Atlanta Update Seven...
(Note: I apologize for not sending out my Atlanta Update Six. I appreciate the emails that checked in on my status. My trusty laptop broke and is currently being fixed by the Geek Squad at Best Buy. I pray it won't cost too much! I'm borrowing a friend's laptop until mine returns to me next week. So, yes, I am alive and well, but am dealing with internet withdraws. God bless!)
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all her sons away;
They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.”
--Isaac Watts (paraphrase of Psalm 90:1-5).
Dear Friends, Mentors, and Benefactors,
DOWN A DEAD-END and graffiti-ed street lies a group home for the mentally ill. A few weeks ago, the entire occupants of this house (including many parishioners of Holy Comforter) moved to this dismal location, amidst boarded-up Churches, broken-down houses, and gnarled sidewalks. They all moved seemingly in the dark of night, with little word to the Church of their new location. After a week of phone calls and wrangling with managers, we finally got an address. Unfortunately, this new location was out-of-reach of our fleet of vans, so many of them have not been able to come to the services of the Eucharist or to the Friendship Center. They lie there, seemingly forgotten by all.
ONCE WE RECEIVED an address, we decided to add the new location to our Friday rotation of visitations. Yesterday morning, a CPE Intern and I made our way to the home, excited about seeing our people who we haven’t seen in a few weeks. As we turned down that wretched street, we saw four people (all parishioners) sitting on the front porch. As soon as they could make out who was in the car, smiles immediately registered on their faces and they pointed at us with joy.
TO SAY THAT they were overjoyed would be an understatement: hugs were given with delightful abandonment; compliments were said freely (I was called “beautiful” several times); and questions quickly came about how everyone is doing at Holy Comforter. It was heartening as they missed us and we missed them; it was like a family reunion. It was also disheartening at the same time, however, as we realized what was the painful loneliness they were experiencing on that dead-end street in that dead-end neighborhood.
+++ +++ +++
IN THE MORNINGS, I walk through Grant Park to get to my bus stop. It is a rather pleasant walk surrounded joggers and those going to work. I have only my thoughts and the silence of birdsong to keep me company before the Georgia heat zaps me in the middle of the day. But when I am especially tired, the voice of doubt follows me on my journey: “Andy,” is speaks irritably, “do you know what you’re doing? Do you think you’re actually doing something? Do you think this work has any significance?” I used to fight that voice and say that the service of God has eternal significance for the souls who will be saved.
NOWADAYS, HOWEVER, I do not argue with the voice, but I quote scripture to it. “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun (Ecclesiastes 2:11).”
“I DON’T KNOW,” I speak to that voice, “If this work has any significance. I’m not here for significance - in whatever form that takes. I’m here because I’m called to be here: nothing more, nothing less. Attachment to significance is vanity, so get thee behind me!”
AND IT LEAVES for awhile, just as quick as the thought came in.
+++ +++ +++
I’VE BEEN READING Alexander Schmeman as of late. He is an Orthodox Liturgical Theologian, who looks at the ways that the Church worships and what our worship tells us about the nature of God and the Kingdom. In his Introduction to Liturgical Theology, Schmeman writes that time does not exist in the service of Eucharist, because it encompasses all of time (the creation, fall, redemption, and second coming). I absolutely love this concept and I’m sure it’s a familiar experience to us all.
GOD HAS GIVEN us Himself in Christ and by Christ we enter bold confidence in the Sanctuary (cf. Heb. 10:19-25). Through Christ, we step into eternity where the manifest presence of God dwells and we step outside of this temporal world. Yes, this does happen in arduous mystical experiences, but it also happens by the simple turning of the heart completely over to God: when we offer ourselves completely to the God-who-gave-Himself-completely-to-us. There is no time in God (for example, His sacrifice is continually effectual) and in the Eucharist we experience a foretaste of that eternal, heavenly banquet.
+++ +++ +++
NOW, OF COURSE, what does this all have to do with loneliness or with doubts about significance?
SINCE TIME DOES not exist in the Eucharist, there is no yesterday or tomorrow, only now (a now so wide that it encompasses both). In the Eucharist we see not only who we used to be (in confession and forgiveness), who we are (“solace and strength” for the day) and who we will be (“and bring us to your heavenly country . . .”). More importantly than all of this, we begin to see ourselves from the eternal perspective, as God sees us. In that we see that Christ is the sole goal of all our lives (“through Him, with Him, and in Him . . .”) and not the trappings of our so-called-sanctified life (appearances and successes among them).
IN THAT TIMELESS celebration we are reminded that we are children of God incapable of being forgotten by Him on whose palm we are inscribed. The fracture of the world by sin and death no longer holds any dominion for us who are new citizens of that new Reality where all things remain as one. Since there is no time, there is “no bearing of its sons away.” There is no parting, no separation, and no forgetfulness, for it is the celebration of one family united across time and space. For those few intense moments, it becomes clear that the Church is one and Jesus is her bridegroom in this foretaste of the heavenly supper.
AND THIS IS why the celebration of the Eucharist (Mass, Communion, the Lord’s Supper, whatever you call it) is so important to the Christian life. It reorients our perspective from the kingdom of the world to the Kingdom of God, where none is forgotten and significance is found in Christ alone. It causes us to remember Christ and in so doing, remember each other in the proper way. Anything else we experience with our encounter with Eucharist (with the risen Christ) is vanity.
