Deacon Dan Wright

Vigilance

Every day I will bless you, and praise your name for ever and ever. Psalm 145:2

Of all the times and events in my life nothing has come close to the impact of being chosen by Christ. There is no comparison to having received the supernatural grace to be his own beloved. Even the idea of his love inebriates and enraptures the soul. I don’t believe that I am thinking too highly of my state in life, of my relationship with the Master, of my being a Christian. In reality, the circumstance of blessing is one that all Christians share with each other.

What our Lord has done for us is such that we scarcely begin to see beneath the surface of the great ocean of Spirit, yet it lies there silently waiting: it moves from the depths, stirring in our innermost heart. But that we might all desire to see God in such a way as to pray daily, in each moment of the day, “Maran atha! Come, Lord.” Only the soul thirsty for God can expect to find the living water.

My words are weak in expressing the glory that I instinctively know to be as near as my heartbeat. Each day as I walk out through my door to begin the day, with an ineffable sense of knowing, I am greeted by the Lord whom I serve—he who is the desire of my heart, the One to whom I sing my song of eternal love; for he assuringly whispers that he is the keeper of my soul, and I trust absolutely.

Being vigilant is as much a vigilance of awareness as it is a conscious staying near through holy actions, through the holy mingling of faith and works. Those who remain awake, those whose eyes are clear to see their God upon his arrival, are the ones whose hearts keep watch ever seeking and ever seeing the face of their Lord in every face they meet; knowing him revealed in the beauty of creation where the certainty of love's being is evident in his handiwork. Vigilance also means nurturing reverence and sobriety of soul, watching, waiting, desiring the love that is God's sweet presence, and settling for nothing less.

Each day my morning drive takes me a half an hour east before I turn north to finish my commute. Daily the sunrise breaks over the plains that lie ahead of me as I travel toward my day’s work. As the sun greets the morning sky so my heart greets the Lord. Yet another night has passed, and thank God he has made me to be his and granted me this day. The warmth of the sun reaches toward me and it serves as a reminder of God reaching toward his children. I think of the eternal morning, and the coming of the Lord. Like the light filling the darkness of the sky, so the Lord fills our hearts.

Although I must certainly wait until the eternal dawn to fully grasp God’s purposes for my life, I can glimpse a little now. We all have it within our grasp to search beneath the surface and catch glimpses of God's plan. Our God is not that far away; no, our Lord comes again and surprisingly he comes from not that far away. He is always as near to us as our hearts. He always beckons us to receive our share of the love he offers. It’s just a little below the depths, but when we begin to look the mystery of all mysteries unfolds and gracefully Jesus is revealed.

Thus, we are vigilant. We wait in the night, but we do so with wisdom realizing that the day of our Lord, like the ocean of Spirit just beneath us, is growing ever nearer.

Interior Holiness

It’s what we’re like in the hidden part of our being that matters most. We can do all in our power to give the appearance of piety, but unless the heart is pure it really will not count for anything.

As I have said on several occasions, I came from a tradition that emphasized a personal holiness code. One could easily determine whether he or she, or for that matter one’s neighbor, met the code by making a few simple observations. Clothing and hairstyle were primary signs of holiness. Men were to be clean shaven and wear long sleeves year round. Shorts were never allowed, not even at the lake. The women were never to wear pants or cut their hair. Also important was abstaining from the use of alcohol and tobacco. Lastly, the content and manner of speech were considered in the assessment of holiness.

Although I was a young man barely 19 at the time, I thought that there was something hokey about determining whether one made the mark as a Christian based on outward appearances. Certainly scripture indicated otherwise. I secretly considered the holiness code to be pharisaical and ignorant in the true light of the holy writ. It didn't take me long, as I grew to adulthood, to find an ecclesial community that looked for holiness in other places.

Over the years it has been a blessing to learn that God deals with the heart—with the innermost being of each person. Who is it that can judge the person in his or her heart? I know of only two judges and both are essential for us to live a life that speaks as a witness of interior holiness. First, God is our judge. We must never stray far from the realization that nothing is hidden from God, and secondly we are our own judges. After all, other than God, who knows our hearts better? The interior of the human being is a deep and mysterious world. When we search deeply enough we find the one in whose image we were made; however, rather than peer inwardly to find the truth of our being we are to turn our gaze outward. The heart, the innermost aspect of our lives, paradoxically lies in our relationship to the world we encounter each day.

