By the Rev. Bruce W. Gray

Probably everyone has their inner measurements of seasons, of cues that let them know when it is summer, fall, winter or spring. For as long as I can remember, baseball has marked the beginning of warmth and long days, whether I was playing it at a local ball field or watching a professional game in a stadium, with television or radio broadcasts being an unsatisfying substitute for being there in person.

But in this time of COVID-19, both time and place have been out of place, including with baseball. The Indianapolis Triple A team never played a game this year. The major leagues stadiums are locked to all but the most essential members of the teams, with some players sitting in the otherwise empty stands to allow for social distancing during games. It is an odd sight on television, and the stadiums having prerecorded fan noise playing makes it all the more disorienting (one reason for that piped in noise is to help cover up for the sake of the broadcasts the swearing by the players). 

Perhaps the weirdest thing has been the pictures of fans that have been attached to some of the empty seats in the stadiums. Watching various TV games has allowed me to see that some stadiums have none of these "fan cutouts" while others, such as my San Francisco Giants, have thousands of cutouts, with some stadium sections virtual sell-outs. The effect is impressive enough that in an early game of this unique season an outfielder, after catching the ball for the third out, tossed the ball to a cutout since he always tossed a third out ball to a fan. He looked a bit embarrassed as the ball rolled around on the concrete beneath the cutout's seat.

I think we can all understand that player's automatic action, born of years of experience, that came from him for a moment forgetting the weird conditions of his game. I know I at times over the past months have forgotten about COVID-19 and the care we must all take with one another to help keep one another healthy. Yet we cannot pretend that we are playing a normal game, that life is returning to normal just because we wish it so. Instead, we must be as diligent as ever, even though it stresses our patience and we may be running out of energy to be focused on something so challenging. 

So in those moments of fatigue and frustration, it is crucial to turn to God, and seek God's gifts for us to get through these times. As much as we wish we could be sitting in the stands at Victory Field in Indianapolis, enjoying the evening air and the company of fellow baseball fans, that is not possible. But we can still love and be loved, by God, by one another, by family friends and strangers, when we seek the best for everyone, health for everyone, safety for everyone, and let God recharge us so that we can continue to live meaningful lives even as we do our best to follow the best science, the best research, in order to keep each other safer. Right now that continues to be one of the most important ways to love our neighbor in fulfillment of God's commandment to us.

By The Rev. Cathy Gray

I cannot speak from experience about your life. 
But I can say this:
You are right to tell me
that I am a carrier of privilege,
that mine is a life graced
by the color of my skin. 
You are right. 


I can never know the pain
that lives in you, the pain
that may well be the death of you.


I have no way to understand
the fear bequeathed to you
by your ancestors
(cast upon them by my own).
I can never begin to grasp
what it means to have your life
formed and then cast out
by the happenstance of genetics
that gave you
(by some white-warped standard)
too heavy a dose
of tyrosinase or melanocytes


As a child
I was honored and loved
by my teachers.
I was respected by my peers.
I had an easy freedom to excel. 
I had clean safe water to drink
and quality health care
and all my shots
and I vacationed in beautiful places.


I knew my mom and my dad 
would be safely home at the end of the day;
that my brother
would live to adulthood, 
relaxed and at ease;
that I could choose from every adventure 
life has to offer
and safely walk - run! -
wherever my heart might lead
for as long as I live
because of the color of my skin.


I’ve never been called out on the streets
or had names flung at me
like stones
because of the color of my skin.


I’ve never been spit at 
or pelted with rotting words
or stopped while driving
or shot at while jogging
or banned from a bus
or a water fountain
because of the color of my skin. 


I’ve never had to worry
about my son’s future
or my daughter’s well-being
or about 
my standing in my community
or the safety of my neighborhood
because of the color of my skin.


I’ve never had to drag 
the history of my people
like a chain
or like a beating
or like denigrating nakedness
or like abject hopelessness
and being sold down the river
because of the color of my skin.


