Rector's Study October 2009

From the Rector's Study ~

“Ours was a life lived in paradise and thus it rendered any discussion of transcendental ideas pointless. …death was something similar to recycling.” So writes author Douglas Coupland in his novel Life After God. Fiction though it is, it is autobiographically reflective. He continues, “Life was charmed but without politics or religion. It was the life of children of the children of the pioneers – life after God – a life of earthly salvation on the edge of heaven. Perhaps this is the finest to which we may aspire, the life of peace, the blurring between dream life and real life – and yet I find myself speaking these words with a sense of doubt. ”

Few authors have expressed as well as this the spiritual life of many of the people emerging into adulthood in the wider community all around us here at ECR. Few authors have so well articulated the deep need among people today for a community like ours here at ECR, and for the good news about God that has made us who we are. Few communities like our own so well express God’s Love and so wonderfully celebrate the opportunity to connect other people with it, as do we.


You’ll see elsewhere in this edition of our parish newsletter the Radiant Cross the names of some of the good folks finding their way to their place with ECR. Maybe some identify with Coupland’s lament, or may be not so much. In any case, we all identify with the great blessings, with the joys that we find in the sense of belonging here. We find spiritual encouragement; we find social connection and fellowship; we find edifying knowledge of God’s Word; we find inspiring ways that the Living Word expresses its Holy Self to us and through us here at ECR. And we find a unique grace and gratification in recognizing someone else’s discovery here of their connection with God.

In the coming weeks I hope to focus ECR on creating opportunities for us to experience this grace more frequently. Ministry groups will be incorporating into their ministries active follow-up with guests and visitors. Just adding a few more voices other than my own to after-Sunday outreach to following up with our guests, visitors, and people still new to the rhythm of life here at ECR will help folks begin to experience this community more immediately; and that can only be a good thing. I’ll provide some training and guidance. However, it’s important for all of us to realize that following up with guests and new members and friends is not a complicated program, but a natural instinct that only needs to be set free.

Especially here at ECR, this instinct to connect with the stranger to offer them our friendship and friendship with God is indeed natural. Our efforts as creating more intentional follow up is largely training ourselves to set aside those less natural habits of, for example, ‘respecting someone’s privacy’ by waiting for them to call, as if…. Or assuming that someone new here will properly digest the wealth of information that we provide people in our newsletter, the Mid-Week, and the announcements, and then take the initiative to act on it. The information is helpful, no doubt; but what matters most is the human connection; because God doesn’t move into people’s lives through information. God moves through God’s people. God connects with people through the connection that you and I make with them.

How wonderful is that! It’s even more so when we consider how deeply-felt is the need for God in the lives of people around us, the people whom God wants to connect with, people with whom wants us to connect for their sake, God’s sake, and our own. Coupland writes about stepping into a cold mountain stream and the roar of the water rushing by. In the midst of the moment, he reflects further: “I think there was a trade-off somewhere along the line. I think the price we paid for our golden life was an inability to fully believe in love; instead we gained an irony that scorched everything it touched. And I wonder if this irony is the price we paid for the loss of God.”

All around us are people who, like Coupland, believe that God is lost to them. All around us are people who know somehow that they need God to find them. “Now – here is my secret,” writes Coupland. “I tell you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again,…my secret is that I need God – that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need to God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.”

All around us are people to whom you and I are moving, people whom you and I are welcoming in, and going out to serve, to invite to a connection with God and ourselves. “I submerge myself in the pool completely,” Coupland writes; “…, and yet, even here, I hear the roar of the water, the roar [like that] of clapping hands. These hands – the hands that care, the hands that mold; the hands that touch the lips, the lips that speak the words - the words that tell us we are whole.”

All around us people are wanting a connection with God. Thanks be to God that your hands and mine, your words and mine, our care, our touch, our love and God’s are right here providing it in this community of ECR, as, by God’s grace, few others can.

God’s Peace.
Jim +