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Dear Members and friends of Redeemer,

How good it is to center down! To sit quietly and see one’s self pass by!

Things in motion stay in motion. That is Newton’s first law, and most days it is also a fair description of our lives. One thing leads to the next. A meeting ends and another begins. We move from task to task without asking how we got there, or where we are actually headed. Our minds race, turning over things beyond our control. Motion, once started, does not require our attention. It simply continues, until something disturbs it.

The streets of our minds seethe with endless traffic; our spirits resound with clashing, noisy silences.

Howard Thurman, in his prayer “How Good to Center Down!,” found in his book Meditations of the Heart, understood this at a cellular level. That single line has outlived the page it was written on. It has lived in my head for years now, uninvited and unpaid, the way certain lines of scripture and certain hymns do. It surfaces at odd hours. I think it keeps coming back because it names a hunger most of us carry and rarely name ourselves. It resonates even more now, after a couple of weeks away, wondering how to carry that same quiet back into the ordinary run of days.

Something deep within hungers and thirsts for the still moment and the resting lull.

We are entering a new season. The literal kind, as summer thins out and the program or school year gathers itself for another run. And the other kind too, the metaphorical turning that a change of season always invites, whether we ask for it or not. New seasons are, if we let them be, an outside force. They can be the thing that disturbs our motion long enough for us to notice we were moving at all.

We look at ourselves in this waiting moment–the kinds of people we are. The questions persist. What are we doing with our lives?–what are the motives that order our days?

To center down is not a technique. It is not a five-minute exercise to fit between appointments, though it might begin there. It is something closer to attention. Awareness. A willingness to stop long enough to ask what is happening in us, underneath the motion, in the interior life that the pace of a new season has little patience for.

Where is my treasure, and what do I love most in life?

I do not have a program to offer here, no three steps toward stillness. Thurman did not offer one either. He simply named the good of the thing and let that be enough. But I do encourage you to carry this prayer as a spiritual practice in its own right.

Our spirits refreshed, and we move back into the traffic of our daily round with the peace of the Eternal in our step. How good it is to center down!

So here is the question I keep returning to as this new season opens. What would it take, this week, to be disturbed enough to stop?

Blessings,

Keith+

Quotations are from Howard Thurman, “How Good to Center Down!,” Meditations of the Heart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953, 1981, 2022)

There has been an extraordinary outpouring of grief and affection around the world at the news of Dolly Parton’s death. Dolly sang and sparkled her way across God’s creation, spreading light and love wherever she went.

For me, Dolly’s magic and music are woven into childhood. Growing up in rural Kentucky in the 1970s, I remember hearing her songs on the radio and watching her television show, delighted to hear an accent on TV much like my own. I sang along with “Love Is Like a Butterfly” and remember the words with which she closed each show: “I hope life treats you kind … I wish for you joy and lots of happiness, but above all this, I wish you love.”

Dolly understood something about love that Christians understand as central to our faith: love is not something we keep for ourselves. It is something we give away. Her kindness and generosity were as well-known as her music. She used the extraordinary gifts she had been given not simply to make a life for herself, but to make life better for other people.

Perhaps nowhere is that more beautifully expressed than in her devotion to children. Although Dolly never had children of her own, she devoted much of her life to helping children discover the joy and possibility that books can open up. Through her Imagination Library, children receive a free, carefully selected book every month from birth until age 5. To date, over 300 million books have been given to children around the world.

During the isolation of the pandemic, many of us also remember “Goodnight with Dolly,” when she read bedtime stories to children from her own home. At a time when so much of the world felt frightening and uncertain, Dolly offered something wonderfully simple: a story, a little tenderness, a familiar voice. She reminded us that sometimes what we need most is someone to say, “Everything will be all right” — not because it is all right, but because we need the reassurance that someone cares.

Her nephew, Brian Seaver, said in the family announcement that Dolly had “lived in the light.” There is something deeply theological in those words. Dolly spoke openly about her faith in Jesus and took to heart his call to us to “Let your light shine before others.” She surely didn’t hide her light under a bushel!

Perhaps Jesus’ call and Dolly’s example are invitations to remember that the light we carry was never meant to belong to us alone. Whatever gifts God has given us — our voices, our creativity, our time, our resources, our ability to listen, our capacity to welcome a child or encourage a neighbor — we are all called to let those gifts become light for someone else.

What light has God given you and where is God inviting you to share it?

Maybe it is by reading a book to a child. Maybe it is by volunteering at Redeemer or around town. Maybe it is by encouraging someone whose dreams have grown dim. Maybe it is by offering laughter, generosity, compassion, or simply your presence and prayers.

