Big Fat Red Pencil
My Dear People,
The bell would ring at any moment. We all sat in our desks, wide-eyed. (We had never sat in desks before.) James' mother appeared through the door, slipping in to bring James his lunchbox, which he had left at home, thanks to first-day-of-school jitters. She put his lunchbox up with the rest of ours (mine had King Kong on it), on the shelf in the back of the room. And, on her way out, she gave both James and me big fat red pencils, already sharpened. And then she was out the door. And the bell rang. We were now first graders.
It is soon to be that time of year again. Some of us will be going to school, some for the first time. Some of us will be sending our children off to school, some for the first time. All of us know the feeling--or, I should say, the feelings--the feelings of newness, of anticipation, of new hope; likely, truth be told, with at least a touch of dread mixed in. The new, the unknown, the possible.
When I arrived at Sewanee as a college freshman, I was nine months into a twelve-step recovery program. I can't fail to note that I had not planned on arriving at Sewanee sober. Quite to the contrary, I had had a taste of what life at the KA house could be like, and I was looking forward to more. However, someone called "my Higher Power" intervened somewhere between when I made my application and when I was accepted. The new, the unknown, the possible.
Upon my arrival on "the Mountain," I did have the name of one man in Sewanee who was "in the program," but that's all I had to go on. Well, within days I had found that man, and, within weeks, I had found a small group of fellow students who were also trying to do what I was trying to do. And, before long, a friend invited me to attend chapel on a Sunday morning; and, before long after that, I found myself attending chapel most Sundays. It was the first time in my life I had gone to church on a regular basis, and certainly the first time in my life I had gone to church by my own choosing. By the next year, the utterly bizarre idea entered my consciousness that perhaps I was meant to be a priest. The new, the unknown, the possible.
As I may have shared with you before, a wise man once wrote me a note, at the end of which he spoke of "God whose other name is surprise." Next to "God is love," that is perhaps my favorite thing anyone has ever said about God. God whose other name is Surprise.
Surprise met me in Mrs. Anderson's first-grade classroom, as I sat at my desk, waiting for the bell. And Surprise met me on the Mountain, under a bright August sun, as I walked through the doors of All Saints' Chapel. And Surprise meets us--you and me--every day, in the new, in the unknown, in the possible.
As you read these words, the end of summer is on the horizon. In the season ahead, in the days to come, as we continue to discern God's will for us here at St. Paul's Church, what new, unknown, and possible things will Surprise us? Because we can be sure some will. Because that is the kind of God we have.
And as we consider, with mixed emotions, the possibilities, we can rest assured that, whatever that Surprise is, God will make sure that we have our lunchbox. And, yes, our big fat red pencil.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
