Thanks for Your Thanks

Today’s blog is written by Pastor Jen.

Friends, this is a week overdue (where does the time go?) but I would be upset with myself if I let the opportunity entirely pass me by to say: thank you.

Last week in and after worship, you surrounded us pastors with deep appreciation, encouragement and care. While I know this effort was led by certain individuals (looking at you, Executive Board), it certainly felt like a full-church project throughout the course of that morning. Like everyone was in on it.

Your cards, and gifts, and flowers, and hugs; your kind words and even the goodie bag of leftover treats were all deeply felt and gratefully received.

I have friends and colleagues in ministry who complain that their church doesn’t see them, doesn’t recognize their work, doesn’t appreciate and validate their gifts or their ministry. And I know that is a painful thing, and lament that it is the experience of so many.

But I also have to be honest, and say: that’s not how I have ever felt here. Winnetka is a special place that way, something that my colleagues and I make no secret of: it is a place that cares well for its pastors. We know the alternative, in some cases we have experienced the alternative elsewhere, and so it is with a grateful heart that I continue to come and serve here each day.

This past Sunday, I was reflecting on a moment from very early in my time here at WCC, maybe my first or second week. I was staying with church members, waiting for my apartment lease to start, and after work one day shared this thought with them: “You know how you get to a new workplace, and get to know your colleagues, and figure out who’s filling what role, and what gap exists? What space there is left for you?

Well, the space here seems to be shaped exactly like me. Like the best thing I could do is just be myself.”

And one of those friends – he shall remain nameless – who was on my search committee, looked at me and said: “Duh.”

Then added: “If you try to be anyone else, I’m going to yell at you.”

It was a holy moment, and one I have thought of many times since. Because the truth is: he was right, and his statement has borne out in the last five years. You have let me be not just your pastor, but who I am as a person: utterly obsessed with my dog, in love with baking and reading and camping, a nerd and an introvert and a homebody. You have helped me grow and learn and also embraced me right where I am.

It’s a rare and special thing in a church, and so for all that and more, today I want to be sure to say:

Thank You.

The Communion of Saints

“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.” Frederick Buechner

On this All Saints Day, memories of loved ones now gone flood my soul. Some of them I encountered every day of my life until they were gone. Others I knew only through brief encounters, and for a short moment. And some, even some of the most formative in my journey, I never actually met! Together they form now a heavenly host, still with me on my way by faith home to them. “I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints…” is what I’ll say again with you as we come to the Lord’s Table on Sunday.

It’s always been a profoundly comforting thought to me, that somehow the saints have life still, and are with me, with us. How wonderful. But equally frustrating is my lingering wish to somehow see and hear from them. I wonder — is it my/our limitations that keep us from seeing and sensing their communion with us? Or, is there some barrier that comes with death that just can’t be penetrated? Either way, How I wish I could talk again with my grandparents now that I’m much older. What fun it would be to encounter Howard Geake just one more weekday morning over at the Northfield Restaurant! Or my preschool teacher who loved me so much, a sacred memory for me. Or find myself sitting on a park bench between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! Or, to be really greedy, to run into St. Augustine in the religious book section at the Barnes and Noble and go for Coffee! Just what does the “communion of saints” mean from what feels like such a veiled distance?

In the end, I guess what matters most is their living presence, even if I can only believe in such a reality by faith. Hope abides, that there’s much more on the horizon than the last score of this mortal life as I swallow hard, approaching a big birthday with a “6” at its beginning. As my childhood pastor Glen Wiberg used to say it, I have stolen his words through my years: “The glory just out in front of us.”

Maybe more than anything else, the saints are living reminders that the best is yet to be, and that just when we think the sunset of life is beginning to glow that it’s actually a sunrise, a new beginning after all and in the end.

I’m looking forward to speaking their names, and singing “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine”, and hoping for renewed hope in this strange belief the church has always had that they are with us still, and that still, some great day, we will be with them again, this time forever! “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful beautiful Zion, we’re marching to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”

“Eternal God, not bound by time, we give you thanks for all the saints who have gone before us, who work beside us, who live beyond us. Open us to their presence among us: the words of prophets on our lips, the blood of martyrs cursing through our veins, the visions of mystics before our eyes, the love of those who embraced poverty innervating our muscles to acts of compassion. May we be so caught up in their Alleluia, our lives vibrating, like theirs, with the pulse of eternity, until the very foundations of this old world begin rumble and give way to your new creation; and through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.” (Jan Richardson)

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

The Communion of Saints

“In his holy flirtation with the world, God occasionally drops a handkerchief. These handkerchiefs are called saints.” Frederick Buechner

On this All Saints Day, memories of loved ones now gone flood my soul. Some of them I encountered every day of my life until they were gone. Others I knew only through brief encounters, and for a short moment. And some, even some of the most formative in my journey, I never actually met! Together they form now a heavenly host, still with me on my way by faith home to them. “I believe in the Holy Spirit; the holy Catholic Church; the communion of saints…” is what I’ll say again with you as we come to the Lord’s Table on Sunday.

It’s always been a profoundly comforting thought to me, that somehow the saints have life still, and are with me, with us. How wonderful. But equally frustrating is my lingering wish to somehow see and hear from them. I wonder — is it my/our limitations that keep us from seeing and sensing their communion with us? Or, is there some barrier that comes with death that just can’t be penetrated? Either way, How I wish I could talk again with my grandparents now that I’m much older. What fun it would be to encounter Howard Geake just one more weekday morning over at the Northfield Restaurant! Or my preschool teacher who loved me so much, a sacred memory for me. Or find myself sitting on a park bench between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.! Or, to be really greedy, to run into St. Augustine in the religious book section at the Barnes and Noble and go for Coffee! Just what does the “communion of saints” mean from what feels like such a veiled distance?

In the end, I guess what matters most is their living presence, even if I can only believe in such a reality by faith. Hope abides, that there’s much more on the horizon than the last score of this mortal life as I swallow hard, approaching a big birthday with a “6” at its beginning. As my childhood pastor Glen Wiberg used to say it, I have stolen his words through my years: “The glory just out in front of us.”

Maybe more than anything else, the saints are living reminders that the best is yet to be, and that just when we think the sunset of life is beginning to glow that it’s actually a sunrise, a new beginning after all and in the end.

I’m looking forward to speaking their names, and singing “We feebly struggle, they in glory shine”, and hoping for renewed hope in this strange belief the church has always had that they are with us still, and that still, some great day, we will be with them again, this time forever! “We’re marching to Zion, beautiful beautiful Zion, we’re marching to Zion, the beautiful city of God.”

“Eternal God, not bound by time, we give you thanks for all the saints who have gone before us, who work beside us, who live beyond us. Open us to their presence among us: the words of prophets on our lips, the blood of martyrs cursing through our veins, the visions of mystics before our eyes, the love of those who embraced poverty innervating our muscles to acts of compassion. May we be so caught up in their Alleluia, our lives vibrating, like theirs, with the pulse of eternity, until the very foundations of this old world begin rumble and give way to your new creation; and through Jesus Christ our Lord we pray. Amen.” (Jan Richardson)

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson