The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, joined by the Rev. Natalie Hanson, leads the congregation in song during worship Thursday in the Hall of Philosophy.
Column by Mary Lee Talbot
“When guests came to Sunday dinner at our house, we all had to be able to talk about the sermon. When I complained that the sermon was boring, my mother told me, ‘If you listen hard enough, you can find something. Half of it (understanding the sermon), is up to you,’” the Rev. Natalie Hanson recalled. She talked about her faith journey with Bishop Eugene Sutton at the 9:15 a.m. Thursday morning worship service in the Hall of Philosophy. The Scripture reading was Matthew 22:8–14.
When Sutton asked her if she was a “good girl” in high school, Hanson responded, “Oh, God, yes.” She was arrested once for participating in a protest at a local high school to allow students to be part of the decision-making in the school. When she appeared before the judge, he said to her, “Just don’t go there anymore and make trouble.”
When she was a student at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, she met Fr. Charlie Gonzalez, S.J., who “brought magic to worship.” He organized a retreat to St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, and Hanson met Fr. Theophane Boyd, who had just finished a year of silence.
“It was my first experience of someone whose presence had power and density in the world. He asked me ‘Who are you?’ and like a little child, I just twirled, weightless, in his presence. I was caught in the silence,” Hanson said.
When the Upper New York United Methodist Conference reached out to her about going to seminary, she was beginning to think about teaching at a university, but as she thought about it, she realized she loved biblical study, preaching and the possibility of the local church.
“I had a dream of walking on a railroad embankment and seeing the lights of a town and hearing the conversations in the houses. I saw a light at the end of the town and it said, ‘It is going to be lonely but worth it.’ I sent my application in to the conference the next day,” Hanson said. She was ordained as a deacon in the 1970s but was not ordained an elder until “12–14 years later, the longest time in the Upper New York Conference,” she said.
When she was asked to be a district superintendent, the Bishop told her to take time to pray about it. “I loved the local church and when I talked to my husband, Paul, he said, ‘if not you, who?’ I was praying in the shower one day and a voice said, ‘You can do it; you can be a cheerleader.’”
Sutton asked her if she ever had doubts about God or her faith. Hanson said, ‘I find it is most necessary to pray when I am knocked to my knees.” She uses Ignatian prayer because of its simple pegs for asking questions. The first question is to reflect on the day or week and ask what one recalls most vividly. The second question is to ask where God was in that event. The third question is to ask how God wanted one to be in that situation, and the fourth asks what one should take into the next new day.
When Sutton asked why she had chosen Matthew 22:8–14 as the Scripture for the day, Hanson said that she was a precocious little girl for whom school came easily, but she knew she was not that good. “I thought I was a fake,” she said.
When she took Clinical Pastoral Education as part of her seminary training, this was the Scripture she chose to live with. Hanson said, “The Scripture grabbed me. I saw myself dressed in rags. I was the one who could not accept a compliment. But then the rags began to fall off and I saw something shining. I have some gifts to share with people and I rejoice in who God made me to be.”
The Rt. Rev. Eugene Taylor Sutton, senior pastor of Chautauqua, presided. The Rev. Larry Malakey read the Scripture. Sonya Subbayya Sutton, interim director of Sacred Music, played Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Prelude Op. 32, No. 5, for piano, on the Steinway piano for the prelude. Kris Miller, host of the Quaker House, read the poem “We Drink the Same Water,” from the book Wild Grace by Chelan Harkin. Anna Womack, a long-time Chautauquan and musician, led the morning prayers. Four male members of the Motet Choir, accompanied by Sutton, led the congregation in “Wade in the Water.” At the end of the service, the congregation sang “This Little Light of Mine,” under the direction of Bishop Sutton. Support for this week’s chaplaincy and preaching is provided by The Samuel M. and Mary E. Hazlett Memorial Fund. Support is also made possible by Week Eight Presenting Sponsor Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield, AHN Westfield Memorial and HealthNow Administrative Services.
