"Find Your Way Home: Words from the Street, Wisdom from the Heart" -- a review of a book by the Women of Magdalene

We have dedicated ourselves to end global poverty because we believe that the brokenness of the world -- particularly when some benefit from the brokenness of others -- prevents all of us from enjoying the abundance of life God dreams for us. That's why we call our movement Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation. Because it's not just about providing a meal, or even an education ... it's about healing the brokenness. It's about the church's mission to "reconcile all people to God and each other in Christ."

The women of Magdalene are some of the most remarkable people I have met on this journey. They are a community of women based in Nashville, TN. They come from as deep brokenness as you will find on this planet. They are survivors of lives of violence, prostitution and drug abuse. And they have not only survived that life but have found that abundance of life Christ dreams for all of us not just from help from above our outside but in the eyes, ears and arms of one another.

"Find Your Way Home" (Abingdon Press) is an accumulation of the wisdom of 11 years of community living of these women who were given a chance to escape their former lives in the intentional community known as Magdalene House. It is exquisite in its simple power. It's a book you could read in an hour --- but it took me days. Because every brief chapter. Every piece of wisdom. Every story pregnant with humanity begs to be pondered, sat with, prayed and even wept over.

Find Your Way Home is a Rule of Life from this community of women. It's a handbook of wisdom that has helped them survive and thrive. Like all Rules of Life it's essentially a community interpretation of THE Rule of Life of Holy Scripture. And like our Christian faith itself, it is Word incarnate ... enfleshed in the lives of the women that leap out from the pages.

I have had the honor of spending time with this community of women on several occasions, and so there were times when I heard their voices and saw their faces as I turned the pages. But you don't need to have spent time with these women to have this book change you. As Magdalene's amazing founder, the Rev. Becca Stevens, says "While our story is particular, the problems of prostitution, violence and drugs are universal. We have residents from all over the U.S. and Latin America and have met with women from widely scattered regions of the world, including Russia, Ecuador, Botswana, Rwanda, Sudan and Thailand, all of whom tell similar stories about how sexual abuse, not prostitution, is the oldest form of abuse."

As I turn the pages, I see the faces of pain and brokenness not just from our city streets but from the mining communities in Western Ghana, where girls who should be in Brownies sell themselves for food. But this is a book and these are lives that are not about despair .. but a sure and certain hope that is pure Gospel. A hope that does not ignore or sugar-coat the brokenness of the world but says with a clear and beautiful voice that death in all its forms does not have the last word. That Christ has the last word -- always -- and Christ, for these women, was found when two or three gathered in his name. When they became the Women of Magdalene.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I know I will read it again and again and again, finding new wisdom each time. I hope it will do more than that, though. I pray it will give me the strength and desire to put the book down and go out in the streets and meet the saints of God who walk there. And spread Christ's love to them as these women have spread it to each other.

"On Sacred Ground" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

It could have been the sun
Blushing from kissing the day goodbye,
Or the reflection off a creek on a late afternoon.
It could have been an early Redbud blooming,
Startled awake by the beauty of the day,
Or a field of fire-pink rising from the ashes of winter.
It called as deep calls to deep.

I followed it deep into the hollow of my woods.
It was fear and liberation walking down the aisle
Toward the altar and the author of life.
I kicked off my shoes so I could feel my feet
Bound for seasons, walking on a wet, cold ground.
I wanted to fall to my knees but hope outweighed despair.
In the whitest flames I was consumed,
And felt a Pentecostal crown set upon my head.
In dancing shadows I felt the pain of poverty
And the burden of riches that feel like death.

I heard nothing but God’s voice rising,
Not just from the flame, but the woods itself.
My face, hot to the touch, was soothed by salty gratitude.
The smell of lavender, olive and geranium
Rose like incense uncontained on upward drafts.
The vision was of fire, or maybe desire.
It melted my heart as easily as iron in the kiln.
My heart was fashioning itself to love.
Ash and sacred oil clung to my skin like manna.

Turning away with an aftertaste burning my heart,
I grieved this specter may never light this ground again,
But pray its light carries me through interminable nights,
Unforgiving waters and undue seasons.
Putting my shoes back on my beloved feet,
I turn from myself so that this fresh heart of flesh
Can grow and flower in its transfigured grace.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has worked with her parish to found a school in Ecuador and to support women's industry in Rwanda. Read her bio here.

