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Prayers for Greece

July 5, 2015 By Andy James

As some of you may know, I’m spending the next few days in Greece, on tour with the New Amsterdam Singers. We planned our travels a year or so ago, quite a while before anyone realized that this summer would bring a currency crisis and challenging referendum to this beautiful and storied country.

Over two days in Athens, we’ve seen some incredible and beautiful sites filled with some five millennia of history, even as there is more history in the making. What has struck me more than anything, though, is the incredible difficulty that this country is facing in this time. Buildings are abandoned in the middle of construction. Storefronts are empty, boarded up because there is no business that could take place there. Development projects of every sort—repairing ancient ruins, repurposing the old airport, even improving transit around a city of five million people—are stalled indefinitely. After enduring multiple years of deep economic depression, there are no easy answers, even as the people are faced with a nai/oxi (yes/no) vote today.

The vote today gives no easy answers. As best I can tell and have heard, neither response is without consequences. A yes vote means to accept even deeper austerity measures imposed on the nation by outside creditors, and a no vote to turn them down will likely deepen the currency crisis as debt limits run out and already-limited access to funds dwindles even further.

As we moved around the city yesterday and sang a concert with a Greek choir last night, I found myself reflecting on this whole experience already, wondering what I could do, questioning what might be possible to offer beyond spending my cash.

Two things stick with me, from the beginning and end of the day. First, a gathering of people at prayer, overflowing out of a Greek Orthodox church near the Acropolis as we wandered up the hill. Though I certainly could not understand anything of what they were saying, I quietly joined in their prayers that surely were for their nation and people in this difficult time. I remembered reading the prayer request from our Presbyterian partner church in Greece, the Greek Evangelical Church, and shifting my prayers from self-concern to those in deeper need, and these only deepened as the day went on.

11201930_892972994082323_7379152011597856451_n Then, at the end of our concert, in his only real reflection on the crisis of this moment, the Greek choir’s director suggested that there was at least one thing we can do in these days: dance and sing until it passes. This sits so very well with the song that we opened the concert with, “Abendlied,” quoting Luke 24:29 and remembering how Jesus appeared at the end of a long day’s journey when his disciples didn’t even recognize him:

Stay with us, for quickly falls the evening,
and the day is past and over.

And so we did exactly that last night, joining our voices together with these words of comfort and hope to offer space beyond these challenging days as we sang from our different traditions and even shared in singing two Greek folk songs.

So I hope you’ll join me in prayer and song for the people of Greece today. However this ends up, I and my tour group will be just fine, and I hope and pray that the people of this great and storied nation will find the path to a new day, whatever the challenges that may come along the way.

Advent Photo Project #1: Go

December 1, 2013 By Andy James

I’m not usually one to do seasonal photo memes or things like that, but this year for Advent I decided to take the plunge and join the RethinkChurch Advent Photo-a-Day as a bit of a spiritual discipline. Each day during Advent, there’s an assigned word for photo reflection. Today’s word is “go.”

Go…

These are the shoes involved in all my “going” today: leading worship, getting some exercise, and making an excursion to Manhattan for Advent Lessons and Carols at St. Bart’s Church.

I’ll be posting these daily reflections on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter each day through Advent. Take a look at the instructions and consider joining in!

A 2012 Recap

January 1, 2013 By Andy James

There’s a family tradition for us to send out Christmas letters. So far, I’ve resisted the temptation—until this year. This one has been eventful enough, I suppose! So I share it here as well as by mail…

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

While I am sending cards incredibly late this year, I hope this letter still reaches you before the Christmas season comes to an end. It has been a busy and eventful year, and I figured I would share a few things about it with all of you!

my new apartment, decorated for Christmas

First, on June 1 I moved to a new apartment in Queens as part of the church’s decision to sell its manse. I’m still serving as pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone, and my new home is still less than a mile from the church. I love my new place, although I’m not quite as able to welcome visitors as I once was. However, as a one-bedroom apartment, it is much more my size than the five-bedroom manse!

Iona Abbey in Scotland

Then, in July and August, I took a wonderful and much-appreciated sabbatical. I traveled first to Pittsburgh to attend the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), then in August I spent a week with family and friends in Mississippi and Alabama. But the real highlight of this time was twenty-five days in Scotland and Iceland! In Scotland, I visited friends in Portmahomack, then joined up with a group on pilgrimage to church sites in Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Stirling, and Glasgow. I concluded my time there with a week on the Isle of Iona, an absolutely incredible spiritual site with history dating to the sixth century. On the way back to the US, I spent four days enjoying the incredible natural beauty of Iceland. It was a trip of a lifetime! The most lasting piece of my sabbatical persists even now, though: I grew a sabbatical beard!

identified as “talent” at the White House

This fall, after completing several major leadership responsibilities in the church and presbytery, I took up singing with the New Amsterdam Singers. We are a group of about seventy gifted and committed singers who rehearse weekly in Manhattan and take on challenging music for our three concerts each year. In December, I was part of a smaller group who were invited to sing at the White House as part of the holiday tours. It was another once-in-a-lifetime experience!

