DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

hagiolatry / hag-ee-OL-uh-tree, hay-jee- / noun: 1. The worship of saints.
2. Treating someone with undue reverence.

Notes & Etymology: From the Greek hagio- (holy) + -latry (worship). First recorded use: 1808.

Usage: “To quote Constantino: Dr. Jose Rizal will still occupy a good position in our national pantheon even if we discard hagiolatry and subject him to a more mature historical evaluation. "
John Nery; Falling for the American Trap; Philippine Daily Inquirer (Manila, Philippines); Jun 22, 2010 .

Use this word in conversation at least twice in the coming week (just try it!!), and it's yours forever!
For more great words visit Wordsmith.org

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

pharisaical/ far-uh-SAY-uh-kuhl / adjective: 1. Characterized by hypocritical self-righteousness; putting emphasis on strict observance of rituals unrelated to the spirit or meaning of the ceremony.

Notes & Etymology: After the Pharisees, a Jewish sect during 1 BCE - 1 CE, whose members were noted for strict observance of rites and rituals, and felt superior because of it. The word is derived via Latin and Greek from Aramaic prishayya, plural of prish (separated).

Usage: “Then we have the pettiness and hypocrisy in the loud and pharisaical condemnation emanating from the media and the public. "
Garth George; No Credit to be Found in Card Debacle; The Daily Post (Rotorua, New Zealand); Jun 18, 2010.

Use this word in conversation at least twice in the coming week (just try it!!), and it's yours forever!
For more great words visit Wordsmith.org

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

ivory tower / EYE-vuh-ree TOU-uhr / noun: 1. A place or state of privileged seclusion, disconnected with practical matters and harsh realities of life.

Notes & Etymology: From a translation of French tour d'ivoire, from tour (tower) + de (of) + ivoire (ivory). The term was first used in the figurative sense in 1837 by literary critic Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804-1869). The term is often applied to academia for its supposed preoccupation with lofty intellectual pursuits. While the term in its figurative sense is first attributed to the French critic Sainte-Beuve, it is found in the Song of Solomon 7:4 in a literal sense: "Your neck is like an ivory tower."


Usage: “In a democratic system, the true leaders have to remain constantly in touch with, and reach out to, the people and not remain like a king in an ivory tower. "
C L Manoj; The Agony of the Hereditary Turks; The Economic Times (New Delhi, India); Aug 9, 2010

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

Bolide / boh-lahyd, -lid / noun: 1. an exceptionally bright meteor. 2. Any extraterrestrial body that collides with Earth. 3. A fireball

Notes & Etymology: From the Greek βολίς (bolis) which can mean a missile or to flash. The bolide term is generally used more often among geologists than astronomers where it means a very large impactor. For example, the USGS uses the term to mean a generic large crater-forming projectile. Astronomers tend to use the term to mean an exceptionally bright fireball, particularly one that explodes (sometimes called a detonating fireball).
Usage: “The smallest impactor that can penetrate the atmosphere deep enough to cause any damage on the ground is not much smaller than the "Tunguska" bolide that flattened a couple thousand square miles of Siberian forest in 1908. "
Alan Harris, senior research scientist for the Space Science Institute

MAKING LENT 5: PASSIONATE LOVE

The guest essay this week is by Mary Graves, senior pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in San Carlos, CA. and comes to us kindness of Mary and Dan Clendenin’s webzine, Journey With Jesus, where this essay appears this week. Mary is a nationally acclaimed preacher whose sermons continually draw new people into the church. "I feel like she is speaking just to me," is the comment of many. Mary received her Masters of Divinity from Fuller Theological Seminary and her doctorate in spirituality from San Francisco Theological Seminary. She began her pastorate at Trinity in September 1996.

We all know how important it is to have close friends. Jesus had some very close friends who were not among the twelve disciples. They were Lazarus and his two sisters, Martha and Mary. He went to their home for meals and part of his ministry was conducted from their house.

They were such close friends of Jesus that when Lazarus became seriously ill Martha and Mary sent an urgent message to Jesus telling him, “Come quick! The one you love is sick.” They figured that Jesus would come to them right away and by his healing touch make Lazarus well as he had so many others. But Jesus didn’t come until four days after Lazarus had already died, and the two sisters were deep in grief surrounded by the village mourners.

