Nov 23, 2023 |
WLSU, Multitasking Gratitude
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulWLSU, Multitasking Gratitude
I am thinking today about gratitude. I am thinking about what it means to be thankful. It is not possible to be thankful all the time. I can’t feel any one feeling all the time. Sometimes I think I’m supposed to always feel good, or happy, or confident – and that is an unreasonable expectation to place on myself. But I can seek to focus on gratitude for this life.
Quite often God is in my presence, showing me attention and care, sharing this life with me. But I get distracted. I say I’m multitasking, but really, I’m choosing to focus on something else. Probably my phone. I’m juggling a lot, and not all of it is good. Not all of it is good. I want to say that out loud, because toxic positivity and delusional gratitude are real: The fanatical push to make everything ok is tempting in religious circles. Not everything is ok. Nobody knows that better than God.
But where will I place my focus? With which eyes will I look at this moment?
Thanksgiving is underrated. It used to signal the beginning of the Holiday Season
Nov 17, 2023 |
When Love Shows Up - Growing Up
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulWhen Love Shows Up - Growing Up
I have a confession to make. I love being an adult. I get to stay up past my bedtime. I get to drive a car. I have to work, sure, but I also get to work – get to do something I love and learn how to get better at it. I will never have to take another math test, never get another detention. Sure, I went bald, but now I don’t get hat hair. I get to have a beard. I watch R-Rated movies. I eat my kids’ Halloween candy after they go to bed. I have two dogs! I had one and wanted another one, so I got another one! It was a terrible idea, but it was my terrible idea and all I had to do was be willing to live with the consequences!
I didn’t much like being a kid, to be honest. It’s not like I had a bad childhood. I wasn’t trying to escape. But from a very young age, I believed that I would enjoy being an adult so much more. And then I grew up and I was right. This is what I’ve been waiting for. All the stressors I described before are still true. It’s very very difficult, this adulting. But I love it. I love being grown-up.
It’s painful and it’s scary. I both laugh and cry more readily than I ever did as a child. It’s all more terrible and beautiful than I ever could have imagined.
I know our culture is obsessed with youth; that we are programmed to look backward and yearn for an idealized version of who we once were, to long for younger bodies and simpler times. I do it too. Some of it is about being scared of death. Some of it is wishing we could have had the ability to comprehend back then just how precious time was when everything seemed endless and ageless and eternal. And some of it is the legitimate annoyance that if I sleep wrong tonight, I will be sore for three days.
Oct 27, 2023 |
When Love Shows Up - Trust Women
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulWhen Love Shows Up - Trust Women
Every time Jesus interacts with a woman in the Gospel narratives, she leaves with her humanity, her dignity affirmed. Every time. So, it makes sense that Christians should actively support the full humanity, dignity, and autonomy of women. This should not be controversial. Supporting abortion rights is not contrary to following Jesus. Supporting abortion rights, at its core, is about trusting people who are pregnant to make decisions for what is happening within their body. It is their body.
I used to think it was my job to protect the life that was growing inside other people. That belief was rooted in the idea that I knew what was right for others, for their bodies. I believed that I should have a say. I believed that it was a woman’s job to do whatever she had to do in order to protect that life no matter what, even if that meant being forced to do so. I believed I was standing up for the dignity of the unborn, but in doing so, I put myself in the position of undermining and even ignoring the dignity of the woman. I am short-circuiting her autonomy instead of affirming and supporting it. I can no longer do that. Jesus won’t let me.
There is a famous moment in the Gospel stories when Jesus calls out the religious leaders of his time, saying, “You are placing burdens on people they can never bear!” Jesus was talking to me. He was talking to all of us who believe we know what is right for others, and especially those of us who use laws to place unbearable burdens on others.
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Oct 20, 2023 |
When Love Shows Up - The Silence
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulWhen Love Shows Up - The Silence
This week the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital in Gaza was hit with a missile and over 400 people died. The hospital is a ministry of the Anglican Church in Jerusalem – with much of its funding coming directly from Episcopalians in America. The bishop who oversees this hospital is a dear friend, and a peaceful man. You have heard of this horrific missile strike. How did you feel when it was reported as an Israeli missile? How did you feel when you then heard reports that it was a Palestinian missile? Did one sound better to you than the other? Which culprit was preferable for the story you are telling about what is happening? I know what my preference was.
