Pardon me boys....

We have spent today wandering from place to place in Chattanooga, finishing up at St. Paul's for the first of the three regional walkabout sessions.  We began the day with a visit to Christ Church, a beautiful church with a really good organ.  The treat was that the organist was there and playing when we arrived.  We convinced her to play Praise to the Lord and we all sang lustily.  It is a good acoustical space.  We heard from several members about the Christian Ed program and the beginnings of their discernment process for the next priest, their former rector having just retired.

Then it was back in the big white vans and off to St. Martin's of Tours.  This church has done some adding on in the last several years, expanding the nave and building space to house a pre-school.  The kids were in class so it was really fun to watch them.  The people were most welcoming and happy to tell us about their congregation.  It sounds like a good group of people.  In the entry, there is a board that listed all the newcomers, those who have recently gotten married and all of those serving in the military.  I wondered where we would put something like that at St. Christopher's.

Back again to the vans and across the Chickamauga Dam to St. Peter's.  We had a tour of the school (nursery to 5th grade), the nave and then were served a really good lunch.  I plan to get the recipe for the portabelo mushroom pasta!  One of the interesting things about St. Peter's is that the sanctuary is on the second floor.  It is a bright space full of natural light.  Over the door are two paintings done by a Russian artist of two scenes from St. Peter's life.  Fascinating!

After a few hours rest - yes, I did take a nap - we went down the street to St. Paul's where the staff, led by Donald Fishburne, did a marvelous job of taking care of us all, keeping us on time and providing us with a lovely evening service.  We began the service with a Taize chant as everyone entered and then joined in.  It really set the tone and opened us up to being quiet and listening for the Spirit.  The nominees all did brief - 3 minutes or less - presentations that helped us know what we might want to ask in the break out sessions.

And now we have eaten dinner, lingered over coffee and dessert for more good conversation, and begun packing for tomorrow's trip to Knoxville.  So it is time to turn out the lights and say our prayers.  Thank you all for yours!

Now the day is over

It is 9:30 of this first day together on the Walkabout and life is good.  All flights to Chattanooga arrived early, on time or at least not very late. The good people of Thankful Memorial Church welcomed us for a tour of their really lovely church and wine and cheese in the parish hall.  And then we were off to Hennen's for a very good dinner.
That's a lot of superlative language but it is how I'm feeling as we begin this five day journey.  There was lively conversation at all three tables at dinner, in the vans going and coming and in the lobby as people met, some for the first time and began to make those connections that remind us the Episcopal world is a small one.
I promised Vikki Myers that I would take pictures on this trip.  Well, I remembered I had my camera with me after every left Thankful and once again as I picked up my purse after dinner.  I'll have to do better tomorrow.
And now I think we are all ready to get some sleep.  Even for those of us who are local, it has been a long day.  So I will say good night.

And we're walking, we're walking

Walking in the light of God.

Walking on eggshells.

Walking the walk, talking the talk.

Walking on water.

Jesus walked.   Oops!  That's Jesus wept.

Well, in any case, Sunday evening begins the official Walk About Week in the Diocese of East Tennessee.  We start in Chattanooga and end in Chattanooga.  While we are there, we will visit six churches.  Wending our way to Knoxville on Tuesday, we will visit three more and a school.  Making the great hike to Upper East on Wednesday, three more congregations will greet our bishop nominees and their spouses.  And, just in case we haven't seen enough at that point, we will stop at the Cathedral, the Diocesan House and Grace Point on Thursday.  Are you tired yet?

This really is an exciting time for our Diocese.  Five people are walking with us through the process of discerning our next bishop.  That means five families, five congregations and even five other dioceses have allowed us to disrupt their routine so that we might hear the Holy Spirit.  How gracious they all are! 

