On Being Wholly Now, Holy Together

2012-01-05T11:03:00.010-05:00

THE FIRST SUNDAY OF CHRISTMAS - 2012

A MORE THAN HUMAN NAME

Today is the Feast of The Holy Name meaning of course our Lord and Savior, Christ Jesus, the name given above all other names, in heaven, on earth or under the earth, for our health and for our salvation.

Watching the holiday bowl games this past week and looking forward to today's pro games, while thinking about this homily, has brought to mind the origin of contemporary names. The personal names of players in particular, how often a first name appears to be a spelling mistake until one realizes, it is a creative combination of the mother and father’s first names or the sound an older sibling made in trying to pronounce the given name of a new baby in the family. Names historically identify the bearer as being part of a clan or tribe, a country or region of origin (for example, the name “Frank” refers to a fourth century Germanic tribe). Names relate physical traits (“Short”) or character traits (“Bright”). Names celebrate locations (“Rivers”) or occupations (“Smith”). Why not then hold up a profoundly human accomplishment of mutual conception, honoring the parents by creatively forming a new name, especially if the child is going to grow up and become a famous athlete!

Here we come to the defining difference in the naming of Jesus, the subject in today’s lectionary. The name of Jesus does not derive from geography or human activity or traits. The birth of Jesus is not even a human accomplishment. The difference here is divine, not human. The naming of Jesus is about the divinity of Jesus or, said in different words, it’s about God’s meaning and purpose and time in Christ. Follow the infancy story from the angel of the Lord’s announcement first to Zechariah and then to Mary, and then to the shepherds in the field. It becomes clear: the conception, birth and naming of this child is of God. God takes on flesh that we might take on spirit. It's all about God's grace, God's initiative of love, and only then is it a matter of faith, our response of love.

From the Gospel according to Luke - “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Luke’s gospel narrative declares three divine truths worthy of note on this Feast of The Holy Name. First, the divine inheritance of the bearer of the name Jesus. He will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. The appellation “Son of the most high” and the bequesting of “the throne of his ancestor David” are monumental in their divine significance. God in this action crosses over from heaven to earth, becoming resident among his creation and creatures in the person of Jesus literally, “God’s salvation."

The infancy narrative also proclaims the divine purpose of the child-bearer of the name Jesus. To rule over the house of Jacob for ever. The divine initiative and presence has a purpose. We remember and petition this purpose every day of our Christian lives when we pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” The kingdom of God has come in the person of Jesus, is here and now already in the person of Christ’s body - the church, and will come again in the final judgment of Christ’s return.

The third truth embedded in Luke’s gospel account is divine time or as Luke says, Of his kingdom there will be no end. Luke proclaims God’s time, what is called kairos, distinct from chronos or time as marked in this world. In chronos, we know the time and channel of all our games, who is meeting whom and when on the field. Kairos is God’s time of opportunity to meet heaven on earth. Kairos happens all the time and beyond time. It can't be scheduled or broken down into discrete manageable bits.

The God of the Incarnation is not Big Data to be programmed with algorithms and reduced to predictable occurrences. The divine conception, birth and naming of Jesus are all moments of God’s time, as is every moment of grace when we hear or look and see or touch God’s presence in this life. To invoke the sacred name of Jesus, not as a fan rooting for yet another player with a strange name, but as a believer in faith, is to enter God’s kingdom, to enter God's time being; at its best invocation it is to become part of that mystic sweet communion that is between God and humanity as intended from before the time of Adam and Eve.

This then is the name of Jesus, a more than human name, above all names in heaven and on earth, holy and blessed. It's time to embrace His holy Name.

2011-05-08T14:37:00.009-04:00

THE THIRD SUNDAY OF EASTER - 2011

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS . . . GETS COMPLICATED

A couple of disciples are walking the road to Liverpool. Their conversation is about recent happenings in Syracuse. I mean Emmaus and Jerusalem, but you get the size and distance intended. A charismatic personality has been executed. Exciting expectations have gone unfulfilled. Yet now, after this bloody weekend, there are strange goings on. Our two friends are trying to sort things out. It’s nothing different from what you and I do every day of our lives, especially when world shaking events occur.

What’s different however is this conversation, these questions, these emotions and thoughts, are about to be answered by a man unlike any other person who ever existed, or will ever again need to exist. The disciples, Cleopas and his companion, are in the presence of the risen Lord, post-resurrection, pre-ascension.

This is mystery. I’m not intending explanation here. I’m talking revelation. God is speaking to us in the Gospel according to Luke. Jesus meets the disciples and walks them through the Easter happening. Everything he says has a Word of God connection They get these connections because they, unlike us today, are steeped in the biblical narrative. They know the Old Testament promises. They expected a messiah to come. They thought they knew who it was. They thought it was Jesus of Nazareth. Yet he was crucified, dead and buried. Now, some of his followers are reporting amazing goings on. The man they are with is speaking of these happenings, and what it all means.

Now it’s time to ask. Where on your journey have you met the risen Lord? Really, this is a valid question, appropriate to the season of Eastertide. Where along your own road to Emmaus, have you encountered the spirit of the living God, risen from the dead?

I encountered the risen Lord, not for the first time, this past weekend. I woke up to an announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed. I immediately got out of bed and went downstairs, to listen to a television already on, reporting this news. Literally, as I stepped down the staircase I was conflicted with sadness. Who am I, a Christian, I thought, to celebrate the death of another human being? Yet, I admit it, I was relieved the man was dead, thanks be to God. And I know the reason, as my son said later from Arizona, “Hopefully, Cooper will grow up in a safer world.”

In that moment of conflicted emotions, happy to have a man possessed of evil killed, sorrowful at the death of another human being, I was in the presence of the risen Lord. My God and my all was speaking to me. Reminding me that we are not in the business of death. We are in the business of life. Our Christian purpose in life is to submit ourselves, our souls and bodies, to His teachings of peace and justice, and creation. We are to be loving, creative, reasonable, in harmony with creation and with God.

The best we can do in a world that is possessed of conflict and violence is to be open to the strange, the stranger in our midst; to listen, and to seek the truth; to allow the possibility that what we know is not enough, and still to be confident that because of the One with whom we have broken bread, and do so regularly, we are able to say, as we strive to think, and do, and say what is right in the face of what is insufferably wrong - “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

I will not fear the evil done or threatened me or mine or us, nor the evil done necessarily by me or mine or us in order to protect and secure our homes and families and nation from violence and harm. We will fear no evil, and we will act accordingly as we must. Why? Because You are with us and in Your Presence we are secure.

2011-03-20T07:00:00.007-04:00

WEEK OF THIRD SUNDAY IN LENT, 2011

SAYING YES TO GOD'S CALL AND WILL

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but I know that’s not true. Gracie is my granddog. She lives in Arizona with Cooper and Pete and Sophia.

When I first visited Gracie in her home, Pete said, “Watch this,” as we got ready to go out. He told Gracie she had to go to her crate. Gracie suddenly laid down, rolled over, and became, with legs pointing up in the air, tongue lolling out and eyes closed, absolutely still. “Gracie, time to go to your crate.” Nothing, absolutely nothing from the dog.

“What’s the matter with her?” I asked.

“She doesn’t want to go to her crate,” said Sophia. “She’s playing dead. She thinks nobody can see her if she closes her eyes and doesn’t move.” Dogs are a lot smarter than non-dog owners think! We literally had to carry her to the crate, her acting as if she wasn't there.

Saying, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” really says more about people than dogs. It’s code for not having to learn new things, an excuse for the aging to avoid tough learning curves of new knowledge. You don’t have to be old to employ this strategy, either. You just have to drag your feet, or like Gracie, to roll over and act like nobody can see what you’re up to, when you’re really just afraid or too proud or blindly refusing to get with the program.

In this morning’s Old Testament God calls out to Abraham in the desert land of Mesopotamia, and says, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great - but you’ve got to go a great distance, and endure many trials.” The reading makes it sound as if Abraham just nodded and said, "Great, fine, which way do I go, God?" But you can bet Abraham thought about doing a Gracie. To Sarah, Abraham’s wife, God says, “You will bear a son.” The fact that Sarah was old, probably in her sixties at this time, made her doubt God’s promise. Sarah laughed at God.

In the Gospel reading, Nicodemus, a scholar and aristocrat among the Jewish people, has heard about Jesus, his wisdom and works. Nicodemus is curious, he's a scholar after all. His religious self secretly wants to believe the good news he is hearing. Yet like Thomas the Doubter Nicodemus must see it to believe it for himself. He equivocates. So Nicodemus sneaks a visit with Jesus in the dead of night, not wanting to be seen in public with him. Jesus calls Nicodemus on this cowardly behavior and confronts his attitude of disbelief.

Abraham, Sarah, Nicodemus, Thomas, you and I all have this much in common - our inability to give full assent to God’s call and will for our lives. We equivocate. Why, because the world doesn’t see God through the eyes of faith, and we are worldly people. We like to get the facts, negotiate, get the best deal possible. Our flesh does this to us, making us worldly wise.

Abraham though said yes; through him the people and nation of Israel, ancient and modern, came into being. Sarah did give birth to Isaac, symbol of God’s promise to those who believe in spite of themselves. Thomas falls down on his knees, having probed the wounds of the risen Lord, and proclaims, “My God, and my all!” Nicodemus goes away that night his soul in turmoil, yet tradition tells us he was with Joseph of Arimathea for the burial of Jesus and a witness of the resurrected Lord. That's the way it is with the spiritual life, you say yes, and blessings abound, and God can be very persistent in response to our foot dragging!

Is it possible for us, too, that we might be reborn, made new as if from our mother’s wombs, and become the spiritual children God has destined us to be? I hope so. I know this much, I have no intention of being a dog like Gracie, refusing to get with the program. I welcome the adventures of faith and obedience. I hope you do, too.

Lord, help us to be obedient to your call; and remain faithful in whatever you would have us do, wherever you would have us go, O God. Amen.

2011-03-11T11:36:00.007-05:00

WEEK OF LAST SUNDAY AFTER THE EPIPHANY, 2011

BLESSING OUR LIVES

Bishop Adams visited St. Peter's this past Sunday. Teens were confirmed as their parents watched and celebrated with Chase, Hadley, Claire, Will and Sam. An infant, my grandson Cooper, was baptized.

Afterwards, the confirmands, Bishop and I stood for a group photo in front of the altar. The Bishop and I then stood at the baptismal font where we held up Cooper for a similar keepsake photo.

I am glad that we will have those pictures to remind us of this day when confirmands, baptisand, priest and bishop, parents and relatives, the people of God in this little upstate church stood together for something greater than themselves.

What connects you to your most important moments? How do you keep the times of your life that mean the most to you? How do you mark the highlights of your life? And more importantly, when you are gone, what will others know and think of you when they look at the markings of your life. What mark are you leaving? What mark are you living?

From a different perspective, where do you see God's maker's mark in your life's journey, past, now, future?

For me, a priest who was first and foremost an infant baptisand, I know God most palpably present each week in the Eucharistic exclamation - "Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us! Therefore let us keep the feast."

We live in an age where individual experience is so highly valued and our values are so highly individual that there really is little that carries over time and connects us to our deeper selves, to others, to creation, to family or to nation, literally to our souls. We are losing the meaning and practice of sacrifice, and without sacrifice, we can have no hope going forward.

The ability to make meaningful connections beyond ourselves, beyond our own individual beings and interests, needs or desires, is what makes us truly human, vulnerable yet hopeful. Hope we are told in scripture comes from suffering. Where does your hope come from? My hope to carry on comes in the relationships of faith and family, both repositories of whatever offerings of sacrifice I am capable of making.

There are other sacrificial places of equal value where hope arises from shared and mutual enterprises. These holy places include art and performance, athletic skill and competition, intellectual and recreational interest, professional and business career, civic duty and volunteerism, military service, and others.

Wherever we invest ourselves, our souls and bodies, what matters is that we come out of what Mary, the mother of Jesus, called the "imaginations of our hearts" and take our stand with others in something more than narcissistic or utilitarian self-interest. One can readily hear Mary's voice of religious conscience supporting her son as Jesus fought the temptations in the wilderness, where he prepared to sacrifice his life for the sake of others.

Baptism and the other sacraments of the church are wonderfully and beautifully instituted by God to help us mark the great passages of life: baptism for birth. Eucharist for nurture. Healing for care. Confession for forgiveness. Confirmation for learning. Ordination for vocation. Marriage for community. A healthy church knows and celebrates these sacred passageways well and fully.

This past Sunday, we made a good observance of confirmation and baptism.

2011-01-19T13:05:00.006-05:00

WEEK OF EPIPHANY 2, 2011

BLESS MY HOME

During the Epiphany season at St. Peter’s we invite parishioners to organize Home Blessings. Epiphany is a season of the church year that disappears between the cultural highlight of the Christmas holidays and the traditional spirituality of Lent, otherwise marked only by Federal holidays, Annual Meeting time and Super Bowl Sunday.

By encouraging Epiphany Blessings of the Home, we literally shine a new light into local homes and reconnect with the meaning of Christ’s coming into the world. In a word, Epiphany Blessings are joyful and formative. Motivations for this entertaining spiritual custom include a new home or recent relocation, a renovation or addition, a new family relationship or renewed hope, whatever it is that makes a Christian want to bring forth anew the Spirit of the Living God in the home. This is the pew side of things.

From the altar side of the conversation, taking the Spirit on the sacramental road is right in keeping with our 21st-century mandate to meet people where they are at (or in this case, where they live). Usually this adaptive approach to church refers to contemporary culture, new patterns of attitude and behavior, generational differences. Here though it harkens back to the ancient practice of sanctifying place. There's always a feeling of Orthodoxy when doing a Home Blessing and invariably leaves one wanting to go home and hang an icon and a sanctuary lamp in a corner. This urge is a sign of a universal need to be more deliberate and intentional in the aspiration toward holiness in our homes.

I commend Ephiphany Home Blessings for these reasons and okay . . . it's exciting to suddenly set off smoke alarm systems with dense clouds of incense. “Oh, dear, did we do that?” No, seriously, holy water works just as well!

2011-01-01T15:37:00.005-05:00

WEEK OF CHRISTMAS 2, 2011

A WONDERFUL AND FEARSOME GIFT

When we read the Bible or listen to a reading from the Bible there is always a word from God the Holy Spirit hidden for us. Like a Christmas present under the tree, this word is laden with tradition, being typically wrapped around an historical account or within a dramatic narrative or dressed up in poetry or an ancient hymn. There it lies, hidden among the rest of the reading waiting for us to take delight in mysterious meaning.

Our task as believers is to find and open this hidden word and to unravel its content. In this way we delight in the word of God intended for our ears only. In this way we hear God’s call for us. If we ourselves are ready and willing, in this way we hear and obey, thus helping to fulfill God’s will in the world. This hidden word then is why we read the Bible. Only persons of faith, only those who properly worship at the Christ Tree, get this present. And what does God present us with, a wonderful or fearsome gift?

The word this morning is mercy. Mercy as in “compassion and forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” Mercy as in “an event to be grateful for, especially because its occurrence prevents something unpleasant or provides relief from suffering.” Mercy as in “a journey or mission performed out of a desire to relieve suffering; motivated by compassion.” The mercies of God, indeed, are too many and wonderful to contemplate in this morning’s Gospel reading of the Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt.

Joseph hears a merciful message from an angel of the Lord. The message is simple: get out of Bethlehem because King Herod has discovered where you are. Herod as a ruler is remembered in history as vicious, really merciless to his people. The prophecy says Jesus will grow up and become a King. Herod says over my dead body, actually over the dead bodies of all young male children in Bethlehem for he sends his troops to kill not only baby Jesus but the entire gender age group just to be sure. Among his recorded atrocities this was a relatively minor occurrence.

The Holy Family though escapes to Egypt, perhaps hiding in the Sinai peninsula among the Bedouin people until another message comes to them. By the mercies of God, Herod has died and it has become safe for Joseph to take Mary and Jesus home, though not to Bethlehem. Instead they head north, beyond the Sea of Galilee to relatives in rural Nazareth, again being warned in a dream. All this foretold in prophecy.

Here we come to the true hidden word. The mercy God intends is not about angels helping Joseph maneuver the Holy Family around deadly kings. The mercy God purposes is enfleshed in the person of baby Jesus. God's mercy has come to live among us in the person of baby Jesus. Jesus is on a mission of mercy. To grow up, live, teach, heal, work wonders, suffer, die and rise again on our behalf; in a word, to provide God’s people with relief from the predicament of being human or said in biblical language rescue humanity from the wages of sin that is death.

This holy present on the Second Sunday of Christmas is marked From God, with love; it is too wonderful and fearsome to contemplate except by faith.

2010-12-09T12:18:00.058-05:00

WEEK OF ADVENT 2, 2010

AMBIVALENT EVEN FEELING QUILTY ABOUT MONEY?
A 13-MINUTE GROWTH EDGE

In 1960 Barrett Strong, a rhythm and blues singer out of Mississippi, gave fledgling Motown Studios their first hit recording - Money (That's What I Want) - with such irreverent lyrics as "The best things in life are free, But you can keep 'em for the birds and bees; Now give me money, that's what I want" and "Money don't get everything it's true, What it don't get I can't use, Gimme money, that's what I want." Little wonder that America at the end of the Booming 50's loved this song with a hearty, self-confident laughter.

Here's the Beatles' 2.53 minute cover of Barrett Strong's Money, on YouTube -

Still with me? 50 years later America is the Great Satan in the eyes of Islamic jihadists who not only don't want what we have but despise us for wanting such things that we value above all else. Our economy is in a shambles. Our national debt load is beyond support even unto the second and third generations. Our vision of the Great American Dream is no longer manifest, our destiny is in doubt.

