Beauty in brokenness

In graduate school I had a good friend who was known for her unconventional sermons. I always looked forward to sitting with her in the lunchroom to hear about the shocking, but always moving, sermons she delivered in her little Methodist Church. My favorite was one in which she propped up a sizable piece of glass, then hurled a huge rock through it. She then retrieved several of the larger pieces and held them up to a stained glass window. The point she made was that God makes beauty out of brokenness. God does not put our pristine sheet of glass back together, as if nothing happened. He takes our imperfection, our pain and grief, and makes something beautiful out of it, something through which God’s love can shine through onto everyone present.

One of our new choir tenors, Eli Tatum, recently shared a poem he wrote on this exact subject. Like many of us, Eli has experienced profound grief and loss. But through the power of God’s presence in his life he has begun to experience wholeness again. It inspired him to write a poem. Here is an excerpt:

When I’m alone you walk beside me

When I’m crying you hold me

When I’m screaming from my past

You remind me that you’re there

The strength you give me

The hope that you bring me

Reminds me that I’m here

I’m stronger now

Than I ever was before

As the years have passed

And I’ve gotten older

I look back

At all the things that I’ve done

Some are good,

Others bad

And for the past that made me sad

You’ve helped me overcome

All of my demons

My trials and tribulations

You stood by me through it all.

You brought me back to life

I’m whole now forever.

I’m always so moved when someone is able to be vulnerable enough to share their faith story. Even more so when they express their experience by creating a beautiful work of art, and when that artist is a member of our own faith community. It disarms me in a way that allows me to see God, too, and to trust that God will continue to make beauty out of brokenness in my own life, here, right now, just the way I am. I hope it does the same for you.

Ginny Chilton
Minister of Music

Sabbaticals!

Dear friends,

Our sabbaticals are just around the corner!  I hope you are as excited as I am!  I am so grateful for the folks who have worked and are working so hard on St. Andrew’s sabbatical:  the original visioning team of Ann Lee, Dawn Edquist, and David Lilley; and the current organizing and oversight team:  Dawn Edquist, David Lilley, and Marc Vance. 
 
You may well be wondering about the purpose of our sabbaticals.  Here’s how I explained it in St. Andrew’s application for the Lilly grant that we received:  The intended benefits for me include better spiritual, physical, and emotional health, along with the development of new habits and skills to help me retain that health; strengthened relationships, especially with God and with my husband; fresh perspectives about God, myself, pilgrimage, faith, racism, and the world around me; restorative rest; the lived reminder that I am more than my role; and the replenishment of soul and spirit for the next phase of my journey with the people of St. Andrew’s, wherever that path leads. The intended benefits for the congregation include a deepened understanding of life as a holy pilgrimage in which change is inevitable and God is always at work; a consequent lessening of anxiety; strengthened relationships with one another; renewed commitment to social justice; and a refreshed priest!
 
You and I will be on similar pilgrimages in the coming months, deepening our relationship with God through learning, prayer, retreat, and walking—you on labyrinths, me on the Camino in Spain.  What a blessing for all of us to have this opportunity! 
 
Please keep me in your prayers in the coming months, and know that you will be in mine.  I look forward to reconnecting in December and hearing all about your sabbatical experience.  Meanwhile, every blessing.
 
 –Anne

(Photo: Anne wearing the shirt with congregation autographs that she will wear while away on sabbatical.)

Our Sabbatical Prayer

Holy God, we are so grateful for the gift of sabbatical and for these three months of spiritual pilgrimage.  Just as you walked alongside your disciples in the Holy Land, please walk with us and with Anne.  Open our eyes and ears and hearts that we may encounter you anew along the Way.  May our sabbatical and Anne’s be a season of refreshment and renewal, new understandings and deepened faith.  Amen.

Anne's sabbatical plans with brief explanations

Just prior to sabbatical, John and I will spend a week decompressing at a resort in Williamsburg.

On Sept 4, we fly to Spain and will spend 18 days touring, visiting Granada, Seville, Cordoba, Madrid, Valencia, and Barcelona.  (Because I didn’t marry until I was 47, I often traveled on my own and sometimes found it very lonely. Exploring the world with John is a source of great delight for me, a chance to savor the blessing of having a life partner.  We will celebrate our 10th anniversary on Sept 7.) On Sept 23, John will return to the US.

