Contents of
THE ANGLICAN DIGEST
PENTECOST A.D. 2008
Vol. 50, No. 3

Encountering the Spirit -- For many in our highly secularized time, the Spirit remains an elusive, mysterious, unknown presence. The need for spirituality has become a growing hunger in American society. People sense that they are missing something vital to their personal wholeness. Certainly they are! — via St. Barnabas’, The Salter, Florissant, Missouri

 Essence of Faith -- Every now and then, someone asks me to “sum up Christianity.” That’s no small order, but I can point to verses such as James 1:27 to show the way. James was writing to the early Christian community that had gotten just a bit too heavy on the “faith” side of things without living out their faith in the practice of loving deeds. Those in James’ particular audience had forgotten some of the orphans and widows in their care. They had gotten a bit too caught up in faith, so they did not mind being “stained by the world” with about as many opportunities for corruption as our own. — The Rev. Dr. Russell J. Levenson, Jr., St. Martin’s, Houston, Texas
 

Courtney -- I can think of nothing else for the rest of the meeting but Courtney’s angel. In the midst of ruin and destruction I see this haunting angel lifting us out of the chaos. The statue is an icon reminding me that there is an angel standing in the midst of the most horrendous sorrow and pain beside every patient I visit either for medical care or for pastoral care. I am reminded that the angel’s presence is in the patient herself as well as in family members, friends, and those caring for the patient. Courtney and all the people in these stories have also taught me that our presence alone can also convey the message that there is something more than the surrounding disorder and confusion. — Excerpted from Healing Presence by the Rev. Joanna J. Seibert, M.D., foreword by Phyllis Tickle, preface by Keith Miller.  Published by Temenos Publishing and available through the Anglican Bookstore
 
The Breath of God --   One of my best experiences at seminary had nothing to do with my classes or field education or any of that. Sometimes I would go walking along the shore of Lake Michigan which was near the seminary. I did not do this during the bitterly cold months of the year but during the fair days of autumn and spring. I would walk along the shore and the wind would swirl around me, gently buffeting me and ruffling my hair and clothing as if it were alive.  This taught me how people got the notion that the wind is somehow the breathing presence of God. That is the idea that lies behind the phrase Holy Spirit. Spirit originally meant breath. Words that mean something like breath and wind are the words used for spirit in practically all the languages I know....  — The Rev. Kip Colegrove, St. James, Painesville, Ohio

Power Over Sinful Habits --  We need continually to depend and draw upon God’s blessings so that we have power over sinful habits because they grieve and quench the Holy Spirit. This lessens the blessing we are seeking from God, for just as faith appropriates the promises of God, so the Holy Spirit makes the blessings a reality. I’m referring both to habits that are obviously sinful, and to bad habits that we take for granted. Remember that “Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.” (Romans 14:23) Our habits don’t shock us perhaps, but they can grieve and quench the Spirit.  — Canon Jim Glennon, via Wholeness

Christian Disciple-ship -- As a caring community of faith the members of the first Church provided for one another; especially those in need (widows and orphans). But the necessary work of caring for and about their fellow Christians, was simply that, a necessary work, an adjunct to the real work which was proclaiming the Gospel and bearing witness to the truth of God’s work of love in the person of God’s Son and Messiah.  As we might imagine, there is a reason as to why the theme of this season of the Church Year is that of discipleship; it is because this is our work as well.  Like those first disciples we too find that there are some days when it is easier to be a Christian than on others or to understand what God is trying to say to us; a blinding flash of the obvious to be sure, but no less true.  And just as it was with the first disciples, we too have an obligation to carry out the work of the Church and proclaim the Gospel whether we feel up to the task or not.  — The Very Rev. Robert Neske, St. Mark’s Pro-Cathedral, Hastings, Nebraska


