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News & Resources: Spiritual Spot

Welcome! 

Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

You'll find here occasional writings, a few rants, and hopefully some insights too, about Christian discipleship, the Episcopal Church, and on faith community's life at the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts. At the Epiphany we understand ourselves to be "a welcoming Episcopal community, united in God, called to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to transform the world with love and generosity."


  • July 14, 2022 11:30 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    That’s why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good.

    Romans 8:28, The Message

    At our State of the Church forum on Sunday, April 24, we shared with you what we see as emerging priorities, and the following discussions served as terrific input to our vestry retreat at the end of that month. My last article in the Three Crowns covered some aspects of our vestry retreat, and this one continues that thread.

    As a quick recap, our priorities for 2022 have been reconnecting with each other, increasing our staffing capacity, and expanding our digital ministries. While those priorities continue, our emerging priorities are:

    • Supporting a renewed culture of welcome and invitation to newcomers

    • Creating capacity and resources to enable small groups to help connect us to God and one another

    • Building awareness and commitment to grow our endowment so that its interest funds all our property needs, and 100% of our annual pledge dollars are directed toward growing our ministries.

    During our retreat and in the ensuing time, the vestry has been engaged in a visioning exercise to create “Provocative Proposals” for each of these emerging priorities. Adapted by Rev. Nick from materials and techniques developed by The David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry, Provocative Proposals is an effective technique to stretch us to think beyond our current constraints and to imagine what could be. The proposals we created are available for you to read here.

    Rev. Nick, Nelia, and I discussed these proposals earlier in the week. While on the surface, they may appear to be separate, they are interconnected. I volunteered to create a first-pass graphic to illustrate the interconnected aspects of the proposals.

    We’re attempting to show that if we can (1) create and sustain a renewed culture of welcome, enable staffing to improve marketing and communications, and (2) provide support resources, technology, and training to enable small groups that deepen spirituality, serve the community, and strengthen fellowship, we’ll (3) grow our giving capacity to sustain our campus and expand our ministries.

    Thank you for taking the time to read about our visioning efforts. They are helping to ground us as we look ahead. And we hope to engage with you in further conversation around these efforts in the coming months as we launch our 2023 stewardship campaign.

    With blessings to you all and continued gratitude for your support,
    Dave McSweeney, warden
  • July 07, 2022 10:40 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Interim Director of Youth Ministries Eva Dalzell and Epiphany youthThis Sunday we hear one of the most beloved and well-known stories from scripture: the parable of the Good Samaritan. It is so well known, in fact, that it's hard to not lead to boredom. We know this, already, we say. At the heart of Jesus' teaching is the simple, yet extremely challenging message: "Go and do likewise." At the end of the day, what is at the center of Jesus' ethical teachings is not right thinking, but right action. Who among us doesn't wonder what the right thing to do is these days? If the story of the Good Samaritan gives us any idea, it is to do the thing that centers our neighbor's suffering and pain as that which calls us to action — not our perfect understanding of the situation or moral calculations based on ideological purity. The question is simply: do we act when faced with the suffering of others? Having compassion, loving our neighbor, is much more complicated than apathy, but only one is faithful to God's call in our lives. This is Jesus' teaching — it is simple, but not easy. Of course, this is the life of faith and it is takes our whole lives and living.

    Trusting in God's ways in this world is the light burden of which Jesus speaks. It is light precisely because it is simple and because it is God who carries it with us. Evenmore, we help one another carry this love into the world. We need one another to build us up, strengthen our trust in God, and carry us when we find ourselves at the limits of ourselves. This is, in a very real way, the gift and power of being community together. So, this Sunday, let's give thanks for God's strong arms to carry us and the deep gift of having one another: companions on the way.

    This Sunday, after the 10:000 am service, we will have a reception to celebrate the companionship and leadership of Eva Dalzell, our Interim Director of Youth Ministries, as she ends her time with us and heads to Princeton Theological Seminary to begin a new chapter in her calling. I hope you'll join me in sharing your thanks for her steady and faithful leadership during this time of transition. If you can't be here in person, I hope you'll take a moment to send Eva a message of thanks by emailing her at edalzell@3crowns.org.

