December 31, 2003

Auld lang syne

Time is so arbitrary, and we can be so arrogant about it. Back in Y2K, one would have thought the world was coming to an end because of the way we had learned to count. The universe barely shrugged.

Yet here we are, lending our voices to an ever expanding cosmos that it may relieve its ominous silence. Here we are, giving audience to God that God need not be so alone, forgetting Isaiah’s counsel to seek the Lord while he wills to be found [Is 55.6]. Here we are, tweaking one another’s fancy, surprised by how much connected and alike we are, only a few whatevers away from our sister chimpanzees.

So we create time and drape it over the galaxies as if somehow to order them, time where once there was no time, time where actually there is no time. Measurers. Namers. Always looking back over our shoulders to Eden, yearning, watching the old turn into the new.

Auld Lang Syne, that tired “old long time” song, careers our minds through another year’s stargate, our selves close behind, wondering, crying out Wait for me. Here we are. May our prayer be with Solomon’s, “Give us an understanding mind… that we may discern between good and evil.”

Happy are they whose year is new. Capricious blessing, no? — this time.

December 30, 2003

Victoria’s Secret

“What’s Victoria’s Secret?” wrote a Brit friend in response to yesterday’s Holy Innocents OoN. The way he put the question revealed to me that Victoria has practically no secrets, but bares them all.

Not so with the church. Gregory Dix made a parable of us when he wrote in his seminal “The Shape of the Liturgy” that his mother, attending his first mass, said that with all his circumlocutions up there at the altar, it looked like he had hold of a live crab and was trying to keep it out of sight.

Well, we’re still at it. Our spin on the gospel of peace and justice and love is probably one of the best kept secrets in human affairs, its voice stifled by all our prejudices and infighting and parsimonious notions about morality. There’s a lot of messiness out there going overlooked by our seeming obsession to remain irrelevant.

So much for homiletic license. Another friend wrote about my claim yesterday to be wholly innocent. “You old lecher,” she commented.

December 29, 2003

Holy Innocents

Today, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, recalls a time when each year we had an open house at the rectory for college students home for the holidays. Most of them, I suspect, were oblivious either to the day and certainly to our sardonic motives.

Foolishness like that, however, has a way of coming home to roost.

We’ve an elderly neighbor around the corner. (Actually, she’s probably not much older than we, but we try to avoid that kind of language for ourselves as much as possible.) Yesterday, she brought by two catalogues she’d got in the mail and left them for me with CP, said she thought that if CP didn’t mind, I might enjoy them as a sort of holiday diversion.

The catalogues? The Christmas specials offered this year by Victoria’s Secret. Wholly innocent, I accepted them with grace.

December 26, 2003

Light

John wrote about Jesus as light. “The light shines in the darkness,” he wrote, “and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1.5).

It’s safe to say that John knew from nothing about Heisenberg’s quantum uncertainty principle that says light is either particle or wave, either fixed or in motion, that we can’t be certain about where it is and where it’s going at the same time.

Something like this seems to be true about Christmas. The Feast of Thomas, the Apostle, comes handily around the corner from Christmas each year. It was he who asked Jesus to show him the way. He wanted some certainty in the midst of all the chaos. What he got was uncertainty, not a road map, not a catechism, not a systematic theology. He got a person and all the holy ambiguity to go with it. “I am the way,” Jesus said, “the truth, and the life.”

Some, these days, seem simply not able to say enough about orthodoxy, even to be willing to split the church right down the middle because of it. The old Anglican oxymoron “ordered freedom” is simply not enough, all together too frustrating, yet something like that seems pretty much what Jesus offered Thomas… and us.

To claim absolute certainty about the Bible or God or, above all, ourselves, sounds pretty much like idolatry to me. On the other hand, Jesus brightens up that darkness, and under those conditions, darkness of whatever kind doesn’t stand a chance.

December 25, 2003

Words becoming

A little boy lived in a town not actually on a map, but in a Broadway play called *The Human Comedy.*

A scene shows him in his public library wandering alone away from his older sister, back into the stacks. Rows and rows of books towered over him in long, dark, ominous shelves. He looked up in wonder, considered them carefully, and said softly, in almost breathless awe, “Words, millions of words.”

