In the Desert In the Desert inside 3 “But then what?” Thinking about Jesus’ temptations in the desert. 5 “Abbas” & “ammas” Who were the desert fathers and moth- ers, and what can they teach us about choices in our own lives? 7 Got acedia? A look at the so-called “noonday demon” and the power of community to heal. On the cover: Grand Canyon, by Patrick Doherty. See page 15 for notes on the artist. Visit our diocese online www.edusc.org 10 Rule of Life In the desert or not, don’t leave home without it. Lent 2009 Crosswalk
Transcript
In the DesertIn the Desert
The official publication of the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina
inside3 “But then what?”
Thinking about Jesus’ temptations in the desert.
5 “Abbas” &
“ammas”
Who were the desert fathers and moth-ers, and what can they teach us about choices in our own lives?
7 Got acedia?
A look at the so-called “noonday demon” and the power of community to heal.
On the cover: Grand Canyon,by Patrick Doherty. See page 15 for notes on the artist.
Visit our diocese onlinewww.edusc.org
10 Rule of Life
In the desert or not, don’t leave home without it.
Lent 2009
Crosswalk
Crosswalk Official Publication of the Episcopal Diocese
sented two plenary sessions on the characteristics
of healthy churches and the obstacles to healthy
development that inevitably come along. He also
offered a two-session workshop on evangelism.
More than 20 additional workshops rounded
out the day, covering topics related to our dioc-
esan priorities of health, formation, mission, and
outreach and addressing everything from “psy-
cho-spiritual balance for church leaders” to “IPod
kids and Episcopal traditions” and “outreach for
the long haul.”continued on page 14
SAVE THE DATE MAY 2, 2009
Equipped for Action: Changing Lives, IIIChrist Church Episcopal School, GreenvilleKeynote speaker: The Rev. Dr. David T. Gortner, Director of the Doctor of Ministry Program and Professor of Evangelism and Congregational Leadership at Virginia Theological Seminary.
The people of St. Peter’s, Greenville, plan for mission during diocesan Leadership Day
Lent, 2009
Sisters and Brothers, dearly Beloved,
Moses led God’s chosen people in the desert for 40years, searching for “home.” Jesus withdrew to the desert for 40 days, “to be tempted by the devil.”You and I are called into Lent by the Church for a period of 40 days “to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”
My only experiences in a real desert occurred during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land—and a drive across Texas without air conditioning, both years ago. But I have been in emotional and spiritual deserts often. I’m willing to wager that you have, too.
The Gospels give interesting, but slightly varying, accounts of our Lord’s experience in the desert. Matthew writes that he was led by the Spirit “to be tempted . . . ,” that he fasted, and that “the tempter came . . .to him. . . .” Mark: “The Spirit . . . drove him out into the wilderness,” where he was “tempted by Satan . . . [and] was with the wild beasts. . . .” Luke: “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit . . . was led by the Spirit in the wilder-ness, where . . . he was tempted by the devil,” and “ate nothing” at all. . . .” (St. John’s version of the Gospel makes no mention of the desert experi-ence.)
To be sure, all of us, as we acknowledge in the Collect for the First Sun-day in Lent, are “assaulted by many temptations.” But that is not the only facet of the Lord’s experience in the desert with which we may identify. There are times in our lives when we, too, are “with . . . wild beasts”—those occasions when we are assaulted not only by temptations but also by trials and traumas of human experience which could destroy us.
There is still another facet of our Lord’s desert experience which we can know—the grace of God’s power, strengthening us for the painful experi-ences of life—the “deserts” into which we are driven not by our own wills. Now I have never been consciously aware of being waited on by angels as Jesus was (as the Gospels according to St. Matthew and St. Mark inform us). But there definitely are times when I have been aware of strength be-yond myself—when I know that God is empowering me for faithfulness and Christian living despite the difficulties which I may be facing.
And there are times when, seeking to follow the Lord’s example, I seek out a desertlike place for retreat, for renewal emotionally and spiritually. So, Beloved, there are “good” deserts and “bad” deserts, depending uponthe nature of our experiences there. This issue of Crosswalk explores both. kIt is our prayer that what you read on these pages will be helpful in your own desert experiences, of whatever kind, whatever source.
And a bit of episcopal counsel for those experiences: to help connect with God’s Holy Spirit, whether “searching for ‘home,’” dealing with temptation, trauma, or seeking renewal: rely on your rule of life and a spiritual director. If these terms are not familiar to you—and they may not be—consult your priest, who can and will be helpful. (And see the articles on pages 9 and 10.)
Faithfully yours in our Lord,
Upper South Carolina VII
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
3
Jesus’ temptations in the desert
WHAT’S IN THE WORD?
When Jesus is baptized in the Jordan River, we are told that the heavens opened
and the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove. He (or the crowd) heard
the words, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” What a mo-
ment that must have been for him! Which of us would not long to hear those words
from our earthly or heavenly father?
Then the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness where he encounters the
Tempter. There the Tempter poses him three challenges, and he responds to each with
a phrase, either from Deuteronomy or from a psalm.
A helpful Satan?We cannot know what Jesus’ interior life was, for the Gospel writers simply were
not interested in interiority, but we can surmise that he was wondering and making
decisions about the shape of his ministry. He had received a blessing and a call, but
it was not clear what form his ministry would take. Satan may have been unwittingly
helpful in posing possibilities for Jesus’ consideration.
The story of Jesus’ temptations appears in Matthew (4:1–11), Mark (1:12–13), and
Luke (4:1–13). We will follow Matthew’s narrative.
Hunger for foodFirst, Satan challenges Jesus to turn the numerous stones into bread. What a temp-
tation! Jesus was hungry after weeks of fasting, and poverty was the norm among the
poor of that place and time. If Jesus had accepted the Tempter’s challenge, he would
have provided them and himself with food in abundance. Just think: no more hunger!
At least that week everyone would have been fed.
But then what? Was he to do the same next week, and the week after, and the week
after that? Was his ministry to be about building dependency relations with the poor,
based on their physical need for food? Would anyone’s life change because they were
fed? Would they become more loving, more trusting in God, less anxious? Would
they become freer? Not likely. Much of the prophecy of the early Israelite prophets was
directed against the wealthy, who exploited the poor for their own gain. Being well-fed
does not make us freer, better, or more faithful.
Jesus responds to the Tempter by quoting words from Moses’ charge to the Israel-
ites, reminding them of how God has provided for them during their wanderings in
the wilderness. He warns them not to forget God in their prosperity when they enter
the Promised Land. The complete sentence is, “He humbled you by letting you hun-
ger, then by feeding you with manna, with which neither you nor your ancestors were
acquainted, in order to make you understand that one does not live by bread alone, but
by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD” (Deut. 8:3).
Hunger for miraclesThe Tempter’s second challenge to Jesus is to throw himself off the Temple mount
and let the angels catch him before he falls to his death. The stunt would have certainly
attracted crowds had it been done publicly. Jesus would have been acclaimed a miracle
worker, a very special person. His own ego would have been fed along with the people’s
hunger for miracles.
But then what? People can see wonderful, miraculous sights and then go about their
business as usual. In the 20th century, we have seen such miraculous events as cures for
pernicious diseases, the development of television, air travel, and instant communica-
tion through cell phones and the Internet. Has it made us better? Kinder? Gentler?
Freer? Has it brought an end to war, or poverty, or improved the welfare of children? It
is arguable that all those have worsened during this time of miraculous advances.
Jesus rebukes the challenge of the Tempter with the words from Deuteronomy 6:16:
“Do not put the LORD your God to the test, as you tested him at Massah.” At Mas-
sah in the wilderness, the people
demanded that Moses provide
them water. It is implied that
their demand was based on their
doubt that God was really with
them. It was a test. If Moses was
able to provide water for them, it
would prove that God was with
them. But it reversed the relation
between the Lord and the Israel-
ites. God tested them; they were
not to test God. Their fear bred
arrogance.
Hunger for powerThe Tempter’s third tempta-
tion was to worship the Tempter
in return for the rule of all the
nations of earth. The rulers of
the nations can make a significant difference in the lives of the people, it is true, but
they cannot change them spiritually. That must come from within, one by one, and by
each person’s acceptance of the invitation.
There is a subtler temptation here. Jesus comes proclaiming the kingdom of God.
It is “at hand,” almost here. If Jesus rules the kingdoms as a gift from the Tempter, it
could be said that the kingdom of God has actually come, but at what cost? There
are ways to realize the kingdom of God that depend on giving up the ways of God.
Everything depends on right desire, as Jesus points out in the Sermon on the Mount,
and not simply on results.
Jesus responds to this temptation with words from Moses’ charge to the Israelites,
warning them that, when they come into the Promised Land, they should not forget
the Lord their God. Moses reminds them that it is God who has brought them into the
desert, all the way to the border of the Promised Land, and has protected and sustained
them all the 40 years of their wandering. “The clothes on your back did not wear out
and your feet did not swell these forty years” (Deut. 8:4).
Shaping ministrySo what were the temptations of Jesus? The first was to meet the needs of the people
for food in a miraculous way, as God had done through Moses in the wilderness. The
second was to show himself as immortal—to deny his humanity—by trying to commit
suicide and letting the angels save him. The temptation was to be a miracle worker, to
show how special he was without leading anyone to greater faith. In fact, even people
of faith tend to focus too much on Jesus’ divinity and downplay his humanity. “How
can I be like Jesus? After all, he was God and I am not. It’s too much to expect of me.”
