April 30, 2004
Keep it simple
Easter 4C Jn 10.22-30
“If you are the Christ,” the Jews said to Jesus, standing around there in the Temple, “tell us plainly.”
Jesus’ answer to the Jews in John’s story was simply — and plainly — to point to the evidence that bore witness to him. To tell the story. He suggested neither creed nor catechism. “My sheep hear my voice… ” he said, and we’re instantly in business. Listen and watch. Out of this pour the blessings. “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.”
It’s too simple. Simplicity is simply too simple. And besides, it just doesn’t look much like you’re doing anything. When people come to 12-step programs with any intention and enthusiasm at all, the first thing they want to know is What to do. They want a formula, a mantra, a routine, immediately to fix things. Tell us plainly, they say
“Keep it simple” is the first and most frequent counsel for the newly-recovering addict, and the second hardest thing to do after the initial abstinence. It’s apparently so much easier to complicate life. And an addict can complicate life — and the simple 12-step program — with the very best of them.
A nun who was a recovering alcoholic spoke in a meeting about how hard it was for her to take the third step. This was to turn her will and her life over to the care of God as she understood God. With all her vows and her theological skills, her prayer life, her commitment, even her currently successful abstinence, she simply couldn’t do it.
Until one day she realized that out of all the complicated creeds and catechisms, devotions and liturgies of her life, she was doing the same thing with the third step. Only naturally, she was trying to turn her will and her life over, like the step said, to God, as she understood God — a pretty impressive understanding in anybody’s league. But it had never quite “worked,” and it sure wasn’t working now.
Then, in a very simple, but maybe not all that obvious turn of phrase, she realized why. She was pounding at the gates of her understanding of God and, all the while, the gates of the God of her understanding were swung wide open, waiting.
April 29, 2004
Disappointments
If asked, I’d be disposed to suppose that Jesus never made a mistake, but I’d also have to suppose that he’d disagree. As for the rest of us, it’s another matter. Ask us, and we don’t exactly on the face of it disagree, we — some of us, at least — just have a devil of a time remembering what it might have been.
The National Security Advisor’s an absolute pro at such avoidance. She proposed a new one recently for the old buck-passer, “Mistakes were made.” Asked about why Iraq never came through with the Rose Parade and burkas in the streets and what’s with all those oil royalties, she said, “there were disappointments.”
Disappointments require appointments. That’s a sine qua non or whatever. And we’re not talking only about at the dentist or on the epistle side of the rood screen, although these have their place. But we are talking about expectations.
We got our current leaders sort of like Rome creates new popes only less collegially and even without the white smoke. There wasn’t much choice involved, only a kind of appointment, as it were.
Appointments don’t require disappointments, but they sure suggest them now and then, and there are ways.
April 28, 2004
Sloth
So it is said, sloth in writers is always a symptom of an acute inner conflict, especially that laziness which renders us incapable of doing the thing to which we are most looking forward. As well, perfectionists are notoriously lazy and all artistic indolence is deeply neurotic, a pain, not a pleasure.
If I heard “promise” once when I set sail for life, I heard it 18 zillion times . Glory me, I believed it all. And then its two close companions sloth and perfectionism sidled up and said, “Promise? We’ll show you promise. Just you watch.”
Sloth, the word, derives from accidie, Greek for negligence and indifference, then it came to convey sadness and spiritual torpor. It made it to the Vatican’s Top Seven in late antiquity and the middle ages and was classically described as a state of restlessness and the inability to pray. Restless, I am, but more or less able to pray. Sadness at the corner of spiritual torpor, now there’s a familiar intersect.
(Maybe all this comes about courtesy of some powerful antibiotics, codeine-laden cough syrup, and the usual round of daily little tablets rasa on which to record my cellular biology. I am aware of all that.)
Cynthia Ozick writes, “letters, those vessels of calculated permanence,” in her essays “Metaphors and Memory.” Something writers do, she implies, perhaps to avoid writing. I imagine letters that way. Writing has always come more fluidly with me when there’s somebody “out there.” Maybe I don’t have to get a response. Not that I want to let my intended (youm, thass whom) off the hook. But writing to somebody who doesn’t answer doesn’t make all that much difference, just so that my imagination can think about them. Maybe that’s what Ozick means by “calculated permanence.” Of course, there is a kind of permanence in a reader’s mind once something is read, if memory can be thought to be all that enduring.
