January 31, 2005

Shepherd

Not unlike others around the church, I suppose, several parishes in our diocese have covered up the word Episcopal on their street signs with black tape. Others, less adolescent or wealthier or both, have just gone out and bought new signs that do not include the not-so-beneficial-to-them word.

At our just now done with 173d Episcopal Diocesan Convention, all the clergy and other delegates from those taped-up churches were present and voting. Nobody, not even the bishop who was in charge or his chancellor upon whom he depends a lot, sought to question what seemed to me a rather obvious irregularity.

So I asked one of the taped rectors who was at hand had his church stripped the tape off their sign. He said, No.

So then I asked whether they’d had a change of heart and now considered themselves Episcopalians. He said, No.

So I asked what for me was the larger question of why were they present and voting and talking and caucusing and offering resolutions at this Episcopal Convention. As he turned his back and walked away, he looked over his shoulder and said, Get lost.

The tapers and their colleagues won just about everything they voted for.

That night, I told CP about my attempt at what I thought was a prophetic ministry. She ignored that altogether. But she did say that my story called to mind the parable of the Good Shepherd, sort of.

January 31, 2005

Habits

Habits often change after traumas. The Calder mobile used in systems
theory is a splendid illustration. Barely touch one of its members,
and the whole array follows suit in disarray.

The system may be a family, a companionship, or a government. Enron
or Indonesia or the Church. Lets hear it for the church. The tsunami
brought forth a world of compassion, but it exposed, as well, a world
of corruption not only in some political systems over there, but in
some over here, as well, where we can continue to spend more money
and energy and even prayer on war and a presidential inauguration
almost as if nothing ever happened. The media speak of the millions
the security cost over here as “Washington in a Steel Capsule.”

Let’s hear it once more for the church. Trauma or no, some habits
never change. They just go into lock down and give the gates of hell
another shot at it.

January 27, 2005

Prairie Home

During the early 1930s economic rearrangement, we lived in a Larry McMurtry “Last Picture Show” kind of town in west Texas. Our neighborhood had dirt streets and yards. The back door of our house opened to what without much effort could be imagined as the south end of the northbound Great Plains.

My early morning chore was to remove and stash the tumbleweeds that had collected overnight, some as big as three feet in diameter. My father’s year-round work was somehow to hard scrabble a living for the four of us selling cigars out of his panel truck to the retail druggists and grocers in the “territory.”

My mother somehow managed, all the while sweeping sand, dusting grit, and washing clothes on a scrub board, mostly more cheerful than choreful. Sometimes, she would make home brew to interrupt the prairie monotony of it all. The smell of yeast would fill the house, and ever so often in the middle of the night, a bottle cap would blow off like a cherry bomb.

I was proud of my mother’s skill, so much so that one season I told about it to some of the neighbors, illustrating my story with the bottle caps. Unfortunately, my neighborliness did not sit all that well with my father. How was I to know that prohibition was very much then the law of the land and that how one attended to it had best be an altogether private matter?

January 26, 2005

Of such

Lilly is our guest columnist today.

Little does she know that her grandmom has told us that “When Lilly was four, her mom took her to her first confirmation service. She watched in fascination as the bishop donned his fancy cope and mitre, took up his staff, and seated himself in a big chair in front of the altar to have the confirmands kneel before him.

“Then Lilly leaned over and in a loud stage whisper, asked her mother, ‘Who is he pretending to be?’”

January 25, 2005

Walking

A more winsome and faithful advocate of the Gospel than Madeleine L’Engle would be hard to find. Of her many intriguing and challenging books, one called “Walking on Water” was especially about Christianity, art, and artists.

Almost as an aside, she wrote that if Jesus was as fully human as we believe and could walk on water, as well, then, if we were fully human, so might we. The reason we cannot, she concluded, is because we don’t remember how, mayhaps because we are not all that fully human.

I never take Ms L’Engle’s speculations or counsel lightly, nor do I think ever that anyone else should. But when you come to think about it, we might be well-purposed and considerably assuaged that when Jesus said, “do this in remembrance of me” he was at the time merely sharing a bit of bread and some of the local vintage with his colleagues and was not, instead, walking on water.

I should think most altar guilds might breathe a sigh of relief about this, as well.

January 24, 2005

Clericals

The story is told that one-time Bishop of Massachusetts Phillips Brooks, never one to wear a clerical collar when a shirt and tie would do, once visited one of his parishes not so, shall we say, oriented. The occasion was a kickoff dinner for an important fund-raising. The bishop arrived in the rector’s study, dark suit, white shirt, maroon tie.

The rector lamented how important it would be to his people that the bishop at least wear clericals at this landmark affair. So as not to worry him further, Brooks removed his maroon tie, reached into his briefcase, and promptly put on a black one.

Today or yesterday (or however the priorities for such things properly drop) we remember Phillips Brooks of “O Little Town of Bethlehem” fame and also one of our better preachers before and since. But what really stands out about him for me is his lack of pretense, a quality so strikingly welcome in our time when so many of our leaders both in church and in state seem to wallow in an obsession with self.

Brooks left us these salient and perhaps curative words among others: “Whatever happens,” he wrote, “always remember the mysterious richness of human nature and the nearness of God to each one of us.”

ps. The current issue of Covenant (#19), the wonder journal, may be found at www.covpubs.org.

January 21, 2005

Organize

Epiphany 3A (Mt 4.12-23)

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.”

