Mount Calvary Monastery, Santa Barbara
I offered this last night at our 8:00 pm “Midnight” Mass. Perhaps more a reflection of lectio than a full-blown sermon.
Thoughts on Luke's story of the birth of Christ:
1. Political background:
Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus is located in a specifically political environment: The census of Caesar Augustus. Why should a government take a census: to control, to impose its will effectively from the top down, to make effective, practical policies possible.
But for the people of Israel, and for the people of the new community of believers who will come to be called Christians, looming behind the Roman census is that other great census – the census of David (2 Sam 24).
David’s census displeased God. So David was told to choose one of three punishments: "Shall seven years of famine come to you in your land? Or shall you flee three months before your enemies, while they pursue you? Or shall there be three days' plague in your land?” David chose the plague and 70,000 men died. It is almost the last thing he does as king: 70,000 people die for his rational governmental act. Not how you want the curtain to go down on your reign.
Power, the power of government, even the power of the very best of kings, which by definition acts in and for the “world”, is deeply ambivalent in this story. 70,000 people: If that’s what happens with the best of kings, what’s in store for us? Something awful is looming, this seems to say. And what’s the way out of that? Luke places this joyful story in a context of foreboding.
2. Social background:
Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus takes place in the world of “us” and “them”: Coming home to Bethlehem, looking forward perhaps to contacting relatives long unseen – no one takes them in. Aren’t they family? To come home and no one takes you in.
Compare John 1:9 ff: Read this with Luke’s story in mind: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.”
Doesn't that sound like the story outline for Luke's nativity?
Who isn’t receiving him? His “own” – family, kin.
Who is receiving him? Shepherds – anonymous, poor, strangers, outsiders, “other”.
And what about the light?
3. The way Luke’s story is told:
Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus has a meaningful structure, a framework: It begins with an act of power – the power of the state – and ends with another act of power – the opposite of the world’s power, as far away from Caesar Augustus as you can imagine – God’s power, which is so very, very different. Both acts of power encompass all the people. But to very different ends!
4. Monastic silence before the Word:
Br. Timothy has told us that the Carthusians keep a special silence on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day – silent so that the Word might reach them. Silence is a kind of powerlessness – to keep silent is a refusal to define, to comment, to exchange, to assert one’s self. It allows the other to speak. In fact, it removes our privilege as those who might speak.
Silence is a joining the powerlessness of Jesus. By it we are entering in to the reversal of all things that is Luke’s great theology of God’s action: by turning things upside down God is bringing his Kingdom.
5. What sort of messages might these thoughts on Luke’s story of the birth of Christ bring?
Well - maybe these:
Action is important. But good political and economic and military organization – the tools of the powerful of this world – are not guarantees that God’s kingdom will come. No matter how fine your intention, it might just blow up in your face. It is a good thing – and in fact inevitable – that we should try to understand the proclamation of the Word of God in practical ways and construct programs to put it into action, but it is well to remember David and his census.
The people we thought are “our” people may not be the ones who know who people really are, who know what is really going on. They – we – may not be the ones who recognize who is a Word Bearer. Humility might be a consequence of this realization.
Where we find the Word of God WILL be a surprise. As God’s people we should be on the watch for its arrival. But we may not be very well prepared to recognize it. It might be embedded in people we don’t think much of. In Jesus’ time the Judeans didn’t think much of the Galileans - not learned and sophisticated like us, but rude, ignorant, not up to date, superstitious country people, perhaps a little simplistic about things. Galilee is where Mary and Joseph were from. Who might such people be now?
And for monks?
Maybe our gift is a different gift from the busy folk of the world.
Maybe silence in the face of the Inbreaking Word is our gift.
Maybe our silence allows us to try to trust God more than we trust ourselves.
Maybe our silence lets us be daring in who we let in.
Maybe, just maybe, we will hear the Word.
If we join in solidarity with those who have no voice in this world of power, maybe we too can see the great light and hear the angels praising God: Glory to God in the highest, and peace to people on earth.
Maybe that’s the gift monks can give at Christmas time.
Friday, December 25, 2015
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Ralph Martin, SSM
In the early 1920's the Order of the Holy Cross began its now almost century long ministry in Africa by opening a mission station in Bolahun, Liberia. In the 1970's it was thought best to indigenize that work, comprising a large church, schools, medical clinic, a village for people with Hansen's disease, and other good works. Time for Liberians to run their own institutions! As the Order pursued this policy -- which was a process that took many years rather than a single event -- the idea arose of an African novitiate. In the early 1980's this led to the Order's second African establishment, Philip Quaque Monastery in Cape Coast, Ghana. A few years later an Anglican seminary was started in Cape Coast, named for St. Nicholas. The OHC community was involved with the seminary from the outset, though the monastery and the seminary pursued their separate goals. The first head of St. Nicholas was Ralph Martin, SSM, who has just published a remarkable autobiographical memoir.
Ralph Martin, SSM, Towards a New Day: A Monk's Story. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2015). Available from Amazon.co.uk at a much more reasonable price than US Amazon.
