La Reunión

For the last month, Paula and I have been feverishly (and stressfully) preparing for the St. Paul’s Church annual meeting. (For those of you who may not know the governance of the Episcopal Church, the annual meeting is a required gathering of all available church members near the beginning of each year to approve the budget, elect board members and attend to other important business matters). Paola and I prepared all of the documents for the meeting, gathering more than a dozen reports, having them translated between English and Italian, and assembling them into a handy & beautiful multi-lingual edition of the church’s quarterly magazine, Letters from St.Paul’s.

One of the things I learned in preparation for our Latin-American community’s involvement in the event is that one Spanish word for a meeting is La Reunión. Of course, as an English speaker this left me really puzzled. Quite naturally I associated that word with something like a family or school reunion – a joyful gathering of otherwise dispersed people for recreation and catching up with stories of all the years gone by. A canonically required business meeting for financial and legal purposes didn’t quite seem to qualify as much of a Reunión that I would want to be part of!

On Sunday morning, having just returned from a wonderful two days In Orvieto, awoke nervously excited for the day to come. To my surprise, I came down to our normal pre-service breakfast gathering to find about 40 high school students from Virginia visiting with their art teacher and ready to enjoy the Eucharist at our parish! The day’s liturgy was downright superb and totally bilingual (English/Spanish). We even chanted the psalm alternating languages by half-verse with the help of two stellar sopranos and Fr. Austin preached a tremendously on-point powerful sermon.

Then came time for the Reunión. We all gathered at little tables around the room – both of our normally separated worshiping communities – by choice not divided with English speakers on one side and Spanish speakers on the other. Instead, virtually every table was a joyous linguistic mix, often communicating in Italian to help bridge the gaps between native languages. So there it was, a truly St. Paul’s affair with three languages going on all at once! Fr. Austin even skillfully did the brunt of the translating while also chairing the meeting. Going around from table to table sharing blessings and goals for the year, virtually every group expressed the desire for more events – more sharing and more fellowship among the two communities!

The Annual Meeting underway!

On top of it, we elected 3 new members of the vestry (the church governing board). Now instead of having all 8 members be native English speakers split between Americans and Africans, we now have a much greater mix of folks variously proficient in English, Spanish and Italian among the group. Now, like our weekly staff meetings, I hope and trust that the vestry Reuniónes will become a truly joyful mix of the three languages and many cultural backgrounds!

proudly displaying the last 4 editions of the magazine!

I had the great pleasure to sit at a table with mostly Latin-American community members and one other USA native. To be fair, my Spanish isn’t especially great (although I’m learning!) and my Italian is even worse. But I was proudly able to get out enough decent Spanish to have a really great conversation and share some great ideas about the church we all love. I even shared a high five with Angelina, a Spanish/Italian student around my age, about the suggestion of mas actividades para los jovenes (more activites for young people). I could really tell how much I’ve grown, not only in my confidence in a new language, but also in a new community and with these incredible people I have the pleasure to love and serve. Never before have I had friendships with people with whom I don’t completely share a language in common – but now I do! Hopefully as my Spanish improves, and as their English improves as many members have asked for English lessons at the church, we’ll have even more in common than we imagined!

So yes, what I expected to be a drab business meeting really was a Reunión indeed!

The Mountains - Part 2

As I mentioned in my last post, I was blessed to spend two days in the mountain town of Orvieto, just outside Rome. here are a few pictures of the town and its majestic Duomo Cathedral.

The beautiful scenic vistas of Orvieto! Note the medieval castle, and the new friends I made!

The stunning exterior and interior of the Duomo!

The Cathedral has just a bit of fascinating art in the classical Umbrian late medieval style. Note: in the Last Supper (top-middle in the second set), notice Judas sitting on the opposite side of the table with the Devil on his back!

Finally, a few more views of beautiful Orvieto as I prepared to head back to Rome. Ciao Bella!

The Mountains - Part 1

On the First Sunday of Lent, we read of Jesus’ retreat from the city into the mountains to pray. Each year, this story marks the beginning of the penitential season of Lent, when we are all to pause, escape from the rhythms of business, take stock of ourselves, and engage in reflection and prayer. Less than one year ago, I journeyed from Jerusalem to the very mountain on which Jesus is said to have prayed during his forty days of fasting and temptation, while I was on pilgrimage in Israel and Palestine. Overlooking both the vast baron desert and the green fields from a marvelous (and terrifying) height, I recall being washed with an overwhelming sense of earthy yet radiant gratitude.

