DioBeth newSpin

'This is my Jesus,' the stranger said

By Bill Lewellis
July 17, 2012

A few weeks ago, Monica and I dined with three close friends. We sat three on one side and two on the other of a rectangular table in a crowded Italian restaurant. I was at the end where no one was directly across from me. A 50-something couple at a small table to my left was within arms reach, closer to me than my friends at the other end of our table. 

Occupied with our conversation, the gentleman at that table frequently stared our way. Turning toward him was my first mistake.

Faith is golden – Beliefs are overrated

By Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, May 26, 2012

Faith is golden. Beliefs are overrated. As are works.

When one reduces religion to either beliefs or good works, both are overrated. Reductionism (think "nothing but") usually destroys anything it attempts to explain, as in religion is nothing but belief or religion is nothing but morality.

Morality itself has for many been reduced to nothing but sexual morality. It is so much more, embracing personal, business and community relationships. And faith is so much more than belief, as in “I set my heart on” God rather than purely intellectual acts of belief.
 
Belief and good works are overrated especially when we think of them as prerequisites to being befriended by God.
 
Some 50 years ago, I sat in a university classroom in Rome when a professor introduced his course on the theology of revelation –– what we know about God because God told us –– with this image.

In a large lecture hall, accommodating several hundred students from perhaps 50 countries, he paced, slowly, along a raised platform.

He pressed one white dot with chalk on an enormous blackboard. After a dramatic pause, he said, in French-accented Latin, “The white is what we know about God. The black is what we don’t. What we know is little. But the little God has given us to know is precious.”

Among that precious little are two biblical themes: Be not afraid and you are loved.

A few years ago, as Monica and I walked through a subway corridor in New York City’s Port Authority, we passed a woman hawking literature near a table laden with posters proclaiming that judgment was at hand. Bold strokes. “Be afraid.”

I was embarrassed that anyone might think she and I were colleagues. As we passed her, to allay my anger within, I smiled and slowly shook my head.

She screamed. Threats of God’s wrath. God would get me. She followed us, proclaiming her caricature of God to everyone within earshot along hundreds of feet of subway corridor. Thirty seconds seemed like five minutes.

The irony is that versions of “Be not afraid” and “You are loved” appear throughout the Bible, the same Bible the tormented woman had deconstructed because she thought people had to be frightened into repentance before an angry and vengeful God.

Our scriptures, Jewish and Christian, tell the story of God’s love in many ways… from the Exodus story of deliverance from slavery to freedom to the Paschal Mystery of God in Jesus Christ demonstrating his love on a cross to God raising Jesus. In between are many stories of God’s love and our freedom to respond.

Those stories abound, I think, because the single, most difficult Christian belief is not belief in God as Trinity, nor that God became one of us in Jesus Christ, nor that God raised Jesus from the dead, nor that God continues to live in us through the Holy Spirit, nor that we too will be raised. It’s none of those. It is that God forgives and loves us even before we repent.

God’s Good News, as I understand it, is threefold. First: we’re all sinners. We stand in a long biblical line of negative role models.

Second: we’re all forgiven and loved by God. “You can’t conceive, nor can I,” wrote Graham Greene, “the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God.”

Third: we’re all forgiven and loved by God not because we’ve been repentant. We’re repentant and transformed because we’ve been forgiven and loved.

God’s relentless love will last. I promise you. I set my heart on God's incredible love. I do not rely on beliefs or works.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

Churches remain relevant despite decline in membership

Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call
Your View column, May 4, 2012

Declining numbers in churches of whatever flavor have become a truism, probably since the halcyon I-Like-Ike 50s but especially over the past few decades. Wednesday's Page One story detailed the past decade's local decline.

Declining numbers often mean church closings. Witness the closing of Roman Catholic churches over the past few years. They received remarkable publicity because they were done wholesale and drew controversy. There have been many others, somewhat under the radar.

Is there positive spin we might give to this phenomenon of changing churches?

Decades ago, a wire service religion editor used to say that the Episcopal Church has an influence far beyond its numbers. (Did I say he was an Episcopalian?) The Episcopal Church has a lot of experience at being a small yet effective church. There are probably more Muslims in the U. S. than there are Episcopalians.

Some of our churches with an average Sunday attendance of 50 serve the poor, the homeless, the marginalized in ways far beyond what such numbers might suggest. Some of our large churches serve the poor better than the cities in which they are located. Not only Episcopal congregations. You may be a member of a congregation like that in another denomination. It's all about the members and the leadership.

Five fewer or five more people in a congregation of 50 make a significant difference for the mission of the congregation. For that reason, among others, every person is a treasure.

Hear me. If you are not now a member of a church, talk to your local priest or minister. Tell him or her why you are not. Hear what he or she has to say. Perhaps you can't get your head around or have an incredibly bizarre notion of what you'd have to believe. People have acted themselves into believing the basics by taking part in the mission of the church. "Come and see," Jesus said. Faith is not about doctrinal purity. It is so much more, including paying attention to the hope that is within you, attending intensely to what is within and beyond.