Born, educated and ordained in Canada, Ralph Martin joined the Society of the Sacred Mission in 1957. SSM had been founded in 1893 by Fr. Herbert Kelly, who desired to educate young men of the working classes for the ministry of the Church of England. This was a significant development, as many (perhaps too many) of the clergy were not from that social milieu and so the Church's life among working people was not as vibrant as it should have been. Fr. Kelly is a fascinating character in himself, and the Kelham story is told well by Alistair Mason, SSM: History of the Society of the Sacred Mission (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1993).
The great work of Fr. Kelly and SSM was the foundation and operation of one of the great seminaries of the Anglican world, Kelham, in Nottinghamshire. The Church of England, battered in the 1960's from many sides, decided it had too many seminaries, and in 1971 Kelham was closed.
Martin's description of his early years at SSM is a classic of the I-enter-the-monastery genre of writing. If the reader knows what is coming, the writing is poignant, and left me almost in tears.
What a wonderful gift SSM and Kelham were, not just to the Church of England, but to Christianity in general. It is interesting to compare Martin's account to Richard Holloway's Kelham days, in his autobiographical Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2013).
Ralph Martin's early years in SSM took him in many interesting directions, but led ultimately to almost a decade as Provincial of SSM in the UK (1973-1981). This occurred in the wake of the closure of Kelham and its internal troubles, and must have cost Martin a great deal. He steered the community in new directions, which envisioned a broader concept of community life. When his term was done, he began a remarkable career of ministries which took him to Japan, Ghana, back to the UK, Kuwait, Rome, Lesotho and Australia. In all of those places his ministries were exemplary, and to read his accounts is to gain a glimpse of what a wonderful thing missionary monasticism can be in our age.
When OHC established Philip Quaque Monastery in Cape Coast, Ghana, the Prior was Christian Swayne. Christian learned that the Ghanaian church wanted to start an Anglican seminary in Cape Coast. He and Martin were old friends, going back to early Canada days. So Christian wrote Martin asking him if he might be interested in heading up the seminary project, and the project began.
The seminary was a real string and baling wire operation in the beginning, and the anecdotes Martin tells are absolutely wonderful, giving a vivid picture of the early days of an important church institution. OHC and the seminary were not the same by any means, but OHC people are prominent in the account of the seminary: Christian himself, Bonnell Spencer, who in his late 70's taught history and created the library from scratch, Boniface Adams, Leonard Abbah, and many others. It is a priceless, brilliant word picture of a bit of OHC's history. And all told with a generous and cheerful eye to human achievement with divine help in the midst of seemingly insurmountable difficulties.
This is a wonderful book. Wonderful because of the light a central participant in its history sheds on a great Anglican monastic community. Great because of the picture it paints of vital Anglican Christian life in so many parts of the world. But most of all, inspired in the character who tells his own story. Ralph Martin is a shining exemplar of Christian discipleship, of monastic life well led, of profound and effective faith pointed toward the Kingdom.
Ralph Martin, SSM, Towards a New Day: A Monk's Story. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2015). Available from Amazon.co.uk at a much more reasonable price than US Amazon.
Born, educated and ordained in Canada, Ralph Martin joined the Society of the Sacred Mission in 1957. SSM had been founded in 1893 by Fr. Herbert Kelly, who desired to educate young men of the working classes for the ministry of the Church of England. This was a significant development, as many (perhaps too many) of the clergy were not from that social milieu and so the Church's life among working people was not as vibrant as it should have been. Fr. Kelly is a fascinating character in himself, and the Kelham story is told well by Alistair Mason, SSM: History of the Society of the Sacred Mission (Norwich: Canterbury Press, 1993).
The great work of Fr. Kelly and SSM was the foundation and operation of one of the great seminaries of the Anglican world, Kelham, in Nottinghamshire. The Church of England, battered in the 1960's from many sides, decided it had too many seminaries, and in 1971 Kelham was closed.
Martin's description of his early years at SSM is a classic of the I-enter-the-monastery genre of writing. If the reader knows what is coming, the writing is poignant, and left me almost in tears.
What a wonderful gift SSM and Kelham were, not just to the Church of England, but to Christianity in general. It is interesting to compare Martin's account to Richard Holloway's Kelham days, in his autobiographical Leaving Alexandria: A Memoir of Faith and Doubt (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2013).
Ralph Martin's early years in SSM took him in many interesting directions, but led ultimately to almost a decade as Provincial of SSM in the UK (1973-1981). This occurred in the wake of the closure of Kelham and its internal troubles, and must have cost Martin a great deal. He steered the community in new directions, which envisioned a broader concept of community life. When his term was done, he began a remarkable career of ministries which took him to Japan, Ghana, back to the UK, Kuwait, Rome, Lesotho and Australia. In all of those places his ministries were exemplary, and to read his accounts is to gain a glimpse of what a wonderful thing missionary monasticism can be in our age.
When OHC established Philip Quaque Monastery in Cape Coast, Ghana, the Prior was Christian Swayne. Christian learned that the Ghanaian church wanted to start an Anglican seminary in Cape Coast. He and Martin were old friends, going back to early Canada days. So Christian wrote Martin asking him if he might be interested in heading up the seminary project, and the project began.
