Jamie Parsley's Blog, page 86
August 11, 2013
August 10, 2013
July 31, 2013
Obituary for Jeffrey "J.D." Gould
Jeffrey R. “J.D.” Gould
Jeffrey “J.D.” Gould, 57, Loveland, CO, formerly Fargo, died Monday, July 29, 2013 in Loveland. Jeff was born June 13, 1956 to Roger and Joyce Gould in Fargo. He grew up and attended school in Fargo, graduating from Fargo North High School in 1974. He worked at various businesses in Fargo before moving to Colorado, including Pepsi and in mobile home sales. He married Judy Strebig on Feb. 15, 1987 in Las Vegas. Since 1994, he and his wife owned and operated the Jade Inn Hotel in Loveland Colorado. Jeff was a loving and gracious husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend. He is deeply loved and will be greatly missed by all who knew him. He is survived by his wife, Judy, Loveland, his daughter Jade, Loveland; his stepdaughter Anonna Tveter-Gould; his mother, Joyce Parsley, Fargo; his father Roger (Julie) Gould, Fargo; one sister, Michelle (Everett) Walker, Valley City; two brothers, Jason (Darlene Erovick) and the Rev. Jamie Parsley, both Fargo; 5 grandchildren; many beloved uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends. Memorial service: 11:00 am Saturday, Aug. 10 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 120 21 Ave. N., Fargo. Burial: Maple Sheyenne Cemetery, Harwood, ND.
Hanson-Runsvold Funeral Home in Fargo is in charge of Fargo arrangements; Viegut Funeral Home in Loveland, CO is in charge of Loveland arrangements.
Obituary for Jeffrey Gould
Jeffrey R. “J.D.” Gould
Jeffrey “J.D.” Gould, 57, Loveland, CO, formerly Fargo, died Monday, July 29, 2013 in Loveland.
Jeff was born June 13, 1956 to Roger and Joyce Gould in Fargo. He grew up and attended school in Fargo, graduating from Fargo North High School in 1974. He worked at various businesses in Fargo before moving to Colorado, including Pepsi and in mobile home sales. He married Judy Strebig on Feb. 15, 1987 in Las Vegas. Since 1994, he and his wife owned and operated the Jade Inn Hotel in Loveland Colorado.
Jeff was a loving and gracious husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend. He is deeply loved and will be greatly missed by all who knew him.
He is survived by his wife, Judy, Loveland, his daughter Jade, Loveland; his stepdaughter Anonna Tveter-Gould; his mother, Joyce Parsley, Fargo; his father Roger (Julie) Gould, Fargo; one sister, Michelle (Everett) Walker, Valley City; two brothers, Jason (Darlene Erovick) and the Rev. Jamie Parsley, both Fargo; 5 grandchildren; many beloved uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.
Memorial service: 11:00 am Saturday, Aug. 10 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 120 21 Ave. N., Fargo.
Burial: Maple Sheyenne Cemetery, Harwood, ND.
Jeffrey Gould
Jeffrey R. “J.D.” Gould
Jeffrey “J.D.” Gould, 57, Loveland, CO, formerly Fargo, died Monday, July 29, 2013 in Loveland.
Jeff was born June 13, 1956 to Roger and Joyce Gould in Fargo. He grew up and attended school in Fargo, graduating from Fargo North High School in 1974. He worked at various businesses in Fargo, before moving to Colorado. He married Judy Strebig on Feb. 14, 1987 in Las Vegas. He managed the Jade Inn Hotel in Loveland Colorado.
Jeff was a loving and gracious husband, father, son, brother, uncle and friend. He is deeply loved and will be deary missed by all who knew him.
He is survived by his wife, Judy, Loveland, his daughter Jade, Loveland; his stepdaughter Anonna Tveter-Gould; his mother, Joyce Parsley, Fargo; his father Roger (Julie) Gould, Fargo; one sister, Michelle (Everett) Walker, Valley City; two brothers, Jason (Darlene Erovick) and the Rev. Jamie Parsley, both Fargo; 5 grandchildren; many beloved uncles, aunts, nieces, nephews, cousins and friends.
Memorial service: 11:00 am Saturday, Aug. 10 at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 120 21 Ave. N.
