Song: "God's Extended Hand" Uplift: Communion in Dublin I’m sitting in a pew in a one-thousand-year-old cathedral in Dublin, Ireland bathed by an ethereal choir song of organ and voices that rings off the ancient stones majestically, like you might experience at the coronation of a king or queen; listening to a priest, a woman, preaching love and acceptance, calling out the unique challenges of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, in a country where centuries of struggle and oppression and violence and division continue to weigh on the population, like a medieval millstone, whose forbearers suffered a particularly cruel occupation- their land and rights taken, the practice of their chosen religion banned, economic and educational opportunities denied, where they endured intentional starvation in a famine that left one million dead; where a lingering animosity, born from this dark history, refuses to extinguish, like an unsettled spirit that can’t rest, it makes its presence known when agitated, a subtext that haunts life here and casts a long shadow over most everything, and my thoughts drift to my homeland, America, where my forebearers journeyed in pursuit of freedom and opportunity, and where today, the unthinkable seems possible, that the rule of law and the underpinnings of our democracy are not immutable, that there is no guarantee that our freedoms will endure, that what was paid for in blood by those who proceeded us is at risk, while we, the most privileged and blessed society in the history of humankind divide into tribes, mired in abject disagreement on everything, including the reality of events that unfold right before our eyes, and then, my gaze shifts to an African-looking priest, robed in the elaborate garments of the Church of Ireland, processing past me down the marbled center aisle, holding a bejeweled staff in his left hand and an eight or nine-year old boy in the other, perhaps a relative- sneakered, shirt untucked, scruffy like any youth his age, shuffling alongside the stiffed-back, formally-garbed priest, tracing the steps of untold worshipers over a thousand years, nobility and commoners, kings and queens and serfs, young and old and the Scripture is read- the unchanging, enduring word of God that recalls an itinerate preacher, Jesus, being admonished by the religious authorities of his day, who are so fixed on the practice of their religion that they are unable to behold miracles, performed by the Son of God, right before their eyes, as retold in Mark 2 and 3:
Communion in Dublin
Communion in Dublin
Communion in Dublin
Song: "God's Extended Hand" Uplift: Communion in Dublin I’m sitting in a pew in a one-thousand-year-old cathedral in Dublin, Ireland bathed by an ethereal choir song of organ and voices that rings off the ancient stones majestically, like you might experience at the coronation of a king or queen; listening to a priest, a woman, preaching love and acceptance, calling out the unique challenges of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, in a country where centuries of struggle and oppression and violence and division continue to weigh on the population, like a medieval millstone, whose forbearers suffered a particularly cruel occupation- their land and rights taken, the practice of their chosen religion banned, economic and educational opportunities denied, where they endured intentional starvation in a famine that left one million dead; where a lingering animosity, born from this dark history, refuses to extinguish, like an unsettled spirit that can’t rest, it makes its presence known when agitated, a subtext that haunts life here and casts a long shadow over most everything, and my thoughts drift to my homeland, America, where my forebearers journeyed in pursuit of freedom and opportunity, and where today, the unthinkable seems possible, that the rule of law and the underpinnings of our democracy are not immutable, that there is no guarantee that our freedoms will endure, that what was paid for in blood by those who proceeded us is at risk, while we, the most privileged and blessed society in the history of humankind divide into tribes, mired in abject disagreement on everything, including the reality of events that unfold right before our eyes, and then, my gaze shifts to an African-looking priest, robed in the elaborate garments of the Church of Ireland, processing past me down the marbled center aisle, holding a bejeweled staff in his left hand and an eight or nine-year old boy in the other, perhaps a relative- sneakered, shirt untucked, scruffy like any youth his age, shuffling alongside the stiffed-back, formally-garbed priest, tracing the steps of untold worshipers over a thousand years, nobility and commoners, kings and queens and serfs, young and old and the Scripture is read- the unchanging, enduring word of God that recalls an itinerate preacher, Jesus, being admonished by the religious authorities of his day, who are so fixed on the practice of their religion that they are unable to behold miracles, performed by the Son of God, right before their eyes, as retold in Mark 2 and 3: