Tribute to Father Jim Jones, d. September 1, 2006

Rambling Around with Jimmy Jones

When I still in high school a jail chaplain came to our parish in Chicago to preach on behalf of the social ministries of the diocese. Jim Jones was not a gentle preacher. He “spoke as one with authority, and not as the scribes,” or, one might add, “and not as Episcopalians are accustomed to hear.” Yet it was not in the evangelical style either. It was “in your face” preaching. It translated the gospel directly into jailhouse jargon, into the vernacular of an oppressed and degraded people. It was irreverent at times, invoking the image of apostles and saints as bumbling, clueless people like ourselves. I remember Father Jones, quoting the New Testament in his sharp nasal voice, “and Peter, not knowing what to say, said…”. It was the first time I had heard a congregation laugh so hard during a sermon, or discuss it so intently afterward. It was also the first time I had been confronted with the reality, not only that it was possible for prisoners to hear the Good News proclaimed by Jesus Christ, but that prisoners are the only ones who can here it. Most amazing of all, I was hearing the Gospel as if I were a prisoner myself, and understanding for the first time how it might truly deserve to be called “Good News,” the best possible news. I remember the passion with which he spoke of Christ incarnate among the least respectable and most despised members of society. And I remember thinking, “this is what I believe. This is how I want to be.”

The notice in The Living Church Magazine read “The Rev. James G. Jones, Jr., who founded the first halfway house for ex-convicts in the United States, died Sept. 1 in his sleep in Copper Harbor, MI. He was 76.”

The Living Church is a small magazine with a narrow focus, and an ironic venue in which to read the obituary of a man who had appeared on the cover of Life Magazine, been the subject of a feature article in The Saturday Evening Post, and been a guest on This Is Your Life. It is ironic that a homicidal cult leader with the same name is better known than a man who, as an Episcopal priest, community organizer, and psychotherapist had touched the lives of people from the halls of highest academia to the meanest Chicago streets. James G. Jones touched my life, and served at different stages as prophet, role model, mentor, friend, and now… what do you call a departed Christian who has had such a blessed influence on the lives of others?… I think you call them “saints”.

But not without further irony. Jim had fallen far away from the church, though I understand he did occasionally attend Roman Catholic services. A nationally-known authority on addiction and substance abuse, he struggled with alcoholism himself, as well as heart disease, and the lingering effects of the encephalitis which had nearly taken his life years before. In many ways, Jim was a tragic figure.

Most clergy have a streak of narcissism, and ordained ministry can provide a socially acceptable way to be the center of attention. But the acclaim focused upon Jim in those early days had a Hollywood-like quality, and his enjoyment of it may have been close to an addiction. But there was nothing posed or fraudulent about his passion for the underdog, his prophetic loathing for injustice, or his often irreverent efforts to expose the idolatrous features of American culture and religion. Although it often made good theater, it was never done for show.

And nothing… not addiction, not disease, not disillusionment, not death … can take away the gift that Jim was to those who had caught his vision, or been touched by his contagious “sense of the sacred” that made holy things seem real and even the harshest reality seem holy.

One of Jim’s qualities was a fearlessness that seemed reckless at times. Many times in his company I felt the rage of alienated people directed towards us. These people could be Black, White, criminals, police officers, or pious church people. Jim would confront, provoke, debate, and agitate. He had no apparent need of happy endings. It was enough to speak the truth and then “shake the dust from his feet.” Early in our history with each other he took me to a tavern on Chicago’s Skid Row where the owner had donated some canned goods. It was 10a.m., and a group of down-and-out men were gathered on the sidewalk in front of the tavern. As we entered, they glared at us with undisguised suspicion. When we emerged from the stale-beer dinginess of the tavern, their hostility had grown more obvious. I was afraid they were not going to allow us to pass through them on the sidewalk. Undeterred, Father Jones walked up to one of the group and blew air in the man’s face. “That’s to show you guys we weren’t in there drinking at 10 o’clock in the morning!” he announced. The men began to laugh and slap us on the back. They were still waving and laughing as we drove away.

