Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friends,

This week two images have stuck with me - there are photographs at the bottom of this email of them! The first was found in the Church on Tuesday morning on the way to a Committal service in the Columbarium. There I found evidence of childhood theology in the West Transept. There is a miniature Altar over there and I often find the little battery operated tea lights in new arrangements when I go to check on that part of the Church during the week. This week the child doing this theology had a lovely image left for me - a lit tea light in the play Chalice, an image of the light of Jesus emanating even when no one else could see it.

The second image below is a beautiful mess. After two weeks of a rotation of sicknesses in my household I set about to clean my office from the week prior to that, where I found my two Eucharistic Visitation sets and two of the Church’s. I shouldn’t have left them un-cleaned and taken care of for that long, but here we are. As I started the cleaning process I remembered where they had been - one to a hospital, one with holy oil to the deathbed of the person whose life we commended in the Columbarium on Tuesday, one set on an end of year Holy Hike with the Beloved in the Desert community on Mt Lemmon, one set to visit seniors at an Assisted Living complex near by.

These two images - the play that demonstrates the layering knowledge of the faith in the life of a child, and the work of caring for the people of this faith with that same light, have stuck with me this week. These signs of life in the midst of death, images of Easter in the midst of quiet duties, are signs of life for me.

The Eucharist, Holy Communion, means so many things - the body and blood of Jesus, given for the life of the world, sustenance for the work of this life, a reminder of our dependence and God’s forgiveness and generosity, praise, our central act of worship. The Eucharist “…announces what the community’s life means, where the roots of its understanding and its possibilities are; and as such it is transforming, a recreative act - a human activity radically open to the creative activity of God in Jesus…Every Sacrament is a sharing in Easter, in the paschal mystery.”* For a rather serious former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams shares some delight in his phrasing - the Eucharist is a recreative act. We join in creation, in divine play, in holy attention when we join together at Holy Eucharist.

May the light of Christ shine in you wherever you go today - a sacrifice, life, forgiveness, praise, and play - the good news.

In Christ,
-Mtr Taylor

*Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel by Rowan Williams, p 52

There is no Holy One like the Lord,
no one besides you;
there is no Rock like our God.
1 Samuel 2:2, from today’s Daily Office readings

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8, from today’s Daily Office readings