Today was my first day off of the New Year, having celebrated and preached on New Year's Day, known as the Feast of the Holy Name in Episcopal/Anglican circles. I finally had the chance to do some New Year's Cleaning. With a three-month Sabbatical scheduled for the summer, I wanted to clean away the clutter in order to have a clearer focus between now and June.
In the course of my cleaning in preparation for my Sabbatical I discovered, ironically, a journal I had begun following my first Sabbatical in 2000. I had returned from visits to Wales, Scotland, and England, with new energy and an idea about bringing the passion of Coventry Cathedral's Community of the Cross of Nails to St. Gregory's. Instead, I found myself at the center of, and the focus of, a painful parish conflict.
The journal was one of the ways I kept my spiritual balance. It was almost entirely a journal of short verses from the readings of the Daily Office Lectionary, verses which spoke to my feelings of sadness and anxiety, and me sense of being betrayal and abandoned. These verses conveyed hope and encouragment, and they were one of the ways in which "the love of God was poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Romans 5:5).
Perhaps these verses may resonate in you, too. If you find yourself in similar straits, I hope that they may bring you "times of refreshing" as they did me then, and as I trust they will do again now, as I remember them and relive them.
The first entry is dated 24 August 2000, St. Bartholomew's:
Psalm 18:20: "He brought me out into an open place; * he rescued me because he delighted in me."
John 7:14-36: "Those who speak on their own seek their own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent me is true."
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