The View from Bolton Street

Dear Parish Family,

Today is Pi Day, 3/14 for those of you who are not math afficionados. Through the years I have enjoyed Pi Day as a perfect excuse to have pizza, or a dessert pie or both in celebration of this inscrutable number. It is considered “irrational” because it is one of those oddities that cannot be expressed as a ratio of two whole numbers. Even if calculated out to more than a trillion digits, there is no repeating pattern.

Five years ago, on the eve of Pi Day, I abruptly canceled a Pi Day party at church—a smorgasbord of pizzas and dessert pies, because I began to be nervous  about what I saw as a dangerous pattern of an unexplainable respiratory ailments. I wrote the bishop and said, “I need to close down the church and go online because something strange is happening, and I don’t want to endanger the people.” He told me that was a serious decision, but that he trusted me to go with my instincts. A couple of days later, the diocese asked all of the churches to put a pause on in-person gathering as we plunged into the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a traumatic experience, but most of the churches stayed community, and five years later, we are still here! Then, still in pandemic times, three years ago, my mother died in the early hours of the morning on Pi Day, and it became even less fun for me as the day rolls around each year. 

However, this year is different. As I reflect on all of the things that have changed in my life in three years, I have begun thinking: pi is an irrational number—one not governed by patterns. It is stubbornly insistent, refusing to surrender to the conformity of repetition. And while I certainly value tradition and familiarity, the thing I love most about God is the endless innovation of our Creator. I decided to reclaim Pi Day as a symbol that we are not meant to be prisoners of repetition. Within any given moment exists the possibility of something new. God will always be the model of innovation. The prophet Isaiah spoke on behalf of God (43:19) Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Waste no opportunity to find the new thing. Spring is here (or will be next Thursday). Don’t keep doing the same things; we can use our rational minds, but we can still break free of patterns like that super-hero number pi. 

Love and Light,

Pan +