I have the honor and privilege of serving as a fire chaplain to the men and women of the Dudley Fire Department.  I also have the honor of serving as Deputy Chief Chaplain in the Massachusetts Corps of Fire Chaplains and this past week was our annual conference and retreat.  We were asked to bring an item that was significant to us on our spiritual journey, and of course, I forgot to bring something.  So as others were speaking I was thinking of what was significant to me and then it hit me, my rock collection.

In 1994 the movie With Honors was released.  The movie stars Joe Pesci, among others, as a homeless man that lives in the basement of one of the buildings at Harvard University.  Pesci’s character, Simeon Wilder, has a collection of rocks that he carries with him in a cloth pouch as reminders of what is past, but it also reminds him of what is to come.  I began to collect rocks shortly after seeing this movie.

The rocks I collect, like Simeon Wilder in the movie, have some sort of significance to me.  They might be from a beach or maybe from a roadside but most recently they have come from the graves of my ancestors.  These stones remind me of where I have been, they call to mind the memories of the place where I picked it up and the person or persons buried there.  This might sound grim but in some way I feel spiritually connected with them through that small rock that was part of their final resting place.

My brothers and I have been engaged in genealogy research for going on thirty years and it has led us on an amazing journey.  It is interesting to learn about where my family comes from and what they occupations they had.  We need to understand where we have come from so we know where we are going, but also to celebrate those who have gone before us.

Last month I spent some time in Maine researching the family and visiting graves.  At each of the graves I would say a little prayer for the person and then pick up a stone or in one instance a twig from a nearby tree, and put it in my pocket.  The funny part is I cannot remember where most of my collection comes from but from time to time I pick one up and think and say a prayer for all of those who have gone before me.

Our ancestors play a large part in who we are and can play a part in where we are going.  Some of them might be famous but, more often than not, they will be regular folks who lived and loved, worked and raised families, and did nothing spectacular and maybe are not even remembered by the world.  But we remember them.

We will soon celebrate Memorial Day here in America.  It is traditional on this day that people go to cemeteries and place flowers on the graves of their loved ones.  In our Orthodox tradition I will go to the cemetery and bless the graves of those buried there.  We pause, say a prayer, and sing Memory Eternal so that the memory of the person is not forgotten.

If you were asked to bring an item that is spiritually significant to you what would you bring?  Would it be a physical item or would it be a memory, maybe it would be a person whatever it is I hope it is something that has shaped and continues to shape your life.

This essay originally appeared in the Tantasqua Town Common, and The Quaboag Currant

This past week the news was all abuzz over comments made by the owner of the Los Angeles Clippers Donald Sterling.  Leaving aside the fact that the conversation was, as far as I can tell, recorded without his knowledge, the comments he made should have never been made.  Racism, or should I say discrimination for any reason, is alive and well in the United States and we have to work hard to defeat this evil.

The New Testament includes a book written by St. James, the first bishop of the church in Jerusalem, and is considered one of the Pastoral Epistles because it is not written to a specific group of people but rather the church at large.  In the second chapter James tells his readers that we should not “hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of Glory, with partiality” – in other words we should not discriminate in matters of faith.  He goes on to say that “if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, ‘you sit here in a good place,’ and say to the poor man, ‘you stand there,’ you have shown partiality.”

Unjustly judging others by their appearance, race, socioeconomic status, or anything else is an example of a fainthearted faith that is coming to light through unjust works.  It is not our works that bring salvation, for we cannot earn our way to salvation, but by our life as Christians we should be moved towards compassion and love for all of humanity regardless of their race or any other thing we might use to judge them.  Favoring one over the other is contrary to our lives as Christians not only in matters of religion but in everything that we do.  We are commanded to love our neighbor, and that command does not come with any conditions, and sometimes our neighbor does not look like us.

I believe in a previous column or two I have written about how all of humanity is created in the image and likeness of God and as such we all have the divine spark of our creator.  That spark of divinity needs to be respected and celebrated in each individual and we do that by showing them the basic respect of just simply being human.  Racism, or any kind of discrimination, is just plain evil and has no part in the life of a Christian.  A person’s dignity comes from God and not from any other human being or institution.  God does not show partiality to anyone.

I recently came across a picture on Facebook that illustrates what I am trying to say.  It was a picture of a poor man, dressed in rags and living on the street and in the next panel was a picture of a rich man dressed in the finest clothes with gold rings and what not, sort of like the description of what St. James was talking about in the scripture quote I used earlier.  In the photo under the poor man was a picture of a grave humbly dug in the ground, and in the picture under the rich man it was the same grave.  In other words, no matter what we have or do not have, in this world we all leave the same way, a humble hole in the ground.

I do not know Mr. Sterling so I try not to judge him by an isolated incident and of course, we only know what we read in the media.  However, what we say in private many times betrays what we hold in our hearts and in this case he does not seem to be living up to the Gospel command of loving our neighbor as ourselves.

The love of neighbor is one of the hardest parts of being a Christian, ranked right after forgiveness in my book, but if we truly want to be authentic followers of Jesus Christ, then it is not an option.