CENTRAL CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, PROVIDENCE, RI

Moment for Witness  

Bill Templeton

Sunday April 22, 2012 (Earth Day)

Some months ago Rebecca asked me to do this moment for witness – on how Central has transformed my life.   I struggled with it.

I was not ready to stand here before you all.   My faith journey was still just getting started, I thought.  And besides, a story needs an ending before it can be told.

I stalled a month, then pushed it off for weeks, and just last week tried to get out of it again.  I told Rebecca that I had too much to do on the “Earth Day Fair” that we are having after worship today.

Paused with a knowing look, Rebecca said simply “Can’t you move things around?” Knowing then that she saw right through me and my lame excuses, I confessed before it became more painfully obvious:  I had nothing to say next week.   I hadn’t done any work on the assignment, had not a clue on what to say.

“Well, You have a whole week.” she replied, with the matter of fact comfort of one who creates a whole sermon every week.  Then she said of it:

“Its never done, Bill.  If you wait for it to be “done”, it will never be ready.”

That freed me.

So like an unfinished book, this is still a draft. Please forgive this work in progress, that is my faith statement.

I struggled with it as I struggle with my faith itself.  But here we go

How I got here

I have grown from a boy that went regularly to church in NJ

I attended regularly for the same reasons that everyone else I knew did:

My parents Made me do it.

After attaining adulthood and its independence, I drifted a bit from the church.

When Donna and I came to Providence we searched for a church.

She Catholic and me Protestant, we sought a place that would feel familiar in this new home town of ours.

We found this place.

It was here that we would Make Our children, Katharine and Will,

go to church.

They have ever since.  And in a month, with luck, Katharine will be Confirmed.

So – that means I’ve been here about 15 years.   (I guess it’s about time I did this Moment for Witness after all.)

Why?  What is it about this place that draws me in on Sunday?

I struggle with my Faith.

I am a deeply flawed soul.

• I try to do right
• I try to love right
• And I try to forgive right.

Being a Christian is not easy, it’s not for wimps.

You need community and a place for your spiritual home.

This is mine.

For me and my family.

On Sundays I may just sit here and re-set myself.

Restore myself.

I sit in those pews, lost sometimes in my thoughts, gazing at those iridescent windows, listening to angelic music from the loft or wisdom and prayer from the pulpit.  I love the way they all reverberate off the muted heights of those soaring barrel vaults.

It is a wonderful space for that purpose.

And then, I look around, at all of you.

The Community that you create here, that we create, is just as restorative as the space itself.

IN this place there is a community of faith, a spiritual family that shows love and acceptance.

The secular world has lost touch with true “community”.

So much of the “communities” outside these thick stone walls is motivated by self-interest or status or measures of wealth or power.

Here it matters not what you do, it matters who you are, and who you want to be.

And You, like me, Choose to be here.

You too may be struggling with faith and are drawn here by the company.

We all share that in common.

We all want to be here on Sundays.

We could worship separately, but this is a Community of faith.

In this place is the strength of witnessing what others do, what all of you do, these wonderful acts of love and service — both large and small.

These thick stone walls create a Sanctuary from all the noise and confused motives – out there.

I believe in God and in the extraordinary power of love.

I have seen evil, and know it exists, and must be confronted.

But I also have seen the absence of both God and evil.

Apathy.

The secular world outside concerns me, worries me greatly.

Apathy is somehow more threatening because it won’t seek a confrontation.  It seeps into the gaps created in the absence of faith.

Yes, I struggle with my faith. What all That really means is a subject I could go on and on, but not here, perhaps some other time.

Still, I am better for it, better for the struggle. Because the questions here keep me engaged on the topic of what it means to be “Christ-like” in the life that I lead.

This is where I return each week to renew, reset and regroup on my attempts, feeble though they may be, to live up to expectations or aspirations that I imagine my parents had for me when they Made Me go to church.

And it is not a solitary journey.  Thank God for that.

This church has given me, and my little family, a home for that journey of faith.  I am so glad to have found it here, and so glad to be part of this community of faith on Angell Street.

Because when I work on my faith, I do it with you and have strength in numbers.

And for that, I thank, All of You.

