Poster for my reading next Thursday

1 Lent

March 9, 2014

Gen. 2.15-17; 3.1-7; Matthew 4.1-11

+ Ten years ago, when I was ordained to the priesthood, I included a prayer on the booklet for my ordination service, which I adapted from a prayer written by the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Michael Ramsey. In that prayer, I prayed:

 

Only one thing I ask: take my heart and break it.
Break it not as I would like it to be broken, but as you would.
And because it is you who are breaking it, how can I be afraid,
for your hands are the hands I have felt all my life….
supporting me, comforting me and guiding me
to the places you wanted me to be.
Your hands are safety and in them, I am safe.

Some times, I realize, we need to be careful what we pray for. Because our prayers might be answered in ways we never thought they would. I can that, in these past ten years, I have been broken in ways I never could’ve imagined.

 

I say that not as a complaint. I say that simply as a fact. And I can say that, I am, somewhat thankful for the opportunity to be broken in ways that God has seen fit.

 

Because, in being broken, I have felt a weird connection with Jesus that I might not have had otherwise.  After all, he too was broken.  He too knew what brokeness was in his very Body.

 

That concept of the broken ones of God having a connection with the broken body of Christ that we experience in a very physical way during our celebration of the Eucharist has spoken to me and it is this theme that I am going to return to again and again during this season. 

 

Being broken—and we all are broken in various ways—is just a reality for us. But it is not a time to despair.  Our brokenness, especially when we place it alongside the broken Body of Christ that is lifted up and shown at the Eucharist, has more meaning than we can fully fathom at times.

 

In that moment, we realize we can no longer feel separated from Christ by our brokenness.  It is a moment in which we are, in fact, uniquely and wonderfully joined TO Christ in our shared brokenness.  

And what we glimpse today in our scripture readings is, on one hand brokenness, and on the other hand, wholeness.

In our readings from the Hebrew Bible and from the Gospel, we get two stories with one common character.  In our reading from Genesis, we find Satan in the form of a serpent, tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden.

In our Gospel, we have Satan yet again doing what he does best—tempting.  But this time he is tempting Jesus.  

What we have here is essentially the same story, retold.  We have the tempter. We have the tempted.  We have the temptations.  But we have two very different results.  In fact, we have exactly opposite results.

But ultimately these stories tell us this:  anytime we find something broken, somehow God fixes it in the end.  When it comes to God, what seems like a failure—the fall of Adam and Eve—eventually becomes the greatest success of all—the refusal of Jesus to be tempted.  And whatever is broken, is somehow always fixed and restored.

Still, we must deal with this issue of temptation.  It is the hinge event in both of the stories we hear this morning from scripture.

Alexander Schmemann, the great Eastern Orthodox theologian, once said that there are two roots to all sin—pride and the flesh.  If we look at what Satan offers both Adam and Jesus in today’s readings, we see that all the temptations can find their root mostly in the sin of pride.  Adam and Eve, as they partake of the fruit, have forgotten about God and have placed themselves first.  The eating of that fruit is all about them.  They have placed themselves before God in their own existence.  And that’s what pride really is.  It is the putting of ourselves before God.  It is the misguided belief that everything is all about us.  The world revolves around us.  The universe exists to serve us.  And the only humility we have is a false one.

When one allows one’s self to think along those lines, the fall that comes after it is a painful one. When Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit, they are ashamed because they realize they are naked.  They realize they have nothing.  They realize that, by themselves and of themselves, they are nothing.  This realization is that it is not all about them, after all.  They have failed themselves and they have failed God in their pride.

But the amazing thing, if you notice, is that Adam and Eve still have not really learned their lesson.  They leave the Garden in shame, but there is still a certain level of pride there.  As they go, we don’t hear them wailing before God.  We don’t see them turning to God in sorrow for what they have done.  We don’t see them presenting themselves before God, broken and humbled, by what they have done.  They never ask God for forgiveness. Instead, they leave in shame, but they leave to continue on in their pride.

