Has happens sometimes, though probably not as often as it should, I have been finding myself in a place of deep and broad reflection these past few months. Some of that reflection has made its way to my preaching and in messages to the parish. This is from the message I wrote for our parish newsletter on April 16, 2025.

This is not a new, groundbreaking, or original thought, though it is one that bears mentioning in this time when so much is happening in the world that it can make it difficult to figure out how to live one’s faith with integrity and authenticity. It’s a timely reminder as we journey through Holy Week.

Our understanding of time is not the same as God’s. We perceive of time in a linear fashion. We have this moment and then the next after that and the next…The moments in the past are over and we cannot go back and change anything. The best we can do is to be in the present moment and do our best from there, which is not always easy or comfortable, especially if we feel any regret or guilt or sadness about what has passed.

God’s time is not linear. God’s time is the fullness of all that was and is and is to be. And as much promise as that holds for those who believe we will one day experience the fulfillment of God’s dream for the world, that there will be a day when love prevails and there is no more suffering or brokenness, we are reminded each and every day that the day is not yet here. We may even wonder if we are moving in the wrong direction and if that day will ever come. It can all feel too much, too heavy a burden to carry day after day.

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Triduum, the days from the evening of Maundy Thursday through the evening of Easter Sunday. Though we experience these as three 24-hour days, liturgically they are one day. I find this quite comforting this year because it reminds me that in God’s understanding of time the betrayal and the suffering and all the worst that human beings can and do to each other do not even interrupt God’s deep desire to save us from ourselves, to heal our brokenness and redeem our sinfulness. And that gives me hope for all the moments yet to be.

This reflection is based on a homily I preached at Heath Village on April 1st. The lectionary included the parable of what is often called “The Prodigal Son.” You can read the parable here.

The parable in the Gospel we just heard is pretty well known, so much so that even people who may not have read it themselves or heard it read or preached about in church, know and use the phrase “prodigal son.” That’s because it is often referred to as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” or “The Prodigal Son and his Brother.” That’s how I learned it as a child in both the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal Churches, though it was only as I got older and, I hope wiser, that I realized that referring to it in that way colored how I heard and understood the story. Reading about the “prodigal ” son, I expected to encounter a “bad” son, though I’m not sure that I ever truly parsed what “bad” meant, other than someone who had not behaved well. Those expectations were affirmed when I read that he “squandered his wealth in dissolute living, ” as it says in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

With those expectations, the younger son was someone who somehow took advantage of his father’s generosity and then deserted the family, abandoning his responsibilities, to live the high life. When his fortunes took a turn for the worse and he had no other options, he sheepishly returned to his family, not asking to be treated in the way he thought a member of the family would be treated, but “only” as good as the laborers they employed. Was it any wonder that his older brother, the presumptive heir to the family’s wealth (whatever they may have been) and the one who lived by the rules, doing what was expected of him, was bitter and resentful when his father opened his arms to welcome his feckless little brother home?

I remember the first time I heard it referred to as “The Lost Son Returns,” even though I couldn’t tell you exactly when or where that was. If I had to guess, I would say it was in an adult Bible study or from an article in Christian Century or a similar publication. The point is that I entered into the story differently when I expected to hear about a lost son returning to his family than I did when I expected to hear about a son who was “prodigal,” i.e. someone who was reckless or who spent lavishly and extravagently, with the implication of carelessness or lack of judgment.

Hearing the younger brother characterized as “lost” changed my expectations and shifted my perception. I remember feeling empathy and compassion for the younger brother. Who hasn’t exercised bad judgment or felt lost in one way or another. How much strength did it take to acknowledge the consequences of those bad decisions and realize that the only option was to go back and ask for some grace? And what’s with the older brother that he can’t even consider that he might need similar grace some day or, even worse, that he can’t remember the time in was in a similar situation, even if the circumstances were much different? Wasn’t he even a little bit relieved that he no longer had to shoulder the full responsibility for helping his father? Or was it all about his sense of entitlement to his father’s estate?

