holy ground

I told this story as the end of my sermon on Sunday. The sermon was on the gospel lesson from Luke when Jesus goes back to Nazareth, his home town, and reads from Isaiah in the Torah and proclaims that the scripture of healing and restoring and bringing the blessing of God is fulfilled.

Then things get dicey. The folks in the synagogue remember Jesus is a hometown boy and what right does he have to speak like God and lecture them on their disbelief? "Isn't he Joseph's son?" the ask each other--where does he come off doing this....? Then they try to throw him off a cliff but he passes through them like fog through the trees and goes on about his work and life.

Then I recalled how Dr. Milchin, who was my doctor as a child, had a son, John Jr., who always went away to school but came back one summer from college and became the laughing stock of the whole community because--before 'running' was seen as something people did for recreation or health--he ran up and down the valleys for hours on end. Everyone laughed at him. "Dr. Milchin's son has a screw loose", they said. "Why doesn't he get a summer job?" they asked. "Who does he think he is?" they wondered while mocking him.

Later I learned John Jr. had been the captain of the Princeton University Cross Country team and was simply training. He went on to be a surgeon and made his GP father proud. But we didn't accept him because we knew him too well...he was too familiar...to ordinary...to commonplace.

So, as Thomas Wolfe knew, it is hard to 'go home again'.

I went on to observe that we often don't honor those things which are familiar, ordinary and commonplace. We usually look for God in the unusual, the amazing, the exotic and strange. In fact, I believe, God's Glory is present in precisely what is ordinary and familiar, we simply need ears to hear and eyes to see,,,,

As I've often said, the definition I know of 'epiphany' is this: 'the sudden, intuitive insight into the deep down meaning of things, usually prompted by what is ordinary, common-place and day to day...'

Then came this story, that I realized I hadn't blogged about on Sat since it was meant to be the end of my sermon:

C was a member of the church I served in New Haven. She is gracious, loving, competent and committed. Her son was the same age of my son and they played together for five of the years of their lives...from 5 until 10. Eric came to an Easter service a few years ago and he and Josh got to connect for a short while. About three years ago, C, who lives in 'the Valley' started coming to St. John's. I hadn't seen her for months, I realized, and was about to call here when she called me.

Her mother has cancer and Alzheimer's and after months of going down to Brooklyn to visit each weekend, C had moved them to CT--her mother to a nursing home and her father to live with her. She called to ask me to come and pray for her mother and anoint her since her life was slipping away.

I got to the parking lot of the nursing home and C was just getting out of her car. We embraced and moved inside, walking behind an elderly black man with a cane who was walking very slowly. I assumed he was a patient, but when we caught up with him, C introduced me to her father. I thought we'd walk with him but C said we should go on, 'he never wants to slow other people down'.

So we were in C's mother's room for a few minutes before C's father made it. Her mother was very non-responsive, in one of those chairs that look comfortable and adjust but roll as well. I talked to her the way I always talk to people who I don't know can hear me 'cause, what do I know about what they hear?

C's sister was there and when the father got in the room, the sister tried to help him off with his coat, but he slipped past her and moved much faster than before to the chair beside his wife's chair. He flopped down, took her thin, veined hand in his own and lifted her fingers to his lips. I was right across from him and saw the moisture in his large brown eyes.

I should have taken my shoes off, being as I was on Holy Ground. I had enough sense not to say anything for a long time. Finally, softly, I said, "a long time...."

"Seventy years," he said, still holding his wife's unresponsive hand to his cheek.

Then we sat in silence for a long time--eyes open to the holiness and glory of the ordinary moment, the familiarity of two people, the love that was there....

So, don't tell me the Glory of God isn't in the ordinary and familiar. Don't dare tell me that!

I was privileged to sit in the profound silence of the Heart of God and of Love.

This is all I know and all I need to know about the presence of God in the familiar and ordinary and so well-known moments of life:

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.... (I Corinthians 13.4-8a)

Just that moment is enough....

my day off

I took my day off today...I did call the church to see if a repair that needed done got done...but besides that, I took my day off.

I used to brag to other priests about how zealously I guarded my time away--and I did. But over the last few years I've found it harder and harder to 'stay away' on my day off and I've taken less and less of my vacation in large chunks. Part of that was that when a wondrous assistant I had left, it was harder and harder for me to trust the place to another...or even 'others'.

