The Light of the World

When I was a little girl, my grandparents had a double wide over on the lake between Soddy Daisy and Sale Creek. My family of four or the whole extended family would gather there in the summertime. We would spend the day swimming or out on a canoe, playing cards and eating tomato sandwiches. At night, we cousins would pack into the room of bunk beds and double beds like sardines. My spot was always on the bottom bunk, and every night I would lay there listening to frogs and cicadas, looking through the crack in the cotton curtains, watching the light from the marina reflecting off of the water. The creaky mattress with the unfamiliar sounds of snoring and breathing from that pack of cousins could have been bad sleep or even bad dream material for a child, but the light coming in shimmering off of the water let a glow into the space that felt safe and right.

We could probably all think of at least one (maybe a few) stories or snapshots of our lives when literal light shone into the darkness. There’s a reason the writer of John’s gospel used this universal image for Jesus, why Jesus went on in the gospels to talk about himself as the light. We know the comfort of light in dark places, the salvation of a lead of light through a dark journey, or the safety of seeing and being seen in a glowing circle through darkness.

The light of Christ is with us always, and particularly today, on the feast of the Epiphany. This is the day the church has historically celebrated as the arrival of the magi in Matthew 2, those strangers who sought the new king by the light of the star.

God’s light in Jesus shines out the hope and guidance and safety we need. We see God’s light rippling into the dark and unfamiliar places, the discomforts and struggles and worries and woundedness of the world.

Of course the light doesn’t extinguish all the darkness. The light is shining into the darkness, it doesn’t banish every shadow. After all, the hope of life comes to us vulnerable and ordinary, small and powerless. The light of God arrives in the milk blistered lips and squirmy confusion of a newborn. Can he fix everything? No. Blast away the darkness like a fluorescent light? No.

Christ comes to meet us, small and humble. He comes to walk with us, to teach us and hear us and tell us stories and visions of healing. It shines and illuminates like a lamp, a candle, a star, a reflection from far away. That little bundle of light, that little glow is enough. The darkness cannot overcome it.

Words and Pictures of God

In 2003, children’s author Cynthia Rylant and artist Marla Frazee published a charming collection of poems and illustrations titled God Got a Dog. The poems and their corresponding art offer a series of snapshots of God participating in ordinary human activities such as: “God got a desk job just to see what it would be like. Made Her back hurt.” “God went to beauty school…and ended up just crazy about nails so He opened His own shop.” While some might find these irreverent, to me they sing with the imagination of the incarnation. How might God show up with us today and now? What would God say to the experiences we have every day?

Rylant and Frazee are in a long line and tradition of curious and faithful people who have tried to capture their impressions and ideas of God through images and stories. Whether Emily Dickinson imagining God hand feeding birds, or the vision of God as a tower, refuge, and rock in Psalm 31, people have long struggled to put ideas and words to God who is beyond our words and imaginations. All our names for God, all our metaphors and visions want to capture and bring God near, and none of them ever could.

The 14th century German mystic, Meister Eckhart, recognized this tension and explored it within his writings. On the one hand, he wrote that any image is a barrier to truth. When we attribute a name or picture to God, we are necessarily eclipsing the fullest picture of who God is. It is faithful and good to call God “Father” in the example of Jesus, and when we do, we miss the wholly other and different way that God and Jesus related. God is like a father, and God is unlike any father we have. Our well-meant words can be the source of much misunderstanding.

But on the other hand, Meister Eckhart also said that every creature is a word of God. God cannot be reduced or understood as any one word or image, and everything can be seen as an expression of the inexpressible God. That means that in all of life we have the opportunity to see glimpses, small and incomplete pictures that will reveal some of God to us. Of course, we have to hold these words and pictures of God loosely and humbly, recognizing that they aren’t complete. But they are gifts available to us, all around for the noticing.

If we open our hearts and keep our imaginations curious, we might find images of God anywhere. Do you have a name or image of God from the scriptures or from life that has especially spoken to you? Have you caught sight of all that is holy and love in some small and ordinary places? There might be a sighting in a beauty shop or a conversation with a coworker, a tree or a creek, a child or a poem. Every creature is a word of God, so may we pause and listen for those words. 

Waffle House Mystic

On an ordinary Saturday morning a few weeks ago, I decided Waffle House could make our breakfast. My kids love the crispy bacon and any adventure on a weekend. I love not having to wash dishes. We went out the door in our pajamas, tromping into the restaurant and wrestling ourselves into the booth, enjoying the morning. They had brought picture books for me to read while we waited for the food. My tenderhearted first grader wanted to talk through an argument with a friend, and my high-decibel toddler wanted to holler about everything and everyone he sees: the holiday decorations, that person’s hash browns, the server’s earrings, and a man at the counter who looks like Santa. I snuck a glance where he was pointing and saw it was a fair assessment. He was wearing a red flannel shirt and red and white hat, long white beard, and the man was smiling to himself—I’m sure he overheard the little observer. I tried not to be too embarrassed, and we went on with our breakfast and conversations.

As we finished up our waffles and bacon, the server came back by and grabbed the ticket she’d left on our table earlier. “Oh, I’m sorry! Do I pay you here or at the register?” I asked. “You don’t,” she smiled back. “That man over there got your meal!” I looked, and sure enough, it was the man at the counter. I made sure the kids were still occupied and stepped over to thank him. He smiled and shrugged. “No need to say thank you. Jesus told me to do that.” A little teary-eyed, I loaded my kids back into the car and told them what had happened. “Maybe it really was Santa,” they speculated. Later, I shared this experience with a member of our parish, and she immediately said, “I think he was an angel! They walk among us, you know!”

Maybe! Perhaps he was Santa, perhaps he was an angel. But I wonder if making this kind stranger into a supernatural being might take away from the gift. After all, are the ordinary mystics so rare, so unthinkable, that we must attribute this moment to an otherworldly being? Is it so strange to do a little good in the world and attribute the impulse to something holy?

A mystic is any person who is connected to divine communication, so focused on contemplating God that they are able to hear or notice the Holy Spirit in a particular way. Many of us might read the books of the prophets in scripture or the ancient writings of the church’s desert mothers and fathers with distant curiosity. Their visions and writings were filled with bizarre images and a particular spiritual intimacy with God’s voice and calling that can seem impossible. We read their words and think, “That’s great, but God doesn’t talk to me that way,” or “That’s weird stuff and can’t be real.” But God does not always speak through wild visions or a loud, audible voice.

