Rosalyn was a beautiful woman who overcame huge obstacles to reclaim her life and become independent. She was a quiet learner and dedicated in her life of prayer.  I remember one afternoon going to bless her home after she had over two years clean from life on the streets and in jail.  She was so proud of all she had accomplished.  I remember that she was unwavering in her desire to stay clean and sober and was a hard worker.   Rosalyn had endured a difficult life and consequently made some rash choices, but she was a survivor and dauntless in her recovery.  In her last year she suffered the loss of her job, her home, her car, and almost all of her worldly possessions before she was murdered. 

This loss is a painful loss, and as the news is sinking in, I find myself grieving for more than my friend Rosalyn. I grieve for all  women who are still suffering on our streets, vulnerable to being beaten beyond recognition and even to death.  If we allow ourselves the privilege of grieving Rosalyn, there is the possibility that our hearts can break with all the heaviness in this world from the senseless violence and private suffering.   But there is also the possibility that our grief will embolden us to love more powerfully and work more diligently in our efforts to be about healing. My heart goes out to Rosalyn's family and to all her sisters in Magdalene who loved her.  

Today we will mourn her with much respect and fond memories.  We will celebrate the years she knew clean and sober and all the gifts she offered our community.  We will hold each other a little closer and worry about other women who are walking the streets tonight.  We will pray for the mystery of recovery to take root  and bring them home safely.  And we will continue to work hard to be witnesses to the truth that in the end love is the most powerful force for change in all of our lives.  And we will continue to go and speak our truth in the alleys and in the prisons and in religious communities about how it is that the life of a beautiful child of God like Rosalyn ended so senselessly and how we can all make use of our sadness by bringing women home. 

Marcus and I took this picture yesterday. This is the one flower blooming at our new building. It is a single thistle. The rest of the yard is mud.  This thistle seems to have thrived in the flood waters; the deep tap root was steady in the storm.  It soaked in the water and is stronger and more beautiful. I love that there is just one on the side lot. One is all we need to remember the thousand more that can bloom from its seeds. I love you all. That's enough of a sign for me.

We just completed the seventh leg on the Find Your Way Home Prison Tourin Atlanta. Peachtree Road United Methodist Church hosted us on Sunday. In addition to selling $3,400 of Thistle Farms products, we made lots of new friends, hosted a forum, and learned about Peachtree's ministry with the Metro Atlanta Women’s prison.

On Monday evening, Marcus Hummon,Julie Roberts, Don Schlitz, and Emily Saliers played a benefit at Eddie’s Attic. That evening we made another $3,400 in sales and invited the packed room to become Thistle Farmers. Tara Adcock and Katrina Robertson from Thistle Farms told a little bit about who we are and why we are traveling around the country. My favorite moment was when Tara covered her eyes and through tears said to the crowd, "you have no idea what it feels like to me to be loved by strangers. You don't know me, and I can feel your love.”

The next day we all went into the prison. Volunteer Carolyn Snell, Abingdon Publishing's John Kutsko and two journalists from the Atlanta Journal Constitution joined us and we offered out presentation to 300 women inmates. The prison choir joined Emily in a rendition of "Amazing Grace". The crowd all sang along on Don's "The Gambler". I spoke about the similarities we were experiencing in the prisons and how I believed in the power of women working in community. Seeing several pregnant women was humbling. Listening to the stories after the presentation undoes me. It's a hard world, and I am grateful to walk through it with friends who continue to try and love the whole world one person at a time.

Katrina, Tracey, and I recently went to St. Charles Church in New Orleans for a Thistle Farms Salon.  We shared our story with a group of women and learned more about the women who are walking the streets of New Orleans.  We also made a lot of new friends.  We stayed at Kathy Meunier's home, visited some of the city, bought t-shirts in the quarter, and preached at Trinity Episcopal Church the next evening.  We got to see Rev. Peter Gray at Trinity, who is an old friend of Thistle Farms.  He was a student in seminary at Virginia when Cokesbury started selling Thistle Farms products.  He walked into the small store at the seminary and saw the products and ran back to his dorm and emailed all his friends to go and buy our stuff!  After they sold out of their first order, the store manager reported the event back to the folks in Nashville, and it helped us get more established as a vendor with cokesbury.  It was fun to see him in his new role as associate rector of Trinity and to thank him in front of his new flock.  Katrina and I love traveling together around the country and sharing the good news of love in action.  It is a story of hope and it is a very concrete way of feeling like we make a small difference in this big world.

