FAITH IN ACTION

Mrs. Robin has been busy since my last visit.  She certainly has faith that this nest is going to be safe for her eggs.  Faith that she is going to even have eggs.  Faith that things are going to happen the way they are supposed to happen. 

Before I even made this visit, I today took a leap of faith of my own by dusting and storing away my beloved Christmas creche and lavender Christmas tree which have been in our TV area giving me solace and comfort; reminding me of the promise that all will be well.  I no longer need this crutch.  I am okay now.  The church is closing.  We have enough money to pay decent severence to our staff and to keep current with our bills until the final sevice which will take place on May 26.  It has been a long and stressful time.  I just could not bear to put away "Christmas" while I was deeply mourning this loss. 

I will still grieve.  Tears come easy, too easy.  The ache in my heart is forever.  And that's okay.  There will one day be new places to nest, new eggs to nurture, and new fledglings to support and encourage.  One day at a time.  This day is the day that it was NOT sad and heartbreaking to put away Christmas.  It is spring.  There is hope.  There is faith that all will be well.

HOPE

Mrs. Robin in going to try again.  Maybe it isn't the same Mrs. Robin.  Maybe it is.  The faith that it takes to start building this nest, four feet off the ground right next to our back stairs.... WOW!  Now, that is faith.  Some might call it instinct.  Perhaps faith is instinctive. 

If a mother robin can have that much faith, then surely I can have enough faith to know that the closing of Grace Church is not an end.  It can surely be the beginning of a new nesting in some other place.  In fact there will be multiple nesting places for the people who will be temporily without a church home. We will not all choose to go to the same new place.  We have different needs and different experiences.  What we have learned at Grace we will take with us and be changed yet again and change those with whom we join.

Maybe this is a good time for a church to be closing its doors.  It is spring.  There is that hopeful promise of all things new.  We have been enriched in this place.  We have learned more than we can ever pass on.  We have experienced resurrection and we will now follow Christ into the world to do what God would have us do.  We are equipped.  We are ready. 

APPREHENSION

Here it is April 13 and the Christmas Cactus is blooming.  How very odd as I have just today removed the Christmas table cloth and replaced it with the flowering one for summer.  The seasons are running into one another.  The world is topsy turvey.  It is confusing and unsettling.

Here it is April 13 and I am NOT looking forward to tomorrow's Vestry Meeting.  When finances are concerned, the emotions run hot.  When the church is closing and the money is running out the emotions are raw.  People are vulnerable and possibly not wanting to make hard decisions.  Hard decisions have to be made.  What do we do about staff severance?  Is there enough left to pay the current bills AND give severance to the staff?  On top of this there is a question of outreach requests.  Too much to grasp. The world is topsy turvey.  It is confusing and unsettling. And the meeting is tomorrow.  And we will have to make decisions.

Personalities clash.  Emotions may cloud judgement.  We will be hard put to be courteous and pastoral, to remain calm, to listen to one another.  We will have to count on God to be in the decision making.  We will have to count on God to guide us through the decision making.  We will have to count on God....

LIVING INTO THE ISSUES

In the midst of chaos and confusion, heartbreak and grief, self doubt and anger, I try to find peace.  Well, at least solace.  Yes, solace.  That's it.  Comfort.  Knitting helps.  Maybe it is the constant rhythmic motion that soothes me.  My hands are creating something with these needles and this yarn.  It is good.  Soothes the mind, calms the body, replenishes the soul.

A return to blogging after more than a year is both daunting and challenging. It is time.  It is time to return with these issues in my life as I struggle to understand and live with them.  To make sense of them.  To move on with them to the other side of them.

Gabriel, my lovable, six pound Shih Tzu, of some twelve years, is losing control of his rear legs.  He previously lost his left eye and his right eye does not see a whole lot and is treated with drops twice a day.  He is small.  He is precious. He is couragous.  We will care for him and give him all the comfort and support that we are able.  We will not let him be in pain.  This is a difficult path for me to live.  But live it I must.  Blogging will keep track of how we deal with this issue and what it does to alter our lives.

Secondly, the church that I have attended for the last twenty years is closing.  Grace Episcopal Church, Norwalk cannot continue for lack of parishioner participation in doing God's work and funds to maintain the physical plant.  I have been a very active member of this parish serving in many roles and this is breaking my heart.  I am in a greiving process.  I cry a lot.  Sometimes I am angry.  In less than two weeks those eligible to vote will vote to close or stay open.  Blogging sooner would have tracked what has led us to this point.  That is hindsight.  It just is.  As time goes on perhaps some of that will come forth as I look back from where we are.

Thirdly, relationship issues.  I will keep those quiet for now, perhaps journaling them as time goes on.  Bill and I have been together for thirteen years now and there are yet differences that can be resolved.  We have been in relationship therapy for four years and it continues  to help us to communicate and understand one another.

SOoo, three huge issues to handle all at once is difficult for me in this, my seventy fifth year.  I will live into them.  I will be changed. 

HOSPITALITY

This evening I am the Grace Host. Something I signed on for over a year ago. Sometimes I have to make myself get to church on a Thursday evening after work in the rush hour traffic on I95. It is worth it. It really is worth the effort.

