I Find No Joy in Any of This

Posted on August 22, 2018 by Fr. Peter

In a recent essay, I outlined my reasons for leaving the Church of Rome. I noted in the piece that my reasons were my reasons and that I was not trying to convince anyone else to leave to explain my reasons why. My reasons are rooted in emotion as well as in theology. As a public theologian, I expect a certain level of criticism of the things that I write, but one remark was not only unexpected, but it hurt me.

I an online conversation about an unrelated topic I was told that the other person was “wounded by all your obvious joy at the plight of the Roman Church.” My response was that I did not realize I had any joy in the plight of the Roman Church for I do not find any joy in any of this.

I find no joy in the unknown number of lives that have been destroyed by the perpetrators of child sexual abuse.

I find no joy in a system designed to care more for an institution than people.

I find no joy in the smugness of church leaders as they attempt to push the blame on to the victims of their crimes.

I find no joy in the countless number of the faithful that has had their faith shaken to the core or perhaps have lost their faith over this.

I find no joy in people who chastise those I just mentioned and say things like “they never had real faith in the first place.”

I find no joy in seeing for sale signs in front of a church that generations of people not only worshipped in but, in many cases, sacrificed time and resources to build and sustain.

I find no joy in the countless numbers of victims that still have not come forward or for those who have taken their own lives because of the abuse they suffered at the hands of clergy and the abuse they faced at the hands of the church after.

I find no joy in the billions of dollars this has cost the Church of Rome, dollars that should have been used to alleviate the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised.

Moreover, I find no joy in the damage this, and abuse in other religious institutions and the subsequent cover-up, has done to the witness of Jesus Christ. Yes, this has damaged the witness of all churches and the ministry and mission they have.

Simply put, I find no joy in any of this, in fact, it sickens me to my very core.

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Why I left the Church of Rome

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Fr. Peter

This has not been the easiest piece I have ever written, I have struggled over this piece for several years writing and re-writing it, but now I feel it is time. I have delayed publishing this for a variety of reasons many of them personal but with the recent news of an investigation into the practices at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts as well as the releases of the report in Pennsylvania it just seemed like the right time. My decision to leave the Roman Catholic Church is complex and based partly on theology and partly on emotion and for me it was the right decision.

I want to say at the very start, that I know there are many, many faithful priests and bishops and many, many faithful lay people in the Roman Catholic Church and my heart aches for them as their church continues to grapple with the continuation of the revelations of child sexual abuse. This is my story and my story only. The other point I will make is I will be using the term Catholic here not in the universal sense of the word but only for ease.

For as long as I can remember I had wanted to be a Catholic priest. During my senior year in high school I applied to St. John’s Seminary College here in Boston. Let me say that I was not the best student in high school and I spent more time in the band room then the classroom and that was reflected in my grades. The priest running the school felt I would not be able to handle to rigorous educational requirements of the seminary college and suggested I enroll in a Junior College for a couple of years and try again. I did not take this news very well. I had spent the last; I am not sure how many years, dreaming of going to school to become a priest and now it was gone. So, I joined the United States Army.

I am going to skip over a bunch of years here, but during my time in the Army and for many years after, I experimented with a lot of different churches from Southern Baptist to Episcopalian, but I always came back to Rome. There was something always calling me back; I used to think it was the candle that continually burns outside the tabernacle in Catholic Church that signals, as I used to say when I was an altar boy, that Jesus was home. I returned home from the Army, enrolled in college and discovered another world.

After more denominational experimentation I ended up as a member of a Benedictine Monastery where I finally felt like I was home. I stayed there for some years, but I don’t think I was every truly settled there. I not sure why I decided to leave but I did and began teaching middle school, but still felt drawn to the priesthood.

In my fifth year of teaching I reapplied to St. John’s Seminary, it had now been about seventeen years, a little longer than the two years that had been suggested by the earlier, but I was accepted, and in August of 2001 I moved into the seminary to begin a six-year program of priestly formation.
Let me pause here to say that at that time, St. John’s had a world-class faculty of theologians. Some of the best minds in the Church were on the faculty there and some of the best practitioners of the spiritual arts, what we call spiritual direction, were also on the faculty. It was also a house of prayer and, like the monastery, we would gather in the chapel several times a day to pray. It was a fantastic experience.

