Spring 2015 by Trinity Wall Street

spring 2015 vol. 62 | no. 1

TrinityNews the magazine of trinity wall street

Countdowns & Transfigurations Experiments in Living The Messy Process of Collaboration

Trinity News

SPRING 2015

TrinityNews vol. 62 | no. 1

the magazine of trinity wall street

DEPARTMENTS FEATURE STORIES 1

7 Countdowns and Transfigurations Lindsay Lunnum

Interview with the New Rector

Letter from the Rector

Archivist’s Mailbag

Anglican Communion Stories

PsalmTube

The Visitor File

For the Record

What Have You Learned?

Pew and Partner Notes

9 I Believe I am So Called Lauren Holder 10 Transition as Opportunity Nancy Davidge and Susan Elliott 11 Experiments in Living Jeremy Sierra 14 The Messy Process of Collaboration Interview with Fred Clarke 16 No Timetable for Grief Kristin Miles and Kelly Murphy Mason

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letter from the Rector

rinity is in a period of conversation and discernment about the parish building that will replace our now-vacated structure at 68/74 Trinity Place directly behind Trinity Church. Congregation, staff, and our downtown neighbors and ministry partners have contributed their ideas about what our new space should look like to accommodate community needs. We’ve invited everyone, in a very public process, especially those people living on the margins of society whose voices might be too easily ignored. This conversation will continue for several months, but we have already reached some conclusions. There were originally four possibilities. One was to refurbish the building. That would have cost upwards of $70 million, and the vestry has decided not to do that. The second was to construct and sell condominiums above the ministry space, and the vestry has also ruled out that option. Still under consideration are rental apartments built above our ministry space or constructing a building devoted solely to ministry space and offices. Before these decisions are made we will do a lot more listening and brainstorming. In the meantime, I am especially concerned with making a space that is welcoming and serves the community. I like to quote the one-time Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, who said: “The church is the only organization whose primary purpose is for the benefit of people who are not members.” Jesus calls us to serve those to whom the rest of the world has turned a blind eye or a deaf ear. We have been given a great gift with this property and it is my hope that this process will help us to make the best use of it. There will be more meetings and many more opportunities for people to offer their insights, ideas, and concerns. This is the way I like to reach decisions. We gather and we learn from each other. In the process the deep wisdom of the community rises to the surface. I’ve already seen it happen here in my first few months as the rector of Trinity. I can’t wait to see more!

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer

An Interview WITH

Trinity’s New Rector The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer became the 18th rector of Trinity Wall Street after the retirement of the Rev. Dr. James Cooper on February 15, 2015. Jim Melchiorre sat down with Dr. Lupfer shortly before the transition.

You’ve been part of the transition for six months. What do you know now about Trinity that you didn’t know six months ago? When she welcomed me, the Presiding Bishop said, “Bill, Trinity is the most complicated parish in the Episcopal Church.” And I agree with her now. It’s a very complicated place. It’s a wonderful place. A person once talked about Trinity as a museum church. It’s anything but a museum church. We had hundreds of people in the pews this last week on Sunday, and during the week, every time I walk through, people were kneeling in prayer. I’ve talked to business leaders in the community who said they’ve prayed in Trinity often over the years. Then you go to Africa [where] there’s an enormous ministry there with Trinity. I am amazed at how much ministry goes on here.

What would you say are Trinity’s strengths? Our friends in Africa see our strengths with philanthropy and with the income-generating projects that we support and train people for. I think our friends in New York City know us as moral leaders, as civic leaders, and also as people who are very concerned for the poor and hungry and for impoverished public education students. Our friends further abroad in America know us for the Clergy Leadership Project, for Trinity Institute. I have people sending me notes each week about our liturgy, because they watch 2

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online. Often after church on Sunday, I take pictures with tourists from all over the world. We’re known by different groups for different strengths, because we have many. You’ve preached on the subject of race in America. How do you plan for Trinity to be involved in improving our situation? What I have suggested is that we can be friends across racial lines, and that friendship across racial lines is a real destabilizer for racism. So that’s the first step. The second step is to engage our congregation, which is the most diverse worshiping community I’ve ever experienced. I think the wisdom of our worshiping community will lead us into next steps. A month ago, you paid a visit to Africa and met with our partners. What are your impressions? I am astonished by our ministry in Africa and really excited by it. We’re working now with mission partners, and they’re very self-directed. They’re doing the same things in Africa that we do here at Trinity: we seek to create incomegenerating projects, to run them very efficiently, and then use that money for ministry. So what we’re trying to do in Africa is equip and support and challenge them to become independent partners in ministry. We’re well on our way, and it’s very, very exciting. In New York City, it is estimated that approximately sixty thousand citizens are homeless, including somewhere between twenty thousand and twenty-five thousand children. How can Trinity help? This is a heartbreaking statistic. I think homelessness in New York City is as bad as it’s ever been, and so I’ve had discussions with city and political leaders. What we want to do is, again, bring action out of our worshiping community. What I’ve asked the political leaders is, what can you not do that Trinity could do? How can we help in those gaps that the government and other people who have been in this a long time cannot fill? We have a large study group looking at this right now and a lot of people working on this, and we’ll be looking for those gaps and then trying to move into the gaps. We might end up in a place we don’t expect, but it will be part of caring for those who are most vulnerable.

Can you talk about the community conversation that you have opened regarding the future of the property that Trinity has at 68/74 Trinity Place? Well, there is a lot of wisdom in people, and if we bring them together in a safe and productive way, and we ask the right questions, that wisdom comes out. So we’re designing a process to brainstorm with members in our parish, members in our neighborhood, stakeholders,

now is to further create a live/work community that’s unique in the city, that has affordable housing right where people work. Our housing study group is looking at how we might do that. I’ve talked to city leaders and religious leaders about the importance of live/work communities here in New York. So Hudson Square is a wonderful opportunity for Trinity, in terms of ministry, since we have so many buildings there.

You have said you would like Trinity to be in a position to be of assistance to smaller congregations around the country. Any vision of that yet? One vision I have is what I’ve been calling “open-source programming.” I think we have the capacity through our resources to program in such a way that ideas can be shared freely. Another [idea] is to encourage places that are doing interesting things and inviting them to come talk with us. We can help them get the word out and communicate all the good that’s happening.

Jim Melchiorre

Can you tell us a little bit about the Rev. Phillip Jackson, Trinity’s new Vicar, and how you plan to work in partnership and ministry with him? Phil is a very faithful person. I’ve known him for 20 years. He’s someone who has a deep faith. He’s a lot of fun. He’s very smart. And he’s a very committed priest who loves the people that he works with and finds something to love in everybody in a playful and purposeful manner. I see the vicar as a key partner with the rector. I have called Phil over the years when I really needed to get perspective on the big challenges and big difficulties, and to have him right near my office right now is a wonderful gift, for me and all of Trinity.

and neighbors who are not members. We want to bring in the voices of the vulnerable and have them speak to us as well. So it’s a broad-based conversation. Have you used this process before? Yes, I have. I like to gather a group together to look at a very tough problem. Bringing groups together, praying, brainstorming, working together to find a new way—I find that very exciting, and I’ve done that a lot in my ministry. What are your thoughts about Hudson Square (that section of Manhattan between Tribeca and Greenwich Village where most of the land and buildings owned by Trinity are located)? Hudson Square is a place that is growing and growing more vital. I know Dr. Cooper and the staff and the folks in the parish have really developed that community. The opportunity

Can you be more specific about how you see the pulpit? I think a preacher who’s in a parish has to learn the language of the parish and then match that with a call from Scripture and from our lived experience of God. That’s what I try to do as a preacher—to stretch all of us, including myself, towards God’s call and to pull us forward into the challenging future that God invites us to. But it has to be in the language that makes sense here at Trinity. My grandfather before he died said, “Now, Bill, when you preach, make them think.” I follow that order.

What are Trinity’s core values? I don’t know yet, but we’re developing a process to clarify them. It will happen in the fall. The big open-planning process for the building at 68/74 Trinity Place will be the beginning. Once we finish that, we’ll go into an intentional core-value clarification. I do know that when Queen Anne gave us the gift of land in 1705, it was to support the civic good in New York as it was then. Our tagline today is, “For a world of good,” so I know we care widely for the world. Specific core values will be up to the group to discern together. If you were meeting with your fellow priests, and they said to you, “Bill, tell us something about Trinity we didn’t know,” what would you say? Trinity’s scope and scale is much broader and deeper than anyone knows, and Trinity has been very discreet up until now. I think we’re in the business of sharing good news, and there is an enormous amount of good news at Trinity, and I intend to share it.

