St. Paul's Pawtucket's unique take on Bishop Knisely's "Cosmos" Meditation

In his meditation for the first Sunday of Lent from "Lent is not Rocket Science" Bishop Knisely spoke of the cosmos, saying "The universe is essentially a great empty, soundless, cold, chaotic void...we believe that the same God who animates the vast cosmos, knows each of us individually by name and loves us."

At St. Paul's in Pawtucket, a Sunday School class lead by Joe and Ivy Swinski was struck by this, and came up with the idea to create a powerful physical representation that their whole church could participate in.  For Lent, the class created a visual representation of a desert, thinking that there is a part for each of us in this journey through the desert. The Desert had a big blank black backdrop to represent the cosmos as Bishop Knisely spoke of them.

Then this past Sunday as congregants left from having received communion, the students were at the exit of the sanctuary.  The students handed each person a star, to take back to the pew and write their name on. Then at the end of the service people went to the "great empty, soundless, cold, chaotic void and hung their star in that place where "God knows each of us individually by name and loves us."

The end result was that the black void is now full of light and love, and many parishioners were in tears.  Check it out!

 

Tuesday, First Week in Lent - Lent is Not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. Today is the last day of the week of meditations we're posting here! To read the rest download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price, and follow along as we discuss this book for the remainder of Lent.

Tuesday, First Week in Lent

Uniform Temperature

In the beginning… — Genesis 1:1

If you put two pots of water in a room and take their temperature immediately afterwards, they will not be at the same exact temperature. Even if you fill them from the same faucet, the water will warm or chill over the time the faucet is open, because the first bit of water that was flowing was stored in the pipes in the walls and the next bit is being drawn from pipes underground. If the two pots of water had exactly the same temperature, then you’d have to either be surprised at something that is extremely unlikely or try to work out in your head how this surprising result came to be. 

The simplest explanation would be that the water in the two pots came from a third pot that held the waters together long enough that they came to equilibrium with each other. Or perhaps the two pots were touching each other as they were filled, and they were able to exchange their heat or chill through the walls of the pots in the time that they were in contact with each other. In either case, the water in the one pot must have somehow been “told” the temperature of the other pot so that the two could come to be the same temperature. 

One of the most extraordinary surprises in the early 1960s, when scientists measured the temperature of the deep space by pointing microwave “thermometers” toward the stars, was that the sky turned out to be not absolutely cold. This information wasn’t a huge surprise, given that some scientists had been convinced the universe had begun in a gigantic fiery explosion of light. But the surprise was that no matter what direction you looked, the temperature was, for all intents and purposes, the same. 

Remembering the question of the temperature of the two pots of water, how did it come to be that one side of the sky was able to “know” the temperature of the other side? Even if they had sent a message to each other at the speed of light, we are in the middle of them and their two messages are just now at the halfway point. 

The answer turned out to be that the universe, which began in the fiery explosion, was very, very small initially. Even though the part of the universe on one side of the sky is too far away yet to have been able to have “talked” to the other side of the sky, the two sides of the sky were once in the same exact place. So while they are rushing apart from each other, they “remember” the information they knew in the beginning of creation. 

That turns out to be true for everything in the universe. Because everything in the universe was once one. Every particle of matter that is contained in your body and mine were once one. Every particle of matter that is found on the Earth was once one. Every ghostly subatomic particle that is hurtling through the outer darkness of the universe was once part of all of us. In the moment of creation, we were once one. And there are certain properties that we all share because of that moment of unity. 

I find that to be more than just a beautiful poetic image. The reality that every part of the universe “knew” and “experienced” every other part of the universe is what makes much of scientific thought possible today. We can assert that the physics that works here on Earth works the same way in another region of the universe because every electron shares the same charge, and every proton the same mass, etc. And they do that because they were calibrated together in the moment of creation. 

We Christians believe that God created us all. We believe that it was God who was the prime cause of the beginning. And that while God is more than the light and fire of the beginning of creation, God was present in it. If God was present in that, then God is present in us and the whole of universe, just as we are present to the whole of the universe and to God. 

When you look into the deep darkness of the nighttime sky, you are seeing matter and energy that is fundamentally connected with you. When Saint Francis talked about the elements of creation as our sister or our brother, he was much more right than anyone ever suspected.

