Receiving with The Rev. Tricia Templeton

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Over the next four weeks, For People will feature special guests from the Diocese of Atlanta: The Rev. Tricia Templeton, Justin Strickland, The Rev. Canon Salmoon Bashir, and Dr. Beth-Sarah Wright. Each guest will write that week's For Faith weekly devotional and join For People host Melissa Rau to dive deeper into their reflections. Join us each week as they share their stories and insights.

In the first guest episode, Melissa has a conversation with The Rev. Tricia Templeton centered on the parable of the Good Samaritan. During Tricia's time serving in the Peace Corps in the early 1980s, she experienced a frightening situation when thieves broke into her Malaysian hotel room while she slept, stealing everything except her passport. Stranded with no money and limited options, she encountered unexpected compassion from a Thai woman prostitute. This stranger provided meals, packed lunch for Tricia's journey, and gave her emergency money—going far beyond basic assistance. The parallels to Jesus' radical parable are striking: help often comes from those we least expect. As Tricia wisely observes, "The most unlikely person might be just the person who has what you need at that moment." Listen in for the full conversation.

Read For Faith, the companion devotional.

The Rev. Tricia Templeton has been rector of St. Dunstan’s for 21 years. She previously served churches in Knoxville and Chattanooga. Before going to seminary she was a newspaper reporter and editor and a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand. 

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Episode Transcript

Tricia (00:00):
Not to let our preconceived ideas of who's
going to be the helper keep usfrom receiving or from just
being able to appreciate thatpeople who we might not expect
to be there might be there withjust what we need in a time of

(00:20):
trouble, kind of like respectingthe dignity of every human
being.
The most unlikely person mightbe just the person who has what
you need at that moment.

Melissa (00:40):
Welcome to For People with Bishop Rob Wright.
I'm Melissa Rau, and this is aconversation inspired by For
Faith, a weekly devotion sentout every Friday.
You can find a link to thisweek's For Faith and a link to
subscribe in the episode'sdescription.
Now, over the course of July,bishop Wright is focusing on
continuing education, and so wehave four special guests from

(01:01):
the Diocese of Atlanta, and ourfirst guest today is the
Reverend Patricia Templeton.
She serves as the rector at StDunstan's Episcopal Church.
Welcome, Tricia.

Tricia (01:14):
Thank you, I'm glad to be here.

Melissa (01:16):
We're glad you're with us.
So you prepared the devotionthis week and that you named
receiving and it's really basedoff of the Good Samaritan.
And that you named Receivingand it's really based off of the
Good Samaritan.
You shared a personal storywhere you happened to be in
Malaysia, were down on your luckand you were robbed, right.

Tricia (01:34):
Yeah, yeah.
I was in Malaysia and someonebroke into the hotel room in the
middle of the night and when Iwoke up in the morning, like
every well, my camera and all mymoney were gone.
They left my passport,fortunately, but everything else
was gone.

Melissa (01:51):
That's incredible.
And so wait, they broke intoyour hotel room.
You slept through it Well.

Tricia (01:56):
I was.
I slept through it, which is alittle disconcerting.

Melissa (01:59):
Holy moly.
Yeah, that's wild.
And so why don't you just kindof sum up, I guess, how long ago
is this?

Tricia (02:06):
Oh, this was a long time ago.
It was when I was a Peace Corpsvolunteer in Thailand from 1980
to 83.
And it was our summer break andwe I was with some friends we
were going to take the trainfrom southern Thailand all the
way to Malaysia, Singapore,through Malaysia to Singapore,

(02:27):
with stops along the way, andthis was our first stop.

Melissa (02:30):
I have really appreciated the fact that you
kind of invited us the reader,if you will to come into the
story in a number of differentways, and so you asked a really
good question, kind of like how,with whom or with what do you
identify in the story, right,what would you say about that

(02:52):
overall?

Tricia (02:54):
Well, you know, the Good Samaritan is is almost trite
it's.
You know, it's such awell-known story and it's lost a
lot of its punch, you know,because now we think of
Samaritans as all good.
In Jesus' day, jews hatedSamaritans and I think when we

(03:16):
read that story we all want tothink that we're the good guy.
You know, we're the goodSamaritan, we're not going to
walk by somebody in need andignore them.
We're the good Samaritan, we'renot going to walk by somebody
in need and ignore them.
But I don't know, I've never,all these years, I've never put
myself in the to identify withthe victim lying in the ditch.

(03:36):
And that just seemed to me tobe a new way for me to think of
the story.
And when I thought of that, Ithought of what happened to me
in Malaysia many, many years ago.

Melissa (03:47):
You talk about the Thai woman who you met at the pool
at the quote expensive nicehotel.
Yeah, you owned your privilegeand your whiteness, so though
you were staying at kind of amore seedy hotel.
You said you met this Thaiwoman who happened to be a
prostitute, and I got to ask sohow did you know that?

Tricia (04:09):
Well, first of all, you know there is a lot of
prostitution in the open inThailand and it was not unusual
for for men, western men whowere in the country for an
extended time to maybe it's ahigh end prostitute, but they

(04:30):
will have a woman.
You know that they are payingto be their companion for the
time that they're there andmaybe it turns into something
more.
You know, she called him herboyfriend, but I, you know
that's, and maybe he, maybe he,turned out to be that, but, um,
it certainly started out as atransaction, a business

(04:51):
transaction, their relationship,yep.
And so what happened is my yeah, she did.
And how I got there was myfriends.
You know, I had zero money.
My friends didn't have enoughmoney for us, to all of us to
continue the trip and, you know,nobody used credit cards then.

