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Why Not Here…..

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As I waste time this morning on here, instead of finishing sermons for Advent 4 (tonight) and Christmas Eve (tomorrow) and Christmas Day (Monday – but it will definitely be a wing-it-as-you-go sermon), I am struck, once again, by the faith of Mary and of how she was “already blessed” by her belief, before Jesus even made the grand entrance in a stable.
Which brings me to prayer request, part two!
Thanks for all of you who have been praying for St. Patrick’s and our continued recovery. Those prayers have been answered in an amazing way! I cannot really yet give out too many details, but this week our vestry accepted the recommendation of our site committee to pursue one particular piece of property that we all feel is a FANTASTIC location for the new St. Pats. It is in the heart of town, near schools, residential neighborhoods, highly visible, high traffice, pretty land, land that is above Katrina flood levels, the list goes on. The process of arriving at this decision was hard yet wonderful, prayerful, and faith filled. I cannot applaud loudly enough the work of our site committee, our planning committee, our consultant, and our vestry. I am PUMPED UP about this decision.
Which brings me to your prayers…..please don’t stop.
The only hurdle yet to cross to obtain this property is the price. We have begun negotiations, and the starting point of the land owner is too high. Our task is to convince him how we will care for this land, how we will offer so much to the community from there, how we had previously given over to the city a large part of our property for a city park, how we are committted to that same kind of presence at our new location. It is our hope and prayer that appealing to his sense of civic duty and our intentions will help us in the negotiations.
Can we claim this in God’s name? Can we dare to rejoice in God’s providence, even before it happens? Sounds kinda like Mary to me. Will you join me and our people in praying for this kind of miracle for our church?
Why not here? Why not claim God’s blessing on the process we have followed and the prayers we have said? Why not look for the unexpected and use it to give God glory?
Will you join me?

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Prayer Request

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Hello, my legions of blogger fans!
I know it’s been a while since I have posted. Things are really hopping here and I have been up to my neck. A lot of it is good, though, and we are making great progress.
Our rebuilding committees have been working fast and furious. We have hired an architect (YEA), and our mission and ministry committee has completed surveying over half of our congregation and they have developed a draft mission statement. This will be presented to the Parish at a dinner on Sunday night, Dec. 3rd. I think it is EXCELLENT and really reflects what we learned from the surveys about who we are and who we want to serve. The process of formulating the statement was really cool. I am excited about it. Once approved, I will share it on here, I know you all are anxious to read it!
Our site selection committee is reaching the finish line. Some of you know we thought we had a property location last March, and after having to wait a couple of months, the owner then decided not to sell (no fault there, the owner’s circumstances changed dramatically). This put us back at square one, but it is really ok as all the above work needed to happen before we even thought about designing a building. This committee has narrowed lcoations down to 3 or 4, and the architects have walked each of these properties and gave us some feedback about them.
This brings me to the prayer request. I believe the location decision for the new St. Patrick’s to be the most important and most difficult thing we have to do. Where we will be will impact this church for generations. Where we will be is more important, in my view, than what the building looks like. So this decision is HUGE. Next Tuesday this committee and our overall planning committee will meet with our consultant. Each property will be evaluated against criteria we have established. The criteria will be weighted as to importance and then tallied up for each location. From this meeting I hope the site committee will be able to present their recommendation to the vestry within one week.
The vestry is tasked with the final decision (with Diocesan approval of course). So these meetings from now until Dec 7 or so will be so very important. I would appreciate your prayers for all the committee members, for our consultant, for me as the Rector trying to lead this process in a Godly way, and to our Vestry as they struggle with such a monumental decision. I think we are going about things the right way, I am impatient but I understand it’s not my time frame we are working under. I am very excited that we are reaching this point.
Putting up a sign on property in the next few weeks promoting “Future Site of St. Patrick’s” will be an incredible morale boost to our folks.
I appreciate your prayers. I will keep you posted. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

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Sad news keeps coming…..

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It’s been that kind of year. It’s hard enough trying to live day-to-day in the aftermath of Katrina, church gone, half our membership gone, etc. But personal tragedies seem to be following us these last few months.
First, losing my seminary classmate and friend, Larry, on Palm Sunday. Then in May my dear Aunt Sharlie died with my wife and I at her side. And the last 5 weeks I have been part of 4 funerals, two for parishioners. 10 days ago I buried a member I had come to know through my wife serving as her hospice nurse. She ended up joining my church and we all became close as she battled her terminal illness. She lost what little she owned in Katrina and spent her last year in a nursing home far away from her beloved Gulf Coast.
Then, yesterday we said goodbye to Tommy, our head usher and all around good guy. Challenged somewhat physically and mentally, Tommy was an inspiration to us all (if you get a chance click on that link and read the article).
Then today, more terrible news. Our beloved friend, Ann Jones-Tutor, of Southaven passed away. Ann was a native of England and a long, long time participant on our annual Honduras Medical Mission. She was my prayer partner on two of those trips and accompanied my wife on all of her trips there (close to 10). She was a nurse and a joy to be with. She died from complications following knee surgery, of all things!
It’s been a tough run of late, folks. Keep us in your prayers.

