An Urgent Update from the Rector. March 11, 2020

Dear Friends, 

I just wrote to you this morning, but events are moving quickly and I need to update you. As of this afternoon at 2:00pm, Bishop Susan Goff has officially closed down all public worship in the Diocese of Virginia for the next two weeks. She also strongly urges all churches to exercise caution about holding any other church gatherings. So I am canceling all worship services for the next two weeks. That includes two Sundays, March 15 and 22, and two Wednesdays, March 18 and 25. In addition, I am canceling all other church gatherings for the same period of time. That includes WAC, Men’s Bible Study, Exploring the Word, Refresh, Conversations in Faith and the March Vestry meeting. All choir rehearsals will also be canceled. This is effective through Wednesday, March 25. The bishop will give us further direction by that point about how to proceed.

In the meantime, the church office will remain open. Mo. Kathleen, Emily, and I will be available for emergency pastoral visits, phone calls, and emails. We are also investigating ways to offer a digital presence for the parish on Sunday mornings while we move through this time of social distancing.

The goal of this, of course, is to help slow the spread of COVID-19, protect people who are most vulnerable to it, and help keep our hospitals from being overwhelmed. This is an extraordinary time and it requires extraordinary measures. It also reminds us that we are truly a community, deeply connected to each other and dependent upon each other. As we go through this together, I pray that a spirit of love, patience, good humor, and hope will prevail. In other words, I pray that the Spirit of Christ will flow freely among us. And I know she will.

With love,

David +

The one thing that does matter. March 8, 2020 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

John 3:1-17

Some of us attended Sam Sheridan’s ordination to the diaconate yesterday up in Herndon. It was a magnificent affair, conducted with all the pomp and ceremony the Episcopal Church excels at. And at the center of it all, leading worship, was the bishop, dressed in a brilliant red chasuble, crowned with a colorful miter, carrying the crozier — the shepherd’s crook, showing her to be a pastor of God’s people. If you’ve ever been here when the bishop has visited us, I’m sure you can picture it. So, do a thought experiment with me. Imagine the bishop (and it can be any bishop, not necessarily Bishop Susan) taking off her chasuble and miter, then laying aside her crozier. And then envision her driving at night to the PACEM shelter to talk with a young, homeless street preacher who has been attracting large crowds and performing miracles of healing. The young man talks to her about being born from above, born of the Spirit. He conveys the wonders of God’s activity in the world.  And the bishop responds, “How can these things be?” And the homeless preacher says, “Are you a bishop in the Church of God, and yet you do not understand these things?”

I don’t know what Gospel passage unnerves you the most. Maybe it’s the one about plucking out your eyes or chopping off your hands if they cause you to sin. Maybe it's the one where Jesus tells the rich young man to sell all his possessions, give the proceeds to the poor, and then leave everything to follow him. But for me, this passage from John is one of the most daunting of all Gospel stories. It shows with such vivid clarity how easily religion can get in the way of God. Nicodemus is a seriously religious man. He’s a Pharisee who rigorously keeps all the commandments — all 613 of them laid out in Torah. He is a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish High Council. He is a teacher of Israel, a man steeped in the faith of his people, respected and admired by others. And he is completely lost. When Jesus speaks of the Spirit, Nicodemus struggles to follow him. When Jesus tells him he must be born from above, he gets bogged down in crude, literal thinking — Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born? He doesn’t understand any of it, prompting Jesus to say, Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

I am a priest of the Church, and I love the Church: the community, the rituals, the doctrines, the sacraments, the traditions — I love them all. But they don’t matter at all unless they point us to the one thing that does matter. We must be born from above, we must be born of the Spirit. Not in a one-off event, but in an ongoing, perpetual process of realizing our unity with God and each other in Christ, a unity grounded and expressed in love.

Religious practices can, surprisingly, unfortunately, get in the way of that. This is a particular danger in Lent, when we can become so fixated on what we are giving up or what we are taking on, that we forget why we are doing it at all. Sure, we can give up dessert for six weeks or we can read more devotional books every day, we can leave our altar bare and stop saying the A-word, but if it doesn’t help us love more, if it doesn’t open us up more to the movement of the Spirit in our lives, what’s the point? 

