Trinity News: The Changes and Chances of This Life

summer 2014 vol. 61 | no. 2

TrinityNews THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

THE

CHANGES & CHANCESOF THIS

LIFE

Trinity’s Rector-Elect

Living with a Lunar Faith

The Rev. Canon James Callaway

SUMMER 2014

TrinityNews VOL. 61 | NO. 2

THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

DEPARTMENTS FEATURES

1

Letter from the Rector

2

For the Record

8

Visitor File

9

Archivist’s Mailbag

20

Overheard

26

Psalmtube

27 Anglican Communion Stories

28

What Have You Learned?

29

Parish Perspectives

32

Pew and Partner Notes

Life is Ministry Interview with James Callaway

10 14

On Certitude and Frogs Mary Ragan

16 Living with a Lunar Faith Interview with Barbara Brown Taylor 21 A Daily Word Jamie Coats

Seen and Unseen Mark Bozzuti-Jones

23

24 Story of a Sermon Emily Wachner

33 Letter from Lower Manhattan

All photos by Leah Reddy unless otherwise noted.

TRINITY WALL STREET 74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | Tel: 212.602.0800 Rector | The Rev. Dr. James Herbert Cooper Vicar | The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee Executive Editor | Nathan Brockman Editor | Jim Melchiorre Art Director | Rea Ackerman Managing Editor | Jeremy Sierra Copy Editors | Robyn Eldridge, Lynn Goswick Multimedia Producer | Leah Reddy

FOR FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS 74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | 24th floor | New York, NY 10006 news@trinitywallstreet.org | 212.­602.9686 Permission to Reprint: Every article in this issue of Trinity News is available for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your church website. Please credit Trinity News: The Magazine of Trinity Wall Street.

Let us know how you’ve used Trinity News material by emailing news@trinitywallstreet.org or calling 212.602.9686.

LETTER FROM THE RECTOR

God’s Eternal Changelessness In June, Trinity announced that the Very Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, Dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, will be the 18th rector of Trinity Wall Street. Both Tay and I look forward to spending the months until my retirement in early 2015 with Bill and his family. We know that their lives will be enriched by all those they meet here, as ours have been.

In this issue we celebrate one of the people whom I have been fortunate to know, the Rev. Canon James Callaway. Jamie came to Trinity 34 years ago and served with three rectors: the Rev. Dr. Robert Parks, the Rev. Dr. Dan Matthews, and me.

During his tenure he has shaped Trinity’s ministry and touched the lives of Anglicans all over the world. One friend called Jamie the “Forrest Gump of the Anglican Communion,” part of just about every major event in the life of the Communion in the past 30 years, often in the background.

Jamie, however, is not an ostentatious person. He likes to work in mutual partnership and empower others.

While Jamie and Trinity have been fortunate to do some high profile and important work, such as supporting Desmond Tutu as he fought apartheid or opening our doors to rescue workers after 9/11, much of the essential work that must be done takes place behind the scenes.

During my tenure as rector of Trinity Wall Street thus far, I have focused on three main goals: growing the patrimony of Trinity, serving Lower Manhattan, and strengthening partnerships in the Anglican Communion, especially in Africa. I am happy to say we have succeeded in these areas. Trinity is in a strong financial position, increasingly connected to the local neighborhood, and giving more grants in support of the Anglican Communion in Africa, especially to make it more financially sustainable, than we have in decades.

I am proud of the work Trinity has done in these areas, though little of it is glamorous. Much of it involves careful decision making, listening, and fostering strong relationships.

The work of the rector, of course, is only one small part of the work that goes on at Trinity. Trinity is a single parish with many parts. The church spire and Trinity’s long history may be the most visible to visitors, but inside the church meets a lively and diverse congregation, and in the nearby office building the staff members make grants, rehearse world-class music, prepare curriculum, teach children, and tell the story of Trinity. Although this work may sometimes be invisible and the individuals who do the work may change over time, the effects can be felt around the world.

We are all familiar with, in the words of The Book of Common Prayer, “the changes and chances of this life.” The church, too, is constantly changing, as it will when Dr. Lupfer becomes the 18th rector of Trinity when I retire in February 2015. Fortunately, thanks to God’s eternal changelessness, the community of believers here at Trinity will continue the sometimes slow and quiet but important work of loving others and proclaiming the Gospel.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper jcooper@trinitywallstreet.org

Kimiko Koga Lupfer

PAGE 2 18th Rector PAGE 4 Ascension Day Youth Chorus PAGE 5 Transformational Fellows PAGE 6 AIDS Walk Stepping Out PAGE 7 Trinity Institute Emergency Funds for South Sudan

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Trinity News

The Very Rev. Dr. William Lupfer Named 18th Rector In June, the Parish of Trinity Wall Street called the Very Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon, as its next rector. Dr. Lupfer will succeed the Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper in February 2015 to become Trinity’s 18th rector.

Before his time at Trinity Cathedral, Dr. Lupfer served parishes in Illinois and Michigan. He also worked in campus ministries in Illinois and Maryland, and served as a prison chaplain in Connecticut. He was awarded a doctor of ministry degree from SeaburyWestern Theological Seminary in 2003, where his dissertation was entitled, The Rector as Parish Leader: Leveraging Vestry Leadership for Spiritual Formation.

He and his wife, Kimiko Koga Lupfer, are the parents of two teenagers, a daughter, Sarah, and a son, Kyle.

In order to facilitate a smooth transition before Dr. Cooper’s retirement, Dr. Lupfer will join the Trinity staff as rector-elect in September. He spoke with Trinity News editor Jim Melchiorre in late June while preparing for the move from Portland to New York.

What is your leadership style?

My leadership style is to do the vision work early and to build strong vision parameters: to get clear about the purpose of what we’re going to do in this task, where those parameters are, and what the vision is, and then let people go and see what they come up with to build a safe way to be playful—purposefully playful. Then I come in and brainstorm with them. But they do a lot of the work themselves, and when they finish they know they’ve done it for themselves.

You call it outreach at Trinity Cathedral; Trinity Wall Street calls it Faith in Action.

How has that aspect of church life informed your theology?

I think it happened early on for me in my prison ministry. I had a spiritual director at the time who challenged me to see every person I served as the face of Christ, and so it became a mutual relationship early on, rather than my helping the poor or an addict. They had as much to teach me.

How do you see the role of the church in addressing economic inequality?

What we say here [at Trinity Cathedral] is that we are the hands and feet of Christ in the world. We want to go meet the people who are suffering from injustice. A lot of the injustice in Portland manifests itself in food insecurity, so we have a lot of feeding ministries here. We always do that with partners. After that initial experience of being the hands and feet of Christ, we study [what happened]. Then we

talk about it. Then we bring in stories from the people we serve and begin to look at the bigger issues, the systematic issues that drive [the injustice]. So we go from a direct personal encounter first, to the person in need, to the theological and political reasons for [injustice], and then what we might do [to address] those larger questions.

Your personal story begins right outside Chicago.

My grandfather delivered me, and then he went down the hall and delivered my cousin 45 minutes later. So I’m part of a family, and that’s part of my life story—that he was there and brought me into the world. He was a physician but also had a farm and loved to work on the farm … and he didn’t worry about other people playing. So I got to play while he was working.

Now I see my role in the parish as rector as the one who does the work so others can play. I see the parish a bit like the farm, where I’m working hard and making sure things are okay, but I’m hoping that others will play and will open up to who they are and then express that in the world.

You mentioned today that you are not a cradle Episcopalian.

I was born to a very faithful family. We went to church regularly in the United Church of Christ, and I loved it. Then I went on a canoe trip for three weeks and had three days solo. It was on that solo time in 1976 that I met God personally. Now, I didn’t hear any voices—I was just on the river. I drank the river water. It was very clear. It was clean. Later, upon reflection, I saw that the river was a symbol of abundance.

It wasn’t raining, but the river flowed. It was a mile wide. I could drink it. It was a symbol of God’s love and God’s abundance. So after that, at 15, I thought, well, how will I reorder my life?

So I started studying Scripture.

My friend’s father was a Methodist pastor.

And I thought a pastor’s family would be a great way to raise children, so part of my call to ministry has been a call to a family. I went off to college at the University of Colorado and studied religion. I took a winter off to ski, and then I went right to Yale Divinity School after that. I graduated after three years, and at the end of that time, my grandparents sponsored me on a spiritual pilgrimage to the Orthodox Church—Russia, Georgia, and Armenia—for three weeks. It was that liturgical worship, along with all my Episcopal friends at seminary, that brought me into the Episcopal Church.

When it was time to get ordained, I went back to the United Church of Christ, just to make sure I wasn’t running away from anything, and

found that my true home is in the Episcopal Church. It’s been a wonderful expression of my faith since.

You said the idea of family was an important influence in your deciding to become a priest.

Well, my wife is my spiritual partner. She has a deep wisdom, and we share our life journey together. It’s been a wonderful expression of love to be married and to be able to minister.

Two people who are very important to us are our children, Sarah and Kyle. Kimiko and I see ourselves as cultural bridges. Our parents were at war together, against each other. Now we’ve been married 25 years, and our parents share grandchildren. It’s a wonderful opportunity to be a world citizen, and to do that with a person I love is just an incredible, incredible opportunity.

Why do you feel called to Trinity Wall Street?

I feel like my emotions, passions, and feelings link up well with where Trinity Wall Street is and where Trinity Wall Street is going. I feel very respectful of the work that’s been done there, very energized by the work that’s been done, and really energized by the next phase that’s coming. I see disciples right now as learners. I look forward to joining people on what I call an adventure of learning. You know, there’s no rule book that says what Trinity Wall Street will do next. It has to be discovered, and I can’t wait to do that.

You can learn more about Dr. Lupfer and read an extended interview at trinitywallstreet.org.

“I see the parish a bit like the farm where I’m working hard and making sure things are okay, but I’m hoping that others will play, and will open up to who they are and then express that in the world.”

Trinity News

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Jon Meacham Preaches on Ascension Day

Leo Sorel

Who better to celebrate 168 years of history than Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Jon Meacham?

On May 29, Meacham preached a stirring sermon at Trinity’s Ascension Day service. In addition to commemorating the day Jesus rose into heaven, according to the Acts of the Apostles, Ascension Day marks the anniversary of the consecration of the third and current Trinity Church in 1846.

Meacham is a former Trinity vestryman and the author, most recently, of Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power. Meacham received the Pulitzer Prize for American Lion, his bestselling 2008 biography of Andrew Jackson.

“The message of Trinity Church,” he said, “is the message of the Gospel: there is more to the universe than the eye can see and more than the ear can hear, but we must listen.”

Trinity also celebrated the ministry of the Rev. Canon James G. Callaway, who joined Trinity 34 years ago. During this time he has headed the grants department, directed the preschool, led Trinity’s efforts to strengthen the Anglican Communion in Africa, and touched the lives of thousands of Anglicans around the world. You can read an interview with him on page 10.

