More things about deer hunting

More thoughts:

Someone told me at a church meeting about how Native Americans believed the deer offered themselves as food for the people because otherwise the people would have perished during the last great ice age.

Offered themselves. The people survived, not because of their great prowess as hunters, nor because of their good luck, or any other factor but that the deer loved them.

I believe it. I enter the woods clad in thermal long johns, gortex, insulated boots, etc, and armed with sophisticated weapons. Those ice-age hunters hunted with sharp sticks and stones, and went naked until they killed something. If the deer did not “offer themselves” as food, our ancestors would have starved to death the first winter.

St. Hubert, the patron saint of hunters, was the greatest deer hunter of his time, but he renounced it all to become a fulltime man of prayer when a huge buck appeared to him in the woods and instructed him to do so.

That is what I need. The buck that offered himself to me as food must appear to me and explain what happened. Until that time, I cannot even renounce hunting a la St. Hubert, because it would be disrespectful, petulant, and leave open the possibility that deer do not offer themselves, that they do not love us, even a little. I cannot accept that conclusion, not only because it empties the world of magic and meaning, but because it would mean the old people all starved to death during the last ice age, and we do not actually exist.

So I am waiting for that buck to tell me I do indeed exist, and why I was not permitted to accept his offering of himself as food.

If this were to occur, it would not be the first time that deer have brought messages to me, although it helps to be asleep.

ONE MORE THOUGHT... the last deer I killed was 17 years ago. I have been at St. Stephen's, Troy, for 16 years. Every November I am (more or less jokingly) informed that a significant number of my parishioners are "praying for the deer." Is there a connection here? 16 years of prayers may have bestowed invulnerabilty upon any bucks in my vicinity. But this would not resolve the matter... what would God want me to learn by granting such prayers?

The Thing About Deer Hunting: November 21, 2007

Here’s the thing about deer hunting.

After seventeen buckless deer seasons, I was in the right place, at the right time. A buck appeared in gathering dusk, 30 feet away and framed unmistakably against a dusting of new snow. I raised my rifle, took aim through the telescopic sight, and fired. The deer bounded away unhurt.

There has to be a lesson, a meaning to this. Had I not put in a seventeen year novitiate, cultivating the thin strand of hopefulness that endures through hours of staring into empty woods? Had I not humbled myself, purified myself, emptied myself of haste and envy? Had I not trained myself to focus on the experience of being in the woods, at peace with myself and in communion with the deer? I can think of no reason why I should have missed that deer. If I had failed to get my gun up before being noticed, or if the buck had come from some unanticipated direction; if I had been dozing, or crinkling a gum wrapper, or any one of a thousand deer-hunting sins I have committed at crucial moments in the past, then I could reproach myself in all the familiar ways.

But this time I did everything right, at least as “right” as I am capable of doing them. So there has to be a meaning here, or else there is no “rightness” to be had.

Meaning 1) There is no meaning. Shit happens. Comment: And that’s not a meaning?

Meaning 2) Jonathan cannot shoot a gun any better than he can shoot a basketball. If it’s such a big deal, take some lessons! Comment: the only lessons that would help would be real-life scenarios with real deer looming out of the dimness, which, at seventeen-year intervals, would not provide much opportunity to practice.

Meaning 3) God is teaching you humility. Comment: I already learned that. In 1988. Ask Bill Moulton. He even wrote an unsolicited letter to the then-Bishop of Vermont to this effect. Can you top that? So don’t be telling me about humility.

Meaning 4) What’s the big deal about deer hunting? It’s not as if something really tragic happened. Comment: When a man who has not had a decent shot at a buck in seventeen years misses a buck standing 30 feet away, it doesn’t seem tragic, it seems stupid. At least tragedy is cathartic. Things like this are… boring? It feels bad enough to ponder, but not so bad as to break him to pieces. So it’s NOT such a big deal, and that relative insignificance is precisely why it has to have a meaning. Get it?

Meaning 5) maybe it was a ghost deer. Maybe the bullet went through him, just to show how the wild things are going to survive the death-dealing blows of technology and urbanization. Maybe, David says, it wasn’t a deer but a person-in-transition, a Webelow maybe, messing with my head on its way to the spirit-world. Comment: what person? It couldn’t be just any Webelow. It would have to be someone who has an agenda for me. I can’t think of who that might be… The former Bishop of Vermont? I doubt it. He never even answered Bill’s letter.

Meaning 6) came to me as I was sitting in the same place the next morning, the first day of the next phase in this long novitiate. “Live gracefully in a world that often seems graceless.” Comment: “That’s what everything means,” says David. Maybe so.

Unwrapping The Rapture: November 8,2007

With Advent impending, the church’s attention turns to somber thoughts of the End-Time, of Death and Judgment, and of the “Second Coming.” With Commercial Christmas upon us, no one else is thinking about such grim matters, but who cares? The church observes Advent anyway.

Well, maybe not “no one else,” as the vast popularity of the Left Behind novels attest. These books, written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, claim the Book of Revelation as their authority for their version of an Apocalypse in which, according to New Testament Scholar Barbara Rossing, “the heroes are an elite band of born-again Christians called the ‘tribulation force’ who drive gas-guzzling Hummers and carry Uzis.’

I have not read these books, but I did read an enlightening article in the Fall, 2007 Anglican Theological Review by the afore-mentioned Barbara Rossing, a Professor at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. “The so-called Rapture that forms the basis for the Left Behind novels is not traditional bible teaching,” she writes, “but was rather a nineteenth-century invention of the British pastor John Nelson Darby, founder of the Plymouth Brethren.” (p.555)

Yet The Book of Revelation can speak just as powerfully for Christians today as it did to the early church, claims Professor Rossing, “as a diagnosis of the illness of the imperial world, and as an urgent wake-up call about the future.” “What may be ending”, she continues, “is our unsustainable view of life [and]…our task must be to help people envision a way of life beyond empire, articulating God’s joyful and compelling vision for the future.” (p.553)

Rossing agrees that Revelation unveils the “end of the world,” but not in the sense of a destruction of the physical world (kosmos or ge in Greek), but the world as oikoumene, or “world order.” This Greek term is the one used in the New Testament in passages such as Luke 2:1, “…a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled.” It is that “imperial” world order that will be destroyed, not because God is a blood-thirsty avenger, but “through the logic of natural consequences,” (p.559). The heedless exploitation of people and environments has tragic consequences. “It is axiomatic (axios estin).” (Revelation 16:5) But “God wills not to destroy our world but to heal it.” (p.561)

According to Rossing, the Roman Empire represented a “toxic political economy” that “was built on deforestation, mining, slavery, [and] unjust globalized trade…” as colorfully described in Revelation 18:11-19. In contrast, Revelation “leads up to the wondrous vision of New Jerusalem…a vision… not of people being ‘raptured’ away to heaven, but rather, if anything, of God being ‘raptured’ down to earth (Rev. 21) to dwell with us… .” (p.560) “How can we reclaim our vision for planet earth?” asks Rossing. For her, it is “a vision of Jerusalem and all cities as places of justice and beauty, with a river of life flowing through the middle, welcoming all.” (p.561)

All Saints Sermon? Mother Teresa's dark night

thinking abt a sermon for All saints... thinking abt the way popular culture "canonizes" people like Princess Diana & Mother Teresa.Like some of the other commentators, I have been put off by the latter's conventional piety and submissiveness... but more drawn to her since the revelation re her doubt and interior bleakness.
How can God be anything but "absent"? I mean, Jesus was present with the disciples in Galilee, but only for a few years. His real accomplishments only began when he absented himself from the world and left the over-dependent disciples to finally grow up. I'm sure his absence was difficult for them, since they were used to being able to come whining to him over every little thing. But the odd thing about Christianity is the way that "absence" became a new sort of "presence", still vulnerable, still incarnate, and still strangely authoritative.
Maybe Teresa was too close to God. Maybe the God she experienced was so wounded, so crucified, that it precluded any joy, any experience of resurrection. Maybe she was really pissed off about all the suffering she saw in the world, but was too constrained by conventional piety to ventilate. I wonder of her spiritual directors ever urged her to dwell upon psalms such as 44 & others that criticize God in some graphic ways. She might have found some spiritual solidarity with Sudanese Christian women described by Marc Nikkel in WHY HAVEN'T YOU LEFT YET?, women who , in effect, stage protest rallies against (and, paradoxically, alongside) God. The "protest rallies" are prayer services, but they freely express people's anger about watching their children starve in refugee camps. Mother Teresa might have benefited from knowing some women like that.
Maybe she was so close to God she couldn't see God, like trying to see your own eyeball. Maybe she was too busy "being Christ" to see Christ. Anyway, it's too bad she didn't have more fun.
If religion is never fun, it gets depressing. Did she ever see , or enjoy, the irony in her own situation? Maybe that is something we can do for her. Maybe from her present vantage-point she will appreciate it and pray for us, or at least not get too pissed off.