Religion that is alive in the Spirit moves beyond outward observance to the vital truth. To be born of the Spirit is to see that the Eucharist, for example, is not just a church ritual, and it’s not just that the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus. The Eucharist demonstrates the staggering truth of the Incarnation: that God has entered fully into the material reality of the world. And as result, everything is infused with Christ: eating bread and drinking wine at church; hugging a loved one; caring for a sick person; listening to the birds sing; going to the DMV to renew your driver’s license — it’s all holy because it’s all filled with God. The Spirit moves through the sacrament of the altar to show us that the entire universe is sacramental. The Spirit moves through the ritual of Holy Communion to help us see that we are not only one with Christ, not only one with our fellow parishioners, but we are in communion with the whole of God’s creation, with every person, raccoon, oak tree, and star — all enfolded in the same infinite love. With the Spirit, we see this and we live this. Without the Spirit, none of it will make any sense. Like Nicodemus, we will be left wondering, How can these things be?

The good news is that God is self-giving love and so God is continually pouring out the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is always moving, always calling us to new life, deeper life, better life. God is never done with us. Whether we are 25 or 95, we can continually be born of the Spirit as she blesses us and renews us. The adventure lies in the fact that we cannot predict how the Spirit will do that: she blows like the wind and we cannot control her. She may push us into new experiences and unexpected relationships. She may wake us up so that we see the world in a whole new way. She may help us to care more for the people around us. She may blow away our defenses and leave us gobsmacked and speechless. I can’t stand up here and tell you how the Spirit is going to move in your life, how the Spirit is going to lead you into greater love and deeper communion. I just know that she has and she will. And we can trust that.

All of which leads me to the positive value of religious practice. When we come to worship with open minds and open hearts and hear the story, and offer prayer, and share in the peace, and get fed at the altar, or when we fast with right intent or pray with desire for God, we are giving the Spirit room to blow mightily in our lives. We are saying yes to being born from above. And no one rejoices in that more than Jesus himself. In this Gospel today, Jesus does not condemn Nicodemus; he loves him. And Nicodemus eventually moves from being an anxious inquirer to being a faithful follower, a sure sign of the Spirit blowing in his life. And what Jesus conveys to him, he is trying to convey to us. I picture Jesus leaning in to Nicodemus and with radiant eyes saying, “I know you are sincerely religious, but God is so much bigger, so much more awesome than anything you have conceived of. The life God wants for you is so much richer, so much more beautiful than anything you have imagined.”

There is only one way to conceive of it, only way to imagine it.

We must be born from above.

Original mercy. March 1, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Genesis 2:15-17,25; 3:1-8

It was years ago. My eldest son, Matthew, was very young at the time probably around age two or three. We were playing hide and seek. And when it was his turn to hide he would scurry over to the corner of our living room, put his hands over his eyes and stand there in plain sight. He thought he couldn’t be seen. Clearly, he was mistaken.

And he’s not the only one. In our reading from Genesis, Adam and Eve are pretty much doing the same thing. But sadly, this isn’t a game. They are hiding because they have just eaten what was forbidden, the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and they are ashamed.

But let’s take a moment to back up just a bit. The world in all of its God-given glory has just been created. In this second story of creation, the rivers come first, then the trees, then a man, then animals, birds, and finally woman. All of creation finds its culmination when man and woman, named Adam and Eve, are together. “And,” Genesis tells us, “the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” Yes, this verse is about physical nudity, but that’s the least of it. What’s most significant here is that in the beginning human beings were created to have no barriers between one another. No hiding. No faking. No shame. That was the plan - for Adam, for Eve, for us all. But that state of openness and authenticity only lasted for so long because, as the story goes, one day a crafty serpent strikes up a conversation with Eve and suggests that perhaps God is not as trustworthy as one might think. So after mulling it over, Eve takes the forbidden fruit, eats, and gives some to Adam who also eats.

And in that act everything changes. Many theologians claim this is the moment that sin entered into the world, calling it “original sin.” That because of Adam and Eve’s disobedience their state of sin is now passed down from one generation to the next. But oddly enough, sin is never mentioned here in the story. What is, is shame. Before this event, Adam and Eve were naked and we are explicitly told they were not ashamed. But now, after this act, they are. And how do we know? Because immediately they cover and hide - both clear indicators of shame. The world has indeed changed.

A word about shame. It’s different than guilt. Guilt focuses on behavior, as in, “I made a mistake.” Guilt is that uncomfortable feeling we have when we know we haven’t lived up to our values. And when that’s the case, guilt is a good and appropriate response which can spur us on to positive change. Shame, on the other hand, puts the focus on oneself. Instead of, “I made a mistake,” shame says, “I am a mistake.” And that feeling of being fundamentally flawed is intensely painful and paralyzing. Rather than spurring us on to change it does just the opposite. It shuts us down.

