Tag Archives: Episcopal Diocese of Texas

Now is the Time: Charleston and the Secret Meeting Sermon 6/21/15

Now is the time. Last week when Bishop Jeff Fisher was with us, we were queued up with the choir for procession, listening to the choir sing the Spirit Song, “Jesus, Come and Fill Your Lambs,” when one of the choir members got my attention and pointed to the small clock posted about the entrance to the worship space. The hands were spinning out of control. They hadn’t been doing that just a few minutes before, as I was nervously checking the time, wanting my first visit as priest from a bishop to go p-e-r-f-e-c-t-l-y. I got the Bishop’s attention and pointed toward the clock. We both chuckled and smiled. We were entering God’s time. Today again we enter God’s time. Today we are getting into the boat, pulling away from shore and heading into deep water. Deep ocean I’m going to tell you about the first time I met Ben Bythewood. I always hoped that some day it would be the right time to tell this story about the young former mayor of Woodville, Texas, but I never imagined it would be this soon. And I never imagined that it would be because of this set of circumstances. A couple of weeks ago, nobody imagined that Ben would go out on a cruise with his cherished wife Amy – one of my high school classmates – and that on that cruise, the Lord would take him home. This past Wednesday night, nobody imagined that a young man would kill nine people in a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Nobody imagined that our personal lives, our community and national lives could get so stormy…that the wind could blow so hard, the water could come into the boat, and we could be so shaken in sorrow and fear. Nobody imagined. But now Ben is gone, standing face to face with his Creator, beside the nine from Charleston. And this is the time. The time is now.

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The Hon. Ben Bythewood, former Mayor of Woodville, Texas, and a true man of God. May he rest in peace and rise in glory. Photo: Ben’s Facebook page.

I was standing with Amy and Ben at a gathering at Woodville Methodist Church as we were meeting each other and making introductions for the first time, and suddenly Ben – the huge, tall bear of a man he was – leaned in and whispered to me. He said, “Can I ask you something?” Not having any idea what he was going to say, I said, “Sure.” He looked fearfully to his left and his right and leaned in further, and in hushed whispers, asked me if I’d be willing to be part of a gathering of a few local ministers to begin an effort to work together on race relations in Tyler County. I was brand new to St. Paul’s and Woodville, and I really had no idea what the state of racial relations was in Tyler County, but I knew my answer: yes. Ben whispered that he’d have his secretary call me. A few weeks later, about the time I thought I had imagined it all, I got a call from Ben’s office, inviting me to “the meeting.” Soon after, I went to the meeting. It was a mixture of black and white ministers and some regional officials. We had a meal and spent time telling our stories – about our raising and our backgrounds, being honest with each other, and vulnerable to each other, about our upbringing and life experience as it related to racism. Then the tenor of the meeting changed. We talked vaguely about what areas we might be able to have an impact on. “You know we need to get into the schools!” We talked about it, but we didn’t really know what the next step was. We prayed together. To be very honest, it felt like a weak effort and I went away disappointed. I’m not sure what I expected, but it didn’t feel very glamorous to me. I wish I’d made time to have this conversation with Ben. But now is the time to have it with you. And for you to have it with each other. And for us to have it with this community. The time is now. Our scriptures today remind us that whether you are facing Goliath or facing the storm, the nature of God’s power is hidden in the appearance of weakness. God works his mighty power through what seems small and vulnerable. Empires cannot stand against the true power of God. The empires of violence and racism cannot stand against the true power of God. In Samuel, it seems like Goliath is an insurmountable force, but David goes to meet him in the storm of battle, not with the heavy armor of Saul but just as he is, just like Jesus was when he got into the boat – armed with faith, walking in the way of the One True God, believing that God is working in the world.

Illustration by The Beke.

Illustration by The Beke.