The seminary was a real string and baling wire operation in the beginning, and the anecdotes Martin tells are absolutely wonderful, giving a vivid picture of the early days of an important church institution. OHC and the seminary were not the same by any means, but OHC people are prominent in the account of the seminary: Christian himself, Bonnell Spencer, who in his late 70's taught history and created the library from scratch, Boniface Adams, Leonard Abbah, and many others. It is a priceless, brilliant word picture of a bit of OHC's history. And all told with a generous and cheerful eye to human achievement with divine help in the midst of seemingly insurmountable difficulties.
This is a wonderful book. Wonderful because of the light a central participant in its history sheds on a great Anglican monastic community. Great because of the picture it paints of vital Anglican Christian life in so many parts of the world. But most of all, inspired in the character who tells his own story. Ralph Martin is a shining exemplar of Christian discipleship, of monastic life well led, of profound and effective faith pointed toward the Kingdom.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Oliver Sherman Prescott
Oliver Sherman Prescott is one of the most interesting priests in the history of the Episcopal Church. The Anglo-Catholic movement has had more than its share of characters, and surely Prescott stands in the front ranks of the colorful and controversial. Jervis S. Zimmerman, an old friend of the Order of the Holy Cross, has written the first book-length study of Prescott, and it is a most welcome addition to the study of the Episcopal Church, of the Tractarian, Ritualist and Anglo-Catholic movements, and of Anglican religious orders.
An Embattled Priest. The Life of Oliver Sherman Prescott: 1824-1903. (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2012.) Available from Amazon.
Prescott was a few years older than Charles Grafton, and was in some ways his mentor. Born into a well-to-do New Haven merchant family, he was educated at Trinity College, Hartford and Yale before attending General Seminary. He was an early adopter of ritualist practices, and ritualism became his life signature. From the beginning of his ministry he was constantly in trouble with bishops and others over these practices. Prescott never stayed very long in any of the churches he was called to lead. He seems to have been a prickly person, easily drawn into controversy, of an Anglo-Catholic type I remember from my youth but not so easily found now: rejoicing in being "advanced"; knowing what others did not, could not, or would not know; pushing situations to the edge seemingly just for the fun of it; playing word games in official correspondence with bishops and other church dignitaries; seeing the trouble they are in as some sort of proto-martyrdom for the cause.
Be that as it may. Prescott came under the pastoral oversight of Levi Silliman Ives, Bishop of North Carolina, himself a rare specimen. Sent to a small church in the western part of the state in 1847, Prescott there became involved with the first experiment in Anglican religious orders for men, the Society of the Holy Cross at Valle Crucis, NC. That did not last long, but had an effect. At Charles Grafton's urging Prescott joined the Society of St. John the Evangelist, which led him in 1875 to become Rector of St. Clement's, Philadelphia, certainly the most ritualist Episcopal parish in the U.S., where his most publicized trials occurred. He resigned in 1881.
Prescott took final vows in SSJE in 1870 and was released in 1882. He went west. "West" in those days encompassed Wisconsin, and he was involved in the process that led to Grafton's election as Bishop of Fond du Lac. But even with his old friend he could not avoid controversy, and they parted ways after Grafton's election as bishop. Prescott's final years were in the care of another religious order for men, the Brothers of Nazareth.
Prescott's life is important because of his role in late Nineteenth Century ritualist controversy, and deserves attention, in that his adult activity stretches from before Newman's conversion almost to the end of the century. He encompasses all the phases of the Oxford Movement, from Tractarian to Ritualist. He was not a great thinker or writer, but rather a man of action, willing to take on in his own work the transformation of the Church.
Fr. Zimmerman's work is an outstanding example of delving into original sources. He is a master of archival research, and has brought to light much that is new and informative about Prescott. His account of the turmoil at St. Clement's and Prescott's part in the breakup of SSJE in 1882, is, together with Eldridge Pendleton's account, likely to be a definitive resource for that most important event.
One small correction might be made. Several times reference is made to retreats led at St. Clement's, at the second of which OHC's Fr. Huntington and Fr. Dod made up their minds to form a religious community. The leader of those retreats was Canon William John Knox- (not King-) Little (p. 71 and 83).
An Embattled Priest. The Life of Oliver Sherman Prescott: 1824-1903. (Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2012.) Available from Amazon.
Prescott was a few years older than Charles Grafton, and was in some ways his mentor. Born into a well-to-do New Haven merchant family, he was educated at Trinity College, Hartford and Yale before attending General Seminary. He was an early adopter of ritualist practices, and ritualism became his life signature. From the beginning of his ministry he was constantly in trouble with bishops and others over these practices. Prescott never stayed very long in any of the churches he was called to lead. He seems to have been a prickly person, easily drawn into controversy, of an Anglo-Catholic type I remember from my youth but not so easily found now: rejoicing in being "advanced"; knowing what others did not, could not, or would not know; pushing situations to the edge seemingly just for the fun of it; playing word games in official correspondence with bishops and other church dignitaries; seeing the trouble they are in as some sort of proto-martyrdom for the cause.
Be that as it may. Prescott came under the pastoral oversight of Levi Silliman Ives, Bishop of North Carolina, himself a rare specimen. Sent to a small church in the western part of the state in 1847, Prescott there became involved with the first experiment in Anglican religious orders for men, the Society of the Holy Cross at Valle Crucis, NC. That did not last long, but had an effect. At Charles Grafton's urging Prescott joined the Society of St. John the Evangelist, which led him in 1875 to become Rector of St. Clement's, Philadelphia, certainly the most ritualist Episcopal parish in the U.S., where his most publicized trials occurred. He resigned in 1881.