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by Leah Reddy

On March 20, 1777, the Rev. Charles Inglis stood among the ruins of Trinity Church and placed his hand on the crumbling, scorched wall. As the vestry looked on, warden Elias Desbrosses instituted Inglis as the fourth rector of Trinity Church, saying, “By Virtue of this Mandate I do Induct you into the Real Actual and Corporal possession of this Church called Trinity Church in the City of New York with all the Rights profits and appurtenances thereto belonging.” Signs of spring surrounded the small group: there were green shoots between the tombstones and birds in the trees, but the city retained a bleak feel. One-third of its buildings had been destroyed in a fire the previous September, and the British Army occupied the city. Patriot prisoners of war were held in deplorable conditions on rotting prison ships in the harbor. Outside the city in Patriot-controlled territory, Anglican clergy were victimized for their loyalty to the Crown, something they had sworn to at the time of their ordination. Of the 19 Anglican clergy working in New York State, only Samuel Provoost was a Patriot. Fifty-six Anglican clergymen were persecuted during the war: banned from working, their homes destroyed, their families threatened. Four were killed outright. Trinity parish, inside occupied New York City, was one of the few places in the country where Anglican clergy could practice openly. Religious life during British occupation continued as normally as possible. Services were held in St. Paul’s Chapel and St. George’s Chapel. St. George’s was also loaned to the Dutch Reformed Congregation, whose church had been seized for use as a prison. The Charity School educated the city’s disadvantaged boys. Forty pounds of beef were delivered to “impoverished widows and housekeepers” at Christmas.

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Inglis was sincere in his belief in the British. He published Loyalist essays under the pen name Papinian, including one titled “The True Interest of the American Impartially Stated.” But by 1780, all signs pointed toward a Patriot victory. Necessities were hard to come by in the city, and the vestry was unable to collect rent on church properties. Though Inglis wrote, “The rebellion declines daily and is near its last gasp,” churchmen in other states began planning how to rebuild the denomination in an independent America. At one of these meetings the name Protestant Episcopal Church was chosen. The term episcopal came from a 17th-century English church faction that favored retention of bishops. On October 19, 1781, General Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, though the British would not evacuate New York City for another two years. Loyalist refugees, both lay and clergy, streamed into the city to await evacuation or acceptance into the new nation. Inglis’s life came apart as the occupation wound down. His eight-year-old son died in January 1782 and his wife soon after. A writ of attainder was issued against him, seizing his property and condemning him to death should he be found in America after British evacuation. (Many states issued these in the aftermath of the war, and most eventually granted Loyalists amnesty. New York did not. The United States Constitution outlawed writs of attainder.) In November 1783, Inglis tendered his resignation and sailed to Canada where he would become the first bishop of Nova Scotia. After Inglis’s departure, the vestry quickly elected the parish’s assistant minister, the Rev. Benjamin Moore, rector. His installation as rector, however, was blocked.

Patriot members of Trinity parish were also returning to the city at this time. They were eager to claim the church as their own. They called themselves “Whig Episcopalians” and included James Duane, the first post-Revolution mayor of the city; R. R. Livingston, who was on the committees that drafted the Declaration of Independence and the New York State Constitution; and John Lawrence, New York City’s representative to the First United States Congress. But the fate of the Church of England in the new American states was in legal limbo, and the Whig Episcopalians knew it. In places like New York, where the church had been “established,” church property was owned not by local congregations but by the British Crown. The entire legal basis for parish structure, business, and property ownership was void, and state legislatures could legally seize that property. The key to the church’s survival would be obtaining the support and approval of the new legislatures, something that couldn’t be done with Loyalist leadership at the top of the parish. The Whig Episcopalians called a meeting at Simmons Tavern at Wall and Nassau streets on December 6, 1783. The group concluded that the vestry election and Moore’s subsequent election were illegitimate, given that many parishioners were unable to vote due to the war. Later that week, at the invitation of the Whig Episcopalians, the two groups met at the tavern. No agreement was reached. Failing in the direct approach, the Whig Episcopalians petitioned the provisional council of the Southern District of New York. Patriot members of the church, the petition said, had fled homes and businesses during the conflict and lost friends in the fighting. “But while your Petitioners acquiesce in these, they cannot consent that Rights to which they are entitled as Members of a Religious Community, should be wrested from them, while they were endeavoring to establish the Civil and Religious Privileges of every Citizen of the State.” The vestry countered the petition with a radical proposition: abolish the office of rector and replace it with two clergymen with equal power, one from each faction. The Whigs declined the proposition. The provisional council took action on the Whigs petition in late January 1784, appointing nine trustees to manage the parish estate until further action of the state legislature. The trustees immediately invited Samuel Provoost

“There is hardly anything more memorable in the history of Anglican Christianity than the preservation of our institutions, our faith, our Book of Common Prayer, and our ecclesiastical traditions in that trying period of transition from the monarchical rule and system of the old world to the freedom and independence of the new.” –Morgan Dix, A History of Trinity Parish

A drawing of the second Trinity Church building, which was destroyed by fire, from Valentine’s City of New York Guide Book, published in 1920. to return to the city and take leadership of Trinity Church. Moore was ordered to hand over the parish keys, and the vestry resigned en masse shortly thereafter. On April 17, 1784, the state legislature passed a bill amending Trinity’s charter, fully separating it from the Crown and putting it in compliance with state law. Ownership of the church estate was vested in the corporation itself, and its structures were affirmed, as was its right to pass on property through the chain of rectors, wardens, and vestrymen. A new vestry was elected, and Provoost was officially instituted as the fifth rector of Trinity Church on April 22, 1784.

There’s no doubt: the Whig Episcopalians’ power grab forced Trinity into becoming American, thus preserving the patrimony. There’s also no doubt that the transition cost Trinity earnest and capable leaders and congregants. But not all: after Provoost’s resignation in 1800, Benjamin Moore was again called to the position of rector of Trinity Church, where he served until his death in 1816. Leah Reddy is Multimedia Producer for Trinity Wall Street.

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rinity Wall Street is in the midst of a change in season: The Rev. Dr. Bill Lupfer, only the 18th rector in Trinityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s history, has begun his ministry. The congregation continues to grow. Trinity has moved to temporary offices and is designing a new parish building. All this got us thinking about the transitions of life, from the normal and healthy changes every community experiences, to the more challenging personal transitions as we lose loved ones or have children, shift careers or follow a new calling. Each year we experience winter and spring, summer and fall, yet our tradition reminds us that in the midst of the changes and chances of this life, there is continuity in community, in our common worship, and in Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eternal changelessness. The stories that follow deal with the way God works during times of change and transition.

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;Jeremy Sierra, Managing Editor

n o i t i d a Tr change Continuity

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Countdowns

Transfigurations What my autistic son teaches me about life’s transitions By Lindsay Lunnum

I am acutely aware of transitions. Not just the new job, new relationship status, new school kinds of transition.

I’m talking about transitioning from the house to the car or from the playground back to home.

seven-year-old son has autism, and for him, moving from one activity to another can be really startling and upsetting. I am learning how important it is to walk with him through a transition. We count down the minutes before we shift to the next thing: “Five more minutes until we leave the playground and go home … four minutes … three minutes. …” My son gets so completely absorbed in the moment, in whatever is occupying his attention, that there is no opportunity for contemplating what’s next. And while I admire his ability to stay in the moment, we’d still be counting steps at the museum if I didn’t help him slowly switch gears. Perhaps that is why I laughed when someone recently commented that as I’d been the rector at my parish for 18 months, Zion is no longer in transition. I suppose it is true that my parish is past the phase of saying goodbye to a longtime rector and welcoming a new one. But in many ways, we are beginning another change. Still. And I am realizing that a

big part of my ministry is to count down the minutes before we shift to the next thing. This is not to say that I am particularly good at dealing with transitions myself. Why are they difficult, anyway? Even Jesus’s dear friend and apostle, Peter, was confounded by transition. We can see Peter struggling when he witnesses the Transfiguration. The Gospel says that Jesus was “transfigured” and his clothes were bleached to a dazzling white. Jesus’s transfiguration confuses his disciples. Peter, James, and John simply stand there and see their friend sparkling and the two greatest patriarchs of the faith standing with him. Peter’s response makes a lot of sense to me. He offers to build dwellings for Jesus, Moses, and Elijah. I can completely understand his desire to construct a kind of container to help him capture the moment. It’s as if Peter is thinking that this is now the way things are going to be. This is it. I like the way things are right