2 Psalmic Compositions August 26,2007

Psalm for Jonathan Daniels d. August 20, 1964

Jon Daniels went down to Alabama * a volunteer, helping black

citizens register to vote.

He left his seminary studies back in Cambridge, * the green hills of New Hampshire,

his boyhood home.

He left the incense-haunted place of revelation, * and took magnificat to be his creed.

Guileless, he lived among the people; * their children trusted him.

Unknowing, he joined the group that went to Hayneville; * nonviolent, they spent the

night in jail.

Released in the morning, they went to get a drink, * Coca-Cola, at the nearby little store.

In the street, Tom Coleman shot him, * and Father Morrisroe his friend.

Tom Coleman, (was he a deputy?), * believing that he did God’s will.

Jon Daniels placed his body * between the shotgun and a teen age girl;

He died instead of her, * white for black, male for female, him for her.

His novice priesthood sacrificed, * his cup spilled, but covenant unbroken.

The reputed deputy went unpunished: * his jurors, twelve white men,

While, from the dust, another justice worked a silent plan * to heal the land.

PSALM OF SACRED IRREVERENCE

O how strange is your wisdom, O God, * how subtle your judgments, how masterful your

process of indirection!

Surely, Coyote is your emissary, * and Raven your plenipotentiary.

When Israel was enslaved in Egypt, Pharaoh commanded the midwives to kill the

little Jewish boys, * as soon as they were born.

Pharaoh commanded Shiphrah and Puah; * he commanded, and they had no choice but to

obey.

But they hastened very slowly, * whenever they were called for.

They explained themselves to Pharaoh, * they offered this excuse:

“The Hebrew women are too fast for us; * by the time we reach the birthing-place, they

have already delivered, and their new-born boys are hid from you.”

Thus were Pharaoh’s plans subverted, * and Israel preserved.

Pharaoh raged and cursed, * but the midwives rolled their eyes and said, “tee-hee.”

How ridiculous are the mighty, O God, * when they set themselves against you!

In vain do they wage war against infants, * and command the merciful to commit acts of

cruelty!

For awhile, they seem invincible, * but history soon forgets them, and robbers

desecrate their tombs.

But let Shiphrah and Puah be remembered, * and their names be praised in Israel.

Wherever childbirth is respected, * and midwives held in high esteem.

Wherever slaves move slowly, * to follow ruthless orders given by the strong.

God’s praise is sung among the lowly, * among those who act with kindness, even

when it places them at risk.

While the cities of the ruthless fall into ruin, * and sand blows over them.

Coyote howls among the fallen pyramids, * and Raven cackles at their tombs.

Exodus 1:15-21

August 21, 2007 3rd month of the last sabbatical

Dear Dad:

You taught me, not just “how to fish”, but how to experience our fishing on a deeper level. Since your death on this day (August 21) in 1981, I have missed the opportunity to recount my fishing adventures to you, knowing that you would excuse and understand my flights of fishing fancy, my piscatorial phizosophizing, and also that you would not hesitate to point out the more unfortunate examples of excessive prosifying, such as that last phrase. Oh, and the spelling mistakes, of course. But we have this thing called spellcheck…

Dad, you know that I don’t just “miss you”, I grieve for you, I love you more with each passing year, and I pray that you know this, somehow, by means beyond our knowing.

Here is my story about…

LAVISH ABUNDANCE ON THE AUSABLE RIVER.

Our lives are spent staving off scarcity, or the possibility of it. We don’t want to run out of money, so we earn more; we don’t want to run out of food, so we store it up. The most glaring example of scarcity would be nothing-ness. So we could, and do, regard all the examples of something-ness around us as random exceptions to a general rule of scarcity. A trout, for instance, or the various stages of insect life upon which they feed… mere flecks of anti-scarcity clinging to the surface of a tilted universe, sliding toward oblivion. If nothing-ness is the norm, then we are all engaged in a desperate struggle to beat one another to the next scrap of edible scarcity.

If that were so, then perhaps our fly fishing would be a symbolic expression of this primeval anxiety. But it is not. While daylight prevails we try to tempt the trout with imitations of the occasional stray bug, but rarely do they respond. And why should they? In their collective trout-consciousness they seem to know: their lives are not “exceptions to a general rule of scarcity”; they are a function of lavish abundance.

Sometimes we get to see this for ourselves.

Last Tuesday evening, fishing with River Dog (guardian of the purity of Michigan rivers), on the Ausable. A few trout had been rising to occasional and largely invisible prey, except for the encouraging sight of an occasional white miller mayfly. This inch-long puff-ball of white insect is known to hatch in mid to late-August along this part of the River, and we had come hoping to witness and, by stealth and artifice, to join it. But who can predict the ways of insects?

Around 8 p.m. the breeze died and the overcast that had prevailed all day cleared somewhat, revealing patches of blue sky and a setting sun. River Dog and I had separated, so, except for two kingfishers, I had this stretch of river all to myself. I caught a trout, and after releasing it, realized that the feathers on my white miller imitation had unraveled, making it useless and unworthy as a trout lure. Standing hip-deep on the edge of the swift current, I set about tying on a new one, and as I did so began to be aware of the sound of trout rising frequently around me, some within a few feet of where I stood. The combination of dim light and barely-visible fishing line can make the tying of a secure knot difficult, and this occasion was typical in that respect. During those few frustrating minutes, I became aware of what was causing the fish to rise. In the darkening air around me a transformation was taking place: along the whole length of river a swarm of white millers was emerging from the water and forming a mist-like layer over the surface, ascending to the tops of the high trees, and then surging upstream in great waves of coordinated movement. New insects continued to rise up, squeezing between the spent white carcasses of their dead relatives floating on the surface. As this transpired, trout were consuming them with successive slurps, sips, and splashes. I hooked one on my first cast with the new fly, and as I was landing and releasing it the last trace of daylight disappeared from the western sky. In the darkness the insect horde continued its pilgrimage, emerging, ascending, surging upstream, dying, falling, and returning downstream again.

Very soon, however, the sound of feeding fish ceased altogether. Apparently the trout were satiated, like overstuffed Romans at an orgy. Bugs continued to flutter at my ears, bat up against my fly line, collide with my glasses, and occasionally get sucked in with my breath. Satiated myself, I soon stopped fishing, and, lighting my way with a pen-light, waded to shore in a shimmering cloud of light reflected from countless white wings. From under the cedars along the shore, the River appeared to be shrouded in a pale fog that swirled sporadically upstream, stirred by an unfelt breeze.

No wonder trout are slow to strike at other times! Why search for food if such a bounteous plentitude is about to offer itself? Why eat when you are still “stuffed to the gills” from last night’s feasting? Their lives are a function of abundance.

What we had been doing was more than a fishing expedition, it was an immersion in the symbiotic relationship between fish and insects and river, and in their collective relationship to us. In this setting we were the intruders, the witnesses, the priests who, alone among the actors in this drama, could behold all the elements of the plot, and all the relationships between the players. We could even masquerade as legitimate members of the cast, disguising ourselves as bugs so as to gain backstage admittance, where we could don our neoprene vestments, and wave our sacred wands over the river, beseeching acceptance.

Our lives proceed from such lavish abundance, and end the same way. Love is not scarce, nor is grace in short supply. The problem for us is not how to beat each other to the fishing hole… it is to find a way to inhabit the abundance with humility and grace, like a native, like a mayfly, like a trout.

Like you, Dad.

August 14, 2007. 3rd Month of the Last Sabbatical

OLD ST. PAUL’S, EDINBURGH: OUTLAW’S HIDE-OUT OR CAVE DWELLING?

