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...

  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...