Thanks.
In
the Beginning
I
never intended to become an Episcopal priest and spend the best years
of my life in parish ministry. What I intended was to earn a Ph.D. in
American Literature from some reasonably prestigious university and
then teach contemporary literature at some small liberal arts college
while I wrote the Great American Novel. Well, the road to priesthood
is paved with such intentions.
John Stasny, was my
favorite professor in college—I took seven of his classes in my
eight semesters so it could be said that I minored in Mr. Stasny. At
any rate, he and Manfred Otto Meitzen, head of the Religion
Department (who later died in a motorcycle accident in Branson,
Missouri) came to me in my senior year and told me they had
recommended me for a 'trial year in seminary' to be paid for by the
Rockefeller Foundation. All I had to do was go through some
interviews and tell the Rockefeller people over and again that I
didn't want to go to seminary.
“I don't want to
go to seminary,” I told them, “I'm waiting to hear from the
University of Virginia and Iowa for graduate school.”
“That's perfect!”
Mr Stasny said. (Although he was a tenured professor at WVU, he
didn't have a doctorate. I once asked him why and he answered,
“Bradley, who on earth would test me?” I had to agree.)
“How's that
'perfect'?” I asked. “I don't want to go to seminary. It's never
crossed my mind....”
“Perfect,” said
Dr. Meitzen, “just tell the committee that over and over.”
So, just to please
these two men I admired greatly, I went to Pittsburgh to be
interviewed. I told the committee in a dozen ways and inside
out/upside down a dozen more that I most certainly DIDN'T want to go
to seminary.
“Great,” they
all said, over and again, “that's just perfect!”
So I became a
Rockefeller Fellow and went to Harvard Divinity School on the
Rockefeller's money, stayed another year and got a degree—an MTS,
'Master of Theological Studies', which, along with $3.75 will get you
a small coffee at Starbucks.
Remitha Spurlock,
one of the most holy people I ever knew, who was a member of the
first parish I served—St. James in Charleston, West Virginia—often
said, “God works is mischievous ways.” And so God does—along
with the Rockefeller foundation.
You know, after
reading the chapter about the Archangel Mariah, why I went back to
finish a professional degree and became a priest. But I blame John
Stasny and Manfred Otto Meitzen for pointing me toward that all-wrong
trip to Harvard Divinity School, where I'd get bitten (as I imagine
they thought I might) by the Theology-bug and change all my plans.
I landed at Harvard
at the best time ever: 1969. Hell's bells, things were a poppin' in
those heady days! In my four semesters, three of them were cut short
by a student strike, a faculty strike and a combined student/faculty
strike. I was immersed in the chaos I love and thrive in. Ask anyone
who knows me—I do best in chaos. And if it doesn't exist, I will
find a way to create it.
I
was friends with a law student at Harvard named Helen Anderson. She
later became a writer about 'law and women' and occasionally had a
column in the The
New York Times.
But in those weird times in the late 60's and early 70's, Helen was a
drama queen. The day the National Guard was called out to protect the
ROTC building—Harvard had ROTC, amazing—Helen came to my room in
Divinity Hall to tell me, “the Revolution is starting and I have
nothing to wear!”
I was once down at
the Boston Common with Helen and Don, my best friend at Harvard.
Helen got a run in her panty hose. Nothing would do
her but go to Jordan
Marsh to buy new ones. The young clerk asked her what shade she
wanted and Helen said, “how many shades are there?”
“Two hundred and
twenty four,” the clerk responded and Helen burst into tears.
“I can't cope
with that much pressure,” she cried and headed for the Ladies'
Room. Don made the decision for her and got burnt cinnamon, if my
memory serves me. Once we delivered them to the bathroom and Helen
put them on, it was if nothing had happened. We went to ride the Swan
Boats.
I'll
try in these musings and reflections and memories to share some
thoughts about parish ministry and 'the Church'(that wondrous and
schizophrenic institution) but most of what I will
write will be about the people who served me more faithfully and well
than I ever served them. People are, after all, the real raw material
of parish ministry—much of the rest is window dressing and smoke
and mirrors. To quote The Rev. Wil B. Dunn, the parson in the comic
strip Kudzu,
“human relations is my field....”
For the last decade
or so of my full-time ministry, I decided not to have an office. I
did most all the writing and study I needed to do at home or sitting
in the parish library with the door open. I know I probably annoyed
the office staff no end by hanging around on the first floor so much,
but it seemed to me that what I was 'for' was to be present to the
daily swirl of activity of that very busy urban parish. Hundreds of
people came through the church doors everyday—the soup kitchen was
feeding 300+ a day when I retired, the Choristers were there two
afternoons a week, a dance group used the building twice a week,
someone was always trying out the McManis Organ, people wandered off
the street to take a look and I was usually there to give them a tour
of the remarkable building, lots of local groups used our rooms for
meetings, and parish members who just popped in always saw me
wandering around. That was a good thing. Being around people suited
me much more than being in an office doing something that probably,
in the cosmic scheme of things, was pretty unnecessary.
