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Its been a few weeks. Many things have happened, but the most profound has been the loss of a family member in very rapid decline.

The shock of losing someone is still with me. Just yesterday I was able to write in my journal again, to feel up to a long walk in the sun, to breathe deeply. Grief is not handled well in our society, not given its due. We don't seem to want to acknowledge the emotional toll, we want everyone to buck up and move on.

I was watching a World War II era movie last night about the home front. One of the main characters, the grandson and fiance' of two other characters, dies in the war. The grandfather wears a black arm band in memory of his grandson. Another minor character loses his son and also wears a black arm band.

This was a good idea--the arm band signified that the person was still in the grieving process. Others could be signaled to respect them and to know that they perhaps were not going to "be themselves" during this time. It was helpful, I am sure, to all involved to have this sign of grief given publicly.

I have no black arm band, only dark circles under my eyes. I have no signal to give total strangers of my not being totally myself these past weeks. I have only a far away look, a tear that sneaks up on me unannounced. There are no signs alerting others that I am in a process of intense emotional energy. So, in some ways I feel I owe it to the world to hide my grief from them. Not to bother them with my tears and sadness, with my stares of disbelief, even my rants of anger at the person who didn't take as good care of himself as we, his family, thought he could have: Could he have survived this illness if he had taken precautions?

Some of the family are mad at God. I don't know what God had to do with his death. I ask questions of God, and am mad that our family seems to have had more than its share of death and grief. What is any family's share of death and grief, anyway? I can't answer that. It may not even be a question, it may only be a rant of anger and holds no real meaning. It is real nonetheless.

So, I am back with this blog. I ask your prayers--again. This time for me and my family as we enter this journey of grief and loss, and learn to live without our dear loved one. Not for just a year, but for the rest of our lives, we enter this grief. Every day the loved one is gone, we remember...

In Transition

Not one of my favorite things, transition, but here I am in the middle of one. I just finished my job as campus missioner for the diocese and am now seeking a full-time parish. Some opportunities are there, and I await their fruition.

Waiting is hard. I want to be gainfully employed, even if not remunerated, so I am engaged in several tasks: Working on ideas for health care initiatives for people of faith; writing, especially writing sermons and reflections; reading, especially all the books and journals that piled up during the busy-ness of everyday priestly activities with a parish and several college and other young adults; and finally, discerning the next place God is calling me to be.

That last one is obviously the hardest. Where do my talents belong? Who needs what I can give? How will I know when it is the place and the people with whom I am being called to serve? I think these questions have been the most difficult of my priestly formation. In my previous jobs, there was a job description that was fairly cut and dried and I knew by comparing what I had done and how I had trained whether the job would be a fit and I would enjoy doing that work. It was partly a matter of special academic interests in specific areas of the health care system.

I thought this would be how the deployment of a priest would go too, but alas, not with the same type of visible and discrete discrimination. Or at least not the obviousness with which I had perceived my talents fitting previous jobs in academia and health care.

I don't know why this is particularly--but I suspect there is lots more going on with parishes than they are able to put into a profile that is used to match my talents and their hopes and dreams for their future. If you think of it, you are asking a parish to make concrete what may be foggy to them, or may seem concrete but is layered with multiple hopes, fears, and dreams, some of which may conflict, about their future as a community of faith and the leadership they seek.

Discernment in this context is coupled with much mist and wavering images. The images seem to change and morph, on what basis I am not sure.

The discernment process calls for others to journey with you, in companionship, certainly, but also in advising, listening, helping you hear. So, I am asking several to accompany me on this journey. If you are kind enough to read this blog, and inclined to prayer, I do ask your prayers for me during this time of discernment.

May God lead me into light and the knowledge of God's will for me and for a parish who is looking for the talents I have been given.

The Power of Community

Yesterday I celebrated at a Eucharist for a group of Episcopal women I am a member of, at the end of a three-day conference on empowering women for social justice work. I asked all the women (about 75 who were present) to come stand up at the altar with me during the prayer of consecration.

As I was praying, I felt like superwoman--a feeling of great power and a kind of empowerment beyond myself. The spirits of all those women ringing the altar were extraordinary. There were more than just my prayers being said at the altar, there were the prayers and power of all those women with me. I felt as if I were floating a little above the floor, that the words of prayer were being sent into God's own mind at that moment.

This is the most powerful and wonderful, and awe-filled moment I have had as a priest. The community surrounding the altar were truly the consecrators of the bread and wine.

I believe this is how Eucharist was meant to be--the community praying together to bring the Holy Spirit in our midst. We all were co-creators with God at that moment, we all made the bread and wine Christ's body and blood to us--we all as an entity, not our separateness, but our oneness, were conduits of the Holy Spirit.

May all of you reading this today be able to have this kind of community where you can go--a place of such love and power, of oneness in Christ.

Christian community

This week our lection from Acts gave us a model of the first Christians living in community.

They broke bread, shared in the apostles' teaching, fellowship and the prayers. They held all things in common. They rejoiced and brought many new members into their fold. The did signs and wonders.

How does this model look next to your community of faith? Where can you take a page from the first Christians' community to learn how to be in communion with your fellow Christians? Does your community of faith look anything like this?

Meeting the Risen Christ

As we continue to meet the risen Christ in our readings during Easter, be mindful of the risen Christ meeting you on the street, in your office, classroom, home. Wherever people are on the margins--the poor, the outcast, the homeless, those in the throes of addictions—all are the face of Christ crying out for the gospel that promises that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. This “scandalous gospel of Jesus”, as it is termed by Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes in his latest book of this title, makes us uncomfortable because it challenges our own place at the table. It takes us out of our comfort zone, to reach out to those whom Christ cried for, healed, loved. Love is never diminished when given away, paradoxically, it grows. Jesus’s love for “the least" showed us the way. And his power over death made death nothing to fear, so now we have nothing to fear by giving away our love.

Encounter the risen Christ this week, live the scandalous gospel in your little corner of the world.