Two
Priests (Jack and Snork)
Every
priest needs a mentor. Every priest needs a guide through the labyrinth that is
'being a priest' and 'doing priestcraft'.
Every
denomination—even a small, mostly irrelevant one like the Episcopal Church—has
two identities, is bipolar and schizophrenic. There is the troublesome, canon
or doctrine bound, low-level toxin of the 'Institution'. All institutions, is
seems to me, are ultimately and fatally flawed. But the 'good twin' is the
'Community' that is the church—IS the church in the most vital and enlivening
and astonishing way imaginable.
Every
priest needs to learn about 'the Institution' and develop strategies to deal
with it...or strategies on how Not to deal with it. The Institutional
Church is politics writ large because of the church's habit of claiming not to
be political! It's politics in the end and a priest must develop a political
sense that allows him/her to navigate the treacherous waters and cross the
long, unrelenting desert of the Institutional Church without being maimed,
impaired or killed. The politics of the
church must be acknowledged and dealt with so the priest might be able to be
present fully to the Community—the very harbinger of the Kingdom.
My
choice has been—mostly learned from Snork but reaffirmed decades later by
Jack—to simply be who I am and do what I do but always cover my back in some
ingratiating way. That sounds all to manipulative as I think about it, but it
is a decision of 'manipulating' the Institution rather than being manipulated
by the Institution. The Institution itself is very seductive. It is possible to
convince yourself that you are being a 'team player' and 'going with the flow'
of the Institution and that the Institution is basically benign. Just as the
Church protests too much about not being political, you seldom find anyone in
the hierarchy who will fess up to the manipulative nature of the beast. 'Going
with the flow', it seems to me, puts one in high risk of being caught in the
powerful undercurrent of the Institution's
inertia. Bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. And bodies in motion tend
to stay in motion. The Institutional Church, remarkably, is both nailed down
tight and careening along at a break-neck speed. Failure to recognize that
either gets you stuck or run over.
Three
examples come to mind in this overly long aside. All three of the examples have
to do with bishops. Bishops have a choice to make that will shape their whole
episcopate: either 'become' the Institution or acknowledge its power and move
around it.
When
I was a baby priest, I called my bishop (a good man) to ask his permission to
do something I knew to be coloring outside the lines. He stopped me before I
could frame the question.
“Jim,
is this about something you really feel compelled to do?” he asked.
“Yes,
Bishop,” I said.
“Then
I'm giving you some advice. Don't ask me beforehand.” He paused to let me get
the wisdom of that. “Then apologize like hell and claim ignorance when I have
to slap your hand. It won't get you out of having your hand slapped, but I'll
still love you for the outrageous nature of your apology.”
That
was a man who had a strategy for dealing with the Institutional Inertia of the
Church.
One
of the best bishops I ever met was as unsuited for the job as a person could
be. He was a parish priest through and through who had been a last minute
compromise candidate in a contentious and divisive election. To his amazement
he was elected.
He
told me once about a particularly thorny question that came early in his bishopric.
It confounded him so much he went to the office of the Diocesan Archdeacon, a
man who had served several bishops, to ask for his advice.
“What
can I do about this?” he asked the politically savvy Archdeacon.
Then
the man smiled slyly at him and said, “Anything you damn well please. That's
why we call you 'Bishop'.”
So,
until he retired, that's what that Bishop did in most every occasion. His
strategy became 'using' the Inertia of the Institution to forward his best
intentions.
Both
those men were what I call the 'extinct bishops' of a much different
generation. They came to understand their power rather than 'becoming' their
office. Giants and Ogres once graced the seats in the House of Bishops. The
Giants (like my two friends) did much good. The Ogres
did much damage. I think the
Institutional Church recognized and deplored the damage of the Ogres so much
that they turned the office into a CEO rather than the Minister to the
ministers of God. They prevented much damage in doing so, but they also made it
harder and harder for bishops—and by extention, priests—to do remarkable kinds
of good.
Finally,
a friend of mine was elected bishop. He was someone I supported and worked for
(trying to ingratiate myself to the Powers that BE). We had agreed about most
issues, including what was wrong with the 'corporate model' of the Church. We
both, I knew, recognized that the Church's grace and healing power came from
the Community Model.
So, we were having lunch—on me
(ingratiate when you can, I say)--when I asked him when he planned to do
something that B.C. (Before Consecration) we had been allies about.