Comin’ Up Shoutin’!

On Sunday, June 8, the Trinity Youth Chorus and Neighborhood Outreach Choirs performed a concert called “Comin’ Up Shoutin’!” The chorus includes five to 18-year-old students from several Lower Manhattan public schools. Choirs from PS 140, Baxter Street School, and Chrystie Street School also performed. The concert featured songs celebrating community, connection, and freedom, including original compositions by Melanie DeMore, an activist, musician, composer, and teacher. DeMore led the students in Gullah stick pounding, a tradition practiced by the Gullah, descendants of enslaved Africans in the southern United States.

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Trinity News

Leo Sorel

Transformational Fellows Visit The 2013 Transformational Fellows, visiting from Zimbabwe, attended the May 29 Ascension Day service.

Margaret Chidzonga, Fredy Matonisa, and Martin Nyaundi represent three different dioceses in Zimbabwe. Trinity recognized them for their transformational work and provided funds to each for rest, renewal, and continuing education.

Margaret Chidzonga is from the Diocese of Harare in Zimbabwe’s capital. She is a counselor by training, who works to empower women. She is Director of Zimbabwe National Family Planning and a board member of the Commercial and Industrial Medical Society.

“The challenge for women is that they are the breadwinners and they look after families,” she said. Political and economic problems beginning in 2008 have left many women without employment.

With her fellowship, Chidzonga learned new skills in agriculture and animal husbandry to create revenue for the church. She planted small crops of potatoes, onions, and tomatoes to raise food and money, and raised rabbits and chickens, whose eggs can be eaten or sold.

She also used her fellowship stipend to visit Egypt and Israel, her first vacation in five years, and visited her son in Boston, whom she had not seen in 10 years.

Martin Nyaundi lives in the Diocese of Manicaland and is working to produce revenue for the church.

Manicaland is a beautiful tourist destination, he said, but also very poor. A former bishop misappropriated land and vehicles, which the diocese recently reacquired.

Throughout his fellowship he was busy raising money through potato farming and raising funds to develop the land. He didn’t get much time to rest.

“In the time I got my fellowship, we were facing lots of challenges,” he said. After his visit to New York, he planned on taking two weeks to relax.

Fredy Matonisa works in the Diocese of Matabeleland. He works for the diocese part time and is chair of the board of a school for boys, where he oversees staff and administration.

Matonisa also looks after six hectares of land where the diocese raises a commercial herd of 300 cattle and keeps wildlife, such as kudus, impalas, wildebeests, and giraffes.

“I utilized my fellowship to better my knowledge of agriculture,” he said. He took classes and acquired some equipment to crossbreed cows to produce more milk. The proceeds from sale of the milk will help support the diocese.

Matonisa also visited Cape Town, South Africa, and his son at the University of Pretoria. After he left New York, he traveled to Atlanta to visit a large dairy farm and see what he could learn.

While in New York the fellows did some sightseeing and visited other Trinity partners, such as Rural and Migrant Ministries in

From left to right: the Rev. Canon James Callaway, the Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, Fredy Matonisa, Margaret Chidzonga, Martin Nyaundi, the Rev. Dr. James Cooper, and Sarah Arney, Assistant Director of Faith in Action.

Poughkeepsie, which serves rural populations and agricultural workers. The Rev. Richard Witt, Executive Director of RMM, was a Trinity Transformational Fellow.

“The whole sabbatical year was uplifting,” said Chidzonga. “God gives opportunities to everyone, and in his eyes no one is more deserving than another. I can also give people the opportunities to realize their own dreams.”

During the Ascension Day service, the 2014 Transformational Fellows were announced.

They were recommended by the Zambia Anglican Council and work in the areas of financial sustainability and stewardship.

Susan Mumba Chulu is the Training Chaplain for the Diocese of Eastern Zambia.

Chulu teaches members of the Mothers’ Union to use local resources and survival skills to sustain the group, church, and their families.

She also coordinates fundraising programs for the diocese.

The Ven. Emmanuel Yona Chikoya is Archdeacon for the Southern Archdeaconry in the Diocese of Lusaka. He is parish priest for Livingstone West Parish and Project Director for Livingstone Anglican Children’s Project.

Evans Mwewa is the Treasurer for the Diocese of Northern Zambia and manages the finances for the diocesan income-generating programs, ten commercial offices, and two residential properties that support the mission and ministry of the church.

The Zambian fellows will visit Trinity in May 2015.

Trinity News

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Walking for AIDS Awareness On Sunday, May 18, 36 members of the Trinity Wall Street community participated in the 29th annual AIDS Walk NY. This was the largest Trinity AIDS Walk NY team to date.

“This has been my dream for Trinity Wall Street,” said parishioner Al DiRaffaele, founder of the Trinity AIDS Walk NY team. “The ‘Remember to Love’ ribbons we had [for the tenth anniversary of September 11] mean a lot to me. That’s what it’s all about: remembering to love those that have passed, those that are sick, those in hospitals, and the kids who are coming of age—they need us to educate them.”

For returning participant Toni Foy, the walk was a chance to raise awareness and remember old friends. “When I started walking, I didn’t have really close people affected. As a matter of fact, some of the people who are no longer with us, with me, used to walk. And so I want to do my part when the opportunity comes.”

Members of Trinity’s youth group also participated in the walk.

“Three weeks ago, after Al made the pitch [for joining the Trinity AIDS Walk team], I asked the youth and their parents if they would

Parishioner Toni Foy (left) marches in the AIDS Walk with staff members Bryan Parsons and Jenn Chinn.

potentially their generation as well.”

Youth group member Olivia, participating in her first AIDS Walk NY, hoped to raise awareness both inside and outside of the church community.

“I think everybody needs to be informed about this and the fact that there aren’t any real cures yet. We like to think we have the answers for everything, but we really don’t.”

like to be involved,” Rite 13 leader Patrice-Lou Thomas said. “My pitch was that Jesus was actually going about healing people. He was in the ministry of making people well. And part of this walk is … bringing us closer to a cure for this epidemic.”

Parent Mutsa Tunduwani said, “I was excited to bring awareness to the younger kids in the youth group, making them aware of issues that are not just affecting the older generation but

Stepping Out with St. Paul

Leah Kozak

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Trinity News

In the spring of 2014, a band of 27 travelers made their way from Trinity Church, New York City, to the cradle of Christianity, the old Roman East, now Turkey and Greece. They began their pilgrimage in the city of Smyrna, now Izmir, one of the seven churches mentioned in Revelation, and from there traveled by land and sea to principal sites of Paul’s ministry, including Ephesus, Corinth, and Athens. The group also traveled through sites in the region such as Heiropolis and Afrodisias, where there are extensive ruins that bring Paul’s daily world to vivid life. The journey of pilgrimage is an inner event as well as an outer one, and members of the group continue to meet and reflect on what is shifting and changing in their lives as a result of their pilgrimage together.

© Lambeth Palace / Picture Partnership

44th Trinity Institute to Feature Archbishop of Canterbury Trinity has announced that the 44th Trinity Institute (TI2015) will take place on January 22–24, 2015. The conference, entitled “Creating Common Good,” will focus on practical ways to promote economic equality and will feature the Most Rev. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Other speakers include Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at Union Theological Seminary and a well-known public intellectual; Barbara Ehrenreich, author of numerous bestselling books, including Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America and Living with a Wild God; Robert Reich (via Skype), former Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton; Juliet Schor, bestselling author and Professor of Sociology at Boston College; and the Rt. Rev. Julio Murray, Bishop of Panama.

The conference will provide practical tools attendees and partners can use in their communities to make a positive economic impact.

TI2015 is open to all from any faith tradition who are interested in a practical, theological perspective on economic inequality. Trinity Institute takes place at Trinity Church in New York City and is streamed at partner sites—churches, seminaries, and other organizations—around the world.

The conference will include 20-minute talks, panel discussions, and facilitated reflection groups, as well as opportunities for networking and informal conversation with other participants.

TI2015 features an affordable sliding-scale fee structure, and scholarships are available. For more information or to register as an individual or partner site, visit TI2015.org.

Emergency Funds for South Sudan At its March 12 meeting, the Trinity vestry awarded $895,000 in grants to mission partners in New York City, across the United States, and in the Anglican Church in Africa.

The funds will bolster Trinity’s work in four areas: creating a vital presence in Lower Manhattan, advocating for children in communities and public schools, engaging communities emerging out of conflict, and strengthening the Anglican Communion.

This year’s grant-making capacity is $4 million.

Trinity also made an emergency grant in response to the crisis in South Sudan.

As has been widely reported, that country is struggling anew with violent conflict.

Thousands have lost their lives, and more than 1,500,000 people have been displaced.

Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, the Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and

Sudan, which covers both countries, is a longtime mission partner in the region and has been an important part of peace negotiations.

In response to the intensity of the human tragedy created by the conflict, Trinity has offered up to $300,000 in funding for emergency relief and peacemaking. The Sudanese Development and Relief Agency, an arm of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan, will administer the aid. The funds will provide food, water, medical care, and other supplies, and trauma counseling for internally displaced people in South Sudan. The funds will also be used to develop community programs encouraging peace and reconciliation.

For more information and resources for prayer and action, visit episcopalchurch.org/sudan.

Archbishop Daniel Deng Bul, the Primate of the Episcopal Church of South Sudan and Sudan.

Trinity News

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How did you end up here in Trinity’s concert series?

I got an interesting call from my manager. I was up in Boston doing Rigoletto, and she said that they need a bass for the Shostakovich. She basically said, “We know that you’ve done it, and hardly anyone else has done it. And you did it like 12 years ago, but we’re wondering if you can dust it off and figure it out.”

Was music a part of your childhood?

I grew up in a musical household. My mom sang all the time. My dad was a really good singer. I always could carry a note, but I just never really sang because everyone else sang. I was the drummer.

Jim Melchiorre

Morris Robinson Twenty-five years ago, Morris Robinson was an All-American college football player. Now he’s among the most respected and sought-after opera singers in the world. Robinson came to Trinity Wall Street to sing in a series of concerts called Lamentatio.

INTERVIEW BY JIM MELCHIORRE

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Trinity News

You were 30 years old when you went to your first opera, and you were in it.

This is Aida, by Giuseppe Verdi, and I’m doing rehearsals. I’m really not understanding the enormity of what this is. It wasn’t until opening night when my parents are out there, and my wife is out there, and they start playing the trumpets for the king’s entrance — all of a sudden this is the real deal. The maestro has on a tuxedo. It was game time. It’s just an out-ofbody experience almost. I was not privy to this art form. I had never participated in or even witnessed it, and I was in it.

You made the All-America team at The Citadel. Is college football good training for an opera singer?

