Longest Night, Saint Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, December 20, 2025

Longest Night Saint Mark’s Saturday, December 20, 2025, Ezekiel 36:26-28, Romans 8:31-39, Luke 5:17-20, 24-25

During one of our recent storms with high winds, a tree fell on our next-door neighbor’s house, causing a waterfall to flood into her bedroom through a gaping hole in her roof. Soon after that, our neighbors across the street cut down all the trees in their yard, except for one./ Now, I am not certain whether cutting down the green space is the perfect remedy for further roof leaks, but it speaks to the fear and anxiety after a disaster.

If you connect to social media, you will believe that the world is comprised of beautiful people with even more spectacular children who have no troubles. They sail smoothly through life, with only an occasional bump in the road.

But we know in our hearts this is not true.1 We are all humans, wounded, with periods of anxiety, pain, and occasionally sheer terror. Terrible things do happen to all of us: divorce,/ death,/children in trouble,/job loss,/ illness. We sometimes live with anxiety, like a second skin. Fear becomes locked inside our bodies and our daily lives. We cry./ We try to talk./ We try not to talk./ Sometimes, we scream./ We try sleeping./ We take drugs or alcohol./ We eat ourselves sick./ We starve ourselves empty./ Nothing works entirely. /

This Christmas season of love can make our hearts ache even more. We remember when our children were small, all “snuggled in their beds,”/ and our parents and grandparents were alive, helping us out. Sometimes we even forget and put an extra table setting for dinner./ ”Oh,/ they are gone now.”2/

We are told that our fear and sadness will disappear if we have faith. We are not good Christians if we harbor fear or anxiety. This does not help./ We reach out to the gospel of self-help. “Try harder!” “Be positive!” But we feel like floating astronauts untethered. We realize we are no longer drivers of our own destiny. Eventually,/ finally,/ we realize we can no longer play this game of solitaire./ We need other people, a community, to help us through it./

Kate Bowler, an Episcopal priest teaching at Duke who developed stage 4 cancer at age 35, nicknamed her community “The Rowing or Crew Team.” They all take turns pulling on the oars. At times, there is a “man down”/ who needs to be carried. The members take turns/ carrying/ and rowing.

Betsy Singleton Snyder, a local Methodist minister, gave birth to triplets and developed a life-threatening heart condition after delivery. She called her team “The Squad” while her husband traveled to Washington as our congressman.3

Kate and Betsy’s stories relive tonight’s gospel./ Friends of a paralyzed man bring him on a bed to see Jesus. There is such a large crowd that they cannot even reach the door. They think outside the box,/ go up to the roof,/ break through the sycamore beams, clay, and earth plaster,/ and lower the man to Jesus. Jesus heals him./ The man who comes in through the roof/ now walks out through the front door. It is a sacred story of a community bringing to Jesus one of their crew members who is paralyzed.

We, as well, can be brought to a place of love when we become paralyzed with fear and anxiety, when we become ill,/when a loved one dies,/ when we lose our job,/ or when our family system breaks up. Healing is not fixing the situation/ but allowing a community to walk beside us, allowing us to be lowered into the unknown, into a new way of life./ In our grief recovery group, Walking the Mourner’s Path, which will begin in April, the new life is learning in community how to honor the person we loved who died./ In 12-step recovery, we have a moment of clarity/ when we decide we can no longer do this alone and seek out a community to hear stories / from those who walked our path/ and found a new life. These saints who help us/ put their own agenda on pause/ as they decide to remember/ what they sometimes would rather forget. /Our self-sufficiency is a sham. ///////

But, Wait! There is more! This is not the final message of Luke’s story.1 Jesus leaves the house,/ and the crowds follow,/continuously talking about the miracle they witnessed. The fortunate homeowner who entertained Jesus and the large crowds now looks down on his floor littered with broken

timber beams, clay, and dirt. We hope he also has a community that will come to place a tarp over his roof until he can fix it,/ as happened to our next-door neighbor. But then, suddenly, the homeowner looks up through the hole in his ceiling and sees only a beautiful/ dark blue sky/ filled with stars.// This is one more truth. When we can see even the slightest sign of “beauty or light” in these times of darkness,/ just something as simple as a flower, a note, a call, a bird, a song,/ or the blue sky, we can be guided by a north star out of darkness.