Dolly sang, sparkled, dreamed, and gave. May we, too, carry the light forward.

“But above all this, I wish you love.”

Anna

Earlier this month I had an opportunity to visit the September 11 Memorial and Museum. It was my first time being there in person since the twin reflecting pools and museum had been completed. Being there, in that space, brought back a flood of memories, feelings, and relationships. I stood still, closed my eyes, and held it all. I remembered that Tuesday morning during my sophomore year of high school, overhearing classmates talk about the accident and then standing in the hallway with what felt like the whole school just watching the news in disbelief as we realized this was no accident. I can still remember the prayer service we held in “The Hollow,” the large rolling field on our campus. I remember listening to the radio on the drive home and realizing that everyone around me was listening to the same exact broadcast, all of us in shock. Do you remember that day?

Standing in that space, I also remembered and held the people who I know were there on that Tuesday morning, those who survived and those who were lost. I recalled the stories of the man in the red bandana, Fr. Mychal Judge, the passengers on the planes, people at work in their offices, bartenders preparing for the lunch crowd, firefighters and police and transit workers running into danger to help. I remembered the iconic image of President Bush standing in Ground Zero, megaphone in hand and arm over a firefighter. Complex and clear emotions welling up. Hold them all.

From the September 11 Memorial and Museum I went to St. Paul’s Chapel, an Episcopal church to the east of Ground Zero, just across the street. Somehow St. Paul’s withstood the blasts and destruction of that morning. Somehow it stood, seemingly unscathed. But because of its closeness to the destruction, suffering and pain, St. Paul’s quickly became a place of refuge, rest, and regrouping for the hundreds, if not thousands, of first responders and rescue teams, helpers all, who would come running to offer whatever they could in the hours, weeks, months that followed. You can still see the scars that the church carries from holding them.

Less than a block south of Ground Zero is O’Hara’s Irish Pub. Though the blasts and destruction shattered the north-facing windows and awnings of the pub, the interior remained sound and intact. As the story goes, the pub staff rushed to open their doors that morning. They cleared the rubble and opened the tap lines to create a much-needed watering hole, community hub, and well of renewal for many of the same first responders and rescue teams, helpers all. As more and more teams of firefighters, police, military personnel, EMT’s, etc. poured into Manhattan, seeking to offer whatever help they could, they would all stop into O’Hara’s. On leaving to return home, after doing what they could, they would leave their unit or team patch at O’Hara’s. Today just about every inch of the interior walls and ceiling is covered by these patches. Literally thousands of teams who came to help found a bit of relief in the pub, and you can see them there, nailed to the walls, a simple gesture of gratitude that O’Hara’s held them.

As we approach the 25th Anniversary of that Tuesday morning, my consciousness of the day is fuller. Knowing now about St. Paul’s and O’Hara’s, having seen the scars and the patches that they carry to this day, I am holding even more light, together with the darkness of that day. It strikes me that in a moment of such darkness, people chose light. They chose it immediately and without delay. And it continues to make a difference.

I know that these are just two examples among thousands, if not millions. Two communities among many that immediately chose to be light. They stand for me as a reminder and hopefully a conviction for myself. Because, believe it or not, there’s still plenty of darkness. Though it may not be as extremely clear as September 11th, it still deals death and destruction. And I hope that when I encounter darkness, I can do what I can to be light. I hope that our Redeemer family can continue to be light when we encounter darkness– whether it’s in our own history as a parish, in our families or our own hearts, in our communities, our neighborhoods, our city, and our country.

Where do you see light? How do you hold light? How can you be light?

And remember, There is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it. –Amanda Gorman

Love,

Josh

Where were you and what were you doing, 20 years ago?

In August 2006, two of my clergy colleagues were in college: Keith starting his freshman year, and Josh, his senior year, while also working as a bouncer at Swallow at the Hollow. Anna was working for Sprint/Nextel and discerning a call to ordained ministry in the Diocese of Southern Virginia. David was in Washington, D.C., serving as the Head of the Upper School at St. Albans School. I, like Josh, was here in Baltimore, directing a summer and after school program at Living Classrooms Foundation, and discerning a call to ordained ministry, like Anna.

What about you? Where were you, and what were you doing, 20 years ago?

And 20 years ago, we held our first contemporary music service here at Redeemer.

Back then, it was called “Faith Under Construction”, and its tagline was “Rooted. Relevant. Real.” They first began meeting weekly in the Parish Hall, using a PowerPoint slide presentation instead of a bulletin.

