Saints in Holy Connection Abiding
Teen suicide rates are an epidemic scourge devastating this nation. Those people in your Facebook page are not sustaining you. Your phone, for the most part, is alienating you from all that is worthwhile. And it is also highly addictive.
I see people even in the mist of congregational prayers stuck in their phones. Not attending at all to the present moment. Not present for the community that is holy nourishment. Certainly not attending to the God present in that gathering.
The Rabbi Martin Buber posits that relationship is so central to existence that in fact, God is Relationship. To respond to that holy moment is to will one thing. It is to will your complete presence to the other. The other who is a “Thou.” Not an “it.”
All who commit to such singular gift of themselves to the other, to their community, to the natural world – those I call the Saints of God in Holy Connection Abiding.
This can happen anywhere. You can really meet them on trains or in shops or at tea. Even at Best Buy.
I was there to see why my upgrade order for a new iPhone had not gone through. Something was very mixed up at Verizon. They had handled the initial attempt to purchase and now it was completely screwed up.
Their rep on the phone spent some 45 minutes of my time going around in circles with this order.
I was not in the best of moods when I hung up and decided I needed to talk to a real, live person. So, I headed off to Best Buy.
There I found a young African-American salesperson about thirtyish. A fellow named TJ. His broad smile and welcoming attitude immediately softened my distress.
He got on the phone with the Verizon people. Patiently he waited as he was handed off several times to the next higher up person who might be able to resolve the issue. All the time he was the picture of Holy Patience. Just listening to his end of the conversation, my spirit was nourished. Here was a Holy Connection. Divine Relationship.
It seemed like the 40 or so minutes I waited, while TJ resolved everything and handed me a new blue iPhone, had gone by in a flash. During the moments he was on hold we talked about our families. He showed me pictures of his children, all named with biblical names. He told me about his church and the difficulties they had during COVID.
Of course, I had some pictures of Luther and my family.
By the time we had finalized the sale, I was a most happy camper. My soul had been nourished by this brief connection. TJ is one of the glorious Saints of Holy Connection Abiding. God sent! He made my day.
Those who respond to community need are also Saints in Holy Connection.
These days I often find my thoughts circling back to those who gave their lives for others during the tragedy of 9/11. I recall the one fireman responding to a woman coming down the stairs of one of the towers, who told him, “Don’t go up there.” He replied, “It’s my job.”
One of the most beloved who died that day was the chaplain Father Mychal Judge, much beloved by all firefighters. He could often be seen at a fire praying for those rushing towards the flames and into smoke-filled buildings. Or offering consolation to those pulled from the fire who had lost everything.
On the day before those tragic events of 9/11, he offered this prayer at the commissioning of a renovated firehouse:
“Good days. And bad days. Up days. Down days. Sad days. Happy days. But never a boring day on this job. You do what God has called you to do. You show up. You put one foot in front of another. You get on the rig and you go out and do the job. Which is a mystery. And a surprise. You have no idea when you get on that rig. No matter how big the call. No matter how small. You have no idea what God is calling you to. But he needs you. He needs me. He needs all of us.”[1]
Father Mychal, a Saint of Holy Connection who would give his life at that fire on 9/11, like so many others of the FDNY.
The Beatitudes embody that very same spirituality – life lived in connection. Connection with oneself. Connection with one’s neighbor. Connection with one’s world and all of nature. Fr. Mychal embodied that connection with those firefighters and his community.
“How blessed…” begin the various petitions of that reading. Not “How happy.” Baruch (בָּרוּךְ) signifies something far deeper than the ephemeral pleasure that happiness connotes.
Fr. Mychal may or may not have been happy on many days. He most assuredly was blessed and was a blessing to all he encountered. As the many who would attest at his memorial service days later.
Blessed souls. These are the saints of God. You and I as we attend to the Spirit within, around and out and about. Blessed, indeed in Holy Connection.
We recently lost another blessed soul, Delores Huerta. Truly a Saint of Holy Connection. At 96 her life was well spent for others. She worked in the shadow of Cesar Chavez in the fields in and around Bakersfield, California.
She was a gifted organizer, bringing hope to thousands of migrant laborers who toiled in the sun-soaked fields picking our lettuce and grapes. She was responsible for the laws which protected these workers and enabled them to strive for a living wage, protected them from pesticides sprayed in the fields, and hope for a future for their children.
Now we have ICE hunting these workers down like dogs. Deporting them to God-knows-where. I remember being out in those fields with my picket sign in support. When those jobs were offered to citified white workers, not one of the 6 or 7 who took them up on that offer lasted more than a couple of hours. I say, give all these workers instant citizenship. NOW! They’ve earned it.
Her efforts enabled Jai and me when living in Los Angeles, to host 5 or 6 of these workers in our home during the Safeway Grape Boycott. When I didn’t have classes, I would be out there on the picket line with them at our local Safeway store.