What will you do today to celebrate this extraordinary family of which you are an equal member?

____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Monday, First Week in Lent - Lent is Not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Monday, First Week in Lent

Olbers’ Paradox

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows his handiwork. — Psalm 19:1

There are a number of jokes that start with a child asking an adult, “Why is the sky blue?” But to the best of my memory, I’ve never heard any child ask, “Why is the sky dark at night?” Both questions turn out to have very interesting answers, but the latter question has much deeper implications. 

The answer to the question about the dark sky at night requires us to think a bit about what we know of the universe. Prior to the last century, scientists of the Enlightenment believed the universe had always existed and was of infinite extent. But that infinity of scale creates a problem when we think about our dark night sky. Imagine you are standing deep in the woods of a forest. The foliage and the undergrowth are so thick that no matter what direction you look, you see a green leaf. In the deepest parts of the forest, or in a fully grown rain forest, it is impossible to see the horizon or sometimes even the sky. The forest floor is kept in a perpetual twilight even in the middle of the day, because wherever you are standing, eventually there’s a plant with a leaf blocking your view of the blue sky. 

Now imagine you’re standing in the middle of the desert looking up into the night sky. You see that the sky is filled with stars, each one a small point of light. In part of the sky, when we look out into the plane of our own galaxy, the stars appear so close together that it looks like there is a glowing cloud that stretches all the way around the sky. That cloud of light appears because as we look into the heart of our Milky Way Galaxy, our line of sight eventually finds a star that blocks it from looking further. 

If the universe is of infinite extent, then it stands to reason that no matter where we look in the sky, we will eventually see a star. The star may be very, very far away and we may see only a tiny, tiny bit of its light, but if you multiply even a tiny number by infinity, you still get infinity. So, no matter how little light we see from one star, the total amount of light that we see should be very, very bright—as if we were looking directly at the surface of the sun at noontime. 

The fact that we see a darkened sky at night when logically we shouldn’t is called Olbers’ Paradox. A number of scientists and philosophers have tried to work out a resolution to this contradiction from the time Heinrich Olbers first proposed it. Interestingly enough, the writer Edgar Allen Poe first pointed the way to resolving the paradox. He suggested that the only way to understand what we see in the darkness of the night was to conclude that the universe was not infinite. It either had an edge—something scientists didn’t want to accept—or it must have had a beginning. If it had a beginning, then even if the universe is infinite, because the speed of light isn’t, we can’t see all of the universe. We can only see the portion that is as far away as light has traveled since the moment of the universe’s beginning—its “Genesis.” 

Isn’t it extraordinary to be able to go outside at night and look up into the dark night sky and realize that the sky is dark because the universe had a beginning? The simple experience of nighttime proves to us that time had a start and that the universe has a history. Then it’s not too far a line of reason to start to wonder why the beginning happened, and what or who caused it. The dark sky invites us to wonder about the existence of the Creator.

Paying attention to the smallest things in our day-to-day existence can take us into the presence of the greatest questions and answers of human experience. Today, pay attention to what you experience and take on the spiritual discipline of asking yourself, “Why?”
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

The First Sunday in Lent - Lent is Not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

First Sunday in Lent

Cosmos

O Lord and Ruler of the hosts of heaven...You made the heavens and the earth, with all their vast array. — The Book of Common Prayer, Canticle 14, p. 90

In this first week of Lent, I invite you to meditate with me on the largest structures of God’s creation. Not the large things that we on Earth have seen or created, but structures that fill the sky and are fundamental to the organization of the universe and our own existence. I invite you to meditate with me on what we can learn by looking at the darkness of the night sky, the sameness of creation over vast distances, the meaning of time, and more. 

On this first Sunday in Lent, as many of us begin our yearly pilgrimage in a formal way, I ask you to consider the scale of creation. Much of what I will present over the next weeks is organized by scale, beginning at the largest, the cosmic scale, and ending in the last days of Lent and Holy Week at the smallest, the quantum scales. The greatest conundrum in my mind is that it is possible for us to use our imagination to conceive the cosmos. 

The universe is essentially a giant empty, soundless, cold, chaotic void. In incredibly rare instances, there are small pockets of organized matter. The little pockets represent very simple things like electrons, a proton, a cosmic ray. Even more rarely those little bits of organization combine into something complicated—a hydrogen or helium atom. Even more rare than that are clouds of hydrogen. Stars, planets, and everything else that we can see are very small and very rare things when we think on the cosmic scale. It’s hard to imagine that God fills all of this vastness with the fire of love, or that God can comprehend its totality. 