From this story, we see that Satan knows perfectly how to appeal to humans.  The doorway for Satan to enter into one’s life is through pride.  Of course, in scripture, we find that Satan’s downfall came through pride as well. Lucifer wanted to be like God.  And when he knew he couldn’t, he rebelled and fell.  We see him trying to use pride again in his temptation of Jesus in the wilderness.

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness, he tries to appeal to Jesus’ pride.  He knows that Jesus knows he is exactly who is.  Satan knows that Jesus truly does have the power to reign and rule, that he has all the power in the world.  And Satan further knows that if he could harness that power for himself—for evil—then he will have that power as well.  Because Jesus was fully human, Satan knew that he could appeal to the pride all humans carry with them.

But Jesus, because he, in addition to being fully human, was also fully God as well, refused to succumb to the sin of pride.  In fact, because Jesus, fully God, came to us and became human like us, the ultimate sign of humility came among us.

So, these two stories speak in many ways to us, who are struggling in our own lives.  As we hear these stories, we no doubt find ourselves relating fully to Adam and Eve.  After all, like Adam and Eve, we find ourselves constantly tempted and constantly failing as they did.  And also like them, we find that when we fail, when we fall, we oftentimes don’t turn again to God, asking God’s forgiveness in our lives.  We almost never are able to be, like Jesus, able to resist the temptations of pride and sin, especially when we are in a vulnerable state.

Jesus, after forty days of fasting, was certainly in a vulnerable place to be tempted.  As we all enter the forty days of fasting in this season of Lent, we too need to be on guard.  We too need to keep our eyes on Jesus—who, in addition to being our God, is also our companion in this earthly adventure we are having.  We need to look to Jesus, the new Adam, the one who shows us that Adam’s fall—Adam’s brokenness—and Adam’s fall and brokenness is essentially our fall and brokenness as well—is not the end of the story.

Whatever failings Adam had were made right with Jesus. And, in the same way, whatever failings we make are ultimately made right in Jesus as well. Jesus has come among us to show up the right pathway. Jesus has come to us to lead us through our failings and our brokenness to a place in which we will succeed, in which we will be whole.

So, let us follow Jesus in the path of our lives, allowing him to lead us back to the Garden of Eden that Adam and Eve were forced to abandoned.  Because it is only when we have abandoned pride in our lives—when we have shed concern for ourselves, when we have denied ourselves and disciplined ourselves to the point in which we realize it is not all about us at all—only then will we discover that the temptations that come to us will have no effect on us.

Humility, which we should be cultivating and practicing during this season of Lent, should be what we are cultivating and practicing all the time in our lives.  Humility is the best safeguard against temptation.  Humility is the remedy to help us back on the road to piecing ourselves back together from our shattered brokenness.

So, as we move through the wasteland of Lent and throughout the rest of our lives, let us be firm and faithful in keeping Jesus as the goal of our life.  Let us not let those temptations of pride rule out in our life.  In these days of Lent, let us practice personal humility and spiritual fasting.  Let Jesus set the standard in our lives.

 And let him raise us up from the places we have fallen in your journey.  And let us let him piece our brokenness back into a glorious wholeness.

 

 

Ash Wednesday

2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6.1-6,16-21

+ This evening is a special evening for me. No, it’s not just because it’s Ash Wednesday. No, it’s not that I am all excited about Lent beginning.  It’s nothing like that.

It’s a special night because, tonight, I am, at this moment, celebrating my 1,000 Mass as a priest. 1,000 masses as a priest in ten years of ordained ministry. That doesn’t included the masses I’ve concelebrated. Or the ones I’ve attended and participated in by my presence.  These are just the ones I’ve actually celebrated at.

Now, you don’t often hear of priests celebrating such things. Why? Because most priests aren’t weird like your priest is. Most priests don’t count the number of masses they’ve celebrated. I only know this because I’ve kept track. I’ve kept a personal record. And back, ten years ago, in fact, ten years ago on June 13, 2004, when I celebrated my very first mass as a priest, I just started writing down all the masses, all the home communions, all the anointing, all the confessions. And weirdly, back then, I never thought I’d approach such a number.

