| What We Do
The Archbishop's Visit to St. Paul's
From: Sr. Grace
February 15, 2002
Hi Everyone. On Sunday, February 3, 2002, the
Archbishop of Canterbury visited St. Paul's Chapel and
Trinity Church, as well as Ground Zero. For an account
of this visit, as well as photos, go to the Trinity
Church website, www.trinitywallstreet.org. There is
also a transcript of his sermon as well as a version
on audiotape and a multimedia version. Grace,n/SSM
Ashes to Ashes, Dust to Dust
From: Sr. Grace
February 9, 2002
Hi Everyone.
Ash Wednesday snuck up on me this year. It is early
this year, this coming Wednesday (Feb 13). I have
always felt like Ash Wednesday came like a slamming
door. I go through the anticipation of Advent, to the
joy of Christmas, then on to the light and hope of
Epiphany. Then suddenly the door slams on light and
hope and I am cast into the darkness of sin and
repentance, temptation and evil, death and the cross.
This year the door slammed on all of us on Sept. 11th.
We were all plunged, against our will and without
warning, into a nightmare of terror. God seemed very
far away. Many thought the end of the world, or at
least the end of their lives, had come. It seemed so
much like the day of darkness and gloom described by
the prophet Joel in the Ash Wednesday Liturgy: "Let
all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day
of the Lord is coming, it is near- a day of darkness
and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness." (Joel
2:1-2 NRSV)
How like Sept 11th it sounds! So many images come to
my mind- the photo of Sr. Marjorie Raphael trudging
down the street, covered with fine white ash,
clutching a handkerchief to her face. Behind her the
street is a sea of gray mud, spotted with an
occasional bit of trash or paper. Or the picture of
the steeple of St. Paul’s Chapel enveloped in a black
cloud of dust and ash, with only the gold at the top
of the steeple visible. Or the picture of brave
Trinity staff members clutching terrified children as
they evacuated the preschool, finding their way
through "white ash several inches deep" which covered
"everything in eerie silence." Or the photos of the
graveyard behind St. Paul’s the day after Sept. 11th,
littered with ash and debris so thick that only the
tops of the gravestones are visible. I cry aloud "How
much more darkness and gloom can we take, Lord?"
Then it occurs to me that Ash Wednesday marks the
beginning of the journey of Jesus to the Cross. I have
learned more about the Cross here than I could have
imagined. Ground Zero has taught me about the radical
love of the Cross- off the chart, over the top,
intense, superhuman, self-sacrificing love. I’ve seen
this radical love every day that I have been at St.
Paul’s. I’ve seen love that pushes you to the brink of
your patience and your endurance and yet somehow also
gives you the energy to go on. Love that chooses to
set aside petty squabbles and differences in personal
style because all that doesn’t really matter here.
Love that pushes men to give up their retirement to
look for the remains of their sons, who were
firefighters who died trying to save others. Love that
makes men and women work back-breaking hours,
punishing their bodies, all in the hopes of bringing
closure to families of people they have never met.
Love that forces you to rethink your answer to "Who is
my neighbor?" Love that propels volunteers to spend
their savings to come to New York from all over the
country (and the world!) to do something, anything to
help those at Ground Zero. Love that unites all of us
with our brothers and sisters of every color, every
race, every faith and every nationality in the bonds
of our humanity. Love mixed with pain, the joy and the
sorrow together, the hope and the horror mixed in
equal parts. Isn’t that what the Cross is all about?
Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of the Lenten
journey, a journey that begins with the tracing of a
gritty cross on our foreheads and ends, not with the
darkness and death of Good Friday, but with the
radical love of the Resurrection. May all of us
experience the Cross of Christ in a powerful,
life-changing way this Lent. Grace,n/SSM
The Archbishops Sermon
From: Sr. Grace
Posted on Trinity News February 6, 2001
This is the Sermon Preached by the Archbishop of
Canterbury at Trinity Church, February 3, 2002.
Good morning. It’s wonderful to be back at Trinity
Wall Street. When your Rector, Dr. Matthews, heard
that I was going to be at the World Economic Forum,
because he’s one of the sharpest operators in the
book, he wrote to me at once and said, "What about
preaching here this morning?" And so, here I am. I
want to bring greetings from my own church to this
church here, and to the Presiding Bishop, my friend
Frank Griswold, to thank him for all he does and to
congratulate him on a very successful trip to Nigeria.
