When Love Shows Up: Weekly Reflections about God’s Presence

Rector’s Blog, Conversions - Part 1 - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I had been raised Christian but had left my church as a teenager with no intention of returning to organized religion. I had not been traumatized and did not leave angrily. But I increasingly did not see a place for myself in it. In the intervening time, I self-described as Christian, but spent a lot of time really wondering if I believed God was real at all. It really bothered me that I couldn't prove God's existence. I mean, really bothered me. Somehow, in my childhood, I had assumed God was obvious, and when God became anything but obvious, and the church could no longer guilt or scare me into saying I believed, God shifted to an idea or a concept more than a divine being. I was even slightly embarrassed that any of the God stuff mattered to me. It did not seem very cool to care. But I did. I always did. I had no idea what to do with God. And then God spoke.

Rector’s Blog, Better Not Easier - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Earlier this week, I looked dozens of people in the eyes and told them they were going to die. And nobody got mad at me for it. Some of them even said Amen. It's a day in the life of the church we call Ash Wednesday. It marks the beginning of Lent - a Christian season of fasting and penitence that leads up to Easter. The whole focus of the day is our mortality, and we spend our time together reflecting on the part death plays in our understanding of life.
Halfway through the service, people come forward and kneel at the altar rail. This is the place where we usually give them communion - that spiritual food and drink that connects them to their eternal life with God. But on this strange day, as they kneel at that same rail, I dip my thumb into a little jar and coat it with ashes, then smudge those ashes in the sign of a cross in the middle of their foreheads. While I do it, I say directly to them, "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." I do it over and over again. I get good at it - good at getting the right amount of ash on my thumb, on not getting ash all over my vestments, on saying the words as if I mean them, on making eye contact with those who want it. It becomes automatic. But one thing I am realizing each year I do this: It is not getting easier.

Rector’s Blog, All The Things We Do Not See - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Some of my beliefs stayed put, some shifted. But my notion of the Democrat as enemy or misguided bleeding heart was forever obliterated. More assumptions shattered. More certainty undermined. I knew less and less what I believed about these people. I was too busy loving them. Perhaps the best way to maintain strong opinions about people is by not engaging with them. If we can just keep them at a distance, we will know exactly what we think about them. We will not have to question our knowledge. All the things we do not see will keep us safe. Our lives are mostly set up to reinforce our assumptions and buttress our prejudices. We know what we know first and then create little worlds that support that knowledge. We try to keep the people and things that will make us understand more and know less as far out of sight as possible. Think for a moment about who is not in your neighborhood, who you do not see in your day-to-day life. How does that construct your understanding of what is normal, what is lovely, what is good? Think for a moment about whom your church is set up to serve. Who is left out of that vision? Whose presence would be too inconvenient to the way you understand your faith?

Rector’s Blog, Just Words - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

When I was a bully, I didn't think of myself as a bully. I was just a kid. I was not tall or physically imposing. I did not threaten the boy in any traditional sense. I did not touch his things or steal from him, gaslight or hit him. I was just mean. He showed up to my school in 7th grade and we were together for two years and I was just pointlessly, relentlessly unkind.
I was 12 and I didn't like him. And I could tell you that I was trying to survive the disintegration of my parents' marriage, the sale of my childhood home, an alcoholic family system, and my own adolescent hormones and feelings. And all those things would be true. But it didn't change the fact that I wasn't kind. That I made some other kid's life immeasurably worse instead of better.I was a good kid too, by almost anyone's standards. I didn't break rules, smoke, drink, or do drugs. I was on Student Council and Honor Roll. I went to church every Sunday, and was deeply involved in Youth Group. I told jokes and had friends and got along with my teachers - most of whom I genuinely liked. I was honest. If you asked me if I was unkind, I wouldn't have denied it. I would've said, well yeah to people who deserve it - but I'm not hurting anyone, just putting them in their place, knocking 'em down a peg. Plus if it's a joke and people are laughing, everyone should just lighten up, right? So I would say withering, mean things to some kid I didn't like and I would say them directly to his face and people would laugh and I would think it was justified and that I wasn't really hurting him because it was just words.
Just words!

Rector’s Blog, That God of the Old Testament - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

When we differentiate, we are furthering the idea either that there really are two Gods, or that the one God had some sort of identity crisis or change of heart. Christians do not believe there are two Gods, and we do not believe that somewhere between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, God had a midlife crisis, had a kid named Jesus, got a therapist, bought a sports car and got a new outlook on life. In fact, one of the major recurring themes of the New Testament is the emphasis on continuity - how Jesus serves as a fulfillment of the hopes, dreams, and plans of God. Jesus is not seen as a course corrective or a constitutional amendment to God's plan but as the human embodiment of the same God we have come to know in what we call the Old Testament.The term "The God of the Old Testament" is antisemitic.
I understand that is strong language and that if you've used the term before you probably had no intention of being antisemitic. So I'm not saying this to shame you - I'm saying it to help solidify in your mind the damage this language causes and help you move past it so that we can begin to adopt new language and with it a better understanding of the God in whom we say we believe.

