Ever since a bald eagle flew over our son and daughter-in-law’s outdoor wedding – and a friend observed that eagles are a sign of blessing – I’ve been mesmerized when an eagle soars overhead. If I hear a murder of crows squawking fiercely, I’ll search the skies for a nearby eagle.
Recently, my fascination with eagles led me to follow the Big Bear Eagle Nest Cam. Jackie and Shadow have been nurturing their two eaglets, as they grow from newly hatched little fluff balls into full-sized eagles. But the real excitement has been watching the young stars Sunny and Gizmo learn, from observing their parents and then practicing. Arranging freshly delivered sticks around the nest helped them develop nest-building and bonding skills. They tussled over fish, and they watched their parents soar overhead and sometimes fend off other birds of prey. Of course, the highlight has been their “wingercizes” as they prepare to fledge!
I was struck by the similarities between Sunny and Gizmo and Jesus’ first disciples, who observed, practiced, and learned from Jesus. The same qualities lie at the core of our call today, as we learn to live and to love like Jesus. Observing, practicing, and learning are how we learn to “fly” – that is, to reveal Christ’s love in the world. The Holy Spirit guides us, even when we falter – just as Sunny and Gizmo are encouraged by their parents. We also can look to each other for encouragement and support.
Our spiritual practices of learning and worship ground us in God. Like our eaglets’ “wingercizes,” they help us grow deeper in our faith. They strengthen us to go where God calls us: to befriend the marginalized; to feed the hungry; to house the unhoused; and to speak truth to and about power – and always with love.
Likewise, we “fledge” every week. Church is like a basecamp or a spiritual gym: It prepares us to put our faith – strengthened by our “wingercizes” – into action in our daily lives. We practice our faith with love by going out into the world to do the work that God has given us, wherever we may land.
Just a few days ago, the Christian church observed Ascension Day, commemorating the day the disciples saw the risen Christ ascend into heaven. The Western church often depicts Jesus rising like an Atlas rocket, soaring toward the heavens as though propelled by a NASA booster. The Eastern church tends to understand the Ascension less as a heavenward escape from terra firma and more as the second person of the Trinity expanding to fill the entire cosmos, infusing Christ’s presence into every atom of the universe.
In their classrooms, teachers of Catechesis of the Good Shepherd tell the Ascension story and then extinguish the Paschal candle. Lifting the snuffer from the candle, the catechist engages the children: “I wonder where the smoke goes?” and points to the dispersion of the smoke as an example.
I love the concept of the Universal Christ, the “glue” connecting all things since the Big Bang. Ascension Day prompts me to see the glory of the Lord all around me – in each person I encounter, as well as in the whole creation. The more skillful I become at glimpsing God’s glory wherever I look, the more grateful I become. I can feel the connections among all of us creatures, as I become more aware of the truth of ubuntu – an ancient African word that conveys the philosophy “I am because you are.”
I believe one reason Jesus left the disciples on that faraway hillside long ago was to widen their vision. Rather than focusing on Jesus the person, they began to see God at work in the world, in their brothers and sisters and community – and even in themselves. They sharpened their vision to see God’s glory in unexpected people and places and things. And their eyes – as well as their lives – became brighter.
John’s Gospel tells us that Jesus said, “The glory that you [Father] have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.”[1] Poet Steve Garnaas-Holmes helps us see God’s glory more clearly:
Glory “The glory that you have given me I have given them.” — John 17.22
God has given you the same glory God gives Christ. You are not created in error or failure, but in glory. God's glory shines in you. God is not served when you dismiss God's work, or dishonor the light.
Beneath the grime of our judgments, the slop and crud of our feelings, invisible even to the person themselves, is a great magnificence, humble, often lonely, yearning to be seen.
God's glory shines in everyone, in every child, in the demented curmudgeon, the strung-out addict, the convict and the executioner, and most of all in the person you meet next. Do you see it?
Like an antique dealer looking past the dust, a mother loving her child beneath the stains, learn to see as God, with eyes for glory. Seeing so will make your own eyes brighter.
Over the past several weeks I’ve been reflecting on the post-resurrection conversation between Jesus and Peter at the end of John’s gospel. Peter and some of the disciples had left the upper room in Jerusalem where Jesus had breathed the Spirit upon them, empowering and sending them to continue his ministry. But they don’t seem to have done so. Instead, they’ve returned to their former occupations as fishermen.
So, Jesus appears on the beach, makes them breakfast, and reminds Peter that it’s time for him – and the others – to do what he has sent them to do: to feed and tend his sheep.
