What Is Radical Christian Life

fall 2012 vol. 59 | no. 2

TrinityNews THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

What is

Radical Christian Life?

A Companion to Trinity Institute’s 42nd Annual National Theological Conference

Joan Chittister

Barbara Crafton

Margaret Guenther

FALL 2012

TrinityNews VOL. 59 | NO. 2

THE MAGAZINE OF TRINITY WALL STREET

DEPARTMENTS FEATURES 1

Letter from the Rector

2

For the Record

7

The Visitor File

8

Archivist’s Mailbag

10

What is Radical Christian Life?

Robert Owens Scott

12

The Call of God Joan Chittister

15

Signs and Symbols of the Kingdom Julio Murray

27

Counter Culture

28

Parish Perspectives

30

What Have You Learned?

18

32

Pew and Partner Notes

20

33

Letter from Lower Manhattan

16

Holy Longing Barbara Crafton

Radical Christians Who Parted in Mutual Sorrow Leah Reddy

Consciousness and Conscience Joe Constantino

21

In the End, It All Comes Down to This Richard Rohr

22

The Breath of Life Margaret Guenther

23

6 Reasons We’re Called to Live Green Fletcher Harper

24

Prophecy and Prayer James Cooper

26

Burning Bush Mark Bozzuti-Jones

On the Cover: A City of Lights Inspired by Trinity Institute’s 2012 Conference, “Radical Christian Life: Equipping Ourselves for Social Change,” the cover image incorporates portraits of radical Christians who have altered the course of history, from the Apostle Paul to Martin Luther King, Jr. For a list of portraits see page 32.

All photos by Leah Reddy unless otherwise noted.

TRINITY WALL STREET 74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | Tel: 212.602.0800 Rector | The Rev. Dr. James Herbert Cooper Vicar | The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee Executive Editor | Linda Hanick Editor | Nathan Brockman Managing Editor | Jeremy Sierra Multimedia Producer | Leah Reddy Art Director | Rea Ackerman

FOR FREE SUBSCRIPTIONS 74 Trinity Place | New York, NY 10006 | 24th floor | New York, NY 10006 news@trinitywallstreet.org | 212.602.9686 Permission to Reprint: Every article in this issue of Trinity News is available for use, free of charge, in your diocesan paper, parish newsletter, or on your church website. Please credit Trinity News: The Magazine of Trinity Wall Street.

Let us know how you’ve used Trinity News material by emailing news@trinitywallstreet.org or calling 212.602.9686.

LETTER FROM THE RECTOR

Sustaining God’s Mission Although we probably identify most personally with our local congregation, it’s always important to remember that the Church, or what we call the “Body of Christ,” is a worldwide movement without borders.

My recent trip to Kenya, Burundi, and South Africa, once again reminded me of that truth.

The primary reason for my journey was to participate in the Trinity-sponsored workshop on sustainability titled “Structure for Sustaining God’s Mission: Governance and Financial Management.”

Organized by the Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega, Trinity’s Deputy for Anglican Partnerships, and Ms. Sarah Grapentine, Senior Program Officer, Anglican Partnerships, the workshop brought together more than twenty bishops from across Africa, as peers, to search together for ways to ensure financial sustainability.

Consistent with the energy of the Church in Africa, many of our partners in Kenya, in Uganda, in Burundi, and in the world’s newest nation, South Sudan, have already found creative ways to invest in real estate to generate funds to accomplish the mission of the Church and the work of the Gospel. These various approaches, though unique in context and scale, remind me of the story of Trinity Wall Street, which received farmland as a gift from Queen Anne in 1705 and has been blessed, ever since, with congregations, vestries, and rectors who, as good stewards, have enabled ministries that span the globe for a world of good.

Helping our Trinity Grants partners ensure the future financial health of the Church in Africa is a priority for Trinity.

I am humbled by the dedication of the bishops, priests, and congregations of the Anglican Church in Africa as they labor amidst the challenges of poverty, crushingly high interest rates, and, sometimes, civil war.

Aside from the financial balance sheets, there are the incredible human resources that everybody who’s blessed to visit Africa can never forget.

As I shared with the bishops on the opening day of the workshop, financial sustainability must be nurtured everywhere, in all churches, on all continents, all the time, but our highest priority is to sustain the Gospel message. The African Church has done that so well.

Faithfully,

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper

Jeremy Sierra

PAGE 2 Four Hundred Totes for Teachers PAGE 3 NY Mission and Service Trip Hudson Square Rezoning PAGE 4 Movement Choir Builds Bridges The Ministry of Math PAGE 5 Speaking Out in Love Richard III at Charlotte’s Place PAGE 6 Sustaining the Church in Africa

Four Hundred Totes Collected to Support Manhattan Teachers On Sunday, Afterwards, they gathered in the Parish Hall September 16, with other parishioners, staff members, and Trinity dedicated teachers for a teacher appreciation forum. more than four Teachers in attendance were from six public hundred Totes for schools, including Richard R. Green Teaching Teachers, which will High School just down the street from Trinity help at least twelve and several elementary schools. thousand students Many of these teachers spend a significant in Lower Manhattan. amount of their own money on school supplies.

With the aid of “The biggest donors to public schools are teachers its partners, Trinity and parents,” said the Rev. Matt Heyd, Priest and congregation and staff collected paper, notebooks, Director of Faith In Action. Some teachers spend pens, pencils, and other supplies to be packed in upwards of $750 per year. the totes.

“The purpose of the forum is to get to know “This is what a community of practice looks and hear from you,” Chan explained to the like,” said Vicar Anne Mallonee in her sermon. teachers. “To support the work you are doing “This is what a culture of love can do.” and find out what we might be able to do to help.”

This is the second year that Trinity’s All The teachers and Trinity parishioners spent Our Children initiative has collected supplies an hour talking about the problems teachers for teachers. This year they have focused on face and their ideas for fixing them. helping schools in Lower Manhattan. There are This forum was a chance to start some more than sixty schools in the area, and fifteen new relationships between Trinity and local of those are designated Schools In Need of teachers. “A lot could be done with partnership,” Improvement. said Joyce Coppin Mondesire, Professor, “Our goal was to ensure that every student Educational Leadership at Mercy College, in our neighborhood has the supplies and who helped start All Our Children. “And that’s resources they need to succeed,” said Anita what we’re all about.”

Chan, Associate Director of Faith In Action.

The teachers ended the afternoon by speaking Members of Trinity’s Education Action about why they chose to teach and taking tote Group held some of the bright red tote bags bags of supplies to use in their classrooms. “It during the service while the congregation sounds cliché, but most teachers get into it to dedicated the totes. The Education Action literally change the world. If you can make the Group includes Joyce Coppin Mondesire, world better one kid at a time, then I’m happy,” Dolores Osborne, Saundra Pinn, Lonny said a high school teacher.

Shockley, and Carla Richards, most of whom “Stay together, stay in touch with each other,” have worked in education. said Shockley at the end of the forum. “Keep doing what you’re doing because the students need you.”

New York Mission and Service Trip a Community Effort

Hudson Square Moves Closer to Rezoning In August, the City Planning Commission certified a proposal to rezone Hudson Square as a mixed-use residential neighborhood.

This begins a seven-month review period of the plan.

This is a big step in a process that has been in the works for years. Trinity Real Estate, which owns fifteen buildings in Hudson Square, submitted the application for rezoning. The plan will now be reviewed by the borough president and the community board before City Council votes on the proposal.

Max Maddock

Eight women, all of them formerly incarcerated, prepared to practice their networking skills with Trinity staff and volunteers in the Parlor at 74 Trinity Place. They looked a little nervous.

One woman arrived at the workshop flustered. “I was in prison a very long time,” she explained, and she was feeling overwhelmed as she adjusted to her new life. But thanks to the warmth of the volunteers, she seemed to relax as the day went on.

The women were part of Hour Children, a program located in Long Island City that serves currently and formerly incarcerated women and their children, and they were participating in Trinity’s New York Mission and Service Trip.

“It’s safe because we’re all going through it together,” said Sasha Blount, a Trinity staff member, expressing the communal spirit of Trinity’s New York Mission and Service Trip.

Maggy Charles, Program Manager for Mission & Service Engagement, coordinated the Mission and Service Trip, which took place over four weekends in July and August. She identified leaders from the Trinity community to plan the weekly workshops. “It’s really the community’s work,” she said.

Workshops covered a range of topics designed to prepare the women for the workplace, including navigating a networking event, how to dress, creating a career plan, and managing an online presence.

“It makes me more confident,” said Fabienne, who is part of the Hour Children program. “I

realized everyone has these questions.” She appreciated the role-playing at the workshops and the sincerity of the staff and volunteers.

The Mission and Service Trip not only drew women from Hour Children and Trinity staff members, but also parishioners and people from local neighborhoods and businesses. More than sixty people volunteered over the course of the month.

In addition to the Friday workshops, volunteers moved furniture and sorted clothes in Hour Children’s thrift stores in Long Island City on Saturdays. Participants in Hour Children work and shop at the stores. Many live nearby in the Hour Children housing.

“It’s a one-stop shop,” said Ebony Lawson, Employment Coordinator for Hour Children.

The organization offers housing, work experience, counseling and therapy, work training, and childcare. Each ministry supports the others.

This is Trinity’s second Mission and Service Trip with Hour Children. All ten women who participated in last year’s program now have jobs. “Every year it gets better,” said Lawson, as staff and volunteers get a sense of what works.

Some of this year’s volunteers are already helping the women find jobs.

On the final Friday, the women attended a concert performed by their children, who were participating in a Music Camp at Charlotte’s Place. The concert attracted a full house of staff, volunteers, and community members.

It was a successful and collaborative Mission and Service Trip, said Charles. Everyone worked and learned together. “The women from Hour Children were appreciative of the community we built with them,” she said, “and the volunteers were also grateful to have the opportunity to be with them and hear their stories.”

Christina Connolly, Terrell Moody, Victoria Mbithi, and Anne Flanagan lead a workshop with the women of Hour Children.

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Building Bridges Through Movement John Morrell

Tears were shed and praise was offered after Trinity’s Movement Choir performed at the Sacred Dance Guild Festival. The Movement Choir originally applied to lead a workshop at the festival, which was held at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, but were then invited by the Sacred Dance Guild to perform. The festival, called “Dance a World of Hope,” brought together sacred and liturgical dancers, teachers, and choreographers from around the country and abroad.

“To dance at the opening ceremony was a tremendous honor,” said Marilyn Green, Director and Choreographer of the Movement Choir.

“It went unbelievably well.”

The Movement Choir doesn’t sing. They dance at the intersection of art, worship, emotion, faith, and movement. No training is required.

“It’s open to anybody,” said Green. “Any faith, any level, any interest in dance.” Green herself is a trained dancer, with experience in the tradition of Rudolf Laban, a pioneer of modern dance who developed the idea of a movement choir.

The choir uses Butoh as the basis for their performances, a slow, precise form of Japanese dance. Their dances are a mix of choreography and improvisation: The dance is choreographed, in the sense that dancers rehearse and portray a certain emotion or segment of the dance, but how that emotion is expressed may vary.

“You never know what movement is going to come out of you at the time of the performance,” explained Toni Foy, a member of the choir.

The choir performed a dance called Reconciliation, created to commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 last year. They performed to music composed by Jeff Rapella, who also dances in the Movement Choir.

The response was overwhelmingly positive, and since then the choir has received many offers to collaborate from people such as Carla DeSola, considered the originator of modern liturgical dance.

“It’s all from a deep spiritual place,” said Foy. “There were lots of tears.

It was just amazing.”

