Adam's monk thoughts

Church of England European Chaplaincies - Some Thoughts

2012-01-21T17:37:00.002-05:00

Tony Jewiss asked me to write a little something about my experience with the congregation at Limoux for the Chaplaincy Newsletter, and so I did. With his permission, I publish it here. I think it is mostly self-explanatory, but just a little background:

There are (surprise, surprise) Brits scattered more or less everywhere in the world. Some places have well-established Anglican churches, including all the Anglophone countries and the former colonies. But there are parts of the world that never were British nor which learned to use the English language as their national form of communication. In such places (most of Europe and the Middle East, for example) the Church of England has formed chaplaincies. They have various origins and manifestations. Their common characteristic, as I see it, is that they bring together the Anglican British diaspora for worship and characteristic Christian activities in countries where Anglicanism is a rare and exotic flower. Most do not seem to have full time clergy, or buildings, or many of the other trappings of your usual Anglican bodies when in full fig.

So here goes:
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One of the joys of the last two years has been coming to know the Church of England congregation which meets in Limoux. I came to know it through Fr. Tony Jewiss, the pastor, who is an old and dear friend. It is a completely unexpected joy. I never thought I would be in Languedoc-Roussillon for any time, and I certainly did not expect to find a church home there, and so many friends.

The congregation at the chapel of St. Augustine in the heart of Limoux is warm and welcoming and faithful and friendly and full of fun. It is small, but the congregation does all the things I would expect an Anglican congregation to be doing – good preaching, music, lay ministries, Bible study, Christian education for children, a variety of liturgies, coffee hour after the service, charitable and ecumenical outreach, pastoral concern for its own members and for the British diaspora in the Languedoc-Roussillon. In fact, I imagine if all the things the congregation does were listed, people would be pleased and a little surprised at how much is done! Where do they get the energy?

What I see in Limoux interests me very much. It is no surprise to anyone that the whole Church faces challenges today, and we Anglicans have our own set. Smaller numbers and not enough money and the anxiety that brings; buildings which are frequently both beautiful and expensive; our dear and very accomplished clergy, who when they work full time cost rather a lot; a large and complex institutional structure. These challenges from within sometimes leave little energy for engagement with the political, social and theological challenges believing Anglicans face from outside the Church.

So it is interesting to me to see in the Limoux congregation, and I can guess in others as well, a different model of doing church than most of us are used to, and which may have something to say to the wider church.

Here are some of the “disadvantages” I see in the Limoux chaplaincy, and perhaps in others: using someone else’s not always ideal buildings; part time clergy who are older, usually retired, and compensated for expenses and little else; the necessity to rely on volunteer lay people rather than paid staff; geographical dispersion and the lack of town or village focus, making communication a challenge; a very wide range of churchmanship in a single congregation; and of course, not very many people and not very much money.

But are these really disadvantages? Rephrase them and they sound something like: freedom from building maintenance worries and expense; experienced, and possibly wise, elders leading the congregation at small cost, and a witness to the value of older people; the development of lay ministries essential to the heart of the Church; developing new ways of being in touch with people and creating community, and with fewer meetings; a widely comprehensive appreciation of theology, liturgy and practice; intimacy and simplicity and energy released from seemingly insoluble problems which can invigorate small congregation ministries.

Perhaps the chaplaincies are in some ways “church lite”. They don’t have to bear all of the burdens of regular parishes, whose life is so vital to the Church. But perhaps it is not such a bad thing for some parts of the Church to tread lightly on the earth when so much of the Church doesn’t.

And perhaps it is good to concentrate on creating worship, faith and community with few resources, and to worry less about buildings, money, numbers and structure. Not the Church model for all, certainly, but a witness of great value, whose form of life can enrich the Body of Christ.

A Weekend in Oxford

2011-12-27T19:32:00.021-05:00

I've been home now for two weeks, and what with one thing and another have not had the opportunity to finish blogging on my trip. So here goes.

The day before I left from Toulouse, Tony and I spent the day there. Besides being a charming town, there are two major churches there. The earlier is the Cathedral, dedicated to St. Sernin, a magnificent Romanesque building built between 1080 and 1120. The later is the Dominican basilica of the Jacobins, Gothic, 13th and 14th century, where the bones of Thomas Aquinas are now honored under the modern altar. Toulouse was the historic center of the Dominican Order for centuries. The Jacobins is unique, as far as I know, among major basilicas, in that massive pillars march down the center, making any unobstructed view of a high altar (which it lacks) impossible.

I spent the final weekend of my vacation in Oxford with a friend and Associate of the Order, Bob Jeffery. Bob has had a distinguished career in the Church of England, beginning as a curate in the North of England, then working in the C of E central offices in Westminster, then secretary of the British Council of Churches, Dean of Worcester and Sub-Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford. There were other jobs along the way, including Vicar of Headington, near Oxford. Bob also writes C of E obituaries for the Times of London.

He also knows just about everyone. So in September when he mentioned his good friend Henry Mayr-Harting, I could not contain myself, and somehow a dinner party was contrived with the M-H's. What a joy it was! Mayr-Harting is one of the greatest living scholars of ecclesiastical history, and held the Regius Professorship, being the first Roman Catholic to do so. Along with the professorship come duties as a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, so Bob had the happy task of teaching this ecclesiastical scholar how to be an Anglican cathedral canon, which the Professor vastly enjoyed. He and his wife Caroline are utterly charming.

My good friend Robbin Clark has landed in Gloucester as the Dean of Women Clergy for that diocese, after retiring from a very successful tenure as Rector of St. Mark's, Berkeley. Robbin had been an exchange student from CDSP to Cuddesdon College, a seminary near Oxford, back in the 70's, and I think it is fair to say that it changed her life. She cultivated her relationships in the C of E for many years, and at a reunion a few years ago at Cuddesdon, where she was honored as their first woman seminarian, she let it be known she would be open to an interesting ministerial challenge upon retirement, and lo and behold! Robbin came over Saturday for lunch and met Bob, and then she drove me out to Cuddesdon, which I had never seen. Such a beautiful place! And the seminary is apparently doing well on all fronts. Deo gratias.

On Sunday, Dec. 11, I went with Bob to St. Peter's, Wolvercote, a short distance outside Oxford, where he presided and preached. The place was full, a wide range of ages, full bench of acolytes, and the six bells were pealed by an expert team for half an hour or so before the service. Of course, the Anglican world being approximately two inches wide, there was someone there I knew: Joanna Coney, who is now the head of Franciscan Tertiaries in Europe, and who had been at West Park in September for the international Anglican Franciscan leadership conference. A joyous reunion. And a joyous morning!

In the afternoon we went to the Ashmolean Museum, completely reworked, with a beautiful atrium and staircase. I am afraid, however, that the museum has chosen the route of educational and informative display, so that there are relatively few objects on view and a plethora of large, explanatory posters to tell you all about them. I would rather see more objects, but I suppose even Oxford needs to cater to the uninformed. My old friend the Alfred Jewel was there, however, so I was consoled.

We had tea and Vespers at the All Saints convent. They are few -- nine, I think, with seven in attendance at Vespers -- but very warm and welcoming. I cannot think of a nicer way to end the weekend and my vacation.

Avignon, Nîmes and Preaching in Limoux

2011-12-05T03:41:00.004-05:00

I am now in the final week of my stay in Alet-les-Bains with my good friend Tony Jewiss. We had a wonderful short trip last week to Avignon and to Nîmes. There are three outstanding reasons to visit these places, apart from their own civic virtues: the Papal Palace in Avignon and the Arena and the Maison Carrée in Nîmes.

It is hard, I suppose, for any medievalist to visit the Papal Palace in Avignon and not have a world of reactions. The French papacy of the 14th Century and then the papal schism (1378-1417) were a huge part of the religious background to the age of Chaucer, Piers Plowman, and early English mystical writings like The Cloud of Unknowing, to say nothing of the vast Christian culture beyond England. So as Tony and I wandered around the vast palace, I had a wonderful meditation on the place of renewed Church administration in Christian culture (the Avignon popes modernized, in their own terms, the administration of the Church) and on the role of Church patronage of the arts.

The Arena and the Maison Carrée in Nîmes are among the best preserved ancient Roman buildings anywhere, both being the most perfect examples of their type that exist in Europe. The Arena is a medium-sized amphitheater for gladiatorial shows and other blood sports. It was used for other purposes through the centuries and its restoration first undertaken by Napoleon. It is still used for concerts, operas, and even for skating in the wintertime. The Maison Carrée is a temple built to honor the two sons of Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, whom the Emperor Augustus, Agrippa's best friend, had adopted as his own. Exquisite!

Tony invited me to preach twice while I was in Limoux. The first was on Christ the King two weeks ago, and I preached extemporaneously. The second was yesterday, Advent II. I wrote it out early in the week so that it could be sent to the lay readers of the Church of England Chaplaincy in this area -- there are not enough priests to cover all the congregations, and it was Tony's turn to provide the sermon. I found it strange preaching a text that I had written some days ago, and to realize that several others might be preaching it as well. To facilitate others' reading, it was devoid of personal reference, which my sermons generally include. My usual practice is to write sermons the day before I preach them, so they are fresh in my mind in the morning. On Sunday I found myself reconsidering and reframing the material in my mind and then, in delivery, modifying and embellishing and providing background as I went on, which made it longer than I had intended. So here is the original text:

Isaiah 40: 1-11
2 Peter 3: 8-15a
Mark 1: 1-8

“Comfort ye”, in the words of the Authorized Version used by Handel in Messiah: “Comfort ye.” Israel in exile in Babylon has just learned that they are to return to Jerusalem. What they thought impossible is about to happen: the cruel exile, in which they had been ripped from Jerusalem, from Zion, from the City of David and the City of the Temple of the Most High God, is about to end. The magnificent poetry of the prophet of the end of the exile, whom we call Second Isaiah, begins with these words, and unfolds not only the joy of an Israel renewed, but one of the most profound meditations on the nature of God and reality in human thought, and not just in abstract thought: The one who comes with might, whose arm rules for him, is also the one who feeds his flock like a shepherd, who carries the lambs in his bosom and gently leads the mother sheep. What joy to contemplate the hope of return, God’s peace accomplished in the love of the Almighty for his flock.

This return of God’s people from their exile is how Mark begins his Gospel, the image he uses as the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ: Prepare the Way of the Lord. John the Baptist is calling Israel out into the wilderness so she can discover what she really is: a people in trouble, a people who need to turn around, which is what repenting is. Leaving behind their sins in the desert and being washed in the Jordan links them not only to the people returning from the Exile, but to the people escaping Egypt, wandering in the wilderness, receiving a new identity, a new life and a new direction at Sinai and at last entering into the Promised Land. John wants a new beginning. He doesn’t know what that beginning will be or who will lead it, or where it will go. His job is to get the people ready, get them to the River. He is the new Moses, waiting for the new Joshua.

When we confront scripture, especially texts as beautiful, multi-layered and moving as the beginnings of Second Isaiah and Mark, there are always several things going on in us at once. One is just to understand the text itself, where it came from, who it was written for and why, and what it meant at the time. Our Bible studies and private reading and continuing studies help us with that. What we learn about the language and history and customs of these times is preparing us for the second step, which is to imagine ourselves back into those days and into the lives of people and what happened to them. What joy must have gripped the Israelites in Babylon, even as they contemplated the hard journey ahead, trusting that steep mountains and deep valleys would be made passable on their journey back to Palestine. And what fearful anticipation must have gripped Israel as the Baptist announced that Something was about to happen, and that there was a way they could be made ready for it. People must have pondered all those things they had done and left undone, and rejoiced that there was a way to deal with them.

But when we have done our work of study, and when we have allowed our study to instruct our imagination, something else also remains. The Scriptures are the Word of God at least in part because they speak to us, to us as we are now. The Scriptures demand our best efforts to understand them as they are as texts and as they were as events, but all that is preparation for the life they give us.

The writer of Second Peter seems to have pondered this double sense of time, time then and time now, the conflation of the ancient time of God’s actions with his people in the past and the urgency of our time in the present. “With the Lord one day is like a thousand years.” The past and the present are one in God’s time. The Lord is not slow, but patient. Nevertheless, the day of the Lord will arrive like a thief in the night. So the time of the past and the time of the future come together in the present, in our lives now. The Babylonian Captivity, the Jerusalem of the unspeakable Herods, the Israel of then, is also ours today.

Who among us has not been in exile, been shut out, been carried away from our true home, whether in physical fact or in the sometimes greater reality of our inner lives, and longed for return? Who among us has not known deep in our hearts that our lives have gone wrong, and longed for the call to the wilderness, where they can be cleansed and made ready for something new? The truth is that the human condition is often to live in an alien land, sometimes objective and real outside ourselves, sometimes deeply interior. The truth is that it is our nature to go astray, at best to wander off into paths that take us nowhere good, or at worst, to take the roads that lead us into deep trouble. There is yearning deep in our hearts for the home we have left. There is a deep need in each of us to find what we have done wrong and right it, so that we can begin to be who we should be. These are Advent yearnings, Advent needs: We want the one to come who will save us, rescue us, and bring us home.

St. Augustine of Hippo was one of the great psychologists and doctors of the human heart. He confronted this longing in his own life and did something about it: he turned from the way of self to the way of God. And along the way he came to a profound understanding of himself, an understanding that can unfold some of the yearning, the desire for change and the conflation of time that these great texts give us. He locates it in our very natures, in the image of God written in our hearts at the moment we came to be, which is so powerful that it animates all our desires: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Our hearts are restless. We feel we are somehow in the wrong place, even when we are happy. We know our lives need change. And somehow we know that nothing in this world will completely satisfy those needs. It is not where we go or what we do or what we get or what we have that give us the peace and joy we crave. It is the love of God that gives us the hope we need, the hope that He will take us in his arms and tenderly lead us home, that when we meet him in the wilderness we will be made ready for his coming among us.

Remembrance Day

2011-11-15T02:44:00.013-05:00

I am happily into my vacation in Languedoc-Roussillon, having arrived a little fatigued on Friday (American frm JFK to Madrid, long wait at Madrid/Barajas, and then a little less than an hour to Toulouse). My friend Tony Jewiss, with whom I am staying, is the priest for the Anglican congregation in these parts, a delightful group of expatriate British who meet in the old Augustinian convent church in Limoux. I will preach there this coming Sunday. Sunday the 13th was Remembrance Day, which is sort of like Veterans' Day but with a lot more to it. C of E Churches generally make a thing of it, and it's a reminder of how much more closely the C of E represents the official English culture than the Episcopal Church does the American. Morning Prayer with sermon. A turnout of about 35 or so. A good coffee hour (with actual coffee) afterward, and then more than a few repaired to the Limoux town square for an aperatif.

I thought Tony's sermon was quite good, and asked him if I might share it on this blog. So here goes:

Zephaniah 1:7,12-end
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30
Psalm 90:1-8

A friend of mine is the organist at West Point Military Academy, not far from the Monastery at West Park where Fr. McCoy lives. The chapel at West Point, coincidentally, has the largest organ in a public worship space in the country.

Meredith plays every Sunday and for many events throughout the year. There, as in most places boasting elite branches of the services, graduation is a spectacular event. Massed marching, bands and plenty of pageantry – not quite as much as you are used to perhaps, but a good attempt to imitate England’s undisputed superiority when it comes to marching about, accompanied by bands, anyway.

Even organ music, as the chapel is used for ceremonial events as well.

Meredith knows hundreds and hundreds of cadets and officers by name. She sees them arrive, all gangly and awkward, from hometown wherever it may be, and sees them whipped into shape, taught to walk ramrod straight, turned out to be officers, then sent off to war.

Not war really. Actually, there are no wars at the moment. War requires formal declaration and that in turn establishes some rules. The many conflicts around the world right now fall into other categories – in the case of the ones we hear about most, Iraq and Afghanistan, these are technically Interventions. There are no rules for Interventions. The War on Terror is just a loose use of words, made all the looser by the absence of a War on Illiteracy, a War on Poverty or a War against human trafficking.

Meredith’s duties at the Military Chapel have another dimension, and it is to play the funerals of some of her cadets who come home in a box. There are usually several every week, and occasionally, several in one day. She says it is rare for her not to be able to recall the name of the young man or woman now being eulogized as a hero,
and then put to rest.

In the western world, these events are solemn and restrained. Grief is controlled, losses borne stoically, and usually with great dignity.

A small town in the UK welcomes each cortege that passes through, bearing the bodies of fallen servicemen and women from their arrival at the nearby air base. It is their ministry, their expression of solidarity and sympathy. It is quiet and very moving.

The last few years have given us very graphic images of how different things are in the Middle East. The loss of an Arab boy or girl results in noisy crowd scenes, women throwing themselves over the open coffin being borne, lurching precariously through the streets. Young men fire rifles into the air, and it is chaos.

Yet mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, wives and children everywhere are equally devastated at their losses. All ask the same question, and it is the very question we must also keep before us as we are gathered here to do honor to, and pay respect to, those who have died in the service of their country.

I do not like the expression – “gave their lives for their country.” That to me implies some kind of intention to go and not return. Armed conflicts have always relied upon that sense of invulnerability that the young enjoy, to send them with a certain eagerness to play a role in the Army or the Navy or the Air Force. I think, and hope, that all of them have every intention of coming home fit and well, appreciated by their country and with a sense of having furthered the cause of peace. But even among the survivors, it is not always that way.

In my last job in New York I was asked to be on the selection committee to choose a national chaplain to oversee the activities of the Church’s corps of service chaplains – several hundred of them stationed all over the world. The candidates were narrowed down to three, and it was a hard choice as they were all very well qualified. Each candidate told us things we did not know. Things that change and expand the ministry of chaplaincy in terms of scope and in terms of longevity. They all spoke of the very substantial percentage of service men and women who came home with devastating injuries. In times past they would have all died, but now modern field medicine saved their lives, but not their limbs.

Thousands of them suffer brain injuries caused by their heads being banged about in those large and instrument-laden helmets – designed as much to provide tactical information and communications, as they are to protect the head.

We don’t think much about this aspect of the lives and work of those who fight for us, even on days such as Remembrance Day, although we should. Nor do we think deeply about who these men and women are. The life in service is not for every one, no, not at all. If it is for the sons and daughters of the rich and famous at all, it is through the portals of officer school and the privileges of rank.

As far as the rank and file in concerned, the Service life is an option when jobs are scarce and one’s social rank prevents a life in banking or commerce or politics.

Here are a few statistics that I think you will find shocking – a recent study shows that almost 60% of veterans suffered physical abuse as children, and almost 40% suffered sexual abuse. In one country, in 2010, the Army reported more deaths by suicide than deaths in the field.

Over 50% suffer some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and almost all have heightened awareness, and reaction to, excessive light and sound.

Much has been written in recent years about how congregations can help returning service people find peace and reconciliation after their field experiences. I don’t believe we have that opportunity but hundreds of congregations do, and are treating this ministry as vital, learning how to avoid clichés and platitudes and how to gently ease these men and women, injured as much psychologically as physically, back into the mainstream of community life.

Military families need support as well. It is hard to even imagine the pressures placed on a family unit as the returning veteran deals with spouse and children who cannot really conceive of the things he or she has so intimately experienced.

The words from Zephaniah may not resonate easily with us. At first one wonders what has possessed the compilers of the lectionary to choose such a reading for today. But I might speculate that they would resonate clearly with someone whose memories are shot with the terrible possibilities of which Zephaniah speaks.

The uncertainty, the apprehension, the sudden percussion, the falling rubble, the dust, the debris, the shattering noise, the blinding incendiary. Thank God most of us will never know it – but every veteran does.

The words of Paul to the Thessalonians may not resonate immediately with us either, but they are actually words of encouragement.

Certainly Paul employs some military imagery but he is really saying that there is an alternative to conflict. This reading is a kind of mirror image to Zephaniah. It shows that there is another way, another ideal, another possibility. We need to hold these peaceable possibilities in mind even as we remember those who carried those ideals into the field of conflict itself.

Last week the Prime Minister entertained the organization that offers support to veterans, at a party at 10 Downing Street. His remarks, aimed as much at the cameras as at those present, were a study in political opportunism. His speech writer had dredged up every cliché possible. Apart from his probably intimate knowledge of the line item in the national budget, it was pretty obvious that he had no real empathy with the work of rehabilitating veterans.

I wish his speechwriter had instead translated the gospel story we’ve listened to this morning into a more meaningful and more sincere message for the cameras. Even when delivered by well groomed and sleek Prime Ministers, the truth can be convincing.

The resources delegated to the servants in the story were in fact immense. The responsibility therefore delegated to them was immense as well. The talent was a huge amount of money, and the risks involved in investing it were huge as well.
Time is a crucial element in the gospel story as well. Jesus is preparing his hearers for the uncertainty of the time element – they were expecting His return to be immediate but he says that is not to be the case. Instead, that information is hidden, and therefore the need for proper preparation and anticipation.

Next, actually possessing the money in the first place is not evidence that the enterprise will succeed. The talents were bestowed because the owner believed his servants already had ability to succeed. The entrusting of the money did not necessarily carry with it the actual ability to succeed.

Then, there is the element of risk, and as we know, one of the servants did not take any risk. He kept his part of the money secure, but he did not use it to achieve anything. He did not do the work that the other two did. His was a passive engagement with the task; theirs was active.

Lastly, the issues of reward and punishment. There are consequences to every decision, every action, every engagement.

The men and women of the armed services are a priceless resource – they are people, they are real, and their value as children of God is immeasurable.

They are given tasks that do not fall into the ideal definition of life. They must take enormous risks, make value judgments and deploy their resources with boldness and with not much time to ponder decisions. There are not many rules as to who succeeds or fails to succeed – but their trajectory has to be forward. They cannot be idle, like the third servant.

All three servants respond to their own view of the Master – two are inspired to please him and to succeed in the goals he has set. The third does not trust the Master and fears his reaction if he should not succeed. It is as if he said to himself “I knew you were unreasonable, and that there was no way to please you, so I decided not even to try”.

This tells us that both conflict and opportunity must be met by people who may or not be qualified. Trained, yes, but temperamentally qualified, not necessarily.

Either way, what we ask of the women and men of the armed forces is not reasonable, yet we expect it of them anyway.

And therein lies the real reason we gather today. Rising to do the work of war is the response to an unreasonable request – and in some cases, demand. Yet veterans did respond, did grasp the higher vision, and did what we have come to call duty
despite the risks.

We remember the ones who could not return. We care for the ones whose injuries prevent their being able to enjoy a full life. And we nurture back to health the ones whose experiences have wounded them in other ways.

And we commend them to God’s loving and healing care, even as we earnestly continue to pray for the peace that they have tried to attain.

Election postponed

2011-10-28T17:40:00.002-04:00

After a year of hard work on the part of so many, particularly the committee whose task it was to present nominees to the diocesan convention, that convention has been postponed until November 19 because of a big snowstorm headed our way. What a frustration to everyone concerned! I have planned for a long time to spend a month's vacation with a dear friend in Europe beginning Nov. 10, so it looks like not only will I not be the convention chaplain, I won't even vote!

I arrived in NYC around 4pm to stay at the House of the Redeemer, and had planned to have dinner with Carl Sword, OHC. Looks like dinner and a late train back tonight.

There must be an appropriate scriptural passage for this sort of thing. If it occurs to me, I'll log back in and add it. Something about the best laid plans going a'glay, or however the Scots spell it. They're all good Calvinists steeped in scripture, so even if it isn't in the Book it probably should be.

Adalbert de Vogüé OSB

2011-10-28T06:00:00.013-04:00

"The Abbey of Pierre qui Vire announces the painful and enigmatic death of P. Adalbert de Vogüé OSB, 86. His body was found 2 km from the monastery after a search of eight days. He probably died Friday, 14 October 2011. The publication of Community and Abbot in the Rule of Saint Benedict (1960) began a distinguished career of research and publication concerning the Rule of Saint Benedict and early monastic literature. He served frequently on the faculty of the Pontifical Athanæum of Saint Anselm in Rome before taking up the hermit's life in 1974 near his monastery. The monks will celebrate the Mass of Christian Burial, Wednesday, 26 October, 11 a.m. Donne-lui, Seigneur, le repos éternel."

With these words the Abbey of La Pierre qui Vire announced the death of the greatest scholar of monastic texts in the world. Adalbert de Vogüé was born in 1924 in Paris to a wealthy and aristocratic family. His father was son of the Marquis de Vogüé and the princess Louise-Marie d'Arenberg, and was a principal officer in the Crédit Lyonnais. His mother was from an equally distinguished and even more prosperous family. Adalbert joined the Abbey of La Pierre qui Vire in 1944. His parents both decided to follow him into the cloister, and amid great publicity in 1955 his father entered La Pierre qui Vire and his mother entered Abbaye Saint-Louis-du-Temple de Vauhallan at Limon.

In 1960 de Vogüé published his first major book, translated into English as Community and Abbot in the Rule of St. Benedict. His scholarly work concentrated on the Benedictine monastic tradition. His editions and commentaries of the Rule and of Gregory the Great's Dialogues, Book II of which contains virtually all we know about Benedict as a person, are standard. He published hundreds of other books and articles, but his crowning work is the 12 volume Histoire littéraire du mouvement monastique dans l'antiquité, a magisterial survey of every written monastic source in Latin from the beginnings to the Carolingian Benedict of Aniane.

De Vogüé was a complicated man. He received a fine education in Paris and Rome and taught many terms at San Anselmo, the Benedictine college in Rome. He lectured widely and participated in the intellectual and academic life of his patristic and monastic specialties. He also traveled. I had the great honor of meeting him when he was a guest at the Monastery of St. Paul in the Desert in Palm Desert in the 80's. He was also devoted to the most austere forms of monastic life, and spent many years living in semi-seclusion at a hermitage near his monastery. He wrote occasionally on the ascetic life, of which he was a powerful proponent, and not of the school of amelioration for the purposes of making such a life relevant to modern people. His was the full-throated cry of the completely committed, and his passion can best be seen, perhaps, in his little book To Love Fasting.

He was just as full-throated in his interactions with scholars with whom he disagreed. Not a few revisionists of monastic history experienced his sharp disagreements. And with all that, De Vogüé was the greatest scholar in the Benedictine world for fifty years. It is not too much to say that he is in great part responsible for the brilliant flowering of interest in Benedictine monasticism, having laid a solid foundation for the rest of us to build on.

I can't help thinking both how fitting and how ironic his death was -- lost to others in the forests several kilometers from the monastery, his death hidden from the world he both embraced and fled.

Electing a Bishop

2011-10-25T08:07:00.011-04:00

On Saturday, Oct. 29, the Diocese of New York will gather in convention to elect a coadjutor bishop. Bishop Sisk has asked me to be the the Chaplain to the Convention. Seven have been nominated, five officially and two by petition. One has withdrawn. The slate was announced at the end of August, and on Tuesday afternoon, Oct. 11, a process of interviewing the candidates began at Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, and continued through the week in six or so other venues.

It was an interesting process. It helped clarify my own thoughts about the candidates to some extent. It is helpful to meet and listen to and observe people in the flesh as well as in their carefully prepared statements and videos and other self-presentations. But more importantly, it helped me to solidify my own thoughts about what the next Bishop of New York might be and do. I share those thoughts here, with the understanding that as I write about them, none of them are criticisms of our current Bishop. No one person can have every gift, and the gifts for which a bishop is elected at one point may not be the same needed a decade or more down the road.

So what do I think is most important in our next bishop?

First, I think that the Bishop should be a clear voice proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. That sounds trite, I know, so let me explain. I believe the Church exists to call people to a new reality. The scriptural name for that reality is the Kingdom of God. It goes by other names, even in Scripture: the Kingdom of Heaven in Matthew, everlasting life in John, salvation in its many forms in Paul. This is not a simple matter, because it involves scriptural interpretation and sound, contemporary theology as well as participation in the modes of understanding with which our culture describes reality. But that proclamation is at core quite clear: There is a new reality to which the Church calls the world, and that reality has its point of origin and its summation in the person of Jesus Christ. So our new bishop needs to be someone who can proclaim that reality publicly, persuasively, consistently and effectively, not only from the pulpit, but in the many different roles he or she will be called to fill institutionally and in the wider community. The Bishop should be one who makes clear that the Church is impelled by this new reality to begin working for it here and now, and that our many works for the poor, for the education of the young and for social advancement flow from this one source: We believe the Kingdom can begin here and now.

Second, I think that the Bishop needs to love, effectively represent and skillfully promote the kind of Christianity the Episcopal Church stands for. We are catholic and we are reformed. Which is to say, we stand for the full practice of the sacramental, liturgical, theological and ecclesial reality of the historic western Church, and we also stand for the freedom of conscience of each believing person within the fellowship of Christ, and all that follows from that in the full participation of all members in the Church's life, witness and governance. The Bishop needs to be a person who can lead us into the challenges to our form of Christianity in the contemporary moment. These are clear to everyone, but the way forward is not so clear. The Bishop needs to be a skillful institutional leader, one who can envision and implement appropriate new or changed forms of congregational and diocesan ministry. The challenges we face include an aggressively materialist culture which is in many ways opposed to the Christian message, a psycho-social environment which does not value Christian belief commitment very highly, and a financial environment in which there is less money for church structures. The Bishop should be a person who faces our future with optimism because he or she believes in the Anglican way of being Christian, believes that our way is essential for the completeness of the universal Church, and believes that the Anglican way is given by God as one proclamation of the Gospel in our society.

Third, I think that the Bishop needs to be a person who loves holiness: a person of personal prayer and reflection breaking into attitudes of generosity and good discernment toward others, of course, but also a person who wants to promote holiness though the Church. The Episcopal Church has chosen the path of radical inclusiveness, not just in areas of sexuality and gender, but in many other areas as well. How are people transformed by their life in Christ within the Episcopal fellowship? How can the Church build up the Kingdom of God by including people who have been excluded, from the Church altogether in some cases, or from our church in particular in others, as they are drawn into fellowship with those who are already members? The Bishop should be a person who in his or her own personal life is known to be living the life of the Kingdom, but also a person who can call everyone to the challenging work of refashioning their lives, no matter when they entered the vineyard (see Matthew 20:1-16). This is all the more urgent in a time when the traditional educational and economic prospects for young people no longer hold their old promise, when the moral and social conventions of the past, built on socially agreed foundations, no longer hold as firmly as they once did. People need to look to us as a church which calls its members with some success to the struggle to be what God intends us to be, which is not and should not be easy. Thoughtful people find themselves drawn to effective disciplines of holiness. The Church, led by its bishop, should be a place where they can find them.

This is a lot. I am pretty sure no one person has all the qualities needed. But whoever we elect should have these as ideals, as goals, for the episcopal ministry. It is trite to say that the Church is at a turning point. The Church has always been at a turning point, because to be alive in any present moment is to have to choose, to turn toward what is coming. Nevertheless, I believe this is such a moment. I pray that our new Bishop will be a person who can represent the values we carry with us from our tradition and do so with cheerful confidence that the challenges that face us are opportunities, and energize us in the Spirit.

The Joy of Old Friends

2011-10-20T20:18:00.003-04:00

Practically the only people I know in Austin are Bill and Molly Bennett. We met years ago at CDSP, where Bill was in charge (I think) of development in 1976 when I started studying for my M.Div. there. I remember well doing my work/study thing as a janitor and being told by Bill how important it was to empty the wastepaper baskets. As it surely is. At any rate, we became friends then.

Bill went on in the mid-80's to become the Provost at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, working together with Durstan MacDonald as Dean. It was a good partnership and the seminary flourished under their leadership. Eleven years later or so Bill became the rector of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Austin, and retired some years ago. Molly worked for years as a Director of Christian Education in Austin Episcopal churches and was responsible for establishing the certification program in Christian Ed at ETS-SW. Both have had distinguished careers.

I had e-mailed in advance, and when I got to Austin I called them up and plans were made. We went for dinner last night at a wonderful place called the Eastside Cafe. The food was delicious. I had mushroom crepes and squash and we all had a scrumptious cherry cobbler for dessert. But of course the nicest part was the conversation. We talked and talked about old friends and the Church, and then they took me on driving tour of downtown Austin. I was a bit taken aback when Bill told me about the Temple of the Holy Spirit which had either six or nine (I'm not sure I remember the number correctly) gatherings a year when more than 100,000 people attend worship. Then I looked up and lo and behold, the U. of Texas stadium. I told Bill I was acquainted with that form of worship, having attended Michigan State in The Good Old Days when Duffy Dougherty was coach.

What a wonderful thing old friends are!

At the Archives

2011-10-17T18:55:00.005-04:00

I'm in Austin, TX, until Friday to work on OHC's archival holdings on deposit at the national Episcopal Church archives, which are located on the campus of The Seminary of the Southwest (SSW) (which used to be prefixed with Episcopal Theological, as in ETS-SW). There was no room in the inn there, so I am staying at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary, in very nice digs called the Presidential Condo. It's a one-bedroom condo on the third floor of a married student housing building north of the seminary, very close to SSW and the Archives.

The flight down took me from Stewart-Newburgh to Detroit and Atlanta and then on to Austin. No problems at all. You would never know Detroit is collapsing from its airport, which is quite spiffy, as is Atlanta. The less said about Stewart the better, but the planes leave on time and occasionally arrive on time as well. The TSA people at Newburgh are not at all like the caricatures of those folks. They were pleasant, efficient and friendly. But we still had to take our shoes off.

The Order has had the bulk of our archives in Austin since 1976, and it is a lot of stuff. I'm mostly confirming and improving the descriptions of our holdings and will do a bit of scanning as well.

Austin being in Texas and all, I'm going to go out for a steak tonight. Last night I had a pretty good burger at a little place just down the street, but tonight I'm up for the real thing. People have recommended the Austin Land and Cattle Company (not to be confused, I was urged, with the Texas Land and Cattle Company). Apparently the Austin version has the more authentic down home Austin feel to it, and perhaps more reasonable prices as well.

I visited Austin and the Archives in the mid-80s when I did research there for the history of OHC. The Archives then was run by Nell Bellamy, of very blessed memory, a great woman, a great Christian and something of a saint, at least in my book. Today I had the opportunity for a good conversation with her successor, Mark Duffy, and he is, as they say, Worthy.

Austin is pretty much as I remember it, at least this part of it. I was struck then and continue to be by the casual approach to sidewalks and curbs here. Not at all like southern California, where they approach fetishism. There was some rain a couple of weekends ago, so things are not totally parched, but the drought is still very much on.