That experience was my immersion into Spanish as none of them spoke any English. I can still vividly remember when one of the women showed up in our kitchen with a plastic bag while I was preparing dinner. She said something in Spanish which I didn’t understand. Jai, who is fluent in Spanish, told me to say to her, “Que ponga la busura aqui,” pointing to a trash can in the corner. “You may put the trash here.” My life was immediately enriched in that moment. The beginning of a Holy Connection through that lyrical language. And through the companionship of those grape workers during the month or so they lived with us.
Delores was arrested 22 times. She was ruffed up by strike-breakers and so badly beaten by a police officer that she suffered broken ribs and a ruptured spleen that disabled her for months.
“The mother of 14 children, she often was seen changing diapers between organizing meetings. Nursing her babies during breaks in negotiations. Her children often lived with friends, eating donated food. Most of them grew up to be dedicated activists and professionals, including a lawyer and a physician. Some became performing artists and one a therapist, another a business administrator and one a chef.”[2]
Later in life, Delores had the courage to share a dark side to her life. Cesar Chavez had raped her, resulting in the births of two children which she gave up for adoption. Her courage opened the way for other women who had been abused by Chavez to come forward.
Why did she wait so long to reveal these ugly truths? “I saw him, again, as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible…I never talked about it to anybody and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement.”[3]
For the sake of those she championed in California’s fields, she suffered in silence. She bore that cross for others.
This week I received by copy of The Veteran, the publication of my veteran’s organization, Vietnam Veterans Against the War. There I read of the fifth school library we have funded in Vietnam. These gifts have also spurred other investment in children by their government and others. Taiwan, through a private foundation has also donated books and other resources.
A Holy Connection between our two peoples, overcoming the estrangement of that tragic conflict. Vietnam still abounds in people with stunted or missing limbs due to the United States Air Force having dumped tons of Agent Orange on that nation. And even our own government, for years, wouldn’t acknowledge the damage it did to our own soldiers and their offspring. A gift of evil passed down generation to generation.
My veteran’s organization, a salesman, a chaplain, a pedestrian on a corner — Saints of God Abiding in Holy Connection. Yes, God is Love and those who abide in Love abide in God and God in them. Glorious saints all.
At our Pilgrim Place noon meal, there is a “sharing” offered up by one of our folks. Mary Ann Brussat offered this up the other day. It’s a reading from the artist that created the sculpture of St. Francis that’s behind her house, Frederick Franck. It’s from his book, Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred.[4]
It reveals the generosity of this Holy Connection leading to sainthood. What this generosity is all about for us ordinary mortals.
“I was five and lying in high grass. A bee hummed close to my eye and frightened me. Then the bee started to suck honey and at that very moment I became sun, a bee, flower and grass. ‘Me’ had evaporated with my fear.”
“Then, when I was eleven, on a country road, I saw a snow flurry approach from afar. The first few snowflakes fell around my feet from the dark wintry sky. I saw how some of the flakes melted immediately on impact, others stayed. Again, ‘Me’ disappeared, melted with snowflakes, became one with road and sky and snowstorm. It has happened often, always when least expected.”
“A few hours before leaving on this journey driving somewhere in New Jersey, I lost my way back to the parkway. At last, at a traffic light stood a pedestrian, a very fat man in a battered homburg hat. A greasy cigar stuck out straight from what looked more like a snout than a face.
“‘How do I get to Route 4?’ I called out.”
“‘Route 4,’ he repeated, chewing on his cigar. ‘Nothing to it!’ His little eyes twinkled with kindness. ‘Take a left at the second light, can’t miss it!’ He had put his fat hand on my sleeve and given a friendly squeeze.”
“I looked at him and saw. I tried to thank him, but no sound came. I made a kind of bow. The jelly had become Man.”
“What is spiritual experience? A snowflake melting, a bee sucking honey, a fat man at a traffic light. Trivia.”
The world is filled with such glorious saints of God. Saints in Holy Connection Abiding. Amen.
[1]Garrett M. Graff, The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 (New York: Avid Reader Press, 2019), 3.
[2] Robert D McFadden, “Labor Leader of Farm Workers Who Earned Folk-Hero Status,” The New York Times, October 29, 2026.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Frederick Franck, Fingers Pointing Toward the Sacred: A Twentieth Century Pilgrimage on the Eastern and Western Way (Junction City, OR: Beacon Point Press,1994).
Delores Huerta
1930-2026
November 1, 2026
All Saints Sunday, Proper for All Saints
“Saints in Holy Connection Abiding”
”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Revelation 9:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10
1 John 1:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12
Which is Which – Caesar’s, God’s?
I remember asking a dutiful, reasonably intelligent citizen once, what she owed the government. What obligations she had just by being a member of this collective enterprise called the United States of America.
I was surprised by her answer: “Nothing.”
“Nothing,” I asked in astonishment? “Nothing,” came back the retort.
Now such an attitude I associate with people who dump their McShake container out their car window as they drive along. This is the attitude of folks who jump the line at the post office or the DMV. This is the lack of shared responsibility passed along to their children who disrupt the class, talking incessantly over the others trying to hear what another student is saying. “Nothing” owed to much of anyone except that person’s sense of their own importance. Me first and if anyone else survives, it’s mere coincidence.