Now imagine hearing this story referred to in this way: “The Parable of God’s Unconditional Love.” I literally lost my breath for a moment when I read this story the other day and heard myself say out loud, “It’s about God’s unconditional love.” What a liberating experience to shift from trying to figure who’s the good son and who’s the bad son, and to wonder if the father really was duped by the younger son and was oblivious to the impact on the older son. How freeing to not have to take sides, to find a winner and a loser, or to see only black and white when there are so many colors in between?

Doesn’t it change so much to expect to hear a story of God’s unconditional love? To accept the truth that God loves us so deeply that God will stop at nothing to show us how much, as God did in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and all the years of Jesus’ life in between? To know that no matter how reckless we are, how bad our judgment, how far we stray, how bitter and resentful we might be, if we turn to find God, God will be there. And to know that God won’t be waiting in the distance to see if we’re really serious and will put in the effort to get to where we need to be, but will come to meet us where we are? To accept that God loves us so unconditionally, that all we have to do is turn to God and God will come running with open arms so that we know who and whose we are?

What a relief and a blessing to read this parable in this season of deep reflection and repentance, and to hear God’s voice saying, “I love you, just as you are, so turn and come home to me.”

If you observe liturgical seasons, you likely know that we are in the Season of Epiphany, which began on January 6^th, the day in which we commemorate the arrival of the magi from the East. It is the season in which we focus on the ways in which Christ is manifest in the world.

I started thinking about this during a recent service.  We gathered with the hymn, Once in royal David’s city before moving on to the bidding prayer.  For some reason, one word in the fourth verse of the hymn caught my attention.  That word was pattern, as in “For he is our lifelong pattern.”  And then, just a few short minutes later, I read this: 

And because he particularly loves them, let us remember in his name the poor and helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed, the sick and those who mourn, the lonely and unloved, the aged and little children, as well as those who do not know and love the Lord Jesus Christ.

I was struck by how much good we can do when we see Jesus not just as the Christ to be worshiped in our prayers and in our church services, but as the one whose earthly life should be the one after which we pattern our own lives, each and every day.   Can you imagine how different the world would be if all people in a position to help in any way remembered Jesus’ particular love for those in any kind of need?  And, lest you think this is just a liberal-leaning priest speaking, there is a decades old body of theology of Jesus’ “preferential option for the poor” that is a foundational principle in liberation theology.  This theology did not spring out of thin air but, rather, from a deep reading of the Gospels in which Jesus’ radical love and hospitality were repeatedly extended to the poor and marginalized, while those with the resources of wealth, power, privilege, and authority were pretty directly reminded of their obligation to love their neighbor by using those assets for the good of those in need.

So, what does it mean to understand Christ as manifest in the world?   And what does it mean specifically for us as we live our faith in 2025?

The second question is the easiest of the two to answer, and, if answered well, leads us to the answer to the first question.  We followers of Jesus are to fashion our lives after his earthly life, which means living the commandment to love one another as we have been loved in ways that make a real difference to real people in our communities and beyond.  In doing that, we show others what being loved by Jesus can do to make the world a kinder, gentler place in which all people have what they need to thrive, and no one feels entitled to have so much that there isn’t enough for others. 

The manifestation of Christ in the world does not consider the accumulation of wealth and power as the ultimate success. We will be truly successful when the world’s resources are not considered to be the property of any person or group to be used to for their own benefit or the benefit of a select few, but when those who have the drive, skills, and connections to build wealth actively work to ensure that the world’s resources are used to ensure that all people have what they need to thrive and no one lacks shelter, food, education, or safety. We will be a beacon of the manifestation of Christ in the world when all people – no exceptions – are valued as beloved of God, and their lives and work are never a means to a better end for some other people.

This is a newsletter message sent to my congregation in February 2020. I came across it today and, for some reason, decided to post it here as a reflection.