    See you Sunday,
    Nick

  • June 30, 2022 3:55 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Purple geoboard with yellow bands in the shape of a crossWhat gets in the way when you try to pray? We are born to pray, created in God's image and with a natural, innate longing to connect with the Creator. It should be easy to pray, and for some of us, sometimes, it is. 

    But what about the other times? When we're overwhelmed — with grief, with anger, with injustice, with despair. Or when our nervous or excited energy is too much. Or, when we’re too busy, too distracted, or too confused about what we're even supposed to be doing when we pray. 

    This past year our parish children have practiced prayer together. These amazing small humans never hesitate to ask "why?" and "how?" and "what is this?" so we needed to explore what prayer is, why we try, and how we can grow in our practice. Like with everything for children, a nice idea has to be played with, or it becomes just a random thing some adult (or teacher, or priest) made us do for a few minutes. 

    Has prayer become for you just a thing some adult (perhaps you yourself) makes you do? How then can you become like the children, learning and enlivening, searching to make prayer your own?

    With children, we easily admit that quiet is hard. And we love to remember that everyone connects differently. Everyone learns differently. Everyone expresses themselves differently. Everyone prays differently. What if we welcomed adults to admit that, too?

    In the back of the church, as you come in the tower doors, you'll see a rainbow of bags. These are worship bags for the children, and they contain different activities to help them hear, feel, pray, and simply be during worship. In these bags are pieces of the prayer practices we worked with this year because we know that movement, our hands, our senses, our minds—these are holy gifts that sustain prayer, rather than derail it. 

    Prayer dough: a soft playdough to roll, to hold, to squeeze, to smell, to shape as we pray. Prayer labyrinths: where we walk our fingers (and ourselves) in and out a long, calm path. Prayer color wheels: where colors, pictures, and words help us to find and name our feelings, and bring our true selves to God. Wax sticks, mandalas and colored pencils. There are many ways to enter into conversation with God. 

    You, fully grown reader, are welcome to try these too. May you feel as welcome as the little ones to explore, to feel, to move, and to find the practices of prayer that unite you with God.

    Bryn

  • June 16, 2022 2:15 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Two dirt paths forking in lush green woodsEvensong on Sunday marked not only the close of that day, but the close of a spring which included a return to many things we weren’t able to do together during the pandemic. Celebrating Pentecost marked another steppingstone in our journey through things that we have missed for three years and it feels good to experience the predictable rhythm of the church year (not that ‘predictable’ is in any danger of returning to my vocabulary). 

    For me, that familiar rhythm also serves to highlight the many ways that we have changed and grown as a church. People who were ‘new’ when we weren’t here to meet them in person are now integral to our life and activities. Midweek is now a part of our rhythm. Children grow older even faster when I don’t see them as often and it is a new group running around the Cloister or Bishop Garden while we meet in Hadley Hall. Amid uncertainty and an unfamiliar path, we embraced new things and took the risk of moving forward with new visions. 

    As Dave McSweeney shared in the newsletter several weeks ago, at our Vestry Retreat in May, Rev. Nick read Joshua 1:1-9 about God’s commissioning of Jacob in the aftermath of Moses’ death and posed questions to us: Where have we been over the past year together? Where are we now, and what crossroads are we facing? In the Midweek Bible Study several weeks later, he read the same passage and asked that group similar questions. At the Mission & Outreach Retreat this past weekend, that group began the day in the chapel with the same reading and similar questions.   

    Each time I hear the words in the passage from Joshua and each time I reflect on the questions, I notice different things and my answers change a bit. Similarly, the conversation within each group evolves in a different way reflecting the experiences and connections in that group. Yet, there are echoes across the conversations that reflect the ties between us and our shared experience of church at Epiphany.

    As we continue to talk about where we are and where we feel called to go, I am energized by what is new and deeply grateful for being with so many of you again in the familiar rhythms of Epiphany.   


