Healthy Congregations

From our Healthy Congregations newsletter on Maundy Thursday:
March 28, 2024
I was struck by the silence.
I live in a community that has an intersection of diversity in religious life. We are a mixture of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim people—along with nones, seekers and those creating a framework of meaning and purpose for themselves.
I shop in a part of Columbus where there are a large community of Somali immigrants. When I walk through the doors, I notice that my Muslim sisters are present. They are abuzz with conversation, and they speak loudly and clearly. They often are on their cell phones as they shop. That is both amazing and irritating to me.
My Jewish neighbors were celebrating Purim, my Somali sisters Ramadan and Christian believers preparing for Holy Week on Saturday. I walked into “Giant Eagle” prepared for the spiritual buzz.
But there was mostly silence. And it was powerful.
I was a parish pastor for many years. One year, on the anniversary of my ordination, I was given a stole that has a shepherd, a shepherd’s staff, and many sheep on it. It is something that I now wear on Good Shepherd Sunday and other special occasions. When the Church Council gave it to me, the President of the congregation said, “In the Gospel, we are told that Jesus knows our voices and we know his. We are grateful knowing your voice and knowing that you listen to ours.”

I cried.

Knowing one another’s voices and noticing the silences. Knowing what is important and listening to the experience and perspective of one another is an important part of being a community of meaning and purpose.

Knowing and being known is a gift from God.

Not long ago, a teacher in one of our programs at Healthy Congregations shared something that she observed about families and parenting these days.

She said, “I have found that many children are really raised by a variety of people. Families are formed by parents, neighbors, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, siblings, coaches and adoptive parents. Many times, biological parents are not available to be with kids, for a variety of reasons. It is hard on children where their parents have died, are missing as a result of war or other circumstances and the only acknowledgement is around mothers and fathers. Kids are particularly sensitive to this on holidays that don’t take into consideration their circumstances. They want their lives to be heard and to be considered important.”

She went on to say, “I am aware, too, as we think about what is going on in the world—particularly in Gaza, the West Bank and in Ukraine—families are made up of a variety of people. Families are separated and many children are suffering great pain, loss and health crises, and many no longer have parents or grandparents to take care of them.
I am inviting the kids to celebrate “Grownups Who Love Us Day.”

What an incredible way to listen to the voices of people whose life is different than expected -- or our own. Whatever their beliefs, backgrounds, or experiences.
I have a guilty pleasure. Truth! It is watching “The Voice.”
The show is exciting not only because of its fabulous music, competitive spirit, and engaged crowd, but because it catapults everyday people who love to sing into possible fame and stardom.
During a season of the show, hundreds of thousands of people gather around their televisions, phones, or computers to watch not just the singers but the bantering between the judges and the reactions of the crowds.
What do we love most? Those heartfelt moments when someone’s dream comes true. With tears streaming down their faces and ours, we celebrate with them. In a sense, their big moment is also the confirmation of our own hopes.
Someone hears and thinks our voice is important to be listened to.
And that anyone’s dream really can come true.
“The Voice” winner isn’t just a judge pick but a crowd pleaser, an unanimously voted-for individual, the one who has won us over with the beauty and resonance of “that amazing voice”! As the winner gets a shot at a long-harbored dream, we dream too. Whether or not we ourselves sing, we live vicariously through the victories of the triumphant and rejoice in the fulfillment of the dreams of these others.
Our voice is important too. But the sound of silence gives us some room to consider what is most vital to us and our presence in the world at this most important intersection of sacred times.
We as humans respond to each other’s voices in ways that are much more powerful than the ways we respond to any other sounds. The loss of the ability to hear and distinguish voices, or to hear at all, makes one aware of the voice’s power—and the ways that we do or don’t listen to one another in other ways.
Our pitch, our tone, our frequency all reveals something about what we are feeling and want to convey. Scientists at Berkeley say humans can detect 24 kinds of emotions just in the human voice.
When our voices connect, our hearts resonate. Are we able to be “still” in this time of spiritual intersection to really listen to what voices offer? And the truth of the silence?
Different faiths understand the importance of voice and silence. They invite engagement with that wisdom in different ways. Directly with Allah, with Jesus, through enlightenment, meditation and works of mercy. Through these spiritual practices we connect with the Holy One, communicate with God, enter into a relationship with a deeper dimension of a life of faith.
From the “voice” that calls the waters and heavens into existence to the sound of the ram’s horn calling God’s people to prayer, God’s voice sends shivers down our spines and seeps into our bones, because God’s “voice” is that hope-evoking and life-giving force that we recognize as both our source and strength.
God’s voice is comforting.
God’s voice is uplifting.
God’s voice is challenging.
God hears our voices, each one of them.
And we hear the voice of God in our prayers, in our worship, and in the love that is incarnated from the grown-ups who love us in this world.
I challenge you to listen—to words and to silence.
Listen to the voice of God in the people who have loved and shaped you.
Who know you. And whose voice you know.
Listen to the sound of God’s voice in the wind.
Listen to the sound of God’s voice as you worship this most holy of weeks.
Listen to the sound of God’s voice as you breathe in and out.
Listen to the sound of God’s voice through the rustling of the leaves on the trees.
And though you and I are not contestants on “The Voice”, it is my hope and prayer that your own voice may sing with the symphony that is God’s creative Spirit.
Emlyn

