When Just Resting Is Enough

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

This week is one when something unusual besets me. I find myself, at least today, at a loss for words. As most of you know, we have been marching through some difficult times at the Rectory. With the stark diagnosis of pancreatic cancer for Mary’s mother, Patricia, the untimely death of a family pet and all that goes with having houseguests, I’m at fairly low energy.

In the section of the Prayer Book entitled Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families, there is this little nugget that seems appropriate right now.

O God, you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are

fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in

quietness and trust shall be our strength. Isaiah 26:3; 30:15

That’s about all I have for you today. In fact, it’s not anything that I have for you, but it is the sustaining promise of the God of all creation. That God, expressed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is deeply interested in your peace, your rest, your quietness, your trust and ultimately your salvation. For today, for me, that’s going to have to do. I hope and pray it works for you as well.

Thank you all for all your prayers and support during these times.

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

Play Ball!!!!

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

Most of you will know by now that I am a huge baseball fan. The Grand Old Game has been on stage in a number of my major life events. Some of those stories are unlikely, but true. Some are mundane, yet profound. The love of baseball seems to be something of a family obsession around here too. Mary, Jonathan and I are quite captivated by the game. I think part of what makes baseball so appealing is that it is not bound by time or space. Here’s what I mean.

Baseball games only end (except by weather or other forces) when the prescribed number of innings are completed with one team clearly ahead. A game can be brief or very long and still comprise only the prescribed number of innings. When asked how long a baseball game takes, the right answer is always, “it takes as long as it takes.” There is no time limit.

Baseball diamonds also have only two real boundaries of play, the first and third base foul lines. Some of you may have seen the play made in this year’s Little League World Series when a player jumped over the fence and caught the ball that was apparently headed for a home run. That’s an out. That’s an out in any baseball field. Theoretically, Manny could regularly scale the Green Monster (or even sit there) to rob home run balls. Each field intersects each other field in some way abstractly. Have you ever considered that?

Baseball is also the only game I know of (besides cricket) that the offensive team does not possess the ball in order to score. Baseball, at its most ‘equitable’ is 9 players against 4.

By now, I hope you’re asking yourself, “What does this have to do with Church or the spiritual life?” Well I think there are some things that are worth noting. Like baseball, the spiritual life is one of practice on personal skills that ultimately benefits the team.

No matter how deep our prayer lives are, the Church is never a Church of one. Community and team are both ways of saying that I need the skills and talents of others in order to be successful. None of us, by our lives of personal prayer, devotion, service and worship, is going to point as effectively toward the coming of the Kingdom as will the whole church. On the other side of that coin, no one else can develop our relationship with God in Christ for us. Times of personal prayer, in spite of the personal benefits on our souls, are never a complete response to the action of God’s coming to the world in the person of Jesus. We can only ‘play the game’ meaning be the Church, if we all work together.

One last analogy if you’ll indulge me. By the time you read this, either the Colorado Rockies or New England’s beloved Boston Red Sox will be World Champions. This is a year unique in my experience and I hope that we all can experience something like it one day.

Part of the problem with baseball, despite all its intrinsic symmetry, anomaly and beauty is that we become attached to particular teams in a way that can blind us to the beauty of the game itself. I suspect that, whether in Colorado or New England, there are going to be despondent folks after one of the two teams wins four games in the Series. I however, see this as no lose. I love the Colorado Rockies, I am quite fond of the Boston Red Sox, but most of all I love baseball. Whoever wins, I suspect I’ll be happy to celebrate with either bunch. Not because I don’t care or am wishy washy, but because I love the beauty of the game.

What if we all were so in love with our Triune God that we didn’t worry about whether or not our ‘Team’ wins? What if we all recognized that our spiritual lives, both individual and corporate are no lose situations? I suspect if we were ever to live into that, even a little bit, the skeptical world would find Christianity so appealing that they wouldn’t be able to stay away and the whole world would win! I'm betting on Jesus in seven thrilling games.

—Fr. Warren

Let the Game Come to You!

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

It’s great to be back from my several sojourns over the last month! Between retreat, vacation and surgery it feels as though I’ve run the gamut of experiences and they’ve all been valuable and instructive. I have to say that slowing down on retreat is always a chore. It is hard, sometimes, to shift gears from doing to simply being. By that I mean that even in getting ready to intentionally spend time listening to God, I found myself making lists of just how I was going to do that as if just sitting and listening in the context of the monastery weren’t enough.