September of 2001 saw the attacks on New York and Washington, DC and our world would never be the same again. We struggled as a community about what to do. I was serving in the National Guard at the time, and there was always the threat of a call-up. Several other seminary students also served, and we were concerned about what was going to happen in the near future. We tried to continue with our studies as the world changed around us outside of the walls of the seminary.

As was the custom, the seminary students and faculty spent a week on a retreat before the start of the Spring semester. We came out of that retreat to the front page news of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston. This report was the culmination of months of research by the Spotlight Team of the Boston Globe that was turned into the movie Spotlight.

Describing the mood around the seminary at that time is hard. These allegations were hard to believe, and almost immediately some students started to call the reports false and fabricated in an attempt to discredit the church and their beloved Cardinal Law. For weeks after the news broke the student body started to divide amongst those who believed it and those who did not. There were arguments at meals and in small areas of the seminary, but it was never really discussed on an institutional level.

Almost immediately groups of seminarians formed, as far as I know on their own, with the explicit task of rooting out the “gays” in the community and one seminarian told me that is was “his calling from God to ensure that certain people were not ordained.” I was glad it was not my job. Support for Cardinal Law was at an all-time high, and if you had the slightest thought of not supporting him, you would be “outed” by what I and some of my fellow seminarians started calling them, the “brown shirts.”

Fast forward, Cardinal Law resigned in disgrace and was shuttled off to Rome and given a cushy job, and the Rector of the seminary replaced him and in his place came a man who was anything but a pastor and is one of the main reasons I left. I saw many a good man run out of the place because they did not match up with what the Rector thought a good priest should be. Seminary is a time of discernment for the seminarian as well as the faculty, but this one man had taken it upon himself to rid the place of guys he determined were unfit.

I know this seems rambling, but my decision to leave was a complicated decision based on many factors, some had to do with theology, and some had to do with personalities.

When a student comes to the seminary, they have to be sponsored by a bishop. When I entered, I was sponsored by the Archdiocese of Boston. During my second year of studies, I switched sponsorship from the Archdiocese of Boston to the Eastern Rite Catholic bishop of the Romanian Catholic Church. This was another complex decision that I cannot explain here other than to say I wanted to be as far away from the Archbishop of Boston as I could.

My studies continued as well as discernment. As I previously mentioned, discernment is a large part of the program of priestly formation, and a great deal of emphasis is placed on this. As students, we had a faculty advisor as well as a spiritual advisor that we met with on a regular basis. These times, as well as the prayer times, were designed to assist us in determining if we honestly had “the call” to be ordained. Seminarians leave for a variety of reasons, and that is the idea of the program to “test” your vocation is you will. Some come and stay right up until the point they have to seek ordination and other leave after a semester; this is how it works. I started to have doubts, not about the calling but about the vows I would have to make at ordination.

As I approached my final year of studies, it was the time for ordination to deacon. Although the office of deacon in the Catholic Church is a permanent state when one is seeking ordination to the priesthood, it is a transitional step and is the first ordination. I was ready, or so I thought I was, but the bishop had others thoughts and decided, a week before my ordination was to take place, to postpone my ordination. I was of course devastated, but it did give me time for further discernment about one specific area, obedience.

Men being ordained in the Roman Catholic Church make three vows, poverty, chastity, and obedience, and it was obedience that I had the most difficulty.

Obedience is not a vow in the abstract; this is a personal vow. During the ordination ritual, the person being ordained kneels before the bishop, places his hand in the hands of the bishop, looks into his eyes and promises obedience to him and his successors. This is a personal vow between the person being ordained and the bishop, and I had a great deal of difficulty with this.

My theology teaches me that humanity is flawed and we are not perfect. My theology also informs me that these flaws flow into the church and that because of that, humanity running the church, the church also has flaws. My theology also taught me that the validity of the sacrament was not hinged on the sanctity of the person performing the ritual, in other words, the person was merely the vessel, and the Holy Spirit worked through them, so it did not matter if the person was a sinner or not. However, I was still having difficulty vowing obedience to a man, a bishop, that was part of an institution that perpetrated a massive cover-up that led to the continuation of sexual abuse of minor children not only in the Archdiocese of Boston but across the globe. The very institution I was to vow obedience to was rotten from the top down, and I could not do it.

