Tridiuum in Trying Times

Tonight, we are entering into that special sacred space we call the "Tridiuum." It's a fancy way of saying the three days leading up to the Feast of the Resurrection, commonly called Easter.

Normally, Episcopalians would gather at their churches tonight, sometimes to share an agape meal, but always to have a foot-washing, a Eucharist, and the sobering moment of watching the things that make our altars beautiful and identifiable get stripped down to nothing. As I remarked in a sermon once at my sending parish, St. Thomas has some of the altar linens fastened down with Velcro. When the altar guild removes them in the silence of the sanctuary with us watching, the ripping sound sends a chill down my spine. It is the reminder of the humiliation and violence Jesus endured when the Roman soldiers stripped him, beat him, and mocked him.

These days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday have served as the opportunity for me to stand before a cross, draped in black, and reflect upon those last moments in Jesus' life and what that brutality and violence means for me and the world. These are the days when I enter deeply into the Christian narrative and have been a time which is both intensely personal and transformative.

I have had these moments of theological reflection both as  a devout member of a faith community and even when I was not a member of a church.

I have been thinking a lot lately about my faith in God, and my faith in God as the Trinity (I have to do this anyway as part of a class in seminary). Since Palm Sunday, I have been reflecting on a conversation I had about Ash Wednesday with the late Father Lee Graham, a Virginia Theological Seminary graduate. Lee challenged me to stand outside St. John's Episcopal Church in downtown Tallahassee and protest Ash Wednesday. I was curious what prompted this 90+ year-old Episcopal priest to be so anti-Ash Wednesday. He explained that he "ain't dust!" and insisted that he was a "child of God" and that the church was using Ash Wednesday as a way to make people feel guilty. And then he turned the tables on me.

"What do you think? Do you think you're dust?"

I didn't have an answer. I had never thought about the question. He smiled and shook his head.

"You need to question your faith!"

Here enter a pandemic that has cancelled Holy Week and Easter services in churches around the globe. People are long-faced and despairing.

How can they celebrate Easter when it feels as if Holy Week is never-ending?

How can they know that they are members of the body of Christ if they are unable to celebrate the Eucharist?

I find myself returning to Fr. Lee's examination of me at his dining room table, and I turn the question around: is our faith in God so dependent upon the rituals and liturgies of Holy Week? Is our faith in God only to be found in the breaking of the bread? Is it only Easter if we are gathered in a church full of flowers on a particular Sunday in the Spring?

Again, I remember that I spent years of my life not associated with a church community in large part because the only church community I had ever known, the Episcopal Church, was a toxic and harmful place for a queer person in Tallahassee. And I had known enough, and had enough of an experience with God, to know that I did not need to subject myself to homophobic rantings from a pulpit to be in relationship with God.

Returning to the church, being part of the Christian community, has certainly deepened and strengthened my relationship with God. One of the ways these roots have sunk so far down is that I have developed friendships with others who, through their baptisms, are in a covenanted bonding with me through Christ. This is why Christianity is a communal religion and why it has been painful for many of us to have to resort to Facebook Live and Zoom in order to worship together. But that's the thing: we are able to worship together through the means of technology. We are able to text and talk on the phone and have Skype and FaceTime and other means of being in touch during this time when we cannot touch each other.

All of this reminds me of the scene in Matthew's gospel where the disciples are in a boat, and they see Jesus walking on the water toward them. They cower in fear because they presume he's a ghost. He assures them that it's really him and they shouldn't be afraid. That's when Peter pipes up and asks Jesus to invite Peter out onto the water with him. Jesus tells his disciple to come. So Peter steps out of the boat onto the water:

But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ When they got into the boat, the wind ceased.--Matthew 14:30-32

These are trying times right now. But I believe that it is in our moments when we are feeling ourselves sinking into despair about social distancing and mourning the loss of liturgy that we are called upon to trust in God and not be afraid. Easter will happen. Love will conquer death. And we, too, will rise from this figurative death as well. Keep the faith.

Proceeding with Palm Sunday

There are a lot of things that I was looking forward to this Palm Sunday. 