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now. Let’s keep it like this always—or at least until I can understand what is happening! I recognize this impulse of Peter in myself. I’m guessing I’m not alone. Perhaps we can even see evidence of it in our parishes and families. There is something new, and the temptation is to claim what feels like a really good new thing as the new normal. Especially when this whole event seems blessed by the familiar characters of the tradition. Like my son when he is watching his favorite episode of The Backyardigans, Peter is basically seeing all of this, Jesus, the Law, and the Prophets—all that he knows and loves about his faith in one place—and his instinct is to make it stay. But inevitably, the closing theme song plays and the episode ends. Peter’s practically still speaking when a bright cloud envelops them, a voice from within it speaking: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” And suddenly, Moses and Elijah disappear and everything returns to its original color and lighting. This is my takeaway from this Gospel: the past is important. It helps inform us of who and where we have been. And the present moment is a gift to be accepted and lived. But neither is meant to be preserved. Or contained. Or normalized. Just as Peter offers to make a place for the past to dwell with the present, God points out that it is Jesus we must listen to. God is calling us to listen to his Beloved. Listen to Jesus. And what does Jesus do? He goes back down the mountain! Peter and the others head down the mountain with Jesus and with a thousand unanswered questions about what just happened. I believe we are called to do the same. We are to listen and keep walking with Jesus. With our questions, confusions, doubts, and enthusiasms. The Transfiguration is not about being done with change. Rather, it reminds us that we are constantly in motion when we follow Jesus. Even as I am counting down the minutes for

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my son’s transitions, I am still learning every day that they are part of our Christian life. What God calls us to do is to listen to Jesus, to see Jesus in new ways, and to follow him where he leads us. The best way for us to do that is to start with what we know. Just as Peter, James, and John knew the Law and the Prophets, we know the ways we have traditionally connected with God and each other. But God doesn’t intend for us to keep doing the same things over

and over. We are called to keep moving. Keep listening. Keep following. Because God is not static. God is on the move. God is busy at work in the world, and we can’t follow Jesus if we stay in one place. The Rev. Lindsay Lunnum is the Rector of Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, NY. Before her ordination, Lunnum served as a staff member of Trinity Wall Street.

Rhythms of Grace On the first Saturday of the month, the Rev. Lindsay Lunnum puts out a sign in the parish hall of Zion Episcopal Church in Douglaston, New York. The sign is for Rhythms of Grace, a service for families and children with special needs. It reads, “Gathering, Storytelling, Exploring, Re-gathering, Eucharist, Dismissal,“ each step illustrated in permanent marker. “The kids like to know what’s coming in advance,” explained Lunnum. “It lowers their anxiety.” The program, created by Church Publishing, is specially designed for autistic children and their families. It begins with storytelling from the Bible, followed by a variety of hands-on activities such as making candle holders with tissue paper and glue. The children go at their own pace and choose how much they will participate. The service concludes with a Eucharist in the sanctuary. Some children sidle right up to the miniature altar where Lunnum kneels; others stay in the pews with their parents. Many siblings join in the activities. Volunteers range from teenagers to Carol Brock, who is 91. She said she’s learned a lot from the experience. “It was really a revelation to me.” She and the other volunteers received training in September. “It’s really been great for our parish,” said Lunnum. “It’s a two-way street.”

I believe I am so called

Craig Ruttle

In the days preceding my ordination, I felt everything—prepared and unprepared, affirmed and afraid, confident and humbled, joyful and somber. On the one hand, I had been preparing for this day with the help of many mentors and friends for years—God had been shaping me for this vocation since birth. Yet there is forever room for growth and new learning. There is a sense that you will never have all that it takes. That latter part is where the Holy Spirit swoops in moment to moment. It’s what reminds us of our reliance on God when we might otherwise be tempted to rely on ourselves alone. The morning after my ordination, I was glad to celebrate my first two Eucharists with my Trinity family as well as my family and friends who had traveled to New York for the weekend. During both the 9am and 11:15am services, I paused several times to notice what was going on. Before approaching the altar, I retraced the shape of the cross on the palms of my hands, where Bishop Curry had anointed me just the day before. I noted the presence of the Holy Spirit when touching the bread and the wine during the Thanksgiving and then paused to remember the Real Presence of Jesus in this same food and drink before sharing it with all gathered. A few days later I ran into the Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee at Trinity Institute who asked me how it felt to celebrate the Eucharist. When I told her of my need to pause and remember that the simple bread and wine had become sacramental food and drink, she said, “May you never forget it.” Indeed many people asked me in the days following my ordination how it felt to be a priest. I mostly responded, “A little the same, a little different.” And that still rings true. I am the same Lauren I have always been. A little quirky, a lover of people, an ambitious perfectionist, a geek, a sinner working to be less critical of myself and others, a wife, an expectant mother, a loud laugher and an even louder sneezer, a child of God. And yet I am changed. As much as I love reading and reflecting on Scripture and prayer, it is now my responsibility to do so. I must remember at all times that I represent the church even as I remain myself, and I must choose my actions and weigh my words accordingly. And while my first vow will forever be to my husband, I have also made vows to the church, my bishop, and any with authority over me. Lifetime vows. On good days and bad, on days I agree and disagree, I have promised to serve the Church with a capital C.

by Lauren Holder

During the ordination, the bishop examines the ordinand: “As a priest, it will be your task to proclaim by word and deed the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and to fashion your life in accordance with its precepts. You are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness to penitent sinners, to pronounce God’s blessing, to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christ’s Body and Blood. … In all that you do, you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.” The bishop then asks, “My sister, do you believe that you are truly called by God and his Church to this priesthood?” The ordinand’s response is, “I believe I am so called.”

I found these words helpful. I believe I am so called. While it is an affirmative statement, it is especially a statement of faith. I believe. Not just “I am” or even “I know” but I believe. No matter how new this vocation is, or how inadequate I may feel some days, I can believe. I can and I do. If I were to get a tattoo, these might be appropriate words to consider: I believe I am so called. Mandatory retirement for clergy in the Episcopal Church is set at age 72, so I have about 35 years to grow into this vocation. I anticipate the ministries I will be invited into will differ from one season to the next, and I look forward to adjusting to new roles and opportunities and communities as I encounter them—trusting that the words “I believe I am so called” will be the common thread tying it all together. The Rev. Lauren Holder is Senior Program Officer for Community Engagement for Trinity Wall Street.

Transition as Opportunity

Recommendations for Church Leaders By Nancy Davidge and Susan Elliott

Transition periods disrupt the status quo, creating opportunities for congregations and leaders to reflect deeply and prayerfully on who they are, what they have been in the past, and where God is leading them. It is a time to focus on mission and vision and to think deeply about what Jesus is calling your church to do and to become. Whether a transition relates to a change in clergy leadership, entering into a new relationship with another congregation, or moving to a different location, the challenges of leading during transition are real and unavoidable. Here are eight ways church leaders can minimize the anxiety associated with change and transition:

ecommit to your vestry and congregational norms and covenants. R Working well together is more important than ever during times of transition.

2 Keep prayer, Bible study, and discernment at the top of your vestry agenda. 3 Monitor your own feelings and emotions. Make friends with them, as the Buddhists might say, and trust in what Teilhard de Chardin called “the slow work of God.”

4 Be a nonanxious listener. People need to share their feelings and concerns with their church’s leadership. Just to be heard is reassuring.

5 Trust the process you are in, trust others, trust God. Easier said than done, but do your best.

Be proactive and collaborative in engaging any issues you encounter.

7 During a clergy transition, be mindful of who is designated as the Le o

congregation’s ecclesiastical authority and come to a shared understanding of the roles and responsibilities of each, honoring the boundaries of each other’s authority.

Sorel

8 Communicate, communicate, communicate. Even when there is little

actual news, the faith community needs to hear that the process to find new clergy leadership is moving forward and that their life and mission are in good hands.

Excerpted from the 2015 revision of The Vestry Resource Guide, produced by the Episcopal Church Foundation, available June 2015 at forwardmovement.org.

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By Jeremy Sierra

Like many New Yorkers, I was admittedly a little sad when I learned Amy Eddings would be leaving WNYC, New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s prestigious and beloved public radio station. Over the years Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d grown accustomed to her voice offering the latest news and headlines on weekday afternoons. Eddings was the local host of All Things Considered for WNYC for more than a decade. That is, until January 2015, when she left all that behind for a small town in Ohio.

downshifter:

“I’ve noticed how much we want to pole vault over the messy work of transition and seeking,” —Amy Eddings

“The actual decision came in a blinding, sweeping feeling that I got last summer when my husband and I toured a big, old Victorian house in Ada, Ohio,” Eddings explained in an interview conducted over email. “But that moment was actually the crystallization of two years’ worth of talks between me and my husband over… what kind of lives we wanted to be leading.” It’s always a bit of a risk to move to New York City, and arguably an even larger risk to leave it once you’ve established yourself. Yet you can find people like Eddings and others across the country rejecting big cities, traditional careers, and business as usual in search of more fulfilling and sustainable lives. Eddings was hesitant to identify herself as part of a movement, but she might be described as what author and sociologist Juliet Schor calls a “downshifter.” Schor uses the term to describe people who eventually reject the corporate ladder and seek more time for creativity and relationships.