I once asked the
son of a very active Episcopal lay woman what his mom did all the
time. “She looks for meetings to go to,” he told me. He was six,
I remember.
I think lots of
church folks, especially clergy, 'look for meetings to go to' to
demonstrate how busy they are. Meetings were, of course, a part of my
life, but I didn't 'look for' them. Instead, what I did, at least in
the last decade of my full-time ministry was 'hang around'. It suited
me rather well, I believe.
Divinity Hall,
where I lived for a year, was next door to the Semitic Museum.
Harvard, in its infinite wisdom, had leased an office in that
building to the CIA for recruiting purposes. Remember—this was
1969—the SDS or even more radical group, found out about the CIA
office and tried to blow up the Semitic Museum one night. There were
a whole host of firetrucks and other emergency vehicles out on the
street and I wanted to see what was going on. There was Dr. G. E.
Wright, an Old Testament scholar, sitting on the edge of the sidewalk
holding some relic that had been damaged. He was weeping.
G. E. Wright was a
renowned person in his field. He was one of the best teachers at
Harvard and known far and wide, along with Professor Von Radt from
Germany, as a leading light in Old Testament studies. He was also
renowned for saying in his lectures: “there are two ways to study
the Old Testament. The Von Radt way and the Wright way....” That
was always greeted with laughter and applause.
And there he was,
sitting on the curb, weeping over the lost documents and artifacts
from the explosion, which, by the way, didn't damage the CIA offices
at all. In that moment, there on Divinity Avenue, I realized the
value of 'the past'. Until that moment I believed stuff in museums
and rare book collections was nothing more than 'old stuff'. But
seeing this world-wide wide acknowledged, aging man, weeping over the
loss of 'old stuff' convinced me forever of the value of history and
the 'stuff' history created. And I respected Dr. Wright a great deal
from that moment forward.
One of the theology professors at Harvard was Richard Reinhold
Niebuhr—son of Richard and nephew of Reinhold. Ralph McGill,
another theologian, once commented about Dr. Niebuhr: “what was the
boy going to do after all? Drive a cab in San Francisco? Theology is
the family business.” (Dr. McGill had, in fact, driven a San
Francisco cab for a few year, a vocation he said was a perfect
prelude to a life spent talking about God.)
Niebuhr as a strange character to us all. He was a quintessential
absent-minded professor. Once he wandered into the lecture hall
carrying an armful of fat books, spead them all out, rearranged the
order they were in, turned to a particular page in each one, stared
at them for a while and drew on the chalk board in wild, cruel,
looping lines until he had created what looked like a deformed
tornado. He stared at that for a while, at the same time cocking his
head to listen to a bird outside the open window singing to the
perfect Spring day.
“The
Void,” he said, not bothering to look at the 75 or so students
sitting in tiers behind him. And then, almost to himself, he
repeated, “the Void...” In a moment, he drew a stick figure of a
man in the midst of the funnel cloud. He stepped back and said,
reverently, it seemed to me, “Homo
religiosis.”
He
listened to the bird again, closed and gathered his books and left,
perhaps to go to his study, perhaps to walk around in the warm April
sun. We never figured out whether he just forgot he had a lecture to
give or if the bird's song has mesmerized him.
I was walking back to Divinity Hall with my friends Don and Cal,
still stunned by what we had witnessed.
“You could ever make this stuff up,” Don said.
Cal asked, “what did that French phrase mean?”
You couldn't have made Cal up either.
Cal was dozing beside me in a New Testament lecture by Dean Kristor
Stendahl, at that time, the once and future bishop of Sweden. When
Stendahl got started talking about the Holy Spirit, he said, “Jesus
promised his followers to send the Paraclete.”
Cal woke up and shook my arm.
“Did he say 'parakeet'?” Cal whispered, ready to write something
down.
Another
time, in a Stendahl lecture, the Dean said, “within two decades of
the crucifixion, the apostles began to peter
out.”
He paused for all of us to moan.
“Wasn't
that a-Paul-ing,”
he asked.
Of all the brilliant, odd folks at Harvard, Frank Cross took the
cake. He was an Old Testament scholar who, someone once said,
probably dreamed in Hebrew. He made Niebuhr seem focused and alert.
The story went like this: one morning Frank Cross got in his car, was
thinking about Isaiah or Numbers or something, forgot to shut the
driver's side door and tore it off on the tree beside his driveway.
