Review in The Living Church

Here is a review of Just Once from The Living Church, February 3, 2008

“This is the seventh book of poems written by Jamie Parsley, a priest of the Diocese of North Dakota. At age 32, he was diagnosed with cancer. His work details the experience. Anyone who has been through a similar experience will find this emotional work to be riveting.”

New Book available.

My new book is available.

Let This Road Beneath Me Sing: Prayers

is available for $5.00 ($2.00 shipping and handling)
from:

Enso Press
PO Box 10115
Fargo, ND 58106

You can find samples from the book at
www.jamieparsley.com

Stony Point

by Jamie Parsley

The wind moves not
toward here but away,
up the shore from this
gathering of boulders
and this one lone pine,
its skeletal roots exposed
to the upward grasp
of the water.

I will leave here
one day never to return.
I will get up from this place
I called my own and never
again return, not leaving
any trace of myself behind—
not one thing that stone-
cold tides and persistent
winters can’t dispose of.
Even then, all will be well.
It will be good to go from here
and to be truly gone—
to not leave anything
that can be traced or
examined or exposed
like this day once
the sun unveils itself.

It will be enough to be
as the wind is in this place—
unleashed here—
an exhausting presence
that completely fills the air
and then is gone.
It will be good to be
as the clouds I remember
hanging above me the first day
I came here. They are gone now—
replaced by ghostly shadows
I find familiar
and yet strangely distant
in a familial sort of way.

The wind moves not
toward here but away,
up the shore toward that place
I have been headed toward
all my life.

Holy Name of Jesus

January 2, 2008
Chapel of the Ressurrection
Gethsemane Episcopal Cathedral

Numbers 6.22-27, Psalm 8, Galatians 4.4-7 and Luke 2.15-21

Yeterday, we celebrated one of my favroite feasts, the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus. This feast used to be known at the Circumcision of Our Lord. We have kept the feast, but we’ve changed the name, probably for good reason. On the eighth day following Jesus’ birth, he, like all Jewish males born in his time, was brought to the Temple, circumcised and named.

This name, Jesus or Joshua, Yeshua in Hebrew, was a common name in his day. There are two differing translation of the name: One is “God with us.” The other is “God saves,” or more specifically “God saves us from our sins.”

Today is an important feast on one hand because what it shows us is that we do truly have an intimate relationship with God. God is no longer a nameless, distant deity. God has a name—or rather the God who came to us in Jesus has a name.

We all know how important names are. Our own names are important to us. They define us. We have been trained to respond when we hear our name called.

We, in effect, are our names. Our names and our selves are bound inexorably together. Our name is truly who we are.

The same can be said of God. In the Old Testament God reveals the Divine Name as Yahweh. Yahweh is such a sacred and holy word to the Jews that it can not even be repeated. In a sense, the name Yahweh becomes so intertwined with Who God is that is becomes, for the Jews, almost like God.

It is the Name God revealed to Aaron. God said, “they shall put my name—Yahweh—on them and I will bless them.”

The message here to all of us is that to have a truly meaningful relationship with anyone—to truly know them—we need to know them by their name. So, too, is this same idea used when we think about our own relationship with God and, in turn, God’s relationship with us.

God knows us by name and we know God by name.

This is important. God is not simply some distant Being we vaguely comprehend. God is close. God is closer than we can even imagine. God knows us and we know God. We know each other by name.

This is why the name of Jesus is important to us. That is why we give the Name a certain level of respect.

Like the Name that was revealed to Aaron, so has the Name of our God been revealed to us. And like the name Yahweh to the Jews, the Name of Jesus is holy and sacred to us Christians.

We have all seen the IHS symbol in churches. Not many people know what IHS stands for. Some people think they are initials for “In his service” But they are not initials. They are the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Greek. They are the letters Iota, Eta and Sigma.

Whenever we see the HIS symbol, we are to be reminded of the Holy Name of Jesus. There was an old belief that the IHS devotion was started by a 14th century Franciscan priest, St. Bernadine of Siena. For St. Bernadine and for those who followed Bernadine’s devotion to the Holy Name of Jesus, nothing was more holy and more sacred than the Holy Name of Jesus. Certainly even for us, the Name is a vital and important part of what we believe as Christians.

The collect for the Feast of the Holy Name recalls that the name of Jesus is the “sign of our salvation.” I don’t see that as a sweet, overly sentimental notion. I see it as a very important part of who we are as Christians.

Anglo-Catholic people in the Anglican and Episcopal Church bow every time the Name of Jesus is mentioned. Again, I don’t see that as an overly pious action. I see it as a sign of respect for Jesus at a time when his Name is widely abused and misused.

We’ve all done it. We’ve all sworn, using the Name in a disrespectful way. We have not given the rightful respect to God’s name in our lives, even when we know full well that a name is more than just a name.

A Name is, in a sense, one’s essence. Certain in Jesus’ case, it is. Jesus is “God with us.” Jesus is “God saving us.” By this very name we have a special relationship with this God who has come among us

We belong to this God whose name we know. Of course, that doesn’t mean that God belongs to us. Rather, God is with us. All of us. God, in Jesus, has come to all of us.
God in Jesus knows each of us by name. Certainly those of us who are Christian know this in a unique way. When we were baptized, we, like Jesus eight days after his birth, were named. At our baptism, were signed as Christ’s own forever.

We were claimed by God by name.

By Baptism, our own names became holy names. By Baptism, God came to know us by name and because of that, our names are sanctified. We bear in us our own holy name before God.
So today—this day we celebrate not only God’s holy name but our own as well—and in the days to come, take to heart the fact that God’s name is holy and sacred. Be mindful of the words you use and be mindful of that name of Jesus in your life.

But also be mindful of your own holy name. When you hear your own name, remember that it is the name God knows you by and, as a result, it is truly holy.

In sense our own names can be translated as “God with us.” When we hear our names, let us hear “God saves us.” And let us be reminded that God knows us better than anyone else—even our own selves. Claim the holiness of your name and know that God in Jesus is calling you to your own fullness of life by name.

Amen.