Listening for signs and wonders

Dear People of Christ Church,
This morning, I've been organizing for our conversation tonight with Rob and Christine about preparing for death; we have a booklet, A Christian Prepares for Death, which will be available tonight and online, and there are some terrific new resources on the medical side from the Massachusetts Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment website-it's based around a newly available form for medical guidance for those who are terminally ill, but it also has some other great Q and A around the different choices we face at the end of our lives. Still, I hope to see you tonight at 7pm, in the clergy office (come through any of the doors, with the exception of the front door of the church itself). If you can't come, I'll upload the document to our online library, or I can send you a hard copy if you want.

I'm also still feeling "wow"ed by our Bible Study conversation on the Acts of the Apostles on Sunday; about nine of us gathered for a phenomenal conversation. One new member talked about receiving more generous help than he ever could have imagined, quite out of the blue, and how it took him years to accept that he just happened to have met an angel in the cornfields of Iowa, and to stop trying to pay back the one who helped him. It's hard to be vulnerable, to give voice to our need and to share our suffering-even harder to accept help where it comes and just receive it gracefully. Erin Jensen started out our conversation with her own questions about the way the biblical writers talk about "signs and wonders"-at Christ Church we've never baptized 3,000 in a day, and we don't cast out too many evil spirits or cure diseases, either. There are smaller miracles everywhere, but in the midst of working or parenting or just trying to keep up with contemporary life, it can be hard to be alert to them. When I'm paying attention, the absolute trust and love of my daughter reaching up her hand into mind is a mind-blowing miracle, but only if I can see her. The fact is, the biblical world was different; God meets us in different ways, but meets us, all the same.

I'm also looking forward to our reflection and action discussion after church on June 23, a week from this Sunday. We'll meet in small groups (each facilitated by a vestry member) to talk about what's going well and what new things we'd like to see happen at Christ Church. This was planned separately from the Hartford Seminary Survey (see below if you haven't done yours yet!)-so if it seems like we're doing an awful lot of reflecting about what we do and how, you're right. And for now, that's just what we need to do. Our world is changing so rapidly, and while the mission of God is the same, the way we implement that mission as God's people is not eternally the same. The "Waltham Churchman" is no longer delivered to your mailbox every week-instead, most of you are reading this on your computer, smart phone, or iPad screen. Rev. Ekwall and I are working toward to serve the same mission of education, reflection, and communication, but using the tools that are in front of us. We, individually and as a church, can always be transformed more and more into the likeness of the God who created us. But-looking for those "signs and wonders" as the apostles did-we have to pay attention in a new way.  Finally, please mark your calendar for the "Listening Group" at Redeemer Lexington to reflect on what our diocese hopes for in our next bishop, June 27 at 7pm.

Blessings,
Sara+

Preparing for Gentle Death

Dear People of Christ Church,

As you may have heard on Sunday, this week we'll gather at 7pm to hear from our own Rob Atwood and Christine August on end of life care. Rob is a hospice social worker and Christine is an ICU nurse-both come to us with a great wealth of knowledge of how we die.  It happens to everyone, and even God in Jesus Christ went there with us, but it's still a topic we fear.  The fact is, though, talking with the people we love about what we want near the end of our own lives, or what they want at the end of theirs, is one of the greatest gifts we can give.  But it's hard. We don't want to be ghoulish, or make anyone uncomfortable, or we can't countenance the idea of not having those we love with us every day.  We'd just rather talk about it...another day.  

In a Christian context, though, we're given a new freedom, a different context to consider the death of our bodies. We can stand neither "for" nor "against" death, but beside, as a known part of our human existence that will happen to us all.  Francis of Assisi put it this way in the hymn we know as "All Creatures of our God and King:"

And thou most kind and gentle Death,

Waiting to hush our latest breath,

O praise Him! Alleluia!

Thou leadest home the child of God,

And Christ our Lord the way hath trod.

O praise Him! O praise Him!
Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Kind and gentle death, leading us home to God.  Wow.

Life is a tremendous gift, and we are stewards-caretakers-of these bodies and souls that are given us. They are a blessing. Our life is a blessing. Modern medicine and technology are a blessing. There are many of you whose lives I treasure who have survived illnesses that just twenty years ago would have been a death sentence.   As much as we are grateful for all the many treatments that are now possible to prevent death, we also know that there's more to the story than just our bodies' eventual end. 