One of life's little signposts

2011-10-13T20:12:00.002-04:00

Well, I suppose it had to happen sometime. I'll be turning 65 in December, so I made my appointment to apply for Medicare and had the interview today. I know you can do it online, but somehow I felt I'd rather talk to a human being about this little milestone in the journey. So I got myself up to the Social Security office in Kingston, which is on the second floor of a nice but somehow sterile and forlorn office building out in Lake Katrine, north of the big box shopping district, near nothing at all.

The man who interviewed me was very nice, very helpful. I was glad I had taken along all the documents. The birth certificate in particular. He tried to get me to retire on the spot, but I think I'll wait a while. The full retirement for my age cohort is 66, and the monthly haul increases a bit each month you wait to retire after that.

Coming down the stairs I could have sworn my knees were complaining.

The marriage feast

2011-10-09T18:14:00.002-04:00

After more than a month taking services at St. George's, Newburgh, I preached at Holy Cross Monastery this morning. St. George's prefers an informal preaching style, but this morning's offering was written. It is posted on the sermon blog for Holy Cross Monastery and can be reached there.

Conflict Resolution for Labor Day

2011-09-05T08:33:00.005-04:00

Preached at The Church of the Incarnation, New York City, September 4, 2011

Ezekiel 33:7-11
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20

Our lessons this morning all in one way or another refer to the resolution of conflict. How interesting that they should occur on the weekend of Labor Day.

The labor movement in this country began as a serious force in the 1880's. Founded in 1869, the first major American labor organization, the Knights of Labor, had only 28,000 members in 1880, and grew to an astonishing membership of 700,000 by 1886, just six years! Something big was going on! The founder of the Order of the Holy Cross, James Huntington, joined the Knights here in New York City and quickly became a national figure supporting the rights of working people, helping to bring their concerns into the heart of the Episcopal Church. The Knights of Labor could not maintain that level and its membership soon fell back, but its rapid growth showed the industrial and political community that organized labor was a force to reckoned with. The Knights of Labor paved the way for an industrial order which eventually came, through struggle, to recognize the rights and dignity of working people. That struggle takes different forms in our own age, perhaps, but it is perpetually necessary, even in times when the creation of work through capital itself seems endangered. And conflict was part of that struggle.

Our three lessons this morning all deal with conflict in one way or another. The prophet Ezekiel is commissioned by the Lord to warn the wicked. But Ezekiel seems not to want to follow through. The Lord has to tell him that if he does not warn them and disaster comes, the blood will be on his hands. So this conflict is dealt with by telling the truth regardless of its consequences to the teller. If people are not warned, they will not change. If they are warned, they may not change anyway, but at least they have had the option presented to them. So, the prophet says, Change while you have the chance.

St. Paul takes another tack. We know what we should and should not do. The Law tells us – adultery, murder, theft, greed are going to cause conflict for sure. Paul wants us to understand how urgent our lives are. We may think there is all the time in the world to resolve things. We may excuse ourselves because keeping the law is complicated. But actually, Paul says, in some of the most inspired words of scripture, Wake up. The time is now. Start living without building up toxic debts to each other. “Love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.” If Ezekiel recommends truth telling, Paul recommends living as though the other person is as important, and as worthy of love, as we are.

The passage from St. Matthew’s gospel comes as a surprise in this context. When conflicts arise in the Church, as they always have, and I suspect they always will, one might expect Jesus to tell the believers to turn the other cheek, as he does in another context, the context of an individual choice. But this is a group situation which requires a different approach. So Jesus recommends a conflict resolution process. First talk to the person you have your problem with. If that doesn’t work, bring in another person or two. If that doesn’t work, take it to the congregation. And if that doesn’t work, invite the person to leave. You can almost imagine Jesus writing this out in large letters on big pieces of paper and taping them to the wall during a conference called something like “Conflict Resolution in the Church”. A morning session at a retreat center just outside of Capernaum, by scenic Lake Galilee, perhaps. Jesus the Conference Facilitator. Joking aside, conflict happens, and it clearly happened in the early church. So procedural. So sensible. So sane. So boring.

Except, the ways conflicts were resolved in Jesus’ time were often quite violent. Just look at the 18th chapter of Matthew, from which this passage comes. Earlier in the chapter, it is said, "If your hand or your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than to have two hands or two feet and to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into the hell of fire.” And after our passage, a story about forgiving debts, which ends: “And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart." Jesus was using these images because they are familiar – all too familiar – to his hearers. If this is the way people deal with themselves and with members of their own extended households, how will they deal with outsiders?

And that is the point of this passage, I think. Jesus wants the church to be different, to start something new. Jesus is saying to the church, Even though you come from different families, different towns, different languages and cultures and nations, you are not outsiders to each other. You have a responsibility to listen to each other. You are still bound to come to a just decision, and when you do, the Father will support you, But this must not be done with violence in any case, as is the way of the world.

Jesus is preaching the Kingdom of Heaven here. The world, God’s world, is enveloped in violence, violence which we commit upon ourselves and upon each other, unthinkingly, almost unconsciously, because that is the way of things. And perhaps it can’t be avoided, although I do think that the Middle Eastern love of rhetorical hyperbole should be considered as an interpretive tool for scripture when we are tempted to follow its advice and pluck out eyes or torture each other as means to spiritual progress. But the believing fellowship, the church, is the place which is expressly dedicated to beginning to live in the Kingdom of Heaven, And so here, Jesus calls his followers to another way, a way which is contrary to the way their world operates, to a counter-culture. It is not acceptance of what is wrong. It does not facilitate the offender. But it gives the offender three distinct forums to repent, not unlike Ezekiel’s prophetic call to tell the truth. And if that does not work, the punishment meted out is not eye gouging or hand amputation or torture. It is simple exclusion. If you cannot come to terms with the honest judgment of those who love you as a brother or sister in the Lord, then you don’t belong in the fellowship. Perhaps the Kingdom of Heaven is not for you.

How different from the organized violence of the Roman state. How different from the rhetorical violence of the thought world of Jesus’ hearers, How different from a world in which you have the duty to practice violence on those outside your kinship group at the slightest pretext, and how different from a world in which the enforcement of discipline on those inside the family can call for torture. Jesus wants to transform the conflict of the world, and he wants the church to lead the way.

The history of labor and industrial relations in this country is a history filled with violence. But it is also a history of learning to listen, sitting down one to one, in small groups, and in assemblies if need be. It is a history of learning to hear each other, and of learning that each needs the other.

Ezekiel says that there must be truth tellers. Paul tells us that the time is urgent, and that the way forward is to treat each other with more than wary respect, in fact, to treat each other with love. And our Lord says, If the conflict is real, deal with it. Begin at the lowest level and work up. Come to good and right decisions, and be prepared to enforce them if necessary. But check the violence at the door.

Irene

2011-09-02T05:42:00.013-04:00

The hurricane came and went. We did as much preparation as we could at the monastery. There were a lot of leaks. The crypt underneath the chapel flooded. It was renovated last year, and the flooding was interesting. The water came up from under the altar, not from the outside drainage area, which had been the problem before, and not from the floor in general. The new heating system was installed in a way that seems to have sealed that part from the source of the water. So once the water was pumped out and the carpet dried and cleaned, little damage was sustained. Our area had a power outage that lasted for a day, but we have a good generator which kept us in electricity.

But that was not the case for our bookkeeper, whose property is by a creek that is tributary to the Wallkill River, and which was badly flooded. At least one car was totaled, and parts of the property so damaged that little could be salvaged. They will be dislocated in various ways for months. And they were lucky. Their power was restored in a day or two, while others in the area are not so fortunate.

Because a lot of the damage was in small towns and out in the country, the news of the effects of the storm is a lot slower coming in than if it had been in more populous areas. It seems that the edges of the storm carried more water than more central parts, so the northern areas, in New York State and Vermont, turn out to be the most heavily hit. A lot of bridges are out. A lot of farms and towns are built in low-lying areas around rivers and streams and were in the way of the water. Schenectady, west of Albany along the Mohawk River, is particularly hard hit. Small towns in the rural areas near us are reported to have basically disappeared. This is not big news in a media sense, but it is significant in our area. There is not a lot of economic activity in New York State once you get away from the New York City commuter areas and the Albany area, where the state government people live and work. The loss of a farm or two, of a small community, can be permanent.

It is increasingly clear to me that the monastery has an important positive economic role in our area. We employ people, purchase a lot of local products, bring people to the area from other places, and work to share what we have with the wider community in various ways, including cooperating with those who help disadvantaged people, of whom there are plenty around here. On a normal week 50 people or more are here doing one thing or another, on retreat or at a meeting or coming to pray with us, in addition to the community, which at this point numbers 15 or so. This is not insignificant, especially in an economic area which, while not precisely depressed, is not flourishing either.

The way we live, the Christian monastic way, is of course not the way for everyone. But we share what we have communally, we practice simplicity (to some extent at least!), and we work cooperatively. These are values useful beyond the monastic context, I think. What we do puts me in mind of the classic Benedictine monasteries of medieval Europe, which were literally centers of their communities, and whose cooperative economics were both stable and dynamic for wide areas around them.

Summertime

2011-08-31T03:56:00.019-04:00

The Monastery closed on July 24 for our annual retreat. It sounds selfish, but I always look forward to the quiet of a house without guests. I love the guests, mostly, but as I get older, I realize I also love quiet and being alone. Strange for a monk, I know. So this year the community had eight days of silence instead of our customary 10. We are going to try a new retreat formula. In the past few years we have joined our monthly retreats into quarterly retreats, so instead of having one silent day each month, we have three or four a quarter. That won't change, but what will is that we are shortening the annual community all-together retreat slightly and then each monk will have another eight days sometime in the other end of the year. For a guy who likes to be alone and quiet this will be wonderful, I think.

As I have for some years now, I spent a couple of weeks in August after the community retreat staying at the House of the Redeemer in New York City. I like to do this partly to catch up on how things are going at the House, where I have been on the Board of Trustees for eight years or more now. It also reconnects me to the City, which I love.

I always enter into that time full of intentions -- you can see my reading list in the previous post. I usually stock my head full of museums and shows and music and other things NYC offers, and then, like my reading list, something else happens. This time two things happened. The first was friends. A couple who had been guests at the Monastery found me on Facebook and suggested we get together. So we had dinner together at a nice place downtown, where they shared an enormous lobster, and we got to know each other better. And then we thought, what fun it would be to go somewhere in the City together. We thought about the Scholars' Garden on Staten Island, but we had all been there already. A place I had not been, however, was the Bronx Zoo.

So, plans made, they picked me up 10-ish on the appointed morning. Brave souls that they are, they keep a car in NYC (they live in Astoria, Queens, where such things are possible) and we started our drive. The short stretch up the Major Deegan, which looked so convenient on the map, turned into a hour or more of creeping traffic. It was for all of us a spiritual exercise in patience. We finally debouched onto the Cross Bronx Expressway, which going east was practically empty. We reached the Zoo, paid for parking, paid for tickets, and entered. I loved it all. The tigers were spectacular, even with half a hundred yammering kids from a Brooklyn Christian summer school. I won't do a full-scale review of the zoo, except to say that if you go, you should definitely bring money. But best of all was spending time together with friends.

On Saturday the 13th another friend and I had lunch at the southern end of the High Line, just below 14th Street, and then walked to its northern terminus at 30th Street or so. It was a view of New York I had never seen, and is so interestingly designed that what could be just a straight path is in fact a wonderful amalgam of creative landscaping and space that is quite charming. I fully intended to go to church the next day, but that was a day of terrific storm, with sheets of rain pounding down for hours in the morning.

The other thing that happened was that not much happened at all. The rest of my time turned out pretty much as it always does. My always-enjoyable time with the wonderful staff at the House of the Redeemer. Some quality time with Carl Sword, OHC, who lives in NYC. A couple of lunches and dinners with other friends. A couple of movies -- Cowboys and Aliens and the ape movie -- and a show -- The Master Class (terrific). And the rest of the time was spent basically alone.

Which I am gradually realizing is something I did a lot of when I was a monk not in residence and which, ironically I suppose, I miss now that I am back at the Monastery. Unstructured, quiet time, some of it for reading, some of it for praying, but much of it just for being. Walking is a big part of it.

I love being with friends and seeing new and beautiful things. But also -- I love being quiet and I love being alone. Strange, no?

I'll be back in NYC this weekend, presiding and preaching at The Church of the Incarnation, at Madison and 35th, 8:30 and 11:00. The Rector, Doug Ousley, will be away at the wedding of one of his sons.

On this rock I will build my Church

2011-08-22T06:11:00.005-04:00

Sunday, August 21, 2011, Pentecost 10, Proper 16A
Preached at Holy Cross Monastery

Isaiah 51:1-6
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

As all the brethren know, I have just returned from two weeks away. I left, as I always do, with a small library of books I intended to read: David Brakke’s Athanasius and Asceticism; another book on asceticism, Margaret Miles’ Fullness of Life, which I should have read when it came out in 1981; two recent compilations of essays on the Venerable Bede; and Harold Bloom’s latest work of literary criticism, The Anatomy of Influence. I always do this: I pack the books I ought to read. I know I will return a much better person if I read them all, and I never do. I crack them, read a chapter or two, and then, somehow, mysteriously, move onto something else. This time I read two books which were actually a lot more fun: Jonathan Yardley’s wonderful short essays on neglected classics called Second Reading, and John Julius Norwich’s just-published narrative romp, Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy. If you want the serious history of the popes, of course, you have to go to the Germans, someone like Bernard Schimmelpfennig, who thinks it is terribly important that the reader understand that the likelihood that Peter ever even got to Rome at all is practically zero. He dissects the papacy like a coroner dissects corpses, looking for evidences of foul play.

Norwich is not of the Schimmelpfennig school. He nods his head to the grim truth that much has been lost to us in the mists of time. But he loves to evoke the living reality, so he tells the stories, and there are a lot of good and juicy stories to tell. The papacy has been around in one form or another going on two thousand years, and its story is a fascinating narrative with a cast of hundreds in the starring roles and thousands surrounding them. The Vatican officially lists Benedict XVI as number 265, and that doesn’t count the numerous popes of disputed title. There are lots of saints and quite a lot of remarkable and admirable men on that list. But there are also more than a few scoundrels, and some stories that will curl the hair of the most ardent proponent of the See of Rome. My personal favorite among the flagrantly ambiguous reigned from 1492 to 1503. Alexander VI, the first Borgia pope, was a great administrator and diplomat, a patron of the arts and of learning, and devoted to his family. He was a man of enormous charm which he used to great and positive effect at some quite dangerous and difficult moments. But as greatly charming persons sometimes are, he was also possessed of dubious personal holiness and habits of life. Among the four publicly acknowledged children by his mistress Vanozza dei Cattanei, all of whom he provided for in quite a grand way at the expense of the Church, was the irrepressible Lucrezia. I recommend Norwich to you to fill in the details.

“You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” Whatever construction later ecclesiastical theory put on this statement, and it is the key scriptural basis for the primacy of the successors of Peter, it is clear that the early church thought that the Lord’s words to Peter were central to its self-understanding. Something essential about the leadership of the Church is indicated by the exchange between Jesus and Peter. Something worth looking at.

Jesus is asking his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, one of the prophets. “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter, without any hesitation, answers, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." An amazingly rich and complicated exchange, using in such a short space three of the most loaded titles in all of scripture, about which commentary has swirled and proliferated likely since the moment this conversation was uttered. Indeed, the first commentary on it comes from Jesus himself: The one who has identified Jesus as Messiah and Son of the living God is the rock on which the Church will be built. That is how important Peter’s statement is.

I find it interesting that Jesus uses the word rock here, and also that the early church remembered it and made it central. Remember the parable of the two houses, one built on sand and the other on rock? The one built on sand is swept away. The one built on rock outlasts the storm. Jesus wants his movement to continue long after he is gone. But he seems to be worried that it won’t last, that it will be built on a false foundation. The church requires rock for its foundation. It may be, as later was taught, that the rock is the character of Peter, and it may be that his official successors will inherit his strength of character and immovability. The colorful story of Peter’s successors shows that some were rocks and some, well, not so much. Yet mysteriously, the church endures.

But I wonder if Jesus’ statement is not about something more direct in his exchange with Peter. The rock to which Jesus refers can be interpreted as Peter’s confession, that Jesus is Messiah and Son of the living God. This is what calls forth the Lord’s declaration. Perhaps Jesus is suggesting that if a leader wants to follow in Peter’s steps, it is Peter’s confession that provides the strength and solidity, the genuineness, the integrity on which the church can continue to be built. What matters in a leader of the Church may include being a good administrator or a good diplomat, or a person devoted to his or her family (and what family doesn’t have its ups and downs!). But what makes Christian leadership genuine is that the leader points to Jesus of Nazareth and declares to all who may care to hear that it is this one – not some other – who is the one anointed to bring in the kingdom of God, that is to say, this is the one who is the answer to how we should order our lives, individually and collectively; that it is this one – not some other – who bears the divine nature in human form, that is to say, this is the one who shows us what it ultimately real.

The rock solid foundation of the Church is its understanding of who Jesus really is. Leaders who truly follow Peter, who are genuine rocks on whom the church is built in every age, indeed in our own age, are those who say with unequivocal certainty that Jesus is the one who brings in the kingdom and shows the true nature of God to us.

In eight days, on August 29, the list of official nominees for the election of the 16th Episcopal Bishop of New York is to be announced, and exactly two months later the Convention will vote, and, one hopes, elect. There are many qualities which one can desire in a bishop of a diocese as large and as complex as New York. We have had good administrators, diplomatic personalities, and men devoted to their families, though not all of them quite as colorful perhaps as Alexander VI. Whoever is elected will need many gifts, but more gifts will be needed than any one person can possess. Inevitably he or she will lack some important ones, and in ten years or so it will be clear what they are.

But there is one gift this new Bishop, in fact every bishop, in fact every Christian leader, in fact, every serious Christian, must absolutely possess. When asked the question, Who do you say that I am? by the Lord, or when asked by others, Who is Jesus?, that person should be one who, with Peter, can say with unequivocal certainty who Jesus is: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And mean it. And understand it. And interpret it to others. And put it into effective practice in this time and in this place. And build the church on it.

Murder Mysteries and Apocalypse

2011-07-17T06:46:00.005-04:00

Preached today at St. George’s Episcopal Church, Newburgh NY.

Genesis 28:10-19a
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

I love murder mysteries. Thanks to the public libraries of Ulster County, I’m reading three authors at the moment: The New Zealand/English Ngaio Marsh, who began publishing in the 30's; an English-speaker from Quebec, Louise Penny; and the Scottish writer Ian Rankin. Each writes in a definite genre: Marsh writes classic closed-room stories, set in picturesque British locations. Penny writes what are called “cozies” in the mystery trade – set in a fictitious rural Quebec village; and Rankin writes what are called police procedures, in Edinburgh.

They are all doing the same thing – revealing the identity of the murderer – but each does it differently. Marsh lays out the clues and gives the reader the same challenge, and the same chance, as the detective. Penny’s story evolves as time and the investigation elapses. Rankin’s stories lurch from event to event, and there is always violence before the culprit is unmasked and trapped.

Each mystery writer creates a small universe, like places in the world we live in but also not like them. There is a central character in each who is the agent for justice, and in whose life we become interested, especially if we read the novels in each series sequentially. And each of these little universes exists to embody a story, a narrative, whose ultimate end is to uncover the truth, to reveal reality, so that justice may be done and right may be established in the place of evil.

In other words, murder mysteries are little apocalypses. Just like our scripture lessons today. Like Marsh, Penny and Rankin, these passages from Genesis, Romans and Matthew are each apocalypses, moments of revealing truth, moments of setting things right at the end of the story. Because, in fact, the word apocalypse in Greek means un-covering, and when the truth is uncovered by God, things which were wrong are made right.

The story of Jacob’s dream is one of the most famous in all of scripture. In Genesis the ladder resting on the rock Jacob is using as a pillow is the opening from this world into the next, the uncovering of the entrance to the realm of God, in which the ceaseless movement of angels up and down, up and down, reveals the continual intervention of God’s energy and activity into Jacob’s world and ours. The dream of the ladder assures Jacob that his life will be the point where the divine meets the human in the world, and that his life will lead to the fulfilling of God’s purpose through the prosperity of his descendants. Jesus uses Jacob’s ladder to describe his own identity when he calls Nathanael from the fig tree in the first chapter of John: "Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." (John 1:51) The cover is lifted, the curtain parts, and the truth is glimpsed for a moment: God’s energy, God’s angels, are always intervening. Our challenge is to find Jacob, to find the Son of Man, so that we may see heaven opened. The apocalyptic message is that there is a point of entry to the realm of God, and it is accessible to us, and if we live into its promise, God’s purpose will be fulfilled.

The eighth chapter of St. Paul is one of the greatest theological meditations on the purpose of God ever written, in any language, in any religion, in any age. His purpose is to uncover for us our real identity as children of God, to reveal God’s ultimate purpose for us individually as sons and daughters of God, but even more, to lift the cover, to part the curtain, and to see as it really is the true movement of what God has made: Creation for Paul is a living being, yearning for its fulfillment. He solves the mystery of existence, of the universe, and our place in it, when he says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” (Romans 8:18-19) We are not what we thought we were. We are so much more, so very much more, to God than we could ever imagine on our own. The apocalyptic message is that there is a purpose to our life, a purpose to the universe, and it is found in the unity with God which God is preparing for each of us and for all of us, and not just us as human entities, but for the whole created order, eagerly longing for us.

After the excitement of Jacob’s ladder dream and Paul’s lyrical description of the stately progress of God’s purpose bringing all things into harmony, the parable of the wheat and the weeds seems harsh, even violent. If the story of Jacob’s dream is in form a little like Ngaio Marsh, a narrative told plainly and concentrating on the facts; and if Paul’s hymn to the unity of God’s creative purpose from Romans can be compared to Louise Penny’s narratives, which unfold from within the continuities of a much smaller created world; then perhaps the parable of the wheat and tares can be likened to the nasty underworld of Edinburgh, the non-touristy Edinburgh, in Ian Rankin’s work. In his stories evil is so palpable, and the necessity to engage that evil is so clear, that we know that in the end people will be hurt. We pray that it is the people who deserve to be hurt, and even though the just suffer injuries, even casualties along the way, the evil do always find their punishment.

The field in Matthew is not picturesque. It is a place of struggle, of hard work, of opposition to the good, where enemies sneak in at night to ruin the crop by sowing weeds. As in the detective story, a premature reaction by the owner of the field or his workers does not help, but can actually destroy the crop altogether. But there will be retribution. There will be a violent reaction. Evil will not win. What must happen first is for the difference between the wheat and the weeds to become evident as the plants grow. In God’s good time all will become clear. And in God’s good time, God will see that it all comes to a proper end, an end described so satisfyingly for those who want to see the evil suffer for what they have done. The catharsis seems as necessary to end this parable as a cathartic ending is for Rankin’s murders.

No doubt the parable of the wheat and the weeds reflects the mixture of good and evil in the Israel of the time of Jesus. It was probably remembered because soon enough the Church discovered that it too harbored different seeds, different plants. The temptation was to identify the evil and cast it out. That temptation is still with us in the Church. But Jesus’ advice then is still true today: God will do his own work. Remember who we are and what we are to do. It is not ours to judge each other. It is ours to grow, to be wheat instead of weeds. The apocalyptic message is that we are the plants which should grow into good wheat, yielding good for God. It is not our job to judge each other, and while there will be serious consequences for the weeds – for those who make themselves subject to evil – God will take care of it.

I don’t want to push the analogy of my three murder mystery writers to Genesis, Romans and Matthew too far. But there is something to it. I think we love murder mysteries because they create universes into which we can imaginatively place ourselves and participate in the double apocalyptic process of the discovery of the truth and setting things right. Today’s scripture lessons offer us the same process, but so much more profoundly. And with this difference: They are true. There really is a person upon whom the energies, the angels, of God ascend and descend. There really is an unfolding process going on which is leading inexorably to the exaltation of ourselves and all creation in God’s own being. There really is a difference between good and evil, and there really will be a time when the good wins.

May we find in our blessed Lord Jesus Christ the angelic ladder opening heaven to us on earth. May we begin to live in the awareness of the great purposes of God for each of us and for all that is. May we grow and thrive, do good in our day, and not be deflected by what is not good, in the confidence that God’s goodness will triumph over all.

The Parable of the Soils

2011-07-10T13:09:00.001-04:00

I preached again at St. Ignatius of Antioch, New York City, today. A nice crowd, and lovely weather.

Proper 10A, July 10, 2011
Matthew 13:1- 9,18-23

The parable of the Sower is perhaps the one parable in the Gospels that seems to require no explanation, because Jesus himself gives us the explanation. It seems like a straightforward call for those who hear the word of God to give fruitful increase. And so it is.

But I want to play a little game with you. As you were listening to the Gospel this morning, or as you read it in the bulletin before the liturgy began, where did you find yourself in the parable? I’ll be willing to bet that some of us, perhaps most of us, identified with the seed being sown, and asked the question, Which of these situations is about my life? How fruitful am I? And, of course, that is exactly the question Jesus wants us to ask about ourselves. The point of the parable is to get us to ask, how can I be more fruitful for the Lord? The problem would seem to be the soil I’m planted in. I could accomplish so much more except for all problems I face. Or I am living in a shallow cultural environment. Or it’s for me hard to put down roots just now. Or there are so many distractions in my life. I’m sure that if I could sort these issues in the background of my life, the real fruitfulness which is surely the potential of my life will come to the fore, bloom, bear fruit, and the increase will be great. If only the circumstances of my life were better, I would be fine. The problem is essentially external to myself. In the prophetic words of Skip Wilson, The devil made me do it.

But let’s look more carefully at the text, and at Jesus’ explanation. In each case, the seed that is sown is the same. It is the soil that the seed is planted in that is different. So perhaps we are not the seed, but the soil. Perhaps this should be called the Parable of the Soils. If this is the case, then perhaps our search for blame for why we re not as fruitful as God wants us to be – assuming that none of us here is quite up to the hundredfold benchmark Jesus sets – perhaps the reason we’re not quite among the hundredfold is that our soil isn’t quite up to hundredfold standards. In other words, if we are the soils in this parable, then we will find within our own lives the reasons why the seed is not yielding as it should. Our own minds and hearts and souls are the soils where the seed of the Word of God is sown. And since Jesus delineates those reasons himself, let’s look at them.

Jesus gives three reasons why the soils are not productive: in the first, the seed is sown along a trodden path, so hard that it cannot germinate, the evil one snatches the seed away, and it never has a chance to grow; in the second, there are so many rocks that there isn’t enough soil for proper roots to grow; and in the third, worldly cares and the desire for wealth choke out an initially good growth.

We are not a culture that is comfortable, on the whole, with the idea of an evil one prowling around, snatching what he can. But I’m not entirely convinced that our skepticism is completely justified. I have seen young people and friends turn almost overnight from loving, helpful, curious and pointed to the future to being destructively self-absorbed, wanting thrills that can only be had from drugs or actions that bring harm. I have watched people become so obsessed or angry that their relationships dissolve and their work or their studies go down the tubes, or more subtly, make living and working with them so difficult that their lives and the lives of those around them wither. They grow hard, like a path that is continually pounded. How can the Word of God penetrate such a shell? It is snatched away before it is even heard. It’s enough to make you wonder, Just what is the power that causes such grief? The path needs to be turned back into soil. It needs to be plowed up, for something to break through and change it.

There are people who have a lot of rocks in their lives. It isn’t their fault, exactly, but they do. The genetic inheritance we’re born with may have problems. The family we’re born into may have problems. The community we are reared in may have problems. The world has problems. Lord knows how many troubles each of us has. And they just seem to grow as our life unfolds. I like pictures of beautiful New England – or upstate New York – fields. How do you think they got to be so beautiful? They started out rocky. How can you make a field like that good for growing something in? You can leave the rocks there and be disappointed in the yield. Or you can remove them patiently, one by one, until the plow can make it through without being deflected or broken. And every spring, more rocks come to the surface. You don’t know why. They just do. So the farmer’s job at that season of the year is to bend over patiently yet again and remove them. Is there anything more beautiful than a carefully cultivated field, with the rocks moved to the side to build a boundary wall, or used to build the farmer’s fieldstone house? But the truth is, if you have a rocky field, you have to work patiently and continually to make space for the crops to grow. And if you do, they will. And fields like that are often heart-stoppingly beautiful. As are people who patiently work at their stony lives, never giving up, season after season moving the rocky parts out of the way, making use of them as best they can, not letting them limit their fruitfulness. But those who do not patiently work at it do not have much capacity to let the Word grow in them.

And the third sort? Their soil is deep and rich and unobstructed. They are the golden boys and girls, born beautiful, their families focused as they should be, their communities supportive. In the world of high school, they are the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader, the homecoming king and queen. They are the ones who got a new car when they turned 16. They don’t know what they have. And not knowing, the cares of life overwhelm them, in part because they don’t have the practice of clearing their life field of rocks, in part because they have been sheltered from the real evils of life by the wise and responsible people in their lives. And so, when care comes, and it always does come, they aren’t ready to meet it. Having always had more than they need, they find it hard to limit their desire, and so they follow it, the false god of always wanting more. Their golden promise turns into something else. The Word is taken up with joy, as are so many new things, but nothing comes of it.

How can we become good soil? The answers are pretty clear: Face the evil that comes to us with courage, break through the hard surface it creates and give the good a chance. Address the problems of life with realism and determination and the knowledge that it is a lifelong struggle, but worth it, so worth it! Come to understand that our blessings are not ours by nature or by right, but are a foundation given to us to build what is better, for ourselves and for others.

There is one more image I would like to lift out of our parable today. The sower is indiscriminate. The seed is sown on soil of every type. The sower is not discouraged by thorns and thistles, by rocks and stones, not even by beaten paths. The sower does not consult the Good Soils Manual and then decide where his best likely profit lies and exclude the rest. He spreads the seed without regard to the probability of its growth. He is not prudent. He is prodigal. Like the father in that other parable about prudence and prodigality, he does not count the cost.

The Word of God is sown everywhere, all the time, with reckless abandon. It does not really matter to God that on the face of it we are unlikely to be fruitful, whether we are beset by problems so great they can prove the existence of evil to a doubting world, or whether our lives require continual work to clear the ground for the good, or whether we have had every blessing and messed up mightily. God plants the Word in our hearts over and over and over again, in the hope that much good will grow. So let us open the stony-paths of our hearts. Let us get on with the lifelong work of dealing with our problems. Let us wake up to the reality of our blessings and clear our lives of distraction and greed. Let our lives be good soil for the Word of God.

On Travailing

2011-07-03T17:48:00.002-04:00

Here's the text of the sermon I preached at St. Ignatius of Antioch, New York City, today.

Pentecost 3, Proper 9A
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

One of my earliest church memories is of the reredos of St. James Church in Pullman, Washington. My father was vicar there in the 1950s. It was wood, vaguely gothic, painted in red, blue and gold, and running across the top were the words “Come unto me all ye that travail”. In 1957 the reredos was moved from the older church and set up in the new contemporary building. That was perhaps my first introduction to the wonderful Anglican way of holding on to an Older Way. My father, of course, explained that travail meant work. Clearly, though, travail wasn’t just any kind of work. I always wondered what sort of work would qualify as travail, so that the Lord might refresh me. I sometimes still do.

That wonderful, encouraging passage comes at the end of a string of sayings that seem deceptively simple . The cute chorus of village urchins taunting passersby. The saying about John the Baptist. Then, after some town cursings, mercifully omitted from our Gospel reading today, another evocation of children, this time as the bearers of revelation, then an involved christological statement, and finally the word of comfort for the weary worker. The sequence seems random, and a common theme hard at first to discern.

And so it would be taken out of context. But, our passage today is actually an answer to the question John the Baptist asks from prison at the beginning of the chapter: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" In other words, Who is Jesus?

Jesus begins the answer by pointing to the works his ministry are accomplishing: "Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” This is the prophetic description of the inbreaking messianic kingdom, and by indirection Jesus is saying, I am the Messiah. John, says Jesus, is the prophet Elijah returned to Israel, in all his desert asperity. And this is the lead in to the taunting urchin chorus: "But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another, 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn.'” The question, Who is Jesus entails a second question: Who are we? Are we the people who so disappointed the children of the street? If Jesus is the Messiah, are we prepared to welcome him, or will we be put off by our expectations?

If the answer to the question, Who is Jesus, is answered first by applying the prophetic description of the Messiah, the second part of the answer, our Gospel today, contains a more developed answer. John came fasting, and they said he had a demon. Jesus comes feasting, and they say, he keeps company with the wrong people. “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." This short saying, dropped into the middle of this discourse as a sort of aphorism, is in fact the key to the question, Who is he?

What are the deeds of wisdom here? The deeds referenced in this section may refer to the ministry styles of John and Jesus, but more likely they refer to the salvation brought to the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead and the poor. In other words, the works of Jesus are the works of wisdom, the works by which she is justified in the face of those who doubt or deny her. In other words, Jesus is wisdom. Jesus is the wisdom of God.

And what is that wisdom? And to whom is it given? It is to children to whom God’s secrets are revealed, even to street urchins, who in their playful rudeness discern the truth. It is to the simple, the little ones, the least, that God opens his infinite heart and discloses his mysterious purposes. The wisdom of God is not bound by human wisdom. The wisdom of God is in fact that Word come into the world, so long expected by the students and scribes and sages of Israel, so movingly described in the wisdom tradition of Scripture. And it is precisely to those who are undervalued by the power of the world that the secret of God’s real power is disclosed: “All things have been handed over to me by my Father.” And it is precisely to these little ones that God reveals his true being: ”and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” God’s Word and Wisdom are disclosed in Jesus of Nazareth. But this disclosure requires humility if it is to be grasped and understood. One must become as a little child to enter the Kingdom of God. And even more radically, “Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it to me.”

If Jesus is disclosed as the wisdom of God, then who are we? Are we seekers after God, disciples of John the Baptist, come here today to find the one we have been looking for? Or are we perhaps the ones who can’t see what is before our eyes, like those who rejected both John and Jesus because they did not fit our preconceptions, our expectations or our pretensions, because perhaps the dance we are invited to join is with street urchins instead of the ballet? Or are we perhaps the overworked, the underpaid, the not appreciated, the ignored, the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf, the dead and the poor of our own time and place?

