Pentecost Table Talk - Endings and Beginnings

Dear Holy Innocents’ Family,

This weekend, churches around the world will celebrate the beginning of Pentecost: the period in the calendar that remembers the birth of the Church, which began just after Jesus’ time on earth came to an end. According to the story, shortly following Christ’s ascension the Holy Spirit descends upon the apostles during dinner. Common symbols for the Spirit make an appearance—rushing wind (the sign of breath and new life), tongues of flame (the sign of communication and understanding), and a dove (the sign of peace and hope).

The story and season of Pentecost underlines what the poet T.S. Eliot famously observed: 

What we call the beginning is often the end. 

And to make an end is to make a beginning. 

The end is where we start from.

To end our school year and start our summer, we had a special Remembrance Chapel on Thursday. Standing before the school, some representative 5th graders reflected on memorable experiences, great teachers, and the ‘Top Ten’ pieces of advice for those entering 5thgrade.

In the midst of the reflections, 3rd grader Grace Bomar addressed to the Lower School challenging us to leave our comfort zone and show God’s love in a special way over the summer. She shared her story about how, early in the semester, she discovered Locks Of Love—a charity that accepts donations of hair to give to children suffering from injury or illness that can’t grow hair of their own. Grace recalled how she felt moved to donate her own hair, but first she had to overcome her fear of parting with her hair and possibly feeling like an oddball without her long hair. Grace explained how her faith and best friend Ava Hayworth gave her courage to cut off the locks she loved and donate them to the charity.

The speeches by Grace and the 5th graders prompt us to ask ourselves and discuss these questions as we end the school year and begin the summer:

• Who’s a person that made a positive and lasting impact on your life over the school year? What did they do? What will your greatest memory of them be?

• What’s an experience or event that took place over the school year that you’ll treasure most? What did you learn from it? Why did you enjoy it?

• When you listen to both your heart and the needs of the people around you, what is something you can do to show God’s love in a special way? 

As summer begins, I pray you pause to reflect on these questions and make the time to talk about them with your friends and families. Like the story of Pentecost, it is often in moments of quietness and meaningful conversations over food that the Spirit of God prepares us for something new and fills us with peace, life, and understanding.

When I pause to pray and reflect on this past year, I feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for being able serve as chaplain to a community as loving, authentic, and hopeful as the one at here Holy Innocents’. And when I look forward to coming school year, I’m filled with an even greater sense of thankfulness because beginning in August I will be co-teaching the Lower School’s global faith and service classes with my esteemed colleague and close friend Sherry Sawicki (next to me in photo). An outstanding teacher whose compassion for others is matched only by her creativity in the classroom, Sherry will work alongside me teaching the distinctive features of Episcopal education: inclusion, respect, diversity, and service to others. Her presence will be a blessing, indeed.

Last, while some things begin and end, an ongoing practice that I’ll continue to do each morning throughout the summer is to pray for all of the students and families of the Holy Innocents’ community.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

Table Talk - Faith, Earth, Poetry

Dear Golden Bears, Parents, and Friends,

April is a month for much rejoicing. The Easter season has arrived. The earth is springing back into life. It’s National Poetry Month. Faith, earth, and poetry—these share more in common than simply occurring in April.

While most religions have specific pronouns for describing God—Yahweh, Father-Son-Holy Spirit, Allah, Brahma, etc.—almost every faith tradition believes that God is the Creator of the natural world. I find it helpful to think of God as being the Poet of the universe. Creation is God’s ongoing poem. Each and every part of creation is a different stanza, line, word, or rhyme in that poem.

Made in God’s image, the poem reflects the Poet. From the galaxies on the furthest stretches of outer space, to each tiny blade of grass beneath our feet, as parts of God’s poem each part of creation contains beauty, goodness, and truth.

In chapel, I shared a story about two maples trees that stood in my backyard during my childhood. Throughout my boyhood, I developed a close relationship with the trees. This relationship was so unique that you could think of it as a deep friendship. The maple trees were the perfect listeners who taught me that God’s first language is silence. They were a sacred place I could always go to feel the presence of God. I played in the colorful leaves they shed each fall. I admired the glassy beauty of their frozen limbs each winter. I relaxed beneath them on the shady grass and watched them bloom each the spring. I imagined myself playing with angels of light as I climbed their branches each summer.

