"For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight….The wolf and the lamb will lie down together."
This text from the third section of the book of Isaiah that we heard on Sunday was written after the remnant population of Judah had been freed from decades of exile in Babylon. You know what people say—“it may be good for the wolf, but I’m not so sure about the lamb.” I believe you can relate—you who have known schism, you who have been disenfranchised over our long history, you who have experienced being aliens in a strange land. You who for any reason have experienced the world as something other than the dream of God for us. This passage reflects a core truth of the Christian gospel: God is changing this world to make it as it was meant to be—a place where a wolf and a lamb can actually lie down together. The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglas, Inaugural Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary and Canon Theologian at the Washington National Cathedral, says this when reflecting on Dr. King’s understanding of a moral imagination rooted in today’s text from Isaiah: “A moral imagination is grounded in the absolute belief that the world can be better. A moral imagination envisions Isaiah’s “new heaven and new earth,” where the “wolf and the lamb shall feed together,” and trusts that it will be made real (Isaiah 65). What is certain, a moral imagination disrupts the notion that the world as it is reflects God’s intentions.” As Christians, we live in-between the new heaven and the new earth Isaiah describes and the world as we know it now, too often marred by sin and pain. Our work, as people of faith, is recover a moral imagination about our world, so that we can build the world God dreams for us. To do this, we must learn to plant the dream in the center of our present reality. National Geographic once carried a story that made quite an impression on me. The writer described the tradition of the Ama. The Ama are women in Japan who carry on a time worn tradition of free diving for sea food and for pearls. Diving into cold waters with limited sight of what lies beneath the surface, these women must be powerfully attuned to the ocean. One of the most fascinating practices of the Ama was initiated by Kokichi Mikimoto, the founder of Mikimoto Pearls. He asked the women not only to search for pearls, but also to help plant the nucleus of a pearl in oysters then re-embed them in the ocean so he could cultivate pearls throughout the sea, even where there were none to be found. When the Ama resurface after replanting the oysters containing the nucleus of the pearl, they make a deep whistling sound called the Isobue. Those who know the whistle say it is a painful sound to hear. It is a sound that reflects both the beauty and the pain of the sea. The vocation of the Ama is not so different from our own. Submerged in the waters of baptism, we are called to plant the pearl of great price, the hope of a new heaven and a new earth into the vast sea of challenge and pain in this world. Our work this past year has included some planting of what we pray will be the nuclei of future pearls. I would like to highlight a few places where we have planted:
You have come through seasons of challenge. I believe now, we have the opportunity to turn toward the future, building on the strong foundation of the past in this historic diocese. Like the Ama, we can dive deeper and plant new treasures amid the landscape of our history. Treasures our world desperately needs. When a Japanese girl is born into households with Ama lineage, the family celebrates by cooking a vibrant red rice. They know that the Ama will not die with their generation. I love this image of cooking the red rice—a celebration of such a singular calling. A modern day Ama said in an interview, “This is work without a beginning or an end. I wish to keep working for a long time.” Likewise, this work of being Christians, being Church here and now is work without a beginning or an end. You and I step into the waters with all the ancestors to continue that which has no beginning, no ending. Ours is the privilege of continuing the journey. Like the Amas, we are called to dive, attuning our Spirits not to our own fleeting impulses and desires, but to the call of God through our baptism. Trusting God is doing a new thing. Trusting that God is redeeming this world, forgiving the sinners, repairing the breaches, healing the broken hearted, restoring his justice, renewing his creation, reclaiming the lost. Trusting not in our own strength but in the goodness of our God. Trusting that the lamb and the wolf can actually both get a good night’s sleep, side by side. This is our sacred call. So, boil the water, prepare the red rice. I want to keep working for a long time. I want to be a sea whistler, to learn my own Isobue. And judging by your presence for so many generations, around this holy table, in this beloved community, despite every challenge you have faced—schism, rejection, exclusion, neglect, disrespect,—judging by your faithful, strong, persistent presence here, I suspect you do, too. Now is the time for us to dive deep into our baptismal waters. For, we are singers of the Isobue; we are the planters of the moral imagination of our God.