The “Royal Mile” in Edinburgh, Scotland, is an historic urban thoroughfare that has adapted successfully to the demands of postmodern tourism and commerce. Its shops specialize in Scottish paraphernalia, cuisine, and whiskey, and street performers do a brisk business among summer crowds that bulge out into the traffic. The “High Street”, as its’ known, runs up the side of a mountain, a dormant volcano, with Holyrood Palace (where I believe the Queen stays when in Edinburgh) at the lower end and Edinburgh Castle on the commanding heights, and numerous alleys and narrow by-ways intersect with it all along its length.

Located on one such obscure side street is Old Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, its existence noted only by a small sign on the High Street. There is no church building in sight, however, and those who wish to find it must proceed with considerable faith down a sloped alley cluttered with the usual signs of urban excess and dereliction to where a weathered door marked by another small sign identifies Old St. Paul’s as having been a “center of Jacobite politics in the Eighteenth Century, and later of Anglo-Catholic religious activity…”, or words to that effect. Like Harry Potter seeking admission to a Wizards-Only rendezvous, one must summon their courage and push on this door with some authority in order for their quest for Old St. Paul’s to be fulfilled.

There may be another, more conventional point of entry for this church, but entering it as I did reinforces the impression of a clandestine meeting place, a catacomb, or cave dwelling, for the door opens onto a space of astonishing depth and height, built as it is into the side of a cliff. Little daylight penetrates, since other buildings surround and conceal it, and so the large stained glass windows admit only a pale greenish version of daylight, barely enough to make out the faintly glowing shrines and altars scattered about the space below.

On the walls of certain European caves are crude paintings of animals that are regarded as the oldest evidence of religion among human beings. It is supposed that prehistoric hunters created these icon-like paintings to express gratitude, wonder, and hope with regard to the animals that sustained their lives. Like all hunters, they spent a lot more time story-telling, than they did hunting, and the cave-paintings were probably the result of winter nights made shorter by tales and memories of wooly mammoths slain and eaten, and of the miraculous renewal of their numbers that occurred every Spring. This sense of kinship with other species and gratitude to whatever it is that produced them is the primal source of religion, and (I am convinced) remains with us still, though few of us hunt, and those who do engage in a highly modified, ritualized version of this ancient struggle for survival.

As I have said, Old Saint Paul’s struck me as cave-like, and had its stained glass contained imagery of hairy bison and wooly mammoth instead of saints and angels I would not have been surprised. Those who worship in this place are delving deep into the primal elements of faith and human community, and when they emerge from their prayers into Sunday-morning sunshine they are reenacting a Navajo creation-myth wherein human beings emerge into this world from a crack in its surface. That was in Arizona, of course, and this is Scotland, so you might have to forget about the sunshine. But cosmic rebirth can occur anywhere, right?

The Jacobites were partisans of the Scottish house of Stuart, adherents of those royal politicians known to the British establishment as “Pretenders.” The Scottish Episcopal Church has this tendency in its pedigree, since its bishops were “Non-Jurors” who believed they could not in conscience rescind oaths of allegiance made to James II, the Stuart King deposed in the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689. Of his successors, the most famous was “Bonnie Prince Charlie,” whose efforts to regain the crown were definitively overthrown at the Battle of Culloden in 1742, the last pitched battle to be fought on British soil.

So it appears that Old Saint Paul’s was, in times past, a center of conspiracy and dissent, a gathering place for outlaws and rebels. No wonder this church is so hard to find! In former times it would not have been wise to be seen entering Old Saint Paul’s publicly. Better to make one’s way furtively down the alley, unseen by officials of the Hanoverian kings.

In some ways Anglo-Catholicism may be to postmodern culture something of what the Jacobite-ism was to Eighteenth Century British politics. To those who know enough about Anglo-Catholicism to criticize it, its adherents often seem like “pretenders” who crave the pageantry of catholicism but have no appetite for its disciplines. Like the “Non-Juring” stance taking by Scottish Bishops of the past, places like Old St. Paul’s can seem out of step with the times, attractive only to mavericks, waifs, and strays. Like Prince Charlie’s doomed cause, there is something quixotic about the effort to melt capitalism’s stony heart by waving incense at it.

I am told there is still a Stuart Pretender to the throne, and nothing could be more irrelevant (or ridiculous) with regard to the current state of British politics. But outlaws have their place in history, an example being found at Old St. Paul’s, where one of the more modern stained glass windows shows three Scottish bishops in the act of consecrating Samuel Seabury, the first Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the USA. It is a relatively well-known historical fact that Seabury sought episcopal ordination from the Scots because English Bishops were unwilling to elevate to the episcopate a representative of England’s rebellious former colonies. Perhaps, along with the apostolic succession, those renegade Scottish bishops conveyed to America’s first bishop some their subversive spirit, and a measure of “up yours” defiance that is not uncharacteristic of Scotland to this day.

Anglo-Catholicism had its beginnings in the “Oxford Movement” of the mid-Nineteenth Century, but in the contemporary scene of ecclesiastical life and politics it continues to wield influence, not so much as a movement as an attitude. Perhaps a parallel observation could be made regarding the Jacobite cause of former times, which could be understood as having evolved into an attitude of cultural resistance to English dominance. In the past, this has taken the form of distinctive Scottish music, customs, and speech, but more recently has shown a more overtly political face, as evidenced by ubiquitous Edinburgh graffiti that reads “END LONDON RULE,” and the like. Anglo-Catholicism persists like the reverent stories told by hunters as they huddled around campfires in icon-studded cave dwellings. It haunts the halls where synods and conventions meet, manifesting itself wherever partisans of any stripe are inspired to take the long view, identify with the underdog, or learn to tolerate ambiguity. In all its diffusion, and even absurdity, Anglican catholicity continues to become incarnate in places like Old Saint Paul’s: obscure, odd, as deeply rooted in human consciousness as it is in the side of its volcanic cliff.

August 8, 2007 3rd Month of the last Sabbatical

Oxford Street and St. Paul’s

Oxford St. in London is more cosmopolitan, crowded, and commercially active than Times Square, Fisherman’s Warf, or Michigan Avenue, or any other American venue of its kind. Like them, it is lined with stores selling clothes, shoes, jewelry, electronics, and souvenirs, but its multi-racial clientele speaks more languages and is generally more glamorous and decked-out. Families on holiday, groups of animated women, and loud teenagers, mostly French, all make their way through the crowds with supreme self-confidence, ignoring everyone but their own companions, all spending, eating, talking, all but one Muslim man who stood out in his gown and skullcap, who carried no plastic bags of merchandise, but strode purposefully through the crowd that seemed to part before him.

At the east end of this thoroughfare rises St. Paul’s Cathedral, protected from the busloads of tourists by a contingent of uniformed attendants who, every day around 5:00pm, bar the door to all but devotees of Evensong. Disappointed tourists turn away angry, like all shoppers deprived of an opportunity to spend. Only the devout minority (numbering about 300), are permitted to queue up, in good English style, and wait to be admitted into the chancel where the daily service occurs. Do they even know what they are waiting in line for? Perhaps not, but, whatever it is, they know it is a bargain, for Evensong-goers are absolved from paying the hefty admission fee.

As I waited with them, my eye wandered over the vast interior, crowded with memorial plaques and tombs of various national figures, some famous but most just well-connected. A thought occurred to me, as it has to others, no doubt: how will Britain’s current crop of celebrities be memorialized? I dare say it will not be at St. Paul’s, because there is no space left! Then again, would the notables of today even want to be recognized in such a way, alongside the members of the famous charging Light Brigade, the first Anglican Bishop of India, and the Duke of Wellington? Preoccupied with such weighty thoughts I looked down at the memorial plaque etched into the floor at my feet, and was startled to find I was standing on the grave of Charles Darwin! A curious place, St. Paul’s, and hard to categorize. It is part museum, part mausoleum, part storage-closet.

Whatever else it may be, St. Paul’s is a place of worship, and after some time a verger ascended the pulpit, and, using the PA system, instructed us in the most elegant of accents to occupy choir stalls in the chancel, leaving space only for the “Vicars Choral,” the male portion of the Cathedral Choir who were to sing the service that evening. As instructed, I found a choir stall beside a very nice Canadian woman and her daughter, and we sat as the vast building gradually fell quiet.

