did I forget to send you the first chapter?

 

  Tend the Fire,

   Tell the Story,

   Pass the wine

     (Memories of Priesthood)

 

 

      

                         by

                    Jim Bradley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                        “Farther along, we’ll know all about it.

          Farther along, we'll understand why;

                   Cheer up, don't worry, live in the sunshine,

                   We'll understand it all by and by.”

                                                   --W.B.Stevens

                                                      (refrain to a mountain hymn)

 

 

                        “...nothing could more surely convince me

                        of God's unending mercy than the

                        continued existence on earth of the

                       church.”

                                                --Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

 

                         

 

                         “...Then the well spoke to me.

                     It said: Abundance is scooped from abundance,

                     yet abundance remains.”

                                                --Anne Sexton                 

                       

                             

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I.  The Archangel Mariah

         The one question that drives people in seminary crazy is this: “Why do you want to be a priest?”

          There are several reasons that question so bedevils those studying for Holy Orders. First of all, everyone and their cousin has asked you that since the first moment you imagined it might be a possibility—you’re being a priest and all. There is no end to the people wanting to know why you want to be a priest—those already parish priests, discernment groups, bishops, commissions on ministry, standing committees, admission committees, seminary professors, strangers you meet at cocktail parties, on and on....there is no end to the people wanting to know why you want to be a priest.

          A second reason is that a call to a priest is, primarily that: an invitation from God to you. It's a deeply personal and profoundly important event or series of events. There is, even in this era of “tell all”, some needs for privacy. If what God has to suggest in your heart of hearts isn't one of those things you have a right to keep to yourself, then what is?

          But finally, the most prominent reason nobody in seminary wants to answer that question is that, on the deepest level, you don't have a clue!  For most of the priests I know—not all, certainly, but most—the 'call to priesthood was as complex as a jet engine. There are lots of parts to it, most of which can't be extricated or distinguished from the parts right next to them or at either end of the whole contraption. I doubt that there are many people who can explain all the intricacies of a jet engine. The same is true, it seems to me, about a call to ordination.

          I once witnessed one of my seminary classmates lose it when asked the question. We were at some reception or another at Virginia Seminary and a well-meaning, sincere woman was talking with him and asked, “Why do you want to be a priest?”

          He took a gulp of sherry and said, “One night I was sleeping naked with my window open during a thunderstorm” (being southern, he said 'necked' instead of 'naked') “and lightening came in my window, struck me on the genitals and didn't kill me....It was either become a priest or go live in Tibet.”

          I swear this really happened.

          Once the woman recovered from apoplexy, she said, in a gentle Tidewater Virginia accent, “I imagine that doesn't happen often.”

          “Only once to me,” my friend said, looking around for more sherry.

          My friend, Scott, when he was a seminarian at Yale and working with me at St. Paul's, New Haven, told me he was about to lose his mind with the Standing Committee in the Diocese of West Virginia.

          “No matter how many times I tell them,” he said, “or how many different ways, they ask me again.”

          “Why don't you tell them you want to be Magic?” I asked.

          Scott laughed. “Are you crazy?” he said.

          “Who knows,” I told him, “it might shut them up.”

          After I preached at his ordination, Scott gave me a wondrous pen and ink sketch based on 'being magic'. It's here in my little office with me. I still love it, two decades later.

          I don't have to resort to tales of lightning storms or the longing to be magic. I know why I decided to be a priest. The sky didn't open up. I didn't hear God speak to me out loud and in English. It was simpler and yet more marvelous than any of that.

          I was visited by the Archangel Mariah.

          Mariah was the only member of St. Gabrial's mission, the campus ministry at West Virginia University, back in the late 60's and early 70's who was older than 35 besides Snork, the priest. Mariah was in her late-70's back then. St. Gabrial's had a ministry of hosting international students in the basement of Trinity Church on Friday nights for games and food and companionship. Mariah was the source of that ministry. That's one reason she came to St. Gabe's. The other reason was that she wanted to be around young people. She couldn't stand stuffiness in any guise. The three-piece suits and women in hats at Trinity's services were too much for her. She preferred the company of college students and week-end hippies.