There was a long pause. Then he took a deep breathe and said, “Things look
different from this side of the desk, Jim....”
I
took a bite of salad and sip of wine to let him explain all that more clearly,
in small words I might understand. When he didn't, I said, impolitely and
without political ac-cumin, “There's no f*ck*ng desk here, bishop. We're two
friends in a restaurant.”
The
rest of the meal did not go well.
Jack
and Snork would have never said that to a bishop. It's not just that 'they knew
better', its simply that they would have known no good would come of it. Jack
and Snork taught me to avoid 'no good will come of it' situations adroitly. I
was not the best of students. No fault could be found with the teachers at all.
Both
Jack and Snork swam below the surface of the rough seas of the Institutional
Church. They had internal radar detectors that warned them of the church's
speed traps. Both did mostly what they wanted to do, with great grace and no
need for acknowledgment, but gave wide berth to potential pitfalls. They were
both, in their own ways, more radical and nontraditional than I ever dreamed of
being—and I dreamed, beloved, oh I dreamed!--yet they pulled it off without
drawing attention to themselves, covertly, burrowing beneath, going under or
over but never straight through. One bishop I served with called me his 'young
Turk'. But he always knew where I was and what I was up to. I was on his screen
and seldom confounded him. Jack and Snork were 'Turks' beyond compare, but they
were secret Turks, undercover Turks, wise old Turks, worn smooth by life. The
older I got, the more I became like them. At least that is my hope and my
prayer.
Snork's
chaplaincy to West Virginia University consisted of being all over the campus
talking with people, being in his office talking with people, sitting in the
coffee house known as “The Last Resort” talking with people, and at other
times, talking with people. Late in my ministry someone asked me exactly what I
did each day. I thought for a moment and said, “I walk around a lot and talk
with people—and hope that I listen more than I talk.” Snork taught me that the
real tools of priestcraft are speaking and listening—hopefully listening more
than you talk.
Snork
was a consummate listener. From time to time, at the house church we called St.
Gabrial's, he would even listen to the words of consecration at the Eucharist.
There were 30 or so of us, all under thirty except for Snork and the Arch-Angel
Miriah (who I wrote about a few chapters ago) and most of us were new to the
Episcopal Church. So, at the Wednesday night Eucharist, Snork would ask if
anyone had a birthday that week. Whenever someone did, Snork let them celebrate
the Eucharist while he did what he called, 'the manual acts'--elevation the
bread and wine, making the sign of the cross at appropriate times, breaking the
bread (always home-baked) at the end. We thought nothing of it though it violated
more Canon Laws than you can imagine! What did we know? Snork was the priest
and he said it was perfectly alright.
Here's
a startling thing, out of those 30 odd people, 5 of us went on to become
Episcopal priests, including Jorge and me and the first woman ever ordained in
WV. We each had our own reasons, but I can't help but think that having once
said those magic and mysterious and holy words that point to the living reality
of Christ in bread and wine, you can't get it out of your system and want to say
them over and again. An unorthodox form of discernment, surely, but one that
seemed to be very effective....
The
first time I petitioned to be elected a Deputy to the church's General
Convention, I came in ninth of the nine candidates. I was sitting alone,
nursing my wounds in the break after the election results had been announced,
when Jack came by and said, “I'm surprised you got that many votes.” He smiled
his crooked smile and sat next to me. “You should have come in tenth out of
nine....”
He
was chuckling at my disappointment. I decided to give him the silent treatment
but though Jack was never very talkative, he kept on talking in spite of my
ignoring him.
“Look
down there on the floor,” he said. We were in the balcony. I dutifully looked.
“You see all the people who got elected clerical deputies?”
In
fact I could—two men and two women. He was tweaking my curiosity just a bit.
“What
do they all have in common?” Jack asked.
Well,
not much. Two were my age, one younger, one older. One was bald, one was blond,
one had brown hair, two were heavy, two skinny, all white, of course. All
parish priests...what else? Then it hit me, they all had on dark pinstriped
suits—one of the women's suit had a skirt—and they all had on big, shiny
clerical collars and pressed black shirts.
I
looked at him. He was still chuckling. I had on sandals, jeans, an open collar
shirt and a tan jacket none the better for wear.
I
finally smiled.
“You'll
never 'fit in' the way the church expects,” he said, growing solemn and wise.