The next morning, in his rental car, he did the very same thing. The
morning after that, the legend said, he had the tree cut down.
Then there was Rabbi Katenstein who taught a course called “The
Life Cycle in Christian Worship”. All the students were Christians
of various hues, 16 different hues among 17 students. All semester we
brought in examples of how our particular cult of Christianity
celebrated certain aspects of the 'life cycle'--birth, baptism,
confirmation, marriage, sickness, death, burial, like that. I was the
only Episcopalian in the class and thanked the little baby Jesus and
whatever God might be for the Book of Common Prayer—1928--because
it had all things, even a service for the purifying of women after
child birth—something the Rabbi went nuts about in joy. His job, it
occurred to me much later, was to teach us Christians how Jewish we
really were. Almost every liturgy or ritual we brought up in that
class was an opportunity for Rabbi Katzenstein to let us know the
Jewish/Jesus roots of all our fanfare and celebrations.
It stunned me. I began, half way through the class to wonder why I
hadn't had a bar-mitzvah, since obviously, as a Christian, I was a
Jew as well. That class served me well when I invited a Muslim group
to make their mosque in a building St. John's, Waterbury owned. Rabbi
Katzenstein taught me, in no uncertain terms, that, not only are the
hues of Christians not that important, the distinctions between
Faiths were not that significant either. God/Yahweh/Ala, thank him
for that.
(I just realized, writing this, that all of these great people who
taught me so well are probably dead or old, old men. It was nearly 40
years ago and they were all in their 50's when I knew them—except
for Dr. Meitzen, who ended his stay on earth outside the Country
Music Capitol of the Universe. I'll always hope he had seen some
shows before he and his wife died on that motorcycle, rather than
thinking they were on their way to see Dolly and George and Garth
when they died. It's difficult for me to think of the them as any
older than they were when they taught me wondrous things about
theology and life. Generations come and go and leave behind valuable
things. G.E. Wright, sobbing in front of the Semitic Museum knew that
only too keenly. And, as I age, I value the wisdom and the kookiness
of those marvelous people more each day.
After my visitation from the Archangel Mariah, I went to Virginia
Seminary for two yeas, which meant I had four years of theological
education instead of the normal three for ordination. Both EDS I
Cambridge and GTS in New York City agreed that I could come for only
one more year. They were willing to accept all my credits from
Harvard. Virginia Seminary was not so open. I needed two years of
field work in a parish to meet their graduation requirements. I made
me so angry that I decided to go there and make their lives miserable
for two years. Which I did. Well, perhaps not 'miserable', but I kept
them on their toes.
That's an exaggeration. VTS is bigger and stronger and has more
integrity than you can imagine. I may have annoyed the seminary
around the edges, but it hardly made a dent. The truth is, I look
back on those two years with gratitude and appreciation. Who I was
when I showed up in Alexandria was angry, arrogant, self-centered and
profoundly ironic. Whan I left, I was a little less of all that and
ready to be a priest. What formed me at Virginia Seminary was the
incredible faculty and their commitment to 'making priests'. Virginia
never claimed to be a 'graduate school of Theology'. It was a
training ground for parish priests. That's what VTS claimed to do,
what they did, and what they did quite well.
So, here are some people from VTS:
Charlie Price
Charlie taught several things, but he excelled at Liturgics. He began
each year of the year long 'Introduction to Liturgy' by handing out
what he called “Forty Beastly Questions”. Then he taught to the
questions. It was a remarkable approach. We spent two semesters
wrestling with the questions Charlie posed.
I
remember one that we labored over mightily: What
is necessary for baptism to be valid?
The
point to this question, as with all the questions, was to struggle
with liturgical issues in a way we never had before. 'Baptism', for
all of us, I suspect, was a ritual performed in a parish church by a
priest after dutifully training and informing the parents and
godparents of the child (and speaking seriously with the occasional
adult candidate) about the meaning of the sacrament, the history of
'washing' in Jewish practice, the role of parents and god-parents and
how to 'speak loudly' when answering the questions asked of them from
the Book of Common Prayer.
Charlie wanted us to get way, way past that image to the very nuts
and bolts of baptism: “what is necessary?”
“Water and oil,” we said, thinking we'd figured it our, “and a
priest and witnesses.”
“Well,”
he told us, “what about the baptisms in
blood
on battlefields over the centuries? Are they invalid?”
Some of us were through at that juncture. Charilie's questions never
had a 'right' answer, he just wanted us to arrive at an answer we
could live with.
But some others of us had to admit we found all that 'battlefield
baptism' rather romantic and didn't want to give it up. So, for those
of us, the most obvious answer, “water and oil”, didn't work.