          I strain to remember her over 40 years of memories. She was a tiny woman—no more than 5'2” and most likely about 90 pounds fully clothed and soaking wet. She had wild gray hair that she wore tied back as best she could. And there was her face: her eyes were an indescribable color—blue, green, hazel in different light—and lost in the most remarkable set of smile wrinkles I've ever seen. Mariah smiled and laughed so much that she tended to look a tad Asian—there were small spaces for her eyes to shine through. She had all her own teeth and showed them off smiling and laughing. Her face, in spite of her age, was actually 'girlish', elfin, like the face of a loris or a lemur—some exotic animal whose name begins with an L.

          Mariah's passion (what Joseph Campbell would have called her 'bliss') was the international students at WVU. Every Friday night you could find her in Trinity's undercroft playing card games and listening, playing backgammon and listening, playing some American board game and listening. She was always listening to the young people from faraway places with strange sounding names. WVU had a remarkable Engineering program so there were hundreds of students, mostly young men, from Third World Countries studying in the part of the middle of Nowhere called Morgantown, West Virginia. One of the informal courses they were forced to study on their own was Culture Shock 101. In the '70's there were no ethnic enclaves in Morgantown, unless you consider Rednecks and Sorority Girls ethnic groups. Those students from Africa, Asia, central Europe and the Middle East had no contact with their homelands besides each other. There was no Internet back then and international phone calls were still ridiculously expensive. It wasn't like living in New York or DC. Morgantown was referred to by many of the students at WVU—many of whom, like me, were from the sticks to begin with—as “Morgan Hole”.

          At that time, there wasn't much in Morgantown for anyone, much less people thousands of miles from home. And nobody much was interested in the well-being of those foreign students except Mariah. Mariah was interested in them with a vengeance.

          She welcomed them into Trinity's basement, into her home and into her vast, expansive heart. She got them to write home for recipes and tried to reproduce them as best she could from the local Kroger's selection of foods and spices. She tried to learn enough of their languages so she could greet each of them as they would be greeted at home. She matched them up with people and the University and in town—all of whom she seemed to know—who might have some faint connection to or interest in Afghanistan or Bulgaria or Korea or wherever they were from. She was a one-woman network of 'connections' for those folks so far from home, those strangers in an oh so strange land.

          There was something biblical in her commitment to the strangers in her midst. She would welcome them all and do any and everything possible to make them a little less anxious about finding themselves plunked down in such a place as Morgantown. Mariah was sometimes the victim of those she befriended. Being from a different culture and far from home doesn't make someone trustworthy. If there is a lesson to be learned from working with any minority group—racial, cultural or economic—it is this: People, so far as I've been able to discern, are, in the end, 'just People'. We all share the same deep-down 'being of human beings'. The international students Mariah dedicated her energy to were so different than the outsiders and oddballs Snork loved and cared for—that is, some of them will rip you off big time!

          The Lord only knows how much money Mariah parceled out to foreign students. And surely only the Lord knows how much of that money could have just as well been tossed of the bridge over Cheat Lake. But she never fretted about it. That's what she told me when I spoke to her after seeing $100 or so pass from her hand to the hand of a Nigerian I knew loved to gamble.

          “Never mind,” Mariah told me, “I'll just let God sort it all out.”

          On one level, that is ultimate foolishness. On another, deeper level, it may just be one of the best ways possible to live a life. And that, above all, was what Mariah was good at—living wondrously and well. I've never had the courage to live letting God 'sort it all out', but it certainly worked for Mariah.

          While I was working as a social worker, Bern and I lived in the third-floor apartment of a three-story house down a charming brick street in Morgantown. During our time there, the home base for St. Gabriel’s Wednesday evening Eucharists was the attic of that house, accessible only through our apartment. We would gather up there—20 or 30 of us—and celebrate the holy mysteries seated on the unpainted floor. When we passed the peace, there was always the danger of getting a concussion from smacking your noggin on the exposed beams. It was a dimly lit, uncomfortable space, but it served quite nicely as the upper room of St. Gabe's.

          It was after one of those outrageously informal communions that Mariah, who I had already determined was a saint (St. Mariah of the Nations) revealed herself as an Archangel. After Mass—if I can dream of calling our attic worship that! --we would all retreat down the stairs to our apartment. There was always food. People brought cooking and brownies (often with a special ingredient) cheese and home-baked bread, fruit both dried and fresh, nuts and seeds and we'd have some feasting. Plus, there was always a lot of wine. Some of St. Gabe's regulars would go down on the front porch to smoke a joint—not normal, I suppose, for most Episcopal coffee hours.

