Tag Archives: relationship

Lenten Book Study – Talking with God: First Sunday in Lent

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Where do we find God in our daily lives? I guess the first part of answering that question leans on one important assumption: we are looking for God. The complex and hidden mysteries of life can be searched out with many different lenses, depending on one’s belief structure. In our discussion here, we will presume that the lens that leads to greater understanding and wholeness of life is illuminated by finding and conversing with God. And, to be even more specific, (because the divine nature of “God” is a complex thing as well), we proceed with a particularly Western Christian understanding of God. I preface all that follows with this statement because our book study group reflected on what people throughout the world might think of the subjects we will soon encounter, and we agreed that the conversation would take different paths, depending on where the conversation was held. This follows an important point made by Mark McIntosh in his first chapter of Mysteries of Faith: context provides clues to conversation and helps us to discover greater meaning.

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Book Study: Road to Character Part II

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Our book study of Road to Character by David Brooks continues…today we briefly cover chapters 3, 4, and 5. The main subjects of these chapters Dwight Eisenhower, Dorothy Day, and George Marshall – two Army Generals and human rights activist. The character content deals with “self-conquest”, “struggle”, and “self-mastery.” Again, as I mentioned in my previous overview, Brooks makes many insightful comments and brings in many thoughtful comparisons throughout these chapters. I can only hope to hit the highlights; and I am enjoying the book very much…maybe too much, which is why I am hopelessly slipping behind schedule. But, technically, it’s still July! Continue reading →

Book Study: Road to Character Part I

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Road to Character by David Brooks is the new book study for July…and I guess I’m already a bit behind schedule! But, hey, it’s summer, right? I’m glad to say that of what I’ve already read (through ch. 2 of 10) I am really enjoying the writing style, the stories, and insights presented by Brooks…maybe that’s why I’m reading it so slowly?

The introduction sets up Brooks idea of “character” by presenting the reader with an Adam I and an Adam II (very biblical), and what these two personas mean. One character is “of this world” and the other is “of a humble and self-sacrificing” centered type of character. The book, as broken into chapters, presents major themes or morality and virtue, as made real through the lives of different people. Chapter 1 (The Shift) continues this theme, generally, as Brooks comparatively presents the culture of the 1940’s vs. today. He examines the cultural differences through the lens of “Little Me” vs. “Big Me.” Little Me was a time “of more understated presence, self-effacing style.” The Big Me of today’s generation is rooted in “self-importance and a tendency to proclaim accomplishments.” Brooks’ point is that we’ve lost our way to follow the humble path in life, and that humble path is that idea, “humility is the freedom from the need to prove you are superior all the time.” I agree with Brooks that in our fast-paced, notice me society, we can often feel the need to highlight our accomplishments…I suppose there is a fine line is joyously proclaiming your delights and becoming a bit full of yourself. Here, Brooks quotes a good Anglican, the late Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, regarding how thankfulness and graciousness helps us prevent us from becoming too boastful: “Thankfulness is a soil in which pride does not easily grow.” Brooks’ point is that self-reflection and honesty about one’s strengths and weaknesses leads to a willingness to improve. Again, I wonder if our culture has lost the ability to take moments of silence for genuine self-reflection. A final thought of chapter 1: Brooks offers that many people who follow the path of humility were brought there through some difficult circumstances. “They had to descend into the valley of humility to climb the height of character,” says Brooks. He continues, “In the valley of humility they learned to quiet the self. Only by quieting the self could they see the world clearly. Only by quieting the self could they understand other people and accept what they are offering.” Continue reading →

Pulling back the weeds from the Saints of God

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All Saints Day (Matthew 5:1-12)  11/01/2014

