The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

The Importance of Observing Holy Week

Dear Ones,

Like the other Abrahamic faiths (those faiths who claim Abraham as our ancestor – Judaism, Christianity, Islam), Christianity has a an important yearly observance that helps us all to ground ourselves deeply in our faith.

For all faiths, these holy days are meant to be a spiritual journey – one that helps us touch the edges of sadness so that we can come to know joy more and more completely. Jewish people have the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Muslim people have Ramadan (happening now) which culminates in Eid ul-Fitr. And Christians have Holy Week.

I invite you, as your priest, into this important observance. I recognize that we all have full lives. And coming to church is usually a social event, as it should be. But Holy Week is not about being social.

The reason we take this time every year is that it’s important for your spiritual lives. The rituals we participate in during Holy Week are ancient and deeply meaningful ways of claiming your own place in the larger story of God’s hope. The phrase “God’s Love” can be used so often that we start to lose perspective on exactly what that means so we perform these rituals every year because we, as humans, need to be reminded of what we’re talking about when we say “God’s Love.” And as I plan for our time together, I’m praying for you as individuals, as well as for us as the larger community of St. John’s.

All the days and times are listed above and I hope you will come to observe and participate.

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

A Lenten Space

On Women Priests and the Story of Holy Week

Dear Ones,

When I first started attending the Episcopal Church in the early 00’s, it wasn’t long before I learned that our church had been ordaining women since the 1970’s. I remember feeling good about that (women’s rights!) but also a little uneasy. Strange, right? Admittedly, it’s simply because it was a new concept to me. I did not attend any church up to that point. So I had to rearrange my thinking a bit so that I could open myself up to what God was up to in the Episcopal Church: Women priests! Who knew?

Then, after I had heard a call to the priesthood, it wasn’t until I was already in seminary that I found out more about how much those first women priests went through. I had simply never thought about it and had never been asked to think about it. But in learning this story, I not only have a deeper appreciation for those women and for those who stood with them, I also have a deeper understanding for the events that led up to the crucifixion of Jesus.

First, they chose to do those ordinations without widely communicating it so the threat of violence would be reduced. Unfortunately, a few days before, the press go hold of the story and immediately, problems arose – threats of violence, bishops backed out of their promise to be there, letters and telegrams were sent and two male clergy appeared at the ordination itself declaring it to be an abomination.

Those first women priests regularly received death threats. The male clergy who supported them were disciplined, maligned, fired, and/or ostracized. The bishops who ordained them were considered to have betrayed their brother bishops. And it was a long time before those women were allowed to preside at a Eucharistic Table. All of them were told they were destroying the church. All of them were told they were evil.

When change is needed because of oppression, and God’s Holy Spirit begins to inspire that change, those who have privilege based on “the way things are” are automatically threatened. Sometimes the privileged are able to see what God is up to and use their privilege to help others. But most often, what we see is a dangerous mix of jealousy, fear, anger, and shame that culminates in violence. That violence is always going to be relational and economical (as I’ve described above) and sometimes even becomes physical. This is the cycle of human sin.

And this cycle of human sin is the story of Holy Week. Jesus was that person – that scapegoat – who became the focus of hatred during a time of extended crisis when the way of life for Jewish people was being threatened by the Roman Empire. Chosen by God, Jesus saw that, during this time of crisis, the religious leaders were further ostracizing those who were in need so that they could gain favor with the Roman leadership. And, at the risk of his own life, he spoke out. He was killed for his teachings and his actions because they threatened the powers that be – both the state and religious leaders.

This is why movies like The Philadelphia 11 help me to reflect on exactly what we are doing in Holy Week. It’s not just a story that happened a long time ago. It’s something that continues to happen… over and over and over again. So the reason Holy Week is so important to me, personally, is that it’s an opportunity to remember just how lost we are capable of becoming as humans. And how God continues to work through those who are willing, in order to overcome human sin so that we can be resurrected into new life. In so doing, God’s Love rains down to save us from ourselves once again.

Especially, at this time in our society’s history, we need to tell this story. So I hope you will join us for Holy Week this year and help us all remember this cycle so that together we can also remember God’s Hope for us.