They are part of the “Plentitude Movement,” Schor says. The loosely defined movement is made up of people who want to “work and spend less, connect and create more,” she says. “It is emerging as a congeries of diverse experiments, in a variety of places, with participation from a range of demographic groups,” Schor writes with coauthor Craig J. Thompson in her recent book, Sustainable Lifestyles and the Quest for Plentitude. Many have the feeling that our current way of living is not sustainable. Eddings described her 600-squarefoot apartment in Brooklyn and the feeling of exhaustion that living in New York can create. This is a feeling familiar to anyone who has looked for an affordable apartment in the city or had

a long and tedious morning commute on crowded trains or clogged highways. For that matter, it’s a familiar feeling to anyone concerned about climate change or growing economic inequality. In her keynote address at the 2015 Trinity Institute conference in January, Schor called the problems of economic inequality and climate change “wicked problems”— problems with no easy solutions. “One approach that fits with the problem we have,” she said, “is to think about solutions that are collaborative, that are based in social networks, that are bottom up and that are experimental. Solving wicked problems involves learning by doing and an open-minded approach.” You’ll find people all over the country who are experimenting in this way: Eddings, artists living in cooperative housing, urban farmers. These are all, in a sense, experiments in living. It’s not necessarily that those experimenting don’t want to work hard—it’s that they want to work differently. For some, like Eddings, these experiments might take the form of a move, born of feeling worn down by urban living and a demanding career. Eddings is now living in that Victorian farmhouse in Ada, Ohio, where her sister also lives. She’s still working out her plan, but it will include gardening and a renewed focus on relationships with her nieces, parents, and husband. “To be intentional about those relationships,” she said, “in a way that I haven’t been before because of physical distance and the primacy I’ve placed on my broad-casting career.” She has been

blogging about her transition and is employed, for the moment, as a part-time librarian. I asked Eddings, who is a practicing Catholic, if this change is a calling. “Yes, in as much as it’s a calling to encourage myself, and others, to embrace change and see risks and conflict as part of being truly alive,” she said. Others, like Caroline Woolard, are experimenting out of a need to create more time and money to pursue creative projects. Woolard, an artist who lives in Brooklyn, started Our Goods, a network of artists and craftspeople who can exchange services and skills without using money. Now it’s a website with more than three hundred active users who might trade handmade clothing for help with web design, or offer tools in exchange for drawing lessons. She started the website after the financial downturn in 2008. “I graduated from school when there was rising unemployment and the fiction of finance was everywhere,” she said. “It was a time where it seemed like we had to make our own way.” Woolard lives in a cooperative household where residents share duties and are able to drastically reduce expenses. She has certain chores—she cooks dinner on Tuesday nights and shops at the nearby food co-op about once every two months—but she also has a lot of flexibility in her life. “I work for money two or three days a week,” she explained. “The other days I do work, but it’s volunteer work. I help friends and barter with people to make art. I wouldn’t be able to do the kind of volunteer work that I love to do if I had a very expensive rent, and expensive food, and expensive lifestyle. So for me I have the privilege of making that choice, but for many people it’s not a choice.” You can find initiatives like this both among artists and lowincome communities of color. One such program is Project EATS, which brings people together in

someone who rejects the corporate ladder and seeks more time for creativity and relationships

“My profoundest experience

New York to grow food and sell it in neighborhoods like Brownsville, which is a largely black, lowincome community in Brooklyn. The organization was started by Linda Goode Bryant, a documentary filmmaker with an MBA who now runs the project. A number of experiences led her to question how food is grown and distributed and what kind of sustainable model might be possible in urban neighborhoods. “I think all of us are trying to find out what model is going to work best,” she said. Project EATS works with partners, hires experienced farmers, and sells the food they grow at neighborhoodappropriate prices (which, in a place like Brownsville, is belowmarket price). “Creativity and innovation are what really drive us,” said Bryant. “It’s all about being able to perceive other possibilities.”

Before leaving WNYC, Eddings reported a series called “Last Chance Foods: Farm School.” She noticed that many young people shared an interest in farming. “I think the thread connecting all the things we’re talking about here—rural living, career change, sustainable lifestyles, and God—is the desire to slow down,” she said. It’s not only a need to slow down, but also a need to rethink our relationships with our food, our homes, our careers, and each other. No project or movement has yet offered a definitive solution to growing inequality, the emissions that are harming our planet, and our disconnection from each other, but each person working to produce food, seeking more time for creativity, sharing skills, or living in community is a sign of hope. They are each testing a hypothesis: can we live differently? These experiments can be scary. For Eddings, her faith has helped her as she leaves behind a prestigious job in a city she’s known since 1986. “I take great comfort in knowing that He’s counted every hair on my head and every grain of sand in the ocean,

of God’s grace is in moments of struggle and doubt.”

that He loves me and is my refuge no matter what happens” she said. Although Juliet Schor does not talk explicitly about faith, she also has hope for the future. “My hope is that as we face a growing climate catastrophe,” she said, “we recognize that we can address it by coming together, creating more fairness, more social connection, strengthening our local communities, our ties to each other, creating resilience, acting in true and loving ways.” This kind of change is slow and requires patience, as Eddings has learned. “I’ve noticed how much we want to pole vault over the messy work of transition and seeking,” she said. She and her husband are often anxious to unpack the last box and finish painting the house and get on with their new life, but the work of change takes time. It does not happen unless we listen to that part of ourselves that isn’t satisfied with an excessively busy and

unsustainable lifestyle. Experimenting in this way requires a bit of faith. “My profoundest experience of God’s grace is in moments of struggle and doubt,” said Eddings. “My deepest prayer is to truly lean in, in faith, and to ‘be not afraid.’”

—Amy Eddings

Jeremy Sierra is Managing Editor for Trinity Wall Street. Photos of Ada, Ohio and Brooklyn, New York from Amy Eddings’ blog, easterhouse.net, where you can follow her journey.

The Messy Process of Collaboration

A CONVERSATION WITH RENOWNED ARCHITECT FRED CLARKE

v Fred Clarke is a founding architect of the firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, which is designing Trinity’s new ministry space at 68/74 Trinity Place. Clarke has been the Design Principal on a variety of projects, including the World Financial Center in New York City and Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C. He shared some insights about creativity and collaboration with Jim Melchiorre. are you doing a reboot or is this business as usual? It’s not business as

usual, honestly. Many times, when a client has invested a couple of years of thought in a project, it’s very, very hard to say let’s pause, think about what we’re doing, perhaps do it differently, and I really do applaud Trinity for doing that. It takes an enormous amount of bravery and self-confidence to be willing to reexamine oneself in this kind of depth. It is really, really healthy. It’s exactly the right thing to be doing. This is a building that really is for the community, it’s for the mission, and you can’t examine those things too much.

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What should someone going into a collaborative process like this keep in mind? First of all, these are inherently messy

processes. They may appear to be disorganized and random and almost too loose, in a way, but you know, architects are a little bit like musicians, we have a trained ear for phrases, for ideas, for priorities. And so part of what we’re doing is not only eliciting comments, but we’re filtering them, we’re organizing them in our heads as we go. It turns out to be really logical and clear and linear, even though it might start out to be rather messy and unformed, but it results in a building. What are the guidelines that you follow when you take in SO MANY DIVERSE opinions? One guideline is that

every idea is a good idea. What that really means is that there may be some kernel of a notion that we certainly might not have thought of that needs to be given its full airing. The obverse of that, though, is there needs to be some organization to it. So the other guideline is

that there are priorities, there are big ideas and small ideas, and part of what we do professionally is to try to discern the core ideas, the core sense of what the building is all about, and give that form as we proceed. How do you handle disagreement?

There will be disagreement. Actually, it’s healthy if there is disagreement. You want that. A discussion is the only way to sort out where people’s hearts really lie. A heated discussion is very, very helpful. Ultimately, though, I think one of the other things we provide is a way to build consensus. At the end of the day, I don’t think any idea will have been abandoned. I think there will be a kernel of every idea in the building. Because in a sense, this is building a home for a very large family that might at times not agree with each other, but just like any home, there’s a sense of enclosure, a sense of containment, that everyone ultimately will feel.

