In the Name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Do you know Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town? It’s a play we put on in my high school . . . I expect that it’s still produced in high schools throughout the country. It’s a lovely, simple but deep play about the preciousness of life. There’s a moment in it that I’ve been thinking about for a few days . . . I wasn’t able to find my copy of the play, so my quote may be inexact . . . but the moment I’ve been thinking about is when the young heroine identifies herself and her address: “Emily Webb, Grover’s Corner, New Hampshire, the United States of America, the western hemisphere, the earth, the solar system, the universe.”

I love that.

Maybe I love it because it reminds me of a meditation I do from time to time. A long time ago I was told by someone or read somewhere about a monk who was asked what his favorite prayer was and he answered that it was the Gloria Patri . . . that simple prayer: Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Now that’s a prayer that we say a LOT . . . and usually without thinking much about it. But since this monk said it was his favorite . . . and we DO say it a lot . . . I decided that I should pay some attention to it. So I started meditating on each little part of it.

At the very beginning, as I start to meditate on the Father, the Creator, I usually try to place myself . . . like Emily Webb in Our Town. I try to become conscious of where I am, very specifically . . . the chair, the room, the building . . . and then I try to expand my awareness out to the neighborhood, still remembering who and where I am . . . and then out to the city . . . out and out . . . trying to eventually to have an awareness of myself in the universe. This can take me quite a while . . . and I’m never completely successful . . . it’s too mind-blowing. But nevertheless, I find the exercise very helpful. It grounds me . . . and it places me, tiny little me . . . very specifically in the grandeur of creation.

I’ve been thinking about this in relation to today’s readings . . . especially the reading from the Book of Acts. Paul is teaching the Athenians about God, and he tells them that, “In God we live and move and have our being . . . we live . . . and move . . . and HAVE our being.” Like that little prayer, the Gloria Patri, we’re also familiar with this phrase about God. But have you ever stopped to think about this statement? And that last phrase: “in whom we have our being” . . . what’s that MEAN? Perhaps it’s something we could meditate on a bit.

To “have our being” . . . that sounds to me like it means that we have in our possession our existence . . . we have our being . . . we have our lives . . . and we DO think of our lives as being our own, don’t we? My life, my existence, my being is somehow . . . well, MINE . . . to do with as I please. MY life. Don’t we all have a sense that this is the case: Me, my, mine . . . MY life. And our lives ARE our own . . . we have free will to make decisions about how we will live.

Yet the phrase is: IN GOD, we live, and move, and have our being. In God . . . what’s THAT mean? Well, I suppose we could be “in God” the way we’re in a house – or a church – and that would mean that God is a rather neutral thing . . . like a structure is neutral. We can be inside or outside . . . a building doesn’t care one way or the other. And so we could have our lives and be separate from this neutral God.

Some people DO think of God this way . . . neutral and removed from our existence . . . not caring whether we’re inside or outside. But I don’t. I don’t think that’s the way God is at all. I believe that God is around us all the time, active and creative. As Paul explains to the Athenians, even though we may be blind and groping for God, God is not far from each one of us. Rather than like a building, God is more like the air around us . . . that we exist in . . . that we breathe in and out . . . that we rely on for our very being . . . usually without even thinking about it.

But even that’s not a good enough simile because the air – like a building – doesn’t care about our existence. And God is active . . . active Love. Again, as Paul says, God gives us life and breath, God allots the time and the boundaries of our existence. Perhaps being “in God” is like being in the arms of a loving mother. That feels closer . . . but it’s still not quite right . . . because a baby is still separate from her mother.

God is all about us . . . even within us. We are surrounded, immersed, saturated with God . . . so that even though we have been given our lives, and been given the free will to choose what we do with these lives . . . our existence is nevertheless permeated by and dependent upon God . . . in whom we live . . . and move . . . and have our being. Like all of creation, we could not exist without God. We tiny little beings, in this church, in this city . . . in this country . . . on this planet . . . in this great big universe . . . could not exist without the active love of God, the creator of EVERYTHING.

Personally, I find this kind of meditation to be very helpful as I try to remember who I am, and try to figure out what it is I’m supposed to do with this life I’ve been given. We have so much noise about us . . . so many VOICES . . . hectoring, selling, instructing, persuading, begging, cajoling, entertaining, informing . . . so many voices . . . and not just outside, but inside . . . we have those nattering voices in our own heads that keep at us even when we’re alone . . . we have so much noise around us and within us that it’s easy to become completely self-involved . . . little universes unto ourselves. That’s why I find it helpful to try to get quiet . . . and PLACE myself . . . and remember how much bigger than my own concerns the world actually is.

When we quiet ourselves it’s so much easier to encounter God. Because this process of quieting and placing ourselves in the universe is also an opening . . . an opening out from our own specific concerns to a much broader perspective . . . and in this openness we can sense the God all about us. The God in whom we exist.

And THEN over time we may come to have an idea of what we are to do with the lives that we have been given. Sensing that our existence is in God, we may begin to sense how interconnected we all are . . . we are ALL immersed in God . . . and we are ALL woven into creation. We do not stand apart from each other and the world . . . rather, we are each a little piece of the whole. Sensing this, we may sense what we are to do, freely, by choice, with our being.

What would it mean if we applied this thinking to our beloved little parish? You’ve done a wonderful job working to fill our deficit this year . . . we’re almost there . . . we’re close to our goal! In this, our future is looking rosy. What’s more, the ministry of our food pantry continues strongly, offering significant concrete assistance to our neighbors. And of course, our work of prayer – our life of prayer – continues unabated . . . providing spiritual nurture and support not only to us, but to those for whom we pray. But I have a question for you: In your prayers – and you do pray regularly don’t you? – in your prayers do you include prayers for Grace? I certainly hope so.

And in those prayers, what would happen if you engaged in a process of trying to place the parish of Grace Episcopal Church in the context of our neighborhood, our city, our diocese, our state . . . out and out and out? Perhaps if we do this often enough and frequently enough we will develop an even better sense of what we are to do corporately, freely, by choice as a parish family . . . a better sense of what God may be calling us to beyond the boundaries of these walls and these gardens. So that, in our own unique way . . . in our own, special way here at Grace . . . we can join even more deeply with all the rest of creation praising the Lord! Wouldn’t that be something?!?

Amen.

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