In My Lifetime

Second Life Reflection |Christmas Day, December 25, 2011 "The Reason for the Season"

 

It's Christmas at Sunshine Cathedral on Second Life. Below are the readings, my reflection, and some music selections for this holy time.

Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life.  Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com.  Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us.  We meet each Sunday  at 5pm EST/ 2pm SLT  My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.

We look forward to having you at service!

Click the grey strip below to play sermon audio:

The Reason for the Season

(*Text for the reflection at the bottom of this page)

The Lessons

Psalm 98.1-2, 4-6

O sing to the Lord a new song, for God has done marvelous things…God…has revealed divine justice in the sight of the nations. Make a joyful noise to the Holy One, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises. Sing praises…with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the Eternal

The Wisdom of Eric Sevareid

“Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.”

Readings Christmas 2011

Luke 2.15-20

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place…So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

Gospel Christmas 2011

Music

Joy to the World    2:06    Johnny Cash    Christmas With Johnny Cash    Holiday   

Light These Lights    4:28    Debbie Friedman    Songs of the Spirit: The Debbie Friedman Anthology    Pop   

Ave Maria    3:52    Wynonna Judd    A Classic Christmas    Holiday   

O Little Town Of Bethlehem    2:11    Ella Fitzgerald    A Christmas Tapestry    Holiday   

Earth and All Stars    3:30    The American Boychoir    Harmony: American Songs of Faith    World   

Universal Child    4:14    Annie Lennox    A Christmas Cornucopia    Holiday   

Love Came Down At Christmas    3:04    Shawn Colvin    Holiday Songs and Lullabies    Easy Listening   

* Reflection Text

The Reason for the Season 

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!  This year those two greetings coincide in a very real way.  Today is Christmas Day, the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth who revealed to us the presence of the Christ in the world.  And tonight is also the sixth candle of Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights that continues for eight days.  So today let’s talk a bit about both of these religious “holy” days.

Hanukkah is a beautiful tradition of lighting candles each night for eight days.  It originates in a group called the Maccabees restoring honor to the temple and refusing to capitulate to the Roman empire who demanded that they stop their religious practices and conform to government decreed practices that mirrored their own religious traditions. 

Hanukkah is about religious freedom. And there is nothing more beautiful or more moving than the candles of a menorah lit fully in the dark night of winter on the eighth night of Hanukkah. It’s a beautiful symbol of light in the darkest days of winter and the triumph of the human spirit exercising it diversity and its right to liberty and freedom.

Today we have here in our midst a fully lit menorah.  We bring this symbol into our midst today to honor and celebrate the fact that it is our responsibility to learn about other religious traditions so that we can honor religious freedom for ourselves by learning about others’ traditions and honoring their right to express their traditions just as we have a right to express our own.

So now let us go to Bethlehem and see the baby lying in a manger there. Let us fully appreciate that his parents were traveling under duress.  They were mandated to travel to Bethlehem, the place of Joseph’s birth, to register for the Roman census. This count of people was used to determine taxes on the occupied people.

It didn’t matter that Mary was pregnant and nearly ready to deliver. It didn’t matter that the journey was long. It only mattered that the empire mandated that the people be counted in a certain way for the purpose of taxing them and keeping them oppressed and living under occupied rule.

 

But the baby came in the baby’s time… the way babies do.  And so they needed privacy for the birth but could not find it in human accommodations. And so they end up in a stable with fresh hay in a manger, a feeding trough for the animals.   When he is born he’s wrapped in strips of cloth and laid there as his mother rests and his father watches over them.

But shepherds in the field saw a light in the sky and heard the angels singing.  They were told of the birth of this child. And they came, as we do today, to the manger in the stable to visit the child and wonder at God’s goodness in the face of a newborn child.

Every year we celebrate this birth as the symbol of the value of every human life.  And every year we are moved to acts of charity and goodness that otherwise throughout the year we decry as foolishness.  But this is not the message of Christmas.  This holy day that we celebrate with gifts and goodness is the essence of what we are called to live our every day of the year as Christians. 