Beloved Community,

Brother, Give Us a Word – Revelation, by Br. Geoffrey Tristam, SSJE

“God creates with love and tenderness and in God’s image. The imprint of God’s very hand – the divine potter – is on everything he created. This intimacy between creator and created is very important, because the created world – the trees and flowers and birds, the sunshine – even the snow! – have the power to reveal God to us.”

When I was in college – I can’t remember if it was my first or second year – I took a pottery course.  Although longer than 40 years ago, I still remember so much about it.   The art building was in an old barn on the beautiful, hilly campus in the Berkshires, surrounded by wonderful expressions of God’s grace in creation.  I remember walking the paths from my dorm to the barn.  I feel the crunch of the gravel beneath my feet.  I see the structure – a traditional New England barn, wooden and red, with large doors that were inviting me to enter. I feel the warmth of the space on the chilly days and the warm welcoming feel of the hard wood interior that did not feel at all cold or harsh.  I see the warm lights of the space beckoning me back after dusk for some time of comforting quiet.

The feel of the clay is like nothing else I’ve ever experienced.  At first solid- hard even- it gradually becomes more pliable as it is worked with a bit of water.  It has a smell, too, which I realized many years later while visiting family in northeast Texas is of the earth.  And the messy process of molding and shaping, of sometimes pounding the clay down to begin all over again, is one that I found deeply meditative.  More than a few times since those days I’ve thought working with clay is something I might like to do more of, though I’ve yet to make the time to do it.

Reading Br. Geoffrey’s words this week brought all of these memories flooding back.  With the wisdom of hindsight and of many more years, I realize that this one course did more for me than satisfy a requirement for an elective. It showed me something of the beauty and power of creation in hands that are not divine.  It makes more grateful each and every day for the divine potter, who reveals so much more than a teenage girl’s somewhat clumsy attempts to create something beautiful.

Copyright 2022 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

That question, the last two lines of Mary Oliver’s “The Summer Day”, is one of the best questions ever asked. It is a question that both compels and defies an answer. How can anyone of us know with certainty that what we plan to do in one moment or one period of time will be what we plan to do with our whole life? Sure, there are those things – marry, have children, travel, go to seminary, buy a beach house, etc. – that are plans we can make and then achieve. There are those things, sometimes even the marrying, having children, traveling, going to seminary, buying a beach house, etc., that aren’t actually plans made in advance but more responses to opportunities that present themselves.

What strikes me when I hear Oliver’s question and think about the kinds of plans we make is that often our responses do not answer the bigger question, the question Oliver seems to be asking in this poem: How do you plan to live into the fullness of who you were created to be? Or, asked another way: How do you envision living as your best self and reflection of the image of God within you?

No matter how we frame the question, no matter the specific language we use, the question essentially is one of discernment, a.k.a. listening for the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to your life. One of the best ways I know to do that is to take some time – some planned, intentional time – to do some listening. For many of us, summer is a good time to do that because the rhythms of our daily lives change in ways that offer space and time. I encourage you to try to avoid filling all the “empty” space in the calendar with activity. Instead, redefine this time to be “Spirit’s” time or “listening” time or sabbath or retreat time or whatever works to remind you that Oliver’s question is an important one, important on more levels and in more ways than I can articulate in this message.

I’ve got some of this kind of time planned this summer. I’ll be at Cross Roads Camp the week of July 10th. I’ll be chaplain for the first week of summer camp, which is a gift of spiritual renewal and time to listen, as well as fun and worship with the campers and staff. I’ll be away from August 16th to September 6th, which is both some vacation with Katie and then with Ron, Kevin, and Alex, and time on a mountainside in Golden, Colorado to pray and write, which is one of the ways I listen for the voice of the Spirit. I’ll also spend some time thinking about my sabbatical, which is tentatively scheduled for September thru November, 2024.

My hope and prayer for you is that you hear this question and find some time to respond in the ways that nurture you, body and soul.

The Summer Day by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?