Just before this service we went to ground zero and
found that a very moving act when all the religious
leaders joined together to remember the events of
September 11 and all that’s happened since. And then
with your Rector we went to St. Paul’s Chapel to see
something of the remarkable work that’s going on
there. May I say to those involved, thank you so much
for all you’re doing to show practical Christianity,
that faith in God and faith in Jesus Christ makes such
a difference in the way we live.
And therefore the message I want to bring to you this
morning is directly relevant to our message today to
our broken and needy world. It’s a message directly
relevant to the World Economic Forum, where I am. It’s
a message directly to your private and personal life
and to mine as well. And this message comes directly
from the readings that we had this morning because
there’s a very clear theme running through the
readings, and it has to do with Christian witness.
The Old Testament passage puts it so beautifully: What
is it that the Lord requires of you? Only to do
justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your
God.
Those wonderful words from the Hebrew Scriptures have
found their echo in Christian theology, history,
culture, and life. In my country Thomas Huxley, the
19th century scientist, said that they represent the
perfect idea of religion. In Rome, they were set to
music by the 16th century composer Palestrina. In
America, in your country, they are inscribed in the
library of congress. And more recently in Martin
Luther King’s great history, in his famous speech
spoken in Montgomery, he said these words: "Let us
march on ballot boxes until we send to our city
councils, state legislatures, and the United States
Congress, men who will not fear to do justly, love
mercy, and walk humbly with thy God."
Walking. Walking humbly with your God. Walking is an
activity that we all take for granted. Like eating or
drinking, laughing or playing. But as a parent, and I
know many of you are parents here, I can think back
and remember the great joy of watching our children
graduate from crawling to walking. Watching those
first tottering steps was like witnessing a small
miracle. Think of your own children when, as toddlers,
they made that transition from crawling to walking.
How you despaired of little Johnny ever learning to
walk. You’d entertained nightmares of him crawling to
the Stock Exchange one day because he hadn’t gained
that habit. We despair but the miracle usually
happens. The penny drops. The crawling moves into
unsteady steps and then, lo and behold, he walks and
even runs toward you. And like that memory, the
ability to walk is a gift to be treasured. Just ask
those who are not able to walk how they long to be
able to do so.
Walking is a recurring metaphor and image in Scripture
for Christian living and behavior. The first
Christians were called people of the way. People on a
journey. People who waked with God. Pilgrim people on
that journey with God, like the disciples on the
Emmaus road. We are commanded to walk in love. To walk
in the spirit. To walk in Christ. To walk in wisdom.
To walk in the light. The theme goes on and on.
And those images of walking clearly imply that the
Christian life involves action and movement, which
indeed it does. But is it only about action? I’ve
noticed that we often in the Christian church put the
act of behaving in a different category from that of
proclaiming the Christian message. That second lesson
from I Corinthians 3 reveals St. Paul urging his
readers to proclaim Christ nailed to the cross -- a
stumbling block to Jews and folly to Greeks. Over the
course of history, sadly, Christians have been
separated quite forcefully into two camps: evangelism
and mission, proclamation and social activism.
You know I have a clear and strong memory of the time
my wife and I visited Honolulu on a visit to Australia
just fifteen or so years ago. I’ve always had great
admiration for Fr. Damien, the wonderful Belgian
priest who stood in for his brother and was sent to
Honolulu and then stood in for somebody else and spent
his whole career looking after lepers. And just as we
were leaving our hotel I found a Roman Catholic Church
with a museum to Fr. Damien. So we went. I then reread
his wonderful story of his profound identification
with lepers until that poignant moment in a Mass when
Fr. Damien lifted up his hands, showing the spots
forming, and said, "We Lepers." That moment of
identification. What sacrifice and what love.
Then I will never forget returning to our hotel,
switching on the television, and going through the
programs until I got to channel 13. We found ourselves
engrossed in a discussion between televangelists about
what the kingdom of God is like. And I couldn’t help
but contrast the two scenes. There, people talking
about membership of the kingdom of heaven from an
air-conditioned studio and the lowly service of a man
who gave himself away for those whose lives were
surely living hell.
