It has been…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

both a beautiful and intense weekend of music with performances on Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and a jam/audition on Saturday evening following Vespers. So much music. So many places to play. Sunday is a tired but happy afternoon.

I cannot remember a time in my life without music, listening to it, playing it, and occasionally performing it. I played for my classmates in grade school. I played for myself in high school. I played for the faithful in church from time to time and in my 40’s and now early 50’s the lid has popped off and every bit of music that didn’t get played in earlier days has started to overflow the jar.

It’s not about being a rock star or anything like that at all. It’s not even that I’m the most adept musician around. Music just flows. Music is interwoven with my life. Music just somehow finds a way in, through, and around me. In my life I’ve played violin, piano, mandolin, guitar, ukelele, and bass and I’m willing to try any instrument at least once. They’re all good and the experience of encountering them never ceases to amaze me.

And now, in my middle years, when the anxieties and self consciousness of childhood and adolescence are long gone there is no pressure to do anything but open my mouth and sing or stand and play. Perhaps others are terrified of that but all my soul says is “It’s about time, get up there and play.” I can and have for hours and I presume that I must exasperate the people I share the stage with when everything inside me says “We’ve got time, let’s do one more song.”

I guess I’m just a late bloomer with a compulsion to make up for lost time. Maybe its just about the idea that I can be me again, the little kid in front of his classmates on the piano, the teenager watching it all from afar, and now a grown man up on the stage having the time of my life.

Sing like you’re in the shower and dance like no one is watching.

Thoughts…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Everyone wants to end poverty, but no one wants to share.

It’s easy to say “All You Need is Love” when you’re sitting on an enormous pile of money.

Isn’t it amazing that the people warning us about the world having too many people are all alive?

We all say the poor are special in the eyes of God but we’re not sure that we want to be that special ourselves.

It’s simple to see pain as a pathway to sanctity if you’re not in pain.

Ever notice that the people who preach the prosperity gospel are usually the ones who get rich?

Here I am Lord, choose someone else.

 

 

 

Wisdom…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment
A human being who does not endure courageously the unpleasant burdens of temptations,
will never produce fruit worthy of the divine wine-press and eternal harvest, not even if one possesses all other virtues. For one is only perfected through zealously enduring both all the voluntary and involuntary afflictions.

St. Gregory Palamas

Someday…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

I suppose, my heart will give way. Tough luck with hearts seems to run in the family. Not to worry, though, because there is a gift in it all.

A life wish, a sense of perspective, a certain kind of positive urgency, all of these are the gifts of knowing that its quite possible that one day my heart will just stop. No time to waste. No time to slough off. Take everything good and leave the bad behind. Keep close to God. Love people and not things. Play music with passion. Enjoy the beauty of creation. Laugh often.

If I make it to 60 I’ll be doing better than average. If life somehow has me scheduled for fourscore or more it’s still good to live this way. Life is just different, I suppose, when you have a family history of touch luck with hearts.

The building was empty…

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this morning, the parking lot, too. Tuesday morning and time to make ready.

Some times its good to be alone in the church. It gives perspective. Just time alone in the nave and the sanctuary, setting up candles, making sure the readings are in place. Cleaning up after the altar boys. When no one is there a wonderous silence pervades it all.

Yes, the building is indeed for use. Its a place of worship, of service, of learning, of confession, and of hope. Its probably true the place is empty far too often and that emptiness is a sign of opportunities lost, of things left undone, and thwarted possibilities.

Yet on an early Tuesday morning, caugh up in the routine of preparation there is a beautful silence to the place. One can think. One can pray. One can rest in the presence of holiness even as the mundane is accomplished.

It’s a kind of worship, setting candles, polishing icons, making sure the things that need to be full are full and that which requires emptying is emptied. The music is the sound of the cloths on the altar. The readings are in the quiet arrangements. The glory is in realizing that even in the absence of people the holy remains.

Wisdom…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

A wandering mind is made stable by reading, vigil and prayer. Flaming lust is extinguished by hunger, labor and solitude. Stirrings of anger are calmed by psalmody, magnanimity and mercifulness. All this has its effect when used at its proper time and in due measure. Everything untimely or without proper measure is short-lived; and short-lived things and more harmful than useful.

Abba Evagrius the Monk

This Sunday's Homily in Advance…

~ Fr. John Chagnon ~ Leave a comment

Sunday of the Blind Man
May 29, 2011

Lord, it’s Sunday morning and we are here, drawn to this place from many places. The week is behind us. A new day is here.

Lord, open our eyes.

Each of us has our own reasons for being here today. Some have come for the sake of routine. Some are here looking for shelter from the storm. Some are troubled and some have deep joy. Some worship because they believe they owe you and some are filled with love and awe. Regardless of why we are here this morning….

Lord, open our eyes.

Gracious Lord, life is both amazing and terrifying at times. We’re riding a small blue ball hurtling alone through space and the days of our lives are like a sigh in the storm. We live but we’re not always sure why. We cling to small things to explain everything and the mystery of it all can be overwhelming. In our soulful ponderings…

Lord, open our eyes.

At times we are well. At time we are downtrodden. We bear in our bodies both the durable strength of an amazing creation and the everyday marks of mortality reminding us that we, too, shall pass. Resilient and fragile. Enduring and as light as a whisper. Possessed of a will to live yet gone in an instant. As we are in this form waiting to be transformed…

Lord, open our eyes.

Out toil consumes us at times and enriches us as well. We eat from the sweat of our brow and yet there is still creative light within us released by the work of our hands. In all that we must do and all that we choose to do, as we create and recreate, and set our hands to the tasks before us…

Lord, open our eyes.

Because You love we love and our lives are filled with this love, even when it breaks our heart. Our love is a faltering flame but still it warms us. Our love is a shadow of Yours but it still can be true. We fight to love. We fail to love. We hope to love. And as we grasp for everything that love is and can be…

Lord, open our eyes.

And at the final hour, when all is done and the only breath that remains is your Spirit, the only life the life you have given us, and our sun sets in the hope of the dawn. When every moment is sealed for eternity. When all our earthly joys become heavenly and every tear is wiped away. When our work is done, our love is left behind, and only the good remains…

Lord, open our eyes.

Because, Lord, whoever we are, wherever we go, however the path of our life unfolds we need most of all to see you.

There are a thousand distractions but only one Truth. There are uncounted dark corners but only one light. We dream almost every night for good or bad but there is only one hope. We look for a way out, a way up, a way through, but there is only one salvation. We wander in the dark and yet there is only one true path.

Grant us to see you Lord to the fullness of who you are, as much as we can understand in our hearts. Grant us to see you so that we can know what is good and right and holy and true and perfect and eternal. Grant us to see you so we know which way to go and how to direct our lives. Everything around us screams for our attention, desires to draw us here and there. Grant us to see you Lord so that our days are full of everything that matters and that the world, not just with its darkness but also its glorious destiny are always with us.

Blind as we are we ask that you touch our eyes with your healing. Let our baptismal washing continue to illuminate us. May the vision we receive from you change everything about us. Let it be that which lets us see the world, each other, everything in our lives, and especially you as it was all meant to be. And if in the course of the days of our lives our eyes track away, if anything or everything less captures our sight draw us back to You, our clarity, our truth, and our salvation.

Lord, how blind we are without you. How confused. How challenged. How rudderless. Yet when your vision becomes ours how great is our light, our faith, our perception, and our peace.

Heal us Lord and open our eyes.