Pilgrimage 2015

Pilgrimage 2015...

Sunday, June 14- Nancy and I set off for the U.P., accompanied by grandsons Jayden and Teagan and dogs Remi and Yogi. For our first night on the road we enjoyed the dog-friendly hospitality of John and Jan Jackson at their lakeside home in Lewiston, MI, where we had opportunity to watch a family of bald eagles in their natural state.

Monday, June 15- passed over the Mackinac Bridge and along the Lake Michigan shoreline to Carney, MI, where my old friends Ginny and Larry McGaw have their farm.

There is an extraordinary evening stillness that descends upon that place, a place where, by labor and ingenuity, they have built a sweet life.

Tuesday, June 16- helped to celebrate the baptism of Sean and Carson Gaston, sons of David and Kasey, who are part of the McGaw-Gaston clan and what Jesus meant when he said "you are the salt of the earth."

When I moved to St. Michael's Farm in Crown Point, IN, David and his brothers were living next door.  It Is profoundly affirming, as well as fun, to renew a bond that has not diminished over 48 years.

June 17-18- retraced our route across The Bridge to Charlevoix, MI, where we caught the ferry to Beaver Island, 32 miles out into Lake Michigan.

June 19-July 2- resided in "The Vicarage" on the north end of the Island, where most of the 657 "year-round" residents live and St. James Episcopal Church is located.

view out the back…

 Days on the island have a ritual, almost liturgical, quality to them, like a monastery following a lax monastic rule. In place of bells the community responds several times a day to blasts from the ferry's mighty horn, three longs, two shorts, answered by the same pattern of blasts from horns at the dock.

Maintaining a more constant rhythm are the cries of gulls and loons, and by the rolling surf on the beach, a sound that, on windless days, is replaced by the audible drone of mosquito wings.

To these rituals we add visits to the nearby library to read and access the web, to Daddy Frank's Ice Cream Parlor for refreshment and conversation, and strolls along the beach in the company of ecstatic dogs.

We make excursions, of course, to remote destinations on the 17 mile-long island, including Iron Ore Creek, a pristine bay and beach at the far southern end. We drove there down the island's west side, through dense forest on a narrow dirt road, passing occasional dwelling-places where people live pretty much off the grid. We saw few people, but those we did see gave the usual Beaver Island wave. After spending about an hour at the public beach, we drove back up the more-populated east side, on another, slightly wider, dirt road that offers spectacular lake views at every bend. The round trip took three hours.

I fish a lot of course, accompanied at different times by Jayden and Teagan, our sons David and Jason, and our friend and neighbor from Troy, Roger Hilborn. Our fishing efforts this year were supported by my Father's Day gift, an electric trolling motor. This was a major asset, enabling me to steer us to remote areas of the various island lakes that heretofore had been too far to reach by rowing. The motor makes virtually no noise, and would be easy to install were it not for its symbiotic attachment, a 53 pound,12 volt battery. So our fishing capabilities were enhanced, but when it came to catching fish the results were about the same as last year, the highlight being Jayden's catching a hefty largemouth bass on a surface lure, using his own rod and reel. The boys' casting and retrieving became quite accomplished as the weeks' passed, although they still require help in the tangled monofilament department.

     Once again, we were privileged to become acquainted with the dark-black bass of Fox Lake on the island. The waters of this remote lake are stained a deep reddish-brown, and apparently the local bass population has adapted to blend in.

     SUNDAYS: June 21 and 28, it was my privilege to preside at the Eucharist in St. James Church

on Beaver Island.

On both occasions, the gospel readings spoke of Jesus’ reaching out to “the other side” of the Sea of Galilee, the  “other side” where outcast  women break all the rules to touch the hem of his robe, the “other side” where storms rage and God seems to be asleep on the job. Now we have left our island haven and crossed back to the other side, to our mainland, mainstream, main street lives, unpunctuated by ceremonial boat horns or expeditions for ice cream. Our pilgrimage, however, is far from over.