Today’s gospel tells the story of Jesus selecting his disciples. It’s a story of both good news and bad news. The good news is to witness the apparently willing surrender of all that these men held dear — work, family, perhaps even their lives — for the uncertainty of whatever it might mean to follow Jesus, the kind of news that might inspire and embrace us all. The bad news is to witness what are probably the first steps, albeit nascent and even unintentional, in the attempt to organize truth.

A colleague of mine once introduced himself. He said, “I am a member of no organized religion. I am an Episcopalian.” I wish this were true, but of course, it is not. Nevertheless, there is a strange and uniquely Anglican spin on the Gospel and its servant, the church, of which we might just remind ourselves from time to time. It would go something like this:

Perhaps our most important and distinguishing mark is corporate prayer, with thanksgiving (we call it Eucharist) at the center of our worship. All that we do and the way we attempt to understand what we do grows out of our corporate worship, powered by grace, implemented by faith in gratitude.

We discover God’s will for us in Scripture. But also in tradition, as says one of our prayers, “joining with the heavenly chorus, with prophets, apostles, and martyrs, and with all those in every generation who have looked to (God) in hope.” We take this Scripture and this tradition and through our rational capacities we strive to understand these things. They are brought together for us in the shape of the liturgy, the work of the people, so that we can share mutual trust with our inheritance.

We distrust judgmentalism, biblical literalism, election, predestination. These ideas lead to division, then hatred, alienation, and even killing. We embrace inclusiveness, moderation, and toleration.

We live comfortably with ambiguity and do not require certainty in all things. We argue. We fight. But then, we come together once more for Common Prayer and Eucharist. This is our way. We seem actually and rather quaintly to prefer vagueness and imprecision. We practice a generous and forgiving orthodoxy, an ordered freedom. We are the oxymoron of the ongoing Christian endeavor and view of things.

Don’t we wish. But there is hope.

For it is a model of community to which we all might well aspire. It is part of this communion’s “ordered freedom.” It is a delightfully redundant diversity with a graced pragmatism about it all. We proceed by the way of “probable persuasions.”

Frank Griswold, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church for whom we pray regularly, claims as his rule of life these words once spoken by a Roman Catholic archbishop from South America:

“The bishop belongs to all. Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must be open to everyone, absolutely everyone.”

This, of course, must not only be true for our bishops, but it must also be true for ourselves and thus for the church. For it is our fear that prevents us from being such a community, not our welcome and affirmation of diversity. If I must choose, and I hope never to have to, I would choose without question an uncertain church that is loving over a loveless church that is orthodox.

So thanks for listening. Here’s a lagniappe for your trouble:

A Franciscan Blessing

May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart.

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.

And may God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen

January 19, 2005

Wulfstan

I’d forgot about Wulfstan (if I’d ever known) when I rediscovered him today, his day shadowed by yesterday’s garrulous old Peter. Rediscovered how he had bridged a gap between William the Conquerer and the Brits way back in the 11th century and at one point was the only English bishop standing in the lot of them.

He was, unlike me and so many others in orders these days, a holy man, they say, disciplined, prayerful, exemplary. I’d like to think he didn’t bother much about that which bothers us much. I’d like to think he cared about prayer — eccentric or not — but especially about justice and peace and about how they require each other.

I like to be reminded by Wulfstan and his kind, rare though they may be, that in Christ, we are none of us “an island” apart even from ourselves.

January 18, 2005

Peril

The N3N-3 Yellow Peril was the Navy’s primary flight trainer during the Great Middle War (aka WW II). It was a bright yellow biplane with two open cockpits. The instructor rode in the front, the cadet in the back. Instructors often said that they felt safer flying off carriers under combat in the Pacific than teaching cadets to fly.

They demonstrated that rather clearly on the occasion of our first night-flying in primary. We would take off together with several other planes at dusk, circle the Memphis Naval Air Station a couple of times, then land. The instructors would deplane and send us back up alone to follow each other in a circle until it got good and dark, then we’d land solo.

The planes had the usual running lights, green on the starboard wing, red on the port, white on top of the fuselage so we could keep up with each other. It was a clear night. We’d been warned not to confuse the white fuselage light on the plane ahead of us with a star.

When I happened to remember that, I found myself all alone at 5,000 feet, several miles north up the Mississippi River (without a paddle, of course), and hard after Polaris. That and being born at the right time are a couple of reasons how I got to be a member of the Greatest Generation.

January 17, 2005

Gushing

Fashion is meant to be the focus of the Golden Globes pre-show programs, but a moratorium seems inexplicably to have been declared on both raving about and panning outfits. One of the interviewers (who looked pretty snappy, herself) said that she had been instructed to stop gushing and stop talking about clothes. Thus handicapped, she struggled to talk about the content of people’s movies and television shows. It was awkward.

Come to think about it, gushing seems to be the MO more often than not these days. I remember how proud was our own bishop when he announced he now had vestments for all seasons and we would no longer have to rehang the parapets to match when he showed up. (Some were looking for a man for all seasons, instead.) Then there’s the plethora of American lapel flags over these past few years all the while the constitution for which they stand is being dismantled.

Not the least of this style-over-substance milieu is the church’s giving primacy to doctrine over gospel, propriety over justice and love, talking over walking. Leave it to the entertainment industry to remind us that it’s content and substance to which we’re commissioned to witness, no matter how awkward it seems.