Life on a Movie Set

Every day this week, from as early as 5:30a to as late as 11p, the Parish Hall was crowded with actors donning costumes and getting made up. Both parking lots were full of trucks and cranes. Dozens of men and women hauled things up and down the halls. [This is from the newsletter I edit at St. James Church, issued April 24 in the week following Easter Sunday]

The Marietta Daily Journal staked out St. James, reporting when "a dark van" left the premises, but no one on the crew would open up about what exactly was happening inside.

PHOTO: Life on a movie set: your Communications Director on Tuesday took a selfie near the elevator. The air was thick with smoke -- and drama!

Our Lawrence Chapel made a great setting for the funeral scene. That's artificial sunlight: the sky was dark. When the double doors open during a dramatic confrontation, it's not a parking lot you see on screen, but green hills and blue sky.

For parishes less accustomed to the film industry, all this activity might be very exciting. For the people of St. James, it's just another movie week.

But it was the film crew who got excited when a bird flew in the double doors by the parish hall. He took a tour of the halls before resting in the parlor, which had been set up for a scene.

Work was suspended for this emergency. The little guy bumped his head and left a little smudge of blood on the ceiling tile. He was dizzy awhile, but recovered and flew off to the nave. Someone played bird calls on their phone, hoping to entice him out the double red doors.

The story is picked up there by Lucia Bird (no relation), who was in the nave with Flower Guild cleaning up after Easter services:

He/she seemed to enjoy flying back and forth from the loft to the wall behind the altar. Several times he lighted on the children’s cross. Finally, with the back and side doors open, he flew to the pews and hopped one by one to the last row and flew out the double doors.

Do you remember a few years ago, the bird that explored the nave during services for Pentecost? We wondered if it was a sign from the Holy Spirit. Sign or not, we are blessed by birds, as we read in Psalms 84:3-7, "The sparrow has found a home where she can raise her young, even by your altar, O Lord."

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Feb - Mar - Apr 2025 + Breaking News!

Every morning I read the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on those readings offered by the quarterly Forward Day by Day. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

Breaking News: Today, the author from Forward's January 2021 issue becomes the Rector of St. James, Marietta, the Church where I worship and work. She's The Rev. Mariclair Partee Carlsen, and I wrote an appreciation of her daily meditations years before I knew she would one day be my priest and my boss. See Comfort Food from Forward Day by Day.

February 2025 - Reflections by Nikki Mathis The writer is rector of her Episcopal church, "wife and mother to 4-legged and 2-legged kids." She often finds an angle on Bible stories that I've missed before, particularly in regard to helping people to feel their own value.

• Gal 3.28 is the famous phrase about how in Christ "there is no longer slave or free, male or female," but Mathis cautions that "everyone is equal" is different from "everyone is the same," and we all need to appreciate the differences.
• Jesus listens to the Syrophoenician woman after he initially rebuffs her, listening with respect, and moved to act on her behalf.
• Mathis asks if we ever strike out in irritation when we're overwhelmed by personal crises and world news. Exasperated with the disciples, Jesus asks, "do you not yet understand?" With "yet," he implies that he's sticking with them even if they don't get it.
• He called Peter and Andrew from their fishing boat, without first interviewing them, imagining what they would become in his relationship with them. Us, too.
• Mathis sees that James and John aren't looking for power so much as reassurance that they will be okay in the time to come. Jesus gives them a chance to commit to "rise to the challenge" and assures them, they will. We, too, should hear how people are often asking, indirectly, for reassurance that they're okay.
• Seeing how the crowd is annoyed by the blind man who calls to Jesus for help, Jesus stays put and tells those same people to bring the man forward, enlisting them as partners in the cure that follows. Us, too.

Her takes on these stories illustrate Maya Angelou's observation, "People will forget what you said, they will even forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

Reading Mathis in February prepared me for a chance meeting that month with a former student at a local food court. He called out, "Mr. Smoot???" I didn't know his name, how many years before retirement I'd taught him, or what class it might have been. But I could (and did) say, "Although I've lost all the details, what I do remember is a lot of strong positive feelings -- that you are courteous, curious, kind, and funny." He took a selfie with me "because no one will believe I saw you." I hope that means I made him feel valued, too.

Some other passages stand out in Mathis's writings.

"Blessed are those who mourn," Mathis quotes, for they have experienced love. Their mourning is a blessing. Mathis adds, "don't think that the one who mourns fastest" (and just "gets over it") wins.

Mathis recalls being enthralled by the language of the Episcopal liturgy, so like the Arthurian fantasy books she read as a little girl. Yet the sonorous "prayer of humble access" also let her close. "My little girl self still catches her breath at the thought."

