CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL An Episcopal Community in the Heart of Houston, Texas
AUGUST 2014 CHRISTCHURCHCATHEDRAL.ORG
AFTER-HOURS EMERGENCY CARE LINE | 713-826-5332
Dynamite “Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the THE VERY REV. sleeping god may wake BARKLEY someday and take ofTHOMPSON fense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.” In this famous quote from Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard is talking about God and about us, and she’s asking whether we truly believe the things we claim in church. Her quote reminds me of a word study from my days in seminary, and this week I pulled my Greeklanguage New Testament from the shelf. The Gospel of Mark focuses on the way Jesus heals the sick, exorcises demons, and influences nature. We most often call these acts “miracles,” because the word used to describe them in the Latin translation of the New Testament is miraculum. The sense of this word is “marvel” or “wonder,” and it is a fair depiction of the crowds’ reaction to Jesus’ mighty deeds. However, the original Greek word most often used to describe Jesus’ acts is dynamis, the same term from which we derive the word “dynamite.” What a different connotation that offers! Dynamite is explosive. It can blast open the most stubborn stone. It can create a new avenue where once there was immovable rock. This grants us a deeper understanding
DYNAMITE, page 6
Decisions made with God in mind In the common language of the Episcopal Church, discernment is often associated with the process of determining whether to become a clergy person, but the process can and should be applied to our everyday lives, according to Dean Barkley Thompson. Thompson points to Genesis 3 as a quintessential lesson in why discernment is important. In the story, the serpent convinces Eve to disobey God and eat from the tree of knowledge. Eve then brings the apple to Adam, who eats it as well, and both are banished from the Garden of Eden.
“The truth that I glean from Genesis 3 is that Adam and Eve enter into a decision-making process on the most important decision of their lives, and they leave God out of the conversation,” Thompson said. “They make this decision that harms them irreparably, until the coming of Jesus. They consciously and willfully leave God out of the process. “The truth of that story is our truth too,” Thompson added. “Too often, we make the most important decisions of our lives and we leave God out of the process. Discernment is
DISCERNMENT, page 6
Canon Genevieve Razim tested “Bible on Tap,” an off-campus Bible study, over six weeks this summer as part of the Vision Action Plan initiative for Welcome and Evangelism. This particular program will launch on September 8.
Vision Action Plan begins to bear fruit At the Cathedral’s 175th anniversary celebration on March 2, Dean Thompson launched Christ Church’s Vision Action Plan, “A Future Filled with Hope.” The plan was the result of a six-month visioning process involving hundreds of Cathedral parishioners. Since March, Cathedral staff and lay leaders have been hard at work furthering the initiatives of the Vision Action Plan. As we enter
a new program year, parishioners will begin to see the fruit of this work. Here is an update on each initiative.
Pastoral Care: Nurturing a Culture of Vulnerability The Pastoral Care Initiative seeks to create and train a team of lay pastoral caregivers as well as build a pastoral care database
ACTION, page 5