Spirituality @ Mercer School

Dear Friends,
I am taking the opportunity to share here and elsewhere word of many of the upcoming events at Mercer School of Theology in Garden City. 

We are expanding our offerings in the area of spirituality.  Beginning today I will share details about six upcoming events in this important area.  Here are the first two:
Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps; a Lenten program to deepen your spiritual journey

Wednesdays in Lent at the Church of St. Luke and St. Matthew, Brooklyn
March 12,19,26
April 2,9,16
7-9pm

We are all addicted in some way.

When we learn to identify our addiction, embrace our brokenness, and surrender to God, we begin to bring healing to ourselves and our world. In Breathing Under Water, Richard Rohr shows how the gospel principles in the Twelve Steps can free anyone from any addiction—from an obvious dependence on alcohol or drugs to the more common but less visible addiction that we all have to sin.

Join us on a lenten journey with The Rev. Dr. Stuart Hoke that is sure to strengthen the bonds between us and draw us deeper into the divine mystery of healing.

Online registration available at: http://tinyurl.com/BreathingLent   The subsidized cost of registration for the entire series is $25. This course is generously underwritten by The Mercer School of Theology’s “Mercer Avenue” series.   Need based scholarships available.  All are welcome!

And the second:
Food in the Desert
Lenten Day of Prayer for Eucharistic Ministers/Visitors @ Camp DeWolfe
March 22. 9:30am - 3:30pm

Do something good for yourself and your ministry!
Join us at beautiful Camp DeWolfe for a relaxing and inspiring gathering for all those who contribute to the good of their communities as eucharistic ministers and visitors. The day will be led by Joseph Diele, an experienced retreat leader.

Registration is available online at http://tinyurl.com/EucharistPrayer - or by calling the Mercer School office at 516.248.4800, ext 140.  

As I have invited you before, please share this good news with 2 or 3 friends you believe may be interested.  We need your assistance in spreading the word.

Blessings,John P. McGinty+
Canon for Formation

With "Focusing and Spirituality," Mercer Institute of Spirituality to Open

Dear Friends,
Looking ahead just a bit, Mercer School of Theology late last year announced the establishment of the Mercer Institute of Spirituality.  The Institute's first work will be the planning and execution of a series of lectures on the theme of Being Human.  This foundational topic will be approached from a variety of angles with the help of the best presenters we can find.

The Institute's first event is scheduled for Saturday, March 8 from 2:00 to 7:00 pm.  We look forward to welcoming Dr. John McDargh of the theology department of Boston College.  Dr McDargh will be inviting our participation in an afternoon of learning about Focusing and Spirituality: exploring a foundational practice for both pastoral conversation and spiritual growth.

The work of philosopher and therapist Eugene Gendlin has taken hold in both the therapeutic and ecumenical spiritual direction communities here and abroad. Gendlin and his colleagues have developed practical and accessible ways of teaching the skill of paying close attention to the “knowing that is deeper than saying”, the body’s “felt sense” of the individual’s personal reality at any given moment. This workshop will introduce participants to this way of attending to their own embodied experience as a way of living close to the wisdom that is part of the Spirit’s endowment to human beings.

Consider joining us on March 8 for this first event in the series.  You can register online at
http://tinyurl.com/MercerSpirituality1

Blessings,John P. McGinty+
Canon for Formation

Phillips Brooks, Us, and Mercer UPcoming Events

Dear Friends,

Today, January 23rd, the church remembers and celebrates Phillips Brooks, the 19th century priest, preacher, and bishop of Massachusetts.  His reception of the Word of God and his ability to speak a word worth hearing to the people of the time remain an inspiration to our own day.

Not surprisingly, there are many words of Brooks worth recalling as we go about our own lives of faith and service.  Today I share but one for your consideration:
“The danger facing all of us--let me say it again, for one feels it tremendously--is not that we shall make an absolute failure of life, nor that we shall fall into outright viciousness, nor that we shall be terribly unhappy, nor that we shall feel that life has no meaning at all--not these things. The danger is that we may fail to perceive life's greatest meaning, fall short of its highest good, miss its deepest and most abiding happiness, be unable to render the most needed service, be unconscious of life ablaze with the light of the Presence of God--and be content to have it so--that is the danger. That some day we may wake up and find that always we have been busy with the husks and trappings of life--and have really missed life itself. For life without God, to one who has known the richness and joy of life with Him, is unthinkable, impossible. That is what one prays one's friends may be spared--satisfaction with a life that falls short of the best, that has in it no tingle and thrill which come from a friendship with the Father.” 

To be alive to learning is part of avoiding this greatest danger as Brooks names it.  Please have a look at the Mercer calendar to the left under "Coming Events/Register."  Explore by clicking on a date and then clicking on the event title.  Also make sure to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter on what's coming up at Mercer.  And call us at 516.248.4800 extension 140 for more information.  

With you in Christ,

John P. McGinty+
Canon for Formation

Safe Church Meeting 1/22 Postponed

Due to the winter storm the meeting scheduled at Mercer School on Safe Church training tomorrow evening, January 22, will be postponed. The meeting will take place a week later, Wednesday, January 29 at Mercer School, beginning at 6:30 pm.