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“For Demus Sake.” That is what my older brothers thought they heard my grandfather say each time he blessed our food around our table at holiday gatherings when we were all young. The question among our generation for years was, “Who is Demus?” A long lost relative? A little known saint? We were never quite sure. Until one day, our eldest brother found the courage to ask. It took our puzzled parents a moment—and then, with a smile on her face, our mother said, “Redeemer’s Sake, Sweetheart. Your grandfather is concluding the prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” And that, my beloved friends, is what a Southern accent will get you around the family table! What you think you hear may be entirely different than what is actually said! For decades, our family gathered at my grandparents’ home for holidays. Then, as our family matured and my grandparents aged, the celebrations moved to our family table with my parents hosting. From the bowl of black olives and the bowl of salted pecans on the table to the beautiful tablecloths and napkins our mother used—everything told us these were special occasions. The table was often a place of joy, a place where we wanted to linger, a place to tell the old stories again, to laugh out loud at their endings—as if we’d never before heard them, even though most of us could recite them by heart. Holidays were a sacred time. I still to this day feel my holiday table is incomplete without a bowl of black olives and a bowl of salted pecans. It is also true that the sweet innocence that began at our grandparents decades earlier did not remain forever the same as it had been. There was division in our family and eventually there was even a lawsuit in my mother’s generation. For years, some did not speak to others. The closeness we had known was broken. There was illness and death too. There were years when seats that had been filled were empty. We felt the absence of those who were missing. That will be true for us again this year, as some we love will be missing from our table. And too, in the earlier years at my grandparents’ and parents’ tables, what we enjoyed was created by the labor of others who were not at the table with us. For decades, those meals were prepared by people who worked for our family in a system rooted in racism and the inequity it fosters that has undergirded many white households in this country for centuries. There was also denial of the experience of people close to us who were lesbian or gay—an invisibilizing of their lives and loves. These dimensions of family life were the pain that ran alongside the joy at our table. As my own family began to build our table life together, we too had times of joy and times of pain. To this day, we sometimes linger into the night to see something through. At all of these tables, we have had the full range of experiences—both good and bad—common to family life. I have noticed one thing. When we make ourselves vulnerable—when we have the courage to make the table a brave space, these are the times when we grow. It occurs to me that the trajectory of my family’s holiday table bears some striking resemblance to the trajectory of our diocesan table. We have known joy, customs passed with care from generation to generation. And, we have known division, lawsuits born of schism that involved people leaving the table instead of staying to work things out—and telling others they did not belong at the table. There has been loss through illness and death, and also, running like a fierce current beneath all the rest—multi-generational pain caused by racism, homophobia, and the making invisible of others who are different than the majority gathered at table. When we come around the table, as we do now, we have an opportunity to disrupt all the old stories that tell us some people are better than others, the old stories that tell us disease, destruction, and sin have the final say. The old stories that tell us we cannot transcend our pain, our anger, our grief . We have an opportunity to prepare a table where we feast on bone deep justice, on gospel hope, on real redemption. But preparing such a table takes effort. It takes courage. It takes humility. It takes stamina. Staying through the night, together, when we need to. Mostly, I believe, it takes vulnerability. We, beloved members of this diocese, gather with much joy this day—the joy of being one body—one in mission, one in love, one in courage. You have been through the fires of division. As we gather at table this day, the first thing I want to say to you is thank you. Thank you for your witness, for your resilience, your courage, your clarity, your compassion. You inspire me, every day. We also gather at table knowing the sting of trial. You have indeed been through the fires. We have had lawsuits a plenty. We have had people leave our table. We have had pain and loss and betrayal. And, some among us have know the pain of disenfranchisement, the indignity of exclusion and injustice for centuries. Our African American congregations have not had the same seat at the welcome table that the rest of us have enjoyed—these members of our diocese did not get seat, voice and vote in this Convention until 1965. They have not had equitable access to resources, equitable voice or agency over the long arc of our history. Yet, they have stayed. Thank you to our African American congregations. Thank you for your grace-filled, strong presence among us. Our LGBTQ members, too, have been turned away, shut out, and told they were not invited to serve, to serve in God’s church. Their very presence distributing elements of our communion was rejected. Thank you to our lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members. Thank you for your grace-filled, strong presence among us. Now, we have an opportunity. A choice is before us. We can paper over the cracks, as they say. As my closest friends would say, we can “make nice” about our challenges. Or, we can take another path. We can determine here and now to make new history. We can determine to ground our lives in the belief that God is building a new world. A better world. A stronger world. A truer world. We can decide to take this opportunity of our new season to do work that perhaps we have never done before in quite the same way—work to set a table of justice, of truth, of freedom, of fierce love for everyone. This, I am confident, is our call. It is a call that demands our all. It is the call to 360 degree love, as Valerie Kaur would say. Love of self, love of neighbor, and always the most difficult one, love of opponent. For us to do this work well, we need to center the voices that have been silenced in the past—we need to listen first to those who have known the pain of not being granted full access to the table, those who have known the pain of displacement, of indignity, of alienation. I believe we have the courage to build Isaiah’s new heaven and new earth. I am so honored that our friends from beyond South Carolina have come to help us begin this new season, to set our table for the feast God longs to share. Archbishop Cyril Ben-Smith, the Primate of West Africa is here to begin a journey of discovery with us as the International African American Museum prepares to open here in Charleston. The Archbishop presides over the dioceses where the ports of deportation are located for the people who made the tortured journey from those shores to ours to face the horrors of enslavement when they crossed onto land at Gadsden’s Wharf. We are thrilled to welcome you, Archbishop Ben-Smith! Bishop Moises Quezada Mota and his wife Mary Jeanette Quezada Mota have come to be with us so we can rekindle our long relationship with the Diocese of the Dominican Republic. I have already been blessed by the wisdom and leadership of Bishop Moises in the House of Bishops, and I am eager to reinvigorate the longstanding partnership between our dioceses. We are delighted to welcome you Bishop and Mrs. Quezada Mota! The Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, The Presiding Bishop’s Canon for Evangelism and Reconciliation, who leads people like us all over the church to build beloved community, is here to guide us in building one table that is strong and just and welcoming. Canon Stephanie, we know you to be a wise, deep, fierce priest, writer, teacher, and catalyst for change. We are so blessed by your presence! The table is set for a feast these two days. May we begin a new season with open, vulnerable, brave hearts. This, I pray, for our beloved diocese—for Demus Sake—or, in case you need translation, for the Redeemer’s Sake. Now, let’s hear from folks around the diocese who share their thoughts in the video we are about to see to help us set the table for our time together… (the video below was shown at this time) Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley has offered a pastoral letter with the people of the diocese regarding the opinion published today by the South Carolina Supreme Court. Read it at this link.
