Changing perspective

Wow! It must look like I dropped off the face of the earth to the three people who actually read this blog. Fear not ... still here and it's now been two years since I've come to Grace Church in Brunswick and they still want me to stay with them. I'm blessed.

It's been a year of changing perspectives. Priestly lore is that the second year of ministry is when the proverbial "poo" hits the fan. Something's going to happen. There will be a crisis. It may be a little one or a big one, or some series or combination of both ... but it will happen.

My year began with a deep loss when one of our confirmation class members took her own life after a long struggle with bipolar disorder. I learned about St. Dymphna, patron saint of those with mental illness, from her. Her life and death had a profound impact on our little community. It helped some of our members who also struggle with mood disorders to reevaluate how they attend to their own wellness and medication regiments. It was painful for spouses, partners and friends to see what can happen when a person doesn't respond to treatment. It was a reminder that no matter the circumstances of our lives, God is present: even in suffering, even through death ... and that death isn't the last word. Two new families came the morning I had to announce her death ... and they stayed because they saw how our community responded and how we loved each other through it. That's grace.

Ash Wednesday ...

Ashes to Go at the MARC. Meeting Jennie ... getting to know her ... helping her prepare over the next few months for her death from breast cancer leaving behind a husband and two teenage kids.

Holy Week isn't always "holy" for clergy. We have a few other nicknames for it ... I'll leave that to your imagination. Just before Holy Week, Beloved Husband's brother took ill with an upper respiratory infection which quickly went septic. By Passion Sunday, he was on a ventilator and things were not looking good at all. To amp it up more, one of our well-beloved elderly members died Passion Sunday morning. Her family was in chaos as was mine. Pastoral visit to parishioner's family and a mad dash to Carroll County Hospital to anoint my brother-in-law before his airlift to Inova Fairfax's ICU.

Oh ... and did I mention this is Holy Week? By now, it seemed more like "holy s**t!" to me. Thankfully, my dear friend Michael+ (who is a priest in the Ecumenical Catholic Communion) was willing to step in to preach Good Friday, assist at Maundy Thursday and Easter Vigil along with our deacon Tom+. Organist Dj and I spent loads of time getting programs together for the Triduum along with fielding many phone calls to the grieving family of the deceased parishioner who just couldn't understand why we couldn't have the funeral on Holy Saturday and why we couldn't have a clowning routine in the middle of the service ("I'm sorry, the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer don't mention 'clowns.'" ... Just sayin').

First Maundy Thursday watch in many, many years. Well attended, even by Grace's ghosts (yes, the church is haunted ... but it's all good juju), and very moving.

Good Friday ... live Stations of the Cross:

First Easter Vigil in 10 years ... 55 people present ... fire, smoke and all the pageantry we could muster! Easter morning ... another 60+ people.

Octave of Easter ... funeral for well-beloved parishioner. Clown routine set at beginning before Mass begins as a pastoral compromise. Packed house ... old Brunswick railroaders ... fascinating. Brother-in-law comes back from the dead like Lazarus ... off the vent ... will go on to recover.

Low Sunday? Not so fast! Bishop Joe's visitation ... confirmations - 16 ... reception - 1 ... 102 people the church for the occasion.

Post-Easter break? Well ... a couple days for the priest ... while the organ gets yanked out of the building for a rebuild and expansion...

Now a break? Um ...no. Jennie departs this life in May. Big funeral - packed house. Her son plays a piano duet with our organist for the opening hymn, "Morning Has Broken." Not a dry eye in the house. Missing you Jennie!

Summer break? Well ... not much. Stayed and prayed while youth and adults went on first mission trip in ... well ... I don't know how long, if ever.

One week vacation ... yes, the fam and I did get away for a week to Michigan. Then back to eldest daughter leaving for college. OK, she's not far away, but living on campus and not at home. A big adjustment for us and more bathroom space for younger sister.

September brings the Kirkin' o' the Tartan with the Mid-Maryland St. Andrew's Society and the Frederick Scottish Pipes and Drums.

