Thursday Reflection

Can we be grateful for the failures or other negative aspects in our life? Should we?  Each year, I do one of the Confirmation Classes on various types of prayer that we Christians pray. Inevitably we get to thanksgiving. This always leads me to ask the teens what are those types of things in our lives for which we should be thankful, and they respond with all the usual suspects (as adolescents are expected to do).

I have a bit of fun whenever I explain that I am ever so grateful for one experience of bitter failure. My very first exam in high school (you may guess the subject – and NO it wasn’t “religion”) was one for which I did not prepare, couldn’t be bothered to study for, and took ever so lightly. My grade on that exam cannot be registered here because the number hasn’t been invented yet to define how poorly I did. I was labeled as having poor study habits, bad attitude, and inadequate ability to do even rudimentary high school work. (And then after that I had to listen to my parents!!!!)

 That experience impacted the 13 year old me. It taught me the need for preparation and in fact, led to a life of appreciating scholarship in several fields. Of course I never realized it at the time, but it was an experience for which I became most grateful (well..all but the “grounded for the next ten years” part). 

I am thankful that I got a chance very early in life to learn that I had limitations. I’m grateful that the Lord showed me that there would be several disciplines at which I could excel, but there would be some that I would, at best, only plod through. And I had to know the difference. I am so glad that I was given the chance to appreciate how we all differ in terms of talents and gifts. To presume that we all can think speak, feel or do the same in life is absurd.   

So in answer to the question posed to my younger charges, I ask YOU: for what failure or negative experience are you NOW grateful? Has there been any unfortunately / sad / horrible event that has happened to you which has shaped the person you have become, and have you been open to the God’s spirit to use that event as a means to positively mold your thinking or behavior?  God has this sense of humor: allowing us to fail then so that we might profit now (and forever. Amen). So shouldn’t we be thankful?

Fr. Joe 


Thursday Reflection

I am going to be that “fool” rushing in “… where wise men (sic.) never go!” (and if you remember this song, then you were a teenager before I was).  I am going to push for “a little change” (gasp !!) – something Episcopalians are just not good at.  


The year is already six weeks old, and I am feeling the desperate need to introduce a little change into my life. Let’s face it: that little rat in Punxsutawney, PA may be promising that we’re heading into Spring more rapidly this year, but the cold in my soul doesn’t feel Spring’s warmth anywhere nearby. Same old winter. And the Patriots won the Super Bowl again. Boring! Heck, as much as I love Abby, watching a border collie (again) smoke the competition (again) in the 2019 Master’s Agility Competition at Westminster is just same old, same old. (Spoiler alert: Borders have an unfair advantage in the way their hips are constructed AND they are so bloody smart and quick).

So starting the end of February the weekend liturgical services will be marked with a little “change” – just to keep us fresh and hopefully to feed us with fresh thoughts, meditations, and food for the spirit.


As we have done in years past, on February 23 – 24, the sermon will be a specially recorded sermon of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King (this year, I have chosen A Knock at Midnight which he preached in August of 1967 as a reflection on Luke 11:5-8)

Then the following six weekends (starting with the weekend BEFORE Lent begins on March 6), we’re going to have a special presentation in the place of a “sermon.”   I have purchased a program entitled: Entering the Passion of Jesus: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Week by Dr. Amy Jill Levine. We’ll incorporate a video presentation within our services as each week as a brilliant but very down-to-earth scholar takes us through the various scripture remembrances of that final week of Jesus life: Entering Jerusalem, The Temple, the Teachings, the First Dinner, the Last Supper, and Gethsemane.  Her reflections are all about risk: risking reputation, righteous anger, challenge, rejection, the loss of friends and finally temptation. So the liturgy for those six weeks leading up to Palm Sunday will be “changed”. Hopefully they remain praise filled as well as thought provoking. 

Anyway I am inviting you all to embrace “change” even if just for a few weeks. And if these small changes in public worship achieve their desired ends, perhaps there will be more and better changes for you and I in what matters most: our journey to life eternal!

Fr. Joe 






Thursday Reflection

The Episcopal New Yorker (Official Diocesan newspaper) just sent out a notice that it is looking for authors to provide articles for its next edition exploring the theme of DEATH.  The categories are, for any clergy, the “usual suspects” (e.g., ministry to the dying; ministry to the family of those who are dying; preparing funeral rites; death of a child; death of a parent; dealing with long term illness; dealing with tragic unexpected death; and on and on).

  What I continue to find so interesting as an observer (and participant) in the human condition as it is lived in this millennium is our deeply ingrained desire to avoid dealing with this topic at all. Having an issue of a journal totally so dedicated reminds me of just how much we cringe from facing death as an inevitability.