April 20, 2022 Dear Friends in the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, Earlier today, the South Carolina Supreme Court posted a final decision on the property case that has been in dispute since the first lower court decision in 2014. Their decisions will no doubt bring joy to many in our diocese, but for others, there will be grief in the possible finality of a loss they have been feeling for nearly 10 years. My heart is with each of you. The South Carolina Supreme Court has decided that all real and personal property, including the St. Christopher Camp and Conference Center, have been held “in trust for the benefit of the National Church and the Associated Diocese,” meaning the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina. As to the parishes, their decisions were based on a number of factors, but in the end, they found that 14 parishes (of the 29 previously named) did create an “irrevocable trust in favor of the National Church and its diocese” (the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina – the “Associated Diocese”). These 14 parishes are as follows: Christ Church, Mt. Pleasant; Good Shepherd, Charleston; Holy Comforter, Sumter; Holy Cross, Stateburg; Holy Trinity, Charleston; St. Bartholomew’s, Hartsville; St. James, Charleston; St. John’s, Johns Island; St. Jude’s, Walterboro; St. Luke’s, Hilton Head; St. David’s, Cheraw; St. Matthew’s, Fort Motte; Trinity, Myrtle Beach; Old St. Andrew’s, Charleston. This leaves 15 parishes that the Court found “did not create a trust in favor of the National Church or its diocese, and thus those fifteen Parishes retain title to their real estate.” These parishes are as follows: All Saints, Florence; Church of our Saviour, John’s Island; Church of the Cross, Bluffton; Epiphany, Eutawville; Redeemer, Orangeburg; Resurrection, Surfside/Myrtle Beach; St. Helena’s, Beaufort; St. Paul’s, Bennettsville; St. Paul’s, Summerville; St. Philip’s, Charleston; St. Luke & St. Paul, Charleston; St. Michael’s, Charleston; Trinity, Edisto; and Trinity, Pinopolis. The Court also included “Christ-St. Paul’s,” Conway in this listing, but likely intended Christ-St. Paul’s, Yonges Island, as St. Paul’s, Conway was noted earlier as a parish excluded from the lawsuit. I call on each of you to join me in prayer for all of the beloved people of this diocese and all who have been affected by the Court’s decisions today. We are still working to understand the immediate path forward and promise to be in communication with you as our legal team helps us determine what comes next. May we focus together on reconciliation and the way of love as we journey together on the road ahead, centered in Christ’s love for all of us. In his second letter to the church in Corinth, St. Paul beautifully expresses the heart of the Gospel, “in Christ, God was in the world reconciling the world to himself.” He said this to a people who had known conflict with one another. While he courageously engaged difficult disagreements where matters of importance were at stake, St. Paul always did so in service of the larger purpose of God’s reconciliation of all people through Christ. It is in that same spirit that you have walked this journey and that we now walk into a bright future, one in which we will focus on the reconciling power of the Gospel to transform injustice, to heal the brokenhearted, and to build God’s beloved community. I look forward with joyful anticipation to our new season of ministry. Faithfully yours, Bishop Ruth Woodliff-Stanley Two Turnings
John 20:11-18 and Psalm 126 John 20: 11-18: But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary!” She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that he had said these things to her. Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. And then, as Sister Miriam Elizabeth pointed out to me recently, there is this movement in our gospel for today—Mary turns twice. I have thought about those two turnings ever since she said that to me. The first is a turning of lament. It happens before Mary recognizes the risen Lord. She is lamenting that they have taken him from her. This first turning is a moment of loss—without hope. Then, he calls her name—and she turns again and says to him “Rabbouni!” This is the turning of resurrection, the moment of rejoicing. Tomorrow, as attorneys and justices take a next, and we pray, decisive step in resolving the legal issues we face, I call us to the turning of lament and to the turning of resurrection, our moment of rejoicing. I call upon us, as we reflect on the property in question, to begin our day with lament to remember those in our midst who have known, for centuries, injustices related to removal from their ancestral lands; those forcibly removed from their homeland packed into ships to come here to face lives of torture and enslavement; and, those who have faced and face still, in parts of the world, grave dangers if they openly reveal their identities—including imprisonment or even death simply because of who they love. The privileges many of us who are white, cis-gender heterosexual people—particularly men— have known—in property ownership, wealth accumulation, in personal freedoms, yes—even in the capacity to build beautiful edifices in which to worship God—we have gained by the blood and agony of those whose suffering is hard for many of us to comprehend. Sociologists, including Justin Farrell from Yale University, have just