The first sign of liturgical life was a growl from the cathedral organ that I felt in my feet and back before I could actually hear it with my ears. Soon the voices of the Vicars Choral could be heard from out under the cathedral dome, singing a Latin introit, and from that point on I became lost in a familiar liturgical landscape, a country where all boundaries melt away as chanted psalm verses merge imperceptibly with silence. Then, with the last “…world without end. Amen” still lingering in the air, from some unseen lectern a disembodied English voice began with faultless diction to inform us of the doom pronounced upon “ruthless nations” by the Prophet Isaiah. Are we to suppose this prophecy applies to the demise of the British Empire? If so, this huge building represents the remnant of its spiritual capital, and this elegant act of worship its requiem, witnessed now by a congregation of tourists, survivors of a day on Oxford Street.

The cathedral organ is undergoing massive reconstruction involving a forest of scaffolding, and the musician plays the instrument, Oz-like, from behind a curtain, saving thunderous crescendos for special moments, our souls serving as the wizard’s playthings, swooped up to dizzying heights of joy and surrender, and then abandoned in mid-air for some sedate doodling and harmless chords. We plummet to earth without a parachute, but finding ourselves still intact, at once begin to long for another dose, another turn on the thrill ride.

It is like an addiction, a yearning for more that cannot be fully satisfied- an awareness all the more strange since only a few minutes earlier, I (we?) were wondering how much longer this bible reading would last, how soon this period of silence would end, when something, anything, would happen.

This is religion in its purist form: ecstatic boredom, ruthless beauty, elaborate simplicity, unfinished completeness. I wonder: is the organist a tool of God, a sacramental agent? A means by which God descends upon a cacophonous world to render it harmonious, coherent, and beautiful? Is that unseen musician like the man in a skullcap, wielding an unseen authority? Or is the Man Behind the Curtain a charlatan? An Oxford Street merchant in an archaic store? A dealer in cheap addictive drugs?

Isaiah has the last word: all the ruthless nations of the Eighth century B.C.E. have come and gone, their cities have fallen and will never be rebuilt. What seems to endure is the very last, exquisite and unresolved chord of the organ postlude.

I return a few days later with my friends, one of whom is an organist and respected colleague of many years. My spiritual appetite has grown sharper in the past few days, and I am eager, desperate, almost, to share the intoxicating reality of this musical place with them. But it soon becomes evident that there is to be no choir, no organ. The Service will be said this evening, as the musicians are all on holiday. Should I feel so disappointed, like a child who, expecting to be offered an ice cream sundae, must settle for a chiclet? Am I a disappointed shopper, too late for the Big Sale? Here is Oxford Street, possessing my soul, right here in the bowels of the Cathedral. What, God cannot arrive without the wizard’s conjuring?

I apologize to U, scourge of empires, author of harmonies: the final chord still hangs unfinished in the air, with U inhabiting the emptiness as I share this moment with my friends.

August 4, 2007. Month 3 of The Last Sabbatical

Before leaving for Great Britain I wrote about “sacred enchantment” and the “vast domed spaces” that have symbolized it in my dreams. Strange, then, to find that “vast domed space” existing within sight of the hotel where we stayed in London! Well, not literally “domed”, but certainly high-steepled, massive, and visible all over the neighborhood. Catching a glimpse of it as I exited the underground, I surmised it must be St. Augustine’s, Kilburn, an Anglican church not unknown to the guidebooks but definitely off the beaten path.

What I found was a building of cathedral-like dimensions, surrounded by a large, green park, and surmounted by many towers of varying heights. In the yard stood a larger-than-life Calvary, its solemn grimness accentuated by vases of faded flowers wilting on its stone steps. Obviously, those who established St. Augustine’s meant it to be a place where religion is not to be taken lightly.

The only sign of life was an open gate in the iron fence surrounding the property, but a sign indicated that “the church will be open for a period before each service,” an event that was to take place shortly, as the hour for “Evening Prayer and Rosary” was about to arrive. Once inside, the dim interior revealed numerous shrines with flickering candles, side altars, and the ubiquitous feel of incense. A large shrine to Our Lady of Sorrows dominated the south aisle, summoning memories of my youthful attraction to that doleful devotion. There seemed to be a mantle of Marian influence cast over this space, like the veils shrouding the many Muslim women in the neighborhood. At St. Augustine’s, “sacred enchantment” revealed a distinctly feminine side.

Evening Prayer was said in choir, with the two clergy reciting from the Roman Breviary and coaching me as required, their mellifluous English voices answering one another like twin waterfalls on converging creeks. Parts of the office were chanted in Latin, and as I joined in soto voce I found myself with disbelief suspended, watching my own imagination take flesh before my eyes, regretting the end of every psalm and every reading, every canticle and every prayer. If it were not for Nancy and the children to hold me in existence, I might have disappeared for good into the silence between the psalm-verses, and become another mute spectator among the apostles posted along the chancel walls. In a way, I am there still, suspended somewhere between the vaulted ceiling and the frescoed walls, a lingering molecule of incense-flavored air, having been burned alive and martyred on hot coals at that place where (as my brother Bob says) myth and reality intersect, and (as I have written before), “…all the stories and the rivers merge, and sleep rolls like breakers on an unknown shore.”

My goodness, whatever happened to “sacred irreverence?” Scarcely any of that to be found written above. But it remains, nonetheless. These ultramontanist clergy are admirers of a different Roman Church than the one I have experienced in the US, where heavy-handed authoritarianism infantilizes the laity and leaves many clergy stuck in a kind of permanent adolescence. And I wonder, is it possible to maintain such a complex shrine as this without blocking out much of reality? Complicated worship, as Thomas Cranmer observed, puts all power in the hands of a liturgical elite, and makes passive consumers out of the most laity. Indeed, the C of E in general exhibits this characteristic, and it would be easy to become a “sampler of religious products,” hopping from one splendid edifice to another in search of musical perfection and liturgical excellence. Clericalism, like any top-heavy ideology, can create some very unhealthy dynamics. At the church I served in the 60’s, the elaborate worship went on unabated while the senior clergy lost themselves in self-destructive behavior. At the time, I blamed the professional choir and fussy liturgics, but what was truly lacking was someone to tell the truth about blatantly dysfunctional behavior. You might say they needed Jesus at that church. Or AA. Or maybe they are the same thing.

Yet if Jesus is anywhere he is at St. Augustine’s, and the clergy there struck me as being the “real thing,” men of God, not unhappy, cynical, or in denial. The congregation that worshipped there was eclectic, affectionate, and extremely devout. There was a sense that something truly extraordinary was happening in the course of the Liturgy, a quality that I want very much to replicate in my own approach to worship, more than in the past.

Yet (my irreverent self interjects) that quality is something (not exactly a “thing”) that enters the church with the people; it is not an alien “thing” we must “conjur up” at the altar and impose upon people. “It” is “already present,” and our task to be receptive and attentive, to remove obstacles, not to play God and invent “religious experiences.” Besides, if people are not exactly clamoring for a chance to take part in the daily office, why not chant parts of it in Latin? It’s just the sort of odd behavior that throws the world out of balance, and creates an opening for the wild Spirit to break in. It takes some drastic magic to enchant a world as thoroughly muggled-up as Oxford Street and Picadilly Circus. Anyway, it worked on me.

My encounter with St. Augustine’s was an accident, like Anglicanism, like meeting Nancy at the pharmacy, like discovering St. Michael’s Farm at a parish coffee-hour. Such “accidents” are the stuff of grace, and I put my trust in them.

Beneath the Cathedral 1988 The National Cathedral

Beneath this chthonic cathedral where tourists swarm like

young bees

in a subterranean chapel domed by solid rock,

I wait

And know

I have been here before.

For this is a stone-dream, wherein

I travel through some small drab towns,

And come upon a huge and multi-leveled church:

It is my church,

And I belong.

The paint peels; candles flicker at the shrines;

A vested celebrant waits in dim sunlight

At the end of a corridor.

But I pass down to the lower depths.

I come to a vast, domed space,

So hollow, so intensely hollow,

And in my sleep I find myself aroused, like in some

adolescent dream.

And then I have two bodies, one an outer husk or shell,

another exactly mirroring the first,

enclosed.

