A Prayer By Our Father, For His People
A man with a handheld microphone stands at the front of the room. Behind him, the wall is cast with lilac lights. He’s Taylor Figgins, the community life coordinator at Hope West Side, a church located on 86th Street and Central Park West.
“Let’s stand and pray the Lord's Prayer together,” he says in a soft voice.
The room of about 25 people shifts and every single person stands to recite the prayer. The creaking of chairs and brushing of coats and bags echo in the room as they do this. Some lift their bibles or their notebooks from their laps with them. Once standing they turn and lean down to place the books on the seats behind them. They bow their heads and close their eyes. Many clasp their hands together, while others open their arms out in front of themselves to “open themselves up to Jesus.” There are two screens at the front of the congregation, one on each side of the room. The words to The Lord’s Prayer appear on each one. The crowd recites it quietly in unison, some from memory and some reading off the screens.
Hope West Side is a progressive Evangelical Church established in 2018. The churchgoers recite the Lord’s Prayer at the same moment at every service: right before the sermon.
“We pray the Lord’s Prayer as a way to connect our Hope West Side church community to the generations of believers who have prayed this prayer since the beginning of the early church,” said Park.
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.”
“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Figgins says each phrase gently, taking time to pause in between each one. As they recite the prayer, one word is louder than all the rest. Everyone says Amen with certainty. This closes out the prayer and they all sit down to listen to the pastor’s prepared sermon.
This prayer is from the New Testament in Matthew 6:9-13. In this passage, Jesus explains to the disciples how they should pray, and recites this prayer as an example. The last line comes from newer versions of the bible and church tradition, whereas the rest is from the ancient text.
“It gives us a template for how Jesus wants us to pray,” says Pastor Mike Park, who sits in the front row. He says the prayer with his head bowed. “We could also say it’s the prayer that is formulated by God for us, while most of our prayers are formulated by us for God.”
He views this prayer as a point of connection between all Christian denominations.
“It’s also one of the oldest recorded Christian prayers and is common to the different streams of Christian faith: Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic,” Park says. “So it’s one of the prayers that we can usually pray together regardless of church background or tradition.”
For some believers, the prayer serves as a point of connection between themselves and God, one that they feel can and should be made often.
“There are many seasons where I will pray the Lord’s Prayer slowly several times a day, pausing at each line to think through the truth of that part of the prayer,” says Park.
The Blessed and Pink Dressed
I had visited Catholic churches before. Whether in Italy, Spain or New York, they always struck me with the same haunting silence.
Aside from the faint echo of monastic chants or organ chords, it was quiet. If I listened too hard, it was like I could hear someone whispering through the stone walls. Maybe believers heard Jesus in the whispers, and that’s why they sat so earnestly in the brown pews.
I couldn’t hear Jesus the way that they did so their prayers fell upon my arms and legs like chills. I entered the Church of Notre Dame in New York with only the expectation of echoes.
The church on 114th Street and Morningside Drive was hidden in plain sight, with a fence on the corner blocking it off from the noise of the neighborhood. A path through a small garden led either to the chapel where the priests said mass or to the rectory, where they lived.
As I entered the chapel, I saw one woman alone, her gaze fixated on the marble altar at the front of the room. . Her bright pink dress stood out from the clean, holy, untouched marble. With a mask on, she looked as if she could be an older cousin of mine, her black frizzy-wavy hair down her back, tan skin warm against the floral pink.
She arrived at the Tuesday service at least an hour earlier than everyone else. As she waited, she sat in a pew near the raised statue of the Virgin Mary. She looked between Mary and Jesus in reverence, muttering under her breath with her hands folded on her lap. It was like she knew God was coming.
Catholics believe that, in 1858 in Lourdes, France, the Virgin Mary appeared to a woman who would later be recognized as St. Bernadette. The New York church replicated this moment in a grotto in stone at the front of the chapel. The gray stone looked real, like someone had carved into the building itself to reveal its earthy interior. The grotto looked so natural against the stark white marble that it lured me into the scene of the Virgin’s apparition.
