Small acts bringing the kingdom (Pentecost 13C) 

I am going to tell you three seemingly disassociated vignettes. Bear with me, as they really aren't all that different. Quite a number of years ago, my first partner and I were in the process of ending our seven year relationship. Without going into the gory details, suffice it to say it was not pretty, clean or easy, but instead rather messy, ugly and difficult. He had become addicted to drugs and alcohol, and I, quite honestly, stayed in the relationship too long, to the detriment of my health, financial well-being and my emotional stability. Nevertheless, when the relationship was in the throes of being over, while we were still living in the same home together, although I knew ending the relationship and moving on was the right thing to do, the actual doing of it was very hard, and sad and depressing.

One evening, when I just could not stand being in the same apartment as him, I went for a walk around the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan were we lived. I was pretty depressed, angry and hurt, and all of those emotions were apparently running across my face. After about an hour's walk, mostly with my eyes downcast at the concrete sidewalk, unwilling to look at or be seen by people I was passing, I turned a corner, not looking where I was walking. I nearly bumped full body into a disheveled homeless man. As I swerved around him, I looked up. He looked directly at me and said "Hey, cheer up, smile, it can't be THAT bad." He chuckled and moved on. His comment, literally, stopped me dead in my tracks. Hold that story in your mind for a moment.

Roll the clock forward about two years from that incident. To set the stage: I am single, and pretty happy in that state of being, but I am unemployed, having been laid off from my position when the division of the multi-national corporation I was working for shut its New York office. I was unemployed for six months. I found being unemployed a very trying and difficult time. Toward the end of that time period, a friend told me that she thought a friend of hers knew of an available job in her company. I asked my friend for this person's contact information, but did not call right away. A few days after that conversation with my friend, the phone rang and it was my friend's friend calling. Her name is Vicki and she is one of those kinds of people who just instantly knows you and becomes your friend. She started telling me about the job, how I was over-qualified for it, that I would be bored but, hey, why don't you apply for it anyway. And the job was all of those things Vicki said it was: about three "levels" below my last job, at a much lower wage, and, in truth, rather boring. I interviewed, Vicki gave a recommendation (based on what I am not sure) and I got the job. Six months later I was promoted, and became Vicki's supervisor, and six months after that I was made divisional vice-president. Now, hold onto that story as well.

Now, let's roll forward a few more years. To set the stage: I am (still) happily single, just beginning to talk to my sponsoring parish about pursuing Holy Orders and am on a weekend silent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery. Holy Cross is an Episcopal monastery near Poughkeepsie, NY and sits majestically on the banks of the Hudson River. The monks who run the place pray constantly, following a Rule of Life where they pray, in community at 6 o'clock in the morning, at 8 o'clock, at Noon, at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and at 8 o'clock in the evening. The group I was with participated in (as best we could) in those chanted services over that weekend. That weekend was formative in my current spiritual journey: not because I wanted to join the monks (because I don't). That visit was formative because upon returning home, and on a regular basis since that visit, I find great comfort in knowing that at 6, at 8, at Noon, at 5 and at 8 those chanting monks are doing their thing: praying and praising God, with their incense being symbolic of their melodic chanting voices rising to God.