Reflection on the practice of restoration

A Sermon for V Easter                                     All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, NC   April 28, 2013                                                                    Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 11:1-18                Psalm 148                    Revelation 21:1-6                     John 13:31-35

Pat and I were driving home and as we pulled into the driveway, I pressed the button on the garage door opener. The door opened up two feet and stopped. I pressed the button again, and it went down, pressed again and it went up, grudgingly. It occurred to me that it had been years since I oiled that sucker. So, I got the ladder and applied some spray lubricant to each of the moving parts. It really is not relevant to the point I want to make, but for future reference, you might want to move the cars out of the garage if you don’t want a nice sheen of oil on them when you do something like this. What can I say?   She picked me because I’m cute and not all that bright.

Anyway, back to the point I wanted to make.  After the maintenance, the garage door was functioning beautifully because everything was working in alignment. It was designed well, but it needs maintenance if it’s to continue to work at peak efficiency. You can see where I am going, can’t you? Entropy, the concept of the deterioration of all things, applies, and all things need to be taken care of and renewed - machines, houses, bodies, relationships, families, the environment, and even faith.

The lessons for today are about God putting things back in alignment. In the Acts lesson, Peter tells how the vision he received allowed him to overcome centuries of custom which had separated Jews and Gentiles and calcified into an inflexible hardened animosity. Peter received a request from the servants of Cornelius, a Roman centurion, a member of the occupying forces and oppressors of Peter’s country. The Romans were the ones who crucified Peter’s mentor, Jesus. The request came at 3:00 in the afternoon, a time of afternoon prayers for a faithful Jew, and also the hour that Jesus died on the cross. Peter refuses to come, and who could blame him? However, the vision comes to him three times, the same number of times that Peter had denied Christ, and so it finally sinks in that, when Peter was denying a connection to this enemy stranger, Cornelius, he was denying Christ. Peter had interpreted Jesus’ last commandment at the Last Supper in the Gospel reading for today - that they love each other - in the narrowest sense of only loving the people who were like him. But the message of the vision was to shatter the attempts of continuing anachronistic division in light of the new life in Christ. Peter, allowing himself to be lubricated by the spirit of God, was able to remember that we were all created by the breath, spirit, of God, and he is given the strength to break down the walls of separation and set Cornelius free to join him in loving relationship.

For Peter life is new.  It may be the same old place, but everything has changed. What Peter is experiencing is what the author of the Revelation shows us in the passage from that dream for today. As in all dreams, this revelation cannot be taken literally but has to be considered in light of the choice of symbols presented.  He reports he sees in this vision a “new heaven and a new earth and the sea was no more”.  Earlier in the dream the sea was the symbol of turmoil and chaos, a place out of which the beasts had come and joined forces with the dragon on the seashore. John sees God’s power destroying the beasts and dragons and the wicked city of the whore of Babylon full of greed, exploitation and violence, and in its place, John sees that now the new heaven and earth are in total alignment, lubricated with the compassion of God who will wipe away every tear and give the water of life to all. 

This new creation where all things are made new is what the Psalmist celebrates in the Psalm for today (which the 10:30 congregation sings in a paraphrase) where all creation, every bit of creation, even “sea-monsters and all deeps; Fire and hail, snow and fog, * tempestuous wind, doing his will; Mountains and all hills, * fruit trees and all cedars; Wild beasts and all cattle, * creeping things and winged birds;  Kings of the earth and all peoples, * princes and all rulers of the world; Young men and maidens, * old and young together”, all are in alignment, praising God.

