Category: Wednesday Morning Thoughts

We paused on the trail—tired, hot, and momentarily liberated from the weight of our heavy packs—and I sat down on a scorched, fallen log, grateful for the respite, in what only three years earlier had been a verdant, old growth Montana forest. Now, the charred remains of spruce, lodge-pole pine, and fir were all that I could see. Burned sentinels of formerly majestic trees rose ahead and above us, and those no longer standing seemed to litter the forest floor as if some great force had arbitrarily tossed them and let them lay where they fell. Chaos and destruction seemed all around. I found myself feeling sad, and lamenting the loss of what I knew had once been a fecund, flourishing forest ecosystem.

I was in the Scapegoat Wilderness area of Montana with dear friends from graduate school, an annual, much-anticipated sojourn, and this was not what I had in mind when I flew into Great Falls a few days before. I’d had visions of escaping my native southern heat by hiking in cool, pristine sub-alpine forests, and I now found myself in a forest radically changed by fire; ravaged, and permanently damaged. Or was it? Was I seeing the whole picture?

Several days prior to our Montana hike, we converged on Great Falls, Montana, where Scott, the younger brother of one of our cohort, lives and owns a small cabin in the Bob Marshall Wilderness area, about 40 miles east of Augusta, Montana. We planned to spend 5-6 days backpacking in what is affectionately called “the Bob,” some of the most magnificent wilderness in the country. When the plane landed in Great Falls I became immediately aware of dense smoke in the air, caused by wildfires in the wilderness area 80 miles away, where we were headed. Once assembled, we loaded up the truck and drove west toward the “Ahorn” fire (fires out west are typically named for a local, distinctive feature). Smoke filled the horizon, and I wondered what lay ahead. Would the USFS fight the fire, or would they let it burn? Fire management is a complex issue, as I learned during my Montana stay. The Native Americans understood that fire, though dangerous and potentially destructive, could also be life-giving. They often intentionally set fires for agricultural and hunting purposes. Following suit, the USFS understands that fire is nature’s way of restoring and replenishing the forest. Indeed, they often let fires burn themselves out, unless they threaten homes, businesses, or other human-related areas.[i] After a day at the cabin, monitoring the fire—now grown from 8,000 to 15,000 acres, we consulted the USFS and changed our backcountry route to a more southerly course, out of the Lewis and Clark Wilderness and into the Scapegoat Wilderness area.

Our hiking trip, thus re-routed to the south began at a trailhead in an area burned by a large and ferocious fire several years earlier. The hot sun, unimpeded by green branches, shone full force on our single-file procession of backpackers and served as a compelling and present reminder of the effects of the fire. It was by most outward appearances a scene of utter desolation, and a mordant reminder of the damage being wrought by the Ahorn fire to the north. It was hard to reconcile the forest, wildflowers, lovely meadows, and waterfalls we left behind in a smoky haze with the pyrrhic terrain through which we now walked. And, although I knew that the sub-alpine lake where we planned to camp for the night was not in the burn area, I consoled myself with images of a clear mountain lake, cool breezes, and a deep forest of many, many shades of green, this was a dramatically different world. Truth told it seemed to reflect aspects of my own inner state. Only a few months after the death of my mother, and the leaving for college of our younger son, I realized that I, too, was adjusting to significant changes in the emotional ecology of my own life. In some ways, the landscape around me—an ecological system in the midst of radical change—seemed to mirror some of the changes in my world as well. I too, was in uncertain, suspect terrain. After several miles of hiking on this hot day, we stopped for water and rest still solidly ensconced in the burn. As we sat, quietly, I began to look around. Amidst the desolation, I began to see that life was everywhere, pushing upward in infinite detail, where my vision had been limited only to what was most obvious to the eye. I caught a glimpse of a mule deer, drawn to the open terrain by the lush, waist-high vegetation now growing in the sunlight. Light, life-giving and fierce, seemed to have given birth to the life lying in the trees, and in the soil, all along. Fireweed, a lovely plant, with lavender and pink flowers, that grows in just such burned-over land, was everywhere round us. How had I missed it?

As I listened, and watched, and finally began to pay attention, I heard a low, buzzing hum, and then began to see that the fireweed had attracted hundreds of hummingbirds, dodging and darting, feeding on the fireweed nectar, along with bees and other insects. Birds, marmots, chipmunks, wildlife of all kinds seemed suddenly visible, where before I had seen only blackened trees and desolation. Life seemed to be flourishing where once there I had seen only death, and destruction. And I had not seen it, in part because I had not paid attention to the moment—and to the larger, more complex picture it contained. Focusing only on the blackened trees straight ahead and above me, and on my fear of the fires to the north, fears stirred by the landscape all around me, I failed to see the profusion of life flourishing right beneath my feet. Seeds of lodgepole pines, needing only the intense heat of the fire to release their inner Chi—the deepest, essential life breath and energy, and I had both literally and metaphorically not seen the emerging new forest for the desolate, burned trees. To contend with high-impact fire, lodge-pole pine produce cones that open following exposure to extreme heat (termed ‘serotiny’). This serotinous strategy is one piece of evidence that fire was historically a prevalent disturbance across the lodgepole pine ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains. And, though trees are the big players in forests, understory species (like grasses, shrubs, and fungal networks) also have a strong evolutionary relationship with fire. Following fire, areas dominated by sprouting species (aspen, cottonwood, gambel oak, many grasses, and many shrubs) tend to rapidly return to pre-fire conditions. These species, many of which were previously rare or absent, flourish under the new conditions. Indeed, flourishing was everywhere, in stark contrast to the all too evident reminders of what had been, on the surface, a very challenging time for this forest ecosystem. The forest was exhibiting profound resilience amidst what appeared on the surface profound destruction. One needed only to quiet oneself, sit, and pay attention to see it.

