On Thanksgiving and Imperfection…

Tags

God, gratitude, imperfect, love, messy, perfect, ritual, shadow, sinner, Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Day

Photo credit:  https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/collections/thanksgiving/

The last two weeks have been marked with rituals of thanksgiving:  a community ecumenical Thanksgiving service at the local Roman Catholic Church, Holy Eucharist on Thanksgiving Day at Hickory Neck, dinner and visiting with my dad, and, today, offering the benediction at the 400^th anniversary of the first official English Thanksgiving in North America.  The rituals have all been tremendous blessings and ways to center and ground life in gratitude, a practice that can sometimes fall to the wayside in the busyness of life.

However, what has struck me about this season of gratitude is how imperfect it has been.  Often when we think of Thanksgiving Day, we immediately picture Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of the perfect meal.  But as I checked in with people and as I watched those around me, I realized nothing about this season of thanksgiving has been perfect.  I had parishioners who just welcomed a baby a few days before Thanksgiving Day and had resigned themselves to having Chinese so that no one would have to cook or stress about taking the newborn out.  I heard stories of family drama over the menu for the day.  My own family was coming off a few hospitalizations so resigned ourselves to dinner out – which then got foiled by a two-hour wait, with a wait staff that looked like they wanted to be home with their own families.  The music and collaboration of clergy was beautiful last week, but we hold in tension our denominational differences.  Even the anniversary celebration today is consciously honoring the ways in which the histories of American Indians, African-Americans, and English-Americans bring a shadow over our celebration.

As I have been pondering this imperfection, this disconnect between our ideal of perfected thanksgiving rituals and the reality of the messiness of life, I have actually found deep spiritual comfort.  Nothing about our lives is perfect.  We are all sinners, trying to be better versions of ourselves.  Even our offering of thanksgiving is imperfect.  But the love of God is perfect.  God sees our messiness and loves us anyway.  God sees the ways we hurt each other, the ways we argue, the ways we are rude or unkind, the ways that we cannot always honor our rituals, and God loves us anyway.  In fact, I sometimes wonder if God doesn’t prefer our imperfection, for in confessing our imperfection, we are fully honest, fully vulnerable, and fully trusting of God.  We bring our real selves to God, and it is there that we give the most heartfelt thanksgiving.  We feel, know, and experience God most powerfully in those moments of imperfection.

This week, I invite you to continue your practice of gratitude with God and one another.  In our thanksgiving, we are not just thanking one another for appearance’s sake, but we are thanking one another in fullness, in love, and in generosity.  Use this week to find people to thank – for the big things and the very tiny things.  My guess is we may all start working toward the perfection of God’s love with each act of thanksgiving.

On Liturgy, Love, and the Lord…

Tags

communion, community, Episcopal Church, Eucharist, God, instructed, liturgy, longing, mental, mystery, physical, ritual, spiritual, welcome, wonder

Photo credit:  Hickory Neck Episcopal Church; reuse with permission only.

This past Sunday we celebrated an “Instructed Eucharist,” a worship service in the Episcopal Church narrated to explain how and why we do the things we do in Church.  Though Instructed Eucharists are pretty common in the Episcopal Church, I had never led one myself, and I found I was pretty nervous about how it would go.  I worried the narrative pieces would feel too long and people would start to lose attention.  I worried the worship would feel too disjointed by narration to feel like worship.  I worried the teaching portion would not be particularly meaningful for those gathered.

As in most things, my worries were unfounded.  Many of those gathered shared that the narrative did not make the service too long.  In fact, they were surprised at how seamlessly the narrative flowed, and how engaging the experience was.  Several of those gathered were touched by the parts that are always touching – scripture, music, preaching, the peace, communion, and the dismissal.  And many of those gathered, of all ages, and of all spiritual backgrounds, shared not only did they love the service, but they also learned many new things.

What caught my attention about the feedback was not simply that people liked the experience.  What caught my attention about the feedback was people were excited about worship.  Having learned something about the weekly ritual of worship allowed our worship to shift from the physical (the habits of bowing, kneeling, standing, singing, eating, greeting) to the mental (understanding the theology, history, and spirituality of our worship) to the spiritual (the opening of our bodies and minds creating deeper connection with God).  That kind of excitement is at the heart of what drew most Episcopalians to the Episcopal Church – a ritual that somehow spoke to something deep inside them, and of which they wanted more.  Sometimes that longing could be easily described, but sometimes that longing was too mysterious to capture in words.

If you had that experience this past Sunday, or if you have ever been touched by that mysterious sense of God in the worship within the Episcopal Church, I invite you to share that sense of wonder with someone today.  You may share the first moment you stepped into an Episcopal Church, or a lifetime of practice, or a simple Instructed Eucharist.  Share the wonder and beauty with someone else, and invite them into the same experience that has enlivened your spiritual journey.  And if you have never had that experience in a church before, know you are welcome to join us at Hickory Neck – a place where you can weekly come and participate – whether physically, mentally, or spiritually – in something bigger than yourself, but in something that makes you feel more grounded in yourself – something that allows you to find God within, already there waiting for you, affirmed in the community around you.  You are welcome here.

On Baseball, Community, and Church…

Tags

baseball, church, community, disciple, God, Good News, Little League, Lord, love, meaning, ritual, serve, support

Photo credit:  newprovidencepal.org/baseball/

This summer we have had the joy of supporting both a friend’s and a parishioner’s little league baseball teams.  Not having boys myself, it has been a long time since I watched a little league game.  In fact, after the first game we saw, I shared with my husband that I could not imagine giving up so much family time for one member’s extracurricular interest.  He understood my hesitation, but invited me to look around.  You see, with all those mornings, afternoons, and evenings at the baseball field; with the ritual of packing chairs, canopies, and ice chests; and with the repeated gathering of parents and siblings, slowly, slowly a community is formed.  Parents learn about each other’s lives, siblings convert boredom into adventures, and guests are quickly made to feel welcome with a shared chair, beverage, or joke.

What those teams, especially travelling teams, have done is create a community.  They have created a group of people who know each other’s stories, who share wins and losses together, and who slowly learn to talk more than just baseball – but life!  They have created a community where kids do not just have one set of parents – they have a whole community of moms, dads, and siblings.  They have created a community that revolves around ritual, memory-making, and maybe even meaning-making.  In many ways, those teams have created something similar to what Church creates.  Church too creates a multigenerational community – where every elder is a grandma, and every adult can parent children.  Church too creates a community where wins and losses are shared together, where stories are known, and companionship is created.  Church too revolves around ritual, memory-making, and meaning-making.

Church creates community, but uses that creation for a different purpose.  The community of Church nurtures, forms, offers comfort, and creates community, but almost as a side-benefit to the main work we do.  Our purpose is to shape disciples for sharing and living the Good News of God in Christ.  So, while we are loved and supported in the community, we are loved and supported so that we can go out into the world to love and support others.  While we share stories, wins, and loses, we also go out to listen to others’ stories, naming where we see God acting in their lives.  While we participate in ritual, making memories and meaning, that same ritual sends us out to love and serve the Lord in the world.  We may come for the community Church creates.  But we stay because that community demands we be much more.

Today I am grateful for our many communities.  In fact, I think we all need more than just Church communities to keep us grounded in the world God created.  But if you haven’t been to church in a while, I invite you to give it a try.  You may find even more than you were looking for!