“But you could find ways to 'fit in' without compromising your strange sense of
integrity. You have two approaches to the Institution of the Church: either you
'ignore', but not benignly, you aggressively ignore it, or, you pick fights
with it.”
I
was the one chuckling now. Jack had nailed me in ways I hadn't expected to be
nailed. I didn't have any particular 'strategy' to get elected Deputy. I just
thought they should see beneath the surface and want to elect me. I was being
the ill-mannered, contentious kid who wondered why no one ever asked him to
play. It worked to get the Institution to leave me alone, but there was no
reason in heaven or on earth that they should reward me for being disagreeable.
Jack
smiled and patted my leg. “I'm going to go 'play nice' with these folks,” he
said, getting up, “You might consider joining me....”
So
I did and watched him genuinely enjoy himself as he moved through crowds of
people, stopping to chat or tell a joke. It wasn't nearly as painful as I had
imagined. The next time—after kissing enough ecclesiastical babies and butts—I
was elected to General Convention and have been twice more since then. And, as
Jack so gently taught me, the kissing up part wasn't unpleasant at all. I
discovered most Episcopalians in Connecticut are hale fellows and gals well
met, by in large. I'm a better person and better priest for learning that from
Jack.
Snork
and Jack both worked with and ministered to the margins of society before it be
came de rigor for the church to do that. Long before Presiding Bishop
Browning declared 'they're are no outcasts' in the Episcopal Church, Snork was
working with runaways, street people, drug abusers and hippies. Jack had a
vibrant ministry to gay and lesbian folks a couple of decades before GLBT
were four letters the church recognized. As the part time Rector of Trinity
Church in Waterbury—the most Anglo-Catholic parish in the area—Jack invited and
nurtured gay folk in remarkable ways. He was their 'pastor' and 'priest' and a
quiet advocate for inclusion in the life of the church.
While
I was at St. John's, a chapter of Integrity was founded. Integrity is a group
for GLBT Episcopalians and their friends. I asked Jack to be the first chaplain
to the group—a role I wanted but knew I couldn't play since it became clear that my inviting
Integrity to St. John's caused a remarkable fire-storm in the parish. I
dutifully and proudly announced I had welcomed the chapter to use the sanctuary
and library for their meetings and let it be known that I would be glad to have
conversations with anyone with questions. This was in the early 1990's and I
was naïve enough to think no one would raise an eyebrow about the whole thing.
How silly of me. (One of my character flaws is that I think of myself as 'the
norm' in society. I am genuinely astonished when people disagree with my
theology or politics.) So I wasn't prepared for the what was truly only four
people, but four people with much mischief in mind.
It
saddens me to tell you that the Gang of Four could be as destructive as they
were. After all, they were just four aging white men, but I quickly learned
that four aging, homophobic white men could do a lot of damage to a parish
community. Give them credit, two of them were former wardens and did have some
reputational power (very important power in a parish). The other two were the
masterminds, however; one not even a member of the parish and the second one
only marginal. The first move was when the marginal member—someone whose face I
knew from the back row at 8 a.m. Eucharists but only learned his name when an
usher told me he was upset. So I called him and he came in to talk, or rather,
to rage at me. I had some experience with dealing with irrational people, but
this was beyond my ken. He called me names, threatened my career and personal
well-being, told me how much 'fecal matter' a sexually active gay man ingested
in a year and described sexual acts I had neither heard of or imagined. That
meeting, which ended with me walking out of my office, leaving him there, and
going to a local bar, convinced me that I should never meet with any of the
group without a witness. I called Jack.
Jack
told me he could have warned me if he had known I was going to be so stupid as
to meet with someone like that alone. (Of course, Jack didn't call me
'stupid'...something along the lines of 'marginally mistaken'...something
Jack-like and kind.) But I never faced any of them in person without Jack,
sitting like a Buddha in the corner of the room. He always wore a black suit and
clericals when he was the silent witness to the escalating attacks on me by the
Gang of Four. And early on he told me something very Buddha like: “Fight not in
the shadows...” Jack said.