You have to have faith IN the collective

Jim Melchiorre

intelligence of

I know you’ve learned a lot of lessons about collaboration in your 40 years as an architect. Tell me about the biggest lesson. The

everybody who participated.

the client and to the community. So we like the fact that these are open, transparent processes and collaborative processes.

biggest lesson in collaboration is that every voice matters, and that there’s an underlying structure to making decisions, but that doesn’t mean ignoring ideas or ignoring people. You have to enjoy the kind of inherent messiness and perhaps at times disorganization of it, but collaboration is really what life is all about, and it’s really what buildings are all about.

The musical analogy is a really good one. Cesar Pelli (co-founder of Pelli Clarke Pelli) and I have often characterized ourselves as instrument makers, just as Guarneri or Stradivari built violins. Neither one of them was a very good violinist, but they built the most extraordinary instruments. But the people who ultimately play the instrument, who are the clients—it’s their instrument, it’s their music.

you’re a creative artist, and you mentioned musicians. That’s another example of a creative artist. How does a creative person feel when HIS OR HER vision is revised? In architecture,

There are many more stakeholders now in this process. Does that make it easier or harder? I mean, talk about messy. Well, for the building, it’s much, much

you have to be ready for it. It happens all the time. Architects almost never get exactly what they’re imagining. And that’s very, very healthy. Any architect who gets exactly what he or she insists on, or is pushing, is doing a disservice to

better. Absolutely. It means that there’s going to be a sense of ownership, a sense of participation that we wouldn’t have had otherwise. So when the building is finished, all the people who’ve participated in this process are going to be able to call it their own.

I firmly believe this: there will be people who will be able to walk around and say, wow, that’s my idea. And it could be something as simple as I want twice as many restrooms as you normally would specify. And I heard that comment a few minutes ago. That person will be able to say it was me who kept the line from forming outside the men’s room. We love that. Now, the process itself might be a bit longer. It might be a bit more cumbersome, but in a way, that’s what collaboration is all about. You have to have faith. You have to have faith that you’re going in the right direction, that you will arrive at a destination, and that ultimately, the result will represent the collective intelligence of everybody who participated. Jim Melchiorre is Director of Content for Trinity Wall Street.

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No Timetable for Grief

On May 17, in partnership with the Psychotherapy and Spirituality Institute (PSI), Trinity began offering a liturgy designed for people in the midst of grief. The Rev. Kristin Miles and Dr. Kelly Murphy Mason, a clinical pastoral psychotherapist at PSI, spoke about grief and ritual.

It’s okay to come and sit with your friend and have nothing to offer other than your heartbeat along with her heartbeat. That’s a human communion.

Kristin Miles: When you’re grieving, ritual is a very powerful source of healing and support and comfort. Often we need ritual to hold us and to go beyond words. Words can be limited. For instance, a colleague of mine lost her baby. There were no prayers she could say, but she could make the sign of the cross. That for her was the only expression she could make of opening herself, of this possibility of God being with her.

there’s this awestruck recognition that life is just bigger than us. Carl Jung famously said, we are not captains of our own ship. We’re along for the ride, but we’re not piloting, and I think when people are grieving they understand that more than at almost any other time in their life.

Part of the church’s mission is be a place where people can lay down their burdens and find rest. Ritual can acknowledge the pain and also hold open the possibility of additional meaning. Sometimes it feels like the whole person comes down to this loss, and ritual can hold open the possibility of something broader than just the loss of the relationship. Yet we’re not rushing. It can’t be said. It can just be experienced.

It’s like you caught the flu. You have grief. I don’t know when you’ll be feeling better. It has a course that it runs, it’s an organic phenomenon, but you don’t know when you will no longer be stricken.

Kelly Murphy Mason: Ritual is so containing and so organizing for people. That’s something our faith communities provide uniquely well. There’s something so primal in us that responds to deep grief, and because of that some will have a tendency to go wordless, but many will have a tendency to go off and lick their wounds, so as not to be seen or heard, not to be a disturbance to the peace—to suffer in silence but also suffer in solitude. That’s exactly what we need to be addressing.

The first thing people want to know is how many sessions they will need before they’re out of [counseling]. When I’m working with someone who’s lost a significant person, a year is nothing. That’s just the first Christmas and the first birthday and the first Fourth of July. That’s just getting acquainted with life thereafter. In a lot of [situations] we work with people in therapeutic settings, we’re asking them to slow down a little bit and honor what’s happening rather than avoid it.

Miles: I love the author Rachel Naomi Remen. She talks about how one of her clients came to her and said, I don’t understand why children, whenever they’re hurt, go to an adult and have [the adult] kiss their boo-boo. That doesn’t take away the pain. Rachel said to her client, well no, it doesn’t take away the pain, it takes away the loneliness. What ritual does is help bear the loneliness of the pain. Mason: There’s this wonderful Buddhist parable I sometimes tell my students: There’s a mother who has lost a child, and she goes to the Buddha and says, I want you to take away my suffering. He says, I will take away your suffering. Bring me back a cup of rice from a household that has known no suffering. So she goes throughout the village and throughout the district looking for a household that has known no suffering, and she hears tales of their suffering. When she returns to the Buddha, she has no cup of rice, but she says her suffering was relieved. I imagine when she’s going from house to house, maybe she’s crying with [the people there]. There’s a kind of communion that happens. Miles: You can say that grief isn’t the problem. The loss is the problem, and grief is the work we do with the loss. It feels like this monolithic, huge thing, but actually we can work with it. Mason: We have this delusion that we can regulate grief. Grief is so much bigger than our attempts to regulate it. All these timetables people get—what’s supposed to happen at two weeks, six months—in some ways they’re cruel. They’re totally unrealistic. When people are in profound grief,

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Miles: I think one of the great gifts that you’re offering is helping people to let go of those timetables and also helping them to cope when people are imposing those timetables upon them. You know, “They keep telling me to get over it.” It’s a process. Mason: One of my favorite cautionary tales is the Book of Job. When Job’s friends come [to him] and they keep their mouths shut, they’re such good friends. As soon as they start talking and theorizing and fixing and hypothesizing and speculating, they’re horrible friends. It’s okay to come and sit with your friend and have nothing to offer other than your heartbeat along with her heartbeat. That’s a human communion. Rest for Our Souls: A Service for those in Grief and Loss will be offered quarterly. For more information contact the Rev. Kristin Miles at kmiles@trinitywallstreet.org.

stories Advocating for Morality in Banking By Jim Melchiorre

David Barclay can walk down almost any commercial street in the U.K. and see his surname on the windows or doors of one of the world’s giant banks. “My ancestors were involved in setting up Barclays Bank,” he said. “They were Quakers, and they would never own property that had slaves working on it. That was one of their moral convictions that they built the business around.” Now Barclay, 26, laments what he sees as widespread abdication of ethics in the financial system. When my Trinity Wall Street colleague Bob Scott and I caught up with him in November 2014, Barclay was leading marchers in a street protest against what he considers predatory lending that targets poor and working-class British citizens. Over-indebtedness in Britain, as elsewhere, helped create the 2008 world financial crisis and was exacerbated by it. Mainstream banks tightened their lending practices, effectively shutting off credit to lower-income citizens. “Access to financial services is a huge part of the discussion about economic inequality. If people don’t have access to credit, then a whole set of things that maybe more middle-class people might take for granted just aren’t possible,” Barclay said. “Whether that’s home improvements, or a car, or surviving life’s shocks and not going into that spiral of debt—what we find is that debt is a trap, it keeps people enslaved, and it stops people from realizing their potential.”

Promoting Credit Unions We went to Hackney, a working-class community of Greater London, to see how economic inequality reveals itself in credit markets. We got the idea from the Most Rev. Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury. In 2013, Welby challenged parishes of the Church of England to provide competition to “payday” lenders, which deliver money within 15 minutes to credit-strapped borrowers—at interest rates as high as 5,000 percent per year. Such payday loan companies have flourished since the Great Recession. Welby’s vision called for parishes to recruit people to join local credit unions as an alternative.

