August Rector’s Message
Perhaps you have had a computer that you hadn’t turned on for a while. In your mind you are simply going to turn it on and get to work. However, that is not what happens. If you haven’t turned it on in even just a week there will be a handful of updates, if not a plateful of updates that need to install. And then it may want to re-start, more than once, to put everything into effect. Which many of us have experienced as deeply maddening and frustrating. We may shout at the computer – I just want to get on with it!!! Restarting isn’t easy for the tools we use, nor for us. If you have been away from a fitness commitment for a while, your body aches and creaks, it is all harder than it used to be. You might be passionate about the goal, however as soon as the necessary demands feel like a drag or a burden we begin to feel overwhelmed and lose our focus. Can you recall a time in your life when you experienced that very response? I can. Every era of humanity has experienced seasons of grief and alienation and incoherence, yet that truth does not make it any easier.
Meanwhile, I’ve kept my heart pure for no good reason;
I’ve washed my hands to stay innocent for nothing.
I’m weighed down all day long. I’m punished every morning.
Psalm 73. 13-14
Re-entering life together in the late pandemic is rather like restarting the computer, it is taking more patience than I have without the help of prayer and community. There is restoration and utter glee of hugs and smiles seen of course, thanks be to God. But we are also all frayed. Languishing. Anxious. Frustrated. Depressed. Impatient. Some of the stand still un-responsiblity of the crisis was just alright, less traffic was ok. The challenges tickled our adrenaline, and now that is gone. We want to be done with it, but the pandemic is not over. New variants are terrible and have room to evolve because of the fear and misinformation that keep people from vaccination. Many only feel safe with indoor masking in our lovely but not spacious or modern sanctuary. Others desire only to gather if we can be free of all carefulness. Even those of us who tend to see eye to eye, who love and care for one another, may not have the muscles of patience to make it work right now. We are all at different places – but for the most part – not who we were, for better and for worse.
So now you, Lord—
don’t hold back any of your compassion from me.
Let your loyal love and faithfulness always protect me,
because countless evils surround me.
My wrongdoings have caught up with me—
I can’t see a thing!
There’s more of them than hairs on my head—
my courage leaves me.
Favor me, Lord, and deliver me!
Lord, come quickly and help me!
Psalm 40.11-13
We are not the first persons to encounter the challenges of reorientation. Many of our psalmists tell of the transitions from disorientation to reorientation. This isn’t the happy ending of a movie, it is the next phase of a journey. We need help because there is no amount of this or that which shall take us back to where we were. We must keep going in a new landscape, tired and fayed as we are.
I hope you know that I give thanks and praise for you, each and every one of you, every day. I pray for you patience and generosity of spirit, trust and truthfulness, and whatever the prayer for a new zap of adrenaline is – I pray that in the mystery of contemplation with the Good Shepherd. Will you pray the same for me, for our devoted staff, for Mackenzie and Dennis and Janet and Carole? Will you pray the same for our lay leadership, both official and unofficial? We need your prayers and your presence. I invite you into a space of mysterious contemplation and daring to carry on with the hard things (even when we just want the computer to be ‘on’ and running again).
Merciful God, help us find out way again.Turn us back towards the road spotted with your other pilgrims, wayfarers, and repentant servants. Remind us the your Way is the way of returning. Guide us by your Spirit and bu your Light. resting in the everlasing arms of Jesus our guide. Amen.
-The Reverend Jane Gober