Why have we come to this? Where have we gone wrong? How can we renew a right spirit within us? Where is our help to come from? Our predicament is not political or economic or even material in nature, arguably it is spiritual. We have lost the blessing of God and, though not for the first time in sacred history, there's a reckoning coming, indeed, it is already here; we would be fools to ignore or deny God's judgment.

Take 9.55 minutes more now, if you will, and listen to the spiritual wisdom and frank talk about money, biblical stewardship and our identity and calling as contemporary Christians, spoken to the people of God today by Walter Brueggemann, preeminent Old Testament scholar and prophet of American values, speaking in the first of an interview series done by Laurel Johnston, stewardship officer of the Episcopal Church. There is hope.

2010-11-26T09:50:00.005-05:00

WEEK OF ADVENT 1, 2010

THE TRADITION: CELEBRATING GOD'S LIFE IN COMMUNITY

St. Peter's Choristers with Professor Tili-Trebicka (at far left)

The First Sunday in Advent marks the beginning a new church calendar year. It's time for another refreshing in the spirit, a letting go of the year before and an anticipation of the year ahead, like a spiritual bath done once a year whether you need it or not! Kind of like Lent but without the rigors of self-examination and guilt.

Advent is more than a cyclical keeping of time: it is also a reaching out beyond temporal self in anticipation of the timeless One who first called us into God's eternal community and would have us prepare for His Second Coming. It is this other sense of Advent that captivates our imagination and turns our habits of the heart to the cosmic. "Prepare ye the way of the Lord!"

If Advent were only about a calendar event, it would still be satisfying especially for those of us who love tradition namely, the customs of the church that help us hold on to truths revealed from the beginning of the Christian enterprise, the things we value as Christians. These are: the seasons of the church year, the sacraments, the doctrines, the spiritual practices including our ceremonials, the orders of the church, the church, in a word the tradition.

Yet we're not in this thing to be satisfied. We're in it to be saved! Salvation is in the name of the Lord our God, maker of heaven and earth.

In holding both ends of this mystery, in typical Anglican form, we stand in Advent looking back at the calendar event and then, completely turned around, seeing into the future cosmic event. We see at once Jesus the Creche God and Christ the Cosmic God. We prepare for Christ's first coming (tradition) while awaiting Christ's second coming (mysticism).

This turn back again spirit of Advent cries out "Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again!" Advent is our special time to refocus vision, reorient lives, reposition priorities. In a word, to prepare anew for Christ's Second Coming, promised of old, by celebrating Christ's First Coming. Enjoy the season responsibly!

2010-11-09T08:53:00.005-05:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 24, 2010

Magda "Maggie" Cum Naughty, our Chocolate Labrador Retriever, celebrated her birthday this week. Actually every day to Maggie is a birthday. Her daily joie de vivre has been a bright light in the rectory ever since she came home on St. John's Day, 2001. There was nothing intentional about that day other than we had agreed with the breeder to pick her up then because it would be down time in the rectory, just right for taking up the demanding routine of a new puppy in the house. Yet in one of those wonderful moments of the Holy Spirit, it happens that Labrador Retrievers, native to Newfoundland, were once known as St. John's dogs. Our four-legged bundle of joy has been an unceasing blessing, worthy of our calendar celebration even if she only just wants her biscuit as always, never mind human artifice and thank you very much!

Retriever grace has been ours for nine years, enfleshing in the rectory everything good about these wonderful creature-children of God, evoking our love and compassion and caring to the point that our adult children now wryly observe, "You never loved us as much as Maggie!" Would it be helpful to respond Maggie never cost me private school educations, insurance, cars, curfews missed, relationships agonized over, unceasing prayer and consternation . . . indeed, Maggie has been all joy, all the time. Even when she gnawed one of Patty's new Salvatore Ferragamo shoes to bare wood (by the way, designer shoes are remarkably well-crafted when observed from inside out!) or scratched and then chewed a large hole in a dining room wall or proudly carried a live baby rabbit home in her soft, gentle mouth . . . she was just being what she is, a Retriever!

Yes, we love our dog, too much probably. Our love and care for her brings many regular satisfactions of the heart that are otherwise inaccessible in human relations, encumbered as human relations are with a dark side, the unreasonableness, meanness and selfishness, greed, willfulness and vapidity of our lesser selves. Maggie is all dog, all the time, without deceit. However annoying her barking or painful her hurts, we wouldn't want it any other way. What we celebrate in Maggie is the flesh ground of God's creation and the fruit of our own good works in her training, care and nurture.

I know our greater purpose and responsibility in human relations, and I do not for one moment mistake the greater value of our human relations even with all the struggle and strife entailed. Yet, in a word there's nothing like the companionship of a good dog at the end of a long run.

Happy birthday, Maggie!

2010-11-06T08:09:00.019-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 22, 2010
Enjoy "Falling Down" by Prester John, performed in a recent live free concert at St. Peter's -

The following is excerpted from http://www.reverbnation.com/presterjohn

ARTIST SUMMARY

Genres: Jazz / Folk / Acoustic Scientist Music

Label: innova Recordings

ARTIST BIO

With a unique blend of acoustic folk, jazz, pop, classical, bluegrass and the avant-garde, New Haven, CT duo Prester John has a sound that is entirely their own. Formed in 2008 by underground guitar-hero Shawn Persinger, Prester John also showcases the musical talents of David Miller on mandolin and harmony vocals.

Taylor Guitars’ Wood and Steel once wrote, “Persinger has defined his career by playing hard-to-define music.” One minute you’re hearing a pop/rock song in the tradition of Cat Stevens or Jack Johnson, the next you’re listening to music that could have been composed by Stravinsky or Frank Zappa. When it comes to traditional and mainstream styles Prester John’s authenticity is also difficult to match; their bluegrass repertoire sounds straight out of Appalachia (no doubt due to Persinger’s West Virginia roots) and their swing tunes recall the bygone days of The Hot Club of France. The ease and flexibility they display traversing and transcending genres is practically unheard of in this day and age (if ever).

Prester John’s latest CD, “Desire for a Straight Line” focuses on the instrumental side of their repertoire. 16 catchy and unique compositions, this music is both challenging and accessible, a rare combination in modern instrumental music. For fans of vocal tunes Prester John is already at work on the follow up to “Desire…” a 16 song, all vocal recording, which also showcases their instrumental virtuosity. Of course you can always hear Prester John vocal performances at every live concert.

“This duo started with a backlog of Shawn’s songs but the future of our sound is wide open,” says Miller. “We both have an interest in different types of music and we also have the ability to play many styles. Whether it’s the simplicity of a two and four backbeat or the complexity of an atonal melody. Nothing is dismissed.” It is that eclectic taste and skill that makes Prester John a force to be reckoned with.

2010-10-21T09:51:00.014-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 21, 2010

Rearing a 21st Century Global Citizen

Cooper Smith Flocken joined the global family on August 3. Patty and I flew out to the new parents in the first week and couldn't get enough of the little guy. By the time we left, we knew two things for certain: one, we had a keeper, and, two, this whole baby at a distance thing was going to cost a lot of money in airfare over the next several years!

I find myself thinking about Cooper a lot. What kind of person will he be and become? What will he look like? More importantly, what will he see when he looks in the mirror? Will he feel confident and secure? Where will his intelligence come from? Has Cooper inherited an ability to think analytically like his maternal grandfather? To see and articulate invisible things like his paternal grandfather? To be compassionate and caring like his paternal grandmother and father? To excel in athletics and art like his mother? To transform food into a heavenly meal and be bilingual like his maternal grandmother? What will his passion in life be? His character and virtues? Values and principles? How can I help Cooper along the way?

Right now it's probably a good thing to just keep him warm and safe, fed and comfortable, with just enough stimulation to peak his curiosity and grow his senses without overwhelming and frightening him. Our little guy may be a 21st century global citizen in the making, but he's still a little guy. I wish we lived closer to Cooper. I'll just have to settle for carrying him around in my heart until we're together again, up close and personal as the saying goes.

Cooper's birth has pressed upon me the immediacy of proper physical care and nurture of other children, children everywhere having the same needs as Cooper, such as:

getting the right prenatal care and baby nutrition,
being kept secure and safe,
having constant, trustworthy and loving primary caretakers,
having access to health care and education,
being free from race or gender discrimination or civil unrest,
having opportunities to grow vocationally and spiritually,
chances to do work that is meaningful and personally fulfilling,
having a life with family and friends,
experiencing love and joy and peace.

How can I help other children along the way that leads to abundant life? I've begun to blend children back into my daily living. I look with renewed sensitivity at babies. Speak with greater compassion about children and especially to children. I'm actively helping to rebuild our youth ministry in the parish: as the congregation has gotten older, we've kind of let this part of what we are called to do slip by. This past weekend for example, I volunteered for the first time to serve as a spiritual director in a weekend long faith discovery program for middle school aged youths. When asked why I volunteered all I could think to say was "because I've got a new grandson who lives 2,000 miles away from me and I hope others will do the same there for him."

In the meantime, until Aunt Kate visits him in early December and GrandPatty does so in late December, and we bring his family east for a baptism in March, I'll keep up with Cooper in the most economical and best way available, namely Skype video conferencing!

2010-10-17T06:25:00.010-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 21, 2010

CROP WALK 2010:
When The Problem Is Bigger Than The Solution

Yesterday during the Syracuse / Pittsburgh game a commercial came up on the screen that caught my attention. It featured a customer standing at a service counter and a parts manager singing an upbeat country western jingle called “Napa know how.”
There’s an ebullient innocence to the commercial that’s charming, as if by just coming into a Napa parts store, “Napa know how” can somehow solve your problem and lift your spirit at the same time. If only life solutions were as easy and convenient to come by as a visit to a village auto parts store or repair shop, right around the corner.
The truth is much of life doesn’t lend itself to easy solutions. Many of life’s problems are hard to control or deal with, indeed, they just may not admit any solutions. An inoperable disease. A sudden death. An irrevocable divorce. A regional disaster. Where is our help to come from when life crashes and burns at a level insurance doesn’t cover? Where do we go when “Napa know how” doesn’t have the inventory to fix the problem?
Psalm 121 this morning points us toward the answer.
I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come? My help comes from the lord, who made heaven and earth.
In biblical times, villagers from all over ancient Israel would sing this hymn on their way to the holy temple in Jerusalem. Kind of like the medieval Canterbury pilgrimage except instead of going down onto the lowlands of Kent, England the ancient Jews went up into the Judean Mountains of Israel. With songs on their lips, prayers of thanksgiving and adoration in their hearts, our spiritual forbears traveled the pilgrim’s way, living and breathing a faith that celebrated their god, the god of Israel, the lord our God who was with them, always and in all ways, even, especially, when wrestling with God in the deepest dark of night as Jacob did in this morning's Old Testament reading.
Today Americans don’t do pilgrimages per se. We travel all over the world with something else in mind. Vacation. Business. Recreation. The idea of stepping out of our life habits and doing something spiritual, something out of the ordinary, doing something profoundly meaningful yet purposed in the inexplicable, just doesn’t occur to the modern mind. We’re poorer for this, really. It’s something the human soul needs to do: to give thanks to God with our whole body without reservation, to express gratitude and return thanks to God “who made heaven and earth” wholeheartedly for the gift and opportunities of life.
This afternoon the parish is hosting the annual Greater Cazenovia Area CROP Walk. It’s not a pilgrimage in the traditional sense, not like Christians walking across northern Spain on the way to Santiago de Compostela. I invite us nevertheless this morning to think of the CROP Hunger Walk as a modern pilgrimage, our way of reaching up to God in thanks for all the blessings in our life by reaching out to others in need that they too may be blest and enjoy life.
In measurable terms, this reaching up to God by reaching out to others means: each year over 2,000 communities across the United States join in more than 1,600 CROP Hunger Walks, with this year alone almost $4 million dollars being raised for food banks, pantries, community gardens, and other local efforts across the U. S. A quarter of the money raised this afternoon in Cazenovia will go to CazCares. The goal is $10,000. (N. B. By day's end we raised $10,135, nearly doubling the money raised in 2009 and all time record for Cazenovia CROP Walks, achieved in part because of a new strategy including corporate sponsors and online donations.)
We give thanks this morning for the faithful leadership by St. James’ Church here in the village this past several years on behalf of the CROP Walk. We also take pride in our own parishioners, especially Paul Terwilliger and Anne Fontana and the rest of their team who are now overseeing the annual Church World Service CROP mission in this local area.
We’re living in a culture and society that promotes self-interest and the individual, and we all know times are hard at home, yet this annual CROP Walk celebrates a greater truth, that sometimes it really needs to be about the needs of others. Christianity knows this basic economy better even than capitalism. In God’s economy the basis of capital exchange is mercy, namely we give from what we have in abundance that others may receive what they have not in need, and we do it gladly and readily.
The unjust judge in today’s gospel didn’t get this principle and value of mercy. He only understood private money and privilege and power, very human motivations. The Gospel message today conversely celebrates our divine nature which is more than self-interest, comfort and convenience. We care about others because God cares. We feel the needs of others because God feels our needs. We want to make things better not only for us but for others also because this is God's desire. In a word, we have within us the desire “to be the passionate presence of Christ for one another and the world we are called to serve.”
You can’t fulfill this desire with “Napa know how” alone. It helps, being able to get down into the problems of life with technology, but there’s more to life than solving problems with Napa or Nasa parts. Sometimes there’s no solution and then what we need is love, great, great love. Love goes beyond the limits of human need and competence because love is willing and able to live with an intractable problem, to endure and persevere, until God alone, maker of heaven and earth, breaks forth the light of God’s truth and a whole new reality is come to life, and humanity can finally live as one.

2010-10-09T16:25:00.003-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 20, 2010

Look at the Details, Search for the Bigger Picture

Zoom (Viking Kestrel)

By Istvan Banyai

From Publishers Weekly (1994) -

"This provocative wordless volume can be 'read' either from front to back or even from back to front. Either way, it's a startling experience. Its illustrations 'zoom' out, as though a viewer has rapidly backed away from each. For example, the first painting, of a jagged-edged red shape, turns out to be a detail of a rooster's comb; as the pages turn, the bird diminishes in importance, until the barn where he stands is shown to be a toy on a magazine's cover. That magazine dangles from the hand of a dozing boy, who himself becomes but a smudge on an advertising billboard. These shifts in perspective repeat until the book abandons earth altogether. The last image is a tiny white sphere-our planet-against a night sky."

We used this book for a faith discovery learning exercise on Monday at youth night. It's a great opportunity to stimulate conversation about the importance of being open to different perspectives. We tore the book apart, page by page, and gave each youth a random page and held the rest back. The youths described their pages to the group and then laid them down in what they thought was the right order. They tried to tell the story as they saw it, although they didn't have all the pages. Finally, the rest of the pages were given out and laid down in the complete order of the book.

They suddenly realized how important is to accurately tell the story as you see it and to respect each person's perspective and, at the same time, to keep their minds open for new knowledge. As one youth remarked, there's always more to the story! Nobody ever has sole possession of the whole truth. If only everybody got this message at a young age!

2010-09-28T09:49:00.003-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 18, 2010

Taoist Tai Chi comes to St. Peter's, the first class of its kind in the village. The instructor is my friend Don Henry, a member of the vestry and a recently retired regional operations manager of Verizon. A couple of fellow instructors from the Syracuse Chapter of the International Taoist Tai Chi Society are helping Don start a local branch here in Cazenovia. Classes meet on Monday and Wednesday evenings, 6 - 7 PM.

Beginners stand in the parish hall and observe Don as he demonstrates over a period of a couple of months the full set of ritual body motions that comprise the practice. There are 108 movements in the set. To inspire the new beginners Don and the other two instructors did a full set. It took about 17 minutes. The beauty of the slow ballet like movements was both inspiring as intended, we clapped at the end in appreciation, and intimidating. How does one ever get to the end without falling over or into the others or more fundamentally, forgetting what comes next and how to do it?

The answer is practice. Getting it right in practice after repeated observations and attempts, and putting right practice together sequentially gradually leads to the full set.

A first insight: if one looks only to the end as a work to be accomplished, the practice becomes daunting and unmanageable. If on the other hand one approaches the practice as a daily, ongoing and cumulative joy of body movement and awareness, breaking the goal down into a repetitive series of related actions, the whole exercise becomes not only manageable and attainable, but also satisfying and fun. Life is a journey. Enjoy the way.

2010-09-21T15:18:00.011-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 17, 2010

A Stewardship Homily: Returning to God When (Before) Returns Decline

Jeremiah’s spirit in this past Sunday’s Old Testament reading is crushed. “My joy is gone” laments Jeremiah, “grief is upon me, my heart is sick.” Why this personal anguish? Because, as the Sunday Readings commentator on our parish website says, “(Jeremiah) proclaimed God’s way of life to a community on its way to death. They were unwilling to listen and had no desire to hear and heed God’s word.” The people of Jeremiah’s time didn’t get the truth that living a spiritual life is more than being good and getting goodies. The spiritual life is about being blessed and sharing those blessing, especially with those who have become disconnected from their people and lost their way, the homeless, the addicted, the grieving, the poor and the marginalized.

“The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved,” God's people complained, as if the material good times they had always enjoyed and were now gone (sound familiar?), were their entitlement, right and privilege for simply showing up in the flesh. “Hey, God, I’m here, lay it on me!” And God did but not as they presumed. They were oblivious to the spiritual judgment that was coming down upon them. They knew that something profound had gone wrong yet thought the cause was elsewhere than in themselves, their materialistic attitudes and behaviors, and in their systems of organizational behavior. Kind of like the economy and society today. Do you think?

The predicament of the people and nation of ancient Israel in the time of Jeremiah was that they thought backwardly. They thought they had material issues with spiritual consequences, if they thought about spirituality at all. What they had, as Jeremiah told them prophetically for forty years, were spiritual issues with material consequences tied on. The real order of the world in every generation is that we all have spiritual issues that have to be dealt with up front or be faced with material consequences down the road. This is an important indeed foundation biblical truth.

