"Easter people living in a Good Friday world:"* Bob’s words have resonated with me since his Easter Sunday sermon, just as the echoing bells that filled the air that morning have lingered in my mind’s ear, reminding me of the possibility of beauty and harmony in a world seemingly overwhelmed by chaos. I have found profound solace in St. Barnabas' willingness to stand for love and tolerance and non-violence in a time of such destruction and hatred.

This Easter moment speaks to the community at St. Barnabas, and to my own faith journey of learning to be an active participant in such a community. When I first came to St. Barnabas nine years ago I was newly married and drawn to the social/political vision I found in the parish, mostly manifested for me in the church’s Anti-Racism commission. After my daughter, Marcelle, came along, I had a difficult time getting to regular worship services for a number of years—and I found myself immersed in a yoga practice and community. That yoga (Kundalini) is deeply spiritual and ecumenical. I found it to be a wonderful way to "get to" Christ and the Holy Spirit, and it fed the part of me that experiences spirituality as profoundly private, the part of me that used to attend the evening services at the magnificent Trinity Church in Copley Square, Boston, going deeply within and never speaking to anyone around me. That solitary worship had a depth that I haven't necessarily experienced since, but it was an immature faith in that I wasn't able to think of spirituality in a community sense.

The complex history of my faith journey began long before I was born, when my parents faced strong resistance to their “scandalous” interfaith marriage in 1954. My mother, Roman Catholic, faced intense pressure about marrying my Congregationalist father. In their personal struggle to balance the demands of religious tradition against personal choice, my parents decided to become Episcopalian, and I was raised quite actively in the Episcopalian tradition. My mother’s faith was deep and unquestioning; when she was dying, she often told me that Jesus was with her, helping her to take her medicines and to withstand the pain she faced.

Upon my mother’s death, I found myself attempting to move from a faith that was connected largely to her pure, unwavering belief to a more mature faith that accepted the questions and the responsibilities of my baptismal vows and my place as an Episcopalian. As a manifestation of the ways in which history, even of the familial sort, seems to repeat itself, my husband and I face the challenges of an interfaith marriage (he is Jewish), and our family has found a powerfully tolerant, embracing home in St. Barnabas. Marcelle was baptized at St. Barnabas as an infant, and this past year she made the commitment to Sunday school and to the lovely 9:15 children’s service. This commitment has confirmed the importance of participation in the church community for our family, with my husband celebrating and supporting our involvement. My spirit has grown from a faith that I'd once had, but had lost touch with in its organizational manifestation (the Church), to being a more natural, organic, more deeply felt and understood faith and practice. It has happened naturally as I've responded to the example set by Bob and Lisa, and by members of the St. Barnabas parish, for sharing faith in community, and it is a great gift.

Even more importantly to our family this year, however, has been the parish’s willingness to speak and to act in what I understand to be truly Christian ways in these frightening times. I find that in our country’s public discourse the definition of what it means to be Christian can sometimes be obscured by deeply conservative Christian groups, and I read many of the practices of these groups as antithetical to the Christ I have encountered in the Gospels—and in the community at St. Barnabas. It is disheartening to proclaim oneself a Christian only to be met with raised eyebrows and a sense that one must be participating in what amounts, often, to a kind of veiled hatred (against gay/lesbian people, against "foreigners" and Others of all stripes).

When I think, then, of helping to create an Easter world whose light builds against the darkness of Good Friday before the dawn, I think with great gratitude of the bells echoing within the walls of our beautiful stone church, and with great joy of what it means to be part of that sound.

Elizabeth G.

* Quote attributed to Bishop Barbara Harris by R.B.Appleyard, Jr., in one of his sermons, Easter 2004.