From Our Interim Rector: What to Wear on the Streets

Our son graduated from college with a degree in psychology and sociology. He spent a couple of years working with children with problems while he decided whether to go to graduate school. We were fine with that. Then one day he called us from Los Angeles and told us he had decided to join the LAPD. He was enrolling in the academy. We were proud that he wanted to serve, but scared out of our minds. But it was his decision and we supported him. 

He survived the long and grueling course, and we went to LA for his graduation. It was a fine ceremony. We sat with the other proud families on the beautiful grounds of the police academy. The officers were handsome in their dress uniforms. There were fine speeches praising the hard work of the men and women in the class and thanking these new “peace officers” in advance for having the commitment and courage to go out every day to protect the public from the forces of evil. 

After the reception, we went back to our son’s house and he proudly showed us his new working uniform and all his paraphernalia. He laid each item out on the bed for us to admire: his bullet-proof vest, his riot helmet, his riot shield, his guns, his sprays, his batons. It came home to me what he would be facing out there on the streets each day. I was absolutely terrified. “Promise me you’ll wear your vest every day,” I begged him.

And that’s the tone we need to hear in Paul’s voice when he says to the new Christians in Ephesus today, “Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may stand against the wiles of the devil”. He lays out for them the many pieces of spiritual armor they are going to need for their protection: the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the shoes of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit. He urges them to put on their armor every day, “that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.”

The armor Paul is talking about is not body protection against bullets and bombs. He is talking about soul protection against those forces “which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God”: lies that are easier to accept than to challenge, policies that are just plain wrong, violence that walks all over basic human rights, despair that promises us nothing will change, apathy that convinces us there is nothing we can do, materialism that guarantees the things we get are more important than the kind of people we are.

We can only protect ourselves against these forces with the armor God gives us: truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, the Spirit. 

Paul warns us today, “Be careful out there!” He pleads with us, “Put on the whole armor of God.” Pray God we listen.

Blessings,

Rev. Phyllis Taylor

From Our Interim Rector: Emancipation Day

Today we are celebrating Emancipation Day with our Caribbean brothers and sisters. All the Caribbean islands have a festival to celebrate the end of slavery in their land, although the dates vary. The islands once under British control observe the anniversary around August 1, as it was on that date in 1834 that the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 took effect. Islands under the control of other European powers abolished their slave trade according to their own schedule: the French Islands in 1826, which they celebrate at the end of May, the Danish ones in 1848, which they celebrate on July 3.

On St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, a former Danish colony, I came across a most amazing church a few years ago. It wasn’t its architecture or its liturgy that blew me away, it was these words on the front of the bulletin:

The Cathedral Church of All Saints
St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
“The Virgin Islands Greatest Monument to Freedom.”
Built in 1848 by the people of St. Thomas in thanksgiving to God for freedom from slavery. Because of a severe drought in 1848, molasses was used to mix the mortar used between the stones.

Our family made jokes with one another about this being the “sweetest” Church we were ever likely to worship in. (Get it? Molasses in the walls?)

But then it struck me: molasses was one of the main reasons the people who built this Church were slaves to begin with. They were captured in West Africa and brought to the Virgin Islands to work the sugar plantations for the Danes, the French and the English. Their freedom had been taken from them for the sake of this sticky black liquid and the rum it could produce. They must have hated molasses.

I’d visited sugar plantations in the islands and been appalled at how horrible life was for the slaves who worked there. It was back-breaking work planting, cultivating and cutting the cane. It was crippling work, turning the mill stones by hand to crush the cane, when the wind refused to turn the windmill. It was hell-hot, dangerous work, tending the fires that boiled the crushed cane down to molasses. And the slaves were forced to produce this molasses with the lash on their backs and not much food in their stomachs. Their lives were a misery, all for the sake of molasses.

When the slaves had been set free in 1848, they couldn’t wait to erect a Church to give thanks to God for their freedom. There wasn’t enough water to mix the mortar, but that wasn’t going to deter them. They were going to go ahead with the project even if it meant using molasses. It was going to be something to tell their children: they had put the hated molasses in their monument to freedom, their thanksgiving to God.

Using the molasses that had been the symbol of their slavery to make a symbol of their freedom made sense to them, because they were Christians. They had grown up venerating the cross on which their Savior died a miserable death. They worshipped a God who had taken this instrument of torture and used it to bring his people freedom.

I guess that only makes sense to those of us who are Christians.

Blessings,Rev. Phyllis Taylor

The Obstacle of Self

Crucifixion by Eduardo Rodriguez Calzado

When I met with my first Spiritual Director for the first time I talked a lot. I jabbered, babbled, confabulated, sermonized and generally rambled. Talking is easy for me and weaving a cocoon of words is second nature. In my heart I know that my words are an attempt at intimacy, in effect they are a smoke screen, a defensive bunker and an assertion of false, egotistic self.

 

My Spiritual Director, a monk from Holy Cross Monastery, patiently endured until he had a chance to speak. “Get your self out of the way,” is all he said before leaving me.

The identity we create over time helps us function in the world. Our self is both an ‘adaptation’ we undertake to manage the demands of life and an ‘accident’ of factors and experiences beyond our control. Our identity may help us swim in the waters of a turbulent world or it may drag us to the bottom, it may help us sing the song God is leading or leave us lonely on an island longing for contact with the Divine.

 

For me, one primary obstacle blocking intimacy with God is my chronic self-loathing. On some fundamental level I hate the person God made me to be. I hate that I am vulnerable. I hate that I am emotional and sensitive. I hate that I am not manly enough. I hate that faith and doubt are constantly at war inside me. I hate that I am inescapably attracted to God and I am embarrassed to be a religious person.

 

Perhaps I share too much. However, the approach to God runs through the bright light of honesty. And this is where self-loathing becomes an obstacle. In God’s presence, we can only be honest; we can only be the person we were created to be. Going into God’s presence means making a journey beneath the mask of our adaptive and functional self and into whatever we are so diligently trying to hide.

Tears, frustration, anger, and avoidance often mark the threshold of this vulnerable place. We are going to a place that we have spent a lot of energy to suppress and ignore. Life experience has often taught us to protect this true self from harsh judgment and rejection by burying it deep.

 

The good news is that the bright light of honesty shining from God is the light of love. It is a liberating and refreshing light, a light that encourages our true self to be alive and real. In the Light, we feel the tingling tenderness and exposure of the newborn; we feel the odd relief of spiritual poverty, stripped of all our armor and strategies for puffing ourselves up. We entertain powerlessness in relationship to our own salvation, putting aside all the false strategies for saving ourselves and admitting our dependence on God.