Ink Smudges

Tony Dungy's book

2010-02-02T17:19:00.001-06:00

This was my monthly article for the parish newsletter in September of '08. Forgot to post it here, and it seems timely given the Colts are playing this Sunday.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

As we head back into the school year and the beginning of football season, this month’s margin smudges are in the pages of some light reading appropriate for this time of year: Quiet Faith: The Principles, Practices, and Priorities of a Winning Life by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker.

As you football fans know, Tony Dungy is the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts and the winning coach in Super Bowl XLI. It’s also well known that he is a Christian; he is not bashful about talking about his faith and is willing to use the publicity that an NFL coach receives to do that in all manner of venues. The book was a big hit when it was published last year, and many of you may have read it already.

The book is the memoir of a football coach, so there is a certain amount of football involved, but it’s not a book about football. Instead, it is a book about faith. He talks with frank honesty about his struggles early on in the league, his questioning whether he is doing God’s will in his life, and his struggles about whether or not to continue coaching. His son James committed suicide toward the end of the season in 2005; he spends a whole chapter talking about the grieving process, even including the things he said when he spoke at his son’s funeral.

Here are just a couple of quotations:

“I had always said that trusting in the Lord was the answer. Now, facing my own tragedy, I knew I needed to accept the truth that God’s love and power were sufficient. If I really believed it, I needed to use this personal and painful time to validate that belief. God would work for the good of those who love Him, even if we didn’t understand how He was going to do it.”

“I didn’t want to be an icon. I wanted to provide hope. I wanted my experience to open people’s eyes to the opportunities available to all of us. Not necessarily just opportunities in football…but any opportunity to knock down the walls that divide us. That’s how God wants it to be.”

There’s a reason this book was a #1 bestseller, and it’s not because a bunch of football fans bought it. It’s worth your time to read, and your faith will be strengthened by it. As always, you can borrow my copy—it’s on the shelf in my study.

More thoughts on college football

2009-12-11T15:07:00.006-06:00

I wondered out loud at this time last year if this would be the year I quit caring about college football.

Turns out I was right.

It's funny, now that Texas is scheduled to play for the (deliberate quotes here) "national championship," and Colt McCoy is once again a finalist for the Heisman, and I should theoretically be on the edge of my seat with anticipation, or on top of the world, I just find it hard to work up the emotional energy.

Several things contribute to this for me. At least one part is that I've moved to a small town in deep south Texas, where they root enthusiastically for the local college team, but it's a division II school, without all of the hype and media coverage that follows most major-college programs.

And I got to know some of the players, and the coach. They came to church together this year, during "fall camp" before the start of the season. So I got a chance to preach to them, and later lead pre-game devotions for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, which was most of the team. When they came to worship, many came up to the altar rail during communion to ask for a blessing, so I literally laid hands on... oh, I didn't count, but I'm guessing about two-thirds of the team, and asked for God's blessing and protection on each one.

Watching them play this year reminded me of my freshman year in college, when I shared a suite with four guys on the team. Made watching the game a completely different experience. I'd frequently watch a play and ask the guy next to me what happened--I might not even notice the tackle at the end, because the whole time I was watching my friend Richard, who played center, pancake-block his man... or I was focused in on Joey, or Jason, or Joel.

Watching the Javelinas was like that this year. Okay, maybe we didn't make the first down and we have to punt, but Markeith made his block, did you see that?

But a big part was that last season's ending soured me on major-college football. So let's just be honest about some things.

First, major college football is an entertainment industry. The players are, depending on how you define it, professional entertainers. They might not get paid directly, but the players get scholarships and make connections which will help them financially in their future careers, even if they don't play professional ball in any future league. They're compensated. The pricing of tickets and licensing of apparel and broadcasting rights is not driven by what you need to break even, like in small programs, it's driven by what the market will bear.

Second, let's just call it what it is. The BCS is not a playoff. It's a cartel.

(go look up the definition, and then tell me you disagree with me. Go on, look it up. I'll wait.)

Last year was a mess. Nine teams with a reasonable argument that they should be playing for the crystal football. This year was almost worse. Six teams finished the regular season undefeated. (Alabama, Florida, Texas, Boise State, Cincinnati, and TCU).

I think my poster child for why the BCS is broken is Boise State. They have the most legitimate gripe, in my opinion. The Broncos have run the table, gone undefeated in the regular season, three out of the last four years. I don't care what conference you play in, that's ridiculously hard to do. They got into the BCS once before, and beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. Remember the Statue of Liberty play and the guy who scored the winning points proposing to his cheerleader girlfriend?

And after all that, there was not any serious conversation about having the Broncos play for the crystal football this year. (Why the hell not?) Instead, the BCS cartel made the cowardly move of having the "outsiders" play each other. What's that about....?

Greed.

Boise State is in a "non-BCS conference," i.e., not a part of the cartel, which is not driven by trying to create a champion, or athletic success, or fair competition. It's driven by making money. The rules are that #1 and #2 (according to a bizarre and arcane ranking system) play each other, and then each bowl chooses teams from those available (with certain limitations) that make the most sense (i.e., most money) for each one. Boise Sate and TCU are outsiders. Small-market outsiders. How many people live in Boise, Idaho?

And since I included the Heisman in this ranting last year, I might as well include it this year.

As long as we're calling things what they are, we have to quit calling the Heisman the award for "the best player in college football." You might, at best, call it the award for "the best quarterback or running back who plays for a team that finishes in the top 5 in the AP poll."

What made me give up on the Heisman this year was the end-of-year reporting. Sure, I know writers gotta write and talking heads gotta talk, and part of their job is to stir up controversy. And since it's been clear for about a month now that (barring any major upset) it was probably going to be Florida or Alabama vs. Texas on January 7th, the pot-stirring has been more about the funny statue than the "championship game." (again, deliberate quotes)

I will admit to a little bias, but I also honestly think Colt McCoy is the best player in college football. Just one stat: 45 career victories, an NCAA record. Oh, the others are outstanding players too.

After thanksgiving night, the overwhelming consensus in the media was that he had it sewn up. But there was still one game to play. If Colt does not win because in the last game before the voting deadline, he had a rough night against one of the ten best defenses in the country... then let's rename it to the award for "the best quarterback or running back who plays for a team that finishes in the top 5 in the AP poll and has a good game the last week of the season."

* * * * *

For the record, the TAMUK Javelinas made the playoffs. You know, playoffs? With college-student players, who manage to find a way to do it every year in division II and also take finals? Yeah, they lost in the first round. An amazing game, lost because the opposing team made a 64-yard field goal as time expired. (I saw it with my own two eyes and still didn't believe it.) I'm still proud of them for a good season.

Lost fair and square. The way Boise State should have a chance to do.

out of hibernation?

2009-12-11T11:22:00.003-06:00

A recent request by our diocesan communications department to link to various bloggers in the diocese made me realize that it's been almost a year since I wrote anything.

I started this blog in September, 2005, just two months after I began a new phase of life, employed as clergy and working as a congregational pastor. The first line of the first post was "hello, world," ironic when you consider the recent frenzy surrounding Tiger's life.

The thing that pushed me over into the blogisphere was that I was already publishing things on the internet. I was required, at my former parish, to write a monthly column for the printed newsletter. It was already published (deep down in the church's horrible web page, but out there nonetheless). And people started asking for copies of my sermons, and I learned as an airport consultant that once something leaves your hand, it should be treated as public knowledge.

So I figured, if I'm already publishing, I might as well write a blog. My rule was that I would post any newsletter article that might vaguely be interesting outside the parish, and any sermon that someone asked for a copy of. And to those entries I would add various other essays.
[side moment of true confession--there were a couple of people who asked for copies of sermons, and I thought it was not because they wanted to read it again for their own spiritual growth, but because I had said something controversial that had upset them... and I was afraid of them trying to use my words against me, so I lied (just a couple of times) and said that I hadn't written out a full manuscript.]

Over the last four years, several things have happened.
* My old friend Meeegan and new friend Tripp got me writing about the book Sabbath, which was a whole series in itself.
* My friend Gordon, aka Real Live Preacher, encouraged me to write and got me in on the ground floor of a network of bloggers for the Christian Century.
* We had a child, which completely sucked my brain clean of the ability to sit and write coherently for several months.
http://schereschewsky.blogspot.com/2007/11/new-daddy-brain-no-blog-posts.html
* I started thinking about who was reading, which led me to shut up where others were speaking up. You can read about that here:
http://schereschewsky.blogspot.com/2008/09/long-blog-silence.html
* I finally got on Facebook, which changed the way I stay in touch with some friends. I still check my regular list of blogs, and wider church news, as has been my habit every Monday morning for 15 years. I'm not the only one who has slowed or ceased blogging when they found a new way to connect... the list of blogs I read regularly gets smaller and smaller as people quit writing.

But the biggest reason is that I'm at a new parish now, and they are not exactly technologically sophisticated. Note: that doesn't mean stupid, or ignorant. I have at least seven university professors and a dean in my congregation, and I'm working on the president. We just communicate differently. The patriarch of the congregation, a man universally loved in this little town, told me once he checks his email once a month, whether it needs it or not.
Yes, we have a parish newsletter, but (and there's layers of meaning in this) it is physically cut-and-pasted together by our editor. My articles for it tend to be announcements of upcoming events, giving detail, rather than meditations, or something else useful or interesting outside of Kingsville. (side note: Peter Gomes said once in my hearing "sermon-ettes make Christian-ettes," and I agree wholeheartedly. I absolutely despise trite little front-page newsletter offerings. I've tried for five years to learn to say something spiritually meaningful in three hundred words or less, and I can't do it. Maybe I need to take up poetry like my friend Gil...)

And not one time in a year have I been asked for a copy of a sermon. Either my sermons suck now, or people just don't ask. Not sure I want to know which is true.

In eleven months of living in Kingsville, I think I have six facebook friends in town--only four from the congregation, and they never contact me or post anything on their own facebook accounts.

(plus it's been a hectic year in a lot of ways.)

At the end of the day (one of my favorite phrases), I'm not sure who's reading this any more, and the original reason for writing the blog has gone away.

I still publish, and occasionally it's something useful outside of Kingsville. So there will be more posts to come--maybe as soon as later today. But if you're still reading... don't hold your breath in between.

non-spiritual ranting: and the Oscar goes to...

2008-12-17T14:05:00.002-06:00

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy watching the Oscars. The Academy Awards show, I guess it’s actually called. I liked seeing all the people from the movies dressed up in street clothes, and trying to remember which movie I had seen them in. I remember Johnny Carson was the host a few times, and he was so classy about his presentation, and I loved getting to see him because normally I didn’t get to stay up late enough to watch his show.

Then there was the presentation of the awards themselves. Just like today, there would be little clips from the movies that had been nominated, and then that moment of tension while the envelope was opened: “and the winner is…”

Somewhere along the way, the presenters were instructed to say something different. Instead of announcing a winner, they were told to say “and the Oscar goes to…” I didn’t notice at first, until one actor brought it up in his acceptance speech, acknowledging all the other nominees and saying that he couldn’t believe he had won if they were also nominated.

* * * * * * * * * *

Do you want to know the best movie of 2005? Hands down? Absolutely no contest?

Serenity.

I’ll just say this: if you’ve never seen it, go rent it. Better yet, go buy it, because you’re going to want to keep it. And then get the DVDs of Firefly, which was its TV predecessor. Or come borrow mine. But you have to give it back, because it’s easily on my top 10 list of movies I’ve ever seen.

It may even be the best science fiction movie ever made.

It crosses genres (western meets science fiction), it tells a story of deep and meaningful relationships between people, and what they do and sacrifice for each other. It’s a story about society, and about the nature of the self. Every single one of the characters (okay, maybe not Jayne) is deeply written enough that you could spend hours talking about just that character. The acting is superb. It’s funny, not as in staged gags and humor, but as in the way that people really laugh with each other. It’s sexy in parts, but there is no blatant why-is-this-in-here sex scene. There are tears for the cast and probably for the audience. There are moments of shocking revelation. There’s action and violence, but not the kind of action that takes over the plot of the story.

Okay, enough waxing rhapsodic.

I’ll bet you a nickel you can’t name the “best picture” Oscar winner that year, even though it was just a couple of years ago. [short interlude while the music plays and gives you time to think]

It was a film called Crash, which was a heavy-handed, slap-you-in-the-face-with-the-point movie about racism and the ‘gritty reality’ of urban life. The other nominees included… Munich, a violent, nasty film about terrorism and the horror surrounding it on all sides, Capote, a film about a tortured homosexual writer falling in love with a man who is on death row for the murder of an entire family, and, please God let me forget this movie, Brokeback Mountain, which I’m not going to dignify with any further comment. (you all who are mortally offended at this point because I’ve criticized your favorite movie ever, take a deep breath. The point is that they’re all dark, depressing, twisted films)

It was a growing-up moment for me when I realized that the Oscar didn’t go to the best actor, film, or song, it went to the one that got the most votes from the members of the academy. And there’s sometimes a vast difference between the two. But we shouldn't really blame the Academy. Every community rewards those who affirm their image of themselves, and the Oscars exist for the purpose of self-congratulation.

And you know what? I hardly watch the Oscars any more. We record it every year, and I sometimes fast-forward to see the acceptance speeches for the big awards, but at the end of the day I really just don’t care what “the academy” thinks.

* * * * * * * *

Well, I’ve had another one of those who’s-the-best growing-up moments this year, in an entirely different arena: college football.

I frankly think there’s something seriously wrong with the inflation of college sports into a farm system for professional sports. I’ve already ranted on that elsewhere.

But if you’re going to play a competitive game, and have a ranking system, then you should have a champion at the end of the season. That’s just logical. Every other sport at every other level does this—except Division I football. I’ve never liked the BCS, not since the beginning. But this year is worse than usual.

There are nine teams (twelve, if you count the teams with two losses) whose players, coaches, and fans have a legitimate, reasonable argument to say that their team is the best in college football. Nine. Boise State, Penn State, Texas Tech, Utah, USC, Florida, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Texas all could play in the last game of the season and say they deserved to be there. On January 8th, some announcer will hand the coach (probably Bob Stoops) the crystal football, and seven other teams will watch and say, “nice game, but we could have beaten those guys.” (Texas players will say, “we DID beat those guys.”)

And for me, it’s going to be one of those moments like when they hand out the Oscars. “and the crystal football goes to…” Well, that’s nice and all, but they’re not the best team. They’re one of the teams that got enough votes to get into the last game of the year.

And who are the voters? Sportswriters, who are supposed to be neutral, but everyone knows are biased toward the teams they cover and the teams that make news. Boise State doesn’t get any love from this crowd, not even after a couple of spectacular seasons. How many readers are in Boise? And then there’s the coaches’ poll. Does anybody seriously think that coaches of major college football programs are actually watching a whole lot of other teams play and making unbiased, informed votes? I bet Mike Leach probably watches a whole lot of game film, but not a whole lot of Florida Gators game film, seeing as how Texas Tech doesn’t play them very often. So they have to listen to the news same as the rest of us, and see the highlights and the scoreboard.

Which leads to another abomination in this process. Thanksgiving weekend, there were three big games played. Florida-Alabama, Texas-Texas A&M, and Oklahoma-Oklahoma State. All with big implications for the last game of the year. And the announcers and commentators were talking about not just wins, but “style points.”

Style points? Excuse me? What is this, figure skating?

* * * * * * *

To put another face on this, let’s go to the perspective of an almost unknown person, a woman named Debra, who lives in a tiny, one-stop-sign-no-Dairy-Queen town in the Texas panhandle, which means, in case you’ve never been there, that this woman lives in the middle of nowhere. Her husband is the local football coach, which, let’s just acknowledge, can’t be an easy life. Her kids, of course, are football players. They’re also good students, and attend church regularly, and volunteer in the community.

So one of her kids (Daniel) grows up and gets ready to move away, and he’s recruited to play football at a big school that’s hours and hours away from her home by car. A school that plays big-time college football, where the defensive linemen weigh well over three hundred pounds and can bench-press the team bus and rip phone books in half. Her son plays quarterback, but this school already has one—maybe the most gifted athlete the school has ever had at the position in a hundred years.

So your son sits on the sidelines for a year, and never gets in the game, and that’s okay, because you don’t want him to get killed. But then the amazing athlete leaves school to go play football on Sundays and your kid gets to play, and sure enough, he gets hurt. Hurt bad enough that they take him to the hospital in an ambulance while the game is still going on.

But your kid is tough, and he does his rehab and lift weights and drinks milkshakes and gains weight and goes back out there for another season. And gets hurt again, this time bad enough that for a while the doctors are afraid he might not be able to walk again. Would you let your son go back for a third season?

Well, unbelieveably, she does, and the third year the kid has finally started to really fill out, and he has a good season. A really good season. In fact, people start talking about giving him that funny-looking famous trophy for being the best football player in the country. How would that feel? From wondering if your son is going to walk again to winning the prize for best player in the country in one year?

Well, I’m sorry, dear readers. Daniel “Colt” McCoy did not win the Heisman this year. Why? Because the award is granted by voters, and his team will not be playing in the last game of the season.

Earlier this year, Texas Tech beat Texas, by one play. Michael Crabtree made a great athletic catch and struggled into the end zone. Two guys had a shot at him, and neither one made the tackle. If either one of those guys makes the tackle, we’re not even having this conversation. (if any one of five different plays gets made over the course of the game, the same is true) Instead, Texas is undefeated, all the press coverage is on them, and the debate is about who gets to play them in the last game… and Colt McCoy probably wins the Heisman easily. You know it’s true.

You could make a similar argument for the other two finalists, or for Graham Harrell. If their team had gone undefeated, they get far more attention, they get to wear the mantle of “quarterback of the undisputed #1 team in the country,” and they probably win the Heisman. But it’s more bitter for Colt McCoy, because they lost by one play. One defensive play. One defensive play in October is the difference maker in deciding who is the best quarterback in the country? And how on earth to you explain this rationally to Daniel’s mother? Good luck.

* * * * * * *

Okay, I know, I’m ranting.

What I’m wondering is, will I look back on this as the year I quit liking college football?

Spam and Eggs

2008-10-14T16:29:00.006-05:00

Happy Schereschewsky day, everyone!

It's the feast day of this blog's patron saint, Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky. I intended to write something commemorating the day. You know, use a few words to honor the man of many words.

And then, instead, I sent a LOT of words. Spam happened. And it's my fault. I clicked the wrong button.

As far as I can tell, an email has been sent to every person in my address book telling them to check out my facebook page and asking them to sign up for an account. (yes, I do have a facebook page. I'm late to the whole facebook party, but finally got there. That's another story for another day.)

Then I tried to send a "sorry, please disregard earlier email" message, but my email program wouldn't let me, saying that I had exceeded the maximum number of messages in an hour. As if I was a spammer... oh, wait, I guess I am.

My whole freakin' address book. It includes three quarters of the active members of my current congregation, about a hundred core leaders from other congregations I've served in and still keep in touch with, at least three ex-girlfriends (don't ask), all of the clergy of West Texas, three judges, fifteen or twenty bishops (one of them a primate), my Senators and Congressman... Ah, crap.

Right. I'm a spammer. And I have egg on my face. (Spam and eggs, get it?)

I'm going home to hide in the closet.

two thousand feet of rock--finished!!!

2008-09-26T17:11:00.000-05:00

(This post has been overdue since March. Better late than never)

It took a lot of work, but... we have a labyrinth!

Here's how it started: with an empty field.

We staked out the widths of the paths with string and flags, and asked the congregation to come put a rock next to one of the flags. People of all ages helped, with rocks big and small.

Eventually, we called a couple of work days. People brought pickup trucks, and we were able to place several loads each day.

At the beginning of the process, the rector placed the initial stone on the altar in our worship space. When we finished the labyrinth, it went in the center.

It's a big labyrinth...

Come walk with us!

The Mathematics of Inevitability

2008-09-25T17:30:00.004-05:00

Sometimes, it really sucks being trained as an engineer.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Two weeks ago Tuesday afternoon, I was packing to go to a conference in Corpus Christi, Texas. Then we got the word that the conference was postponed because of in impending hurricane. By Wednesday evening, the projections said that Ike would be directly overhead of us here in San Antonio on Sunday morning, as a category 1 or 2 hurricane.

I sent an email to my congregation, warning them of the possibility of a hurricane (just in case someone wasn't listening to the news), and telling them to use their common sense on whether or not they should try to get here for worship on Sunday. I planned out a couple of alternate routes for myself for Sunday morning (the two most obvious ways to get from my house to the church campus have streets that flood).

We weren't alone--events got cancelled all over San Antonio. Kids' activities, high school football... and the Texas Longhorns rescheduled a football game in Austin. Now there's a sign that the world just might be coming to an end.

On Sunday morning, Ike was... over five hundred miles away. In Missouri, for crying out loud.

The very best minds we have, using the most sophisticated computer modeling we have, missed their guess by five hundred miles. Some things we still don't know how to predict, or else are inherently unpredictable.

And then there are other things, whose behavior we know very well how to predict. And that's why it sucks sometimes to be an engineer.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Engineers, you see, are trained to understand the way the world works, and to make it a better place. I studied with Phil Bedient, and I know that hydrology is a fascinating and complicated discipline, but if you over-over-simplify, this is true:

V=R*I*T*A

where
V=Volume of water
and
R=rate of rainfall
I is a coefficient for the percentage of the impervious surface of the land, from 0 to 100%
T=time of rainfall
A=area on which the rain falls

Just for fun, I've used this basic formula (yes, I'm a nerd) to calculate the rate of rainfall, based on the amount of time it takes to fill up a trash can with the runoff from the roof of my house.

Applying to the impending hurricane:

Houston, my friends, is a great big place. It's flat as a pancake, with a huge portion of it paved over or developed. By late Thursday evening, our best guess had changed, and a storm five hundred miles wide was heading for the city, where it was about to rain very, very hard.

And the engineer part of my brain said: It's going to flood, and at least a few people are going to die. The only question is where, and how much.

I've also studied roadway design and traffic flow, and even if there's not such an overly simple equation to show you, I know that if you made every highway single-direction flow out of town, and somehow got the residents of the city to move with military precision, with no breakdowns or accidents, you still couldn't evacuate four million people in less than two days, even if you wanted to.

Which meant that when the mayor of Houston (or the disaster response people) said that they were "taking a calculated risk" when they only ordered the evacuation of certain portions of the city, that's true, but it's only partially true. The other side of it is that they know that they can't evacuate the city that fast, and people with pretty good models for runoff and floods (like the aforementioned professor) know where it's going to flood first, so they move those people first.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Seven years ago this September, I remember having a similar moment about an impending disaster. I didn't see the first plane hit the world trade center, and I was hoping it was a particularly horrible accident. But when the second plane hit, I was sitting on my friend Brian's couch watching it on TV, and it was clear that this was deliberate.

I was stunned for a few minutes, wondering how on earth, and who... and then I started thinking about what was going on. Suddenly, the part of my brain that studied high-rise building design jumped over and overlaid itself on the part of my brain that had been an airport consultant for a few years, and I knew--I knew--that the towers were coming down.

I stared at the wall, and saw in my imagination the curves from the steel construction handbook that describe the strength of steel as a function of temperature. I saw, dancing before my eyes, the homework I had done in high-rise design and in structural stability class. And I turned to Brian and said, "Oh, God, they're gonna collapse."

It's just the mathematics of inevitability.

(by the way, it's not that I'm a particularly good or smart engineer. I'm certain that every one of my classmates came to the same conclusion, wherever they were scattered around the country, only they got there faster than I did)

I got up to call my only friend who worked in the World Trade Center, and got as far as picking up the phone, before realizing that he's pretty smart guy, and was (if he was even in the office that day) already on his way out of the building. I put the phone back down, and went and sat back down on the couch, and waited for the horrible scene I knew was coming.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When a city floods, whose fault is it?

You can't blame the hurricane. It didn't decide to turn North, it just happened.

You can't really blame the city engineers, either. They designed a bayou system for Houston that will handle some tremendous storms. If I remember right, Braes Bayou is designed for the five-hundred year storm. (That means a storm of such intensity that it occurs, on average, once every five hundred years) But it was designed for a five-hundred-year storm in the city in which it was built... and Houston kept growing. Several years later, the runoff from all that extra pavement still flows downhill (such as that is in Houston), and it gets to the creeks and ditches and bayous as intended, but there's more of it than there used to be.

So who's to blame now? Should we tell Mrs. Martinez on the west side of the city that she is not allowed, after all, to realize her dream of owning a house in America? Should we forbid St. Martin's from constructing their enormous new worship space? Make the members of Second Baptist Church park on the grass rather than paving over a parking lot the size of Massachusetts?

Even if maybe we should say some of those kinds of things, we probably won't..because this is basically a free country, and people are going to do what they're going to do. There are laws in place in many inhabited areas that require new construction to be offset by the creation of retention ponds, which makes me feel a little better. But there are plenty of good people who find ways around those laws, or who ignore them because constructing the water retention areas are sometimes expensive.

It's old news by now, but I guess we have to keep saying it. We must recognize that our lives are interconnected. What I do matters.

We breathe the same air, we share the same water supply. When I cut down a tree, we all have a tiny bit less oxygen to breathe. And when I pave over the land, there are people (literally) downstream who are affected.

Death of another classmate

2008-09-18T19:24:00.029-05:00

I was the youngest member of my seminary class. Every last one of us are second-career clergy, and some of my classmates had already retired once, before pursuing a different vocation.

I remember the day that I realized that being the youngest meant I stood a good chance of grieving every one of their deaths, one by one. I just didn't expect that one of them would die at 42.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

D. Brent Russell was technically the graduating class behind me, rather than my class year. He was an interesting fellow...Strongly held opinions. High ecclesiology. And, unfortunately, intolerant of bullshit. It got him thrown out of a rather heavy-handed cultural immersion course that he was required to attend, and he had to go back for a second helping the next year.

We got to be friends over a series of loooong afternoons in the back workroom of the library. See, almost every student at the seminary in Austin is on a work-study program for financial aid. It becomes a kind of monastic service to the community. In between classes, you see people sweeping, cleaning, running video, shelving books, working for professors. My second year, I had the great privilege of being the student assistant to the Dean. That was way cool. Third year, though, I said that I was willing to let somebody else have that honor, and I moved to the library.

And so it was that, many afternoons, Brent and I sat in the workroom and talked about life, and classes, and the state of the church, and theology, and human sexuality, and liturgics, and... life. I was unhurriedly checking in and shelving periodicals, and he was unhurriedly fixing up old books, repairing spines, carefully gluing end panels back together. I asked him once where he got so good at that kind of thing, and he laughed.

Turns out he was a funeral director before coming to seminary. Didn't really surprise me, once I thought about it. That, of course, gave us material to talk about for at least a month. He never betrayed personal information, but he had stories that would make you laugh and weep, sometimes both in the same story.

He gave me a great gift one afternoon. I went out to his house, waved to his wife, sat down with him at his kitchen table, and for three or four hours talked about the nuts and bolts of the funeral industry from the funeral director's perspective. He had documents, tricks of the trade, perspectives on things I'd never thought about. It was advice I took to heart, and it's come in handy several times already.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

The thing I'll remember most is what we called each other. Not sure how it started... probably, it was because I said something to him in the middle of an argument like "okay, in twenty years when you're the Bishop of Texas, we can do it your way," and he responded with something not generally printable.

(Note to the non-clergy:Seminarians love to tease each other about things like that. Nobody in their right mind wants to be the bishop.)

The next day, I walked into the workroom, and called out, "Good afternoon, Your Grace!" Without missing a beat or even turning around, Brent responded, "Good afternoon, Your Eminence!" (which is the honorific for a Roman Catholic Cardinal, or an Archbishop, depending on your religious tradition.) I cracked up laughing, and somehow it stuck.

It became our ritual greeting:

Good afternoon, Your Grace.
Good afternoon, Your Eminence.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Life moved on. I was ordained and hired and brought to San Antonio. Brent dropped out of the ordination process, finished his seminary degree anyway, and made some difficult and painful decisions about his family and his future. Then he decided to try his hand at being a chaplain, which is extremely difficult duty. I think he would have made a great priest, or a great chaplian, in the right circumstances.

And then came the brain aneurysm, a 'successful' repair surgery, the beginnings of rehab, and a sudden (and probably merciful) death. By the time I got the news, he was already gone.

Goodbye, Your Grace.

*

A long blog silence

2008-09-12T09:58:00.005-05:00

I think I've finally figured out why I haven't written in quite a while.

Most of you who have had face-to-face conversations with me know that I'm not exactly naturally shy or reserved. ("In love with the sound of my own voice" is more accurate.) In small groups, I have to be careful not to dominate the conversation. I have to constantly remind myself to stop and listen, really listen, to my wife and children, rather than jumping in before they even finish their sentences, and I'm not always successful at that.

But in a large group, I'm different. I want to choose my words carefully. I don't want to waste the time of a large group of people with an incomplete or rambling thought.

I've been a delegate to diocesan council in three different dioceses, covering at least twelve years. In all that time, I've never stood up to address the council, not even once. I've gone to clergy conference for three years, and I have yet to speak up at clergy conference. (sotto voce jokes not withstanding) I've attended city council meetings, meetings of concerned citizens about airport noise, and public forums, and only rarely, rarely, will I say anything.