I was planning to work with a group of readers from St. Monica and St. James to present the Passion Gospel. I had visualized a situation where our Jesus and narrator would occupy the ambo and the lectern while our other readers popped up from their seats...at the altar, in the middle of the sanctuary, and in the choir. It would have been, I think, a powerful way to place the Gospel with the people and made them feel a part of the story. I had been thinking through some talking points that I would have liked to have had with my readers, making sure they understood some of the evil that has been the unfortunate outgrowth of the Matthew Gospel account of Jesus' death. There are verses that some have used to justify their anti-Semitism. The whole idea of "blood libel" comes from Matthew's Gospel, and I think it is a point worth addressing with people charged with reading so they understand the importance of being careful with the language. Especially in our American culture today where hatred of "others" is running rampant. Add the fears generated by the pandemic, and I fear what hateful thing might happen to Jewish people this week. 

But, the pandemic put a halt to my participation at my CXM site. And now I find myself learning the ways of Facebook Live as I bring my services to an Episcopal Church in Bainbridge, GA. And rather than take an active part in Palm Sunday, I was in the place of passive observer over the internet. 

And guess what? It was not devastating. 

I don't know if it's that I have been exhausted from worry about school, how to pack my room (which a classmate very helpfully did for me).  I don't know it's that we had a week of trying to find a home for a stray kitty who followed us home on a walk (we did find a home for him!). Maybe it is that I have been carefully folding bandannas into masks between wandering in and outside the house in an effort to force myself to sit down and engage in my school work which feels so meaningless at this point. But whatever it is, I was OK not being physically involved in the liturgy of Palm Sunday. Instead, I could really take a moment to worship...and witness the innovative ways in which churches in the diocese of Georgia were using the lemons of this COVID-19 moment and making the lemonade of meeting the worship needs of Episcopalians. 

One of my favorites was the procession of palms on video from my sending parish, St. Thomas. We were asked to get any green branch, and take a photo of ourselves holding it or showing it hanging on our door. The organist had the choir members record themselves singing "Ride On, Ride On in Majesty" which she mixed together. That soundtrack played as the video showed the photos of parishioners and their homes bedecked in palms and other green branches. It was a simple and beautiful way to process palms while honoring the need for physical distancing right now. And we got to see each other and our homes! 

The diocese has also been honoring the physical distance requirements, but not letting that disrupt our communal and social media connection. The Palm Sunday celebration today featured a sung Gospel with a woman singing Jesus in one place, the narrator in his own locale, and a third male singer sitting in his room somewhere else in the diocese. The intercessors were a family in another part of the diocese. Music was from two of the diocesan seminarians and their husbands. No, there was no Eucharist, but there was communion through the internet. And some of these little churches in Georgia are suddenly seeing an uptick of visitors to their web and Facebook pages. 

In this time of such discombobulation, what I am seeing for the churches is an opportunity to lean evermore on our faith in God, deliver us from fear, and raise pleas to the Almighty to bring wisdom and persistence to our scientists and medical researchers to find a way to deal with COVID-19. We need our political leaders to rise to the occasion of calming fears, while allowing their knees to knock as they guide us through this uncertain time. And the church needs to remember that our origins and our existence are not tied to buildings but to the mission to keep being a voice proclaiming the Gospel and reminding people that we are not alone. We can emphasize the importance of working together to protect our neighbors and ourselves by following recommendations to stay at home, wearing a mask in public, and practicing thorough hand-washing. We each have a place and a job to do to help flatten the COVID-19 curve. 

Georgia looks to be coming up with creative ways to get that message across. Bravo!

Ride on, ride on in Majesty!

Please: Don't Go To Church

Don’t go to church. 

I know that is not the message that you might expect to come from someone who is in seminary being formed for ordained leadership in the Episcopal Church.

But I mean it.

Even though we are coming to Palm Sunday, and will be entering into Holy Week, the most meaningful and powerful portion of our liturgical calendar culminating in our celebration of the Resurrection of Our Lord….

Please, for the love of Jesus, do not go to church.

I’m writing this because the Governor of Florida, after too much delay, has finally ordered people to stay at home to slow the spread of COVID-19. The death toll in Florida, while not nearly as bad as some other locales, is rapidly rising. The fear is that we will be seeing our hospitals facing the same dire straits that exist in New York City and have devastated Italy. We might end up forcing our doctors to make a horrific choice of who will get a ventilator and live and who “has lived a good long life” and will die simply because there are not enough machines for every person needing one.
There have been letter-writing campaigns and petitions and phone calls to the Governor, pleading with him to close the state down…even while college students chugged their Bud Lites on beaches and mumbled that “if I get Corona, I get Corona,” as they kept wrapping their arms around each other and wandering into cities while resident retirees hid behind their doors.  

