Virginia Episcopalian Magazine Winter 2014 Issue | Page 19

the residents are connecting in ways that seek to honor the
relational space held by Christ through which life thrives.”

Part of the allure of the program is its goal to connect
the church with the community outside its own walls
– and to get young people involved in exploring that
concept. “Through deeply engaging in their workplaces,
local congregation, neighborhood and in each other, the
residents of this program are able to examine what it
means to be in community through various lenses,” said
Ball. “For young people who are considering their own
vocation, the multi-faceted doorways through which they
can enter in and connect with each other and with God
allow many avenues of discovering not only more about
their worlds, but also themselves.”

We asked this year’s three Grace-on-the-Hill residents
to share their perspectives on the experience so far. Here’s
what they had to say.
Vincent H.
Vassar College Graduate
St. Andrew’s School Intern
As a member of Grace-on-the-Hill, I have been asked to
write about community engagement and modern-day faith
experience. But today I am thinking of the 13th-century
Dominican friar Meister Eckhart. In his sermon “The Virgin
Birth,” he expressed the relationship between community
and faith very simply: “I was thinking on the way I was
walking here: I should not have come were I not prepared to
get wet for friendship’s sake. If you have all got wet, let me
get wet too.” Community engagement, for Eckhart, does not
have to do with the faith that, by travail, we beget ourselves
in the image of the Father. The soul need not hasten to God
as her goal, but is rather at her goal constantly, in God’s “Isness.” Eckhart walked in the rain in the faith that sharing in
the commons of life with others, whatever might come of it,
is to participate in the work of incarnation. This faith is love.

I walk across the street to help in a Baptist food pantry
and free luncheon for the homeless. We are starting a
clothes laundering service in January. I walk to the school
a block away to help one-on-one with struggling students,
serve lunch, take the kids out for recess.

Opening to life’s sheer “givenness,” we partake in a
faith that ever engenders new possibilities for mutuality,
reciprocity, and love. Faith lacks life without community,
just as fire alone cannot exist. Faith requires that we infuse
into others and into our own otherness. We need this faith
to keep changing. When we partake in this faith, we enter
the wilderness of a supreme perfection. The father of faith
wandered into the wilderness in the faith that its promise
was already fully bestowed. We are likewise invited out of all
our little faiths into a faith that calls us to be celebrants of
life with others, where we are given gifts of newness more
quickly than we can possibly receive.

Megan-Drew Tiller
University of Virginia Graduate
Diocese of Virginia Mission & Outreach Intern
Living in this kind of intentional community with my
roommates, I am able to reflect on what it means to work for
the Church, and to explore my fears of personal inadequacy
in the face of societal shortcomings, such as dealing with
the growing poverty and homelessness. I am free to grapple
with the promises I made in my Baptismal Covenant: to seek
and serve Christ in all persons, to strive for justice and peace
among all people, and respect the dignity of every human
being. We have been asked to live simply in terms of material
wealth, and I have found that the physical de-cluttering of
my life has led to a similar mental change, allowing me a mind
and heart open to the Holy Spirit’s stirrings around me.
Teresa Willoughby
University