“So, how about a priest?” we asked Charlie.
“Read
the rubrics,” he told us. (Rubrics are the little instructions in
the Prayer Book. They're called 'rubrics' because in early editions
of the BCP, they were written in red. Rubrics and Canons are what
govern the Episcopal Church. Another piece of Charlie-Wisdom was
this: “never unknowingly
break a canon.” He knew that most of us would break more than one
along the way—but we should know what we were doing and be able to
answer for it if ever asked.)
Well, in the rubrics about baptism, it is clear that a deacon can
administer baptism with the sealing in oil to be done later by a
priest or bishop. And, in emergencies, any 'baptized person' may do
the ritual, if the person recovers, the rest of the service should be
done by a priest, omitting the administration of water. So a priest
isn't necessary. Any baptized person can baptize.
“So”, we raced back to Charlie to say, feeling proud, “all
that is necessary is a Christian and the words of baptism.”
He told us to go think about it some more. Would God—the God
Charlie knew and loved and we were learning about—would THAT God
deny baptism to on of God's beloved children simply because a
baptized Christian wasn't present?
That
divided the house of those still inquiring about the 'right answer',
just as Charlie intended. Some held out from that point on for the
need of a baptized Christian for baptism to occur. A few of us were
more open to the possibility that Charlie's God, more expansive than
ours by a long short, would let a heathen baptize someone in
extremis.
Charlie had taken away almost everything that made us comfortable
with the sacrament—water, priests, oil, Christians. What was left.
“The words said,” we told him, the few of us, fairly panting
that's we'd at last solved his puzzle. “You need the words, 'in the
Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” We were so
delighted to give him the answer.
He smiled and laughed—Charlie was a great one for smiling and
laughing. Then he said words to the three of us I think I will never
forget and pray to remember always. “So, you're telling me that the
Great God Almighty who spread out the universe and created all
things, the God who lives and moves and has being in our midst, would
deny baptism to someone who desired it because the only person there
with him was a deaf-mute Muslim?”
That was the last straw for one of our trio. All the others had
already answered the question for themselves in a way they could live
with—which was the point of the whole exercise I later understood.
Charlie just wanted us to realize we'd 'come down' where we'd 'come
down' for a reason. He forced us to look at familiar things so
critically, so analytically, that we'd always know 'why' we believed
what we believed. But the two of us sought him out at lunch in the
Refectory one day.
“OK,”
one of us said, “what if the only thing necessary for baptism to be
valid is the 'intention' to
be baptized?”
He stopped his fork half-way to his mouth.
“We are now way beyond doctrine and dogma and practice,” he
said. “We're beyond ritual and rubrics. We in dangerous territory.
The Enemy is near.” Then he took a bite. Charlie could say stuff
like that and not sound silly.
As he was chewing, I felt we were on the edge of a precipice,
looking over a sheer cliff, nothing below us, nothing to keep us from
jumping off.
“I'm
not saying 'this is the right
answer', there
being no right
answer,not
really. The two of us were hanging on every word. “But what if,
just what if—and I'm not saying I believe this in any way,” he
said, growing as somber, save one other time, that I'd ever seen him,
“what if the intention
is God's alone?”
My friend and I left Charlie to finish his lunch. Oddly, we never
talked about his response to our question. It would have been
frivolous and vain to have discussed it and analyzed it and a
betrayer to have told others about it. But I know I've pondered
Charlie's strange words ever since. They are always in the background
of my considerations about theology and God.
“Jump,” the Buddhist masters say, “and the net will find
you....”
Charlie gave us 39 other 'beastly questions' and I only realized
decades later that the purpose of the questions was not the 'answers'
but the 'inquiry' the questions set in motion. And I realized that by
then, Charlie's God had become my God—a God that prefers the
struggle to the resolution, the wrestling to the winning, the deep
wonderings of paradox to certainty and clarity. For that realization,
I am forever grateful.
We also did a liturgics practicum with Charlie—we called it 'play
church'. We baptized baby dolls, anointed each other for healing, did
marriage services for each other (and since there were 15 men and one
woman in my section, we participated in same-sex unions long before
our time!) buried shoe boxes and had mock Eucharists. When I was
distributing the wafers once, Charlie stuck out his tongue at me.
Having grown up in the Pilgrim Holiness Church and the mountain
Methodist Church where we hardly ever had communion (and when we did
it was sitting in our pews with our little personal crouton and a
tiny plastic cup of grape juice) I was startled at his tongue and
started laughing.
“Put the wafer on my tongue,” he told me. “Try not to make
finger contact with my tongue and then move on....”
