The View From The Vicarage August 7, 2022
I find it difficult to believe that I am the only person of faith who suffers these days from
an acute sense of overwhelming sadness coupled with mental, emotional, and even
spiritual exhaustion. While I attempt to keep the media voices of doom and gloom at
arm’s length in all times and places, I make it a point to keep up with newsworthy events
in our state, our nation, and across the globe which shape our common life as citizens of
the world community. As a wise elderly priest once counselled me to do, I try to pray
“with the Book of Common Prayer in one hand and the newspaper in the other”.
But with the advent of the internet, as delightful and informative as it can often prove,
the never-ending onslaught of bad, even horrific stories of suffering, violence and death
from across the earth in real or almost real time becomes more than I can bear. For my
own health and well-being, I attempt to fast from regularly following the headlines
completely, or at least pry myself away from their endless roar clamoring for my
attention for a precious day or so of quiet and peace. But all it takes is a brief question or
comment from a well-meaning friend, and I’m right back in the utterly exhausting and
depressing “thick of it”.
Yet, other than endless tale of destruction wrought by Muslim extremists, or the
heretical rantings and saber-rattling of the so-called Christian nationalist right-wingers
here in America, nary a word of hope or even mild encouragement ever appears in any
news feed today. Despite the reality that the Episcopal Church’s General Convention
met in Baltimore back in July, and the Lambeth Conference involving Anglican bishops
from across the globe just concluded their every-ten-year gathering, not a peep was
heard anywhere (other than friends’ posts on Facebook). Even the exalted Episcopal
Diocese of New York bears nothing but bad news for so many small and struggling
parishes, some facing the agonizing option of immanent closure as their only recourse.
So it’s up to us, dear and beloved friends, to be proactive in our families, our circles of
friends, our local clubs and organizations, and our own villages and towns to that
blessed alternative, to be that Gospel voice of hope, love, and fullness of life in God to
the millions of good people around us who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. It’s
time for every member of Trinity Church and others like us to stop being “the best kept
secret in town”. Remember: it’s not that the Church has the love of Christ to share
among ourselves, rather that Christ has the Church to bring that boundless love to
people everywhere!