We are not called to celebrate only the birth of the child Jesus but to be concerned, vitally concerned with the wellbeing of EVERY child born on this earth.  Every human baby comes into this world made in the image of the creator we say we worship. But we act as if some images of God are more valuable than others…. Those who have light skin, those who speak English without and accent, those who identify as Christian rather than some other religion.  It’s ironic that some who call themselves Christian and insist it is the ONLY way to experience God forget to remember that the baby Jesus was born a Jew, circumcised on the eighth day after his birth and presented to God in the temple as was his parent custom.

As we close the curtain on yet another Christmas Day in this year of our Lord 2011 let us agree together to endeavor to keep Christmas not only today but every day of our lives in 2012.  We will need to help each other.  Old habits die hard.  But we can develop an attitude of gratitude and an outlook of love and grace just as easily as we have cultivated pessimism, greed, and judgementalism fueled by the media manipulations of our modern culture.

The great Albert Einstein said, “Either nothing is a miracle or everything is a miracle.” I choose the later.  I’ve been in the room when a baby was born. I’ve felt the burst of psychic energy that comes forth with the cry of a newborn child.  I’ve felt the space in my own heart open where just a moment before there was no space to love another.  All of these things are miraculous to behold.

Just as miraculous as the birth of the baby Jesus, wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. Let us now go to Bethlehem to once again behold the miracle and hear the angels sing.

 

Amen.

 

Second Life Reflection | Advent II, December 4, 2011 "Let There Be Peace"

 

It's Advent II at Sunshine Cathedral on Second Life. Below are the readings, my reflection, and some music selections for the theme of Peace.

Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life.  Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com.  Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us.  We meet each Sunday  at 5pm EST/ 2pm SLT  My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.

We look forward to having you at service!

Click the grey strip below to play sermon audio:

Let There Be Peace on Earth

The text of this refleciton follows the Music selections below.

The Lighting of the Advent Candle

The Second Candle: Peace

Today we entertain the concept of Peace, Shalom.

Peace in our hearts.

Peace in our family and among our friends.

Peace in the institutions in whic we participate and Peace in our larger world.

 “As the budding flower bursts into bloom; as the glowing light kindles into flame, may the spirit of life and love bloom and flame within us, with ever-renewing light and love.” (Dorris Dow Alcott)

Peace Candle

 

The Lessons

Isaiah 40.3-5 (NRSV)

3A voice cries out: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 4Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. 5Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all people shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

2 Peter 3.13-15 (NRSV)

13…in accordance with [the] promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. 14Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found…at peace, without spot or blemish; 15and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation.

Readings Advent II

Mark 1.1-8

(The Inclusive New Testament: Priests for Equality)

1The Gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s own, 2begins as it was written in Isaiah the prophet: “I send my messenger before you to prepare your way, 3a herald’s voice in the desert, crying, ‘Make ready the way of our God; clear a straight path.’ 4And so John the Baptizer appeared in the desert, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to John and were baptized by him in the Jordan River as they confessed their sins. 6John was clothed in camel’s hair and wore a leather belt around his waist, and he ate nothing but grasshoppers and wild honey. 7In the course of his preaching, John said, “One more powerful than I is to come after me. I am not fit to stoop and untie his sandal straps. 8I have baptized you in water, but the one to come will baptize you in the holy Spirit.”

Gospel 11202011

 

Music

See Amid the Winter's Snow    3:31    Annie Lennox    A Christmas Cornucopia   

O Come O Come Emmanuel    3:56    The Choir of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh    20 Favorite Hymns - From the Cathedrals of Britain      

Peace Be With You    1:41    Anne Marie David    Peace Be With You    

Peace    3:24    Michael McDonald    This Christmas  

Let There Be Peace    4:51    Mahalia Jackson    I Wonder If I Will Ever Rest  

In the Bleak Mid-Winter    3:09    Katie McMahon    Celtic Christmas  

Reflection Text for Advent II by Rev. BK Hipsher

Let There be Peace

There are images of peace in all our readings today. And the image of peace in Isaiah is one of smooth ways, a road through the desert, the mountains made low, an image of obstacles removed and a serene and safe journey.  Anyone who has attempted to navigate the last few years in a faltering economy with uncertainty around every corner can see this as an image of peace and serenity.  No sleepless nights, no anxiety wondering how to make the mortgage payment or the utility bill.  All of us can appreciate an image of peace of mind and peaceful rest.  It’s a beautiful thought to have peace inside us.

