Words & Letters

Rev Henry C. Burdick,III retires

Transitions, part 1………

About ten years ago the Search Committee discerned, selected, and otherwise plucked Fr. Henry Burdick from amongst a bevy of superb priests to a Call at Trinity Branford. We realized Hank’s transition to Trinity would be both helped and hindered by the simple fact that he had already served in the Church as an assistant in the earliest days of his ordained ministry and knew there would be some tricky shoals to navigate to make his coming to Trinity go smoothly. As Senior Warden I thought I might want to keep an eye on this and on him.

In fact, I soon realized the opposite thing happened, he was the one keeping the eye on us. From the start, he kept coming up with creative ways to nurture what I think of as his “sourdough bread” approach to parish ministry. Allow me to explain. Hank is a great connector- with all the instincts and empathy to tune in to where a person is and walk with him/her, along pathways narrow and treacherous, or smooth and wide. In this is the implicit message that who we are as Christians is readily evident by who and how we are with each other, in community. This community is one that takes miracles for granted, and shares this little piece of the world during our brief time together with joy, support, engagement, and love. But moreover, while creating within a parish family the social context for a practiced Christianity, we also are a kind of “sourdough starter mix”, glutinous and connected, ready to take a contagious optimism out into the world well beyond the historic walls of Trinity.

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his beliefs from his occupations?..... And he to whom worshipping is a window, to open and to shut, has not yet visited the house of his soul whose windows are from dawn to dawn. Your daily life is your temple and your religion. Khalil Gibran

The Ten Best Days…….

Hank does not have a doctorate in mathematics. In his sermons he often reminded us that it was indeed one of the ten best days. There were nearly as many ten best days as there are in fact, days. That’s exactly the point…

I love the rich running day, but I do not desert her in whom I lay so long, I know not how I came of you, and I know not where I go with you, but I know I came well and shall go well. Walt Whitman

Transitions, part 2……….

Father Hank’s retirement- these words uttered together form an oxymoron for me. This is a transition not only for Trinity, and for Hank and Kathrine, but for Branford, for the Diocese, for family, for friends…… in countless ways, small and large, life changes. There are numerous people Hank’s ministry has touched, moved, stimulated, engaged, guided, assuaged, enraged, enwrapped, and nurtured. He has journeyed with us during our most vulnerable, intimate, meaningful, and intense moments; at our birth and at our death, at marriage or loss, knowing us in our strength and weakness, sharing in our tears of pain and of joy, and otherwise bringing us closer to that place of peace, which passes all understanding.

It is not possible to do an accounting. What I do know is that this transition intensifies our appreciation, if not our understanding, and make us take pause by throwing into a sharper relief, the fact that we are different now than when Fr. Burdick first strode through the front door of Trinity Church as Rector. The footstone at that brilliant red door bears the inscription from the 100^th Psalm, “Enter His Gates with Thanksgiving”. Perhaps we feel that that just a little bit more today.

So, to Reverend Henry C. Burdick, III, I offer this unsolicited advice… go bake some bread, and as important,…… break some bread, …… in health and happiness and in peace..……. and I wish that you and Kathrine may have had experienced only 10% of your ten best days.

John P. Seibyl, MD

15 February 2009

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Dr. John P. Seibyl, MD semi-retires

31 December 2017

Great Diamond Island, Maine

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens…….

I take this opportunity to inform the Invicro family that effective January 1, 2018 I will step down as Managing Director, New Haven while continuing to work on various scientific and core lab projects on a part-time basis. This decision to go into semi-retirement is largely driven by increasing physical challenges associated with Parkinson’s disease and supported by my confidence in the ongoing organizational changes in the nascent leadership infrastructure. That being said, transitions are difficult at best, particularly when it involves something that is such an important focus of my energy as well as a deep source of satisfaction and joy for nearly two decades.

Upon hearing that an American newspaper inaccurately reported his demise whilst he was abroad, Mark Twain famously cabled back, “Rumors of my death of been greatly exaggerated”. While reducing my time, I am not going anywhere and will continue to labor in Invicro’s rich scientific vineyard as well as commiserate with Jacob about the latest faux pas of the hapless 0-16 Cleveland Browns. I shall devote energies to other endeavors as well including writing, working in my nonprofit which teaches mindfulness and restorative justice practices to elementary school children, and travel.