A post note to our neighbor, who cut down all his trees but one. Recently, that tree fell on his neighbor’s house! Trees are interconnected, maybe our best example of community. When the tree’s community died, so did its nourishment. /

The gospel homeowner is witnessing a fundamental Christian truth/: that there may be a hole in our roof once/ or several times in our lifetimes. God doesn’t promise us a prosperous, healthy, and happy life that we dream we deserve. But God promises to be present,/ often in the form of a community such as this one here tonight at Saint Mark’s./ God constantly calls us to a community where we find hope,/ and we realize our protection is the arms of our God beside us in the form of our community. Hope comes from releasing all the energy of trying to rearrange the past/ as we learn to forgive. Hope comes as we let go of our panic about the future. All that anxious energy can now be used to walk in the storm in the present moment, and know that our God is walking beside us like the paralytic’s friends. God’s loving arms through our community will never abandon us. This is hope, quaking hope.4 /Emily Dickinson even better describes this hope as “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul-

And sings the tune/ without the cords-

And never/ stops-at all- 5///

“Blessed are we, the anxious,

with eyes wide open to the lovely and the awful.

Blessed are we, the aware,

knowing that the only sane thing to do in such a world

is to admit the fear that sits in our peripheral vision.

Blessed are we, the hopeful,

eyes searching for the horizon,

ready to meet the next miracle,/ the next surprise.

Yes, blessed are we, the grateful/

Awake/ to the terrible,/ beautiful/ star-filled, longest night.” 1

1Kate Bowler, Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! (Convergent Books 2024) preface.

2 Kate Bowler, “What is Advent,” Have a Beautiful, Terrible Day! (Convergent Books 2024) p. 184.

3Betsy Singleton Snyder, Stepping on Cheerios (Abington Press 2017).

4Sam Wells, interview with Kate Bowler at Duke Divinity’s Convocation and Pastors School

5 Emily Dickson, “’ Hope’ Is The Thing with Feathers,” The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, edited by Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Funeral for Bill Phelps, Long Time Choir Member, December 12, 2026

Funeral for Bill Phelps, Friday, December 12, 2026, 1 p.m.

Lynn tells us that the two most important things in Bill's life were his family and his church. Lynn's daughter, Lisa, told her mom when she was 12 that she had won the prize when Lynn married Bill 44 years ago. Bill also adored his two children, Jo Kelly, a well-known artist, and Don Phelps, who followed in Bill's footsteps into the family business, Phelps Fan Company, which sold industrial fans worldwide. Don was the fifth generation in the family business, and now his son, Garrett, will be the sixth. What a legacy of continuity to be part of a family tradition so rare in our world today. Of course, Bill cherished his other two grandchildren, Jay and Keisey, and his five great-grandchildren./

The part of the church that Bill most loved was church music. Bill and Lynn met in the choir at Trinity Cathedral. He was a tenor, and she was an alto. It was a choir romance. They married and later moved to St. Mark's, where they sang in this choir for over 40 years. Bill and Lynn's love for this church and their choral experience are attested to by their wish that any memorials go to the Craig Chotard Music Fund, in honor of the former choir director at St. Mark's. Lynn also asked me to thank Kathy Roberts, who is still an alto in St. Mark's choir, for her great friendship since they moved back to Little Rock. Another story about how a church choir becomes family throughout a lifetime.

Maybe another reason Bill loved the Episcopal church, besides its music, was that we are one of the few churches having three Rogation Days, just before we celebrate Christ's ascension and Rogation Sunday, the sixth Sunday of Easter. These are four days when we say special prayers for farmers and ask for blessings on their crops. I will never forget hearing Ted Glusman, a former rector at St. Mark's, say Bill Phelps was the only farmer who was a Saint Mark's parishioner. This was Bill's other love, his pecan grove. Bill would slip away to the pecan trees south of the airport whenever he could. He was very active in the pecan industry and helped develop machinery and equipment to improve crop yields. Lynn was also involved in the business and was the head cracker. Many of the Phelps' friends were in the pecan business. Bill helped invent a special shaker to shake the pecans out of the trees at just the right time. Lynn and I laughed about that,/ as we decided to say Bill Phelps was a mover and shaker. But if you knew Bill, he was a quiet man with a total dry wit that would always amuse you.

