“What Serves Christ?”  by Angela Liptack

“May the fields of the wilderness be rich for grazing, and the hills be clothed with joy.” (Psalm 65:13)

In church and elsewhere, the call to serve is strong. To feed those who cannot feed themselves. To hug the frightened. To bind wounds, repair rotten porch steps, volunteer to chaperone a field trip. To visit a shut-in. To hear a sad story with no other role than to listen.

There’s joy in these acts. Absolutely without question. I see it in the faces of people who speak of their walk with Christ in this way.

But what if your walk with Christ doesn’t “look like” these things? Maybe it’s looked like this once in a while. Maybe never. What if the very best you know how to do is to dance? What if the gift you want to give is to sing? What if it’s to meet injustice with respectful resistance? What if it’s to create something that celebrates or adds to the beauty around us? What if your work, at this moment, is to grieve a hurt or loss and move on?

What if your call, today, is simply to “be still and know that I am God”? (Psalm 46:10)

Not that long ago, I began experimenting with fabric, reviving a teenage passion. Inspired by design-rich, traditional quilts, I began making art. My first attempt was very simple: Irregular skinny brown/gray rectangles set vertically against a swirly blue. An undulating white scrap at the base, a white dot for the moon. Voila—a winter woods. Did I do that?

I have been in woods like that, with people I love. People who loved me gave me the tools I used to create that simple scene and many since. Creating art that celebrates the beauty I’ve seen and the abundance with which I have been blessed gives me joy that starts in the center of my being, literally. Looking at these pieces has, apparently, made other people smile.

“Does this serve Christ?” I’ve asked several people wise in His teachings. “It does,” they say. It has something to do with joy. It seems that where your joy is, Christ is there too.

And yes, “Hills Clothed with Joy”—cousin to that first piece, also about six inches square, colorful and happy–has a special place in our home.

This is my third “Stewardship Testimony” I’ve given here at St. Stephens.  My grandfather was a Southern Baptist Minister, and my grandmother’s done a lot of church work at a lot of churches in her lifetime.  One time she sat me down and said, “Erika, if you say ‘yes’ to something at a church, they’re going to keep on asking you to do it until you finally say ‘no’. Remember your Church-Yes isn’t just for that one time, it’s for all time until you say so.”  I must say, I’ve found that advice to be very true! So…YES I will do another Stewardship Testimony.

Usually when I approach this Stewardship time, I get rather John F. Kennedy about it – “Ask not what your Church can do for you, but rather ask what you can do for your Church”, right? I truly feel we are called to create The Church together, and to keep *this* church together specifically – we give our Time, our Talent, our Treasure because we honor and glorify God. 

But.  This time happens to coincide with something so amazing in my life, in my journey with God, and it all happened because of the volunteer time, the hard work, the financial contributions of the people of St. Stephens.  It’s AMAZING.  So, even though it’s not my natural tendency, I am going to tell you what this church has done for me, and how God has used this church and the people in it to answer my prayer.

My eldest son, Isaac, has lower functioning autism. I adore this kid – he is genuine and snuggly and loves his loves so completely and passionately, from his devotion to me to his obsession with Peppa Pig and Opera. He has profound disabilities and delays in speech and in social awareness and communication, though, which means while we can watch Opera on PBS together, he can’t tell me what he loves about it or what he’s hearing or seeing in it. His nervous system is miswired and raw, causing his processing of the world around him and the input we all take in to be overwhelming and often painful.  We cannot take him to places with lots of people, loud noises, strange textures or distinct smells, or ceiling fans.  He falls apart in a room with a ceiling fan. While he is physically healthy, he is a 12-year old walking around with less skills to function in the world than a preschooler. 

But I knew none of this when he was born.  He was my miracle, my surprise baby that delighted me every day.  When he was 6 months old, we had him baptized at the church where I grew up in Ohio, and when I promised God and those around me that I would raise my son in the love of God, teaching him how to follow Jesus, I thought my heart would burst with joy and pride. 

And as he grew, and it became clear that he simply was not going to be able to attend church – the people, the music, the flowers, the organ, the behavioral expectations being beyond his ability to handle – every time I heard the words “Will you be responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life?” at a baptism, and I heard the parents and Godparents say “we will” my heart would break a little.  I had promised this too, and I had no idea how to do it when I couldn’t bring my Isaac to church – no church school, no Worship.

I prayed.  I prayed and prayed.  I prayed that God would show me what to do, how to keep this vow.  And for a decade, I’ve been waiting for an answer.  Since I began praying this prayer to now, I decided to give myself permission to be patient, to wait, to remove the urgency I felt from the equation and to trust that God created Isaac and God sent him to me and God has a plan for him.  I attended church.  I followed Jesus as best I could.  I prayed out loud at home, and one day I heard Isaac say the Lord’s Prayer along with me in another room, and that was good.  I sing a psalm each night to start early evening prayer, and Isaac sometimes sings it with me, and that is good. I say, “thank you God for…” and he fills in the blank with what he’s thankful for – usually it’s Pizza.  I thought that if this was all we could do, it was pretty good.