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Saturday Night LIVE!!

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We have made the switch to Saturday night services! The gym where we’ve been meeting for most of the past year has become, let’s say, very difficult for us to remain there. It is HOT HOT HOT for one thing. And the dust and airborne stuff in there has gotten very bad. I have several parishioners who have gotten ill from being in church, and they along with a handful of others just cannot be present there anymore.
I began discussing with some of the churches in town about using their facilities. No one had a time slot that would work for us on Sunday mornings. We decided to try Saturday nights – and the local Lutheran church has very graciously offered their building to us. For now, we won’t have a Sunday morning service at all – and that’s very weird to me. It doesn’t feel right, but we will try this on for a while and see how it goes.
Two Saturdays ago we launched this service, and it was a BIG HIT! We had 90 folks there. Our average Sunday attendance (ASA) pre-Katrina was 140 (up from 125 when I arrived here). So for 90 to be there on a Saturday night, considering how many of our folks have moved away, was really a great turn out.
It remains to be seen if this will hold up. Will people really stop what they are doing on Saturdays and get ready for church? Will moving off of Sunday mornings mean some people may switch to other churches? Time will tell. I am hoping to add a Sunday morning service as soon as a facility becomes available, or perhaps a VERY early one at the Lutheran church (but keeping the Sat evening one). We could meet there around 7:15 and be out of their way for their own services.
But for now, I like the idea of us being one body together. It’s been that way since the storm and I think it’s been good for us. Once we are comfortable in the space and have the kinks out, and once I am convinced our numbers will support this move, we will then decide on the Sunday morning options.
It does kill me to miss college football games for CHURCH! Oh, the sacrifices we must make…..

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These are good words….

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The following was written by Bruce Colville. Bruce sold his home in NYC to come and live at our disaster relief center and aid in the recovery efforts. He is a good friend, and as you can see from this, a great writer. He describes far better than I could the gathering in our outdoor chapel on Aug 27th to remember the anniversary of “the storm”. The original had pictures from the service and from around the destroyed area. If you wish to hear the sermon he references, click here.

Only the oaks remain.

Upright and dark their vertical survival is all that prevented a complete washing clean:

Banda Aceh or Phuket.

I am not kidding.

The first things you see are the oaks. From wide immovable trunks, thick encompassing arms reach broadly over the swept lots, slabs and pieces of foundation that is Beach Boulevard in Long Beach. Since last fall you see that leaves (non-deciduous) have filled the smaller branches, even faint traces of the once ubiquitous Spanish Moss have begun to appear.

You are about a dozen feet above sea level on the former site of this small Episcopal Church. It is Sunday morning, August 27th, the first mass to be celebrated here since the last one was benediction-ed, with some haste in the face of evacuation, one year ago.

You sit under a small tent where once the outdoor chapel stood. You look about. Actually, you notice green everywhere, tangled and waist-high, covering completely the footprint of a sanctuary, farther over an office and the Sunday school. Overgrowth might be the technical term. Weeds, scrub, high grasses and delinquent shrubs are what they are, really. You are saddened, as if ruination were not enough, but this: vanquished by weeds seems the final insult.

You should’ve known, seen the irony. This is grim evidence of new life. The Celtic Christians would tell you (you later are told) that all growth is evidence of life renewed and this is, after all, St. Patrick’s Church.

Another beloved disciple lived his final years on the island Patmos surrounded by an unruly and maddening sea. From that ravaged beach he was caught up in the revelation of a new heaven and earth. And the one who was seated on the throne said to him, to us, for all time: “See!”

“See?” See what? How do you see when all around nothing is left? You ask that question this very morning. You have asked it in your own life as well. Again the words come from his aged half-crazed lips. “…the one who is seated on the throne said: ‘See, I am making all things new.’ ”


* * * * * * * * *

The first thing you hear is the quiet. You hear that a lot in our communities. You hear the hollow stillness of what is no more and the aimless rustling of that which will never be the same again. Then there is some hammering too, the din of repair and restoration, even on a Sunday morning: perhaps especially so.