Five Heavy Words -- Discussion of the means of our redemption, a major issue during the 16th century Reformation, is never out of date. Christians today must know the means by which we are saved. Several of the terms overlap in meaning, but point to the same divine action... — The Rt. Rev. H.W. Shipps, St. Paul’s, Savannah, Georgia

Christian Prayer -- The first work of all Christians is Prayer.  The context of Christian Prayer is Scripture, Sacraments, and Community. The activity of putting Scripture at the core of our lives is our common challenge.  It is the means to making our lives more authentic and it is the place where we discover our Lord’s invitation to become his disciples.  Each generation is called to conversion of life and manners.  We cannot ride on the accomplishments of previous generations nor should we want to if we desire to be truly alive to God.   — The Very Rev. William Willoughby, III, St. Paul’s, Savannah, Georgia



Jesus — the Vine -- Jesus is the vine. We are the branches.  Such a simple metaphor.  It’s easy.  We can do nothing without God.  Nothing. Any achievement we accomplish, any talent we possess; any body we inhabit comes from God and God alone. And, because we are all branches from One vine, we are all called to work together in relationship, assisting others in our abundance, receiving help in our deficits. Christ provides all we need for true life. We just have to collect our sunlight and use our respective gifts. We have to bend our wills and our lives to the will of God with the knowledge that without God we will die a spiritual death, as surely as a branch that has been chopped from the vine dies an actual death.   — The Rev. Kitty Davis, St. James, Wilmington, North Carolina

 Justin: Friend of Seekers  --  We do not know the content of that conversation, but it is clear that we know of the willingness of the stranger on the beach to be used by God! Who knows how many “Justins” God might put across our path? Does that mean that if we are going to be responsible to these “Justins” we need a talent for sharing our faith? I don’t think so. Instead, I think that what we need is a willingness to be used by God, and a little courage. Paul writes that “the foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom.” (1 Corinthians 1:25) That means that God can use me, foolish as I am, if I am willing to step out and be God’s instrument when the time is right. — The Rev. Greg Brewer, Good Samaritan, Paoli, Pennsylvania



HILLSPEAKING -- THE spring 1985 selection of the Anglican Book Club was Richard Holloway’s Suffering, Sex and Other Paradoxes.  In the Foland Library, there are a half-dozen books with the word “paradox” in the title. They range from 1958’s Further Paradoxes by Henri de Lubac to 2002’s Paradoxes for Living: Cultivating Faith in Confusing Times by N. Graham Standish.   Nineteen fifty-eight, of course, marked the beginning of THE ANGLICAN DIGEST in a garage in Nevada, Missouri.  And that raises the question: Is TAD, is Hillspeak itself, a paradox? If we adhere to the strict definition of the word perhaps not. On the other hand ...  — The Trustees’ Warden

The Door -- This is where I discovered Hunt’s portrayal of Jesus challenging. From his side of the closed door he implies that we do not receive without asking; we do not find without seeking; we do not find access or exit from the interiority of ourselves without knocking. Yet we dare not impose ourselves upon one another. We must be freely invited into one another’s life, willingly admitted to the sharing of common frailties and common joy. — The Rev. Dr. Craig Kallio, St. Stephen’s, Oak Ridge, Tennessee



With His Stripes We Are Healed --  During a time of intense prayer, a friend of mine proclaimed in quite literal terms, “With his stripes we are healed.” I had always heard that phrase from Isaiah 53:5 used in spiritual terms, but I had never heard anyone appropriate it into a prayer for physical healing. Was this friend making a claim that through the physical suffering of Jesus we are offered the promise of our own physical healing? When I asked him about it, he answered with an unequivocal “yes.” “How can this be?” I wondered silently. “What is the connection between a moment of pain that happened two-thousand years ago and a hope for healing that is held now?”    Our spiritual journey offers an answer... — The Rev. Evan D. Garner, St. John’s, Montgomery, Alabama

 Samuel Seabury: First American Bishop
   Third in a series of articles from early issues of TAD celebrating 50 years of ministry to the Anglican Communion