"Harbingers of Truth" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

I was walking in the beautiful woods in North Carolina when a crow's caw caught my attention. The crow has a distinct and familiar song,but this old crow, sitting in a low branch sang a strange new song. It had more notes, and it sounded almost backwards. It was startling and brought me from my day dream into the power and presence of the woods I was walking in.

The crow is known as a harbinger of truth, so to hear him sing a new song made me think about hearing a new truth that shifts the other truths that live in us to make room for a new one. It is similar to the heart shifting and making room for a new baby. The new truth becomes part of all the other truths we have already let sink into our hearts. There are many thoughts in the world, only some sink in past our thick skin, a smaller amount moves past our cynical thoughts, and only one in a million make it beyond the boarders of our guarded hearts and take residence in the sacred place that is our moral ground. That is the place that influences our actions and moves us to act in faith without fear.

The old crow with the new song reminded me of the great gift of new and deep truth that broadens and expands our horizons. Learning new truth is what makes the gospels a living world and our faith such a joy. The truth comes to all of us, not like a nice finished piece of art, but like a tapestry, made from the thousands of threads sewn together from fragmented memories and bits of insight. It takes a patience and prayer to weave the pieces together into a work of art in progress. Each tapestry is as unique as the fingerprints on the hands of the weaver. The piece,if made well, gets more intricate and bigger for the truth seekers. To be such a truth seeker is a high, artistic pursuit, it is not for the faint of heart or hand.

In the 25th chapter of Matthew, Jesus has finished his time at the temple, he has confronted the religious authorities who claim to hold the truth, and he knows the plot to kill him has begun. He is two days from his arrest after the Passover and he goes to the Mount of Olives with his disciples to conclude his teachings. He is preparing them for the lives they will have to lead without him in their presence. They will kill him for all the new truths he is speaking with authority and for all the people he is drawing towards himself. So he speaks to them in parables and tells them stories to assure them that he is with them, that they should not be afraid even though they don't know what is coming, and that they need to go back out into the world, trim their lamps, carry more oil, share their talents, and rejoice in the new spirit that will lead them into truth.

He tells them not to have the attitude of the Sadducees about religious tradition that refuses to change, develop or grow. They bury the truth in the ground, with no light and no growth and so it will miss the joy of growing and flourishing in the world. It is written on stone, not on hearts of flesh that change as they beat in the world. We cannot hold on to what we feel comfortable with, or what reassures in changing times or a hard economic forecast, this is when we have to listen to the gospels anew, hear the song of the crow again, and make room to learn new things and share the message with the world that needs to hear it.

Howard Thurman, a wonderful theologian of the 20th century, talks about the loneliness of the truth seeker that keeps moving beyond all boundaries and boarders to larger spaces and places where we are challenged again to hear God's calling anew. The crow's new song is a great symbol of the gift of allowing new truth to weave its way into our broad tapestry and share it as part of the unfolding story of the truth of our lives.

This week Roy stopped me in the hallway. Roy is sometimes homeless, sometimes living with a friend, and he has graced this community for several years now. I have known Roy for a long time, but mostly we just talk in passing, and he always reminds me that he prays for me and my family. Sometimes he tells stories about the police or his health or some injustice that has occurred in his life. And sometimes I don't pay attention; it's like the crow's voice that drowns into the noise of the woods themselves. But this time when he was walking by he said, "Becca, do you know what to pray for?" And like the strange song of the crow in North Carolina, I was startled and stopped in my tracks. I almost didn't understand the question, but the clarity of the question coming from my old acquaintance, made me take it very seriously. "I don't know Roy; I don't know what to pray for sometimes." "You need to pray for truth. Then you need to preach the truth you learn. If you pray for God's truth and then teach us what you learn, we all grow. You don't remember how young you were when you started" he said, "but I remember, you didn't know what you were doing. God has been kind to you. You need to keep praying for God's spirit to lead you."

