Inter-Dependence Day

There is special significance for this Independence Day in our house. As many of you will know, Jonathan, our beloved son turns 13 tomorrow. The rite of passage that being a teenager is not lost on any of us. That this rite of passage comes as we celebrate American Independence from Colonial Rule as a nation is an interesting coincidence.

For some 200 years we as Americans have relished our Independence and the glorious success that Democracy has been for us and for countless others across the globe. And for good reason.

Having said that, I think we can fairly make the case the complete Independence, on any level, is a myth at best. The fact of the matter is that isolationism has never worked for America as much as we’d like it to. The same holds true with children, adolescents, and adults. This is especially true with the spiritual life. It is true that God’s presence is everywhere. I cannot deny that as a basic tenet of the religious life. We all, by virtue of our kinship with Jesus have access to God in ways that our Hebrew forbearers could not imagine. It is easy, and a bit dangerous, to think that we can have the fullest experience of God possible all alone. John Donne, famous Anglican preacher and poet penned these words,

"No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

We have existence in God apart from others, but we cannot claim the fullness of fellowship that God desires for us all individually if we choose to make God and our relationship to God a private matter. As Christians the centrality of relationship is central to our belief. That’s why the Trinitarian understanding of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit is part of our ordering our common life. We are created for relationship.

I guess my point is (and I do have one) this: Independence is a step toward maturity, but it’s just a step and not the end to which we’ve been called. As we understand ourselves independently we are offered a great and noble choice, that is to choose interdependence. We cannot do without one another. We cannot experience God’s fullness outside of community. We cannot worship fully in our tradition without relationship. The Eucharist, by definition, is the community expressing its thanks to God for all that is.

Regardless of where you find yourselves tomorrow, I hope that in the midst of our Independence Day Celebrations we’ll remember that we depend on one another and indeed on everyone that is in ways that we can never completely understand.

Blessed 4^th! May you have the courage to seek Interdependence!!!

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What's Happening Now?

Dear Folks,

I’m getting ready to do some traveling. Next weekend Rick Kimball, Mary Hicks and I will travel to Washington D.C. for training in the Disciples of Christ in Community (DOCC) program at the National Cathedral (more on that in another update!!!!). After returning from that trip, we’re off on family vacation to Nashville with my extended family.

I mention this because it never ceases to amaze me how much work it is to get ready to go on vacation! There’s so much to do on both ends of a vacation, both the getting ready and the returning, that it’s easy to forget to really have one’s vacation. There is a strong corollary in the Spiritual Life.

We are people who treasure our tradition. We hear the stories of God’s past interaction with folks every weekend at worship. We often read these stories to ourselves as we study the Scriptures as individuals as part of our faith formation. We pay attention to the past and we should.

We also look forward to a more full coming of God’s Kingdom. We see ourselves on a Pilgrim’s Journey back to where we came from, communion and full relationship with God. So we look ahead with the Christian virtue of Hope squarely on the horizon. And that’s a good thing!

What can happen, however, is that we can spend so much time on where we’ve been and where we’re going that we miss the gift of where we are. So it is with the life of the Church. We can be so tethered to our memory of better days, that we miss the blessing that rests at our feet each day. Likewise, we can be so invested in the promise of a better future in God that we lose sight of the blessed present that God showers us in every day. I hope you get the point I’m making.

Reflecting on vacations past is great. Planning new adventures for the future is worthy. Having said that, I’m going to do my best to be really present to the experience of vacation while it’s happening. I’ll let you know how that works out. See you this weekend!!!

Judgement and Grace

Just a note with this video. I was stunned by the disconnect between my expectations and the reality I witnessed. Another lesson in humility and standing back from judgement (and the Lord knows I really need all the reminders I can get).

Have a grand day and dream big dreams.

--Warren

Archbishop Rowan Williams - What is church?

Archbishop Rowan Williams talking about at the core, what the Church is. The Church exists in response to the often surprising touch of Jesus into our lives.

Where's the Church? Not just under the steeple!!!

