Our Annual Valentine's Day Letter

Valentine’s Day 2012

Beloved family and friends,

Where are the frogs? And the flies? And the locusts? After last August’s earthquake and hurricane we’ve been expecting more plagues to hit Richmond. So far, though, the best we’ve been able to muster, plague-wise, is last Saturday’s 30-minute blizzard. It was fun while it lasted, but one inch of rapidly melting snow hardly constitutes a Biblical plague. Maybe it’s time to relax…but not till we’ve put more gas in the emergency generator.

Our major accomplishment for 2011 was that we managed to paint two rooms in our house, wallpaper a third, and hang drapes or shades in three rooms without setting off a single argument, tantrum, or pouting fit and with no trips to the emergency room. (We’re pretty skilled at home first aid, though.) Doug did spend a fair amount of time complaining about crumbling plaster and crooked walls and mysterious wiring, but after 14+ years of marriage Mary has learned how to ignore him until he drives to Home Depot and comes back in a better mood. Doug has learned to simply say, “Wow!” when he’s got some doubts about Mary’s decorating projects.

While we were content with pretty modest accomplishments, Alex impressed us all by graduating from Columbia University in May. Way to go, Alex! We’re counting on our favorite Ivy Leaguer to bring fame and fortune to the family – or at least to be gainfully employed at some point. Meanwhile Alex is hard at work editing the third edition of Flaneur Foundry, the literary journal she founded three years ago.

Christopher has followed in the footsteps of his mother and his older brothers by becoming a serious home cook. The menu he tackled for Thanksgiving dinner sounded like something straight out of a five-star restaurant. With some long-distance coaching from his mom he managed to get everything on the table and impress his guests. Doug has volunteered to be the official taster whenever Chris and Mary cook together.

We gratefully enjoyed a visit from Sam and his fiancée, Shauna. Sam’s time off had to be squeezed in between the end of landscaping season in the fall and the start of snowboarding season. This year he is continuing to sell snowboards during the week while coaching private students on weekends. Shauna manages a shoe store in Stowe and has developed a knack for coping with snooty shoppers with more attitude than taste.

On the Thorpe side we enjoyed Hannah’s wedding to Corey B. outside of Pittsburgh. Mary contributed a Texas-shaped cake for the festivities and she and Doug sang “Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us,” accompanied by Grandma Eileen and a strong wind. Everyone downwind of us seemed to hear fine. Anyone upwind enjoyed watching the wind blow out the candles. In the end, though, the event was an unqualified success.

Later in the summer Doug joined his parents and siblings in Kansas for the triennial Adell family reunion in Lindsborg, KS. It’s hard to imagine Swedish immigrants’ reactions to their first summer in Kansas, as the air warmed to temperatures only seen in Sweden inside ovens. The Adell humor and affection somehow make the heat tolerable, though. It’s also hard to imagine an entire pioneer family living in one of these dugouts, probably with a sod roof and one window at most. Our ancestors were made of stern stuff, indeed. But the therapist in Doug looks at this dugout and sees an incubator for depression.

Doug continues to love his work at the Virginia Institute for Pastoral Care, where he is now the Director of Clinical Services. At the end of April he will finish his term as president of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. His four years as an officer in AAPC have taken him all across the country and exposed him to many creative, devoted pastoral counselors. He’s ready to give up the conference calls and travel for a while, though. He loves his time on his bicycle, and is grateful that Richmond is flat.

Mary’s second year at Church of the Epiphany extended many of the ministries in which she was engaged her first year there. She was very pleased to be asked to change her status from temporary priest-in-charge to permanent rector near the end of 2011. This winter her bishop asked her to serve as dean of Region XI, coordinating the joint ministries of the parishes on the north side of Richmond and offering the first line of pastoral care to the clergy of the region. She is also the president of the Lakeside Clergy Association, an interfaith group that shares outreach ministry and ecumenical worship, and an active member of the Committee on the Diaconate for the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia. She still has time to cook (although she isn’t posting as many menus on FaceBook) and to knit (it passes the time in meetings).

We are excited about celebrating our 15^th anniversary this year by taking a walking tour of western Ireland with the poet David Whyte. Mary will get back to her Irish roots and Doug will explore the wonders of Irish culture (and beer).

