Windy, windy, windy

It’s been wicked windy at Thousand Island Park revealing beautiful white caps up and down the   mighty St. Lawrence River. It’s impossible for me not to think about wind, which today isn’t especially welcomed by boaters, and at 20mph it’s even a little noisy to visit on the porch. 

The daily office readings from the New Testament are making their way through the Acts of the Apostles, and the “wind of change” is fierce for Peter. Here’s what we know about St. Luke, the author of Acts: he continually heralds the glory of inclusiveness. Today’s installment focuses clearly on Peter’s “conversion” to associate with Gentiles, something about which he heretofore has been reluctant (at best) to do.

Who among us can’t relate to Peter? The world changed radically before his very eyes, and so is ours. The church is engaged in what some have called the biggest change in 500 years. Our own nation’s economy and identity are blowing all over the place, and I hear elders saying they’ve never known America so divided as they do in these days. 

We all have to grapple with change, whether tragic or welcomed; whether it comes from loss or gain. The gospel responds with a blessing of hope that in the midst of change disciples of Jesus Christ proclaim again the glad news that Christ is risen from the dead. So we celebrate, and share with others, the reality that God’s wind, fierce at times and gentle and quiet at other times, leads  the church to embrace all people.  

For me, the question remains: will I sense the wind of change and follow God’s lead? 

A life well-lived: Betty Sawyer, rest in peace and rise in glory

Two days ago Betty Sawyer died, a giant in faith and service to the Episcopal Church, a woman whose twinkly eyes and faithfulness to prayer were consistent invitations to join her in practicing the Christian way. Her walk with Jesus always seemed to me both contagious and selfless. Betty Sawyer was a leader in the church long before women were ordained to the priesthood; I can imagine that if the door to priesthood had been open to her she would have walked in that path many years ago. 

In the last couple of years she began to be a little confused. There were moments--sometimes within the same sentence--when she was crystal clear, alert, and filled with insight, then suddenly she’d be addled, unable to complete the thought that had begun. One day, about four months ago, she insisted that I was one of the brothers from the monastery. When I assured her that I wasn’t, but that I was “Thomas, your rector, from the Epiphany” she said, “that’s ridiculous. They’d never have you be the rector!” I’m not sure if that was an indictment of the Parish of the Epiphany, or of myself, or both! When I laughed, she smiled graciously, and she seemed wholly herself again, and then with every ounce of gentleness and genuine concern, she said, “how are things going for you?” 

She loved the world and everything good in it. But that’s not to suggest she was inexperienced with either pain or death. Maybe it was the holy combination of loving what was good and knowing about death that made her so generous. In a way, Betty Sawyer always impressed me as one who was willing to do everything she could, and to give everything she had to save the particles of her life, and to invite others to do likewise. She raised the level of life by the level of her own call to “do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God.” It was her way in life and in death; at home, at church, at work; when she was busy and when she was idle; when she was sick in bed, and when she was up, and well and active.

When I first arrived at Winchester, three years ago, she gave me a copy of William Temple’s book, Christian Faith and Life. I don’t consider it a coincidence, but rather a profound gift of serendipity that yesterday afternoon as I walked into the kitchen door of a neighbor’s cottage to borrow green  olives, there was lying open on the reading table Temple’s Nature, Man, and God. Not the same book, but what’s the likelihood of that convergence? In that book...the one at the neighbor’s here in Thousand Island Park, there is a prayer which Temple wrote for a series of lectures at Oxford in 1931:  

O Lord our God, from whom neither life nor death can separate those who trust in thy love, and whose love holds in its embrace they children in this world and in the next: so unite us to thyself that in fellowship with thee we may be always united to our loved ones wether here or there; give us courage, constancy, and hope; through him how died and was buried and rose again for us, Jesus Christ our Lord. 

Betty’s requiem will be Saturday, 22 September at 11:00am at the Parish of the Epiphany.

Opening our ears

Two days with a friend with adult-onset hearing loss leaves me sensitized to this impairment, especially to its myriad negative psychological and emotional consequences. My friend is neither part of the hearing world nor part of the deaf culture. She lives somewhere in between, I suppose. She reports feeling isolated much of the time, of no use most days, and over the course of the past several years she finds that it’s easier to stay away from social gatherings, including church. So yesterday at worship, at the Church of Saint Lawrence in Alexandria Bay, New York (the Diocese of Central New York) I paid close attention to how well people read, the degree to which the sound amplification system was used effectively, and generally whether people could pick up on the nuances in communication and patience which are required to make people with hearing loss welcomed and integrated. Evidently the folk at the church did well because my friend said she was able to hear. 

In the mid-1800s there was an Episcopal Church established in New York, called St. Ann’s Church, still very much alive today, and is given the moniker “the mother church” of all congregations of deaf people in the United States. 

Thomas Gallaudet

Henry Winter Syle

Today,  August 27th, the church commemorates two men, Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle--considered the founders of the Episcopal Church’s ministry to and with deaf people. Thomas Gallaudet was born in Hartford in 1822 to a deaf mother and a hearing father. He later married Elizabeth Budd, who was deaf. It was Thomas who started St. Ann’s Church, and from that genesis there sprang up congregations for the deaf throughout the country. One of Gallaudet’s students, Henry Winter Syle, who became deaf at an early age, was the first deaf person to be ordained to the priesthood (in 1876). 

I’m glad to be part of a church with this history.  But, I wonder about those of us who serve countless people who are not deaf, for whom sign language isn’t possible. What will the church’s response be to the ones among us who have hearing loss? What shall I do to make certain the doors of my church will be open to my friend? Jesus said (Mark 4:9), “let those with ears, hear.” 

Let us pray.

O loving God, whose will it is that everyone should come to you and be saved: we bless your Holy Name for your servants Thomas Gallaudet and Henry Winter Syle, whose labors with and for those who are deaf we commemorate today; and we pray that you will continually move your Church to respond in love to the needs of all people; through Jesus Christ, who opened the ears of the deaf, and who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.