So many people have made all of this possible.  There's the Standing Committee, the Search Committee and the Transition Committee for starters.  But there are lots of people at all those churches who will greet the Walk About group, feed us and host the three "meet the nominees" events.  There are many on the diocesan staff who have helped us on this journey starting with Bishop vonRosenberg and his wife, Annie, who isn't even on staff but is pitching in.  I think it is clear to all of us that the Spirit is already moving, calling us to a new place and a new day which will be built on all that has come before.

So in our walking, we need to remember one more "walking" phrase:  And he walks with me, and he talks with me.  All of us who will be meeting nominees, caring for them and their spouses, showing off our churches and Diocese to them are walking with God.

It's going to be a great week!

Blue Christmas

This is the first year we will have a Blue Christmas service at my parish.  It seems appropriate for us as well as for the larger community.  We lost a beloved member this year and had a young man commit suicide.  A few of us have children in prison, there have been several serious hospital stays and probably a lot of other things have happened that I am not aware of.  So we are inviting the community to join us in prayer and meditation.

The gospel reading for this service is the birth narrative from Luke.  Everyone knows this story.  Last year, when we read it Christmas Eve, I cast Joseph and Mary as poor people from back in the mountains who were traveling to Washington DC and had to stop here so Mary could have her baby.  It wasn't a sermon that was bursting with joy.  I think we lose sight of the fact that the birth of Jesus wasn't a time of joy.  They were away from home, required to go to Bethlehem by an oppressive government.  There was no doctor to tell Mary that she was too pregnant to travel and it wouldn't have made a difference anyway.  They had to go; there was no choice in the matter.  Add that to the general scariness of giving birth - scarier then than now even! - and it wasn't a clap-happy night. 

We have surrounded this holiday with such overflowing joy that we often lose sight of what the day/night actually was.  We also forget that this is more than just another baby.  Jesus is the one who comes to bring God into our lives in a radically new way.  And he doesn't come to the wealthy or well-connected but rather says over and over again that he comes for those who are weary and heavy laden, the very people who will gather for Blue Christmas. 

And we will bring this baby gifts, although they might not look like gifts.  You see, we bring Jesus our problems, our sorrows, our pain and our losses.  We are most real when we admit that there is more to us and to our celebration than joy in gathering together and in giving and receiving gifts.  There is remembering those who are no longer with us or who, for whatever reason, cannot be with us around tree and table.  There is sadness mixed with our joy and we do ourselves a disservice if we do not recognize that.

Here's one of my favorite Christmas stories.  My youngest sister was convinced there was no Santa Claus.  She spent her 8th Christmas noticing little things - who had written the tags, what store the box came from (in the days before generic boxes).  And then she announced that there wasn't any Santa Claus. 

I think we spent the entire next year trying to convince her otherwise but she was adamant.  Mother and Nana had wrapped the presents and put the tags on.  She knew where they had come from and it just wasn't the North Pole.  To prove that she was right, she put out a snack for Santa the next Christmas.  And she wrote a note asking that Santa leave her a note in reply.  She also warned us that she would recognize anyone's handwriting even if we wrote wrong-handed.  I remember wondering how in the world we were going to pull this off.  There just didn't seem to be any way to pass her test.

Christmas Eve, we all went to the early service.  Then, Mom put the little kids to bed, Daddy went off to direct another church choir and my older sister and I went to sing in the choir for the late service.  I admit I was thinking more about what to do for the Santa note than I was interested in the sermon.  As we processed out of church, I noticed a good friend of the family in the back row.  Obie hadn't ever come to church; in fact, I'm pretty sure I knew that he had no use for church.  So I was delighted to see him there.  We asked him to come back to the house with us, knowing that Mother and Daddy would love to see him.  Yes, you guessed right; Obie wrote the note from Santa.

My little sister was flummoxed!  She had no idea where that note came from but it was enough to help her believe for one more year even though the boxes came from the same stores and Mother wrote the tags.

The reason this story is one of my favorites is that Obie died young of an awful disease.  The doctors told him he could go to bed and perhaps have another year or he could go back to teaching and directing plays and he would die much sooner.  He chose to do the work he loved and use the talents he had been given as long as he was able.