My friendship with those two maple trees taught me how to befriend other parts of God’s creation. In time, I would come to count the following among my best of friends: the purple sunset, the quiet pond in back of my house, the falling snow, and a cliff in the East Rock Park of New Haven that I often rested at during my afternoon run.

I’m aware that it may sound odd to form friendships with parts of the earth; but I suspect that most individuals who have spent a healthy amount of time outside also have friendships with specific places and parts of God’s poem. I’d love to hear the stories of trees, mountainsides, beaches, flowers, or any part of earth that has helped reveal the beauty, goodness, and truth of God.

This April, I pray you set aside the time to go outdoors, pause, and, breathing deeply, quietly give thanks for the beautiful, fragile poem we call earth.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

Let us pray: 

Creator of all life, Poet of the universe, 

we give you thanks for the sacred earth; 

for the stars and galaxies that shine in outer space; 

for the deep oceans and aquatic life. 

May we love the earth and help her to grow. 

May we love the waters and protect their purity. 

May we love the skies and heavens and honor their infinity. 

Through your many names we pray. 

Amen.

Table Talk - Symbols of God

Dear Lower School Family and Friends,

“Why does Easter—the celebration of God’s peace over violence, hope over despair, and life over death —take place at the start of spring and not in the dead of winter?”

I asked this question last week in chapel and have been repeating it to my classes over the past few days.

Taking place just after the vernal equinox, Easter, like Passover, is a holy day that celebrates and symbolizes a time of transition from conditions of death to the promise of the new life. The dead of winter becomes the promise of spring. Barren trees begin to bloom. Muted shades of brownish grey become vibrant and verdant colors. This is why Easter takes place in the spring and has come to be associated with new life—be it fresh flowers, bunnies and chicks, or floral dresses and pastel shirts.

In the early Christian tradition, it was a common practice to search for God’s presence in the surrounding environment and culture. This is how lambs, butterflies, peacocks, phoenixes, pelicans, and dolphins came to be symbols for Jesus as the Easter stories recall him (these symbols are explained below).

All journeys of faith are based on the ongoing search for God’s presence in our midst. It’s important to understand the symbols and practices that people in the past have used to connect to God. But it’s even more important to ask where we can encounter God in the symbols and practices of today. Among the most significant points of Jesus’ message was that we readily encounter God in our interactions of love, compassion, and celebration.

Last month, in a loving act of compassion and celebration, our students took part in the second annual Lent Madness Fundraiser and raised over $6,800 to aid the underprivileged children who will attend HIES Horizons summer enrichment program. News about this generosity spread and I had an unexpected exchange with someone from New York who contacted me commending our Lower Schoolers’ actions and attitude as being a clear example of God’s presence in the world. This person was not the only one to notice that something significant and holy took place here at HIES. The website of the local NBC station ran this article last week, and so did a few other online publications.

  

Each week in chapel, we go out of our way to open ourselves up the Spirit of God, asking it move in and through us so that we may reveal God’s love to one another and to the world. Having the honor of spending so much time with the Lower Schoolers, I can humbly testify to witnessing God’s presence at work in our student body and faculty. I firmly believe the HIES Lower School is steadily becoming a symbol of God here in Georgia and even beyond.

I pray you continue to look for positive symbols of God in the people and world around you; and I’d love for you to share your vision with your children, close friends, and me, too!

With love and prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

_________________________

Explanation of Easter Symbols             

The Passover lamb of the Jewish tradition became one of the most common symbols for Jesus. The butterfly is a symbol of the Resurrection, as a caterpillar disappears into a tomb-like cocoon only to emerge as a butterfly. In Roman mythology, the peacock was Juno's sacred bird and symbolized immortality. Early Christians adopted the peacock as a symbol of eternal life and the Resurrection of Christ. According to ancient myth, the phoenix is a large, beautiful bird that bursts into flame at the moment it would die. Out of the ashes comes a new live bird, restored to its youth, to begin another life cycle. The phoenix is often used as an image of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and the triumph of eternal life over death. The image depicting a pelican pecking its own breast so its starving young can feed on its blood—a reference to Jesus’ likening wine to his blood during the last supper—comes from the line in Psalm 102 “I am like a pelican in the wilderness.” In classical mythology, the dolphin was thought to carry souls to the islands of the dead and return back to the shores of the living. Early Christians adopted the dolphin as a symbol of Jesus’ resurrection.

