 St Alban’s Episcopal Church Bolivar, Missouri Monday, November 8, 2021 The Collect for Sunday and Dorothy Day  Dorothy Day Nov 8, 1897-November 29, 1980There is a great deal of easily accessible information about the life of Dorothy Day. And she is someone worth your knowing. I read her early book, The Long Loneliness (1952), as a teenager and never forgot it. And then I read more and more. She has challenged me ever since. I love her, complexity and all – partly because of her complexity. Yes, she was a journalist. And a darn good one. Yes, she was a radical sort of Christian who took God seriously and made people uncomfortable. Especially Church people. And yet – those same uncomfortable bishops can’t stop talking about her, arguing about her, trying to dismiss her, forty years after her death! Like Francis of Assisi and all the saints, her awkwardly biblical life of obedience to a vision of love and justice compels a response of some kind, because no matter what authorities decide, ordinary people love her – as they loved Francis. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t mind the continuing controversy. “One of the disconcerting things about the spiritual life is that God takes you at your word.” Dorothy Day   The Collect for next Sunday Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ… So what about the Collect for this coming Sunday? How do we understand this “gathering” prayer for the beginning of the week’s worship? Is it really all about embracing the hope of heaven when we die? Is the Bible our just to point us out of this world? Does that even make sense? What if we read it as it is: What if we begin with the admonition to “hear, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest” the Scriptures? What if the author of this prayer took for granted that having done these things, we would then seek to live faithfully according to what we discover in the Bible? And what if he knew it wouldn’t be easy? What if he knew that we would find that the biblical invitations would mess with our preconceptions, our prejudices, our plans and programs, our demands on others, our expectations of ourselves? But what if he also knew that if we go on reading, and striving to follow – if we keep on keeping on – we will also find welling up within us the certainty that the life of love we only barely manage to live here will be an everlasting pursuit – that it has no end – that we really will “embrace and hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life” in which to love all of God’s creation, to love each other to love God, and also to be everlastingly loved by God?  |
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