We have a responsibility to preserve life, but we can also be realistic about what treatments are likely to be effective and which are not.  If nothing can separate us from God and the love of those we love, then we don't have to approach death as the enemy.  Choices about care can be made from the standpoint of compassion for the whole person, not just the scientific alleviation of a particular symptom or illness. If someone near death is unable to swallow or loses interest in food, for example, is it compassionate to give a feeding tube? It's a hard question.  It may prolong the life of their body, but that may come at another cost.

In our Church's teaching about the end of life, we differentiate between "passive" and "active" ways in which death may be hastened. The passive withholding of treatment is an ethical choice; if there is no prognosis for recovery, the question becomes whether the patient's dying process is being prolonged, as opposed to whether their actual life is being extended.  At the same time, when the physician assisted suicide referendum came around at election time, I voted "no;" to take an action specifically with the desired outcome being death is not, in my view, an ethical choice. As Episcopalians, also, we respect each others' freedom of conscience. These issues are complicated, and we don't condemn those who believe otherwise.  There are times when the lines are blurry and that's why it's so important that we talk to those we love about the choices they want us to make.  Fill out the legal paperwork for who will be your health care proxy if you can't make decisions for yourself.   Put down, in writing if necessary, the kind of treatment you do and do not want and tell that person.

As part of our conversation next week, I'll also make available a booklet we put together several years ago called "A Christian Prepares for Death," which leads you through many of the choices to be made in preparing for the kind of burial you want. We might think, "I won't exactly be present, so I'll let the people who survive me make the choices." But let me tell you from the experience of going through this with a lot of people-the most comforting thing for the surviving person is to know what you would have wanted!  This goes for whether you want to be cremated or have "Go Tell it on the Mountain" sung as much as for whether you would want to be removed from a ventilator.  Small decisions loom awfully large in a time of grief.  Communication about death is not morbid--it's one of the most loving things you can do. 

I'll leave you with this piece of Scripture:

For I am convinced 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. (Romans 8:38-39)

Thanks be to God!

Blessings,
Sara+

Trinity Word Cloud

From May 23: Trinity Sunday

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week I’m writing from “Gathering 2013,” a meeting of youngish clergy from across the whole Episcopal Church. We’re a diverse group of “Gen X” and “Millennial” folks, ranging in age from our mid twenties to early fifties—I’m about in the middle third. We serve in cities and the country, in cathedrals and small parishes, and all the range in between. We’re talking about our churches and our lives, our hopes and fears, and discovering all the ways our stories intersect—and don’t.  We long to take risks, to be more comfortable with speaking the truth of the Gospel rather than succumbing to our fear or desire to be liked. We long to DO a little less and BE a little more, which is why, in place of staying up late to finish my letter to you, I offer instead this blessing for Trinity Sunday (this Sunday) from Jan Richardson.  I hope you can take a moment to pray, to be, and to reflect on where the mystery of God is with you today, as always, and how you are ready to receive it.

Poured Into Our Hearts: A Blessing for Trinity Sunday from Jan Richardson - Read her whole piece here

 

Like a cup
like a chalice
like a basin
like a bowl

when the Spirit comes
let it find our heart
like this

shaped like something
that knows how to receive
what is given

that knows how to hold
what comes to fill

that knows how to gather itself
around what arrives as
unbidden
unsought
unmeasured
love.

Peace,
Sara+

 

PS:

Curious about Brene Brown, whose work on vulnerability I mentioned in the sermon last week? Watch her 20 minute “TED” talk here.

 

 

From May 16: The Pentecost Experience

Dear People of Christ Church,


As I write, I’m sitting at Café on the Common: my second office. It’s lively, bright, and sunny, with the whole spectrum of our city sitting and drinking their coffee. Fat/thin, young/old, black/white, business-serious and summer-casual: everybody’s here. I wonder if this is what it felt like on that day of Pentecost, 2000 years ago—the disciples just hanging around, doing what they had to do, and then, boom! Tongues of fire and a riot of languages, everyone met by the Holy Spirit exactly where they were, finding them each in their own languages, but also uniting them in a common experience. This Sunday, we’ll have our own linguistic Pentecost moment, with Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Hebrew, and even Welsh portions of readings (all of it will also be printed, as usual, in English so you can follow along).