An often-repeated story concerned an occurrence when Jim was chaplain of the Cook County Jail. It seems there was a cigar-chewing guard who repeatedly would come into the chapel and remove prisoners whom he felt were behaving badly. Jim objected, but the guard ignored his protests. “So I decked him”, Jim liked to say.” This got him in trouble with the prison administration, of course, and he was brought before an Assistant Warden who later became a distinguished criminologist at the University of Chicago. Many years later, Jim and I attended a Memorial Service for that same man, who, it happens, had taken his own life. Although the Memorial was not to be “religious,” Jim had been asked to give one of the memorial talks. The other speakers were all very solemn academic colleagues of the deceased. Alone among them, Jim spoke of his anger: “I’m mad at him for killing himself,” Jim said, “but I love him anyway, and so does God.” These words startled that erudite assembly, and spoke for their true feelings in a way that polite erudition could not. Jim went on to tell the story of the offensive prison guard, and how the Assistant Warden who counseled him afterward was the same man being memorialized that afternoon. “He taught me about the meaning of my own religion,” Jim said. “That was the beginning of my education in non-violence. Since that day I have never hit another human being.”

Jim’s personal life was difficult. He and his first wife, Kitty, divorced in the mid-1960’s, and he became a part-time father to their five children. He remarried and moved to Roanoke, Virginia, where he worked as a community organizer. In the early 1970’s he moved to Miami, FL, where he worked as a director of substance abuse recovery programs and as a private psychotherapist. Eventually, he divorced and remarried again, and after his retirement went to live in Copper Harbor, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where his father (also an Episcopal priest) had served for a time while Jim was a boy.

During the later years in Florida Jim grew increasingly disillusioned with the church, eventually to the point of bitterness. Though he served as an assistant in several congregations, he often expressed disappointment in not being called to serve as rector of a parish. After an initial openness regarding women’s ordination to the priesthood, he became increasingly negative on the issue. This provides a further irony to his life, since Jim was the catalyst for so many catholic-minded Episcopalians to adopt a progressive stance with regard to such changes in the church. He was “on the left” in every other aspect of church politics. On the subject of human sexuality, for instance, he was an early and outspoken champion for the rights of homosexuals in the church and society in general. Why so negative about the ordination of women? The reasons he put forth did not seem to match the intensity of his feelings on the matter.

1976 was the year the Episcopal Church approved the ordination of women, but wonder if the roots of Jim’s alienation did not lie in the preceding decade, with Vatican II in the Roman Catholic Church. This was the Council that sought to renew the idea of the church as the “Community of All the Baptized”, and with that to reduce the emphasis on clerical power and priestly mystique. The Vatican II decrees seemed to de-mystify the Mass for many people, and although he tried to adapt to the “new rites” (of which the Episcopal Church had its own version), Jim never seemed to quite “get it”. He once told me “in the old days, we never worried about ‘the experience of worship’… in those days, we WERE the experience.” Did Father Jim feel lost without the old mystique of the priesthood? It may seem like a foolish question, since his bearing and manner were far from conventional. It may be, however, that the popular image of a priest as an austere and remote figure provided a kind of ready-made icon for him to be iconoclastic about. The discrediting of these old ideas, obscured by unconscious projections and expectations, may have affected Jim more than he, or anyone else, knew. If so, he was not alone.

If this were so, it could be understood as another example of Jim’s capacity for prophetic insight. Since the 1960’s, clergy have put tremendous energy seeking credibility in the secular arena, and now find themselves scrambling to recover a “sense of the sacred” which many had once regarded as a liability. While the churches were learning to be “secular”, the spiritual agenda of our culture was being co-opted by neo-evangelicals and New Age spirituality. One doesn’t have to reject the ordination of women to acknowledge that didactic, utilitarian liturgy fails to catch the imagination of our times. Perhaps Jim, for all his contradictions, was as much a prophet in this area as in others, striving to sustain an authentic “sense of the sacred” with little support from a church preoccupied with pietistic “renewal movements” and institutional survival.

But it might have been different, and we can still learn from Jim’s example, even his failings. To grasp the significance of a “baptismal ecclesiology” takes more than a change in seminary curricula. For such a return to early Christian norms it is necessary for each of us to become more intimate and more honest with each other and ourselves, and to confront the demons, ghosts, and idols that afflict us from within and without. We must learn to be less reliant on established hierarchies, whether based on class, gender, race, or religion. If it’s true that Jim was better at impressing, entertaining, shocking, and inspiring people than he was at just being with them, he would not be the only person to have it so.

Jim once told me that “I’ve never had a woman as a friend,” a startling admission for a thrice-married man who was rarely without female companionship. “Maybe in AA I can make some woman friends”, he told me. That was years ago. Maybe he did.