The trajectory of today’s gospel suggests that those to whom the Word of Wisdom is addressed are the little ones of the world, the ones who don’t matter, the children of the street, those whose lives are scarred by poverty and oppressed by disability, hopelessness, despair and death. This discourse is exaggerated, perhaps in the way of Middle Eastern rhetoric through the ages. But what do we have in common with them? What part of our lives shares their life? If those disastrous qualities disqualify us from the great race of the world, they are precisely the qualities which gain us entrance into the Kingdom. For it is only when we live in the truth of our limitations, and not just in our glories, that we can stand before God, when we can mourn when it is time to mourn, and dance when it is time to dance, and dance in the street with the children if that is where God gives it to us to dance, it is only when we live in our whole truth that we can recognize the Son of God when He comes among us and know that He, even He who keeps company with gluttons, drunkards, tax collectors and sinners, and perhaps with us, is the one who reveals the truth of God to us.

For most of us, the reality of our life is work. Work to make a living. Work to make a family. Work to make a home. Work to make a community, a city, a nation, a world worth living in. Work to share what we can with others. Work to build a church and work to share the good news of Jesus Christ with those the Holy Spirit brings to us. Work to create what is noble, beautiful and inspiring. Work. Work. It seems sometimes that our work never stops, that every waking moment is given over. I think that is what travail must be. Not just eight hours given for a paycheck, but a lifetime of obligations, faithfully and caringly attended to, even when we would rather not. No wonder our Lord calls it a yoke.

But his yoke is easy, and his burden is light. So join the urchins in their dance. “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.”

Pentecost 2: The Sacrifice of Isaac and a Cup of Cold Water

2011-06-28T10:44:00.005-04:00

Here's the sermon from Sunday, preached at The Church of the Incarnation in NYC.

Next Sunday, July 3, and the following Sunday, July 10, I will be presiding and preaching at The Church of St. Ignatius of Antioch in New York City. 10:00 am for both.

Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

What an amazing contrast there seems to be this morning between the lesson from Genesis and the Gospel, so disturbing to so many. So disturbing, in fact, that a copy of “A Child’s Bible” I picked up in the sacristy before the service here doesn’t include it at all!. Between the sacrifice of Isaac and the concluding words of our Lord to us today: “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple--truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward." -- what a contrast!

God in the first narrative seems harsh, demanding, primitive. Abraham and Sarah have gone almost a whole lifetime, nigh onto a century, without a legitimate heir. The Lord visits and promises a son, and miracle of miracles, Isaac is born. What joy there must have been! Watching the boy grow up and begin to take his place in the family must have given Abraham and Sarah hope and confidence that the Lord’s promise to them – a multitude of nations from their offspring, as numerous as the sands on the seashore – would come true. And then God, who has given, takes away. Abraham trusted God to give him a son, and Abraham trusts when God asks for that son to be given back to him. So off they go, three days journey, and who can imagine what must have been going on in the minds of that father and that son? The only clue we have is when Isaac asks, Where is the lamb for the sacrifice? And Abraham replies, God will provide. Simple words, loaded with apprehension, loaded with emotion. Loaded, no doubt, with fear.

But they push on, and when Abraham binds Isaac and lays him on the wood for the fire, wood Isaac himself has carried all the way, for three days, Isaac seems to understand. There is not a peep from him. He is the perfect lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearers is dumb, as the old translation put it. For Christians he prefigures Christ, who will be the perfect offering, and not for us only, but for the whole world. And at the last moment, the ram in the thicket. Isaac is saved. Abraham has proven his faith. God’s trust in him as the father of God’s new people is justified.

There is, of course, more going on here than a simple family narrative. Abraham is the founder of the faith. He is the exemplar for all who want to follow in faith for all ages to come. And Isaac is more, so much more, than the beloved son who arrived late in life. Isaac is the promised hope of the future. And one of the purposes of this strange story is to make it clear to Abraham, to Isaac, to Israel, and to us, that this promised future does not belong to Abraham alone. It is not Abraham’s doing and it is not Abraham’s possession. The future belongs to God, absolutely and unconditionally. Those who welcome God, who trust God, and who follow God will belong to that future, will be unimaginably blessed. But it is not their – our – doing. It is not their – our – possession. It is ours because God gives it to us, and he gives it to us because we, like Abraham, are willing not only to begin the journey, to share the joy of things long desired or entirely unexpected, but also to walk the hard path when it comes to us. That is what made Abraham the father of all in faith. And no less is asked of us.

And so, the cup of water for the little ones, given to them, presumably, by bigger, greater ones. What a charming image. Thirsty little children, perhaps, or perhaps the poor, the disadvantaged, those who never will “make it”, whose lives are the supporting cast for the great ones. The “minim” as the Hebrew has it. God never forgets them. They are those who are in his heart of hearts. “Come unto me all ye that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.” “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Who cannot spare a cup of water, who can fail to give them what they need? A cruel heart indeed who would deny such need.

But this saying does not stand alone. It is the conclusion of Jesus’ instructions to his disciples as he sends them out for the first time, the apostolic discourse in Matthew, Chapter 10. That discourse begins with these instructions:

Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment.

Jesus is telling his disciples how they are to announce the kingdom, how they are to carry on his work, how they are to begin the long journey of faith that will create the family of God’s kingdom. He continues through a long and familiar list of instructions: Take no gold or silver, no extra baggage, for the laborer deserves his pay. Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, because you will be like lambs among wolves. You are going to be handed over to authorities, but don’t worry. Don’t worry at all. Aren’t two sparrows sold for a penny, and yet you are worth so much more than sparrows. Every hair of your head has been counted. The smallest thing in your life is precious to God. But don’t be fooled. There will be conflict, there will be suffering, even from those closest to you. And then this:

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.

Does this strike a familiar chord to us today? It should. It is a direct echo of the story of the sacrifice of Isaac. These lines come immediately before today’s Gospel. Our Gospel text today is not just a suggestion to adults to be kindly mindful of children, or to those better off to regard the needs of the less fortunate. These lines come as the climax to the Lord’s extended teaching on how the discipled life of faith is to be lived. They are the point of the whole discourse. To announce the kingdom, to find the grace of God to take us on the arduous, difficult, dangerous journey of faith, all leads to one simple act: the prophetic, apostolic ministry points in the end to this: That the little ones receive their cup of water. And not just from the licensed disciples: Whoever. Whoever gives even a cup of cold water. Look around. How many are already doing the work of faith? They are as numerous as the sands on the seashore.

The story of Abraham and Isaac and our Lord’s apostolic discourse are really calling to the same thing. God makes the promise of the future, the promise of the kingdom. God invites us to the kingdom as to a journey, and gives us the same invitation as he did to Abraham. And God invites us to set out in the faith of his kingdom, as he invited his disciples.

Like Abraham we are called to produce the promise of the future, as Abraham and Sarah produced Isaac, to produce the holy offspring of the life of faith. But it is not ours. It belongs to God. There will be joy, but there will also be trouble, three day walks to mountains without wood for the fire we need, and radical, existential uncertainty about what we will do when we get there. The little one God has promised is the center of it all, so young, so fragile, such a thin thread to the future. He could so easily be lost. The point is not to know. The point is to trust.

Like the disciples we are sent out to live our lives in faith as a proclamation, and we need to know that there will be joy but there will also be trouble. As with Abraham, the future that faith promises is a gift from God, not our possession, even though it is through our lives that the promise comes to life. And just as with Abraham, it is the little ones who bear the future. The little ones – the children or the poor, who knows? Probably both – are the fragile, thin thread to the future.

So have faith. When the road seems hard, harder than perhaps we think we can bear, be Abraham. God will provide. When we find the little ones, or rather, when they find us, be kind. Give them the cold water they need. Fear not. Be of good cheer. For of such is the kingdom of heaven.

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

2011-06-24T19:23:00.008-04:00

I preached this morning in the Monastery Chapel on this feast, doubly important to OHC because the Community of St. John the Baptist were our sponsors when Holy Cross was just starting out. It would normally be published in the Holy Cross Monastery sermon blog, but the brothers who maintain our website are away for a bit.

I'll be preaching this Sunday, June 26, at the Church of the Incarnation, Madison Ave., at 35th St. in New York City, at 8:30 and 11:00 am.
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The Nativity of John the Baptist
Holy Cross Monastery, June 24, 2011
Adam D. McCoy, OHC

Isaiah 40: 1-11
Acts 13: 14b-26
Luke 1: 57-80

“Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” (Matt 11:11) So says our Lord of John the Baptist. John is the forerunner, who calls Israel out to the Jordan to wash themselves clean so that they may join God in making Israel new again. John points the people to a new Exodus, and to a new Moses, who is not John. John is the greatest of the prophets of Israel, for in him come together Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah and Jeremiah, if not all the rest as well. It is the calling of a prophet to point the way and let God bring it in. Every prophet did, and every prophet does. And so does John.

John’s birth is Samuel’s birth: a barren woman close to God; a husband who loves her so much that once his duty is done he recedes from the picture; an infant known to be holy from the moment of his conception; a child dedicated from his first breath to the service of God; a young man who supplants his elders as he proclaims God’s word to the people. And what is the word of this new Samuel? A new day is dawning, the old is passing away. From the shambles of the past God will raise up a new leader for his people, a new David.

John’s life is Elijah’s life: living in the desert, the camel hair garment and leather belt, the locusts and the wild honey. But not just the life-style: John has adopted Elijah’s mission as his own. Israel has gone off the track and must be called back to her Sinai purity. Brood of vipers, he calls them, unworthy of their descent from Abraham. Israel’s leaders are corrupt, beyond corrupt: they are wicked. Ahab’s wife Jezebel’s arrogant, haughty, self absorbed cruelty has only one match in Scripture, and it is Herodias, nursing her own shame at the scorn John the Baptist has for her. Jezebel could not kill Elijah, but the vicious Herodias gets the Baptist, his head served on a platter as a grisly after dinner spectacle. But does she really win?

John’s proclamation is Isaiah’s proclamation: “"The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" (Matt 3:3) Comfort, the prophet proclaims. The end of your imprisonment is coming to an end. All the things of the world die like the grass of the field, but the word of God is forever. God is coming, a fierce warrior who is also a tender shepherd. Fear not, Israel. Return to the Lord, for the time is now.

John’s vocation is Jeremiah’s vocation: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.... today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” (Jer 1:5, 10) Jeremiah announces the end of Israel as they knew it, and so does John. Will they listen to Jeremiah? Some of them, but mostly not. Will they follow? Yes, but only a few. Will it make a difference? The prophet hopes so, but we know better. It is not God’s plan that Israel escape captivity and re-establish political sovereignty, but rather she is to be reshaped as a witness to the world of God’s mercy, justice, law and love, in ways unforeseen by Jeremiah. And so with John. Did they listen? Yes, quite a few. He was noticed. Did any follow? Yes, including some of Jesus’ disciples, and perhaps even Jesus himself. Did it make a difference? In a way, yes: John certainly upset the ruling classes. The historian Josephus wrote about him, which is more secular, outside notice than Jesus got. But was what happened what the prophet John thought would happen? Did he think Israel would be reshaped as a witness to the world of God’s mercy, justice, law and love in ways unforeseen by him?

I think he did. I think he knew the teachings and the history of the prophets of Israel. And this is what made him the greatest of the prophets: He led the people out to the Jordan, to the new Red Sea, to prepare them for the new Exodus, and then watched as a new Moses led them forth. As a new Samuel John prepared a new king for them, as the new Elijah John called them from apostasy, as the new Jeremiah John prepared them for their coming exile from the world they knew, as the new Isaiah John promised them God’s renewed creation.

The whole movement of the prophets, from the earliest times before Israel even knew Yahweh to Herod’s temple in John’s own time, the third to be built atop Mount Zion, the greatest religious building of the ancient world, and so ambivalent a symbol, built by such a crafty collaborator, calling out for renewed prophecy from the Lord.... the whole prophetic history, the whole prophetic identity, is summed up in John the Baptist.

An angel announces him. A miracle conceives him. His father’s voice goes silent while his mother’s voice proclaims her cousin Mary as she bears the greater one: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb,” which countless millions say daily with Elizabeth to Mary in praise. The child John’s birth is six months to the day before the Nativity of Jesus, the forerunner in his birth as in his ministry, as in his death.

This child: conceived of the will of God, dedicated to God in the womb, so finely tuned to the Word of God that when still in his mother he leaps for joy when the Word comes near. The prophetic life of Israel, which will reshape the world toward God’s justice and mercy for hundreds, for thousands of years to come, the prophetic life of Israel is now incarnate in this child, whose life will prepare the way of the Lord, preparing Israel, preparing us, to open their eyes, our eyes, so that they, so that we, may see the dawn from on high which is breaking upon us, so that we who have sat in darkness and the shadow of death will see light, and so that at long last our feet may be guided into the way of peace.

Kairos Goes Anglo-Saxon

2011-05-09T06:38:00.005-04:00

For some years the choral group Kairos has been "in residence" at the Monastery. Their ongoing project is performing the Bach cantatas, and since they perform here four or more times a year, we are privileged to hear them. Two of our monks sing in the group -- Scott and Andrew.

They are wonderful -- showing up most Saturday mornings for rehearsal in the north end of the Library, where I work. I get to listen to them. So it was a surprise earlier this year when Scott mentioned to me that they were preparing a new piece based on the Anglo-Saxon Riddles from the Exeter Book, and would I be interested in helping. Of course I was. So Scott gave me copies of the music -- lovely to look at but I couldn't tell a thing from the score, except that is certainly wasn't Haydn. But what they wanted was help with pronunciation. So I typed out the texts and did a quick literal, interlinear translation to help them with the sense, and showed up. They were eager to learn. Then Scott suggested I record the texts, which I did and he circulated them.

I heard the music for the first time last night, at St. Andrew's, New Paltz. What a thrill! The composer, John B Hedges, who is a tenor in Kairos, was there singing, and did a lovely introduction, in which he graciously introduced me and the Old English prof at SUNY New Paltz, Dan Kempton.

John set five of the riddles (there are 90 some): shield, bread dough, water, bagpipe and iceberg. Each piece is quite different. I was especially taken with "bread dough", which like several of the riddles can be interpreted in a risqué sense. He presents it as a group of young kitchen maids gossiping in the back corner. So funny!

Thanks to all at Kairos!

Douglas Brown, OHC: In Memoriam

2011-05-05T08:03:00.003-04:00

Douglas Brown, OHC, died five years ago today, on May 5, 2006, at the age of 61, in the 22nd year of his life profession.

Douglas was a complex man, as most interesting people are. He was a true monk, in many ways a contemplative. He was a widely known spiritual director, preacher and conference leader. He was influential in the Episcopal Church, particularly in his work with the early stages of the clergy wellness movement, which led to CREDO. On Sept. 11, 2001 he was participating in the taping of a program in company with Rowan Williams and others at Trinity Church, Wall Street and was caught up in the escape through the wreckage of downtown Manhattan that day.

He was also a challenge to the community. Deeply devoted to his work as Prior of West Park, he was also deeply protective of himself in that work.

He was also a good friend. Douglas and I did not know each other well for many years. He joined the community in 1977, after I had moved out to California, and our relations in the next 24 years were formal to cool. I think he regarded me as somewhat alien to his concerns. I probably felt the same. But that had more to do with the positions we held and their unavoidable dynamics than with any personal relationship. That all changed in 2001 when I moved to New York City to become Rector of the Church of St. Edward the Martyr. I came to Douglas with some fear and trembling to ask if I might have a room in the monastery at West Park, since I wanted to become more closely involved with the community there. He was very welcoming, actually quite happy to be asked, and said Yes, Of course. That welcome probably did more than any other single thing to reintegrate me into the West Park community. Many good things followed from it, and one of the best was a growing friendship with Douglas.

When he was at home, Douglas was quite reserved. But when he was "on the road", as he was often, especially in his various ministries in New York City, Douglas was gregarious, outgoing, a lot of fun. His friendship was a new chapter in my monastic life.

Late in life Douglas began to write icons. I don't think he finished many. But I have ended up with two: one of John of Damascus, resplendent in a white turban, and one of the αχειροποίητα, the Not Made By Hands, or Veronica's Veil. They remind me of Douglas's deep and growing love for the Faith, which he shared so skillfully with so many people, myself included.

I was privileged to preach the sermon at his funeral at West Park. The place was packed with people whose lives had been changed by Douglas, and I am glad to say I was one of them. Here's a link to it.

Good Friday Sermon

2011-04-22T18:29:00.001-04:00

Preached at Holy Cross Monastery, Good Friday, April 22, 2011

Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Psalm 22: 1-11
Hebrews 10:1-25
John 18:1-19:37

Every year on Good Friday I look out at the congregation and hope that there is someone there who is hearing the Passion for the first time. I wonder what it would be like to hear it as something completely new, to be caught up in its drama with no preconceptions, to meet its characters and hear its words and feel its emotion completely fresh. Is that person here today?

What is the power of the Passion story? Is the power in the retelling of the final moments of Jesus of Nazareth, with its memorable characters, words and actions? Is the power in its superb narrative, stripped to the bone, so to speak, stark and plain, leaving, as the best stories do, room for our imagination to insert ourselves into the action? Is the power in the figure of Jesus, at once humble and exalted in John, whose words and deeds reveal more than just glimpses of the presence of God? Is the power in that man, whom we have grown to love, brought to a grisly and terrifying end, which cannot help but move even the stoniest heart? Is the power of the passion in the art of the story? Or is its power in something greater than art? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and ... yes.

Because this is a story of power. It is a story with power, and a story about power, and a story that confers power.

What sort of power would an early Christian find in this story? Imagine an early Christian assembly, before the Gospels were published, before St. Paul had written his letters, before the stories of the disciples were gathered into collections and shared, in a time when the community was telling the story to itself from memory. The Lord is risen, His life is the life of our community. We really don’t know how. We hardly have words to describe why we believe, although Isaiah is a good guide. But at the center of our faith is this mystery: Jesus showed us the power and the wisdom and the life of God and died precisely because of who he was and what he did: God was in what he did and was in him. And the death he died was not the end but the beginning. What he said and did is still alive and growing, and in ways we have a hard time putting into words, there is a new power loose in the world because of him. The story of his death is the story of life. And it transforms the lives of those who begin to live in the power of his story.

As early Christians we would also understand that the story is about power. Power is real in the world. We all live with it every day. But the reality of power has been transformed by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the Passion narrative, the world’s power realities are personified by Pilate, but they are true of power the world over. The world’s power is a hierarchy, up and down. The one with the power is above, and acts upon those with less power. It is his business to get up in the morning, hear cases, make decisions, and supervise their implementation. Power, in fact, is work, in all its scheduled banality. It is the work of deciding things about other people according to the larger story of power of the system this person represents. It is also the worry that it will lose its place if it slips up. Today’s agenda is the same as every day’s: Public tranquility so that money may be made so that taxes may be collected so that the powerful may be glorified. Really, there’s nothing personal here. In the Passion story Pilate is urbane, even witty. He enjoys a bit of banter with Jesus, and at least at first doesn’t seem to mind much that Jesus gets the better of him. But the obscenity of this urbane chatter is in the fact that it doesn’t matter: There is a loser and a winner here, and the loser will be dead before sundown. Cat and mouse. Clever word games in the antechamber of death.

Except to the early Christian, the joke is on Pilate, the joke is on all the holders of the world’s deadly levers of power. Because God’s power is not like theirs, and God’s power will win. We do not need to be without hope as we are used by the powerful of the world for their gain and for their glory. There is another glory, another use to which our lives can be put: we are not raw material for the exploitation of our betters, but each of us is made for God’s glory, for a life in God beyond human imagining.

And because the Passion is a story of power and a story about power, it is also a story that confers power. People who have heard about, seen and understood what God’s power is and how it works and what it is aiming for are no longer easily fooled by the other kind. When told to bow down to that power as if it is God, they will ask rather what is the good it confers on its subjects. When told to pay taxes without murmuring, they will ask what public benefit public money is used for. When advised to reverence persons in high places, they will inquire of their virtuous life and whether they dispense impartial, righteous justice. In other words, they will give to the power of this world its rightful place: an instrument of God for the good of all, not a means for the glorification of those who possess it. When people begin to live in the realm of God’s power, we cast off the fear that poisons self worth, and stand and walk as God wished us to from the beginning.

You will notice that my pronouns are shifting from they to we. We are not early Christians. We don’t have to be. The power of the Passion story is still as much at work in our own day as it ever has been. In fact, it is hard to find anyone at all, Christian or not, who does not already know the outlines of this story. And why is that? Because the power of this story is that it is true. The power of goodness, righteousness and justice rests on a stronger foundation than greed, violence and tyranny, whether goodness, righteousness and justice are labeled “God” or not, and that’s the truth. And at a very basic level the world has learned this truth. It springs up in unlikely places and does inconvenient things to people who thought they were born to rule. The weak who die for good are never lost in God. The Passion of Jesus Christ is truth for everyone.

So we listen to the words of Jesus to Pilate once again this year, fearing what is to come, feeling the pain and the suffering he will shortly endure, but also knowing the truth about power. Oh the irony of the eternal dialog of the Word of God with the word of the world: "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." And the one who does not belong to the truth has only a witty question in reply: "What is truth?" And then, as a detectable anxiety creeps into Pilate’s voice, as he perhaps senses something else is going on here, and tries to get others to take the responsibility from him, he finds he really has no power except the power of death, unless he wants to betray his masters. Which he will not do. Which is his tragedy, and the tragedy of all in power who follow Pilate’s path.

The power of the Passion story is not the power of public order and exploitation administered with the threat of death, but the power of truth: Power, real power, is from God, does God’s will, and builds God’s kingdom. God’s power is built from below and side by side, not from above. Those with the least are the favored of God. The one who told us and showed us and then died for us when we started to hope we could live in God’s kingdom is the one with the power, power so different from what we are used to we can hardly find words for it. We can’t really define it, or even describe it. And since we can’t reduce it to a set of propositions, that’s why we tell the story.

Sermon on the Woman at the Well

2011-03-30T07:53:00.003-04:00

My sermon for Lent 3A, the story of Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob, was well received, and has been published on the website of The Church of the Transfiguration. Thanks, Bill Guild! It was great to see you and so many other friends at The Little Church Around the Corner. It has also been published on the Holy Cross Monastery sermon blog.

Upcoming Programs

2011-03-20T17:38:00.003-04:00

I haven't blogged much recently -- I guess I could put it down to practicing simplicity. But life just gets in the way sometimes.

Three programs are coming up which might be of interest.
__________
On Saturday, March 26, I am leading a Quiet Day at The Church of the Transfiguration in New York City ("The Little Church Around the Corner"), from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. I will be preaching there on Sunday Morning, March 27. The writeup:

"Why God? Beyond Guilt, Sin and the New Atheism"
We will examine two contemporary objections to belief in God: that the universe is impossibly large for a personal deity, and that belief is a need generated by neurobiological function. We will look to the Early Church for an alternative belief system that makes sense for us today.
_______________
On Wednesday evening, March 30, I will be leading a program on lectio divina at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in New York City, beginning at 7:00 pm.
__________
From Thursday, March 31 to Sunday, April 3 I will be helping to lead a Benedictine Experience for the Friends of St. Benedict in the Washington, D.C. area. The retreat will be at Roslyn Conference Center in Richmond, VA. I will be talking about the family structures of late Roman antiquity as a cultural background to the Rule of Benedict, exploring how Benedictine communitarian ideals attract people in the present day.

Christmas Eve Sermon

2010-12-31T17:52:00.002-05:00

My sermon for Christmas Eve here at the Monastery has been posted on the monastery's sermon site. Enjoy.

A very Happy New Year to all! ¡Feliz Prospero Año!

Last Chance Before Advent...

2010-11-27T07:52:00.005-05:00

Another liturgical year has passed, and my blogging has slowed down. I can only plead busyness.

The fall has been filled with work in the monastery library: several kind donors have filled up the acquisitions shelves, and the estate of the late Fr. Karl Layer sent 27 boxes of his library. The auditors have been here and wearing my hat as OHC Corp. Bursar, I have tried to be helpful to them. The Board of Trustees of the House of the Redeemer elected me President once again on Oct. 26. I have been charged with rounding up content for the Holy Cross Magazine, and have finally gotten that off to the excellent Suzette Cayless for formatting. The theme is Vocation, and it features articles by as many of the brethren as cared to write. I have been busy with spiritual direction as well.

Last weekend I led a weekend program at Christ Church, St. Michael's MD, on the Eastern Shore, in the Diocese of Easton. It was wonderful. I was reminded once again of how the lay people in Episcopal churches can take such wonderful care of the fabric and finances of their parishes. It was the Feast of Christ the King, and the program centered on the New Testament as counter to the Roman imperial ideology/theology.

I was asked by our Prior to preach on the Solemnity of James Huntington, the founder of OHC, this week. I tried to lay out themes basic to his life and work.

In this season of Thanksgiving, I want to wish all who read this blog a spirit of gratitude for all God's wonderful gifts to us.

Just a note

2010-10-13T17:36:00.004-04:00

Just a note to tell you that my sermon for last Sunday has been posted on the OHC Lectionary Blog, available through this link or through the sermons part of the links page of the Holy Cross Monastery website. Proper 23C, October 9. I haven't stopped blogging, but catching up after vacation took some energy.

I will address the adult education forum of Holy Trinity Church, Manhattan, this Sunday morning, Oct. 17, about Benedictine spirituality. It is part of a series on classic Christian spiritualities.

Vacare deo

2010-08-25T08:16:00.007-04:00

One of the expressions monks used to use about what they do is vacare deo, which literally means to empty oneself for God. It is an ideal of the branches of monasticism which focus on the contemplative side of things. The idea is to let go of what is extraneous in one's life and not fill it up with other things, but allow God the freedom to move in. I have always thought of it as related to Jesus' promise in his high priestly prayer that "Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them" (John 14:23). Keeping the Word provides room in the heart for the love and presence of God. Clearing out life's underbrush. Opening space for the not-self, the One who is seeking me/you/us, not my/your/our stuff.

The last few weeks have been bliss on the underbrush-clearing front. We had our long silent retreat at the Monastery from the end of July into the beginning of August. 10 days of silence, no director, reduced schedule. We're pretty good about the silence. But we're not silly about it. If something really (I mean, in actual fact) needs to be said, it gets said and whatever it is about gets dealt with. I loved it, as I always do.

On Saturday, August 7, the day after the retreat ended, much of the community went to the monastery at New Skete, near Cambridge, NY, for their open house and a talk by Fr. Michael Plekon, who used to be a Lutheran and is now OCA. He has been a friend of our Monastery for a long time. The whole outing was fun.

I preached on August 8 (not a sermon I wrote down, so not in the OHC sermon blog), and then took off for vacation. I have been staying at the House of the Redeemer in New York, where I have been president of the Board for some years. I enjoy getting to know the current situation and trying to be helpful (or at least staying out of the way) as deep cleaning and renovation projects take place. And of course I love New York City. I usually look forward to times there with an almost childlike eagerness for the activity, the noise, the hustle-bustle, the energy of the City.

But this year something different has been happening to me. I am usually driven to do things on vacation. There are museums to visit, shows to see, friends to look up and reconnect with. I have been doing that, of course, but most of what I have been doing is being quiet. Most of each day is spent reading, getting a bite to eat, napping, reading some more, doing very little. I think without intending it, I have been practicing vacare deo.

I don't know where it will go or what, if anything, will come out of it. I think I am usually so full of myself that simply putting the projects aside, letting go of some of my concerns, allowing my imagination a freer space, I am letting something new in. At least I hope so.

Wanting and Being Wanted

2010-08-02T19:54:00.012-04:00

I have tried to write about simplicity, and find that that attempt opens many doors. One of them opened for me yesterday.

I was sitting quietly, enjoying the silence of our retreat. When I do that images, memories, ideas wash over me. And sometimes not. But yesterday the images were of religion in Orange County, when I was working there in the 90's. The images were of religious seeking. There is a lot of it there, or at least there was then, and there are a lot of religious professionals and religious establishments to cater to that seeking. It would be easy to caricature some of it, but I am pretty sure I don't need to do that for those who may read this blog.

The common denominator of those images was wanting. Wanting things -- a better job, a happier family life, a healthier relationship, better health. Wanting good things. Getting involved in religion in order to clarify, identify, find and follow a better path to them. And then as I reflected on these, I realized that I knew a lot of those people, and while they verbalized their desires as things, actually a lot of those desires were more for a life of greater order, stability, productivity, meaning, significance. To have a better job is in some ways to be a better person -- a person who can be productive, a person who is respected for good reasons. To have a happier personal life is to be better at relationships, more loving, more sensitive. To have better health is to be a better integrated self. And so on. The "things" are objective correlatives of deeper personal possibilities.

A fundamental constituent of our lives is desire. We want things, money, what money can bring us. We want sex and we want love, and we mix the two up all the time. We want power, in small as well as large ways. We want recognition. We want answers. We want security. We want. We want. We want. We want so much that we never stop wanting. Wanting seems to be essential to our nature. I can tell you that becoming a monk does not make wanting stop!

And so, it should not surprise us that religion structures itself to deliver on the desire front, as much as any other human activity. You have questions? We have answers, say some. You feel alone? We have community, say others. You're poor and want not to be poor? Come and see Reverend Ike sitting on his golden throne (ok, I couldn't resist one little dig, even though Reverend Ike was in New York and not in Orange County). And those are the less sophisticated religious establishments. The ones that have been in business a long time have honed their appeals quite a lot finer. In fact, most respectable religions offer a smorgasbord with spiritual dishes for most wants and needs.

Is there anything wrong with this? Well, no. If wanting is our nature, then following that nature's needs is not only good marketing, it is in fact a very good, rational way to serve those brought to our doors. It is good if it helps us discern real wants from illusions, and to discern more and more genuinely our nature and its directions.

But the truth is, we never stop wanting. Nothing is ever enough. Have you ever been in a truly wonderful store, filled with things of beauty and quality, the sort of place where you don't have to ask yourself the question, Is this real? Is this the best? And then, being in that store, have you ever looked around to see the other shoppers, the ones who have the money to be there as customers (unlike ourselves, for whom this is a sort of vacation from our Target/WalMart lives)?

How many of those people who can afford to be there seem happy? How many light up in delight when they see the perfect watch, the perfect crystal vase, the perfect scarf, the perfect whatever? In the presence of such beauty, perhaps unsurpassed in the world, are they illuminated with joy? Do their faces show their awareness of the good they can have if they act on their desire?

Well, some of them, perhaps, sometimes. But when I have been in such places, I am struck by their serious, not to say grim, countenances. And I am puzzled. I am usually delighted to be there. Perhaps it is because I can't afford to buy anything there that I am free to see these things for their own excellence and be happy that such things exist, that human beings can have such skill and creativity to make them. But wanting in the context of being able to get often gives us a strange experience -- calculation, fear that someone else will get a better one perhaps, expectation of buyer's remorse later on.

In fact, it is the wanting that animates us, not the getting.

If wanting is deeply embedded in our DNA, perhaps that is a clue to a larger reality. Perhaps it is part of the image-of-God thing in creation. Perhaps the One who made us also wants. I know this thought departs from the philosophically strict concept of God as without parts or passions. He may be without parts, but the God we meet in scripture is certainly not without passions. He pursues the people of Israel with an almost insane intensity. One may sometimes wonder, listening to the old biblical stories, Why does he bother? It's like watching a friend pursue a love affair that is entirely too one-sided. Nothing good can come from it, we think. And of course, nothing good comes of God's pursuit. It leads to the Cross. And, then, to the Resurrection.

If we can't stop wanting, we also can't avoid being wanted. I imagine God's infinity sometimes as an infinite capacity for wanting his creation, every creature in it, including (especially, from my point of view) me.

There is this mutual energy in wanting. I can't fill my desires, no matter how hard I try. And God keeps wanting me, in ways I can't begin to imagine. The things we think we want are really simulacra of God, and that is why everything we get, except perhaps a taste of the divine, leaves us dissatisfied. We really are the rich people in that great shop. Deep down we know that things won't do it for us, that at some level we are wasting our substance on anything but the Real Thing.

Anglican Values 8: The Daily Office

2010-07-25T10:48:00.005-04:00

Anglican Values 8: The Daily Office
February, 2000

Sometimes people ask me, What is distinctive about the Episcopal Church? So much seems similar to what others do - our Sunday service, form of church government, forms of private prayer, are all shared with or similar to what others do. But there is one uniquely Anglican form.

It is called the Daily Office, a forbiddingly bureaucratic title which might better be Daily Scriptural Prayer. It is the basic, fundamental form of prayer in our tradition. In its simplest form it consists of reading psalms and Bible lessons in the morning and evening every day. Nothing very special in that - except that Anglicans have evolved a unique format for this kind of prayer over our 450 plus years as a worshiping community.

The Daily Office has its roots in synagogue practice, in which men would gather and read the scriptures each day at a stated time. Early Christians continued this practice. When the monastic movement arose in the 200's and 300's, the monks and nuns would memorize the psalms and often would recite all 150 every day. When St. Benedict wrote his Rule for monks in the early 500's he arranged the psalms and scripture in eight services each day, saying the whole
Psalter every week. The Benedictine arrangement became the pattern for Christian scriptural prayer for the next 1000 years, becoming very complex with the addition of saints days, seasonal variations, hymns, and music.

One of the main agendas of the Reformation was to make Bible reading central to the prayer life of ordinary people. It was the genius of Thomas Cranmer, who produced the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549, to turn the eight daily monastic services into a twice a day format. The psalms were divided into a monthly cycle and the Bible was read through in course, a chapter from the Old and New Testaments twice a day. The new form, called Morning and Evening Prayer, was required to be said by the clergy in the Church every day, and recommended to the laity. It rapidly became the most important part of Anglican worship, supplanting the Eucharist as the main Sunday service in most places.

The Book of Common Prayer set out the readings for each day, and devout lay people as well as clergy soon made it the basis of their devotions. Countless millions of people over the years have started and ended the day with these services, often in family prayer at home. Its use led directly to the Anglican approach to Scripture. It works against a piety resting on proof-texted theological propositions, since a faithful user of this form of prayer will read the whole Bible through many times in a lifetime of devotion and become aware of the rich dialogues among Biblical theologies in that enormously complex library of holy writings.

[Note: This short essay was followed by a detailed and date-specific way to use the Daily Office, which is omitted here.]

Anglican Values 7: Scriptural Interpretation

2010-07-23T09:49:00.008-04:00

Anglican Values 7: Scriptural Interpretation
October 1998

There is no more important area of theology today than the question of how we are to interpret scripture. Many of the current religious battles, both within and between churches (including our own), are fought on this important question.