The Waffle House mystic, right here in Athens, saw an invitation to bring a little bit of love and care to strangers. For him, that opportunity was an invitation from God to share the love that he has understood in Jesus. And anyway, in a world of self-preservation and division, the prophetic, mystical act of care without expecting anything in return might be just as odd as the proclamations of Jeremiah or as radical as St. Macrina. But the oddness and holiness is not a separate project for the angels and the named prophets. We are all able to be a part of this work of love in the world. Any time we offer graciousness and forgiveness, a gentle word and the benefit of the doubt; any time we shelter the unhoused and feed the hungry, we have become practical, ordinary mystics, communicating a divine message of love. 

The Ethic of Gratitude

Each year as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, I’m mindful of the complex origin story of this holiday. It is a wild historic moment and a wonder of the human spirit. Religious refugees manage to escape and survive to make their journey to a new land, only to suffer and struggle with disease and starvation in unfamiliar territory. 

But like God appearing to Elijah in the wilderness with sustenance, Patuxet and Wampanoag peoples met them in their need. They welcomed the stranger, even at great personal risk, and changed the future of an entire community through care of immediate needs and education. The secret to survival in Massachussett land was a reimagining what abundance could be, finding adaptation for new ecosystems, and approaching the natural world with an attitude of interdependence rather than domination. The Wampanoag people offered this wisdom and welcomed the strangers to their custom of harvest time thanksgiving. In the generations to come, this season of care would be rejected as the settlers turned toward violence to their neighbors, but this story of the nobility and graciousness offered to pilgrims, should not be eclipsed by the harm to come. The profound care offered to the stranger deserves our remembrance and invites us to reflect, give thanks, and, perhaps, find transformation. 

In her book Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks, historian and Christian writer Diana Butler Bass shares the insight that “Gratitude is... more than just an emotion. It is also a disposition that can be chosen and cultivated, an outlook toward life that manifests itself in actions—it is an ethic.” As we gather around tables this week with family and chosen family, hopefully we will find that emotion of gratitude. At this holiday we might taste family recipes or grieve a loved one’s absence from the table. We may see sweet faces for the first time in a while or take time to go around the room and share our gratitudes from the year. We hope to find, in the ritual and food and company, the feeling of thanksgiving. 

This year, may we also remember that it is more than a feeling, it can be nurtured as a posture toward the world. May we recall the story of the Native American people who modeled the ethic of gratitude. May we honor their example of love through practicing welcome to those who are different from us. May we honor their witness of interdependence by committing ourselves to sustainable care of our earth and ecology. May we honor them through reimagining abundance, walking with humility through the world, and telling their story. 

All Saints and All Souls

Last week in the church year we observed the “feast days” (special celebration days—no feasting involved, unfortunately) of All Saints and All Souls. On All Saints, we remember and celebrate the lives of the saints, and on All Souls, we remember and celebrate the lives of those we love who have died.

In my tradition, the Episcopal Church, we’re a little more cagey about what exactly we mean by a “saint”. Yes, this indicates people who have been canonized by the church, like Saint Paul the Apostle or Saint Macrina, the Cappadocian church mother. But we also believe that saints are any faithful Christian who shares in the life of Christ. There’s a sweet English hymn that says it this way: “They lived not only in ages past; there are hundreds of thousands still; the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will. You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea; for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too."

For the celebration of All Saints and All Souls, in addition to our usual liturgy of singing and scripture readings, prayer, sermon, and Holy Communion, we add a reading of all the names of those who have died in our congregation. As we say the names, we’re invited to remember their lives and all the ways that they showed us God’s love. They are our saints. And we also might reflect through study or worship on the lives of the big-S saints, the more ancient or official witnesses to God whom we’ve never met. They are our saints, too. In all these remembrances, looking to these beloved people of faith, we don’t only love and honor their memory, but also ask ourselves what they have to teach us about a faithful, love-centered and God-honoring life.

The late author Frederick Buechner described these folks as people “who are made not out of plaster and platitude and moral perfection but out of human flesh... who have their rough edges...like everybody else but whose lives are transparent to something so extraordinary that every so often it stops us dead in our tracks. Light-bearers. Life-bearers.”

It is especially tender each year to read the names of those members of our church who have died since the previous year’s feasts. This year we added Frank, who showed holy humor and a deep care for God’s creation; Nelson, who revealed the immense curiosity and holy wonder of learning; Tim, who taught us the love of the game and how to show up for each other; Judi, who radiated God’s love to children and all of us; Frances, who created beauty and welcome every day; Cecilia, lover and teller of a great story; and Bitsy, who gathered people around tables of food and dreams of community.

Of course, there is so much more to a life, countless stories and connections, struggles and questions in each person. Each of these saints, and all the others we have known and loved, these saints with rough edges, bore the light and life of God in this world. They showed us a glimpse of something holy, and taught us a bit more of how to walk in love. That’s something to remember. That’s something to celebrate. 

Pray Without Ceasing, Pray With Your Feet

Prayer takes many forms. There are the prayers of intercession that we offer together in church and at home throughout the week, when we hold each other and the burdens of the world with love to God.

There are the prayers of listening, also called meditation, when we quiet our busy and anxious minds to find the center quiet of contemplation, practicing so that we might better hear the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit.

There are prayers of pure emotion, like the psalms, when we are just turning our overflowing hearts upside down into the lap of God.

There are the prayers when we ask for God to show up. We need grace, a miracle. We don’t even know what, exactly, we need, but it would be great if God would show up soon. T

here are prayers we use from the Bible and prayer book, pre-written and handed down for generations, and prayers that pop out of our mouths and hearts without practice or polish.

But there is also the prayer that Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel called “praying with our feet.” This is the prayer that is expressed as it actively seeks justice. This is a prayer that is spoken, yes, but is also marched, written, voted, and volunteered.

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tells his friends “a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart.” It’s the story of a judge “who neither feared God nor had respect for people,” and who was mistreating a widow who repeatedly appeared in court for hearings, seeking justice for herself. In the Jewish tradition, care for widows and orphans is the paramount marker of the ethical life. A community that is following God is a community that takes care of those who are left vulnerable in a patriarchal society. But here, there’s a woman, a widow, who is in the position of having to defend her own interests in court, likely against a male opponent, in a society that saw her as inherently less. Rather than following the teachings of the Torah and seeking her wellbeing as he would his own, this judge is entrenched in his bias and does not respect the laws of God to care for her, or consider the protest she voices. Only through her persistent self-advocacy, the judge was swayed and changed his mind. She was persistent in prayer, and that prayer looked a lot like going out into the world to challenge injustice.

Her story, this parable, invites us into a life of prayer for change and hope that are accompanied by action. We can look toward great social change movements of our world to see this prayer at work in the lives of other faithful people.

One powerful story of this unceasing prayer comes from the Civil Rights movement in Tennessee. In February of 1960, a group began to sit-in at lunch counters in three prominent Nashville stores. These students had been training and preparing. They were highly principled and believed so deeply in their own human dignity that they would not harm another person. This was steeped in prayer and intention, holy work. Violent reaction to these nonviolent protests quickly followed, but they persisted, showing up again and again to sit and abide in their dignity regardless. In April of that year, white supremacists showed their opposition by bombing the home of a black lawyer, Z. Alexander Looby, who was active in the movement. The community gathered at the rubble of the home, and a spontaneous nonviolent march of 2,500 people slowly made their way to city hall, where movement leader Diane Nash asked the mayor to desegregate the lunch counters. Faced with the strength of this peaceful yet insistent response to unspeakable violence and destruction, he agreed. The tide began to turn.

When we are walking with the Holy Spirit, when we are seeking God’s love in our work to make our communities flourish, when we seek to recognize the dignity and voice of every human person, we won’t lose heart. These prayers of active love bring change in the world and change in our spirits, too.

The persistence of the widow, the persistence of those activists, is all of our calling, and we can each begin right where we are. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his letter from a Birmingham jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

We can start praying with our feet, praying like the widow, right where we are. We can feed one neighbor, be a listening ear, give a few bucks or a thousand, tutor and read to one kid, call our elected representatives and cast our votes, staff the emergency warming shelter, pick up litter on our street. In all of these things, we are people at prayer, putting love into action. Do not lose heart. 

Joy & Sorrow

A friend recently shared with me an excerpt from Kahlil Gibran, a poet from the Ottoman Empire: “Some of you say, ‘Joy is greater than sorrow,’ and others say, ‘Nay, sorrow is the greater.’ But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.”

When I heard this, I thought about getting the giggles with my sister at our grandmother’s funeral visitation. Oh, we knew it was not the right time, but couldn’t help ourselves! We remembered one of her funniest stories in the midst of that grief and with all this kind, well-dressed and well-meaning folks standing in line to speak to us. She was a funny lady! What could we do but laugh?

There are countless other times our joy and sorrow come together. There’s the grief of closing a life chapter even as we celebrate its accomplishment. There are small mercies and humor to be found even in the ICU; perfectly beautiful late autumn days carry a twinge of sadness at how swiftly they’ll be done.

Qohelet, the “preacher” of Ecclesiastes, reflected on the theme with this wisdom: “In the day of prosperity, be joyful, and in the day of adversity, consider: God has made the one as well as the other.”

Our world seems to only reward joy and optimism while continuously bombarding us with messages of inadequacy, hopelessness, and violence. So for us, it is a radical act to insist that prosperity and adversity, joy and sorrow, are all part and parcel of the same gift of life. God does not need us to ignore, repress, or pray away our grief; it is part of this life, and understanding and acknowledging grief’s role is healthy. And yet, there is a freedom and joy that cannot be denied. The beauty and humor of our beings intertwines with the ever persistent guarantee that resurrection is always coming and here.

Gibran and Qohelet invite us to consider that joy might enliven and temper sorrow, and grief might bring joy resilience and wisdom. When we accept the holy invitation to hold the joy and sorrow of our lives together, inseparable, we might discover something astounding. We might find that despite all we’ve been told, all we’ve feared, there is space for them both.

Howard be thy name

This week, I heard about two children in our church community who have developed up some interesting ideas about God.

One girl, associating her Heavenly Father with the sky and galaxies—fair enough—has actually been thinking of God as an extraterrestrial, spaceship and all.

The other, a sweet kindergartner, has been praying along all these weeks in church with the understanding that God’s first name is Howard. As in, “Howard be thy name.”

After some big laughs with the parents and grandparents who shared these innocent errors, these kids made me think. It’s so easy for young children to mishear or take ideas about God and put them into other categories of meaning. We adults take for granted that they’ll know just what we mean when that might not be such a fair expectation. From their perspective, why should a child in McMinn County be expected intuit the King James “hallowed be” without our help? Why shouldn’t God in heaven be an associate of similarly mysterious martians? As kids figure out world where everything is new to them, grow in their language, reading, and understanding, it’s delightful and normal to have some mistakes in connecting the dots. 

But children are not the only ones who make wrong connections. Adults also get tripped up all the time but our assumptions, mental associations, and Christian lingo. When we read the Bible, at church, in small groups, or in our individual spiritual practice, we bring the other categories of knowledge and meaning-making from our lives and read scripture through them like a pair of colored lenses. This shows up when we assume the emotional tone of a passage without first wondering what the author of a book intends or what the persons in a story might be feeling. If we neglect to study the cultural and historical contexts of the Ancient Near East, we will assume that the world of the Old and New Testament is more or less like our own, and miss the nuances of understanding needed to grasp what we’re reading, much less find the connections between ancient scriptures and our own lives in order to faithfully follow the way of Jesus. 

In all of the limits of our knowledge, we are invited to be humble in our understanding. In the scope of all God’s wisdom and all that we cannot understand, so much of our talk and about the matters of faith is just as certain and just as off-base as “Howard be thy name.” We continue to learn and grow in our faith, experiences of God’s presence, and our knowledge of scripture, truth, and love throughout our lifetimes. So let’s release some of our certainties and have faith in the mystery we cannot fully grasp or describe. Let’s be gentle and find good humor for ourselves and one another as we walk together in love. May we apply ourselves with open minds and humble hearts to the lifelong work, as St. Augustine said, of “faith seeking understanding.”