In Mark, the disciples are afraid of the storm and rush to wake up Jesus, desperately asking, “Don’t you care that we’re about to die?” They don’t yet understand that God is already at work. He is already on the boat with them. So to show them again, he rises and calms the storms. Jesus is the King of all Creation, and the power to calm the storm is in his hand. God is at work stilling the storm. Are you listening? Or are you still, like the disciples, stuck at “Who is this?” God is already in the boat with us, and he is at work stilling the storm. How, where? He was on that cruise ship – blessing Amy and surrounding her with helpers who supported her and her family. And when she got home, he was there in the outpouring of love from this community to shield her and hold her up through these difficult days. God is at work in that beautiful, bright blue-eyed grandson she holds that looks so much like Ben. God is at work calming the storm. God was at work when that 21-year-old man from Charleston stood up before a judge for his arraignment, and one after another, family members of his victims stood with heartbroken voice and said, “We forgive you. We forgive you. Every fiber of our being is aching, but God says to forgive. Turn to Jesus. We forgive you.” As people sank to their knees outside that hearing and outside Emanuel AME, as they stand this morning inside church after church across the country and hold hands and embrace in peace, as we sing and pray, God is at work calming the storm. I wish Ben were here today, because I would apologize to him. First I would apologize for thinking that he didn’t accomplish much at that meeting. I would apologize and beg his forgiveness, and God’s, for failing to have enough faith to see that the nature of God’s power is hidden in the appearance of weakness. I went away disappointed because I didn’t realize that God was at work in that group of pastors who felt helpless, but who still had the courage to come together and start SOMEWHERE. I see it now. Thank you Ben. May we have the courage to continue what you started. Now is the time to go out into the storm and face our Goliath. Now is the time to stand up for God’s justice, to love with his mercy, and to walk humbly with him when we find ourselves being Goliath. This week our bishops have put out a call for us to pray for Charleston, and for priests to speak a call to action from our pulpits. I share these words from Bishop Doyle with you: “Now is not the time for a cowardly church but a proclaiming missionary church which is at work offering a vision of a kingdom that is being built and a reign of God underway. Now is the time for bravery and commissioned missionary work where our hands join the hands of God to still the storm of the world and to heal the sick, help the blind to see, and the poor to have good things. “Now is the time for our voices to join the voice of God and still the storm around us. It is our opportunity as missionaries to name God in the world putting down the forces which seek to destroy God’s creation and the creatures of God.” God is at work. Now is the time.

A Women in Ministry Thing

“Why don’t you leave the Church and get ordained in (insert other denomination here)? It’ll be easier.”
Those were the first words I heard from a priest after finally gutting up enough to go and talk to someone “official” in the Church several years ago about thinking I might be hearing God calling me to ordained ministry. The conversation got worse from there. I’ll spare you, and myself, a walk through that painful discernment experience. Opening your deepest spiritual wonderings to another person is never easy – doing it with someone who doesn’t honor the vulnerability of that act is traumatic. Suffice it to say by the end of the afternoon, I was curled up in the fetal position at home, sobbing like my dog had just died. Sorry I didn’t spare you that image, but there’s a reason why:
At home on the couch that evening, still crying, I said to me husband, “I can’t stop. I don’t understand what’s happening to me.”
Being at times a redneck sage, he nailed it right on the head when he thought a moment and said, “You’re grieving your call.”
And I realized that he was right. That was exactly what was happening. The best way I know to explain it is that it felt like a part of my heart was dying.
Today is the 40th anniversary of the ordination of women to the Episcopal priesthood. On this day, July 29, in 1974 in Philadelphia, a group of 11 women, known as the “Philadelphia 11,” stood, and then knelt, for ordination to the Sacred Order of Priest. The Church is celebrating this wonderful anniversary. Still, I can only imagine how many times before that July day that they must have felt like their hearts were dying.
Today is also the one month anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Woodville, Texas, where I serve bi-vocationally as vicar in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas. It is because of those foremothers, and the people who supported them, and those who listened, finally, to their call, that I was finally able to answer mine at age 43. For all those who have supported me, and listened, I thank God for you.
My journey to ordination was a bumpy one, to say the least. Raised in and having left the Southern Baptist tradition after years of extensive involvement in children and youth ministries, I was deeply devoted to the Episcopal tradition I’d adopted in young adulthood. To have experienced a tersely closed door on my first attempt at approaching my own Church with an ordination discernment question was rough. But I am sure it was nothing compared to the huge splinters that were surely imbedded in the noses of those 11, who must have become well-versed at doors being slammed in their faces.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori with some of those involved with the Philadelphia 11 ordinations Photo Credit: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori with some of those involved with the Philadelphia 11 ordinations
Photo Credit: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service