The funny thing is that I tend to be one of those people who have to start talking about something complicated before I get it straight in my head. I almost always have a step in the sermon writing process where I go for a long walk, or take advantage of a long drive, or shut the door and pace around and around and talk to myself. If we have to make a decision quickly, I'll sometimes ask my wife "let me think out loud for a minute, okay?" and she knows that the first thing out of my mouth might not be the same as the last thing.

* * * * * * * * *

A while ago, my friend Gordon Atkinson asked me to be a part of the network of bloggers for the Christian Century. (you've almost certainly noticed the link in the upper right corner of this page.) I had to think about it for a while to see if I wanted to be included, but finally accepted. I suddenly found myself in distinguished company, people who were faithful and far more articulate than I am and insightful and smart and funny. I read everything that anyone in the network wrote, for a while. Then the network grew and grew, and more and more voices were added, all of them worth reading. I kept reading. And the more I did that, the less I wrote.

Took me a while to recognize the same dynamic that happens when I'm in a room full of people. I realized that I was unconsciously weighing everything that was going on in my head to say against the wonderful stuff that was already being said, and deciding not to waste everyone's time on it. And then I got out of the habit of regular writing. And then life events happened, and I had a few crazy-busy weeks, and then all of a sudden it's been three months since I posted. And if it's been three months, then it's really no big deal if I let it stretch to four...

Take, for example, the subject of my most recent post. It was the middle of Lent, and we were building a labyrinth. Yes, we finished it. Yes, I started writing about it. I even have pictures. But the urgency wasn't there to post it. The people at my congregation already knew it was finished, and my friends who read this blog from several states (or countries) away couldn't come and walk it with us, and all those wonderful people in the bloggers network probably wouldn't care less... Same goes for my monthly articles for the parish newsletter, and sermon manuscripts.

This is silly, I know, but I haven't been consciously thinking about it. It took a day like today, when I was going to be doing something that got cancelled and then I was going to be really busy doing another important thing that's probably not going to happen either and I unexpectedly have a free day to sit back and take few deep breaths and look around to see what I've been neglecting that I shouldn't be.

I never promised to be prolific, but I won't be living in a cave again.

two thousand feet of rock

2008-02-05T08:36:00.000-06:00

The rector of my parish has, literally, laid out a challenge for the congregation during this season. He has asked us to build a labyrinth.

My congregation's worship space, offices, and school sit on twelve acres on the north side of San Antonio. Four of those acres are completely undeveloped, mostly grassy field with a few trees. There are "long-term master plan" sorts of plans for the land, but those plans are years away from fruition.

In the meantime, Chuck wants us to turn the field into a place for prayer.

So, last weekend, three of the ministers of the church went out and staked out the outline of an 11-circuit labyrinth, and placed survey flags in the ground to mark the width of each path. The idea is that the members of the church will bring rocks to line the paths.

The more I think about it, the more I think it's a great idea. For those of you unfamiliar with San Antonio, it's dry, rocky country. There are stones everywhere. You can pick them up off the side of a highway. You can dig down in your front yard about three inches and hit one. When we were placing the survey flags, it was a 50-50 proposition whether there would be enough soil in the right place you wanted to plant the flag for it to stick. Half the time you would go to put the flag in the ground and would hit (you guessed it) rock.

The point is, everybody can participate. Maybe you don't have extra money for world missions or extra time to volunteer, but everybody can find a rock or two... or five, or ten.

My rough estimate of how much we'll need: a little over two thousand feet of rock.

If you're in San Antonio, come particiapte. Bring us a rock, 12 inches long (roughly the size of an american football), head out to the field on the southwest corner of our church grounds, and place your rock next to one of the survey flags.

Current count: 39 rocks.

stay tuned.

The Golden Compass review

2008-01-28T19:42:00.000-06:00

I've been asked to renew my series (called "margin smudges" in our parish newsletter) in which I review and comment on books I'm reading, and specifically to start with Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. At the time of the request, I had neither seen the recently-released movie nor, more importantly, read the book on which it's based. Having now done so (thanks to a loaner copy from Betsy Rupe to get me started), I can with a little more integrity add my two cents to the reviews that have already been published.

The Golden Compass is the first of a three-volume work entitled His Dark Materials, and as such is only the opening to a longer story. It is remarkably well written and makes an enjoyable read. The characters are believable and real, and Pullman has great storytelling skill. The movie is also well done, and actually does the first novel some justice. The acting is superb, the CGI and special effects are seamless, and other than what I thought were a few poor casting decisions (Sir Ian McKellen as Iorek? Really?), it's a thoroughly enjoyable film.

As you've probably heard already, though, it's not the first book of the trilogy that's the problem; it's books two and three. Philip Pullman is an avowed atheist, and, as he told The Sydney Morning Herald point-blank in an interview, "My books are about killing God.” At the end of book three, his protagonists do just that (sort of).

The god that gets killed in Pullman's novel, though, bears almost no resemblance to the Living God we worship and serve. It's more the medieval concept of an old man with a long beard living in the sky who is out of touch with the world. He's described with weak limbs and rheumy eyes, a rather pathetic and almost pitiable figure.

Pullman's real target isn't God, exactly, but rather "the church." The overarching point he makes is that the church wants to control behavior, and thus robs humanity of our freedom and robs life of all beauty. Pullman is particularly savage in his criticism of the church's desire to control human sexuality. The exercise of sexual expression, for Pullman and his characters, is something to be celebrated, a way to grow and mature, to expand human consciousness. Thus puberty is the beginning of self-knowledge and intellectual curiosity. To quote Hanna Rosen's review in Atlantic Monthly, "To [Pullman], the loss of sexual innocence is not a tragedy; it’s the springboard to a productive and virtuous adulthood."

While many Christian writers have condemned the books and the movie, it may be surprising to note that Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury (and a formidable theologian), is an admirer of Pullman’s and a supporter of his books. Williams even spoke in favor of using the books as a text for religious education in England, for he contends that Pullman's negative portrayal of the church amounts to an attack on dogmatism and the oppressive abuse of religion, not on Christianity itself. (It’s interesting to note that the person and teaching of Jesus are not a part of Pullman’s construct called “The Authority.”)

It’s unfortunately true that there’s been plenty of oppression in the history of the church, and plenty of attempts to control human behavior, even going so far as abuse and violence, so Pullman’s argument finds an easy mark.

Where the rubber meets the road on this kind of review is: will I take my son to see the movie, and will I read the book to him (or let him read it himself)? And a close corollary is: do I think the children of the parish should read it?

My answer is entirely dependent on the maturity of the child. I’m all for engaging children with deep and meaningful questions about life, spirituality, and morality. But the main point of the book requires a certain level of maturity to grasp. Any child able to read with comprehension will understand that the books are firmly against “God” and “The Church.” I’d want to wait until the reader has sufficient maturity to be able to question how Pullman’s world and ours differ before tackling these stories.

To pre-pubescent children, much of the subtext about sexual expression may also be missed, which may be an argument for letting them read the books early, depending on how you look at it. The whole "heroine loses her virginity and thereby saves the whole multi-world universe from impending doom" ending seemed... pointedly overdone, and fairly ridiculous. I saw it coming from at least three hundred pages away and kinda hoped that particular train wreck wasn't going to happen. Alas.

I will, eventually, encourage my boys to read these books. But I’ll wait until I think they’re ready, and until I judge that I can engage them in the important conversations that the book begins.

$6000 per pound

2007-12-20T14:38:00.000-06:00

The baby bills are starting to come in. Some of them are enormous. I'm keeping a running tally, and the current cost of bringing Zachary home from the hospital: approximately six thousand dollars a pound. That's just the hospital cost... individual bills for the physicians will arrive separately, or so they told me.

Several thoughts come to mind.

First, it really doesn't matter what the bill is; a child is priceless.

Second, it's odd to incur such a huge bill for services that I didn't deliberately choose to pay. Sure, you sign a waiver and agreement for treatment and all that legalese when you check in to the hospital. Then your wife is in labor and they want to give her IV drips of drugs you've never heard of, and then she eventually requires an emergency c-section (read: major abdominal surgery), and then they whisk the baby off to the NICU because he's not breathing properly and keep him there for four days, and meanwhile, your beloved's life is saved, not once, but twice, by an attentive nurse, OB, and anesthesiologist. Nowhere in this process do you say, or even think, "hey, wait a second, what's this going to cost?"

Third, I'm thankful we are insured. It's actually rather good insurance. There are a few ways that the church takes care of our clergy, and the insurance coverage is one of them. So my out of pocket cost will be a fraction of that. A surprisingly small fraction.

But what if I wasn't insured? I guess we might have tried to deliver the baby somewhere cheaper. (But if we hadn't been at a first-class medical facility, my wife and son would have died. No kidding.) Or we would have sucked it up and paid it ourselves, which would have exhausted all our savings, and we're people who are living privileged lives. There are plenty of people in America who don't have health insurance, can't afford it, or don't qualify. Gordon wrote about this recently, with more eloquence than I have at my disposal at the moment.

No matter how you look at it, the health care system in this country needs fixing. And what irks me is that this is an election year coming up. Which means we're going to hear a lot of hot air about health care and prescription drugs for seniors (because seniors vote in large numbers), and not a whole heck of lot about addressing the difficult issues of who's going to pay for it and overhauling the system. And then the new administration will take a while to settle in, and...

New Daddy Brain = no blog posts

2007-11-09T14:13:00.000-06:00

There are some things in life that affect you whether or not you see them coming. The syndrome I cheerfully call "New Daddy Brain" falls into that category.

You know the symptoms: heavy-lidded eyes, rumpled clothing, coffee mug permanently attached to left hand (regardless of how hot or how empty the mug is), a tendency to wander into rooms and then look around in bemusement, wondering why you're there...

I pitched up to Bible study a couple of days ago without my Bible, which is usually considered an essential piece of equipment if you're the one leading the study. Hey, at least I've managed to remember to wear pants every day this week.

And it's not like there hasn't been material worthy of reflection in my life. Declining numbers in the church, comic strips, hospital experiences (mine and those of others), reflections on new babies, letters from loved ones... all of them flit past, then go get trapped somewhere in the cobwebs of my mind, possibly never to return. I'm aware that I've promised you, dear readers, a wrap-up to the Sabbath set of posts, and also some reflections on the trip to Tanzania. Stay tuned. I'm giving myself another half a week to climb far enough out of the fog to function without a coffee IV drip, and then I'll get to some of this backlog.

Here he is....

2007-11-02T10:56:00.000-05:00

Home from the hospital!

It's a boy!

2007-10-31T12:29:00.000-05:00

Rejoice with us! The Lord has given us a son.

We're going to call him Zachary Alexander.

Mom and baby are still in the hospital. Pictures to follow when I get a chance. And a cool story or two.

Death of a preacher man

2007-10-18T17:13:00.000-05:00

One of my seminary classmates died yesterday. That's one of those things you know is going happen eventually, but it's never welcome news when it gets to you.

His name was Bill Wiseman.

Hard to know where to start describing him, really. Bill kinda defied categorization. I knew him best, not as a classmate, but as a prayer partner. We were part of a small group that met together on a weekly-ish basis, prayed together, shared lives and stories, read scripture and discussed it, that sort of thing. The rules of the group made our discussions confidential, and there are some stories about him, or stories that he told, that I'd love to share--but I never got his permission to do so.

Those of you in small groups know what kind of special relationship forms between people who regularly pray for each other. We didn't always hang out together, but I always knew he was there. Some corner of my mind paid attention to where he was in chapel (along with the rest of the members of the small group), and at the prayers of the people it was a kind of anchor in reality to know that I was praying for Bill, that wise-cracking dude right over there, rather than some random name off the list of alumni and donors. He'd occasionally come down to my study desk in the basement of the library and keep me company.

Bill got to seminary by a roundabout route. Somewhere around age 30 he got himself elected to the Oklahoma state legislature, served a couple of terms, and then switched parties and lost his next election. Never really left politics altogether, in the sense of politics being the realm of people trying to make a difference in the world and make the world a better place. After he left office, he did a number of things. Worked in advertising for a while, if I remember right, and then was a consultant of some kind. Learned to fly somewhere along the way. He earned at least four academic degrees, including a doctorate (jurisprudence, I think), read Hebrew fluently and enthusiastically, and had a depth of connection to literature that astounded me.

He was in his late 50s at seminary, and you always knew that he was working from a slightly different paradigm than everybody else. Thought he was smarter than the professors (and was in some cases), concentrated on things differently than the rest of us, and was driven by different motivations. I remember him as a passionate reader and scholar of Hebrew and the old testament.

The thing many of my classmates are going to remember was one of his signature moments... his senior sermon. Now, you gotta have a little background on this to understand it. At the seminary in Austin, you get one chance, exactly one, to preach to the community in chapel. Usually it was Thursday, which was the weekly Eucharist, and was your garden-variety Episcopalian sermon: 10 to 12 minutes (maybe 15 at the outside), a few Biblical references, a carefully politically correct joke or two...

Well, old Bill preached on a Wednesday, if I remember right. Wednesday's service (Choral morning prayer, at least a couple of years ago) was usually about 25-30 minutes long, followed by lunch, followed by committee meetings. There's not usually a sermon. Well, that day we had a sermon. Boy did we. Bill preached for, I kid you not, I timed it, forty-seven minutes.

Bless his heart, it was the worst sermon I ever heard in the chapel. It had about four false endings, where people started to pull out their prayer books and shift in their seats, ready to move on... and then he kept talking. At one point, he pulled out a prayer shawl and a zucchetto (skullcap), put them on, and began to chant from the Torah. He rambled, he gushed, he told stories from the prophets, he told stories about his own life. And I'm sitting there the whole time, rear end long ago fallen asleep from the uncomfortable chairs, loving him because he's my prayer partner and wanting to wave the white surrender flag and tell him to shut up at the same time.

My feedback to him was this: in the end, it was basically an eight-word sermon with 46 minutes of commentary. Somewhere in the middle of that rambling and gushing over the beauty and richness of Hebrew scripture and tradition, he said:

I beg of you, drink from this well.

I actually agreed with him on that, and I envied his depth in the scriptures and his knowledge of Hebrew. At one point, he had me convinced that I should wear a zucchetto as part of my normal Sunday clerical attire. (okay, most of you, quit laughing.) I talked myself out of that, mostly because I didn't want to have to explain it a thousand times. (Also because I landed in San Antonio, and the combination of cowboy boots, a clerical collar, and a zucchetto is bizarre.) But hey, I just might go get one and wear it in Bill's honor one of these days.

He died, along with four other people, when the plane he was flying crashed. he was heading from Tulsa to my old home town of Sugar Land, but never got out of town. The funeral is next week, but I'll be at clergy conference. I'll have to let my friends Ron and Stephanie and Reid be my tears for me.

Give rest, O Christ, to your servant with your saints,
where sorrow and pain are no more,
neither sighing, but life everlasting

the other side of the world

2007-09-08T09:21:00.000-05:00

So, here I am in Zanzibar. And here's a quick blog post, just because it's cool to post from the other side of God's world.

We saw the sites today of some caves where slaves were kept before being sold at the markets, and the cathedral built on the site of the slave market. I was invited to preside at worship and preach there--talk about intimidating! I'll get through somehow. God is good.

This afternoon, I'm engaging in a little sabbath time with my host and friend Masalakulangwa.

Can't download pictures, unfortunately, but I'll post a couple when I get home.

blogslacking: guilty as charged

2007-09-03T23:10:00.000-05:00

Yes, I've been blogslacking.

I've been busy, really.

First, the sabbath chapter for three weeks ago was right down the middle of what I planned to preach about, so I put off posting till the sermon was over. Then Sunday was crazy and I didn't post it and put it off till later. Then the next chapter was what I thought was the last one of the book, so I got ready to do some kind of wrap-up...but Megan and Tripp read it differently, and the good news is we have a few more weeks to go. Their posts are good ones, and reflect well on the material. I may or not catch up. (Megan and Tripp, I've been reading along, and reflecting, just not posting.)

Then our senior pastor went on vacation for two weeks, and I tried to hold down the fort in his absence. That's not normally so busy a job, but this time it was.

And now I'm leaving tomorrow, for a short (weeklong) trip to see a seminary buddy--in Dar Es Salaam. I'll post about that when I get back.

Five shiny things

2007-07-31T12:54:00.000-05:00

There are days I love living in San Antonio.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Sabbath 28: The Way Of Enough

2007-07-23T21:33:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 28: Tripp's post, Meeegan's post

In this chapter, Muller returns to a familiar theme. He wants to draw a distinction between sufficiency (having enough) and abundance (having more than enough). Sabbath is about recognizing that enough is enough; a time to focus on what we have, rather than what we lack. "When we are trapped in seeking, nothing is enough. Everything we have mocks us; we see only what is missing, and all that is already here seems pale and unsatisfying."

This is another verse to a familiar tune of Muller's: simplicity. He devoted what I think is an entire section to it earlier in the book. (chapters 17-20, if you want to search back and look at them again) And he's right on target, for me at least, and probably for the vast majority of his intended audience--people who live in the developed world, probably America--who are, by the global standards of the world, incredibly, ridiculously rich.

But for the vast majority of the world, the story is different.

One billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day--or try to.

Two billion more live on just slightly more than that, two or three dollars a day.

There are people on this Earth right now who will never in their lives have as much food in their home at one time as I have in my refrigerator and pantry right now--and we were just thinking that we needed to make a run to the supermarket, because we're out of a few things.

Yes, I'm ridiculously rich. Yes, I have literally half a garage full of stuff my family never uses. And yes, I am trying to do my part to do something about it. Those of you at St. Thomas heard me mention this in the sermon last week.

I guess that Muller's chapter served not to remind me of the abundance of God's creation (which is true--there is enough food in the world to feed the world) but to remind me of the unequal distribution of wealth. Much of the world doesn't have enough, even as Muller tries to remind me that I do.

PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME THE ENDING

2007-07-20T20:07:00.000-05:00

We've had something of a family tradition--I read the first six books out loud to my beloved, in way-over-the-top pythonesque accents, thankyouverymuch.

She has asked me to do the same with the last one, which means that it will take us at least a week to ten days to get to the end.

Don't tell me what happens, or I ain't gonna be your friend no more.

* * * * * * * * *

Post script--
Until we are finished with the book, I will not be reading anonymous comments posted to the blog, opening emails from unknown addresses, answering blocked phone calls, or reading billboards on the side of the highway.

Constant Vigilance!!!

Millennium Development Goals follow-up

2007-07-16T21:40:00.001-05:00

For the readers at St. Thomas, here are a couple of links to things I referenced in Sunday's sermon.

ONE Campaign

ONE Episcopalian

(and here)

Sababth 27: Mindfulness and Holiness

2007-06-29T11:06:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 27: Meeegan's post, Tripp's post

Okay, we're back in the blog saddle after a few weeks of travel and other craziness.

This week's chapter begins a new section, one called "Consecration." In the chapter, Wayne makes the point that Sabbath is time for re-creation, for restoration, and that restoration involves taking stock of where you are, and acknowledging the reality of that.

His suggested exercise for this chapter is confession. It reads like a natural progression from where he's been going all chapter, in that seeing the reality of life often means seeing your faults and failures, and wanting to make those better. He tells stories of couples he knows who take time to deliberately talk on the Sabbath about the times they have wronged one another in the last week, and asking forgiveness.

The health of honesty in relationships is something that happens more often, these days, in the psychologist's office rather than the confessional booth. Either way, Muller's treading on ground that's going to be sensitive for many people. Once again, he's is playing in deep water for my faith tradition, and it's the practice of confession that I want to spend my time on this week.

* * * * * * * * *

Last week, I visited one of my parishioners, and she started telling me stories (unprompted) about going to confession as a child.

"We used to make things up," she said with a giggle. "Well, you had to go to mass, because if you didn't your soul was in danger, and you couldn't go to mass without going to confession, and you couldn't go into the booth without having something to confess! So we'd make things up!"

I have about a hundred confessional-booth jokes in my back pocket. You've probably heard a few yourself. I think the problem has nothing to do with what Muller is reaching for--the reconciliation of people to each other and to God--and everything to do with the institutional logistics of the system. When you start making rules around the grace of God, strange things start happening. And the have-to-do-it-this-way mentality that is all too often the product of institutional church (the Roman Catholic church is only the biggest example) can actually become the hindrance to God's action in the world that it was trying to avoid by making the guidelines in the first place.

Viewed the wrong way, the system seems to put a requirement for human participation (the priest) in the way of God's forgiveness. You need a priest to pronounce you clean, or you'[re going to hell, because that's what the rules say.

And that same system is the one that can lead to great abuse. Today's legal decision to settle with victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles to the tune of some $60 million casts a long, dark shadow over this discussion.

Every week, my community says a prayer of confession as a part of our regular worship.

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.
For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

This prayer is usually sufficient for most people. But some sins are just too heavy, and too hard to let go of. The Episcopal church does still retain the one-on-one sacrament of "reconciliation of a penitent," although it surprises most people to know that there's a rite in the prayer book. We tend not to do it with the old-school confessional booth, instead meeting privately in an otherwise empty church building, or in the priest's study. This is the formal prayer used in confession:

I confess to Almighty God, to his Church, and to you, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word, and deed, in things done and left undone; especially__________. For these and all other sins which I cannot now remember, I am truly sorry. I pray God to have mercy on me. I firmly intend amendment of life, and I humbly beg forgiveness of God and his Church, and ask you for counsel, direction, and absolution.

When I hear a confession, whether from an individual or from a congregation of Christians, I think of myself as a witness. I witness the penitent(s) confessing their sins to God, and I in turn remind them of God's forgiveness. (or, in the language of the ordination liturgy, 'declare God's forgiveness to penitent sinners') It's not that God won't extend God's grace without my participation--that's ridiculous--but I can sometimes be the needed catalyst on the receiving end.

Sacraments are just patterns; material, tangible reminders of the countless ways God reaches out to us. We are material beings, and we need some way to be touched (literally) by God. The water of baptism, or oil of anointing, or bread of communion, are ways for us to experience the presence of the living God.

For some people, they need to hear someone look them in the eyes and audibly tell them that God's grace is sufficient to cover even their sin. (As in: Yes, even you are forgiven. Yes, even for THAT. No, really, God still loves you.) To get to be that person, occasionally, by virtue of the function assigned to me by God's people, is one of the great joys of my vocation. (and one of the frightening things).

sabbath sabbath: off to camp

2007-06-05T16:30:00.000-05:00

I really have no idea how many readers I have, because I took the hit counter off the blog a long time ago. (though I did install one of those cool world maps to see where the visitors come from. It's a small planet, friends, and we need each other.)

Anyway, for those of you waiting with bated breath for each new installment of Sabbath reflection (yeah, right) we're taking the next three weeks off. I'm off to camp!

Sabbath 26: Beginner's Mind

2007-06-05T16:27:00.001-05:00

Sabbath 26 (finally!): Tripp's post, Megan's post

This chapter was a bit scattered for me, and I had to read it several times over before it made sense at all. I ended up understanding it best as a part of a longer section of thought entitled "wisdom."

It seems to me that Muller is trying to explore what the Sabbath teaches us about wisdom from several angles, but instead of accomplishing that he ends up saying the same thing in five different ways. My summary of the section: you're not in control. You don't know what's going to happen in the future.

He tells a few stories in this chapter, some legendary, some real-life anecdotes, about people who struggle for control of their lives, and are swept away by unforeseen and uncontrollable forces. This whole section is steeped in eastern thought; he quotes the Tao Te Ching and references the Buddhas several times.

I struggled with this chapter as I did with the others in the section. After five chapters of the same argument, the same things are true: Wayne seems to think that things will solve themselves if you leave them alone, and I don't. There's a difference between allowing yourself a break from working and worrying at something and deciding that it's going to fix itself.

also, if you go down the track of "we don't know what's going to happen in the future and we can't control it," you eventually stop at a station called "why should I work at anything at all?" Here I will admit that I'm not well schooled in Eastern philosophy, so maybe I'm being too critical. Maybe my friend Brendan over at Off the Beaten Path can help me understand where Wayne is trying to go.

When Muller says that each Sabbath is an opportunity for a new beginning, my response is to think that he's missing his own point. If you're not in control of events, then what's the use of new beginnings?

Wayne's suggested exercise for this chapter is "sabbath bathing." Wash as if you're taking a ritual bath, cleansing all your parts and starting anew. If I could disconnect it from the chapter, I might feel better about it. I like the idea, even if I had to clean the tub before I could do the exercise.

Sabbath 25: Being Sabbath

2007-05-27T17:28:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 25: Megan's post, Tripp's post

Muller spends this chapter talking about how he began a life spent as a therapist, counselor, and pastor.
"As early as I can remember, I was both drawn to, and pained by, the sorrows of others."
"Today, 25 years later, they still call me."

He says that his biggest asset, his biggest gift, is the ability to be nothing. To be invisible. To be so completely non-obtrusive that it draws others out, and so that others can be completely at peace.

He ties this to sabbath in that we can create sacred spaces of time for one another, by being present, calm, in the midst of crisis: "Others share with me how they are sabbath for one another. 'After years of running from patients to meetings and writing reports and calling volunteers I have finally learned that my real job, when dealing with dying patients, is to be calm, the eye of the storm.' "

"...at our best, we become Sabbath for one another... we become space, that our loved ones, the lost and sorrowful, may find rest in us."

Muller has a gift. It's obvious from his description of his life. But I'm not sure I agree with his description of it, or that I understand it the same way he does.

* * * * * * * * * *

Muller's experience rings with a certain amount of truth. The first rule they tell you in chaplaincy training is: shut up. Let people talk. They are not interested in your answers to their problems, even if you would love to solve the problems of the world to your own satisfaction.

The second general rule is: Just be a calm, non-anxious presence. In crisis, people want to know that you're there, but they don't necessarily want to talk to you.

That's true, in my limited experience, in the vast majority of crisis situations, or health emergencies. But there's a significant difference between 'being sabbath' for people as a counselor or a chaplain, and 'being sabbath' as a friend or a pastor--or a priest. Hold that thought for a second...

Muller's suggested Sabbath exercise threw me for a loop for a while, until I think I figured it out. He suggests getting rid of stuff you don't need. Take a box of old clothes to a charity, for example. Let go of stuff. Okay, that's probably a good idea on general principles, but... I think the connection is that he spends time in the chapter talking about being in the midst of counseling relationships, and bringing none of himself into the conversation, so that others were free to speak about what burdened them. So, he suggests, do something to diminish yourself. Let go of physical things you don't need, and that effort will help you be spiritually more invisible, thus more able to help.

I think his suggestion is a good one, but the connection (which he doesn't make, but again I'm guessing) is ridiculous.

coming back to the thought you were holding, I'm going say that I think Muller is talking as a crisis visitor or a therapist. His job really is to get out of the way and focus on the person in crisis or therapy. But as a friend, or a pastor, what people need most when they ask you to be with them, when they ask you to talk with them, is not your absence, the way Muller talks about "making yourself a zero." They don't want your absence, they want your presence.

I got a call from the family of one of my parishioners this week, asking me to come to the hospital. It turns out that I had the great privilege of holding her hand while she died.

And while I think my teachers were right about the best thing I could do was be there, they didn't call me so I could be a vacuum in the room to draw out their pain--they called me to be their friend and their priest, to pray with them and sing favorite hymns and commend her soul to God.

Yes, we can be Sabbath time for each other, but I think being Sabbath time is more about presence that absence.

Sabbath 24: Nobody Special

2007-05-24T23:00:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 24: Tripp's post, Megan's post

With respect to Wayne, I don't think this chapter is about Sabbath. It's about humility, with a sabbath exercise. And it's a great chapter. Another chapter worth buying the book for. Here's the closest I can come to a summary:

According to Henri [Nouwen], Jesus' three temptations were these: To be useful. To be important. To be powerful.

Useful, important, and powerful--are these not the attributes that still tempt every one of us who seek to do good in the world? Yet the saints and sages teach us to offer or kindness humbly, invisibly, quietly. Jesus did not seek worldly power or influence. He spent his time with unknown, disliked people.

This week, I think Muller continues on the trajectory of things that are extremely valuable to say, and have the ring of deep truth (even if painful for some), but I'm not sure how they connect to the rest of his book. We're in the middle of a section of chapters called Wisdom; I read this chapter as a part of Muller trying to elaborate on what the kind of wisdom is we're looking for when we practice Sabbath on a regular basis, or when we are freed by the Sabbath to be the wisest and best people we know.

I think his central point is, once again, in the last paragraph. "We are most human when we do no great things. We are not so important; we are...participants in a process much larger than we." He encourages us to follow the practice of the desert fathers and mothers, who would retreat to their monastic cells. He encourages us to spend some time alone this week, believing that the time alone will allow us to look honestly at ourselves in the mirror.

Okay, I guess I haven't spent enough time in the cell for the wisdom of the desert mystics to work on me. I did notice that when I was alone, I tended to spend the time planning ahead, thinking of ways to be useful or important or powerful. I caught myself daydreaming this week about what might have happened if I had chosen another career path, one that I looked closely at before rejecting, or if I had never left the airport consulting industry to go to seminary. I learned, in short, that it is indeed my unconscious nature to not be humble.

In this week's chapter, Muller tells us the story of his ordination, and how Henri Nouwen, who preached at his ordination, used repeatedly the phrase "downward mobility" to describe the task of Christian ministry.

He uses this phrase to describe his ordination:

In the Christian lineage, Jesus ordained Peter, who ordained a long line of priests, who eventually ordained Henri Nouwen, who put his hands on me. This is my lineage, an unbroken chain of hands. My words and actions, if they bear fruit, come from the soil of that lineage.

That's close to home for me. When the church made me a priest, I could substitute "Gary Lillibridge" for "Henri Nouwen" above, and the same is true. I am the latest in a long line of messengers and ambassadors of Jesus, and any good that comes out of my ministry is not because I'm good at being a messenger, but because God is good.

My friend The Rev was gracious enough to come preach on the day the church made me a priest. I'll cheerfully admit that I threw away Muller's suggested sabbath discipline in favor of my own: listening to the recording of the ordination sermon. I offer you just this snippet, transcribed from close to the end:

Having faith is more than just about being tough; there are resources that rise up, that there's a power that rises up out of the human heart out of brokenness that has power to transform the world.
our challenge is to hear the same voice that called Abram out of the land of Ur...to leave what makes us comfortable, to leave what makes us feel secure, and to tell the story of the transformation of the world that was effected one dark day on Calvary. And here's how it's going to happen: not by a bunch of Texans being tough, not by a bunch of Atlantans being genteel, not by a bunch of New Yorkers being rich or a bunch of Bostonians being smart or a bunch of Californians being sentimental. It's going to happen when we embrace our brokenness, and we recognize that there's a greater power at work, who is alive in us, when our hearts are broken, to allow the blessing and the power of God to flow through us, so that the world may be transformed.

Sabbath 23: Be Still and Know

2007-05-15T13:47:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 23: Megan's post, Tripp's post

I think Wayne's chapter is summed up in this quote: "Through meditation, prayer, and stillness, we refine our vision, we sharpen our hearing." He does on to apply this principle in the realm of social-service concerns, where his organization Bread For the Journey does its work.

Megan has a good summary of the chapter this week.

I did something scary this week. I preached about Sabbath. The text was one of the Jesus-heals-on-the-Sabbath stories, where "the Jews" (in this case, meaning not Jesus and his disciples, but those who did not follow Jesus) criticize him for healing (i.e., working) on the Sabbath. I tried to use the misunderstanding in the text to gently point out that we tend to misunderstand Sabbath just as much as those characters in the gospel stories who criticized Jesus--it's just that we miss the point of the Sabbath by working too hard.

The first scary part is that I know--know--that my congregation is as crazy-busy-overworked as anyone else. And as a preacher, you have to be very, very careful about things that might sound critical. (I'm sure somebody on Sunday heard me say that they were bad and sinful people for not properly observing the Sabbath, even though I didn't say anything of the kind.)

The second, and bigger, scary part, is that I asked the congregation to do something--one of Wayne's Sabbath exercises, specifically. Go for a walk. Stroll. Be. Recognize that you have great value and worth even when you're not producing.

My prayer this week is that three hundred people are out there taking an evening stroll, and being aware of God's presence while doing that.

Sabbath 22: Doing Good Badly

2007-05-06T07:39:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 22: Megan's post, Tripp's post

This week's chapter begins a new section, one entitled Wisdom. I'll start off by saying that, once again, I have problems with this week's chapter, and I'm not sure how the exercise and the chapter connect. However, I'm learning to trust Muller to a certain extent, in that his ideas in sequence work like the moves in a sermon, getting you to a point, and not always standing alone. Let me try to summarize this chapter:

Muller begins by telling a story of how he, in what he seems to describe as a fit of 70's-induced wide-eyed idealism, championed the idea of getting juvenile criminals and psychiatric patients set free to return to their homes. The idea was, he says, to fully engage the community in the raising of our children...they would be "free to be cared for by their families, back home where they belonged."

You know the end of the story, of course:
"eager to be useful, we just let them go. Now the nation is awash in lost children, some violent, many in pain. And now they are not first-time offenders, they are multiple felons. We, for our part, now rush to blame them for threatening the safety of our society, and we cannot build prisons fast enough to hold them."

He then goes on to other stories of not thinking through the possible implications of our attempts to be helpful--attempts that tried to help children in Africa that instead helped the warlords who enslaved them, or attempts at improving the food production of a region that seriously imbalanced a fragile equilibrium in the ecosystem.

His next move, given that we're on a Sabbath groove, is to say that if we/they had only taken some Sabbath time to think about the implications of their ideas, they would have done better. This is oversimplifying at best--we can't always see the results of what we intend ahead of time, even with the best planning.

He then moves on to say that the kind of love that raises healthy children requires time. Quantity time and quality time. The kind of time you have if you practice Sabbath.

This, I think, is his conclusion: "Doing good requires more than simply knowing what is wrong. Like God in the creation story, we need Sabbath time to step back, pause, and be quiet enough to recognize what is good."

* * * * *

Here's my fundamental problem with the chapter: I'm honestly sorry that Wayne feels guilty for the unforeseen consequences, and that his hindsight shows him a clearer picture. But I can't agree with him that if he would have just slowed down to think some more, he (and the State of California) would have made the right choice, children in Africa would not have starved... the logical conclusion to his exercise is to not do good at all, or else to do so in such a careful manner as makes no difference.

I do agree that there is wisdom in slow deliberation, and in taking the time to try our best to see ahead and consider the consequences.

I'm also going to re-frame his exercise, because I think he's aiming for intercessory prayer and trying to describe it in different words. I'll paraphrase: Think of a problem you struggle with. Now, imagine that problem as a seed, growing toward resolution in some invisible soil. Imagine, just as a seed knows how to grow, this problem may already know how to be resolved. How does this change your feeling about the problem?

Okay, that's interesting. But the focus of his exercise, I think, is in the wrong direction.

And here I'm going to say something that all of you might not agree with. I think that God answers intercessory prayer. There are some people who say that God will not act just because we ask. (another way of saying that is that I can't control God.) There are people who say that their prayers are "answered" so infrequently that they've decided God's not listening or that God's not there to listen, and the times they did seem to hear an answer were just coincidence.

Muller's suggestion seems to be: the problem knows how to solve itself. Leave it alone and let it time to grow. If you imagine that the problem can solve itself, (or, if I'm feeling snarky, pretend that the problem can solve itself), do you feel better?

Let me use one example of the things that I'm praying about right now: I'm planning a session of camp for the summer. Camp doesn't inherently know how to plan itself. Now, if I sit still and visualize a wonderful camp session, I feel better, at least while I'm visualizing (or daydreaming). That's internally focused--my feelings are happier. But if I ask God to (to use Muller's metaphor) grow the hearts of my campers, and prepare them to experience the transforming love of Christ Jesus, then that's externally focused. The first way says "let it be," and accepts that whatever happens will happen. The second, while still recognizing that the problem is bigger than my ability to control it, turns it over to God and asks for help.

Sabbath 21: Sensuality and Delight

2007-04-30T08:02:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 21: Tripp's post, Megan's post.

Muller waxes rhapsodic this week about our sensual connection to re-creation. He starts by asking a great question: let's assume, for just a minute, that you're ready for Sabbath. You've actually turned off all the electronic gadgets, cleared your calendar, etc. What do you do to enjoy the day?

He then points out that the Jewish Sabbath ritual is wonderfully sensual--the sight and scent of candles, the taste of familiar favorite foods, soft cushions to rest on. Muller then goes into some detail about the sensual delights of physical affection, points out that the Talmud decrees that a husband's (ahem) obligations to his wife should be performed on the Sabbath, and quotes the Song of Solomon.... And then, his suggested exercise is......

Go for a walk. Barefoot. Indulge your senses.

Ha! A suggested Sabbath exercise of "now go enjoy the sensuality of taking a cold shower" might have been funnier. But I guess you just can't be a pastor and write a book that suggests that people go have sex. At least not one that suggests that you enjoy it.

(if you're getting mad at me right now, you go take a cold shower.)

First, to the exercise: I'm not much of an outdoorsy type, to start with. And my spouse has said several times that her idea of roughing it on vacation is a hotel that doesn't offer room service. It's not that I dislike nature, or that I don't spend time outside. But I'm usually indoors, or I'm outside with running shoes on, or I'm walking my dog, who seems to prefer sidewalks to grass. It's been a long time since I took off my shoes and stepped onto the earth (or the grass), as if I was stepping onto holy ground.

So I did. Fearing only briefly for stickers and chiggers and random dog poo and other suburban terrors, I went out for a walk, imagining that I was Moses, being told to take off my shoes and step into the presence of God... and I was surprised by the hair-raising holiness of those few minutes. No, it wasn't the feel of the grass and the dirt, or that there was a bush in my backyard that was on fire (but not consumed).

Muller touches on something true--we are sensual people. In my worship tradition, the engagement of the senses is an essential part of the sacraments of the church. We feel the splash of cold water, the touch of another hand, catch the scent of healing oil, taste the wine of the thanksgiving feast. These things provide moments, specific times and places, when we can be opened to the presence of God. And without the engagement of the senses, worship becomes an intellectual exercise, easily untethered from its original purpose and left to roam.

sabbath 20 extra: cartoons!

2007-04-28T11:04:00.000-05:00

As promised, here are some of my recent cartoons.

Harvey does several teaching techniques to get our little linear brains out into cartoonland. We do pictures from squiggles, compound words (e.g., "bull-frog") and charaters out of letters or numbers (which I think he's calling alpha-pics). Anyway, here are some examples:

Sabbath 20: The Tyranny of Choice

2007-04-23T10:51:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 20: Megan's post, Tripp's post

Here's my summary of Wayne's chapter (quoting him, as we read through the chapter):

(1) sometimes it is necessary to stop one thing so that another can begin
(2) What if we hear these [sabbath] prohibitions with different ears? What if...these teachings are...a useful boundary that keeps out things that would do us harm?
(3) freedom of choice can suffocate us; we drown in a sea of options.
(4) sabbath restrictions on work and activity actually create a space of great freedom; without these self-imposed restrictions, we may never be truly free.

My summary differs a little from Megan's; not that I think she's wrong, but Muller poked her in a sore spot this week and her response is appropriate.

My life's analogy to Muller's point this week is what it's like for me to tell my young son that he needs a nap. (We've almost, but not completely, outgrown the afternoon nap stage.) Some days, especially weekends when we're going full speed at some series of activities, he gets cranky. He almost always reacts the same way to my suggested nap: with an explosive negative response. I know a nap will help, he'll feel better, he'll enjoy the rest of the day, so I make him go rest. Lie down, I tell him, but you don't have to sleep.

Yes, sometimes I'm grumpy myself when I send him off to his room, but the point is that it's to help teach him that when he's tired, if he rests, he'll be better able to enjoy things.

* * * * * * *

Muller's suggested exercise is one that only tangentially touches on the chapter: do something creative and fun and refreshing daily. Some small thing. Snip a flower, tear a picture of something you enjoy out of a magazine and keep it with you to look at it during the day, sing, draw, dance...

I've been looking for a while now for an excuse to talk about one of the odd joys in my life... I'm learning how to draw cartoons.

We have an after-classes enrichment program at our church school, and one of the offerings is called "kid-tooning." The instructor is a fellow named Harvey S. Williams, the creator of a whole "who's who" of cartoon characters, including Bullwinkle, Tony the Tiger, the Trix Rabbit, the Raid Bugs, and a bunch of others. (I'd link you to a web site, but he doesn't have one)

Harvey is a wonderful guy, jovial, enthusiastic, and fun-loving. He loves kids, he loves to draw--it's a great match.

I called him an artist one time, and he corrected me--"I'm a cartoonist." Maybe that's why I've loved drawing with him, and why I never learned how to draw myself. I always wanted things to look right, for the perspective to work, for the lines to meet, for the shading to make sense. I never doodled in the margins of my homework, because it never looked right--I did geometrical shapes and patterns instead.

Ah, but if it's a cartoon, it's supposed to be a little silly. Bullwinkle doesn't look like a real moose, right? The funnier, the better. There are still rules on what works and what doesn't, but they're inherently flexible. Harvey's constantly telling his students, "you can't mess up. It's just different, that's all. Or, if you don't like it, start over. No big deal."

Here's where I really need to learn more about blogger software, and take the time to scan some of my drawings and put them up here. To do that, I gotta go borrow a scanner, and... okay, okay, I'll figure out how to do it, so you can see my silly frogs and camels and roly-poly bears. Real soon now...

Sabbath extra: Easter break

2007-04-17T17:17:00.000-05:00

I've been recently chastised for lack of Sabbath posts, and lack of explanation. mea culpa.

The Three Amigos (or whatever we're calling ourselves) decided to take a few weeks off for Palm Sunday, Easter, and the week following. We'll return to your regularly-scheduled programming next Sunday.

Sabbath 19: Selling Unhappiness

2007-03-25T08:00:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 19: Megan's post

This chapter contains a great paragraph:

Sabbath is a time to stop, to refrain from being seduced by our desires. To stop working, stop making money, stop spending money. See what you have. Look around. Listen to your life. Do you really need more than this? Spend a day with your family...sit with your spouse on the couch, hang out--do what they do in the [catalog advertisement] picture without paying for it. Just stop. That is, after all, what they are selling in the picture: people who have stopped. You cannot buy stopped. You simply have to stop.

...then, at the end of the day, where is the desperate yearning to consume, to shop, to buy what we do not need? It dissolves. Little by little, it falls away.

Amen, Wayne!

But the rest of the chapter, unfortunately, is a diatribe against consumerism whose train of thought derails (in my opinion). It makes a little more sense when the previous chapter and this one are combined. Under the umbrella of a section called "the pursuit of happiness," the previous chapter says "money can't buy happiness" and this one says that if you participate in an understanding of the world where you consume to be happy, then your fundamental state has to be unhappiness, so that the things you buy can make you (momentarily, but never completely) happy--until you take Sabbath time to stop and realize that you really do have enough.

I think Tripp has it right--Muller is aiming at simplicity. It's just the whole "thus the free market canonized grasping, conumption, and desire as the essential human impulses" thing that gets under my skin.

The first time I ever encountered the idea of the Sabbath as a break from spending money, it was in conversation with another priest. She was the massively overworked type; I caught her, one day, strung out and exhausted, and asked when the last time it was she took a day off. She explained that today was the Sabbath for her, and the way she kept it was to not spend any money... not even for a diet coke out of the machine. This sounded just a little bizarre to me (and yes, I became the goyim who would buy her sodas from the machine that day), and I thought it missed the point of a day off. But it was an odd enough idea that it stuck with me, and grew on me over time. After thinking about Muller's anti-consumer rhetoric for a couple of weeks, I think he's got a significant point to make for modern society, and I'm going to have to keep ruminating on the idea of non-participation in the wheels of economy as a Sabbath practice.

Muller's suggested exercise this week actually made me laugh out loud when I read it. His suggestion: practice some "slotha yoga," a cute name for staying in bed in the morning when you wake up. Let yourself wake up, Wayne says, and spend the next hour in bed...

My beloved probably said it best (just picture her counting on her fingers, please): This is the advice of (1) a morning person, who has (2) no children at home, (3) no pets, and (4) no job.

I honestly can't recall a stretch two days in a row in my whole life (not since summers in junior high school) when I woke up without an alarm clock of some kind. Wayne might say that my life is seriously out of balance... but the point is, I can't even imagine what his exercise looks like.

I tried a modified version, this Sabbath day (which is why this post is late): I got up, made coffee, walked the dog, took the kid to school, came home, got back into my pyjamas, and lazed around all morning. I even took a morning nap. (this is exactly what would happen if I tried Wayne's exercise as suggested: about three minutes of contemplating restfulness, followed by immediately going back to sleep) I deliberately didn't work on anything, not even (at the risk of losing husband points) fixing the broken upstairs toilet. I played games; picked up our son early from school, and walked the dog. To my surprise, at the end of the day, I felt slightly disgruntled at not having accomplished anything all day!

I guess I'm enough of a people person that trying to 'stop' without having my family and friends around to be stopped with (my Sabbath days are spent alone) defeats the intent of the suggested exercise. Oh well, better luck next week.

Sabbath 18: The Gospel of Consumption

2007-03-18T21:47:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 18: Meeegan's post, Tripp's post

I think Muller gets to the point he wants to make for this chapter rather towards the end: "Happiness is the single commodity not produced by the free-market economy." He goes on to say that when we are happy, we don't feel the need to buy anything, and that the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of delight, a day of being "at peace with all we have" rather than yearning for more.

Muller points out that the United States (most of his assumed audience) leads the world in consumption, and if the rest of the world followed our example we'd denude the planet in incredibly short order.

To get there, though, he goes in a direction I just can't follow. He says that we now follow a gospel of mass consumption, as in, consumption will make you happy. He hints that there's some kind of huge dark big-brother conspiracy among manufacturers to promote this gospel (either that, or he anthropomorphizes "the market" and says that the market has made greed the essential human impulse).

Um... no.

Basically, this week's chapter sounded like a warning against conspicuous consumption (and I happen to agree with him on that, by the way) that Muller has force-fit into the ongoing theme of Sabbath rest.

I also disagree with his basic premise in this chapter: that money can't buy happiness. Yes, it can! Maybe I should draw a distinction between two situations: poverty, or a paycheck-to-paycheck existence, versus a certain financial stability. I know of nobody who has come from the first to the second who isn't far happier in the latter condition. But to draw the distinction between comfortable and rich... Muller might have a point there.

If we say that money can't buy happiness, then are we saying that global poverty means that most of the people in the world are happy, and we should leave them alone? Of course not!

* * * * * * *

Muller's suggested exercise this week sounded interesting: go to a favorite store, one where you particularly enjoy shopping. Walk around for an hour in that store, but do it knowing you're not going to buy anything. Pay attention to how you feel. Let yourself feel the tug of buying. Listen to the things tell you "you want me, you would be happier if you had me." Walk away, hopefully free of the impulse to buy things, feeling a sense of sufficiency.

Okay, this sounded interesting in principle. But, I'll admit ahead of time, I haven't done it yet. We've had multiple house guests for the last week, and I haven't spent an hour on his exercise. I'll try to do it, but I'm not sure how much help it's going to be for me, because I don't really enjoy shopping in the first place. I don't wander and look at random things. I'm not even sure what store I should go to for the exercise. (A bookstore, probably) I'm also skeptical that the exercise would make me more frustrated rather than more rested. We'll see how Megan and Tripp do with it.

Sabbath 17: The pursuit of happiness

2007-03-12T09:15:00.000-05:00

Sabbath 17: Tripp's post, Meeegan's post.

This week, we enter a new section in Muller's text, this one titled "Happiness."

His main point in the chapter, as I see it, is to draw a distinction between the gratification of desire and the state of happiness. Gratification fades. Gratification, in fact, can become an insatiable monster. Happiness, Wayne says, is more about being enjoying what you have than about the acquisition of more or better things.

Jesus taught his disciples (and teaches us) that God's desire for us is that we live in happiness and peace. Muller says, "finding happiness in life is universally perceived as an essential human endeavor." He references several other philosophers and religious leaders who have similar messages.

Side note: I'd always understood Thomas Jefferson's famous phrase "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" to mean, not the chase of happiness, but the occupation of happiness... meaning that it is a right of humanity to choose one's life work, rather than having it determined by someone else, and to do something that you find happiness in.

I've been gently disagreeing with Muller for much of the book, when he tries to draw distinctions between "work" as a draining activity and "rest" as an energizing activity. A good bit of what I do that could be called work is actually energizing for me. Not all, of course. Some of it is exhausting.

Muller says that when we look for happiness in a market-driven world (my words, not his) that we tend to look to consume, to buy our happiness. But this is a trap--to consume is merely to gratify desire. In an echo, or a deliberate recall of his last section, he says that happiness only grows in the soil of time.

So, he says, as the sabbath exercise, be grateful this week. Recognize the blessed nature of your life. Count your blessings, name them one by one...

Okay, can do. It's a simple exercise, almost cliche if you're not careful, but one with rich rewards. Give it a shot for a day if you've never tried it. If thanking God for the things that bless you is too hard, try it this way: I'm grateful for this food. I'm grateful for a roof over my head. I'm grateful for my friends...

5 fabulous things about Megan

2007-03-07T09:19:00.000-06:00

here are five fabulous things about Meeegan, in no particular order:

* she has the best posture, carriage, and personal presence of anyone I know.
* she sings! And makes time in a crazy busy schedule to go make the world a little more beautiful with the gift of her beautiful voice.
* she's fiercely loyal to Clan Monaghan.
* she came from hither and/or yon to stand up with me at my wedding. Yikes, that was eleven years ago!
* her vocation is the encouragement and development of art. Huzzah!

Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you...

Sabbath 16: A Deeper Wealth

2007-03-05T12:34:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 16: Megan's post, Tripp's post

In this chapter, the end of the section titled "time," Muller's makes two main points:
(1) in a free market economy, we financially reward some people far, far out of proportion to what they produce, and those whose primary work involves the investment of time tend to hardly get any financial reward at all. Money's not a good way to keep score if you're trying to measure the value of vocation.
(2) he then goes on to share stories about how Bread for the Journey, the organization that Wayne founded, seeks out "people in impoverished communities who measure their wealth in terms of the time they have to give to their community." They make grants of small amounts of money with which to start programs, and those communities have been impacted far more by the expenditure of time than of money. (by the way, there's a picture of Wayne Muller here.)

Wayne ends the chapter by saying that "during Sabbath, we specifically honor those precious things--courage, creativity, wisdom, peace, kindness, and delight--that grow only in the soil of time." His suggested exercise is called 'the wealth of companionship.' Wayne points out that when we are lost or afraid we tend to isolate from each other, and he encourages us to seek out those when we lose our way, so that we might be a place of refuge for each other.

I read his suggested exercise, and wanted to change it to seek out other people, period. We are a society living in crazy isolation. (In fact, it was part of the impetus to get me to start doing this blog-writing reflection exercise. See this post.) To make friends, and to be friends, requires intentionality, practice, and patience.

At my home parish, a small-ish group of us has begun to gather to do just that. We're (mostly) parents of small children, and we only meet for a short time (too short, really). But we're beginning to see the fruit of deeper relationship, or to use Wayne's terms, see the early returns on an investment of time. We have an agreement among us not to share each other's stories, so you won't see me talking or writing anything more about the group than the fact that we meet together. But it's good stuff we're doing. If you're in the area and you're thirsty for authentic human relationship, come see what we're up to.

Principle: I am my brother's keeper

2007-03-03T15:53:00.000-06:00

One of the stories in the "prologue" section of Genesis (i.e., Genesis 1-11), is the story of Cain and Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it."
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Then the LORD said to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?"
"I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?"

The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground..."
--Genesis 4:2-10, NIV

Am I my brother's keeper?

It's been said that the rest of the Bible is an attempt to answer that question.

This is dangerous ground in America. Our legal system is based on the principle that the rights of the individual are sacrosanct. I'm not supposed to care about you too much. I'm supposed to leave you alone. I'm not supposed to presume to know what's good for you.

I got a tremendous chewing-out during the course of my chaplaincy training, merely for using one high-voltage word in conversation with a patient: should. As in, "Well, maybe you should [take a certain action]." I disagreed with the instructor about whether I was imposing my own stuff onto the patient, but what was communicated to me was that the nature of the offense was not about the specific patient, but that I had violated a cardinal rule of pastoral care--never, never, never say "ought" or "should." What right do you have?

Am I my brother's keeper?

One in five people around the world survives on less than $1US per day, with few opportunities to earn more.
More than 38 million people around the world are infected by HIV/AIDS, 25 million in Africa alone.
One person in seven has no access to clean water for drinking, cooking or washing.
Around the world, 104 million children do not go to grade school, because their parents cannot afford fees, books or uniforms for all their children.
every day, somewhere in the world, approximately twenty thousand children starve to death.

Am I my brother's keeper, or is this somebody else's problem?

Principle: Jesus is the savior of the world

2007-03-02T13:55:00.000-06:00

This is how far God loves me--God became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. You've probably heard that story before; if not, go read the gospel according to Mark and the letter to the Romans.

At the time, God's people didn't understand. How could we? There's a sense in which I don't understand it (exactly what does it mean for Jesus to be God incarnate?), and I have the wosdom of centuries of faithful people to help me. Though I have seen the Holy Spirit working in the midst of God's people, I didn't, y'know, eat lunch in Galilee in 27 a.d. with this guy named Yeshua.

Anyway, Jesus came, and tried to tell us about the reign of God. About God's will for creation. We misunderstood. And when we understood, we got scared. Or selfish. Or mad. Or all three.

Mel Gibson, director of The Passion of the Christ, revealed in an interview that in the shot where Jesus is nailed to the cross, it is Gibson's hands that are shown wielding the spike and mallet. When asked why, he replied, "It was me that put him on the cross. It was my sins."

"I put Jesus on the cross." what he might have been reaching for is something of a universal truth for humanity: when we encounter the Kingdom of God, we reject it, over and over. When faced with the decision to make a covenantal choice or not, we often choose not. That's just the reality of sin. Jesus came, and reminded us of God's desire, that we bless the world instead of grabbing power and control for ourselves, and we killed him. And God raised him to life.

Jesus called to the world, the way God has always called to the world, to live into the kingdom of God.
the whole world.
no exceptions.

Principle: I am blessed to be a blessing

2007-03-02T11:32:00.000-06:00

This is a foundational text for me:

The LORD said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.
I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him.
--Genesis 12: 1-4

This is the beginning of the calling of God's people. This is where the story really begins (more about the Genesis 1-11 prologue some other time). And the story begins like this: God desires to bein covenant relationship with humanity. And God picks one person to start the particular story we find ourselves in, and God says: you are blessed, you and all your heirs, for a purpose. And that purpose is to be a blessing to the world.

All too often we get it backward. We'd rather say that God blesses us so that we'll feel good, or that God will bless us so that we get ahead financially, or that we'll be safe, or that we'll be unafraid, or that we won't get sick... we tend, in short, to be inwardly focused. But God's mission has always been outward, not inward.

I, personally, have been blessed almost beyond my ability to write it down. I'm (mostly) healthy, I have a loving family, I live in an embarrassingly large house, I've earned three (!) university degrees, and I'm among the top 0.33% of the richest people in the world. And I could go on and on.

That blessing has a purpose: I am supposed to be a blessing to the world.

Principle: I am part of the story of God's people

2007-03-01T23:25:00.000-06:00

This one is eluding a short little blurb description for the moment; I may pin it down later. It has to do with identity, which I need far more room to talk about than I have time for today, but here's a start.

I once sat around in a friend's apartment with a group of fellow college students. Somebody asked the question "who are you?" and I tried to answer in terms of who I currently was, i.e., I'm a student, I'm an engineer, I'm a dancer, I'm a musician, I'm a Christian, I'm courting this woman who lives in New Orleans right now... Most of the rest of the room responded to that question by starting, "I'm from [Gopherbutt, Tennessee], and I have three brothers and two sisters..." and going on with a historical account of themselves.

Where we come from is an important part of our identity. (It's not causal for everything we do, ala Skinner's rats, but it is important.) Our story places us in the world, tells us where we've been, and tells us (to a certain extent) where we're going. For God's people, a part of our story begins with, "My father was a wandering Aramean." This is a quotation from a section of Deuteronomy in which a festival of thanksgiving is described, where the people bring the first fruits of their harvest to the temple, and recite their place in the story, beginning with the quote above, as a way of acknowledging all that God had done for them.

One of the pillars of my faith is the collection of books that are, together, called the Bible. The Bible tells the story of God's people, from the calling of the first Hebrew to the establishment of the early church, and covers some two thousand years in the process. The writings that have been included in the Bible were inspired by God, and written by an unknown number of human hands through the centuries.

It is a story that bears the marks of revision, of adapting to the times and places we find ourselves in. It is a story that points toward an unfinished future. But it is more than story. It "breathes." It touches us in ways that other literature doesn't. And because I am one of God's people, I am in the story. Somewhere.

One of my guiding principles is that the story of God's people is not somebody else's story. It is my story. I am a Christian because many people (I could name a few prominent ones, and so could most Christians) showed me the transforming love of Christ Jesus at work in their lives, and I wanted the same thing for my life. I am a Christian because Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and a host of others were faithful. I am a Christian because Moses led the people out of Egypt. I am a Christian because of the faithfulness of David, Ezra, Nehemiah, John the Baptizer, Athanasius, Martin Luther, C.S. Lewis, and thousands of others.

My story is not wholly my own. I am part of a much greater story, the ongoing story of God's people.

A related principle tomorrow.

Principle: God loves me

2007-02-28T11:10:00.000-06:00

One of the great joys of my vocation is that I regularly get to share in the leadership of chapel for our day school. Children from 4 years old to 5th grade.

When it's my turn to lead chapel, I always begin my homily with the same call-and-response prayer:

God is
God is

God loves
God loves

God loves me
God loves me

It's my hope that they will remember this, in the years to come, if they remember nothing else. And now you know why there's a pattern to my last three entries.

Not only does God love, God loves me.

Hear the words of the scriptures:
Jesus said: "indeed, the very hairs on your head are all numbered." (This is in the middle of a joke Jesus is telling, so I won't distract you)

and, in another place, Jesus said: "I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my father I have made known to you."

I am known to God, all of me, good parts and bad parts, in such a way as to be valued, treasured.
I matter.
And that changes everything.

Principle: God loves

2007-02-27T15:45:00.000-06:00

God loves.

