are tied to the lectionary and include wonderful selections from homilies by ancient Christian writers, preachers and commentators.

This morning, however, I was shocked...

Read more: Seeking Perfection Using Imperfect Approaches

Nope! I am not going to suggest creating icons or touching up icons with nail polish. It’s the juxtaposition of purple and blue nail polish by the pantokrator icon on the coffee table where we pray morning prayer that makes me smile. Sr. MO bought the nail polish as a gift for our four year old granddaughter, since she is into such things. Distracted by other things she forgot to take them home. So there they were this morning --those two little bottles of garish color inhabiting the same space--beside the “all powerful” One. They were for me symbols of the hopes. desires and interplay of the world. Such is the profane and sacred tumble and mix of this worldly life.

Living the Rule of Life and Service for us Lukans is just this worldly. We are a religious community in dispersion in over eight hundred peculiar and particular places. We pray and work is settings that mean each of us has to discern and determine the particular and peculiar ways we will embody and enact Christ’s call to live the baptismal covenant and the “Rule” amid nail polish and children, spouses and dependent parents, oil soaked beaches and pristine forests, college campuses and pre-schoolers, less than ideal/real churches, with specific health and age issues, and unique economic stressors. We inhabit the same space with all these in apostolic hope, seeking to carry on the practices of lived faith. We are the bottles of nail polish juxtaposed with the Word made flesh and present by the Spirit. When I think of that I smile. I hope you do too, and that you think of specific sisters and brothers, see their faces, imagine their lives, and realize anew that by grace all of life tends toward holy gratitude .

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A day after prostate surgery and a day before my 67^th birthday the May/June issue of Circuit Rider (a magazine for United Methodist clergy) came in the mail. The theme is “Global Health” and there is much that commends itself to readers, whether clergy or lay, United Methodist or other traditions. And, it is available on line at http://www.umph.org/resources/publications/circuitrider.asp?act=displayissue&cr_issue_id=107.

Age, health, the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the recent and controversial passage of healthcare reform are ganging up on me and amazing me at the cost of disease. Before surgery I had an echo cardiogram in prep for surgery. I asked the technician, “How much did this cost?” Without a blink she said ask the admitting department. I went to ask but there were lines and I wasn’t in a mood to stick around. My guess and my anxiety is that that the surgery yesterday and all of the emergency room visits, tests, visits to specialists, and prescriptions leading up to it will end up at about $10 to 15K! And that may be conservative.

Read more: Healing and Wholeness at What Cost?

I am pleased to tell members of the Order and visitors to this website that you can now find a substantive history of the Order of Saint Luke: “The Story of the Order of Saint Luke.” This history was written by Br. Hoyt L. Hickman in the 1996 for the Convocation of the General Chapter on the 50^th anniversary of the Order and a decade later appeared in Sacramental Life in the Fall issue in 2006.

Here are names, places, ideas, and the narratives of beginnings, shifts and transformations that are our inheritance as a community. I encourage members to read the story and visitors, particularly those who are considering whether to enter life within the Order, to read this story.

For example, you will want to know more of what follows this statement:

About 1948, [Romey Pitt] Marshall wrote: “The name [of Saint Luke] was selected after much discussion among the original organizers, and was suggested by the Rev. William Esler Slocum in order to put the emphasis where it seemed to belong—upon service, instead of upon ceremonial. St. Luke was the ‘Beloved Physician’ and followers of him will need to emphasize the whole Gospel: Salvation from sin, healing of the body and soul, service to the needy, and cultivation of the spiritual life through prayer and the sacraments. Mr. Slocum spoke with some authority, having made his ministry center around these things for many years.”

This early conversation still goes on among us and it is good to be reminded that we are in company with our founders in continuing it today!

Read more: A History with a Future

Blessings as we come to the Great Three Days and

  the shadows and

    the cross and

      the grave and

        the fire and

          the book and

            the font and

              the table and

                the Life of all that lives.

May vigil we keep bring us back to the place that grace and penitence brought us when we first believed.

(adapted from the “going forth” of Morning Prayer for Holy Thursday, The Daily Office: A Book of Hours for Daily Prayer (Volume Two: Lent and the Triduum), Order of Saint Luke Publications, 2002), p. 188.

Almost every funeral at which I have presided has included a reading of selected verses from John 14 as is specified in the rituals of our Anglican/Methodist heritage.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also…Peace I leave with you….”

The 14^th-17^th chapters of John’s gospel are, in some respects, a health care directive or an ethical will to his disciples then and now. We read those profound words and know that here was one who knew who he was and where he was going (John 13:1 ).

Read more: Holy Week and a Directive for Health Care

The 4^th century Jerusalem church got ready for Easter by tracing the steps of Jesus from one traditional place to another in the course of Holy Week.[1] Egeria, a Spanish pilgrim, narrates her Diary the movement of the Jerusalem faithful around the holy places available to them: the Mount of Olives, Golgotha, the anastasis (the place of resurrection) and other places. The Jerusalem Christians lived where these landmarks were and so could experience Jesus’ passion and resurrection as historical events “remembered.” It must have been impressive and powerful “to walk where Jesus walked.” In Jerusalem, if someone asked, “How do you know Christ lives,” the people could answer, “There is where he was crucified and here is where he was raised.”

In early 5^th century Hippo, a city in North Africa where Augustine was bishop, Christians experienced the resurrection differently. They didn’t have the “props” of the historical places. What did they do?

Read more: Holy Week and Easter in Jerusalem and Hippo

I remember a meeting of the Order in 1986 when a major shift in the life of the Order took place, symbolized in the move from the title “Canon” to “Abbot.” It was an evolution toward a new seriousness around the Rule of Life and Service and of our being a living community.

Change is inherent in life. The recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile remind us that even the planet we live on is still evolving. All of this is preface to my sharing a letter that one or our members sent me. I share it here at length and invite you reflection, comment, and openness to hints of what God may doing among us.

I am reminded of a book I read a few years ago about the future of religious community life. I don't remember all what it had to say, but it did comment on the perennial evolution of religious communities. Certainly that is evident historically, but the process continues was the point being made in the book. What happens is that 'one size no longer fits all' and new adaptations take place, first within the Order or Community and then eventually separately or apart from the original community.

Read more: Evolution in Our Ordered Life?

Circumstances can suddenly change our lives and this morning is one of those times. “Tsunami” is its name for us and the 2 AM call from our daughter in law ended our sleep and launched our activity to evacuate our coastal home. Fortunately, we are prepared and are ready to load our car and leave for higher ground. (Higher ground reminds me of a gospel song, “Lord, lift me up, and let me stand….”)

The people of Haiti, and now Chile, remind us of how small we and at risk we are in this very seismically alive planet. We have fifteen hours of warning. They had none.

Sr. Sue Moore reminded me in an email on Thursday that my letter for the Font was due and could I please get it to her by the weekend. I was going to write it after Sunday worship and pastoral work at Parker UMC where I am acting as supply for three months while Br. Gilbert Stones is on renewal leave. I am dashing this off because I don’t know when I will be able to connect to the internet again! I am anticipating being cut off for an indeterminate period.

Read more: Tsunami and Timing