Well, not literally. I know I got here because Virgil Hoyt Bradley and Marion Cleo Jones had sex (Oh Lord, it's still hard for me to imagine my parents having sex!!!)
No, what I was thinking about was how I got to be an Episcopal priest when nothing of the kind would have occurred to me until I did it!
Then I remembered I wrote about that in a manuscript called Tend the Fire, Tell the Story, Pass the Wine. I'm almost sure I've posted that chapter before, but it's been a while, I'm sure--like really sure. So here it is again, just to let you know how 'I got here'...
(It's longer than a usual post, but, if I might be so bold, it just might be worth reading....)
3 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.
Here was Jess' genius, his legacy to me and so many others.