I wonder if the children who were killed care who was responsible.
Our need to have a clear cut take on what is happening unites us with Job’s friends. It somehow feels safer if we can unabashedly Stand with Israel or Free Palestine. We can choose our story and roll our eyes at the obviousness of it all. We can avoid our grief and focus on our outrage.
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I wonder if the children who were killed care who was responsible.
Our need to have a clear cut take on what is happening unites us with Job’s friends. It somehow feels safer if we can unabashedly Stand with Israel or Free Palestine. We can choose our story and roll our eyes at the obviousness of it all. We can avoid our grief and focus on our outrage.
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Oct 13, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Good Grief
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Good Grief
I have lived a few places now: several rounds in Southern California – both in Orange County and Los Angeles, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, North Carolina, Virginia, and now Cincinnati Ohio. Most of these places have felt like home at one point or another. I am always happy to go back to any of these places to visit. At the same time, it’s just that: A visit. I need to consult Google maps to get places I used to know by memory. I imagine alternate realities where I never left California in the first place, or where I never left New England, or where I settled down in Charlotte. So many things I was, and so many I could’ve been. There’s beauty in that, and also some grief.
Grief is different than regret. I do not wish I had made different decisions, that my life was different. It’s not that. It’s just an acknowledgment of all the loss that life brings.
We have a desire to demonize grief, to minimize it or stifle it completely if possible. And when experiencing grief there is some part of us that feels guilty, like we should not be feeling this, like it’s maudlin or overly sensitive. Our goal seems to be to get through grief as quickly as we can. I wonder why that is. Christians can be particularly problematic. We will often try to short-circuit grief by pointing to God’s plan or the promise of Heaven. As if our belief that everything is going to be ok means that we should not experience grief.
But grief is not evil. Grief is a gift, because it is honest about the things that we have lost.
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Oct 06, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Got To Get You Into My Life
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Got To Get You Into My Life
I remember recently witnessing a friend of mine being painfully misunderstood, and I remember thinking if only the people who misunderstood her really knew her, they would love her too. How could they not?
It's interesting though, this idea that loving someone is meant as a compliment. Love as seal of approval. As if the love we give someone is a sign that they are worth loving, that they have earned it, that their character has somehow merited our love. Even though that’s almost never been our experience of love. People may earn our trust. People may earn our respect, our esteem, our appreciation. But our love works differently and we know it. It wasn’t my trust the Beatles won over that day in the booth of that vaguely Hawaiian-themed restaurant.
The phrase is to know them is to love them. But I think I’ve begun to believe the opposite. I think I believe now that to love someone is to know them.
It is the Christian belief that God is love.
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It's interesting though, this idea that loving someone is meant as a compliment. Love as seal of approval. As if the love we give someone is a sign that they are worth loving, that they have earned it, that their character has somehow merited our love. Even though that’s almost never been our experience of love. People may earn our trust. People may earn our respect, our esteem, our appreciation. But our love works differently and we know it. It wasn’t my trust the Beatles won over that day in the booth of that vaguely Hawaiian-themed restaurant.
The phrase is to know them is to love them. But I think I’ve begun to believe the opposite. I think I believe now that to love someone is to know them.
It is the Christian belief that God is love.
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Sep 29, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Becoming a Runner
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Becoming a Runner
I was a runner once about 12 years ago. I don’t just mean that I ran once. I mean I became a runner. I had jogged now and again growing up, but was never a runner. Then one day I thought to myself, I’m gonna run a half-marathon. I cannot tell you exactly why, other than I was 31 and at the beginning of my marriage and the beginning of my career, and was about to have a child and was still very much of the mindset that I had something to prove. Is there such a thing as a 1/3rd life crisis?
I’m not so sure I don’t still have something to prove.
Anyway, I decided to run a half-marathon because I wanted to prove I could. That was it. Can a short stubby out-of-shape guy in his 30’s run a long way very slowly? It turns out I could. I had a friend who was a runner, and I asked her to train me. And she did. I trained. I followed her schedule. I got running shorts, and running shoes, and BodyGlide – which is what they call an anti-chafing balm, and a little water bottle I could attach to my hand. I ran long distances and listened to podcasts and took ice baths. I ran two half-marathons before a combination of shin splints and a new baby sidelined my burgeoning career and I hung up my Brooks sneakers.