Copyright 2022 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

The context: May 11th – the troubling election of a Bishop-coadjutor in the Episcopal Diocese of Florida; May 14th – hate crime/mass shooting in a grocery store in Buffalo, NY; May 20th – Senator Pelosi denied Communion because of her pro-choice stance; May 24th – mass shooting in an elementary school in Uvalde, TX; and one grieving priest/pastor/preacher/human.

I am, like so many people, exhausted. Finding a way to understand why we choose to hurt and maim and kill each other as we do is work that feels well beyond what I am capable of doing. And yet, I continue to try. I continue to try because I know that my innate Easter hope, which colors my view of the world, exists even when I have a hard time touching it. I continue to try because of my faith in God and my trust in the promises of Easter. And yet, like so many people, I am exhausted.

Though not a believer in a puppeteer God, i.e. the finder of keys and manipulator of all our actions, I spent a lot of time this morning talking with my spiritual director about why God doesn’t just give us the divine kick in the ass we seem to need so that we stop the hurting and the maiming and the killing and all the other things we do to each other that are absolutely, unequivocally contrary to the commandment to love one another as we have been, are, and will always be loved.

The other day, I happened upon Diana Butler Bass’ sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter, a day in which we hear the John’s version of the story about Thomas needing to touch Jesus’ wounds before he can believe in the resurrection. (I found it on her podcast, “The Cottage.”) It’s probably fair to say that most preachers focus on Thomas, either to assure us that the doubt we might feel is not unique to us or to admonish us to get in line like those who believe sight unseen, or maybe it’s both. But Bass doesn’t do this. The sermon is titled, “Tomb to Table,” and in it she explores place and relationship with God.

Bass questions whether our focus on Good Friday and the cross is the lens through which we should view Easter and the resurrection. She points out that the narrative arc of the days leading up to the empty tomb begin at a table, with Jesus sharing a meal with his friends. She repeatedly summarizes the movement of the story from Maundy Thursday to Easter evening when Jesus appears to Thomas and the others as “table, trial, cross, tomb, table.” The Easter story starts and ends with the table. Though there are figurative trials and crosses to bear along the way, Jesus never returns to the tomb. He never takes his friends back to place of suffering and death. It is done. Jesus meets his friends where there is life. Jesus meets his friends where there is hope. Jesus meets his friends at the table.

So now I’m thinking about “tables.” For example, there’s the water table. The water table is life-giving. We are made of water and it is the element most necessary to life. For Christians, water is the necessary physical element of baptism, i.e. new life in Christ. There’s the dinner table. The dinner table is life-sustaining. The foods we eat have a clear and direct impact on our health and well-being, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. There’s the Thanksgiving table. The Thanksgiving table often is fraught. And yet it’s a choice we make to come together in and with whatever relationships we have because we know it means more than just what it is: an occasion to overeat foods not regularly on the table with people we may not spend a whole lot of time with during the rest of the year, sometimes because relationships are downright hard. It’s a day and a way of celebrating life and blessings and all manner of good things, even when life and blessings and all manner of good things are not immediately and apparently “good.” And, for some of us, there’s the Communion Table, which is and does all of the above and more.

Beyond what ever happens in the holy mystery of the Eucharistic Celebration, there is the shared journey to the Table, to deeper relationship with God through fellowship with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is a place where all are welcome to come as they are with others who do the same because the grace and love of God supercedes all else. There is nothing we cannot bring with us, no fear, no anxiety, no exhaustion. It is a place to receive solace and strength, pardon and renewal, and to be reminded that none of us is alone in this life, even when we feel most lonely and afraid, most worn down and exhausted. It is a place to be both fully who we are and who we strive to be.

The Table is a place to meet Jesus and to be reminded that the hurting and the maiming and the killing will not have the last word. It is a place of hope. It is a place of grace. It is a place of Love. It is God’s Table, to which all are invited and where all are welcome.

The Table is a place I go to be reminded that I am exhausted because I care, because I trust, because I choose to show up, because I know I am loved and want to love others well. It is a place where even exhaustion and grief can be transformed. It is a place I go to find the strength and the courage and whatever else I need to be able to act, to do my part to realize God’s dream for God’s world.

