"Love-in-Action" Caryne Eskridge

Caryne Eskridge will begin her third and (Godwilling) final year of her Master of Divinity degree at Yale Divinity School in the fall. She has been a member of Spring Glen and a Member in Discernment in the New Haven Association for about two years, having previously come from the Church of the Redeemer. In quarantine, she has practiced making sourdough pancakes and pizza dough, figured out some different ways to play games with friends on Zoom, recommitted every day to decolonizing her faith and to taking actions to bring about justice, and completed a full re-read of the Harry Potter series. 

"Love-in-Action"

Wonderful people of Spring Glen, hello! It feels like a very long time since I was with you last, but know that you have never been far from my heart and mind. This past Fall and Spring semesters I was interning at First Church Guilford, and this summer I am completing hospital chaplaincy training for ministry. 

Practicing ministry of presence in a time when being present looks very different than the way we usually expect or imagine is a fascinating experience. It has given me the opportunity to reflect on and practice a specific form of love-in-action. It is sacred and difficult and exhausting and heartbreaking and joyous, from one moment to the next. 

The fact that my chaplaincy training is happening in the midst of a global pandemic and a surge in national uprisings demanding long-overdue justice has the effect of making it feel as though I am experiencing an intense reckoning of what love-in-action means to me. I bet that some of you have felt that too. I have been returning to the description of love that we get in 1 Corinthians 13, which describes a love that is active, that sometimes feels risky, that can survive (even thrive) through struggle, that doesn’t flinch in the inevitability of pain, that knows that we are all so deeply connected. 

This kind of love, Spring Glenners, makes me think of us and where we are right now. I have been encouraged by hearing about all of the love-in-action that has stepped up in our current time of mutual grief and struggle. I believe that we were always a love-in-action kind of people, and the many ways I have seen you offering care, assistance, and love shows me that you are not flinching. I have certainly had my days of grief and despair, but I have also experienced a deepening of faith as I, and as we, have reached down into the deep spiritual truths and resources of our faith tradition: that God suffers with us, that we are never alone, and that we must continue to lift up those we have marginalized until we have fixed systems so that no one is marginalized. I am sure that I am not alone in this experience. 

I did not set out for this to sound quite so sermon-y (and I hope you will forgive that), but I often find that I often write and preach what I also need to hear most. If you need to hear this reminder today, I remind you that you are loved, that you are not alone, and that you are both called and empowered to be love-in-action in our world. I am here with you, in all of the new ways that we are “with” one another these days. I am convinced that there is something holy happening right now, and I would not choose another time or another church to be formed for ministry.