In reality, there should be no separation between
living the faith and proclaiming it. Faith cannot be
hermetically sealed off from the contradictions and
questions of life anymore than action can be separated
from life in Christ. You may know the old ditty, which
I think originated in the United States:
Mr. Businessman he went to church
He never missed a Sunday
Mr. Businessman he went to hell
For what he did on Monday
It is amazing that some Christian people still wish to
drive a wedge between faith and life. I recall that
shortly after the martyrdom of Archbishop Oscar
Romero, some of his opponents actually argued that he
had brought death upon himself by his involvement with
issues of human justice and social justice, too. The
Gospel is not about politics, it was implied; it’s
simply about the worship of God through Jesus Christ.
But this begs the question: which idea of God is the
one that should direct our journey? Is it the God of
those televangelists with an emphasis on salvation one
by one, which has nothing to do with the rest of
creation, or is it the idea of God in Christ who
identifies with the poor and the blind and the
suffering and the powerless? Thank God we don’t have
to choose in such terms. The God who walks with us on
our journey is the one who calls us to follow him one
by one, but he is the same God who calls us to live
out our faith on Monday, Tuesday, and throughout the
rest of the week.
But we all know how difficult it is to live out our
faith, don’t we? I’m sure that those of you who were
so close to the terrible events of Sept 11 in this
church and elsewhere still remember how the shock of
it tested your faith. I’ve been struck by so many
stories of heroism, bravery, defiant optimism,
outstanding courage. But I guess it wasn’t quite that
easy at the time. I imagine that each of those heroes
felt very vulnerable. Very scared indeed. And that’s
entirely understandable, because walking by faith
clearly suggests that we haven’t arrived at our
destination. Walking in faith implies that we have
still so much to learn, so much more growing to do.
Feelings of weakness, then, and inadequacy, are
inevitable in our journey as Christians.
The World Economic Forum that I am currently attending
is entitled, "Leadership in a Fragile World." It
apparently hadn’t occurred to the organizers that
there’s an irony in those words because our problem as
a world is fragile leadership in a fragile world.
We’ve only got to think of the Enron scandal. Ask
anyone who’s bankrupt as a result of it. They know
what fragile leadership is all about. And we know in
the Christian Church as well.
Some time ago I came across a very ironic commentary
on this in an article entitled "A Letter from an
Employment Agency to Jesus, Circa A.D. 30."
"Thank you for submitting the resumes of the 12 men
you’ve picked out for managerial positions in your new
organization. All of them have taken our tests. We’ve
also arranged personal interviews for each one of them
with our psychologist and vocational aptitude
consultant.
"It is our opinion that most of your nominees are
lacking in background, education, and vocational
aptitude for the type of enterprise you are
undertaking. Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and
given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no
qualities of leadership. The two brothers James and
John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest
above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questing
attitude that would undermine morale. We feel it is
our duty to tell you that Matthew has been blacklisted
by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau. James
the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, definitely have
radical leanings, and they both registered a high
score on the manic depressive scale.
"One of the candidates, however, shows great
potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness,
meets people well, has a keen business mind, has
contacts in high places, is highly motivated,
ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas
Iscariot as your controller and right hand man. All
the other profiles are self-explanatory. We wish you
every success in your new venture."
What a powerful point that story makes. That the
followers and disciples of Jesus Christ are neither
plaster saints nor are they as actually dedicated as
Fr. Damien or Oscar Romero. They are like us:
fallible, stumbling, and oh-so-weak. And yet by God’s
spirit, they are able to walk in love and service. And
they and we will always be surprised by God’s power to
use us when we least expect it.
That is why God pours his heavenly spirit upon us. As
we come to receive the Holy Communion, we hold out our
empty hands and God gives us those tokens, those
sacraments of his love and presence. That’s why the
Gospel tells us we are blessed. The Sermon on the
Mount is a profound meditation of those who seek to
walk day by day in the light of the Gospel. It is
saying to us simply that our primary and most
important obligation is to live a Christian life both
in word and deed. As we do this, we shall be given the
strength to speak out and live life prophetically, and
we will find to our great joy that God will be
speaking through us as he uses our humble selves. He
has shown you what is good. And what does the Lord
require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and
to walk humbly with your God?
Pictures from Saint Paul's...
Dec 10, 2001
Hi Everyone! To see pictures of all those working at
St. Paul's, including me, go to
www.trinitywallstreet.org. Click on View photo
galleries and then click on the Courage Series. The
forward arrow will take you through the photos.