David Barclay is an enthusiastic foot soldier in the Welby-inspired campaign to strengthen credit unions. “We think they provide a much better alternative for people in need,” Barclay said. “This isn’t just a poor man’s bank. As a more middle-class person, [if you] need to take out a loan for whatever purpose, then you can see that as an opportunity to take an ethical consumer choice, as you might do with fair-trade shopping.” Barclay has teamed up with the Rev. Rosemia Brown, Vicar of St. James the Great, in an ongoing project called Church Credit Champions Network. With marchers representing 10 congregations, Brown and Barclay walked along the busy commercial section of Hackney that Britons generically call high street, stopping in front of payday loan stores and betting shops, speaking with passersby about the merits of local credit unions, and delivering 132 applications they had gathered requesting membership in the London Community Credit Union. “We deliberately designed this process to be one that is about helping churches reflect and think and listen to God and listen to their neighbors,” Barclay said. “This is very high profile in the UK, but things will move on and there’ll be another kind of sexy thing for churches to do, and we wanted to make sure this was really in the bloodstream of churches.”

Practical Theology Barclay, a native of Glasgow, graduated from Oxford University in 2010 with a degree in modern history. While a student, he honed his skills in community activism as president of the Oxford University Student Union. Barclay now serves as Faith in Public Life Officer at the Centre for Theology & Community (CTC), which has offices in the crypt of St. George-in-the-East in the Shadwell neighborhood of London’s East End. “The Center for Theology & Community exists to help churches engage with their communities,” Barclay explained.

The work includes community organizing, theological reflection, and prayer. Through the CTC, Barclay has worked with the Living Wage Campaign and Citizens UK. “Often, theology is seen as a kind of abstract, academic exercise that’s not connected to the real world,” Barclay said. “Actually, theology is intensely practical.” When Barclay recruits congregations for the Church Credit Champions Network, he says he asks three questions: “The first one is, what are the problems that people face in terms of money and financial services? The second one is, what practical changes would make a positive difference on those issues? And the third one is, what’s the role of your church in being part of making those changes happen?” David Barclay embraces his personal status as the descendant of a celebrated banking family now working with those critical of the British banking and financial system, recalling his ancestors had a “very strong moral frame-

Jim Melchiorre

David Barclay

work that the business was held within.” “It seems like some of those moral convictions, not just in Barclays, but in most of the mainstream banks, have kind of eroded, and what we saw in the crash was the unraveling of that on a huge scale,” Barclay said. He sees his activism as a return to his famous family’s roots. “I feel a sense of calling to be reviving some of the spirit of my ancestors, to say there is a different way of viewing money,” Barclay said. “We can actually use it for the common good.”

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psalmtube

Take Me to Churches

Wikimedia Commons

By Nathan Brockman

Sinéad O'Connor in concert at Festival Interceltique Lorient 2013.

A couple of pop singers recently wrote songs called “Take Me to Church” that appeared on albums released within months of one another. The singers are both Irish, and both songs take on the Church as an institution, but that’s where the similarities end. Hozier’s is a jarring mix of romance and worship. Sinéad O’Connor’s is an uplifting hymn to a change of heart that my wife and daughters and I sing along to at the dinner table. Let’s tackle the darker one first: Take me to church/ I’ll worship at the shrine of your lies, sings Hozier, a young singer-songwriter. He articulates a love brushing passionately against servitude and surrender. (Interestingly, the song gained notoriety after its video, in which the romantic relationship was transposed to one between two men, became popular on YouTube.) Hozier’s church is self-contained in its worship. It is the liturgical work of one person worshipping another. Spurring Hozier’s energetic worship is his idea that his lover is a better version of the Church, even if she does share some of the deceit: I’ll worship like a dog at the shrine of your lies.

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That kind of worship isn’t my thing, but I can’t dismiss the song as a whole too quickly. I interpret the “deathless death” Hozier sings of as a form of dying to self, or at least trying to. O’Connor’s exuberant “Take Me to Church” captures the joy in being on the other side of a profound personal change. When last many of us heard of O’Connor, the Vatican was likely involved. O’Connor tore up a picture of John Paul II on live television in protest of the sexual abuse of children in the Roman Catholic Church. This was in 1992. The singer, whose wail and whisper make for one of the most beguiling voices in popular music, was way ahead of most of the rest of the world. Her “Take Me to Church” begins with a litany: I’m not writing love songs anymore/I don’t want to sing the way I sang before. There are intakes of breath as she works over the powerful lines, and a crescendo to the chorus: Take me to church/I done so many/bad things it hurts. You hear how awareness and hope is helping to shape a new way of life. The iota of silence before she sings the phrase “bad things” is delightful.

O’Connor is not interested in being taken to the kind of churches “that hurt,” and she defines the hymns she’ll sing in the new nave: I’m going to sing songs of loving and forgiving/ songs of eating and of drinking/songs of light/ songs that’ll mend your broken bones/and won’t leave you alone. O’Connor says the song is about someone who has decided not to sacrifice herself for romantic relationships anymore. That may be, but the song works on a number of levels. Online, some lyrics sites have “I’m the only one I should adore” written as “I AM; the only one I should adore.” I like the ambiguity. When we do the sing-along thing around the dinner table, I also like thinking of my girls growing up with voices as strong as O’Connor’s (and I don’t necessarily mean singing voices). For anyone interested in changes of heart that feel religious, and joyful, this is one fiercely uplifting song, describing a church I wouldn’t mind being taken to at all. Nathan Brockman is Director of Communications and Marketing for Trinity Wall Street.

Can you tell me about yourself and what you do? I have a company called MorrisAllsop public affairs, and we are good cause advocates. We work on trying to help grassroots organizations, faith-based leaders, and labor union members. We train them on how to advocate for their causes and make their voices heard. We also do training for minority and women’s businesses to help them learn how to market their business to government and how to be successful in doing government work.

Photo courtesy of Celeste Morris

What is your advice to faith communities who want to be advocates? They have to be constant and consistent in their approach and in their advocacy work. [Their vison]has to go into the fiber and the fabric of the faith institution so it’s not just one little group working—everyone becomes aware of the issues. They need to make as many partnerships as they can in the community and share resources.

Celeste Morris

is an activist and teacher. She taught Trinity’s Discovery Class in January.

In your class you said that organizations need to keep in mind reading, writing, and arithmetic. Can you explain that? Well, reading is so important because there are many of us that do not read the daily papers or the newsfeeds. If we’re not reading those types of documents, we don’t know what the pulse is—we don’t know what the pulse in Albany [the state capital] is, we don’t know what the pulse in city hall is. But if we’re reading our newsfeeds, even Twitter and Facebook, then we as advocates become aware of what is going on. So you have to do research, and you have to read constantly. If you have issues and you’re not writing about them, then you’re out of the loop as well. Nobody really knows what you’re advocating for. You have to be involved in things like writing blogs, writing issue papers, sending letters, sending postcards, doing petitions—all of that is a real necessary part of advocacy. Arithmetic is something that we definitely don’t pay enough attention to. The budget process right now is going on in Albany, it’s going on in city hall, and most of us grassroots people don’t know anything about how it works. We carry the banner for good causes, but we have to pay attention to the numbers. One more part of arithmetic is the statistics that bolster our issue. If we’re working on gun violence, then we should have some awareness of how many people were killed by guns this year and how many were killed last year. Why is using social media important? If we want to make sure that our causes and our voices are right there in the forefront, then we have to use social-media platforms because they’re being [widely] used. It makes you part of the conversation. Social media is a part of life. Everybody, everywhere is looking at their phones. I don’t think any organization is going to survive with any kind of strength if we’re not doing that. Why do you think it’s important for people of faith to be involved in advocacy? After having done a lot of political work, I saw how the people who have money and real estate are the most influential in this democracy. Albany is where a lot of the money comes from, a lot of the laws come from, and I believe that the grassroots community has to pay attention to what goes on there. The only power that we really have is our vote and our advocacy.

