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 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.