reverendjaneausten

  Returning to Transylvania Park is always a homecoming for us.   When you have two uncles who thrive on making their built-in-1900 home a place of ultimate welcome, there is no other way to feel about it.   I spent several Holy Week sojourns there when serving at Christ Church Cathedral.   In those spring days, the front upstairs bedroom was the guest room, and a veritable bower up in the arms of blooming trees.   Now, that room is smartly used as home office, [and this week, World War II War-game Central,] and the room we are in is equally welcoming.   The library is much as it has always been, and though perfect in any season it reigns at Christmastide.   There is often a roaring fire, and the generous tree skims the tall ceiling.   Cozy leather chairs invite you to sit a while, and books who have long ago become friends and family line the walls.   The house has always been friendly for us, but of course it is the people who live th...

  A Service of Advent Lessons and Carols is one of my favorite moments in the liturgical year.   I sang it in different choirs until I was ordained, and then read the parts designated for the Rector after becoming a priest. This year I got to do it all!   It was tremendously fun to sit with our choir for the whole service, to hear Julia on flute, and Chip at the organ, and to be warmly aware of our wonderful singing congregation.   Colin and Amelia joined Chip and Julia for a fun and surprising percussion session on the Advent processional.   There will be things we will tweak going forward, but for this moment, there is only gladness. Before going in, I reminded the choir (and the Rector!) in prayer that this was about praising God, not about performing.   As so often happens in this parish, the sum was even greater than the parts!   The Holy Spirit has a habit of showing up at Our Saviour and we often depart feeling more blessed than the reasons we ...

  Love this Parish I serve. . . It was a wonderful Sunday.   We had a beautiful Border Collie named Seabury for nearly a decade;   she was never trained formally, but she showed us her obstacle course agility in endless football games and military type maneuvers with our boys.   I think I channel some of that same energy on Sunday mornings these days, though perhaps with less agility —and with much less barking. The 8:00 service had a lovely amount of people, and some were back for the very first time.   Our chalice has had a tablespoon of wine in it for so many months, but the wine has now returned. The half full chalice caught me off guard as I lifted it, sending a tiny tsunami over the edge.   It could not have been much more than a tablespoon or two, (plenty remained,) but to my horror, it formed a small lake on the Corporal and Fair Linen.   My wonderful 8:00 Altar Guild person was doubling in the A/V Room, and she watched in slow motion as it unf...

  Thanksgiving Reflections (Photo Credit Maggie McGill) Although our own Thanksgiving was quiet and serene, the real meal that centered our own holiday was the Advent I Eucharist.   It has been so hard to balance safety with hope, and we are not apt to ever be completely carefree again on that score.   But, as I preached this morning, there absolutely must be hope as well. Returning to some of our liturgical traditions on this first Sunday of Advent was tremendously moving for our congregation, but also for me as their priest. This morning was wildly distracting and compressed on the surface, (I love the happy chaos of our community,)   but so much more grounded than some of the Sundays during the past year and a half.   Part of it was offering both bread and wine to those who wanted it, but even more so it was the chance for more of us to participate in making the Eucharistic service come to life.   That is the heart of our community, and although it never...

                          Homily for the Community Thanksgiving Service November 21, 2021 + Thanksgiving is all about serving others, rejoicing in what we do have, and finding love in gathering together.   It can be overly idealized, of course, and there is much good work being done to view our history more realistically.   But aside from tradition? We bring this on ourselves.   We imagine perfectly behaved toddlers, spouses and siblings loving one another without tension or disagreement.   We envision gorgeous table settings with heirloom pieces and beautiful flowers. We plan impeccably curated dishes that everyone will rave about;   we may even secretly dream that this will be the thanksgiving that goes down through the ages, sung as of old ‘ in memoriam .’   But even as we imagine those things, our doubt and anxiety creep in, pushing God to a less accessible place.   Which means th...

  This morning offered one of those remarkable glimpses of God— the kind that you could never plan.   In fact, more planning might have obscured the gift entirely.     Some weeks ago, we began a mission with our next door church neighbors to work toward providing Thanksgiving boxes for those in our community who might otherwise not share in the blessings of this holiday.   We do this in the midst of realizing— via Sacred Ground —that the holiday we have long cherished brings only heartache and generational bitterness for others who share this planet.   But sharing love still seems the right thing to do, even as we are learning truths we were never taught.   Our church is historically very white; our neighbors are historically black.   Only a narrow ten foot alley separates us; it is way past time we got to know each other better.   Last year, even in the pandemic, we shared a Second Harvest give-away.   They had arranged it, and we offer...

Shannon and I recently watched the film, “A Queen is Crowned.”   Some of us are familiar with this part of Queen Elizabeth’s story from the newer series, The Crown, that Prince Philip was instrumental in making sure that this event was available to the world. “A lavish documentary film of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation in 1953,” it is narrated by Sir Laurence Olivier. ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046222/ )   By the way, I researched it—the ‘Sir’ stands; he received that honor in 1947 from Elizabeth’s father. ( https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/KingsQueensofBritain/ ) What was great fun for us, in the same week in which we later celebrated the ‘Ending of a Pastoral Relationship’ with our retiring Bishop, was to marvel at how similar the Queen’s liturgy and our own movements within a service are. I never stand at an ancient throne and turn to the people in all four directions, but watching this film was just a delightful reminder of why so many Episcopalians are Anglophi...