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Advent Word December 1st

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

December 1st – SAID

From the 1st Sunday of Advent lectionary readings: Psalm 122:1. “I was glad when they SAID to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord’.

Two interesting things in the Psalm verse. First it is a communal invite: let US go. Our faith is a communal faith, Jesus calls us (when 2 or 3 are gathered together) to community, the numbers don’t matter, but isolation, other than those moments of quiet prayer, is not the way. We need each other to both encourage and challenge one another. In this verse one group is encouraging someone to go with them on pilgrimage to a holy place, the house of the Lord. Calling one another to worship the holy one, together. It is fine to commune with God in nature, in your own quiet space, but from those experiences we must then be part of a community of faith, a community with plenty of faults, with people who annoy us and leaders who disappoint us. This is the way. Our Episcopal theology of the Eucharist (Holy Communion is such a great name for this!), we do not consider a Eucharist “valid” if the priest says the prayers alone. It takes a community praying together, offering “our selves, our souls and bodies”, for the ordinary elements of bread and wine to become the real presence of Christ.

Secondly, the group doing the invite (“us”) is quick to say where they want the one being invited to go – to the house of the Lord. This makes the one invited “glad”. As I said in my sermon Sunday, maybe not just glad but also relieved. Peer pressure can often find us going places we really don’t want to go or really should not go. We’ve all been there. There is a sense not just of joy over the invite, but perhaps also relief – I was GLAD when they told me where they wanted me to go with them! Perhaps you know someone who would be overjoyed with just such an invite. You could even warn them – we are sinners and hypocrites, yet we need one another, we need the love of one another along with the love of God. Come with us to the house of the Lord. Be welcome at the table of Christ. Let us go, together. Be glad they SAID let US go to God’s house.

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Advent Word – November 30th “Again”

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Forward Movement, the excellent resource for many things Episcopal, including the Forward Day by Day booklets many of you are familiar with, has once again challenged people to reflect on one word each day of Advent. Each word is taken from the Sunday liturgy – the prayers and readings for the Sunday in Advent for each of the 4 weeks of the Advent season. I am going to attempt (pray for me) to add a short reflection on each word each day of Advent. To subscribe to the Advent Word series from Forward Movement, click HERE.

Sunday November 30th – Again

Advent is all about “again”. In our opening Collect of the Day for the 1st Sunday in Advent we are reminded, “when he (Jesus) shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to life immortal”. The word “Advent” comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “coming”, and during this season before Christmas, we rejoice and celebrate the coming of Jesus Christ at his humble birth in Bethlehem, while also looking forward to his “parousia”, Greek for “coming” which is usually associated with the Second Coming of Christ. “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead”, as we say in the Nicene Creed. And at the end of the book of Revelation, we hear an Aramaic word, “Maranatha”, which basically means: “Our Lord, Come”, or even “Our Lord has come”. This word incorporates the double meaning of Advent as we too wait for Jesus to come again, so we may rise to life immortal. Maranatha, Jesus, Maranatha again!

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And the dolphins were watching…

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No Wipeout, instead a perfect day

On Sunday, October 12th we had our annual beach Eucharist. We met at Beasley Park, a public beach with a nice pavilion and restrooms on Okaloosa Island between Ft. Walton Beach and Destin. We set up near the water and this year made an altar out of a cross we use on Good Friday set on some saw horses (not seahorses). Last year I baptized two amazing teenagers in the Gulf, full immersion as you know. This year I had an adult lined up for baptism, she has been attending for over a year and really wanted to be baptized in the Gulf but had a family emergency and was out of town this weekend. In the last several weeks I had a new adult visiting by herself who came up to me and said she felt moved to be baptized at this service. We had a nice talk about it, some pre-baptism instructions, and I agreed to proceed. Let’s call her Sally (not her real name). She is a very sweet person who has been through a LOT, seems to me Jesus would have gone through with this also. That was my prayer, anyway..

Soooo we gather on the beach for our 10am service, with baptism as the program and IN the program, but no Sally. So, I just decided to proceed and renew vows and see if anyone wanted to be dunked as a symbol of their renewal of vows (what can it hurt, I am clear this is not a re-baptism, but it can be meaningful). Just as I was about to begin my off the cuff sermon, I saw Sally coming down the steps from the pavilion, dressed in a wedding gown, train and all! I sent the person who volunteered to be her sponsor (she knows her well) to sit with her and make sure all was well and help her during the service (and help me in the water – with my recent shoulder surgery I was a little concerned about dunking someone and not being able to lift them up after!). We had a large turnout for the service, and there were a good many people around us just enjoying a day at the beach, the water was amazingly beautiful and during the entire service, there were dolphins playing in the water directly behind where we set up!