 The rubrics of our Book of Common Prayer remind me that at least once (if not more often) per year, my priesthood vows command that I remind people of their duty to put their affairs in order, to make sure that (as much as humanly possible) they will provide for the spouse or other family they leave behind, and also leave gifts to various charities and causes as a final demonstration of one’s commitment to Christ. And I cannot tell you how often in my years as a parish priest, I will encounter some parishioner who will express her (or his) disapproval of even raising this issue. “No one who gets up early on a Sunday morning wants to hear that someday they’re going to die”- this I have been told a number of times. News Flash: Whether we say it or deny it – It’s the truth even for those who profess their faith in life beyond life (“…I believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.”), there is our fear of the unknown. There is the realization that as we get older, we have left not only a “carbon footprint” but a moral footprint as well. There have been too many unkind things said or actions done that we have not yet fully regretted or perhaps even acknowledged. There have been too many “I should have’s” in my life. And perhaps we wonder (to ourselves if not aloud) whether one can truly be forgiven for all the pain one has caused. On the flip side, there is the anger at those who “sinned against us” and we wonder if there will be sufficient punishment for those who hurt me (or any other innocent soul). Funny how we are very comfortable seeking divine justice on to OTHERS! 

And there is that little matter of forgiving those who have injured us. Just how will we be held to account should we leave this life’s journey with hatred for another still burning within? Even if such animosity is deserved! Do we demean ourselves by forgiving too often? Do we become enablers to the abusers? How does leaving an issue like this “in God’s hands” bring justice to those who have no one to care or speak for them?   So many unanswered questions!

  Lent is still a month away (Easter VERY LATE this year). The reminder in the Ash Wednesday liturgy that we are but “dust” is unsettling.        “All we are is dust in the wind…”    

So when was the last time you reflected on an event that is heading straight for you?  Ready or not: “Sister Death” (as Francis of Assisi referred to this reality) comes for us and will bring us home to a loving and forgiving God – but have we loved and have we forgiven? Have sought to be loved and forgiven? Are we ready for the journey?  Or is death a topic never to be addressed except at a funeral of someone else. Just leave me alone and let’s not think about it.

  So, anyone want to take up the offer and write for the paper?

Fr. Joe



A Thursday Reflection

For this last reflection in 2017 (yes, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness” will resume in 2018), I am neither going to create a Christmas message that oozes with “sweetness and light” because, frankly, it’s not reality.  Nor will I play the role of a crude Mr. Scrooge and give you all a “bah humbug” since the power of Jesus and what we celebrate at the Feast of the Incarnation is so wonderful that I refuse to play the role of cantankerous curmudgeon!

But my friends, my sisters and brothers, let’s keep focused on what is terribly and truly important: the “message” of Christmas is the Message of Easter!  This fact of remembering that God chose to become enfleshed in a human body and thus into human history is a call to remember that every aspect of the Christmas story points to a deeper reality marking the greatest mystery of all: The Death and Resurrection of Jesus for our Salvation.

Don’t forget that a child born into poverty and for whom no one would share hospitality prefigured a time when a popular peasant preacher would be turned on by the crowd of supposed followers and abandoned by his own.  And who stepped up to shelter him then?  And just as the machinations of a corrupt emperor forces a young family to migrate to be registered, so the decisions of a corrupt Procurator will bring about this child’s death as an adult.  As the baby would be laid to rest and bound on to a wooden feeding trough (“manger”), so one day he would be bound to another harsher piece of wood (“cross”).

But never forget that if the place of his birth is seen as a CAVE where no one human should be (only animals hung out there), so his intended final resting place (another cave) would become the site of mystery and light, redemption and reconciliation: from that cave would emerge He who IS the way, truth and LIFE.  Born in a cave / resurrected from a cave.

And finally, in both cases, those who are totally “other” than we – call them “angels,” call them messengers of the Divine – proclaim the Good News.  The announcement to Shepherds of the child’s birth (“Today is born for you a Savior”) and to the women who had come to anoint his broken dead body at the empty tomb (“He is not here.  He is risen.”) is the same message:   Do NOT be afraid!  Be at PEACE.  REJOICE.  Your God is greater than human evil. And God’s “redeeming grace” is far more powerful than human tragedy.

Please don’t forget what we celebrate each Christmas:  A memory of Jesus that prefigures His (and our) most important moment.  And don’t forget that no matter the darkness of our world, that He has been born for us, and lived for us, and taught us, and died for us and rose from the dead to give us life.  And what better gift could we possibly need or be given this or any season of the year!

