Butterfly House

"I am so grateful that God reaches us through God’s creatures."
Image: A yellow morph (female) Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly perches, 
wings spread open flat, on one in a bunch of purple cone flowers.

I approached the butterfly house with low expectations. From the outside, I could not see much through the black mesh of the quonset hut at my local Watershed Headquarters. Upon entering, however, a cloud of bright, colorful butterflies fluttered all around me in an enchanting swirl of gentle wings.

My heart melted. A sense of joy and gratitude swelled. Happy tears filled my eyes and my whole face smiled.

Beauty. Goodness. Diversity. Adaptive Creativity. Delight. Gentleness. Freedom. God was powerfully present in God’s creatures. God’s gift of God’s whole self - i.e. God’s grace - resets our hearts, re-tunes our mind and restores us to our most soulful state - alive, serene, emotionally available, heartfelt, grateful, receptive, appreciating.

I am so grateful that God reaches us through God’s creatures. I am so grateful that God has flooded creation with goodness and excellence that resemble and point to the ultimate goodness of God.

When we are under stress or brought low by the assaults of bad news, it is helpful to remember that the good is there and that it surpasses the bad in every way. As people of faith in the risen Christ, we know that evil is passing away - a defeated remnant. As people of faith in our good Creator God, we know that evil has no positive existence in itself; it is only ever the negation of the good. All that really exists is what God called good and very good from the beginning.

It is no accident that butterflies are a common symbol of risen life in Christ.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector


What creatures make you think of God's creativity, love, and beauty? Let us know in the comments.

Also, please save the date for our St. Francis Day Blessing of the Animals on Sunday, October 6, 2019 at 2:00 p.m. You can find us both in Pastorius Park and right here at St. Martin's at that time.

What do I need to be free?

How do we get free from the pain we carry from injuries inflicted on us by people close to us? This painful and pressing question comes up frequently when I am providing pastoral care. Emotional, spiritual, and moral injuries cry out. They will not remain still. They beg to be addressed.

In the face of the painful insistence of these injuries we often provide false answers to ourselves in an attempt to get free. The instinct is correct. We want to get free of the pain. False answers, however, increase the pain and leave us with a diminished life. Examples include blaming ourselves, taking too much responsibility, pretending it was not so bad, excusing the abuser, and so on.

What we really need - what our emotional pain is calling out for - is a reckoning and an apology from the person who harmed us. Eve Ensler makes this observation in her amazing new book, The Apology. Ensler is a playwright, author, humanitarian, and a survivor of vicious childhood abuse by her father. Using her creative gifts she conjures up her dead father as the narrator of the book and uses her imagination to lead him into the reckoning and apology he owes her.

Ensler starts with the question, “What do I need to be free?” From that starting point she discovered her process. An apology from her abuser would need to have the following characteristics to aide her healing:

First, her father would need to be humble and approach her as an equal and not from above. Second, her father would need to be vulnerable, emotionally available to understanding the harm done, and ready to hear what he has done. Third, her father would need to be empathetic, ready to understand and feel the sadistic harm he inflicted from the perspective of his daughter, and what she experienced at the time. Fourth, the father would need to forsake the self-excusing amnesia of the victimizer and be ready to reconstruct the hidden, shameful history for what it is, listening to the voice of the victim especially. Fifth, her father would need to be accountable, willing to take responsibility for harm done and, most importantly, willing to become reflective enough to begin his own healing journey into his own personal damage.

The good news is that the author was able to walk this path to freedom in a conversation with a father who has been dead for many years. In her imagination she was able to dream a new reality that crossed boundaries and opened up new possibilities for empathy and healing. I would call this a form of therapeutic prayer.

We can be set free from harms that oppress us. I highly recommend this book as an aide and guide to your healing. I will plan to offer a Reading with the Rector during 2019 - 2020 on this book.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

A People Set Free

Easter Greetings!

My kids and I love to play Monopoly on lazy summer evenings in Maine. After years of play, my kids delight in dominating me in this property acquisition game. Soon enough I am hemmed in by monopolies with hotels on every side. At that moment I pray to ‘Go Directly to Jail’ for a moment of respite.

While cooling my heels in Monopoly jail last summer, I found myself wondering, “What if a man in a tuxedo and top hat rang my doorbell one day and delivered to me a ‘get out of jail free’ card? How would I live my life from that moment on?”

On Easter we get a very real ‘get out of jail free’ card. The risen Christ delivers to us the good news that we are set free from sin, fear, and death and invited into a new life of grace, hope, and love. How will we live our lives, having received that good news?

Free from the fear of death, we can live boldly and take risks in the service of Jesus Christ. His way, his truth, and his life are vindicated and embraced eternally by God in the resurrection, so that we can live his way, his truth, and his life with him now!

As a people set free, let us serve Christ in righting wrongs, healing relationships, reconciling historic grievances, crossing divides, and sacrificing for the sake of the most vulnerable. As a people set free, let us serve Christ by giving ourselves to spiritual transformation through prayer, study, worship, service, and by exchanging harmful habits for ones that give life.

The risen Christ is our way out of bondage and into a freedom that sets the world free; a freedom that desires only the flourishing of all God’s creatures.

Happy Easter,

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

Before the Crisis

The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel

Mortality has a way of focusing our attention. Suffering, anguish, and crisis put daily distractions in perspective and focus our minds on what is essential. Most people seek out pastoral support in times of crisis. We are always here for you in that moment whatever time of day or whichever day of the week. Always make that call. We have the spiritual resources most needed in crisis - love, listening, compassion, prayer, community, and most importantly the presence of Christ in sacraments and in the midst of believing people. “Wherever two or three are gathered, I will be in the midst of you,” said Jesus.


