I am sorry for the delay of this weekly bulletin; I was hoping to have a radio interview regarding 9/11 as a part of the "Going Deeper" section, but that will have to wait for another week.
This weekend is quite busy in the life of the parish, our community, and the nation.
At St. Francis, we are kicking off the program year with Christian Education starting up, a sung service at 8AM, and the choir returning to support worship at the 10AM service.
I invite everyone to join in. Invite a friend. And enjoy a little ice cream following the 10AM service!
Alison Quinn and Nancy Geary deserve special recognition for all that they have done in putting together the curriculum for the kids for the coming year and organizing volunteers.
THANK YOU
Alison and Nancy!!!!!
Of course, we all, the larger community, and the nation formally remember the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It is amazing that we find ourselves at this point. Ten years later. It seems like only yesterday. And, yet, it also seems surreal and a part of an even more distant past. Time has frayed the immediacy of the event, however we do not forget, and with each anniversary, there is a reliving of that heinous and calamitous day.
I invite you all to join in an InterFaith Council remembrance of 9/11 this Sunday evening at 7:00 PM at Temple Beth-El on Roxbury Road. If you can attend, please register as a shuttle will leave from St. Leo's to the Temple Beth-El. (You can get information to attend on the header of this note.)
I don't know about you, but with the significance of the 10th anniversary, it almost seems like we are being inundated with a barrage of constant reminders, remembrances, and reflections. Starting almost two weeks ago there is continual reporting of the many sides of this tragic day and the myriad lives that have been forever impacted by the events of 9/11/2001.
Indeed, it is appropriate and important to remember in this and many other ways. It also is can be extremely overwhelming. And the events of that day were, of course, overwhelming. Efforts to capture the event, the emotions, the fear, the horror, the anger, the outrage, the cost, the implications, the trajectories of lives and a nation in its aftermath all pale and seem so limited before the enormity of the event itself.
I think that, perhaps, that is why the remembrances and the anniversaries are so important for they allow us to--a little at a time--see a portion of something so large that we can never see and comprehend the entire piece. Piece by piece we perceive and piece by piece we come to understand, certainly not completely but, as is our lot, in part. (Thus, I believe that the idea of heaven to know in full as we have been fully known resonates profoundly in moments and times like these.)
Furthermore, as many churches and synagogues were filled with people seeking solace, safety, understanding, and meaning the first weekend after 9/11, it is interesting to notice how, after that initial influx, there has been a steady exodus from religious institutions. And who can blame those who have--what we casually call in religious circles--"lost" their faith.
Confronted by the horror of such an event, stripped of the illusion that we control our lives and destiny, faced with the capriciousness of the evil acts of immoral actors, and engaged with the question-that-is-prior-to-all-the-other-questions:
Where is God?
are we surprised that people would be shaken to the core and, in the case of some, reject what heretofore had been foundational?
In the funeral homily in the "Going Deeper" section there is a segment where Father Duffy despairs over what has happened. A fellow priest slips him a piece of paper with a quote from the book of Lamentations:
The favors of the Lord are not exhausted. His mercies are not spent. Every morning,
they are renewed. Great is his faithfulness. I will always trust
in him.
The words were not spoken in a vacuum or the delight of ease or success. They were spoken in the midst of horror and loss millennia before. The words are the expression of a profound trust. Not that everything "works out" and we skate through life free of pain. Rather the words express the heart of the reality of a relationship of trust with the divine. We do not have all the answers, we are not given the secrets to the mysteries of life. We are, however, privy to an insight that we are loved intimately by God and that this God enters fully into the mix of our lives, amidst the joy of it no less than in the pain and sorrow of it.
Faith, in this context, is not Pollyana or a denial of reality. It is, rather, an entrance into the fullness of reality supported by the knowledge that we are not alone, and there is no place that we go where God is not . . . even death. Because absolutes cannot be handed down in this life and because we do not know with absolute certainty the machinations of the Holy One, a nimble faith built on trust (which never fully knows with certainty, right? But continues to what? Trust!) and engaged with the world is a key to bringing a bit more of the presence of God into the world here and now; this posture of faith also allows us to enter into the pain of life and the remembrances of 9/11 and the other tragedies of life; and it helps us to speak in our own day the affirmation that transcends understanding:
The favors of the Lord are not exhausted. His mercies are not spent. Every morning,
they are renewed. Great is his faithfulness. I will always trust
in him.