Be careful if you're on the roads. 

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Thoughts on the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity January 18-25

Dear Friends,
Each year the Church community over the face of the planet is invited to celebrate a week of prayer for Christian unity from January 18th to the 25th.  This year's theme comes from Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.  Chapter 1, verse 13 opens with a question: "Has Christ been divided?"

Our instinct, thank God ultimately, is to respond strongly in the negative.  There is only one Christ.  He cannot be divided, and we are united in him.

But to look around the ecumenical landscape in a following moment is to be compelled to grant that. though Jesus Christ is not divided, we who worship and serve in his name have proven ourselves all too divisible from the beginning.

At least once a year, and more properly once a day, once an hour, once a breath - we should recognize these two truths and act out of them.  Not simply to lament our lack of unity, but to actively pray and work for deepened and restored unity in the one Christ.

You can learn more about the observance of this week online at http://www.oikoumene.org/en/resources/week-of-prayer and elsewhere as well.

If your parish church has not actively noted and prayed the week this year, make a mental note for 2015.

Here is one of the suggested prayers for this week of prayer:

Most loving and gracious God, we give thanks for the gifts of your grace that we experience in our own tradition and in the traditions of other churches. By the grace of your Holy Spirit, may our gratitude continue to grow as we encounter one another and experience your gift of unity in new ways. This we pray through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

Pax,
John P. McGinty
Canon for Formation
Dean, Mercer School

Spiritually Alive

Greetings from Mercer School!

On more than a few fronts we are working to continue the renewal of Mercer School of Theology.  We do this not for the sake of the school itself, but for the sake of its usefulness to the parishes, people, and clergy of the Diocese and of the whole church.  Beyond even that, we are working to renew and upbuild for the sake of the church's mission, undertaken in Christ's name.

One thing that has come to seem both relevant and obvious is the need for more opportunities for us, as individuals and church communities, to grow spiritually.  We need to attend to the questions: what is the spirituality that underlies and enlivens my faith?  What is my relationship to God, to the person of Jesus Christ?  Do I experience God's presence, call, and support in my life?

It is a tall order to effectively offer this kind of experience.  It might come in a day of prayer for a parish vestry, in a major event with an invited presenter at Mercer, in an evening retreat or in a couple of days spent away and dedicated to prayer.   And these spiritual hungers are present in all of us, certainly both laity and clergy.

It is a blessing that Mercer is not alone in recognizing these needs and responding.  We work together with the Society of Saint Francis at Little Portion Friary and with the committed and talented staff at Camp DeWolfe, as well as with parish clergy and lay leaders.   In all these places, we are working together to offer substantial support to your spiritual journey, whoever and wherever you are.

Evelyn Underhill, the 20th century spiritual writer and mystic, said that the spiritual life is "the art of union with Reality."

I love that.  Do you want to be more in touch with the ultimate Reality?  Do you want to be yourself more real?  Here are just some of the upcoming opportunities:

• February 7/8 Listening to God retreat at Camp DeWolfe;
• March 8 Inaugural Event Opening the Mercer Institute of Spirituality -A series  examining what "Being Human" means will open with an afternoon/evening on Focusing and Spirituality with Dr. John McDargh of the Boston College Theology Department.
• March 19, 26 and April 2 Lenten Retreat Evenings at the Good Shepherd Chapel of Mercer School; come to one or all three;
• March 22 A Day of Prayer for Eucharistic Ministers  at Camp DeWolfe, open to eucharistic ministers and visitors from across the Diocese of Long Island.

In addition, our Mercer Avenue series of off-campus events around the diocese will sponsor a 6-session experiential examination of the transforming power of 12-step spirituality in any human life; at Saint Luke and Saint Matthew Parish in Brooklyn.

Stay tuned as well for details on a lenten season spiritual direction group meeting at Mercer School under the guidance of an experienced director.

In addition to all this, there's a lot more going on educationally at and through Mercer.  Check out our calendar often on the Mercer School website (www.mercerschool.org).  And we hope you'll enjoy and subscribe to Mercer's new daily online newspaper, Open Gates.  You'll find a link to it everyday on our Facebook Page - Conversations at Mercer - and on our Twitter feed - @MercerTheology.

There are many ways for us to connect, whether at Garden City, around the diocese, or online.  Let's get together.  Mercer.  We're your school.

Blessings,
John+

The Very Reverend  Canon John P. McGinty
Canon for Formation
jmcginty@dioceseli.org

Make It A New Year of Significance

Dear Friends of Mercer School,

I share here a reflection written late on the evening of December 31 of the year just past:

Ninety-two years ago the Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, then preacher at the First Presbyterian Church in New York, gave the Cole Lectures for 1922 at Vanderbilt University. These were later collected in book form under the title Christianity and Progress [copyright 1922, Fleming H. Revell Company]. Fosdick, a well-known and sometimes controversial theologian, argued that genuine progress can only be sustained in the context of faith. In his first lecture he said, “This world needs something more than a soft gospel of inevitable progress. It needs salvation from its ignorance, its sin, its inefficiency, its apathy, its silly optimism and its appalling carelessness.”