“Time, like an ever-rolling stream, bears all her sons away;
They fly forgotten like a dream dies at the opening day.
O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come,
Be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.”
--Isaac Watts (paraphrase of Psalm 90:1-5).
Dear Friends, Mentors, and Benefactors,
DOWN A DEAD-END and graffiti-ed street lies a group home for the mentally ill. A few weeks ago, the entire occupants of this house (including many parishioners of Holy Comforter) moved to this dismal location, amidst boarded-up Churches, broken-down houses, and gnarled sidewalks. They all moved seemingly in the dark of night, with little word to the Church of their new location. After a week of phone calls and wrangling with managers, we finally got an address. Unfortunately, this new location was out-of-reach of our fleet of vans, so many of them have not been able to come to the services of the Eucharist or to the Friendship Center. They lie there, seemingly forgotten by all.
ONCE WE RECEIVED an address, we decided to add the new location to our Friday rotation of visitations. Yesterday morning, a CPE Intern and I made our way to the home, excited about seeing our people who we haven’t seen in a few weeks. As we turned down that wretched street, we saw four people (all parishioners) sitting on the front porch. As soon as they could make out who was in the car, smiles immediately registered on their faces and they pointed at us with joy.
TO SAY THAT they were overjoyed would be an understatement: hugs were given with delightful abandonment; compliments were said freely (I was called “beautiful” several times); and questions quickly came about how everyone is doing at Holy Comforter. It was heartening as they missed us and we missed them; it was like a family reunion. It was also disheartening at the same time, however, as we realized what was the painful loneliness they were experiencing on that dead-end street in that dead-end neighborhood.
+++ +++ +++
IN THE MORNINGS, I walk through Grant Park to get to my bus stop. It is a rather pleasant walk surrounded joggers and those going to work. I have only my thoughts and the silence of birdsong to keep me company before the Georgia heat zaps me in the middle of the day. But when I am especially tired, the voice of doubt follows me on my journey: “Andy,” is speaks irritably, “do you know what you’re doing? Do you think you’re actually doing something? Do you think this work has any significance?” I used to fight that voice and say that the service of God has eternal significance for the souls who will be saved.
NOWADAYS, HOWEVER, I do not argue with the voice, but I quote scripture to it. “Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun (Ecclesiastes 2:11).”
“I DON’T KNOW,” I speak to that voice, “If this work has any significance. I’m not here for significance - in whatever form that takes. I’m here because I’m called to be here: nothing more, nothing less. Attachment to significance is vanity, so get thee behind me!”
AND IT LEAVES for awhile, just as quick as the thought came in.
+++ +++ +++
I’VE BEEN READING Alexander Schmeman as of late. He is an Orthodox Liturgical Theologian, who looks at the ways that the Church worships and what our worship tells us about the nature of God and the Kingdom. In his Introduction to Liturgical Theology, Schmeman writes that time does not exist in the service of Eucharist, because it encompasses all of time (the creation, fall, redemption, and second coming). I absolutely love this concept and I’m sure it’s a familiar experience to us all.
GOD HAS GIVEN us Himself in Christ and by Christ we enter bold confidence in the Sanctuary (cf. Heb. 10:19-25). Through Christ, we step into eternity where the manifest presence of God dwells and we step outside of this temporal world. Yes, this does happen in arduous mystical experiences, but it also happens by the simple turning of the heart completely over to God: when we offer ourselves completely to the God-who-gave-Himself-completely-to-us. There is no time in God (for example, His sacrifice is continually effectual) and in the Eucharist we experience a foretaste of that eternal, heavenly banquet.
+++ +++ +++
NOW, OF COURSE, what does this all have to do with loneliness or with doubts about significance?
SINCE TIME DOES not exist in the Eucharist, there is no yesterday or tomorrow, only now (a now so wide that it encompasses both). In the Eucharist we see not only who we used to be (in confession and forgiveness), who we are (“solace and strength” for the day) and who we will be (“and bring us to your heavenly country . . .”). More importantly than all of this, we begin to see ourselves from the eternal perspective, as God sees us. In that we see that Christ is the sole goal of all our lives (“through Him, with Him, and in Him . . .”) and not the trappings of our so-called-sanctified life (appearances and successes among them).
IN THAT TIMELESS celebration we are reminded that we are children of God incapable of being forgotten by Him on whose palm we are inscribed. The fracture of the world by sin and death no longer holds any dominion for us who are new citizens of that new Reality where all things remain as one. Since there is no time, there is “no bearing of its sons away.” There is no parting, no separation, and no forgetfulness, for it is the celebration of one family united across time and space. For those few intense moments, it becomes clear that the Church is one and Jesus is her bridegroom in this foretaste of the heavenly supper.
AND THIS IS why the celebration of the Eucharist (Mass, Communion, the Lord’s Supper, whatever you call it) is so important to the Christian life. It reorients our perspective from the kingdom of the world to the Kingdom of God, where none is forgotten and significance is found in Christ alone. It causes us to remember Christ and in so doing, remember each other in the proper way. Anything else we experience with our encounter with Eucharist (with the risen Christ) is vanity.