If you’re just good enough to make the team, you already have the natural ingredients, I think, to be successful at anything. One cannot comprehend unless they’ve been through it—the amount of discipline, the amount of physical exertion, the amount of organizational skills one must have to be able to attend class, remember all the meetings, the aptitude that you must have to remember a playbook and remember what the blocking assignments are. You’re not just a talented person because you can run fast. Coming to the operatic world, I was blessed with a voice. To go from not having done this ever in my life to singing at the Metropolitan Opera in two years, I mean, it’s incomprehensible unless one has the discipline, the aptitude, the structure to put it all together. I learned a lot of this on the athletic field.

So what’s your life like?

I’m a classical music singer. I sing opera, I sing oratorio. I work with some of the greatest orchestras and conductors and opera companies. And what’s it like to be that? The moment I leave here on Monday morning and fly back home to Tyrone, Georgia, I’m probably going to pick up my kid from school, go home, sit at the table, do homework, play some games with him, make sure he takes his bath and gets into bed. Then I’m going to sit on the couch, turn on the television and watch whatever game is on that night, grab a beer, and talk to my buddies. It’s a dichotomy. And you learn how to manage it because you can’t let those two worlds interfere with one another.

O L D S T. G E O R G E A N D T R I N I T Y C H A P E L Leave Trinity Church through the front doors, and walk down Wall Street. Take a left at William, then a right onto Fulton Street. Walk one block, then take a left onto the tail end of Cliff Street. The street disappears into a pedestrian plaza. Look for Squire’s Diner. There, you’ve found it: the location of Trinity’s first chapel, her “eldest daughter,” old St. George’s.

At the time of St. George’s conception in 1748, the first Trinity Church building was operating at capacity.

The Anglican population of New York City had grown: immigration from England accounted for part of the rise; a smaller part was due to New Yorkers of Dutch ancestry converting. Trinity decided to build its first “chapel of ease” “for the encouragement and convenience” of its burgeoning congregation.

But where to build it? The vestry eventually accepted a proposal from the citizens of Montgomerie Ward (the part of the city east of William Street and north of Crown Street): if Trinity built the chapel in that ward, the citizens would raise money for the land purchase themselves.

At the time, Montgomerie Ward was a religiously diverse area.

Contemporary maps show a Baptist church, Lutheran meetinghouse, Moravian meetinghouse, and Jewish burial ground in the neighborhood.

Land was purchased, and vestryman Robert Crommelin drew up plans for the new chapel. Completed, it An illustration of St. George’s Chapel. Inset: An icon from what is now the was 92 feet long by 72 feet wide, with a Cathedral of St. Sava. processed, and Dr. Barclay, rector, preached stone front, tile roof, and “irregularly shaped” spire rising 172 feet over the street. A 19th-centu- on a passage from Leviticus: “Reverence my sanctuary: I am the Lord.” ry history of the parish reports that “the pulpit, St. George’s remained a chapel until 1811, reading-desk, and chancel-rail were constructed when it voted to become an independent parish. of mahogany, which was given by a sea captain In 1846, the congregation moved uptown to who had lost his mainmast in a storm and had fashionable Stuyvesant Square, where much of rigged up a temporary one in a West India its congregation had moved. Today, it’s part of island, where he had taken refuge and where the Parish of Calvary-St. George’s. The original mahogany was the only lumber available and building remained a church supported by which he contributed to the Church as a Trinity until 1868, when it was torn down. thank-offering on his return to New York.”

Leaving the location of Old St. George’s, travel St. George’s Chapel was consecrated in 1752, uptown to East 25th Street, the block between with a grand procession from Trinity to the Broadway and 6th, just west of Madison Square new chapel on Beekman Street. Mayor Edward Park. Tucked into a block of retail establishments Holland attended. Fifty-two students from (featuring a Bonobos, a Gracious Home, and a Trinity’s charity school (40 boys and 12 girls)

graphic design firm) you’ll find the Serbian Orthodox Cathedral of St. Sava, formerly Trinity Chapel.

By 1855, much of Trinity’s congregation had moved uptown, and the vestry set to work on a new chapel of ease. Richard Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church, designed the building, which stretches the length of an entire city block.

Trinity Chapel was immediately a center of high society life: Edith Wharton was married there, and it hosted the funeral of John Jay. Beginning in 1931, the painter Rachel M. Richardson Ominsky created a series of 14 murals of the life of Christ to fit inside the niches of Trinity Chapel, many of which became memorials to parishioners.

Despite its high-society pedigree, Trinity Chapel was not immune to the march of Manhattanites northward and into the suburbs of Brooklyn and Queens. The congregation dwindled, and in the early 1940s, Bishop William Manning suggested selling the chapel to the Serbian Orthodox Church. In a letter prior to the sale, the leader of the Serbian church wrote, “After this war, our country in Europe will be devastated.

Our clergy will be small in number, as the result of the enemy’s massacre.

And it will be up to our church here, our clergy here, as the only free diocese in the world, to do something towards bettering those conditions in Europe. And we feel that this church property will be ideal for that purpose.”

The chapel was sold to the Serbians in 1943 (the sale price included the coal already in the chapel basement, as it was hard to come by during the war) and reconsecrated as the Cathedral of St. Sava. The rector of Trinity, the Rev. Dr. Frederic S. Fleming, and Bishop Manning participated in the reconsecration service, when many of the existing interior works of art were rededicated as Orthodox icons. The marble high altar, however, was moved to St. Ambrose Episcopal Church on 130th Street.

Trinity Chapel and Old St. George’s have faded from memory, but the spirit that inspired them lives on in Trinity’s modern-day ministries.

Trinity News

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Jamie Callaway came to Trinity with a resumé that

Life is Ministry The Rev. Canon James Callaway reflects on 34 years at Trinity INTERVIEW BY JIM MELCHIORRE

included boy soprano and probation officer. He had also served two Episcopal congregations in northern New Jersey. Something about Callaway caught the eye of the Rev. Dr. Robert Parks, Trinity’s 15th rector, and convinced Parks to hire Callaway as his executive assistant, or as what Parks’ widow Nancy describes as “my husband’s right-hand man.”

That was in May 1980. Staying at Trinity for 34 years was not the original plan for the priest now formally known as the Rev. Canon James Callaway. But his ministry just kept expanding with new and challenging assignments, as Callaway explained in an interview with Trinity News editor Jim Melchiorre.

“Be open to the effect of inequity and listen to the people who are suffering from it.”

Photo courtesy of Mary Chilton Callaway

James Callaway at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City.

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Trinity News

“You have to decide what’s of the first order, and the first order is our fellowship in Jesus Christ.”

Trinity Archives

JM: As you began to travel more widely in Africa for the Trinity grants department in the 1980s, you had to deal with the issue of apartheid. Since that was now 30 years ago, can you provide your recollection for people who don’t remember those times?

The Rev. Canon James Callaway (center) with E. Thomas Williams and George Fowlkes of the South Bronx Churches at a ribboncutting ceremony on May 7, 1992, for 22 Nehemiah Houses.

JAMES CALLAWAY: You know, 1980 is going back. It was a different time in the city.

The congregation was rebuilding. There was a real nascent excitement that this congregation had not only roots, but had legs, and was developing. Remember, no one lived in Lower Manhattan, so engaging families meant getting people who had worked downtown during the week to come back.

JIM MELCHIORRE: When I talk with some of the dozens, maybe scores, of people who worked for you over the years in the grants department, inevitably they say that you taught them about partnership. What have you learned and taught about that?

JC: I guess it just goes back to the community that we know the church to be. Funding projects is not always a benign endeavor. It can create dependency in terms of control. Mutual responsibility and interdependence [mean] we have to break down this barrier between the mother church and the daughter church, the sending church and the receiving church, the giving church and the suppliant church, and find an equality where we each share together and do our own part. It’s easier said than done, and certainly we haven’t done it perfectly, but the desire throughout was that if Trinity was to be a constructive force, it had to be a force based on partnership.

JM: We think of the grants department’s work in Africa, and we’ll get to that in this conversation, but there were some really vital local programs in New York when the city was going through an especially bad time, weren’t there?

JC: In the ’60s, with the graffiti, the crime, the drugs, it wasn’t very popular to live in the city.

New York was not a rising stock. This tended to unfold throughout the city, particularly in what we call the outer boroughs. And in Brooklyn, you just had acres upon acres of housing that had been abandoned, where there had been fires because landlords did much better getting an insurance settlement than they did with the renters that were left. It was “white flight.”

So the churches in East New York, Brownsville, and Bedford-Stuyvesant came together and said we need to rebuild our neighborhoods.

They took the perspective of Nehemiah, who rebuilt Jerusalem, and said we’re going to raise money to start housing. But the social contract doesn’t work for rental housing. We need ownership. So they built single-family row houses. And Trinity got involved in the start-up and support of East Brooklyn Congregations, which started this project of Nehemiah Houses, selling houses to low-income people who would raise the equity and would then be able to move into a neighborhood and start changing it. South Bronx Churches actually did the same thing.

We put in some of the start-up money, but more significantly, from a ministry point of view, we were involved in both cases in the communityorganizing backbone that made the projects possible.

JC: Often some of society’s worst evils are things that people are entirely comfortable with, and no one really notices. People who actually were running apartheid always clucked their tongues [and said] that it wasn’t the best, they were looking for a solution, and that fundamental change was on the way, but actually it was a very cozy situation and nothing was changing. So in any time or place you have to be open to the effect of inequity, and the corrosive effect that it’s having, and listen to the people who are suffering from it.

JM: And at some point, you met this pivotal figure who, like you, was a priest in the Anglican tradition, Desmond Tutu.

JC: I got to first know the then Bishop Tutu through noonday services. When he was in New York, we worked closely with his supporters and almost always arranged a noonday service when he would preach. I remember a noonday service when he preached and we had 1800 people in the church.

Trinity started picking up on the inequity of apartheid and became one of the centers of support. Archbishop Tutu probably treasures most the support we gave him when he became the bishop of Johannesburg. People there were not all that pleased. He was not allowed to live in the bishop’s house because it was in a white neighborhood. He was a provocative figure. He had a whole range of issues he was involved in.

So they essentially slammed their pocketbooks closed. There was a collapse of financial support for the Diocese of Johannesburg. So Trinity made a grant of $150,000, and it did two things.

The first thing was that it took away the power of people to bring about the collapse just as he arrived. Second, it sent a message that Desmond came with friends, and he came with support.

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Trinity Archives

Archbishop Desmond Tutu preaching at Trinity

JM: What about the support Trinity provided in the area of telecommunications?

“Our partner was Archbishop Desmond Tutu and our responsibility was to support his people in the decisions they made. They called on us to divest.”

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JC: If the support in Johannesburg is the archbishop’s favorite story, this is probably mine. He had been the bishop for about a year and came to see us. I met with him and a couple of his staff and ours, and I had never heard him so dragged down. He was always buoyant, regardless of the conflict, and almost the more he was pressed, the stronger he fought back.