This past year provided all of us a remarkable series of changes, transitions, transformations, and re-creations of our Company. While changes are inexorable, it is important to remember our collective values, culture, and scientific integrity. We embrace disruptive and transformational change even while maintaining this core constancy.

It is with a deep sense of gratitude I wish everyone a happy and successful new year and look forward to continuing our journey together 2018.

John

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A Colleague's Transition

28 September 2016

Dear D.,

Pardon my not being physically present to offer my heartfelt well wishes and farewell. Ironically, my absence is due to your future employer, Lilly, on whose behalf I am in Japan at an Asian IM. I write from halfway around the world from a land where I am a functional illiterate.

In thinking about the nearly 16 years you have been my colleague down the hall at MNI, I realize my meager words have limited power to capture the joy attendant to this fact.

Your transition fosters a mélange of feelings, thoughts, affects, and memories tumbling about in an inchoate cerebral slurry begging for organization and synthesis. I suppose the one word that helps to provide some of this order is “gratitude”.

I am grateful that you took a chance and the risk with us when we hatched a plan to start MNI and migrate outside the security of traditional academic medicine. Thank you for your trust.

I am grateful for your even-keeled and measured leadership of the clinic. Thank you for your wisdom and mindful presence.

I am grateful for your growth as a clinical scientist, and gratified by your mastery of running early phase clinical trials, from the logistics of negotiating with IRBs, countless sponsor calls, arranging a-lines, working through internal issues with chemistry, image processing, regulatory, even before the real science- working with the data- can commence. Thank you for your persistence and dedication.

Finally, I am grateful for a fellow traveler sharing the good, honest, and vitalizing work of clinical discovery with a goal, both noble and necessary; to have at the end of the day provided some genuine benefit in the lives of patients with neurodegenerative disease, the difficult hedonic calculus notwithstanding. Thank you for walking this path with us. It made the burden of the journey lighter, the joy of the adventure deeper, and the integrity and value of the work all the greater.

May your subsequent journeys be as light, engaging, and full of joyous purpose.

Fare thee well, D.

John

Dr. John P. Seibyl, MD semi-retires (the other half)

To all Invicro colleagues :

Effective October 15, 2018 I will be transitioning from part-time and semi-retirement to full retirement. I will continue to have a relationship with Invicro, as a consultant and investor.

I have spent the majority of my professional career working to remain relevant, to make some good of myself, and otherwise advance, through scholarly endeavor, the body of knowledge related to our field in ways that palpably improve the lives of those with neurodegenerative disorders. Since the beginning of this year when I went into semi-retirement I have been struggling to the opposite end; to become irrelevant, a less than necessary appendage which may be easily separated from the body without its missing critical or useful functions.

This difficult exercise in self-effacement makes me realize that the time that one spends in a place working with whole heart and soul is not something one just walks away from or becomes irrelevant to . The stamp of the individual is inexorably intermingled in many seen and unseen ways into the corporate fabric and culture. This is true for everyone in this company. While no one is indispensable, each has a unique opportunity to apply their own particular and singular skills, talents, and gifts toward a shared vision and purpose. When one leaves, the gift of that individual’s presence persists, embedded in a document, policy, or procedure, a methodology, or some bit of transferred knowledge, perhaps even wisdom; a kind of legacy which is both knowingly and unknowingly honored. We take advantage of and live within other‘s unspoken legacies in crafting our own. We influence, model, adjust, refine and sculpt each other.

It is gratitude for this influencing, modeling, adjusting, refining and sculpting of me and opportunity to do the same to you that I carry away from these nearly two decades. It has been a good ride, indeed. At the risk of being ploddingly pedantic, I would gently implore you to always remember what you do, and do well, does matter in incalculable ways to patients and families, and will matter to future struggling patients and families. Seemingly insignificant choices that you make today, the nuts and bolts, and the daily rhythms of this workplace convey us to new places, closer and closer to a treatment and perhaps a cure.

I bid you remember this, remember them, remember me…and never forget… you matter.