The Pentecost experience of unity in diversity was something we experienced last Sunday at the Mother’s Day walk for peace, too. Thousands of people had gathered in Dorchester from all around—we had our Christ Church sign, just as there were banners from Episcopal Churches in Walpole and Sudbury, Unitarians from Lexington and Chelmsford, and individuals from all over with T shirts or buttons memorializing those they had lost. The day was pervaded by a deep sense of mourning, as well as a deep sense of possibility. Terrible things have happened. But newness and grace are possible.

First, we can start asking some different questions; the usual narrative we tell around tragic violence puts the focus on the victim. We talk about how someone was “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” with the subtext that it could perhaps have happened to anyone. This is a natural response; it is, strictly speaking, true: Jorge Fuentes was walking down his own street, and had someone else been walking down that street at the same time his killer pulled out a gun, that person could have been shot instead. There was nothing about Jorge that would have made someone single him out. Yes, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it didn’t “just” happen. It’s more complicated than that.

While we think we are preserving the innocence of the dead, we’re still putting all the focus on the victim, not the perpetrator. Tina Chery, the founder of the Louis Brown Peace Institute, said on Sunday that we should instead ask: “Where did they get the gun?” These crimes are perpetrated by individuals who are, themselves, part of a wider context. There is a whole web of poverty and violence and poor education that brings them to that point. And a whole other system of criminality and commerce that brings the gun that they pick up.

The police have not arrested the person who killed Jorge, but what about the other 6,000 youth nationwide who have been killed by gun violence since he was in September? That’s 12,000 parents whose children have died. What about those guns? What about those communities where 1% of the population terrorize the rest? What if there were the same level of outcry whenever any person, anywhere, were killed? What if, as a culture, we really and truly valued the life of every person? What would have to change? How would each of us have to change?

I don’t have all the answers—not even close. There was something so holy, though, about all of us pouring through the streets of Dorchester, just for a morning, to stand with Tina, and Jorge’s mom, and Scarlett, whose six year old son was killed in Newtown, CT who also walked that day. As Rev. Tim Crellin, priest at St Stephen’s, Boston, said, “These are the first of many steps.”

Last night, at our Alewife Deanery meeting, we talked about how to move forward in this work for peace in our cities. All of our contexts are different; Waltham and Burlington won’t need the same thing, and neither will Bedford and Cambridge. Below, you’ll see an announcement about a community meeting that’s happening in Newton that our own Heather Leonardo heatherleonardo@gmail.com plans to attend. So please be in touch with her if you want to be part of that. Finally, mark your calendars for September 28, when the annual diocesan resource day will host workshops on nonviolence organizing. And feel free to give money--we’ve so far raised $200 for the Louis D Brown institute, and will collect donations for one more Sunday; write B Peace on your check.

And pray! This Sunday the disciples were gathered in one place praying, when they were surprised by the Spirit. It can happen to us, too.

Peace,
Sara+

From May 9: Dialogue on Faith

Dear People of Christ Church,


Last Friday, I had the wonderful opportunity of joining friends from the Massachusetts Council of Churches at Friday Prayers at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center. The director of MCC, Laura Everett, has long been a friend, and she invited colleagues to join in an ecumenical witness of support for the Muslim community in the aftermath of the Boston bombings and recent Islamophobia. Hands down, it was one of the best sermons I've heard; at least with preaching, I tend to regard brevity in highest regard, but Imam Suhaib spoke for 45 minutes and I was more focused on taking notes than clock watching. From the moment we walked in the door, too, the welcome was incredibly warm, and we were invited to stay after for lunch. When there was an extra chicken curry, Loay, their director of development, sent that home with me for dinner, too!

The theme of the sermon was American Islam-which both is and isn't "a thing." How we relate to our culture is something we all grapple with-as we were mulling over in our recent Christ Church Quarterly, as Christians we've sort of forgotten how important it is to stand apart from culture. As Muslims, Imam Suhaib said, maybe they've emphasized that separation too much. As for American Islam? On the one hand, "Imam Will" shes/(who actually grew up Baptist in Oklahoma City and was a DJ before converting to Islam) said that it's wrong to talk about American Islam. God made everyone-every society. The universality of Islam is to care for everyone. At the same time, he said, we recognize that there are many cultures, and many different ways to honor God and share faith. American Muslims live differently from those who live in Bangladesh, and will express their faith differently as well. The most important thingis to challenge ourselves to be relevant to the world as it is now; don't talk about medieval conflicts, talk about contemporary narcissism. Don't define yourself by a disagreement that happened 1000 years ago, apply the reasoning that helped people of faith live through it to contemporary problems. Fundamentalism, Imam Suhaib said, is a modern problem-it comes from a modern desire to see everything in an absolutist way. The premodern view was much more flexible. This is true for Christians, too-the early church was much more committed to Scripture in terms of metaphor and allegory than those who claim the label "orthodox" do today.