And our reading from 2 Peter speaks of anticipating a new heaven and a new earth, an image of wholeness and health, of peace and serenity. It speaks of God’s patience and our goal to emulate that patient serenity extending that good will to ourselves as God has extended it to us.  Extending that good will to our neighbors and friends and family as God has extended it to us.

But what of this image of John the Baptizer in our gospel reading? This picture of a wild man dressed in camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, eating grasshoppers and wild honey. This is an image of an insane person. Today we would lock someone like him up if he attempted to wade into a local pond or lake and began to invite people to come in and submerse themselves in water as a ritual cleansing of sin. And he is heralding the arrival of someone else, someone greater whom he feels himself unworthy to even unloose the sandals of this holy one. This is one heck of an inferiority complex complicated by an enormous ego. So where is the image of peace in this reading?

I see it in those very last few words…”the one to come will baptize you in the holy Spirit.” The Greek word that is used in this passage that is translated baptism actually means immersion. The literal translation of the Greek text refers to “immersing” people but also says that he was “announcing immersion of mind.” This immersion of the mind initiates change that sends away sin.

And what is sin but that which separates us from God and from our neighbors?  If we send that away, if we have a change of mind and heart that opens us to the possibility of peace then we once again begin to understand that we are all connected, we are all part of one human family.  This is the beginning of TRUE peace.

This is the kind of peace that can change hearts. This is the kind of peace that can mend relationships. This is the kind of peace that can change our institutions and this is the kind of peace that has the capacity to change our very culture of hate and war and fear into a culture of peace all over the world.

 But what can you and I do? We’re only one or two people?  How can we do anything that has the potential to change the world?  Well I submit to you simply that one man did… his name was Jesus.  This is what we celebrate this time of year…. His birthday.  We celebrate his birth because we know the rest of the story. We know that in three short years he changed the entire course of history!  We celebrate Christmas as the coming into the world again, the coming of hope and the coming of the Christ child with all it’s potential for bringing peace to the world.

Let me read you an Advent poem written by one of my Episcopal Divinity School classmates, Rev. Tom Moussin…

We know to keep the door ajar for strangers traveling from afar.

We know to make a manger bed where ox and sheep are nightly fed.

But you whose birth we’ll welcome there, will turn our gaze to love and care

For every child at every birth, in whom we’ll see your sacred worth.

You see Advent and Christmas are not about celebrating the birth of one child. They are about anticipating, expecting, waiting, being ready, for the birth of every single child with all of their potential to spread love and peace through out the world. This is the stuff that hope is made of and this is the potential we all have the opportunity to foster. Every child is God’s holy child. Every human being is made in the image of the creator. Every human life is worthwhile. Every human being deserves dignity. No child deserves to starve or die from lack of simple antibiotics.  And no person deserves to live in war and hate and hostility and fear.

What would the world be like?  If we all knew for just one day that when we hate another we hate ourselves, when we harm another we harm ourselves, when we disrespect another we spit in the face of the Christ What would the world be like if we could hold on the kind of thought that immersed our mind in peace?

 In this Advent season let us make straight the way and clear a path for peace in every way we can…large and small.  Because every bit of effort we put toward peace in ourselves, between those we know, in the institutions and companies within which we work… all of these things move us forward closer to a world at peace.  All we are required to do is our part, each day, in small ways.  It all matters.

 Let there be peace on earth… and let it begin with me.

Amen.

 

 

 

Second Life Reflection | April 24, 2011 Easter "Falling in Love"

The music and  lessons for this week are listed below the audio.  Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life.  Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com.  Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us.  We meet each Saturday at 5pm EDT/ 2pm SLT  My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.

We look forward to having you at service!