    Nelia Newell 

  • June 09, 2022 3:50 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Children from behind with arms around each other's shoulders. One holds a wooden cross.This Sunday is Trinity Sunday — a uniquely odd day of the church year dedicated to a theological doctrine. It may not get your blood pumping, and that's okay. But, the way we think and talk about God makes a difference, because our lives and living are shaped by core beliefs, whether they be religious or not.

    I follow a singer and songwriter named Nick Cave. He has written some amazing lyrics that are weirdly religious, like: 

    I don't believe in an interventionist God
    But I know, darling, that you do
    But if I did, I would kneel down and ask Him
    Not to intervene when it came to you

    Silly, right? Who talks like this? Who would even know what interventionism is as a theological concept? In fact, I haven't heard "interventionist God" outside a systematic theology class. Maybe it's all just nonsense.

    Each month, Nick Cave takes questions from fans and attempts to answer them in longer format writing that he shares with his "The Red Hand Files" email list. I'm on that list. This month, someone asked him plainly: "In your opinion, what is God?" Nick responds simply: "God is love." Does that sound familiar?

    This rock star then goes on to say something so beautifully heartbreaking, I must share it with you. He writes: "(In this world) There is no problem of evil. There is only a problem of good. Why does a world that is so often cruel, insist on being beautiful, of being good? Why does it take a devastation for the world to reveal its true spiritual nature? I don't know the answer to this, but I do know there exists a kind of potentiality just beyond trauma. I suspect that trauma is the purifying fire through which we truly encounter the good in the world."


    The backstory here is that Cave has had two sons die prematurely and tragically in recent years. These words do not come from a soul inexperienced with the realities of this world.

    And, of course, neither are you. None of us is spared the tragedies and chances of this life. We see it all around us, in the headlines, in our relationships, in our hearts. And yet, the good remains. There is good in this world and in our lives. We have one another. You are a gift and a sign of goodness in my life — this I know. Each Sunday, even this oddly and awkwardly theological one like Trinity Sunday, is touched by the unspeakable goodness of coming together, feeling one another's presence, extending our hands to receive the mystery of Christ, and being shaped by actions and words and stories and warm bodies that remind us amidst the despair and devastation that, yes, there is goodness, even now. Hearts opened, hands extended, we say: "Yes, wow, thanks."

    See you Sunday,
    Nick

  • June 02, 2022 1:40 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Seven robed children singing in the chancel of Parish of the EpiphanyDear Friends,

    It feels a bit like cheating (or goal-snatching?), but this ran across my desk and I felt the timing was meant to be. It is a copy of a speech that the British actor and comedian, Alexander Armstrong, gave at a concert at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, organized by the Friends of Cathedral Music there. He is, of course, speaking about the immersive and intense experience of being a chorister in a boarding school. Nevertheless, I have found the stories of choristers from all types of programs to be similar, even if with varying degrees of intensity. It is true, belonging to a more serious choir is much like playing a team sport, yet no-one sits on the bench! And singing is one of the few activities I can think of where children can actually perform at a professional level (and be treated like young professionals, for that matter). As we wrap up the current program year and look forward to summer activities, we are already beginning to plan more substantial programming for young voices in the fall. Now is the perfect time to be thinking about which activities will be most beneficial long-term, worth the commitment of time and energy which is required.

    Jeremy Bruns

    "The Privilege of Choristership" by Alexander Armstrong


    Your Royal Highness, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen: good evening! What a spectacular event this is and what a great honour it is to be a part of it. I am thrilled to be here. Moreover, I am delighted to have the opportunity to talk to you briefly about the tremendous privilege of choristership: the single greatest leg-up a child can be given in life. 

    Now, I know that sounds overblown and, yes, it is a bold claim but the more I think about it the truer I realise it is. Someone made the mistake of asking me during an interview the other day what the benefits are of being a chorister. Well that interview ended up overrunning by half of an hour and I was barely halfway through my list. 