This is how we enter a new creation, by praising God. How can we praise God? We can start by being in awe of God’s creation.  I am an introvert, so I find renewal when I shut down my rational thinking, where I am the center of my universe and I allow myself to be swept with awe and wonder at beauty like  when I walk across the beach feeling the wind on my face and the mist in my hair and the sun’s warmth on my body, or in my predawn walk with the stars as my light and the sounds of the animals ending their night or beginning their day, or listening to music that opens all sorts of beauty, Jazz like Dave Brubeck doing Take Five  (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzpnWuk3RjU ), or Cleo Laine doing Send in the Clowns (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjLyuqEL2YY) , or hymns like the ones we sang for this service e.g. Come my way my truth, my life http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThH8pwgqEbk  , or opera, like Joan Sutherland singing Casta Diva from Bellini’s Norma (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iK2LwLyZAlc ) , or the sound of an Azan, the Muslim call to prayer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20fLzaFtVRY ), or the Tibetan Buddhist Om Mantra ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVM8ZYODKng ), or Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76RrdwElnTU ).  I have this fleeting moment of the new heaven and new earth, where everything is in alignment and all the people of the earth join together in praising the one God under whom we all are children. Then the other side of my brain kicks in and I start to think that I have all the answers, and the next thing I know this vision of a new heaven and a new earth starts to fade, and I am left with my vision of me being “right” instead of God’s vision.

What would happen if we just stopped worrying about being the one with all the right answers and worked at aligning ourselves as God’s lovers, lovers of God and one another, and worked on living in and maintaining the new heaven and the new earth?  That is a big goal. But, how about for just one minute, or one hour, or one day; one day at a time? Start off small by maintaining the small patch of the world in which you live and then move out, one day at a time. Maybe we can praise God not only with our lips but in our lives, and live into the Psalmist hope, “Let them praise the Name of the LORD, * for his Name only is exalted, his splendor is over earth and heaven.”

Good Sheperd Sunday

A Homily for IV Easter All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. April 21, 2013 Thomas E. Wilson, Rector

Acts 9:36-43 Psalm 23 Revelation 7:9-17 John 10:22-30

This is the 4^th Sunday of Easter which is usually known as “Good Shepherd Sunday”, the time in which we have the 23^rd Psalm and passages about Jesus as the Good Shepherd. I was first introduced to the 23^rd Psalm in Vacation Bible School in 2^nd grade. We memorized it and I earned a little plastic glow in the dark statue of Jesus carrying a little lamb. The vision I had was that little lamb shining on me during my nightly prayers: “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep, and if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless etc.”

 

The way it worked was that God would leave me alone if I did well and, if I should die before I wake, the Good Shepherd would take my soul in the form of the little lamb into the green pastures with the still water. It was a literal, surface understanding focused in on heaven as reward. I did not understand that the King James Version used “comfort” to mean strength from the Latin (cum= with and fortis = strength) and not a soft pillow. The Psalm stayed in my memory my whole life, the statue stayed by my bedside until I left for college, and my understanding of God never went deeper than it was when I was in the 2^nd grade surface - until I came to grips with the fact that the world is a rough place and maybe faith is how we live in this world and make it a better place by following Jesus. I thought of this Psalm as I tried to make sense of the terror of the last week and decided that little plastic glow in the dark statues were not going to cut it.

In John’s Gospel the author remembers Jesus using a lot of shepherd images for himself. In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus is walking on Solomon’s portico of the Temple during the Feast of the Dedication, the celebration which we call Hanukkah, the Hebrew word having a root meaning of “dedication”. The Festival remembers the time when the Jews in the 2^nd Century BC forgot their fear and were able to rebel under the leadership of the Maccabees against their Greek oppressors and re-claim the Temple for the worship of their God. In the dark days of the war the lights in the Temple were reminders to them that their God was with them. God’s rod and staff strengthened them.

The freedom of the Jews was not to last for their internal conflicts and external forces caused the Jewish state to fall under Roman control. Each dedication festival under Roman rule increased their longing for someone to unite the country and drive the Romans out. They looked for a leader, an anointed one, a Messiah, who would shepherd them into a new age of freedom. Some had hopes that Jesus would be that kind of Messiah. In response Jesus uses the Shepherd metaphor and says that he leads the sheep who follow him into a new way of living; it is not about the politics of changing the leaders at the top but about changing oneself for new way of deeply living daily life. To use God’s rod and staff as strength for faithful living in a world gone mad with hatred.