Because what do we do when we feel shame, whether we are Adam, Eve, or anyone else? We cover and hide. We decide which parts of us to let others see and which parts to conceal. In today’s world that can look like putting on a happy face or posting enviable pictures on social media. It may take the form of over achieving, over consuming, or over criticizing. The ways we try to hide ourselves from others and from God are endless. And they all work just about as well as loincloths made of fig leaves and taking cover behind a bunch of trees.

Which is where our reading ends with Adam and Eve covering and hiding from God. But what happens next is that God pursues them. God seeks them out in their shame - not in anger or wrath as in, “How dare you?!?!”, but with the question, “Where are you?” As if God didn’t already know. But that question is an invitation - an invitation to repair the relationship. Because at its core sin is the breaking of relationship. And what God is doing here is asking Adam and Eve, and all of us really, to trust enough to come out of hiding so that relationships can be genuinely restored. Not that everything can go back to the way it was, but by moving forward there is healing and hope. As it is with Adam and Eve. Just as they are about to leave the garden and head out into the big, wide world God knows that fig leaves just won’t do. They need more. So God becomes seamstress and dresser to the two of them as Genesis records further on how, “the Lord God made garments of skins for the man and for his wife, and clothed them” (3:21).

Ultimately, this story of our beginnings isn’t about original sin or even original shame, but about original mercy. God’s great mercy that creates the world and creates us in hopes that we might fully live - without any shame, with nothing to hide, with no need to ever feel embarrassed, inadequate or lacking. But when things go awry, when we sin, because we all do, we do things that break relationships with ourselves, with others, with the world, with God - when that happens God’s mercy always seeks us out with love and forgiveness. 

As we enter into this season of Lent, God’s mercy is calling, “Where are you?” It is an invitation to a time of sacred honesty, to trust enough to come out of hiding - because really who are we kidding here? Our attempts to hide who we are from God are just about as effective as standing in a corner with our eyes covered thinking we can’t be seen. When the truth is that God not only fully sees us but fiercely loves us. So much so that God simply refuses to give up on us until we are the ones who are able to see the fullness of original mercy that abounds in our lives, in the lives of others, and in all of creation.

Light shines brightest in the dark. February 23, 2020 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Matthew 17:1-9

“Joyful, joyful, we adore thee.” It’s a great hymn set to great music, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” He composed it for the last movement of his last symphony, the Ninth. It’s a magnificent work, and Beethoven was the first major composer to use such a chorus in a symphony. He wrote the piece for a large orchestra, and it demanded 90 singers to balance the strength of that orchestra. It is widely considered to be one of Beethoven’s masterpieces. And he was almost completely deaf when he composed it. At the much anticipated premiere in Vienna in 1824, Beethoven could not conduct but he insisted on setting the tempos, even though he was deaf. So to honor his wishes the conductor allowed him to stand next to him and do that, but he instructed the musicians to ignore him. So as the conductor led the orchestra and chorus, Beethoven dramatically set the tempo to the music playing in his own mind. Eye-witness accounts describe him gesticulating wildly as the symphony reached its powerful climax, bounding up and down like a madman, one person wrote. But he didn’t hear the concluding chords: he didn’t hear anything. So when the piece ended, he kept on beating time in front of a stunned crowd until one of the soloists went over to him, stopped him, and gently turned him around to face the audience. And as they cheered they threw hats and handkerchiefs up into the air so that Beethoven could see the applause he couldn’t hear. 

It was a moment of great glory and terrible heartbreak at the same time — and thus so human. It never ceases to astonish me how radiant people can be when they are most vulnerable, whether it’s a mother comforting her sick, frightened child in a hospital room at night or civil rights marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma even though they see the men with clubs waiting to beat them on the other side. The light shines brightest in the dark. And I don’t think there is any way to understand the experience described in our Gospel today without remembering that. We give that event a fancy name, “the Transfiguration,” which might imply that we somehow have it all figured out. We don’t: it is wondrous, mysterious, and perplexing. One thing we can say for certain, though, is that in the Gospel narrative, it’s a glorious event that begins and ends in suffering. Right before this passage, Jesus has told his disciples that he will be crucified. Peter insists that can’t happen, and Jesus, in the strongest rebuke he ever gives anyone, says to Peter, Get behind me, Satan. Jesus is going to suffer and going to be killed, and there is no escaping it. Having made that clear, Matthew then recounts this remarkable story of Jesus transfigured, a story which then ends with these words: Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead. There is no way to understand what happens on that mountain apart from the crucifixion. The light shines brightest in the dark, or as one modern songwriter puts it, “the shadow proves the sunshine.”

