May 31, 2007

Scheme

The Visitation

It was on this day, as best we can remember, that Mary and her cousin Elizabeth got together to talk about the mysterious pre-natal fix they were in. Elizabeth’s babe was apparently so excited by the visit and about one day becoming John the Baptiser that he started right off telling about Mary’s Jesus in the only way handy to him at the moment — leaping in the womb.

Times like this, privately available only to women as a part of their own rich communing skills with one another, are among the most important times we can celebrate in our remembering of who and whose we are. Further, the more we learn about biology, the more we know that virgin birth — parthenogenesis, the Greeks call it — is not all that rare in God’s scheme of things. But whatever we know can never by-pass God’s taking the very reality of it as a way of reminding us that she and Mary can do quite well running things, thank you, without any assistance from the males of the species who then and especially now aren’t all that hot at it.

On this treasured day of the Visitation of the BVM with her elder relative Elizabeth and in our own time as we turn more and more to women as our leaders both in church and state, let anyone troubled by this remember that what was good enough for God had better, shall we say with emphasis, be good enough for us.

May 30, 2007

Ember

These current Ember Days make me mindful of the canonical requirement that postulants and candidates for Holy Orders (sic) “communicate with the Bishop personally or by letter, four times a year, in the Ember Weeks, reflecting on the individual’s academic experience and personal and spiritual development” [Canon III.6.3(f);III.8.2(d)(1)].

When those of us now aging affirmatively were in seminary back in the mid-twentieth century, Kathleen Winsor wrote the best-selling novel “Forever Amber” and topped a craze amidst the nostril-flaring, bodice-ripper boom. The movie was, might we say, rather risqué for the time. It antedated ratings, of course, so you took your chances — usually without hesitation.

The Ember Days come four times a year and eventually entice seminarians’ imaginations to write creatively and convincingly to their bishop about things academic and spiritual which are largely mutually exclusive. So, taking a bit of a risqué myself, I wrote my canonical letter in the spirit of the times, “Dear Bishop: Did you hear about the seminarian who wrote to his Bishop and signed the letter, ‘Forever Ember’?”

His return was instant, “Dear Fading Ember: That’s exactly what you’ll be if you don’t start convincing me that accepting you for the Postulancy was not one of my graver errors in judgment.”

May 29, 2007

Wishful Thinking

I am a naval aviator veteran of WW II, and I’m lucky that I never got shot at (but once when we forgot to turn on our bomber’s IFF system), and that I never shot at anybody else. I never joined the American Legion or the VFW when it was all over. I’m an also-ran in Tom Brokaw’s Greatest Generation. The only veterans’ parades I ever marched in were playing trumpet in my high school bands for WW I vets. I enjoyed the full and considerable benefits of the GI Bill, and I’m mighty grateful for that.

I just recently learned that Memorial Day got started in the South as a thanksgiving for Yankee soldiers who died to end slavery. I’ve no brief with Memorial Day. I think it’s a splendid idea, we displayed our flag, but I do not otherwise especially celebrate it.

The lives given to make it possible are legion and precious and altogether worth celebrating, but the wars that took them are not. I wish we would not call the monuments “war memorials,” but “peace memorials,” instead.

I’m reminded every evening on the news that we haven’t really learned much about Memorial Day and the irony that we don’t really “support our troops.” I wish we would not define peace in terms of war, but war in terms of peace. I wish we would not define peace as the absence of war, but as the presence of justice, distributive justice, not retributive justice.

And I’m not so naive not to know it will take a lot more than wishful thinking to make all this so.

May 28, 2007

Anamnesis

It was on this day in 1549 that we got the first Book of Common Prayer. Knowing that plus a buck will get you a cup of coffee. Knowing that book in its many subsequent incarnations will get you an insight into how Terry Holmes called Anglicanism “a mode of making sense of the experience of God… an approach to the construction of reality or to the building of a world” (What is Anglicanism?, p 1).

In the foreword to Marion Hatchett’s splendid Commentary on the American Prayer Book, it is said that, “Anamnesis is the antithesis of amnesia…(that) a person with amnesia has lost identity and purpose. To know who you are, to whom you belong, and where you are headed, you must remember… A Christian is one for whom, through anamnesis, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is a present reality, and one who has already entered the Kingdom, though it is not yet realized in its fullness” (p xi).

Ann Davis, “cradle Episcopalian” television star in “The Brady Bunch” took up some serious Bible study for the first time in her life. As she got into it, she remarked with some insightful humor, “Isn’t it amazing how much of our beloved Book of Common Prayer is quoted in the Bible?” It would be difficult to find a better way to prompt and refresh our remembering that than the Book of Common Prayer and its many cyclic and crisis liturgies. For there within anyone’s reach is not only the authority of Holy Scripture as containing all things necessary for our salvation, but also the “common” ways our tradition and we in the here and now incorporate and realize it.