Life Magazine is dead, and so is This Is Your Life. If the Saturday Evening Post still exists it is as a shadow of its former self. And now Father Jim is dead. Only The Living Church, and whatever publication you are now reading, is alive to tell his story.

But it will be told, one way or another. It is being told whenever our eyes are opened so that holy things seem real, and even the harshest reality seems holy. It is being told when we are able to use the language of social analysis and psychology to express the Gospel in solidarity with the oppressed and forgotten. It is being told when we are fearless, reckless, and prodigal in our love for the world and the Incarnate God who hides within it. It is being told when we can express our reverence in irreverent ways, and even our tragic flaws can be seen as having their comic aspect. These are things Jim taught me to value, and I still do.

Pray for us, Father Jim. When we are stuck in our various addictions, pray that we might find serenity for that one day. When we are taking ourselves too seriously, pray that we might lighten up. When we are lonesome, pray that someone like you bangs on our door to go out and find a blues band playing somewhere. When we are hesitant to call or write some old friend, pray that we not put it off. And while you’re at it, pray that I be forgiven for not staying in closer touch with you. If I have written anything that is offensive to you or represents you falsely… well, you’re stuck with it now. As John Prine has written and sung,

Father forgive us for what we must do;

You forgive us, and we’ll forgive you.

We’ll forgive each other til we all turn blue,

And whistle and go fishin’ in heaven.

Rest in peace, old friend. “Even at the grave we make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”

Notes from Trinity Institute 2011

TRINITY INSTITUTE, 2011
1. Walter Brueggeman, Old Testament Scholar
How do we distinguish the “truth” of scripture from those elements which we know to be culturally conditioned? That includes our own culturally-conditioned viewpoint. The 19th Century saw a “three-cornered power struggle” with regard to scripture…

Reductionist & dogmatic orthodoxy /Affective pietism/ rationalist developmentalism

For us today, this struggle has lost its validity. We cannot accept dogmatic fundamentalism, and rationalism has no “missional energy.” We seek a new paradigm.

A. Paul Ricour (French scholar/philosopher) provides this in his model of “pre-critical/critical/and post-critical” approaches to faith and the scriptures. We cannot return to a “pre-critical innocence,” but we can embrace a “Second Naivite”, an intentional “post-critical innocence” that suspends disbelief in the interest of experiencing a greater reality.
B. Make use of newer modes of inquiry that approach scripture from more than a historical perspective. When we say “Christ is risen” we do not ask, “is that a historical claim or a poetic metaphor?” Instead, we seek to “get inside the text and see what it is saying from within.” This is “rhetorical criticism.” [ I say-The big question is not, “did Jesus really rise from the dead? But rather “so what?”]
C. Social Scientific criticism seeks to understand how texts are embedded in power relationships. This is “Ideology Critique.” Feminist scholarship, Liberation Theology, and Post Colonial scholarship ask “what interests did the scriptural authors, editors, and interpreters represent? What interests do WE represent?” If only white males are in the room when the Bible is being interpreted, how does that impact the result? And, even more, how does that fit with the various messages that the scriptures convey? When we look to the disputed aspects of the biblical text, the subtext or background elements, the result can be transformative. When we engage in Ideology Criticism we realize we are more enmeshed that we realized, and a new level of empowerment can ensue. {I say- God is present/active when I am most uncomfortable. The same is true in psychotherapy.}
D. Jewish modes of interpretation “do not move quickly toward closure” with regard to the meaning of scriptural texts. The rabbis return again and again to the same passages, exploring them through new stories. This method was taken up by Freud and applied to psychotherapy, wherein one “walks endlessly around a dream or memory” with the expectation of discovering multiple meanings that, hopefully, prove emancipatory.
According to Freud, “the self is thick, layered, and conflicted.” The same is true of the biblical text. A pre-critical mindset denies that there is any conflict within the text. A post-critical mindset relishes them. “THE GOD REVEALED TO US IN THE SCRIPTURES IS THICK, LAYERED, AND CONFLICTED, AND WE ARE MADE IN THAT IMAGE.”
GROWING CHURCHES ARE PRE-CRITICAL… people are afraid, ignorant, or innocent. PART OF OUR VOCATION MAY BE TO HELP PEOPLE MOVE FROM PRE-CRITICAL TO CRITICAL, but not abandon them there. ONE MUST GIVE UP CERTITUDE TO BECOME POST-CRITICAL. We can help people to embrace NOT CERTITUDE, BUT FIDELITY. WHAT WE SEEK IS NOT AN INFALLIBLE TEXT, BUT A RELIABLE GOD, A RELIABLE COMMUNITY, AND A RELIABLE NEIGHBOR.
Question of the Resurrection is not analyzable. It comes down to DO I ACCEPT THE WITNESSES? The Community of faith must discern who are the true witnesses.
How do we know a true interpretation when we see it? Suffering & struggle. If we are not motivated to love and struggle, it is not true.
[MY THOUGHT: ALL RELIGIOUS STATEMENTS ARE AT LEAST SOMEWHAT FALSE, EVEN THE TRUEST ONES]