I am grateful to the crow and I am grateful to Roy and I am grateful for Howard Thurman, all reminders to be open to new truth in our lives and to be reformed in God's love. I want my tapestry to grow and be a more loving piece. I want your tapestry to weave new images so that you can love better. It means we have to take the truths we know, and risk them and seek new truth. Pray for truth, let it take root and blossom in your heart, let it weave into the fabric of your life in practical ways, and then preach it, so we all grow and share in the joy of the kingdom.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has worked with her parish to found a school in Ecuador and with the women of Magdalene to build relationships and cottage industries in Rwanda. Read her bio here.

"Moses and the Starfish Thrower" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

In the old story, two people walk down the beach as one bends down and throws a starfish back in the ocean. After being questioned about the futility of it in the face of a million starfish on the beach, the thrower's insight that to the starfish it makes a difference is intended to inspire us to help our brothers and sisters who are suffering. Seen the from the starfish's perspective it is life-saving and merciful parable. Seen from the perspective of the more practical and flippant walker, the parable becomes a call to humility and loving-kindness. But from the perspective of the guy who keeps walking and throwing starfish, there is a touch of sadness in the seemingly endless task ahead. You can picture him finally leaving the inspired friend behind and walking alone on the beach, pitching starfish and wondering if he is going to be throwing starfish for the rest of his life. He may wonder if he will be throwing starfish while forces more powerful than he will continue to wash a greater number of starfish up on shore. He may wonder if he will be throwing some of the same damn starfish again when they come back with the next low tide. He keeps throwing starfish, and even though it means something to the starfish, maybe sometimes he wonders what it says about the meaning of his own life.

When I hear the parable from the starfish throwers view, I see a single man walking along a lonely beach. There is more to the theology behind this story of starfish throwing though.

The image it has etched in my mind undermines our ability to throw starfish well and ignores the foundation of walking that path of faith.

Moses walked and led the multitude in the desert, ascending and descending Mount Sinai to write countless laws given to him by God to offer the people as a guide. He spent forty years in the desert leading people towards the promise land. The people are depicted in the story of exodus as helpless as starfish, victims of a force greater than themselves and unable to determine how to respond. Moses just keeps the faith, offers his life for their sake, all the time searching for his God and following the path before him. His career included dictating the Laws in Numbers and Leviticus for his people to follow to be faithful and prosper. Toward the end of his life, when the Lord calls him to Mount Sinai God tells him he can only show him the back of his head. He is faithful and doesn't look upon the face of God until God has passed before him and he glimpses at the back of his head. A founder of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish faith, he is only allowed to see the back of his head. Whenever you or I are mired in uncertainty about our calling or our discernment of God's will, all we have to do is remember our Father Moses. He began by floating at the mercy of the Egyptians in a reed basket down a river with crocodiles. He found his calling on Holy Ground before a burning bush with no idea how that would translate into freedom for his people. He fought a powerful army only to wander in the desert for forty years.

He kept leading them and dreaming of the day he could stop wandering and find the place he could call home. At the end of Deuteronomy, when he is at the end of his 120 years of wandering, God shows him the land. "I can't let you cross to the promise land", God says. "You have to die on this side of the Jordon." Moses even dies as God commands and after the people grieve him for thirty days, they start walking towards Jerusalem. It kills me that he never got to stand in Israel. It is similar to the seemingly sad story of the starfish and can make one almost fall into despair.

That is, until you read this Gospel in Matthew 22. Jesus uses Moses' words when he is confronted in Jerusalem. He uses the words that Moses heard from God in the endless desert that he told the Israelites to write on their children's hearts in this book of Deuteronomy. Jesus, at the critical confrontation with the religious authority, doesn't bother quoting the Minor Prophets, he speaks Moses' words. The faith of Moses is alive and well and lived beyond the Jordon, beyond the words of other prophets and was carried to the whole world.

It is Moses himself that began the tradition of starfish throwing when he demanded that we learn how to love God, self and neighbor and self. He spoke the words of God and we have been carrying the message through the desert, through every major religion, and throughout the world for all time. It only feels futile when we think we are the only starfish throwers. We come from a long and powerful line and we get our instructions from the creator of the universe through the life and witness of Moses himself. There are thousands of starfish throwers to walk the beaches and when we are faithful in our stretch, the vision of helping starfish throughout the world feels doable.