The Governor ordered the beaches to limit gatherings to no more than 10 people in a group. He has refused to close them. Local municipalities have had to do that.

He has closed the nightclubs, bars and restaurant dining rooms. But we can still get takeout.
The pressure was mounting on him to get more serious and aggressive in closing down the state. So he started having roadblocks to stop people fleeing New Orleans to the west and New York from the north. 

On Wednesday, the Governor finally issued an order to have people stay at home. With exceptions for essential services…such as gas stations, grocery stores….and your local church, synagogue, mosque, or temple.

What?!?!?

Yes. The Governor’s order specifically overrides any local government mandate that bans a religious group from meeting if it has more than ten people present at a time. Some church will use this misguided idea of freedom of religious expression to gather and sing at the top of their lungs, shout for joy, all the while potentially infecting ten people around them. They won’t even know what hit them until days later. And by that time, they will have been around grandma or a person in line at Publix unwittingly infecting them.

They will get seriously ill, be unable to breathe. And unfortunately, some will die.
We know this is true because this is how the virus has spread both here and in other countries. Christianity is a communal religion. It started with a rush of wind through the Upper Room and people babbling in all kinds of languages praising God. But the virus sleuths have found that it's these gatherings of the faithful that have been one of the most convenient ways for the virus to spread.

I have no idea why the Governor thinks religious services are an essential need. Even I, as one in formation, and want people to be curious enough to come to church and experience the presence of the Holy in community don’t like this decision. And I do not believe it is motivated by God. I believe this is a wicked move motivated by love of something that is not God; hence it is sinful and must be rejected. This is pure evil. And nothing could be more evil than to call on Christians to gather in worship of the one who we ask for the saving health of all nations to be the center of infection.
For the president to suggest that he wants to see houses of worship “packed on Easter,” for me sounded like the Tempter had come into our public space to encourage everyone to throw themselves down from the pinnacle of the temple.
“God will save us so what do we have to lose?”

I believe in a loving and creative God who works through the scientists and researchers looking for a vaccine. I believe in a God who sits at the bedside with nurses and doctors treating the sick and comforting the dying. I believe in a God who keeps calling to us to see in this crisis that there are serious problems in our health care delivery system…our political leadership…and our treatment of nature that has exacerbated the problem. I believe this God knows the hearts and minds of those who truly turn toward Love and Life and away from self-centeredness and death. And, much as we love our buildings, God is not found just inside the red doors and the Tiffany stained glass windows of our sanctuaries. Now, God is being discovered through the pixels and data shared over the internet. New life is emerging from the figurative rubble of this age if we keep looking. 

When the day comes that we are no longer wandering through this COVID-19 wilderness, we will gather again in our churches, maybe just a little more cautious and respectful of each other’s personal space. We will share in the breaking of the bread, and pray together again. And we will praise God for helping us get to the other side of a tragic and terrible time. But we’re not there yet.

So, please, don’t go to church.

Emotions and Deep Breaths

"Haaaaa….mmmmmmm...maaaaah."

The "haaa...mmmm...maaaaah" exercise, designed to bring up sound from the diaphragm and awaken all the muscles in speaking,  is one of the staples at Virginia Theological Seminary as they prepare us for preaching or leading worship. With this recent pandemic, it has been a way for me to self-monitor my breath.

Am I drawing my breath deeply?

Am I feeling any tension in my body as I breathe?

Do I feel that I need to cough?

No? OK, good. I think I'm still good.

This has been an almost daily exercise for me since I left campus on March 12th. Not because I am going to be doing any liturgical work. But because I need to know that my body is still OK.

The news about COVID-19 keeps getting worse. New York City's hospitals are overrun, healthcare workers are ill-equipped with not enough masks or ventilators. The number of infected people is climbing rapidly every day to the point that we are now leading the world in the number of coronavirus cases.

This is not an area where we should be celebrating that we are number one.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

I had my Embodying the Sermon class today, a course that was to engage our whole bodies in preaching. But now it's an online Zoom course, and we are learning the art of how to connect with a camera, imagining it to be a person (I confess: this is hard and brings back memories of my awkwardness as a morning TV news anchor on KOMU-TV in Columbia, MO). As we checked into our bodies, minds, and souls...we were asked to choose three words for how we were feeling, and do an action to illustrate that feeling.

"I am warm," I said, wiping my brow. The office where I was doing the class gets a lot of afternoon sun.

