Better Together ~ Jack Johnson's truism

I've become a big fan of the singer-songwriter Jack Johnson.  I love his song, "Better Together," and I believe he's happened upon an important truism to life.  "It's always better when we're together."

I pray that we can find more ways to be "together" in this holiday season!

Prayers for those in the Armed Forces

As we move toward Christmas, I am praying for those in the armed forces of our country:

For Those in the Armed Forces of Our Country

Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women of our armed forces at home and abroad. Defend them day by day with your heavenly grace; strengthen them in their trials and temptations; give them courage to face the perils which beset them; and grant them a sense of your abiding presence wherever they may be; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Continued prayers for Newtown, CT! : A Family Business in a Small Town Named Newtown

My folks grew up in Newtown, Connecticut, and my uncle married a Honan.  The Honans are pillars of the community in Newtown and have run the Honan Funeral Home in Newtown for over a century. While I am not a Honan in the literal sense, I consider myself a Honan because they are faithful, compassionate, loving people who are only a degree or two of separation from my own family.  I have shared many many important family events with the Honans, and I feel humbled to know that they are doing God's work as they help to care for the community of Newtown in this tragic and terrible time.

My cousins' cousin wrote the following blog entry today about her family, the Honans.  It is well worth a read!

Blessing and prayers for everyone in Newtown today,

~Peter Carey+

from Neil Callahan at http://neilcallanan.posterous.com/a-family-business-in-a-small-town-named-newto

A Family Business in a Small Town Named Newtown.

My mother and her many (7) siblings were raised by my grandparents on Main Street in Newtown, CT.

Just down the street from the town general store and the picturesque flag pole you’ve seen on the news. The home is not unlike other homes on the street, and not probably not all that unlike grandparents’ homes around the country. What distinguishes our family home is not that it is next door to the family business at 58 Main, but that our family business happens to be the Honan Funeral Home. The sole funeral home in Newtown, CT. 

Founded in 1903 by my great grandfather, William Sr. and taken over by my grandfather William Jr in 1966, the business has been run by my uncle Daniel since his passing. The Honan Funeral Home has been a big part of our family for more than a century. The unqiueness of it was a part our our lives in both bigger, and smaller ways than you might expect. The famously casual nature in which my grandfather could discuss his work was seemingly balanced by the heaviness of being part of a family who handle their own calling hours and funeral services when a family member left us. 

My grandfather’s (and now my uncle’s) day-to-day was very different from you or I. The topics of his consultations and mine could not be more distinct. But in ways I’ve been thinking about more and more over the last few days the way my grandfather ran things serves as a model for who and what I’d like to be in many ways and especially in business.

My uncle is faced with a work week that is unimaginable, but he’ll look to all those years working side-by-side with my grandfather to help guide him through serving those who have just experienced unknowable tragedy. 

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He’ll be a familiar face to those in need; because just like my grandfather, Dan is incredibly active in the Newtown community.

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He’ll both give and receive support from the St. Rose of Lima Church community; because like my grandfather, he is active in his church community during both good and bad times. 

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He’ll rely on his colleagues from around the state to help provide the support and service the many families in need that would otherwise be impossible with a staff of just two; because like my grandfather, he understands the value of relationships within his industry. 

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And when he is able to walk those families through the unbearable experience they’ll face this week with confidence and compassion, he’ll being doing his job; because like my grandfather learned from his father, Dan knows that it is his job to use the 100+ years of experience passed down to him to make things a bit less awful for those who’ve lost so much. And by attempting to do just that, he makes our whole family proud to be Honans from Newtown. 

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Filed under: life 

"Be joyful though you have considered all the facts" - Wendell Berry

Manifesto:
The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" from The Country of Marriage, copyright © 1973 by Wendell Berry

16 December 2012 ~ Advent 3 ~ "Our hearts are in Newtown, today"

The Rev. Peter M. Carey

16 December 2012

Advent 3 – 8am – Sermon

St. Paul’s Memorial Church - Charlottesville

We are all in Newtown

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.

On this day we all are in Newtown, Connecticut.

We grieve for the loss of these wonderful people, we are angry, scared, frustrated, sad, confused….

Our hearts are with those in Newtown, today, and our prayers go out to them.