The first parish I served was a Black parish. Black Episcopalians
tend toward 'high church' where receiving the wafer on you tongue is
the norm. So Charlie saved me from enormous embarrassment and endless
explanations when, on my first Sunday at St. James, fully half of
those coming to communion stuck out their tongues at me.
Just one more thing I have to thank God and Charlie for....
Finally,
Charlie probably kept me from getting expelled from VTS even though I
graduated second in my class. My assigned adviser was Reginald
Fuller, a renowned New Testament scholar who actually co-wrote one of
the best books I ever read, The
Book of the Acts of God,
with G. E. Wright, who we last saw on the sidewalk outside the
Semitic Museum at Harvard. But I hadn't had any classes from Dr.
Fuller, though I'd met once morning a week with him and his other
advisees at his house for worship. Once, he celebrated communion with
us in the living room wearing full Eucharistic vestments. Odd, I
thought.
He was the shining light of the few Anglo-Catholic students. One
morning a week, chapel was the responsibility of students. The high
church students convinced Reggie to celebrate a 'high mass', with
incense and bells, chanting and bowing. Back in that day, such
carryings-on were not tolerated by the low church folks at VTS.
Several students and more than one faculty member walked out rather
than be present at such Popish Nonsense. I'd never seen such a thing
and stayed throughout, mesmerized by the smoke wafting around the
chapel, by the eerie cadence of the chanting, by the exaggerated
manual acts of Dr. Fuller.
Anyway, he didn't know me well. He didn't understand my ironic kind
of charm. He didn't know I was a serious student whose quips and
sardonic way of talking simply announced the seriousness with which I
too, my calling by the Archangel Mariah and, I hoped, Charlie's God.
Besides, it was my job to make the idyllic life on the 'holy hill' in
Alexandria a little more interesting....
Dr. Fuller stopped me in the hallway of Aspinwall Hall, the main
building at VTS about half-way through the last semester of my senior
year.
“Mr.
Bradley,” he said in his Oxbridge accent, “we need to make an
appointment to discuss the ordinal.”
I knew fair well that was British-speak for 'the ordination
service', something taken very seriously by a seminary committed to
producing parish priests. But what I said was flip, ironic,
smart-assed and, in the end, stupid.
“The
Baltimore
Ordinal?” I
asked, much to the amusement of the students in the hall around us. I
always intended to 'amuse' and poke fun at most everything. I
succeeded rather well with all save Dr. Fuller, who turned on his
heel, redness rising in his face, and made his way to the Dean's
office to describe, in what I am sure was flawless English, my
impertinence. Not to mention my arrogance and frivolousness. All of
which, I must humbly admit these many years later, was 'on spot', as
Reggie would have said. And, as I would have said, 'true'.
To graduate from VTS you had to, obviously, have enough credits and
not have committed a felony offense. In addition, you had to have
your adviser 'sign off' that you were fit to be a priest. Well, my
little, inappropriate joke about the Baltimore Ordinal had hardened
Dr. Fuller's heart. He would not approve me for graduation—and,
therefore, ordination—without an apology, which, in my Young Turk
days of trying to prove to Virginia Seminary that they were fools for
making me study two years instead of one, I was not willing to give.
During all this, and after pleas from the Dean to apologize, which I
refused--”the man has to know how to take a joke,” I remember
saying—I contacted double pneumonia and was in Alexandria Hospital,
a few blocks from the campus. Incidentally, I had two room-mates in
succession at the hospital die on consecutive nights. The
psychiatrist came to see me to make sure I wasn't freaking out and
took my request to not have any other room-mates seriously. So, for
over a week, I laid in bed, had treatments, sucked up gallons of
antibiotic laced saline through an IV and wondered if I would
graduate.
All my classmates decided to try out their hospital visitation
skills until I put in a request not to allow anyone in except my
wife. However, Charlie Price charmed his way through the insulation I
thought I had and came to my bedside.
After asking about my health and recovery, Charlie said: “Jim, I
hope and pray that some day you will come to a moment, a principle,
some issue or another that you will be willing to risk your career,
your priesthood for. I really hope that.”
Then, after a pause, he added, “Jim this silly fight with Dr.
Fuller is NOT that moment....Apologize, get a new adviser and move
on.”
He was absolutely right. So, I did apologize, got a new adviser,
graduated and was ordained.
So much I owe to Charlie Price. So much. Even more than that.
Looking back, I feel like an utter fool about the whole Reggie-Gate
thing. That is an appropriate feeling since I really, really was a
fool.
Mary Ann Mixx
Dr. Mixx as the only woman professor at VTS when I was thee. She was
a New Testament scholar and, from all accounts, a superior one. Her
presence on campus was an oddity to us all—the only female and,
save one other, the only un-ordained professor. Once, sitting at the
same table at lunch with her and hearing other students discussing
Romans, I got on my “I Hate Paul!” rant. Everyone was initally
aghast, first that I would 'hate Paul' and, probably more
importantly, that I didn't know Paul was one of Dr. Mixx's passions.