(05:11):
So they gave me enough money toget back to Thailand and stay
in this seedy, really seedyhotel, and there was also a nice
hotel in town that catered moreto westerners, and I knew that
if I went there and sat by thepool, no one would question me
because I was white.
And that's how I struck up aconversation with this woman, um

(05:36):
, and when she heard my story.
you want me to just go ahead andtell you the rest yeah when she
heard my story, um, sheinsisted that she and her
boyfriend take me out to dinnerthat night.
And the next morning there wasa knock on my door at the CD
Hotel and that day I was takingthe bus to meet other people to

(06:00):
do a workshop in SouthernThailand.
Anyway, she came to my door andshe had breakfast for me.
She had a box lunch for me forthe bus ride and gave me money
for an emergency.

Melissa (06:16):
Wow, I just got goosebumps because, like, talk
about going above and beyond,which is really what the
Samaritan did.
So the Samaritan didn't justintervene and pick, you know,
and take the person who is lyingin a ditch to a hotel, but also
then paid it forward right andsaid I'll handle and I'll take
care of everything, even beyondright, when I guess I'm curious

(06:39):
if you've seen this kind ofstuff happen in the day to day,
in how you you've been therector at St Dunstan's.
And so you know yourneighborhood pretty well, I
would imagine.
Yeah, how have you seen storiesof the Good Samaritans show up

(07:00):
in in your, you know, in theeveryday milieu of the
neighborhood of St Dunstan's?

Tricia (07:07):
Well, the neighborhood that St.
Dunstan's is in is a verydifferent kind of neighborhood,
because we are the onlynon-residential building on our
street and we're also probablythe smallest building.
We are surrounded by mansions,mega mansions that are millions
and millions of dollars, whichis not the case when the church

(07:28):
was built.
So you know, it's a differentkind of neighborhood.
But I can think of two examplesOne from the pandemic when
schools closed and there werewomen in Sandy Springs, which is
the suburb that we're in, whorealized that their, their kids

(07:50):
classmates were not going to bereceiving breakfast and lunch at
school and what a toll this wasgoing to take on families.
And so it started out with abunch of moms just buying
groceries, extra groceries, andpeople started showing up and
then bringing more food and itended up to be this big food
pantry which is still going onnow and it's 100 percent

(08:14):
volunteers.
They do all sorts of otherthings.
My congregation, while thebuilding was shut down, every
week people brought a mountainof food to the church door and
then we took it to the pantry.
So I mean, I think that has abit of the Good Samaritan of us
being the Good Samaritan at thattime, not being the ones in the

(08:37):
ditch and my congregation rightnow is in a good, I think, a
good Samaritan kind of way.
We were planning to sponsor arefugee family and all we knew
was that they were going to gethere before January 20th, when

(08:57):
we knew that everything wasgoing to shut down for refugees.
We didn't know where they werecoming from or how many there
were or when exactly they werecoming.
And the Tuesday before theinauguration on January 20th my
outreach chair got a phone callfrom the refugee services and
said would you be able to taketwo families instead?

(09:19):
So we're trying to get as manypeople in as we can?
And she just automatically saidyes, and the congregation
stepped up and turns out it'sreally one large extended family
.
But it's been really amazing tojust kind of sit back and watch
what has happened with that.

Melissa (10:04):
I do have a question about, I guess, being quote the
victim you know being the person, or you know who who is quote
lying in the ditch, if you will.
You were down on your luck andsomeone came alongside you maybe
someone you might not haveexpected to give you a leg up,

(10:24):
you know a help up and wentabove and beyond, and she didn't
really typically fit the ideaof what somebody who would go
above and beyond for somebodyelse would right, based upon our
own preconceived ideas.
I'm curious about what youthink about receiving versus

(10:49):
taking.
Got any insight for that?

Tricia (10:54):
Yeah, I've been thinking about that.
You know we don't want to bethe ones.
Most people I know don't wantto be the ones who are the
receivers.
You know, I remember when I wasgrowing up in an Episcopal
church, the rector said everySunday before the offering
remember the words of our LordJesus, how it is more blessed to

(11:15):
give than to receive.
You know that message ishammered in pretty early on,
although I later realized thatwe never have a record of Jesus
actually saying those words.
Paul says Jesus said that.
So maybe he did or maybe hedidn't, you know, but whether or

(11:36):
not it's still, I think that isingrained in a lot of us.
And it can be hard to be theone on the receiving end.
And I've had to do that a lotlately because my husband died
of COVID a couple of years agoand you know, all of a sudden
the congregation's taking careof me instead of me taking care

(11:57):
of the congregation, and it wasboth wonderful and hard, you
know, to receive all that.
So, but you know, sometimesyou're in a position when you're
in the ditch and you really doneed to be the one who receives.

Melissa (12:11):
You're in the ditch and you really do need to be the
one who receives.
Yeah, I kind of feel like we'reliving in a time where people
see receiving as weakness,exactly, exactly and.
I don't know that it is.
Yeah, I don't see receiving.

Tricia (12:28):
I mean, you know there is a fine line between receiving
and taking and I think thatsometimes people feel like they
are taking, despite the factthat something is being freely
given as a gift.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Melissa (12:42):
I think that's true, Tricia.
So you are rector and I'mcurious if you have any final
words of wisdom tied to thisvery incredibly real modern day
parable.

Tricia (12:55):
Not to let our preconceived ideas of who's
going to be the helper keep usfrom receiving, or from just
being able to appreciate thatpeople who we might not expect
to be there might be there withjust what we need in a time of

(13:16):
trouble.
Be open to that, you know, kindof like respecting the dignity
of every human being.
You know, the most unlikelyperson might be just the person
who has what you need at thatmoment.

Melissa (13:26):
That's right.
Thanks be to God, Tricia.
Thank you so much for spendingtime with us.
Thank you for your reflectionand folks, we're grateful for
you for tuning in to For People.
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Wright, or by visiting www.
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