Depression and Finding Hope for the Hopeless

Depression and finding Hope for the Hopeless

There is no quick fix for depression, but the Church has a role to play in teh healing of the depressed. We can’t just tell those suffering among us to snap out of it and expect the pain to go away, but we can surround our brothers and sisters suffering from depression and be there source of strength, faith and hope when they are unable to attain to these things for themselves. We can help by combating the lies of distorted self-perception and affirm those truths most essential to an identity to be found in the God who created them.  Depression is not a journey to be taken alone.

Guarding Your Children's and Grandchildren’s Spiritual Heritage

I am writing this article while on vacation at Kanuga, a church Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC.  In many ways I spiritually grew up in this place, and I continue to encounter God on each return visit.  I return year after year seeking his face, the touch of His hand and the sound of His voice.  I seem to always find it.  As I have shared with many of you at Holy Trinity, there is a particular place on the trail on the far side of the lake that I consider, as the Celtic Christians say, my Thin Place; that is, it is that place for me where the fabric between heaven and earth is drawn so thinly that it seems I can almost reach through and touch the face of God.  What happens instead, however, God always reaches through and touches me first.

This year among all the years has a special significance.  My son, his wonderful wife and my two extraordinarily perfect grandsons (a grandfather’s perspective) are here with Nancy and me this year.  It is a special time because I was coming here with my parents when I was my three-year-old grandson’s age.  Nancy and I summer after summer brought our children here. Now our son is bringing his children here.  This week at Kanuga thus represents four generations of Hartley’s who have been blessed by this place.  Kanuga in that sense has become part of my family’s spiritual inheritance. 

As I was walking to my Thin Place before Eucharist yesterday morning, it came to me how extraordinarily important it is that we indeed pass on to our children and grandchildren their spiritual inheritance.  I am not just talking about a spiritually significant place like this place; I am talking about something much more important.  I am talking about handing down the Faith to the next generations- telling them that Old, Old Story, introducing them to Jesus, witnessing to the blessings of the Christian life. This is their true spiritual inheritance.   Perhaps as you are reading this you are thinking that your spiritual heritage got short-circuited somewhere along the way, or never existed in your family to begin with, but it is not too late for you to make your Faith your children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance.                                                                  Father Rob

It Takes a Village

I grew up in a quiet little village on the edge of Charleston harbor.   This village is no longer sleepy nor is it little.  It is now among the largest cities in the State of South Carolina.  It was, however, far from that in my growing up years. 
 
The world of my childhood was bounded on the west by the high bluffs that overlook the harbor.  A tidal creed marked the northern extent of the village.  Just outside of town were tomato and cucumber fields that seemed to my young mind to be the edge of the world.  What could possibly be beyond? 

The home in which I grew up was two blocks back from Charleston Harbor.  The house dates to the early 1800’s; it is to this day beautiful and unique.  When I drive by that old place today, extraordinarily happy memories come flooding back. 

Everything in my world was within easy bicycle-riding distance.  Summers growing up there were especially wonderful times.  Once school was out, shoes were largely an unnecessary item.  A vivid childhood memory is how odd and restricting it was to put on shoes once a week to go to church.  I spent many  hours  fishing  and  crabbing  in  the  creek,  and  my  very  earliest entrepreneurial endeavor was selling crabs to Ms. McNulta.  I later delivered eggs around town for Mr. Scott who owned a chicken farm across and up the creek.  I found out, however, what real work was like when I was old enough to work in the tomato and cucumber packing sheds out on the edge of town.

Family, school and this village defined my world and gave structure and meaning to my life, but it was in the church just around the corner that I came to know what living life was really all about.  My brother, sister and I were there every Sunday; my mother saw to that.  In that church family were people like Mrs. Green, Mrs. Boench, Mrs. Dupre, the Covington’s, the Cain’s, my priest Mr. Catlin and many others who became very important to me.  They nurtured me in the Faith and grew me up in the Lord.  I discovered through them something of what it means to love and serve the Lord.  Today I am still on that journey of discovery.