But he was pretty despondent and he said, “You know, we’re just not getting our message across.” I said, “Well, bishop, if you were in the United States, what I would say is you need a communicator, someone who will take on the cause of getting your message across and will do what’s needed to do it.” And he said, “Well, if I were to do that, is it something Trinity could support?” So instead of being careful, I just said, “Yes, we could.”

He had had in his pocket John Allen’s CV, this incredible journalist in South Africa, and it didn’t take long before this idea of a communicator became a media affairs director and John Allen arrived on the scene. And in 1986 we started a telecommunications grant to put together a computer network, with dial-up connections, to all the bishops in South Africa.

When Tutu gave a sermon on Sunday, [his staff]would send the text in English to all the bishops on Saturday. So when he was pilloried in the newspapers, a bishop anywhere could stand in the pulpit and read a paragraph from what Tutu was saying.

JM: It was right about that time, in the mid-1980s, when Trinity decided to divest in South Africa as a protest against apartheid.

What do you remember about that?

JC: It was a very tortured decision. No one on Wall Street believes in divestment. If the Episcopalians or the Methodists stop investing in tobacco companies, there is zero effect.

Further, there was deep debate whether Tutu was on the right side. The other side felt it was best to go with the status quo and have incremental change to avoid a bloodbath. Ford Motor Company had set up these model towns.

So if you were a black worker and you worked for Ford, you had your own house, you had a YMCA, there was a swimming pool, there was day care, there were model schools. So if you divested and Ford left, that would all be lost.

Was this the right thing to do?

I essentially took the position that our partner was Archbishop Desmond Tutu and that in partnership our responsibility was to support [his people] in the decisions they made. They called on us to divest.

JM: What do you think the church, and I don’t mean just Trinity or the Episcopal Church, can learn from the battle against apartheid?

JC: That was one of the high-water marks of the American Church, the Episcopal Church included. The people who had the leverage and were able to make a difference in South Africa were church people. Desmond Tutu was able to enlist the fellowship of the Anglican Communion. Episcopalians in this country who had been so strongly divided and in many

ways humiliated by the civil rights movement and the reluctance to integrate were able to come together and say we now have been formed by this kind of consciousness, and we want to take it on. And that’s what it is to be a follower of Jesus. Jesus was in the world and he confronted inequity and he confronted human need, and this was one of those moments when the church was able to find that common ground.

JM: One of your former staff members told me he thinks of you as a bridge between people with deep philosophical or theological differences. This makes me think of the tension between the Episcopal Church in the United States and many of the Anglicans in Africa over bishops who are gay.

JM: Everybody who was in New York on 9/11 has a story. In your case, your twin responsibilities in the Trinity grants department and with the Trinity Preschool merged that day.

JC: It was a beautiful day. I was coming downtown early for a chairman’s meeting with the grants board on the 24th floor [of 74 Trinity Place] at 8:30. There were those two bangs. It sounded like a sonic boom. So we went down the hall and the North Tower had this thick black smoke coming out of the tower, and the air was full of debris. Then I looked up and saw

JC: I guess it started out with going to church.

That always helps. I was in fifth grade, and there was a Sunday school service at our church at 9am, and at the end of the service I was tapped on the shoulder by Ernie Thompson, a clockmaker in Kansas City, and he said: “You have a good voice. You should be in the choir.” So two weeks later I was in the boys choir, soprano choir, and going to all these services and singing, it rubbed off on me.

I found that so many of these questions of meaning, of relationships and community, were focused on, and engaged in, the church, as I found them nowhere else, and so I was drawn to it. I went to a church college [University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn.], and when I was a junior and pursuing other interests, I felt this tug toward the priesthood. That brought me to New York in 1966. When I graduated from General [Theological]Seminary, I wasn’t ready to start parish ministry, so I took this job as a probation officer.

JM: Do you have any insights from your 34 years of ministry at Trinity or, really, from your adult life as a priest?

Leo Sorel

JC: You have to decide what’s of the first order. And the first order is our fellowship in Jesus Christ, that we are disciples. Now our cultures are so different. And the first place that it showed up was ordination of women. And it was just clear to me at the beginning that we were about partnership and we weren’t about getting them to understand a Western view of feminism. I never raised it. However, I hardly made a visit where it didn’t come up, and I would share stories about how ordination of women had come to be understood in the United States, in the Episcopal Church, how it first had been divisive but then when women were in that role, their authenticity had been recognized.

So by the time the [tension over ordaining gay priests as bishops] came, I and Trinity had a sense of mutual responsibility and interdependence [with Anglicans in Africa]. We share our common agenda in the faith, and are respectful for each other for managing our own lives.

this orange fireball coming from the second tower. I said, “We’re out of here.” So we walked down the stairs, and then I got involved in evacuating the Trinity Preschool, which was one of my responsibilities and how I spent the rest of the day. We had about sixty kids and forty parents in the basement of 74 [Trinity Place]. We were there when the South Tower collapsed and the room filled with acrid smoke in 30 seconds because it just sucked in. So we realized we had to evacuate. We evacuated on Greenwich Street, which was like a moonscape;

there was no sun in the sky, and there was this heavy ash over everything. We had gotten as far as Bowling Green when there was this great—it sounded like an explosion but it was really an implosion. The North Tower then collapsed.

We didn’t know with those fifty-odd kids how many would have parents to pick them up.

Well, as the day developed, more and more parents came. All the kids were not only well, but their families were all secure.

JM: As you tell about your wide range of ministries and experiences over the past 34 years, I keep thinking what people tell me about you—that at your core, you’re a priest.

And we haven’t really talked about why and how you took that step, from your boyhood in Kansas City.

JC: Life is ministry. Ordained ministry is a role within the ministry of the people of God, and I think we lose our bearings when we see it as something other than facilitating the whole. I guess as a priest—hearing confession, preaching a sermon—it kind of looks sacerdotal or professional, but this kind of pastoral engagement and spiritual friendship is what makes us human and what we live for. This probably took me 40 years to realize: when someone sits down and asks you a question, they’re not seeking an answer, they’re seeking conversation, and I generally find that’s best advanced by asking further questions.

Another reason it works is the vitality of Trinity. Mary Chilton and I are just so grateful that our kids were raised in a diverse community that we didn’t see in a lot of other places. Trinity is a place where ministry has reach. This is an incredibly exciting place, and the vitality is amazing.

Editor’s Note: The Rev Canon James Callaway and Mary Chilton will remain a part of Trinity Parish even as he pursues his current ministry as General Secretary of the Colleges and Universities of the Anglican Communion.

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On Certitude and Frogs

BY MARY RAGAN

One summer day, long ago and far away, I stood by the edge of a pond, looking at a frog floating motionless on top of the water. I pointed out the dead frog to my friend, who replied, “That frog’s not dead.” I said that it surely was dead and, in the face of her failure to see the truth, finally spoke with authority: “That’s the deadest frog I’ve ever seen.” At which point, of course, the frog leapt out of the water. I now have a circle of friends and family who will simply say to me: “That’s the deadest frog I’ve ever seen” when I speak with a degree of certainty about that which is not certain.

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The certitude of my earlier years can still surface at times but mostly has given way to a deep appreciation of the provisional nature of what I know or think I know. I understand that certainty is a hedge against anxiety and anxiety is what fuels emotional distress. In the face of change or transition, anxiety spikes.

The kind of change that produces the most anxiety is change that “shakes the foundations.” It may be traumatic, as in the sudden death of a loved one resulting from violence, an accident, or undetected medical condition. These traumas result in feelings of fear and helplessness.

Change may also be less dramatic but still devastating nonetheless, e.g., it may be the loss of a job (or inability to get one), producing financial distress as well as an assault on one’s self-esteem; it may be the end of a marriage or the beginning of dementia. It may be the recognition that some deep desires will never be realized. The feelings connected with these events often appear first in the body: muscular tightness, difficulty breathing, inability to relax, lack of interest in sex, evidence of a sleep disorder, and appetite changes. The body provides the first warning sign of emotional distress.

Foundational change can also be positive: the birth of a child; the public commitment of two people willing to cast their lot with one another in faith and hope; crossing boundaries of race, class, geography, and culture to address human need. It can be the replacement of one building in the service of another. It can be the arrival of a new leader.

What is important to recognize about this deep change, whether positive or negative, is that the change is significant and irreversible. It does not simply mean doing more—or less—of what was already being done. It means doing something fundamentally different, something that requires new learning and a new story. A basic axiom of learning theory applies here: “Learning happens when events violate our expectations.”

My work as a clinical social worker is filled with examples of people who have either chosen or been subjected to profound change and have reconstituted themselves in new ways. They demonstrate that devastation need not be permanent and resilience is a human capacity that goes far beyond what we can imagine. They embody what it means to be able to tell a “new story,” one that acknowledges the past while, at the same time, refusing to allow that past to define them forever.

How does an individual, group, or institution arrive at such a positive outcome? Obviously, there are multiple pathways to wholeness and wisdom, to developing a new story that enriches an individual and builds the community. The Sufi tradition stipulates four basic rules of life that I think offer a valuable template for dealing with change:

SHOW UP: This requires a willingness to make a conscious choice to be present, stay in the moment, create value for yourself in the process, and not depend on another to do it for you.

PAY ATTENTION: Track the feelings that are happening within you—excitement, resistance, confusion, anger, fear, hope—listen for what has heart and meaning for you and for others; listen for what the deep story is and where healing needs to occur.

TELL THE TRUTH WITHOUT BLAME OR JUDGMENT: Find your voice and add it to the collective wisdom; speak of your own experience; practice the discipline of naming your own feelings and your own thoughts.

DO NOT BE ATTACHED TO THE OUTCOME: Offer your gifts, talents, opinions, and ideas—and then let them go; be willing to be changed by the process Be willing to be changed by the process.

Be willing to give up certitude, and you will never be accused of a false sighting of the “deadest frog ever seen.”

Mary Ragan, Ph.D., is Area Director at the Psychotherapy & Spirituality Institute at Trinity. She teaches at Columbia School of Social Work and Hebrew Union College.

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Living with a

An Interview with Barbara Brown Taylor

BY JEREMY SIERRA

LUNAR FAITH

Episcopal priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor’s newest book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, is written for all those who feel unsettled in their faith. “If I have any expertise,” she writes, “it is in the realm of spiritual darkness: fear of the unknown, familiarity with divine absence, mistrust of conventional wisdom, suspicion of religious comforters, keen awareness of the limits of all language about God and at the same time shame over my inability to speak of God without a thousand qualifiers, doubt about the health of my soul, and barely suppressed contempt for those who have no such qualms.”

With characteristic grace and wisdom, she uses this expertise to explore literal and metaphorical darkness, offering a “lunar faith” as an alternative model to the “full solar spirituality” that does not admit any room for shadow and doubt.