Scripture is not simple but complicated. It is written in different languages and at other times for other people than our own. In the Christian world over the centuries there have been three main ways to interpret scripture.

The first and oldest is to look for the consensus of the faithful in the organized church. This has been expressed mainly in church councils and in the works of important theologians which have been accepted as normative in different ages. In ordinary life it means that scriptural interpretation is not private, but communal, and that what other people have thought over the ages is the shaping factor in interpreting Scripture: we listen to them and contribute to the dialogue from our own knowledge, point of view and experience.

The second is the classic Protestant position of sola scriptura, which is Latin for "scripture alone". In its original meaning to the Reformers this means that Christian belief is to be found only in Scripture, and that no other agency, such as tradition, church authority or personal experience, can be put on the same level as scripture.

The third position is the radical Protestant position of individual conscience, in which each believer is trusted to read the scriptures carefully, and in prayer and careful consideration, to reach the interpretation which the Holy Spirit gives to the conscientious believer.

The Anglican position was developed by the first great Anglican theologian, Richard Hooker, in the late 1500's. Bringing together all three classic positions, he stated that Christian belief had to rest on three principles, each of which had to be present and in accord: Scripture, Tradition and Reason. It is not enough to look to what the text of scripture alone says; nor is it enough to consult the past for the consensus of the faithful; nor is it sufficient to consult human reason individually or collectively. All three must be present and in accord for sure interpretation to be held by the Church.

This is an especially important question because of the growth of a new phenomenon in Christianity: fundamentalism. Early in this century an innovation in interpretation arose called "scriptural inerrancy", which is not precisely sola scriptura, let alone one of the other modes of interpretation. This holds that each word of scripture is literally true. This is a radically new form of interpretation, and is increasingly influential in the Christian world today. But it is not the Anglican way.

So when an important question arises, on which scripture speaks, Anglicans begin with careful reading of the text, paying attention to every aspect of meaning in the original language and culture, and dealing with nuances and differences in different parts of scripture on the same question. Then we go on and ask, how have others in the faith understood this question in their time? How does their understanding illuminate us? Then finally, trusting in the Spirit's guidance, we ask, What do our experience, reason, and conscience tell us, illuminated by scripture and guided by the consensus of the faithful in the past?

This is a complicated process. It is by no means as simple as opening up the Bible and finding a verse which speaks to our concern. We accept the great Councils of the Church as the Spirit’s revelatory work, authoritative for doctrine. But we are unlikely to accept as ultimately authoritative a contemporary interpretation by a particular Bishop, theologian, conference or synod of the Church on a question of the day. Interpretation always involves our best intellectual efforts. It is always a communal process, in dialogue with other Christians past and present. And it always involves an honest acceptance that our question is framed in our present life and understanding and by our own best efforts of reason and conscience.

Easy answers are not often Anglican answers. Final answers are hard to find in our tradition precisely because we believe that scripture is the Word of God constantly meeting people in their present situations. And as a result, sometimes what seems to be the secure Biblical answer to a question in one age will change in another. The Holy Spirit has led us to see that slavery is unacceptable, though scripture clearly accepts it. It has led to the acceptance of leading ministries of women in the liturgy, although scripture seems to reject them. It has led to an acceptance of some kinds of money lending, the basis of capitalist economics, though money lending at interest is clearly contrary to scripture. It has led to a more pastoral understanding of divorce and remarriage in many places, though scripture plainly condemns divorce.

Anglicans believe in the Holy Spirit’s guidance of the Church for the problems of every age. and in the Word of God which is as alive and dynamic today as the day it was first encountered. The answers we receive are usually provisional, subject to better scholarship, more complete dialogue with the faithful, and to a more complete use of reason and experience. The fixed point for us is not simply the text of scripture, but also the presence of the Spirit in the Church and in the hearts of sincere and believing Christians of every conceivable sort and calling.

Anglican Values 6: The Beauty of Holiness

2010-07-22T11:44:00.001-04:00

Anglican Values 6: The Beauty of Holiness
August, 1997

Roofs. Termites. Plumbing. Painting. Signs. Lawn sprinklers. Garage cleaning. The list of things we do for our church property is daunting, and this year the Vestry is determined to accomplish many projects we have known we need to do for some time. Work will be done. Inconvenience will be endured. Tempers will be frayed. Money will be spent.

Why do we care so much about the physical structure of the Church? A clergy friend of mine from another denomination explained to me once that in his tradition, the building is functional, a place to accommodate the real church, the fellowship of believing and practicing Christians. I was touched by his explanation. Sometimes I look around at the myriads of churches with very functional physical settings — rented warehouses, even — and have a sort of envy of their simplicity. But purely functional is not the Anglican way.

Back in the days when most Anglicans went to Evening Prayer, we regularly heard a verse from Psalm 96 at the beginning of the service: "O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth stand in awe of Him." Anglicans care about the physical beauty of the Church. For century upon century we have built the very best we were capable of, and in every land where our Church has been planted, beautiful buildings have arisen -- sometimes simple but soul-filling, sometimes gloriously complex — and places have been nurtured to be worthy of the worship of the Lord of Hosts.

There is something about the way architecture, light, music, vestments, liturgy, the ordered worship of the Book of Common Prayer, even landscaping, come together, that is characteristic of Anglicanism. It can be absolutely revelatory to a visitor if it is done well, with joy and lightness and filled with the Spirit. A person can be lifted up to heaven by all of this beauty ~ or so it seems. And many people have found the Lord in the Church's beauty, beauty which reminds them what they were created to be, the high and beautiful calling of human life in this wonderful world of God's.

There is of course a danger of relying on the beauty alone and not practicing the gifts of the Spirit in person, of formalism, ritualism, or worse, idolatry — the beauty becomes its own reason for being. And we trust God to protect us from the dangers of the path he has set us on.

At St. Michael's we are blessed with an extensive property and with two church buildings, one of them a historic treasure without peer in our part of the world. We are blessed with people who love our music, liturgy, and the beauty of our worship. Thank God for our Vestry's decisions. Thank God for those in the congregation who will step forward to help us pay for this important work. Thank God for the beauty He has given us. Let us worship Him indeed in the beauty of holiness.

Anglican Values 5: Restraint

2010-07-21T07:55:00.003-04:00

Anglican Values 5: Restraint
May, 1997

Restraint is an ingrained custom for Anglicans: we wish not to do or say things too directly, too blatantly, too obviously. We are happiest with liturgy in which the facts of life are alluded to indirectly, in sermons that make their points discreetly, in church furnishing and decoration that are "in good taste", in clothing that is restrained, not to say dowdy, in colors that are not too bright, in theological conversation that is polite and non-confrontational. It has been said in jest that Anglicans do not have sins, but lapses of taste. This habit of ours sometimes drives non-Anglicans slightly crazy.

I am writing this essay on April 23, Shakespeare's birthday, April 23, 1564, in Stratford-upon-Avon. His dramatic works include some 16 comedies, 11 history plays, and 11 tragedies, produced between 1590 and 1613. Shakespeare is the premier dramatist and poet of the English language, and all of us have read at least some of his work, if only in high school. It goes without saying that his influence on every aspect of English-speaking civilization is incalculable.

Why introduce Shakespeare into a discussion of Anglican values? Because he is the most important and representative writer of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period in which the Anglican Church took its characteristic shape and form. And also because there is something important about his dramatic work that bears on Anglican restraint.

During the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603), to avoid bloody and unnecessary religious conflict, it was forbidden to discuss theology and the Christian religion directly in plays produced for the stage. And so Shakespeare had to find other ways of treating the great moral questions of human life. He found them in stories from the past, in far-away locales, and most of all, in presenting them indirectly through the experiences of his characters in the drama. He treats of sin, but without direct theology: pride in Othello, greed in The Merchant of Venice, ambition and despair in Hamlet, deception in Much Ado About Nothing, the lighter and darker sides of patriotism in the history plays, and so on. But at no point does he preach, or state directly his points.

And this is exactly the Anglican style: when we want to make a point about faith or sin, we tend to tell a story, look for an example displaced from our own context, avert our eyes from the thing itself and trust in people's innate intelligence to apply the moral.

This may not be helpful to everyone in contemporary American culture. People flock to churches with more direct ways of expressing the faith. But it is our way, and it has produced something valuable in Christian civilization: space for difference, room for a person to make up his or her own mind without coercion, and most of all, an ample appreciation for the universality of God's love, laws and revelation that transcends religious language and is at home in palaces, humble homes, enchanted forests, battlefields, town squares and every other imaginable human habitation.

In Shakespeare, and in Anglicanism, Church is not the only place to look for God's plenty and God's truth.

Anglican Values 4: Complexity

2010-07-20T07:41:00.003-04:00

ANGLICAN VALUES 4: Complexity
October, 1996

What sets Anglicans apart from other Christians? All Christians believe that God is revealed in Jesus Christ, that the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth has set the seal of God's love on humanity and has given us the ability to lead new lives, that our lives are no longer limited by death but that God's new life waits for us beyond. But Christian differ in their emphases and explanations of this faith.

Many churches try to simplify faith and life for their people, and many people want this. What exactly does this or that mean? What exactly am I to do in a given situation? What exactly does the Bible say about this or that? These churches are often big and popular. Other churches offer program after program, their staff thinking constantly about how to appeal to the market of this or that age group or segment. And these churches are often big and popular.

The Anglican church may try to answer questions, and it may offer appropriate programs. But we also have a more complex life.

Anglicans are in dialogue with tradition and are not ashamed of the past. It is sometimes said that Americans are not interested in the past, but in the here and now, and in the future. I think this is true. But Anglicans are aware that what we are is a result of what we were, and that the circumstances of our lives were not created from the mind of God yesterday. And so we are in dialogue with the past. Our music is not just the music of our own day. The language of our worship is not simply what we think appeals at this moment. We value the dialogue we have with something other than ourselves, and we call others into that dialogue, because it is truer than ignoring what we and those who came before us were and did.

Anglicans know that some questions do not have fast answers. Many problems of contemporary life cry out for answers. The state of American family life, personal morality in a culture which values gain, greed and instant gratification, present challenges to all Christians. To some questions there are easy answers: not taking experience-altering drugs is better than taking them. Chastity for young people before marriage is better than promiscuity. But for some of life's questions, there are not answers but the shared experience of a loving community. When a marriage breaks up, when a child is inexplicably caught in a cycle of negativity and self-destruction, when our work presents us with two or more choices, each of which is less than ideal: in such cases it is not answers, but fellowship, friendship in the Lord, lasting and understanding relationships, which provide what we need. In such cases the Bible is a resource, not a lawbook, and theology is a helpful friend along a path new to us but worn smooth with the experience of others.

Anglicans know that God trusts humanity to co-create the future. We do not believe that God has a single "plan for man", but that the future emerges as we accept our place as His sons and daughters, growing up, as St. Paul says, into the full stature of adulthood in Christ. We are not cookie-cuttered into a lock-step pattern (to mix metaphors) but rather given power through our intelligence, moral discernment and faith to create the future with Him. We are set free from sin, justified in faith, and then trusted. Anglicans know that this complicates our lives, because we now have responsibility to build and to care for others.

Anglican Values 3: The Sanctification of Ordinary Life

2010-07-19T06:12:00.004-04:00

ANGLICAN VALUES 3: The Sanctification of Ordinary Life
September, 1996

It is sometimes said that different Christian traditions are characterized by different doctrines of the faith in their worship and thought styles: Roman Catholics are said to be "Good Friday" Christians, Orthodox Christians, Resurrection Christians, and Pentecostals (of course), are of Pentecost. This does not do justice, of course, to those rich and wonderful traditions, but is useful.

Anglicans are often associated with the Incarnation, because we so fully believe in the presence of God in the ordinary things of life. One of our great poets, George Herbert, in two of our hymns, makes this point so excellently: “Let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King” (Hymn 402); and “Teach me, my God and King, in all things thee to see” (Hymn 592).

We often think that religion is "special" ~ so we put on our Sunday best (or we used to — remember hats and gloves!), we dust off our Sunday manners, and we head for Church, because Church is where God is, right? And we pay our respects - as decorously as we can and as well as the parson is able to produce that day's ritual drama – and pray for one or two things (we'd better choose carefully and not ask for too many things — lest God think us greedy) — and then, with a companionable handshake at the door (nice sermon, Reverend!) and a cup of coffee with our friends, we're on our way, our Sunday duty done.

But in our tradition, religion isn't "special" — it is every day. The first service in our Book of Common Prayer is not the Eucharist, but Daily Morning and Evening Prayer. The idea is that we will read scripture and psalms and pray every day. That's our tradition! And then come together once a week to join in worship with others.

Anglicans take special delight in the homely parables of Jesus: the parables of housekeeping, gardening, business dealings, family relationships, which our Lord, ever observant of God's inbreaking wonderful new life for his world, delights to tell. And as we read and meditate on these parables, we are encouraged to think of our own ordinary experiences as places where God comes in to dwell as well. A certain man had two sons: well, we have children. Now, let's see....; The kingdom of God is like a woman who lost a coin. When was the last time you turned over the house looking for something valuable?....

In so many ways in our Church we carry out this domestic quality of our understanding of Christ's inbreaking love. We make most decisions by consensus, like a family in real life. And like families, there are always loose ends, always discussions that aren't finished, always life carries on in an uninterrupted stream. Things are rarely tidy or absolutely complete. Our worship, while done as well as it can be, with good music from many periods, and using the rich resources of the past as well as the present, has a sort of "homely" quality to it in most of our parish churches - as nice and grand as we can make it, but we will still see the acolytes smiling at each other, we will enjoy the Rector's jokes in the sermons (well, most of them - but then, poor thing, he does try!), we will notice the new parts we aren't used to and remark on them, wonder at how that teenager is able to read the lessons so well, rejoice to hear our own activity or ministry announced. The church is our home!

George Herbert (in Hymn 592, using the image of the drudgery of a servant's work) makes a wonderful point: God turns our most ordinary tasks to times of grace: "This is the famous stone that turneth all to gold; for that which God doth touch and own cannot for less be told".

Anglican Values 2: The Bible

2010-07-16T08:30:00.003-04:00

ANGLICAN VALUES 2: The Bible
January 1996

Anglicans are people of the Bible. We read as much from the Bible in worship as any other Christian tradition, and more than some. The Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer, which is the basis of Anglican prayer life, is almost entirely readings from the Bible.

How do we read the Bible? That depends on what we think it is. Is the Bible a huge book which "has the answers", a talisman of security in a changing world? Anglicans believe it is more.

In Old Testament times Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets, and in New Testament times, Mary and Joseph, John the Baptist, the disciples and apostles, and others, encountered God directly. Their experiences, and those of many others became the foundation of Israel and the Church, whose experiences were written down and collected in what we now call the Bible.

So when Anglicans read the Scriptures, we know we are reading the experiences of people like ourselves who lived in the faith tradition stretching from Abraham to our own day.

What is characteristic of Anglican Bible reading?

First, Anglicans encounter the Scriptures whole. We don't proof text - that is, search the scriptures for support for positions we already "know" are right. Rather, we stand in awe of the goodness of God revealed in Scripture, letting it guide us in its own directions.

Second, Anglicans let the Scriptures speak to us in their own voice. The Old and New Testament weren't written in English to twentieth century people, but in Hebrew and Greek to people whose cultures and understandings of life were different from our own. Our Anglican diversity helps us with Scripture reading. We experience in our own lives the different ways people encounter the world, and so we are prepared to hear familiar words with new ears!

Third, Anglicans trust the Word of God in all its complexity. There are different voices in the Scriptures; Deuteronomy is in vigorous dialogue with Job. Memory has preserved more than one account of many events, like David's rise to the throne of Israel, and there are of course 4 Gospels, with many different recollections of Our Lord's life. This complexity of Scripture is heartening to Anglicans, because it shows that God's Word and his world are related, in glorious complexity and variety.

Fourth, Anglicans find truth in a living relation to Scripture. St. Paul warns the Galatians not to fall back into a life governed by the letter only and not by a living relation to Christ, who sets us free. Anglicans believe that God has called us into freedom in Christ Jesus, and that we discover our new life in Christ at least in part in our encounter with Scripture. Our lived experience is in dialogue with the ancient writings. Our present lives come alive when they are held under the light of scripture. God continually surprises us in this dialogue - in insight, in direction, in showing us the deeper mysteries of our life in His life, and sometimes in judgment.

Anglicans care about the Bible. It shows us the path through Christ in the Spirit to the Father. It is central to our prayer and worship, and spurs us on to acts of compassion and justice in building the Kingdom of God. We are truly People of the Book!

Anglican Values 1

2010-07-15T20:56:00.007-04:00

I have been practicing simplicity the past week or so by cleaning out some of my files, throwing the truly useless away and digitizing others. Among the latter I have run across my collection of the monthly magazine written for St. Michael's, Anaheim, during the years I was Rector there (1992-2001). I wrote a small essay each month, a sort of mid-90's blog before there were blogs (or at least before I knew about them and had one). Surprisingly, they still read fairly well, at least to me. Beginning in October, 1995, I intermittently wrote a series called "Anglican Values". I wrote it in the hope of articulating what I think are distinctive Anglican values, and I hope they are still true. And before my dear p.c. friends start in on me for being exclusivist, let me just say that every virtue I find and label Anglican can of course be found among others as well, mutatis mutandis. But not perhaps in quite the same combination and packaging.

Through the miracle of optical character recognition I am able to share them. I thought I would publish them between now and the beginning of our Long Retreat, on July 28, as a sort of pre-retreat project, and see if they generate any interest. I'll footnote things that might be unclear to non-St. Michael's types.
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ANGLICAN VALUES
October, 1995

Today we hear a great deal about values. People are concerned that their families, communities, churches, workplaces represent and practice wholesome and helpful values. The current debate about values is an important and welcome development in a time in which the only value sometimes seems to be economic productivity. Church is a good place to look for values!

Every Christian church holds up Jesus Christ as Lord, proclaims His Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection as the source and power of new life in Christ, both looks forward to and tries to begin to live in the Kingdom of God, and learns and teaches new ways of living according to God's values. But God's graciousness is so great that he has given us many kinds of churches, from many backgrounds, and with many ways to approach the New Life in Jesus Christ. Each church proclaims the same Gospel, but finds in the variety of human experience different ways of living it, and different sets of cultural values it honors as it practices the Gospel. All are gifts of God, each is distinctive and value-able.

Our Episcopal (Anglican) Church has a distinctive history and tradition and so we have distinctive values we stress within the Gospel life. I want to share three with you this month. We are the historic "Church of England", and although the Anglican Churches are now as much American, African, Caribbean, Hispanic and Asian as English, that is our "root". We grew up as the Church for the Nation in a special way, and that has left us with three Anglican Values:

Anglicans Care About Different Kinds of People. The Church of England welcomed everyone in the nation, unless they specifically "opted out". And so we are comprehensive. We expect to have all kinds of people in our church, with a very wide range of ideas, economic backgrounds, interests, causes and concerns. We are interested in everyone's welfare, and Anglican churches typically have a great concern for the poor which leads us to help. St. Michael's Nearly New Shop* and Feed The Hungry Program** witness to this value. Today, our Anglican Church has reached out to embrace people of every land and many different languages.

Anglicans Care What People Think. We have a rich legacy, growing out of our diversity, of differences of opinion within the Church. Today we honor and value that, and try to participate in it as best we can. This means we care greatly about education, and we try to get the best education we can for our children. And it means that we listen to Scripture, to teaching and tradition, and to each other, and don't close off discussion very easily, so that we can hear God's voice in life's complexity. We know that God's world is not simple, and we treasure the depth, wisdom and variety of his Word, ever new in His creation.

Anglicans Care About Beauty. Our Church has a long and wonderful tradition of art, architecture, music and worship. The artists, composers and writers who are part of the centuries-old Anglican tradition are too numerous to mention - indeed, the English-speaking world derives its culture from Anglican roots. And so our worship honors the past as well as the present. We care about form and custom, and about preserving the beauty of creation, while in our own way adding to it, both at St. Michael's and in our lives.

These are three, but only three - a start! I hope to share more Anglican Values in this space again from time to time!

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* Nearly New Shop: A thrift store operated out of a store front in a strip mall for many years by members of St. Michael's. The profits went primarily to fund charitable projects in the Anaheim community.
** Feed The Hungry Program: A dinner served at St. Michael's to all comers, mostly indigent and homeless, every Monday night at 6:00 pm for years and years. Those who came were guests: seated at tables with set places, and served on the church's best china. It had a very significant volunteer base from St. Michael's and others who joined in.

Ecumenical Martyrs

2010-07-06T14:49:00.007-04:00

Today in our OHC calendar we observe the feast of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher as martyrs, who were executed by the English government of Henry VIII for opposing the new structural definition of the Church of England, making the King the Supreme Head of the Church.

I'm reasonably sure that this is a quirk of OHC's practice. More and Fisher are not in Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2006, nor are they in the new Holy Women, Holy Men, the greatly expanded LFF. I think they are there because our community wants to acknowledge the suffering on all sides which the English Reformation occasioned.

I had not thought about it until recently, but three times in my experience visits to Roman Catholic Benedictine monasteries have occasioned something rather different. Years ago I would visit the monastery at Valyermo for spiritual direction, with the estimable Thomas Duscher, OSB, later Fr. Romuald of the Camaldolese, now regretfully departed. On my last visit one of the masses was dedicated to the English martyrs, by which was clearly meant the RC martyrs. The same thing happened on a visit to another major monastery in the last two years (I don't want to identify it). I didn't think much of it at the time. But recently one of our brothers on a monastery visit also encountered the same commemoration at the mass. Hmm. Makes one wonder.

The Episcopal Church does observe the martyrdoms of Latimer, Cranmer and Ridley on October 16. Usually at these celebrations no great point is made of accusing the Roman Catholic regime then in power of wickedness. Rather, the point is often made of Cranmer's changeableness when faced with the stake. His witness was not one of undaunted principle and courage. In religious history, of course, Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the lives and deaths of the Marian Martyrs, was hugely important. For a very long time Foxe was the second best-selling book in the English-speaking world. The anti-Roman prejudice it whipped up was enormous, deep and long-lasting. Knowing this, I am not surprised at the continuing depth of RC sentiment about their own martyrs. But I am surprised how often they seem to be trotted out in monastic contexts when Anglican monks come visiting.

The Reformation is not over, of course. Some of what is going on in the Anglican Communion at the moment is a resurgent Calvinism, suppressed by Charles I just as it was getting going in a serious way in the early seventeenth century. It went underground, eventually finding a home in overseas missionary societies like the Church Missionary Society, whose work is now bearing much fruit in African and Australian contexts. And all the decades of friendly contact between Anglicans and Roman Catholics, with the present Pope at the middle of much of it, could be coming to an end in his oddly and obviously anti-ecumenical bid for Anglicans to become Roman Catholic.

I wish there had been some RCs at the Eucharist today. I wish that some of them had been monks, who could go home and say, Those Anglicans observed Fisher and More as saints at the altar when I was there. Maybe something pointed toward mutual understanding could grow from it, instead of something that sets us against each other, even after all these years.

Simplicity 5

2010-06-17T15:31:00.011-04:00

The July-August 2010 AARP Magazine arrived today. The cover touts an article: "Live Simply, Be Happy: You can be rich with less". This looks right down my alley. So I turn to page 38 and start reading the article "The Leap to Cheap": "Spending is so old school. With the economy forcing folks to live more simply, self-proclaimed cheapskate Jeff Yeager cycled across the country to meet some of America's thriftiest people. The surprise: They've invented a better way to be rich." The graphic is a goldfish leaping from a bowl with lots of stuff in it to a bowl with a single branch of rather elegant orchids.

It is soon apparent that the article is a trailer for Yeager's new book. He tells a story of people living on less and doing it better, by getting what they really want ("an Architectural Digest-gorgeous ranch-style house" paid for in cash) and skipping the rest. He relates the death of National Thrift Week (in 1966) and how that relates to our long-term national spending spree. He tells of a family who make a pretty good income ($80,000) but moved into a smaller house and stopped buying so much stuff and discovered each other. He interviews the authors of Your Money or Your Life, who make the sensible observation that less can be more. The example is the Hummer. (Note to self: reconsider the Hummer purchase.) Many of us can all spend 20% less and not feel it. A guy in Pennsylvania rents out half his condo, spends very little, and gives a lot (a lot in this context is 15%) to charity. Speculation on whether being "cheap" isn't so stigma laden now. It ends with a good sentiment: "We have enough right where we are, and we realize that is a gift most people don't ever choose to receive."

So you don't need to read the article.

The premise of it is pure American materialism: Do something so you can have more. In this case, it's spend less. But the goal is More.

Is More wrong? Well, no. If you don't have Enough, then More is good. Lots of people need More. In many parts of the world, people have objective, actual material needs: food, shelter, medical care, education, sanitation, to say nothing of a cleaner environment or a safer society.

But what if you have, on an objective level, Enough? The most radical lack cited in the article was clothing dating back to the Jimmy Carter era. Wear it till it falls apart. I'm for that (as my friends know). For a person who in fact has a decent place to live, food every day, medical care, an education, what might More be? The article hints at it: closer family life, ability to help others, satisfaction with the life we already have.

I certainly don't expect the AARP Magazine to be spiritually profound. But what it hints at is, in fact, where our More can come from if we adopt the sensible advice this article peddles. Of course, once we have Enough in objective terms, we can always move the line! I have known plenty of well-off people who thought they were borderline poor, especially at parish pledge time. But if, instead of redefining what our needs are to include our wants and fantasies, we begin to practice other disciplines than getting stuff, More can be very good. Other disciplines like paying more attention to each other. Like giving more to causes we believe in and spending time being personally involved with them. Like turning off the gadgets and being quiet. Like reading the scriptures, like praying, like regularly saying the Daily Office. Like spending time regularly in meditation. When we do these things, unexpected doors open, and a world of spiritual possibilities begins to unfold itself for us.

Like learning to love the poor. Like being poor. "Blessed are you poor" says the Lord in Luke. And if we have a hard time with actually being poor, then pare the stuff down and learn to be poor in spirit, as Matthew recommends. The poor are the ones God loves. In the Scriptures, the rich are given gifts to be used and responsibility comes with it, and they don't often come out of it with their hands clean. So being poor is not a bad thing in God's eyes, but a good one.

Is living simply just another way to get stuff, this time spiritual instead of material? Or is it a way to clear the space out in our lives and let something new and wonderful begin to grow? In other words, is living simply just another way to keep myself in the center, to get my rather elegant branch of orchids, so much more aesthetically pleasing than a junked up fish bowl, or is it a genuinely transforming choice? May it be the second.

The summer begins

2010-06-15T21:50:00.006-04:00

OHC finished its annual meetings, which we call Chapter, on Sunday. We had the better part of a week together. It always begins with the Finance Committee, which I chair. That committee collates complete financial reports from our four monasteries and from the OHC Corporation, and considers the proposed budgets for the coming fiscal year, which for us runs from July 1 to June 30. We consider the financial statements and budgets of the monks not in residence as well. There are four of them. And there are always other matters to consider. It is a lot of work, and the work doesn't really stop till Chapter is over. I was quite tired when we rolled it up on Sunday morning. Fortunately the following few days are light. We will re-emerge into full engagement on Thursday.

My summer looks pretty lightly booked for once. The House of the Redeemer does not have Board meetings in July and August. The next big event at the monastery will be the Long Retreat here, from July 28 to August 6. That is always silent, and we all look forward to being monks together in the strict sense. I will take some vacation time in August.

I have always had projects for the summer, and this year is no different. I am hoping that the lack of other major responsibilities will let me catch up on some major reading, and even perhaps some writing. At the moment I am reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It moves along at a pretty brisk trot, but for that reason reads well. I sense that it is selling well, and may well open up the history of Christianity to a wider audience than is customary for that subject. I have acquired a number of specialist studies in the history of monasticism, in Anglo-Saxon studies, and in late antiquity and as I read them, I will share them with you. They are not to everyone's taste, but some of them may deserve a modest push.

Perhaps in reaction to the stress of getting ready for Chapter, I have over the last few weeks read more murder mysteries than usual. When I was ill for three weeks or so this spring I read (in some cases re-read) as much P.D. James as we had around the place. It is interesting to read an author in bulk, as it were, especially if one has had some training in literature. She has patterns. After the third book, I knew that she always kills off a second important victim a little more than halfway through. The guessing about the identity of the next victim was almost as much fun as guessing the murderer.

Br. David Bryan had a DVD set of the television series of James' novels which he loaned to me, and I watched them as well. Roy Marsden is wonderful as Adam Dalgleish. But at a certain point a different director or team took the project up, shortened the adaptations, and generally messed with the formula, as is probably obligatory with new teams. At any rate, in one of the newer series Dalgleish's hair, which had been quite consistent to that point, changed. It was awful. I noticed that in the next one he was back to the original wig. There is some fodder for a meditation on the pointlessness of change for the sake of change there.

Trinity Sunday Sermon

2010-05-31T16:44:00.004-04:00

The sermon I preached at West Park yesterday, Trinity Sunday, is up on the Holy Cross Monastery sermon blog.

I wanted to focus on the connection between the observable universe and the divine. It is my conviction that the Trinity is the most adequate religious description of why "what is" is the way it is. I hope I have avoided the worst pitfalls of panentheism. It was well received.

CAROA

2010-05-27T05:19:00.005-04:00

The second major trip I made this spring was to Toronto (April 20-24) for the annual meeting of the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas, or CAROA. Each year the leadership of North American Anglican religious orders meets for general discussions that last about a week.

Brs. Scott Borden (the Assistant Superior) and Andrew Colquhoun (in charge of formation for annually professed) and I drove to Toronto and were met there by Br. Robert Sevensky, the Superior. He was already there, after making his annual visitation to Holy Cross Priory in Toronto. The drive was nice -- up the NY State Thruway (I-87) to Albany, west on the Thruway (I-90) to Syracuse, north on I-81 to Watertown and the Thousand Islands (beautiful!), across into Canada and west on 401 to Toronto. It took a little more than 9 hours, but we didn't gun it. We had a nervous moment at the border, as Br. Scott had endured a Canadian inquisition the last time he entered Canada, but this time, all was sweetness and light.

The conference was at the new convent of the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine. They have a long and distinguished history in Canada, working in hospital administration, medicine and nursing care as well as in education and church work. Recently they have built a new convent on the grounds of St. John's Hospital, now separately administered. The convent is a wonderful modern building, light and airy and spacious. It is built around a quadrangle, with full guest facilities, the usual rooms for community life, a good library (with two copies of my book!), a wonderful infirmary built and equipped for (I believe) eight sisters, and best of all, a magnificent new chapel. SSJD has many gifted members, and music is among their gifts, so the chapel music was especially good. One of the sisters was a professional violinist, and gave a delightful concert Friday night with the music director of the convent at the keyboards (organ and piano).

The SSJD sisters were warm and welcoming. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends from the religious life across North America, and to make some new friends as well. The discussions centered around the agendas CAROA wants to pursue in the next couple of years. CAROA organizes the presence of the religious communities at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church (I helped with that last summer in Anaheim) and at the General Synod in Canada. The Canadian Church officially recognizes the religious communities in Canada (at this point there are three active: SSJD, OHC and the Sisters of the Church) by giving them two seats in Synod. The Episcopal Church does not.

The leadership of the conference was under the guidance of Fr. Gregory Fruewirth of the Order of Julian of Norwich, Fr. Donald Anderson, the General Secretary, who is a Canadian priest with wide experience in the ecumenical movement at the international level, and Ms. Suzanne Lawson, a very gifted facilitator with extensive experience at the national level of the Canadian church. Fr. Gregory has recently resigned as the Superior of OJN, and also as president of CAROA, in order to spend a six month time of work and reflection in Norwich.

The day began with Morning Prayer organized around small group lectio reflections on the daily Old Testament lessons for the week, from Exodus. This proved very fruitful. The meetings included function groups for superiors, for formation directors (my group) and for others. In the function groups we had time to share community and vocational issues on a deeper level. But most of the meetings were in whole group format. The discussions were quite frank, with time spent on the possibilities of cooperation in the care of elderly members, in helping declining communities in various ways, in the seemingly eternal topics of recruitment and helping the Anglican churches become better informed about the religious life. Suzanne Lawson did not let us get too diffuse about these and other topics, and had a firm hand in leading us away from pious generalities and toward actual people doing actual things. I ended up being the coordinator for formation directors for the coming year.

A highlight of our time together was a talk given by the Anglican Archbishop of Toronto, Colin Johnson. He has been an associate of SSJD for most of his ministry and understands pretty well what we do. He is delightfully informal, and had warm and helpful words for us. Another visitor one evening was OHC's Br. Reginald Crenshaw, now stationed at our priory in Toronto, who was very much a part of CAROA leadership conferences for many years and is deeply loved.

The time-off time was scheduled at the end of the conference, on Saturday afternoon, with the business finished, and we were tired and eager to return home. So after the business session on Saturday morning we piled back into the van and the four of us drive back the way we came. Well, almost. At Watertown we turned onto NY Highway 12 and drove south through a more rural area, quite lovely, rejoining the Thruway at Utica. I love the drive through the Mohawk Valley and it was wonderful to watch the trees leaf out more and more as we went further south.

Ascension Day sermon

2010-05-21T11:37:00.008-04:00

Just a brief note to tell you that my sermon for Ascension Day, preached at West Park, has been posted. It was one of those sermons whose impact is hard to judge. Except for a few smiles during the first paragraph, there was little reaction, mostly quiet. Was it the quiet of Ho Hum, another boring sermon by Adam? Or the quiet of, This is something that interests me? A few comments later on indicated the second might be a possibility, so I thought it might be worth drawing your attention to.

And while I'm at it, if you don't know about the Holy Cross sermon blog (actually, it is called the Lectionary Blog), it is worth a look. Most of the brethren post their sermons there. Most of them are pretty good. And it's a good way to get to know the OHC community and get a flavor of monastic theology and preaching, OHC-style.

St. Meinrad's

2010-05-17T08:14:00.023-04:00

I feel I should catch up my gentle readers on the main events of the past few blogless months. So here is the first of a pair of reports on two major trips.

The annual meeting of Benedictine formators (that's contemporary Romespeak for novice masters) was held the week after Easter. This was my second year attending this meeting. It was at St. Meinrad's Archabbey in southwestern Indiana. You can fly to Evansville or, as I did, to Louisville KY. Fr. Sean, the Guestmaster, was there to pick me up. There had been a weather disturbance in Chicago earlier in the day which had delayed flights all around. I was more or less on time but another participant was not, so we waited. He eventually showed up and we made it to St. Meinrad's in time for Vespers.