And yet that is just what we insist on believing about God as Christians. And more than that, we believe that the same God who animates the vast cosmos knows each of us individually by name and loves us. And that God came into the cosmos at a specific moment in history here on the Earth, a nondescript rocky planet in orbit around a boringly typical and relatively small star. It is when I think about the universe at the largest cosmic scales that I am most dumbfounded by what theologians call the “scandal of the particularity of the Incarnation.” We are so small and yet for some reason we matter so much to God. It is a thing near impossible to grasp. And yet it is central to the teaching of the prophets and the apostles.

Do you believe the God of the cosmos hears your prayer?

If you find yourself struggling with that, could you, at least for today, envision what changes in you if you believe that?
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday - Lent is Not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Saturday after Ash Wednesday

The Limits of Logic

You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. — John 8:32

One of the great mistakes people make is to believe that things that are true can be shown to be true by the use of deductive reasoning and logic. I think the roots of this belief come from the way we are educated as children, when we learn facts in a systematic way and arrange truths in a logical order. You can see this most clearly in the way we learn mathematics, particularly as students move from elementary school classes in arithmetic into junior high and high school courses in algebra and geometry. Teachers start with the basic axioms, things that we accept as true without needing proofs. 

We use those axioms to prove more complicated ideas, and then use those proofs to support more and more sophisticated conjectures. The student is left with the idea that mathematics is a beautiful, organized ladder that starts with simple things and climbs up by use of logic and deduction to ever more complicated ideas. 

The same idea underlays much of the physical sciences, given that they are, to the greatest extent possible, driven by theories that are logically derived and experimentally verified. Certainly the great triumphs of Kepler, Galileo, and Newton in mechanics and celestial movements start with the very simplest laws possible and then extend them to explain and accurately predict the intricate movements of the world. 

A rather famous mathematician named Kurt Gödel threw a huge monkey wrench into the whole logical enterprise when he rigorously proved that there were things that were true that could not be proven true using logical deduction. (It’s a bit more sophisticated than that, but basically that’s his idea.) Gödel’s incompleteness theorem means that logic won’t get us to all truth. In fact it says that we can’t even hope that it will get us to most truth. Logic is a powerful, but limited tool. At least when we look at logic logically. 

Many people of faith worry about not being able to logically prove or experimentally verify their beliefs. And there are certainly voices in the world around us for whom this inability is seen as a fatal flaw in the religious enterprise. But if we hold Gödel’s idea before us, we can understand that this lack of logic isn’t a fatal flaw; it just indicates that religious truth has to be handled with a different set of tools. The big question for us is to discover what those tools might be. That’s something for you to ponder a bit. 

While you’re at that, you might reflect on the spiritual significance of limitations. Logic is limited in its utility. God limits God’s self in the act of Incarnation. You and I are taking on the spiritual discipline of limitations in the season of Lent. Sometimes the decision to limit our choices makes space for creativity to flourish and allows new ideas to emerge.

How do we know if a religious idea is true? 

Is it because it’s logically proven from the Bible? 

Is it because the church has found it useful over time? 

Is it because it makes you a better, more loving person?

How do we know our faith is true?
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Friday after Ash Wednesday - Lent is Not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Friday after Ash Wednesday

Don’t Make the Bible a Liar

Lead me in your truth, and teach me. — Psalm 25:4

Most of the perceived conflict between science and religion is rooted in how we understand the role of the Bible in the church. For most of the church’s history, the Bible was understood to be authoritative for Christians and worthy to be studied by all. But it was used as a conversation partner and not as a rule book. 

This is seen very clearly in some of the writings of Saint Augustine of Hippo. Augustine’s understanding of how we are justified by our faith and not by our works came from his deep study of Saint Paul’s writings. But when it came to defending biblical accounts of creation against criticisms made by pagan philosophers, Augustine argued that it was a mistake to insist on the biblical account as literal truth in all instances. To people who insisted that natural laws didn’t apply, Augustine 18 responded: “It is disgrace for a Christian to talk nonsense to a pagan about something the pagan knows about—because it causes them to doubt everything that is found in the books of the Bible.” (He was specifically referencing the movement and relative sizes of the heavenly bodies.) 