When Jesus did show up, both Mary and Martha at different times went to him and said, “You know, if you had been here Lazarus wouldn’t have died.” And Jesus told them what he told his disciples the first moment he heard that Lazarus was sick: “This situation is going to reveal God’s glory.”

Soon after Jesus arrived he went to the tomb where Lazarus’ dead body had been placed four days earlier, and he ordered the stone to be rolled back from the entrance. The sisters protested that they would be overwhelmed by the stench of their brother’s rotting corpse, but Jesus called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead Lazarus, still wrapped in grave clothes, came out very much alive.

The story of the death and resurrection of Lazarus, which is told in John 11, is, as Jesus said, a sign story. Even though this story is about Lazarus, the story points beyond itself to Jesus’ death and resurrection.

That is what sign stories do.

They point beyond themselves to tell us deep things about God. That is what Passover does for the Jews. It is the re-telling of the story about God’s people being delivered from Egyptian slavery through the slaughter of the Passover lamb. But the story points beyond that drama to reveal deep things about our covenant God. Passover is a sign story.

Communion is a sign story. When we stand at the Lord’s table and say, “on the night that Jesus was arrested and betrayed, he took bread and broke it, and he took the cup” — the telling and the enactment of the Last Supper points beyond itself to tell us something important about God’s love for us in Christ.

Sign stories. That is what the gospel from John 12 for this week does.

It is a simple story: a dinner in the home of Lazarus and Martha and Mary, several of Jesus’ disciples are there. They are having this dinner party in honor of Jesus, probably to celebrate all that he did for Lazarus and this family.

It was customary in that time and geographical area when you hosted a dinner to wash the feet of your guests. Walking was their main mode of travel, walking in sandals or barefoot, and their feet needed cleansing and refreshment. So, Mary washes Jesus’ feet.

But John makes it very clear, as does Jesus, that this is more than just a dinner. What Mary does is more than just wash Jesus’ feet. What she does is a sign. The story points beyond itself to reveal something important about God and what God is doing in Jesus Christ.

We are invited to look closer, beneath the surface of this story. John does not want us to miss the significance of what is being revealed here about Jesus’ passion.

Passover is near. Good Friday is near. The crucifixion is near. Jesus already told his disciples that this was coming. He told them many times, “The Son of Man will be killed by the religious leaders, and raised on the third day.” But they didn’t understand the significance of what he was telling them. They brushed it off. “Don’t be ridiculous!” they said. “Why would you get yourself killed? What a waste of a wonderful leader! No way! We won’t let that happen to you!” They didn’t see Jesus’ passion and where God’s love was taking him.

Like Judas, they just saw on the surface. He looked at what Mary did and said, “What a ridiculous waste! Why wasn’t this perfume sold and given to the poor?” Yet he cared nothing for the poor; he was a thief! His words had nothing to do with Jesus’ compassion or love. He only saw the surface meaning of Jesus’ life.

From here on out the rest of the Gospel of John — chapters 13-21 — are about Jesus’ passion. This section of John’s Gospel is called The Book of Jesus’ Passion. It’s not just another tragic story of a great leader getting murdered. It is about God’s passion; it is about God’s love. So, John places this important sign story right here, hoping that we won’t miss the significance of what’s coming.

John gives us this story as we journey into Holy Week. Don’t miss the significance of Jesus’ passion. Look deeply into the story of Mary’s passionate act. It is a sign story taking us deeper into the reality of God’s passionate love for us in Christ.

March 7 was Oscar Party night. The Academy Awards have become a fun opportunity for people like me and my friends to watch all the big stars gather with their beautiful clothes and beautiful bodies. But underneath it all it is an honoring of the art of film-making. It is an honoring of the art of deeper seeing that can come to us through movies.

When everything is woven together just right — script, sound, costumes, casting, directing, editing, special effects (everything for which they give awards) — through this drama we are given a deeper seeing into the reality of the war in Iraq, or the stark reality of loneliness; we are given a deeper seeing into domestic violence. That is what a well-done movie can do; the story can immerse you more deeply in reality, take you beyond the surface pieces that make up a movie and touch you in a deep way.