This might seem a less-than-cheery starting point on this New Year’s Eve entering 2014. Often we speak to one another of the future on this night as if it were to be somehow entirely separated from all that has gone before. Public airwaves and internet blogs review the year past and cast a line into the year ahead, on some occasions with an easy optimism that belies the complexity that relates 11:59 pm of one day with 12:00 am of the next.

Better to seek to leave the past and enter the future with a couple of important tools in the toolbox:
One would be a realistic appreciation of the continuities between today and tomorrow, even those continuities heavy to carry, the ones we wish could be left behind. War. Famine. Political haggling without apparent progress. Deep disagreements between peoples, nations, and faiths that have endured the passing of numberless new year’s eves.

A second tool might be a perspective that sees the present moment in its long-term context. This is neither the best nor the worst of times. It is nestled somewhere between the two, likely comfortable with neither extreme. And also, you can bet, in need of some real improving.

A third tool would be the use of a particularly human gift mentioned and developed by Fosdick in his second lecture almost a century ago. It is the question of meaning that we human creatures put to ourselves both minute-to-minute and throughout our lives: what does this experience, this moment, this event, this night, this life mean? What is its significance? Both the posing and the perhaps-hesitant answering of that question is one of the most powerful tools we can use – both to understand the year that ends tonight and the new one as it begins.

Fosdick puts this forward as one of the key gifts of religion to humanity; religion, a powerful reality yet that has often suffered a bad name in the period between Fosdick and ourselves. He said at Vanderbilt:

“The deep need of a worthy interpretation of life is just as urgent in a world where the idea of progress reigns as in any other, and to supply that need is one of the major functions of religion. For religion is something more than all the creeds that have endeavored to express its thought. Religion is something more than all the organizations that have tried to incarnate its purposes. Religion is the human spirit, by the grace of God, seeking and finding an interpretation of experience that puts sense and worth, dignity, elevation, joy, and hope into life.”

We need to know why. Or at least to place that most human of questions before us always and everywhere. In religion, according to Fosdick, we find a force that both insists we ask the question and introduces us to a Lord whose Gospel is much more than ‘soft.’

Every generation receives this question. It bubbles up from deep within us. We handle it as best we can. Some years, some generations, do a better job of it than others. And then the question, still living and intact, is passed on hand-to-hand and heart-to-heart to the young. Forty years after Fosdick spoke, Baroness Catherine de Hueck Doherty, impassioned Catholic, Russian emigre, founder of Madonna House (an apostolate of laity and priests serving the poor still today), continued her ongoing longtime correspondence with Father Louis, that is, Thomas Merton, Trappist priest, monk, author, activist.
[Compassionate Fire: The Letters of Thomas Merton & Catherine de Hueck Doherty, edited by Robert Wild, Ave Maria Press, 2009].

Expressing her frustration at the formalized, dry, overly-intellectualized approach she saw developing among groups like hers, de Hueck Doherty wrote of her desire “to shout to my fellow lay apostles at those conferences, conventions, THAT NOTHING MATTERS EXCEPT CARITAS!” (capital letters in the original!). The baroness asserts that “worldly competence” only means anything in the context of being motivated first, last, and completely by love.

This is one instance in an endless sea of possible examples of the truth that what we humans do is make meaning, or if you prefer, recognize significance. For Catherine Doherty, meaning is made by love, by reaching out, serving, offering what we have in caritas. We all receive in these latter days a living example of caritas taking the lead in the words, acts, and person of Francis, Bishop of Rome. Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby just a day ago seconded Time’s choice of the former Jorge Maria Bergoglio as Person of the Year, calling him ‘an extraordinary man.’

There is a reasonable likelihood that Archbishop Welby, Catherine Doherty, and the Pope himself would be united in a devout wish that Francis would not be so extraordinary in letting love take the lead, but rather one of many who would do so.

Let caritas become quite everyday and ordinary.

Now there’s a New Year’s desire that is both unrealistic and a valid response to the meaning-making of Harry Emerson Fosdick, Catherine de Hueck Doherty, and many other valiant men and women who have lived new year’s eves before this one, and wondered and hoped what the next year would bring as we may do tonight.

The word-master Thomas Merton, in a letter to another great 20th century woman, Dorothy Day, appears to both echo and answer Catherine Doherty as he sets forth all that can be hoped-for on this or any night:

“Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody’s business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy if anything can.”

[Letter to Dorothy Day, quoted in Catholic Voices In a World on Fire (2005) by Stephen Hand, p. 180].

And so, I can dare to say: Happy New Year!

Pax,

John McGinty+
Dean and Canon for Formation

PS - Registration is still open for the annual workshop for Parish Treasurers and others who may be involved at your church in preparing the annual Parochial Report.  Visit our Coming Events/Register tab on our homepage (www.mercerschool.org), click on January 25 and then click on the event title to reach registration information.

We hope to welcome you here to Mercer soon again!