Said in the Bible language of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew, chapter 6 - every generation has to “Strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness” and only then “all these (good) things will be given to you as well.” In other words, if you don’t get your spiritual house in order first, regardless of whether you get or don’t get material satisfactions, you’re on your way to death without hope. The good news is, if you’ve got God and your spiritual house is in order, you’re still on your way to death but with hope for what’s to come and “hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

We are a new creation in the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit we are a dusty lakebed, gone dry for lack of the sustaining wellspring of every blessing. With the Holy Spirit, all of life’s experiences, every good or bad turn of events, every joyous or calamitous happening, bears within a transcendent glow that will lead us through every day and night. Rock songs or drinks on the rocks can’t get close to this Spirit! No wonder the crowd on Pentecost thought the disciples were drunk early in the morning. Who’s ever that joyful and cheerful in the morning? The Holy Spirit is, thanks be to God!

How upsetting it must be then in the Lord to see us, literally his namesake Christians unhappy or complaining all the time, having issues unworthy of our true identity, calling and destiny. How can we shine our light that others may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven, if we ourselves are dispirited? This we are told is how Jeremiah felt after forty years of fighting the good fight in a depressing era in the life and history of God’s people. Given the circumstances of our time, it would be easy to throw up our hands and fall into the despair and anguish of Jeremiah, although who among us would dare arrogate to ourselves his dark night of the soul?

And what about Jesus? God knows Jesus did not have an easy time of it on the way to the cross, his death and resurrection. We see something of the stress weighing upon him in the Sunday morning Lucan parable of the shrewd manager, another story told in the face of constant opposition to the Good News by Pharisees and the scribes. How annoying they must have been to Jesus!

Jesus offers what amounts to sarcastic admiration (if we were making this point) for the villain in the parable precisely because of the man’s attentiveness to his own best interests. The manager certainly had this for a talent, looking after himself. He shrewdly lines up debtors who will owe him favors when he loses his position. Jesus then turns to his disciples and drives home the message of the day, asking, “Who among the children of God are as wise in the ways of the kingdom; lining up favors with God in acts of justice and mercy for when they lose their lives!”

Christ commands us to be every bit as clever in doing good works for God and others as the shrewd manager was in doing good works for himself. No one can serve God and wealth. You can have both - and I have many friends who are both rich in God and rich in wealth - but you can’t do both. You can’t serve God and serve wealth. It’s a matter of basic stewardship orientation. It all begins, continues and ends with God: God’s love, God’s grace, God’s justice, God's annoyance and outbursts, God’s mercy and forgiveness, God’s joy and fellowship, God’s gratitude and generosity. This was Jeremiah’s message. This is our message.

Let’s stay on message whether or not others are hearing what the Spirit is saying to his people. Recite with me again, and this time with conviction, the Collect of the Day - “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure, through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

2010-09-17T12:06:00.008-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 16, 2010

Centered in Crested Butte, CO

How do you keep yourself centered, calm and confident and capable of being creative and productive and communicating well with others, especially amid the challenges of a busy week full of mind stretching and body stressing activity, week after week?

We're told that time off is a good thing for these purposes. Yet after any extended time away from work, such as vacation or sabbatical, the first days back have a way of blanking out all of the refreshment or restoration gained in body and spirit.

Coming back from vacation is hard work and it can be painfully counterproductive work if not done slowly and deliberately. Take my board meeting yesterday morning, please! After several long days doing many things that I care deeply about I was spent, as if I'd never even gone on vacation. I knew I was emotionally vulnerable going into the meeting. Nevertheless, I acted out in spite of my knowing better than to do so. Thank God for the generous and caring spirit of my colleagues.

What really is needed for our ongoing health and well being is time off each day or said differently, a daily mini-vacation. My daughter Katharine exercises at a gym and does yoga after a long day of teaching. My friend Paul runs in the early evening to help clear his mind of a private law practice (I know because I've been avoiding running him over for years on the way home from the church). I drive five miles through a pleasant countryside every day to get to work and I've noticed over the years walking and biking have become increasingly popular. I'm told all this exercise is beneficial to the attitudes and behaviors of the people I see along the side of the road.

There are so many healthy ways that work toward bringing our selves, our souls and bodies, back into harmony after extended labor under the burden of the noonday sun (or more likely, in front of the laptop screen or inside the board room or nursery room, for that matter).

We really don't need to be acting out because of stress. There's no excuse for such madness, especially when the world in which we live and move desperately needs our consideration and loving-kindness. We are God's people, called to be peacemakers, called to be joyful in the Lord, always and in all ways. Even though this sometimes is easier said than done, it remains our Christian calling and purpose. Happiness is a job we all need to work at, deliberately and intentionally. God, help me.

"O God, in the course of this busy life, give us times of refreshment and peace; and grant that we may so use our leisure to rebuild our bodies and renew our minds, that our spirits may be opened to the goodness of your creation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
The Book of Common Prayer

2010-09-06T22:15:00.016-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 15, 2010

Magpie, Delivering Good News and Inviting Good People

Patty and I were in Colorado over Labor Day weekend for a wedding. As we walked up to the Wedding Garden in Crested Butte on the morning of the rehearsal, I stopped to take a picture of the mountain.

Suddenly a black-billed magpie swooped into my viewer screen, landing on the right hand side of the sign in the photo above. I had never before heard of much less seen a black-billed magpie.

This frequent flyer in the Northwest is revered in Asia as a herald of good news, and there was good news and joy in abundance on this weekend. A perfect sign of the occasion.

The bride was beautiful in her gown, surrounded by family and friends. The groom who in the winter had flown a backward somersault on skis off a mountain cliff, stood rock solid at her side. We celebrated and blessed this wedding in Holy Matrimony in the picturesque grandeur of a mountain valley, worshippers in an open-air sanctuary at high altitude, elated by nature and juiced with the Holy Spirit.

Francis of Assisi, patron saint of eco-spirituality, would have been happy and proud. Church at 9,275 feet above sea level, twentysomething style!

"Let all the ends of the earth revere God" . . . Let earth and wind, fire and rain, glorify the Lord our God . . . all God's creatures . . . all God's children . . . sing God's praise!

2010-08-30T12:35:00.012-04:00

WEEK OF PENTECOST 14, 2010

Cooper Smith Flocken, 4 weeks old

Faith, hope, love renew.

The power of a smile.

I'm good. How about you?

2010-04-03T10:32:00.005-04:00

EASTER DAY - EX FACTIS JUS ORITOR

IT'S HARD TO DO RESURRECTION SERMONS in Central New York. Easter doesn’t usually burst forth on time with blossoms and buds and the burn of warm spring days. Mostly we get overcast and rain or sleet or even snow. Not exactly the stuff to raise one’s vernal spirits. But not this year; this year we’re all up and running with joy in our hearts.

Across from the rectory, the wetland is alive this morning with the white noise of peepers spiked by squawking geese. Nature is returning to life, Central New York style that is, until the next snow storm. There’s always this possibility. We live with the unexpected when it comes to weather in Central New York. Our plans are constantly on hold, always waiting to see what the facts will be on the ground.

Perhaps this is our best connecting point with today’s message of resurrection: our ability to see and interpret the facts on the grounds. Get inundated by as many snowfalls as we do in a typical year, year after year, and you learn to read the weather like a Storm Center pro. Maybe this is our special gift in the spirit, the innate ability to read the facts on the ground and know which way the wind is blowing, an ability lost to city and suburban residents but part of our ongoing rural life here in Central New York.

Beware, though, being smart and practical can be a stumbling block to the spiritual life especially when it comes to resurrection. Fix your mind on always knowing the facts on the ground and you’ll miss half of life’s joy: the laughs, the ironies, the sorrows, the wonders of being alive to the unseen spirits, the messengers of God’s presence in the world around us.

This is what I love about the gospel of Luke’s Easter narration. Forget about the weather outside and think only of a small group of practical minded women who can eke out daily subsistence from the least of the land in hard times. These are the women whom Luke reports coming to the tomb to prepare Jesus’ body for the grave, doing what women once did commonly before we sanitized death and made it a separate commercial business. These women are life hardened but still alive to the spirits of life and of the living God: they know how to birth a baby, care for the sick, feed a family, love their people and bury a body.

Let’s follow these women this morning as they enter the storm of the resurrection.

“But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared.”

They come expecting things to be as they have always been in the moment of preparing a body for entombment. But everything is different. The facts on the ground have changed. The stone is rolled away. The tomb is empty. The linen wraps are lying on the ground but there is no body to be found. These women are life hardened as people tend to be who live close to the earth. They are bright and strong in the way of the world. Yet like sensitives who have the inkling of a powerful unseen presence, they are perplexed.

What matters as we listen to the facts unfolding before the women at the empty tomb is not that we suddenly exclaim the mystery of faith as it has evolved over the intervening millennia . . . or that we start shooting darts at the mystery of faith because it doesn’t fit into our current scientific beliefs . . . but that we stand with these women and enter the moment of their faith discovery.

This is an opportunity for sudden awareness of new knowledge, what we in the practice of spirituality call the Aha Moment. Like Sherlock Holmes we must look with eyes and minds open to the new clues on the ground and allow our thinking to follow the facts.

At first the women are perplexed . . . things were not as they expected . . . but then they have a quickening insight and remember what Jesus had told them. Prior physical knowledge informs and advances their understanding toward a whole new spiritual reality, the spiritual reality of the resurrection, resurrection which could not happen without the physical death of Jesus. This is what he had told them, what Peter the Fisherman had at first refused to believe or accept.

Doubt and denial is also the reaction when the women return from the tomb and tell the apostles and other disciples the new evidence on the ground. There is a rapid process of new knowledge taking place in this gospel narrative, and it is so familiar as to be taken for granted. The process goes like this: important new information is followed by negative reaction before the information is finally accepted and received. Scripture at this point reads -

“But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them . . .

"But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.”

Peter, the apostle who first heard the messianic purpose of Jesus and refused to accept what Jesus meant, hears what has happened to Jesus at the tomb, and connecting these new ideas with what he had learned previously “went home, amazed at what had happened.”

I am not asking you this Easter morning to swallow two thousand years of evolved Christian faith and understanding hook, line and sinker. I am only asking you to stand with our patron Peter and his fellow disciples Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and the other women at the empty tomb. Open your eyes and minds to what’s happening in the context of the facts and prior knowledge of their times and come to your own conclusions. My conclusion and that of many others over the centuries is this:

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

2010-03-11T11:46:00.015-05:00

A LENTEN REFLECTION ON CONTEMPORARY FAITH AND CULTURE

THIS PAST MONTH A PARISHIONER CONVALESCING AT HOME gave me an inter-campus communique announcing the following -

“Syracuse University’s Hendricks Chapel has established its first Pagan chaplaincy in the chapel’s 80-year history. ‘The appointment of a Pagan chaplain enables Hendricks Chapel to demonstrate our true interfaith nature and add depth to our perspective on religious life and spirituality,’ says Hendricks Chapel Interim Dean Kelly Sprinkle. ‘Having a Pagan chaplain clearly places Hendricks Chapel and Syracuse University as one of the leaders on the national scene among university and college chapels in recognizing and embodying the importance of religious pluralism on campus.’”

The parishioner asked me what I thought of this appointment. Rather than express an opinion I adopted what I assumed would be the voice of the new Chaplain and spoke of Earth-based religious practice and principles as I understood them. I did so with surprising readiness of mind and affection, noting that a sabbatical in 1999 had involved considerable time spent in the study of Celtic spirituality including residence in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. I left the parishioner to decide what if any faith resonance there was for her in this impromptu portrayal. The greater context here is that in the Episcopal Church we've had this conversation before, most recently when a clergy couple in Pennsylvania was subject to church discipline over their private practice of paganism and expression of loyalty oaths outside of their ordination vows in the Episcopal priesthood, clearly a conflict of religious interests. A variation on this controversy though without fault of his own involved the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion himself.

Earlier in 2002 the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, a Welsh native and then in his last months as Archbishop of Wales, was elected into a select group of contributors to Welsh cultural heritage. The ceremony and language of inducting Williams into this Welsh “Hall of Fame” included white hooded robes and reference to “ordained” status, the lifting up of a six-foot sword and allusions to “druid” origins. The sensationalist British press had a field day, wrongly accusing Williams of “dabbling” in paganism, guilt by association of symbology. A high personal honor of national esteem became fodder in the ideological warring of our time, at once besmirching Williams and belittling pagan religion, with no more apparent agenda than stirring up trouble among “true” believers. We in the Episcopal Church know this behavior as both effectively contagious and highly resistant to common sense and decency.

So I offer this reflection in way of salutary blessing, not that such is needed or probably even appreciated in today's academic community. The appointment of a Pagan chaplain at Syracuse University represents many things among which in my opinion are the following: a compassionate outreach to members of the academic community who are spiritual but not religious in a mainstream traditional sense; a recognition of the faith life of members of the community who profess beliefs of ancient pagan meaning and purpose; an opportunity for these members to meet for support in the discovery and practice of their faith; and a deliberate and intentional broadening of ownership and participation in the interfaith dialogue that is at the core of Hendricks Chapel’s mission today, including now the voice of Earth-based pagan religion.

As we come to our own Christian seasons of Holy Week observances and Easter celebration, we are reminded in these converging moments of contemporary spirituality and practice that the path of faith is long and diverse in history as well as complex in knowledge and understanding, indeed, God and the experience of God is beyond all human knowing. What matters here is that we ourselves respond in faith to the God we know and love namely Jesus Christ, and that we have the courage to adapt to changing needs while remaining true to the foundation of our faith. Adaptation and truth are not mutually exclusive. The church throughout Christian history has been successfully adaptive in embedding our universal truths into the cultural life of indigenous populations all over the globe, Christmas and Easter holidays being our prime examples.

What matters ultimately and most intimately is our own integrity of faith and fellowship as members of the Body of Christ which is expressed primarily in and through the church, a membership privilege which is not limited solely to the church nor exercised only in the church. This we know because Jesus said, "I have many sheep and they are not all of this fold."

I for one am deeply grateful for my life in Christ. I am confident God’s promises are true. God's Spirit sustains me. As I get older this is very comforting indeed. I increasingly delight in the richness of God’s presence and power throughout creation, within all human relations and above all human predicaments, including death and resurrection.

I look forward to meeting this new Chaplain at Syracuse University and celebrating our experiences of the Risen God whom I live and walk with daily in the ideals of love and forgiveness and grace, embodied in Jesus Christ.

2009-04-29T14:53:00.019-04:00

A VISION OF KNOWING
N. B. Last Blog Entry Before Sabbatical Time

THE WETLAND ACROSS FROM THE RECTORY THIS MORNING is shrouded by a spring mist. This wetland and I have been together for twenty years and I know its habitat and seasons as well as I know my living room. I see this wetland frequently in a special way, as when musing this morning in the growing light. At such times it becomes briefly a thin-veiled place of knowing beyond knowing, an altar mystery within the nature sanctuary. This wetland is for me a place of sacred encounter and I value it with the intensity of an Orthodox monk in the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem.

I lay in bed during this customary waking hour just before dawn, looking out over the hillside, through the leafless maples; not seeing the wetland because of the mist but knowing its Presence. I wonder is this what it’s like for people without faith, to always be looking yet never truly seeing except what’s only there before one’s eyes.

It takes the knowing eye to see into the wetland when misted over. I see clumps of tough grass, shallow spreads of water barely moving. I see geese moving on the nesting grounds, readying at the slightest provocation to honk angrily at each other - saints forfend that they should ever stop squawking loudly at each other over any and all actual or perceived offense. I see them glide out then abruptly flap furiously, lift off and fly away. With the knowing eye I see them. I see them return again from wherever they have gone and whatever they have done – flying over and then banking down into the hospitality of their watery home. All this in a morning muse before the light of day . . .

. . . I thrill at their sounding and delight in their movement. They are so full of themselves, so loud and present one moment and in the next, silently waiting out there, hidden under their wetland covers, bedded down for a rest from their labors. I cannot always actually see them, even in the daylight, yet they are there; as I know they are there in the mist of a spring day dawning; as I know they are there throughout the dark night. How they manage to sleep a wink with all those peepers, God alone knows! Soon the peepers will give up their racket and occupy themselves with whatever it is they do until winter stills their every action and they disappear altogether until spring returns and life cycles . . .

I wonder is this what it means to be a person of faith, to know confidently that like the geese and peepers out there - invisible in the light of day, yet apprehensible to the knowing eye in the mist and dark - so also with God? Is this what faith brings to the table in nature - the wisdom and knowledge that as these wetland friends go away in the fall, and return again and make themselves known in the spring, so also with God?

Why must we believers prove the presence of God, supernatural and unseen, to doubting, skeptical, thought-proud others? They cannot see in the mist what faith reveals. They see only visible nature. I see invisible God! Let them take comfort in nature’s way. I am truly happy for them. For I too love nature! I love nature's play and drama. Yet I love God more! And when this nature passes away, like the wetland mist at the burning of the sun, what then?

Will Nature still see me, touch me, love me, move me like God moves me when I’m ashes to ashes, dead and gone? The answer is a shout-out no, I don't think so and I don't care! for God, my God is mine and I am Thine forever!

The people of God have lived within the mist of human nature by the light of God's revelation for more than two millenniums. We have seen into the Mist for centuries. From the ancient Celtic fellowship of Lindisfarne, Holy Island at the borders of southeastern Scotland and northern England, from this ancient place of similar thin-veiled sanctuary and knowing eye, of kith and kin to this morning's muse -

"Though the sun rise cheerless o'er this Isle this day, I walk in a pathway of Light. I cannot for a moment fall out from Thine everlasting Arms. I know my greatness. I am in the Heart of God and I'm on my way to Glory."