This very simple drama in John does that; it takes us beyond the surface pieces to the passion of Jesus Christ. So we are invited to take a closer look. What’s happening here?

After all that happened to Lazarus you can imagine how much it meant to this family to have Jesus in their home now and to serve him. When Mary bent down to do the customary washing of feet she took this outrageously expensive vial of perfume that could have been a family treasure. She broke the alabaster neck of it and poured it onto Jesus feet and the whole house was filled with the powerful aroma of it.

When we are told by Judas that this perfume could have been sold in the market for three hundred denarii that’s a lot of money! A denarii was a day’s wage in those days and three hundred denarii was a year’s salary. I have heard that the average salary in San Carlos is between $90,000 and $115,000. Let’s just say it’s $100,000. Can you imagine having a special dinner guest over and anointing him in some way with a bottle of $100,000 perfume?

What Mary did was beyond extravagant! It was this outpouring of love and gratitude that knew no bounds. She loved and appreciated Jesus so much, and sometimes when you really love and appreciate somebody you just can’t do enough to let them know it.

I think it’s important, too, as we look deeply into this story to acknowledge that there are definite sexual overtones to what Mary did. I’m amazed that the commentaries that I read didn’t bring any attention to this at all. Maybe they were afraid to. But this scene is loaded with sexual overtones.

First of all, Jesus and Mary are both single adults of marriageable age and available. That automatically creates a dynamic right there. As you know there are many ways to be sexual with one another that are not about sexual intercourse or pursuing sexual intercourse. Just a look or a touch that isn’t overtly sexual can be because we are sexual beings and never stop being sexual beings.

Also, in Jesus’ day a woman was not allowed to let her hair down in public because there was something about that act that was considered sexual. Women didn’t wear their hair short; they wore it long. Once they moved beyond girlhood they always wore their hair tied up or back. To wear it down in public marked you as an immoral woman, a loose woman.

When Jesus arrived at the house for dinner Mary went to him with this family treasure in her hand and this deep love in her heart. Once he was seated she bent down and took his dirty and tired feet into her hands. She touched them and washed them and massaged them in a way that communicated the esteemed place of honor he held in her heart and in this family.

Then she broke open the flask and poured this fragrant ointment on his feet. Everybody in the room immediately was filled and moved by the fragrance of it. Then she loosened her hair and let it fall to her shoulders. She bent low to the floor with her face on the ground so that she could wipe Jesus’ feet with the looseness of her long hair. The scene is charged with passionate love!

But this scene isn’t really about Mary. It is pointing beyond itself to Jesus and his passionate love.

The Bible is not shy about using sexual imagery to describe God’s love relationship with us. Not at all. In Scripture God tells Israel, “I am your husband,” and Israel is talked about as God’s faithful or unfaithful wife. The verb for knowing God in the Old Testament is the same verb as knowing someone sexually. In the New Testament the Church is talked about as Christ’s bride and Christ as the bridegroom and our relationship is described using the language of a marriage union, sexual intimacy.

It makes sense. For what is sexual intercourse at its best but this extreme vulnerability, nakedness, a complete whole-person physical yielding to an intimate union — out of which comes the miracle of new life? Sexual intimacy and marriage language are the Bible’s favorite metaphors for talking about God’s passionate love relationship with us.

What Mary does here is a passionate act. And it points beyond her to the rest of what is going to unfold for Jesus. He is going to bend down to serve his disciples. He is going to take the greatest family treasure he owns, his own life, break the neck of the flask of his own life blood because of God’s great love and passion for you and me.

Jesus is going to make himself completely vulnerable, stripped naked, nailed to a cross. He will become one with our nakedness and our humility on the cross — and out of that passionate act will come the miracle of new life that will never end.

His death will look like a complete waste of a good life. But this story of Mary tells us differently. Jesus’ journey to the cross is the greatest act of self-giving intimate love ever, and out of it God gives us the miracle of new life.

Passover is near. Holy Week is coming. What will we see? What will you see?

Hopefully, through these sign stories we will see the passionate love of God — through the sign story of Lazarus’ death and resurrection — through the sign story of Passover — through the sign story of the Lord’s Supper — through the sign story of Mary’s passionate act of love.

“The whole house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.” May the whole church and your whole journey through Holy Week be filled with the sweet fragrance of God’s passionate love for you.

