Showing posts with label Sabbatical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sabbatical. Show all posts
Thursday, May 9, 2013
From May 2: Writing as a Sacramental Gift
Dear People of Christ Church,
This Sunday, we welcome Bishop Gayle Harris, so we'll have just one service at 10am to greet her. After the service, she'll stay for a short congregational meeting, so please bring your questions. Finally, before departing for her next visit (at Good Shepherd, Watertown), she'll meet with the vestry. Bishop Gayle has visited several times over the near-eight years I've been at Christ Church, notably at the blessing of our front altar, installed in 2006 in memory of Robert Hughes, Sr.
Later this Sunday afternoon (at 3), I hope you'll join me at Bethany House of Prayer in Arlington for a poetry reading. Alex at Back Pages Books here in Waltham helped me publish the work I did on sabbatical (with our own Kristin Harvey's cover design), and I'm part of Bethany's "Spring Celebration of Poetry and Art." I will read with another poet, Sandy Stott, who works with the Thoreau Farm and chairs the English Department at Concord Academy. Art by Rev. Judith Clark will also be on view.
I'm excited, and nervous-I picked up my books from the printer this morning (Ashes/What Remains will be for sale for $10.00, first at the opening and later at Back Pages and online). Seeing everything out in black and white makes it seem so real. I know I wrote the poems-I stared down blank pages and an empty computer screen all fall. But something about poetry more than prose, seems so vulnerable-it's all me on the page, my joy and my anxiety, my sense of blessing and my sense of lack. I can't take it back. "Ordinary" writing feels much safer; one wrong word out of 500 is less risky than one wrong choice out of 40. And, of course, poetry isn't for everyone. It's ok not to "get it"-just slow down long enough to see if you can get something. The title, "Ashes/What remains" is an allusion to the idea that the life of faith involves a certain stripping away, trying to get at what's most important. Sabbatical time is Sabbath time: abstaining from traditional work, you can't hide from yourself anymore with all of those crucial tasks. Staring down into not-doing can feel awfully close to staring down into not-being, which is terrifying, and certainly the reason so many of us are so busy all the time.
What came up for me at the center are my deeper vocations-of being a priest and a parent. I recently got my kids' names tattooed in a half-sleeve of my upper right arm (along with some birds and flowers, as children are wont to do it took up more space than I'd planned), which I jokingly called my "mommy tattoo"-some of these are definitely mommy poems. And they are all priest poems. Writing as a sacramental gift; when we celebrate the Eucharist, we take very ordinary things and ask God to come into them, to make Christ alive and to feed us with his body. In my poems, I feel something similar; I'm taking very ordinary things-a sibling squabble, a bird staring at a pond-and asking them to translate God's presence in the world. I see the heron; she lets me recognize my instability, inviting me to be quiet and still. I see my kids complaining at each other; they show me all the traps of self-absorption and scapegoating we never seem to grow out of. A fair number of "first world problems" are catalogued in there, too. Packing school lunches is a drag, but it beats no lunch at all.
So come! And buy the book...though a few of the poems are already on my blog, and you can see them there for free.
Blessings,
Sara+
Thursday, March 7, 2013
From March 7: Remembering Uganda and Tanzania
Dear People of Christ Church,
Looking out at the snow, I'm getting ready for the presentation I'll share after church this Sunday about my sabbatical trip to Africa. Three months ago at this time, I was sitting in a cinderblock church in Kizara, Tanzania. I was one of about 20 at the altar-twelve other priests and two bishops, plus six altar servers-and the only woman. But what a glorious day. It took us six hours to drive up the Usambara mountains to the tiny village of Kizara, where the Massachusetts-based Friends of Tanzania had helped to fund the construction of a health center. I was there with Bishop Shaw and a constellation of other clergy and lay people from home to bless it and celebrate the new care that would be available to people in that very remote part of the world.
Our group left on December 2, all of our bags loaded down with candy, bubbles, and school supplies (many donated by YOU!) to share with the children we would meet. I felt some uneasiness in appearing suddenly as strangers with candy-on the face of it, pretty useless-but after spending some time with people I felt less angst and more... fun. After all, Jesus didn't turn water into a nutritious wheat grass soy shake-he turned it into wine. Doing the hokey pokey with our lollipops in a churchyard in Kasese, Uganda while children's parents went for HIV testing and younger siblings were vaccinated was definitely a Cana moment. Love is an international language-apparently also refined sugar.