The Heavens Declare

This week when NASA released images from the James Webb Space Telescope, and our family pored over each one. But I’ll confess, I had barely remembered last year’s space telescope launch. In the day to day concerns of pastoring, writing, raising children, and so on, it’s sometimes hard to think beyond my week or community, much less beyond our galaxy. But this week my mind is full of Planet WASP-96b, star cluster SMACS 0723, the Southern Ring Nebula and Carina Nebula. As a brand new space nerd, I have never heard of these before, but now these images fill my imagination. I’m eager to read all about the discoveries and learn the new language and concepts to explain the stunning pictures, see what the astronomers and physicists are saying. I’m not alone in my curiosity. Not only are the scientists thrilled, but social media feeds are filled with the images and I’ve heard friends casually chatting about outer space at kids’ pool parties, Blue Front, and the Arts Center.

For me, this wonder is decidedly spiritual. These discoveries are so entirely—literally!—otherworldly, that they catch our breath and imagination.Their beauty, scale, and antiquity feel holy, and refrains from the ancient poetry of scripture resound in my mind and heart. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” And “Let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times, and days and years.”

My faith tradition, the Episcopal Church, has roots in the 1530’s establishment of the Church of England. The early Hebrew stargazers and storytellers wrote and marveled in the 11th and 6th century BC. The first deep field images are estimated to show a galaxy cluster that originated 4.6 billion years ago. It is truly mind-boggling. Humanity is catching a new glimpse of galaxies we had only theorized, and realizing again all that we know and cannot possibly know.

For some, this sort of new science is portrayed as a challenge to religion, but for this priest, these expansive discoveries and questions are nourishing mine. As a parishioner said in Sunday school last week, paraphrasing the spiritual writer Anne Lamott, "The opposite of faith isn’t doubt or questions, but certainty.” The James Webb Space Telescope, this expansive international discovery mission, yields answers alongside countless new questions; it offers us an invitation to reconsider our certainty. Albert Einstein, whose incredible work was pivotal to the development of current space exploration, said in 1955, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.” May we allow ourselves to be humbled and amazed, overjoyed at the strangeness and greatness of this discovery. Why not honor our curiosity and questions, celebrate them as expressions of worship? Let us accept this overture to wonder, to consider the heavens declaring the glory of God and the sacred times. 

Pluck Blackberries

Last week, my children and I found a patch of wild blackberries growing in an empty lot down the street. We celebrated by picking as many as we could and heading home to make a scant batch of cobbler, throwing in some store bought nectarines to make them stretch. What southern summer joy! Naturally, every single evening since, they grab their old Easter baskets and clamor to go down to gather more. It’s getting so dreadfully hot out, and now the mosquitos have also found the blackberry patch. They’re too young to walk down the block alone, but intent on harvesting, so off we go. The adults’ enthusiasm is waning.

One afternoon this week, I was getting ready with a bad attitude, reluctant to be pricked and bitten and sweaty, when suddenly a stanza from Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh came to mind with a chuckle: ““Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.” This 19th century poem offers a riff off of a scene from the Exodus story. In this biblical tale of how God freed the Hebrew people from their suffering and enslavement in Egypt, the divine presence inhabited a burning bush in the wilderness. This strange sight, a bush on fire but not burning up, was a sign and an invitation to a man named Moses. When he took notice of the odd plant and turned aside to look more closely, Moses started his journey of listening to God, and became the liberating leader of the people and a key figure in the Jewish and Christian religions.

Browning spins a vision of that sacred moment as immanent, present here and now, all of the time. Every common bush might become a sign of God’s invitation: the oak leaf hydrangeas and the goldenrod, the boxwoods and the privet and, yes the blackberry brambles. But only when we see the world in this way, crammed with heaven, will we turn aside like Moses, taking notice and hearing the call to honor holy ground. Otherwise we run the risk of just hanging out, plucking blackberries, oblivious to the wonder of God’s liberation and love all around us.

Each evening when we grab those baskets and head down to the patch, my children are asking me to “sit round and pluck blackberries.” But they’re also asking me to see that the empty lot, the hot summer evening, the thorns and tangles, are afire with God. Ages 3 and 5, picking their berries for summer pies for the very first time, the kids are full of awe and joy. They see and listen, and in their own way understand that the Holy presence of God and God’s invitation is just as alive in East Tennessee as in the wilderness of Midian. I can grouse about humidity and jump at the thought of a rat snake in the bushes, or I can join their wonder and take off my sandals at this holy ground.

“Earth’s crammed with heaven.”

Can we see? 

Enough of This

Last Sunday at St. Paul’s, we joyfully sang the verse, “When Christ is throned as Lord, men shall forsake their fear, to ploughshare beat the sword, to pruning-hook the spear.” This good old hymn, written by the Anglican priest George Briggs in 1933, echoes a radical vision of peace in the Hebrew Bible. The prophet Isaiah envisioned a world without need of war, in which people followed the guidance of just and peaceful God and had more need of gardening implements, ploughshares and pruning-hooks, than tools of death, swords and spears. Later in the writings, the prophet (translated in the King James Version) called such a world a “peaceable kingdom”.

As we sang the upbeat tune, I felt a wave of grief between the dissonance of the hopeful song and the beautiful church and my heavy heart at the state of the world. There are ongoing armed conflicts with thousands of fatalities this year alone in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Yemen, Ukraine, Ethiopia, Colombia and Venezuela, Somalia and Kenya, DR Congo, Uganda, Nigeria, the Maghreb region, Iraq, Mexico, Sudan and South Sudan, Mali and Mozambique. Here at home, our community joins with others across the country in grief over the recent mass shootings in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa. These events make us wonder if or when our own neighborhood and towns will turn into war zones; civilians being killed by terrorists in grocery stores, elementary schools, and hospitals is hardly the mark of peace.

I’m not an international or domestic policy maker, and I don’t presume to have detailed answers and solutions to the horrific violence in our world and country. What is clear to me, as a spiritual and religious leader, is that the vision of the prophet and the hymn composer has not yet fully arrived, and people of faith and good will have much work to do in order to put away our fear and choose flourishing over harm, tending over destruction, care of the earth and community over vicious preservation of our own interests and power. Occasionally when I talk or preach about peace, I’m met with patronizing pity or scorn. “Peaceable kingdom? What a quaint fantasy.” “How naive; you’re young and you’ll see.” “You must be living on another planet.” Perhaps, but I’m not convinced by quick dismissal.