Feeding and tending Jesus’ sheep – God’s sheep – are what all of us as Jesus’ disciples are called to do. But what does this mean today?
We’re to feed and tend the sheep Jesus puts in our path: the marginalized; the hungry; the fearful; the unloved; and refugees, to name only a few.
Certainly, we’re called to feed them in the literal sense of the word. Especially today, as food insecurity is aggravated by severe cuts to programs that provide food benefits. Food banks and school lunch programs are already experiencing severe shortages.
Yet, we’re called to feed others spiritually as well. We do this whenever we root ourselves in Christ – treating others with the respect and dignity that Jesus teaches. We feed others when we, ourselves, are fed spiritually at the eucharistic table so that we can seek and serve Christ in the world. We feed others when we invite them to join us in spiritual community.
Tending God’s sheep calls us to do more, to put ourselves between our sheep and the wolves, to stand up for the weak and vulnerable, the voiceless – or those whose voices have been silenced. We tend God’s sheep when we stand up to unjust power structures – those power structures that divide, separate, and dehumanize God’s children. We tend God’s sheep when we openly claim and proclaim the goodness that God infuses into all of creation, into all of God’s creatures and creation itself.
How will you feed and tend the sheep Jesus places in your path today?
Fred McDarrah, Untitled (Youths at Stonewall Uprising), New York, June 28, 1969
by Brandon Beck
Picture it. June 28, 1969. Greenwich Village, New York City. The Stonewall Inn. You’re drinking and dancing with your friends, your neighbors, your “chosen family.” You feel safe and seen. Everyone is here. Really everyone: the homeless kids from the park, the old men from the café, the butch in the biker vest, tall black men in big wigs and dresses, skinny white boys, Cuban dock workers, NYU professors, high femme socialites – everyone from everywhere. Even though the police come in most every night, you always know they’re coming; you always know you’ll be ok.
The owners of the bar protect you as long as you drink while you’re there, as long as you’re always bringing more people with you. And you do both of those things. There’s no place you feel so much your true self as here. The owners pay the police; the police tell the owners a raid is going to happen. The owners tell you and your friends the raid is about to happen. You and your friends line up on the wall when the police show up. Those of you who have IDs show them. The owners hide some of the liquor and turn over most of it. Those without ID go in the wagon and sit in jail for a couple hours, until the sun comes up. For some of them, it’s the first warm bed and hot meal they’ve had in a while. Every night, it’s the same. You still are in heaven when you’re at The Stonewall Inn.
It’s June 28, 1969. Barely. It was midnight just an hour ago. You only got here maybe half an hour before that. You’re not even drunk yet. You just met this super cute boy. (Is this his first time coming here?) You and Marsha P. Johnson had a drink together. The Daughters of Bilitis are hanging out in their corner of the room, and you see two of the elder members of The Mattachine Society dancing in the middle of the floor. A group of young teens have just come in the front door. The youngest, you guess, is maybe 14, and he is beautiful in his long wig, tight bell bottoms, and sequin tube top. You and your new friend are talking to the old queens while taking a break from dancing when the floodlights come on. (No warning this time?) Dozens of police rush in. You see one of your favorite Daughters of Bilitis members shoved against the wall and handcuffed roughly. You notice Marsha duck out the front door before anyone can check her ID. The homeless kids are loaded into a wagon before you have a chance to even understand what’s going on. The front windows shatter suddenly. You scream.
This raid in the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, led to a riotous response from the LGBTQiA+ community in Greenwich Village that lasted from June 28 until July 3, 1969. Even though protesting, picketing, and rioting for LGBTQiA+ rights began before The Stonewall Inn riot, this particular riot changed the course of LGBTQiA+ history significantly, and we celebrate its significance now with Pride parades, services, prayers, and celebrations worldwide.
The Stonewall Inn started out in 1930 as a speakeasy down on Seventh Avenue. As early as the 1930s, Greenwich Village was an LGBTQiA+ neighborhood, and by the 1960s the concentration of LGBTQiA+ residents had moved westward, centering on Christopher Street. Since 1934, The Stonewall Inn had been operating as a restaurant in its “new” location on Christopher Street. In 1966, four members of The Genovese Family (a famous mafia family founded by Lucky Luciano) bought The Stonewall Inn. In 1967, those four – “Fat Tony” Luria, Zookie Zarfas, Tony the Sniff, and Joey – reopened The Stonewall Inn as a private club for gay men in order to capitalize on the people in the neighborhood. As mafiosos, “Fat Tony” and friends knew that they could extract extra profit from the clientele of this new iteration of The Stonewall Inn by offering them protection, as New York state law prohibited bars from having a liquor license if they were distributing alcohol to gay men – being gay in public was “indecent”; being gay and drunk in public was “disorderly.” The mafia bribed police while running private gay clubs to capitalize on this inhumanity.