Being a "host" entails just being here. I sit in the office. I bring my computer so that there is work to accomplish when I am not 'hosting.' I greet everyone with a wave and a friendly hello. It took a while for some of them to accept that a friendly wave was just that, a friendly wave and that I was here consistently the second and fourth Thursdays of every month. And then when they got used to my being here, some of them started stopping and exchanging a little small talk. Now I am familiar enough that sometimes they share confidences.

It is hospitality. There are a lot of groups that meet at our church. There are three AA groups, a manic/depressive group, Literacy volunteers, a local symphony orchestra, it goes on. And that is besides the two other congregations that worship here. How wonderful it would be if there were a host available to meet and greet all of these groups as they arrive for their meetings. So far it hasn't worked out -- for one reason or another. I feel that we need to look at this ministry again and see if we can't figure out how to make it a really important part of how we interact with the community. It isn't being "church," it is being hospitable. It is being human. It is offering a face of caring and acceptance.

FEB 10 AND THINKING .......

It has been way over a month since my last writing. Too long to be accountable to anyone who follows me OR just happens to drop in. I have been really hung up on format and content. Recently there have been many blogs with just wonderful photos -- daily. And blogs with terrific themes. My photos are not that great and my life is boring.

Howsomever, there are things going on that need posting and discussing. AND Lent is coming up altogether too soon and I am NOT going to bog myself down into some kind of Lent ritual/discipline. What I am going to do is to be a little more active here. And hope that there are followers of my blog who will comment and participate in discussion.

I am linked on the http://www.graceb2u.com/ site which is Grace Episcopal Church. I am an active member. I am passionate about some of what is happening at Grace. I plan to talk about that -- A LOT. I have really strong opinions about 'stuff.' Sometimes that's good, sometimes not. I will always listen to another opinion with an open mind.

There are two Lent offering in which I plan to participate and I will comment on both of those. There is merger talk going on and I will certainly comment about that. The Mission Congregation that meets once a month is a reall passion of mine and I plan on commenting about this group -- which, by the way I feel is the REAL Grace Church.

Don't be shy about comments. Just be polite and respectful to one another.

WHERE IS GOD?

I had thought that God was in our hearts as we enumerated the attributes and characteristics of Grace Church. When all was said and done, the lists compiled, the obvious was obvious. And the Bishop asked "WHERE IS GOD?" Well, everywhere. But you don't SAY it, he answered. Nowhere on these lists that you made is the word God or Jesus. NOWHERE.

Oops! What were we thinking? Inward, of course. And some were thinking of how Grace Church WAS; and some were think about how we want Grace Church TO BE. There was very little of what Grace Church really IS. And we certainly did NOT mention God in any of it.

We don't like to look at what is and we seem shy about even mentioning God. We are afraid to look because we know we are going to come up short. So, why not just look at the short of it and build from there? How hard can that be? And put God into it. A better question for us to be considering might be "How do we experience God?" And the ways that we can hear this is by listening to one another. Gathering and listening. Hearing how God has worked in our lives and how we expect to go forward following Jesus. Talking. Listening. Hearing. Gathering together. Praying.

TWITTER/BLATHER/PHTTTT!

Twitter seems like so much blather. Or so I am assuming from the descriptions I hear on the news and in some blogs. I don't blather -- much. Maybe why I have been so quiet here for such a long time. I need to think through things before I see the letters forming into words.

Twitter just appears to me to be brainless. Like texting, who needs to be that attached. I am thinking that I don't need to be that attached. I like to listern. I am a blog lurker and rarely comment. This is pretty much the way I am in "real" life. I sit on the sidelines and listen. When I do speak it is from the innermost part of me. Sometimes spoken without prudent self censorship. I get into a lot of trouble this way. But the truth in my heart gets put on the table. The elephant in the room is acknowledged -- sometimes too forcefully, but, hey, somebody's gotta do it.

I am too private for twitter. Anyone else's and especially my own. Maybe I am too private for blogging. Maybe that is part of my problem here. Perhaps I need to let my hair down, so to speak, and really say it the way I see it. That can get me into a lot of hot water, so to speak, so I will give it a little bit of consideration. But watch out, folks, I'm tired of rigid thinking, passive, denial ridden pew sitters. I am about to explode with frustration and continually thwarted hopefulness.

THE UPPER ROOM

WE are in the upper room. Grace Church is in that upper room. The disciples did not know how to cope without Jesus. They locked themselves into the upper room because they were fearful. Grace Church has locked itself into the past because we are fearful of losing the past. The disciples could not understand the death of Jesus and how they could go on with life. The Grace Church congregation does not understand the death of Grace Church as we know it or consider how to go on with life.

The disciples did not realize that life would never be the same. Grace Church does not realize that she will never be the same. Death changes everything. Death changes life. And so we sit as the disciples sat. Frightened. Bereft. Hopeless. Aimless. We are an apathetic bunch, waiting for things to get back to the way they were. Waiting. Hopeless. Aimless.