The third was to gain all worldly power at the expense of his loyalty to God, to bring
in the kingdom of God without God.
Jesus’ decisions in the wilderness shaped his ministry and therefore shape ours. This
story challenges us to reflection on our own ministry. Do we try to change people’s
economic status without changing their lives? Do we tempt God to prove that he is
with us? Do we try to bring in God’s kingdom (a state of affairs in which there is plenty
for everyone—food, shelter, clothing, satisfying relationships, all based on justice for
the poor) without God?
The Rev. Lloyd Edwards is priest in charge at Church of the Cross, Columbia.
By Lloyd Edwards
The Third Temptation by William Blake (1757–1827). Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK/
The Bridgeman Art Library Nationality / copyright status: English / out of copyright.
Lent 2009Crosswalk
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Reflections on a sojourn in the Holy LandffBy Bob Horowitz
Last fall a group of 37 people from Church of the Redeemer
and other Greenville-area churches made a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land. As soon as we arrived I became aware that Israel is
a land of stark contrasts. As we waited in the busy Ben-Gurion
Airport terminal for our tour guide to meet us, pale-skinned,
bearded Hasidic men in traditional black hats and suits walked
briskly amid olive-skinned women in khaki military uniforms.
The contrasts between ancient and modern, religious and secular
are always present in Israel.
Geography of contrastJerusalem and the nearby Judean desert also stand in stark
contrast to one another. Jerusalem is topographically the high-
est elevated city in Israel. A roughly 20-mile car ride will take
you from the heights of Jerusalem to the Dead Sea, the lowest
elevation on earth. Jerusalem is alive with thousands of pilgrims
from all over the world. Every day tour buses jockey for parking
spaces along narrow streets while open-air restaurants and mar-
kets teem with people.
In contrast, the desert is a quiet, lonely place where signs of
life are hard to see. In Jerusalem there are high-rise buildings and
five-star hotels. In the desert the keys to discovering information about ancient civiliza-
tions are hidden in caves or under layers of sand and rock. Jerusalem has been fought
over and conquered, destroyed and rebuilt by world powers over thousands of years.
Teaching humilityThe desert is unconquerable and timeless. Peter’s observation “with the Lord one
day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (2 Pet. 3:8) takes
on new meaning in the desert. How old are the mountains? Ten thousand years? Five
million? Two billion? Jerusalem is the city of kings and emperors who built sanctuaries
and monuments to glorify God and themselves. With its jaw-dropping majestic beauty
the desert reveals the awesome glory of God. The desert is a teacher and the subject
is humility. The greatest shrines built by human hands pale in comparison to God’s
handiwork that formed and shaped the desert.
The desert is the handiwork of the same Master Potter who has called men and
women into the desert over the centuries to shape and transform them into vessels for
his service. We live in the midst of a culture that promotes comfort, ease, luxury, and
self-reliance as signs of success and achievement. It is hard for us understand why anyone
would willingly pursue the rigors of an austere, aesthetic life in the desert as a means to
further spiritual union with Christ. But that is exactly what our spiritual forebears did.
Less and moreAfter centuries of government sponsored persecution, Emperor Constantine
authorized the Edict of Toleration in 313 that officially declared Christianity a legal
religion in the empire. Under Constantine, clergy became official functionaries of
the empire, tax subsidies were given to build ornate churches, Christian worship was
influenced by imperial pomp and elaborate ceremonies. Politics became a part of the
Church institution and councils became political conventions.
The identity of the Church had developed within the context of persecution for
several centuries. Martyrdom had become a respected and in some cases a sought after
way of expressing Christian piety and union with Christ by sharing in his sufferings.
When the Church became a part of the establishment some saw the shift as divine
providence while others saw it as a great apostasy. How could the Gospel be heard by
the rich and politically powerful now in charge of the Church?
Some asked, “How can I be a true Christian in this environment?” In the early
fourth century monasticism evolved as a reaction to the rich and powerful Imperial
Church. Monasteries originated in the Egyptian and Syrian deserts. People went out
into the desert to seek the counsel of wise ascetic Christians living a simple life. There
was something about the desert that connected with the elemental human desire to
become less so God might become more.
Untamed wildernessIn Scripture, desert is synonymous with wilderness—a wild place. Not a Friday
night frat party kind of wild but wild as in untamed. In the desert, our vain human
efforts to manage, control, and shape the world around us into our own image appear
laughable and become unmasked in the desert.
Maybe that is one reason why God brought the Hebrews immediately into the
desert after securing their freedom from slavery in Egypt. What better place for God
to bring them to be formed as a people than in the desert where they would have to
rely totally on God for their food, water and survival? Immediately after the Israelites
celebrated their new freedom from the hardships of slavery “they went into the wilder-
ness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. . . . And the
people complained against Moses, saying, “What shall we drink?” He cried out to the
Lord; and the Lord showed him a piece of wood; threw it into the water, and the water
became sweet” (Exod. 15:22–24).
continued on page 13
The author and fellow pilgrims at the Jordan River. In the photo Deacon Lee Quinn, who serves at Redeemer, Greenville, with Fr. Horowitz, lays her hands on his head (photo: courtesy of Dick Dobbins).
The desert is a teacher and the subject is humility. The greatest shrines built by human hands pale in comparison to God’s handiwork that formed and shaped the desert.
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
5
The metaphor of “desert” as a place for physical, mental, and spiritual challenge is
a recurrent theme in both the Old and New Testament. As we come to under-
stand the metaphor, we can see its implications for meeting and facing challenges in
contemporary life. To understand the metaphor, it is helpful to explore the historical
context out of which desert spirituality arises and the range of components that make
up its definition.
The end of martyrdomThe first three centuries of Christianity were a time of continual opposition to the
Roman state, to the extent that Christian martyrdom became a significant testimony
in the faith community. Although early on there had been a trickle of spiritual seek-
ers from urban centers into the desert, the critical event, marking the beginning of
the period of desert spirituality and the desert mothers and fathers, took place in 313
C.E. In that year, Emperor Constantine declared Christianity to be a legal religion of
the state. With the end of persecution, Christian martyrdom no longer functioned as
a measure of faith.
With the institutionalization of the Church, major shifts occurred. As it took on
the patriarchal components of society, the Church became increasingly structured, bu-
reaucratic, and dogmatic. It was a time of factions of differing theological argument, a
time of the early councils where creedal statements were hammered out and decisions
made about the biblical canon.
A new model of faithA new model of faith emerged. In the words of Laura Swan in The Forgotten Desert
Mothers, “Fasting, voluntary poverty, silence, and deep prayer became a way of living
continuous martyrdom once the persecutions ended.” Experimentation in community
and solitary living, already developing in urban settings and growing out of the desire
to live as Christ, expanded into the desert as the trickle of seekers grew to thousands
over the next three centuries.
An important aspect of desert spirituality was the spiritual guide, the teacher/dis-
ciple relationship. We know some of these guides intimately through writings left be-
hind by them, the desert fathers (abbas) and mothers (s ammas), who provide fascinating sglimpses into the spiritual seeking of the era.
Words of the abbas and ammasHere is a sampling of what remains of their words and teachings.
Unless thou first amend thy life going to and from amongst men,
thou shall not avail to amend it dwelling alone. (Abba Lucius)
Teach your heart to keep what your tongue teaches others. (Abba
Poemen)
The prayer of the monk is not perfect until he no longer realizes
himself or the fact that he is praying. (Anthony of the Desert)
We carry ourselves wherever we go and we cannot escape tempta-
tion by mere flight. (Amma Matrona)
Many people living secluded lives on the mountain have perished
by living like people in the world. It is better to live in a crowd
and want to live a solitary life that to live a solitary life but all the
time be longing for company. (Amma Matrona)
Just as the most bitter medicine drives out poisonous creatures
so prayer joined to fasting drives evil thoughts away. (Amma Syncletica)
Imitate the publican, and you will not be condemned with the
Pharisee. Choose the meekness of Moses and you will find your heart
which is a rock changed into a spring of water. (Amma Syncletica)
Desert waysThe desert model manifested in a variety of ways. At one end of the spectrum was
the most severe: hermitical (solitary) lives of isolation, deprivation, and hardship. (St.
Anthony, 270 C.E., is remembered as an early solitary fleeing to the desert for “spiri-
tual warfare.”) At the other end were small communities that developed intentional
spiritual practices, the precursors to monasticism. (Pachomius is credited with found-
ing the community monastic model about 320 C.E.) In between were loosely clustered
hermits a day’s walking from one another, meeting periodically for a common meal
and the Holy Eucharist. St. Benedict, founder of the Benedictine order in 528 C.E.,
developed a balanced rule of work, study, prayer, and recreation that is still followed in
contemporary monastic communities (and recommended by our bishop).
A common spiritualityRegardless of the particular manifestation, there were certain elements common to
desert spirituality. Striving to distance themselves from sinfulness and secular society,
seekers turned to the desert in order to enter a deeper relationship with God. The basic
elements of their lifestyle were simplicity, prayer, and detachment. There was focus on
mindfulness of work and non-possessive relationships. The desert dwellers were self-
supporting, makers, for example, of baskets, mats, and rope from surrounding natural
materials. Often they practiced extremes of self-discipline: fasting, isolation, and self-
denial (of water, sleep, shelter, and warmth) to the point of self-destruction, reflecting
an imbalanced theology. Desert dwellers maturing in their spirituality became teachers
and models of wisdom and attracted other seekers and disciples.
continued on page 13
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Gifts from the desert for a contemplative lifeAmong the many gifts we have been given by the
Christian Wisdom tradition, inspired by the desert mothers and fathers, are the gifts of silence and stillness. These contemplative people left their families and the familiar comforts of home and journeyed far into the desert to be alone and closer to God. Did they realize when they began their spiritual quest how hard it would be? And did they imagine that their insights would influ-ence people many centuries later? The silence and still-ness drew them into a deeper place with God, and we are the beneficiaries of their wisdom.