I saw her in a hallway a few days later and apologized for my
hatred of Paul. I didn't repent it, please notice, but apologized for
whatever might have offended her about it. (I wasn't quite the total
pain-in-the-ass I claim to have been at VTS!) She waved my apology
away, and, instead of saying what most of the professors said when
accosted by a student in a hallway: “Well....” while looking at
their wrist watch. Instead of that, Dr. Mixx said, “you have any
plans for winter term?”
Winter Term was a two week mini-semester after Christmas and before
the Spring semester began. There were tedious classes that met every
single day for two weeks, too much information too fast, and too much
library time all at once for students who had come, long before, to
live in Academic time...semesters, not two weeks. I hated the winter
term.
“I haven't decided yet,” I told her, delaying as usual, making
decisions about classes, or anything, for that matter.
“Do a reading course with me,” she said, “on Paul's letters.”
A 'reading course' was the last refuge of people who didn't really
want to go to class. Like me. My heart lept up....
“You want to make me love Paul?” I asked, always suspicious of
the motives of people smarter than me.
She laughed. “I don't care one way or the other how you feel
about Paul,” she said, still chuckling. “I just thought it would
be fun for both of us....”
I was stunned. A VTS professor making a suggestion on the basis of
'fun'! How could I turn that down.
“Me too,” I told her, “I'm always up for some fun.”
Here's what she asked me to do: A. read all Paul's letters and give
her a list of the things he said that I hated and have a conversation
with her about my list; B. Put the letters in chronological order
instead of the order in the New Testament, read them that way, and
write a paper about what I learned from the exercise.
The truth is, I only had a faint notion of the reality that Paul's
letters aren't in chronological order. So that was a valuable
research exercise. What shifted for me as I read Paul in the order of
writing was that most of the stuff I hated came in the earlier
letters when Paul was harsh and judgmental and boastful. Read in the
order in which they were written, I noticed a softening, a mellowing
of Paul that I hadn't been able to notice before. As he aged and
became certain of what he initially believed (that Jesus was coming
back on next Tuesday if not next Monday and that he, Paul would be
there to greet him) his tone shifted subtilely. There was more
ambiguity, more openness, a new found ability to hedge his bets. That
later Paul wasn't the monster I had always experienced.
I still hated him, I told Dr. Mixx in our conversations and my final
paper—but not for the same reasons as before. Then, as now, 35
years later, I am sad that Christianity is more “Pauline” than
“Jesus-like”. Over the centuries, Paul's thought has insinuated
itself into the fabric of the faith and altered the all-embracing,
never met a stranger kind of faith Jesus sought to pass along. The
church is fussy and strict and patronizing in ways obvious and not so
obvious. We are wed to doctrine and swayed by dogma that doesn't have
much at all to do with the “suffer the little children to come unto
me” attitude of Jesus. When compassion bumps head with canon law,
guess which side almost always wins? But what I did learn profoundly
is that I need to give Paul a bit more of a pass on things. I
considered, back then, what if the letters I have written in my life
were all that people knew of who I was and what my trust was in? What
I consider now—much more frightening—is what if all that people
knew about me was gleaned from going over the e-mails I have written
rather than from knowing me face to face?
Horrors! So though I don't yet adore Paul, I cut him a break. And
for that I am always grateful to Mary Ann Mixx.
Interestingly enough, something that got me in hot water with the
Dean, before the Reggie Fuller Fiasco, was an article I wrote for the
“Ambo”, the student newspaper, using the front door of Aspenwall
Hall as a metaphor for what was lacking at Virginia Seminary. That
door was ten feet tall and solid oak and took a strong person to
open. I wrote in my article that it was a “Pauline Door”--a door
that represented the rigor and narrowness of Paul. I called for a
“Petrine Seminary”, one based on the acknowledged frailties and
weaknesses of Peter—the one who doubted, the one who ran away, the
one who betrayed. I simply identified more with Peter than Paul.
I got a note in my little mail box in the coffee room to come see
the Dean. I went straight to his office and his secretary showed me
in. It was morning so he offered tea or coffee. I was wishing it was
late afternoon because everything that happened in late afternoon at
VTS involved an offer of sherry.
I sat down, sipping my coffee (having fussed with sugar and cream
while he fussed with lemon and cream for his tea) and when we were
both adequately seen to, the Dean spoke.
