Betsy's Back

Betsy, my wife, has returned from her studies in Ireland. Having her home is great. Funny how in some ways it seems like she was never gone. But in other ways it seems like everything has changed since she left. Maybe I inhaled too many fumes while furiously cleaning the place for two days.

Denise is particularly happy to have Betsy back. She demonstrates this by jumping around and being more talkative than she was a few days ago. She also follows us around from room to room, eager to keep the pack together. Our cat got lonely with me gone most of the day and no one at home to play with.

Last night we celebrated my appointment with a Taco Casserole and very nice bottle of champaign. After we finished it, I put it on a bookshelf next to the bottle that we used to celebrate Betsy's admission to the U of T more than two years ago. Hard to believe it's been that long since we left New Haven to come to Canada.

We've been listening to the new Harry Potter book on Audiobook. This is our tradition when it comes to the Harry Potter books--I've never actually sat down with the actual printed books. It's a good story with plenty of potential as sermon material. Lots of spiritual themes like sacrifice and love and providence.

A couple of pieces of my preparation to go to Messiah are starting to form up. One is to review as much print material as I can handle. Soon I'll be pouring over Vestry Reports and Histories of the parish. I've also got a meeting coming up with the Music Director. I'm thinking of burning a CD for him of some of my favorite songs--we need to familiarize each other with our musical tastes and styles. But I expect to spend much of our first conversation simply talking about church music and what it means to us. In particular, I want to know what makes him really excited about Church music.

I remember when Stephanie Martin first came to SMM and I spent a good deal of time learning about her vision of Church music simply by talking about what we each liked and disliked. We also looked over various hymnals and other resources for ideas. That kind of blue-sky dreaming and musing is a critical kind of exercise to do in collaborative projects like this, I believe, especially when the goal is to create something fresh, exciting, and new. I did something similar with an artist named Jennifer Mitchell whom I've commissioned twice. First she created an Advent-themed Raredos for our side chapel. The second time it was to make a Lent-themed one for the same space. Both were a success and really helped to pull those seasons out of Ordinary Time. Just for kicks, I'll end with pictures of those two pieces...



-t

Church of the Messiah

Today was a big day for me. It was officially announced that I have been appointed as the new incumbent (aka Rector) of the Church of the Messiah, Avenue Road. The position starts September 1st, but my first Sunday will be the 9th of September. (I'm taking a weekend of Professional Development Time to go down to Holy Cross to meditate and spiritually regroup). It's a very exciting time for me and for the Church of the Messiah. I realize that they are trusting me with a great responsibility and are taking a big risk--the risk and the trust are mutual, of course. This is my chance to put my training/experience/formation to its full application. It's going to be a blast. I can hardly wait....

Interestingly, when I first heard that Messiah was open I was keen on the appointment, and it's strange how the timing worked so that the position stayed open long enough to coincide with my search. Even at the peak of my search when I was looking at various options, I felt really drawn to Messiah.

I'll be blogging a lot more about my initial impressions and feelings as things go on. Right now I'm a bit exhausted by the whole Sunday morning thing. Services at SMM were excellent. It's the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene and we make an appropriately big to-do about that around here. Although I didn't preach at the main service, I did give an excellent extemporaneous sermon at the 8 o'clock--the sort that made me regret not recording it! Ah well.

Now it's time to go pick up Betsy at the Buffalo airport. I probably won't be able to blog again until Tuesday.

Life is good. Life is VERY good.

-t

More pictures from Monhegan

"Fairie House" in Cathedral Woods.
Looking across the Bay at Manna Island.
My sister Lynne, nephew Charlie, and myself.

"why not you"?

Sometime ago a person came to me for pastoral care. They spent more than hour describing all the problems in their life and in the world. They kept asking "why me," "why must I suffer in this way." This is a classic question one gets in pastoral care, and I've been asked it many times in many different circumstances. There are various answers to it, depending on the circumstances under which is asked. The most powerful answer, the answer that is most transformative is "why not you?" No one ever said that life would be easy. Nor does living "righteously" mean less suffering. Wisdom suggests quite the opposite.

So the "why not you" answer is the advanced ninja-priest answer that you only give when you think the person is ready to receive it. It can be a real bomb of a response. I can remember with crystal clarity receiving that answer for the first time when I was receiving counseling from a priest as a child. Changed my life--no kidding.

