Signs of Life
Water: Tuesday
When we bless water for baptism, we tell the story of how water has become to us a sign of life. We remember that in the beginning, the Holy Spirit moved over the waters. We remember that through water God led the children of Israel out of bondage into freedom. We remember that through water Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan, and in our own baptism, we move from the bondage of sin and death into the freedom of resurrection and everlasting life.
Read MoreWater: Monday
A lot of people try to make God domestic. God becomes the “Hail Mary, full of grace, help me find a parking space” God. But this means missing the absolutely unfathomable power of God, like you can see at Niagara Falls. That’s what water can teach us about God: you can’t bottle God.
Read MoreWater: Video
Baptism is our birth into the church as a whole, and we enter these baptismal waters again when we physically enter the worship space. When I begin to enter the chapel and put my fingers in the holy water stoop, then make the sign of the cross, I have this experience of going through the veil. It’s an experience of entering into the baptismal waters of death and birth; saying that the preoccupations, worries, thoughts, and feelings that might be a distraction are dying in this entrance into God’s time, into the time of prayer and worship, and in this entrance into the Christian community.
Read MoreLight: Saturday
There’s an innate craving to be safe in the darkness. It has an enwombing quality about it. So I love to pray in our chapel when there’s just the whisper of light coming from a votive candle. It’s a very safe, nurturing space. Most of us choose to sleep in the dark, and that’s full of meaning: it’s how we began our life in our mother’s womb, and it’s how we restore our life, day by day.
Read MoreLight: Friday
Don’t worry when you’re in a place of darkness. God is there as well. There’s nowhere God is not. In fact, we can experience profound times of spiritual growth in times of darkness.
Read MoreLight: Thursday
When I was in the seminary, I had the chance to attend the Easter Vigil at Canterbury Cathedral. First they light a bonfire. Then the most amazing thing happens: everybody takes a candle, and we all enter with our candles, one by one, into this huge, cavernous, pitch-black space, until every candle is lit and you can see the whole place illuminated by this warm glow that reaches all the way to the ceiling. “Oh,” I thought, “this is it. This is what it means.”
Read MoreLight: Wednesday
There’s something I find incredibly reassuring about how God separates light from darkness. Orchestrating it all with infinite possibilities, God decides to create a cadence of light and darkness to fill each day. It’s true about the soul, too: we can only bear so much light. If there’s too much light coming at us, we’re blinded. Light can be as blinding as darkness.
Read MoreLight: Tuesday
One of the things I love about Saint John’s Gospel is how it is shot through with a dialectic between darkness and light. From the beginning of the Prologue, John makes it clear that the light shines in the darkness. Even though the darkness is there, light will always overcome that darkness.
Read MoreLight: Monday
After air, light is the dimension of our experience of the natural world that is the most intangible. It’s invisible, but without it we can’t see anything. It’s like God: God is invisible, but without God we can’t see anything or relate to anything. Without God, we have no being.
Read MoreLight: Video
Everything that I do in the chapel is actually an act of praise, thanksgiving, and adoration to God, who’s gazing at me. And I’m returning that gaze – wanting to return that gaze every moment I have because I’m so in love with Jesus.
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