More prayers

In my report to the vestry tonight, I said the following:

As in last month, my time mostly has been spent on pastoral matters. This is one of those epochs when there is a lot of accompanying is needed. While I couldn’t find the exact citation, I believe my seminary dean, Jim Fenhagen, spoke of the priest as ‘burden bearer.’ Not that the priest alone bears other people’s burdens, but that accompanier in steady prayer as well as presence is a vital aspect of who a priest is.

Michael Ramsey [in The Christian Priest Today] writes of the priest as a person of prayer who is called to be with God with the people on their heart. ‘Being with God with the people on your heart’ to him is part of everything the priest does. I like that definition and it helps me to keep everything else I do in perspective.

But I also acknowledge that surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly, the type of intense prayer in which I have been engaged these past weeks, also fatigues in a physical way. So, if I have been less engaged in some of the minutiae of administrative matters, that is a small price to pay for the importance of the church being present at those critical life moments. We have ‘shown up’ for Phoebe’s 95th (and how!), Esther’s 90th, and this Friday, we will walk with P and his family as I participate in the burial office for his father, Art.

For the time being, there are some intense pastoral needs, near and far, that demand my time and energy. I have noted over the years that there is an ebb and flow of pastoral needs; we went through two or three years without too much going on; now we are once again on the upswing.

+

Pray for Emilee Landry, 14 years old, who died yesterday from Ewings Sarcoma. I only know of Emilee through Caring Bridge, the same network that Naomi uses. She sounds like she was a neat kid... one of her wishes is that everyone wear jeans to her funeral. There's a photo of her on her web page in which she is standing with her back to the camera, hands pointing to the words on her tshirt, words that say it all: 'Cancer sucks.' Pray for her family.

Pray for Art who died this morning from brain cancer. He is survived by his wife, Joan, and four sons, one of whom goes to church here.

Pray for Naomi, who is (I hope) down in Boston with her family, enjoying her week off from chemo. She has finished radiation and now is on a six-month chemo regime. Her numbers are 5% survival but that is a huge difference from 'terminal.'

Pray for Esther who, having celebrated her 90th on Friday with a huge party on Saturday, now has to deal with rehab. I watched her take her maiden voyage today: five or six steps. It nearly caused her to faint from the exertion but after some time in her chair, she stood a little more. Seeing what effort it takes an elder to walk that short difference reminds me of how precious my mobility and health are.

Pray for Peggy who fell and now has an infected wound in her leg that may have gone as deep as the bone. Pray for her daughters as they walk alongside their mother who must face rehab, too and, if the infection is as deep as the bone, four to six weeks of IV antibiotics.

Finally, remember in prayer a friend who has received death threats from gang members. Pray not only for my friend's safety but for a change of heart of the gang members who think that extortion by way of death threats is a way out of poverty.

Oh, we live in a broken world.

But we believe that God is raising up that which has been cast down, making that which has grown old new, and bringing all things to perfection through Christ.