After the opening ceremony, the members of the choir participated in a variety of classes, which included modern dance, Persian and African dance, storytelling, and Reiki. The participants at the festival ranged in age from 10 to 85. There were heads of university dance departments, renowned sacred music choreographers, those who just loved dance, and a few who had never danced before.

“It was a great experience,” said Dolores Osborne, a member of the Movement Choir. “We were exposed to first-class teachers.”

Green led a class on breaking barriers. It was based on the premise that even those with deep differences can “build bridges through movement,” she explained. “It was so spiritually fulfilling,” said Foy. In addition to being a learning experience and a chance to dance, she said the festival was a retreat and pilgrimage as well. “I felt sustained to do the work I am called to do.”

“The possibilities for Trinity and the Movement Choir are amazing,” said Green. “The good we can do is going to be marvelous.”

The Ministry of Math Summer school students from Leadership and Public Service High School sat in Charlotte’s Place, quietly focused on their computers, headphones on. No one spoke. They were all doing math.

The students were selected by teachers to participate in a Math Camp to improve their math skills. Leadership’s summer school is two weeks long, from 9am to 3pm. The hours they spent at Charlotte’s Place each day were a welcome break for the students.

“Even the kids who are normally rowdy were laser focused,” said Leah Khevelev, one of the teachers from Leadership High School.

After the first day, students made sure to show up at school on time so they could join the group going to Charlotte’s Place. In fact, a couple of students who weren’t originally chosen to attend tagged along one day because they heard from other students that it was fun.

Mike Miller, a teacher at the high school, said he had expected the normal hum of student voices, but instead it was quiet and focused all week. “They’re motivated,” he said.

Instructors used a free curriculum called Kahn Academy. Students worked on computers 4

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Wesley Chinn discusses a math problem with a student.

at their own pace, selecting which areas to focus on and accessing explanatory videos. Meanwhile, the teachers monitored their progress. If a student was doing well, blue bars appeared on the teacher’s screen near the student’s name. If a student was having trouble, red bars appeared, and the teacher could help. On Tuesday, most of the bars were blue.

“It’s really amazing. Easy to navigate, very intuitive,” said Miller. “It allows kids to work where they’re at.”

The camp is part of the All Our Children Initiative, which partners churches with local schools. “This work is about mutual partnership,” said Anita Chan, Trinity Wall Street’s Associate Director of Faith in Action. “We listen to

our partners and work with them to identify solutions that bring together the talents from our community with the needs of the school to best serve all our children.”

After brainstorming with school leaders, Jenn Chinn, Program Manager for Charlotte’s Place, suggested the Kahn Academy curriculum, which has been adopted by some schools but has not been used before on the East Coast.

“It’s a mutual ministry,” said Chinn, and fits with the mission of Charlotte’s Place to be a place where people have fun, do something different, and connect with others.

Principal Philip Santos is very happy with the partnership between Trinity and the school.

“Through the multitude of services offered by Trinity—tutoring, cultural events, our unique bell-ringing program, the Khan Academy Math Camp, providing prom dresses to our graduating seniors, providing basic school supplies, beatification projects, yoga for staff, community service projects, etc.—our students, staff members, and I have been enriched, inspired, and challenged.”

Speaking Out in Love: A Conversation about Poverty and Race Trinity parishioners Emory Edwards, Toni Foy, Roz Hall, and Patricia Thomas attended the Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) 2012 National Conference on July 22-25. The CDF is a national advocacy group for children, especially poor and minority children. Over 3,000 people from around the world attended the conference to discuss “Pursuing Justice for Children and the Poor.”

In the early 1970s there were 300,000 prisoners in the United States. Now there are 2.3 million prisoners in the United States. Mostly people of color. And the U.S. accounts for 25 percent of the world’s prison population. So you finally overcome one hurdle when it comes to civil rights yet you can see the system creating another way of diverting people of color away from society.

Hall: The other major issue that was discussed was gun violence. Between 1979 and 2000, 116,385 children and teens in America were killed by guns. In America children die by guns at a rate of 43 times higher than the combined rate of other nations.

Biljana Milenkovic

Thomas: And I think that as a church it is [good] to not just be aware of it, but get that information out there, make people more aware of these facts.

Hall: I think that the biggest thing that we as a church and a community can do is to become more informed and become more active. But you’ve got to actually do the work. You’ve got to actually be committed. Right now in this country we all need one another.

Foy: The reason you gather that many people is because it’s not individual, but everybody together, and out of all of that rises the leaders who have all of this support.

Edwards: What we have to do is find a way to have the hard conversations, to encourage people to go deeper personally, to go deeper with their friends. Almost everything we talked about at the CDF conference was at some point grounded in love, grounded in hope for a better future, grounded in hope for a better America, hope for a stronger church.

For more information about the Children’s Defense Fund go to childrensdefense.org

Richard III Thrills in Charlotte’s Place Hall: You walked in and everybody felt so at

peace and at one. Everybody in attendance knew what they were there for and it was so diverse in terms of age, race, culture, class, and education.

Edwards: The day was 12–14 hours long. About the time we thought “information overload” you go into the workshops and they said, “This is what you do with your information. This is where you take your first step. This is where you can go.”

Thomas: One thing that I took away from the

CDF conference is that [there’s] an onus on the not-for-profits and churches to help the poor kids all across the nation because many government programs are not only cutting back, but they’re not interested in investing in the lives of these children.

Edwards: Head Start costs about $10,000 per child per year and most children that go through Head Start now are likely to finish high school, and if you finish high school you’re more likely to get a job that pays and to be successful. The average cost per prisoner in the United States is over $25,000 per year. So basically you’re cutting ten thousand dollars per child and you’re going to be paying [much more] to have them incarcerated.

Joan Marcus

Foy: It supported us as a church and in our ministry. It validated what we are doing and what we’re trying to do.

The Public Theater’s Mobile Shakespeare Unit put on a stirring and entertaining performance of Richard III at Charlotte’s Place. Despite thunder and rain outside, almost fifty people gathered to watch as Richard III, played by Ron Cephas Jones, schemed and murdered in pursuit of power.

The Mobile Shakespeare Unit performs at prisons, schools, shelters, and community centers.

Barry Edelstein, director of the Public Theater’s Shakespeare Initiative, introduced the play, explaining that while the language was four hundred years old, if you just gave it a few minutes you would be able to follow along and enjoy the play without any problem. And, of course, he was right.

Though the play had been pared down to ninety minutes, it was no less engrossing because of it (to quote Shakespeare himself, “Better to be brief than tedious”).

They used simple props—folding chairs and wooden boxes and dowel rods instead of swords—and a family tree painted on a large cloth. Each time another character was murdered as Richard III maneuvered for the throne, the name was crossed off with red paint, making the plot easy to follow.

“This is exactly the kind of event Charlotte’s Place is designed for,” said Jenn Chinn, Program Manager of Charlotte’s Place, bringing together actors, people from the neighborhood, and Trinity parishioners.

Judging from the occasional spurts of laughter, expressions of horror, and even gasps at Richard III’s treachery, everyone was enthralled by the performance.

Michelle Beck and Ron Cephas Jones in The Public Theater's Mobile Shakespeare Unit production of Richard III, directed

by Amanda Dehnert.

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Sustaining the Mission of the Church in Africa

Photos: Jim Melchiorre

In September, Trinity staff and clergy participated in a Trinity-sponsored conference on sustainability titled “Structure for Sustaining God’s Mission: Governance and Financial Management” in Nairobi, Kenya. More than twenty-five bishops attended five days of workshops and discussion. Trinity Grants partners initiated this sustainability movement to ensure that the Anglican Church around the world remains strong into the future by using the gifts of God to generate income for ministry.

Those efforts are already underway. In the nation of Burundi, for example, the Diocese of Bujumbura is constructing a multi-story building that will operate as a guest house for travelers enjoying that country’s natural beauty, and also as a school for Burundi’s youth interested in careers in hotel management.

Top: Trinity Rector, the Rev. Dr. James Cooper helps with construction of the Faith Centre, a sustainability project in Bujumbura, Burundi, that will eventually house a conference center, restaurant, and an Internet café.

Left: The Rev. Canon Benjamin Musoke-Lubega greeting congregation members after Sunday Services at St. James Cathedral in Kiambu, Kenya.

Below: Sarah Grapentine, Senior Program Officer of Anglican Partnerships for Trinity, greeting congregation members after Sunday Services at St James Cathedral in Kiambu, Kenya.

Above: Archbishop Albert Chama in a video interview with Jim Melchiorre of Trinity Wall Street.

Left: Stacy Brandom, CFO, sharing expertise with more than twenty Anglican bishops on the subject of financial autonomy for the church in Africa.

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What do you like about working in education?

I was born in Brooklyn, raised in Queens, and worked in the Bronx most of my career. This is year fourteen or fifteen for me in education. For me, education is a calling. Initially I thought I was going to go into the ministry when I was in high school, but I realized I wanted to be involved in a non-denominational environment where I could still have an impact on students’ lives. For many of our students it’s their one chance to end the cycle of poverty, to think about something bigger than the five, ten block radius where they live.

Can you tell me about the Leadership and Public Service High School?

The founder of the school is Donald Schupack, a businessman. His philosophy is that public service is an excellent career for first generation students—from there they can be a building block for their children and so on. Our focus is on how we become leaders—as individuals, in our community, in our families—ideally global leaders. Regardless of how successful our students become we want them to be able to give back to their communities.

There are approximately seven hundred students from all five boroughs.

We’re 50% Latino, 25% African American, 25% other. Quite diverse. For the most part they come from struggling backgrounds. A lot of the time these are first or second generation students; in most cases parents have not gone on to college or university, so if they do, that will be the first time that happens in their family. The majority of the students that graduate go on to college.

What’s the biggest challenge for educators right now?

The main challenge for many New York public schools is that we have students for a limited amount of time. We’re expected—regardless of deficiency, whether it’s academic, social, emotional—to graduate them within four years. So we not only have to fill the deficiencies, but we have to prepare them for state exams, teach them how to pass their classes, how to study, how to act. They come from so many different places, so many different backgrounds, so many different home situations—that’s a huge challenge.

PHILIP SANTOS Philip Santos is the principal of Leadership and Public Service High School in Manhattan, a partner school in Trinity’s All Our Children program.

Tell me about the school’s relationship with Trinity.

We’re very blessed, and I say it all the time. Trinity sends between five and ten tutors almost every Saturday to work with our students. Twice a year they have these totes for our teachers which our teachers love. There are community service opportunities that we’re starting to develop for our students. Our graduation, held at Trinity Church, is unbelievable. Whenever we need space for events or meetings, Trinity has always offered their space to us. They provide yoga for our teachers every two weeks. Last year they collected prom dresses for some of our senior girls. All types of things happen.

The high school held its freshman orientation at Trinity and works with the parish on numerous programs.

How can the community support public schools and students?

I believe that public schools, for various reasons, need as much support as possible. Especially with [tight] budgets, to be successful without the community support would be very difficult. I think the relationship between Trinity and Leadership High School can be a great example.

Are there any experiences that have inspired you?

The first time that our students went over to help with the brown bag lunches that Trinity does every week, they came back to the building so excited they were able to do something. It was remarkable. Some of the most challenged, challenging students went, and the fact that they were doing something positive, giving something back, really had an impact on them. It was beautiful to see.

Interview by Jeremy Sierra Trinity News

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One Wall, Three Hundred Years of Lower Manhattan Geography Trinity is currently undertaking repairs on the retaining wall around the churchyard. The repairs will address

Back in 1697, when the first Trinity Church building went up, the churchyard ended near the shore of the Hudson River. Today, Trinity Church is nearly a half mile east of the Hudson River.