But I would also guess that they, like me, found a measure of strength that allowed them to keep moving forward by understanding that those were collective doors slamming – not a rejection of whether they personally were being called to ordination. The Church was struggling to free itself from the burden of holding all those doors closed, and those women were bearing the strain.
There is empowerment in realizing that a struggle is universal. In that, you feel less alone. But the good news is that if it is God calling you to serve, then God will make a way. Our work is in understanding that his time frame, and the grace and mercy he has to pour out on many along the way, will not be what we picture – it will be much more than that.
Obedient justice was one of the hardest disciplines I had to practice in my journey toward ordination. (I am sure God has much to teach me about it post-ordination, too.) Obedient justice means to work without fear or shame for what is right and good in the Church, while staying true to the form of Jesus Christ’s Church as we have received it. For me, that meant quietly taking another year of personal discernment, and truly honoring that, and all the other difficult tasks that first priest required of me, in order to follow my call. But it also meant reaching deep into that call for the boldness to ask for guidance from other leadership, and to continue to walk back up to that door – and knock. I remember having a dream during my discernment process about making my way around a huge castle wall filled with an endless row of doors.
The Church has a ways to go in accepting the ministry already being done by the women God is calling. Our sister priests in the Church of England have just this month been voted permission to put themselves forward for election to stand, and kneel, to join the Sacred Order of Bishops. My heart and prayers go out to those unknown women still standing silently behind a door. I encourage you to reach out and knock, and to keep knocking.

In the United States, our own Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori, preached this week about the 40th anniversary of the Philadelphia 11. On the pulpit beside her was a pair of red heels, as she reminded the congregation how women priests have experienced even being told what not to wear, including red high heels and dangling earrings.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori during her sermon at Church of the Advocate uses a pair of red high heels to illustrate the expectations set upon ordained women. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service www.anglicannews.org

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori during her sermon at Church of the Advocate uses a pair of red high heels to illustrate the expectations set upon ordained women. Photo: Mary Frances Schjonberg/Episcopal News Service
http://www.anglicannews.org

Those shoes were particularly interesting to me –  I was part of a group of female students advised by a female priest a few years ago that we were NOT to wear red heels at our ordinations. Of course in my diocese, we’re likely to be wearing red cowboy boots! And I know a woman who gave away all her dangling earrings after a male priest told her she couldn’t serve with him at the altar if she was going to wear them. A long way to go yet.

“Women in all orders of ministry – baptized, deacons, priests, and bishops – can walk proudly today, in whatever kind of shoes they want to wear, because of what happened here 40 years ago. We can walk proudly, even if not yet in full equality, knowing that the ranks of those who walk in solidarity are expanding,” the presiding bishop said. “Try to walk in the shoes of abused and trafficked women. Walk on to Zion carrying the children who are born and suffer in the midst of war. Gather up the girls married before they are grown, gather up the schoolgirls still missing in Nigeria, and gather up all those lives wasted in war and prison. March boldly, proclaiming good news to all who have been pushed aside, and call them to the table of God, to Wisdom’s feast.”
Thanks be to God for honoring his call in me, blessing me with a strongly supportive husband and children, wonderful friends, loving and praying church members, two amazing groups of classmates in the Iona School for Ministry bi-vocational training program, bishops who are not afraid to be wise and bold iconoclasts for the good of the Church, and many good deacons and priests here in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas.
“I’ve never seen anyone so excited about their own ordination before. I guess it’s a women in ministry thing?” said a supportive community clergy colleague at our first ministerial alliance meeting after my ordination last month. “I wish all pastors were so excited about being ordained,” another minister said.
There is really no way I can fully explain the daily joy I feel in being able to live this amazing ordained life, after nearly 10 years of doors and doorways. It’s a women in ministry thing. It’s an Episcopal thing. It’s a bi-vocational thing. It’s a God thing.

