by Marcus Halley, Rector-Elect
The Reverend Marcus Halley, Rector
Coming into a new community is never an easy task. There is always a playful dance that occurs both as the community figures out how to incorporate the new person and as the new person figures out how they fit into an established system. The dance involves discovery of relationships, mutuality, sensitivity, and grace. I have entered many “new” communities over the past few years and each time I marvel at the dance I wonder deeply about what God might be saying in it.
I wonder if God is inviting us to the divine dance that is part of God’s very nature. The Orthodox Christians have a way of understanding the nature of the Holy Trinity that they call the perichoresis or “rotation.” The three persons of the Trinity — Father, Son, and Spirit — rotate in around one another in an endless, fluid movement each both entering space and making space for the others — giving and receiving divine hospitality and grace. They dance. I have always found the imagery beautiful as I have imagined it, particularly when I remember that, because God created us for love’s sake, we have been invited to enter that dance with God.
In just a few weeks we will dance across the threshold of Lent into the festival of the Great Fifty Days of Easter, where we will celebrate Jesus Christ dancing across the threshold of death and life and destroying it altogether. It is a time for thanksgiving and rejoicing. It is a time for merry-making and music. It is a time for newness and celebration. It is a time for dancing.
I am so thrilled to be entering this community as we enter this new season together, to discover new relationships, to hear and see where and how God is present in this community, and to join that dance started here in. Coming into a community is never an easy task, but I am so grateful for the dance partners I have already met, for the dance steps I am already learning, and for the new dances we will discover together.