Often, in the last few years, I'd even go to a movie somewhere in Waterbury and then 'drop in' to say hello at the church. Of course, in a church like St. John's there is no such thing as 'dropping in' or just saying 'hello'. Life there is always pretty much teeming. St. John's is the ecclesiastical equivalent of a rain forest. Something is always happening, someone is always passing through, every moment is pretty much pulsating with life. So, 'dropping by' might turn into an hour or so and saying 'hello' meant it was hard to say 'goodbye'.

I do regret the loss of big chunks of vacation time that I gave up because I wasn't sure I wouldn't be needed. That was hubris, by in large, though not completely. I remember times when I took a month long vacation--even at St. John's. But somehow I stopped that in the last 5 years or so. Part of that was the loss of the greatest Episcopal priest vacation destination ever--Block Island, Rhode Island. St. Anne's on Block Island didn't have a full time priest so if you were willing to be available and to do the Sunday services you could stay in their rectory for free. I did that time and again. But they eventually had enough wealthy folks move to the Island, though only part time, that they decided they could afford a full time priest. Bye-bye free vacation spot!

Anyway, part of it is our dog--he's 4 years, 10 months old and Bern loves him so much she can't stand to kennel him for longer than a week or so. That's cut down on leaving for long periods as well. But much of it has been the gathering and expanding need I had to be there.

When people ask me why I'm retiring so young I should probably tell them if I don't do it now I probably would have to be removed from St. John's by the Bishop and Federal Marshals. I'm able to leave now--in another year I'd start wearing out my welcome at the same time it became impossible to leave....Just a thought.

It does occur to me that when I'm taking my 'terminal sabbatical' (that sounds final, huh?) in May, June and July I'll have to begin to adjust to the reality of 'not being there'. It will be, I know, harder than I think it will be. (I only took two months of my sabbatical I earned five years ago and half my vacation for the last few years. I thought about asking to be paid for all that time I 'didn't take' but it seemed silly since I was the one who decided not to....)

I had a long talk with the mail carrier who serves St. John's this week. Everyone, even lots of people I don't know and have never, to my knowledge, know of, is aware that I'm retiring. The thing is I can walk around in downtown Waterbury and 80% of the people speak to me as 'Jim' or 'pastor' or 'Father'. I told John the mailman that I'd given some of the best years of my life to St. John's. Not untrue. I was just 42 when I arrived and will be barely 63 when I leave. For a man, those should be the most productive years of your working life--unless you're Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or a pro athlete. So there is a big piece of me that has seeped into the stone and wood and air and flesh of St. John's. It will leave a gaping open wound in my psyche and heart when I leave. I'm not sure what the cure is, of if there is one.

Mostly I already wonder if I stayed a year or two too long already and fantasize about what it would have been like to stay a year or two longer. All of that is vanity, I know, so don't tell me! But I do hope my decision will be good for me, very good, and, prayerfully, even better for St. John's.

Someday, I know, I'll reflect on what I did and didn't do, what I succeeded at and failed with--stuff like that. But now it is just the reality of the leaving--that it IS going to happen now--that consumes me. I don't expect to be able to be as faithful to my day off in the next three months as I was today--but I'll try. I don't want the last 3 months to be radically different from the 247 months that came before. I have promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep and, as of today, I have 91 days left to continue to try to be who I have tried to 'be' for these 20 1/2 years....There is world enough and time for other pondering in the months and years to come after April.

For now, I am still the Rector of St. John's on the Green in Waterbury, CT--proud, humbled, challenged, amused, confounded to be so....

Another day in New England...

The temperature on our back porch dropped 10 degrees F. in the past hour. It went from 24 at 7:25 to 14 at 8:25.

When I woke up this morning nothing was happening. After a shower, the ground was covered by snow.

It took me 25 minutes to go 6 miles on I-84 because there were a slew of accidents.

Schools that opened before the snow were closing early.

Everyone at St. John's was hustling to get home before the expected early afternoon freeze. Before they got in their doors, the sky was blue and the temperature was in the high 30's.

On my way home at 4, it was snowing like crazy.

Now the temperature is dropping 10 degrees in an hour.

People ask me where we're moving when I retire. I tell them we're going to Cheshire. Who would want to miss a day like today?

Got to go. I'm going to Google "North Carolina Shore + Retirement Properties..."

irrelevancy isn't so bad....

My last post may have seemed like a bummer of sorts--the church is irrelevant: woe are we!

But it isn't' that bad. In fact, I think being irrelevant to the culture gives the church a wondrous opportunity to play a different role than the church has--in the last 1600 years--normally has played.