If you can't find someone to talk with or if you are not treated as a treasure, resort to me. I'd love to hear from you.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the bishop's staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the bishop's staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that. His email is blewellis@diobeth.org]

Mary could get you out of jail – and put you in

Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Feb. 18, 2012

When I was growing up in a small town in Schuylkill County, a strong woman was my hero. Before folks heard the word, Mary was a feminist in the Forties.

She kept Port Carbon, except for a few contrarians, Republican. In nearby Pottsville, she had a patronage job, matron at the county courthouse. I never had the nerve to ask her what the matron did.

She knew every judge, lawyer, bureaucrat, policeman and politician in the county. And they knew her. In Port Carbon, Mary was your network. She could get you out of jail quicker than a lawyer could.

Mary had a big heart. She and Vince had no children of their own, but they raised a few. None bore their name. Billy came to live with them when he was eleven after appearing in juvenile court on a petty theft charge. Mary happened to be sitting in the courtroom. Billy’s parents told the judge they couldn’t handle him. The judge said he’d have to send Billy away. They called it “reform school,” in those days.

“Judge, you can’t do that to this nice boy,” Mary said. “What can I do?” the judge replied. “I’ll take him home,” she said. She did. She and Vince raised Billy until he enlisted in the service.

That would have been enough to make Mary my hero; but she also did something for the women of Port Carbon that no man could have done.

My parents operated a neighborhood tavern in Port Carbon for some 35 years. That’s where I got the scoop. After I was ordained a Roman Catholic priest, my mother quipped that she may have already heard more confessions than I ever will.

Domestic violence, wife battering, may have been every small town’s dirty secret. The word in town, however, was that if a woman was abused by her husband she should call Mary. Mary went to the house, She’d go jaw to jaw with any man, confronting the abusive husband for the jerk he was. Her language was vivid. I’d love to supply samples. The confrontation often ended with the husband spending the night in jail. Mary could get you out of jail – but she could also put you in.

Some women didn’t call Mary. Some felt they had no economic alternative. Some feared that something worse might happen to them later. Some stayed in the “relationship” for what they called religious reasons. It was difficult to convince some that God did not want them to be abused.

One of my favorite readings is from the Book of Isaiah: Thus says the Lord who created you, who formed you: [Hear this word the Lord speaks to each one of us.] Be not afraid, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. For I am the Lord your God… You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you… Be not afraid, for I am with you…

Hear this word of the Lord… hear it in your mind and heart: You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that. He has written hundreds of columns for newspapers and collaborated with Jenifer Gamber in the 2009 book, Your Faith Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church.]

Christopher Hitchens dead at 62 – Is he still an atheist?

By Bill Lewellis

Christopher Hitchens was diagnosed during the spring of 2010 with stage-four metastasized esophageal cancer. He may may have been our best known and most bitter atheist – author of God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Reviewing the book in the Washington Post, Boston College professor Stephen Prothero wrote that he had “never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject.” Hitchens went after easy targets. Most would be on my list of “bad religion.”

During the next few months, he wrote three brutally honest pieces for Vanity Fair on his experience of “the unfamiliar country” of people undergoing treatment for cancer. The same critic who panned Hitchens’ knowledge of religion wrote that Hitchens' reflections ranked up there with the best writing he knows on the topic of cancer. “In whatever kind of a ‘race’ life may be,” Hitchens wrote in VF, “I have very abruptly become a finalist. Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down."

Then he lost his voice. "Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs ... I wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech.

The oncology bargain, he wrote, is that "in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here’s the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head." 

During his battle with cancer, there were people who told him in hard, hard copy or online that God is punishing him, especially with the loss of his voice, for his "blasphemies" against God and religion. I could not understand such people. Because Hitchens was an atheist, they wanted him to agonize in his illness and then go to hell rather than discover our compassionate God in the undiscovered country of death and what lies beyond.

Read articles in the NYTimes and the Daily Beast.

Thanks,
Bill

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998)
newSpin blog, Email (c)610-393-1833
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]

Diocesan Life for December 2011/January 2012

Open publication - Free publishing - More floods

You can download a .pdf of the file here: Download DECEMBER2011_DiocesanLife_SMALL

A kind-of Thanksgiving column

Savin’ up for the things money can’t buy
Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Nov. 19, 2011

In The Marriage Plot, Jeffrey Eugenides writes of two 1982 Brown University graduates backpacking through Europe. They part when Mitchell, on a religion quest, goes to India to serve at a guest house for the dying.

Working for a week within his comfort zone, Mitchell is challenged by an older man to color outside his lines.

The older man removes a dying man’s bandages, revealing putrid sores. Pouring water on the man, he says, “This is the body of Christ.” Not finding God there, Mitchell leaves Calcutta with a different prayer on his lips: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.”

I am thankful for God’s mercy on me, a sinner.

Doris died last week. A longtime editor with a difficult ministry in the onetime reactionary Diocese of San Joaquin, she wrote this to a colleague a week earlier.

“I have rather suddenly become filled with cancer of just about everything. This week is my last week of lucidity, then it's off to la-la land and eventually to heaven.

“You know how much Episcopal Communicators [a national organization] has meant to me all these years, and I am going to count on you to pass on the information and all of my thanks for everything everyone has done for me. Don [spouse] will let you know when I am gone. Doris.”

I am thankful for those who teach me to die with gratitude and trust in my heart.