---

Image credits: (1) VisbleKingdom.com and (2) Resources for Catholic Educators.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

edacious / i-DAY-shuhs / adjective : 1. Devouring; voracious.


Notes & Etymology: From the Latin edere (to eat). Ultimately from the Indo-European root ed- (to eat, to bite) that has given other words such as edible, comestible, obese, etch, fret, and postprandial.

Usage: “For too many years my edacious reading habits had been leading me into one unappealing corner after another, dank cul-de-sacs littered with tear-stained diaries, empty pill bottles, bulging briefcases, broken vows, humdrum phrases, sociological swab samples, and the (lovely?) bones of dismembered children. ”
Tom Robbins; In Defiance of Gravity; Harper's (New York); Sep 2004.

MAKING LENT 2010: A WEEKLY LENTEN RESOURCE FOR THE PEOPLE OF ST. MARY’S AND THE ST. MARY’S COMMUNITY

The Fourth Week of Lent: Tsitsi Ella Jaji – The Mystery of Friendship

I’ve been spending this week with one of my dearest friends from Zimbabwe. I was born and spent my childhood there, and share with many people of my generation vivid memories of the immense hopefulness and joy of the years immediately following independence in 1980. And like millions of Zimbabweans who have moved away in the wake of economic and political upheavals, my friend Elinore and I carry with us a jumble of feelings about our present “diaspora”: a deep longing for home, a sense that what we remember as home no longer exists, a strange guilt at having left our loved ones to struggle there, and a stubborn nagging conviction that God will restore the fortunes of our little piece of Zion. And this week we have spent hours trading stories with each other, many about our joint adventures as teenagers playing in orchestras and rolling our eyes at our teachers, and many more about things we didn’t share back then. We haven’t seen each other in 13 years, and haven’t spent more than a couple days together in 17 years. It took a tragedy to bring us together again, and before I arrived at her home I wondered how it would feel to resume our conversation, and perhaps even whether we could.

Jacaranda trees in Montagu Ave, [Harare], Zimbabwe 1975 by Graham Bould

Last November her son passed away in a terribly unexpected way. When he was born she asked me to be his godmother, and over the last nine years I’ve followed her stories about his funny expressions, unique culinary creations, and inappropriately hilarious skype icons. I always imagined that I would come and visit them in person, just as soon as I saved up enough money for the trip to their new home in Sweden…and it always seemed like too much of an extravagance, the thing I would do the next summer, or after graduation, or after I had paid off my student loans. And then the news came that he was gone. I am not sure what was more devastating, knowing that I had missed out on the chance to know him any better than through our brief electronic correspondence or knowing that my dear Elinore was going through such an excruciating loss so far away. We have spent lots of time on skype since then, and this week we finally can be together. Some of our time has been spent looking through his creations: everything from astonishingly detailed storybooks about space to an odd little angel he made for his Mum which now perches atop a cupboard she has made for his memories and creations. And while fingering his things and talking quietly of the horror of discovering his death released heavy tears I have been astonished by how much time we have also spent laughing, recognizing in each other the girls we were, reminding each other of the mad exploits that sealed our place among the ranks of the arch-nerds in high school. And filling in the gaps about life since then: the bitter struggles of illness, relationships, homesickness. It has been a profoundly healing time. For Elinore, but also for me. A time to heal from an ache that I did not even know was ailing me.

This lent has been an odd season for me. I began it deciding to come to one of the short day-time impositions of ashes rather than the evening gathering where there would have been more people. Nothing came to mind to give up, and so after deciding that Facebook was probably the greatest distraction in my life, I announced on my page that I would be curtailing my online presence for Lent. It was clear within about 36 hours that I had not been granted the grace to keep this vow. And since then I’ve come to see that friendship, sustained through online applications or expensive plane tickets to Sweden, is one of the ways through which the Great Love that Julian of Norwich sometimes called Our Mother Jesus is revealed most poignantly. I remember the many stories of intimate friendship in our tradition: Jonathan and David; Elizabeth and Mary; Jesus and Mary Magdelene. And I think that in enduring friendships we truly taste and see how good communion with that Mother Jesus might be. I am thankful beyond words for the friendship I have known with Elinore. And I suppose if there is a ‘message’ in this reflection it is an invitation to see what may be revealed to you in the great mystery of friendship.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

steenth / steenth / adjective : 1. Latest in an indefinitely long sequence.
2. One sixteenth.