The Mount of the Temptation which I visited last year, and a view from its height on a clear day

I have now felt that sensation once more, as I find myself once more on retreat in the mountains surrounding a great and holy city. This weekend, I traveled about 90 minutes by train to Orvieto, a small city in the Umbria region north of Rome, for a nearly three-day spiritual retreat.

This past week, without question, was one of the most stressful and exhausting weeks I can remember in at least the last several years. I knew without question that I was not only overdue for a little vacation, but that without one I would definitely be in a very rough place physically, emotionally and spiritually. Quite literally a breath of fresh air was not only desirable but absolutely necessary.

In the lush, bucolically forested mountains of Umbria, I have had the absolute blessing to enjoy the hospitality of St. Pauls’ vicar Fr. Francisco Alberca and his marvelous wife and two children. Eating what is without question the best meals I’ve had since coming to Italy (which as you can imagine is VERY high praise), I have been overjoyed to share with such a marvelous family.

Notably, the Alberca family speak perfect Italian and Spanish, but very little English (although Francisco is learning for sure). Likewise, I’m learning Spanish and Italian but by no means close to fluency in either. Despite the lessons I’ve picked up in the highly multi-lingual environment of Rome, I was still awfully nervous about being a good house guest without fully (or perhaps even mostly) sharing a language with my hosts!

As soon as Francisco and I arrived in Orvieto and enjoyed some quick cappuccino (it is Italy after all), we picked up his two kids and headed to the giardina where they love to play sports every day. For about an hour, as the sun began to set behind us, we joyously went back and forth playing soccer and basketball with the two little bambini and their happy dad. I couldn’t help but be flooded with thankfulness and that incredible feeling of “that was exactly what I needed”. After months traversing the dirty, smoggy, traffic-covered, tourist-filled, incessantly busy city of Rome, there was nothing better than a wholesome game of football with two great kids on a blue-sky day in an adorable suburban park.

Long story short, the Albercas are bar none the best hosts ever. No offense to all you awesome hosts out there (some of whose hospitality I’ve had the opportunity to enjoy over the years). Over dinner and board games (and did I mention amazing food?) we all went back and forth, flowing between English, Spanish and Italian – sometimes even in the same sentence – creating full and fulfilling conversations along the way! A real Pentecost experience!

The following morning, I had the extraordinary joy of rising early with the Alberca family. After a delicious breakfast we departed for the day. Fr. Francisco, who also remarkably happens to be a surgeon and former BioEthics professor, was off to his weekly duty visiting patients in the hospital. Meanwhile, I headed up to the center of Orvieto via the Funiculare (a sort of tram that goes directly up the mountainside instead of the curved vehicular roads) to explore the marvelous Duomo and surrounding area.

Rather than describe it in detail for you, I’ll let you enjoy the photos for yourself! Click here or head to the next blog post to see them!

Are You Listening?

I was blessed to preach the following sermon, entitled "Are You Listening?" on February 7, 2016 for the Feast of the Transfiguration at St. Paul's Within the Walls Episcopal Church in Rome.

YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!!!

I can basically hear Jesus screaming, exasperated, trying to get to the top of his lungs but just beat down by the sheer exhaustion of it all. “for heaven’s sake, I’ve been trying to get through to you people time after time after time after time, and you just won’t listen!”. Then, like an overwhelmed grade school teacher: “no no no, keep talking, I’ll wait. I’m not going to talk while you’re talking”. And the disciples, unfazed, keep right on babbling to each other, just rambling, barely taking in air between ridiculous vacuous thoughts. “oh oh, I got it this time, here’s the answer! No Peter, that’s stupid – this is it! Shut up James, you’re wrong, I’ve got it!” And Jesus just turns and slinks away, disappointed and now nursing a serious migraine. “you gotta be kidding me”

Ok, I don’t know if it actually happened like that, but that’s what I imagine as Jesus leads the Disciples up the mountain as we hear in today’s Gospel. Take ten minutes to read the entire ninth chapter of Luke, from which our passage today comes, and like me you will be amazed by the frequency with which Luke tells us that the disciples just aren’t getting it. In each of about twelve short paragraphs, Jesus is trying to communicate a simple point, we turn to the disciples, and without fail they (and all the other people around Jesus) get it ridiculously and preposterously wrong.

