February 14, 2007
Gershwin
GERSHWIN
I’ve nothing against Cyril, the monk, and Methodius, the bishop, who were missionaries to the Slavs in the ninth century, but I do take issue with giving them today for their festive occasion on the liturgical calendar.
By all rights it belongs to the earlier third century Valentines (there were two of them) who, of course, are relatively quite obscure and had so far as we know nothing at all to do with the hearts and flowers associated with their names.
Nevertheless, only St Bah of Humbug would take issue with all the little paper hearts and candies proliferating in public school classrooms this morning. Surely word of this has got to the Supremes and the ACLU. But just as surely, we can hope, they skipped Sunday School often enough to have missed out on whether Valentine had any connection at all with, heaven forbid, anything religious.
Nice thing about the day, mayhaps, is to remind us if ever so faintly that love is here to stay, and that the tune by the same name was George Gershwin’s last. The chord changes, say the jazz players, lay right in the pocket. But since OoN’s not yet got an audio complement, here’s the lyric, a mighty fine Valentine all by itself:
It’s very clear, / our love is here to stay
Not for a year / but forever and a day
The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know /
May just be passing fancies and in time may go /
But oh, my dear, / our love is here to stay
Together we’re / going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble /
They’re only made of clay /
But our love is here to stay…
February 14, 2007
Gershwin
I’ve nothing against Cyril, the monk, and Methodius, the bishop, who were missionaries to the Slavs in the ninth century, but I do take issue with giving them today for their festive occasion on the liturgical calendar.
By all rights it belongs to the earlier third century Valentines (there were two of them) who, of course, are relatively quite obscure and had so far as we know nothing at all to do with the hearts and flowers associated with their names.
Nevertheless, only St Bah of Humbug would take issue with all the little paper hearts and candies proliferating in public school classrooms this morning. Surely word of this has got to the Supremes and the ACLU. But just as surely, we can hope, they skipped Sunday School often enough to have missed out on whether Valentine had any connection at all with, heaven forbid, anything religious.
Nice thing about the day, mayhaps, is to remind us if ever so faintly that love is here to stay, and that the tune by the same name was George Gershwin’s last. The chord changes, say the jazz players, lay right in the pocket. But since OoN’s not yet got an audio complement, here’s the lyric, a mighty fine Valentine all by itself:
It’s very clear, / our love is here to stay
Not for a year / but forever and a day
The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know /
May just be passing fancies and in time may go /
But oh, my dear, / our love is here to stay
Together we’re / going a long, long way
In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble /
They’re only made of clay /
But our love is here to stay…
February 13, 2007
Whoopla
Many may remember Professor Reuel Howe once at Virginia seminary’s pastoral theology chair. It was he who said that even hostile communication is better than none, counsel that when followed saved many a relationship for the better.
When I read that some of the primates at the forthcoming big Tanzania whoopla are so much in a wad about our new PB that they can’t stay at the same table or even in the same room with her, I wonder where they were when Pastoral Theology 101 was handed out.
Of course, she’s pretty impressive. I can understand why some of us who may be missing a few vertebrae might feel a bit intimidated. Impressive, yes. But from watching her at work these days, I suspect she long ago put away temper together with a lot of other childish ways.
Old +Nigeria is one of those who seems to be pawing up the most ground. So dare I say, “Dear Peter, you’ve naught to fear. You’ll probably never make it to Canterbury’s chair, anyway, certainly not behaving the way you’ve been lately. Arrogance and swagger is not all that becoming, even when draped in a cope and capped in a mitre. So let it go. Get a life. And as that old apostle-saint James probably meant to say about dead faith had he been more hip, ‘Don’t let the grace grow under your feet.’
“And try staying within earshot and while you’re there, then listen, as well. It’s one of the first things a chief priest and pastor like you is expected to do. Then talk back when the right time comes. Katharine can handle it.
And by the by, as Billy Graham often said, ‘May the good Lord take a likin’ to you.’”