2008-11-26T10:49:00.002-05:00

A THANKSGIVING MEDITATION

FOOD SUSTAINS THE BODY AND INSPIRES THE SOUL, and should properly be respected and honored for its life-supporting, soul-inspiring capacity. So too the sources of food should be respected and valued. We should be ever mindful of the ranges and plains, fields and gardens, rivers and oceans and bays, the very earth and wind and water and heat that provide room and bed for the food we enjoy. We should remember also the creatures, great and small that make their living flesh part of our being, and treat them with dignity and compassion.

We should give thanks when the harvest is set down before us at table, however abundant and diverse or plain and scant it may be. It is the fruit of human labor, yet it comes from Hands beyond our human self. We did not create the order of being we enjoy, we only live and move within it. At every partaking, we owe therefore a bow of obeisance and a word of gratitude in humble acknowledgment to the Other without Whom we would be less than nothing.

From food properly received and properly prepared and properly presented, there is meaning and purpose in life. In such proper honoring is both thanksgiving and communion, the practice of universal religion. The food sacrifice in multitudinous customs and habits of celebration, according to diverse climates and peoples around the globe, in every time and place since the beginning of human consciousness, acknowledges the One from whom all blessings flow.

Since life is a great good there attends therefore a measure of sacredness in the planning, provision, preparation, presentation and partaking of food, wonderful food. In the sacred knowledge and understanding of food, how one eats is at least as compelling as that one eats. All eat to live and as life is sacred, so too is food. Better to go hungry for a day or two than to eat mindlessly without appreciation or even awareness of having eaten.

Food brings forth more than mere physical maintenance. Within its play upon the senses, food has the capacity to succor, palliate and pleasure and uplift the soul. Beyond nutritional values, beyond tastes and textures, color, balance and heat, there is spiritual meaning and purpose. A whole world of social order and divine principles is there either in potential or at risk on every plate of whatever one brings to the table! Nothing to be taken for granted or lightly therefore is food. Food, wonderful food, the sacrament and mystery all the more complex, complicated, chaotic, confusing and even contradictory for the flesh and fellowship and fine living within every fork and spoonful.

Feast daily therefore as a regular part of your being, however simply or refined, doing well with whatever and whomever you have before you. And remember this, food is for sharing. By its nature of production and distribution, by its very nature in creation, the food you have before you is itself a measure of prior sharing by another, and by the Other. You are under a bounden duty therefore to share as well and as generously, with others. This is the cycle of civilized life.

To do anything less, as for example keeping to one’s self all of whatever food is before you (or of any other good for this matter) is an unthinkable act of ingratitude, selfishness, sheer laziness or indulgence or proof of distrust that God will indeed ultimately provide what is needed.

And know that food is to be shared but not only in what generally is known as "good" company. No reading of the sacred scriptures in any translation conveys the encouragement to be with family only. Christ bids us to feed the hungry. "What is it if you only invite others knowing that they will respond by inviting you?" We are called to reach out to those who cannot return the favor. In them we meet Christ. The good Christ would have done makes the ancient sacrifice both present and living. " We are to meet one another in a mutual hospitality that embraces the stranger, this being different from our common fellowship which only celebrates family and friends. We are to meet in the company of the truly needy from whom nothing more is expected than that God’s good will is satisfied.

And in this latter regard, beware, for giving - even giving generously - without grace and gratitude is a sin and no less a sin than outright withholding. In both offenses the spirit of commonality and communion is diminished or degraded. Generosity and grace, well mixed, has the combined power to uplift and inspire another to live a better life, a life more worthy of the Great Provider, and this blessing redounds to the uplifter and inspirer as well as the uplifted and inspired. Bare mind of what the wisdom of the needy proclaims, "If you come only to be charitable, we don't want your charity; yet if you come to learn and share with us, we welcome you in good company."

And do not neglect humor in your food fellowship. There is great joy at the heavenly banquet table and even the slightest treat, however discreet and modest the provision may be, is to be celebrated with delight. All is a foretaste of the same heavenly banquet in any taking, blessing, breaking and giving of food at the earthly table. Be a model of companioned graciousness.

May your table spirit be large and welcoming, neither withholding nor begrudging of substance, or self. No crying over spilled milk (or wine for that matter). Have a pet nearby or better yet a child to remind you in both of the baser needs and instincts from which you have grown and the higher good to which you are called and should aspire.

2008-05-26T10:50:00.009-04:00

RIGHTEOUSLY THINKING

THE MEETING MINUTES WERE SENT OUT TO PARTICIPANTS to review for accuracy. The minutes reported at length on an exploratory discussion about the proper conduct of stewardship in the business of the church. In one section, following an assertion of the need for a renewed praxis of property, there appeared an editorial phrase, actually two commonly used words that are the death to all Christian vision and mission. The words were"realistically however . . ."

Oprah tells her followers "When a person shows you who he really is, believe him!" Language in action has the power to reveal how a person truly views the world and therefore defines himself and others in relation to his personal world view. The language of religion is especially revealing in this regard if for no other reason than religion is all about ultimate meaning and purpose in life, the very stuff of a world view.

Imagine then sitting through a church meeting where others in the room are secretly thinking not in terms of what God wills but of what the traffic will bear in this world. It used to be asked, "When is a businessman not a businessman?" The Episcopalian humor answered, "When he is a vestryman!" This humor though is lost in the increasingly secular culture of today's church membership. Today in the church money is the secret prime mover and not the Holy Spirit, especially in decision-making that concerns the programs of the church. "What's the bottom-line here?" Results-oriented decision-making is all about the money, the "real" bottom-line, and not the process of the conversion of souls ("world views") and the transformation of lives.

It's maddening, these conversations about ministry and stewardship and the business of the church, how these conversations get turned away from a discernment of God's will and made instead a practicum in capitalism. How did we get into this spiritual mess? It's like the proverbial bull in a china shop. Any appeal in the instance to goodness, truth and beauty or transcendent glory as a motivation and justification for taking a path of action that is counter-intuitive is contextually nonsensical, incomprehensible to the contemporary church business mindset. Once the business bull’s let in, it’s all about the business plan, brand name, marketing, accountability, regulations, strategy, results, the bottom line, profit and as much of this as possible: as if what (who) makes money is real and what (who) doesn’t isn’t.

Such “realistically however” thinking is unfaithful to a greater ultimate realism, in a word Christian realism and the belief that God’s hand is at work in the world around us and not just in a fantasy of wishful-thinking. Such "realistically however" thinking is patronizing of Christians who for centuries have sacrificed time, talent and treasure into the vision of God’s kingdom without ever worrying about results or profitability according to the standards of this world, trusting instead that God will bless their faith and trust and confidence in God. These often very "unrealistic" sacrifices are what have made possible the very culture in which the extraordinary benefits and opportunities of capitalism now exist.

The term “realistically however” is revealing of a world view that is entirely on this side of things, as if the speaker has the only true and final knowledge of what is ultimate meaning and purpose in life, and this knowledge is all and only about this world. We must challenge this attitude for what it is, nothing other than the siren song of Judas. We must renounce the weight of such worldly wisdom as nothing more in substance than Judas’ bag of gold, and every bit as a dangerous and deadly to our soul.

The biblical tradition speaks about the sin of the love of money. Many would argue that they do not love money. Do not be deceived. They love instead the things that money can do. They have become masters in the manipulation of the principles of money, of the bottom line and of profit. They take for themselves what is not theirs to take and give out to others what is not theirs to sacrifice. They talk about reality as if they are the masters of reality, as if they alone know what's what, and there is nothing that matters to them other than the illusion of their own reality.

Again, whose "reality" are we talking about here, anyway? Look back at an instructive engagement in recent history between the reality of God's kingdom and the illusory "reality" of this world namely, the engagement of Gandhi's rule of God against Rule Britannia in the 1930s. Look at the lesson of that outcome: dynasties and empires come and go in this world, but God's kingdom is forever. Again, do not be deceived. There is only one reality for the soul who has the vision of the kingdom of God before all else. All we have is - and all I understand is - the one Body, one Spirit, one Hope, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all. Nowhere in this baptismal proclamation do I see a declaration that there is another greater determining reality.

To allow unchallenged the use of the term “realistically however . . .” in the context of our conversations means that we would be submitting to a model of church which sees the church as a firm, the structures of the church conceived only as in a marketplace, and all actions of the church based upon utility or said in words paraphrasing biblical language, in the image and likeness of capitalism. It is true there are churches today thriving in our culture precisely on these terms. Yet they are sacrificing their mission and vision on the altar of the capitalist marketplace, a lesser dominant altar in our time and not the true vision or dare I say reality of God's kingdom. Beware the success of a church that models the world.

Such "bottom line" thinking is what has gotten us into many of our messes - the "realistic" attitude of money determining what we will or will not undertake as Christians in our call to be the passionate presence of Christ for one another and the world we are called to serve. This attitude is what got Judas confused. This attitude led to his betrayal of Jesus. This attitude is what has made the church blind to the legacy of creation and supported results-oriented accountability above process-oriented faithfulness. It is what has left the rest of the world cold to Americans in our obsessive pragmatism and practicality, compromise and calculating plays of power. We are in the wake now of our own success in worldly wisdom and practices. The tide is turning around the world and we're about to be overcome by our own backwash!

The measure of faithlessness in our times is Christians speaking more as capitalists than as Christians: as if the conversion of money and capital assets to profit is more the matter of our faith than the conversion of our checkbooks to Christ’s kingdom. We cannot discern God's will, much less fulfill God's will until we step back and have a long talk with Jesus (you might start by reading the gospels and looking for every reference to money). We need to clear our heads and get a renewed focus and discipline on what it means to be a Christian steward and business person working for the Company of God.

Jesus wants us to return thanks to the Father in heaven. This return of thanks includes time, talent and treasure, for all are gifts from God. Jesus wants us to incorporate best business practices into our church ethos; it's a simple matter of good stewardship. We know Jesus admired a good return on investments (cf. Matthew 25). Indeed capitalism has a lot to offer that is good and productive or rather potentially productive of much that is good. Capitalism however and free market economics are not in and of themselves, the ultimate good. For Christians the highest determining good is the Kingdom of God.

In a word, do you "realistically" think Jesus intended his kingdom to be premised in the model of a contemporary multi-national corporation? Come on! Jesus exhorts Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. Why not then say more commonly and faithfully this, namely - "righteously" thinking!

2008-05-04T20:00:00.009-04:00

“RELAX, THE LITURGY WILL TAKE CARE OF ITSELF!” said the faithful elder at the end of the service.

Suddenly I realized the anxiety I had been feeling about church attendance, more specifically a precipitous drop in church attendance, had begun to affect my attitude and behavior in worship. As a worship leader, this change apparently had become palpable to members in the pew and had serious ramifications, not least of which could be the further alienation of the faithful remnant, not to mention the Holy Spirit. Yet it wasn’t as if my concerns weren’t well motivated. God knows, there has been cause enough to be concerned in both church and culture in our time.

Following the prophetic witness of the church in our nation-wide 2003 General Convention, attendance in my little parish around the corner in a small Central New York lakeside village declined, roughly 22 percent in the ensuring three years. By the time the lay leadership knew what was happening, the damage was done. Our base of parish support on the evangelical side of parish life had left and with them went other parishioners with faith perspectives formed from the right. Translated this means not only attendance dropped but financial support as well as membership.

Combining this culture-war battle in the national church with a bold and outright advocacy from the local pulpit on behalf of social justice for all members of Christ’s body, the church - in a congregation that demographically tended slightly to the conservative side of things - was risky to say the least. Compounding this dynamic for destruction with a long-term pastorate (by 2006 18 years in duration) that has not been a walk in the park for any number of reasons, left my rectorship especially vulnerable. Nothing like a good (bad) controversy and a few scores to settle to get the congregation riled up . . .

The last three years in a word, have been exacting in time, energy and faith. The fact that I’m still standing is a tribute either to German obstinancy or English sensibility (both gene sets at work in my personality), or to a goodly measure of common-sense and decency exercised by my lay leadership. Usually, the short-term satisfaction in any major church crisis, as in business, is to lob off the head of the leader rather than to address systemic issues. It's easier and appears decisive.

Our parish history throughout the twentieth century in fact is littered with unsuccessful ministries involving clergy and laity. When I arrived in the fall of 1988, respect for the clergy and the parish’s reputation in the eyes of outsiders were low and well-deserved. Our concept of parish health was to celebrate interims (you know, the supply clergy between pastorates, the ones with all the smiles and none of the guts for meaningful ministry). I would hope we’ve done something about this in my time, and it would seem we have, although slow developing to be sure but progress nonetheless.

These years later, I am deeply grateful and proud of a turnaround in the culture of the parish. We are addressing the real issues of our time, the ones that speak directly to our local situation. We even have a strategic plan in place, the first such document in our 164-year history. Our focus is increasingly on ministries and mission of compassion and care for others, and not so much as before on our "Episcopalian" pride of place in public square or our individual purposes in private prayer. The tacit motto of former generations - "Manners maketh the man" - has given way to a motto unanimously affirmed by the current leadership - "To grow in God's image, and to spread Christ's kingdom, through the power of the Holy Spirit."

An ironic and future positive outcome of the recent 2003 separating of ways owing to theological and cultural differences among the membership (alluded to earlier) has been that a certain, non-traditional element of the evangelical right, our perceived growth edge in recent years, has gone from us as well. Turns out they had every bit as much pride and self-righteousness in religion as "God's frozen chosen" ever did. As soon as the church affirmed social justice for faithful worshippers of alternative lifestyles, they screamed indignantly and quoted the Bible, chapter and verse, as if they had exclusive knowledge, understanding and wisdom in reading and interpreting God's will in the 21st century. Sometimes I wish I had their certainty of conviction, but then I used to wish I could walk on water, restore sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, ambulation to the lame, cast out demons and raise the dead. I toned down. I wish they would, too.

All of which leaves us here in the parish without extremes, neither the old Episcopalians so full of themselves for simply being themselves nor the mistakenly perceived new growth which turned out to be intent on remaking the Episcopal Church in the image of whatever Methodist or Baptist or non-denominational church of their childhoods. We centrists are left alone in the center of things as it probably should have been all along, a spiritual remnant at the still small center of heavenly things that is God’s life in this world.

What lies ahead in this current spirit of parish leadership is an adventure that promises good things, wholesome and holy things well worth our living out together. Such things are premised in a gracious knowing that one indeed should “relax, (for) the liturgy will take care itself.” A rather pleasant Anglican thought that, at least for those of us who have not lost our confidence and trust in the Mysterious Center that holds this rapidly turning world of ours together.

We cannot control or much affect what is happening elsewhere. Yet we can do this much in our own parish lives, namely be faithful and trust the liturgy to work its wonders of grace. This spirit of obedient centeredness, so counter to today's rebellious assertion of self above and beyond all things, may be the real way forward for the church. The words of our ancient faith would suggest as much. "The Lord is in His holy temple, let all the earth keep silence before Him!" "Be still and know that I am God!” Perhaps it's time to deliberately and intentionally rachet down the stress and noise of our several anxieties, the clamor to be seen and heard, and be at peace as the risen Lord bids His disciples in this Easter season.

2008-04-29T13:17:00.007-04:00

SUCCESSFUL TRAVEL IS ALL ABOUT THE AHA MOMENT, the serendipitous and elusive moment of a soul's awaking to another reality that often (hopefully) leads to the breaking of self-image and a drawing closer to God. At least this is how I measure travel. Travel of this kind which I always intend in going off-campus suggests more a pilgrimage than a vacation or business trip. The three motivations are connected only in that the body physically moves from one place to another: and different for obvious reasons.

About vacationers little needs to be said other than that most travelers of this kind have more in common with their luggage than with spiritual awareness. Moving from the safe confines of surburbia to the scripted "serendipities" of packaged tours or resorts has about the same capacity for true adventure as the clothes in their suitcases. Vacation is literally all about being vacuous and nothing that interests me.

On the other hand, given the intense focus of modern corporate business people, the possibilities for the Aha moment are certainly there, indeed, they may well need such moments more than the average person, uniquely focused as they are on their corporate survival or that of their corporation, in the race for rank and sustaining profits. In this instance, the enlightened business traveler is a joy to behold.

I remember in this regard meeting a businessman in a Benedictine monastery while I was on retreat, just before Compline, the last office of the monastic day. He said, "Whenever I travel (and he apparently did so often) I try to stay at a monastery or convent; it ends my day in the Spirit and the money I would otherwise have spent at a hotel goes to support something I believe very strongly in." The words (the faith of the man) were powerful. I remember them clearly as if heard just yesterday, though they were spoken fifteen years ago. This is the power of an Aha moment which can happen anywhere and not always in such a casual and safe enclosure as a monastery.

Of course, travel today is anything but routine, whatever the motivation. Just recently, I got off a plane at LaGuardia and discovered we had to go outside the concourse, outside the building itself and walk several hundred yards to another building to catch our next flight, this without prior knowledge and late on a Friday night. Having dodged taxis and traffic personnel yelling at me to go this way, not that way, and scurrying along a dark sidewalk as best one can with luggage, I sensed a sudden movement in the shadows from beneath an overpass to my immediate right.

In the instance, I thought a mugging was about to take place (on my person!) and heard myself yelling ahead at my travel companions to move quickly. What we saw in looking back over our shoulders was not what I thought but rather two airport employees using a shift break to worship Allah. I had crossed in front of an Islamic prayer ritual.

My interior consciousness in rapid fire sequence went from tired anxiety in getting somewhere unknown to a fight-or-flight fear reaction, and then to an awkward recognition of what really was happening. A painful reflection on my own lack of calm ensued, closely attended by another having to do with a potential hidden prejudice toward the Muslims' religious observance.

The Aha moment though came later when I realized the Holy Spirit was speaking directly to me in this moment, demanding to know not what I thought or knew or cared about the two Muslim men or Islam in general or even about myself, but rather what am I doing for my God each day. Or said in different words, how am I walking with Jesus through the night of our time? Never mind what others are doing, how am I journeying with our God?