And part of our organ coming back:

Then the Blue Mass for the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels:

Lovettsville Oktoberfest and Brunswick Railroad Days:

And the All Souls Mass and Dedication of the St. Dymphna Garden of Peace in memory of Sophia ... where our whole year started ... with an ending and a beginning:

Many events, many people, many lives coming together and coming apart ... life and death ... hurt and healing ... changing my perspective on so many things ... and through it all is God's grace. If nothing else, the love of God through Christ remains.

Now you know where I've been.

Don't it always seem to go ...

I've had the song Big Yellow Taxi going through my head today. I'm old enough to remember Joni Mitchell's original recording of this song but young enough to give props to Counting Crows for their respectable cover of it. Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone?

I lost a fellow sojourner in the faith this week. The Rev. Mary Pat Ashby was well beloved in the Diocese of Maryland and certainly there were many who knew her better than I did; however, she graced me with time and care, especially in my call to serve as a priest.

I met Mary Pat+ at Diocesan Center in the summer of 1996. I had been selected to be part of a five woman delegation to the Diocese of Tokyo to discuss women's ordination to the priesthood which had been considered by their national synod convention the prior year. The vote was split with the House of Deputies (lay persons, deacons and priests) voting in favor of full ordination for women and the House of Bishops voting against. There was discouragement among the people, especially those women who felt called to the priesthood and had to continue waiting.

That September, the five of us journeyed to Tokyo for a whirlwind 12 day trip. I say whirlwind not just because of the pace of all our visits and presentations (and there were many panel discussions with lots of question and answer sessions), but also because Typhoon Violet made an appearance that first Sunday we were to visit our sister congregations! We all made it to our various churches in spite of wind, downed trees and flooded streets. We were all greeted most warmly and shown amazing hospitality.

Midway through the trip, we went into the Japanese Alps (yes, they have serious mountains there!). There we spent two days with women and men in retreat where we were housed in a dormitory style setting. Mary Pat+ and I went walking early the first morning we were there ... and found ourselves locked out of the building. No matter, there was an open window and with a boost, up Mary Pat+ went and scrambled through the window. We had a hard time stifling our laughter so as not to wake our companions.

After the retreat, Mary Pat+ and I were slated to go on to Nagoya for a Sunday service and to speak at "St. Matthew's Church" while the rest of our group went to Osaka. Our guide was Yoko Tachikawa - a very short Japanese woman who spoke no English. We figured we stood out in a crowd, so English or no English, Yoko would be able to find us if we got separated. We boarded the train to Gifu City where Yoko's husband Paul+ was the priest at the local Anglican church. Paul+ spoke a little English and drove us from the train station to our hotel. As Paul+ sped along the narrow road, he got just a bit too close to the railing on the right side of the car and BAM! off went the side mirror! Mary Pat+ and I about jumped out of our skin but Paul+ seemed rather nonplussed about the whole thing ... which made us politely stifle our laughter until we got into our hotel room. I swear we laughed until it hurt!

In hindsight, that trip, and our misadventures on it, inched me closer to ordination to the priesthood. Mary Pat+ quietly supported me and gave me encouragement. As a former transitional ministries officer, she helped review my resume and my CDO profile with helpful suggestions. She knew how difficult my first year of ordained ministry was. Closing a church is never on a new priest's radar and to find myself on Good Friday saying good-bye to the members of that church and knowing I had nowhere to go on Easter Sunday was just devastating. My first Easter as a priest ... all dressed up and nowhere to go.

Last year, Mary Pat+ retired from Grace Episcopal in New Market. She called me before she left and basically set me up to be the supply priest for a few months while the congregation took the time to call an interim. It was the first Easter where I was the chief celebrant at the Eucharist. Yes, I had assisted in other congregations in prior years, but it wasn't quite the same. Mary Pat+ made sure I would be chief celebrant at Grace on the holiest day of the Christian year - and for that I will always be grateful.