“Jim,” he said in his oh-so-sophisticated Tidewater accent (if
you aren't familiar with the Tidewater Accent—coastal Virginia,
North Carolina and South Carolina—you don't understand that it is
exactly the accent a Dean of Virginia Seminary should have). “Jim,
I am very distressed with your criticism of me in the last issue of
the Ambo,” is what he said. His accent made my name sound like
“gi-um” and both 'distressed' and “criticism” seemed to have
gained a syllable as well. But it is a mesmerizing sound, soothing
and soft and sophisticated in the way that mint juleps and magnolias
and the architecture of Monticello is sophisticated.
“Dean,” I said in an accent that he would recognize as
Appalachian, coal-miner son, trailer-trash, hillbilly, “I wasn't
criticizing you, I was criticizing the Seminary.”
He took a delicate sip of his tea. Then he said words, though in one
of the most delightful of all American accents, that chilled me to
the bones and sinews.
“Jim,” he said slowly, “I AM Virginia Seminary.” Then he
went on to explain how such a seeming impossibility could be so.
The accent was lulling me into sleep or compliance. It was like the
'Turkish taffy' the White Witch offered the children who went to
Narnia. I was a stranger in a strange land. I put my almost full cup
of coffee down on the little table between our two wing chairs. I
reached over, interrupting him, to shake his hand.
“Dean,” I said, standing up, moving toward the door of his
office, “I'll never do it again. I promise you that.”
Something I know to the depths of my being is this: never try to
reason or argue with a man who thinks he's a seminary or any other
major institution, for that matter.
David Scott
Speaking of 'reading courses', I wanted to have one for the last
semester of my Senior year. I didn't want to take four classes, as
was expected and required. I even had a topic. I wanted to write a
paper about the theology of the novels of Kurt Vonnegut. I took my
ideas to the usual suspects—the people I thought would buy into my
getting out of a class. None of them wanted any part of it, more I
think, because they only vaguely knew who Kurt Vonnegut was than
because they didn't think it might be an interesting topic. Finally,
I asked David Scott, one of the most conservative of the members of
the faculty. And much to my surprise (probably his too) he agreed
although he didn't even 'vaguely' know who Kurt Vonnegut was!
So David read five of Vonnegut's novels just so he could talk with
me about the writer's 'theology'. Then he read my rather lengthy
final paper. I wish I had a copy of it except I almost certainly
remember it as more insightful, ground-breaking and brilliant than it
actually was....
Here's the thing: a teacher who is willing to read five novels he
would have never otherwise read in order to teach and evaluate a
student's work—well, I don't know what is more committed to
education than that. Reminds me of the character from the Canterbury
Tales who would 'gladly learn and gladly teach'. Though we didn't
agree on much of anything (besides, eventually, that Vonnegut was a
very theological writer!), David Scott won my heart.
(Once in an ethics class, David suggested that masturbation could
lead to loss of fine motor skills and most every student in the room
dropped their pencils. Even though that actually happened, David had
my heart. And God bless his....)
Fighting with Fitz
Fitzsimmons
Allison was even more conservative than David Scott. When he left VTS
it was to become Rector of St. James in Manhattan, the quintessential
'low church' of New York City. Then he became Bishop of South
Carolina. If you know anything about the Episcopal Church, you
realize being Bishop of South Carolina is theologically akin to being
a bishop in the Global South. South Carolina rather redefines
'conservative' in the Episcopal Church. Fitz was the only other
member of the staff besides the Dean who objected to my comparison of
the front door of Aspenwall Hall and the theology of St. Paul to my
preference for a door that would open easily and the theology to be
derived from the accounts of Peter in the gospels.
We began to exchange opinions in the pages of the Ambo. I still
have, somewhere, copies of what I wrote and what Fitz wrote in reply
and what I wrote in reply to his reply and what he wrote in reply to
my reply to his reply. Just like the previous sentence, all of our
writings were rather discombobulated and not very interesting. It
certainly wasn't up to what a debate between Calvin and Luther might
have been like! It was a smart-ass student and an equally, though
better educated, smart-ass professor throwing bricks at each others'
glass houses. I'm too embarrassed about how lame my words and
arguments were to even share them with you. I'm sure, from the
perspective of all these years, Fitz would feel the same.
What our disagreement boiled down to was a vastly different view of
'human nature'. But isn't that always so in debates between the right
and the left, conservatives and liberals, or, as we now call them in
the Episcopal Church—Orthodox and Progressive. I was (and am) of
the theological persuasion that we human beings are created in the
image and likeness of God and just a little lower than the angels.
Fitz contended that the whole point of the 'Fall' was true and human
beings, not bound by rules, doctrine and dogma were not much above
odious little vermin. I exaggerate both our positions, but you get
the point.
