Discover Advent in Everyday Moments: PEACE

In this three-part video, orchestra teacher Pat Aaron discusses her musicianship at her church, where she performs either solo, with a pianist friend, or as part of a quartet or trios. She reflects on how performing music provides a deeply spiritual and emotional experience, not just for her, but for those who are listening. The video highlights the beauty of connecting with people through music and the sense of calm and unity it brings within the community.

The conversation takes a deep turn as the priest, the Rev. Dr. Brandt Montgomery, school chaplain, shares his personal struggles of racial prejudice at a previous school, including an incident with KKK literature. Despite these challenges, his story reflects resilience, forgiveness, and an ever-abiding faith in the 'wideness of God's love and community’.

Priest and author the Rev. Mary Luck Stanley reflects on her personal relationship with God, the omnipresent, during times of crisis and happiness. She articulates a theory that during stressful periods, humans tend to experience tunnel vision, making it difficult to see the presence and work of God in their lives. In hindsight, as healing occurs and with the passage of time, the perspective tends to broaden, and God's grace can be seen in those stressful situations. She further talk about her book “Grace in the Rearview Mirror,” being an invitation for readers to retrospectively examine their lives, share those experiences, and see God's work in their past, even in difficult times, providing a sense of catharsis and eventually leading to strengthened faith. The book is recommended for those seeking personal spiritual growth and could be used as part of a book group activity.

Highlights:

00:00 intro

00:43 Pat Aaron

05:25 Brandt Montgomery

09:48 Mary Luck Stanley

16:30 Ending

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Listening for Clues invites you into conversations that discover clues, rather than solutions to life’s problems. Join the journey with Jon Shematek and Lauren Welch, Episcopal deacons, as we explore whatever lies ahead. Check our website Listening for Clues.

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Jon: 00:00:49

thing you mentioned in your bio is that you do perform at your church.

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And I'd like to hear a little more

about that, but also to what extent

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your musicianship or your teaching

experience has involved something of

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the spirit or your spiritual life,

if you're able to talk about that.

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Pat: Yes I do often play at my church.

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I have a pianist friend

that, that I play with.

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And, and on other occasions I play

in a quartet or a a string trio,

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which is piano, cello, and violin.

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So I have all those kind

of chamber opportunities.

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But I do like your question about

how that affects my spiritual life.

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Playing music.

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can be a very spiritual thing.

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It's a way to kind of lift myself

and, and I think sometimes those who

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listen into a spiritual place sometimes

playing it's hard to explain sometimes

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playing is, can be a very emotional

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I don't know, spiritual experience.

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So you, so you play and you

listen and you connect with the

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people that are listening to you.

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And you kind of can reach them

by playing to them and for them.

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And No, it is, it is a difficult

thing to explain, but, but

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not so much to experience.

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I often can see that I'm connecting

with, with people as I play.

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And And one of the neatest experiences is

finishing a piece and hearing or feeling

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the calmness that follows the piece.

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And sometimes that's the way that

you know the feeling within yourself

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and then the feeling within those

who have experienced the music.

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Jon: Yeah, you know, Pat, I think that

is so well said, , you're trying to

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find the right words, and I think that

actually was a demonstration that this

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kind of connection is beyond words.

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It's wordless

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Lauren: to continue what you're saying,

Jon, because I've experienced Pat playing

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at retreats and what you were saying

and what I was hearing, Pat, is that you

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are bringing community together as one.

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Brandt: And and you asked how

this is has affected me as a black

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priest there have at my previous

school before I came to Saint

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James there were some issues that I

stepped into there that necessarily

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weren't good and that, you know there

were some times in which the students

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let me know in certain ways that.

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They did not want me there.

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For example very early on in my time as

I was walking to my office one morning,

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and this again at my previous school, I

had KKK literature on my desk found there

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and and that was a rattling experience

and went the rector at my previous church.

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When he found out about it,

he said, Brandt, you are fine.