Peace to all! Sr. Grace,n/SSM
Archbishop Visits Trinity, Ground Zero
From: Sr. Grace
Posted on Trinity News February 3, 2002
by Nathan Brockman
Today, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev.
George Carey, saw ground zero first hand, co-leading a
memorial service at the site, visiting the relief
mission to rescue workers at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel,
and preaching a sermon at Trinity Church that put the
arduous and often horrific tasks of rescue workers and
volunteers in the context of justice, love, and faith.
The Archbishop is among 40 world religious leaders
attending the World Economic Forum being held in New
York. A delegation of these same leaders journeyed by
bus to ground zero early in the morning to hold a
memorial service on a viewing platform for family
members who lost a loved one in the World Trade
Center. It was “a moving act,” said the Archbishop.
The service concluded with the assembled singing “We
Shall Overcome.”
On the opposite side of the acres-long site, now a
muddy pit with the concrete foundation of the center’s
plaza exposed, stood the Archbishop’s second
destination: St. Paul’s Chapel. Since a few hours
after the September 11 attacks, St. Paul’s has been
serving as a relief mission for the relief workers –
firefighters, police officers, ironworkers, engineers,
and others. Leaving the Forum group, the Archbishop
and his party were driven to St. Paul’s.
The Chapel was “humming” with activity, noted the
Archbishop. Police officers lined the wooden pews of
the more than 200-year-old building. Firefighters in
rescue gear walked down the aisles. The Archbishop
greeted the workers and the volunteers as he walked
through, expressing his gratitude for and amazement at
their work. “They’re all heroes, aren’t they?” he
said.
Ground Zero’s horrors were immediate: Among others,
the Archbishop met Michael Bellone, who said it was
his job to “extract bodies” from the site. Ten minutes
before, Mr. Bellone said, he had removed a body part
from the rubble.
The Rev. Lyndon Harris, associate responsible for
ministry at St. Paul's, led the Archbishop and a group
of Episcopal leaders around the chapel: The Most Rev.
Frank T. Griswold, Presiding Bishop, the Very Rev.
Ward B. Ewing, Dean and President of General
Theological Seminary, and the Rev. Canon Peter Larom,
Executive Director of Seamen’s Church Institute, along
with the Rev. Dr. Daniel Paul Matthews, Rector of
Trinity Church.
Then it was on to Trinity, just down the street, to
reflect on the morning. The appropriate words came
from the the Old Testament lesson. “What is it that
the Lord requires of you?” reiterated the Archbishop
from Trinity’s pulpit. “Only to do justice, love
mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”
A Heartbreaking Story from Ground Zero
From: Sr. Grace
Sent: January 8, 2002
Hi Everyone, This article, from todays New York Times,
is why we are all still doing what we are doing. It is
what keeps us all going. It is heartbreaking, but
please read it and pray for all of us who are still
struggling here at Ground Zero to find and bury ALL
the dead. Grace,n/SSM
THE SEARCH
Still Digging for Lost Sons After a Million Tons of
Pain
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
The father comes to be near his son. He digs through
the smoking steel with a small Army pick and shovel.
"Where are you, boy?" he asks. It has been the same
routine for months.
The search by Bill Butler, a retired fire captain, has
been futile so far. After a 10-hour day at the site of
the former World Trade Center, he drives home in the
dark to Long Island.
His wife, Peggy, will have a pot roast and potatoes
on. She will ask how his day was. Was it a good day?
And if they found one person, he will tell her it was
a good day. If they find one finger, he tells her
something was accomplished. But mostly, they are bad
days.
Mr. Butler, 62, is a member of a sad fraternity of men
at ground zero, a dozen or so who lost their sons or
brothers in the cataclysm of Sept. 11. For almost all
of the 118 days since, most of these men have spent
the daylight hours in search of their kin. They are
retired firefighters and police officers and, in a
contorted way, they are the lucky ones. Because of
their careers in uniform, they are able to be near
their lost children rather than having to sit home and
crumble.
But there are perils that come with their privileges.
They have come for so many days on end, one melting
into the next, that their sense of the calendar has
been lost entirely. Fishing and golf have been put
off. The house goes wanting. Their lives have been
taken over. Even when a son is found, a man from this
group does not leave the pit. He just expands his
sense of mission.
