Sunday, July 7, 2024

Dear Friends, 

I am writing to you from Africa where I have been for these past 3 weeks.  It has been deeply felt and magnanimously rewarding.  

Once again, the cross-cultural experience supports my conviction that the spiritual life encourages risk, a willingness to explore, to go beyond what is comfortable, and always to be less afraid.  Many years ago, I heard Henri Nouwen describe Western spirituality as suffocated and disembodied.  Is that true?  The answer of course lies in the heart of each person.  

But his statement draws me to the wonderful words of poet, Dawna Markova:

I will not die an unlived life
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.

She goes on to interpret the meaning of her poem:

“Traveling from the known to the unknown requires crossing an abyss of emptiness. We first experience disorientation and confusion. Then if we are willing to cross the abyss in curious and playful wonder, we enter an expansive and untamed country that has its own rhythm. Time melts and thoughts become stories, music, poems, images, ideas. This is the intelligence of the heart, but by that I don't mean just the seat of our emotions. I mean a vast range of receptive and connective abilities, intuition, innovation, wisdom, creativity, sensitivity, the aesthetic, qualitative and meaning making. It is here that we uncover our purpose and passion.”

I believe more than ever that Markova’s words lie close to God’s intention for each one of us.  How is God calling you?  What are you ready to do that is completely different from your past choices and patterns?  Are you actively dismantling the fears that have limited your joy?    

I look forward to seeing you again soon. 

Carter   

Sunday, June 30, 2024

Friends

I am writing this week, at the start of summer travels in which many of us are fortunate enough to rest and recreate in softer climes.  Whether near or far away, I hope you will join us this Sunday to experience a new voice talking to us about healing.

In the pulpit, we will welcome the Rev. Mark Montgomery.

Mark serves as one of the Co-Pastors at Wilton Presbyterian Church.  From his early days as a cradle Presbyterian, Mark was ordained in the United Church of Christ. He has worked alongside UCC and Presbyterian congregations from California to Texas and South Carolina up through New Jersey, New York and Connecticut, in both settled and interim ministry. Mark’s ordination standing is currently held in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A.

Mark says that professionally his best days happen when art, faith, and the community of God all come together to birth a creative and interactive experience.  Personally, it’s hard to beat a day on Cape Cod, mountain bike trail riding, or simply hiking with his dogs.

Here is Mark’s invitation for this Sunday. “In the scripture passage for this week [Mark 5:21-43] we encounter two healings. Both are women. Both are healed. The similarities seem to end there and yet, it is one reading, in one Gospel chapter. What might we understand if we consider this as one story of healing, involving multiple characters and their diverse perspectives? How do our own perspectives shape the story? How is our faith challenged and strengthened? Let us explore the process, idea, and reality of healing and how it shapes our own story.”

You are called.

Patrice

Sunday, June 23, 2024

Dear Friends,
 
I just returned from visiting my parents in Kansas City.  My father turned 92 on Saturday and Sunday was Father’s Day.  I don’t get to see them enough and every visit means so much to me.  That being said, my father spends most of his days caring for my 87-year-old mother who has advanced Alzheimer’s. Their day is a set routine of meals, hygiene, the coming and going of home health aides and the precisely scheduled movements from the dining room to the living room and back again. All of this takes place with the background noise of the televisions (one in each room!) constantly tuned to cable news reporting on “news” that rarely changes throughout the day. The only variety in the news cycle seems to be the commercials, and even they lack variety. The vast majority of those are for pharmaceuticals treating all kinds of health issues, with each commercial ending with a string of boxed warnings including, “may cause stroke, heart failure, coma or death.” But there was one noteworthy commercial that had nothing to do with prescription drugs and seemed to counter the background noise of the news:  It was a commercial for the 2024 Hyundai Tucson and its tag line was “There’s joy in every journey.” It really stood out. It made me smile – and not just because it provided some levity. It was true! Every time it came on, I shifted my reflection to the innate joy of the journey that I have enjoyed with my parents as their child and the bittersweet journey of aging that I am observing through their experience. It is not devoid of pain, health crises, difficult decisions, challenging choices about budgeting or scary moments – yet there is a joy under it all. It is so easy not to see it. But every time I got my little reminder from Hyundai, I chose to feel it and see it and let it linger like the setting sun in these amazing weeks around the Summer Solstice. Wherever you are on life’s journey or summer travels, I hope that you can see the joy underneath it all, even on the hardest of days. And I hope that realization – however fleeting—reminds you of God’s presence and love as the source of it all.

See you on Sunday!

Love,
Cheryl

Sunday, June 16, 2024

Dear Friends, 

I am writing a short note today to acknowledge the Men’s Retreat this weekend.  

As you know, it is an annual event that brings together 20-30 men.  Most of the men are active members of Talmadge Hill.  But the event is also a form of outreach which typically draws a handful of men who are “friends” of the church. 

People ask, “What is the purpose of the Men’s Retreat?”  If I were to answer in a general way, the purpose is to get to know each other on a deeper level.  The purpose is to have some fun.  The purpose is to identify ways to be a better husband, father, friend and citizen.  Then of course, the underlying purpose is to consider what God’s role might be in shaping and instructing us along the way.  

Yet the purpose cuts even deeper.  It has layers.  For too much of history, men have led with distorted forms of masculine energy.  (Frankly in more recent times, women have sometimes done the same.)  However in healthy institutional cultures, masculine and feminine energy is in balance.  Thus on the Men’s Retreat, we emphasize vulnerability.  We encourage men to identify their primary emotions.  We ask men to take risks, do something different, change the paradigm, seek different outcomes.  At least in part, this is the value of feminine energy which is sorely missing in too many places.  

So I/we ask for your prayers this weekend.  May we seek and find a better balance of the masculine and feminine.  Jesus embodied it.  We aspire to do the same. 

Carter

Sunday, June 9, 2024

Dear Friends, 

The last week has been quite an emotional ordeal.  When I arrived in San Antonio last Friday, the doctors announced that my daughter (Rebecca) might not make it.  It was sobering and thank God I was sober.  I was present to every moment.  I felt everything I was supposed to feel.  My heart belonged to me. 

By early this week, the tide had turned.  Becca was out of danger.  It might have played out differently.  But somehow by the grace of God, it didn’t.  So I have been reflecting on Carl Sandburg’s poem, “Our Prayer of Thanks”.  It is a lovely piece, an invitation to sentient beings, to pay closer attention.

“For the gladness here where the sun is shining at
         evening on the weeds at the river,
    Our prayer of thanks.

For the laughter of children who tumble barefooted and
         bareheaded in the summer grass,
    Our prayer of thanks.

For the sunset and the stars, the women and the white
         arms that hold us,
    Our prayer of thanks.

    God,
If you are deaf and blind, if this is all lost to you,
God, if the dead in their coffins amid the silver handles
         on the edge of town, or the reckless dead of war
         days thrown unknown in pits, if these dead are
         forever deaf and blind and lost,
    Our prayer of thanks.

    God,
The game is all your way, the secrets and the signals and
         the system; and so for the break of the game and
         the first play and the last.
    Our prayer of thanks.”

I must confess that I do not know the mysteries of the game.  I do not understand the rules, nor am I able to foresee any outcomes.  But I am learning on a much deeper level how to be thankful.  What a blessing – a simple gift which threatens to change my every waking moment.

See you on Sunday. 

Carter