Practically speaking, peace accords have been reached in history that procured long periods of stability. Other countries have responded with swift change to isolated mass shootings to great effect. Another way of walking through life together in our cities and across the world is quite possible when there is a will to change. Spiritually speaking, hanging on to the vision of a peaceable kingdom puts us in good company. We can choose to join in the legacy not only of Isaiah of Jerusalem and George Briggs of York, but also Mohandas Ghandi, Sophie Scholl, Leo Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of other faithful souls who have dedicated their lives to peace, justice, equality, and disarmament.

And of course there is Jesus himself. He understood that the way of love, the way we walk toward a peaceable kingdom, required committed refusal to take part in violence, self-protection, or retribution. Each of the four gospels includes the account that on the evening Jesus was arrested, when the soldiers and crowds came for him, one of his friends cut off a man’s ear, prepared in a posture of defense to fight back with weapons. “Am I leading a rebellion?” Jesus says, healing the wounded. “Put away your sword. Enough of this.” 

Mental Health Awareness Month

Mental Health Awareness Month

When I was a kid, I loved to listen to “Nature Corner” on Moody Bible Radio, a short children’s segment in which the host, Uncle Bob, would interview different kinds of animals. The animals could talk in funny voices—amazing! Each week they Bob and his animal guest would chat about the traits and habits of the animal, and ponder how amazing it is that God made such a creature. It was natural history and theology in one. Uncle Bob taught me to wonder at the great wingspan of an owl with its special feathers and bones, to appreciate the details of a tiny salamander and the nuances of each insect. Most of all, this little radio show gave me an abiding appreciation for the ways that nature, creatures, and bodies can tell a powerful story.

Last week I found myself in amazement at creation and could even imagine the funny little voice of one of the animal radio guests exclaiming, “The wonderful creator made me this way!” The object of my amazement was not the moray eel or a white-tailed deer, but the human being, with all the complex connections of our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. May is Mental Health Awareness month, and to honor this call and grow my own awareness, I completed a course to be certified in mental health first aid. This training teaches how to recognize and offer compassionate first response to mental health crisis and substance misuse issues, and that fits well with the care I offer members of our church and community as a priest. The phrase “first aid” might sound urgent, but the need for someone to notice another person’s struggle and offer compassionate, non-judgmental listening is more common that you might think.

Studies show that 1 in 5 adults has or will experience a mental or emotional crisis. One in five! Yes, that’s a lot of folks who at some time in their lives will face challenges to their mental well-being and might need support along the way. I’m among that number myself, and have sought support of therapists at times. Unfortunately, though, social stigma still makes it hard to ask for help or find resources for support and healing. Many do not know the “1 in 5” statistic, and believe that they are alone in their struggles. Because we are silent about mental and emotional health, many people don’t know the signs of mental struggle or crisis and care and intervention are delayed. Perhaps most frustrating, many people are afraid of the impact asking for help might have on their friendships or social networks, afraid they’ll be misunderstood, dismissed, or labelled “crazy.” Mental and emotional health or struggle may or may not mean someone has a diagnosed disorder or condition. It can be a lifelong condition with medical treatment, or a short season of situational or environmental change. Whatever shape, significance, or duration of a mental health need, everyone deserves to have caring community and access to resources for their flourishing.

And that brings me back to Uncle Bob and “Nature Corner.” Part of the ways that human beings are fearfully and wonderfully made, reflections of divine presence and image, is in our complexity of mental and emotional being. The details of our family systems, thought and behavior patterns, brain chemistry, relationships, desires, resilience, and motivation are absolutely astounding. As the scientific fields of neuroscience and psychology continue to offer more insight into the wonder of our minds, we are invited to grow in our wonder, appreciation, and gentleness with ourselves and each other. Mental health struggles tell a powerful story of struggle and grace and adaptation. We honor God the creator when we give thanks for the complexity of our minds and emotions, celebrate the tools of medicine and therapy for our healings, and journey together toward mental flourishing with compassion, curiosity, and empathy. 

Washing Feet

This week, many Christian traditions begin Holy Week, a series of daily ways to connect to the story of Jesus’s last week before he was arrested and killed by the Roman Empire. It begins with Palm Sunday, which recalls his final journey into the city of Jerusalem. Jesus created a strategic, politically symbolic entry that echoed ancient prophecies and thwarted expectations. He healed and preached, got into good trouble, taught and shared food, and in a poignant moment depicted in John 13, he showed his friends about the importance of caring for each other by washing their feet. Many traditions remember that occasion as a regular sacrament or part of worship, while others recall it this week in a special liturgy and day on the church calendar called Maundy Thursday. The word “Maundy” is derived from the Latin phrase “mandatum novum” or “new commandment,” as Jesus told his friends, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” When our parish gathers this Thursday evening for worship, we won’t just remember the story. We will be washing each others feet as part of our worship. For many people—this priest included—the idea of washing another person’s feet in church can be uncomfortable. We might hang back or skip this service, try to strategically sit next to our friend or family member so that at least we know the feet we’re washing! For others—this priest included—the discomfort lies in the idea of having our feet washed by someone else, permitting this kind of care and touch. In church! It’s fortunate that we are not alone in those feelings, as Peter expressed horror that Jesus would wash his feet. “Surely not!” he exclaimed, and I imagine he wasn’t the only person around that table pulling back his toes. But the prickly feeling, the uncertainty about this whole idea, is exactly what Jesus wanted to communicate. Caring for people around us, their dirty, warty, wrinkle selves, just as they are, is a prickly and uncertain undertaking. Washing literal or metaphorical feet is not even a desirable undertaking, and is often unrewarded. How can we wrap our hearts and minds around the idea that Jesus did this, and then told us to follow suit? Where do we find the courage to overcome the prickly, the uncertain, and both show and receive care in the most vulnerable and unimpressive ways? Well, John’s gospel includes the key. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself.” Jesus could take a deep breath, look around the room, and decide to wash feet because he knew that God had given him all, God was his source, and God was his destination. Everything else unfolding in Holy Week was grounded in the deep certainty and security of this identity. How could any one moment, any vulnerability or humility, be louder than the voice of God who said at Jesus’s baptism, “This is my beloved child”? How could discomfort in wondering what others might think ever exceed the significance of what God thought? Jesus’s dignity and foundation in divine love offered the power to take on a less powerful position; his assuredness that he was deeply loved allowed him to freely offer and receive loving care with those around him. This Thursday if you find yourself washing feet, if you stumble into an uncomfortable opportunity to serve or receive the gift of another’s service, remember that you, too, are a beloved child of God. When you find yourself hesitating with the prickly vulnerability, the uncertainty of what it might feel or mean to care or be cared for, remember this: you have come from God and you are going to God. May you live grounded and secure in that love, able to give and receive loving care with those around you.