One of the gifts this fall has been traveling and speaking about the community of St. Augustine's grounded in the corporeal acts of mercy and the ministry of Magdalene. Everywhere we go we hear stories of people who are tending the starfish on their beaches. It is a beautiful, broad and powerful image to enhance the old story. We can imagine the story again; no longer lonely and sad as the starfish thrower runs into others who are connected to him in his desire to love God, self, and neighbor with compassion and faith. When you take a step back and see the power in the thousands of people throwing them from many different beaches it fills you with a sense of community and purpose. You see yourself in a long line beginning with Moses and we can keep going with all our hearts and write it again on the hearts of our children.

When the prophets and preachers from the time of Joshua crossed into the promise land, they took Moses with them. The religious authorities in Jesus life knew this Law. They knew the Torah given by Moses and that we are required to do deeds of loving kindness. Jesus reminded them that the law itself depends on deeds of love. The words and works of love have continued to echo through a great and powerful line and words like Martin Luther King who knew that even though he saw the Promised Land he may not get there. When you look into the cosmos, a professor explained to me that you are really looking into the past, because we can only see to our beginning, or when the first light reached us. In the same way, when we look at the deeds of love, we are not just looking at the present; we are looking at the entire history of love in the world. It is the most powerful force for change in the world, and it is a gift to be able to keep walking, and do our part, knowing love was our beginning, and will carry us back to God---our promised land.

"Beneath the Dry Creek Bed" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

The week before our riverside baptism, I got a call that the creek was, "bone dry". I thought about canceling, and logistically trying to move almost three hundred people to a new location was going to be impossible. Instead I thought maybe we are supposed to stand in a dry creek when there is no water, and see what happens. There were nine people to baptize and I wanted to make sure they and their families didn't feel slighted. So a cousin of a friend shipped us some bottles of hurricane Fay water that had just landed in Florida and we distilled it, added some myrh and lavender, and put it in glass containers. At the baptism a beautiful band was playing "God's Going to Trouble the Water" and had four priests standing in the creek bed with healing oils made at Thistle Farms and anointed each baby and adult on their hands, feet, forehead, and mouth.

I was a little fearful of how it was all going to unfold, but think of the day one of the best days of baptizing I have ever been a part of. Everyone was so loving and the water from the grateful tears would have been enough to hold another baptism. I am so glad we didn't let the fear of no
water stop us from coming to the creek. It is a great reminder to me to stand by all the dry creeks I have known in my life, and feel grace and mercy coming my way like cool streams. It is powerful to stand on a bed of rocks and trust water is flowing underneath the limestone, we
just can't see it.

Beneath the Dry Creek Bed
by becca stevens

Worn Limestone in a dry creek bed
Reveals chapped dirt and broken roots.
We stand on the skin of the earth,
Barefoot and thirsty, through this dry season.
We baptize babies in sweat and tears above
Ashes and dust that remind us we are human.
We celebrate the waters that led us all
To this blessed dry creek.

Dry beds teach us the bounty of a drop
Falling our way like grace.
Dry beds assure us even hurricanes die
Given time and space on forgiveness's shore.
Dry beds keep us searching for new life
That cuts its path through rocky ground.
Dry Beds give us hope in bounty coming
In new waves because water never dies.
Dry Beds point us to believe in water that
Runs deeper than we know.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. Worked with her parish to found a school in Ecuador. Read her bio here.

"Means by no means" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

A street encounter with Roger Miller's classic song "King of the Road" prompts reflections on the Feeding of the Five Thousand. On scarcity and abundance. Remembering that we are people of means by no means ... and that God provides more than enough. And how she found herself and her community challenged to live the call to joyful faith in the midst of scarcity.





The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has also worked with St. Augustine's to found a school in Ecuador. Read her bio here.

"Love the whole world, one person at a time" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens.

I have been thinking about what it means to love the world. A group of seven women from the Magdalene Community just returned home safe and sound from Rwanda. It was amazing, and we thankful to be with our families again. The women we met fell in love with the message and community of Magdalene. We read letters the women from Nashville sent and in response, the women who are part of the sisters of Rwanda started sharing their experiences of surviving incest, violence, addiction and prostitution. Their staff said that they had never heard the women talk so openly. In gratitude and solidarity with the women of Magdalene, the sisters of Rwanda wrote letters and sent video messages to us. The stories are hauntingly similar.