St. Meinrad's was founded in 1854 from Einsiedeln. That area of Indiana is populated by people of the Swiss-German diaspora, and is, even in this parlous economy, pretty prosperous. Hardworking people unto the umpteenth generation, I guess. The monastery's mission over the years has encompassed education, including high school, college and seminary, parish work in the local area, and traditional monastic crafts as well. I have the impression that like a lot of larger institutions, it has had to change with the times (who hasn't!) and though I heard little of their struggles, the new guest ministry building, the fairly separate seminary operation, and the new monastery are physical testimonies to re-conceived ministries. The monastery seems to be undergoing a renewal, with younger and dynamic leadership in the formation program, and it is working. The vocation part of the website is one of the best I have seen.

The building complex is enormous. The monastery church is a mid-nineteenth century romanesque/gothic mix, which I found intimidating in its exterior aspect. I am pretty sure it was designed to impress, sited at the edge of a ridge overlooking a valley. Not only is it huge, but you have to look up from below the hill to see it. The interior is another matter, however. Some years ago the community cleared out the church, stripping it to its bare bones, as it were, and lived with it in that state for a while. (I am repeating my memory of what I heard, so forgive me, brothers, if I get it wrong.) After some years they came to a consensus of what to do, and it is brilliant, in my humble opinion. They completely reoriented the liturgical space. The organ pipes (which must rise two stories) are in the old sanctuary area.

The nave divides more or less naturally into three parts. The one nearest the sanctuary, at the truncated transept area, is devoted to the monastic choir, whose beautifully built and very sturdy seats rise in four levels, accommodating something like 80 monks. The altar is in the west area, near the great doors. It is a large square table whose sides are covered with gilt metal. At the offertory during the Eucharist, the community moves from the choir to the altar, the priests in white albs in a semicircle behind and the rest of the community in a semicircle facing them. It is very effective. The middle section is for visitors and guests (though we were graciously received into the monastic choir). This section is the least marked of the three, consisting of little more than chairs in facing rows. The church "works" remarkably well, I think.

St. Meinrad's is so huge that its three elements -- monastery, guest house and seminary -- don't seem to meet except by appointment, as it were. The seminary occupies a very large complex to the south of the church, and has its own chapel and food arrangements. The Guesthouse is a completely separate modern building at some distance from the monastery. I think the guests attend chapel with the monks, but they are quite separated there as well. The monastery is a modern three-story building, interestingly trapezoidal in shape. The monastic refectory (the guests and the seminary have their own eating arrangements) is the central element, rather like West Park's -- octagonal, bigger, but without the view. There is a long hall from the refectory to the statio, which is the meeting point of the building, and then another hall to the church. A well-thought out plan. The rooms are like the new rooms in the monastery at Collegeville -- large, 15' by 17' or so, with a bathroom at one side of the entry and a closet at the other.

The Daily Office begins with a combination of Vigils and Lauds at 5:30 am, Mass at 7:30, noon day prayer, Vespers at 5:00 and Compline at 7:00. The timetable is built around the need for teachers at the seminary, I think, though it seems that not so many of the monks teach there now as in earlier days. They use the Grail Psalter to tones similar to Collegeville but with many of their own melodies. The liturgical life calls forth a lot of talent at St. Meinrad's, and it shows.

The conference itself was great. Br. John Mark Falkenhain led us in a consideration of psycho-sexual maturity in celibate (male) clergy and male religious. John Mark is a monk of St. Meinrad's and a psychologist whose research has been in this area, with particular emphasis on abuse issues. He is data-oriented and so we got a good snapshot of the condition of male celibates and their developmental dynamics. I was struck by how different the Anglican world is on this issue. It is a cliché to say it, but for Anglicans, celibacy is a choice and is in no way forced. Quite the opposite, actually! The presence of women in the ordained ministry makes a big difference to us. And Holy Cross has for a long time been fairly open in our discussion of these issues among ourselves, leading to a level of mutual understanding and support within the community that I sensed may be harder to achieve in Roman monastic communities.

On our last full day the conference participants went on an outing to New Harmony, Indiana, a town that was founded as part of the early 19th Century utopian movement and was associated with Robert Owen. It is a lovely place, interestingly but not obsessively restored, having reinvented itself as a conference center. There is some new architecture as well. The visitor center is by Richard Meier and the Roofless Church, where we sang Vespers, is by Philip Johnson. There is interesting contemporary sculpture there and in other locations in the town. I dragged a few of the brethren into St. Stephen's Episcopal Church and we had a learning moment about Anglican liturgy, architecture, furnishings, customs and sociology. We ended the day with a wonderful restaurant dinner.

The St. Meinrad's community was warm and welcoming. The Abbot made a point of meeting us. There are a number of younger men in formation, and as seems typical (judging from Collegeville last year) they seemed a little reticent about meeting us. I was particularly moved to meet the older monks at recreation, which takes place daily between supper and Compline. One of them was a former abbot (I did not know!), another the former librarian, and a third a great scholar of African-American Catholicism. And best of all, the brother tailor remembered OHC's request for help when we changed our habits back in the 80's! I felt warmly welcomed. It was a great way to celebrate the week of the Resurrection!

I'm Back

2010-05-04T20:11:00.004-04:00

After a 3 week bout of illness in February, dragging into March, (not too serious, bronchitis mixed with flu) and a whole lot of work and travel, some of which I will probably write about, I'm back.

Obviously, simplicity is what I need in my life at this point! I do hope to write more about it, and this time with more experience about its need and its elusiveness.

One administrative thing. Someone has been posting comments to the blog which, if one clicks on them, seem to end up on porn sites from the far east. So I have changed the setting and will now be reviewing comments before they post. I hope this does not offend anyone, but after a half dozen or so of these pesky critters, I thought it the better part.

Simplicity 4

2010-02-18T10:00:00.012-05:00

My life hasn't been very simple in the last week or so. But it has slowed down for the monastery's Lenten Retreat, for which I give thanks.

One further preliminary thought about ascetic practices leading to better focus. I was wondering why I was reluctant to write more, apart from general busy-ness, and yesterday it came to me. Focus on what? Focus for what? Whose focus?

If the focus is mine, or on something that comes from me, then what I will achieve in that kind of focus is to narrow my attention down to something that is going to be of my choosing, and will reflect me. But that is precisely what I do not want, as a monk, as a person striving for simplicity so that God may be more present to me and I more present to God. An ascetic discipline which increases intensity of focus on my life, my hopes, my desires, my past experiences, my whatevers, is going to narrow me and draw me deeper into myself, into a place which may not in the end be productive.

Yesterday during the Ash Wednesday liturgy (at which for once I was not a liturgical minister of some kind, thank God) I had an experience of focus. I began to focus on ashes, the ashes of my life. Losses. The literal ashes of Mount Calvary, lost a year ago November, into which I poured my working life for eleven years. The losses at St. Michael's, Anaheim, whose Anglo congregation has largely dispersed and which has reverted to mission status. The ashes of my parents' bodies, buried these many years in that little cemetery by Red Bank Creek in Hawthorn, Pennsylvania. One ash-loss after another. The losses began to cascade in my consciousness. And after I had wallowed in the ashes for a while, it came to me that I was not focusing on something that could let God in, but on something that kept God out. These really are losses. But life -- my life and the lives of others -- has been made possible by these things. Their significance is only partly in their loss. The kind of focus I was practicing was not really on loss as a path to God, but on me -- my losses, my feelings, my failures -- me. Me. Me. And it was not going to go anywhere but deeper into me, and it was not going to produce anything but depression.

That kind of focus is not good because the object of the focus is inadequate. It doesn't expand my life. It doesn't open anything up. It doesn't take me out of myself. Rather, it closes me in, in the name of compunction latches on to my depressions.

Self focus will not take us very far.

So the focus a monk, a Christian, seeks needs to be on the Not-self, on the Other. Setting aside the barriers to focus is not an exercise that should close us down interiorly, but should open us up. And if that Other is God, the focus will illuminate my life, but this time with the light of truth.

If my focus experience yesterday had been better directed, it might have moved in quite a different direction. Instead of taking me into a pity-wallow of depression, it might have shown me how loss is part of the Cross, how one cannot grow unless the past is transformed. It might have led me to speculate on what new wonders can come in the life of our community in Santa Barbara, in the different circumstances we now enjoy there. It might have led me to wonder at a new model of church being born in Anaheim, an Episcopal church for the immigrant poor, with a ministry so large that it can't be sustained by the current model of parish support, and the joyful problem that presents to the Church. It might have led me to speculate on the gifts my parents gave me in their too-short lives, how they and their gifts continue to live in my life.

So as we simplify in order to focus, what are we training our focus on? Is it self, with the inevitable inadequacies of self-smallness, or is it God, who brings life from the ashes?

Simplicity 3

2010-01-27T19:48:00.009-05:00

The word monk comes ultimately from the Greek monos, meaning one or single. It is not clear historically whether it originally referred to being alone, as in celibate and so forth, or whether it referred to a more interior unity. I think probably it began as a description of a state of life -- single, alone in the relational sense, and then in time had the other meaning added to it. In fact, both are true.

The monastic wisdom of the ages is that you really cannot achieve unity of focus on God unless your external life facilitates that focus. And while very few would say that a conventionally placed person, married or professionally employed, can not focus on God, the preponderance of texts seems to move in the direction of recommending the monos state of life for the monos state of focus on God. But then, many of the ancient texts were written by, and certainly all of them were transmitted by, monks. So there is a certain filter at work in Christian spiritual tradition.

I have, as a monk for 36 years and a monk not in residence and parish priest for 16 of those years, been on both sides of this issue. Not married, of course, but with plenty of experience in befriending and leading in a churchly way a lot of married people. The longer I am at the monk thing the more I am convinced that the point of spiritual life, whether married or single, employed in a career or living in a monastery, is focus. The ascetical disciplines do not exist for themselves but as aids to focus. The life of prayer in its organized forms exists as a way to achieve focus. Our concentration on the person of Jesus is a way to achieve focus. Silent, wordless and (sometimes) formless prayer is a way to achieve focus.

The whole point of any genuine religious life, in fact, is to help us redirect our attention from what doesn't ultimately lead anywhere very productive to the source of life and being itself: God. Focus on God is what we hope to achieve.

And so, yet another exercise in simplicity. What in our external lives, what in our inner lives, gets in the way of focus on God? That, it seems to me, is what the traditional ascetical program is for. That is what the leaving behind of the usual major life commitments for a monk is for. That is what the redirection of the life of a baptized person who is not a monk is for. And, frankly, in many ways, being a monk makes focus on God easier. I think achieving God-focus as a person "in the world" is one of the most remarkable and beautiful things I know. I have been privileged to know more than a few people like that. I admire them, and I know that I probably don't have half of their capacity to achieve that focus in the midst of ordinary life. Which is why I, and I suspect many others, become monks (and nuns, and other type of monos-people).

But all of the people on this path, it seems to me, face very similar challenges, monk or married. In a word, the challenge is to learn to evaluate the phenomena of our life in terms of how they promote this focus on God. This activity, this work that I am doing -- will it in some way bring me closer to God? This thing I have -- does its use help me in some way to get closer to God? This thought, or fantasy, or fear, or dream that I have -- can it open up a door for me to get closer to God?

There are the tried and true paths. Serious seekers will read the scriptures with these questions in mind. They will consult the ancient traditions, made accessible to us in texts like the Rule of Benedict, or John Cassian's Institutes and Conferences, or a thousand other wonderful places. These need to be read with an understanding of their original setting and purpose and the cultures out of which they came. But at a certain point we need to move from study to action. We need to apply what we read. I am going to write something about that process soon. But the bell for Compline is about to ring. And for sure, one of the ascetical practices that monks undertake to help them focus on God is to get into Chapel at the stated times and pray the Divine Office! So, off I go.

The Earthquake in Haiti

2010-01-13T13:47:00.006-05:00

A disaster of almost unimaginable proportions is slowly being revealed as the reports from Haiti come in. This should be a special concern to Episcopalians and Anglicans, as Haiti is a diocese of the Episcopal Church, and by membership is our largest.

The Sisters of St. Margaret have worked intensively there for many, many years, and their work is one of the most significant not only of our Church, but of Christians in Haiti in any sense. Over the years they have established or worked in educational, medical and adult education programs of every kind. Their convent has been a spiritual center for thousands and thousands of people. Their Haiti web page:
http://www.ssmbos.com/Pages/Haiti.html

They have a brochure as well, in pdf format:
http://www.ssmbos.com/Pdf/Haiti%20Brochure%202009.pdf

To make a donation for Haiti emergency and reconstruction work through Episcopal Relief and Development, click here:
https://www.er-d.org/donate-select.php

Please keep the people of Haiti and our dear friends in St. Margaret and the Episcopal Church there in your prayers.

Simplicity 2

2010-01-10T07:59:00.008-05:00

I ended the last post with an appeal to the practical benefits of a simpler lifestyle, with food leading the way. But in this post I would like to say something about the spiritual benefits of a simpler life.

The more things we have, the more things we worry about. If you don't have anything worth stealing, for example, you won't worry so much about your neighbor the thief. At least you won't worry about him in his thief persona, or at least, in relation to yourself. In fact, you will be freer than you would have been otherwise to regard him as a human being and to develop a relationship with him. Whereas, if you have Aunt Tillie's silver and an expensive big flat screen tv and a bunch of money salted away in the cookie jar and so forth, you will have (and should have) some suspicion toward him. Without them you do not need to fear their loss. Monastic spiritual writers all agree that this is a foundational principle for our life with God. The more you have, the more there will be between you and God. So, in the famous phrase, Sell what you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me.

The same is true with regard to less tangible things, especially with regard to things we have agreed to do. I know more than one person who is fairly careful about their possessions but loves to collect responsibilities. The more things we have to do, the more important we feel we are. And in fact, it is true. The more things we have to do, the more important we are. People depend on us. Good things happen when we do our work well, and bad things happen when we don't. Either way, it puts us in the center.

And that's the crux. If we have a healthy attitude to responsibilities, we will do them first because what comes from the work we do is good, and secondarily because it lifts us up. But if personal uplift is first, then something is probably wrong. The word for it is vainglory, and although vainglory was one of the original eight problematic thought categories, it got merged along the way with pride, and shoved into the corner. But in fact it's pretty primary. It's about the self, the ego.

If we are doing things primarily because they make us feel important or give us a good name among others, then we may begin to act to increase our sense of importance rather than to do a good job for its own sake. In fact, it is not unknown to sabotage our work in order that self-importance can be validated by disaster ("They'll be sorry...").

So simplicity is not just about stuff. It is also about what we do, the mutualities we enter into in the world of work and responsibility.

Things are good. We should value them for what they really are, and if we are fortunate to have them, we should use them if we need them. We should enjoy them. But we should not hoard them, keeping from others what might make their life better when it is simply a marker of success or status or inner security for us rather than something we need and use. A spiritually mature person knows how to share, how to give.

Responsibilities are good. We should value them for the good that work accomplished gives to others and to ourselves. Good work builds a healthy sense of self and contributes to the well-being of others. But piling up responsibilities for the sake of self ultimately undermines both self and others.

A humble person, a person who has been learning who he truly is in the sight of God, will try to discern what he really can do and what he should let others do. He will do the things he can do well and which he has has agreed to do, and let their value speak for themselves. He will be able to concentrate better on the responsibilities he has agreed to if he is able to let go of the ones he has that are too much, or which he has taken on to increase his sense of self, or which others can do better. One might actually relinquish some that one does well so that others may have a share in the work -- and in the glory. (Which is not to urge laziness, but that's another issue!)

I am of course speaking to myself in all of this!

Simplicity 1

2010-01-07T08:18:00.017-05:00

The new year is now launched. The Three Kings have visited the Child, observant Christians are packing away the Christmas decorations, and most new year's resolutions are facing reality.

So I want to put in a word for a monastic value I want to last beyond its new year's resolution shelf life for me: Simplicity.

Poverty is not one of the Benedictine vows, which are Obedience, Stability and Conversion of Life (to the monastic way of life). A friend of mine once rejoiced (in jest, I think) that OHC, in changing from its older form of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience, was putting aside chastity. But, of course, Not. Conversatio morum, conversion of life, encompasses the whole monastic program as known to Benedict, and is shorthand for the way of monastic life in general. So, chastity and poverty stay in.

As fraught as chastity may be in our modern church context, I think that in some ways poverty presents a greater challenge. People simply do not want to be poor. Being poor is looked on as an affliction, an affront to human dignity, something to be warred against, which is rather non-scriptural, actually. The monastic tradition, however, is a help here. Benedictines are not Franciscans. Which is to say, personal poverty aside, radical corporate poverty is not part of our ethos. Benedictines have things -- property, buildings, libraries, money. These things are held in common and used as necessity dictates. Less is more is the ethic, but not destitution. The famous Benedictine moderation is very much the way Benedictines have always lived, mutatis mutandis.

Having said that, however, we are still left with our modern dilemma. Ours is a culture which urges us to get what we want. Monks are not exempt from this cultural imperative. The idea of doing without is as difficult a sell within the cloister as without, except for a few exceptionally evolved ascetic souls. Suggesting that we might not have what we want, let alone what we need, is quite a hard sell in modern society. The word No is not heard very often.

And for good reason. We understand that to pray well, we must be well. An underfed or overtired or unhealthy body is a poor vehicle for prayer. Scientific understanding of human needs has made considerable progress since the early sixth century. So an ascetical regime based on the idea of deprivation alone is no longer viable. The ancients may have understood that the soul's capacity for contact with God increases as the body's strength diminishes, but that is not our understanding. Health and genuine well being are necessary for a good spiritual life.

So deprivation is not the path. But then, neither is having everything we want. Mary Margaret Funk, in her little book about Cassian called Thoughts Matter: The Practice of the Spiritual Life, makes the good point that even Cassian did not recommend edgy practices about food, which might be a stand-in for our consumption practices in general:

"Refrain from eating too much, but also refrain from eating too little. Eat at the designated time. Refrain from eating before and after meals. Eat the type of food appropriate to the season and the geographic region in which I live. My menu should not be too rarified or too delicate, nor should I select foods that are inadequate for the body's sustenance. I should prefer a middle fare."

Taken as a general principle, this can point us in a healthy direction. The word we are searching for in this ascetic is not deprivation. The word is sufficient. Or adequate. Or enough. Eat, use, take what you really need. Leave the rest for others.

Most Americans have more than enough, and not just as regards food. Putting this ascetical practice into effect in all the areas of our life will probably result in a slimmer body, a cleaner house, a less-stuffed clothes closet. It may also result in less money spent, less debt, more savings, in fact, more material security.

I will be writing more about this. But it is a good way to begin the new year.

Thirty Years of Thanks

2009-12-31T10:37:00.023-05:00

Thirty years ago Tuesday I was ordained a priest, in the Chapel of Mount Calvary in Santa Barbara. I have been meditating on 30 years as a priest and what comes to me is a deep sense of gratitude for all who have been part of the ministry I was given then. A priest does eucharist. And since giving thanks is what eucharistia means, and one of the principal elements of giving thanks is anamnesis -- not forgetting -- I'm going to dedicate this entry to remembering people and places and institutions that have formed my ministry as a priest.

I was ordained by Wes Frensdorff, Bishop of Nevada. My father, Duncan McCoy, was one of my clerical presenters. They are gone now, as is Mount Calvary. I was endorsed for ordination by All Saints Episcopal Church, Las Vegas, which my father founded in 1960. Members of the parish made the journey to Santa Barbara to present me. Bill Clancey, who was my seminary (CDSP) field work supervisor at All Souls, Berkeley, preached. Bishop Dan Corrigan, a dear friend of the Mount Calvary community, was vested and seated next to Bishop Frensdorff. The master of ceremonies was Fr. Bob Worster, Rector of St. Mary's, Palms, in LA. The organist was Fred Hammond, then professor of music at UCLA. In attendance among the reverend clergy were Robert Hale, of the Camaldolese, and Basil Meeking, then Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity in Rome, later Bishop of Christchurch, New Zealand, and a dear friend of the Corrigans. And so many others. It was a wonderful day.

Such a cloud of witnesses. The bishops I have served in an official relationship as a priest are, in more or less chronological order: Wes Frensdorff of Nevada; Robert Rusack, and Oliver Garver of Los Angeles; William Swing of California; Fred Borsch, Chet Talton, Bob Anderson and Jon Bruno, of Los Angeles; Dick Grein, Mark Sisk, Catherine Roskam and Don Taylor, of New York.

My first years as a priest, of course, were spent serving the OHC communities at Santa Barbara and Berkeley, and then later (now) West Park. The eucharistic ministry is foremost in our communities, of course, but I discovered the ministry of hearing confessions, especially at Mount Calvary, where I must have heard hundreds over the years. Retreat leading and preaching and relationships that have grown out of those encounters loom large, and scores of churches I was graced to be invited into. Years spent helping Greg Richards when he was Rector of All Saints, Beverly Hills, and the group of faithful praying women who gathered around Alice Smith in the corner of their elegant parish hall, are vivid to me.

My first parochial pastoral charge was Holy Family, Half Moon Bay, CA, who taught me a great deal in a few short months in 1992. Then from 1992 to 2001, St. Michael's, Anaheim, and from 2001 to 2008, St. Edward the Martyr in East Harlem. So many people from those congregations rise up in my mind, too many to name lest I forget even more. So many wonderful Christians giving their talents in vestries and altar guilds and Sunday Schools and youth groups and music programs and ministries to the community. I especially want to lift up the Feed The Hungry program at St. Michael's, run by some great saints of the Church, among them Chuck Henderson and Bill Miller, who fed a hot meal on the church china to the homeless and unfortunate every Monday without fail for years and years. Much of what St. Michael's did in the way of outreach was funded by the profits from the St. Michael's Thrift Shop, and Alyce Compton deserves to be remembered for years of patient (and sometimes impatient) labor.

Baptisms in all three places, of course, but numerically the most at St. Michael's, especially among the Hispanic congregation. My last year I believe we recorded 152 baptisms, not all baptized by me, of course. Frs. Santos Flores and Juan Barragán labored mightily to bring that large congregation into being, and deserve an honored place here. But baptisms are just the tip of the iceberg! Presentations, first communions, confirmations and quinceañeras, by the dozens, even the hundreds. The Anglo congregation had its baptisms and confirmations and weddings as well, but also a lot of funerals, and I discovered what a great moment a funeral is for families. Hispanic ministry is largely about celebrating life events, especially those of children. When I left St. Michael's in 2001, there were well over 2,000 people on the membership lists. It was one of the great adventures of my life.

I would never have thought that I would have much to do with police, but for five years I was one of the chaplains to the Anaheim Police Department, and what a joy that was. Joy mingled with sorrow, because so much of the work was getting up in the middle of the night to be with and comfort people in the midst of trauma, disaster and death. Kneeling in the middle of a major street with Hispanic road repair workers at 2 in the morning to say the prayers for their dead comrade, killed by a hit and run, probably drunk, driver. Sitting with a mother whose son had just hung himself in the enclosed porch of their house. Helping to organize and lead the funeral for our Chief at the Crystal Cathedral with thousands in attendance. Listening to small, quiet moments of self reflection by police, who are not always the most inward-directed people.

Being Dean of north Orange County brought regular fellowship with the clergy of that region of the Diocese of Los Angeles. And monthly meetings of the clergy support group offered insight and solidarity.

Then coming to New York City and discovering ministry in another community, as St. Edward's is largely African-American. The faithful Christians there, who kept the Church alive for decades before I arrived -- beginning right after World War II, when almost all the white middle class people left that part of the City, with worsening conditions in East Harlem as the years marched on, crime, drugs, young people in trouble, despair on every corner. Small churches who continue alive in the midst of such conditions are in some ways greater cathedrals of the spirit than much larger, better endowed places with marvelous programs, because there is often little more than faith to feed the fire, and year in and year out their faith and hard work keep the flame burning.

One of the joys of my ministry has been mentoring people who have started on the path to ordination. In Anaheim, Ruth Tomlinson and John Kloman; and in East Harlem, Peter Irvine, Mary Ogus, Elise Johnstone, Willie Smith, Christopher Pyles, Susan Greenwood, Antonio Checo, Ajung Sojwal, Rob Picken, Filomena Servellon, Dustin Trowbridge. Another joy has been collaboration with the secretaries, sextons and musicians of the three congregations. And four years of teaching church history to the students of the Hispanic Programa as an adjunct faculty member of the General Seminary brought much joy.

A large part of the ministry of St. Edward's, and therefore of its Rector, is its work with community organizations: The Yorkville Common Pantry, with its directors Jeff Ambers and then Carolann Johns; Interfaith Neighbors (alas, no more) and its director Eileen Lyons; and The Amsterdam Boys' Choir and its director James Backmon; the Saul Alinsky-based Industrial Areas Foundation in its shape-shifting local incarnation usually known as Upper Manhattan Together. And I must not forget the two rewrites of the YCP lease which involved generous and tireless work by Gerry Ross, our volunteer attorney.

Then of course there was the seemingly endless building of the front door, with our architect Kevin Lichten and the Landmarks Conservancy, as well as the still-ongoing fire and safety project, both managed by a wonderful layman in the parish, Angus Oborn and our irreplaceable project manager, Dick Muffoletto. Without them very little would have been accomplished on the building front.

And finally, and still, the House of the Redeemer, which claims my time but also my heart.

So many wonderful people. I'll probably keep adding to this.

A Letter for Rowan Williams

2009-12-22T07:45:00.002-05:00

Thanks to TitusOneNine, I just came across this wonderful Christmas letter from the historian Diarmaid MacCulloch to The Archbishop of Canterbury. It is full of joy, hope and good cheer and a particularly appropriate message for the ecclesial celebration of the powerless one we recognize as Son of God. One apt quote:

"Worldly power has gone out of the established church, and that is why so many of its adherents have fallen away. Thank goodness for that; churches never handle power well."

And in the wake of it, I want to thank Kendall Harmon for producing his marvelous blog!

Advent Thoughts

2009-12-18T07:41:00.007-05:00

The Monastery is emerging today from our quarterly retreat -- three days in silence. I love these retreats. Everything is quiet, no guests except a few pious souls who slip in for the Divine Office, work pushed back to the minimum necessary to keep the place running. I am in charge of ringing the bells this week, and I enjoyed getting to Chapel early.

A verse from the Old Testament reading at Matins struck me this morning, Zechariah 7:13: "Just as when I called, they would not hear, so when they called, I would not hear, says the LORD of hosts." This oracle of God to the prophet is about the restoration of justice, kindness and mercy among the people of Israel. It is a condemnation of Israel's past behavior, which led God to scatter them among the nations.

Quite a lot of the readings for Advent are about judgment. The whole ministry of John the Baptist warns people of the wrath to come, and is the centerpiece of the Advent proclamation. I used to think the whole judgment day business was a culturally conditioned first century Palestinian preoccupation, a little embarrassing in our more enlightened times. The fierce urgency of the prophets (who centered much of their work, one way or the other, around the destruction and restoration of Jerusalem) and of the Baptist, and of Jesus himself, caused one in preaching to struggle to relate to our own less dramatic times. The end-of-the-worlders were other people, strange Christians on the fringes, cartoon figures.

But no longer. If you're not an end-of-the-worlder now, your liberal friends think you callous, uninformed, deeply suspect of having gone over to the Other Side. Because, isn't it obvious? The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Or at least in an SUV. The financial system almost crashed. The health system is about to crash. Global warming is upon us. To name the three most prominent scenarios of the moment. In each case our current government finds salvation in vastly increasing its own power to run things and a concurrent increase in the amount of money it can spend to do so. But what if these crises are not amenable to well-wishing folk manipulating the levers of power?

Because you did not listen to me, I will not listen to you, says the Lord.

In Zechariah's prophecy there is a direct link between our past behavior and what is to come. The iniquitous behavior of God's people in the past will bring about God's deafness to our pleas in our time of need. His instructions to us show what has been lacking: "Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another, do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil against one another." That we have not listened and acted as God wishes has gotten us into trouble and will be the cause of more trouble yet to come. Worse is on the way.

Except... read on. The next oracle is a promise that God will come and live with his people in Jerusalem again: "I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy, and I am jealous for her with great wrath. Thus says the Lord: I will return to Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem." God cannot help himself. He loves his people so much. Tough love. Watch out for that kind of love. It makes demands.

Leaving aside the exegetical question of who, exactly, is Jerusalem here (is it the actual Jerusalem? is it the literal people of Israel? is it all God's people, including us perhaps? is it the world God so loved?), the line of action is clear: God expects his people (however defined) to listen and obey, and if they don't, there will be the consequence of non-action on his part. But eventually he will act to restore them.

So the Advent question of the moment might be, Have we listened to God? Have we acted? It would seem that we have not. Wastefulness, injustice, lack of concern for each other, greed, have led us to the precipice of our current problems. Will we be able to address them ourselves, as the political elite of the moment would have us believe we can?

What God calls for through the prophets is for his people (= us, presumably) to change their (our) hearts. The prophetic analysis would seem to be that bad behavior comes from not listening to God, and that God will not listen to us when we are in our untrue, unkind, unmerciful state. So we had better get our inner dispositions together and act on them. In fact, the prophet doesn't seem to think that God's people have what it takes to make this change on their own. And so, God will come to live among his people: God with us. No wonder this is an Advent lesson. Zechariah is pointing the way to the Incarnation, or so we Christians would say.

We have been careless and so we are in trouble. Since we did not listen to God, God is not going to listen to us. Worse is on the way. But God will not leave us alone. Is our salvation in TARPs, in Copenhagen, in a 2074 page Senate bill morphing every minute and which Harry Reid won't let the public see, at least in today's headlines? Are these the societal equivalent of change of heart, or might we view them from another perspective? Have the dispositions in peoples' hearts that brought these problems about changed? If not, how effective can bureaucratic action be?

And anyway, can public action ever measure up? If ears do not listen and hearts are unchanged, what do such actions matter? Will they not themselves become occasions of more wastefulness, injustice, lack of concern for each other, greed? And with unchanged hearts, will we be ready for God to come and dwell among us? Will that not be judgment itself if we are not prepared?

God will not leave us alone. Advent comfort.

Hither and Thither

2009-11-15T10:49:00.006-05:00

November is a month of activity. It began with preaching All Saints Day at West Park, which was well received. Br. Bernard made his Life Profession in OHC on Nov. 4. I went into NYC on the 7th to preside and preach at St. Edward the Martyr, which was a joy. The evening before I had dinner with dear friends from the parish, Peter and Louise Crawford.

The afternoon of Sunday, Nov. 8, was the celebration of OHC's 125th Anniversary, at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields in NYC. They could not have been more gracious. Monday was the monthly clergy group luncheon and paper, whose topic was the 100th anniversary of the death of William Reed Huntington. Then Brother Charles and I spent the rest of the week at a conference on retreat giving at the Convent of the Community of St. John the Baptist in Mendham, NJ. It was sponsored by the Conference of Anglican Religious Communities in North America (CAROA) and led by Barbara Crafton. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know other religious and share our experiences as well as learn more about retreat giving from an expert.

And now I am off for some vacation. My dear friend Tony Jewiss is turning 70 this month -- I told him it can't be, but he assures me it is. Tony lives in a section of southwestern France called the Aude. So tonight I am using the rest of my frequent flyer miles and will fly to Amsterdam and then to Toulouse where Tony will pick me up. We are spending the actual birthday in Venice, thanks to Ryanair, which charges almost nothing as long as you do not need anything more than a seat and a space for a VERY controlled single bag. They make their money, apparently, on deviations from the basic plan. There is a fee for everything else. Probably one for breathing too often. I'll be back at the Monastery on Dec. 1.

I am taking along 4 books: Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou:The Promised Land of Error, about the Cathars in the very area where Tony now lives; Anselm Dimier's Stones Laid Before the Lord: Architecture and Monastic Life, in case I have the opportunity to see some, which I hope I will; Jeremy Driscoll's Steps to Spiritual Perfection: Studies on Spiritual Progress in Evagrius Ponticus, to keep the mind alive; and Hillary Mantel's new novel Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell. We'll see in 2 weeks if I have obeyed my superego, or if I have found murder mysteries and spent the time in the reading equivalent of the candy shop.

Taking the Tiber Ferry

2009-10-22T19:31:00.020-04:00

To those who have been so kind as to ask, Yes, I did finish writing the article on OHC's history and sent it off. It will be published shortly in the autumn issue of the Order's little magazine, timed to coincide with our celebration of 125 years.

Our Celebration of 125 years will be at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in New York City on Sunday, Nov. 8, at 4:00 pm. Solemn Vespers will be followed by a talk by the estimable Esther de Waal, and then munchies and holy schmoozing. Do plan to come.

The Pope's announcement of a personal ordinariate (I think that's the term) for Anglicans happened shortly after I finished a new book on one of the major groups of Anglo-Papalists, the monks of Elmore, formerly Nashdom, formerly Pershore. It is by Peta Dunstan, a Cambridge University scholar who has made the history of Anglican religious orders (more accurately, the religious orders of the Church of England) her specialty: The Labour of Obedience: The Benedictines of Pershore, Nashdom and Elmore, A History. It is a readable book, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I enjoyed even more a cordial e-mail exchange with her about an error. She's a class act.

The thread which holds her narrative together is those Benedictines' history of Anglo-Papalism in the Church of England, a subject recently treated in a wider context by Michael Yelton: Anglican Papalism, An Illustrated History, 1900-1960. This movement was much stronger in England than in the U.S., where it was/is practically nonexistent.

Briefly, your average Anglo-Papalist (if there was such a thing: so many were Characters) believed that the Visible Unity of the Church was the great desideratum; that unity could only be accomplished under the headship of the Bishop of Rome; and that God's great plan for the English church would be best fulfilled by conforming as closely as possible to Roman norms, liturgical and otherwise, and working and waiting for the great day when the Holy Spirit would reveal the validity of Anglican ordination to that eminent personage, and with a great shout, all would be forgiven, the ecclesial rifts would be healed, and England Returned to the Bosom.

Some of the steam went out of this position with Vatican II and the liturgical reforms. Tridentine baroque Catholic liturgy was so much more fun than Father Facing The People and the pedestrian liturgical texts given unto the faithful in the 60's. But the truly faithful soldiered on, counting among their number people of importance, including, apparently, Tony Blair.