SISTER THERESA OKure, NIGERIAN BIBLICAL SCHOLAR

TRUTH = “WHAT IS REAL?” NOT= “what is not false?”
WE ARE PRODUCTS OF OUR CULTURE, BUT THE IMAGE OF GOD EXISTS IN US SO THAT WE ARE ALWAYS CAPABLE OF TRANSCENDING CULTURE (OR CLASS/RACE/ETC).
GOSPEL=NOT A CONTENT BUT A SHAPE. IGNATIOUS OF ANTIOCH= “OUR BOOK IS A PERSON.”
[ME=”TRUTH IS WHERE IRONY BEGINS”]

MARY GORDON , PROFESSOR AT BARNARD COLLEGE & NOVELIST

HOW IDENTIFY A MISREADING OF SCRIPTURE? WE BRING OUR OWN NEEDS TO THE READING: CERTAINTY, POWER, CONTROL, ETC. The Grand Inquisitor in Brothers Karamazov accuses Jesus: “Thou didst choose all that is exceptional, vague, and enigmatic.”
To guard against misreadings, remember that
1. JESUS EXEMPLIFIED AND OPENED TO OTHERS AN INTIMATE RELATIONSHIP TO GOD.
2. JESUS ACTIVELY ENGAGED IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH HUMAN BEINGS OF ALL KINDS.
3. JESUS SUFFERED ON THE CROSS, AND BY THE RESURRECTIONS REVEALS ALL HUMAN SUFFERING TO BE NOT ABSURD, BUT MEANINGFUL/REDEMPTIVE.
CHRISTIANITY DOES NOT PRESENT A SUPERNATURAL ESCAPE FROM SUFFERING, BUT OFFERS A SUPERNATURAL USE OF SUFFERING.
“MIS-READING RESULTS IN ACTIONS THAT DENY ANY OF THE ABOVE CRITEREA.”
IN LATIN, “SALVATION” IS CONNECTED TO “SALUS”= “HEALTH.” SALVATION= THE ULTIMATE WHOLE-NESS, COMPLETENESS, FULLNESS.
“INTIMACY WITH GOD” DOES NOT MEAN PERPETUAL SERENITY. “INTIMACY IS LOST WHEN NOBODY IS LISTENING. INTIMACY=AGONY. GOOD FRIDAY= “A TOTAL VOID?” “a LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE VOID?”
RESURRECTION? DETAILS OF THE EVENT =NOT IMPORTANT (MY TAKE: UNKNOWABLE IN ANY CASE]. “LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH.”
IN JOHN’S GOSPEL, THE CROSS=”GLORY” THE SAME WAY “LABOR”= “BIRTH.”

MARY Callaway, Fordham University
OUR “COMMUNITY” IS NOT LIMITED TO OUR OWN IMMEDIATE CIRCLE, OR EVEN THE SUM TOTAL OF ALL THE CIRCLES IN THE WORLD, BUT INCLUDES THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.”

FROM ST. GREGORY THE GREAT: “SCRIPTURE IS LIKE A RIVER, BROAD AND DEEP, SHALLOW ENOUGH HERE FOR A LAMB TO WADE, DEEP ENOUGH THERE FOR AN ELEPHANT TO SWIM.”

Hunter's Lament

I hate to deer hunt.
I hate the dimness of a late November afternoon.

I hate the knowledge that a deer might come, and spoil my plans regarding coffee and a
fire.
I hate the chill wind, the groan of writhing trees, and the rattle of sleet against
dry leaves.
Did I mention how I hate the dimness? I suppose I did.

Most of all, I hate that you are not here, waiting at the truck or camp with coffee,
or sometimes whiskey, and stories of what you did or did not see.
Who else would love to hate these things but you and me?

Meditation in Muir Woods, June 26, 2010.

