Rector’s Corner

October 21, 2021 EVERY PERFECT GIFT! The Stewardship 2022 Campaign My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, I find myself sitting, yet again, in amazement and gratitude for all of the “perfect gifts” that were on full display this last Sunday as we Doubters celebrated the culmination of our “Every Perfect Gift” stewardship campaign with the ingathering and blessing of commitments for 2022 on Christ’s altar, the place that has witnessed the generosity of so many perfect gifts across all these many years.  This is, after all, the altar where so many of us, past, present, and future, have brought the many blessings of who we are, great and small, joyous and sorrowful, significant in their insignificance.  I find myself wondering what makes every gift perfect. It seems that what makes a gift perfect is the place, the location from which the gift is generated.  Perfect gifts, no matter the size,…

September 23, 2021 EVERY PERFECT GIFT! The Stewardship 2022 Campaign My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, If you have been on the property, in our sacred space over the past few weeks, you surely have noticed the “swarm” of beautiful butterflies that adorn the pathway into our beloved Nave, pointing the way, a proverbial “yellow-brick-road” leading us on the journey through baptism, toward the altar, and beyond to the foot of the cross of Jesus.  It is the creative gift of the time, talent, and treasure of Mr. Stephen Toon and his merry band of decorators (the veritable Kathy Carson, who does as she is told!). The journey that a single butterfly makes is so singularly synonymous with the many, varied, unique, and yet united journeys that we each find ourselves on.  Butterflies, these signs and symbols of spiritual rebirth, change, transformation, hope, and new life, represent the many different…

September 9, 2021 “Always we begin again.” Benedict Dear Doubters of Great Faith, Thankfully, by God’s great grace, we are constantly and consistently in the ever ongoing process of “beginning again.”  With each new day, we’re gifted fresh opportunity to meet God in that grace, to rise to new levels, no matter what prior days have held. Being together is, I would venture to guess, one of THE most important aspects of the Christian identity.  It is how our identity is shaped and formed and grown and strengthened.  Being together is how we know we are a part of the body of Jesus Christ.  Being together is how we celebrate and worship our glorious, merciful creator God.  Being together is how we breathe Holy Spirit life into each other, and into the world. I have heard the statistic quoted that in the current age, many Christians consider themselves “faithful” attenders…

August 26, 2021 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, In so many ways, it is hard to believe that we are quickly approaching the end of the long, hot days of another North Texas summer, so similar, and yet so strangely different to the many we have witnessed in years gone by.  This is the time that we hope toward anything that remotely resembles the first breath of spirit, a cool wisp from the north, even if only in the form of “pumpkin spice!”  (I know, there is no such thing, that “pumpkin spice” is made up, but it does in some way represent the hope of something to come!) And we need those things to hope toward, now, more than ever! Beginning the week of Sunday, September 12, 2021, we will start a new worship schedule at St. Thomas the Apostle, one which I hope will give more people…

August 19, 2021 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, This has been a week that finds the news wires simply chocked-full of humanitarian crises, with the devastating earthquake in the country of Haiti, and the collapse and fall of the Afghanistan government.  The scenes from both of these unfolding situations have been jolting and heart-wrenching, drawing us back from our own day-to-day life struggles to engage with lives that are lived, even in their normality, so completely differently from the ones we experience in Dallas, Texas. I’m not sure what classifies something to rise to the level of the label “humanitarian crisis” – is it number of lives lost, severity, horror?  I do know that by the very nature of labeling something “humanitarian,” that whatever has happened is being connected to me, to us, in ways that we may not be able to see, to feel, to touch, or to…

August 12, 2021 #BlackLivesMatter My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, As most of you know, your Vestry voted in 2020 to erect a sign along Inwood Road staking a bold claim about the sentiment of this parish, St. Thomas the Apostle, regarding the sanctity of human life represented in Black and Brown bodies.  While some feel this is an inflammatory claim to make, seeing that all life is sacred (a fact which I completely agree), we know that for many, many years people of color have NOT been afforded and accorded the equal benefit of full participation in the rights and respect of humanity.  Black and Brown lives have NOT mattered in the same ways that white lives have. I have just finished reading author Jim Schutze’s “The Accommodation,” written in 1986.  It details the state of race relations in Dallas, Texas, particularly how and why things developed in our…

August 5, 2021 My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, As of this writing, Judge Clay Jenkins has returned Dallas County’s COVID-19 threat status to red, the highest of its color-coded threat assessment system, indicating that there is a high risk of virus transmission in our community.  Our county has not been at this level since March, as vaccines began to roll out, and it seemed that we were beginning to find our way out of this pandemic morass.  The red level indicates a shelter-in-place order, as well as the mandating of face coverings, particularly in indoor settings. All of those generalized public health control measures have been taken from local authorities and centralized in the Texas governor’s office. This does not mean, however, that we do not have control, and for that matter, responsibility in how we live out our Christian faith in light of the public health of those…

July 29, 2021 I will, with God’s help! My Dear Doubters of Great Faith, I cannot imagine that there are five more important words contained anywhere in our beloved Book of Common Prayer than these five, “I will, with God’s help,” our response to the five life-changing, identity-altering questions of the baptismal covenant.  For it is, after all, the baptismal covenant, that shapes and guides how we live out our Christian faith, responding to the broken and hurting world in which we find ourselves.  I am beginning to realize that there is very little, if any, of this that I can do without God’s help! I have to be honest that this week’s update from the CDC regarding the on-going, continuing state of the COVID-19 pandemic has me in a bit of a funk.  I really had hoped we had turned a corner, that more of this crisis was in…