Prayers for the repose of the soul of my brother, Jeff Gould
I ask your prayers for the repose of the soul of my brother,Jeffrey Roger "J.D." Gould,
who died July 29, 2013suddenly and unexpectedly
in Loveland, Colorado.
I also ask your prayers for his wife, Judy,
his daughters, Jade and Anonna,
our mother, Joyce,
our siblings, Michelle and Jeff
and his father, Roger,
as well as our entire family.
The Fargo memorial service is set for Sat. Aug. 10 at 11:00 am at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 120 20 Ave. N., Fargo.
Rest eternal grant o him, O Lord;
and let light perpetual shine upon him.
May his soul, and the souls of all the departed
rest in peace.
July 28, 2013
10 Pentecost
July 28, 2013Luke 11.1-13
+ You’ve heard about this ad nauseum this past week—and for that I am sorry. But, yes, this past Thursday, I celebrated the 10th anniversary of my ordination as a Deacon. 10 years of ordained ministry is a hallmark, to some extent. And, this past week, between celebrations, I found myself pondering these past ten years.
In that time, I can say that there have been two consistent questions I have been asked, again and again over those years. So, do you think you can guess what the common questions I have been asked as a priest over the years?
The first question is, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?”
By far the most common question. And I have explored this many times over the years in my sermons, and I will again.
The second question I asked again and again is, “Why aren’t my prayers answered some times?”
I think it’s an important question. And the answer I always give is, God always answers prayers. But an answered prayer is not necessarily a granted request.
As I’ve said again and again, God is not Santa Claus in the sky, granting wishes to people who have been good, and punishing people with unanswered prayers because they’re bad. Many people think prayer and making petition are the same thing. But petitionary prayers is not the only kind of prayer. Prayer essentially is communication—communication between us and God. When we pray, we should simply open ourselves completely to God. We should take on a prayerful attitude.
Or, as the Catechism we find in the back of The Book of Common Prayer defines prayer:
“[It] is responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.”
For those of us seeking God and striving after, and God, in return, coming to us and revealing God’s self to us, we do find the need to respond in some way.
In our Gospel for today, we find Jesus talking about this response. We find him talking about prayer. The disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Jesus responds by teaching them the prayer we know as the Lord’s Prayer. Then he goes on to share a parable about a friend asking another friend for a loan. In the midst of this discourse on prayer, Jesus says those words we find quite familiar:
“For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knows, the door will be opened.”
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard the complaint from people about unanswered prayers.
“I prayed and I prayed and nothing happened,” I will hear.
And I definitely not going to tell you how many times I have complained about unanswered prayer in my own life. But when we talk of such things as unanswered prayers, no doubt we are zeroing in on the first part of what Jesus is saying today:
“For everyone who asks receives.”
But rarely do we ever get beyond the petitionary aspect of prayer. Jesus shows us that prayer also involves seeking and knocking. Oftentimes in those moments when a prayer is not answered in the way we think it should, we just sort of give up.
But if we seek out the reasons our prayers are not answered in the way we want them to, we may truly find another answer—an answer we might not want to find, but an answer nonetheless. And if we keep on knocking, if we keep on pushing ourselves in prayer, we will find more than we can even possibly imagine.
The point of all of this, of course, is that when God breaks through to us, sometimes we also have to reach out to God as well. And somewhere in the middle is where we will find the meeting point in which we find the asking, the seeking and knocking presented before us in a unique and amazing way. In that place of meeting, we will find that prayer is truly our response to God “by thought and deed, with or without words.”
Jesus is clear that prayer needs to be regular and persistent. I have found that prayer is essential for all of us as Christians. If we do not have prayer to sustain us and hold us up and carry us forward, then it is so easy to become aimless and lost.
As some of you know, I lead a very disciplined prayer life. I do so not because I’m acetic or overly-pious or saintly (I’m sure all those words come to your minds, especially those of you who came to the tiki party at the Rectory of Friday night).
