A Note from Jim: February 17th, 2023

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the whole creation eagerly awaits for the revealing of the children of God.

So wrote Paul to the nascent church in Rome two millennia ago. While I am not an unalloyed fan of the author, in this matter and against the backdrop of the situation into which these words were written, I find its notion of glory in response to suffering and trauma instructive.

Like you, I have been powerfully moved by the images and narratives emerging from Syria and Turkey in the wake of the enormous and ongoing destruction, displacement, and death of these most recent earthquakes. All that horror can leave me a little numb, but then I look at the images and narratives of heroism and self-sacrifice and even joy that also arrive almost every moment.

I am encouraged and given hope by knowing that the human community is capable not only of the greed and avarice, corruption and criminality that are indubitably at the root of much of the death and destruction we are witnessing, but that also we human beings are practiced in courage and compassion and the hard work of rescue and repair and rebuilding: “the glory that is to be revealed in us” is on full display these days in Turkey and Syria and their neighboring nations as they continue to dig and dig, still hoping to find, occasionally even now finding life in the rubble. (If you want to contribute into this work, which is not free, you can join the Episcopal Church, in alliance with others, here: Episcopal Relief & Development There is more about this in another note in this edition of Field Notes.)

This is just one example of what I have always known to be true across the whole range of my own life and ministry. There is glory, and it can be revealed--is often revealed--out of our own individual and our communal experiences of trauma.

Recently, we’ve been having a little staff conversation about a small example of how we might best, as humans and as God’s children, respond to the slings and arrows that life and fate bring our way, these days amplified by the rapid-fire, sometimes knee-jerk culture that comes at us through our omnipresent screens, flaring demands at us like the little deities they are rapidly becoming.

The conversation has been about the use of the words “Fat Tuesday” to describe the last day before Lent begins on Ash Wednesday. It’s an ancient usage, one translation of Mardi Gras, that great hedonistic feast embroidered into first Christian and from there western culture for centuries. For some, it turns out, using the word “fat” is triggering, rekindling the battles large people in our culture have often had to fight in relation to cultural shaping of acceptable body image. Of course, a huge swath of that affected culture in recent decades fought back, reclaiming fat as an often powerful thing, a thing to be celebrated. No one, it seems, gets to take large people down because of some warped notion of what a body should look like or be.

Another example, right here at St. Martin’s, was on magnificent display Wednesday night as St. Martin’s choirs, adults and children all together, along with a powerful roster of Black readers, sang and spoke out the powerful learnings and lessons that have emerged in poetry and music out of the profound sufferings of the present times of Black people in this country across centuries. And all celebration was surrounded by powerful visual art created by Black artists, loaned for the evening from the collection of Carolyn Green and Michael Blakeney.

This insistence on recovering and celebrating the identities of people who have been shunted aside by mainstream cultures is as old as Christianity itself. When Paul speaks of suffering, he is talking about the persecution of early Christians by the Roman empire, persecution from which not even his own Roman citizenship would finally protect him. Still, those early Christians persisted--scrawling their mark, a fish, on the sides of buildings all across the empire. Derided for their name to the degree that the name itself became an allegation, a slur, and a dangerous maker all in one, those spiritual ancestors of ours kept on. And as they did, there emerged art and music and literature that proclaimed and celebrated their identity as followers of Jesus Christ. We are inheritors of that legacy.

So too did an enormous celebrative culture emerge from the trauma of our Jewish siblings. Across all the many centuries of their persecution, often at the hands of the very Christians whose roots were and are in Judaism, right up until now, Jews have shown exactly how the sufferings of any present time might be transformed into powerful glory.

Finally, and more personally, I can attest to this same possibility as it has manifested in my own Queer community. When I was a boy, there was nothing much worse than being labeled and called a queer. I shrunk from the name every time I heard it being hurled at some poor boy or another, terrified that I would be the next victim--for after the naming came the shaming, then the beatings. I did my best to be the straightest little boy in the world, and perhaps that protected me. Then came Stonewall, and we began to stand up, and to fight back, and in that effort, to reclaim our names and speak them proudly. So now, at least part of our huge ancient trauma is transformed, and somewhat miraculously to me, my community now calls itself Queer. At the same time, and for a long time, powerful art--visual, dance, theater, and more--has emerged out of that trauma, and keeps on coming every day.

All of this is to say that as we enter the season of Lent, and all that it calls us into, I hope we will make it a season of thoughtful, reflective, powerful joy. As you join me and our whole community in the work of self-examination, I invite you to make that journey a joyful one.

Joy is a very deep thing, done right. In our Lent this year, we’ll hear from those involved in some of St. Martin’s powerful ministries, each reaching into the world beyond us and each, I hope, full of the joy that comes in real self-giving. God’s glory is in this very moment being revealed in you, in us, in St. Martin’s. Examine that glory. Make a record of it in your life. Make art of it! That’s my hope. Join me in celebrating abundance, at next Tuesday’s Mardi Gras, and in finding abundance on Ash Wednesday and on every Lenten day.