Falling in Love

 

Music

Resurrection by Nicol Sponberg on Resurrection (Bonus Track Version)

Easter Song by 2nd Chapter of Acts on Encores 

Earth and All Stars by The American Boychoir on Harmony: American Songs of Faith

Holy Week  by Jess Hawk Oakenstar on Your Heart Will Show You

The Strife Is O'er by Saint Michael's Singers on Christ Triumphant

 

The Lessons

The Wisdom of Rabindranath Tagore  (Sadhana)

“Every morning the day is reborn among the newly blossomed flowers with the same message retold and the same assurance renewed that death eternally dies, that the waves of turmoil are on the surface, and that the sea of tranquility is fathomless.”

The Wisdom of Max A. Coots     (found in Singing the Living Tradition)

“We need a celebration that speaks the Spring-inspired word about life and death, about us as we live and die, through all the cycling seasons, days, and years. We need the sense of deity to crack our own hard, brown, December husks and push life out of inner tombs and outer pain. Unless we move the seasons of the self, and Spring can come for us, the Winter will go on and on.”

Matthew 28.1-11 (NIV)

 1After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb. 2There was a violent earthquake, for an angel…came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. 4The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like [corpses]. 5The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. 6He is not here; he has risen…Come and see the place where he lay. 7Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”

8So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. 10Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell  [the others] to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

 

 

Second Life Reflection | April 16, 2011 Help Us! Save Us!

The music and  lessons for this week are listed below the audio.  Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life.  Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com.  Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us.  We meet each Saturday at 5pm EDT/ 2pm SLT  My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.

We look forward to having you at service!

  NOTE! There is a "mis-speak" in the audio this week. When I say that Hosanna is from an Arabic word I MEAN to say Aramaic word. Big difference. Very sorry.

Help Us! Save Us!

 

 

Music

Palm Sunday Processional by Gary Daigle, Rory Cooney & Theresa Donohoo on This Very Morning

In the Palm of Your Hand by Alison Krauss on Now That I've Found You: A Collection 

Holy Week  by Jess Hawk Oakenstar on Your Heart Will Show You

Lessons

The Wisdom of Jeffrey Moses  (Oneness: Great Principles Shared by all Religions)

 “In today’s world, it is vital to understand that disagreements and conflicts between people or nations cannot be resolved through force. All religions are in complete agreement on this. Conquering others with force merely imprisons them. It does not remove the reasons underlying the conflict. Rather, it increases the tension and inevitably gives rise to even greater animosity.

Love, in contrast, is a unifying force. It radiates outward to resolve differences. It is not that the differences dissolve and are lost, but that they are integrated into a greater whole in which they are made more useful and beautiful. Love conquers before there is fighting. Even if channels of communication have broken down and fighting breaks out, the underlying attitude should still be one of love and unification by love.”

From the Wisdom of Kahlil Gibran

“Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.”

Matthew 21.1-3, 6-11 (NIV)

 As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethpage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, ²saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. ³If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the [Teacher] needs them, and he will send them right away.” ⁶The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. ⁷They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. ⁸A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. ⁹The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted, ”Hosanna to the Son of David!” ”Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Hosanna in the highest!”  ¹⁰When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?” ¹¹The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Second Life Reflection April 9, 2011| Dry Bones or Raised to New Life?

The lessons for this week are listed below the audio.  Join us each week at Sunshine Cathedral in Second Life.  Download the software and make your avatar at http://www.secondlife.com.  Search Sunshine Cathedral in Classifieds to find your way to us.  We meet each Saturday at 5pm EDT/ 2pm SLT  My name in Second Life is CristoferAslan Muircastle.

We look forward to having you at service!