Bill died in his ninety-third year, a non/a/genarian. If you sing in an Episcopal church choir, at least several times a year, you will sing Evensong, a traditional evening sung service of psalms, prayers, and canticles. At Saint Mark's, for Bill and Lynn, it was the Fourth Sunday at Four. Canticles are songs or chants of praise that are from holy scripture or other sacred texts, but not from the Psalms. The two canticles that Bill and Lynn most often sang were from Luke's Gospel: the Magnificat (Song of Mary) and the Nunc Di/mit/tis (Song of Simeon).//

The music we make on earth,/ which passes away in a moment,/is an anticipation, a rehearsal for music that is unending,/ that flows forth forever;/ the music of worship,/ the sound of praise,/ the eternal alleluia.1

Simeon2 was also a faithful, nonagenarian, like Bill. Simeon was a righteous and devout Jewish man waiting for the coming of the Messiah in Jerusalem. The Holy Spirit had revealed that he would not die before seeing the Messiah. Guided by the Holy Spirit, Simeon went to the temple when Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus there/ eight days after his birth/ to be named. Simeon recognized Jesus as the promised Savior. Simeon took the child in his arms, blessed God, and proclaimed this beautiful prayer that Bill had sung so many times in his crystal clear tenor voice.

"Lord,/ you now have set your servant free////

to go in peace as you have promised;///

For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior,///

whom you have prepared for all the world to see;///

A  Light to enlighten the nations,//

 and the glory of your people, Israel.

Glory to the Father,/ and to the Son,/ and to the Holy Spirit,/

As it was in the beginning,/ is now,/ and will be for ever.3 Amen/////

We do believe that these words,// Bill so often sung,// became a reality on Monday of this week. Amen

1Charles Hoffacker, "Life as Music," A Matter of Life and Death, Preaching at Funerals (Cowley 2002) pp. 54-55.

2Luke 2:29-32,

3BCP 120.

28 C Luke 21:5-19 Oil Spill

28C  Luke 21: 5-19 A Stewardship Story from the Gulf of Mexico, November 16,  2025.

The Gulf Coast 2010

“And there will be great earthquakes..dreadful portents, and great signs from heaven.”

It is mid-August, high tourist season on the Alabama Gulf Coast. We arrive at the condominium our family has visited for twenty-five years. No cars in the parking lot—no sunbathers on the white sandy beaches. No bathers swimming. At dusk, a covey of trailers arrives with beach cleanup workers wearing colored shirts. The color of their shirt is like a liturgical vestment (dalmatic or chasuble), signifying the worker’s duty.

A half hour later, a John Deere tractor pulls a trailer with more workers who set up a blue tent and folding chairs. They sift the sand for 20 minutes and then rest under the tent. Next, a lone person strolls like a verger or crucifer in a religious procession, ahead of a green tractor pulling a large machine raking the sand. At night, this tractor has large lights on either side like processional torches. The procession leader searches for flipper turtle tracks leading to a loggerhead turtle nest that the beach rake must not disturb. We see no pelican, Great Blue Herons, or dolphins. Only the squawking laughing gulls are unchanged in numbers.

No fishing boats leave the pass, venturing into the Gulf. At a restaurant, we easily find a favorite table. Most locals report their businesses have fallen off 30 to 60%. The commercial and charter fishermen and the shrimpers have entirely lost their businesses. No Gulf shrimp for St. Mark’s Shrimp Boil this year. At a marina, we watch charter fishermen hosing down their boats like boys on a Saturday afternoon washing their cars in expectation of that Saturday night date. For these fishermen, the date never materializes. We grieve for one charter boat captain who took our family fishing. He committed suicide. Henry’s, the local furniture store, is going out of business. Only Henry is there answering the phone, praying for last-minute orders.// Nearly 185 million gallons of oil has violated the Gulf since the explosion on the oil rig on April 20th, 4 months ago, which also killed eleven workers.//We have weathered major hurricanes —Ivan and Katrina —with this Gulf Coast community. This disaster, however, has more unknowns and far-reaching effects.

“By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

 One month later. The oil well is finally permanently capped. We return to Paradise Island, as the locals call it. The parking lot is three-quarters full. At daybreak, three men and three children cast their lines on the surf for an early morning breakfast. They are joined by five Great Blue Heron free-meal stalkers, craning their long necks, observing every movement of the fishing lines. I cannot hold back tears as fishing boats leave the pass, heading farther out into the Gulf. Bathers frolic in the surf. My husband only finds two small tar balls on his morning beach walk.