As she sat, the woman in pink held the same facial expression as the memorialized St. Bernadette–a combination of awe and longing.
While the priest gave his homily, the woman in pink was seated one row across from me, with her eyes laser focused on the book he was reading from. The Good Book, the word of God Himself, the Holy Bible.
She seemed to know every word to every prayer the priest spoke. I followed her to know when to stand up and sit down, and when to bow my head. But when she rose to take the Eucharist–the wine and bread that Catholics believe to be the real body and blood of Christ – I stayed in my seat. There are some moments that are only meant for true believers.
The woman in pink gracefully consumed Jesus’s body and knelt on the pew closest to Him to pray. As I sat in my pew, I tried to talk to God. But it felt like I needed someone to translate for me, like I couldn’t reach Him in the same way that everyone else could.
Her prayer was long. I could see in the folds of her face that she was fervently praying to God, faithfully asking for help and expressing her pious devotion. I wanted so badly for all of her prayers to be answered. But neither I, nor she, knew if they ever would be.
When she sat back down at the end of service, she started singing on cue with the other worshippers; out of tune, at a higher volume than the rest, but with the passion of someone who knew the song well and believed every word. It was a hymn about Jesus, but I couldn’t pick out the melody from her shouted notes.
She closed her eyes and remained in her seat. As I left the church, she was still singing.
For Catholics, Sometimes the Body Is a Prayer
Countless embellishments compete for the visitor’s attention as she steps into the Church of St. Francis Xavier, a Jesuit house of worship in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. The décor is so distracting that she may miss her cue to stand in prayer or kneel in submission.
The early morning sunlight turns blue as it shines through stained glass windows, which have the color-scheme of a peacock. For every detailed oil painting of a saint, there is a corresponding warm glow emitting from lanterns or candles. The building is drenched in ornate, pious eye candy. However, the culmination of the basilica is the sizable, golden Gospel Book, resting on a slanted stand at the front of the church.
Behind the stand is the Rev. Ricardo da Silva, St. Xavier’s associate pastor, who recited the Lord’s Prayer with his arms stretched out and his palms facing the rotundas. This position is the “orans position,” which comes from the Latin word meaning pray. This position during Mass is symbolic of leadership in prayer. It is called for the priest alone during the Our Father prayer, with the elbows close to the sides of the body and with the hands outstretched sideways, palms up. The orans position exemplifies Catholic deference of the church hierarchy and the Church’s belief that the body is a necessary mechanism of communication for the spirit.
As the priest, da Silva is a representative of God, who utilized this body position to invite the Holy Spirit into the Church. The priest’s fingers, facing the heavens, are a privileged symbol of a leader’s power in prayer and praise.
Biblically, this position is a sign of surrender. An example of the orans position is in Exodus 17:11, which stated, “as long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning." Completely submitting to God by lifting the hands benefitted Moses, allowing the Hebrew prophet to protect and led his people.
During the prayer, a nearby mother swatted her seven-year-old’s little hands down, which were previously outstretched with palms up, mimicking Father Ricardo. The mother’s scold can be translated to mean that the orans position of prayer is reserved for the office of the priest. Justification for making this position exclusive lies in the Church’s liturgical documents, Instruction On Certain Questions Regarding the Collaboration of the Non-Ordained Faithful in the Sacred Ministry of Priests.
"In eucharistic celebrations, neither may deacons or non-ordained members of the faithful use gestures or actions which are proper to the same priest celebrant,” stated the Vatican in 1997. “It is a grave abuse for any member of the non-ordained faithful to ‘quasi preside’ at the Mass while leaving only that minimal participation to the priest which is necessary to secure validity.”