We keep you in our hearts and prayers – we hope this Valentine’s Day reminds you of the power of divine and human love in all of our lives.

Be blessed-

Doug and Mary

Sermon for Sunday, February 12, 2012 2 Kings 5:1-14, Mark 1:40-45 “Healed or Transformed?”

Our readings from the Old Testament and the Gospel are linked together by a disease: leprosy.

It’s important to understand a little bit about the disease, because this is a little complicated.

When we think of leprosy, we think of folks who just a few decades ago would have been isolated in leper colonies. We would imagine people who would lose body parts – fingers, lips, noses, toes – whose disease would be highly contagious. Nowadays there are multi-drug treatments that render a person’s disease non-communicable within a couple of weeks of starting treatment, and transmission is generally more difficult than we originally thought.

But leprosy was a blanket term in the ancient world that covered a broad range of skin disorders. Some were as aggressive and contagious as what we now call Hansen’s disease, some were simply eczema. What we call leprosy wasn’t introduced into the Middle East until 300 BC, when Alexander’s army brought it back from India.

But this thing that was called leprosy then was a frightening disease because it could be disfiguring, and in a religious tradition that prized ritual purity, a visible skin disorder was viewed as a sign of uncleanliness, of impurity. The Book of Leviticus has a whole chapter, chapter 13, about the diagnosis of and ritual response to what the ancient Jews called “tzaarath” or a skin disease that they called leprosy. Only a priest could diagnose. Only a priest could order confinement. Only a priest could say someone was cured of his disease. And over it all was this sense that this was a physical manifestation of something spiritually wrong within a person.

It was this kind of leprosy, rough patches of whitened skin, that affected Naaman, the powerful commander in our first reading. Naaman didn’t want to be disfigured – he believed it lessened his ability to exert his power over those around him. He wanted a solution. And remarkably, Naaman’s wife just happened to have a Israelite servant girl who knew of the prophet Elisha, and of Elisha’s power in calling for God’s healing.

But Naaman was the kind of guy who wouldn’t speak to some odd religious nut in a subjugated county…he went to his boss, the king of Aram, who then wrote directly to the king of Israel, in an exchange that is both funny and sad at the same time. The king of Aram, who, we recall, had subjugated the Israelites, sent a letter to the king of Israel to get Elisha to fix Naaman’s problem. He sent it with Naaman, and with some pretty amazing gifts – ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and a rich wardrobe of fine garments.

Now put yourself in the place of the king of Israel. His conqueror sends him this letter, with all the rich gifts, and he knows he has to deliver the cure. But even though the king of Israel may not be an effective warrior, he knows his theology. “Who am I? God? I can’t cure this guy. This conquering king is trying to pick a fight with me by giving me an impossible request.”

Somehow Elisha gets a message that this drama is going on in the palace, and he sends his own message – poor king of the Israelites is caught in the middle again – saying “don’t fret. Send him to me, and I’ll show him what a prophet does.” I’d bet that the king of Israel breathes a sigh of relief, getting Naaman out of town. The passage from 2 Kings doesn’t say anything, though, about sending all the goodies from the king of Aram with him.

Naaman goes off in his chariot to Elisha’s house. And then Elisha does something very interesting. He doesn’t go out to meet him. Major insult, that! He sends out an assistant, like spending a small fortune to see Dr. Oz and him sending out a little nursing assistant with a message. “Just go wash up in the river, then go to the priest so they can certify you as cured.”

Naaman isn’t used to being treated this way. He’s used to snapping his fingers and having everyone say “Yes, sir!” And he is furious. He stomps off, saying that if this was all he was going to get from Elisha, he could have stayed home. But his servants, those patient and wise people, convince him to give it a try. And he does, and he is healed.

Contrast this with what happens with the leper in the gospel. He’s just a beggar by the side of the road. If you asked him why he had leprosy, he’d probably have said, “I don’t know. Maybe I did something bad, or my father did something bad. It doesn’t much matter. All that matters is that I have it, and I can’t be with anyone, and all I can do is beg for a few coins to survive.” Naaman never thought he was responsible, he just wanted the problem fixed, and he would do what it took to fix it.