But here’s my question: When did I become a runner?
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I’m not so sure I don’t still have something to prove.
Anyway, I decided to run a half-marathon because I wanted to prove I could. That was it. Can a short stubby out-of-shape guy in his 30’s run a long way very slowly? It turns out I could. I had a friend who was a runner, and I asked her to train me. And she did. I trained. I followed her schedule. I got running shorts, and running shoes, and BodyGlide – which is what they call an anti-chafing balm, and a little water bottle I could attach to my hand. I ran long distances and listened to podcasts and took ice baths. I ran two half-marathons before a combination of shin splints and a new baby sidelined my burgeoning career and I hung up my Brooks sneakers.
But here’s my question: When did I become a runner?
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Sep 22, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Holy Dying
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Holy Dying
What is your prayer when you know someone is going to die? So many of my prayers for the sick and dying are centered around their return to health, for a cure, for an end to the disease, for a reversal of fortunes. Sometimes a prayer for healing is a reasonable request. Other times I pray for a miracle. To be clear whether healing seems reasonable or realistic or not, I should pray for it if it is what I hope and wish for. Sometimes it’s exactly the thing I need to pray. Sometimes “heal them” is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I remember kneeling in front of the bed and praying for my dad to be healed while paramedics were working on his body in the hallway around the corner. He was already dead, had been dead when they showed up, but there I was praying for healing. I don’t judge myself for that prayer. It’s what I wanted. I asked for what I wanted. And I don’t judge God for not making it so. There is so little I understand about life and death and how it all rests in the heart of the God who made us. God, my dad, me – we all did our part in that moment.
Death shows up. What is our prayer?
One of the great gifts of my job is the sheer number of times it puts me in close contact with death. I am invited into the room where a person will die, invited to pray over them, to thank God for their life. To witness the tears of their loved ones, to shed my own tears. There is heaviness there. It is not a joy. It takes a piece out of me. And also, I have come to see it as a gift. Death carries with it a sort of holiness. An ending that is shared by every living thing. We hold it in common. I have stumbled into the practice of praying for a holy death when I find out someone is dying. I have learned to pray this without flinching. Because I believe there is such a thing as holy dying.
I remember kneeling in front of the bed and praying for my dad to be healed while paramedics were working on his body in the hallway around the corner. He was already dead, had been dead when they showed up, but there I was praying for healing. I don’t judge myself for that prayer. It’s what I wanted. I asked for what I wanted. And I don’t judge God for not making it so. There is so little I understand about life and death and how it all rests in the heart of the God who made us. God, my dad, me – we all did our part in that moment.
Death shows up. What is our prayer?
One of the great gifts of my job is the sheer number of times it puts me in close contact with death. I am invited into the room where a person will die, invited to pray over them, to thank God for their life. To witness the tears of their loved ones, to shed my own tears. There is heaviness there. It is not a joy. It takes a piece out of me. And also, I have come to see it as a gift. Death carries with it a sort of holiness. An ending that is shared by every living thing. We hold it in common. I have stumbled into the practice of praying for a holy death when I find out someone is dying. I have learned to pray this without flinching. Because I believe there is such a thing as holy dying.
Sep 15, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 3
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 3
" I had been taught Evil was about satanic rituals and Ouija boards and heavy metal music and people loving someone they shouldn’t. This priest changed my understanding in one fell swoop. And then she spoke passionately of Jesus. In Los Angeles. To Episcopalians. She spoke about Jesus’ clear and consistent advocacy for the love, the humanization, the belonging of all people. And she spoke of how, while she lay in the hospital healing from her wounds, Jesus healed her heart and allowed her to choose love instead of hate as she persisted in the holy work for justice and equity.
That night I sat in this space where this Christian woman connected the spiritual and the practical with articulation, where she connected the actual issues of love and mercy and equality and violence and hatred and fear with the story of how God is working in the world and where Jesus shows up.
That Sunday I showed up. I worshiped with them for the first time."
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Sep 08, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 2
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 2
Do you believe you can be yourself at church? Do you think you can be yourself in front of God? I don’t like admitting that I’ve had problems with this my whole life. I remember during the years when I was unaffiliated with church and was actively questioning if I even believed in anything. I could never bring myself to say I wasn’t Christian, because what if I died in that moment and went to Hell? What is that other than the belief that you can’t be your whole self in front of God?