I eventually went off to Clemson and found out what was beyond those tomato and cucumber fields.  My family, my village and my church family had taught me what I needed to know to love God and live life rightly.  I am extraordinarily grateful to them all.

We have all heard the old third world saying, “It takes and village to raise a child.”  God is surely going to be calling on us to be that “village” for yet unnamed children He will bring to us?   We will be that place where these young people will learn to love God and live life rightly?   

The Rhythm of Life

I was invited by my son and his rector to baptize my grandson.  As it was infant baptism, I cradled that little boy in my left arm and held his head in the palm of my hand.  As I poured   water   over   his forehead, his blue eyes looked penetratingly into mine, and it was as if he were saying, “This is an important moment, isn’t it granddaddy?” 

It is not likely those were my infant grandson’s thoughts, but they surely were mine.   This baptism was for him the beginning point of a life destined for a full and rich relationship with God.  My grandson’s parents and Godparents vowed to point him continually toward God such that he grows in the Lord as he grows in years.  

One of their duties will be to reveal to this young man a rhythm and cadence to his life that will weave his life into the very life of God.  Our lives, of course, have a natural cadence.  We rise to work and rest in the evening.  We work for six days and turn aside from our labors on the seventh.  We live our lives according to the seasons of the year and the seasons of our lives, from childhood to old age.

We Christians, however, teach our children to overlay this rhythm of life with another rhythm. One of the first rhythms of life we teach our children is pray at meals and kneel at their bedside each evening.   The God-ordained weekly rhythm we pass on to our children is that of God gathering us in on the Lord’s Day to honor Him.  We teach the yearly rhythm of the Christian year which flows year after year between the two great pinnacles of Faith, Christmas and Easter.  And finally, we teach our children to weave God into the rhythm of their entire lives through Sacraments and Ordinances that become for them touchstones with God, such as this, my Grandson’s baptism.

Sometimes the cadence of our lives is not predictable.  We have highs and lows, mountaintop experiences and times of slugging it out in the dark valleys of our lives.  We have life-transforming encounters with God, while at other times wander through arid places trusting only in the knowledge that God is on the far side of our current wilderness.  Even in our wilderness experiences, however, there is a rhythm as we have many wilderness times to repeatedly find God on the far side.

My grandson’s baptism was, among other things, about taking on this rhythm and cadence that weaves him into the purposes and plans that God has for Him.  A life well lived is one that has appropriated this God-given rhythm.  It would not make sense to live life to any other beat.

Spiritual Gifts

Luke’s Gospel tells us the story of the Wedding at Cana of Galilee.  This is a story about Jesus taking water and changing it into wine.   It is a story of God taking something natural and doing something supernatural with it, taking something ordinary and making it extraordinary.  The lectionary writers interestingly pair this story with Paul’s discourse on Spiritual Gifts from 1 Corinthians 12. 

The thread connecting the two readings becomes obvious: Jesus takes what is ordinary and natural in our lives, such as our natural talents and abilities, and supernaturally makes them extraordinarily useful to Him and for the furthering of His Kingdom.  Such is the nature of the Gifts of the Spirit, This is how we can understand the way God equips us to do the ministry to which He calls us. 

Our relatively young church family has grown because this dynamic of God gifting people to do the ministry they are called to do.  People have caught hold of what the Lord is doing in this place, discerned how the Lord is calling them to be a part it, and allowed God to empower them with the Spiritual Gifts needed to live into the calling.

This relates wonderfully to what we are learning on Wednesday nights.  “Experiencing God” study series is teaching us to look for where God is working, listen for His invitation to work with Him, and then allow God to work through us in the accomplishing of His purposes.  Wednesday nights are also teaching us that, when God calls us to do for others or be something to others, the calling has what Henry Blackaby calls “a God-size dimension.”  The calling, the task, the ministry, whatever it is, is something we cannot do, as God intends for it to be done, without Him gifting us with the ability to do it.  We are totally dependent on God for the ability to do what He Has called us to do. 

