Tag Archive | "Rev. M. Tracy Smith"

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CLERGY CORNER: What are your plans for the fall season?

Posted on 29 September 2016 by LeslieM

Now that most of us have had our summer vacations, it’s time to look at the calendar and plan for the things we can do this fall season. Our places of worship are certainly planning a full schedule of services and events to honor our Lord, encourage our fellowship and foster the commonweal. Our Lord is also making plans for each of us, and our enjoyment of what He has in store for us will not be nearly as costly as our vacations and will likely be more rewarding. Our Lord doesn’t charge for the splendors He has to give us!

Some of us are “morning people” and some of us are “evening people;” but it makes no difference to our Lord because He has gifts for us all. As for me, I’m a morning person and nothing gives me greater pleasure than to begin my day looking eastward at a glorious Florida sunrise and feeling the touch of our Lord in the warmth of His sun’s rays. I’m also an evening person, and how better can a day end than to spend some time in the coolness of a fall evening illuminated by the light of the moon which our Lord hung in the sky for our pleasure. These are times meant for reflection about our days, for wonderment at our Lord’s creation, for dialogue with Him, and to listen to what He has to say to us. If you include these times for reflection in your fall plans, our Lord will richly reward you for the time you spend with Him.

Our Lord has gifted us with Holy Scriptures so we can study and understand His will for us and make it a part of our lives. He has also inspired creative artists and enabled them to project His will in their artistry by using the language and imagery of their own generations. We are indeed fortunate here in South Florida to have so many venues where our Lord’s will is on display in the works of our creative artists – our museums are wonderful examples of this and many of them have “free admission days” – so you can enjoy them without even having to reach into your pocket! The Norton Museum, in West Palm Beach, has Paul Gauguin’s Christ in the Garden of Olives, a dramatic oil painting to help us understand Christ’s agony on the night before His crucifixion. The NSU Art Museum, in Fort Lauderdale, will soon offer a new exhibition of works by Anselm Kiefer, a contemporary German artist who depicts the human response to human suffering. Holy Scripture deals with this in the Book of Job; Kiefer deals with it with brush and paint. And then, there is the Pérez Art Museum in Miami. When you go there, please don’t miss the wonderfully moving painted plaster sculpture by George Segal of Abraham’s Farewell to Ishmael. It helps us understand that there are times our Lord may ask us to do something that is painful in the short term but needed in the long term. Make a museum visit part of your fall plans and you will have an opportunity to “read” Holy Scripture in a new and contemporary language.

And now for music. Why? Because as Thomas Carlyle said: “Music is the speech of angels.” You can make an argument that Holy Scripture is laid out like a classical symphony in four movements. First, there is chaos, until “the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” Then, there are generations of disobedience while mankind learned to live under our Lord’s laws until He “put His spirit within us, and caused us to walk in His statutes and keep His judgements.” Third, our Lord became incarnate and walked among us to make certain we understood He will keep every promise He ever made. And the symphonic story is resolved in the Book of Revelation. We see the Divine Presence on a throne, not dealing with chaos, but looking out upon a peaceful “sea of glass like unto crystal.”

We are very fortunate in South Florida because there are many places for us to go and hear the musical “speech of angels.” If you’ve got a few bucks, get a ticket to one of Seraphic Fire’s concerts. You ain’t heard an angel sing until you’ve heard them!

Finally, I’m the first to admit that I’m not as familiar as I should be with the music of our current generation. I don’t know how much of what they’re doing is a reflection of our Lord’s will in the world. If it isn’t, then I challenge our young musicians to listen to our Lord, and project His will in their music; it may be the first time their audience has ever heard from our Lord in a language they understand. That would be missionary work of the highest order.

Rev. M. Tracy Smith, SSA, is a rector at St. Peter’s Anglican Church at 1416 SE 2nd Terrace in Deerfield Beach, FL 33441. Morning prayer is Wednesday at 10 a.m., Holy Communion is Thursday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 10 a.m. For more information, call 954-695-0336.

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CLERGY CORNER: The summer vacation of the church

Posted on 30 June 2016 by LeslieM

Trinity Season is the long summer vacation of the Christian Church. It lasts from Ascension Day (40 days after Easter) until Advent Sunday (usually the first Sunday in December), a span of seven or eight months. The rest of the year is filled with days and weeks of intense activity — a myriad of events that celebrate the life and teachings of our Lord and define Christianity. Our Lord spent six intense days of activity during the Creation; but, the seventh day, He rested. He surely knew our lives could benefit by following the same pattern, so He gave us Trinity Season to rest and re-charge our batteries.

Now, whether our own vacation is a week or more long, or simply a series of “day-cations,” we should consider our vacation a gift from our Lord and use it, as it was given, for our joy and benefit.

That raises a question … how should we use it for our joy and benefit? We are all aware of the things we need in our lives to make our lives work: time with our Lord, family, friends and time with ourselves. If you are anything like me, you have probably discovered that when your life is out of sync, you have let some of the things that make your life work, slip out of your life. Our Lord’s gift of Trinity Season gives each of us an opportunity to gaze deep into our hearts and identify those things that are truly necessary for our well-being and make certain they are right where they need to be.

Summer vacation and time with our Lord: When we gaze deep in our hearts, we had better see our Lord looking back at us, because Saint Paul reminds us, “In him we live and move and have our being.” There is no life apart from our Lord or apart from the life He planned for us.

Our summer vacation is a perfect time to make certain we are walking, hand-and-hand, with Him, in the same direction. Revisiting our prayer life is a wonderful way to enrich our walk with Him. The words we use are not important. He knows our concerns and what is in our hearts. Whether we are newbies or oldsters to daily prayer, the way we do it is the same. Find a quiet place, turn off the chatter in our minds, and be with the one who loves us most. Speak to Him as we do to a loved one, and listen to Him as we do our most trusted friends. If we make this a part of our summer vacation, then, come fall, He will have made us brand new.

Summer vacation time with family and friends: It is no secret that our Lord made us social beings, some more than others, but all in need of some measure of companionship. If you are blessed with ideal relationships with family and friends, then you have a wonderful summer vacation ahead of you. However, if you are like me, and “wonderful” does not describe all your relationships, then our Lord has given us a summer vacation promise of how He heals broken relationships. Again the words of Saint Paul: “Let peace of our Lord rule in your hearts. Forgive one another, and, above all things, put on love which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” Love is the best slave for hurt relationships. Smear it on heavy and cover all that hurts!

Summer vacation and time with ourselves: Life can be exhausting, both physically, emotionally and spiritually. Shakespeare famously said that “sleep knits up the raveled sleeve of care, is sore labor’s bath and is the balm of hurt minds.” True enough, but I say that summer vacations also have a restorative effect on our exhaustion! Yes, it is good to spend time with ourselves, or as someone once said, to be alone “with the beating of our own heart.” But the wonderful thing about spending time with ourselves is that it gives us the opportunity to invite others to come into our world, and for them to invite us into theirs, so we can all share our joys, benefits and challenges together.

If all this sounds a little bit like “kumbayah” to you, please don’t blame me. Perhaps we can use some of that in this disjointed world in which we live.

Have a wonderful summer, reconnect with all those who are dear to you, and may the Lord bless us all.

Rev. M. Tracy Smith, SSA, Rector is from the Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, 1416 SE 2 Terr., Deerfield Beach, FL 33441. For more information, call 954-695-0336. Morning Prayer at 10 a.m. on Wednesday; Holy Communion at 10 a.m. on Sunday, and 7 p.m. on Thursday.

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CLERGY CORNER: “April is the cruelest month”?

Posted on 31 March 2016 by LeslieM

T. S. Eliot famously wrote that “April is the cruelest month.” I beg to differ. For me, April is a month overflowing with hope and with promises fulfilled. In the northern hemisphere, it’s the beginning of springtime, and if you’ve ever lived on the cold side of 40 degrees north latitude, then, with the coming of April, you’ve paid your winter dues and are ready to enjoy the first blooming of the cherry blossoms.

I’ve long held a completely unsubstantiated belief, that when our Lord rested on the seventh day of Creation, it just happened to be on a beautiful day in April, and, when He saw what He had made, He declared: “it was very good.”

Yes, our Lord’s Creation is spectacular in April, but we may miss the whole divine show if our thoughts turn to other Aprils – those past, present and future – and the memories of losses and fears that may come to mind. Any Biblical-optimism generated by the wonders of Creation can be a challenge to defend, in the face of our own doubts, and to the skeptics of our world. Remember Saul on the road to Damascus, who could only see a god of anger and was blind to the God of Love.

Our God knows this about our thought process and that’s why He never leaves our side even if we think we’re meant to go it alone and all talk of hope and promises aren’t in the cards for us.

When such thoughts make their appearance, we need to be reminded that, if God permits “a time to weep and a time to mourn,” he also provides “a time to laugh and a time to dance.” Holy Scripture is teeming with stories of the self-inflicted tribulations of flawed humankind, and how our God redeems us with His love when we turn to Him. The story of our redemption is a golden thread that runs through the Bible from beginning to end.

We find an early stitch in this golden thread in the Book of Genesis; there, we learn what happened to Adam and Eve, our first parents, when they made their ill-fated choice to disobey God. They were driven from an earthly paradise in the Garden of Eden, but not before God gently clothed them against the elements of a cruel world. Yes, there are also cruel times in each of our lives, often engendered by the poor choices we make; but our pathway through these cruel times may be successfully navigated when we follow the directions our Lord lovingly lays out for us.

We find another stitch in this golden thread in the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah. He wrote of the Hebrew’s disobedience leading to the Babylonian Exile and to their losing all hope of ever returning to their homeland. Their longing to return is offered as a prayer in Verdi’s stunningly beautiful “Va, pensiero” which is sung by Hebrew slaves on the banks of the River Euphrates in the opera Nabucco. God did lead the Hebrews home to their beloved Jerusalem and enabled them to rebuild their city.

There may be times in each of our lives when we feel an estrangement from friends, family and home and can’t see any way for a re-connection. During these times, we need to remember the power of prayers and that they are like the ever-returning spring. They never leave our lips without the promise of our God’s providential reply.

And, finally, with each spring, God’s golden thread leads to the remembrance of the singular event in the story of our redemption that overflows with hope and with promises fulfilled – the glorious Resurrection of our Lord on Easter morning after he was savagely crucified on Good Friday. Yes, although we also experience times of suffering in this life, the promise of Easter is that we will also rise again to life eternal with our Lord. Is April the “cruelest month”? I don’t think so, especially when we kneel at the foot of the Cross and look up at our risen Lord and all the hopes and fulfilled promises that entails.

Rev. M. Tracy Smith, SSA, Rector is from the Saint Peter’s Anglican Church, 1416 SE 2 Terr., Deerfield Beach, FL 33441. For more information, call 954-695-0336. Wednesday: Morning Prayer at 10 a.m., Sunday: Holy Communion at 10 a.m.

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