St. Paul's 2021

1. Day 1 – 10 INWARD Where is God in your life? Sun., Nov. 28 Think about the last 24 hours. What has given you joy? Name it, and give thanks. Mon., Nov. 29 Reflect on your experience of going to church. Where in the church or during   worship do you feel God’s presence? Tue., Nov. 30 Who introduced you to Jesus? How did they introduce you to Jesus? Wed., Dec. 1 Think of your life. When did you feel close to God? When did you feel far away?   What brought you home? Thu., Dec. 2 What is your favorite piece of scripture? Why do you love it? Fri., Dec. 3 Write a thank you post, note or email to someone who’s been influential in your faith life. Sat., Dec. 4 Read 1 Corinthians 12. What are your spiritual gifts? What part of the Body are you? Sun., Dec. 5 Is there someone in your life that shares your faith? Ask them a question today about their faith. Mon., Dec. 6 Is there a piece of music, art or film where you see or experience Go...

When we get to the end of November and the beginning of this December we enter a particularly sacred time for me personally. The church calendar presents with the series of holy days that over the years have had a particularly profound effect on my life. Queen Lili'uokalani -- King Kamehameha & Queen Emma: Nov. 11, Nov. 28. The first of these holy days have to do with Hawaiian royalty, and I didn't have any idea of a personal connection until 2001 when I responded to a call to do ministry there. I have 3 daughters and each of their names is associated with Hawaiian queens or princesses. The last queen died on Nov. 11 and a petition is being circulated to get her placed on the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts . King Kamehameha and Queen Emma have been on the calendar for many decades. They brought the Anglican Church to the islands. Dorothy Day: Nov. 29 Dorothy Day died on Nov. 29. Her case is being pursued for sainthood in the Catholic Church. Ever since learning...

  Reflection November 22 was the day my stepfather died. None of you would know that. He was the love of my mother’s life and for many years was a father figure to me. It was also of course the day that John Kennedy was killed in 1963, an event that many of us have etched in our memories. What many people don’t realize is that it was also the day that Clive Staples Lewis died. He was more commonly known as C.S. Lewis. I first encountered Lewis’s writings when I was in junior high. One of the priest chaplains at a church summer camp gave a talk on the novel  Perelandra . He described it as a metaphor for what human life might be like without sin, or at least with sin completely redeemed. It was perhaps the first time in my life that I became aware of a piece of fiction trying to communicate the most significant things about life. I subsequently read every piece of fiction that Lewis wrote and most of his nonfiction work. He became a key figure in my own conversion to Christian ...

  To the saints at St. Paul’s, Monroe, NC I said last Sunday that we would be scheduling Christmas this past week. It has been a busy week and it will end with a virtual diocesan convention. We did, however, map out the basic schedule of worship for Advent and Christmas. Date Note Advent 1: Nov. 28 Begin consecrated wine from individual cups Advent 3: Dec. 12 8 am Eucharist Advent 3 10 am Lessons & Carols   (with communion from Reserved Sacrament) Christmas Eve 4:30 pm Music Christmas Eve Eucharist 5:00 pm Beginning with Advent, you will also receive via email a series of “thought questions.” These are intended to allow the congregation to participate in our preparation for confirmation at the Bishop’s visit in January. You will receive self-reflective questions in 4 areas: Where is God in your life? Where is God already moving? Where are the forces holding back God’s grace? What truths do you embrace and desire to vow to God? Where is God calling you to proclaim and perfo...

  November Rector Report The Rev. Dale C. Hathaway The highlight of the last month was the baptism of the Colt's grandchildren. It was a satisfying experience for me and I think for others as well. Nicci and I have slowly begun to reintroduce regular office hours. As I have continued to spend some time at the church, I've had the opportunity to meet some of the people coming and going, particularly those involved with Loaves and Fishes . I'm one of those occasions I got to meet Michael Moore who is the head of Loaves and Fishes. I am eager to learn how the ministry fits into the larger ministry of the church. One of my general concerns with the office and administrative work of the church has to do with the way in which files and technical tools are located in personal accounts rather than in the Church's own accounts. From my perspective I note the following: Sharing files in Google drive seems to be a good way to make things available to others, e.g. the vestry, and t...