Lower Manhattan was widened first by individuals filling in “water lots,” offered for sale by the city on condition that the owners fill in the space between the high and low water marks. The island was widened later by fill from construction, subway, and river dredging projects.

basic wear and tear on the wall: As water drains from the yard, it pushes against the stones, damaging the wall and causing visible bulges. Seasonal freezing and thawing exacerbates the problem.

Structural engineers and masonry conservators will work together to remove sections of stone, install concrete beams and soil anchors, and then replace the stones. When the project is complete, the wall will look exactly as it does today, minus the bulges.

As this illustration shows, the embankment Trinity stood on was steep. The soil that makes up the churchyard is “sand varying from moderately fine to very fine with ground water at about 36 feet below the surface of the churchyard.” The entire churchyard drains to the west, toward the river.

Because of the location, soil composition, and drainage patterns of the churchyard, a retaining wall was built on the yard’s south and western sides. Trinity’s records don’t pinpoint when the wall was built, or who built it. Vestry records show that the wall existed by July 30, 1787, because it was “ordered that the committee of Repairs secure the Wall in the Rear of Trinity Church Yard and Raise a new Wall if found necessary.” The vestry had had the churchyard enclosed by a fence back in 1704, and it’s possible the wall was already in place then.

In 1864, the Common Council resolved to extend and widen Church Street (called Trinity Place as it passes behind the church; this article uses Church Street throughout) from Fulton Street in the north to the Battery in the south. The Council sought to alleviate traffic problems on Broadway and other nearby thoroughfares. At the time, the road that passed behind the churchyard was known as Trinity-alley and described as dirty, narrow, and unpaved.

As a result of these improvements, the grade of Church Street changed, and the wall of the churchyard had “to be supported by a new wall to be built underneath the present one,” at a cost of approximately $6,000. James Webb and Son was employed for the job. The work on the wall was completed to everyone’s satisfaction—unlike the work on the street extension itself. An August, 1871 New York Times article accused the project of being “a huge ‘job’ for extorting money from the

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IN 1878 THE 6TH AVENUE ELEVATED RAILWAY BEGAN OPERATION. PASSENGERS ON THE EL’S STEAM LOCOMOTIVES PASSED TRINITY CHURCHYARD AT EYE LEVEL. pockets of property-owners, who live so far from the line of improvement that no benefit could possibly accrue to them.” The writer went on: “The street is still unpaved and obstructed with car-loads of brick and rubbish, and heavilyloaded trucks and wagons driving through the streets drag and stick in the mud.…the sanitary condition of the street itself is disgraceful.

A considerable population live in Greenwichstreet, and the rear of a number of tenementhouses opens on Church-street. Garbage and filth of every description is thrown out into the unpaved thoroughfare to mix with the mud and putrefy in the hot rays of this August sun.

The lanes running from the street to Broadway and Greenwich-street are covered with decayed matter and excrement that makes the air of the neighborhood reek with the foulest odors.”

The Church Street extension was eventually completed. In 1878 the 6th Avenue Elevated Railway, which ran along Church Street from South Ferry to Park Place before curving onto Murray Street, began operation. Passengers on the El’s steam locomotives passed Trinity churchyard at eye level. By 1881, the line offered 24-hour service—and soot and debris continually falling onto the darkened street below. The line remained in operation until 1938.

In 1918, the BMT Broadway line—now the N/R/Q train lines—opened a station at the corner of Rector Street and Church Street, about ten feet from the churchyard wall, directly below the 6th Avenue El. Trinity’s vestry hired an engineer named Mr. H. de B. Parsons to monitor the wall. There is no record of subway-related damage to the wall.

A stairway from the churchyard to Church Street was added in 1963, at the time that the Manning Wing was added to Trinity Church.

A survey of the retaining wall done in 1996 showed movement in the west wall.

Expert opinions were sought, repairs decided upon, approval received from the Landmarks Commission, and funding allocated. Work was scheduled to begin in early fall, 2001. Then, on September 11, the World Trade Center—just two block north of the churchyard— was destroyed.

An engineering survey of the wall taken the following month showed a small amount of additional movement (as a result of the attacks? or just time?). Repairs to the wall were finally completed in October, 2003.

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What is Radical Christian Life?

EVOLVED AND ALWAYS EVOLVING

BY ROBERT OWENS SCOTT

T

he challenges of our time ask us to grow beyond what we think we know and become more than we believe we can be. The evolution of faith and the evolution of the planet go hand in hand. This is an important part of radical Christian life. “Radical” means “roots,” and roots are all about growth. If the motto of the Reformation was “reformed and always reforming,” perhaps ours today could be “evolved and always evolving.”

This suggestion may sound strange because we usually hear that religion fought Darwin’s theory of evolution tooth and nail. The truth is that a number of prominent theologians embraced evolution from the start. An 1890 essay by Oxford’s Aubrey Moore explained how at various points in history, knowledge of the natural world (including humans) grew beyond what the religion of the day taught. Religions that refused to evolve in light of new information fell behind the rest of society in their understanding of what was right and moral, with predictable consequences (RIP, Greek gods). But such times also present great opportunity. By engaging with new knowledge, “the old religion is purified and becomes the foster-mother of the new morality, giving it a divine sanction, and receiving from it in turn new strength and vitality,” he wrote in Lux Mundi.

Just as some Christians embraced evolution, today an emerging group of evolutionary scientists are returning the favor. At a time when popular authors attack religion as delusional and harmful, researchers in the field of cultural evolution are giving us empirical evidence of how religion can richly benefit societies.

Some believe that it has the potential to take us where no other force can—to the embrace of a universal human family.

Believers may bristle at the implication that science is being called to affirm the value of faith, but, again, the story is not so simple. Social scientists warn of a mistake sometimes called the Nothing-But Fallacy. For example, studies show that prayer helps people cope with illness and other stressors, but it would be a fallacy— an error in reasoning—to conclude that prayer is Nothing-But a coping mechanism. Joan Chittister, OSB, describes how St. Benedict exerted a positive influence on sixth-century Europe through the values modeled in his monastic way of life. “Those values turned a Europe devastated by invasion and neglect into

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a garden again,” she writes in The Radical Christian Life. She urges us to see Benedict as a model for social transformation today. Does that make the Benedictine order Nothing-But a social experiment? By no means. We may celebrate the practical impact of his work without assuming that we’ve summed him up. This way of life was the inevitable outcome of his contemplative awareness of God’s presence in the world.

Perhaps the best way to avoid the NothingBut fallacy is by practicing what contemplatives call nondual thinking. In The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, Richard Rohr, OFM, notes, “I am convinced that Jesus was the first nondual religious teacher of the West.”

Mystic consciousness, he says, does not rush to categorize. We need not conceive of our faith as being true or helpful, contemplative or active, even sacred or secular. We can hold the tension of “both-and.”

Chittister observes that, in a world shaped by evolution, our concept of God loses the hard edges of either-or thinking. “The God of creation becomes the God of ongoing creation, of life intent on its own development, and of life involved in contributing to its own emerging form,” she writes in the National Catholic Reporter. Such a God does not ask us to follow a set of predetermined rules in order to merit heaven. Rather, we are invited to become co-creators of God’s kingdom on earth.

Studies in cultural evolution confirm that religions often have facilitated the movement toward the universal justice and compassion that we, as Christians, might call the Kingdom.

Robert Wright makes such a case in his Pulitzer Prize-nominated book The Evolution of God. History, he says, is not random but has a direction. The arrow points toward greater cooperation, wider circles of concern, and a broader conception of the human family. He calls this principle “nonzero.” In essence it’s a kind of seeing: viewing life not as a zero-sum game where for you to win I have to lose, but as a nonzero relationship in which both of us win.

We might express this principle, and what it asks of us, as “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Wright posits that history has moved in this direction because, broadly speaking, groups that cooperate with one another do better than those that don’t. A recent Scientific American article

by Harvard’s Michael Nowak shows that cooperation has been a driving force behind evolution from the beginning. But both Wright

and Nowak also agree that moral progress is neither automatic nor guaranteed. Wright observes that in this age of globalization our fortunes are more interdependent than at any previous time in history, but we often fail to see how interconnected we are. Why? “Hatred blocks comprehension by cramping our ‘moral imagination,’ our capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another person.”

But there is hope. What hatred conceals, the mystical, nondual vision reveals. A generation ago, philosopher Henri Bergson observed that even though our circles of concern have widened through history from kin to tribes to nations, natural forces can only take us so far.

Even when our group widens, it’s still our group.

Remember, love of neighbor is not the same as love of everybody. Religion often reinforces group identities, which accounts for the dark side of the story: religion’s history of abetting violence. Bergson believed that what he called the “genius” of mysticism nurtures the kind of religion that carries us beyond in-groups. Think of it as the move from “love your neighbor” to “love your enemies.” He saw Jesus and other great religious figures as pioneers, but he appreciated the genius in all who approach faith contemplatively, giving themselves to the great mystery of love. These mystics “prove to be great people of action, to the surprise of those

for whom mysticism is nothing but visions and raptures and ecstasies,” he wrote in The Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

“Survival of the fittest” conjures images of the strong exploiting the weak, but “fitness” in evolutionary terms means whatever helps us to survive and thrive. It turns out that cooperation, compassion, and the embrace of a single human family actually make us more fit. Our faith has a special vocation to teach those very things.

Critics who claim that the progressive church is Nothing-But a social movement miss the point.

At this moment, humanity has an opportunity for collaboration of staggering breadth, with unprecedented stakes in the quest for human

flourishing and the salvation of the planet.

As people of faith, our starting place is the contemplative awareness of God’s presence.

That makes us mystics—which is to say, people of great and holy action.

Robert Owens Scott is the Director of Faith Formation and Education for Trinity Wall Street and Director of Trinity Institute.

The Call of God AN ECHO IN THE HEART

Dave Cutler/Illustration Source

BY JOAN CHITTISTER

L

ife is a series of possibilities, one large grid of entrances and exits, highways and byways, directions and decisions that cross and conflict with one another, all of them promising fulfillment. Each of them lies just one more tantalizing step beyond reach of what we think will surely fulfill us, certainly make us completely happy, finally give us what we want.

And so we grasp at every infatuation restlessly.

We run riot up and down the roads of life always looking for new directions, for sure gain, for certain success. We try one. And then another.

And then another. Until eventually we discover that in all our going we have gotten to nowhere that we recognize as home. The search is relentless; the finding is always incomplete.

What is to be made of such a thing? Do we all live life wrongly, or is life only lived on the run, an endless, but fruitless, scurrying from one dead end to another? Or, perhaps, is the search itself the essence of life?

The fact is that each of life’s roads goes somewhere different. And all of them sparkle and beguile. All of them run the risk of leading us away from the center of the self. We set out to swallow the universe and wind up too often starved for life.

Some of the roads go to money. Some of them go to the heaping up of “grain in barns,” as the Scripture describes accumulation for its own sake. Some of them go to excitement and variety and stimulation. Some of them go to independence or security. Some of them go to status. But where they go is almost never the point. Any road is a good road as long as it takes us where, at the deepest center of the self, we know that we should be. It’s the road that takes us to a sense of the fulfillment that we really seek.

It’s the road on which, having reached the end, we say to ourselves, “Yes, finally.”

The most haunting question in life is, Which one of those roads really leads to the self? Which one of them brings us home to the part of us that nothing else satisfies? Which one of them, without it, leaves us living shells of the person we know ourselves to be? Which one of them takes us beyond fear of loss and fear of others to a sense of spiritual invincibility, to the awareness that nothing and no one can deter us from what we are meant to do, that nothing and no one can

take anything away from us that can possibly touch the center of the self? It’s an important spiritual question, because the road that goes to the self is the one that goes to God. The journal was clear. “For the gifts and call of God are irrevocable,” Paul writes in the Letter to the Romans. And I got the message. I wrote, I like this. It’s straight: We have a purpose in life and we are given within us whatever it takes to do it. All we need is the will and the courage to be what we are supposed to be. Then, everything else in life gets focused on it, gets caught up in it, gets filtered through it, gets measured by our fidelity to that call.