Margaret, a onetime colleague, shared a nightly practice suggested in the book, Simple Abundance. “Every night, before going to bed,” she said, “I jot down five things about that day for which I am thankful.” Later, she told me how this practice changed her perspective on so many things, how it gave every day greater validity.

I’m thankful for all the blessings of this life.

"For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea, we thank you, Lord. For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, and our friends ... For minds to thik, and hearts to love, and hands to serve ... For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity ... For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty and justice ... we thank you, Lord." {From A Litany of Thanksgiving in The Book of Common Prayer)

I once sat at the coffee counter of a local Dunkin’ Donuts. A glass-shattering crash spun me around. I touched the hood of a car that had burst through the plate glass window. No one was hurt, not even the elderly driver who had accidentally hit the accelerator rather than the brake. Later that day, my eyes widened as I pulled a handful of glass pebbles from my jacket pocket.
I’m reminded to be thankful when I drive by a Dunkin’ Donuts, to be thankful for accidents where no one is hurt.

Onetime UPI religion editor Lou Cassels was syndicated in 400 newspapers. He died in 1974. A fellow journalist, perhaps at Lou’s funeral, said he wrote three columns and one sermon every month. I looked forward to reading all four.

I thank God for Lou Cassels.

Sermons may be found at times today in films and on TV; also in songs by Bono and Bruce Springsteen, among others.

Try on this refrain from a Springsteen song: You’d better start savin’ up for the things that money can’t buy.

I am thankful for sermons that catch me by surprise.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that. He has written hundreds of columns for newspapers and collaborated with Jenifer Gamber on the 2009 book, Your Faith Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church.]

Movie – "The Tree of Life"

Canon Bill Lewellis

I recommend this 138-minute film from director Terrence Malick (Jessica Chastain, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn), now available on DVD. It could be the centerpiece of a fruitful two-day retreat. Having viewed it twice (easy for a retired guy to say), I'd recommend a first viewing prior to consulting any reviews. Don't seek meaning, just let the film flow into you. If you have already read reviews, do what you can to prescind from them. Let the film – the imagery, the music and the narrative – simply flow into you. Then (1) bask in what you've seen, and (2) read a few reviews. There are many. Here are five: Spirituality and Practice, NYTimes, Roger Ebert, The Guardian, Wikipedia. On the second day, or some later day, view the film again. Enjoy again while seeking your own meaning, not what the director's meaning may be but what you seem to be taking from it. Make liberal use of the pause button for contemplation. Says Roger Ebert at the conclusion of his review, "It all happens in this blink of a lifetime, surrounded by the realms of unimaginable time and space." Warning: It requires concentrated viewing. If you are in any way distracted while watching The Tree of Life, if you watch it with anything else on your mind, you will neither enjoy the film nor solve your distractions.

Book by DioBeth authors among Church Publishing bestsellers

Your Faith Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church, by Jenifer Gamber with Bill Lewellis, published in 2009 by Morehouse/Church Publishing remains among Church Publishing's bestsellers, surpassed only by the BCP, hymnals and The Episcopal Handbook. It's available in paperback and on Kindle. More at Church Publishing and Amazon. Download a free Leader's Guide here.

"Not every useful book is heartfelt and not every heartfelt book is useful, but Jenifer Gamber and Bill Lewellis's new book is both." —The Rev. Barbara Crafton

Disguised as a reference book, YFYL is about transformation. It is about relationship. It is about process: being attentive, intelligent, reasonable, responsible and in Love. It is about increasing our attentiveness and transforming our consciousness through reflection on our faith and life and on being in Love. Ultimately it is about secrets of the heart, whispers within of the hidden presence of the real. It is about telling secrets of God's visitation.

Your Faith, Your Life: An Invitation to the Episcopal Church
Jenifer Gamber with Bill Lewellis  ISBN: 978-0-8192-2321-0  $15.00  Paper  192 pgs

”Your Faith, Your Life is more than an invitation to the Episcopal Church. It is an invitation to reflect on personal transformation as you consider facts about the Episcopal Church. Disguised as a reference book of information, as Bill has suggested, this book outlines a path toward authenticity and personal transformation.”

This ‘everything-you-need-to-know’ guide – now available from Morehouse Publishing, an imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated (CPI) – carefully unpacks the Episcopal Church's language of worship, theology, church structure, and sacraments. Readers will gain the vocabulary and framework to share their beliefs and practices, explore the Bible, understand prayer, and discern their own ministry within the church.

Designed for denominational newcomers, parish study groups, clergy, and Christian formation specialists, Your Faith, Your Life features a unique format, utilizing sidebars, boxes, charts, reflection questions, and minimal text blocks to enhance reading appeal and aid in understanding.  Balanced didactic and experiential elements capture a wide variety of learning styles.

Closely linked to the Book of Common Prayer and the catechism and flexible for use with a variety of Christian formation models, it is supplemented by a leader guide and other supporting materials on the book's website.

Jenifer Gamber, a national youth-ministry workwop leader and a confirmation leader at the Cathedral Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, has a BA in economics from Oberlin College and is the consulting editor for a principles of economics textbook published by McGraw Hill. 

Bill Lewellis, retired communication minister and editor of Diocesan Life for the Diocese of Bethlehem, has served the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal Church for more than 40 years. Local dailies have published more than 100 of his columns and op-ed pieces.