"I am relaxed," came with dropping my shoulders and opening my hands, feeling loose in my wrists and lower arms.

Then, I clenched my fist and slammed it into my other hand.

"I am pissed!!!"

Pissed because people are dying. Pissed that the warnings signs were there that this pandemic was coming, and our president kept calling it "a hoax." Pissed that millions of people are losing their jobs. Pissed that we can no longer gather with each other and when we do, we have to stay "physically distant" by six or more feet. Pissed that some spring breakers didn't care and are now infecting other people. Pissed that every day, I am having to work harder at concentrating on assignments for classes and I'm losing that battle. Pissed that all the courses, the plans, the conferences I had been excited for this summer have now evaporated with this virus. Pissed that I had to deliver another heartbreak to my dorm residents back in Virginia that the refectory is being treated as a restaurant by the Commonwealth of Virginia; hence they could no longer gather...even six-feet apart to share a meal.

This after having spent half-the-year eating in a giant wedding tent waiting for the refectory to be remodeled.

Dean Ian Markham, the president of the seminary, started the year with a sermon in which he noted that "we are under construction".  Now, it seems, we are "under disruption."  These times are dangerous and we don't know when it will end.

I have had a lot of biblical metaphors crop up in my head for this time. My exit from VTS two weeks ago felt as if I was one of the Israelites running away from Egypt. I didn't have time to stop and do my laundry. I wanted to get home quickly, so I had left my car and took public transit to the airport. Definitely no time for the bread to rise with me! I have described this time as like being in the wilderness, wandering, with no signs pointing the way forward and only trusting that God will live up to the promise to be with us always to the end of the age.

Perhaps there is a new age that will emerge out of this one. When all is said and done, maybe we will realize that we are more interconnected--believer and non-believer, Christian and Jew and Muslim and Buddhist and Pagan--than  we dared to think before. Perhaps we will see that our care of creation--all of it and not just a piece of it--is the covenant we have with God, and that when God called it "good" we were to treat it with the same respect and awe.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

Connected and Moments of Gratitude

The usual pattern of VTS life: Coffee. Chapel. Class. Lunch.

In this pandemic wilderness moment, where I am joining my seminary community via Zoom and FB Live, I could have coffee AND chapel at the same time. Small pleasures, but a pleasure nonetheless.

It is weird to be doing this work from home in Tallahassee. But I am grateful to be here and am thankful that the sometimes isolating and silo-forming nature of the internet is serving its other function: bringing me together with people I know who are 800 miles away. I have accepted this new reality, and am dedicating myself to find the ways that these lemons can be made into lemonade.

I'm grateful that I have a spouse, a cat, and a house. As I remarked in an exchange with a couple of dorm proctors, doing seminary being separated from my family has been hard. If I had attempted to be at VTS when everything is online and still separated from my home, it would have been untenable. It has been hard enough to concentrate as COVID-19 has taken over every conversation and news program. Being able to be at home has helped to lower my blood pressure.

It's also created some new opportunities. My wife has done her Saturday morning worship and I've been able to listen in with her to her rabbi. In turn, she gets to leave her state job (yes, the state of Florida is still making her come into the office!) and eat lunch with me and share in my studying and eye-rolling at having to read David Hume. Aside: I thought Hume and other "Age of Reason" philosophers were deadly boring when I had to read them as an undergrad 30 years ago. They have not improved with my age.

I have picked up more worship with my community by joining in on the "Quarantine Compline" service in the evenings offered by some of my fellow seminarians.

I am also learning how to host Zoom meet-ups myself. I've setting up my phone in front of the television set on weeknights to host "Zooming Jeopardy!" with my dormmates who would normally gather in our common room for a half-hour of game show watching.

I'm very grateful for my friends. The woman who lives across the hall from me was able to get me my computer and notebook that I had hastily left behind at spring break. One of my friends has agreed to drive my car while it sits in Virginia waiting for my return. And still other friends have kept connection through texts and FB messages over a myriad of topics as we navigate our new normal.

Yes, things are strange. Yes, things are uncertain. And yet, it is in these moments that are broken where the light shines in...even through a computer screen. Now...back to reading.

Thanks be to God!

Formation from Afar

About this time a month ago, Virginia Theological Seminary had just wrapped up another Spring Visit Weekend. People discerning a call to ministry had met students, sat in on classes, ate with us in our refurbished refectory. 