Blessings beyond measureToday, we can do something like what these hermits
did, perhaps by taking a week away at a retreat center, but with the same goal in mind: cultivating our relation-ship with God apart from the world’s demands and en-tering into the silence and solitude we crave. As humans, we know instinctively that silence and stillness are neces-sary for our survival. As children of God and beloved by him, we should not be surprised that it is well worth the effort to spend this extended time with God. Remov-ing oneself from the world and retreating into silence is just the beginning of contemplative spirituality. There are blessings beyond measure for those who persevere on this path. And there are other gifts of the Spirit that are given as the journey unfolds.
A retreat experience need not be the only time we deepen our relationship with our creator. Contemplative, quiet spirituality can be a part of our daily lives if we val-ue it, nurture it, and place aside time for it. Even though we cannot duplicate the cloistered lives of the monastics who practice the Benedictine Liturgy of the Hours, we can take inspiration from them and apply some of their practices to our daily spiritual lives. If we allow time for holy reading (lectio), and prayer with words (meditatio) that can lead us into wordless prayer (contemplatio), we are using time-honored Benedictine methods of cultivat-ing our relationship with our loving God.
Awareness raisedHoly reading and listening (lectio) are like breathing.
They form a rhythm which allows us to “be still and know God.” Reading passages of Holy Scripture slowly and reflecting on them in a deliberate, meditative way al-
lows time for the Scripture to sink into and become part of us. We can also read writings and reflections of great contemplative writers of the past—Teresa of Ávila, Julian of Norwich, and, in the 20th century, Thomas Merton, to name a few. Their experiences and reflections help us on our spiritual journey in ways that can give us personal understanding, hope, and encouragement to persevere in the midst of struggles, dry times, and distractions. While these “spiritual giants” inspire us, it is important to know that we don’t need to become “spiritual giants” to achieve access to God’s presence. We already have that access as children of God—we just need to be made aware of it. By faith and prayer our awareness grows, and eventually awareness of God’s presence becomes second nature, and more and more becomes the lens through which we see and live in our world.
Already therePracticing prayer with words (meditatio) can lead us
into wordless prayer (contemplatio), resting in the divine presence. Wordless prayer is an integral part of the con-templative journey into deeper silence and stillness. It takes us into an incredibly rich place filled with God, and it is also a humble place of surrender before our creator in which we experience our total dependence on God. The beauty of this kind of prayer is that we are not at-tempting to get anywhere, but rest in the realization that we are already “there,” the place where we belong.
As William Shannon, a Roman Catholic priest and well-known Thomas Merton scholar, writes in Silence on Fire: Prayer of Awareness:
Wordless prayer is a kind of firm foundation for prayer with words. For without this deep awareness of God’s dynamic presence in our lives, which comes with wordless prayer, we would probably become restless and uncertain in our prayer life (wondering whether we are doing it properly, worrying about our distractedness, etc.). With wordless prayer as the secure root of our spirituality, we shall never become overanxious (at least for long), because we shall know that we are in God and so is all else that is. This is what really matters: all reality charged with the glory of God’s presence.
Two pillarsShannon describes “the two pillars of contempla-
tive spirituality” that undergird a contemplative attitude toward life. These tenets are based in the Church’s Wis-dom tradition from its earliest times, and include the insights of the desert fathers and mothers and others on down through the centuries in our Church’s contemplative history. The first pillar: God as the Ground of all that is.
This (contemplative) mode of spirituality . . . accepts the importance of devotions and the sacraments in the life of the Christian. Obviously it also accepts the truth of the transcendence of God. Yet it refuses to identify that transcendence with the vision of a God who sustains and guides the universe from afar. It maintains that it is simply a misunderstanding of the transcendence of God to conceive of God as “there” and creatures as “here.” . . . It is important that we realize that the transcendence of God ex-cludes any notion that God is one existent among other existents. Rather, God is the Ground of all that exists. God is the immanent One, the One who is present in all things as the Source whence they come and as the Ground in which they continue to be.
The second pillar: Realizing that we already have ac-
cess to God because God is the Ground of our Being. Trappist monk and founder of Contemplative Outreach Thomas Keating calls this “the Divine Indwelling”—God in us. Contemplative prayer allows us to “come into consciousness” of what we already have: namely, God’s presence in us. In Thomas Merton’s words, “We should have an immanent approach to prayer. God is not an Object… God is Subject, a deeper ‘I.’ He is the Ground of my subjectivity. God wants to know Himself in us.”
continued on page 15
Removing oneself from the world and retreating into silence is just the
beginning of contemplative spirituality. There are blessings beyond measure for
those who persevere on this path.
God is not an Object … God is Subject, a deeper ‘I.’ He is the Ground of my subjectivity. God wants to know Himself in us.
—Thomas Merton
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
I like Kathleen Norris. I have not found her to be some-one who leads me astray. Thus, it was quite unsettling
to read Kathryn Harrison’s review of Norris’s most recent book, Acedia and Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer’s Life (“Am I Blue,” e New York Times Book Review, Decem-ber 21, 2008). Harrison berates Norris for distinguishing acedia from depression. Harrison suggests with some sar-casm that modern psychiatric diagnosis has progressed beyond the time of the desert fathers and mothers, whorecognized acedia (listlessness, lack of care) as a poten-tially virulent spiritual malady.
A spiritual cause?Certainly, at least from this lay perspective, some
symptoms of depression and acedia are similar. Nor-ris admits as much at the outset as she reflects on her own experience of acedia, and contrasts it with what she knows from her husband’s debilitating depression. Far from suggesting that people who are seriously depressedshould just pray through it, she offers her readers a chance to pay attention to the possibility that boredom,a sense of futility, despair, or restlessness could in facthave a spiritual cause. She recounts the historical devel-opment of the condition of acedia with great care, trac-ing Evagrius’s writing of it in the fourth century, identi-fied by him as one of “eight bad thoughts” but in later centuries dropped—or at least subsumed into the sin of sloth—as the list of seven deadly sins came to the fore.
More than slothNorris does us a favor by determining that acedia is
more than sloth, more damaging to the soul than mere laziness. And we are unable to be let off the hook by assuming that lack of action is always a result of depres-sion. In the world we inhabit, where accountability has not been particularly in favor, it would be easy to over-look the damage that results from inaction—those sins of omission. In fact, we’ve lived a generation of barely ever praying in community the confession in Morning Prayer I, where we admit that “we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.” The words of confession for most of us now place sins of commission before sins of omission; I wonder if that makes a differ-ence? I remember as a young person that I tried to recall things I did not do but should have done when I prayed the confession. While I would not have known at thetime that acedia could be part of my spiritual condition, I recognized it when I began to read desert wisdom years later. Acedia—the response of the son who said yes but did nothing (Matt. 21:28–32). Jesus had no trouble rec-ognizing spiritual malaise. Do we?
The “noonday demon”For those of us who are timid about identifying this
torpor, Norris offers 42 pages of insights on acedia that span centuries. From Psalm 91 we are reminded of the “scourge that lays waste at noon,” thereby spawning the name acedia is often known by the “noonday demon.” From Chaucer’s “The Parson’s Tale”: “Envy and anger cause bitterness of heart; which bitterness is the mother of acedia, and takes from a man the love of all good-ness.” From John of the Cross: “There is a great differ-ence between dryness and tepidity. . . . The state of te-pidity implies great negligence and slackness in will and mind, without willingness to serve God; but purgative dryness is accompanied by . . . willingness, with concern and sorrow . . . that one does not serve God.” From Karl Menninger’s Whatever Became of Sin?: “Let it stand that there is a sin of not doing, of not knowing, of not find-ing out what one must do—in short, of not caring. This is the literal meaning of acedia, recognized as a sin for so many centuries and plaguing us still.” From Dorothy Sayers: “[Sloth] is the sin that believes nothing, cares to know nothing, seeks to know nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing . . . and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.” From Václav Havel: “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.” And, finally, from
Ford’s Dennisnis DeDe A Primer on Moral Indifference: “Patho-““cally, sloth is described as a sin of arrested childhood: logicogicl
loth extends into adulthood the passivity, dependency, slsland egocentricity characteristic of childhood . . . [provid-ing] a context for indifference, a slothful expectation that someone else will do it for us.”
None other than loveOnce we have named the enemy, and are resolved not
to look away, we can begin our quest for the antidote. Surprisingly, diligence is not the main corresponding virtue. Diligence and commitment to work are helpful, but to address the root, lack of care, the spiritual virtue is none other than love. Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthi-ans 13 contrasts with acedia at every turn, ending with the ultimate profession of care: “Love bears all things, be-lieves all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” Maxie Dunnam, in his workbook on the Seven Deadly Sins, reminds us that while we might think hate is the opposite of love, in actuality apathy is. While with hate we find emotion and feeling, with apathy we find the absence of all feeling—indifference. What can deliver us from this self-destruction? None other than a rule of life—a discipline of prayer, study, and purposeful, loving action.