The good news is that grace abounds in excess of anxiety and I was able to get to a state of being in fairly short order. I read, I prayed, I slept, I walked, I read some more, I ate wonderful Trappist Preserves with reckless abandon! At the end of a couple of days I was really getting the hang of this retreat thing! That’s when the thoughts of what had to be done upon my return started to seep into my reading, my prayer, my walking and the like. I guess the point I want to make is that we need to guard our being every bit as diligently as we plan our doing. I have hear athletes, artists, writers and musicians talk about how things slow down when they’re really in ‘the groove’, ‘the zone’, ‘the creative place’. I suspect that holds true for the art and discipline of prayer and discernment as well.

I am trying very hard (with dubious success) to really believe that simply showing up and paying attention is all that God requires of me in the daunting task of aligning my life and work to God’s will and plan. Sometimes I want to complicate the simple (don’t think that I mean ‘easy’) instead of just allowing God’s grace to act upon me as an open channel of possibility.

In the rest of the week ahead, I invite you to look at the passage from Jeremiah that we will read in Church this Sunday where the LORD talks with Jeremiah as the clay and God as the potter. It is up to God to form us lumps into the images that reflect the Glory of God that is meant to be ours as God’s children. In order for clay to be shaped, it mostly needs to just be clay. God is working on forming us, you and me, into vessels of His Grace. Wait upon God’s work and expect truth, goodness and beauty to be the product of His forming us all, over and over.

It’s great to be back!! See you all around!

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

More Than We Can Ask Or Imagine

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

I was reviewing the parish website of a seminary classmate today and took the time to read a sermon that she preached this past Sunday. In it she took on the text from Luke not looking back and moving forward into the reality of God without reservation. From putting our hands to the plow, letting the dead bury the dead and dealing with Jesus news that “"Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head." Let’s face it, taken literally Jesus is claiming to be homeless! Jesus is so completely at home in his own skin that he recognizes that his authenticity is a gift from God and that being in the right place at the right time is a matter of listening to the voice of God leading the way and not clinging to the trappings of security. That’s freedom that I can scarcely imagine. I guess the closest I’ve come is in trusting God to lead our family to Worcester, not even knowing what Worcester was like.

My friend is challenged by that text because, in her own words, “I’m such a homebody.” On some level we’re all like that. We like what’s comfortable. We’d rather stay around the ordinary than to make ourselves available to the extraordinary, spiritually speaking. Jesus uses this occasion in Luke’s Gospel to challenge us to trust God’s presence and passionate desire to bless us ‘more than we can ask or imagine’ (Ephesians 3:20).

I believe we make ourselves available to the best that God has to offer when we trust that no matter where we go, God is. On the fleeting occasions when we’re able to trust God in that way, we find ourselves called to places that we’d never imagine ourselves and being richly blessed to boot.

I believe God is calling the community of St. Luke's Church to some amazing places (that’s easy to say, because I believe God calls everyone and every community to amazing places!!!!!!). I want to challenge us all to allow God to do the unimagined and unbelievable in our midst. There’s only one way for that to happen, in my opinion. That is to pray daily for God to lead us into the realities he has prepared for us.

Will you make that sort of commitment? If so, here’s a prayer to use should you like to have one:

Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to thee, so
guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our
wills, that we may be wholly thine, utterly dedicated unto
thee; and then use us, we pray thee, as thou wilt, and always
to thy glory and the welfare of thy people; through our Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. (BCP p. 832 A Prayer of Self Dedication)

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's Yours To Do?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

As I sit in my office and write this, the mercury is headed for 90 for (I believe) the first time so far this summer. I can’t help but marvel how easily I change my tune from one season to the next. It wasn’t a month ago that I was lamenting the fact that warm weather had been so elusive so far in 2007 here in Worcester. Today, I found my mind wandering to the coolness of the fall already. I have such a hard time being in what is sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with hoping for an improvement in our lives. Having said as much, I have a hard time remembering the weather is not in my sphere of influence. What’s the old saying? “Everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it!” As if we really could do something about it.

The weather is but one of the objects of a certain kind of magical thinking in my world from time to time. I have to admit finding myself concerned about ‘big issues’ while at the same time being unwilling to act in the small ways I can around me sometimes. There are many examples I could give, but here are two.

1. I decry the lack of Sabbath time in our lives. Weekends are full with all sorts of things, and yet I find myself available by phone and/or email almost all the time. Sometimes, despite my protestations to the contrary, I act as though I am indispensable. “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.” (Isaiah 30:15).

2. I am concerned about the fact that our culture preaches the ‘more is better’. I know that the scripture tells us that “where our treasure is, there our heart will be also” and yet, I have to admit that I really like my things. I’m trying to work on that but it’s a tough one for me.