That night I was at a table with people who all believed different things and said that aloud. A couple of lifelong Episcopalians who never had serious doubts. A gay Christian who loved Jesus and felt safe being himself at this church. One guy who said he wasn’t sure he bought any of it but was there to sort things out. And me – a former fundamentalist turned spiritual-but-not-religious agnostic conservative liberal Jesus lover who’d had a recent conversion experience and was just trying to understand how to be Christian again. And we were all together. It was such a mess. Thank God.
The third thing I remember is the cookies.
Sep 01, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian
Shortly thereafter I moved to Los Angeles, which was about an hour from where I grew up, and started going to the farmer’s market on Sundays. I wanted to be a Christian, but I didn’t know how. Some people say you can be Christian on your own terms and all by yourself. Maybe they’re right. My experience has been otherwise. Community is central to this faith. It would be like saying you can be married on your own terms and all by yourself. It became clear to me that I wasn’t going to believe in Jesus all by myself. I was going to have to try to find a church that I could stand and that could stand me. I wanted my life to look like I meant it.
I decided to give the farmer’s market a break and go to church. But the idea of finding a new church was overwhelming. So I just started driving back to my hometown and taking my Grandma to our old church. The one I had left. The one I didn’t know what to do with. I knew the first Sunday that it wasn’t my place anymore. But I kept going for a couple months. I still loved the pastor there very much. And I loved my Grandma. Sometimes I’d come down the night before and do my laundry at her house. Then my clean clothes would smell like her cigarettes for a week. We’d sit in the same pew as when I was growing up. The people who remembered me seemed happy to see me. When the offering plate came around, my Grandma would slip me a $5 bill so I wouldn’t be empty-handed. She always did it without making eye contact, like we were dealing in contraband.
It wasn’t my church anymore. It wasn’t going to be. I wasn’t angry or bitter. I just didn’t belong there anymore. And one Sunday I skipped. I slept in. And I called up my buddies to see who was going to the farmer’s market. They were all sleeping in that day and I was definitely not going to go by myself. I resigned myself to a quiet morning. A few minutes later, my roommate peaked his head into my room. He and I were friendly enough but not really friends. We rarely hung out. We certainly didn’t go places together. He said, “Hey I’m thinking of going to the farmer’s market. You wanna go?”
Aug 25, 2023 |
Nourished by Ritual
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulNourished by Ritual
Do you remember the bowls you used for your breakfast cereal as a child? I do. We had these light blue hard plastic bowls with rims on them. I ate cereal every morning without fail. Somehow my kids have managed to get us to make them eggs or pancakes or waffles from time to time. When I was growing up, if we had eggs or pancakes for breakfast it was probably a holiday. Waffles were for brunch buffets. Day in and day out I ate cereal out of one of those blue bowls.
Maybe it wasn’t cereal bowls for you. Maybe you can close your eyes and immediately picture the plates and flatware you used at the dinner table, or the glass you used for juice. What is it for you? Can you see it?
These things were not, in themselves, spectacular. They were simply there every day. They did not need to prove themselves as flawlessly designed. We don’t remember them for being particularly beautiful. We remember them because we used them over and over again for years. I can still remember placing the bowl on the coffee table in the family room then sliding down the couch onto the floor – because if I sat on the couch itself, the bowl would be too low. So I’d sit criss-cross on the floor and that blue bowl overstuffed with cereal and milk would be just below my chin, and that way I wouldn’t spill and maybe my mom wouldn’t notice I hadn’t used a placemat. I realize now I loved it there.
Aug 18, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Nourished by Training
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Nourished by Training
I was talking to a friend recently who is a pilot, and he told me that 30% of his flight training focused on emergency landing and crashing. For all the complexity of plane mechanics, navigation, the physics of flight, and the proper technique for taking off and landing, a full third of the lessons are devoted to catastrophic events.
And that makes sense. If you’re sending someone up in the air, you don’t just want them to know how things work when everything is going well, you want them to have a clear picture of what it looks like when things go wrong, so they can handle the stress of the situation. I had heard about this emergency preparedness for pilots before, funny enough, in a book about churches navigating tumultuous and changing times. The author had been having a similar conversation with a flight instructor and had asked why so much time was dedicated to emergency situations. The instructor responded, we tend to believe that in high pressure situations people have a tendency to rise to the occasion – but in reality, in moments of crisis, people revert to their training.