Notes & Etymology: An alteration of the word sixteenth. The formation of the word "steenth" from "sixteenth" took place through a process called aphesis (from Greek, literally "a letting go"). Aphesis is when an unstressed sound from the beginning of a word get lost over time. Some other examples are:
"cute" from "acute"
"'tis" from "it is"
"gypsy" from "Egyptian", from the belief that Gypsies came from Egypt (they actually came from India).

Usage: “And for the steenth time I wondered why he hadn't phoned me. ”

Robert A. Heinlein; The Cat Who Walks Through Walls; Putnam Publishing; 1985

MAKING LENT 2010: A WEEKLY LENTEN RESOURCE FOR THE PEOPLE OF ST. MARY’S AND THE ST. MARY’S COMMUNITY

The Third Week of Lent: Thomas Ward— Chocolates and Uncertainty

I always used to enjoy giving things up for Lent. It was a chance to prove to myself that I cared enough about whatever religion meant to me in those days to deprive myself arbitrarily of some small but enjoyable thing for forty days. The decision of what to forgo was often arrived at in a somewhat haphazard manner-usually involving my forgetting until a week into the season and then choosing something from among the several pleasures in which I happened not to have indulged up to that point-but once the decision was made, I was pretty good at sticking to it. Easter always brought with it some measure of pride to make up for the humility to which I had willingly submitted myself: not only had I made God happy by conserving, in however small a way, the planet's precious chocolate supply, but I had exercised Restraint and, in the process, proven that I could reign in my appetites-that I was in control.

Fasting Buddha, at the Lahore Museum. 2nd Century AD

This strikes me now as precisely the wrong attitude to have taken toward a season meant to teach us that we are all but dust. However much we might think we can, by an act of sheer willpower, declare our independence from the world, Lent calls to us as persistently as a box of delicious, forbidden chocolate and reminds us that we come from the very earth we walk upon and, in reality, probably have about as much agency. If there is a value to renouncing something, perhaps it is that doing so gives us the chance to experience firsthand the failure of our resolve.



But that can't be quite right either; if Lent is meant to remind us of our human limitations, it won't let us escape from the responsibilities and the powers we do have to make decisions that might have a positive effect in the world.

In thinking about whether or not to give something up this year, it struck me that, forasmuch as it is meant to inspire a sense of humility and, perhaps, of connection to those who go without on a daily basis, there is actually no greater luxury than that of being able to choose to forego something. It might be right to say that only within a culture of prosperity could a virtue be made out of not enjoying the things one is otherwise in a position to enjoy. And yet, it is a luxury that seems, oddly, to be available to everyone, no matter how poor: indeed it sometimes seems like rich people have less interest in taking advantage of their increased capacity for self-imposed privation.


Lent is full of paradoxes: it is supposed to remind us that we're mortal and that our sense of being in control is an illusion while at the same time it calls us to do something; it presents privation as a luxury, and one that seems more often to be indulged in by the poor. I actually don't know what Lent means: that is, I've been sitting in front of a blank computer screen for some time trying to think of a neat way of summarizing what Lent means to me, and I'm getting nowhere. However, if there's one thing that I think Lent really challenges us to do without, it is the certainties we spend the rest of the year holding onto, consciously or unconsciously. We're sometimes told that Lent is a time to learn about oneself, but perhaps it is time when we enter into reflection without the expectation that anything will be revealed. There are very few times when we aren't responsible for coming up with an answer for things, but it strikes me that we might take this opportunity to explore possibilities of being that don't involve being able always to explain what we're about. And it is the kind of uncertainty best dwelt on, I would suggest, over a nice box of chocolates.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

Methuselah / meh-THOO-zuh-luh / noun: 1. An extremely old man.
2. An oversized wine bottle holding approx. 6 liters.

Notes & Etymology: From the biblical figure Methuselah, who was said to have lived 969 years. Methuselah is the oldest person whose age is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. He was the son of Enoch and the grandfather of Noah. As an aside, the oldest known living non-clonal organism is a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine appropriately named Methuselah. The plant is 4,841 years old.