Few men who took the Loyalist side in the American Revolution were so successful as Samuel Seabury in helping to build the life of the new nation once the war was over. As a parish priest and practicing physician, as one of the ablest American propagandists for the British cause, and as the first American Bishop, he deserves to be far better known to all those interested in the history of our nation and Church.  — Taddled from many sources


Summer Sequel --  I offer not a sequel but a re-visitation of the cover piece from the October 2001 Heavenly Messenger.  It was written days after the tragic events of September 11th when we all were wondering how to go forward into a future that would be defined and redefined by terrorism and a new kind of global  conflict, which, in many ways, no one at that time could plausibly imagine. I came across it a few days ago as I was searching through my files for something else and it struck me that we all have, in one way or another, been searching not our files but our world and our lives for some sort of something else to deal with the uncertainties and fears that still haunt our conflicted world. We have gone to war, we have tightened our borders, we have taken positions in the  global community, we have redefined security -- from airports to street corners -- and we seem all too willing to embrace a variety of distractions, perhaps because the problems we face seem so intractable. As I reread the piece from 2001, I realized that I certainly needed to be reminded of the thoughts expressed back then. I was aware, in my own life, of just how easily I can slip back into old routines while God is continually calling me into a new kind of life. Perhaps you will feel the same. —The Rev. James L. Burns, Church of the Heavenly Rest, New York, New York

Commandments Are Not Optional -- I’m not sure exactly when the Ten Commandments were demoted in our liturgies, in our lives, and in our culture. They were prominent enough in the 1928 Prayer Book, and though they became optional in the 1979 edition, I do not believe anyone expected them to recede from weekly use as rapidly as they did. Even sadder is their gradual disappearance from daily life and the weakening of their influence in regulating moral conduct. Many churchgoers cannot recite them from memory. — The Rt. Rev. Gethin B. Hughes, Interim Dean, St. Mark’s Cathedral, Shreveport, Louisiana

Just Stay  --There are some things in this world which are gifts beyond price; gifts that mean so much to another there is no way to fix a value. Sometimes we might never know the value of what we do. We do it because it’s the right or the appropriate thing to do  — The Rev. Guido F. Verbeck, III, St. Paul’s, Shreveport, Louisiana

The Holy Spirit
   Dower and Power - The last message of Evelyn Underhill & The Seven Gifts of the Spirit

If sacrifice, total self-giving to God’s mysterious purpose, is what is asked of us, his answer to that sacrifice is the gift of power. Easter and Whitsuntide complete the Christian Mystery by showing us first our Lord himself and then his chosen apostles possessed of a new power -- the power of the Spirit -- which changed every situation in which they were placed. That supernatural power is still the inheritance of every Christian, and our idea of Christianity is distorted and incomplete unless we rely on it. It is this power and only this which can bring in the new Christian society of which we hear so much. We ought to pray for it; expect it, trust it; and as we do this, we shall gradually become more and more sure of it. —from An Anthology  of the Love of God by Evelyn Underhill, a 1976 selection of the Anglican Book Club
Devotions to the Holy Ghost
   A Prayer for the Seven-Fold Gift

O HOLY Ghost, my Lord and my God, who hast over-shadowed the Blessed Virgin Mary and formed the most holy humanity of my Saviour Jesus Christ, I adore thee, and acknowledge here in thy divine presence, that I am nothing and can do nothing without thee. Come, thou blessed Spirit of God, and dwell in this soul that longs to be thy holy temple. Heal the lurking distemper of my heart and infuse thy grace into the well-springs of my life...  — Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book

Happiness -- ...the Greeks were trying to be happy and the Jews were trying to be holy, that is, godly.  In fairness I must add that Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle insist that happiness consists of virtuous living. This is a caveat often omitted by modern pagan writers. And the Jews were convinced that happiness could not be had apart from holiness. —The Rev. Sam Todd, via The Texas Episcopalian, Houston, Texas

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