Day 9

A recent report shows that slightly more than 2 ¼ million people in the United States declare themselves to be Episcopalian – a tiny number, if you consider that the Episcopal Church Welcomes YOU!! What’s more, nearly 70% of our members, myself included, come from other denominations. (Imagine if we converts had not turned tiny Charlotte, NC into a Houston-sized boomtown?)

What drew us here in the first place? Most of us would say that we do, indeed, feel welcome in the Episcopal Church. But, does our need to feel welcome mean we choose to stay here because we worship ourselves in proximity to God or because we truly worship God? We are often criticized for making God in our own image and for reinventing scripture to suit ourselves. For a small denomination, we certainly do know how to stir things up. Do our rainbow flags, often borne by female clergy, find themselves planted in a New Jerusalem or do we, instead, seek to create God’s Kingdom on Earth as one in which the smoke from the censing obscures, only faintly, mirrors that reflect, not heavenward, but on our own images?

I remember singing, not so long ago, the lovely aria from Handel’s Messiah – He Shall Feed His Flock. Except, nearly every time I sang the words from memory, I found myself singing, “He shall lead his flock”. Now, any country girl worth her salt (and I earned my salt both here and on the pecorino-producing hillsides of Tuscany) knows that a shepherd doesn’t feed sheep – a shepherd leads sheep. Yet, a shepherd would never lead sheep to a place where they cannot find sustenance, where they would not be safe. A frightened flock does not feed. And, so, by leading his flock to a place of safety, he enables them to feed.

I like to think of the Episcopal Church as a church of reason, a light in the fight against bigotry, intolerance and hatred, but, I am also deeply touched to think of it as a safe haven where He will carry, in his bosom, those whose delicate faith needs to be nurtured and protected until they can, without fear, eat and flourish.

For the day has not yet come when the wolf and the lamb can live together. But, in the meantime, the Episcopal Church will welcome you, and me, and all who seek to feed and, when strengthened, to lead.

Day 8

From the Eucharistic Gospel reading for today, John 3:8: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”

This reference to the Spirit could easily have applied to the young woman riding her bicycle at top speed the wrong way up my street, except for one minor detail. I didn’t hear her. I didn’t hear her, and, almost before it was too late, she was upon me.

I am normally derided for having both feet firmly in the “Susie, the Safety Queen’’ camp, but tonight I was in a hurry. I looked to the right, that being the direction from which a car going the right way up the street would have come. Then, I stepped out, only to hear a voice exclaim and find a bicycle and its rider embracing my left. Too surprised to do more than gaze at her in consternation, I listened as she asked twice, “Are you okay?” I’m afraid my answer had little to do with my state of being and rather more to do with what she was doing going the wrong way up the street. She sped off.

I raced on to mass, arriving late and distracted. As my mind spun, I missed most of the import of the first reading, can recall little of the Psalm and only managed to focus on the point of the Gospel reading in its final phrases.

I’d be hard pressed to say that I’ve ever heard the sound of the Spirit, but I am aware, somewhat after the fact, that it has hit me, coming unbidden and without regard to the direction from which I would have expected it. Unlike the woman on the bike, it didn’t stop to ask, “Are you okay?” It had much better things to do than listen to a piece of my mind, chastising it for surprising me and putting me at risk. It, too, sped on, knowing I’d eventually get the point.