20: Potter’s Field, Potter’s Wheel

Posted on April 27, 2020April 27, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged Church, covid-19, hart island, potteryLeave a comment

roman-hinex-3s-D6FZKxAc-unsplash — Photo by Roman Hinex on Unsplash

Before (virtual) church began yesterday, we caught the tail end of the Mayor’s briefing on the state of COVID-19 in the city, which gave way to CBS Sunday Morning. Sunday Morning is always an odd collection of stories, and we’re usually not home to watch it owing to the timing of choir rehearsal and church (if the NPR Weekend Edition puzzle segment with Puzzlemaster Will Shortz!!! is on, it’s time to leave the house), but we’ve been catching it a lot more often as we shelter in place. It was unnerving, to say the least, to go from the Mayor’s briefing to a report on Hart Island, New York City’s potter’s field; i.e. graveyard of last resort. New York City’s prisoners are no longer doing the burying on Hart Island, as they have for decades, but the site remains active, even more so as the unclaimed bodies of COVID-19 victims are being interred there.

Continue reading “(Don’t) Take Me to Church 4/26/20: Potter’s Field, Potter’s Wheel” →

(Don’t) Take Me to Church 4/19/20: Dormant and Doubtful

Posted on April 20, 2020April 20, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged doubt, easter, easter lily, st. thomas1 Comment

deleece-cook-TOi_oMU4-n0-unsplash — Photo: Deleece Cook on Unsplash

It wasn’t the remedy one might expect for these times, watching Donna gently twist the wilted blooms from her Easter lily. Gathered in front of our screens for the (***checks calendar, because what is time anymore***) sixth Sunday in a row, even in this season of resurrection, we spent a moment or two with death—another moment or two, really, in this season of resurrection that is also a season of death. New York experienced something of a second peak in COVID-19 deaths after our initial Holy Week high, and while we knew the death toll would continue to mount, it feels especially Sisyphean to note that the worst was not, in fact, over.

On the second Sunday of Easter, we remembered St. Thomas, and it’s worth noting that, even in traditions less free with the “Saint” title than ours, he’s remembered as a saint. As Valerie pointed out in her meditation, Thomas’s doubt does not exclude him from the communion of saints; it doesn’t exclude him from the band of disciples a mere week after Jesus’s resurrection; and it certainly doesn’t exclude him from the love and regard of Jesus. Thomas remains in the circle despite—because of?—his doubt. His doubt brings him into a new phase of his relationship with Jesus and his fellow disciples, one we don’t see in the Gospels, one in which he will contemplate what it might mean for him to believe without seeing, or discern when to demand proof and when to trust that things will reveal themselves in due time.

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(Don’t) Take Me to Church 4/5/20: In the Belly of the Whale, On the Back of a Donkey

Posted on April 5, 2020April 5, 2020 Posted in Church, LentTagged Church, covid-19, Lent, palm sunday, things to do in the belly of the whaleLeave a comment

It’s easy for the world to feel stagnant as so many of us “shelter in place.” Only if we venture outside, in our makeshift masks, do we notice that our favorite magnolia trees have already bloomed and begun to shed their white and pink petals. We wonder what became of the fifth cat of a family of five around the corner; we haven’t seen them all together in a long time. We observe that traffic is light, and sidewalks are quiet with neighbors who don’t want to stop and chat. And when we return to our homes, we notice the small, curled green shoot on the pothos plant, unfolding over a series of days. Even at home, the world spins on, continuous in its change.

Still, stillness is the best for which many of us can hope. We hope that a deadly virus is not multiplying by the millions in our bodies or those of our loved ones; for those of us who love someone who is already sick, or someone working through pain and exhaustion on their behalf, we hope for a slowdown and a stop. We hope for an end to the sirens careering through the air night and day. We hope for the slope of the graph to stop its precipitous rise.

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(Don’t) Take Me to Church 3/15/20: Remain in a Circle

Posted on March 15, 2020April 20, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged Church, covid-191 Comment

dan-smedley-hbD2-Db0zLs-unsplash — Photo by Dan Smedley on Unsplash

In my wet hair, leggings, and circa 2018 Beto Por Texas t-shirt, I went to church, in a manner of speaking—not because my personal presentation standards are slipping, late in my pregnancy, but because I only had to walk across my living room and press Play on the YouTube link. For we are practicing love in the time of COVID-19, and church was available on a strictly virtual basis.