The spirituality of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, spawned in a world of coal mines and assembly lines, taught an offer-it-up philosophy of survival. Gone were the farmers and the artisans who gave themselves to their work and became new themselves because of it.

Now, work became what a person did to make a living, rather than to make a life.

But everybody lives to do something that only they can do. Everyone of us is called, by virtue of what we love and what we do well, to give something to the world that will bear the stamp of our presence here. We are all called to add something to the creation of the universe.

The question is, How? And the answer must surely be by using what there is in us that we do best.

My journal confronted me with words that I had been hearing for years from the First Letter of Peter. “You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of the imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God.” The words brought me up short. I heard a clanging sound within me.

I don’t know if I have been “born anew” or not but I do know that something new is trying to be born in me. The question is whether or not it may not be a bastard child—unwanted, illegitimate, disruptive. Whatever it is, it lurks inside fighting for breath. If I repress it, I may never be real, never be true, never be a writer in the truest sense of the word. But if I let it grow, I may be none of those things anyway. And yet, how else do we test the Spirit?

I know too many people who have not tested the spirit within them and died inside, even while they went on living.

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A friend of mine went from accounting job to accounting job, grinding out one set of numbers after another and wishing all his life that he had gone into woodworking. He went into accounting to have a steady job and resented its sameness, its steadiness, all his life.

A student of mine, a brilliant debater, an excellent history student, majored in math in college. His father insisted that there were “better opportunities in math,” which, translated, meant that there was more money to be made in math than in the liberal arts. In the end he failed the higher math courses and had to change majors. It was an experience that ate away at his self-confidence all the rest of his life.

I myself postponed writing for years in order to concentrate on teaching and administration, both of them good for me, but neither of them enough to open up the other whole part of me.

The point is that we are never at home with ourselves until we have come to be what we know ourselves to be inside. And what we are inside, we are born with and meant to unleash. But all too often—for social approval or fear of risk or neurotic self-doubt or quick gain—we have learned to resist the call of God to full development with might and main. We stay where we are because we prefer the security of the present to the possibility of the future.

My journal wrested the truth out of me. Mary Borhek wrote, “One of the marvelous facts of life is that every ending carries within itself the potential for a new beginning.” I wrote in return, I have had to learn this truth the hard way— and may not really have learned it at all. Whatever the public perception, I find it very difficult to give up the past. My pattern is to resist it kicking and screaming. But then, once the step is taken, never to look back. I simply am where I am—rooted until I go through the next forcible replanting— and then I root again. So far every planting has been a better one. When will I ever learn that?

We are each called to something. Discovering where it is that God will break out in us in full becomes the major task of life.

“Call” sinks its talons into our hearts. The awareness that we are yet meant to do more than we are signals where God lies in wait for us to become what we are meant to be. Then the spiritual life, the awareness of a driving energy within that is greater than ourselves, greater than anything around us, begins to happen. We give ourselves over to what is even greater than the self, the idol to which we had previously devoted our lives.

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We cease to live for the self alone. We walk with God now. We begin to make cosmic plans; we begin to make things happen that co-create the world, rather than simply soothe the ego. We begin to rebuild life in the model of the gospel.

Spirituality requires that we release the spirit in ourselves. Most of all, it implies that we must follow the road to the innards of our souls. “No one knows what lies ahead,” Jan Richardson’s journal entry said, “when we say yes to God.” After having lived through years of good works, but false starts, I wrote back, I can only trust that what lies ahead will be fuller, freer, than the present. I hope for a life that is my own, that has no false chains to bind me, that allows me to move like a butterfly on the wind and to stand, when necessary, like a lioness in high grass. I want a life that is directed by the call within myself—not by an institution, not even by what looks like the care and concern of others.

When we find at the core of our being what God has planted in us for our tilling and reaping, we will have found the God who is waiting for us. Then we will walk with God, singing all the way.

We make life an unending engagement with the systems to which we are beholden, however benign, however smothering they may be. We forget sometimes that God is the echo we hear in our hearts, totally independent of the systems, the certainties, to which we have fallen heir. To be what my father wants me to be, to do what my mother hopes I will do, to become what the institution says I should become, to succeed at the role in the way the world says the role must be played trap us outside of ourselves. We must, Thoreau reminds us, “Step to the music we hear, however measured or far away.”

We must not, if we are to be spiritual people, fail to realize that life is meant to be nothing but a growing ground in God. If we fail to cultivate that part of us that is our truest self, how can the self come to full life in us? The spiritual life is the discovery of the self God meant us to be so that who we are can be God’s gift to the rest of the world.

Joan Chittister, OSB is a Benedictine sister and internationally known author and lecturer. She has been a leading voice for the essential connection between spirituality and social action for more than three decades. She will be the keynote speaker for Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

Republished with permission of Sheed & Ward, from Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir, Joan Chittister, © 2004; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

Signs and Symbols of the Kingdom The Rt. Rev. Julio Murray’s ministry in the street How do you see the relationship of contemplative life and the engaged life?

Do you have any recollection of stories where the Church has done that well?

This brings to mind the Great Commandment, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and to love your neighbor as yourself. If I have a deep relationship with God, it means then that I must also have a deep relationship with my brother, with my sister, with my neighbor. If I understand that I love God, then I must have some concrete action of love towards my neighbor, and that is where I understand that contemplation comes in play with action, a concrete action towards the other.

Just recently here in Panama, the indigenous groups, Nôbe-Buglé and the Kuna and the Embera, got together, and they placed a complaint. Because of the process of mining in their territory, they were being pushed aside and pushed out of a place to live and their natural habitat. They began their manifestations. They got on the street peacefully, trying to get the attention of legislators. They didn’t ask anybody else to join them in the struggle. There came a point in which the voice of the indigenous people became the cry to God, and they looked at the church, and they said, “Do you hear our cry?” The Church in Panama responded, and they stood beside the indigenous people and fought for justice.

I remember from my trip coming back from Bocas Del Toro, we were caught in the midst of the manifestation, and I got out of the car, and I walked up to some of the indigenous [people] that were on the bridge that we had to cross just to inquire what the struggle was all about. Mining projects were taking away their place to live and were taking away their capacity to feed themselves. The procedure that was being used to extract gold or minerals was poisoning the water where they were fishing. Because I [made it] my business to sit and listen to them, I can accompany the cause and the call even better.

They are the people that are excluded today. I think that the Church should not become the voice of those that are excluded, but that the Church should take on the responsibility of creating the space so that that voice can get to the table where decisions are being made. I do not need to become the voice of someone else.

I need to make sure that that someone else, that person who’s excluded, can speak for themselves.

We are created to be in a relationship with God, but also a relationship with one another. Jesus gave his life so that we will have life and life abundantly, but that cross would [not make sense to me] if, by the power of the resurrection, he did not come back to life again and walk among us, fulfilling the promise that “I will be with you always.” The ascension is what puts ministry in motion.

When you recognize that as a call, how do you then stay awake to that?

I have a 12 year old and an 18 year old at home, and each has their chores to do. I said to them, “If you walk into the house or walk into the kitchen and see that something needs to be done, would you rather that I tell you it needs to be done, or would you just recognize that it’s something that has to be done, and you go ahead and you do it?” So they say, “We’d rather recognize it. We don’t want you to tell us.” It is the same in life. If we understand that the kingdom of God is about justice, inclusion, it’s about peace, it’s about solidarity, you can look around, and you can see what needs to be transformed. That’s the inner call, because I know what the kingdom of God is like or what it should be like. To be awake is to be looking out for the signs and symbols of the kingdom, and when I see that they’re not there, that they’re missing, it means that work has to be done.

There’s a ministry of the Church in the street, and this ministry responds to the needs of those who you may not meet on the inside of the temple. People who stand at the crossroads, people who stand at the stop signs, stoplights, and are selling something.

How many times have we stopped and asked where these people are coming from? Sometimes they are children who should be at school. Other times they are women who are single parents. It speaks to me about a ministry with children who have to work on the streets, and it speaks to me about a ministry to women who are immigrants.

These new ministries are opportunities to give the testimony of what the kingdom of God is all about.

The Rt. Rev. Julio Murray is the Bishop of Panama. He will be a creative work session facilitator at Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

The disciples are standing, looking into the skies, and here is the invitation: Why are you standing, looking into the skies? You need to go back to Jerusalem and get busy. You need to go back to Jerusalem and practice some radical kingdom building. Mission keeps me in this process, coming back, seeking, understanding, seeking God and his will for us, but also moving me in action towards my brother and my sister.

What is radical Christian life in your experience?

I would say that radical Christian life is recognizing that the Christian life is a challenge to be active on a journey. It’s a challenge to be a sign and a symbol of something bigger than the Church, to be a living testimony that the kingdom of God has come close to us and that we are invited to be engaged in life every day, and the invitation comes from Jesus as he says, “Come follow me to be on this journey with me.” Being engaged in radical Christian life also means that I have an opportunity to be light and salt and leaven. Every Christian should see themselves as an agent of transformation.

HOLY LONGING

The Rev. Barbara Crafton on following our desires and a universe created out of love When we’re talking about working for social change, what is discernment for you?

In working for social change, discernment is locating as specifically as possible what it is that needs to change. There is some disequilibrium.

Something is not right. What is it? I have to be able to name it in order to be a part of changing it. That is the disturbance.

We never move except in response to a discomfort. The discomfort of longing, not necessarily pain, but the unrequited longing that we have for something.

St. Augustine said, “Who can pursue wholeheartedly that which does not delight him?

But who can know if what he pursues will, in fact, delight him?” There is this combination of longing and uncertainty. “I long for this, but I may be wrong about it. So I need to really be as sure as I can, and know as much as I can, and look as deeply as I can, and as widely as I can, and be as smart as I can possibly be about it because I may be wrong. I want my longing to be pure, and I want to long for that which will actually satisfy my longing.”

When you talk about longing are you talking about desire? What role does desire play?

I think desire is the engine of our spiritual growth. It is desire which propels us toward everything that we see, and unless we desire it we will not pursue it wholeheartedly. So to me, desire is not something that needs to be overcome. I will never be absent of desire. It propels me toward that which I seek. And so I need to be sure that that which I desire is worthy of my desire and worthy of my love. Because if I pursue it with the passion that I have in me, and it’s too weak to bear the weight of that passion, I will be unhappy.

More than one Christian thinker has said, “Go ahead and pursue your desires because they’re not going to satisfy you. And after you’ve done that you’re still going to be hungry and you’re still going to be looking. And when you have come to the end of all of the electronic gadgets you might want to have, and all the really cool cars, and all the vacations homes, and all the jewelry, or all the boyfriends and girlfriends, you’re still going to be hungry.”

We have known in the centuries of Christian life for a long, long time that none of the creatures of God are strong enough, large enough to sustain the weight of our desire. It’s not sinful to want nice things, but it won’t satisfy you. A whole edifice of advertising is erected upon hoping that we will believe that buying

something can make us happy. Wanting and realizing that no amount of having is going to satisfy you is instructive for the soul because it forces the soul to aim higher.

I look at myself, and I think about the zest with which I, not so long ago, collected cooking things, and more than one set of dishes, and things like that and got delight out of them for a time. And it was a long time, but a time has come in my life now when I’m not hostile to sets of dishes, but I sure don’t need them, and that’s not the object of my longing anymore.

