How May I be of Service

 How can I be of service? Admittedly it sounds like something you hear when calling a customer service line or chatting with a Customer Service Representative online. It also sounds like something I ask my grandma on a daily basis “What do you need grandma?” In other words how may I be of service to you. It’s one of a series of questions posed in the book  “The Courage to Confront Evil” In it the author Caroline Myss has a series of questions to ask GOD every day:

• What should I do with this life you have given me today?

• What shall I do with the gifts you’ve given me?

• How can I be of service? 

• What NEEDS to be done?

I used to write a column for the church newsletter back when I attended an Episcopal church in San Francisco called Time and Talent where I interviewed a parishioner each month and wrote about the talents and gifts of time they provided for the church. It was a way of letting people know what opportunities to serve the church were available and the people involved. When I came to Oklahoma and attended the Newcomers classes at Saint John’s Episcopal church they had one class which specifically went over all the opportunities to serve the church that were available. After doing Cards for Others for a few years I had to give it up because I no longer had the time to do it because I was now called by GOD (and my aunt) to help care for my grandma more often. 

Another challenge Caroline Myss poses in her book is to ask what needs to be done. When I’m at my grandma’s working as her PCA what needs to be done is clearly laid out on her care plan. What needs to be done is also evident when the washer or dryer are going or when the sheets are stripped off the bed or the food container from the Senior Nutrition Center is on the kitchen counter unopened. Not so obvious is what grandma’s emotional needs are. Her needs for anything come out in the same question “When’s [her daughter/my aunt] coming home?” Then we ask her “What do you need?” Sometimes she can articulate it and sometimes the dementia has taken over along with the hearing loss and it becomes a guessing game. 

When it comes to GOD however, in prayer we often approach GOD with OUR needs rather than coming to GOD humbly and asking “What should I do with this life you have given me today? What shall I do with the gifts you’ve given me? How can I be of service? What NEEDS to be done?” We forget that as Dr. Wayne Dyer said, quoting the French philosopher, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” We forget to humble ourselves before GOD. We forget to USE our life in service to GOD and to others. We focus more on the material than the spiritual.  

 So my challenge to you and to myself as we enter into the year 2024 is to humble yourself and ask GOD every day: “How can I be of service?” I leave you with this post I recently came across on social media:

Old Church Door

 

There's an old church door weathered and blown.

She's seen it alL our old church door.

She's welcome parishioners and priests.

And she's watched them leave.  

She's seen the changing of the seasons. 

She's watched these decades and centuries fly by.  

She's watched new babies being born and baptized.  

She's seen people confirmed and welcomed them into the community.  

When people pass on, well she's been there too. 

She's got battle scars from fights with mother nature. 

Maybe that's why she doesn't get used much anymore. 

People still come but they prefer those newer doors to her. 

But she's there just the same. 

Waving at passersby. 

Come Palm Sunday she'll have her moment to shine. 

The priests will stand in front of her and she'll stand a little straighter too. 

She'll be there with arms open wide to greet all who enter.  

She's seen so much and there's still so much more to see. 

Yes, our old church door, she'll be standing long after the rest of us have gone.  

Finding Light in Times of Transition

 

Matthew 4:12-23

“When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee.

He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of

Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah

might be fulfilled: ...” 

    This was a time of transition for Jesus as he was relocating from Nazareth to

Galilee and made a new home for himself  in Capernaum by the sea.

It was a time when he was taking on a new leadership role because

his friend, and mentor John the Baptist who had Baptized Jesus was now

imprisoned. The disciples too, were transitioning from their old life as

fishermen to becoming disciples of Jesus. 

     As I write this, the Earth itself has gone through some transitions as well.

We are almost a month into the transition from 2022 to 2023 on the Julian

calendar. Those that follow a Lunar Calendar year have also just celebrated their New Year. Astrologically we have just come off of the first Mercury Retrograde of the New Year, and the first New Moon of the New Year. At Saint John’s Episcopal church we are getting ready to transition from our current rector Father Mike Lager to searching for a new rector. 

We don’t need to see what lies ahead during and after times of transition. As Father Mike and the book The Secret remind us “Think of a car driving through the night. The headlights only go a hundred to two hundred feet forward, and you can make it all the way from California to New York driving through the dark, because all you have to see is the next two hundred feet.”  So what do you do when you go through these times of transition? Well, in the words of my spiritual mentor John Stewart “For the eyes of sweet Virginia, Were headlights on the road, A beacon for the weary heart, that hardens as it goes. ... Hang on Dreams you ain’t seen it all...” You know who has seen it all?  God.  In John 8:12 Jesus says “ I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”  

Changes

 Isaiah 43:19 (NLT):

“For I am about to do something new.

See, I have already begun! Do you not see it?” Well, change is coming in that our rector Father Mike Lager has announced he's leaving us and moving back to Ohio. I've experienced this type of change before and it can be a positive or negative experience depending on how it's handled. I've experienced both a positive transition and a negative transition both of which I will share.    

The negative transition took place when I still lived in California in the church where I grew up while I was a member of the Vestry. The  experience through that process not only caused me to resign one year into a two year term but ultimately led to my leaving that parish altogether. The positive experience took place at the church I attended after that. SO having gone through those experiences I have some pearls of “wisdom” or at least things I learned along the way that might prove useful. 

The first thing is it’s okay to be sad and happy at the same time. Being human is a wonderful thing. We can feel many emotions at the same time. Our emotions are a far more accurate barometer than our brains. In the words of the movie Bull Durham “Don’t think. It can only hurt the ballclub.” or in this case the church.

 So pray, meditate, contemplate as individuals, as parishioners, as vestry members where we are as a church and where we’d like to be. The church isn’t about thinking it’s about the feeling of the church. What feelings do you want the church to have going forward? What feelings did you have and do you have about your church? When I was looking for a new church after I moved to Oklahoma, I knew I wanted a church that felt comfortable and inviting. I knew I wanted a church in which the LGBTQ+ community and was welcome like my Episcopal churches in the Bay Area. I knew I wanted a church that was genuinely part of the community and not just lip service. 

That was the difference between the positive and negative experiences of the churches in transition. The negative experience the parish was coming into the new rector search on the heels of a failed capital campaign and the economic and political fallout from that. So the senior warden and half the vestry approached the selection from a very business-oriented thinking standpoint. They wanted a rector who could just come in and take the reigns day 1 and clean up the economic and political rubble. The other half of the vestry was coming at it from the standpoint of who feels right for our church who could build bridges back to the community. They chose the rector the senior warden wanted. A little over 6 months later I had resigned from the Vestry and left that Parish. For various reasons the church I had grown up in and had been confirmed in sadly no longer felt like my spiritual home.  My mom and I found a new spiritual home in a new Episcopal church shortly before we found out her cancer had returned. The rector had lost his first wife to cancer. Talk about God's putting you where you need to be. He was there through my mom's second cancer diagnosis and ultimate referral to hospice and had given the ministration at the time of death. He presided over her memorial service left and went back to minister at the church in his hometown in Tennessee.YI was fearful that this would be another traumatic and dramatic transition. Happily the process was so much smoother. The interim minister was instrumental in gently leading the congregation and the vestry to figure out what we wanted the church to feel like going forward. 

So I guess that's my main pearl of wisdom for what it's worth. Go with what feels good for the church. As Dr Wayne Dyer said "We are all essentially spiritual beings having a temporary human experience. This is our essence. This is where we come from.”