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

Rector’s Blog, Growing in Understanding - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I want to be honest and tell you that I had no real way to process my friend's transition. I was not mad or sad. But, at least at the moment, I was not happy either. I literally did not know how I felt. I did not have the tools to process this.
Well, I suppose that is not entirely true. I did have a few things that helped me when I didn't know what to think. I knew that I cared about my friend. I knew that I respected him. I knew that he was smart and thoughtful. And I knew that such a major medical decision must not have been made lightly. I didn't know what I thought about his decision, but I knew what I thought about him. When you are not sure what you think or how to react to something, choosing love and respect is, in fact, a practical tool you can use.
So, I congratulated him. And, at least for the time being, I kept my questions to myself. It didn't feel right to pepper him with curiosity that might be read as skepticism. In the meantime, he looked and sounded happy. Genuinely happy. And I liked that.
As I look back on all this I am fascinated by how interconnected understanding and language were. I did not have the language to describe my friend's situation, and I did not have understanding either. I had not thought of gender and sexuality as separate.

Rector’s Blog, My Daughter’s Sign - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I knew that sign would be more polarizing than a candidate endorsement. I also knew I believed Black Lives Matter. Maybe more than anything, I was impressed with my daughter's audacity, and convicted by the simplicity with which she suggested it. Because I must admit I did not have the courage to imagine putting that sign in our yard. I wondered if it would cause problems with any of my parishioners. I wondered if it would bother any of my neighbors. I wondered if they'd think things about me that weren't true. I wondered if they'd find out things about me that were true. I wondered if a sign like that would be defaced. But I was proud of my daughter. So, I said OK. Well, that's not true. I said let me talk to your mom about it, but in my heart, I had already said OK. And my wife agreed. I still wondered all those things, and so did she. But we got the sign and we put it up right in our front yard.
Nobody has defaced it. Nobody has even commented on it, to be honest, except one guy at a nursery my wife went to. She was showing him a picture of the front of our house asking him for advice on what kinds of bushes to buy and he gave her grief about the sign, saying she was getting political by showing him the picture. My wife hates confrontation and hates signs more than I do, and here she was hearing about it from a stranger at the nursery. She was courteously resolute in her response to him, which made him feel embarrassed. She chose boxwoods and he put them in the car for her.
Now it's been nearly 3 years. And the sign isn't looking so good. All the other signs in the neighborhood have gone away - most of them shortly after November 2020. And here we are with our Black Lives Matter sign, a White family in a White house in a White neighborhood. And I have to make a decision. Do we take it down?

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

Of course, I'm not an actor. I'm a priest. But Nicholson had a profound influence on my life. I mean, I was a good little fundamentalist Christian, so his fast-living reputation was not really for me growing up. But he had this way about him that just bowled me over. He seemed always to be utterly himself in whatever he did - even while convincingly playing fantastic characters. He was the Joker, or McMurphy, or J.J. Gittes, or Col. Jessup, or Melvin Udall, but at the same time he was Jack! And I loved that. When I was in college, my buddy Wes and I visited Hollywood and made our film lover's pilgrimage to Grauman's Chinese Theater. This is the spot where many famous actors have put their hand and foot prints into the cement. I got down on my knees in front of Jack's signature and placed my hands in his handprints. They fit perfectly. Wes' hands fit in James Stewart's. We floated away.
It's a strange thing to call someone your inspiration when you haven't actually followed in their footsteps. A few years back I was at a concert and I ran into a comedian named Emo Phillips. He is not terribly famous, but when I was younger I had seen a stand-up special of his that was so absurd and outlandish that it had turned my idea of comedy upside down. I walked up to him that night and introduced myself. He was very gracious. I told him that he had been a big inspiration to me growing up. "Is that so?" he asked, "what do you do?" I said I was a priest, and without missing a beat he said, "Well obviously."

Rector’s Blog, Where is God - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Where is God when things are terrible? Where is God when I pray for the healing of a loved one and they get sicker? Where is God when I pray for their healing and they die instead? Where is God when people are being torn apart by AR-15 bullets?
Where is God?I ask this question a lot, and I get asked it a lot. A friend who is really going through it recently asked me, and followed up by saying they were not asking rhetorically. It's not a new question. Some biblical scholars believe that the Book of Job is the earliest story in our Scriptures. Which means not only is "Where is God?" not a new question - it might be the oldest question anyone who believed in God ever asked. And it's important to remember that "Where is God?" is asked most frequently by people who believe in God, because we often think it's a question rooted either in faithlessness or cynicism. But in my experience it is one of the most faithful questions anyone can ask.
Where is God?I need to tell you that I will not answer this question in anything like a satisfactory way. So please know that going forward. Just the same, my first answer is that God is with us. This is the stated belief of the Christian - even when we don't understand, even when we question, even when we doubt, even when we are furious with God. God is with us. When I was growing up, the spectacular Bette Midler sang, "God is watching us from a distance." It was beautiful and it was believable, but it was also not true - at least not according to the Christian narrative. We say that God is here right now.

Rector’s Blog, Raise Your Hand - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

The first time I ever got kicked out of class was for arguing with my teacher. I was in 5th grade and Mr. Ahlers said that dinosaurs never existed. This was actually not the point of whatever he was teaching - it just came out while he was talking about something else: A very casual denial of dinosaurs. I raised my hand. He called on me. "I'm sorry, did you say there were no dinosaurs?" That's right, he said, and when I asked him why he said that he said they weren't in the Bible.
I attended a private Christian school, so Mr. Ahlers was allowed to say this, but I had never actually heard it before. I didn't know one could just believe there were no dinosaurs. You should know at this point that I was not a science-oriented kid. I did not like educational programming - and to this day I still try not to learn anything while watching TV if I can help it. I have a son who memorizes animal and dinosaur facts and I love that about him, but that has never been me. But still, as a ten-year-old I had heard of dinosaur fossils and bones. Which is why I immediately asked him what about the fossils and bones.
Mr. Ahlers said that God had put those in the ground. I asked why God would do that and he said in order to test our faith. I expressed incredulity. He doubled down, "What? Don't you think God could create fossils and bones and put them in the ground to test us?" To which I responded, "Of course I think he could do that, I just don't think God would be such a jerk." And that, my friends, was when I was kicked out of class.

Rector’s Blog, Listening for Love - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

First a word on anger: Anger is not anti-love. And it is a misguided understanding of love that makes us equate anger with hatred. As I wrote last year, God gets angry. And God is Love. Our Scriptures paint a consistent picture of a God who gets angry when they see people in positions of power marginalize and oppress the powerless in God's name. God's anger is not arbitrary but is inflamed by injustice and inhumanity. And God's anger is not hate. It is an extension of love.
My parishioner's expression of anger was an expression of love and an act of courage. And it reminded me of all the times I had sat on my thumbs and kept myself from confronting friends or family when they dehumanized others, because I didn't want to rock the boat. I didn't want to be unpleasant myself.

When we deny ourselves the natural emotion of anger as a response to injustice, marginalization, or dehumanization, we are denying the voice of God that stirs within us. And when I deem a woman's anger unattractive, unseemly, undesired, I am denying the presence of that same God that dwells within them.

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.