On Wednesday of last week, 15 souls gathered in our Holy Family chapel for the “First Wednesday Healing Service.” I shared a brief version of this story with those gathered, reminding us all that “wholeness” and healing may not always take the forms with which we are most familiar. The emphasis in these services is “care” as opposed to “cure.” By gathering together—the very act of showing up—we are co-participants in healing, solace, nurture, and compassion. Even as our church, like so many churches, is in a season of transition, we are flourishing in so many ways. At the heart of this flourishing is imagination, creativity, and our intentional cultivation of relationships, and hospitality. After the service we gathered for lunch, and the laughter and conversation around the table were also healing for us all. In an age of loneliness, providing opportunities for connection can heal us all, including mind, body, and spirit[1]

Recently I gathered in Northern Colorado with friends from graduate school, a trip almost canceled due to fires in the area. A week of heavy rains extinguished the fires and we were able to proceed with this annual trip. The valley where we stay is at 9’000’ at the confluence of Rocky Mountain National Park and the Comanche Wilderness, and was the site of significant fires in 1994 and 2022. On a trail run through the former burn area, I delighted in the young Aspen, spruce, and pines are flourishing in outward and visible signs of resilience, a coming back to life in myriad ways

The Paschal Mystery at the heart of an Incarnational, sacramental spirituality, is about the ongoing reception of the Holy Spirit in the ever-flourishing receiving of it here, now, in the moment at hand, a process of transition—and transformation. There, we are given both new life and new spirit. Ron Rolheiser suggests that ”It begins with suffering and death, moves on to the reception of new life, spends time grieving the old and adjusting to the new, and finally, only after the old life has been truly let go of, is new spirit given, for the life we are already given.”[i]  We might even glimpse the Baptismal promise of resurrection during times of transition—times, that is, of waiting, watching, listening. Understood in this way, emotional and relational wisdom can emerge from such transitions—those conflicted, contested, potentially life-giving spaces. This can transform us, and potentially those whom we find there, even as it transforms the boundaries themselves, in an ever-fluid, reciprocal, and hopefully generative unfolding. This is how change becomes transition, through resilience, as we adapt to the inevitable changes in our lives. I am so grateful for all those at Holy Family who, in this season of transition, are proving resilient and helping others to find life-giving resilience as well. We shall indeed find new life at Holy Family as we seek a way forward. Last Wednesday, those gathered for the Healing Service were themselves outward and visible signs of resilience, and hope amidst transition. And so it is for all those who serve this parish in so many ways, including simply showing up, paying attention, and bearing witness to signs of new life! Thank you!

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

Blessings, Bill

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/social-connectedness/risk-factors/index.html [i] Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality, (New York: Doubleday, 1999), p. 147. 

This month we observe the Feast Days of two remarkable women, Hildegard and Phoebe. Hildegard of Bingen, born in 1098 in the lush Rhineland Valley, was a mystic, poet, composer, dramatist, doctor, and scientist. Her parents’ tenth child, she was tithed to the Church and raised by the anchoress Jutta in a cottage near the Benedictine monastery of Disibodenberg. Drawn by the life of silence and prayer, other women joined them, finding the freedom, rare outside women’s religious communities, to develop their intellectual gifts. They organized as a convent under the authority of the abbot of Disibodenberg, with Jutta as abbess. When Jutta died, Hildegard, then 38, became abbess. Later she founded independent convents at Bingen (1150) and Eibingen (1165), with the Archbishop of Mainz as her only superior. From childhood, Hildegard experienced dazzling spiritual visions.

We are told that at age 43, a voice commanded her to tell what she saw. So began an outpouring of extraordinarily original writings illustrated by unusual and wondrous illuminations. These works abound with feminine imagery for God and God’s creative activity. In 1147, Bernard of Clairvaux recommended her first book of visions, Scivias, to Pope Eugenius III, leading to papal authentication at the Synod of Trier. Hildegard became famous, eagerly sought for counsel, a correspondent of kings and queens, abbots and abbesses, archbishops and popes. She carried out four preaching missions in northern Europe, unprecedented activity for a woman. She practiced medicine, focusing on women’s needs; published treatises on natural science and philosophy; wrote a liturgical drama, The Play of the Virtues, in which personified virtues sing their parts and the devil, condemned to live without music, can only speak.*

For Hildegard, music was essential to worship. Her liturgical compositions, unusual in structure and tonality, were described by contemporaries as “chant of surpassing sweet melody” and “strange and unheard-of music.” Hildegard lived in a world accustomed to male governance. Yet, within her convents, and to a surprising extent outside them, she exercised a commanding spiritual authority based on confidence in her visions and considerable political astuteness. When she died in 1179 at 81, she left a rich legacy which speaks eloquently across the ages. 

St. Phoebe is recognized as the first woman deacon, although we know little about her life. She is honored as being the prototype for female deacons just as St. Stephen is the prototype for male deacons. In her book Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church Dr. Kyriaki FitzGerald suggests that St. Phoebe is an example of faith and service for female deacons. St. Phoebe came from a very busy port area called Cenchreae, a popular stop for people traveling from Syria or Asia Minor. Although there has been a great amount of debate concerning what her actual duties as a deacon might have been, it is clear that St. Paul gave recognition to St. Phoebe, thanking her in public for her hospitality and for meeting the needs of the people in Cenchreae, and urging others to help her with her ministry as “a deaconess of the Church at Cenchreae.”*

Centuries later, St. John Chrysostom praised St. Phoebe’s work for the Church as an inspiration and model for both men and women to imitate. He calls her a saint – a holy person and a woman who served the Church through the office of deacon. Among my favorite prayers in our tradition is the lovely Prayer of St. Chrysostom, copied here:

Almighty God, you have given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplication to you; and you have promised through your well-beloved Son that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will be in the midst of them: Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen.

Of course, in our own Episcopal tradition we began ordaining women only in 1974 in Philadelphia, and we will have a chance to learn more about this later in the fall, thanks to our wonderful Adult Education team:

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/philadelphia-eleven-the

But as we know, women were indeed called to serve in the early Church, as is seen in the example of Hildegard and Phoebe. There are many women in addition to these two who are recognized by the Church for their various ministries – St. Poplia (fourth century), St. Sophia, known as the “second Phoebe” (fifth century), St. Tabitha, mentioned in the early Acts of the Apostles, also known for her almsgiving, St. Mary, St. Mark’s mother who opened her house for Christian meetings in Jerusalem, St. Lydia, who showed her hospitality to St. Paul and his companions, and St. Priscilla, who was involved in missionary work (FitzGerald 1998). Female deacons are mentioned in the salutations of the epistle to the Philippians (1:1), and the first epistle to Timothy (3:8-12). Many of these women were of course women of color. As the theologian bell hooks has written:

“When we dare to speak in a liberatory voice, we threaten even those who may initially claim to want our words. In the act of overcoming our fear of speech, of being seen as threatening, in the process of learning to speak as subjects, we participate in the global struggle to end domination. When we end our silence, when we speak in a liberated voice, our words connect us with anyone, anywhere who lives in silence. Feminist focus on women finding a voice, on the silence of black women, of women of color, has led to increased interest in our words. This is an important historical moment. We are both speaking of our own volition, out of our commitment to justice, to revolutionary struggle to end domination, and simultaneously called to speak, “invited” to share our words. It is important that we speak. What we speak about is more important. It is our responsibility collectively and individually to distinguish between mere speaking that is about self-aggrandizement, exploitation of the exotic “other,” and that coming to voice which is a gesture of resistance, an affirmation of struggle.”