I didn’t think that far ahead down the road.  Because in 2004, I was only two years out from my cancer diagnosis.  And there was still, a sense then, that I might not have ten years ahead of me. Instead, I simply took each Mass, each communion visit, each time I received Holy Communion with gratitude, knowing that I might not have many more.

St. Teresa, in the priest’s vesting rooms of all of her convents, made sure that an old saying was saying posted in the sacristy where the priest could see it as he prepared for mass.

It read, “Oh, holy priest of Jesus Christ, celebrate this mass as if it were your first mass, your

last mass, your only mass.”

I can say that I have done just that over the last ten years. That saying, for me, has always been a Momento mori—which means “bear in mind that you will die.” In the day—we’re talking the medieval and renaissance day—it was common for people to keep some kind of momenti mori around—a reminder of death. Often, that was a human skull- a real human skull. Of course, when you think of it, what makes a better reminder of death than a skull?

In those days, one was encouraged to look at the skull as one would look into a mirror, realizing that what one was looking at was really themselves. To some extent, as morbid as it might seem, I think it wouldn’t hurt us to think about and ponder such things in our own lives. In our lives, we do go about oblivious to death. We go around as though we are invincible, that we are eternal, that this moment in which we are living will last forever.  As much as we might wish for that and hope for that, the fact is, it is not the case.

For many of us, this fact was driven home for us this very day with the news that Deacon Terry Star, whom many of us here this evening knew, died very suddenly, very unexpectedly, yesterday morning at age 40 in his room in Kemper Hall at Nashotah House Seminary.  News such as that, or even this service this evening is really, in a sense, our own Momento mori.

In this service we are reminded in no uncertain terms that one day, whether we like it or not, each every person in this church this evening will stop breathing and will die.  I’m sorry to have to say that. I don’t like saying that. None of us want to hear that.  It’s sobering. But it’s what we are reminded of this evening and throughout this season of Lent.

We will stop breathing. We will die. Our bodies will be made into something that will be disposed of—either by burying in the ground, or by being cremated.

That realization essentially is what Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent are all about. It is a time for us to stop, to ponder, to take a look around us and to take a long, hard, serious look at ourselves and our relationship with God. It isn’t easy to do.  It isn’t easy to look at where we’ve failed in our lives in our relationship with others. It isn’t easy to look at ourselves as disposable physical beings that can so easily be buried or burned to ashes.  It isn’t easy to imagine there will be a day—possibly sooner than later—when life as we know it right now will end.  It isn’t easy to shake ourselves from our complacent lives. Because we like complacency. We like predictability. We like our comfortable existence.

However, we need to be careful when we head down this path. As we consider and ponder these things, we shouldn’t allow ourselves to become depressed or hopeless. 

Yes, our mortality is frightening.  Yes, it is sobering and depressing to think that we, at this moment, find so normal and comfortable will one day end.  But this season is Lent is also a time of preparation.  It is a preparation of the glory of Easter. And in that way, also, our lives as Christians also lead.

It would be depressing and bleak is the skull was the end of our story. It would be sad and sorrowful if all we are reminded of when we ponder the cremation fire is the finality of this life. It would be horrible if we were not able to see the momento moris of our lives as gateways to something larger and more wonderful.

But for us, death is a gateway. Death does lead not to eternal non-existence, bur rather to eternal existence.  The darkness of death leads to the glorious light of Easter.

What I like about Lent is that is shows us that, even though we are living in the glorious light of Easter, bestowed on us at our Baptism, it’s not always light and flowers and happiness all the time. If our Christian was only that, it would be a frivolous faith. It wouldn’t be taken seriously because it would ignore a very important part of our lives.

But Lent shows us that, as Christians, we are to reflect about where we have failed—where we have failed God, failed others and failed ourselves. And it reminds us that death—death of our loved ones and our own deaths—is simply a fact of life.  It is a part of who we are and what we are. It forces us to realize that we are wholly dependent upon God for our life and for what comes after death.

Of course Ash Wednesday is not a time to disparage our bodies, to believe that our bodies are some kind of prisons for our souls. If we truly believe in the Resurrection, if we believe that Jesus was God Incarnate—God in the flesh—then we cannot believe that somehow the spirit is all-good and the flesh is all-bad.