Our trip was divided into two parts-one week in Tanzania hosted by the Anglican Diocese of Tanga and five days (not counting travel time) in Kasese, Uganda, hosted by the Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation. We landed at the airport in Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and drove to Korogwe, the home of the Diocesan offices, where our task was to visit parishes and build relationships between Tanzania and Massachusetts. The Anglican Church in Tanzania has good British Oxford Movement roots and is correspondingly high church, so Bishop Shaw and Bishop Maimbo blessed the health center that day in fine form with cope and miter on a rainy, 80 degree day. We blessed a lot of things on the trip-swing sets, a kindergarten classroom, sewing machines, hospital rooms-there was such an embodied sense of God's generosity and celebration.
Our time in Tanzania was all church. The next week, our Uganda visit was all mission. Bishop Masereka has visited our diocese several times (and has preached here and at St Peter's), so I thought I had some sense of what they do-I was wrong. It's nearly impossible to convey just with words the astonishing difference the Foundation makes in the lives of the people of Kasese.
The Foundation's work is divided between health care and education. Our diocesan collaborative campaign (to which Christ Church has so far given about $35,000 through our Together Now pledges-yay!) has supported the construction of a new and Jubilee Funds have supported the education program as well. Their health work is currently done out of their health center and mobile clinic (which reaches those who can't or won't come to their offices). With a 15% rate of HIV infection among adults in Kasese, the district is home to 15,000 to 20,000 orphans. Funding school is hard enough (the fees for primary school are about $400 a year, depending on whether in includes room and board), but for kids without a stable home situation, it's next to impossible. In the education program, sponsored students are given 360 degrees of support-from tuition and fees to books to girls' menstrual products-there is no barrier left standing between these dedicated students and their education. Students come from families where one or both parents have died from HIV, or are themselves positive or otherwise vulnerable. BMCF supports 611 children, more than 50% of whom don't live with a parent. Ann Nyangoma and her staff spare nothing in their efforts to keep kids in school, but financial barriers are another question-there are always more kids who need help.
What was most amazing-and there were a lot of amazing things on that trip-was how much confidence I came out of it in the work that's being done. I really believe that the Diocese of Tanga is going to follow through on their "Vision 2025" plan to expand accountability in their organizations and clergy support through their parishes. I really believe that fewer kids will drop out of school, that fewer mothers will pass HIV on to their babies. We saw a lot of struggle, but also a lot of hope.
This Sunday after our 10 am service, I'll share more about our trip. For our international Easter collection this year, the Vestry has decided to send our support to the Masereka Foundation's Children's Program, so I hope you'll choose to give generously. Last year's "Creole Pig" collection for Haiti gathered about $800-about enough for two kids to attend school for a year. Do you think we could go for $1200 and get three kids enrolled?
Hear more on Sunday.
blessings,
Sara+
p.s. I blogged all the steamy (literally steamy-hot and rainy season steamy) details at my blog --click on "Tanzania and Uganda." You can also read more about the ministries in Tanzania at Friends of Tanzania/Tanga
See also:
The Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation
The Anglican Diocese of Tanga
Looking out at the snow, I'm getting ready for the presentation I'll share after church this Sunday about my sabbatical trip to Africa. Three months ago at this time, I was sitting in a cinderblock church in Kizara, Tanzania. I was one of about 20 at the altar-twelve other priests and two bishops, plus six altar servers-and the only woman. But what a glorious day. It took us six hours to drive up the Usambara mountains to the tiny village of Kizara, where the Massachusetts-based Friends of Tanzania had helped to fund the construction of a health center. I was there with Bishop Shaw and a constellation of other clergy and lay people from home to bless it and celebrate the new care that would be available to people in that very remote part of the world.
Our group left on December 2, all of our bags loaded down with candy, bubbles, and school supplies (many donated by YOU!) to share with the children we would meet. I felt some uneasiness in appearing suddenly as strangers with candy-on the face of it, pretty useless-but after spending some time with people I felt less angst and more... fun. After all, Jesus didn't turn water into a nutritious wheat grass soy shake-he turned it into wine. Doing the hokey pokey with our lollipops in a churchyard in Kasese, Uganda while children's parents went for HIV testing and younger siblings were vaccinated was definitely a Cana moment. Love is an international language-apparently also refined sugar.
Our trip was divided into two parts-one week in Tanzania hosted by the Anglican Diocese of Tanga and five days (not counting travel time) in Kasese, Uganda, hosted by the Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation. We landed at the airport in Mt Kilimanjaro, Tanzania, and drove to Korogwe, the home of the Diocesan offices, where our task was to visit parishes and build relationships between Tanzania and Massachusetts. The Anglican Church in Tanzania has good British Oxford Movement roots and is correspondingly high church, so Bishop Shaw and Bishop Maimbo blessed the health center that day in fine form with cope and miter on a rainy, 80 degree day. We blessed a lot of things on the trip-swing sets, a kindergarten classroom, sewing machines, hospital rooms-there was such an embodied sense of God's generosity and celebration.
Our time in Tanzania was all church. The next week, our Uganda visit was all mission. Bishop Masereka has visited our diocese several times (and has preached here and at St Peter's), so I thought I had some sense of what they do-I was wrong. It's nearly impossible to convey just with words the astonishing difference the Foundation makes in the lives of the people of Kasese.
The Foundation's work is divided between health care and education. Our diocesan collaborative campaign (to which Christ Church has so far given about $35,000 through our Together Now pledges-yay!) has supported the construction of a new and Jubilee Funds have supported the education program as well. Their health work is currently done out of their health center and mobile clinic (which reaches those who can't or won't come to their offices). With a 15% rate of HIV infection among adults in Kasese, the district is home to 15,000 to 20,000 orphans. Funding school is hard enough (the fees for primary school are about $400 a year, depending on whether in includes room and board), but for kids without a stable home situation, it's next to impossible. In the education program, sponsored students are given 360 degrees of support-from tuition and fees to books to girls' menstrual products-there is no barrier left standing between these dedicated students and their education. Students come from families where one or both parents have died from HIV, or are themselves positive or otherwise vulnerable. BMCF supports 611 children, more than 50% of whom don't live with a parent. Ann Nyangoma and her staff spare nothing in their efforts to keep kids in school, but financial barriers are another question-there are always more kids who need help.
What was most amazing-and there were a lot of amazing things on that trip-was how much confidence I came out of it in the work that's being done. I really believe that the Diocese of Tanga is going to follow through on their "Vision 2025" plan to expand accountability in their organizations and clergy support through their parishes. I really believe that fewer kids will drop out of school, that fewer mothers will pass HIV on to their babies. We saw a lot of struggle, but also a lot of hope.
This Sunday after our 10 am service, I'll share more about our trip. For our international Easter collection this year, the Vestry has decided to send our support to the Masereka Foundation's Children's Program, so I hope you'll choose to give generously. Last year's "Creole Pig" collection for Haiti gathered about $800-about enough for two kids to attend school for a year. Do you think we could go for $1200 and get three kids enrolled?
Hear more on Sunday.
blessings,
Sara+
p.s. I blogged all the steamy (literally steamy-hot and rainy season steamy) details at my blog --click on "Tanzania and Uganda." You can also read more about the ministries in Tanzania at Friends of Tanzania/Tanga
See also:
The Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation
The Anglican Diocese of Tanga
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
From 12 20: The Christmas Moment
Dear People of Christ Church,
It's so nice to be back writing to you, particularly knowing how well things have gone in my absence! I am so thankful to Rev. Norm Faramelli for holding down the fort, and to Sharon in the office for managing everything so smoothly behind the scenes. And there are not enough thanks and blessings for Jonathan, your senior warden, Victoria, and all the vestry! At the root of it all is my gratitude to God for all the ways God has made this such a strong church and to each of you who make it what it is. Since it's the end of the year, I also offer thanks to those who have made financial pledges for 2013-get those cards in!
So what have I been up to?
My initial goals were writing poetry and singing, and for September, November, and December, I was immersed in those projects. I met with teachers affiliated with Bethany House of Prayer (for poetry) and Episcopal Divinity School (for singing), and have collected a few things I've written which hopefully soon will reach the light of day and into a readable form. I attended church on Sundays with my family at Grace Church, Medford, where Noah is the rector, and sang in the choir there, which was so much fun. So. Much. Fun. I was happy to see many of you when I came to church on December 2 before taking off for Africa. My trip to Tanzania and Uganda was amazing-beautiful, heartbreaking, fascinating-the adjectives continue. I wrote and posted pictures whenever I had internet access at my personal blog- www.saraiwrites.blogspot.com -and you're welcome to take a look.
Finally, Christmas. Throughout my time in Africa, my thoughts returned often to all the hustle and bustle that must have been taking place at home, none of which was evident where I was. I did, however, see Christmas everywhere. Why Christmas? Because Christmas is the time when we look to God, most ultimate power of the universe, born in powerlessness.
In this Christmas moment, God has chosen the weakest possible place to show us who God is. At Christmas we learn that God will always go to the place of the least power. God will go to the kids we met in Tanzania who have no access to health care within 100 miles. God will go to the Ugandan teenager whose parents have died of AIDS and whose grandmother is dying too and can't take care of her. To the twelve year old who doesn't have enough food and gets dizzy from his HIV medicine. To the fifteen year old who has become the head of her household and goes out to sell charcoal before school.