But if it’s like the “permanent care” cemeteries claim (there’s some torpor, for you), then one must expect it to accumulate weeds and toppled concrete urns and generally just to weather the wear and tear of time’s seasons watching the ground sink slightly and irregularly over the coffins.
Anyhow, Yogi Berra said you can observe a lot just by watching.
April 27, 2004
Grabbing power
Canon P D Quirk, onetime mentor and all-time friend, called out of nowhere (as it were) the other day. He wanted to comment on a couple of breakaway bishops he’d known ever since they “rode sacerdotally sidesaddle.”
He noted there’s a pattern to their power grabs and their distortions of the Anglican system that put them into office. “Once you recover from the irony and the two-by-four between your eyes, back off a bit, you can see what’s happening,” Quirk said. “Of course, it’s probably too late once they’re ordained. But it’s never too late for Standing Committees and Conventions, if only they’d get some backbone. And maybe seminaries?”
“These newbies always have to be the ‘bride’ at every wedding and the ‘corpse’ at every funeral,” Quirk said. “They are usually afraid of their own shadow, so it shouldn’t haven’t been all that difficult to see what they’d do if ever getting their hands on a diocese. They’d use the ‘honeymoon’ time systematically to abolish or ignore all those things that make them feel insecure.”
“First, shut down all opportunities for conversation and questions. Don’t make appointments with groups. Add a couple of staff linebackers, give them fancy titles, and let them run interference for you.”
I could think of a few places he might have had in mind, but interrupting him was out of the question. He took a breath and went on.
“Shorten the annual convention, create annoying space and time barriers to make resolutions there harder to present and discuss, load all the appointments with rubber stampers, most especially the Chancellor and the Commission on Ministry, publicly interrogate and threaten the others. Create small divisions in the diocese and call them convocations, thus making it much easier to micromanage.”
“Then,” really wound up, he said, “schedule — and attend — every meeting yourself, especially the Standing Committee and the parish search committees, whether or not you’re invited, welcomed, or allowed to by canon. Take charge of the association of presbyters (aka clericus) as soon as it has enough of your clones in place. Plan its programs. Choose its speakers. Pay its way. Shorten its meetings. Make them less frequent. Appoint its officers.
“Preemption’s not a new MO peculiar to the Bushies. It works just as well in the church so long as the laity are rewarded and remain indifferent and the presbyters are all intimidated. Remember the new PB’s call at his installation for ‘conversation’ and remember Lambeth’s urging us to get some face-to-face going on sex? Ignore both,” Quirk said, “and before long, you’ve got your own diocese.”
I thought he was surely finished, and that we might talk about a couple of other things, when, no way…
“And just think,” he suddenly added. “You can get your own private chapter of the AAC where you can learn to develop further and to justify your essential equivocation skills. And, of course, there’s the biggest plumola of all. When the time comes, you’ll be all set to elect your own successor and never, ever have to let go.”
Then he asked if I thought maybe this might make a good PowerPoint presentation for some diocese that had already got itself a couple of years down the pike before they found out what hit them? I wasn’t sure what to say. Actually, there didn’t seem to be a lot left.
April 26, 2004
Justice
Our country’s leaders get scarier with every new greed-based initiative and failed commitment. Few seem to realize that that kind of behavior is ever so much adultery all the same, that infidelity wherever can assume more shapes than one.
A newspaper columnist put the current damage assessment right: “I’m afraid to drink the water,” she said. “I’m afraid to breathe the air. I’m afraid glaciers will melt and seas will rise. I’m afraid to visit California in the dark. I’m afraid the Dow will dip below 5,000. I’m afraid Russia will take leave of its senses. I’m afraid China will take leave of its senses. I’m afraid North Korea will lob a missile our way. Soon, I’ll be fearing fear itself.”