I am so very grateful for women’s voices and their influence on my journey, including family, friends, professors, and colleagues. My beloved maternal grandmother wisely reminded me that while she was so proud of me for being a “helper,” she also wanted me to remember that “helpfulness is sometimes the sunny side of control.” She well knew that men could often sacrifice relationships for the need to be in control of narratives that were not necessarily their own. I am grateful for my life partner Vicky, who has never stopped learning and growing, with a delightful, incisive intellect, and profound wisdom born of empathy and compassion, and who has so often been courageous in the face of a male dominated healthcare field. Being as I am the father of two sons, I am now so very grateful for two wise and courageous daughters-in-law, giving so much to the communities they serve. And, I am thankful for and delighted by our two granddaughters, Sophia and Alice, whose wisdom, humor, curiosity and compassionate hearts delight us and give us hope for the future. I am reminded of a remarkable book by Carol Gilligan I first encountered at Vanderbilt, “In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development” where she writes;

“Our ability to communicate our own feelings, and to pick up the feelings of others and thus to heal fractures in connection, threatens the structures of hierarchy. Feelings of empathy and tender compassion for another’s suffering or humanity make it difficult to maintain or justify inequality.”

Indeed, and since the beginning of the Church, women have been using their talents and gifts from God to serve. Of course, we at Holy Family have been blessed for many years by the gifts and graces of the women in our parish, who nurture, sustain, and guide us in so many ways, including our own beloved Deacon Katharine. Thank you, to each of you! I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church! Bill+

They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”Matthew 14:17

Some time ago, while backpacking in the Four Corners area of Utah, at Cedar Mesa, I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of a small animal scurrying around outside my tent. At least, I hoped it was small. Earlier in the evening we heard coyotes calling in the deep canyons of Grand Gulch, where we were now four days into our trip. Curious, I unzipped the door of the tent and crawled outside, headlamp shining in the darkness, to find a fox scurrying away. Standing outside the tent, I turned off the headlamp, and looked up. In that moment, I saw more stars than I had ever seen. There was a fullness, depth, color, and abundance to this heavenly host that left me speechless. I will never forget it. The light from those stars had been traveling thousands of years to reach us in Red Canyon that night. Indeed, at that moment we were in the ancestral home of the Anasazi—from which the Puebloan tribes arose—and it occurred to me that the light from some of those stars began its journey at the same time the Anasazi lived in Grand Gulch, some two thousand years ago. In that moment, time and space seemed a seamless web of light. The light seemed to be everywhere, past, present, and future.

John Polkinghorne, the Anglican priest and physicist, has likened the dual nature of Jesus—both human and divine—to the dual nature of light, which we now know is both particle and wave. It is this Incarnational understanding of Christ into which we live in the long, green season of Pentecost, and the abundance we find in the feeding of the 5,000, among our Gospel texts recently, is no exception. When the great crowds pressed in upon them and Jesus was seeking some time alone—they urged him to “send the crowds away.” Jesus’ response is a call to compassion—a summons to them to “suffer with” (“com-passio”) and take action to do justice (Hesed) to that suffering. It is a clear message to the disciples to see the situation differently: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Most of us probably grew up hearing this story as “Jesus Feeds Five Thousand.” In truth, Jesus fed the disciples, who then fed the multitude. Perhaps this is a call to us to go and do likewise. It may be that the disciples were reticent to feed the crowd because they believed that what they had was simply not enough—indeed, they described it as “nothing.” But in the hands of the living Christ, even our limitations become God’s bountiful abundance. He was not simply asking the disciples to change their offering of bread and fish into something more abundant. He was asking them to think—to imagine—more abundantly! He was asking them to change their ideas about the power of compassion here, now, in this world.

Recently I was in Northern Colorado, working on a book project with dear friends from Vanderbilt Divinity School whom I have known for some 40 years. I’ll be saying more about this in future posts, but among the topics of our book is the importance of relationships that nurture, sustain, and give life-giving meaning to our sojourn on this earth. These dear friends, along with Vicky, our sons and their families, and our community of faith at Holy Family, are gifts helping me to find joy and meaning in even the most challenging moments. While in Colorado I rose early one morning for a trail run and was greeted by a glorious sunrise, a surprisingly abundant gift—a moment in time for which I was deeply grateful.

That night in Utah, the light from the stars, a seamless tapestry of time and space, reminded me of the Eucharist we celebrate together in this sacred place, our beloved Holy Family, and which is seen in the foreshadowing of the Eucharist in the feeding of the five thousand. Our present participation in a past reality, and calling down of the spirit, are both a commemoration of the Last Supper and an anticipation of the heavenly banquet to come. In the meantime, we are called to participate in God’s reconciling compassion right here, and now. Teresa of Avila said “Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes through which Christ’s compassion is to look out to the earth, yours are the feet by which he is to go about doing good, and yours are the hands by which he is to bless us now.” Blessing, breaking, and giving away…we know how to do this, because we do this together all the time. Look up. Look around. The loaves and fishes spread, like light from distant stars, on that hillside long ago. Let us go and do likewise. I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

Blessings, Bill+

Next week, we in the Episcopal Church will celebrate the feast day of Jonathon Myrick Daniels. Born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1939, he was shot and killed by an unemployed highway worker in Haynesville, Alabama in August of 1965. From High School in New Hampshire to his studies at VMI and Harvard, Jonathon Daniels wrestled with the meaning of life and death and vocation. Attracted to medicine and law as well as ministry, he eventually entered Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

In March of 1965 the televised appeal of Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma to secure for all citizens the right to vote drew Jonathon to a time and place where the nation’s racism and the Episcopal Church’s share in that inheritance were exposed. Jailed on August 14 for joining a picket line, Jonathon and his companions were unexpectedly released. Aware that they were in danger, four of them walked to a small store. As sixteen year-old Ruby Sales reached the top step of the entrance a man with a gun appeared, cursing her. Jonathon pulled her to one side to shield her from the unexpected threats. He was killed by a blast from the 12-gauge shotgun. Jonathon’s letters and papers bear eloquent witness to the gifts he possessed, and to the cross he chose to bear as he discovered these gifts, renewing his mind and being transformed in the process. He writes; 

“The doctrine of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments were the essential preconditions of the experience itself. The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown…I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection…with them, the black men and white men, with all life, in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout…We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”

Before he entered seminary Jonathan Daniels earned his undergraduate degree from the Virginia Military Institute where he was the valedictorian of the Class of 1961. The school honors his service and sacrifice to the civil rights movement to this day. Photo: Virginia Military Institute

From Paul’s letter to the Romans, I found myself drawn again and again to his eloquent words: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds…” These words seem so deeply important to what follows. Paul reminds us, wisely, that we each have gifts that differ according to the grace given us. I was reminded of the wonderful poem by Czeslaw Milosz, entitled “Encounter”:

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn.