So
I dragged the whole mess out into the middle of the room, into the light of day
and parish meetings and sermons and articles in the newsletter. Whatever they
did, I made immediately public. Like when they started calling people in the
parish directory to ask if they knew that the Rector was letting fagots and
perverts use the church. One of the first people in the A's in the directory
was a member of the vestry who was a lesbian. She hung up on whoever called and
came to find me. She became a firm ally in what was to come. They also, in the
C's called a woman whose brother had just died of AIDS to convince her to take
up their cause against queers. They didn't 'know' who they were calling, of
course.
Through
it all, Jack stood by me at every meeting, his 'reputational power' and the
volume of his silence radiating trust and safety to all who were confused and
confounded by the conflict. The vestry, god bless them, endorsed my decision to
invite Integrity to use the church. Not everyone was convinced it was a good
idea, considering the conflict it had caused and considering that my
predecessor as Rector had 9 years of conflict that had damaged the parish
deeply. But the vestry knew that Episcopal Canon Law gives exclusive right of
'building use' to the Rector. And I was the Rector, though the four and whoever
sympathized with them were hoping 'not for long....'
Jack
gave me a tee-shirt he had made that said on the front: “I'M THE RECTOR, THAT'S
WHY!”
Bless
his heart.
After
several public meeting, Jack silently by my side, where the better angels of
the parish were given voice, things began to go away, at least until I found
out that the Four had contacted a notorious anti-Gay priest in Pittsburgh for
advice on how to rid themselves of me. That's when I called my bishop (the one
at the time was no champion of gay folks but was a strict interpreter of Canon
Law and the integrity—no pun intended—of
diocesan lines.) With his permission I invoked the disciplinary rubric
on page 409 of the Book of Common Prayer—the part about denying communion to
those who “have done wrong to their neighbors and are a scandal to the other
members of the congregation”--telling the Four I would refuse to give them
the host unless they ceased and desisted what they had been doing. Within a
month or two, two of them died and one moved to Florida. The fourth member of
the Gang—bless his heart—repented and became, once more a wonderful member of
the community, going out of his way, I heard, to welcome gay folk to St.
John's.
All
Jack told me after all that was this: “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
Jack could get away with saying stuff like that.
There
was a remarkable gay couple at St. John's while Jack was a member of the
parish. They had met in high school and had been faithful to each other for
over four decades. Neither had ever had another lover. They had come to St.
John's as volunteers for Bill H., who had AIDS. At first they dropped Bill at
the door and went for breakfast. Then, when Bill needed more attention, they
would take him to his pew and then wait for him in the parish library. Finally,
they started sitting with him and when they realized the deep affection of the
congregation for Bill, the two of them became members themselves.
They
had asked me to give their home a house blessing and wondered if I could throw
in a blessing for their 'marriage' as well. This was years before same sex
marriage became the law of Connecticut and I knew I would be on dangerous
ground. So I talked with Jack. Jack was glad to come along and bless the
couples' rings and relationship, using words that sounded quite true to the
formula of the Book of Common Prayer.
I
asked Jack if he thought I should have done it myself.
“No,”
he said. “You're still beholden to the church and could get in unnecessary
trouble.” Then he smiled and winked. “I'm just an old retired fart, what can
the bishop do to me?”
Now
I'm just an old retired fart, the way Jack was then. If I could only be a
percentage as gracious and bold and wise as he was—that would be a state
devoutly to be desired.
Both
Jack and Snork had five children. One of Jack and Marge's kids died in
childhood and another was severely mentally handicapped. Snork's five—3 girls
and 2 boys—were, and I suspect, still are alive and well. The difference was Jack had Marge to help him
raise the kids and Snork raised his children primarily by himself. Divorce,
even so short a time ago as the 1970's was still suspect when you were an
Episcopal priest. So Snork wasn't going to become a cardinal rector
anywhere—not that he wanted to and not that he would have if he'd been happily
married. Snork had this 'white Afro' of sandy red hair. Jack was a red-head
too—though when I met him, white haired as he was, I asked, “how did all your
kids get red hair?” He snorted. “What color hair do you think I was born
with—white?”
Snork's
children were always omnipresent. When I first met him one daughter was in her
late adolescence and the others spaced above her. The three daughters were all
lovely and not a little seductive. It was an odd home to grow up in since Snork
was constantly inviting people he found wandering on the earth to come and
sleep there. Mostly the visitors just smoked dope and hung out at Snork's house
but sometimes they ripped him off, carrying away electronic equipment and
whatever else they could sell. One guy really cleaned him out but some of us
ran him to ground and got Snork's stuff back. Snork, of course, wouldn't turn
the guy in and he was still welcome beneath Snork's roof. As you might imagine,
the guy cleaned Snork out again and disappeared.