So I think we have to allow ourselves to progress in terms of articulating the object of our desires, to let the object of our desires change, to let our desires lead us to better and better places, and to lovingly set aside the things that used to delight us.

Does discernment have anything to do with God’s desire?

I don’t have a sort of an Apollonian god who is so self-sufficient that desire does not enter into the divine person. Because the Son of God had desires and longings. And this introduces, if it was not already there, desire into the Godhead itself.

But I think it was there to begin with. The creation of the universe comes out of love. There is a profound lack of necessity in our being here at all. There is this big bang, this burst of the divine love which is energy, and it doesn’t have to happen. It arises out of a singularity that is self-sufficient and doesn’t need anything, but nonetheless, longs to be multiple. And it bursts out of that and hurtles through the universe and congeals into planets, and mountains, and seas, and stars, and then animals and plants, and then us. It’s all made of love. The whole thing is made of God’s desire.

God’s desire creates. It causes things to be.

And God’s desire sustains our life, too. God wants us to stay alive, and not just alive in this body, but alive in the universe, alive in the life that stands next to this one eternally. The life that is without time and independent of space.

God’s desire propels us through all of this.

The Rev. Barbara Crafton is an Episcopal priest and author. She heads The Geranium Farm, an institute for the promotion of spiritual growth. The Farm publishes her “Almost-Daily eMo,” a meditation read online by tens of thousands worldwide via email. She will be a creative work session facilitator at Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

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Radical Christians Who Parted in Mutual Sorrow The letter arrived on the desk of Dr. Fleming, Trinity’s rector, in 1947.

The Vatican was requesting access to Trinity’s archives in search of an elusive document: the baptismal record of Elizabeth Seton—the same Elizabeth Seton who would be canonized in 1975, the first American-born Catholic saint.

It’s fitting that the road to sainthood for Seton wound through Trinity Church because it began there. Seton lived to be 46 years old; for thirty of those years she was a devout communicant of Trinity Parish. Her decision to convert to Catholicism was so wrenching for her dear friend, the Rev. John Henry Hobart, an assistant minister at Trinity and the future Bishop of New York, that his biographer would single it out as “an event that long rested on his memory with painful interest.”

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Elizabeth Anne Bayley was born into a prominent Anglican family with many connections to Trinity Church on August 28, 1774. Little Eliza Anne, as she was known, was certainly baptized soon after her birth, though no records of when or where the ceremony took place survive.

It’s difficult to imagine the Lower Manhattan of Seton’s childhood—a city half-burnt by the Great Fire of 1776, occupied by the British Army, and continuously besieged by infectious disease.

Seton’s mother died when she was two years old, likely in childbirth. Her father’s remarriage to the young Charlotte Barclay, a fellow Trinity parishioner, produced seven children before ending acrimoniously.

Seton’s early writings reveal an intense, emotional relationship with God. The spires of Trinity Church and St. Paul’s Chapel, visible from Staten Island and Lower Manhattan, were her happy symbols of faith and home.

On a Sunday evening in January, 1794 Eliza Anne Bayley married William Magee Seton, the son of a successful merchant family. The Setons settled into a comfortable family life and soon had five children. Even in the midst of temporal joy, Seton sensed God’s presence, writing soon after her marriage, “My own home at twenty— the world—that and heaven too.” Always active in charitable works, Seton helped found the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children in 1797 and taught children’s catechism for Trinity Parish.

In 1798, William Seton’s father died, leaving the young couple to raise his seven orphaned siblings, including his younger sister Rebecca, who became Seton’s best friend and “soul sister.”

THE SOOTHER AND COMFORTER OF THE TROUBLED SOUL IS A KIND OF FRIEND NOT OFTEN MET WITH. neared death, Seton’s soul soared towards God The death of her father-in-law began a period of to Hobart about her belief in Catholicism. and home. “I went to sleep,” Seton wrote in a trial in Seton’s life. William’s business struggled, Hobart spent months trying to counsel her out journal addressed to Rebecca, “and dreamed I was of conversion, insistent that the Anglican Church and he contracted tuberculosis. But one bright in the center Isle of Trinity Church, singing with spot appeared in Seton’s life in September,1800: was the true successor to Christ and his apostles. all my soul the hymns at our dear sacrament.”

A young assistant minister named John Henry Their friendship deteriorated, as neither was able Though thousands of miles away, Hobart Hobart arrived at Trinity Church. to come to terms with the other’s point of view. was a presence in the darkest hours of Seton’s When they met, Hobart was just 24 and an “Mr. H. was here yesterday…and was so life. “I sometimes feel that his angel is near and unusually enthusiastic preacher. Seton, then 26, intirely out of all patience… his visit was short undertake to converse with it.” was entranced by his sermons. “Mr. Hobart this and painful on both sides—God direct me for I William died on December 27, 1803. morning—language cannot express the comfort see it is in vain to look for help from any but him.”

Seton and Anna Maria stayed in Italy for the Peace the Hope,” she wrote in a letter to Ironically, Seton seems to have made peace several months, cared for by William’s friends, Rebecca that year. Hobart preached a “high with her decision to convert during services in the Filicchi family. “Tell my dear friend John church” theology, emphasizing, among other St. Paul’s Chapel in September 1804: “I got a side Henry Hobart that I do not write because the things, the importance of the Eucharist in pew which turned my face towards the Catholic opportunity is unexpected and my breast is very spiritual life.

Church [St. Peter’s] in the next street, and found weak after all its struggles,” she wrote on January myself twenty times speaking to the Blessed Seton’s letters reveal the depth of her 4, 1804. “That I have a long letter I wrote on friendship with Hobart, on whom she relied Sacrament there instead of looking at the naked board of ship to him—that I am hard pushed by altar where I was…Mr. H. says how can you during this difficult period in her life. Hobart was also struggling, and he sought out Seton for believe that there are as many gods as there are comfort. Early in 1801, he called on Seton at her millions of altars and tens of millions of blessed home after returning from a visit with his ailing hosts all over the world—again I can but smile mother and sister in Philadelphia. at his earnest words, for the whole of my “Mr. H[obart] sent up to know if we were all Cogitations are but reduced to one thought it well. I went down quietly as possible but trembled is GOD who does it.” rather too much even for a Christian—told me a Ash Wednesday 1805 was “a day of days” in great deal about his mother and sister.”

Seton’s life. “I have been—where—to the church Then Seton told Hobart of her great joy: of St. Peter with a CROSS on the top instead her husband, William, had experienced a of a weathercock.” Her joy was tinged with the religious awakening, an event Seton attributed knowledge of what she turned her back on: to Hobart’s influence.

St. Paul’s Chapel and Trinity Church, whose “I told him the last 24 hours were the happiest weathervane-topped spires long represented her I had ever seen or could ever expect as the most spiritual home. earnest wish of my heart was fulfilled…if you From that day forward, Seton was a devout had known how sweet last evening was—Willy’s Roman Catholic. Hobart’s biographer, who heart seemed nearer to me for being nearer to knew and worked with the man, said it well: his God.” “They parted, however, not in anger, but mutual Later in 1801, Seton sent a letter to a friend in sorrow, each to run the course of a high and which she talked of Hobart: conscientious duty.” Hobart became an “The soother and comforter of the troubled influential Bishop of New York, celebrated with soul is a kind of friend not often met with…he a feast day in the Episcopal Church. Seton took is so the friend most my friend in this world, holy orders and founded the Sisters of Charity, and one of those who after my Adored creator I which still exists today. these charitable Romans who wish that so much expect to receive the largest share of happiness When she was confirmed in the Roman goodness should be improved by a conversion.” from in the next.”

Church, Seton’s Episcopal baptism was By the time Seton left Italy, she was seriously Hobart’s friendship buoyed Seton through her considering Catholicism. Transubstantiation— considered sufficient and she was not re-baptized. father’s death in 1801, and into a difficult 1802 Seton was canonized on September 14, 1975. the doctrine of the real presence of God in the and 1803. William’s health deteriorated as his bread and wine at the Eucharist—was irresistible The Rev. Hunsicker, longtime vicar of St. Paul’s faith, encouraged by Hobart, grew. William was Chapel, attended as a guest of the Vatican, and to her. “My sister dear,” she wrote to Rebecca, forced to declare bankruptcy and the family lost “how happy would we be if we believed what a special Eucharist was celebrated in Trinity their home. these dear Souls believe that they POSSESS GOD Church. Perhaps Elizabeth Seton and John In October 1803, the Setons and their eldest Henry Hobart, reunited in the next life as Seton in the sacrament?” child, Anna Maria, set sail for Italy. William had once hoped, looked down.

Seton drafted a letter to Hobart on the ship friends there and hoped that a change in climate home. “The tears fall fast thro’ my fingers at the would restore his health. Seton carried her insupportable thought of being Separated from “hidden treasure” across the ocean: religious Leah Reddy is Multimedia Producer for Trinity you …I cannot doubt the Mercy of God who books and copies of Hobart’s sermons.

Wall Street. by depriving me of my dearest tie on earth will When the family arrived in Italy they were certainly draw me near to him.” immediately quarantined for a month, “shut up Back in New York, Seton, now an in damp walls, smoke, and wind.” As William impoverished single mother, spoke openly Trinity News

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you need to be Christ for the world, and that’s a radical notion.

What role does conscience play?

It’s very important that people always follow their conscience, no matter what level of consciousness they have. It is our obligation as Christians to always expand our consciousness, our mindfulness, our understanding, everything we know, and to consider other points of view, new information, just as Christ did with the Syro-Phoenician, Canaanite woman. But conscience needs to be followed. Pope Benedict, while he was cardinal, talked about following one’s conscience, even if it violates ecclesial authority. That doesn’t mean that we can do whatever we want; it means through prayer, and understanding, and reflection, I can do no other.

I must do this.

Consciousness and Conscience The Rev. Joe Constantino, SJ on Jesus’ openness to change

What is conscience?

The Second Vatican Council talks about following one’s conscience because conscience is where God speaks to our heart. It’s a tender place in which one comes to in prayer in order to make decisions. And all of us every day are making all sorts of decisions, not simply the large decisions that have to do with social change, but even small decisions about how I will or will not react, or act, in a particular circumstance. This is why [it] is so important to keep going back, reflecting on one’s day, where God was, and where God might be challenging me, or stretching me a bit more in order to expand my consciousness, in order to [give me] a more fully developed conscience, that seat where God speaks to us.

Does the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman say anything to you about how God speaks to us?

The Canaanite story is so wonderful because it does show Jesus being challenged by the Syro-Phoenician woman and expanding his understanding. And that’s why challenge and conflict is good. In that story she’s challenging Jesus to expand his horizon and be more inclusive.

You feel like Jesus is a model, but what does he model for us in that exchange?

What is the role of consciousness when working for social change?

It’s not as if you become 21 and you stop growing.

Consciousness can continue to expand, and there are different levels of growth. Some people’s level of consciousness is ideological—they are locked into their position and can hardly see any other point of view. And the challenge for all of us as Christians, as servant leaders, is to grow to the next level of consciousness, which appreciates the different points of view and tries to reach some consensus or live with conflict so that something new can emerge.

We need to pray for openness for all points of view and then use that in order to expand our level of consciousness. So it’s Hegelian in a sense that Hegel talked about the unfolding of 20

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consciousness through history, and that happens in the culture, but it can also happen in the individual.

Richard Rohr has a wonderful chapter in one of his books called Great Themes of the Old Testament. He talks about consciousness development in the faith life: We go from exclusivist faith, to covenant faith, to prophetic faith, to incarnational faith. And some people unfortunately get stuck. To be stuck in covenantal faith, for instance, is to be stuck in the sense that I have to be a certain way in order for God to love me. But, when you get to prophetic faith, it’s unconditional love that we see and appreciate. Incarnational faith: We go forth and we are Christ for the world, and that’s an important shift. In order to do any social change,

I think he models an openness to change, and growth, and development. Gregory of Nyssa has a great line that sin is the refusal to continue to grow, and that comes from the early Church fathers. Jesus is fully human so he does grow.