Such anxiety yearns for pastoral care and presence. Such failure of leadership calls for prophetic indictment. Such an environment calls for a church. Of course, there’s that irksome old problem of whether the Bible is infallible, whether our clergy are orthodox, and who’s shacking up with whom. There’s simply no time for justice.
April 23, 2004
Going fishing
Notandum: I’m pleased to come out from my recent trip under the weather to at least be on a par with it and start functioning again. I’ve missed all you brilliant and curious readers. — JLD
Lent 3C [Jn 21.1-14]
Comedian Mort Sahl once observed that fishing is the activity of doing something when you’re not doing anything.
As John tells it, he more or less leaves the impression the disciples weren’t doing much of anything, just standing around, maybe wondering what on earth they’d got themselves into. But then Peter broke the spell.
“I’m going fishing.” At least, I’m going to do something while I’m not doing anything, anyway. (By the by, this story’s a good source for some trivia question about the disciples’ names [Jn 21.1-14]). So they all said, in effect, we’re not doing anything either, so “we’ll go with you.”
It’s amazing now to remember how simple was this little scene and how simple-minded were these fishers who, John records, couldn’t even recognize Jesus who stood there on the beach. It wasn’t all that long, remember, since the resurrection, an event, we might imagine that we could expect might just have caught their attention and set them in motion as much, maybe, as a tornado coming across the water.
But no, they’d had to do something when they weren’t doing anything. It’s easy to miss this turn, blinded by what’s probably the mother of all fish stories. And it seems easy enough to miss the big Easter surprise, itself.
I wonder how much of what followed on Easter Day and in the days and years to come could best be understood as a desperate attempt to explain the inexplicable, to get reality back under control? I am trying to understand why the disciples — and we who cherish so our succession with them — respond to the resurrection of Jesus by doing exactly the opposite of what he commanded.
Why did they — and we — move quickly to define in precise words a Messiah who spoke in ironically ambiguous parables? Why did they — and we — create hierarchies to serve one who clearly rejected hierarchies? Why did they — and we — marginalize women in the name of one who welcomed women to his inner circle and who appeared first to them that they became the apostles to the apostles?
Why did they — and we — create standards of admission to see and be with a Savior who gladly welcomed and ate with sinners? Why did they — and we — become advocates for war, privilege, wealth, hatred, and pride in the name of one who gave his life to defeat such darkness?
Of course, it was good to catch those fish. Maybe they should just have stayed with it, remain unsurprised, not recognize Jesus, and just let it be. Not try to explain it. Not try to get reality back under control. Not dive under the covers of intellect. Not domesticate surprise. Instead of all that, just savor the moment, allow God to keep on speaking in his surprising ways… and start listening.
I wonder if God had more to say on Easter Day, and nobody had the courage to wait and hear what it might be. Me? I’m going fishing. It’s a lot safer.
April 16, 2004
The faith of Thomas
Easter 2C Jn 20.19-31
Most of us probably remember Thomas more for his doubt than for his faith. We forget his courage and his enterprise. All of which gives him a lot more grief than he deserves.
While the rest of the disciples were cowering up in the loft for fear of the Romans and probably full of resentment that they’d bet their lives and possible fortunes on a loser, Thomas was out pounding the pavement, risking arrest, renewing old contacts, checking the want-ads, and looking for work.
He didn’t believe the talk about Jesus. He wanted better evidence than the cringing behavior of his old pals. But when he got it, he signed on for good or ill, accepted his commission as an apostle, wrote a gospel, and, some say, started a new church over in India.
Obviously, Jesus believed his commitment, and actually, Thomas could hardly have done otherwise. Whatever, John’s gospel stresses that Jesus specially blessed those who had not seen and yet believed, ultimately, those for whom John wrote in the first place, that we, you and I, “believing, may have life in his name” (Jn 20.31b).
We don’t have the hard evidence Thomas got. John knew that, but maybe he knew something else, as well. Faith is not only always surrounded by doubt and without evidence, but that it also creates both.
Faith is risk, and risk, by definition, contains doubt. But faith that comes only after evidence is no faith at all. It is merely trust one way or another. Faith, that is, the daring commitment that walks life’s planks and then leaps is all the evidence we get.