Upcoming “Bee the Change” Gatherings…

Beginning in late February and extending through March, Healthy Congregations is hosting a series of “Bee the Change” Conversations for those who are interested in hearing more about the ways in which the church, leaders, and others are being challenged by our current health and social changes. HC, Inc. (along with you) are Boldly Growing.

Interested in sharing your challenges? How do you see HC and that challenge connecting? Let us know if you are interested in being a part of the conversation. Contact Jill in the HC Office at [email protected].

From the Executive Director...

Our family lives on a pilgrimage path.

Each Friday, families and individuals walk to worship in the community synagogues along this path.

We chose to live in this community, in this particular home, on this particular street because we found being on a path of spiritual pilgrimage was a source of strength and hope for us. A regular reminder. There is diversity. There is rhythm. There is a reminder of the different “routes” that we all find and venture forth on as we wrestle with who we are, what we believe, and what we are willing to change our lives, our relationships and our actions for.

We are now aware of the Jewish holy days. Our membership at the Jewish Community Center makes it a very practical learning. We know when we can and cannot work out which is built around the festivals. We have found that we can work out on Christmas day, our family version of offering gifts to the baby Jesus. Our nod to the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The Jewish festival of Yom Kippur coincided this year with many notable wider political and social changes in the United States. Yom Kippur is a traditional time of atonement that follows the start of the Jewish New Year. It is a holiday spent fasting and reflecting on things done and left undone over the past year.

Richard Rohr shared a prayer this week written by Etty Hillesum who was murdered at the age of 29 in the Westernbork transit camp. She was a young woman who suffered much more injustice in the concentration camp than any of us can imagine.

Her prayer follows:

There is a really deep well inside me. And in it dwells God. Sometimes I am there too… And that is all we can manage these days and also all that really matters: that we safeguard that little piece of You, God, in ourselves.

I speak to many ministry leaders who are feeling the impact of this marathon that we imagined in March would be a sprint. Hillesum makes a wise observation about faith in the midst of grief, loss, and a changing world. We are learning new ways of holding onto that safeguard of God in ourselves, in our relationships and communities. This is a pilgrimage of power and might, of incredible loss, of unrelenting hope, of humility and gift. How do we rest? How do we strengthen? How do we repent and consider not only what has been done and left undone? How do we also acknowledge with gratitude the gift of the pilgrimage — and the holy fire of our companions in that pilgrimage?

New paths of pilgrimage are never easy. We may get lost, distracted, or hurt. We also may have new observations about what that little piece of God might be guiding us to change, adapt or disrupt.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described pilgrimage as motion, “passing through territories not our own, seeking something we might call contemplation, or perhaps the word clarity will do as well. A goal to which only the spirit’s compass points the way.”

Perhaps we all live on a pilgrimage path.

Emlyn Ott
Executive Director
Healthy Congregations, Inc.

Join us this May for a two day event with guest speakers Tod Bolsinger and Peter Steinke! Registration will be opening soon!