Bill Butler, a retired fire captain, puts in 10-hour
days searching for his son Thomas, a firefighter who
is still missing at ground zero. "This is a hell of a
way to spend your retirement," said Lee Ielpi, a
retired firefighter who found his son on Dec. 11 after
91 days of searching. "But I'm not leaving until the
last dustpan of dirt has been swept away from here."
The debris is being taken out of the hole rapidly.
Close to one million tons have been removed so far. It
is not the search that makes headlines anymore, these
fathers say. That news, to their minds, has given way
to the bickering talk of politics and money and
memorials.
But the search is not over; fires still smolder and
more than 2,000 people are still missing. The men of
this fraternity are reluctant to talk about their
feelings. It goes against their code. But they do with
the hope that the public does not forget the
search.Their names are Ielpi, Vigiano, O'Berg, Butler,
and they pick through the muck of destruction, their
eyes distant and sad, speaking of nothing but
death."They're such horrible words — was, had been,
used to be," said John Vigiano, 63, a retired captain
in the Fire Department who lost two sons —John, 36, a
firefighter, and Joseph, 34, a police detective.
Joseph was found in October. John is still missing.
"When I sit down there alone, I talk to him and tell
him I love him."The fathers greet each other jokingly
as doddering old men. They talk about the war years in
the Fire Department three decades ago, when it was not
uncommon to answer dozens of calls in an evening.The
younger men see the older men hurting and, out of
respect, they call them sir. The construction workers
wear the pins memorializing the men's children; they
bring them coffee and keep them updated on the search.
For lack of better words, Mr. Ielpi, 57, is a
fortunate man. They found his son Jonathan, 29, a
firefighter with Squad 288 and a father of two, in the
remains of the south tower. Mr. Ielpi was able to
carry him out. He spoke about that day in the warmth
of a construction trailer; the workers there silent in
attention."We found him and now I don't have to go on
wondering `Maybe?' whenever I see someone who looks
like him," he said with tears welling in his eyes.
"But to tell you the truth, I had hoped he turned
coward and ran to an island or drilled a hole behind
the fridge and was living there. I held a glimmer and
then I found him and all the air drained out of
me."Still, Mr. Ielpi cannot leave. There are other
sons and it would be unfair to leave them in the cold,
underground. There are the sons of his friends like
Bill Butler, whose son Thomas, 37, from Squad 1 in
Park Slope, Brooklyn, is still missing. Mr. Butler was
supposed to be off to Sarasota, Fla., this week.
Instead, he is going to sell the retirement home
because there is going to be no retirement, he said.
He has his son's three children to help raise. They
say the worst thing in life is having to bury a child.
Worse, the fathers of ground zero say, is not being
able to find that child. There remain layers and
layers of packed floors, with sons somewhere in
between.Perhaps the most heartbreaking man at the
16-acre hole is Dennis O'Berg. Mr. O'Berg, 53, had 31
years in the department. His last tour of duty was
Sept. 11. His son, Dennis Jr., also a firefighter,
died at the trade center. A few days later, Mr. O'Berg
put in his retirement papers.
"I had enough," he said. Mr. O'Berg did not come back
to the site for a very long time. He needed to steady
his legs. Then the calendar turned and he returned. He
speaks very little. "I feel he's deep down," Mr.
O'Berg said as he surveyed the steaming heap.
But with every piece that gets sifted, turning up
nothing, a little hope flutters away. Parts of the pit
are 60 feet deep, and with workers having hit bedrock,
pools of water have collected. The grackles and
sparrows and seagulls have returned. The odds are
better for finding a firefighter than anyone else,
since their fire-retardant gear preserves the bodies.
That reality has given rise to some tension, as a bit
of graffiti in one urinal at the site suggests: "Hey
FDNY, look for everyone, not just your own!" "We
are!" was the reply.
On Saturday, a construction worker, judging by the
boots and the clothes, was found. Just as they do for
fallen uniformed personnel, firefighters and police
officers, along with construction workers, formed an
honor guard as the body, covered with a flag, was
taken out.
"It was a sign of respect," said Bob Gray, the foreman
of the heavy machine operators. "And it was
appreciated."Given the chance, family members of the
thousands of missing civilians would almost certainly
be down at ground zero with claw hammers and boots.
