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

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

I have a dear friend from college who belongs to a different religious tradition. Though we believe different things and practice different religions, we've always liked each other, in part I think, because we respected that the other took their faith seriously. It's been over 20 years and we are still talking about our faith with each other, and recently we were talking about the difficulty of being faithful in this hard world. He asked me if there was anything that kept me coming back, and I said, "Well, I mean, I heard God speak." His response was similar: I love that that happened to you. I wish it would happen to me.I don't know why these things have happened to me, and not everyone else. Those who have confessed to similar experiences have been comforting in the moment, but it's the people who have not had them that rattle me. Because I know these people and I am not better or smarter or stronger or more faithful than them.
What's more, it's this sort of inconsistency to which skeptics point when they are saying why they don't believe: Any person can add 1 to 1 and get 2. Anyone can put water in a freezer and make it into ice. Anyone can recognize life is life and death is death. These things are consistent and reproducible. But you say God spoke to you and nobody else heard it? And you can't make God speak again by going the same place and doing the same thing? Unprovable. You say you spoke with a deceased relative in a dream? Unreasonable.It is strange what we feel the need to prove.When we think about why someone loves us, we feel the need to prove we've earned it. We haven't. You can't earn love. But we want to prove it just the same.

Rector’s Blog, The Phone Call - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

When I woke up I felt peace. And then I never told anyone this happened. Because I was not interested in sounding unhinged. And I'm still not interested in that, so I still rarely share this story, and certainly am not sure how I feel about telling you here. I feel compelled to tell you that I do not normally hear voices, claim clairvoyance, or converse with the dead - though I'm not opposed to any of these things. My dad was also neither the first nor the last person I loved who died - though he's certainly the one to whom I'm the closest. He's the one I know and love the best.
I find it interesting that there are multiple occasions in Scriptures when mystical, divine things happen in the midst of dreams. It's like God is deliberately leaving room for plausible deniability. Did Joseph really have those visions of himself as ruler, or was he just being cocky? Did Abraham really enter into a covenant with the Almighty, or was that just a story he told to justify his far-fetched hopes? Did Jacob really wrestle with God or was that just a metaphor for psychological struggle? Did Phil's dad really call him on that dream phone to say goodbye, or was this just a way to cope with unspeakable grief?
Everyone outside of the dream is free to believe it is a flight of fancy. But in the sacred stories, the dreamer wakes up transformed and convicted.

Rector’s Blog, When God Feels Like It - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

We don't get to conjure or control the manner in which God shows up. God is not a parlor trick. God has agency. God has a say. And whether we understand that or not says more about us than it does about God.None of this is meant cynically or hopelessly. Quite the opposite. I believe we are made for relationship with God. And healthy relationships aren't one-sided. In a good relationship, I don't get to just decide when and in what manner my friend shows up. In a good relationship, I am pushed to recognize the otherness of the person about whom I care - and to respect it. Why would this not be true about God? Why do I think God has to be here for me in exactly the way that makes me comfortable? In what world is that a healthy relationship?
We Christians often seem obsessed with proving God's existence. But if the God in whom we believe actually exists, they don't seem terribly obsessed with proving their own existence. God seems content to show up in inexplicable ways and places, and then just as content as a silent observer.

Rector’s Blog, But Through Me - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I know there are some Christians that think pop culture is bad, evil, maybe even demonic, and I know that they are very vocal, but most of the Christians I have known in my life have been more open. They are able to see the value of the secular alongside the spiritual. Me, I think I'm more on the radical side of things. I don't believe anything is secular. I see Jesus all over the place.
Speaking of the Beatles, I remember when my dad slipped into a coma and I thought he was going to die. I was in California and he was in Maine, and it would be at least 24 hours before I'd be able to get to him. The only comfort I could get that day was in the George Harrison-penned Beatles song "Within You Without You." It had long been my least favorite song on that album, but for some reason it popped up now and wouldn't let go. It was so simple and emotionless, and I heard George intone, "You're really only very small and life goes on within you and without you." Should that have comforted me? I don't know, but it did. I heard Jesus in that song that day.
I got back to Maine, and he stayed in that coma for a couple more days. Windchill made it 30 degrees below zero, and I was driving back and forth from his house to the hospital, and it was George Harrison again, this time singing, "All Things Must Pass." I did not know if my Dad was going to live or die, but I heard this long-haired British Hindu Hippie tell me this is the way of things and I believed him. And I heard Jesus that day.

Rector’s Blog, Conversions - Part 2 - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I was 41, standing in my kitchen with my hand in a bowl full of flour and water and salt, and I did not hear God talk to me. I didn't hear much of anything, other than the same Ella Fitzgerald album on endless repeat from the speaker on the kitchen counter. I was about 5 months into leading our church in a pandemic. I felt isolated and stir crazy and very tired of my beautiful family. I was insecure about the future of our church, which felt small compared to the fact that I was scared for the future of our country. On top of that, In the last month our dog had died, and we had moved into a smaller house. I was confused and exhausted and heartbroken.For whatever reason, COVID-19 did not bring about a crisis of belief for me. That is not a brag, just a strange statement of fact. It had been 21 years since the moment on the hillside when I heard God's voice and realized I believed. 21 years later, and I was pretty sure I believed in God at least once a day every day. But I was in despair because I wasn't sure I believed in people anymore. I mean, I knew people existed, I just wasn't sure why, or what we were doing with this gift of life. A lot of despair there.And though I believed in God, I did not hear their voice. So, I did what many sensible White men did during the pandemic: I started making sourdough bread.

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.