Is this stone a womb, where I re-live my own passionate

conception, and life in vitreo?

Am I an egg, waiting for some rendezvous?

Here in the Arimathean’s cave, I wait to see.

August 2, 2007. Last Month of the last sabbatical

Wedding Day: July 28, 2007

In Duns. Berwickshire, The Borders, Scotland.

Duns is Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, with narrower streets. It is also Oz, or the Shire, except with everything made of stone, solid and made to last. If “the Imagination became flesh and dwelt among us,” it would be at Duns. Yet the town radiates good sense, careful management, and tradition. But not stuffy! The Scots may be frugal and industrious, but they are peerless when it comes to having fun. As with other peoples who have been subject to cultural and political repression at the hands of more powerful neighbors, the Scots cling to their dances, music, speech patterns, and festivals as acts of defiant self-definition. To observe this in action is a major attraction for tourists; to be invited and accepted into it as a participant is an honor beyond measure.

After a blessing ceremony at the Scottish Episcopal Church the Bride and Groom led the entire congregation in a procession down the street to the groom’s family home, where a garden reception was held. A piper led us, the sound echoing far down the hill and throughout the town.

Procession Poem

A piper is playing,

A procession is following

Caitlin and Michael

Down the Duns Road.

Between the tall meadows,

Sheep at their grazing,

Stone walls and slate roofs

Yield to the sound,

Welcome their passage

Into the future,

Surrounded by Scotland,

Embraced by the sky.

Sacred their walking

In the procession,

Begun in the future

On the bones of the past.

Follow the piper,

Never an ending,

Crossing the Borders,

Join with it now.

July 17, 2007. 2nd Month of The last Sabbatical

Tomorrow we leave for England. For me it is a pilgrimage to places of sacred enchantment. I anticipate revisiting dreamscapes, “vast, domed space/So hollow, so intensely hollow…” (Beneath the Cathedral, 1988). I anticipate revisiting Muir Woods and Grace Cathedral, while remaining half a world away from California.

What I do not expect is to find anything like St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco, because I have the impression that such vigorous community life is rare in the C of E. It is not so rare in the Episcopal Church here. What is rare is to find places where the “vigorous community life” coincides with “sacred enchantment”.

The most popular forms of religion in our culture are almost entirely devoid of sacred enchantment. They are correct in their perception that most people do not seek exposure to the mysterious, the unfamiliar, or the “sacred”. I suppose Pentecostalism is an exception.

What I mean by “sacred enchantment” is an interior awareness before it becomes a theology or a set of conscious beliefs. As I have said, it involves dreams, childhood memories, sexuality, feelings of belonging and rejection, safety and threat, love and repulsion, guilt and forgiveness, fascination and vulnerability, ecstasy and dread. It involves the awareness of death and oblivion, as well as powerlessness and dependence, and a primitive sense of justice and the appalling wrongness of much in the world. Finally, it involves a child-like awareness of gladness, gratitude, and wonder. For me, all this gets caught up in the gestures, rhythms, rituals, and “vast, domed spaces” of catholic Christianity.

But without a healthy community to cherish, sustain, manage, finance, and be transformed by “it”, the “sacred” quickly loses its power to enchant. It is ironic that the recurrent effort to maintain the Tradition requires us to risk it in perilous forms of Mission. In reality, we cannot bring ourselves to actually take such risks (any more than could the original disciples of Jesus), so the Mission comes and finds us, drags us “out of the oratories and into the streets”, as our Theology Professor at Nashotah House used to say.

As I say, most people do not want such a paradoxical form of religion or of community, so they shroud their practice of it under layers of familiarity: football stadiums, theater-style seating, soft-rock music, etc. Of course, “vast, domed spaces” can become “familiar” too, a caricature and even perversion of the Gospel. In secular culture, anything like sacred enchantment comes disguised under layers of either violence or satire. Nothing is less enchanting than bland sentimentality, just as nothing is less sacred than stiff, formalized worship with no healthy community behind it, or intimacy without trust.

This is where “sacred irreverence” comes in. To be real, worship and community must have the capacity to laugh at themselves, as well as weep.

WHERE IDOLS ABOUND

For Herb Gunn

Where idols abound

Worship is common

Products are plentiful

But vision is rare.

Where idols abound

The landscape is littered

With discarded scraps

Of old vestments and prayers.


Out in the desert
The cities have crumbled
Discarded chemicals
Poison the sod.
Out in the rubble
Children are playing
On broken-down idols
And the bones of old gods.

Gross is the profit
Fat is the toy
Played with at markets
In Greece, or at Troy.

Wherever the desert
Wind blows it cleanses
The ruins of cities
That once there were found.
Blasted with insight
The prophets they wander
Like owls in the wilderness
Where idols abound.


High as the Spirit
They fly in their hunting
The word that escapes from from the
Cracks in the ground.
Blest with night vision
They write in the darkness
The wind is their weapon
Where idols abound.

JULY 5, 2007 2nd Month of The Last Sabbatical

LECTIO DIVINA...Psalms 42 & 43


These two psalms actually form one unit, with three stanzas each followed the refrain, Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?* and why are you so disquieted within me?
Put your trust in God;* for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of
My countenance, and my God.

This psalm may have a special resonance for anyone who served as an altar-boy in the years prior to the Second Vatican Council, when the “Preparation at the Foot of the Altar”, including Psalm 43, was recited between the Celebrant and the Server at the very beginning of every Mass. The Preparation (which also included the dual recitation of a Roman Catholic devotion called the Confiteor) was murmured in conspiratorial tones barely audible to any congregation that might (or might not) have been present, and it contributed to a sense of strangeness and secretiveness, as if there were mysteries unfolding that were dangerous for the uninitiated.
This sort of obscurantism is why the “Preparation” mini-ritual was removed from the Roman Rite (and by those Anglicans who had sought to imitate it), along with most of the other devotional addenda that had latched onto the liturgy over the centuries. But these rhythmic verses continue to evoke the memory of intimate worship held in side chapels on weekday mornings, witnessed only by a pious few and the whole company of heaven.


Psalm 42
V 1.
As the deer longs for the water-brooks, *
so longs my soul for you, O God.

It is significant that the psalmist chooses a deer as an image of spiritual longing for God. Deer are graceful, beautiful, and possess an almost totemic fascination for a person like me, a hunter since my youth, and one whose dreams are haunted by elusive herds of deer that clearly represent the deepest longings of my own soul. Yet, like any animal, their grace and beauty are diminished as thirst increases. This Psalm reflects the basic Judeo-Christian experience that any relationship with God is going to include times of anguish and bitter desolation. Whether it is St. Paul, Martin Luther, St. John of the Cross, there is a common awareness that proximity to God is risky, painful, and terrifying, and that longing for the experience of God’s presence can become as all-consuming as the need for water in a dry place. By the same token, communion with God is like a cold drink of pure water that restores gracefulness and hope.
But the Psalmist is not there yet…
Vv 2& 3.


My soul is athirst for God, athirst for the living God; * when shall I come to appear before the presence of God?

My tears have been my food day and night,* while all day long they say to me, "Where now is your God?"


The commentaries point out that the Hebrew word translated as “to come before the presence of God” is a term used to describe the pilgrim’s passage through the doors of the Temple in Jerusalem. This Psalm is regarded as a lament uttered by exiles or prisoners of war, Jews prevented from making their accustomed pilgrimages and held captive at a distance from the sacred place of encounter with God.
The world today often seems this way: disenchanted; alienated; utilitarian; impersonal; indifferent. The natural thirst of animals has been replaced with an insatiable thirst for security, comfort, and convenience. This is not the longing of a deer for the water-brooks, but the thirst of a rich nation for more wealth, of a celebrity for more fame, and of an addict for more of whatever-it-is.
But who likes the the idea of “tears as daily (and nightly) food?” It is easier to dull the senses, focus upon the immediate and the superficial, and try to forget our longing. As one heroin-addict said to me years ago, “I’ve gotten to the point where I have to get high to feel normal.” In psychotherapy, emotional pain is often regarded as an early and positive sign of healing. As one therapist friend of mine says, “you can’t heal what you can’t feel.” Perhaps the closest some people can get to God is to experience the painful emptiness where the presence of God might fit. So mediocrity, depression, and cynicism are greater obstacles than suffering, desparation, and outrage.
It is a terrible experience to be mocked for one’s forlorn hopes. “Where is now your God?” is the taunt of the powerful, the succesful, and the smug, but it can also be an inner voice that taunts us, deriding any inclination toward naivite, vulnerability, or trust. This is a familiar voice to me: when vows are broken, trust betrayed, and old icons exposed as idols this voice can be heard within.
Of all the spiritual enemies, this one is the most potent, and most subtle. When a child suffers and dies as family, doctors, and priest watch helplessly, this voice repeats its litany of hopelessness: “Where now is your God?” There is a particular brand of cold-heartedness, emptiness, and helpless rage that can come to eclipse all else that lives within the heart. Over time, it shuts down all the emotions, stifles curiousity, and silences every song.
At such times the memory of past joyfulness can intensify the self-mockery. Psalm 42 speaks with particular force to an ordained person who is depressed or suffering through a time of spiritual darkness. “I didn’t just join in with the ‘voice of praise and thanksgiving’, I led the multitude into the house of God.” I was a role-model, a spiritual guide, a teacher. I was a star.

