October 16, 2007

Visits

My calendar took little note of Columbus Day last week on October 12. You remember, he was the explorer who set out to find the new world because spices were so important and cholesterol hadn’t been invented yet. Rather than a new world, what he found was a world altogether as old as and maybe in better shape than the one he left, with a native welcoming committee already intact, and without any spices worth writing home about.

Actually, the natives were minding their own business until Columbus made it his. I suppose they were surprised and maybe even glad for some diversion until they got his courtesy gifts of a new disease along with Italian and irregular verbs.

Columbus was one of our earlier immigrants who was even less invited. We didn’t fence him out though we might have been better off and suffered one less parade had we done so. Instead, we later on started making over him in a different way from our more recent immigrants who are also looking for a new world and having to learn English and its infinitely more irregular verbs and whatever.

We pay little attention to the other Europeans who had off and on visited the Americas earlier. There are varied theories of contact by East Asians, Phoenicians, let alone the native Americans themselves who were already here and reasonably satisfied, thank you.

But Columbus’s expedition triggered a great wave of European interest in the “New” World. Unlike the earlier visitors, Columbus aggressively made do about his discoveries and arranged for return voyages. Actually, he may have started one of the earlier travel agencies. There’s little evidence that he did, although the whole country’s been full of immigrants of one kind or another ever since.

October 15, 2007

Perfect

So, now we’re being told that the Jews need to be “perfected.” Many of them would probably be the first to agree and have no problem with that.

But so the Jews need to become Christians, and doing so would make them perfect like us? Who are you kidding? Deliver me from fooling around and making with that kind of judgment of anybody, especially God’s chosen Numero Uno, themselves. That’s too precarious a business for any sensible, certainly for any informed Christian to get all mixed up in. Even the Muslims who, if they’d only admit it, also have enough of their own problems.

It’s apparently too easy, as well, to forget that Jesus was a Jew. We presume and even believe, of course, that he was without sin, a pretty good step toward perfection in itself. He said he wasn’t into abolishing the law, but into fulfilling it, and while he was at it even to throwing in the prophets whom he apparently thought needed some perfecting, themselves. Whether he was without sin, of course, was actually nobody’s business but his own. Besides, he also said not to go around calling him good, that only his Father rated those kinds of adjectives.

So maybe it’s time to remind ourselves that “perfect” not only means complete and without flaw, but that “to perfect” as in “to be perfected” means rather to fulfill, to move as it were like Webster’s Dictionary, toward becoming unabridgedly whomever it is God wants us to be by whatever religion if at all. Perfect, the goal, and perfect, the process, one of those good Anglican words that make us so irresistibly attractive and about as happily ambiguous and unorganized as one can get. A word also suggesting a splendid occasion for grace to move in and chink up the gaps that all of us have between where we are and where we’re headed.

Like has been said so often and on those neat little crocheted samplers, Parity begins at home.

October 12, 2007

Smarts

Now that Al Gore’s won a Nobel Prize, the anti-intellectuals will surely fire up again all over the place. They’ll more than likely make much of the fact that he won only half of one. Remember 41’s “Ozone Man”?

I wouldn’t want anybody to think I am an intellectual, so I did my research for this column on Wikipaedia. They say that anti-intellectualism describes a sentiment of hostility towards, or mistrust of, intellectuals and intellectual pursuits. This may be expressed in various ways, such as attacks on the merits of science, education, or literature.

Further, anti-intellectuals often perceive themselves as champions of the ordinary people (aka red necks), pitting egalitarianism against elitism, especially academic elitism. These critics argue that highly educated people form an isolated social group that tends to dominate political discourse and higher education. There was a time when they called them communists. Maybe they still do.

Anti-intellectualism can also be used as a term to criticize an educational system if it seems to place minimal emphasis on academic and intellectual accomplishment (there’s a new movie out about high school football in Texas), or if a government has a tendency to formulate policies without consulting academic and scholarly study. You know the type. They have lots of trouble with T-cells. They’re the ones now substituting “climate change” for “global warming” and hoping maybe nobody’s looking.