But like Peter, we might well prefer our glory straight up, undiluted by any pain or suffering. And clearly Jesus knew that most people would prefer that, which is why he orders his disciples to tell no one about this event until after he has been crucified and raised. If we just had this story without the crucifixion, we might be tempted to think that God’s glory is only reflected in sunny days and smiling faces. Don’t get me wrong: sunny days are great, and the world could use more smiling faces. But if as people of faith we think that is the primary or only way that God’s light shines, we’re going to miss something crucial — literally, we will miss the crux, the cross, of the matter. This is the problem with happy-clappy versions of Christianity, like the so-called “Prosperity Gospel,” which is always about winning and being successful and blessed. Such a faith cannot see God in weakness or failure.

Bur according to the New Testament, that’s exactly where God’s light shines the brightest. In John’s Gospel, the greatest moment of glory is the moment Jesus is lifted up on the cross. This is a message the Apostle Paul preaches relentlessly: We have this treasure in clay jars, he tells the Corinthians, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us (2 Cor. 4:7). My grace is sufficient for you, the Lord reveals to Paul, for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:9). And so it is that on the road to the cross, in the shadow of suffering, when he is most vulnerable, Jesus shines like the sun.

I don’t know how God’s glory will be manifested in the world to come, but the story of the Transfiguration shows how it is manifested in this world. Two weeks ago in the Gospel we heard Jesus tell his followers, Let your light shine. The world needs the light of Christ to shine through us. But that light will not shine through our moral perfection. It will not shine through our self-righteous piety. It will not shine through our material success. It will shine through us only insofar as we give ourselves to love as flawed people in an imperfect world. And that really is awesome, because that’s what people yearn for: it’s in the darkness of everyday life that people most need to see the light. I can’t speak for you, but I don’t need to hear fairy tales about plaster saints who never struggled, who prayed effortlessly, and whose feet never seemed to touch the ground. I need real people through whom Christ really shines. I need people like my first spiritual mentor in college. He was a monk, and a very human one. He was a recovering alcoholic who could be difficult and tricky. He wasn’t a great preacher, he struggled at times with his vocation, and he made lots of mistakes. But he loved God and he loved me and he conveyed the light of  Christ to me at a dark time when I really needed it. Each one of us can shed that kind of light. Forget about perfection. Forget about keeping up pious appearances. Forget about avoiding struggle. Just show up: pray as best you can, believe as best you can, trust as best you can, love as best you can. The Holy Spirit will do the rest.

The musician Leonard Cohen was no Beethoven, but his song “Anthem” is moving and it speaks the truth:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.

And that’s how the light shines through.

Bound together in relationship. February 16, 2020 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Matthew 5:21-37

Yikes! Is Jesus serious? Anger and harsh words, the moral equivalent to murder? Stray thoughts the same as adultery? Anything except the complete and honest truth, evil? Add to that the part about removing an eye or a hand or anything else that causes us to sin. What is Jesus talking about here? Let me tell you if he is looking for perfection then I’m out!

I’m probably not the only one. For if we separate Jesus’ words from Jesus himself then we are all in trouble - big trouble. But, thank God, these words are uttered from The Word made flesh. The one who is God with us, who seeks to heal and to save by entering into every nook and cranny of our lives. We fool ourselves if we think that following Jesus is just about following certain rules of behavior. I didn’t murder anyone today, I didn’t commit adultery, I didn’t tell any outright lies. That’s not what Jesus wants for us. Jesus didn’t come into our world to make us “good boys” and “good girls.” Following the rules isn’t the goal here it’s only a means to the real goal God has for each and every one of us, and that is life - full, rich, abundant life.

But how is taking some commandments from the Old Testament and upping the ante on them really a means to life? It’s a means to life because ultimately this isn’t about creating stricter rules but cultivating real relationships. The first one being the relationship with ourselves. Jesus is calling us to live authentic lives. To live in such a way that our outward actions match up with our inward truth. For there is no life when we are divided and fragmented - when we are one person on the inside and another on the outside. Real relationships always begin with honoring the truth of who we are which then enables us to honor the truth of another.