A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road.

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive.

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going

the flash of hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles.

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

It is precisely this sense of wonder about our lives and the sojourn each of us is on that I want to emphasize here. My brothers and sisters in Christ, we may not share the particular cross Jonathon Daniels chose to bear, the most radical form of what Deitrich Bonhoeffer called “the cost of discipleship” but we do share his journey, by virtue of our shared Baptism. He chose not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of his mind as he participated in the Paschal mystery of Baptism, and so can we all. When Paul appeals to us to present ourselves as living sacrifices, he is asking that we live as if our lives are gifts to be used, here and now, in community. This begins with asking in wonder, and measuring in grace and faith our gifts. And let us remember that transformation is primarily about becoming a “whole” person, integrating all aspects of who we are, including our shadow selves, into a person of integrity and compassion. This is the way of Christ, who taught us how. And so I ask, with the poet Milosz, when we allow ourselves to be caught up in the Pentecostal winds of the Holy Spirit: where are we now, where are we going? 

Jonathan Daniels’ funeral was held at St. James Episcopal Church, the parish that was sponsoring him for ordination, in his hometown of Keene, New Hampshire. Photo: The Archives of The Episcopal Church

Here’s a lovely villanelle on vocation, by Theodore Roethke:

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

Indeed, we learn by going where we have to go. Let’s covenant, shall we, to pay attention to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, calling us to be share our gifts and graces in service, in community, with love.

Here’s more on the life of Daniels from the Episcopal News Service: Remembering Jonathan Daniels 50 years after his martyrdom – Episcopal News Service

Blessings, and I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church!

PS – Friends, along with three dear colleagues from our days at Vanderbilt Divinity School, I am working on a book for Vanderbilt University Press, and we will be in Colorado from August 14^th-21^st as we endeavor to complete this project. So the Trail Notes will take a summer break for a couple of weeks, and resume the week of August 21^st. Perhaps I’ll have something to report based on this time off the grid in the Northern Rockies. Blessings, and Godspeed to each of you. I am so very grateful for this time as your interim priest in charge!

In a lovely poem by William Stafford, we are invited to pay attention to the “threads” in our lives that endure, and in so doing, remind us of what is most deeply important to our faith journey:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread. ~William Stafford

This week in the Episcopal Church we celebrate the “Philadelphia Eleven”—the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church—and we observe the Feast Day of William Wilberforce, reformer and abolitionist.

The ordination service was held on Monday, July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saints Mary and Martha, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, where Suzanne Hiatt served as deacon, and whose rector was civil rights advocate Paul Washington. Beginning at 11 o’clock in the morning, the service lasted for three hours.^] The eleven women serving as deacons presented themselves to Bishops Corrigan, DeWitt, and Welles, who ordained them as priests. Harvard University professor Charles V. Willie, who was also the vice president of the House of Deputies at the time, preached a sermon entitled, “The Priesthood of All Believers,” which began, “The hour cometh and now is when the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth,” followed by Dr. Willie’s declaration that “as blacks refused to participate in their own oppression by going to the back of the bus in 1955 in Montgomery, women are refusing to cooperate in their own oppression by remaining on the periphery of full participation in the Church.” Those gathered numbered almost two thousand supporters and a few protesters. In the middle of the service when Corrigan said, “If there be any of you who knoweth any impediment or notable crime (in these women), let him come forth in the name of God…” several priests in attendance proceeded to read statements against the ordination. Once these statements had been made, the bishops responded that they were acting in obedience to God, noting that “hearing God’s command, we can heed no other. The time for our obedience is now.” And they proceeded with the ordinations.Here is a lovely photo montage of women clergy in our own Diocese:

William Wilberforce (24 August 1759 – 29 July 1833) was a British politician, philanthropist, and a leader of the movement to abolish the slave trade. A native of Kingston upon Hull Yorkshire, he began his political career in 1780, and became an independent Member of Parliament (MP) for Yorkshire (1784–1812). In 1785, he underwent a conversion experience and became an Anglican, which resulted in major changes to his lifestyle and a lifelong concern for reform. According to Holy Women, Holy Men, in 1787, Wilberforce came into contact with Thomas Clarkson and a group of activists against the slave trade, including Granville Sharp Hannah More and Charles Middleton. They persuaded Wilberforce to take on the cause of abolition, and he became a leading English abolitionist. He headed the parliamentary campaign against the British slave trade for 20 years until the passage of the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Wilberforce was convinced of the importance of religion, morality and education. He championed causes and campaigns such as the Society for the Suppression of Vice, British missionary work in India, the creation of a free colony in Sierra Leone, the foundation of the Church Mission Society and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. In later years, Wilberforce supported the campaign for the complete abolition of slavery and continued his involvement after 1826, when he resigned from Parliament because of his failing health. That campaign led to the Slavery Abolition Act 1833, which abolished slavery in most of the British Empire. Wilberforce died just three days after hearing that the passage of the Act through Parliament was assured. He was buried in Westminster Abbey close to his friend William Pitt the Younger.

Wilberforce’s life and work have been commemorated in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. In Westminster Abbey, a seated statue of Wilberforce by Samuel Joseph was erected in 1840, bearing an epitaph praising his Christian character and his long labour to abolish the slave trade and slavery. Various churches within the Anglican Communion commemorate Wilberforce in their liturgical calendars, and Wilberforce University in Ohio, United States, founded in 1856, is named after him. The university was the first owned by African-American people, and is an historically black college. In Ontario, Canada, the Wilberforce Colony was founded by black reformers, and inhabited by freed slaves from the United States. With the backing of his friend William Pitt, who became Prime Minister, Wilberforce became leader of The Society for the Abolition of Slavery. The society campaigned for almost 20 years to bring an end to British involvement in the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The abolition campaign made them many enemies, especially among those who had made huge profits from the trade in enlsaved African people. Amazing Grace, a film about Wilberforce and the struggle against the slave trade, was released in 2007 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Parliament’s anti-slave trade legislation.

And so this week we give thanks for the ordination of women, and for the life of William Wilberforce. In two weeks we will observe the life of Jonathon Myrick Daniels, who was killed while working for civil rights in Mississippi.