 

Dry Bones or Raised to New Life_

Music

Dry Bones by The Persuasions on Sunday Morning Soul    

Lazarus by Scott Krippayne on Life Is Precious - A Wes King Tribute

Live While I'm Alive by Jenny Jordan Frogley on Beautiful Life                 

 

 

The Lessons

Ez. 37.1, 3-12, 14

 ¹ The Divine hand…was upon me, and…set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. ³ A Voice asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” I said, “O Sovereign, you alone know.” ⁴ Then the Voice said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of divine Life! ⁵ This is what the ETERNAL says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. ⁶ I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the HOLY ONE.’ “ ⁷ So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. ⁸ I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them ⁹ Then the Voice said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, mortal, and say to it, ‘This is what the ETERNAL says: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” ¹⁰ So I prophesied…and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.¹¹ Then the Voice said to me: “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ ¹² Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what your God says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back…¹⁴ I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I have spoken, and I have done it.’ ”

 

 John 11.32-39a, 41-44

 ³²When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the others who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. ³⁴“Where have you laid him?” he asked. ”Come and see,” they replied.  ³⁵Jesus wept. ³⁶Then the religious leaders said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” ³⁸Jesus, once more deeply moved, came to the tomb. It was a cave with a stone laid across the entrance. ³⁹“Take away the stone,” he said.  

 

 ⁴¹So they took away the stone. Then Jesus looked up and said, “Abba, I thank you that you have heard me. ⁴²I know that you always hear me, but I said this for the benefit of the people standing here, that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”

 

MCC brings Charter for Compassion to Second Life

by Rev. BK Hipsher

Karen Armstrong's new book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life surely has the power to change the world. Thanks to a new book study just begun it has the power to change another world, the virtual world of Second Life (SL). Armstrong's new book is based on her life and her work on the Charter for Compassion, a collaborative document started by Karen Armstrong after she won the TED award a few years ago.

Sunshine Cathedral, a Metropolitan Community Church congregation in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, has generously sponsored my ministry in Second Life for two years this month. Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins and Rev. Dr. Robert Griffin continue to lend their support to the congregation in SL for this cutting edge ministry. Each week we have services on Saturday at 5pm EST/ 2pm SLT (Second Life Time).  It has long been my dream to expand the programming in Second Life to include book studies, a Classical Reform Jewish service once per month, Buddhist meditation sessions, comparative religion discussions and more.  This week marks the beginning of the fulfillment of that dream.

My good friend Rev. Dr. Kharma Amos of MCC of Northern Virginia recently partnered with us to co-host our very first book study in SL.  She and are are both Karen Armstrong fans and she introduced me (I am deeply in her debt) to Armstrong's new book Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life. It was her idea to host a book study, inviting members of her real life (RL) congregation in Fairfax, VA, in Second Life. It's a dream come true for me and again with the support of Sunshine Cathedral, MCC of Northern Virginia is hosting this grand experiment in virtual relationality.

Our first session on Thursday, February 17, 2011 was an "informational, solve the tech issues, review the discussion guidelines, and have a sense of the overall structure" affair. We will begin with a weekly review of each chapter in the book including the preface and the prologue for a total of 14 weekly meetings. We will meet on Thursdays at 6:30pm EST. You are all invited! 

Simply go to www.secondlife.com, download the software, make your avatar (the virtual body you will use to move about Second Life) and then log onto the software using your username and password.  Once there "search" MCC NOVA or Sunshine Cathedral on the "Classifieds" tab. There you will find a "teleport" button that will land you in the courtyard of the facility where the study will be held. Search CristoferAslan Muircastle (that's me!) and offer friendship so we can connect in SL.

I'll be happy to meet you before the next meeting to get you squared away and ready to hear voice presentations from both Kharma and myself along with music, prayers, and dialogue with others in the study.  It's a GRAND experiment and I'm so happy to be part of it.  Come join the diversity of Second Life and enrich your REAL life in the process.

It's no accident that Durrell, Robert, Kharma, and I all graduated from Episcopal Divinity School.  There we were taught to honor diversity, seek reconciliation and work for justice... all from the point of view of living with compassion.  We are all grateful for that foundation to our theological and personal lives and give thanks for the faculty and administration who facilitated our education there. Karen Armstrong was the Kellogg Lecturer at Episcopal Divinity School in May 2006.

Rev. Dr. Robert Griffin currently serves as a Trustee for Episcopal Divinity School

Rev. BK Hipsher is currently serving on the Alumni/ae Executive Committee and plans to graduate from the Doctor of Ministry program there in 2012.