The disciples waiting in the upper room did not have the experience of the resurrection. We do. We have heard the story over and over and over again. Do we believe? Do we REALLY believe in resurrection? We are NOT the disciples sitting in the upper room. We have the benefit of knowing the story. We have the benefit of knowing that Jesus came to his bereft disciples and is already with us. If we believe we will look to resurrection and what that means to us right now.

It is not going to happen on it’s own, folks. We have to believe it. More that that, we have to LIVE it. Death changes life. We are being changed. NOTHING will ever be the same. We can accept that or we can deny it. Denial will be a slow and agonizing death. Accepting that this death we are experiencing will change how we gather, how we worship, how we view ourselves as disciples in the community is a call to act. What we DO!

Wake up, people! It is time to DO! It isn’t about what the church can do for us, it is about what we can do as church. We have to DO the doing. Wake up, people, everywhere. We don’t have to sit idle and frightened, locked in an upper room. We can gather together in hope and go out into the world living out the Good News. And we can encourage and support one another in our individual and collective endeavors.

Grace Church as we have known it is DEAD. It can be remembered. It can be celebrated as a good thing of the past. Now, let us all work together to resurrect ourselves as a church that will be a monumental credit to those who have gone before us and a church worthy of who we are as a people of today and build for tomorrow.

Death changes life. Let us choose the new life that we can be.

Jesus is here. Choose Jesus and the new life.

ANNUAL VISIT TO INDIANA....

...to stay with my sister, Jacq. To relax. To laugh, reminisce, cry if needs be. Sisters are something pretty special. At least mine is. She just accepts me. The whole me. Whatever size or shape or attitude or weird phase I happen to currently espouse. She just loves me. It is the most wonderful gift of the whole world.

SOooo, I have pretty much wrapped up my current responsibilities at church. Today we hosted an Open House so that we might come face to face with others that share our space. We have a Haitian Baptist group that has been worshiping at our church for over twenty years, The Temple of Deliverance who has been worshiping at our church for three years. We worship at different times and this was an opportunity to get to talk with one another and share some of our story. As Episcopalians we are blessed to be able to share our space with such diverse worshipers. There are also three AA groups, a Mental Health Support group, Literacy Volunteers, and other community groups.

Our church is also in the process of assisting one of the local Methodist churches in their annual Community Thanksgiving Dinner. This is their tenth year and as with many congregations their numbers have dwindled over the years and so we decided to be a part of that with them. It is coming to the place where many churches cannot do alone what they did in the past. And how simple to join forces. I hope that we can do more of this community work.

Packing, of course. I sent a box of clothes ahead as I will be in IN for two weeks. And getting the house ready for Thanksgiving. I return the day before the PA family comes up for the holiday. The dining room table and chairs are arranged and the table linens and decorations placed. I even had the inspiration to make and freeze a scrumptious Sunday Italian Gravy for our Friday or Saturday meal. It is going to be great fun and I am going to be refreshed and renewed from my visit.

Two more days. I am so excited. Our Vestry meeting is Monday evening and I fly out on Tuesday. I am the Parish Clerk and as part of the Vestry I really want to be at every possible meeting. We are at a critical stage. The make or break stage. The, when are we going to have to close the doors stage, so I want very much to be part of the decision making.

Two more days.

TRANSITION/TRANSFORMATION

I have avoided talking about "my" church on this blog because it is listed on the "Resource" page of our web site and I was uncomfortable really speaking my mind for all those parishioners to read. BUT, as you notice, I have not posted in over a month. My prayer and ponder time is pretty much focused on the health and well being of my parish and the ability to express that was being stifled by this feeling of exposure. And so I am not going to hold back any longer. I am going to put it out here for any and all to read. Read and respond -- with respect, dignity and integrity for all who choose to share

We have made the transition of healing from our past life into this new life with our new priest. She is titled "Priest-in-Charge" because we are not financially stable enough to call a rector. We are drawing down our endowment at an alarming rate -- all things being equal we will be out of endowment by mid 2011 and will have to close our doors. (I think I got that right. Anyone reading may make a correction of this statement.) That does not give us very much time for transformation.

Many in our parish are still into the thinking that whatever we do going forward is to save Grace Church. OR, even worse, fix Grace Church. It isn't about paying the oil bill and the electric bill and putting on a new roof. It isn't about pulling in more people to help share the financial load. It's about US. Too many of us are not willing to look to ourselves, individually and collectively, and see that WE, we persons, we Christians, are the ones that need saving. So many of us have decided that we're done. DONE? How can that be? How can we sit in the pews Sunday after Sunday with the smug, snug feeling that we have done whatever we needed to have done. WRONG!!!

There is more. There is always more. More to learn: a deeper experience of God; a closer relationship with neighbor -- pewmate, lifemate, workmate, streetmate; a sense of responsibility to our own small community, and even more to the community outside our doors. AND there is more than Sunday worship. Of the 168 hours of our week we spend 1.25 at worship. Of the 166.75 remaining hours, how many do each of us give to ministry? I'm talking about 'in-house' ministry and the ministry we do in our week-day lives. Do the math, make a pie chart. Be accountable to yourself.

This is only a beginning. I'm just getting started.