In Jesus’ time, the government in Rome was a far-off irritant. It only held meaning when it’s dictates were served by its locally corrupt administrators, the tax collectors and money changers at the temple who got wealthy at the people’s expense through grift and thievery.
My dad certainly had no love for the taxman. He would resort to any dodge to shave off what he owed the IRS each year. Some deductions were, let’s say, shady. At least questionable. Fortunately, his tax preparer Paul was straight arrow and kept him out of trouble.
I do remember one issue he had with the California State Franchise Tax Board. It was over a miscalculation on his part of his employees’ withholding tax payments for one year.
I had been helping out at the office and had taken over the bookkeeping after my mom had died. The issue at hand was several years old and apparently, the tax folks had finally gotten around to catching it. It was an underpayment of 600 or 700 dollars.
In the scheme of things, considering the size of his business, this was chump change. So, when we got the letter dunning him for the amount plus penalties and interest, I was prepared to send in a check when I paid the bills.
Dad would not hear of it. “These people are going to rob me blind. We’re certainly not paying this extortion.” End of discussion.
Next month we got another dunning letter with more interest due and higher penalties. Again, it went in the round, circular file on the floor.
Finally, we got a really stern letter threatening to take the company’s business license and promising firing squads and other odious action to collect this, now some $1,200 obligation. To no avail I argued that we just weren’t going to win this one.
While Dad would not relent, he did agree for us to go down to the Franchise Tax office in downtown Long Beach. Just finding a parking place took forever. When we made it up to the second or third floor office, there was a big waiting line. We took a number and sat down with the other disgruntled souls. My big mistake was a failure to bring a book.
We were finally called to the window. Dad, in usual form was irate. Waving this letter around, he demanded that they cancel this bill and all the extra charges. The lady at the window must have been a saint. Patiently she went through her file, explaining where the misunderstanding must have occurred. Dad would hear none of it. She continued in a low, soft voice attempting to clarify the matter in his mind and mollify his anger.
We finally left with the matter unresolved, but had in hand a page containing the further enforcement actions the state would be obliged to take. The threat was dire. So dire that the next day Dad caved in. Mumbling, he agreed for me to write the check. “And be sure and send it registered mail so these ‘blankety-blank’ crooks get it.”
In our God-given wisdom we are given the ability to order our common life. “Governments are instituted among men to secure these rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Opposed to the Roman Empire, the authority for the political order of this republic is not Caesar but the people. Though the current incumbent at the White House believes he has both Caesar’s power and authority. November 3rd we’ll see. But I digress.
The question poised by those trying to entrap Jesus and turn the populace against him concerned taxes and Caesar. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the empower, or not. Unctuous, ringing their hands these obsequious authorities in great concern – oh so very great concern –pressed their question.
Now, if Jesus answered, it was lawful and proper to pay the dreaded taxes he would have alienated the tax-hating crowd that pressed in ever closer to hear his answer. If he answered, “No,” he would have been hauled off for trial in Rome or worse.
“Show me the coin used for the tax. Whose face is on it?” You know the rest. “Give to the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
So, send in that check to the Franchise Tax Board.
In a democracy, as it reflets our desire to support the common good, that all might flourish and exercise their freedoms and God-given talents – to that degree, the ability to order our common life is a gift of God. Exercised hopefully through the concern we have for one another.
Unfortunately, this ideal has been far from reality in practice. Honored in the breech. But from time to time, it has kept us from the law of the jungle where the meanest, sociopathic SOBs with the most guns prey on the rest of us. Sometimes the center has held.
But we have experienced periods of ruthless failure. Ask our First Nations people. Ask the Black citizens at the lynching trees of this land. Ask the poor working stiff as the tax code is jiggered to keep him or her impoverished while enabling astronomical wealth for the one per cent at the very top. Ask the Chinese who built our railroads in the 1860s, or the Japanese stripped of their dignity and possessions solely over lies spread by a bigoted general in California at the inception of WW II. Lies acquiesced to by none other than FDR. Ask these folks.
Yet, it has been through our government, fueled by citizen power that from time to time we have addressed these gross injustices. Yes, in many cases, through halfhearted amends. But still a long way to go. Yet the effort bends towards justice, bends towards the fashioning of the Beloved Community of Dr. King. In that it does, I believe it has the blessings of heaven.
So, though I often vehemently disagree with the use of my tax dollars – endless wars, the persecution of the president’s imagined enemies, the denial of impending climate catastrophe, the jiggering of the tax code to give birth to more millionaires and billionaires – yes, this year again, I figured my tax obligation.
As George Orwell is reputed to have said, “The rich will rob you blind but first they will arrange the laws so what they do is not illegal.” And when the tool of theft is the government, hold on to your wallet!” Robert Reich is right, what counts is who makes the rules.
One example. Just one.
After the runaway speculation that gave us the Great Depression, Congress created rules that separated investment banking from commercial banking. This prohibited banks from using your deposits to speculate in wild, unsecured investments. With that and FDR’s Banking Act of 1933, the government reopened the banks and created the Federal Deposit Insurance program guaranteeing banking customers that their deposits were safe. Safer than “under the mattress,” as FDR put it. Your bank will no longer be a casino.