My own heart is with all those in Newtown today, and when they sometimes say, “this hit close to home,” I would say that is this case, Newtown is one of the places of home for me.  I spent some significant time in Newtown, where both of my parents grew up, and my mom went to Sandy Hook Elementary School.  My aunts and uncles were married, where many thanksgiving meals were eaten, where I used to bake with my grandmother and hike with my granddad.  Newtown is also where I mourned the death of my grandparents, and where I led the funerals for them both.

Newtown, for me is a place of warm Thanksgivings, of joyous Christmases, of kickball games behind my grandparents house, of games with cousins, of marvelous 4^th of July parades, and of God’s love pouring out through the love and life of family.  Saturday mornings were full of granola and fresh donuts that Granddad would go and buy in the wee hours of the mornings.  For me, Newtown was one of the places where God’s love was made manifest in the lives of family and friends.  My grandmother, before she began to decline, was the quintessential “church lady” and I was really thinking about what she would be doing today.  I have a feeling that she would know these families, and she would be out serving them. 

My own heart and mind are having trouble catching up with the news of the last two days.  Images of warmth and love and kindness are in conflict with images of pain and evil and death.  My own heart is broken with grief for all those who have died, and for those families whose hearts must also be broken.

I have trouble finding a way to wrap my mind and my heart around these events.  And I’m sure I’m not alone.  However, the sadness, grief and anger are real, and I have a knot in my stomach about all of this.

In the midst of this event, our hearts are broken, and we mourn for all those who have died.  We turn to our loved ones and we hug our families and friends.  We also  reflect on all that we have, and on all of those who we love.  Our hearts are broken, broken open.  One thing about a broken heart is that we become vulnerable, and even if we tend that open heart we can be open to one another’s pain and suffering.  A broken heart, when it heals, the question will it become hardened, with scar tissue? Will it become hardened (like Pharoah’s), or will it be open, soft, supple, vulnerable?

I began to think about responses to this event, and of course I thought about my own kids.  I think about the ways that we are vulnerable to folks who slip into extreme mental illness and get their hands on guns.  We know that we cannot stop every evil, but there is much that we can do.  Surely we need to have a serious discussion about guns in our society, and about access to mental health treatment.  Will this prevent all these tragedies from happening?  Probably not.  But we do need to get busy.  There is much we can do, and that we should do.  As Christians, we have a specific call to remind the world that we are called to create a world of love, compassion and reconciliation, even in the midst of tragedy.

On this day, we are all in Newtown, Connecticut, and our hearts are broken, broken open.

We can allow our hearts to be broken open, so we can respond to a world in need. 

In this time, we turn to God so that we can be reminded of that wonderful sentiment from William Sloan Coffin who said “Hope is a state of mind independent of the state of the world.”  We cannot allow what we see around us to determine our hope, for our hope is in God; is in Christ.  We can embody this audacious hope, hope, even in the midst of sorrow and pain.  This audacious hope.  Hope that things will change, especially when we turn our open hearts to one another and to God, and when we get busy.  As Dave Matthews sang in concert here in Charlottesville on Friday, “We gotta do much more than believe, if we’re going to change things.” And obviously we have to begin with our belief, and our hope, but then get busy.

We are not alone, as we approach Christmas, we are reminded of the audacious hope given to us in Jesus.  As God became human, as a vulnerable child, God showed his love for us.  The love of a daddy; the love of a mommy, for the likes of us.  God entered this world. Jesus entered into this world, this world of tragedy and turmoil, this world of sorrow and pain, but also this world of hope and love, despite all the odds.

My own mind and heart are still trying to wrap around the events of Friday in Newtown, Connecticut.  But I do feel that we have a call to let our hearts be broken, and let them be open to one another, and find ways to get busy, and keep our hearts supple and vulnerable, even and especially, in this difficult time.

Almighty God, we thank you that in your great love you have fed us with the spiritual food and drink of the body and blood of your Son, Jesus Christ, and you have given us a foretaste of your heavenly banquet Grant that we may receive this as a comfort in affliction and a pledge of our inheritance in that kingdom where there is no death neither nor crying and the fullness of joy with all your saints, through Jesus Christ our Savior.  Amen