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

A Lenten Space

The Long Exhale

Dear Ones,

I’ve been thinking a lot about breath lately – for several reasons. I’m still dealing with the lingering upper respiratory infection I contracted in January. Ana is practicing her breathing with a device called a spirometer, a common post-surgery/injury exercise. Those are a couple of very practical reasons.

But I’m also aware that there is an emotional aspect of this. I’ve noticed that, over this past week, my own breath has become deeper and deeper and, just in the last 2 days, I’ve realized that it’s like I’ve exhaled. Finally.

Every week during Centering Prayer, I invite everyone to gradually take deeper breaths and then invite them to take a longer time on the exhale. The reason for this is simple biology: a longer exhale engages your parasympathetic nervous system, which signals to your entire nervous system that it’s ok to “stand down.” It’s time to relax.

And, as I reflect, it’s as if I have been holding my breath for the entire month of February. And, if I’m honest, I’ve been holding it even longer than that. Of course, this has so much to do with all of the health issues my loved ones are going through.

I wonder if you’ve ever felt like that? A time in your life when there was so much happening that, despite your best efforts, it felt like you could never really get to the the place where you could experience the long exhale. A time when you could never really relax and know, on a cellular level, that all will be well. There are people who live their entire lives and never really feel what it’s like to have this kind of exhale.

For now, I am grateful for the long exhale.

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

LENTEN ISSUE

This Sunday: Lent II and Children’s Activity Available

Bad Weather? Good Question!

A Lenten Space

What Is Our Offering?

Dear Ones,

As most of you know, I’ve become a gardener. For the past several years, Ana and I have spent January planning the garden and then we begin to sow seeds in February. And this year we are not doing any of that. We’re taking the year off from planting flowers and tending a vegetable garden.

The reasons are simple – Ana is having a major surgery and will not be able to assist with gardening chores and I am planning to be on a sabbatical during the months of June, July, and August so I won’t be around to tend to and harvest what we plant. It’s just a good year to be free of this responsibility.

I have to admit to feeling a small sense of relief. But I also have to say that I am already missing the garden. I mean, it’s kind of like skipping Christmas. There is no planning, no anticipation. And, the gifts will be different. We have so many perennial flowers and plants so we won’t be in need of things to tend to and nurture and watch unfurl. But I feel like I’m not offering anything to this unfurling myself. So I am missing something.

As I reflect on this, I am reminded that our sense of belonging is deeply tied to our offering, our personal participation. We get tripped up sometimes by believing that we do not belong. Yet, we can easily forget that the invitation to participate is always there waiting for us to pick it up and respond because we DO belong. In God’s economy, God’s house, we ALWAYS belong.

Each Sunday before Eucharist, I say: “Let us walk in love as Christ loved us, and offer of ourselves a sacrifice to God.” This isn’t just about putting your pledge into the plate. This offering is your participation in the Eucharist. It’s you saying yes to God’s open invitation to the Banquet of Love. It’s an Amen. A joining-in. The offering of our presence is an acceptance of our own belovedness.

The question is, then: What is our response? What is our offering?

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

LENTEN ISSUE

Lent has begun: Ash Wednesday and Lent I

St. John’s Upcoming Schedule

The Installation and Investiture of the Rt. Rev. Matt Heyd as the 17th Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New York

A Lenten Space

An Invitation to a Holy Lent

A reprise of my homily from Ash Wednesday.

Dear Ones,

In her poem called “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver begins by asking… even demanding… our attention to the sacred. She says:
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?

The awe Oliver expresses here are words of praise. And she continues, leading us into a more devotional prayer – noticing the beauty of this individual bein. She says:
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

Oliver brings us with her to this moment where she falls in love with this little being. And then beckons us deeper, into the truth of what it means to be beloved of God, saying:
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Oliver’s question is an Ash Wednesday question: Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

This past Wednesday, I did what I always do on Ash Wednesday. I placed my thumb into the slurry of chrism oil and ashes made from the burned palms of last year’s Palm Sunday. And I “imposed” ashes on the foreheads of all those who came to me as I said the words, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Or, as Oliver says, “Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?”