Life was rough for the people in Jesus’ time, as there were such enemies as grinding poverty, injustice, exploitive religion, corruption in government, the greed of the rich, and the constant threat of senseless violence. Life was rough when the 23^rd Psalm was first sung, as there were such enemies as grinding poverty, injustice, exploitive religion, corruption in government, the greed of the rich, and the constant threat of senseless violence. Life is rough now, as there are such enemies as grinding poverty, injustice, exploitive religion, corruption in government, the greed of the rich, and the constant threat of senseless violence. What is it that gets us through all of the darkness of the shadow of the brokenness of life? The 23^rd Psalm was probably written to suggest that the only way through was with the power of the one greater than ourselves, the one they called the LORD.

Originally the Hebrew people had a tribal God that they worshipped, but their experience caused them to go so deep in that relationship that they realized their God was bigger than their tribe and their understanding. They came be believe that the only way they could encounter this God was to enter into Mystery - not a mystery to be solved but a mystery which defied glib descriptions. They would use the Hebrew word Adonai, a word meaning “the Lord” in the 3^rd person or “sir” in the 2^nd person, in place of the old Tribal name of their God, so they would not violate the commandment against taking the name in vain.

The 23^rd Psalm’s first line begins with this metaphoric name “The LORD” and follows it with another metaphor of the shepherd because the composer of the song is trying to tell us that their God is a mystery not to be solved but embraced in relationship. We see this in any true relationship when, at the beginning, you think you know the other person, but the longer the relationship continues you find greater depths of complexity, greater shadows behind the outer persona. Love is not about approval or attraction but about trusting one another in the mysterious journey together in a broken world which can give us a rough time.

The Hebrews did not have a separate word for “soul”. Rather, they knew the word for breath - life force – spirit; one did not “have” a soul that lived on after them, but instead was a body full of a life force - spirit. They believed in a here and now and left the question of life after death to the mystery with whom they traveled. When Jesus dies he enters trustingly into the mystery and returns full of life force-spirit. In the first lesson from the Acts, Peter, filled with the life force of the resurrected Lord, shares it with Tabitha and brings her back to full life.

The Psalmist sings that this living double metaphor of mystery with whom he is in relationship takes him, guides him to a place where there are rich meadows and still water in that desert country, an oasis where the Psalmist has his/her depleted life force-spirit brought back to her/him so that s/he might work for justice in a world that sorely misses it. In the middle of all the things that are against life force, the double metaphor gives renewed breath by sitting down to eat at a table set with good things, an overflowing glass of wine, and, in the middle of terror, rubs luxuriant oil into his/her hair like a lover. Robert Alter translates from the Hebrew that the word the King James version uses for “anoint” is not to be used as sacramental but as sensual. It is about living fully in this life and not about religion. The double metaphor becomes a third as God is our lover into whose arms we climb, gathering calming strength until the world makes sense, echoing the lesson from Revelation for today, “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes."

Bobby McFerrin arranged the 23^rd Psalm for the group Cantus to sing and dedicated it to his mother and uses the feminine for the metaphor for the God that will not be pressed into a box of definition. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91TbjlaS4kc )

Today may you be still and allow the God who will not be defined embrace you and allow you to embrace her/him, may you allow her/him to guide you into doing justice, and may you feel her/his hands drying your tears and fears and rubbing luxuriant oil in your hair as a lover or mother giving you strength, so you may live fully and face your enemies without fear.

A Boston reflection

                                            Parson Tom’s Tomes

somebody's  idea of being "right"

I have more than a suspicion that I am not alone in having trouble loving my enemy. I am still reeling about someone planting a bomb at the Marathon in Boston so as to kill as many human beings as possible. The problem is that I am not horrified and surprised that someone could do such a dastardly act. Killing innocent people in order to spread terror has been part and parcel of our  landscape for the last several thousand years. Usually we humans dress it up with the niceties of declarations of war and statements of regret for “Collateral Damage’ caused to civilians.

