Greetings, friend,
I’ve been dreaming of blogging again, so here goes. We begin this new year with a sermon preached in Atlanta by Cynthia Hizer, after having attended a Sound as Prayer Workshop with Ruth Cunningham and me. You can understand why I try to do what I do.
I’ll be back soon. Enjoy the day, and show love now!
Ana
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Jesus said, “Now fill the jars with water.”
Were the jars empty?
The Heart Sutra, a teaching from Buddhism, says nothing is truly empty.
Everything is filled with something.
Air, moisture, fire, earth – potential.
Even empty, I bet if you blew across the top of a jar it would make a whistling sound.

So sound is there all along.
It is waiting to be activated,
waiting to well up from within itself
and be heard.
Waiting to be blessed.

That is the way I felt yesterday, during a workshop we held here at Epiphany. Ana and Ruth led us in chant, and breathing and silence. We came as jars empty, and we left filled.

It was hard to think about singing, about chanting, with so much pain in the world right now. Jesus said to fill the jar with water, and all I could think about was the Haitians so thirsty.
So empty.

I wanted to be silent.
But for Zion’s sake I will not be silent.
For Haiti’s sake, I will not be silent.

IT will not be silent, after all, this uncreated sound. It will be created when one of us stands up before the jar, the empty stone jar full of something, and we become the jar.

For its sake, for sounds’ sake, I will not be silent,
For Zion’s sake I will not be silent.

I will fill the jar with water.
I will fill my lungs with air.
I will fill my heart with care.
For our sake I will not keep silent.
It’s not as if we are empty inside.
Sound is in there, and I will find it.

For heaven’s sake I will not keep silent.
For Haiti’s sake I will not keep silent.

Fill the jars with water.
For Zion’s sake, fill the jars with water.
For healing, for peace, for mercy,
Fill the jars with water.

And what is this sound, this uncreated sound that won’t be silent?
I think it is our ability to be healed and to heal.
it wells up instinctively
with this water,
and is activated in this seedbed of a jar.
What better place for this than a wedding.

Jesus activated his miracle at a wedding, under
The canopy, through the new covenant and the
Blessing of life.
In Zion, the garden of blessing.
He activated it.

The uncreated sound, the blessing, is waiting
for something to activate it.
And so we activate it.
We step up the jar,
For Zion’s sake we step up to the jar.
We become the jar.
We take a stand.
We won’t be silent.

Because our very stepping up to the jar
activates the blessing.
Every kind act is stepping up to the jar.
Opening our hearts
Activates the miracle.

The miracle in Jesus’ time was turning water into wine.
The miracle in our time is finding the water and becoming the jar.
And being the people who activate the blessing.

The people of Haiti are waiting for us to fill the jars with water.
to activate the blessing.
And they are singing.
All over the island, in the sea of sadness,
in the tent cities,
On the president’s lawn,
people are singing.
If they can sing, I can sing.

And so I sang yesterday. A room of us sang, here,
Toning the sounds of the charkas,
singing to activate our hearts.
It is an act of kindness, of bravery –
to create the uncreated sound.
It activates the blessing.
It brings the miracle.
It is full of something.

Now: fill the jars with water.
amen

Jan 16 2010 epiphany 2 Homily for 6 p.m. Holy Eucharist
Episcopal Church of the Epiphany, Atlanta Ga.
The Rev Cynthia Ann Hizer