 All we do on this Ash Wednesday is acknowledge the fact that we are mortal, that our bodies have limits and because they do, we too are limited.  It’s not a matter of denying our bodies or seeing our bodies as sinful, disgraceful things. Rather it is simply a matter of not making our bodies our treasures.

Jesus tells us in tonight’s Gospel not to lay up our treasures on earth, in corrupting things, but to store up our treasures in heaven. A lot of us put more store in our bodies than we need. We sometimes don’t take great joy in our bodies at all, but rather abuse our bodies or become inordinately obsessed with our bodies and in what used to be called “the way of the flesh.”

This time of Lent is find a balance with our physical selves as well as with our spiritual selves. That is really the true meaning of Lent.

Where are our treasures? Are they here, in the corruptible? Or in they in the incorruptible?

This is the question we must ask on this evening. This is the question we should be pondering throughout this season.   So, as we head into this season of Lent, let it truly be a holy time.

Let it be a time in which we ponder whatever momento mori we might have in your life. Let it be a time in which we recognize the limitations of our own self—whether they be physical or emotional or spiritual.

But more than anything, let this holy season Lent be a time of reflection and self-assessment. Let it be a time of growth—both in our self-awareness and in our awareness of God’s presence in goodness in our lives.

As St. Paul says in our reading from this evening: “Now is the acceptable time.”

“Now is the day of salvation.”

It is the acceptable time. It is the day of salvation.  Let us take full advantage of it.

 

 

 

Last Epiphany

March 2, 2014

Exodus 24.12-18; Matthew 17. 1-9

 

+ As most of you know by now, I was in a car accident this past Thursday. I don’t know what it is about my luck—or actually I should say my lack of luck—with cars. My father once said that everyone gets one car accident in their lives. Well, I’ve had three now. That’s enough for me.

But there is an interesting thing about car accidents. Or any kind of weird, traumatic events in our lives. One emerges from them with a different view of things.

 

After I got home from the hospital on Friday afternoon, I went to the rectory to check up on a few things and to take a shower and rest.  What was amazing to me was how different things looked. Yes, it was still the rectory. Yes, my midcentury modern furniture was still there and recognizable.

 But it all seemed…different too. I sort of went around thinking to myself: what if I had died? What if I never returned here again? What would all this look like to someone entering my house after I was dead?

 Yes, I now…morbid. It’s morbid thinking. But…it’s also realistic thinking as well.

 Life-altering events change us and change how we see the world around us and our place within that world.  And things do look different—our perspective changes—after events like this.

 No doubt Peter, James and John thought somewhat like this when they gazed upon Jesus transfigured on the mount.  He still looked like the Jesus they always knew.  He still had the basic features.  He was recognizable.  But…he was different.  He was transformed. He was transfigured by the Light which shone from within him.

 On this last Sunday of Epiphany, we hear in our Gospel reading an echo of something we heard on our first Sunday of Epiphany.  If you can remember back all the way to January 12, we also heard God speaking words very similar to what we hear this morning in our Gospel reading.  On January 12, the First Sunday in Epiphany, we found Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the River Jordan.

 That morning we heard in our Gospel reading about how, as Jesus rises out of those waters of the Jordan, God’s voice is heard to say,

 "This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased."

 Today, on this last Sunday in Epiphany, as Jesus is transfigured on the mountaintop, flanked by Moses representing the Law and Elijah representing the Prophets, both of which Jesus fulfills, and with Peter, James and John gazing on, we also hear again God speak, almost as an echo to what was said at Jesus’ baptism:

 “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!”

 We find in all of this, that although Jesus is changed somewhat, that the situation has changed somewhat, the one thing that has not changed is God. In fact, in our reading from the Hebrew Scriptures this morning, we find God speaking to Moses in a very similar way as well.

 There we find, much as we find in our Gospel reading, a mountaintop, a cloud, and God’s glory—and God speaking to Moses much as God speaks to all of us in today’s Gospel.  For us, these readings reveal to us that we too are to be available for such transfigurations. We need occasionally to be transfigured.

 This past Wednesday, at our Wednesday night Mass, we commemorated the great Anglican priest and poet, George Herbert. You know how Herbert is so important to me personally. One of the poems of his I reference again and again is his poem, “Windows.”

 I use the image from that poem over and over again of us being windows. Herbert says we are like stained glass windows. Windows in which the light of God shines through. Being the conduit through which God’s Light shines means allowing ourselves to be transformed by that Light.

 It means being reborn by that Light.  It means that, yes, we are still who we are.  We still look the same.  Yes, we are still cracked and warped windows.  But that somehow, that Light coming through transforms the cracks and the warping and makes the whole window shine and glow.

 As the Lenten season starts, we find everything dimming a bit.  I often refer to these Lenten days as the long, gray days of Lent.  To me they are, any way.  They are the time we when, whether we like it or not, we hear more talk in our scriptures and in our liturgy, of sin, of repentance, of being aware of our shortcomings and of trying turn away from those moments in which we fail. It is a time, to continue our Windows analogy, in which we examine the cracks and warps in our glass panes and we try to repair them in some way.

 But as we progress through Lent toward the glorious, blinding light of Easter morning, we realize that although the Light may seem dimmed, it at no point goes out.  Even on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, when it will seem darkest of all, the Light will not be completely extinguished.  We end the Season of Epiphany with this glorious vision of the Transfiguration.  It essentially sustains us and upholds us until the Light of Easter shines upon us.

 On Tuesday night, after our Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper, we say goodbye to the Alleluia.  We take down the alleluia banner and place it in a box, which will then be taken out and “buried”  As we do this, the rest of us will sing our last Alleluias for a while.  After Wednesday—Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent—we will not be saying the word “Alleluia” in our liturgies until Easter.

 Sometimes it’s very good to do things like this.  It’s good to retire a word for a period of time. Because we often take words for granted.  We use some word without thinking about them.

Alleluia is one of those words.  It’s a joyful word.  It’s meant, essentially to be an exclamation.  It’s what Peter, James and John no doubt exclaimed on the mount when they saw Jesus transfigured and the voice of God speaking to them.  And when that word goes away, we miss it.

We find ourselves almost—just almost—saying it on occasion during Lent.  And then we catch ourselves.  When we do that, we appreciate it even more.  We realize how important that word has become to us.  We are conditioned to say it.  And when it’s gone, we realize—yes, it is important. It’s a precious gem in our language that we need to remember is truly precious.

And like the Light we experience today, we will carry it with us through Lent, even when we don’t actually say it.  We will still hold it close.  We will still truly be, as St. Augustine once said of all Christians, “an Alleluia from head to toe.”  We will still carry the Alleluia and the Light of Christ within us even through the grayness of Lent and the darkness of Holy Week.  So that, on Easter morning, seven weeks from today, we will truly rejoice. That morning, we will say that word with all the meaning and joy it carries for us.  And that morning, we will find that Light we have carried within us burst forth in glory. And we will find ourselves once again transfigured and transformed by that Light.

We will, on that glorious morning, say once again with a true and glorious joy,

“Alleluia!”

“Alleluia! Alleluia!”

 

 

5 Epiphany

February 9, 2014

Matthew 5.13-20

+ So, for all my talk about vacation, I do have to admit: Vacation is actually a very difficult thing for me. I know. I’m weird.

If I didn’t force myself to take a vacation (and also if I didn’t hate winter in North Dakota as much as I do), I’m not certain I would even take vacation. If we were all living together in Florida—if St. Stephens’ could be transported to Florida or anyplace sunny and warm— I wouldn’t even see a reason to go on vacation.

But, I do it because I know it’s important, for my own health and for all of you as well. Let’s face it, you definitely need a vacation from all of this…

A few month ago, as I was thinking about vacation and trying to figure out who I could cover that second Sunday I’m gone, I stopped at Bethlehem Lutheran Church here in Fargo to ask a pastor friend of mine the if she could cover for me. She wasn’t in, so I decided to ask the secretary where the old baptismal font was—the one from about 1970.

She kind of gave me this weird look. Why would an Episcopal priest be asking where the old baptismal font is?

