From the Rector: Finding the heart of St. John’s

Dear Friends,

I sat down at my desk this past Monday morning to begin writing my annual report for our upcoming annual meeting on January 26. It was a curious experience. For one thing, I haven’t been here for a year, and so I had to begin writing in such a way that acknowledged my somewhat limited experience. And yet, as soon as I started writing, I found myself recalling all the things Devon and I have already shared with you all in our mere six months with you. And while my first draft still very much feels like a long list of “thank yous”—which I’m sure isn’t a surprise—it was in the listing of events, the naming of individuals, and the seemingly endless thanksgivings that something special emerged. I became more aware of what holds this place together.

So, what holds this place together? Well, God, obviously. But how? One of the things that struck me, indeed as we were saying farewell to Buffy Gray on Sunday, was the deep interconnectivity of this parish. One of the hardest things to establish in any community, let alone a parish church, is a culture where people are genuinely embedded in each others’ lives in ways which are healthy, pastoral, and fruitful; where people truly care about each other, and where the connectivity is authentic and unforced. It may sound funny to say, but one of the most difficult jobs any parish has is nurturing such a Christian relationality; not because people, or indeed priests are that difficult, but because, especially in a wider culture of suspicion, skepticism, and irony, fostering such deep relationships is unusual, to say the least. And yet, it is possible. One of the great gifts of St. John’s, especially for someone entering the community afresh, is that this deeper level of engagement is already prevalent and heartfelt. It’s organic, and you sense it as soon as you walk through the door. And from there, having established that level of connection, one can then set about the “business” of worship, spirituality, and prayer in ever new ways.

Indeed, this is another unusual aspect of St. John’s. From the theological point of view of many in parish ministry, such community is often seen as the product of worship rather than something which we then bring to worship. Yet, as someone remarked to me recently, what often currently brings people through the door of St. John’s is the sense of community, and from there the worship begins. Those of you who first discovered this community through the Not-So-Spooky Haunted House, the Holiday Boutique, Summerfest, or one of our many social gatherings, for example, will perhaps testify to this. And so, we begin from a different angle, where community brings together the people for worship, and this is not unusual in the contemporary church. However, here lies our task as a parish: whatever may bring one through the door, how can we then nurture that sensation of being compelled? Once we are together in worship, how do we then grow that connection? Put in more spiritual terms, how do we pray? And how do we go on praying even when we leave? It is in questions such as those that we discover the heart of our shared journey in the heart of God.

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The Rev. Edward Thornley

Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist

From the Rector: Feeling the joy of Christmastide

Dear friends,

Audrey Farrell carries the Christmas Star down the aisle.

A very Happy Christmastide and New Year to you all. I trust that this note finds you well and sharing a good Christmas season as we move into the new year. It has been a good Christmas at St. John’s. Our worship throughout the season so far has been immensely joyful and full of hope; from our Christmas Eve and Christmas Day Eucharists, from tots and toddlers to pageants, from midnight mass to baptisms, from joyful singing to the holy tarantula … Yes, I finally saw it, and I am very grateful. And for those who may be wondering what I am referring to, please see the photos and video of our pageant and the star which the shepherds and magi followed … It was very special, I must say.

One of the memories that I will take with me following our Christmas Eve worship was the final “scene” of our pageant. Again, if you watch the service again online, you’ll notice that during the hymn the whole “cast” gathers around the manger, featuring one of our parish family’s newborns! And as the characters gathered, the baby smiled, the tarantula-star hovered over, and the singing rang out, I had this wonderful realization of what makes this parish what it is, and what a gift it is to be here. There so much quirky (yet incredibly well controlled!) chaos, with so much laughter, smiles, and over four hundred people all zooming in on this one moment. It was not only one of the most worshipful moments I’ve witnessed in a pageant (that wasn’t a comment on the chaos, by the way), but one of the most delightful I’ve seen in such a service. It was pure joy. And, furthermore, there was hope.

Moments like this are significant for all of us. Indeed, as I’ve said elsewhere in this season, Christmas is not always the happiest or easiest time for everyone. In fact, for some it can be an unbearable season, and for important reasons. Without boring you with my life story (again … you’ve heard my sermons), Christmas isn’t the easiest season for me either. But what caught my attention the other day in church, as the pageant came to an end, was that this moment of jubilation didn’t distract from or water down the importance of the serious side of Christmas. If anything, it was a gentle, quirky sign of hope. Essentially, it helped me stop for a second and think, “Now I can see something new worth striving for.”

Brian Locke

And so, here we are: 2025, a new year, and a lot of joy and change ahead. This Sunday, we will say farewell to Buffy Gray on the occasion of her retirement. On Monday, Brian Locke will begin as our interim organist and choirmaster. Over the next few weeks, we will also prepare for our annual meeting which will take place on Sunday, Jan. 26 after the 10 a.m. Eucharist. And from there, we will launch fully into the new year with a renewed vestry, and many plans and hopes for our future ministry. Wherever you are on your journey, I pray that you will find what you are looking for in this new year, and I hope that you will share your journey as part of this parish’s life.