To buttress these protections, Congress under the leadership of Senator Elizabeth Warren set up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. All over the howls of the uber rich and their political puppets. Over all the scare-mongering she made it work and headed it up. Trump and his oligarchs have by now virtually gutted it. Let the good times roll. For the top one percent that is.
The Dodd-Frank legislation was enacted to address the 2008 mini–Great Depression. The banks hired armies of lobbyists and arm-twisters to prevent this legislation form being enacted. Having failed that, JPMorgan “spent more money lobbying against Dodd-Frank than any other Wall Street firm — creating exceptions, exemptions, and loopholes that effectively allowed it to do much of what it was doing before the crisis…more money than any other bank to water it down.”[1]
I remember my wife asking her mother, who had been a banker, and was raised in a family of bankers who had owned the main bank of San Jacinto, California, where she had grown up – asked her mother if banks could ever fail like they did in the Great Depression.
Her mother’s answer was an unequivocal, “No – there are now rules.” No more. Not so many.
Forcing our government to serve the needs of all the people is a never-ending job. Eternal vigilance is the price to preserve this democracy. It’s like housekeeping — never done.
I close with the sentiments expressed in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a friend, Richard Price in 1789. (ME 7:7253).[2]
“”Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government…whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.”
This November 3rd, if things are so far wrong to have gotten our attention, it will our God-given duty to “set them to rights.” Just paying one’s taxes and policing one’s litter is insufficient. Not if all are to enjoy the benefits of our common life together. Yes, go vote. Then go the extra mile to the “Glory of God and the good of your neighbor.
Amen.
[1] Robert Reich, The System: Who Rigged it, How We Fix It) New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2020), 60.
[2] The citation “ME 7:253” refers to a specific volume and page number in the Lipscomb and Bergh edition of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Monticello Edition). [1]
The exact text found at Volume 7, Page 253
October 18, 2026
Pentecost 21, Proper 24
“Which is Which – Caesar’s, God’s?”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 45:1-7; Psalm 96:1-13
1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22
All Good Things
A comfort at memorial services for many is the 23rd Psalm. It speaks tenderly of God’s gracious intention for us all. It speaks to our deepest yearning for an existence that has meaning and significance.
Indeed, we have been granted a cornucopia of plenty. We have a planet that is just right for human habitation – in what scientists call the “Goldilocks Zone.” It abounds with fields of grain and lush forests of game. The seas team with a multitude of fish and clams, lobsters and squid.
Isaiah celebrates God’s gracious munificence.
“For you have been a refuge to the poor, a refuge to the needy in their distress a shelter from the rainstorm and a shade from the heat. When the blast of the ruthless was like a winter rainstorm, the noise of aliens like heat in a dry place, you subdued the heart with the shade of clouds; the song of the ruthless was stilled. On this mountain the lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.”
Now that I have lost quite a bit of my taste – old age or COVID, I can’t say which – food does not have that much appeal, though somethings I can taste quite well, like coffee, spinach and beer.
One of my favorites has been lima bean soup and ham hocks. I learned to make this from my roommate’s mom who came from Texas. It was a favorite with Dan and myself.
So, back in the day when I was in medic training in the Army, we were out on bivouac for several days. What was served up at the end of a long, very hot slog through woods were K-rations. They came in a small olive-drab can and you heated up your selection over a small camp stove.
There were a number of choices and as I pawed through the box of them, I was delighted to find one that said lima beans and ham. Wow! I had hit the jackpot.
I heated up my can, and opened it to great disappointment. There, floating in a sea of grease was one, ONE lima bean.
The vendor of that product should have been hauled up before a firing squad, was my thought in that moment. Or at least sent to jail for fraud.
I delight in this lavish picture of the end-time feast. But we are the despoilers of this paradise. We have fouled our nest. We have turned that fabled feast into one lima floating in a sea of grease.
I worry most about what we are leaving my little grandson Luther. But the calamity will likely strike during the lifespan of my children.
I have previously mentioned the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC). Yeah, I didn’t expect anyone to remember.
Well, catastrophe is now upon us[1]. Perhaps in my lifetime. Certainly, in the lifespan of my children. Definitely while Luther is still alive.
Okay, what is it. Here’s the refresher. It is that circulating current that brings the warm Gulf Stream up along America’s east coast. Onward along Labrador and Newfoundland splitting off to the east coast of Greenland. In bringing warm water to Europe, it keeps things seasonably warm, even in winter.
It then dives down to the ocean floor and cycles back to the Gulf of Mexico in an entire journey of some 1,000 years – yes, Mexico, not Gulf of America!
We are now discovering that this crucial ocean current is approaching a tipping point where it will slow substantially, or perhaps even shut down completely.
What happens next? Europe and northern Asia, Canada and Alaska will enter another ice age. Just as much of the northern climes of planet earth were covered by a mile or so in solid ice.
Not much commerce takes place under such conditions. And we will have a refugee crisis like none in historical memory. Such a disaster would undermine global food supplies, millions starving. In the breakdown of civil societies, only the meanest SOBs with the most guns would reign. Yes, millions of refugees – all coming to America. What will we do? Shoot them all at the border? If so, don’t get powder burns on your pinafore.