Augustine’s point is that we when try to use the Bible’s witness incorrectly, we damage the Bible’s witness to the primary matters to which it testifies: the story of God’s relationship with Israel, the coming of the Messiah, and the death and resurrection of Jesus. The way the books of the Bible were misused in Augustine’s day is happening again in ours. In our day, this misuse is a reaction to the ascendency of the scientific method, specifically Darwin’s work in natural selection as the origin of the diversity of life. There’s a sense in some parts of the church that we can read the Bible the way we read a textbook, and that every single verse of the Bible has an eternal truth to teach. There’s a differing model in other parts of the church that what is most important are the stories contained in the text, and, of course, the meta story that the entire library of books tells as a whole. There’s no one single model on how to read and understand the Bible, and that’s the root cause of much of the conflict within the church today. 

So this Lent, as we begin to think about how the natural world testifies to the hand of God in creation, it’s important for us to take some time to think about how we each understand the Bible. 

How do you understand the Bible? 

Have you thought much about it?

Do you think all the various parts of the Bible are equally true? 

Are there different kinds of truth?

Episcopal clergy testify at their ordination that they believe the Bible is the Word of God and contains all things necessary to salvation. What do you think that means?
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

The Rev. Greta Getlein: A New Vicar for St. Paul's, Pawtucket

The Wardens and Vestry of St. Paul's Church in Pawtucket RI are pleased to announce the call of a new Vicar, The Reverend Greta Getlein. The Rev. Getlein is to Join St. Paul's on May 1st, 2014.  She is currently serving as the Associate Dean and Director of Anglican Studies and Formation at Berkeley Divinity School, an Episcopal Seminary at Yale University.  She concurrently serves as Pastoral Associate at Christ Church, New Haven, CT.  In 2009 she earned her Master of Divinity Degree from Yale Divinity School and Diploma in Anglican Studies from Berkeley Divinity School. Upon graduation she was ordained to the Diaconate and in January, 2010 to the Priesthood.

Prior to entering seminary, she served for over ten years as Nurse Manager/Administrator in hospice and home healthcare. She was also a professional chamber singer specializing in early music and sacred music. Throughout this time she was an active lay leader in the Episcopal Church.

Since ordination she has been involved with Chapel-on-the-Green, an ecumenical service held outdoors each week for those who are uncomfortable inside a church. She is also involved with a local food pantry and Community Soup Kitchen, and a twice weekly clothing and food distribution program to folks living in poverty, called the "Midnight Run."

In describing herself she writes, "I believe in the goodness and inherent worthiness of all people and that God's love is stronger and deeper than we can ever imagine. Through the rhythm of daily prayer, corporate worship, sacrament and service we are transfigured to serve God in the world." She believes the most effective pastoral care begins with careful, attentive listening--being present for another. She is very joyful and hope filled about the "Church of the future." She believes we are in a time of transition and transformation and that what we know as church must be opened up, explored, tested, and expanded to open us to the Holy Spirit in new and exciting ways.

She is married to Wanda Strickland, B.S. Nursing and has three grown step-children and a grandson. Her family includes a special needs dog that she and Wanda recently adopted.

What You Didn't know about Forward Movement, the Publisher of the Bishop's Lent Book

Bishop Knisely's book "Lent is not rocket science" was published by Forward Movement, which is a ministry of the Episcopal Church with a fascinating story.  Forward Movement is more than just a publishing house. It's ministry and mission to "reinvigorate the life of the church and to rehabilitate its general, diocesan, and parochial work." grew out of the determination of the General Convention in 1934 to counter a period of anxiety, distrust, and decline in the Episcopal Church by creating a "forward movement".

Forward Movement lives into this mission by publishing "brisk, easy to digest publications on discipleship" and does so at an accessible low cost. They are best known for the popular daily devotional Forward Day by Day, which provides daily meditations based on Bible scripture readings appointed by the lectionary and Daily Office. They also publish a number of books you can find here:http://www.forwardmovement.org

One of the reasons Forward Movement's materials are so inexpensive is because their materials are written by laity, clergy and bishops of the church who write for free (some receive a couple hundred dollars as an honorarium). If you want to write for them, do not expect to get rich! However, if you write for Forward Day by Day, your words will reach hundreds of thousands of people in churches and in hospitals, nursing homes, and prisons where their materials are distributed free of charge. Congregations pay a modest fee for these devotional booklets and many people donate funds to support this ministry.