“I have not found anyone who does not have qualms about his or her faith,” she said in our interview, conducted over email and phone. “All I have found are people who are afraid to express their qualms—or who have been taught they should not have them.”

Taylor is the Butman Professor of Religion at Piedmont College, Demorest, Georgia and her speaking and writing have made her an influential voice in the Episcopal Church, landing her on TIME Magazine’s 2014 list of 100 Most Influential People. Two of her previous books, Leaving Church and An Altar in the World, also explore the darker or often-forsaken parts of life and faith. This book serves as a much-needed reminder that, as she writes, “Dark and light, faith and doubt, divine absence and presence, do not exist at opposite poles. . . . As different as they are, they come from and return to the same source.”

Photo by Kenny Simmons

You explore many different kinds of darkness, often literal, in your book. Why is it important now, in 2014, for us to learn to walk in the dark?

At the literal level, I think it’s important because the human fear of darkness is affecting everything from our view of the heavens to the migratory patterns of birds. Artificial light has only been widely available for about a hundred years, which means that we’re conducting a scientific experiment on ourselves and other species for which no one signed permission slips. At the spiritual level, I think it’s important because we’re entering a period of global transformation that calls for new vision and new thinking. Trying to operate by our old lights will not serve us. It’s time for a walk in the dark.

Can you say more about the global transformation we’re experiencing?

Karen Armstrong, Phyllis Tickle, Harvey Cox—most of the great observers of spiritual movers in our time all say it in different ways.

Karen Armstrong says we’re in the midst of a new axial age. Tickle says we’re experiencing a 500-year rummage sale of Christian ideas, and Harvey Cox says we’re entering the age of the spirit. Those are three of my guides into what’s happening at the global level. I’m a very local person and local thinker, and they are global thinkers and I trust them.

Do you think many people share your lunar faith? I could certainly relate to your book, and I wonder if you have a sense that many others feel that waxing and waning.

Based on the mail I’m receiving, the book speaks to people in a lot of different ways. I don’t think it says anything particularly new, but perhaps it gives people some new language for saying what they have known all along— that the light comes and goes in any life of faith.

What sort of mail have you received?

A lot of mail from people who are simply happy to have their love or attraction to darkness named as something that isn’t perilous for their soul. They’re grateful to hear that if they’re sitting in the dark it doesn’t mean they’ve taken a wrong turn or been abandoned by God. I’m glad to be a part of normalizing the experience of darkness as part of the life of faith.

How do you think the Episcopal Church might benefit from exploring its darkness a bit more?

That’s above my pay scale, but I think The Book of Common Prayer is rich in resources for those who want to learn more about walking in the dark. The daily offices of Vespers, Compline, and Evening Prayer are there, along with the Easter Vigil and the entire book of Psalms.

I have always been grateful to the Episcopal Church for teaching me how to live by the church calendar, with its varying seasons of dark and light.

Did you learn anything surprising about yourself while writing this book?

The most surprising thing was how many of my fears about the dark were outdated. Some were fossils left over from childhood and others were religious teachings I never bothered to investigate. After exploring them a little further, I discovered that what I was most afraid of was not the dark. I was afraid of being afraid!

Could you give me some examples?

Childhood fears, like things put in place by fairy tales, which were really helpful to put in place ideas of good and evil, but they had to be revisited. Religious teaching about dark and light—Scripture is full of language that cautions people against darkness, especially 1 John 1:5—“God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.” God comes to Moses in a dark cloud. If God has no darkness at all, what’s God doing in a big dark cloud? Even Scripture needs an update.

Even urban teachings—I lived in a city and moved to the country, and when I got here I was locking my doors. It took me awhile to realize I didn’t need to take a flashlight every time I went out, I could go out alone and walk as far as I wanted. Our fear of darkness gets in at a primordial level, and it takes a lot of effort to get it back up to the critical level again.

“Trying to operate by our old lights will not serve us.

It’s time for a walk in the dark.”

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Is there any kind of darkness you find it especially difficult to walk in?

The darkness of death is pretty daunting, even for someone who hopes she still has some time left to prepare. Who looks forward to taking that last breath? Whatever we believe comes next, the letting go is never easy. Plus, faith and certainty are not the same thing. At this point in my life, learning to walk in the dark is how I practice learning to walk by faith and not by sight.

Have you spoken to any of your students or other young adults about accepting or living in darkness? Is it more difficult for them to see why it’s important?

One of my favorite writers, Frederick Buechner, once wrote that teaching religion at a prep school was like instructing young princes in the use of crutches. Piedmont College isn’t a prep school and my students aren’t royals, but I see his point. When you’re young, the sun is your best friend. I would worry about a 19-year-old who spent too much time in the dark. But insofar as learning to walk in the dark is a metaphor for figuring out how to move forward even when the way ahead is not clearly lit, young people have as much need of that skill as anyone else.

I noticed you sent an email at 1:30am.

Has writing this book encouraged you to spend more time in the dark (or was it just a busy day)?

Writing a book is a piece of cake compared to launching it. I like to spend my night hours on the porch, not in front of a computer, but right now I’m burning the midnight oil just trying to keep up.

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What is your advice to someone who also finds that full solar spirituality doesn’t work for them, who feels as if “they are shutting themselves off from something vital for their souls” when they avoid darkness?

There is no advice that will help anyone in that situation. If something vital is missing, the only thing to do is to go looking for it—to explore your own darkness at your own pace—with a good companion or two if you can find them.

There are kinds of darkness. I am nobody to tell people what they ought to do about their own kinds of darkness. Some people have darkness, and they should run from it as fast as they can. We have excellent instincts. But to be asked to ignore that is not good for your soul.

Take adequate care.

In my experience, good writing has a bit of darkness in it, and you hint at this in your book. Do you think there is a connection between darkness and/or sadness and good writing? Is there openness in the church to this kind of writing?

There are lots of different kinds of Christians and lots of different kinds of churches, but when I go into an Episcopal Church bookstore I see books by Thomas Merton, Simone Weil, Wendell Berry, Kathleen Norris, Nora Gallagher, Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Winner, Richard Rohr—I could go on and on—all writers who know how to balance on the edge of exquisite faith and sadness.

You mention, as Miriam Greenspan puts it, that there’s a close relationship between “individual heartbreak and the brokenheartedness of the world.” Do you think it’s more difficult to have empathy for others who are sad or broken without letting yourself be sad or broken or accepting darkness?

Of course! It takes one to know one. You have also put your finger on the reason why we so often flee those who are brokenhearted— because we do not want them to remind us how that feels.

Is it any easier to explore darkness when you know that darkness and heartbreak are a part of life?

I don’t flee rooms where people are experiencing heartbreak. It is so much easier for me to sit in a hospice or visit a hospital. It is such a relief not to have to run out of those rooms and know that I don’t have to be afraid. It’s a lot easier to stay now. I actually look forward to that going into some of the hardest places. That may just be my predilection. Give me a jail or a hospice or an emergency room, and I’m pretty ready to stay.

Do you ever find it difficult to be a priest with the kind of faith that provides “no permanently safe place to settle?” How do you deal with it?

What’s more interesting to me is how any of us ever got the idea that faith would offer us a safe place to settle. How did the followers of Jesus ever come up with that? He was the son of man who had no place to lay his head, the son of God who died believing he had been abandoned. Urban T. Holmes was one of my earliest teachers about what it meant to be a priest. He said it meant living on the boundary between the human and the divine, the sacred and the profane. Anyway you shake it, there’s nothing safe about that.

At one point you write, “As a young priest I became a different kind of stranger to people who had no one else to tell their stories to.” As the son of a priest, it seems to me that there’s a kind of loneliness in being a priest, because you’re a pastor but also in some sense a stranger to your congregation. It’s almost as if you’re representing a kind of accepting darkness for your congregation that provides a space for their stories and questions rather than filling it with light and answers. Does that resonate with your own experience? Is it a difficult position to be in?

That’s a lovely way to say it. Yes, I think being a priest entails emptying yourself out on a regular basis so that you can be of some use to other people. Of course, I think being a Christian entails the same thing, but since clergy do it both publicly and professionally, the stakes are higher. As you noticed earlier, I teach college now.

What made you write this book now?

The truth is I wanted to write a book on the Book of Job. I think the Book of Job explores the dark side of God, but my editor wasn’t interested in another book on Job. I’m a contrarian. When everybody’s looking in one direction and saying this is the way to go, I like to look at what’s behind us—that’s usually just as important, but no one wants to look because it’s gloomy or scary. In the Book of Job, God didn’t take away the suffering or give him all the answers but showed him a vision that Job said is too wonderful to behold. There’s something so beautiful in that. So this was a way to approach that.

You mention starting a moon garden in your book. How is your moon garden growing?

It’s in the design stage. The person who is helping me says my clothesline has to go, and I’m not giving up my clothesline, so we’re still in discussion. Plus, I don’t have to weed a garden that is still in my head.

What are you working on next?

Are you kidding? This field will have to lie fallow for a while before anything new can grow.

“Living on the boundary between the human and the divine, the sacred and the profane ... there’s nothing safe about that.”

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overheard | S A C R A M E N T A L S O C I A L M E D I A

The goal isn't to argue, debate, call out, or "win." Because that game, as best I can tell, isn't winnable.

The goal is to use social media sacramentally. To be a sign, a sign of life and grace.

True, sacramental isn't all that viral. But maybe it could be. Slowly and quietly.

A flicker here and a flicker there. Signs and sacraments. Eventually. Everywhere.

Maybe that's the way the world changes.

Excerpt from “Social Media as Sacrament: A Thought for Rachel,” from the theologian Richard Beck’s blog, Experimental Theology, experimentaltheology.blogspot.com.

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g n i s u the t e n r e t in to

help people pray every A DAILY day

WORD

BY JAMIE COATS

Richard Meux Benson, the founder of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist (SSJE), was concerned about the pace of the Industrial Revolution and its effect on our humanity. He wrote that he was worried about what the impact of the train arriving in Oxford would be when people started traveling over 30 miles an hour for the first time. Benson did something radical: he did not run away to create a reclusive order but founded SSJE to stand in the middle of modernizing developments and uphold the timeless wonders of daily prayer, reflection and meditation, and focus on God’s love in the world. He founded SSJE in Oxford, England, in 1866, and the order thrives to this day at two monasteries in Massachusetts.

One hundred and fifty years later our technology has swept us along to unimaginable wealth. This progress has been marred with terrible losses in two World Wars and many other conflicts. As we now move at an accelerating pace, maybe our progress will be unmarred by further losses of humanity. I hope so. I believe, like Benson and the Brothers at SSJE, that if we help people pray every day it will help. But we can’t just pray when things go wrong—we need to pray to keep our lives humane and make sure we use well the gifts of technology.

I have the good fortune to work for SSJE and be involved in efforts to bring prayer to the Internet. The Brothers, as is laid out

in The Book of Common Prayer, publicly pray at least four times a day: Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline.

