An Ordinary Update from the Clemmons, on Mission
An Ordinary Update from the Clemmons, on Mission
Summer(over)time, Testimony, Summer Scenes
Dear friends and family,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
One year ago today I sat down and composed a letter—a letter many of you received—announcing our imminent move to Birmingham, AL. This move was, as best we understood it, the next faithful step in following God’s call on our life. In the letter, I tried to express some of our reasoning, our hope, our trepidation:
We just this week closed on a little house in Hoover, AL, which we’re eager to make into a home. We’re eager to meet new friends and families through Beeson, through church, and in our neighborhood. We’re also, when we pause for a second, a bit petrified. We’re doleful at the prospect of leaving our dear friends in Colorado (not least Eleanor and Ames’ friends!). We’re disconsolate to be leaving Holy Trinity Anglican, the church that has nurtured and supported us through trying three years.
But still, we know that this is what God has called us to in this next season. Our faces are set like flint, and we press on in faith to the glory set before us.
The year which followed has been one continual testimony of God’s faithfulness and grace, your friendship and love, and our own fumbling attempts to mortify and submit and obey. I hope the newsletters of this past year (and the update which follows in this one) stand as some monument to the simple steadfast love of the Lord.
To those of you who have been supporting us, both in prayer and pocketbook, I offer my humblest and heartiest thanks. You’ve made sure my inevitable anxiety wouldn’t be over imminent indigence, but rather that I have so little to show in return for your gifts of provision. You each deserve a longer, personal update, which will be in your mailboxes (USPS permitting) by the end of the month.
For now,
Peace of Christ,
Zack
Summer(over)time
My life has been organized according to the academic calendar, without pause, from the time I was first cognizant of time. I was a student, then a teacher, and again I’m a student. Summers arrive, then, with a certain set of expectations. Some time off, some side-gigging, some travel to see family, some leisurely reading.
I knew our family’s list of aestival obligations had been accumulating, but I woefully underestimated. Which is just to say our summer has grown far busier than I had anticipated. May was primarily a month of tending to house projects which had been neglected during the semester, as well as visiting Erin’s family at the TN homestead one last time as they prepare to move house.
A praise: By the end of May, we had finally worked out details such that I could start part-time work as the janitor at Christ the King! This has been good, honest work each week; it’s fun to get back into my janitorial groove (I also worked as janitor at the school where I taught in Castle Rock).
Shortly thereafter, I started Summer Hebrew, which has been pretty well a whirlwind. Having learned (and taught) Koine Greek and Latin, I have all my grammatical and syntactical categories pretty well down, but the script and pointing and strange new systems (e.g. right-to-left orientation, verbs with gender [???], inflections that primarily effect vowel changes, etc.) of a Semitic language have been harder to process, especially at such an accelerated clip.
Then another part-time, temporary job cropped up, in a furniture warehouse down in Calera, which pays relatively well but is physically quite exhausting. Essentially, we’re unboxing and reboxing furniture which survived a warehouse flood. I’ve grown quite handy with a boxcutter and tapegun. Glamorous work, really. I have class on MWF, and then work the warehouse job on Tuesdays and Thursdays (and clean the church somewhere in there). At our parish here, Christ the King, our rector has been on sabbatical, another priest recently moved to church plant in Jackson, Tennessee, and my fellow deacon and his wife just welcomed their first child into the world, so my duties at Christ the King have marginally increased. I'm working one other gig, too, for a Samford professor whose forthcoming book I'm commenting upon and helping to prepare a number of articles to put out before its publication. Plus other little opportunities that crop up: helping friends move, hosting guests (including my family), tagging along with a handyman to replace bits of soffit and fascia (to learn the process, primarily). Plus church softball, of course, for fun.
Eleanor and Ames and Virgil are all having their own great summers, in their respective ways. Virgil’s definitely the heftiest of our children, which is fun. Ames is a very expressive and opinionated chap; his personality continues to emerge in entertaining ways, especially in song. And Eleanor is a brilliant reader and storyteller. She’s been writing lots of letters (and asking how lots of words are spelled), so at least she has the correspondence game going strong. We continue to be regulars at the library (Eleanor finished the summer reading challenge [2000 pages] in 3 weeks flat), and we continue to haunt the Birmingham Botanical Gardens and Aldridge Gardens. Erin has been gearing up her pottery business of late, selling at a couple markets, establishing our weekly schedule of parenting/working, filling some custom orders, and experimenting with online pop-up shops. She also has a healthy flower garden going strong, which means we get fresh cut flowers in every room of the house, and our humble attempts at vegetables have kept the deer eating well.