The result was a long meditation including even this moment of sharing with you, on the practice of our religion by common, ordinary everyday Christians like you and me -

Where do we find the solitude necessary to be in the presence of Jesus?
How do we make room in our daily busy-ness to be still and know that He is God?
What do we do to create interior silence for the still small voice of God to speak to us?

Out of these reflections come other questions that demand personal ownership and accountability.

When does each of us act in overt solidarity with other Christians, especially during our workday and not only Sunday?
What suffering do we endure willing that others may know that He is Lord of all?
What is the nature and purpose of our living sacrifice to help save and redeem the world for which He shed His Blood and died?

All this is simply offered as one example of a successful travel moment in my world, though nothing I planned.

I don't like traveling but I do it because it's good for me. I do it for vacation and for continuing education and for pilgrimage. By travel I mean getting in an airplane and flying someplace out of my region and comfort (or stress) zone, which would explain the reasons why I travel. For me it’s more travail than get away, more business than pleasure, this kind of traveling. I do it for my soul’s sake and for the sake of those around me; otherwise, I’m strictly a homebody fixed in local habits of the heart.

I used to think this home-centeredness was a virtue. Speaking with a friend who goes to the Antarctic a couple of months each year, leaving spouse and children behind to study the ongoing global effect of changes in the atmosphere, I said this very thing. “I couldn’t do what you do, travel as much as you do and be away as long as you are each year, I’m more of a homebody.” My friend’s response, gentle and well-intended as it was, pricked my social conscience as only truth spoken with kindness of heart can.

“I guess I have a larger sense of home than you have,” she said. The good news is that my world-mindedness is growing thanks to her and others who live daily in a room much larger than mine of habit and preference. I’m not ready to hug Al Gore but I do admit I’ve hugged a windmill across the valley from the rectory, and this is a positive step forward, don’t you agree?

I find as I get older I need this sort of experience more than ever before or perhaps I mean to say that I recognize the need for this sort of experience more than before, thanks to my adventuresome scientist friend. The irony is that I’m now less physically inclined to the effort of preparing and returning - never mind the actual going forth part of the journey - now that I admit it’s a good thing. Maybe this just comes with being more deliberate and intentional in what traveling I do. I still could not be on the road every month, much less every week or day as some do.

My father-in-law loved to travel. He was rector of his last parish for 17 years (I’m now 20 years here). Ward loved going places - to Jerusalem several times, Africa, Europe, England and Florida especially, and anywhere else anyone would suggest. He loved being with people. Wardie would go to three-day conferences and say, “If you come away with one or two good program ideas or activities to take back home with you, it’s worth all the nonsense that goes with it!”

This said in response to me sitting with him, stewing over things or more likely the people saying things – being a young priest with opinions on everything and everyone - while he the cardinal rector would be just waiting patiently for the one good idea to come along. Suddenly he’d say “Let’s go!” and we’d become tourists enjoying the city we were in. It was fun traveling to conferences with my father-in-law. Later, on the way home Ward would explain what it was we had learned . . .

Now I have to see with my own eyes and make sense of things for myself, and create my own learning spaces and be open to spiritual opportunities when they present themselves. I can if I must and do so with increasing skill learned at the side of my father-in-law. I practice contemplative seeing, that is actively waiting for the momentary Aha when things click into place and the door of my interior room opens, offering new insight or vantage on the worlds beyond me. It's nothing you can force. Yet you must be open to Ahas happening. You must allow the possibility of an interior journey within the actual travel of body and baggage from one place to another, as exampled in the aforementioned LaGuardia experience.

Traveling is a good thing if done with an open, alert and receptive mind, and especially for the purpose of drawing closer to others, to creation and to God. I confess to having been convicted in that recent vulnerable moment. I want to give witness to a faith strengthened and broadened by the spiritual message heard spoken from out of the darkness, from under the overpass.

I love the way the Spirit comes to God's people when we make ourselves, our souls available to His coming again. As with the disciples on the road to Emmaus it is often in the shuttling moments between our destinations that He appears and makes His presence known. Truly, God is great, and everywhere! For what it's worth though, I still don't like traveling.

2008-04-21T10:47:00.014-04:00

TAKE YOUR INSIGHTS WHEN AND WHERE THEY ARE OFFERED especially when the alternative is to complain and whine about something that can't be changed. I turned to the in-flight publications having gone through my carry-on reading material while waiting over an hour on the tarmac for an already delayed flight - the third of the day! An article about a successful immigrant businessman caught my eye. What inspired further thought was nothing to do with the actual business product or service or how much money the man makes or what he now does with his riches but how this business owner emphasizes the importance of spiritual growth and human values and personal development among his employees especially for anyone who would move up in his company.

The man, the article maintained, holds himself to a higher standard than the dollar and demands no less of his associates. His approach to business (I wish I could remember the man's name) is counter-intuitive, different in practice from most American corporations today although many now use the language of his approach if only for marketing purposes. BP, the largest oil company in the world, for example can say all it wants about being "green" and socially responsible these days but until they stop leading the industry in preventable worksite accidents and deaths, BP will remain the ugly profiteer that it is.

This more uplifting business standard is comprised of three central concerns about employee wellness or said in different words, three concentrations of employee self-interest that if managed properly lead to employee wellness and social happiness and therefore continued business success for the company. The concentrations of interest - are your ready for this? - are spirituality, effective parenting and personal ambition. We get the last, but the first two?

An employee must be ready, willing and able to talk intimately and in detail during ongoing employee reviews about his or her spiritual life, the problems and opportunities of parenting, and lay out what one really wants to accomplish or achieve or acquire, and why. If the employee fails to convey a sincere desire to focus on these interests and to pursue them freely and enthusiastically, passionately if you will, the relationship at least on any promotion-track is abruptly ended. You can readily see what it was about the article that got my attention . . .

The thought of a business leader coming into a room full of employees and talking about the spiritual life, being an effective parent and personal ambition is so refreshing as to make me half reconsider my own choice of profession. Where once an employee was only a commodity or disposable good in the American corporate scheme, and any business relationship was in the corporate nature of things necessarily competitive and therefore all-consuming if one has any aspiration to succeed and advance in the corporate culture, one can almost imagine in this enlightened employment scenario a community of shared interests and mutual cooperation and common vision.

I work for the church as a paid professional because it is the only institution I could see at the time of my choosing that left sufficient room to accommodate my soul's needs. It still seems that way to me. The idea of a successful for-profit company premised in an employee's soul's needs and interests, and not exclusively on profit or client or customer is mind-boggling. If this is true and not simply another exercise in clever marketing, there is hope for the American enterprise system yet . . .

What further caused me to linger over this article while on my way to a vacation destination, and what will continue to hold my attention until I am able to see this thing through into the life of my parish, is the spot on focus of this businessman's vision. He sees the things we see as the people of God, specifically the importance of a relationship with some higher authority beyond the self, the importance of forming sustainable and supportive human relationships that will benefit society over time, and the importance nonetheless of bringing one's own self up to speed in doing the very best that we can and becoming who we are truly meant to be and become.

We of course have our own language in the church for these primary interests, namely the Summary of the Law, but the very fact that a successful contemporary for-profit business owner sees these things as we do is, well, inspiring of hope for the future of "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

I'm looking forward to working this man's standards of interest into the life of the parish, not that we don't already do these things in one way or another but rather because when done with deliberate and intentional purpose such things work out better than they might otherwise. I actually prefer his language insofar as it speaks more directly to identifiable secular needs. The church needs to address real secular needs. Ambition, family and God, perhaps even in that order would be for us coming at things from where common, ordinary everyday people are. It's all about having one's eye on the ball - where people are at - at a time when many in the church have lost this focus and our vision has clouded.

2008-04-10T10:09:00.015-04:00

EASTER IS A GOOD TIME TO REFLECT on the nature and experience of the risen Lord, though I find it increasingly difficult to think about such things at the moment. I would rather go on a whole new trajectory. To soar uplifted on the wind currents of the Holy Spirit would be nice . . .

Right now though I'm spent and the spirit of Thomas weighs me down. Thomas crowds in when tired as I am at the end of a good Lenten run, especially after the holidays. Thomas pokes at us like an importuning child at the bedside - wanting this and that, to know and understand, to analyze and categorize, to name and control, to objectify the mystery of the risen Lord - precisely at the moment when we're least of a mind to respond! I wish Thomas would lighten up and let me rejoice and be glad in the mystery.

I’m reminded of the Black Dwarfs in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. Black Dwarfs though confessed to be on the side of the Narnians were nonetheless drawn to the Witch. At every turn in the adventure they made things difficult for the Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, the Talking Beasts and Walking Trees of the celebrated kingdom where all creatures were blessed with light and love and the joy of living happily together. Tough-minded Black Dwarfs - always looking out for themselves, withholding support and encouragement, always practical and pragmatic, always demanding, never seeing, unable to share in the light!

Such small thoughts and -behaviors and -attitudes have a way of getting under the spiritual skin, like a tropical parasite that then malingers and undermines the spirit. They crowd aside the reality of the risen Lord. This year the early occurrence of Easter Day certainly doesn't help! Spring in Central New York is still two weeks away. Or perhaps a simpler fact stands out, namely that I’ve delayed too long a post Easter break until I could take time away with my family. There's this added pressure - always striving to balance the needs of others, even the needs of those we love don't always fit well with what's happening to us already.

Or maybe this feeling of enough and too much already has to do with tax returns. Surely I'm not the only one in that slough of despond! Or the war, or the White House and the national election campaign, the housing market and recession economy, or the state of the church, this time of year in Central New York . . . yes, I think a vacation is indicated.

It is time for a bit of letting go and letting God. We must do this more often, taking time to be away, to refresh and restore. And when we return to steward again the blessings and burdens that are ours to have and to hold as they say, may we do so with a greater trust and patience and confidence than I feel at the moment. And please, Lord, help us to be more understanding and accepting of the Thomas sorts (akin to those Black Dwarfs) who would drive your saints to despair. They are your children too. Help us to love them better.

If only they would be as happily open and accepting and engaging as when I greet Maggie after a time away. She goes to puppy spa eagerly enough. But when I return to pick her up Maggie is ecstatic, out of her Chocolate Lab skin with joy of deliverance! Tired beyond belief, hoarse from endless barking, Maggie nonetheless literally jumps for joy at the sight of me. If only we could be this happy in the knowledge of the risen Lord . . .

Aslan, I could do with a sighting! Maybe in the "Ding" Darling Wildlife Refuge . . . or maybe just in returning, refreshed in mind and restored in body to know, love, live and serve the Lord among friends, at home again.

2008-03-24T13:33:00.004-04:00

WE COME NOW OUT OF OUR LENTEN AND HOLY WEEK JOURNEYING to the place we’ve been seeking since Ash Wednesday back in the beginning of February. The spiritual quest is over. We are at the Empty Tomb on the first day of the week, with Mary Magdalene. We feel with senses wide open a whole new reality of being, spiritually alive and renewed, Easter springs forth as for the very first time.

We have worked hard to be ready and open to this spiritual moment. We have awakened in Lent and Holy Week to the pain and sorrow of being human. We’ve acknowledged private longings and desires unworthy of our God or of our calling in his Name. We’ve admitted having disappointed each other and having disappointed our Father in heaven. We’ve tried to turn around from seeing only ourselves, only our private expectations and not your kingdom come.

And now the moment has come to be blessed, not receiving as the world rewards but receiving as only God can bestow with grace and abiding love. With Mary, timid and alone, we peer into the place of our deepest fears, the Empty Tomb, and the Empty Tomb does not disappoint us.

Resurrection is upon us! He is here! He is with us! Not forgetting but forgiving, Love comes to restore and raise a fallen Earth up to heaven. As the stone rolls away from the Empty Tomb, our Father in heaven has opened wide the sluice gates of hope, and washes away sin and death.

Though the detritus of ten thousand years of human sin remain and the clean-up as if forever remains, this divine initiative of love endures.

“He died that we might be forgiven, he died to make us good, that we might go at last to heaven, saved by his precious blood.”

As the favorite Good Friday hymn goes on to proclaim – “There was no one good enough to pay the price of sin, he only could unlock the gate . . . of heaven and let us in.” The gates of hope on this Easter day are opened to us, the people of God.

“O dearly, dearly has he loved! And we must love him too, and trust in his redeeming blood, and try his works to do.”

The clean-up of humanity continues in the work he has given us to do - the work of proclaiming God’s grace and triumphant suffering, uplifting others as we ourselves have been uplifted - this all remains. Yet like volunteers on a coastal shore spoiled by an environmental catastrophe, whose labor to outsiders seems minuscule and pointless, we are not disheartened by this daunting task. We have seen the hope of God. We have seen the world restored to the balance of life in harmony with creation and with God as intended from the beginning. Our visions have been made possible by this resurrection, this life outlasting death and destruction.

Because we look into the Empty Tomb with Mary and Peter and John, and are turned around ourselves by the wash of resurrection, we are no longer without hope. We now know the rest of the story, and it’s good, way good, awesome good! We stand with Mary in the joyful company of God’s people who believe. Our hearts are warmed and our spirits uplifted. We hear Mary as she exclaims to others still held captive by their sorrow and grief - “I have seen the Lord!” He is with us! He is here!

2007-04-20T15:06:00.000-04:00

IT'S REALLY SIMPLE LIVING a happy, healthy and bright Christian life. Simple yet hard! We forget in the midst of all the things we have to do today, to do the things that make and keep us well. Here are several key areas of Christian living and questions to help re-member your self in the risen Body of the Living Christ.

Ritual Worship Nike says, “Just do it!” and suddenly everybody is wearing the Swoosh symbol and feels cool. Why then when Jesus says “Do this in remembrance of me” is it now an issue, as if Nike were the God of victory over death, and not Jesus? Just do it! Indeed. There are other compelling reasons for just doing as Jesus commands, more theologically sound, but this should make the point. Do you attend Sunday services?

Shared Meals McDonald’s is the largest fast food purveyor in the world. Kids love to get Happy Meals. I know my kids loved theirs. Turns out this food isn’t doing it for the health of the peoples and nations of the world. Eat this food and one day you’ll wake up unable to recognize yourself in the mirror! It’s not a sustainable health diet, whatever the marketing spin doctors say.

The risen Jesus met two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and in the simple act of breaking bread in a shared meal they recognized their Lord. The command is obvious: have an occasional meal together so that the graces of hospitality and fellowship may re-form the faith community and help us re-member the Body of Christ in our daily life, and not just on Sunday morning. In a word, we need to broaden our table fellowship. Have you been to a church supper recently? Do you belong to a parish foyers group?

Common Values We don’t have to agree on all things to be members of an Episcopal parish. Actually over the centuries we’ve had serious disagreements with one another, occasionally even causing division and separation. Thankfully these moments in history have been for the most part only temporary. A recent parish “Holy Ground” pilgrimage to Gettysburg reminds us of one such a major Episcopal division over states’ rights and slavery. After the war, the bishops in the north invited the bishops in the south to rejoin their fellowship, and reconciliation ensued.

What do you value? Christ’s fellowship is very large and enduring, but not impervious to evil and death in this life. We need to mind our voices. A recent national controversy involving shock-jock radio talk show host Don Imus and the Rutgers University women’s basketball team has caused the entire nation to reflect on our core community beliefs, attitudes and behaviors. How are you imaging Christ’s values? Is your highest good the kingdom of God? Remembering that what the self describes, describes the self, how is your life showing forth the light of the Risen Lord?

Mutual Ministry “We all need someone we can lean on.” The lyrics are sung by Mick Jagger. I’m never quite sure what the Rolling Stones are singing about, but this much I get, we really can’t do it all alone. We need others.

The whole concept of re-membering the Body of Christ is premised in getting all the parts back together and working as God intended. No one person is more important than the other, all are interrelated and interdependent. Besides, it’s more fun as a group. Are you part of a small group doing ministry or mission in or through the parish? If not, then why not?

Collaborative Governance In the leadership culture of America the days of “My call, I made it,” are over. It’s all about working together administratively in small groups of enthusiastic people who share a common interest toward accomplishing a short term goal. Everybody has a voice that needs to be heard, and all voices must be spoken and listened to in cooperation with the spirit or purpose of the endeavor.

I remember my 14-year old son saying during painful exchange, “Dad, I’m trying the best I can but you’re not helping!” We’ve got to help one another. Learning how to speak with respect and value the voice of others is a good starting place and a skill all of us must develop further.

Collaborative governance requires true discernment and discretion to work well. Are you praying for leadership success in the parish? Are you supporting the corporate business and interests of the Body of Christ?

Rhythmic Celebration No, this isn’t about learning how to dance hip-hop or ballroom, although there must be something to this because so many people are enjoying “Dancing with the Stars"!

Here is meant the sanctification of time and experience over the course of a calendar year. The happy Christian celebrates life with deliberate joy and solemnity throughout the calendar year as part of the Body of God. What about your Easter holiday made you feel a part of Christ’s Body? What about the rest of the year? How can we help sanctify your daily life with offerings of thanks and joy, succor and support?

2007-04-09T13:26:00.000-04:00

IT’S EASTER and school vacation week. This means many of our fellow parishioners are away around the country. Some are in the South where it’s unseasonably cold, but the flowers are up and the hint of spring is in the air. I know one of our families is on Amelia Island, in Florida. Never been there, but it sounds great. Then there’s us, celebrating Easter here in Central New York. What are we, nuts? It’s snowing outside!

You know, here in Central New York we don’t get to live off the fumes of springtime for our Easter faith. If we depended on Easter lilies or bright sunshiny mornings to get us closer to God, we would indeed go nuts! It just isn’t going to happen here in Central New York. But that’s okay. We’re all big boys and girls here. When we sing “Welcome happy morning” we have to mean it from the heart because Mother Nature isn’t going to help us. Snow on April 8 in Central New York – we’re happy, but it ain’t easy!