Creator, I am a slender fern growing here in the shadow of these vast red trees. For a thousand years they have listened to the soft murmur of the water running over rocks worn smooth. They have listened, and remember everything wrapped within their slow growing rings. They remember storms and fires and droughts when the creek fell silent and moisture came only from the omnipresent fog. They remember looking down at my fern ancestors, clinging tenuously to damp life like tiny acolytes serving nervously at the redwoods’ feet. They remember silent Indians, moving swiftly through the forest in search of better hunting grounds. They remember men with saws and teams of huge horses, hacking at the boundaries of this sacred place, cutting, sawing, hauling, burning, building, piling up money along with boards, while the trees still loomed and grew ponderously overhead.
They remember it all, and the memories reach so high, up toward you, the creator, and down deep into the earth toward you as well, and I am lifted and drawn deep with them. They sing with the people walking by today, speaking Italian and Russian and Alabaman. “Theyuz a whole whoppin’ beeg fambly ub’m ovah theyah,” they proclaim in wonder, their necks crained backward and their voices muffled, as if they were pilgrims in an unfamiliar church.

A leaf falls on the page where the man is writing, making him another memory enclosed within the trees, making him bark and branch, fern and fog, silence and water-song.
His friends are waiting on the footbridge. All are remembered, all have gone.

More Psalmic Verses: Creation-Song

CREATION SONG

Abba, U slung this chunk of cooling space-rock into orbit * and wrapped the
biosphere around it.
U coaxed forth precise conditions * for thoughts slowly to emerge, tentative
and slimy, from primeaval mud.
U provided animals for our clumsy ancestors to hunt, * and on the walls
of caves they scrawled icons of their gratitude.
U sought out tribes to represent U in the world, * and wrestled them into
something like submission.
U rescued them from slavery by the hand of Moses and Aaron, * and many
unsubmissive women.
U hounded them with relentless prophets, * and beheld the folly of their
kings.
U revealed Urself in unexpected births, * and in the fertility of fields and flocks.
U scattered them like seeds upon the earth, * that they might become a blessing to
the world.

The "Parable of the Dishonest Manager" Luke 16:1-13

REFLECTIONS ON THE “PARABLE OF THE DISHONEST MANAGER”*
Luke 16:1-13

About the “dishonest manager…”

WE are the “Dishonest Manager”, just as we are the “Rich Young Man”, the Good Samaritan, Lazarus, etc. ALL wealth is dishonest. There is NO “parable of the righteous Manager.” Even the Good Samaritan is in need of forgiveness. We all partake of what the older translations call “Mammon,” even if we avoid the flagrant wheeling & dealing of the Dishonest Manager.
So then, some will ask, “what’s the point of trying to be honest? A legitimate question, and one that has been addressed by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Martin Luther, and many others… but not by me at this moment. I leave the issue of “antinomianism” for another day.
“The Master commended the Dishonest Manager. There is a clue! What “Master” would do that? The beginning of the parable paints a picture of the Master as a typical boss-man. The Dishonest Manager does not go to the Master and say, “I figure you’d be impressed if I doctored the books to my own advantage.” He had to be as astonished as we are at this unexpected twist in the plot.
So does that mean we will be commended if we act shrewdly on behalf of the kingdom? “Make friends for yourselves”, he says (and so did Pastor Manisha in her sermon yesterday) using “dishonest wealth” (is there any other kind?). Nothing is said about how the Dishonest Manager RESPONDED to the Master’s equanimity. Chances are, he saw it as a sign of weakness and became more corrupt than ever.
The kingdom of God is a Retirement Community for unsuccessful swindlers and inside-traders. “How did I get here?” asks Bernie Mahdoff. “Beats me”, responds the head of ENRON Corp., “you must have done somebody a favor back in the day. As for me, I can’t stand this place, all these big wedding parties with riff raff as guests of honor. I’m trying to arrange for a transfer to some other kingdom.” “There’s only one other alternative that I know of.” says Bernie. “It’s hard to get used to this forgiveness thing, but I find that it’s growing on me.”

Good News. Great News. We are forgiven for our participation in the Kingdom of Mammon. We are like Jonah, swallowed by the Monster but vomited safely back on shore by virtue of the grace of God. Our part is to stop fighting it, but even if we can’t stop (and no one can, if they eat), the Mischievous Master keeps pulling the rug out from under both our sins and our virtues. It’s also our responsibility to accept the essential kinship between ourselves and the Dishonest Manager types.

* From henceforth I shall refer to this passage as “The Parable of the Mischievous Master.”