    The most obvious benefit is the total submersion in music. This is a ‘compleat’ musical education by process of osmosis. When you come to hang up your cassock for the final time at the age of 13 you will – without even having realised it was happening because you were just having a lovely time singing – have personal experience of every age and fashion of music from the ancient fauxbourdons of plainchant, to the exciting knotty textures of anthems so contemporary that the composers themselves might very well have conducted you. You will have breathed life into everyone from Buxtehude to Britten to Bach to Bridge to Bax to Brahms to Byrd to Bairstow to Bruckner to Bliss (and that’s just the Bs I can think of off the top of my head). But you will know them, know them and love them in the way only a performer truly can. Choral music, to this day, has the power to move me so profoundly that I can lose myself in it for hours and just ride out the happy contemplations it evokes. It is a constant and lifelong tiding of comfort and – euphoric – joy. 

    Then there is the musicianship you absorb as a chorister, not just the music theory, the maths (the Italian!) all of which is very useful, but elegant musical phrasing, the projection of good diction, the shaping of beautiful vowel sounds for optimum tone, the careful precision singing a psalm, which can only be achieved by listening intently to those around you and blending your tone and rhythm with theirs – all of these skills and sensitivities become second nature and all of them have strange and unexpected use and resonance in later life. 

    And then there’s the language – and I don’t mean the salty badinage of the vestry but the liturgy you’re immersed in, the psalms, the collects, the canticles – the poetry you get to sing (Herbert, Donne, Milton, Shakespeare, Hardy, Auden are all poets I first learnt to love – Christopher Smart even – by singing and performing their words). Your lexicon at the age of 13 is astounding, and your turn of phrase, taught by endless psalms and hymns, and not just the range of your vocabulary but your innate sense of the poetic. You will have come to know only too well the powerful quiet of an evensong, the sumptuous echo of a final amen sung from an ante-chapel but rolling around the clerestory like wine in a taster’s glass. 

    And let’s not overlook the discipline of choristership; the order it brings to a young person’s often chaotic life, the friendship, the focus. Punctuality is one of the first lessons you learn: the ignominy of arriving even a minute late is something no chorister wants to experience twice. Then self-possession, decorum and grace are all attributes you quickly learn to fake – in the first instance – before adopting them for real as you gradually mature. But where else in the modern world is a child taught gravitas? Where else is a child taught, for example, to bow with proper dignity and humility? 

    I owe my entire career to my experience as a chorister. It was where I learnt to perform, where I learnt to use the full range of my voice; where I learnt to listen, where I learnt to write comedy, where I learnt to carry a pencil at all times – but most importantly it was where I learnt the wonderful truth that something exceptional, something as beautiful as anything anywhere, can be created just by you and your friends. I remember on a choir tour to Salamanca (ooh travel there’s another benefit!) exploring the old cathedral with a couple of friends and finding ourselves alone in some sort of chapter house, we fired off a Boyce 3-part canon just to test the acoustics. A terrible, toe-curlingly self-indulgent thing to do but what a sound we made! And what a thing to discover: that we three – children essentially – carried between us all the components of something so joyous, so perfect, so complete. (And Boyce! There we are, there’s another B for my list.) 

    I was lucky enough to be a chorister at St Mary’s Cathedral in Edinburgh which had a good mix of boy and girl choristers as is now fairly typical in cathedrals up and down the country. And both there and at Trinity College, Cambridge where I ended up as a choral scholar, I sang with people from all walks of life (many of whom had their entire educations – at some of the country’s best schools I might add – paid for by the music they had first learnt as choristers). I sang alongside some people of different faiths and plenty of none at all. And I am always heartened by the ethnic diversity in our cathedral and college choir rooms. So you see, you don’t need to be a boy to be a chorister, you don’t need to be a toff to be a chorister, you don’t need to be religious, you don’t even need to be Christian. Although as I say that I’m aware there is a certain spirituality that all choristers come to know well – something that lurks in the silences of a darkening nave while rush-hour traffic chugs about just yards outside the West door. A spirituality that is wrapped up in the ritual, the mystery and the beauty of this ancient tradition we have become part of. And I’m going to call that spirituality The Privilege of Choristership. That is what we are here tonight to celebrate and to preserve for the future, ‘throughout all generations.’