Like most natural phenomena, scientists cannot predict with any certainty. Scientists have been sounding the alarm for some 40 years, yet, since it seemed so far off, the political class has not listened.
The near-term effects, coming soon, will be drier summers, fueling more devastating wildfires. Diminishing food production and bringing more sudden winter storms with torrential rains and flooding. Yes, fouled our nest have we.
One lima bean floating in a sea of grease is a fitting metaphor for where we’re heading. This is not God’s intention.
But it’s not too late to avoid the worst. The Truth will be our salvation. It will set us free. But as my friend Ed Bacon is wont to say, “But first it will hurt like Hell.”
In our Advent study book for this year, we will be reading Dancing in the Darkness by Otis Moss III.[2] Otis is an African-American heading one of the most vibrant, mostly Black UCC congregations in Chicago. In his book Otis shares a letter he wrote to his young son. In part it reads:
“Dear Elijah,
“What shall I tell you?
“Shall I tell you that your rights are protected, and racism is a scourge now banished from society?
“Shall I tell you that in this country, you are entitled to act and live as any other teenage boy, to dance playfully with minor mischief, and to speak with a quick, immature tongue?
“Shall I tell you that your body is safe, your mind valued, your future free?
“If I tell you these things, my words will be perjury before God and an assault upon the memory of our ancestors. So today I must share a hard truth with you.”
Yes, hard truths. The same truths I must leave for my grandson Luther, for he, too, will not be valued as that other white child in his classroom, on his job application, in his college admission prospects, in his profession. Or on most any job.
Yet, that is not God’s intention for any child.
Some will say, well, what can we do? It’s all in God’s hands. And in some measure that is true. True because God’s hands are OUR hands.
We are blessed with reason and skill. We have agency, beginning with spiritual resilience. Most important, we have been granted a vision of what might be. A spiritual vision wherein all thrive. Where our planet has a chance of remaining habitable.
America may be traveling through a time of deep darkness. Climate denial. Racism and political violence. Thousands upon thousands living in the street, food insecure.
During such a time Otis Moss recounts in the darkness of the evening in his house he thought he heard a suspicious noise. Obama was running for president and a fear of racial violence was not unrealistic for a Black family.
He grabbed a baseball bat to confront an intruder. When he opened the door to his daughter’s room he found the source of the noise. His little girl was simply practicing for a ballet recital the next day. There, dancing in the darkness.
But the darkness had been in Otis. “The intruder was within himself. Caught in a cycle of worry and anger.”[3] He had allowed the darkness of that night to penetrate his soul.
Inspired by that moment, came a sermon based on Psalm 30. “You have turned my mourning into dancing.” That sermon became our Advent study book. Advent is a proclamation of Light coming into the darkness. Into our darkness that we might go dancing through the dark night of the soul. Moving imperceptibly, inexorably toward the Joy at a manger.
We are a part of that holy procession. We have agency as God’s hands and feet. God’s mind and heart. Agency! God-given spiritual power in Christ to make a difference.
I close with a thought from the great playwright August Wilson.
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”[4] May we have the willingness to wrestle with the demons of this nation. The rife ignorance of our leadership, the racism, the denial of the destructiveness of our own history. May we have the willingness. Then, the better angels of America will sing a Hallelujah Chorus. And so will we. Maybe November 3rd? Dancing all the way to the polls. Amen.
[1] Alec Luhn, “Trouble at Sea: A crucial ocean current is at risk of shutting down. How close is this disaster and what happens next asks Alec Luhn” New Scientist, September 2, 2026.
[2] Otis Moss III, Dancing in the Darkness: Spiritual Lessons for Thriving in Turbulent Times (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2023).
[3] Op. Cit., the front cover flyleaf, as is the entirety of that story.
[4]Op. Cit., August Wilson, quoted in the introduction, p.1.
Where’s the ham?
October 11, 2026
Pentecost 20, Proper 23
“All Good Things”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Isaiah 25:1-9; Psalm 23
Philippians 4:1-9; Matthew 22:1-14
The Splendors of Creation
This Sunday our church celebrates its patronal feast day, St. Francis Day. We will indeed bless the animals. Each in their own heart carries images of St. Francis. And there is some historical evidence, though scant as it is.
Like all holy personages of distant past, the life of St. Francis is shrouded in myth and legend. In his novel, Saint Francis,[1] Nikos Kazantzakis brings forth a most vivid picture of the beloved saint.
Kazantzakis tells the story of St. Francis through the fictional character Brother Leo, a God-obsessed follower of the beloved saint. It is he who commits to writing down everything he remembers of what Francis said and did.
In the mists of memory and urged on through inner compulsion Brother Leo explains how he came to produce the story.
