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Dear People of Christ Church,
Last week, my family and I drove 925 miles (and, again, 925 back) to the Wild Goose Festival, our second time joining other Christians and questioners for a four day festival of “justice, spirituality, and music.” Thankfully this year we came out of the Cherokee National Forest with no wild tow truck stories as we did last year! I’m not sure how many hundreds of people were there, but it’s kind of a pop-up Christian community of campers, speakers, and musicians, with a combination of Episcopal progressivism and evangelical Jesus-fervor. Wild Goose is a good example of how Christians of many different stripes can learn from each other.

Some of the speakers were big names, both in the Episcopal Church (music workshop with Ana Hernandez) and in the wider world, including, a rousing altar-call to social justice sermon by the Rev.William Barber, leader of the Moral Mondays movement in North Carolina. I also heard Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners talking about racism as America’s original sin. Most of the time, though, I hung out in the “Carnival” tent. It was hosted by the Carnival de Resistance, a crew of poets, dancers, artists, and activists. Also academics: Jim Perkinson talked about American white supremacism and how living in inner city Detroit and learning from the African-American community there had saved his soul. Ched Myers, whose work I’ve long been interested in, talked about the Christian invitation to love our watershed, not just change our light bulbs because we ought to.

From their welcome sign:
We wish with our bodies to contradict claims that civilization has made about how necessary its gifts are to a life well lived and again to playfully produce, if not proof, some early evidence that a life of another stripe might be realistic, even necessary.

In addition to all of these great ideas and discussions, The carnival space felt liturgical. At the end of one session we wandered into, we were invited to greet each other with this: “We are here! We are here!” which would not have been out of place (maybe without the puppets and face paint) here as we pass the peace on Sunday mornings.

We are here! This is the human interaction that says, “I see you, and yes, we are here. We have been created for more than buying and selling. We have been created to see each other.” We are here! We see each other! We remember! We remember, not just each other, but everyone. Poor people in Detroit whose water is getting shut off. New immigrants, whether or not they have the correct paperwork. People you disagree with. Women who have lost their right to their full health care benefits. We are all here. God made me. God made you. Before we’re supposed to “witness” God’s love to each other, God invites us to witness the Other in the first place, see each other at all. Jim Perkinson pointed out that the beginning of the Gospel-the beginning of the Gospel, that we so often remind ourselves is “good news”-is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. The cry is the beginning.

All of this raises the question: how are we seeing each other? How do we see each other here at Christ Church, as well as those not within our doors? How do I live out these values in my comparatively comfortable life? What was great about the Carnival tent was the shimmering, holy joy of finding a way to live differently: the bean bag toss game “Cleanse the Temple” to remind us of Jesus’ invitation to faith without commerce, the puppets, the parades, the anti-clock tower that asks, “Do you have time or does time have you?”

I imagine-I hope!-I will spend some more time thinking about this. One of the talks I went to was called “Slow Church,” about how very, very long it takes to establish yourself in a community and to listen to what the community needs, to respond authentically to those who are there and where God might be leading not necessarily with more programs, but with more attention. As we finish our ninth year together rand enter the tenth, I am grateful for all of you traveling together with our little carnival!

Blessings,
Sara+

(For a longer reflection on this, and to see pictures and links to all the speakers, look at my post on my own blog)

Dear People of Christ Church,

This week, I’m all aflutter about the decision in my home state of Pennsylvania to allow same sex marriage. Of course, it’s been the law in my chosen state for ten years (we moved here in 2004, too, the same year it came through), but this feels different. Pennsylvania is such a big state-the part I’m from is basically Ohio-and while it’s may not be such a paradigm shift for Philadelphia, for Erie, this changes a lot. Admittedly there was something Onion-satire-like about the headline on the Erie Times-News: “Another same sex couple applies for marriage license.”

In Massachusetts, this is old news. Still, there’s something about the place where I’m from recognizing the right to marriage for all people that feels healing. My right to marry my spouse was never questioned because my beloved happens to be male, but that is not the case for one of my high school best friends, who had three weddings with her wife-one commitment ceremony, one legal NH civil union (presided over by yours truly), and one party when that civil union became a legal marriage on January 1 2011. Phew. They had to buy a lot of champagne.

Marriage is a sacrament, a gift, and a blessing. There’s an old image of the church that imagines us as “the bride of Christ”-this is not an image that I feel particularly drawn toward, but it reminds us that the covenant of marriage is holy-and the failure of the church or the state to extend equal benefits to all is just an injustice. Of course I believe in separation of church and state, but I also want a wedding I officiate in church to be legal in the eyes of the state. I haven’t been to Pennsylvania in years, but I still feel so grateful for this. Judge John Jones, in the PA case wrote, “In the sixty years since Brown was decided, ‘separate’ has thankfully faded into history, and only ‘equal’ remains. Similarly, in future generations, the label ‘same-sex marriage’ will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by ‘marriage.’ We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history”

This is the country we are becoming; we’re not there yet, but slowly, slowly. This is what we say we’ll do in our baptismal covenant: to strive for justice and peace and respect the dignity of every human being. With each state where marriage for all becomes a reality, we get just a little closer to making that possible. Oregon went this week, too. Now, reader, I’ve been sending this newsletter every week for almost nine years, and perhaps you’ve read this before. But it’s like that parable Jesus tells in Luke 15:

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.

Every time, every time there is a victory for peace and justice, we are called to rejoice. So today, I’m rejoicing for those two couples in my hometown who’ve gotten their marriage licenses. Easter continues!

Blessings,
Sara+