A joy-filled day to you! We walked around the corner onto Broadway the other morning and ran into Adam and Mr. Dixon who had spent the  night sleeping in the doorway of a vacant building. As we chatted a bit, Adam reached behind Mr. Dixon and pulled out a copy of the book we've been reading the past few weeks as part of our Lenten study of the Beatitudes - Eric Kolbell's What Jesus Meant; the Beatitudes and a Meaningful life. "Good book," offered Adam. "It certainly is. Maybe you'll join us on Friday when we gather to talk about it."
"Maybe I will."
We hope you'll join us too. We gather in the parlor at Hope every Friday at 6:30 for some music, readings and quiet before heading off to the kitchen for soup and conversation. |
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Ecclesia wins Human Rights Award
 Ruth Ruelke holds a plaque your ministry was given at Thursday's dinner hosted by the Orange County Human Rights Commission. Ecclesia was given the 2014 Human Rights Award for its "commitment to serve homeless and otherwise marginalized people." With Ruth are a few members of the Ecclesia Family (L. to R.): Bo Carey, Will Pierce, Deb Gould, Tommy Jackson, Cynthia Gulkeson, Kyle Hooks, Janet Horan and Catherine Costello.
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Meet me in Galilee, Meet me in the Burgh
When my youngest daughter was a baby, it was sometimes tough to get her to sleep at night. So, in the warmer months, we'd put her in her car seat and drive from New Paltz to Gardiner and back. She'd be fast asleep before we got halfway through the trip. "Going to Gardiner" became the expression we used for going to sleep, a place of peace . . . We didn't need to explain. We just said "It's time to go to Gardiner" and we knew what was happening.
In next week's Easter Sunday gospel reading - Matthew 28:1-10 - the Angel of the Lord and then the risen Jesus tell the Marys to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where Jesus would meet up with them. They needed no further explanation. You wouldn't expect them to need one; it was familiar territory. The disciples apparently were folks who were either from Galilee or had spent a great deal of time there. So, it was familiar territory.
But, Galilee was also a kind of out-of-the-way place which, for perhaps centuries, was a region governed directly by God. It was considered to be a place of little value, a place abandoned by empire. It was also a region where an activist, troublemaker, terrorist, freedom-fighter could begin to build a movement, attracting followers who would join them in attempts to liberate their homeland.
When you think of it, the two characterizations of Galilee work well together. It is places ruled by God in which revolutionary things happen. Pilgrims go to the "thin places" to experience the holy and be transformed.
Newburgh is such a place; it is our Galilee, the place to which one can come to meet Jesus. It is a place abandoned by empire, a place where trouble can be found living beside great need, a place where Jesus is alive and well and sleeping in abandoned buildings and eating at soup kitchens.
It is because we have encountered Jesus in the face, the life of others, that we can say with certainty, that Jesus has risen, he has left the tomb, that the love of God abounds.
Where did you meet Jesus today?
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