As Robert Chrystal, our director of contemporary music, who was invited back then by associate rector Rev. Chuck Messer to lead the music, remembers:

“The service was much more free-flowing than the Faith@Five liturgy we know today. Selected elements of the Episcopal liturgy were used, particularly the Eucharist, but even that was abridged. Contemporary music and a willingness to experiment were central to this new Saturday community.”

Over the past 20 years, the service has changed and grown. We now worship in the church (and sometimes, in the chapel) not the Parish Hall, and we use bulletins and not a PowerPoint. Our Connections Choir, in addition to singing at our Saturday services, will also lead sing-a-longs with Robert from time to time after the service, featuring different styles of music (like Gospel) or the music of different artists (like the Beatles).

The ethos and spirit of Faith@Five continues to be “come as you are”. Clergy typically don’t vest when we serve at 5 p.m. on Saturdays; the environment is low-key and informal. And so often, at that time of day, the light streaming in through the stained-glass window behind the altar is just stunning, filling the sacred space with an ethereal glow.

Here at Redeemer, whether you come at 5 p.m. Saturday, or at 8 a.m. or 10 a.m. on Sunday, during the announcements and before communion, you will hear one of the clergy say, “This is God’s table. Wherever you are on your journey of faith, you are welcome.”

I imagine over the past 20 years, you too have changed and grown. I imagine you have celebrated joys and endured heartbreak and loss. Know that wherever you are on your journey of faith, and whatever roads you have traveled, you are indeed welcome here at Redeemer.

Love,
Cristina

Dear Folks,

“The boundary of sleep is an ocean, [and] our dreams the waves that interconnect [us],” writes Edward Bruce Bynum in “Families and the Interpretation of Dreams,” which offers particularly good news in these balkanized times. Even if we are divided in our waking lives, the realm of the collective unconscious unites us. Indeed, the work of Spirit is to un-divide systems and individuals, to invite integration of every kind in every way it can be imagined.

Bynum’s work centers on the dreams that people share, especially among and between the members of a family. He shares predictive dreams that anticipate a personal event, prophetic dreams that may have an impact or bearing on a community, visitation dreams that feature deceased family members, and the appearance in dreams of existing relatives who report having the same dream as the dreamer.

His book is grounded in “what all of us have roots in: some form of family life and a nightly dream cycle.” He addresses individuals who are interested in seeing how their own lives are reflected in their dreams, and interestingly, how their lives are reflected in the dreams of others. Because we live in an intimate web of family and self, our dreams understandably take their images from that web of relationships. So, Bynum invites the “awakened” dreamer to not only understand the images the dreams present, but to wonder how their images can heal both the dreamer and her system(s).

“The collective dreams of ancient peoples are expressed and lived through their myths,” Bynum writes. So he locates the origins of modern dream work, not in Sigmund Freud or Carl Jung (whose work he connects to the “ice caves of Europe!”), but much further back, to the sunny, generative delta of Egypt, which he calls the African cradle. Because humanity initially evolved on the African continent, the “deepest and oldest aspect” of our collective narrative is rooted there, as is the birth of human consciousness.

He coins a term “personalism” to convey the ancient, African experience of integration: of individual with group, the material with the spiritual, the living with the dead, and finds modern manifestations in Voodoo, the Christian communion of saints in which the dead have commerce with the living, and the goals of psycho-spiritual work. Instead of merely reacting to a dream, the dreamer is taught to take ownership of the dream, and approach the beings, forces, and situations within it “as an active presence” in the dreamer’s life. In dreamwork, ritual and ceremony, the “ancestors” still live and offer a pathway to healing.

Bynum concludes with this powerful image:

“Death is the escarpment between realm and realm, the dream [is] the bird that flies from each to each, ignorant of the illusion and boundary we keep during the waking state. This is how we keep the dead in our memory. This is how, near our own death, we become lucid, take flight, and are greeted in luminosity by the dead.”

“And so we dream into the dream of matter and energy beyond our human dreaming until all mind and boundary are completely dissolved and transcended and we dream ourselves into the infinite lifeblood of God.”

Dreams are rooted in human imagination, and our ability to imagine is what enables us to have empathy for others. I can never walk in your shoes, but I can be curious about the load you carry, what your shoulders and heart feel like, and how your feet may hurt. So it is true that our dreams seek to un-divide us, to acquaint us with each other and our own deepest selves, and to invite us to the source of Being where all of us dwell.

Love, David