But I can see it in your eyes.
I can hear as your breath catches 
and as you swallow the hard words.
I can tell by the cut of your jaw 
- in such contradiction with your beautiful smile -
that being alive 
in this time and in this place
and in your skin
must hurt, might be
the very definition of trauma.


I’ll never know how it feels
to be you
but I can say, out loud:
This history is wrong. 
This present moment is wrong. 
This future we are careening into
is wrong. 
And I can say:
Your life matters.
Your life is of immeasurable value
(infinitely more than twenty dollars).
Your life (your beautiful life)
is held in God’s hand,
here, right next to mine.


And I can take a deep, deep breath
then, in front of everyone, I can call you human,
call you beloved. 
I can’t really tell your story because 
I cannot speak in your voice -
but I can speak. 
And maybe 
I can give you a moment to sit in peace,
to draw your own precious breath,
long and deep and alive. 

By the Rev. Bruce W. Gray
If you were in central Indiana today, Friday June 26th, you got to experience a desert sandstorm. Unless you are an obsessive news follower like I am, you probably had no idea that at a very high altitude there was a massive sand storm that had blown all the way from Africa. It darkened skies in the Caribbean, but here we mostly experienced it as oddly dry air, moderate winds, and eye irritation from the tiny particles. Perhaps the only way to really see the sandstorm was at sunset (I admit, I was not awake to see the sunrise today, but maybe it was even sandier). From my backyard, the sky as the sun went down had a unique tan over tone, with everything looking like I was seeing the world through brown tinged sun glasses. It was fascinating, but after awhile my eyes became sore enough that I had to go inside.

One reason I was outdoors was the actual feel of the air. At first I could not place what was so striking about it, and then when I let my mind sort of relax rather than  to run in over analysis mode, I realized what I was experiencing. I was back in time, over twenty years ago, when I lived for about seven years on the edge of the desert, west of Palm Springs, California. There the summer days were hot, but when the evening winds came up, though full of sand, they carried cool air from the ocean almost a hundred miles to the west. Then it would be time to play outside, with my kids, one of the many softball teams I was on, with friends throwing around a football in the quiet street we lived on. In other words, happy times. So this evening, as my eyes teared up and I started to cough, I had strong feelings of happiness and contentment as I again experienced good times from a third of a lifetime ago.

In the midst of these troubled times, it is important to pull on our savings accounts of happy memories, of times recent or long past, when we felt loved, purposeful, faith filled, or simply safe. Sometimes, when we revisit those times and places in our minds, we might see in new ways how God was present and loving us, or if we are lucky, we have always known and so remembering is like reading our personal holy scripture, in which we see God's subtle and might acts in the immediate world around us. These days are the perfect time for such memories, to help us hold to the faith that God never leaves us, and the holy hope that things will get better. The darker the night, the more important it is to pull to mind those times of light, those times of love, those times of God being close and evident.

By the Rev. Bruce Gray

In this time of pandemic, societal conflicts, and appropriately deep and difficult discussions around anti racism, it can be easy to think that life has gone off the rails in various ways. As someone who likes trains, I am reading a book by that title, “Off the Rails: A Train Trip Through Life" by Beppe Severgnini, an Italian travel writer. I thought it would be an entertaining (or should I say entertraining?) lightweight book to escape a bit from these challenging times. 

Instead, it has surprised me with insights about life that are very applicable to today. It was hard to choose just one quote to share for the sake of brevity, but here is the winner...

"[Our lives] can derail because of a trifle. But it is our duty to fix the track and continue our journey, even if it’s a difficult one , even if we know it won’t go on forever. To discover you’re resilient is a source of relief, and relief is a sophisticated form of happiness."
​
We are in times that are testing our resilience in completely unexpected ways. I hope you are experiencing surprising amounts of  resilience, and through that experience a sophisticated form of happiness. That is no small thing to have, and I am grateful to God when that gift is given.

By the Rev. Cathy Gray

If you’ve ever been on a long trip with a small child - or if you can remember being a child yourself - then likely you are familiar with the refrain, “Are we there yet?”  It starts out like the panting of a happy puppy:  quick, repetitive, cheerful. After an hour or so it becomes as much a slog as traffic in a big-city rush hour: Are we therrre yeeeeet?