The chapter starts out (before where we started today) with King Herod trying to figure out whether this miracle-working preacher from Nazareth is a prophet, or the long-dead prophet Elijah, or John the Baptist whom Herod himself beheaded not long before. Then, as if to answer the question, Jesus famously goes and feeds 5,000 people with a handful of loaves & fish. Next the disciples get to arguing about the same question – whether Jesus is Elijah or John the Baptist, and to clear things up, he tells them one of many times about his coming death and Resurrection. Naturally they remain perplexed, so Jesus tries another approach, taking them up to the highest mountain around, away from all the distractions of the world. Clearly subtlety, parables, prophecy, and even grandiose miracles haven’t done the trick, so he tries an even flashier approach:

Imagine it with me, friends – on top of a very high mountain- one it would have taken several days to climb – looking out 360 degrees onto all the sparse countryside for miles and miles and miles. It is eerily quiet. Gone are the crowds and the bustle of the city, replaced by only the stiff blowing wind. There is no one around. No one. Just three disciples and Jesus. Normally you might silence yourself in such a place, taking in the beauty, the majesty of it all. Instead, the disciples seem to be continuing to bicker as they were before.

And all of a sudden, as they are still talking, Jesus is literally transformed – transfigured before their eyes. In the blink of an ete, Jesus is literally standing there, in suddenly dazzling white clothing (and if popular depictions are correct, levitating in thin air). Moses and Elijah – who Jesus is NOT – are literally talking to him in a vision about what he’s about to go do in Jerusalem! How much clearer could he be? How can one not be moved to silence, to trembling, to reverence at such a moment?

Well, not to be outdone, Peter STILL manages to be uproariously off-base. He basically says the equivalent of “Oh wow, look at the cool thing that happened here – let’s build a church here to remember it by!” (a sentiment that I think Rome understands better than any city I have ever known). I think if Peter could’ve taken a selfie instead, he would’ve done it.

Still exhausted, and having had it up to HERE by now, God kicks it up even one notch further. Literally interrupting Peter mid-speech, the voice from heaven comes down –

“This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!”

It may as well have added “Do you have any further questions?!?!? I didn’t think so!”

YOU’RE NOT LISTENING TO ME!!!

Just Listen.

That’s it. Don’t worry about responding, don’t worry about getting it right, don’t worry about preserving this moment for posterity, don’t worry about who’s right and who’s wrong, don’t worry about anything else.

Just Listen.

Just to bring home the point, as he takes the disciples back down the mountain again, he commands them, for the umpteenth time, not to say anything to anyone about what happened up there. I used to wonder for a long time why Jesus, who taught in public, did miracles in public, healed people in public and a whole lot more, would so often pointlessly tell people to keep quiet, knowing full well that they wouldn’t. But the more I read & re-read Scripture, I think it’s that Jesus just wanted people to listen and really take in the incredible works that God was performing before their very eyes.

Friends, I think God is still saying that to us today….

God is constantly calling us, constantly reaching out to us both individually and in society. God whispers to us, taps us on the shoulder, works even to this day miracles large and small in our lives, provides moments of revelation and leads us unsuspectingly in one direction or another.  But I believe far more often than not, we manage to miss it entirely, or misunderstand, or ignore altogether the signs that God works in us everyday.

After all, it is so much easier, so we think, to stay focused on other things. We live distracted by our work, and our calendars and schedules and to-do lists. We live with cameras and phones in front of our faces to try to memorialize moments instead of truly experiencing God in the moment at all. Or we project our own biases and assumptions onto God, assuming that we have the right answers already. Surely, we think, God is who we say God is, thinks how we think, wants what we want, or even hates who we hate. And so even when we pray, we pray with our mouths always open and our ears always closed.

So here we are, together, on this final Sunday of Epiphany. Jesus has given us this incredible transformative moment – the Transfiguration. We have seen Jesus lifted up on high upon the mountain, in dazzling white. With the disciples, we have fallen to our knees in amazement and heard the voice come down from heaven: “This is my son, the Chosen. Listen to Him”.

So friends in Christ, what will we do as we come down from this mountain? What will we do as we leave this church and go back into the busy Roman world? On Wednesday, we will observe Ash Wednesday together and begin again the holy season of Lent. In Lent we remember that we have so often failed to listen, failed to hear and failed to understand, failed to act in the way that God desires. And in Lent, we recommit ourselves to following Christ, and engage in acts of spiritual discipline to guide us on the way.

You may choose to “give up” something this Lent, and I encourage you also to “pick up” something spiritually enriching as well. Read a book that will help you in faithful spiritual reflection. Pray Evening Prayer or Morning Prayer on page 79 of the BCP as we do together in this church every weekday. Or take part in a discussion group, taking care to listen to the voice of God in others much more than you speak.

Whatever you do, pray with your mouth closed and your ears open. Listen.