Although I’ve pointed out a kind of legalistic religion that exists in various forms, the most insidious form of hypocrisy is not always as easy to detect. It is not so much a hypocrisy that deals with what it considers to be outward impurities, indecency, and various violations of good clean "holy-roller" living, but it is the inner blindness of the soul. It is a kind of spiritual sickness that refuses to see the need for salvation, but instead understands itself as righteous and pure already, and perhaps even goes as far as to indict the truly righteous on the grounds that they fail to be holy. I've found such indictments typically to be polemical in origin. The failure, they say, is in being too liberal, too conservative, too traditional, too contemporary, too moderate, or maybe just too intelligent.

What is it that we are to do in order to please God, in order to be holy? Only God has the power to make us into something holy and pleasing. Do we not pray along with the psalmist, "Create a pure heart in me O God"? Our own righteousness tends to fail miserably anyhow, and there's always the evil sort of hypocrisy that leads to the murder of the righteous, which is really the message that today’s gospel reveals to us. Left to our own attempts at being holy we will end up at the extreme opposite. To be holy we must lay out our hearts before Jesus Christ and allow the power of the Holy Spirit to begin transforming us.

In every instance of interior evil or religious hypocrisy that has grown to have a noticeably foul smell, there has been a failure involving the immersion of the person in righteous things—here I add that it is righteous works that qualify as the stuff that transforms the heart, and this is the point of the first reading today.

If ever you doubted, or if you ever felt daunted and unable to attain holiness for any reason whatsoever, it may be that there was a failure to plunge into the waters of good works. I speak as one who knows. Anyone who puts himself or herself completely at the service of his or her brothers and sisters is well on the way to overcoming even the most tenacious of sinful habits.

By immersion in God’s work we learn also to say, “Lord, your grace is sufficient for me.” All that I care about when I lie down to retire at the end of a long day, is that what I have done that day has been pleasing to God. My failures and sins disappear when I turn from concern over whether I'm making the mark to doing something that actually makes a mark, even a scribble at first. In our work we allow the One who created all things to create a pure heart in us.

Keeping the Faith, Come What May

Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm
and hold fast to the traditions that you were taught,
either by an oral statement or by a letter of ours. 2 Thes. 2:15

Undoubtedly in our living the faith trials will come our way; there may be moments that will cause overwhelming doubt and dismay, but our role will be to keep the faith—come what may.

I am reminded of the scripture in which the Lord tells us, “if the householder had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into.” The fact is that we cannot foretell what is coming, but we most assuredly must be prepared for those things that tend to be of such a magnitude that they might shake our faith.

It was enough that John had been imprisoned. His disciples certainly were shaken already—how much more it must have devastated them to have received the word of his beheading. Nevertheless, faith has a way of answering those things that shake us the most. It is incumbent on us to remain strong with the Lord's help. God reaches in and heals where we let him and he speaks softly through the Holy Spirit, “Stand firm, hold fast, believe, believe…”

You may recall that just this last weekend every diocese in the US took a special collection to support the relief efforts for last year’s Gulf coast disasters in New Orleans and Biloxi. As I was thinking about what kinds of things could possibly shake me the hardest, the first thing that came to mind had to do with those things that would affect my family. I have learned to put my family first. This was something that I heard emphasized time and again during diaconal formation several years ago. It remains true: family must come first. I don’t know exactly how I would go about handling it if something similar to the Katrina/Rita disasters were to take place, but I pray that my faith would remain strong through it. I pray that I would remain courageous and that I would make decisions that would be best for my family. Also, I pray that I would be courageous in offering aid to others. We never know what it will be like when our souls are required of us.

It seems that the biggest thing that we can do when the unexpected happens, whether it be natural disasters, persecutions, war, famine—even if the world we know turns upside down tomorrow—is to take strength in one another, to support and uphold our brothers and sisters; the greatest thing we can offer is our love for each other. If everything that means anything in the world to us disappears tomorrow, we are yet to hold fast to what we have been taught. Here is the real test, and the value, of Christian unity. Here is where we cast aside petty ideological differences that only serve to mock the love that has appointed us to be one in Christ. Here is where we must abandon the immaturity that we often see expressed in polemical arguments and positions. The real world levels out our differences and teaches us that in order to survive we must unite: God has the power to make us one.

Since I was a very young person I have clearly known and seen one thing above all others. Should I ever face death because of what I believe, and I think we can extrapolate this to all kinds of situations and not just persecutions, my soul cannot be taken from me; yes, my life can be taken, but my soul belongs to God. By the same reasoning, love cannot be taken from us. Even if the world we know ends abruptly tomorrow, we still have love. Is this not what we have been taught? God is love and nothing can separate us from him.

Late Have I Loved You

I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God  and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever….Late have I love you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. 

From St. Augustine, Confessions

I don’t know what I could add that would say more than the passage above from the Confessions. When we even slightly move near God, he touches our lives and we become increasingly aware of our need for him. Sometimes the awareness of our need is immediate, but at other times it takes years for us to realize just what it is that we long for. Often it involves a long search down many blind passages filled with painful and unfulfilling experiences.

St. Augustine speaks well to our times—to our materialistic times that are only different from his in the degree and availability of the things we grasp for in order to fill the empty depths of the human soul. We must come on our own to the realization that the longing in our hearts is God-shaped. Nothing can fill such longing other than that for which our hearts were made.

For many years I searched for what would satisfy the unnameable longing I felt deep within. I tried to fill it with everything at my grasp only to find that the things at my grasp only intensified the awareness of my emptiness. To be without God, truly without God, is unimaginable.

Recently my 12-year-old son has taken an interest in Dante’s Inferno. The questions about hell were plentiful around my house this weekend. His mom and I offered him a divine comedy of explanations and speculations that only a 12-year-old boy could appreciate, but not without a tone of seriousness. It's interesting to watch a young person begin to ponder ultimate spiritual consequences. Regardless of how bleak a picture we paint, hell is never so dark as a single moment’s existence without God. I think this is what Augustine knew, and what everyone who genuinely searches for God knows.  There is no imagination of hell so bleak and painful as to live in the absence of love and peace.

Even in those times when we may have sought to fill our lives with everything other than God, he was nevertheless close; he was calling and tugging on our hearts. When, and wherever, we come to the realization that only God can satisfy, our reaction is universal, “Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new. Late have I loved you.” Yet at the moment we realize that only God fills what was made to be filled by God, we enter into the relationship that is more than lifelong with him who bridges the gap that separated us from God. Late have I loved you, but in timelessness I embrace your love. Thus, we enter into true relationship with the Almighty.

We enter into communion with what we see, breathe, touch, and taste—and it only intensifies our desire for God, for that which is love, for that which is peace.  He fills us utterly, taking our souls to the heights and returning us to the ground on which we stand only to desire him the more.

Certainly I sought elsewhere. I ran from God, thinking not so much that something else could fill my longing need for love and fulfilment, but that I stood to lose what little I held. If only I had known the all-fulfilling love in you, Lord, I would never have sought anywhere else.

On Being in Love with God

The video that I'm including today is a little out of the ordinary for me. It's not the kind of music that I normally like to listen to, and it's not what I would ever expect to hear played at Mass--even at a youth Mass. If I heard it played like this at a Mass I'd probably be critical or feel way out of place.

Still, the song is, in fact, one that we play during Mass from time to time at my parish. It's just a whole lot more mellow and sweet sounding when we sing it on Sunday. I actually like it when our accomplished musicians and choir perform the song. I know the lyrics and I can sing along with it pretty well. It speaks to my heart and reminds me of my Christian beginnings. Many people would say that contemporary music has no place in a Mass, and for their community that is probably true. However, we have to accept that God may be communicating to someone even though it isn't our preferred mode of communication. Being tolerant isn't bad, nor is it liberal in some pejorative sense--being free with our hearts is Spirit!

I was thinking about when I was a teenage Christian, and what it was that inspired my life, what motivated me spiritually. Certainly, the music that was part of worship made a big difference. I learned to let my heart sing. For my young companions and me, music went along with being in love.  You see, we were quite in love with our Lord. We believed that we were in a relationship with God that was characterized by passionate love, and we acted accordingly. What I experienced prepared my heart to be open a few years later to the poetry of St. John of the Cross. Ultimately it prepared my heart to be open to the Catholic faith. I saw Catholicism as a faith for lovers. It was the passionate saints who inspired me, especially the monks and martyrs and holy women.

Catholicism gave me something to touch, to smell, to taste.  It's rich and beautiful art--the elegant beauty of the Mother of God; the exquisite images of the passion. The faith was alive with hearts of flame.

Loving God, the first and foremost commandment, is about being in love with God.  When you're young and in love you express it with passion--you sing and dance like David. When you get older you find that the love hasn't gone away, you just learn to express it in a different way.  Friday penance? Just be in love with God.