Vv 4 & 5.


I pour out my soul when I think on these things: * how I went with the multitude and led them into the house of God,

With the voice of praise and thanksgiving, * among those who keep holy-day.

So much for the narcissistic self-importance that afflicts most clergy to one degree or another. Exposing and acknowledging it can be healthy, but only if we can shed the heavy garments of victimhood and self-pity, only if we can acknowledge our vulnerability and woundedness and let humility and gratitude have a chance to emerge.

Vv 6 & 7

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? * and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God; * for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

Verse six could be a beginning-text for all psychotherapy. Why am I so unhappy? Why does everything seem so dull and meaningless? Why am I so restless and dissatisfied? Why am I so anxious?
By the same token, verse seven might provide inspiration for the provider of psychotherapy. I am not sure what Hebrew word has been translated “countenance” in the Book of Common Prayer, but it provides a rich image in English. The Shorter Oxford Dictionary defines the English word as having to do with “comportment, demeanour…appearance…the expression of a face… a sign, gesture… composure of face….” I Samuel 17:42 says that King David was, “…a youth, and ruddy, and of a faire countenance.”
In this way of speaking, a patient might come to a psychotherapist and complain: “my countenance hurts, Doc!” And the therapist might respond, “I can tell. We will have to repair your countenance from the inside out. But first, you must put your trust in the possibility of healing, in the the power of something greater than your present suffering.” In the Twelve Steps of AA it is stated thus: “we came to believe that only a power higher than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”
Or, as the Psalmist says, “put your trust in God… who is the help of my countenance, and my God.” For this ancient author, no façade of cheerfulness, no carefully crafted public image could substitute for the serene countenance of one who has been healed from the inside out. Such healing can only come from a ruthless honesty regarding oneself, and a willingness to venture deeply into the unexamined regions of memory and the unconscious.

Vv 8 & 9


My soul is heavy within me; * therefore I will remember you from the land of Jordan, and from the peak of Mizar among the heights of Hermon.

One deep calls to another in the noise of your cataracts; * all your rapids and floods have gone over me.

Here the psalmist wanders into a specific geography, citing certain landmarks as launchpads for memory. Are these places the site of the author’s captivity? One commentator suggests that the Hebrew translated in the BCP as “the land of Jordan” may be intended to invoke the notion of “the land of descent”, or the “nether-world,” called Sheol in the Hebrew scriptures. That such ideas were common in the ancient Near East is well-documented.
If the poet intends to lead us from the banks of Jordan into Sheol, the imagery in verse 9 would reinforce it, for it could be understood to refer to both the actual Jordan River, in its precipitous descent from the mountains to the Dead Sea, and to the subteranean land of the dead as expressed in Egyptian and other ancient mythology. For us, it can lead us into the nether-world of our own unconscious minds, where parents morph into gods and demons, and “one deep calls to another.” Here, if our souls are to recover from their spiritual obesity, the “flood” must be allowed to drown the old and broken self, overwealmed as it is with heaviness from the past. This surrender to a higher power, this seeming loss of control, can be terrifying, and it is typical for human beings to fight it with all the resources at their disposal: denial; intellectualizing; blaming others; faking recovery; substance abuse. But death will come, one way or another, and the drowned soul is carried away down the Jordan rapids toward the Dead Sea.
It would be difficult for a Christian to ignore the baptismal imagery in these lines. The baptismal font, after all, is a branch of the Jordan River, and a portal into the nether-world of Sheol. In the water of baptism “…we are buried with Christ in his death… share in his resurrection… [and are] reborn by the Holy Spirit.” Having risen with Christ from the water, the reborn soul is ready for verse 10 of the Psalm:

The LORD grants his loving-kindness in the daytime; * in the night season his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.


In the season of darkness there is an unexpected moment of refreshment.
“I wake up to the sound of music,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom:
Let it be.”
This respite is brief, but exactly what is needed in order for the soul to persevere in its pilgrimage. Newly baptized and gleeming with the oil of chistening, the neophyte gasps for breath on the river bank, only to be driven back into the water, back towards the gates of Sheol and the thunderous waterfalls.
What is this? I thought I had finished this phase of my treatment! I want to register a complaint!

vv. 11 & 12
I will say to the God of my strength, “why have you forgotten me? * and why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?"
While my bones are being broken,* my enemies mock me to my face;

Broken bones? This has gotten out of hand! I demand to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention!

Szat so? Listen up…

Vv 13 -15

All day long they mock me * and say to me, "Where now is your God?"

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul? * and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God;* for I will yet give thanks to him, who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

This heaviness that seems so burdensome, it has not gone away, but it is changing in significance, just as what was merely bread becomes sacramental body, and what was a dead Jesus becomes a Risen Lord, so what was “heaviness of soul” becomes the “weight of glory.” As St. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4:17: “For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” The “heaviness” that has dragged the soul down towards nothingness has been transfigured into a “weightiness”, a profundity, a gravitas that serves like a vestment cast over the presence of God. This heaviness contains strong medicine for the fallen countenance. The drowning swimmer becomes a fish, at home in its environment and giving thanks to God with every joyful flash of its silver sides.

Psalm 43

Give judgment for me, O God, and defend my cause against an ungodly people;
deliver me from the deceitful and the wicked.

For you are the God of my strength; why have you put me from you?
and why do I go so heavily while the enemy oppresses me?

Send out your light and your truth, that they may lead me,
and bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling;

That I may go to the altar of God, to the God of my joy and gladness;
and on the harp I will give thanks to you, O God my God.

Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?
and why are you so disquieted within me?

Put your trust in God;
for I will yet give thanks to him who is the help of my countenance, and my God.

July 1, 2007 Month 2 of the last sabbatical

JULY 1, 2007

Journal Entry: December 20, 2006

“What if we knew the effects of our intercessory prayers? What if we knew for certain our prayers could reverse someone’s cancer, or end a war? It’s a good thing we don’t , because if we did have such knowledge the burden of guilt would be too great for us. We would suffer from extreme guilt for every second we did not spend in prayer on behalf of some poor suffering soul, some person whose pain grew worse with every thought their intercessor had about baseball, or bacon, or bananas.
We don’t know the precise effect of our prayers, so we pray in uncertainty, sensing the justifying enormity of Christ who adopts our wayward, orphan prayers and makes them his own…”

JUNE 25, 2007

At St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers, MI.
While browsing in the monastery library I happened upon a ragged monograph that had been personally signed by Dom Gregory Dix, the English Benedictine liturgical scholar. It was dated 1947, at which time Gregory Dix would have been resident with the fledgling St. Gregory’s community. The monograph, with the title Catholicity hand-written on the cover, was a report written at the behest of then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, by a group of high-church English theologians. The Archbishop had asked these people (all men, of course) to consider “whether any synthesis between Catholicism and Protestantism was possible.” It appears that Archbishop Fisher was concerned that the Church of England might be on the verge of splitting in two, or even three!

I was amazed to find that the authors of this monograph included almost all of the writers and thinkers who had influenced my own theological formation. In addition to Gregory Dix there was Austin Farrer (an Oxford theologian who managed to achieve credibility in both biblical and systematic theology), Gabriel Hebert (who is most responsible for popularizing the Liturgical Movement in Anglicanism), Arthur Ramsey (later Archbishop of Canterbury), Ambrose Reeves (later expelled from South Africa for his activism against apartheid), Lionel Thornton (who, as I recall, applied sociology and ascetical theology to the dynamics of congregational life), and (most astonishingly), the poet T.S. Eliot. A veritable rogue’s gallery of Anglo-Catholic heavy-hitters!

In this obscure little booklet “catholicity” is defined as “wholeness”, as a capacity to hold in creative tension all the strands of Christian experience that have developed over the centuries from the primal experience of the apostolic church. According to the authors of Catholicity, “wholeness is not the wholeness of an ideal but of something that is.” Every Christian community partakes of this wholeness to some degree, but no one church or tradition can fully contain it. “The apostolic writers cling to the paradox that the Church is both the Body of Christ and also consists of sinful and fallible members…the glorious Church of the future… and the imperfect Church of the present are one thing…”. The authors quote a former Archbishop of Canterbury, Fredrick Temple:

“Men [this was the 40’s!...JCS] speak of Christianity as if Christians came first and the Church after: as if the origin of the Church was in the individual wills of the individuals who composed it. But, on the contrary, …it is the Church that comes first, and men [!!] are invited into it… .”

So we live in two worlds: on the one hand, we get up in the morning, have Carnation Instant Breakfast, pat the dog, and go about our business; on the other, the world has ended, and we are breaking bread with Mom, Dad, and Dom Gregory Dix in heaven. The future is already present, and the past is now. The church is an absurd and pretentious bunch of social drones; it is also the vanguard of a new and transfigured creation. This strange duality could be interpreted as a form of schizophrenia. To the authors of Catholicity, it is the wisdom of wholeness.
For these authors the Eucharist is the daily bread of catholicity. For them, everything was “contained” within this “action of God toward the Church…and the Church toward God.” This recalls for me how all my old Anglo-Catholic mentors were in love with the Mass. There was a serene objectivity about their Eucharistic piety. For them, there was no dilemma in heaven or earth that could not be made right by offering it to God at the altar and receiving it back transformed in communion. For my mentors (and for Gregory Dix, et al), this eucharistic transaction included the achievement of social and economic justice, racial equality, and international peace. On the more personal side, it included the reconciliation of broken friendships, recovery from addiction, and the prospect of reunion in heaven with departed loved ones.
It is true that this kind of objective catholicity can serve as an “opiate of the people,” and encourage an unbliblical and unchristian resignation to the status quo. After all, if the kingdom of God has already arrived at the eight o’clock Mass, why be anxious about the petty affairs of this miserable world? It is against such self-serving complacency that prophets and reformers have raved. Yet even an apparent complacency can, when counterbalanced by prophetic impatience, contribute to wholeness. Catholicity calls us to be both prophets and priests. It is not a matter of “either/or”, but of differing vocations, of different gifts bestowed by the same Spirit.
Much of that “objectivity” has been lost, a casualty (at least in part) to the effort to make liturgical worship intelligible to highly secularized people. It was a shock for clergy in the middle 1960’s to begin celebrating the Mass “facing the people” and discovering how bored, distracted, or just plain absent those people were. It was easier to maintain delusions about “realized eschatology” with our backs to congregations that had no clue. In recent years evangelicals have reminded us of what visionaries such as Gabriel Hebert knew from the beginning: without the Gospel the Eucharist becomes a more-or-less empty ritual. If no one is aware of any spectacularly Good News to celebrate, why bother with a celebration? “Catholicity” requires conversion, discernment, spirituality, authentic community, wisdom, and repentance just as much as it does reverent Eucharistic worship. More than anything else, it requires that we be real with each other.
As a result, members of our congregations know each other more deeply, give more sacrificially, disagree more vehemently, pray and study the Bible more intently, and expect more of themselves and each other than has been true since the time of Constantine. It costs more to be an Episcopalian than it used to, and those who may have sought a more casual sort of Christianity have gone away. It was this sort of strong spiritual intimacy and honesty that led the Diocese of New Hampshire to choose Gene Robinson as the Bishop. They could not do otherwise without denying the validity of their experience of the Gospel.
Ironically, their integrity has contributed to the stretching of the bonds of catholicity as far as the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion are concerned. In an effort to preserve a measure of unity, the current Archbishop of Canterbury has emphasized the role that consensus ought to play in the maintenance of wholeness. Yet building consensus is no more a guarantee of faithfulness than papal infallibility or protestant fundamentalism. What if the prophet Jeremiah had waited for legislative consensus to confirm his vision of God’s will? The same question applies to Athanasius, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King. Catholicity ought not to be used as an excuse for complacency. At the same time, those who would challenge the status quo must be prepared to suffer the consequences, just as were the prophets of former times. Division and conflict, however, ought not to obscure the requirements of catholicity. Wholeness is not a reward for Christians who behave exactly as they should: it is a gift to be received humbly from God every time we approach the altar for communion. Excommunication and anathema have been the weapons of choice employed against each other by Christians in the past: they do not serve the interests of catholicity now.
The authors of Catholicity put it this way in 1947: “ [The] wholeness of the Church manifests itself in its outward order…the mutual submission of the members of the Church to each other in respect of their divine offices is a part of their submission to the rule of God.”

June 22 19th Day of The Last Sabbatical

Journal Entry from May 9, 2003. Beginning a Retreat at St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers, MI

Upon arriving in the monastery parking-lot I step out of the car and am at once absorbed by a very physical sense of familiarity, a soft and living presence that is utterly welcoming, utterly and strangely real. These monks are caretakers to a region of altered reality, a sacred blob of air and earth commingled within irregular boundaries, boundaries I cannot see but feel when I cross them, as if passing through a veil or curtain. It has been at least eight years since my last visit here, yet the very same frogs seem to be singing. There is also lightening, and towering clouds. I had forgotten the profound stillness. How could I forget? The air is damp, warm and heavy, charged with something more than electricity. The frogs are drinking the air in great gulps, and then singing about their great love.
Well, I am singing about mine.

In the monastic church the heavy wooden doors shut out the frog choir. Outside the doors the entrance is strewn with blossoms fallen from some flowering bush. Everywhere in the deserted church are candles and tiny grottos strewn with icons and more flickering lights. The air smells of barnwood, incense, and wax.
I think of the old, dead monks of the past who cast their lives into the deep well of this place, whose free spirits form part of the singing cloud that pervades it now. I recall their names. What moments they had in this brief world they chose to squander on the management of this sacred enclave, like gamblers in a high-stakes game. Other former monks cut their losses and left the monastery behind: I know their names as well. Having left this place, were they haunted by the memory of it? Or was it simply another former address where they stayed awhile?
I imagine some future time when every monk has gone, and the buildings demolished, or put to some other use. I imagine people pausing in their business to take note of the strangeness, bumping into the sacred boundary just as I did upon arriving here. “What is it about this place?” they wonder. “Why do I suddenly feel at peace, at home, and loved?”



Fishing with Michael

Michael, becalmed on the river;
Fishless, continues casting.
Michael, a poet,
Imagining verses;
A romantic,
Imagining grace.

Downstream, David
Holds a fish aloft;
Clearly, the outlines of a Smallmouth Bass.
James is floating too.

I watch from my place in the river.
There are stones in my shoe.

The river, a poet,
Imagines us:
Graceful verses
Recited by bass,
Held up by innertubes
And down by stones.

Jonathan
June 18, 2007

Two Mega-Metaphors

JUNE 10 7th day of “The Last sabbatical”

September 17, 1996
And yet there are times, moments, when the flow of events becomes a River in which I wade and fish, every cast a search for missing parts of a story.

June 11, 2007 St. Barnabas

Two Mega-Metaphors for God.
1. The Natural World. Rivers in particular, and some forests. It was at the Delaware River in Pennsylvania that I first talked to trees as if they were interested. The River was like a distracted Grandmother, whispering to herself in the night.
Last night on the Au Sable River we fished late, long after our lines and flies became invisible, long after the owls had begun to hoot and hunt, and (we had eventually to admit) long after the trout had ceased to rise. There were plenty of bugs hatching: just no trout eating them. I caught two, a rainbow and a brown. The River was high and strong from the recent rains.
In the gathering darkness the water seems to merge with air, and for awhile we become as if amphibious, inhabiting both regions. For that time we are a discontinuous arc, linked to the underwater realm by fly line and tapered leader, requiring only a rising trout to complete the circle. Yet even the absence of trout implies a potential completeness.
In the fishless void a scrap of remembered poetry rises to the surface. T.S. Eliot, I think.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

The potential implies the possibility. Gods spawn in the River alongside the mayflies, and merge into one. For Thine is the kingdom, continues the poem. Our casting is a rehearsal for such a kingdom, a ritual with sacred sticks waved lucklessly at shadows.