For starters that means that we are to treat each other with respect which includes, but is not limited to, the way we talk to and about one another. We are called to seek reconciliation not just with those we have a problem with, but with the ones who have a problem with us. We are to cease from objectifying and dehumanizing others - which goes way beyond the sexual realm. And we are definitely not to treat others as disposable or without value. That’s the heart of what Jesus is getting at when he speaks about divorce. Because, remember, this is a time where the man held all the power to keep or end a relationship. A woman was at her husband’s mercy and if he divorced her, she became extremely vulnerable - economically, socially, physically. Jesus makes it clear that no one, in any kind of relationship, is to be treated as a throwaway. And then there’s the part about swearing oaths which, if you think about it, the whole reason we swear to “tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” is because we know that in our daily lives people can and do lie. That’s not the way we are to operate. In order for relationships to flourish there must be honesty. We are called to speak the truth in love.

And that is exactly what Jesus is doing here - speaking truth to us in love. Now, granted, he is using extreme language but that’s because what he is talking about is extremely important. The truth that all relationships matter and when it comes to our relationship with God it is never independent from others. For what we do at the altar of God, the gifts we bring, are bound together with the relationships we have with one another. 

Which brings me to the Passing of the Peace. Contrary to what it may look like, the part of our service where we pass the peace with one another is not the church’s equivalent to a 7th inning stretch. No, it really is an essential part of our worship because the Passing of the Peace doesn’t happen out of the blue. It comes immediately after the confession and absolution. The time where we confess that we have fallen way short in our relationships, ask for God’s mercy, and then hear the Good News of God’s forgiveness. At that moment we are at peace with God. But that’s not enough because, again, our relationship with God is not just a couple relationship, it’s communal. Having made peace with God, we now share that peace with others and, when necessary, to make peace with another. Here’s one of my confessions, there were times in my previous church - not here of course - when a relationship with a parishioner would become strained. On those occasions I was compelled to seek that person out during the peace with the intention of letting my hard feelings go. Sometimes that worked better than others, but the intention was there and the attempt was made. So it is that once we have peace with God and with one another we come to the altar offering the gift of ourselves, our souls, our bodies and in turn receive the body and blood of Christ in communion with one another. 

This is the abundant life that Jesus wants for us. If it feels almost impossible to do all that Jesus is saying that is exactly the right response. Jesus’ words are meant to take away any confidence we have in our own individual goodness. As Paul in the letter to the Romans puts it we “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (3:23). Once we really know that we are set free to turn from ourselves to God. Instead of worrying about following the rules we can surrender our whole selves to God’s Spirit who seeks to transform us and all of our relationships so that we might have life in Christ. For Jesus didn’t come to make us good. Jesus came to make us alive.   

You are the light of the world. February 9, 2020 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Matthew 5:13-20

You are the salt of the earth. 

You are a city built on a hill. 

You are a ragtag assortment of fishermen, peasants, tax collectors, prostitutes, and ordinary, sinful people. 

You are the light of the world.

When I hear these words from the Sermon on the Mount, I cannot help but think of the people Jesus is addressing. He is not speaking to the priests in the temple or some spiritual elite, if there is such a thing. He is talking to his disciples and the crowds that have surrounded them, a hodgepodge of humanity. And he speaks such exalted words to them. You are the light of the world. You.

And since those words are also addressed to us . . . we are the light of the world, the motley assortment of people we are. I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I’d be curious to know if any of you ever think of the light shining in you. I wonder if you ever want to shine. And if we do want to shine, what would that mean? How would we do it? We could be super religious, go to church every Sunday, get involved in all sorts of church activities. Would that do it? We could volunteer out in the community — in hospitals, schools, soup kitchens, the jail. Would that do it? We could become activists and work for social justice, promoting policies that help the poor and disadvantaged among us. Would that do it? We know our righteousness has to somehow exceed that of the scribes and the Pharisees, but what does that mean? We are ordinary, sinful people, and Jesus says that light shines in us — or at least it can. 

And I think Paul shows us how. He is writing today to the Corinthians, a fractious and unruly congregation if ever there was one. And Paul says to them, When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. Paul could have focused on the resurrection, and certainly that is essential to his Gospel. He could have made life in the Spirit the centerpiece of his teaching, and certainly that is a crucial component of it. But Paul makes the crucified Lord the center of everything. Why? Because it reveals like nothing else can the nature of God’s love, a love which is at once so vulnerable and so powerful. Jesus goes through life unguarded and defenseless: he encounters the pain of the world with an openness and tenderness that is transformative. How Jesus died on the cross is the just ultimate expression of how he lived on earth. And if Paul is going to proclaim the Good News of Jesus in a way that is faithful to Jesus, then he must show that same kind of love. And so that’s what does. He doesn’t just teach about the crucified Lord, he knows him and lives him. And so he comes among the Corinthians in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. Paul is real, he’s vulnerable, he’s transparent — and the light of Christ shines through him.