I
was trying to get Snork to explain why he would let the fox back in the
henhouse. He bobbed around the way he always did—one mass of nervous energy—and
said, “Well, obviously I didn't think he'd do it again....” And then laughed,
wondering if I knew anyone with a used stereo and some records for sale.
That
was just Snork. It wasn't so much that he was foolish about human nature—though
he certainly was—it was more that he was unable to think bad about anyone.
Sometimes he could disarm really shady characters by treating them as if they
were paragon's of virtue. But just as often, he got ripped off. However, he
never seemed more than momentarily put out and was usually sure that he'd been
robbed for some higher, purer more exalted reason than simple human greed.
One
of Snork's gifts was to allow most of the people around him the opportunity to
worry about him and try to keep him safe from his own good nature. Like the
time he started a bible study group and had it invaded by fundamentalists.
There only seemed to be two kinds of 'Christians' around the campus those
days—semi-believing counter cultural types and raving charismatics. At least it
seemed that way to me. Trinity, the parish church, had become very conservative
so Snork, who was partially paid by Trinity, was always treading softly around
there. Not only did he look radical, he was, but he was also a loving, kind
man, which covered a multitude of his liberal sins. Things eventually got so
bad that a group broke away from Trinity and formed St. Thomas a Beckett, with
Snork as their vicar. But that was later—what Snork tried to do was offer
alternatives to the conservatives...like his Bible study.
I
didn't attend when he started the group but within a week or so he called me
and said I had to start coming. After two years at Harvard Divinity School, I
wasn't in the mood for Bible study but Snork explained he'd lost control and
wanted me to 'kick some ass' for him. Which I dutifully did, out of love for
him but also because kicking charismatics' asses was a load of fun. It took
about two more sessions—marked by much yelling and accusations of my being a
heretic at best and a hater of the baby Jesus at worst—I cleared out the right
wing folks.
I
told Snork afterward that he could have just canceled the study group or driven
away the bible thumpers who were confusing a handful of undergrads who really
wanted to know more about God—Snork's sweet and loving God.
He
shook his hair heavy head. “I just couldn't do that,” is all he said.
At
first I thought it was about not offending the folks at Trinity's right wing
sensibilities. But, on second thought, it was simply that Snork did not have
the capacity to shout down or offend anyone, ever. He was as gentle a man as I
ever knew. And his gentleness soothed and healed those around him much as,
years later, Jack's quiet presence had done so much to stop the bleeding over
gays at St. John's.
Gentle
men—both of them. Would that I could emulate them more fully.
Just
before my 25th birthday, my mother had a massive stroke from which
she never recovered. She was 63—the age I am as I sit writing this—so the
memory is fresh and damp upon me these days. My father had called in the middle
of the night, frightened and irrational. I promised I'd leave at daybreak to
drive home. It was a 5 ½ hour trip and I was so shaken I wasn't convinced I
could do it. My wife was in the Drama Department at West Virginia University
and had a performance so she couldn't come with me. I woke Snork up to ask him
to think gentle thoughts for me as I drove. Instead, he insisted on meeting me
at Trinity Church at 5:30 the next morning.
He
was unlocking the chapel door when I arrived. I lived only a few blocks from
the church but my hands were shaking as I drove over to the parking lot. Snork
wordlessly embraced me and half-led, half-carried me into the dark chapel. He
told me to sit and that he'd be right back.
I sat in the early morning light in that Gothic chapel, smelling the
stone and the candles' wax, listening to the profound silence of such buildings,
waiting, hardly thinking at all, frightened but settled. But there was no way I
could make that drive to Bluefield. I started thinking of someone I might ask
to drive me or, having Snork take me to the Airport in Pittsburgh or the
Morgantown bus station.
Then
he was back, decked out in full Eucharistic vestments over his jeans and
sandals. I'd never seen Snork wear a chasuble before. He even had on one of
those useless, anachronistic manaples no one ever wore. Before I knew what was
happening, he had started saying the words of the Communion service from the
1928 Book of Common Prayer—words so solemn and beautiful that I stood as he
prayed. He gave me communion and anointed me with healing oil. Then he embraced
me at the altar rail and said, softly, “I think you can do the drive now....”
