Canons

Friday evening, January 29 and Saturday morning, January 30, people from all around our diocese gathered electronically to listen, try out, and learn about the practice of small Faith Groups. Well over two-thirds of our parishes were represented and there was a lot of excitement around how this practice might help us to deepen community and connect people to God and each other through Christ. In this time, when it isn’t possible to gather in the same physical space, new connections were made while trying this practice that goes all the way back to Jesus and the first disciples.

I was watching the presentation of Lessons and Carols from Sewanee earlier this month – which is usually a very large public event for them, the final hurrah of the semester for the talented University Choir members. They had reframed it as a recorded, distanced, masked online event, which worked pretty well.

This Advent season as we wrestle with “COVID Fatigue” and all the fear and frustration of this moment in time, let us remember that the spiritual essence of the season is waiting and paying attention.

In August and September, many more churches have filed plans to worship with a physically present congregation.

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year since I arrived to join you all in ministry in this diocese as the Canon to the Ordinary; that year has gone by very quickly!

These last few months have been different from anything in living memory. We are all left in some way unmoored, set adrift, not knowing how to find the way, or even where we are going. Some of us are still in the early stages of dealing with unbearable loss, some have risked their lives for the good of the community, some of us find ourselves in a precarious status with regard to job, home or food, some of us have had the relative luxury of working safely from home and had food and family with us—and yet, none of us knows really what we will face next.

This time of year – between Ascension Day last Thursday and the Day of Pentecost next Sunday – I'm always intrigued by this in-between time, between Jesus' Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Ascension is the withdrawal of the Incarnate One, Jesus in his human body, from our world. There is a specificity, a concreteness to that historical Jesus that we long for, in some ways, but is elusive for us.

Do you remember before you learned to walk? I do not. There are other things that my memory does not give a “before” context. I cannot remember a time before singing, before singing sacred music even, and I don’t remember a time before loving beautiful buildings, church decorations or those things together with music. These things grew up alongside my faith. I am a woman in a line of church musicians and singers, my earliest memories are of being a toddler in darkened concert halls and churches listening to choral music being rehearsed or of my Nana playing hymns.

The powerful responsibility of Christians to respond to those in need is first and foremost about love – God’s love for us enacted by our showing love to others – but it is also wound up in our basic identity as those who gather at Christ’s table.

Right now in Northern New Jersey, whole families are food insecure because schools are closed and there are no school lunches; seniors cannot get out to shop safely; others have no access to cars; and so many in New Jersey have lost or will lose jobs.