Sally and her sponsor joined me in the water. My wife, Jennifer, suggested I invite everyone to come stand right on the shoreline to better see and hear (her suggestions are usually really good ones, this one for sure!). Before walking into the gulf, I asked Sally if she was ok getting this wedding gown wet or would she prefer I just pour some water on her head. She immediately responded, “oh yes, I WANT to get this wet, I have good reason!”. So, she was baptized, fully immersed in the sparkling clear waters, and came up crying and thrilled. Our people were very gracious welcoming her into the family of God, bridal gown and all! And everyone kept commenting that a pod of dolphins were playing in the Gulf the entire service! I think they knew something was up!

We then prepared for communion, and I invited any of the beach goers nearby to join us if they wanted to. Well…someone did. I didn’t see all this going on but one of my parishioners spotted a woman standing in the back, crying, and knew something was going on with her spiritually. She made sure the woman knew she was welcome to receive communion. She got in line and as I gave her the body of Christ, she was crying big tears. I didn’t have a clue who she was, having never laid eyes on her before. After receiving she walked over to the side and another parishioner went to hug her and thank her for joining us. The new person (let’s call her Kathy), asked my parishioner if she could be baptized, too! She had watched Sally’s baptism, and she felt drawn by something she could not explain to ask that question, crying and shaking all over. The parishioner asked me, and I said, sounds like the story in Acts when Philip was teaching the Eunuch the meaning of the Isaiah passage he was reading, and the Eunuch said, “here is water, why can’t I be baptized?”. How could I and why would I say no? We said the post communion prayer and then everyone made their way back to the shoreline as Kathy and I and my helper waded in the water (yes we sang that old gospel song as we did so – cause God’s gonna trouble the water!). We promised to take good care of her, and then she was also baptized in the Gulf. My people responded with applause and cheers as we made our way out of the water for the chrism oil and a final blessing.

We found out later Kathy had just moved to the area, lived alone, and was hoping to find a church. She happened to come to the public beach where we were for the only time all year, intending to just enjoy a lovely beach day, when the Holy Spirit showed up and took care of the rest. Sometimes folks, we must let the Spirit have her way. The whole day was amazing and Spirit filled, and people were SO full of  joy! I expect to see Sally and Kathy this coming Sunday, ready to join this happy and grace filled body of Christ in real ways. What a day. YAY JESUS!

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Dirty was the daybreak, Sudden was the change

The title of this blog post comes from a song by Elton John (music) and Bernie Taupin (lyrics) called “Where to now St. Peter”. It is on the Tumbleweed Connection album recorded in 1970 and released the same year as Elton’s self titled album which included the hit, “Your Song”. Tumbleweed Connection is a very unique album in the EJ collection, with a mix of bluesy and country themed tracks, and this song has always haunted me. The words of the title are sung halfway through the 2nd verse and describes, I think, the change in the character’s life as he faces eternity and asks St. Peter, “where to now? Show me the road I am on”.

This song, and especially those words, “Dirty was the daybreak, sudden was the change”, always pops into my mind when thinking about our Katrina experience (by the way for a really detailed look at our experience on the ground, my wife, Jennifer Forrester Knight, offers on her Facebook page some excellent descriptions of what we went through, we being the people of the Gulf Coast of Mississippi.

I am not the first person by any means to quote the saying, “the body knows”. It is like muscle memory, a smell, a sound, a song, a picture, bring it all crashing back. Every time a storm brews in the Gulf it happens. On anniversaries, it happens. When even reminiscing about some of the wonderful people who we met along the way, especially the volunteers from all over the world, seeing their hard work and smiling faces can still trigger that deep, ugly feeling in my gut.

Dirty was the daybreak. Although it was near dusk when the storm finished her job on the coast of Mississippi, the sky was weird. Clouds and gusts of wind still played around the rubble as we scrambled to chainsaw our way out of the driveway of the home we had stayed in, about 5 miles north of our own which was one mile from the beach. I had arthroscopic knee surgery for a meniscus tear just a few days before the storm, so climbing over debris became my physical therapy. For many days in late August and September we had no rain (until Hurricane Rita sent some our way), it was like Katrina had absorbed all the moisture in the universe and dumped it on us and many others to our north, west, and east. We were left with bright sunshine and brutally hot and humid days, with no air conditioning or fans of course. Those day breaks didn’t look dirty, until the light of the new day shone on destruction and devastation as far as you could imagine.

Yep, Sudden was the change.

There are no words to truly describe those early day breaks, other than, perhaps, dirty and sudden. So I will close with a great thanks be to God for all those who helped, who came, who sent money and goods, and who prayed. Twenty years seems like a 100 and like 2 at different times. We as a nation have learned a lot about how to respond to disasters like Katrina, I hope we continue to support each other in the better ways we have learned since then. For Katrina there is no doubt faith communities saved us, but they cannot sustain that level of help forever. Jennifer and I were very blessed to meet so many wonderful people, many good friends to this day. Every hand that reached out in any way, was a blessing. My prayers are with all the people of the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts on this terrible anniversary day. May your day breaks be clean and changes bring blessing.