It’s not as if at the beginning of his ministry he knew all that he knew at the end of his ministry.

All the people that came in contact with him really expanded his consciousness so that he was able in his human nature to show more and more because he had an openness to growth.

The Rev. Joe Constantino, SJ, is a pastor at The Church of St. Francis Xavier, New York City. Prior to his appointment at Xavier he was full-time Retreat and Spiritual Director at St. Ignatius Retreat House, Manhasset, NY. He will be a creative work session facilitator at Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

In the End, It All Comes Down to This

BY RICHARD ROHR

We mend and renew the world by strengthening inside ourselves what we seek outside ourselves, and not by demanding it of others or trying to force it on others.

This truth may sound like the Law of Attraction that is so widely discussed today, and often called the “Secret,â€? but there is one major difference. Perhaps, like many people, you use the Law of Attraction to draw to yourself the good things you want in life—love, a successful relationship, stability. This is ďŹ ne as far as it goes. The true contemplative mind, however, does not deny the utter “facticityâ€? of the outer world. In fact, much of its suffering comes from seeing and accepting things exactly as they are. The Secret seems to be saying that your mind creates the outer world. I am saying that you do create your response to it, and that response, for all practical purposes, is your reality.

What you see is what you get.

What you seek is also what you get.

s )F YOU WANT OTHERS TO BE MORE LOVING CHOOSE TO LOVE lRST s )F YOU WANT A RECONCILED OUTER WORLD RECONCILE YOUR OWN INNER WORLD s )F YOU ARE WORKING FOR PEACE OUT THERE CREATE IT INSIDE AS WELL s )F YOU NOTICE OTHER PEOPLE S IRRITABILITY LET GO OF YOUR OWN s )F YOU WISH TO lND SOME OUTER STILLNESS lND IT WITHIN YOURSELF s )F YOU ARE WORKING FOR JUSTICE TREAT YOURSELF JUSTLY TOO s )F YOU lND YOURSELF RESENTING THE FAULTS OF OTHERS STOP RESENTING YOUR OWN s )F THE WORLD SEEMS DESPERATE LET GO OF YOUR OWN DESPAIR s )F YOU WANT A JUST WORLD START BEING JUST IN SMALL WAYS YOURSELF s )F YOUR SITUATION FEELS HOPELESS HONOR THE ONE SPOT OF HOPE INSIDE YOU s )F YOU WANT TO lND 'OD THEN HONOR 'OD WITHIN YOU AND YOU WILL ALWAYS see God beyond you. For it is only God in you who knows where and how to look for God. Richard Rohr, OFM is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province. He is a writer, internationally renowned speaker, and the founding director of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He will preach at the Eucharist for Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, Richard Rohr. Published by The Crossroad Publishing Company, 2009. Reprinted with permission by The Crossroad Publishing Company. crossroadpublishing.com

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PEACE

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HOLY E LEISUR

BY MARGARET GUENTHER

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Do we seek solitude, isolation, withdrawal from the bustle of so-called “ordinary” life, rather like those cartoon figures of the wizened guru, sitting alone on a mountaintop, visited occasionally by a seeker in search of a life-changing word? Or do we plunge into frenetic activity, convinced that God cannot run the world without us, that even pausing to breathe, especially to take in the lifegiving breath of the Holy Spirit, is dangerously self-indulgent?

Yet when I ponder my own identity as an embodied follower of the God Incarnate, I realize that my very body has a great deal to teach me about the divine rhythm of taking in and letting go, then taking in and letting go again and again until I draw my last breath.

Breathing—the reflexive drawing of air into our lungs, then letting it go.

Long ago, when I did my obligatory hospital training on the path to ordination, bodily death was recorded in the patient’s chart as a CB, a “cease to breathe.” Yes, that’s still true, if we are speaking only of bodily death. And yes, it’s also true if we think of the drawing of the divine breath of the Spirit into ourselves and then sending it out into the world. Receiving and giving, taking in and letting go.

And those wonderful muscles! They atrophy; they are useless unless they contract and expand.

Take in and let go. This is the inborn gift of our embodiment. We sleep and we wake. We are active, and then we accept that divinely ordered letting go, giving ourselves over to restorative passivity. If we go too long without the refreshment of sleep—of unconsciousness, 22

challenging and

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of openness to the world of dreams or merely to that world of letting go and falling like small children into the safe arms of God—we have abused ourselves. We suffer.

And so it goes with our remarkable bodies. We are hungry, and we eat—at least in this corner of abundance in God’s world. We are tired, and we rest. We take in nourishment and then use that energy for action.

There’s the action of our ordinary lives: our daily work that brings the bread to our table, the holy work of caring for our families, and—more demanding—the holy work of God’s call to serve.

This is hard work: to live in awareness of need, poverty, cruelty, and injustice. Often I think that our greatest sin is inattention: We say our prayers and embrace assorted spiritual disciplines and yet protect ourselves with a willed blindness to the world around us.

But there’s also the temptation to avoid the other part of the pattern: stepping back for a bit and letting ourselves savor the holy hunger of reflective yearning for the enlivening touch of the Holy Spirit. We cannot keep giving of ourselves, even for the most sacred causes, unless we pause and let ourselves be replenished and then let go, give generously of ourselves and then take in again.

Admittedly, many of us are born with a predilection, a gift, for one aspect of this holy process, seemingly to the neglect of the balance of breathing in and breathing out, the balance of God’s gifts of contemplation and action.

Throughout history there have been those among us born to the contemplative life. They don’t do

HOLY LEISUREhu keep

stewardship the well in our present-day, frenetic society. Yet BE SIMPLE PEACE IN OUR NEEDS & GIVE of c TO LIF diverse our history as Christians is punctuated community let touch HOLY LE just ice the world by the self-giving lives of those saints roll gently & down peacefully BE CONSCIOUS be gentle wit who chose or were called to withdraw come apart & rest awhile and gentle w be con from the bustle of the world and to give of the of God DIVERSE let it go p themselves to lives of deep prayer. And COMMUNITY HOLY LEISU Come apart and rest awhil e bein there have always been those called BE SIMPLE IN OUR NEED S & GIVE holy to action, to give of themselves in the STEW let qu struggle for justice and compassion. We just tu ice STEWARDSHIP need them both. Where on earth would rollwi humility dow nb we be without tough and energetic St. Paul, GIVE TO LIVE keep aware of the well being Be con moving tirelessly over the known world! be gentle of creation tend the earth ourselves & g Or, for that matter, where would we Back into Balance with o stewardship let justice roll down PE be without St. John, visionary and Back A TOUCH THE W into Balancebreathe GENTLY & PEACE keep aware of the well bein mystic in his retreat on the Isle g of creati CREAT humility peace of Patmos? We need them be IVE WO breat he gentle with ou humility Touch RK gentle with the world gentlyand and peacefully keep aware of the well both. We need their models DI being of creation GIVE TOCO LIVE of sanctity and self-giving, humility action and contemplation. holy leisu Back into RSE COMMUNITY And then there is the example wheDIVE ce ju re your deep stewardshBalan ip PEACE gladness meets ro of Jesus, who understood the the world’s deepHUMILITY dow listen keep aware LET IT GOneed TO each hol rhythm of solitude and engagethe well be humility y voice of crea tion Touch the Come apart and world gently and peacefu ment, of the taking in and letting discover rest awhile see the divine in one ano let true it go Be simple in Backquie go, of the life-giving pattern of turm vocation our need s and give to life into wi hum ilit y action and contemplation. No Balance LET IT GO caring for the most vulnerab DIVERSE wonder that his friends and followers COMMUNITY PEAC discover tru stewardship called him Teacher!

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let justice roll down THE WORL The Rev. Dr. Margaret Guenther LY breathGENT e PEACE FULL is Associate Rector, St. Columba’s Episcopal Church, Washington DC, a retreat leader, and author of Walking Home: From Eden to Emmaus, and At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us. She will be a facilitator for Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

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2 The Bible tells us to.

Reasons We’re Called to Live Green

1 God loves us—and shows it outdoors.

Roughly 75% of all people, when asked where their most powerful spiritual experience took place, answer “outdoors” or refer to an outdoor location. This pattern is consistent with people from a wide range of economic, racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. However, when asked if they’ve ever discussed these outdoor experiences at church or in their spiritual community, the answer is “no” from over 90% of all people asked. If God reaches out to us so consistently through the Earth, shouldn’t we take the time to look, listen, and remember?

In Genesis 2:15, we get our marching orders from God—we are to “till and keep” the garden. The Hebrew words for “till” and “keep” connote respect, protection, and service. This same verse could legitimately be translated as saying that we are to “protect and watch over” the garden.

Lent.

There are fascinating differences and similarities between the world’s religions, but none teaches that we find fulfillment in life by consuming as much as we can. In fact, the opposite is true. Material restraint—such as Christians are called to practice during Lent—is consistently described as a path to spiritual maturity.

In a society where the average child sees twenty thousand TV commercials each year, and the average adult will have seen two million TV commercials by the age of 65—all of these thirty-second spots urging us to consume more—practicing material restraint can feel like a heavy lift.

Christianity’s ascetic tradition offers useful, countercultural wisdom: that by unplugging from the consumerist treadmill, we find God.

4 Vulnerable lives depend on it.

Many people are more familiar, and less comfortable, with an earlier Genesis passage in which God gives humanity “dominion” over the planet. Perhaps this Genesis 2 passage can help place that recognition of our undeniable power in perspective, reminding us that we’re to use that power, itself morally neutral, for responsible stewardship and not destructive exploitation.

Respecting the Earth is frequently depicted in sentimental ways, as a “nice” thing to do. But the reality is starker and more significant. Protecting the environment saves lives—particularly the lives of the poor, who are disproportionately burdened by pollution of all kinds.

From creating less toxic pollution and fewer greenhouse gas emissions to protecting clean air, water, and food, living green creates tangible benefits that protect people’s health and lives. If you doubt it, ask poor farmers in Africa, faced with increasing droughts linked to climate change, if they think protecting the Earth is worth the time and effort.

5 You don’t want your children and grandchildren to be angry at you.

Ultimately, it is our children and their children who will feel the impacts of environmental decisions made today. A healthy environment is as important a part of our legacy as anything else we leave behind.

6 Because we can.

Too often, people feel that “environmental problems are just too big and one person can’t make a difference.” We feel differently. It is possible for people to reduce their carbon footprints, to use less toxic products, to reduce their negative impact on the earth. And, in doing so, many people find that their lives are made more meaningful, more whole.

For millennia, religious communities have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, housed the homeless— tasks which could easily have seemed overwhelming. But we’ve persisted, not because we believe that we can solve the problem alone, but because it’s what God calls us to do. The same is true with protecting the Earth. Together we can.

The Rev. Fletcher Harper, an Episcopal priest, is Executive Director of GreenFaith, an interfaith organization that equips and empowers faith groups to address environmental stewardship. A 2007 Trinity Transformational Fellow, he was named an Ashoka Fellow in 2011 for his leadership as a social entrepreneur. To learn about GreenFaith, see greenfaith.org.

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Prophecy Prayer

&

BY JAMES COOPER

“You lie on beds inlaid with ivory.”

AMOS 6:4 “Comfort, comfort my people.”