I had suggested that a seminary with a 'high view' of human
nature—which, coming from a Pilgrim Holiness background, I
considered 'distinctly Anglican'--wouldn't need grades because
everyone, for the love of learning and enlightened self-interest,
would work just as hard without the threat of grades. Fitz contended
that just because some people might indeed 'not need grades', the
flotsam and jetsam of the student body wouldn't do anything but mess
around and not study if there weren't grades to keep them in line.
Well, you can see from that little exchange that our debate wasn't a
dialog of Plato. We eventually agreed to disagree, but I look back
and thank him both for arguing with me and giving me credit by
considering me a worthy opponent for argument.
I still believe I'm right about the being of human beings. Given all
the considerations and pains and suffering of life, most people are
better than we could otherwise expect them to be. Fits eventually
left the Episcopal Church to be part of the movement associated with
the ultra-orthodox theology of the Anglican Communion's Global South.
So, true to form, he still believed he was right too.
What his gift to me was is the knowledge that people of vastly
different views CAN agree to disagree and respect each other in the
midst of their disagreements. There's not enough of that around these
days in the church, or, for that matter, in the country or in the
world. Respecting the integrity of you avowed opponent changes the
playing field, makes it a place of honor rather than bitterness and
unrequited anger.
As I said, there's not enough of that around these days, anywhere.
Jess, dear Jess
Jess
Trotter was the dearest man you can ever imagine—probably more
'dear' than you have imagined or could imagine. He was a deeply
spiritual Christian, a social activist of no mean repute and a father
or grandfather figure to us all. He was my field work colloquium
leader. Field work (which I did for two years at Christ Church,
Capitol Hill) was a major part of the theological education at VTS
when I was there. I pray it still is. Field work—actually being
present to a real life parish or a ministry setting while in
seminary—is the anchor that holds a theological education to this
world and keeps the students from drifting off into an oh, so
fascinating alternative reality of 'God Talk' devoid of what is so in
the actual world. In my time as a parish priest, I have supervised 21
seminarians in their field work. Although those 21 young men and
women taught me much more than I ever could have taught them about
anything, I was responsible for grounding them in the 'real world' of
church while they were still comfortably and safely ensconced in the
womb that is a Seminary.
There is a great deal I could tell you about Jess. He was a priest
and a man who had known great personal suffering. And unlike most
suffering—which is mindless and nonsensical—the suffering Jess
knew actually was salvific, actually made him a better man, a better
priest, a better friend and guide. But beyond all that, he was as
wise as a Buddhist Master, as learn-ed as a medieval scholastic, as
kind as a loving mother, as gentle as a spring breeze in Alexandria,
Virginia. Jess was a mentor, friend and brother to all the
seminarians who fell under his spell. I would have sailed the North
Atlantic in February if he told me to. I would even go into
Washington D.C. And sit on the steps of St. Paul's K Street for two
hours and look every person who passed in the eyes if he told me to.
Actually, it was that last thing—sitting on K Street, making eye
contact with every person who passed that he suggested to me that I
do. “And when you look at them,” he instructed me, “say to
yourself these words, 'that is the One Christ died for', and if you
can, begin to believe it.”
It
is astonishing to me that I have had eleven years of education beyond
high school. Eleven years of study, four degrees, and I all of that,
the most valuable and useful lesson I learned took place in a two
hour span, sitting on some steps of a church on K Street in
Washington, D. C. on a May afternoon when I looked hundreds of people
in the eye—members of Congress perhaps, federal workers, lawyers
and doctors, clerks and secretaries, an insurance agent, several
police officers, military folks in uniform, a mail carrier, delivery
people, students, children, street people, illegal aliens, drug
dealers, a prostitute or two I imagine, people black and brown and
white and Asian, people who worked in the embassies around the city,
harried mothers, people cheating on their spouses, the unemployed,
the elderly, the infirm, people on crutches and in wheel chairs, rich
people and poor people, people with every hue of hair and curl and
people with no hair at all, a veritable panoply of the wanderers on
the earth that is the human race. And each one I saw, I told myself,
“this
is the one, the very one, for whom Christ died.”
I said that so many times, with such hope that I would believe it,
that I came to understand the deeper Truth Jess was teaching in his
gentle, unassuming way—each face I saw was, in a way beyond all
believing, a Face of God.
I owe so many people—many of whom I haven't mentioned—so much
from those years at Harvard and VTS. So many to whom I owe so much.
But none more probably or more profoundly than I owe Jess.
To
this day, like it or not (and often I don't
like it!)
I cannot look another human being in the eye and not say “This is
the One—the very One—for whom Christ died”. And, because I
realized what the point of the exercise was, finally, I know each
face I see is, without doubt, one of the myriad faces of God,
Charlie's God and Jess' God.
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