November 6, 2024
If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough. ~Meister Ecka
Friends, These past two weeks at Holy Family have been filled with signs of hope, enthusiasm, and teamwork among so many of you. Thank you!
Our Stewardship Kickoff celebration, the glorious Rutter Requiem on Friday, and the services on Sundays are all outward and visible signs of a vibrant community and remarkable energy. And, I have met several new visitors to our parish, including a former member of the Cathedral who now lives in Big Canoe and will be joining Holy Family. We have now gone “live” with our search, thanks to the tireless efforts of our nominating committee, led by Martha and Steve! Thank you!
This week we will enjoy our monthly Wednesday healing service, and on Friday a contingent of us will journey to Holy Innocents parish for Diocesan Council. This parish is deeply important to me, as it was where I began my journey into the Episcopal Church as a 16-year-old soon-to-be lapsed Presbyterian! On Saturday the 16th we will host a Men’s Retreat, and I hope some of you can join us to discuss the epidemic of loneliness, and how fellowship among men can have practical applications for wholeness in mind, body, and spirit. Please keep in mind our Stewardship drive as we move toward the Advent season, and pick up a Holy Family polo shirt, sweatshirt, or hat as we seek to spread the good news about our beloved parish!
October 30. 2024
As I write in the pre-dawn darkness, I am so grateful for this community of Holy Family. The services and festive stewardship kickoff gathering on Sunday were wonderful and were the result of the good and creative work of so many. A deep bow of gratitude to Loran and her team for a fantastic event. I am so very grateful for their energy, vision, and the necessary leadership to see that vision through to reality! As the old song goes, “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place.” Indeed, there is, and I am so very proud of and grateful for each of you.
And thank you to Jacques and his team (Tony Militello, Terry Nicholson, Bruce Elliot, Andy Edwards, and all who jumped in to help!) for such a bountiful repast, done with excellence, grace, and hospitality! Wow! Laissez les bons temps rouler!
Jim Braley’s stewardship message during the worship services was spot on and set just the right tone for the next phase in our efforts. Thank you, Jim!
In this season of giving at Holy Family, let’s promise, one to another, to remember that we are all leaders by virtue of our Baptismal Covenant. Leaders come in many forms and are based on our awareness of our gifts and graces. Among the most distinguishing characteristics of leaders is a willingness to give of themselves considering these gifts and abilities. Indeed, our own Holy Family has a long history of engagement in the community,
October 23, 2024
Many years ago, while a Postulant at Holy Family, I was invited by Pete Cook to drive to a Dahlonega tree farm for “a few maple seedlings.” Pete knew the owner, who gave us a good price for a particular hybrid maple he admired. Over the next several weeks we planted the trees that now line our parking area, so lovingly cared for by our indomitable grounds crew. Now those trees are turning many lovely shades of red, orange, and yellow. Autumn arrives slowly here in the Southern Appalachians, and I delight in the subtle changes in the woods this time of year. A walk on the trails reveals lovely vistas, but the earth beneath our feet is revelatory as well. An ancient oak, split in half by recent storms, now presents a window on the world of deep fungal connections we seldom see. The forest is indeed alive, and as it turns out, we are more fully alive in the forest:
https://www.outsideonline.com/health/wellness/take-two-hours-pine-forest-and-call-me-morning/
Once we begin to pay attention in relation to this, as in so many things, our perspectives can change. As the poet Robert Frost said,
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
And Carl Jung reminds us that our cathedrals and the Nave of our own lovely Holy Family, are not the only sacred spaces: “Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.”
October 16, 2024
One of the things Jung taught was that the human psyche is the mediation point for God. If God wants to speak to us, God usually speaks in words that first feel like our own thoughts. As Rohr asks, “How else could God come to us? We have to be taught how to honor and allow that, how to give it authority, and to recognize that sometimes our thoughts are God’s thoughts. Contemplation helps train such awareness in us. The dualistic or non-contemplative mind cannot imagine how both could be true at the same time. The contemplative mind sees things in wholes and not in divided parts.”
In an account written several years before his death, Jung described his early sense that ‘Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I wanted. That gave me the strength to go my own way.’
As Rohr reminds us, we all must find an inner authority that we can trust that is bigger than our own. This way, we know it’s not only us thinking these thoughts. When we can trust God directly, it balances out the almost exclusive reliance on external authority (Scripture for Protestants; Tradition for Catholics). Much of what passes as religion is external to the self, top-down religion, operating from the outside in. Carl Jung wanted to teach people to honor religious symbols, but from the inside out.