Prescott took final vows in SSJE in 1870 and was released in 1882. He went west. "West" in those days encompassed Wisconsin, and he was involved in the process that led to Grafton's election as Bishop of Fond du Lac. But even with his old friend he could not avoid controversy, and they parted ways after Grafton's election as bishop. Prescott's final years were in the care of another religious order for men, the Brothers of Nazareth.
Prescott's life is important because of his role in late Nineteenth Century ritualist controversy, and deserves attention, in that his adult activity stretches from before Newman's conversion almost to the end of the century. He encompasses all the phases of the Oxford Movement, from Tractarian to Ritualist. He was not a great thinker or writer, but rather a man of action, willing to take on in his own work the transformation of the Church.
Fr. Zimmerman's work is an outstanding example of delving into original sources. He is a master of archival research, and has brought to light much that is new and informative about Prescott. His account of the turmoil at St. Clement's and Prescott's part in the breakup of SSJE in 1882, is, together with Eldridge Pendleton's account, likely to be a definitive resource for that most important event.
One small correction might be made. Several times reference is made to retreats led at St. Clement's, at the second of which OHC's Fr. Huntington and Fr. Dod made up their minds to form a religious community. The leader of those retreats was Canon William John Knox- (not King-) Little (p. 71 and 83).
Saturday, October 3, 2015
Charles Chapman Grafton
Recently four books relevant to the study of Anglican monasticism have appeared. I have read three of them and am now reading the fourth, and thought I would share some thoughts about them. This is in a way a promotion, and I am happy to do so, because I think the study of Anglican monasticism deserves more attention both by the reading public and by scholars.
Eldridge H. Pendleton, SSJE, has written a wonderful short biography of Bishop Charles Grafton, which I heartily recommend. But first a word about Eldridge. He died less than two months ago, on Aug. 26, 2015 . Eldridge joined SSJE in 1984, and in the thirty years of his monastic life made a deep impression on many people. He was a beloved spiritual director and advisor to many, many serious seekers after God. He is deeply missed, and I am sure he is with the Lord in glory.
Press On, The Kingdom: The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton (Cambridge, MA: SSJE, 2014). It is available from Blurb.com.
Charles Grafton was one of the three founding members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, together with Richard Meux Benson and Simeon Wilberforce O'Neill. They began community life together in 1865 and made their vows in 1866, in Benson's parish in the village of Cowley, near Oxford.
He was born in Boston in 1830, educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard Law School, became active in the faith as a young man, and was confirmed at the Church of the Advent in Boston in 1851. He was eventually ordained and with Oliver Sherman Prescott, a fiery ritualist Anglo-Catholic, was drawn toward the idea of a religious community for men. Since this did not then exist in the Anglican world, he went to England to meet people moving in that direction, and there he joined Benson and O'Nell in the Cowley adventure.
His understanding was that Fr. Benson and the nascent community intended SSJE to establish an American branch, and so when the opportunity arose for him to return to the U.S. he did so. He eventually became the rector of the Church of the Advent, but left SSJE in 1882. He remained at the Advent until 1889, becoming Bishop of Fond du Lac, in Wisconsin, shortly afterward. His many works included the foundation of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, the re-establishment of Nashotah House seminary on a firm footing, the solidification of his own diocese, poor and unstable when he began his ministry there, decades of leadership of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, whose principles are now the basis of Prayer Book Episcopalianism, and pioneering ecumenical work with the Orthodox world. He died, full of honors, in 1912.
The property where Mount Calvary Monastery is now located was founded and developed by his Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity in Santa Barbara in the early 1950's. Even though the direct inspiration for the former St. Mary's Retreat House was the work of our own Fr. Karl Tiedemann, OHC, it is in a sense an indirect foundation of Bishop Grafton.
Pendleton shows in a clearly, compellingly written traditional biography -- that is, a biography which begins at the beginning and ends at the end and encounters the events of the subject's life in the order in which he himself met them (as not all modern biographies do) -- the course of Grafton's remarkable life.
Two virtues, beyond its wonderful writing, stand out in particular. First, Pendleton tells, perhaps for the first time, the unvarnished story of the breakup of SSJE in the early 1880's. Grafton was doubtless the precipitating agent. But Pendleton writes candidly about the interaction of other members of SSJE in it as well. In particular he describes the breakdown of the relationship between Fr. Benson, with his authoritarian ways, and Fr. Grafton, whose determination was as inflexible as Benson. Pendleton's work is the more remarkable in that he does not let Benson's subsequent deposition as Superior and his eccentricities anachronistically control the narrative. He quotes liberally from correspondence and shows how the events of 1882 unfolded in their contexts. SSJE is to be commended for opening its archives and shedding light on this complex series of events.