released research confirming what Native Americans have known—that in the continental U.S., Indigenous tribes lost close to 99 percent of their combined historical land bases through European colonization and the expansion of the United States. Their documented presence was reduced from more than 2.7 million square miles to roughly 165,000 square miles. Well into the twentieth century—into the mid 1960s, our white diocesan leaders denied seat, voice, and vote to our African American sisters and brothers in Christ at our Diocesan Convention—one of countless injustices with which they contended as they were fighting for their basic rights against constant threats of intimidation, physical violence, torture, and death in cities and towns across our state and nation. There are still approximately 69 countries that have laws criminalizing homosexuality—nearly half of those are in Africa. These laws can, in many cases, be traced to colonial times. And we are at risk of a roll back on hard earned civil liberties for marriage equality, upon which hinges many basic rights for family members in this country. As we pray for clarity and justice to prevail in our own matters of concern as a diocese, let us remember that our present trials sit in the larger context of the story of God’s mighty justice in this world. It is a story in which the circle is always, as Bishop Rob Wright of the Diocese of Atlanta has said, being drawn wider. The only true reason to hope for a favorable outcome of our present legal matters is so that we might use our resources rightly—to bring the light of the Gospel to transform powers and principalities that have harmed God’s beloved children, to restore God’s hope and truth and beauty in this world. Our present conflict has at its roots very different understandings of what justice entails. Just under 10 years ago, you made painful, wrenching choices to stand firm with Jesus in his call to us to practices revolutionary love. You committed to building communities where there are no outcasts. I am profoundly moved by your courage, your clarity, your willingness to embrace the wilderness for these many years because you would not leave a single beloved child of God out of the circle. You respected the dignity of every human being by your actions. For that, you can be deeply glad. No matter what happens tomorrow or in the days ahead. As we pray and tend to our own wounds and to the wounds of those with whom we have disagreed, and whom we love as we always have, I ask that we not lose perspective. When it comes to the story of land and property, Jesus calls us always to tend first the needs of those who have been most disenfranchised—those who have lived with injustice from generation to generation. See them. Center their experience. Honor their lives. Seek their well being first. This is the gospel call upon our lives. For all the nameless ones who have had land, freedom, dignity, and life ripped from them because of human sin, may we pause to lament tomorrow. May we name them. May this be the first turning of our day. Then, I call us to the second turning tomorrow—the turning of resurrection. From our lament, may there rise in us a conviction to walk in solidarity—with all those of good will who would join us—be they ones we have counted as friends or adversaries. May all of us who long to build the beloved community of Jesus join hands across all of our differences. May we walk from a past of division into a future where everyone, everyone has a seat at the welcome table. And we all feast together—no outcasts. This is what beloved community entails—radical, unfettered welcome, safe harbor, just society. I believe there are those on all sides of our disagreements who know there is room at the table for everyone. There are those on all sides of our disagreement who want a world where their children, their siblings, their cousins, nephews and nieces, their parents and friends and neighbors can live without fear of harm simply because of who they are. I promise you, if we dare to follow Jesus and “draw the circle wider” like Bishop Wright says, bright will be our future, clear will be our voice, beautiful will be the footprint we leave in every place where we plant ourselves—with or without buildings and properties. Mary Magdalene went and announced to her disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” When we see the Lord in each and every one we encounter, then, those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Then, those who go out weeping, bearing the seeds for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. Lament will give way to rejoicing. Resurrection will arrive, clothed in unrecognizable form. So, tomorrow morning when you arise, turn and turn again. For a new day awaits. Psalm 126 When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion, we were like those who dream. Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then it was said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.” The Lord has done great things for us, and we rejoiced. Restore our fortunes, O Lord , like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves. 231st Diocesan Convention