He sees Jesus approaching. We don’t know how he knows that Jesus is the person to go to for healing, but he does. He is unclean. He shouldn’t approach anyone. But he takes the risk, and goes directly to the one who can help him. No kings as intermediaries, as Naaman did. Just a sick man taking a risk. And Jesus is no doubt surprised by his approach. In that place, a leper keeps his distance. But Jesus shouldn’t be. This is the third in a close series of healing stories in the Gospel of Mark. Word is spreading of his power to heal. But here is this unclean man, and he says “if you choose, you can heal me.” A clear recognition of Jesus’ power. Jesus looks at him, shocked by the leper’s boldness. He responds almost without thinking…”I do choose. Go, you are healed. Make an offering at the temple and present yourself to the priests, but say nothing about what has happened here.” A direct healing, no prophetic intermediary. A risky request, without the protection of being a powerful commander in service to the King. A humble man expecting nothing, unlike the proud military man demanding results and attention by the healer. They are both healed – God is more merciful than any of us deserve – but are they changed by their healing?

We might think that these stories are about miraculous healings. On one level they are. Both men are healed.

But on a deeper level, it is not about the miracle, it is about what happens before and after the encounter. How do we approach God and ask for something? Do we act like Naaman, swaggering and insisting? Or are we like the man approaching Jesus, humbly requesting, braced for a “no” but hoping for a “yes?”

And after we have that encounter with the divine, whatever the results, how are we changed? Our skin may be clear, like both these men, but are our hearts transformed? Do we head back to our homes tempted to share the miracle we have been given, or do we simply march back as if we expected what we got all along?

Healing, that miraculous gift, takes many different forms. God touches us and tries to fix what is broken in us, whether it is patchy skin or cancer or depression or anger. Do we accept his healing grace and rejoice in his ability to reshape us, or do we simply say that we are better because of something that we did, or some doctor did, or a medicine did? Do we brag about how smart we were to read up on what we needed on the Internet. Or do we simply quietly thank God for his willingness to keep with us, regardless of whether we are physically healed or spiritually transformed.

Healing is a complicated thing. We are changed. But more important than a change is how we respond to it, how we then use it to be witnesses to Christ’s love in us and in the world.

We can be Naaman. We can be the poor soul in Mark’s gospel, whose name we do not know. Which one do you think reacted as our God would want? When you are changed, when you are healed, when you are lifted up, which one will you be?

Amen.

Sermon for Sunday, February 5, 2012 Isaiah 40:21-31 “Steady”

For his fiftieth birthday, my husband indulged himself in a midlife crisis. He, with his brother and other friends, decided to bicycle across the United States as part of a four-man team in something called “The Race Across America.” This was not a leisurely jaunt from B&B to B&B. No, this was hard-core. Not for nothing does the Race Across America – also called RAAM - bill itself as the world’s toughest bike race. Some member of the team was on his bike at all times, riding day and night, from San Diego to Annapolis. While one person was riding the others were either in the van following the rider or in the RV sleeping or eating. It took a total of 8 and a half days, a remarkable accomplishment given that one of the riders was injured about halfway across the country and the rest of the team had to work that much harder, riding longer each day, until they reached Annapolis.

The remarkable thing about this accomplishment, outside of the fact that four middle-aged desk jockeys like Doug, Chuck, Mike and Majd actually finished, was that they rarely rode very fast. Their pace was respectable, but it wasn’t as fast as Lance Armstrong or the other elite bicycle racers. No, to do RAAM and survive, you’ve got to find a pace that works for you and stick with it. Sometimes, when they had to reach check-in points by a certain time, they stepped up the pace, but mostly it was steady as she goes, day and night, hour by hour, across the country.

Steadiness. That’s not a virtue that you hear about very often in today’s world. No, it’s always about being the fastest or the strongest or the biggest. At the Super Bowl this afternoon, no one is going to laud a running back for his steadiness. In that contest, it’s all about speed.

And yet steadiness is one of the things that gets us through.

It is steadiness that Isaiah is talking about in the Old Testament reading today. He is chiding the people of Israel who are exiled in Babylon. They complain “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” They feel that their time of trial is abandonment by God.