I reminded people of their death. And in these words, as you are reading them now, I am reminding you of your death. And I call this act of imposing ashes, this moment of reminding you of your death… a blessing.
Yet, not too many people I know of would say that being reminded of one’s death, or of death itself, is a blessing. But it is.

Not because we hope for heaven, a more peaceful existence than what we currently experience. But this is a blessing because most of the time we take life for granted and live in denial of the very certain, very real fact that everything/everyone does die at last. This is knowledge that we all have. But truly accepting this, is another thing. Because it’s there, in the deep acceptance, that we are invited into to truth. We are beckoned into the mystery that gives life meaning. And we come closer to God. A reminder of death is always a reminder of life. One always points toward the other.

I don’t believe that the season of Lent is a time for us to think of all the mistakes we have made, chewing on them until our mind becomes shrouded in fog and our heart slows its beat. That is a death, for sure. But that death is not one that leads to resurrection. And we are a resurrection people. I do not believe that God wants our groveling and our painful confessions… unless they lead to new life.

God just wants us closer. God just wants us to be reconciled to Them. So, I believe that Lent is a season of renewal. A time and space in which we remind ourselves of the truth: That we are dust. That we will return to dust. Because in this truth lies our nourishment, even our refreshment. In this truth lies our possibility. In this truth lies our very life.

Our death is intimately tied to our life. In this, perhaps we can see that we are as fleeting as the grasshopper Oliver so tenderly holds in her attention on a summer day. And, if a grasshopper can be so loved, so are we loved. So are we beautiful. So are we beloved and whole. So are we precious and wild.

And so, what is there to do but love? If our lives belong to God, if all of life belongs to God, then what else is there to do, but pray in this way that Oliver describes: To pay attention; to fall down into the grass; to be idle, and be blessed; to stroll through the fields of our lives; to live our one precious and wild life and find the way we are called to be opened up by God so that we don’t miss the beauty of the grasshopper. Or, more importantly, so we don’t miss the exquisite beauty of ourselves.

To be opened up to our potential – becoming more and more reconciled to ourselves and, in so doing,  more and more reconciled to God. So that we may come to know that prayer and love are the same thing: An expression of curiosity and awe and devotion and gratitude.

Today you are invited to a Holy Lent: a time of self-examination, is what our prayer book says; a time of repentance. Because we are called, not to death, but to life, to live this one wild and precious life and be fully immersed in its beauty.

So if it is repentance, then let us repent of the practices and ways of being that deaden us. And if it is self-examination, then let us examine what it means to live and breathe and hope and pray and love.

For what else is there to do? What else is there to do, my beloveds?

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle

The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

Coming Up at St. John’s

THIS SUNDAY: Godly Play

The Installation of the 17th Bishop of New York

The Good News from St. John’s Kingston

The Installation of the 17th Bishop of New York

2024 Vestry Nominees

The Sacred and the Profane

Dear Ones,

I love to listen to this podcast called Smartless. It’s mostly about actors and the film/TV industry, but on an episode I recently heard, singing/songwriter Paul Simon was being interviewed by the hosts. And he talked about his new album called Seven Psalms.

Ana and I listened to this album as we drove back from PA this past week and I was reminded of Simon’s exquisite lyrical skill as I found myself pondering the beauty of life and of our relationships with those we love. I felt as though I was praying… listening to a song by a popular singer, driving down the road in my car – something that has happened to me many times before.

So I find myself musing: what is sacred and what is profane? The word “profane” is so often used to describe anything that is not specifically defined as sacred. I usually wonder if it isn’t our insistence on defining things so narrowly, that is the real problem. Such arrogance leads us down some very problematic paths.

Sometimes, it’s social norms and expectations that cause us to label things without thinking. Other times, I believe, it’s our own fear and shame that cause us to point to others outside ourselves, hoping that Satan will be found somewhere else or in someone else. None of us are immune to these tendencies, even if we think we are enlightened in some way. Perhaps, especially then.

For me, for today, I’ll be listening to Paul Simon as I work. Or maybe another episode of Smartless. And I wonder what will happen.

In God’s love and mine,
Rev. Michelle