The second great virtue of this work is that Pendleton resurrects Grafton as a person. Grafton wrote voluminously but there is not a lot of self-disclosure in his works. Lacking this, the portrait of him here shows well his great energy, capacious mind and sophisticated understanding of the Church. His was a great spirit, but of a type which might not find much sympathy today. Pendleton reminds us that the church always stands on the shoulders of people of other ages, of other understandings, whose lives, when presented by a sympathetic, learned and skilled author, can shed light where once there was obscurity.
A book well worth reading!
Eldridge H. Pendleton, SSJE, has written a wonderful short biography of Bishop Charles Grafton, which I heartily recommend. But first a word about Eldridge. He died less than two months ago, on Aug. 26, 2015 . Eldridge joined SSJE in 1984, and in the thirty years of his monastic life made a deep impression on many people. He was a beloved spiritual director and advisor to many, many serious seekers after God. He is deeply missed, and I am sure he is with the Lord in glory.
Press On, The Kingdom: The Life of Charles Chapman Grafton (Cambridge, MA: SSJE, 2014). It is available from Blurb.com.
Charles Grafton was one of the three founding members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, together with Richard Meux Benson and Simeon Wilberforce O'Neill. They began community life together in 1865 and made their vows in 1866, in Benson's parish in the village of Cowley, near Oxford.
He was born in Boston in 1830, educated at Boston Latin School and Harvard Law School, became active in the faith as a young man, and was confirmed at the Church of the Advent in Boston in 1851. He was eventually ordained and with Oliver Sherman Prescott, a fiery ritualist Anglo-Catholic, was drawn toward the idea of a religious community for men. Since this did not then exist in the Anglican world, he went to England to meet people moving in that direction, and there he joined Benson and O'Nell in the Cowley adventure.
His understanding was that Fr. Benson and the nascent community intended SSJE to establish an American branch, and so when the opportunity arose for him to return to the U.S. he did so. He eventually became the rector of the Church of the Advent, but left SSJE in 1882. He remained at the Advent until 1889, becoming Bishop of Fond du Lac, in Wisconsin, shortly afterward. His many works included the foundation of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, the re-establishment of Nashotah House seminary on a firm footing, the solidification of his own diocese, poor and unstable when he began his ministry there, decades of leadership of the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, whose principles are now the basis of Prayer Book Episcopalianism, and pioneering ecumenical work with the Orthodox world. He died, full of honors, in 1912.
The property where Mount Calvary Monastery is now located was founded and developed by his Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity in Santa Barbara in the early 1950's. Even though the direct inspiration for the former St. Mary's Retreat House was the work of our own Fr. Karl Tiedemann, OHC, it is in a sense an indirect foundation of Bishop Grafton.
Pendleton shows in a clearly, compellingly written traditional biography -- that is, a biography which begins at the beginning and ends at the end and encounters the events of the subject's life in the order in which he himself met them (as not all modern biographies do) -- the course of Grafton's remarkable life.
Two virtues, beyond its wonderful writing, stand out in particular. First, Pendleton tells, perhaps for the first time, the unvarnished story of the breakup of SSJE in the early 1880's. Grafton was doubtless the precipitating agent. But Pendleton writes candidly about the interaction of other members of SSJE in it as well. In particular he describes the breakdown of the relationship between Fr. Benson, with his authoritarian ways, and Fr. Grafton, whose determination was as inflexible as Benson. Pendleton's work is the more remarkable in that he does not let Benson's subsequent deposition as Superior and his eccentricities anachronistically control the narrative. He quotes liberally from correspondence and shows how the events of 1882 unfolded in their contexts. SSJE is to be commended for opening its archives and shedding light on this complex series of events.
The second great virtue of this work is that Pendleton resurrects Grafton as a person. Grafton wrote voluminously but there is not a lot of self-disclosure in his works. Lacking this, the portrait of him here shows well his great energy, capacious mind and sophisticated understanding of the Church. His was a great spirit, but of a type which might not find much sympathy today. Pendleton reminds us that the church always stands on the shoulders of people of other ages, of other understandings, whose lives, when presented by a sympathetic, learned and skilled author, can shed light where once there was obscurity.
A book well worth reading!
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Dealing with anger -- and other thoughts
I was privileged to preach at All Saints Episcopal Church in Oxnard, CA, on August 9. I thought the sermon might be of interest as if makes reference to the Desert Fathers tradition about how to handle the sins/emotions/thoughts/logismoi that were such a preoccupation. And still are.
All Saints Episcopal Church, Oxnard CA
Proper 14B
August 9, 2015
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
From the fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, which we have just heard: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, more than 40 years ago now, when I joined the Order of the Holy Cross at our monastery on the Hudson River in New York State, I found myself taking my turn cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. In those days we did not employ a cook, but since we had a lot of novices - more than thirty at that point – we did it all ourselves, preparing and serving three meals a day for forty or so members of the community and for anywhere from ten to thirty guests. One of the brothers in first vows was in charge, and he told us what to cook and how he wanted it cooked, down to the small details. I think he loved his job, because he really liked telling people what to do. He supervised every detail of the cooking and the serving, and then he supervised every detail of the cleaning up. He liked a tidy kitchen. His kind of tidy.