For three years I had sat and watched an institution, run by men whose life calling was to serve people, care more about the preservation of the institution than the people. I watched press conference after press conference with Cardinal Law and others with their smug attitudes towards victims. I listened to my fellow seminarians say the vilest things imaginable about victims and others, most of those guys went on to be ordained priests and several of them have since left involved in their sex scandal. I listen to excuses after excuses for why this happened, and I was not buying any of it. I watched as Cardinal Law was whisked off to Rome and given a cushy job there while many of the victims of the clergy in Boston were killing themselves. I could not place my hands in the hands of a bishop and vow obedience to him and his successors, so I left.

My decision was based on emotion, and it was based on theology. For me, it was the right decision, and although I sometimes regret the choice, I believe it was the right one. I dearly love the ritual of my youth and my formation and spirituality, for the most part, will always be Roman Catholic. It pains me to see what all of this is doing to the great and holy priests that are just trying to make a difference. It hurts me to see that this is doing to the faithful of the Catholic Church who is trying to make sense of it all. Moreover, it pains me for the victims that were first abused by a priest and then abused again and again and again by an institution that could care less about them until they were exposed.

It has recently been reported that this scandal has cost the Roman Catholic Church close to $3 billion but what has it cost in the human, and the spiritual? What sort of damage has this done to the witness of Jesus Christ in the world? This has tormented the souls of countless numbers of people, those abused, their families, and to a certain extent the faithful and each time additional revelations happen it reopens those wounds.

I do not expect anyone to agree with me or my decision but it is my decision, and they are my reasons.

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Sermon: Thankful and Festive

Posted on August 16, 2018 by Fr. Peter

Back in the early 90’s, I was participating in a study abroad program for a college course I was taking. I was a biblical studies major with a focus on missions, and the country was Romania. Romania is, as it was in the 1990’s, an interesting place. Although my attention was on missions, the broader topic of my study in Romania was on cultural sensitivity and cultural inclusion.

Before leaving the United States, I studied, as best I could from the available books, the culture of Romania and her people but upon my arrival, the study went into high gear. Romanians, by and large, live off the land. The country was once called the “bread basket if Europe” since they produced much of the food for Europe, but due to poor farming practices over the last generation that had changed. What had not changed was that bread was a large part of every meal.

No matter where you went, bread was baking. Driving through the street of Bucharest or some small village in the Carpathian Mountains, bread was baking in small and large bake shops, and people stood in line each morning for the fresh bread that would last them the day. In the villages of the countryside, the first item on the agenda of the day was to bake bread. To Romanians bread was life and to not have bread with a meal was, well, to not have life.

Bread is central to Christianity as well in the form of the Lord’s Supper that we celebrate as one of the two Sacraments of the Church. We do not believe that anything changes about the bread and the juice that we serve when we pray over it, but I think that it becomes sacred in the sense that it is through those simple elements of the earth, bread, water, salt, yeast, wine, or juice, that we are drawn closer to God and each other.

When we, as a community celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it is a sacred moment of communal worship. The Greek word that forms the English word Eucharist comes is derived from two Greek words, eu, meaning well and kharis, meaning favor or grace. The word Eucharist means “gratitude.” Bread is blessed and shared, to remind us that food is sacred and it gives life to our bodies and is a gift from God grown out of his creation. Wine or juice is blessed as a reminder that drink comes from God, it is a gift that brings joy and warmth to our souls.

Jesus reminds us in the passage of scripture we heard tonight that He is the bread of life. Jesus is the essential part of our lives, and He is a gift from the Father to us. Jesus also reminds us that whoever eats of the bread will never hunger again, not in a physical sense but a spiritual sense. We come to Him, spiritually and communally, and get our fill of Him and His Word as a gift from God and we are to take that gift and give it to others.

One of the spiritual gifts I have received from my coming to the Congregational way of life is that the table of the Lord’s Supper is open to anyone to come. In many, many churches communion, Eucharist, the Lord’s Supper is used as a weapon or a way to divide the Congregation. You can only partake if you are a member of the club. Sadly, I used to believe this and then I meditated on the scene of the Last Supper.

