An Epiphany from the Clemmons, on Mission
2020 in Review, 2021 in Preview, & a newsletter-exclusive name reveal
Dear friends & family,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today, on this feast of the Epiphany of our Lord, when we remember and give thanks for the revelation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles (especially as typified by the visit of the Magi), I am reminded that no gift or offering could possibly suffice as repayment for the God’s gift in the Son’s Incarnation. Yet this gift—the Creator of the actual universe, with us and for us—means in part that we can offer our souls and bodies to God, in gratitude and without reservation, and He will actually receive them. He will receive us, and in His mercy forgive us and heal us and raise us up into new life and new virtue. This commitment and sacrifice—to give our lives over the mission of God—is both our acceptable worship and our only shot at lasting joy.
Which is why I am also thankful this day for the long, faithful line of Christians who, through both pioneering witness and patient generational transmission, have spread the Gospel of God’s Kingdom even to my end of the earth, and to yours. Their lives on mission have led to our own.
What follows is a brief reflection on the recent and less-recent past, and a preview of coming attractions for our family. PLUS, an exclusive baby-name reveal. Read on!
Peace of Christ,
Zack
A Seasonally-Appropriate December
Advent is a season of expectancy and waiting, Christmas a season of celebration and new life, tinged with the hint of looming tragedy (the Christ-child being born in order to die, the swaddling cloth looking awfully like a burial shroud). Our December lived up to its thematic setting, in ways we didn’t anticipate.
I had big plans for the month off from school—ambitious goals for reading and writing and study, strategies for picking up side gigs, hopes for a renewed and vigorous prayer life, a schedule open to attending to the needs and desires of my wife and children. And reader, it may surprise you to learn I failed at all of them. It turns out the best laid plans of mice and men do in fact gang aft agley. Ambitions do not so easily transmogrify into instantaneous virtue.
So books were left unread, essays undrafted, Greek vocab cards gathered a month’s dust. I did stain a deck solo, and loaded a truck, but I didn’t succeed in stringing together a more regular schedule of odd jobs. I found myself selfishly hoarding or begrudgingly bestowing my time, rather than willingly giving it to my eager children, or to prayer. I suppose this is turning into a kind of public confession. I wanted to have something to show for the unique gift of a “free month,” especially to those of you who have generously provided for my family in so many ways this past year. Yet I feel that all I have to show for December is that I remain a sinner, in need of mercy and grace and prayer.
December was a month of plans made and then dashed. My plan for the perfect summer job was no match for the slow-grinding wheels of government timelines. Our hopes (and Erin’s diligent efforts) for a January-launch of a family ceramics business were short-circuited, so to speak, by persisting kiln troubles.
But all was not failure and loss. I did really enjoy more time with Eleanor and Ames, and I did get some needed house-work done and began serving consistently at Christ the King, and Erin really did produce some lovely ceramic work (check out, for instance, the lovely nativity set below). And perhaps most significantly, we enjoyed some welcome time with our family. This season made us freshly grateful that we live within driving distance of pretty much our entire family. We met my family at my Mimi’s home in Florida (including a beach jaunt!), and then were able the next week to spend a few days with Erin’s family in Tennessee. Eleanor and Ames are no doubt in attention-withdrawal now that there aren’t grandparents and cousins to coo over them all day.
And then of course there was the celebration of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, with their welcome and familiar reminder that God has not despised us, but has drawn near.
So I write this afternoon newly resolved to redeem the time before me, and with the fading light of December 2020 rosily filtered through the lens of gratitude.
2020 in Review: Gratitude Edition
Erin has informed me that the last thing the world needs is another “COVID Year” reflection, and she’s right. And the prospect of attempting to reflect adequately on the over-fullness this past year fills me with existential dread. So instead, here’s a list of 20 things for which we’ve been grateful for in the past year:
That we worship and serve a God whose faithfulness never fails, and whose steadfast love endures forever
The outpouring of generosity we’ve received from near-countless family and friends, supporting us in this strange season
A home
That we were able to visit twice this year (even through a window) with my Gigi, Jewel Gillis Butler, who passed away just over a week ago at 99.
