Weekly Reflection - 10/8/24
St. Mary's Reflection: The Rev. Kira Austin-Young
An “Island of Sanity” in Cow Hollow
As I mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon, I spent a few days last week outside of Seattle for a conference called Gathering of Leaders, which, as the name suggests, gathers leaders from around the Episcopal Church (there are both clergy and lay gatherings) to learn from and inspire one another. The theme of the gathering I attended was “Mission in the New Reality,” and we looked at how we were living out God’s mission in our contexts in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and all of the various crises that our world and communities are facing.
The first presentation was by Dr. Dwight Friesen, a professor of practical theology at the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, and he deftly put a framework around the broader context of what we are all living through. Together, we named a variety of challenges facing our communities and our world - housing and addiction crises, climate change and the increasing severity of natural disasters, generational change, wars around the globe, and rising religious nationalism. All of those and more contribute to that sense that we have daily of the “end of the world as we know it.” Dr. Friesen gave us the vocabulary of “polycrisis,” the vast multiple overlapping and interconnected crises that our world is facing and that our historical ways of dealing with these crises only seem to make them worse.
While our reality is frequently frightening and overwhelming, we as the church have a new opportunity to be the Body of Christ here and now. Even as the former structures are passing away, something new is emerging. As people of resurrection faith, we believe that God is up to something, that nothing dies without something else being born. Dr. Friesen named that one role that our church communities have in this time is as “islands of sanity,” and I recalled that, in our Vital & Thriving process, many people reflected on the peaceful space of the St. Mary’s courtyard - a place of beauty and calm in the midst of the bustling city.
It is not only our physical space that can serve as an “island of sanity,” but also the community itself. The wider world desperately needs examples of what it looks like to be in community with people of different demographics, different backgrounds, and different political persuasions. The world needs examples of what it looks like to love one another well, which doesn’t mean we always get along, but does mean that we believe in forgiveness and reconciliation when (not if) we hurt one another.
I left that conference wide-eyed but hopeful - encouraged by the work that my colleagues are doing in their contexts and re-committed to the ministry I feel called to by God here at St. Mary’s. Especially as November’s election comes closer, may we commit to being an “island of sanity,” a community of love and grace for one another.
The Rev. Kira Austin-Young
Associate Rector
