Years ago I read a novel by Thomas Wolfe entitled "You Can't Go Home Again."  It was a long novel.  Pages and pages and pages exploring the question, "Can one go home again?"  By the end of the book, I was moved to say, "No way."  But now I'm not so sure. 

Surely you can't go back to your childhood.  That is a time that has passed.  Maybe you can't go home to stay.  After all--both you and the place from which you come have changed.  And yet....

I'm writing you from Dunn Brothers coffee shop in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Years ago, it was Guertin Drug Store--a pharmacy and ice cream parlor that served the best mint chocolate chip a person could buy.  I look out the window and I see the dental office that housed the friendly dentist who capped my teeth before I told my parents what really had happened in that tackle football game they had forbidden me to play.  Then my glance shifts to the south.   The Carnegie Library that opened worlds to me.  

It's not only this place that takes me back to that day.  It's also the occasion the brings me home to Minnesota in the midst of a cold and snowy winter.  I'm here to say "farewell" to my late mother's last remaining friend. I'm here to mark the passing of a generation.  And I'm here to remember and give thanks for the life of the woman to whom I fled when I chipped my teeth in the football game so long ago.  

They held the service in St. Anthony Park Congregational Church--the church my parents and my grandparents attended.  The church that made me feel at home.  As I sat in the pew, I looked around and saw those who had sat in those pews so many years ago:  the three old me, all standing and sitting asone--they never sang but they always had their books open and their mouths moving;  my grandmother, looking away uncomfortably as our family dog marched into church one warm summer morning; my mother on her ninetieth birthday feted by the church that had been her home her whole life.  Towards the end of the reception, I snuck off.  I wanted to see the church again through the eyes of the child I was when last I was a part of that community.  

As I stepped into the world below the steps, the years disappeared.  The kitchen had not changed since the time my father and his buddies washed up after coffee hour!  And the back rooms and hidden passages that had intrigued me as a child still beckoned kids and kids at heart to explore their mysterious halls.  The memories washed over me--Dr. Tselos kicking me out of Sunday School when he had had enough of my mischief; Bob Brasted leading thirteen-year-olds through the great stories in the Bible; and best of all--I've saved the best for last--the window I snuck out of almost every Sunday one year when Sunday School was particularly boring!

That church welcomed me, nurtured me, accepted me, loved me.  That church knew me as a beloved child of God and taught me (more in retrospect than at the time) that the God who created a little imp also loved that imp.  

My hope, my prayer, for Live at Five and for St. Michael's too, is that we are--both for our kids and for the kids at heart that we all are--a community and a space that exudes the love God has for all God's beloved children.

From the land of ice and snow and lutefisk and lefsa,

Susan+ 

Dear Five O' Clock Friends,

Tomorrow is St. Michael's Annual Meeting--a moment when we come together as a whole community to hear a bit about the year gone by and to hear about what is on the horizon for our community.  It is at the annual meeting that we elect members of the Vestry--the governing body of our parish.  Those elections are always important, but in a time of transition they are doubly important.  Most likely, the people we elect to the the vestry tomorrow, along with those nine members of the vestry whose terms are not yet up, will be the people who decide whom we call as our next rector.  It is practice in the Episcopal Church, that a search committee vets and interviews candidates for rector and then submits three names to the vestry which then calls the next rector.  Please make every effort to attend this important meeting.

I am thrilled that one of our own Live at Five people is running for Vestry.  I believe that Susan Langer would be an outstanding vestry member.  I am so grateful that she agreed to run for vestry.  Come and give her moral support tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. (Parking may be tricky.  Don't be discouraged.  Park on Gene Av. one block north of St. Michael's and then just walk the ditch south to St. Michael's.  I watch for the ditch and then park nearby!)

Live at Five will hold Compline tomorrow night at five!  It is a beautiful way to round out the day. 

Susan+ 

Dear Five O' Clock Friends,

Last Sunday, JP Arrossa preached a fabulous sermon.  At one point in the sermon, he suggested that we need one another in order to walk this path of faith.  I think he's right.  We need one another's support, encouragement, wisdom, passions, sufferings and joys.  We can learn from one another and we can grow with one another.  I'm reminded of the many times in my early days at St. Michael's and later in seminary when someone said to me, "You might try..." or asked me, "Have you read...?"  Their suggestions and questions opened windows through which I could look at my life with God.  

In that vein, I want to share with you a book, an article and a hymn I discovered this week.  Maybe they will prove helpful or at least interesting to you.