I don’t remember when I first heard the hypothetical theological question, maybe when I was in seminary.  The question was posed, “If archeologists went back and discovered the tomb and found the body, what difference would it make in your faith. I hadn’t thought about the question in years, but recently it came to mind.  I was taking a long walk on the coast of Ecuador and ended up wandering down a dusty road in a small town around noon. The town was empty, maybe because the residents were out gathering fishing nets or working in the fields; who knows.  There was a big church on the street that drew me in because on the cross atop the steeple two huge buzzards were perched. I wanted to get a better look, but I could see the arched thick wooden front doors were locked with heavy chains.  All the glassless windows had wrought iron vertical bars covering them, so the best I could do was hold on to the bars, and peer into the grey, unlit chancel.  The silent sanctuary looked completely abandoned.  The only one left in the church was Jesus, hanging life-size on the cross above the altar.  It looked as though he had been hanging there for a hundred years.  At first glance, with buzzards, locked doors, and old dusty crucifixes, the whole scene looked like death incarnate.  The question of what would you do if they found the body popped into my head and transformed into other versions of the same issue, “What if death has the last word?”  “What if Good Friday was all there was?”  “What if God was done after the death of love?’  “What if in grieving people we love dearly, there is no hope of resurrection?” 

 Death is powerful to be sure.  It is as ominous and foreboding as buzzards on a steeple overhead.  It is so powerful it seems like it seals the stone over the tomb and kills that which we hold most dear.  That church looked like death to me, and it scared me to look at it.  It was symbolic of all the places in our world and in us that feel hopeless.  It feels like sometimes in the face of death nothing is left to be said; so we stumble over words at funerals and pretend that is not where we are headed.  Death is present in the midst of life and it comes around unexpected turns on roads we travel alone.  Death packs a pretty hard punch despite Paul’s conviction in 1Corinthians that it has lost its sting. Standing in places like that church and letting the word of death fill our minds with the possibility that it may have the last word can sink the bravest hearts.  Mary, John and Peter, were almost undone by the fear and power it invokes in our lives and thoughts.  To be without the hope of resurrection seems the worst.

There are four versions of the resurrection narratives in the Gospels.  The details of each vary, but what is consistent is the way they each begin with a group of grieving women with Mary Magdalene preparing to encounter the body.  They head out as soon as the day of preparation is over, packed with spices and all kinds of perfumed oils, the same as those used just a few weeks back.  The women are full of grief and in each of the scenes of Easter morning painted for the communities of faith, we get the picture that even when they saw the stone rolled away, they are still looking for the body. The resurrection scene in John’s gospel offers us plenty of questions to ponder; “What if Mary had not looked again?”  , “what if Mary went out at dawn, saw the stone rolled away and  ran away as far and fast as she could and never looked back?  What if John and Peter had not looked into the tomb and seen it empty?  What if Mary had not dared to look again and walk through death’s door and weep in the presence of Angels?  What if Jesus had not lingered for her? 

The realization came like a flash, turned stone to flesh, and spun the question on its heels: “What if it’s real?”  What if there is no body?” “What if death doesn’t have the last word?”  And in that moment of truth that love has the last word, Mary hears her Lord. 

I looked again though the barred windows under the buzzard’s perch with more faithful eyes.  Suddenly I could see something else in the old church. There was a series of small, square cloths tied and hung across the front of the church that children had painted with suns, trees, and butterflies, full of love and hope.  The string of prayers looked like a rainbow carrying the deepest desires of our hearts to a living and loving savior.   There was a vase of flowers set in front of the Blessed Sacrament.  There was a dove’s nest in the rafter in the space between the tin roof and concrete wall.   Death didn’t begin to have the last word as love was thriving. I just had to look again, not with fear, but with eyes filled with the light of Easter morning.   I looked back out towards the street as a beautiful Ecuadorian woman I didn’t see before, the only person visible in the whole town, strolled by, smiled at me and crossed herself in the presence of this Holy Ground just as the buzzards caught an upward draft and ascended. 

In the light of Easter morning love has the last word.  Buzzards on a cross aren’t a sign of death; they are just two angels standing by an empty tomb. In light of Easter morning, even when we make the grave our bed, we can go down singing “alleluia, alleluia, alleluia” and catch an almost imperceptible draft like buzzards and soar to be with our God. In light of Easter morning we can look again anywhere on God’s green earth and see love. 