Micah preached and Matt sang and Donna prayed as Zac’s camera panned across empty seats, seats that must have been set up when we were still hoping against hope that we could gather in person. A shot of the headsets we offer folks who would otherwise struggle to hear sitting on two empty chairs took me aback. I was reminded that we are doing this in large measure to protect the vulnerable among us, especially our elders—the same reason we encourage folks to fill out their census forms (a promotional poster for the census appeared in another shot), the same reason we fight detentions and deportations (the New Sanctuary logo on a bulletin board in another shot). What else would we do? When Dakota and I hosted coffee hour last week, we were reminded that the food we offer after church might be the only thing tiding some folks over until their next meal, that the cheese and clementines serve as tangible reminders that spiritual food can’t be the only thing on offer when we open our doors. But today the doors were closed, and I took my material food (Cream of Wheat, lightly sugared) from my Williamsburg Prep High School coffee mug while the service streamed on my television and I fought my urge to thumb through Twitter yet again.

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Take Me to Church 1/26/20: On Stilts

Posted on January 29, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged Church, climate changeLeave a comment

seth-kane-XOEAHbE_vO8-unsplash — Photo by Seth kane on Unsplash

Sometimes—only sometimes—I can see the flood coming.

The warming of our planet and the consequences of a great melt are obvious. I can see the manifold deluges of climate change approaching; I (should) know its first victims will likely be those among us who are already uniquely vulnerable. I step back from the shore and up from the sand. If nothing else, I build my own house on stilts, so I can stay safe and dry, so I can lift up others.

Anxiety wants to keep me at the edge of every flood. Anxiety believes I can hold it back, somehow, even if the waves are lapping at my chin. If I hold on a little longer, whispers a snarled configuration of genes and neurons and memories, I can stop it from coming. I can’t possibly get out of the water. All those people on the shore are depending on me. I don’t imagine for a moment that I could drown. I don’t recognize that all those people on the shore have already seen their individual powerlessness, that they are joining hands and raising up their houses.

Empire benefits from this feeling. When I can’t step back from any particular flood, whether climatological or emotional, I am primed to consume, to blame, to isolate—all responses ripe for exploitation by rapacious corporations, by amoral politicians.

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Take Me to Church 1/19/20: In the Image of God

Posted on January 20, 2020April 20, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged apaphatic theology, cataphatic theology, martin luther king jr, prodigal sonLeave a comment

256px-Martin_Luther_King_memorial_Westminster_Abbey — MLK Jr. at Westminster Abbey. Photo by Nadiastrid on Wikimedia Commons.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.
—Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s easy to forget that King began his public career as a preacher, given everything that came afterwards, and ironic to imagine that he preached from the same Bible that was used to justify slavery and segregation. King showed up how and why he did because of his faith, not despite it, and I think the quotation above offers a glimpse at King’s image of God, as, in the photo here, he both points towards the world beyond us and opens his hand to the world before us.

What is power, and what is love? Believing God to be limitless in both is an example of the cataphatic theology Micah mentioned in his sermon yesterday. It’s not enough, he said, to know either what God is (cataphatic theology) or what God is not (apaphatic theology); these are in conversation with each other. Maybe the same can be said of all of us, that none of us is the grand sum of what we are or the differences of what we are not.

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Take Me to Church 1/12/20: New Things

Posted on January 13, 2020January 13, 2020 Posted in ChurchTagged faith, goodreadsLeave a comment

Screenshot 2020-01-13 at 6.00.57 PM — Cartoon from theawkwardyeti.com (via Facebook)

If your New Year’s resolution involves posting more trivial updates online and you still don’t succeed, maybe you are the kind of person for whom New Year’s resolutions are just not a thing. My New Year’s resolution for the last three years has been to update my Goodreads regularly, and I’ve failed every year, even in 2018 when I attempted the 52 Week Reading Project (I ended up somewhere in the 40s, which is still pretty respectable).

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