I think of these prayers as follows:

MORNING PRAYER: Center yourself as you begin your day.

NOONDAY PRAYER: In the thick of the day, offer all you are trying to achieve, all you see, to God. Be in awe.

EVENING PRAYER: Stop work, be grateful, begin to recover a sense of peace.

COMPLINE: Have hope for the following day. Rest in God’s peace.

With these practices we can try to keep our humanity in the busiest of worlds.

The Episcopal Church, like most mainline churches, is largely organized around a service and a sermon on Sunday morning. Monks and nuns place less emphasis on Sunday and more emphasis on every day. The question we are asking at SSJE is, “Can we provide ways to pray every day when people need it?” We are learning how to use the Internet

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to help people pray, at least once a day to help people not just be swept along in the business of their lives.

A few years ago we started sending out a morning daily email called “Brother, Give Us A Word.” It consists of a single word to meditate on with a very short reflection. For example, “Gift—This life is a gift— not to be earned, but received—the gift of living in union with God. —Br. David Vryhof” We now have many subscribers all over the world. We discovered that we had developed a simple form of Morning Prayer. Recently we received this comment: “I work with the dying—with men who are in the process of dying from HIV, AIDS, terminal cancer—and ‘Brother, Give Us a Word’ is so helpful to me in that work. The other day, for instance, when I wake up, there is ‘Hope’ on my iPhone. That’s the day’s word. Or there is ‘Love.’ And I carry that word with me throughout my day, as I’m companioning the dying.

The simplicity of it is perfect. Through this study, every day, I’m learning more and more about myself, about others, about spirituality. It’s a very important part of my daily life. It is so helpful to me to have these words, as I companion the dying in prayer.”

Through these meditation emails we have seen both new forms of church and mutual care grow. In Lent 2014 we sent daily emails with very short videos featuring the Brothers talking about love in the Gospel of John. The series was called LoveLife and can be viewed at SSJE.org/lovelife.

With each video we posed a question. The first video asked, “Where can you know abundant life? Where can you still grow?”

A reader wrote: “What is ‘abundant life’? I am mourning the death by suicide of my 29-year-old son, Joe, three months ago. I wonder if/when I will love life and accept that Joe did not.”

The Brothers replied: “Our hearts go out to you as you grieve the death of your son, Joe, three months ago. We will remember you in our prayers—for strength and courage to claim the gift of life amidst this terrible loss, and to know Jesus’ promise of his presence with you. And we

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R E t Y s A u PRFAITH tr ICE V R E S

lo

T SPIRI

e p hveo wonder

n e t s li

Monasticism began when a few faithful men and women went into the desert to seek God and live a life of prayer.

These Desert Fathers and Mothers, as they became known, were spiritual beacons whom others sought out for their wisdom in the ways of God. The seeker would approach and ask, “Father (Mother), give me a word.”

The Brothers have adapted this ancient tradition for today, offering online a daily “word” to all who seek a deeper knowledge of God, a means of handing on what we ourselves have received.

You might use each day’s word as a focus for your prayer.

Say the word to the rhythm of your breath and invite the Holy Spirit to speak to you through that word. You might also use the day’s saying as a focus for meditative reading or lectio divina, reading slowly and allowing your mind to drift as the words inspire you to further prayer and reflection.

You can find the daily word at ssje.org/word.

Jamie Coats serves as the Director, Friends of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, a monastic community of the Episcopal Church. He shares his personal writing at wingedboots.com.

ss vene forgi

Brother, Give Us a Word

will remember Joe in our prayers, that he will know healing in death, that he will be filled with Jesus’ light and life and love.”

People who had never met revealed their suffering and compassionate desire to help one another. These replies were posted by other readers: “I lost my younger son in 1999 to suicide. The one thing I would say to you is that I am proof you can eventually return to an appreciation of life. I don’t know how you will do it, but it can be done. Please don’t go it alone. There’s help to be found.”

“I am so deeply saddened by your loss. I too lost a son, age 32, by suicide almost four years ago. I also lost my ability to enjoy all that I had enjoyed before his death. Slowly, and much to my surprise, my life has changed, and I have found new enjoyments, for lack of a better word, among them a much closer relationship with God.” All of this has given the Brothers encouragement to support daily prayer online. I am currently working with them on a Noonday Prayer offering. Over time and with enough support, we hope to help people pray four times a day.

Recently I received some unexpected encouragement for helping people pray daily. I was in a taxi in Washington, D.C., and my driver was El Mostafa, who was working long hours to support his family in Morocco.

He asked me, “What brings you to D.C.?”

I replied, “I work for Episcopal monks—we teach people to pray four times a day.”

He reached up to his meter and turned it off, saying, “The rest of the ride is free, please pray for me. Where I come from, we are told to pray four times a day. But most people only pray when things go wrong.”

Please pray for El Mostafa. Please don’t wait for things to go wrong.

Pray every day.

E D I B A

Seen UNSEEN

By Mark Bozzuti-Jones

&

I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord, or in the midst of life we are in death . . . that is how we begin every funeral, every celebration of life.

We hold fast amidst the tears, broken hearts, memories, and loss, amidst the emptiness that memory brings—shadows of ourselves and our loved ones. Tears and loss tear at our hearts. Jesus weeps and heals with us.

We hold fast to the God of life.

Our dead, our loved ones, like God we do not see.

Our dead, our loved ones, like God live in eternity.

For those we see no longer: we remember them, we give thanks for them, we thank God that we got to know them and love them.

We ask God to console us, we ask for faith to see in death the promise of eternal life, and in God we remind ourselves that one day we will see God and see all who have died (again).

Those who die never leave us: we see them in our memories and in the patterns of our living and loving hearts.

At home, we see their favorite cup, their clothes, the empty chair, and the things they loved.

At church, we remember the things they did, the things they said, and how they made us laugh, how they made us see God. We remember in the loss and through the tears and in the midst of the broken hearts . . . we remember that Jesus Christ rose victorious from the dead.

We remember that Jesus always comforts us with blessed hope, Jesus comforts us with the hope of everlasting life.

We remember that for us, the faithful people who see dimly, as though in a mirror, that life is changed, not ended.

We remember how we are all loved by God: the living and the dead.

We remember that God has prepared a place for us and that we will see God. We will see God and all those who have died.

We will see God and all who have died, and our hearts will be filled with joy.

See: Jesus lives and we all live—we all will live (in God).

In the resurrected life of Jesus, the seen and unseen and Life are One.

Vincent Norman and Shimmer Hall, pictured, are two of several beloved members of the Trinity community who died during the past year and inspired this poem.

STORY OF A

sermon

We Preach How We Live A priest reflects on her sermon and the practice of preaching

BY EMILY WACHNER

What is it that is happening behind the curtain in today’s Gospel stories? On the one hand, we have the story of brave Elijah, finding the still small voice of God in the wilderness. On the other, Jesus healing a sick person, demonstrating God’s decisive power in the world. In each story, though, there is something behind the curtain to be found when the smoke and mirrors are cleared away. The thing behind the curtain, that is so easy to ignore as a preacher and as a church, is two men who are deeply mentally ill.

From the The B-Side, a sermon preached by the Rev. Emily Wachner on June 23, 2013 (Texts: 1 Kings 19:1–4(5–7), 8–15 and Luke 8:26–39). We suggest you watch the sermon at trinitywallstreet.org/TheBSide then read the reflection.

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Preaching as Pastoral Act Preaching is a pastoral act at heart. When I begin, I ask myself not what do my people want to hear, but rather what do they need to hear? In a smaller congregation with a discrete population, this is an easier question. What is this local community facing? What is being celebrated? Even at Trinity, when my sermons are being webcast, I try to shape my sermons to the perceived needs of the members of the local congregation, because they are my people, and my preaching is a pastoral act on their behalf.

When I sat down with these texts, I asked myself that same question. The characters of Elijah and Legion came alive to me in a way that I suspected they might to my parishioners—they vividly spoke to me as troubled men, men who might be brothers or children of people sitting in the pews, or might be sitting in the pews themselves.

In I Kings, Elijah asks God to let him die.

He wanders aimlessly through the desert, hiding out in a cave, wrapped in a blanket, alone and depressed. The Gerosene demoniac described in the Gospel appears to be in the grip of terrible mental illness. I believe that people want to know that the Church sees the suffering of Elijah and Legion, just as we acknowledge the suffering of those struggling with mental illness in our congregations.

Detective Preacher Between Monday and Thursday, being a preacher is like being a detective—I spend my time looking for clues and paying attention to my own intuition. What are people experiencing in the world around us? What is happening in the church’s liturgical and pastoral life? Have I heard any good stories that might inform my preaching? I save these up like tiny treasures in a mental basket to be examined later.

Then I sit down after breakfast on Friday with a big mug of coffee and I think through the texts and connect with them emotionally: What is powerful? What speaks to me out of the silence? I Google things; I listen to music; I check in with my preacher friends on Facebook to see how they are struggling with the very same text (one of the benefits of working with the Revised Common Lectionary, shared by most Protestant churches across the world). If I am very lucky, an idea drops into my head that then gains momentum, much like a snowball rolling downhill.

When I sat down to write this sermon, I had many clues saved up in my mind. We had a lot going on in our home. My husband had broken his shoulder one month before, and most of my nonwork time was occupied by caring for him.

This was both a hindrance to my writing and a help: I was already in the mindset to be sensitive to the needs of those who were vulnerable.

We also had recently watched The Wizard of Oz, which made an appearance in the sermon’s themes. Finally, I had led a conference at the end of May where we used a number of creative pieces of music (Beatles included, which found their way into the sermon) and poems—my favorite was one I quoted at the end of the sermon by Anis Mojgani, called “Shake the Dust.”

Should it be Personal?

Some preachers will say that it is inappropriate to tell stories about your own life in a sermon —that this makes preaching an egocentric act.

My sense is that using personal experience in a sermon allows preaching to be more authentic and connected to the lives of my congregants.

It also allows me to be more connected to the sermon—my heart, in a real sense, is in it. The danger is in revealing so much about yourself that you make the sermon either about you, or you make the congregation feel that your own struggles are pastoral issues that they need to tend to. A sermon should never burden a listener with the cares of the preacher.

Much of this sermon is deeply personal, though I don’t really tell stories about my own life in it. Rather, this sermon comes from my own experience with mental illness in my friends and family members, and personally.

I would never have preached a sermon about such a sensitive pastoral issue without actually passing through it myself, one way or another.

I view my own experiences with depression as things that have made me more compassionate, more understanding, and more self-aware, but this would have been difficult to communicate in the short span of a sermon and might have overwhelmed some listeners. I considered preaching about the bouts of depression I have

experienced as an adult but in the end decided not to. I felt that the sermon would be more effective if preached primarily about Elijah and Legion, so I allowed my history to provide the foundation of that understanding rather than the illustration.

