August 7, 2024
Next week, we in the Episcopal Church will celebrate the feast day of Jonathon Myrick Daniels. Born in Keene, New Hampshire, in 1939, he was shot and killed by an unemployed highway worker in Haynesville, Alabama in August of 1965. From High School in New Hampshire to his studies at VMI and Harvard, Jonathon Daniels wrestled with the meaning of life and death and vocation. Attracted to medicine and law as well as ministry, he eventually entered Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
In March of 1965 the televised appeal of Martin Luther King, Jr. to come to Selma to secure for all citizens the right to vote drew Jonathon to a time and place where the nation’s racism and the Episcopal Church’s share in that inheritance were exposed. Jailed on August 14 for joining a picket line, Jonathon and his companions were unexpectedly released. Aware that they were in danger, four of them walked to a small store. As sixteen year-old Ruby Sales reached the top step of the entrance a man with a gun appeared, cursing her. Jonathon pulled her to one side to shield her from the unexpected threats. He was killed by a blast from the 12-gauge shotgun. Jonathon’s letters and papers bear eloquent witness to the gifts he possessed, and to the cross he chose to bear as he discovered these gifts, renewing his mind and being transformed in the process. He writes;
“The doctrine of the creeds, the enacted faith of the sacraments were the essential preconditions of the experience itself.
July 31, 2024
In a lovely poem by William Stafford, we are invited to pay attention to the “threads” in our lives that endure, and in so doing, remind us of what is most deeply important to our faith journey:
There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread. ~William Stafford
This week in the Episcopal Church we celebrate the “Philadelphia Eleven”—the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church—and we observe the Feast Day of William Wilberforce, reformer and abolitionist.
The ordination service was held on Monday, July 29, 1974, the Feast of Saints Mary and Martha, at the Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, where Suzanne Hiatt served as deacon, and whose rector was civil rights advocate Paul Washington. Beginning at 11 o’clock in the morning, the service lasted for three hours.] The eleven women serving as deacons presented themselves to Bishops Corrigan, DeWitt, and Welles, who ordained them as priests. Harvard University professor Charles V. Willie, who was also the vice president of the House of Deputies at the time,
July 24, 2024
River Sojourns-Life Journeys
One of the enduring joys of my youth has been a fondness for rivers, lakes, and streams. I especially enjoy whitewater canoeing and kayaking, and the wild places to which these activities take me. Growing up in North Georgia, I felt at home on the Amicalola and the Chestatee, the Chattahoochee, and the Nantahala. In more recent years, I have discovered sea kayaking, and I have been fortunate to paddle in places as diverse and magical as coastal Maine, Tebenkof Bay Alaska, Lake Jocassee, and the Boundary Waters of Minnesota. Our two sons also developed a love for water, as evidenced by this photo of older son Justin, who was a raft guide for the NOC while in graduate school at Vanderbilt:
It is a delight to view the world from the perspective of the water. One notices the intricacy and beauty of creation in new and remarkable ways. One is for a time both in—and of—the context of the water. The Japanese poet Basho knew this experience well:
The old pond, ah!
A frog jumps in:
The water’s sound!
Like the ripples of my paddle as I dip it into the current of the Cartecay, the frog’s presence both disrupts the smooth texture of the world and belongs to it. Yet in some ways we are different, Basho’s frog and I. We humans cannot fully immerse ourselves in the river world around us.
July 17, 2024
Loaves and Fishes…Salmon, in particular
It is deep summer, in this long, green season of Pentecost, and as we speak, in rivers and streams all along the Pacific coast, salmon are returning home to their native waters after journeys of up to 6 years—and thousands of miles—at sea. Some time back, I took a sea-kayaking trip to Alaska, just about this time of year. Our group journeyed to Tebenkof Bay, deep into the wilderness of southeast Alaska, for a week-long sojourn based on Buddhist mindfulness practice.
Early one day, we set out in our boats across the bay. A gentle summer rain was falling. Ravens called out as seals and otters followed our flotilla of kayaks, diving playfully beneath our boats. Ducks and loons eyed us curiously framed by snow-capped mountain ranges, their glaciers emptying into the bay.
We found ourselves in the delta of a small river. We paddled upriver protected from the rain by spruce forests. Beneath our boats was a river of salmon, coming home to spawn.
Our guide gave us a streamside lecture on the ecology of salmon nation. Salmon are amazing members of God’s creation, and this is especially true of Pacific salmon. Leaving their fresh-water birthplaces they journey out to sea where they roam the oceans of the world, returning to spawn at the exact spot they were born years—and thousands of miles–earlier.
Most of you have seen scenes of Chinook and Sockeye salmon making their way up waterfalls to their native pools against tremendous odds.