Bits & Pieces
Making best use of A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery
There have been a significant number of new subscribers since our press release in ENS. Welcome!
This issue of “Bits & Pieces” will orient you to “A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery” and provide a list of just some of our pieces by categories in our parish development work. We’ll begin with that.
Parish Development
Our approach to parish development is a mix of ascetical theology and applied behavioral science. See the charism of the Order of the Ascension.
Benedictine Spirituality
Four monastic practices: To teach congregations about how to be in, but not of the world
Benedict and the Christian Membrane: A promise of stability, obedience and conversion of life
Assessing with the Benedictine Promise: Stability, obedience and conversion of life.
Benedictine Balance and Social Ethics: In you we live and move and have our being
Parish Culture
Troubled Parish Cultures - An inward focus, short term focus, morale problems, fragmentation, emotional outbursts, and subculture issues
Parish Cultural Density: An inquiring and discerning heart
Suffering, endurance, character, hope: "This is how we do things here"
Subcultures in the parish: Parishes need ways of effectively and faithfully managing the relationship between the body as a whole and necessary and important subcultures.
Ascetical Theology & Practice
Praying with Holy Icons: To help guide people to God in prayer and worship
The Daily Office: the work of a people who have been doing this a long time
THE FEASTS OF SAINT MARY THE VIRGIN & JONATHAN MYRICK DANIELS: What brought Blessed Jonathan Daniels to that door on that morning?
A love story: The need not to run away, the need to be open to change, the need to listen
Do it often: if you want something to become a true and inherent part of your life, do it often
Scrubbing white marble steps: Lifts her poor, half-hearted, weary and wandering children heavenward
Doing Parish Development
Parish Development is a Conversation: The onion is being peeled
Organizations in a World of Choices: People need to see the parish as a resource for making sense of, and navigating, their world
Improving Vestry Meetings: The best meetings are like the best Eucharist
Building an Apostolic Core: The vestry is not the Apostolic Center
Is St. Clement's, Seattle poised for growth?: There is nothing so contagious as holiness
Stay in the City: Until you have been clothed with power from on high
Disciplined reflection on experience: Centering the soul’s aspirations entirely on God
I don’t have the time: Subtract - Add - Focus
Assorted
Make yourself at home -- Inclusion is a two-way process. We orient you and treat you with respect and love; you take responsibility for making yourself at home.
The worship of God: It carried within it an energy not its own - Worship is what human beings do. It comes naturally to us. We are wired for adoration, awe, and reverence. Even our resistance to it illustrates its significance and attraction.
Social Ethics
Antisemitism
The menorah and the swastika: The light shines in the darkness - I’m very aware that my Jewish neighbors do not have a menorah in their window this year. Andrea told me a few months ago how afraid she feels.
Stay in the City: Until you have been clothed with power from on high
Faith, hope, and love abide: Now we see in a mirror, dimly
Antisemitism is like crabgrass.
Antisemitism is a shape-shifting virus: There was the illusion that America was different, that it couldn’t happen here
Amsterdam: What do you see?
Assorted
BLESSED DESMOND TUTU: SPIRITUAL PRACTICE AND CHRISTIAN ACTION - They go right down into the mess
Teaching social ethics in the parish: Complexity, not slogans, and the messiness of concrete responsibility
Benedictine Balance and Social Ethics: In you we live and move and have our being
Earth's proud empires, pass away: Sister Michelle, OA and I said Evening Prayer last night. It was the Eve of the Feast St Simon & St Jude. Our discussion of the video brought her to sing "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended." It was a hymn sung by British POWs in Japanese prison camps during WW2. The soldiers of an empire about to fade held by the soldiers of another old empire about to be defeated.
Friendship: The habits of heaven
Bread and circuses: "They’re eating the cats"
Why Politically Engaged Christians Are Good for Our Politics: “What the soul is in the body, that are Christians to the world”
Humility is the antidote to grievance: There are moments in the political life of the nation when we see recognizable virtues in play.
PREFERENCE FOR THE POOR: Real love to Christ must issue in love to all who are Christ's, and real love to Christ's poor must issue in self-denying acts of love toward them. E. Pusey (in the Rule of the Order of the Ascension)
Palestinian Christians: Lift every voice and sing
The indelible stamp of the Creator: Christianity reshaped the Western mind
How to make best use of “A Wonderful and Sacred Mystery”
Looking at the articles on the Substack website is probably the most enjoyable way. It’s also the place where errors that appear in the email version get corrected and sometimes additions made. An easy way to get to the website is to click on the title of the emailed article. There’s also an app available for your phone.
About us
Sister Michelle, OA & Brother Robert, OA - find us namong the members of the Order of the Ascension
Troublesome Priests: He rescued me because he delighted in me
Three parishes: Your life is hidden with Christ in God
Free and Paid
A Wonderful & Sacred Mystery is set up to be free for everyone. Our intention is to keep things that way. We have noticed that a number of you have committed yourselves to pay for your subscription. We love seeing that. Very affirming. You really don’t have to do that. Really! But it’s possible that at some point we’ll turn on the part of the system that allows for both free and paid subscriptions.
However, it seems fair to say how we’ll use all that cash. So, here’s the story.
For the last 18 years Sister Michelle and I have gotten together around 4:00 pm on Wednesday. We have a drink and some food, take a walk, catch up (i.e., vent, complain, and plan the reconstruction of all things), and then we go to Mass or say Evening Prayer. So, if we begin to allow you to pay for our efforts here at A Wonderful & Sacred Mystery, we’ll use the money for our Wednesday drink and food. If ever the total sum became greater than the cost of our refreshments, we’d give the additional money away. Probably to the Order of the Ascension. Now that you know your money will be used in drinking and merriment – feel free to withdraw your pledge to pay and return to a Free Subscription.
Additional Resources
Shaping the Parish
Join us for the next cycle of Shaping the Parish, a two-year online training program making use of the best methods of parish development and applied theology, from the Episcopal Church’s own spiritual traditions. Current participants come from Canada, the US, Zambia, Haiti, and Dubai, The St Benedict Cycle begins October 10, 2025. Learn more - Shaping the Parish.
Our books
The two of us have written a number of books on parish development. They are available on Amazon in the Shaping the Parish Series. If you look at each book you can read the table of contents and a short segment.
Shaping the Parish Resources
On the Order of the Ascension website there is a section - Shaping the Parish Resources - that offers you hundreds of resources for parish development: core models and theories, group development, assessment forms, PDFs of several Ascension Press books, and processes and methods you can use in your parish,
The History of Parish Development
Understanding from Within: Working with Religious Systems
The History of Parish Development in the Episcopal Church (as of March 2023)
Myths and Norms in Parish Life: A Guide to Parish pathology - written in the 1979s by Loren Mean, then director of Project Test Pattern. A mix of humor and wisdom.