From the Dean
Dear Friends in Christ,
The dean of my seminary once gave us a bit of advice that I’ve found useful over the years: After you have finished a significant piece of work, he said, take some time to rest and reflect on what you’ve just done. Don’t immediately rush into the next project but, instead, savor your accomplishment and value the effort that went into it. Maybe that’s what church seasons are intended to help us do. We have just come through Lent and Holy Week. We have celebrated the divine gift of new and eternal life offered to us in the name of the resurrected Christ on Easter morning. Now, perhaps, it is time to hold all of that reflectively and appreciatively. Can we bask in the glow of Easter and continue to remain open to the gift that God so dearly wants to give us for a season of seven whole weeks? What if the joy of Easter expanded within our hearts, moving from one day to fifty, from one blessed moment to an entire blessed season?
I don’t ask these questions with the expectation that we will all stop everything we’re doing in the service of endless, blissful contemplation. My own calendar is as full as ever: an immigration hearing with the Imam from the Islamic Center, a fundraiser for Integrity, more work with Faith Leaders for Peace, a conference at UCSD on stem cell research, and two sessions around the diocese on the Windsor Report in anticipation of our upcoming General Convention.
The beat goes on, in season and out of season. My question (posed as much to myself as to you) is simply this: Is it possible to do this work with the conscious awareness that Easter is upon us – that God in Christ has won the final victory and defeated sin and death once and for all? Labor - both yours and mine - is still important but the basis, the foundation, is forever different. All shall be well in the end; our primary task now is to make it as well as possible for as many as possible in the present moment. I pray that you will do that work (and get some rest and savor life) with a mind and heart full of Easter power.
God’s peace,
Scott +
