St. Paul's 2021

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...