The child’s confusion was understandable. Not following the priest’s moves is an exception to customs. A general rule of thumb for an unconfirmed or unfamiliar person at a mass service is to imitate the posture of those around her. When others stand to pray, she rises to her feet. Standing in Catholicism is considered the appropriate position for prayer and is also a way to show awe to Jesus, who is represented by the priest during Mass. When the celebrant instructs the laity to sit, she takes the weight off her feet. When the laity kneels, she shifts to her knees. When worshippers genuflect, they submit to their Heavenly Father. The priest is a representative of Jesus, he leads the congregation to do gestures and rituals that are part of the Catholic Mass Order.
With all of that moving around, the role of the corporal body in the church’s body was paramount. But changing postures was not simply posturing. The physical positions symbolized believers’ spiritual pleadings - all in unison. The worshippers did so (or, in the case of the orans position, did not do so), to respect the church hierarchy, and in turn, God.
Even in the progressive doctrines of St. Francis Xavier, which is an inclusive church that regularly advocates for racial justice and LGBTQIA rights, da Silva still found use for principles of posture and ritual.
“A new perspective can reveal the sanctity of tradition,” he said.
Christianity and natural farming in the Hudson Valley
Christianity and natural farming in the Hudson Valley
Sara Badilini
A tall wooden cross and an American flag announce the entrance to “Freedom Hill Farm,” in Otisville, a rural village in Orange County, N.Y, that is north of the city, but not quite upstate.
The owners of this 50-acres , Rick Vreeland and his wife Julie Vreeland, are born again Christians. By combining the principles of natural farming with those of Christianity, they hope to fulfill their mission of sharing the Gospel with others.
“We don’t own the farm, we simply take care of it,” said Rick Vreeland, 67. “It belongs to God.”
The cows and their calves mooing in the barn are the soundtrack of this holy land, which is dotted with colorful signs singing God’s praises.
Jewish, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and even atheists visit the farm frequently as well however, shopping their products and asking questions about the owners’ faith.
From the cows’ milk, the Vreelands produce yogurt, buttermilk, and kefir that they sell and distribute in retail locations from Albany to Brooklyn.
All of the employees — two full-time, five part-time — and the several volunteers are Christians. “We don’t ask for it, but God seems to send us only other Christians,” Julie Vreeland, 64, said.
Faith hasn’t always been so central to the Vreelands.
Julie Vreeland grew up in Otisville in a Roman Catholic family, but she “unconsciously fell away from religion,” right after receiving the sacrament of confirmation, at the age of 13.
Rick Vreeland never stepped into a church until he turned 38. “Everything changed that year. I was crossing a yard and I heard a voice telling me ‘You have to go to church,’” he said.
He doesn’t know why God picked that particular moment of his life to speak to him, but ever since, he has dedicated his life to what that voice called him to do.
After growing up on the family farm, not far away from where Freedom Hill Farm is today, he started farming in 1972, when he opened his own commercial farm with a colleague. His wife joined him in 1975, after they got married. Together they worked on their commercial farm for 26 years with more than 2,000 cows.
Despite the success of their business, they decided to quit and four years later they opened Freedom Hill Farm. The barn had been a property of the Vreeland family since the 1930s. After farming it for generations, the dairy farm shut down in the 1960s, and the barn sat empty until May 2007, when the Vreelands opened Freedom Hill and nine milking cows started calling the barn home.
“Before renovating the place we had been praying for years,” JulieVreeland said. “I wanted to do something for Jesus, but didn’t know what.”
Then they came up with the idea of a small dairy farm that could also be a Christian ministry for the youth.
The Vreelands understood they made the right choice when they met their neighbors, who run the Freedom Farm Community, a nonprofit that also happens to be a Christian ministry for young people in the form of an organic farm, where they grow tomatoes, cilantro, pumpkins and all sorts of vegetables.
Edgar Hayes, the nonprofit’s executive director, remembers when the Vreelands knocked on the door and announced the plan for their land. The Vreelands and Freedom Farm Community still cooperate today.
“We have our own program for the youths and they’re really busy with the dairy farm, but their cows come on our land, and we share a mission,” he said.