How did Bishop Knisely get involved? Forward Movement's Executive Director is the Rev. Scott Gunn, is a priest who previously served in the Diocese of Rhode Island. While Forward Movement often invites new bishops to write to give them a national voice, Scott may have had an even greater incentive to ask the new bishop in his former diocese. So far the book has been a huge success. 

The initial print run of 7,000 sold out in a few weeks, and a second print run is being processed as we speak.  Forward Movement plans to offer the book again next year, and they have asked us to not post the entire book on our website. Instead, we encourage you to follow along with us this Lent and support Forward Movement's ministry by buying the e-book, which they just reduced to $1.99 for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook or iTunes. This is a great way for you to support a ministry of the church that reaches far beyond the walls of our churches!

Thursday After Ash Wednesday - Lent is not Rocket Science

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Thursday after Ash Wednesday

Joseph Butler and the Analogies

My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.”— The Song of Solomon 2:10 

How should science and religion speak to each other? It’s not clear. Science is built on a ladder of deductions and observations. Religion, particularly in the case of Christianity, is built on revelation and experience. Given that the two disciplines are different at this fundamental level, finding a common language has always been difficult. 

In the earliest days of the church, there was no divide between natural philosophy and theology. One led directly to the other, and people studied natural philosophy—what we typically call “science” today—on the way to their work in theology. But during the Renaissance of Western thought, when pre-Christian thinkers were being rediscovered and studied, a gulf began to grow between the two disciplines. The way scientists and theologians did their work became an increasing barrier to the conversation many expected them to have. The problem became more acute as time went by. 

Joseph Butler, Bishop of Durham in the mid-eighteenth century, wrote a book that was primarily a response to the new thinking that Isaac Newton’s work had begun. Newton’s laws of motion and gravitation allowed the natural philosophers of his day to make predictions that were a revelation to their time. Things we take for granted today—like predicting the exact date of an eclipse, describing the flight of a canon ball, or understanding how a barrel of water drains from a spigot—became commonplace for the first time as a result of Newton’s work. The universe was no longer viewed as a living entity with the Holy Spirit as its core, but as a machine, a mechanism that was understandable and predictable. A new view of God began to emerge—the clock-maker God who, having set the universe in motion, had left the scene and was no longer in constant relationship with it. 

Butler’s work, titled Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature but commonly known as the Analogy, was considered a tour de force in his day. He undertook to show how the best scientific thinking of his day was not opposed at all to the theology of the church. Rather, he said, all of nature pointed toward the deeper revelation of God. He began by describing the butterfly that emerges from the cocoon transformed with a new and more glorious body as an analogy of what God intended for each of us—and the whole of creation—in the coming kingdom. Butler’s work became the talk of northern Europe, and for a while it was one of the most popular books in print. 

But then scientific thought moved on. The French and German schools began to move beyond Newton’s mechanical models for the universe and toward a view based on the behavior of energy in all its various forms. Butler’s book was now having a conversation with a partner who was no longer speaking with him. Christianity, based on the full revelation of God in the person of Jesus, speaks of eternal truths that must be at the heart of all theological conversations no matter the era in which they occur. Science is constantly moving forward, discarding older ideas that are no longer viewed as adequate explanations and taking up new ones that promise to do a better job of explaining what is observed. It’s not that the two conversation partners have a different language; they are each speaking in ways that the other has trouble detecting. 

And yet we need to have the conversation. And so we struggle to hear each other’s voice. There can be no reconciliation, which is the core of the church’s mission, unless there is conversation. It has always seemed to me that learning to speak to each other, learning to understand how another person thinks, is both the key to empathy and compassion but also a primary gate to be entered as we come into the kingdom of God. 

What conversations have you been neglecting because they are difficult to have? 

Who in your life do you have trouble identifying with or understanding? 

What can you do today to move a little closer to those persons, to take the conversation a few steps further along? Doing that is doing the work of reconciliation. 
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Ash Wednesday - Lent is Not Rocket Science, with Bishop Knisely

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Ash Wednesday

First the Fire

And the fire will test what sort of work each has done.