          I was in the kitchen with Mariah. She'd managed to get me there alone by some miracle since people tended to clump around her wherever she was. There was something about how intently she listened to whatever nonsense you had to say that made her a people magnet. But we were alone in the kitchen when she said to me, balancing her plastic wine glass and a handful of cheese with remarkable grace. Then she said, “When are you going back to seminary and get ordained?”

          I was three glasses of wine and a trip to the porch past whatever state of sober grace the Body and Blood of Christ had given me up in the attic. I was then, as I am to some extent today, a 'smart ass'. Ironic and Sardonic were my middle names in those days. I can still be depended upon to lower or deflate whatever serious conversation I come upon. “Nothing is serious or sacred” has been my motto most of my life. I never realized how annoying that can be until my son demonstrated, in his teen years, a genetic predisposition to that same world view.

          So, in my cups, you might say, I replied in a typically smart ass way.

          “My dear Mariah,” I said, “I'll go back to seminary and get ordained when I get a personal message from God Almighty.”

          She smiled that smile that made her eyes almost disappear and, after a healthy drink of what I assure you was not good wine (we drank only that vintage in those days) said words that changed my life forever.

          “Jim,” she said, “who in the hell do you think sent me and told me what to say?”

          Never, before or after, did such a word as 'hell' pass through Mariah's sainted lips. She was never even mildly profane. I stared at her, suddenly as sober as a Mormon or a Muslim or both at the same time.

          She finished her cheese, put her wine glass in the sink and embraced me. I held her like a fragile bird. She kissed my cheek and whispered in my ear, “You've got your message....”

          She left me in my kitchen with dry ice in my veins and some large mammal's paw clutching my heart. I found it hard to breathe. Two trips to the porch and a full juice glass of the Wild Turkey I kept hidden under the sink on Wednesday nights changed nothing.

          I called the bishop the next morning. Only after I had an appointment with him could I tell Bern what insanity I was up to and breathe properly again.

 

          Mariah died a few months later. I was one of her pallbearers. She was as light as air for us to carry—three international students and three members of St. Gabriel’s carried her. Archangels don't weight much. They are mostly feathers and Spirit. She was buried from Trinity Church. Snork did the service and did her proud in his homily of thanksgiving for so rare a soul. I had just been accepted to Virginia Seminary. Bern was in New York acting in an off-Broadway show. We would meet up in Alexandria in September.

          Mariah's granddaughter, who was a member of St. Gabe's as well, embraced me at the reception following the funeral. It was in the basement of Trinity Church where Mariah had spent so many Friday nights. Many of the foreign students brought ethic food. Clara told me Mariah had asked about me on the day she died. I'd left my acceptance letter in Snork's office and he'd shown it to Clara. I hadn't tried to call when it ca e Mariah was in the Intensive Care Unit. Her so full and generous heart had simply worn out from so much loving.

          So, it was Clara that told Mariah I was accepted at VTS. Clara said her grandmother smiled that eye disappearing smile when she heard. She smiled through her great weakness.

          “You tell Jim,” she whispered to Clara, “that I told him so....”

          Her last words for me: “I told you so.”

          That works for me. That will do nicely.

 

                       

 

 

 

 

 

I've been holding this back

I can't wait until the current cases against the former President (who I will not name) play out.

Jail would be too good for him and his family.

We need to exile them to some miserable nation or send them to the moon.

We have never had anyone in the highest office in the land who was so corrupt, so brutal, so unforgiving.

Plus, he is a world-class liar and cheat.

To have one or more of the lawsuits and criminal offenses or the January 6th committee bring him down would give me great joy.

Great Joy!

Time will tell.

Yes, it will.

 

Chapter two of Tend the Fire, Tell the Story, Pass the Wine

 

2 Job Descriptions

       A seminary classmate of mine, who was also a priest in West Virginia when I was there, was once riding an airplane from Los Angeles to Chicago. My friend, let's call him Joe, was wearing, as he seemingly always did, a clerical collar and a black shirt, black suit and black wing-tips. Joe is quite a large man so his priest outfit always made him look like a black-out curtain from the London Blitz. He spent the flight talking amiably with a salesman from the Mid-West. They developed one of those airplane friendships and exchanged business cards and the descent began toward O'Hare. Just as the 747 was taxiing up to the gate, Joe's new friend asked, “What do you do?”