But I lead a disciplined prayer because I can very easily become a lazy person regarding prayer. I pray the Daily Office every day—the services of Morning and Evening Prayer found in the Book of Common Prayer. I pray for everyone at St. Stephen’s by name through the course of the week. And I take regular times during the day to just stop and be quiet and simply “be” in the Presence of God.The Daily Office is sort of the skeleton of my day. I have prayed the Office every day, without fail (well, there have been a few times when I’ve just been too sick to do so), for the last ten years. Actually I was praying the Daily Office long before that, but beginning at my ordination as a Deacon, I promised I would never miss praying the Daily Office. And, for the most part, I have not. I made that promise, because I know that I am a creature of habit. I need the discipline of the Daily Office to keep me in check and to lay down the boundaries, because without those boundaries, I would too easily be led astray.
Of course, the Daily Office was a requirement for all Deacons, Priests and Bishops. Although in our current Book of Common Prayer it is not laid out so clearly, in earlier versions of the Prayer Book, it was emphatic. In the 1662 Prayer Book it says this:
“All Priests and Deacons, unless prevented by sickness or other urgent causes, are to say daily the Morning and Evening Prayer either privately or in the Church.”
And, I have tried to do so every day over the last ten years. Some days not so well, other days better. I have prayed the Daily Office on wonderful days, when it all came together, on bad days when I really didn’t want to pray it all and, by far the majority of days, when I prayed and it was neither great nor horrible. And, as you’ve heard me say again and again, I commend the Daily Office to everyone who has issues like me of needing some structure in their prayer life. Fifteen minutes in the morning, fifteen minutes in the evening and a lifetime of spiritual sustenance.
The important thing, however, is not to be bound by structure or rules such as this. The important thing is finding a way in which we can each respond to God by thought and deeds, with or without words. The important thing is to recognize that God is breaking through to us, again and again. We see it fully in Jesus, who came to us and continues to come to us. In response to that breaking through, we can each find a way of meeting God, whenever and where God comes to us, in prayer. In that place of meeting, you will receive whatever you ask, you will find what you’re searching for, and knocking, you will find a door opened to you. That is how God responds to us.
So, let us go to meet God. God is breaking through to us, wherever we might be in our lives. Let us go out to meet the God who asks of us first, who seeks us out first, who knocks first for us to open the door.
July 21, 2013
July 14, 2013
8 Pentecost
Good Samaritan Sunday
July 14, 2013
July 14, 2013
July 7, 2013
7 Pentecost
July 7, 2013Luke 10.1-11, 16-20
+ Yesterday I was fortunate to attend an ordination—the priestly ordinations of Jordan Hylden and Christian Senyoni at the Cathedral here in Fargo. I enjoy being a part of such events. They are always very meaningful to me.
In his sermon at the ordination, Bishop Michael shared a point. This point was directed at the new ordinands, but I have to admit—I took it to heart. I don’t really want to admit that I took it so closely to heart. But I did.
The Bishop said something along the lines of the fact that ministry—and not just ordained ministry, but all ministry—is not for “lone wolves.” You can’t do ministry and be a lone wolf. Doing ministry means doing it together. A very, very valid point. Well, I have to admit. I did agree with him on that one.
But…as I said, it also hit kinda close to home for me. For any of you who know me and worked with me for any period of time, you know I’m a bit of a lone wolf about some things. You can call it lone wolf. I call it being independent. Or maybe, sometimes, just impatient. Things have to get done after all. And, when they do, you know, I’ll just do it.
But, I understand what the Bishop was saying. Sometimes being a lone wolf is not a good thing. In the Church it is never a good thing to be a lone wolf. None of us can do ministry alone. We all need to admit that we need each other to do effective ministry.
And sometimes even the lone wolf admits that simple fact: I can’t do this alone. The lone wolf sometimes has to seek help from others.
Ultimately, the lone wolf can be a bad thing for the church for another reason though. Lone wolves can easily be led down that ugly, slippery slope of believing, at some point, that it’s all about them.
Now, I want to make clear: I never have believed that anything is about just me. Yech. I despise that kind of thinking in myself. For all my lone wolf tendencies, I have a pretty good support system around me—people who will very quickly tell me when they think I might be heading down that slippery egocentric slope. But, I have known too many church leaders who have not had a support system like mine. I have known too many church leaders who have made it clear to me that it was because of them—because their winning personality, or their knowledge of church growth, or their years of expertise—that a particular parish flourished.