Finding communityFor Norris, stumbling into a monastery and bathing
herself in the recitation of the Psalter, day in and day out for years, has provided the structure and discipline she needed to recover a holy response to God’s grace. Like Norris, we all experience times when we do not want to pray. Instead, we want to run. In fact, a tendency to-ward acedia is often accompanied by a desire to separate from the community. Our hope, however, is in finding a community that will give us space and make few, if any, demands on us, because by placing ourselves in the midst of community prayer our souls are quietly, impercepti-bly, watered. The softening turns us out toward others,and the opportunities to overcome acedia through loving become manifold. Apathy, without pathos, can then be-come pathos—passion—loving and suffering with God for others and for the creation. For Norris, the metaphor for this transformation is her marriage. Indeed, we watch her grow in her capacity to love as her love for her hus-band deepens, providing that necessary crucible of heal-ing from the spiritual malaise that once threatened to envelop her. Walking the journey with her gives us the chance to examine our own lives, the environments in which we are called to love, and the realization that the choice is ours.The Rev. Alice Haynes is vicar of St. Matthias’, Rock Hill, whose previous service includes a ministry as chaplain resi-dent at the South Carolina Department of Mental Health.
7
Acedia—cedia—cedia—ediaediadidiNaming a desert foe ming a deserming a desering a deseing a deseng a desng a des
By Alice Haynes
“[T]here is a sin of not doing, of not knowing, of not finding out what one must do—in short, of not caring. This is the literal meaning of acedia. . . .”
—Karl Menninger
Lent 2009Crosswalk
8
Caroline Myss, noted author, spiritual leader,
and theologian, has com-bined mysticism and human consciousness development to create an inner path to spiritual and self-knowledge. Using St. Teresa of Ávila’s vi-sion of the soul as a beauti-ful, clear, crystal castle with seven mansions of many rooms, in Entering the CastleMyss guides us on an interi-or mystical path through the rooms of the mansions. In each room we meet with our soul and aspects of our soul and spirit.
In the author’s words from the introduction, “Enter-ing the Castle gives you a portal into a deeper experi-ence—mysticism. It provides a path to follow in which you can still live in the everyday world of work and fam-ily but follow the call to a genuine spiritual practice that gives you a direct connection with the divine.” “Could you,” Myss asks, “be a mystic without a monastery?”
Soul over mindPart One prepares us for the journey. Three beautiful-
ly written chapters offer guidance for understanding and interpreting the world of mysticism. Intense preparation is given for our entry into the castle. We are instructed to imagine our self, not as a body, but as spirit: to let go and let the soul become real. “Your mind,” Myss suggests, “is exhausted in its search. You need to finally let your soul have at it. Get your mind out of your soul’s way.”
At the entry to the castle, we pray a “drawbridge prayer,” asking to gain a higher perspective on our life and to discover the depth and beauty of our soul. In Part Two, “The Soul’s Journey,” the visits to the seven man-sions and their many rooms begin.
The journeyEach mansion represents a particular aspect of the
journey. For example, “The Power of Prayer, Humility, Chaos, and Divine Seduction” is the first mansion’s top-ic; “God in the Details: Inner Vision and Soul Compan-ions” is the theme for mansion number two.
Inside the rooms of each mansion we meet, speak, and listen to our soul. Through intense meditation, con-templation, and prayer come revelations. Each room in
each mansion includes a section entitled “Soul Work,” offering reflections and posing questions that the author asks us to consider in a journal dedicated to that pur-pose.
Forgotten, or hidden, memories arise when we visit the dungeons of our castle. We confront our demons and dragons (our hurts, doubts, fears, guilt, sorrows, and pain). With prayer and reflection and the opening of our heart and soul come forgiveness and healing. Our con-sciousness is expanded, and we have a deeper knowledge of our true self and the divine spark within.
As we complete our journey and prepare to leave the castle, Myss offers guidance for our return to the physi-cal world. In the chapter on the seventh mansion, in a section called “Taking Leave,” there is a list of fifteen “es-sentials” for “mystics outside the castle walls.”
This book is not one just to be read and shelved. It needs to be experienced with openness, commitment, courage, and a bit of bravery. My journey on the path elicited var-ied feelings and emotions, some disturbing, some cleans-ing, but overall freeing. I now recognize an interior sacred space, my interior castle, where, at will, I can retreat and receive solace, peace, and joy from my soul and my God.
Ms. Dot Martin is a member of St. Simon & St. Jude, Irmo.
Mystics without monasteries—It’s time to heed the call!
Reviewed by Dot Martin
Entering the Castle: Finding the Inner Path to God and Your Soul’s Purpose, by Caroline Myss (New York: Free Press, 2007; paperback edition, 2008)
Book review
No one escapes it. As full, rich and productive as a per-son’s spiritual life is, as profound as the relationship
with the Holy One might be, there come darkening—some-times gradual, oftentimes sudden—moments in everyone’s life when the sense of connection with God’s loving presence ceases. The “it” of the moment has many names, all of them unsatisfactory in describing the depth of the loss.
“Hard times”Best known is the term “the dark night of the soul,” used
by St. John of the Cross (1542–1591). St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) in his Spiritual Exercises writes of “desolation.” sContemporary author Kathleen Norris explores the debili-tating listless boredom denoted by the ancient word acedia. Perhaps Margaret Guenther, however, has captured this oc-currence most helpfully in her straightforward reference to “hard times.”
These periods during which our prayer seems pointless and unheard stretch beyond us in all directions, vast and va-aacant, God’s apparent absence an aching void. But, much like
the earth’s out-of-sight activity during winter’s chill and dim-ness, our personal dark nights almost always result in pro-found insight and take us to new spiritual depths. Desolation
can be understood as a gift of a high order, the very aridity that saddens and disappoints a quiet and steady teacher.
Opening to the experienceA natural response to spiritual gloom is to despair, to be
angry with ourselves or with God, to give up. But, the spiritu-ally wise beckon us to a different response and in a different direction, encouraging us to recognize what is happening to us and inviting us to open ourselves to the experience. It is during the nighttime, the saying goes, that people gaze into the heavens more often than during the light of day. Dur-ing our spiritual nighttimes God has our attention. When what has worked no longer does, when who we have thought ourselves to be seems strangely insufficient, when our fond-est illusions reveal themselves as false, we are most ready to receive.
Embrace the moment. Trust that the darkness fosters growth. Wait in stillness and quiet for what is to come. Be patient.
The Rev. Janet Tarbox is a retired priest of the diocese who served most recently as vicar of the Church of the Ridge, Trenton, Edgefield, Ridge Spring.
COMPANIONS FOR THE “DARK NIGHT”
Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556), Spiritual Exercises
John of the Cross (1542-1591), Dark Night of the Soul, a commentary on his poem of the same title
Margaret Guenther, At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us(Seabury, 2006)
Kathleen Norris, The Cloister Walk (Riverhead, 1996)
By Janet Tarbox
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
9
In a time when the world is faced with economic crisis and change appears to be imminent, it is easy to feel as
if one is indeed standing on shifting sands. Henri Nou-wen in The Wounded Healer notes that humankind lives “in a desert with many lonely travelers who are looking for a moment of peace, for a fresh drink and for a sign of encouragement.” Nouwen states that at these times “we need a guide, a director, a counselor who helps us to distinguish between the voice of God and all the other voices coming from our own confusion or from dark powers far beyond our control.”
Spiritual companionshipSpiritual direction can provide such guidance in
times of turmoil. As Gerald May writes in Will and Spir-it, “One needs help from others in the course of one’s spiritual pilgrimage.” Spiritual direction, as defined by the organization Spiritual Directors Intenational (www.sdiworld.org/), is “the process of accompanying people on a spiritual journey.” Tilden Edwards in Spiritual Friend: Reclaiming the Gift of Spiritual Direction notes that “being a spiritual friend is being the physician of a wounded soul.” A spiritual director is a spiritual friend, someone who can be there to listen and provide encour-agement. Margaret Guenther, in Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction, states that “even though we may die alone, no one was born alone, so to be born presupposes relationship, connection, and community.” Having a friend or companion is especially important in times of need, providing the reassurance that one is not alone in the desert.
No exemptionsChristians are not exempt from times of trial or
from feeling as though they are wandering in the desert. Guenther notes that “life in Christ is not necessarily a life free from pain.” Those feeling as though they are in a spiritual desert often need someone to hear their story and acknowledge their pain. Guenther states that often directees need a “simple acknowledgement of the inten-sity of pain.” Guenther notes that the “director’s task is to help connect the individual’s story to the story and thereby help the directee to recognize and claim identity in Christ, discern the action of the Holy Spirit.” The spiritual director therefore is a witness to the struggles encountered on the spiritual journey.
Witnessing the struggleAs a witness, the spiritual director can aide the direct-
ee in discerning where the Holy Spirit may be leading, helping to identify times of transition. Guenther notes that “the director can see patterns and form in seeing formlessness. More importantly, he knows that the time of transition has a beginning and an end, and that the directee will emerge from it into a new level of clarity.” Transitions are inevitable in the spiritual journey, and often they lead to transformation. Guenther notes that “the director can help by naming the transition for what it is: a time of movement from one stage to another, a time of change and transformation.”
Choosing to riskThe spiritual director can encourage and walk be-
side the directee, supporting the directee in such times of transformation. Guenther states that “this can be si-multaneously frightening—matters are out of hand—and joyous—something is finally happening.” Growth, however, often involves risk. Alan Jones in Exploring Spiritual Direction notes that “the spiritual life requires risk because the new is always breaking in.” Jones further
notes that in times of change, the question arises as to whether we choose “the security of a life where noth-ing changes, nothing grows, or the risk and adventure as part of what it means to be a pilgrim people?”