The Episcopal Church “strives for justice and peace among all people, and respects the dignity of every human being.” (BCP 305) Now, that doesn’t mean we’re first or best at justice, peace, and dignity, but it does mean that we have made headway and continue to make progress.
Whether people knew it at the time or not, we were at The Stonewall Inn in late June and early July, 1969. The Rev. John Moody, a priest at Trinity Church Wall Street, remembers being Episcopal, clergy, and gay at Stonewall in 1969 in his video of remembrance.
In 2019, for the 50th anniversary of The Stonewall Riots, Episcopal News Service interviewed Rev. John and two other Episcopalians who witnessed the riots first-hand.
Just yesterday, in rural Texas, my wife and I encountered something unexpected even for rural Texas. Seeing it is what led me to begin reflecting on how good it is to think on the little progresses and to remember that we are all striving for more.
In a convenience store, we found a little substation of the local Sheriff’s office – a booth operated by one man. It was adjacent to the women’s restroom. Affixed to the door of the little office was a sign. My wife dragged me out pretty quickly, but the sign said something to the effect of “We’re watching you. Only women in this restroom. Trans not allowed.” Should I have thrown a brick through the window? Should I call the Transgender Law Center? Should I pray for justice? Should I let it go? How many times did these same thoughts go through the minds of the people at The Stonewall Inn until enough was enough?
I do know that the next best thing I can do (and I encourage you to join me) is to join the webinar on Friday, May 23, at 1pm ET titled “The Episcopal Church in Conversation With: the Rev. Cameron Partridge of TransEpiscopal.” This is part of a webinar series in which “we must remember what is at the root of our engagement with our faith, each other, and creation … .with Episcopalians across our small but mighty church…a casual but substantive interview style program with the faithful in our midst.” The Rev. Cameron Partridge (he/him) is an openly trans and genderqueer Episcopal priest, theologian, spouse, and dad of two middle and high school aged children. Register Here!
Then, I’ll be tuning in on June 1 at 6pm ET for Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe’s livestream service from the Episcopal Church Center chapel during which he will bless all upcoming Episcopal Pride events and participants. Join on Facebook or YouTube, with a recording available afterward.
Here at Church of Reconciliation in San Antonio, TX, we’ll host a Pride Eve service and join the San Antonio Pride Parade June 27 and 28, and we are so grateful we’ll be going into this Pride season with Presiding Bishop Rowe’s blessing.
And in the words of Henri-Frederic Amiel: “Life is short. We don’t have much time to gladden the hearts of those who walk this way with us. So, be swift to love and make haste to be kind.”
Everyone is here at The Stonewall Inn.
Amen.
For further resources – LGBTQ+ in the Church: LGBTQ+ – The Episcopal Church (Aaron Scott, Staff Office for Gender Justice)
Nearly 50 years ago, a Roman Catholic archbishop told his flock,
“How beautiful will be the day when all the baptized understand that their work, their job, is a priestly work, that just as I celebrate Mass at this altar, so each carpenter celebrates Mass at his workbench, and each metalworker, each professional, each doctor with the scalpel, the market woman at her stand, is performing a priestly office! How many cabdrivers, I know, listen to this message there in their cabs: you are a priest at the wheel, my friend, if your work with honesty, consecrating that taxi of yours to God, bearing a message of peace and love to the passengers who ride in your cab.” – Oscar Romero, Nov. 20, 1977
Fletcher Lowe, a colleague and a co-founder of Partners for Baptismal Living, frequently quoted Martin Luther: “When you wash your face, remember your baptism.” He longed for each Christian to be reminded every day that their baptism inspires and equips them to live their baptismal promises:
continue in the apostles’ teaching and the prayers;
persevere in resisting evil;
proclaim God’s Good News by word and example;
seek and serve Christ in all persons; and
strive for justice and peace, loving your neighbor as yourself.
A few years ago, Adam Hamilton, pastor of a large Methodist Church in Leawood, KS, asked each member to hang a laminated tag in their shower. As they showered, they were to pray the words on it:
Lord, as I enter the water to bathe,
I remember my baptism.
Wash me again by your grace,
Fill me with your Spirit,
Renew my soul.
I pray that I might live as your child today
And honor you in all that I do. Amen.
Eastertide offers us 50 days to practice. What reminder might you use to claim your baptismal promises? How might you remember each day to claim your identity: “Child of God, beloved and called”? How might we grow every day in recognizing the calling God has placed on our lives?