All of Jesus’ disciples were present with him in the Upper Room that night. All of them. Peter who would deny him, the others who would run off and desert him at his hour of need, and Judas, the one who would betray him and hand him over to death. They were all there, and they all participated. Jesus gave himself, spiritually through the elements of bread and wine, to everyone, even those who would destroy him. What a powerful message this was to me.

We come to the table of the Lord not because we are prepared but to be prepared. We come because Jesus is the bread of life and if we eat, we will never hunger again. We come to the table not as individuals but as a community, and we receive, and we eat together, as a community, and we are satisfied as a community.

Jesus commands us to do this in remembrance of him but what is this “this” that he is commanding us to do. Jesus is commanding us to break ourselves open for others. To share the gifts we have been given, large and small, with others. Jesus is commanding us to share our lives with others and to allow them to share their lives with us. Our gratefulness comes when we see the Christ in others, and we allow others to see the Christ in us.

Jesus IS the bread of life, and all who come to him will never hunger or thirst again. Ask yourself this question this week, am I leading people to or am I driving people away from the food that will satisfy them? Am I building walls to keep people out or am I clearing paths that will allow people to come and receive all they need?

Jesus IS the bread of life and whoever comes to him (notice there are no qualifications) will never be hungry and whoever (notice no qualifications again) believes in me will never be thirsty.

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Reflection: I am the Bread of Life

Posted on August 15, 2018 by Fr. Peter

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

One of my favorite spiritual recording artists is John Michael Talbot. JMT, as I will call him, is the founder of the Little Portion Priory, a Roman Catholic group of men and women based in Texas. JMT’s music is meditational, and it has allowed me, over the years, time to sit and reflect on the words of the song without a lot of shouting and banging on in the background of so much of today’s spiritual music.

In 1989, JMT released a new song called, “I am the Bread of Life” that is based on the scripture passage I have quoted above. Here are the lyrics to the song:

I am the Bread of Life
All who eat this Bread will never die
I am God’s love revealed
I am broken that you might be healed

All who eat of this heavenly Bread
All who drink this cup of the covenant
You will live forever for I will raise you up

I am the Bread of Life
All who eat this Bread will never die
I am God’s love revealed
I am broken that you might be healed

No one who comes to Me shall ever hunger again
No one who believes shall ever thirst
All that the Father draws shall come to Me
And I will give them rest

I am the Bread of Life
All who eat this Bread will never die
I am God’s love revealed
I am broken that you might be healed

For the ancients, and for many today, bread is a staple of their diet and to have a meal without bread would be incomplete. With these words of Jesus he is telling us that he is what completes us on a spiritual level and although we hunger for more and thirst for more, with him, we will be satisfied as he is the bread of life.

This song and the associated scripture is a reminder to us that spiritually if we come to Jesus, we shall never hunger or thirst again. Many of us are always searching for that thing, that something, that will complete us on a spiritual level when it is right there in front of us. What do we hunger and thirst for?

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Reflection: “I am the bread…”

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Fr. Peter

“I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” John 6:35

In the 19th century, China hungry people were coming to Christian Churches in large numbers. Churches of that time were providing food when food was scarce in the community, and the church was one place where people could be fed. The problem was after they no longer needed the free food they left the church. Church leaders gave these people a name; they called them “Rice Christians.” They were consumers of the church rather than disciples.

When speaking with people about the church I often hear the comment, “I get nothing out of church so why should I go?” My typical response is that we get out of it what we put into it.

Too often we who are in church leadership fall into the trap that church has to be entertaining. What this is saying is that we are playing into the consumer church mentality and as soon as the church stops being fun people will leave and move on to a place where they can be entertained. The mission of the church is not to entertain, the purpose of the church is to make disciples and making disciples is hard work.

Jesus encounters a group of people who heard about the feeding of the 5,000. They are attracted to Jesus because of the miracle, and they wish to declare him King. Remember, the people who came in search of Jesus were in search of a political and military, and after speaking with Jesus, they discovered this was not to be the case.