Faith creates evidence. Yours for me. Mine for you. Our faith as a community is what makes church church. The groveling disciples in the upper room would probably never have convinced Thomas until he personally experienced the vision of the risen Lord. Were fear our only motivation we’d never convince those who pass by.
For not until we show the world by the way we love one another can our witness ever become the winsome and compelling evangel of the Lord. That’s church — where the Lord is risen, where He is risen indeed. In your deeds and mine.
April 15, 2004
Aging
The whole idea of “affirmative aging” is silly, patronizing, and trivial. This, of course, is only my take on it. It doesn’t clean it up much to call it “point of view” or “opinion,” just maybe sounds better than “bias.”
For one thing, when does aging start being affirmative? If getting born at all has any special value (and some would probably take exception to it if they had the chance), then it’s affirmative from the start. Suddenly to start calling aging affirmative at some arbitrary stage in life is absurd, sounds like an AARP lobby, and is probably insulting to God.
Our diocese has (or has had) an affirmative aging “program.” I’m never sure exactly why. The fact that its “director” seems always to be part time with a gradually diminishing budget ought to tell us something. There’s even a chaplain — volunteer, I think, for lack of anything else to do — who sends out hearts-and-flowers cards with pious, soap-operish messages on birthdays and anniversaries. The bishop tips his mitre once a year and invites all us old duffers, our spouses, and “survivors” to lunch. Otherwise, to us he’s more often out-to-lunch. He’d probably spend his time better embedded in Iraq.
I always find “survivors” a funereal thought, anyway, with an obituary creepiness about it or maybe at best a hokey TV show ambience. I’m never sure what it means. Survivors of what? Vestry meetings? Reinventing some ecclesiastical wheel every decade or so? Holy Week? Life?
There’s a lot of untapped experience and maybe even wisdom out there among what the Brits lovingly call the “old age pensioners.” Surely there’s a better, less sappy, way to find out about it, maybe even use it to get those “new” wheels on straight.
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Out of Nowhere is an occasional piece, intentionally daily, but not likely. If you know others who might want to receive it, please send me their addresses. If you’re getting duplicates or if you want your address removed, please let me know. The OoN archive may now be found at www.covenant-journal.org. Copyright © 2004 Lane Denson III
April 14, 2004
“To church”
The parish where I more or less work sponsors the Hope Exchange for five summer weeks.
The idea is a kind of school that garners fifty or so young ghetto kids together with skilled and thoughtful mentors to practice social skills and develop some self-esteem. Tuition and a couple of meals a day are on the house. Families, as well, get into the action.
To watch it move and grow each summer is to discover that “to church” is really the infinitive of a verb meaning to catch and unfurl one’s spirit into the human being God imagines it to be.
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April 12, 2004
Perfection-ism
Note: People whose email addresses are firmly intact in OoN’s address book are missing copies that have been sent. Their applications may be spamming and junking us. One way possibly to prevent this, we’re told, is to make sure OoN’s sender’s address (john.l.denson@vanderbilt.edu) is in your address book. If you know another way, please tell us. Just on an uninformed hunch, we’ve also tweaked the subject line ever so slightly in an effort to fool the usually unfoolable electrons. Let us know if anything’s changed. — JLD
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Perfectionism is sweeping the campuses, and the deans, of all people, are worried about it.
Far from being shocked, the dean of student affairs at one college supported the women’s group that came up with a campaign of posters showing naked undergraduate women from the neck down in all their short, tall, thin, not-so-thin, fit and unfit, anonymous, unairbrushed glory — anything to stop students from worrying so much about body image, grades, careers.
College officials are telling students to get off the treadmill. Go for a walk, go surfing. Read a novel just for pleasure. Eat ice cream. Hang out with the knitting club. Find your passion.
All of this reflects the ever-increasing attention colleges across the country are giving to undergraduates’ personal growth and emotional well-being. There are now free massages and dogs to cuddle in exam seasons, biofeedback workshops, and therapists available just to help students work through their first C.
We didn’t have those posters when I was an undergraduate. All we had was our imaginations where the bodies were always perfect. But I do remember very well my first C. I was so grateful finally to make one, that I gave the prof a massage.