Home  ›  About  ›  Weekly Message from Rev. Matt Handi

Weekly Message from Rev. Matt Handi

Message from

The Rev. Matt Handi

April 24, 2024

Picture it.

Bedford Falls sometime in the early 20th century, somewhere around 1918-1919 most likely.

George Bailey is serving up some ice cream at Old Man Gowar’s Drug Store. That was a thing back then, pharmacies with a soda counter where children could sit on stools and take their time in deciding which flavor ice cream they’d like to eat.

[i]Mary, sitting across from George who is behind the counter, is trying to decide just that. George asks Mary, “Made up your mind yet?” [ii]

Mary replies, “I'll take chocolate.”

George asks, “With coconuts?” Mary mentions she doesn’t like coconuts.

George is incensed, “You don't like coconuts!  Say, brainless, don't you know where coconuts come from?  Lookit here – from Tahiti – Fiji Islands, the Coral Sea!”

Now, admittedly, this seems a rather harsh rebuke to someone not liking coconuts. I mean, I’m not sure why their provenance factors into one’s like or dislike for rather large nuts that leave bumps on one’s head when falling from trees in all the finest Looney Tunes cartoons, but I digress.

George takes a breath and pulls a magazine from his pocket. He shows it to Mary. Mary is very excited about this magazine because she’s never seen it before. Evidently, along with taking an interminable amount of time to decide whether to eat chocolate or vanilla ice cream, she is also fascinated by new magazines.

Bedford Falls is a very small town, you see. New magazines, ice cream flavors other than vanilla, and horseless carriages are all causes for excitement when seen in this little village.

Seeing the new magazine, Mary exclaims, “A new magazine! I never saw it before,” as if George presented before her King Tut’s unopened tomb.

George replies, “Of course you never. Only us explorers can get it. I've been nominated for membership in the National Geographic Society.”

And that is where we will cut from Bedford Falls and land in Glastonbury, because I, my friends, have been nominated for membership in the National Geographic Society! I am not sure what that means exactly other than they’ve cashed my check, but here we are. Your Priest-in-Charge is a self-implied expert in all things global esoterica!

[iii]After reading one article, I can confidently say that I am now an expert in hyenas.

Yes, we started this article in Bedford Falls, that bucolic hamlet in “It’s a Wonderful Life” and have now moved to the plains of Kenya’s Massai Mara savanna.

And I have learned that these rather, erm, unique looking animals are quite intelligent and adept at adapting to their environment(seriously, look at those puppies; furballs only a mother could love.)

And that brings me to the point of this rather rambling article.

Hyenas will adapt to the situations in which they live. Where there is a large amount of prey, larger packs of hyenas will form. Where there is a large amount of food to scavenge, hyenas will spend less time hunting and will instead search for more readily found sources of food.[iv]

But their intelligence goes farther than just adaptability, they can be problem solvers, especially when their environment is less than ideal and where food is scarcer than in less urban areas.

As an experiment, researchers placed locked boxes in various locations near where hyenas were known to roam: in a city where hyenas had long been present, near a growing town where hyenas lived for just 20 years, and a rural, protected land preserve.

In the locked box was a piece of raw meat. It turned out that the rural hyenas, where resources were scarcer, were better problem solvers and they were better able to find a way to open the locked box to get to the meat inside.

I think there is a lesson in this for all of us.

Church is not as “easy” as it once was. Our resources in terms of finding new people to grow the church seem to be depleting. Sundays are no longer just for church and sabbath anymore and year after year we find ourselves competing with secular society more and more to bring attention to all that we have to offer.

And based on that seeming scarceness, we must adapt. We must find new ways to unlock the boxes that hold the attention of those who might look elsewhere for fulfilment, be it social or spiritual.

In some ways, we are already doing that. At St. James’ we are trying on new ways to share God’s word and prayers in the form of Celtic Vespers, for example. At St. Luke’s we are continuing to try on Dinner Church, a more informal gathering where we share the word over dinner and conversation before gathering for the Eucharist. These are new ways of gathering. We are adapting.

Yet I would warn us not to consider these times as only times of scarcity. People are still looking for connection. People are still hopeful for that something more and we have that story to share. We know of that something more for we know of Christ’s love for all of God’s creation and that is our story to share. It might seem harder to gather resources, but God’s savannah still contains sustenance even if that sustenance is to be sometimes found in locked boxes scattered hither and tither. It is our job to figure out how to find and open those boxes.

Rather than scarcity, these are times for creativity and adaptability. That is our calling now and perhaps that has always been our calling. We must continue to try and to try on new things that may not work or work very well. We can look to polls that say we are a part of a declining church or we can look to Jesus who tells us to gather his flock as if we are his shepherds just as he is the Good Shepherd.

And by gathering in all who are searching, all who are wanting, we are welcoming in all who Christ would have us welcome. Be they coconut fans or otherwise, we are all God’s children.

  |    |   Share