But that is the mixed benefit of wearing a
uniform.There is one civilian, however, who lost a
brother and has been at ground zero for all but a
handful of days.Brian Lyons, 41, spent the first 20
days on the pile. Before the calamity, he had a desk
job as a construction project manager with a big
Manhattan firm. He earned six figures, he said, and
wore a suit.When his boss would not grant him a leave
of absence, he quit, and took a $30-an-hour job as a
supervisor at ground zero. This allowed him to look
for his brother, Michael, a firefighter with Squad 41.
"I know he's talking to me," Mr. Lyons said. "He's
saying, `Brian don't quit. I'm in here.' "As if proof
had to be given, Mr. Lyons spoke of an event that
cemented his resolve.
A pile of ID cards was found in the rubble of the
north tower. He picked a random one. It read: Michael
Lyons. He keeps that in his wallet now."He's my
brother," he said during a break one day, "and I'm
going to look for him until this place is immaculate."
A Christmas Message from St. Paul's
From: Sr. Grace
Sent: Dec 24, 2001
The season of Advent here at St. Paul's has been a
roller coaster of emotion. The events of Sept 11th
have yet to fade. Many people have emailed me to ask
"Have things gotten any better down there yet?" The
answer depends on the day. There have been times when
we have rejoiced- like the day when it was announced
that all of the fires had been put out at the site.
And there are times of profound sadness- like when
word came that one of the women whose husband had died
when the towers collapsed had taken her own life,
choosing to not live without him. Or when a man who
had been seriously injured by debris falling from the
towers finally succumbed to his injuries and passed
away, three months to the day after the attacks. We
were encouraged by a visit by Manu Dhingra, a man who
was burned over 34% of his body, yet who is very much
alive and who continues to inspire us with his courage
in the face of daunting physical injuries. We were
moved to tears by the unexpected visit of Temple Beth
Torah, a Jewish synagogue who came to St. Paul's and
shared their traditional lighting of the menorah and
who carried with them the message of peace between our
faiths. We felt collective outrage at the callous
remarks by Osama bin Laden on the videotape shown
recently and we saw so many burdened with that rage,
with no real outlet for the anger. We cheered when the
NYPD announced that it would require mandatory trauma
counseling for all of its 55,000 employees, and we
cried when the Fire Department made public that one
quarter of the 6500 firefighters who have worked at
Ground Zero have serious respiratory ailments, several
hundred of them so severely ill that they qualify for
disability pensions. We have been momentarily buoyed
by visits from celebrities like Cheryl Ladd, Mia
Farrow and Scott Bakula, and we have been nourished by
the presence of visiting clergy from around the world
who celebrate the Eucharist with us every day at noon.
We have been overwhelmed by the generosity of so many,
from the 6 year old little boy from Canada who sent us
a $2 coin, to the anonymous donor from Kansas who
walked into the Chapel and laid down $5000 in $100
bills, to the churches who took collections by passing
hard hats around instead of collection plates and who
raised tens of thousands of dollars for our work here
at Ground Zero. We have been thrilled to hear that
many of the people who come to volunteer in our chapel
become so inspired by the experience that they seek
out other opportunities to volunteer- in their
workplace, in their churches and synagogues, and in
their communities. We worry about those who have time
to volunteer because they have been laid off, or their
businesses have folded. We pray together for peace in
our world, for a strong economy and for healing for
our nation. And amid all of this emotion comes
Christmas. This year, in the midst of the chaos that
is Ground Zero, comes the birth of the Christ Child.
Isn't it wonderful that God loves us so much that
Jesus was born on Earth as a human being, to
experience all of these emotions, all of the chaos and
pain and joy and love and bitterness and anger and fun
and sadness that comes with being fully alive and
fully human!! Jesus was born in poverty, at a time in
human history that was as full of pain and suffering
as we have now. All over the world, in the past as
well as in the future, there will be times like these
when we experience so much emotion and turmoil that we
cannot see beyond our own little corner of the world,
our own little pocket of pain. And into that world, in
the body of a tiny little newborn baby, comes the Son
of God- unafraid of the problems, unafraid of the
chaos, unafraid of the future- to bring us the message
of God's love for us, now and always. My prayer is
that each one of us may experience that love this
Christmas. God bless us one and all! Grace,n/SSSM
=====
Your worst days are never so bad that
you are beyond the reach of God's grace,
And your best days are never so good that
you are beyond the need of God's grace.
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