June 30, 2004
Bishops
In 1956, the two-year old Brown decision legally desegregating the public schools was enforced at the small state college where, fresh out of seminary and collared green, I had just been appointed as our church’s chaplain.
At registration time that fall, black students, many of whom had day jobs, came in considerable numbers to register for night classes only to find campus entrances blocked by picketers carrying signs, baseball bats, and ax handles. As the word spread, the campus Methodist chaplain, the Presbyterian campus worker, the rector of our downtown parish, and I met, got our signals together, and walked students, one on each arm, through the pickets onto the campus and to the Registrar’s Office.
State lore often recounts with pride that it never takes more than one Texas Ranger to settle any size misunderstanding. I was comforted to note that in addition to the presence that night of a few dozen of our local finest, there were also two Rangers. Comforted, but not all that much.
The morning paper’s front page pictured us brazen clergy at work and surrounded by pickets. Later in the day, my bishop called, said, “Looks like you’re having quite a time over there. I’m getting a lot of unsympathetic callers wondering why I sent you and why don’t I send you somewhere else.” I mumbled something very unprophetic.
He said, “I know you’ll probably have to make some quick decisions, and I just want to let you know that whatever they are, they’re also mine. Just let me know as soon as possible so I’ll be able to say what we’re doing. Be safe.”
Nine years later, that same bishop became the Presiding Bishop of the church. He said at that time, “A bishop’s job is to keep his church family on the firing line of the world’s most desperate needs and to learn to accept the exquisite penalty of such an exposed position.”
How greatly I miss him and his kind.
June 29, 2004
Flowers
Notice on the campus e-mail of a well-known church university:
“Please be advised that Evening Prayer has been cancelled for this evening at 4:30 p.m., in St _______’s Chapel, due to the flower arrangement class.”
Following that, maybe sentence arrangement class, then down the line, perhaps a seminar or two on mission and ministry?
June 28, 2004
Ike
As we approach another Independence Day, these words of President Dwight Eisenhower forty-one years ago before the American Society of Newspaper Editors seem as relevant now as then.
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”
June 26, 2004
Choice
During one of the “debates” in the last presidential campaign, the candidates were asked to name their favorite “philosopher.” One of them answered, “Christ.” His answer obviously pleased thousands who gave millions, convinced, along with their new leader, that he was not only their choice, but God’s, as well.
And now it has come to pass (actually it was there all along, I just wanted to elevate the prose some) that there are others who also believe that they are God’s choice and that God also chooses for them to kill us come what may. What comes is that we are returning the favor and with zeal.
I can imagine that God might want to be counted out of all this were it not for his favorite “philosopher” to whom he asked us to listen and who just happened to have said, “Love your enemies.”
June 25, 2004
A Place
Pent 4/8C (Gal 5.1,13-25; Lk 9.51-62)
Angus Dun, onetime bishop of the Diocese of Washington, was often invited together with other prominent prelates to attend high-level state dinners in the capital city. As he sipped a glass of wine at one of these gatherings, a colleague of a more conservative persuasion observed, “I’d sooner commit adultery than drink that wine.” Politely, the bishop responded, “And indeed, who wouldn’t?”
If you’re not shocked or even startled by Paul’s catalogue of fleshly malfeasance and warnings thereabout to the Galatians, you’ve been making the rounds too much. If you are, perhaps you need to get out and circulate. Nevertheless, it is well to take note that Paul puts all these options — both the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit — under the umbrella of freedom with the gospel’s characteristic redundancy, “For freedom Christ has set us free… ”
It has been said that the only person who is truly free is the one who can turn down an invitation to dinner without giving an excuse. Such freedom is what grace is all about. Indeed, without freedom, we could hardly even entertain taking on any of Paul’s list of errancies, let alone practicing them. Without such freedom we cannot finally accept grace in all its nourishing grandeur.
If we are not free to choose between wine and adultery or none of the above, we are not free at all. But with such freedom, a wise person once said, the possibility of making complete fools of ourselves appears to be limitless.
The old prayer speaks of God “in whose service is perfect freedom,” a paradox that is not so hard to understand as it sounds. For it is Love incarnate who calls us into service. To obey such a master who above all else wishes us well, is an obedience that leaves us the freedom to be the best and the brightest that we have it in us to become, to be fulfilled as the human being whom God imagines us to be. For the only freedom totally contrary to such Love is the freedom not to love and thus quite possibly to destroy ourselves, as well as others. A dear mentor of mine once said that if I love my neighbor and hate myself, God help my neighbor.
The gospel for this Sunday tells of this very thing. When the Samaritans rejected the disciples’ plea for hospitality, they chose not to love, they rejected wholeness in favor of boundaries. They rejected God’s freedom in favor of indenture. This is how religiosity always stifles faith.
The Samaritans disapproved of where Jesus was heading, so they spurned his need for shelter. They put their dogma ahead of another’s humanity, a practice that continues, that has apparently never been out of vogue, and remains quite firmly planted there today. The Samaritans were not alone in forcing Jesus to say that even though all else has its place, “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”
Saint Theresa of Lysieux surely meant something like this when she wrote with such great spiritual insight that, “If you are willing to serenely bear the trial of being displeasing to yourself, then you will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter.”