It can be confusing to feel joy and to experience God’s presence after years of searching. Spiritual direc-tion can aid in identifying the next step. Guenther states that often directees “come filled with surprise and joy: after years, perhaps decades, of faithful observance, they have experienced a sudden awareness of God’s presence and grace. They feel fruitful, joyous, and expectant—and they don’t know what to do about it.” She further notes that “spiritual direction is about hope, and there is always a next step. The spiritual director can support the directee, and help the directee discern what God may be calling him or her to do.
Desert guideThe spiritual director can be a guide in the midst of
the desert. Jones acknowledges that “my heart is on its way home and I have placed it in the keeping of others, for it is only with them that I can find my way home.” He continues by noting that “companionship is your hand stretched out to me when I am frozen and lost.” Guenther states that “spiritually, too, we cannot make it through the desert or across the frontier alone, but must depend on the kindness of strangers.” The spiri-tual director, according to Nouwen, can “let others en-ter into the space created for them and allow them to dance their own dance, sing their own song and speak their own language without fear.” As Jones concludes in Exploring Spiritual Direction, spiritual direction is “walk-ing together the way of the cross and living together in the power of the resurrection.” The desert can be a frightening, confusing place, but with the companion-ship of a spiritual director, one can feel not alone in the desert.
Ms. Betsy Neal is a member of St. John’s, Congaree, in Hopkins.
A friend in the desert . . .
Thoughts on spiritual direction
Gerald G. May, Will and Spirit (HarperSanFrancisco, 1982)
Margaret Guenther, Holy Listening: The Art of Spiritual Direction (Cowley Publications, 1992)
Alan Jones, Exploring Spiritual Direction (Cowley Publications, 1982)
Henri J. M. Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Doubleday, 1975)
Henri J. M. Nouwen, The Wounded Healer (Doubleday, 1979)
Tilden Edwards, Spiritual Friend: Reclaiming the Gift of Spiritual Direction (Paulist Press, 1980)
How do we survive during a period of spiritual barren-ness? What can sustain us when we are empty? When
we are at our darkest places, a Rule of Life can be a catalyst for healing and clarity.
A Rule of Life, in its simplest terms, is a “structure in which spiritual formation is facilitated.” It is a tool for per-sonal growth . . . entirely personal. Many Christians already have a Rule of Life, and don’t even realize it. Do you go to church regularly? Do you say grace before meals? Do you do daily readings such as those in Forward Day by Day or other ydevotionals? Do you pray daily? All of these, even though un-intentional, form a Rule of Life.
An intentional ruleThe most famous “formal” Rule of Life was developed in
the seventh century by St. Benedict. However, other formal rules have developed. The style that has had the greatest im-pact on my life is that used by the Cursillo community.
I have to admit, for most of my life, I have lived a charmed existence. I grew up in a loving home and was economically and socially secure. Church was an important part of my upbringing, but there was never any challenge to my beliefs. After leaving home, I went through college and law school. I married a wonderful woman, and settled into a comfortable existence. I was professionally successful. In short, “the world was my oyster.”
During this time, I attended a Cursillo weekend and was introduced to the idea of a formal Rule of Life. Like most people, I probably already had an unconscious rule; this was
the first time I saw the need for a more intentional Rule of Life, and how it could be used to nurture my own spiritual journey. I took a look at my life as a whole. What would sus-tain me? Daily? Weekly?
A rule for the darknessOf course, this experience took place at a time when ev-vv
erything was going well in my life. In formulating my rule, I never really considered what impact it might have during darker times.
Ten years ago, I suffered a heart attack; my wife was diag-ggnosed with breast cancer two years later. I thought that times could not be worse. I was wrong. Four years ago, my daugh-ter was diagnosed with a chronic illness, requiring multiple hospitalizations. I was truly in the desert. I was angry . . . with the world and with God.
At that time, my Rule of Life consisted primarily of the reading the Daily Office each morning, personal prayer, and attending church on Sunday. Another important component was a weekly meeting my wife and I had with another cou-ple, spiritual friends, in our parish. When the hard times set in, I was spiritually numb. An obvious reaction would be to withdraw inside myself and withdraw from God. However, I found that the opposite was true. I found myself continuing to practice my rule, although for a long time, I really did not feel anything.
“Spiritual autopilot”Have you ever prayed or gone to church, but not really
felt anything? I think we all have at some point. This is par-ticularly true with prayer. We all want to “feel” when we pray.
However, as St. Teresa of Ávila noted in counseling a young nun who was discouraged with her prayer life, “Sterile prayer pierces heaven.” Indeed, I found that simply going through my rule helped, even if I only carried on by rote. My rule enveloped me, and I went on a type of “spiritual autopilot.” I needed time for reflection and for healing. My rule became an anchor in the storm, a way of steadying my life when it felt completely out of control. The daily and weekly practices of my rule came almost as a habit, something automatic. Over time, I began to find more peace and clarity, and slowly, heal-ing began and the feeling came back. It was a true spiritual reawakening.
The experience reminded of the words of Fr. Charles Da-aavis, who served as rector at my parish, talking about teaching Bible stories to children. He always emphasized the impor-tance of telling the stories to children, leaving understanding for later. The same is true for the development of a Rule of Life. By having a rule, formulated in the good times, I was able to sustain myself in the desert until calm and under-standing came.
Developing a Rule of LifeHow is a Rule of Life developed? First, consider all of the
spiritual aids which you have at your disposal. You may even want to write them down. These can be any number of things such as attending the Holy Eucharist, reading the Daily Of-fffice, personal prayer, meditation, Bible study. Then, set goals. What can I do each week? What can I do each day? Do not be too ambitious. You do not want to be overwhelmed and possibly set yourself up for failure. As you progress in your own rule, you can add more.
continued on next page
Navigating the desert with a R U L E O F L I F EL I F EO FOR U L ER
My rule enveloped me, and I went on a type of “spiritual autopilot.” . . . My rule became
an anchor in the storm, a way of steadying my life when it felt completely out of control.
By Thom Neal
As a Christian, My Aim is to Follow Christ
Lord Jesus Christ, I, __________________ fromthis day on, a conscious and growing member of your Mystical Body, in union with all apostolicChristians of your Church, with the help of your grace, will contribute my idealism, my self sur-render, my spirit of charity, to make your king-dom more effective in me, and in all my brothers and sisters.
This Rule is an act of solemn dedication which Imake in the Name of the Father, and of the Son,and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Piety“Without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:15
___ Worship God every Sunday in Church___ Holy Communion
___ Daily Personal Prayer Time___ Meditation___ Altar Visit___ Examination of Conscience___ Spiritual Direction___ Reconciliation of a Penitent
Study“Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet.” Psalm 119:105
“If you only understood the gift of God…”
Bible ReadingBible CommentaryBooks of Spiritual Formation
the best.
COPYRIGHT1980 by the National Episcopal Cursillo Committee of the National Episcopal Cursillo. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.
No part of this service sheet may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. This is a portion of the Cursillo Rule of LIfe Card (reprinted with permission of the National Episcopal Cursillo Committee).
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
11
Rule of Life –continued–
You can also change your Rule from time to time. In fact, as your needs change, you should periodically reexam-ine your Rule of Life. You can also utilize the assistance of a spiritual adviser or director to guide you in developing a Rule of Life. Discipline is important in developing a Rule of Life. One important component to my Rule of Life is that of accountability. When my wife and I meet weekly with the other couple in our parish, we examine the events of the past wweek, pray together, and, most important, examine how we are progressing with our individual journeys, and hold each
other accountable. We get encouragement from one another, and, in dark times, we experience comfort and compassion.
Prayer, discipline, patienceFor those who need a bit more structure, I suggest ob-
taining a “Rule of Life” card. You can order a Cursillo Rule of Life Card (no, you don’t have to have gone to Cursillo to get one) through the National Episcopal Cursillo Office in Conway, South Carolina (www.episocpalcursillo.org or call 1.877.858.7392). You can also get a weekly “group reunion card” from the National Cursillo Office, which can help structure periodic group meetings.
Although Cursillo helped me form my own rule, it is notthe only resource available. Numerous other useful materi-als include Wisdom Distilled from the Daily (1990), by Joan yChittister, and Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict (1984), tby Esther de Waal. Developing and living a Rule of Life takesprayer, discipline, and patience. Consider developing a rule of your own to nourish and give direction to your spiritual journey.
Mr. Thom Neal is a member of St. John’s, Congaree, in Hopkins.
The desert holds such joy and promise as the beginning TTof the great family, the disappointment of God’s chosen TTpeople, defeated and taken into slavery, the hope and expec-tation of the Exodus, and the desire of Jesus to be in a place where he could come close to God.
As a Christian educator I wondered how to teach my stu-dents about the scriptural stories of the desert. We do not live near a desert and most of us have not experienced being in a desert. It seems so abstract. How could I possibly help the children imagine themselves in the desert? My answer is Godly Play.
Godly PlayGodly Play is a rich, hands-on, storytelling approach that
invites children to journey into the stories and experiences of God’s people. It recognizes that children need to learn about and participate in worship in a sensorimotor way, bringing “their own experiences into dialogue with the biblical stories” in a manner that allows them to create order and meaning in their lives. Every Godly Play story has beautiful language, wooden figures, and other material and visual props that the children can see, touch, and watch. At the end of each story we ask the children “wondering” questions that help them understand what they have experienced.