When death feels like it has all the power, let love be your last word.  When there are places in this world and in our lives that look forsaken, let love be your last word.  When you are afraid to look again, let love be your last word.  When it is hard for you to see for your weeping, let love be your last word.  When you see your Lord, let love be your last word.

One of the jobs of a priest is to proclaim the good news of the gospel each week.  I am well aware as one of the pastors of St. Augustine’s Chapel that my job is easier because I am preaching, not just to a sweet choir, but to a congregation of disciples who have already discerned much of their calling and believes in offering one another the freedom to act as our callings guide us.  About nine years ago in the fellowship hall of St. Augustine’s, we started making candles and body balms.  We began because of a desire to help the women residents of Magdalene have an income and job experience.  We began with volunteers from this congregation, three women of Magdalene, and the name Thistle Farms, decided upon after discussion around a dinner table. The prayer was to make bath and body care products that would be healing to the earth, the body, and the women who were making products.  The chances that such a venture would succeed were exceedingly slim.  Our business plan was created by students, our work force of three had a combined record of over 500 arrests, and the director got mad every time someone asked for a budget.  But, slowly and surely we grew and outgrew our space. When construction on the chapel started, we found a new refuge in a building offered to us by St. George’s Episcopal Church on Belle Meade Boulevard.  And over the years as we embraced the reality of being thistle farmers and went out into the world, not just to help a group of women who needed help, but to talk about the myths in our culture of why women walk the streets and the truth about what it takes to invite them back into the wider community, we even outgrew our space at St. George’s.  Two years ago we started praying and publicly asking for a space to manufacture these revolutionary bath and body care products that preach without words that Love Heals.  It has been our dream.

In this Gospel, the Good News, Jesus calls Simon Peter to discipleship.  Peter, who has already witnessed the miraculous healing of his mother- in-law and the great catch of fish, is being invited by the Lord to stand close as the Good News is proclaimed.  In this account, he falls to his knees and seems unsure if he can take on this offer.  He feels unworthy, and seems to be on the brink of walking away.  He has to abandon everything else to follow this call.

In the story of Isaiah’s call, he receives a magnificent vision and is given the voice of a prophet.   He is given a message and told to proclaim it to the wide world.  It seems incredible, as if it would be a place of privilege and honor that many religious leaders would crave.  God gives him the words and the ability to preach them and Isaiah says, “Woe is me.” He stands back, and finally, almost as a surrender, we hear the words, “Here I am, Lord, send me.”

It is not that Peter doesn’t hear the call as the Good News or that Isaiah doesn’t love his Lord and desire his words to be on his lips or in his steps.  It is that the weight of not just good news, but great news is coming our way in our lessons today, that makes it a little overwhelming. We realize it means our lives will change and the calling will lead us to places we have never been before.  That is what is unfolding in our lessons today: the great news that we are called.   We, like Isaiah and Simon Peter, are called to intimacy with God on the path of discipleship, to hear his voice and follow his lead, and that is not just good news, it is great news, and it is completely overwhelming.

After two years of search and prayers, a donor came to Thistle Farms this fall and asked what we needed.  I told him a manufacturing facility.  He had given two smaller gifts to us in the last two years to help purchase the raw materials needed to grow our sales revenue.  The way he described it to me was that he was ready to make a significant gift.  Shortly thereafter we found a building, and he wrote a check for the entire amount. Now we are waiting to close on a building that has four store fronts, a manufacturing facility, and offices on the corner of 51st and Charlotte by the old First American Bank building.  We have a million dollar building that needs paint, carpet, lights, and heating/cooling to expand and live out our dream of growing and becoming a force for change in the world.  It is huge and the largest gift we have ever received.  It allows us to grow fourfold, to meet the needs of women we haven’t met yet, and to dream of things we haven’t begun to imagine.  The beatific irony of being thistle farmers and having the deed to a $1,000,000 building is a testimony to the dreams of a community.  But when the news came, it was not jump-up-and-down joy.  All of us were like Peter and Isaiah, feeling unworthy at this new calling.  It is not going to be easy to allow the longing and the dream to come into our waking truth.  It will pull us all in deeper and that is not good news; it is great news, and great news changes our lives.  This building, on top of our Ecuador commitment, our pastoral concerns, our baptisms, our personal stuff, and our prison tour is a great new calling for all of us. 

The great news for all of us today is that we are called like Isaiah and Peter to follow closely.  This calling isn’t a sweet reflection that fits into our lives.  Callings move us to walk more deeply into the wilderness of our faith.  It is not good news—it is great news, and because of it, our lives will never be the same. Thank God.



"Ave Maria" muzak blew through speaker-wreaths at the mall in strange and perfect dissidence with the Christmas classic “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer” that was ringing from the Santa kiosk.  The booth had a long coiled rattlesnake-line of weary children on the verge of a venomous meltdown.  Two old stoics sat on a nearby bench in the decked halls under camo ball caps that silently revealed their sugar-plum dreams of sitting in a homemade stand of pine boughs waiting for their Christmas feast to amble by.  What normally would have been a tightrope walk hanging above a gulf of sarcasm masking my fear that my own materialism is drowning out the call to peace, instead, felt like just a sweet stroll with my children.  I believe the joy was welling up in me, because I had spent the morning sitting with a woman who believed this may be her last Christmas.  Seeing this Christmas scene through eyes filled with the memory of her tear-filled eyes was the antidote for hearts that while they may never say “bah humbug," still beat through stone-like flesh.  I walked through those decked halls, welling up with gratitude for love.

That stroll became my “O come, O come, Emmanuel” this year.  It came as a surprise, and it was freeing and joyful. It has made me reflect on how many seasons I have spent trying to get the Christmas spirit by getting back to the spirit of Bethlehem or at least the spirit of my youth and feeling like something was missing and ending up feeling lonely.  This year though, instead, the gift of the spirit for me was found in imagining that this might be my last Christmas.  I know that if this was my last Christmas, I would love every gift that I gave and every single gift I received.  I think that if this was perhaps my last Christmas Eve, every carol would make me cry and sipping coffee by the tree as the kids opened presents would feel like even this sadness was filled with blessing.  I think that if this were my last Christmas I could hear the words of "Ave Maria" and the Magnificat as balm to my soul.  I could feel that Mary was singing her song of praise to all of us-- from generation to generation-- that remember our very flesh makes us human and lowly and that is what God loves. It is in our humanity that we are lifted up and that our pride is scattered as we remember that we are returning to God one day.  If this were to be my last Christmas, that is the good news that would feed me and carry me through the many silent nights.

After my walk through the mall, I spent the next couple of days in a grateful cloud that always seems to hover after moments of clarity. I received an email from a woman who had contacted my brother, The Rev. Gladstone Stevens, III, to see if he was the same Rev. Stevens she had met in New England when he was a young priest.  My brother explained that he was his son, and that our father had been killed by a drunk driver in 1968 when we were little children, not too long after she had met him.  She wrote us back and said that almost 50 years ago before Christmas, on what would turn out to be one of my father’s last, my father and mother both were very warm and kind to her and her boyfriend, a young couple who found themselves in the middle of tremendous personal upheaval and change.  She explained that they were both students and very much in love.  She wrote, “When I learned I was pregnant, we decided to be married. We contacted St. Andrew's Church near Yale where your father was vicar.  Your parents, who couldn't have been that much older than we were, invited us into their home for premarital counseling. I recall such a happy scene there, with at least two small children climbing on your father's lap.  At a time when our world was full of censure, your parents were accepting and supportive.  Your mother helped dress me in a borrowed gown and veil and choreographed the ceremony.  I was in a daze.  I wish your father could know that he joined us with strong glue---four children, ten grandchildren. I'm long overdue in expressing my appreciation, but it is heartfelt.”

For me, this letter was not overdue, but right on time.  That my father, who I can’t remember, spent one of his last Christmases opening his home and church to a couple seeking shelter from the storms around them is the best Christmas gift I could have asked for this year.  She remembered to write and give thanks 50 years later to children and grandchildren who might have wanted to ask the young priest, “How did you spend some of your last Christmases?  And would you have done it any differently if you had known you would die so young?”  Her email memory is a sermon to me about how each of us might want to spend this Christmas, whether or not it is our last—seeking to love without judgment, welcoming the stranger, not feeling put upon, opening our homes and hearts, letting children just crawl on our laps, planning a celebration in the midst of hard circumstances, and seeing Christ’s love in it all.