To Newtown, and to all victims of gun violence. To the new immigrant struggling to learn English and the elder who stretches to make ends meet by the end of the month. To the gay teenager coming out to his parents, unsure of how they will react. All of those places of weakness and struggle are where God will be born. All of those people will not be abandoned. God will be born, too, in places of justice-making. Where Ann Nyangoma, the director of the education program we visited offers comprehensive family support and school tuition to sponsored students. Where Bishop Maimbo of the Anglican Diocese of Tanzania helps his parishes start microcredit programs and build capacity for local hospitals. Where the Community Day Center of Waltham offers a refuge from the street. All of these are images of Christmas, where a different vision of power comes to be. Not the power of wealth or influence, but the power of vulnerability and love.
There is nothing wrong with presents at Christmas. But that version of giving isn't the whole story. Christmas isn't just about giving. It's about being changed, top to bottom, and bringing that change into the streets. Celebrating the birth of God born in a truly marginal place-among people who are oppressed, who society turns away from-how will we be moved? How will we turn away from imaginary conflicts over public displays of religion and look at where God can actually be found?
How will we hear what God asks of us, and how will we respond?
Blessings,
Sara+
p.s. Visit www.maserekafoundation.org for more on the group we spent time with in Uganda; my
blog is at www.saraiwrites.blogspot.com
It's so nice to be back writing to you, particularly knowing how well things have gone in my absence! I am so thankful to Rev. Norm Faramelli for holding down the fort, and to Sharon in the office for managing everything so smoothly behind the scenes. And there are not enough thanks and blessings for Jonathan, your senior warden, Victoria, and all the vestry! At the root of it all is my gratitude to God for all the ways God has made this such a strong church and to each of you who make it what it is. Since it's the end of the year, I also offer thanks to those who have made financial pledges for 2013-get those cards in!
So what have I been up to?
My initial goals were writing poetry and singing, and for September, November, and December, I was immersed in those projects. I met with teachers affiliated with Bethany House of Prayer (for poetry) and Episcopal Divinity School (for singing), and have collected a few things I've written which hopefully soon will reach the light of day and into a readable form. I attended church on Sundays with my family at Grace Church, Medford, where Noah is the rector, and sang in the choir there, which was so much fun. So. Much. Fun. I was happy to see many of you when I came to church on December 2 before taking off for Africa. My trip to Tanzania and Uganda was amazing-beautiful, heartbreaking, fascinating-the adjectives continue. I wrote and posted pictures whenever I had internet access at my personal blog- www.saraiwrites.blogspot.com -and you're welcome to take a look.
Finally, Christmas. Throughout my time in Africa, my thoughts returned often to all the hustle and bustle that must have been taking place at home, none of which was evident where I was. I did, however, see Christmas everywhere. Why Christmas? Because Christmas is the time when we look to God, most ultimate power of the universe, born in powerlessness.
In this Christmas moment, God has chosen the weakest possible place to show us who God is. At Christmas we learn that God will always go to the place of the least power. God will go to the kids we met in Tanzania who have no access to health care within 100 miles. God will go to the Ugandan teenager whose parents have died of AIDS and whose grandmother is dying too and can't take care of her. To the twelve year old who doesn't have enough food and gets dizzy from his HIV medicine. To the fifteen year old who has become the head of her household and goes out to sell charcoal before school.
To Newtown, and to all victims of gun violence. To the new immigrant struggling to learn English and the elder who stretches to make ends meet by the end of the month. To the gay teenager coming out to his parents, unsure of how they will react. All of those places of weakness and struggle are where God will be born. All of those people will not be abandoned. God will be born, too, in places of justice-making. Where Ann Nyangoma, the director of the education program we visited offers comprehensive family support and school tuition to sponsored students. Where Bishop Maimbo of the Anglican Diocese of Tanzania helps his parishes start microcredit programs and build capacity for local hospitals. Where the Community Day Center of Waltham offers a refuge from the street. All of these are images of Christmas, where a different vision of power comes to be. Not the power of wealth or influence, but the power of vulnerability and love.
There is nothing wrong with presents at Christmas. But that version of giving isn't the whole story. Christmas isn't just about giving. It's about being changed, top to bottom, and bringing that change into the streets. Celebrating the birth of God born in a truly marginal place-among people who are oppressed, who society turns away from-how will we be moved? How will we turn away from imaginary conflicts over public displays of religion and look at where God can actually be found?
How will we hear what God asks of us, and how will we respond?
Blessings,
Sara+
p.s. Visit www.maserekafoundation.org for more on the group we spent time with in Uganda; my
blog is at www.saraiwrites.blogspot.com
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