Not all of the novices who worked under his care enjoyed the experience. Most of us already had some experience cooking and cleaning and didn’t especially care for Brother’s hovering presence as we prepared the food. Nor did we especially care for his meticulously demanding instructions about cleaning up. Nor for his sometimes sarcastic remarks about our work. He was an enthusiastic follower of the diet plans of Adelle Davis, who preached a low fat, low sugar diet as the way to avoid cancer. Brother constructed our menus according to her rigorous principles, and not everyone in the community rejoiced in them. I must confess that when she died of cancer in 1974, some of us were not slow to draw a lesson from her ironic end.
This is all a long prologue to one fateful day. I forget exactly when it was. I forget the exact causes. I forget what had been cooked and served. In fact, forgetting was a good thing in this case. I do recall that it was during the final cleanup of the kitchen. I suppose Brother had been especially overbearing about something. I can imagine that I was likely not being my most charming, helpful, humble self either. At any rate. Temperatures rose. Words were exchanged. And exchanged again. Louder and louder. Pots flew through the air. Pans followed them. Heads were narrowly missed. Doors were slammed.
The next day when I returned to work in the kitchen, all was quiet. Too quiet. Brother appeared. He came over to me, put his arm around me, and said, “Well, let’s get on with it then.” And then quoted the very verse from Ephesians we have just heard. He left the monastery eventually and I stayed, but we have remained friends to this day.
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” I learned an important lesson that day. As good as we may try to be – and after all, I was training in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and not doing a very good job of the obedience part – as good as we may try to be, anger, and other dangerous emotions, will happen. But they do not have to define our relationships or control our lives.
The ancient desert fathers and mothers in the monastic tradition knew this too. They, like Ephesians, connected it with the devil. Anger, and other harmful things, will overtake us. And if we give in to them, tempers will flare, words will be exchanged, pots and pans will be thrown, doors will be slammed, and relationships will be damaged.
The desert fathers and mothers called things like anger, pride, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, and lust “passions” or “thoughts”, and much of what monks and nuns did then and do now is to learn what our passions, our “thoughts”, are, to recognize them when they arrive, to know how they work in us in general, and more importantly how they work in me, to know which of my buttons they push, which well-worn paths they follow, which bad habits they evoke. And then, surprisingly, how to call them each by name when they arrive, know what they’re up to, and like a perfect host with an unwelcome guest, to know just where to put them so they won’t cause any more trouble till they decide to go away. Consciousness – awareness of who we really are and what can happen if we let ourselves be controlled – is the first thing. “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Know the truth about our own lives so that we can speak truth to each other. And as we grow in self-knowledge, the knowledge of the passions we are drawn to, the evil thoughts which come unbidden into our minds, we can grow also in the ability to keep from harming each other. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
How can we find the energy, the capacity to do all this? Our gospel reading this morning points the way. Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” We will find what we need by taking Jesus into our life, taking his life into our life. If we want to live a Christlike life, we cannot do it on our own steam. But we can do it if we take His life into our lives.
There’s no way I could put away my anger in that kitchen all by myself, and I didn’t, and neither did Brother. I exploded and so did he. And if we had left it there, it would have grown, making the next day worse and God knows how bad the day afterward would have been. But by not letting the sun go down on it, by dealing with it using the tools Christ gives us, we can pick up and start again.
One other interesting detail in today’s gospel catches my eye: Jesus compares the bread of his flesh to the manna the Israelites found on the ground in the wilderness during their Exodus out of Egypt. Moses told the Israelites not to store up the manna for the next day, but to eat it on the same day it appeared, trusting God to give them what they needed fresh every day. Ephesians tells us “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, in other words, use the grace God gives us at the time it is given. The bread Jesus gives us from his own flesh is like the daily bread we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. Manna stored in jars became wormy, and so does the grace of forgiveness we are given if we don’t use it right away. Eat today’s manna today. Do not let your anger linger till tomorrow. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Give us this day our daily bread.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
As the saying goes, “You are what you eat”.
All Saints Episcopal Church, Oxnard CA
Proper 14B
August 9, 2015
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
From the fourth chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, which we have just heard: “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
Many years ago, in the early 1970s, more than 40 years ago now, when I joined the Order of the Holy Cross at our monastery on the Hudson River in New York State, I found myself taking my turn cooking and cleaning in the kitchen. In those days we did not employ a cook, but since we had a lot of novices - more than thirty at that point – we did it all ourselves, preparing and serving three meals a day for forty or so members of the community and for anywhere from ten to thirty guests. One of the brothers in first vows was in charge, and he told us what to cook and how he wanted it cooked, down to the small details. I think he loved his job, because he really liked telling people what to do. He supervised every detail of the cooking and the serving, and then he supervised every detail of the cleaning up. He liked a tidy kitchen. His kind of tidy.
Not all of the novices who worked under his care enjoyed the experience. Most of us already had some experience cooking and cleaning and didn’t especially care for Brother’s hovering presence as we prepared the food. Nor did we especially care for his meticulously demanding instructions about cleaning up. Nor for his sometimes sarcastic remarks about our work. He was an enthusiastic follower of the diet plans of Adelle Davis, who preached a low fat, low sugar diet as the way to avoid cancer. Brother constructed our menus according to her rigorous principles, and not everyone in the community rejoiced in them. I must confess that when she died of cancer in 1974, some of us were not slow to draw a lesson from her ironic end.