Rwanda is full of people walking around with ghosts, while new life is strapped to the backs of women. Hearty crops are blooming next to people so poor they can't feed their children. It was so much to take in sometimes my legs would shake or my head would throb. Our small group carried you all with us the whole time. It was the right trip and we all think there are many more villages of women who want us to be with them. We found the cousins to the thistles. One of the many lessons I learned in Rwanda was that rape and love are universal actions. Neither get lost in translation and our job is to love the whole world, one person at a time.

Seeing women in traditional African dress with goggles and rubber gloves preparing to make soap is awesome. They were so excited when we started the second morning, they had already started cleaning the equipment. We went to villages where women waited all day to see us. They were stunning, poised, and almost whispered what they needed to tell us about their lives and their need for hope and money to keep going. We went to the market and purchased shovels, seeds, and sewing machines in response to some of their requests. Sometimes its just a fishing pole people need. They already know how to fish. The faith we saw was inspiring and a little intimidating. The singing and dancing were beautiful. The landscape is hilly with mists that come in like sweet blankets. It is strange to think of a million people dying on that land. It is hard to love the world, but if we can't, nothing else means anything to me.

"The Moral Issue of Suffering - The Gospel of John" -- by the Rev. Becca Stevens

John’s Gospel message this morning really begins while Jesus is walking with his disciple down the road after people threw stones at him in the Temple. Rejected from the flock, they meet a blind man. Jesus stops, even though it is the Sabbath, and makes an ointment from his spit mixed with mud and places it over the man’s eyes and he is healed. The religious authorities then question the man and throw him out as well. This is Jesus’ response and he says there is a gatekeeper who knows who the real shepherds are. It invites the listener to move beyond doctrinal issues that separate flocks and declares the gatekeeper is concerned about a higher imperative which is the moral issue to care for the suffering sheep, wherever they are and whose ever they are. That is the only way sheep are safe, and the voice of God is recognized.

On the eve of our journey to Rwanda by eight women from the community of Magdalene and Thistle Farms this Gospel is indeed good news. This journey allows us to care for women who are suffering: women trying to find sanctuary and freedom after surviving lives of violence, addiction, and prostitution. Their suffering has been and continues to be a moral issue because they are our sisters. That morality is not confined to people who share our doctrinal beliefs, it is not bound by nation/state boarders, and it affects people of all races and ages. It affects all our communities, the culture we live in, the health of the world, and how we raise our children.

Last week, one of the residents of Magdalene, our community dedicated to women who have suffered similar trauma here in the United States, spoke to the student body of Vanderbilt Law School about her experience of being the only teenager to ever testify in a federal case against a huge child prostitution and pornography ring. She talked about what a long journey it has been so far and about the guilt and fear she faced in naming the men who abused her. She talked some about coming to terms with being a child of God and dreaming of a future and helping others. For her, the dreaming includes finishing school and going to college and ministering to others who have suffered. One of the Law students raised her hand and asked, “Where do you want to go to school”. She held the mike and said, “Maybe here”. Those thin lines that some of us still draw in spite of our selves to separate flocks were erased with surgical precision in her words. “Maybe here.”

Eleven years ago when Magdalene was created we wrote that we wanted to be a testimony to the truth that in the end love is more powerful then all the forces that drive women to the streets. Those streets are hell, I have been told, and I haven’t met a woman who hasn’t been raped and who isn’t destitute. The Gospel says such suffering should cause us all to stop and make mud ointments to soothe the pain, even if we are at a place in our lives where we feel a little out of the fold ourselves. Over 115 women have graced the threshold of the Magdalene community as residents and a thousand more have come as seekers to help and find healing. Seventy-two percent of the residents have graduated and I am so thankful to still get to be a part of such a flock. In that sheepfold people share the role of shepherding, we get to talk about the freedom of forgiveness we have known, how mercy runs deeper than abuse, and about how we have to learn to love without judgment each day.

