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

Rector’s Blog, Becoming a Runner - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I was a runner once about 12 years ago. I don't just mean that I ran once. I mean I became a runner. I had jogged now and again growing up, but was never a runner. Then one day I thought to myself, I'm gonna run a half-marathon. I cannot tell you exactly why, other than I was 31 and at the beginning of my marriage and the beginning of my career, and was about to have a child and was still very much of the mindset that I had something to prove. Is there such a thing as a 1/3rd life crisis?
I'm not so sure I don't still have something to prove.
Anyway, I decided to run a half-marathon because I wanted to prove I could. That was it. Can a short stubby out-of-shape guy in his 30's run a long way very slowly? It turns out I could. I had a friend who was a runner, and I asked her to train me. And she did. I trained. I followed her schedule. I got running shorts, and running shoes, and BodyGlide - which is what they call an anti-chafing balm, and a little water bottle I could attach to my hand. I ran long distances and listened to podcasts and took ice baths. I ran two half-marathons before a combination of shin splints and a new baby sidelined my burgeoning career and I hung up my Brooks sneakers.
But here's my question: When did I become a runner?
Give Here
or if you can't access the link, see it here:https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/podcast

Rector’s Blog, Holy Dying - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

What is your prayer when you know someone is going to die? So many of my prayers for the sick and dying are centered around their return to health, for a cure, for an end to the disease, for a reversal of fortunes. Sometimes a prayer for healing is a reasonable request. Other times I pray for a miracle. To be clear whether healing seems reasonable or realistic or not, I should pray for it if it is what I hope and wish for. Sometimes it's exactly the thing I need to pray. Sometimes "heal them" is the only thing that makes sense to me.
I remember kneeling in front of the bed and praying for my dad to be healed while paramedics were working on his body in the hallway around the corner. He was already dead, had been dead when they showed up, but there I was praying for healing. I don't judge myself for that prayer. It's what I wanted. I asked for what I wanted. And I don't judge God for not making it so. There is so little I understand about life and death and how it all rests in the heart of the God who made us. God, my dad, me - we all did our part in that moment.
Death shows up. What is our prayer?
One of the great gifts of my job is the sheer number of times it puts me in close contact with death. I am invited into the room where a person will die, invited to pray over them, to thank God for their life. To witness the tears of their loved ones, to shed my own tears. There is heaviness there. It is not a joy. It takes a piece out of me. And also, I have come to see it as a gift. Death carries with it a sort of holiness. An ending that is shared by every living thing. We hold it in common. I have stumbled into the practice of praying for a holy death when I find out someone is dying. I have learned to pray this without flinching. Because I believe there is such a thing as holy dying.

Rector’s Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 3 - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

" I had been taught Evil was about satanic rituals and Ouija boards and heavy metal music and people loving someone they shouldn't. This priest changed my understanding in one fell swoop. And then she spoke passionately of Jesus. In Los Angeles. To Episcopalians. She spoke about Jesus' clear and consistent advocacy for the love, the humanization, the belonging of all people. And she spoke of how, while she lay in the hospital healing from her wounds, Jesus healed her heart and allowed her to choose love instead of hate as she persisted in the holy work for justice and equity.
That night I sat in this space where this Christian woman connected the spiritual and the practical with articulation, where she connected the actual issues of love and mercy and equality and violence and hatred and fear with the story of how God is working in the world and where Jesus shows up.
That Sunday I showed up. I worshiped with them for the first time."
Give Here
or if you can't access the link, see it here: https://redeemercincy.tpsdb.com/Give/onetimegift

Rector’s Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - Part 2 - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Do you believe you can be yourself at church? Do you think you can be yourself in front of God? I don't like admitting that I've had problems with this my whole life. I remember during the years when I was unaffiliated with church and was actively questioning if I even believed in anything. I could never bring myself to say I wasn't Christian, because what if I died in that moment and went to Hell? What is that other than the belief that you can't be your whole self in front of God?
That night I was at a table with people who all believed different things and said that aloud. A couple of lifelong Episcopalians who never had serious doubts. A gay Christian who loved Jesus and felt safe being himself at this church. One guy who said he wasn't sure he bought any of it but was there to sort things out. And me - a former fundamentalist turned spiritual-but-not-religious agnostic conservative liberal Jesus lover who'd had a recent conversion experience and was just trying to understand how to be Christian again. And we were all together. It was such a mess. Thank God.
The third thing I remember is the cookies.

Rector’s Blog, When I Became an Episcopalian - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Shortly thereafter I moved to Los Angeles, which was about an hour from where I grew up, and started going to the farmer's market on Sundays. I wanted to be a Christian, but I didn't know how. Some people say you can be Christian on your own terms and all by yourself. Maybe they're right. My experience has been otherwise. Community is central to this faith. It would be like saying you can be married on your own terms and all by yourself. It became clear to me that I wasn't going to believe in Jesus all by myself. I was going to have to try to find a church that I could stand and that could stand me. I wanted my life to look like I meant it.
I decided to give the farmer's market a break and go to church. But the idea of finding a new church was overwhelming. So I just started driving back to my hometown and taking my Grandma to our old church. The one I had left. The one I didn't know what to do with. I knew the first Sunday that it wasn't my place anymore. But I kept going for a couple months. I still loved the pastor there very much. And I loved my Grandma. Sometimes I'd come down the night before and do my laundry at her house. Then my clean clothes would smell like her cigarettes for a week. We'd sit in the same pew as when I was growing up. The people who remembered me seemed happy to see me. When the offering plate came around, my Grandma would slip me a $5 bill so I wouldn't be empty-handed. She always did it without making eye contact, like we were dealing in contraband.
It wasn't my church anymore. It wasn't going to be. I wasn't angry or bitter. I just didn't belong there anymore. And one Sunday I skipped. I slept in. And I called up my buddies to see who was going to the farmer's market. They were all sleeping in that day and I was definitely not going to go by myself. I resigned myself to a quiet morning. A few minutes later, my roommate peaked his head into my room. He and I were friendly enough but not really friends. We rarely hung out. We certainly didn't go places together. He said, "Hey I'm thinking of going to the farmer's market. You wanna go?"