Vested for the first time as a priest on the night of my ordination, June 29, 2014, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Woodville. Beside me are two friends who are recently ordained transitional deacons, the Rev. Paulette Magnuson, left, and the Rev. Terry Pierce.

Vested for the first time as a priest on the night of my ordination, June 29, 2014, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Woodville. Beside me are two friends who are recently ordained transitional deacons, the Rev. Paulette Magnuson, left, and the Rev. Terry Pierce.

The Coach’s Perspective

Lots of different kinds of people need Jesus, and they need him in lots of different ways. That thought remains with me as the conversation warms up among Episcopalians about our church language, and its inclusive or exclusive nature (read more about it here).

While a city editor at a community newspaper earlier in my bi-vocational career, my work included coaching writers. Frustrated reporters would come to me for help when particularly struggling with a story. Bogged down and writing in circles, they had climbed so deep inside their own experience, they had temporarily lost contact with the one ability every good news writer possesses: seeing things from the perspective of the reader. That is to say, writing as if the person reading the story doesn’t know what you know, and hasn’t seen what you have seen – because in reality, chances are they don’t, and they haven’t.

Here’s a technique that usually solved the problem: I’d ask a reporter to imagine they were home at the end of the day, relating to their friend or spouse what they’d witnessed. Very often, the first few words out of their mouth became the lead, the first sentence in a news story. Those initial words were usually the foundation on which they were able to build a stronger, clearer story structure.

It worked because they began to look at telling a story not as artificially rebuilding an experience, but as the evolution of an experience into the ongoing work of figuring out what a certain event means, and its impact on community life, related in terms that have no concern for maintaining social barriers. It works because it’s in our nature to want to communicate in ways we can understand and be understood, an expression of the God who is in us, who desires to know us and to be known. As a writer, if you stay connected to the reader’s perspective, it doesn’t matter whether you use simple or complex language, as long as you remember to take the reader along with you. Hard or easy, no one wants to read a story that makes no effort to address what they care about. We are all different, and we all need Jesus in different ways. The common link is that, differences or not, we all need him.

Differences can be important. It is important for me, as a foreign-born American child of two Caucasian-American parents, to listen and attempt a level of understanding about the impact of shared language on a community which includes various cultures. Before we get to cultural concerns, the Episcopal language discussion begins with an evaluation of churchy terms. Is the room you enter before reaching the worship space a foyer?cab57aa105cf6028fe7c8c6934f01a7c Nave? Vestibule? Lobby? Is it a worship space, Nave, Sanctuary, or just “the church?” After the temporal discussion, we move to the more difficult to put a finger on: How do we talk about what we call mission, without forgetting the very different historical experience of Native Americans and other people around the world, who have suffered at the hands of missionaries? How to integrate that into the different experience of those for whom mission holds important meaning to their historical identity as Christians, sent into the world in the name of Jesus?

It is certainly true that some language is exclusive to some cultures, and must be considered in the wider appeal and sensitivity of the Church. As both a female and a member of the clergy, I certainly appreciate gender-inclusive language in Scripture and liturgy, and have become so accustomed to it in the majority of my Episcopal community work that I feel with some difficulty its absence in other settings, evoking the lack of it in the Scripture and worship of my younger years in a different denomination. I can only imagine the pain of a native culture struggling to feel at home in a Church it cherishes, the same entity historically responsible for some of its cultural wounds. From these discussions unspoken questions emerge: “Whose experience matters more?” “What ground am I called to give up in preserving the dignity of other human beings?” “How do I find a comfortable space in the ground that remains?” “How do we achieve groundlessness?”

We are Episcopalians. Throwing our arms open wide and inviting others to join us is what we do. Gathering to sit at the table with those whom the world shuns is what we do. Kneeling in unity beside those who are different from us, to be fed together from God’s table is what we are called to do. Surely there is room in our broad and creative Church for both those who find beauty and acceptance in simplicity, and those nourished through the dance of complex language. Surely there is common ground for those whose cultural experiences are opposite but whose Savior sacrificed himself to bring all into communion with the Father.