SANCTUARY

2 Corinthians 5:1   For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

How do I describe the medieval, pure sense of sanctuary, the tears and relief that come to me as I walk into Central Congregational Church each September 11 and make my way toward the chancel of this church?

You see, I used to work at the World Trade Center and 34 people who worked for me perished in that moment in 2001.  The following year, September 11, 2002, found me newly relocated to Providence, in search of a church home, and trying to understand what my soul and heart sought in that first anniversary of a horrific event.  I only knew that I needed quiet space and the only church I had visited in Providence was Central.

I made my way that Wednesday morning to this imposing Central Congregational Church building, having previously made arrangements with a kind voice known as “Rebecca” to open the doors early.  With me, I had my childhood Bible and had placed within it the names of those I wished to honor and celebrate.  I brought writings of mine from that day a year previous, and a pile of snapshots I had taken of the twin towers and lower Manhattan.

My minutes in this space progressed from the timing of the first plane attack on the buildings, to the second plane hitting, to the second building collapsing, to the implosion of the first tower.  During this time, I went through the things I had gathered that morning before coming to the church.

Sitting in one of these pews, I finally began to look through the photographs—most of them taken on a trip to Ellis Island several years earlier.  There were the beautiful vaulted arches of the main immigration building at Ellis Island.  I saw the lovely simplicity of the light fixtures on the photographed ceiling.  The unique, exquisitely crafted tiles caught my eye.  The final photograph in my hand was an image through the patterned window of the Ellis Island building, across the waters of my beloved Hudson River, to the view of lower Manhattan and the silhouette of the twin towers.

At what point did it strike me that the arches, the tiles, and the light fixtures in my photographs were also above me at Central?  I only knew that the uniqueness and total beauty of the hand-crafted tiles was not accidental.  It was a puzzle, but one I put away as I closed those 102 minutes with a prayer.

That afternoon the voice of “Rebecca” called me.  “Have you ever been to Ellis Island,” I asked.  “Did you know that the tiles on Central’s ceiling are the same as those at Ellis Island?”  “Yes,” the voice said.  “Both were designed by the same man.”  At that moment, I knew I had found my new church home.

Every year on the anniversary of this difficult day, as I enter the doors at Central and approach the true “sanctuary” of this space, my heart is filled with a surrendering of all my external protections.  It is one of the most powerful moments and images in my life—the concept of complete sanctuary, a place of refuge, a safety from violence.

January 30, 2011

What is it that brings a person back to Central after his or her first visit?

Is it the extraordinary music led by Patrick and made complete by our wonderful choir?

Is it the Sunday School and youth programs superbly conducted by Cathy and Kat?

Is it the preaching, led by Rebecca, assisted by Claudia and Kat, always challenging, always reassuring, always perceptive?

Is it the myriad educational programs, which enlarge our knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith?

Is it the mission program, which reaches out to Amos House, New Orleans, Haiti, and many, many other places?

Is it the building, this wonderful space, so plain throughout but with such a richly decorated chancel dome, together comprising the frame or context for everything we do here?

We talked about these things in a recent budget planning meeting, and I made the point that it was all these things together that make it worthwhile and enriching for people to come here each Sunday.

What I left out, however, is that we are an extraordinarily caring and compassionate people, reaching out to one another and to the world.

What I have discovered in the past year is the bottomless well-spring of goodness and love that has supported me here in a time of grieving and loneliness, when I have been questioning, “Why am I still among the living?” How can I live a complete life when an enormous hole has occurred in it?

There are no magic answers, but knowing the concern about me of so many in the congregation has made an enormous difference. You have been with me.

Caring works in many directions. The many care about each of us as an individual person, and we as individuals care about the whole body.

Budget making is a part of that, and we are invited to attend and participate in what I think is the most interesting meeting of the congregation each year: to consider and adopt the Tentative Budget that shapes our program and our mission for the year ahead.

About three-quarters of a century ago a small boy and his parents came into this room for a Sunday worship service. The small boy stared in wonder at the chancel dome, even though he could not distinguish or name the images shown there.