The first thing I know about God, the first thing that the scriptures, the tradition, and my own experience tell me, is that God loves. The source of all things, toward which I stretch, the creator of all that is, can be described as loving.

Think about that for a second. When I studied the Greek gods in literature class, the stories were all about a universe ruled by deities that were vengeful and cruel. Selfish, spiteful, manipulative beings. If you were an ancient Greek, you didn't want the gods to notice you, most of the time. Other cultures had, or have, similar understandings of the universe -- that the universe is capricious, cold, mean. At best, indifferent.

Maybe creation is indifferent, but the Creator is not.

God is not malicious and cruel. God does not intend suffering and pain. God is revealed in self-giving love for all of creation. We walk around, every day, in a universe created by One who gives ridiculous, self-sacrificing, boundless love.

Because the Creator loves, so we are freed to love. To live in love, not in hatred. To give, rather than take. To be joyful, not afraid.

Principle: God is

2007-02-26T13:59:00.000-06:00

First, we gotta talk about what we're talkin' about.

from dictionary.com:
prin·ci·ple /ˈprɪnsəpəl/
–noun
1. an accepted or professed rule of action or conduct: a person of good moral principles.
2. a fundamental, primary, or general law or truth from which others are derived: the principles of modern physics.
3. a fundamental doctrine or tenet; a distinctive ruling opinion: the principles of the Stoics.
4. principles, a personal or specific basis of conduct or management: to adhere to one's principles; a kindergarten run on modern principles.

I'm not sure which of the above definitions Wayne is talking about. (and I hope that if I asked him, he wouldn't say, with a spiritual-ish glance, "whatever you want." I hate it when people say that.) Are we talking about truth from which rules are derived (#2, above), or are we talking about the rules themselves (#1,#4)?

Meeegan seems to be going with the latter (seriously, go read the link. She is, as usual, spot on). I think I'm going to go with the former, and leave the latter for later. I made two lists, and decided to flesh out one of them, in brief form, one per day.

* * * * * * * * * *

God is.

No, I'm not going to try to prove God's existence by rhetoric. I remember reading Kant and Descartes in college, and getting a tremendous headache, and then falling asleep. Plenty of people smarter and more eloquent than me have written on this; go read them instead.

The vast majority of people in this world have some sort of spiritual dimension to their lives. We understand God in different ways, of course. While I'm not a universalist (i..e, all spiritual paths lead to the same place, or all religions are essentially the same), and I sure don't think that I have cornered the market on the right answer (dude, I'm an Episcopalian, just look at us recently), I do think that the essence of spirituality is a search to respond to the self-revealing God. AA uses the term "higher power" instead of God, which I think is a stroke of genius.

The rest of my life flows downhill from this source. Because there is a God, I believe what I have come to believe. Because there is a God, I try to govern my actions in a certain way.

more tomorrow.

Sabbath 15 addendum

2007-02-26T09:25:00.000-06:00

A monday-morning addendum...

Okay, so I wasn't going to do Wayne's exercise. Them are deep waters. But this weekend, my bishop asked me to go out into deep waters. And then Megan also specifically asked me to. Oh, drat. Well, maybe I will after all.

* * * * * * *

Now, just so's you know, here are the thoughts that flew through my head in rapid succession:
where did I put that "I believe" statement I did during the last confirmation class? Is it in the file drawer? No, I think it's on the hard drive of my work computer. No, remember, you wrote it out longhand. It's in the file drawer.....hey, wait a minute, does that defeat the purpose of the exercise, to use something you've done before? No, not really. yes, it does. well, maybe.
The next set of thoughts had to do with making statements of important principles on a blog. Back when I was an airport consultant, "Robinson's First Law of Consulting "was: if it leaves your hand, it's gone. You can't get it back, you can't ask for a do-over, and you will always be asked to account for your mistakes in the first draft, even if they were typographical errors rather than calculation errors.

The Law applies to blogging. Big Brother's hard drive, somewhere, may have copies of everything I say, and it might be held against me later... and now we're not talking about the amusing antics of my pets, we're talking about life-governing principles. eek! But hey, I already wrote about this, just about a year ago.

* * * * * * *

Are you ready for the concept of a priest whose theology is not a fixed structure, but is instead a tent? Not a symphony, but a song made up as we go along, and always unfinished?

You might have said yes. Do you mean that?

Okay, here we go. And, by the way, welcome to the emergent church.

* * * * * * * *

Muller asks, "What are some of the inviolable precepts that guide your life?... Make a list of the principles that shape your days. Include both those you currently follow and those you would like to be able to follow."

Okay, here we go. A week's worth of principles, not necessarily in any order. Starting... tonight, maybe tomorrow. I gotta think about it for a few minutes.

Sabbath 15: why time is not money

2007-02-25T21:46:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 15: Megan's post. (everyone send Tripp a quick get-well email)

Summary of Muller's chapter:
(1) Gross Domestic Product is a bad metric to use for measuring the value of the activities of a country. (my note: duh. It's not about "value," Wayne, it's an indicator of the industrial output of a national economy.)
(2) many things of value are "bought" with time, not money.

there, I just saved you several pages of reading.

I didn't get the connection between the chapter and the suggested exercise, though it's a doozy: make a statement of your most important priorities. Write it down; say it out loud.

I have a love-hate relationship with several of my duties as a priest. One of them that fits this description is to hold 'preparation classes' for baptism and confirmation. The reason I don't like it is that we don't spend enough time on the process, and don't acknowledge the gravity of the moment in some people's lives. Publicly stating your intention to deliberately be a part of a Christian community, to try to live as a Christian in the 21st century, might seem like a teeny thing to some ('specially here, in the Bible Belt, where people tend to ask where you go to church instead of whether you go). But it's an enormous deal for others, a day that your life story will always pivot around. Preparing for that day can either be done in the one-meeting method, or it can take years.

We tend to do the one-class method for baptizing infants (in which the parents make the enormous commitment to raise the child in the Christian faith and life, and the community of the baptized promises to help in that task), mostly for pastoral reasons--gathering parents of teeny to toddler age children more than once or twice is usually a deal-breaker. For baptisms of adults, or adult confirmations, we meet together for a few weeks.

Where I'm going with this is that I always ask the adults I meet with to do an exercise similar to Muller's, and I realize what a big deal it is. Go get a blank sheet of paper (or several), start at the top with "I believe..." and then go until you're done. We do this in the context of talking about credal statements of faith, since Episcopalians recite one of the ancient statements of faith together when we gather for worship.

Some of the responses have been simple. Some have been orderly and logical. Some have been halting and brief, which is also okay. I often hear things like "I've never done something like this before." Some of the statements of belief I've heard have been absolutely beautiful.
(if you're reading this and you've done this exercise with me at some church or another, and would like to share it--unattributed--send it to me or let me copy it and I'll post it here.)

However, it's a big exercise, requiring some introspection... and I don't have time for it this week. Council is this weekend, Ash Wednesday, and other things. Sorry, Wayne.

sabbath 14: carpe diem

2007-02-19T14:17:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 14: Tripp's post, Megan's post

In his second chapter on the section titled "Time," Muller asks us what our time is worth, and how we value it. He begins by telling the story of the Kellogg plant in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the 1930s. Kellogg experimented with four six-hour shifts instead of three eight-hour shifts, and the result, at the time, was viewed positively.

In 1932, the U.S. department of Labor sent a research team to Battle Creek to interview Kellogg's workers. They found that nearly eighty-five percent preferred the six-hour shift, primarily because it provided "more time for family activities and home duties and leisure" and because it helped some of the unemployed find work. The great majority of the Kellogg workers used freedom or closely related words when the agents asked them to compare the eight-hour and six-hour shifts.
(Muller, p. 104, paraphrasing B. Hunnicutt, Work Without End)

He goes on to describe how the workers described the shorter hours as "a moral act," stressing their willingness to share with others. But in the 21st century, workers no longer use words like "freedom" and "family" to describe the benefits of work. We tend to work for one thing--money--and we can never get enough of it unless we work full time or overtime. Theoretically, enough money is supposed to buy back our leisure time, but we tend to use any extra time we have to...work.

Muller begins his description of the suggested exercise by asking: "What do we place on the altar of our life? It is useful to have a visual reminder of what we hold sacred..." And only now does the title of his chapter begin to make sense. He might have tried "the value of time" or "take back the leisure hours," but it doesn't have the same pithy punch as "Carpe Diem." I, of course, immediately went in a tangential direction in my head:

They're not that different from you, are they? Same haircuts. Full of hormones, just like you. Invincible, just like you feel. The world is their oyster. They believe they're destined for great things, just like many of you, their eyes are full of hope, just like you. Did they wait until it was too late to make from their lives even one iota of what they were capable? Because, you see gentlemen, these boys are now fertilizing daffodils. But if you listen real close, you can hear them whisper their legacy to you. Go on, lean in. Listen, you hear it? - - Carpe - - hear it? - - Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day, boys, make your lives extraordinary.
--John Keating, "Dead Poets Society," 1989

Muller's suggested sabbath practice for this week is to create a sacred space in your home, a space where you can remember things that are important to you, a place to put reminders of what's important--for example, pictures of family. This follows somewhat naturally from the chapter, in which he mourns that we have come to value money as a society more than time with family.

Unfortunately, he uses the loaded word "altar" to describe the special place. In my world, particularly in my parish, that conjures a very different image than the one he intends.

It's an open question whether the piece of liturgical furniture we gather around on Sunday is a "table" or an "altar." The liturgy, and the tradition, and the prayers, mix the images up. On the one hand, we put bread and wine on it and say grace and then eat, deliberately and mindfully recalling a meal that Jesus ate with his disciples and asked us to continue, so it's a meal, and the thing the bread and wine sit on is a table. On the other hand, the Eucharistic prayers refer to our "sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving" and we give thanks for the death and resurrection of Jesus, which has elements of a substitutionary sacrifice... so it's an altar.

The liturgical architecture clearly thinks the thing at St. Thomas is an altar--it's on a raised platform, three steps higher than any other thing in the room, and lit by nine theater-style stage lights. It's mostly surrounded by a waist-high railing, so that it feels like crossing a boundary to deliberately step into the area immediately adjacent to it. We even tend to dress differently for Sunday--the people who serve inside the rail wear special dresses, and the people who serve outside the rail wear street clothes.

I will occasionally say "table" to describe the thing, but I don't really pay attention to deliberately using one or the other. It comes up in odd conversational moments. Yesterday, for example:
me: would you put this [handing over a folded stole] on the table for me, please?
parishioner: oh, on the [pause, glance at me] altar?

I love the concept of having a sacred space in your house. In our house in California, we had a whole room that served as the chapel. (okay, it wasn't much bigger than a closet, but still) There was an altar there (we used a bookshelf), with a cross, and a bible, and a finger labyrinth, and a few other prayer tools and/or reminders of grace. There was a comfy-ish seat, and some artwork. We dedicated it as a chapel in the company of friends.

Given the directions Muller seems to be going with his text, I'm sure I'll get a chance to talk more about the chapel in a future another post.

However... I balked at Muller's suggested exercise. Maybe it was because I'm doing these exercises to try to rest, and having an altar at home is too close to a job-related thing. Tripp didn't feel that way; let's see how Megan reacts when Muller asks her to read a new play for relaxation.

If I decide to put one up in the house, though, I know exactly where it would go.

I'm a saint?

2007-02-14T11:32:00.000-06:00

Somebody trying to find me via google search misspelled my name, and came up with this link. She thought I would find it amusing.

It's from the "patron saints" section of the new catholic encyclopedia.

http://www.catholic-forum.com/SAINTS/saintc7l.htm

It doesn't say who Christopher Robinson is the patron of, but that he's been beatified. If I ever get to be a patron saint, I'll be the patron of liturgical irreverence or something.

Sabbath 13: a life well lived

2007-02-13T16:39:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 13: Tripp's post, Meeegan's post

Meeegan's post does a good job of summarizing the chapter, so I'll refer you there for the summary.

The new currency of the 21st century, friends, is time. I find this particularly true in the work that I do, trying to get people to connect to each other and help them to find meaning and purpose in their lives.

I spent the weekend getting my ticket punched to be able to mentor an education program called "Education for Ministry." This program is serious, varsity-level stuff, sometimes called "seminary lite." We did some talking about recruiting and advertising the requirements of the course, which involve a $350-$450 annual fee. But the bigger deal is that the program involves one evening a week spent in group study and reflection during the school year, and as much as 8 hours per week of homework and study. Most people in my congregation could find the money without too much trouble, but that amount of time is a tremendous commitment.

Muller's suggested exercise this week is to spend our most precious resource--time--on play. Make time, he suggests, in the evening, to be together. Talk, play catch, play cards, whatever. Turn off the phone, the TV, the computer. Lock the door, it's play time.

A few thoughts come to mind. The first is to remember a high school friend of mine, who was (and is) LDS, introducing me to the concept of Family Home Evening. Her family would spend an evening together each week, being together. I thought that was a cool idea. And then I heard that there was a church-distributed program or agenda for the evening, which dampened my enthusiasm a little. And then, being a teenager, I realized that a night at home with my parents wasn't my favorite thing either. But if we had done it regularly, it might have been cool rather than forced.

The second thought, is: believe it or not, we do this on a regular basis at home. The time between coming home from school and suppertime is usually play time with our son, although we do take him with us to the gym or run errands occasionally. It's a part of my rule of life that this time belongs to him, and I do my best to let him be a little boy and drive the agenda, because I believe that it's important to do that for him. But here's the place I disconnect with Muller. I have to try, hard, to give our son my full attention, and I don't always succeed. He's a tornado of energy, with a five-year-old's attention span. What is a recipe for rest for Muller is a recipe for tired for me.

I'm writing this with his best friend over at the house to play, and I just had to separate them and give them time-outs because they ran full-force at each other and bumped heads. On purpose.

Forgive me, Wayne, if I think I'll appreciate your suggested exercise more when my son is a little older.

Sabbath 12: The Book of Hours

2007-02-04T21:18:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 12: meeegan's post, tripp's post

Muller's way to talk about rest this week is to point us the direction of things that don't change. The specific example he uses is the seasons and festivals of the church. The seasons of the year come and go: advent, christmas, epiphany, lent, easter, pentecost, advent, christmas... There is comfort in knowing, Muller says, that millions have prayed this way before you, millions have observed these festivals, and millions will do so after you are gone.

Every year people make resolutions for the new year. Some do it in January, some do it in Lent, a few rare ones at the beginning of the church year in advent. The idea of a resolution, for most people, is self-improvement. By this time next year, we will be morally, physically, emotionally, spiritually stronger. Better behaved. Closer to God. Muller offers liturgical celebration as an odd antidote to the constant need for self-improvement. Liturgical ritual, he points out, is meant to be repeated. Not done until we "get it right," but done over and over again in its proper time and season. To recognize our place in a long chain of worship is to remember our history, to free us from the need to try to get it right, and not rest or be satisfied until it's perfect.

While I can appreciate the scriptural idea that there is something about God that is solid and immutable, as in Malachi 3:6; "For I, the Lord, do not change," I'm wary of ascribing the same attribute of changelessness to the liturgy. Liturgy is meant to allow the people to pray according to ancient patterns of worship, but not in exactly the same way as in years past. (Just as an example, we tend to bathe regularly, and so need less incense in church... ) Language, movement, dress, music, all these have changed over the centuries, and will continue to do so.

Some of the biggest fights I've ever seen in church have been over liturgy. I've also, unfortunately, seen more people driven away from the church, and from God, by trying to make the liturgy play the changeless role. In fact, the key attribute of God's people at worship should be agility, not immovability.

Howdy, St. Thomas!

2007-01-30T09:25:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note for any folks who are reading the blog for the first time because you were directed here by my article in the parish monthly newsletter. You found me!

The sabbath-themed posts that brought you here are below (scroll down or follow the links under the archive to the right).

I call this blog "Ink Smudges," and you, who have seen my fingers, know that they are usually stained with ink. (when I'm feeling liturgically correct, the ink I use is the color of the church season) I call the semi-regular newsletter column "Margin Smudges" because first, I'm not that creative, and second, my original intent was to offer reviews and comments on whatever I was currently reading. The problem is that I have a limit on my Clarion article of about 250 words, and it's hard to do substantive comments in such a short space.

There are a few parishioners who are regular readers, but most of them make comments in person, rather than posting them here. I never published my blog address before, and I'm not sure why. Probably because I wasn't sure at first that I was going to continue, and then because I didn't always have things to write about on a regular basis.

Anyway, enjoy the sabbath conversation!

Sabbath 11: Let it be

2007-01-28T07:17:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 11: links to Tripp's post, Meeegan's post

I think Muller's main point for this chapter is really made in the first two paragraphs, which I summarize this way:

part of the wisdom of the Jewish Sabbath is that it begins at sundown. We don't stop working on the sabbath day when we are finished with a project, we don't stop when we're done returning our phone calls, we don't stop when our email box is empty, instead, we stop when it's time to stop.

If we refuse rest until we are finished, we will never rest until we die. Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.

For this week's exercise, Muller tells a story about praying the angelus prayer at noon on a campus of people who all stopped and prayed together for just a moment. He then goes on to suggest "prayer" while being maddeningly unspecific about how or when or why. (I'm coming to realize this as Muller's style.) I'll admit to a little twinge of disappointment, because I've enjoyed his suggestions that fall outside of my normal routine.

My thoughts immediately went in the direction of his 'praying the angelus' story. I don't live, and I've never lived, in a society where the church bells all ring at noon or the voice of the muadhan calls the people to prayer five times a day. But my faith tradition does hold on to a tiny portion of that culture.

One of the roots of the Anglican tradition goes back to the monasteries, and the rule of St. Benedict, which calls for a careful balance between work, rest, and prayer. Benedictine monks would gather for prayer many times a day in the monasteries, and/or do individual prayer at specific hours. I've always sort of admired from afar the concept of a community who agrees to gather for prayer day in, day out, good weather and bad, rain or shine. I've heard it described as the breath of the community--a rhythmic exercise that draws the people in and sends them out, and is the source of life of the community.

In the monastic tradition, some of the prayer hours included the middle of the night, mid-morning, noon, late evening... I've only tried to follow that discipline once, at the suggestion of my spiritual director, and couldn't get into stride. Maybe it was that I was doing it by myself. Setting an alarm clock to remind me of prayer hours (given my hectic schedule at the time) never really worked, and I was tired all the time from changing my schedule around, so I gave it up after a couple of weeks.

When Thomas Cranmer wrote the first English prayer book, he gathered the tradition of the multiple services of monastic prayers (formerly in Latin) into a smaller number of daily offices (in English). They survive in today's version of The Book of Common Prayer as morning prayer, evening prayer, noonday prayer, and compline.

The closest I've ever come to living in that sort of intentional community was during seminary, when the daily offices were observed. I was actually excited, when I arrived, about the possibility of living with an intentionally praying community for a few years. But I lived off campus, which made it really hard to attend early and late prayers, and our services in the chapel....well, um.... had a tendency to be three times as overblown as they needed to be. In the words of one of my favorite professors, who shall remain nameless: "good Lord, every day is Sunday, and every thursday feels like Easter!" So chapel became a chore far more often than I'd like to admit. But now I'm griping about the practice of the praying life of the community in a specific place, which is a different thing than the offices themselves.

For the non-Episcopalians (or Anglophiles), here's the rough outline of "Daily Morning Prayer:"

confession of sin
psalms and readings from scripture
Apostles' Creed (basic statement of belief, said together)
Lord's Prayer ("Our Father...")
prayers collecting the cares and concerns of the community
general thanksgiving, collecting the joys and gratitude of the community

While I won't lie and say that I pray the whole daily office...um, daily, I do manage to use one of the services as a form of prayer (either personal or corporate prayer) more days than not. We actually offer morning prayer as one of our regular services at St. Thomas on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 9:30. It mostly happens through the gentle faithfulness of one of our saints, who leads the service. I join him when I can, and pray one of the offices (usually morning prayer or compline) using a daily office book given to me as a gift by one of my Christian friends.

Sabbath 10: hurtling toward the eschaton

2007-01-21T07:30:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 10: links to Tripp's post, Meeegan's post

This week's chapter was fabulous. I'd post the whole thing here, except for the whole blatant copyright violation thing. I'm tempted to tell you to buy the book for this chapter alone. I can't copy it, but I can paraphrase.

Scripture talks about, and some of it leans toward, the eschaton (the end of all things). Our modern, western assimilation of the concept, Muller says, is 'progress.' We live in a culture that says that things will be better next year, next decade, than they are today. We work frantically for a future in which we can rest, say that we have arrived.

The trap is that there's always more money, or a bigger house, or a faster car, or...insert your stereotypical object of gratification. But we still participate to a certain extent, even if we see the trap.

Now, here's the important move: if the future is the desirable thing, then the present automatically becomes undesirable, or at least less desirable. We have to work, hard, right now, harder, faster, now now now, and we can't stop to rest, because we haven't reached the promised land yet.

Oh boy, he's hit this generation right on the head.

On to the suggested sabbath exercise. When I first read the chapter on Sunday, I actually laughed out loud. The first reason was that this week's exercise is simple: go outside. Well, I just did that. The other reason to laugh out loud is that this week in San Antonio has been between 25 and 33 degrees with freezing rain. The schools were closed for "ice days." My yard is a lake of not-quite-ice-cold slush. It's a good week to be glad we're members of the local gym.

We did spend some time outside, mostly for the benefit of the well-bundled urchling who had never tried to walk up an icy driveway before (or slid down same), or broken icicles off the trees to eat. But nothing particularly contemplative of the beauty of nature.

In other words, ain't gonna happen. I'm giving myself a bye on the exercise.

Sabbath 9: "Inner Music"

2007-01-14T21:32:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 9: links to Tripp's post, Meeegan's post

Yes, I know this is two sabbath posts in one day. I started my response to Sabbath 8 a week ago, but didn't quite finish the thought. So I started doing the next week's exercise while simultaneously juggling the other things in my world and waiting for time to write again.

* * * * * * *

Muller belabors a point in this chapter, namely that all things have a natural circadian rhythm. We're hardwired to need rest. well, duh. Anybody who has pulled an all-nighter studying/doing homework/playing computer games and experienced the inevitable subsequent crash landing afterward knows that you can't go without sleep forever. Not even for small values of forever.

He then goes on to talk about how animals can and do find their way without maps and GPS receivers, and almost seem to listen to songs of the earth we can't hear to orient their lives, followed by a nice segue to the suggested exercise for the week, which is simply to meditate on your own breath.

Or, as we said in seminary, "just breathe, baby."

It's a simple exercise, common to many religious traditions. Get comfortable somewhere, preferably quiet to begin with. (we had to take the ticking clock off the wall for this exercise at first.) Clear your mind as best you can. Now concentrate on your breath. Feel the muscles. Feel your ribcage move. When (not if) your thoughts intrude, notice them, let them go for now, and return to the breath.

This is a wonderful exercise. If you've never tried it, five minutes a day for a week will work wonders. If you're doing this by yourself, you might want to set a timer of some kind, even if it makes you feel a bit like a boiled egg. The point is to not think about what time it is and how long you've been breathing. Don't count breaths. Just breathe.

A personal story about breathing:

Almost all third-year students at Episcopal seminaries are required by their dioceses to take the GOEs, which stands for General Ordination Exams (or God's Own Exam). It's a week of comprehensive essay exams, and seems to comprise equal parts of examination, fraternity hazing, and rite of passage (because many third-year students effectively coast it in after the exam). It's stressful, because students are facing a big honkin' exam at the end of at least a five-year process, and this is pretty much the last place where anybody might say "well, maybe you shouldn't be a priest/deacon after all."

On the first day of the exams when I took them, our chapel leader that Monday morning was the liturgics professor. He read to us from the Bible, and then looked up and said, "remember to breathe. Every year, some time about Wednesday, some of you come to me in a panic, and it's almost always true that you're forgotten to breathe."

And doggone it if I didn't find myself forgetting to breathe. And then I would laugh at myself, and take a few deep breaths, and relax, and get back to it.

Sabbath 8: the sabbath walk

2007-01-14T18:51:00.000-06:00

Sabbath 8: Meeegan's post, Tripp's post

Before we get to this week's reflections, Meeegan asked a really good question in regard to my post on last week's exercise: how did it feel to pick those things back up again when it was time to get back to work? Instead of answering immediately, I gave it another few days to pay attention to the picking back up ritual. I did the prayers 'in reverse,' giving thanks for things and responsibilities to be taken on.

It felt... refreshing. Orderly (which is a good thing in my world). I was able to be intentional and deliberate about starting off the day, and more ready to pick things up after allowing myself to put them down for the night.

Of course, I really like what I do for a living. In fact, I can't believe I get paid for this. I tried to put myself into the mental space of not liking my job at all, remembering the worst of my time as a consultant, but I have to imagine how the exercise would work if the things to be picked up were burdensome.

* * * * * * *

Now, on to this week's chapter and exercise: the sabbath walk. Walk without purpose, he says. Pay attention. Notice things. Stop if you want to.

I think Meeegan is right; Muller lives near the beach, and is imagining somewhere beautiful and out-of doors to wander in, rather than an urban setting. Wandering aimlessly in downtown anywhere might be dangerous.

My beloved and I got to retreat to Camp Capers for a day over Christmas break, and we actually did Muller's exercise for this week without knowing it, even before I read the chapter. (God is good) We just strolled for a while, being outside, and then we strolled and talked, and then we strolled some more.

For me, the biggest benefit of the time spent was not necessarily the mindfulness of it, but instead this simple idea: go outside. I live in suburbia, and the church where I'm one of the priests meets in a building that's right off a freeway. We do have some of the wildness of West Texas right close to us, but you have to go looking for it.

The biblical narrative, which I use as one of the lenses through which I view my life, has a certain dirt-under-your-fingernails sensibility. The biblical writers, and original readers, tilled the soil and herded the sheep. They gathered in the grain, the wine, and the olive oil, and knew the smells and tastes and textures of each. Things that the original readers understood at a visceral level we have to stretch for.

We lose something when we lose contact with the land. I grew up a city boy, so I don't want to over-romanticize that. And it's not like I suddenly get in touch with some kind of innate pastoral wisdom when I go for a walk in the woods. But just to get outside for a while is refreshing for me.

lectionary group

2007-01-12T13:22:00.000-06:00

Gordon Atkinson and I have started doing a way-cool lectionary study group. He writes about it here. (my reflections coming soon)

For the moment, I'll just echo his invitation. If you want to join us, come on!

Sabbath extra: sabbath discipline?

2007-01-10T19:36:00.000-06:00

I call Sabbath keeping one of the seven spiritual disciplines of the modern Christian.

(what are the other six? stay tuned)

Discipline, specifically, because it's not something that comes naturally to us in this crazy overstressed overbusy world we live in. Discipline because it takes determined effort. Discipline because, frankly, it's not always easy. I struggle mightily with aspects of sabbath keeping (I'm thinking, at the moment, of the resting part, not the community worship part).

I've had the idea for a discussion of sabbath "discipline" in general in the back of my head, waiting for the right chapter to come along. Don't know if or when that will happen, because I'm deliberately not reading ahead in Muller's book. But Tripp and Megan have already started the discussion. I'll refer you to their posts for now, and add to that conversation later.

new colors!

2007-01-09T11:17:00.000-06:00

The new color scheme brought to you by request of Elfie Stafford. (I love you, Elfie)

Please, nobody write me a nastygram about how I'm changing the blog liturgy and We've Always Done It That Way Before.

sabbath: the sabbath box

2006-12-24T08:28:00.000-06:00

Muller's suggested practice this week: use a sabbath box. A place to put the things that you carry around, and deliberately "let go" of the attended uses. Close the lid, and be done with them until it's time to deliberately pick them up again.

This one was easy for me. In my closet, on the shelves, there's a pretty wooden box with a cross on it that my mother gave me. It tends to gather clutter, but I cleaned that out and made places for the loose change and receipts and other little things.

Every evening, when I got home for the day, I went through the ritual of putting down my responsibilities. For those of you who are dying to know the regular contents of my pockets, here was the regular litany:

Wallet: I am through buying things today.
Wristwatch: I am on family time now. I have no other time-sensitive obligations.
Fountain pen (which goes in the other box, with all the other fountain pens): I am done writing, creating, preaching, and proclaiming today.
Vial of healing oil: I am always a priest, but I am done with my ministry for the day.
Class ring, seminary ring, clerical collar: I am finished being a visible minister of the gospel today.
Cell phone (turned off): I'm finished talking to the rest of the world today.
Keys to the church: I'm done with my job today.

it worked. I was really able to put things down and tell myself later, "nope, that's in the box. Go pick it back up if you want to work." I'll stick with this discipline for a few more weeks and see what comes of it.

Sabbath: silence

2006-12-18T20:29:00.000-06:00

given that Muller's suggested sabbath exercise was to exercise a period of holy silence, I was tempted to make this a blank post. But, then again, two people would get the joke.

Silence is something I don't get a whole lot of, given that I have a five-year old in the house. I honestly tried to do some holy silence this week, but it didn't happen.

Two thoughts on silence:

First, I agree with Megan that Muller is thinking of the experience of shared silence. Most silences between people are at best uncomfortable, or else icy. Silence is often a negative thing. This sunday, I dropped the ball on the lighting of the advent wreath. We had a first-time acolyte (who did a fabulous job, and I discovered that he has a great singing voice) who was asked to go find the candle-lighter, and light it with matches, and go from place A to place B. I was supposed to help, and I forgot. Since all this action took place behind a pillar, the congregation didn't know what was going on, only that the presider was standing still and waiting. By the time I got to acolyte, his hands were shaking as he tried to light the wick and get out to his place. I bet the whole thing took 15 seconds, but it had the time-gets-multiplied factor that happens whenever there's unplanned silence.