But there was one more thing I desperately wanted that I could not do at home, alone.  I wanted Isaac to receive communion.  So I continued to pray.  And I prayed and I prayed, with truly no idea how this could happen. This seemed impossible. But NOTHING is impossible to God.

Here’s the end of the story – we had our first Grace 2 Go service yesterday, a worship service designed for families with children with special needs.  Isaac was excited for it from the moment I told him about it.  He’d point to Saturday the 14^th on the calendar and say “church school!” We arrived, and in the room was a tent set up in the semi-circle, open on one side facing the Worship leader and he went straight to it, playing with toys and when something sparked his interest, kind of perking his ears up, tilting his head.  Next was an activity that he had zero interest in doing, but that was okay, he was allowed to wander and be who he is, and I didn’t have to worry about it.  And when we all started gathering to do a procession from North Hall to the Church, he suddenly saw how it was all coming together and said “it’s a parade!” and I sad, “yes it is!”.  And we came over to the church, and he said the Lord’s Prayer under his breath with me, and then we lined up for Communion, and it didn’t matter that he couldn’t keep his body still or his mouth from making noise.  Mother Whitney said “take, eat” and he took, and he ate, and it happened! Isaac had communion. My prayers were answered, and I had nothing to do with it. God is so good.

But let’s back this answer to my prayer up.  It took the Stewardship of everyone to make this happen.  This Grace 2 Go costs money.  It’s run by volunteers, it’s an efficient and well-organized program, but it costs money for supplies, to maintain North Hall where it’s held – to keep it clean and heated and the lights on. It costs money to pay the water bill to make the coffee and tea for the parents.  It costs money to put out the diocesan magazine where Claire Simard first read about Grace 2 Go to bring it here to St. Stephens.  Our money, yours and mine, creates the space for God’s work to happen.  God’s work doesn’t have to happen in the context of a church, but it surely DOES happen here, and we create it together, and it takes our time, our talent, and yes, our treasure to do it.  You tithed money, and my prayers were answered.  My Isaac received Christ’s body and blood, and Worshiped God in a community, because of you.  It was beyond my ability to do, but not beyond God’s, and God used you to do it.

So I guess I *am* asking “What can you do for your Church?”.  I am asking you to give.  But I want you to remember that you’re being asked this for the Church to do something for You, for Me, for the Catalyst to create the space for the Holy Spirit to work within us and through us and for us and for others.

I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your past gifts, and for those of the generations before us at St. Stephens that created this church, this campus, that created the opportunity and space for Grace 2 Go.  And I can’t wait to see what God will do with what we give NOW, for us right now, and for generations after us, for the Holy Spirit to work in and for and through them.

Please, say Yes, and keep saying Yes, because we’re going to keep asking you.  It’s how churches work, literally.  They can’t work without it.

A-men!

Erika Hagan

Focus on What Matters Most – by Tom Carr

Every so often I’m reminded how lucky I am.  I have a wonderful, caring, loving wife.  We have 2 great sons, both of whom have graduated college.  They are also caring and loving people, and I’m happy to say I have strong relationships with both.  My wife and I both have good jobs, so we can pay the bills and do fun things once in a while.  We’re all healthy.

Is everything perfect?  No.  But I try not to get caught up in perfect.  When I focus on perfect, I think about what’s not right; I think inwardly.  I can feel bad for myself.  I know people who have better jobs, who make more money, whose kids are financially independent.  Do I want to trade places with them?  No, because they have struggles, too.  I might not know what they are, but I know they have them.  And the ones I have aren’t bad.

Many years ago, I heard a priest say in his homily, “If we all focused more on those who have less than we do, and less on those who have more than we do, we’d all be better off.”  How true is that!  There are so many more people who have less: less loving, less caring, less health, less security, less opportunity, less money.  And I don’t just mean less than I have; I mean less than almost all of us have. 

We are so blessed in this little corner of the world, but we don’t think about it most of the time.  I believe it’s so important to think about others and what we can do for them.  For people around us: Take the time to listen to them; spend time with them; take the time to pray for them; take the time to lighten their load in some way by doing them a favor; ask them how they’re doing and be interested in the answer.  For people who are distant from us: Take the time to read about them; learn what’s different and the same; donate to a cause that supports them.  I can promise you this: the more outwardly you focus, the happier you will feel inside.

Our Week Bedford Hills/St. Stephen’s PartnershipJuly 8^th – 13^th, 2017

by Eleanor Arnold

Twenty miles separate our home in Wilton from Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.  I have traveled that route more than 200 times, picking up kids, visiting moms, touring, attending programs.  Every time I am there, I am reminded of a sermon I once heard.  An Episcopal priest, dedicated to mission work, described the individual stories of several people who lived on society’s fringes – a homeless veteran, a serial addict, and a recently released parolee.  After each of their deeply personal stories, he said, “this is a person for whom Jesus died.”

The stories of the mothers in Bedford Hills Correctional are varied and compelling.   Their children, of course, are innocent victims, whose lives are forever altered.  Ten of these children came for six days to six host families this week. 