This is all a long prologue to one fateful day. I forget exactly when it was. I forget the exact causes. I forget what had been cooked and served. In fact, forgetting was a good thing in this case. I do recall that it was during the final cleanup of the kitchen. I suppose Brother had been especially overbearing about something. I can imagine that I was likely not being my most charming, helpful, humble self either. At any rate. Temperatures rose. Words were exchanged. And exchanged again. Louder and louder. Pots flew through the air. Pans followed them. Heads were narrowly missed. Doors were slammed.
The next day when I returned to work in the kitchen, all was quiet. Too quiet. Brother appeared. He came over to me, put his arm around me, and said, “Well, let’s get on with it then.” And then quoted the very verse from Ephesians we have just heard. He left the monastery eventually and I stayed, but we have remained friends to this day.
“Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger.” I learned an important lesson that day. As good as we may try to be – and after all, I was training in the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and not doing a very good job of the obedience part – as good as we may try to be, anger, and other dangerous emotions, will happen. But they do not have to define our relationships or control our lives.
The ancient desert fathers and mothers in the monastic tradition knew this too. They, like Ephesians, connected it with the devil. Anger, and other harmful things, will overtake us. And if we give in to them, tempers will flare, words will be exchanged, pots and pans will be thrown, doors will be slammed, and relationships will be damaged.
The desert fathers and mothers called things like anger, pride, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, and lust “passions” or “thoughts”, and much of what monks and nuns did then and do now is to learn what our passions, our “thoughts”, are, to recognize them when they arrive, to know how they work in us in general, and more importantly how they work in me, to know which of my buttons they push, which well-worn paths they follow, which bad habits they evoke. And then, surprisingly, how to call them each by name when they arrive, know what they’re up to, and like a perfect host with an unwelcome guest, to know just where to put them so they won’t cause any more trouble till they decide to go away. Consciousness – awareness of who we really are and what can happen if we let ourselves be controlled – is the first thing. “Putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Know the truth about our own lives so that we can speak truth to each other. And as we grow in self-knowledge, the knowledge of the passions we are drawn to, the evil thoughts which come unbidden into our minds, we can grow also in the ability to keep from harming each other. “Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
How can we find the energy, the capacity to do all this? Our gospel reading this morning points the way. Jesus tells us, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” We will find what we need by taking Jesus into our life, taking his life into our life. If we want to live a Christlike life, we cannot do it on our own steam. But we can do it if we take His life into our lives.
There’s no way I could put away my anger in that kitchen all by myself, and I didn’t, and neither did Brother. I exploded and so did he. And if we had left it there, it would have grown, making the next day worse and God knows how bad the day afterward would have been. But by not letting the sun go down on it, by dealing with it using the tools Christ gives us, we can pick up and start again.
One other interesting detail in today’s gospel catches my eye: Jesus compares the bread of his flesh to the manna the Israelites found on the ground in the wilderness during their Exodus out of Egypt. Moses told the Israelites not to store up the manna for the next day, but to eat it on the same day it appeared, trusting God to give them what they needed fresh every day. Ephesians tells us “do not let the sun go down on your anger”, in other words, use the grace God gives us at the time it is given. The bread Jesus gives us from his own flesh is like the daily bread we ask of God in the Lord’s Prayer. Manna stored in jars became wormy, and so does the grace of forgiveness we are given if we don’t use it right away. Eat today’s manna today. Do not let your anger linger till tomorrow. The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Give us this day our daily bread.
“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
As the saying goes, “You are what you eat”.
Thursday, April 23, 2015
Jury Duty 2
The jury finished our work on Tuesday afternoon. It was fascinating to be a part of. And now I can talk (and write) about it.
We were sitting in judgment on a personal injury case, under California civil law. A young fellow driving a very large adapted pickup-type vehicle, part of a convoy on the way to a job, changed lanes, with a subsequent collision with a much smaller compact car. Both vehicles ended up horribly tangled at the side of the road, the truck on top of the car, with gasoline dripping down into the car. It was a miracle both drivers survived.
The woman driving the car suffered severe injuries to her left leg and pelvis. Though she can now walk again (with difficulty) and suffered no cognitive loss, her life is changed forever by this accident. The young man driving the truck died a bit more than a year ago of unrelated causes, and so there wasn't an equality of evidence for the defense.
The jury found him negligent and awarded actual past and estimated future medical damages. It also awarded money for pain and suffering, though not anywhere near what the plaintiff's attorney had asked. Under California civil law only 9 of 12 jurors need to agree to reach a verdict. Also under California law we had to completely disregard insurance as a factor, which is certainly different from what I encountered in civil cases in New York
I was impressed by the care with which the jury approached the decisions. I was also interested that what we found determinative was not what either set of lawyers spent most of the time on. They spun out quite elaborate reconstructions of what must have happened, since there were only two real witnesses to testify to it: the plaintiff herself and an employee of the company the offending truck belonged to. He spoke only Spanish, and was called by the plaintiff and examined in a very formal way: the lawyer read a statement sentence by sentence he had made in his deposition and after each sentence asked if he had said it. Yes or No. His testimony was not helpful to the defense, even though it was the company he worked for. The lawyers also spent a long, long time going over the plaintiff's injuries and likely upcoming surgeries.