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone? I will miss Mary Pat+ and will wait with patient expectation for the day when we will see each other again.

Dropping into Grace

For those of you who know me, my spiritual journey has been marked by many random acts of "Huh?" Søren Kirkegaard said, "Life is lived forwards but understood backwards." Hence most of the time when God is at work, my general response is "huh?" ... until much later.

My work at Hospice of Washington County was abruptly terminated in September 2011. Officially, I was terminated without cause. Essentially, I was placed in a position where I was told to ignore a legal obligation and violate my ordination vows - neither of which were acceptable.

The upshot of this is I had been scheduled to begin a stint as a long term supply clergy at Grace Episcopal Church in Brunswick, MD ... which began the Sunday after I was fired. Now being supply clergy is a few shekels in the pocket - but it doesn't really pay the bills. However, I had a place to be and an altar at which to celebrate and I somehow had a sense that God was at work. Maybe it was getting the phone call from a parishioner the same day I was fired who said, "I just heard you're coming to Grace and I'm so excited!" Or maybe it was later that same day when a deacon friend called and said, "Hey, I just had a call from the bishop's office - I'm coming to Grace Brunswick." Somehow it felt like, "Here's your sign" (and I don't mean the "Stupid sign" either).

After spending a few weeks at Grace, it became clear that their traditions were pretty high church. First hint, thurible hanging in the sacristy ... and a full boat of incense! My heritage is pretty high church having come from California, so I felt like we could work well together (and yes, the incense came out on All Saints Sunday and Christmas Eve).

In November, the vestry voted to call me as their Priest-in-Charge ... that's a priest who really isn't in charge of anything. Who said Anglican terminology is always accurate? I'm pretty much doing the work of a rector but in a "try before you buy" kind of way. The folks at Grace get to check me out and work with me and I get to check them out and work with them ... and after a year or three, we decide whether this is working and convert the position into rector if it's mutually agreeable.

So how'd I end up here? Only by Grace ... God's grace and the power of the risen Christ to make new things happen. Where will we go? I hope we'll go forward in the power of the Holy Spirit to make disciples, to be healers and reconcilers, and to bear the light of Christ in the community. I don't know how that's all going to work ... but I know it will be interesting.

Unexpected grace

Every now and then, something just leaps out and surprises me in my work. I had to visit some patients in a local assisted living "memory care" unit. "Memory care" is a gentle way of describing a secure, locked area where people with dementia, Alzheimers or related cognitive disorders live. Admittedly, it's not a place where most of us would like to end our days, but some of us will. This facility (which must remain nameless for confidentiality's sake) has a pretty good memory care unit and their director is very good. I have seven patients in this unit and you never quite know what they will say or do. Working in there definitely sharpens your improvisational skills!

There is one couple in the unit who live together. The husband is forgetful but still conversant. He's always a gentleman and appreciates being able to talk about his faith. His wife has Alzheimers and isn't able to converse anything more than what we call "word salad" - a jumbling of words and sounds which do not make sense to the listener. I visited the gentleman in their shared room and we had a nice visit. They've been married 64 years - I call them the "cute couple on campus" and this usually elicits a chuckle from both of them. His wife was eating her breakfast in the dining room so I joined her there.

She was sitting in her wheelchair and I could tell she didn't recognize me when I first spoke to her. I showed her my badge and introduced myself as the chaplain - she smiled at me and took my hand. She has a far away look in her eyes most of the time. I asked how her breakfast was, she struggled to reply, "I'm not hungry." She tried to say some words but they didn't make much sense so I just held her hand and smiled. Towards the end of the visit, I asked her if I could pray for her. She said, "Yes." So I offered a prayer for her and her husband and a blessing. She said, "Thank you." I told her, "You're welcome - I'll see you soon."

As I gathered my belongings and put on my coat, she watched me intently. As I turned to leave, she reached out for my hand and said, "I love you." I was taken by surprise. I took her hand and she pulled me towards her and gave me a kiss on the cheek. I wished her a Merry Christmas.

