Walk both the Fourteen Stations of the Cross as interpreted by Episcopal priest and sculptor the Rev. Thomas Faulkner and Trinity Cathedral’s own Chartres Labyrinth. A day of guided meditation and spiritual practice to prepare for Holy Week. Led by Adam Spencer and Natalie Appeldorn. Registration is $15 and includes lunch. To register, contact Adam at aspencer@dohio.org or 216-774-0418.

The Mission Office of the Diocese of Ohio invites you to training on anti-racism. This training meets the requirements for elected and appointed lay and clergy leadership. Debby Stokes of the Diocese of Southern Ohio will be facilitating this event. For additional information, visit: racismtraining.eventbrite.com.

To request a ballot application visit: www.boe.cuyahogacounty.us, or call 216-443-3298. Vote by mail ballot applications are also available at all public libraries. Hand-delivered ballot applications must be returned by 6 p.m. on March 2. Ballot applications that are returned by mail must be received on or before noon on March 3. However, election officials urge voters not to wait until the last minute to apply for a ballot.

For additional information concerning the March 6 presidential primary election, visit the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections website: www.boe.cuyahogacounty.us or call 216-443-3298. Voters should check their voting information prior to each election. Voters may confirm their ward, precinct and voting location at the Board of Elections website: www.boe.cuyahogacounty.us or call 216-443-3298.

“If you ever wondered what happened to Amelia Earheart or all those folks lost in the Bermuda Triangle; if you ever wonder about the nature of God; if you wonder ‘why the winged whale sings’; if you want to experience the greatest satirist since Jonathan Swift — you just have to read Fluke.”
— Denver Rocky Mountain News

All are welcome to join in the lively conversation… even if you haven’t finished the book! To learn more, contact coordinator Evan Coaker or staff liaison Ginger Bitikofer. Learn more about the book here.

Panelists and topics include:

Atty. James Hardiman (ACLU & NAACP) – a legal history in Ohio from desegregation, to DeRolph, and beyond

Piet van Lier (Policy Matters Ohio) – the fiscal state of education in Ohio (“alarming levels of fiscal distress at districts across the state“)

Stephen Dyer (Innovation Ohio) – educational funding formula(s), Ohio’s and those that work across the country

Rep. Sandra Williams – current legislation and the climate in the State House

The church is located near the intersection of Warrensville Road. Look for the church steeple; park in the rear of the building; enter the back door. Handicap Entrance: Accessible from the parking lot behind the church. When facing the church from the parking lot, the handicap entrance is on the left-hand side. A greeter will direct people to the elevator. Carpooling is encouraged to assure sufficient parking. Parking is also available on nearby side streets.

The poet Mary Oliver once wrote: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”  In her poem “Sometimes,” she elaborated on this thought. “Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”[i]

The scripture readings appointed for this last Sunday in Epiphany are about paying attention. In 2nd Kings, Elisha pays attention as Elijah ascends to God, thus receiving the promise of inheriting a double share of his mentor’s spirit. The text tells us that, Elisha “kept watching.” The word “watch” means to pay attention to what you see. As Paul writes in his second letter to the church in Corinth the Gospel of Jesus Christ is unveiled to those who pay attention to what they see and are willing to believe.

This morning’s powerful gospel story is also about paying attention. Jesus, standing with Moses and Elijah is transfigured before their very eyes. And after Peter once again misses the mark by suggesting that they build dwellings, that they create a permanent structure on the mountaintop, God intervenes. Speaking from the clouds the divine voice says, “Listen.” The word listen means to “pay attention to what you hear.”

This morning I ask you: are you paying attention these days? Are you really paying attention – to your life, your world and your God? Are you watching and listening to the word and wisdom of God?

Last week, Bishop Michael Curry imagined with us what the world would be like if we really did as Jesus would have us do. This morning, I invite you to imagine what the world would be like and what our own lives would be like if we really paid attention to the Holy One in our midst.

It is difficult to be attentive. Attention requires discipline, focus and purpose. In fact, according to the National Institute of Health, some 3-5% of the U.S. population suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD. With all of the stimuli – television, radio, the internet – in our environment, one might expect this statistic to be even higher.

It’s hard to listen attentively, to really hear what others, even God, are trying to say to us.  People think four or five times faster than they can speak. Humans speak at a rate of 120-130 words a minute, but we are able listen at a rate of 600-800 words a minute. Thus, distractions often slip in our minds when we’re trying to listen. That’s why we have a tendency to interrupt, finish the other person’s sentence, talk over the other person, jump to conclusion, write the end of the script, and offer advice too soon. No wonder so many people get frustrated and say, “You never listen to me!”

