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Valentine for the Parish
(from Leslee)
(from Leslee)
Poem for Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Delaplane
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, a white wooden structure recessed in tall oak trees and surrounded by a cemetery that speaks the history of the place in names and dates and kind epitaphs, sits at the crossroads of an interstate and a busy state road. Passing by on Rt17, slowing from 65 to 45 miles per hour, one might assume that the church is only a historical edifice, a testament to the past. A passerby could be fooled into thinking Emmanuel exists for the sake of the past alone, protected under some decree by the Historical Preservation Society, which swoops down on such old picturesque structures, spreading wings like the ravens that haunt every bare tree.
Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Piedmont Parish is not a bare, dead or dying tree. It is alive. From the eyes of a hawk swooping over the fields where cattle graze, and squirrels skitter over the fences, and cardinals flit from boxwood to boxwood, Emmanuel is a bright sacred patch in a landscape sometimes too bleak and weighted with tragedies past and present. An embrace, an epiphany, the spirit moves and lives there, like the name means: God is with us.
Underneath the Parish house, the secretary works in the basement office, a booklined room. Behind her hangs a picture, painted from a photograph taken in 1972, of the congregation assembled in winter coats and hats, on the front steps of the sanctuary, which rises above them in a rickety series of parallel lines representing the boards of white-washed wood. In quieter afternoon moments, after the preschool children have left, their laughter and little-kid shouts and songs faded from the corridor, the secretary converses with the painting, nodding as she goes past to the copy machine. She asks one figure why he is so smug, and another what she is thinking as she looks off to the side, and the little girl in the patchwork skirt just what she is laughing at in the distance.
The secretary prefers the picture on the cover of her directory, handy on top of her desk, with the photograph of the 2008 congregation, taken in the same arrangement in front of the church. This picture is filled with faces she recognizes, hers among them, by accident, on a bright September morning. She does not talk to this rendering of Emmanuel’s families, because she deals with them in the flesh; they are real, but no less mysterious, than the faces that smile at the back of her head. The faces in the recent photo are Emmanuel’s present, and presence, the one that the airborne hawk can feel, the presence she serves, experiencing her own epiphany of the word made flesh in the people and work of Emmanuel Episcopal, Delaplane, VA.
Time is different than when the church was built, in 1858, 150 years ago. Time was different when the sanctuary served as a hospital during the Civil War, to both sides. Different in 1972, when the small congregation gathered on the front steps of their house of worship, to have the picture made.
Time is different but no less trying and precious, painful and beautiful, as now, in the uncertain 21st century. Grace stays the same, lives and breathes in the Parish - in those who bear the chalice, and those who prepare the altar, those who fold the bulletins, and those who dress the children as lambs and shepherds and angels and dancing stars for the pageant. Grace lives and breathes in those who take notice of the bills and the calendar, the Sunday School curriculum, the hymns, and those who come together for worship. And at the moment of true communion, everyone gathered breathes life and spirit into a place otherwise dead, a sacred place, nonetheless, but one composed solely of wood and paint, and stones and trees.
Grace is an ambiguous word to have such absolute consequences, extraordinary and revelatory. Grace casts a light on the world: it is a defiance of gravity, a counterweight to tragedy. A mediation between what is and what should be, between reality and desire, between matter and spirit, self and love, time and eternity, human and divine. Grace provides evidence, against all the other facts to the contrary, of the incarnation, of Christ and of our love for one another.
Emmanuel, as the name means, sits at such an intersection -- a cross - where the heavy world is precariously and lovingly balanced. Grace is the lever, the balance of how we see ourselves and see others, how we do our work and what our work is, what we desire and what we must be ever willing to give, the word made flesh. Emmanuel Church is not a historical husk; it is a place where the resurrection is practiced, not merely believed. And every day holds the epiphany of this in the mission to celebrate, invite, and finally, to restore.
Emmanuel Episcopal Church of Piedmont Parish is not a bare, dead or dying tree. It is alive. From the eyes of a hawk swooping over the fields where cattle graze, and squirrels skitter over the fences, and cardinals flit from boxwood to boxwood, Emmanuel is a bright sacred patch in a landscape sometimes too bleak and weighted with tragedies past and present. An embrace, an epiphany, the spirit moves and lives there, like the name means: God is with us.
Underneath the Parish house, the secretary works in the basement office, a booklined room. Behind her hangs a picture, painted from a photograph taken in 1972, of the congregation assembled in winter coats and hats, on the front steps of the sanctuary, which rises above them in a rickety series of parallel lines representing the boards of white-washed wood. In quieter afternoon moments, after the preschool children have left, their laughter and little-kid shouts and songs faded from the corridor, the secretary converses with the painting, nodding as she goes past to the copy machine. She asks one figure why he is so smug, and another what she is thinking as she looks off to the side, and the little girl in the patchwork skirt just what she is laughing at in the distance.
The secretary prefers the picture on the cover of her directory, handy on top of her desk, with the photograph of the 2008 congregation, taken in the same arrangement in front of the church. This picture is filled with faces she recognizes, hers among them, by accident, on a bright September morning. She does not talk to this rendering of Emmanuel’s families, because she deals with them in the flesh; they are real, but no less mysterious, than the faces that smile at the back of her head. The faces in the recent photo are Emmanuel’s present, and presence, the one that the airborne hawk can feel, the presence she serves, experiencing her own epiphany of the word made flesh in the people and work of Emmanuel Episcopal, Delaplane, VA.
Time is different than when the church was built, in 1858, 150 years ago. Time was different when the sanctuary served as a hospital during the Civil War, to both sides. Different in 1972, when the small congregation gathered on the front steps of their house of worship, to have the picture made.
Time is different but no less trying and precious, painful and beautiful, as now, in the uncertain 21st century. Grace stays the same, lives and breathes in the Parish - in those who bear the chalice, and those who prepare the altar, those who fold the bulletins, and those who dress the children as lambs and shepherds and angels and dancing stars for the pageant. Grace lives and breathes in those who take notice of the bills and the calendar, the Sunday School curriculum, the hymns, and those who come together for worship. And at the moment of true communion, everyone gathered breathes life and spirit into a place otherwise dead, a sacred place, nonetheless, but one composed solely of wood and paint, and stones and trees.
Grace is an ambiguous word to have such absolute consequences, extraordinary and revelatory. Grace casts a light on the world: it is a defiance of gravity, a counterweight to tragedy. A mediation between what is and what should be, between reality and desire, between matter and spirit, self and love, time and eternity, human and divine. Grace provides evidence, against all the other facts to the contrary, of the incarnation, of Christ and of our love for one another.
Emmanuel, as the name means, sits at such an intersection -- a cross - where the heavy world is precariously and lovingly balanced. Grace is the lever, the balance of how we see ourselves and see others, how we do our work and what our work is, what we desire and what we must be ever willing to give, the word made flesh. Emmanuel Church is not a historical husk; it is a place where the resurrection is practiced, not merely believed. And every day holds the epiphany of this in the mission to celebrate, invite, and finally, to restore.
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Emmanuel Episcopal Church
Delaplane, VA
Delaplane, VA