Peace,

Fr Joe

Thursday Reflection

Let me give you an example of something which, while majestic to witness, is a sign of things-not-good.  You who are caretakers of dogs know that no matter the weather, you must take care of your charge and provide opportunity for him or her to respond to the “call of nature.” So Abby and I had our share of slip sliding and trekking over the frozen snow and ice these past few bitterly cold mornings/evening. And then we saw it:


At the back of the yard usually runs a waterfall type stream (referred to as “babbling brook” in the real estate literature). However in response to subzero wind chills, that entire water display (from over the hill way beyond our back yard down to road beyond the front of the house) had frozen solid.  It is a river of ice - suspended in time and space. Any creature unlucky enough to have been in it is now solidly embedded within its mass (kind of like Harrison Ford’s character “Hans Solo” in the concluding scene of Star Wars V: The Empire Strikes Back).


There is a seductive attraction to the frozen river. It is beautiful to behold! It is awesome and cool to witness a wall of water now frozen where it used to flow rapidly. But it’s wrong! This is so wrong! That water was intended to move, to vivify the life forms within it, and to gracefully inspire us to passage with it into future movement. But it’s motionless and solid, going nowhere, and taking up space without purpose.


One of my concerns for our parish (as a symbol for my church in general or even our nation) is the fear that we become so fixated on ourselves, that we never consider change or growth or the input of anything or anyone new, and we remain “frozen.”  When I was investigating this deep and rich Anglican tradition of Christianity, one of the factors I had to overcome was how some few people (with smirk but also with a kind of off putting pride) advised me that “we are God’s frozen chosen.”  Now I don’t hear that phrase uttered aloud much anymore, but I certainly still experience the effects of those who choose to believe this.

While I do not believe in shedding all traditions or always taking a contrarian approach simply because I can (that’s such 9th grade thinking, is it not?), I am very concerned by those who desperately want to hold on to structures, people, ideas or material things which no longer serve their original purpose. In any organization, a parish included, if the buildings, just as an example, become a drain or an eyesore because one cannot properly and responsibly care for them, then holding on to them makes little sense. If people choose to move on and find their own way to God by another path, rather than condemn them or desperately try to hold on to them with self-denigrating apologies, let them go. Honor their choice. Be faithful to what you believe is the right choice for you. If new people do enter our community, they need to be loved and embraced and listened to – and not merely talked at and made to feel that they should be grateful we let them in the door. Just because things were done in a certain way for years, decades or even centuries does not, of itself, tell us that this is the way things should be done now. We need to discern, judge, examine, pray for wisdom, and then act to bring about, with God’s grace, life we share and will share, and not just muse that our better days are behind us. 


I believe in movement. I believe in growth. I believe that “God calling us” means we must move towards God – and “move” is the operative word. I don’t want history to judge us as the group that chose to remain frozen. Looking at the frozen waterfall, I am afraid it has lost its beauty as far as I am concerned. Just saying!

Fr. Joe


Thursday Reflection

                                                                                     

  I think I’ll leave Abby out of this week’s musings!  (She is starting to “want a piece of the action,” and I don’t feel like sharing any portion of the “millions” J I make in bonus money for writing this column)!

How well do any of you tune out the “noise” around us?  As a kid who found it impossible to study if TV or radio were on, it is surprising that as much work gets done at the church office on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  For those who are unaware, on those days, our Early Learning Center’s Two Year Old’s Program takes place in the “classroom” next to my office. 

There are many many little two year old humans reacting with joy, sadness, glee, terror and crankiness at the thought of being dropped off by mom (or dad).  If you are looking for peace and quiet, time for prayerful meditation, or the pacific journey into some mystical experience, then TRUST ME, you do not want to be near this office on those days.  Play time is loud time.  Learning time is loud time.  I’m sad because mommy is leaving me is very loud time.  It is the wonder filled stuff of childhood, and as a priest and grandpa, I marvel at the beauty of what goes down in that room.

But I am also moderately proud of myself for having learned to “tune out” all the action background noise seeping through thin walls.  I am learning to laser focus on what needs to be written / read or the person with whom I am speaking.  (Spoiler alert: on Friday the Bishop’s assistant [“point person”] who is coming up from NYC to set up the details for the Bishop’s Pastoral Visitation in a few weeks is going to be meeting with me, in this office, with this joyful noise.  This is what we call a “teachable moment” - what life is like in the real world)

But this is all an introduction for me to question: are we still able to tune out the noise that so dominates 21st century USA life?  Can you focus on what is important in the midst of the shouting, the anger, the fear, the false assumptions, the lies, the pain that all conspire to distract us from what our life’s journey is really about.  “Talk” radio has become “screeching” radio and whether the object is sports or politics, all we hear is noise.  Can we tune the racket out and focus on solutions and not scream and blame for the problems.