By contrast, I arrived two or three minutes early one day this week for morning prayer. Our reader who leads morning prayer is a dear friend, and after a brief "good morning" we just sat together in companionable silence until he decided that it was time to start. He got up, opened his prayer book, and broke our moment of silence with "in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen."

Second, I've experienced a couple of evenings of keeping silence between dinner and breakfast, or between compline and morning prayers. That's been almost frustrating--it's not quite enough silence to let it settle in. Our seminary offered a week-long silent retreat, but I love the sound of my own voice too much and figured I'd come home in a straightjacket, so I never even tried to go.

Sabbath: it is good

2006-12-08T11:58:00.000-06:00

May the One who creates and restores all things
the One who is Mary's child and child of God
the One who is Holy Spirit
may this Holy One bless you, and fill your lives with joy

this is the blessing I'm using at the end of services during the season of advent. It was written/created/composed by Bill Adams, my liturgics professor.

Muller's chapter this week invites us to remember the fundamental goodness in creation. He says that one of the reasons we don't stop and rest is that we're afraid to be alone with ourselves or alone with the world, because we fear that the world is bad. Or that we are bad.

That's certainly the message that we get pounded into us on a daily basis. We're bad, or at best incomplete, unless we eat this thing/wear these clothes/drive this vehicle. We're not happy unless we watch this Christmas special on TV. Your kids won't love you if you don't buy them the Power Rangers Ulta Mega Bonzo Blaster. It's even true in politics: Vote for me, I'll make things better. Given the barrage of input, it's no wonder we forget sometimes.

The creation story on Genesis is set against a prevailing worldview that offered a story of a destructive, violent universe. It told a different version of the story, one in which the universe is deliberately spoken into existence by God, and that over and over and over God affirms that the physical world is good.

Muller's suggestion for a sabbath discipline this week is to bless people, either with or without their knowledge. Lay your hands on their head and offer a prayer, he suggests. Or do stealth blessings--just look at people who don't know you're praying for them and ask for God's blessing. In this action, you are reminded of their goodness, and of the goodness of creation... and that goodness is a moment of sabbath re-creation.

I guess that's the connection between the ideas on the chapter (i.e., remember the goodness of creation and let that goodness allow you the freedom to rest) and the suggested sabbath exercise (i.e., demonstrate that goodness). But I had trouble making the connection, and more trouble with this week's suggestion. I spent far more time and energy and thought on it than I'm sure he intended. What Muller probably sees as a casual thing, what is a shallow pool for him, is deep water for me, and for my community.

While every praying parent I know prays for their children, very few of those do so with an actual laying on of hands. As he described his suggested activity, I found myself imagining my father's and mother's hands on my head while they talked to God on my behalf, and I ached with wishing that I was remembering instead of imagining.

Here's the other thing. Blessing people in God's name is one of the things I'm asked to do on a regular basis. Those are, more often than you might think, transcendent moments, or "thin" moments, when it seems that the fabric of heaven is just within reach, out of sight, over your shoulder.

For better or worse, (and in many ways I think it's worse), blessing people in the context of liturgical worship is something reserved (in my faith tradition) for a priest. And I struggle with that. And Muller sent me into an exercise of re-examining blessing, with a good bit of unproductive tail-chasing thrown in.

One simple way to introduce the conversation (usually about the transubstantiation of the bread and wine at Eucharist, but extendable to people with only a little stretch), is to ask whether there is an ontological shift. If I make the sign of the cross on your forehead and ask God to bless you, or pronounce God's blessing on you, have you changed?

Well, welcome to a subject about which whole shelves of books have been written, by people smarter than me. But here's my answer, for the moment: My head says no, but my heart says yes. (or at least maybe)

The biggest reason my head says no is that I'm pretty sure I can't tell God what to do. But my heart remembers times in my life when I have been on the receiving end of blessings, and experienced, physically, emotionally, financially, relationally, what I can only describe in hindsight as the blessing of God. Moments of re-creation, what I imagine Muller is looking for.

Maybe, just maybe, this happens because God always wants to bless us. And if there is a person whose understanding of the world includes the idea that I'm allowed to bless them in God's name, then when they see me, hear my voice, feel my hands or fingers, then a little window cracks open for God's fresh air to blow through.

Sabbath: mindful breaths

2006-12-03T08:00:00.000-06:00

I'm going to tell you something now that is universally true.

No kidding. Everyone reading this will agree with it, and probably every one you know will agree too. I live in a world of shades of gray, so I don't get to make blanket universal statements very often. Are you ready?

People are busy.

Am I right? Are you nodding your head? see, I told you.

There's busy, of course, and then there's busy. We are a nation of cell phone toting, overscheduled, overworked people. There's a reason Starbucks is so dang popular, and one of them is that we've become a nation of caffeine addicts, and we started drinking high-octane stimulants to keep ourselves awake and alert.

I started drinking coffee at university. Friday mornings are what I remember vividly. Friday mornings I had math, physics, and chemistry homework all due on the same day. In later semesters, it was materials science, structures, and vector calculus, but the same pattern existed. There were some Thursday nights I didn't sleep at all. Friday mornings, I would walk through the commons on the way to class, and emerge carrying three glazed doughnuts and the biggest paperboard cup that the food service had full of black coffee. (it was about the size of the venti at Starbucks these days.) That was just to try to keep myself awake through morning classes. I'd have done an IV drip of the stuff if I coulda figgered out how to do one.

But I digress, just a little. We were talking about overscheduled people with too-busy lives.

One of what I believe to be the core disciplines of a modern day disciple of Christ Jesus is Sabbath keeping. So when I read that one of the wisdom people in my life and one of her friends (who will probably become one of my friends when we finally meet) were doing a blogwriting exercise using the framework of the text Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller, I asked if I could play along.

On the heels of that request to play along, our parish administrator informed me that I had so much vacation time left this year that I probably couldn't use it all before the end of the year if I tried, since I hadn't taken but one vacation over the course of the year.

Oops. Sounds like somebody I know needs to practice some disciplines of sabbath keeping, huh?

* * * * * * *

This week, we're reading chapter 4 and doing the accompanying exercise, and reflecting on those. This week, Muller asks us to.... breathe. Stop and take mindful breaths, create spaces of rest and mindfulness in the midst of mundane tasks. For me, for the part of the week that I practiced the exercise, it was three mindful breaths while picking up a pen, uncapping it, and posting the end on the barrel.

I was immediately reminded of liturgics class. Bill Adams, our much-beloved teacher, would occasionally enter the room, sense the collective anxious busyness in our shared space, and gently ask, "do we need to exhale?"

Ah... yes. I remember now. This is a seminary. The church sent me here becase they want me to be a priest. I'm gathered in a room with a bunch of people I love very much. and isn't it beautiful outside?

And there would exist, for just a breath, a delicious moment of collective re-creation.

Call me Quasimodo

2006-11-28T11:19:00.000-06:00

I always thought that it took a special kind of insanity to sit there, loudly ringing the same jangly bell, hour after hour after hour.

And then a friend asked me to do it.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Salvation Army. They almost never turn anyone away, and they deal with folk who walk in their door who live in places deep down you don't like to talk about at parties. Their transparency of finances is remarkable, and their fundraising percentage phenomenal.

So, anyway, my friend Gordon asked, and I went to help ring the bell last Saturday. He wrote about it here (including a picture of me--last one on the page).

* * * * * *

To answer your question, yes, my own bell dang near drove me crazy. To anyone with a musical ear, a small handheld bell becomes an irritant, like that one slightly flat piano key in the middle of the keyboard.

First you try ringing different ways: grasping handle firmly, like you're ringing a handbell in the church choir. Then with a little more fluid wrist action. then held loosely, dangling from between your fingers. Then with a stiff wrist, ringing from the elbow. Then repeat. I started to feel like the queen of the Rose Bowl parade. wrist, wrist, elbow, elbow...

Then you start experimenting with rhythm. Double rings are the easiest: ding-DING, ding-DING, ding-DING... Single rings with that kind of bell are harder, but you eventually get that down. Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding... Then, after some experimentation, if you hold the bell right, you can get triple-rings. Ding-a-ling, Ding-a-ling, Ding-a-ling.

Then I got creative. They give you a stick so you can push all those folded dollar bills down into the crack in the plastic kettle. So I started using the stick to make the bell ring. First on the bell itself, which sounds even worse... then on the wooden handle, whack-ding, whack-ding, whack-ding. After a few minutes of this, you discover where to whack the thing so it won't ring and will just give you a percussive sound. AHA! Rhythm!

Of course, you don't want to be too obvious about trying out your ringing technique. You're kinda in public. Kinda. But Gordon's right. There's a sense in which you blend in with the architecture and the elevator music, and you don't really exist for most people.

I did a one-man, stick-and-bell rendition of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel." Then it was on to "Angels from the realms of glory." My perambulating audience seemed to take no notice of the remarkable artistry being displayed. Even tried a rendition of "Jingle Bells," even though I can't stand that song, because... well, yeah, it's a jingle bell. The good news was that nobody stopped to criticize my own little bizarre brand of holiday artistry.

So, anyway, give to the salvation army. They do good work.
And say hi to the bell ringer, even if you don't have anything to put in the kettle.

pretty words

2006-11-19T21:43:00.000-06:00

Okay, there haven't been many posts recently.

Mostly because I've been sick. The creeping crud, I guess. My physician told me to get some sleep and take my vitamins, so we'll see.

The lack of posts is also because people haven't been asking for copies of sermons, and because I haven't been writing monthly articles. I didn't turn one in one month, and the ceiling didn't cave in. And then another month, and then they got used to life without my articles. I'm not sure anyone was reading the little things anyway. I'm also going to be undertaking a self-enforced blog writing exercise on Sabbath disciplines. stay tuned.

But today, I heard something blogworthy in the ubiquitous handshaking line after church.

Pretty words, Sonny, but don't change the liturgy.

The irony was that the sermon used as one of its two foundational texts the great sermon to the Hebrews, which says, in effect, "it's not about the liturgy."

These might have been the pretty words in question: "God's people are called not to preservation, but to proclamation. Not to immovability, but to agility."

C. Robinson, DFF

2006-11-01T15:37:00.000-06:00

SAN ANTONIO (AP)-- It's become a tradition that championship teams get invited to the president's house. The Super Bowl champs get White House tours and ceremonies in the Rose Garden. This year, the ETSS Alumni Fantasy Football League honored last year's champion with a private ceremony at the Dean's office... in the basement.

In a Cinderella story almost beyond belief, the San Antonio Monsters rode a wave of utterly improbable coincidence into the playoffs.

In week 13 of the 2005-2006 season, the Monsters ended the regular season campaign with a crushing 111-46 defeat at the hands of the Dixie Dawgs, leaving the Monsters with a record of 5-8. While the Monsters were taking a first-class whupping, however, during the final game between the Delta Blues and Tennessee Blue Ticks, coach Chuck Culpepper benched star RB Shaun Alexander for the entire second half. Alexander was playing in the snow, and the coach later said he was worried about an injury. But Alexander, who the year before came up a yard short on the NFL rushing title, once again came up a yard short. One more yard would have meant one more fantasy point... and a change in the wild card bid to the playoffs. And so the Monsters, who were ready to pack their bags after a dismal season, found themselves in the playoffs.

As the TV ads kept saying, anything can happen in the playoffs. And happen they did.

Week 14 saw the Monsters pitted against the Zydeco ChaChas. The Chas watched with dismay as Fred Taylor, Donald Driver, Joey Galloway, and the Colts defense all collapsed simultaneously, giving the Monsters the win despite a zero-point performance by their starting quarterback. Tests on the affected players' pregame gifts of cookies (which arrived in brown-wrapper packages) ultimately proved inconclusive.

Week 15 saw the Dixie Dawgs contribute to the Monsters' improbable streak by choosing to use the Seahawks defense instead of the Ravens. Despite poor lineup choices at quarterback, running back, and wide receiver, the Monsters found themselves stumbling into the super bowl.

Super Bowl week, it was the West Coast Woozy Wockers' turn to lie down under the wheels of the Monster truck, as Uber-back LT2 scored a whopping 5 points. Monsters workhorse RB Corey Dillon limped into the end zone twice on national TV to seal the Monsters victory.

"Wow," said the bemused Coach Cristopher, "I ought to get an honorary doctorate for this."

And so, some nine months later, at a small but distinguished ceremony in the basement of the dean's office, Coach Cristopher was awarded the degree of Doctor of Fantasy Footballology, honoris causa. Former league champion Bob Kinney was there to hand out the honorary degree, give the graduation speech, serve the refreshments, take the pictures, sweep the floor, and lock up afterwards. "Don't know how the hell you did it," Bob said. "Musta sold yer soul to the devil."

Happy Schereschewsky Day!

2006-10-14T10:19:00.000-05:00

I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted.
--Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky

Today is the feast day of this blog's inspiration (and patron saint, if you're into that kind of observance).

While I was in college, I roomed with a couple of fellow episcopalians (and a gaggle of assorted hangers-on) who once decided that we needed a patron saint. So we turned to the calendar of feast days in the Book of Common Prayer and went skimming through the odd and/or old names. Somebody saw October 14th, and made a comment like "sher-uh-shoe-ski?" (mispronouncing it) "who the hell is THIS guy?" As the longest and oddest name in the calendar of feast days, we adopted him as our unofficial patron.

Later on, we heard his story. And most of us were struck with a sense of awe at what God had done with this little man, and a small measure of shame for having made fun.

At the consecration of the new suffragan bishop for West Texas, the sermon (one of the finest I've heard in a while) featured St. Sam as its central character. Unfortunately, Bishop Hibbs either didn't use a text, didn't offer it for publication, and/or it wasn't recorded, or else I'd post it here.

a biography, taken from "st. sam's cyberparish" at www.stsams.org

Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky was born in Lithuania in 1831, went to Germany to study for the rabbinate, there became a Christian, emigrated to America, trained for the priesthood, and in 1859 was sent by the Episcopal Church to China, where he devoted himself from 1862 to 1875 to translating the Bible into Mandarin Chinese.

In 1877 he was elected Bishop of Shanghai, where he founded St John's University, and began his translation of the Bible into Wenli (another Chinese dialect). He developed Parkinson's disease, was largely paralyzed, resigned his position as Bishop of Shanghai, and spent the rest of his life completing his Wenli Bible, the last 2000 pages of which he typed with the one finger that he could still move.

Four years before his death in 1906, he said: "I have sat in this chair for over twenty years. It seemed very hard at first. But God knew best. He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted."

From William Steven Perry's Bishops of the American Church (1897):

The third missionary bishop of the Church in the United States appointed to China was a native of Russian Lithuania, and was born in Tanroggen, May 6, 1831.

He was educated in the schools of his native town and in the adjacent town of Krazi, and at the Rabbinical College at Zhitomeer, in Russia. He was a student for two years at the University of Breslau, Germany, On coming to this country he was for a time in the Western Theological Seminary of the Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, but afterward entered the General Theological Seminary. He received deacon's orders in St. George's Church, New York, July 7, 1859, from the first Bishop Boone, who ordained him to the priesthood in the mission chapel at Shanghai, October 28, 1860. In 1875 he was elected by the House of Bishops to the missionary episcopate of Shanghai, but declined. Two years later he was again chosen to this office, and was with difficulty induced to accept. He received the doctorate in divinity from Kenyon in 1876, and from Columbia the following year.

He was consecrated in Grace Church, New York, October 31, 1877, by Bishops Bosworth Smith. Henry Potter, Bedell, Stevens, Kerfoot, and Lyman. After most faithful labors in his field, failing health compelled his resignation of his episcopate, which was accepted by the House of Bishops in 1883.

The celebrated Professor Max Müller, of Oxford, stated to the writer in 1888 that Bishop Schereschewsky was 'one of the six most learned Orientalists in the world.' He has translated from the Hebrew the whole of the Old Testament into the Mandarin dialect. He was one of the committee having charge of the translation of the New Testament from the original Greek into the same tongue. Together with the bishop of Hong-Kong, Dr. Burden, he has translated the Book of Common Prayer into Mandarin. He has also translated the Gospels into Mongolian, and has prepared a dictionary of that language. He has (1895) just gone abroad to perfect and publish these translations, which have occupied his time since the resignation of the episcopate.

The heavens are telling

2006-10-01T23:39:00.000-05:00

When I was a boy, I didn't see the stars very much. I grew up in Austin, which even back then was a city of several hundred thousand people, and there was lots of light pollution, and you couldn't see much of the stars. Later we moved to the Houston area, which was even worse. Houston is a huge, sprawling place, with lots of people and lots of lights and lots of smog and lots of clouds. On a good night in Houston you can see about ten stars.

I knew there were more of them up there, of course. We'd take car trips sometimes at nights, and stop for gas in the little towns in between big cities. I liked to wander just a little, out away from the buzzing fluorescent lights and out away from where the June bugs and the moths distracted you, and look up at the sky. It was a little better then. You could see lots of stars, hundreds maybe, even on the Texas Gulf Coast. I always knew that somewhere up above the dense, sticky humid air, somewhere waaaay far away, there were these lights in the sky, and it was a little secret thrill just to see them when I could.

But the real beginning of my love affair with astronomy began when my parents took me camping out at Big Bend state park, out there in the direction of El Paso, miles and miles away from any city, and up in the mountains of West Texas.

You ever seen the stars on a really dark night, up high out of some of the atmosphere, out away from the city lights? Out there, the stars are amazing. As a little boy, my eyes were drawn to the sky like iron filings to a magnet. The stars weren't little dim dots in the sky, fighting their way through the haze. They shone like diamonds dropped on black velvet. They had colors! Red and yellow and blue-white and orange and gold. They twinkled and flickered, fluttering like the beating hearts of living things.

Those were the stars that Abraham saw, the founder of the nation of God's chosen people, who heard the call to go and bless the world, and obeyed.

Those were the stars that Moses saw, up on the mountain receiving the law.

Those were the stars that Jesus and the disciples saw, as they rowed across the Sea of Galilee by night.

Those were the stars that the ancient Hebrew poets saw, exiled from their homeland and held captive in Babylon, when they wrote and compiled the scriptures that make up what we call the Old Testament.

I can imagine an old Hebrew man, sitting beside a stream in the darkness, a thousand miles from his home, staring up at those same stars I see, and softly singing

The heavens are telling the glory of God
With wonders of God's work resounds the firmament.

That's certainly not what the children of Babylon were told. Do you know the Babylonian creation story?

The story is told in an epic poem, known by its first two words: Enuma Elish.
The story tells how Tiamat, the great dragon, the mother of all the gods, takes part in a great war in heaven. The gods fight, and Marduk, the chief god of the city of Babylon, crushes her head with a club. Then he takes a sword and slits her right down the middle, and from her corpse he creates the world. Her guts become the world, and her skin becomes the sky, and that sort of thing. And Marduk, because he is the strongest, sets up the laws of the universe. Then he kills Tiamat's consort, and from his corpse he takes the materials to make human beings, so that the humans can do menial tasks for the gods.

You, and everything that is, was born out of violence. You are made of the corpse of a dead god. The gods only made you for menial labor. The gods are still watching, and though there is some order in the universe, the gods might come and get you if they feel like it. The whirling things in the sky are watching you. The gods are capricious and wicked, at war with each other. The earth has meaning, but its meaning is nasty, and life is brutal.

That's what a Babylonian child grew up hearing.

But that's not the story I was told in school.

Here's what my teachers and textbooks taught me: A long time ago, a very, very long time ago, the universe began with a huge cataclysmic explosion. For a short fraction of a second, everything was heat and light, all the energy in the known universe in one place. Then everything went rushing outward, faster than we can realistically contemplate. Some of the stuff of the universe formed into great burning balls, and then those balls eventually burned up and coalesced into stuff like carbon, and then those stars exploded, and from the leftover stuff form the explosions, planets were formed.

So much later that it's difficult for our minds to contemplate, on one of those planets around a small star, conditions were just kinda accidentally right for life to happen, and so life started. We don't really know how, and we can't duplicate it, of course, but somehow the little microscopic thingies lined up in the right order and something unusual happened and the little microscopic bits did something else and then they were alive. And so life on Earth began with some kind of pond scum, probably. And some of that pond scum survived, and it grew up and became bacteria and tadpoles and dinosaurs and trees and roses and penguins and other critters.

And then, so the story goes, something called natural selection takes over. Natural selection says that the strong critters survive and the weak critters get eaten, which is okay because the weak critters are, well, weak, and I guess they deserve to be eaten. So whatever it was that made the strong critters stronger than the weak critters gets passed to their children, and after a really long time you get a species of critter that doesn't look anything like what you started with.

And the universe doesn't care.

The universe, says this creation story, is vast beyond our imagining. It is almost completely empty, and bitterly cold, with only a few accidental pockets of heat and light. The world is that way it is, and it is utterly merciless and without pity, indeed without consciousness at all. And you, you blobs of overgrown pond scum, are great cosmic accidents, who probably shouldn't be here at all. You are so small and so insignificant you can't possibly begin to imagine it. Life has no meaning whatsoever.

The creation story in the first two or three chapters of Genesis is often set against the big bang theory, and you often hear them described as diametrically opposed, as if they were mutually contradictory. I've been asked, "are you a scientist or are you a Christian?" or "do you believe in evolution or are you a Christian?"

The key point, I think, is that the old Hebrew poets who gazed at the stars didn't know the theories of Galileo or Copernicus or Joss Hawthorn or Steven Hawking. What they knew was that their children were being taught that they were born in violence, and that the universe was subject to the capricious whims of god who were constantly at war. That only the strong survive, and the weak are killed, and they deserve it.

And so the Hebrew poets told a story of creation that begins in the same way the Babylonian creation story begins: with nothing. In fact, the order of creation is the same in the two stories--first there is light, then the sky, then the earth, and so on. But the Bible's creation song has a refrain that separates it from the other story. Do you remember what Genesis says, over and over, at the end of the days?

And God saw that it was good.

And at the end of the song, God saw everything that God had made, and God said, it is very good.

In this version of the story, human beings are made by God's own fingers, scooped up out of the dust of the ground, and they carry in their nostrils God's own breath. Rather than being slaves to the whims of violent Gods, Abraham and his descendents, both genetic and spiritual, are covenant partners with God. Covenant partners to bring about the kingdom of God on earth.

This leads us to the question of how God interacts with the world, and what it means when bad things happen, or at least start the beginning of the introduction to the answer to that question... stay tuned.

Today, we baptize [John Doe]. What story shall we tell him as he grows up?
Shall we tell him that he is an accident? Or shall we tell him that he is created in God's image?

I think we tell him that the universe is vast and magnificent, that it is orderly rather than capricious. I think we show him the stars, and teach him Newton's laws of motion, and show him pictures from the hubble space telescope of the birth of new stars, and let him experience the awe and wonder of the majesty of the universe. I think we teach him the ancient song of the Hebrew poets, who said "the heavens are telling the glory of God."

I think we tell him that he matters, that he is created in the image of God who made and blessed and continues to bless the world, and that his life is intended to bless the world as well.

And so is yours.

Wired Parish

2006-09-30T11:28:00.000-05:00

I was recently offered a trial subscription to an interesting idea: Wired Parish.

It's a collection of regularly offered podcasts, provided by several big names, with exclusive content. It's not a parish in the sense of a community of people, but rather a resource.

I'm new to the whole podcasting thing. I know, I know, get with the program.

I was pleasantly surprised by the first two offerings I listened to, one by Brian McLaren and one by Reggie McNeal. Both are authors that I've read and enjoyed, and hearing their voices was a delight. McLaren offered some faithful reflections on scripture, specifically on the creation stories in Genesis.

Reggie McNeal's cast was about the difference between GenX and Boomer generations in worship, and why GenX folk tend not to fit into Boomer-shaped holes. Makes me want to play it for my vestry.

further review, if warranted, in the upcoming weeks.

The big question

2006-09-20T11:00:00.000-05:00

I just want to make something clear, for the record: I am a Christian.

That may not come as a surprise to you. I don’t know. But if you meet me on the street and ask me who I am, if you ask if I go to church, I tell you that I’m a Christian. The next question is usually "where do you go to church?" and then I say that I’m a member of St. Thomas’ church. I guess you would say that I’m a Christian first and an Episcopalian second, and I mean that in the best sense of the word. I mean that I’m a follower of Jesus Christ, that I believe that Jesus is the savior and redeemer of the world (which includes me) and that I try to honor my covenant partnership with God in the best of the Anglican tradition.

I try to turn the conversations away from church and toward Jesus, and not just because we’ve been getting ourselves in trouble recently in the national press. I do that because I think that the church is a group of people who are followers of Jesus who are trying to live together and do our best to bless the world. But I don’t think the church is going to save anyone. That’s God’s job.

My first exposure to Jesus was in Southern Baptist Sunday school. I was given a Children’s living Bible translation that contained pictures of Jesus. There he was, in hallmark-quality artwork, a nice smiling Caucasian man in a white robe, with blue eyes and tastefully combed hair, carrying a spotless sheep on his back while little children danced around his feet. My Sunday school teachers had me memorize verses from my little Bible. This is what I learned in Sunday School:

Jesus loves me.
Jesus wants me to be good.
Jesus wants me to be quiet and respectful (and sit still) in church
Jesus wants me to mind my parents
Jesus wants me to eat my broccoli.
The Bible is God’s word, and you don’t argue with it—you do exactly what it says.

* * * * * * *

When I got a little bit older, I was introduced to a different kind of Jesus, or, if you prefer, a different picture, or a different understanding. I started to hear stories about blood and death and sin. I started heading stories along a basic formula: God made us, and wants us to be good and perfect, but we screw up. (duh) And the price for screwing up is death, eternal separation from God. But Jesus paid the price for my sins. Jesus went to the cross for me. Jesus reconciled me to God.

And as I grew up, the world of my childhood started to clash with my adult world. My best friend in high school got disgusted with the hypocrisy of the church he attended, and the dysfunctional nature of the family he grew up in who claimed to be Christian, and he quit going to church, and so far as I know, he’s never been back. Three or four other friends, brainy types, started challenging me on questions like “your bible says the world was created in seven days. Do you really believe that?” and “can you prove to me, with an experiment like we do in Physics class, that God exists?” And many of them have left the church and never come back.

They did what far too many people do: when the slightly more grown-up version of the world doesn’t match their childhood picture of God, they threw out God along with the childhood worldview rather than looking for a new understanding of God in their new understanding of reality.

The church has been guilty of that, in our history. Galileo Galilei, a name you’ll remember from high school physics, was considered the father of astronomy. He published and defended a heliocentric theory of the universe, or that the sun was at the center of the solar system and the planets revolved around it, rather than the prevailing theory, which was that the earth was the fixed center of the universe.

The text that got him in trouble, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, was published in 1632. He was ordered to stand trial in 1633 on suspicion of heresy, and later sentenced to house arrest for the rest of his life, on the grounds that his work was incompatible with holy scripture and the teachings of the church, based in part on references to scripture like Psalm 19:

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the firmament shows his handiwork.

In the deep he has set a pavilion for the sun,
It comes forth like a bridegroom out of his chamber
It rejoices like a champion to run its course.
It goes forth from the outermost edge of the heavens
And runs about to the end of it again,
Nothing is hidden from its burning heat.

I doubt that any of you read those lines and interpreted them that the sun begins the day in the depths of the sea, and drives across the sky. Even the church, faced with a picture of God incompatible with what we had known previously, was unable to look for a new understanding of God in a new understanding of the world.

* * * * * * *

In the gospel of Mark, chapter 8, we hear Jesus ask what just might be the greatest question in all of the Bible. In fact, if you wanted to summarize the Bible in one phrase, you might say some thing like John 3:16, or you might say something like “all is forgiven.” Or you might borrow Jesus’ phrase from today’s reading:

who do you say that I am?

The setting of today’s reading is highly significant.

Caesarea Phillipi, the site of the story in Mark 8, was the capital of Philip the tetrarch’s territory, on the far northern end of the Biblical lands. It was formerly called Panias, named after the Greek god Pan.

Panias was the site of a grotto, out of which ran a stream that fed the headwaters of the Jordan River. It was a place dedicated for worship of the Greek god Pan. Remember Pan? Half-goat, half-man, wild, capricious, uncontrollable. Pan was the god of shepherds, who were wild half-beast people themselves. A shepherd slept out in the field with the animals, didn’t bathe much, smelled like sheep all the time. A brave shepherd might take on a mountain lion with a stick. Not exactly the kind of people you wanted to bring home to meet your mother.

More important for the gospel reading, Pan was also the god of fear. The kind of fear you experience in wild, open spaces, far from help. It’s from the name Pan that we get our word panic.

Just before Jesus was born, the city had been renamed Caesarea Philippi in homage to Caesar. Herod the Great had built a great white marble temple there to his patron, the temple of the god Caesar.

So Jesus stands between the grotto of fear and the temple of power, and asks, “who do people say that I am?”