I don't know quite what to make of the Pope's recent announcement yet. The devil is in the details, as they say in other contexts, and the details aren't out yet. Apparently there will be no married bishops, so I don't expect to see a rush to join by the over-bishoped ranks of dissident Anglican leaders, so many of them so recently mitered. My guess is that there won't be much movement at first. But the establishment of a functioning Anglican rite within the Roman fold could in the long run be very significant culturally, apart from the current and continuing fractious bickering on all sides.

And I am reminded by this event of how much I love the Roman Catholic Church. So many wonderful friends in Christ, some gone to glory, like Fr. Thomas Duscher OSB, of Valyermo and later Fr. Romuald of the Big Sur Camaldolese, for some years my spiritual director; some hearty and well, like Robert Hale, also of Big Sur; the Camaldolese in general, who may have saved my life at a time of crisis; Benedictines of many sorts and conditions; Sr. Mary Klock of the Mercies; sweet and wonderful Christians, too many to name, all of them saints or on the way.

I do think that Benedict XVI has made an end run around Rowan Williams. I thought Canterbury looked and sounded distressed in that joint news conference with the AB of Westminster. It might have been better if he hadn't attended it. I don't feel that he held up the side, as the Brits say in cricket (or is it rugby?). There was a whiff of the deer staring into the headlights.

Does this affect me personally? Not really. I have prayed for the visible unity of the Church all my adult life, but on terms which recognize the dignity and validity of the Reformation, of the Anglican Church's heroic and self-sacrificial encounters with the modern world and with forms of thought and culture previously uncontemplated, from the mid 1500's through the centuries, in each succeeding age and on into the future. I think that is part of our genius. It comes wrapped in Anglican chant and Percy Dearmer and coffee hours and sherry and vestries and too many bishops and Trollope and Barbara Pym and Auden and Perry and Vaughan Williams and prayer book wars and are-you-high-or-low-or-broad and a thousand other little cultural artifacts we know and love. But to bring the catholic faith face to face with today's real challenges is our genius, it is the Gift of the Spirit to us, and to betray it would be to betray what has given us life.

The Death of Eurydice

2009-09-25T20:54:00.026-04:00

The Superior asked me some time ago to write an article on the history of OHC over the last 25 years, a sort of brief update to the history of the Order I wrote in the 80's, to be published in the 125th Anniversary issue of the Order's little magazine this fall. So I went to work and started doing the chronicle of dates and names and events and so forth onto which to inscribe a more developed narrative. And I have kept at it and at it. And by doing so I have pushed off writing it.

In wondering why I didn't just dig in -- I had some clues of course -- I considered a lot of reasons, and they are all probably true at some level. But it wasn't until early this evening that they came together for me.

After supper I was having a quiet evening in my cell, reading an excellent article by Michael Casey in his The Undivided Heart called "Saint Benedict's Approach to Prayer", which is so wonderful I have been reading it half for knowledge and half as lectio for a few days, not wanting it to end.

I put on a cd of Haydn's L'anima del filosofo ossia Orfeo ed Euridice, the Hogwood version on L'Oiseau-Lyre, with the incomparable Cecilia Bartoli. It was the only opera he composed after leaving the employ of the Esterhazys, and was written for his first journey to London in 1791, though it was not produced there. It is contemporary with the last of Mozart's operas, but somehow it feels like it is from an earlier age. I was enjoying Haydn's brilliant but not always deeply moving music when, at the end of the second act, something I had completely forgotten: the death of Eurydice. The music dims in volume as Eurydice describes her emotion as the poison in her body takes effect:
Del mio core il voto estremo
dello sposo io vo' che sia.
Al mio ben l'anima mia
dono l'ultimo sospir.
Bartoli sings with such pathos that I was suddenly drawn into the music, into what was happening, in a way I have not been for a long time. As I listened to her, I could feel part of me dying with her.

Then it was time for Compline, and what would the first psalm be but 88:
my life is at the brink of the grave.
I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I have become like one who has no strength....
My friend and my neighbor you have put away from me,
and darkness is my only companion.
It would be an overstatement to say that I was undone. But tears came. I suddenly realized, sitting in the Chapel at West Park singing Compline this evening, what was keeping me from writing.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is certainly one of the most important myths in the history of Western art, and deservedly so. The (purportedly) first opera is an Orfeo by Monteverdi, and there are others as well. My favorite is by Gluck. Orfeo is a musician, and at the death of his beloved wife Eurydice, he plays so beautifully that the powers of the underworld are moved to allow him to descend there and be with her once again. But he cannot turn to see her.

There is a lot going on in this myth, as there is in every major myth. Its main attraction to art and music would seem to be the power of music to change what seems unchangeable, and much more, of course. Orfeo's art rearranges the past, if ever so briefly, and resurrects (here we're getting into Christian territory, but that's another set of thoughts) the one so deeply loved, only to be lost again. When they are reunited Orpheus is not to look at her or she will return definitively to the Underworld, lost to him in this life forever. And, of course, he turns and looks at her. Who would not?

I have been resisting writing the article, brief as it will be, because it brings me close to what is gone, to places and times and events now past, to those who are dead, and to people and places living but different than when I encountered them in the early enthusiasm of monastic youth. It brings me close to what might have been but wasn't, and to what is, but not as I had hoped or imagined. And, not to be too lugubrious, some things have turned out better!

For Orpheus the death of the object of his love brings forth the power of his art, and I suspect that this is one of the reasons this story has moved so many for so many centuries, and probably still does. (I would mention the film Black Orpheus as a contemporary witness to the story's power, but it would only date me!) Eurydice's loss opens the gates of creativity to Orpheus, but in this version he cannot continue, and takes poison to join his beloved. Haydn's Orfeo cannot face his loss and live.

How can we write about "the" past when it is our own past? -- because in writing this article I will be writing about myself as well as the community I have been part of, and not something that happened before me. How can we write about what is irretrievably lost except to memory, and in setting it down, in choosing this and not that to represent, how can we not betray that past, that love? How can one continue to live when one's love does not? How can any artist take what he has lost and give substance to what is inexpressible, make what is emotionally inchoate beautiful, externalize it and share it in some recognizable artistic form, and continue to live? Certainly he cannot do so unchanged.

To give substance to the memory of what has been lost to external reality is to change it from the pure but unexpressed memory to a shaped and produced and shared object. By that act the memory, the love, will now always be different. That is the nature of art. In sharing it, it is lost in its completeness, it dies a second death. And so, at a profound level, the artist who "makes music" of his loss is both acting to recapture it and acting to betray its completeness. The work of art is thus not only an act of betrayal (losing its completeness in concrete, shared expression). It is also a work of hope, because in making it, the artist is rejecting the option of joining what is now gone (except for memory) in its Eurydicean oblivion. The artist reshapes and gives to others as beauty what would have drawn him down with it into what is no more. He conquers the Orphic temptation to lose himself in his private, irrecoverable, sensate memory, which will be lost to the world if it is not shared, and ironically, lost to himself (as private, as complete) if he does share it.

The artist, or musician, or writer, or (in my case) historian, takes "the" past, recognizes it as his own past, and makes something new of it, something that will live for others, as well as refashioning it for himself. Neither he nor "the" -- his -- past is the same after it is done.

Mystical Chapters

2009-09-15T10:31:00.012-04:00

I finished a book last week.

Now ordinarily that's not such a headline statement. There are good reasons not to finish a book: it has become boring; it is badly written and I just can't bear it anymore; I have figured out the main point(s) and a swift glance through the remaining chapters convinces me that my time is better spent elsewhere. I have abandoned many books over the years for these and other reasons. But I finish more than I abandon. At least I think I do.

Last week I finished a book and I was sorry I had come to the end. It is The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul's Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Early Christian Contemplatives, translated and introduced by John Anthony McGuckin. It consists of three "centuries" of sayings arranged in the classic Evagrian way: Praktikos, Theoretikos and Gnostikos. The eastern Christian sages include Evagrios (using McGuckin's Greek-based spelling), of course, but also Maximos the Confessor, Theodoros the Ascetic, Thalassios the Libyan, Symeon the New Theologian, Niketas Stethatos, and many others.

When I got the book I was initially disappointed. Some of the pages aren't printed as clearly as they might be. And as I looked at the layout of the sayings, in loose short-line poetic format, I thought, Oh dear, another smallish essay strung out into book length. I did not lay it aside, but began to read it. And as I did I began to be drawn into the world of the sayings. I decided to make it the book I read a bit of at the beginning of our common corporate meditation time at the noon office. And so began months of reading one or two of the brief chapters. They opened up worlds to me, not so much in that I did not understand what they said: they are perfectly consonant with the logos theology so prominent in the Eastern church from earliest days. But rather, the beauty of their imagery and expression gave me much to ponder in meditation.

When at last I read and pondered the final one, by Symeon the New Theologian, from his Mystical Prayer, I was not left with a sense of disappointment. I was left with a deep sense of satisfaction. It begins "Come true light. Come, eternal life. Come, hidden mystery." and on through 29 biddings, ending in "For I must give you all my thanks for making yourself one with me in spirit." That is how I felt at that moment, and indeed, how I had felt for many moments during the blessing of this book over the months past.

One Chapter remains especially with me. It so reminds me of George Herbert (especially in "Prayer 1") that I wonder whether he in his Greek studies -- because he was a formidable student of Greek as well as Latin -- I wonder whether he might have encountered it and pondered it and allowed its rhythms and substance to influence him. It is by Symeon the New Theologian, to whom I am apparently especially drawn:

My Christ,
you are the Kingdom of Heaven,
you are the land promised to the meek,
you are the meadows of paradise,
the hall of the celestial banquet,
the ineffable bridal chamber,
the table open for all comers.
You are the bread of life,
the wonderful new drink,
the cool jar of water,
the water of life.
You are the lamp
that never goes out for all your saints,
the new garment, the diadem,
the one who distributes diadems.
You are our joy and repose,
our delight and glory.
You are gladness and laughter, my God.
Your grace, the grace of the all-holy Spirit,
shines in the saints like a blazing sun.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

2009-09-03T19:41:00.005-04:00

People my age can probably remember the torture session in grammar school when we had to get up in front of the class and tell everybody something about our summer. That's the point when one begins to spot the good speakers, but for others it can be excruciating. I eventually got over it, obviously. Here's my offering for this little class:

I began my "time off" with OHC's Long Retreat, 10 days of silence at the monastery. This is a venerable tradition and I look forward to it every year. It is a time when the schedule is simplified to encourage rest and quiet reflection. Matins in the morning, Eucharist at noon, Vespers at 5 pm, then one silent meal taken together, and that's it. The first few days I basically crash, and then begin to emerge. I was particularly interested when toward the end I thought a Tuesday was a Wednesday (when I was scheduled at the altar) and vested and said the Mass with the commemoration I thought was the right one. Everyone was very kind. I was the only one really upset. But it did make me think twice about the desire to enter the timeless realm!

After taking the Sunday services at Ascension and Holy Trinity one more time, I took off for two weeks in New York City, staying at the House of the Redeemer. I loved it. If you can envision a gentle time in New York, this was it. That neighborhood (East 95th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenues) is clean, quiet, genteel even. It is walking distance to several major museums and other amenities. I had dinner several times with Carl Sword, OHC, lunch with some friends, went to the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Sunday, where the Rector, Jim Burns, preached a good sermon. Bede came down for a few days from West Park and we visited museums, saw a show and had some good meals together.

But mostly I rested, walked, listened to music and read. I brought a raft of books to read: Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red; Rupert Shortt's Rowan's Rule; Pierre Hadot's Philosophy as a Way of Life; Kathleen Norris's Dakota, plus some technical works on Evagrius and Cassian. But in wandering through some bookstores I got a couple of other books while I was there, and they were what I actually ended up reading: Ryszard Kapuscinski's delightful Travels with Herodotus, and Robert Wright's The Evolution of God.

I also enjoyed being at the House of the Redeemer for an extended visit because it gave me the opportunity to see it up close, get a better sense of the physical work involved in upkeep, and develop a closer working relationship with the Executive Director, Judi Counts, and the other staff.

And so I returned to the monastery rested and ready for the new program year. I hope your summer was similarly refreshing.

Ecclesiastical Anxieties

2009-07-20T05:55:00.016-04:00

I preached on the Feeding of the Five Thousand in Mark 6:31-44 yesterday. I was taking services for Jennifer Barrows at Ascension, West Park and Holy Trinity, Highland, NY, the Episcopal churches closest to the Monastery. Jennifer is a goodhearted, hardworking priest, whose career before ordination included organizing social services and practical necessities for homeless people in midtown Manhattan. She deserves her break.

These two churches are yoked, and share the common problems of smaller, underfunded churches everywhere. They have beautiful buildings which need attention. The congregations are small. There is no substantial endowment. The bulletin listed a need for $7,000 to replace the "air handlers" at Holy Trinity. We had a little fun playing with those words. What it comes down to is that the blower system for the heat needs help.

This is a story that can be observed in thousands of churches. It is one of the stories that underlines the narratives of the recent General Convention: not enough people, not enough money, old structures needing maintenance.

I enjoyed preaching to these two congregations. I gave them a bit of historical cultural background for interpretation, and suggested that we always are interpreting on three levels simultaneously: what the text meant to its earliest hearers/readers in the context from which it originally came; how the text has been normatively proclaimed in the practice of the Church over time; and what it might mean to us in our particular and present situation.

I found the Gospel story especially interesting on the third, present, level. Here you have thousands of people running after the disciples and after Jesus, tracking them down in the wilderness, demanding teaching. This event is not a carefully planned attempt to get a large crowd to come to your special event. Quite the opposite. Its success brings the problem to the fore.

The people have left everything to seize this opportunity to hear the good Word. And their trust has left them unprepared for the practicalities: there is no organized food event. Visions of potluck planning meetings that take longer than the potluck rise before me, as a sort of counter-image.

Note that the concern is not coming from the people. It comes from the leaders. Here the background gives us a clue. The key passage is Mark 6:34: Jesus is concerned about the people following him because they are like sheep without a shepherd. My Jerusalem Bible study edition, usually so diligent in its marginal notes, fails to point to the OT referent for this passage. But the wonderful commentary by Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of Mark: A Commentary, does. In Numbers 27:17, Moses, having learned that he is not to enter the Promised Land, asks the Lord to appoint Joshua to be Israel's new leader, so that they may not be like sheep without a shepherd. This passage introduces the two key image clusters that lie behind Mark's story: the Exodus and the figure of the Shepherd, which help to explain the seemingly extraneous bits about the people being divided into hundreds and fifties, and the green grass on which they are invited to recline. Mark is not one to waste details.

So: Exodus (Moses morphing into Joshua, people out in the wilderness seeking their new life) and Shepherd (the inescapable comparison with David, and the inevitable reference to the 23rd Psalm) form the background to this story. The feeding miracle is thus linked to the manna in the desert as well as the shepherd leading the sheep to pasture. God will provide.

And so on to the General Convention moment: Anxiety. So many anxieties. Budget cutting. Structures that are too large -- talk of combining small dioceses at GC. Cutting the size of the national Church staff. Trimming GC itself from 10 to 8 days. God created the world in 6, so maybe we could improve our own processes a little. No in person meetings for the many groups that do the planning work of the Church next year, but relying on electronic communication. Not printing so much next time. And so on. Good, sensible, practical responses from good, practical people to real, practical problems.

Jesus does not enter into their anxiety. He simply looks at them (I had fun imagining his facial expressions, the pause as perhaps he recollected that a first, uncensored, response might not have been helpful. One has had such moments.) And then he says, "Give them something to eat yourselves." What?!! The leaders provide what the followers need?? It's supposed to be the other way around. It's like the national Church giving money to the dioceses, not the other way around. Clearly impossible. But a VERY instructive challenge to the leadership!

But where will we get bread to feed all these people? 200 denarii wouldn't be enough. If you calculate the value of the 2 denarii that the Good Samaritan gives to the inkeeper for 2 nights lodging and care at a minimum of $100 a night, 200 works out to $20,000. How can we possibly get so much for this great need?

So then Jesus sensibly asks, Well, what food is there here now? What actual resources do we have? And, famously, they turn out to be more than enough.

So many lessons here. But two principally come to me this time around (one does preach this from time to time, and it is always different!).

First, whatever we really need is already present. The Lord's example is first to challenge the leadership's assumptions about what is needed and where it is to come from, and then to look for what is already present and share it creatively, trusting that if we do so, God will provide. He will. He really will.

Second, this time the miracle seemed to me not to be the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, but the spontaneous assembling of this huge crowd -- 5000 men, implying women and children, probably 15,000 to 20,000 people. The Word they are seeking and which Jesus is preaching is so powerful that they rush out into the countryside to hear it, leaving the cozy security of regular meals behind, at least temporarily.

Maybe the Church should look to what it already has and use it creatively, expecting that what is truly needful will be provided when the time comes. Maybe the Church should concentrate its energies on the quality of the proclamation, listening to the people's deepest yearnings (enslaved Israelites hoping for freedom, sheep needing pasture and good trustworthy shepherds) and finding the answer in the liberating Word Himself. Preach that and people will come looking for you. When is the last time a crowd showed up at your church wanting to hear the Word so much that it forgot to think about lunch? May it be.

For the moment, there were 6 at Ascension and 13 at Holy Trinity. Good, solid, friendly, faithful people. It doesn't seem many. But it is what the Spirit drew that morning. They are God's gift to each other, to the Church, and to me. They are enough, for this moment. And for next Sunday the 26th and for August 9, this disciple will work on a Word of salvation that will justify their journey to hear it.

Faithfulness in little. Planting seeds that will grow. Slaves who become the nation of God's own choosing. Flocks of sheep needing shepherding. I love the ministry in small places that don't seem to have very much. You never know how many baskets will be gathered at the end of the meal.

General Convention - Back home

2009-07-15T08:00:00.010-04:00

The trip back home on Sunday was uneventful. Gassed up the rental car, turned it in at the airport, waited for the flight, no problem SNA to ORD. In Chicago a previous flight to LGA had been canceled and many unhappy people were trying to get on the flight I was booked on. The waiting list was more than 100! Needless to say, the flight was full. I was seated next to a delightful young woman who joyfully shared that she was six months pregnant. That was really nice. I took the shuttle bus to Grand Central and the 8:45 train to Poughkeepsie, where our Superior met me. Thank you, Robert! I was really tired, and "peopled out", so I cocooned most of the day on Monday.

I have been processing what I saw and what has been happening at General Convention. In a lot of ways it is easier to do it at home than on the site, at least in part because the unfiltered experience lacks perspective and is too filled with incidental detail. So what follows is a meditation on what is known as D025, the resolution passed by both the Bishops and the Deputies, and now the official policy of the Episcopal Church.

D025 says that the Episcopal Church will no longer, at the national level, exclude homosexual people from the processes leading to ordination as Bishop simply because of the nature of their sexual orientation. If you have read my blogs at all faithfully, you know that I am concerned for the unity of the Anglican Communion. There are many issues confronting Anglicans, but this is the one that is most controversial and divisive.

In his sermon on Saturday, Ray Suarez, of the PBS Nightly News, listed all the ways that the Episcopal Church seems to be out of step:

"So let’s stop clinging to that outmoded prayer book that happens to be one of the crown jewels of the English language, we’ve got the get rid of that hymnal, with all those tricky tunes and old-fashioned words… stop those long sermons delivered by people who always seem to want me to feel bad about something… the organs, the outfits, it’s so archaic in a world where religion bestsellers are trying to convince me that Jesus wants me to be rich. I thought Jesus wants me to be holy, and it just goes to show you how wrong a guy can be. But hey, while we’re jettisoning all these things that are leading us to what is called marketplace failure… let’s also stop the radical welcome… Let’s stop the willingness to live, sometimes uncomfortably, with the ambiguities of modern life."

I guess that Suarez is from the more traditional end of the Church, for which I give thanks. His point is, If Jesus wants us to be rich and successful, we're barking up the wrong trees. We should stop being what we are and became conservative megachurches.

But actually, Jesus does not want us to aim at becoming rich and successful. Jesus wants us to be holy.

And there's the rub. How can we as a church be holy when we are departing from the traditional standards of holiness?

Perhaps a church convention is not the place to go searching for holiness. For sure, that great besetting sin of churchmen down the ages is on full display: Ambition. It would be easy to lampoon this, but it would also be unjust and cruel. The Holy Spirit has always used ambition to get the work of the Church done. Are ambitious or proud people excluded from ordination? No. Are vainglorious people excluded? Check the Wippell's booth. They are not. Are people who want more than a moderate salary excluded? Surely you jest.

There are so many stony paths lined with temptations to sin that lead to ordination. So why single out one category of human behavior (sexual identity vs. desire for prosperity or worldly respect) over all the others and insist that God cannot work in and through it to accomplish His work?

I think the most brilliant line in D025 is the one that catalogues ways in which homosexual relationships can be channels of grace. It quotes a resolution from 9 years ago in doing so: "the General Convention has come to recognize that the baptized membership of The Episcopal Church includes same-sex couples living in lifelong committed relationships "characterized by fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, and the holy love which enables those in such relationships to see in each other the image of God" (2000-D039)"

It reminds me of St. Paul in Galatians 5:22-23: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law." (KJV). Fidelity, monogamy, mutual affection and respect, careful, honest communication, holy love: against these there can be no law.

What the Church needs is more holy people, and right now, more holy gay and lesbian people, people who show forth Christ in their lives, who are self-sacrificing, whose words and deeds are activated by the Holy Spirit, people through whom the love of Christ flows and to whom seekers after the goodness of God are drawn.

My beloved Episcopal Church has taken another step in the prophetic direction. This time it may be a step too far, if unquestioning unity on other peoples' terms is the criterion. If so, then we will need to throw ourselves into the arms of the Gracious Lord of us all. In this moment, I think we need more than anything, more than daring words and acts, more than brave (and perhaps over-brave) stances, more than self-congratulatory back-patting on one side and ungracious muttering in the other, what we need more than anything is the irrefutable evidence of holiness. Gay and lesbian holiness of such goodness that no Christian can deny the Spirit's anointing.

General Convention - 6

2009-07-13T08:33:00.009-04:00

Saturday is my last day at GC. I learned many years ago that the first four days or so at GC are the most productive for someone who is essentially doing public relations. In the past the first days were mobbed by visitors and it is good to be around then. But about the halfway point this aspect of GC begins to taper off. I understand that the exhibitors are required to sign a contract for the entire convention and man their booths. Some inevitably drift away. At any rate, that is why I decided to come home at the mid-point.

We get to the Conv. Center a little after 10. The opening hours for the exhibit hall are different most days, so today we don't have to wait. The same drill as days before -- check in at the booth, see who's around, talk. A very helpful consultation with Michael MacDonald at the Pension Fund booth.

The eucharist today features Ray Suarez, of the Jim Lehrer News Hour on PBS. He speaks on the day's theme, Hospitality. Lots of interesting insights. He speaks a little fast for the enormous room, but effectively. His basic message seems to be, Don't give up being who we are while trying to reach out. Behind me in the line for communion (given by Paul Colbert, former OHC) is Mark Lawrence, Bishop of South Carolina. I greet him and he tells me that we met years ago when I spoke to a Province VIII meeting on evangelism. Nice to reconnect. I am at a table with David Bryan, who points out the Primate of Canada, Fred Hiltz. OHC has had a priory in Toronto since the early 1970's. I go over and introduce myself to him. He is gracious.

I have linked up with Tony Jewiss, intending to do lunch (as the local idiom would have it). Tony is on deck to help out, with his vast experience of this event. He is homeless, in that he was not given a room in exchange for coming at his own expense and working on his own time, so he is camping out in rooms paid for but not used. After all those years of saving money for the Church at this vast event, I guess karma has caught up with him. At any rate, Bob Williams, former Communications Director at 815 and now doing the same for LA, and an old friend, is his angel. Thank you, Bob!

Tony is with Robbin Clark (St. Mark's, Berkeley), Fred and Barbara Borsch, and Rick Swanson, from W. Michigan. We decide to do lunch together, and I suggest Nory's, a favorite from many years, in a strip mall a mile or two away. Peruvian-Japanese seafood. We exchange directions and cell phone numbers and are on our way. Nory's hasn't changed a bit. They still have my favorite dish, pescado a lo macho, a fish fillet breaded and fried with a clear red spicy sauce, lots of shrimp, calamari and baby squid, and rice. Yummmmm. The portions are ample, and everyone is happy. I am especially happy, sitting for an hour or so with old and dear friends.

Back at the Conv. Center, more schmoozing. Toward the end of the afternoon Tom Schultz and I wander up to the House of Bishops, on the third floor, and listen to a bit of whatever it is they are doing. Then to the Prayer Chapel (now reassembled) for Evening Prayer. A bit more of the Bishops. Their process is formal, but not as formal as the Deputies.

CDSP is having a reception from 6 to 8 in lieu of a seminary dinner, so David Bryan, Tom and I head over to the Hilton for that. Tom received an honorary DD a couple of years ago, after many years of spiritual direction to countless students, alumni and staff. He was Prior of Incarnation Priory in Berkeley from 1992 until we closed it last year. His spiritual influence there has been incalculable. I got my M.Div. in 1979, and David was Superior for 9 years and knows it well. So much joyful schmoozing again. I sit down between John Conrad (All Saints, Riverside) and an old friend of my days in Santa Barbara, Mort Ward, now mentoring people in interim work. We talk of Santa Barbara, of course. Mark Hollingsworth (Bishop of Ohio) finds me. We were at CDSP together. A nice long chat. Also, Barry Beisner (Bp. of No. Calif.) and Tom Breidenthal (Bp. of So. Ohio), for shorter chats. Donn Morgan, Dean and President, gives a gracious speech. He's retiring in a year. Then Eliza Linley, head of the search committee for the new Dean. Eliza was an acolyte at All Souls, Berkeley, when I was a seminarian there 1977-79. So I find her. All Souls chat. She tells me that Helen Laverty McPeak is here as well. Also an All Souls acolyte from those times. Helen is now a priest as well, and in Henderson, NV. So we have the Nevada chat too (my father founded All Saints, Las Vegas, and I was ordained by Bishop Wes Frensdorff, of blessed memory).

At some point in all this I am beginning to realize that I have been at the Episcopal thing for a long time. (My whole life, actually!) All these younger people! I will celebrate 30 years as a priest this coming December 29. I should feel old, but I really don't. Except for my feet.

David, Tom and I have been invited to dinner at the home of former parishioners from St. Michael's, Al and Pat Battey, so we excuse ourselves and drive over. Not far. Pat is a loyal Daughter of the King, and both have been involved in renewal and charismatic ministries for years. Al and Pat say some unexpected and gracious words about the long-term impact of my Bible studies (twice a week for 9 years) at St. Michael's. I am deeply moved and grateful. It is a delightful reunion and a lovely meal with dear friends.

And so to bed.

General Convention - 5

2009-07-11T10:22:00.009-04:00

We arrived at the Conv. Center around 9 am only to discover that the exhibition hall, where we are based, is not open until 11. Somebody said that "they" want to channel people into the meetings and so forth. So we allowed ourselves to be channeled.

I was channeled into the House of Deputies where I heard a fair amount of the open microphone session on what to do about B033. This is the resolution passed at the last General Convention in which the church agreed not to ordain any bishops whose "manner of life" is not appropriate, or words to that effect. It was really about homosexual people. The catch word is "move on", which seems to mean to abrogate that commitment. The speakers repeat the same arguments over and over: the justice and inclusion argument for those who want to "move on", the sensitivity to other Anglicans argument from those who want the policy to continue. Lots of use of the airplane analogy -- two wings are needed. There is a little edge to a couple of the comments, but not a lot. I am more interested in the tone of the remarks than in their content. The Deputies will almost certainly "move on". The action on this issue will be with the Bishops. My concern, as I expressed it yesterday, is the way in which decisions are expressed. I want us all to fly this plane together.

The morning eucharist features the Bishop of Milwaukee and a Moravian bishop. We are now in communion with the Moravians. Bonnie Anderson (President of the House of Deputies) opened her sermon with the story of Louis Armstrong being asked about how do jazz players manage to stay together when there is no written music: “Pops, what is jazz?” His answer first came in that gentle smile and then this penetrating response, “Man, if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.” She applied this to unity. The intuitive, feeling approach to unity, I guess.

The day winds on in the now-usual pattern. Lots more conversations. Vern Jones, an OHC Associate of 59 years standing, retired from St. Peter's, Redwood City, CA, now in ministry to older people. Jim Schumard, from Savannah, a graduate of St. Andrew's School who asks after Bonnie Spencer and Lee Stevens, and has an idea about funding for a possible new school at Grahamstown: Get St. Andrew's alumni involved. Jim turns out to be related in some important way to Vern. Another former OHC man is here, Vincent Shamo. I have a lovely chat with Janet Wylie, briefly my secretary at St. Michael's, Anaheim, before she became the Bishop's secretary.

About the middle of the afternoon I hit a wall. I am really tired. The Integrity eucharist is in the evening, and that is a priority for me. Tom and Lister feel the same depletion of energy, so after any number of wonderful conversations on the way out, including a good one with Frank Griswold, we return to the motel and crash.

The Integrity eucharist is at the Hilton. A reception is in progress, crushed with people, friends at every turn. The room is beautifully set up, with the furnishings from the Prayer Chapel. There must be at least a thousand seats, probably more. By the time the service starts it is full to overflowing. Vincent Jang, former OHC novice, now a deacon, is seated behind me. I'm next to my old friend Stuart Hoke, formerly with Trinity Wall Street, now retired to North Carolina and pastoring a small Anglo-Catholic Black parish in Durham. Great music and pageantry, with a Gospel procession that must have lasted 20 minutes, banners and holy water being sprinkled on one and all by Gene Robinson, the celebrant. A huge Thank You applause for Susan Russell's six great years of leadership, well deserved. Barbara Harris preached a sort of marching orders sermon, with edgy reflections on the sacraments: If a person, by reason of his/her sexuality, can't be ordained a bishop, then why ordain at all? In fact, why baptize? She was powerful on the logic of inclusion, devastating on the audacity to draw lines where God erases them: "What right does anyone have to draw lines beyond to whom God's grace, care and favor extend?" I was very moved by the whole service, and responded to the call for clergy to come forward. Many did so, a great crush. Here's the Episcopal Life story on the service.

The most poignant moments for me though were hearing Louie Crew read the call to worship at the beginning, and the vast applause and affection for Ed Browning. His famous statement in 1985 here at Anaheim (he was elected in St Michael's Church!) that "There will be no outcasts in the Episcopal Church" was the energizing moment for so many gay and lesbian Christians in our church. Louie basically invented Integrity's ministry and has been a rock in all the storms, a gracious rock too, if I may mangle a metaphor. He is a model of how to be true to principle and remain in fellowship with people who disagree. It is impossible not to like Louie. Ed Browning is showing his age. I am so very happy that he is spending his energy to be at this Convention and to be honored as he should be. He was and is and deserves the name and respect of a prophet.

General Convention - 4

2009-07-10T10:09:00.011-04:00

Thursday is the Big Eucharist -- the Archbishop of Canterbury is preaching. We get to the Conv. Center about 10, and it is to start at 11:30. I hitch up with Jamie Callaway from Trinity Church, New York, and we try to make our way in early for a decent seat. Either he or I are accosted at every point by friends. I must really work on patience and disengagement, because I find my usual anxieties about fulfilling my prior agenda rather than responding to the moment coming to the fore. We find a table with some folks from Minnesota and North Dakota. But then Jamie goes off to find someone else he has hoped to sit with.

Jon Bruno, the Bishop of Los Angeles, is presiding. I had forgotten how big a presence he is -- large physically (even with his foot problems, which make him hobble), his booming voice, his habit of injecting comments into the liturgy. He always has a young person beside him at the altar. It is very clear that although he wants the eucharist to be inclusive, he remains the center of it.

Rowan Williams' meditation is magnificent. He begins by saying he wants to speak frankly, and he does. He thanks the Episcopal Church for hanging in there with the Anglican Communion, in a way that makes it clear that he is responsible for the whole Communion and not just our corner of it. And he says clearly that he hopes the EC does not decide to do certain things, which he does not specify, but which I suppose means repealing B033, same sex unions, the Windsor report response, and the rest of that raft of agendas. Then he gives a most wonderful meditation on facing up to what is not real, to nothingness and death. Here's the link to the text on his site.

After his words and during some of the music and prayers, before the eucharistic action, I find myself tearing up. I don't know exactly why. Perhaps anxiety mixed with joy. I have not spent much energy here so far thinking about the issues, because, frankly, I am tired of them and think that the church's over-energetic preoccupation with sex and who's more orthodox or in the progressive spirit or whatever is a devil's trick to destroy this part of the Body. The major issues are all important, and I have my opinions on all of them, of course. I am generally on board with the mainstream agenda of the Episcopal Church. What bothers me is a passion for being right and don't count the cost, on every side of every issue. My anxiety is there, because these 990-plus people can actually move this boat in the water, and it isn't clear yet what they will do. And since it is They who have the power, and the Rest Of Us really don't, there is a sense of detachment for me, just watching as Whatever slouches into view. Joy because of the magnificent voicing of the truth of the Christian faith at a fundamental level this morning by the leader of the Communion, who has taken time to be here and tell us his concerns and lead us, for a moment at least, out of the legislative lowlands into something very profound.

There are more people today in the exhibit hall, and more good conversations. I sit down at a lunch table with Carmen Guerrero, who was the multi-cultural staff person in LA when I was there and then went to 815 to run Jubilee Ministries, and is now in Arizona working on those issues. She tells me of a large Sudanese congregation in Phoenix that has organized itself. At our table is the Rector of Sitka, Alaska, who tells of the ministry of his church to the marginalized there, where addiction issues are huge, and the expense and difficulty of their Standing Committee, which can't afford to gather very often. There is an older woman from New Hampshire who tells of doing Vacation Bible School in Alaskan villages in the 50's, and is very moving.

David Bryan Hoopes and Tom Schultz arrive in the afternoon. Clark Trafton and Lew Kerman have brought David from Palm Springs, where he had a little R&R with them. See the picture of them with Don Anderson above.

Tom brings news of injuries to Jeff Bullock, the Rector of All Saints, Montecito, the husband of Nancy, who is the administrator for our ministry in Santa Barbara, and a dear friend of mine from seminary. He had a bad fall from his mountain bike. A little later I see Jim Burns, Rector of Heavenly Rest in NYC, who is returning this evening to be with his wife Nancy for major surgery. Please pray for them all.