Don’t think the church is spared all this. There’s always my favorite parson over on the east coast who, according to the Associated Press, burned a copy of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible in church one Sunday and said that if the King James Version was good enough for Jesus it was good enough for him. And Anglicans might well consider special caution these days. If an 800-pound primate comes banging on the narthex door, grab a valid copy of your baptismal certificate and run — to beat hell, of course.

October 11, 2007

Common

Pent 20/23C  Ruth 1.1-19a; Lk 17.11-19 

In a Doonesbury comic strip, Mike is on a jet to New York, nervous, praying to “get a grip on himself.” A part of his uneasiness comes from the fact that his seat mate is dark, wears a turban, has a mustache, needs a shave, and is talking on the phone about cash, a rental car, and a motel. Overhearing all this, Mike panics, confronts the man, and says in uncontrolled frustration, “Okay, look! I’m trying not to profile here.” The man, interrupted, says into the phone, “Hold on a moment, will ya, mom?”

As different as we think we are (and we can come up with some doozies), we have a lot more in common with one another than we have in uncommon. Everybody has a mom and, of course, a dad, too, but somehow, the moms are more often better reminders of how close we are. Surely you’ve noticed that when the camera pans the crowd at the ball games and some people hold up a sign of greeting, it hardly ever says, “Hi, dad.” 

The story about Ruth and Naomi in the book of Ruth is a story about families, families not all that unlike our own. It is one of the better known and more heartwarming stories in our spiritual genealogy of all those in the Bible saga. Naomi, though a mother-in-law, mothers her sons’ wives no less, even all the more. To hear once again this poignant tale of tragedy, love, and loyalty can be, if we’ll let it, a pleasant comfort in our own time of fear and anxiety, anger and vengeance (Ruth 1.8-19a, BCP lect).   

The confusing and tormenting events of these times drive deep down within us and test the spiritual bedrock common to all human beings, regardless of how this manifests itself. They challenge us to be present to and to listen to others. Many of us need to share our continuing consciousness about 9/11 and our reactions to the war’s recurring escalation. Our lives are being changed in dozens of ways, not to mention the ongoing changes that come in every cycle of life. In this season of terror, all this can get lost in the noise or downplayed as unimportant.

The gospel story tells of lepers, people to whom nobody listened, people cast out of society and made almost totally inaccessible. Their very presence created fear. They were accustomed to being rejected. Perhaps they’d heard of this Jesus and rightly suspected that he’d treat them differently. So they cried out to him, moving in closer than the safe distance required by the law. The story says that Jesus heard them and responded with healing words and with his usual drawing near and touching (Lk 17.11-19). 

In our times, we consider well Jesus’s and Naomi’s examples of warmth and reception, listening and healing. This is not a time for keeping a safe distance from other people. It is a time to draw close, to listen, to touch, to offer an embrace. 

This spiritual genealogy we all share makes of us a common family, however it may reveal or not reveal itself. It calls forth from us our imaginations and the knowledge of our own occasions of loneliness, pain, grief, and joy. It can enrich our faith and open doors into new and unheard of experiences. Such faith-in-common is the key to discovering and appreciating the grace that today’s collect reminds us “precedes and follows, making us continually given to all good works” (Proper 23, BCP p 183). 

Imagination, after all, is one of the most important ways that our faith is implemented and made incarnate. Can we not imagine, then, the healing bond that faith complimented when Ruth said to Naomi, “Where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God… ” (Ruth 1.16b), and when Jesus said to the leper, “Rise and go your way; your faith has made you well” (Lk 17.19b). 

October 10, 2007

Lying

Sissela Bok writes in Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life that “A society… whose members are unable to distinguish truthful messages from deceptive ones, will collapse. But even before such a general collapse, individual choice and survival would be imperiled. The search for food and shelter could depend on no expectations from others. A warning that a well was poisoned or a plea for help in an accident would come to be ignored unless independent confirmation could be found.”