It was also my birthday weekend, and I had gone off campus to find a hole-in-the-wall sushi bar in Springfield, VA. I was settling into the rhythm of the Spring semester with a new systematic theology class, poking and prodding at our faith in a Triune God. I was also taking a little time each day with the Gospel text for the First Sunday of Lent, Matthew 4:1-11, which would be the first of four scheduled sermons at my contextual ministry site. And I was getting together again with friends at our campus pub, eating the delicious Café Burger with or without an adult beverage. 

Many of us in the Middler Class had been going home to our dioceses for our candidacy interviews...the next step forward toward the day we hope to reach: our ordination to the transitional diaconate and then (God willing and the people consenting) the sacred order of priests. 

Life was busy, full, and what I call "seminary" normal.

But outside the relative safety of VTS campus life, I was aware of the news that there was a virus in China that had caused an entire region to go into quarantine. Bizarre, but not beyond Wuhan....oh, wait: now there are cases in Iran. Then South Korea. Then Italy. A cruise ship in Japan. And then Washington State?! 

Yeah, but it's only seeming to affect people over 60 or with chronic health problems. Geez, what are the symptoms? Will anyone tell us what the symptoms are of this virus?

An email. 

The proctors of the residence halls and apartments, all six of us, were asked to join a Zoom call with the Dean of Student Life. A case of this coronavirus, now named COVID-19, had affected members of our community through a church in Washington, DC. 

That was on March 8th. 

Then we learned that there was a person who had tested positive and had had close contact with members of the seminary choir. Soon, another case was confirmed. And the job of delivering three meals to the dorm residents asked to self-isolate went from five people to fourteen. Suddenly, classes were going to Zoom only. The Episcopal dioceses of DC and Virginia closed all their churches to public worship until March 28 (DC has since extended this to May 16). Questions were abounding, anxiety was rising, and the answers were largely only best guesses because nobody knew anything about this new virus. 

We still don't know a lot. And what we do know is that it is not a simple flu, at least not for anyone with any kind of immune weaknesses. 

I was scheduled to come home for spring break. I wondered, "Should I leave?" Friends told me emphatically, "Yes!" 

 I threw books in my bag that I needed for a couple of classes, but in my rush to pack, I missed my notebook. I made a strategic choice not to take my clunky laptop that stays in my room. I mean, worst case scenario, I might have to stay home an extra week, but will be back before the end of the month.

Now, it seems, I won't be back before May.

I struggled with the decision to stay put in Florida. VTS is my community, people who are swimming in a similar wild and wacky stream of discernment that I am. These are the people with whom I do the routine, "Coffee, Chapel, Class, Lunch" every day for weeks on end. 

I am a dorm proctor, meaning that I care for the lives of thirteen other adults and am the builiding super, making sure that maintenance requests go in and doing follow up to make sure repairs happen. I have friends I won't be seeing except via Zoom. I won't be interacting in quick casual conversations with faculty or staff as I go to get my mail. If there was ever time when I am feeling what it is to be "in the wilderness" this is it!

Which brings me back to the scene of my sermon on 1 Lent where Jesus is in a dialogue with the Tempter. My sermon focused on how Jesus was in a very vulnerable place. He had been out in the wilderness with nothing to eat or drink for forty days and forty nights and "afterwards he was famished." Instead of falling into the traps of the ego that the Tempter was putting before him, Jesus summons his strength from his source: the words of Scripture that point to faith and trust in God. When all else is failing him, Jesus turns to God to stave off the Satan who tempts him. In the end, Satan leaves, and "suddenly angels came and waited on him." 

This wilderness and temptation scene with Jesus feels like a formation experience for him. He's being tested and tried and he prevails against Satan's efforts to pull him away from God. On the contrary, the temptation moves him closer to his source. This will all become even more important as he goes forward with his ministry and mission of calling his community back to the basics of the Shema: Love God with all your heart, soul and strength while also loving neighbor as yourself. This time in the wilderness will prepare him for another famished moment as he hangs on a cross at Calvary with only the words of the psalmist to help him as he calls to God for strength in his agony.

Formation from afar will not be as dramatic as either of these moments when Jesus was alone and facing the forces of evil. But this is wilderness time for me. This is the test of faith and reliance upon God as the source for strength in this moment of great uncertainty. This is the time for drawing closer to God when I am feeling in the most remote place and being starved of community.

Perhaps there is much to be gained in this experience. 