A month ago Katrina Davidson, Susan Sluser, and I drove to Tuscaloosa, AL to preach, teach and sell our natural bath and body care products to an Episcopal Church. They welcomed us through their gate. We shared stories, talked about ministry, hugged as friends and even laughed about bath and body care products being the revolutionary tool we use to talk about women’s freedom.

Driving back I thought about the other churches in places like Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, Chicago and New York that have already invited us to come and share our story this year. During the drive back we talked about how it felt like we were a new kind of missionary. Not in the sense that we have a new message, the message is as old as the gatekeeper, but in how we are not going out to convert people to a particular fold, but just trying to reach out to women who are suffering with a balm of Gilead and then go into churches to remind them that the moral issue of suffering is the matter of faith to confront. Dorothy Day, a beloved saint, says that you cannot help a sister or brother in need without getting naked first. The moral issue of the suffering of another requires us to look at our own suffering and remember all those who mixed their spit with mud to help us sit in this sanctuary today. All humanity knows suffering. The special gift of this fold has been to witness how love works in the lives of some of the most vulnerable voices in the world and hear their call as shepherds.

So we get to go to Rwanda and make candles and soap and hear stories of suffering on a colossal scale. In saying that we are coming, good things are already happening. The Serena hotel chain in Rwanda and Tanzania has sent us swatches so that they can order candles and soaps for all their rooms. A fundraiser by Bono’s group in July in Europe has ordered five hundred candles for their cause; a church in a remote village has invited us to preach on Sunday, the minister of gender and the embassy want to help. Before we step foot on the plane we are learning that we should never doubt that our compassion, our fire for justice, and our moral outrage, is needed and welcomed in a world with so much suffering.

This community is my sheepfold. It is where I was allowed in the gate stumbling always through what it means to be a shepherd. I have learned so much from so many here who have shepherded me. This has been the wandering flock where many of us have found sanctuary to grieve and freedom to grow in our faith. This Gospel invites us all to step through the gate again and care about the whole world and weep unapologetically for the suffering and our own blindness. This Gospel reminds us no one is outside the gatekeeper’s flock because he spent his entire ministry caring for the suffering of others on the way to offer his life for the sake of love. For that same loves sake, we are given the gift of caring for God’s sheep. Amen.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has worked with her parish to found a school in Ecuador. Read her bio here.

Meanwhile...

by The Rev. Becca Stevens

Following the path of Jesus can drive you crazy. I pray impatience with the Gospel is not a deadly sin! While we may not necessarily want to skip the journey, and get to the destination, we at least would like to move ahead on our spiritual path. Lord, each week, inch by inch, the church doles out only a tiny snippet of the story of Jesus on the way to Jerusalem. Each week we preach and hear the Gospel a paragraph at a time. Sometimes it is excruciatingly slow.

One section of the Gospel of Luke is called, “The Journey”. It begins in the 9th chapter after the transfiguration when Jesus has “his eyes set on Jerusalem”. It continues until the 19th chapter of Luke with the triumphant entry into the Jerusalem. These 10 chapters take months to read a paragraph at a time. It took Jesus months as well, even though he could have traversed that amount of territory in a couple of weeks, easy. Months after the transfiguration we find we are still wandering with Jesus right outside Jerusalem in Jericho. He may have had his eyes set on Jerusalem but his heart is sidetracked feeding, healing, teaching, and praying. His disciples tried to keep him moving. They rebuke parents for bringing their infants to Jesus, but Jesus lets all the children come anyway. He spends time visiting Pharisees, tax collectors, healing lepers, telling parables and debating in the synagogues and streets. And those are just the events they recorded. The image of a map with a hundred dotted lines going every which way indicating all the detours gives us a picture of what on the way may mean.

On the way, he is slowly and patiently teaching his disciples. At the beginning of the 12th Chapter the very first words to his little flock are, “meanwhile”. That is the part that undoes me.

Meanwhile, while we preach a paragraph at a time, meanwhile, while we take up one more collection, meanwhile we eat a bite of bread and take a sip of wine.