Throughout the gradual assimilation over the years of what we call the Anglican Communion of churches, it is this book, to borrow a phrase*, “locally adapted in the methods of its use to the varying needs of the nations and peoples called of God into the unity of His Church,” that has been a kind of ecclesial and liturgical collage that has helped us not lose sight of one another.

In the current rush to judgment that we become a covenant church we remember well to keep in touch with the fact that for some time it has been the genius of this Book of Common Prayer that already reminds us that anamnesis is indeed the antithesis of amnesia.

* Cf the Lambeth Quadrilateral on the Historic Episcopate (BCP p 877).

May 26, 2007

Savoir faire

If ever you need an illustration of savoir faire, a true story:

A friend attended an early Sunday morning Roman Catholic mass. A dozen or so fellow congregants were also present. At a solemn moment in the liturgy, a cellphone in the congregation rang.

The young priest stopped, stood, turned to the congregation and said, “If that’s my wife, tell her I am busy.”

May 24, 2007

Breath

The Day of Pentecost 2007

The Earth’s atmosphere is a relatively thin envelope of gases composed of 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and a smidgen of others. Perhaps our most vital activity in return for our lives, together with all the rest of creation, the animals, the plants, is constantly to be at the process of recycling this envelope. For it connects us in an essential and almost intangible ambiance. Philosopher-scientist Lewis Thomas, it was, who likened our atmosphere and its function most to the walls of a living cell.

In a remarkably similar way does God’s Holy Spirit wholly envelop us. It sustains our lives, creates our communities and connects us in them, and most importantly, enables our reconciliation with one another. No wonder that in so many languages spirit is translated as “breath.” And further, we well remember how it exists quite apart from us and like Jesus told Nicodemus, this Holy Spirit lives and moves, comes and goes as it damn well pleases.

Unlike the Earth’s atmosphere, God’s Spirit seems limitless. We, by God’s grace, become the occasions, the stewards to receive and recycle its energy in service to God’s will. We are created by God as those spiritual beings whose vocation is to give human shape to the Spirit as we mature into the way God imagines us to be. Indeed, a case can be made, can it not, that this life begins with our first breath just as it ends with our last. That is a reality with which both pro-life and pro-choice advocates must contend.

Have you ever imagined how a symphony orchestra or a chorus could function if there were no air, no breath? The wind instruments, the strings, the percussion, all depend on there being an atmosphere if there is to be music, an atmosphere which they can move and shape if there is to be music. So is our mission as churchers to shape Spirit. In the way a musician shapes the air into sound, so must we take our lives, the instruments God gives us and use them to play God’s melodies, to shape God’s Spirit in service to God and to our fellow human beings.

Perhaps one of the most grievous examples of the way we cripple this stewardship is our continuing effort to transfix Holy Spirit in our own interests and not God’s. Of course, the mere thought of such a thing is ludicrous. But not a day passes that we churchers do not strive to fashion and refashion that Spirit in some way so as to warp the gift of Pentecost.

Just as we contaminate the Earth’s atmosphere by our carelessness do we defile God’s Holy Spirit by forcing our identity upon it. Global warming pales beside the toxicity of the church’’s current selfish obsession with its manners, morals, and means at the expense of its mission. We must remember on this Pentecost Feast that we are not only the community created at the first such gathering, but we are, as well, the community commissioned not only by but for Pentecost. We are Spirit-enabled to become Spirit enablers.

The constellation of propers for this Sunday overwhelms us with this good news. Acts’ accounting of the fire, wind, and apostolic headiness that birthed God’s church (Acts 2.1-11). Paul’s catalogue of the gifts of the Spirit to fulfill the church’s purpose with shape and substance (1 Cor 12.4-13). Jesus’s granting of apostolic ministry by the power of his own breath, a portend of the Spirit to come (Jn 20.19-23).

This Pentecost Sunday calls us once again to such ministry. “Breathe on us breath of God,” we sing and pray. This Pentecost comes once again to brace and refresh us, to call us back to and enlist us in the Way, the Truth, and the Life revealed in the Upper Room. This Pentecost comes once again to drag us kicking and screaming away from our fascination with ourselves and our need for ecclesiastic security. And this Pentecost comes once again to license us as God’s agents as Mary sang to show the strength of God’s arm, to scatter the proud in their conceit, to cast down the mighty from their thrones, to lift up the lowly, to fill the hungry with good things, to send the rich away empty, and to champion God’s peace and justice and love for all.

May 23, 2007

Threefold

Somewhere in my recollection there’s a 19th century theologian or Bible scholar or the like who proposed the intriguing idea that Jesus’s threefold ministry as prophet, priest, and servant/king was too hot for any one institution to handle. So he suggested that the church do the priesting, the state do the serving, and the university, the propheting. (Propheting, not prophesying, indicting, not predicting).