Another little boy lived a long way from Broadway in a small, central Texas town. One day, a friend of his mother’s stopped by. She had got a new hat. As she tried it on, she asked his mother if she thought it was “becoming.” He was already strangely curious about words and instantly set to wondering what other than a hat a hat might become. It was years later that he heard Bing Crosby sing to Dorothy Lamour, “moonlight becomes you, it goes with your hair…”

Once upon an earlier time, another lover of words said of Jesus to the whole world another strange thing about words and about becoming. “The Word became flesh,” he said, “and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth… ”

Two little boys, one in childhood as long as plays last, the other forever searching to find childhood. Might they think it passing strange that at Christmas, when old John told of his friend Jesus, he spoke not of mangers or stars or wise men or donkeys, but of the Word that became?

December 24, 2003

Willing suspension of disbelief

Samuel Coleridge wrote about the “willing suspension of disbelief,” of that ability to believe born firmly in each of us which so often withers as we are taught that the world of imagination is not true.

The power of his phrase is the suggestion that not only disbelief, but belief, as well, is a matter of choice. Faith, ever so much as love, is an act of the will, as is the decision to rid ourselves of the clutter of disbelief.

We live in a time when few of us will to believe what we do not already understand or what we have not experienced or what does not meet our own personal criteria in order even to qualify as “experience.” We seem especially fearful of belief.

When it comes right down to it, the Christmas story, that God would care in this way, is outrageous. Is it no more than denial and the Gross Domestic Product itself that keeps the bells — and the cash registers — jingling?

Just as the will to love precedes the loving, so can the willing suspension of disbelief precede the believing, beginning with ridding ourselves of the notion that something must be demonstrably clear before it can be considered true.

The message of Christmas is that God is intimately accessible even under the most outrageous conditions, his own and ours. The willing suspension of our disbelief can reveal for us true peace on earth and good will for all, an even more outrageous notion in itself.

December 23, 2003

Honking

I’ve come to believe that there’s a difference between being honked at and honked to. The one is a warning to get out of the way, the other, a possible greeting from a friend who only wants to say a passing “hello.”

Either one is a way of getting noticed, and when you think of it, that’s never so bad. It’s like when somebody calls out, “Hey, Frank!” in a crowd, everybody named Frank and even a few more not named Frank at all stops and turns around.

Now there’s a third possibility that’s come along over the past few years. Some might think it’s a sign of progress. It’s neither being honked at or honked to, but just being honked, and you don’t know which, if either. It happens whenever some showoff driver locks — or unlocks — a car by remote control. It’s not clear why the car has to honk — and sometimes blink its lights, too — when it gets the signal, unless it’s just trying to make the driver feel more secure.

I can’t just simply ignore it. Honking — either at or to — always makes me stop whatever I’m doing or wherever I’m going. It’s probably all vanity But when it’s only some car honking at its owner by remote control and rendering all the pleasure out of being noticed even its only by a robot on four wheels, it unnerves me. I would draw the line if I thought it would make any difference.

I’m pleased to learn, however, that New York City has drawn a line that may eventually help honking. I understand there’s going to be a new ordinance preventing those abominable car alarms that always go off and pollute the air for no apparent reason, least of all to announce a theft, which is what they are for in the first place. The police say they’re more a nuisance than a prevention, and that they have little effect on thievery.

It reminds me of a time when there was a big college campus demonstration about something planned one time, but when the press and the televisioners failed to show up, nothing at all got demonstrated. We’ve got more than our share of alarmism in the church these days that we’re maybe paying more attention to than is really necessary.

December 22, 2003

Mary by the well

Long years ago when I wrote weekly (and turgid) profundities for the parish “newsletter” (I hate that word) and thought they were hot stuff, I’d get substantial comments (pro and con) from anywhere but the parishioners who seemed simply to ignore them. Unless… when I included typos (deliberate and accidental), then the callers-to-my-attention would warm up. It was comforting to know there were readers out there.

In my recent paean to Mary (19xii03), I set her in a scene by a well, drawing water, imagining this to be an appropriate place for Gabriel’s shock wave. Thanks be to God, some folk read the piece, and I’m grateful.

Here’s what they wrote:

One, a man: “My bible says nothing about a well or hauling water. Perhaps you are confusing Mary with the Syrio-Phoneician (I know I didn’t spell that right!) woman.”

Two, a woman: “This points up the problems of literal adoption (sic?) of the bible. I’ll just bet that Mary didn’t sit around on her duff waiting for an angel to happen by and change her life. All the people of the bible had a life beyond the words we know which were arguably the salient points of that life. What’s wrong with supposing Mary hauled water as part of her daily chores? The point being her humbleness, her ordinariness.”