Reading the news in recent days I think I’m hearing a lot of that familiar, slogging whine: Can we go to chuuurch yet?  

That refrain raises an old question for me. Just what is Church? The quick answer is, of course, that Church is many things. Many of us have faced and answered that question at least once before in our lives, some of us many times. Right now, we might add the question, “Where is Church?”

I believe that “Church” is whenever and wherever these things are present:
There is a bond among people, where people are gathered, seeking and finding joy, grounded in God, a gathered people seeking consolation, or hope, or clarity - again, grounded in God. Church is hearts united in prayer, hearts  listening together for inspiration and wisdom - from scripture, through song, through sermons, through smiling faces - and, now, through those little floating bubble hearts that Facebook offers to us!

In the past several weeks while participating in Holy Family’s online worship, I have found deep consolation and the highest joy praying the Psalms with the background melody of a rushing creek. A sermon punctuated by birdsong is utter delight.  Being offered God’s Peace by a tiny child...or by feet brandishing  tap-shoes, color brought to us by spring flowers, and the deepening, lush shades of green as trees ripen toward summer. Seeing friends in the intimacy of their homes, standing on noisy urban sidewalks, snuggling with family pets, stuffed into that back of their car, and held safe in the branches of a tree...praying and offering their lives to God from all those places.  And we can’t forget the technological brilliance of hands that operate all those recording devices (cell phones?) and those that quilt all the bits into a lovely whole, those who shoot it through the air to us on Sunday morning - and those e-offered comments and heart bubbles that (oddly enough) I’ll actually miss when we’re able to meet again in person!  These things are all new - creativity, born from odd and troubling days. You have done this, People of Holy Family! This is Church - Church in the spirit of her most ancient and revered tradition. It is liturgy (liturgia) living up to its own truest definition - the work of the people!

If I was tech-skeptical at the beginning of this journey on the side rail (yes, I was), I am skeptical no longer.  The Sunday morning ritual of gathering around the computer screen with a cup of tea, to be enlightened and inspired, to pray and to laugh, IS Church. It is a sacred and holy act (even when the center aisle of Facebook clogs up and leaves us in a moment of suspended animation!). 
Church is that time and space where, collectively, we pin our hearts to God...and we’re doing that. We’re doing it in abundance, and we’re doing it in creative and open-hearted ways. 

There are things I miss, of course: Real hugs.  Joining voices in song and prayer. Children feasting on donuts - and, ok, grown-ups feasting on donuts. I miss being sniffed by Benson the Dog at 8 a.m.   And I miss Eucharist - the gathered feast of Bread and Wine, the gathered  ritual of people bound together in the harvest of God’s Earth.  I really miss that! Eucharist is a vital, tangible way in which God engages and delights all our senses. 

But it’s not the only way. 

Have we learned from this side rail that God is with us, God gathers us, binds us, blesses us wherever we are?  I hope so. 

Church has traditionally been seen as a place of Sanctuary...red doors, a safe place, where we can let go of pretense and anxiety and fear. Right now Sanctuary has relocated itself into our homes, where we can be free from the anxiety of coughs and contagion, and free from living inside taped-off boundaries. Free to take off our masks in God’s presence, while having a better chance to stay free from a fatal disease. 

Covid19 has pressed us toward new ways of being community, of being God’s people gathered...Church.  If we are to find ourselves secure - safe - in God’s arms, then, for now, we must be together by being apart. I don’t want to read another story of people so desperate to gather in church that dozens of church members are made ill, die. 

I do believe, with all my heart and soul and mind, that life is an integrated whole, that God’s fingerprints mark everything that is. But the hard truth we have learned many times through history is that God does not hold a magic sword designed for slaying viruses. That is a task for the wisdom God has granted us - and helped us to nurture and expand through the long ages of our life on Earth.  

In this moment we best do God’s work of valuing life and respecting every person when we join our hearts and keep our bodies at home.  Are we Church yet?  Yes, I’d say - in surprising and creative ways we might never have imagined only a few months ago!  We might need to “be Church” this way for some time to come...and, I I have no doubt whatsoever, we will be blessed and renewed and loved by God in every moment -  Church, as we always are.  