(more…)
February 12, 2007
Indiscreet
It is a custom for the college of presbyters (aka the clericus) of a diocese to present a new bishop a gift at the time of ordination. This is often a piece of episcopal hardware or haberdashery. It was thence altogether refreshing for the Tennessee clergy to make, instead, a contribution in the bishop-elect’s honor to the Episcopal Relief and Development Jericho Project for rebuilding Katrina-demolished homes in New Orleans. Louisiana was the home diocese of the new bishop.
This gift is significant in other ways, as well. Intentionally or not, it symbolizes a possibly nascent unity of purpose among a clericus that has been increasingly sorely divided over the thirteen years of our previous episcopate. This has provoked an additional uncertainty of leadership that many say has confused the laity, divided parishes, and diminished energies for support. Hence, for the clergy additionally to invite their congregations to join them in this gift many believe may have moved us all further toward a possible reconciliation of sorts.
When the Canon to the previous Ordinary learned of this plan, she admonished her colleagues for “tapping” the laity and possibly compromising the offering at the new bishop’s ordination, an offering customarily designated for the episcopal discretionary fund. Let alone that the remainder of the retiring bishop’s discretionary fund would be expected automatically to transfer to his successor.
In the manner of irony’s frequent capacity for refreshment, however, what did the new bishop do but request at his ordination that the offering be ascribed to the Katrina rebuilding programs, and that we — laity and clergy — give generously. We did, again. After all, what are discretionary funds for but discretion, perhaps, as some might have it, even indiscretion.
February 10, 2007
Race
February is Black History Month. Perhaps it might better be known as White History Month.
I heard a speaker say this a few days ago, a man whose credentials in so-called race relations are impeccable. He did not elaborate. I wonder if he meant that Blacks deserve far more than a month to remember and celebrate their dignity, integrity, and perseverance, and that we cannot possibly stand more than a month to recall and remember the indignities we Whites have heaped upon them and all their generations.
I do not know. But I do know that what we call race relations shall probably never end until we understand that races, if, indeed, there are such, do not in substance really matter, that people matter, that we’re not about race relations, we are about human relations. God created us as human beings and gave us Eden for precisely that.
What’s in the middle of God’s big fat imaginative love feast? Neighbors, thass who. Love neighbors like God and self. It is we who have caught and dwelt, lived and died, upon our so-called differences and always at the great expense, the wanton waste of losing sight of what we humans have in common. Are we spending the wealth and creativity and stewardship of our connectedness on the obsessive poverty of our imagined disconnectedness?
Until we come to this realization on our knees before our Creator, plead our ignominy and ask our forgiveness, we will continue the war and violence among ourselves on the battle fields and in the market places, in our schools and in our churches. We will continue to suffer the incompleteness of our lives, the failure to embrace and keep the Great Commandment, and the final insult to God.
February 8, 2007
Congratulations
Epiphany 6C / Lk 6.17-26
As he was checking out for the day, a workman pushed a wheelbarrow full of sawdust up to his company’s security gate. The guard took special care to poke around through the sawdust, then cleared the man to pass. Day after day, the two went through this same routine.
One day, the guard said that he had been transferred, that his curiosity about what was being smuggled out was driving him bananas, that he would keep strict confidence if only the workman would tell him. So, cautiously, looking over his shoulders both ways, the workman whispered, “Wheelbarrows.”
The Beatitudes occur in two places in the New Testament. In Luke’s Sermon on the Plain as in this morning’s gospel and in Matthew’s perhaps more familiar Sermon on the Mount. I can’t speak for you, but whenever I think of the Beatitudes, I nearly always envision those whom Jesus blessed — the poor, the mourners, the hungry, the peacemakers.
There, plainly before us, is our Lord’s handbook for pastoral ministry. It’s been the church’s model for centuries and rightly so. We may not always have measured up, but there it is, anyhow, reminding us to whom we are called so that we never lose sight of our purpose.
So it is that this remarkable and inclusive Jesus-sermon challenges any preacher. It certainly makes me wonder what more can be said or even needs saying about church and world. But then, like the curious company security guard, the obvious hits me smack-dab in the pulpit.
