February 28, 2004

“Yes” at both ends

Ever since 9/11, we’ve been patronized senseless to go on and live as if nothing ever happened. Spend, eat, drink, make merry, and live SUVicariously while somebody else picks up the tab, namely, hundreds of volunteers and national guards dying and being maimed in the dessert for reasons not all that clear or convincing.

Our current crucifixation with The Movie in the midst of all this suggests an irony beyond imagination, but not much of a surprise. The pundits say we’re not going to the flicks, we’re going to church. Maybe we need reminding about what Jesus did so we won’t get all that restless about the present macabre state of the environment, the economy, the legislature, the judiciary, the administration, that is, all the things we don’t do so we can continue to sit back as if nothing ever happened then or now.

Some take comfort in the notion that we are created in the image of God — that is, as God imagines us to be and become. Most often that’s taken to mean that we are free to choose the good — or the bad. Choice is not only a privilege, but a powerful amount of responsibility.

So it was with Jesus. What we seem to forget is that his choice, his Yes at both ends of his servant leadership — in the Wilderness and again in the Garden — is the truly salvific* act. The Cross, as some seem to think, was not a payoff to set us free, it was the logical — and horrible — consequence of another insecure religious and political system functioning at its very best.

*[a theologically overbearing word for “saving,” the kind you might expect in a place like this]

February 27, 2004

Proud towers

Anybody wrestling with vocation is probably influenced at one time or another by the world’s Three Big Compulsions. We want our life and work to be relevant. We want to have at least enough control over it and our environment to keep it “between the curbs.” And we want it to be noticed, even if only for Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes.”

The daemons knew something like this was going on with Jesus, maybe even before he did. The same thing is true with us. The devil is in such details as one’s confusion about vocation. The devil was in these details in the wilderness, with Jesus and waited out there until he was half starved to death to move in on his anguish.

You want to be relevant? Turn these stones into bread. You want to be in charge? Here’s a whole empire of kingdoms and all the authority and glory that goes with it. You want to be noticed? Take a flying leap off the pinnacle of the temple, surely the angels won’t let anything happen to the Son of God. No vocational headhunter could come up with better tests than these (Lk 4.1-13).

We’re facing a national election motivated at its very heart by which party claims to be the most relevant, the most spectacular, the most powerful. The devil expected a field day by using them with Jesus. But the gospel as Jesus understood it and as we’ve received it never fails to knock every one of our such pretentious priorities into a cocked hat as it asks not for relevance or power or fame, but for justice and peace and a fair concern and respect for all.

Of all the answers Jesus gave, one stands front stage center. “You shall worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve” (Lk 4.8b). And it is to our eternal benefit that it does. This major turning point in Jesus’ understanding of himself and his work proved to be the furnace of his transformation, to protect him from becoming a victim of society, and from continuing to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. In the face of these temptations, he affirmed God as the only source and substance of his identity.

The church today seems often to find itself in a vocational wilderness, wondering what is its ministry and to whom. It’s struggling with relevancy, with authority, and with wondering why the world simply doesn’t seem to notice much anymore. Many ask “what would Jesus do,” but don’t seem sincere enough to realize that he asked the very same question of himself but refused to seek its answer in the world’s terms.

Ironically, what Jesus told the devil in the wilderness, he tells the church today. Religion’s proud towers are for princes and tourists. Its intricate doctrines are for the angry and the arrogant. Its pretensions to power are just warmed over Caesar outlined in fancy script. “You shall worship the Lord your God, and God only shall you serve.”

The kingdoms of this world are humanity’s mistake, not its glory. Can you imagine Jesus vested in silks and sitting on a throne demanding that we do him homage? I doubt it. Rather might he be here at table erasing centuries of warfare, turning us to discover our common humanity, easing us out of our historic enigmas and into the shared language of love.

February 26, 2004

Finish line

At a Special Olympics event in Brooklyn, six eager contestants stood ready on line for the 100-yard dash.

As the starting whistle sounded, a boy tripped, fell, and began to cry. All the other runners stopped, turned, and went back to help. Then they all held hands and went on to the finish line together.

February 25, 2004

Recycling

When the liturgy prompts us each year to remember that we are but dust and to dust we shall return, it appears that the system of environmental stewardship which we have so proudly come to call “recycling” has been God’s plan all along.

Genesis understood this from the beginning with its story about God’s shaping the clay and spiritually informing it as his creation. Science has been slow to catch up, but now tells us something very much the same.

Even the elements which compose our bodies are second-hand. They’ve already been switched and rotated countless times in countless places, near and far, affirming that we are not so much mere stewards of the environment as if we were some alien groundskeeper, but that we ourselves are indeed inseparable from the environment and from the world’s rich and miraculous fecundity.

T S Eliot put it like this — “The dance along the artery / The circulation of the lymph / Are figured in the drift of the stars.”

When there comes that moment, that opportunity in our personal history to be marked by those same ashes, let us be blessed through their presence. Let us welcome and claim them as our sisters and brothers with whom we are so intimately connected. Let us remember to receive this life and time that we are given that we may be stewards of ourselves and of our neighbors and of God’s universe of which we are part, joining as companions on the Way.

February 24, 2004

Big Bang

Timothy Ferris, the science journalist, wanted to find a new name for the Big Bang, something more dignified, so he held a contest. Nothing won. Somebody even had the gall to suggest Genesis. And so it remains. The Big Bang.

Stephen Hawking calls it the Singularity which, I take it, is about as unique as one can get. So is Stephen Hawking. So are you.