And
I did.
I
drove home and fed my mother vanilla ice cream out of little cups with a wooden
spoon though she didn't know who I was or what I was doing. And my Aunt Elise
came in one morning and watched me feed my mother ice cream and then wished me
a Happy Birthday—my 25th—and then I stood by my mother's bed with my dad a few
days later and was with my mom as she died, something I shall never forget or
stop being thankful for the honor of that moment.
All
because Snork gave me communion and anointed me.
(What
I learned from that and never forgot was that about the only thing priests have
to offer that makes any sense or difference at all is the sacraments. And in my
life as a priest I have always remembered that when anyone was broken or pained
or confounded, what I could give—perhaps the only thing I could give—was
sacraments. So over the years I've taken hundreds of people into a chapel
somewhere and given them communion and anointed them and forgiven them whatever
horrid sins they had committed or imagined and washed them in the blood of the
Lamb through the remarkable and profound objective reality of the bread and
wine and oil and confession. All that I learned from Snork and relearned a
dozen times in two dozen ways from Jack.
Both
of them knew fair well the power and reality of the sacraments. And they taught
that to me....God bless their hearts....)
Jack
was the resident 'confessor' of St. John's during my time there, those 20 plus
years. People were always disappearing into the chapel with him when I wasn't
looking and he would hear their tales of woe and forgive them, whether they
really needed it or not (of course 'they' thought they needed it and Jack gave
forgiveness freely, completely, wondrously....) and give them the bread and
wine with a few well placed words and anoint them with that oh so holy oil.
What a privilege it was to sit at their knees and learn such mysteries....
Snork
dropped dead at 63—the same age as my mother, the same age I am as I write
this. He was in the bookstore at West Virginia University, having just bought
something (I wish I knew what so I could read it for him) and almost to the
front door. He had remarried and didn't take his heart medicine because it
inhibited his sex drive. His second wife was quite a bit younger than he was.
The choices we make in this life are strange and wondrous. I can't blame him at
all for his.
Jorge
and I drove down to Morgantown from the northeast corridore together to Snork's
funeral. I had temporarily left the full-time priesthood and was considering
never returning. However, I'd been to a workshop called Making A Difference and
had gotten my priesthood back all new. One of the distinctions of the
workshop—which I have led now for 15 years or more all over the country and in
Ireland several times—is the distinction between what we call 'the superstition
IS' and 'occurring', or, as we called it then, 'showing up'. The distinction is
that if you live in an IS world there are few possibilities. But choosing to
live in an 'occurring' or 'showing up' world, life can be full of new ways of
being. It's a bit more complicated than that, but that is enough to tell you
because I was explaining all that to Jorge somewhere in Pennsylvania and he,
driving, said to me: “Let me get this straight...what you're saying is Snork showed
up dead?”
Both
Jorge and I, two of the half-dozen priests who went to seminary because they
knew Snork, said some words at his funeral. I have no idea what I said all
these years later. But I know that I said something about how he taught me to
be a priest. That I know I said. And it was true, even if I was a slow learner.
A
group of us went through Snork's books and stuff. His new wife wanted us to
take things. One of the things I took was a round paper plate full of names.
Apparently, making this up but it has no other explanation, Snork would take a
plate from coffee hour at St. Thomas a Becket and write down the names of
everyone who had been there and date the plate with a magic marker. How amazing
to me that he could do that—know who had been at the Eucharistic and write them
all down afterward. I can't even begin to imagine the concentration and
attention that would require. There are 72 names on the paper plate. It is
dated, simply, Advent II 1985. That's all—72 souls remembered for having
received the Body and Blood. That's all...and more than enough.
Jack
loved jokes, bad jokes, really bad jokes. Like this, one he told me: Two old
guys in a nursing home. One tells the other, “I don't know how old I am.” The
second guy says, “wheel yourself out in the lobby and drop your pants and I'll
tell you how old you are.” So they both go in their chairs into the lobby and
the first guy takes off his pants. After all the upset and screams of visitors,
the two of them are taken back to their room. “You're 87,” the second guy tells
the one who dropped his pants. “How did you know?” the first guy asks. “You
told me last week,” the second guy says.
On
about any level, that is a bad joke. But Jack loved them. He loved to laugh and
to hear jokes and tell them. Bad jokes. Really bad jokes.