Well, I explained, I’d like to see it because in that font, I was baptized 44 years ago. Actually it was 44 years ago yesterday, on February 8, 1970.

She relaxed and smiled and said, if you go rise across the hallway from the office, there’s a small chapel. In there is the old font.

So, I went in and there it was. As I stood there looking at it, I remembered a story that I have shared with you often. It is the story of one of my heroes, Archbishop Michael Ramsey.

One day, after he became the Archbishop of Canterbury, he visited St. Michael’s in Horbling in England.  There, in 1904, he was baptized. When he saw the font in which he was baptized, he exclaimed,

“O font, font, font in which I was baptized!”

I’ve always the poetry of that story! I, on gazing at my own baptismal font, did repeat those words (quietly to myself) on that day. I do so not out of piety or drama. I did so, because I realized: I have thought about that event often in my life.

In that font, my life changed. I didn’t know it. I wasn’t aware of it. But it did. Something wonderful and incredible happened there. Of course, that wonderfulness and the incredibleness wasn’t unique. It was there for all of us on that each of were baptized, whether we knew it or not.  We were formed in those waters. We were made who we are today in those waters. And in those waters, we found love. A love that we didn’t ask for. A love we certainly never anticipated. But it was love.

In our Gospel for today, Jesus talks about salt and light. You are the salt of the earth, Jesus

says. But our usefulness as “salt” is only good enough until we still have “taste.” He then goes on to say, “You are the light of the world” but then proceeds to say that the only effective light is one that is uncovered. In that baptismal moment in our lives, we essentially became salt with taste and unhindered light.

When we live out our Baptismal Covenant, when we act as baptized people in this world, we are the effective salt of the earth. When we live our baptism, we are a light set on a lampstand.

Now I don’t know to tell anyone here this morning that being baptized people is not easy. Remaining tasty salt is not easy. Being a light on a lampstand leaves us exposed and open to every wind that blows through.

In our lives as followers of Jesus, there will be moments when it hard. Hard to be a Christian. Hard to believe as a Christian.  And, often times, hard to live with other Christians.

Other people—oftentimes other Christians—irritate us or intimidate us or threaten us, either intentionally and unintentionally. But these are just the realities of what it means to be a light on a lampstand. This is what it means to live in community with one another. And the only response we can have to all of that is love.

We must love. Our love, formed in those waters of baptism, must shine brightly. Those spirit-infused waters must be the fuel for the light within us.

And loving people who hurt us, or intimidate us or make us uncomfortable is incredibly hard. Let me tell you! I have been there. I know.

But we don’t have any other options as Christians, as followers of Jesus. The only option we have is the love that was infused in us as our baptism.  There are times when I wish I didn’t have the deal with these things. There are times when I wish everyone just liked me and I liked them. Life would be so much easier.   But, sadly, that’s not the reality.

Some people, as hard as it is to believe, don’t like me. I remember being shocked one time when a fellow clergy person told me that I intimidated them. Me! Intimidating anybody. I didn’t get it and I still don’t get it. But this person resented me and, sadly, I think still does, no matter what I’ve done to right that situation. I obviously did something in which, for that person anyway, I was tasteless salt. I was a light under a bushel.

But that’s the way it is sometimes. We will fail. We will falter. We will make mistakes. Those waters of baptism never guaranteed us that we would never trip up or fail. But those waters do guarantee that we can pick ourselves up and continue on, broken and wounded as we are sometimes.

My life as a follower of Jesus has never been easy. That day, 44 years ago yesterday, started me out on a road of twists and turns and thorny, sometimes ugly bypasses.  I’ve fallen on that path. I’ve tripped up majorly at times. There were moments when I wasn’t even certain I wanted to go any further.

But I have. We all have. All of here this morning have pressed on, going forward, striving and failing and striving again.  And it’s all good. Even the trip-ups are good.

Yes, our Christian life is hard at times. Loving each other is hard at times. Loving ourselves as God loves us is sometimes the hardest of all. But when we do this, we truly do become the salt of the earth. We truly do become a light set on a lampstand.