Flocks of pelicans fly silently by. Dolphins swim in parade and occasionally jump for joy. Restaurants are crowded. It looks like resurrection. We attend a midweek Eucharist and healing service at a local church to give thanks. As members of the congregation and their priest, lay hands on each other at the altar rail for healing,/ they pray through their tears for the strength to meet

their present financial and personal losses. During the Eucharist, we hear a dog barking. At the peace, someone goes out to find a gray dog with matted hair in its kennel abandoned at the church door. The priest interrupts the service as Chan offers the dog water. Another parishioner will take the dog to a friend who “needs a dog.” Someone can no longer care for a special pet and leaves him with a trusted church family. At the vet’s, the parishioner learns the dog is a year-old purebred Lhaso Apso. This breed originated in Tibet and was bred as interior guard dogs for Buddhist monasteries. The thought is that the souls of the lamas enter the Lhasa Apso while awaiting reincarnation. //

  We see scars in this community. But we experience a pastoral Episcopal church becoming a place of sanctuary and healing in the wake of disaster, where people share their pain and are surrounded and touched by the many hands of God.

A federal survey, however, reports tar balls still washing ashore with every wave/and bands of oil, buried under 4 or 5 inches of clean Gulf sand. The Old Bay Steamer in Fairhope closes Sunday. Sales bottomed out as people fear eating oil-contaminated local seafood, especially their specialty, the royal reds.

Our hearts ache. We stare into the Gulf for hope.

 At the five o’clock bewitching hour, nine cars pull off onto the highway shoulder. Twenty people dressed in black emerge and walk to the beach. The apparent leader is a photographer. For two hours, the family gathers for candid shots. Farther down the beach, a trellis is covered with flowers. Four bridesmaids in red dresses arrive with the barefooted bride and groom. Another ancient liturgy

returns to the beach. At dusk, three people with lime green shirts approach a roped-off beach area. They carry a shovel, bucket, stethoscope, and surgical gloves. My husband and a half dozen children gather to observe this “medical” team. The green team leader demands perfect silence. Perfectly still. She lies on the beach with the stethoscope on the sand. She hears movement. They remove the wire mesh over the Loggerhead sea turtle nest, protecting it from coyotes and raccoons. They gently dig into the sand with surgical gloves, careful not to disturb unhatched eggs, and find six hatched baby loggerhead turtles that have just absorbed their yolk sac. Demeter herself could not have been more motherly, lifting the two-and-a-half-inch turtles to the bucket and transporting them to the shoreline. The green team digs a trench in the sand to the surf and places the sea turtles in it./ The crowd cheers as they ceremoniously parade awkwardly to the sea. Loggerhead turtles have nested on beaches worldwide for over 150 million years. It takes 25 to 30 years for loggerheads to reach sexual maturity. Only one in 1000 to one in 10,000 eggs reach adulthood. Will these six, by chance, be in this number?

“By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

Today. Fifteen years later, oil sediment remains in the seafloor, marshes, and wildlife. One study estimates that up to 10 million gallons of crude oil, or 4-31% of the spill, settled on the seafloor. Dolphin, sea turtle, and coral populations are decreasing.1

Our story is one of long-standing consequences when our environment is injured,/ but also about hope and endurance, and how we might respond to and prevent disasters in our natural world. Endurance is making a difference in incremental measurements every day.

When multiplied by a million or a billion, our small actions to protect our environment make a significant difference. To save what is still beautiful in this world, to save the planet for the future generations,/ our grandchildren,/ their grandchildren,/ we must routinely take actions daily. 2

Made in the image of God, we stand in as God’s representatives, God’s agents.

Here at St. Mark’s, stewardship is not seasonal. There is presently a large group of people dedicated to stewardship of this land where we comfortably sit,/ as well as the land, the river, and the sea around us. Our prayer is that if “great earthquakes, dreadful portents and great signs come from heaven” to our city, that St. Mark’s will become a pastoral center like the Episcopal Church on the Gulf.

Our story today comes from our own Gulf, where many here vacation each summer. But it is not our Gulf. It will soon be in the care of our grandchildren. Our hope also lies in the children, photographed with their families, the newly married couple on the beach, their groomsmen and bridesmaids, the three young early-morning fishermen on the surf, and in the half dozen children who cheered the baby sea turtles into the surf that magical night,/// and especially this morning/ to the children who will soon return from Children’s Chapel with Ashley who/ at this church/ are taught about being good stewards of the land/ and sea/ our God gifted to us/ to protect and share/ throughout all eternity./ This world is on loan to us. The question is—when we are gone, will we leave it in better/ or worse condition than we received it?

