September 16, 2003

Proof texts

Several decades ago, a little girl attended a vacation Bible school sponsored by the Church of Christ in a small Gulf Coast Texas town. She won the graduation prize for knowing the most Bible quotations. The story made the front page of the local weekly, not because she won, but because she was an Episcopalian.

We’re not all that well-known for our prowess with the Scriptures, except, I’ve been told, we read them out loud in our public services perhaps more than any other church. Even so, it’s not until lately that quoting “proof texts” has got into vogue.

People like to be right about what they claim and believe. There seems to an abundance of anxiety of that sort of late. And there’s probably no better back-up than to find some affirmation for it than in the Bible. Of course, it never seems to change any body’s mind one way or the other.

I personally wish they’d quit. We’ve got a reputation to uphold, you know, and I wouldn’t want anybody to suspect that we’re getting religious and all. Besides, we’ve already got more than our 15-minute allotment of fame in the news these past few weeks.

September 15, 2003

Holy Cross Day

Once upon a time when children were given the alphabet to copy and learn, following the “Z” was placed the rather squiggly symbol (&) we now use as an abbreviation for “and.”

This was called originally, “and per se, and.” It survived as “ampersand,” and it remains now as the sign for joining together other symbols and such like, as we say, a “conjunction.” There are, of course, numerous ampersands, some of elegant design. The cross is one.

Imagine for a moment a scene perhaps only a short distance around the corner into our future. A final international summit conference about missile shields and ABM treaties and global warming and WMDs is deadlocked at a point beyond which our proud, flag-draped leaders on both sides simply will not go.

Standing thus in their last refuge of patriotism, they release their weapons, their “clean bombs,” and simply set fire to the planet. They never quite realize the difference between arson and Armageddon, grandeur’s delusion long since having blinded to any remaining sense of stewardship at all.

Now. as the old Eucharistic liturgy put so well, “this fragile earth, our island home” orbits, cremated, a giant cinder cast aside along some cosmic byway.

But it was not without notice.

All the while and for centuries before this holocaust, this once vibrant cell of life has been circled and monitored by intergalactic probes no larger than grapefruit, rendered invisible even to our most sophisticated stealth initiatives. Messages about us in every detail from Irma’s “Joy of Cooking” to Alex’s “Joy of Sex” are faithfully recorded by another people intent on peaceful exploration and expansion in the universe.

They’ve watched our “progress.” They realize that Earth’s atmosphere once vaporized, now gradually returns, sufficiently rejuvenated to sustain life, perhaps even life such as theirs. And so, they come. They come not to experiment, but to explore, not to conquer, but to conserve, not for greed, but for grace.

And imagine further that first landing party, excited, skillfully trained, disciplined. They touch down. They move out into the ruins, collecting, sampling, filing, their data instantaneously noted and analyzed into appropriate cyberarchival systems at their faraway origin. Perhaps, they conclude, this may indeed be a safe environment to nurture into a fuller and more fecund life.

Then one of the landing parties, sorting gently through the crumbling remains, sifts and dusts to expose to their astonishment, intact and hardly damaged at all, a large cross. They cease work immediately. They cordon off the area. They send for their leader who arrives and approaches cautiously the display as they stand hushed, awaiting instructions.

With the care and respect of a competent archeologist, their chief observes the artifact at some distance, then reaches down to examine it more closely. As she does, her tunic opens ever so slightly at the neck allowing a pendant chain to swing free and reveal, hanging there, a cross.

September 12, 2003

Organize

God and the devil are walking along the road together. God sees something lying there and picks it up. The devil says, “What’s that?” God says, “It’s the truth.” The devil says, “Give it to me, and I’ll organize it.”

Mark’s gospel this Sunday tells of Peter and Jesus walking along the road together. Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter says, “You are the Christ.” Not all that many years later, the church said, “Give him to us, and we’ll organize him.”

The gospel includes both the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history. We make a doctrine of the one at the risk of losing the other in the distant past. We lust after the commission to make disciples and forget the commandment to love them.

Ultimately, it was Jesus’ love that brought Peter through his denials and into his realization of the cross and that wherever the brokenness of the world was being healed, there was present the kingdom of God. Ultimately, that same love breaks through to the church, but first, not without the denials.

September 11, 2003

Prayer Book

I’m an Episcopalian. Maybe you’ve wondered. Somebody’s always trying to make us into an organized religion, but so far as I know, they’ve not been successful.

My biases and my church’s biases change from time to time, usually for the better and making it a kind of moveable feast. I hope you’ll understand that that’s what makes it so attractive and maybe so uncomfortable for some. Most of us believe that only God knows the truth about anything and may have given up on our ever finding it out.

Whatever else there is of any great importance can probably be found in our Book of Common Prayer, a treasured, if somewhat drawn-out volume changed every half century or so mainly to see if anybody’s paying attention. A friend, a lifelong Episcopalian, took up serious Bible reading in her middle years and was surprised to discover how much of the Prayer Book was already in it.

Maybe that’ll give you some idea.

September 10, 2003

Remembrance

Not long ago, my computer was disowned by its parents.

It had barely passed its third birthday. And now, here it was, faced with its manufacturer’s birth announcement of a newer, faster, more powerful, and, to put it one way, more memorable successor.

One commentator observed this event by wondering at least half seriously where computers get their memories after all. Unlike creation, memory is not ex nihilo, or not much of it, anyway. So far as we know, memory seems largely exceptional to a very small part of God’s creation, perhaps only us. So we must be the source of computers memories. Where else?

Actually, that explains a lot. Nobody remembers much any more. Some don’t remember anything that happened before Elvis. Even the shrinks, a profession helpless without memory, will certify sanity on precious little more evidence than one being able to remember and recite the names of the last four presidents of the USA.