John Seibyl, MD

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Sermon Christ, Community, and Connection: A Neuroscientist’s Perspective

Use me, God. Show me how to take who I am, who I want to be, and what I can do, and use it for a purpose greater than myself. Dr. M.L. King, Jr.

In the African language Haya there is a saying, 'Omwana taba womoi,' which translates as; 'A child belongs not to one parent or home.' Many of us are familiar with a variant of this proverb,”It takes a village to raise a child”, which acknowledges the value of individuals acting in community for a common good.

Today’s reading of St. Paul’s first letter to the Christians in Corinth might be summarized as, “It takes a community to be a Christian”. Specifically, it is in the context of an integrated, well-functioning Faith community that we are best equipped to discover and live out God’s plan for our lives. Paul wrote his letter about 56 CE as a response to some troubling issues among the Corinthians. The community was divided and bickering, with members aligning themselves with different and competing religious leaders. Paul makes the case for Christian unity by describing the church as a composite of its members, akin to the human body, each with different functions and skills, yet all contributing in critical ways, to the body of Christ.

I wonder if St Paul were alive today, how he would think about Christian communities. Rather than use the simple analogy of the body’s constituent parts; of eyes, ears, hands, and feet, he might employ metaphors which stress the need for connection and communication. After all we live in the age of communication, most have these miraculous little devices, our smart phones in our pockets, our smart watches on our wrists, our smart televisions in our homes; all designed to facilitate communication and the ready flow of information. And while I love gadgets and appreciate the ability to turn on the lights in my home from my phone after getting a text message from my wife- while I’m in China, the technology can lead to disconnection. I frequently see families and groups of friends out together for dinner in a restaurant, sitting quietly, each with their head down tapping away at their phone, their faces somberly shining in the glow of the touch screen, distracted from the present moment. They are disconnected and isolated, ironically, by the very device designed to facilitate communication. Smart phones remind us that true human connection is not the same thing as superficial or anonymous communication.

But back to Paul and his take on modern Christian community. We humans are social beings who necessarily live in community. It is in the community of our nuclear family that, we as completely helpless infants had our first experience of the power of human interaction, to nurture and foster development of consciousness, language, and conscience. Later on, it is in the context of the larger Faith community that we develop, model, and perfect for each other Christ-like attitudes and behaviors. Subsequently, we take these lessons out into the secular world as living examples of the Good News.

Yes, Faith communities are complex with an intricate web of relationships, and composed of imperfect humans, each at a different and unique place in their spiritual journey. Further, as community, we share the most precious and vulnerable experiences of our lives. We are born, baptized, confirmed, married, maybe divorced, become ill and heal, and finally we die, all in membership in this community. Our personal aspirations, joys, tragedies, and loss, the whole spectrum of change in the course of life, is played out in the supportive matrix of the community, where, through our interactions with each other, we can become a more perfect sum of imperfect parts or we can stray off course.

Were he to write his epistle today, I think Paul would focus on the brain as his metaphor for the community, because the brain is all about connections. How can we better understand this? The brain is three pounds of fat, salt, protein, and water composed of 86 billion nerve cells, each which have one job, to communicate by spreading messages in the form of little electric impulses called action potentials. While the brain is only 2% of total body weight, it uses 20 to 25% of the available energy. Each nerve cell uses this energy to communicate. The brain, this gooey, gelatinous mass of cells is changing constantly, altered by the experiences of the world, by information that comes in through the senses, as well as its own internal inputs. The fact that you can hear and understand the words I speak now is the result of millions of nerves messaging each other along circuits and pathways which developed over time to serve the functions of hearing, language, memory, and comprehension. When I utter words in a language foreign to you, 'Omwana taba womoi’’ the words are heard but not comprehended (unless you were paying attention at the beginning of this sermon). You were not exposed to or developed the brain networks specific to the vocabulary and grammar of the Haya language. This is something you could learn, circuits can be modified, new connections can be enjoined, your brain can change.