TCC – Many thank you all

By Bill Lewellis

"Due to declining enrollment and a lack of funding," the story began in today's Republican Herald, "the preschool[Trinity Center for Children] at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pottsville will close June 3."
 
How sad. In its heyday, TCC's enrollment surpassed 30. Today, 14 children, five full-time and nine part-time, are enrolled, with a staff of four, two full-time and two part-time people.

Sad, indeed, but might we not thank God and many groups and individuals for 20 years of this wonderful ministry.

I thank God for the vision and unselfishness of the lay and clergy leadership of Trinity Episcopal Church who sought back in 1991 to provide quality education and spiritual nurture for children beyond the bounds of their membership, for the Diocese of Bethlehem, the diocesan community's provision of financial and other important resources at TCC's launch and periodically thereafter, for the board volunteers of TCC, often recognized only when criticized, who over the years provided crucial governance, expertise and insight in hiring dedicated staff and keeping the ministry afloat. I thank God for the teachers who have loved the children and for the parents who have appreciated the teachers, the board, the Diocese of Bethlehem and the vision and leadership of Trinity Episcopal Church. Indeed, it took a village to raise 20 years of precious children. Many of us thank you all.

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998)

The deadline of mortality – not today

By Bill Lewellis

[This, or an edited version because it is significantly longer than I usually send, will be published in The Morning Call on Saturday, May 21.]

I admire intelligence, insight, wit and wisdom. I know them when I see them. That may explain why I do not admire those who claim to have deciphered scripture to predict the end of the world.

Despite his 1994 "miscalculation," 89-year-old evangelist Harold Camping of Family Radio has touted for at least three years that the beginning of the end will happen today (May 21). At 6:00 p.m., two percent of the earth's population will be "raptured" to meet Jesus, while the rest of us experience five months of torment before the final end.

If you enjoy non-contextual play with scripture, read a Dan Brown novel. It's at least entertaining.

Never having listened to Family Radio, I don't know whether Camping has ever encouraged listeners to put an end to poverty, war, or the marginalization in many churches of gays and lesbians. Betting man that I am, however, I'd lay odds that he has not.

I don't mean to ridicule people who have given some credence (and money) to Camping. I'm simply saying, "Shame on you, Harold Camping."

On the other hand, I have admired the intelligence, insight, wit and wisdom of Christopher Hitchens. Because he is arguably today's best known atheist, I wonder about wisdom –– but that's not fair.

Upon reading the following, how can one not read on, seeking wisdom?

"Like so many of life’s varieties of experience, the novelty of a diagnosis of malignant cancer has a tendency to wear off. The thing begins to pall, even to become banal. One can become quite used to the specter of the eternal Footman, like some lethal old bore lurking in the hallway at the end of the evening, hoping for the chance to have a word. I don’t so much object to his holding my coat in that marked manner, as if mutely reminding me that it’s time to be on my way. No, it’s the snickering that gets me down."

Hitchens, 61, was diagnosed last summer with Stage Four metastasized esophageal cancer. "The thing about Stage Four," he quipped, "is that there is no such thing as Stage Five."

He recently lost his voice.

"Like health itself, the loss of such a thing can’t be imagined until it occurs ... I wait impatiently for a high dose of protons to be fired into my body at two-thirds the speed of light. What do I hope for? If not a cure, then a remission. And what do I want back? In the most beautiful apposition of two of the simplest words in our language: the freedom of speech."

The oncology bargain is that "in return for at least the chance of a few more useful years, you agree to submit to chemotherapy and then, if you are lucky with that, to radiation or even surgery. So here’s the wager: you stick around for a bit, but in return we are going to need some things from you. These things may include your taste buds, your ability to concentrate, your ability to digest, and the hair on your head." 

Hitchens has written three brutally honest columns* on his experience of cancer.

"In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be," he wrote in one, "I have very abruptly become a finalist."

We all became finalists the day we were born. Only when we approach the deadline of mortality, however, might we become intentional about the undiscovered country of death, whatever lies beyond. There is some shortsightedness in most of us about the deadline of mortality. I know indications of mine.

Hitchens knows cancer, aggressive treatments, and the snickering of the eternal Footman.

He does not know religion. Boston College professor Stephen Prothero wrote In a scathing review of Hitchens' 2007 book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, that he had "never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject."

Prothero wrote later that Hitchens' reflections about “the unfamiliar country” of people undergoing treatment for cancer rank with the best writing he knows on that topic.
 
I admire compassion and action arising out of compassion, seeking to ameliorate misery. I cannot understand people who tell Hitchens in hard, hard copy or online that God is punishing him, especially with the loss of his voice, for his "blasphemies" against God and religion. I cannot understand people who, because Hitchens is an atheist, want him to agonize in his illness and then go to hell.

Christopher Hitchens might not last long. I know God will be compassionate.

Jesus will be with him the way he was with his disciples on the night before he died. He will have a basin, some water and a towel. He will pour water into the basin. Jesus will look deeply into his eyes and heart. He will see him for the best person he had ever been … and all the suffering he may have experienced. “You’ve had a long journey,” Jesus will say. “You must be tired. dirty and sore. Let me wash your your feet and dry them. The table has been prepared." Jesus will take bread and wine. He will bless the bread and wine and say, “Welcome to the banquet.”

