Praying for the Economy

I read that Trinity Episcopal Church on Wall Street (which was such an important pastoral presence after 9/11) has become a refuge for the battered New Yorker again. Specifically, the workers of the financial district, who are coming to midweek services to pray and to cry, and even to ask the clergy for financial assistance.

It is tempting, when one is a faithful, regular churchgoer, to want to look down one's nose at the folks who only show up during a national or personal crisis, or who only turn up on Christmas and Easter. But those very people are the reason we keep our doors open and our community strong. So that when they come to our churches, whatever is driving them, they find us already worshipping, already witnessing, already ready to welcome them in Christ's name.

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Collecting Your Clutter

The basement of the church is now receiving your items for our fall rummage sale (this coming Friday evening and Saturday day). This is a good time for you to go through your closets and cull out those things you no longer need or want and bring them by for the sale.

But may I suggest that you make this a spiritual practice? You can do this in several ways.

1) As you clean out the clutter, think about what clutter in your mind or life you need to remove to make more room for God. What's filling up your thoughts and energies that you might lay aside?

2) As you sort, you will invariably come across things that once had meaning for you, that once were fresh and new, that once amused you (or simply that once FIT you!). As these items pass through your hands, say a prayer of thanksgiving for the time they were useful. Or ask for healing for a time that was not pleasant. Or pray for the strength to diet back into that size pants again. But use the objects as a way to open up conversation with God.

3) Pray for the people who will purchase your items. Pray for their health and happiness, their future and their security.

And Rebecca McKee would want me to add -- if your spirituality finds its meaning in action, she could use your help sorting, selling and cleaning up!

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Christians and the Election

The best thing out there on faith and the election is this piece by Sara Miles.

Please read it, prayerfully and thoughtfully. Please forward it to people you know who are just a little more tied up in this election stuff than they might want to be if they sat down and asked, "What Would Jesus Do?"

And pray.

Peace,

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Reading Ahead -- Pentecost 19

Pay day for the workers in the vineyard brings some startling surprises in
this week's gospel lesson. Those who worked all day get paid the usual daily wage.

And so do the ones who only worked one hour.

How do you hear this lesson, living in a union community? It's certainly not fair. But is it unjust? Who is God in this lesson for you, if the ones who work the least get paid the same as the ones who work the longest? What does that say to you about God's generosity and our own small-mindedness?

Have you ever gotten goodness you did not earn?

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Putting it Back Together

Last Saturday, with the sermon still only partly written, my computer went crazy. The virus protection program started saying viruses were trying to invade. I rebooted, and the whole thing got very strange, error messages, threats, requests that I click here, click there.

My computer had been invaded by a dozen or more viruses and it needed to die. Wendell couldn't make it better. I was freaking out ... all my pictures, all my sermons, class notes, stewardship letters, genealogy charts ... (at least all my emails live on the web). The SERMON! (Well that got finished late at night at church.)

The computer died. I managed to scrape off it my documents and my pictures. That was it. Wendell reset it to factory settings and it was fresh and new like the day I got it. Every single program, document, etc. had to be reinstalled.

It made me extremely grouchy.

It also made me realize how extremely petty my grouchiness was. Because if I was this worked up over one computer, imagine how I would be if I were the woman in the picture above, sorting through the wreck of her Texas home after last weekend's hurricane, searching for pieces of her grandmother's china.

From the bridge in Mirebalais, Haiti, to the flattened landscape of Galveston, to the overflowing Grand River, Ike left his mark in a wide swathe. So many people felt the storm's destructive force.

In the end, it's your health and life and the safety of your loved ones that counts. But once that is assured, cleaning up, rebuilding, restoring, can take years, as we have seen with Katrina. It creates financial hardship, physical deprivation, stress, grief and anger.

Please: pray for all those affected by the storm, from the Caribbean to the Midwest.
Please: consider making a donation to the Red Cross or Episcopal Relief and Development.
Please: Remember to keep a sense of humor when life's little problems loom large. Things could be much worse.

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Hurricane Ike

Ike is still on my mind ... I dreamed about Haiti last night, and I am concerned for friends and colleagues in Texas.

As this massive storm approaches the U.S., keep all affected by it in prayer. Also, I saw today in the paper that these storms have put the Red Cross deeply in debt. The Red Cross is always there during these catastrophes. Please remember the Red Cross and also Episcopal Relief and Development with your gifts.

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From "90210" to the Pulpit and Back

The Rev. Ann Gillespie has taken a trip back to her roots as a member of the cast of "Beverly Hills 90210". She plays alcoholic Jackie Taylor, Kelly's troubled mom.

After a career in Hollywood, Gillespie (the daughter of an Episcopal priest) got tired of the Hollywood scene, felt the call and moved her family across country to attend THE Protestant Episcopal Seminary in Virginia (also known as Virginia Theological Seminary, alma mater of mine and Sarah Midzalkowski's.) Now she is associate rector at historic Christ Church-Alexandria, Va., where George Washington once worshipped.

But when "90210" returned in a remake version this fall, they wanted to keep Jackie Taylor as a character. Gillespie took off the plastic collar and headed west once more, to play the sort of person she would spend hours counseling in real life.

Lots of clergy have "previous lives" that their parishioners don't really know much about. Chaplain Sarah, for example, worked in costuming on Broadway for several years, on shows like "The Lion King." I was editor of Discovery Channel's print magazine.

But then God gets all in the mix, and the church gets all in the mix, and the next thing you know, it's the plastic collar and the pulpit.

Or not. God can call us out of one career into another that actually has nothing to do with the Episcopal Church. The challenge is to be responsive to those movements of the Spirit that lead us from one stage of our life into the next, from one vocation into another.

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