Mt. Washington trip

Here are a few pictures from a PERFECT weekend up in snowy New Hampshire! There was still 1 to 2 feet of snow at our cabin, which made for fantastic nordic skiing through the woods. And in the mountains there are still 4 to 8 feet on the ground. With warm temperatures (40-50's) and full spring sun, it was amazing. Praise God who is the giver of all good gifts!

quite a snow pile at the cabin!

climbing the mt washington summit cone

view from Tuckerman Ravine top

view from the summit cone itself

Angus and Se' snowboarding with me at Waterville Valley - $1 lift ticket day!!

in honor of the nor'easter

In anticipation of what is forecast to arrive soon...! (Praise God!)

The Snowstorm



by Ralph Waldo Emerson


Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.



Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of snow.

Frosty or Milocinek?

Is this Frosty the Snow King? His real name is Milocinek, and he lives (for now, anyway! the locals built him last Friday) in Poland. He just might be the largest snowman (snowperson?!) in the world. What fun!

A Shout-out to the Ambrefe's!

A great big hello to our friends from Boxford, Massachusettes! Brian, Mary, Lyndon, and Avery Ambrefe!

For the sake of nostalgia, here are a few pictures that I could find from our days up in Topsfield, when we were able to see the Ambrefe's on a regular basis. This picture is from Holy Week 2004 (I think). Note how small the children were then! 

Here is the rectory backyard, about the time when we held the 100 Inch Snow Party for the parish! Once we had received 100 inches of snow for the season (by my careful calculations), the Ambrefe's joined others for an afternoon filled with Sugar-on-Snow  treats, ice skating, sledding down our huge snow-plow pile, snowshoeing in the woods, playing in the snow fort, etc. This was in early March 2005, and it was a great day.

Tuck's Pilgrimage

"The annual pilgrimage to Tuckerman Ravine is the world's grandest, oldest, biggest celebration of sliding on snow. Nowhere else on earth do people come together so faithfully and in such numbers to revel in the joys of snow.

Tuck's is anathema to many of the values of modern society. It takes hard work to get there, there are no rules, dire consequences can follow from mistakes, and you have nothing to show for your courageous efforts save for a fleeting track in the snow. For this, people return again and again. In Tuck's, you are free" (From Backcountry Skiing Adventures: Classic Ski and Snowboard Tours in Maine and New Hampshire by David Goodman, p.121).

All of our household made the pilgrimage up into Tuckerman's Ravine yesterday (Erin and me, all 3 children and 2 dogs). It was a fantastic day: 72 degrees at the base, sunshine, small crowds. How strange to run into a group from Urban Promise in Camden right in Pinkham Notch and at Hojo's!  It is such hard work to ride this magic snow, but amazingly beautiful!

Praise God for such beauty and such reminders fo the reality of our life-task. Riding in Tuck's is like our journey into holiness in Christ: it takes hard work to get there, on this journey we are free, and at the end we truly have nothing to show for it except for the reality of our own experience. But it is a path of the greatest beauty. Nothing else can compare.

Here are some photos:

Silent Subversion

Here is a poem I wrote a few years back during the waning days of winter (very sad to see it go). The sap of the maples stands as a metaphor for the spiritual life. Enjoy!


Silent sentinels standing


watch over the palls of dead apathy.

Secret life flows with dreams

about which the snow cloak knows nothing.

Nor does it care but to lay still

and hold down what may be.

Alive to unseen potential stand these life-givers

patient in affliction yet active

in conspiracy, these lovely maples.



Invisible now is the glory

which has been and could be.

The new life of the vine

is like this, secretly planning

to supplant the cold with unbounded

fruitfulness on the now barren branch.

There’s not much to do but wait…

unless you’ve got a tap.

God & Guinness and SNOW

Last week, a few men joined me at Connie Mac's Irish Pub in Pennsauken for a beer and conversation. I call it God and Guinness.

Our snowy street on Saturday, Feb. 6. What a crazy winter! It sure messes with our average Sunday attendance at church!

Christmas week holiday photos

Our cabin in Wilmot, New Hampshire. It's truly a winter wonderland in a pocket of boreal forest. We go out into the snow, then come in to read by the fire, play family games and eat. Moonlight sledding was a big hit on this trip!

Even our old dog, Ita, loves the snow! She is 11 years old now, though she has difficulty walking through deep snow with her bad hips.

We do lots of snowshoeing, always on the search to see the many moose who inhabit the woods around but who always seem to elude us! We follow their tracks and see where they sleep and eat, but no sightings yet.

The Great Brook over the ridge behind our cabin, just a short hike away.At the top is the Great Brook Falls.

The family reluctantly follows me through the woods on my adventures! I could be out all day exploring every rock and tree.

Nordic skiing at the local Pine Hill Ski Club on New Year's Day 2010. The perfect day! 30 degrees, sunshine with flurries and some fresh powder. Even Fiona (7 years old) enjoyed the skiing!