Usage: “Five restaurant years would be about equivalent to 30 human years, so Bambino's, which has been around since 1983, is a veritable Methuselah among eateries. ”
A.C. Stevens; Why Cook Tonight?; The Boston Herald; Feb 11, 2001

MAKING LENT 2010: A WEEKLY LENTEN RESOURCE FOR THE PEOPLE OF ST. MARY’S AND THE ST. MARY’S COMMUNITY

The Second Week of Lent: Sara Macro Forrest—A Story and an Opportunity

Last week's Sunday school session was about the Hebrew concept of "midbar" (wilderness). The wilderness of the Old Testament is a place where wonderful and terrible things happen. Here is an excerpt from last week's lesson:

For many of us, when we leave our familiar school or home to go somewhere new like a new school or camp – it is really difficult. Nothing is familiar – schedule, people, food – nothing. It is scary. You may want to go back, even if where you came from wasn’t that great. But even though it was hard and there may have even been some tears involved, most of the time it turned out pretty well. (Even if the new place did not turn out so well, you probably learned a lot about yourself in the process.)

Midbar is Hebrew for “wilderness.” It was a scary and frightening place. It seemed empty and lifeless compared to Egypt. Even though the Israelites were free, they did not like it. But something very important happened there in this empty place, away from the “comforts” of Egypt. The people of Israel met God there.

The art project asked children to draw a time in their lives when they struggled, or were in a wilderness or didn't know what to do (or were tempted). You can see the outcome on the Parish Hall bulletin board. Some of the kids drew pictures of staying alone in a tent at camp, jumping off a big rock into a lake, or realizing that the teacher in a classroom is in charge, and that it doesn't always work out to challenge the teacher. But the lesson reminds us that "God is Always with You, Even in the Wilderness".
One child brought up the "Footprints in the Sand" poem. [http://www.wowzone.com/fprints.htm] She described it to us and reminded us that “…when we see only one set of footprints, that's when God carries us through the hard times.”


I've decided that for my Lenten practice this year I'm going to do something a little unusual, but I hope it will be fruitful. My Baha’i friend suggested this on SoulPancake (http://bit.ly/ckuxf1 Rainn Wilson's-- aka "Dwight Schrute" of The Office’s-- blog)

Now, the opportunity: Draw on your innate creativity and make a collage that represents your soul over the past year.


No one else can tell your story like you can. Here are some guidelines to help you get started:

1. Make a list of your highlights, low points, and learning experiences of 2009.
2. Find some old magazines, bits of paper, small objects or photos and cut out the images/words that resonate with the experiences on your list.
3. Layer the images and words and attach them to a surface (using glue, wire, tape—whatever).
4. Upload your collage here, and tell us how it felt to tell your story using art.
Can you muster the courage to share the life of your mind, soul, and emotions?
So, I'm going to do that project. And, I'm going to continue to work on prayer, because I'm starting to feel like it's really effective! Eventually, I’ll post the outcome on my blog: http://grandforet.blogspot.com/

My soul has been through a wilderness in the past year. It was a wild and transformative place. I feel like I have found a path, and felt God’s presence too. I hope that a visual description of my journey will be helpful, and prepare me for living the miracle of Easter.

P.S. If you are looking for a great movie about the life of Jesus that is appropriate for kids ages ~ 4 yrs and up, I recommend “The Miracle Maker” [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0208298/]. It’s claymation but visually amazing with a wonderful voiceover cast. It would be a great preparation for Easter during Lent for kids. A central character is Jairus’ daughter who was healed by Jesus – kids can relate to her.

Next Week…Thomas Ward

MAKING LENT: A WEEKLY LENTEN RESOURCE FOR THE PEOPLE OF ST. MARY’S AND THE GREATER ST. MARY’S COMMUNITY

Breugel: The Fight Between Carnival and Lent

Here are some thoughts to ponder during your wanderings in the first week of Lent, from the blog, Per Crucem ad Lucem…blogging life sub specie crucis [http://cruciality.wordpress.com/] by Jason Goroncy, a Presbyterian Minister of Word and Sacrament who teaches and serves as Dean of Studies at the Knox Centre for Ministry and Leadership in New Zealand. Goroncy writes:
“There’s one wee book of [Stanley} Hauerwas’ that I purchased during the past year and never got around to reading, namely Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words (Brazos Press, 2004). Lent seemed like the right time to dig in. So I found me a quiet moment tonight and read it. Here’s a few passages that I sat with for a while:

