Seeking Authentic Voice

Last year, 2018 began with some major transitions: our daughter, son in law, and grand-daughter sold their home, took a new job in Detroit, and moved in with us. The end of 2017 and first few days of 2018 were complicated by all of us catching the flu. This despite having the flu shot. It was, apparently a bad season for the flu.  Saying good bye to their former home I went to Chicago to help with the last of the move and got sick myself. I sequestered myself in an upstairs room while the movers loaded the truck. Then I slept in the car while Jess drove us to Dearborn. We had a lovely winter last year, lots of snow and plenty of play time outside as we all figured out how to live together. By the time Easter came we were anticipating the birth of a second grand baby, due in October.  In July I travelled to Austin, Texas where I preached at the historic St. David's church during the celebration Eucharist for the closing of the Episcopal Women's Caucus, of wh...

My call to ordination came after much soul searching on my part. I had received permission from my then Bishop (Frank Griswold) and my parish priest to start seminary before I went through the formal discernment process with the parish and the diocese. My sense of call was to hospital chaplaincy and in those days one did not need to be ordained to be a hospital chaplain, one only needed approval for chaplaincy by the leaders of one’s denomination, which I had. Of course the tide was changing even in late 1994, with all signs pointing toward ordination as the preferred credential for chaplains.   In the years leading up to seminary I worked as a massage therapist with a volunteer ministry giving massages to parents of sick children on the Pediatric unit, PICU, and NICU. I also had a small private practice as a massage therapist. But, it was the volunteer work that really challenged me to think about hospital chaplaincy. I researched to find the kind of education I needed a...

Imagine a young girl who has accepted a great challenge, which is also a gift. Because she has accepted this challenge, the gift she finds is courage and she is fierce to the end. The courage she finds is her capacity to be theotikos, the “God Bearer”, the one who literally births God into the world. This was no small task, the story tells us that the risk was so great it could have cost her her life. But her betrothed, who, as the story goes, was not the biological father of the child she carried, yet he protected her and the unborn babe, and with them created the holy family. This mother had no idea, at this birth, how the story would end, with her holding vigil at the foot of the cross as love died a wretched death. That she would stay fierce and courageous to the end. But she did.  Imagine, as the story goes, that this young girl Mary, and Joseph, about to be a mother and a father, have travelled a long way and when they  arrive at their destination, the girl ...

A few years ago I began an exploration on spirituality with members of the church where I am the priest. We asked questions like, “What is spirituality?” and, “What does spirituality mean to you.” Almost to a person I heard, “I yearn for deeper spirituality”. And yet, none of us could really articulate what that meant nor how we’d know if something were spiritual. We came to realize that what makes something spiritual is a very individual experience, what works for one person may not work for another. One member of the spirituality exploration group said something to me that I hear in the back of my mind every time I prepare a sermon. “Please,” she said, “Be hard on us, make us do something.” This was a plea for me to be more political in my sermons, more focused on social justice and more directive in what people are supposed to do to live out the Gospel.  In this Advent season I am thinking a lot about the Good News, that the Greek word euaggelizo was not a Christi...

About a month ago I watched a beautiful green and black stripped caterpillar as it clung to the stem of a potted parsley plant on the rectory deck. It stayed in one place for days, and then suddenly was gone. I wondered if it had eaten its fill and finally wandered off to create its cocoon and begin its long slow transformation into a butterfly. Or maybe not. I’ve read that caterpillars can live in denial of the road before them, remaining a caterpillar can prolonging the chrysalis stage for up to a year.  However, when the caterpillar begins to build its chrysalis it forms a spiny protuberance at the end of its abdomen called a cremaster. The cremaster is like a button or patch of velcro, holding the pupa, the dissolved caterpillar, in place within the cocoon. It’s the anchor point from which the caterpillar hangs.  Spiritually speaking there is a place where we too are fastened, no going backward, no going forward, or turning. We are fastened and everything el...

What if the basic element of life all life, human life and plant life animal life and life beyond this planet what if the basic element of all life is love, emanating through our heart pulsing out into the universe affecting every thing and every one? Love. What if the basic nature of humankind is love? Not greed. Not arrogance.  Not superiority, not aggression, Love.  What if we have it wrong, to think that more is better, that bigger is better, that more and bigger means powerful?  What if that is not really true? Because nothing in nature  ever takes more  than it needs  but when it does,  it dies.  Cancer.  Cancer takes more than it needs. Cancer is a disease that can kill because it has no boundaries, no limits takes more than it needs.  And so it is when humans do that,  take more and more and let others suffer and have less,  then human kind fai...