My Soul Magnifies the Lord

Sermon for 4 Advent RCL C 12/20/2009, offered by Nathan Ferrell for Trinity Episcopal Shared Ministry

Texts: Micah 5:2-5a; Canticle 15; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

Please indulge me, friends, as we begin, with just a few words about the mystery and magic of snow. I love snow. To be honest, I’m a bit addicted to it. For me, snow is a metaphor for the grace of God. Just like the Lord, snowstorms are quite unpredictable. When the snow falls, it changes everything. My plans get tossed out the window, and snow forces me to change how I go about my regular, daily activities. Snow causes me to slow down, to move more carefully and thoughtfully. Snow quiets the world. It pushes away the fast-paced rush of life. Snow causes neighbors to talk to each other, even when we usually just rush past each other on normal busy days. Just like the grace of God, everything looks different when touched by the snow. It brings beauty to everything it touches. This is how snow reminds me of the grace of God.


But that is just a minor aside. Because today, the Church calls us to remember the Mother of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin Mary. Today, we hear of her blessedness and we hear her song of praise. This song, ever sing its recording, has been beloved and been sung everywhere in the world where the Gospel has been heard.

Many of you will remember the old translation of the Magnificat and how it begins in this way: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” Our newer version tries to make the text a bit more understandable by phrasing it this way: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” But the older version actually gets the original text correctly.

We can see the original wording right here in the Latin title of this most amazing poem: the Magnificat. The Magnifier. The original Greek verb here is megaluno, and it means literally to make something larger or greater. To make something appear great.

But this begs the question: how can we human beings ever speak of magnifying the Lord? What can God ever gain from our words? What can we give to God to fill any divine need whatsoever?

Nothing at all. God does what God wills. God is who God is. Our words, our thoughts, our praises and thanksgiving cannot give God anything that God does not already have. Of course, we can never add anything to God. But we can, in fact, magnify God, just as the blessed Virgin here suggests, as she speaks with prophetic voice.

Our family’s good friend, and neighbor, is a crystallographer at Bristol Meyer Squibb up in Princeton. She studies the crystalline structure of chemicals by magnifying the molecules thousands of times so that their helpful or beneficial qualities can be seen and identified.

To magnify these chemical compounds in this way does not change what they are; it simply allows people to see what has been there all along.

Likewise, when we magnify the Lord, we do nothing to change the Lord; we simply allow people to see more clearly what God has been all along.

I was thinking about the process of magnifying yesterday as I was shoveling snow – which is one of my favorite activities, don’t you know! Have you seen how mountaineers who are climbing on glaciers must wear special sunglasses to block out the sun? If they don’t, they are sure to suffer from snow blindness. The snow magnifies the power of the sun’s rays. It doesn’t change the rays of the sun, but it enhances their effect upon human eyes.

This is what it means when blessed Mary says, “My soul magnifies the Lord.” She had no power in herself to add to anything to what the Lord does, nor to take away from it.

These words are prophetic, spoken with inspiration from the Holy Spirit. The soul of Mary, (Mariam is the Greek) does indeed magnify the Lord by making it easier to see how the Lord works in the hearts of human beings. She does this by her faithfulness and obedience. “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”

Mary, the faithful one, is the second Eve, the one who corrects by faithfulness what has previously gone astray due to unfaithfulness. St. Irenaeus, who lived and wrote in the second century, had this to say about our blessed Mother:

“Just as Eve, seduced by an angel’s message, turned away from God in betraying his word, so Mary, welcoming an angel’s message, bore God within her in obeying his word. Eve had been led to disobey God, but Mary consented to obey him, and so the Virgin Mary became the advocate of the virgin Eve” (Against the Heresies).

Mary is the Theotokos, the God-bearer. That is her proper title. She is the pinnacle of all created beings. This is why she is hailed as the Queen of Heaven. This is right and true, but many people get lost in these titles. We must never allow her exalted status now blind us to the role as our mentor, our teacher, our role model who gives us the perfect image of what it looks like when a human being opens her heart completely to the Lord.

God spoke to her. She trusted and believed and obeyed. And she became the spring out of which Living Water flowed to re-create the world. And thus she magnified the Lord, making him clearly known to all peoples.

My dear friends: it is the goal of the Christian life that, like Mary, we become a lens, a magnifying glass, if you will, through which people are able to see God better and more clearly; so that when people look at you, what they see is the goodness and love of God.

You may ask yourself, “Well, how is this possible? How can I ever really live that way?” That’s a good question, because the truth is that by yourself, you can never do it.

Only if you allow yourself to be transformed by the Holy Spirit can this thing happen. Only if, like Mary, you open yourself completely and say, let your will be done in me, only then can it happen.

This song of Mary, this Magnificat, is the evening song of the Church, and it has been sung at the setting of the sun each and every day for thousands of years now.

Give it a try, my friends. Let it be your song at the end of each working day, and let your life be a lens through which those around you can see the majesty and magnificence of the Lord. Amen.