Lou Enoff, president of the Christian Farmers Outreach — a program based in Maryland that supports Christian farmers around the world with different initiatives — explains the connection between farming and Christianity using the parable of the sower explained in Matthew’s gospel.
“To sow the seeds of the gospel you talk to people to tell them about Christ,” Enoff, 78, said.
Christian farming became a popular concept in the United States in the 1980s. To respect God’s creation, devoted farmers started promoting organic agriculture and unprocessed foods, as opposed to more industrialized products, Enoff said.
Some Christian farmers gathered in organizations such as Christian Farmers Outreach, and the Christian Farmers fellowship. Others, like the Vreelands, carry out their Christian mission on their own.
“Once the seed is planted, if it falls on good ground, it grows and produces crops,” Enoff said. “If it falls in the weeds, then the weeds can choke it out. It's similar to evangelism.”
Today, the Vreelands own 36 milking cows and have around 1,000 clients, who come to the farm once or twice a week to collect their order or raw milk. Freedom Hill is one of only a few farms that sells raw, unpasteurized milk and products. They believe that producing whole foods, while respecting their animals and caring for the land is what makes their farming Christian.
The days at Freedom Hill Farm start early. Julie wakes up at 3.30 a.m., checking the milk orders, while her husband starts the day at 4 a.m. Once they are both awake, they study the Bible for about an hour before heading out into the fields.
“We pray for the cows, the land, the people we know. And we pray every day for divine meetings here at the farm,” said Rick Vreeland.
By 5 a.m. he is milking the cows, while his wife feeds the goats. The rest of the farm soon comes to life. The couple’s son shows up to gather the products and deliver them to the retail locations, and the store manager arrives to open the shop. Other employees and volunteers work in the barn, others fill the milk, and one makes the yogurt — which includes the pasteurization process, the culture of the yogurt with bacteria, and a 10-hour setting.
In the early afternoon Julie Vreeland takes the calves from the barn into the adjacent meadow, followed by some young visitors. Each child leads their own calf with a rope, teaching the calves how to follow instructions. One of them struggles more than others when a stubborn calf refuses to follow the young girl’s lead.
When bigger groups of young visitors come the Vreelands organize afternoon activities and games to entertain them, always starting with a prayer. But the rest of the time with the children is dedicated to games and activities, it’s not meant to be a religion class, explains Julie. Vreeland.
“We don’t want to overwhelm the children with a lesson on faith, we want them to witness our faith through natural farming. But when the subject of religion comes up we are happy to speak about it,” she said.
The Vreelands say they have found a way to combine the farmers’ lifestyle with the Christian ministry, but they don’t belong to any particular branch of Christianity. After trying a number of churches and denominations, they’ve found their own way to worship and praise God.
They hold weekly Bible study gatherings at their home — now on hold because of the pandemic. They also pour their faith and Christian values into how they care for the cows.
As they explain, one of the basic needs for cows to thrive is comfort. That’s why the cows at Freedom Hill Farm stay in the barn only while they’re getting milked and they spend the rest of their day in the fields, where they can take a dip in the pond and lay down.
That heavenly environment for the livestock prolongs their life expectancy, Rick Vreeland explains. On average, the cows at Freedom Hill live around 10 years, he says as he caresses the back of a cow whose box is in front of a poster of “The Last Supper” by Da Vinci, hanging on the barn’s wall.
“You cannot just go to church and think you’re going straight to heaven,” Rick Vreeland said. “You have to be born twice and then you secure yourself a place in heaven. This, instead, is cow’s heaven.”
“The Whole Situation was Soaked in Love”
“The Whole Situation was Soaked in Love”
Lucy Soucek
When Hope Fried first received the text from her staff chaplain, she burst into tears. Pacing her Manhattan apartment, her mind was racing. It was spring of 2021 and she was working the on-call shift of her chaplaincy residency at nearby Mt. Sinai hospital. The message came in at around nine in the evening explaining that a mother in the labor and delivery unit was preparing to give birth to a baby either stillborn or expected to pass away soon after birth. The mother was Roman Catholic, Spanish speaking, and she was asking for her child to be baptized.
