What's Next After St. Martin's?

Some years before I came to St. Martin’s, I attended three cooking classes taught by Christina Pirello, the host of WHYY’s Christina Cooks. In these classes, I learned how to cook in what Christina calls the “whole foods way”. “Cooking the whole foods way” means using fresh vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and legumes, and avoiding processed food. I was excited to be in Christina’s class because it took me back to my childhood days when I used to watch my mother cook. Interestingly, I learned that my mother also cooked in the whole foods way. You might say that Christina’s course was an advanced version of, what for me is, back-home cooking. So her class enabled me to refine my cooking skills. In particular, I learned different ways of chopping vegetables, how to
use my intuition when combining ingredients to make a recipe, and how to use appliances like a pressure cooker. I was also excited by the abundance and diversity of vegetables and legumes: so many colors, shapes and sizes with which to experiment. My choices of ingredients expanded. I now include leeks, rutabagas, parsnips, turnips, collard greens, kale, quinoa, flax seed, and many other ingredients in my recipes. 

Christina has inspired me since I took her classes. When she was 27 years old (some 30 years ago) she was diagnosed with terminal leukemia and did the most courageous thing. She opted to forego conventional treatment because, she told us, she saw how her mother suffered as she underwent chemotherapy. Around the same time of her diagnosis she met her future husband, Robert, who introduced her to Macrobiotic cooking and the macrobiotic lifestyle. A major part of her treatment was a matter of nutrition, and she credits her healing to eating in the way Robert taught her. She went into remission after a year and a half! As a nurse I was amazed by her recovery and by her trust in the power of nature to heal. Our body has the capacity to heal itself. We all have a healer-within, if we but trust in the power of our body to heal itself. 

I’ve heard and read similar courageous healing stories like Christina’s that inspire me and my husband to adopt their eating lifestyle to complement the traditional treatment he is receiving.

Some of you asked me about what I am going to do when I leave St. Martin’s. Well, I am going to take some Sabbath time and cook. I am going to cook like I’ve never cooked before. That is, I am going to devote more time to cooking than I ever did in the past. I have a collection of recipes from a stack of cookbooks that have been on my shelf for quite a while now just waiting to be cooked! These recipes are calling to me. And I plan to create some of my own recipes as well.

Lately, I have been spending much of my time in the kitchen when I’m home. I have come to consider my kitchen a sacred space in which I prepare holy food for nourishment and healing. Cooking has become a prayer exercise in which I thank God for the abundance God has given us and I ask God to bless each ingredient I am using for that meal. I also ask God to bless the fire, the pots and pans, and my hands.

I am looking forward to new possibilities during my Sabbath time and beyond. God willing, all will be well.

- The Rev. Harriet Kollin

The Rev. Harriet Kollin, Associate Rector, is leaving her employ at St. Martin's at the end of June. We'll celebrate her ministry with us these past three years, and wish her a blessed and fond farewell at the Pentecost worship services on Sunday, June 8, 2014.

Of Parenting and Faith

It all became clear to me recently that my spiritual journey has made a pit stop.

It has been getting harder in the last year or so to feel connected to my faith. I've continued going to church, participating in choir and church activities, keeping up on and off with devotionals, but something has felt off.

It all came to a head recently as my church is embarking upon a visitation tour to go and speak to people about their spiritual selves and what if anything they need from the church at this time to help them discern God's call in their lives.  We're hoping just to meet people and get them even thinking more specifically about God's call.  As a leader in my church, I'm part of the team planning to make these visits.  We held a training session which involved the role play of visitor/visitee. I volunteered to be the visitee.

I don't recall the exact question that my fellow members asked me, but I do recall what came out as my answer. "I feel like my own spiritual journey is entirely tied up right now in making sure that my son's will be provided for - or that I'm doing the right things to get him on that path."

It brought tears to my eyes to say this. Because it is 100% true and because it was the first time I had put words to my spiritual block and said it aloud for myself to hear. And because I suddenly felt that the whole thing was backwards.