Squeezing in my ordination to the diaconate just before the US entered full pandemic-mode
A brief, bizarre, probably-never-to-be-repeated experience of remote work
Our church famil(ies), who sent us off and welcomed us, respectively, with characteristically Christian love
Studio space
Cross-country visits from friends (we’re looking at you, Bishops and Bill and Sam and family)
Our health, preserved by God through some painful and fearful illnesses
The opportunity to officiate my first wedding (homily text here)
Beeson Divinity School
Erin’s gardenia bush
5 years of marriage
Honda engines, and a car that has carried us an unprecedented number of miles this year
A firepit, and pretty much endless deadwood to feed it
Eleanor & Ames’ budding friendship
A pretty uneventful cross-country move, all things told
Birmingham Botanical Gardens (and it’s lack of an entry fee)
The blessing of a third child to anticipate and adore
2021 in Preview: Goals & a Name Reveal
This newsletter is already feeling unwieldy, so I’ll try to keep things short here. I used to be skeptical of New Year’s Resolutions, but these days I find myself grateful for any forces which might fortify the will unto fresh resolve. It’s a bit nervy to commit to such things in public, but accountability is a good thing, so here’s a small smattering of ambitions for 2021:
To, between Erin and myself, read ~100 books
Respond to texts & emails immediately (which, in turn, means only checking texts & emails at appointed times)
Post-pregnancy, again take up the habit of running (and to complete a half-marathon)
Refrain from buying any non-school books
Live on a monthly budget of ~$2000
And in the next month (January 2021), we plan to:
Complete another seminary course (DVMS500 | Christian Missions)
Pray Morning & Evening Prayer every day (and thus read Galatians, 1 & 2 Thessalonians, and most of 1 Corinthians, Jeremiah, and John)
Read ~4 books by & write about the missiology of Lesslie Newbigin
Complete Eleanor’s first reading course (Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons)
Make 4 sculptures
Have a new baby (due date: January 27th)
Speaking of a new baby, here’s a newsletter exclusive. We elected to do this time what the majority of history’s parents had no choice but to do: waiting to learn our child’s sex until birth. Which means we have to have multiple names ready. We’ve got our potential girl name locked, so we’ll keep that one secret until it’s needed.
But we’ve always had a harder time with boy names. We’ve narrowed the field, but haven’t quite decided on the one. So, while we’re not soliciting opinions, exactly, we thought we’d publicly share our top few, and see what sticks. (You’re welcome to share your favorite of the names with us privately, though!) In the event we end up with Boy #2, here are our top contenders (in alphabetical order):
Ezekiel Kingfisher Clemmons
Virgil Ezekiel Clemmons
Wilbur Ezekiel Clemmons
Status Board
Reading: My big winter novel this year is the final volume in Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, The Mirror & the Light. It’s a lyrical account of Thomas Cromwell’s brilliant and mostly immoral machinations. Erin’s working her way through a book that was really influential for me in college, Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung’s Glittering Vices.
Listening: I’ve never quite clicked with audiobooks, but there’s a specific genre that I find lends itself well to the form. The book needs to by non-fiction, relatively short, and organized into coherent, clear chapters or essays. Right now, I’ve found the perfect exemplar, Sara Hendron’s What Can a Body Do?, which is a captivating meditation on design & disability (or, in more precise terms, mis-fittings between persons and the built world).
Watching: Erin & I have a relatively new tradition of listing and ranking our Top 10 Films watched each year. These are films we watched for the first time in a year, not films released in a year (we’re usually at least a year behind in seeing new movies). Here’s my list:
A Hidden Life (dir. Terence Malick, 2019)
The Wild Pear Tree (dir. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2018)
Chernobyl (miniseries, dir. Johan Renck, 2019)
Little Woman (dir. Greta Gerwig, 2019)
The Irishman (dir. Martin Scorcese, 2019)
Barcelona (dir. Whit Stillman, 1994)
Sorry We Missed You (dir. Ken Loach, 2019)
First Cow (dir. Kelly Reichardt, 2019)
Light From Light (dir. Paul Harrill, 2019)
Knives Out (dir. Rian Johnson, 2019)
Food & Drink: Not much to report here. We’re mostly sticking with the staples these days, though allow me to commend this beef ragu recipe which I’ve made a couple times this winter.
Prayer Requests
The best way to support us is to join with the Son in remembering us before the Father. If you’d like to pray with and for us, here are some things you can remember:
a safe & healthy birth for Erin and our child
healing for Eleanor & Ames, who have yet to fully overcome a lingering cold
that Eleanor & Ames would love & receive well their new sibling
that our kiln woes might end; that Erin might receive direction & peace regarding her art
that Zack would be granted the virtue to devote himself to study & service
that we would be presented with more opportunities to witness to our neighbors
that our financial needs would be met, and that Zack in particular would be at peace
We’d also like to pray with and for you! If you’re reading this, you’re probably already in our prayers, but we’d love to know more specifically what we can pray for. You can text us, of course, or you can email us prayer requests at clemmonsonmission@gmail.com
We’re the Clemmons family–-Zack, Erin, Eleanor, and Ames–-living & studying & working in Birmingham, Alabama for sake of God’s Kingdom.
If you’d like, you can support us financially as we navigate this new season on mission, without incomes.
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