In our recent national past, lying has become as endemic as lapel flags. When our leaders consistently lie as a way of life, they endanger our nation far more than can any terrorist or immigrant. Removing shoes, packing belongings into three-ounce plastic bottles, leaving harmless little nail clippers at home, may protect us against peril in the skies. Building fences by the mile may protect us against peril at our borders. But none of these things will ever protect us against the insidiously crippling peril of deceit.

There is more than one kind of infidelity in the oval office. Whatever it is has its own brand of voodoo trickle-down insinuation of approval all the way from the behavior of lesser cabinet level satraps at Senate hearings to setting examples for fun-loving kindergartners in the school yard. A vow is a vow is a vow — even so is a pledge of allegiance. Whether marital or inaugural, on the floor of the United Nations or at a scout troop powwow, there are no gradations.

October 9, 2007

Brains

The tourist-come-on two-master sailboat in the harbour (that’s harbor back home) in Baddeck, NS, is named Amoeba. I never asked why. Neither did we ride it at the scheduled time as we’d hoped, disappointed that the wind had died. But when the skipper admitted that the trip around the island would probably be by gasoline engine, a not all that romantic means, and mentioning no names, it would simply have been beneath an experienced sailor’s dignity. Gasoline is only $1.06/litre — approx $4/gallon — in Nova Scotia, but some wind is cheaper.

Later, the name of that boat came back to haunt when I read in the NYTimes that an amoeba has been discovered in dirty southern (US&A) lake water. It can enter through one’s nostrils of all places, that is, if one meddles with southern lakes. But that’s not all. Once it gets whatever is the equivalent of an amoebic toehold, it eats one’s brain, all of which has something less than salubrious effects on some, but may not be all that noticeable on others.

Mortimer Adler wrote “How to Think About God.” I don’t know whether it was in the same book, but he also refused to equate the mind with the brain. (He did admit we probably wouldn’t have much of a mind if we didn’t have a brain.) I found that comforting. Brains remind me of that super old song from the Wizard of Oz by Harold Arlen and E Y Harburg, If I Only Had a Brain…

I could while away the hours / Conferrin’ with the flowers / Consultin’ with the rain / And my head, I’d be scratchin’ / While my thoughts were busy hatchin’ / If I only had a brain.

I’d unravel ev’ry riddle / For any individ’le / In trouble or in pain / With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’ / You could be another Lincoln. / If you only had a brain.

Oh, I could tell you why / The ocean’s near the shore, / I could think of things I never thunk before / And then I’d sit and think some more.

I would not be just a nuffin’ / My head all full of stuffin’ / My heart all full of pain. / I would dance and be merry / Life would be a ding-a-derry / If I only had a brain — Whoa!

October 8, 2007

Memories

My doc’s a youngster in his late forties who keeps track of things including me. At my recent annual physical and between blood-lettings he brought up some actuarial stuff about alzheimer’s. Said at my age chances are pretty good I’m a candidate, gave me a thirty-question quiz (which I creamed like he predicted I would), and handed me a sample pack of fending-off meds which he recommended now before it was too late. Naturally, I was offended, but didn’t say so and just set them aside somewhere.

Then I called a couple of gerontologists I know to ask about the recommended meds. They both affirmed the doc for being so thoughtful and on his prognostic toes. One of them actually said she thought it was “sweet” that he was. They both said that there was some evidence the “cure” (which the meds are not, they only procrastinate, instead) could be worse than the disease I might actuarially never get and added as is the case with most pharmaceuticals these days.

The time has come, of course, that considering the diminishing quantity of life out there in the future, the quality becomes even more important. Yesterday’s appointed gospel about the mustard seed helps bring that to mind. Not much size, but enough chutzpah to house a few birds. And birds of course, may be better than bats.

But the OoN archives also send the message loud and clear from time to time that I tend to repeat myself for some strange reason known only to prescient medics. Sometimes, I wish I could remember where I put those samples — or whether I’ve already taken them — or written about them and forgot to enter it in the archives?

October 6, 2007

Aping

Years ago, I was accused by someone for whom I cared a lot of never having an original thought and of believing only what I had most recently read. I was offended and still am at the thought of it, for the one-time observation continues to haunt me.