This weekend is quite busy in the life of the parish, our community, and the nation.
At St. Francis, we are kicking off the program year with Christian Education starting up, a sung service at 8AM, and the choir returning to support worship at the 10AM service.
I invite everyone to join in. Invite a friend. And enjoy a little ice cream following the 10AM service!
Alison Quinn and Nancy Geary deserve special recognition for all that they have done in putting together the curriculum for the kids for the coming year and organizing volunteers.
THANK YOU
Alison and Nancy!!!!!
Of course, we all, the larger community, and the nation formally remember the 10th anniversary of 9/11. It is amazing that we find ourselves at this point. Ten years later. It seems like only yesterday. And, yet, it also seems surreal and a part of an even more distant past. Time has frayed the immediacy of the event, however we do not forget, and with each anniversary, there is a reliving of that heinous and calamitous day.
I invite you all to join in an InterFaith Council remembrance of 9/11 this Sunday evening at 7:00 PM at Temple Beth-El on Roxbury Road. If you can attend, please register as a shuttle will leave from St. Leo's to the Temple Beth-El. (You can get information to attend on the header of this note.)
I don't know about you, but with the significance of the 10th anniversary, it almost seems like we are being inundated with a barrage of constant reminders, remembrances, and reflections. Starting almost two weeks ago there is continual reporting of the many sides of this tragic day and the myriad lives that have been forever impacted by the events of 9/11/2001.
Indeed, it is appropriate and important to remember in this and many other ways. It also is can be extremely overwhelming. And the events of that day were, of course, overwhelming. Efforts to capture the event, the emotions, the fear, the horror, the anger, the outrage, the cost, the implications, the trajectories of lives and a nation in its aftermath all pale and seem so limited before the enormity of the event itself.
I think that, perhaps, that is why the remembrances and the anniversaries are so important for they allow us to--a little at a time--see a portion of something so large that we can never see and comprehend the entire piece. Piece by piece we perceive and piece by piece we come to understand, certainly not completely but, as is our lot, in part. (Thus, I believe that the idea of heaven to know in full as we have been fully known resonates profoundly in moments and times like these.)
Furthermore, as many churches and synagogues were filled with people seeking solace, safety, understanding, and meaning the first weekend after 9/11, it is interesting to notice how, after that initial influx, there has been a steady exodus from religious institutions. And who can blame those who have--what we casually call in religious circles--"lost" their faith.
Confronted by the horror of such an event, stripped of the illusion that we control our lives and destiny, faced with the capriciousness of the evil acts of immoral actors, and engaged with the question-that-is-prior-to-all-the-other-questions:
Where is God?
are we surprised that people would be shaken to the core and, in the case of some, reject what heretofore had been foundational?
In the funeral homily in the "Going Deeper" section there is a segment where Father Duffy despairs over what has happened. A fellow priest slips him a piece of paper with a quote from the book of Lamentations:
The favors of the Lord are not exhausted. His mercies are not spent. Every morning,
they are renewed. Great is his faithfulness. I will always trust
in him.
The words were not spoken in a vacuum or the delight of ease or success. They were spoken in the midst of horror and loss millennia before. The words are the expression of a profound trust. Not that everything "works out" and we skate through life free of pain. Rather the words express the heart of the reality of a relationship of trust with the divine. We do not have all the answers, we are not given the secrets to the mysteries of life. We are, however, privy to an insight that we are loved intimately by God and that this God enters fully into the mix of our lives, amidst the joy of it no less than in the pain and sorrow of it.
Faith, in this context, is not Pollyana or a denial of reality. It is, rather, an entrance into the fullness of reality supported by the knowledge that we are not alone, and there is no place that we go where God is not . . . even death. Because absolutes cannot be handed down in this life and because we do not know with absolute certainty the machinations of the Holy One, a nimble faith built on trust (which never fully knows with certainty, right? But continues to what? Trust!) and engaged with the world is a key to bringing a bit more of the presence of God into the world here and now; this posture of faith also allows us to enter into the pain of life and the remembrances of 9/11 and the other tragedies of life; and it helps us to speak in our own day the affirmation that transcends understanding:
The favors of the Lord are not exhausted. His mercies are not spent. Every morning,
they are renewed. Great is his faithfulness. I will always trust
in him.
Blessings,
Mark
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