"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.

"Our Baptismal Promise: It's Not 'Politics as Usual!" -- by Elaine Thomas

We held an election in Pennsylvania yesterday. You may have heard something about it. The Democratic warriors trying to score the knockout blow against their opponent. At this writing, it would appear that the primary season is destined to continue. We’ll have the privilege of more weeks of hearing platitudes and promises that they occasionally might mean and perhaps might be able to deliver, though not likely in the grandiose forms in which they are now being presented. It’s all politics, and year after year I hold out hope for something real and genuine, as I do still, not quite hopelessly jaded to the process!

What would happen if you and I did not take our promises seriously, knowing that we might not really have to keep them in the end? If we could promise anything in return for something we desired, knowing that we might not really have to deliver? We’ve all made one big promise in our baptism – we signed on to a covenant, irrevocable and permanent. And even if you were an innocent and unaware infant, those promises made on your behalf are binding, and you renew them every time you witness a baptism yourself. I know a priest who, just prior to the renewal of the baptismal vows in the liturgy, invites anyone who might not be able to keep those promises to leave for that portion of the service lest they perjure themselves before God. Think about that the next time you promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons and strive for justice and peace among all people.

Have we kept our promise? I read in the paper this morning that the UN has reset the number of dead in Darfur at 300,000. Did we keep our promise to them? We observed the 39th Earth Day yesterday, yet continue to rely on fossil fuels to power our lifestyles and live in a disposable society. Have we kept our promise to the Earth? The number of people in sub-Saharan Africa living on less than a dollar a day has not lessened in the 8 years we’ve been working on the MDGs. Have we kept our promise to them?

Frederick Buechner once preached a sermon in which he imagined the characters in Shakespeare’s plays as oblivious and unaware of God’s presence as we seem so often to be. Juliet and Hamlet and Lady Macbeth know only the confines of the four or five acts of their universe and God in the great beyond is beyond comprehension. “If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right but I cannot see him” (Job 23:8-9) And what if Shakespeare decided to enter the play, to break through the parchment into their limited reality and show his hand? Would that change the evil done to King Lear or prevent the tragedy of Hamlet? Would it make a difference?

Our God did, in fact, break into our existence in the person of Jesus. We did not receive a promise that we would never know pain or suffering or would have all the answers to all the questions. What we received was even better – I will be with you in all the joys and sorrows of your life; I will be with you always, even to the end of the age (Mt. 28:20). And we can do with that what we will, for good or ill. We can do nothing, seeking and serving only the devices and desires of our own hearts. Or we can be the hands and feet of the body of Christ, working to mend this torn creation, to heal the earth and feed the hungry and heal the sick.

And many of us have worked tirelessly to do just that. We have, to the best of our sometimes flat-footed ability, done our best to seek and serve Christ in all persons. And yes, the poor and hungry are still with us, just as Jesus said they would be. Does that mean that our efforts are for nothing? Do we throw up our hands in despair, give up, stop trying?

No, we don’t. We made a covenant. And when we make that covenant with God, we make it with all God’s people, as well. And because we do, lives are being saved because mosquito nets are available to millions of people who need them, sustainable agriculture is feeding those who have known nothing but a life of hunger, relief is provided to those whose homelands are destroyed by war and chaos, AIDS outcasts are brought into community. And all because we continue to say ‘yes’ to the promises we have made.

This isn’t politics as usual, my friends. This is where the rubber meets the road. And we don’t despair because we are people of hope who know that God can take the measly loaves and fish that we have to offer and work miracles. We simply have to be willing to bring them forward. So say it with me brothers and sisters: I will, with God’s help.

Elaine Thomas is a member of St. James in Lancaster, PA where she is a member of the Peace and Justice and Stewardship Committees. She is also the EGR and ERD Coordinator for the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. Elaine works for Episcopal Community Services in Philadelphia, a social service agency whose mission is to help individuals and families with multiple needs overcome the impact of poverty.