Alas, often someone who is going through their litany of problems isn't actually interested in transformation or growth. Really they just want to sympathy. Sympathy enables them to sustain their state of self-focused suffering. Sharing and having their feelings validated allows them to continue suffering the changes and chances of this mortal life without change. But as a priest/caregiver I can't always offer that kind of unconditional sympathy in good conscience. Sometimes you gotta take the risk of challenging someone to grow. This must always be done in a loving and responsible way. I rely mostly on instinct and experience to make that call about when to be congruent and when to be dissident in counseling situations.

Truly masterful therapists, in my experience on the receiving end, spend most of their time agreeing with their clients (cf. Carl Rogers' three rules of unconditional positive regard, congruence, and empathy). But then in a special moment the therapist whips out zinger of an insight. From the client's perspective this insight seems to come out of nowhere, though it's often a fairly common place notion that they may have even thought about themselves. Somehow, though, when it is said in this context it can change everything. Good stuff.

Patronal Feast (the Feast of St. Mary Magdalene) is tomorrow. It's going to be a great celebration. I'm looking forward to it.

-t

weird day

Today was an odd day--lots of ups and downs for some reason. Started off on a great note. I had an inspirational meeting with a committee I'm working with. But by mid-morning I was feeling kind of ill. Not sick enough to go home, but definitely a little off. The rest of the day was similar, good news, and then something jarring, and then good news again.

An example of uplifting news: Brin, our Administrative Assistant (and the Church Seamstress), finished a private commission I hired her to do. She created a new burse and veil to match an existing chasuble and stole that my mother commissioned for my ordinations. She did a fabulous, fabulous job. She really did her homework not only to match the fabrics but to develop and learn new techniques to work with them. The result is a completely hand-stitched masterpiece that I am very much looking forward to using at our next green Mass. I would put up some pictures but Betsy still has our camera.

She comes Sunday PM....

More tomorrow.
-t

Foggy

This is going to be a hard day, I can tell already. Last night I found out just before bed that I would be celebrating the 7.15 A.M. Mass at SMM. I didn't get to sleep until around 3 A.M., however, and my alarm woke me up in grumpy mood. When I stepped outside I was surprised by how wet, foggy, and hot it felt. Sure enough, the rain fall only accelerated by the time we were saying Mass in the church. So in my "intentions for the Mass" (said just after the offertory) I thanked God for the rain and prayed for the farmers who need this kind of thing.

Whether it was the weather, the lack of sleep and an early Mass, or some other reason, I found Mass difficult this morning. Since we celebrate Eucharist everyday here, I get lots of practice. I've probably said Mass here more than 300 times. Yet this morning I had to concentrate not to mess up. In the end the only thing the congregation is likely to have noticed was when I screwed up the Fraction Sentence: "Christ our Sacrifice is Sacrificed for us." Oops. Luckily, the vestry prayer book I created with prayers to say before and after Mass includes a prayer with the line "pardon the imperfections of our worship."

Perfection being impossible with any human endeavor, we reach and reach. And in the reaching is some kind of spiritual grace. Rahner would say that the transcendental reaching is part of the spiritual character of humanity and evidence of God's presence in the universe. What I know is that I celebrate Mass in my little way with my little gestures. I do it in a way that keeps me empty and receptive and mindful than a million other priests are doing the same thing at this or another time. But what I really hope is that one day I'll be changed totally into flame.

Here's a story from the Desert Fathers:

Abba Lot went to see abba Joseph and he said to him, "Abba, as far as I can, I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven; his fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, "If you will, you can become all flame."

-t

21st Century Evangelism

Here is a picture of our cat, Denise, for no apparent reason...


She makes our life better through her ministry of cuddles.

Last night I was an a dinner party with two other priest-couples. Lots of talk about Church politics and mutual contacts. I take these kinds of opportunities to ask priests more senior than myself about how they handle two issues: evangelism/church growth and lay leadership development.

Nothing much came out of a conversation about the evangelism issue, except all of us venting our frustration that so much of the conversation in the church these days is about shrinking and closing places.

