Calvary Episcopal Church
Memphis, Tennessee
THE CHRONICLE
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost
October 1, 2000
Volume 45, No.34

Autumn Musings
So now begins the month of October, a time of fullness and ripeness, when the sky seems to fill with a golden hue as the sun sets ever earlier and the air takes on the first clarity of autumn. This all comes with a sense of relief after such a hot, dry summer. It's as if the Holy Spirit is using the world of nature itself to issue an invitation to us, saying, "Come, ye blessed of the Father, and inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world!" I pray that we can each find our way of responding to the gift of that invitation.

We so seldom seem to pause to realize the gifts of God given to us. The sheer volume of our interests and concerns seems to block our ability to be open to God's voice or to God's presence in our daily lives. Perhaps we've forgotten how to be still and receptive, how to wait for God with a sense of consuming expectation. The words of the Psalmist come to mind:

"O God, you are my God; eagerly I seek you;
my soul thirsts for you, my flesh faints for you,
as in a barren and dry land where there is no water."

October entreats us to slow down and to seek God's presence in the poignant beauty around us - in the face of a friend or the ripeness of a pumpkin or in the frolicking energy of a puppy; to seek God's presence in this community of Calvary Church - on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings, at Wednesday noon's Calvary & the Arts or in a steaming cup of Soup Sunday soup; to seek the power of God's presence at the Inter-Faith AIDS Healing Service or in the light that filters through the AIDS banner, each ray representing the life of someone in this world living with this illness; to seek the presence of God through giving in stewardship of the gifts God has given you.

Poet David Stendahl-Rast once observed that "The antidote to exhaustion is wholeheartedness." October is a time of just such wholeness and wholeheartedness. May you and may I enter into it fully and receive its blessing.
~Peggy Gunness+