Learning to Deal

‘Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you. I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’ (Philippians 4:8-13)

The Apostle Paul writes these words near the end of his letter to a fledgling church in Philippi struggling along with Paul in the challenges he faced as he was imprisoned and uncertain about his future. It seems to me that we might do well to put a bookmark at this passage as we face the uncertain future of a challenging world. I particularly draw your attention to verses 12 & 13:

‘I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’

Given the current state of affairs in the economy (especially at the grocery store, the gas station and when the oil delivery comes), it might be wise to pray that we can become as Paul in knowing the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry. What Paul is calling the Philippians (and be extension us) to is being mindful of the ground of our being (as theologian Paul Tillich would put it), which is God alone. At the very core of our being as humans created in the image and likeness of God is an insatiable yearning to connection, relationship, even union with God. We were created to reflect the confidence, glory, compassion and love of the God of all that was, is and is to come.

I guess I’d summarize one of our challenges like this: It has been said that tough times don’t last but tough people do. I would like to make an appeal to a different understanding. One that comes from a place of deep faith and confidence in God’s good wishes for us and for the whole world. I want to suggest that Paul’s appeal to the Philippians might be best summarized that tough times don’t last simply because God is. So then I see the challenge as not giving into the temptation to despair by remembering, to the core of our beings, that whatever tough times we endure, we do so with the God of all the universe at our side and in our corner. Maybe Julian of Norwich said it best, “All will be well and in all manner of things, all will be well.” She recognizes that it is not at present well in the eyes of God but that the promise is that the completion and perfection of the creation is a promise, not merely a dream. I believe that is what leads Paul to boldly proclaim is ability to ‘do all things through him who strengthens me’ (v. 13).

Here’s to strength for your journey, my journey and our journey. I trust that sooner or later, we'll all learn to deal .

Cultivating Gratitude

Our Prayer Book boldly states that:

“The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord’s Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in this Church.” (BCP p. 13)

This fact makes the active life of the community very important especially when we view ‘Eucharist’ by the literal meaning of the word in Greek, which is ‘thanksgiving’. Each and every week as we gather around the table and expect our Trinitarian God to transform our gifts of bread and wine into the ‘Real Presence’ of Jesus at our table we should be profoundly thankful. That thankfulness should not be limited to a ‘feeling’ of gratitude but should extend in to lives which display, in tangible ways, how thankful we are to be fed at the Communion Table.

One of the ways we have done this over the years at St. Luke’s is to gather non-perishable goods on the first Sunday of the Month to send off to Jeremiah’s Inn to help with their work with those seeking to break the grip of substance abuse. I don’t have to tell you that times are tough. I don’t have to tell you that it costs more to fill our grocery bags with our accustomed fare. I don’t have to tell you that just getting to the store is more expensive than it’s ever been. You all know all of that.

The really important question, given all of these realities, is; “What’s a Church to do about it?” I think that, among other things, we need to be more public about our support for those who feel this pressure most acutely and we need to do it publicly within the context of our regular corporate worship. A number of you have suggested over the course of the past months that we need to be more public about our monthly ingathering and have suggested that it become a weekly practice. I could not agree more and you all will be happy to see (I hope) that I’m getting around sharing your suggestion with the community.

Beginning this weekend, I invite you all to bring whatever non-perishables you have, whether it be macaroni and cheese, canned goods, dry cereal or the like. It doesn’t have to be much, but I believe it is a Holy Habit to cultivate, tend, nurture and watch blossom. Just as the flowers at the church or at our homes give us pleasure through our care and cultivation, so to does our Heavenly Father take pleasure in the gratitude that we cultivate in the giving of what we have to those who have so much less. I would also like for these offerings, whatever they may be, to be a part of the offering of our treasure and the gifts of bread and wine in the service. I conclude with this Offertory Sentence from the Book of Common Prayer (p. 376):

Through Christ let us continually offer to God the sacrifice of
praise, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his Name.
But do not neglect to do good and to share what you have,
for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. Hebrews 13:15, 16


Peace and Good,
The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602

Where Do You Stand??

Dear Folks,

I write this just ahead of the Income Tax deadline. I won’t tell you when I filed, just say it’s done. It is a bit daunting to make one’s way through the maze of tax law under the best of circumstances. Whatever your position in this tax season, the reality is that we are all better off than most when we put it in a global context.

Before I give you a tool to find the answer, I want you to guess what your ranking among the world’s richest people is. For point of reference according to the world census clock (http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/popclockworld.html) there are roughly 6,660,878,099 people in the world. That’s in the BILLIONS. Where do you think you stand my number? Are you in the top Billion? Higher? Lower? Hmmm, interesting to think about. Okay, if that’s too hard, where do you think you fall in terms of percentage? Top 25%? Top 10%? Higher? Lower?