Last weekend was my first opportunity to participate in the gathering of delegates at Diocesan Convention. The experience was a great day for me filled with wonderful opportunities: sharing stories on the ride to convention and back, meeting new people throughout the diocese, listening to the Bishop’s annual address, and doing the important work of the church. One presentation that really made an impression on me was the report of the Youth Group, introduced by the diocesan missioner for Christian Formation, The Rev. Hilary Bogart-Winkler. Several youth of the Diocese attended the Episcopal Youth Event in Philadelphia this past summer. The event is a week long gathering of youth from across the country and is held every three years. After the week long gathering, there is an opportunity to remain in the area and participate in a three day urban mission experience. The group of young adults from our diocese took up this work and were assigned to work at St. John’s Church in Norristown, PA, (an urban town northwest of Philadelphia). Soon after arriving the group discovered they had been assigned to clean up the church cemetery, which was in need of some general cleanup and care. The group was surprised to be sent out to the cemetery, thinking they would be assigned to take care of other areas more central to the mission of the church. However, after spending several hours working in the cemetery, the importance of the cemetery became more obvious and the value of their work of cleanup and care became more obvious as well. I can appreciate their story of summer mission work because during the past few years I have taken up the hobby of researching my family history, a hobby that has many twists and turns. Often times, the research requires one to leave the library and spend several hours walking through cemeteries in search of elusive family members. As I have traveled to many different cemeteries, I have discovered beautifully maintained landscapes and I have discovered places that seem to have been long since forgotten. One small cemetery in central CT is one of those “long since forgotten” places; probably selected for its once beautiful landscape of rolling hills, it now sits at the edge of an industrial park with a railroad track just feet away. As I stepped over broken branches and pushed back the overgrown weeds, I read the names of my ancestors from more than 200 years ago. I have since returned a few times to clean up the fallen branches and pull up the weeds and moss from the stones that tell the names of those that lie beneath. And as I performed that work, I was reminded that the cemetery had its own story to tell. The overgrown and forgotten state of things seemed to speak of the separation we can experience with each other, while the work of cleanup and care seemed to speak of the restoration of relationship that God hopes for us. As I did the work of cleanup in the cemetery, I read the stones and remembered their stories, their joys, their sacrifices and I felt connected to them in new  and personal ways. Continue reading →

Wolves, Rivers, and changing God’s World

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Pentecost 19A (Matthew 22:15-22)  10/19/2014

“Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” (Matt 22:17), said the disciples of the Pharisees, along with the Herodians, to Jesus as they stood in the temple. An interesting question posed by an interesting group of people; a strange group of “friends” you might say. The Pharisees were more concerned with religious “correctness” and righteousness, while the Herodians, supporters of the royal family of Herod, would have been more concerned with political power. But these strange friends found common ground in their challenge to Jesus…a question that by its very nature had a lose-lose response: if you suggest paying tax to the emperor, you are a friend of Caesar and the Roman empire which was set against the Jewish people; and if you suggest withholding your tax payment, well you are a religious zealot and a dangerous insurrectionist. These Jewish authorities had been listening to Jesus teach the crowd about the kingdom of God and they seem to have had enough of his rhetoric…they were determined to entrap him with a unanswerable question. The problem for the Jewish authorities, however, was that the question is only a trap if you think in black and white, right and wrong: the Roman empire or the kingdom of God, devotion to my worldly life and its success or devotion to God and all that God invites us to be. In this black and white world, the question posed to Jesus was fraught with challenges beyond belief! Jesus’ response to their tricky question might appear black and white in our hearing: “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt 22:21b) But Jesus does not live in this black and white, earthly or divine world; Jesus lives in the fullness and abundance of God’s creation, and his response amazed the authorities and sent them away as they considered all that was given to them from God; and how their lives would change if they listened to Jesus. Continue reading →

Trinity Sunday: In relationship with a loving God

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Trinity Sunday (Matthew 28:16-20)  6/15/2014