Holy Cross Faith Memorial Episcopal Church, Pawleys Island Sermon given at the Sending Eucharist on November 13, 2021 There is a day I will remember forever. It began with an early morning short plane ride then a bus ride to a place north of Chang Mai, Thailand where Lek Chailert has made a home for elephants who have been abused. In that home, the elephants lucky enough to be found by Lek are cared for and loved. Our family of four went there on July 22, 2013, the day I will remember forever. We saw elephants whose eyes had been gauged out, whose ears had been cut and legs had been broken, elephants who had lived their whole lives in fear of physical violence. Often, when Lek found the elephants, they did not want to be with her, or even with the other elephants. They would isolate, hide even, for days or weeks before they would venture out into the clearing to join the rest. Similarly, the trainers she recruited, called mahouts, often did not want to speak about their former work. Many of them had come from a tourism industry that taught them to use violence and methods of torture to subdue the elephants. They were trained to tie them up in what is called “the crush”, then jab them until they bled with spears, even blinding them, gouging out their eyes. I’m not sure what attracted these trainers to Lek and Elephant Nature Park. It’s a mystery how a person comes to desire to change the things that harm the soul. Perhaps, it was simply getting a taste of Lek’s vision. Or perhaps it was something they saw in the eyes of the creatures they sought to subdue. Whatever it was, something led these trainers to Elephant Nature Park, to care for elephants who had been abused by the very methods they themselves had used. With Lek, the elephants and their human caregivers were learning a new way of living, together. It was beautiful to witness the love between the elephants and the mahouts. They easily showed affection to each other. They played together. The trust was obvious. Our day with Lek and her friends was one of the most beautiful days of my life. All four of us would describe it to you, I think, as a day when time stood still, suspended. There are moments in life when we just know we are in the center of our purpose. We are fully alive. Fully aligned with love. Those are abiding moments. In his farewell discourse in the middle of John’s gospel, Jesus’s uses this one word over and over. Abide. Or, in the Greek, meno. Meno implies something more than just physically staying in a place. It has a deeper sense of connection, companionship, and harmony. It is used to describe how we are knit into God, like a baby is knit into the mother’s womb. John uses it to describe the deep down rootedness of a vine with intertwining branches. We were made to abide. To dwell with one another and with our God. And from that place of deep connectivity, to live with joy, with generosity, and the kind of uninhibited delight we knew as children. Episcopalians of South Carolina, I’ve seen how you abide. I can say that with some authority now, because I have visited most of you in your home churches—I have listened to your stories. And those I’ve not yet visited, I am coming soon! By early in the new year, I hope to have been with every community in this diocese. You know, I’ve walked in to beautiful churches you where you have abided with the saints before you for generations. And, I’ve walked into a bank, into a storefront, into a grove of trees, onto a college campus, into spaces borrowed from other churches—I’ve walked into living rooms and onto porches, into gardens and beside beaches. In all the places where you are, you share the same story—of how you love one another—how you are tending each other’s souls, how you have opened your eyes to see your neighbor and love them. It’s happening everywhere, this abiding. That would be enough. Truly. I could stop preaching now, and your witness would be enough. God is smiling on you. But, as we know, the story does not stop there. Your story, our story, has another layer. A very particular layer. You have lived for a decade now with a deep wound. The schism has been costly in more ways than we can ever count or name. I know that. So, what does it mean, then, to abide in the face of such pain? How do we abide with those from whom we are cut off? In the church…in the world. There is no easy answer to this question. It looks different in each circumstance. What we know is that God is in the business of bringing all the broken pieces, all the shards of our lives, back into oneness—knitting us back together. Like Lek was knitting back together the community of elephants with the mahouts who trained them. As I’ve listened, I hear some of the same wisdom Lek had coming from you. You have talked to me about your neighbors, friends, even family, with whom you find yourselves in conflict. I hear your pain and your hope. It might be easier to cut and run from our adversaries. But their wounds, too, Christ calls us to tend. I’ve heard how you are tending not only your wounds, but their wounds, too. This tending the other, the one who has harmed you, is hard work. I understand the cost of these past ten years has been great to you. I understand that, even now, we are not finished with that difficult road. And I think your stamina to continue to see it through comes from the fact that, through the trials you’ve endured, you have realized how important it is to you to stand for what you believe is right. You are crystal clear that when you say all are welcome, you mean all. You are crystal clear about God’s justice. There is nothing naive about your faith. And, from that non-naive place, I also hear something else. I