For a little context, this was unexpected for me. I didn't do the typical "fall away from the church until you have kids" thing that we see so often these days. And I don't think that's a bad or unhealthy thing to do - it just wasn't my journey. I was very involved in my church growing up. Attending worship, singing with the choir, youth group, church school teacher for the preschoolers when I was in high school, I even attended church summer camp.  After high school graduation I did a slight "fall away" by not seeking out a regular Sunday service during college. However, I went to church when I came home on holidays. I took 2 or 3 religion classes that kept me connected; I talked with my boyfriend (now husband) about all the interesting things he was learning at his own Disciple Bible Study, and I longed to go on the mission trips he got involved with at his home church. When I graduated, he and I moved in together in South Philly and one of the first things we did was go and find a church. Suddenly, I was fully involved again and have been since.

So, to now find my own faith journey stalled by what I need for my children - I just didn't expect it. I knew it was important to me, but I didn't realize how disconnected from my own path it had made me. And as soon as I spoke those words in the meeting it occurred to me that I was maybe looking at it the wrong way. I wanted to give my son (and my 2nd on the way) something that I did not have myself. I expected the church to create for my child what I didn't feel capable of providing on my own. It dawned on me that, like so many other things in parenting, perhaps my best route to teaching something to my son was to model it myself and have my life be the lesson.

It seemed so simple to identify in that moment, but I admit I am still unsure how to move forward. I still feel stalled. There are still so many challenges to parenting, especially right now when my first is so young and impressionable and with another on the way. I want them to know God's love, and feel it clearly in our church home. I want them to be welcome in worship while they figure out appropriate behavior there and not only once they have figured it out.  I want them to know the words to the Lord's Prayer the way preschool has taught my son the words to the Pledge of Allegiance - that learning the words and repeating them may let their meaning seep into their bones the way they have mine. I want to not be the only one trying to teach them these things. I want to surround him with a community that takes its baptismal vows seriously to help raise up and teach every member in God's way. And, I don't want to force it in a way that will only cause push back.

Mostly though, I want help with my own journey so that I can be strong for my children and others. I want advice on how to integrate more of Sunday into everyday in a way that is meaningful enough for me that something is obvious to my children.  People to share my struggles, questions, hopes, excitement, and thirst for justice with. I want for the faith to trust that it will all be all right. I need it for me so that I can live it for them, that by my living, they too will be drawn to life in faith.

Have you ever felt this way? What ways have you found to fill this need? Or, are you too still searching yourself?

- Natalee Hill

Meditating on the Risen One and His Wounds

Before Easter, I spent every morning for two weeks meditating on the story of Lazarus. Since Easter, my meditation is on the story of Jesus appearing to the disciples in the locked room after his Resurrection.

In the Gospel of John (20:19-31) Jesus appears to the disciples who are huddled in a locked room for fear of the people of Jerusalem. Evidently, the city is still in an uproar after sending Jesus to be crucified and the disciples are afraid that they will share their master’s fate. Jesus enters the scene and says “Peace be with you” twice which underlines the terror of his followers. Then he shows them his wounds and breathes on them. 

Sharing this moment of Jesus breathing on his friends is fun in Children’s Chapel, because the kids immediately get the weirdness of the gesture. Yet this breathing is Jesus passing on his Spirit – the animating core of his life, his inner peace – to his followers. He is breathing them back into life. The locked room is the tomb their fear has created. The breath of Jesus is the ‘ruach,’ (in Hebrew “breath” or “spirit”) of God which moved over the chaos of creation and brought the world into being as told in the book of Genesis. Jesus is making them a new creation, a patch of new goodness in a sea of chaos, fear and violence.

Appearance of Christ to his Disciples by Anthony Van Dyck

Jesus also shows them his wounds. What an interesting detail. The one who is risen is the same one who was brutally executed. The signs of his death are not removed or healed by his new life. The wounds assure us that the life Jesus lived that led to his death is the life that God is vindicating through the resurrection. The way of life-giving sacrifice for the other is the risen life that God favors.

For me, meditating on these wounds is incredibly liberating. I can be incredibly punishing of myself. The hurtful and hateful things I think about myself on an hourly basis are as familiar as they are toxic. The same negativity – I hate to say – is something I too often inflict on the people and world I love. When I meditate on Jesus’ wounded hands and imagine the wound surrounded by and overcome by his risen body I can say, “Thank you Jesus for taking all of my negativity and toxicity into yourself. Thank you for absorbing and defeating it. Thank you for showing it to me, so I can grieve the pain I cause and learn to give life instead.”  