But the jury was primarily interested in whether the man driving the truck broke the law as written. We decided he did. I tried hard to hear his side of the case as presented by the defense, since he couldn't speak for himself, but unfortunately for the defendants there just wasn't much evidence there. He changed lanes in a way he should not have. Everything else flowed from that.
We were sitting in judgment on a personal injury case, under California civil law. A young fellow driving a very large adapted pickup-type vehicle, part of a convoy on the way to a job, changed lanes, with a subsequent collision with a much smaller compact car. Both vehicles ended up horribly tangled at the side of the road, the truck on top of the car, with gasoline dripping down into the car. It was a miracle both drivers survived.
The woman driving the car suffered severe injuries to her left leg and pelvis. Though she can now walk again (with difficulty) and suffered no cognitive loss, her life is changed forever by this accident. The young man driving the truck died a bit more than a year ago of unrelated causes, and so there wasn't an equality of evidence for the defense.
The jury found him negligent and awarded actual past and estimated future medical damages. It also awarded money for pain and suffering, though not anywhere near what the plaintiff's attorney had asked. Under California civil law only 9 of 12 jurors need to agree to reach a verdict. Also under California law we had to completely disregard insurance as a factor, which is certainly different from what I encountered in civil cases in New York
I was impressed by the care with which the jury approached the decisions. I was also interested that what we found determinative was not what either set of lawyers spent most of the time on. They spun out quite elaborate reconstructions of what must have happened, since there were only two real witnesses to testify to it: the plaintiff herself and an employee of the company the offending truck belonged to. He spoke only Spanish, and was called by the plaintiff and examined in a very formal way: the lawyer read a statement sentence by sentence he had made in his deposition and after each sentence asked if he had said it. Yes or No. His testimony was not helpful to the defense, even though it was the company he worked for. The lawyers also spent a long, long time going over the plaintiff's injuries and likely upcoming surgeries.
But the jury was primarily interested in whether the man driving the truck broke the law as written. We decided he did. I tried hard to hear his side of the case as presented by the defense, since he couldn't speak for himself, but unfortunately for the defendants there just wasn't much evidence there. He changed lanes in a way he should not have. Everything else flowed from that.
Saturday, April 18, 2015
Jury Duty
I haven't posted for quite a while. No apologies. A lot has been going on.
You can catch some of my thoughts on the Prior's Blog at the Mount Calvary website:
http://mount-calvary.org/category/blog/
After living in Santa Barbara a little more than a year and a half I was called up for jury duty. I have been called before, several times, in Orange County, when I was in Anaheim, and in New York City, when I lived there. But never picked. Somehow I always escaped. It may have had something to do with having been a police chaplain for the Anaheim Police Department, since they usually asked whether prospective jurors had any significant relationship with the police.
At any rate, that question didn't come up. There was no particularly good reason I should ask to be excused except that I had other not at all unusual things to do, which is not, I take it, actually a good reason to ask to be excused. So on Wednesday, April 8, 100 or so who were called showed up and were winnowed down to 40 or 50 after the judge, who was surprisingly lenient, let all but one of the people go who asked. There I still was. And to my surprise I was called to the jury box. And then the voir dire began. And again, nothing knocked me out.
I guess I was a little happy to have been called and chosen. The little boy who was always last to be chosen for the baseball team (bad eyes and uncoordinated; and was only chosen because everybody had to be) was finally on the team. Oh joy. I guess.
So for more than a week, 5 1/2 days of testimony, there we are. I can't talk about the case except to say that I am on a jury, so I won't. Both sides have now rested their case, we have been instructed by the judge, and the closing statements of the attorneys begin Monday. Who knows how long they will take. And then the jury will deliberate.
Maybe we'll be done by Monday late afternoon. Maybe not. Stay tuned.
You can catch some of my thoughts on the Prior's Blog at the Mount Calvary website:
http://mount-calvary.org/category/blog/
After living in Santa Barbara a little more than a year and a half I was called up for jury duty. I have been called before, several times, in Orange County, when I was in Anaheim, and in New York City, when I lived there. But never picked. Somehow I always escaped. It may have had something to do with having been a police chaplain for the Anaheim Police Department, since they usually asked whether prospective jurors had any significant relationship with the police.
At any rate, that question didn't come up. There was no particularly good reason I should ask to be excused except that I had other not at all unusual things to do, which is not, I take it, actually a good reason to ask to be excused. So on Wednesday, April 8, 100 or so who were called showed up and were winnowed down to 40 or 50 after the judge, who was surprisingly lenient, let all but one of the people go who asked. There I still was. And to my surprise I was called to the jury box. And then the voir dire began. And again, nothing knocked me out.
I guess I was a little happy to have been called and chosen. The little boy who was always last to be chosen for the baseball team (bad eyes and uncoordinated; and was only chosen because everybody had to be) was finally on the team. Oh joy. I guess.
So for more than a week, 5 1/2 days of testimony, there we are. I can't talk about the case except to say that I am on a jury, so I won't. Both sides have now rested their case, we have been instructed by the judge, and the closing statements of the attorneys begin Monday. Who knows how long they will take. And then the jury will deliberate.
Maybe we'll be done by Monday late afternoon. Maybe not. Stay tuned.
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