The Sisters Speak

I began reading the late Rachel Held Evans’s writing as a student at Lee University in Cleveland, TN. I was a good church kid who had gone to college in hopes of finding a calling. What that meant, I could not be sure. I grew up in a faith background that did not ordain women, and could not quite feel at home in Pentecostalism. As a young adult on a faith journey, my spirit was asking a thousand giant questions about God, but it seemed that only a few roles and questions were permissible for me as a woman. In Rachel’s writings I found a sort of sympathetic older sister, and was thrilled at the faith questions she was willing to ask. Her searching was grounded in deep love of God and thoughtful study of the Bible, but she didn’t seem interested in conforming to the limits of faith imposed by traditional Christian gender roles. When I finally read her bestselling book, A Year of Biblical Womanhood, I had made my way to the Episcopal Church, a denomination that affirms the full inclusion of women in leadership in every role. Although my faith community no longer limited the questions and calls available for women, this book was essential in my faith. It was a love-letter to my younger self, encouraging her questions, her love of scripture, and her refusal to only read the assigned script or accept the limitations of how God might speak to women.

A Year of Biblical Womanhood, now a decade old, was Held Evans’s studious and playful experiment in taking on all of the Bible’s instructions for women, as literally as possible, for one year. From instructions around menstruation to calling her husband “master,” she searched the Bible to explore what biblical womanhood really means. This led to meaningful encounters with God as well as some frustration and silliness around applying ancient texts to modern day Rhea County. But as she explored the theme of “obedience,” looking at stories of obedient women in the Bible, Held Evans found many troubling examples. Identified by biblical scholar Phyllis Trible as “texts of terror,” some of the stories of women’s obedience to men placed women in terrifying danger, objectification, physical harm, and death. These include Hagar’s desperate flight from abusive slave owners into the wilderness in Genesis 21; the daughter of Jephthah, foolishly and needlessly sacrificed in Judges 11; the woman who, attempting to flee a dreadful husband, was abandoned, abused, killed and desecrated in Judges 19; and the princess Tamar, raped, rejected, and shamed by her brother and family in 2 Samuel 13. 

These stories are often passed by in Sunday school lessons and pulpits. They are hard to preach, and leave us with a lot of open questions about God’s will and God’s people. How can we find hope or a hero in stories like these? And yet, they are part of what we have inherited as scripture, part of the library of books where Christian believe we meet God. The biblical authors, rabbis, and early church fathers who determined the Biblical canon were led by the Holy Spirit to preserve these horrible tales, to remind us that we must reckon with the worst atrocities and bear witness to our sisters’ suffering. If we are willing to reckon with them, to read these texts with care and curiosity, these stories may break our hearts. They may invite us to be loving and courageous witnesses to the suffering of women, as they remind us that many women and girls today continue to suffer in trafficking, parental abuse, domestic violence, and incest. They may offer us an acknowledgement of the abuses we have suffered, or call us to repent of harm we have perpetrated. When we read and consider these scriptures, we turn our ears to the voices of women that have been silenced too often. 

In honor of Women’s History Month and inspired by A Year of Biblical Womanhood, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and Keith Memorial UMC are listening to the stories and questions of these and other women in scripture. On March 27th at 7:00 p.m. at Keith, all are invited to “The Sisters Speak: A Service of Scripture and Prayer.” In this special worship service, we will remember these stories of women in the Bible, pray, and reflect together. We will refuse to only read the assigned script or accept the limitations of how God might speak to women, remember these heroes of our faith, and hear their voices speaking. 

The Commemoration of Emily Malbone Morgan

The Episcopal Church, like the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and other traditions, has a calendar of saints and commemorations, honoring the lives of faithful people, worthy of remembrance in the church because of the ways in which they honored God and showed God’s love in their lives. 

On February 25, the church’s calendar honors Emily Malbone Morgan, an Episcopalian who lived in New England from 1862–1937. She is not the most familiar saint, but is recognized for her life of prayer and care for the vulnerable. Most notably, she founded the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a women’s society that focuses on prayer, spiritual growth, peace and justice. This group, that now spans continents and has over 800 members, began as a small act of care and inclusion for one person. Emily’s dear friend Adelyn became sick and homebound, and was missing the spiritual companionship of attending church with community. The then-21-year-old Emily, concerned for her friend’s well being and faith, started the Companions. This group of likeminded women of faith gathered together with Adelyn at home, and committed to thanksgiving, prayer, lives of simplicity and the work of social justice. In this way, these spiritual companions nourished their friendships and wove together the ministry of God’s love in action and prayer, as each was able.

Emily was also a business woman for love. She was a savvy budgeter and investor of her family’s money, but not for business enterprise. Rather, she carefully stewarded funds to respite and retreat homes for women and children who were ill or facing overwork in the mills of the industrial revolution. She wrote, “My greatest desire has always been to make tired people rested and happy.” Emily saw this as a ministry of providing sabbath for those who needed it the most, and had the least resources to access such care and rest. 

While many aspects of Emily Malbone Morgan’s life are different than ours, we still remember her life and other saints whose lives were a witness of God’s love. These ordinary people filled with extraordinary love can teach us ways of faithful living that transcends their cultures and contexts. Emily Malbone Morgan has much to show us about the practice of our faith in community, and the way that prayer and contemplation, action and social witness, weave together and inform each other in the Christian life. 

First, her witness reminds us that we are called to care for others as beloved members of the body of Christ and our communities, and none are excluded from our concern. Those who are physically vulnerable, living with chronic health concerns or disability are often dismissed in society, but for the Christian community, we affirm the dignity of every human being and give extra care to those who are vulnerable. 

Emily’s life also shows us that to remember each other in prayer is more than just a kind thought or word. Prayer is the connective tissue, the ligaments and fascia that holds together the body of Christ. When we hold each other in prayer, invoking both our own love and the love of God, our churches and friendships can be transformed. 

Finally, Emily Malbone Morgan teaches us that action and prayer are woven together in the fabric of our faith. A life of prayer should lead us to wonder what God is calling us to do in the world, where the Holy Spirit we meet in prayer is leading us to act justly and love mercy in the world around us. And the inverse is true, too. Our work of service, love, and social justice cannot be fueled on our own power; this ministry should turn us back to God in prayer for spiritual grounding, wisdom, and strength. Let us follow her example in love, prayer, service, and commitment to God’s beloved community. 