A Particular Way of Life

I like to arrive at work a little early each morning. The day moves along better if I find a moment to prepare myself mentally and spiritually for whatever may come my way. Typically, I get up each morning as early as 5 a.m. Remember, I have three kids of my own, and my wife and I have to get them ready for their school day. Naturally my life differs—in many ways of course—from those in religious communities, although sometimes I think the analogy serves well. I often visualize myself as living according to the evangelical counsels.

I believe we are all called to serve the Lord in chastity, poverty, and obedience. We all share a call to live holy lives in which our main sustenance comes from God. It’s really just a matter of giving ourselves completely. I think of it as a matter of being able to “image” myself in the role. It always begins with prayer. Usually I wait until I arrive at work to pray the Morning Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours. Each morning I have about a 20 minute window of time alone that will allow me to sanctify my work, my day, with prayer.

Yesterday the theme of our having an advocate in heaven was still fresh in my mind from my previous blog posts. As I read the words of Psalm 146, I thought, “Yes, this is it!” The psalmist tells us outright how the Lord serves in our lives as our advocate. It is the Lord

who executes justice for the oppressed; who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free; the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. The LORD watches over the sojourners, he upholds the widow and the fatherless…

In all we can clearly see that we have a great advocate who is moved by our needs. God hears our prayers to such a degree that his own Son Jesus became the price of our being able to apprehend how much the Father loves us. It never was the case that the intercession of Jesus was needed because God the Father would not hear us on account of our sinfulness, but that we had moved so far away from God that the only hope left was to send one like us, though without sin, to be among us. The Father loves us immensely and desires that we walk with him daily.

What we have to consider this day is the many ways that God sends advocates into our lives, and without a doubt I believe that among the children of Adam, Mary was the greatest advocate that God could send.  She points us always toward the one who is our teacher. It is the way of our many mediators and advocates to show us Jesus, and never do they detract from his unique role as the one mediator between God and lost humanity. Today we celebrate the advocacy of the Apostle Bartholomew. Fittingly, the passage from Revelation speaks of the Church in our foundational relationship to Christ. We come to it by way of knowing him through our many advocates, such as the holy apostles.  Through them we learn to see great things.

I have personally found that Christ the teacher, whom the disciples called Rabbi, in turn teaches us that we are to be his instruments of love. It has always been those who bore the love that is God in their hearts who have shown me God. I pray that I too may show God to others. Intercession and advocacy, by which we come to experience the reality of God with us, is made real to the world through how we serve others. Those things listed above from Psalm 146 are ours to show to the world through what we do.  All that we are asked to do is to take up a particular way of life.

Interceding for the First and the Last

The beginning of the first full week of school since returning to teaching from summer vacation is a hectic and fast-paced time. The amount of energy to get everything ready and going is unbelievable. Add to it that many of us have school-aged children with homework and evening meetings to attend.  I seriously considered taking a blog day off, but my spirit is energetic despite my body and brain being tired.  A colleague remarked to me today that the sheer stress of it is enough to cause physical pain. Of course, I agreed without having to go into my own personal experience of the same thing she was expressing.

Through every season in life what I see clearly is the help that comes from heaven—from having a great advocate ascended on high. A favorite scripture passage that I often turn to is Romans 8: 34. It tells us that Jesus Christ intercedes for us at the right hand of the Father. Something we as Catholics may not be accustomed to thinking of in terms specific to Christ is his intercessory role for us. The first Epistle of John 2:1 tells us that Jesus is our advocate. When we are in relation to the Lord as our help and strength wherever we are in life, beginning, middle, or end, we may come to him and find eternal hope.

I have long been aware of the role that Jesus has of bridging the gap of alienation between God and humanity that resulted from the fall from original grace. However, the first time that I really read the Romans passage—I mean to say that I had read it many times, but had somehow never really comprehended it—it was like a light coming on for me: Jesus himself intercedes for us.

As I looked at the readings for today I thought that I wouldn’t try to tie in to them. After all, it’s not always necessary and I never really intended to have a lectionary blog though in some respects that’s what I have done.

Still my memories were awakened again by today’s gospel words, “…the last will be first, and the first will be last.” They reminded me of an early time in my Christian experience just after when I was baptized at age 12 in a Protestant congregation. The church had purchased a used school bus to to serve as its church bus. It was quite an ugly thing, nothing to be proud of in the eyes of most people, but the pastor, whose community did not have an abundance of material wealth, claimed that getting the bus was the result of “intercessory prayer.” I think that is probably the first time in my life that I ever heard of interceding for something. It was all new to me.

