Celebration

The act of celebration is honoring and remembering a past event or
person, the lifting up of a memory. Celebrating Holy Communion is
the common act of lifting up ourselves, a kind of reaching out and
asking God to be especially present.

On the other hand, I know that for me God is always present, and I
seek each day to celebrate the God in us, and make my sharing with
the people around me a lifting up , a sacred act - the ritual of
being. The highest act of celebration is knowing and honoring the
presence of God in each other, experiencing the Knowing of God and
sharing of it. Sharing love, anger, defeat, joy - being is the real
stuff of celebrating.

When I am bringing it off, I experience a tingle that is near that
of being in the arms of my lover in tight embrace. My insides jump
with joy at the sight and fresh smells of a spring morning as old man sun
explodes over the horizon. This is celebrating - experiencing God.
I try to share God, inhale God, celebrate being with whoever I am
with in the present moment of Now.

Life is a total possibility of celebration; the steaming hot smells
of a shared breakfast after a long refreshing sleep is for me a
Eucharist of quiet joy. Hearing the sounds of joy, seeing the
bright smiling faces of children on a playground is a sacred rite. Being
trusted with the pain of sorrow and loss of a friend is High Mass.

Walking in the solitary woods of fall, hearing and tasting its
crispness, being with the year's last insects and their late sounds
is a solemn ritual.

Life and celebration form the word "being" and being is; and being
is only to be experienced in the beginning - in the Now, celebration is
a total possibility. The time for the High Mass of life is now.

Hope is now; God is in the Beginning.

Bishop Allan W. Frink