The bell for Morning Prayer

When the bell over St. Paul's Chapel rings at 8:25am on weekdays, it is more than a signal to those making their way to Morning Prayer: it is also reminding the resident animals and birds to praise their Maker; it is reminding the Rouge River of its vocation to find the sea; it is reminding the towering stone and watchful statues of their ancient and persistent purpose.

Aren't those things obvious? Why bother with bell-ringing and psalm-saying? Why put so much energy into a church service where no one even passes a collection plate?

Without the bells and the psalms the world would go on, but in a stunted, starved version of itself. There is something the landscape is always trying to say, but lacks the words. The traditional shapes and rhythms of the Daily Office seek to supply that language and speak those words, using symbolic  forms  developed through centuries of monastic practice as symbolic commentary to the tidal, the seasonal, and the catastrophic life that transpires all around us. Each morning in St. Paul’s Chapel  our liturgical phrases and movements are joined to those uttered by the robins and crows, by variant breezes, by passing traffic on Lone Pine Road, and by the people who have prayed, studied, loved, and been buried on this site. The Daily Office translates this inchoate sound into worship, into words beyond concepts, values beyond worth, wisdom beyond explanation. 

The Latin word officium  means “duty”, “service”, or “job”. Hence, we go to the “office” to “work.” The “Daily Offices” of Morning and Evening Prayer constitute, therefore, the “work of worshipping God”, and have the connotation of a disciplined, intentional effort, as opposed to a spontaneous or occasional outburst of some kind.  It should come as no surprise, therefore, to learn that the form and practice of the Daily Office had its origins in the monastic movement, wherein, from the 4^th Century onward, groups of men and women vowed to maintain lives completely focused upon God.  Monastic communities sought to sanctify the natural rhythms of each day with chanted psalms, short readings from scripture, and prayers. Over time, parish churches, cathedrals, and school chapels adapted the monastic pattern to their own circumstances, with clergy and lay people coming together to perform offices of prayer on behalf of neighbors and friends whose officium  in the world made their physical presence at church difficult . 

Poem. "I seem to be a trajectory"

I seem to be a trajectory

Rather than a thing,

a streak across time's topography,

an illusion of physics, mass, solidity,

mostly made of memory

That was the future,

And only briefly 

Now.

So physics is a moving target,

Nothing solid as it seems,

Galaxies passing into dreams,

Beloved instances of light

And night.

 

TRINITY

THE TRINITY: One of the young monks complained to Abba Jonathan: “when I go to pray, it seems like nothing is there.” 

“Exactly,” said Abba Jonathan, “the one to whom you pray is No-Thing.” 

 “So what about the Trinity? ” another monk asked him.

 “That’s easy,” replied Abba Jonathan, “Aim your prayers at the No-Thing, the Every-Thing, and the Wild-Thing.” 

“I guess by ‘Every-Thing’ you mean the 2^nd Person of the Trinity,” the seeker responded.  

 “Yes,” said the older monk, “for ‘he has ascended far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.’ 

 The first inquirer asked, “So the one-to-whom-prayer-is aimed is both No-Thing and Every-Thing?” “You bet,” said Abba Jonathan, “and a Wild-Thing too.”    

Reflections on Community ...from"Rector's Forum" May 10 2015

reflections on Community, Dietrich Bonhoeffer... From Bill Danaher's Sunday "Rector's Forum" May 10. 2015

Following Bonhoeffer, CHRIsTIAN COMMUNITY is "divine" not "ideal". A matter of GRACE that proceeds from the intrusion of the OTHER, not the natural AFFINITIES based on ethnicity, mutual interests, goals, etc. AGAPE over EROS. 

"Church" exists on an institutional, systemic level like any other organization, but it does not transcend this limitation until it's natural affinities fall short, and it is confronted with the reality of the "other", the out-of-control, the strange. 

