The Meditation

We are the Diocese of Kentucky. You, and me. With the bishop. All following after Jesus. 

Here we are, morning prayer opening our lips in the chapel at 7 am. Some days we're listening to a podcast version as we're running through the park. The diocese already ironed linens for the noon eucharist, and now is setting up a tray with bread and with a cruet of wine. The diocese is trudging through dirty snow on campus for a study break, and this afternoon, the diocese will run over to open the church building for AA. As the sun fades over a still much too cold Kentucky, the diocese will read the words of Evening Prayer, leaning over to point to the words of the magnificat for someone who is still trying to figure out why that red book is so very important. (Maybe today they'll take home their very own copy.) Tomorrow the diocese will sort cans of green beans and evaporated milk into paper bags so they can offer them to families in the neighborhood. Tomorrow the diocese will go to bed having had a good meal because they were able to pick up a bag of groceries someone had given and sorted just for them. 

A few days from now the diocese will preach a sermon that insists, despite all messages to the contrary from both the church and the world, that everyone listening (and those not listening!) are the very creation of God, and beloved of God, and that they are not alone, ever, and that in Jesus, their whole lives are loved and turned upside down, and made new, and that they have a whole bunch of brothers and sisters. The diocese will say: there is hope. The diocese will say: there is something more true, and more powerful, than wealth, fashion, debt, fear, technology, divorce, betrayal, racism, sin. There is even something more true than death: life. Your life, God's life, your neighbor's life. And Love. Love is more powerful than all those things combined. 

The diocese will share those words by offering a space for tutoring children who mostly see images of themselves as violent criminals or victims of violence, as drug users or sellers, as strangers to be feared. The diocese will say to them: your life matters. It matters. Tell us about your life.  

The diocese will share those words with a woman whose mind has betrayed her; we will soak up those words when our hips and knees have just stopped cooperating. We will pray, and worship, and offer and receive blessings, saying: your life matters. It matters. Tell us about it.

The diocese will will meet dozens of women who live life as a prisoner. We will meet them knowing that Jesus' first sermon was to proclaim their freedom. He was a teenager when he preached that. We will know that freedom is meant for each of us. 

We'll gather up the courage to sit with our priest and ask for help from the discretionary fund to pay our heating bill. It's been so very cold for so long. We'll knit a blanket for a man who's been working on a boat on the Ohio for months now. Maybe it will smell a little like his own family by the time we're finished. 

The diocese has given up chocolate for several weeks, and cut back on the bourbon, but not basketball. (Easter Sunday is April 5. The National Championship is April 6.) We will say we are sorry for all the things we ought not to have done, and all things we ought to have done, but haven't yet. The diocese will give up delicious fancy coffee and drop that extra $3.50 x 5 into the collection plate each week. We'll take a deep breath and write down a number that seems impossibly large on a pledge card and trust that when God says we can live off 90%, God means it. After a while the deep breath will turn to peace and gratitude. 

The diocese will go to lots of meetings, and will continue the work of ensuring healthy systems, good order, and making sure our Sunday School rooms, our altar rails, and our mission trips are a safe place for all. We will walk alongside those who are trying to figure out just what that still, small voice of God is whispering in their ear.  We will make sure we aren't violating any IRS regulations. We will be listening, and sharing, and preparing, and interviewing as we call priests to serve with our congregations. 

And we will spend a huge chunk of our money and time and creativity and so much love planning and producing weeks of Christian community for our young people on a woody, rambling piece of the riverside in Grayson County. 

There are so many other things, too. But that's more than enough for today. Time to rest. 

We are the Diocese. You, and me. With the bishop. With Christ. With each other, and with all our neighbors from the middle of Kentucky until you dip into the river or into Tennessee. Thanks be to God. 

Solemn Prayer over the People