My Up North fishing partner prefers to be known by a pseudonym, so I will call him Riverdog since he stands guard over the rivers, protecting them from pollution and other forms of disrespect. We sit by the river bank in darkness, discussing ways in which our environment is holding us accountable for our self-indulgent life style. Riverdog tells about his Basic Training in the army: “we will break you down,” he was told. That seems authoritarian and harsh, but is exactly what our planet will do to our species if we don’t stop abusing her.
And exactly what Christ teaches, demonstrates: we are being broken down, shattered, disassembled by the events of life, by climatic change, tectonic shifts, geologic or otherwise.
Will U raise us up? Reassemble us as partners with these waters and these fish?

2. Community. Churches in particular.
At the Eucharist in Mio, Michigan, this morning the congregation arrived early, eager to see one another, reluctant to leave at the end. They lavish much care on their quaint, tiny church and well-equipped parish hall, but what they cherish most is their communion with one another. They greet strangers warmly, anxious to show a visitor how to find the pages in the books. When the visitor turns out to be a priest in disguise, they laugh heartily at themselves. They are thankful for their church, and like to share it with others.

What keeps liturgy from being boring and subversive to community and gospel?
A. Participation… the congregation at St. Bartholomew’s, Mio, are liturgical adepts. They read scriptures & prayers, preach sermons, and sing idiosyncratic service music with laudable enthusiasm.
B. Stories… people need to tell about what they did and what it meant to them. Last week they had held the funeral of a member who was highly esteemed in the community. Two hundred people attended the service for this 93 year old woman. Many funerals for people that old are sparsely attended because they have outlived their contemporaries. But some people transcend their generation
C. It is understandable that people hold back from participation in our life and worship. Worship is like looking over a cliff into an abyss of sorrow, joy, brokenness, and infinite possibility. You know there is no way to appreciate it without jumping over the edge and becoming part of it. But there is a strong temptation to watch from a safe distance, to dabble in spirituality, to watch Bassmasters on TV instead of wading into the Au Sable River in the dark. I notice this when I visit other congregations where I have no personal connections.

The rector of St. Bartholomew’s spoke in her sermon about how God empowered prophets, apostles, and Jesus to take action in various ways. She suggested we do the same by recycling Styrofoam. “It’s mostly symbolic,” she acknowledged. Like Elijah the prophet, we must trust in God to reveal the abundance in the midst of apparent scarcity. Like Jesus, we must join the grief-stricken crowds and seek to restore their lost joy. Only God can bring this about, and most of us make changes only when we have to.
In other words, when we are broken down, shattered, and disassembled. Then we may be ready to become bread.

The liturgy at St. Bartholmew’s was good. It served the community. But when there is healthy community, even tedious liturgy can be endured.

The last sabbatical 6th Day

Journal Entries… March 25, 2000.“Caitlin said: some one should write a book about you, Dad, and all your weird experiences. It would be really good. But probably not until after you’re dead.”
June 9, 2007. Going Up North to fish.
Today I wrote to my friend David:
It occurs to me the potential, unseen, often-unresponsive cyber-audience of the internet makes a servicable metaphor for God. I aim my daily commentary at it, fishing for a response of some kind, imagining a response even when there appears to be none.
Fishing, which is what I am about to do now. Another potent metaphor. We cast out our bait, piercing the surface of observable reality, hoping for some sign of life from below.
Of "signs of life" there is no shortage. Are no shortage? Anyhow, they are abundant.
Amen.

June 8 5th Day of the Last Sabbatical

U and Thou

It’s too bad we stopped saying “thee” and “thou” in ordinary usage. The lack of a distinct first-person singular deprives us of a means of intimacy, a threshold to mark the passage from acquaintance to friendship, and from mere politeness to personal trust. Its absence from everyday conversation spoils its use for religious purposes as well. If the only time we say “Thee” is in prayer, it loses currency and distorts meaning. Instead of signaling increased intimacy, it increases distance.
I am often at a loss as to how to address my prayers. “Lord…” is a patriarchal term with archaic political overtones. Bewigged Englishmen with no meaningful power? Doesn’t work for me… .
A monk once told me that his prayer life consisted of simply this: whenever I would normally think of “it,” I think of “you” instead.
So there are no objects in the world, only sacraments? Hmmm…

JOURNAL ENTRY.

March 10, 2004. In deep silence I hurt, mourn, and behold all the tiny sadnesses, the episodes of loss and regret. I grieve over the vast distances that separate us, even as we cling to each other with great tenderness.
My anger, fear, and dread exist across a void, a vast distance from you, God. From U, God.
Uternal.
Upernatural.
Ulmighty.
Uly One of Israel.
U only are immortal, the maker and redeemer of mankind, and we are mortal, formed of the earth. For so did U ordain…
Even at the grave we make our song: Ulleluia, Ullelulu, Ulleluyu.

U reach, flow, seep across the abyss to touch me- heart and head.
U. Nancy; Caitlin; all the kids; all the people. All U.
I offer my isolation, pain, and fear to U.
U are in it and through it and beyond it.
Umen.

June 7 2007 Pilgrimage

Journal Entry

August 24, 2006, Davis CA- This trip is more of a pilgrimage than a vacation. For Nancy, it is an opportunity to revisit places she lived in the 1970’s, places she had left behind, hurriedly and unhappily, and not seen since. For David, it is a chance to set foot in a series of classic punk rock venues and music stores. For me, a quest for havens of sacred practice and true community. Katie’s part is something of a scribe, reporting each stage of our journey into her cell phone. To whom is she speaking?

Pilgrimage begins with a call, an allure, and intimation of bliss.
“Pilgrimage” is to “vacation” as “action” is to “motion;” as “word” is to “noise;” as “grace” is to “luck.”

We are driving through Santa Clara, searching for Nancy’s old apartment-complex. The locus of her memory resembles a dreamscape, crowded with random associations and scraps of memory, scrambled and buried under miles of gleaming new architecture and disguised on streets with unfamiliar names. In a Mexican restaurant painted bright yellow the gregarious owner provides confirmation of structures existing more than thirty years, including the one we are standing in, though not always Mexican, and not always bright yellow. Armed with such knowledge, we renew our search. Then a flash of recognition at a street sign: “Scott Boulevard!” We turn, then turn again, then proceed slowly. “Turn here!” she cries, into a cluster of shaded courtyards and adobe-style apartments with balconies and tile roofs where “my cat would escape and run across the rooftops.” A small swimming pool “where Jason would splash.” Jason the merest infant at the time.

Pilgrimage: from a jumble of disconnected images a pattern leaps out.
Ingredients: persistence; a willingness to endure the chaos, the disorientation; companions willing to accompany you in uncertainty, other eyes through which to see your own past; a capacity to connect with strangers; intuition; trust.

Unlike Islam, Christianity does not require pilgrimage. For Christians, pilgrimage is more of devotional extra, like Stations of the Cross. The Reformation condemned it as a relic of superstition and worse. But the pilgrim’s call seems irrepressible, inevitable, regardless of theology.

June 7, 2007. Day 4 of The Last Sabbatical.

In the end, of course, life itself is a pilgrimage, for “this world is not my home/ I’m only passing through.” Or, rather, it is either a pilgrimage toward some ultimate goal, or it is a vacation from oblivion; it is either an act of defiance and obedience, or it is a random motion taking place on a freak planet, a twitch unobserved on the lifeless skin of an unconscious cosmos. (Come to think of it, is not the cosmos itself a pilgrim, expanding toward ???)
Our life is either a word addressed in darkness to an unseen listener, or it is so much noise, percussion with no beat, dancing with no feet.
Is it grace or luck that I am here, writing these words? That you are there, reading them? Are you there?

It is the pilgrim’s task to discover.