Computers may get their memories from us, but when it comes to doing things “in remembrance,” they’ve got us hands down.

September 9, 2003

Purple zucchetto

I’ve mentioned here, in passing, my old friend and one-time mentor Canon P D Quirk. His name is from some obscure French source and is pronounced “kirk.” He doesn’t like to have that overlooked.

At any rate, he called the other day to say that he’d got another one of those “patronizing notices” from the Affirmative Aging Commission, this time offering a workshop on “centering prayer.” Being incurably eccentric, he was immediately suspicious and wondered if it’s another “plot by the AAC and all those other disaffecteds in their never-ceasing efforts to purge the church into something it isn’t.” The Canon associates his curmudgeonhood with the Anglican Communion where it was discovered waiting for him and subsequent nourished. He has long realized it probably wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else.

Quirk was also curious as to why the bishop’s name and “reverential qualifiers and modifiers” plus his title and honorary credentials were listed not only once, but twice on the diocesan letterhead. He’d got a memo from the bishop, himself, telling the retired clergy how much “the Bishop” appreciated their service. “Is there another bishop,” he sighed, “or is the Ordinary having some sort of identity crisis?”

Such a decorum-less roll could easily lead Quirk off on one of his favorite peeves, what he called the “obsessive affectation of some prelates with the indelibly purple zucchetto.” He especially likes to point out to anybody who’ll listen how the name of the “little beanie” is cognate with zucchini and other assorted squashes and gourds. Fortunately, he went elsewhere.

He’d read in a national church magazine that his diocese was advertising for “orthodox priests” to come “plant” churches and “make” disciples. “Don’t we have a sufficiency of joint commissions without going all the way to Constantinople for parsons?”

As usual, he didn’t wait for an answer, just said goodbye and broke off before I could even say “Istanbul.”

September 8, 2003

Improvisation

Lester Young played tenor sax with Count Basie and consistently turned out imaginative improvisations on the repertoire of ballads in what we now call the great American songbook.

He was an authoritative inspiration even for his peers, but especially for those just beginning in the mysterious and elusive world of jazz. He was often asked what lay at the heart of his creative music. He would say that one must always know the lyrics, then sing them silently as the improvised melody progressed.

We have, many of us, a lyric of scripture, tradition, and reason, and a life to sing them silently as we improvise on the melody.

September 5, 2003

Praise God

“Praise God for what you can fathom; / for what you can’t fathom, praise God” (Ps 146).*

Through her first six months of abstinence, a friend of mine was like the guy in the TV ad gleefully stopping anybody and everybody on the street to tell them his cholesterol is down. She bored us all with her incessant gratitude for her “new” life away from substance abuse.

One day, her fortune turned, and all we could hear was a bad case of the “why me’s?” Until somebody took her in hand and told her, Try showing as much gratitude for the bad stuff as for the good. Maybe there’s meaning in discomfort as well as in comfort. Maybe some thanksgiving when we rarely think of offering thanksgiving will open whatever and bring a perspective never seen before.

Fear blinds the path to praise. Anxiety throws life’s lenses out of focus. Anger is an inevitable response. Isaiah tells us, “Be strong, fear not!” (Is 25.4) James reminds with his timeless phrase, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” (Jas 1.22) Twelve-Step programs claim there’s little effect, lest one “walk the talk.” All well and good, but not all that easy to understand.

“Praise God for what you can fathom; / for what you can’t fathom, praise God” (Ps 146).

To fathom is to understand, to find meaning, support, foundation. For the thoughtful, easy cause for gratitude. But not to fathom, to find no meaning hardly ever provokes a grateful heart, only a fearful one. Such fear is an enemy. Much fear pervades today the very community whose love it is said can cast it out.

In the “Prayers of the People,” the time following the opportunity for intercession is often filled with names, events, needs, some fears, and a few mumbles. The time appointed for thanksgiving is often ominously quiet.

The psalmist suggests this part of the Prayers may be a good place for what we cannot fathom, perhaps for our enemy fear. Jesus said to love our enemies. Praise is not an altogether bad way to start.

(* Stephen Mitchell, “A Book of Psalms: Selected and Adapted from the Hebrew,” HarperCollins, 1993, p 79)

September 4, 2003

Honeysuckle Rose

It’s time for name-dropping.

The great jazz trombone player and singer Jack Teagarden and his band had just finished off a set at the Tidelands Club in Houston. I joined him as he retired to the Green Room.

I commented on the fine old tune they’d just played and how much our band always enjoyed it. He said, You know, the first time I ever heard it was the first time I ever played it.

It was when he, Fats Waller, and some others were jamming in a club after hours and ran out of drinking money. Waller told them to hold on, that he’d be right back. Shortly, he returned with fifteen dollars and ordered a round for all.

Somebody asked where did he get all that money. I sold this song, Waller said, took out a copy, and laid it up on the piano. They all gathered around, looked over his shoulder at the music, and played it.

The song was “Honeysuckle Rose.”

September 3, 2003

OAP Crossing

On a trip to the UK not long ago, C and I were curious about an occasional street sign that read “Caution. OAP Crossing.”

We asked a passerby what manner of British beast it is that we might be on the lookout for. “Oh that,” she said, “OAP stands for Old Age Pensioner. They rarely watch where they’re going.”

It happened that at the time, we were just beginning to enjoy the combined and marginally beneficent largesse of our hard-won retirement gratuities. We were even about to accept phrases like “old age” and “elderly.” But somehow, “pensioner” was one for which we found ourselves ill-prepared. It filled our minds with depressing visions best left unmentioned here.

We walked on, sharing what we’d been led to believe was affirmative aging and reflecting on this new classification we’d been given. Then, as we cautiously looked first, then stepped off the curb to cross the street, some foolhardy London driver going the wrong way almost took us out.