Dear Friends,
The 13th Century mystical poet, Jalal al-Din Rumi wrote,
“Come, come!
Whoever you are;
worshipper, wanderer, lover of leaving.
Ours is not a caravan of despair!
Though you have broken your vows a thousand times, come.
Come again. Come!”
Composer Mark Miller put these passages to music for the Imagine Worship services we hold on Thursday evenings. They make for a provocative call to worship.
We make the invitation to “Come, whoever you are!” at St. Bart’s over and over and over again. We pose the invitation in a variety of different ways. We invite people to classes, social events, small groups, and concerts but, at the heart of it all, we are a worshipping community and we are always inviting people to find a place at the table in order to find connection and spiritual nourishment.
We recognize we are all “worshippers, wanderers and lovers of leaving.” It is innate to the spiritual pilgrimage. We struggle with permanence and commitment. We idolize our freedoms and break our promises. We get angry and leave... and still, we return. We listen to the music. We hear the ancient stories. We make, and then we remake again, the age-old promises. We fail utterly. We give up and we try again. We promise to do better. We aim higher and we pray God will forgive our failings and empower us for the life to which we are called.
I am very glad to be a part of this community. It is a relief to have found this place; a place where I can share my giddy successes and my unspeakable defeats. It is a place where I can share my authentic doubt as well as my wobbling faith. We come before the altar and lay our truest and real selves upon it. We make our sacrifices. We risk public embarrassment by trusting we can be... who we genuinely are... in this place.
Honestly, we don’t always get it right. That too, is being part of the human condition. We aren’t always the people we want to be. We aren’t always the faith community we want to be. So, we get knocked down and then we get back up again. We dust ourselves off, and we leap back into the fray. “Ours is not a caravan of despair.” We have not given up. The church is changing right before our very eyes and we may be more fragile than we have ever been. Yet, we are growing in faithfulness as well... and we know that our God is not done with us yet.
Lent is a season given to such inward exploration. It is a time when we admit who we really are and what we hope to become. We are coming to the end of this season. The time is growing short. Spring is beginning to reveal itself and Holy Week beckons. Easter rests at the end of this journey like a glittering, flawless jewel.
Come, Come!
Whoever you are;
worshipper, wanderer, lover of leaving.
Ours is not a caravan of despair!
Though you have broken your vows a thousand times, come.
Come again. Come!
Grace & Peace,
The Right Reverend Dean E. Wolfe
Rector