hear that you believe a heart can change. I hear that you have become adept at finding common ground with those who see things differently than you do. There is a great temptation in the face of chronic conflict to withdraw, to become cynical—or, worst yet, to begin to think the gospel doesn’t really hold in every situation, that it’s not up to the acid test of real life. But we know the gospel holds. In every situation. The gospel holds in every circumstance precisely because God’s love is the strongest force in this world. And that love conquers fear. Late in the afternoon of July 22, 2013 at Elephant Nature Park, Lek Chalert walked with our family into a field where several elephant families were resting in the afternoon sun. Lek took our sons, George and John, and invited them to sit with her at the feet of one of the young elephants. Lek then crawled under the elephant. It was a moment that could have been fearful for me—in fact, I probably should have, by all accounts been really afraid. Here were my two sons sitting where this elephant could take them out with one stomp. But, I did not really have an opportunity to engage fear. Because, what happened next was more compelling than fear. Lek began to sing a lullaby. Quietly, to this young elephant, while she was sitting underneath him. There in front of me were our two boys sitting at the feet of this elephant with Lek, singing the lullaby from under the elephant belly. And, somehow, I did not fear for their lives. I knew, in that moment, I was hearing the song of redemption. Redemption from all the violence, from all the harm these creatures had endured. Redemption from all the shame, from all the burden the mahouts had carried. When Lek sang her lullaby, she sat under a beast who could have killed her with one movement. Hers was not a sentimental act. It was, rather, an act of resistance against a belief that fear and hatred win. It was an act born of the conviction that love is stronger than any evil. She chose to abide beneath the belly of the elephant. Such is our calling. To sit beneath the belly of the elephant and dare to sing a lullaby. To abide in the company of the saints and martyrs. God redeems this world by our abiding in all the places that need love most. There will come a day when we will lie down under the belly of all we have feared the most. Only, we won’t be afraid anymore. Instead, we will sing the lullaby of redemption, together. What a day that will be. A day we will remember forever. The Feast of All Saints
The Seating of the Bishop in Grace Church Cathedral November 7, 2021 There is a sound I know of my shoes on metal. The metal is textured and thin, welded together with old bolts. The bridge has born many people, and dogs too. Children have raced over it with abandon, with no concern for its apparent fragility. It shakes when I cross it. It is a bridge that does not belong to me, or to my family. For many years it belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Hill. Until they died and the house was sold off and the bridge that went with it. But, before that, in the season when I was a child across the street from the bridge—for all those years—they let us traipse through their backyard without invitation or warning and cross the bridge. That bridge was my crossing to a telling place, a place where heaven and earth met for one small girl. It was a place worlds away, yet just steps from home. Coming up from the metal bridge, I remember the tingle I felt on the grassy slope when I heard the first quack. I remember my first glimpse, time and again, of Belhaven lake. My hand in Mama’s hand, I would laugh with delight and some trepidation as the headstrong ducks who resided there approached, anticipating the bread in our sack, and began nipping at my fingers. I remember the island in the lake where they would sun bathe. I remember watching them glide on the water, propelled by the unseen movement of their webbed feet. And I remember, after time had drifted out of my consciousness, suspended for a while, there came the moment when Mama took my hand and walked me back down the grassy hill, over the metal bridge home. I walked home with Mama, carrying the wisdom of another world with me back across the metal bridge. Jan Richardson wrote a poem about how close we really are, all the time, to unseen worlds that lie just on the other side of all our inventions and distractions. She says: When the wall between the worlds is too firm, too close. When it seems all solidity and sharp edges. When every morning you wake as if flattened against it, its forbidding presence fairly pressing the breath from you all over again. Then may you be given a glimpse of how weak the wall and how strong what stirs on the other side, breathing with you and blessing you still, forever bound to you but freeing you into this living, into this world so much wider than you ever knew. —Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow Today, to my great joy, I am being seated as your bishop in this beautiful and holy cathedral on the feast of All Saints. Thank you, Dean and people of Grace, for being our cathedral. You know, Cathedrals are our family living room. Look around you. On the walls, in the windows, in the floors, in the chancel and sanctuary—everywhere, there are remembrances of the saints who have gone before us. Beautiful images to remind us who we are and what we are meant to do in this world. Every