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I'm glad that you're here.

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I've got your back.

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The church has got your back.

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We are glad that you are here.

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So he definitely supported me through

that cuz I almost said, okay, okay, if

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they don't want me here, I will leave.

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But he had my back and a very good

thing, you know, in connection to that.

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It was about a year ago now, I would say.

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I had the student who was one of the

people that did that, he called me and

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he said, Father, that was one of the

stupidest things I ever did in my life.

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Mm, it has, yeah, it has

haunted me ever since.

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And I just had to call

you and say, I'm sorry.

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And so, and, and he said that, you

know, the way that I still loved him

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through all that remained with him.

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And so I would say as a black

priest, that's one of the things

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that I've seen later on that

hopefully I've been able to help.

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You know, just other people see just

the wide breadth and diversity and

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just the wideness of God's mercy.

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The wideness of God's love,

the wideness of God's community

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Mary: I'm starting to...

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have kind of an overarching theory

about how the book came together for

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me and, and answering the question why?

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Why did we construct the book this way?

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Why did we write it?

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How would it be helpful to people?

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And so what I think is that if you

start with the understanding that every

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human being yearns for to connect with

something greater than themselves.

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And you can call it different

names, higher power, God whatever.

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But if you start with that, and

then you also have an understanding

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that God is omnipresent and is all

around us all the time, then...

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The question is, why is it that people

sometimes feel like it's so hard

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to experience God, to connect with

God, to be in the presence of God?

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In some ways, it's really easy to be

part of feel connected to God when you're

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looking out at the ocean, or you're

hiking a mountain and seeing gorgeous

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views, or when you witness the birth

of a child, or you're falling in love.

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It's harder in our lives to see God

when we're right in the midst of

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a crisis or a very stressful time.

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And so I've had that experience where

during a stressful time involving grief

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and, and illness and death, that it

felt like God had left the building.

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It felt like I was abandoned by God.

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And That presented a lot of

questions and problems for me.

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I think that what happens is that when

we're in a crisis, We get tunnel vision.

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You know, we know that cortisol is

a chemical that is a crisis response

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that help us to focus, but I also

think that cortisol can help us or,

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or create a sense of tunnel vision.

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And when you get tunnel vision,

you're very focused on solving a

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problem to get out of the crisis.

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But also, you can't see the

perspective around what that

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tunnel vision has focused you on.

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And so I have this, this theory,

and it's not my theory, it's, it's

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based on psychology and things

I've read and my experience, is

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that sometimes it takes time.

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like years of healing to get to the place

where you can look back on a stressful

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situation and not still have tunnel

vision, but be able to mine that and look

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around and ask the question, where was

God in the midst of that awful time when I

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just felt like God had left the building?

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And so my experience is that

Looking back on those kinds of

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memories is a healing process.

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And it's funny that a lot of people

who've read the book have talked not

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only about having tears as they read

the book, but also raucous laughter.

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And I wonder sometimes about the

cathartic and medicinal benefits of

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both laughter and tears when we go

back and we, we look at our memories.

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We need to have some

kind of movement there.

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So what I hope is that this book is

an invitation To people, when they're

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ready, to look back on their lives.

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To consider writing a spiritual

autobiography, or just sharing stories

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with whoever their trusted people are.

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It'd be great for a book group.

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And I hope that that's cathartic for

them, and that somehow they say, Oh, wow,

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it felt like God was absent from this

situation, but really I see God's grace.

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at work now and

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the great thing is that now that

I've been thinking about it and I've

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had that experience enough times,

the next time I get into a really

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horrible phase of my life, I think

I'm going to have more confidence.

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That I'm gonna know.

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I have tunnel vision right now.

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It feels like God's not here

because I'm suffering too much.

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But if I wait long enough, I

will gain perspective eventually.

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And I know that's a long answer, but

that is my perspective and and the way

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that I've been thinking about this book.