They came to Jesus and asked him for another sign, like feeding all of those folks with a few loaves of bread, and a couple of fish was not enough, but they wanted to be entertained, so they asked for a magic show. Rather than entertain them, he told them that He was the bread of life, spiritual life, and all that seek him out would not leave hungry or thirsty. We should seek after Jesus not seek after flashing lights and floor show.

In the end, most of those who came left because they did not get what they wanted, entertainment. The road that Jesus was putting before them required work on their part. Jesus was not going to snap his fingers and save them, he expected them, and us, to put the hard work in. Jesus offers us a way of life but that way of life requires change, and we have to be willing to change.

So, if the church is not offering anything for you, perhaps the problem is not the church but our thinking. The church offers, through Jesus Christ, life but that life requires work, and if we are willing to do the work, we will never be hungry or thirsty.

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Sermon: Grateful Together

Posted on August 9, 2018 by Fr. Peter

During the summer months the church I serve hold their weekly worship service on Wednesday nights. This summer we are reading the book Grateful, The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks by Dianna Butler Bass. This reflection is based on chapter 5 and all references are from the book unless otherwise noted.

Last week we spoke about individual gratitude and the need for us to make a conscious choice to be grateful as well as to seek out those positive moments in our lives. I reminded us that positive moments are all around us and all we need to do is look for them and hold on to them. Tonight we are going to expand upon the personal side of gratitude with a discussion about collective or community gratitude.

Gratitude is not something we can do alone. Sure, we might be all alone on a hillside, watching the sunrise, but when we have the sensation of gratitude it is for the sunrise, for the place where we are, for the time to be there, and perhaps, for God for, once again, providing a beautiful sunrise for us to witness. So we are “grateful for something, grateful to someone, and, often, grateful with others” (Bass pg. 97).

Gratitude always points toward someone or something else the “‘me’ always leads to ‘we'” (Bass pg. 97). When we are grateful, we acknowledge that we are part of a much larger world and that there exist people around us who are also grateful and perhaps, are there to help us and perhaps, we are there to help them. However, “gratitude is not about repayment of debts. It is about relationships” (Bass pg. 98).

On June 17, 2015, thirteen people gathered in the basement of the Mother Emmanuel African Methodist Church in Charlottesville, South Carolina. There were there for bible study and prayer. This group gathered each week in this historic black church, the oldest black church south of Baltimore, for prayer and study. It was in this church in 1822 that Denmark Vessey and 34 others were hanged because they were suspected of planning a slave revolt in the town. This church is no stranger to hate.

But about 9:00 pm as the bible study was coming to an end and all of the heads in the room were bowed, a 21-year-old man took a gun out of his backpack and started shooting, he reloaded five times and, before he fled the room, 9 of the 13 people there were dead including the pastor. The survivors reported that, while he was shooting, he screamed, “I have to do it. You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” The young man was later caught, tried, convicted, and now faces the death penalty for his hate.

However, the most extraordinary thing happened later that night and the next day. Church members began to gather to support each other. By all accounts, the church is a very close-knit family, and they needed to be together to help one another. The press was gathering and started asking questions of the church members, and they were shocked when member after member started talking about forgiveness and how they needed to forgive this young man for what he had done and for what he had taken from them. At the sentencing hearing they came and pleaded for his life, but their plea fell on deaf ears. The spoke of the need to show this young man love and that killing him would remove that, and that love would turn to hate, and they would be no better than him if his life were taken.

This is an extraordinary example of gratitude. They were grateful to be alive, but they were also grateful that they had the capacity to forgive someone who hated them with such a passion that he had to resort to violence.

There was one story that reported the shooter saying that he almost changed his mind because they were so friendly and accepting of him but unfortunately his hatred ran too deep, and he carried out his plan.

Gratitude is not about repayment it is about relationships, their strength and their healing came through the community, and it has been an example for me and my ministry since it happened.

Gratitude is a social concept, and it is about being with one another and being in life together. There is a thread that is woven between us which is very fragile, and these strands weave our lives together.

As much as we need to develop that ethic of gratitude on a personal level, as we spoke about last week, our most profound expressions of gratitude move us out of our own self and our own isolation and into a connection with the community. Gratitude is powerful and can transform us and transform a society.