For well over a millennium, 'Christendom' meant something. It meant that the Christian Church was 'relevant' to the society and culture of what we somewhat inaccurately call 'the Western World'. All geography depends on where you are standing at the moment. I guarantee you that most people who live in Iraq and Israel places like that, don't think of themselves of living in 'the Middle East'. People who talk about 'the Middle East' are standing somewhere else and looking over there and naming it.

Leaving that strangeness behind, let me share with you a fact: "Christendom" is gone. The church is not 'relevant' to the culture and hasn't been for a good while now.

But that is not bad. I personally think it was a problem for the church to be propping up and legitimizing Western Culture. There was a complicity that I think was unhealthy for the church. So, being 'irrelevant' in what was essentially an compromising and unhealthy connection with the the culture is not a bad thing.


Christianity, in and of itself, is not totally irrelevant in all places. But where it is--oh, take Nigeria where Anglican bishops have done nothing to oppose the criminalization of homosexuality with severe penalties even for those who 'associate' with gay folk--it is not a good idea to my mind. And the 'religious right' plays much the same role in the US. Pat Robertson has publicly stated that the earthquake in Haiti was God's judgment on the 'pact with the devil' that Haiti made 200 years ago by allowing voodoo and Jerry Falwell blamed 9/11 on homosexuals and other sinners. God knows who believes nonsense like that but I'm betting quite a few folks do.


But, for the most part, the so-called 'main-line churches' (and probably the Roman Catholic Church as well) are irrelevant to our American Culture. (How many RC families do you know who have never had a divorce or who all have 6 or 7 kids?--that's the base line of irrelevancy....
None of which is a bad thing. I'm personally pleased that RC couples who are battering each other one way or another no longer feel constrained to stay together because of the the church and that birth control isn't something couples discuss with their priests. (You see, some of the trappings of 'being Relevant' aren't bad things to lose....And that fish on Friday thing was simply a centuries earlier attempt to support Italian fishermen...)

So, being irrelevant as we are...there are remarkable possibilities for the church. Like this--we can be the fool, the jester, the gadfly, the prophet, the shaman, the joker, the wondrous and so needed foil to the nonsense of the culture.

Just one example of how this irrelevant church keeps thinking it is relevant and matters to the culture--the culture, the state of Connecticut, has outrun the Episcopal church by legalizing same-sex marriages. We should have beat them to it as the joker and Trickster of the culture, yet, even though they got there first, our Bishop has yet to even 'catch up'. I still can't sign a marriage license for a gay couple. We should have been out in front, flaunting the culture that takes us as irrelevant and pointing the way for the larger society.

Come on, being on the edges, being loosed to dance and be fools for Christ and to flaunt the eccentricities of a society and culture we are no longer responsible to shore up with our support, that's a remarkable calling for the Church 'to be....'

I love and adore the opportunity to hang out on the limits of the society and the edges of the culture and proclaim, not support of the status quo but an outrageous and Godly alternative to the culture and the society and 'the way things have always been done..."

I'm sure I'll ponder this more in the days and weeks ahead, but know this: retiring from full-time parish ministry will give me the opportunity to be even more irrelevant and irreverent than I already am....Praise be to God....

Fear not 'irrelevancy' doesn't mean the church doesn't matter...it means we "matter" in a way that frees us to be 'of God' rather than a part of the Culture....

talkin' to hear our heads rattle...

We had a great conversation today at the weekly Clericus meeting. All the Episcopal clergy in the deanery are invited and who usually comes are pretty much the same every week. Three active priests (2 from St. John's and a third from Oakville), St. John's intern and 3 retired priests. Today our Episcopal/Buddhist clergy guy showed up too. And we talked about 'the Atonement' for over an hour. It was fascinating to us and showed a wide variety of interpretations of that central doctrine of the church and prompted not a little back and forth disagreement. Wonderful. It really was wonderful....

And I was all ready to detail some of the fine points of the conversation and outline the distinctions we made and the disagreements we had to prove that the Episcopal Church is the place, of all Christian churches, where you will find the most diversity and freedom to disagree.

Then I reconsidered.

My pondering is this: does anyone in the pews or, more importantly, outside the tight little clan we call the Episcopal Church really care. Do people pause over dinner or wake up in the dark of the night considering the doctrine of the Atonement? Driving to pick up your kids from school, running late because work took longer than you hoped or looking for a new job or shopping for groceries and comparing the contents of two kinds of chicken noodle soup or in the midst of a fight between two lovers--or a time of making up between two lovers...are people wondering which interpretation of the Atonement speaks to their lives and spirituality most vividly?