Copyright 2022 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

Just a few moments ago, when I logged on to upload my Easter sermons, I came across this post in my drafts. I began the post last April, and had a working title of “Injustices grow like this virus”. For some reason I don’t recall, I didn’t finish it then. I’m guessing from this incomplete sentence : “As I read or hear about the assaults on people who either are or are presumed to be Chinese” that I wrote in response to one of the stories I heard about Asian people being targeted or something then-President Trump said about the “Chinese virus.” I’ll never know. I’m publishing it today because some of the underlying message seems to hold true still, though where I find myself in terms of any kind of conclusion is a bit different. If you read on, you’ll see where I land today and perhaps it will resonate with you.

April 16, 2020: This morning as I was online praying with my parish and others, it occurred to me that one of the worst things about the corona virus is that it is more than just a breeding ground for Covid-19. As if that disease were not bad enough, this virus has shown itself to be wily, with the capacity to ensnare all manner of things in its path.

It has built into its DNA its own injustices. People fall ill. Many suffer horribly. Many die. This happens alone for so many because it is no longer safe or allowed to attend to a loved one in their illness or as they breathe their last. Relationships end with more loss than any one person should be expected to bear.

Even the still healthy struggle. Health care workers must choose between the patients they care for and their own families. Others have lost or will lose jobs and needed income. Basic necessities like food and toilet paper are scarce, if one can even get to the store. Children are stuck at home without the time with other children they need to grow and thrive.

This dastardly virus causes havoc in everyday life with the wherewithal to continue to do so for God knows how long, seemingly always at least a step ahead of the brilliant minds that study it and the courageous minds that enact the numerous and often changing responses to it. There is no justice in this. No one deserves it.

All of that is bad enough. But it doesn’t stop there.

This virus has a seemingly unmatched in our lifetime ability to sow fear and anxiety across the globe, dismissive of the boundaries of geography and resource that often protect some of us from having to live in these conditions, with these choices. That kind of privilege (which I admittedly hold because of all that accidents of birth and subsequent opportunities that make me who I am today) coupled with all of the fear and anxiety this virus feeds breeds more injustice even as we lament the sadness and loss we face, regardless of those accidents of birth.

Although typically an optimist who believes that given the chance we will do our best to be our best selves – the selves God created us to be – the news of how we behaving in this time gives me pause. I realize daily, it seems, that the anxiety and fear, the separation and loneliness, shed new light on the weaknesses of believing that we are entitled to live our own individual lives as we choose, without regard to the truth that is based in science or any care and consideration for others.

Today:

I am struck by how willing we seem to be to defer to our very real feelings of impatience, frustration, and emotional and spiritual exhaustion as we seek to find ways to return to life pre-pandemic. Even though in places such as New Jersey, where I now live and serve God’s people, the rates of infection, hospitalization, and intubation continue to rise to fourth spike levels from a plateau that was at about the same levels as the second major spike (over the summer), there is tremendous pressure from all parts of the community (though not medical professionals, as far as I know) to get back to “normal.” Restaurants, gyms, comedy clubs, and retail stores are opening up. Some churches – though not the Episcopal Diocese of Newark and my favorite, St. Stephen’s in Millburn – are open for business as usual, sometimes with smaller numbers and common sense safety precautions in place, sometimes not so much. This is happening when there is so little, if any, science to support these decisions and a good number of experts saying we need to be patient for a while longer.

I get it, I really do.

I feel cheated every day that I don’t get to gather in-person with the people I have come to love so much at St. Stephen’s. I question every day if I have what it takes to be a pastor in this physically distant, online way, while constantly wondering if any of it feels truly meaningful to those same people. All this while expressing my very real gratitude to those same people for their patience and faithfulness and to the Holy Spirit for those glimpses of grace that I experience when suddenly a new drop of creative juice seems to magically appear just when I need it most. This is a kind of emotional multi-tasking that drains energy at a rate that is hard to fathom.