          Joe glanced down to make sure his uniform was in place—and hadn't they talked about the church somewhere over Idaho?

          “I'm an Episcopal priest,” Joe replied, confused.

          The salesman smiled. “Oh, I know what you are,” he said. “I was just wondering what you do.”

          It is an interesting observation and question. What on earth does an Episcopal priest do? How can you describe a role that I believe is more ontological than functional? What's the job description? Doesn't every professional DO something?

          Once, at a cocktail party in New Haven, surrounded by Yale 'people' (the population of New Haven is divided into 'Yale people' and the masses of the unwashed) I had a long conversation with a physicist from India with one of those delightful post-Raj English accents that sound like a bird's song. You hear that accent most every time you call customer services (aka “help!”)

for your computer. All those folks seem to be in India. Since I didn't have on a clerical uniform—and never once flew on an airplane with a collar lest I be seated beside some psychologically disturbed stranger who wants to confess at 40,000 feet—I had told him when we greeted each other what I 'did'. And he told me what he 'did'. Its what people do.

          (Here's a fascinating aside: back in the Appalachian Mountains where I grew up, when people meet for the first time the question comes trippingly off each of their tongues is “where are you from?” not “what do you do?” I haven't asked enough people who grew up in really rural places if that was true back home for them. So, I don't know if it is purely and urban/rural distinction or has something to do with the culture and ethos of Appalachia. But I know and know fair well that back home you could tell a lot more about a stranger by knowing where they were from and 'who their people were' than you could by finding out how they earned their money. I still have the tendency to ask people where they spent their formative years, believing as I do that there is a wealth of instant knowledge and intimacy in discovering someone's roots. But in the place I live now and amidst the people I know now, the first question in invariably, “What do you do?”)

          So, I told this Indian physicist that I was and Episcopal priest and he asked me with the guilelessness of someone who was 'from' a place half-a-world away and who was Hindu, if he was anything religious at all, what my 'work' consisted of.

          Even then, I had begun to believe that being a priest is an ontological rather than a functional thing, so I fished around in my brain for some way to describe succinctly what my 'being' in the midst of a parish looked like beyond the obvious worship and meetings.

          “I'm a member of a community,” I told him, “and I function as the leader of that community in our ritual life. And I am very aware of what is going on in and around the community so that when I see God breaking into the day-to-day, I can say “Stop! Look! There's God...right there!”

       He considered that in that lovely, calm and timeless way people from the Indian sub-continent seem to have naturally, took a sip of wine and then said, smiling knowingly, “You're a process observer.”

          He, of course, had to explain to an English major that a 'process observer' was an indispensable role in the sciences. Much of what science is about is watching experiments and noting what happens. It is, he told me, rather tedious and painstaking work (not unlike the day-to-day 'duties' of a parish priest) but finally crucial to the march of scientists to the day when they have the String Theory down pat,

          “A process observer,” I said to myself, giving the little voice in my head a line to speak of my composition instead of just listening to it chatter on of its own volition. I rather liked the term, yes, I did.

          The actuality is this: one of the things parish priests DO, it seems to me, is 'point to God in the process.' We do it in the Eucharist—all the sacraments—in a most obvious way. “You may think this is just fish food and bad port”, priests say in the Mass, “But I'm going to 'point out' to you that this is ALSO the very Body and very Blood of Christ. How about 'dem apples?” Or, like this: “You may imagine this is just a little baby and some water and some oil, but I'm going to reveal to you a different way of looking at all this...a way that brings to mind the Creation and the Exodus and John the Baptist and Jesus and the oil of anointing a royal child and the fact that this squirming little creature is actually the most loved Child of God.” Or this: “I know everyone here assumes you are simply a man and a woman anxious to get the reception over and shed these fancy clothes and do what men and women do in the dark, wine-soaked night. But I tell you a Mystery—you are beloved of God and God approves, blesses and watches over you. Go after each other with passion and zeal—it is as the Almighty has ordained.” Stuff like that is what priests “do”. Process observing—seeking to unconceal the oldest String Theory of them all: that God is in control in some way we seldom recognize and can only faintly understand.

