Ben’s January Letter
Dear Friends in Christ,
The Catholic writer, activist, and contemplative Dorothy Day is said to have spent three hours a day praying. She did this in addition to a life busy with service, raising her daughter, and ending up on an FBI watch-list. Many people (me included) have wondered how she had time to do all of this while still spending something like 20% of her waking hours in prayer. But for Day, the time spent in prayer was how she got it all done. She could not have loved the poorest people in New York without prayer; she could not have stood up to what she saw as evil without prayer; she could not have balanced motherhood and her many other aims and focuses without prayer. Dorothy Day died in 1980—but more than 40 years later a Protestant minister is still thinking about her work. Maybe she was onto something with praying for three hours a day.
When I talk about “spirituality”, I don’t mean some kind of up-in-the-sky good feelings about God. I mean something like Dorothy Day had: a rhythm, a practice, and way of life—where connection with God allowed her to connect deeply with other people. She did hard work because she was re-fueling every day with God. Time in prayer helped her establish goals and a purpose; she loved God so that she could love her neighbor. We often seek one side of this or another: some people prefer to ignore the world outside of themselves, focusing only on God. Others say “God is fine, but God wants me to be busy helping, so I will go do.” People who do this often become irrelevant or exhausted. Seldom do they become modern-day saints.
This month, The Grove at Evergreen (our new ministry of connection, community, and spiritual growth) will offer two programs to help you balance love for God and love for neighbors in a healthy way. On Saturday, January 25, at Swaim Lodge in Montgomery, we will gather for the Creating Connections class—a day-long event that some Evergreen members have done before and described as “life-changing”. We will learn and practice how to have more thoughtful conversations with one another—and growing closer to other participants. A few days later, on Tuesday, January 28 at 10AM (and every week after that until March 4), we will meet in the Kemper Room at church for a series on spiritual practices—exploring and engaging in techniques for connecting with God. These are both opportunities to change how we live—how we talk to each other, how we make time for God, how we stay energized for discipleship—just in time for new patterns and goals that come with the new year. I hope to see you at both—or even at just some of the Tuesday morning classes.
Who could we be with a fraction of Dorothy Day’s time with God? What could we accomplish if we learned better ways to love our neighbors? How much can we be changed by trying some new things? I can’t wait to find out with you in 2025.
In Christ,
Rev. Ben