The story of the widow brings the observation that she's giving her all, while everyone else is giving God a 10% tip.

In childhood, Mathis memorized Psalm 134, all two verses. Telling us of occasions when those words spoke to her, she observes, "What we pray when we pray together as a community forms us... I'm anchored... not only by the words said... but also by the power and presence of God experienced each time they are prayed."

March 2025 - Reflections by Tyler RichardsHe's an Episcopal priest at St. Anne's Episcopal Church in DePere, Wisconsin. Also, he's a birder, vocalist and gardener with wife and daughters.

When Hebrews tells us to pay attention, Richards notes the average adult'sattention span is now only 8.53 seconds, so "Some of you will have stopped reading by now." I can relate to how the Sanctus bells bring his wandering mind back "to attend the mystery."

About humility, Richards says, "It's one thing to be zealous for God. It is quite another to inflict that zealotry on others." When you take God into "the marketplace," he writes, don't forget "God is God, and we are not." Also about witnessing, he remembers how the TV lawyer Matlock used to "crack" witness testimonies. Every day, Christians are on the stand about Jesus. We're no longer persecuted, but, he warns, we are being scrutinized.

Richards tells about the first time he left his daughter at Preschool, how he could think of nothing else but her all day. Like the father of the prodigal son, like God. (And, I'll add, like me last month when I was in NYC away from Brandy.)

April 2025 - Reflections by Owene Weber Courtney The director of Christian Formation at St. John's in Jacksonville, Courtney has an educator's knack for clarifying the text with another story or image.

When Jesus says he's the shepherd who stands at the gate, I've always heard the negative connotation of "gatekeeper," i.e., one who excludes the wrong kinds of sheep, people, whatever. Courtney says that the shepherd would lie down across the narrow gate so that any predator had to cross him first. Jesus is not excluding, but offering protection.

Responding to Acts 2.36 ("They were cut to the heart" with regret for killing Jesus), Courtney illustrates repentance with a familiar anecdote about the priest in a French village who excluded the body of a Protestant soldier from the church's graveyard. His comrades buried their friend as close as possible to the cemetery wall. But when they came the next morning to pay last respects, they couldn't locate the site. The priest, unable to sleep as he repented his ban, rose in the night to move the wall to include their friend. "Repentance," Weber quotes another source, "is moving beyond the mind you have."

A couple of meditations stand out because they don't offer answers to distressing questions. Isaiah's poetry imagines restoration, good news for the poor, sight to the blind, prisoners released from dungeons. "We struggle more to believe that GOd's plan for this hurting world will be enacted." Then, she responds to a bit of the letter 1 John 2.14, addressing "young people" who are "strong." Courtney observes that young people are missing from the churches nationwide. She hears from them, "They are tired of being lectured or sung to all the while not having a chance to ask questions, disagree, and engage" She has no easy answers, but holds on to John's statement that young people "are strong and the love of God abides in them." [More to follow]

The Day After Valentine's Day

Yesterday, several friends and relatives received this card from me and Brandy. Below is my poem for "The Day After Valentine's Day" (a.k.a. "Singles Awareness Day") from 2023 copied from my poetry blog First Verse.

Single on Singles Awareness Day and un-
aware, I scrolled through meme after meme
of loners at parties and tables for two with one,
but never the acronym.

It's SAD, they don't have to say to say, a disease:
My clinic offered S INGLES SHOTS.
At church we're listed with shut-ins and refugees
as Those Kept In Our Thoughts.

But what commuter in February rain
is not a refugee, alone,
and straining through frosted glass to see the lane
that's theirs but not their own?

In warmth at home through every page I read
and write exploring in aloneness,
God's restoring me. I've all I need --
the dog in my lap, a bonus.

Theology for Breakfast: Forward Day by Day Nov & Dec 2024, Jan 2025

Every morning I read the scripture assigned by the Episcopal Book of Common prayer, then relax into a short reflection on the reading offered by the quarterly Forward Day by Day. Every quarter I've culled highlights. See my responses going back to 2013.

November 2024 - Reflections by Jazzy BostockLove the name! She's a kanaka maoli in Hawaii, an Episcopal priest, farmer, wife, and foster mom.

The story of the rich young man prompts her to tell us that her congregation, far from affluent, sings a song based on that story. They have "wealth" in generosity. She asks us, "Where is your wealth?"

About the measure of yeast, she's amazed how one measure of yeast affects 60 pounds of flour, and how nonviolent resistance by just 3.5% of a population spurs political change.