Landing the Ending The ending is nearly always the hardest part of a sermon, and many preachers (myself included) often fall victim to what I call the “Jesus Band-Aid.” We do well in studying the text, in offering potential complications with interpretation. We speak to how a text might actually impact our daily lives; perhaps we reference a real-world event. And then, for lack of a better ending, we say that everything will be fine, because … well, Jesus. Jesus’ life, or death, or resurrection, or teaching, or presence in our personal lives, will make everything better, somehow. Amen. That is the most common sermon ending, and it is insufficient.

Everything is better, or at least more tolerable, because of Jesus, but it is still a preacher’s responsibility to tease out exactly how Jesus makes life more navigable.

I often wait until Saturday, or even Sunday morning, to decide exactly how to end a sermon. This was not the case with this particular sermon—instead, I decided early on that I would conclude by performing the Anis Mojgani poem rather than simply quoting it, and began practicing it out of anxiety for my slam poetry debut. I am not a performer of slam poetry, but in this moment, I needed to be one in order to drive the sermon home.

Not Saying It All Another common trap that preachers face is the “Saying it All” Syndrome. In my first two years of preaching at the suburban Saint Timothy’s Church in the Diocese of Missouri, I preached every single Sunday. At first, I felt that I had a lot to prove, or at least a lot to explain, and my sermons were excruciatingly frenetic— leaping from one topic to the next, in an effort to explain the totality of my theology in less than 12 minutes. As time went on, however, I became more comfortable with the reality that my parishioners would be there again next Sunday, and that I didn’t have to address, say, the nature of the Holy Spirit in addition to how exactly we should interpret the Gospel of John.

I am grateful to this first group of parishioners

who taught me to patiently trust that I would not be defined by one sermon alone.

At Trinity, where I do not preach every Sunday and we frequently have visitors, I’ve had to struggle to hold on to the lessons I learned in St. Louis and to trust that I don’t need to prove my pastoral identity again with every single sermon.

One True Thing In the end, we preach how we live. Funny and true; deep and passionate; hollow and grand; hesitant; subtle. In the pulpit, the most frightening thing is that all is revealed.

One of my great professors at Yale, Gordon Lathrop, once told me (quoting Martin Luther), “We are all mere beggars, showing other beggars where to find bread.”

My theology of preaching is thus: I am entrusted with the great gift of God’s Good News in Jesus Christ and am challenged to break it open each week, much as the Eucharistic bread is broken, so that I can offer it as nourishment to those who are listening.

I preach in an effort to offer one true thing to those who are listening. I ask myself with each sermon, “What is true about this?” My goal is always to give hope by offering truth, through direct encounters with both the Gospel and real life. They are so often the same thing.

The Rev. Emily Wachner is Priest and Assistant Director for Liturgy, Hospitality, and Pilgrimage for Trinity Wall Street. She is indebted to her many teachers and mentors for the thought behind this article, notably Professors Tom Troeger and Nora Tubbs-Tisdale of Yale Divinity School, and to Dean Jim Kowalski of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

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psalmtube: CALL THE MIDWIFE

The Call of the Past

Patrick Reddy

BY LEAH REDDY

In the first scene of the BBC television series Call the Midwife, Jenny Lee, a young midwife, walks through the rough lanes of London’s East End. It’s 1957, and Jenny is on her way to her new life as a resident midwife at Nonnatus House, joining other young nurses and members of the Order of St. Raymond, Anglican sisters who work as midwives.

You heard that right: there’s a popular television show out there about young women and Anglican nuns, one that portrays the characters as full human beings, with faith,

The Children’s Fresh Air Home (above) and the author (inset left), who was in an awkward phase when these photos were taken.

doubt, failings, love, quirks, yearnings, and, always, the potential for change. The series is based on the memoirs of midwife Jennifer Worth. It can be seen on many PBS stations in the United States.

The residents of Nonnatus House—both the faithful sisters who sing Compline in the chapel, and the young nurses who sip scotch and dance in their rooms—tend to the families of the East End day and night. There’s a new birth story in each episode.

But the real birth in the show is that of the adult Jenny. The true action of the show happens inside Jenny, as she learns to navigate the world and her own soul. It’s an unabashedly nostalgic portrait of a young woman’s formative experience, narrated by her older self: “Through the telescope of memory, I see now the convent was our pole star, a guiding light for those who worked there and the people

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that we served. … I have never forgotten it, any more than I forget the days it gave me. The days when the world was new and bright. The days when I was delirious with joy. When I ached with love … and when my soul went questing.”

Recent scientific studies on nostalgia (which translates to “home pain”) reveal that regularly experiencing that wistful longing for the past actually improves our present lives. It makes us physically warmer, more optimistic about the future, and gives us a healthier sense of self.

Reveling in cherished memories reinforces our sense that we are valued members of the community and that our lives are meaningful.

Watching Call the Midwife, I’m sent back to my own seminal experience, working as a counselor at a very singular institution called the Children’s Fresh Air Home of North Wildwood, New Jersey. It was a long summer of getting traumatized kids to sleep or wake up, to behave at the zoo, get along, or accept new experiences.

And there, like Jenny at Nonnatus House, I witnessed the effects of poverty, the power of systems to keep people down or raise them up, the beauty of community, and the reality of selfless love. There, too, was the constant background noise of faith, of faithful people living out their calling while others doubted, of watching the certainty of childhood faith slip away and the world come sharply into focus.

My nostalgia, my “home pain,” is often for the Fresh Air Home, for the hot sand, faulty plumbing, and bologna sandwiches of that disorienting moment in between adolescence and adulthood.

Our lives are long; if we are wise, we are constantly growing. Why then do we return again and again to a handful of moments?

Through my own “telescope of memory,” I see those are the days when I stopped doubting myself, when I first found competence and confidence in my abilities. When I first saw myself as an adult.

We return to the moments when we discovered our own power to listen to each other, to fight to change things, to love so much that we would try again, and again.

The nostalgia of Call the Midwife isn’t a yearning for the teacups, habits, and nurses’ hats of the 1950s. It’s a longing for the moments we felt sure we could handle changing the world.

Leah Reddy is Multimedia Producer for Trinity Wall Street.

stories

Jim Melchiorre

Mary Kembo instructs students in the auto mechanics class at Waddington Community Centre.

Finding Vocations in Zambia George Kateka remembers being an altar server at St. Peter’s Anglican Church in the Libala/Burma Residential Area of Lusaka, Zambia, when the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Geoffrey Fisher, visited in April 1955 to dedicate the new sanctuary. Libala is what was known as a “compound” in the colonial period, a neighborhood segregated by race where Africans lived, away from the neighborhoods of the British colonialists.

Kateka recalls his childhood congregation providing assistance to the local community, including vocational training, which eventually became headquartered in the Waddington Community Centre. Today, more than a hundred students attend Waddington. About sixty of them are enrolled in the Auto Mechanics class, a course dating back to the 1950s.

During my visit, some twenty-two students, including one young woman, tinkered with car and truck engines under the direction of two instructors. One of them was Mary Kembo, who said she studied auto mechanics for the challenge of working a job not traditionally open to women. Also visiting was recent graduate Francis Nkasha, who plans to use his skills to open his own business.

In another building, David Ndumba oversaw a group of student chefs in the kitchen as they prepared vegetable salad with peanut dressing and pork loin with apple and onion sauce, all made from scratch. Later Ndumba, who has worked in the food-service industry for 15 years, gathered 16 other students training to be waiters and waitresses.

“We are trying to coach them in food services,” said Ndumba, as he questioned his students about the correct side to pour water for a diner (right) and the correct place to position a pepper shaker (to the left of the salt shaker). Ndumba also emphasized personal grooming.

“He [or she] has to look smart.”

Waddington students get to work in their career fields while still in school, in a kind of internship program that, in Zambia, is called an

BY JIM MELCHIORRE

attachment. Alintula Nakawala, a 2012 graduate, credits the practical experience she received here with landing her a job at a private lodge.

Another course that dates back to the founding of Waddington is Tailoring and Design. And all students are encouraged to take a six-week computer class to add to their skill set.

Outside the front door of St. Peter’s Church, a plaque marks that long ago visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Much has changed in the ensuing 59 years. Colonialism is gone, and Zambians will celebrate 50 years of independence in October. The altar server of 1955, George Kateka, retired from a career as a communications specialist with the nation’s parliament, is now Chairman of the Board of the Waddington Community Centre. Kateka and his fellow board members have a strategic plan to expand into courses in baking, cosmetology, and early childhood education, and might even add driver education.

Waddington Community Centre maintains a modest campus, surrounded by a low concrete wall, and keeps recycling its old but sturdy buildings. For example, the previous St. Peter’s sanctuary now provides space, including the kitchen, for the food production course.

The vocational training is a ministry of the Anglican Diocese of Lusaka, and Trinity Wall Street is a partner. In 2010 Trinity helped purchase engines for the auto mechanics course, sewing machines for the tailoring and design students, and 20 computers.

Framed and displayed on the wall of Waddington’s administrative office is the centre’s mission statement, which pledges to empower “disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our society,” especially youth and women. Libala/Burma is still a community where many students lack the opportunity for higher education, including vocational training, and so the Waddington Community Centre remains anchored in its neighborhood, a symbol of perseverance, determination, and commitment to meet those needs.

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learned?

WHAT HAVE YOU

DEBORAH LEE JOINED TRINITY AS THE PROGRAM MANAGER FOR PASTORAL CARE AND COMMUNITY IN 2012. SHE IS

LEAVING TO PURSUE ORDINATION AS AN EPISCOPAL PRIEST AND WILL MATRICULATE AT THE GENERAL THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN AUGUST. PASTORAL CARE IS being our brothers’ and our sisters’ keeper.

WORKING AT TRINITY has shown me how to navigate a complex institution with courage, while offering my frailties to God to be held and healed.

WORKING IN SMALL GROUPS CAN help us realize that our paths are interconnected and that our journeys need others in order to be full and fruitful.

MY BACKGROUND IN MENTAL HEALTH COUNSELING has helped me cherish the God-given potential of other human beings.

SPIRITUAL JOURNALING HELPS me interpret some of the mystery that enfolds us each day.

ONE DAY I HOPE TO celebrate the Eucharist in unconventional places—on the beach, the boardwalk—to meet people where they are and invite them to share in this sacred meal together.

I DECIDED TO GO TO SEMINARY because, with Frederick Buechner, I agree that “vocation is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

I AM INSPIRED BY people who can exhibit authenticity and grace in seemingly impossible situations. And anyone who can make a mean Cubano sandwich.

MINISTRY SHOULD be grounded in the desire to lay aside what we think we know about people in order to accept who they are and receive the hope of who they can be.

TAKING GUITAR LESSONS has shown me how callused fingers can represent progress and not just pain!

