Flowers for God

by Fr Sergei Fudel (1901-77), married Russian priest, bearer of light and love for the Church during and beyond his years in prison and exile at the hands of the Communist régime:

People who believe in God in their own way, yet do not believe in the Church, often say, "Does God really need all this ritual? Why do we have to have all these formalities? We only need love, beauty, and humaneness." A man, on his way to the woman he loves, seeing flowers, buys them or picks them and brings them to her, never stopping to think whether this is a formality or not. Yet this is the very concept of church ritual.

Love for God gives birth to the beauty and humanity of the ritual, which we lay, like flowers, at the feet of God. Faith is love, and the essence of Christianity is to be in love with God and to feel that the Church is His body which has remained with us and lives with us on earth. This feeling expresses itself in actions which we call ritual.

However, if only external and dead action remains, then such action will be sterile and self-deceptive, not only in Christianity but in any sphere of human life, even in science. This truth should be clear to everyone.

Formalism and sanctimoniousness is not Christianity. Each one of us has to move along this long and narrow way from non-Christianity to Christianity, from artificial flowers to live ones.

"In a world full of so much ugliness, liturgy should be a rest for the soul, a repose where the soul can breathe.

Beauty is not aestheticism. It is not an aim in itself. It is a glimpse of God's glory. We shouldn't stay with a glimpse . . . because people are thirsting for beauty and for what they rightly feel is behind beauty: the glory of God revealed to us.

Heaven opens in liturgy. Beauty in liturgy costs time, love, care, commitment. We must take time for preparing the liturgy, looking for the beauty of the flowers, the songs, the space, the incense, the candles. All this has nothing to do with pure aestheticism, but it is an expression of love.

The faithful can tell whether or not there is the love of God in a church. My experience is that wherever you have a beautiful liturgy, people come. People are attracted, and rightly. We should not say that this is only a superficial attraction.

Beauty is one way to God. It should never be separated from goodness and truth. Beauty without goodness is not beauty; so love for the poor has to be cultivated together with love for beauty -- and, of course, with love for the truth."

-----Cardinal Schonborn

Mathis Gruenwald

I'm taking a break from all my verbalizing, to show some images. Gruenwald(1480-1528) is justifiably remembered for his rather "grue-some" depiction of Christ's crucifixion. These two images I find quite powerful: "The Resurrection"(above) and "The Agony of St. Anthony"(below.)



(extra credit: do you know how St. Anthony is linked to L.S.D.? Clue: "St. Anthony's Fire.")

As a child rests in its mother's arms, so I rest in you...

A Psalm of Darkness, Silence and Despair

"I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry"

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill?
He sounds too blue to fly.
The midnight train is whining low:
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

I've never seen a night so long,
When time goes crawling by.
The moon just went behind a cloud,
To hide its face and cry.

Did you ever see a Robin weep,
When leaves begin to die?
That means he's lost his will to live.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.

The silence of a falling star,
Lights up a purple sky.
And as I wonder where you are,
I'm so lonesome I could cry.
I'm so lonesome I could cry.


By Hank Williams, noted psalmist, performer, and martyr for his faith

the line, "...the silence of a falling star lights up a purple sky..." is pure gold!!

A Time to Listen

"Psalms are answering the God who has addressed us. God’s word precedes these words: the prayers don’t seek God, they respond to the God who seeks us.

Presumptuous prayer speaks to God without first listening... You cannot breath out what you have not first breathed in."

----Eugene H. Peterson

In about a month, we will have another "40 Hours Eucharistic Celebration" at our church. You might remember that last year we decided to revive this ancient practice that fell by the wayside in recent times. With the consecrated host(we call it "Jesus") enshrined on the altar for all to see, it is a time for some group prayer, but mostly individual, private, quiet prayer. We keep the church open day and night for 40 hours
and encourage people to stop in for quiet prayer whatever the time.



During this next month I hope to have people consider silent prayer. Our congregation is a talkative, group-oriented bunch, and some think meditative prayer is only for monasteries. So don't be surprised if I use this space to collect thoughts on this.

"Be still and know that I am God."

"I will come to you in the silence."

There was a quote somewhere about the ultimate in contemplative prayer: to be able to hear God listening to us.

The website for the celebration is stnicksfortyhours.blogspot.com and I hope to post some of the group prayers
in mp3 form so you can listen in -------or just be silent with yourself!!

"Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort. Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. Learn who it is within you that makes everything his own and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body." Learn the source of sorrow, joy, love, hate. Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, loves without willing. If you carefully investigate these matters, you will find him in yourself."

Hippolytus (c.170-c.236)
quoted in "A History of God" by Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong: "A Charter for Compassion"

What religion was supposed to be about, and why it should be spread around the world (21 minutes.)



As she accepts her 2008 TED Prize, author and scholar Karen Armstrong talks about how the Abrahamic religions -- Islam, Judaism, Christianity -- have been diverted from the moral purpose they share to foster compassion. But Armstrong has seen a yearning to change this fact. People want to be religious, she says; we should act to help make religion a force for harmony. She asks the TED community to help her build a Charter for Compassion -- to help restore the Golden Rule as the central global religious doctrine.

Words Needed for Today and the Future

"The history of the church is littered with the shells and remnants of purist and separatist movements, as is the world. From Babel to Utopia, from the Zealots to the Taliban, from the House of Shammai to the Sanctified Brethren — such efforts to lift and separate more often fall and dissipate. The church will always be a hospital for sinners, a field strewn with weeds and wheat; it is not the task of one sinner to judge another, nor the task of anyone to weed the field. We are instead called to grow and bear fruit — and it is the fruit that will be gathered in the harvest, not the stalks, be they weed or wheat."

Tobias Haller (BSG) is the vicar of St. James Episcopal Church, Fordham. The above quote is taken from his excellent blog, "In a Godward Direction", which really takes one inside the divisions of the Anglican community. Tobias is also responsible for the "Nunc Dimittis" music and video that you can link on this page on your left.