Go Green Hands Collaborative Tree
by Karen Cappello

We are Episcopalians. We are the people of the Middle Way. As I heard Bishop Jeff Fisher say last week when he visited my church at St. Paul’s, Woodville, in the Diocese of Texas, “We are the Church of both-and.” Catholic and Protestant, male and female, struggling and free, we are all one in Christ Jesus.We are all different. And we need Jesus in different ways. But we all need him. Examining the changing experience of our shared language expressions in the Church is fine, as long as we don’t go so far in charting and languishing in our linguistic differences that we forget to approach everything we do from the perspective of the people who need the Gospel story we have to tell. We can focus on our differences, or we can work for unity strengthened by standing together and holding up the world’s needs to our Lord, inviting everyone to be a part of the varied and beautiful ways to experience Jesus.

 

One Bread, One (Ceramic) Cup

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Somewhere in my training for priesthood, a teacher told my class there are three professions that attract people with the biggest egos: acting, journalism, and the clergy. Also being a former journalist, I figure my next stop is either Hollywood or humility training. The professor’s warning jangled in my head at my new church this morning as a broadly smiling member named Lou handed me a shiny coffee cup. “Hey, check out your new mug,” he said. Vaguely remembering hearing a conversation a few weeks before by members planning to restock the supply of St. Paul’s personalized coffee mugs, I looked down, noticing a large Episcopal Church shield covering the side of the mug. “Nice, looks good,” I said. “No, look at the other side,” he said, expectantly. I rolled the cup over in my hand, lines of text coming into view. A welcome, the church name, our Internet site, e-mail address and phone, and, finally, at the bottom in BIG BLUE lettering clear as day, was my name, “Rev. Ashley Cook.”

A couple of nervous reactions dashed through my head. “Oh no, what did you guys do?” I said to him, half-teasing, half-mortified. They had ordered a lot of mugs, he said. A LOT. Soon to finish my studies for priesthood in bi-vocational ministry, I’d only been assigned to the small, rural church in the deep pine forestland of East Texas for four short months. Egotistical is a label and a trait clergy have to guard against, and it probably wouldn’t help in that department if folks thought I’d put my own name on our mugs, I thought.

But then I took a second look – at Lou’s face, not the mug. His warm expression, his nodding approval, his big smile. These were signs of welcome, and I’d almost missed them. These were indications of a congregation ready to share both themselves and their new clergy with the wider community. Ironically, I’d almost let my ego about trying to control other people’s impressions of me overtake the open invitation to build a relationship with my congregation. Lou and his wife Carol, among the most faithful members at St. Paul’s, would shortly be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary in the service that morning. The mugs were a symbol, I realized, of a congregation in it for the long-haul, stepping forward in faith to offer their part of a commitment to a long-term pastoral relationship. Swallowing my ego, I gripped the cup tightly, suddenly very conscious of its meaning. “Thank you, so much,” I said to Lou.

People are drawn to the Episcopal Church because of its connectedness. We are the people of One Bread, One Cup, as we say of our Communion practice of kneeling together to receive the Body and Blood of Christ, in the form of wafers and a shared cup. We are the Church expressing the transformational love of God, who draws all people to himself in Jesus Christ. And yet, a symptom of rural church life is that small mission congregations often go unconnected for years, without the guidance and pastoral care of having their own clergy, being fortunate if they have a series of well-meaning but short-term supply priests. Seldom having an opportunity to settle into a focused pastoral relationship, congregations may begin to feel neglected. Out of that neglect can grow a reluctance to evangelize, to build relationships in their community, or to foster a pastoral relationship when a newly assigned incoming clergy finally does arrive on the church doorstop. Bi-vocational clergy support in rural areas remains in short supply, which challenges the Church to re-imagine rural church structuring. It could be that an answer lies in our own connectedness.