ISAIAH 40:1

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The prophetic voice of God can come to us There is an old song that we all know in the by way of a prophet like Amos, or a worldly United States called “Home on the Range.” It force like the Assyrian army, or through the goes, “Oh, give me a home where the buffalo person that has been sitting in the second pew roam, where the deer and the antelope play, on the left for the past three years and hasn’t where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and spoken a word until now. Prophecy comes in the skies are not cloudy all day.” Well, it may be times of change, both joyful and sad; it shows up true that “never is heard a discouraging word” at splendid and awesome events as an “ah-ha on the open range, but that is definitely not true moment,” as if cymbals are crashing; it also in the Church.

We often hear discouraging words, from many creeps in at moments of quiet, simple intimacy with our colleagues as we live together in sources aimed in a number of directions on a mission, planning work and ministry around full scope of topics. Naturally, this brings many the physical and spiritual issues of the day. challenging responses, ranging from simple Through Scripture, we know that not all will unease, to fear, to anger. be prophets. Nor will all who raise uncomfortable Uncomfortable words may be prophetic, topics point us in the right direction. There however, and are therefore not easily dismissed. are false prophets. But we don’t always know Prophecy is that aspect of life in the Church, immediately what is false and what is just plain or of any spiritual life, that comes through uncomfortable or difficult or inconvenient. The inspiration, through prayer, and in faith as we temptation is to let those issues stay “out there” strive to integrate worldly and spiritual issues. or, if they are not already out there, to push them There are times when the conversation is tough “out there,” outside the “hallowed walls” of the and people are seemingly on opposite ends of Church. Certainly it would be easier than being the spectrum as we wrestle with how to live so very uncomfortable. into our spiritual purposes. The prophetic voice emerges through prayer. And often those prophecies that emerge from a life of prayer bring on circumstances and realities that drive us right back down onto our knees in prayer—a much different kind of prayer.

So once again we enter a process of discernment, centered in lots of prayer. Although we often want and seek a quick fix and a final answer (at least this is true in the U.S. culture), the process on these critical issues can take as much as a generation or two to work out.

In my personal experience, an example is women’s ordination. I grew up in the Episcopal Church in a clergy family. By the 1960s the issue of women’s ordination had son that she should not be a priest. I felt it would benefit and enhance the Church to have her as an ordained leader. My position of observation had shifted to advocacy through this personal encounter.

Obviously, many in the Church had not been persuaded and so began a long, circuitous, and painful path toward change.

I became more active in that procession, but I participated in hope and faith, not certainty. It would be arrogant to say that “I know that it is God’s will.” Rather, it is better to say, “I believe that it is God’s will,” and by faith, not certainty, I work for that cause. Only now, after forty years, can I look back and say, “I do believe that it is God’s will to have women ordained as priests.”

Remember, when Moses was on the mountain he saw only God’s back as God passed by.

Perhaps it is by looking back, even looking back over a significant period of time, that we can say that this or that was God’s will. Meanwhile, we do the work through prayer and stay in the conversation and discomfort by faith. We are willing to live together in a church family with differing positions as we hope and pray and expect that God’s will can manifest, and that we will be agents and play the part we are called to play to live into the prophecy. For some that part will be to say, “Let’s move more quickly,” for others it will be to say, “Whoa, let’s slow down a bit.”

To live in that tension, each living by faith, not certainty, is to live out God’s will—living together in fellowship strengthened, bonded, and sustained by prayer and the Eucharist. The action is to look for ways we can stay together to hear each other, not knowing at first what listening will bring us to realize and how it will lead us in God’s direction, but knowing that silencing voices stalls us and halts God’s mission.

Willingness to live with ambiguity, a discouraging word or two, a difference of opinion, can create the space for God to reform, refresh, and redirect the Church, the people. Through the prayer that brings prophecy and the prayer that helps us live out the prophecy, the Word can be heard in all times and all contexts.

The prophetic voice drives us to our knees in prayer. And with prayer we come full circle back to simplicity and intimacy. To pray together with one another in the presence of almighty God is intimacy at its very best. We pay attention to Amos’ warning, but also hear the prophetic voice of Isaiah: “Comfort, comfort my people.”

The Rev. Dr. James H. Cooper is XVII Rector of Trinity Wall Street.

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BURNING BUSH: The Ongoing Call

BY MARK BOZZUTI-JONES

The Burning Bush, I believe, is not a one-time isolated event; the Burning Bush happens regularly in human history and every human life. The story of the Burning Bush invites us to ask ourselves, how are we responding to God in the midst of our busy lives, how are we sensing God’s vocation in us, and how are we paying attention and participating in the miracles of life?

We enter into the mystery of this story by remembering that it took place while the people of Israel were enslaved in Egypt. God comes to every experience of human suffering and seeks to end the suffering. There are more “burning bushes,” calls from God to every human being, than we acknowledge. Our addictions, weaknesses, sin, selfishness, indifference, sickness, and preoccupations sometimes prevent us from taking off our shoes and paying attention to what is “burning.”

And the fire of Love will burn/ And if the fire of evil burns /the tree of good and love will not be burned or consumed/ Love will water the good, true, and beautiful/ Love lives and yearns and burns.

Many lives burn deeply with a passionate fire to do what is good, true, beautiful and just. Fires still burn in the soul of the artist, the scientist, the saint, the poet, the different, parents, children, man, and woman. Some lives burn deeply with a passionate fire to commit evil, cause harm, create resentment and carry out sin-laden actions. God burns with continued unconditional love for the world. God exists so that every human life will burn with the purifying fire of love for justice, mercy, and truth.

And the bush that will not die/ Will wipe the tear from every eye/God and life at their best/ burn like bushes are Burning Bushes/ the Sabbath rest, that rest/ God sustains us in our rest.

A defiant bush will always grow and blossom and bear fruit. Many people, institutions, and things grow in their dedication to blessing others, to peace, generosity, radical hospitality, and healthy living no matter the evil that happens to them or the persecution they face.

Evil and lies and sin will not have the final word.

So a fire will always burn, because every human heart is a hearth. The bush on fire invites every human being to dance with joy, to paint with deep faith, to dream of justice, and to dedicate their lives to make the world better. The bush on fire shouts the need for repentance and renewed faith in a better tomorrow: a belief in peace on earth, goodwill to all.

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Moses in me calls and hopes/ I will see God, stop and listen/ Then God’s voice will let me know/ I must let the people go.

Moses: the one dragged from a river. We are all pulled from the water of our mother’s womb and given a mission of liberation. Moses’ mission of liberation called him to speak truth to power and to give voice to God’s desire for justice—God’s desire to end all forms of oppression. In the life of every human being an encounter with a Burning Bush will happen. In the life of every human being a call will go out

with an invitation to make the world better.

We are Moses. We meet the Burning Bush.

God reveals God-self to us quietly, definitively, and constantly.

At the Burning Bush, God reveals the essence of God to Moses. God seeks to continue inviting us to take off our shoes before what is holy, good, and true. God is the great I AM and calls us to be here now, to live for love, to live in love and to live like God. The Rev. Mark Bozzuti-Jones is Priest for Pastoral Care and Nurture for Trinity Wall Street. He will be a creative work session facilitator for Trinity Institute’s 42nd National Theological Conference.

Questions for further reflection: BURNING: What consumes us? What are our addictions?

What is our deepest desire?

BUSH: What is growing within us? What are the values we possess that will never go away? Do we respect the mysterious, care for the environment, and trust the sacred in all things?

MOSES, THE SHEPHERD: How are we being pulled or lifted up or out by God? How are we leading our lives?

How are we being led?

Psalm Tube

CO U N T E R C U LT U R E

BY NATHAN BROCKMAN

Walter Brueggemann, writing about the Psalms, wrote that “the faith of Israel, like all human experience, moved back and forth between the polar moods of, on the one hand, deep anguish and misery, and, on the other hand, profound joy and celebration.” In two songs I have been listening to lately, you get both at once.

Bonnie Prince Billy’s “I See a Darkness” and Justin Townes Earle’s “Harlem River Blues” have in common something you don’t find much in popular music: Both turn dark lyrics into upbeat, toe-tapping, celebratory bursts of song.

There’s a great performance by Earle on Late Show with David Letterman on YouTube. Dressed nattily in a tan suit and bowtie, he sings, “Lord I’m going uptown/to the Harlem River to drown/Dirty water gonna cover me over and I’m not gonna make a sound.” In a clearly enunciated baritone, he’s quick to differentiate himself from some regular sad sack: His journey uptown is to do himself in while he’s “still good in His grace.”

The “dirty water” of the Harlem River is especially evocative if you’ve seen the slender channel of murkiness near the FDR Bridge; this is about baptism for both him and the river water.

The old hymn had us going down in the river to pray. Earle has us watching a different act that doesn’t feel any less sacred. His drowning will somehow purify the river we’ve wasted, making its dirty water clean.

Bonnie Prince Billy’s “I See a Darkness” might be the closest history gets to a pop song penned by Søren Kierkegaard: two minutes on the frightening electricity between madness and joy, love and despair. In its first incarnation (1999), “Darkness” was merely a dirge of introspective loathing. Johnny Cash’s cover (2000) suggested hope brewed somewhere in the brooding, and now this newest recording by Bonnie Prince Billy, released this year, is dramatically upbeat with a Gospel chorus and curls of electric country guitar. The new arrangement unearths a bright duality at the heart of the lyric, expressing a complexity rare in pop but ubiquitous in life. It’s improbable a song so dark could feel so light.

On one hand, Billy wishes to be saved “from this darkness.” On the other, he has “a love” for everyone he knows. The intensity of this love brings love’s “opposition,” which comes “blacking in” his mind. Yet when he smiles toward the end of the video, which is also easily found on YouTube, it is a smile of revelation: Both song and video build to a mesmerizing climax, when Billy smiles and says “that isn’t all I see.” It’s a bit of a mystery-box-of-illuminating-wonder moment, but I confess I want to see what’s inside. My sense is Billy finds in the blackness a joyful spiritual moment—maybe more. The song is a celebration with a chorus that blooms around bleak words.

These songs are about spiritual transformation, in which laments and praise become one.

As I listen, I can’t shake the feeling that this pair of dark songs has as much to do with the light, a great light, as the dark.

Illustration: Brian Stauffer

Nathan Brockman is Trinity Wall Street’s Communications Director and Editor of Trinity News.

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PA R I S H

perspectives

The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee, Vicar of Trinity Wall Street, rings the Bell of Hope in remembrance of the victims of September 11, 2001.

Members of Novus NY, The Contemporary Music Ensemble of Trinity Wall Street, perform at the Twelve in 12 concert series, which featured works by twelve Pulitzer Prize winning composers. Julian Wachner, Director of Music and the Arts for Trinity Wall Street, conducts.

Jim Melchiorre

Trinity Parishioner Mercedes Gonzalez hands out lunch during Trinity’s Brown Bag Lunch program, which takes place every Tuesday and Thursday.

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Members of the Aaron Burr Association visit the gravesite of Theodocia Shelberg, daughter of Aaron Burr’s chef, in the Trinity Churchyard.

The cross (and lightning rod) atop the Trinity Church spire.

Four World Trade Center, still under construction, is in the background.

Anne Damassa conducts participants in the Hour Children program performance at Charlotte’s Place to conclude a week of Music Camp. Hour Children works with currently and formerly incarcerated women and their children.

Jeremy Sierra

Max Maddock

Workers survey and repair the stone on the Trinity spire.

Trinity parishioner Lorna Buce sorts clothes at one of Hour Children’s three thrift shops during Trinity’s New York Mission and Service Trip.

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learned?

WHAT HAVE YOU

CHARLOTTE’S PLACE IS like nowhere else.

Even with months of practice, it can still be a tricky place to describe. Not because it’s hard to say what they do, but because they do so much: Open hours, children’s events, homeless services, artistic performances, spiritual formation.

