“Room for that and more” by Terri Polley

  Posted on November 11, 2020  by admin  No comments

I so want to be a better person.  A more Christ-like person.  Every morning when I wake up and drink my coffee, read my morning readings and say my morning prayers, I resolve, again, to be just that.  I will remember today, I tell myself, that in every encounter with another living being, I will see the Christ in that person.  I will look for the divine in their eyes.  “Trample not on any,” Samuel Taylor Coleridge says.  “The name of God may be written upon that soul thou treadest on.”

Then I watch the morning news.  Let’s just say, by 8:30 a.m., I am seeing the speck in many others’ eyes but ignoring the plank in my own.

At moments like these, I am grateful for the radical welcome that is St. Paul’s.  Whoever I am, whatever I believe, wherever I am going, whomever I love, I am always welcome.  I now add the following.  Whomever I voted for.  Wait.  Really?  No matter whom I voted for, I am welcome?  Yes, especially that, especially now.  In the election’s aftermath, we continue to live in uncertain times.  Some may feel hope.  Some may feel bereft.  Some, angry.  Some, joyful.  Some may feel bewildered.  Some may feel afraid.    In the family that is St. Paul’s we have room for all of that and more.  I know this with certainty.

With that radical welcome, here is a radical invitation.  Come.  Come to St. Paul’s.  Walk the grounds.  Step into the hush of the church.  Heal.  Be healed.  This year, this 2020, none of us are unscathed.  We all are wounded.  We all can help each other heal.  And in the healing, let’s remember a radical truth.  The name of God is written upon each of our souls.

I promise to keep trying to remember that.  Can we all keep trying?  The name of God.