They whine and complain, and Isaiah responds as sharply as if he had slapped them. “Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told to you from the beginning?”

He launches into an ecstatic recounting of God’s history with his people, of God’s power and creative force, all the things that God has given them, God’s never-failing attention to them. He says they are in the grip of what William Carl calls “theological amnesia.”

They have forgotten who God is, because they have been so busy ignoring God and tending to their own needs…and look where it has gotten them, in the hands of foreigners, living in a strange land. He cries out to them: “Remember! Remember your God. He has not abandoned you. You have forgotten HIM! Look around and see God’s presence in everything and everyone you see and touch and use.”

He says that if they go back to the beginning of their understanding of God, if they steady themselves and rebuild that relationship, they will no longer feel like God has abandoned them. They will see and feel his presence even in their times of trouble.

Even more important, Isaiah reminds these broken people that God not only has not gone away, but that he is there to give them exactly what they need to soldier on, if they look for it: “…but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” In other words, be steady in faithfulness, and God will supply the strength you need to survive whatever you must endure.

If you are running around yelling and complaining and struggling, how can you feel God’s presence? It is when you stop, stay still for a second, that you can regain that steadiness and calm that allows you to hear him, to feel him, with you.

I found myself thinking of this passage on Friday, when my colleague at Immanuel, Old Church would be presiding at the Memorial Service for the three year old twin girls who were murdered. How could the family of those beautiful little girls carry on with the awful burden of grief? How could they live with the worry that they should have seen something in the girls’ father’s behavior that would have been a clue to what he planned? How could they stop themselves from imagining, over and over again, how the girls might have suffered before they died?

It would not surprise me if the family said, like the Israelites, “My way is hidden from the Lord, and my right is disregarded by my God.” “I feel like God has abandoned me, and abandoned my girls, and I feel utterly lost and alone.”

Isaiah says that God is with us, even in the times when we are most broken, most betrayed by the world around us, most lost and in pain. If we turn to the Lord, if we remember his power and his love for all of that which he created, then we know that even in the most difficult times, we are not alone. This God loves us. This God remembers us, each one of us, by name. This God gives us the strength we need. All we need to do is to be steady, to pedal our bikes at an even pace, to be faithful, and he will be there giving us what we need, whatever the world does to us. Those who wait for the Lord, steady despite the insanity around them, shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not be faint, because the Lord will give them what they need to endure.

Amen.

Strange Weather, Strange Times

It has been extraordinarily warm this winter here in Richmond. It was over 70 for two days this past week, and it is confusing our plants in the garden. Several daffodils are up, and the camellias are blooming. If and when we get a cold snap, those poor plants will get a shock.

Still, despite what Punxatawney Phil predicted, our local weather folks are saying the generally mild weather will continue, so we may have six more weeks of mild temps instead of true winter.

I'm of two minds about this. I like real winter, with enough snow that you can stay at home and enjoy the fire in the fireplace and drink hot cocoa. I don't like feeling chilled to the bone, though, and that's part of the package.

It's been another challenging week. I have taken over as dean of the region (sort of a mother hen to the parishes in our general area) and have worried about and prayed for one of our country churches, where they had a funeral for twin 3-year-old girls who were murdered by their father. This has rippled throughout the whole area - I presided at a Eucharist in the retirement community where the girls' great-grandmother lives, and all her friends there are grieving with her. So much pain and questioning in the midst of this - it informs the sermon I will preach for tomorrow, on Isaiah 40:21-31 ("Have you not known? Have you not heard?"

I also presided yesterday at a funeral in a funeral parlor for a lady who died at 53 after a hard life - she had been born and brought up Episcopalian, but had not been affiliated with a church for a long time. I find myself wondering if things would have been different for her if she had had a church family to help her. No answer to that, of course, just as there is no answer to whether things would have transpired differently for the aforementioned little girls if their father, who killed them before he killed himself, had been attending church and had talked to someone there in his depression and anger.

All we can do with these sorts of tragedies is leave in God's hands and hope that other people who are struggling as these two did will ask for help - our help in the church or other kinds of help.