In a sense we can be grateful for crisis and suffering when they encourage us to “wake up,” “seek help,” “go deeper,” and “depend on God.” On the other hand, I would like to advise all of us to engage our spiritual growth and development well before the moment of crisis hits. Imagine getting the horrible news that you have only months to live. Do you want to cram a lifetime of spiritual growth and development into those months when coping will be hard enough? The Good News teaches us that God will complete our healing on the other side of death. But, we will be better equipped to meet all our challenges on this side of mortality if we have embraced the learning and growing made available by grace each regular, normal day.

If I have learned one thing in 23 years of ministry it is that people who embrace the baptismal cycle of dying to self and rising to new life in Christ during their quotidian life are more prepared for the final instance of that cycle when death comes.

Perhaps it all depends on what you think the end game is. If you are only preparing for eternal life with God in the hereafter, perhaps you can leave your spiritual growth to the last minute. On the other hand, if your desire is to witness to the Gospel in this life - for your life, your love, your energy to radiate the life-shaping freedom of the Good News now - then we need to delve deeply into prayer, scripture, community, service, and intentional spiritual reflection daily.

The latter path requires virtues acquired through habit, through practice. Only through daily prayer, weekly study, steady service, and ongoing, faithful relationships do we build a heart attuned to what God is saying to us. Such a life of habitual approach to God both requires and builds up the virtues of endurance, perseverance, courage, and patience in us. These virtues bring a steadiness to our life that we desperately need in tumultuous and distracting times. Reacting to every provocation, chasing every fad, making every minute productive, chasing immediate gratification - these habits pull our souls apart, leaving us exhausted, fragmented, and ungrounded. The Good News is that we know a better way.

Blessings,
The Rev. Jarrett Kerbel
Rector

Connect into the community of faith:
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Contact the clergy in crisis:

Rev. Jarrett Kerbel, rector
jkerbel@stmartinec.org | 215.247.7466 x101 | 215.704.5499 cell

Rev. Anne Thatcher, associate rector
athatcher@stmartinec.org | 215.247.7466 x105 | 509.876.1924 cell

Rev. Carol Duncan, deacon
carol.duncan8031@gmail.com | 330.705.4795 cell

Barbara Ballenger, associate for spiritual formation & care and postulant
bballenger@stmartinec.org | 215.247.7466 x102

From Our Interim Rector: Elijah and Walking with Angels

We come across the prophet Elijah in our first lesson this Sunday. He is in a sorry state. He has dismissed his servant and friend and gone out alone, a day’s journey into the wilderness. He is sitting under a tree as solitary as he is. He says he has had enough. He asks to die and lies down to wait for his prayer to be answered.

What is the matter with him? How did he get in such a state? We don’t know. 

Perhaps he is simply exhausted from the stress of being a prophet. We know from the previous chapter that he spent the entire day competing with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel for the souls of his people. He and the Baal’s prophets traded insults and taunts all day like children on a playground: “My God is stronger than your God!” “Your God is a joke!” “My God is going to whoop your God but good!” At the end of the day, the true God sent fire on the sacrifice Elijah had prepared for him, while the sacrifices the prophets of Baal had prepared for their false gods still sat there, a soggy, bloody mess. God won the contest for Elijah, but it took a lot out of the prophet.

Perhaps Elijah is out there in the wilderness because he’s afraid to go anywhere else. Queen Jezebel has put a price on his head. She has not taken kindly to what Elijah did to the prophets of her god Baal. The wilderness is the only place he feels safe.

Perhaps he is in the wilderness because he is depressed. He has, after all, the classic symptoms: he has withdrawn from everyone, even those closest to him; he has no energy for anything except lying around; he has given up eating; he can’t see any way out of his misery but death.

Perhaps he is angry at God. In the following passage he complains that God has let him down. He has tried to do what was right, he has done everything God asked him to do, and his reward is that there is a price on his head. Where’s the justice in that?

Whatever the reasons Elijah is in the state he is in, our hearts go out to him.

Then comes the good news. An angel from God shows up. He touches Elijah, then puts some food and water in front of Elijah and says nothing but, “Get up and eat.” Elijah does, but then he lies back down again. The angel shows up again with food, again he touches Elijah, but this time, besides serving the food he says to him, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” The angel is offering Elijah not just food for his body, but also whatever help Elijah may need to get himself out of the state he is in.

This time Elijah gets up, eats and drinks, and then uses “the strength of that food” to journey back to Mount Horeb (Mount Sinai) to encounter his God and figure out with God what he needs to do to get his life back on track. In the rest of the First Book of Kings Elijah goes from strength to strength, until the chariots of fire come to carry him away. It’s an inspiring story.

When I attended my first SUPPER at St. Martin’s, I realized how well the members of this congregation “get” this story. They had invited the whole community to SUPPER, no questions asked, no money requested, no commitment demanded. The community arrived with family, with friends, alone; parishioners, neighbors, perfect strangers. Who knows why they came, what burdens they were bearing. Angels from St. Martin’s met them at the door, clasped them by the hand and welcomed them by name. Other angels filled their plates with truly delicious food prepared by yet more angels, and seated them at tables with interesting folk. Information prepared by other angels was readily available on the opportunities available to them at St. Martin’s. When SUPPER was over, they were sent on their way, hopefully strengthened for their journeys.

I went home walking on air. I had been with the angels. I was so proud.

Blessings,

Rev. Phyllis Taylor