The best part is gratitude is contagious and can spread but it needs to have a start, a foothold, and that begins with us. Gratitude should connect us all, and that means to connect us all across racial and ethnic lines which will allow all of us to unite as a community rather than being isolated and only concerned about ourselves.

However, be warned, gratitude will change us, and we will start to look at people differently. The young man who pulled the trigger in the church almost changed his mind because he was grateful for how he had been treated, perhaps this was the first time anyone had treated him with kindness, but they almost, by their expressions of love, almost convinced a killed not to kill.

Gratitude comes when we least expect it, but, sometimes we have to look for it. Let us pray that we can be as grateful as the saints at Mother Emmanuel and rise to that level of gratefulness and love in our lives and in our community.

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Sermon: Intentional Practice

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Fr. Peter

During the summer months the church I serve hold their weekly worship service on Wednesday nights. This summer we are reading the book Grateful, The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks by Dianna Butler Bass. This reflection is based on chapter 4 and all references are from the book unless otherwise noted.

Back in the mid 90’s, I joined the Roman Catholic religious order known as the Benedictines. The Benedictines have a rhythm of life focused on prayer and work and the day is evenly divided. We would rise in the morning and gather in the chapel for prayer. This early Morning Prayer focused on readings from the psalms and other biblical and non-biblical texts. A period of individual scripture reading follows and then back to the chapel for another round of prayers. The same cycle is repeated in the afternoon and evening with the idea that the day is started and ended with prayer and praise.

The rhythm of prayer was regulated by the bell. Five times a day the bell would ring and call us to prayer, it go so that you could anticipate the ring and start toward the chapel. However, other times, you would be right in the middle of something, and the bell would ring and whatever it was would become secondary to prayer.

My favorite prayer time was in the evening after the evening meal. For most of the year, it was dark in the chapel when we arrived. The service was simple and was the same every night, so it was soon memorized and allowed me to focus more on the words of the psalms. I have not tried in years, but I wonder if I could still recite it from memory.

Anyway, the evening focused on taking stock of the day in what the Jesuits call the “examen” the examination. There are five steps to this, and there is a focus on gratitude:

Awareness of God’s Presence
Review of the day with gratitude
Paying attention to the emotions
Selecting one thing from the day and praying from it
Look toward tomorrow. (Bass pg. 79)

In the morning the focus is on the intention to live the day in gratefulness, but the night time is devoted to reviewing reflection, and the offering of thanksgiving. These hours of prayer do not focus on what we want or need. “The hours start with gratitude. Ancient Christian wisdom is that the first words of the day should be those of thanks” (Bass pg 76). We need to start each day remembering that each day is a gift and that the sacred is present with us.

This “hallowing of the hours of the day is fundamental to a faithful life, and remembering blessings and giving thanks is shared practice across world religions” (Bass pg 73). Christians are not the only ones to sanctify the day in such a way; Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists share this tradition among others.

I tried, somewhat successfully for a few years after I left the monastery to keep up this prayer rhythm but I soon fell out of practice. I would pick it up every now and again but never at the level of the monastery. I am not sure if it was because the bell was not present in my life or just that m priorities shifted. However, one needs to be intentional about prayer and set time aside for it each day. Notice I said my priorities changed and I did not say my life became more complicated to my life became busier than it was in the monastery. We make time in our lives for what is, and if prayer and praise are essential, we will make time for it. This is where I need to practice what I preach.

I think for many people prayer has become a laundry list of what we want God to do for us. Perhaps we have a list of people we are praying for; we do it in each service as well. Intercessory prayer is not a bad thing, but it is only one form of prayer that we need to practice.

However, we have to be intentional about it about the practice of gratitude.

Last week I mentioned that there are gifts all around us and we don’t see them. I asked us to be more mindful of those gifts and perhaps journal or somehow keep track of them. I began but the week got away from me so I need to start again.

Following a life of intentional gratitude is all about choosing to do it. We choose to be aware of the moments that surround us.

In the Gospel of Matthew we read the words of Jesus, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). What do we value in our lives? Do we value the things that we have earned or are we drawn towards the life of the spirit? In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the flesh. However, to those who live according to the spirit set their minds on things of the spirit” (Romans 8:5).