We all face times of balmy weather and cold snaps. It's easier to handle if we do it with God as part of the picture, and with God's people to help.

Sermon for Thursday, February 2, 2012 Eucharist at Westminster-Canterbury Luke 2:22-40 “Seeing Things”

Those of us who are older see things differently than those who are young. Part of it is just that we’ve lived longer, seen more things. There isn’t much in life that we haven’t experienced, be it good or bad. Part of it is that we’ve had time to reflect on our own lives, what we’ve experienced, how that has formed us and changed us. We’ve had great joy and we’ve had our hearts broken, and we have survived both those experiences.

That’s certainly true for me. I cannot look at a daylily on a summer day, especially those speckled orange ones we call tiger lilies, without remembering my first visit as a city girl to the country, when I went to Girl Scout camp at the age of 7. I had no idea there were places with so many trees, and that there were roads where hundreds – no, thousands – of those tiger lilies filled the ditches flanking the dirt road, their tangerine glory lighting up the day as we hiked alongside them.

I cannot walk in a churchyard without remembering with a chill the cold January morning when we buried my mother almost two decades ago, after her long battle with heart disease.

We who have lived a while see things more deeply than our younger friends and family, because we have touchpoints, memories, that help us give meaning to what we observe.

In this, we are in fellowship with Simeon and Anna, the elders in the synagogue when Joseph and Mary bring the infant Jesus to the temple to be dedicated to God, as Mosaic law decreed.

Imagine them now, an old man and an old woman, faithful believers in the one true God. Simeon had been promised by God that he would not die until he saw the Messiah. He spent most of his days now in the temple, waiting for the arrival of the anointed one as he had for many years, wondering perhaps if he would truly live until he saw the child. What a gift that God had given to this faithful man! Years to hone his skills in seeing, so that when the right child, that blessed child, came, he would recognize him. He was now old, so old that his eyesight was not very good, but when Joseph and Mary brought the child to the temple, he had no trouble seeing who and what this child was. At last, after all those years of waiting and watching! The child, the Messiah! And Simeon offered up a beautiful prayer, one that we still recite as one of the canticles in our prayer book:

"Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel."

Simeon was grateful that God had kept his promise, both to the people of Israel in sending them deliverance through this Messiah, and to him, in giving him the gift of seeing who this child was.

But the gift of seeing does not mean that you only get to see wonderful and joyful things. The burden that Simeon carried was that he also saw how it would end for this baby, and he warned the child’s mother:

"This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed-- and a sword will pierce your own soul too."

We see more deeply, don’t we? And the hard part is that we see it all, good and bad.

This community knows that truth with particular sadness these days, when we mourn with our friend Louise over the senseless deaths of her great-granddaughters. We know bad things happen, that people go insane and hurt others, just as we know that little children are pure blessing and joy to us. We see how it is possible for such evil to happen. We wish we didn’t, as I am sure that Simeon wished he hadn’t seen what was going to happen to the precious infant Jesus that he held in his arms in the temple that morning. Sometimes it feels like we see too well, and wish we had the limited vision and naïve understanding of our youth. But this is the gift and the burden of our age – we see it all, too clearly to deny it. So it was with Simeon. So it is with us on this day, when we grieve the death of the King twins, when we weep tears of sympathy with their family.

The gift of vision, like all gifts, is simply given to us. It is given without regard to the good and bad we might see, but it is also given with the understanding that whatever we see, God sees with us. Whatever we see that frightens us, God knows about and stands behind us to strengthen us. Whatever we see that gives us joy, God knows about and stands beside us, smiling. Whatever we see that causes us grief, God knows about…and he wraps his love around us in shared grief.

We are not given this ability to see so deeply without a care for the emotions that it brings to us. And so, even in the most difficult times of seeing the hardest things, like the death of children, we know that we are not alone. We are never alone. The giver of the gift is with us, telling us that we must look, we must see, we must bear witness to what has happened, and we must pray that it will never happen again.

So we pray, and may our prayers help us to see the Resurrected Messiah as well as the Christ on the Cross. May our prayers help us to see two little children in heaven, as well as the poor hurt bodies they have left behind.

God bless us and keep us, and help us to bear the gift of seeing that we share.

Amen.