          Once, several years ago, the remarkable Organist/Choir Director of St. John's—the finest musician I've ever known who doesn't have a big, honking attitude—found a Spiritual he thought I might like, knowing I'm partial to Spirituals. It was called “I Believe This Is Jesus” and went like this--” I believe this is Jesus....Come and see.... Come and see....” Bob's idea was that I would, after the fracture of the host, sing the “I believe this is Jesus” part and the choir would respond, “Come and see.... Come and see...”, then sing the rest of the song while I administered communion to those serving at the altar. Great idea—real 'process observer' stuff.... I’d break the bread and then hold the paten and chalice up and sing, “I believe this is Jesus.” Which I do believe, by the way.

          So, without telling anyone but the choir, that's what we did. I broke the bread, took a deep breath since I'm rocky about my singing ability, and broke into song. When the choir responded with the 'Come and See' part, I made 'come here' gestures to the congregation, shifting from foot to foot, remembering why I love Spirituals—you can't stand still and sing them. I turned to give communion to the others at the altar—including the assistant Rector and the Parish Administrator—and they were all staring at me as if I were a crazy person just escaped from the looney bin with sharp weapons. After I force fed them the bread and wine—fattening up the Christmas goose—they dissolved into that kind of laughter that there is simply no way, no way in heaven or on earth, not act of will available to human beings to repress. The “I Believe this is Jesus” Mass passed immediately into St. John's lore. When I talk to people who were there, it still comes up occasionally—them laughing more than me since I am 'process observing—and I can still sing it. I'll sing it for you if you ask me nicely.

 

          I had this ongoing conversation about ontology and function and what a priest 'does' with bishops, priests and lay people if it just doesn't seem too precious and tedious to them. I come down heavy on the 'being' side of the distinction. I actually think a priest's job description is to be in the midst of the community. The functional stuff is neither rocket science or brain surgery. In fact, most of the things a priest does—since we are the last of the 'generalists'--someone else could do much better. Say Mass, for example—I'd suggest training in theater would make for a more dramatic Eucharist than studying theology ever could. Visiting the sick, another example—couldn't a nurse or a social worker pull that off with great aplomb? Teaching Adult Classes—well, give me someone trained in education every day to someone who can recite the Nicene Creed by heart. Counseling the troubled? A seminary education makes you a counselor as much as a class in auto mechanics makes you a jet pilot. Parish priests, if they took my advice, would avoid 'counseling' like the plague and get a rolodex (oops, dated myself) a 'smart phone' full of professionals to refer people to. I can listen to someone's problems but seldom, if ever, do I know or suggest an answer.

          (Aside to parish clergy: you know the old saw, “misery loves company”? My belief is that “misery loves misery” and if you start fooling with someone's misery and aren't fully trained to handle the consequences—oh, like they'll blame you if they have to face life without their misery and blame you if you leave them miserable—it's what we call, these days, a No Win/No Win situation. Besides, when people tell me their problems, instead of having the necessary psychological training to bring them to see that only they can solve their problems, I get 'hung up' in their problems, find them fascinating and probably wouldn't want them to go away because they interest me! Call a real professional, that's my advice to a parish priest. Run, don't walk, away from anyone who comes to you for 'counseling'. End of aside.)

          So, here I am, trying to describe 'what I do' when the reality I deal with tells me that being a priest is much more about 'being' than 'doing'. I have this argument with people all the time and it goes on and on. Most clergy are so embarrassed that they don't have a 'real job' that they make themselves incredibly busy and overworked to somehow justify what I think is a fact: like Woody Allen said (and this goes squared for priests) “90% of life is just showing up.” Priesthood is about ontology, about 'being' much more than it is about 'doing' or the functions we necessarily fulfill in the Church of God. People, over the years, before I retired, often said to me, “I know you're busy,” as prelude to sharing some joy or sadness. And I would always say, “I'm not busy at all. I sit around waiting to hear from you.”

          Perhaps my ontological view of priesthood is the result of my remarkably high view of the sacraments. I believe 'being a priest' is contained and fully lived out in the 'being' of 'being a priest'. The busyness we create is smoke and mirrors and vanity. I've done it too, but I think the most egregious example of putting 'function' over 'being' is exemplified by something that happened here in Connecticut a decade or more ago.

          Connecticut always has, for nearly 30 years, three bishops. Count 'em, three bishops for the Episcopal Church in Connecticut. Amazing. I am reminded of Will Rodgers' observation about Methodist ministers. What he said was: “Methodist ministers are like manure. Spread out, they tend to do a lot of good. All in one place they begin to smell.” Well, well, three bishops for Connecticut. (Sniff, sniff....)