I’ll leave it to you to answer the questions and then go to this Website The Global Rich List (www.globalrichlist.com) and figure it out. You’ll have to convert the filter to dollars and then put in your income and see where you stand. I must admit I was humbled by both my rank and percentile. Let’s just say I (that is my family) is in the top 1% globally.

Why do I bring it up? Because perspective is important and we can do more good than any of us know if we begin from a posture of gratitude and abundance instead of fear and scarcity.

One of the marks of Missional Communities is gratitude and a sense of abundance in the face of God’s many blessings on our lives.

Whether you owed the IRS or are getting some of your money back, remember that all that we have is a gift from God. Our families, our homes, our ability to work, earn, save, spend and above all to give. God loves a cheerful giver! I pray that we all have the grace to give according to what God has given us.



Peace and Good,
The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602
508-756-1990 (Office)
508-756-8277 (Fax)
Blog Address www.frwarren.blogspot.com

Sometimes it's all in how you look at it!!!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

There’s an saying that was front and center in my mind and reflection after the Holy Week and Easter festivities were winding down today. The saying is, “Perception is reality.” I have to admit that there are times when that is more true for me than I would like it to be. As I thought about it I found that often when I use that saying, it’s not in a positive vein.

However, today, I was struck at every turn about how different things seemed around me than they did just last week. Sure, I’m talking about the spiritual realities of the profound shift from Lent to Holy Week to Easter, but in the temporal stuff around me, I also noticed a real shift in how things appear. It actually started on Good Friday. As I walked down the steps toward the door of the Church I saw a robin for the first time this spring. As I noticed the bird at work seeking a crisp morning meal, I found that I was hearing a cardinal here, and the chirp of more robins there, I could sense that new life was straining to break out all over.

Now I know the next part of this change in perception has largely to do with timing. But daylight savings time notwithstanding, the quality of light on things is just different in the past couple of days. The children are out playing longer after school. They’re also pushing on the limits of whether or not they should wear coats.

I noticed in driving back from a trip to the store this evening that I could hear birds everywhere. There were more than the usual number of folks out walking their dogs. There seemed to be more runners and walkers on the road. The big pile of snow in the turnaround at Flagg Street School is smaller every day. My perception of the world around me and what’s going on in it have a huge influence on my reality.

As Easter people it struck me that simply a shift in perspective can make all the difference as well. Assume for a moment that you don’t experience Lent and Easter knowing how the story turns out. Imagine if you will, what Jesus’s disciples might have experienced, perceived and felt each in their own way as it became clearer and clearer that something really important had happened.

Now move out of your imagination and into your experience and perception of the miracle you’ve been a part remembering and celebrating in the past week. You have a new chance this year, just as in every Easter season, to see the world in a new way as a result of the resurrection of Jesus. Death is no longer the final answer but merely a shift in lives that are eternal in nature. Hope is not merely an attractive idea but confident assurance that God can make good out of bad. Love is a way of life not an emotion. We can come to see people as walking talking images of God instead of viewing others with fear and suspicion.

Sometimes it’s all in how you seen things. Take a look at the world around you in the light of the resurrection and help change the reality of things and you’ll be helping bring in the Kingdom of God.

Fr. Warren+

How Are Things With Your Soul?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

As some of you might know, I have succumbed to one of the latest trends in our increasingly digital and pluralistic world.

I am on FACEBOOK.

For those of you who don’t know of it, Facebook (www.facebook.com) is a social networking website in which folks can make connections with people of similar interests and communicate in real time in a virtual community. As with most of the internet, you have to take the good with the bad, but Facebook lets you choose your content and who has access to that content. But that’s not what I’m really writing about.

Earlier this week, I received a ‘bumper sticker’ on my account from on of my Facebook ‘Friends’. He is a freshman in college at St. Thomas College in St. Paul, Minnesota and the oldest son of one of my seminary classmates. He still finds it amusing that relics like his mother and me are on Facebook. The sticker he posted on my site quotes noted 20^th Century Anglican C.S. Lewis, saying, “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” The implication, at least in part, is “there’s more to us than what you see….WAY more!”