Good chats with Fred and Barbara Borsch (formerly Los Angeles and CDSP), Ward and Jennie Ewing (General Seminary), Steve Huber (National Cathedral), and many others. If you read this and I have not mentioned your name, mea culpa. Everyone is a joy, every conversation a treasure. Really.

The day wears on. 5pm comes. Evening prayer, then taking DB, Tom and Lister Tonge back to the motel to get ready for dinner. Clark and Lew take us to the Anaheim White House, which maintains its high culinary standards (as I remember them from my days here) in an over-the-top decorating mode (it represents the School of Creative Fabric Use: covered chairs, ceilings, etc.). In the next room is a little party for Ed Browning attended by Frank Griswold and Carl Gerdau, among others. Frank and Carl say hello on the way in.

And so to bed.

General Convention - 3

2009-07-09T11:55:00.008-04:00

Wednesday began with breakfast at the motel. They provide donuts, sugar-laced dry cereals, milk, orange juice and coffee. The Holy Spirit Sisters have arrived. Also Fr. Lister Tonge, who was CR in England, but left, and has become Chaplain to CSJB and also to Cuddesdon College. A great guy. On to the Conv. Center. Too early for Lister to register, so we went in to the huge space used for worship to find a place for the opening Eucharist of the Convention. Set up with round tables, about 8 chairs to a table. Lively opening music (a southern African guy with a drum whose energy level was just a tad above mine at that hour). The Archbishop of Canterbury arrived about 10 minutes before the service with a retinue of 6 or 8 people, sat down at a table near us, but behind a post so we couldn't see him.

The PB presided and preached, very well. Her text was Ezekiel 36:24-26, a new heart will I give you. She used the analogy of a heart transplant, quite effectively. A good sermon. There was a little hiatus at communion when it was realized that they had stationed all the cup-bearers but hadn't put out the bread, but after 5 minutes or so that was rectified. A decent Eucharist with a good sermon.

Being at GC to represent an organization means standing around your booth a lot and talking to people who walk by, and also wandering around and talking to other people at their booths. My impression -- and it is only an impression -- is that there are fewer exhibitors at this GC than I remember from the past. Certainly there was not a horde of visitors. After a brief rush in the morning, it settled down pretty quickly.

But the relative quiet meant that I had a lot of really good conversations with OHC friends, personal friends, Church acquainances. My predecessor at St. Michael's, Gary Goldacker, was just around the corner, and we had a long talk. Also Barton Jones from the Pension Fund; Jane Tomaine (St. Benedict's Toolbox); Leo Frade, Bishop of SW Florida. Two former OHC brothers, Paul Colbert and Philip Mantle. I'd better not get deeper into names, because I will forget some. I'm name-challenged, a terrible affliction for someone in the ministry.

The day went fairly fast, although standing and talking is hard work and quite tiring after some hours. I encountered the PB and told her I liked her sermon. She seemed pleased, but probably 100 people had already told her that.

Everyone wants to know about Santa Barbara.

Schmoozing For Christ. That's the phrase I started using in conversations. I''ll be interested to hear if it comes back.

Evening Prayer again. More this time. 3 OSH, Don, Lister, Gregory, 2 CSF who have arrived from San Francisco. An Army chaplain from Oklahoma who is the nephew of Sr. Ruth, OSH, and has some funny stories about growing up with an aunt who is a nun. And Andrew and Barnabas from SSP, up from San Diego. Barnabas is having serious foot problems, and has had for some time.

The others being variously engaged, Lister and I depart for the evening. I take him up to St. Michael's and show it to him. This is the third time for me. I realized this morning that I am inoculating myself against old memories, bringing St. Michael's into the present for myself. It is good. Again, people recognized me. That was lovely. The Roman priest who got married and joined the Episcopal Church in Miami, Cutie, is preaching at St. Michael's tonight. A real phenomenon may be starting. He is very famous in his television ministry in the Hispanic community. All the Hispanic clergy I have talked to say this is the event which has brought the EC to the attention of masses of Latinos. So tonight's preachment is aimed at non-EC Hispanics. Interesting.

I wangled a dinner invitation from my dear friends Tom Curtiss and Saul Renteria in Silverlake, so Lister and I changed and we drove up. Lister had never been in LA before. We had a drink and looked at Saul's latest paintings (Saul's website is here), and then went to a great old Mexican restaurant for dinner.

An uneventful freeway drive home (well, uneventful for me -- Lister is not yet tuned in to the zen of the flow of a 10 lane freeway at 75 miles an hour). And so to bed.

General Convention - 2

2009-07-09T10:53:00.008-04:00

I thought it might be useful to set down the basics of what has happened on this trip day by day and let thoughts, if any, emerge from them.

It turns out my suspicion about the distance of the motel from the Convention Center was correct. I'm glad I rented the car. The walk takes 20-30 minutes, along the heavily traveled Disneyland Drive. It is nicely landscaped, but a long haul, at least for me. Some of the CAROA folks enjoy the walk, to which I say, God bless you.

Don Anderson, Director of CAROA, Fr. Gregory, OJN, President of CAROA and I assembled the booth on Tuesday morning. One of the St. Margaret sisters arrived as we were starting and helped. It looks fine. There's a wide, flat screen tv that plays the CAROA video in a loop. We are giving out the dvd of it along with a brochure to anyone who asks. It is a little weird to hear Br. Scott's radio announcer voice all the time. The Order of St. Helena has its own booth next to us, with Srs. Cintra, Deborah Magdalene and Sophia Woods doing the honors.

That task was done about 11:00 or so, so Don and Gregory came with me for a little "inside Anaheim" tour. We went past where my old house was (much improved), then to St. Michael's. The secretary let us in to the two churches and the other spaces, and we saw pretty much everything. Then up to my favorite taqueria, Guadalajara on Anaheim Blvd. Don and Gregory were in a new world, with Mexican food in an untranslated menu. I had my favorite burrito pura carne al pastor (all meat, pork). Then on to the Anaheim Police Department where Sgt. Chuck Knight, Warden at St. Michael's in my time, was desk sergeant for the afternoon. Chuck gave us a little tour, including the dispatch center, which has very spiffy new computer stuff. Then to the local Vons supermarket for supplies, back to the motel, plug in the fridges in the rooms and load the produce in. And then we walked back to the Conv. Center. We wanted to hear the Presiding Bishop's opening address in the afternoon but did not understand the schedule correctly, and so missed it.

Tuesday was not the official opening day, but there were lots of people I know among the exhibitors and volunteers, many happy reunion conversations. A trickle of visitors. It is clear that everyone wants to know about what will happen in Santa Barbara.

CAROA is supposed to man the "Prayer Chapel" (as distinct, I suppose, from other sorts of chapels) which is WAAAAY at the north end of the huge exhibition spaces lobby, on the second floor, around a corner, tucked away next to the ultimate pair of bathrooms in the complex. You really have to be intentional about prayer in this space. No cheap grace. Your typical bare, room-divider divided, high ceilinged, overlit, "smaller" convention space. Some weird furnishings ordered up included four very colorful 5-6 foot pavement candles; an incomplete (8 of 14) set of "stations" -- a face with various expressions set against a dark background; a large square purpose built (two by fours and plywood) altar with fabrics (iridescent orange and a squarish fair linen); and most interestingly, three Asian (Tibetan?) umbrellas on long poles anchored in concreted plastic buckets. Later we met Randy Kimmler, who works in the LA Diocesan offices, who told us he was responsible for setting the room up. We came back a little before 5 for Evening Prayer and the rooms looked fine, the orange iridescent altar with the pavement candles creating a space in front, fifty chairs in three groups, and the station pictures in a semicircle behind. See the picture above.

So we (Don, Gregory and myself, and 3 OSH) had Evening Prayer. Don and I headed back to the motel on foot, took a detour into Disney's Grand Californian Hotel, sat in the beautiful Ahwanee-style lobby for a while, found our way into Disney Downtown, which was packed, and then got lost trying to get back to the sidewalk on Disneyland Drive. It is pretty clear that walking outside the Disneyspace is not greatly encouraged. We finally found our way back. I wanted to take Don to Nory's, a wonderful hole in the wall Peruvian-Japanese seafood restaurant in a strip mall, but when we got there, it was closed on Tuesdays. So up to another old favorite, Marie Callender's, where St. Michael's folk often congregated. Middle American comfort food. As Pepys would say, And so to bed.

General Convention - 1

2009-07-07T07:55:00.014-04:00

I was wide awake at 4 am from jet lag, so here's a new blog.

Our Superior, Br. Robert, asked me some time ago to help represent OHC at the GC in Anaheim, so here I am. The trip yesterday was fine. I took the 8:56 am Metro North train from Poughkeepsie to 125th Street and then got the M60 bus ($2.25 - a pretty good deal) to LGA. The train took 90 minutes, the bus arrived at the stop in 5, and 45 minutes later I was at the Delta terminal. The flight, to Minneapolis and then on to Orange County (SNA) boarded but then waited 50 minutes for takeoff. No problem in the plane change at MSP. I'll be here until Sunday morning, July 12.

During the flights I started Iris Murdoch's The Green Knight, which has been sitting on my shelf forever. Finally shamed into reading it. Pages and pages of dialogue which seems to be going nowhere, and then all of a sudden, a passage of narrative that just grips you and won't let you go. And Julia S. Konstantinovsky's new Evagrius Ponticus: The Making of a Gnostic. I'm three chapters in and it promises to be one of the best things going on Evagrius.

In addition to schmoozing for OHC, I am helping out with CAROA, the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas, which will have a booth in the exhibit hall. The point of it all is to be visible, to connect with old friends and make some new ones, and basically to hold up the flag for Holy Cross and the religious/monastic life in the Episcopal Church.

I have been to several GCs before: New Orleans (1982), Anaheim (1985), Detroit (1988), Phoenix (1991), Denver (2000), and now back in Anaheim. It is huge: each diocese (110 or so, including 10 foreign dioceses) is represented by four clergy and four laity, plus alternates, as well as its bishop. There are two legislative houses, like the US Congress: The House of Bishops (the bishops) and the House of Deputies (the clergy and laity). You can do the math. A minimum of 990 people to do the business, depending on how many alternates show up and whether there's an extra bishop or two. Well over a thousand official members of the Convention. But of course that's just the beginning. Most of the national church staff is here and a lot of diocesan staff people as well. Then there are the official organizations of the Church, from the Pension Fund on down, with people from the myriads of committees and commissions, the different official ministries, and a lot of unofficial ministries. The vendors of church stuff of all kinds. The exhibition hall is always huge. And of course faithful (or at least interested) church people drop in. It is a huge event.

My friend Tony Jewiss worked in the GC office for 8 years or so, retiring in 2007, and so I got a peek inside the planning process. It is complicated work, with facilities having to be locked in years in advance, schedules to be coordinated, people's egos to be massaged, and enormous amounts of detail work.

I was the Rector of St. Michael's Episcopal Church in Anaheim from 1992 to 2001, so the first thing I did after checking into the Motel 8 on Disneyland Drive, where CAROA are staying, was to drive up to see it. There was a gathering of Native American ministries just ending, and I wasn't dressed to be recognized, so I just poked my head in here and there to see how it looked. Pretty good was the answer. St. Michael's has had hard financial times recently. It is one of the largest Hispanic congregations in the Episcopal Church, and most of those folks are poor and virtually all of them were raised in the Hispanic Roman Catholic culture where stewardship is handled quite differently. Maybe I'll write about that someday, but the bottom line is, there are a lot of dollar bills in the plate on Sunday morning, but not enough of them.

I had been back to Anaheim for a wedding at St. Michael's some years ago, so this was not the first time. But it is a strange feeling. Fortunately the first person I ran across remembered me (bless you!).

More later.

The House of the Redeemer

2009-06-08T08:21:00.015-04:00

Last week I was trying to get over a chest cold and so was unable to attend one of the favorite things that happens in my life each year: the annual Garden Party benefit at the House of the Redeemer, an Episcopal house of retreat in New York City. I'm glad to say that it was a smashing success. By all reports it was a lovely event, the people were interesting, and lots of money was raised.

The House of the Redeemer, on 95th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, was founded in 1949 by Edith Shepard Fabbri, a great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt. She and her husband, Ernesto Fabbri, built it during the First World War to a Florentine Renaissance design. The architect was Grosvenor Atterbury. It incorporates many original elements brought over by ship, including a spectacular Library, the woodwork of which is from the library of a palace of the Dukes of Urbino, and is certainly one of the great rooms of the City of New York. The House is among the few standing great homes of New York, very few of which retain their original character as homes, with many of the original furnishings and works of art intact, as the Redeemer does.

Mrs. Fabbri was a devout Episcopalian, and a woman of considerable spiritual depth. When it came time for her to consider the disposition of her house, she decided she wanted to create a retreat center, "a place apart", as she put it, a place of beauty, quiet and prayer in the midst of the City. The Board was created in 1949 and the house deeded to the Board. It included Bishop Robert Campbell, OHC, who was then the Superior of the Order of the Holy Cross. Bishop Campbell had been the Bishop of Liberia, but had returned to the U.S. for reasons of health. The Board asked the Sisters of the Community of St. Mary to staff and run the House, and they did so until 1980.

The House's offerings have grown to include musical programs, lectures, group spiritual retreats, and meetings and events of non-profit organizations of all kinds. But its primary work is as a place of retreat and prayer, and the Chapel sees daily Morning and Evening Prayer Monday through Friday every week,as well as the Eucharist on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the House is open. The public rooms are not air conditioned, so the House is formally closed in July and August, though some guests brave the rigors of summer. There is a faithful band of people who worship regularly together with the priest in residence, who changes monthly. Many individuals and groups, Church related or simply spiritually minded, who value quiet and calm come to stay at the House when they are in New York, making a time of retreat their base for whatever else has brought them.

I became involved with the House in 2002, during the first year after I moved to New York City to became the priest at the Church of St. Edward the Martyr in East Harlem. I was looking around for a congenial church or community related activity to join, to give me a larger scope of interests and contacts and to be useful. My friend Fr. Tom Synan invited me to the 2001 Christmas benefit at The Church of the Heavenly Rest, at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, and in the course of that I had a chat with the Rector, Fr. James Burns. I indicated I was looking for something additional to do, and his face lit up and he told me about the House. He was on the Board and would introduce me. It seemed a good fit for me, as I had been Prior of Mount Calvary in Santa Barbara for nine years and Guestmaster there for two years before, so I knew the retreat business pretty well.

Jim introduced me to the Board President, Frances Reese, known to all as Franny. Franny was a legend in her own time, a tireless worker for Episcopal Church and environmental causes, and a member of one of the old-line New York families, with deep roots in Dutchess County and in New York City. I was elected to the Board of Trustees in May, 2002. In the fall Franny drafted me to work on a subcommittee with the excellent Barton Jones, of the Church Pension Fund. We did our work, made our report the next Spring, the issues were resolved, and I went on vacation.

I was in Sevilla. I had wandered over to the local internet cafe and was checking e-mail, and learned to my horror that Franny had been killed in a terrible automobile accident. This was a real crisis for the House, as Franny had led the efforts which had reorganized the House's ministry and governance and had begun to put it on a secure administrative footing. We were devastated.

To my surprise, the Board asked me to be the new President. I was elected in December, 2003, and have served as President since. It has been wonderful, with many interesting challenges, and with some complex and difficult decisions to make. It has been my joy to work with a wonderful group of Board members and with a terrific staff, headed by the marvelous Judi Counts. When I moved back to the Monastery last fall, I asked the Board if they wanted me to continue as President, since I would no longer be close by, and they asked me to stay, and re-elected me last October.

I would like to encourage all the readers of my blog to become acquainted with the House of the Redeemer. It is one of the great places.

A Great Library Retreat

2009-05-18T04:30:00.006-04:00

Last week we held our second library volunteers retreat here at the Monastery. It was wonderful. The first was in November and attracted eight volunteers. This one brought three people back from the first retreat plus nine more, for a total of twelve.

I was a little concerned that we wouldn't have enough jobs for everyone, but I needn't have worried.

Holy Cross's library is located on the ground floor of the new monastery building, where it occupies most of the space. It is, next to the Chapel and the Refectory, the biggest area in the monastery. I would say that we have perhaps 15,000 books. The collection is an organic one, as most monastery libraries are that do or did not also serve as school, college or seminary libraries. That is, it has grown in response to the needs and interests of the community over the years. Our library is strong in areas you would expect, in older Anglo-Catholic materials, spirituality, and in religious biography. The older generations loved reading lives of holy people -- Fr. Huntington recommended it in his Rule. The scripture section is not huge but serviceable. The section on the religious life has some interesting strengths, particularly in materials on Anglican religious life. And there are some surprises. For example, in the 70's many of the brethren were involved in addiction ministries, so we have a fair collection of books on that subject. And quite a lot of liturgical materials, dating from Bonnell Spencer's days.

The collection uses the Dewey Decimal system. But not exactly, of course. One of the older fathers, now gone to glory, John Baldwin, tweaked it to fit his ideas. Actually, wrenched is a better word than tweaked. Whole sections were reassigned, including the religious life. When we made plans about the Library a couple of years ago, it was decided to get a computerized system which would allow more or less automatic data retrieval and cataloging. But it was clear that the work involved in switching over to the Library of Congress system was so great that, given the fact that we can't hire staff, it might never get done. So we have retained the Dewey system, and are gradually changing our special categories back to the normal ones. This means a lot of recataloging will be going one for quite a while. It also means that we will have the old card catalog and the new computer system (a creature named ResourceMate) side by side for years to come, if not forever.

One of the projects I started when I become Librarian last October was to move all the books published in 1900 or before into a protected area, which, if not climate controlled exactly, at least has a de-humidifier. We had already moved the Patrologia Latina and its Greek companion set there. There is a surprising number of books from 1900 and before, and looking at that collection gives one a snapshot of the Community's interests at that point, just before we moved from Westminster, MD, to our then-new Henry Vaughn-designed Monastery in West Park. Lots of the sorts of books you would expect from Anglo-Catholic monk types, but some interesting outliers as well. The room needs some new shelving, which will probably cost several thousands of dollars. For the time being it is a hodge-podge of smaller shelves, not quite enough to house them all as they should be.

The volunteers were wonderful. A couple of them started work on the old book room, reading the shelves against the cards, which had been carefully removed by volunteers from the first retreat. We had missed a fair number in our first pass through the shelves as it turned out. Several worked on the oversize books, opening up new shelf space for additions. The growing cd collection needed to be put in order, uncatalogued for the moment. One of the men is a church sexton and was able to clean the enclosed skylights which had grown filthy over the years, letting in more light. His wife is a computer wiz, and started cataloging existing books into the computerized system. She made some good progress. One of the volunteers straightened up the Guest House library and then added about 35 books to it from the proven duplicates in the library office. Three continued reading the shelves against the shelf listing, discovering books that had "walked". An interesting finding was that a whole section of books on Vietnam had disappeared. My guess is that a previous regime decided to de-accession them and had forgotten to take the cards out of that section of the file.

And one brave soul began something close to my heart. She started to check bibliographies of monastic history to see what we might have, and more importantly, what we might not have. Most of our acquisitions come from two sources: gifts of collections by people who are downsizing their libraries, or after death, and books that the brethren have acquired and which filter down the stairs in due course. But we have not had much deliberate acquisition over the years, mostly because we have such a small budget. The first step in improving the collection is to find out what we need.

I have two great dreams for the library. The first is to begin systematically building up our collection in areas important to us, especially in scripture and monastic studies. Since many of the books we will want to fill out the collection are out of print, the best way is to identify the ones we want and then start looking for them, purchasing what we can find and afford (donations anyone?) and beginning a regular list of desired volumes on the website that people might donate. The second dream is to begin welcoming writers and scholars to use the library. It is a small collection and probably never will be a scholarly destination for the holdings. And we don't want the books to circulate outside the monastery. But our library is a very congenial environment for study, reflection and writing. The Community, which has not been intensely focused on the library over the years (for many members, it is just there, as it were), has begun to wake up to the ministry possibilities our collections may hold.

It gives me enormous satisfaction to watch the collection improve. And as it does, it is even more satisfying to watch the brethren and others take a renewed interest in reading and study.

St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville

2009-04-23T19:08:00.013-04:00

I spent most of the week after Easter at the Conference for Benedictine formation directors, held at St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville, MN.

The trip there was only mildly arduous, involving an overnight stay in New York City with one of my oldest friends in OHC, Fr. Carl Sword. Carl has been a psychotherapist practicing in NYC for many years, and like me, for many years a monk not in residence. I was up and out early on Tuesday morning and took the airport shuttle bus from outside Grand Central Terminal to La Guardia. The Northwest (becoming Delta) flight to Minneapolis was uneventful. At the gate for the connecting flight to St. Cloud I found Fr. Aelred Glidden, the Prior and Novice Master from St. Gregory’s in Three Rivers, MI, and Fr. Joel Rippinger, our conference leader. Fr. Joel is a well-known Benedictine scholar whose specialty is the history of the monastic movement in North America. He is the author of the standard history of American Benedictine communities, and is a monk of Marmion Abbey in Aurora, IL. The flight to St. Cloud lasts about 11 minutes, shorter than its attendant preparation and debarkation procedures. The flight steward was humorous throughout in the best self-deprecating Lake Woebegone, MN, fashion. Jokes about the flight to and from Minneapolis and the St. Cloud airport are de rigueur at St. John’s.

We were met by Br. Paul Richards, the Novice Master at St. John’s. Last summer, Br. Paul finished a 20-some year stint as director of the boys’ choir associated with St. John’s schools, and took up his new work at the same time I did. I sat up front in the van and had the opportunity to talk with him at length. He took us the scenic way. I had never been in Minnesota before, but it looked a lot like I remember the area around Lansing from my Michigan State days – flat to low rolling countryside, patches of woods and occasional wet areas. The campus of St. John’s is very large, encompassing farmlands and St. John’s University. The monastery is only a small part of it, forming a bridge between the Church and the University buildings.

The Church is enormous, looming over everything. Designed by Marcel Breuer and built in the 1950's, it is resolutely mid-20th century modern, representing I suppose an ecclesiastical version of brutalism in its style. The famous front is dominated by the campanile wall. I had seen pictures of it, but had no idea of it as a functioning building nor of its relation to its surroundings. After four days of worship in it I found it a liturgical success, both for the Daily Office and for the Eucharist.

The Community at St. John’s could not have been warmer in its welcome. My entire time there was punctuated by kind greetings and the small conversations between monks which indicate good will and benevolent interest, from the retired monks to the newest members and even to the Abbot, who sat down next to me at lunch on Friday. Abbot John Klassen is a listener, and obviously both a kind and a firm father of the community. He, like our Presiding Bishop, is a scientist by training. The atmosphere of the monastery and community was one of respectful, mutual and loving patriarchy in the best Benedictine sense.

We were housed in the monastery, some in the older section, others (including me) in the newer Breuer wing connecting to the Church. These newer rooms are functional, laid out like simple motel rooms: an entrance area with closet on one side and bathroom on the other, then a fair sized room with a big window and sliding door with view of the lake which the monastery property encompasses.

The daily worship schedule begins with morning prayer at 7, then noon prayers, Eucharist at 5, and evening prayer at 7. We were busy in the evenings, but my impression is that Compline is voluntary and private. They generally wear habits but no big fuss is made if some of the monks come in civvies. They use their own books -- well-printed and loose leaf, a seven or eight binder set -- for the daily office, as one would expect at this great liturgical center. The psalms are the Grail translation, the music is to modern modes – two or more simple melodies in a set, much as our Camaldolese friends do, and which Holy Cross uses in Santa Barbara and Grahamstown. The St. John’s usage is distributed with artful variety and care between the two sides of choir and one, sometimes two, cantors, which they call soloists. The organ backs up the melody. The singing is well-modulated and in the somewhat indistinct acoustical environment of the Breuer church it blends well and sounds good. I am not a huge fan of this setting for the Office, but at St. John’s it works and I enjoyed it. I found myself looking forward to the next time of prayer.

The other participants included Aelred and Paul as well as the three-man formation team from St. Meinrad’s, in southern Indiana, and individual “formators” (as the Roman Catholic world now designates those who usher in the new monkly generation) from St. Gregory's Abbey in Shawnee, OK; New Subiaco in Subiaco, AR; from Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, SD; from Holy Trinity in St. David, AZ; from Christ the King in Schuyler, NE; and from St. Benedict's in Oxford, MI. It was quite a jolly group.

The conference itself was wonderful. On the first day Fr. Rippinger led us through some strategies for teaching the Rule of St. Benedict, and on the second day ways to approach teaching our individual monastic community history. I found it very useful.

One of the blessings of our time at St. John’s was the funeral of Br. William Borgerding. He was a classic monastic character. His uncle had been a monk there as well, a missionary among the Native Americans who formed part of the monastery’s original ministry in Minnesota. Br. Willie was in charge of cattle until they gave that up, and then was monastic night watchman for both the monastery and the university. He was both loved and legendary among the students, and when the student pub opened, they voted to name it after him – Brother Willie’s Pub. I imagine that his legends include reasons for his name being appropriate to a pub. It was a privilege to share the rites surrounding his burial, which included the reception of the body and vigil on Wednesday evening, and the office of the dead, funeral and burial on Thursday. The monastic community, including all of us attending the conference, processed chanting in double file, leading a large gathering of family and friends, to the cemetery overlooking the lake, where Br. Willie was laid to rest, the latest in lines of hundreds all buried in their new order of precedence, that of their entrance into the Larger Life of the Risen Christ.

Family Tidings

2009-04-10T18:50:00.009-04:00

My Aunt Mary, known to the world as Mary Catherine McCoy McKay, died on Monday. I learned about it on Wednesday from her son, my cousin Bruce McKay. She was 101. Aunt Mary (if you just called her Mary, you might hear a word or two from her!) was the second girl in a family of five children: Emily, Gauin, Orlo, Mary and Duncan, who was my father. They grew up in a fairly large but by no means pretentious house in Smethport, PA, in McKean County, northwestern PA. My grandfather, Guy Huenerfeldt McCoy, worked in the bank and later in the drug store owned by my grandmother, Edna Dunbar McCoy. Aunt Mary became a nurse, and a part of her training was in New York City (grandfather had studied pharmacy at Columbia). She spent part of her practical training in East Harlem, which was my home for seven years. She married Alexander McKay, who became an architect, and after World War II Alex was posted to Germany, where they lived for some time. They returned to Pennsylvania, then lived near Rochester, NY, where Uncle Alex designed tract houses. After he died, Aunt Mary moved to Silver Spring to live near Bruce and his wife Suzie and their children.

Aunt Mary turned 100 on January 1, 2008, and practically the whole family was there. I saw cousins I hadn't seen in 40 years. I decided there must be something to genetics after all. I got out of my car, dressed in khakis, turtleneck and a wool sport coat. Across the way was my cousin Guy, a retired physician who lives near Albany, dressed in khakis, turtleneck and a wool sport coat. Bruce opened the door to us, dressed in khakis, turtleneck and a wool sport coat. So it is genetic!

She had all her marbles that day, and it was glorious. She was a keen genealogist, and several of the younger folk have taken her interest to heart. One cousin by marriage had prepared a really fascinating account of the family. I had known that we were related collaterally, through the Dunbars (my grandmother's paternal line) to Henry David Thoreau. But the great discovery was that in the 1600's we had a pirate, and not just a run of the mill pirate, either, but one who left his wife and family in Denmark (I think) and landed in North Africa, converted to Islam, and became the ruler of a small city state in coastal North Africa. I think we're descended through the Danish line. He changed his profession once he went south and apparently made his living by capturing people in Iceland and selling them in North Africa. So, we have a pirate king. I have always loved that song from Pirates of Penzance, and now I know why.

She was also a keen Christian and Episcopalian (except when she got mad at one of the Sunday School teachers and moved the family to the Methodist Church for a while). The McCoy family attended St. Luke's, Smethport PA, where an uncle, William Van Dyke, was the rector. He was a huge influence on my father's vocation to the priesthood. He also had been a novice for a time in the Order of the Holy Cross.

This fall Aunt Mary began to suffer psychological disorientation, probably due to brain function changes. She had to have more intensive care. A few weeks ago she fell out of bed and broke some ribs, and began to decline.

She was a wonderful human being, full of life and love and always with that McCoy edge that I think is also genetic. We all have it. Her funeral will be at Grace Church, Silver Spring MD on Wed., April 22, at 11 am.

In the course of spreading the news about Aunt Mary I learned that my brother Duncan has entered politics and won his first race. He was elected to the City Council of Boulder City, NV, in the first election by more than 50% of the votes, which allowed him to avoid a runoff.

Dunc has been a professional librarian all his working life, specializing in directing city libraries in Kansas (I forget where), Colorado (Rifle), Wyoming (Laramie) and Nevada (Boulder City). He retired last year. He says that his wife encouraged him to get out of the house and find something useful to do, so he did. He has always been a schmoozer, and hides a keen intelligence behind a facade of western good old boy-ness. I am very proud of him.

Texts in Context

2009-04-03T05:21:00.019-04:00

In the course of teaching Bible and early monasticism over the years I have become aware, as I suppose is inevitable, that modern readers come to these texts with our own presuppositions. This is not exactly news. But it is also not always obvious to us when we are reading. We aren't usually conscious of the biases of our own culture until we have something to compare it to.

The first thing to know about an ancient text is that it was not written in our language. English as we speak and read it only emerged between 1500 and 1600. And for quite a long time after that, there are enough differences between our form of English and theirs to require fairly heavy notation. In fact, our language is always changing. Something written 50 years ago can already seem linguistically and culturally dated.

For many people this does not seem to be a problem, though. Just get it translated. And so we do, and we can read Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer in our own language. Except then we soon discover that the text we are reading doesn't make much sense. Not because the words aren't clear, but because what they are saying isn't part of our world. Translating the words is just the first step.

In fact, with any text older than approximately this morning we need to do historical and cultural translation as well. When we read things from our own past, or see an old film or hear an old song or look at an old photograph, we do this automatically, remembering the date it was produced and adjusting our focus accordingly. We can do this because we have the tools to understand the context in which what we are reading or hearing or seeing was produced, because we lived in that context and can remember it. If we were alive and conscious when it was produced we can retrieve the context. In doing so, we automatically make what might be called a hermeneutic shift, imagining ourselves back into the original context and then comparing it to what we might make of it in the present moment.

This is the essential process for confronting anything from the past. And since we are used to that process in things within our own range of experience and memory, we apply the same process to things from before our time. But unfortunately, we don't always have the tools we need to interpret the past. Translation is only the beginning, and it is often problematic itself, as anyone who has compared vastly different translations of the same text will know. A translation is always dependent on the cultural presuppositions of the translator, and translators sometimes have agendas. Think of translations of the Bible which serve different theological and denominational interests.

I have long thought that the best way to study anything from the past, including the Bible, is to read it with a double focus: What did it mean to its author and his original audience? and, What does it seem to mean to us today? Then the task is to move beyond our (always at least partly) uninstructed contemporary perceptions of what we are reading to ask a second level question: What would be an analagous meaning in our own terms?

But to tell a group of students or a Bible reading fellowship that they can't really understand the text or artifact they are considering until they understand its original context is not very helpful unless they have some access to that culture, that context. And unfortunately, most of the time the answer is to point them to the library, where, if they apply themselves, they will soon discover themselves mired in the almost trackless forests of academe. The minute you think you have a grip on some important cultural fact that allows you to go back to your text and approach it with a new and better instructed confidence, along comes another scholar ambitious for fortune and fame, or at least tenure, and knocks that down.

What to do, short of discouraging people from reading intelligently at all? Well, one might provide some tools for reconstructing context.

Some years ago I discovered an approach that I have found consistently illuminating. An old friend, Phina Borgeson, years ago, recommended the work of a cultural anthropologist named Bruce Malina to me. I went looking and eventually discovered his major work, The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. Originally written in 1979, and now in its third edition, Malina outlines major cultural categories that are different from ours. I have to say that this book completely changed the way I have read older texts, and not just the ones from the New Testament period. This alternative cultural understanding opened my eyes to the possibility of the double focus, the hermeneutic shift, not simply as a theoretical possibility but actually.

Malina uses major categories of cultural anthropology and compares those of the New Testament period with our own: Honor as the primary cultural value instead of material and professional success; the absolute importance of locating oneself in one's in-group for identity instead of achieving one's own autonomy; finding one's psychological identity in what others think of you instead of cultivating your own interior self (the dyadic personality); the idea that the wealth of the world is a fixed quantity (limited good) and all that flows from that in terms of fixed status hierarchies instead of our assumptions of social mobility; and so much more.

With these categories the stories of Scripture take on new life. The Prodigal Son moves from a touching drama of family forgiveness to a confrontation about the nature of God: in the values system of Jesus' time, a father who allowed a son to behave as the younger son did was endangering the family's future (by halving its resources, which were not likely to recover) and inviting public shame by the violation of the family's honor (the direct insult of the son to the family demanded a severe and public punitive reaction from the father). What the people listening to that story would hear in the extravagant welcome of the son home would not warm their hearts, but chill them to the bone. If this father is a stand-in for God, then God is violating every norm of civilized behavior, is in fact undermining the very fabric of human life as they understood it. The parable should be called the Prodigal, that is, Criminally Irresponsible, Father. And of course, Jesus is telling the story to make the point that God's love for us transcends the assumptions of our culture which would bind and constrict a human father's love and condemn a wayward son for life instead of reincorporating him into the family.

And then, more importantly for us, how does this story challenge us? We can be smug and tell ourselves, Well, thanks to your teaching, Jesus, we don't live in those presuppositions anymore, and so we're home free on that one. Our fathers can welcome their sons home without the tiresome cultural baggage of the past. But that would be a false reading, I think. In place of adopting the specific cultural shift Jesus seems to be recommending to his culture as our own and then basking in our superior understandings, I think we should ask ourselves, What process of cultural criticism would be analagous to us? What fundamental presuppositions of our culture would come under judgment if God acted so recklessly in our terms? That might set us back as much as it doubtless set Jesus' hearers back. The message for us both would seem to be, God really is not interested in validating our deepest cultural assumptions when they would stand in the way of redemptive love.

I have found Malina's book so profound that I have introduced it to almost every class I have taught both in Bible and early monastic texts. It gives some actual, helpful categories to place our encounter with ancient texts in context. It gives us a way to analyze ancient texts and the compare them to our own situation. It helps our reading move away from cultural solipsism. I heartily recommend it.