From Sept 24 to Nov 4, I will walk the 500-mile Camino Frances, from St. Jean-Pied-de-Port in France to Santiago, Spain.  (This is the heart of my sabbatical—walking as a pilgrim on this ancient route with God as my companion. I know from traveling in the Holy Land what it feels like to encounter God viscerally on a holy path so many others have also trod. I anticipate the same on the Camino. We need sustained time together, God and I, for me to work on repairing my side of our relationship, which (embarrassingly often) gets short shrift in my busy working days. Walking the Camino will give me time for confession and repentance; time for seeking, finding, and rejoicing in God’s presence everywhere; time for rebuilding my trust in God’s love for me; and time for holy listening.)

From Nov 8 to 16, John and I will drive south, visiting sites on the US Civil Rights trail:  the International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, NC; the Birmingham, AL Civil Rights Institute; The Legacy Museum, Rosa Parks Museum, Freedom Rides Museum, and National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, AL (where we will also worship at the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church); and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute and Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.  (Despite years of anti-racism training and leadership, I am acutely aware that I still have much inner work to do to combat racism within myself and within our society.  This part of my sabbatical will equip and inspire me for that challenging task.) 

From Nov 17 to 21 I’ll be on retreat at a retreat center near San Antonio, TX.

From Nov 22 to 27, John and I will be with dear friends in San Antonio.  We fly home Nov 28, and the sabbatical ends on Nov 30.  

St. Andrew's Sabbatical Prayer

Holy God, we are so grateful for the gift of sabbatical and for these three months of spiritual pilgrimage.  Just as you walked alongside your disciples in the Holy Land, please walk with us and with Anne.  Open our eyes and ears and hearts that we may encounter you anew along the Way.  May our sabbatical and Anne’s be a season of refreshment and renewal, new understandings and deepened faith.  Amen.

If it's not...!

There is a saying that pops up on Facebook every now and then, attributed to the Dalai Lama or with no attribution at all.  Regardless, it rings true: The issue we have to deal with today is that people were made to be loved and things were made to be used, but now things are loved and people are being used.  It is reminiscent of what Presiding Bishop Michael Curry has often said: If it’s not about love, it’s not about God!

With summer break almost over and all aspects of the church and society getting back into the routine of the academic year, the increased busyness can lead us to forget what all the activity is supposed to be about in the first place.  Too often the gospel is used for political or personal gain rather than for its inherent purpose: the proclamation of the good news of God in Christ Jesus; the love of God and neighbor as self.  The fall gets awfully busy.  Life piles on.  Regardless of what swirls around us, I hope the simplicity of the gospel message grounds us in love, because if it is not about that, it is not about God!
 
-Marc

Let it be.

When I was a child, summer was a vast country with infinite possibilities, and it lasted a very long time. Endless days, some full of activity, some spent in a tree with a book, some walking from Hilton Pier to the Lions Bridge, a crab net in my hands and a bushel basket trailing behind me, tied with a rope cinched around my waist. In those days, low tide yielded a bounty of crabs. We walked in the water and lunged with the net, scooping them up and then flipping them back into the bushel basket. it was summertime, and the living was really easy.

I'm writing this as the clock strikes midnight, and suddenly it's August first. I haven't walked on the beach, I haven't read a book for the pure pleasure of a good story, and it feels like Memorial Day was a couple of weeks ago.

Is time moving faster? Are the days shorter? Where has this season, my lifetime favorite, gone? Can I make something different of August?

All of scripture invites us to live in the moment, to be fully present tothe here and now, and my failure to do that is where my summer has gone. As an adult, I am sometimes torn between the incompleteness of each day as I reflect on it (what has been left undone), and trying to make a plan for the next day, or the next week. The times I feel fully present are when I am with my patients as they share their thoughts and feelings, joys and sorrows, with me. My interior life is the one that races, meanders, and takes me down the rabbit hole of regret and/or anxiety. This is where my summer has gone.

There is a prayer in the New Zealand prayer book that I am incorporating into my evenings from this day on:
Lord, it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.
it is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done; let it be.
The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness of the 
world and of our own lives rest in you.
The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
and all dear to us,
and all who have no peace.
The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen..

And so, my brothers and sisters, may August be a long month, filled with peace, quietness, joy and possibility for each of us. That should slow time down a bit. Let it be.

---Kathy Gray