I remember more than 20 years ago when I was studying in Jerusalem and members of our class visited a “settlement” in the West Bank. Settlements are a strategy of our ally Israel of placing armed camps in the middle of occupied territories on high ground to control roads when, not if, open war will break out. Many of these camps are occupied by recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union and the United States who want to make sure that Israel will not lose land to any Palestinian state. I talked, actually talked would not be the right word, mainly I listened to an harangue from a group of people mainly from Brooklyn who lectured me on the Book of Joshua in the Bible where God had told the people to cleanse the land of the residents, men, women, and children, so that “God’s people” could claim the land. They saw themselves as continuing the Biblical Mandate as they waved their Bibles in our faces making sure we could see the loaded Uzis slung over their shoulders.  Later that day we went to Ramallah where we talked, or listened to a group of Palestinian Arabs who lectured us on the only weapon we Americans, and our client state Israel, understood was violence to claim their land back after it was seized in 1948. They claimed that “Justice” required driving Israelis and their American lackeys into the sea. 

Later that week the class I was taking went down to the ruins of Jericho where the excavations at the tell (mound) uncover one of the oldest settlements in the world going back to before 9000 BC. There were at least 20 different cities built on top on the rubble of one ruin after another, with many defined “burn layers” showing the ashes of conquest and the destruction of the innocent.

The night of the Boston bombing I got in the mail from Netflix, the Movie Zero Dark Thirty, about the hunt for Osama Ben Laden, which starts with long horrible scenes demonstrating torture, or as our government called it, “Enhanced Interrogation”. 

How much we love violence and excuse it for all sorts of reasons. Jesus told us there is another way.

SHALOM

tom+

singing with others

A Sermon for III Easter                                                All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores,     NC  

April 14, 2013                                                       Thomas E. Wilson, Rector       

Acts 9:1-20                          Psalm 30                              Revelation 5:11-14                          John 21:1-19

Isn’t it interesting the decisions that you make in your life? 47 years ago I had to make a choice between two roles being offered me in Outdoor Drama. One of them was to come to the Outer Banks, the place I finally came to 37 years later, but I turned down that role because the other role down in Florida paid $20.00 more a week. The parts were similar but, in Florida, I wouldn’t die in the final battle, and I would join the entire community in singing lustily at the end of the play. I love to sing, but that summer I had trouble with my ego in that I thought that I ought to stand out.

I really wasn’t interested in blending in and listening to the other voices; I wanted to promote my own self-interest. As a consequence I was the only member of a cast of 60, politely but firmly, asked not to sing as they pointed out that I was being paid as an actor and not a singer.

I love hearing our choir because Steve is usually able to get the members to forget about performance and concentrate more about being the church in miniature, gathered together in praise of God with songs of the heart. The reading from the book of Revelation for today has the apostle hear all of creation singing together:

myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, singing with full voice, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”  

What a wonderful vision. Just picture it: here are the robins singing along with the eagles and crows, and the fox, and the basset hounds, and the donkeys. and the lions, and tigers and bears- oh my! - and the porpoises, and the sea lions, the oysters, the shrimp, the sharks, the iguanas, the pandas, the wind, the thunder, the Episcopalians, the Lutherans, the Unitarians, the Buddhists, the Muslim, the Hindu, the South and North Koreans together in perfect harmony, the Romans and Jews, the Swedes, even Britishers in their tweeds—all of creation singing praise to the Lord. All of them forgetting their own agenda and joining in singing the song, listening to each other so that the space between them is sacred space.

The Book of Revelation is about one vision of two different ways of living in this world. One vision is the way things seem to be in the following of the “way” of the world, and the other competing vision is the way things can be in the following of the “Way of the Risen Lord”. The early church called itself the “Way” as we can see from the lesson from the Book of Acts for today. The “Way” of the church was not a collection of creeds but a new way of living, as if one was in praise of God, in awe of God, and in love of neighbor. We can see how this way is played out with the response of Ananias. Here is Ananias, sitting fat and happy in Damascus and suddenly Jesus appears to him in a vision and tells him to seek out Saul, the man who was sent to Damascus to capture him and take him back for trial and execution to Jerusalem. He is instructed that, when he finds Saul, he is to pray over him and heal him from blindness of vision. Now Ananias’ mother didn’t raise no dummy, and so he starts to object, but the Risen Lord convinces him to be vulnerable and follow the “Way”.