You have more nerve cells in your brain when you are two years old than when you are 22-years-old or 72-years-old. Yet despite all those nerve cells, two year olds are not running the world (well, maybe some). A 2-year-old brain is about becoming, about laying down new wiring patterns, tying together clusters of nerve cells. It’s only in forming more connections that sophisticated functions emerge; language, motor coordination, consciousness, human affection. Networks develop amongst groups of nerve cells, self-assembling functional circuits organized out of the maelstrom of swirling electrical messages. Most mysteriously, from this controlled bioelectrical storm emerges the remarkable; symphonies, creativity, poetry, philosophy, humor, science, a sense of Self and Others, an appreciation of God.

It is also the source of jealousy, pettiness, and distrust, of foolishness, neglect, and violence, of the experience of pain and loneliness, the deviser of torture chambers, Inquisitions, and Holocausts. The brain can be instrument for evil or an instrument of sublime beauty and love. It permits our consciousness of and connection to our spirituality and godliness, our God-likeness.

So it is with the community constructed around Faith. Like the brain composed of it individual neurons, the community is composed of individual members whose job it is to be connected. Out of these connections emerges a community invigorated, inspired, and directed by Faith, passing messages of the Good News, living lives full of the spirit, characterized not by action potentials but the potential for action, for seeking out and implementing God’s plan, for raising up each other, for being the body of Christ.

Similar to our spiritual ancestors in Corinth, the quality of our community is entirely dependent upon the integrity of our communication with each other. So how are we with one another? Are we compassionate and trusting, humble and open-minded, curious and wondering? Do each of us, crafted in God’s image, see the spark (action potentials) of the Divine in one another and consequently treat one other with both awe and respect? And when we disagree and argue is it done with responsibility and integrity, knowing we are one community, one body consecrated? Finally, do we embrace a spirit of reconciliation with honest communication and an openness to the possibility of transformative forgiveness? Rev Martin Luther King, Jr in reflecting on the spiteful hatred directed toward him wrote, "I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

Communities may go down different pathways, choosing expedient self-centered purposes or lofty, altruistic ends, much like the good and evil potential of the individual. It is very difficult to be a functioning, ethical community. It takes energy to maintain connection and a set of shared values. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote,” Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule.” The real power that runs through a Faith community, the energy that invigorates and informs, that permits the emergence of a small piece of the Kingdom of Heaven out of a network of connected individuals is, simply…. Love. Communities are about connections and networks of Christian love. Connections transform the lives of its members. The community is the substrate in which God dwells with us collectively, and acts through us individually.

'Omwana taba womoi,', a child belongs not to one parent or home. We belong to each other; we are responsible for one another. It takes a village to raise a child and a community to be a Christian. So, go out and love one another. After all, hate is too great a burden to bear. Amen

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A Collect for Discernment of a New Rector

Dear Lord, You gift us with membership in this Faith community at Trinity as we seek to be Your hands in the world. Guide us in our discernment of a new Rector to lovingly lead us to not only be Your hands, but also Your heart, as we work to bring glimpses of the Kingdom of Heaven to Branford and beyond. We bid You help us listen with precision, see with clarity, and understand with complete comprehension as we seek that person whom You are calling to be with us, so that we may walk the next steps in our spiritual journey through this earthly existence and in the fullness of time, come home to You. We ask this through Your Son, and our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen

Sermon DANCING WITH GOD

MEDITATION: O Father, let my meditations and words be a reflection of your Light, illuminating the pathways before us. Pray we may traverse these paths dancing your dance, delighting in your Will as your Chosen people. Amen

A. Some months ago, while walking along a street in New Orleans I heard music coming from about a block away. This is not unusual, but what was strange was that rather than the jazzy, bright, ambitiously energized sounds normally heard in the French Quarter, this music was rather slow, a dirge, like the lowing of a cow seeking her lost calf. I realized that I was watching a funeral procession. I saw the line of mourners file by me in the funeral parade, tiny and precise beads of sweat glistening on their faces in the humid, brilliant summer morning.

Suddenly and unexpectedly, the dirge changed into a bright, upbeat, and energetic sound. The mourners, taking their cue from this, were instantly transformed from their slow and deliberate funereal march into a frenetic dancing celebration, awakened in unison like a rousing dragon. Handkerchiefs, which moments ago were used to wipe tears of sadness and loss, became small white flags waved in jubilant celebration.