During Holy Week I walked into the parish office before the Good Friday service and met a young friend. He’s four years old. His mom is our new parish secretary and he was in the library. I said hello and he said, “Can you make my pirates come to life?” First the weather, and then “Can you give life to my toy figures?” from a four-year old. You need to know that this is the same kid who stood by the baptismal font several days ago, and said, “This is where God baptized my brother and me!”

I’m telling you. It’s Good Friday, and I’m getting down into the gloom of things, and that’s okay. We’re supposed to get down on Good Friday, but then there’s this kid who thinks I’m God heaping the resurrection of his pirates on me! It’s bad enough when adults amuse themselves by pointing out that clergy not God, as if that actually needs saying, but here’s this kid desperately wanting me to be God. And he wasn’t asking “Can I bring his toys to life?” He was asking “Will I bring his toys to life?” The weather, the questions, the expectations, the disappointments, the surprises, this is Easter, Central New York-style! It ain't easy.

What would you have said to my young friend? I looked right at him and said gruffly, without hesitation, “No, I can’t bring your pirates to life! That’s your job!” The truly bewildered look on his face was precious, and I knew I was over my head.

“But I can’t bring my pirates to life!” he pleaded.

This is where the story became our Easter homily. His brother who was also in the library, looked up at this point, and smiled the all-knowing smile of a six-year old, big brother. He pointed at his head and said, “Yes, you can. You can use your imagination!” I felt like I was inside the Guinness Stout commercial, you know, the one where two characters say and do crazy things and then exclaim, “Brilliant!”

My two young friends and I had brilliantly come to the end of a wild conversation and out of it came an understanding of how we can practice resurrection in our own lives. Jesus had it right when he said, “A little child shall lead them.” Kids at play imagine a great many things that you and I as adults have long since forgotten. Kids don’t have the doors of fear and anxiety and doubt closing them in yet, not as we do. They’re still wide open to the visible and invisible, the outward and visible and the inward and spiritual. For them the veil is still gossamer thin. They still live in the thin places of the Spirit, while we’ve become thick to the conversation.

Our job today is to recommit ourselves to practicing resurrection in our lives again. We need to use our heads in this life, yes, but we’ve also got to rediscover the imagination in our hearts, not in the prideful way that characterizes so much of life today, but in a way of humility that leaves room for the Spirit to come and bless us with new life. The point isn’t that Jesus is raised from the dead, although this is true and central to our remembrance. The point is that because Jesus is raised from the dead, we now can think and act and behave differently. We’ve got a whole new reference point, no longer the grave but now the Empty Tomb.

Easter morning is all about running to the place where the stone has been rolled away, letting go of our selves and letting God come back into our lives with new hope and new glory, especially through strange and fearsome changes. It’s easy to get old and think that because the sun refuses to shine over our region this day, there is no sun to shine at all when in truth the sun is shining all the day, whether it’s dark and gloomy or bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Whatever the circumstances of our day or night, God, our God is there overcoming evil and death.

Easter 2007 is a call to practice resurrection as our Presiding Bishop encourages us to do in her Lenten book, “On a Wing and a Prayer,” and to be joyful about it. Stop looking for things to be just the way they have always been or only how you want them to be, and start allowing again the possibility that you can do something great and wonderful, even if it’s only a little bit of playfulness in the parish library on Good Friday. Bring the awe and wonder, the glory and majesty, the beauty and the blessing back into play. Happy Easter!

2007-04-05T13:41:00.000-04:00

HOLY WEEK MESSAGE – 2007. There’s a lot going on in your life today, and in the parish and world, indeed more than enough for most of us. For me it all comes together in the recent birth of a new parishioner. A new baby born to parishioners on St. Patrick’s Day! Just imagine the adventures that await her and her big brother and their generation in this century.

Yes, there’s a lot going on out there today. For some of us, okay let’s admit it, for all of us it gets pretty overwhelming at times. It takes faith, family, fortitude, and hope for the future, in combination or all together to get through it all sometimes. How can we help little Chloe prepare to meet all these goings-on well and fully, as a mature Christian person, in the spirit of the saints of God? Remember, we want to be one, too!

In the mysteries of Holy Week and Easter I encourage you to remember your Baptismal Covenant and especially the prayer offered for the newly baptized. You know the one, the one where the rector walks the baby down the aisle, reciting holy words. Here are those words –

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon this your servant the forgiveness of sin, and have raised her to the new life of grace. Sustain her, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give her an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen.

We all need to remember the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We all need to be sustained, enlightened, emboldened, both loved and loving, and enthused in life. It’s a great adventure, life and to truly celebrate life in all its fullness, we must admit unto ourselves the rest of the story, and never be afraid to tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Only if we are ready and willing to own the truth including the dark side where evil and death have dominion, will we be truly empowered to practice resurrection.

This Holy Week begins with a Friday Al Jezeera Lecture as part of the Cazenovia Forum, a great recent addition to Cazenovia’s intellectual life, established by new St. Peter’s parishioner and friends. On Saturday, parishioners are invited to join our Peregrini on a solemn tour of the Peterboro Civil War Cemetery. Then there’s Palm Sunday including an afternoon workshop for our confirmands who are helping to design an Area-wide Youth Anti-Racism Event in September. On Tuesday afternoon the rector will share in a Cazenovia College Symposium on Conflicts and Differences. On Wednesday evening our Faith Adventurers and Teen Peregrini will enact their interpretation of the traditional Stations of the Cross. Other liturgies follow on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and finally, Easter Sunday.

Yes, there’s a whole lot going on in your life, in the life of the church, and in the world today, and it can be pretty overwhelming. In the face of it all, we might be tempted to back up and deny the reality in which we live or said differently in biblical words, to leave the Garden of Gethsemane be things get really out of hand. This is not our religion and practice however. We have been taught by our Lord that the way of life is the way of the cross. We press on knowing that God, our God is there, already there wherever it is that we find ourselves. We can never fall out of God’s everlasting Arms. Do not be afraid, therefore. Be of good courage for God, our God is here, there, everywhere. He is Risen!

2007-04-02T11:25:00.000-04:00

A PRIMER ON CURRENT CHURCH CONFLICT – Part 2 (for Part 1, see preceding blog entry). Now, what’s all this about, anyway? Are all the conflicts and divisions and litigation in the church really worth it? We’re losing market share in this current ongoing conflict because other churches especially the non-denominational churches are sitting on the sideline, either not taking a stand on behalf of the rights of gays and lesbians or are themselves violently opposing them. Their appearance of peace and growth is in part premised in our just cause conflict. Yet no one stands outside of this action because it involves all of us. Conflicts and differences, where do they come from, what gets us into them, and how do we can go about resolving them. In a word more importantly, how can we relate better with one another?

First, I would argue that the absence of conflict is not necessarily a good thing or said in different words, peace is not simply the appearance of the absence of conflict, and not all conflict is all bad. One of you for example, might come forward and put your foot on my throat and demand, “Peace! Be still! Do as I say or I will hurt you.” I can assure you if your foot is big enough I will give every appearance of being at peace. Yet in the presence of such persuasion, coercion, hostility, violence or abuse there can be no real peace. These ways of imposing one person’s will or one group’s will over another are evil, plain and simple.

Peace can only exist where there is social justice and freedom of will and respect for the dignity of every human being at work in the relations of society and among the people, and peoples and nations of the world. Here in America, the Episcopal Church realized gays and lesbians deserve to live in true peace, or at least deserve the full support and empowerment of their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ to seek and demand peace. We acted as a matter of social justice, and I say this in all humility because it was a thing long overdue.

Some in the church would have us pause over this action and think about it some more, or hopefully in their way of thinking, disown this action altogether. And they have tradition and scripture to support them. They quote the bible, especially the Old Testament. This is the core of the problem for the church today. This is the root source of our predicament. We all don’t read the bible in the same way, and this makes all the difference in this current and forthcoming religious conflicts. Stay with me here.

Whatever your moral compass in life is, it comes from some authority or power or relationship outside of yourself. We are not born as moral beings. We become moral beings. In the church our primary moral authority is the Bible. Now, if you read the Bible literally, literally word for word, you will get one outcome of moral directives. “The Bible says it, and I believe it, end of conversation.” If however you are a literate and not a literal reader of the Bible, you will get another entirely different outcome of Biblical directions for decision-making. I once told my son when he was young and took everything I said literally, “Here, take this hot pan of frying grease and throw it on the side of the house.” He did, literally throwing it on the side of the house! We’re on to something here.

Both you and I can say we believe the Bible contains all things necessary to living a moral life, but because we read and interpret the Bible differently, one a literate reader and the other a literal reader, we will disagree on the ways and means of what constitutes a moral being. This applies also in a larger sense to how members of other religions in the world today read and interpret their own sacred scriptures. This is a very important point I am making. It explains both current conflicts and differences in religion, and why they will remain intractable globally well into this century and beyond. It is a problem we ignore at our own risk.

This all is not just a squabble over differences between conservative and liberal Episcopalians here in America. This action resonates throughout global society, as evidenced by the virulent reaction of primates in Africa and Asia to alternative lifestyles. Our greater problem has to do with culture and religion, and our common humanity.

In a world of six and a half billion people, with two billion of those people Christian and one billion Muslim, and another three-quarters of a billion Hindu, nearly half of the world’s population today is triangulated by embedded differences in culture and religion, and therefore in world view. Conflicts and differences, we haven’t even begun to own the underlying tensions out there today, coming to a head in our time, threatening hope for the future.

We’ve got to find a way forward. The good news is many people of good will in all world religions are awakening to their responsibility and duty to step forward and be heard for justice and righteousness’ sake, for all people, everywhere.

The bad news is many really bright people still think and act as if religion is irrelevant to the future, as if religion is not an integral part of humanity. They treat the global world as a political or social engineering problem to be solved, and seek to reduce the world to manageable parts. Absolute truth and ultimate reality however, the stuff of religion and the mystery of humanity, transcends limited and flawed human governance and polity which tends to focus only on what is attainable and practical. In this pragmatic, even cynical approach the rest of humanity, those who are not part of the elite ruling order become problems to be solved or if necessary, eliminated.

True religion sees the global world today as a mysterious, beautiful, complexly harmonious mix of ethnicities and identities, regions and locales, genders and orientations, theologies and ideologies. We’re not objects to be fixed or commodities to be brokered in the market place or infidels needing to be converted. We’re people with differences that need to be respected and treated with sensitivity and understanding; having different needs that must be addressed because we’re all in this together.

In the past at the table of world dominance nation states like the U. S. and Russia have had national interests foremost in mind in their decision-making. Trans-national corporations like Microsoft and British Petroleum have had profit and market demand in mind. World organizations like the U. N. and the World Bank have had human law and protocols foremost in mind in their decision-making. True religion alone has mystery and beauty and harmony in mind for theirs is the vision of God. This voice must be also be heard in the future at the table of world decision-making if we are to progress toward world peace.

For an authentic voice, the leaders and peoples of world religion for their part must be truer to their divine call to worship God and to become the compassionate presence of God for one another and the people they are called to serve. Governments and foreign policy leaders for their part must admit religion matters and take counsel equally from world faith representatives. Whereas before politicians and their diplomats simply denied religion has any practical place in world governance matters, they are now realizing that peace in our time can only grow in a soil that has representatives of the world religions in the mix, all working together.

2007-04-02T11:12:00.000-04:00

A PRIMER ON CURRENT CHURCH CONFLICT – Part 1 (for Part 2, see next blog entry). The Episcopal Church of the United States of America, of which I’m a priest, is passionate about human rights and therefore has become expert at conflicts and differences especially of the cultural, ethnic and identity kind. This may sound strange to hear. Think about it though. In this century of conflict much of the conflict is at origin ideological in nature, and ideology is based on a commitment to absolute truth and ultimate reality. Where else then would you expect conflict to arise but in religion whose business, whose stock in trade is absolute truth and ultimate reality.

We were there in Selma, Alabama. One of our seminarians was martyred in the South, a killing shotgun blast to the chest as he sought to protect a young black woman from an angry white man. In the 1960’s our clergy marched against the Vietnam War and thereby alienated and divided many congregations. Much later, against the first war in Iraq, our Presiding Bishop picketed the White House where one of his parishioners, the first President Bush, had residence. Conflicts and differences, we know all about them.

We ordained women priests when it wasn’t canonically legal to do so in 1974. Our House of Bishops, all men at the time convened an emergency meeting and declared the ordinations invalid. Three months later, the illegal women priests celebrated their first public Eucharist at a church in New York City, and the rest is history. One of those first eleven women priests, from right here in Central New York, got into an argument with her bishop and sued him in court.

We know conflict and differences. And when push comes to shove, we don't respond to bullying, we won't back up, we stand up for what is right. Some churches run when the going gets tough. The Episcopal Church of the 21st century holds to the truth even when it's not popular, even when our read on the truth changes and causes us to change our position or the practice of tradition and biblical interpretation.

Sometimes you have to stand up for what you believe, indeed it’s been said, “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” Sometimes you have to be willing to sacrifice yourself for a greater good. If your cause is just you may end up having a far-reaching effect for the betterment of society. If your cause is not just, even if it enjoys wide support, it can have long-lasting detrimental effect. Think of past justifications for slavery and the oppression of women. You better get good therefore at knowing the motivation of your heart, what your reasons are for doing the things you do, and be sure that you’ve got more than only you and yours in mind. Only then, if we’re willing to step beyond our own selves and tribal loyalties, and see the greater ties that bind all together in our common humanity, will we ever get closer to the elusive ultimate good, what we in religion call the reign of God.

Most of the time though, it’s a matter of a little bit of advocacy here, a little bit of support there, a good deed done without credit, a word of encouragement spoken in private, a little stroll in the other person or group’s shoes. Over time, combined with hundreds and thousands of others, things eventually change for the better. Sometimes though, you’ve simply got to make it happen, now not later and damn the consequences. If the cause is just, there sometimes comes a time when one must press on even if it involves conflict. You might accomplish some lasting good, however lamentable the pain and suffering in the short run. Think for example of the American Civil War. What would America be like today if the Abolitionists and Unionists had compromised their commitment to equal justice and the greater good, and instead let evil continue to rule over our nation?

Today the Episcopal Church of the United States of America has a woman for presiding bishop, only 30 years after the great conflict over women's ordination. She’s got a doctorate in oceanography and is a licensed pilot. When Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori was elected over four men a year and a half ago, on the floor of convention delegates appeared wearing buttons declaring, “It’s A Girl!” As our chief executive officer in the church Jefferts Schori gets to go around the world now and meet with other presiding bishops or primates, all men again by the way, many of whom don’t feel comfortable with a woman as their equal, much less a woman at the head of the richest, most powerful church in the Anglican Communion.

The Anglican Communion for the reader who don’t know these things, is a fellowship of 37 national churches or provinces as we call them who all have a common bond in history, having all come out of the Church of England. We call ourselves Anglicans, people of the English church heritage. Our history goes back to the first century of the Common Era. Things really took off for us after the Reformation with the global spread of the British Empire, when the Church of England became the Anglican Church in countries as close by as Canada and colonial America, and far away as Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa or Nigeria. In all today there are 87 million believers in the Anglican Communion. This is our background and working environment.

Right now the Episcopal Church is in a huge conflict with a small but vocal minority of fellow Anglicans, both here and around the world. This is where the story gets interesting, and relevant to our time. In recent years the General Convention of the Episcopal Church, meeting every three years as a national representative legislature to do church business, has advocated for gay and lesbian rights. We even approved the election of an openly gay man as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire.

Many celebrated this moment, like the ordination of women and the election of a woman presiding officer, another step forward in respecting the dignity and freedom of every human being regardless of race, ethnicity, gender identity or orientation, theology or ideology. Others screamed blasphemy and damnation, and all hell broke loose. The archbishop of the Anglican Church of Nigeria, with a membership of 17 million, has stated publicly that he believes gays and lesbians are animals, a poignant remark from an African and not a little ironic as one recalls several recent centuries of prejudice, discrimination and racism by whites in global relations especially in Africa. He leads a hostile opposition to our General Convention, which opposition includes the Archbishop of Canterbury who thinks he trumps the self-autonomy and self-governance of a province in the Anglican Communion. These primates may choose to dis-invite the Episcopal Church from the Anglican Communion, but if the terms of party attendance include having to let the hosts and their best friends run or oversee our Episcopal Church, the filial fun of belonging isn't worth the price.

Think of the Congress of the United States in Washington, D. C. after which our church governance was modeled in 1789, and imagine the English today trying to change our acts of Congress to suit their own interests and you’ll have an idea of what the Episcopal Church is facing around the globe today.

We’re not alone in this fight, though. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa for example, perhaps the greatest Anglican of our time and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize agrees with us in this current conflict. Of all people in the world today, he knows about conflicts and differences, and oppression, and the cost of social justice. Just this past week in another instance of solidarity 32 members of Congress petitioned Secretary of State Condolezza Rice to bring diplomatic pressure upon the Nigerian parliament which is considering making a whole new set of draconian laws against homosexual activity, making it criminal for gays or lesbians to even have a dinner together in public. We think such legislation would be a reprehensible human rights violation in the world community.

Here in the United States small pockets of dissenters have become violent in their opposition to our recent actions. Because they don’t like what a majority of fellow Episcopalians decided in a democratic vote duly enacted as part of our General Convention, they have declared themselves no longer responsible to our bishops or any Episcopal Church governance. They have tried to create a new Episcopal Church polity by aligning with African bishops in Nigeria and Rwanda of all places, and seeking to take Episcopal Church property away with them as they go. The matter is now in the secular courts. (Continued - Part 2, next blog entry)

2007-03-22T09:25:00.000-04:00

THE ENGLISH CHURCH HUMORIST David Walker has a cartoon in the first person beginning with the title I HAVE, followed by four figure drawings with captions reading “I have evangelized with the Evangelicals,” “I have crossed myself with the Anglo-Catholics,” “I have worshipped with Charismatics,” “I have questioned with the Liberals.” The cartoon finishes with a British cultural humor, “I think now I will stop and have some tea.” Walker in short form encapsulates the worship experiences out there in the church today, and then brings it home, humorously reminding us to not take ourselves so seriously and give it a break occasionally. Good counsel, and well delivered. For more of the same, visit Walker at http://www.cartoonchurch.com.

