As we celebrate Christmas (and remember that the season lasts for twelve whole days!), and prepare for the changing of the year, it is natural to reflect back on 2020. And while the year’s awful events were unprecedented for the vast majority of us, there were also unprecedented opportunities to connect, to serve others, and to give thanks....
During the summer of 2019, we invited the parish to read Grateful: The Subversive Practice of Giving Thanks. The author, Diana Butler Bass, wrote about the struggle she had to embrace gratitude in her life, yet also how crucial it was for her to practice being grateful. She wrote a prayer that stuck with me, and it seems like an especially appropriate prayer for Thanksgiving weekend of 2020, when many of us may be having a hard time giving thanks. I hope this slightly amended version will help!....
As we get nearer to the official date of the election on Tuesday, November 3, I imagine that our individual and collective anxiety level is going to skyrocket! We don’t know what that enormously consequential outcome will be, and we don’t even know when we learn the election results....
I spent a few days of my vacation on a virtual retreat through Holy Cross Monastery. The theme was “Praying with the Spanish Mystics” and we spent a day each with Ignatius of Loyola, Teresa of Avila, and John of the Cross. (My niece, upon hearing the names of the mystics, wondered if someday she could be known as “Audrey of Manhattan”?!)....
These are uncertain times. There is so much that we don’t know about the virus that has caused the pandemic. We don’t know the full health impact on individuals, communities, and our health system, and we don’t know the full financial and economic impact either. We have hopes that the recent and continuing protests will finally mean that some action will be taken to address police brutality and to enact antiracist policies and structures in our country -- but we don’t know yet what that may look like. And the election season is beginning to heat up. We can work to get our favorite candidates elected, but we have no idea yet what changes to our political landscape November will bring. With every day that passes, it seems more clear that we don’t know much about what lies ahead! For those of us who like to be in control, or at least like to think that we are in control (!), these are very trying, frustrating, and even scary times. But perhaps there is a spiritual lesson we can learn now, one that is harder to learn when things are going well for us. And that is that even when things are good, we are not really in control of much in our lives! Especially in our complicated world, we are dependent on each other and especially on God....
At the risk of treading on our Director of Music Tim Pyper’s territory, I thought I’d extend the feeling of Trinity Sunday (which we celebrated this past Sunday), by inviting us all to spend a little time with the wonderful hymn “St. Patrick’s Breastplate” (or “I Bind Unto Myself Today”). It is based on a poem said to have been written by St. Patrick, and it describes sources of strength we can prayerfully draw on for support, including two sources I preached about on Sunday: the power of the Trinity as the three-in-one God united in love and the presence of Christ who is always with us.
I’ve long been fascinated by a particular dynamic in many people’s prayer lives. They often don’t have time to pray, they tell me -- but when I ask if they are able to pray more when they do have more time and flexibility (such as weekends, vacations, snow days, etc.), they sheepishly admit that they don’t pray then either!...
Alleluia! Christ is risen! This year we came through an especially challenging Holy Week to the grateful celebration of Easter on Sunday, and as we are now settling into Eastertide -- the period between Easter Day and Pentecost - we may be feeling even more acutely a cacophonous mix of emotions. Holy Week occurred as the New York region was experiencing perhaps the worst week of the Covid-19 crisis, and we felt the sorrow of death especially in our church. And still, Easter Day arrived! We gathered together and celebrated the Feast of the Resurrection in our Zoom house church! And we remembered that even in the darkest times, God is with us, and helps us to find the places of promise, hope, joy, and new life.....
Last week, just before flying to New Zealand for my vacation, I wrote a meditation for this week about labyrinths. At the time, I didn’t realize how rapidly our life in the time of COVID-19 would change (and I certainly didn’t realize that my NZ trip would be cut in half, forcing my return to New York early this week!). But the concept of the labyrinth seems even more apt today than it did a week or two ago.....
We’ve enjoyed a fairly long season of Epiphany this year, but now the season of Lent is upon us, beginning with Ash Wednesday on February 26. As you will hear if you join us for the 8 am or 7 pm service that day, Ash Wednesday invites us to the observance of a holy Lent, “by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 265) So now might be the perfect time to think about how you will observe a holy Lent!...