That really knocked me over. When the chips are down, people don’t tend to become superhuman. We tend to be ourselves. This is not a negative judgment of people, just an observation. I myself like to imagine how I would respond in an emergency. I have very little interest, however, in training for an emergency.
Aug 11, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Nourished by Giving
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Nourished by Giving
I could drop a loaf of bread off on your doorstep and ring your doorbell, and see you smile through a window, or from a bit of a distance and we could have little awkward conversations that meant I love you even when we didn’t say it.
My job is to facilitate a community that is founded on love. And most of the ways we knew how to share that love were just gone for a devastating amount of time. We are nourished by love and for a time there, many of us felt like we were starving.
I began to pray while mixing the dough together. I would say a prayer for the specific people for whom I delivered the bread. I would think of them as I removed the lid from the piping hot Dutch oven and saw how the bread had risen. I did not wait around to watch them eat it; I did not sit by my phone waiting for thank you texts. I’m not saying I didn’t care if they liked it or not. I always hoped they did of course. But I was not fed by gratitude. I was nourished by the giving.
The feeling of being able to do something for someone else is deeply fulfilling, and that is no accident. It is built into us.
Aug 04, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Nourished by Community
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Nourished by Community
A few weeks ago, a woman from out of state was visiting her daughter here in Cincinnati and they both came to church. It was very obviously the mom’s idea, but the daughter was game. I was talking with them after the service and the local daughter just asked me point blank, “So why should I come to your church?” I just laughed. Why can’t everyone be this direct? “Oh, wow,” I said, “I don’t know if you should. I can’t pretend it’s for everyone.” She appreciated that, and I asked her if she knew about The Episcopal Church and she said yes, and that she’d even checked out our website before showing up and that she liked what she saw. But she had still asked the question.
Well, I said, because we humans are built for community. We are literally made for one another. We are not meant to be alone. And we’re lonely. And we need community. And this place, I said, this place is a community that is founded on unconditional love. You can find a community that is founded on all sorts of things, on your wealth or status, on the color of your skin or your last name. You can find communities based on shared interests or neighborhoods, and all these things can combat loneliness in one way or another. But what your community is based on matters. And this place, this community is founded on the premise that you are completely and fully loved and that you belong in community just as you are.
Jul 28, 2023 |
Nourished by Love
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulNourished by Love
That’s the trick with nourishment: It is not permanent. It is not one-time only. Our need is ongoing. We must be fed again and again. This is not because we are broken or faulty – this is how we were made. Our bodies are built in such a way that they use the nourishment we are given and then need more. It’s perpetual, and in fact is a sign that we are alive and thriving.
I tell my kids I love them every day. I have one child who, when I call him over to tell him something, says, “You’re gonna say you love me.” And he’s right. I am. Every time. Because I do. And also because I do not believe once is enough. I’ve heard people say, “Well so-and-so never says it, but I know they love me.” That is not going to be the case for the people around me. I try to tell people that I love them regularly, because I do, and because I believe hearing it repeatedly matters. I don’t often think of myself as a disciplined person, but telling people I love them is one of my disciplines.
And I know words aren’t everything. I know it. “I love you” can ring hollow if not backed up by action. The words can be misused, abused, twisted. If rule number one is tell them you love them, the second rule is act like it’s true. But the act of loving people cannot be a one-time event. It cannot be. Because our Gospel belief is that we are made by the God of Love, that we are made out of the abundance of God’s love, and that we are made for loving and being loved. It is the most fundamental truth of our being. And that means we need to be nourished by love. We need it again and again, day in day out.
Jul 21, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Older
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Older
Sometime in my 30’s I drove by the school for the first time in what must have been a decade, and I was so excited to feel that feeling again, or some nostalgic version of it. I almost drove right past the building. It was like they had replaced it with a half-sized replica. I kept looking for it even as I was looking right at it. And then I realized that it was right in front of me, with those tiny steps up to some simple looking doors and the quaint edifice that was definitely lovely, but certainly not imposing.
I’m sure you’ve had this experience at some point: Some thing or place changing so dramatically over time from how you remember it – changing in size, in magnitude, in meaning. It used to tower over you, and now, well, it doesn’t. And you have to adjust.