Rector’s Blog, Giving Up - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

One of the best things about New Year's resolutions is when you give up on them. I don't mean when you miss a day, or start to slack: I mean when you just throw in the towel and say, ok this isn't happening in 2023. 2024 will be my year.I am ready to do that today.
You might remember in a previous blog I said that I was not going to try to be a better person this year. New Year Same Me, I said. That was essentially my New Year's resolution: to be myself and not try to get better. But I keep wanting to try to be a better person anyway. I keep slacking and accidentally wanting to be less terrible. Friends, how do I win the fight against self-improvement? I think I'm throwing in the towel. I think I want to be better, whether I like it or not.
Each year, on or around Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I re-read King's Letter from Birmingham Jail. This is a letter he wrote while incarcerated for marching against racial segregation in Alabama in 1963. I read to be inspired and challenged of course - but also to be convicted. Let me explain.

Rector’s Blog, Dumpuary - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Dumpuary is a term coined by the now defunct pop-culture website Grantland. This movie season runs through January and February, basically post-holiday, pre-Oscar time. It's during this time that studios dump the movies they wonder why they made, their least promising works. It's a strange mix of smaller, cheaper movies that might just make some money during a dry moviegoing season, and larger movies that should've been a big deal but turned out poorly, and the studio has to release them anyway. Hence Dumpuary. It is just an awful time to go to the movies.In case you were wondering if we are currently in Dumpuary, the movies that are being released in theaters this week look like this: The Devil Conspiracy, in which a biotech company made up of secret satanists uses the Shroud of Turin to try to clone Jesus and offer him up to the Devil. No, I am not kidding. Also opening is a reboot of the 90's hip-hop comedy House Party, and an action movie about a plane called, well, "Plane." This, my friends is Dumpuary.
But I'm a priest, not a movie critic, so we should talk about Jesus - and not the cloned one from that Devil Conspiracy movie.

Rector’s Blog, New Year Same Me - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

This is a good time to say that Christmas cards are not for everyone, and they are not a status symbol or a sign of particular popularity. It's like some odd club one gets into. Maybe you decide you're going to send out cards just this one year. But it's like the mafia - there's no escape. Just when you think you're out, they pull you back in. Mostly we send cards specifically to the people who have sent cards to us. And for the people in our little Christmas card cult, sometimes that's the only time we all check in with each other all year. If you don't get a Christmas card from me and you want one, just tell me. That's how you get on the list.Anyway, 8 days later we returned home to a big stack of new cards. And it hit me: It was not that a large group of friends had written us off, it's that this year they just happened to be as overwhelmed and behind as we usually are!And I have to tell you this was a great comfort to me. There is such joy in finding out I'm not the only mess I know.Every time the calendar flips from December to January, I hear the refrain "New Year New Me." This is what follows Christmas. I am supposed to conclude my celebration of hope and salvation by deciding to become a different person, or failing that, a marginally better person. New Year New You. The assumption being that you are constantly in need of improvement. And, hey, maybe you are. But I keep thinking about the ways we measure ourselves and the ways we fall short of our own expectations.

Rector’s Blog Throwback Series, The More You Love - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

As part of our When Love Shows Up Throwback Series we are re-posting this podcast which was originally posted on August 25, 2022
Of course, I loved music, but somehow the number, the size of the CD collection became just as important as actually listening and enjoying the music. I assumed CDs, which supplanted both vinyl records and cassette tapes, would last forever, and that my collection would grow along with me and last me a lifetime. And then, of course, the iPod happened. And then streaming services, and everything changed. Up until very recently I was incredibly resistant to the new ways of listening to music. I still have a CD player in my car - and I still use it! I still love CDs to an unreasonable degree. And my daughter recently got a Discman (I have no idea how) and has been dipping into my collection.
But something has shifted in me in the last couple years. I don't think about the numbers anymore. I don't think about collecting. I just listen. In some ways this digital development has freed me to be obsessed not with CDs, but with music itself. As a result, my palate has expanded, and I'm branching out and trying new things - allowing new kinds of music into my ears and heart. I find myself appreciating genres and artists I wouldn't have given a chance before.
There's a book on my shelf that says on the cover, "The more you love music, the more music you love." I have found that to be truer and truer since letting go of the numbers game.

Rector’s Blog, Your Perfect Christmas - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

As you are reading this, Christmas is about to happen. And you are probably anxious about at least one thing, probably several. Some of your anxiety is obvious and conscious and articulable: You still have shopping to do, your house is a mess, people are coming over, what will you wear, how will you cook everything and wrap everything? Some of what you're feeling is inexpressible but just as palpable: Sheer anxiety shooting through your subconscious, silently running the numbers on all the ways things could go wrong.I wish you could see the cards hanging in my Dining Room. I wish you could hold in your heart just how beautiful things can be on the day that things go wrong, when they are chaotic beyond imagination.I am giving you permission to screw up this Christmas. I am giving you permission to overcook something. Or undercook it. Or both. Break a plate. Stain something irreparably. Bring up politics even though everyone knows you should NOT BRING UP POLITICS. You can be too cranky or get the wrong gift. You can disappoint yourself, and you can even disappoint someone else. I know you don't want any of these things. I know this. It's not like you're trying to screw up. You want to get it right and I want you to get it right. And also, even if you do all the wrong things, God is showing up.I want to invite you to make love the center of your Christmas. Not flawlessness: Love. Not met expectations: Love. Not simplicity: Love. Not idealism: Love.