Wheelbarrows! Blessings! It’s the blessings, stupid! And further, it is not so much who or what the church blesses, but that the church blesses, and that the church itself be a blessing.
What a moment of Aha! Strange is it not that the act of blessing is at the very heart of the schism over which we anguish in these times. The blessing of a priest to make him a bishop. The blessing of a loving relationship to make a commitment sacramental. The cry of thousands ringing in our ears to claim that blessing.
It is not only the church’s primary vocation to bless and to be a blessing for its own and for its neighbor, but it is also the calling of each and every one of us. What is our worship in this place, our service, but to bless God? At the end of every reading of the Daily Offices, there it stands.
“Let us bless the Lord! Thanks be to God!”
The circle of blessing is completed when we bless God, when we offer grace for God, that God’s blessing of us does not return empty. For the church ever to withhold blessing may be the gravest of the ways we separate ourselves from God and from each other, for that is a judgment call that only God can make.
It must and should be clear that blessing does not always mean approval or that it is merited. God’s grace is always free and unearned. We who by that same grace are commissioned as God’s servants dare not risk the peril of standing in its way for another. We cannot claim thus to comprehend grace and not, as well, extend it, nor finally define the means for its giving as if it were some possession that we alone can certify. It is precisely when we are so addicted to our past or to Holy Scripture or to our fixed ways and take ourselves more seriously than we take our work that, for a pity, we become graceless and we are no blessing at all.
Now, I should like to add something of a postscript or actually something that is called a lagniappe. A lagniappe is a kind of grace, itself, something given or obtained gratuitously or by way of good measure. It is rather like the thirteenth cheese Danish in a baker’s dozen.
In the matter of blessings, the scholars of the Jesus Seminar have suggested that the word “blessed” in the Beatitudes may well be translated as “congratulations.” Indeed, one has offered that the phrase, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” might be translated, “Congratulations, you bums!”
“Congratulations” is a word we often use, sometimes just a throw-off without much thought behind it. Somebody will say it to somebody else surely before this day is out. So let me then suggest that we may be blessing folk when we’re not even aware of it, and that, of course, is the best way, the least pompous way of all. For to “congratulate” literally means to “wish grace” to another, to hope for them joy for the time of their life.
When we share the peace in a moment, maybe we should say, “Congratulations! God loves you.”
February 7, 2007
EO
Our Town Council’s got its jingoistic adrenaline going again and is taking another shot at making English our only local language.
When my friend Geoff who lives on the Ely flats over north of Cambridge in the United Kingdom hears about it, he’ll probably say it’s about time. We’ve had over two centuries, he’ll remind us, and all we’ve come up with so far is what he calls Merkin.
Another thing is that if we make EO a law, and it takes effect, and we all have to read and write and talk English only, that will require adding citywide ESL classes in a public school curriculum that dropped any kind of language classes years ago.
None of the rest of state (and especially the South) will have the vaguest idea what we’re talking about over here. The tourist business will have to hire interpreters and all. Then there’s the added expense of replacing all the signs — traffic and otherwise — with double-language types like in Quebec and Wales.
Our town, claiming to be the Buckle on the Bible Belt like it does, you’d think that somebody would remember the story of the Tower of Babel (Gen 11.1-9). That’s when a BO (aka Babelese Only) ordinance was passed and everybody got so smart that they didn’t even need an architect anymore. God favored the architects so she zapped them all back into where we are now, with nobody understanding anybody and with the present state of confusion continuing to reign.
There was an attempt to fix that at Pentecost, of course, with the languages staying about the same and with the Holy Spirit interpreting. But all that got us was several more religions and more denominations than you can shake a stick at. Even one called the Anglican Communion where AO is supposed to be the common language doesn’t do all that well.
ps The Council met tonight and approved English 2/1 as the “official” language of our town, not the “only,” but only the official.