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Katrina at 20

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I have written a lot on this blog regarding Hurricane Katrina and especially the PTSD which still impacts Jennifer and me whenever storms pop up. This August 29th marks 20 years since the storm hit the coast of Mississippi. I am not aware of a lot of activities on the coast to commemorate the anniversary, nor been invited to participate in any. So I am not sure how we will pass the day, we’ve been pretty good at reflecting on our experiences over the years.

I did want to share a story, the memory of which was triggered by an article in the Mississippi Episcopalian, the diocesan newspaper. It was authored by my friend and former parishioner, Doug MacCullagh, who is currently the Senior Warden and historian at St. Patrick’s in Long Beach, Mississippi, the church I served for 8 years.

I arrived at St. Patrick’s as a brand new Rector in March of 2004. 18 months later the storm changed our lives forever, destroyed our church and most of the area we lived in (Pass Christian and Long Beach) and greatly influenced the rest of my life as a clergy person. In the article Doug described the importance of a statue of the mother of Jesus, Mary. Please read his article HERE before continuing, as the context is important to my story.

Katrina made landfall in Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday morning, August 29th. I (foolishly) had my regular two church services the morning of the 28th, for any folks who had not yet evacuated. We had a decent crowd at the 8am service, then most of those people hit the road. The 10:30 service only had a handful, and after it ended Jennifer and I began to panic a bit and thought about leaving the area, but by then all the highways out were packed with cars, with no way to get to a safe area before the storm arrived. I won’t ever forget a CBS radio news reporter interviewing me between services. As we walked around the property where St. Patrick’s was, he asked what I was most worried about regarding our building. I told him we had made plans to get our most valuable items out of the building and divided them up into large totes, each able to allow church with Eucharist (communion) to take place from the content, but I was concerned about branches from the many Live Oak trees on our property damaging our roof. Can you tell I was naive? As Doug points out in his article, one of the totes contained the marble statue of Mary, the only item recovered after Hurricane Camille in 1969 had destroyed an earlier version of St. Patrick’s (also on the coastline but in a different area on the beach road than the church I served).

The importance of this statue to the people of St. Patrick’s cannot be understated and Doug’s article speaks to this. After the storm passed we were all in shock, the church gone,

28% of my parishioners lost their homes completely, 100% had damage. In Pass Christian, where we lived there were about 9000 housing units pre-Katrina, after the storm 500 of them were habitable. The devastation was enormous.

But I felt within me we needed to try to gather together, to worship and pray and sing and cry – cry a lot! So we never missed a Sunday gathering. The Sunday immediately after the storm found us at Grace Lutheran Church in Long Beach, who graciously hosted both us and St. Thomas Catholic church. We used the parish hall for our service, I think we met early afternoon. The Sun Herald newspaper was miraculously publishing every day, printing the paper off site and delivering free copies all over the coast. We got word to them and WLOX, the local TV station, we would have church on Sunday with the information as to where and when. None of us had working phones, and Grace Lutheran, like the rest of the area, did not have power, but somehow the word got out and a small group of St. Patrick’s folks made their way to the Lutheran church. The reunions upon seeing one another were uplifting and heart breaking as people shared their stories.

Kitty MacCullagh, Doug’s wife who very sadly died this past year, was our long time Altar Guild director and she had the tote with the Mary statue in it. Upon finding this out I got word to Kitty to bring Mary to our church service that Sunday. We sang a hymn and I reached into the tote and pulled out the Mary statue, wrapped in a protective cloth, and placed her on the make shift altar in that Parish Hall. The entire room stilled, people gasped as they realized this long time symbol of hope and recovery was still with us. As I placed Mary on the altar, tears began to fall from all of our eyes. It was a holy moment of faith and grace and thanksgiving.

Fast forward to September of 2007. The Episcopal House of Bishops met in New Orleans. Included in their gathering were opportunities not only to tour devastated areas in NOLA and Mississippi, but also to participate in recovery efforts in both places. St. Patrick’s met on Sundays and Wednesdays at our disaster recovery and relief center, Camp Coast Care (CCC), on the grounds of Coast Episcopal School in Long Beach, where my wife, Jennifer, had run a free medical clinic for five months post storm, serving over 22,000 patients with medical and mental health care. My office was in a trailer at CCC until we finished our new church building in 2009. Quite a few Bishops came and stayed at CCC and were sent out with work crews to help muck out houses, hang sheet rock, paint, etc. It was hot and humid and they worked hard. Then Presiding Bishop, the Most Reverend Kathryn Jefferts Schori, was one of the bishops at CCC and we discovered she could hang sheet rock like a champ! They joined us for worship and I preached about the Mary statue, which I had on display for them to see. The PB was preaching later that Sunday at a special service at the Cathedral in New Orleans, and she asked if she could borrow Mary and use the story in her sermon. So our beloved statue and symbol of hope was shared with the good people of the Diocese of Louisiana that day, and to this day she is still around, watching over the flock of St. Patrick’s in their new location, truly a messenger of resilience and faith for so many.