Author: revdbeth

I am a retired Episcopal priest after serving over thirty years in Diocese of Texas and a Benedictine Oblate of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove, Indiana. I'm also an eighth generation Texan. My daughter, The Homesick Texan, has moved back home to Texas. My son and his wife live in Bend, Oregon, with my two grandsons who call me Grandma Texas.

Holy Tuesday: We pray and we give

The parishioner that I traveled into town to pray with before her surgery yesterday is in a great deal of pain.  The surgeon was unable to repair all of the damage to her spine. We wait, and we pray. Of course we hope. 
Another parishioner whose only brother died suddenly less than two weeks ago called to say her mother had died last night. We’ll do the burial Holy Saturday. We carry the burden of her pain, and we pray. 
A dear friend, pastor of two churches, emailed with a request for prayer. Her father died yesterday morning. She’ll spend Holy Week going home to make burial arrangements, then return to serve Easter in her two churches and then go home yet again for his funeral.  Our hearts hurt for her, and we pray. 

Every day of Holy Week (as we do everyday of every week) we gather morning and evening to pray. This morning, one other woman and I knelt in St. Mary’s prayer garden, in a corner of the nave, and read the lessons for Holy Tuesday and prayed for so many. As we prayed for these three, we lit candles one by one by one. 


Tomorrow, Holy Wednesday, we’ll celebrate Holy Eucharist with the Sacrament of Healing in place of Morning Prayer. On a good week, ten folks come to this Eucharist. We’ll pray, and we will be fed by Christ. 

Sometimes, like this week especially, it feels like there is so much suffering and sadness.  Then I read words from Brother Curtis Almquist:  Our life is not about hoarding or about conserving for its own sake but its opposite: about giving. Our life is about willingly giving up our life and our life’s energies as we see in Christ’s own self-emptying. 

The worship leader who faithfully prayed Morning Prayer Holy Monday when she was a congregation of one. Abundant giving. 

The woman who came up to St. Mary’s this afternoon and set up as carefully and prayerfully for the Eucharist a handful will attend tomorrow as the group of faithful women will on Holy Saturday for the hundreds who will join us for Easter Sunday. Abundant giving. 

Meanwhile, emails travel silently across computers and tablets and smart phones with words of care and prayer. Abundant giving. 

Every little moment this Holy Week that is not hoarded or conserved but given.  It is a good Holy Week rhythm.  




Holy Monday: Walking the Forgiveness Road

So I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone; so that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses.  Mark 11. 24–25

As I write this, I’m at St. Luke’s Hospital waiting while a parishioner has extensive back surgery. It seems that we have a lot of folks in the parish with back issues–people for whom we’ve prayed a lot and who continue to have chronic pain.  Our hearts hurt with the agony that is theirs day in and day out. We’d like to vote for more yeses to our healing prayers. 

The promise from the Gospel reading for this Holy Monday is about forgiveness. Jesus asked early in his ministry–which is more difficult to do:  to forgive or to heal?  As challenging as it often is to receive healing, forgiveness is absolutely impossible without God. Seeking forgiveness with a repentant heart is always a yes from God. 

As we show up on the Holy Road of Holy Week, what healing through forgiveness is God placing on your heart?  Do you need help knowing that God’s forgiveness is a yes waiting to happen?  Your priest is ready to help with the gift of Reconciliation of a Penitent. Please call her and make an appointment.

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.



Palm Sunday: Showing up begins

For many years there was a woman who is very dear to me who suffered from depression.   When asked, she said that her depression felt like she had no purpose and no hope. Too many times, her sadness so overcame her that she took to her bed.

The woman has never been particularly fond of travel, so nearly thirty years ago when her church planned a trip to go to the Holy Land, she was not particularly interested.  But her husband wanted to go, and they loved their pastor who was leading the pilgrimage, and so, somehow, she found the courage to make the trip.

The story from her travels that touched me most was the one of her visit to a road just south of the old city in Jerusalem.   Worn stone steps climb a hill, and though historians cannot agree exactly where the High Priest’s house or the Upper Room were, almost all believe this road was used in Jesus’ time. In fact, most concur that this is the road that Jesus and his disciples would have walked from his last meal with his disciples to the Garden of Gethsemane.  It’s the same road that he would have walked after his arrest by the Roman soldiers back into Jerusalem to the High Priest’s house where his trial began.

 
This woman who is dear to me told me that this road wasn’t on their planned itinerary, but that somehow they ended up there. When she got to the ancient road, she was overcome by the presence of Christ, and was unable to put her feet upon on it.

It was holy ground.  It was one of those thin places where heaven and earth meet.

The woman walked up the hill on a path beside the steps, mindful as she walked that she was walking beside the place that Jesus himself walked.  Where his very footsteps had been. On the way to the cross.

In that thin place, something shifted in this dear woman, although she didn’t know right away.  When she got home, after years of suffering, really suffering from depression, a doctor finally listened to her.  He acknowledged the deep emotional pain that she had carried within her.  He prescribed some medication that began to help.

In her sixties, this woman began to be the woman that God had created her to be in a way that she never had before.  She was transformed.  Beside that road that Jesus walked the week we call holy, she had received what I consider a miracle of healing.

When I went to Jerusalem a year ago, this was a place that was on my must see list. It’s roped off now, and one cannot walk on it.  But it is still a thin place. And I could stand beside it and see Jesus walking up and down those steps.

I could see on this very road ….. When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives (Matthew 26.30).  Jesus’s disciples walking with him.

I could see, later that night, on that same road, Those who had arrested Jesus took him to Caiaphas the high priest (Matthew 26. 57).  His disciples having deserted him, he walked this time without a friend.

I could see this woman, so dear to my heart, walking prayerfully up the hill, with her broken spirit being made new by Christ’s healing grace.

This week, of all of the weeks of our Church year, is a place where heaven especially meets earth. We are all invited to walk on ancient and holy roads with Christ.  Roads of prayer and scripture and worship.  Roads of spiritual practices.


I wonder.  Would this woman have been healed in such a remarkable way if she had not made her pilgrimage?  God only knows.

I wonder.  What will happen to us when we walk this Holy Week with Christ, and with our parish community?  God only knows.

But I know that walking this road was important to Jesus.
Walking it so that we could be forgiven.
Walking it so that we could be healed.

When the dear woman traveled to the Holy Land, to this road, I believe she had no expectation of healing or transformation.  But she showed up.  And God did an extraordinary thing.

When we show up on this the Holy Road of Holy Week, what extraordinary gift of healing and forgiveness does God have planned for us?

AMEN




Sunrise prayers

Today is the last day on Tybee Island, and 

I was up before sunrise again for another walk on the beach. Today I carried my St. Mary’s prayer list with me, and battling winds that would have blown away the pages of names of those I carry everywhere with me in my heart, I walked and prayed. Holding tight. 

The first email of the day had been from a parishioner whose brother had died last night. This leaves many extra challenges in her life, and I carried her in prayer.  
The friend with which I travel has a dear friend, a priest, who was placed on hospice last night. I carry him and those he loves in prayer with her. 

For my family, one by one. For the leaders of St. Mary’s. For each member of the parish. For friends so dear. 
Each step on the beach, as light changes colors and fills, a prayer. 

As my prayer walk ended, a congregation of birds had gathered. Usually ready to fly at the first approaching footstep, these stayed in community, mostly looking in the same direction. A little church of shorebirds. 
Good morning, God, this is your day. I am your child. Please show me your way. AMEN.