‘Everyday death always threatens the everyday, but we depend on our death-denying routines to return life to normality’. (p. 26)

On Luke 23:43: ‘What does it mean to say these are criminals?’ (p. 38)

Citing Rowan Williams: ‘God is in the connections we cannot make’. (p. 39)

‘Our attempt to speak confidently of God in the face of modern skepticism, a skepticism we suspect also grips our lives as Christians, betrays a certainty inappropriate for a people who worship a crucified God’. (p. 40)

‘Our salvation is no more or no less than being made part of God’s body, God’s enfleshed memory, so that the world may know that we are redeemed from our fevered and desperate desire to insure we will not be forgotten’. (p. 44)

MAKING LENT, WEEK ONE, PAGE 2
‘In spite of the current presumption that Christianity is important for no other reasin than that Christians are pro-family people, it must be admitted that none of the Gospels portray Jesus as family-friendly’. (p. 50)

‘Jesus’s being handed over, Jesus’s obedience even to the point of death, Jesus’s cry of abandonment makes no sense if this is not the outworking of the mystery called Trinity. This is not God becoming what God was not, but rather here we witness what God has always been … The cross, this cry of abandonment, is not God becoming something other than God, is not an act of divine self-alienation; instead this is the very character of God’s kenosis – complete self-emptying made possible by perfect love’. (pp. 62–3)

‘This is not a dumb show that some abstract idea of god appears to go through to demonstrate that he or she really has our best interest at heart. No, this is the Father’s deliberately giving his Christ over to a deadly destiny so that our destiny would not be determined by death’. (p. 63)

‘We try … to compliment God by saying that God is transcendent, but ironically our very notion of transcendence can make God a creature after our own hearts. Our idea of God, our assumption that God must possess the sovereign power to make everything turn out all right for us, at least in the long run, is revealed by Jesus’s cry of abandonment to be the idolatry it is … In truth we stand with Pilate. We do not want to give up our understanding of God. We do not want Jesus to be abandoned because we do not want to acknowledge that the one who abandons and is abandoned is God. We seek to “explain” these words of dereliction, to save and protect God from making a fool out of being God, but our attempts to protect God reveal how frightening we find a God who refuses to save us by violence’. (pp. 64–5)

‘If God is not in Mary’s belly, we are not saved’. (p. 76)

‘”It is finished” is not a death gurgle. “It is finished” is not “I am done for.” “It is finished” will not be, as we know from the tradition of the ordering of these words from the cross, the last words of Jesus. “It is finished is a cry of victory. “It is finished” is the triumphant cry that what I came to do has been done. All is accomplished, completed, fulfilled work. The work that is finished, moreover, is the cross. He will be and is resurrected, but the resurrected One remains the One crucified. Rowan Williams reminds us of Pascal’s stark remark that “Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world.” This is a remark that makes unavoidable the recognition that we live in the time between the times – the kingdom is begun in Christ but will not be consummated or perfected until the end of the world. Williams observes that Pascal’s comment on Jesus’s on-going agony is not an observation about the deplorable state of unbelievers; it is instead an exhortation to us, those who believe in Christ. It is an exhortation not to become nostalgic for a supposedly lets compromised past or take refuge in some imagined purified future, but to dwell in the tension-filled time between times, to remain awake to our inability “to stay in the almost unbearable present moment where Jesus is.”‘ (pp. 83–4)

‘We are told in John 1:18 that without the Son no one can see the Father. Von Balthasar, therefore, reminds us “when the Son, the Word of the Father is dead, then no one can see God, hear of him or attain him. And this day exists, when the Son is dead, and the Father, accordingly, inaccessible.” This is the terror, the silence of the Father, to which Jesus has committed himself, this is why he cried the cry of abandonment. He has commended himself to the Father so he might for us undergo the dark night of death. Jesus commends himself to the Father, becoming for us all that is contrary to God. Christ suffers by becoming the “No” that the salvation wrought by his life creates. Without Christ there could be no hell – no abandonment by God – but the very hell created by Christ cannot overwhelm the love he has for us’. (p. 97)

‘Christ had no Christ to imitate’. (p. 99)

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

ex cathedra / eks kuh-THEE-druh / adverb, adjective: 1. Spoken with authority; with the authority of the office.