Devon and I (and the cats!) send you all our greetings, prayers, and blessings for the new year.

With prayers for peace this Christmastide,

Ed.

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The Rev. Edward Thornley

Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist

From the Rector: A disinterested look at Mary

Dear friends,

The eighteenth-century philosopher Immanuel Kant once coined the term “disinterestedness.” Among his writings on aesthetics, Kant contemplated what it meant to appreciate something that we find to be beautiful. For Kant, when we not only pass a judgment on something but truly appreciate something’s or someone’s beauty, we find ourselves being disinterested. Not uninterested, as in not having any desire or curiosity about something. But dis-interested. In other words, you have an interest, but it is somewhat disassociated from one’s individualistic desire, or, put another way, you are interested in something but not with a fixed agenda that you seek to fulfil, particularly an agenda you had prior to encountering the person or thing you find beautiful. You simply appreciate or perceive beauty in someone or something for the sake of it, for the sake of them. You like them for who they are, not what you would prefer them to be.

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Portrait painted c1790.

I have often thought that the more penitential and reflective seasons in the church’s year help us with precisely this commonly shared conundrum. What does it mean to like or even love someone or something purely for who or what they are? Of course, for many of us, we may already find ourselves in relationships or circumstances where we know the answer to this. Nevertheless, I would hazard a guess that there might still be some areas in our lives where this notion goes unchecked. That’s not to sound judgmental or presumptuous, but simply to say that there are always things in our lives which are unfinished; things which we might want to control, or even let go of, yet where the letting go is itself another means by which we try to control something.

In many respects, this question brings us to Mary. At this time of year, and on the Fourth Sunday of Advent specifically, we are invited to contemplate who Mary is, and the part she plays in the Nativity of Our Lord. At first, this may seem obvious, but a closer inspection of our readings this coming Sunday provokes a particular kind of wondering. As we will hear on Sunday, Mary is someone who we know very little about, if anything. And while some traditions within the church have deeply held beliefs around her early life, her perfections (or imperfections), and the circumstances of her life beyond the pages of scripture, still she is someone who in so many ways captures the essence of what it means to simply be present to God. Regardless of history, circumstance, or desire, Mary appears in the story, she is called by God to do something, and she follows. She is indeed a disciple, and long before others.

This openness to God’s call and how we might embrace this rests at the heart of our worship, and not only in Advent. I am overjoyed at the prospect of gathering with you all this Sunday, and excited to see where our journey leads.

With every prayer and blessing,

Ed.

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The Rev. Edward Thornley

Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist

From the Rector: Reorienting patterns of prayer

Dear friends,

The Rev. Ed Thornley preaches from the pulpit Dec. 8.

During my sermon on The Second Sunday of Advent, I was reflecting on the words of The Rev. Canon Edie Dolnikowski, who spoke the previous week about how Advent is a season for slowing down, not taking on more, and seeking to adopt new prayerful and reflective practices. During my homily following Edie’s, I found myself thinking about how I have struggled with this more meditative practice myself, and how important it is to try and slow down. Of course, several friends, knowing my sense of humor, remarked afterwards, smiling, “Oh, so if it’s important for me to slow down then I suppose you don’t need me to help you this week with XYZ then …!” Or, “Do you really need the choir this week …?”

I suppose it would be nice if we were all able to continue getting some things done, even in Advent (although I did appreciate the joke!). However, it did genuinely get me thinking: what if we could keep up the pace but find more meditative ways through it? Instead of slowing down as such, what if we considered what it might mean to maintain a certain pitch and purpose in one’s life while still fervently moving forward?

Now, I’m not going back on my sermon right now, nor because I’m afraid people will stop helping me keep this church afloat in one of the busiest seasons of the year … But indeed, as I moved from sermon to announcements during last Sunday’s service, and inevitably started listing all the merry things going on in the parish which are joyful, and of course a major part of this season, I did find myself wondering if my sermon needed to be a little more nuanced. Perhaps it’s not so much about slowing down so as to cut things back, rather readjusting our pace and focus so that we might become more aligned with the way God approaches us.