A Further Note on the Passover-Easter Connection

Like the overlapping Jewish holy day of Passover, Easter’s placement in the calendar is partly symbolic of the season. Passover—which Jesus was celebrating the week of his last supper, arrest, and murder by Roman authorities—is the annual celebration of the Exodus story where death passes over the Hebrews because they listen to God’s call for justice and are led by Moses out from the deadening bondage of slavery towards the new life of the Promise Land. Easter echoes this story: death passes over humanity because, by heeding God’s call for forgiveness over retributive vengeance, Jesus defeats death and fulfills the promise of the resurrection.

Table Talk—Continuing the March To The Promise Land

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Holy Innocents' Lower School.

(We Shall Overcome -- artwork by a 1st grader). 

Dear Golden Bears, Parents, and Friends,

This month marks the 50^th anniversary of the historic 1965 civil rights march that began in Selma Alabama and ended in the state capital of Montgomery. The freedom march resulted in the passing of the Voting Rights Act, which federally prohibited voter discrimination across the United States.

The anthem of the Civil Rights Movement and the Selma march was the gospel hymn ‘We Shall Overcome.’ The promise of freedom from oppression is as much a spiritual issue as it is a political one. Martin Luther King, Jr. and other religious leaders helped to frame the Civil Rights Movement as fulfilling both the political promise of democracy and the spiritual promise of God’s kingdom. In his final speech, entitled “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop,” MLK referred to his famous dream as a dream of the ‘Promise Land.’

The Promise Land is an idea that dates back to about 600 BCE and is memorialized in the book of Exodus found in the Hebrew Bible. In the story of Exodus—‘exodus’ means ‘mass departure of people’—God chooses Moses to lead the freedom march of the Jewish people. Moses' freedom march overcomes Pharaoh, brings the Hebrews out from the bondage of slavery, and, eventually, leads them into the Promise Land of milk and honey. (Milk is a symbol of life and freedom; honey is symbol of abundance and justice.)

In the quest to overcome segregation, MLK drew on the religious traditions of marching toward the Promise Land. However, rather than referring to a specific location, Martin’s Promise Land pointed to God's intention for the world as a whole— a world of love, freedom, and justice for all.

In the Exodus story, the Hebrews spend 40 years marching through the wilderness until they reach the Promise Land. Echoing this, during Lent we recall the story of how Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness before beginning his ministry of overcoming hatred and sin with God’s healing love and grace.

During the 40 days of Lent, the Lower School is taking up the dream of marching towards the Promise Land and asking, “What shall we overcome?” What, in other words, are obstacles preventing us from living in a world of God's love, freedom, and justice for all? How shall we partner with God and help to overcome these problems?

With ‘overcoming’ as our theme for Lent, throughout the month of March the spiritual life of the Lower School is raising awareness about what our students can do to help overcome the problems homelessness, gender inequality, and educational inequality. Our three guest speakers in chapel will be DeCarlos Wardlaw of the Atlanta Children’s Shelter (March 5^th), the Rev. Noelle York-Simmons of All Saints’ Episcopal Church (March 19^th), and, the Site Director of Horizons at HIES, Christine Brodnan (March 26^th).

I hope you can join us and support the Lower School as we continue the spiritual work of overcoming obstacles that stand in the path of the Promise Land.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy J.S. Seamans

(MLK and Rabbi Abraham Heschel March in Alabama -- artwork by a 1st grader). 

Lent: Acknowledge, Apologize, Act

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Holy Innocents' Lower School.

Dear Golden Bears, Parents, and Friends,

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.”

 — Alexander Pope

This past Wednesday hundreds of us at Holy Innocents’ joined the millions of others around the world that had their foreheads marked with ash. Placing ashes on your forehead is a sign carried over from ancient times that indicates you are sorry for something. As the ashes were imposed, we recalled the famous Ash Wednesday words: “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.” which is really just a poetic way of saying ‘remember that you’re human.’ (The English word ‘human’ comes from the Latin word humanus, which is derived from humus meaning ‘earth’ or ‘soil’.)