A priest I know recently attended a meeting of local business leaders who were struggling to comprehend the many changes that are being thrust upon our nation. The meeting included an elected official who was also struggling for answers and how to respond in such times. The leaders conveyed a sense of hopelessness, pondering where to find hope. Then, they turned to the priest and said that the church was their only hope. This took place in a blue city in the heart of the “none zone.” Their message was that the church is our only hope.
When we focus on our baptismal promises, as Episcopalians we often focus on the three action-oriented promises – especially in these challenging times as we advocate on behalf of so many who are being increasingly marginalized and ostracized. We are actively striving to proclaim the Good News of the Jesus of the Beatitudes, especially in response to the loud voices of Christian Nationalists.
Yet, our first promise at baptism calls us to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. This promise is about worship. As Demi Prentiss wrote in her blog last week, this promise points to being rooted in Christ. And we can’t be rooted in Christ if we aren’t engaged in worship.
Communal worship matters because it helps us learn about Jesus. It helps us pattern our lives after him. We encounter Christ in the sacraments and hear the stories of God’s profound love for us in the scriptures. We offer our thanks and praise to God. Our souls respond to the Holy One.
We can’t respond to our second baptismal promise – to persevere in resisting evil and to repent and return to the Lord whenever we fall into sin – without faithful worship in community. Corporate worship inspires us to love and to good deeds – and to become inspired ourselves. It keeps us accountable to God and to one another.
Worship is also a form of resistance that pushes against the status quo. Worship transforms what could be fleeting hope from mere wishful thinking to something concrete and sustaining. And worship transforms us into agents of God’s hope to go forth into the world.
What a glorious vision of what takes place at every baptism, and even at the four yearly occasions when Episcopalians renew our baptismal covenant (Feast of the Baptism of our Lord, Easter, Pentecost, and All Saints’ Day): “Rooted in the very life of Christ.” Like the tree planted by the water, we recognize that we are sustained by the Word of God (Jesus Christ, especially as revealed in scripture) and the water that represents God’s sustaining love, bathing us at all times and in all places.
The opening quote above was written by Mark S.B. Docken, a 1982 graduate of Luther Seminary, in a reflection on Psalm 1. To offer more context:
….[T]here was a severe drought when I served in northeast Montana, and the Big Muddy went dry. Nevertheless, the cottonwoods were sustained by the subterranean moisture invisible to the eye. When we encounter the arid times of depression, oppression, loneliness, ill-health, and grief, we trust that God will sustain us even when we cannot sense it. For in the water and the Word of baptism, we have been rooted into the very life of Christ. “It is not I who lives, but Christ who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20). We trust that God is an ever-flowing stream of justice, unconditional love, and blessing.
Each day, each hour, each minute we are immersed in the blessing of being rooted in Christ. Our challenge is to claim and proclaim it, by living into our identity as members of Christ’s Body.
Sister Wendy Beckett, SNDdeN (25 February 1930 – 26 December 2018), well-known Catholic nun, hermit, teacher, and art historian is my Lenten guide this year. Among the many videos, TV series, books, and other media Sister Wendy produced in her life, two books stand out to me for such a time as Lent: The Art of Lent: A painting a day from Ash Wednesday to Easter (SPCK: London, 2017) and The Art of Holy Week & Easter: Meditations on the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus (SPCK: London, 2021, posthumous).
Recently, I was asked “to recall a time when [I] came to respect the dignity of another human being [and to share w]hat allowed that to happen.”
How divine that God should give me Sister Wendy’s Lenten and Easter books as guides while also asking me this discernment question.
I wonder how you might answer the prompt for yourself, what you might recall of such a transformational moment in your own life.
As I am walking with Sister Wendy this season, I find that I cannot pinpoint the moment I came to respect the dignity of another until I reflect on the moment I came to respect my own dignity.
I struggle by using words when words are not necessary. I speak to fill silence, over-intellectualize, info-dump, and people-please with mimicry and excessive explanation. At times, I can be inauthentic, raising my own feelings of inadequacy and subsequent lack of self-respect.
Lent has become a time for me to practice a better way of thinking, feeling, and acting toward myself. I focus more deeply on drawing near to God through silence, pause, listening, and taking on perspectives other than my own.
If I can improve my conscious contact with God through seeing myself more as God sees me –with dignity and respect – then I can see others more as God sees them, with that same dignity and respect. With those clearer lenses, I can perform fewer of those overcompensating behaviors, thus reducing my shame cycle.
Woman with a pink (1665-69) Rembrandt, The Met 5th Ave, G616
Here’s just one example of how Sister Wendy is helping me.