“Every evening beneath the light of the lamp I took aim at each of your words, each of your acts, and pinned them down securely one by one so that they would not perish. A single word from your lips, I said to myself may save a soul. If I fail to record it, fail to reveal it to mankind, that soul will not be saved, and I will be to blame.[2]
“I had taken up my quill to begin writing many times before now, but I always abandoned it quickly, each time I was overcome with fear. Yes, may God forgive me, but the letters of the alphabet frighten me terribly. They are sly, shameless demons—and dangerous! You open the inkwell, release them: they run off—and how will you ever get control of them again! They come to life, join, separate, ignore your commands, arrange themselves as they like on the paper—black, with tails and horns. You scream at them and implore them in vain: they do as they please. Prancing, pairing up shamelessly before you, they deceitfully expose what you did not wish to reveal, and they refuse to give voice to what is struggling, deep with your bowels, to come forth and speak to mankind.[3]
One Sunday, Brother Leo, arriving home from church is finally God-compelled to take up the story.
“Had God not squeezed those demons into place whether they liked it or not, with the result that they wrote the Gospels? Well then, I said to myself, Courage, my soul! Have no fear of them! Take up your quill and write![4]
What a marvelous narration of how the imagination reconstructs a story from the scant bits and fragments of personal and corporate memory, from legend and myth, where little actual historical fact is to be had.
And so, Spirit-inspired, this is how Kazantzakis offers up the reality of this sainted personage as it has become imbedded in his soul.
And this the best that any of us can do. The reality of St. Francis is what the Spirit has implanted in our souls. Yea, a smattering of facts, but they hold no existential meaning. Meaning comes from the living images of St. Francis that mentor behavior and understanding.
So, here’s what the spiritual gift of that saint that guides my understanding and actions, the gift that uplifts my soul.
First, St. Francis for me is the seer of the immensity and wonder of creation. There is an incident in Kazantzakis’ novel where one monk abhors the redness of the geraniums at the gate of his parents’ house. Monk Peter asserts, that flower is evil for it is a distraction from God. Francis to the contrary, tells his mother that it is a blessing, for in the deep redness of that flower God is revealed.
I agree with Francis. The natural world at its deepest levels – from the tiniest amoeba to the swirling billions of galaxies revealed in the James Webb and Nancy Grace Roman space telescopes. The lizard in my yard that I delight in as I spend most of an hour observing as it seeks its next meal and basks in the warming sun.
Francis is the saint celebrating the delights of the oneness of creation.
As our reading from Job exclaims, these mysteries are beyond our ken. God inquires of Job’s presumptiveness:
“Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you observe the calving of the deer? Can you number the months that they fulfil, and do you know the time when they give birth, when they crouch to give birth to their offspring, and they are delivered of their young? Their young ones become strong; they grow up in the open; they go forth and do not return…Who has let the wild ass go free?”
Of course, Job in his hubris knows absolutely nothing of these natural delights. Nothing.
He knows nothing more than we know of many of the mysteries of the cosmos. We still have not a clue as to that dark matter is or what that dark energy is that continues to propel the galaxies further apart from one another.
He knows nothing more than this administration knows or will acknowledge of global warming that already is killing hundreds of thousands of us in increasingly uninhabitable lands. Nothing. And our Mother Earth continues to heat up.
This world and beyond is a treasure revealing the depths of God every much as my friendly lizard friend or Francis’ brilliant, red geranium at the gate.
Might it be time that we, along with the Psalmist, delight in the immensity and began to care for it? Before it’s too late? Just saying.
Secondly, Francis appreciated the gifts of women.
He valued the gifts of all. He worked with Saint Clare as an equal in her work to draw women closer to God. The Poor Clares, the Order of Saint Clare was an order of the Franciscans.
Recently, we have lost a beloved sister with the passing of Gloria Steinem. I believe St. Francis would have delighted in her gifts and mission. She worked for decades to elevate women to their full potential. It was her work in encouraging women to build flesh-and-blood networks that opened the door to the awareness of their full ability to claim their rightful place in society. To exercise all their gifts of mind and spirit.
In a 2016 speech she said, “Something happens when we are together in a room like this with all five senses, that cannot happen on the printed page—as much as I love books – that cannot happen on a screen.”[5] Such gatherings were the key to consciousness-raising. No, you can’t do this on your cell phone!
In the tradition of St. Francis, I totally agree with Ms. Steinem and celebrate her legacy – a gift to all of us.
In her memory we are called to stand opposed to the misogamy of this current administration that has demoted and disparaged women as “fat, stupid, and unqualified.” We must send these women haters a loud and clear message this November.
I close with a story of three monks at evening prayer that gives us an insight to their three orders – Dominican, Franciscan, Jesuit. At some point the lights go out. The Dominican begins to philosophize on the nature of light. The Franciscan began to pray in celebration of Brother Darkness. The Jesuit goes outside and changes the fuse.
I believe I share a deep resonance with the Franciscan in his delight in the deep mystery of creation. Yes, that deep red geranium flower and the prancing wild mountain goat of Job. I also share a heritage with the Jesuit who gets stuff done.
With Francis, I believe I too have received the same divine call, “Build my Church.” Yes, maybe a bit God-obsessed as Brother Leo and Father Francis. In a vibrant community of memory and faith, the door of eternity opens wide. Wherein we celebrate and give thanks for the splendor of God’s handiwork in the cosmos.