Like I said, you never know what will happen!

Whew! Grace happens...

This week's lectionary (Proper 12 RCL) finally gets us to Paul's core theological claim:

I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I know I am not alone in holding this particular text dear to my heart and spiritual journey (this passage is actually on the back of my Cursillo team shirt). I'm glad we finally got here ... after several weeks of Paul pounding us with SIN (capital letters intentional), it's kind of nice to know we're not left wallowing in it!

I have a love/hate relationship with the lectionary. I like the fact it forces me to deal with a lot of different texts all over the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. As a lectionary preacher, I don't have the luxury of picking my personal "text du jour" and constructing my whole worship experience around that one favorite passage (which is not to say that some of my favorite passages are not in the lectionary ... this week proves they do come around). What I don't like is that some of the readings get chopped up in weird ways that aren't always helpful and some authors (like Paul) are not good as "sound bites."

Three weeks ago, I was serving at St. Andrew's Episcopal in Clear Spring. We were squarely into Paul's rhetoric on the power of SIN (primarily in Romans 6 & 7 ... but the "front end" of Romans has a lot of "sin talk"). I told the congregation that I'm not a fan of "sound bite Paul." To really get what Paul is doing with his rhetoric here, you need to read the whole of Romans 1-8 (the second half of the letter goes into other topics). Paul synopsizes his theological point that we are justified sinners, the nature of the power of SIN as a big cosmic force, and how Jesus Christ defeated the power of SIN once for all. The problem with lectionary "sound bites" is they chop up Paul's argument so that it is hard to see his line of thinking.

Paul tends to beat you over the head with SIN to the point that when he gets to the subject of grace, it's as if he shifts gears without a clutch and grabs your attention. You're hearing:

• SIN
• SIN
• SIN
• SIN
  

and trotting down that rhetorical road with Paul only to be caught off guard when he opens Romans 8 with the good news,

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

"What??!! Huh??!! Hang on ... I thought we were talking about sin. 'No condemnation??' Now you've got my attention!!"

And that's where we are this week ... the point where Paul is persuaded that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus. I love how he says he is "persuaded." Paul didn't just swallow this story without some work. He has heard, considered, prayed over, and finally accepted that absolutely nothing will separate us from God's love.

I'm blessed to be going back to St. Andrew's this week again to preach on this text. It's like the continuation of a good story and it's nice to be able to preach on the completion of Paul's thoughts.

My own peace I leave with you

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you; I do not give it to you as the world does. Do not let your hearts be distressed or lacking in courage. (John 14.27)

On the final night of Jesus' earthly life, he blesses his friends with these words of peace. In the Church, we speak of God's peace as that "which passes all understanding." It doesn't make sense.

We are very rational people steeped in a culture grounded in scientific facts and knowledge. We have trouble with things which are not rational. Somehow, we've mistaken rational for real. If something doesn't make rational sense, it must not be real, right?

Wrong!

I tell folks I've tried rationality and found it's overrated. Truth is, there are many things irrational which are very, very real. The most obvious one is love. Anyone who has been in love can tell you there is a lot about love which is irrational. It isn't logical and doesn't always make sense.

Grace is irrational too. Why would God pour out grace on us? More specifically, why would God pour out grace on sinners ... especially the "really bad sinners" (of course I don't believe in gradations of sin so that makes us all "really bad sinners" ... but that's another post for another time).

Peace isn't rational either. Most people define peace is an absence of conflict. I'm not sure that's truly what peace is. Conflict is a means for change and transformation, so the absence of conflict is stagnation. I think peace is when we can be in the midst of conflict, but do it in such a way that allows us to see Christ in another with whom we disagree ... and in such a way as to honor their humanity which, in turn, honors God.

This week is Holy Week. It's the "high water mark" of the Christian year. It's not rational at all. The idea of a crucified God is pretty weird ... not at all rational. But God doesn't have to be rational to be real ... and neither to we.