A little more than a week ago, many people throughout the world took a moment to pause and remember the 70th anniversary of a day we call D-Day. This day continues to hold great significance in our common history; significant because we may personally know people who were present on the beaches of Normandy that day, significant because of the sheer scale of the event and its importance in world history. In remembrance of this day, Brian Williams, NBC News Anchor, presented a special broadcast titled, “Journey to Normandy.” His news story highlighted the lives of four men, all near 90 years old, who were returning to the same beaches they encountered 70 years ago, at a time when they were just a few years removed from their high school days. As they traveled back to Normandy they remembered their first trip, an experience that was beyond words in many ways, and they shared their memories of that day and the many days that followed. As I listened to these brave men share their thoughts about their upcoming visit to that far away beach in France, I was quite moved by the men’s stories and the hopes they had set for their visit. One man hoped to finally discover the future of a wounded teenager he had seen those many years ago, another simply wanted to throw a flower into the water where a dear friend was lost forever, and another brought his family along so they would understand his story in a deep and personal way. Their hopes and dreams, after all these years, were rooted in relationships with others: some relationships were only momentary (like the wounded teenager), while others were life-long relationships of family and close friends. The hopes of these veterans reveal an important truth for all of us: the spiritual connections we share with God and with each other are nurtured by our relationships. These brave men’s stories, begun in the crucible of the frightening moments on a distant beach, continued and was transformed to something profound and valuable due to their intimate relationships with family, friends, and God. Each transformation was made manifest in their personal story, the story of the past 70 years since that first day on the Normandy beach. Continue reading →

New birth and a living hope – transformed by Christ

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Second Sunday of Easter (1 Peter 1:3-9)  4/27/2014

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Last week I mentioned the important meaning of this year’s Boston Marathon, especially in light of the tragic events of last year’s race. The Boston Marathon is significant in many ways for those who run the race. There is, first and foremost, hundreds of hours of training…an act of dedication on the part of the runner. Although I have never run a full marathon, I have spent a few months training with friends who have run marathons and I can attest to the commitment they put forth. After countless hours of training and preparation, the day of the big race finally arrives. This year’s Boston Marathon included more than 35 thousand runners (the second most in the race’s history) and was blessed with beautiful weather! Cheering fans lined the streets of the 26.2 mile course and provided excitement and support to all those who pass by. As the moments passed by and after the elite runners quickly ran past, the cheering fans remained to support the competitors who run because they love it; for many runners, the Boston Marathon is a very special moment in their lives. This year, there was a man from Massachusetts who was running in the race and he had nearly reached the 26 mile point, just a few hundred yards from the finish line…and he found that he had run out of energy, the muscles in his legs giving up on him. It is not uncommon to see runners taking a rest during the race, but with just a short distance remaining this man collapsed to his knees, unable to move. I can imagine his lonely agony, surrounded by thousands of people, yet feeling alone in the moment as he slumped to his knees unable to move. Runners continued to pass by, focused on that line just ahead, but there was one man from Illinois who did something surprisingly different – he stopped and supported the slumping man by lifting him under his arm. And then another man from Texas stopped to support the other arm. As the three runners moved slowly forward, unable to sustain their forward movement, two additional runners stopped as well, a man from Minnesota and a woman from Seattle. The group moved toward the finish line, a weary man supported by four exhausted runners: time didn’t matter, the rules of the race that prohibited assisting others didn’t matter, nothing mattered except helping each other, and in helping each other, everyone was dramatically transformed.[i] Continue reading →

Maundy Thursday: care & compassion for others

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Maundy Thursday (John 13:1-17; 31-35)  4/17/2014