* Published in Vanity Fair: Topic of Cancer (Sept. 2010), Unanswerable Prayers (Oct. 2010) and Miss Manners and the BigC, (Dec. 2010)

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that]

To The Morning Call, re 'new RC structure to welcome Anglicans'

By Bill Lewellis
April 11, 2011

A March 14 Page One story (Allentown Catholic Diocese anticipates new structure to welcome Anglicans) included a phone number for Episcopalians who seek an older liturgy or who have a problem with the acceptance of women priests and gay clergy.
 
We learned from the story that a few "have turned to Rome where teaching and practice are unchanged." Huh? Then another stereotype: the uninformed description of Episcopal liturgy as one where "prayers are lengthier and language richly Elizabethan." We do better than that. Come and see.

Prior to my resignation as a Roman Catholic priest, I served the Diocese of Allentown as media liaison (1968-81). I wrote hundreds of news releases and made suggestions for many more stories. Not one put another denomination down.

During 24 years as communication minister for the Diocese of Bethlehem, until recently retiring, I knew some 20 former Roman Catholic priests, not counting former RC women who became priests. Hundreds of former RC laity were members of our parishes. Though I knew many of their stories, I never sought to provide any to the media. I encouraged a policy of not seeking publicity for such stories, even turning down local and national offers to publish my own story.
 
I enjoyed a scene from the 1997 movie, The Apostle. Robert Duvall, playing a Texan charismatic-Pentecostal minister, watched priests in full regalia bless shrimp boats. "You do it your way," he said to himself, "and I do it mine ... together we get it done."
 
Let's "get it done" together. No need to put the other down.

Bill Lewellis, Diocese of Bethlehem, retired
Communication Minister/Editor (1986-2010), Canon Theologian (1998)
newSpin blog, Email (c)610-393-1833
Be attentive. Be intelligent. Be reasonable. Be responsible.
Be in Love. And, if necessary, change. [Bernard Lonergan]

Six chronically homeless persons will live next to Grace Episcopal Church in Allentown

By Libby House and Bill Lewellis

On April 20, Grace House at 112 North Fifth Street, Allentown, a newly renovated three-story brick and stucco property next to Grace Episcopal Church, will welcome its first homeless residents.

The creation and development of a group home to provide permanent housing in apartments for six chronically homeless persons began a few years ago with a conversation between Robert Wilkins, president of the board of New Bethany Ministries from 1998 to 2010, and Elizabeth House, senior warden of Grace Church.

It was the brain child of Wilkins, House, William Kuntze, former executive director of New Bethany and Patrick Malloy,  former rector of Grace Episcopal Church. Their initiative received enthusiastic moral support as well as financial commitment from Bethlehem Diocese Bishop Paul V. Marshall.

Funding for Grace House came from a wide variety of sources. Grace Church donated to New Bethany Ministries half the value of the property which for nearly 15 years had served as the church's headquarters for its former AiDS Outreach Ministry that closed in December 2007 when federal and state funding dried up. The $500,000 costs for renovating the facility were paid for by a $250,000 grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank, Pittsburgh, through KNBT grants from Lehigh County and the City of Allentown, and additional money generously provided by Episcopal Ministries of the Diocese of Bethlehem, the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, the PA Department of Community and Economic Development, Senator Pat Brown, Representative Jennifer Mann, The Century Fund, and individual donors.

The new group home will become part of the City of Allentown's First Lady's Commission to End Chronic Homelessness in 10 years. The six individuals who will gain the safety and stability of a permanent residence through this project represent 10 percent of those described as chronically homeless in Allentown in 2010.

Grace House will be a joint project of New Bethany Ministries of Bethlehem, sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem and community operated, and Grace Allentown, a parish of the Diocese of Bethlehem. The facility's location in downtown Allentown will allow New Bethany Ministries, which has been working to address the needs of homeless people and others on the margins of our society, primarily in Bethlehem, for 25 years, to expand its outreach. it will also allow the Grace Church community to continue to develop and increase its mission and ministry to the people of the inner city neighborhoods of Allentown, where it already provides strategic services to the poor.

in addition to New Bethany and Grace Church, the Lehigh County Conference of Churches will play a crucial role in supporting and supervising the residents who will live in the facility by providing rent subsidies and social services. The organization will select the individuals who are to live in the group home and will assign a caseworker to help see that those living in Grace House will have the assistance they need to help them become independently functioning and contributing members of the community. They will assist with access to public benefit funding, subsidized meals, clothing services, referrals for medical and mental health treatment, and job skills training.
Grace Episcopal Church houses several ministries that will also provide additional support for the group home residents, such as supplemental groceries through its food pantry, Grace Community Foundation which provides supplemental food in a respectful manner to some 6,000 ethnically, religiously and racially diverse persons in need every year; access to a job placement counselor through the City's Weed and Seed Program; a GED program for those who dropped out of school who wish to work to earn their diplomas; the iMPACT juvenile offender program; services from paralegals from North Penn Legal Services; and blood pressure screenings. The church hopes that the tenants may wish to become part of the Grace Church community and will benefit from the possibilities that can be derived from relationships offered there.

