Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friend,

Rachel Held Evans wrote in her last book, “Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again” about how she has known and loved the Bible in various stages of life.

As a child she was so fluent in Scripture and so captivated by it that she easily saw her world as overlapping with the characters that she knew. For instance, she writes about how she would not look back after their car pulled away from their house in case she might turn into a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife! She writes about how in adolescence the scripture went from Story Book to Rule Book, and later to a book that contradicted itself and wasn’t adding up anymore. This challenge propelled her into community as she knew she wanted to love the text that led her to Jesus again.

Wrestling with the text as a Christian, a writer, and someone trying to figure out how to live her life felt so urgent to her that she blogged and wrote and studied and contributed to a community of online and in person Christians seeking to love Jesus too for years.

Within that community she turned a corner and considered that the Bible might just be alright as it is. Complicated, messy, ancient, divine. Her journey is truly worth reading about-check out Inspired in the Little Shop or from the library (I listened to the audiobook version on the Libby app.)

Evans eventually joined a liturgical tradition, she became Episcopalian, and learned much from the layers of teaching and tradition the Anglican Communion has to share, and brought much to her circles within it, I am sure. Those rhythms of scripture reading, liturgical changes, ritual, and communal practices of feasting and fasting act as a prism and enable us to see God’s presence, love, being, in new ways through various seasons.

The crisis of COVID-19’s overlap with Lent may be an experience that layers into what Lent means to us. The wilderness and "the already-but not yet," is a little too profound for many of us right now. Though I would not liken our shared experience of social distancing to a fast, it’s too tight a connection to make I think, it is perhaps the first time that I have really “felt” a fast. To hunger for something that shows you the way to the deeper hunger for God, that shows you the gift of God's mercy in the present moment.

I know this moment for us may not be or feel tidy for a while. In this wilderness, in this longing, may our desire for God remind us of God's presence and mercy always. May the communities we access by phone, letter, zoom, or through neighbor's care for one another be manna in this wilderness, and may God's love for us show through the prism of the current moment.

In Christ,
Mtr Taylor