I think of Obie every Christmas Eve when we sing Hark the Herald Angels Sing, the hymn we processed out of church to that long ago night.  And I shed a few tears for a man who was so dear.

RevGals Pie Debate

1) Are pies an important part of a holiday meal?
       If I had to choose which was more important, pie would win out over turkey even.  I made pumpkin, pecan chess and bourbon chocolate pecan.  Long ago, though, I went from apple pie to apple crisp.

2) Men prefer pie; women prefer cake. Discuss.
       I prefer pie over cake any day.  In my immediate family, we used to do birthday pies rather than birthday cakes. 

3) Cherries--do they belong in a pie?
       Yes, but not sweet ones.  Years ago, we could get sour cherries during the season but since I moved back south, I can't find them.  Anyway, I would can lots of cherries and we would have cherry pie all year.  Yum!

4) Meringue--if you have to choose, is it best on lemon or chocolate?
       Lemon definitely.  I don't really like chocolate pie, probably because it is rarely dark chocolate and there's no point in eating any other kind of chocolate.  But meringue is the very best on key lime!

5) In a chicken pie, what are the most compatible vegetables? Anything you don't like to find in a chicken pie?
       Carrots and peas.  When I was a kid, this was about the only way I ate peas.  You can add potatoes if you have to but keep everything else out.  No beans, turnips, parsnips or anything else.

There is only one cake I would ever allow at a Thanksgiving dinner.  That's an apple stack cake.  Our grocery store was selling them last week.  I finally had to tell a manager that what they had was *not* an apple stack cake.  They had taken yellow cake layers, sliced them in half and put apple butter between the layers.  Absolute heresy!  I have experimented with using gingerbread cookie layers rather than sugar cookie ones.  It is good but still not as good as your basic short cookies and applesauce with or without cinnamon.  My aunt uses half applesauce and half apple butter - both home made - but I prefer just applesauce.

Today is the day we eat desserts for breakfast!  I confess pecan pie does not make a good breakfast but I often feel like the only reason I make pumpkin pie and apple crisp is so we can have them first thing in the morning.  A great way to start the day, especially when the weather is lousy like today.

Thanks!

Here’s my Thanksgiving prayer.  If anything in it leads you into your own prayer, you have my permission to stop listening to the sermon and go where prayer takes you.


Good and gracious God, I thank you that I am not a wandering Aramean. At the same time, I thank you that my ancestors were. I cannot begin to imagine the hardship they faced, the days of wondering if it was worth it or whether it would just be better to lie down and die. I thank you that they remained faithful followers of yours, trusting that the Lord their God was there always.
I thank you, too, that I did not have to find my way through the wilderness of this country when it was settled. I wonder sometimes what made people move off the coastlands and start walking towards the mountains. Thank you for those who had the zeal for exploration. I know that I can live here between the Cumberland Plateau and the Smokies because people living many years before me made it possible.

And thank you for the circuit riders and family Bibles, the tent meetings and riverside baptisms. As much as I love my mostly proper Episcopal Church, I am truly thankful for all of the men and women that made sure wherever they went on this huge continent, you went with them.

Thank you, God, that I got to make the decision to follow your loving Son after the crucifixion/resurrection. I confess that I wonder sometimes if I would have done what the crowd did and allowed myself to be swayed from Hosanna to Crucify. I am most thankful to have been spared that particular temptation.

You see, God, I don’t think I have what it takes to be a wanderer or to settle land that doesn’t look like it would support any crop other than more trees and rocks. I’m not sure I would remember to be faithful in prayer and reading of Scripture and tradition if I didn’t have a church community to worship with me. And I see so many people who, when confronted with adversity, turn away from you. It isn’t that I have lived a charmed life with no difficult decisions or times when I have felt alone. There have been plenty of those and I suspect there are more of those times in store before I leave this mortal coil. But all of those who have walked with you before I ever came to be and those who taught me to walk with you and with them have made it possible for me to give you thanks even when I cannot see the light anywhere.  And thanks for those who taught me to walk this Way.