Again last night while I was reading Ronald Rolheiser’s book The Holy Longing a similar claim barreled into my space. It said, to paraphrase, that the soul is what brings the chemicals of the body, the stuff of which we’re made, into animation. In that sense, according to Rolheiser, to lose one’s soul is to cease to live. It gave me pause to reflect. In fact, it’s still giving me that pause.

This morning I asked a gentleman who came to a meeting in my office, "How are things with your soul?" He pondered a moment and thend said, "I don't know, I don't think about it that much." I was taken aback with his honesty and had to admit that though I ask the question of others fairly often, I don't often take stock of how things are with my soul as often as I might. If my soul is that part of me that makes life fully possible, then you'd think I'd pay more attention to its health. After that meeting ended, (a couple of hours ago) I spent some time dealing with the question of how it is with my soul. It seems to me that is entirely consistent with what Lent call us to do. So, having said as much, here's how things are with my soul just ahead of Holy Week...

Thus far this year my Lenten Journey has been, as it often is, about focusing my energies on the things that God is calling me to do and not being concerned so much with those things that I’m told I ‘ought’ to do (either by myself or others). I don’t know about you, but it makes it much easier for me to step out in faith when I sense that God’s desire is my invitation and not that the expectations of another are my compulsion. Make no mistake, some of what we ‘ought’ to do is God’s will, but I invite you to at least acknowledge the possibility that what we ‘ought’ to be spending our time doing might be taking time away from getting into the heart of God in which our souls find their true rest and most powerful inspiration.

Well, enough of the reflection, I ought to get back to work. (he said with tongue firmly planted in cheek).

May the Love of Christ and the song of God in your soul inspire you to hopeful living this Holy Week!!!!

Take a look! Really take a good look!

Okay, now I’m getting closer to having seen everything.

For what it’s worth, we didn’t have weather like the past three days out in the west. Usually when it snows there, it snows. When it rains there, it rains. When it sleets, you know that something’s really wrong!

I have to admit that on more than one occasion yesterday I caught myself looking out the window in wide-eyed wonder. As I found myself in that state, I wondered why I don’t do it more often.

If we open our eyes at any given time to what’s around us we stand a pretty good chance of seeing something that perhaps no one else will see. Sometimes that witness is a happy thing, sometimes not, sometimes it’s neutral, but the fact that we see it is an experience. Much of what the spiritual life is about is experience. We do liturgy in hopes of having a God-moment. At its best, prayer is putting ourselves intentionally in God’s way so that we might have another, newer and deeper experience of the Divine. Looking out the window at falling rain on top of sleet on top of snow was for me a remarkable experience of God’s imagination and the wonderfully Divine complexity of the Creation that is steeped in God’s own self.

As part of your Lenten journey toward the cross, the tomb and the resurrection, I invite you to really look around you in the midst of your business at least once a day. Take note of what you see. Where is God in what you see? How would God in what you see make a difference? How is what you see revealing in your own life the presence or seeming absence of God? It needn’t take long. Just steal a minute or two each day and think of God, the world and our place in it as the people of God. You might be surprised by what you see.

--Shalom
Warren

St. Brigid

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

The icon you may or not be able to see to the left in this week’s reflection is that of St. Brigid a shining light in the Celtic pantheon of Saints. She is known as the patroness of hospitality and helped maintain Christian identity ahead of the celebrated time of St. Patrick on the Emerald Isle. Her feast day is tomorrow, February 1^st.

She was known to be generous to a fault. One story of Brigid is that she was sent to take the family dairy produce (cheese, butter and cream) to the county fair for judging in competition which would mean a great deal in real terms for her family’s dairy business. Her parents were skittish about sending her alone to do this task as she was known to give anything to anyone who she believed needed it more than she. Their fears were realized (though they would not know) when on her journey to the fair, Brigid came across a poor unfortunate. She shared a bit of her fare with him and went along, determined to have at least some of the dairy products to serve at fair. She came across another poor one and then another practicing her signature generosity along the way. She makes the last stretch of her journey to market and fair noticing that she has nothing left for the judging.

She takes her place in the judging line and opens up her basket one last time to see if she had missed something that she might offer for sampling and judging. Miraculously, the basket appears full and with products of a quality superior to that which she had left Kildare with. Her radical and reckless generosity was rewarded with top prize and orders for all the produce that her dairy could supply.

