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A Few Words from Pastor Bryan
and... Bishop Phyllis Spiegel
Hi folks. Well I've had COVID this week unfortunately. It's been a mild case and my symptoms are finally diminishing today, so I'm trusting I'll be in church on Sunday. But to be honest my energy is low and so rather than write much myself this week I'm going to share what to me was a very soulful and heartfelt post-election response from Bishop Phyllis Spiegel of the Episcopal Diose of Utah.
It's been a strange couple of weeks in the aftermath of the election for so many. A lot of people are finding that they are having a difficult time trying to emotionally move through this moment in our history and all that it involves. If you are struggling a bit, just know that you've got lots of company. There's nothing wrong with you. This is a complicated time to put it mildly. Feel what you need to feel. Take your time. We'll find each other and together we'll figure out some soulful and ultimately beautiful ways to step fully into this next chapter of our nation's history with grace and grit...when the time is right.
In the meantime, stay as spiritually and emotionally grounded as you can and be as gentle with yourself and each other (including friends and loved ones who are in a very different place than you) as possible.
See you in church I hope this Sunday,
Pastor Bryan
Post-Election Response from Bishop Phyllis Spiegel
I am writing an official response to the election very late. Not because I didn’t think offering one wasn’t important, but because there were such a plethora of responses being offered. Words to uplift, to recall, to center, to remember. In his pastoral letter to the Church, our new Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe, showed us how to stay focused on what we as Episcopalians are called to do. Many others offered strength this week through their writings and posts. These words are all needed. And I, like you perhaps, feel a sense of gratitude for the many voices that spoke hope and peace into the aftermath of the vote. We needed to start regrouping after an election that placed the stark divisions of our nation into homes across the world in blazing contrasts of Red and Blue shapes and numbers.
My voice, though, was silenced by my own need to not speak into the chasm rent by the huge emotions of the days after the election. I focused instead on the people immediately before me. My staff, I suspect, did not all vote for the same presidential candidate. My clergy, I suspect, did not all vote the same way. Whether they did or not, I love each one; I am blessed to serve God with each and every one. And I wanted each of them to know that I love and value them.
And yet, that is perhaps what added to the pain, because, of course, the truth is, no matter how the election was decided we are still a deeply morally ill nation that sits on a far sicker planet. So, I have taken a few days to collect my thoughts; I have turned off the news and turned on music that speaks to me of being human; I have listened back through episodes of On Being with Krista Tippet finding comfort in big thoughts being discussed with gentle curiosity; I have sat in the dark, and let my body and soul settle, remembering Barbara Brown Taylor’s wisdom that Christians need to learn how to walk in the dark.
So, if you, like me, did not want to respond with immediate comfort and optimism this week, I hope you took the time you needed. If you too needed space to feel deeply and spend time naming the people, places, and situations you are grieving for and offering them up to God’s love, know that my voice and thousands upon thousands of others filled the darkness joining your prayers.
But as my therapist once said, “In a crisis most coping mechanisms are good and helpful. The problem comes when you are still using that coping mechanism when it is past time to move on to a plan of action.”
When you get to that place, when you are ready to act positively on the sorrows that have been in your heart, I would offer one particular On Being episode that has been helpful to me this week. Krista’s guest was Adrienne Maree Brown. (The link is at the bottom.) I’ll end with a quote from that episode that helped me pull back the blackout curtain and let some light in. (Note that I read in “mission work” in place of “organizing.")
“All organizing is science fiction, right? It’s like, we are reaching into the future, we are trying to project what we can imagine into the future, and organizing is a way of saying, we are going to put our hands directly on the future. We’re not going to sit by and let injustice perpetuate. We are going to get involved and shape it into something that we can all be in.” ~Adrienne Maree Brown
My siblings, may God bless your action and your inaction in just the right measure. We are in this together; we are all the beloved of God.
In the Spirit~
Bishop Phyllis Spiegel
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