Getting Clear

During college I spent one summer digging a hole in a Galilean hillside. Our archaeological team scraped and sifted the dirt inch by inch until the trench reached three meters deep. I remember sitting in the cool, earthy shade at the bottom of the pit and marveling at the clearly defined layers of earth exposed in the wall across from me. Over 2,000 years of history were revealed in layers of dirt accumulating three meters deep over time.  

Our souls and our common life in a community are formed by accumulation over time. Different influences create layers and patterns in our psyche. We accumulate values, beliefs, patterns of thinking, habits, reflexes, assumptions, anxieties, fears, pockets of resilience and buoyancy, guilt, shame, scars and wounds. Sometimes we feel very coherent and clear in relationship with what makes up our soul and sometimes we feel chaotic, confused and unclear. At times we feel like a clear flowing stream and at other times like a puddle of mud. 

Lent is a time to seek clarity, integration, and coherence in our inner life and our community life. God’s mercy and love give us the gentle light we need to look at ourselves with compassion and sort through the layers in search of new integrity. Spiritual practices help us exchange unconscious reaction and reflex for conscious virtue and healthy, life-giving habits. We learn the joy of leaving behind our shadows and emerging with our best selves into the delight of God.

We will teach tools for clarity this Lent during Sunday Forum Hour. Please join us for three sessions I will teach on Values Clarification. We will seek clarity for our individual values and for the values of the St. Martin's community as a whole. Our 125^th Year is a good time to look at our corporate life in the light of God’s mercy and love, celebrating the gifts, confessing our faults and lifting up the values and virtues that will guide our life in Christ together.   

Rethinking Communion

For as long as I have seriously thought about Holy Communion, I have thought about it as a mostly personal portion of the service. The time leading up to Communion is probably the point in church when my focus is most drawn within myself. I spend that time reevaluating my relationship with God, recognizing how more often than not I have fallen short in many ways, and remembering that through Christ and his loving sacrifice on the cross I am offered forgiveness, hope, and a way to do better. Then, as I partake of Communion, I marvel at so much love, grace, and mercy being offered by someone so holy to someone as unholy as me.

That was the sum of my thoughts during Communion until two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I went away to the Franciscan Spiritual Center for three days to dialogue with a small group of Christians from various theological and geographical places about sexual diversity in the church. After hours of sharing stories, thoughts, laughter, and tears with each other, we ended our last session with Communion.

As our facilitator held the bread and the cup to pass around our seated circle, she explained that before we passed the elements to the next person we were to say a blessing we wished for them to receive when they returned to everyday life. That one unfamiliar act she asked of us—to bless each other as we passed the body and blood of Christ—opened my eyes to a side of Communion I had never seen. Suddenly, Communion wasn’t simply about my relationship with God, it was also about my relationships within the body of Christ. Communion wasn’t simply a moment to consider how I could better reflect Christ, it was also a moment to consider how I had seen Christ reflected in the people around me.

As each person provided an intimate, unique blessing over their neighbor, I felt a sense of deep connection like I had never experienced during Communion. Here were thirteen people from different theological stances and approaches putting those differences temporarily aside in order to love each other, to love God together, and to jointly reconnect to that ultimate love evidenced by Christ on the cross. Here were thirteen people recognizing God at work in the people around them and praying that God would continue to pour into them and fill their needs. Here were thirteen people truly reflecting the body of Christ.

For the first time in my life, taking Communion was both deeply personal and deeply communal, and the more I think about it, the more I feel that is how Communion was meant to be. Personal, communal, and utterly sacred.

- Angelique Gravely

Learning to Clap

Voices of POWER featured 10 choirs from POWER
congregations, ranging from gospel music to jazz to
recitation from the Quran.

I delight in church music! I am lifted up by singing the words, by hearing the choir and the organ playing. You may not notice – I rather hope you don’t – that my head is nodding to the beat of just about any hymn. If not my head, then my foot. Sometimes I try to stop because I’m worried it looks goofy to have my head nodding like a metronome. But it doesn’t work. Something inside me just responds that way to music. Often I think it’s a way of praying. Even when I am standing waiting in the gospel procession listening to you all sing my toes are keeping time inside my shoes. I can’t help it. It’s my spirit uplifted in praise.

So, here’s the thing. I can’t clap in time to gospel music. Maybe because I’m left-handed, but probably not. No, it’s probably because I never had the chance to learn this different kind of rhythm from most of the hymns I know. But I love gospel music. So here is a great thing that happened for me:

On January 26th, over 400 Philadelphians from diverse faiths and backgrounds attended POWER’s first annual musical fundraiser, Voices of POWER. The event celebrated POWER’s work thus far for its three campaigns: expanding living wages for workers, increasing equity in public school funding, and promoting more humane immigration policies.

I heard ten choirs pouring out their hearts for love of the Lord. The beat was irresistible. Everyone around me was clapping on the off beat. My hands wouldn’t do it. I could nod my head and sway my body to join the music, but not my hands. I felt stymied, short-circuited. I tried watching my neighbor very closely to clap when she did. But she was an inveterate praise singer. She leaped to her feet because she just could not sit still. I would have like to follow her, but I probably would have tripped over my feet. It was the kind of music that made one want to rise up.

So then I tried following the person sitting in front of me. That worked better. By about the fourth choir I was getting it at least half the time. I would go along, but then stumble and lose it. It’s like learning to ride a bicycle, a new kind of balance.

Then about the sixth number, I could sort of let go of copying. My hands were starting to know when to clap. On the seventh song I got it. I didn’t need to think about it or watch anyone else. It was thrilling to me. I slipped into being part of the whole. Something broke loose in me and I could swim in the music. It was a revelation of unity. I hope it really is like riding a bike, and I can keep this new kind of balance.

I urge everyone to come to next year’s Voices of POWER. It is a great experience.

Oh, and I also got one of the 30 awards they gave out. It was the “Show Me the Money Award” because I was the first to commit to a monthly contribution. POWER is doing great work. I hope many St. Martin’s parishioners will join me in supporting fair wages, good schools and welcoming immigrants.

- The Rev. Carol Dunan (far left in photo to the right)


CLICK HERE FOR MORE PHOTOS FROM THE CONCERT