I miss being able to hop on the train to NYC to see show or just hang out. I miss being able to hop in the car to go see my parents in RI or to my favorite yarn store in MA. These are things I didn’t just think about doing but was doing before March 2020. My plans with my husband about how we would take day trips to get to know NJ, our home for only a little more than a year before Covid, were wiped out. It is so unsettling to not know one’s home after 2 1/2 years.

I worry about traveling to NM in June to officiate my son Kevin’s wedding and then worry some more that Covid will wreak havoc we don’t see coming on the already smaller-than-they-would-have-liked festivities and that my worry about these things could possibly interfere with the joy I feel at officially welcoming my soon-to-be daughter-in-law Alex into the family. This worry is exhausting in and of itself because I’m not usually a chronic worrier. Do I dare hope that I will revert back to my less worried self soon or has this gone on so long that worry is now a familiar state, one of the ways in which I know myself day to day?

I get angry that this dastardly virus already has taken away so much and, more than a year in, insists that we live with uncertainty about what life will look like next week or month or year. Sadness and loss are almost constant companions, threatening to usurp the contentment that has been baseline for more years than I can remember. I find myself having to be more intentional than ever before in tapping into the underlying joy and gratitude that has grounded me for more years than I can remember, perhaps even longer than contentment has been my baseline. I long for the days when I was more aware of joy and gratitude than I was of sadness and loss or anger and frustration or worry.

So I seek the stillness.

I seek the stillness because I know that to be the place in which I best understand who and whose I am, which is the reason for the joy and gratitude in the first place. My awareness that this is also the place that nourishes my faith so that I can invite the Spirit to open me to the grace of God that is so contant and true that not even a global pandemic that feels like it has completely messed with my life cannot mess with my heart. This is the place I find hope. Hope that there will be enough of us willing to remain in this seemingly interminal in-between space of needing to find ways to regain our equilibrium and something that resembles our pre-pandemic lives, while being patient enough to let the science catch up with the ever-changing realities of this virus so that we don’t make foolish and potentially lethal choices out of our exhaustion and need. Hope in the presence of God and the companionship of the Holy Spirit.

Copyright 2021 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

I realized just today that I wrote this in April 2020 but, for whatever reason, did not hit the “Publish” button. I am publishing it now because I came across it at a time in which I am thinking about how different things are now. I’m hoping that by publishing it today, I will be more likely to post about the learnings from this time and how grateful I am that the faith and hope we held onto during the height of the pandemic carried us through and into a truly beautiful place.

There is a poem I love, “I Tremble on the Edge of a Maybe” by Ted Loder”

O God of beginnings,
as your Spirit moved
      over the face of the deep
            on the first day of creaton,
move with me now
       in my time of beginnings,
             when the air is rain-washed,
                    the bloom is on the bush,
                           and the world seems fresh
                                 and full of possibilities,
                                       and I feel ready and full.

I tremble on the edge of a maybe,
      a first time,
               a new thing,
                      a tentative start,
and the wonder of it lays its finger on my lips.

In silence, Lord,
I share now my eagerness
        and my uneasiness
               about this something different
                      I would be or do;
and I listen for your leading
       to help me separate the light
              from the darkness
                     in the change I seek to shape
                             and which is shaping me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about this poem as I go about doing the usual things that need to be done even in the midst of all the changes and restrictions in place because of the corona virus/Covid-19, while trying to figure out how to do things that have never had to be done before. For what feels like forever but has, in reality, been only a couple of months, at least some part of my day has been spent thinking about what it means to life as we know it here in this small Episcopal parish in northern New Jersey. You see, the parish I serve has a large preschool and many of the families are Chinese. The virus broke out in Wuhan during the time we were in recess and a number of families were on holiday in China, including two in Wuhan. Since the news broke, this virus has been real, it’s been up close and personal.