This is not masochistic thinking, but just the opposite. I am learning to recognize my hurtful fault in a spirit of hope and redemption, absorbed into a greater life that will lift me into a new creation.

I invite you to meditate on this story and to see how it speaks to your heart. Simply breathe in the breath of Christ and receive his peace. Breathe out your fear and all that keeps you locked away and stuck in an airless room. Follow the breath and see where it leads.

- The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

So what's this Choir Pilgrimage about anyway?

Exeter Cathedral

Exactly three months after Easter Sunday, our choir will embark on our 125^th anniversary pilgrimage to England, where we’ll sing as choir-in-residence at Exeter Cathedral and at our namesake church, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London. I am honored to be able to take our choir on this trip, and am counting the days until departure. I am very fortunate to have attended two similar choral pilgrimages with the Choir of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Erie PA; these trips moved me deeply, and remain in the forefront my memory. I am eager to add to these memories this summer.

We are rehearsing to sing six Evensongs and one Eucharist in one week – that’s 27 choral pieces, not including psalms and hymns. The musical preparations are exhausting, but very much part of the journey, and just as important as the actual services. Singing in a massive, ancient Cathedral will be a powerful experience, but the routine of daily Evensong will make an indelible mark on each of us.

A word about Evensong – this is something that no other church has. Other denominations have similar services such as Vespers or Evening Prayer, but Evensong is much more than a service. It is a culture. While the Church of England reports low attendance generally, Evensong, especially in Cathedrals, remains attended, and is broadcasted on radio and television. In fact, a recent rise in Cathedral attendance is said to be directly related to daily Evensong: http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2014/03/cathedral-choirs

There is much to be said about this. Every Evensong, two canticles are sung, the Magnificat (Song of Mary) and the Nunc Dimittis (Song of Simeon) – I’m going to focus on the Magnificat.

My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden.
For behold from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath magnified me, and holy is his Name.
And his mercy is on them that fear him throughout all generations.
He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble and meek.
He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away.
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel, as he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit: as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be for ever. Amen.

St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London

What weighty words Mary has given us to pray! It’s the whole Bible in a handful of verses: God, doing the unexpected, turning the tables on the powerful, exalting the lowly. Everything that we know about the world is wrong – the rich get nothing, the poor get everything. God’s ways are not our own. There is something deeply mystical about singing the Magnificat every day for a week. At our church, singing Evensong only once a month, the Magnificat takes a tone of joy and praise, a loud cry of exultation. When sung every day, it becomes a powerful rhythm, so slow and so deep that we can barely hear it. This rhythm has pulsed every day for centuries, for millennia even. It pulsed from the earliest stories of Genesis, in the Exodus from Egypt, through the resurrection of Christ, and continues to pulse today. It pulses whenever we find God in a way we didn’t expect, doing things that we didn’t expect to happen. I was first able to hear this unfathomable rhythm only after a week of singing the Magnificat. The implication of the words becomes quieter, but much more pronounced, when this is a daily routine; you begin to notice things you didn’t see before when Mary’s words continuously swirl in your head. I genuinely hope that everyone on our pilgrimage will pick up on this rhythm, and follow its beat for the rest of our lives. Once you’ve heard it, you begin to hear it everywhere.

                  A few more thoughts – it’s easy to look at this trip as a pleasure-tour, seeing the sights and singing in an exotic space. This tour will be great fun, and we will be sight-seeing. But at the same time, during our residency, WE will be the Cathedral choir. We will be the mouth of the church, proclaiming God’s earth-shaking message through Mary’s words. Maybe the church will be filled, and maybe we’ll be singing for a dozen souls. Either way, God will be with us, using our voices to feed others and ourselves – we can expect that God will work in ways we don’t expect. 

- Erik Meyer, Music Director

St. Martin's Chancel Choir sings Evensong monthly, on the first Sunday of the month, from October to June. The music sung at the spring Evensongs is being prepared for the Choir's Pilgrimage in July in honor of St. Martin's 125th anniversary. 

The final two Evesongs of the season will be held at 5:00 p.m. on May 4 and June 1. On May 4, join us immediately following the Evensong for a Silent Auction fundraiser in support of the trip. More information and a list of items may be found here. On June 1st join us to wish the choir well as we commission them for their journey. The pilgrimage will take place July 19-28, 2014.