There’s a thread we follow, dear ones, as our journey in faith unfolds. Nothing can stop time’s unfolding, but we don’t let go of the thread. Among the threads in my own faith journey is our beloved Holy Family. And like those women priests—and a Holy host of lay women who are also among the priesthood of all believers and who have been saints for me—I am so grateful. I give thanks as well for the life of William Wilberforce, whose “amazing grace” has blessed so many. As the poet RS Thomas—a highly educated Welsh priest who spent his life serving small, rural parishes wrote, they are luminaries for us all (More about Thomas and Daniels next week!):

My luminary,

my morning and evening

star. My light at noon

when there is no sun

and the sky lowers. My balance

of joy in a world

that has gone off joy’s

standard. Yours the face

that young I recognized

as though I had known you

of old. Come, my eyes

said, out into the morning

of a world whose dew

waits for your footprint.

Before a green altar

with the thrush for priest

I took those gossamer

vows that neither the Church

could stale nor the Machine

tarnish, that with the years

have grown hard as flint,

lighter than platinum

on our ringless fingers. ~RS Thomas

Blessings to each of you, and thank you for the ways you contribute to the “thread” that is our common life together. You are luminaries for me as well. I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and see you in church!

Bill+

River Sojourns-Life Journeys

One of the enduring joys of my youth has been a fondness for rivers, lakes, and streams. I especially enjoy whitewater canoeing and kayaking, and the wild places to which these activities take me. Growing up in North Georgia, I felt at home on the Amicalola and the Chestatee, the Chattahoochee, and the Nantahala. In more recent years, I have discovered sea kayaking, and I have been fortunate to paddle in places as diverse and magical as coastal Maine, Tebenkof Bay Alaska, Lake Jocassee, and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. Our two sons also developed a love for water, as evidenced by this photo of older son Justin, who was a raft guide for the NOC while in graduate school at Vanderbilt:

It is a delight to view the world from the perspective of the water. One notices the intricacy and beauty of creation in new and remarkable ways. One is for a time both in—and of—the context of the water. The Japanese poet Basho knew this experience well:

The old pond, ah!

A frog jumps in:

The water’s sound!

Like the ripples of my paddle as I dip it into the current of the Cartecay, the frog’s presence both disrupts the smooth texture of the world and belongs to it. Yet in some ways we are different, Basho’s frog and I. We humans cannot fully immerse ourselves in the river world around us. We cannot escape our awareness of being “sojourners” in the world, as the theologians Kierkegaard, Tillich, and others have expressed so well. We are wholly in the world, but reflectively so. We are carried along by the current, even as we participate in our passage and watch our ripples spread for better or worse. We are at one and the same time travelers, and part of the terrain. We are sojourners in our own home. And as such, we need companions on our journeys. We ask questions about who and whose we are, where our lives are going, and the meaning of our sojourns here. This is one reason we have created religions, and churches: as contexts which bind us together (Middle English (originally in the sense ‘life under monastic vows’): from Old French, or from Latin religio(n- ) ‘obligation, bond, reverence’, perhaps based on Latin religare ‘to bind’) in our quest for meaning. 

In some ways, my own work as a pastoral counselor/marriage and family therapist is like paddling down the Amicalola River. Those of us who engage this work do so out of our conviction that it is ultimately relationships that heal what is broken. And relationships provide the best context for asking the deepest spiritual questions about our lives. Theologian Ed Farley, one of my graduate school professors, once described courage as “venturing forth into creation with vitality and wonder.”  This is true of both river sojourns and the many journeys—both relational and spiritual—we take over the course of our lives. We often need companions on our journeys, even the most introverted among us. One of my favorite authors, the psychiatrist Donald Winnicott, began his autobiography with these lines: “O God, this is my prayer. My prayer is that I will be fully alive when I die.” Indeed, as the theologian/mystic Irenaeus said so well, “God fully glorified is a human being fully alive.”  Another author whose work has been important to me is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, especially on the topic of “intersubjectivity” or, those spaces between us in relationships:

“True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it: I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and through them, all the rest….The world is the natural setting of, and field for, all my thoughts and all my explicit perceptions.”

 ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

Philosphers, theologians, psychologists such as Emmanuel Levinas, Donald Winnicott, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty have been frequent conversation partners, though I cannot claim to have mastered any of them. Still, there are times when running on trails, listening to a patient, teaching in the classroom, or immersed in the liturgy are all of a piece, phenomenologically speaking. They are forms of what Merleau-Ponty called “intertwinement“–cultivating and adopting an ‘attentiveness and wonder’ and curiosity towards the world and one another as fellow sojourners. And our “intertwinement” with others extends, equally, to our relationship with the natural world – a theme that Merleau-Ponty was increasingly drawn towards in his later writings. Intersubjectivity is a theme that informs and enriches in so many ways. Or, as Thomas Merton wrote:

“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all these people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world. . .

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. . . . I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed. . . . But this cannot be seen, only believed and ‘understood’ by a peculiar gift.”

― Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Yes, and through our disciplines and practices we can cultivate this embodiment. As Dan Nixon has written:

“Citing the French poet Paul Valéry, Merleau-Ponty even questioned whether there’s a sense in which language is, before all else, ‘the very voice of the trees, the waves and the forest’.”

This is a lovely invitation to pay attention and join in the dance. 

Poets often convey both intersubjectivity and availability in their writing, as in this lovely poem by Robert Frost:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;

I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away

(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):

I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too. 

~ Robert Frost

Friends, we are, each of us, called to be ministers of relationship, and in so doing, to facilitate just this process of “aliveness.” I invite us all to pay attention to the world within our reach, and to reach out to those who may be in need of relationship, as so many of our Holy Family ministries are designed to do. Consider, won’t you, ways you might reach out and connect to another. In this epidemic of loneliness we are called to be “available” to one another. The theologian/philosopher Gabriel Marcel called this “disponibilite’” or availability. And should you need a paddling companion for a time on your journey, let us know—the water’s fine.

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I’ll hope to see you in church!

Bill+[i]

Loaves and Fishes…Salmon, in particular

We found ourselves in the delta of a small river. We paddled upriver protected from the rain by spruce forests. Beneath our boats was a river of salmon, coming home to spawn.

Our guide gave us a streamside lecture on the ecology of salmon nation. Salmon are amazing members of God’s creation, and this is especially true of Pacific salmon. Leaving their fresh-water birthplaces they journey out to sea where they roam the oceans of the world, returning to spawn at the exact spot they were born years—and thousands of miles–earlier.