Nourished by Ritual - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Do you remember the bowls you used for your breakfast cereal as a child? I do. We had these light blue hard plastic bowls with rims on them. I ate cereal every morning without fail. Somehow my kids have managed to get us to make them eggs or pancakes or waffles from time to time. When I was growing up, if we had eggs or pancakes for breakfast it was probably a holiday. Waffles were for brunch buffets. Day in and day out I ate cereal out of one of those blue bowls.
Maybe it wasn't cereal bowls for you. Maybe you can close your eyes and immediately picture the plates and flatware you used at the dinner table, or the glass you used for juice. What is it for you? Can you see it?
These things were not, in themselves, spectacular. They were simply there every day. They did not need to prove themselves as flawlessly designed. We don't remember them for being particularly beautiful. We remember them because we used them over and over again for years. I can still remember placing the bowl on the coffee table in the family room then sliding down the couch onto the floor - because if I sat on the couch itself, the bowl would be too low. So I'd sit criss-cross on the floor and that blue bowl overstuffed with cereal and milk would be just below my chin, and that way I wouldn't spill and maybe my mom wouldn't notice I hadn't used a placemat. I realize now I loved it there.

Rector’s Blog, Nourished by Training - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I was talking to a friend recently who is a pilot, and he told me that 30% of his flight training focused on emergency landing and crashing. For all the complexity of plane mechanics, navigation, the physics of flight, and the proper technique for taking off and landing, a full third of the lessons are devoted to catastrophic events.
And that makes sense. If you're sending someone up in the air, you don't just want them to know how things work when everything is going well, you want them to have a clear picture of what it looks like when things go wrong, so they can handle the stress of the situation. I had heard about this emergency preparedness for pilots before, funny enough, in a book about churches navigating tumultuous and changing times. The author had been having a similar conversation with a flight instructor and had asked why so much time was dedicated to emergency situations. The instructor responded, we tend to believe that in high pressure situations people have a tendency to rise to the occasion - but in reality, in moments of crisis, people revert to their training.
That really knocked me over. When the chips are down, people don't tend to become superhuman. We tend to be ourselves. This is not a negative judgment of people, just an observation. I myself like to imagine how I would respond in an emergency. I have very little interest, however, in training for an emergency.

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

I could drop a loaf of bread off on your doorstep and ring your doorbell, and see you smile through a window, or from a bit of a distance and we could have little awkward conversations that meant I love you even when we didn't say it.
My job is to facilitate a community that is founded on love. And most of the ways we knew how to share that love were just gone for a devastating amount of time. We are nourished by love and for a time there, many of us felt like we were starving.
I began to pray while mixing the dough together. I would say a prayer for the specific people for whom I delivered the bread. I would think of them as I removed the lid from the piping hot Dutch oven and saw how the bread had risen. I did not wait around to watch them eat it; I did not sit by my phone waiting for thank you texts. I'm not saying I didn't care if they liked it or not. I always hoped they did of course. But I was not fed by gratitude. I was nourished by the giving.
The feeling of being able to do something for someone else is deeply fulfilling, and that is no accident. It is built into us.

Rector’s Blog, Nourished by Community - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

A few weeks ago, a woman from out of state was visiting her daughter here in Cincinnati and they both came to church. It was very obviously the mom's idea, but the daughter was game. I was talking with them after the service and the local daughter just asked me point blank, "So why should I come to your church?" I just laughed. Why can't everyone be this direct? "Oh, wow," I said, "I don't know if you should. I can't pretend it's for everyone." She appreciated that, and I asked her if she knew about The Episcopal Church and she said yes, and that she'd even checked out our website before showing up and that she liked what she saw. But she had still asked the question.
Well, I said, because we humans are built for community. We are literally made for one another. We are not meant to be alone. And we're lonely. And we need community. And this place, I said, this place is a community that is founded on unconditional love. You can find a community that is founded on all sorts of things, on your wealth or status, on the color of your skin or your last name. You can find communities based on shared interests or neighborhoods, and all these things can combat loneliness in one way or another. But what your community is based on matters. And this place, this community is founded on the premise that you are completely and fully loved and that you belong in community just as you are.

Nourished by Love - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

That's the trick with nourishment: It is not permanent. It is not one-time only. Our need is ongoing. We must be fed again and again. This is not because we are broken or faulty - this is how we were made. Our bodies are built in such a way that they use the nourishment we are given and then need more. It's perpetual, and in fact is a sign that we are alive and thriving.
I tell my kids I love them every day. I have one child who, when I call him over to tell him something, says, "You're gonna say you love me." And he's right. I am. Every time. Because I do. And also because I do not believe once is enough. I've heard people say, "Well so-and-so never says it, but I know they love me." That is not going to be the case for the people around me. I try to tell people that I love them regularly, because I do, and because I believe hearing it repeatedly matters. I don't often think of myself as a disciplined person, but telling people I love them is one of my disciplines.
And I know words aren't everything. I know it. "I love you" can ring hollow if not backed up by action. The words can be misused, abused, twisted. If rule number one is tell them you love them, the second rule is act like it's true. But the act of loving people cannot be a one-time event. It cannot be. Because our Gospel belief is that we are made by the God of Love, that we are made out of the abundance of God's love, and that we are made for loving and being loved. It is the most fundamental truth of our being. And that means we need to be nourished by love. We need it again and again, day in day out.