By: Elizabeth Billings
When Dean Owens invited me to fill in for him and write a Dean’s Corner article for Trinity, I blithely agreed. The date was a few weeks away and, really, how hard is it to write a few (meaningful) paragraphs to share with the congregation? And then I promptly forgot all about it. I did not write it down, I did not make an adequate mental note. I went on to the next pressing thing in a world where there seem to be no end of pressing things for us to pay attention to.
For an example of pressing things, I am a small business owner who does a very small amount of importing of goods that originate in China. Combing through a detailed invoice of a recent shipment, we realized that the new tariff is being added to the 30% existing tariff, making the full tariff on Chinese-made goods 170%. That meant over $3000 in fees and tariffs for an order of our goods that cost $2000. Two weeks later tariffs were frozen for 90 days at 30% (60% actually), so now what?
I know, I know. What has this got to do with Trinity or the Dean’s Corner or anything? But that is my point, there is so much for us to pay attention to, so many things heaped on our plates that affect us and others. And focusing on one small part to share with our community in a meaningful way is not the breezy task I thought it was.
In a recent Vestry meeting, Cynthia Ries described Trinity as a a community that “helps people find their place in the world”; a world where the Episcopal Church as an entity is shrinking. This resonated so much because I know many people who are turned off by the idea of organized Christian worship, yet have never experienced what a community like Trinity has to offer. At Trinity, we are challenged to find our connection to the Divine and to use ourselves to help our neighbors.
Jesus said, “By this everyone shall know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35). And this is the pressing thing I want to raise up: The world around us will never stop churning, stealing our focus and wearing us down. We need to overcome that churn and show up at worship and for all those community events that we can. We need to see Christ in the other and build up our community with love. We need to do this now, over the summer, and going forward. We need to do this because it feeds us and makes us resilient. We need to do this because it will be a beacon to those who are hungry for the same.