You hear the high whistle of Slane, the Irish ballad and the opening phrase Be Thou My Vision. It is the music of what is surely to come.

* * * * * * * * *

Words are read, another ancient prophet, again with the oaks (the planting of the Lord) and something about the rebuilding of ruins. When you read together the psalm appointed your mind starts to wander. You look around. Behind you, the annoying child, up there the big oak is blocking the sun nicely; with the soft breeze it is enough to keep the heat away. You wish it were the same for the gnats.

Stand for the gospel. Then sit. He still stands… the one up front at the altar wearing the cassock and stole. Have you ever heard a pin drop on sand?

“What can I say?”

It’s not much of a sermon starter. You hear this year-worn priest’s voice aching all around the thin edges like dark filmy ice stretched across a pool of freezing water you dare not plunge into.

Then he says it again entirely unsure of where to place the italics:

“What can I say?”

In one of those unique moments in the long storied tradition of Christian homiletics, he doesn’t. He doesn’t go on and try to say something. He just lets it be.

This was proclaimed a service of remembrance and hope. Nevertheless it is grief and loss, anguish, dust and ashes. Most came. Some simply would not. It is a mass. It is formal ceremony. It is like a funeral and a part of the process is just getting through the steps you have to take. This is the way the human heart works.

There’s not a lot of eye contact, you notice…you can notice; you remain an outsider after all. It is more the sitting very still variety, more looking straight ahead. It is an hour at the end of a year of hours of just trying to hold it together…. Well, what is there to look at anyway?

Then something changes. Reality, the helplessness of past and present, is incontrovertibly altered. God intervenes. The Greco-Romans called it deus ex machina — the appearance of a god to redeem and restore the tragedy of our woeful drama. The Christian church calls it a sacrament. No matter how many they choose to number, sacraments are symbols and enactments of the greatest intervention of all: the one that began against the bare wood of a manger and is called the incarnation.

A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.

(BCP)

This morning you will celebrate two sacraments: baptism and communion. The first is so logical, so perfect and obvious that it almost strikes you as a complete surprise. Of course there will be a baptism! In baptism we are buried in water but rather than drowning we are raised up and out of the water. That raising up initiates and is a visible sign of new life. The past goes under those waters. So do loss, pain and brokenness. So does death and Death itself.

But we rise up out of the waters of baptism to a life that we didn’t think we would get. It is a gift. Redeemed as can only be affected by a god and restored wholly to life: it is an image of eternity.

The second sacrament follows. Communion or the Eucharist, as the Anglicans say, is something we do at almost every church service. Because we have and because we do it makes perfect sense this morning.

No matter the variety of Christian theologies on the Eucharist, they all seem to agree that the sacrament is a way that the Church is invited to experience Jesus’ presence in a tangible and uncommon way.

Interestingly for a moment like this, in baptism and communion you enact something that Jesus did and something that he told his followers to do. If you look at the Last Supper and the few other New Testament references to communion, you see moments in time that are marked by uncertainty for the future, gripped by suffering, death and a loss of all hope. When you add in the admonition to do this often and in remembrance of Me, this morning is blessed with a clarity and the sense of God incarnate who desires to fully join us in all of life.

If we can experience Jesus in these moments, then the Jesus we experience is the same resurrected Jesus that his early followers encountered. The body is physical and is touched. Yes, it is preternatural but it is also real. This body still bears its scars, the wound in the side and the imprint of nails. The Jesus encountered has suffered and the body we meet at this table is meant to be handled.

This is very good news on the slabs of Long Beach.

* * * * * * * * *

The wood that began the incarnation has mostly disappeared, save the occasional crèche in December. The wood that was its climax still stands, in your lives and mine, amidst every act of drama and loss that is shaking this world. It is present on this day. It is there in the endless quagmires, that broad swath of death and war that arcs across continents a half a globe away: the disasters of our own making. Add to that, the muck that was once New Orleans.

Here in the sands and bayous of coastal Mississippi it still stands, towering o’er the wrecks of time.


The mass concludes with an a cappella singing of the Irish Blessing, a long-standing tradition for special services.

May the road rise with you.

May the wind be always at your back.

It is too familiar. It catches you by surprise undermining the final ramparts of feeling that defend the heart.

May the sun shine warm upon your face.


It is the fourth line that is the problem and suddenly everyone knows it:

May the rain fall soft upon your fields.

I think I managed a word or two. Around me, I only heard air coming out in metered time and that wet whistling sound when suddenly puffed cheeks exhale.

And until we meet again,

May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

Let the whole world see and know that things which were cast down are being raised up and things which had grown old are being made new.

– Anglican Collect (BCP)