Notes & Etymology: From the Latin ex cathedra (from the chair), from cathedra (chair). In the Roman Catholic Church, when the Pope speaks ex cathedra he is considered infallible. The word cathedral is short for the full term cathedral church, meaning the principal church of a diocese, one containing a bishop's throne. The term is often used ironically or sarcastically to describe self-certain statements

Usage: “The Supreme Court's ex cathedra pronouncement that the area is not riverbed or floodplain commits two errors. ”
Ramaswamy R. Iyer; Let the Games Go On; The Indian Express (New Delhi, India); Aug 4, 2009

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

castigate / KAS-ti-gayt / verb tr. : 1. To criticize or chastise severely.

Notes & Etymology: From the Latin castigare (to chasten), from castus (pure) + agere (to drive). Ultimately from the Indo-European root kes- (cut) which is also the source of castle (apparently in the sense of a place separated from the rest), chaste (cut off from faults), caste, quash, and caret.

Usage: “Obama did not mention his predecessor by name, but there were harsh words for George W. Bush, who was castigated for funding two wars and several tax cuts through borrowing rather than cutting spending elsewhere. ”
Kevin Connolly; Obama's Deficit Dilemma; BBC News (London, UK); Feb 1, 2010.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

affranchise / uh-FRAN-chyz / verb tr. : 1. To make or set free.

Notes & Etymology: From the Old French franchise, from franche, feminine of franc (free), from Latin francus (free). Franchise and enfranchise are synonyms of this word.

Usage: “A [Greek] slave could buy his liberty: this happened in the rare cases of slaves known as choris oikointes, who had managed to amass a sufficient sum from their labour (two fourth-century bankers, Pasion and Phormion, were former slaves). A slave could also be sold fictitiously to a sanctuary, where the god hastened to affranchise him, a quite common gesture of piety.”
Claude Orrieux, Pauline Schmitt Pantel ; A history of ancient Greece (p.188);1999.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

hagiocracy / hag-ee-ok-ruh-see / noun: 1. Government by a body of persons esteemed as holy, such as priests or saints.
2. a state so governed.

Notes & Etymology: From the Greek hagio- (holy) + -cracy (power, rule ). A related word is hagiography (A biography of a saint).

Usage: “But before all that dancing begins, there is the contrived build-up as schools play superfluous conference tournaments (excepting the ACC with its hoops hagiocracy) to fill broadcast hours and sell tires."
John Crumpacker; Sending out an SOS: RPI's and all the jargon are maddening in March; San Francisco Chronicle; Mar 13, 2005.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

heliolatry / hee-lee-OL-uh-tree / noun: 1. Worship of the sun.

Notes & Etymology: From the Greek helio- (sun) + -latry (worship). Related words include heliotrope (a plant that turns toward the sun) or heliocentric (having the sun as the center).

Usage: “Professor Frazer himself has warned that his vaccine is not an invitation to feckless heliolatry, stressing that any jab, no matter how effective, 'is not a replacement for prevention'. "
Tamara Sheward; Browned Off by a Baking Fad; Herald-Sun (Melbourne, Australia); Jan 7, 2010.

DOUG'S WORD OF THE WEEK

arrogate / AIR-uh-gayt / verb tr : 1. To claim as a right for oneself presumptuously.
2. To claim on behalf of another: to attribute or assign.
Notes & Etymology: From the Latin arrogatus (appropriated), past participle of arrogare, from rogare (to ask). Ultimately from the Indo-European reg- (to move in a straight line, to lead or rule) that is also the source of arrogant, regent, regime, direct, rectangle, erect, rectum, alert, source, surge, supererogatory, abrogate, and prorogue.
Usage: “Youth fills you with optimistic thoughts, bursts with energy, and brims with confidence. It is the stage where you feel that your calling in life is to change the existing order for betterment arrogating the role of the social arbiter. "
Philip Fernando; Understanding the JVP; Daily News (Colombo, Sri Lanka);
Dec 8, 2009.