Grace: Advent Word 5

Posted on December 7, 2023 by Boz

I delight in volubility and could write thousands of words on the idea of grace, so antithetical to American culture beginning with our Puritan forefathers and continuing right through the rugged individuals of the frontier.

However, I also delight in beautiful words written by others. Beginning on p. 845 of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, we find “An Outline of the Faith: commonly called the Catechism.” It is to this seldom-used section of our prayer book that I turn for my discussion of grace, which occurs in a section aptly labeled “The Sacraments.”

Q: What are the sacraments?
A: The sacraments are outward and visible signs of inward
and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain
means by which we receive that grace.

Q: What is grace?
A: Grace is God’s favor towards us, unearned and
undeserved; by grace God forgives our sins, enlightens
our minds, stirs our hearts, and strengthens our wills.

My prayer for the days of Advent and for every day of our lives is that we may accept the daily miracles of God’s grace and, in turn, practice its etymological cousin, gratitude.

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Peace: Advent Word 4B

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Boz

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Peace: Advent Word 4

Posted on December 6, 2023 by Boz

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Give Peace a Chance?
Most Advent meditations have no need of a trigger warning, but here goes: If you’re expecting warm fuzzies, you should make a peace sign and hum a few bars of “Kumbaya.” My thoughts as I pondered today’s Advent Word did not incline me to subtitle my post “Give Peace a Chance.” Continue reading →

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Presence: Advent Word 3

Posted on December 5, 2023 by Boz

Richard Jolley, “God’s Map of the Universe”

In an argument that has informed my efforts to understand God ever since I first read it, Walter T. Stace wrote, “Either God is a mystery, or he is nothing at all.” However, it seems that some of the attributes of God are more ineffable than others. Even though we can’t comprehend God’s omnipotence, we can at least understand something about the nature of power and thus imagine the all-powerful. The same goes for omniscience; since we ourselves know things, we can wrap our heads around knowing everything. Continue reading →

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Hidden: Advent Word 2

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Boz

Metaphor was my guide as I pondered today’s assigned word.

First, my thoughts strayed to one of the Bible verses I memorized as a girl in Sunday school. It was the very early 1960s in a very Protestant church, so we used the King James version: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against Thee” (Psalm 119:11). That trope of hiding reflects significantly on the act of memorizing itself—what we used to call “learning by heart.” Of course, in addition to committing the scriptures to memory, this verse—and those that surround it—suggests that we must internalize the word of God to assist us in living according to his precepts. Some modern translations (notably, the NIV) preserve the metaphor of “hiding,” but even those that use other verbs (“treasure,” “lay up,” “store,” “bank”) maintain a focus on using the scriptures as guides against behaving badly. Continue reading →

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Wind: Advent Word 1

Posted on December 3, 2023 by Boz

Christina Rossetti, the fervent proponent of High Anglicanism who gave us #112 in the Episcopal hymnal, the haunting carol “In the Bleak Midwinter,” also wrote the brief poem below, often anthologized for children:

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894); chalk drawing by her brother, Pre-Raphaelite painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you;
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I;
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

Read in the context of Rossetti’s ardent faith, these deceptively simply stanzas offer subtle but powerful suggestions for us as we begin our observation of a holy Advent.

The precise diction with which Rossetti presents the images in her two stanzas carries obvious Biblical connotations. The leaves in the first stanza are trembling—a word that appears throughout Bible, often characterizing the proper behavior of sinners and saints alike in the presence of God: Continue reading →

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United in Grief and Patriotism: The Memory of a 10-Year-Old Girl

Posted on November 22, 2023 by Boz

What were you doing 60 years ago today? (If twinkling somewhere in a galaxy far, far away, don’t bother to reply.) Continue reading →

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The Evening and the Morning

Posted on July 27, 2023 by Boz

And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day. . . . And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:7-8, 10b)

This was not judgment day — only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.      (William Styron, Sophie’s Choice)

Continue reading →

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Relationships in Red Ink: 50 Years

Posted on July 22, 2023 by Boz

My relationships with red ink have been myriad and complicated.
Continue reading →

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Russell Banks: 1940-2023 (Actually, Immortal)

Posted on January 28, 2023 by Boz

Russell Banks (photo credit Bryan Mann, NPR, 10 Jan., 2021)

Browsing the “Books and Arts” section of the Wall Street Journal today (matutinal guilty pleasure #2, close on the heels of “Opinion”), I glanced at a small headline in the lower left-hand corner, revealing the death of Russell Banks. I didn’t read the article, was, instead, so powerfully reminded of my first encounter with the writings of Russell Banks, that I opened Apple Messages and typed to a dear friend and colleague in the English Department, “Russell Banks has died.” My use of the present perfect tense was based on my assumption that Banks died yesterday. I included a brief snippet of what would become this post, with a link attached. It was only later, after deciding that this event was momentous enough to commemorate on my blog, that I learned my mistake: Russell Banks actually died on January 7. It hardly matters. He is immortal because of the personal story I am about to tell—and the short story I am about to share with you. Continue reading →

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