Most of you have seen scenes of Chinook and Sockeye salmon making their way up waterfalls to their native pools against tremendous odds. As many as 20 vertebrate species, including elk, deer, and bear, feed directly on salmon, re-cycling those ocean borne nutrients into the soil. Salmon born in Idaho will make their way 900 miles inland and climb 7,000 feet as they return to spawn.

More than simply food for bear, ravens, eagles, or humans, salmon are in fact a parable of a complex, and life-giving set of relationships. DNA from Pacific salmon has been found in groves of Aspen at the top of the continental divide. The minerals from their ocean journeys feed salmonberry bushes miles inland. Every level of the food chain will reveal evidence of the gift of salmon.

Over 137 species of animals in the Northwest rely on salmon as part of their diet. When salmon die they generate the most biologically diverse forests on earth, honoring future generations with the gift the journey that is at the heart of all they are. “They leave branches of streams no larger than a broomstick,” the author Richard Manning has said, “and make their way to the ocean for years, returning weighing up to 60 pounds of biomass harvested from the sea. They bring this mass of nutrients back to the forest to feed it, and the generations to follow.”

I think of this as evidence of God delighting in God’s creation—a cosmic playfulness at the level of ecological communion. The grace in the story of the salmon is evidence of sacred connections of life-sustaining nourishment. As the poet Mary Oliver reminds us, “Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.”

On this morning in Alaska, we did just that. Cultures as diverse as Pacific Northwest Indians, especially the Tlingit, Norse, and Celtic mythologies have found in the story of the salmon symbolic and religious power. I see God watching all the permutations and combinations of salmon, and I imagine God laughing with joy. The gift of their living, and dying, and rebirth is moving, and powerful. A salmon is not simply a fish—but a metaphor of the deep ecological mystery of God’s creation—a timeless reminder that in the cycle of life and death lies the abiding connections of all living things…of transformation, and renewal.

It is fascinating to me, then, that on another shore, this time near the village of Capernaum, Jesus gives a sea-side homily on the nature of bread, and a metaphorical lesson on what nurtures and sustains our souls. On this day following the feeding of the 5,000, the impromptu picnic was over, and Jesus and the disciples were looking for a quiet place to rest, and recover.

The people, however, had other ideas. They were not inclined to let him fade back into the Capernaum hills without finding out more about what he could do for them. They had been hungry, and they had been fed—more than enough—we are told, and yet they did not know the depth or sources of their hunger. He had given them bread, and they had their fill, but perhaps he could do more in the way of fulfilling basic needs of shelter, clothing, and the ambiguities and uncertainties of daily life. The possibilities were unlimited.

And somewhat disingenuously, when they find him they say, in essence, “What a surprise! Imagine finding you here! When did you come here?” Jesus will have none of it. “You worked hard to find me, and I know why. But I am more than a free lunch, and moreover, that is not what you really need. You ate your fill, and now you want more, but you are missing the point. The bread you seek won’t last. I am the bread that endures, and addresses a deeper hunger. All you have to do is believe.” “Prove it,” they say, invoking Moses and the manna in the wilderness; “Give us a sign.” “You don’t get it,” Jesus says to them…”Remember where the bread Moses gave you came from.”

It is not always easy to see beneath the literal to the metaphorical and symbolic, especially when our basic needs and fears often determine what we see, and how. Jesus knows we are hungry on many levels, and we are often scared, and wilderness can take so many forms.

 Jesus says to us, “Broaden your spiritual horizons. I want to be more than a provider of physical bread. I want to fill the hunger of your souls. I want to fill the emptiness you try to fill up with lesser things…to satisfy those Holy longings you often attempt to quiet with substances and material goods; to quiet the anxiety that finally comes to possess you, rather than allowing yourselves to be placed in God’s compassionate, outstretched, open arms. I want you to remember where that bread in the desert really comes from. And then I want you to feed one another, in love.”

Like the salmon that journey so far to come home to their native streams, Jesus is to be broken, blessed, and shared with the world. He gives himself away, each moment. Like the Eucharist we celebrate, Jesus is more than a provider of physical sustenance. Our river guide said, in essence, “Pay attention; see, and you will believe.” Conversely, Jesus says to us, “Seeing is not always the same as believing; sometimes you have to believe, in order to really see.” Both are correct. And both point to a similar truth: salmon may be a first principal of an ecological paradigm of gratitude and abundance. The only way to have a full life, and keep it, is to give it away. Jesus embodied this in his life, in which we are invited to be creatively, imaginatively compassionate, with gratitude. “Every day,” Wendell Berry says, “you have less reason not to give yourself away.” Jesus said, “I am the Bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry.”

Blessings friends and I’ll catch you later on down the trail. And I hope to see you in church! Bill+

Early on Tuesday morning last week, I enjoyed a lovely trail run in preparation for the Peachtree Road Race, held on Thursday, July 4^th. Tuesday morning was deliciously cool and breezy, in contrast to what would be a hilly, humid, and hot Fourth of July in Atlanta. I enjoyed the solitude, and some much needed time to immerse myself in the Southern Appalachian woods. Wildflowers and wildlife were plentiful, and I was reminded of John Muir’s invocation:

Keep close to Nature’s heart… and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean. ~ John Muir

In contrast, on Thursday morning I ran from Buckhead down to Piedmont Park with 55,000 of my fellow sojourners. Two days, and two very different experiences, yet both involved running, and both provided opportunities to be fully present to the moment at hand; as Mary Oliver has said so well:

Instructions for living a life:

Pay attention.

Be astonished.

Tell about it.

And so I am doing just that now, with each of you. As I ran past the Shepherd Center on Thursday, a facility devoted to brain and spinal cord injury, I paused to greet the patients lining Peachtree Road. Most were in wheelchairs or on stretchers. Like many, I’ve had family, friends, and patients who were treated there. The patients come out to cheer on the runners—imagine that—and give us “high fives” as we pass by. We should be cheering them on in fact, and I try to connect with some as I walk up the hill.

The British psychiatrist Donald Winnicott once wrote “O God, may I be alive when I die.” As I ran by the incredible Shepherd Center, and the heroes who were lining Peachtree there, a woman in a wheelchair looked at me, smiled, and said, “Be in this moment.”

Exactly, and as Wendell Berry wrote so very well:

The question before me, now that I

am old, is not how to be dead,

which I know from enough practice,

but how to be alive, as these worn

hills still tell, and some paintings

of Paul Cezanne, and this mere

singing wren, who thinks he’s alive

forever, this instant, and may be.

