Sonnet of Love: Mid-Week Reflection

THE REV. KATHLEEN M. STURGES

In the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in our country, Lin Manuel Miranda, creator and star of Broadway musical, "Hamilton", writes:

We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger

We rise and fall and light from dying embers remembrance that hope and love last forever.

Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

When hate rages and overpowers and even kills, it certainly does feel like evil is stronger than anything we can muster. Yet although that is the way it feels at time, that is not the truth. Miranda is correct when he proclaims, “hope and love last forever...love is...love cannot be killed or swept aside.” These aren’t just nice words, but truth. It is truth that is revealed and known to us through God in Christ Jesus. It is truth lived out by the One who, empowered by love, endured the vehemence of hate, violence and evil even unto death and then, through Jesus’ resurrection, claimed victory. The worst that the world could throw at him, and at us, did not win the day. Love won and Love is then and now and always.

Oh how I wish that meant the cessation of evil, but obviously it does not. Humanity still suffers tragedies on both a global and personal scale. Even so, there is real hope in the powerful love that is.

We see that hope and love as people pray heartfelt prayers, line up to donate blood, give money on behalf of victims, and gather for vigils. Let us not stop there. May we continue to find ways to act in the power of God’s hope and love that claims victory over every evil seeking to serve Christ in all persons and striving for justice and peace for all

When Church is Fun: Mid-Week Reflection

EMILY RUTLEDGE, YOUTH MINISTER

When Church is Fun.

I sometimes forget that not everyone’s entire life centers on parish life. It’s easy as a church worker to get sucked into the all-consuming nature of this work. Other people’s lives become part of your daily story. You know peoples ins and outs, their deepest secrets, their longings, their failures, and their dog’s names. Even before I was a minister I was rooted in strong faith communities. The parish I grew up in filled my extra time: church softball, bbqs, and babysitting. Everything was rooted in church.

This meant there was no way to ‘be’ at church for me because in one way or another I was always at church, surrounded by church people, or at my Episcopal Church school. I am basically admitting to you that I am a serious church nerd. With the church so rooted in my daily life it makes it hard to figure out where the line is between ‘my life’ and ‘my work’. Church and its people have always been my safe place. I am blessed by that fact. There are many people who have had the opposite experience and church is a place with a history of pain and exclusion. As we strive to love all that walk through our doors it is easy to focus on the details of parish life when the reality of belonging means more than any program or Eucharistic detail. The parishes I have belonged to that have been the most formative and life changing for me have been a wide array of things: low and high church, large and small, urban and rural... yet all have had one thing in common.

They were fun.

I couldn’t pinpoint it until a few months ago when a friend was sharing his hopes for what church would be. He said, “I need them to know that church and God are FUN.”

There is so much pain, healing, and hope that we each need and as we travel this life as a community. When we are sure that there is an aspect of fun, healing, respite to our communal lives church changes from something we do to something we are.

This season for our parish is precious. Our rector is on a well-deserved and needed sabbatical, we are welcoming Kathleen as our associate, and we are rethinking how we are as a community. Wednesday dinners will soon mark all of our calendars as adults and small people join in on the secret the youth community has known all along… eating together is critical. We are breathing in the summer air, preparing for a parish retreat, and reclaiming FUN as part of who we are.

And I couldn’t be happier about it.

Oh, The Places You'll Go: Mid-Week Reflection

THE REV. DAVID M. STODDART

In "Oh, The Places You’ll Go", Dr. Seuss describes a “most useless place, the Waiting Place, for people just waiting”:

“waiting for a train to go or a bus to come
Or a plane to go or the mail to come
Or the rain to go or the phone to ring
Or the snow to snow
Or waiting around for a yes or no
Or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.”

And he is right about one thing: everyone is waiting. I talk with people all the time who are waiting for test results to come in and conflicts to be resolved, for circumstances to improve or retirement to come. And all too often our waiting feels useless, something we must passively endure.

But speaking as someone who does not especially enjoy waiting, I have come to appreciate its genuine spiritual benefits. Despite the fast-paced, fast food, fast action nature of our popular culture, most of life really is a slow unfolding. Nothing truly worthwhile comes quickly. We can’t make ourselves grow up fast, nor can we master the skills needed to play an instrument or maintain a marriage overnight. Maybe there is something salubrious about waiting, something that opens us up to richer, fuller life.

Certainly we worship a God who is not in a hurry. In the poetic language of Genesis, God creates the world over seven days—not instantly. That same God has been acting in and through the events of human history for ages. Indeed, of all people, Christians should most embrace and appreciate the process of evolution. God is at work in our world and in our individual lives to do something marvelous. Why rush it? If it takes twelve years to make an excellent Scotch, it may take a lifetime or eternity for us to become all that God intends. And we cannot even fully imagine what that will be like. But we know it will be awesome beyond our imagining. And we know God is moving even now to make it happen. If we consent to it, we are already being transformed.

Wait for it.