So, to the memory and legacy of Francis, that beloved saint of Assisi, may God be praised. Amen.
[1] Nikos Kazantzakis, Saint Francis (New York: Ballantine Books, 1966).
[2] Ibid, 20.
[3][3] Ibid, 20-21.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Michelle Goldberg, “Losing Steinem and the Freedoms She Fought For,”, September 6, 2026
October 4, 2026
St. Francis Feast Day
“The Splendors of Creation”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Job 39:1-18 Psalm 121
Acts 4:32-35; Luke 12:13-21
On Wings of Grace
We’ve always had someone who believed in us. If we hadn’t, we wouldn’t have made it this far through all the trials and tribulations of this life. We wouldn’t have made anything of ourselves.
As a hymn puts it, “Blessed are the feet of those who bring glad tidings.” Messengers of Grace. On such wings we are buyoed up and develop our wings. In scripture such are angelos, angels in English. Messengers.
Though my father thought I’d never amount to anything, I had an English teacher in the eleventh grade, Mrs. Reiner, who had high hopes for me.
I remember one day in her class. As usual I hadn’t done the reading. When called upon, I had nothing to say. And, as usual, I felt like a complete dolt. As the class was leaving after the bell had rung, Mrs. Reiner pulled me aside. She gently said, “John, I know you are capable of much more than what you’re doing.”
That was it. As simple and as sincerely as that. I knew deep down, she actually meant it. She was the first teacher who had believed in me. Knew that I was capable of so much more. Delivered by a blessed messenger of God.
It was later in my senior year, based on my remembered encouragement of her words, that I signed up for a class in world literature. And loved it. I actually think I would have lived up to her expectations.
Mrs. Reiner was the messenger of good news, of possibility I needed at that point in my life.
Jonah is such a messenger to ancient city of Ninevah. I suspect his admonishments were not quite so gentle as those of Mrs. Reiner. I suspect that he breathed fire, smoke and thunder on the wickedness of that people.
And they listened. And amended their evil ways. God did not destroy that city as Jonah had said God would. God did not bring calamity down on those wayward people.
Now, Jonah being very human, felt he had been dissed by God. He feels himself to be in such disgrace that he would rather die.
Jonah retreats to a barren hill to sulk. Still waiting to see if God would destroy that city. While he stews, a bush grows up to shade him from the scorching sun. Grows up almost overnight and was a great comfor to Jonah as he sat under its shade.
But in a short while God appointed a worm to attack the bush. It died and God took command of the elements.
“God prepared a sultry east wind,and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, ‘It is better for me to die than to live.’”
“But God said to Jonah, ‘Is it right for you to be angry about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Ninevah, that great city, in which there are more than anhundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right from their left, and also many animals?”
Some of God’s messengers cannot abide such freely given Grace. All so human. In their petulence they actually hope God will smite the wrong-doers with the threatened sword. Smite them dead to the very last one.
Again and again God sends messengers on the wings of Grace. And sometimes we actually heed their warmings. Live up to their encouragement. God’s word to the Ninevites? “You can do better than this. Now, shape up!”
The Results? There’s a “Wideness in God’s Mercy” which Jonah can’t comprehend or accept.
In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, hired at different hours of the day yet all paid the same generous wage, the first hired complained about the master’s extravagance. Grace freely abounding. Same Wideness. In parable after parable, Jesus is the messenger with Wings of such Mercy and Grace.
Leymah Gbowee has been such a messenge of Grace to the nation of Liberia which had roiled in violence and turmoil since Samuel Doe overthrew the government of William Tolbert, the last Americo-Liberian president – a long line of Americo-Liberians dating from the arrival of the first American slaves on Liberia’s shores.
President Tolbert and most of his family and administration were publically executed on a beach, “murdered in front of screaming crowds” by machine gun fire.
Unrest again seized the nation when the forces of Charles Taylor, an army sergeant in bloody fighting overthrew Samuel Doe and brutally murdered him after hours of torture. The army of Taylor’s ragtag boy souldiers raped and pillaged Liberia for months on end. The full contagion of hell was soon to be unleashed on that impoverished nation.
The slaughter continued for months on end as bands of teenage boys roved the streets with AK-47s shooting at anyone and anything they took a fancy to destroy. As looting had emptied virtually all the markets, hunger was rife. Many now faced starvation.
Leymah witnessed one atrocity after another as the violence consumed Monrovia. When one armed boy at a checkpoint didn’t like the sight of a woman nursing her baby, he grabbed her and with a knife sliced off her breast.
Mighty be our Powers is Leylah’s powerful and redeeming story[1]
When thousands, including Leymah Gbowees’s family had taken refuge in the main Lutheran church in Monrovia, Taylor’s boy-soldiers raped and hacked to death or shot the hundreds taking refuge in that church. Fortunately, Leymah’s family had left only days earlier. U.S. Marines just stood by and did nothing to prevent the slaughter.
Finding herself in an abusive relationship with Daniel, a man who didn’t respect her, Leymah lost all self confidence. Beating and shouted insults went on endlessly. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” He used it so often that even her children picked it up and called her that.