Real things, real peopleMany stories are told using a “Desert Box,” a box roughly
2 feet by 3 feet that holds half a bag of play sand. Something as simple as a sand box is transformed into a little piece of the desert where very real things happen to very real people. My students anticipate what will happen next in the life of God’s people as we tell stories in the desert. “I wonder what God was doing while Abram and Sarai were wandering back andforth in the desert?” “I wonder which part of the story is most important?” “I wonder if there is any part of the story we can take away and still have all we need?”
For some students the power of the Ark of the Covenant captivates, or perhaps it’s the magic of the Red Sea opening to allow Moses and the people of God passage into the desert.
For others it is acknowledging how it feels to be in a danger-ous place and beginning to understand that God is present.
Jerome Berryman, the creator of Godly Play, includes a touching story in volume one of The Complete Guide to Godly Play that a Godly Play trainer, Cindy Bishop, shared about yan experience she had which demonstrates the power of the desert box. She writes:
A family in our church suffered the loss of the mother and one son in a car accident. The father, one son and one daughter survived. The surviving son was in my Godly Play class last year. When I told the story of The Great Family [the story of Abram and Sarai], I asked what the most important part of the story was. The boy, then in second grade, said, “The part where you said the desert is a dangerous place is the most important because the world is a danger-ous place. Bad things happen like car accidents and people get so mad about it but it just happens.”
Another child in the class looked at me and said, “Yeah, his mother and brother were killed in a car accident.” Most of the other children seemed to know this already and were nodding their heads. I thought it was so important that the children could attempt to process this tragedy and wonder about it together.In Berryman’s words, “So many important stories
happen in the desert that we have to have a little piece of it in our classroom to tell the stories.”
Mss. Cheryl Banks and Dianna Deaderick are members of St. Alban’s, Lexington.
“So many wonderful and important things happen in the desert. The desert is a dangerous place. The wind blows and changes the shape of the desert. It is easy to get lost in the desert. There is very little food or water in the desert. Without food and water people can die. The desert is a
dangerous place. People do not go into the desert unless they have to.”
—Jerome Berryman, The Complete Guide to Godly Play
Children and the desert . . .
Wondering about God’s story, our stories with Godly Play
Children and the desert . . .
Wondering about God’s story, our stories with Godly Play
Who: St. Michael and All Angels’ Episcopal Church; parish, Midlands Convocation, 6408 Bridge-wood Road., Columbia, South Carolina 29206; www.st.michaelepiscopal.org; e-mail: [email protected]. Average Sunday attendance 140. Rector: The Rev. Paul E. Stricklin.
Where: St. Michael and All Angels’ is located in Forest Acres, immediately north and east of Columbia. It is close to downtown Columbia and Fort Jackson. The church is visible from both Bridgewood and North Trenholm Roads.
Forest Acres was one of the first “suburbs” of Colum-bia. The church came into being about the same time as the Forest Acres community. Together, the church and the community have aged and matured. “And just like people who are reaching their early to mid fifties, the church is starting to feel the need for some repair,” says St. Michael’s rector the Rev. Paul Stricklin. The com-munity is in a time of regeneration. New families with young children are moving in. And St. Michael’s is tak-ing on some major repairs.
When: St. Michael and All Angles’ had its beginning as a result of the rapid growth of St. Martin’s-In-The-Fields, just two and a half miles away. When St. Martin’s was organized in 1950, the steering committee includ-ed in the by-laws a stipulation that when membership reached 350, a new mission should be organized in the northeast area of Columbia. The membership goal was reached quickly, the area was surveyed, and, during the episcopate of the Rt. Rev. C. Alfred Cole, it was deemed that the area would be able to support a parish, and not simply a mission church.
On September 8, 1957, St. Michael and All Angels’ held its first service with 32 adults in attendance. Chil-dren were not officially counted, but they far outnum-bered the adults. On September 26, 1957, St. Michael and All Angels’ was officially recognized as a mission. On June 8, 1958, a groundbreaking ceremony was held. The first rector, the Rev. James Fenhagen, was called in July of the same year, and the first service held in the new church at 11 P.M. on December 24, with 200 persons at-tending. The following May St. Michael’s was recognized as a parish.
What: Fr. Strickland has been at St. Michael’s for only one year. “The church came through a pretty stress-ful time between 2004 and 2007,” states Stricklin. The
rector of 26 years, the Rev. Philip Whitehead, retired, and there followed an interim period and a rectorship of short duration. Now, says Stricklin, “I believe St. Mi-chael’s is coming right along. As the Body of Christ in this place, with the help of the Holy Spirit, we are bear-ing much fruit.”
St. Michael’s has an eclectic mix of ethnic, gender, economic, and family backgrounds. Ages range from babies a few months old to those in their 90s. Most pa-rishioners are professionals in the mid-level range; some own their own businesses. Sunday attendance is holding steady and Sunday school attendance has increased 170 percent. The parish has added about 18 to 20 commu-nicants this past year, all under the age of 50, some with children.
St. Michael’s has an active youth program. “The young people help raise money for one of our primary outreach opportunities, Columbia’s Harvest Hope Food Bank,” says Stricklin. “They recently raised $600 for the ‘Souper Bowl Sunday’ program.”
Outreach is a top priority at St. Michael’s. In addition to Harvest Hope, the church works with St. Lawrence place, Sister Care, and Home Works, and soon they will be holding a Red Cross blood drive. The congregation also participates in an annual “Thanksgiving Box Pro-gram,” partnering with a local school to prepare boxes of Thanksgiving goodies for families in need. Recently St. Michael’s held a clothing drive for children in Afghani-stan. “We had hundreds of boxes of clothes to send,” Stricklin said— “a whopping response.” A parishioner who had been in Afghanistan for one year spearheaded the program.
On March 8 Bishop Henderson dedicated St. Mi-chael’s new educational wing in honor of the Rev. James Fenhagen. Part of the wing houses the Children’s Devel-opment Center (CDC). “The Center has been around for a long time; we have second-generation children coming through,” says Stricklin. “It’s a place to bring your children from newborn to four years of age, and it’s not just a day care, which is why we call it a development center.”
The CDC is a key element of evangelism at St. Mi-chael’s. “We are actively trying to forge a seamless ministry between St. Michael’s and the Children’s Development Center,” explains Stricklin. “Many parents who bring their children here don’t really know anything about the Episcopal Church, and we’re attempting to change that.” In addition to learning opportunities for the children St. Michael’s offers various activities throughout the year that are directed toward CDC parents and personnel. The CDC is running very close to capacity.
St. Michael’s offers two services on Sunday, 8:00 and 10:30 A.M., with breakfast and Christian education classes in between. Breakfast is an important part of the St. Michael’s culture—a long-standing tradition with different teams responsible each week. Lent has added a special Thursday evening program and Stations of the Cross on Friday evenings to an already busy schedule. St. Michael’s also offers a Taizé service on the first Sunday of each month and a Wednesday evening service of Holy Eucharist and healing.
“When we were at our parish weekend at Kanuga this past summer we realized that many of the things we loved about Kanuga we have right here at St. Michael’s, literally in our own backyard,” says Kay Stricklin, direc-tor of children’s and family ministries. “We have woods that haven’t been developed and beautiful grounds, and so we set out to raise our awareness by studying Scrip-ture and theology and realistic day-to- day environment kinds of things. In the fall we offered a curriculum for children and adults with creation as the basis for looking at ourselves as creatures and reflections of the image of God.” The focus is on how the people of St. Michael’s are stewards in their immediate world—“How we can be more environmentally conscious and better at sharing what we have with the community,” Kay Stricklin says.
St. Michael’s has launched a new program called “Let’s talk about it,” partnering with the Humanities Council of South Carolina and the Richland County Library and reading and discussing classics of American nature writing. “I think the underlying thing that holds us all together is the love for the physical grounds at St. Michael’s and the awareness of what they might mean to an increasingly urbanized community, using them as a urban sanctuary,” Kay Stricklin says.
Quote: The Rev. Paul Stricklin: “I believe our pa-rishioners, who are very active in the world, take their faith very seriously, and they take it into their work plac-es, their home places, and their play places.”
Ms. Kimberley P. Higgins is a member of St. Paul’s, Batesburg.
St. Michael and All Angels’,Columbia
By Kimberly P. Higgins
Parish Profile
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
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Reflections on the Holy Land
—continued from page 4
A season of wanderingBefore the trip to the Holy Land I wondered how the
Israelites could have wandered for so long in the wilder-ness. But now I clearly see how easy it could be to get lost in the desert and lose all sense of direction. “Wandering in the wilderness” has become synonymous with those times on the Christian spiritual journey when our pur-pose becomes fuzzy and God does not feel near.
Every pilgrim of faith will enter the wilderness at some point. We feel like we have put great effort into our travel only to find that we are right back in the same place we started from and have gained no ground at all. During those times it’s good to remember that God always has a higher purpose at work. The time of “wandering in the wilderness” is for a season and when the season passes we will find that we have grown stronger and gained spiri-tual wisdom from the experience.
One choice onlyPart of our Holy Land pilgrimage included a three-
day stay in Egypt following our time in Israel. After pass-ing through the proper security checkpoints we rode the tour bus over the Israeli border into the vast Sinai desert of Egypt. Harry, our Egyptian tour guide, prob-ably sensed our unease. We were out in the middle of
nowhere, in a strange and foreign country, it was getting dark, and we had absolutely no idea where we were going or how we were going to get there. Looking out the bus windows all we saw for miles around was desert. To loosen the tension, he said, “Relax. You are in good hands. I promise I will take good care of you and get you where you need to go safely. So, put your total trust in me. Besides, you have no other choice but to trust me! What else are you going to do?” He stated the obvious.