Need of Each Other

Several weeks ago at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, where I serve as rector, our congregation was invited to reflect and write down ways that they have encountered God’s hope during hard times. When I looked through the responses later, here are the ways people had experienced hope: small acts of kindness, grandchildren, nature and animals, vaccination, family gatherings and chosen communities, meeting God’s Holy Spirit in prayer and worship. 

It became clear that many of the ways that we meet God’s hope in the hardest times are all about connection. Connection to God in church and everyday spiritual practices, connection to God through the beauty of the natural world, and most of all, connection to one another. 

Our namesake, St. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthian church, had a bit to say about how we know the hope and presence of God through our connection with each other. 

As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you," nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you." 

Our human lives are entangled with each other, as interwoven as the parts of one body. Social psychologists have called the connectedness of our emotional and spiritual states, “emotional contagion,” that is to say, the way we feel and our attitudes are remarkably contagious in community. The decisions each of us make connect us to our neighbors here and across the globe: the coffee or peas or bananas we buy, music or programs we absorb, books read and websites perused map our connections across the world. But this goes beyond contemporary globalization. Consider that the water on our planet circulates through towns and homes, people and animals, clouds and hurricanes and back again, and always has.

In her book I am, I am, I am, Maggie O’Farrell includes an odd and poignant description of visualizing breathing another person. As the writer embraced and smelled a person she loves, she imagined the molecules of them leaving their skin and going into her body. That’s not just poetry, it’s also science! We are always in flux and flow and exchange with each other. 

Studies have shown that talking to houseplants, giving them the focus of our carbon dioxide, leads them to flourish and creates emotional satisfaction for the plant collector. The emotional, aesthetic, and biological pieces of our beings are interconnected.

Everything, everyone, is connected, and we cannot say to each other: I have no need of you. 

But is it enough for us to say so? Is community connection something that we achieve, check off a to-do list and move on? No, this is a commitment and call we must revisit and put into practice again and again.

The church at Corinth had forgotten their call to mutual care and love. They’d shifted away from the deep conviction of their proximity and connection, the understanding that other people are the means by which one experiences God’s presence and hope. They had forgotten that if they want to meet Christ, to see God’s vision and presence, they must follow the way of love, the teachings of care and concern for each other beyond the moment of their gathering for worship. Paul was calling them back to each other, reminding them that they are all connected to each other. Without love, all the church stuff is just noise, a clanging gong or a cymbal. 

Can we hear Paul’s call back to one another, too? Where might we need to turn in care to other members of the body in our families, community, region and the world? Let’s remember that we are connected and need each other, and that through each other we encounter God’s hope in the world, and treat one another with respect and care.

Sermon for the 4th of July and the 6th Sunday after Pentecost

Happy 4th of July! How do you celebrate this holiday?  wI had a friend in college, Lucas, who would come to our annual summer fourth gathering with pocket sized copies of the constitution and the declaration of independence and read sections of them to anyone who would listen. Now although I was guilty of making myself scarce when he got on a roll, I really loved that he wanted his friends, a bunch of goofy students ready for a fun night with sparklers and cheap beer, to remember the bigger vision and hope articulated in those founding documents. He wanted us to think a little more deeply about what we were doing, about our citizenship and the purpose of this day, and that practice has been an annual gift to me ever since, as each year when the 4th of July draws near, try to read and think and return to reflection on our country and what it means to be a citizen and hold this legacy. 

Now this year on the Fourth of July, in the Episcopal Church, something strange is happening today, something even more provocative and even more deeply considered than a pocket sized constitution. Because on this national holiday, we are being prompted by our traditions and worship to consider beyond the cookouts and fireworks, even beyond the Declaration of Independence, to the meaning of our citizenship as people who are called first to be citizens of the Kingdom of God. 

Let me tell you why I think that is. The forms of our liturgy and the Book of Common Prayer, while recognizing today as an occasion of commemoration, instruct us that should the fourth fall on a Sunday, we read the scriptures and pray the prayers appointed not for Independence Day, but for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost, and that we have to scoot any church observance until tomorrow.  This once a year celebration of the founding of a whole country has to scoot over for a regular Sunday? Hmmm.

We have liturgical instructions that a usual Sunday morning is priority number one. And then the readings for this Sunday give us some other food for thought on this Independence Day. Today’s gospel story is about Jesus’s conflicted relationship with his homeland, his love and loyalty of home and the limits and tensions of that love and loyalty. 

Where does our lesson begin? “Jesus came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue.” Jesus has been traveling about, not all that far from home, but arrives back in the town he grew up in, and back to what we might think of as his childhood parish, the local synagogue. Jesus is back in his home territory, home synagogue, and he began to teach, likely saying some of the same things we’ve read in Mark up until now, beautiful and confusing and provocative things like:

“Is it easier to say ‘your sins are forgiven,’ or ‘stand up and walk?’”

and 

“I’ve come not to the righteous but the sinners”

Or perhaps he was telling stories of demons sent away, children come back to life and women healed, storms calmed, strange disciples called, the rules of the sabbath reformed. The people in his homeland were astounded and they took offense at Jesus. The word for offense can also be translated as scandalized. They are scandalized by his gospel. 

Jesus can’t do any ministry there, and he is amazed at their unbelief. Amazed, Mark says! And we might imagine that in that amazement at their unbelief, their rejection, is also some heartbreak, disappointment, maybe even anger?  And so Jesus and his friends take on a fresh strategy of ministry. They go around the villages and countryside, looking for like-minded folks and ministering and proclaiming the gospel with their travel gear on, ready to keep on moving, to shake the dust off their feet when they face rejection.

Jesus loves his homeland, he wants to bring his love and gifts to his community, but compromising the gospel in order to fit in there is not an option. So he does what he can do — heals a few, talks with those who want to listen — and lets go of the rest, remembering that his call is bigger than Nazareth. Jesus loved his homeland, but compromising the gospel was not an option. Hmmm.

What do we do, how do we live, when our homeland cannot accept all of who we are? 

That’s a question in this gospel lesson, it’s a question from the instructions of the Book of Common Prayer to honor the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, and it’s a question for Christians on the Fourth of July, when we might take the opportunity on this occasion to ponder our patriotism and how to love this place and project of the United States well and faithfully. 