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Earlier this week many people took time to remember an event that took place one year ago; a tragic event that ripped through the streets of Boston and ripped through the lives of many, many people. We wish we need not remember days like these, but there is some powerful truth about our common life together that is unlocked and exposed for all to see as we experience events that are beyond our control. The bombing at last year’s Boston Marathon was a day that held this truth for us. The marathon in Boston is not just another sporting event, not just a special day for people who like to run distances that immediately make the rest of us wonder where we left our car keys. No, the marathon is a special part of Boston’s character and spirit; run on a celebratory day that remembers the town’s unique place in the struggle that led to the birth of our nation. The bombs did not simply create the tragic deaths of three people and the injuries of hundreds more, but they shattered the peaceful patterns of people’s understanding of a day that had been celebrated for generations. In the immediate aftermath of the bombs’ destructive force, both people and the community’s sense of peace lie in agony. And if that were the end of the story, it would certainly be a story we would hope to soon forget, but that moment was only the beginning of the larger story that continues to this day and beyond. The larger story is the story of the powerful truth about our common life together, and this is the story we must not forget, this is the story we must remember as we gather together in later days. As the Governor of Massachusetts said to those gathered in Boston this past Tuesday, “There are no strangers here. We are all connected to each other, to events beyond our control, to a common destiny.”[i] The powerful truth of that common destiny is that we are called to serve each other, in times filled with joy and in times filled with sorrow.

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Connected as children of God – All Saints Day

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All Saints Day (Ephesians 1:11-23)  11/03/2013

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This past weekend, I joined the group of folks from this parish and hundreds of delegates from other churches throughout the Connecticut Diocese as we gathered for our annual convention. After arriving in Stamford and registering at the convention desk, Colin and I set off to accomplish one of the most important tasks of convention…finding a really good seat! We picked the perfect table and as we began to settle in we introduced ourselves to the one person  already sitting at the table, the Deacon from Trinity Church in Newtown, Tom Mariconda. After a brief conversation about convention topics, I asked Tom the question that is on everyone’s heart and mind, “how are the people in Newtown?”…and I mean, how are you all, really? Tom replied, “Good days, bad days; still a little bit of everything, and the one year anniversary is coming up in December.” We expressed our concern and assured him of our prayers, but the expression and emotion of his words simply hung in the air. The convention room slowly filled in as people arrived and our table was quickly filled with delegates from St. John’s, Grace Church (Hartford), and Trinity Church (Newtown). Throughout the convention we discussed many topics; topics big and small, official and personal, and some serious and some quite funny. But throughout our time, sitting at our table, there remained an awareness of the journey the folks in Newtown were traveling, made incarnate before us in the delegates from Trinity Church. Saturday morning, Kathie Adams-Shepherd, the Rector of Trinity Church, addressed the Convention. Kathie gave her thanks for the continued prayers and support of so many people; and she eloquently expressed the experiences of Newtown and the connection of their journey with the everyday journey of so many others grieving and in need – a connection with people who experience loss nearly everyday in Hartford, in New Haven, and in so many other places throughout our country and the world. She also expressed a connection with gracious acts of mercy from others, from people in Newtown, and in CT, and gracious acts from the helping hands and hearts of the wider world. As she spoke to the delegates of the Convention, she was thoughtful and heartfelt, her voice moving with emotion; and those in attendance that morning were connected to her, our hearts moving up and down with her, connected with great emotion and gratitude. Continue reading →

Close the almanac and say a prayer

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Pentecost 22 (Luke 18:1-8)  10/20/2013

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Information is an important part of our society today. We are connected to the news of the world in ways that were unimaginable just a few short years ago. Information feeds our curiosities and gives us confidence that we are in touch with our world. However, information of the “here and now” is not the only information that peeks our interest. We are not quite halfway through the fall season and I have already spotted my first winter prediction in the newspaper. Predicting the coming season’s weather has been a fascination with people for generations. I remember reading the Old Farmer’s Almanac as a young boy, intrigued that the details of the weather could be known so far in advance, and I soon learned that the Almanac was not always correct. Long-term predictions would have struggled to capture the fierce storm from nearly two years ago, an epic October snow storm that disrupted our way of life for a week or more. Throughout those days, many of us sought some solace, some hope in the power company’s outage maps and restoration predictions. And as the days dragged on through the week, it became difficult to believe the information given to us and not lose heart with our circumstances. This morning, our Gospel lesson offers us an interesting twist on how we might inform our lives, how we might live a life of faithfulness and hope-filled confidence by telling a story of a determined woman and an unjust judge who sat in judgment of her future. Continue reading →