One of the things we learn from the New Testament is that outwardly perfect people, people who seemingly have it all together, people like the scribes and Pharisees, often don’t shed very much light. It’s the other people, the broken people, who shine. And that has been true in my experience as well. One of the people who has most deeply influenced me was a man named Andrew Wissemann. Andrew was a retired bishop and he served as my spiritual director when I lived in Massachusetts. He was a bishop and so had been “successful” in the church, but that’s not why I loved him. For years he made it safe for me to open up to him because he was so open with me. He freely shared his own struggles and failures over the years. He had weaknesses and quirks, and he knew it: he could laugh at himself. He understood, in a world that prizes technical skills and the ability to make money, how useless priests can feel because he had felt it himself. He once told me that clergy are really just the “offscouring” of society. He was a prayerful and learned man, but he was very honest about the doubts and uncertainties he felt. As he approached his own death, he would describe being awake at three in the morning and looking up into the darkness and saying, “I’m planning on resurrection, Lord. I hope you are, too.” He was real and vulnerable and transparent — and the light of Christ just shined through him. He accepted me and loved me as I really am. I miss him.

If we hear this Gospel today as an exhortation to achieve perfection and somehow produce light for God, then we will certainly fail. It’s not our light that matters, but the light of Christ shining through us. And it’s not our perfection that transmits it, but our transparency. And if we are going to be transparent enough for the Christ light to shine through us, then we need to be real and vulnerable. We are all of us flawed and wounded people. And we are all of us forgiven and loved unconditionally by God. If we are vulnerable enough to receive such love and vulnerable enough to share it, then divine light will pour through us. So I urge us all to practice compassion: practice receiving it and practice giving it. Every person we encounter this week, every single person, will be flawed and wounded. Every person we encounter this week, every single person, will need love. And to love them, we don’t need to be perfect — we’ll never be perfect — we just need to be real enough and vulnerable enough. And if we are, the light of Christ will shine. It may happen while we are taking care of a sick child; it may happen while we are advocating for humane immigration policies. But as long as we are open to it, the light of Christ will shine through us. And that light changes lives, as I know so well.

In essence, I’m asking all of us to take the cross seriously. Like Paul, we need to know Jesus Christ and him crucified. The one thing we can offer the world, the one thing we can offer the people we meet each day, is the real and vulnerable love of Christ. If we don’t let down our defenses and show that kind of love, who else will? Who else can we count on? 

We are the light of the world. Let it shine.

                                                                                          

We don’t ring alone: A Reflection by Carolyn Voldrich

As hand bell ringers, we don’t play alone and can’t practice by ourselves. We need each other playing together to hear the entirety of the piece and figure out where our bell notes fit within the whole. So there is a good deal of trust that needs to happen in bell choir…trust that everyone shows up to rehearse, that we do our focused  best, that we don’t give up and leave, that our director knows how to lead the rehearsal.

Playing bells takes me out of my comfort zone. Feeling in control and relying on myself is how I function best, along with avoiding mistakes at all cost (sound familiar?).  Relying on others is always risky.  And yet… I can’t play alone, and my mind and spirit are made whole because I do this bell choir thing on a regular basis. Totally crazy, right?

So here are steps that help me endure bell choir – and as it turns out – make it possible to live a somewhat sane life:

Show up: Get to rehearsal, get out of bed, be on time.  Make sure courage and sense of humor come along.

Listen and follow your director/Director. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or wonder what the heck is going on.

Be brave, willing to fail, and know you are not alone. Pray for strength to do this!

Be flexible and ready to play any part that is needed.

Pay attention to your own part/life and resist the urge to comment on anyone else’s.

Mistakes happen – move on! Be OK with not being perfect, and strive to do better next go around.

Give thanks to God for your fellow ringers and those who travel the journey with you.

_________________________________________

My fellow bell ringers in the COOS Canterbury Bells and our fearless leader, Tom Dixon, are just the best. How lucky am I to share in the disarming discomfort of creating beautiful music with them!

You can hear us play next on Sunday, February 23, at the 9:00 and 11:15am services.