Because we love this place—this landscape and dream and project and homeland. Right? I love Fourth of July nonsense and Americana nostalgia and US history, and I love soul food and hamburgers and cheesecake and Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys and Aaron Copland and Beyonce and the Appalachian foothills and Keith Haring and Walt Whitman and Toni Morrison and the way the Rocky Mountains look from 40,000 feet, and I have big feelings about our Olympic teams, and most of all I love the aspirations of democracy and the vision of freedom and equality that we continue to work toward. 

And you have things that you love about this place, this people, this project of a nation, things that move you to tears or make you jump to your feet or slap your hand over your heart. But no matter how we love our country, for Christians, that love must come second to the call and love that we have to Jesus and the gospel. 

In his book, City of God, St. Augustine talked about this in terms of ordering our loves rightly, and says that while we it is good to love what God has made, it becomes evil when our love of that thing displaces our love of God. This notion sounds well and good, but can sometimes feel more prickly on the ground. The right ordering of loves might be a little less clear in our catchphrase culture that holds “God and country” very tightly together, or if we sing and pray “God Bless America” without considering the depths of what that such blessing might mean in line with the gospel. It’s stickier to rightly order our loves when America First permeates our soundwaves, or when it seems like everyone is trying to judge the most legitimate way to be an American, when our deepest values are supposed to be reduced to a bumper sticker, or when loving our home seems to entail suspicion or even derision to others beyond our borders. 

In other words, we can only order our loves and faithfully live our citizenship in God’s kingdom and our country with thoughtfulness, dialogue, and intentionality. 

We love our homeland, but compromising the gospel in order to fit in here is not an option. So we might need to find ourselves feeling uneasy with politics and culture that don’t square with the core of the Christian faith.

And what’s the core? What’s the good news? It’s that God loved God’s creation so much that putting on skin and walking and living and loving and healing and liberating people he came in contact with, loving so much and in such a practical way and just so strangely that they killed him for it. But, but! The love was so big and strong and unstoppable that he came back to life and kept on at it. 

And not only that, but this kind of love, this live-changing, body healing, soul nourishing, society changing, freedom love of God is not just for me and you, it’s not just for holy people or Episcopalians or even just for law-abiding constructive citizens of the United States. It’s for all of us. Doesn’t that make us glad? Doesn’t it make us nervous? 

When we live into this good news and refuse to give up on that vision of God’s love for all people, those like us and not, people might say we’re compromising our patriotism, might not want to hear it. 

When we live into this good news and remember that God is the source of all things and holds a love and life more powerful than death, we can’t put our trust in a government or a passport or a culture or a nation, but have to lift our eyes, turn for help, to God alone.

When we live into this good news of God’s strange strength and abundance, God’s weird kind of love and power, and find ourselves in the unpopular camp and feeling weak and out of step, that’s when we remember that God’s grace is sufficient for us, for power is made perfect in weakness.

This gospel passage is framed by calls to place our trust, or pledge our allegiance, we might say, in God’s goodness, mercy, and grace, and we are in very fine company with the prophet Ezekiel, and the psalmist, and the Apostle Paul, when we follow Jesus’s example of his relationship to homeland. 

Friends, my fellow Americans, let us love this place well, love this landscape and dream and project and homeland. And let us love it thoughtfully and carefully, remembering that our love of country, our patriotism, and our service to it, follows second to our love and call to walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself for us an offering and sacrifice to God. 

Caring for Community Part II: Listening Well

Listening to each other is harder than we think. We know we should do it; we know we’re not great at it; and we don’t learn how on purpose.

In the spiritual accompaniment training with Still Harbor, I was recently introduced to OARS, a helpful acrostic framework of active listening and compassionate communication called Motivational Interviewing, a counseling practice. But we don’t have to be counselors to use this tool, and it already feels like a game-changer in my person life and ministry.

O is for “Open-ended Questions.” These are simply questions that can’t be answered with a yes or no, and open up conversations and stories wherever your conversation partner wants to lead. Some examples are:
“What did you think about this?” “Who has been with you through this time?” “What are you hoping for?” “Tell me more about this…”

A is for “Affirming.” We often skip ahead to what we’d like to say, how we think or are correct, but it is an act of listening love to honor the courage of our conversation partner in sharing and showing up. Use your body language to show openness and affirmation, don’t interrupt, thank people for what they are sharing.

R is for “Reflective listening,” which is a way of reflecting back to folks what you hear them say. This might feel a little silly, but we know some of the biggest miscommunications can happen between what we have said and what someone heard. By saying back, “I hear you saying _________” or even asking, “Are you feeling this way?” we help each other feel heard, seen, and honored, and we also make sure we are hearing the most important parts.

S is for “Summarizing,” which is the fuller version of reflecting, and takes a lot of our attention and willingness to help others weave their stories and thoughts together. Reflect back what you heard, then summarize it. It is a powerful experience to hear someone tell us back our story (no matter how small). It can be as simple as, “Wow, from this morning’s traffic jam, to that bad meeting you were having such a hard day, but then you had that beautiful moment with your friend on the phone!” We tell each other back the stories of our lives to honor that they matter.

This framework of listening is miraculous only in the most ordinary sense. It is a small infusion of grace to offer each other deep listening and care, but this ministry of peace begins with us!

Caring for Community

Back in April and May, St. Paul’s Chattanooga used the Christian classic instruction, Life Together, for our weekly Sunday School study, and I can’t stop thinking about it as a gift for the church in pandemic. As we head toward the holidays, new griefs and losses are on the horizon for our families and communities, and as we navigate election season our conversations feel more fraught than ever. How are we a people apart? How are we a people when there’s so much vitriol, and human dignity seems to be up for debate?

Bonhoeffer points to the core virtue of our connection as the body of Christ:

“Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us… I have community with others and shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.”

In this community, Bonhoeffer says, we offer each other the ministries of right and loving speech, considering each others’ needs first, listening, bearing one another’s burdens, and proclaiming God’s love for each other. Right now those ministries, so simple yet so hard, feel like essential nutrients for the church. So here’s a reminder for me and for us all, from the wisdom of saints before us.

May we speak with love and proclaim God’s love.

May we listen well.

May we consider each other and help each other.

May we pray for each other and with each other.