This passage is called the hinge passage in Mark. A hinge because it is the question on which the whole story turns. The first half of the story asks the question “Who is this?” The disciples even ask the question in the text—who is this, who speaks with such authority? Who is this, who casts out demons? Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

After the hinge, the rest of the gospel story asks a different question: “What does it mean that Jesus is the Christ?” Jesus gives us a summary: the Christ will suffer and die, and be raised from the dead.

A hinge because it is the center point of Peter’s life. He’s done some significant things. He’s a married man. Might have a family. He’s also done some daring things—leaving his nets to go follow this traveling rabbi. But after this question, his life is different.

And the question that Jesus asks, the hinge on which Peter’s life turns, is: who do you say that I am?

Jesus stands between the grotto of fear and the temple of power, a simple man with dirty feet. I am not like the gods of the Greeks, who play capriciously with mortals, so that people are afraid of offending the gods. I am not like the god of my childhood, one who demands sacrifice. I am not the god of political power. I am not the god of the white marble temple on the hill, built by slave labor, to a man everybody knows isn’t god but is afraid to say or the legions will kill your family.

No, says Jesus, I am the god who lays down his life in obedience. I am the god who teaches that love is the greatest power there is, who tells you to turn your swords into plows and your combat helmets into birdbaths. I am the God who dies in shame on the cross, takes the worst that humanity has to dish out, and gives only love in return.

* * * * * * *

The question I think the text is asking is this:
have you hit the hinge in your story yet?
Have you turned the corner from who is Jesus to what does that mean?

Danish philosopher and theologian Soren Kierkegaard wrote:

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world?

I told you earlier that I always try to respond that I’m a Christian, rather than an Episcopalian. That’s because being a church-goer can get in the way. Doing churchy things is easier than answering Jesus’ question. Going to meetings about ministry is easier than getting out and getting your hands dirty. It’s certainly safer.

But Jesus never promised safe.

The question for us is the same as it was for Peter, all those years ago.
who do you say that Jesus is?
And what does that mean?

blogslacking

2006-09-18T19:33:00.000-05:00

I've been accused of blogslacking, since I haven't posted in three weeks.

Not guilty.

For those of you wanting to know what's been happening, here's a brief summary:
* I got sick, only one day a stay-at-home kind of day, but more a lingering, nagging, grossness.
* School has started. We have to be there, and on time, every day. So we have to leave for school at the same time every day, and we have to fight the traffic, and our schedule is thrown all off.
* I've done (performed? facilitated? officated at?) two off-site funerals, both from families who aren't regularly-attending parishioners (which means that I've had to spend more time than usual getting to know the families and planning the services), both times when the rector was out of town and I had to do all the liturgical lifting anyway.
* I led chapel for the day school for a whole week in a row, which is a new idea.
* we put on a budgetary conference for the diocese at our home parish, which involved a practice session, and then a setup session, and then a six-hour conference.

I've had several blog-worthy thoughts, but no time and energy to complete them and write them down.

Ways to tell you're in the Diocese of West Texas

2006-09-01T08:30:00.000-05:00

I stopped at a traffic light the other day, and took a careful look at the car in front of me. It was a laborer's pickup truck--long bed, four doors, with chipped white paint, a multitude of small dents and scratches associated with moving heavy loads. One of those huge round steel bumpers, with a massive tow hitch. Pipe, or lumber, or something, sticking out the back.

It was the bumper stickers that caught my attention, though:

"Bush-Cheney 2000"

"W for President 2004"

"I only fish on days ending in Y"

"Proud member of the National Rifle Association"

aaaaaaand...

"The Episcopal Church welcomes you"

someone else's ink smudges

2006-08-22T16:25:00.000-05:00

yes, I'm the Cristopher referenced in this eloquently written article. (also here)

Amen, RLP!

Writing sermons is hard, Part 6

2006-08-16T17:01:00.000-05:00

In response to my earlier post, "Onward Christian Soldiers," the question was asked:

Can you preach about that, somewhere along the line?

Which is a really good question. One that deserves its own post.

My answer:
Well...no. Not here and now, anyway.

My congregation is in San Antonio, Texas. We have a huge number of retired military and active military members. It's a pro-military environment, with some of the usual trappings; e.g., we carry the American flag in procession behind the cross, and veterans day is a big deal, with recognition of those who served and special prayers. I actually got a nastygram after the sermon July 4th weekend for not supporting the troops. I heard some grumbling after a one-sentence insert into one of the rector's sermons, which went something like "you can't make peace while you're lobbing bombs at somebody."

I did wrestle, hard, on the Sunday morning in question, with the idea of ditching my prepared sermon and speaking from the passion that the hymn had brought up in me. What stopped me was the knowledge that I'm not that articulate preaching while shooting from the hip, to use a military metaphor. I've tried it, and it doesn't work so well. And if I'm going to preach something that I know isn't going to be immediately well-received, I want to be extremely careful.

My current thought is that, if I want to confront a congregation, I have to have either (1) a large stockpile of relational credibility, so they know that we love each other even if I fuss at them, or (2) zero relational credibility, meaning that nobody knows me, which gives an odd freedom to speak, even if only a small fraction of the congregation will really hear. After a year, I hope there's a small positive balance in the credibility account. But not enough.

Of course, I do realize that by that argument I'll almost never say anything difficult, and much of the gospel is uncomfortable to western middle-class culture if you really pay attention, so I can't always be positive.

I've picked up a couple of books on the topic of preaching uncomfortable messages, in hopes of finding some help.

Onward Christian soldiers, part 2

2006-08-08T17:46:00.000-05:00

More on "Onward Christian Soldiers."

one of the dearest people in my congregation took me to task last Sunday, and rightfully so, by pointing out that Hezbollah started it. This is a person who lived through the Nazi regime, and knows first-hand the horrors of what happens to the world when someone declares that someone else's very existence is offensive. Her story is precious, and it's hers, not mine, so I won't share any more of it here. Suffice it to say she's well and truly earned the right to fuss at me.

I don't dispute the nation of Israel's right to defend themselves. I don't dispute that Hezbollah is indiscriminately firing rockets into Israeli territory, or that they are using innocent (or mostly innocent) Lebanese civilians as shields.

But children are dying.

children.

Is there anybody on the face of God's green earth who thinks this is a good thing?

I haven't written, or spoken, much about the conflict. I've been praying. Asking people to pray with me. Feeling helpless and angry. Crying.
And now I'm grateful for the cease-fire, or whatever the diplomats are calling it.

Part of the reason I've been mostly silent is that this is not an impersonal war for me. Just so's you know, I'm Lebanese-American. By covenant. My stepfather's family is from Lebanon, and I'm adopted and accepted into that family tree. I have what I think is one heck of a sermon on that subject in my back pocket, waiting for the right text to pull it out.

I have relatives we haven't heard any news of since the shooting started. The town my great-grandfather came from is scorched.

dona nobis pacem

sacred space

2006-08-08T16:46:00.000-05:00

Imagine, if you will, one of the Thin Places of the world.

A place in the middle of nowhere, off a two-lane road in south Texas.

A river runs along one border, with gigantic trees digging their thirsty toes into the banks.

The grass in August is brown and crispy.

It's a hundred degrees in the shade.

welcome to Camp Capers.

The diocese of West Texas has run a kids' camp there since before my parents were born. I met a couple of third-generation campers there. The current bishop of West Texas, the most recent bishop of West Texas, and the bishop suffragan of West Texas all were campers there, and summer staff counselors, and all met their future spouses there. Seems like half the clergy of the diocese were campers or counselors or both.

It's not the programs. We do things like play kickball and capture the flag.

It's not the facilities, which are mostly not air-conditioned, and some are showing their age.

It sure ain't the weather.

It's God. somehow. We bring kids up there and love on them for a week at a time, and it changes their lives. Doesn't seem logical. But somewhere in the middle of the camp songs and the arts and crafts and the swimming in the river, God acts. You can see the results.

You know what I call the place? sacred ground.

I got to be the chaplain for a week. I'm dead tired. but it's a good tired.

Onward Christian soldiers

2006-07-30T09:51:00.000-05:00

(originally written before going away for a week)

Twice now in a month I've run up against a serious problem with the hymns in church.

In general, I think hymns are some of our greatest theological stuff. Written on the cover page of my prayer book/hymnal is this quotation from one of my seminary professors: "in thirty years of ministry, I've never once heard the congregation walk out the door of the church humming the sermon."

Part of the stealth evangelism of hymns is that we don't memorize them, and they're complicated, and so we find ourselves carried along by the music, not paying particularly careful attention to the words.

But I do sit down and pay careful attention. If I'm going to lead the congregation in worship, that includes singing. I've got a big voice, and I love to pray while singing. But, for the pre-written parts of the order of worship, I want to know ahead of time what prayers I'm leading, and I study them in advance of Sunday.

At St. Thomas, in July, we're basically taking requests from the congregation. We put voting cards in the pew sheet one day, and the music director tallied up the votes. The end result has been fun, since we've been able to sing a bunch of old favorites. It's also been funny at times...we did Christmas hymns, Easter hymns, lenten hymns... and only occasionally would they directly correlate to the lectionary texts for the week. That's okay. It's been fun.

Until this morning.

This morning, the congregational choices were hymns 561 and 562.

stand up, stand up for Jesus, the trumpet call obey
forth to the mighty conflict in this his glorious day
ye that are his now serve him against unnumbered foes
let courage rise with danger, and strength to strength oppose.

and this:

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,
With the cross of Jesus going on before.
Christ, the royal Master, leads against the foe;
Forward into battle see His banners go!

Like a mighty army moves the church of God;
Brothers, we are treading where the saints have trod.
We are not divided, all one body we,
One in hope and doctrine, one in charity.

um...yes, acually, we are divided. And it's doctrine we're divided about.

This morning, before we got up to go gather as the church, the nation of Israel (funded and supplied by the United States) dropped bombs on Qana, killing 54 people, including 19 children. And it's at least in part a religious war. A war we're participating in, secondhand. More about that later.

I've always been able to justify the words to "Onward Christian Soldiers" this way:
the first verse clearly describes a liturgical procession. And that makes the theological statement a reversal of worldly values, i.e., the only kind of war Christians wage is in church, by opening the doors to anyone who would come in, by proclaiming the gospel of the one who said to turn the other cheek. It's an anti-battle.

But this morning, it was too much. The words to the hymns seemed to say "we're going to come kick your butt in the name of Jesus."

Instead of singing, I hung my head and walked in and out of the church in silence.

and wept, just a little, even though I tried not to.

Writing sermons is hard, Part 5

2006-07-14T11:49:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I just don't have any guts.

For example:

This week's gospel reading, Mark 6:14-29, tells the story of Salome dancing so provocatively before the king that he makes a rash and exorbitant promise.
In today's world, something in the neighborhod of $60 billion is spent on pornography each year, $3 billion on child pornography. Over 10% of all web sites host pornographic material.

and I'm not going there.

This week's gospel also tells the story of John the Baptizer, thrown into prison by the king for being a danger to the state, and left there without possibility of parole. There are now approximately 450 people held at Guantanamo Bay--some have been there for years--with the Supreme Court only recently granting the possibility of their release after trial.

Since I live in San Antonio, Texas, I'm not gonna go there, either.

Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me.

in order to form a more perfect union

2006-07-04T14:45:00.000-05:00

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This weekend's holiday is called "Independence Day." It's a day that celebrates something more than an event, something more than the historical memory of the founding of our country, something more than fighting for own government separate from the British crown. I think this holiday celebrates something far deeper, something that is at the heart of American values and American character.

Independence is almost a part of the DNA of Americans. We teach independence to our children. We teach it in our schools, and we teach it in our homes. We teach that this is a land of freedom. Freedom of movement, freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of choice. As long as we abide by the laws of the land, we can go anywhere we want to go and do anything we want to do. We can do wise things and we can, if we wish, do foolish and destructive things.

This is a country where a man born in a house with a dirt floor can, and has, become the President of the United States, so beloved to our national understanding that we carved his face on the side of a mountain. This is a country where a young man with little more than an idea, and ambition, and some luck, can and has become the richest man in the world.

But our freedom has its dark side. If we are free to do anything we want to, we are also free to leave undone some things which ought to be done. We are free to walk past the poor and the homeless. We are free to ignore the sick. We are free to ignore the children without parents. We are free to ignore anything we choose. You and I live in a society where we are free to not even know our neighbors.

So, how are we to govern this great collection of autonomous individuals?

Enter democracy. The great experiment. The great pride of America, and some would say our most valuable contribution to the world.

I'll admit it, I grew up in this country. I only know one way to live. And that is a democratic way. A way that acknowledges the basic freedom and basic worth of everyone else. A way that allows every person to have a say in how we live our lives together. It's slow. It's cumbersome. It's frustrating sometimes. But it's what we have.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

My first real experience with democracy was not a particularly pleasant one. Now, to tell you this story, I have to make a bit of a confession. When I was a kid, I was, well, something of a geek. A nerd. A dweeb. A dork. At the tender age of 12, I was one of the founding members of the local junior high school Star Trek club.

Keep in mind this was before "Star Trek: the Next Generation" and all of its spinoffs were created. We had old trek: ridiculous overacting, cardboard sets, aliens made of flashy blinking lights. There were a couple of movies out, and a series of paperback fiction books set in the star trek universe. The members of the club would gather and watch old episodes, reruns which aired at 10:00 at night on weekdays, and play a board game called "star fleet battles," and... well...you know what Trekkies do. And for those of you who don't, maybe it's better that I stop right there.

But of course, if we're a club, we have to have officers with funny titles. I was one of the founding members, and since we used Space-navy vocabulary so as to be spiritually closer to our galactic heroes, I was the Rear Admiral. Or something. This, of course, allowed us to send coded messages to each other and sign them with our appropriately grand titles, which I'm sure caused no end of amusement to the math teacher who confiscated a note that I had been passed, intending to read it to the class, only to find that it consisted of a string of coded gibberish signed impressively at the bottom by "Vice Admiral Morgan." I seem to recall my friend John ordering me to make up an entrance exam for the club, testing prospective members on their devotion to the cause by their knowledge of the inner secrets of Trek.

It was fun for awhile, but then we grew, and attracted more members... and there was grumbling in the ranks. Grumbling that swelled into a full-blown hostile takeover. I don't remember what the argument was about, frankly, it was probably just something silly, or else just arguing for the sake of arguing, which is not unheard of among teenaged boys. But I do remember that, being Americans, freedom and democracy and all that, we finally decided that we would do was to take a vote to elect the fleet admiral of the club, whose word was thereafter to be obeyed instantly and without question. And nobody thought that was weird.

So we took a vote, and, lo and behold, my friend John was out. And I also suffered the indignity of demotion. And it was sorely tempting to take our, um, phasers, and go home, so to speak. But what could we do? We'd voted, like we agreed to, and lost. But...we still liked Star Trek. So we stayed in the club. And we still stayed up late and watched reruns, and still played games and practiced our Spock-isms. Live long, and prosper.

I learned that year that sometimes democracy is a pain. Especially when you lose, or feel like you've lost, and you have to live with what the other side wants.

But then I grew up, and learned that we do that all the time. The modern American political system is pretty much evenly divided into two major political parties. I'm an independent voter, myself, which means that my candidate loses with distressing regularity, or the vote on the bond issue, or the change in the law, or the amendment, goes the opposite of how I wanted it. The thing is, I never stop being proud of my country. (and if that pride is a sin, then so be it.) I am occasionally ashamed of the behavior of my government representatives, sometimes even people I voted for, but I don't stop being proud of America.

And, more importantly, I never stop needing the people I live with, even when I disagree with them.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Listen to some wisdom from Paul, written to Christians in Corinth.

The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one Spirit into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free-and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

Now the body is not made up of one part but of many. If the foot should say, "Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. And if the ear should say, "Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body," it would not for that reason cease to be part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? But in fact God has arranged the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. If they were all one part, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, but one body.

The eye cannot say to the hand, "I don't need you!" And the head cannot say to the feet, "I don't need you!" On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.

Let's be clear: Paul is talking about the church at Corinth, not about the current government of the United States, or about the problems the church is having in convention trying to decide on which road to take. I don't think we can read Paul's letter, from another time and another culture, addressed to somebody else, and read it as if it were written to St. Thomas in San Antonio. But I do think that Paul says something wise, something that we can hold on to: we need each other.

Here's the truth: the church is divided on the issue of human sexuality. Good people of faith, sincerely trying to discern God's will, do not hear the same thing. Bishops, priests, deacons, and laity, all four orders of ministry in the church, are in the same boat. And while I might wish for the discussion to be easier, it's just not. So what do we do about it?

First:
we acknowledge that we disagree on something. There were recently votes taken in convention, and resolutions passed and failed, but by narrow margins rather than by overwhelming majorities.

Second:
as a part of the realization that we do not see a clear way forward, we continue in discussion. Bishop Lillibridge has clearly stated that we in West Texas will continue to be a part of the Windsor process, which means that we continue in dialogue.

Third:
we realize that, while the way forward is ambiguous, we all are invited to be a part of the kingdom of God revealed here. This is the difficult part.

When I came down here, just over a year ago, to interview with Chuck and with the vestry to see if I might be a good fit for St. Thomas, this question came up. Chuck has given me permission to share my answer to the question back then with you today; I think I said something to the effect that until we hear the Holy Spirit speak clearly and decisively, until our Bishop asks us to move decisively one way or the other, or until convention speaks with something more clearly approaching a unanimous voice, that we have to realize that this is an unsolved issue. And while it is unsolved, I think our doors have to remain open to anyone who walks through. Old, young, gay, straight, rich, poor, black, white, brown, green, and chartreuse, everybody gets a seat at the table, and everybody plays nice. And we have to do the difficult thing of living and working alongside people who are believers in the gospel of Christ Jesus who don't agree with us on the details.

Now, I don't know, but I believe, that the founders of our country would approve of that. The writers of the Constitution were all religious people, of varying denomination. They knew what is was to argue and lose. The wording of the constitution itself bears the marks of reasoned discussion and disagreement. But they had read the words of St. Paul to Corinth, and I think that they understood that they needed each other, when they began the Constitution with we, the people...in order to form a more perfect union.

There is something in the noblest part of the American character that knows this. There is something in us that wants to reach for the great society where hunger and poverty and sickness and abuse and neglect are no more.

This is our chance, as the church, to remind the nation what the noblest aspects of freedom are, and to disagree with one another with honor,
acknowledging that all people are created in God's image,
treating all people with dignity, respect, and courtesy,
and, as Paul says, outdoing one another in showing love.

This holiday, join me
in giving thanks to God for the freedoms we enjoy,
in giving thanks to God for the peoples of many lands and cultures who have come together to create, out of their differences, this great nation.
In giving thanks to God for the richness and diversity of our heritage.

Let us remember that our work is not yet done, and rededicate ourselves to difficult work--the formation of a more perfect union.

Mustard seeds and cedar trees

2006-06-18T20:36:00.000-05:00

Friends, I’m stuck this week.

On the one hand, General Convention is going on as we speak. The next Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church will be elected later today, a person whose name we will hold up in prayer together each week for the next nine years. On the other hand, I have instructions from Bishop Lillibridge not to add fuel to the fire if at all possible. Can’t talk about it, can’t not talk about it.

So today, I want to tell you something that God has been telling me, quietly, over the last two years. Something that gives me an odd sort of comfort in these days.

Two years ago, my parents moved to Kerrville from a suburb of Houston, where they had lived for the past twenty-five years. They bought a nice little house on the top of a hill outside of town, a place with great potential. It’s a small ranch-style house, horse corral and a barn in the back, and the property includes a section down the slope of the hill on two different sides.

Sounds really nice, doesn’t it? Well, when they moved in, it had great potential, except for one thing. The guy who owned the property before them hadn’t done any landscaping or maintenance of the property for about ten years. And the property was covered, absolutely covered, with scrub cedar trees. You know what those look like? 6 to 10 feet high, mostly more bush than tree. Dark green and prickly. When you cut them down, there’s sticky sap if it’s the growing season, and the little barbs get everywhere. In the right season, cedar pollen floats like a yellow fog over the Texas hill country. And, most importantly, they were blocking the view off the top of the hill. You couldn’t see the barn from the house, you couldn't see the corral from the house, and, most importantly, you couldn’t see what was probably a very nice view, which is why people build houses on the tops of hills in the first place.

So, about two years ago, right after my parents moved in, I began an offensive campaign on the cedar trees. Cutting them down, loading them in the back of the truck, piling them in the horse corral, and burning them in a series of bonfires. Currently, this little arboreal altercation has cost me about ten weekends, two pairs of loppers, a hedge trimmer, and three chainsaw blades. I’m happy to tell you that the view from the top of the hill is indeed gorgeous.

And at the end of each day, I go get a glass of cold water, and unlace my work boots, and sit down on the porch with my back aching and my hands still buzzing from the chainsaw and my arms all cut and scratched and prickly, with the smell of cut cedar still lingering in the air, and I sit there and feel the breeze, and gaze out over a couple of miles of vista, and I think: Yes, this is better. I accomplished something today.

And that’s when God comes and whispers in my ear. The breeze blows through the remaining trees, and rustles the leaves, and whispers:
Eventually, the cedar will win.

* * * * * * * *

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus uses an odd image for the Kingdom of God.

An image that’s also familiar. Maybe even too familiar. The Kingdom of God, he says, is like a mustard seed.

Now, we all know that mustard seeds are little bitty things. Hard to see, in fact. And, as the gospel text tells us, from such a small thing, such a small seed, comes a fairly big plant. You usually hear this parable explained, or understood, as a tiny thing becoming a big thing. That the tiny church can, and has, and will, do big things from small starts.

In fact, that’s the theme of General Convention this year—"come and grow." Come, and have some faith, and believe that God can, and has, and will, continue to do great things.

But there’s another thing about mustard seeds. The tiny little seed grows up and turns into... remember what a mustard bush looks like? 6 to 10 feet high, prickly branches, it tastes bad (remember what mustard tastes like), if you cut it down it just grows back, the tiny little seeds are everywhere... in other words, it’s a weed.

Now, if you’re expecting Jesus to use some arboreal metaphor for the kingdom of God, you expect him to say that the Kingdom of God is something grand and glorious. If we’re in California, you expect Jesus to say that the Kingdom of God is like the giant sequoia, the greatest of all trees, the largest of all living things, something so majestic and grand that when you stand in the presence of the tree you feel small and insignificant, and your eyes and your soul both rise up and up and up.

If you're in West Texas, you expect that Jesus is going to say that the Kingdom of God is like a mighty oak tree, 150 years old, great thick branches spreading out as big as a house, so wide that all the community can come together under its branches for a barbecue, a tree that can weather any storm.

And I think those images might be true about the kingdom of God. But that’s not what Jesus says. No, Jesus looks at his disciples and says "you’re a weed."

And I’ve been thinking about that for two years.

* * * * * * * *

Remember that when Jesus first said that, it was to a small group of disciples, walking about the countryside, preaching and teaching. They didn’t really know who Jesus was. Remember the story about how Jesus called his disciples to him and asked, "who do people say I am?" and they respond 'some say Elijah, some say John the Baptist, some say you’re a prophet...' They really don’t begin to figure out who Jesus is until after the resurrection.

And when the gospel was first written down it also meant something else. Scholarly consensus is that the document that we call the Gospel of Mark that became a part of the collection we call the Bible was first written down in about 70 AD, two generations after the resurrection. At that time, the number of followers of Jesus was still pretty small, and many of us were Jews. Viewed from the outside, some people had difficulty telling the Jesus-is-the-Messiah believers from the traditionalist Jews. And there was an argument going on within the synagogues between the people who believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and the traditionalist Jews. Right about the time the gospel was written, there were murmurings going on between these two factions, and one of them was beginning to say, "I’m sorry, but what you believe is just too weird. You’re going to have to leave the synagogue. You can’t be a part of us any more."

It is to those people that the writer of the Gospel of Mark speaks. He says, remember what Jesus told us. Remember what the Kingdom of God is like. You’re a weed. You can’t be cut down. You can’t be causally picked, because your roots go deep into the soil. If they dig you up, your seeds go everywhere and grow ten more in your place. If they turn their back on you, you’ll be everywhere. The Kingdom of God will not be contained.

I’ll tell you the reason I cut down all that cedar at my parents’ house. It’s because I like a certain sense of order. I like things the way I like them, and I like things that make sense. For example, if you build a house on the top of a hill, I think you ought to be able to see the view. I’m a good Episcopalian that way—for the most part, Episcopalians like things orderly.

Right now, in General Convention, the best and the brightest of us are meeting in convention to try to order our common lives, doing their best to bring a certain sense of order out of chaos. And they’re doing their best. But sometimes I despair at what goes on at convention. At how slowly we move, when we move at all.

And when I despair, I remember what Jesus said.

The Kingdom of God will not be contained.

in spite of our best efforts, if necessary.

Pearson-Horany wedding sermon

2006-06-03T19:00:00.000-05:00

Sermon at the wedding of Elizabeth Michelle Horany and Christopher Lynn Pearson.

I used an outline and notes, rather than a manuscript; this is what I can remember of what I said.

Posted by request of the bride.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

When we were little kids, Sweetmama taught us to dance.

(Elizabeth and Meg and I call our mother's mother "Sweetmama." For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting her yet, the name tells you most of what you need to know.) I remember it was in the kitchen of their house in LaMarque, on Westward. That kitchen, when I remember it, always smells like spaghetti and meatballs. And in my memory, it's always crowded with family.

I remember being a little boy, putting my feet on top of Sweetmama's feet, and she held my hands, and we swayed and moved together. A few years later, Elizabeth was born. And I also remember Papa and Sweetmama doing the same thing with her that they did with me. And then I wanted to play, so I put her cute little toddler feet on top of my big old clodhopper teenager feet, and we danced around the kitchen.

Everybody dances. There's something universal about moving to music. It's funny, most people don't think of themselves as good dancers, but everybody does it, in some way or another. Maybe all you do is tap your feet to the rhythm, or drum your fingers on the steering wheel while you're listening to the radio while you drive. But that's still a way to dance, to move yourself with the music.

But while dancing by yourself, just moving to the music, is easy, I'm here to tell you that dancing with a partner is hard.

Dancing with a toddler is its own unique brand of difficult. Toddlers are not the most graceful creatures God ever created, and for the adult, it's hard to move with thirty or forty pounds on your toes. When I grew up, and started taking dance lessons, I learned that dancing with an adult partner isn't really any easier than dancing with a toddler. It's just a different kind of hard.

First of all, you've got to learn to deal with another person inside your personal space. You know that we all have that polite zone of personal space that we like to maintain. Well, your partner is inside it. Pretty much constantly. Ribcage to ribcage. And while that, in itself, is its own brand of fun, it's also something unusual that you have to learn to deal with.

Then you have to learn to step together. You have to learn to move your body in such a way that you don't step on your partner, but instead step with your partner. Dance teachers call those steps "patterns," which become second nature after a while, but at first require a great deal of concentration.

Then you have to learn a whole new way of communicating. Yes, you can talk on the dance floor. But there's usually not time for verbal cues, especially in the fast dances, so you have to learn a whole new language of communication, using hands and eyes and balance and gestures.

You have to learn what steps your partner likes to do, and what steps your partner doesn't enjoy as much.

And, most of all, you have to learn grace. Not as in gracefulness, as in dance floor coordination, but as in graciousness, in forgiving one another's mis-steps and bumps and missed signals and forgetfulness.

Some of you have known our family for quite a while; a few of you were even present at my wedding to Kristina, some ten years ago. Last night someone was kind enough to remember that we had done a choreographed first dance, and to say that they remembered how nice it was. What you probably don't remember was what happened not fifteen minutes later--in the middle of another dance, with lots of people on the dance floor, I kicked my newly minted bride so hard that I broke one of her toenails, and she limped her way through the honeymoon.

Like I said, grace and forgiveness.

Now why am I telling you this?

Because, being intelligent and perceptive people, you know that I'm not just talking about dancing.

Also because tonight, if you know where to look, you can catch a glimpse of the glory of God.

The first place will be right here, in just a few minutes, in front of the altar. Two people, in the middle of a selfish world, will invoke the name of God and will vow to be together, whatever might come, for the rest of their lives. The church calls Holy Matrimony a "sacrament," which is a fancy church word for something that is a visible sign of God's grace. When we see these two pledge faithfulness to each other, we remember God's faithfulness to us, God's faithfulness to a broken and sinful world, and we remember that God is always ready to forgive and welcome us back into the relationship that God desires for us.

And, if you look just right, out of the corner of your eye, as these two people make promises of faithfulness, you will see a flash of the glory of God.

The second place will be just after the vows. We could, in the tradition of the church, end right there, and everyone go home. But Chris and Elizabeth wanted that the first thing they did as a married couple would be to share the covenant meal with all of you. The communion meal that we celebrate is rooted in ancient covenant-making tradition. When two parties made a covenant together, they would eat together as a part of sealing that covenant. When Jesus first shared the covenant meal with his disciples, and commanded us to continue it, it was at a celebration of remembrance of how God saved us from slavery and bondage and claimed us as God's own. Jesus bound the disciples together into a family, and tonight we bind these two families together.

As you come to the table, as you receive the elements from the parents of the bride and the groom, if you look just right, out of the corner of your eye, you will see a flash of the glory of God.

The third place will be over at the reception, following the service. The Horany family is Lebanese and Italian by ethnicity, and every year the Lebanese side of the clan gathers for a huge family reunion. And at that reunion we always do a traditional dance, called the dubke. It's a simple step: right, left, right, stamp, kick, repeat. One of those long lines where you catch hands and follow along.

