Tomato update

These won't go on forever because in Texas our tomato season is early and brief. Already it appears as if our drought is settling back in, and temps are predicted to reach 106 this week. So J's tomato harvest is at its peak. Today he earned $282 for the Early Readers' program. What a blessing! Hmmmm...I wonder what's next. 

Open My Heart

In 2003 we were at General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis, and one of the most moving experiences was listening to Ana Hernandez lead the music at noonday worship. I have used this as a centering experience for years now and hope it speaks to you as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lei6rR_pcSc                              

Tomatoes for Hope

       




 
Every year J plants his garden. Some years it is great. Other years the critters get it or the weather gets it, but this year J is winning, and the tomatoes are coming in. A real home-grown summer tomato is something worth waiting for. Garrison Keillor calls all other tomatoes "those little hockey pucks they strip-mine down in Florida," and they are not worth the shelf space they take up. But J's tomatoes are bliss. And he's got more of them than he knows what to do with.

So he's bringing them to church. He sent out an email that he's selling them, so he set up shop right in the parish hall after church, and it was our own little farmer's market right there next to people eating fruit and hummus and chicken enchiladas left over from the parish lunch a few weeks ago (they had been in the freezer but we need room for the Independence Day Stars and Stripes Music Fest that is coming up.)

 But the coolest part -- other than the very cool part that means I can eat a really great BLT and make my favorite gazpacho -- is that the proceeds go to our Early Readers' Project. It's going to take bounty like J's tomatoes but most of all generous and outpouring hearts like his to enable us to buy books for all the first, second, and third graders at Menchaca Elementary School next May. And that is a lot of books: 12 for each first grader and 8 for every second and third grader. They get fewer because they are into chapter books, which take longer to read and are more expensive. I imagine we will need somewhere around $5000.

We just gave away 1266 books to 174 first and second graders. I'm guessing it will be closer to 2800 next year.

So here we go, a tomato at a time. Or pennies dropped into a jar.

We are in the hope business. Hope that if these children have books to read over the summer -- books that they chose and that they own -- they will not suffer 'summer slide' and will come to school in the fall still reading on grade level. That did happen in the second grade last fall after we gave books to the first graders in the spring. And hope that being strong readers, they will be filled with self-confidence and will go on to finish high school instead of dropping out, which is what happens to 60% of children who are not reading on grade level by third grade.

Yes, we are in the hope business, and it doesn't hurt a bit if those tomatoes that are fueling it taste amazing. I think they are why Mr. Hellman made his mayonnaise in the first place.

(If anyone would like to contribute, donations may be sent to St. Alban's Episcopal Church, 11819 So. IH-35, Austin, TX 78747. Or you may help by placing your Amazon orders through the reading child icon on our website www.stalbansaustin.org. We receive 6% on all orders placed through that portal. Thank you.) And it would be awesome if you'd share this with your friends. We can't ship the tomatoes, but we'd really like to share our excitement over this project.

You can find the gazpacho recipe under 'Chicken.'

Missing G.

I don't know how old G was. Not old at all. She had a sweetness about her, but was one to fly under the radar. She would slip in for our 8:00 Rite One Eucharist until we changed our worship schedule. She came back from time to time afterwards, but not often. We needed to accommodate more than the five regulars. But she never participated other than to soak up whatever she came to soak up -- silence? Holiness? Peace? I didn't get to know her well, because apparently knowing and being known by the rector was not why she was in church. Still, she was warm and gentle, if very private.

Sometime last fall, after being gone for quite a while, which wasn't all that unusual, she came to Bible study, which was extremely unusual. She was thinner. She was thin to begin with. She told us she had colon cancer, but was beating it. She didn't beat it.

I didn't meet anybody else in her family until I began to go see her in the hospital. It was mostly accidental that I found out she was back in the hospital. No one called to tell me. By the time I got to see her she was on drugs that made her loopy, but her sweet self shone through. I got to be with her in hospice care, and then she was gone. I met her daughter but have only talked with her husband on the phone.

It is strange for me to have parishioners who choose to be so private. Who long for their intimate time with God but not for community with the parish. But I'm OK with it. I wish I'd known her better, because I liked her, but I do believe she got from church what she wanted from church.

I offered to do whatever the family wanted to do, but she wanted to be buried in the small town out somewhere on the outskirts of Llano, where she grew up. So I didn't get to celebrate her life the way we typically do when we lose a parishioner. But I feel a loss. She was a quiet presence, but even so, her presence was a gift to all of us who worshiped with her and passed the peace with her even if we did not know how many children she had or what her job was or any of the complexities of her life. It didn't matter. We shook hands -- at church, at least, she wasn't a hugger -- and smiled and said 'Peace' and ate the bread and drank the wine together. Each of us drawn by the same love, each of us receiving it in our own way.

When I got to church today and got about the business of things, I saw that her husband, whom I still have never met and who doesn't go to church, has paid her pledge through the end of this year. My heart melted. It's not about the money. It's about his knowing how much her church meant to her. How much a pledge of her heart meant to her. I wonder how many of our parishioners are like G. In love with whatever it is that they find in the quiet or reverence or community or liturgy or music or whatever it is they come to church for.

Lord knows, there are plenty of people who are at church for attention. Who are very high maintenance. I love them. But then there are the G's who come with their very private hungers and are fed quietly and who leave and may never know how much they have meant to all the rest of us, though we have only communicated with our eyes.

Not explaining the Trinity

 

Today is Trinity Sunday. I usually joke that I meant to get somebody else to preach. Pretty much nobody wants to preach about this enigmatic doctrine of the church. Or else they pull out the old metaphors. Yawn. The Trinity deserves more respect than that.

So I didn't preach about understanding the Trinity. I preached about not understanding it. Not even trying to understand it. If theologians with PhD's haven't been able to do it in 1700 years (it wasn't a doctrine until the 4th century), why would I presume to think I could. So I let myself off that hook.

You can read it in a little while on the Sermons page, but I ended it with Thomas Merton's prayer, and a number of people asked for a copy of it. Merton was about as faithful and holy a man as walked this earth in the twentieth century, but he was always filled with self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy. Here is his prayer:

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone. Amen.