A former seminarian contacted me today to tell me she finally understood why I always said that a priest is "a nearly irrelevant functionary in a totally irrelevant institution".

Why did she come to that understanding? She read Henri Nowen and he said so to. Since a well known spiritual writer agreed with me, it might just be true. So much for both my authority and my irrelevance!

At any rate we enjoyed that hour of unabashed irrelevancy about a doctrine which matters not a fig to most people on the planet--or even most Episcopalians....

Being a priest, I tell people, is being the last 'generalist'. But even when we delve into stuff we know about and care about and worry about, we still probably show up irrelevant to the needs and moments and longings of our culture.

I don't think God is irrelevant. It's just the church and the church's theology....Alas and alack....

in the moment...and this one....

No matter what else I read, hear, experience about 'spirituality'--which is what has replaced 'religion' in our time--there is this: it is about 'being in the moment'.

It really isn't hard.

Today it was raining in wind driven sheets in Waterbury and I was watching it from the front steps of the church. The flag on the Green and the two in front of the Rectory of Immaculate Conception were all blowing UP! And I stood there for a few moments, just watching--"only" watching--and until I said to myself, "some rain, some wind...", I was 'in the moment', simply there, no doing anything or even thinking, simply 'one' with the wind and rain and flags.

As far as I can tell, that's what spirituality and all the folks making money writing and talking about it are saying. Just 'being there'.

I'd invite you to begin by simply 'noticing' when you are 'present' and nothing else. (The problem is, when you 'notice' it, you aren't there any more....

The question seems to be, how to provide the opportunity and possibility to simply 'be present' more and more. That's what 'spirituality' is about. Everything else is what we 'say' about it.

Just notice those moments when you are present in such a way that, actually, "YOU"--like your conscious mind or your ego--aren't there at all....

Ponder that. More later, I promise.

Yours 'in the moment'....

members of the Body

At the Annual meeting yesterday, I preached about Paul's long message to the church in Corinth about the many members of the body. It is in 1st Corinthians somewhere (chapter 14 I think) and points out that the 'members of the body' are equally important. That is something hard for parish churches to remember. Each of the 3 parishes I've served over 30 odd years have shared this one concept--there is 'the in-group', though they wouldn't call it that, I don't think, that does all the work that all the parish profits from. In all cases, the 'in group' feels overworked, beset upon and a tad resentful of the members who aren't 'doing' what they are doing.

It might just be that the in group are the brain and heart and alimentary canal of the Body and those further out in the concentric circles are things like finger-nails and hair and skin. Somebody has to be the vital organs of the Body, but that shouldn't mean the fingernails aren't important--like if you need to scratch an itch, for example, a fingernail becomes suddenly 'vital'.

Parish churches are NOT 'intensive communities'. There are 'intensive communities' of Christians--two I know of are The Church of the Savior and Sojourners--both in Washington, DC. In those gatherings of Christians 'everybody' is in the 'in group'. They are very efficient, effective and well oiled machines. But they cannot tolerate folks 'hanging around' or on the edges of their lives as a Christian community.

Parish churches not only invite those on the edges, those on the edges become the possibility for new members of the in-group if they can be moved, motivated and inspired...and most of all 'welcomed' into the inner circle.

One of the things I'm aware of, though I seldom say it outloud, is that people in the 'in group' in any community give lip service to wanting help, but the terrible truth is this: help in the 'in group' would involve the 'in group' in change--and one thing 'in groups' wherever you find them and you can find them in any business, organization, communion, clan, family--don't want to change. In-groups have pretty much worked out how to handle things and the last thing they want (unconsciously) is someone to tell them a different way to handle things. 'Consciously' and resolutely and honestly, they long for help and more folks to join them. The big problem is most in-groups I've ever observed are not hospitable to 'new thoughts' and 'new paradigms'. They do, sincerely and desperately, want others to join them...who are, it usually seems 'just like them...'

I'd have to think longer--though I have thought long and hard for years and years--about how to make 'in groups' truly welcoming to new folks with new insights and new agendas.

Perhaps it begins by convincing in-groups that the best way forward is to do things in different ways all the time. Go try to sell that concept to anybody--ice to Eskimos, warm breezes to Pacific Islanders...that would be easier.

I'll sit here under my withered Castor Oil Tree and ponder how to make the parish model accommodate itself to welcoming the 'new' into the inner circle. Give me a while...