The Eastern Orthodox church, whose thought greatly influenced our ancestral homeland, describes the nature of God as a dance. One being, three persons, in an endless circle dance of joy and love and mutual respect and honor. And into that dance, God invites humanity. God reaches out a hand and invites one of us, and another, and another, to join in the dance of joy, until all creation echoes with the pounding of feet and the laughter of children.

Tonight, as we celebrate, as Dad leads us in the dance, I encourage you to get up and join in, even if you think you can't dance, even if you only walk. And as you reach for a hand, as someone else reaches for yours, remember that God invites you to join in the dance of all creation. And if you look just right, out of the corner of your eye, as we dance, you will see a flash of the glory of God.

In the readings from the Bible that Chris and Elizabeth chose for today, Jesus says to his disciples, "I came that my joy may be in you, and joy your your may be complete." And this is God's desire for you: that your joy may be complete.

The 2nd-coolest thing that happened on Friday

2006-05-23T15:29:00.000-05:00

The coolest thing that happened on Friday was that my sister graduated from college. Margaret Ann Horany was awarded (or will be, after her summer internship) the degree of Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology, Health Promotions, and Fitness, with a minor in Biological Sciences, Cum Laude, from the University of Texas at Austin.

That was Friday at noon. Closely followed by the 2nd-coolest thing to happen that day.

Friday morning, we held end-of-school-year worship for our local parish school with the staff and teachers. I gave a short sermon, in which the names of my elementary school teachers were invoked with a certain degree of thankfulness. Three hours later, at graduation, one of those teachers walked right past my nose. I had no idea I would ever see her again in my life. Dr. Dorothy Lambdin now teaches at the University of Texas.

Nobody asked for a copy of the sermon, but I'll violate my self-imposed rule this time.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sermon at Eucharist at the end of the school year, St. Thomas Episcopal School, May 19, 2006.
* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Nora Garcia
Sharon Black
Bettye Lumpkins
Nancy Wade
Elaine Rushing
Elaine Peterson
Susie Jenkins
Sharon Wilson
Dolly Lambdin
Lucy Nazro

These are names which will mean nothing to you. But they mean everything to me. These are the names of my teachers and principals and chapel leaders, from kindergarten through fifth grade.

Some of you know that I attended an Episcopal school as a child. St. Andrew's, in Austin, through the 5th grade. And then we moved away. I remember 25 children in a class, two classes per grade, but that may not be right. It felt small. I felt known, and loved.

What you saw when you looked at me was an enthusiastic but slightly odd child. My mother and father showed up to drop me off or pick me up with smiles on their faces, they dutifully came to field day wearing their school-logo T-shirts. What you didn't know was that my family was in the process of going through a divorce and remarriage, and at home I was not the nicest child in the world, particularly to the step-parents. Not because they were bad people, not at all. In fact, they were both wonderful people, but people who had taken my parents away, people whose very presence cemented the brokenness of the world.

At school, from my teachers, I found nothing but love. Nothing but encouragement. It might have helped that I was an exceptionally bright little boy. I made straight A's all the way through 5th grade, with a single B in long division that marred my otherwise spotless elementary school resume.

Never, never underestimate the impact of love on a child.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

In today's reading from Acts, Philip encounters a court official from Ethiopia. This is a man who's the court advisor to the queen, the treasurer of the country. One of the best and the brightest the country had to offer, and probably a little boy who made straight A's in school. When Philip runs up to him, he is reading. Searching. Searching to understand the world, searching to understand himself, searching to understand the God he is drawn to across a thousand miles of desert. Philip's question is gentle, and is exactly the right one: do you understand what you're reading? And, in a flash of the profound and the blindingly obvious, the official says, "How can I, unless someone guides me?"

Isaiah 53 is a puzzling passage from late in the work of the prophet. My servant, in whom I delight, says God, will be despised. Viewed in hindsight, viewed from the foot of the cross of Jesus, the description of the suffering servant in Isaiah sounds like someone we know. But viewed from somewhere else, it's not easy to tell who the prophet is talking about.

And, just as before, Philip meets him where he is. Starting from the text he's reading, he begins to tell the story of Jesus. And somewhere along the way, Philip saw in the court official's eyes the same flash of insight that you have seen in the eyes of your students, the same moment when the world opens up and becomes larger and more beautiful than before.

Never, never underestimate the impact of love on a child.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

This is the end of a long year. We're all tired, all ready for a break. Well, I'm here to tell you that being tired because you've spent your year pouring yourself out into the lives of God's children is a good thing. A noble thing. You've earned the right to be tired.

When members of the church began to come to me and tell me that they thought I should be a priest, my thoughts went back to memories of school, memories of people who loved me without condition and wanted the best in the world for me. People who gave, sacrificially, of their lives, knowing that they would never see the full return.

And I thought: I can do that.

Never, never underestimate the impact of love on a child.

Amen.

Ashram Cats

2006-05-17T15:37:00.000-05:00

When the guru sat down to worship each evening, the ashram cat would get in the way and distract the worshipers. So he ordered that the cat be tied during evening worship.

After the guru died the cat continued to be tied during evening worship. And when the cat died, another cat was brought to the ashram so that it could be duly tied during evening worship.

Centuries later learned treatises were written by the guru's disciples on the religious and liturgical significance of tying up a cat while worship is performed.

--"The Guru's Cat" from The Song of the Bird by Anthony De Mello

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A dear friend of mine got in trouble this year at seminary. No, not theological trouble. No, not academic trouble.

She wore red shoes to church.

As an acolyte.

For those of you who don't tie up this particular cat outside your sanctuary so that God can hear you, Episcopalian liturgical ministers tend to wear funny dresses to church. There's a long white one called an alb (or a cassock-alb), and a black one with a white thing worn over it called a cassock and surplice (or cota), and a red one called a chimere--we seem think it's even more stylish and hip to give them funny names than to just wear them and call them dresses.

The funny dresses are one of my favorite pet ashram cats. They were originally designed to keep people warm during long, cold, rainy, English winters, and I put one on every Sunday for worship. In San Antonio in the summer, the temperature reaches 110 in the shade. So we air-condition the building where the church meets. And I sit there and sweat in my dress, and wonder whether Jesus thinks we've gone quite mental.

Another of my favorites are candles. At my current parish, there are two on the table (or altar) where I preside. There are also, mounted on the ceiling, a set of theater-style stage lights. Lights so bright, in fact, that when I step up to the table, I can't see the back of the room because of the glare off the white cloth on the table (the student who fussed at my friend would want me to call the cloth a "fair linen"). I've taken to casually turning the lights down when it's my turn to preside at the liturgy, so I can see who I'm worshipping with. (I'm not kidding that I can't see, by the way. A couple of months ago, somebody fainted in the back, and I never saw her) Then I went on vacation, and when I came back, it wasn't a sliding rheostat on the table spotlights, it was a standard off-on light switch. oops.

But maybe my favorite of all is the gospel procession. Long before America was colonized, there were no electronic sound systems, and the gospel book was carried out into the congregation before it was read so that all could hear the good news of Jesus. But if we're going to have a parade, we have to carry the cross on the stick, and carry the torches so we can see where we're going...
At my current parish, we do indeed do a gospel "procession." A cross, two torches (placed where they wouldn't help even if the church was dark), and a fourth acolyte to hold the Bible while I read from it. This requires, of course, that four different families get up early and get to campus early so their kids can put on their funny-looking white dresses, so that we can do the gospel procession. But here's the best part: the building is in a cruciform shape, meaning it looks like a cross to the birds flying overhead, and the table where the Bible rests is more or less in the middle to begin with. So the gospel procession moves....wait for it.....

three feet.

The congregation in California that encouraged us to go be priests takes many of these things far more casually, but the cats are still there. (Maly, if you're reading this, I still say a gospel procession three steps to the left so you're at the top of the stairs is goofy looking. Just read the gospel from the dang lectern.)

If we were making up liturgy from scratch, we probably wouldn't do any of those things. In fact, to deliberately overuse a metaphor, you can't swing a dead cat in an Episcopal church without hitting an ashram cat. We do them because we value the long tradition of the church at worship, because we value the sense of being connected to something far older and wiser than we are, something that transcends our experience and lengthens our perspective. At our best, we're honoring the Holy Spirit speaking through the centuries of Christian worship that preserved the good news of Christ Jesus for us.

Now, back to my friend.

She's a second-year student at seminary, sponsored by the same congregation that sponsored me. At every seminary, there are people from literally all over the world, who come together to worship on a very regular basis. And you want that to go smoothly, so to establish a certain amount of orderliness in what could easily be a chaotic mess, you agree on a general standard of 'this is how we do it here.' At its best, it's a relatively short document giving guidelines so that all can get beyond the "how do we do this" mechanics and focus our hearts and minds on worship.

and then sin begins to happen.

The reality of seminary life is that the rules are complicated, because trying to learn all the liturgical traditions is a complicated business. At my seminary, the customary was over 60 pages long, single-spaced. At the beginning of every year, the first-year students have to learn the traditions of that particular place. And, unfortunately, observance of the customary often means that the focus is on the rules, on the method of worship, rather than the God who we worship.

And when my friend wears red shoes to chapel, the first thought that goes through people's minds isn't "swell shoes, Julie." Nor is it to giggle at her as she gently pokes fun at tradition. Nor is it to notice, then to notice that it irritates us, and then to ask ourselves why we give a damn and whether it's important. Instead, what often happens is that we think, and then say, "that's not in the customary," or "we don't do it that way." And that's part of the environment in which future clergy are trained for leading worship.

Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us.

When it was my turn to do chapel duty, I often found myself peering through the customary trying to make sense of it. My first time to preside at worship was at choral morning prayer (a service I'd be willing to wager a week's pay you've never participated in if you haven't been to a seminary), which was a harrowing experience just because it was unfamiliar, and I had to lead, and I had to sing solo in public...and afterward one of the third-year students criticized me for not following the customary on a couple of details that (trust me) you wouldn't have noticed. And this was a friend of mine. I damn near ripped his head off.

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Now, here's why this drives me crazy. The western world is, ever more increasingly, a culture that is post-institutionalized religion. To Julie's and my generation, the goofy dresses aren't beautiful tradition, they're just plain goofy. At best, since you see them in church, in the company of other unexplained symbols, they get lumped in with the transcendent. At worst, they get in the way. They are a stumbling block to proclamation of the gospel in this generation.

Julie knows this. Her kindling passion is to proclaim the transforming grace and love of Christ Jesus, and she gets impatient with people and things that get in her way. In that impatience, she rubs people the wrong way. (Including me.) But she's right a lot more than she's wrong, and when she speaks, I listen.

Lenten discipline, or lack thereof

2006-05-17T15:10:00.000-05:00

Now that Lent is over (okay, we're five weeks into the Easter season), some thoughts on Lenten discipline.

This year, my Lenten discipline was to write every day. In past years it's been to say the daily office, or something similar. The most valuable discipline so far was last year, when I found and fed a homeless person every day.

But back to writing.

Part of the trouble I've been having with sermon writing is trying to say the perfect thing. I read books of good sermons, and watch good preachers on tape, as a way of getting better (that's the theory, anyway). And then I compare myself unfavorably, and try harder, and can sometimes paralyze myself with overthinking.

So the discipline for Lent was twofold. First, don't even begin to try to write Sunday's sermon until Thursday. I did the exegesis ahead of time, and let the readings wash over me, but I wouldn't do any writing, not even scribbles, no walking around and talking it out. Just go with the first thought (okay, maybe second or third thought), say something as well as I can, but don't even try to give the sermons without notes unless they came off my fingers in easily memorable format. Do a second draft, to clean things up, but not whole rewritten drafts on second ideas.

I compare this to being a kid and tinkering with my batting stance. (There will be a whole chapter about this, someday, in my long-contemplated opus one on baseball theology, but for now, you get the short version.) When you're a kid, you tinker with the stance all the time. It's part of the fun of the game. I would try to hit like Terry Puhl for a while, then switch to the Jose Cruz stance with the bat waaaay up over my head, then the Pete Rose stance, belt over almost double. Same task, different starting point, different feel, different result. And as a new preacher (at least until my 100th sermon), I feel like I should be tinkering around. This was the equivalent of two-strike hitting: see and react, protect the plate, hit the ball where it's pitched.

The second, and related, part of the discipline was to write something down daily. Preachers see sermons in rocks and trees and kids at wal-mart. We just do. It's part of the vocation. If you've talked to me for any significant amount of time, odds are good you've heard me say "that'll preach." Problem is, I tend not to write those thoughts down. And many of them would make good homilies, or short thoughts. But for Sundays, I tend to want to expand ideas, give the congregation fully-developed thoughts.

So I resolved to discipline myself to give those little thoughts away, not mentally file them for later, and to write them down as a method of prayer. This is why some people noted an increase in posting frequency--or, more commonly, accused me of blogslacking when Easter arrived.

How did it go, you ask? Well, good and bad. I almost always slip on Lenten discipline, no matter what it is. But daily writing got exhausting. And I often had trouble getting the intuitive idea from my head to the blog, usually because it required explaining the context and situation, which would take too long for too little reward. And the Lenten sermons weren't bad, just not my usual style.

I wonder if the congregation even noticed, but it felt different to me.

Mr. Spock goes line dancing

2006-05-05T11:26:00.000-05:00

Okay, I've been accused of blogslacking. In my defense, I was out of the country, and was quite deliberately unplugged. No phone, no email, only one page of daily international news.

The good news is that we were on vacation for two weeks after Easter. The bad news is that most of the household got really sick with a stomach bug when we got home.

That's right, a two-week vacation. I've never in ten years of married life heard these words escape my spouse's lips: "I need a vacation." So when I heard them, my response was something on the order of, "yes, dear; where would you like to go, and can I come with you?" She wanted to go on a cruise, so that's what we did. Down the west coast of Mexico, with bookend stops in San Jose to see our god-child and compadres. I took the new camera along. Watch it, or I'll send you eight gigabytes' worth of pictures of beach. And birds. And seals.

One of the surreal things that happened on the trip was that one of our fellow passengers was an almost dead ringer for Leonard Nimoy. I did a triple-take that first day. That's where you glance, and then stop and look again, and then stop and take a really hard look because it just might be him, before you finally decide it's really not.

The first day, Mr. Not-quite-Spock (as I began to refer to him in my head) was wearing a dinner jacket and dark turtleneck, the same kind of outfit Nimoy wears in interviews and things. Dignified, gentle smile. But then, of course, as the cruise wore on, I got many more Spock glimpses, and every one was jarring, out-of-place:

Mr. Spock goes line dancing, in blue jeans, boots, and straw cowboy hat.

Mr. Spock in a tuxedo.

Mr. Spock in a deck chair, wearing a white spa robe, reading Tom Clancy.

Mr. Spock eating a burger and fries by the pool.

Mr. Spock in the hot tub?!?

I'm certain that this is going to work its way into a sermon someday. I can think of several ways it might go. In fact, that's one of the happy results of some vacation time for me: when I read gospel texts, the fireworks of multiple images and multiple things to say and allusions and connections are once again going off in my head.

But for today, I'll just leave you with the "Spock in the hot tub" image and let it work its own little brand of mischevious magic.

A preacher in the bleachers: sacrifice flies

2006-05-04T17:09:00.000-05:00

It's well known that I grew up playing baseball, and that many of the ways I see God interact with human history, many of the ways that I see God's people interacting with each other, are things that I learned on the sandlot.

Sometimes, I see the world through baseball lenses.

For the uninitiated, a sacrifice fly is one of the ways to score in baseball. It requires deliberate action by at least two players. One is the baserunner, the other the batter. To complete a sacrifice fly, the batter has to hit the ball long and high (generally one of the easier ways to hit the ball). The runner waits on third base until the fielder catches the ball, then runs home ahead of the throw. The reason it's called a sacrifice is that the batter is out on the play, deliberately foregoing the ability to run the bases and score in deference to helping a teammate score instead.

The early church was characterized by love for one another. The book of Acts tells of great sacrifices made on behalf of the poor, careful consideration for the welfare of widows who were unable to care for themselves, and the inclusion of the outcast in the community.

Great love includes sacrificing for each other.

Great love allows the other's gain to be considered more important than your own.

And in the sacrifice fly, the whole team scores.

Good Friday

2006-04-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

Was there ever a day that you cursed the sunset?

Friday might have been that kind of day for Peter. It had been a long week. First there was all the preparing for the Passover celebration. Then there was that great crowd that showed up when Jesus and the disciples entered the city, and then there was that big mess the next day at the temple. Jesus with a whip, causing all kinds of ruckus. Then came the big feast, the great Passover celebration. A long, slow, extravagant dinner party, reclining at the table with your best friends in the world, tender roast lamb and unleavened bread with honey and rich wine.

Then, after dinner, Jesus wants to go out for a walk, all the way over there, to this garden, and pray. Seems like he’s always praying. Sometimes by himself, but this time he wants the disciples to come along. And, of course, they go. He’s the Rabbi, after all. They go where he goes, if he asks. He’s the one they have given their whole lives up for, bet the farm on, laid on him all their hopes and secret dreams. For three years now, they’ve been wandering around the countryside, stopping to preach in every little village they could find. Peter, every so often, jokes that he’s forgetting how to fish, not that he really wants to go back to it.

The garden is quiet at night. Jesus takes Peter, and James, and John, and says to them, stay here and watch while I go right over there and pray. Okay, Rabbi. Peter sits down, puts his back against a tree trunk, and waits. The night air is cool, and the tree branches rustle soothingly in the gentle breeze. The stars are clear and bright. The night birds and the little bugs make soft, quiet, contented sounds. The breeze wafts over him the delicious scent of blooming flowers. And Peter leans his head back against the smooth wood of the olive tree and closes his eyes. Only a moment later, it seems, Jesus is shaking him awake. Peter! Wake up! Can’t you watch with me a little while? Okay, Rabbi, I’m up, I’m up. But his eyelids are heavy after the great feast, and soon once again Peter dreams.

The next time he awakes, it is to the flickering light of torches reflected on swords and clubs. And for the last twenty-four hours, Peter has been wide awake, with some tiny part of him thinking that he is, in fact, still trapped in a horrible nightmare.

The disciples have deserted Jesus and fled. Peter denied him three times, and the mocking call of the rooster still echoes in his ears. He was mocked, beaten, executed.

He is dead.

Friday night, Peter has neither eaten nor slept since the feast. And now, as the sky darkens from royal purple to empty black, as all light and all goodness slowly leach out of the world, as all the colors of all the objects around him turn to a lifeless gray, the exhausted disciple slumps to the ground, leans his back against the great stone that covers the mouth of the tomb, and stares with empty eyes into the void.

Peter must endure the long, slow, still hours of this night, not daring to sleep for fear of the horrors that crowd in every time he closes his eyes. He can’t even think about tomorrow, with nowhere to go and nothing to do, or the next day, or the rest of his life.

In today’s gospel story appears for the first and only time a man named Joseph of Arimathea. A disciple of Jesus, so we’re told. The gospel writers tell us that he was wealthy, and a member of the Sanhedrin. And he was probably an older man; with his wealth, he bought a garden, and in the garden he had carved a new tomb. Joseph knew his scriptures. He was seeking the kingdom of God. And he also understood that people die. That’s just the way it is. So he was making preparations.

When Jesus died, this disciple did a stunningly foolish and courageous thing: he went to the governor and asked for the body of a man executed that same day for being dangerous to the state. Working in haste to finish the work before sundown, Joseph carried the broken body of Jesus to his own tomb. In the place the disciple had prepared for his own burial, instead there lies the Son of God.

A huge stone seals the mouth of the tomb. Jesus lies in silent blackness, the air of the tomb filled with myrrh’s bitter perfume almost, but not completely, covering the coppery smell of spilled blood.

* * * * * * * * * *

When I was a little boy, I loved to run and play outside. My grandfather, who was in his youth a semi-professional ballplayer, taught me to love the game of baseball. Along the way, he introduced me to the writings and teachings of a man who would become one of my boyhood heroes: Theodore Samuel Williams.

Ted Williams! Fighter pilot, United States Marine, decorated war hero, sport-fisherman par excellance, and almost unarguably the greater hitter in the history of the game. "The gospel according to Ted Williams" is called The Science of Hitting. My copy is an ancient brown hardback. The cover and spine are almost worn out, the pages are dog-eared and stained, with the dust of thirty years of sandlot ballparks deep down in the creases between the pages.

In case you’re getting worried, that’s about as far as I ever want to go comparing Ted Williams to Jesus of Nazareth. Ted was an atheist, for one thing. And a foul-mouthed, misogynistic, arrogant old man. His temper and foul mouth were legendary, he spit at the fans, and threw and smashed things in his rage.

Before he died, he and his son and one of his daughters made a pact to undergo a bizarre post-mortem procedure. Supposedly written from a hospital bed, where the old man was confined, close to death, the handwritten note was scrawled on an oil-stained piece of yellow legal sized paper. The key line read: "To be able to be together in The Future, even if it is only a chance."

Almost immediately after Ted Williams took his last breath, his son John Henry Williams went to the doctors and asked for the body. There was no announcement of death, no funeral arrangements, no memorial. The body was immediately packed in ice, loaded onto a private jet, and flown, faster than the speed of sound, to a cryonics laboratory in the Arizona Desert.

His body was drained of fluids and filled with an anti-freeze solution. His head was shaved, and then crudely separated from his body. Holes were drilled in the skull. In the process it was cracked nine times. Both head and body were coated with a glycerin solution and lowered into a vat of liquid nitrogen.

The greatest hitter who ever lived, the fighter pilot John Wayne emulated, the man about whom Pulitzer Prize winning author John Updike once wrote "immortality is non-transferable... gods do not answer letters," floats, upside-down, in the silent blackness of a nine-foot-long steel tube maintained at a temperature of 350 degrees below zero.

Only a few short years later, his son John Henry died of leukemia. He was subjected to the same procedure. And now, father and son lie together, in the same shabby warehouse on a side street somewhere in Arizona, in a bitter, unnatural cold, preserved forever.

Just in case.

I dearly wish I was making this up.

* * * * * * * * * *

We are a resurrection people. Tomorrow at the great vigil we will proclaim again the greatest news ever recorded in the history of the world.

But today we remember: he is dead.

Jesus, the Son of God, the Son of Mary, lies in the darkness on the other side of a great stone. He’s not asleep. Not faking it. Not preserved in hope of some future advance of medical science.

He’s dead.

Friends, the wondrous news of Easter is not that death is cheated. It’s that death is conquered. But that’s tomorrow. For tonight, keep watch through the long slow hours. And wait.

Bringing an ass to church

2006-04-12T15:21:00.000-05:00

A long time ago, in a land far, far away, a land that some of my people claim as their original homeland, a great general stood on the banks of a stream. It was just dawn. All around him his army stood, ready for orders to march. Young men from the provinces, some from noble families, all up before dawn, armor on, tents packed, animals loaded, a hurried breakfast in the dark. Horses saddled for the officers to ride, a great white stallion for the general, and the donkeys hitched to the wagons, ready to roll forward.

But the general hesitated. For in one critical way, this was no ordinary stream. It was a boundary. A line between the north of the country and the south. A line which, so said the government, could not be crossed by a standing army. If the order was given, if the parade of soldiers and supply wagons began, then the general was in fact declaring himself king. A king set in opposition to the current government. Civil war would not be far behind.

The story is told that the general turned to his friends, his advisors. We can still retreat, he said. But then he took a trumpet from one of his heralds, crossed the bridge over the stream called the Rubicon, and sounded the advance. And Julius Caesar cried, alea iacta est! The die is cast.

And mounting his great white stallion, polished armor shining in the dawn’s early light, Caesar rode toward the capital, and immortality.

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Some eighty years later, a certain teacher from Nazareth, the leader of a rag-tag band of traveling homeless people, spent the night with his friends in a tiny house in a tiny village just outside the capital city of a far-flung province of the vast Roman Empire. And as the dawn’s light began to break, he rose from his bed, shook his sleeping disciples awake, and went outside, gazing into the distance at Jerusalem.

Jesus hesitated. And then he took a deep breath, and grabbed two of his disciples by the arms, and said,

James and John! Fetch me... a donkey!

Um, sorry, you want what?

A donkey!

Where are we going to get a donkey?

Oh, I don’t know. Go into the next village and borrow one.

What do you want a donkey for, Rabbi?

Just go get one, will you?

And so the parade began. No generals in polished armor on great stallions. No troops marching in proud formation. No, just that up-country preacher and his hick disciples, a great parade of lepers and loose women and beggars, fishermen and tax collectors, stirring up the crowd, hollering and disturbing the peace.

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Now, one of these years (but not this year), I’m going to bring a donkey to church.

Yep.

A real live donkey.

And right about the time we do the palm procession, we’re going to open the back doors of the church, and I'll go back there and try to get on its back, so everyone can see what it’s like for a full-grown man wearing a dress to try to climb on the back of an animal he’s never ridden before.

And then I’m going to ride him right down the center aisle. Now, while I do that, I’m going to have the congregation yelling at me as loud as they can, and waving palm branches all over the place, and try to high-five everyone on the way down the aisle, and just for good measure I‘ll have some of the gentlemen take off their coats and throw them out in my way.

Yessir, right down the middle of the aisle. Right where the donkey will want to go, because, as we all know, donkeys love to carry about two hundred pounds of freight while they’re being shouted at and having things thrown at them.

And, of course, donkeys always do this while maintaining an air of dignified humility.

This is how Jesus entered Jerusalem. A great, riotous, undignified mess. In fact, a delicious farce on the way kings usually entered the capital city. Most undignified. Definitely un-Episcopalian. But a sense of humor is a mighty asset if what you're seeking is God's kingdom.

And yet... the Rubicon was crossed. The crowds proclaimed him king. And before the week was over, he would receive the answer of the governing authorities.

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I’ve always felt somewhat schizophrenic about Palm Sunday’s readings. Every year, we dress up this celebration of the triumphal entry. Every year, we tell the story of the arrest and crucifixion, with even a tiny amount of solemn theater to highlight the importance of the story. Every year, we the congregation are asked to sing, "hosanna!" with the voices of the crowd, and we’re also asked to shout "crucify him," and it’s the same crowd.

It’s all too tempting, in the private chambers of our hearts, to assign the good parts to ourselves and the bad parts to someone else. All too tempting to imagine ourselves in the first celebration but not the second.

But that would be dishonest.

We love winners. We love it when God does what we want. We love it when the hero rides into town on the white stallion and trounces the bad guys. But we don’t like being made fun of. We don’t like it when the one we’re cheering for goes to the church and begins turning over the furniture. If I walked into church and turned over the big honkin' table on the grand high platform under the spotlights, or really brought a donkey to church, some of my beloved parishioners would be planting "for sale" signs in my front yard.

But that’s more or less what Jesus did. He came to town, rejected the movement that would have risen up with swords and clubs, and instead humbled himself before God, doing what God wanted rather than what we wanted. And we killed him for it.

On Ash Wednesday, we called each other to the observance of a holy Lent, a time of prayer and self-examination, a time of self-denial and repentance. Now it is time for the observance, to the remembrance, of Holy Week. Not to forget the tragedy, but to remember.

And to remember that God’s love is the only thing that makes sense out of suffering, conflict, tragedy, and death. God’s love does not do away with these things; the cross should teach us that. No, God’s love doesn’t do away with it, but rather it the thing that makes it possible to bear the pain, to see it, to share it, to pass through it.

Fearing the blog

2006-04-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons I had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the blogisphere is something that I affectionately termed Robinson's First Law of Consulting: once it leaves your hand, it's gone. You can't take it back. You will always be required to acknowledge that it's out there. Math mistakes can't be corrected. Even when you send the client a new piece of paper, saying "oops, we goofed on our math, here is a new page 36 of the report," you still have to deal with the OLD page 36, and why you made the mistake, and why it makes a difference, and why you weren't smart enough to do it right the first time. "Sorry, I forgot to carry the two" just doesn't work as an acceptable answer.

Even when it's not your fault. A printing error, for example. That's why we had editors and proofreaders. The editor at my first job was amazing. Fast, accurate, smart enough to remember all the different clients, smart enough to know what all the different disciplines of the practice were talking about.

At my first job out of graduate school, we were constantly making last-minute (and I mean, knock on the closed door waving $20 bills kind of last minute) FedEx runs. First one I did, I swore it would never happen again. Not on MY project. Trouble was, I was never really in charge... or at least I console myself with that sometimes. I kept score by pulling off the little tracking number sticky tabs on the package and pasting them on the dashboard of my car. By the time we gave that car away to charity, there was a collection of them, spaced about an inch apart, running all the way across the dashboard to the passenger window.

Sure enough, things got missed. The typos were embarrassing, but the hurried mistakes were worse. Even when it said "draft" on it in big fat letters. Never mattered.

Then there's deliberate misinterpretation. This last week, my bishop was quoted in The Living Church, which was nice, except that he was selectively quoted. In fact, the quotation was lifted in such a manner as to mean exactly the opposite of what he intended to say. And he was only talking about the Windsor Report.

And now, here I am, daring to do the ultimately arrogant thing of talking about God.

Now do you know why I fear the blog? That once you publish something in this format it's out there for the world to see? (never mind there are a handful of you reading this, it's my fear, it doesn't have to be rational.)

