Lenten thoughts - Week 2

As I mentioned in my previous post, Connecticut doesn't seem to have the kind of winters I'm used to. However, this February has been pretty snowy. This past week has been really gray, cold, damp and wintery and at this writing, other than a few brief glimpses yesterday we haven't seen the sun in almost eight days, and the forecast is predicting the same for three more days. Not seeing the sun gets to people. Everywhere I go I hear laments like, "It's so COLD!" "When is it going to be spring?" "I'm ready for this to be over now." Maybe it's my puritan roots, but I have to admit that I actually like something about this kind of weather during Lent. Perhaps it's easier to be penitent when you're miserable about the weather. It certainly is more of a spiritual discipline to be hopeful in this kind of weather.



I didn't realize I felt this way until last year at this time, when Steve and I took a trip to San Francisco. We stayed with a friend who has a beautiful yard that was positively dripping with fragrant wisteria vines and other flowering trees - in early March! Along her driveway were citrus trees covered with little oranges and lemons. And the birds were singing like a choir from morning until night. The hills surrounding the city were an amazingly deep, rich green, and everywhere you looked was the evidence of botanical bounty, including the most amazing vegetable markets I've ever seen - filled to overflowing with LOCAL produce. Coming from gray, damp and cold New England, where the tomatoes in the stores not only overpriced but also hard and barely pink at this time of year and where the only local produce available is the now kind of soft butternut squash stored in the cellar since fall, San Francisco felt like the most abundant and rich place on earth to me. My first reaction was to be delighted. But my second thought was, "This just isn't right during Lent!"

I was to learn that the moist green-ness of the area would not last long. In just a month or two, the hills would turn what they euphamistically call "golden" (but which my friend calls dried-out brown.) New England is actually a far more consistently moist and lush region year round, rich with natural springs and rivers and lakes, while California suffers from droughts every year. Knowing this at least appeased my green envy.



Everything in life has its own costs and benefits, as does every region, I guess. But I'll take Lent in the late New England winter any day, when the sky is often gray and the ground, when it shows, is damp, matted down and dirty, like a used dishcloth in need of a good laundering. The only breaks we get are the breathtakingly beautiful snows like the one we got this weekend that frost the trees with magical beauty. Too bad it all needs to be shovelled.

I once visted Key West for a few weeks, and I noticed how relaxed and happy everyone seemed to be all the time. I realized that their mood was definitely linked to the weather. I mean, how can you not be laid back when all you need to throw on is a pair of shorts, a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops? The colder the climate, the more tense the population seems to be. I have noticed this as a trend in my travels. People from cold climates tend to be viewed by others as being rather crusty, distant people - somehow especially New Englanders. Perhaps we retain some of the European reserve along with our cold climate temperament. We, like many cold weather people, don't let many of our feelings out - maybe we keep them inside in an attempt to conserve energy!

But our challenging climate attunes us to the seasonal changes around us. We can smell when snow is coming, and we can recognize the healing fragrance of spring earth - sometimes even when it's still covered in snow. Our ears pick up the first bird songs that are so welcome after the muffled silence of winter, that tease us into believing that spring must be just around the corner when we know it really isn't. What can possibly compare to that first warm day in the spring when you don't need to wear a coat and the sun feels warm on your neck? People in Key West don't get to have these experiences. It seems to me they must have to try a lot harder to believe in the resurection. Up here we travel through the somber Lenten journey in our very bones, and this makes Easter all the more welcome and all the more miraculous. Every year we physically feel salvation.

Snow Day

All week long its been raining and sleeting and snowing. And today we're having a real snow day. School was not just delayed - it was cancelled entirely - and it looks like we've gotten about 5 inches by now with more to come. My boys are playing on the floor with cars and legos while I sit by the fire with a cup of hot tea. There's nothing like a good snow day every now and then. It reminds me that my personal agenda is not the most important thing in the world. I had arranged what I thought was an important meeting today, but as the snow continued to fall, I realized that in the larger scheme of things, it wasn't that important after all, and there's really no good reason to ask people to get out on the road if they don't have to. So I cancelled it. My trip to the store can wait, too. What we already have in the house will suffice for dinner.

My family and I moved here from New Hampshire in 2007 and we generally like to make fun of how people here in Connecticut are such chickens in the snow. Early during our first winter here the school called a snow day one morning because a storm had been predicted for after lunch. We sent the boys out to the busstop without a second thought - it was slightly overcast, but there was no sign whatsoever of snow. It never even occurred to us to check if it was a snow day. They don't call snow days in NH unless it's a veritable blizzard. About 20 minutes after the boys left, it was the Poland Springs guy who asked us, "Those your kids out there at the bus stop? Didn't you hear it's a snow day?" I can only imagine the looks we must have given the guy. A snow day? You've got to be kidding! We went out and collected them again and laughed all day about how lame Connecticut is about snow. (To add insult to injury for poor Connecticut, the predicted storm finally arrived to leave a mere dusting of snow late that evening.)

But now a few years later, maybe I've adjusted to CT standards. Or maybe my older parishioners are rubbing off on me. Why go out when you don't have to? And I like how we're all together snug as bugs in rugs today. And I like being reminded that ultimately I live in the rhythm of God's larger agenda.

As I enjoy my snow day, I'm saying some prayers for people who aren't able to stay at home - the people who drive ambulances and police cars and plows and staff hospitals and fire stations and stores. I also tip my hat to Maryann, our church secretary, who came over to paint the trim in her office today. She has a vision of how great that office is going to look by the end of next week, and no stupid snowstorm is going to throw her off schedule!

Lenten thoughts - Week 1

We had two new couples visit our church this Sunday. One couple stayed and showed great enthusiasm for having found us. The other couple slipped out before the service was over. I don't know what hit them wrong, but obviously we were not what they were looking for.

What do you suppose we are really looking for when we come into a church? What thirst are we trying to quench and what hunger are we hoping to feed? What hole in our souls are we trying to fill? And how do we know when we have found the place to which our souls are being called?

Most people I meet these days tell me they're spiritual but not religious. That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, pedophile priests, televangelist scandals, religious lobbyists brokering political power, people being shunned for who they are and violence committed in the name of religion are reasons enough to turn any thinking person right off. It's no wonder people would rather find their spirituality elsewhere - in nature, in a yoga class, in a book group, etc. It is really clear that our souls can find sustinence in such places. So why put up with the church - that fallible and often messed up institution? It sometimes seems the church is more concerned about what people believe and what they think than about how they act and what they do. Christianity has degraded, in many cases, into a faith stance, a certain set of intellectual beliefs - an opinion - instead of the relevant and life-giving spiritual practice it was meant to be.

I think in this era of rugged individuality - and of increasing isolation and alienation - there is great value to coming together in real community, even when it is challenging. There are simply somethings we just can't do alone. I also think there is great value in examining history and tradition and mining it for its riches instead of constantly creating new wheels. I think the great mystics of Christianity and other religions have touched on the very things that we all deeply hunger and thirst for, and it is a good thing for us to pay attention and listen to what they have to say. They have things to show us that we can't see yet.

So I thirst for a church where people are welcome to ask lots of questions - to struggle with tradition and feel safe to disagree. In fact, I thirst for a church where finding answers is not faith at all, but living into the questions is. I thirst for community that welcomes us to show up exactly as we are - and where everyone feels the profoundly accepting love that Jesus showed everyone by his words and actions the minute they walk in the door.

I suppose no church can be that for everyone and some people will not find what they are looking for here. But, then again, if one church fit everyone's needs perfectly, there wouldn't be much dimension to Christianity. I think the deepest beauty is in the full, varied spectrum. I at least hope that the people who feel called to be here at Grace Church will find not only what they are looking for, but what they most deeply need.

A New Glow and a New Blog

The blog's been on the back burner for a while, but since the words Paul wrote to the Corinthians that we read on Ash Wednesday keep ringing in my ears, ("now is the acceptable time") I guess it's time to just jump in. I'd like this blog to be a place where the changes that are happening at Grace Church and in me as their priest are recorded and shared.

I am the priest of a struggling Episcopal Church. Like so many North American churches these days, we're feeling the unsustainability of the way church has been done in past decades with our large buildings, small congregation and dwindling funds. Our congregation of mostly older folks decided that rather than closing down, they wanted to be open to a new way of being church, so the bishop sent me here in July of 09 as their priest in charge for three years. We're going to try and make a go of it. I am a fairly entrepreneurial person who loves a good challenge - which is what all clergy need to be these days - and I feel particularly called to re-discovering the ancient and beautiful spiritual practices of the Christian faith and exploring what they might have to offer us here in the 21st century. So we have come together as pastor and parish, opening our minds, our hearts and our doors to whatever the Spirit blows in!

I hope you'll visit every now and then to see how we're doing.