Seven whole days

Back when my time in churches was spent on an organ bench, I used to play this sometimes on Trinity Sunday. There’s no actual connection between Bach’s präludium and the Holy Trinity, just a proliferation of threes and the sublime scope of the piece. (My performances tended toward a Schweitzer tempo, but this one is a masterful and zippy performance.)

If you want some “real” Trinity music, check out this Bach cantata, some music by Messiaen, or perhaps this Festival Te Deum of Britten. If you want an old-fashioned CD for the occasion, this is your buddy.

This is one of those things that I read and then immediately think, “This needs to be on 7WD.” Just when you think Starbucks has reached market saturation, they astound you with new locations. Here is a doozy, as reported by the Courier-Gazette of McKinney, TX.

The Turrentine-Jackson Morrow Funeral Home opened a Starbucks franchise in their building back in February as part of a recent expansion and the owners said it provides a perfect and familiar corner of comfort for grieving family and friends.

“When families come to a funeral home to make arrangements and tend to those details that they have to attend to, there is no reason they can’t take a break to have something nice to eat or drink and we wanted to incorporate something familiar and comforting,” Turrentine-Jackson Morrow Funeral Home owner Diana Morrow said. “So they can sit back and enjoy a nice cup of coffee and relax.”

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It’s not the first time I’ve posted vegetable art here on 7WD, but here you go. This is magnificent. That is all.

Wave of the broccoli to Likecool.

It always amazes me — but never surprises me — when people object to the need for change within the church. Most often you encounter comments along the lines of, “We are already making so many changes, can’t we slow down a few changes?” It’s as if there’s a change quota that we are in danger of exceeding.

Of course, this is ridiculous. The whole point of the Gospel is change. Let me say that again. Change is the point. God changed choas into creation. On nearly every page of the Old Testament, we read about people who are changed by their encounter with God. Through Jesus Christ, God changes our world, bringing about our salvation. Jesus consistently asked people to change. The Holy Spirit changes hearts and lives. There are no saints of the status quo; nearly every saint is known for change. You get the idea.

Now granted, some things never change. God’s boundless love for us is eternal. The core faith of the church (e.g. “Christ is died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”) remains unchanged from the time of Jesus. We Christians have always gathered around a Holy Table to retell the sacred stories, to offer our prayers, and to feast on Christ’s presence in bread and wine. The message is the same, but the proclamation of it has changed much over 2,000 years.

The institutional church is particularly prone to getting all this wrong. Despite historical certainty which teaches us that change will not kill us, but will in fact make us stronger, we resist. In the present time, we are experiencing a particularly virulent strain of change-o-phobia. If we Anglicans don’t defeat that dreaded affliction, our branch of the Christian witness will wither. I suspect that the very threat which occasions our need for change is what pushes us to whistle past our potential graveyard as we seek to avoid change. In other words, our anxiety provokes us to cling to our present or to a mythical past.

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As many 7WD readers know, I have been discerning where I might be called to serve next. Well, I am delighted to announce that I have accepted a call to serve as the Executive Director of Forward Movement. You can read the story on Episcopal News Service. For those of you who think that Forward Movement is synonymous with Forward Day by Day, let me tell you there is a lot more now and even more to come.

In no particular order, here are some reasons I am excited about this call and about the future of Forward Movement.

The origin of Forward Movement is also the key to its vibrant future. You can read the whole tale on the Forward Movement website. Back in the 1930s, the Episcopal Church was hurting. A bunch of lay people and clergy worked (initially outside the bounds of General Convention) to contribute to the financial need of the church and then to breathe life into the Church. Simply put, the Church had forgotten why it exists. Sound familiar? Anyway, soon there was a “forward movement” at work — with materials and gatherings “to reinvigorate the life of the Episcopal Church”.

Our church needs this today, as we all need continual renewal. My hope is the Forward Movement will once again be on the vanguard of producing materials and maybe even holding gatherings that will equip, empower, and inspire people to exercise the fullness of their ministry.

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