Seeing Jesus moving forward despite the surety that he will be killed, she thinks of kuleana, the Hawaiian word for responsibility, combining ku for "standing tall and strong," and le'a, "joy." That's a beautiful way to see our prosaic concept of response.

The parables of lost things all end in parties. Jazzy observes that sharing joy multiplies joy for others.

December 2024 - Reflections by Deon K. JohnsonBorn and raised in Barbados, he's the first openly gay, first black, and first immigrant bishop to lead the Diocese of Missouri.

He tells of his parish's monthly community supper made special at Advent when the volunteers brought out the church's china and silverware. A guest told Johnson, "This is the first meal I have had since I lost my home where I didn't feel disposable." They'd always served disposable ware. Johnson realized, "We stumbled upon the gift of dignity in offering our best to Christ in disguise."

He derives some lessons from other writers. Theologian Karl Barth, asked for "his most significant theological insight," said, "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so." An ancient rabbi said you can know when the New Day dawns when you can see others as brothers and sisters -- till then, the world is in darkness. Someone said the opposite of faith isn't doubt; it's absolute certainty.

He draws on experiences in rural places. "Let us walk in the light of the Lord" (Is. 2.5) reminds him of the neighborhood children playing to the last bit of sunlight in summer, until the lights came on. He still remembers his grandmother's voice, and he assures us, we all know God's voice -- just listen. He owns chickens, he writes, each with her own distinct personality (one likes to climb on him when he brings out food), and they are "communal in the best and worst ways." They're not what comes to mind when he thinks of God, but that's the image in Mt 23.37. Johnson concludes, "there's deep wisdom in a chicken."

He may have been a witness to what he describes among the Bemba tribe in Zambia, where villagers ring an offender and one by one offer stories of his kindness and goodness to them. When all have spoken, the circle breaks and the offender goes free. This came to mind when Jesus says to the woman taken in adultery, "Neither do I condemn you" -- his attention and mercy having (we imagine) a life-changing effect.

He enunciates a core belief for me: "We want an extraordinary God and instead, we get a God who calls the ordinary to do extraordinary things."

January 2025 - Reflections by Jackie Fulop A Montessori elementary teacher, Jackie Fulop lives in Danville VA with her husband, priest-in-charge at Christ Church. And she's a self-confessed "word nerd" who delights me with her discovery that "trust" and "tree" share the same root. "I become like a tree -- supported, sustained, and standing firm -- grounded by my faith in God, despite any turmoil that threatens to uproot me."

She opens up the "gate" image, too. I think of it as an entrance where one may be barred; she looks at "gates" as "places of transition," as when Jacob saw the gates of heaven open. Jesus says, "I am the gate," and he's there "between what my life was and what I hope it will be."

"The pilgrim's way" in Psalm 84 calls to her mind a cross-country drive she made without a plan, veering off-course for beautiful sights and some desolate places, always confident in the eventual arrival. Wherever our path wanders, we will arrive at God, says the psalm.

Psalm 118 is one of those psalms of revenge on your enemies, off-putting for the author, until she thinks that your worst enemies may be internal ones. She observes that the psalm is bookended by gratitude, an effective defense against anxiety.

She always reads blame into the question Jesus asks of the lame man who doesn't make his way to the healing fountain: "Do you WANT to be made well?" But suppose it's "Do YOU want to be made well?" Then it's Jesus scanning the crowd to find one who can't push his way there. Jesus takes the healing to him. I like that - and it's something I can emulate. (As a teacher, I certainly tried to notice the ones who were afraid to ask for what they wanted.)

Another hard-nosed and domineering Biblical expression about putting all things under Christ's feet is softened by the translator Eugene Paterson, who reads this as, "Christ is not peripheral in the world, but central." Really? Fulop asks, when the church faces "diminishing membership, loss of influence," and highly negative perceptions among 90% of adults under 60. We don't have to dominate, but we should be working with God to put Christ in the center.

"But who do YOU say I am?" Jesus asks Peter. Good question for each of us, today.

Fulop was always bothered by the passage about the unforgivable "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" in Mark 3.29 until she paired it with Isaiah 44, about those woodworkers who bow down to idols they've carved, then cook dinner on the ashes of the wood leftover. They call the good evil and the evil, good. Fulop says that the unforgivable sin is "moral obtuseness."

Paul's conversion brings to her mind something by Paula D'Arcy: "God comes to you disguised as your life."

Fulop reminds us that the Hebrew word chesed is different from the words we use to translate it (mercy, compassion, goodness, steadfast love) because all of those are emotions, or emotion-adjacent. But chesed is an inherent quality of God, something she affirms with her favorite punctuation --!