We’ve lost our focus in worship lately and gotten things a bit backwards: many in the church today are coming (if coming at all) not for worship that transforms lives and empowers social action, but for worship that confirms selves and approves social action already taken. True worship transforms us, making us living self-icons of God, drawing us ever closer to God, keeping us on task and forward moving. Many instead want worship that transforms God into their own image. They go church shopping not for a sense of the holy God, but for a sense of the wholly Me.

I am reminded in this of a parishioner years ago, in the throes of evangelical renewal proudly declaring, "When I pray to God I imagine I'm a little girl crawling up into Daddy's lap and just talk to Him!" Well, I have a daughter, and as a child when she sat with me, I was putty in her hands. A God relation that is subject to our whims and desires would not be in God's image, but in our own image. Help us to grow in your image, O God, and yours alone.

The church over time has explored many forms of worship. Some of these experiences out of our living laboratory of love have been developed into Christian liturgy because the things done and discovered in the experience lend themselves to a higher order of faith. This is not to say all forms of worship have been accepted into the life of the church. Early on, the Old Testament people of Joshua, while taking command of the Promised Land, realized for example that Dionysian temple worship simply wasn’t going to work for the people of the God of Abraham. Instead of orgies, we now have coffee hour. Don’t ask me to explain, it just works better for us this way. My point is, this very Episcopalian behavior has an origin that is deeply layered in the historical decision-making of the church, how we order our spiritual life over time.

21^st century Christians take all these things, chosen or preferred, abhorred or rejected, as part of the faith discovery process. Live and learn, as they say. Live, learn . . . and lead others into all righteousness. Mind you, I did not say into all self-righteousness. No one order of faith discovery is absolute. Just as no one person can know all things, do all things, meet all needs, redress all wrongs, express all feelings. This would be divine, or said in different words, this would be the reign of God on earth, a now-not-yet reality made present but not complete in the person of Jesus Christ in the First Coming. We are not God, but we are God's people and this matters.

We are human, and with being human there is the need to pick and choose albeit imperfectly among all things humanly possible. In this picking and choosing we have our own special needs when it comes to worship for just as there are several different kinds of intelligence and not only one having to do with analytical and complex reasoning skills as once thought (thought that is by the very people who possess such intelligence), so too there are different kinds of worship to suit our several personality types, hence the Evangelicals, the Anglo-Catholics, the Charismatics, the Liberals, et al. Walker gets this in his cartoon.

Much of what transpires in the way of controversy today seems to be premised in these prior conditions of human need. What makes church life problematic is not so much the presence of evil and suffering in the world today. This we can deal with, for God is with us. What makes church so difficult is when any one order of worshippers asserts the need to be right and therefore everyone else must be wrong. St. Paul has a lot to say about the contentious spirit, none of it good. Given the history of cooperation among Christians, or lack thereof, Paul was spot on in belling this beast. There are too many contending voices in the church today wanting to be right, to have their way and their way alone, kids really making a very unpleasant experience for the rest of us and needing a time out.

All I ask of any worship experience is that it somehow takes me out of myself and reminds me of who I am and whose I am ultimately, assures me that I am not alone in this great adventure, brings grace and consolation to my own life experience and those for whom I have compassion or care, and hooks me up with others to do the things that I alone cannot do yet when done bring meaning and purpose to my life. In a word, I want a worship experience that brings me closer to God, in an effective ritual that I can come back to, again and again. I want this because I need this and God commands it. The rest is my business to do out there.

But first I think I will stop and have some tea which itself of course is a uniquely English form of worship in ritual behavior that would do all those things as well, though at a lesser and less intense altar. Come to think of it, we may need more tea rooms as much as we need more worship, whatever the flavor of our preference may be . . . this and a bit more self-reflective humor in our time.

2007-03-21T09:48:00.001-04:00

THE EXECUTIVE EDITOR OF THE LIVING CHURCH, in a recent Editor’s Column “What I didn’t Miss” (February 25 issue) asks a question of the church. He refers to our Diocese of Central New York and St. Andrew’s, Syracuse which the diocese in partnership with the national church is suing for recovery of property. “Is this really worth the cost of litigation?” Kalvelage asks. The implied answer is no, suggesting even by the Column’s caption “Hostile Takeover” that the diocese is “taking over” somebody else’s property, the seeming possessions of St. Andrew’s.

Regular readers of The Living Church know the editorial staff there has made common cause with the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council. Though you also may be a sympathizer of their cause, let this blog entry be a warning. Do not for a moment think that the forbearance and good will of the Episcopal Church leadership will suffer much longer the assaults of the Network against our governance and discipline. A corrective course of action is already building. Anything less would leave us all complicit in the Network strategies for alienation and control of the church, primary of which is to first align with an ecclesiastical entity outside the governance of the Episcopal Church and then monetize church property as their own, effectively circumventing General Convention, the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church and every precedent of order and discipline in the church.

Theirs is a strategy worthy of Andrew Fastow and Enron in the 1990s, blinding in its brains and wiliness, and as morally bankrupt. If the members of the Network, especially the dissenting clergy and bishops were truly righteous in their religious disdain for the Episcopal Church, they would renounce their vows taken in a church they no longer acknowledge as valid and create their own authority. What they want though is their dissent and the privileges and property that they accrued from membership in the institution they would now reject.

We must proceed boldly and decisively in response to these self-proclaimed enemies of the church. Now is no longer the time for dialog, as if listening to the passionate assurances of the chief officers of Enron at its collapse would change in the least the consequences of their ongoing criminal behavior. We can no longer put off facing down these adversaries simply because they are erstwhile members. The truth is they are no longer fellow Episcopalians. Though they remain our brothers and sisters in Christ, they have declared themselves implacable enemies, and as Oprah would advise "when somebody tells you who they really are, believe them."

Get this point firmly in mind. The reality of their intent upon taking control of the Episcopal Church must not be glossed over in our care and compassion for the Network as former members of our fellowship. They have broken faith. There is no more room for discussion. Yet this is precisely what Kalvelage would ask of us in his question, “Is this really worth the cost of litigation?” Kalvelage would argue that we naively accommodate Network and Primatial demands hitherto totally without precedent, appease Network aggressions against our governance to our own everlasting detriment, all as the Network steals us blind.

This is what the Network is doing while it can. While the rest of the church suffers “rolling black outs,” and struggles in the heat of the noonday sun to discern God’s will for all of God's people especially including the poor and suffering, the oppressed and degraded, Network leaders and sympathizers stand aside in self-righteous celebration as the cause of our distress. Like the evil-possessed Enron cult of traders, they are trading on the fears and anxieties of the people to their own profit, even creating the crises of confidence, all the while thanking God for their windfall of ill-gotten blessings. A curse on them all! They are not even using their own capital resources, but would take ours to use against the church. It is time to bell the beast.

Let all take heart by a recent resolution of the House of Bishops delivered out of their deliberations in Texas in response to the Dar es Salaam Communique by the Primates of the Anglican Communion. Our House of Bishops has finally pronounced their voice in the Episcopal Church and joined us in our commitment to respect the dignity of every human being, especially all who have been baptized into the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is as if the House of Bishops, having listened, has finally heard what is being said (and more importantly, done and planned) by the Network and responded, "Enough! Do as you must. So will we and here it is that we stand. Good luck, and if it is your will, good bye!"

Said at greater length and in the bishops' own words -

"It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships. We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God's children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ's Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God's truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision." About time. Amen.

This breaking of relations to which the bishops refer at the end of the preceding long passage, is what has happened in St. Andrew’s, Syracuse and the cause of our current litigation against this parish. The Living Church would have us allow this breaking of faith to proceed apace without opposition. From Milwaukee, WI they would mind our local business, telling us basically to "Let them take all your products, goods, services and value with them, it doesn't really matter anyway, it's just property." This of course is a nonsensical argument at best, and suspiciously duplicitous at worst. If it were only property, then why did the leadership of St. Andrew's, Syracuse sneak into a deed office and try to change the title of the property into their own name? Clearly it has value to them. They want it even if they don't want to honor and respect the custodial obligations by which they occupy this property.

In a word, the diocese is not attempting to “take over the church’s property.” The property already belongs to the Diocese. In our governance the diocese is owner of both the “franchise” and property of the church. Parishes are custodial agents, not only custodial agents mind you but, yes, in regard to the disposition of property only custodial agents.

The Diocese of CNY and the national church has every right and duty to maintain the church’s inheritance and to protect collective assets from all adversarial assaults including thievery, for distribution into subsequent generations of Episcopalians as a resource for future faith initiatives. St. Andrew’s, Syracuse initiated the “hostile takeover” by entering a deed office to surreptitiously change the church’s title information. They will be held accountable for their action not because they must be punished but because the church must be protected, especially from the sins of pride, deceit and avarice, especially from its erstwhile members. We owe this litigation to our children, painful as it is.

Hopefully this litigation will serve toward building a solid ground of legal precedent. Though we should never want to go to court, indeed scripture finds great offense in doing so, when compelled, we must and will do so. To do otherwise, to let the current leadership of St. Andrew’s, Syracuse change the brand name of a member parish and take all the property assets, in a word to steal the products, goods, services and value of the Episcopal Church into their own image, would be an unconscionable failure of fiduciary responsibility with disastrous repercussions throughout the church.

Let the Anglican Communion Network and American Anglican Council, and any one else of similar mind, now take fair warning. The Episcopal Church is forbearing, open, inclusive, full of good will, yet not to be treated as a doormat in our own home.

2006-11-17T08:11:00.001-05:00

THE CHURCH'S LITURGICAL CALENDAR features three cycles of annual readings referred to as Year A, B and C. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP) specifies all the readings for every service of worship especially in the primary service of the week, Sunday. These liturgical readings collectively form what is called a lectionary. In the BCP lectionary the gospel selections for each year determine all the other readings from Old Testament (OT) and New Testament (NT): Year A focuses on the Gospel according to Matthew, year B Mark, year C Luke. Selections from the Gospel according to John are added throughout the three-year cycle of readings, especially during holidays and feasts celebrating Christ.

Our BCP lectionary is based on ancient liturgical calendars adapted into the Church of England at the time of the Reformation and compilation of the first Book of Common Prayer. The special feature of the BCP lectionary already noted is how it seeks to tie the OT reading, the Psalm, the NT reading and the Gospel selection together to form a coherent Biblical story keyed to any given Sunday, focusing on the Gospel topic.

The preacher and congregation are able therefore to listen to the Word on any given Sunday and hear connecting messages coming out of all of the various readings, all tied to the topic of the day as capsulated in the Gospel reading. Preacher, choir director and congregation, all tied in the best of BCP lectionary practice to the same Gospel passage. Here in St. Peter’s we have been well disciplined in keeping this rule of the BCP lectionary.

The problem with this traditional lectionary approach is that the Bible, which Anglicans maintain “contains all things necessary to salvation”, becomes a servant to the lectionary. Think of the BCP lectionary as the homework assignment and the Bible as a Google data search base, and you will have a general idea of the problem. The pieces of the Bible especially from the OT are more important than the whole story.

The overall story in particular the large portion of the story that is contained in the OT gets picked apart by the BCP lectionary to serve the Sunday gospel reading. The result is like owning a fleet of cars but never maintaining or taking inventory of the fleet. Eventually they are broken and scattered all over the place and the purpose of the fleet in the first place is lost. We need to remember the whole of the Bible, the whole story from creation and fall to redemption and salvation to sanctification, and this requires knowing the OT as well as the NT.

Starting this Advent a new schedule of liturgical readings is being used in the parish. It is called the Revised Common Lectionary (abbreviated RCL). It is already used by many other denominations and churches throughout Christendom, primarily Protestant congregations. The RCL is different from the BCP lectionary in that it focuses on consecutive readings from OT sources as well as from the Gospels. The advantage here is that the overall integrity of the Word as revealed in the Bible is more fully respected. In the RCL consecutive readings span several Sundays in a row from one OT book whereas in the BCP lectionary OT readings are only chosen in subordination to the Gospel reading, and that means picking from one book one Sunday, from another the next, and so on until there is no integrity at all to the OT. It becomes like that mighty fleet of lost cars.

The RCL in this way allows a preacher and congregation to explore Biblical themes more fully over consecutive weeks on occasion, and using OT material to advantage rather than depending exclusively on the Gospel readings, thus possibly enhancing our biblical knowledge in an age of disturbing Bible illiteracy. There may be occasions however in the RCL when the readings in the OT do not fit with the Gospel or NT selections on a given Sunday. This happens because the OT readings in the RCL run concurrently with the Gospel selections whereas in the BCP the OT readings run subordinately. The preacher must occasionally decide intentionally therefore which stream of biblical source material to run in over a span of several Sundays, OT or Gospel.

This change from the BCP order of scheduled readings to the RCL will require of the preacher alertness to new opportunities for preaching a series of sermons based on OT themes, something hitherto not possible unless the preacher broke the rule of canonical adherence to the lectionary as scheduled throughout the Church, a common practice among non-traditional Protestant congregations but frowned upon in the Episcopal Church. General Convention last summer however approved the use of the RCL in local congregations indeed resolved that starting in Advent 2007 the Episcopal Church will begin a transition to the RCL concluding in 2010 when the RCL shall become the only approved lectionary throughout our Church, rendering the BCP lectionary obsolete.

All of this may be minor matter for most Episcopalians, as indeed may be the adoption of the RCL here in St. Peter’s four years ahead of the mandated date of use. For the preacher this is a significant change. It challenges the mental habits of thirty years of sermon preparation. Renewal comes in many forms however and the preacher welcomes this change as yet another opportunity to help reshape our ministry and mission for the better in the twenty-first century.

This then is how I choose to view the change in how we choose the readings for Sunday morning: it promises to open more of the Word to the ear and mind and soul memory of the regular Sunday worshipper and bring to the congregation a more fruitful spiritual discipline not in keeping to the human tradition that is the BCP lectionary but in attending to the divine revelation that is the Word the lectionary was constructed to serve.

2006-09-26T12:52:00.000-04:00

ABOUT A 28-DAY METTA PRACTICE recently offered for use next month. “You need to lose the prayer rug!” whispered a fellow parishioner. This advice followed a Sunday morning homily in which I literally laid out my current spiritual practice to the congregation. In a similar vein, a staff person privately warned against the homily altogether - “You cannot hold up a prayer rug and use the word enemies in the same talk, and not have people free associate to think Muslims are our enemy!” Two weeks earlier another parishioner wrote angrily at the time of the 5th anniversary of 9/11, "You need to take that reported prayer rug you're using and turn it around and face WEST instead of East!"

These are parishioners whom I love dearly and listen to with great respect. Yet in these troubling times, suddenly I knew firsthand the thankless predicament of Pope Benedict embroiled in a tempest of inferences beyond any intended meaning. Then I remembered the cynical humor the meaning of which had eluded me until now - “No good deed ever goes unpunished!”

The irony of the two controversies - both the personal objections of my little parish and the world event of Muslim offense taken at the Vatican recently - is that the intent in both instances was to engender greater peace, not more violence in thought or word or deed. Consider the spiritual practice I was describing is Metta, "metta" from the ancient Pali word meaning “loving-kindness,” specifically benevolence. Using a prayer rug seemed a natural bridge-building tool. Yet given the depth of emotions that have surfaced in many Christian minds lately, especially from the war against terror, I can now see the minefield into which I blithely walked. Blessed are the peace-makers . . . may they rest in peace!

We press on nonetheless. Metta practice of the kind that I described this past Sunday focuses on the war within each of us, on what Sunday’s New Testament reading from James speaks of as “those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you?” Metta seeks to re-orient the controversies of the heart toward virtue not sin, toward good not evil.

Said in different words by way of a story, recall the American Indian teaching of Two Wolves –

(paraphrase) An old Cherokee tells his grandson about two wolves at war within each soul, the one Evil and the other Good. He then describes at length the characteristics of Evil and Good. The grandchild asks, “Which wolf wins?” The grandfather replies, “The one you feed.”

Metta practice would feed the Good Wolf. It seemed so simple. Show a prayer rug to my parishioners. Describe how I use it in daily Metta practice as a Christian. Stand on the rug with hands upraised in orans position. Invoke the Trinity. Kneel and bow my head to the rug in obeisance position. Ask aloud “May I be free of suffering”. Stand up and meditate on the Christian meaning of freedom and suffering. Give thanks for an answer to my prayer. Then repeat the process three more times, petitioning God with three successive prayers - “May I have physical happiness.” “May I have mental happiness.” “May my heart be at peace.” Again, seeking in each meditation to let Christian tradition inform and transform the prayer.

Having shown the basic order of my private practice, I then invited others to join me in a 28-day discipline of Metta, beginning October 4, the Commemoration of Saint Francis of Assisi and ending November 1, the Feast of All Saints. In the first week we will pray as described above – for our selves. The next week – for a beloved person. The following week – for a neutral person. The last week – for an enemy. Each Sunday during this 28-day discipline participants will gather to share together their several experiences and insights, questions and concerns, all with the goal of spreading loving-kindness or benevolence further out into the world, peace beginning with our selves.

I might make reference at this point to spiritual warfare and how even the simplest good purpose is quickly assaulted by the true enemy, Satan. The Devil loves to use our private confusions and misunderstandings to keep us apart even as the Spirit would move us to seek greater clarity of mind together. This devilishness however is the topic of another practice and conversation for another day. As noted in an earlier blog, too much energy today is spent on what is controversial and strange and polarizing, energy that would better be spent on seeking communion with one another and with the Divine. Metta would do the latter while letting go of the former.