Attempting to keep her three children alive and pregnant with a fourth, the walls had closed in. Depression overwhelmed her. Virtually disowned by her own father as just a “baby machine,” and unable to provide food for herself or her children, Leymah shut down.
Leymah and Daniel were now living with her parents as looters had destroyed her former house, and pretty much everything else in the old neighborhood.
One evening her mother asked her the question she had been dreading. Gently, she asked, “Leymah, what are you want to do with your life”[2]
“’Let me tell you something,’ she said. ‘I’ve endured those nights of listening to your dad say terrible things about what you’ve become. But I know that’s not who you are, and I know you can do better, I want to make a vow to you. If you decide you want to do something for yorself, if you decide to go back to school—I will tie my waist.” By now I couldn’t see the beauty of that night, because my tears were flowing.
“If an African woman tells you she will tie her waist, it means she will do anything for you, give you everything she has. ‘I will support you Leymah. I wil take care of your kids. Until you make something of your life.’”[3]
Previously she had been a social worker at the local office in Monrovia of Lutheran World Federation. Her mother, speaking those precious words of Grace and faith in her daugher were the wings on which Lehmah’s
courage would rise. Yes, as upon eagle’s wings. That unbounded faith of her mother gave her the courage to approach the director she had previously known before the carnage that had pulled Liberia into the darkest of nights.
The director, Tunde, this gentle man, also expressed an unbounded faith in Leymah. When she entered his office, he rejoiced. “I’ve been asking people about you.” When he saw her one day with a bruised arm and she let him know that Daniel had done that, he urged her to leave that abusive relationship.
Later, when she told Tunde that she had finally left Daniel, Tunde beamed, “Good for you. Don’t worry, you’ll find someone else one day.” Right now, she didn’t want anyone else.
She found that Tunde was easy to talk with. He was polite and respectful and valued her ideas and opinions. And while he had grown up in an abusive house and bore the scars of whippings, he was the gentlest person she had ever met. He offered encourage that chipped away at her feelings of inferiority, of being stupid and useless.
When she said she certainly couldn’t go back to school as he kept encouraging her to do, he lifted her confidence in herself insisting. “Yes, you can.” “I’ve lost my old abilities,” Leymah countered. Tunde again insisted, “No you haven’t…You have too much potential. Don’t throw it away. You know this isn’t the life you want for yourself.” She was afraid, but deep down she knew Tunde was right. Actually, before the war she had been a very good student. Long, long ago.
When her fourth child was about to arrive, Leymah was scared and confided to Tunde how vulnerable she felt. So trapped. He responded, “What if I told you thatI would be there for you and this child? What would you say?”[4]
“I would say that you’re lying. Men are not to be trusted.”
Yet on delivery day, there he was. He had rushed to her part of the city, forgetting to take anything with him that he might need. “I was so excited,” he exclaimed.
“’This gentle giant,’ I thought. ‘This was someone I could love.’” Wings of Grace. Wings of Mercy.
Leymah did go back to school and earn her A.A. degree. She would go on to found an army of women of faith that would stare down Taylor’s maurading boy souldiers. God’s Grace working through Leymah, the people who encouraged and suppored her. Such abounding Grace would eventualy bring peace to Liberia through the united effort of millions of Liberian women. But more about that later.
But here’s the secret. Each of us has the same promise of being messengers of Mercy and Grace. It’s our baptismal vow. Each of us daily is present with opportunities to bring hope and promise to be bearers of Mercy on Wings of Grace. If your life has been annointed by the Spirit, you have been given the gift to bring comfor, to bring restoration, to bring redemption. If not you, who else?
Grace abides at the food banks where we provide veggies and fruit. Grace happens when you gave a fiver to the fellow by the freeway, and then demanded to know why is he there. And what will we do about it? And vote for folks asking that very same question, folks who could do a lot about it. Grace happens when you give encouragement to a grandchild, or just sit down and listen to them with an open heart.
Grace descends on healing wings in manifold ways. Ways that the Spirit opens to our imaginations. Call a friend. Be a friend. Visit a shut-in can do wonders for them and for your soul. Work in the Garden of Hope or St. John’s Food Bank. That will do wonders for your health. And on October 17th, Grace will arrive on soaring outstretched wings all across the nation at No Kings Day demonstrations. Millions will be out in the streets proclaimng to America, “We Can Be Better Than This.” And on Sunday, November 1st, it will be “Souls to the Polls.” All of us claiming our right as citizens to make our voices heard. Grace abounding. Let’s be the Change we Seek. Pure unadulterated Grace that will “Pray the Devil back to Hell,” as Leymah and her sisters put it. Each one of us, Wings of Grace. Amen.
[1] Leylah Gbowee, Mighty be Our Powers: A Memoir, with Carol Mithers (New York: Beast Books, 2011).
[2] Op cit., 69-70.
[3] Op.cit., 72.
[4] Op. Cit., 79.
September 20, 2026
Pentecost 17, Proper 20
“On Wings of Grace”
The Rev. Dr. John C. Forney
Jonah 3:10-4:11 Psalm 145:1-8
Philippians 1:21-30; Matthew 20:1-16