It’s an unfortunate trap leaders in the Church fall into when they believe that a parish’s success depends on them as individuals and their own abilities of ministry—and, mind you, I am not just talking about priests here. Lay leaders in the Church have fallen into this trap as well. I have known some of those lay leaders as well, trust me.
Maybe to some extent it’s true. Maybe some people do have the personality and the winning combination in themselves to do it. I can tell you, I don’t. Nor do I want to. But for those who may have that kind of natural personality, I still have to admit: it all makes me wary. It’s just too slippery of a slope for me.
We are dealing with similar personalities in today’s Gospel. The seventy that Jesus chose and sent out come back amazed by the gift of blessing God had granted to them and their personality. They exclaim, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!”In and of its self, that’s certainly not a bad thing to say. It’s a simple expression of amazement.
But Jesus—in that way that Jesus does—puts them very quickly in their place. He tells them, “do not rejoice in these gifts, but rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven.” Or to be more blunt, he is saying rejoice not in yourselves and the things you can do with God’s help, but rejoice rather in God. Or as the great Anglican theologian Reginald Fuller (who, I have been told by those how knew him, also had one of those amazing personalities) says, “It is Christ’s mission and message, not ours.”
The burden of bringing about the Kingdom of God shouldn’t be solely the individual responsibly of any one of us. Just imagine that stress in having to bring that about. Bringing the Kingdom of God into our midst is the responsibility of all of us together. It is the responsibility of those who have the personality to bring people on board and it is the responsibility of those of us who do not have that winning personality.
For those of us who do not have that kind of personality, it is our responsibility to bring the Kingdom about in our own ways. We do so simply by living out our Christian commitment, the same commitment Stephanie this morning is going to profess and take on with her baptism.
As baptized followers of Jesus, we bring the Kingdom into our midst simply: we do it by loving God and loving each other as God loves us in whatever ways we can in our lives.
Bringing the Kingdom of God about in our midst involves more than just preaching from a pulpit or attending church on Sunday. It means living it out in our actions as well. It means living out our faith in our every day life. It means loving God and each other as completely as we can.
But I does not loving ourselves to the exclusion of everything of else. It means using whatever gifts we have received from God to bring the Kingdom a bit closer. These gifts—of our personality, of our vision of the world around us, of our convictions and beliefs on certain issues—are what we can use. It means not letting our personalities—no matter how magnetic and appealing they might be—to get in the way of following Jesus.
Our eyes need to be on the One we follow. We can’t be doing that when we’re busy preening in the mirror, praising ourselves for all God does to us and through us. The Church does not exist for own our personal use. If we think the Church is there so we can get some nice little pat on the back for all the good we’re doing, then we’re in the wrong place. And we’re doing good for the wrong intention.
The Church exists for Jesus. The Church is ideally the conduit through which the Kingdom of God comes into our midst. And it will come into our midst, with or without me as individual. But it will comes into our midst through as us. All of us. Together.
The Church is our way of coming alongside Jesus in his ministry to the world. In a very real sense, the Church is our way to be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion, the love of Jesus to this world and to each other. But it’s all of us. Not just me. Not just you as individual. It’s all of us. Together.
Working together.
Loving together.
Serving together.
And giving God the ultimate credit again and again.
Hopefully, in doing that, we do receive some consolation ourselves. Hopefully in doing that, we in turn receive the compassion and love of Christ in our own lives as well. But if we are here purely for our own well-being and not for the well-being of others, than it is does become only about us and not about God. And in those moments, we are sounding very much like those 70 who come back to Jesus exclaiming, “look at what we have done!”
The message of today’s Gospel is that it must always be about God. It must always be about helping that Kingdom of God break through into this selfish world of huge egos. It means realizing that when we are not doing it for God, we have lost track of what we’re doing. We have lost sight of who we are following.
So, let us—together—be the hands, the feet, the voice, the compassion and the love of Jesus in the world around us. Like those 70, let us be amazed at what we can do in Jesus’ name. But more importantly let us rejoice!
Rejoice!
Rejoice this morning!
Rejoice in the fact that your name and my name—our names are written in heaven.