Once described at a national conference because of its outreach ministries as the largest small church in the United States, Grace Church also owns Grace Montessori School, which provides scholarships to one-third of its diverse student body of more than 100 in a newly built, state-of-the-art facility.
 
Episcopal Ministries of the Diocese of Bethlehem, Inc., dba New Bethany Ministries, is an agency of the Diocese of Bethlehem and as such is a church-sponsored, non-profit corporation whose purpose is to organize and operate housing and social ministries with related services in the geographic area of the Diocese of Bethlehem for the care and relief of the needy, poor, displaced and other distressed persons.
 
With its long history and experience in battling homelessness, New Bethany Ministries brings compassion and expertise to the Grace House initiative at a level that cannot be overstated. This ministry of The Episcopal Church summons the talents of approximately 20 employees and 600 volunteers to serve the needs of the homeless, the hungry, the mentally ill, and the poor. In addition to managing its many shelters, homes, and apartments and providing much needed social services, the agency also serves breakfast and lunch daily in its hospitality center in South Bethlehem and offers emergency food pantry services. it is hoped that the unique combination of experience, expertise, services, proximity, and common mission of these three social justice power houses, New Bethany Ministries, Grace Church, and LCCC, will serve as a model for faith-based groups wishing to work together to address the problems of the most desperate of individuals living in our society, making a permanent difference in their lives that will restore them to dignity and independence.

New Bethany's 25-year history has included one deep valley. It was buried in debt in 1998. Low morale had spread through the staff as its executive director and two executive board members resigned. The staff had to be cut from 16 to 10. The organization was close to going out of business. That’s when Wilkins, retired senior vice president of finance for Bethlehem Steel and former Bethlehem city administrator took a leave of absence from his business to serve as interim executive director during New Bethany’s crisis when the ministry was having a hard time finding the $1,000 a day in donations (half the budget) it takes to operate its shelters, subsidized housing and meal programs. That's when the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem, New Bethany’s 1983 founder, stepped in.

The Diocese of Bethlehem provided New Bethany the security for a loan and lent the charity $200,000 without interest. Bishop Paul Marshall convened a “Blue Ribbon” panel of leaders in business, social service, church and philanthropic fields to explore the problems and challenges facing New Bethany. The panel met during the last quarter of 1998 and offered a series of recommendations to the New Bethany board. By 2001, the charity cut its annual spending plan by $100,000. It got back up to a full staff of 16. It began offering just as many services as before its financial fall.

[Mrs. Elizabeth "Libby" House is senior warden of Grace Episcopal Church, Allentown, and director of the Grace Montessori School. Canon Bill Lewellis, now retired, served for nearly 25 years as communication minister for the Diocese of Bethlehem.]

Download: (1) An outline of the origin of New Bethany Ministries, by Bill Lewellis, (2) New Bethany's Two-Year Recovery, by Bill Lewellis, Diocesan Life, Dec. 2001, (3) Remarks by Beth Reed at Grace House open house, 4/7/11.

Download NBM.Outline of Origins

Download NBM’s Two-Year Recovery.Lewellis

Download NBM.GraceHouse.Holy Ground

 

Invited to believe, with your heart

By Bill Lewellis
The Morning Call, Feb. 17, 2011

"We are invited to believe." The line jumped out at me from the printed copy of a sermon a friend recently preached. It was on the Dorchester Chaplains. Two Protestant, one Roman Catholic and one Jewish chaplains, they gave up their life jackets and means of rescue to others on the Dorchester, a converted cruise ship whose boiler room was struck by enemy fire on February 3, 1943, one day from their Greenland destination. They are commemorated in an Episcopal book, Holy Women Holy Men.

Diocese of Bethlehem Archdeacon Howard Stringfellow mentioned "the ice and the horribly cold water," 19 degrees, in which they drowned. "We are invited to believe," he said, "that the Lord was there with them. We are invited to believe that theirs was the greatest love, for indeed they laid down their lives for their friends (John 15:13). We are invited to believe that their sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that is being revealed in them (Romans 8:18).

We are invited to believe. What a wonderful way to imagine the faith to which we are called. Not an obligation, not a should or a must, but an invitation. We are invited to trust, as much a matter of the heart as a matter of the head. Perhaps more a matter of the heart.

Diocesan Life February 2011

Hello everyone! Here is the latest edition of Diocesan Life. We are now wrapping around a new, independent paper called the Episcopal Journal. Of course, our online version doesn't include that news, but you should receive it in your mailboxes this week. As always, if you have stories, photos, news, please pass them along to Kat Lehman. The file is in .pdf formate and is 2.3 MB in size.

Download 1102_DiocesanLifeFINAL_SMALL

Becoming grateful, surprise upon surprise

By Bill Lewellis
New Year's Day 2011
The Morning Call

When she was growing up in New England, a onetime colleague on the staff of Bethlehem Bishop Paul Marshall related that her doctor father would sit with her at bedtime until she remembered at least five things for which she was thankful.

I suspect this grew easier when she discovered the hints in the Book of Common Prayer:

For the beauty and wonder of God’s creation, in earth and sky and sea, for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery of love.

For all that is gracious in the lives of men and women, revealing the image of Christ.