Meanwhile, the world is burning for his message of radical love, the war is four and half years old, the number of people below the poverty level in America is on the rise, and the Nobel Peace Prize has been given in recognition of the crisis of global warming. Meanwhile, he is within fifty miles of Jerusalem in an occupied nation in which people are being persecuted. Meanwhile he takes his own sweet time saying, don’t worry about tomorrow, give everything away, give thanks and watch and wait.

Meanwhile, two Sudanese women walked into my office.

I had scheduled forty-five minutes for their meeting. They began the meeting by thanking me for my time, my precious time. Then they told me the journey part of their story.

They had been on a long and arduous journey from a long and bloody war that created an entire generation of refuges. They told the story of the death of most of their family, their village being ruined, being separated from their siblings and friends since their childhood in the late 1980’s, fleeing to Egypt and the brutality they faced, the process of becoming refuges and arriving in Nashville in 2000. Finally they are here and safe with their own children. They are now feeling called to return to their hometown and build a school for the orphans of war. They had their eyes set on freedom on a journey that took them 10 years; a journey that should only take a day by plane. They get here and begin to get established. But in their great humility, they were sitting in my office with beautiful thick accents saying they wanted to turn around and go back and help. They said that God had been merciful to them and this was an expression of their gratitude.

The Gospel message came flooding past my pharisaical mind and I could hear the words, “God have mercy on me, a sinner. God forgive my arrogance and impatience. God make hear the cry of others so that I don’t worry if I ever make it to Jerusalem.” These two young women wanted to go back, register themselves as a new organization and get some land for their fellow pilgrims in need. Having been given mercy from the war, they needed to make meaning out of all the suffering. The scars on their legs are reminders we can’t walk fast enough to get away from the pain. We worked on their journey and how to begin to plan for a school when they return.

We can keep moving forward on the journey only to find out we have walked round and round and found ourselves right back where we started saying, “Have mercy on me, a sinner.” I am not ready to go into Jerusalem yet. I need to stand by the side of the road with the blind man, I need to climb a sycamore tree with Zaccheus, I need to stand in the temple with the tax collector and beg for mercy.

Dr. Buttrick, a Professor at Vanderbilt Divinity School, taught us to proclaim the whole story of salvation and not be limited by the lectionary. But sometimes studying a whole paragraph might be too much. We may need to take it slower and stay at a verse long enough to feel it sink in, forgetting the journey and destination for awhile. St. Paul says the Gospel is so rich we need to sip it. Like communion, savored. Digesting slowly what it means to be humble, until we feel it sink into our thick hearts.

It is enough to read, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”, be changed by the words, and the deeds these words provoke, so if we ever get to Jerusalem, we are ready.

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My Night-Time Prayer for Tennessee

In a Cumberland cove by the old Oaks you can hear in the hollow the whispering of our mothers. Near a black willow shaking by the Tennessee River you can hear in the current the laughter of our children. In a field with Pecans and Basswood old enough to trace their ancestors like DARs you can hear the delight of our fathers. Under a hawk perched in a sugar maple limb afire in fall you can hear old farmers’ whistles.

We have found magic in the trees, shelter under a canopy of green, and reverence for their silent witness. We have walked on parched trails with unmoving roots and thin seedlings and prayed for rain and survival. We have buried our beloved in their shade, praying they find some solace.

We live in a land that beholds trees that have clapped their hands like the fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision:

Hemlocks shed cones like tears for the seasons gone by. Sycamores tell the story of the tornado of ‘98 in their bark. Chinquapin Oaks exhale poetry, Catalpas drip with ornamental pods, and Ginkgos put us in our humble place. Poplars call us to passion that comes only from loving the woods.

We live on a limestone foundation, in moon light and bow our heads in thanksgiving. In this prayer we feel the dusty voices of our ancestors rising from the chert to join our thanksgiving for these sacred woods:

God give us vision to preserve these woods. Let the moonlight carry our meager prayers to your heart. Fill our heart with love like this heavenly host that holds us all as your children. Knit us close to these trees so that we teach another to love these woods, and they will be saved.

Amen.

The Rev. Becca Stevens is a priest, author, rector of St. Augustine's Church in Nashville, TN and founder of Magdalene House. She has also worked with St. Augustine's to found a school in Ecuador. Read her bio here.

Tomorrow: The Rev. Devon Anderson