I was interested to hear, however, that one of the priests there met with his Wardens at least once a week. "I'm lucky," he said, "they can meet in the middle of the day." This would be difficult to pull off with the schedules kept by most Wardens. They tend to be busy, working folk with tons of responsibility. But the advantage would be that they can really keep track of the daily changes and chances of church life. He also told me that he does some spiritual work with his wardens with prayer and study. Good to know. I file these kinds of reflections away for further thought. Every church requires different styles of leadership at different times. But the more options you know, the more adaptable you can be.

I began filming a tour of the church today. This is my second run at the project. I'm discovering that it's actually very difficult to talk articulately while on camera. Probably be easier if I was actually showing someone around the church for the first time. Or I could film someone who knows a lot about the place and keep them going with helpful questions and such. See--I'm learning. New wine for new wine skins! I need to write a white paper on "The Media Savvy Church" one of these days. I have little doubt that this is part of the key to "solving the evangelism problem." We have to learn the languages of our mission field....

-t

Pictures from Monhegan

Here are a few pics from summer vacation, courtesy of my sister Lynne...


Me and Charlie on the hammock. The book I'm reading there is Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols.


This is the house we stayed at.


Charlie's introduction to lobster.


A very photogenic house next door to ours. Often a black lab would sleep in front of the door to complete the scene.

Sunday Recap

Bede just wrote a great blog entry about beauty. Creation of beauty (or perhaps it's co-creation?) has been an important task of religious folks all over the world for a very long time. Creation is a spiritual activity. We are quite used to certain kinds of creativity in church. Traditional church music, for example. But it's too bad that most churches aren't brave enough to journey with the artists that are stretching the creative envelope. I'm not totally sure why that is, but I suspect it has to do with the insider-outsider problem: we want insider art inside our churches. There are exceptions, of course. Note The Episcopal Church and Visual Arts project.

Part of my vision for a 21st century pastorate is the cultivation of my own creative abilities. Not just learning to sing "priest-chant" or collaborating in conventional church art forms like vesture and architecture--I want to push the envelope a bit. That's why my video project is important--we need to proclaim the Gospel in new tongues. Watch Father Matthew Presents to get an idea of where I'm heading...

Speaking of singing, I got some nice compliments on my singing at the 11 o'clock Mass today. Yeah!

Betsy returns in one week. I can hardly wait...

-t

Enjoy!
-t

Movie Making

This morning was a Requiem Mass for a departed member of our extended parish family. She was the daughter of a parishioner and died far too young (in her 40's.) This is the third Requiem Mass I've been a part of in as many days. Weird how deaths and themes of death seem to all come in batches. Of course, my spiritual director would probably say that it isn't weird at all, simply a phenomenon to be noticed and pondered. I suppose it shows the interconnectedness of things.

After the memorial reception I spent some time playing with Adobe Premiere. I'm new to the world of video editing, but I expect to post my first attempt a little later today on YouTube. I'll cross-post it here when I can. At the moment my computer is dutifully crunching away at the billions of calculations necessary to convert the file from one format into another more suitable for posting. From this attempt I've learned some things...

1) GIGO: "Garbage In, Garbage Out" Or, you are only as good as your footage. Alas, I suck with a video camera. I need more practice, clearly. it would probably help if I had a better tripod and camcorder, too.

2) Jesus Saves. Yes, I lost my work partway through due to a computer crash.

3) This is where GHz Count. I'm realizing that I'm reaching the limits of what my computer is really capable of doing. It's still faster than most people's machines, but it's not really quite powerful enough to be a good video editing workstation.

Anyway, I should have something ready to post in a few minutes.

8 Days until Betsy returns. I don't like being a bachelor, I'm remembering.

-t

Singing

I had a very good singing lesson today with my teacher, Hallie Fishel. My voice was tired, so my accuracy and range weren't what they could be. But one of the things that I love about Hallie's style is that she knows how to detect and respect the body's limits. And even with a tired voice I was noticing how much I've learned in only a year of lessons. Things that were once difficult are now automatic. So we are moving on to different things, such as learning to sing the Exultant from the Easter Vigil service. We are also doing more advanced ear training to ingrain chordal structure. And, of course, we are continuing to expand my range. At this point I've got good control over an octave and a half (maybe two octaves when I'm having a really good day). Beyond that is shaky. Good stuff.

I saw the new Harry Potter movie last night. Pretty good, though I prefer "Goblet of Fire." Betsy and I have listened to everyone of the books on unabridged audio CD's. The next one is on pre-order from Amazon.

9 days until Betsy comes back....

-t