— 1 Corinthians 3:13

Many Episcopalians and other Christians will have ashes placed on their foreheads in the sign of the cross today. And many congregations make their ashes the day before, by burning the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday service.

When I was a parish priest, I started asking people in the middle of the season of Epiphany to bring in any palms that had been blessed and that they wished to recycle. We collected the dried-out palms in a bag in the sacristy during the weeks leading up to Lent. After the traditional pancake supper on Fat Tuesday, the day of celebration before Ash Wednesday, I gathered the children to help me with burning the palms.

Over the years I had perfected my technique: Find an aluminum baking pan, a large tin can, and three small, similar-sized rocks. Place the rocks in the bottom of the pan. Use a can opener to take the top and bottom off the tin can so that it becomes a large empty cylinder. Place the cylinder on top of the three rocks. (Children and parents often asked me why I used three rocks, expecting that it had something to do with the Trinity or Richard Hooker’s three-legged stool. I wish I had come up with a better explanation than the one that is the truth—it simply takes three points to make a stable balance for the cylinder.)

On Fat Tuesday I took the palms that we had collected and stuffed them down into the cylinder. I then used a long-necked butane lighter to light the palms on fire from the very bottom of the cylinder. As the bottoms of the palms smoldered, they gave off a growing cloud of tan smoke. Once the tan smoke was rising in a thick column, I put the long-necked lighter back down at the bottom of the can and made a new flame. That flame ignited the column of smoke into a column of fire, and the palms in the can rapidly turned to ash. (I always kept the children way back for this part, of course.) After the fire died out and the ashes were cooled, the children and I took forks and smashed the remaining ashes into smaller and smaller bits until only a fine powder remained. I used that fine powder the next day as the dust for Ash Wednesday. 

The reason the second small flame makes such a dramatic change in the way the palms burn is because when something “burns” what actually ignites are the gasses given off by the material that is decomposing in the heat. The gas is the release of all the complicated organic molecules that the palm tree gathered from the soil in which it grew and the atmosphere it breathed, then combined with the rainwater from the sky and the energy of the sunlight, and stored in the cells of its branches. The first fire that I lit started taking apart all that work, so that the organic molecules trapped in the cellulose of the palm would be freed and lit. The second flame I used ignited the gasses in the rising column of tan smoke, and their ignition created the small fireball and dramatic column of flame. 

I find it very evocative that the ashes we use on this day come from the destruction of the work of creation. The microbes and cellular creatures of creation labored for years to organize the minerals and chemicals that made up the structure of the leaf of palm. When we cut the leaf off the tree, taking it away from its source of nourishment and water, those cells began to die. They dried out and become mere husks of what they once were. But the fire of Fat Tuesday released the molecules back into the atmosphere so that a new plant could use them again. Fire, water, air, and Earth are all present in the moment of the creation of the ashes. And though we put the end product on our foreheads, the life-giving parts have been returned to creation to be used again and again.

In our own lives there are times when the fire must come to release the elements we’ve stored up in careful, complicated containers in our hearts. Ash Wednesday reminds us not to fear that experience but to see in it the wonder of God’s economy, the working out of the plan of creation and salvation.

Where is the fire going to come into your heart this Lent? 

And what will it release to others?

What needs to be broken down in you to release the fire of the Holy Spirit in your life this Lent?
____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Follow here as we read Bishop Knisely's "Lent is Not Rocket Science: An Exploration of God, Creation and the Cosmos"

From Bishop Knisely's new book published by Forward Movement. You can read the first week's meditations here, and download the ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, or iTunes at a discounted $1.99 price to follow along as we discuss this book the rest of Lent.

Intro: An Invitation to View Lent from a New Perspective

For a long time Christians understood that there were two ways to learn about God. One was by studying the revelations that God made through the writings collected into Holy Scripture. The other was by applying our senses to the world around, the creation that God made and then declared “very good” (Genesis 1:31) This second way of learning about God and God’s intentions for humankind is called Natural Theology. The word theology literally means “words about God,” so Natural Theology means “Nature’s words about God.” 