And when we are—when we are a light unhindered, a Christ-infused light shining brightly for all the world to see, sharing the light of Christ with others—we are doing what are meant to do as Christians, as followers of Jesus.

So let us not put our light under a bushel. Let us not grow frustrated. Let us not the tiredness and fatigue that sometimes comes upon win out.

But let us be infused. Let us be rejuvenated. And let us shine! Shine brightly! Shine without apprehension or fear!

Let us shine! And when we do, others will, as Jesus tells us, see our good works, and we will truly be giving glory to our God in heaven.

Amen.

 

 

One year Vegetarian

Tomorrow, I will have been a vegetarian for one whole year. One year without cheating. One year without meat of any kind.

I have also been vegan for two months as of today.

Plus, I haven’t Diet Coke also two months ago last week.

I don’t say that in some self-righteous way. For the most, people who aren’t vegetarian or vegan or who drink diet soda on a regular basis are not impressed by it. I say it only because I am happy I’ve done it. It was a personal challenge and I achieved it. And I feel a certain sense of personal pride in doing so.

So, how has it been? To be blunt: it’s been incredible. I have learned much this time around as a vegetarian. Twenty years ago, I went vegetarian for the first time for five years. I didn’t cheat once in those five years, but I also didn’t do it right. I ate lots of junk. I ate lots of cheese and dairy. I didn’t eat healthy. And, in the end, I gave it up as easily I as would throw away an old shirt.

This time around, I haven’t always eaten healthy, but I have done much better. My health has not been this good in a very long time. And I can really see and feel the results. Not because I am trying to or desperately want to. They simply are happening for me, and I am grateful.

One thing has surprised me: I still get scolded by people. I have to admit that at 44 years old,

an ordained priest, a published writer, a person with lots of life-experience under my belt, someone who has been indepenet for a very long time, being scolded at this time in my life is sobering. And I honestly don’t know how to react to it.

So, when someone tells me, out of the blue: “This vegan diet is not healthy for you,” I stiffen and bite my tongue. And I try not to respond by simply noticing the meat they fork onto their plates and the gravy with which they smother their mashed potatoes.

My resentment comes from the fact that I am amazed nobody scolded me when my diet was unhealthy, when I was eating fast food from McDonald’s or ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery or pizzas from Pizza Hut. When I was diagnosed with cancer twelve years ago and my weight ballooned, did anyone scold me for my eating habits then. Then, when I should have been scolded for what I was eating.

All I can say in return is: I haven’t felt deprived or lacking once in what I eat. It has been strangely natural for me. And once I got into the habit of ignoring the scolding and bolder in asking servers to make a dish of pasta with marinara instead of creamy sauce, or order a sandwich without cheese or mayo, it was actually pretty easy.

Still, I’ve learned not be a jerk about vegetarianism/veganism. Taking a note from Moby, I’ve learned to be almost apologetic about it when people scold me or even when they ask me over to their homes or out to eat. Waving the vegan flag or whipping out photos of suffering animals on factory farms or slaughterhouses certainly does not win people over to the cause (which isn’tmy  intention in the first place). In fact, that vegan flag-waving and disturbing photos only drives people further and further away.

I do what I can, where I can, because it makes a difference in my life. It makes a difference in my ethics, in my diet and in my health. And I understand now how being vegetarian/vegan really is more than just an issue of food. It is more than just a diet. It is a lifestyle. It is a way living one’s life and it is a way of seeing the world around me differently.

I can also say there is something weirdly spiritual about this way of eating. It does seem to fit so well into my faith life. As I Christian and as priest, I feel a certain moral obligation about animals and the suffering they endure for human consumption. There is a disconnect in our collective intention blindness toward the suffering of other living being. And there is something good and holy in compassionate living.

I am thankful for this year as a vegetarian. I am thankful for these past two vegan months. It has been very good. The proof is in the vegan pudding. I am feeling great—better than I have in a long time.

What more can I ask?

Maple Sheyenne February 2014

This evening, while driving out to Maple Sheyenne Cemetery where my father's ashes are buried, I took this photo, which turned out pretty good, if I say so myself: