Called to Trust

Before I left on vacation last week, I attended the splendid consecration service of our new bishop, Ian Douglas. The Koeppel Center at Trinity College, usually used as a sports arena, was transformed into a beautiful worship space by colorful fabrics and banners. Choirs from all over the state, African drummers and a steel drum band provided spirited music during the liturgy. (Carl and Bo were among the many choristers that took part.) Over 40 bishops were in attendance in their red vestments, along with hundreds of priests and deacons, vested in white, along with the celebrating bishops in their white and gold copes and miters. With that number of clergy in attendance, it was quite a procession!

I had volunteered to help, and I was given the task of helping to shepherd in the procession. In fact, I was asked specifically to shepherd Katherine Jefferts Shori, our presiding bishop, into the service, which gave me the opportunity to meet and talk with her before the service. Oh, I liked her very much, and felt immediately at ease with her. I was most impressed her presence. She is an unusually centered person, and her calm energy seems to relax everyone in her vicinity. I asked her if she was enjoying her work as presiding bishop, and she told me that it has been a great gift – a blessing. She particularly enjoys the variety in her work, and seems fed by it. “The Spirit always has something unexpected in mind, so every day is new,” she said.

I was thinking how much trust in the Spirit it must take to be a bishop. Stepping into such a significant leadership role brings great pressures along with it. I was immensely grateful to hear that rather than becoming overwhelmed by the many pressures of her role, our presiding bishop seems to receive each task as a privilege and as a gift. I asked if she ever gets overwhelmed by her many responsibilities. She told me with a warm smile that she just has to trust that moment by moment the Spirit is putting the thing that most needs her attention in front of her. That was a powerful testimony to me.

I pray that our presiding bishop’s faithful sense of trust will ripple out like waves in a pond to the entire church. I pray that Bishop Douglas also has that kind of trust in leading our diocese - and that I do, too, as the priest in charge at Grace Church. I pray our vestry also lives more and more each day into trust. And I pray that everyone who walks into Grace Church not only recognizes that trust is alive among us there but is put at ease by it, just as I was put at ease in the bishop’s presence that morning.

I was visiting with our own Bishop Ahrens yesterday and telling her how things are going at Grace Church. She told me she has no doubt that God has called me here. I have to agree - but I'm also clear that it's not just me who's been called here. The people of the church have been called here, too. Whether they've been attending Grace for decades or have just started coming, I think God has something in mind in calling us all together here in Trumbull in 2010. I think we're all being invited into God's mission together. It will take lots of listening and lots of discernment to hear and begin to understand that call. It will take lots of courage to answer it. It will take lots of willingness for this church to step into leadership, and it will take lots and lots and lots of trust – in God and in each other. But by trusting in the power of the Spirit, which is guiding us every moment, I hope we will be fed by our work together, and that we will come to treasure as both a gift and a blessing.