Bare essentialsIn the desert one is stripped down to the bare es-
sentials. Money and fancy electronic gadgets are of little value. The next meal, clean water for drinking, a place to go to the bathroom become your focus. At times during what seemed to be an endless bus ride through the Egyp-tian desert, we murmured and recalled the good food we had back at the hotel in Israel. We had to trust the one who was leading us and promised to provide for us in the same way that the Israelites had to trust the One who had brought them into the desert to lead them to the Promised Land.
Driving a wedgeIn the New Testament “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit,
returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by
the devil” (Luke 4:1–2). Jesus was fully human and ex-perienced the same temptations in the desert as the Isra-elites. Jesus endured the baking sun of the day, the cold nights, the hunger and thirst of fasting, the temptations of the mind during long periods of solitude. The devil tried to take advantage of the harshness of the desert to drive a wedge between Jesus and his Father and to reveal Jesus as one more sinful human being, who, when push came to shove, would murmur against God and abandon his calling.
Holding fastBut it was the devil, not Jesus, who was unmasked in
the desert as a powerless liar in the presence of the Holy Spirit and when confronted with the power of the word of God. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus rebuked each temptation of the devil with words of life from Deuter-onomy. When all material essentials were stripped away from him in the desert, he held fast to the true essentials: the word of God as food for the soul, worship of the one true God, humble service to the glory of God. Jesus endured the temptations of the desert for us so that with his help and power we might persevere through desert trials we may face. The desert revealed the starkest of contrasts between Jesus, the Son of God, and the powers of darkness.
The Rev. Bob Horowitz is rector of Redeemer, Greenville.
Desert spirituality —continued from page 5
Seekers and their legacyThe thread of desert spirituality continues through
the history of Western Christianity. It is a history of
mystics and inspired monastic reformers, coming to the
fore again and again to remind us of our spiritual roots.
Among many are several examples:
St. Francis (1182–1226) was inspired by Christ’s
direct command, “Repair my church!” He gave
up all for a life of love and poverty out of which
grew the Franciscan order. (Italian)
Julian of Norwich (1342–1413?) voluntarily
chose an enclosed life of solitude as an anchrite.
Her extensive writings record personal mystical
revelations of great intensity. (English)
St. Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), representing the
dual character of contemplative mysticism and
practical organizing, succeeded in reforming the
Carmelite order and restoring contemplative
centrality. (Spanish)
St. John of the Cross (1542–1591), working with
Teresa of Ávila for religious reform, is best
known for his writings, such as “The Dark Night
of the Soul,” that wrestle with recurrent spiritual
issues of the desert tradition. (Spanish)
George Fox (1624–1690), founder of the Quak
ers, led a movement outside the institutional
Church that had much in common with earlier
Catholic mystics and contemplatives. (English)
Thomas Merton (1915–1960), Trappist monk,
hermit, and prolific mystical writer, is remembered
for his exploration of commonalities between East-
ern and Western mysticism. (American)
Desert choicesDesert spirituality offers us relevant considerations
in today’s world. In paying attention to the nudgings of
the Holy Spirit, we acknowledge that we have choices.
If we choose to listen, we become aware of the alterna-
tives presented by the desert metaphor. As we search for
a deeper spiritual relationship, we recognize the barriers:
hurry, crowds, media, noise, distractions, gluttony, and
materialism. We can choose to fast, to go into the “des-
ert,” intentionally to withdraw. Difficult at first, it can
be done in small steps. Such withdrawal opens time for
prayer, study, and contemplation. Periods of physical and
spiritual retreat present opportunities for small desert ex-
periences. Sometimes it is helpful to work with a spiritual
director for guidance, a present-day abba or amma.
The process and the goalWhether desert seekers of the early centuries of Chris-
tianity or spiritual seekers of the 21st century, the issues
are the same. Confrontation of one’s deepest inner being
in the search for union with holy mystery is the process
and the goal. Willingness to make the intentional choices
that open us for this to happen is the legacy of desert
spirituality, a legacy there for each of us to tap and use on
our own spiritual journeys.
Ms. Felicia W. Smith is a member of St. Simon & St. Jude, Irmo.
Learn more about desert spirituality
Historical resourcesThomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert (New
Directions, 1960)
Laura Swan, O.S.B., The Forgotten Desert Moth-ers (Paulist Press, 2001)
John Michael Talbot, The Way of the Mystics (Jossey-Bass, 2005)
Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (Doubleday, 1990)
Benedicta Ward, The Lives of the Desert Fathers (Cistercian, 1980)
Contemporary resourcesSolitary Maggie Ross writes frequently in the
journal Weavings (www.upperroom.org/weav-
ings/)
The Benedictine Experience is a contemporary
gathering of men and women to study and expe-
rience the balanced way of life as the Rule of St.
Benedict envisaged it. For a schedule of events
and activities go to www.benedictfriend.org.
Lent 2009Crosswalk
14
—continued from page 2
Episcopal Search Committee appointed
Following Bishop Henderson’s announcement of his retirement “effective on the date of the consecration of the eighth Bishop of the Diocese, or on December 31, 2009, whichever occurs first,” the Episcopal Search Plan-ning Task Team has announced the appointment of the Episcopal Search Committee. Nominations for commit-tee members were received from each of the five convo-cations of the diocese and from members of the Stand-ing Committee, after which the Planning Team finalized membership with an eye to “assuring diversity (by gen-der, age, Convocation, etc.), providing needed skills for the committee, and having people with a strong com-mitment to Jesus Christ and Church.”
Search Committee members are: Carolyn Barfield, St. Bartholomew’s, North Augusta; Zach Brown, St. Matthew’s, Spartanburg; Rudy Canzater, St. Luke’s, Columbia; Suzi Clawson, Good Shepherd, Columbia; Angela Daniel, St. John’s, Columbia; Donnie Daven-port, Ascension, Seneca; Norah Grimball, Trinity Ca-thedral, Columbia; Jack Hardaway+, Grace, Anderson; Fergie Horvath, Epiphany, Spartanburg; James F. Lyon IV+, Good Shepherd, Columbia; Larry Moore, Advent, Spartanburg; Blaney Pridgen+, St. Mary’s, Columbia; Al Sloan, Grace, Anderson; Janet Tarbox+, retired, John-ston; Bill Thomason, Christ Church, Greenville; and Robert Yoffie, Our Saviour, Rock Hill.
A 15-member Transition Committee, charged with managing the election and other elements of the tran-sition period, was also named. Details and updates regarding the search are on the diocesan Web site at www.edusc.org.
Holy Trinity’s Dr. Harry Morse wins Virginia Seminary’s Lettie Pate Whitehead Award
The Virginia Theological Seminary has awarded the 2009 Lettie Pate Whitehead Award to Dr. Harold G. Morse, a physician and active member of Holy Trinity, Clemson. The award is given each year by the seminary to honor an Episcopal layperson who, over a significant period of time, has given leader-ship and unique wit-ness to the Gospel of Jesus Christ within his or her congregation, community, diocese, and in the world.
Morse was selected because of his lifelong dedication to providing medical care to the underprivileged. Early in his career, Morse led the effort to establish the An-derson Free Clinic which continues to serve thousands of underprivileged patients. Later, Morse established the Clemson Free Clinic. Both clinics continue to be led by Morse and are run with a staff of dedicated volunteer health-care workers.
For more than 20 years Morse has also led a project to improve the lives of residents of the small Haitian village of Cange by helping to fund and build a health clinic. Now, Cange has a full-service hospital, whose services include primary care, women’s health, surgery, dentistry, ophthalmology, and a treatment center for HIV and TB. After helping to train Haitian medical personnel to run the hospital, Morse focused on broader community ef-forts, including water security.
Morse has been instrumental in helping Cange and other communities in Haiti improve sanitation, farming, and in starting income-producing manufacturing plants, a school, an Episcopal Church, and other projects.
Bishop Henderson dedicates and consecrates new Gravatt chapel
On February 16 a joyful crowd of more than 150 people gathered at the Bishop Gravatt Center to join Bishop Henderson for the dedication and consecration of Gravatt’s new Chapel of the Transfiguration, a beau-tiful, free-standing structure built to replace the chapel destroyed in the December 2003 fire that burned Cul-lum Hall.
The new chapel, designed by LTC & Associates of Columbia and constructed by Pizzuti Builders of Lex-ington, honors Messrs. Bailey Dixon, John Glover, Clyde Ireland, Peter Trenholm, and Michael Turner. Gravatt’s original chapel was completed in 1989 with a generous gift from the Bailey Dixon family to honor Mr. Dixon’s friends, John Glover, Clyde Ireland, and Michael Turn-er. Peter Trenholm served as chair of Gravatt’s Board of Trustees from December 2006 until his death in Septem-ber 2008.” Without his passion,” according to a note in the service bulletin for the dedication, the “chapel may not have been completed.”
Every three years the diocesan ECW selects a “Most Hon-ored Woman,” who in turn will be rec-ognized at the ECW Triennial, which runs concurrently with the General Conven-tion of the Episco-pal Church. The next Triennial will take place in July 2009 at Anaheim, Califor-nia, and our diocesan “Most Honored Woman,” named at the 87th ECW Convention in February, is Nell Mason Barr from St. John’s, Columbia.
