Fr Peter Helman
Dear friends,
It is hard to believe that next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent. We’ll begin again another year of the Church’s sanctoral calendar and, without getting ahead of ourselves too much, look to Christmas. The Feast of the Epiphany and Ash Wednesday and Lent will then be here before we know it and shortly thereafter Palm Sunday and Holy Week and the observance and celebration of the Paschal Triduum. The Feast of Pentecost will land, as it always does, fifty days after Easter. Trinity Sunday will be the week following, the Feast of Corpus Christi the week following that, and then, once more, if God wills to give us the time, the long season after Pentecost, which we’ve only just concluded yesterday with Christ the King Sunday. And then Advent will ring the door chime in the night.
It all goes so quickly, doesn’t it? Time waits for no one, the saying goes, and it’s hard to slow down and focus on the still point of the turning world when the world around us moves on and on to the chronic drum.
How strange a thing that I remembered only today that I will have been a priest for five years a week from this Friday. December 7, the Friday after the first Sunday of Advent. I was ordained on the Feast of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Middlesborough, Kentucky. I cherish the memory of that afternoon. Of the presence of my parents seated in the front pew. The toll of the church bell. It was a winter day with snow and no wind and full of prayer.
What moments and memories in your life moor you amid the whirlwind world? What marvelous works of God stand fast and help you measure the steps you’ve taken along the pilgrim’s way? And in the light of whose affection and friendship have you shared the road and weathered storms? Amid the swell of days that fall one upon the next like breakers, remembering where we've come and with whom we've traveled will help us find the road ahead.
My ordination day reminds me there are a thousand daily graces for which to give thanks, for hearts set on fire by love, for moments grand and many others still more ordinary and all of them nonetheless luminous for the chance to find God at work in the midst of community. And what wondrous works of God remain to be known and to praise God. What so often feels like wandering is in fact a path set before us. What so often we find a desolate valley is in fact a place of springs, the very threshold of the house of our God.
As we look to the days and months ahead, let us with glad hearts give thanks to the God from whom all good gifts do proceed.
Yours in Christ,
Fr. Peter
"Perhaps the World Ends Here"
by Joy Harjo
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.