Joanna joannaseibert.com

      1. Liz Kimbrough, “15 years after the BP oil spill disaster, how is the Gulf of Mexico faring?” in Conservation News.

      2. Jane Goodall in Famous Last Words, Netflix.

//news.mongabay.com

12-Step Eucharist St. Mark's All Saints, Hell, November 5, 2025

12-step Eucharist St. Mark’s All Saints, Hell, November 5, 2025

“Blessed are you who weep now,/ for you will laugh.”

Generally, on this first Wednesday of November, we talk about those who have died using the lectionary readings for All Saints or All Souls. We talk about what we have learned from those who died, who have come before us. Recently, Jake Owensby, the bishop of Western Louisiana, wrote about a friend who died from addiction to alcohol and drugs. His friend lost his family, his home, his job, his health, and finally committed suicide. Many of us will have family and friends who have been like Bishop Owensby’s friend. They were people who lived a living hell. I also had an uncle who lived a living hell. I always dreaded calling him on his birthday. He would start to use abusive language and tell me what was wrong with me. He was a very unpleasant person to be around. You never knew what he might say next. I know he drank, but I was never sure whether it was alcohol that was interfering with his life. I do know he was mad at the world and went to his grave believing his father had loved my mother more than him. So, disturbed family dynamics can lead people to a living hell, just like alcohol and drugs.

 Where is God in all this mess? Indeed, living the 12 steps, which are based on Christian teachings, offers help to those with addiction or to anyone having difficulty living life on life’s terms. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, help does not materialize, or is not accepted.

 In the burial office and at Baptisms, we read the Apostles’ Creed instead of the Nicene Creed. The contemporary version reads that Jesus “descended to the dead.” By contrast, the traditional words are “descended into hell.”

Bishop Owensby believes the risen Jesus does more than follow us wherever we go. He is there before we arrive, before we are born. Jesus died on a cross and was buried in someone else’s tomb, which stands for our own graves. Jesus preceded each of us into dark places and continues to do that today. Into our darkest place. Into our hell. And that’s what we believe he did for the bishop’s friend and my uncle.

In the depths of his darkness, even after Owensby’s friend had taken his own life, his friend discovered he was not alone or unloved after all. I think this was true for my uncle as well. I imagine that as they both passed from this life to the next, they found that Jesus had preceded them into the tomb. Eventually, they heard Jesus say, “What’s two nice guys like you doing in a place like this? Let’s get the hell out of here.”1

1.Jake Owensby,“Faith and Salvation,” The Woodlands: A Place for Exploring the Spiritual Life. October 24, 2025.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

12-Step Eucharist, Saint Michael and All Angels, October 1, 2025 Saint Mark's Episcopal Church

October 1, 2025, St. Michael and All Angels, 12-step Eucharist, Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church

 “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.” Psalm 91:11

St. Michael and All Angels September 29

Two days ago, the next-to-last day of September, is always the Feast Day of St. Michael and All Angels. I keep a carved stone with a painted picture of St. Michael, holding his sword, hanging above my desk in my home office by my window. St. Michael is almost the first thing I see when I lift my eyes from my computer. St. Michael lives in stained glass, overcoming evil just outside this chapel door. I give thanks for the St. Michaels in my life, who have been by my side in difficult times, lending me courage to go on. Those in 12-step Recovery call them sponsors.

 I think of some other favorite modern angels of today. There, of course, is Angel 2nd class Clarence Odbody, played by Henry Travers, who saves George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart, from bankruptcy and suicide in the timeless Frank Capra 1946 Christmas movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. Whenever I hear a bell ring, I do wonder if an angel, or a sponsor, has earned their wings!

Then there is my all-time favorite movie angel, the suave  Dudley, played to the essence by Cary Grant, who comes to save the life and marriage of Bishop Henry Brougham, David Niven, whose wife, Julia, is played by Loretta Young in the 1947 Samuel Goldwyn Christmas classic, The Bishop’s Wife.

Whenever I visit my Bishop’s office, I always look around to see where Dudley is.

As I talk to people in recovery, I listen to hear if they speak about angels in their lives —people whom they encounter for some time/ or briefly/ that stand by them or lead them through situations or obstacles that used to baffle them. (Of course, this is one of the promises.) Angels are life-changing and life-giving. They are messengers and truth tellers who see God in us, much like the angel Gabriel to Mary, proclaiming that God is in us even when we have no clue.

Give thanks for the angels in your life. Repay them by being a Dudley, Clarence, Michael, or another angel to someone else you will meet daily,/ one day at a time. It is called paying it forward. A daily dose will keep you clean and sober.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com