The past several weeks, with the onset of social distancing and the seemingly ever changing onslaught of news and governmental directives, not to mention directives from our bishop, it feels increasingly as if we are living in a giant paradox. We – the Church- are the place people come to for so many reasons in times like this and, in this particular time, they cannot physically come. Our preschool is closed. The 12-step groups we host can no longer meet. We cannot visit to provide pastoral care. Our offices are all but closed, open only to a skeleton crew that is almost never in the building at the same time and, if they are, it is with many feet between them. Our hearts break that we cannot gather for worship and fellowship on Sunday mornings. And still we are called to be the Church, the “life-giving sanctuary, where love begets love” (as this parish has been described).

We’ve been challenged to step so far beyond our comfort zones that at times it feels as if we will be forever lost. We are developing a love-hate relationship with the technology that is even more present in our lives than ever before. Even as we struggle to figure it out and find ourselves frustrated when we can’t get Zoom to connect to Facebook Live or the wifi signal lacks the stability to support consistent audio, we are grateful that it exists and enables us to be together in some way.

We are a faith-filled and Spirit-guided people with an abiding trust in God’s love and a joyful reliance on the promise that God is always present with us, that God’s wildly wonderful Spirit works in and through us at all times and in all things. And yet, as seems to be true of everybody we know, we have been anxious and afraid. We worry that we will get ill or that someone we love will get ill. We worry that we will have to say goodbye in this life to people we love and that we won’t even be able to gather together for their funerals. We worry about money and jobs and being able to buy the food we like and the toilet paper we need.

We worry and we question and we seek to experience the presence of God in all of this. We rant and we rave and we wonder if this means we are not the faithful people we think we are. We remind ourselves that the best relationships are those in which we can be truly ourselves, completely honest about how we are feeling, and then we feel better that our relationship with God has this kind of intimacy.

We live for the day we can gather together in the usual ways even as we wonder if there isn’t something about this new way of being Church that we might want to hold onto for a while. Maybe we want to stream our Sunday service even after we don’t have to, so that some of the people who joined us in this time will continue to bless our community? Maybe we will continue to check in with each other more often just because we can and we know how good it feels to have that connection? Maybe we’ll continue to pray together online at least one or twice a week? Maybe we’ll grow the personal spiritual practices so many of us have begun, rather than shed them as soon as we can gather in-person for worship and have returned to our pre-corona lives?

Maybe we’ll ask God to help us to understand how it is this time of pandemic has shaped us in ways that we need but would otherwise not have thought to discover. Maybe…

This is from the weekly newsletter at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Millburn, the January 17,2020 edition. It was suggested that I share it more widely, so I do so now with you.

There is an anthropological concept: liminality (from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold”) which is about transition, the time when what was is no longer but what is next is yet to come. It is a time of expectation, of anticipation, of hopeful uncertainty.  This is something that pertains to rites of passage, especially in cultures in which there are strong rituals to mark such times. In everyday life, some people experience liminality in challenging life experiences, such as when one is between jobs or is aware of facing end of life.

Celtic spirituality often ascribes liminality to places. In liminal spaces it is said that the veil between heaven and earth, between the Divine and creation, is lifted. The Scottish island of Iona is one such place.  People who visit feel changed, they experience transformation in their relationship with God and God’s creation.  Liminality is not limited to those places multitudes have had this experience.  A liminal space is any place or any time you know or see God in a way that changes you, that moves you deeper into the holy mysteries, deeper into the heart of God.

For me, liminal spaces have long involved bodies of water, such as the ocean or a lake, especially during sunrise or sunset.  The picture on the top left is of sunset in Matunuck, Rhode Island, one of my happy places.  The middle is sunset on Otter Lake in Greenfield, New Hampshire, home of another happy place, the Barbara C. Harris Camp & Conference Center.  The last picture is of the Glorieta Pass in Glorieta, New Mexico.  As you can see, there is no water visible anywhere, nor is there any changing light. Imagine my surprise when I repeatedly found myself looking around, marveling at the astonishing beauty of a landscape that is so unlike those that usually speak to my heart.  And yet, speak to my heart it did, at times in the way that I find myself catching my breath because I don’t want to do anything to lower the veil between heaven and earth, anything that will prevent me from going deeper, getting closer to God.