  • May 26, 2022 2:45 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Rev. Nick Myers in front of flipcharts full of questions

  • May 19, 2022 1:00 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    Worshippers in pews at Parish of the EpiphanyAt our vestry retreat last month, we spent Saturday Morning in our chapel, praying the Morning Prayer service together. One of our readings was from Joshua 1:1-9, God’s commissioning of Jacob in the aftermath of Moses’ death.

    After reflecting on the scripture reading, we shared how it resonates in our own lives now. Some shared they are motivated by specific words such as “be strong and very courageous,” and others are comforted by “I will be with you; I will not fail you or forsake you.” Some spoke of how the passage provides hope for the future, even during our challenging times. For me, it focused my heart and mind to lean into what’s next, trust in God’s presence, and remember our baptismal covenant. Easier said than done for sure, yet for me, a helpful reminder of how scripture comes alive and resonates daily in unexpected ways.

    Next, we wrote down our thoughts on the following questions Rev Nick had prepared for us: 

    1. Where have we been over the past year together? 

    I wrote:

    • We have been able to be together in our worship spaces again.

    • God has provided new friendships.

    • It has been hard and exhausting. 

    2. Where are we now, and what crossroads are we facing? 

    I wrote:

    • We can see each other again.

    • We can embrace each other again.

    • New life can result from hardship, what do we want to do about it?

    • How do we balance looking back and longing for what was, with what is forever changed?

    How might you answer these questions?

    Next, we each shared one answer to each question with the group, many with responses similar to the ones I’ve written above. The ensuing discussion led us to formulate a new question: “Who is God calling us to be now?” The surprise for us is that even though the questions were filled with where and what, our discussion led us to focus on our identity, who we’re called to be. 

    While we had other work planned for the rest of our day together in retreat, we kept this new question in our hearts and minds. Having that question hanging in the air (and literally hanging on the wall) helped shape our work that day and will continue to do so. For us today, where and what is at the service of who.

    We look forward to sharing more outcomes from our retreat time together in the coming weeks.

    Dave McSweeney

  • May 12, 2022 3:15 PM | Anonymous member (Administrator)

    YouTube thumbnail of Reverend Nick Myers in a white button-down shirt in front of stained glass windows

  • May 05, 2022 11:25 AM | Anonymous member (Administrator)
    Barbara C. Harris Camp set against the mountains and woods of New Hampshire
    Laughter. Sitting and really talking with friends, old and new. Nature walks. Meals that somebody else plans, cooks, and serves. Perhaps an “untalent show.”

    These are all things that our retreat planning committee said at our first meeting, as we each answered the question “what do you need, at our parish retreat?” 

    All our various ideas came back to two core themes: Connection, and Joy. The need to know, and be known to, a loving community in true and real and deep ways. The need to play and to laugh. The need to enjoy those beautiful pleasures of retreat life (books and canoes and campfires). The need to mourn and heal, and to find peace. The need to see that God is good, and that we are standing together in a joy-filled, sometimes silly, sometimes serious, and always loving holy family. 

    The Parish Weekend Away will be September 23-25, 2022, at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center in Greenfield, New Hampshire. This past Wednesday, you received an email with all the details — accommodations, meals, costs, options. Please look back at that (and spend a few minutes taking in those beautiful, inspiring pictures), and make a plan to join us. This Sunday, May 8, you’ll receive an email with a link to our registration form. 

    And on Sunday, May 15, during our Sunday forum after worship, we’ll ask you those same questions our planning committee pondered: What do you need? What would be life-giving? Soul-healing? What can this Parish Weekend Away offer to you? 

    Please come. Connect. Laugh. Eat. Play. Sit. Talk. Renew.

    With joyful anticipation,
    Bryn


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Phone: 781.729.1922
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