And
everyone who knew him laughed just as hard as he did, not because the jokes
were funny, but because Jack—that dear man—told them. Perhaps we will all be
judged, not on the quality of our jokes, but on whether everyone laughs with us
simply because laughing with us—like laughing with Jack—was healing and pure
and good. Like that.
Healing,
pure, good...words I associate with my connections to Snork and Jack. And, oh
yes, holy....
Jack
died with dignity and peace, just the way he had planned it. At his funeral, it
was my honor to preach. This is what I said:
October
17, 2009—Jack Parker's Memorial Service
Years
ago, I went on a day trip with three men who I love like uncles and mentors and
dear, dear friends. Jack Parker, Bill Penny and David Pritchard and I drove up
into the heart of New England. I remember we went to a place called 'The
Cathedral of the Pines' and we also went to see Jack's mountain—the one he
loved and had climbed time and time again and where some of his ashes will be
scattered by his remarkable family. We had a great lunch at some place one of
them knew and somehow got back before it was too late for such a motley crew to
be out without getting into mischief!
A friend of mine told me that there
are only two plots in all of literature. One is, “a stranger arrives in town”.
The other is, “someone sets out on a journey.”
I have memories of sharing part of the
journey that is life with Jack Parker.
Memories like that are precious, rare,
wondrous and, finally, holy.
Holy.
I've ONLY know Jack Parker for 20
years or so. I say 'only' because I know some of you have known him much longer
than that—his children, his family that he loved so fiercely...and others. But
knowing him for two decades was a beautiful gift to me from God. And if I had
to choose a word to describe that gift it would be this--'holy'.
Holy.
I've never known anyone who loved a
bad, corny joke as much as Jack.
Most of the jokes Jack loved began
something like this: “A rabbi and a priest and a Baptist minister went into a
bar...” Or, like this: “Three elderly men were sitting on the front porch of
the nursing home....” Or, like this, “A man was trying to sell a talking
dog....”
You get the point. Jack would start
laughing half-way through telling the joke and anyone who was listening would
start laughing with him, entranced by Jack's laugh, caught up in his story, not
caring at all how the joke turned out—it would turn out bad and corny—but
thankful and joyous to be sharing a laugh with Jack.
There is a word for sharing a laugh
with Jack. The word is 'holy'.
Holy.
There is a word that occurs to me for
anything, anytime, 'shared with Jack'.
The
word is 'holy'.
Ok, he was not St. Francis of Assisi.
Not quite. But he was, for me, a 'holy' man. Truly, really, without fear of
contradiction, Jack was 'holy'. No kidding. I'm not exaggerating. Not at all.
He taught me so many things. Knowing
Jack was like post-doctoral work in kindness and love and long-suffering and
generosity of spirit and joy. Knowing Jack was like a seminar in prayerfulness.
He was a priest to be admired, a man to be emulated, a quick study in
sweetness. It seems an odd word, perhaps, but Jack was a sweet, sweet man. I
know you all know what I mean.
And learning these things from Jack
was—have I mentioned this?--holy.
The words from Jesus in today's gospel
are among the most beautiful and comforting in all of Scripture.
“Let not your hearts be
troubled, believe in God, believe also in me...In my father's house are many
rooms...If it were not so, would I have told you I go to prepare a place for
you?”
The Greek word translated 'rooms' is mona.
That word has many possible translations--'rooms', 'resting places', 'mansions'
(as we used to say), and 'abodes'. That's the one I like: 'abodes'...places to
be, space to 'abide' in the nearer presence of the God who loves us best of
all.
The last time I saw Jack, I made him
promise that he wouldn't die until I got home from a trip to the beach. He said
he'd try, but he wasn't sure he could. It was the only promise he didn't keep
to me. He had other plans, another place to abide.
That last time I saw Jack, I offered
him communion. The sacrament was Jack's favorite food and drink, but that last
time he said, 'no'.
“You've been a priest to me long
enough,” he told me, with that crooked smile and twinkling eye he always had.
“We're just two old friends saying goodbye....”
Jack taught us all so very much about
'living'. And he taught us how to die.
And it is time now—he would have
wanted it this way—it's time for us to smile and remember and thank God for the
journey and say 'good bye' to our old, dear friend....
“I fear no foe, with thee at
hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no
bitterness.
Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy
victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.”
