Becoming Both Beggars and Gentry

My most heartfelt prayer right now is that as many of you as possible become involved in next week’s Retreat. Why? Because I believe that the PrayWorshipServe Retreat is the beginning of the next chapter of our life together.

I believe this for a variety of reasons. One of the most important is that everyone either working on the Retreat or participating in it is claiming two values that are in beautiful tension with one another. In one, we are beggars, in the other, we are gentry:

We are beggars showing other beggars where to find bread.

This means that while we have learned much about our Seven Core Christian Practices, we also know that we have much to learn. Any authority we have derives from our underlying hunger to know more. We assume that the people coming to the retreat will have much to teach us too. We believe we will be stronger together, as beggars, than apart.

We are ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.

Judy, one of the leaders of the retreat, carries around a card in her purse with this phrase in it. It captures perfectly the blend of respect, courtesy and dignity we expect from both ourselves and our guests next weekend.

The tone we are claiming for ourselves next weekend, what we hope to embody in this mix of being both beggars and gentry, is a tone I hope we adopt as we move forward as the family of St. Paul’s. As we look to launching New College of Christian Practice in August, the PrayWorshipServe Retreat looks like a beginning, not a destination.

I want you there. If you wish to become a participant alongside over 30 people from other parishes and at least half a dozen members of St. Paul’s, either email me a c.h.mrtn@gmail.com or go to our Eventbrite webpage and sign yourself up. For you, it’s free. You need only attend, at a minimum, 9am to 3pm on both Friday and Saturday, and come to church at 9am on Sunday.

If you wish to be a volunteer, email Judy at JLRowcliffe@comcast.net. I believe there are just a few slots left. Volunteering gets you an invitation to the feast on Saturday night.

Finally, at a bare minimum, come to the debut of my performance piece, Pelican, on Saturday at 5pm. This hour long, open-eyed guided mediation imaginatively weaves together many of the themes of our common life in Jesus.

Our first guests arrive just one week from today, on Thursday the 22nd. Please keep praying for this momentous event!

The door is open to you.