  

"Famished": A Sermon for 1 Lent Year A

Sermon for 1 Lent

St. Monica and St. James

March 1, 2020

Matthew 4:1-11



“…and afterward he was famished.” It’s when we are at our lowest, weakest, most vulnerable moments that our faith in God helps us to overcome the forces that would destroy us. We can know this through the Scriptures.



Prayer: 8am simple doxology.

11am: Let us pray: All the faithful make their prayers to you, O God, in times of trouble. May your calming presence be felt in our hearts and your Word spoken in truth and love from my lips. Let this be an acceptable offering in your Holy Name. Amen.

I don’t think it’s an accident that our Gospel today is focused on temptation.

Lent has started and presumably we have all made some sort of commitment to either give up a habit, take on a new life-affirming one, or otherwise make an effort to walk more humbly with our God. We hear that Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the wilderness…so even Jesus is in a Lenten period.

Matthew’s account of Jesus’ temptation paints a vivid picture of the struggle with his accuser (fun fact: Satan is the Hebrew for accuser or adversary). If we enter deeply into this Gospel narrative…we might find ourselves being able to see the stones and feel that ache in the stomach that says, “if only these rocks could become bread.” 

Perhaps we can imagine being at the highest point of the temple with the wind whipping around us. We might be filled with a daredevil impulse beckoning us to let ourselves go without worrying if we’d crash land. Remember: angels will catch us! 

Or possibly we can visualize being on top of that mountain surveying all the land and wealth in the valleys below. What would it be like to not just be the one-percent…but even richer than a Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined?

I imagine that if Jesus was facing off with the accuser in the wilderness on his best day, when he was feeling fit and healthy, he probably would have run logic circles around Satan and twisted him up into a pretzel with a parable of some kind.

But Matthew doesn’t present us a Jesus on his most robust day. Hear the words again: “He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterward he was famished.”

Famished. Not simply hungry or-as the Brits might say—peckish.

Famished is more than that. Jesus is weak, dizzy, parched throat, low blood sugar, starving. 

He is completely vulnerable, and he is alone. What a perfect entry point for the tempter to come in and whisper: “you’re the Son of God…go ahead: turn those stones into bread so you can eat.”

And yet…even in this diminished state, Jesus goes back to the Hebrew Scriptures…noting that “one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Not only has he said, “Not today, Satan!”; he returns to the God known through the Scriptures to summon the strength to resist temptation. And as this scene progresses…and the pull toward a narcissistic self-obsession…”All these I will give you if you fall down and worship me!”…the greater the enticements to turn away God, the more this weakened Jesus was turning back to the One who knew him best…relying on the word from Scripture to feed him.

I think that’s the real message for us. During those times when we are feeling tried and tested, and at our greatest moments of insecurity that’s when the ego will tempt us to believe that we are invincible, that we don’t need any help, that we have everything under control.

Think about the destructive and bad theology behind the message: “God helps those who help themselves”

Really? I don’t think that is what Jesus was saying in this dialogue with the devil.

 “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle.”

No, sometimes the things before us…whether a personal crisis or ones of a more global nature…are truly more than we can handle. Certainly, there is a lot in our world that is more than we can individually handle! Our egos are too frail to sustain us.

What I believe Jesus is showing us about God is that it’s not our selves and centering on our self that feeds us, keep us safe in times of trouble, and makes us rich. It is our realization that our strength, our life, our breath is dependent upon God.  And it is God who is love and loves us dearly in those times when we are at our weakest, most vulnerable and completely famished.

How can we know this is true? Well, for me…at the moments when I have been the most challenged and even in times when I am feeling that spring of joy in my step…I have turned to the words of the psalmist, who seems to be the best Biblical poet and captures the ups and downs of what it is to be human.

Whether it is phrases such as

“Restore us, O God of Hosts, show us the light of your countenance and we shall be saved” (Ps.80) or

“Taste and see that the Lord is good,”(Ps.34) 

Reading and sitting with those words have been the necessary touchstones and the gentle reminders that I am not alone and that God is with me and isn’t absent from our world.

As we journey through this season of Lent, we will no doubt face temptation and our egos will prick at us and persuade us to forget about God and become so self-absorbed as to believe that we don’t need anybody else. I don’t know what Lenten discipline you’ve adopted…or if you’ve even thought about adopting one. But I would encourage us to consider finding a phrase or a line of Scripture that speaks to our soul and feed on that for these forty days. Keep it somewhere where you can read it and meditate on it daily. In these troubled times of pandemics and politics…see how feasting on the Word might give you the strength to carry on.