Our family hosted two boys, and these were some of the things that were said at our house this week:

Who lives in all of these rooms?

My Mom will be out when I am 18 or 20.

How does the dishwasher work?  Do you just lay the bowl in?

My Dad got out of jail but had to go back in because he couldn’t find a job and it was hard taking care of me.

My grandma doesn’t like me to be out on the streets.

And at others’ houses:

My grandma said I could get a mani/pedi before I came home.

My Dad is in the same kind of place my Mom is.

We had tacos at the jail today.

Look at the birthday presents my Mom got for me.

My grandma would let me stay longer at your house if you asked.

Do you live in a mansion?

As a group of 24 this week, we swam, we played, we grilled, we zip-lined, we danced, we made s’mores and ice cream sundaes.  As families with guests, we picked blueberries, visited farms, played cards and monopoly, had Wii playoffs, did puzzles, talked and made promises to keep in touch, certainly to see each other next summer.  And on our last day, we went to the prison to visit the mothers of the children we hosted. We ate bagels and donut holes, watched a live presentation of the program Puppies Behind Bars, played some cards, and talked. We talked about children and hardships and the things of this life.  At the end, we gathered in a circle, had the opportunity to reflect a little about our week, and passed the love, hand to hand.  These are the mothers and these are the children for whom Jesus died.

God is always there as we journey towards Him ~ by Erika Hagan

“Mommy!  Mommy!  MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!”

Ugh.  While my children did the appropriate amount of night-waking as infants and toddlers, we are well past that stage right now, and I am having a lot of difficulty with this 2am Mommy-alarm.

“Mommy, I’m really really really scared!”

Deep breath.  Get out of bed.  Stumble across the hall.

“Mommy,” my 6-year old tells me, “I woke up, and I was all alone, and GOD wasn’t there.”  He is sitting up in his bed, clutching his Winnie the Pooh, and the fear is real on his face. 

I sit next to him on his bed, pull him into my lap, and hold him close….and wonder what on earth I’m going to say.  My general rule of thumb with him is to only answer the question he asks, and it’s gotten me through a lot of questions and ponderings as he begins to grapple with the more complex nuances of our world, and the Divine within it. 

After my grandfather passed, questions of death and the afterlife naturally came up.  This is what the Bible says, I’d tell him, and this is what I believe, I’d share, but this isn’t something you can know, it’s something we trust in faith.  And it takes a lifetime.  And you change your mind a lot.  But that’s okay, because God is always there as we journey towards Him, working this all out.

He became enraptured with the Apostle Paul this past spring, and how he was one thing one day, and then ZAP he became another.  “Is being Jewish wrong, Mommy?” he asked.  “No,” I answered, and this is what the Bible says and this is what I believe and Jesus tells us to love, love, love and God loves everyone and that’s hard to wrap our minds around, but that’s okay, because God is always there as we journey towards Him, working this all out.

“Why do I have to give some of my toys to charity?” he demanded angrily as we prepared a box to donate to the upcoming Nutmeg festival.  This is what the Bible says about giving, I say, and this is what I believe, and boy is it hard sometimes to give, but that’s okay, because God is always there as we journey towards Him, working this all out.

God is always there.  I realize whatever he has asked, I’ve reiterated this as fact.  With all the nuance and area for interpretation I’ve shared with him, the fact that God is always there has never been up for discussion.

Yet, I don’t always feel that God is there.  There have been times when I’ve felt loved and cared for in Her arms, when I’ve felt the Holy Spirit lift me up and out, when Jesus has been just in my peripheral vision…and there have been times when I’ve called out in pain or for help, and it’s seemed as if my prayer is going into a void.  When a tragedy strikes, and I can’t process how a God who loves us so much and is all-powerful could allow it to be, and so how, how, is God there. 

And finally, I remember.  When I was six.  I walked into the living room and found my mother sitting on the couch, hands relaxed and resting on her lap, eyes closed.  “What are you doing?” I asked.  “I’m praying,” she replied, “I’m listening.  Sometimes if you hold yourself very very still and quiet…you can hear God.”

I took this very, extremely, literally.  This seemed a magic trick I could surely do.  That night, I lay in my bed, and held myself very very still and was so so so quiet…and NOTHING.  I wasn’t sure how long I had to stay doing this, so with tenacity I maintained my still quiet state until (of course) I fell asleep.  I woke up the next morning so disappointed.  I truly believed God would say, “well, hello there, Erika! Good work being really still and quiet!  I love you!”  I kept my experiment, and failure, to myself…but it was the first time I allowed the thought to enter my mind – is God really here? 

Six is a big age for existential angst, apparently.

“Baby,” I say to my son, “I know exactly how you feel.”

“I was all alone.” He sighed.

“I know how that feels.” I said.  “Honey, everyone feels that way sometimes.  It’s okay if you can’t feel God and that makes you feel alone or sad or mad.”

And maybe our next existential crisis could happen at a time other than 2am, I thought to myself.  Yawn.