As I begin writing this essay, Halloween is one day away. We’re planning to help carve pumpkins this afternoon. But I also want to make it clear at the outset that this is not an expert who is doing the writing. I am not an expert. I'm not an expert on Halloween nor anything else. In fact most of my life I have thought less of myself because I was not an expert at anything. I was never at the top of the class at something or other. In seminary one of my teachers said to me many years ago, maybe you’re meant to be a generalist instead of a specialist. It took me a long time to accept that judgment, but I’m finally getting there. I write as a generalist, as someone who thinks about things, as someone who asks questions of things, and as someone who sometimes makes connections between things. That's what I'm trying to do here. In the last week, with Halloween approaching, I have seen many posters and decorations that leave me cold. Themes of death and spooky scenes. Skulls. ...

  Baptism We're scheduled to celebrate Holy Baptism on All Saints Sunday, Nov. 7. It seemed to me that it might be useful to reflect on "baptism" in general as we approach this watershed time in the lives of Bill and Melody's grandchildren, Anna Claire Powell and Reid William Taylor. One of the songs I love to sing on that day is "When the saints go marching in." It's not because I'm a New Orleans Saints fan. It is, perhaps, because in my teens I adored the music of Louis Armstrong. For me, the inclusion of Jazz music into the liturgy brings joy to my smile. Memorably the first verse includes: Oh, when the saints go marching in Oh Lord I want to be in that number We might associate that with a future time of deliverance. The original song no doubt did. But it has always been for me a song very much about the living. Dancing, processing, with vibrancy and passion. That's the tone that the service of baptism has for me. Baptism ritual As...

  Questions about healing. Even before we moved to Monroe, I began asking parishioners at St. Paul's, "How can I help?" This was modeled after a TV series that Mary Pat and I enjoy where the head of a hospital regularly responds to people who come to him with problems, "How can I help?" Again and again I would hear the response, "We need healing." Healing . I have long known that the word and concept of healing was not as simple as it sounds. I wonder to myself what does even the word mean? What does the person using the word mean? It means a myriad different things, depending on the person and the circumstance. Dictionary meanings include: cure, fix, mend, rehabilitate . One line of thought would have it that healing is essentially "transcending suffering." I have heard preachers and teachers over the years emphasize that healing and wholeness are related; so the word would mean "becoming whole." Healing and wholeness are bo...

  A Church That Looks and Acts Like Jesus COME AND SEE … We are becoming a new and  re -formed church,  the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement— individuals, small gathered communities and congregations whose way of life is the way of Jesus and his way of love,  no longer  centered on empire and establishment,  no longer  fixated on preserving institutions, no longer  shoring up white supremacy or anything else that hurts or harms any child of God. By God’s grace … … WE ARE BECOMING A CHURCH THAT LOOKS AND ACTS LIKE JESUS. What does this re -formation look like in practice? We’ll know we’re moving forward when we… Center on Jesus Christ . His teachings, his example, his Spirit, his way of love and his way of life are the key to having loving, liberating and life-giving relationships with God, our neighbors, all of creation, and ourselves. Practice the selfless, self-giving way of the cross . The way of “cruciform love”—Jesus’ act of unselfish, sacrificial, self...

  Love and fear Many years ago I came across a book that I have never forgotten. Very often when important books have come to me, it often seems that rather than me finding a book the right book finds me -- and at just the right time. For a variety of reasons I needed to hear the message of that little book at that point in time. As I say, I've never forgotten it. Evidently the need has stayed with me. The title of the book is Love is Letting go of Fear . At the heart of the insight in the book is the text from The first letter of John. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. (1 John 4:18) Several times in the last couple of weeks I have been reminded of how fear creeps into our thoughts and our behavior, even when we don’t recognize it as fear. I shared with my spiritual Director that I knew very well that my habit of walking every day had been broken in the course of our move to Monroe, but somehow I was not doing what I needed in order to re-establish...