It’s a marvelous story and fun, no question. I believe there is a deeper reality about the nature of our call of God in Christ that we ignore at our own peril. To give without question and because there is need is the action of a faithful life and a mature faith. This last Sunday in my Annual Meeting address, I called the community to a commitment to practicing the Christian Virtue of Hospitality.

As you enter tomorrow, the shortest month of the year, and stand on the threshold of Lent, remember Brigid and her lasting example on a people who have a heritage of hospitality to the stranger. Remember Jesus in Matthew 25, “Whenever you have done it to the least of these, you have done it to me.” Or Hebrews 13 “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Happy St. Brigid’s Day!!!

Preaching the Gospel and Hershey Bars

I ran across the following news item in the ‘Odd News’ section of Yahoo. I was amused and thought it a ‘sweet’ story (pardon the pun) but realized it was something more when Elizabeth Emerson utters this line near the end,

"I couldn't enjoy it if I wasn't able to share."

What if we looked at the love of God and the Good News of the Gospel the way Elizabeth looks at chocolate. Just a thought. Chew on it for a time.

Maine woman, 87, gets a sweet response

Mon Jan 21, 10:36 PM ET

JONESPORT, Maine - When Elizabeth Emerson confessed to a newspaper that her only real indulgence has been an occasional chocolate bar during her 87 years, she wasn't prepared for the sweet response that followed.

The 87-year-old Emerson was featured in a New York Times story about the impact of soaring fuel prices, generating letters from across the country, some with bars of chocolate inside.

She hit the jackpot in mid-December with an assortment from Hershey Co. that was accompanied by a personal note.

"I couldn't believe it. I laughed more than anything. All that fuss over little old me," Emerson told the Bangor Daily News.

The story about how the low-income elderly endure harsh Northeast winters gave a snapshot of Emerson's life: married for a half-century, grandmother and great-grandmother to 52, former aide at a nearby nursing home, now struggling to live on a $683-a-month Social Security check.

The final line disclosed her secret: "My greatest vice is Hershey bars."

This weekend, Emerson displayed what remains of her chocolate collection at her kitchen table.

"This isn't even all of it. I've given boxes and boxes away," she said. "I couldn't enjoy it if I wasn't able to share."

Besides, she said, "I can only eat so much chocolate."

Peace and Good,

The Rev. Warren Earl Hicks, Rector
St. Luke's Episcopal Church
921 Pleasant St.
Worcester, MA 01602
508-756-1990 (Office)
508-756-8277 (Fax)

Blog Address www.frwarren.blogspot.com

What Gift Do We Bring?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

The dust is finally starting to settle. I’ve gotten at least a few of the boxes that filled the house broken down. The tree’s still up, but hey, it’s not Valentine’s Day yet and besides, it’s artificial. I’m really not ready to move on from the Christmas Season yet, but the calendar says the Epiphany is a matter of hours away!

During Christmastide we spend a lot of spiritual energy (or at least I have) on coming to grips with why God sends such a gift as Jesus to a bunch of folks (we humans) who so consistently seem to miss the bloody point. In fact I usually do so at the expense of forgetting to imitate the Magi in their Epiphany response. Moving between the sacred and profane aspects of Christmas (by profane, I’m not talking about my language) often diverts me from realizing that the new birth of Jesus into my life each Christmas ought to inspire some kind of thankful response. Let’s face it, the Magi were late, talked to the wrong people before heading to see Jesus and weren’t ‘the right sort of folks’, and yet we remember their faithful response to the coming of the Everlasting King by bearing opulent gifts to a poor child who appears to needed a place to stay more than gold, frankincense and myrrh.

As we prepare to Celebrate the Feast of Epiphany and the Sundays that follow before Lent comes (very early this year I might add), I want to invite you to search your experience of God over the past weeks in the liturgy, in your family, in the parish, at work, count some blessings and make an offering to God. Make an offering that may seem insignificant but that nags at you. Make an offering from the heart and see what God does with it. What good is the birth of a King if we just sit around and say how cool it is? Jesus has always called his disciples to reflection AND action. Let us as the people of God do both in hearty measure and with prayerful intention.

Blessed Epiphany!! Jesus the Light of the World awaits your gift. What do you bear for the coming of a King?