February 6, 2007
Shadow
Long ago when I started my work-in-progress of growing up, there was a radio program called The Shadow. After some spooky music, it would begin every time with the same question, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men(sic)?” Then, after a suspense-filled pause, would come the same answer, “The Shadow does.”
Well, apparently he was not the only one. For some considerable time later and only recently in these last six years, another shadow type called The Decider actually created an Axis of Evil Society, himself alone, of course, naming the founding members and deciding the criteria for membership. One seemingly, though strange-sounding culinary requirement had to do with yellow cakes. Members also had to be about storing up and stock-piling nasty germs and “nooklar” bombs, the whole smash under the heading of Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka WMDs) that only he and his intelligence alter egos knew anything about.
Apparently overlooked in all this was Us and our otherwise rather impressive credentials for membership, an arsenal of our own WMDs. We have plenty, I’m told, to settle, for example, the so-called global warming problem once and for all by simply finishing off the job and burning up the globe altogether. Why we were not somehow included in the Society as fellow founders or just elbowed our way in as usual completely escapes me, but then that’s probably one of those things like our energy program that’s better kept under a blanket of “national security.”
Another item I don’t recall ever being included in this horror story is a definition of evil itself. Membership was determined only by “evil” behavior and not by anything more substantial such as what, after all, is evil.
Anyhow, as I’ve written before in this more or less vanity press publication and feel now moved to report even again, Scott Peck wrote a book about the nature of human evil which may be helpful and which The Decider, himself, might be encouraged to read. It’s called “People of the Lie.” In it, Peck, a practicing psychiatrist, proposed some diagnostic criteria for evil that he hoped other professionals like himself would pick up and use in their handy desk reference called the Diagnostic Statistical Manual (aka DSM). These may be helpful for you to understand just what The Decider has decided and, better still, maybe even how he goes about such decisions.
On page 129, Peck says of evil that in addition to the abrogation of responsibility that characterizes all personality disorders, evil would specifically be distinguished by a consistent destructive, scapegoating behavior, which may often be quite subtle and also by an excessive, albeit usually covert, intolerance to criticism and other forms of narcissistic injury. I suppose Peck may mean by this the frequent use of such phrases as, “mistakes were made” or “in the interest of national security” or, of course, “executive privilege.”
Evil, Peck says, would also show a pronounced concern with a public image and a self-image of respectability, contributing to a stability of life-style but also to pretentiousness and denial of hateful feelings or vengeful motives. And finally, evil would also reveal an intellectual deviousness, with an increased likelihood of a mild schizophrenic-like disturbance of thinking at times of stress.
It is our usual intention here not only to report and comment on matters that may be of public interest, but also to help clarify some of what may seem more obfuscatory in our attempt to understand the news. I hope this little epitome meets that need.
February 2, 2007
Skewer
Molly Ivins died the other day, and “skewer” is back in the news. It is one of the words-in-common that her obit writers could find that seemed best to them to be best for her. For surer, she skewered.
We churchers need a skewerer, probably several, and I’m applying for one of those jobs. I’ve been called a troublemaker and a rabblerouser, but what I really aspire to be is a skewerer. It’s not any harder to say than inimitable, and it’s a lot more exciting. And besides, I’ve got the credentials. If his judgment counts for anything, our previous bishop right out in public for everybody to see and with his finger in my face said I was personally responsible for the sore divisions in “his” diocese. I’ve already got that on my resumé.
With the Tanzania safari right around the corner, and the Primates getting all primed themselves to skewer TEC and our new Primatron, we need to gussie up and hold the fort. Not that she needs any help. When somebody asked her how she would handle that Nigerian clown Peter Akinola walking out of the room when she walked in, she said she’d follow him and ask him how come he’s so mean to Christians.
For me, I’d ask him why he’s so silly and is he bucking for a place on The Daily Show? Come to think of it, silly is a superb word for this whole smish and for grown men (mostly) acting like they do. Ludicrous is too sophisticated. To what other brainless ends can we go to avoid our Lord’s commandment to love and his commission to get on with it? What else will we think up to pass by the poor and the sick and the otherwise helpless casualties and leave them in the ditch? Will there always have to be bangles hanging over our childish cribs to divert us and to embellish our denial and puffery?
