Podcast

Sunday, August 21, 2022

By: David May, Rector

I don’t know about you but sometimes I lose touch with what I’m doing and why. I lose the thread. Maybe you do too. Let me give you an example to describe what I’m talking about. I once served on the board of a community development non-profit on the Northern Neck. We were about an hour or so into our regular board meeting. I realized I had no idea what we were talking about or why. I had no idea where we were headed. So I just sort of blurted out, “I’m sorry, but where are we? Why are we doing what we’re doing?” It just kind of came out and I instantly wanted to apologize. The board chair looked at me in sort of a funny way and then he said, “Right. Me too. Let’s just stop and take some time to talk about our mission and why we’re here.” God bless him for that.

It happens, in all kinds of areas of our lives. With whatever it is we’re doing, you can lose touch with why you’re doing what you’re doing. Here’s another example to prime the pump.

We had an occasional practice in our household particularly when our sons were growing up that we called (somewhat ominously) ‘A Family Meeting’. It didn’t happen very often, usually when we were all too busy, stretched too thin, and were mostly ships passing each other in the night. And, that our lives had gone like that for way too long. What happened was we called a family meeting, and then the four of us would sit around in a circle on the kitchen floor and talk. This get-together would start off with a sort of ‘airing of grievances’. We each got a turn to say whatever we wanted to say and the rule was no one could butt in. And then after we’d all kind of gotten our gripes and resentments and complaints on the table and out of our system, we moved on to part two where each of us answered the question: what are the things that matter to you most?’ Like, ‘I want you to know I love you’, ‘I want us to be together more often’. Things like that. And then we’d covenant with each other to support each other on those things. It only happened four or five times over the course of 15 years or so but it was how we picked up the thread and got back in touch with why we were doing what we were doing, namely being a family.

Sometimes, I see Jesus whole ministry with us being something like that, where in word and deed his life confronts us with ‘why are we here?’, and why are we doing what we’re doing?

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Sunday, July 24, 2022

By: David May, Rector

I spent time at the Missionaries of Charity house in Kingston, Jamaica about thirty years ago with about two dozen college students on a three-week mission trip.  Some of you may have already heard me talk about this place before.  It’s funny – in the course of a life – what a few days here and there can do.  The Missionaries of Charity is the Roman Catholic order of nuns founded by Mother Teresa.  Their job is to care for the least of the least.  Their job is to see the face of Jesus in the old man dying of cirrhosis from decades of drinking who no one in his family can tolerate anymore.  Their job is to show God how much they love him by taking care of those who’ve slipped through the cracks (or been pushed through) who have no one and nothing left.  That’s the job they do that we all talk about and marvel over.  They would probably tell you that their job, mostly, is to pray.

We volunteered at the Kingston house while we were there and did whatever the sisters told us to do.  We swept and mopped floors.  We put fresh sheets on beds and helped prepare and serve meals and clean up after.  Things like that.  Whatever the sisters told us to do.  They were amazing.  The sisters were from all over the globe: brown and black and white.  They were young and old.  They were from Europe, South America, Asia, North America – a little community of the Kingdom already gathered as a sign of what God is up to in the world.  It was an amazing, amazing place.  It’s hard to describe.  There was so much brokenness and pain – so much suffering; so much that showed that this world is not the way that God means for it to be.  But all that brokenness was side by side with the radiant grace of Jesus shining through, transforming everything.  It was just stunning, literally. It took you breath away.  I could see how you would give up everything to live like this.  But I also knew that we’d be leaving in a couple of weeks – which makes it easier to think about giving up everything.  These women, on the other hand, weren’t going anywhere.  This was just their normal life.

Several times in the course of a day, the sisters would finish whatever it was they were doing, wash their hands and face, straighten their habits, and silently walk up the stairs to the second-floor chapel to say their prayers together.  The first time I figured out what was going on and where they were going, I fell in line behind them.

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