To their credit, I received a warm and enthusiastic welcome on my arrival to St. Paul’s in September, from both the congregation and the local ministerial alliance. Still, there were questions asked of me regarding the longevity of my stay, most who asked assuming I was only placed there for training purposes, and that I would leave after graduation in June. Any reluctance to committing a lot of resources and energy to my arrival would certainly have been understandable. While it was yet unclear in their minds whether this would be a long- or short-term relationship, my experience of Episcopalians and their neighbors in East Texas was still that they are loyal and tightly-knit, whole-hearted and generous in their welcome. This innate spirit of strength and hospitality speaks of what may very well be the as-yet untapped full potential in small churches to creatively host and flourish God’s presence in their communities.

This morning as I looked at Lou, smiling at me over a new coffee mug, it was this welcoming gesture that reminded me of the Holy Spirit’s work in bringing us all together, to glorify God and to build up this corner of his Kingdom. Putting my worries aside, I thanked for Lord for his mercy, and heartily embraced the congregation’s tangible commitment to sharing ministry at St. Paul’s, evident in the shiny stacks of coffee cups now gracing the Parish Hall.

Building the Safety Net

It was getting late on Sunday afternoon and I was sitting alone in my church office after services, catching up on various administrative details while thinking about the week ahead, and musing on the week  behind me. As a bi-vocational minister serving a rural church 50 miles from where I live and work a full-time weekday job, quiet time in the church office is rare. In my senior year of studies for priesthood, I’d been at my new church for four weeks. Most of my time in the office to this point had been about unpacking, organizing, planning, and figuring out what I’d forgotten to put in the car on the other end of the drive between church and home.

In neglecting our personal time for non-essential ministry tasks, we weaken our own support system, and endanger the one we are called to build for our children.

In neglecting personal time for non-essential ministry tasks, we weaken our support system, and endanger the one we are called to build for our families.

That Sunday, I’d meant to get out of the office early to go home and enjoy the rest of the day off with my family. But as was getting to be usual for me, it was nearly 5 p.m. and I was still trying to wrap things up. Hearing a soft tapping on the glass doors in the hall adjoining my office, I poked my head out and saw a petite woman who looked to be in her 30s standing outside. Walking to the door, I noticed an old minivan in the church parking lot loaded with belongings strapped to the roof, a man sitting in the front passenger seat. The woman’s story wasn’t unusual. At first, it sounded like most other stories pastors hear from folks who come asking for help. They were traveling through on their way out of state, and needed money for gas and food, she said. Not really keen about giving out cash, and not having a gas card on hand, I loaded her arms with food from the church Pop-Top Pantry, a dry goods feeding ministry for walk-in traffic.

Ready to send her on her way with prayer and encouragement, the conversation took an unusual turn at the door. She’d stopped at our church – one of a number in our small town – because the name, St. Paul’s, called to her, she said, thanking me for the food. “My father was a priest,” she added.

That casual addition to the conversation caught my attention. Her father had died, was all she would say further about him. But she’d been raised in the faith, she said. We shared a hug as she left. “Peace be yours,” she said, unprompted, voicing a traditional Church greeting embodying God’s healing love in exchanged words of reconciliation. As we parted, I invited her to stop by the church again on her next journey through the area. As she got back into her van and left, I had doubts I would ever see her again.

Back at my desk in the church office, I sat thinking. What if her story were true? But how could it be? How does a priest’s daughter end up so desperately low as to go begging at random church doors for money? Not that clergy families are insulated from the turmoil and tragedies of life, but I just couldn’t fathom how it could have come about. Surely there was some safety net somewhere that should have kept this from happening. It frightened me to think of my own two children, and my new, busy bi-vocational life. I have no idea what happened in her family, but I could see the future of what might happen to mine if I allowed my new ministry, as much as I loved it, to completely consume all my extra time.

The complete story of who the woman was and what had brought her to my door would remain a mystery. Maybe God would bring us together again, but it was sufficient for now that he had done it today – a visit I was sure was anything but random, for either of us. Thinking of my own daughter at home 50 miles distant as I whittled away a free afternoon on non-essential paperwork and ministry self-analysis, I suddenly visualized a weakening in the portion of her safety net I was responsible for building. God had blessed me with two wonderful children, one already in college and one preparing to enter high school. In the midst of establishing a new clergy presence in this small rural congregation, I was on the cusp of forgetting that my call to motherhood had not ended because God has added a call to priesthood. In fact, my family was his gift to me, and spending time with them was a loving, supportive place to experience his restoration and joy. I closed my laptop, packed it and my papers up, grabbed my keys and headed out the door. The long ride home provided lots of time to think. There was no guarantee that my husband and I would be able to save either of our children from the kinds of decisions or circumstances in adulthood that could veer their lives off-course like the woman at my church door. But it was a virtual guarantee that if we didn’t keep family and personal time a priority, then all of our lives, and by extension our ministry, would suffer in the long run. No minister stays healthy for long if our lives at home, the foundation of our safety net, born in relationship with God and one another, are unraveling through neglect.

The best we can do for the children God places in our care is to continue as godly parents building their spiritual safety net, loving one another and our children within the holy covenant of the relationship between our family and our Creator. This model of family calls us to teach our children by word and example the image of the Body of Christ as his Church: holding each other up, guiding younger members, supporting older ones, offering accountability with love, encouragement in times of need, relying on God as our ultimate safety net. May God bless that woman in need at my door on a late Sunday afternoon as her words of peace blessed me, speaking into my need – to many a busy minister’s need – to recall that reconciliation begins at home.

Let’s go exploring

On Dec. 31, 1995, the Calvin and Hobbes comic strip made its final appearance in print. That day, a little blond boy named Calvin and his real-when-Calvin-was-around stuffed tiger named Hobbes jumped off the predictable page of weekly-installments and into the magical world of our unformed imagination:

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Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson

A stuffed tiger with fierce love for the boy who never gives up believing in him, Hobbes was my generation’s Velveteen Rabbit. Unlike the rabbit, Hobbes never quite got to become real, but he was real enough to be witness to Calvin’s fearless love of adventure and sharp-edged commentary on social justice.

This week Calvin and Hobbes came through again for me. A child of the ’80s, I rediscovered this strip during my own final appearance of sorts, going into my last Sunday of two years’ service as a bi-vocational deacon to my home parish of 13 years. After a month off, I will take up my new assignment – leading as head of congregation in a new church while continuing my remaining studies for priesthood. As a bi-vocational minister, I will continue to work my day job at a non-profit child advocacy center, commuting an hour to the church I will be serving, a small rural parish deep in the tall pines of national forest country. Like a good Calvin and Hobbes strip, the last few weeks of my home parish departure were a mixture of excitement, fear, humor and wonder. I’d never left a ministry before, so I wasn’t sure what my exit was supposed to look like.

By Sunday evening, after two final worship services and Rally Day festivities, I was on the couch staring at a blank TV screen, completely spent after an exhausting week of goodbyes and last moments mixed with the strain of disentangling oneself from a hundred pastoral relationships.

I’d like to say I received some great revelation from the Holy Spirit in my hour of need. But after sitting numbly for awhile, what came to me was something I’d seen a few days before. It was the first panel inset from the last Calvin and Hobbes strip, as the two pals are heading out, wooden sled in tow, into the woods covered in a night’s untouched snowfall. “Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand-new!” Hobbes says. “A new year … a fresh, clean start!” Calvin says, arms thrown open wide. “It’s like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on,” Hobbes says, as the strip moves forward. “A day full of possibilities. It’s a magical world, Hobbes, ol’ buddy,” Calvin says, as they hop on the sled and launch down a snowy hill. “Let’s go exploring!”

I’m not sure if God often works through comic strips. But in that moment, I stopped feeling sad and realized I had a gift to receive if only I would throw open my arms to embrace it – an opportunity at a fresh, clean start forging new ground in bi-vocational ministry in Deep East Texas – together with a congregation, a big white sheet of paper to write our new ministry on. I’m excited about the possibilities of where God will lead us.  Maybe that wasn’t a great revelation, but it was what I needed to make my exit. And that’s pretty great.