It is human to make mistakes. Unlike God, all humans fall short of perfection. Each of us occasionally does things we know we shouldn’t, just as we sometimes don’t do things we know we should. Lent is the season in the Church calendar when we pause to 1) acknowledge our faults and sins, 2) apologize to God and to our neighbors, and 3) try to renew our lives and act in ways that mirror God’s love and forgiveness.

Acknowledgment is a practice in honesty. Apologizing is a practice in forgiveness. Acting is practice in agape or Godly love.

Over the weeks leading up to Easter, I encourage you to join me in practicing what I call The Three As of Lent. I’ll get us started by sharing one of the faults I acknowledge that I am often guilty of. Like many people, it’s easy for me to find myself spending too much time on my computer or my smart phone. When I give too much of my attention over to technology I find I don’t dedicate enough attention to the presence of the Spirit of God, I don’t pause long enough to listen to the quiet voice of my own soul, and I don’t devote enough attention to the lives and needs of the living, breathing people and world surrounding me. I am sorry and I apologize to God and to all who have been negatively affected by my lack of attentiveness, and, to show that I’m willing to act differently, I’m giving up the personal time I spend on social media for Lent and spending ten prayerful, tech-free minutes a day silently listening with my heart. 

I hope you join me on this Lenten journey. If you feel inclined, I also hope you’ll share with me how you’re renewing your relationship with God.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

MLK Table Talk - Prophets and Partners with God

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

(Portrait of MLK by 1st Grader)

Dear Golden Bears and Parents,

Contrary to popular belief, prophets in the Jewish and Christian traditions aren’t fortune-tellers who predict the future. Instead, a prophet is a spokesperson for God who addresses people when they forget how to listen to God and fail lead holy lives of justice and peace.

Prophets often express God’s dismay over broken relationships between humans and they point humanity on the path towards healing.

This week in chapel we remembered how one prophet named John prepared the way for the healing work of Jesus. Before Jesus began his ministry he insisted that John baptize him. As soon as this took place, the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus like a dove. A key point in the story is that the arrival of God’s peace in the world first demands active participation on our behalf.

God partners with humanity to fulfill the kingdom of God, and the story of Jesus and John the Baptist asks us: What are you doing to partner with God and help bring peace into the world?

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet of peace who helped teach the world that if we’re to be partners with God we must actively work to mend the relationships that have been broken by slavery, segregation, and racism. Much healing has taken place since the Civil Right Movement—much still needs to be done.

This weekend I encourage you make the time to reflect and talk with your family about two things:

1.    How have the actions of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement affected your life and your relationships?

2.    How can your family become better partners with God and help continue the healing work that Martin Luther King did so well.

With Love and Prayers,
Chaplain Timothy

Table Talk - Unexpected Saints

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

Golden Bears and Parents,

Saints are central figures in the Episcopal tradition. At least once a month in chapel, we sing a favorite hymn called ‘I Sing A Song Of The Saints of God’. One of the lyrics goes:

They lived not only in ages past,

there are hundreds of thousands still.

These words are a great reminder that to find saints we need not look only to the past. A saint is anyone whose life serves as a witness to the love of God, and while it’s true that we encounter saints when we set aside days to celebrate and remember people like St. Francis or Martin Luther King, Jr., our most frequent meetings with saints are those quiet, daily occurances when we find God’s beauty and inspiration shining through the people closest to us.

My lesson in chapel this past week was about how naming the saints around us and identifying the ways they share God’s love makes it easier to find God’s presence and activity in the world. Naming saints is exactly what we’ve been doing in class, and it’s been very inspiring to see how many students recognize moms, dads, siblings, grandparents, classmates, and teachers as saints.

Students are realizing that you don’t have to be perfect to be a saint (we’re human, after all). Instead, the beauty of saints is that the perfect light and love of God gracefully shines through our imperfections. God uses saints to perfect our imperfect lives, and, as the song reminds us:

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,

In church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;

For the saints of God are just folk like me,

And I mean to be one too.

This week, I pray that you keep your eyes and soul open to the communion of saints that surrounds us.

Don’t be perfect. Just be saintly.

With love and prayers, 

Chaplain Timothy