~ Sabbaths, VIII

And the Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge once wrote:

“The best things in life have no lasting forms. When you move on, don’t think too much. Look around you and up, into the sky–towards the sun, the moon, the stars–and listen to the surroundings: the rain falling, your foot rising from the wet moss and the silence. Ask yourself: where am I right now? Thanks. I am here.” 

~ Erling Kagge, Philosophy for Polar Explorers.

 ​ At the Cathedral I greeted my friend and colleague Juan Sandoval, Hispanic missioner for the Diocese with whom I served our Cathedral Hispanic congregation for many years. Like my experience on the trails Tuesday morning, it’s a moment of being fully present, of “I am here.” I have no idea who took the photo, which was posted to the Cathedral website.

One might say these two days—one in the mountains and one on Peachtree—while different, had much in common. I think the most important theme on both days was being in “relationship” to me—my own experience of being “fully alive,” and to others. Likewise, there are many “trails” at Holy Family, both literally and metaphorically. And these trails offer opportunities for learning, growth, and being in relationship to oneself, to others, and to God.

We are so very fortunate at Holy Family for opportunities to serve, learn, and grow. One can join the choir, or the parish life committee, or the intrepid grounds crew…or one can make the decision to attend one of the exciting Adult Education opportunities available both now, and upcoming this fall! Here’s more about those options, with more to come:

Adult Education: Join us June 30 at 9:15 AM at the Sunday morning Adult Education group for week 5 of an 8-week study of First Isaiah. We will use materials created by Yale Bible Study (yalebiblestudy.org). Each session will consist of a brief video presented by Dr. John J. Collins (Professor of Old Testament Criticism and Interpretation at Yale Divinity School) and Dr. Joel S. Baden (Professor of the Hebrew Bible at Yale Divinity School and Director of the Center for Continuing Education at Yale) followed by group discussion. This study addresses “the prophet and his prophecies, the text and its time”.  Isaiah “embodies the notion of speaking truth to power”. In Session 1 we will address the “Historical Context”. Later sessions will include Isaiah’s call, Immanuel, Messianic Prophecy, Demand for Justice as well as other topics. All course materials are available at no charge at www.yalebiblestudy.org. You may download the study guide from the website.

If you’ve never attended Adult Education before, now is the time to join us. If you’re a regular, we look forward to seeing you again. Questions? Contact Kathleen Allen-Leonard.

And, from Tammy Kirk, this could be the study for you if you are interested in a long-term Bible study which:

• encourages personal transformation through biblically-based study
• is focused on living faithfully within the Christian community
• develops meaningful relationships through sharing in group discussion

Disciple is a time-tested program (with study manual) which consists of daily Bible readings done at home and weekly meetings (roughly 2 hours for 30-34 weeks). The group meeting includes a short video presentation given by leading Bible scholars, followed by guided discussion and prayer. Days and times will be agreed upon once the group has been established. For more information or to sign up, contact Tammy Kirk at jtmlkirk@aol.com. 

Education for Ministry (EfM):  A total of 12 members of Holy Family participated in the Education for Ministry program for the 2023-2024 academic year, which was just completed. Next year, we can accommodate four new participants in the program, sponsored by The School of Theology at the University of the South. Sessions will begin in early September and run for 36 weeks. The group consists of 6 to 12 participants, plus the mentors. Usually, the participants meet face-to-face for about 2.5 hours a week. The group utilized Zoom for over a year due to the Coronavirus pandemic and still uses it when someone needs to be absent for a session.

Every baptized person is called to ministry. The EfM program provides people from all walks of life with the education “to be” Christians and to carry out their ministries. All Christians need a Christian education which supports their faith and which prepares them to express that faith in day-to-day activities. EfM is a worldwide program developed by the School of Theology at Sewanee. It holds before us that the foundation from bringing Christ to the world lies in a church empowered by an active, theologically articulate laity. Thousands of persons have completed the four-year program. Participants enroll one year at a time, can transfer almost anywhere in the U.S.A. and in many foreign countries, and can obtain 18 Continuing Educations Units per year by participating.

You don’t have to be an Episcopalian to take part in the program, either. As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be a Christian. If you have any interest in EfM, just ask any of the current or former participants or Byron Tindall or Jeannine Krenson, the mentors. The current participants include Connie Moore, Gordon Stefaniuk, Jim Reid, Martha Power, Rosemary Lovelace, Susan Stefaniuk, Loran Davis, and Bill Zercher. You can also check the Sewanee website. The cost is $325 per year, and there is some scholarship help available. Each participant has to furnish her or his own text books.

Contact Byron via email Byron Tindall at bctindall@hotmail.com or 678-493-6609 or Jeannine via email at jeanninekrenson@gmail.com or 706-299-7949. Currently, the sessions are held Monday mornings from 9:30 to 11:30 or noon. Each of these opportunities at Holy Family offers chances to “pay attention,” and to be present…to say “I am here.” And these are invitations to relationships that allow for growth, transformation, and deepening our theological awareness. They are guideposts on the trails of your choosing, available to all, and limited only by our imagination. Join us, won’t you, and find a trail on which you feel more fully alive, as I believe God intended. Just look for the signposts, and tell us about it!

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and see you in church!

Blessings, Bill+

Greetings everyone, and grace and peace to each of you as we celebrate the Fourth of July this week, and we journey together in this long green season of Pentecost.

As many of you know, our denomination held its 81^st General Convention in Louisville over the past two weeks. Here’s a summary from the Episcopal News Service:

Episcopal News Service – The official news service of the Episcopal Church.

As you know, our own Bishop +Rob was among 5 candidates on the slate for Presiding Bishop. Bishop +Sean Rowe was elected on the first ballot. Here are his remarks to the Deputies gathered at the convention:

Bishop Rowe’s Remarks to Deputies – The Living Church

And here is a compelling quote from his speech:

“Our ministry together in the next nine years comes at a critical time for the Episcopal Church. It is not too strong to say that we’re facing an existential crisis. Not because the church is dying, or because we have lost our belief in the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. But because as the world around us changes, and continues to change — it changes all the time — and God is calling us more deeply into the unknown…I sometimes think of this moment in the Episcopal Church’s history in terms of the history of my own region of the United States, where I grew up and where I continue to serve. I am from the Rust Belt, and in the economic unraveling that has befallen our communities in the last 50 years, I have been around to see things I love go away.

My grandfathers were steel workers, and nearly my entire family worked in industry. In the space of a few years in the mid-1980s, when I was in elementary school, I watched everything I had known evaporate. The Westinghouse plant closed in my area, and my fourth-grade friends moved to Indiana when their parents were offered a transfer instead of a layoff. In 1987, Sharon Steel, a major local employer, closed when a corporate raider gained control, and thousands of people lost their jobs.