A group of the men from the church decided to paint the bus. They chose barn red—perhaps they should have sought intercession on paint color, but the choice was made. Being a new member of the church I volunteered to help with the painting. It was a job that went late on a Friday night. I did a lot of masking and being a gopher that night. It was a hard evening’s work. I was by far the youngest and smallest person there—the only child in a group of grown men. The pastor invited everyone that had helped to a fish fry at his house the next Friday.

When it came time to thank all involved, the pastor said, “and we can’t forget to thank young brother Danny Wright, who reminds me of the scripture saying the first shall be last and the last shall be first.” He then allowed me to be first in line to be served, saying, as he filled my plate, “Never forget… the last will be first.” That Sunday I rode the entire bus route while the driver sang "Shall we gather at the river."

I don’t know that I can tie it in well to the Lord’s intercession for us, but because of it everyone, from the smallest to the greatest; from the first to the last, has more than a chance to go to heaven, though they may have to ride a barn red bus to get there.

On the Memorial of the Queenship of Mary: An Advocate in Heaven

Today’s Memorial is a good jumping off point for something that I would like to explore more deeply. The thought came to me during my morning commute to the school where I teach, which is in a neighboring city. I have about 45 minutes going outside of Austin, and thankfully I don't have to worry too much with the traffic, which mostly comes from the opposite direction. It gives me time, as I drive into the morning sunrise, to reflect on the spiritual significance of life.

However, the last few mornings I have dreaded the drive due to a flare up of sciatica, which makes sitting for more than five minutes significantly unpleasant until my senses numb. When I got in the car yesterday morning I was thinking, "Today I’ll have to depend on my advocate in heaven." I had strong sense of peace as a continued my drive. It was an opportunity for me “to offer it up” I thought. Driving and teaching school on Vicodin isn’t wise or realistic. So there I went, sitting on my pillow, breathing deeply, praying and driving at the same time. I remembered my wife’s first labor 12 years ago and soon I forgot all about my pinched nerve. It was just justice coming my way I figured.

Although I wasn’t thinking about today’s Memorial specifically, I felt inclined to give time and thought to the idea that we have an advocate in heaven. One of the things that I had to come to terms with, as a convert from Protestantism, was Mary’s role as Advocate—a title we bestow on her in our faith and from grateful hearts. It is a title that flows from the sheer gratitude of knowing that she bore our savior out of her freedom to choose. She freely chose to say yes to the Holy Spirit.  She too bore the pain of childbirth, and the pain of Good Friday.

An aspect of Mary’s advocacy, especially as we see her exalted in heaven, is that her advocacy flows forth from heaven; that is, it is the direct result of the most basic relationship, the advocacy of Jesus Christ who intercedes for humanity continually before the Father. The advocacy of our Lord is the foundation for all hope. It is a certainty that we may turn to at all times.

For the next couple posts I’ll be taking a closer look at the Epistle to the Hebrews, and portions of Romans, even though they're not coming up in our readings. There is something special that the Lord wants to say to us now in regard to what it means to have faith, to believe that God loves and cares for us enough to make seemingly impossible things happen at any moment. I believe it will be helpful to explore the foundation of the meaning of advocacy in Christ. Really, an easy case unfolds for holding the belief that Mary is our Advocate and Queen. It has to do with Christ’s humanity, which he receives from his mother.  The Queenship of Mary is the logical outcome of her being the Theotokos, the Mother of God.

I suppose the reason that I’m interested in the advocacy question itself is that there are times when we need an advocate more than others. It seems to be, maybe more often than not, that God tells us to depend on his love given through others. Could he be speaking to us now through particular situations? Maybe it's time to share those situations with others. At the risk of stating a truism, there are certain aspects of living life as a human being that involve having real needs. What I'm saying is there are times that we just can't figure it out alone.

Sometimes our need flows from personal pain or from the suffering or needs of those close to us. At other times it seems less clear, but is every bit as real. Living often seems to cry out to us all by itself. It's an emptiness that longs for God alone. A close friend, now gone to his reward, once told me, “Whether it’s lumbago or a terminal illness, you’re presented with the opportunity to look straight in the face of your greatest fears, and your greatest hopes, but you have to learn to see them.” Through manifold opportunities, which most often will perplex and confuse us, life is certain to give us the opportunity to find our advocate.

Church Teacher Fired for Being Female

I found the following rerported worldwide.  Here it is from ABC:

After 54 years of classes, a New York Sunday school teacher is getting an unexpected lesson in theology: She lost her job because of her sex.

