Be Still and Know

Do you ever wish for silence? Do you ever want to have some time for yourself? Time to put everything aside, to shove away the deadlines, the distractions of life, or the worries of family? Time to become closer to God, to hear His voice? Time to focus on what God’s thoughts and desires are for you and your family?

In our daily lives, finding a time of quiet, God-centered time can be challenging. We are pulled in so many different directions with job pressures, deadlines, family, and friends that finding a moment to slow down can be difficult, and usually, it is the last thing we have on our minds. We think if we slowed down, we wouldn’t get everything done. We wouldn’t have that time with friends or with family. We wouldn’t make that deadline if we didn’t send that email now. So, we keep going, keep running until we are done, overly tired and too spent to meet with God. The stress and tension of our lives builds with each day of the week and, over time, can exhaust us. Spending time with the Lord is one of the most precious and refreshing things you can do in your entire day. The God of the universe wants to speak to you, wants to whisper to your heart. However, He has a hard time doing that when we won’t take the time to stop and listen.

Finding a quiet place inside your home is not always easy; it is sometimes hard to create a space for just you and God. On Sunday afternoons, there are two services that can create a time away from life for you to connect with God. These hours are for you to set aside everything in your life for a short span of time to listen to God, to hear God speak, to lift up your worries and your praises to God.

Once a month, our magnificent choirs offer an exquisite and ethereal choral Evensong. This sung service of canticles and prayers, along with the aroma of incense, can give you the space to hear God’s voice. Come and listen to the prayers of Mary and Simeon, the psalms of David, and the spoken word of God. Let God speak through those timeless words. Then lift up your needs, your worries, your fears, your praises, and your thanksgivings to the Lord. He will hear them and reach down and touch your heart. At the Sanctuary service, this hour is filled with serene stillness, soft peace, beautiful music, atmospheric incense, and glowing candles. It is a time for you to take yourself away from the world and focus your attention on the Most High God. When you come to this time with Him, bring a journal, bring your Bible, bring your prayers, bring an open heart, bring your praises, bring your hopes and dreams. Let the silence and music wash over you as you reveal your heart to God. He will hold it and quietly speak to it.  

Whatever you bring to Evensong or Sanctuary, during the stillness and music, let your heart get in tune with the Almighty. He will meet you there; He is ready to whisper to your heart.

Gifts from Children

     Through the months of June up until now, many gifts have been tossed my way by children.  Shall I heed their lessons in my life or let them pass me by as “merely childish stuff?”  Here are just a few:

• ·         If I sit long enough with a spider web while the sun is bright, I can see sparkles.  It is magical.
• ·         A baby discovered his smile and the laughter that sprang from his depths.  As he continued to exercise this discovery, I too began to laugh.  I could no longer focus on anything other than pure joy.  My capacity for love grew.  Perhaps laughter is a gift to cultivate more of – and every day.
• ·         A really good story never grows old.  No matter how many new books a child receives, the old tattered ones are still the go to books.  How about that story of the Good Shepherd?  It never grows old and there is always something new there.
• ·         Playing in the sand and dirt can be exhilarating – the dirtier you get the better!  I forget this sometimes.  Every now and then a good dirty day in the garden does more for me than most anything.  Somehow I feel closer to the creator on a day like this…
• ·         It can hurt deep inside to see a bird that has fallen from a tree and has died.  One should not just walk by but stay there in silence and wonder.  We are connected with the living world – we must honor and respect it.
• ·         Over and over I see how the gift of the imagination can carry us deeper into truths that sustain us.  I do wonder why so many adults shut the door on this gift.

     Thank God for the young children in our midst at Christ Church Cathedral.  As adults live together with children, we can learn how to wonder, live in the present, see beauty, and take time.  Have you ever really thought that children could be spiritual guides for adults?  I know that they are – my life is surrounded by them and this is where profound growth has been gifted to me.

     Children also need adults as spiritual guides.  We provide safe space and a language in which to make meaning.  Jerome Berryman, the founder of Godly Play says that as Christians, we are always learning Christian as a second language.  Children and adults do this together.

     The cathedral is gearing up for a new year.  Rooms are being prepared, teachers are planning, back packs will be blessed this Sunday, forum classes are being formed.  We are all in this together.  This year, make it a point to listen to the children in our midst.  Yes, they are cute but they are way more than cute.  If you listen deeply, you will learn.  You will be blessed.

Pilgrimage: a journey of spiritual significance.

Some years ago, I had the privilege of hearing Ruby Sales speak in Atlanta. Ruby, an African American, spoke about her experience at the age of 17 of being saved by Jonathan Daniels, a white Episcopal seminary student. They and others had been arrested 6 days earlier in Ft. Deposit, Alabama for picketing a “whites only” store. The 1964 Civil Rights Act had outlawed this type of segregation. When released from the jail in Hayneville, Alabama on August 20, 1965 they went to a nearby store to buy sodas. They were approached by a “special deputy,” Tom Coleman, who was wielding a shotgun. Coleman aimed for Ruby, but Jonathan pulled her out of the way and was killed instantly. Father Richard Morrisroe, a priest from Chicago, was also shot and seriously wounded.

Despite being severely traumatized, and also receiving death threats, Ruby testified against Coleman in the trial. An all white jury acquitted Coleman. Of this verdict, the Attorney General of Alabama, Richmond Flowers, Sr., said that the verdict epitomized “the democratic process going down the drain of irrationality, bigotry and improper law enforcement.”

When Martin Luther King, Jr. heard of Jonathan’s murder he said, “…one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.” Jonathan was designated a martyr by the Episcopal Church. We remember his selfless acts of sacrifice on August 14, the day he was arrested and jailed. In the letters and papers Jonathan left, he wrote: “…The faith with which I went to Selma has not changed: it has grown…I began to know in my bones and sinews that I had been truly baptized into the Lord’s death and resurrection…with them, the black men and white men, with all life in him whose Name is above all the names that the races and nations shout… We are indelibly and unspeakably one.”

On Sunday, August 16 Christ Church Cathedral members and friends will make a pilgrimage to the Abbey of Gethsemani where 3 bronze statues (created by sculptor Walker Hancock), commemorating Jonathan’s death are located. Please join us on this, the 50^th anniversary of Jonathan’s death, as we recall his sacrifice. We will gather at 11:30 a.m. in the Great Hall of Christ Church Cathedral for lunch (bring your own lunch), and then leave for Gethsemani at noon.

Postscript: Ruby Sales eventually went to Episcopal Divinity School, Jonathan’s seminary. Although she decided to not become formally ordained, Ruby continues to work for racial equality, justice and peace as founder and director of The Spirithouse Project, Atlanta, Georgia.

Peace be with you,

The Reverend Brent Owens