Just as we need to feed our bodies with a healthy lifestyle so we must feed our soul. We must be intentional about prayer, and we must be intentional about gratitude. Our spiritual life is life our physical life in the sense that we need balance. The Benedictine day was a balance of work and prayer so must our lives be a balance.

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Making Room in our Hearts

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Fr. Peter

“I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his spirit and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.” Ephesians 3:16-17

Paul writes these words to the church that he helped establish in Ephesus. Paul often writes to his churches to offer them encouragement and correction when things are not always working out as planned and this case is no different. This passage, however, is part of a larger prayer that he is offering for the people and a prayer that could be used in churches today. Paul is praying that through the power of the Holy Spirit Christ takes up his abode, or his residence, in their hearts and by translation, in our hearts.

In my days in the Southern Baptist Church, I would often be asked two questions, am I saved and had I let Jesus into my heart. Fundamentally both items mean the same thing. I have come to say that no, I am not saved I am being saved as salvation is a life-long process. However, what of the second question, have I let Jesus into my heart, well, that is a bit more complicated.

The idea of letting Christ in is to change us. Having Christ take up his abode or dwell in our hearts is like asking someone to come and stay with you. If the person is visiting that’s easy, we make a little room for them and after a short, hopefully, a period, they go back to their own home. However, if we ask someone to move in, on a permanent basis, well then everything changes.

At first, we might try and hang on to our usual routine, but after a period, we have to make room for the other person as well. Our routine changes and we begin to do things differently because we are no longer living alone there is someone else with us. Conversations change. Relationships change. Household tasks and responsibilities increase and shift. This situation is the same as when we invite Jesus to come and live in our hearts. Jesus is not coming for a vacation, Jesus is moving in, and we have to make room.

Paul recognizes that we cannot do this alone and his prayer is that by the “power of his spirit… Christ may dwell in your hearts.” This is a prayer of hope that we will make room for Christ to come and by making room for Jesus, our lives begin to change, our attitude begins to change, our worldview begins to change, and our hearts become open to change.

Paul’s prayer is my prayer for us.

This essay appeared as the From the Pastor column in the weekly email newsletter of the First Congregational Church of Salem, New Hampshire.

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Is the Sun Setting on Civil War Reenacting? A Response to the New York Times

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Fr. Peter

On Saturday, July 28, 2018, and article appeared in the New York Times concerning the 155th anniversary reenactment at Gettysburg and the decline in the reenacting hobby. Before reading this essay, take a moment to follow this link and read the New York Times article for context.

I am a relative newcomer to the world of reenacting. I started on this journey during the 150th-anniversary cycle where there was a lot going on in the world of reenacting. That first year was terrific, there were events all over New England, and I attended as many as I could. I portray a Union Army Chaplain and signed on with the 28th Massachusetts, a group that recreates the famed Irish unit from Massachusetts. I’m not Irish, but I chose this unit because they seemed to be the most organized unit around.

However, as the 150th anniversary of the end of the war had come and gone, many reenactors left the hobby. The Civil War trade sites on Facebook started to be filled with all sorts of gear that belonged to former reenactors that had either moved on to other time periods or were getting out of the hobby altogether, it was a rapid decline that continues today.

This past weekend, while at a living history event with the colonial group my wife and I reenact with, an article was published in the New York Times concerning the decline in the hobby. This decline was not news to those of us involved in the hobby as we have witnessed this over the last few years as I have already mentioned and, the article did not give any reasons; well It provided several reasons, but there is not one clear reason.

Before I continue, I do not think Civil War reenactors glorify war or glorify the antebellum south in any way. Most of the reenactors I know both have family connections to the war or a deep love of history and want to share that knowledge with the general public. Sure, some of us like to dress up, and for a few days of the year, we get to throw off the distractions of our 21st-century life and go back to a different time. I do not look upon those that reenact time gray, or butternut, as racists or anything of the kind, just a group of guys that love the hobby and love to tell the story.

In my opinion, one of the most overlooked reasons for the decline is the aging reenacting population. There are not a lot of young people joining the ranks of the hobby. I believe there are many factors to this two being available time and available funds. Reenacting take much time and much money if you are going to do it right and let’s face it, we all want to do it right. Sure one can find good used items out there, what I like to call the seasoned uniforms and other accouterments of battle, but those can still run into the thousands.