At first, I thought this a most extraordinary, odd, if not schizoid display. On further consideration, I realized this actually makes a point on a number of levels; emotional, psychological, and theological. These mourners are a faith community who wear their beliefs on their sleeves, publicly and unabashedly joyous in the certainty of one thing: that as much as they miss and grieve for their departed brother or sister, they are exuberant in the understanding that their friend is going home…. to God. They teach us a lesson; that as members of a community in genuine relationship with God, there is always a place in our burdened hearts for glimmers of light and weightlessness and joy, even ecstatic dance.

B. Backtrack now 3,000 years to another dance by another faith community, this time in ancient Israel where King David led a celebratory parade with some thirty thousand men “dancing mightily” accompanied by harps, lyres, cymbals, and tambourines. The reason for this raucous celebration is the Ark of the Covenant, a precious object to the Jews and the material symbol of God’s promise and presence in the community. The Ark, containing two stone tablets bearing the inscription of the Ten Commandments, was being brought to an honored place in Jerusalem having accompanied the Israelites in their years of wandering in the desert.

The Ark is important because it represents God’s connection to the Jewish community, the covenant made with Abraham, reinforced by Moses and symbolized by the Ten Commandments. To this faith community connection with God is in a covenant defined by laws and commandments, articulated through prophets and interpreted and codified for the people by priests. God’s marvelous choreography, his plan for his Chosen, worth dancing mightily over.

C. Fast forward now 1000 years to St. Paul writing to a mostly Gentile faith community in the young church in Ephesus. Paul’s letter was an effort to address a major controversy, specifically, how is it that Gentiles can receive benefit of salvation by the Messiah promised to the Jews, or rephrased, can one be a Christian without being a Jew? More important, it speaks to the evolution of the relationship between God and his Chosen peoples. Taking from St. Paul’s letter: “In Christ we have obtained …. an inheritance toward redemption as God's own people…”. God reaches out to us through his Son, Jesus, who becomes incarnate, one of us, and serves as our bridge to heaven, as intermediary and mentor. He delivers the Father’s invitation to the great dance as His chosen people.

D. Frankly, this is an astounding and remarkable notion; that we as a community of faith are rehabilitated through grace to be true children of God. Despite our flaws, our pettiness, our undeserving, self-centered, and repeatedly sinful lives, despite all this, God sees something in us. His startling overture may be due to the simple idea that we are created with love in His image; as my Sunday school student once told me, “God don’t make junk”.

As God’s children, we inherit the possibility of redemption, bounty in this life and in the one beyond, beyond the sting of suffering and disappointment, beyond the constraints of our physical bodies, beyond the fear of death and the tomb, beyond our incomplete understanding, to a moment when, Paul writes, “we will see everything with perfect clarity, all that we know now is partial and incomplete, but then we will know everything completely”. We inherit the possibility of going home.

Yet, accepting God’s invitation to engagement as his people in His great dance, is not without risk and consequence; even as we giddily celebrate, we must soberly assess the meaning of accepting claim to our inheritance. This is not about defeating our enemies in battle. Nor is it about obtaining great wealth, influence, or popularity. It is about embracing difficult positions and stances, acting counter to our own seeming interests at times, turning the other cheek and having it struck, being put out, mocked and ridiculed. Paul knew this risk quite well, he wrote to the Ephesians from a Roman prison. John the Baptist provides even more dramatic demonstration of the risk and the difficult interface between the secular world and persons of faith. Mark’s gospel describes yet another dance, one very different and in dramatic contrast to the Israelites’ joyous celebration of the Ark in Jerusalem or that of our friends celebrating the passing of their brethren in New Orleans. The dance of Herod’s step-daughter Salome is seductive, manipulative, and full of retribution, subterfuge, and hate. It is a dance of whirling, swirling, salacious evil, out of step with God, commissioned by Herod’s drunken oath, costing John the Baptist his head, … a dance of death.

E. Some two thousand years after John the Baptist, how do we understand God’s mystical choreography in our lives, in our faith community? Are we in step as members of God’s family, created in His image and a reflection of Him to others? How do you manifest your spark of the Divine in the world at large? Is faith a private thing reserved for Sunday mornings or does it spill out of you for all the world to see, like the effusive mourners in New Orleans?