I turned 44 last week, which is a pretty inconsequential age to be, as ages go. Just good ol’ mid-forties. Middle-aged. I’m not going to take this opportunity to wax poetic on the aging process, as I know that about half of you who read this are 20, 30, 40 years older than me, and you don’t need to hear my version of the thing you’ve been dealing with for a while. It’s strange though, when I am doing Premarital Counseling with a couple and I begin to talk about “our age” and then realize we are, in fact, very different ages.
I was listening to the Beatles the other day, and I realized they were in their 20’s the entire time they were together. They were kids. Remember the Sgt. Pepper era when the Beatles all had terrible facial hair? Well of course they did: they were in their 20s! That’s when you do that! I am 4 years older than John Lennon was when he died. The Beatles, the bride and the groom, the elementary school, they haven’t changed, but you change in your relation to them.
Jun 30, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Accepting Blessing
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Accepting Blessing
My dad was not my hero. He was not perfect, invincible, unassailable or saintly to me. I had a list of complaints for this very human guy. None of that mattered in that moment. I believed the story he told me. I believed him. When I say that I chose to accept him what I actually mean is that I chose to listen to him and to believe his experience as valid and true. That he had been gay as long as he could remember. That he had tried not to be. That he had prayed endlessly, tried to be straight, tried to be what he considered faithful, and that none of it had worked. That he was done trying to be anything other than who he was. And that even though he was scared of my rejection, he was going to be himself and invite me to see the truth of that.
Looking back on it, I shake my head to think of how often Christians have made telling the truth a difficult and scary prospect. How judgmental we can be, how condemning. How sure we are of what others’ lives are supposed to look like, of what their identities should be, of who and how they should love. When I am feeling idealistic, I like to imagine a world in which Christians have earned a reputation for being gracious and loving, open and thoughtful. You know, like Jesus.
Jun 23, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, The Political Church
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, The Political Church
I don’t like that the church has become political. But then, when was the church not political? We see Jesus as one who founded a spiritual movement rather than a political one. And indeed he intentionally eschewed the partisan binaries of his time. And the language of his teachings didn’t fit neatly within the political paradigms. But to take his teachings seriously required people to reorder their whole lives, their relationship to one another, their relationship to their communities and cities, their relationship to power, and therefore their relationship to government. We saw this in the first generation of Christians. This is why they were systematically persecuted, arrested, tortured, marginalized and killed. Their beliefs were seen as threatening to the status quo. Under a government that insisted Caesar was Lord, they proclaimed Jesus is Lord. In a culture where patriotism was reserved for Rome, Paul insisted our primary citizenship is Heaven. How can we pretend that wasn’t political?
I used to take pride in the fact that the Episcopal Church was one of the few American denominations that didn’t split over the issue of slavery. I thought it was really beautiful that we found a way to call ourselves united despite differences. It was lost on me that our church accomplished this by not taking a stand against slavery. We prized the appearance of unity and the enforcement of the status quo over the proclamation of God’s liberation of all people in Jesus Christ.
This does not mean we weren’t political, by the way. It means we chose the politics of status quo even when it was evil.
Because there is no such thing as an apolitical church. It does not exist. It has never existed. The decision not to teach and preach and think and talk together about what is actually happening in our community, in our world is itself a political decision.
Jun 16, 2023 |
Rector's Blog, Growing in Understanding
| The Rev. Philip DeVaulRector's Blog, Growing in Understanding
I want to be honest and tell you that I had no real way to process my friend’s transition. I was not mad or sad. But, at least at the moment, I was not happy either. I literally did not know how I felt. I did not have the tools to process this.
Well, I suppose that is not entirely true. I did have a few things that helped me when I didn’t know what to think. I knew that I cared about my friend. I knew that I respected him. I knew that he was smart and thoughtful. And I knew that such a major medical decision must not have been made lightly. I didn’t know what I thought about his decision, but I knew what I thought about him. When you are not sure what you think or how to react to something, choosing love and respect is, in fact, a practical tool you can use.
So, I congratulated him. And, at least for the time being, I kept my questions to myself. It didn’t feel right to pepper him with curiosity that might be read as skepticism. In the meantime, he looked and sounded happy. Genuinely happy. And I liked that.
As I look back on all this I am fascinated by how interconnected understanding and language were. I did not have the language to describe my friend’s situation, and I did not have understanding either. I had not thought of gender and sexuality as separate.