The First Sunday of Lent, Sister Wendy themes Silence. For Monday of that first week, she reflects on Profound silence using Rembrandt’s Woman with a pink (1665-69). She says, “The capacity for silence – a deep, creative awareness of one’s inner truth – is what distinguishes us as human.”
Sister Wendy says of Rembrandt’s Woman, “she is explicitly encountering the mystery of being human.”
And that’s the key for me: simply encounter the mystery of being human. In the silence of the streets of New York City surrounded by the crowds rushing by; on the edge of the Grand Canyon surrounded by skunks, squirrels, and moose; holding the hand of my beloved; not doing, when yesterday I would have done.
Let me find my own inner silence and let the mystery be.
How Full is Your Bucket Is the title of a book I read years ago for professional development.Authors Tom Rath and Donald Clifton’s premise is that each of us has an invisible “bucket,” and each interaction with another person can help fill our “bucket” by making us feel more valued, more positive. Conversely, when we say or do negative things, we diminish other people and ourselves. Those interactions affect our physical health; our mental health; our productivity; and even our longevity.
Each of us also has an invisible “dipper.” When we use that dipper to fill other people’s buckets – by saying or doing things to increase their positive emotions and energy[1] – not only do we fill their buckets, but we also fill our own bucket.
I was reminded of this book on the first Sunday in Lent when we read in Luke’s Gospel that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit as he is led in the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. It’s no surprise that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. After all, he’s just been baptized in the Jordan River by John the Baptist and anointed by the Holy Spirit. He’s also been affirmed as God’s beloved Son, with whom God is well-pleased. As Jesus fasts for 40 days in the wilderness, the devil keeps trying to empty Jesus’ bucket by tempting him.
At baptism, we, too, are anointed and affirmed. We’re sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own – forever. Our buckets are full. They’re full of the Holy Spirit. They’re full of love – because God created us in love and for love.
Every day, throughout the course of our lives, each of us has multiple opportunities to fill someone else’s bucket – or to dip from it. Each such encounter is a choice. We can fill someone’s bucket, or we can dip from it. We do this by choosing to be loving and kind – especially in the face of adversity and even cruelty. By choosing to be kind we can profoundly shape our relationships, our health, and our spiritual well-being. This Lent, I’m choosing a daily practice of kindness. And I invite you to join me in this practice, as together we spread Christ’s love in a way that just might offer hope and healing to our hurting world.
[1] Tom Rath and Donald Clifton, PhD. How Full is Your Bucket (New York: Gallup Press, 2004), 15.
by Edward Lee [From his parish’s daily 2025 Lenten Reflections written by parishioners]
And when Jesus saw that he [the scribe] answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” Mark 12:34
And what was the scribe’s wise answer? A paraphrase of what Jesus had declared earlier when the scribe asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus’s reply, drawn from Hebrew scripture: “The first commandment is this: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is the only Lord. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these.”
I am a “cradle Episcopalian” from birth (1934) and baptism (1935), all the way to becoming a bishop (1989). I am steeped in the language and liturgies of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) the many texts of which have informed and nurtured my life as a disciple of Jesus, the Christ. And probably none more so than the above passage. For centuries it has been referred to as Jesus’s “Summary of the Law” with the “shall nots” of the Ten Commandments firmly echoing in mind and memory. In the current BCP it is incorporated in the text of “A Penitential Order” that can precede celebrations of the Eucharist. The emphasis in both contexts is on personal contrition, confession, repentance, amendment of life, and pardon; the getting our lives right with God, and therefore closer to God’s kingdom. Let’s be clear, it is a basic and faith-tested practice of Christian spirituality and discipleship. And still is when it comes to serious soul-searching.
However, over the years I’ve come to realize it is also a spirituality and discipleship for Christian community: how we relate to each other and our neighbors as deemed and demonstrated by Jesus; and live in the whole world that God with/in Jesus has “so loved,” and not just the church.
For me the operative biblical word is Covenant with a capital C. It’s about a holy relationship that is mutual and reciprocal, initiated by God in Christ, but beckoning us, even wanting us, to come and be nearer to God’s kingdom with all our capacities of heart, soul, mind, and strength, and not only our contrite confessions and repentance. It’s a radical hope and dare by God. Dare we reciprocate and embrace it?
The sacramental sign and action of this Covenant is Holy Baptism (BCP, p. 299ff) by which we are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own for ever.” Yes, marked for ever. This Lent let’s think, reflect, and pray about that holy claim on our lives. It can be risky, but I suspect we won’t get much closer to God’s kingdom if only we would let ourselves.
Living God's Mission 