One More Testimony of Provision
By June’s second week, I reckon I was the busiest I’d been in some time. A full-time student’s workload (learning an utterly unfamiliar language), three part-time jobs, diaconal duties, young children who don’t seem to nap anymore. It’s always deeply humbling to remember that many people—perhaps you included—live their lives perpetually at this high-pitch of busyness. Some by choice, most by necessity. These seasons are needful reminders for me, not least as a minister-in-training, that the ways of life are myriad, and always happening. We know our own lives best, but we must cultivate imagination and memory that we might remember that our own lives do not exhaust human experience, and that each person we encounter—toiling or resting, overwhelmed or sitting pretty—encounters the same day in a very different way.
To top things off, I was slated to preach at the end of June. For those of you unfortunate enough to have experienced it, my sermon prep process (while somewhat improved over the years) mostly involves being utterly consumed with reflection and writing and rewriting in every spare second of the week. It’s not anxiety, really, but I am a touch nervier.
By Tuesday of sermon week, my body decided it had had enough for a bit, and I fell precipitously ill. For two solid days, I was laid low with high fevers and host of other meanspirited symptoms. All the tests came back negative (from COVID to strep), but a run of antibiotics had me mostly upright by Friday. I fought exhaustion to keep up with Hebrew, and a sermon came together in my occasional moments of lucidity. (At one low point, in a sort of fever dream state, I talked through the entirety of the sermon and thought it quite good. It did not translate well to paper.)
Saturday night, after I cleaned the church, I spent some time alone in the sanctuary, praying and rehearsing for the next morning. I thought, “So long as I can bring some energy tomorrow, I think we’ll make it.”
Sunday morning, the energy simply wasn’t there. By the time the service started, I was feeling faint. I sat down during some of the singing, trying to properly catch my breath. I started in on the quiet prayers, “Lord, I need the strength to preach your word.”
In college, I had a few panic attacks. Traumatic in the usual way, but I gradually learned how to recognize their onset and calm them away. It’s been years since I’ve had another. But when I stepped to the pulpit, within the first thirty seconds, I could feel the stirrings of a full-blown attack. Within seconds, my brain had fired off a dozen different possibilities for how this might play out—how I might have Fr Daniel pick up where I would leave off in the manuscript, how I might slink off the chancel, how I could get some water. I offered a silent prayer: the Lord needed to sustain me, right now, through this sermon.
And then He did. Calm returned, my breathing regulated, the sermon didn’t miss a beat. I would not have
I write this to offer a testimony to the mundane faithfulness of God, which I find can be easy to forget—even to doubt—unless I make a habit of noting it.
(If you have any interest, you can read or listen to the sermon here.)
Summer Scenes
Some scenes from Cedar Hill, TN, Birmingham, AL, and Niceville, FL. Summer 2021.
Status Board
Reading: Despite the overfull schedule, summer is still a time for some leisure reading. And I finally got to Marilynne Robinson’s new novel, Jack. Jack was far from my favorite character in the world of Gilead, and I had some trepidation about spending a whole novel more or less in his head. These worries were misplaced. It’s lovely, patient, luminous, full of grace—everything you can expect from Robinson. If I’m ever a good pastor, it’ll be in no small measure thanks to her writing.
Listening: I’ve never watched Eurovision (the European pop song competition) and never will. But somehow I stumbled upon the songs from the Icelandic entry, Daði Freyr, and they’ve changed my life. Most pop songs are about casual hedonism and the regrets which attend casual hedonism. Daði Freyr’s song entries the past two years are about, respectively, how great marriage is, and how it keeps getting better 10 years in, and how he can’t wait to hear what his newborn daughter thinks about the world. So wholesome, and eminently danceable.
Watching: A few years ago, after completing ignoring the NBA for some time, I decided on a whim to become a Milwaukee Bucks fan. I still basically ignore the NBA, but it’s been fun to check in on Giannis and co. from time to time. Now, after a couple years of sad playoff showings, they’ve made the Finals! So I might actually find a way to watch a game or two.
Food & Drink: Still genuinely mad at the deer who ate my heirloom tomatoes just days before they reached vine-ripeness, but grateful for the few grape tomatoes I’ve been able to sample from our garden, which have been delectable.
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:
we thank God for providing part-time work for me this summer, and that my janitor job at our church is secured
that I would be diligent and successful in learning Hebrew this summer, that I might better read, mark, learn, inwardly digest, and proclaim God’s character and work through the Old Testament
that we would have a bit more space and time to devote ourselves to deep reflection on our trajectory one year in to our “life on mission,” and as we think through the year to come—spiritually, familialy, habitually, financially, &c.
that Erin’s ceramics practice & business would develop strongly in the coming semester
that Eleanor and Ames would find joy in prayer and worship
that Virgil would continue to grow healthy and strong
that God would go before us to begin preparing our post-seminary ministry
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, Ames & Virgil–-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 season on mission, with part-time income.
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Zack, so good to hear about you and your family. Glad to hear your alive and kicking, even if a little kicked around at times! We’ll keep on praying for you guys, we are hoping for you the very best in your lives and ministry. Peace, Tom