Murmurations of the Spirit: Learning from Starlings
Over the last week, I had the chance, the good fortune really, to attend a Zoom call that is on my calendar every week but that I have rarely had the opportunity to join. It is a call filled with innovative and creative thinkers in the church that are wrestling with how to follow the Spirit in a moment in which almost nothing has remained stable. The group often considers the role of chaos and order and how those two…
Pilgrimage in an Uncertain Time
We have reached a milestone as a parish. It is not a milestone that we necessarily knew that we would reach, and it certainly is not one that we had any desire to reach. You see, it was four months ago today that we had to shift how we were doing church. Church of the Epiphany moved from our regular rhythm of worship and gathering as a community to doing those same things by way of online technology. While we…
The Faithfulness of the Saints
Back in March, as the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold and to have major impacts in the United States and as our own parish responded with modified worship services being hosted online, I, along with our wardens and vestry, shared in the concern of what the crisis was going to mean for our parish. Would we be able to weather the storm enough to come through the other side? How will we need to respond to the pandemic in order…
Seeking Happiness
It was the end of the day. I had just finished cleaning the kitchen after cooking dinner and was settling into a mindless game on my iPad whilst a Netflix series that I had watched already played in the background. It was more of a source of background noise than it was something that I actually wanted to watch again. The idea of tuning into a screen more attentively than that is somewhat off-putting in the days of coronavirus. I…
The Image of Love
Over the last few weeks, I have been reading a book called Formed by Love written by my professor of theological ethics, Scott Bader-Saye, Ph.D. In his little book on Episcopal ethics, Bader-Saye invites us to consider how to live out the Gospel by confronting big questions and then considering how we are able to put these things into practice in our work, our play, our prayer, and our rest. It is a fabulous little book on how ethics is…
A Living Sacrifice, Holy & Acceptable to God
It’s has been a long spring season as we turn the corner to the summer months. The last 90 days have been incredibly different for us as a church, and we have shifted how we practice community time and again as we have attempted to weather the Coronavirus pandemic that is gripping the world right now. We began those shifts around March 15 of this year. On Sunday, we will mark a full 90 days of worshipping by remote means,…
Sacrificial Love Wins
In 1969 in New York City at the end of June, the New York City Police planned to raid an establishment called The Stonewall Inn. The Inn, which was a bar and gathering place for LGBTQ+ persons that were excluded from the larger LGBTQ+ community such as ‘drags,’ ‘queens,’ and young and homeless LGBTQ+ persons (generally between 16 and 25 years old). It served as a place in which those who were excluded even from the larger LGBTQ+ community could…
Bodies of Color; One Body
If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. 1 Corinthians 12:226 NRSV Bodies have been in the news a lot this week. On Sunday, The New York Times used the whole of its front page to publish the names of the 100,000 dead bodies from the plague ravaging humanity right now. It painted a picture of what is happening in our nation and in the world, and it served…
Finding Vocation: A Way of Belonging
In the past two months, most of us have entered some kind of state of isolation. It is important to point out that those of us that have been able to do so are the privileged ones in our society. We are the ones that have the luxury of working from the safety of our homes in the midst of a plague that is sweeping the world. We have been able to remain inside a harbor while a storm has…
Rogation, Creation, and a Pandemic
In one week’s time, the Church will celebrate the Feast of the Ascension on May 21. It is a feast day that happens every year and is considered one of the principle feasts of the church year. On the Sunday prior to the feast of the Ascension, the church recognizes another type of celebration called Rogation Sunday. Rogation days originated in the 5th century in France when a bishop called for days of fasting and prayer to ward off a…
Life in the Now
All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Acts 2:44-45 NRSV A few weeks ago, the vestry voted to launch a special giving campaign called Foundations of the Apostles and Prophets. (I hasten to add that we have received just over $3,000 through this campaign thus far.) The effort of the campaign is pitched as one way that our parish…