For our daily food and drink, the blessing of family and friends, and the loving care which surrounds us on every side.

For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve.

For health and strength to work, and leisure to rest and play.

For setting us at tasks which demand our best efforts, and for leading us to accomplishments which satisfy and delight us.
 
For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity.

For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty, and justice.

For those disappointments and failures that lead us to acknowledge our dependence on God alone.

For the great mercies and promises given to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I thank you, Lord. I thank you. I thank you.

Studies show, according to a recent article in Christianity Today, that “grateful people are happier and more satisfied with their lives and social relationships, more forgiving and supportive than those who are ungrateful, less depressed, stressed, envious, and anxious.”

Near the southern end of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when New Jersey by way of the Walt Whitman Bridge is my destination, I listen to a Philadelphia radio station at 2, 12, 22, 32, 42 and 52 minutes after the hour. KYW promotes this minute as Traffic on the Twos. Listening helps me determine whether the Schuylkill Expressway or the Blue Route and I-95 north might be the better, or at least the less harrowing route to take.

My occasional Traffic on the Twos practice has suggested another practice to help with a daily journey.

I give thanks for some happening or relationship of the preceding three hours as I reflect for a few seconds at 9:00 a.m., noon, and 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 p.m.

Thanks on the Threes. It helps, often in unexpected ways.

Brother David Steindl-Rast asks if we've ever noticed how our eyes open a bit wider when we are surprised. Surprise is the beginning of living with a clue.

Surprise is often the beginning of gratitude.

Be surprised, open your eyes a bit wider as you walk through a supermarket brimming with the gifts of God and the labor of people you'll never know.

Be surprised –– and grateful –– when your car starts in the morning.

Computer technology has been part of my job and my life for many years, but I'm still surprised when my computer works. As a “high-use, low-tech” person, I'm grateful for the Info/Tech person who fixes it when it doesn't.

I have been surprised when I've been able to connect so quickly with someone by email or text, post something on a blog, download a podcast, find a helpful web site, lay out a newspaper with a computer program and convert the page files to specs required by a distant printer.

When I sit with my laptop to write a column or sermon, I'm surprised that words begin to appear on the screen.

Someday, the words will not come. I will not chance putting thoughts together for public scrutiny. Someday, my sight and reflexes will not allow me to chance the drive to the bridge. Someday, my legs won't tolerate exercise.

I have been surprised during the past year by how much I have enjoyed retirement, even though I have loved the work I had been doing at Diocesan House (Diocese of Bethlehem) for 24 years.

Moving into 2011 I want to remember how well I have felt during 2010, after having experienced some six months of ill health during 2009. Of course, I am grateful. In fact, one thing I find as I grow older is how much more grateful I have become.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

Thanks on the Threes

By Bill Lewellis

[This is a revision of a column published in The Morning Call in 2006.]

Near the southern end of the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, when New Jersey by way of the Walt Whitman Bridge is my destination, I listen to a Philadelphia radio station at 2, 12, 22, 32, 42 and 52 minutes after the hour. KYW promotes this minute as Traffic on the Twos. Listening helps me determine whether the Schuylkill Expressway or the Blue Route and I-95 North might be the better, or at least the less harrowing, way to my destination.

My occasional Traffic on the Twos practice has suggested another practice I've devised to help with a daily journey.

I give thanks for some happening or relationship of the preceding three hours as I reflect for a few seconds at 9:00 a.m., noon, and 3:00, 6:00 and 9:00 p.m. Thanks on the Threes.

It helps, often in unexpected ways. When I'm inclined to complain, I search between the threes for something or someone to be thankful for.

St. Paul encourages us to "pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances." Alice Walker advises us to "live frugally on surprise." Brother David Steindl-Rast asks if we've ever noticed how our eyes open a bit wider when we are surprised. Surprise is the beginning of living with a clue. I'd say surprise might often be the beginning of gratitude.

Be surprised, obviously grateful, as you walk thrugh a supermarket brimming with the gifts of God and the labor of people you'll never know.

Be surprised when your car starts in the morning.

Be surprised when you computer works. As a "high-use, low-tech" person, I'm usually surprised, even though my computer works 99% of the time.

I have been surprised when I've been able to connect so quickly with someone by email or text, post something on a blog, download a podcast, find a helpful web site, lay out a newspaper with a computer program and convert the page files to specs required by a distant printer.

Using computer technology has been part of my job and my life for many years, but I'm still surprised when it works. And I'm grateful for the Info/Tech person who fixes it when it doesn't.

I have been surprised during the past year how much I have enjoyed retirement, even though I have loved the work I had been doing at Diocesan House (Diocese of Bethlehem) for 24 years.

When I sit with my laptop to write a column or sermon, I'm surprised that words  begin to appear on the screen.

Someday, the words will not come. I will not chance putting thoughts together for public scrutiny. Someday, my sight and reflexes will not allow me to chance the drive to the bridge. Someday, my legs won't tolerate the exercise  I need to take time to do.

This Thanksgiving I will remember how good I have felt over the past year, after having experienced some six months of ill health during 2009.

I intend to continue to be surprised, to thank God on the threes, to be grateful that the whole of my life is greater than the sum of its parts.