I’ve always liked that idea, found it fell on deaf ears when I was in the university ministry. For that matter, the church and the state never much cottoned to it, either. So I had to do the whole megillah and usually — if not always — made something of a mess of it.

I still like the idea and wish it would start up somewhere. Maybe the press could get into the act. They’ve sure dropped the ball in the present miasma, though there are signs of a bit of spine even now. But when it came to the state or the press, even Thomas Jefferson preferred the latter.

Forget it on the church. We’re so preoccupied with our orthodox two-step into people’s bedrooms these days we may never recover intact. That pulpit is too often six-feet above contradiction. And we’re probably causing more damage than any priesting could ever patch, even if Jesus gave us a 21st century jump-start.

As for the university and the state, like with Peter and Paul wandering around loose in the Acts, it’s “follow the money.”

Clark Kerr, one-time chancellor of the California academic system, said in his little monograph in the sixties, “The Uses of the University,” to get enough money to run a successful university one has to satisfy the faculty’s parking privileges, the student body’s sex life, and the alumni’s football appetite. Corporate support, foundation giving, and government grants follow when all’s quiet on the academic front. Prophesy, schmophesy.

As for the state, apparently the only thing more important than getting elected is getting reelected. No matter how noble the cause, money buys votes. We, the electorate, will fall for anything and usually whatever and whoever defers to our favors. As for checks and balances, it was a good idea until the bankers got hold of it.

May 22, 2007

Smiles

I’ve a good friend who is a financial advisor with what would be called a “major investment house.”

She’s a lifelong Episcopalian, and probably the only reason I know that resides somewhere in her knowledge of my work and her willing and refreshing candor. She has not a lot of energy for either “The Church” or for “church.” For that matter, I’m not so sure whether God does either, but I am deeply confident that when God thinks about her, God smiles. I certainly do.

One very important and unique reason for that smiling is that she’s made herself something of an authority on who are those in the corporate world that practice fair employment and that are also environmentally friendly. She’ll not assist a potential investor to use money to empower any business endeavor that does not on its own initiative meet the highest employment and environmental standards.

If the love of money is the root of all evil [1 Tim 6.10], here’s a professional that can take that kind of “love” — greed is another of its names — and use it in the world of finances in service to the kind of stewardship for the distributive justice of which I suppose God might be rather fond. It’s a model, as well, for us churchers better to embrace our own and also to commend in our mission.

May 21, 2007

Fist

Back when I had a heavier-than-usual case with Poor Me and was lamenting the busted sagittal band on my right hand’s bird finger, I got some sympathy from here and there. It was enough, pretty much what I was not so subtly asking for. Then it all faded as soon as I got back to hunting-and-pecking out more or less daily OoNs.

Well and good. But just the other day, a “devoted reader” wrote, How’s your hand? and Poor Me said, I thought you would never ask.

The hand bams along. The other day, the surgeon, looking it over, said, Make a fist, and when you can, you’re more or less free to use your hand for other things like driving a car. Meanwhile, keep wearing the splint. I’ll give you three more weeks. If you can’t make a fist by then, I’ll turn you over to Kruela, The Punisher, Board Certified Physical Therapist.

I asked how soon may I start playing my horn. He said, three weeks. I said, just so we’re on the same page, what does “playing a horn” mean to you. He wiggled his fingers rapidly. I said, I didn’t ask how you envision Wynton Marsalis playing his horn. He said, Three weeks, Fist.

So, though making a fist — and even shaking it at somebody — used to be a lot easier and altogether painless, just the thought of Kruela pushes my resolve, denies the pain, and here I am,squeezing away. At the surgeon’s suggestion, CP, my onetime main squeeze, brought home for me some fist-size Silly Putty, instead. She’s tired of driving and especially tired of listening to my futile attempts at the cornet-without-pistons. And just to think, I once got a scout merit badge in bugle.

May 19, 2007

Jerry, RIP

My friend and colleague, the Revd Elizabeth Kaeton, writes…

“Perhaps Jerry Falwell’s greatest legacy - and lasting curse - will be that he defined for the general public what it means to be ‘Christian’ and, of course, for his ‘analysis’ of the reason for the disaster of 9/11.

“A Falwell Christian is one with a negative, narrow view of the human condition, someone who is both judging and judgmental, who grants forgiveness contingent upon a pledge of allegiance to the god of Falwell’s own imaging and conformity to a way of life strictly prescribed by Falwell’s own understanding of the will of God as revealed by his interpretation of the fundamentals of scripture.

“When it is learned that someone has died, it has become as automatic to respond, ‘Rest in Peace’ as it is to say, ‘God Bless You!’ when someone sneezes. As a Christian, I pray that’s true for Mr Falwell. Because now, it’s certainly true for many of the rest of us.”

Myself included.