Trinity Stories

Dear Friends,

Spring training began this past week as baseball teams reported to Florida – the Grapefruit League – or Arizona – the Cactus League. Pitchers and catchers always show up first. Then the position players arrive, some of them grizzled veterans, some of them rookies hoping to be in the lineup come Opening Day.

I’ve loved baseball since I was a boy. My grandfather Applegate was a huge baseball fan. He spent summers living with us for several years, and he parked himself in front of the TV set in the living room so he could see and hear the games. Although he wasn’t totally blind or deaf, his eyesight and hearing had suffered considerable decline in his old age. One didn’t need to be in the living room to know what was going on with the Yankees. Mel Allen, Red Barber, and Phil Rizzuto’s voices on WPIX could be heard throughout the house.

These days, I rely on the MLB app on my phone, or watch one of the games on MLB.TV to get my baseball fix. A recent email reminded me that I needed to update my credit card so my subscription will renew without interruption.

Here’s a story about spring training and Lent that’s circulated for a long time: Many years ago, a popular Roman Catholic priest was invited to celebrate Mass for a men’s club as they were entering the season of Lent. Like most people, the men thought of the 40-day period as just a time for increased prayer and fasting. The priest changed the thinking of the men that evening as he presented a talk on “Lent, a time of spring training for people of faith.”

“Lent is like spring training in baseball,” the priest said. “We get out of spring training what we put into it. We need to do this yearly to be on God’s team.”

You may not be a baseball fan, or even pay any attention to the sport, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how much eye-hand coordination it takes to hit a sphere that’s only 9-9.25” in circumference traveling at you from 60’ 6” away at 100 mph.

Instead of seeing Lent as a dreary season when we give up things we like for reasons we don’t understand, I’d like to offer another view of Lent – a view from our National Pastime. Lent is the time to ensure that our spiritual life is in top-notch coordination. But in the case of our spiritual lives, it’s not eye-hand coordination; it’s mind, heart and hand coordination.

In place of taking batting practice and fielding ground balls as players do during baseball’s spring training, prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the essentials of spiritual spring training. They result in the coordination of mind, heart and hand.

Opening Day will be here before you know it, and so will Easter. Will you be ready when the umpire says, “Play ball”?

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

Late last Saturday afternoon, I drove from Columbus to Toledo following the Ordination & Consecration of the 10th Bishop of Southern Ohio. After two very full days – one of them converting the Short North Ballroom of the Greater Columbus Convention Center into a church, the other serving as the Minister of Ceremonies for the service – I was grateful for time alone in the car. If I answered one question during the time I was in Columbus, I answered a hundred. So, I thoroughly enjoyed what the old hymn calls, “blessed quietness, holy quietness.” No radio, no CDs, no Spotify.

When I arrived at my office early the next morning, I found my desk covered with papers, files, books, and empty coffee cups. What a mess! I don’t claim to be the neatest person when it comes to my office, but I’d clearly let things get out of control in the days before the consecration. I’m still clearing the clutter as a write this – still digging out of the pile.

Albert Einstein famously pointed out that “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Thomas Edison, who had a famously messy desk, must have agreed. And Steve Jobs. While our cluttered desks may not prove we are brilliant, they do show that we might be geniuses. . . or that the desks need some attention!!

Lent is the season of the church year to clear off our desks, to do some holy housekeeping – some spring cleaning – to open the windows of our souls enough for the strong breeze of God’s Holy Spirit to clear out the clutter that’s piled up over the winter. Our resentments, our uncharitable thoughts about others, and our sins all keep piling up on the flat surfaces of our lives.

Repentance is the word traditionally used to describe what Christians need to do to clear off those surfaces – to create enough space for there to be room for God. The famous preacher, Barbara Brown Taylor, writes that repentance “calls individuals to take responsibility for what is wrong with the world – beginning with what is wrong with them – and to join with other people who are dedicated to turning things around.”

What does the top of your spiritual “desk” look like? Take a few moments now to see the clutter that is crowding God out, ask God’s help to clear some space, and then join with others who are dedicated to turning things around. The invitation to a Holy Lent awaits your RSVP.