In Praise of F. Homes Dudden

2009-03-20T20:52:00.019-04:00

I have been re-reading the classic study of Gregory the Great by Frederick Homes Dudden. Few major studies of anything remain standards for long, usually having an undisputed reign of 10-20 years before another bright and enterprising scholar's book elbows it to the side of the shelf. But Homes Dudden's work has remained supreme since its first appearance in 1905. 104 years is not a bad run, and despite great strides in scholarship since, there is no effective challenger yet. Which is all the more impressive as Gregory is the towering figure of his age, the subject of a century's harvest of specialist studies by armies of brilliant scholars.

The study is classic late Victorian. Two thick volumes with multiple indices, comprising three sections: Gregory before he became Pope, Gregory as Pope, and his thought and writings. The book marches at a stately but unimpeded forward pace, chronological in the same way that the Thames flows to the sea -- not in rushing torrents, but steadily, and as it approaches the tidal points, with an occasional backward glance. And like the Thames, it is wide and has many tributaries. Along the way one learns a great deal about Constantinople and its church and imperial politics, about the collapse of Italy in the wake of Justinian's reconquest, about the city of Rome in its pre-Gregorian decline and in its time of collapse, the educational curriculum of the day, the Three Chapters controversy (certainly one of the most intricately confusing episodes in the history of heresy), and quite a lot about the Lombards. And not coincidentally, about the monastic project in the mid and late sixth century. This is your solid, traditional life-and-times narrative.

When I read it first, in graduate school more than 35 years ago, I was put off by the author's use of the first person and his amusing and more than occasionally sarcastic evaluations. But after much study along the way I realize that behind these apparently solipsistic forays lies an immense learning. He's almost always right. If you want to profit from reading the best of old style British history, complete with untranslated Latin and Greek footnotes and the undiluted Oxonian quadrangular attitude, this is the book for you.

I had always thought of Homes Dudden as a middle aged or elderly don who had spent his entire life reading up the sources, chasing down the footnotes, getting all the references right, reading all the secondary literature, including the interminable Germans, and then quietly setting pen to paper in the half-light of the Bodleian Library or over a second or third glass of sherry in lodgings after an agreeable first sherry in the Fellows' Common Room. A lifetime of comfortable academic plodding crowned by The Great Book.

So what a surprise was in store when curiosity led me to the internet for further information. Homes Dudden is a somewhat elusive target, but I tracked him down, and he wasn't what I thought at all. Or rather, the book wasn't what I thought it was in relation to its author.

He was born in 1874 and died in 1957. That puts the publication of the Gregory more or less at age 31. Thirty one! This staggeringly learned book, still on the top of the pile after a century, the work of a man in his mid to late twenties! Because everything I said about it is true. All the references are right, all the research has been done, and what is more, on the whole his judgments are mature and have stood the test of time. 31.

He studied at Bath College and Pembroke College, Oxford, was ordained in the C of E, was lecturer in theology and chaplain of Lincoln College, Oxford at the age of 24, was Vicar of Holy Trinity, Sloane Square, and in 1918 became Master of Pembroke College, a position he held until his death some 39 years later. He held many offices, including Vice Chancellor, at Oxford, greatly increased the endowment of his college, was a colleague of J.R.R. Tolkien. He published at least six volumes of sermons, several in the important genre of consolation over the devastation of the First World War. In 1935 he published a second two volume life and times, this one about Saint Ambrose. The Ambrose is still respectfully referred to if not as dominant as the Gregory. And then in 1955, two years before his death, a third two volume behemoth, this time about Henry Fielding. And from 1929 to 1952 he was Chaplain to Kings George V and VI.

So, if I had a glass of sherry as I write this, I would lift it to you, Dr. Homes Dudden. Your great work endures. Thank you.

A New Novice

2009-03-15T11:11:00.013-04:00

"What do you seek?"
"The mercy of God and of the Order."

With these simple words Charles asked Robert -- or in more formal terms, a Postulant who had been approved formally and publicly petitioned the Superior of the Order -- to be admitted as a Novice.

It's a pretty impressive service. We approved it for use many years ago, but I had not seen it before. The elements are the request and response, reading of portions of the Rules, asking then if he is ready to enter the monastic life, asking those assembled if they will uphold him, the blessing of the habit, a hymn while he and the Novice Master (me) go to the sacristy and put it on him, then a blessing. There is a moment of drama at the end -- the new novice comes back into the Church with his hood up, walking in through the guest court. At the blessing the NM lowers his hood. Then the NM leads him to each of the brethren in turn and the Peace is exchanged. Br. Randy took some wonderful pictures that you can find here.

There's a lot tied up in such a moment, but chiefly Charles's own life leading to that point and the hopes of the Community for him. Charles is a deeply serious person with a clear commitment to give this a good strong try. The Community wants him to succeed.

Each one of us in OHC, indeed, every monk at some point, has gone through this rite, with the essentials the same even if the words are a little different. When I was clothed, in March of 1974, I believe at least 3 of the original class of 10 had dropped out, so there were 7 of us. We weren't formally Benedictine at that point, though we were talking about it even then. The habit was different -- a white tunic with a black girdle knotted on the side and hanging to about eight inches from the floor, a hoodless scapular and a pellice -- a strange garment, a sort of short cape with no opening at the front that came not quite to the waist, a triangular point in the back, and the hood. The Benedictine habit is much simpler. I really don't remember what went through my mind at that point. For me the big moment was becoming a postulant six months before, on Sept. 5, 1973, and that is the day I count as my entrance into monastic life, even if it is not the official date, because it is the day I started to live the monastic life.

I was moved by the readings from the Rules. From Benedict, the beginning of the Prologue (Bede read) and the next to last chapter, 72, The Good Zeal of Monks, which is an almost lyrical prose meditation on community (Ronald). From Fr. Huntington, excerpts on Obedience (Scott), Poverty (which I read), and Study (Randy). For each of them Charles faced the reader and it was clear that we were inviting him to join the monastic project, but only if he understood well enough what he was getting into. I was struck by these moments, left wondering at the solemnity of these declarations and of Charles's eagerness to join us.

I sometimes think there aren't many people who want to join the monastic project, who want to undertake obedience, poverty, study, to join themselves to a sort of monastic militia, the image Benedict uses in the Prologue. But they do keep coming. We have an aspirant coming for a two week visit on Monday.

What sort of men became Holy Cross Benedictines? Well, there are the obvious qualifications: male, between 25 and 50 more or less, in good physical and psychological health, free of family and other relational obligations, out of debt, a practicing Anglican or in communion with us, finished with your education to your satisfaction (i.e., if you want to go to seminary and get ordained, it would be better to do that first!). Those are the objective qualifiers. The subjective ones are more nebulous. The three most important are: wanting to be united with God through Jesus Christ; wanting to be a monk in some realistic way (do you love prayer, silence, the Scriptures, praying the Daily Office, good honest and sometimes hard work, obeying someone else when you don't especially want to, etc?); and able to live constructively in community with others, which has a LOT of subheadings.

OHC wants new members. We are thrilled when a likely type shows up (nowadays usually after finding out about us on the internet) and begins to form a relationship with the community, which is the usual way vocations proceed. But we have been blessed with a lot of shared experience as a community. We've seen a lot of men come and go, and some of them have stayed, but not all, and that's ok. What we know is that God is leading every one of us in ways we don't always understand, so every journey is a worthwhile journey, even if it does not lead to the monastery.

But I certainly hope and pray that some journeys do lead here. Being a monk is not for everyone, but it is for some people, and perhaps for more people than realize it now. It is a good thing to be, a good thing to do with your life. I am so glad for Charles. And I know that the Holy Spirit is working on some others, perhaps not a few, working in their hearts, planting the spark that can burst into flame when the moment is right.

Seeking the mercy of God is a good place to start.

A Schedule Change

2009-03-06T20:52:00.011-05:00

At the monastery we make most major decisions after discussion, and we try as much as possible to withhold making decisions until a genuine consensus has been reached. So sometimes discussions can go on for a long time, weeks, months, sometimes years. And, of course, once having reached a decision, it may after a time seem not the right one. Humility is a communal as well as a personal virtue. Sometimes something the community has decided doesn't work as well as we thought it would. So the humble thing is to acknowledge that and change it.

One of the seemingly eternal discussions is about our daily schedule. When to pray, when to eat, when to work, how much time to allow for personal prayer and study, whether to label (read: coerce) study and prayer times or let the brethren work out their own rhythms. In the time since I returned to the monastery the continual conversational theme of this perennial topic has been that we don't have enough time, that between five times a day in Chapel, the whole food service aspect of our large guest house ministry, necessary community meetings and activities, and the other work each of us has every day, we hardly have enough time to turn around, let alone the necessary time for significant prayer and study. And the thing is, it was often true.

Our schedule was:
7:00 Matins
7:30 Breakfast
8:30 Eucharist
9:15 Chapter
12:00 Diurnum
12:30 Dinner
5:00 Vespers
6:00 Supper
7:30-7:40 Corporate Meditation
7:40 Compline

As you can imagine, the Matins to Eucharist segment sometimes requires quite a dash to get all the breakfast dishes done and the refectory set up for dinner before the Eucharist. The Refectorian even had to leave chapel before Matins was over to get everything set out for breakfast. Similarly in the Vespers to Compline segment.

So after many months of low level discussion, we had a meeting and talked explicity about the schedule. In fact, we had done so much preparation in prior private and public discussions, that a decision we all thought would require lots of time and energy and probably some personal tradeoffs, was reached in just a few minutes. We decided to experiment with something different in Lent. We have made a couple of seemingly small changes: Breakfast is at 7:45; the Eucharist is at 9:00 am instead of 8:30; the Corporate Meditation has been moved to Diurnum; and Compline is an hour later, at 8:30 pm.

What a difference! Now the refectorian doesn't have to sneak out after the second reading at Matins to set up breakfast. There's plenty of time now to get the dishes done, the refectory cleaned up and the tables set, even when we have a lot of guests. And there's time now in the evening to have an evening session with a retreat group and end with Compline. And, since it's later, our day now really does end with Compline, as it should. Most of us have commented to each other after just a little more than a week what a difference it has made.

It has made my life surprisingly better, physically and spiritually. I am refectorian this week (the job rotates weekly), which means setting up for all the meals, making sure that the serving pantry is stocked with all the food and supplies we need from the kitchen and storerooms, turning on the dishwasher, keeping the coffee flowing, and so forth. I was dreading it. With this change, it seems to work with a lot less stress. The extra half hour in the morning has meant that I don't have to dash from food service to Eucharist (as appropriate as that might seem symbolically) but have some time to calm down, brush my teeth, get my head together better. Which is especially nice if I am presiding.

The evening change is even better. Now there is at least an hour, at most two hours, depending on whether I'm on supper dishes, before Compline. Considering that most mornings I wake up before 5:00 and so have an hour or more of study and prayer time then, with the ample evening time I now feel like a rich man! Time for prayer and study suddenly abounds.

And our retreat ministry ministry is positively changed too. This week a delightful group of people from Christ Church, St. Michael's, MD, was with us, and I was leading them. Our two evening sessions had ample time and the evening ended with Compline, as it should. The old schedule more or less forced us to have a session after Compline, ending at 9:00 pm, which defeats the purpose of that office. But now the flow is right.

And something even more wonderful has happened. When we had our meditation time before Compline, I could never concentrate. I ended up reading because I just couldn't be quiet interiorly. But now with that moved to Diurnum, I find I can. Something I thought I had lost altogether, the ability to sit quietly and meditate with a group of people, is returning. I realize now that I was so tired, physically and mentally, by the evening, that I simply couldn't do it. But at noon I have the energy and strength. So a whole new dimension to my prayer life is beginning to return.

Sometimes change is good.

Dust you are

2009-02-25T10:17:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted here for a while. Apologies. Life gets in the way.

Over the weekend I was in Washington, DC, to help with a program for Associates of Holy Cross led by Esther de Waal. Esther's new book, Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict, has just been published. She was wonderful, as always. On Sunday I preached at All Souls, Woodley Park. The Rector, John Beddingfield, is a good friend, and it was a joy to share Sunday with him and his wonderful congregation. You can read the sermon on the Holy Cross Lectionary blog here. And it was a special joy to meet the Prior of St. Anselm's Abbey, Simon McGurk, and to share Vespers and supper with the Community of St. Anselm's.

It was my turn to preach today in the monastery chapel, for Ash Wednesday. I didn't write out my sermon, so I thought I would turn it into a meditation and share it with you.

Dust you are, and to dust you shall return.

Years ago, I spent Ash Wednesday preaching for my dear friend, now departed, Fr. Bob Worster, at the parish of which he was Rector, St. Mary's in Palms, near Culver City in Los Angeles. He had been a novice of OHC, then a Companion in our work in Liberia, and in fact was ordained there. He was of the old Anglo-Catholic school, quite certain of both faith and practice. He used to say, "Hell is Lent at Holy Cross." Perhaps it was then. Not so much so now.

A dear friend of his, an RC sister, was staying with him. I came in from preaching and found her with a feast of food spread out on the table. As a simple-minded Anglican I assumed that fasting meant simply not eating. I indicated my simplicity, asking if it were not a fast day, and she looked at me with an expression of horror and said "Oh -- you mean the Black Fast!"

We're having cheese and fruit today, laid out by a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America. Not hell. Not the Black Fast. Deo gratias.

We make such a fuss out of Lent, which is not exactly what our Lord is telling us in today's Gospel reading (Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21). He counsels us not to make such a fuss. But we go on doing it anyway, in part, I suppose, because we need to remind ourselves that we are contingent beings.

Our daily life as North Americans is not normal in historical terms. We have so much more than human beings historically have had -- all the food we want, medical care, transportation, education, housing, entertainment, all to a surfeit. We rather regard people who don't have those things, who live at the margins and without, as somehow not normal. We pathologize them. But not having is the normal condition of human life.

Brother Randy recommended a novel to me last fall which I did not pick up until recently, Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. It is a wonderful read, and in many ways quite accurate about medieval life. Of course the characters think and speak like contemporary Americans, not least I suppose because Follett wants contemporary Americans to buy his novel. He adopts the literary device of multiple points of view, which allows him to insert little essays on all kinds of things -- church architecture, twelfth century politics, medieval dietary habits, monastic customs, and so forth. But it is engrossing, a real page turner.

It begins with a family, the husband and father of which has lost his work. He is a master mason, a skilled builder, a knowledgeable man. His wife will reveal shortly that she is pregnant. There are two children, a difficult adolescent boy and a seven year old daughter. They are not marginal people in their society. In ours he would probably be a successful contractor. But in their society their life is uncertain, because, as the novel makes clear, everyone in that society was marginal. They were much closer to the edge of things than we are, much closer to the earth. This family sets out to find new work, which involves walking through the countryside and forest from castle to cathedral to monastery, not knowing what they will find, and finding nothing but rejection, sometimes with scorn and dismissal and sometimes with sympathy. They have a little money, the husband's tools and a pig. They run short of money, the pig is violently stolen from them, they gradually sell off the tools for food, and we see and feel their downward progression heartbreakingly described by this skilled writer. The mother lies down on the ground, gives birth and dies, and they bury her deep in the earth. I found this account deeply moving.

Their story is much more "normal" in human historical terms than ours is. Most people through most of history have lived close to the edge, uncertain of work, of a place to live, of food, of life itself when biology asserts itself in pregnancy, injury or illness. We in our abundance are not "normal". Our fortune is quite recent in historical terms.

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. Our Christian faith reminds us who we are in Lent. We are just creatures of the earth, briefly and insecurely alive, even if we think we have virtually conquered nature. It is good for us to remember who we are.

The word humility comes from the Latin humus, meaning earth, soil in which things grow. To be humble is to recall our reality, that we are in fact very close to the earth, not always able to control our destinies, liable to hunger and cold and uncertainty and sudden violence and physical weakness that will result in death.

In a way, then, Lent calls us to be "normal" -- to remember our nature, that we are part of the earth and not lords of it, to remember our contingency and how close we are to death when we are in life. Such remembering also gives us a strong sense of the value of simple things, of nourishing food, of an unexpected kindness, of the usefulness of practical skills that can prolong our lives if we find ourselves shut out of what we had before and wandering without knowing what is next. It might give us a little more respect for the poor of our own time, whose survival skills might be worth studying. The current urgency may call forth skills we did not know we need.

Our ashes today remind us that we are of the earth, that death is around the corner, that we are temporary and contingent. Humility is the proper response. Humility before the power of a universe we think we understand and mostly control but which yet will get the better of us. Humility in the face of human greed and nastiness, but also in the face of unexpected sympathy and kindness. Most of all, humility before God, who loves us just as we are, not for what we have or for what we can do, but simply because we are creatures of His earth.

Remember that you are dust.

Different Values

2009-01-21T05:53:00.002-05:00

Like many others, I watched the Inauguration yesterday. I thought it was pure pageantry, with press commentary more on the level of the description of Rose Bowl floats than news. Rick Warren’s prayer, for example, made the appallingly ignorant point that “Now today we rejoice not only in America's peaceful transfer of power for the 44th time.” I have so far found no-one in the media who pointed out that four of those transfers were at the point of a bullet: Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy. So many brains were checked at the door, Warren’s and those of the people whose job it is to frame these events for the nation. The adulation of Obama worries me.

So when our new president's speech moved into the familiar territory of national purpose and national greatness, even with its explicit call to buckle down to the work we need to do, it sounded to me like pretty much the same political rhetoric we have heard so many times before. I don’t really want to parse the speech, except to say that it repeated the litany of American self-help heard so often before. The closest it came to a national ethic of sharing was really a call to equal access to the tools of success: “The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart — not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good..”

Not out of charity. Faith, hope, charity (to use the traditional words). But the greatest of these is charity. Obama has invited comparisons to Lincoln, and the word charity has an important place in Lincoln’s vocabulary: “With Malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.” Of course, what Obama means is giving money to people without corresponding expectations. But that has some theological issues as well. Agape being one of them. As a Christian I was disappointed.

What does a monk say to all this? Monks, of course, can have political opinions, some with passion. Fr. Huntington, the founder of OHC, certainly did. Fr. Huntington’s passion was for fairness and justice and prosperity for working people. He was on the side of ordinary people who worked hard and did not get a fair shake from the system. He joined the labor movement when it was small and unpopular and remained faithful to it to his life’s end. He was not afraid of political engagement when that seemed appropriate. He was a dedicated, lifelong supporter of his good friend Henry George and the Single Tax. That idea flourished briefly toward the end of the 19th Century, with its apogee in George’s campaign for Mayor of New York City in 1886. Huntington actively campaigned for George, and was criticized for it.

But there is another monastic tradition as well. It doesn’t seem political, but it is, because it raises the possibility of a different set of values, not based on having more but on having enough. The implicit promise of much American political rhetoric is, Vote for me and I will lead you into greater prosperity. More is what we want, and More is what we vote for. We don’t often ask for a life with Less so that we can pursue other values. We don’t often choose what is simpler except in retrospective nostalgia, making the point, as Obama did, that enduring hardship, having Less, was the price that our forebears paid so that we could have More now.

But for monks, More is the problem. It is a huge temptation. It is our default setting as human beings to want More. Humility is hard. Having Less is hard. Wanting Less is even harder.

So I was struck by a saying I read the other day which has stayed in my mind. I have begun a slow reading of The Book of Mystical Chapters: Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers and Other Christian Contemplatives, by John Anthony McGuckin . It is a collection of three “centuries” of sayings from the desert monastic tradition.

The saying is from Abba Philemon, quoted from the Philokalia:

Set your mind on following the path of the saints.
Prefer a simple style of life.
Wear unremarkable clothes.
Eat simple food.
Behave in an unaffected manner.
Don’t strut around as if you were important.
Speak from your heart.

The monastic path is not the path for everyone. The pursuit of economic plenty is necessary for us all, monks included. Monasteries, ours included, need financial help (our gas bill for heating this month is $13,000! It’s a big place serving a lot of people! It’s been cold!) Part of the engine, the energy, that drives economic growth is the desire for More. So More is not wrong, not bad, in fact, it is necessary.

But More is not the only value. It needs to be in relation, sometimes a relation of tension, with the value of Less, the value of enough but not more. Human society needs people who live differently, whose values point to a path chosen less often but none the less important for that. It needs this difference in order to keep open the path of reflection, to re-open the question of generosity, of charity in precisely the sense of helping others who have little opportunity to give back.

The question ultimately is the heart. When you get More, does it open your heart, does it allow you to speak the Word that made you and everything you have? And when you choose the simpler path, does it make you humble and appreciative of the regard and generosity of others, on whom you now depend? Or does it bring pride and a sense of moral superiority? Which is one of the dangers for monks.

More and Less need each other. In the spiritual life and in the life of the nation.

California Time

2009-01-17T00:14:00.001-05:00

Away this week. Writing on the plane from Denver to LGA, about 2 hours out. I am on the Council of the Order, five members who advise the Superior and are empowered to make some decisions. Lots to talk about in our meeting this time. We had planned well before the fire to have it in Santa Barbara, and so it was providential that we were there. We were at St. Mary’s Retreat House, next to the Old Mission. It was founded in 1954 by the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity, in part to provide a retreat place for women because Mount Calvary did not then admit men. The Sisters have graciously welcomed our brothers and given them a temporary home.

A few days before the meetings began I visited some old friends who live in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles. They were among my California friends who visited me in East Harlem, and so it was a special joy to be with them. We did some fun things, including going to a movie props parking lot sale, a visit to the new Roman Catholic Cathedral and the new Disney Concert Hall, lunch at Philippe’s (a venerable sandwich joint in Chinatown). We went see the new Clint Eastwood movie, Grand Torino, which I liked a lot, at the restored Vista Theatre, which has a truly kitschy Egyptian motif.

On Sunday I preached at All Saints Episcopal Church, Highland Park, which is between Los Angeles and Pasadena. All Saints is one of the larger and more active bilingual congregations in the Diocese of Los Angeles, with a pretty good English language congregation at 10am and a larger Spanish speaking congregation at 12:30. The Rector, Tom Callard, is a wonderful priest who is in his second or third year there.

The Superior called Monday morning to ask if I could arrive in Santa Barbara by 11:15. The brothers were going to drive up to Mount Calvary to see the ruins. I made it, and we went up.

What can I say? I’d already seen the pictures, so I knew what I would see. But there is no substitute for a direct, physical experience. I walked through the remains of the front door, which have become iconic. I will tell you that I never really liked the repainting of St. John and Our Lady of Sorrows. I began to weep. And then along came one of the brothers and we just quietly moved around the edge of the building and I regained my composure and began to notice things. How odd stucco on wire mesh looks – sort of folded and draped. How the things that survived were the things that don’t burn – Duhhh you might say, but touching and smelling and walking on that truth, having known what was there and isn’t there any more, in fact, doesn’t even exist any more, is different than knowing it intellectually, different than having to reconstruct the past on an archaeological dig. How the still-standing parts were mostly the poured concrete substructures. The broken tiles. The occasional pottery that fire and water and decomposure cannot destroy.

And another thing. All the way up and back, Nick, our Prior in Santa Barbara, kept pointing to this house that burned and that one, right next to it, that didn’t burn. For no discernible reason. There’s an old joke about American Airlines, based in Dallas, which had (it was rumored) a policy of having two pilots on every flight, one of them a saved Christian and the other something else. Just in case. Of the Rapture. You never know. Well, here it was, right before our eyes. As Our Lord said, Two will be working in the field. One will be taken and one will be left.

I’ll write more later.

At Long Last – Shopping!

2009-01-03T19:42:00.001-05:00

The monastery had a fairly full guest house for the week between Christmas and New Year. We usually close every Sunday evening to have a community day off on Monday, but between Christmas and New Year we’re open and it is wonderful, mostly, with old friends and some folks who are happy to be with us for some or all of that time. I certainly remember plenty of lonely times around Christmas and New Year when I was a parish priest and understand how nice it is to have a community to spend the holidays with.

We bade a fond farewell to the last of the guests on New Year’s Day after Vespers, which we moved up to 3pm, and then more or less collapsed into a time of rest and silence. Which has been wonderful.

Much of yesterday I was working in the Library. We have lots and lots of neat books that have been crying out to be cataloged, and since to me working in a library is next thing to blissful sandbox play time, I let myself play in the Library. It was great. Then today I had a piece of work I had been putting off for some time, which in the way of such things seemed to grow more daunting the more I put it off. But in fact I got through it in about 3 hours this morning, and then decided, I need to get out and do something.

I got in the car and drove toward Kingston. I had a pretty good hamburger (actually, a bacon cheeseburger) at the pretty good Port Ewen Diner, and then headed off to the mall, where I purposed to look at carry-on luggage at Target and see a movie.

Once there, the parking lot was pretty full. I was trying to park near the door near the movie section, and couldn’t get a place there, so I had to settle for something further out in the tundra, near the entrance to Macy’s. I went in and walked to the cinema section and checked the showing times for Doubt, and then headed for Target. Which was, of course, at the exact opposite end of the mall.

I must make a confession. I am a terrible shopper. If there are more than 2 things I have purposed to check out, unless I write them down, I will forget half of them and remember them on the way home. I get into a store and I clutch. I get all Consumer Report-ish about things, obsessing about things I really don’t care about. And, once I found the luggage in Target, which was of course at the exact other end of that very large store, I got all geeky and started to obsess about zippers and compartments and wondering if this one with the computer pocket in the front was better than that one with the computer pocket in the back, and so forth. This went on for some time, until I woke up and realized, I don’t want any of these suitcases. They’re far too small, once I pack my habit and enough clothes and other stuff to get me through a week or so. What was I thinking? A carry-on? Me? Get real.

I got real and sauntered out of the store. Now when I was young, and this is still true in some stores in Manhattan, if you come in, you came in to buy, so one prepares one’s face and a conversation in case the salesperson stops you with The Look, and you have to justify yourself, leaving empty handed. A sort of fraud. Under judgment. So I reflexively prepared myself, but of course, no-one really cares if you leave Target without buying something. And anyway, “No, I was just looking”, sounds faintly ridiculous in that context.

I started walking back to the cinemas, and wandered into Best Buy. I’m more comfortable in the computer and audio-video commercial environment, but as I looked around, I realized something I had noticed subconsciously already in Target. There were lots of people looking, and not very many people buying. And the ones buying were looking at the pricier items and then getting a little black case or a dvd or something. As I wandered back to the cinema, my lengthy hike gave me time to notice the people more carefully. Lots of young people, not really shopping, but just being young together. And also lots of older people not really shopping either. In fact, much of the population of the mall was people like me who were really not shopping, but just there for a while.

This is so different from Manhattan. There basically the whole island is one form of shopping or another. But there are a lot of other things as well, and the arteries that move you from shop to shop also move people to work and home and hospitals and schools and churches and all the other activities of life. Commerce is just one element, and the social life is natural. Well, the social life in the mall is natural as well, except that the environment is entirely commercial.

There are a lot of cheap shots one can take at malls, and maybe it is true that they are dinosaurs about to morph into something else, what with internet shopping on Amazon and so forth. But here were lots of people doing what they had learned to do over a couple of generations – they wanted to be out, in public, with other people, and this is the space that’s available to them. That's sweet, I think.

So I relaxed and decided to let my inner mall child out. I enjoyed the movie too. And – a monastic victory of sorts – the only things I bought today were a hamburger at that pretty old fashioned diner, and a (senior priced) ticket to Doubt.

Happy New Year.

A final thought about the Great O’s.

2008-12-31T21:48:00.000-05:00

Reading what I have written about the original series of the seven Great O's, I am struck by how deeply dependent they are on a particular culture of Bible reading. It goes without saying that it is not the predominant culture of our age.

Most modern people, even the most evangelical, read the Bible through filters put in place by the enlightenment, by the scientific revolution, by university-based academic study methods, and by a constantly enlarging base of historical knowledge. Which is to say, We are aware of the Bible as a text. This sounds almost absurd to say. Of course it is a text! What else could it be?

But for it to be a text, it must also be something we can investigate, an object separated from ourselves, over against which we can range ourselves and organize our reactions, responses, investigations, theories. The net result of our entry into the modern world through the historical revolutions named above is to change our relation to the Bible – indeed, to any text.

In a pre-modern culture the Bible has a different location in human experience. For our medieval ancestors the Bible was not primarily an object of consideration, to be studied, but the world of God into which one was invited to enter.

This was true at every level of participation in pre-modern Christian culture, but particularly for those who dedicated their lives to Christian service, monastics and mendicants but also “secular” clergy. The lives of such people were lived, to an extent we can hardly imagine, in a Bible-saturated world, mediated through the liturgical practice of monasteries and of the Church at large. In the course of a lifetime of listening and learning, they would have memorized large stretches of scripture, certainly the Psalms, and many major passages. In addition, the habit of lectio divina, which in those days was almost entirely focused on scripture, would have led most to know much if not most of the Bible by heart, and those passages not known to the level of recitation from memory would have been deeply embedded in the memory which can recall significant passages with the trigger of a word or phrase.

As regards memory the medieval world had an advantage over us. They did not value the new the way we do. We get a significant new Bible translation almost every generation it seems, certainly since the late 1800s. But what we gain in accuracy and freshness we lose in retention. There was a time when most English-speaking Protestant Christians knew large chunks of the King James Version by heart. Much has been lost in the communal culture of Christianity by abandoning the single-text model of scripture.

Medieval Christianity was single-text based with a vengeance. The Bible they used was the Vulgate translation of Jerome, with a few holdovers in the older parts of the liturgy from earlier Latin translations. This text was incredibly stable from the early 400's when the Vulgate was first promulgated until the time of the humanist scholars at the turn of the 1500's, a thousand years, half the history of Christianity. Everyone in Western Christianity was on the same biblical page for a millenium, so to speak. [The translation of the Bible into vernacular languages is a complex and wonderful story, but these translations did not assume a central ecclesial and cultural role until the Reformation.]

So what we see in the Great O’s is a special form of memory. Each of the antiphons combines several passages, evoked by a word or two or at most a phrase, which brings to mind the entire passage and its context. By juxtaposing them, the antiphon creates a rich meditation on the subject, which brings simultaneously into one’s consciousness two, three or even more scriptural passages and amalgamates them into a new, thoroughly scriptural and quite sophisticated theological reflection. And this was easily available not just to instructed individuals, but to a whole religious communal culture because of the commonality of liturgy and written word to all.

This kind of memory-based, communal theological thinking is almost impossible now. We no longer have the shared culture of centuries of everyone hearing or reading the same translation, of life-long memorization and living into the word of scripture that they had. So in order to begin to unlock some of the richness of these antiphons, we have to resort to learned study and think in historical, researched ways. I think an average medieval monastic probably would not have been able to write these antiphons. They are the work of a theological and poetic genius. But the average medieval monastic, certainly one who had been at it for ten to twenty years or more, would have understood their allusions immediately, and would have quickly appreciated their complex meanings. Whereas we have to dust off our concordances, or find them online, and then do the work of reconstruction.

Much has been gained by modern scripture study. I certainly rejoice in it. But much has also been lost by our exit from the ancient ways of experiencing scripture. One of the joys of monastic life for me, and I know for others as well, is (in addition to modern scripture study, of course) to live into the Bible not as a text, a book, an object, but as a World – the World of God’s Word, where our imaginations can use our instructed memories to build wonderful and deeper and deeper appreciations of God’s love and goodness from our increasing knowledge of the Word.

O Virgo virginum

2008-12-26T21:09:00.000-05:00

December 23:
O Virgo virginum, quomodo fiet istud? Quia nec primam similem visa es nec habere sequentem. Filiae Ierusalem, quid me admiramini? Divinum est mysterium hoc quod cernitis.
O Virgin of Virgins, how shall this be? For neither before you was there any seen like you, nor shall there be after: Daughters of Jerusalem, why do you marvel at me? The thing which you behold is a divine mystery.

The final Great O is entirely different from the preceding seven. That is because it was added after the original series was established, in England, to introduce the Virgin at the end of the Advent devotional cycle. For all that it is an addition, however, it is quite old. It is adapted in the wonderful Anglo-Saxon poem Christ A, often known as The Advent Lyrics, found in the Exeter Book manuscript, which was probably written at the end of the 10th Century, around 990 or so. That adaptation is worth study on its own, but not here (I can hear the sighs of relief as I am typing!).

The O Virgo is different both in form and in content from the others. The others introduce a title for Christ and then, as we have seen, gather a tightly woven group of quotes and references from the Vulgate which elucidate and clarify the scope of the title, ending with a call for Christ to come and aid us in that aspect of His rule.

The O Virgo is a little drama, a dialogue between the Daughters of Jerusalem and the pregnant Mary. The Daughters are surprised and question how the Virgin Birth can be, as it has never been seen before, nor will it be again. Mary serenely reassures them that what is about to happen is a divine mystery.

I find this dramatic scene reminiscent of the famous Quem queritis trope (“Whom do you seek?”, asked of the women who came to the tomb where Jesus had been buried). This four sentence narrative unit was introduced into the Easter Day liturgy in the Ninth Century, perhaps as part of the Carolingian reforms of worship. Within a century it had become a separate dramatic piece. It is, in fact, the beginning of modern western drama. Before long a similar Quem queritis was introduced into the Christmas liturgy, this time asked of the shepherds as they approached the stable. OHC uses a form of this little play as the first antiphon on the psalms for Christmas Day: “Whom do you behold, O shepherds, tell us, declare to us the tidings, on earth who has appeared? We saw the new-born Infant, and the choir of angels, praising the Lord together. Alleluia, alleluia.” It is customarily sung by us as a dialogue, the question sung by the choir on the cantor’s side, and the response on the other, with all joining in the Alleluias. Without knowing the origin of it, the monastery has moved instinctively in the same way that Tenth Century monks did.

My guess (I am not a liturgical scholar!) is that the O Virgo would seem to have had a similar origin. It sounds very much like the other fashionable little dramatic dialogues in vogue in the ninth and tenth centuries. It was probably added as an additional liturgical action piece, since people seemed to like that sort of thing. It was part of the liturgical movement of its day, and probably in response to people actually liking these little plays.

And the reason for its popularity is clear. The antiphon asks the question everyone asks of the Virgin Birth: How can it be? There has probably never been a time since the publication of Matthew’s and Luke’s gospels that people did not ask this question. It is simply impossible from a human point of view. Which is precisely the point. In the birth of Jesus God is doing something new. He is breaking the rules, establishing a new humanity. As Adam and Eve were brought forth without reference to human parents, so the second Adam who ushers in the new humanity does not derive from business as usual childbirth either. At its base the Virgin Birth is not just about how one child was born, but is a statement of God’s power and capacity to bring the new into being, to transform the world, to upset the old and initiate a new creation. That is the divine mystery.