"For the beauty and wonder of your creation, in earth and sky and sea ... For our daily food and drink, our homes and families, our friends ... For minds to think, and hearts to love, and hands to serve. For the brave and courageous, who are patient in suffering and faithful in adversity ... For all valiant seekers after truth, liberty and justice ... We thank you, Lord. (From A Litany of Thanksgiving in the Book of Common Prayer)

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]

God doesn't resolve

By Bill Lewellis
Published in The Morning Call
September 18, 2010

Donald Miller (Blue Like Jazz) never liked jazz because it doesn't resolve. 

One night he listened for 15 minutes to a man on the street play the saxophone without opening his eyes. "Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way. I used to not like God because God didn't resolve."

God doesn't resolve. Intransitive. It's not about resolving problems, also problematic. Godself isn't resolvable. 

Throughout our lives, God remains a question rather than an answer. Some say mystery. As we pursue the mystery, however, our questions about God do resolve into questions about ourselves, more embraceable questions.

Your Faith Your Life - An Invitation to the Episcopal Church

[Episcopal News Service]

"Your Faith Your Life - An Invitation to the Episcopal Church" by Jenifer Gamber with Bill Lewellis, paperback, 208 pages, April 2009, $16.

[Church Publishing] This "everything-you-need-to-know" guide for newcomers to the Episcopal Church is written and designed to provide accessible and user-friendly reading, with an easy-going look and style that's packed full of substance.

The book carefully unpacks the Episcopal Church's language of worship, theology, church structure, and sacraments, so that newcomers will have the vocabulary and framework to share their beliefs and practices, explore the Bible, understand prayer and discern their own ministry within the church.

Drawing upon the success of an earlier book written for teens (My Faith, My Life - A Teen's Guide to the Episcopal Church), the new book
retains the same unique presentation, inviting readers to consider their relationship with God and the church community as an ongoing
process of transformation, while providing ways to engage in that process.

To order, please visit Episcopal Books and Resources online at
http://www.episcopalbookstore.org, call 800-903-5544, or visit your
local Episcopal bookstore.

Who worries you?

By Bill Lewellis

[Published in The Morning Call, June 5, 2010]

Some people strike us as saints. Some as sinners. Some as troublemakers, radicals. We don’t have a word for Dorothy Day, 1897-1980.

I wonder, however, whether anyone who hasn’t washed the feet of Jesus with their tears and has been in some ways a troublemaker should ever be honored as a saint.

When a journalist called her a saint, Dorothy Day said she didn’t want to be dismissed that easily.

An anti-war demonstrator, outspoken opponent of Sen. Joe McCarthy in his heyday, a Greenwich Village radical and activist, she had an abortion, was divorced, and bore a lover’s child out of wedlock.
 
Once asked about her recipe for soup at shelters she founded, she said you cut vegetables until your fingers bleed.
Her challenging twist on a gospel verse was, “Your love for God is only as great as the love you have for the person you love the least.”

In 1933, she and a French Roman Catholic and Christian anarchist, Peter Maurin, co-founded the Catholic Worker Movement. Her nearly 200 Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken. Her urban soup kitchens and shelters still set the standard for compassionate treatment of the homeless and dispossessed.

Engrossed in a conversation with a drunken woman at a soup kitchen, she recognized someone by her side. "Which one of us did you wish to talk to?" she eventually asked.

She lost many radical friends when she accepted the Lord and entered the church. They thought she had capitulated to the opposition, lining up with property, the wealthy, the state, and capitalism. She agreed with much of this, though not with lining up. “There was plenty of charity but too little justice,” she once wrote about the church.

Some 20 years after her death, she was surprisingly approved for the process of study that leads to her being recognized as a saint. Will her early life and the troublemaker aspect of her later life impact on this? Will they be sanitized? We’ll see. Probably later than soon.

“Rare was the seminarian and young priest of my era untouched by Dorothy Day’s life,” wrote the late New York Cardinal John O'Connor (1920-2000). “Whether or not we honored in our own lives her passionate commitment to the poor, or followed even distantly in her footsteps, she worried us. That was her gift to us.”

I have long regarded people who worry me as saints.

They worry me because I know how consistently they live with integrity, how they witness to Jesus Christ even without uttering the words, how they respect the poor and marginalized and work for justice on their behalf. Among others. There are probably some among your friends and colleagues, in your families, and among those you may know of.

Some may worry you because you see their integrity and witness in their work of decades in soup kitchens, food banks or other agencies that serve your sisters and brothers. Some may worry you because you know how authentically they have washed the feet of Jesus with their tears. Some may worry you because you know how courageously they work for justice and peace.

They worry us because they set the bar so high.

There’s some ecumenical irony here for me. Dorothy Day’s parents were Episcopalians who did not go to church very often. While working in NYC, she may have seen the Roman Catholic Church as the church of the immigrants, the church of the poor. It may not have been how she saw the Episcopal Church of those days.

If during my lifetime, my former church declares her a saint, I look forward to reading an official biography that includes her rough edges, one that might make her accessible while continuing to worry us.

[Canon Bill Lewellis, blewellis@diobeth.org, a retired Episcopal priest, served on the Bishop’s staff of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem for 24 years and on the Bishop’s staff of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Allentown for 13 years before that.]