Deborah Lee (left) with Trinity parishioner Lillian Laidlow.

I GET JOY FROM deep belly laughs and children’s voices when they are trying to teach me something.

PA R I S H

perspectives LEFT: The Rev. Canon James Callaway and his wife, Mary Chilton Callaway, at a celebration in his honor on Ascension Day.

Leo Sorel

Leah Kozak

Leo Sorel

BOTTOM: Roslyn Williams, Denise and Lonny Shockley, and other parishioners and friends of Trinity toast Canon Callaway.

The Rev. Daniel Simons (foreground) and pilgrims from Trinity follow in the footsteps of St. Paul’s ministry in Corinth, Greece.

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RIGHT: Trinity staff and congregation members with clergy and lay leaders from the Diocese of Matana, who hosted the mission and service team on their trip to Burundi.

Photo provided by Mike Hogan

BELOW: The marriage of congregants Catharina Oerlemans and Jonathan Schultz is blessed during the 11:15am liturgy on June 29.

ABOVE: The Rev. Mark BozzutiJones baptizes Bodin as his family and the Rt. Rev. Andrew Dietsche, Bishop of the Diocese of New York, look on.

Artist Muriel Stockdale in Charlotte’s Place. Ribbons that were placed on the fence at St. Paul’s Chapel on the 10th anniversary of 9/11 are being used as part of an art project at Charlotte’s Place.

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Jeremy Sierra

Jeremy Sierra

Congregants and staff compete in a tug-of-war at Camp Trinity, a parish outing to Governors Island that included games, a picnic, and a Eucharist.

ABOVE: Trinity staff member Tony Pardini, Manager of Print Production, shows students how to tie a tie at Prom Mania. Community members donated formal wear and accessories for local high school students.

RIGHT: Jenn Chinn, Program Manager for Hospitality, helps a student from a local high school try on a necklace at Prom Mania.

Trinity interns with staff member Chris Connolly (far right). From left to the right: Nora Soe, Human Resources; Jack Barbeau, Archives; Samantha Scarcello, Media Production; Kelly Marinaccio, Communications and Marketing; Jessica Paredes, Faith in Action; Monish Pahilajani, Faith in Action; Kimberly Pooran, Creative Services (not pictured).

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News from Trinity’s partners and friends, near and far.

9/11 Memorial Museum The 9/11 Memorial Museum, which opened to the public in May, includes several items donated by Trinity Wall Street. A pew from St. Paul’s Chapel, where rescue workers and police officers would rest between shifts, can be found in the exhibit, as well as replicas of letters and drawings sent by children around the world, thanking St. Paul’s and Trinity for their work in the days following the attack. The exhibit also includes photos of St. Paul’s by Leo Sorel, who freelances frequently for Trinity.

Sister Promise Atelon Sister Promise Atelon, a member of the Sisters of St. Margaret and volunteer staff member at Trinity, graduated with her bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pace University in May. Kathy Bozzuti-Jones Kathy Bozzuti-Jones, Associate Director of Faith Formation and Education, creates artwork by digitally manipulating photography.

Her photographs were featured in the Lent/ Easter edition of Behold: Arts for the Church Year and in the Episcopal Church and the Visual Arts exhibition called “Women at Prayer.” Her work was also on display at St. Paul’s Episcopal School and Chaplaincy in Concord, N.H., in the exhibit entitled “Which Continues in Heaven,” and was featured on the popular Episcopal Café art blog. Bozzuti-Jones graduated from One Spirit Interfaith Seminary’s InterSpiritual Counseling certification program on June 7.

Choir of Trinity Wall Street The Choir of Trinity Wall Street released two new recordings. The first is Julian Wachner: Symphony No. 1: Works for Orchestra and Voices, a three-CD set of the composer-conductor’s principal works for orchestra and voices, recorded in Trinity Church with NOVUS NY, Trinity’s resident new-music orchestral ensemble. The second is Missa Gentis Humanae, Opus 16 (“Mass for the Human Race”), composed by Ralf Yusuf Gawlick, on the label Musica Omnia. Featuring only eight a capella voices, Missa combines liturgical texts and literature in an intimate setting. The choir was conducted by Julian Wachner, Director of Music and the Arts.

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Tom Durack On April 4, soul and R&B singer Sam Moore released a new song, “They Killed a King,” to commemorate the 46th anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The song was mastered by Trinity’s audio engineer, Tom Durack. As part of the duo Sam and Dave, Moore recorded “Soul Man” and other hits for Stax Records. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

EfM Graduation Eleven members of the Trinity congregation were recognized for completing years one, two, and three of the Education for Ministry (EfM) program. EfM is a four-year course developed by the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn. Participants meet regularly to discuss the Bible, theology, and church history while engaging in theological reflection.

Bob Griffiths The Rev. Canon Robert S. Griffiths, a former Trinity employee who ran the camp at West Cornwall for many years, has written a book of fiction for children called Voices From On High, to be published in the fall. Illustrated by Katheryn Marsh, it follows the adventures of a boy named Tony one night in Trinity Church as he encounters statues and stained-glass characters that come to life and teach him about the Bible, the history of the Church, and life.

Marilyn Haskel Marilyn Haskel, Trinity’s Program Manager for Liturgical Arts and New Initiatives, was featured in an article in Chorus America in April. The article focused on community sings, when people, many without any musical training, come together to sing. The author interviewed several accomplished composers and song leaders, including Haskel, about the practice of community singing.

William Jarrett William Jarrett, Director of Media Production and Operations for Trinity, was inducted into the Communications Media Management Association. Membership in the association provides direct access to other members and partnering organizations. Members can also attend regional and national conferences that provide professional development and networking with other communications media managers from a wide variety of organizations.

Leah Kozak For the past year, Trinity parishioner Leah Kozak has worked as a volunteer staff person for the Micah Institute. An initiative of New York

Theological Seminary, the institute grew out of the Living Wage NYC campaign and seeks to educate and equip faith leaders to fight poverty and injustice.

New Staff at Trinity On July 1, the Rev. Kristin Miles joined Trinity as Associate Priest for Pastoral Care. The Rev. Deacon Lauren Holder, a transitional deacon, also joined Trinity on July 1, as Senior Program Officer for Community Engagement. She will be ordained a priest later in 2014. Trinity also hired Avi Stein as Associate Organist and Chorusmaster. Stein is the principal continuo player in the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and an adjunct faculty member at Yale University and the Juilliard School of Music.

Oklahoma Peace Conference Several congregation members took part in “Reclaiming the Gospel of Peace: An Episcopal Gathering to Challenge the Epidemic of Violence” in Midwest City, Okla. in April.

Congregants Roslyn Hall, Raynelle Mensah, Alonzo Shockley, and Mutsa Tundawani attended, along with the Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, Director of Faith in Action.

In addition to workshops on current programs within the church, the conference offered training on how to teach anti-violence programs.

The group is considering next steps to continue combatting violence as a community.

PENCIL Fellows Two PENCIL Fellows joined Trinity Real Estate on July 8. PENCIL is a nonprofit organization that connects business volunteers with public schools. Trinity provided funds for its Downtown Initiative, a program designed to serve students in Lower Manhattan public schools. The fellowships help to prepare high school students for internships in business.

Hawa Adula is interning with Property Management, and Keila Peralta is interning with Design & Construction.

Trinity Youth Chorus Led by Julian Wachner, Director of Music and the Arts, and Melissa Attebury, the Director of the Trinity Youth Chorus, the high school members of the Youth Chorus spent several weeks during Lent creating the Gloria which was sung by the congregation during the Easter season. This is the first piece composed by the Trinity Youth Chorus.

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Whitby the Airedale terrier came over to where I was reading and pressed a chew toy up against my knee. Her tail was wagging and her ears were up. As I reached out to take the toy, she gripped it more firmly between her teeth and bounded away. A few seconds later, she returned and repeated the process.

This time, I leapt out of my chair and chased her down the hallway, into the dining room, and around and around the dining room table. It is a favorite game. After several rounds, she plopped down panting happily with a big toothy grin on her face.

Whitby is about 95 percent blind. One would never know by watching her navigate the furniture-filled rooms of the vicarage. It’s barely apparent outdoors, as she wondrously discerns where the curbs and stairs and obstacles are on the sidewalk. I suppose there’s a lot communicated through the varying tautness of the leash.

I have no idea if she remembers what it was like to see. Somehow, I suspect it doesn’t matter.

Her life is her life, and she is a happy girl.

The veterinarian had told us that her other senses would make up for the loss of sight, and that seems to be how she has adapted. I have heard the same is true for humans as well. Recently, however, I’ve begun to question whether that’s actually overly simplistic. What more is there to seeing than what happens physically between our eyes and our brains?

In Barbara Brown Taylor’s recent book, Learning to Walk in the Dark (see page 16), she describes fascinating dimensions to seeing that she discovered while exploring darkness. She writes of the late Jacques Lusseyran, a French Resistance leader and author, who lost his eyesight at the age of 8 but then developed a remarkable sense of sight that, as a Christian, he understood in spiritual terms.

Inspired, I wanted to find out more about Jacques Lusseyran and his sense of sight. I came across this from his autobiography, And There Was Light: Autobiography of Jacques Lusseyran, Blind Hero of the French Revolution, which I found to be very exciting: “Inside me there was everything I had believed was outside. There was, in particular, the sun, light, and all colors. There were even the shapes of objects and the distance between objects.

Everything was there and movement as well. … Light is an element that we carry inside us and which can grow there with as much abundance, variety, and intensity as it can outside of us. …I could light myself … that is, I could create a light inside of me so alive, so large, and so near that my eyes, my physical eyes, or what remained of them, vibrated, almost to the point of hurting. …

God is there under a form that has the good luck to be neither religious, not intellectual, nor sentimental, but quite simply alive.”

Then, coincidently, at about that same time, my understanding of what it is to see was challenged from yet another angle. During an adult Sunday school class, in a series on how to live with change (a timely topic around Trinity this year), pastoral counselor Mary Ragan (see page 14) introduced the concept of “cognitive illusion.” Through a series of exercises in the class, it became clear that we see what we expect to see and our brains fill in what isn’t actually there (even though we swear we see it), and two people can look at the same drawing and see distinctly different images. How complicated change can be when we consider that our sense of what has been (and is changing) and what will be are both susceptible to tricks our brains may be playing. How easy is it for conflict to arise when different people, who are certain of what is, cannot see what the other is seeing?

Between Barbara Brown Taylor, Jacques Lusseyran, and Mary Ragan, I have grown convinced that our capacity to see is more complex than we realize, and that we also must not be too confident about what we think we are seeing. No wonder there are so many references in the Gospels to sightedness and blindness. What have I been missing, reducing much of that to metaphor?

Blessings,

Leo Sorel

The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee Vicar, Trinity Wall Street amallonee@trinitywallstreet.org

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