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Jim Melchiorre

Page 20 Visiting Sing Sing on First Day as Rector Page 21 What Will the New Parish Building Look Like? Page 22 Sister Marie Margaret Supporting Ebola Survivors Page 23 Dr. Lupfer’s Institution Trinity Increases Food Distribution Page 24 Bobby McFerrin Evangelicals, Episcopalians, and Everyone In-Between

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Visiting Sing Sing on First Day as Rector Trinity Wall Street’s rector, the Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, spent the first day of his new ministry at the Sing Sing maximum security prison alongside the Hudson River in Ossining, New York, about thirty-five miles north of Manhattan. Dr. Lupfer visited inmates behind the walls on February 17, accompanied by Trinity’s vicar, the Rev. Phillip Jackson, the Rev. Canon Petero Sabune, an Episcopal priest and former Sing Sing chaplain, and Roz Hall, a founding member of the parish’s decade-old prison ministry. The group began the day with a visit to Housing Block A, the largest unit at Sing Sing, with more than six hundred prisoners. Dr. Lupfer also met with Sing Sing superintendent Michael Capra, offering to explore the ways that Trinity can assist inmates and their families, as well as prison staff. “What do you need that you can’t do?” Dr. Lupfer asked Capra. “What’s the tough spot?” Capra told him that “reentry is the key.” Dr. Lupfer then addressed a class on leadership attended by 15 inmates who are studying for a master’s degree. The leadership class is

organized by New York Theological Seminary and led by the Rev. Dr. Edward Hunt. At the conclusion of the class period, Dr. Lupfer asked the inmates to form a circle and join hands as he offered a prayer. As Trinity’s 18th rector, Dr. Lupfer has pledged to actively support prison ministry, recalling its formative role for him during seminary in his call to the priesthood. “I had a spiritual director at the time who challenged me to see every person I served as the face of Christ,” Trinity’s rector recalled. “They had much to teach me.” Dr. Lupfer served as a prison chaplain in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in the 1980s, during and after studying at Yale Divinity School. “I know I can bring the rector role to prisons and to places where people’s voices are not often heard, and I intend to do that,” Dr. Lupfer said. “But I will always do that in partnership with members of our parish and ministry teams.”

What Will the New Parish Building Look Like?

Community members brainstorm together at the first charette on February 28.

Photos: Jim Melchiorre

In late winter, Trinity began a major community conversation about the mission of Trinity and its impact on a new parish building at 68/74 Trinity Place (just behind Trinity Church) in a series of charettes. The word charette originated in France and describes a collaborative effort by various stakeholders to reach a common vision. The charette is an especially common tool in reaching consensus on an architectural project. More than two hundred people have participated in these meetings thus far, bringing their ideas—big and small—for Trinity’s ministry space. Led by the staff of the architecture firm Pelli Clarke Pelli, the meetings have consisted of presentations, roundtable discussions, and question-andanswer sessions. The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, Rector of Trinity Wall Street, began the first charette reminding everyone to listen to each other and to be generous. “In God’s economy, when you share you get more,” he said. “We’d like for every space to be used constantly,” said Fred Clarke, a founding architect of Pelli Clarke Pelli. “We want the building to be a constant hub of activity.” The charettes are open to everyone, not just Trinity congregation members, including community partners, downtown neighbors, and those, in the words of the Trinity rector, “hungry, homeless, put aside for some reason or another and ignored.” Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer also joined the first charette. Catherine McVay Hughes, chairperson of Community Board 1, attended the second meeting and reminded the audience that Trinity has been a neighbor since the community began more than 300 years ago and thanked the church for making the building process public. The first two charettes were open discussions designed to gather ideas. At the third charette on May 2, Clarke and a team of designers from the firm led the participants in a mini-class in architectural design as they showed what it takes to try to fit the wishes of the parish and community into a brand new building. “This building will be carefully and prayerfully designed,” said Dr. Lupfer to conclude the third charette. “What you say is very important.”

The process will continue through the fall. Go to trinitywallstreet.org/conversation for more information and to offer your thoughts online. See page 14 for an interview with Fred Clarke.

Trinity News

Sister Marie Margaret

Photo courtesy of Sister Promise Atelon

Trinity’s congregation and staff have enjoyed a long relationship with the Sisters of St. Margaret and join in mourning the passing of one of its ministry partners from that order. Sister Marie Margaret (photo, left), a member of the Sisters of St. Margaret, died on January 20, 2015, in Boston. She was approaching the 48th year of her profession. She was the Sister in Charge in Haiti since 1994 before she became ill in December 2014. Sister Marie Margaret’s ministry in Haiti included a program she directed that employed women to make altar linens to support their families, a home for elderly women, and a scholarship program for children. Sister Marie Margaret was especially close to Sister Promise Atelon (photo, right), who is also Haitian and now provides pastoral care at Trinity Wall Street. In 2000, Sister Marie Margaret received Sister Promise’s vows.

Supporting Ebola Survivors

Trinity News

Photo courtesy of the Diocese of Liberia

“We pray now that Liberia has come down to zero, we can remain at zero,” said the Rt. Rev. Jonathan Hart, Bishop of the Episcopal Church of Liberia and Archbishop of the Internal Province of West Africa. Hart visited Trinity to meet Trinity’s rector, the Rev. Dr. William Lupfer, to discuss education in Liberia, and to thank Trinity for its support. Last year Trinity made a grant of $300,000 to the Province of West Africa, which includes the dioceses of Liberia, Freetown, Bo, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. With support from Trinity and other partners, the Diocese of Liberia has conducted safety trainings for the teachers and clergy at Episcopal schools, as required by the government. The diocese administers 30 Episcopal schools and Cuttington University. Liberia also used the funds to distribute food and sanitation materials such as soap and hand sanitizer. “Liberia collectively fought to bring peace in our nation,” said Hart. “We did the same thing to remove Ebola in Liberia.” Religious organizations of all kinds have worked together to help educate people and treat the sick. “We’re still praising God for survivors in Liberia,” said Hart. He hopes that Liberians can help their neighbors in Sierra Leone and Guinea, where there are still cases of the disease.

Distribution of food and Ebola prevention, items at the end of a workshop.

The Diocese of Guinea and the dioceses of Bo and Freetown in Sierra Leone have also used funds from Trinity to teach people about the symptoms of the virus and how to prevent its spread, and distribute preventive supplies. “Trinity is working with all affected dioceses to discern how we can accompany them as they minister to survivors,” said Sarah Arney, Senior Program Officer for Anglican Partnerships.

The Rev. Dr. William Lupfer offering communion during his institution as Trinity’s 18th Rector on Ascension Day, May 14. The service was attended by Trinity congregants and staff, as well as friends, family, clergy, and bishops from around the world.

Trinity Increases Food Distribution

Every Tuesday and Thursday, more than a hundred people from Lower Manhattan come to the Trinity churchyard for a Brown Bag Lunch. On February 1, Trinity expanded this six-year-old ministry and began to offer lunches on Sunday and Monday, a total of four days a week. While the number of people who are homeless in Lower Manhattan is not as high as some other areas of the city, there are still many in need of a meal. “The biggest growth is people who experience food insecurity,” said Mandy Culbreath, who manages the Brown Bag program. Twelve percent of people in Battery Park City, Greenwich Village, and SoHo are food insecure, meaning they do not have access to sufficient affordable food. Many people come to Trinity’s Brown Bag Lunches from Chinatown and the Lower East Side, where the rate of food insecurity is 20 percent. Having two more meals provided each week will help those who are suffering from lack of nutritious, affordable food in the area. Culbreath is also developing partnerships to better serve those in need. Most recently, Trinity became a member of Food Bank NYC, a hunger relief organization. This also gives Trinity access to its Tiered Engagement Network (TEN), which connects organizations serving New York City. Culbreath can now refer clients to the TEN Tracker, a database that connects them to other benefits and social services and keeps track of their progress and needs. Volunteers are an essential part of the Brown Bag Lunch ministry. Trinity parishioners, as well as people who live and work in Lower Manhattan, pack and serve the lunches. If you would like more information about Brown Bag Lunch, or if you can help, contact Mandy Culbreath at mculbreath@trinitywallstreet.org.

Trinity News

Evangelicals, Episcopalians, and Everyone In-Between

Trinity News

Photo courtesy of Ellen Andrews

Bobby McFerrin performs with the Choir of Trinity Wall Street and the Trinity Youth Chorus as part of By the Waters of Babylon, a festival celebrating the power of black music in America. You can watch this performance and others at trinitywallstreet.org/babylon.

Ellen Andrews, Program Manager for Pastoral Care and Community at Trinity Wall Street, has found a home in the Episcopal Church, but she didn’t start there. She grew up in an Evangelical church, attending The Chapel in University Park, in Akron, Ohio, one of the first mega-churches. It was a positive environment. “I like to say I was spoon-fed, not force-fed, my beliefs,” she says. Still, the move from Evangelical to Episcopalian was not easy. This transition is not uncommon but presents its own particular challenges. That’s why Andrews started a group at Trinity where people with similar experiences can share and support one another. Andrews worked in contemporary Christian music before studying acting and continued to be immersed in Evangelical culture. As she neared 30, she had a crisis of faith, which spiraled into a four-year depression. It led to a lot of healing and a new understanding of her faith. “Everything wasn’t black and white anymore,” she explains. The Evangelical church no longer felt like home. She ended up attending All Saints’ Church in Beverly Hills, California. “I would just weep in church,” she says. She experienced the Eucharist as getting back to the basics—back to the sacrifice that Jesus made. The Episcopal Church was a place where she understood that God was big, and she didn’t have to have everything figured out. Living in that gray area was okay. “I love the mystery that the Episcopal Church embraces,” she explains. Her background still influences her. “I knew who Jesus was before I knew my name,” she says, which leads her to experience the Eucharist in a very personal way. At the same time, she often finds herself wrestling with how to read the Bible. She grew up interpreting the Bible in a very personal and often literal way. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to hear it in other ways,” she says. So she is inviting others to join her in discussion and study to better understand their own experiences and each other. Lifelong Episcopalians who are curious are invited as well.