The inability to listen attentively is affectively all aspects of our life, perhaps most especially the public realm and the political arena. Just think about the deadlock in Washington.  We joke about the rowdiness of the British parliament, but what about our own Congress. I like tuning into C-Span watching Senators and Representatives making speeches to an empty chamber. Is anybody listening to what anybody else has to say?

Or what about political campaigns? Are the candidates able to listen to each other, much less to the voters? Last evening I was talking with Dan Moulthrop of the Civic Commons, a tenant in one of our storefronts on Euclid Avenue, a project designed to “bring communities in NEO together with conversation and emerging technology.” He told me that thanks to Noelle Celeste, a member of Civic Commons staff and a member of this Cathedral, that in articulating its values, the Civic Commons defined civility as what happens when we are interested in another’s opinion as much as our own. I would suggest that civility is what happens when we really listen and pay attention to one another. This morning, I ask you: What would happen if we listened to God and to each other? What kind of a world would we inhabit if we were as interested listening to the opinions of God and our neighbor as much as our own?

With all of the visual distractions in our world, it’s also hard to see that which is important and perhaps even transformative. As a photographer, I try to pay attention to what my eye sees, but sometimes I’m so distracted that I forget to look. For instance, yesterday as I was writing my sermon, I looked up from books and my computer screen and I saw the most magnificent light on the lake. But by the time I grabbed my camera, my shoes, my coat and hat – the light has shifted. I almost missed it!

We often miss the visual cues in front our eyes because we’re not looking. We’re not paying attention. As Annie Dillard so acutely observed in Teaching a Stone to Talk, we are often like “cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute…having coffee and doughnuts on Deck C…[presuming that] someone is minding the ship, correcting the course, avoiding icebergs and shoals, fueling the engines, watching the radar screen, noting the weather repots radioed in from shore.” (p. 40) But are we looking around, paying attention to the reef, the shoreline, the ship in our course. As Dillard asks, are we even attentive to “the sleeping god [who] may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god [who] may draw us out to where we can never return.”[ii] (p. 40-41)

That’s the story of the Transfiguration. Those disciples went up on that mountaintop with Jesus, and he was transfigured before their very eyes and they were drawn out to a place where they could never return.

The Rev. Tom Faulkner is with us today. He is here installing some Stations of the Cross. Tom is an Episcopal priest and a visual artist who served for eight months at Ground Zero in NYC as a chaplain at the morgue. And these Stations of the Cross are a reflection of what Tom saw and heard for those eight months. They are a meditation on what he was paying attention to during those weeks and months at Ground Zero. These Stations of the Cross, which will live with us for the season of Lent, invite us to pay attention: to look and to listen to the intersection of Jesus’ passion with that of the world. They aren’t pretty. They aren’t easy to look at. Some of them are very provocative, and some of them are downright disturbing. But, they are one artist’s, one priest’s faithful response to the voice of Christ, the voice of Christ transfigured on the mountaintop, crucified on Calvary, resurrected in the garden, and now sitting at the hand of God.

As you walk the Stations of the Cross this Lent, I invite you to look and listen attentively and closely to the voice of Christ speaking through this artist. I hope you see the face of Christ in these stations so that you might heighten your attentive eyes to Christ in the world around you. I encourage you to imagine how you might create the state in your own life, your own art, in the work of your own hand. I pray that this installation, this gift from one human to others, be a window into the divine mystery and task of transformation.

In his most recent book, Parker Palmer explores the old Quaker saying: “Let your life speak.” He reminds us that vocation is rooted in the Latin word “voice;” and he advises us: “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.”[iii]

As we live this Lent with these stations, I invite you to listen carefully and look carefully at your life and the life of the world. I invite you to pay attention: pay attention in a new way, pay attention in a more profound way.

We’re getting ready for Lent. It will be upon us this coming Wednesday. And I ask you: as you prepare for your Lenten discipline of fasting and/or taking on, to what or to whom do you need to be attentive? Is it your body or your diet? Is it your family or your work? Is it your politics or your civic engagement? Is it your prayer life or your spiritual practice? Is it our world or our God? Quite possibly, it is some combination of all of the above. Perhaps our Lenten task is as straightforward as Mary Oliver suggests: Pay attention. Pay Attention. Pay Attention.

Canon Mebane’s testimony:

Mr. Chairman and members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  My name is Will Mebane.  I am the canon for Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio.  Trinity is the cathedral church for The Episcopal Diocese of Ohio. The diocese consists of the 48 counties of northern Ohio. There are approximately 112 active priests and 10 deacons serving in 95 parishes, with a membership of almost 19,000 individuals.[1] We are part of the worldwide Anglican Communion as represented in the United States by The Episcopal Church, which is comprised of 110 dioceses in 16 nations.[2] We trace our roots to the beginning of Christianity[3] over 2,000 years ago.