By the Rev. Bruce W. Gray

Holy Family, Fishers, has been worshiping together exclusively on the internet, via Facebook and YouTube, since March 15.  One of the major concerns has been keeping the large number of parishioners under 18 connected and nurtured by Holy Family even though physical gatherings are not possible. The teens are adapting to Zoom get togethers well, playing games, praying, and just talking with each other. 

The youngers were a bigger worry, since communicating through a screen only goes so far with them. Fortunately, Holy Family has a long history of children being in church and active in as many roles as possible, so the worship via the internet was filled with familiar patterns and words.  One of the mothers in the parish sent me these encouraging words, which I am sharing with her permission...

We became licensed as transitional foster parents for migrant children from the border earlier this year and accepted our first placement in March, a three year old boy from Guatemala.  This also coincided with social distancing and staying at home due to the coronavirus.  He arrived on a Saturday, and the first few days were understandably quite challenging.  I remember thinking after our first breakfast that Sunday morning that church probably wouldn’t be happening, or that we would need to watch it after the kids were in bed.  He had been begging to do play dough since he woke up, so after breakfast, we got out the play dough and all of the supplies to go with it.  He and our four year old daughter Nina were calm, quiet, and content playing at the kitchen table for the first time since his arrival, so we decided to stream the church service.  They were both intrigued and often looked up at the screen while continuing with their creations.  Nina got excited about seeing people she knew and hearing familiar phrases and prayers.  They sat there playing through the whole service, and a new routine was formed. 

​Since then, every Sunday we break out the play dough (or more recently, homemade slime) and have church together at the kitchen table.  Our little boy’s English has exploded, and he is constantly asking me about words, so during church, he now asks multiple times what “alleluia” is and gets very excited when he hears “Jesus.”  Both kids have both been belting out “Glory to God in the highest and peace to God’s people on earth” and have loved seeing people do their readings out in nature (or from a tree).  While we really miss being with the church community in person, we have come to enjoy and appreciate these calm moments together at the table in the midst of weeks that often have a lot of chaos.  We are so grateful to everyone who is making the online services possible and wanted to let you know the impact it is having, even on the little ones. ​

by the Rev. Bruce W. Gray

This year, Holy Week and Easter were experienced by many people in a new and unique way, as churches in many parts of the world were closed to limit the spread of COVID-19. As many have already said, the best way Christians could love their neighbors, as both Jesus and the prophets before him instructed, would be to stay home. This dynamic continues today, and the best ethical practice remains the same-stay home for the sake of the wider world.

So Holy Family has been working hard to create and share meaningful worship without being in the church, and with all the leaders and participants being at their homes. So rather than worrying about whether the temperature in the church is comfortable and the bathrooms are clean before a Sunday service, I watch the weather forecasts for the week so that I can plan to record my portions of the service on a pretty day outside. I still am responsible for making sure the bathrooms are clean, but just at my house. 

What has been surprising to me each Sunday, as I sit at home experiencing the prerecorded service, is who many people are participating in this way. Some Sundays there have been as many people who watched on YouTube or Facebook as we have had in attendance in person in past years. That makes me want to do my best with worship all the more, but also gives me a sense of hope that the Grinch called COVA-19 has not been able to steal people's connection to God, to take away our faith, hope, and love (to quote 1 Corinthians 13), nor separate us from our fellow human beings, particularly those in need. Instead, many people are taking these very different times as a chance to live in very different ways, choosing to spend  our time of necessary distance to develop intentional and deep ways of connecting with both strangers and people close to us. 

So COVID-19 did not steal Easter, and it cannot steal our identities of beloved children of God, who continue to be loved deeply by the one who conquered death on Easter through the Resurrection, and continues to offer to everyone new life, new hope, and new meaning even in times that feel chaotic. We are people of the Resurrection, and are called to live that reality in our actions, words, and perspectives, with generosity and joy given by God.