For when those times come that we cannot accept ourselves for some self-imposed reason that rejects God’s forgiving grace and prevents our own wholeness, then we have turned against this “freedom (for which) Christ has set us free.”
But if we can love ourselves in spite of all we know to be unlovable about us, if we can will to bear serenely that trial of being displeasing to ourselves, then we will be for Jesus a pleasant place of shelter where the Son of Man can lay his head, indeed.
June 24, 2004
John Baptist
So far, the cicadas have spared our town. They were here six years ago, and if the thirteen-year cycle be true for us, they won’t be back for a while. They’ll just lurk.
They come to mind not only because they’ve been in the news of late, but because today’s John Baptist’s birthday. If he ate locusts, well… ? Whatever. It’s really not so much what he ate and what he wore, but what he did and what he would and wouldn’t put up with.
You’ll not catch us churchers eating bugs — unless, maybe, if they’re chocolate-covered — but neither will you catch us much sporting WWJBD bumper stickers. Anyhow, we’ve got a prayer about him that says, “Make us so to follow his teaching and holy life, that we may truly repent according to his preaching; and, following his example, constantly speak the truth, boldly rebuke vice, and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake… ” (BCP pp 190 & 241).
It’s of the cicadas’ nature to lurk, not ours, at least while we’ve still got a prayer.
June 23, 2004
Weeds
Our stewardly Metro Council of some thirty-five members was considering an ordnance that says our yards cannot have “grass, weeds, or other vegetation” taller than twelve inches. As reported in an earlier release, the Electric Service was already ahead of the council and working along their proposed lines with the trees.
Being someone of serious mind and also a concerned citizen, I took down my Book of Weeds and found that a weed is any obnoxious, undesired plant growing in competition with less obnoxious, desired plants. Weeds are not only useless, the Book says, but often result in direct loss by contending for moisture, robbing the soil of nutrients, reducing the yields of the good stuff, providing comfort to unwelcome insects, generally messing up the appearance and value of one’s property, and completely exhausting and frustrating gardeners who hate to come in second in any race.
The Council was apparently thinking along these same lines and had suggested a list of at least ten plants which they would define legally as illegal. It’s probably best not to list those here as what’s obnoxious to some could well be precious to others.
As it turned out, the proposal never got past the second reading. It seems that an enterprising reporter took pictures of the yards of the two council members who had introduced the legislation, only to find they’d both be in serious violation had their bill passed. When she pointed this out in the newspaper, complete with the pictures, one of the sponsors claimed that he had never signed the bill in the first place.
June 22, 2004
Judas Priest!
There’s probably no way beyond speculation to know whether Judas endorsed abortion. But it is clear that he embraced treason, and that Jesus knew it.
It also seems altogether likely that in spite of himself he was not excommunicated from that Holy Table up there in that room on that fateful night.
Maybe there’s a pattern here that might be attended by those certain modern-day prelates who, when it comes to our Lord’s Table, seem to confuse apostolic succession with apostolic possession.
June 21, 2004
Homeowner
We live on a steep hill composed of generally busted-up, fossiliferous Ordovician limestone arranged in a kind of stair- step topography that once served as a redoubt during the Great Misunderstanding of the 1860s. The drainage has never allowed for much soil of any depth or fecundity to form. What good dirt there is, we’ve hauled in ourselves, rearranging the indigenous rocks into terraces so they could be of more service than where God left them a few hundred million years ago.
A stone mason working for us observed these contoured retaining walls (largely stacked by CP over the recent past) and commented, “Pretty good for a home owner.” She thought he meant “for a woman” and told him so. He smiled.
The yard and all its several gardens of herbs, tamed wildflowers, and swapped-out-with-others plantings are all native Tennessee and casual in their splendor. They are admired often, and the ones in the along-the-street garden are sometimes even stolen by running and walking passersby. Once a woman took lots of pictures for a garden book she said she was publishing. CP, who’s the steward of all this, seems altogether pleased, although she’s got no royalties she’s told me about.
I watch all this and enjoy and am most of the time embarrassed to be so one-upped by a home owner. (Actually, I’m a writer with an allergically compromised respiratory system that gets a seasonal no-yard-work pass from its doctor.)
June 19, 2004
Village People
I wish I had thought of this myself and didn’t have to plagiarize it, but actually it is the sort of thing I would think up if only I weren’t generally so serious-minded. I can’t remember where I found it, but here goes, anyhow. — JLD
“For the first time in their three decades of existence, the disco band The Village People have inducted an openly Episcopal man, igniting a controversy that threatens to tear the fabled group asunder.
“In a recent press conference, The Construction Worker, a prominent member of the band since its inception in the 1970’s, urged ‘tolerance and understanding’ for its latest member, The Episcopal Guy, who joined the group just recently.
” ‘From the start, The Village People have been all about inclusiveness,’ The Construction Worker said. ‘And introducing The Episcopal Guy as our latest member is part of that tradition.’
” The Indian Chief and The Fireman were reportedly in agreement with The Construction Worker about including The Episcopal Guy in the band, but The Policeman, The Cowboy, and the Leather-clad Guy were reportedly opposed, creating speculation that The Village People might split up into two or more smaller, somewhat less influential disco bands.”