“Everybody needs a place.” I know it’s true. I know because I’m one of those “bodies” who needed a place and found it at St. Bart’s.
I left parish ministry in 2012, when I moved from Boston to New York City to begin serving as a canon in the Diocese of Long Island. So it has been nine years since I was a member of a church. Nine years since I knew the rhythms of worship around a particular altar. Nine years since I prayed consistently in and for a community. Nine years since I could look around at a congregation and feel that these are my fellow sojourners on the way with Jesus.
The lack of a home or a place hasn’t always troubled me. My work as a canon to Presiding Bishop Michael Curry for the last six years has sent me across the country and around the world, helping Episcopal dioceses and communities to look and act like the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement. I love visiting these places and discovering how our whole church is engaging the ministries of evangelism, racial reconciliation and creation care.
Something shifted for me during the pandemic. Planes were grounded and I could no longer travel, not even to our Church Center offices at 815 Second Avenue. In the process, I fell more deeply in love with my life here in New York, with my neighbors in East Harlem, with my partner Albert deGrasse (who became, as of December 20, 2020, my husband!). And my hunger for a church home got stronger and stronger.
Mind you, I had already planted some roots at St. Bart’s prior to pandemic. Way back when I was merely a visitor to New York, I fell in love with the stunning interior, which has always felt to me like being in the mosaic-filled womb of God. I wrote a book about Radical Welcome in 2006 and even then knew I was echoing a theme dear to the heart of this church. St. Bart’s was no mystery to me.
Then you called Bishop Dean Wolfe to be your rector. +Dean is a dear friend; we partnered for years while he was Vice President of the House of Bishops and I served as Chaplain to the House. Early in his term here, he invited me out for a cocktail and suggested I could “hang my cassock” at St. Bart’s. But the time just wasn’t right, or maybe the yearning wasn’t yet that strong.
That’s what changed over the last nearly two years of COVID-tide. I grew to yearn for roots, for a place – and a people – where I could say, “I belong to them and they belong to me.” This week we get to make it public, because I have officially associated (as an “Assisting Priest”) with St. Bart’s-NYC.
This role doesn’t change my full-time commitment to Presiding Bishop Curry and the church-at-large, but the simple truth is that I won’t be as much of a road warrior. I could float from parish to parish in New York, or I could intentionally spend two Sundays a month with one community of people. I choose you.
St. Bart’s is the lively, curious, inspiring, fun and hope-filled community where I can have real conversations and test the ideas and assumptions that affect what I then say and do in the wider church. My vocation as a priest and as a regular follower of Jesus will be more true because I join you for worship, fellowship, learning and common life, as well as strategic consultation about our present and future.
Each time I’m with you, I get to see the joy of long-time members finally returning after pandemic forced us out of the building. I get to see newcomers who discovered St. Bart’s online, now exploring in-person. I get to stand on the steps in my chasuble before worship and wave and invite people to come on in and reimagine church. I get to stand at the altar and weep with love as we re-enact ancient rituals and fill them with new life and hope.
Everybody needs a place … especially people like me who haven’t had one in a long, long time. Thank you for making room for me at St. Bart’s. You now have a place – a home – in my heart, too.