And, speaking as one who needs the “quiet” (and is the stone thrower living in the glass house), can we make more time to make quiet around us.  I think the lyrics of the song went: “all we need is love”  and not “all we need is noise.”  I know this comes as a shock to many, but not everyone needs to hear my voice or read my thoughts at every moment of every day.  There really is need for quiet time – and then maybe some one-to-one conversation.  Who knows?  Maybe we start to become reflective and gentler in our dealings with the other, and maybe if the background noise that infests life is managed, there will be less need for columns like this.  (And then Abby says I can spend more time writing about her).

Fr. Joe

Thursday Reflection

I long ago had stopped making New Year’s resolutions since I tend to break them so easily. I think this year, I am proposing one for myself and anyone else who has the courage to take the challenge. As often happens in my unusual life as an adoptive Border collie parent, this resolution is born from a conversation we had during one of our cold wet early morning “bathroom” – and - exercise walks!


Dodging rain drops, Abby asked me what “zero sum” means as it refers to politics or economics. Now what I know about either discipline would fit into a thimble, but this I do know: the phrase assumes that there is only a finite and limited about of “x” in the world (and “x” can be food, power, money, love or anything for that matter.  Whatever I possess will take away from you. There is no middle ground. If I win, you must lose! If I have authority, you must submit. If they “love” me, they must “hate” you.   (I know this is a bit simplistic, and it makes life sound like the one-and-done format of the NFL playoffs, but like I told you, I am no political or economic theorist)As I tried explaining what I barely understand and do not believe in to my far-too-inquisitive border collie, her theological acuity kicked in. She wanted to know if I believed that God was so limited, eg, if God infinitely loves me, then God must love someone else less. I explained that, to me, that’s what the theory would hold, but I can’t buy that. She then asked me, does this kind of thinking undergird all our politics today: one must never compromise. One must win and this means one must destroy the other. I told her that political practitioners might not express their thoughts so crassly, but it is hard to not see this being played out day after day in the public arena. 


Although I am tugging at her to come in out of the rain, she digs in her paws and asks: so is that why some people leave their respective groups (be that group a “family,” a “church” a “club,” etc? If I can’t get my way all the time, then I quit. Again, I tried to explain that this is a rather simplistic way of viewing things, but to be honest, for some, this is exactly why they move on. Others may have tried and tired of compromise. Some must never do so as they deem themselves always right all the time.

So here is my resolution for 2019: I am going to religiously try to avoid “zero sum” thinking! If I do not get my own way, I will be at peace with the final decisions of others. I will not treat my opponent as my enemy. I will try to imitate our beloved Master who wishes us to love others, even our enemies, with the same steadfast love that God always has for us. Now I do have one advantage as I hope to live out this resolution: I know who will be watching me each morning and asking if I am keeping my resolution.  Of course, then she’ll more than likely ask me to slip her more food for breakfast as long as mommy doesn’t find out.

Fr. Joe

Thursday Reflection

 In spite of the rain on New Year’s Eve, I have just come off the most wonderful few days away – visiting children and grandchildren.   It was the first time in months where I have spent days in utter relaxation and not bothered with emails, writing sermons, following up with insurance companies or reviewing work contracts. I have just had some time with the pure of joy of being irresponsible and silly and eating all sorts of things that I dare not put in print lest either my beloved wife or my cardiologist read this and explode at me! 

 However, it was still time for prayerful reflections. Abby and I took long walks on unfamiliar turf (the local high school football field and the various tree filled streets behind it) where we raced from (I guess?) smell to smell in spite of cold.  Of course being a year away from a heart procedure, I can do far more than I could a year ago, but still I am coming to face an undeniable truth – my body no longer allows me to pretend to be 25 (or even 65), and each step with a racing border collie reminds me that the finish line of my journey is now that much closer.

I walked by unfamiliar and large village church buildings that seemed to me to be filled with as few (maybe fewer) than those who join us in worship each weekend here.   Christianity as we know it is changing in terms of those who wish to commit themselves to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I think we will be a much smaller but hopefully more dedicated communion.

I have now seen at family / friendly gatherings that there are now topics (politics / politicians, religion v. spirituality, beliefs about culture and custom that are just so volatile that the topics for intellectual conversation have been reduced to watching the next funky reality based TV cooking show!  I am sensing that that the voices of discord and anger are getting so loud that one may not even utter a musing thought without fear of reprimand (or threat of reprisal). And I pray with hope that this coming year the volume gets turned down and we try to listen a bit more – it can’t get worse – but that’s what I was hoping for a year ago! How did that work out?

So I am ready to throw myself back into the “battles” of life. 2019 is here. Let’s not just wistfully hope but truly work at committing ourselves to improving our own lives and the lives of others in 2019.  Let us be instruments of peace. Let us make this coming year a year to remember for all the right reasons as we remain open to be vessels of God’s grace to a broken and dark world. Happy New Year!

Fr. Joe