The Rev. Dr. Jerome Berryman

In preparation for our Evenings in Advent study this past week (which was canceled due to the storm), I found myself reading one of Godly Play founder Jerome Berryman’s books, Becoming Like a Child. In the book, Berryman writes about the spirituality of childhood, and how adults, too, might reorient their patterns of prayer and the way they attend to aspects of their mature lives by reflecting on the ways that children perceive reality. In one chapter, Berryman describes what is often referred to as “unitive” or “mystical” knowing. Here, he reflects on an early childhood experience which, at different moments in his adult life, resurfaces in his memory when he encounters experiences which trigger, in his subconscious mind, the recollection of when this type of experience first took place. Berryman writes, “I had experienced a unified kind of knowing. Many have such experiences, especially during childhood. Their significance remains even if the details fade.” (Berryman 2017, 68)

In other words, one of the qualities children have, and which adults sometimes forget they have, is that our minds, and indeed our hearts, carry experiences even when we are not aware of them. And these moments resurface when prompted; sometimes happily, sometimes tragically; sometimes helpfully, and sometimes unhelpfully. But whichever way they manifest, they are with us, and our task, as any therapist or spiritual director knows, is to find ways of navigating our minds and hearts so that we know how to healthily move forward while not ignoring the past; and how to keep on moving while absorbing and reabsorbing information and experience, all the while gaining new insight into our deeper purpose even amidst uncertainty, anxiety, or busyness. This is certainly something children can teach us about, especially at a time of year like this. And perhaps this readjustment rather than removing is the more important spiritual discipline that both Advent and Christmas, at their own heart, can shape within ours.

With every blessing for this third week of Advent,

Ed.

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The Rev. Edward Thornley

Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist.

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Reference

Jerome Berryman, Becoming Like a Child—The Curiosity of Maturity Beyond the Norm. New York: Church Publishing, 2017.

From the Rector: Re-imagining John the Baptist

“Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness” by Joshua Reynolds (1776)

Dear friends,

In the Gospel reading for the Second Sunday of Advent, we encounter John the Baptist for the first time. John is considered by many to be Jesus’s cousin, a forerunner to Jesus, who preached, prophesied and baptized prior to Jesus’s ministry beginning. John speaks about Jesus’s coming. And when Jesus is about to begin his ministry, John baptizes him, thus making explicit a new relationship between the divine and the human, indeed all of creation, and opening the way for us to relate to God in a new way. In the Gospel for this Sunday (Luke 3:1-6), we encounter John prior to Jesus’s baptism, when he is preaching about future judgment and Christ’s arrival.

I had never spent much time studying John the Baptist until I lived in London ten years ago. One year, while I served at St. Marylebone in Central London, I preached an Advent II sermon about John the Baptist, and on the reading coming up for this Sunday. As I was working with children and youth a great deal, as well as older adults who often found sensory worship helpful, I found myself using a well-known image of John as an illustration during the sermon. The image is at the top of this letter. It is a painting which hangs in The Wallace Collection in London (just down the street from St. Marylebone), and it is an image of the infant John the Baptist in the wilderness. It was painted by Joshua Reynolds in 1776.

Reynolds was famous for two distinctive forms of painting: he was known for his landscapes, and also his images of children. He had a gift for capturing certain qualities of childhood. Reynolds was often recruited to paint famous London residents’ portraits. Interestingly, he would also often be asked to paint Biblical figures, and when he did so, he would often portray them as children. Scholars have mused as to why Reynolds did this. One theory is that he was especially strong at capturing the somewhat “traditional,” innocent, wondering qualities of childhood, yet when portrayed upon a Biblical character who is known for a more fiery, adult personality, enabled the viewer to contemplate what this character may have been like in another stage of life. Indeed, when contemplating someone as fierce a preacher as John, one might wonder how this person came to be the way they are as an adult. By contemplating such a figure as if they were back in their childhood, requires the viewer to re-imagine this person’s character, purpose, and vocation; and possibly re-think their perspective of them. In the case of John, we are presented with someone who, now, thanks to Reynolds, is not only a fire and brimstone preacher and prophet, but someone who from their youngest days was called by God to serve in his name, and to usher in the Kingdom of God in the most beautiful yet striking way. Indeed, we see this in the image, with the child John, surrounded by wilderness and a lamb representing Christ, pointing to the sky, powerfully yet gently.

When we focus in on a Biblical figure, or indeed any aspect of the Bible, we are invited to consider not only them but how they impact our own lives. When I preached about John that time in London, an older woman who would often visit our parish was in the congregation. She took a copy of the picture home, and a year later, during Advent, brought the image at right, to me in a frame. It is a replica of Reynolds’s painting, but in cross-stitch, made by hand, and she presented it to me as a gift. I don’t know how long it took her to make this, especially something so startlingly accurate and clearly painstakingly created over a long time. I didn’t get the chance to ask as she dropped it off at the church quickly, and I never saw her again. Yet this image remains in Devon’s and my home (it’s in the Rectory study if you ever visit and want to see it), as a reminder as I pray daily for God’s grace amidst uncertainty; God’s patience amidst an unfolding and complex history; God’s power amidst weakness and frailty; and God’s love amidst imperfection and consequence. Engaging in such prayerful, penitent, yet joyful reflection is very much our purpose in Advent, as we look again for the one who will make all things new.

With every prayer and blessing,

Ed.

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The Rev. Edward Thornley

Rector of The Episcopal Parish of St. John the Evangelist