From the Rector

Dear Friends in Christ,

Last weekend, we took the boys to a small quintet concert at the Tucson Symphony Orchestra. The week before Karrie had taken our younger son to True Concord’s performance of Saint John’s Passion.

I went bracing myself to have to whisk them away because they broke out into some fierce argument, talked non-stop, or insisted on making the auditorium their personal jungle gym.

But they were enthralled. The same was true of Saint John’s Passion. (One lady did give a dirty look at our son because he was asking questions which made me realize immediately that she had never been a child, had children, or knew any children). Both concerts were a wonderful reminder that joy and wonder are always around the corner for kids even when we might expect annoyance or exhaustion around that same corner.

And they are the same corner!

It is work to bring kids to events. It is work to get ourselves to them, too. It’s the same of church. It cannot act on us unless we’re willing to act. We can’t be moved if we won’t move.

Sometimes staff uses the shorthand, “let’s just do the thing” which means do everything as fully as we can to live into the promises of Christ revealed in this work together.

Let’s just do the thing. It’s something we all need reminders of from time to time—and it’s something our kids desperately need in a have-it-now consumer culture of superficial commitments and dodged responsibilities.

Let’s just do the thing. Lent is a time of refocusing on what the thing is and, for Christians, the thing is to follow Jesus more nearly. We can’t do that by ourselves. We can’t do that apart from one another, apart from the Scripture, apart from Communion and community.

Church is a pack activity. We come to it together seeking, following, journeying, eating, praying, singing, and more together. Over and over again in Scripture we see Jesus encouraging his disciples to live as one, with one another’s good in mind and heart, knowing that in one another we catch glimpses of Christ. And others, in us, catch those glimpses too.

It is all part of doing the thing.

We ourselves need to commit to come. And we need to commit to the sacrificial work of bringing our families, too. And yes, I know it can be a pain!

Here’s the thing, though. No one can help our kids love God more than we can or more than we do. No one can help our kids know God loves them more than we can or more than we do.

The Book of Common Prayer asks that children baptized will have the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works. That gift of joy and wonder is fed and sparked and fired by new experiences and the patient exploration of patterns and habits that shape and define us. The great gift is that by helping them find joy and wonder, our joy and wonder are sparked and renewed, too.

I periodically bring the boys to mid-week morning prayer at church. They do the readings and help lead prayers. It is, to put it mildly, frustrating! I could zip through the service in literally 1/5 of the time. I could pronounce the names and place properly. I would not stumble over the words “inestimable” or “vouchsafe.”

But then I would lose the gift of remembering what God’s inestimable gifts are as I explain it. I would lose the wonder of remembering that what has been vouchsafed for us is simply eternity. I’d lose the gift of recounting the stories and explaining, as I had to recently, why someone would want the head of John the Baptist on a platter! And it is a gift. We get to rediscover what these things mean to us, and that they mean anything at all, by the simple work of sitting alongside our kids and praying.

Let’s just do the thing. In doing the mundane things together we find new grace. That’s how God has always worked. Whether under a star in Bethlehem or under Bread on a Table, God has always used the mundane to be with us.

So let’s not underestimate just how crucial each and every time we gather is. It is life-giving, life-changing, and life-restoring. And that is the gift and wonder of life together—of doing the thing.

One thing you might come to and bring kids to in this Lenten time is the upcoming concert at 2:00pm on Sunday, March 17. There is an article about it later in this e-newsletter.

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Robert