The article mentions the Confederate question, and I am sure the protests and other negative press have had some impact on the hobby but, the decline started long before those events. Reenactors, well most reenactors anyway, know that our brothers and sisters that portray the south are not racist, and as the article suggests, you cannot fight a battle, or tell the story of the Civil War, without both sides.

Until most recent times, the focus of reenacting was on the battle and camp life and stayed away from the political climate of the 1860’s and the reasons leading up the war. Today, more of that story is being told, and I do not think that is a bad thing. We are living historians, and we have a duty, to tell the truth, the whole truth, no matter how ugly it might be.

With all of that said, I think the current climate of protests and monument removal has had little effect on the numbers of people involved in the hobby, it might affect the spectators that attend events, but I do not think it has done much to diminish the ranks of reenactors.

To switch centuries for a moment, I also reenact with a Revolutionary War group, as I mentioned before, where I also portray a chaplain in the army. I seem to be typecast in these positions because I am a minister, but in my mind, I am saving money because I do not have to buy muskets….. As I write this my wife and I are preparing for a reenactment at Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Red Coats and Rebels is the most significant Revolutionary War reenactment in New England, and it will draw about a thousand reenactors to the two-day event. Compared to Gettysburg and this year’s 6,000 reenactors it may seem small, but for a regional event, it is quite large. There has also been massive World War I and World War II events in recent memory and many Civil War reenactors, like my wife and I, reenact in multiple timelines.

Is Civil War reenacting dying? Perhaps a better way to describe it is there is a shift happening away from large national events to smaller events and more living history setups. We cannot overlook the time, and cost factor and new people have very little of both. So I think it will continue just not at the scale it once had, but, there is a need to continue to tell the story, the accurate story.

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We must be intentional in seeking out the goodness in the world

Posted on July 26, 2018 by Fr. Peter

I have fallen into the pit of despair and felt the anger welling up inside me. In our present political climate, it is easy to go down that road of anger and despair. I have become weary of fighting the good fight to help bring mercy and justice to the world I live in. I feel at times that I am fighting an uphill battle and sometimes I feel all alone. However, I know I am not alone, but I also cannot keep banging my head against the wall.

I do not like the person I become when evil takes over, and by evil I mean anger. Sure, sometimes anger is righteous and sometimes it is out of anger that change becomes a reality, but then I remember it was anger that got us here and what we need now are love and understanding.

During these summer months, the congregation I serve is reading the book Grateful, The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks by Diana Butler Bass. I like to think of this book as a manual for change in our lives as it is indeed, as the title suggests, transformative.

A recent study focused on the intentionality of gratitude and how we have to seek out those things we need to be grateful for. Bass quotes from Brother David Steindle-Rast, a Benedictine Monk, “Ninety-nine percent of the time we have an opportunity to be grateful for something. We don’t notice it. We go through our days in a daze” (pg 54). We have to be intentional about seeking out those grace-filled God moments and make a note of them.

Since I have started reading the book, I have decided that I was going to make an intentional shift in my thinking and my acting. I am not giving up the fight I am just taking a different perspective on it because the outcome is too important. I am going to be intentional about finding the good, and when there is something to be critical of, I will be critical with facts and not emotions.

However, this being grateful is a habit that needs to be cultivated in our lives. As the quote I used above suggests, we are surrounded by things to be grateful for we need to attentive to what they are. In a recent church service, I suggested these moments might be as simple as all of the lights turning green on our commute to work. They might be small, but they are visible if we see them.

I have never been great with journaling but if that is your thing then keep a list of the things you see to be grateful for. If journaling is not your thing, make mental notes about them. I have noticed several folks who have taken their gratitude to social media, posting each day the things they are grateful for. Whatever works for you is what you need to do, it is not the system we adopt or the techniques we learn just that we do it!

The challenge I gave my congregation is to start today looking for those moments of gratitude. As Bass suggests in her book, gratitude begets gratitude, and slowly our lives will begin to transform and when our lives transform our worldview begins to transform.

Since begging this intentional search I have noticed that my disposition has changed and I am starting to come out of the pit and funk, and I am starting to see the world a little different, and I like what I see.