Fried, 32, is Jewish. Normally, she would have called for a Catholic priest to conduct the baptism, but this was during the overnight shift. If the baby was born alive and they waited for the priest to make it over to the hospital, they ran the risk that the baby might die before the priest arrived.
Fried wasn’t allowed at the hospital during the overnight shift because of Covid restrictions. She had never been to a Catholic baptism, and now she would have to talk a doctor or a nurse through one from her living room on the phone in Spanish in the middle of the night during a pandemic. After her initial bout of panic, she realized that she had a choice to make. And that choice was experienced by many chaplains over the past year and a half.
“COVID made it so that in the times where you would call for a priest or you'd try to call for an Imam, that wasn't available,” said Fried. “So it asked more of us because just the logistics weren't really possible. I think a lot of chaplains were like, okay, we just have to show up with our full humanity.”
In hospitals across New York City, pandemic restrictions have forced chaplains to navigate novel and potentially uncomfortable situations in their attempts to administer care. But what has guided them through the last year and a half is training that prepares them to honor the belief systems of their patients, even when those belief systems are dramatically different from their own. Now, chaplains and chaplain educators are focusing on how to care for themselves so that they can care for others as they continue to practice both in person and remotely.
For Fried, growing up in a multi-religious household influenced her eventual path to chaplaincy. Her mom is Catholic and her dad is Jewish. Ever since she was young, she’s felt more connected to Judaism, although she’s never had a strong belief in God. That’s where her humanism comes in. She identifies as a Jewish Humanist, which means she is ethnically Jewish, but in terms of spiritual beliefs, she doesn’t believe in a higher power.
When deciding what she wanted to pursue in her career, religion felt important. She thought, if she was meant to become a rabbi, God would reach out. But that just never happened. And so she turned to chaplaincy. It was a way for her to still feel connected with her faith, despite not believing in a higher power, and it allowed her to just sit with people and help them navigate hardships.
“I thought, ‘maybe I should try chaplaincy,’” said Fried. “It doesn't have to be super religious, but you get to be with people; you get to accompany people.”
She attended Union Theological Seminary, graduating in the spring of 2020. After taking four units of Clinical Pastoral Education to become board certified and participating in a yearlong residency. She is now a staff chaplain at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan.
It was during her residency that she navigated the baptism. And so on that night, Fried spoke with the doctor, who also happens to be Jewish, and they decided to make it happen. “We were both very firm,” Fried said. “I remember that feeling of being really grounded in our intention of like, we've been asked to do this; we are going to do this.”
After they made the decision, it was all about talking through logistics. Fried’s staff chaplain and clinical supervisor emailed her a guide to performing an emergency baptism, with details outlining the protocol, sample prayers and information on how to provide support over the phone.
She didn’t know Spanish, so she pulled up YouTube videos and practiced it with her husband over and over again, then walked the doctor through the ritual instructions on the phone. The doctor would need a little pill cup of sterilized water, which would act as holy water. Typically, holy water is water that has been blessed by a member of the clergy, but in the hospital, the protocol is different.
Dabble water on the baby’s forehead, and say:
“[Patient’s name,] Bautizo a ti en el nombre del Padre,” [I baptize you in the name of the Father].
Drop of water.
“y del Hijo.” [and the Son].
Drop of water.
“Y del Espiritu Santo,” [and the Holy Spirit].
Drop of water.
“Amen.”
The baby was born at around 4:30am, alive. A nurse performed the baptism, though Fried doesn’t know their personal religion or language preference. And then, at 4:45am, Fried called the on-call priest to come to the hospital to bless the baby and provide an official document. The baby survived for a couple of hours and then died later that morning.
In the Catholic church, baptism is seen as a way to cleanse infants from the original sin they were born with, and to welcome them into the Catholic faith. So Fried says the family was deeply appreciative that they were able to perform the ritual and receive the certificate.
