Bonus Post: Remarks to the Annual Meeting of the Misfits

 

Among the firsts coming fast and furious for me, the Annual Meeting. Ours is scheduled for the last Sunday in January, so I had all of eight days as a priest to get ready to lead this thing. These meetings, in my experience, are usually marked by general congeniality but with some pockets of "concern" about what's happening with the budget. And we elect members to the vestry (for those who don't know, that's the lay governing board of an Episcopal Church). In addition to those two important tasks, we adopted bylaws (finally!) for the parish of St. Barnabas (it had been a mission for its first forty years). 

And there is always an expectation of "remarks" from the rector or priest-in-charge. Here's what I had to say...

When Bishop Logue was here this fall for the celebration of 150 years of Episcopalians in Valdosta, he shared a story about each of the three Episcopal Churches. When he talked about us, he recalled a conversation he had with the late Janet Robinson, who said of St. Barnabas:

“We’re the Island of Misfit Toys.”

Now, if you remember your Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you might remember that all the toys on the island were a little quirky:

A Cowboy who rides an ostrich.

A bird that doesn’t fly but swims.

An elephant with pink polka dots.

These toys are all quite loveable if someone would just love them.

Those of you who were at my ordination last weekend might remember that the cake was decorated with a gray and black cat in a clerical collar. The message was simply “Welcome Home.” The legend behind the cake is that, again, Bishop Logue had shared a story he got from my mentor and good friend, the Rev. Dr. Lee Shafer, about my re-entry into the Episcopal Church. After staying away from the church, God called me back in. And she described me as “that feral cat that wandered into the church.” Mama Lee fed me, got me involved in lay ministries of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Tallahassee, and tamed me with one book after another to show me that not everyone in the Episcopal Church was as stiff-necked and cruel as I had come to believe them to be.

Feral cats are just another type of misfit toy. And just like misfit toys searching for that child who will love them, they just want someone to love and care for them.

As COVID hit, this congregation found itself without clergy leadership. Your Senior Warden, struggling with her own health issues, had to find her way through the maze of what is to be leading a parish. She and the treasurer had to cobble together a parochial report for the first time. With no priest, and no idea how to gather, if to gather, members of the congregation suddenly found themselves needing to figure out a way to worship. Eucharist wasn’t a possibility, at least not every week. So the next best option—Morning Prayer—became the weekly staple. Kathy Hodges, serving as a volunteer in the front office, made schedules of prayer leadership. Mother Tar Drazdowski came in once a month to provide Eucharist. And St. Barnabas persevered.

Meanwhile, in Virginia, I was perfecting my skills at hybrid learning, attending classes sometimes on Zoom, sometimes in person, sometimes half the class in person and the other half on Zoom. I was completing Clinical Pastoral Education and taking (and passing!) General Ordination Exams and waiting and wondering when the diocese was going to be in touch with placement possibilities. I celebrated each classmate who landed a call somewhere, attended many a virtual diaconal ordination. But no one was calling me. In fact, it wasn’t until almost the week before my graduation that I received an urgent message from Canon Loren Lasch to please send along my profile from the Episcopal Church’s Office of Transitional Ministry. There was a plan afoot. A church in Valdosta. And then it became two churches in Valdosta. One was Christ the King, in crisis because of the death of their rector. The other was St. Barnabas, in crisis for lack of a rector. Christ the King had an interim, my former spiritual director, Mtr. Galen Mirate. She could be my supervising priest as I ventured into life as a transitional deacon. So, the feral cat essentially had two foster homes, working to see which one, if either of them, would be a good fit. And it didn’t take long for me to get the sense of where I wanted to be. Listening to your stories, both the good things and the bad stuff of your lives, I knew this was the better place for me to be. At first, the bishop was surprised. And then he saw me and our delegation at the diocesan convention and our interactions with each other and the rest of the delegates. I believe that’s when Bishop Logue knew that we were a good match.

In essence, to stick with the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer theme, we were like Rudolph and Hermie, the Elf who wants to be a dentist. We were independent…and now we’re going to be independent together! Thanks be to God!

Independent together is, of course, an irony. Once we are put together, we become interdependent, dependent on each other. Thankfully, we are not alone in this venture.

The bedrock of this relationship begins with God. I make it a practice every day to take time…even if it is only the 20 minutes of doing the Morning daily office…to touch base with the Holy One…and give thanks for opportunities and learn from my missteps. I encourage you to do the same. Take a small segment of your day or night to give thanks and seek God’s love and mercy.

The diocesan staff are willing, able, and want to help make this partnership succeed.  They will answer questions as they come up. Fellow clergy have also been very helpful to me, and have been there to remind me, constantly, that it is not my job to do all the roles in the church and to make room for others in the congregation to exercise their gifts. I look forward to ideas and dreams that you have, and ways you think we can accomplish goals for serving our wider community. Maybe it’s doing more with our gardens. Maybe it’s looking into safe ways to utilize our campus, both the grounds outside and the inside, to host groups. Perhaps it’s setting up strategic planning for the future of St. Barnabas or creating special events that we can host to introduce ourselves to a community that doesn’t know us yet.

I know I want us to former stronger ties with our two sister Episcopal churches as well as some other congregations and faith-based groups in Valdosta and engage in the ancient practice of the church to be a prophetic witness to the larger community. I feel strongly that we are at a juncture in our history of this country that demands the best efforts of those of us who claim the mantle of Christ to work toward a society where no person is an outcast, and those on the margins are brought into the center and treated with equity and fairness. For me, this means rejecting racism and other forms of the sin of exclusion, be it marginalizing the disabled, or the LGBT+ community or anti-Semitism. We serve and worship a God who is Love. And that Love demands us to act with compassion. Matthew 25:35-40 makes it plain that love means extending ourselves and stepping up to help the person who is in trouble. Reminding our community leaders of their responsibility to be servants of all and not some of the people is the type of witness that is a politics not of left or right; it is the politics of love.    

I realize this is a lot. As a wise person recently pointed out to me, neither Rome nor London was built in a day. My hope is that we ponder these ideas, allow ourselves to take this next year for the Holy Spirit to stir up the power within each of us, and give hope, love, encouragement, and above all, value each other as we venture forward, grounded in love of God and each other.

The spirit of the Lord is upon us!