I share this with you today, not just because I still bask in the experience.  I encourage you to notice when a place or a time when you realize you are catching your breath or have goosebumps or tears in your eyes or whatever it is that signals to you that you are experience God in that moment.  And that take a few moments to bask in the experience before offering a prayer of thanksgiving and gratitude to the one who loves YOU beyond all imagination.

Copyright 2020 The Rev. Paula J. Toland

Earlier today I gathered with my diocesan clergy colleagues for the annual Renewal of Vows.  Our bishop, The Rt. Rev. Carlye Hughes, preached to us in her quintessential loving and deeply pastoral way.  She started out by talking about how much she loves being our bishop, how “delighted” she is to know all of us.  She spoke encouraging, honest words, clearly reflecting her understanding of what it is like to be in parish ministry.  Partway through the sermon she said something that caused me to gasp – audibly, perhaps.  She said, “Our job is to put ourselves in the presence of God and then let God change us.”  She went on to say that, in her experience, it is easier to “let God judge us,” but, nonetheless, that is not our job.  We are to let God work on us, in us, and through us because we are created to be doing what we do, in this particular time.

I know she said a whole lot more than that, some of which I remember, though I’m sure she will forgive me for not retaining too much of what she said after the “put ourselves in the presence of God and then let God change us” part.  When she spoke those words, which came after she first mentioned being created for ministry in this time, something in me shifted, something broke wide open.  It felt in that moment as if she were speaking directly to me, speaking about experiences I have had over the past several years, some of which she knows nothing about.

The journey toward ordained ministry, even if it goes as smoothly as it can go, does not leave one unscathed.  I’m not sure that is should.  I believe there is something about how we experience God through the dark times, the challenging times, the times we’d rather not experience if we had our druthers, that changes us in ways that bring us closer to whom it is we are created to be.

Don’t get me wrong.  I also believe that how we experience God through the mountaintop experiences, the exciting times, the uplifting times, changes us in ways that bring us closer to whom it is we are created to be.  This is true, too, in the neutral times, the more mundane times, the times we probably won’t recall in months or years.  All of it is essential because in all of it we are in the presence of the God who created us in the divine image for no other reason than love. God works on, in, and through us in all of it, whether we are aware or not. It’s just that sometimes it is easier to put ourselves -or maybe it’s that we don’t stop ourselves from wandering – into God’s presence during those times we are most aware of needing God’s help.

Parish ministry, even if it goes as smoothly as it can go, does not leave one unscathed.  This, I think, may be hard for folks who have not experienced it to understand.  How is it that a calling – doing the thing God wants or needs you to do in a particular time and place, with particular people – ever be scathing?  The short answer is that being in relationship, even with people with whom you fall deeply in love, as I have with the people I’ve served,  is hard. All of us are deeply human, even those of us in collars.  And as humans we sometimes struggle to be our best selves with each other.  It can be hard not to experience every shortcoming, every failure, every lost hope, as a personal failure. It can be hard not to move to that place of being in the presence of God for God’s judgment, rather than God’s life-giving love, when things don’t go as we or the congregation think they should.

My journey to ordained ministry included a number of challenges, some of which seemed at times to have little or nothing to do with me in particular.  Some of the challenges felt and were deeply personal. The journey to where I am today in ordained ministry included calls to two beautiful, faith-filled congregations where I served for less time than I had planned, though, in retrospect, for just the right amount of time.  I find myself now in a relatively new place, again a beautiful faith-filled congregation, and there is something about this call that seems different in ways that compel me to wonder, to unleash my curiosity in ways that feel new.

No doubt my awareness of what I have learned along the way from all of the people who have journeyed with me to this place and time has something to do with this new feeling of hopeful anticipation.  And, since this morning, I am aware that some of this change is because one of the things I have learned along the way is to go more readily into the presence of God to be changed, trusting that God’s creation of me to be in this place at this particular time is a process of creation that is ongoing and sure.