St Thomas

My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, It is amazing when I stop and consider that only one brief year ago (and yet a lifetime), I had my first conversation with the Search Committee of the Episcopal Church of St. Thomas the Apostle. I remember telling you in our first Sunday together that my time with you, our time together, while sometimes seeming painfully slow, as in a pandemic, would in reality, be fleeting. And so, if we had business to attend to, we’d best be about that business! I was clear in my interviews as to the kind of ministry that God was (and is) calling me into, the ministry of urban social justice work with a particular emphasis on race, reconciliation, and healing. And I believed that was something that St. Thomas would be particularly good and gifted at, based on the leadership and hard work this place has…

Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being? I will, with God’s help! My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, It was over ten years ago that I began my official journey toward ordination in the Episcopal Church, and one of my first assignments was the penning of a “spiritual autobiography.” I crafted my work around the touchstone of our particular Episcopal tradition, the Baptismal Covenant, specifically the questions that get asked of or on behalf of candidates. These questions really are foundational to our Christian identity, because they reflect the ways Jesus lived out his human, and yet divine existence, thereby modeling goals for our own behavior. As such, they are (or should be) the lenses through which we view all of life. But this question of justice, and peace, and dignity, particularly when coupled with the seeking and serving…

My Doubters of Great Faith, We find ourselves on the horns of another national holiday, Labor Day, the veritable conclusion to the trilogy of summer’s secular holiday Trinity. This Labor Day finds us all in a place that feels in many ways so different than Labor Days past. The things upon which we reflect this year are not the adventure-filled excursions, time away with family and friends, and the joyful returns, recanting stories of the road. Those things were much fewer and farther between, if at all this year. Instead, themes of this year’s reflection all seem to revolve around strife, division, and “apart-ness.” A virus necessitates much of the physical separateness. Deeper wounds of ongoing racial injustice are exacerbated by COVID-19, and by political and economic responses to and around the pandemic. But there is something we as Christians can, should, and must do, as a part of our…