To think that an explosion of such magnitude could eventuate out of nowhere [© 2004] into us maybe just so it could get a spokesperson to make its case and name it, however mundane, causes one to get a real bang out of life — and God. A big bang, indeed.

[Maybe it’s even bigger than believing the Grand Canyon was spun off in a day or so.]

February 23, 2004

A little fun

Sibyl is a retired friend of mine . I did not ask her the other day what she does to make her days interesting. But if I had, she’d probably tell me a story something like this.

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about five minutes. When I came out there was a city cop writing out a parking ticket. I went up to him and said, Come on, officer, how about giving a lady a break?

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I said that was the sort of thing a fascist might do. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires. So I raised a question of doubt about his parentage. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first.

Then he started writing a third ticket. This went on for about another twenty minutes. The more I abused him, she said, the more tickets he wrote.

Then she told me that she didn’t especially care, that it was really important at her age to have a little fun now and then. And besides, she said, her car was parked around the corner.

I wish I had asked her. This story sounds just like something she would do.

February 20, 2004

Appearances

Epiphany last, Lk 9.28-36

DNA and anthropology have joined forces now to throw out the notion of “race” as altogether arbitrary. Our puzzlement about “sexual orientation” and “gender” are probably not all that far behind.

The more we know about ourselves, the more we discover not only how drastically we’ve allowed appearances to deceive us, how indeed foolish has been our behavior — our laws, our politics, our religion, our educational systems, maybe, as well, the way we treat chimpanzees. All important to order our lives, but not to define them. Now that we know these things, the new problem is what will we do about it, indeed, will we do anything?

Appearances were also deceptive for the three who went walking in the mountains with their leader. Even when they saw him in a totally different light, they still didn’t get the point. But then, the Voice — “This is my beloved son, my Chosen. Listen to him” Paul got it — “We are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another” was the way he put it.

Such a perspective seems altogether missing in the way we continue to fall for appearances, to lay so much stock by them. Whether we are gay or straight matters for our own personal identity, for who we are. But the more fundamental fact is that whatever, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” [Gal 3.28]. This is where our true identity resides, and as we grow into our vocation in becoming human beings — which is God’s image for us — we are to reveal the Light behind all things.

Appearances are deceptive. There are no ordinary people. We are all on the way to being glorified — if we will have it. Transfiguration reveals in Jesus the uncreated light of God as it does potentially in ourselves and our neighbors in a totally new and different way. Whoever we are, we are called to be transparent to the light of God which flooded through in Christ and “to seek and serve him in all persons” [BCP, p 305].

February 19, 2004

The Wheel Museum

At the Wheel Museum there was on display what was perhaps the world’s largest collection of wheels — invented and reinvented — ever brought together in one place.

The hundreds of authentic examples were carefully documented, even carbon-dated. The Curator and the team of docents were well-trained, each of them articulate in explaining handily the function, use, history, ethnic, and cultural place of each wheel on display.

There was, however, deep concern among the Museum staff about the diminishing attention from the public to this collection of wheels. They realized that something must be done once again to get the public’s attention to this valuable and priceless resource of the world’s greatest collection of wheels. Someone finally suggested that if the public is not going to come to us, then we must take the Museum to them.

But how? said someone else. This is a massive and ponderous place. There is no way it could be moved. And so they set out to form a committee, indeed, not merely a committee, but a council that would put its most skilled people (some trained and commissioned, others not trained and who couldn’t be expected to know any better than to accept an invitation to membership on the council) to work on finding a way the Wheel Museum could become mobile and thus reach the people.

(To be continued if not clear enough already.)

February 18, 2004

Spenser - was that you?

One of OoN’s readers writes that the Sydney Morning Herald’s feature “Column 8″ tells of a rather radical driving technique that may be of some interest to fans of Spenser, the wonder dog, who, we regret, appears in these columns from time to time.

“Annabell Wood, of Turramurra, reports that her fiance, Shaun Lawlor (who had the advantage of an elevated position in a van) spotted a woman driving along the Pacific Highway near Pymble “while wearing nothing but a dog.” To be specific, the dog was an Australian silky terrier, and it was sitting comfortably on the driver’s lap. Both appeared to be relaxed.”

Annabell added that though all this happened on the morning of Valentine’s Day, one needn’t imply any special significance.

On the other hand, Spenser, when told of it, shrugged it off with a sigh, said chivalry was only one of his strain’s many attributes whatever the season.

February 17, 2004

Chrestomathy

A chrestomathy (accent on “tom”) in its true sense is “a collection of choice passages from an author or authors.” For the Greeks, it means “useful learning.” Whatever reference to these current tracts such a notion might have depends, I should think, entirely on one’s perspective.

Anyhow, looking to fill a few gaps in my bookshelves at a library sale the other day, “A Mencken Chrestomathy” practically leapt off the table. It was an entirely new word wrapped around an entirely old idol of mine, journalist H L Mencken.

When dwelling on Mencken, one thinks “curmudgeon,” which in its better sense means a gruff, blunt, but honest fellow with an encrusted heart of gold. But in its not so better sense suggests a mean, testy person. Scrooge before his conversion. W C Fields after his.

Some linguists think it comes from the French for “evil heart,” but that’s only an inspired guess. However, in the light shed by a couple of recent OoNs, I tend to prefer the notion that it derives from *cur-mudgel*, dialect for “dunghill dog,” but actually, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.

Fields did make one of my favorite curmudgeonly pronouncements, however, when he said that anybody who doesn’t like kids or pets can’t be all bad. So much for today’s entry into my nascent chrestomathy.