saint is a bridge, a bridge between this home and what lies on the other side of all our prayers—just beyond our reach. The saints we know and love are real folks, ordinary folk, sinners themselves, sometimes with difficult pasts, sometimes shaky, vulnerable, worn—yet able to bear our souls like that metal bridge carried me to the lake for so many years. Teachers, grandparents, gardeners, nurses, clergy, friends, adversaries, spiritual guides, waitresses, mail carriers. These saints show us just how weak the wall is between our world and the world beyond. And that world, the one John writes about in the book of Revelation, is not only a far away reality we meet after death. Rather, it is the world Christ beckons us to build every day when we rise. A world made of those who have come out of the great ordeal—which, finally, before this life is over, will be all of us, each and every one. It is a world where we, the multitude of humanity, truly become one. In that world, we see each other clearly—with sight no longer hindered by hatred, division, or fear. In that world, every child of God knows respect, experiences justice, lives in abundance. That world is no farther from this home we call the church than Belhaven lake was from my childhood home. Cross the street, wander through the neighbor’s backyard and across the worn metal bridge and you are there. The saints in our lives show us this world just beyond our home. Saints like Catherine “Kitty” Springs, a freed slave who gave her earthly goods to found the Church of the Epiphany in Summerville in 1887, saints like Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, who in her early twenties, in spite of betrayals, arson, and threats to her life, in 1897 founded the school we know as Voorhees College, saints like The Rev. A. Toomer Porter of Holy Communion Charleston, who, convicted of the evil of having enslaved people, turned to take a new path, and used his inheritance to educate and lift up those left destitute in the wake of the civil war. Saints like The Rev. Dr. Stephen Mackey, the first Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church, who guided it through the challenges born of injustice with a pastor’s heart and a prophet’s courage when it finally was granted parish status in 1965, saints like Mrs. Ruby Forsythe who founded a school on Pawley’s island that educated a generation of African American children in the low country and her husband, Reverend William E. Forsythe, who guided the spiritual community out of which the school was born and Johanna Brown and Cathcart Smith who moved their vision into a new generation. These saints, and countless others like them, saw another world was possible and brought it home. They have been letting us cross over their lives and legacies like a well worn bridge for years upon years. They remain in our collective consciousness—standing firm, though worn by years, so we can get a glimpse of the world Christ beckons us to bring home—not someday at the end of time—but today. Now. And what about you? You, people of this beloved diocese, who carried prayer books to docks and funeral parlors? You who worship without bricks and mortar, without clergy and vestments? You who fashioned tabernacles and altars of beautiful wood to take into strip malls and bank buildings? And what about you who worship with buildings and altars, inviting those without them to share what you have? What about you who quietly fill backpacks with school supplies, you who march in the street bearing witness to justice? You who insist that all means all, no matter the cost. You who cook for the hungry week after week, you who start flower ministries and get cards to those who are lonely? You who raise up children and youth to lead a new generation? Yes, what about you? You, my beloved ones, have become the bridge that once carried you. By your life, by your witness, born of the saints of old, you reveal how weak the wall truly is between this present world with all of its limitations, and the world to come, in all of its glory. In you, I have seen glimpses of the world to come. I have seen glimpses of home. Home, where the banquet table is laid out lavishly for all who are hungry. Home, where all know they are welcome to feast. Home, where everyone slumbers in peace, taking rest without fear of violence or the storm that comes by night. Home, where people of many languages, tribes and nations become one—not by some being subsumed into the likeness of others, but rather, by each one being fully the person God made that one to be. Home, where we are all fully who God made us to be. Ram Dass once said we are all walking each other home. Perhaps, being Christ’s body looks something like crossing a worn metal bridge on a warm sunny day to get a glimpse of a shimmering lake, to feel the bite of duckling beaks on our fingertips, and then, when time suspended comes back into our awareness, to walk each other home, bringing with us the paradise we have glimpsed—only to discover that, somewhere along the way, we have become the bridges that once carried us. Look around you, Saints of God. Behold who you are. You have become the bridges that once carried you. |
Bishop Ruth Woodliff-StanleyThe Rt. Reverend Ruth Woodliff-Stanley was elected by the Diocese of South Carolina in May 2021, and consecrated as a bishop on October 2, 2021. Archives
August 2023
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