As for my own dance with God and Faith, sometimes the irony can be overwhelming, you see I have Parkinson’s, a movement disorder I have studied all my professional life, developing brain imaging techniques for diagnosis and monitoring treatment responses. My first thought about this diagnosis was that this is not possible; it must all be in my head. After all, I am the diagnostician, not the diagnose (denial). I realized of course, one way or another, it is definitely in my head (acceptance). Who can be so lucky as to be able to get up each morning and go to work on unlocking the secrets of the disease that one is afflicted with? Now I simply feel that God has a pointed sense of humor…….. as do I(integration). My own dance with the Divine (again an odd metaphor for someone with a movement disorder) has taught me that I am never alone, that curses can become blessings, and obstacles become opportunities.

Another take on Faith and God among us is from the writer and artist K. Gibram:

Is not Faith “… all deeds and all reflection? …

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself;

This for my soul, and this other for my body?…...

Your daily life is your temple and your religion.

Whenever you enter into it, take with you your all. …..

And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles.

Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children.

And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the cloud, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain.

You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.”

Finally, you shall see Him, in the faces of others, companions on this earthly journey, in this community at Trinity, in the Christians dancing through their grief on the streets of New Orleans, in all of us, miraculously, part of God’s great plan, His choreography of restoration and salvation meted out through the generations. We are co-inheritors of God’s unfathomable grace, privileged beyond our frail understanding to be invited to our own dance with the Divine and to address our reply to His invitation using these two familiar and precious words…. “Our Father”.

Post-meditation: “…. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.” K. Gibram

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Congratulatory letter on a high school commencement during a global pandemic

Dear G. ,

We wish you our warm and heart-felt congratulations on your graduation. This is an important event that represents not only the end of one phase, but more critically, hints to the promise at the start of the next. That is why graduations are “commencements”, a term literally meaning “to begin”. May you have a joyous and fulfilling new beginning. The world awaits your contributions, your talent and passion, your energy. Along your journey you will be faced with many choices, some seemingly trivial, others life-changing. These are like the sculptor chipping away at the marble block in search of the statue hidden within the stone. The consequences of your choices chip away at an unfinished self, transforming potential into the actual, and slowly releasing the You you are to become.

Our wish for you is that you choose wisely, from the heart, guided by your moral compass to do what is right, never compromising personal integrity or losing insight into the mystery, miracle, and sometimes pain of personal growth. Be facile, open to the unexpected and the opportunities that sometimes come with life’s tribulations. Understand that we are all gifted by virtue of our very existence, in simply awakening to a new morning, or listening to the sounds of birds orchestrating their shrill symphony in the nearby forest, or the unexpected beauty of a glass of orange juice on the kitchen table, beads of condensation beaming a glistening prismatic light when illumined by the morning sun. There is cause for gratitude in every moment of your life, even the more challenging ones. Carry yourself with gratitude, kindness, and respect for others, but also respect for yourself. Show humility and the ability to laugh at yourself, but also be bold, determined, and unrelenting. Strive to be more compassionate, than you are passionate; more loving, than you are loved; more forgiving than you are forgiven. Finally, may you be so lucky that your aspirations are the inspiration for your perspiration.

Congratulations, fare well, be well,

John and Cathy Seibyl

Note to a College Friend on the Passing of His Wife

Brett,

Thank you for providing the vignettes about Eve. I think these capture something very special about her. It's funny how these brief moments, short interchanges that occur unexpected and with seeming randomness over the course of any normal day, can many years later have transformative impact on our lives. A short encounter, a memorable glance, even a single word can create a kind of sacred connection and offer precious insight about someone which teaches and inspires over a lifetime. We take these exchanges and build them into a compendium of memory that serves to chronicle the growth they engender in us during our life’s brief sojourn. At its best these memories become a fulcrum upon which we obtain a kind of equipoise and momentary balance, getting a glimpse of our own potential for being something greater, something better, someone more giving, and equal to the task of shaping others to see their own higher purpose. We owe an unfathomable debt to those who touch us in this way and cherish them as they end their own sojourn. Brett I imagine the very depths of the grief you now experience is testimony to the power of these moments of sublime connection, and the profound sense of gratitude which undergirds your spirit as you celebrate and share the gift of Eve.

John