Bonhoeffer's work was cut short by martyrdom at the hands of the German fascists, but had he survived to develop his thoughts on community he might have come to be less suspicious of the natural affinities that motivate the creation of churches. We do not usually set out to find the "other" and form communities with it. Rather, we seek out other people whose experiences are similar, whose motivations seem trustworthy, and who (as Father Bill pointed out) "will do" for the purposes of spiritual pilgrimage, and we try to fashion our common life so as to be as receptive as possible to the intrusions of that Otherly Grace (my term). 

SO Without affinity the OTHER goes unrecognized; without Boundaries there can be no  transgression; without the institutional church there is no place for community to emerge. 

NOTES FROM CHARLES LAFOND

Notes from Charles LaFond, author of "Fearless Fundraising". Speaking at CCC April 24, 2015

1) Stewardship= begins with being truly PRESENT with people, like Mary & John at the cross. Tend to your own spiritual life. Stewardship =KIND, EFFECtIVE, minus NICE. 

2) Compassion for their situation- we are are living with John The Baptist in the Wilderness. Continuum CLamos/chaos/order/control...we try to impose ORDER but the better course is to seek CHAORD, a "conflation of order and chaos." Order enough to feel safe; chaotic enough to be fun.

3) Compassion or their fear. JESUS LOOKED STRAIGHT AT THE YOUNG RICH RULER AND WARMED UP TO HIM. Understand their fear of scarcity, of being judged, of being hustled. It is an honor to ask a person to become a giver, a lover, a creator. "Detoxify their limiting beliefs". Be a "curator of their hope". Practice a spirituality = "a relentless attachment to truth." Debunk NOSTALGIA= Untruth about the past; FANTASY= untruth about the present and future. 

Charles LaFond ASSUMES your congregation is earning people's trust and generosity. 'Go willingly into the wilderness." He also agrees that INVOLVEMENT precedes GIVING. This contrasts to other stewardship experts who have told  me GIVING can be a way for some people to BECOME INVOLVED. 

Is it at all an original thought to say that "faith" is a kind of "suspension of disbelief"? Last week in one of the groups at Christ Church Cranbrook we were discussing the passage in 2nd Kings where Elijah is "taken up to heaven in a whirlwind." It seemed to us that the closest we come to such experiences is in dreams or at the movies. Movies and plays call for a "suspension of disbelief", a willing surrender to the embrace of an alternative world. In dreams, however, the alternative world seems more like waking reality, more immediate and convincing, at least until one awakes and resumes a waking perspective. 

"Faith" involves a posture of its own, somewhere between a movie and a dream. For postmodern folk like us, we must be prepared to set aside our analytical, "enlightenment" ways of seeing and "see" through the eyes of our spiritual ancestors. We do this willingly, consciously, just as we do when entering a movie theater. But the process does not end there, as a form of religious entertainment. Rather, when experienced in the context of worship, prayer, and reflection, it can take on a quality of "givenness" and immediacy that resembles the convincing authenticity of dreams. We do not invent the way these stories and images lay claim to our loyalties and our sense of identity. Perhaps dreams are what remains of a spiritual receptivity that our ancestors possessed but we have lost.

 Of course, some would describe this as simple "gullibility", or "naivite", and they would not be entirely wrong.  

What I suggest is that we approach the stories of our spiritual tradition with as much openness and vulnerability as we do skepticism and guardedness. We do not have to give up our doubts about firery chariots swooping down  from the sky to appreciate the potential for transfiguration that inhabits even our disenchanted world. It seems that our dreams and imaginative experiences can bring us right up to the brink of what in earlier times would have been described as "visionary." So we are like Martin Luther King, or Moses, having "been to the mountaintop, and seen the Promised Land." We know it by its effects, its blessings, its adherents, and its smell. 

Are we "seeing" what Elisha and the others saw, only shorn of the comfort of unquestioned belief? We have embraced the solidity of being fully awake to reality, but does that mean we must utterly renounce the possibilities unveiled within the dreams?