This spring has felt like a season of hybridity, or like a continual lesson in how to occupy the both-and situations that characterize much of our reality right now. Our reflection that began our May Vestry meeting focused on the dual nature of our existence as people of joy and resurrection enmeshed in a world of sorrow. In a passage from Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, John Phillip Newell encourages us to embrace tears not as a sign of emotional weakness but as a way of cleansing our inner sight. He writes that we should not hide or be ashamed of tears but should instead recognize their power to reveal the “glistening of heaven in earth” and to help us feel “more deeply within us the current of life’s sorrows.”
Vestry Report for December and January
When the Vestry met in mid-December, the Omicron variant had just appeared in the US. As it was still new, we were in that unfortunately familiar “watch and wait” situation. We began our meeting as usual with a reflection from Thomas Merton about how (at Christmas specifically) Christ comes uninvited into a world that has no room for him at all. Merton calls this world “a demented inn,” and we were struck by the intensity and seeming cynicism of that label. What Merton calls attention to though with his harsh language are
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