          But anyway, fifteen years or so ago, someone had the bright idea to have Connecticut's three bishops do a time study of what they 'did' as bishops. This, in its inception was a miscarriage of an idea. First of all, who cares? Secondly, why on earth would they agree to do it? These are Bishops for goodness sake! In our polity, they are the cream of the crop, the tops, the Eiffel Towers, the Pacific Oceans of the world of the Episcopal Church. Why would they spend time writing down how they spent their time? And record how much time they spent writing down how they spent their time? Astonishing that someone convinced three more than reasonably intelligent “princes of the Church” to go along with such a hair-brained idea. Time studies for Bishops qualifies as an abomination in my book.

          Anyway, they did it. And what is even more outrageous than their agreeing to do it, they allowed it to be published. I remember it vividly. Changing the names to protect the guilty, it went like this: the Diocesan Bishop, Bishop Wall, could claim to spend 80+ hours a week trying to bring in the Kingdom of God. Bishop Cool, one of the two (count them) Suffragan bishops, clocked in at 79 hours a week toiling in the vineyard of the Lord. But the second Suffragan, Bishop Rowdy, tallied up his hours and only worked, on average, 50 hours a week.

          I was astonished and horrified by the spectacle of three Bishops lowering themselves to record how long they were on the phone to some troublesome person in St. Something or Other's with a ridiculous and totally fabricated complaint about incense or the lack of incense in their parish. Embarrassing is what it was. But I was so proud of Bishop Rowdy. Bishops, like priests and deacons, take a vow at ordination to be a 'godly example'. Since a bishop has been ordained three times, they have agreed to be a 'godly example' thrice. I called Bishop Rowdy and said, “you are the only 'godly example' I have as a bishop. I don't much like you and don't agree with your theology or politics, but by the breath of the Baby Jesus, you are MY BISHOP from here on out. Only you give me the example of not being busy by design and letting your ministry consist of 'being' for me and the whole diocese. Thank you. Bless you. I love you.”

          Actually, I didn't say it all that way, this is poetic license at work. But that is what I meant.

          There was a long, awkward silence on the phone line.

          “Bishop?” I said.

          He sighed. I heard him sigh. “Jim,” he said, slowly, deliberately, I pray regretfully, “after I saw the other two bishops' time sheets I went back and found 25 hours I neglected to record.”

          Holy God, how can a bishop (or anybody) misplace 25 hours a week? And how can priests seek to 'BE' when their bishops are competing to see how functional and 'busy' they can be?  How vain and weirdly arrogant for those of us in ministry to imagine our 'doing' is what will bring in or impede the coming Kingdom. Why would we spend so much time worrying and fretting about 'doing' enough rather than seek to explore the nature and purpose of the 'being-ness' of being ordained.

          My friend John told me this joke once. “An email arrives that says, 'Start worrying, letter to follow'.”

          It seems to me that we priests are always worrying about whether we are doing enough to justify our existence. The busyness we create out of nothing is designed so that people will think we are busy about the Lord's work. Being comfortable about 'being' would be more clearly a 'godly example' to the people than running ourselves ragged with make-work.

          Back in 2000 I visited 37 of my seminary classmates as a project for a sabbatical. (By the way, in this Diocese, three month sabbaticals are required for each five years of active ministry. I know people who never took one in three decades. They either felt they were indispensable to the parish, which is simply wrong, or they were too nervous about their 'authority' that they couldn't see a value in being away for three months! And, also by the way, the bishop wants to ascertain that priests in this diocese have something they plan to 'do' while on sabbatical. Heaven forbid someone would simply take the time off for themselves and for well-being!) One of my classmates—a guy who was only with us for the last year of seminary and who had been a Roman Catholic priest before he married a woman with five children—told me how gratifying it was to have left VTS and gone to a parish where he had remained for all 25 years since our graduation.

          “I've been here long enough,” he told me, “that the people accept the fact that being a priest is the only job in the world that is focused on 'being' rather than doing.” What a thought—a whole career of ministry in one community focused on 'being'! What a pity we don't trust parishioners enough to share that example for life with them. What a pity that we need to make people think we are so terribly busy that we shouldn't be bothered by their petty concerns and wonderings and questions and longings. That, in fact, is precisely what being a priest entails—to be free and available and ready to 'be' with people whenever they need that presence.