I try to begin my days in silence.  I brew a cup of coffee, I light a candle and some incense, and I sit down to read and then meditate.  Recently, I happened upon a book that opens the shades of the day in a most glorious way.  It's A Book of Hours by Donald Culross Peattie.  Here's a sampler:

A thousand miles an hour, day flies the Atlantic.  It finds the 
tossing lightship and picks up the white signal numbers on its
gray flanks.  It gives back to lonely driftwood, prophetic of
land, and to sargossas of red kelp, floating lazy and succulent,
their existing shapes.  It eats out darkness, leaving only the 
etched lines of the spars and masts of the fishing fleet.  Meeting
shore, it runs a finger of cold shine down marginal sand....(23-24)

And here, from an article entitled, "Necessary Songs" in the most recent issue of The Christian Century a hymn written by John Bell in paraphrase of psalm 94:

O great God and Lord of the earth,
rouse yourself and demonstrate justice;
give the arrogant what they deserve,
silence all malevolent boasting.
See how some you love are broken,
for they know the weight of oppression;
even widows and orphans are murdered,
and poor strangers are innocent victims.

Should the wrong change places with right
and the courts play host to corruption;
should the innocent fear for their lives
while the guilty smile at their scheming;
still the Lord will be your refuge,
be your strength and courage and tower.
Though your foot should verge on slipping,
God will cherish, keep and protect you.

As I watch reports from South Sudan, as I think about the Lost Boys of Sudan escaping the violence there and then returning to their homeland only to meet genocidal violence once again, as I read about returning to Iraq, and as look out at the people of St. Martin's encountering many layers of trauma in their lives, I find that hymn and the gritty psalms of the psalter comforting.  

Martin Tel, in an article entitled "Necessary Songs", suggests that we, as people of faith and people of pain, need to read and hear the hard psalms--not necessarily as lives given voice but as the laments of those who share this moment with us.  If you can, read the article.  In any case, read the psalms--both those that give voice to praise and those that give word to pain.

Grateful to be on this road with you,

Susan+

Today, on the tenth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood,  I find myself remembering that old African proverb---"It takes a village to raise a child." A variant of that proverb is true when it comes to priests - "It takes a congregation to raise a priest."

Ten years ago today I nodded thanks to three congregations that had come together to raise me as a priest: St. Michael's-the congregation that nourished the seed God planted in me and then sent me off because at that time there would have been no way forward for me in the Diocese of the Rio Grande; St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Sunnyvale, California, where I did my field education; and All Saints Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, California-the church that took me in as a refugee, that made me feel at home, that asked hard questions, that gave loving support and that hosted my ordination on January 3, 2003.

Ten years ago, people from all three congregations were there joining their voices together as they answered Bishop Shimpfky's questions, "Is it your will that Susan be ordained a priest?" and "Will you uphold her in this ministry?" I suspect that few present that day-and surely NOT me-fully understood how important that second question was and still is.

For it is the congregations a priest serves that form her as a priest. Today, I'm giving thanks for all the ways that the congregations I have served have called out the priest in me-both in the gravy times and in the hard times. I've learned so much from each of them and from you-the part of the Body of Christ we call Live at Five.

But most of all today I'm giving thanks for the many gifts of the last ten years: the gift of the Gospel and the gift of being called to and reminded of trying to follow it as best I can; the gift of a punk priest in California who invited me into ministry on the margins; the gift of talented priests and wise parishioners who have mentored me along the way; the gift of generosity on the part of people who have invited me into their lives; the gifts of hard times and challenging moments; the gift of serving with an amazing, diverse and quite wonderful assortment of lay servants at worship; the gift of serving two extraordinary and diverse congregations The list could go on and on.

At St. Martin's on Christmas Day one of the people who helps at worship, put her hand in the candy basket on the counter and pulled out a maple sugar Santa Claus. With a grin spreading across her face, she exclaimed, "This is the BOMB!" In her words, "You are the BOMB!" I'm so grateful to God for the privilege of serving you.

And I'm grateful for all the moments we have spent worshipping and celebrating together in the last year-from gazing at the stars last year at Epiphany to worshipping with our four-legged friends on the Feast of St. Francis to our series of occasional complines to Live at Five at Nine and Live at Five at St. Martin's and Live at Five at Dia de los Muertos to Posadas, Pinatas and Potluck. You are teaching me the meaning of Communidad, Familia, Comida in the family of the faithful.

Blessings on this New Year!

Susan+