His mother leaned over and kindly pointed out the two deer drinking from the eternal springs, and the boy was able to see these. He knew about reindeer from Christmas and from the Roger Williams Park Zoo.

Now, years later, I continue to look warmly at the chancel dome, and I know in my heart how fundamentally I am supported and sustained in this place by God and by this church family.

“Moment for Witness” by John Peters

January 16, 2011

I am now several years into retirement.  And I find myself increasingly looking back on my life – reflecting on the high points and warm memories, and the low points and not so warm memories.  Triumphs and failures …… perhaps that’s the way it is with most lives.

But, when I really stop and reflect carefully on  the good things that have happened,  I find that the church, and my participation in the life of the church has been at the center of many – if not most – of those good things that have happened to me.

I am, for example, profoundly grateful to the church of my youth in Wisconsin for the guidance, and moral counsel it provided.  Those influences are still very clear in my mind today some 60 plus years later.

And later as a young adult I found myself in a church fellowship group not unlike one at this church, where the friends I made had major influences on my life, and still are among my closest friends today, some 50 years later.  One such church group friend suggested that I might be suited for work in health care, and I strenuously objected!   Health care is doctors and nurses and I’m not either one – but she persisted and I entered a very satisfying 38 year career in – you guessed it – health care administration.  I believe the hand of God placed that person in my path.

At another point in my life, being between jobs and having a difficult time, it was my church home, its ministry and its programs and people that saw me through that difficult time.

Later in my life I was led, I believe, to Central.  I have now been a part of Central for nearly 16 years, 16 years of new and deep friendships and connections, and opportunities for service.

However, I must, and do, realize that the church is only the setting.  It is one of the places where I believe God speaks to us.  Our church is a place where we can sense God’s leading us.  Sometimes in easy and sometimes in challenging ways.  And sometimes in ways we don’t understand.

God was speaking to me in the church of my youth in Wisconsin, and God was speaking to me in and through the church in Minneapolis that redirected my life, God was using the Church in Houston to help me through that difficult time in the 1970s.  And God is still guiding me today in this wonderful place we call Central.  I’m not sure I always understand how, or where, I am being guided and led, but I can feel it happening.

So, I am grateful, almost beyond words, for this church, like so many others, that is a place and a people where one can come to be reminded of God’s presence among us, to feel God’s comforting presence and to offer our thanks as we do in prayer and through returning a part of that with which we have been blessed.

“Thanks Katrina” by Barbara Silvis

December 2010

Three months ago I was in New Orleans…again…
This is the 6th time I have made the trip to do Katrina recovery and the one thing I’ve observed is that it is really all about poverty.

For those of you that can’t go there and do this work, poverty in New Orleans is deep and cuts across wide swaths of the city and the people.  After Katrina, it’s even easier to see–there are still broken down houses with big “X”s on them (code for the post hurricane triage effort), and it is dirty and a bit scary.

But beyond the obvious signs, poverty is far more insidious, and when you spend a full week inside a single home, and learn the story-both from the house and from the inhabitants, it is eye opening.

Three years ago, it was in Mid City in a small shotgun that .  It was the family’s only asset, and, if it were not for Katrina, would have continued to serve for a couple more years.  But we found out the truth of it–the structure was riddled with termite damage.  The paper thin walls were literally falling off, and the roof was sagging toward a not-too-distant collapse.  No resources to fix it up, and no reason to even look for the termites–just wait until it falls down one day, and then you’ll just figure out something.

This year, it was south of the River, where none of us had been.  Nice looking neighborhood, but one of those flooded when the pump operators were told to shut them down and go home.  But we learned the truth of that—drug gangs have moved in, and just a month before, twin teenagers were shot to death in two separate instances just a block from where we were working.

Recently I read a devotional on the Thessalonians text “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances,” so today, I say “Thanks, Katrina”.  For me and thousands of other volunteers, the storm gave us an opportunity to live local and get to know the incredible complexity of poverty in a way that I might never have seen, in the context of my somewhat privileged life.

And I also say Thanks, Central Congregational Church, for giving me the opportunity to visit New Orleans and open my eyes, and helping me in turn to open your eyes to the reality of poverty all around us, and to the call that we have to make a difference for all of God’s people.