I’ve recently started receiving Garrison Keillor’s online Writer’s Almanac and usually relish every word of it, even copying quotations by the cyber cut-and-paste method over into my journal which is also kept electronically and which I intend to print into hard copy one of these days to protect it from what, I know not, maybe for when I forget to pay the light bill and the laptop battery runs dry. I have boundless admiration for Keillor, his style, his wit, his authenticity, and I tend — like said my accuser years ago — to believe his every word, especially in a piece he wrote about the Episcopal Church and about impeaching the president, an act which he favors if for no other reason than to reveal the crippling shenanigans of this current administration and perhaps to protect us from the next one getting the idea that that’s the way things are executed.

We don’t have pets, at least no domestic ones with cute names and about which I might write cuddly tales like some of my peers do. Although we did once have a beloved cat (there I go with cuddly) named Alice Aforethought. She helped me discover my feline allergy, so we gave her away to an even more pet-loving couple of opera singers, a soprano and a basso. We do have feral pets, turtles, ground and tree squirrels, skinks, an occasional fox, rabbits, a plethora of birds, and hawks who keep watch over all the others.

We, CP and I, don’t expect soon again to see a fox. You see, the last surviving, undeveloped lot in our neighborhood which contained a whole encyclopaedic agenda of fauna and flora was sold off by the nature-lover who owned it only to be razed and dug up and become the locale of a 6,000 square foot, three-story temple to vanity. The beasts long ago left with and perhaps to follow their vegetational ecosystem.

It’s Saturday, TGIF+1, and with no less gratitude. Thank you.

Go Red Sox and Cubs!

October 5, 2007

Redundancy

OoN’s (more-than-once) seasonal tribute to the Great American Game…

THE PITCHER
by Robert Francis

His art is eccentricity, his aim
How not to hit the mark he seems to aim at.
His passion how to avoid the obvious,
His technique how to vary the avoidance.
The others throw to be comprehended. He
Throws to be a moment misunderstood.
Yet not too much. Not errant, arrant, wild,
But every seeming aberration willed.
Not to, yet still, still to communicate
Making the batter understand too late.

PS. I know, I used this in April, but the playoffs are underway, the Series is about to start, you may have missed it, and I couldn’t resist it.

October 4, 2007

Increase

Pent 19/22C Lk 17.5-10

When the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith,” they surely had the right idea, only they asked the wrong question.

Although his answer wasn’t all that environmentally correct, they could have learned from it, as well, can we. If your faith were merely the size of a mustard seed, Jesus said, you could deforest the planet. Put another way, faith is not something we have. Faith is something we are.

Ironically, he answered them in their own terms — size — to show them the results on his terms — effect. The apostles wanted more faith as if faith were some fringe benefit, Jesus wanted more faithfulness, as if it were a way of life. For so long as we put more stock by quantity than quality, by style than substance, he implied, we’ll never, like our Methodist cousins say so well, “catch the spirit.” The Great Commission to baptize all nations is a noble venture and goal and mission statement, but it is rendered senseless until it is grounded firmly in the Great Commandment to love which is to make us more consistent with what God imagines for us.

You want faith-based, Jesus implies, I’ll give you faith-based. Faith and love and hope are communal, foundational values long before they’re personal possessions. Indeed, we never possess them as if to parcel them out on occasion and on demand, we live them as if to find in them a constant and consistently rewarding way of life. We don’t “have” faith as a possession, we do faith as an action we can give away. It’s never about how much faith. It’s about living the life of the faithful. For that’s where is the leverage that uproots the status quo, the spirit that permeates the body politic, the authority that turns our hearts and minds unto the love of God and neighbor and self.

It is the age-old question of church and state. So long as the church remains obsessed with its size, its orthodoxy, its always “being right,” its “how much,” it will continue to be altogether indiscernible from any other secular institution that measures itself by the same criteria, and it will have even less relevance than it does now. Only when it ceases accounting how much and, in turn, looks inward at how accountable, will size cease to matter and will relevance take effect.

But careful, beloved, it’s gangbusters out there. God may just 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.