          I'm not suggesting that 'being with people' will “save them” or “heal them” or do anything more than simply being present with them in their joy or confusion or pain or loss or wonderment. There is a wonderful psychological term: the non-anxious presence. Therapists seek to provide that for their clients—just to be with them, whatever is going on, without anxiety. A calming presence is what most of us need when stuff is happening in our lives. Just that—a shadow in the background that is simply 'there' without attaching themselves to the emotions and feelings of the moment—that is what most of us need, most of the time. And that, it seems to me, is how a priest can 'be' in the midst of the community he/she serves.

          I have done what used to be called “EST Training”. Most religious folks I knew at the time thought EST was mind-control and a monstrous intrusion into the lives of those who submitted themselves to it.  I am still involved, 20+ years later, with the Mastery Foundation, that uses the 'technology' of EST combined with the practice of centering prayer. I took the Making a Difference workshop when I was considering renouncing my vows as a priest and what I came out of the three days with was my priesthood all shiny and new. The workshop is 'ontological'--it is about 'being' not 'doing'.

          Back over a quarter of a century ago, when I was at an EST workshop, I called to tell them I couldn't come to the second weekend because a beloved parishioner of St. Paul's (the parish I was serving at the time) was dying and I had to be with him. The EST Training leaders gave me much grief about my 'commitment' to the training and what if I'd been hit by a truck, who would be with Aaron, who would be his priest then? It seemed a far go to compare missing two days of the training to being a victim of a hit and run, but I listened. I finally rejected all the b.s. arguments they threw at me—some of it reasonable b.s. but b.s. all the same—and went to visit Aaron when I should have been in my chair at the EST training.

          Aaron was in a coma and I couldn't 'do' much of anything. I couldn't give him communion or talk with him or reassure him as he was slipping into that good night. So, after 15 minutes I left his room, having anointed him and given him final unction—I could “do” that, after all. I rode the elevator to the lobby and was unlocking my car when I remembered the first weekend of EST and the emphasis on 'being' I had learned there. So, I went back up the elevator to the 5^th floor and went back to Aaron's room. I sat by his bed for over two hours. From time to time I would read a psalm from my Prayer Book aloud, but mostly for me since he wasn't in my time/space continuum. After two hours, I kissed his 88-year-old face and headed for the door.

          At that very moment, he awoke momentarily from the coma of his last sleep and said, with the basso voice I'd know from him before his illness: “Jim, thanks for being with me....”

          It never occurred to me in that moment to 'do' anything. I didn't rush to him bedside and give him communion. I didn't open my BCP and say a prayer. I only answered, “you're welcome Aaron,” and left. Three days later I was the celebrant and preacher at his funeral. I had done my job. I had BE-ed with him. That was what he needed and I was given the privilege of sitting in his presence for a while.

 

          Actually, I do have a definition of the job description of a priest. I've used in in a couple of ordination sermons that did not get me in trouble with a bishop. I think the form of it is—if not RIGHT—at least in the country where RIGHT lives. Here's how it goes: the 'job' of a priest is simply this, to tend the fire, tell the story and pass the wine.

          A parish priest has an enormous amount of discretionary time. Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise. And that time should be spent being the Shaman of the Tribe. I really believe the metaphor of the Shaman is one we priests should embrace. We should walk backwards and sideways. We should speak words our mouths are unfit for. We should do the holy acts and dwell in the 'being' of our being in the midst of the Tribe. We wait with the expectant father. We sit by the sick bed. We pour water on the babies. We whisper nonsense syllables over bread and wine. We light the candles. We tell and re-tell the story of our Tribe in old ways and ways made new. We anoint the sick and dying. We rejoice with the joyous. We are there when one of the Tribe moves to that Good Night. We pour dirt on the casket. We unite the lovers. We sit and wait and are not anxious whatever is happening. Shamans are the role we play in the Tribe who loves us and we love to death.

          So, we tend the fire.

          Everyone else is too busy in the tides and times of living to pay proper attention. The priest must add the green branch to the dying fire and blow on it until it takes and burns. The priest must know the history of the Tribe and breathe it into the fire as the flame turns to embers. We are the fire-tenders, the wood gatherers, the ones who choose between the green wood and the seasons as is appropriate. That is who we 'are' and how we 'be' in the midst of the Tribe.