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

One of the images for the season of Lent is wilderness. It’s easy to see why. According to the Gospels, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness after his baptism by John in the Jordan River. The people of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness after they were freed from slavery in Egypt. Although we, who live in North America, often think of wilderness areas as being heavily forested, the wildernesses of the Middle East are deserts – dry, desolate places with little to sustain life.

Many years ago, a priest friend gave me a book of sermons by H.A. Williams entitled The True Wilderness. The title comes from one of the sermons – the one Williams preached on Ash Wednesday in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. Here’s how he began the sermon: “It is a pity that we think of Lent as a time to make ourselves uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way. And it’s more than a pity, it’s a tragic disaster, that we also think of it as a time to indulge in the secret and destructive pleasure of doing a good orthodox grovel to a pseudo-Lord, the pharisee in each of us we call God and who despises the rest of what we are.”

Ouch! I remember thinking, is this what I’ve been doing all these years I’ve been giving things up – like alcohol or chocolate – for Lent? Was I just making myself “uncomfortable in some fiddling but irritating way”?

H.A. Williams went on to say that what Lent should be about is entering the true wilderness that’s inside each of us – a wilderness that isn’t so much about our wickedness (although some people are indeed wicked) but is rather about how incapable we are of establishing communion with each other and, therefore, how alone and isolated we are.

This past Christmas Eve, USA Today published an article about how loneliness has become epidemic in the United States. Dr. Vivek Murthy, the Surgeon General, gives this definition of loneliness: he says loneliness occurs when the connections a person needs in life are greater than the connections they have.

If loneliness is not your wilderness, you are blessed. If the connections you have are greater than the connections you need in life, give thanks. But if loneliness is your wilderness, Lent offers forty days to reestablish communion with others and with God.

Here are ways we offer “holy communion” – ways to connect – at Trinity during Lent: the 10 o’clock Sunday service (in-person or online), the Wednesday service of Holy Eucharist at noon or the three Wednesday evening offerings: Evening Prayer at 5:30 pm., supper with others at 6:15 pm, and the class I’m teaching at 7:00 pm about St. Mark’s account of Holy Week.

Celebrity doctor Daniel Amen recommends minimizing screen time while maximizing in-person interactions to combat loneliness. He especially recommends church. “So it’s back to church,” he says. “Go back to church. Get involved. Get involved with groups. We have to go back. And really, no better place to solve [loneliness] than the church.”

The good news is that the Biblical accounts about wilderness end with stories of new beginnings, of new life, of new connections. The season of Lent ends this way, too, on Easter morning . . . . But for now, we’re just getting started.

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate

Dear Friends,

This Sunday, February 11, promises to be a special one at Trinity. First, the Reverend Anna Sutterisch, Canon for Formation for the Diocese of Ohio, will be our guest preacher. Anna and her husband, Noah (who was recently instituted as Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Parma) are the proud parents of the adorable 15-month-old Martin. Her role on the diocesan staff includes thinking a lot about how the church – ‘big C’ institutional church and ‘little c’ faith community church – can best teach and shape Christians amidst the brokenness of the world. She asks, “How can we form communities of courage and hope, when it’s easier to just disappear into apathy and Instagram, putting trust in no one because everyone is a disappointment?” Anna loves to cook, grow and eat plants, and run!

Following the 10:00 am service, all are invited upstairs to My Brother’s Place on the second floor of the Parish House for a Mardi Gras/Shrove Sunday party. We’ll combine the best of the English tradition of Shrove Tuesday – think pancakes! – and the best of the Latin tradition of Mardi Gras (which means Fat Tuesday) and Carnival (which means Farewell to Meat) – both ways to mark the shift to the 40-day penitential season of Lent that begins on Ash Wednesday, February 14. Below are all Trinity’s offerings to help you observe an intentional and holy Lent. – from worship opportunities, to classes and gatherings, to practices you can undertake at home on your own schedule.

We say goodbye to the word, “Alleluia” this Sunday – “fasting” from the celebrations it represents in order to prepare for the great celebration of Easter on March 31 this year when we we’ll sing “Alleluia” joyfully!

Blessings,

Stephen Applegate