“I think sometimes we attend to the worst moments in people's lives,” said Fried. “We try to be present and accompany and we try to lessen, slightly, their spiritual distress, and I think having their baby baptized was able to slightly lessen some of that spiritual distress.”
Throughout this whole situation was the tension between Fried’s Jewish Humanism and the Catholic ritual that she was being asked to lead someone through. But Fried, relying on what she learned about being a hospital chaplain where they often have to navigate interfaith situations, thinks of it as an expression of love.
“If a family has this request and this is their ultimate expression of love and will provide some sense of spiritual relief to know that their baby has been baptized and blessed by God and will be accepted into heaven, I think that's an ultimate expression of love and I will perform it,” said Fried.
Hospital chaplains navigate these complicated situations every day, but many also benefit from a system of training called Clinical Pastoral Education that is in place to guide them. During her yearlong residency, Fried was guided by her education supervisor, Rev. David Fleenor. He is the director of education for the Center for Spirituality and Health and the Assistant Professor of Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai. He is also ordained as an Episcopal priest.
One idea that Fleenor, 46, taught Fried to keep at the forefront of her mind was to think about the context of the situation and how that determines her role as the chaplain. For Fried, the pandemic, the timing of the birth, the support she received from educators and other chaplains, and the importance of this ritual to the family all drove her decision to make sure it would happen.
“The whole situation was soaked in love,” Fleenor said. “People have their own convictions, but the beautiful work that she did was to dig deeper within herself and find that love was a deeper value; that love and care and compassion compelled her more to facilitate this meaningful ritual for this family, at such a profound time of loss in their life.”
Profound loss was ubiquitous throughout the pandemic. And hospital chaplains spent much of their time caring for not only patients and families, but staff as well. At Mount Sinai, chaplains had the option to administer care throughout the pandemic in person, and many did. Fleenor said their role of caring for staff at the hospital was vital and is too valuable for the field to be replaced by services done over the phone.
“What happens with chaplains is that they are embedded on units and they walk around and staff informally say, ‘Man I'm really struggling,’” said Fleenor. “They're not necessarily gonna reach out to the employee assistance program. But when the chaplain happens to be there, then they open up.”
But to be able to provide staff support, hospital chaplains also need to know how to take care of themselves.
At Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the staff chaplains were able to administer care in person throughout the pandemic, just not in the rooms of COVID-19 patients. Figuring out how to sustain care and avoid compassion fatigue is now one of their primary concerns.
“It’s like everyone's taking a vacation or is sick or something,” said Rev. Christine Davies, ordained Presbyterian minister and the director of pastoral care at Robert Wood Johnson. “They're all dropping like flies just because of the sheer amount of suffering that they witnessed; It’s unparalleled. And so I think they’re still carrying a lot of that.”
Davies, 38, teaches Clinical Pastoral Care Education courses as well, and she says that much of what she teaches her students has to do with learning how to maintain their own emotional wellbeing so that they can care for others. Especially after this past year.
“Even right now, when we're not in a surge, I'm cognizant of my students’ cumulative exhaustion since the pandemic started,” said Davies. “A lot of it is helping them to see and acknowledge and be aware of their own feelings and emotions so that they can honor the emotions in others.”
For Fried, practicing chaplaincy during the pandemic will stay with her for a long time, and she’s learned to recognize when she might not be able to give the care she wishes she could. “I think it just really made me aware of how long lasting the intensity of the pain that we're asked to witness and hold is, and that that can become sort of ingrained in your body and needs to be processed over a longer period of time,” Fried said.
When she got home from her shift the day after the baptism, her husband ordered her favorite takeout dish, Pad Thai, and she spent the afternoon watching The Real Housewives and taking moments to cry. Fleenor and she have a running joke that she’s the crying chaplain.
“Your body needs to release the anguish and the fear and uncertainty,” Fried said. “All that needs to come out, and my way is through crying.”