May 29, 2024
As we begin the long, green season of Pentecost I am filled with gratitude for our Holy Family community. It’s been a wonderful few weeks as we transitioned from Eastertide to Pentecost Sunday, We’ve celebrated with a festive Pentecost worship service, a joyous old-fashioned hymn-sing and potluck, a Wonderful Wednesday at The Reserve, and a lovely evening at Grandview Lake last Wednesday evening! Trinity Sunday was replete with a return of the CAT-man!
A deep bow of gratitude to the Parish Life, Hospitality, Pastoral Care and Outreach, the faithful and steadfast women of the DOK who pray for us each week, the Altar Guild and Flower Guild and those committees often working tirelessly and behind the scenes to keep our parish running, including Finance, our intrepid Grounds Crew (aka the “Woodchucks”) and of course the Nominating Committee and Vestry. Thanks, too, to our staff of Jacques, Christie, and John who give so freely of themselves to keep us moving forward! Thank you all!
Jesus encouraged us to become like little children, and regardless of our vision for the future, and our hopes and dreams for Holy Family as we live into this season of transition, our willingness to do this together finds encouragement from other sources. As Mary Oliver said so well:
“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.”
I’ve been astonished by the spirit of community,
May 22, 2024
We paused on the trail—tired, hot, and momentarily liberated from the weight of our heavy packs—and I sat down on a scorched, fallen log, grateful for the respite, in what only three years earlier had been a verdant, old growth Montana forest. Now, the charred remains of spruce, lodge-pole pine, and fir were all that I could see. Burned sentinels of formerly majestic trees rose ahead and above us, and those no longer standing seemed to litter the forest floor as if some great force had arbitrarily tossed them and let them lay where they fell. Chaos and destruction seemed all around. I found myself feeling sad, and lamenting the loss of what I knew had once been a fecund, flourishing forest ecosystem.
I was in the Scapegoat Wilderness area of Montana with dear friends from graduate school, an annual, much-anticipated sojourn, and this was not what I had in mind when I flew into Great Falls a few days before. I’d had visions of escaping my native southern heat by hiking in cool, pristine sub-alpine forests, and I now found myself in a forest radically changed by fire; ravaged, and permanently damaged. Or was it? Was I seeing the whole picture? We live in a complex world that is always changing, and the response of any “system,” whether a family, a business (or an economy), a church in a season of change as we are currently experiencing—or an ecosystem, to the shocks and disturbances of change, depends on a number of factors.
May 15, 2024
This coming Sunday is Pentecost Sunday, a day on which we celebrate the “birthday” of the church! And Happy Birthday to us at Holy Family too! Traditionally, Pentecost marks the beginning of the church. Something remarkable, that changed the course of history, happened on that day so long ago. That same Holy Spirit has led each of us to Holy Family parish, to continue the work of those assembled so long ago.
We share this day, more or less, with the Jewish holiday called Shavu’ot that falls fifty days after Passover. On this day the first fruits of harvest were brought to the Temple. It also commemorates the giving of the Torah to Moses—and thereby to the people of Israel—at Mount Sinai. So on this ritual day the covenant of God was remembered and renewed in the form of a pilgrimage feast. Ideally, all of God’s people were to come celebrate in Jerusalem.
But of course, there had been the Exile and flight from the Exile into Egypt. Descendents of those who had been taken into exile were living in the lands of the Parthians, and the Elamites, and other peoples beyond the Euphrates. Others were scattered throughout the Roman provinces in what we now call Asia Minor, Cappadocia, Pontus, Phrygia, and Pamphylia. There were heirs of those who had gone to Egypt and Libya, and those found in Rome, Crete, and Nabatean Arabia. At any pilgrimage feast, then, there would be Jewish pilgrims from all of these places,
May 8, 2024
As the congregation moved from Mikell Chapel to the post-quinceañera reception, the young woman whose service we had just celebrated said to me, “Padre Bill, estás entre mis abuelos,” or, “Father Bill, now you are among my grandfathers.”
Each Sunday for 18 years, I could be found on the Cathedral Close of the Cathedral of St. Philip, where I was a part-time Associate Priest, and where I continue to see patients at the counseling center, a wonderful, sacred space so dear to me. Among the services in which I participated was Catedral de San Felipe, our Hispanic ministry held in Mikell Chapel each Sunday. During those years, my learning curve was rapidly ascending, both in terms of my language skills and my role in relation to the congregation. They had several names for me, including “Padre Guillermo,” and more recently, “Abuelo,” meaning “Grandfather.” The latter is perhaps my favorite name. On Christmas Eve 2018 our granddaughter Sophia was born, and in December of 2022, our grandson Georgie joined his sister. Our twin grandchildren Jack and Alice—age 7 (who call me “Granddaddy,”) were born in March of 2017, so I am now un abuelo multiplicado por quatro or, a grandfather times four!
Sophia and George Harkins
Jack and Alice Harkins
So, how am I living into this new normal of being a grandfather, and how has it changed my ministry,