I respectfully appear before you today to testify in support of abolition of the death penalty as a punishment option.  My support of SB 270 is rooted in the long history of commitment The Episcopal Church has made in abolishing the death penalty in the United States.

Action The Episcopal Church has Taken Against Capital Punishment[4]

In 1958, the General Convention of the Episcopal Church opposed capital punishment on a theological basis that the life of an individual is of infinite worth in the sight of Almighty God, and the taking of such a human life falls within the providence of Almighty God and not within the right of humans. 

Twenty years later in 1979, The Episcopal Church reaffirmed its Opposition to Capital Punishment and called on all dioceses and individual Church members to work actively to abolish the death penalty.

Meeting again in 1991 in General Convention, The Episcopal Church reaffirmed its opposition to capital punishment, deplored the expansion of capital offenses and supported initiatives to establish alternatives to incarceration and to reduce recidivism.

Then in 2000, the 73rd General Convention of The Episcopal Church called for a moratorium on the use of capital punishment and urged parishes and dioceses to study the death penalty and explore reasons for the Church’s opposition.

More recently in 2009, the 193^rd Convention of the Diocese of Ohio called on the Governor and Legislature of the State of Ohio to impose a moratorium on capital punishment and asked parishioners to pray for families, friends, and murder victims.  Since that time, we at Trinity Cathedral have prayed for murder victims and their surviving families and friends.  We also pray for those convicted and for their families and friends while tolling the bell at the hour appointed for the execution by the State of Ohio of individuals sentenced to death.  I no longer want the blood of those killed by the State of Ohio on my hands.  The state need not continue to seek vengeance, retribution or punishment by death on my account.  There are available alternative punishment options short of ending a life that the state did not create.  It’s also important to clearly understand that the state also cannot restore a life were it to execute an innocent person; an irreversible mistake that I’m afraid in all likelihood has already been made.

The death penalty:

-        Does not deter serious crime;

-        Prolongs suffering by the survivors of victims;

-        Costs much more than life without the possibility of parole;

-        Tortures persons on death row who are innocent;

-        Is used against defendants who lack adequate legal representation;

-        Is unevenly sought by prosecutors across Ohio;

-        Is disproportionately used against the poor and minorities;

-        Causes corrections officers and officials who witness executions to question whether justice has indeed been carried-out; and

-        Is irreversible.

It is ironic that we find ourselves gathered here for a hearing about killing people on a day that has been set aside for expression of love…Valentine’s Day.  One year ago, Frank Spisak, a mentally ill man sentenced to die for the murders he committed, was executed by the State of Ohio on this very day.  It is perhaps even more ironic that the first person to be executed at the Ohio Penitentiary was named Valentine.  Valentine Wagner, age 56 from Morrow County was hanged in 1885 for the murder of Daniel Shehan.[5] Are we really any safer today because the State of Ohio killed Valentine Wagner 127 years ago or Frank Spisak just last year?

Hebrew Scripture in the Book of Leviticus instructs as follows: You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself…” (Leviticus19:18)  These same words from Jesus are also found throughout the Holy Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke when he commanded You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:43f.) Jesus says there is no commandment greater than this.  (Mark 12:31) In fact Jesus states that keeping the commandment ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’ —“is much more important than all…offerings and sacrifices” humans can make to G_D. (Mark 12:33)

Jesus offers no exceptions to this commandment.  He doesn’t say, “love your neighbor except those who commit capital crimes in the State of Ohio.”  Are we to express our love of G_D and showing love of Jesus by killing our neighbors?

Mr. Chairman and members, I am grateful for this opportunity to testify before you and prior to making my final statement would like to commend the courage of Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, former Director of Rehabilitation & Corrections, Terry Collins and others committed to ending the insanity that is capital punishment.

I conclude now with an excerpt from a 2005 letter from the bishops of Connecticut that was recently re-stated by the current bishop in a letter calling for the end to capital punishment.  This committee is no doubt aware that Connecticut may soon become the next state to abolish use of capital punishment.  I think the bishops’ statement summarizes the basis for my support for SB 270.  It is based on a belief that all life is sacred.  All humans can be redeemed even when it is difficult for our frail human minds to conceive any good in persons responsible for heinous crimes against others.  G_D sees the goodness that we are unable to see.

“For us, the greatest argument against imposing death as a sentence is that we believe the will of God, as we know that will in Jesus Christ, is to value the gift of life, as a holy gift.  In his ministry, when Jesus met someone who was dying, or had died, or was sentenced to die, Jesus gave life.  Never did he condemn someone to death.”[6]