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A Lenten Journey
Many of you have heard the story of my long-time friend Col. Richard Slay. He is a retired Air Force pilot and lives on the east coast of Florida. Dick was a member of the Parish I served before I came here, and is a life-long Episcopalian.
One warm Saturday in August, he went on his regular weekend fishing excursion on the Chesapeake Bay. This particular trip he failed to call his wife every hour as he always did when fishing alone. Along around 7 pm he returned to the dock with fifty Rock Fish, an endangered species in 1980’s. The marina attendant refused to clean his fish and called his wife. My friend was disoriented—“He knew not who he was.” After three days in the hospital, Dick was diagnosed with with Transient Global Amnesia, a loss of memory effecting both sides of the brain. What was peculiar about his story is that when he was released from the hospital Richard had changed.
Before the episode on the Bay he was stridently against all our Parish social outreach programs. As a member of the Vestry, he failed to see the value of our being a founding member of the Episcopal Coalition on AIDS. He challenged the Youth
Group’s raising money for inner city summer camp programs. He advocated the Parish not supporting the homeless ministry program we had started.
But after his bout of Transient Global Amnesia, Dick totally involved himself in all our social outreach programs. He began our mobile soup kitchen ministry, took an active part in the National AIDS Coalition and other programs. My sense from working with him both before and after his episode, albeit medically explainable, was that what actually happened was an encounter with God. Richard Slay had an Epiphany on that day in the Chesapeake Bay. He was touched by God in a way that changed him.
As you may already know, last Wednesday I, too, had an experience that was diagnosed as Transient Global Amnesia. I have no recollection of events that happened Thursday through Wednesday ending February 18. My doctor tells me most of my memory will come back, but as of yet it has not returned. Medically I understand the diagnosis, but like my friend Dick Slay I can’t help but feel that the real event is spiritual. This is an opportunity to walk with God for a while and see where it leads. I will take a Lenten journey and try to discover how God’s Spirit will search my mind and heart and use me effectively in ministry.
I look forward to the journey, the challenge and time of reflection. You are welcome to join with me.
David +
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Lenten Series:
Christian Meditation and Other Ways to Pray
Thursdays in Lent, beginning March 4, 7-9 PM
These classes will offer a five week introduction to Christian Meditation. Each session consists of a teaching on meditation, 30 minutes of meditation, and a presentation of a different way of meditative Christian prayer. The basic practice taught is that set forth in the teaching of the World Community of Christian Meditation, as developed by John Main and Lawrence Freeman.
The course is sponsored by the Christian Meditation Center, an offering of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Leaders for these five classes are the Rev. Sarah Horton and Martha Holden.
Sessions are preceded by Holy Eucharist in the chapel at 5:45 p.m and a simple supper after the Eucharist.
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The Links of Parish Prayer
There is a group of people quietly and continuously ministering within our parish—the Prayer Chain.
These people (currently David Hall, Claude Stone, Nancy Walker, Pat Carruth, Peggy Bingham, Cynthia Steed, Peter and Frances Grassadonia, Marjorie White-Wilson, Charlotte and Ernest Gibson, Susan Clifford, Martha Holden, Kathy Preis, Lois Hadd, and Laurie Labarthe) hold into God’s light needs for healing in times of illness, surgery, death and dying, and other crises either personal or of the parish. Should you wish to be a part of the Prayer Chain, call the office
(223-3631).
If you have a need for prayer or wish prayers for another, call the parish office or Pat Carruth (223-7050). The intercessions will be passed through the Chain and a current list will be posted in the foyers and the chapel. (Please be sure to get permission before asking to have another’s name put on the list.)
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Lent with Evelyn Underhill
Everyone who is engaged on a great undertaking, depending on many factors for its success, knows how important it is to have a periodical stocktaking. Whether we are responsible for a business, an institution, a voyage, or an exploration —even for the well-being of a household—it is sometimes essential to call a halt: examine our stores and our equipment, be sure that all necessaries are there and in good order, and that we understand the way in which they should be used. It is no good to have tins without tin openers, bottles of which the contents have evaporated, labels written in an unknown language, or mysterious packages of which we do not know the use. Now the living-out of the spiritual life, the inner life of the Christian—the secret correspondence of his soul with God—is from one point of view a great business. It was well called “the business of all businesses” by St. Bernard; for it is no mere addition to Christianity, but its very essence, the source of its vitality and power. From another point of view it is a great journey; a bit-by-bit progress over roads that are often difficult and in weather that is sometimes pretty bad, from “this world to that which is to come.” Whichever way we look at it, an intelligent and respectful attitude to our equipment—seeing that it is all there, accessible and in good condition, and making sure that we know the real use of each item—is essential to its success. It is only too easy to be deluded by the modern craving for pace and immediate results, and press on without pausing to examine the quality and character of our supplies, or being sure that we know where we are going and possess the necessary maps. But this means all the disabling miseries of the unmarked route and unbalanced diet; and at last, perhaps, complete loss of bearings and consequent starvation of the soul. . . .
Lent is a good moment for such a spiritual stocktaking; a pause, a retreat from life’s busy surface to its solemn deeps. There we can consider our possessions; and discriminate between the necessary stores which have been issued to us, and must be treasured and kept in good order, and the odds and ends which we have accumulated for ourselves. Most of us are inclined to pay considerable attention to the spiritual odds and ends: the air-cushions, tabloids, and vacuum flasks, and various labour-saving devices which we call by such attractive names as our own peace, our own approach, our own experience, and so forth. But we leave the superb and massive standard equipment which is issued to each baptized Christian to look after itself. There are few who cannot benefit by a bit-by-bit examination of that equipment, a humble return to first principles; for there we find the map and road-book of that spiritual world which is our true environment, all the needed information about the laws which control it, and all the essentials for feeding that inner life of which we talk so much and understand so very little.
This reading for Ash Wednesday is from a book compiled from the writings of Evelyn Underhill by G.P. Mellick Belshaw, titled “Lent with Evelyn Underhill.” This particular quote is from her book “The School of Charity.”
Submitted by Jan Armstrong.
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