Mary Lambert, 81, has been a member of the First Baptist Church in Watertown, N.Y., for 60 years. She had her wedding on the premises, raised her kids in its halls and taught Sunday school at First Baptist for more than five decades.

And to think that recently there were some Catholic bloggers decrying the role of leadership by women in mainline Protestant denominations.  I wonder what they think of this?  May we offer her our prayers!

Get the story here.

Muslim Cleric Works Toward Ecumenical Understanding, Work Continuing Among Christians, Jews, and Muslims

Yesterday's online edition of the Austin American Statesman ran an interesting story about a local Muslim cleric and the work he has done to improve relations between Muslims and members of other faiths since 9/11.  The Statesman reports:

A Pakistani who spent most of his life in Qatar, [Safdar] Razi had emerged from his Islamic cocoon, from the small Shiite congregation in North Austin he had led for a year, and into a pluralistic rough-and-tumble American society.

The breakthrough, as he calls it, would open his eyes to loving, understanding people, allow him to teach an eager audience about Islam and learn about other faiths. But his new role would also lead to disappointment, even depression, as he worked to exhaustion, endured the government's suspicion and watched the post-9/11 interfaith fervor fade.

In the weeks after the attacks, churches, synagogues and other organizations inundated Razi with invitations to speak. Austin Area Interreligious Ministries, which organized the Capitol event [in response to 9/11], recruited him to write newspaper columns on Islam. Community groups wanted him on panels. He appeared with Christian and Jewish clerics on a public TV show in October, participated in an interfaith celebration at Thanksgiving. By January, he was praying with Bishop Gregory Aymond in a Muslim-Catholic service at St. Mary's Cathedral downtown.

In public, Razi appeared as a man of perfected calm — a peace he says comes from his faith — but he was also being pulled in several directions.

Having served Austin Area Interreligious Ministries during the first year of my diaconate as Director of Congregational Outreach, I found the article of personal interest although I left AAIM before 9/11.  While I never met Safdar Razi, I was aware of his work with the Interreligious Ministries.  I felt that it was important for people to understand a side of Islam that we don't see in the media.  While working with AAIM I noted that those congregations, and denominations in general, interested in dialogue with other faiths were the ones that had moved beyond the confines of relationship to God and one another according to one's religious affiliation alone.  Safdar Razi's congregation, I thought, had made a strong adaptation toward survival and acceptance amid the American religious climate.

In a separate article, the Statesman notes that AAIM, now under the leadership of Rev. Emilee Whitehurst, continues the effort to bring people together:

Whitehurst's goal is to encourage people to learn more about Austin's diverse religious community.

For example, she said, Interreligious Ministries might hold a passport event at PromiseLand Church, a nondenominational church with a Pentecostal heritage, to highlight its broad racial and cultural ministry.

"It's a beacon of light in this city," she said. "And people have no idea."

Stressing the need to expand the interfaith circle, Whitehurst has been working with churches that do not belong to Interreligious Ministries.

Some congregations don't feel comfortable joining an organization that includes non-Christians, but Whitehurst doesn't think that should preclude people of faith from learning about as many ministries as possible.

One of the things that I remember when I served at AAIM, and recruited new congregations, was the resistence that I would often encounter when visiting with Evangelical groups.  Nevertheless, because of my background as a former Evangelical and Pentecostal, these were my favorite congregations to contact.  Sometimes their resistence to interfaith dialogue was based on the fact that congregations would not join unless they were allowed to proselytize, although that was rare.  More often what I found seperating people was simply their ideological differences.  It is positive and refreshing that Rev. Whitehurst continues to reach to Evangelicals and Pentecostal groups.

As I read the readings and the gospel for today, and revisited the familiar story of the rich young ruler, I had to ask myself, "What is it that we, as the people of God, are withholding that is demanded of us?"  It might be more telling to ask what it is that we, like the young ruler are still holding on to.  All that I could think is that it still has to do with love and mercy, though on a much larger scale than we are accustomed to thinking about.

While certainly we are to attend to the commandments that demand our personal holiness in lifestyle, and repent where we have failed, the larger demand is upon us to let go of the ideologies we cling to that seperate us from others.  Another way of looking at it, if you still prefer a personal reference, is to ask what beliefs do you possess that keep you from embracing people of faiths, races, creeds, and economic statuses, different from your own.  When you can let go of those possessions you then have stepped closer to the kingdom.