Two “ways” - the way things seem to be and the way things can be in God’s dream. There is a line from George Bernard Shaw’s play Back to Methuselah, which Bobby Kennedy used to paraphrase: “You see things, and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were, and I say ‘Why not?’”  However, there was a response by comedian George Carlin, and I will paraphrase:  “Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that . . . stuff.”

The Carlin quote is what Peter seems to be saying in today’s lesson from John’s Gospel. They have just had a life-changing experience with the Risen Lord, and Peter has been commissioned to forgive sins and bring healing, but he decides that he doesn’t have time to do all that “. . . stuff”.  He has to go to work and goes back to just seeing the way things are, and so he returns to fishing, acting out a quote from Thoreau: “Everyone should believe in something; I believe I’ll go fishing.”  However when he meets Jesus on the beach, he comes to the realization that another quote from Thoreau seems to fit:  “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” Jesus persuades him to reclaim God’s vision and return to the “Way” of dreaming of things that never were and working to make the “Why not “ come true.

There is a song to be sung and it is the song and not the individual singer that is important. Some months ago I saw the film of the musical Les Miserables and was reminded all over again of how much I love this story. I have read the book, seen five different movie versions of the book ( Fredrick March and Charles Laughton as Jean Valjean and Javert 1935, Michael Rennie and Robert Newton 1952, Jean Gabin and Bernard Biard 1957, Richard Jordan and Antony Perkins 1978,  Liam Neeson and Geoffrey Rush 1998,  and a wonderful variation with Jean Paul Belmondo in 1995),  and  I have seen both live and film productions of the musical. Victor Hugo wrote of the book:

The book which the reader has before him at this moment is, from one end to the other, in its entirety and details ... a progress from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsehood to truth, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from corruption to life; from bestiality to duty, from hell to heaven, from nothingness to God. The starting point: matter, destination: the soul. The hydra at the beginning, the angel at the end.

Hugo looks to his past and sees a new future. When I saw the film of the musical, at the finale and under my breath (so I would not be asked to stop), I sang along with the final song - right after the epilogue’s last line “To love another person is to see the face of God”:

Do you hear the people sing
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.

For the wretched of the earth
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise!

They will live again in freedom in the Garden of the Lord!
They will walk behind the ploughshare. They will push away the sword!
The chain will be broken and all men will have their reward!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will be strong and stand with me?
Somewhere beyond the barricade
Is there a world you long to see?
Do you hear the people sing?
Say, do you hear the distant drums?
It is the future that they bring
When tomorrow comes...
Tomorrow comes!

Will you sing the song with others, seeing, and working for the different future of God’s dream?

A Thomas Sunday sermon

A Reflection on II Easter                                           All Saints’ Church, Southern Shores, N.C. 

April 7, 2013                                                                  Thomas E. Wilson, Rector                 

Acts 5:27-32               Psalm 150                    Revelation 1:4-8          John 20:19-31

“Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” “Christ is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!”

Today is the second Sunday of Easter, or what is sometimes called “Thomas Sunday”, so named because of the Gospel story for today about St. Thomas. I call this Sunday and the Sunday after Christmas “So what? Sundays”. We have had a big celebration and now that all the decorations are put away - “So what?”  What difference does it make in our lives? 

Last Monday, as a member of the local Ministerial Association, it was my turn to deliver a prayer at the beginning of the Board of County Commissioners Meeting.  My task is to look over the agenda and in prayer ask for guidance on the issues reflected - prayers for being faithful stewards of the environment on this fragile ecosystem of the Outer Banks, for the avoidance of the traps of greed and exploitation, for the honoring of the work of people who work for us in our local government, for the care for our children and families.  But I was struck with one item especially - the Proclamation of Child Abuse Prevention Month.

I remember when the issue of Child Abuse changed the way I looked at the world. I had graduated from college at the age of 21, and my first job was counseling with high school drop-outs aged 16-22. Some of the “kids” I was counseling were older than I was, but it was a job and I did well in it, and I could go home after the job and the job had nothing to do with the way I lived my life. Most of these kids lived in very poor neighborhoods and most faced racial discrimination, and I lived in a nice little house on Wrightsville Beach. After a couple years I got offered another job working with the Juvenile Court and with abuse and neglect cases. 