Hailing Mrs. Barr as our “Most Honored Woman,” ECW president Beck Sullivan cited her 30 years of ser-vice as diocesan liaison to the National Cathedral As-sociation , her gift of hospitality, her teaching, and her ability to keep us all connected. “Nell’s love for ECW and the Episcopal Church,” Sullivan said, “can only be described as passionate!!! We are thrilled to honor Nell for her warmth, amazing capacity to love and her ability to shine the light of Christ . . . , mentoring many and raising the standard for Church women.”
Three ordained to the diaconateOn January 31 at St. Mary’s, Columbia, amid
joyous celebration, Bishop Henderson ordained three to the diaconate: Fred Ashmore Walters, Margaret Her-ring Jennings Todd, and Leslie Carol Ferguson Horvath. They will serve at All Saints’, Cayce; St. John’s, Winns-boro; and St. Christopher’s and Epiphany, Spartanburg, respectively.
Around the Diocese
“Most Honored Woman” Mrs. Nell Mason Barr is
recognized by diocesan ECW president Beck Sullivan.
Our newest deacons: Fred Ashmore Walters, Margaret Jennings Todd, and Leslie (“Fergie”) Horvath
Lent 2009 Crosswalk
Rejoicing at Gravatt’s new Chapel of the Transfiguration
Dr. Harry Morse on one of his many trips to Haiti
15
Bishop Henderson urges sup-port for SC constitutional amendment for “high quality”education
Bishop Henderson is urging all Upper South Caro-linians to support a constitutional amendment to re-place South Carolina’s dismal standard of “minimally adequate” with a new expectation of “high quality edu-cation” for our public school children. Supporting the amendment is as simple as signing the petition online at www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com.
“Beloved,” Bishop Henderson said in a recent state-ment, “this is a cause which I might call ‘MDGs at Home.’ God’s Kingdom has neither geographical nor national boundaries; but even as we ‘strive for justice and peace’ and to ‘seek and serve Christ’ in the underdevel-oped countries, we ‘strive’ and ‘seek’ for our immediatecommunities, too.”
The language of the amendment will replace South Carolina’s current state standard of “a minimally ad-equate education” established by the South Carolina Su-preme Court in 1999. Please sign the petition today by visiting www.goodbyeminimallyadequate.com.
St. John’s, Clearwater, holds last service
On Monday, January 5, Bishop Henderson learned that the vicar of St. John’s Mission Church in Clearwa-ter, the Rev. Rob Hartley, and the majority of commu-nicants there had announced their departure from the Episcopal Church at services the preceding Sunday cov-ered by local media. Expressing “complete surprise” and “extraordinary disappointment” at the decision and the
manner in which it was handled, the bishop arranged for Sunday liturgies to continue at St. John’s through the month of February, allowing time for study and discern-ment regarding the future of the church
Bishop Henderson wrote a letter that was mailed to everyone in the St. John’s database, expressing sadness and the desire to have a conversation about the decision. From this experience, it was determined that the level of community participation was not sustainable and that good stewardship required the closing of the church. A final service was held on February 22.
Diocesan canon to the ordinary the Rev. Michael Bullock is in consultation with the Property and Insur-ance Committee for assistance in selling the property and applying the resulting funds to the newly formed Bishop’s Legacy Fund for congregational development.
Cursillo looks toward program in Central Ecuador in 2010
Cursillo #112, held at Gravatt February 13-15, welcomed its first ever Spanish-speaking table, com-prising diocesan missionary in Ecuador Cameron Gra-ham Vivanco, two visitors from Ecuador, and three can-didates from the Hispanic congregation at St. Francis, Greenville. The weekend was one more step in a pro-cess working toward export of the Cursillo program to the Diocese of Central Ecuador in summer 2010. The model for the transfer is the already successful transplant of the diocesan youth renewal program, Happening, to Educador in the summer of 2007, and driving the pro-cess is a leadership team from St. Paul’s, Fort Mill, who visited Ecuador in summer 2008.
The next step will be the participation of four more Spanish-speaking candidates from St. Francis in Cursillo #113 in June and continued seeking of human and other
resources that will culminate in Cursillo #1 in Ecuadorin 2010.
Anyone interested in serving on Cursillo staff in Upper SC or in helping with the transition to Ecuador should contact Chip Smith, [email protected].
¡De colores!
Gifts of Bread and Water Cam-paign for Haiti is under way
For more than 25 years, a significant part of our diocese’s mission outreach efforts have been directed to Cange, Haiti, and envi-rons, where, in 1984, a system pro-viding safe, fresh water was built. The gift of water has been the foundation for the transformation of Cange into a vi-brant community with a church, hospital, women’s and children’s clinics, schools, an artisan center, and commu-nity agricultural projects. However, the system, built to serve 800 and now relied upon to serve 8,000, is on theverge of failure—a situation which would result in a hu-manitarian crisis of gargantuan proportions.
The Gifts of Bread & Water capital campaign, endorsed by Bishop Henderson as a key way in which Upper South Carolinians can express their “determi-nation to be “One Body” with “One Mission”: which is “Changing Lives,” is now under way. To learn more about our ministries in Haiti and read Bishop Hender-son’s endorsement of the campaign, visit the diocesan Web site, www.edusc.org. Donations or pledges may be sent to the Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Caro-lina, 1115 Marion Street, Columbia, SC 29201, “For: The Gifts of Bread & Water; Attention: Julie Price.”Questions should be addressed to Earl Burch, chair of the campaign, 864.356.9804; [email protected].
ON THE COVERGrand Canyon,
by Patrick DohertyPatrick Doherty was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Painting professionally since 1990, he looks to color for enlighten-ment, finding much satisfaction translat-ing thought to canvas. Grand Canyon shows the influence of his ex-periences during travels in the Arizona desert. For more information visit www.patrickdoherty.com
Everything we needBefore entering into silence and stillness, whether in the practice of spiritual reading, reflecting, or
wordless praying, consider the awesome gift of God’s presence in you, and God as the Ground of your be-ing (and all being). Meditate on these two profound truths. Because of this, we already have everything we need to be contemplatives. Indeed, we already have everything we need. We only have to awaken to this reality, and open ourselves up to the awareness of this life-giving grace. By consenting to God’s presence and action in us, we are being transformed into the image of Christ.
Thanks be to God!
CONTEMPLATIVE RESOURCESCynthia Bourgeault, Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (Cowley Publications, 2004)gThomas Keating, O.S.C.O, Manifesting God f g (Lantern Books, 2005)Thomas Merton, by William H. Shannon (HarperSanFrancisco, 2003)
William H. Shannon, (Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000)
Ms. Susan Conway is a member of Christ Church, Greenville.
Lent 2009Crosswalk
Silence on Fire: Prayer of Awareness
The Inner Experience: Notes On Contemplation , edited and with an introduction
Nonprofit Org.U.S. Postage
PAIDPermit No. 848Columbia, SC
Episcopal Diocese of Upper South Carolina1115 Marion StreetColumbia, SC 29201
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Commission on the Anglican Communion and International Concerns, Diocesan House
Bishop’s Interview and Discernment Committee, All Saints’, Clinton
Clergy renewal of vows, Trinity Cathedral, Columbia
Holy Week, Diocesan House closed Good Friday & Easter Monday
Celebration of new ministry, St. James’, Greenville
Commission on Congregations, All Saints’, Clinton
Bishop’s visitation to St. Augustine of Canterbury, AikenGravatt Convocation, St. Thaddeus’, Aiken
Celebration of new ministry, St. Martin’s-In-The-Fields, Columbia
Bishop’s visitation to St. John’s, ColumbiaBishop Harris’s visitation to Grace Church, AndersonReedy River Convocation, Redeemer GreenvilleCatawba Convocation, Good Shepherd, YorkMidlands Convocation, St. Timothy’s, Columbia
Leadership Day, Christ Church School, Greenville
Bishop Duvall’s visitation to St. Francis, ChapinBishop Harris’s visitation to Holy Trinity, Clemson
Ordinations to the transitional diaconate, Christ Church, Greenville
Reedy River Convocation residency
Bishop’s visitation to St. Luke’s, ColumbiaBishop Duvall’s visitation to St. Alban’s, LexingtonBishop Harris’s visitation to St. James’, Greenville
Bishop’s visitation to Church of the Ridge, TrentonPiedmont Convocation, St. Margaret’s, Boiling Springs
Clergy Day, All Saints’, Clinton
Bishop Duvall’s visiation to All Saints’, Clinton
Diocesan House closed, Memorial Day
Bishop’s visitation to Christ Church, Greenville
Provnice IV Bishops, Kanuga
Province IV Synod, Kanuga
Bishop’s visitation to Trinity Cathedral, Columbia
DEC, All Saints’, Clinton
Bishop’s visitation to St. John’s, Winnsboro
Bishop’s visitation to St. Paul’s, Fort Mill
PYE 2008, Central Gulf Coast MIssissippi, Senior High Mission Experience
Catawba Convocation residency
Commission on Convocations, Diocesan House
Bishop’s Interview and DiscernmentCommittee, All Saints’, Clinton
Zero Circle
Be helpless, dumbfounded,Unable to say yes or no.Then a stretcher will come from graceto gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty.If we say we can, we’re lying.If we say No, we don’t see it,that No will behead usAnd shut tight our window onto spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,Beside ourselves, and only that, soMiraculous beings come running to help.Crazed, lying in a zero circle, mute,We shall be saying finally,With tremendous eloquence, Lead us.When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,We shall be a mighty kindness.