So, on the eve of the day which we set aside to be thankful, I want to give you thanks especially for your peace. It really is beyond all understanding and I like that about it. I am a better person knowing that your peace guards my heart and my mind in Christ. May I keep on doing the things you have given me to do and may others come to walk with you because you walk with me.

Thank you.

By faith

When Abraham left Ur, he did not go alone. His wife, his nephew, his household of servants, all went with him to the unknown land. And, of course, God was with Abraham, too, this Lord Almighty of whom Abraham had never heard before God spoke to him.


So why did Abraham follow? How did he know that he was hearing the voice of God and not that of his own mind, wondering if there might not be a better land far away from that of his ancestors? The author of Hebrews says Abraham acted by faith. So did Abel, Enoch and Noah whose stories we skipped in this morning's reading. If we had continued reading, we would have heard that Rahab, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses also acted by faith.

But what is faith and how do we know that we are putting our faith in God? The author of Hebrews has much to say about that. To better understand him, though, we need to know more about this so-called letter. Sadly, if we are searching for who/what/where details, we will be disappointed. We do not know who the author was or when and to whom he wrote. We do not know where he was or where the congregation was, either. What we do know is that this letter is more likely a sermon, written to buoy up a flagging congregation and we think it was written before the end of the first century because that was a time when it was really hard to be a Christian.

Tom Long, author of a commentary on Hebrews, says this: "The Preacher is addressing a real and urgent pastoral problem, one that seems astonishingly contemporary. His congregation is exhausted. They are tired - tired of serving the world, tired of worship, tired of Christian education, tired of being peculiar and being whispered about in society, tired of the spiritual struggle, tired of trying to keep their prayer life going, tired even of Jesus. Their hands droop and their knees are weak, attendance is down at church and they are losing confidence."

Does any of that sound like a time or two in our own lives? Havent we all experienced times when we just feel that being a Christian - constantly being ready for the return of the Christ even though a large part of us just doesn't believe we will ever see it and we sometimes doubt that it will ever happen at all? - is exhausting and maybe even futile? I've heard a lot of people say something like, "Well, if God really does care, why doesn't God come down here right now and *do* something about this?" It is not very hard at all to put ourselves in the shoes of the Hebrews even though some 2,000 years separates us.

It is to this situation of exhaustion and flagging faith that the sermon is speaking. When we are ready to give up, says the Preacher, remember Abraham. Remember all the faithful people who have gone before us, rarely seeing the fruit of their labor but having faith that the fruit will come.

We too get tired, even tired of being peculiar. This country may be called a Christian nation but it really isn't. What would happen, for instance, if we told our child's soccer coach that he or she won't be playing on Sundays? What would happen if we refused to work on Sundays? What would happen if we asked our company for time off to go on a spiritual retreat or if we asked to leave early because we want to go to church? As far as I know, I am the only one here who ought to work on Sundays and who actually does get to take time for spiritual reenergizing.

But Jesus is very clear that we are supposed to be ready at all times for the bridgroom to come. How, Lord, are we supposed to do that 24/7, we want to ask? The answer, I believe, goes back to faith. We are grounded by our faith. We need to see everything we do, no matter how trivial or secular it seems, as being done in faith. For instance, children with the special gifts necessary to play soccer give thanks for that ability, pray that the Lord will continue to be with them as use their gifts and that through the sport of soccer they may learn how those same skills might be put to use for the kingdom of God. That sounds very strange, doesn't it? But I believe that we are to use our gifts and that by doing so, we will be drawn closer to the Lord. How? Well, we are to have faith that God will reveal that to us in God's time.

Faith, says the Preacher of Hebrews, "is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." Because we have faith in the promises God has given us through the Christ, we act out of faith even though the world doesn't often look as though God care one whit about it or us. It is through faith that we live in the promises of peace, jsutice, mercy and salvation.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.