Child Abuse is created by three factors - #1, the abuser, a person who is isolated and cannot use other people; #2, the child, a child who is different or thought of as different; and #3, stress. I thought that what I was going to do was rescue children from monsters, but what I found was that I was working with real people overwhelmed with life. I realized that the only things that separated me from them was the amount of stress I was under and the fact that I was meaningfully connected to others. When my daughter was born and she was teething and I was up half the night walking with her and trying to comfort her, and I was just overwhelmed at how much baby stuff cost, there were moments when I started to understand what it is like to walk in their shoes. I started to understand that a response to stress and isolation is fear and that fear causes people not to be monsters but to do monstrous things. The world changed and I changed with it.

The Gospel story for today is about how the disciples changed as the world they lived in changed. Before the Resurrection they saw the world as locked in battle between the forces of Good versus Evil. They saw the death of Jesus as the defeat that put them out of the battle, and they felt isolated and alone.  The other side, the corrupt political and religious establishment, just seemed to have so much power and, if the disciples stayed in the battle, they would all follow Jesus into defeat in death and lose everything. However, when Jesus returns, they know that they are not alone and recognize death as not the end but a door through which to go. They no longer were able to see their opponents as “evil” who must be destroyed, but as ordinary people who were terrified, who had fear at the center of their hearts. The disciples understood that Jesus’ ministry was not about hating and punishing the enemy but about making oneself vulnerable so as to begin healing. Jesus greets them with the Peace of God which drives fear out of their hearts, and he breathes on them God’s Spirit to connect them to the power greater than themselves, sharing with them the strength not to be overcome with their own fear. 

Thomas has his “so what” moment the next week. He is filled with sorrow at the loss of his mentor Jesus and thinks the other disciples are undergoing a delusion. In order for him to believe he says he must put the fingers in the wounds of Jesus’ hand and to place his hand in Jesus side. Thomas wasn’t to wallow in sadness and anger over the wounds of Jesus, harboring hatred toward those who caused those wounds. Jesus appears and invites Thomas to touch the brokenness of the world, to enter into and participate in the wounds inflicted out of fear. For Thomas the experience of “belief” is not a mental abstraction but is about changing his understanding of the world and what that has to do with the healing of his fear. Belief is not what he thinks but how he lives his life and in whom he places his trust.

It is that healing which we see in today’s lesson from the book of Acts. Here the disciples are hauled into court before the council. The council members puff themselves up and act for all the world like the character in the Wizard of Oz who thinks that displays of power will threaten them and command fear.  Peter and the apostles, knowing there is only a fearful person behind the curtain, respond in essence, “Let us tell you “so what”! You are not evil monsters but puny humans ruled by fear. What is the worst you can do - kill us? We have seen how effective that has been.” They say, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” 

They do not respond to fear with fear but with the strength of knowing that God’s Spirit gives all of us the power no longer to be ruled by fear. Their enemies are only scared human beings, prancing around like they are in charge. Yet the apostles know who is ultimately in charge, and in that power greater than themselves they put their trust. To obey God is not to respond in fear but to share the love which had been given to them by God. 

We see how this strength is passed on to further generations in the section of the Book of Revelation for today where the peace of God’s spirit is shared so that the churches need not be ruled by fear. Before the Jesus experience, the people think that they have to earn God’s love by doing good deeds. However, God loves us first when we respond freely out of that love by giving it away.

Today at the 10:30 service we commission Gary Kimmel and David Feyrer for their mission trip to our sister Diocese of the Dominican Republic. They will do many things there like painting and building and will tell you about them during the sermon time at a later Sunday, but the most important things they will do is to help break down the isolation between our two dioceses and to share the love and Peace of the Lord which passes all understanding.

“Alleluia, Christ is Risen!” If Christ is not Risen inside us and how we live in sharing love, than indeed, “so what.” But, let me tell you so what; “Christ is Risen Indeed. Alleluia!”