St. Paul's 2021

  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...