Sometimes our deep concern about the big issues can be an excuse for not doing the things we can that are right before us with regards to our personal transformation. Let’s face it, worrying about the big, hard problems can be a way of getting out of doing anything.

There are times when I can grasp the deep faith in St. Francis’ dying words, “I have done what was mine to do”. What sort of world might we be able to create if we could all say that at our last? Better, I’m guessing. We all have something to do. May we all have the strength to do it, no matter how small it may appear. Many small acts, done faithfully, are what ultimately can change the world. I leave you with the following classic prayer by Reinhold Neihbur, an acclaimed 20^th Century Theologian. Note, if you will, his prayer for temporal happiness is qualified, he prays only to be reasonably happy in this life. Oh that we could be so easily satisfied!

The Serenity Prayer

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

What is this World Hungry For?

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

It’s been just now a year since you extended the call for me to be your rector. My how time flies!! One of the things that made a big impression on me from the first was the Mission Statement of St. Luke’s. In the I’ve been here I find myself attaching it to all kinds of things. This weekly (or almost weekly) update. The Blog that contains these updates. It’s amazing how something can fade into the background in a short time. The Mission Statement above has done so a bit for me.

I was having a conversation with a couple of folks the other day and we started talking about the Mission Statement and we spent an awful lot of time concentrating on the first phrase. ‘Nourished by God’s Word and Sacraments,’

The assumption that it makes is that we, all of God’s people, have a hunger that only the experience of God can satisfy. That seems to me to be the easy part. The more challenging reality at hand is twofold.

1. Invite people to the table and let them express their hunger.

2. Prepare, from our best ingredients of faith and truth, wholesome, nourishing food for the soul.

During the remainder of our conversation we were quite taken with the feeding metaphor that nourishing conjured up for us. I want to encourage you to sit with that image as well as the summer unfolds. It seems to me that it connects beautifully with our self-identified gift of feeding, eating and hospitality. We do those things well, but we can always do all things better and more faithfully. Sit with this question if you will.

”With what shall we feed the stranger at our door who hungers for the transformative power of God in Jesus Christ?”

This, it seems to me, is a great question because there are a whole number of ‘right’ answers. Let’s reflect on this and talk about it as we encounter one another through these languid summer months.

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

Gardens, Gardens, Everywhere!

Dear St. Luke’s Community,

Memorial Day has come and gone and Independence Day is bearing down upon us. The days are longer, the flower, oh my the flowers here are truly a sight. You must remember that I am used to living somewhere where 9 inches of rain is a year’s worth. The green, verdant and colorful gardens everywhere are such a treat to the eye!

I have been reading a book by a man named N. Graham Standish who is a pastor of a Presbyterian Congregation in Pennsylvania. He says that congregations and churches are like gardens. Some he says are like English Gardens, requiring lots of upkeep and planning to maintain their character. Some, he says, are like herb gardens that add flavor and fragrance to the world about it. Others are vegetable gardens, that feed those in the church and the many neighbors as well with hearty and simple fair grown from fertile, loamy earth. Another variety is the cottage garden whose plants are simple and often serve the purpose to create separation and space from noisy and nosy neighbors. Others are like wilderness gardens. Wilderness gardens are grown on large tracts of land, require a bit of planning and maintenance, but are often allowed to grow wild. They have incredibly lush areas and some dead spots as well. Standish thinks that much of New Age Spirituality is like this. Finally Standish offers the conservatory model. It is a garden that has many varied zones and may contain all of the above types (save maybe the wilderness garden). It can be confusing, it takes enormous amounts of time, planning and money to maintain and is not easily accessible or necessarily a place of prolonged respite.

I have been wondering what sort of garden we are at St. Luke’s. I see elements of several and I’m not sure there’s any ‘right’ answer. What is far more interesting to me is to deal with the question, ‘What sort of Garden does God wish for us to plant in this fertile soil?’ I point you all back to the parish profile where there is mention of fertile soil and tilling. Could it be that part of the Holy Conversation into which God is inviting us is to plan, prepare, plant and tend a particular kind of garden (either literally or metaphorically)? I’m not sure of the answer but I’m loving the question.

Shall we all grapple with the question together in the coming months? During the summer we are likely to have the chance to experience some different church settings in our vacation travels. Why not try and find out what kind of garden you’re visiting? See what kind of plants seem to be flourishing there and bring back your stories. Who knows, we might be able to do some transplanting to make this Garden Spot of God more lush, diverse and inviting?

Have a great summer. Bring back your ideas, but most of all, rest in the lushness of God’s garden, wherever you may find it.

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