For one thing, I'm just not that good. My theology isn't always going to be consistent. My descriptions of God and of scripture and of life are a work in process. But this is a world where nominated supreme court justices are questioned about opinion papers they wrote before my little sisters were born. Here you go, here's enough rope to hang me. Oh, a little more? Sure.

Second, to quote my friend Jim Flowers, you can't talk about the Trinity for more than five minutes without committing some kind of early-church heresy. But what's a little heresy among friends?

Third, I'm a storyteller. I'm going to run out of stories to tell eventually. And if I do this, I can't even move to a new congregation and re-tell them. (okay, this fear makes the massive leap that the new congregation will find and read this. But it's my fear, and it doesn't have to be rational to be real.)

Writing sermons is hard, Part 4

2006-03-28T15:58:00.000-06:00

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

You know what the difference is between me and Billy Graham? When Billy Graham preaches on that text, fifty thousand people turn their lives over to Jesus. When I preach on that text, a homemade posterboard reading "John 3:16" and a rainbow clown wig are involved.

Ah yes, John 3:16. One of the most beloved verses in the Bible. If you were ever asked to memorize Bible verses in Sunday School, this one was probably at the top of the list. That, friends, is the gospel in miniature. A nugget of wisdom so profound that one of my seminary classmates tells the story that when he was asked to preach on that text, he got in the pulpit, read John 3:16-17 very slowly, said "all else is commentary," and sat down.

And frankly, I was tempted to do the same thing.

The baseball analogy is this: sometimes, the sermon text is a chest-high fastball with no movement. Or better yet, a ball on a tee. It just sits there, begging to be crushed.

Come on, here I am, the whole gospel in fifty-two words. I'm begging you to hit me. Hard. I'm a home run ball waiting to happen.

Okay, I'll admit it, I see texts like this and, what goes through my mind is: don't miss.

Sometimes, I'm just speechless in the face of Paul, or the author of Mark, or Genesis, or especially John. And every last thing that goes through my mind to say instantly gets compared to the very bestest sermon that there ever could be, with the result that nothing gets out from between my teeth. I stare for hours at a blank Word document. Then close the window, or turn off the computer, because I'm tired of the blank screen mocking me.

can you say shibboleth?

2006-03-27T16:33:00.000-06:00

Here's a new one for me. We received a form today from one of our parishioners, a "pastor's recommendation form" for a local Christian elementary school. I've signed a bunch of these kinds of things already. But this one was different.

Are the X family members of your congregation? (Y/N)
How well do you know them? (1-5 scale)
Indicate their level of spiritual hunger. (1-5 scale)

We believe that... [here was included a neat one-paragraph summary, complete with scripture references, thankyouverymuch, that all have sinned and Jesus saves].

and, waaaaait for it:

Are the X family born-again Christians?
Father___
Mother___
Prospective Student 1___
Prospective Student 2___

Run that by me again? You're asking me if the 9-year-old is a born-again Christian? On the application form for 3rd grade?

let's just pause for a moment and ponder that, shall we?

That's so wrong on so many levels that I'm momentarily rendered speechless with anger and disbelief.

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

2006-03-25T14:02:00.000-06:00

Notes from Lucio Blanco, Day 2

We brought about 150 gallons of paint with us. Home Depot donated them to our efforts. They were paint-mix rejects, attempts that for whatever reason some American homeowner didn’t want. The vast majority, of course, were varying shades of beige.

Ah, but then there were three or four cans of glorious green, and some dark red.

We took a great big bucket and some paint sticks, and stirred together what we had. Kids at play. Out of the smorgasbord, we created a yellowish beige, an antique rose, and a delicious pistachio green.

Then we asked the woman who would live in the second house what kind of color she wanted on the inside. She said she wanted a melon-ish color. The whole house, in fact, would resemble a melon. Green on the outside, orange on the inside. I began to have visions of James and the Giant Peach, with the singing dancing centipede.

Oops. We could make pink, or brown, or beige… but we didn’t have any orange.

A quick huddle eliminated most of our options, and we ended up sending some of us back over the border to purchase a gallon of glorious Tigger-riffic-bouncy-flouncy-fun orange. Mix it in, and sure enough...melon.

So much in this world is ugly. So much is out of our control. It was wonderful to see the future residents of the house with big happy grins. "Si. Es muy bonito!"

The Language of God, part 1

2006-03-17T17:09:00.000-06:00

Desmond Tutu helped bring me to California.

When I was leaving graduate school, I had six different offers from six different companies in six different fields. The one I ended up going with was a high-powered airport consulting shop based out of San Mateo. When I flew out for the interview, a friend and colleague graciously spent his whole weekend showing me the town, showing me what it’s like to live in San Francisco.

Because I didn’t know if I’d ever be back, I dragged this friend along with me to Grace Cathedral. (If you’ve never been there, go.) We were just inside the great big doors in the back of the nave, and I was looking around at the paintings and the stained glass and the ceiling, waaaaaay up there far away, when my friend said “hey, isn’t that Desmond Tutu?”

The celebration took two and a half hours. Three choirs, two bishops, absolutely packed house. No word on whether my friend has ever darkened the door of a church since.

At the end of the service, Bishop Swing asked the visiting archbishop to bless the congregation. I remember him saying “I will give the blessing in my own language.”

Now I don’t know what his native tongue is, and I didn’t recognize it or understand a word, but I do remember that prayer. It was a long string of words, beautiful and rhythmic, rhyming, almost musical in its quality. I have no idea what he said, and I couldn’t even see him. But I do remember the feeling of awe and wonder, remembering that God’s langauge transcends our human understanding; that God speaks with an eloquence and power that we can’t touch.

Jesus on the playground

2006-03-15T17:07:00.000-06:00

Day one of spring break trip to Lucio Blanco, Mexico (just south of Harlingen, TX)

Several months ago a truck tried to beat a rain across the tracks in Lucio Blanco. It didn’t make it. Several buildings were destroyed in the explosion and fire; about a dozen people were killed. Many more were orphaned or widowed. Our diocese has responded; various church groups have come to build houses and repair the neighborhood.

It’s spring break, and here we are with eleven members of the church. Much fun will be had; some work will be done.

We made the trip today in just enough time to join the departing crew of another congregation for their last hour of work and for a dedication service. They were here for several days, and built a playscape for the children of the neighborhood. Wooden stairs and ladders and slides and ropes and swings and all things wonderful about early childhood.

Today was what Eucharist is supposed to be.

Members of four congregations. Two languages. We switched back and forth between Spanish and English with cheerful clumsiness. We sang, in no recognizable key whatsoever. I even knew the words to the chorus. The altar was a plastic folding table set up in the middle of the playscape. And, best of all, as the adults prayed and read scripture and hugged and sang, the smallest of the children clambered around, playing on the new playground.

And there I stood, in the dirt of a tiny Mexican town, in my U.S. Army issue General Infantry combat boots, blue jeans, a t-shirt, and a stole. I’ve never felt better dressed for the great feast.

to give only love in return

2006-03-12T12:19:00.000-06:00

And Jesus said, if any would become my disciples, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.

Sooner or later, when we tell the stories of our lives, and we’re going to tell the truth, we get to the embarrassing parts. The story of Jesus is no exception. People ask: “why are you a Christian?” and we say, well, to be a Christian is to believe in God. And to believe in Jesus. That Jesus, is some way we can affirm but not completely describe with our limited minds and clumsy language, is God incarnate. That Jesus was God, come to earth, looking like one of us, teaching us and showing us how to live.

And then, if you’re talking to someone from my generation especially, a strange thing happens. See, in this day and age people have heard the name of Jesus before, it’s kinda hard to grow up in America and not hear the name of Jesus, but we don’t know what it means. We know it’s associated with churches, and with God, and that whatever picture we have of Christians, we know that this Jesus fella is involved, but we don’t really know who he is. And, to this person, asking “why are you a Christian?” we begin to tell the story of Jesus.

How he grew up a peasant, how he was a carpenter for a living, but then when he came of the right age to be a rabbi, a traveling preacher, in his culture, he left his carpenter’s tools on the bench and went walking around from town to town. And then we begin to tell the stories of the great signs and wonders that the gospel writers tell us:
how Jesus touched a woman who had a fever and the fever left her
how Jesus made the blind man see
how Jesus made the lame man walk
how Jesus healed man who was deaf and mute
how Jesus turned the water into wine
how Jesus fed a huge crowd on a mountainside out of a kid’s lunch box
how Jesus walked on the water
how Jesus spoke to the wind and the waves and they listened, and quieted down
how Jesus raised the dead man Lazarus to life.

And then, when we’re done telling the wonderful stories, we tell them what we first teach our children: that Jesus loves everybody. That Jesus was a teacher, a healer, a reconciler. That Jesus shows us who God is, and what God is like.
God is not angry,
God is not vengeful,
God is not cruel.
No, God cares.
God heals.
God comforts.
God caresses.
God gives hope.
God loves.

And then…. And then… sooner or later, someone will ask what happened to him.

Well… um… he… he want to the capital city for a festival. And the government, the ones in power, they arrested him, and beat him, and stripped his clothes off so he was naked and ashamed, and they hung him on a big stick next to the street, and they stuck nails through his hands and feet so he couldn’t get away, and left him there until he died.

It’s at this point that some people just plain get bewildered, and get up and walk away.

I grew up a southern upper-middle-class white boy, in the suburbs. And here’s the gospel, the good news, I was taught as a child: it wasn't, "deny yourself, and take up your cross, and follow."

It was this: you can do anything you want to.

You are an American.
You have rights.
You can be anything you want to be.
You can go anywhere you want to go.
You can wear anything you want to wear, you can eat anything you want to eat, you can do for a living anything you want to.

You can achieve anything, if you just set your mind to it, and work hard enough.

Well, why can’t we just leave it there? That Jesus was a teacher, and what he taught, at heart, was the golden rule we teach our children: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you?”

Why can’t it be about truth, justice and the American way?
Why can’t we just leave it at “Be nice to each other?”

Because of the cross.

Because the cross is a reminder
—and I’m sorry we need it—
of all the evil and ugliness in the world that will not be denied.
Of all the power in this world that wants to become powerful by stepping on other people.
Of all the power in this world that is built on exploitation.
Of all the power in this world that wants to hold on to power, as long as it can, by any means at its disposal.

It is a reminder that even in high places, proper places, places that should know better, there is a lot of ugly, evil, cruel power in this world that crushes and hurts.

You know this to be true.

What our culture is interested in is success, not sacrifice. And the cross is a symbol of the acceptance of the pain and suffering of the world. That God came to earth, that he gave himself away, that he fed us and taught us and healed us and told us to give ourselves away and knew….knew… that there is selfish power in this world that doesn’t want to let go, and that he would, by preaching something different than what the powerful wanted, would come into direct opposition with that power, and that the results would not be pretty.

And he did it anyway.

To take up the cross and follow Jesus is to realize that we live in a world where the powerful want more, where success means control. But that’s not what Jesus did. He walked right into the buzz-saw of power, right up to the cross.

Bearing the cross, for me, means realizing that I participate in systems of oppression, whether I want to or not.

See this stole? You like it? Pretty, isn’t it? Handmade, one of kind. Let me tell you where I got it. Two years ago, my classmates and I took a trip just south of the border, to Juarez. We saw a number of church ministries there, saw some good work that was being done, participated as much as we could in a few days. One of the things we saw was a ministry aimed at an indigenous group of people to Mexico. They’re called the Tarahumara Indians, and they live in the Copper Canyon region. They are deliberately primitive people, deliberately living by themselves. But there was a famine a few years ago, and the people were starving, because they lived so close to subsistence level. The tribes sent some of their strongest and most able workers into the cities to earn money and buy food to send back to buy food.

There was a church mission to these native peoples set up in Juarez. A church group had come in, if I remember right, and built shelters on a hillside lot. Little things, 8 feet by 8 feet, maybe, cinderblock and plywood and tar paper. The whole lot was about the size of a typical suburban plot of land for a single-family home, and there were between thirty and forty people living on it. Ten little shelters. They had one toilet. One, between them. And one hose.

And I remember asking, why did they build the shelters on the side of this steep hill? Wasn’t there an easier place? And our guide said, “Oh, no, it’s not a hill, it’s a landfill. If you dig down six inches you’ll hit trash.”

I met one of the men, a quiet, reserved fellow. We had to talk through an interpreter. He came in to the city, and he worked in the factories in Juarez, the maquiladores. The factories, the maquiladores, exist because American companies can take raw materials, send them south, have them assembled in Mexico, and then ship them back north, more cheaply than could be done here in the states. The factories provide jobs for Mexican workers, and that’s good. But they provide jobs that pay, on average, about $7.50. A day. There are benefits, and food, and other intangibles, and the wages are rising. I’m told it’s ten times better there now than it was a decade ago.

But this guy still lives on a trash heap. And when they offered to sell us some of their native garments, we bought them. What would you do? This is a belt, in their native garb.

And I’m wearing it as a stole today, not to say, look at me, aren’t I pious, or to say, aren’t we great, to give charity to those in need. No, for me this is a reminder. A mark of shame, almost. Shame that there are places in this world where people live under crushing poverty. Shame that I contribute in any way, whether intentional or not. Shame that the man who made this with his own two hands lives in a house that’s smaller than my bathroom.

that’s just not right.

This is part of what taking up my cross and following Jesus means to me: that I recognize that, on a global scale, I live a life of unbelievable wealth and privilege. That my life, whether I like it or not, is embedded in a society in which such injustices happen. When I can, when I know and when I have a choice, I try to do the right thing. To buy fair trade. To give an honest wage for honest work. Because, so the gospels tell me, God made all of us, every one, in God’s own image. But I don’t always know. And I get up every morning, and say, Lord, have mercy on me. I can’t help some of the things I do.

Follow me, says Jesus, to the cross.

Jesus, the Christ, who saw, as Peter in today’s gospel did not, that true power is made perfect in self-giving love. Jesus also knows that the way of abundant life, the way of self-sacrifice, leads to the cross. And what God does is take that cross, that symbol of all the human cruelty in the world, all that power corrupted and turned to domination, and transforms it.

The cross tells us who God is.

God identifies with human suffering,
God identifies with the powerless,
God identifies with the lowest of the low,
God absorbs the worst humanity has to dish out, and gives love in return.

And that, I think, is the essence of our calling:
To give only love in return.

...am I saved?

2006-03-11T23:13:00.000-06:00

They tell me that doing Clinical Pastoral Education is about facing your fears.

Facing the realities of life and death, evaluating your own theology. Everyone has monsters in the closet. It didn’t take long for me to have to face one of them. God, it seems, is not without a sense of humor. Then again, I’ve known that for a while. Even the staging was good.

It was my first overnight on-call shift. Being the overnight on-call chaplain for a 400-bed hospital means that you’re the one who carries the pagers, the one who responds when somebody wants to talk to the chaplain, even if it’s 3:00 in the morning. You’re also the one who answers the emergency page when somebody stops breathing, one of twenty people, all from different disciplines, who read their pagers, decode the locator message, and drop what they’re doing and move as swiftly as they can to the patient. Seconds, they tell you, are critical.

As the chaplain, of course, you’re not next to the patient. The bed will be ringed with physicians and nurses, doing CPR, evaluating, barking orders. You’re across the room, watching. Praying, if you do that. (But not all chaplains do.) The chaplain is usually out in the hall, watching, waiting, praying with the patient’s family.

The on-call pager at my hospital was set to a particular sound: a strident three-beep repeating pattern that would halt all conversation and freeze everyone in the room. It still haunts my nightmares. No other pager was permitted to sound like that. It was a sound that meant, somewhere close by, a human being had stopped breathing. Somewhere, close by, eternity beckoned.

The first time they hand it to you, it weighs a hundred pounds. You feel the weight of it on your belt, pressing against your waist, even if you normally carry something there. The first day I carried it, I kept reaching down to touch it. To check the battery. To confirm the reality. And you know, you know, that the damn thing is going to go off. Like the starting gun at a race, but worse.

In one of the chaplain offices, high in one of the towers, in a mostly unused hallway, there’s a back door. Through the back door is a tiny cell for the on-call chaplain to sleep in (if you get any). A tall person can stretch out and touch both walls at the same time. Tiny bed, nightstand, bathroom, TV bolted to a stand high up on the wall.

It was my first night. I’d been like a runner at the starting line, tense for the sprint, all day long. I’d been handed the dreaded pagers at noon, and all day long I’d carried their awful weight, the weight of unanswered and unanswerable questions, the weight of death and pain.

Knot in the stomach, sweaty palms, thoughts chasing themselves around the ceiling at breakneck speed. I had set up the tiny room in combat-ready fashion: Clothes laid out, pagers at the bedside, finally convincing myself to get undressed and try to sleep—if a patient coded at 3 a.m., the extra 120 seconds to get dressed wouldn’t really matter all that much. I couldn’t help staring at the pagers a few times before turning off the lights. I surprised myself by being able to fall asleep.

I was up, adrenaline racing, lights on, halfway out the door in my underwear, before I remembered to breathe. It was the ‘regular’ pager, not the emergency one. It was a few minutes to midnight, and somebody wanted to talk to the chaplain.

Tonight, that meant she got me instead.

The patient was in the last stages; only days, or hours, left to live. Cancer everywhere—lungs, breast, abdomen, brain. She looked terrible. Hairless, shaking, with an oxygen mask covering her face. A picture taped to the wall told of her former head-turning beauty, a sad contrast to how she would meet her end. I had to lean over and strain to hear her as she struggled to get the words out.

Am I saved?

I tried the mirror technique first. “Are you saved?” I asked, hoping to draw her into further conversation. Good try; no banana. She asked me again.

Am I saved?

Then I asked what she thought, and she told me she didn’t know. Slowly, laboriously, with me leaning over the bed, ear next to her mouth, she told me the story of her life.

The Bible says this, and that, and I did these things...
is my baptism valid, if it was done this way...?
If I lived this way, did this and such, is that okay...?
Is there anything else I need to do?

Well, who am I to judge, anyway?

I don’t think that there are entrance criteria to God’s love. I firmly believe that God doesn’t keep score. I could never imagine an enormous roll of parchment, held by a tired old angel with a quill pen, on which the names of every baptized Christian was recorded. Nope, sorry, you didn’t quite go all the way under the water when you were baptized—-straight to hell for you. Just like Achilles and his heel. Next... let’s see, how about you? Oh, too bad, your priest turns out to be a child molester, so the sacrament isn’t valid. Well, at least he’ll join you in hell to keep you company.

I asked her, “What do you think?” How are we to be saved?

“I was baptized,” she gasped. “I confessed my sins. I confessed…the name of Jesus…” she trailed off into unintelligible mumbling.

Let’s pray about it, I suggested. She closed her eyes; I thought she was asleep for a minute. Then I realized she was weeping. That was a mess. Snot in the oxygen mask, all over the cannula. And then a moment of real panic—she couldn’t breathe. Had to clear away all the stuff so she could get some air. (I could see the headlines: ‘Patient drowns in her own snot during prayer with chaplain; student sued for malpractice’)

We prayed. It took a while. She had difficulty focusing, difficulty finishing sentences, difficulty breathing. It became clear that she had done everything she thought she needed to do, but she was worried that there was something else. She didn’t want to be left out of glory on a technicality. I don’t blame her.

It's now 3 a.m. The city is still. eternity beckons.

Am I saved?

She’s asking God, but she gets me instead. I stood up and put a hand on her forehead. “Yes, you are. It is enough. Be at peace.”

God have mercy on me if I’m wrong.

blogging Episcopalians

2006-03-10T13:15:00.000-06:00

In the information age, we spend vast amounts of time and energy getting computers to connect.

But my question is: what does it take to get people to connect?

In one of her 'vampire chronicles,' Anne Rice called this a culture of "frenzied isolation." That's a phrase so apt, and so delicious, that I've adopted it as my own. And every time I say it out loud in a group of people, heads nod. We are busy. Not just busy, crazy-busy. Too busy to take time for our families, much less our neighbors.

So what does it mean that I've now joined a ring called "Blogging Episcopalians?" There are over 200 members. I spent an hour or so looking over the list of sites before joining the ring, and the vast majority are like the vast majority of Episcopalians I know: thoughtful. Deep. Insightful. Faithful. You could spend a whole day reading blogs on that list, and it would be a day well spent.

But am I adding to the problem? One more voice in the cacophany?

My current solution is, as with many things in the faith: to hold it in tension and let it stay there. My need to be in real, physical community, in tension with the reality that many of us today perceive a significant part of our lives through the lens of membership in a community that is present in all places and none.

would you like to dance?

2006-03-09T14:00:00.000-06:00

Based on these Bible readings.

I want to talk to you for a minute about dancing.

My wife and I have recently started learning a new dance. Lindy hop, specifically. A relatively new couple in the parish, Jeff and Aimee, teach dance, and throw regular Friday-night dances in a dance studio just south of here. They were the ones who did the recent workshop here in the parish hall. And if we ask them nicely, we might get them to do it again once in a while. Now, for those of you who don’t know us that well yet, my wife and I love to dance. She’s been my dance partner longer than she’s been my wife, and we spent a significant amount of our courtship on one dance floor or another.

Learning a new dance is an interesting thing. Coming to it as dancers who know other steps, there are some similarities. Some are basic things like rhythm, counting, dancing with a partner, one of you leading and the other following. Some of the patterns are similar, too. There are underarm turns, hand changes, spins, that sort of thing.

But there are also some differences. The basic step, the thing you learn first, is eight beats of music instead of six. The style, the feel, is subtly different from other kinds of swing, and dramatically different from classical ballroom dancing. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.

Thankfully, we’re at the delightful stage of laughing with each other over little things like blown leads and my mysterious inability to count to eight. We have a community of regular dancers helping and encouraging us, and all of us are learning together, at our own speeds.

* * * * * * * * * *

Five hundred years before the birth of Christ, God spoke these words, in the mouth of the prophet Isaiah:

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

These were words first spoken, or written, we don’t really know which came first, after the nation of Israel had been defeated by the Babylonians, and many of the people had been carried off into exile in Babylon. And there, in exile, they asked themselves, has God abandoned us? How can we be God’s people if we can’t go to the temple? How can we be God’s people if we don’t have a king? How can we be God’s people if we’re not our own nation?

And God said: fear not. Don’t worry about the former things. I am still with you. I am still your God. You are still my people. See, I am doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it? I will show you a new way to live.

Five hundred years later, as we hear in today’s reading from the gospel of Mark, four people carry a paralyzed man on a mat, bringing him to Jesus, and lay him at Jesus’ feet. The crowd watches, and waits. Everyone knows what they want. Everyone knows what, presumably, the paralyzed man wants. He wants to be healed. He wants to walk. Everyone waits, holding their breath, for Jesus to heal him.

But that’s not what Jesus does. He says, instead, your sins are forgiven.

There are scribes in the crowd, teachers of the law. Keepers of the tradition. Interpreters of the scripture. And they say “hey, you can’t do that!”

Now, I think most Episcopalians would make good scribes. (even better Pharisees) And that’s not meant to be derogatory. We’re keepers of tradition. We’re teachers. We know how things should be done. We worship using an ancient liturgy, using a pattern that has not significantly changed for centuries. We respect the wisdom of the spiritual masters of faith. We even know how we like our music, don’t we?

So the scribes question Jesus. Hey, you can’t do that! No one can forgive sins but God. That’s not your place. But Jesus responds: God is doing a new thing. Are you paying attention? Can you see it?

Oh, and you? Get up. You’re free.
Walk.
Dance.
Live.

* * * * * * * * * *

One of the holy places in the world for me is a little church on the top of a hill in the middle of San Francisco. It’s called St. Gregory of Nyssa, and if you’ve heard of them it’s because they’ve become famous for their style of worship. They are, in some ways, a quintessential urban San Francisco congregation. They serve really good coffee, they have an active homeless ministry, they’re active in all the social justice concerns of the city. And they do some odd things. The architecture is odd, there are painted icons all over the ceiling, they have two rectors. I used to call them “St. Gregory the weirdo.”

We lived out there a few years ago, and some friends came to visit over Easter weekend. And they convinced us, well, no, dragged us kicking and screaming is a better phrase, to go to the great vigil at St. Gregory’s. You have to realize that the great vigil of Easter is my favorite day of the year. And I didn’t give it up lightly, but I really loved the people who were visiting, and so we went.

Now you might think, after I’d grown up attending Baptist and Methodist and Lutheran and Mormon and jump-for Jesus Pentecostal and Catholic and other various flavors of churches, that I might run out of ways to think, “no, I’m sorry, that’s just too weird, church just can’t be done that way.” But I found one more way to make we wonder what the heck was going on.

It was packed. Sardine-can packed. So bad that one of us got claustrophobic for a while and had to step outside. The room where they celebrate Eucharist together is about as big as the altar area here. Icons painted all over the ceiling, icons of dancing saints. There was incense. And I mean, lots of incense. Great billowing clouds of incense. Not an instrument in the building, expect a handful of Tibetan prayer bells, and the voices of the congregation. And, at Eucharist, they sang. In parts. And... danced. Around the table.

Each person had their right hand on the shoulder of the person next to them, and their left hand holding a service book with the music. The steps were simple. Right, left, right, back. Right, cross behind left, right, back. And, like all new people to the congregation, I was trying to read music and remember steps and not step on somebody and not kick somebody.

It sounds chaotic. And it was. It sounds awful. Definitely out of the box. Sounds quite un-Episcopalian. But you know what else it was? Glorious. As in, the glory of God made manifest. I know, because I’ve tried to describe it before, that it’s something I can’t capture in words. And I know that many of you are like me, wouldn’t go to do something like that unless one of your favorite people on God’s green earth came and begged you to go like my friend Jason did to me.

And I looked around with new eyes. And I saw the members of the church feeding the hungry. And sheltering the homeless. And caring for and grieving with and praying for the thousands and thousands dying of AIDS in the city.

And I said, "God is doing a new thing. And I wasn't paying attention at first."

* * * * * * * * * *

The early spiritual masters of the eastern orthodox church described the nature of God, who we typically affirm as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as an eternal dance, a relationship of movement and interaction in mutual love, honor, respect, and joy. In John’s gospel, Jesus prays that the disciples, that we, might be one as Jesus and the Father are one, that we might be in him as he is in the father, inviting all of us, all of creation, into the great dance of joy that God wills for all creation. In this understanding, some of us ‘sin,’ deliberately step out of the dance, corrupting its rhythm, crashing into other dancers, pushing and shoving and stomping on feet. Then, in Christ Jesus, God enters creation to restore the beauty again, to teach us the new steps, to call us back to an ever-widening dance of joy that includes all of creation.

It is into this great dance that we are called. And each new age means that we need new steps. The basic patterns will be the same, but, like us learning the Lindy hop, the dance will be different enough that we’ll have to pay attention, unlearn old habits, and learn new ones. There are things in our muscle memory that have to be unlearned. Things that once worked now don’t.

Because as people join the dance, the dance changes. As the music of the age changes, the dance changes, in subtle ways, still with the same beauty and order, but with new steps and new style to fit the new day.

And that’s okay. Because God leads. And it is God who invites us to dance.

(Today is the feast day of St. Gregory of Nyssa.)

never let anyone else cut your grass

2006-03-07T21:26:00.000-06:00

I once heard a bit of advice from an old Lutheran pastor: never let anyone else cut your grass.

Once a week, maybe even on Sunday afternoon, mow it yourself, and edge. Trim around the trees and flowerbeds. Then sit on your porch, crack open a cold beverage, and just gaze at your lawn in all of its ordered splendor. And say, "I have accomplished something. It is done. I did it. I am proud of it. And now I can rest."

I laughed at the time. It was supposed to be funny, after all. But a joke with a ring of truth. There's precious little in this vocation that has the satisfaction of a job done. Most of it is seeds sown, or plants watered, or ground tilled.

To continue the metaphor, what we're about to do during our lenten series, starting tomorrow night, is fertillizing. Fertilizer smells bad, and too much can be dangerous, and it can be combined with other ingredients to create death and destruction. We're doing the sometimes dangerous work of examining and questioning something absolutely vital to the Christian story.

Tonight, my version of cutting grass was changing the oil in my truck. Insides cleaned and wiped down, outside washed, oil and filter changed, used oil stored in sealed container for delivery to recycling station. Tools cleaned and put away.

And then I just stood there in the driveway, in the dusk, gazing at the car.

Maybe the old man had a point.

through Him who strengthens me

2006-03-04T16:42:00.000-06:00

from today's daily office readings: Philippians 4:13

"I can do all things through Him who strengthens me" is a great phrase. I had it on the back of a T-shirt in high school. And the way I was taught it as a Bible-school memory verse, it meant:
* with God I can do anything.
* I can overcome any obstacle
* I can defeat any enemy
* I can achieve anything I set my mind to
* with enough hard work, and if I live according to the modern purity rules, I can succeed.

I look back at that Sunday school class and think: how very American. Local boy makes good, overcomes obstacles. Just me and my God, and that's all I need. Cue the stirring music, and I'll be off to slay some dragons....

But, as one of my favorite seminary professors said, the key to interpreting Biblical texts is context, context, context.

In Philippians 4, Paul is basically saying to that early church, 'oh, you wanted to send me some money, but couldn't? Well, that's sweet of you. But I don't really need it. I've learned to be content in whatever situation I find myself.'

Not quite diametrically opposed, but that sure is different.