February 1, 2007
Leveling
Epiph 5C / Lk 5.1-11
“Getting into one of the boats, which was Simon’s, (Jesus) asked him to put out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the people from the boat” (Lk 5.3).
It is perhaps for many a tired saying, but it is always seems so very relevant, almost necessary. “The pulpit,” said the old British Bishop John Robinson, “is all too often six feet above contradiction.”
Jesus maybe took that possibility into mind when he put offshore and sat down in a boat to teach the crowds. He was not only smack dab in the middle of where the people lived and worked, he was also where he could level with them in more ways than one. Leveling in these times is an increasingly important and increasingly rare practice for us churchers.
The propers this Sunday are about vocation, about calling. It took hot coals to get Isaiah’s attention to become an advanced man for the cause of God (Is 6.1-8). It took being struck blind on the way to Damascus for Paul to be able to make his case — even if only in his passive aggressive way — that he, too, had apostolic credentials from Jesus (1 Cor 15.1-11).
In Luke’s gospel accounting, Jesus has the audacity not only to show professional fishermen how to fish, for in this mother of all fish stories, he does it so well that they hang up their nets and follow him, changing their chosen calling altogether and becoming “fishers of men.” I’m sure they would have included the women and children, too, but it wasn’t a time that paid a lot of attention to political correctness (Lk 5.1-11).
Our vocation was not sealed like that of either Isaiah or Paul. Though there is the matter of that tornado.(1) Our credentials are contained in the covenant that we make at our baptism, the covenant that transforms and challenges us with the holiest of all the orders, the Covenant in which we commit ourselves at our baptism to follow the apostles, ourselves.
This space here where we worship is not called a nave for naught. Nave means boat, often lovingly called the “ship of life.” And here we are, rather a bit like old Simon’s boat in which we can prepare ourselves again and again to level with the world.
The most profound response we make to our vocation is by the way we love one another (Jn 13.35). For that is the way we are identified as Christians. Not by the way we share the warm fuzzies, and not by what we believe, but “by God’s grace sustaining our shared following after Christ as exemplified in our baptism and our eucharistic companionship and our love of God and (of) one another… Such a life is far more organic than institutional, for we are embedded here in the communities of God’s people in direct engagement and communion with one another.
We are threatened at every turn with monolithic “notions of biblical interpretation, ‘orthodoxy’ and other modern understandings of ‘truths for all time.’ These, if they cannot be dispensed with altogether, are better lightly held and kept sufficiently broad to encompass the wide variety of Christian witness and conscientious, faithful living in all our several locations as a Communion. This means that in our shared discourse and vocation as Christians, we need to agree to let God and let go of the ancient oppressive words of an imperial Christianity, including all the language therein that dehumanizes and demeans. Theological language and biblical interpretation that builds up our communion will be both felt and articulated” in ways that lead us into a joyful and holy — how shall we say — something like waltzing with Matilda.(2)
You know that, for you’ve both witnessed it and witnessed to it, and you, by the grace of God, are the reason why this magnetic attraction works its charm. It’s the way we love one another and offer a just peace together.
Jesus sat in Simon’s boat on a level with the people so he could level with the people. And he gave his life for us so that we, too, can level with the people and celebrate this Epiphany, this season of telling it like it is. We love and keep this Baptismal Covenant by the way we say what we mean and mean what we say and the way we make and keep our commitments here and elsewhere and in the grandest Epiphany sense, show and tell what community really means. Maybe this is only a “field of dreams,” but when we build it and shape it that way, they will surely come, and they may well ask, “Is this heaven?” And we can say, “No, it is only St Ann’s.”(3)
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(1) The nave and chancel of St Ann was demolished by a tornado in April 1998. Maybe you’ve another illustration.
(2) Adapted from a report on a recent conference, “Ways Forward in the Anglican Communion.”
(3) Use the name of your own community.