It has been good to hear from many of you during the holidays this year. I hope and pray that your Christmas was joyous and your New Year is filled with much love! Look me up whenever you are in New York City—it is always wonderful to see friends!

Sabbatical, Day 64

August 31, 2012 By Andy James

Today is the last official day of my sabbatical. While I don’t preach on Sunday and don’t go back to work until Tuesday, my two-month sabbatical officially runs July and August, so today is the official end of my sabbatical and as good a time as any to reflect a bit on the events of these last two months.

reset button

More than anything, I view this time as a giant “reset button” in my life. This may not be the case with all sabbaticals, but the other things going on in my church work and in my life made this very much the case for me. In the last three months, I have moved to a new apartment, moved to a new office, attended General Assembly for the first time in ten years, and traveled Europe for 25 days. All these experiences mean that so much of what I do when I return to the office next week and to the pulpit on September 9 will be quite different from what I was doing when I left on June 28.

I’m actually very excited about these changes. I am looking forward to having better separation between work and home because my office is no longer on the first floor of my home. I am excited about taking up some new things in life that have been inspired by my experiences this summer, most notably as I begin singing in the New Amsterdam Singers this fall. And I am looking forward to how my experiences of worship this summer at General Assembly, in New York City, and in Scotland will inform and transform my leadership in worship at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone.

At some level, I think I expected more immediate things out of this time away than I can see right now. However, I know that the full meaning of this sabbatical will emerge over the coming weeks, months, and even years as I take what I’ve done and bring it into my daily life. This is not particularly comforting or hopeful – it would be easier if I could say right now that these are the things that have changed. But the reality is that they haven’t yet – and that’s very much normal. The way of following Jesus in general is like this: it takes time to figure out what it all means and sort out how to integrate it into daily life. So if I can start that process, keep remembering all that I have experienced in these days, and begin to apply what I have learned in this time, I will fit very much within the long tradition of this way of life.

In the end, I suppose that has been the goal of these days as much as anything, to sort out a more faithful way to walk with Jesus, and I hope and pray that such will emerge as I continue the journey ahead beyond this time away into the calling of life I live every day.

Sabbatical Rest

August 29, 2012 By Andy James

my friend Teri enjoying a restful afternoon of cream tea on Iona

One of the most important elements of my sabbatical has been rest. I have enjoyed getting a good night’s sleep most nights, especially when I’ve been at home. I’ve realized a number of things about myself in this process.

First, I generally don’t get enough rest. I actually tend to sleep pretty well, but I’ve realized that I often don’t really slow down enough to get true rest. While I was at General Assembly in Pittsburgh and traveling in Scotland, I tended to go to bed late and get up early so that I could make the most of my time with these wonderful people and places. It was a great thing to do, and I don’t think I would do it differently if I did it over again. However, during my last few days in Scotland, I realized how much this lack of rest caught up with me. On my last full day in Scotland, I took a three-hour afternoon nap. On two of my three afternoons in Iceland, I also took three-hour naps. Since returning to the US, I’ve continued to sleep more than usual and make up for some of the rest I missed. As I think about doing such a trip again, I’m going to be sure to include more downtime for rest in the middle of the trip so that I can be more energized as it continues.

Second, my lack of rest makes a difference for me. While I was deeply energized by all the things and people I was seeing in Scotland and at General Assembly, I also noticed toward the end of all these travels that I was burning out. It was a very similar feeling to what I had been experiencing in my work before my sabbatical began – I was in desperate need of some down time, and the regular moments for that were few and far between. Now that I’ve really started to recover and rest more, I can tell a difference. My friends have noted my restedness lately, and I’m finding that I am just in a more settled and joyous place.

So how do these learnings translate into life after sabbatical? I had better figure this out quickly, since it ends next Tuesday! So far, I’m planning to be more careful about taking my days off and more intentional about my sabbath time. It has been easier to disconnect from things this summer without my work email continuing to “ding” away, and I will likely do this more often. I’m also thinking that I will be sure to take vacations that aren’t just filled with family and friend and travel time but also have some downtime on the front end or back end. Maybe instead of going right back to work the morning after returning from a week of travel, I’ll plan to take an extra day of vacation so that I can be more relaxed and rested as I move back into the world. And I suspect that I will also try to have better hours for sleep going forward – though that is easier said than done!

Sabbath and rest are continuing challenges in my life, and this time of sabbatical has only highlighted my ongoing issues with how I try to live them out. Nonetheless, I hope and pray that the space I’ve had this summer will help to make the time ahead all the more fulfilling and restful and joyous all the same.

A note on the photo: Since I don’t have any pictures of me resting on the trip (surprise, surprise!), I’ve borrowed my friend Teri’s photo of a relaxing afternoon in the garden of the Argyll Hotel on Iona with tea and scones.