The contemporary world can be a hard place to be a person of faith; so much about the world now is about instantaneous answers and incontrovertible truth. Faith, though, takes time; it takes time to nurture a relationship with God. It takes time to be in that relationship with God. It takes energy-it takes all of what you have and all of who you are. We are converted by experience, Suhaib said, not by cognition. That's pretty counter cultural, and something we all need to spend some time with. What is converting you right now? Where are you being transformed in your life, right now? Jesus said, "Come and see," not "Decide right now or else."

I left the mosque feeling not just like I'd listened in on some really good thinking, but also profoundly grateful for the diversity of so many experiences of holiness. Of course, there are some serious bedrock differences between Christianity and Islam, but (and I know it sounds trite), there really is so much that unites us in terms of how we live in the world. Being in dialogue makes us better at being who we are. And being supportive of brothers and sisters in faith-no matter what faith-makes us better, period.

Blesings,

Sara+

From May 2: Writing as a Sacramental Gift

Dear People of Christ Church,

This Sunday, we welcome Bishop Gayle Harris, so we'll have just one service at 10am to greet her. After the service, she'll stay for a short congregational meeting, so please bring your questions. Finally, before departing for her next visit (at Good Shepherd, Watertown), she'll meet with the vestry. Bishop Gayle has visited several times over the near-eight years I've been at Christ Church, notably at the blessing of our front altar, installed in 2006 in memory of Robert Hughes, Sr.

Later this Sunday afternoon (at 3), I hope you'll join me at Bethany House of Prayer in Arlington for a poetry reading. Alex at Back Pages Books here in Waltham helped me publish the work I did on sabbatical (with our own Kristin Harvey's cover design), and I'm part of Bethany's "Spring Celebration of Poetry and Art." I will read with another poet, Sandy Stott, who works with the Thoreau Farm and chairs the English Department at Concord Academy. Art by Rev. Judith Clark will also be on view.

I'm excited, and nervous-I picked up my books from the printer this morning (Ashes/What Remains will be for sale for $10.00, first at the opening and later at Back Pages and online). Seeing everything out in black and white makes it seem so real. I know I wrote the poems-I stared down blank pages and an empty computer screen all fall. But something about poetry more than prose, seems so vulnerable-it's all me on the page, my joy and my anxiety, my sense of blessing and my sense of lack. I can't take it back. "Ordinary" writing feels much safer; one wrong word out of 500 is less risky than one wrong choice out of 40. And, of course, poetry isn't for everyone. It's ok not to "get it"-just slow down long enough to see if you can get something. The title, "Ashes/What remains" is an allusion to the idea that the life of faith involves a certain stripping away, trying to get at what's most important. Sabbatical time is Sabbath time: abstaining from traditional work, you can't hide from yourself anymore with all of those crucial tasks. Staring down into not-doing can feel awfully close to staring down into not-being, which is terrifying, and certainly the reason so many of us are so busy all the time.

What came up for me at the center are my deeper vocations-of being a priest and a parent. I recently got my kids' names tattooed in a half-sleeve of my upper right arm (along with some birds and flowers, as children are wont to do it took up more space than I'd planned), which I jokingly called my "mommy tattoo"-some of these are definitely mommy poems. And they are all priest poems. Writing as a sacramental gift; when we celebrate the Eucharist, we take very ordinary things and ask God to come into them, to make Christ alive and to feed us with his body. In my poems, I feel something similar; I'm taking very ordinary things-a sibling squabble, a bird staring at a pond-and asking them to translate God's presence in the world. I see the heron; she lets me recognize my instability, inviting me to be quiet and still. I see my kids complaining at each other; they show me all the traps of self-absorption and scapegoating we never seem to grow out of. A fair number of "first world problems" are catalogued in there, too. Packing school lunches is a drag, but it beats no lunch at all.

So come! And buy the book...though a few of the poems are already on my blog, and you can see them there for free.

Blessings,

Sara+