This gifting for ministry has its source in our ongoing and intimate relationship with God’s through His indwelling Holy Spirit.  Again, Blackerby in “Experiencing God” makes the very wonderful point that the real gift is the gift of the Holy Spirit who takes up residence in us and works in the world through us.

So then, what do we do?  Again turning to our Wednesday night study, Blackerby tells us that we are to open ourselves to the possibility of God working in us and through us for the sake of the world around us.  We are to invite God to “gift” us with the ability to live into His purpose and calling for our lives. 

A prayer for you…. Come, O Lord, and fill us your servant to overflowing with your Holy Spirit.  Grant the spiritual gifts and empowerment for the ministry to which you have called us.  Equip us to take our place in the Body of Christ to which you have placed us. May to you be the glory.  May your Kingdom grow firmly in us.  May your Kingdom grow in the world through us.  In Jesus’ Name we pray.  Amen.

Fr. Rob

Lent: Preparing for Easter

Lent- A Season of Special Devotion & Discipline
The season of the Church year that we know as Lent begins with Ash Wednesday (this year on February 13) and ends for many Christians traditions with an evening celebration known as the  Great Vigil of Easter, which takes place on the eve of Easter Sunday (Saturday, March 30 this year).  Lent was the one of the first seasons of the Church Year to be observed by the early Christians.  It is a season of penitence, fasting, devotion and discipline in preparation for the Day of the Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter). 

These 40 days were also used by the early Church as a time of final preparation of those wishing to be baptized into the Faith.  It was traditional for baptisms in the 1^st Century Church to take place at the Great Vigil of Easter on Easter Eve.  Those who were being baptized would take their first Communion with their new church family on this first celebration of our Lord’s Resurrection. 

As us modern Christians did not invent back-sliding, Lent was also a time for the restoration of those who had “departed from the faith,” and a time of renewal and recommitment for all the Faithful.

You may notice that there are more than 40 days in Lent (February 13 to March 30).  Sundays are not counted among the “penitential” days of Lent.  Sundays are “Little Easters,” and therefore every Sunday is considered an Easter celebration and not a day of penitence and fasting. 

Why did the first Christians decide on 40 days?  Forty is a biblical number symbolizing a span of time sufficient to accomplish what needs to be accomplished.  For instance, Jesus’ own preparation for ministry was by a “fast” of 40 days in the Judean wilderness.  I am sure that you can think of other biblical references to a span of time represented by the number 40.

Ash Wednesday (February 13) sets the tone for the Lenten Season.  At many traditional Ash Wednesday liturgies, ashes are placed on the forehead of each person with the words, “Remember, O Mortal, you are but dust; and to dust you shall return.”  This is intended to lead us to consider our weakness and mortality and to ponder the meaning of life as well as the meaning of death.  It is not intended to be morbid, only realistic.  On Ash Wednesday, we reflect on our utter dependence on God’s saving grace that has come to us through Christ.  We contemplate our need for what God has done for us on Easter 40 days hence.  

Confirmation

 

Baptism is the sacrament in which we are grafted into God’s one, holy, catholic (meaning universal) and apostolic Church.  As Anglicans we recognize all baptisms regardless of denominational label that are done with water, teh Holy Spirit and in teh name of Trinity.  The sacramental rite of Confirmation serves as a mature reaffirmation of those baptismal vows in the context of one's church fellowship.  In the ancient traditions of God’s holy Church, this is done by the laying on of hands by a bishop who is recognized as being in the succession of the Apostles (“Apostolic Succession”).  The bishop’s prayer over the confirmand is one of calling upon the Holy Spirit to empower that person to live out his or her baptismal vows and take his or her rightful place in the mission and ministry of this Church.       

Father Rob