Three, a woman: “It’s poetic license — makes the story come to life for those of us who listen with more than our ears and see with more than our ears (sic: eyes?). BTW — It was the Samaritan woman by the well and the Syro-Phoenician woman who was uppity with Jesus when he called her a dog.”

Four, a woman: “Thank you for this one and many others — you help put many things into proper perspective. ”

Five, a woman: “Possibly thinking of Rebecca at the well? Fetching water was generally a woman’s job, yet I seem to recall a reference to a male water-carrier in Jerusalem. (Lk 22:10).”

It’s altogether comforting to be reminded that Mary did, indeed, have a “duff.” Thanks.

December 19, 2003

Mary’s song

Each year at this time, the question about the pink candle in the Advent wreath gets its fifteen minutes of fame. When they asked about it recently out in Nevada, their bishop, Katherine Schori, put it to rest, and said, “It’s there because Mary wanted a girl.”

A simple maidservant, she was standing by the well doing her daily chores, never for a moment imagining that this tedium might ever become Te Deum, instead. And along came Gabriel to tell her that God had something else in mind for her beside hauling water.

Like any young and puzzled unmarried woman, she asked a couple of logical questions. Then, as nonchalantly as if this sort of thing happened every day, she said, simply, “Let it be to me according to your word.”

“Let it be to me… ”

In that simple commitment by the well side, the Word became flesh. The cosmos broke into our space and time ultimately to revolutionize a world in the name of peace and justice. May it never escape us for a moment that not the least of the reason for this was Mary’s simple and unhesitating, “Let it be.” Faith needs no more defining moment than this, than to turn one’s life to God and say, “Let it be to me according to your word.” Through that kind of faith, grace becomes limitless.

It’s time we give Mary a decent chance.

Isn’t it ironic that at this Advent season when Mary is so center stage, there stands lurking in the wings a schismatic movement in our church that disdains the ordained ministry for women? How much more evidence than Mary’s faith might we need for God’s image and intention?

Anglican theologians have traditionally left room for skepticism about the Virgin Birth. But Karl Barth, the great Swiss Bible scholar, affirmed it rather winsomely as God’s special way of showing us males that in the overall scheme of redemption, we are altogether pitifully unnecessary and insignificant.

But Mary wasn’t only faithful, she was, as well, prophetic. Perhaps that’s why that song of hers bears listening over and over again. The Magnificat. Mary’s Song. Continuing always a pivotal point in our liturgies — ringing changes on her faith and on ours and on the great cause of justice. Sadly, the church has turned against itself on Mary and on her magnificent song, singing it over and over, but when the song is ended, only deafness to the radical claims it makes.

“My soul magnifies the Lord,” she sang, “and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… for God has shown strength with his arm… (and) scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts… (and) put down the mighty from their thrones, and exalted those of low degree; God has filled the hungry with good things, and (sent) the rich… empty away… ” (Lk 1.46b-55 mostly).

Hardly a mantra for today’s principalities and powers. Hardly an encouragement for the oppressive domination systems of church and state in our time.

We would look far and wide to find a more appropriate way to approach and live through these Christmas days with ourselves, in our homes, with our neighbors, in our church, and before our Lord. We might never find a more appropriate place to receive a message from God than, like Mary, in the routine of our daily chores drawing and toting the water at our own wells.

December 18, 2003

Shivers

Deodar (the Indian cedar of recent OoN fame) is planted just outside a large north-facing wall of double-hung windows topped by a peaked clerestory of fixed panes. The effect looking through all this glass is as if there is no enclosure at all, only distant rooftops and sky or rain or clouds.

Of late, and in deference to the season, a large cut Douglas fir is mounted just inside and rather overlooking Deodar. It is bedecked only with the characteristic multicolored lights and with only a small, but jaunty and beribboned hand basket raked at its top where one normally expects an angel or a star.

Deodar wears only tiny clear and bright jeweled lights, patiently, as if this too will pass. Indeed, of course, it will. The fir will be gone by Epiphany, shredded to help cover the lakeside paths in a nearby city park. Deodar will not disrobe its lights soon enough — an invisible shiver following suit — and then proudly to remain for other years.

It is not difficult to experience a similar feeling, a mild chill at the thought of decades of Christmases past and perhaps fewer than one, if at all, of decades to come. Shivering is the way one’s body warms itself by calling small muscles into concert. Perhaps anxious celebration is the way one’s spirit warms itself by blanketing small memories into harmony.