Ellen Andrews on a mission trip with Media Fellowship International, an Evangelical organization for Christians in the media, in the 90s.

On January 24, a group of a dozen or so met in St. Paul’s Chapel to talk about their own experiences. Prominent author Rachel Held Evans, who spoke at the 2015 Trinity Institute conference, joined them. Evans is evangelical and attends an Episcopal church in Tennessee. Her first book, Faith Unraveled, deals with just this change: from a black-and-white faith to one with a bit more gray. Attendees spoke about the churches where they grew up and reminisced about the prayers, praise music, and Bible drills of their youth. At the meeting there were Trinity congregants, people who had read Evans’s book and wanted to meet her, and at least one person who was dealing with a changing faith and searching for a home. That’s exactly whom Andrews is hoping to attract. “I hope it can be a place for those who are journeying out and feeling lost but still want a spiritual home,” said Andrews. “A safe place where they can come talk about their experience with those who understand that experience and can help them find new ways to connect to God.”

learned? What Have You

One of my favorite memories of Trinity is the 300th

anniversary of the parish, which was celebrated between 1996 and 1997. I was part of the steering committee. It was a wonderful time— an entire year of celebration including staff, clergy, and many of Trinity’s partner organizations, which culminated in an event on Ellis Island. Over one thousand organizations sent representatives. I was very honored. It was Trinity at its best.

Trinity Is a place of refuge. I will never forget being at Trinity

on September 11, 2001. The response of our parish to the needs of our neighborhood in the aftermath of so much loss and pain will be told for generations to come. The generosity of the people of the Shrine of Elizabeth Ann Seton made it possible for worship to continue for seven Sundays before the rededication and opening of Trinity Church on All Saints’ Sunday. The point of worship is to honestly express our desire to worship

God in the best possible way with all of our senses. We also have to be careful that it doesn’t become an idol. The point of liturgy is not liturgy. The point of liturgy is God. One of the strengths of the Episcopal Church is everything we do is anchored in the tools of the Book of Common Prayer and the hymnal. We don’t edit those things. We interpret. They are bequeathed to us. What we do is a reflection and variety on what has been done in previous generations. I became an Episcopalian in my early 20s. What drew me to the

Episcopal Church is what still keeps me here: the respect and reverence for tradition in a contemporary living context. The Creed is a springboard for conversation. The Episcopal Church is a

place for thought where we can ask questions. Our faith is strong enough to handle a variety of ways of understanding the same thing. Tradition is a living organism that needs to be thought through,

prayed about, and discussed.

David Jette has served as head verger for Trinity Wall Street since 1985. He is retiring on May 31, 2015. A verger is almost always behind the scenes. If the verger has done his

or her job adequately and thoroughly, those attending worship are rarely aware of his or her presence, and that’s exactly how it should be. I will never forget my first Christmas at Trinity. One of my tasks

was to get the rector at the time, Dr. Parks, to the pulpit for the sermon. I was so taken with the Gospel story that I almost forgot. I remember him saying “Let’s go. Let’s go. Let’s go.” It was a lesson. Vergers have to learn to worship differently.

I have half the combination to the safe where we have irreplaceable objects dating back to 1693, including complete communion sets from William and Mary, Queen Anne, and George III. The archivist has the other half. We open the safe together on special occasions. These things were given to us to be used, not to be kept in a safe. Next I plan to take the time to enjoy the benefits of New York City that I have not been able to before. I don’t want to simply sit back and read the New York Times every morning. I also want to take French lessons and continue to garden. I have enjoyed working with dedicated congregants and staff members. When I first came to Trinity I was impressed with the talented and dedicated staff. I was quickly able to see that Trinity was committed to lay ministry. That hasn’t changed. Trinity is beginning another chapter, not a different book.

Trinity News

The Trinity congregation blesses the Rev. Dr. James Cooper, 17th Rector of Trinity, and his wife, Tay, on the day of his retirement.

Leo Sorel

â&#x20AC;&#x153;O God of unchangeable power and eternal light: Look favorably on your whole Church, that wonderful and sacred mystery.â&#x20AC;? Leo Sorel 28

Trinity News

News from Trinity’s partners and friends, near and far.

AHRC NYC Members of AHRC NYC are volunteering every Monday at Trinity’s Brown Bag Lunch Ministry, which distributes free lunches to people in need of a meal. AHRC NYC is an organization that works with adults with intellectual and other developmental disabilities. AIDS Walk Trinity parishioners participated in the AIDS Walk on May 17 to raise funds to combat HIV and AIDS. Last year, 36 parishioners participated, including Al Di Rafaele, who has participated in the event for the past 30 years. Michael Hall Michael Hall, a member of the Anti-Racism Committee for the Diocese of New York, facilitated two discussions on race in February and March as part of Trinity’s Discovery Class series, “Reflections on Race.” The series was a partnership between Trinity’s Education committee and Task Force Against Racism. Scholarships in Haiti Trinity is providing funds for the education of 16 students in Haiti. The scholarships are administered by the Sisters of St. Margaret and are offered to children and youth of all ages, including some in elementary and high school as well as college and medical school. With funds from Trinity and other sources, the Sisters of St. Margaret support a total of 50 students.

Donors Education Collaborative Trinity is currently working with the Donors Education Collaborative (DEC) to identify grantees and distribute funds in New York City. DEC distributes grants to education organizations in New York City such as Advocates for Children of New York and the New York Civil Liberties Union. DEC is also a Trinity grantee. Congregational Council Trinity Wall Street held its annual meeting and election of Congregational Council members on Sunday, March 8. The new Congregational Council consists of: Deborah Hope, President; David Elliott, Vice President; Patrice-Lou Thomas, Secretary; Beverly Ffolkes-Bryant, Ruth Antoinette “Toni” Foy, Oliva George, Sam Ghiggeri, Barbara Inniss, Keith Klein, Joyce Coppin Mondesire, Amy Roy, Maribel Ruiz, Luciana Sikula, Scott Townell, and Susan Ward. Pinnacle Award On February 26, Trinity Real Estate received the prestigious Pinnacle Award for One Hudson Square. The Building Owners and Managers Association (BOMA/NY) chose the Trinity property in the category Operating Office Building over 1,000,000 square feet. Entering the competition requires an extensive application and an inspection by BOMA/NY staff members. One Hudson Square received the highest point rating given in its category in the past 10 years. It will now be submitted for The Outstanding Building of the Year award at the national level next year.

was hosted by Bishop Suffragan Ogé Beauvoir. The two bishops spent a day together visiting an agriculture school and several farming sites. Bishop Murray’s visit to the northern region of Haiti marks the first such partner-to-partner visit. Hudson Link On March 25, Hudson Link held its bimonthly alumni gathering at Trinity’s Parish Center. Trinity has a longstanding partnership with Hudson Link, which provides college education and re-entry support to incarcerated men and women. The event included people who had been out of prison for years and others who had just left. With the help of Hudson Link, the inmates have received everything from an associate’s degrees to a PhD. Vestry Elections Trinity held its annual Vestry elections on Tuesday, April 7. Mr. Joseph E. Hakim and Ms. Diane B. Pollard will serve as wardens. Other Vestry members are: Betty A. Whelchel, Clerk; Evan A. Davis, Chancellor; Leah C. Johnson, Suellyn Preston Scull, Frederick Bland, Lawrence F. Graham, Westina Matthews Shatteen, William H. A. Wright II, William L. Cobb, Sanders Davies, Scott E. Evenbeck, Joel Motley, Paul Yang, Robert G. Zack, Suzanne Hammett, Susan Hewitt, Macculloch M. Irving, Dennis Sullivan, Emory Edwards, and Eric Eve.

Mission and Service Partners Meet In March, the first-ever Mission & Service team for Haiti went to Cap Haitien, Haiti’s second city and one Trinity partner traveled to the country of another to share insights. Bishop Julio Murray of Panama visited Haiti, where he

Spread the Word Do you have news to share with the rest of the Trinity community? Email your news, milestones, and updates to news@trinitywallstreet.org or call 212.602.9686.

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