Lisa Basile

Good morning. I’m really honored to speak to you this morning about my life and giving at St. George’s.

I was raised in the Catholic Church in the suburbs north of New York City, a kid who asked a lot of God questions. Adult responses to my questions ran the gamut from bemused and bewildered to dare I say angry and annoyed. Sometimes we went to church as a family, sometimes our parents dropped us off, my mom remaining home in her bathrobe to tend to the “tomato sauce” bubbling on the stove for Sunday dinner. By the time I went to college, I stayed in the pew as my family went to communion, the all knowing anthropologist watching this human ritual. Then as a single woman living in NYC in my 20s and early 30s I found myself searching to know who I was and what I believed and even who I wanted to be. In that journey, I somehow dropped the all knowing academic stance and found my way to a Catholic church in the Village more progressive than any I had known, St Francis Xavier. It was not surprisingly a thorn in the side of the NY cardinals and bishops- there was a large gay community there, social justice was at the forefront of their work and divorce was not a dirty word. Many Sundays, I trudged there from my Lower East Side apartment and was filled up by the Word and the sermon and the being “home”, surprised, in part, that church could do that for me.

When I got married to a Jewish guy and moved to Maplewood in 1997, I was a bit lost about church and a church home. The Catholic churches I went to here were not “home” and I wondered if I would find that spiritual community I sought. A number of people suggested I try St George’s, and though hesitant, I did. “I Protestanti!” my Italian grandmother would have said, “Protestants!” speaking of some other world, some other culture, some other people, “Americani” not like “us”. Anne Bolles-Beaven was preaching that Sunday. Other, indeed. A woman leading the procession, a woman’s voice wafting through this place, reading, singing, speaking with authority and intelligence and humility, a mother and wife, the priest. How about that?

At the peace, I shook hands with the red haired woman in front of me -- she was about my age and I cooed over her newborn baby, Georgia. We spoke, she, also a Catholic, looking for a spiritual home more like the church she came from in Minneapolis. She and her family were new to Maplewood as well. We swapped phone numbers. Jane remains one of my closest Maplewood friends, one I can talk to not only of life’s bumps and blips, but a rare friend that I can talk to of the bumps and blips in a spiritual frame.

At coffee hour, I met David Sard. My story was no big deal. He had also found his way to the Episcopal Church from other places. His dad was a scientist and a nonreligious Jew. His mom, a nonpracticing Christian. He was raised without any religious affiliation. He introduced me to his wife, Cheryl, a former Catholic. They had made their spiritual home here. They were nice and smart and easy to talk to.

I was on guard probably for a few years. Could I find a church where I felt my nonreligious Jewish husband was included in God’s blessing? Would I ever feel comfortable saying Our Lord’s Prayer in the slightly different way it was said here? It smelled different here. The prayer books were a confusing jumble and the hymns were impossible to sing on key.

Back and back I came. St George’s was in a period of transition, and there was one interim priest after another. Still I came and I listened and I was moved. I came to know the liturgy in a way I never had before. A rich and diverse community surrounded me -- families came in all shapes and sizes. Women were ordained. Gay men and women spoke up openly. My sense of God and the place of church and religion in my life was growing here.

On an October Sunday in 2000, the birth of our twins, Francesca and Lucia, was announced here at the 10:30 service by my red-haired friend, Jane. It was in that next year or two that I had to do some hard thinking. We were an interfaith family. Was St George’s the place that our kids could grow in the way we wanted? The girls were half Jewish, and while David and I were making the choice to raise them in one faith, the Christian faith, we also wanted them to be raised in a community where Jewish life and history was celebrated and accepted as part of our life and history and not swept under the rug. I had a long talk with the then interim priest, Clark, and decided that, yes, if there was any place we could have this, it was this place, this St George’s.

It was then that I really began to see myself less as an outsider and more of a member of this church, moving from “I go to St George’s” to “I belong to St George’s”. Up until then, I was a person who dropped a 10 into the basket each Sunday. Now, despite the fact that I still felt discomfort at the financial piece of belonging to a spiritual place, I recognized that this place had heating bills and a leaky roof, and people to pay and other stuff that cost money. I filled out a stewardship card and got my envelopes and began to write that weekly check.

Truthfully, I always felt it wasn’t quite enough and I knew that one day I would change that. But good financial times gave way to this recession and our family has been hit along with so many others. We have cut back in many ways, but not here. If it was too little when times were good, it is just enough now, to keep us reminded that this little church on the corner of Ridgewood and Woodland, keeps us and our neighbors held up and belonging each Sunday. With gratitude I have worked on the altar guild, designed and sewn Christmas riddels, hemmed angel choir robes, organized a children’s art show, flown into coffee hour on my broom as La Befana, The Italian Epiphany witch, or just supplied many a coffee hour. And with gratitude I write my check each week.

With gratitude, I stand with Franca and Lucia each Sunday at Children’s Chapel, listening to Jane Cates tell a story that embodies all the goodness and care of Jesus. I send my children off to learn stories with Sunday school teachers whom I trust will teach them about a radical, out-of-the-box man named Jesus, about a Book that holds truths -- truths of faith and belief, of good and evil, of questioning and lapses in faith, of love and of the best of what it means to be Christian. With gratitude I sit in my seat here, always towards the front and left and receive my kids from Sunday school. We go to communion and I hear the words, “All are welcome to receive at God’s table” and I am deeply grateful. Afterwards, my children go back to their seats and sometimes I head for the healing corners. I kneel and share my burden and feel the care and prayer of the men and women who receive me. The minute the service is over, Franca and Lucy beseech me to let them go to their friends and to coffee hour where they eat too many donuts, but where I know they are at home and filled up. And I am grateful.