          We also 'tell the story'. It is a story everyone in the Tribe knows, on some level, in some way. So, the way we tell it must annoy and inspire and provoke. It is the story of our particular Tribe and of the larger Tribe we are a part of. It is the story of a God who created us in the very image of God's self and of a God who took on our flesh and a God who died, as we shall die, yet rose from death to prove to us that Life is the last word, the ultimate word, the only word that matters, really matters. So, we tell this story with mouths full of pebbles and in halting, stuttering words and with an eloquence we neither deserve nor can rise to, except the Spirit leads us and gives up speech. We tell this story as the tribe sits by the fire we tend and we watch their eyes...heavy, full of sleep, confused and questioning, brimming with tears. It is always the eyes we must watch—those subtle pathways to the soul—as we tell the story in old ways, often heard, and in new ways to surprise and delight and confound. We have tended the fire and told the story.

 

          What is left is this—to pass the wine.

          When I used to do baptismal classes, I'd bring out the symbols that are part of the service: bread, wine, water, holy oil, a candle and the scallop shell that's used to pour the water. If there were several candidates, I'd mix the parents and god parents so they would be with people they didn't know, and give each group one of the symbols to talk about. The distinction I'd make between symbol and sign is simple: a sign 'points to something' while a symbol not only 'points to something' but participates in the deeper reality of what it points to. Then, after conversation, the group’s report back on their particular symbol.

          I'm always interested in the report back about wine. We are still part of a remarkably Puritanical culture where wine is not openly praised. Of course, I know church basements and parish halls are full each week with AA meetings—there is a downside to alcohol. But my thought has always been that the deep-down value of something can be measured most accurately by how much it has been misused and abused. Oh, take Christianity for example. We Christians have a lot to account for when it comes to oppressing and persecuting people with our faith. The Christian faith has been so misused and abused that it must be of great value—silver and gold and pearls.

          Most of the time, the group reporting back on wine will make a joking reference to the intoxicating quality of wine. They are seldom comfortable to reflect on the joy and goodness of wine. The seldom mention that we refer to alcohol as 'spirits', a telling figure of speech. Most people don't feel confident in being counter-cultural enough to say wine is a good and gracious substance. Never has any group reported back by saying In Vino, Veritas, So I tell them how valued and important wine is to the tribe gathered by the fire, listening to the story. Invaluable, I say—that's what wine is to the life and metaphor and myth of the Tribe. There must be wine to make us mellow and congenial and to “inspire” us and bring the story to full bloom and to make the dying fire look like a wondrous and warming blaze to keep us safe from the Darkness all around us.

          So, the priest passes the wine.

          None of the functions or tasks or acts of my priestly job description actually 'require' ordination. Just about anyone could tend the fire and tell the story and pass the wine. But in our Tribe—the Episcopal Church—we have long ago determined to set someone 'apart' for those acts, those liturgies, those rituals. So, we ordain priests and entrust them with the work of “being” in our midst to “do” these small but oh, so significant tasks. The Shamans of the Tribe walk backwards, speak in nonsense syllables and touch the Holy Things.

          A dear friend, the wife of a seminary classmate, told my wife that when her husband was ordained, “his hands changed”.

          My wife, God bless her, said she hadn't noticed any change in mine.

          Here is the conundrum about being a priest: nothing changes really. It isn't the ordination that matters so much as the willingness to “be” when all the world around is so obsessed with “doing”.  That is the difference, the set apartness, the uniqueness of the calling. His/her hands don't change—not a chance, that's just an illusion. What happens, so far as I can tell, is simply this: some sap agrees to 'be' rather than 'do'. (A onetime assistant of mine told me, “Jim, you can do nothing better than anyone I've ever met....” As I remember she was frustrated by my inactivity when she thought I should be doing something or another. But I took it as a confirmation and a compliment.)

          The Truth is, it's a great job—process observing, tending the fire, telling the story over and over again, passing the wine. The down side is if we take ourselves too serious or confuse yourself with Jesus or decide you can save the world or anyone in it. That is the road to ruin. Keep the job description simple—observe the process, keep the fire burning, tell and retell the story, take a good sip of wine before passing it on, have the courage to not feel guilty about simply 'being', don't 'make up' stuff to do and keep you busy. And it's a great job, actually....

         

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