People in our region are resilient, but we spent years resisting the change that was forced on us, wishing things would go back to being the way they had been. In the partnership between the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania and the Diocese of Western New York, we have spent the last five years bucking that trend, that cultural resistance to change in what we call an experiment for the sake of the gospel. It is not always easy, but I believe that the kind of collaboration and experimentation we are up to can help us ensure the strong and effective witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ and to bring the Episcopal Church into the future to which God is calling us…This imperative to change doesn’t just reside in the Rust Belt. If we are honest with each other and ourselves, we know that we cannot continue to be the Episcopal Church in the same way, no matter where we live.”

Here is more from another ECUSA news source: Home – The Living Church

This editorial excerpt is relevant both to the deliberations in Louisville, and to us at Holy Family during our search process:

“The small boat of the Episcopal Church feels exposed on the windswept sea on the eve of our 81st General Convention. We are in a period of profound unsteadiness. Recent moves to consolidate dioceses are resourceful decisions, but they also make the reality of decline more vivid. Despite many creative projects, our numbers continue to fall sharply. We are closing more churches than we can plant. Zoom church was not the cure-all it may have seemed three years ago, and it’s harder to make our message known in a time of such shrill polarization, within and outside the church.”

Of course, we are not alone in this. Our friends in other mainline Protestant denominations are experiencing similar challenges. I taught at Columbia Seminary (a PCUSA free-standing seminary) for many years, and know first-hand how our PCUSA friends are struggling in ways similar to ours. Our United Methodist cousins in the Anglican tradition (John and Charles Wesley were Anglican priests) have experienced a split over LGBTQ+ issues, losing many congregations, and so on. For those of you who are interested, here’s a deeper dive into some of these trends: Reports – Religious Workforce Project

We are called to remain hopeful, resilient, and creative. Let’s commit to staying the course, doing all that we can in our beloved corner of Creation, and work together for the common good. I am so proud of you all, and grateful for your ministries among us. Bishop +Rowe quoted Thomas Merton in his address to the Deputies gathered last week:

“In a time of drastic change one can be too preoccupied with what is ending or too obsessed with what seems to be beginning. In either case one loses touch with the present and with its obscure but dynamic possibilities. What really matters is openness, readiness, attention, courage to face risk. You do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you need is to recognize the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage, faith, and hope. In such an event, courage is the authentic form taken by love.”

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I’ll see you in church!

Blessings, and Happy Fourth of July! Bill+

Grace and peace to each of you wherever you may be this week. As I write, I’m looking forward to gathering this afternoon with our vestry, nominating committee, and Canon Sally Ulrey from the Diocese of Atlanta.

On the agenda will be a review and discussion of the interpreted results from the Congregational Assessment Tool (CAT) survey. The nominating committee will use these results to create the Parish Profile, and the vestry will utilize the CAT results for long-range strategic planning purposes. This is a key moment on our journey toward calling our new rector. I am so very proud of the good work you are all doing in this season.

Thank you, to each of you who have contributed to this survey, and in all the ways you serve Holy Family…including our intrepid Grounds Crew working in the summer heat and humidity; and our Flower Guild, Choir, Outreach, Hospitality, Worship, and Parish Life committees, and on and on, all the many ways you give so much to our beloved parish. I’ve been thinking lately about all those who came before us at Holy Family, with its rich history of both trials and moments of uncertainty, as well as resilience, grace, and a strong and steadfast spirit. I am so grateful for our Holy Family, and I am hopeful that the good work we have been called to do in this moment will bring us into a hopeful future.

Jesus encouraged us to become like little children, and regardless of our vision for the “kingdom,” (I prefer “kin-dom”) our willingness to do this finds encouragement from other sources as well. This is a perspective we can cultivate. Poets can help us remember the importance of our deepest, core values as Christians, Episcopalians, and as the ministers—and we are all ministers of the church—at our beloved parish. Our willingness to have the fresh eyes of children can be profoundly important during times of change.

RS Thomas was a Welsh, Anglican priest who, while highly educated, served rural congregations his entire life. His poem “Luminary” reveals a deep, abiding faithfulness amid the vicissitudes of parish life in the sometimes harsh Welsh countryside, and a childlike commitment to remember what is most important:

My luminary,

my morning and evening

star. My light at noon

when there is no sun

and the sky lowers. My balance

of joy in a world

that has gone off joy’s

standard. Yours the face

that young I recognised

as though I had known you

of old. Come, my eyes

said, out into the morning

of a world whose dew

waits for your footprint.

Before a green altar

with the thrush for priest

I took those gossamer

vows that neither the Church

could stale nor the Machine

tarnish, that with the years

have grown hard as flint,

lighter than platinum

on our ringless fingers.

Thomas is asking us to keep our eyes on the prize—to honor our commitments to those vows that can guide and sustain us, especially during times of transition and uncertainty.

Shoshin (Japanese: 初心) is a concept from Zen Buddhism meaning “beginner’s mind.” This, too, is a reminder to have a childlike faithfulness. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions during seasons of change, just as a beginner would. The term is especially used in the study of Zen Buddhism and Japanese martial arts and was popularized in Japan by Shunryū Suzuki’s 1970 book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind….The practice of shoshin acts as a counter to the hubris and closed-mindedness often associated with thinking of oneself as an expert. This includes the Einstellung effect, where a person becomes so accustomed to a certain way of doing things that they do not consider or acknowledge new ideas or approaches. The word shoshin is a combination of sho (Japanese: 初), meaning “beginner” or “initial”, and shin (Japanese: 心), meaning “mind”. So often in the church, we hear ourselves say “We’ve always done it this way,” when in fact being open to new opportunities may allow us to co-participate in the movement of the Holy Spirit in Her wisdom, leading us to new possibilities.

This lovely poem by William Stafford is a reminder to us to remember where we have come from, and be open to where God may be leading us:

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change.

People wonder about what you are pursuing.

You have to explain about the thread.

But it is hard for others to see.

While you hold it you can’t get lost.

Tragedies happen; people get hurt

or die; and you suffer and get old.

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.

You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford 

Let’s covenant to remember and honor our “ancestors” at Holy Family, and in the church, as we move forward. No matter the challenges we and the church may be facing, let’s remember the thread of our faith, and adopt a “beginner’s mind” as we trust the process; 

5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we^a have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access^b to this grace in which we stand; and we^c boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)

I’ll catch you later on down the trail, and I hope to see you in church! Bill+