My years as an undergraduate were spent in large measure in a quest for spiritual awakening. I suppose in someways I’ve never left that quest. An important waystation was the pursuit of the writings of TS Eliot. I was first made aware of him when one of my classmates in high school slipped me a copy of Eliot‘s "The Hollow Men". My whole life that classmate -- I can no longer even remember her name -- has been a mysterious and very significant figure for me, some thing like Dante's Beatrice. I later went on to memorize large quantities of Elliott's poetry, including the longer ones, and read most of his prose. In the course of that, I encountered his major work, "The Four Quartets." Since then I have regarded that long poem as the greatest religious poem of at least the 20th century. In it I encountered a person by the name of Nicholas Ferrar. And prayer is more Than an order of words, the conscious occupation Of the praying mind, or the sound of the voi...

Liturgical Jottings Rector’s Blog Sept. 11, 2021 Elijah and the cup Early in the summer, I had an insight in the middle of the Eucharist at Christ Church in Lancaster, SC. Sometimes that happens. Mary Pat and I both have had the similar experience of the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the midst of our morning shower. It seemed especially significant that the insight came during the Eucharistic Prayer. The insight was that blessing a chalice with wine at the Eucharist, along with the bread, and yet not consuming the wine, was very similar to another religious ritual with which I was fairly familiar. There are five cups of wine poured at a Passover meal, but the last one is not consumed. It stands alone at the table, unconsumed, an eloquent but silent symbol of the longing for Elijah to one day return, bringing with a time of complete redemption that is not yet fulfilled. It is called “Elijah’s cup.” As we refrained from sharing in the common cup at Eucharists, out o...

  Respond with Compassion For more than a month now I have been meeting with 100+ parish leaders from around the diocese via Zoom . It's been in part away for me to get familiar, and to get to know, the wider diocese of which we are a part. The resources available to us are quite considerable and not at all like what I have been used to. I have always served in dioceses that are small and very limited in what they can offer members of this branch of the Jesus movement, as your former bishop, Michael Curry, might put it.  One of the things I would like to do here is to make a brief note of some of those resources. I expect others will emerge on a regular basis in the future. Before I go ahead with that, however, I would like to say something about the other thing that has impressed me over this last month of meeting with the diocesan leadership. Speaking just for myself, I sometimes feel overwhelmed with the breadth of suffering around the world and here at home and right n...

Congregational Size Sizing up a congregation In the 80’s and 90’s much was made about a study that sought to identify different characteristics in congregations of different sizes. It’s a common sense kind of observation that a congregation of 1,800 baptized members is going to be different from one that has, say, 50 members. From that time there emerged a kind of working vocabulary that allowed for conversations among church members and leaders. Over the years I have found it useful, not in a prescriptive sort of way but more as a reminder that size matters, that the needs of a small “family” sized church are quite different from the expectations of a larger “program” sized church. cell or family sized church: x < 50 pastoral sized church: 50 > x < 150 program sized church: 150 > x < 350 corporate sized church: 350 > x The numbers themselves are old numbers and, in any case, were rough estimates even then. A description of the basic schema can be found at:  https...

  Time of pandemic Martin Luther, writing during the Bubonic plague of the 1500’s, seemed to be talking directly to us today. “I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I will fumigate, purify the air, administer medicine, and take medicine. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order to not become contaminated, and thus perchance inflict and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence. If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others. If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person, but will go freely. This is a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy, and does not tempt God.” Nostalgia and Hopes At our monthly diocesan interim’s meeting, some of the conversation prompted me to observe how things that we remember as the “way things used to be”, things which may appear to be nostalgia, are really hopes ...