Above all, though, it’s about welcome.

Charlotte’s Place is a feeling of welcome.

THE FUND FOR THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION FELLOWSHIP was a really special opportunity for me. I’d never seen so many different kinds of Christians, and to be able to talk openly and honestly with such a diverse group of people about the future of the church was both challenging and comforting.

WHAT I ENJOYED MOST WAS watching the faces of the crowds at our events. All the work, worry, and care felt very much worth it when a group of people came together to enjoy the experience.

I WILL NEVER FORGET my summer at Trinity. Charlotte’s Place was a challenging job at what is a challenging time in my life—early 20’s, first apartment, trying to finish school and go after what I want in life. This summer helped me accomplish so much. I came away from it reaffirmed in my call to serve in the Episcopal Church, as well as feeling like I actually had the skills to do so. I needed to feel pushed and to hold some real responsibility. It was also a lot of fun!

THE HOUR CHILDREN MUSIC CAMP WAS one of the best weeks of my summer!

That many children at once can drive anyone a little crazy, but they were so bright, happy, and surprising that I could only feel grateful at the end of a long day with them. Well, grateful and exhausted.

WHAT SURPRISED ME WAS the resilience of people in their capacity to grow and heal, and God’s grace and love for us all. Think about that for a while, and you’ll be surprised all day.

I WAS CHALLENGED BY myself. I set out this summer hoping to learn better patience, and my boss quickly warned me that “If you ask God

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Eva Suarez is a senior at Columbia University, where she majors in religion. She is a recipient of a grant from the Fund for Theological Education, which allowed her to work at Charlotte’s Place over the summer. She plans to pursue ordination in the Episcopal Church.

for patience, he’ll send you a test.” Which he did, in the form of many different, lovable, complicated people. I learned that the largest barrier to being a better listener and a more open person wasn’t them, it was me. Once I stopped doubting and worrying about myself so much, it all got a heck of a lot easier.

I LEARNED THAT COMMUNITY has its foundation in love. Community is really very simple. And like all simple things in life, it is incredibly difficult.

New! Cave, Refectory, Road

Uncommon Gratitude

The Radical Christian Life

Monastic Rhythms for Contemporary Living

Alleluia for All That Is

A Year with Saint Benedict Joan Chittister, OSB

Ian Adams

Joan Chittister, OSB, and Archbishop Rowan Williams

S978-0-8146-3444-8 Paperback, 104 pp., 6 x 9, $14.95 e eBook, $11.99

S978-0-8146-3022-8 Hardcover, 208 pp., 5 x 7, $16.95 e eBook, $9.99

Ian Adams explores how traditional monastic life is helping to shape a new flowering of Christian community today—through a new engagement with the mystery of God, communities that make a difference in the world, and creative and loving engagement with public life.

Archbishop Rowan Williams and Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, offer a series of reections on the reasons for gratitude that ďŹ ll our lives, including in the moments that do not feel like ‘alleluia moments’ at all.

LITURGICAL PRESS

S978-0-8146-3365-6 Paperback, 160 pp., 5 3â „8 x 8 1â „4, $15.95 e eBook, $13.99

Joan Chittister considers how the insights and values of a sixth-century monk can illuminate today’s search for a meaningful life. She leads us through the year with twelve stories from St. Benedict’s life and daily reections that offer rich spiritual nourishment.

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

Leslie Booker While politicians and delegates gave speeches at the Democratic National Convention, Trinity staff member Leslie Booker led people in quiet meditation. She was participating in the Huffington Post Oasis, which offered a place of contemplation and tranquility in the midst of the convention. The Oasis was a partnership between the Huffington Post and Off the Mat Into the World, a community that uses yoga to inspire and support activism. It was offered at both the Democratic and the Republican conventions.

Booker, who has been active in Off the Mat for years, was recruited for the DNC. She spent the four days of the convention leading meditation and yoga classes for individuals and groups, working in shifts with other volunteers.

James S. Hewitt James S. Hewitt, who has been a member of Trinity for thirty years, gave a lecture at the Westfield Historical Society in September. Entitled, “From Captain Kidd to Occupy Wall Street,” Hewitt gave an overview of the history of Trinity. Hewitt moved to New York in 1982, and worked for at time for Trinity’s real estate department. He continues to work in real estate development, and lives in the Westfield, NJ area, where his great-grandfather moved in 1899.

Interfaith Yom Kippur Service Tamid: The Downtown Synagogue, has begun observing Shabbat and holy days at St. Paul’s Chapel. On September 26, Tamid collaborated with Trinity in an interfaith Yom Kippur service. Rabbi Darren Levine, founding Rabbi, led the congregation through the service, elaborating on the prayers and explaining the significance of Yom Kippur in the Jewish tradition. The service included a joint sermon with Rabbi Levine and the Rev. Daniel Simons, Priest and Director of Liturgy, Hospitality, and Pilgrimage for Trinity, as well as sung prayers led

by Basya Schechter, artist-in-residence at Tamid, and a song led by Marilyn Haskel, Program Manager for Liturgical Arts and New Initiatives for Trinity Wall Street. “We hope this is the beginning of a very long relationship,” said Rabbi Levine.

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Trinity News

J. Chester Johnson At the request of poet and professor David Lehman, Trinity parishioner J. Chester Johnson wrote an article for the website of The Best American Poetry. In the article Johnson recounted his experience working with W.H. Auden on a retranslation of the Psalms for the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. The psalms on which Johnson and Auden worked became part of the official Book of Common Prayer, and were adopted for worship by Lutherans in Canada and the United States and the Anglican Church of Canada.

Jim Kennedy With the help of friends, volunteers, and sponsors, Jim Kennedy, Director of IT for Trinity Wall Street, has built a haunted house in a warehouse in Massapequa, New York. The haunted house, called Darkness Rising, is 9,000 square feet, built entirely by volunteers with the support of company sponsors. All proceeds will benefit the Heather Pendergast Fund and a community counseling center. The haunted house began as a project in his front yard, and was held in a friend’s backyard before being moved to the warehouse. Last year, they attracted thousands of visitors and raised $50,000 for charity, and expect to exceed that this year.

Ali Lutz Ali Lutz, Trinity’s former Manager for Congregational Development, was ordained on September 29. She will be working with Partners In Health in Boston, where she will help steward PIH’s supporters, teaching about PIH’s mission and commitment to a preferential option for the poor in health care. She will travel to Haiti one week a month to help at a community in Central Haiti called Corporant, where Partners In Health has opened a vocational school. Lutz will assist the local priest by celebrating the Eucharist, teaching classes, visiting community members, and helping out however she is needed.

Maribel Ruiz Schedule conflicts prevented Maribel Ruiz from joining the other volunteers on the New York Mission and Service Trip this year, so Hour Children invited her to lead a workshop one Friday in July. She brought make-up kits for each of them from Mac Cosmetics where she works.

If the women wanted to use make-up, then she gave them tips. She also spoke about other ways to prepare for an interview. “The lesson is you have to be comfortable in your own skin and use what you have,” she said.

Sister Tesa Sister Teresa Fitzgerald (Sister Tesa), founder of Hour Children, was featured as a CNN Hero for her 25 years of work with convicted mothers and their children. For the past two years, Hour Children has been a part of Trinity’s New York Mission and Service Trip. In July, staff and volunteers from Trinity led workshops on workplace skills and helped in Hour Children’s three thrift shops. Children from Hour Children’s summer program also participated in the Music Camp at Charlotte’s Place.

Sister Tesa was nominated by Juliana Robinson, Coordinator of the Adult Mentoring Program for Hour Children. “The reason I nominated her is not just because of the fabulous work she does to help women and children affected by incarceration,” she said, “but because she genuinely cares and loves us.”

Trinity Choir Releases Two CDs The Choir of Trinity Wall Street released two new albums in September. The Trinity Choir and Baroque Orchestra recorded Handel’s Israel in Egypt on the Musica Omnia label. The oratorio tells the story of Exodus. The soloists on the album all come from the choir. “You get a sense of the loving, collaborative methodology that the choir has,” said Julian Wachner, Director of Music & the Arts. In addition, Novus NY, Trinity’s contemporary ensemble, released Averno by Elena Ruehr on AVR-AVIE Records.

This album includes works inspired by American poets Louise Gluck, Emily Dickinson, and Langston Hughes.

On the Cover: A City of Lights Portraits of Radical Christians from left to right Joseph Fyodor Dostoyevsky St. Paul Paul Moore Thomas Cranmer Søren Kierkegaard Maximus the Confessor Thomas Moore St. Francis of Assisi Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton Apostle Paul Rosa Parks Blessed Virgin Mary Flannery O’Conner Archbishop Desmond Tutu C.S. Lewis St. Augustine Joan Chittister

Dorothy Day St. Mary Magdalene Martin Luther Nicolaus Copernicus George Fox Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Jesus Christ John Henry Newman Madeline L’Engle St. Gregory Thomas Tallis Rev. Fred Shuttleworth Gregory of Nazianzus Thomas Merton John Brown John the Baptist Abraham Lincoln

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.

LETTER FROM LOWER

manhattan My nephew is a serious Ultimate Frisbee player. Because my own experience of a Frisbee is limited to tossing one back and forth with siblings in the yard of our childhood home, I am rather fascinated at how the sport has grown up. Now there are formal teams, leagues, and local and big deal tournaments. Ultimate rivals other, more established sports in structure and scale. Its dedicated players are fit, fast, and furiously competitive. There is talk of it going Olympic.

If a childhood game can become a serious sport, is there a similar trajectory for one’s faith? I have been reflecting on this question in anticipation of this year’s Trinity Institute conference, “Radical Christian Life.” Are we talking “Ultimate Christianity?”

On the one hand, we are called to be extreme as Christians. Jesus certainly was. I believe our faith journeys lead ever more deeply into commitment and action. No longer satisfied to simply toss about (sufficient at the time) Sunday School teachings, at some point adult realities can drive us to go deeper into the substance of our faith. Christianity is difficult, it is challenging, and it is demanding.

To be spiritually fit requires practice, perseverance, and commitment: “Ultimate Christianity.”

On the other hand, we don’t have to achieve our own salvation. What a slippery slope that is.

Sometimes the still small voice says “stop.” Stop the busyness, get our bearings, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

In our noisy, hectic world, sometimes the most important striving we can do is to strive to be quiet.

To listen. The space allows us to discern, to suddenly see a neighbor in need whom we have barreled past every day, to notice a spark of an idea that has been vying for attention in our racing brain, to discover that the road on which we have been speeding along is the wrong road (and we were supposed to turn off a few miles back).

To strike the balance is perhaps the most radical demand of all. It is only possible when we remember that God is God and we are not.

My favorite prayer in the Book of Common Prayer recognizes that some days we are called into overdrive, and other days we are to be still. Although this prayer comes in the section “Ministration to the Sick,” it is appropriate for all of us and for any day: This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.

Blessings,

The Rev. Canon Anne Mallonee Vicar, Trinity Wall Street

Leo Sorel

Trinity News

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TOOLS TO LIVE A RADICAL CHRISTIAN LIFE—ONLINE This year’s Trinity Institute conference, Radical Christian Life, features Joan Chittister, OSB, offering methods for making the vital connection between contemplation and social action.

After the conference is over, it lives on online.

You can access many more tools used at the conference at trinitywallstreet.org/institute including: Ř 2Q GHPDQG YLGHRV RI WKLV conference and past Trinity Institute conferences Ř 3DULVK VWXG\ FXUULFXOXP IURP WKLV conference developed in association with Forward Movement Ř $UWLFOHV IURP FXUUHQW DQG SDVW LVVXHV of Trinity News

Discover ways to take action now.

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