During the Reformation in the sixteenth century, theologians began to become increasingly wary of humanity’s ability to use reason properly. During the medieval period, the “scholastic” movement within theology had worked to apply the best of classical philosophical thought, primarily that of Aristotle, to reasoning about God. This way of thinking reasoned that the Earth was the center of the universe, that the lights in the sky revolved around it, and that planets moved because of the angels who propelled them with their wings. But as scientific observations about the nature of the solar system and gravity began to overthrow these ideas, theologians reacted by giving more importance to the revelation of Holy Scripture than that of Natural Theology. Today the situation has gotten so extreme in parts of the church that special courses taught in schools and universities focus on “Christian Science” and hold that anything that is seen to contradict the literal and plain meaning of Holy Scripture must be considered wrong and be dismissed. This leads some Christians to be suspicious of the study of evolution, cosmology, and geology. 

During this Lent, I invite you to return to an earlier understanding of Natural Theology. I invite you to see it as a channel of revelation about the nature of God that is not absolute in itself, but is an equal partner in conversation with Holy Scriptures and the traditions of the church. Paying attention to the world around us—to the intricate structures of nature, to the mind-bending reality of the cosmic and microscopic realms—will invite us to recognize that the God we worship, and with whom we have an ongoing relationship, is present in the raging storm, the fiery whirlwind of the surface of a star, and the deep silence of intergalactic space. 

I invite you to open all of your senses to seek God’s presence in nature. God is not nature, nor is God bounded by nature, but God is most certainly nature’s author—and nature’s “words” can point us onward to that which is beyond its bounds. In the coming days and weeks of Lent, I invite you to journey from the largest scale of the created order inward to the very smallest scale we can speak about. Some of the images will be familiar, some of them will require a bit of meditation and imagination to understand, but all will hopefully lead us to new insights about God’s relationship with us.

W. Nicholas Knisely

XIII Bishop of Rhode Island 

Providence, Rhode Island 

Lent 2014
_____

"Lent is Not rocket Science" was published by Forward Movement, a ministry of the Episcopal Church which publishes accessible low cost resources on discipleship written by the laity, clergy, and bishops of the church largely on a pro bono basis.

Get your Ashes to Go Tomorrow, Ash Wednesday

Deacon Janice Grinnell on URI's  campus for Ashes to Go 2013

Tomorrow for the third year in a row, Clergy and Laity from Episcopal churches across RI are taking ashes outside of their church buildings and into their neighborhoods, to offer the imposition of ashes and prayers to people on the streets for Ash Wednesday.

As chief organizer, The Rev. Edmund Harris says “Of all the days in the Church’s year, we thought, Ash Wednesday is a day when God’s love and mercy meets people wherever they might be, whatever their connection to church or God has been."

The Rev. Edmund Harris is Priest in Charge of Epiphany in East Providence, and the founder of Church beyond Walls (CBW). CBW is a congregation that feeds the hungry physically and spiritually by holding worship and distributing food in the park at Kennedy Plaza. CBW aims to equip parishes to better reach outside of their doors and meet the needs of their communities.

“Ashes to Go.” Was inspired by a similar program in the Diocese of Chicago founded by The Rev. Emily Mellott, and in past years this has been a powerful event which has made a huge impact on both those who offered and received ashes. We hope to see you outside tomorrow! 

Ashes to Go 2014 Participants & Locations

• Stephens, Providence: Outside church after noon mass (12:30-12:45ish)
• Ascension, Cranston: outside church 7-8am during commuter hours and 2:15-3pm as school lets out.
• Holy Trinity, Tiverton: Drive up Coffee and Ashes in Church parking lot 6:30-9:00am
• St. Marks in Warwick and St. Thomas in Greenville will be at TF Green Time TBA
• Epiphany, East Providence: and Church Beyond the Walls: Kennedy plaza from 7-11am
• Transfiguration, Cranston: Washington Park Square starting at noon
• Redeemer, Providence: Hope Street at Fourth Street in Providence, 7am to 9am 401-331-0678
• St. Augustine's at URI: Kingston Train station 5:45am to 7:30am or so, URI Campus (in front of Memorial Union on upper end of lower college road) 9am-11am
• St. Martin's, Providence: Providence Train Station, Time TBA
• St. Matthew's Jamestown: Outside in front of church during morning commute

Watch online as it unfolds by following these lists of our churches:

49 on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lists/682849971770

15 on twitter: https://twitter.com/EpiscopalRI/lists/ri-episcopal-churches