The real work of peace is grounded in such spiritual awareness, single soul by solitary soul developing kind affections out into this sore troubled world. Remember the hymn - "In Christ there is no east or west, In Him no north or south, But one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide world." This is the purpose of Metta. This is the necessity of prayer.

Turning a parish’s focus of attention to such spiritual practice - and there are many such practices from different traditions, all readily adaptable to Christian prayer - would seem the better activity in the Episcopal Church today than what has become our usual practice namely, talking at each other from extreme positions of mutually exclusive self-righteousness, judgment and condemnation. If this little spiritual exercise does anything toward moving a few of my parishioners out of themselves and toward a greater and more immediate sense of communion with others: I say alleluia.

As for the several objections within my parish. For the record, I’m not losing the prayer rug in fact I have two of them, both identical, one for the rectory and one for my study in the parish house. With every best wish in mind, if my fellow parishioner is willing to join the Metta exercise next month, I will gladly lend one of them!

2006-08-24T08:26:00.000-04:00

THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH IN RECENT YEARS indeed for decades has received a lot of heat for taking stands at the leading edges of social advocacy and prophetic ministries – race relations, civil rights, prayer book revision, women’s ordination (first as priests then as bishops now even as Presiding Bishop), gender equality in the work place, gay and lesbian rights, blessing of same-sex relationships, world economic justice, and on. This is as it should be, both that the list goes on and that there should be heat received for taking stands. Heat improves the strength of the metal or proves the metallurgy faulty. So be it.

The core truth for us is that there can be no real peace without justice, no real love without sacrifice, no real faith without works. German martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer called this “the cost" (or heat) "of discipleship.” Unless we take stands that prove our mettle as Christians we have no integrity, no real part in the Word.

About the knowledge of such things, let me say that I know a lot more about the church and God’s will now than when I was young – and a lot more about people and what motivates us – and a lot more about institutions and systems as they both help or hinder our advance as a people of God. From what I know today, I can say without reserve that I’m prouder of being an Episcopalian than I’ve ever been before and preciously because of stands taken by others in the years that I’ve been a priest and rector. And I am sorely convicted and deeply humbled by the fact that it’s taken me years to come up to speed in the Spirit with these brave others.

This is an exciting church era in which to be alive. Good things, godly things are happening and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. I know of a priest who told a parishioner of mine the Episcopal Church is “going down the tubes.” The priest also celebrated being about to retire and finally "done with this mess". What strange things to say and for two reasons: they show a singular lack of loyalty and trust in the Holy Spirit, lack of humility really, and display an all too prevalent arrogance among the baptized especially the ordained clergy namely that we know and can truly judge what is happening ultimately. This is God's work and not ours to judge. You and I did not become Christians to please or prove ourselves, or to win contests over others, but rather to serve others and glorify God, a work by the way that is never done as we die and in dying "go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service!"

Lord, help us to be more open and faithful, especially in celebrating the Strangeness of You, differences of others, and our common humanity.

The call today for responsible Christians is to attend to the Center, what Anglicans have always known to be the Middle Way and secularists have taken to calling the Common Ground, although when it comes to living the gospel I’m not sure how helpful the secular notion of a common ground really is. Slavery for example, for centuries had a common ground of understanding and support, yet we now hold slavery to be unacceptable; so too with the oppression of women and degradation of minorities. Whatever the social common ground may be, it’s wrong if it allows any such indignities and violations of gospel humanity. Yet such former accepted practices were countenanced by official keepers of the gospel as an accommodation to the common ground politics of their day; actually those "authorized" gospel keepers were complicit in making the gospel itself a slave to the common ground.

Friend, Christians are not called to a common ground but to Holy Ground! So it is that we must take difficult stands in troubling times, even be perceived as causing the trouble, though often because others have not in their day met their duty well and rightly. It’s like Social Security and the National Debt: you can have “the livin’ is easy” in your day, but what will you have done to your children and your children’s children, in their day?

I believe the Episcopal Church in General Convention this summer returned to the common ground. Our leadership turned back from that scary Holy Ground on which we had trod three years ago. By this I mean bishops and lay delegates who voted for Gene Robinson and allowed for the blessing of same-sex relationships (at the discretion of local clergy), said publicly before going into this Convention – “If I’d known how much this action (three years ago) would upset the Anglican Communion, I might have voted differently.” Shame on them!

Gospel principle does not accommodate to accepted practice; gospel principle informs and transforms practice. Said at length and in greater context, I feel many in Convention this past June caved in to the pressures of extremists from the right in particular from those in Africa whose living situation is influenced historically by Evangelical 19^th century British missionaries and contemporarily by Fundamentalist Islam bordering or ruling their societies.

Too much of our Christian dialogue is out there at the far side of everything, at the extremes. Extremism has come to be our accepted given reality, the determining norm of every conversation. We have lost the ability to reflect and speak and act from a rationale center: either someone is for peace or for war, in support of a group or people or nation or not, a true believer or not. As if there is no Middle Way, no regard for mitigating and opposing conciliations. The ability to analyze, interpret, resolve and act with regard for complex, complicated, conflicting, convoluted, contradictory, chaotic forces and do so with gentleness is sorely needed today. To hold the center while others are pulling off into extremist, absolutist positions, that’s the true measure of our practice today.

Children of the Lord, stand your ground; yes, stand your ground! Yet let it be holy ground on which you stand. Holy ground!

2006-08-22T12:22:00.000-04:00

SUSAN HOWATCH IN HER 1999 NOVEL The High Flyer takes the story of our Western times – the story of corporate corruption, material excess and spiritual opacity – and weaves it along the satisfyingly nuanced lines one has come to expect of her writing, that is if one is a cognoscenti fan and Christian believer and knows the spiritual opportunities inherent in such a topic. The story also as one might expect was dismissed at review time by popular critics as preachy and moralistic, opportunistic even, themselves not unwitting to God-talk but above and beyond all that of course. For those who have ears however, listen!

Out of the power- and success- and money-hungry corporate culture of the 90s, Howatch fashions the atheistic life of her heroine Carter Graham, a high flyer in London’s world of tax law and corporate life, and subjects it to evil and death. Howatch then makes with this stuff of our common humanity a timeless weave of grace and redemption with which to comfort a soul in its darkest hour. Here is a lesson to be remembered (present in all of Howatch’s fiction), namely the Christian hope that as God has done in the past, so again God will do or in different words and more to the point of our topic, using biblical language, God is ever present to redress our imbalances as in “the hungry shall be filled with good things, and the rich shall be sent away empty” . . . though not necessarily in the way literalists, whether of the Western or Eastern stripe, might wish.

A recurrent theme in Howatch's novels (especially the Starbridge series), this mystical turning of God's favor upon all who come to God's altar of opportunity in the midst of "trouble, sorrow, need or any other adversity" satisfies the thoroughly modern spiritual reader yet perplexes even repulses the reactionary fundamentalist. The Howatch twist that catches and causes us to pause and reconsider matters spiritually is this - we are at once ourselves both the rich and the hungry. This is a profound insight worthy of Christian saints throughout the ages, and a message we need repeated often especially in our overheated world of religious argumentation. In the words of that witty 1970 environmentalist cartoon - "We have met the enemy and he is us!"

Toward the novel’s end Howatch tells the story of a father and nine-year old son traveling in the Lake District on holiday –

They see signs pointing to “The Sheepdog Trials” and the son thinks it would be a grand spectacle for them to watch. Following the signs through hill and valley, they finally arrive at the Sheepdog Trials which are in fact what the signs proclaim them to be – a contest of sheepdogs leading a flock of sheep through a series of trials or tests, and being judged for skill and aptitude in their several performances. The boy however is sorely disappointed. He wanted to see a white wigged, black robed judge, stern and foreboding, peering out over a courtroom of jurymen and fellow citizens and especially upon an accused soul standing in a cage. Maybe a murderer to be convicted and sentenced to death by hanging!

How like that boy we are in our elementary school understanding of God’s love and justice, and our desire, anger even to see things resolved in black-and-white. How much more like the sheepdog judges is our God who does not condemn to death those who fail, but only encourages them to try again to do better next time, always against an empowering background of improved instruction and discipline for success. We look for hangings with phenomenal interest and concern for sin and judgment, Old Testament-style, while the Eternal Being in whose image we are made and in Whom nothing is lost that is created, calls us to model love and justice tempered by mercy, New Testament-style.

Remember the One “who died for our sins and not for ours only, but for the sins of the whole world.” All else bows before this one surpassing grace! How hard is that to get, one asks and then shrugs immediately, realizing very hard indeed especially when looking to the centuries long sectarian foment of the Middle East and the culture wars of our own Anglican Communion.

The spiritual learning for high flying Carter Graham is mostly implied or “out there” beyond the last chapter, leaving her spiritual outcome as it were a work in progress, and that is a good thing come to think of it (except perhaps to dyed-in-the-wool Baptists). Spiritual lessons as universal absolute truths are commanded of all souls in every generation hence, the value of tradition and the practice of religion as keeper of sacred knowledge. It's good to cycle stuff on out into the future (provided we've got the right take on the conversation to begin with). Yet as relative transient experiences each generation is condemned to learn anew these same spiritual lessons again the hard way, one painful lesson after the other, soul by soul. I suppose this is God's way of tempering the truth, making it capable of cutting through the denials and deceits of each age, while leaving room for these same truths to adapt to new realities as yet unknown over time. Both immutable and malleable at the same time.

Evangelicals in general, fundamentalists in particular are strong on the former understanding but weak to the latter. They cannot reconcile their desire for harsh judgment of grievous wrongdoing done by others (readily albeit selectively quoting, "The Bible says . . .") with their own need for loving acceptance of sins done by themselves ("Make me a forgiven sinner!"), sins no less separating them from God than the sins of others. They lack an Anglican tolerance (others might say taste) for ambiguity and paradox and mystery and what the Christian existentialist Camus called "reasonable culpability". They have to separate themselves from those others, as if their objectivization of others as sinners (not forgiven) thereby rejoins them alone as sinners (forgiven) to the Ultimate Other. Yet sin only separates (especially the sin of condemning others); sin cannot join or restore; only living sacrifice can restore to justice what sin has done. All sin separates. Only virtue can repair and heal, and ultimately only Christ's virtue at that.

The meteoric rise and fall of 90s’ corporate star Kenneth Lay, a regular Methodist churchgoer and community philanthropist (with ill-gotten gains) is our most recent poignant example of how awry high flying human aspirations and desires can take us in “scattering the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” as we in the Anglican know of things, would say. Millions were affected adversely by Lay and his fellow corporate conspirators. Yet "there's a wideness in God's mercies" that will embrace Lay and countless others who have done foul deeds unworthy of our forgiveness. That's the good news indeed that is The Good News - we're not the ones doing the judging, thanks be to God. The bottom line is - Christ died for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world - even those whose sins have caused us immediate and lasting harm, pain and suffering, dammit.

Biblical literalists (including atheistic heroines whose lives are being transformed) don’t quite get how the sheep fold together at day’s end, good and bad alike. Even the canonical gospel writers, inspired as they were, couldn't resist anthropomorphizing the revelation of God's grace, God's love in sacrifice, with their own touch of anger and vengeance. Howatch gets it though and gets it right even if we are not quite sure of what it is.

In the end there is always hope. Although we do not yet know what for, Howatch knows this hope includes the whole of humanity. There is no hope unless it includes the whole of humanity. Billy Graham Ministries and all those descendant community churches scattered around the country in fancy new digs may have sure knowledge of who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, and how we can tell the difference in this world, but for Howatch and the rest of God’s Anglican children, there is always and in all ways grace (and more grace to come) to be considered. Thanks, Susan.

2006-08-14T12:54:00.000-04:00

"DO THE GOSPEL!" ENJOINS A FRIEND from Florida. For us that means advancing the global Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) designed to combat the root causes of basic human suffering in the world today. The MDGs are supported by a growing coalition of world organizations including the United Nations (the commissioning agency), the G8 nations, the Episcopal Church’s Episcopal Relief and Development Fund, the One Campaign (led by U2 rocker Bono) and the Earth Institute at Columbia University. These diverse humanitarian groups (if one can conceive of any G8 nations in such terms) are among the leading forces now rallying millions of people to help achieve the eight Millennium Development Goals -

Goal 1: Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger
Goal 2: Achieve Universal Primary Education for Children
Goal 3: Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women
Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality
Goal 5: Improve Maternal Health
Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Other Diseases
Goal 7: Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Goal 8: Create a Global Partnership for Development

How you participate in helping to meet the MDGs depends upon your situation in life and what you hear the Spirit calling you to do as an individual or member of a small group. Perhaps you will read a lot about what’s going on in this war to make poverty history and by your informed conversation with others, maybe in a study group, grow the Spirit of Matthew 25:37-40 into an ever-widening circle of belief, recognition and commitment. Or you will be moved to contribute money by carefully selecting a reputable charitable organization that is known to be working on behalf of global relief and development. Or you might go all out and become a volunteer on mission. Or even organize a group of volunteers such as our diocese does for medical mission pilgrimages to El Salvador (our companion diocese in Central America).

The bottom line is rather than being distracted by the angers and frustrations of politics in the Anglican Communion or Middle East, which is spiritually debilitating and enervating over time, what better thing to do with your own life and energy than to commit in a personal way toward fufilling the MDGs. They are all about doing the Gospel of Matthew 25, 21^st century style: that is, with coordinated cross-border planning, shared personnel and material resources, using the best of modern technology and scientific methods, things done from bottom-up with human ingenuity and care and compassion, and measured accounting of outcomes. Isn’t it time we got past the politics of nation states and culture wars consuming our energies and dividing our fellowship and unity as the church, the body of Christ and people of God?

Think about this - when your last day comes upon you, which do you think the Lord our God and Judge will want to know of you, how many people you argued with about God’s disposition or who you helped among the least of these his children in their time of suffering desperately? Being a Christian today means doing the Gospel, not arguing about who is going to heaven or should go to hell, but doing the Gospel and in today’s world that means helping others. Our bishop in CNY wants us “to be the passionate presence of Christ for one other and the world we are called to serve.” Or said in different words, in the context of this posting - think more about MDGs and less about General Conventions and you will be happier and more likely a blessing in the heart of God.

This message, the central message of our Presiding Bishop-elect Katharine Jefferts Schori’s mission outreach agenda for the next nine years in the service life of the church, was brought home to me recently last spring at a week-long Clergy Leadership Conference in Connecticut. On our reading list was Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains (Random House, 2003), about the extraordinary life of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard-based infectious diseases specialist and medical missionary to Haiti who though not yet 50 years of age has already through profoundly personal charismatic outreach and by employing the latest public health sciences, improved the lives of thousands of people and changed world health protocols for the better around the globe. It is a remarkable story about a man who will be acclaimed a hero of the first half of this century and an inspiration to generations of practical idealists in the future (reading my daughter's alumae magazine recently, I see Mount Holyoke College for example has made Mountains Beyond Mountains required reading for the entire academic community this year).

Doing the Gospel today, and not just talking about it at least not that portion of the gospel represented by Matthew 25:37-40, is in large measure, borrowing from the mission statement of the Earth Institute, about “mobilizing the sciences and public policy to build a prosperous and sustainable future.” By “sciences” is meant not only earth science, biology, engineering, health, but social sciences as well including theology and religion. All have a part to play in realizing the future envisioned by the MDGs and it is an important and vital part that the church plays, namely bringing to the table of humanity our unique knowledge and understanding of ultimate meaning and purpose in life, along with a sustained history and sustainable manner of behaving that has long served the world with hope for a better future.

So let’s get about it – the goals are out there to be achieved, the time is short - four millions lives a day are at stake, whole peoples and nations are at risk in regions around the globe - and God is calling us to be faithful. Speak in your local faith community today about coming up to speed on the Millennium Development Goals. "Do the Gospel!"

For more on MDGs and the policies and practice behind them, go to: for a general overview www.unmillenniumproject.org/ or for a close-up look try the Millennium Villages Project www.earthinstitute.columbia.edu/or to get involved www.er-d.org/programs_36756_ENG_HTM.htm.

2006-08-12T13:08:00.000-04:00

OUR PRESIDING BISHOP-ELECT Katharine Jefferts Schori has proclaimed a major focus of her new administration will be pursuing the global agenda of what are called the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Bishop Jefferts Schori will need all the help she can muster in support of these goals and to hold back countervailing forces on two fronts: the clash of civilizations in an ongoing increasingly violent, wide-spreading world war that will likely outlast her 9-year term of office and the self-obsessing culture war within the Anglican Communion that is doing systemic violence to the fabric of Anglican faith and practice.

Our greater central task reasons Jefferts Schori - here moderates everywhere should find holy ground in agreement - is to help meet basic human needs in a world that is suffering desperately and for whom we are called to be the compassionate presence of Christ. The newly elected Presiding Bishop’s work is cut out for her. She will need all her skills as an airplane pilot and oceanographer and moral theologian to maneuver the church successfully through these times.

Recent Episcopal administrations at 815 2^nd Avenue, NYC (headquarters of the national Episcopal Church) have failed at important moments in contemporary history, witnessed symbolically by twice-removed Presiding Bishop Edmund Browning picketing his fellow Episcopalian President George H. W. Bush outside the White House in protest of the First Gulf War (a pathetic display of pastoral bankruptcy in the office of the Presiding Bishop and thorough lack of understanding of what was at stake globally) and the craven act of P. B. Frank Griswold pushing a last-minute resolution through General Convention which effectively gave up holy ground reached at great prophetic cost to the church.

The latter refers to 2006 G. C. Resolution B033, a backroom accommodation to reactionary bullies reminiscent of Neville Chamberlain’s “peace in our time” diplomacy on the eve of World War Two. Resolution B033 instructs the church to abstain from ordaining to the episcopacy any person whose manner of life would present a challenge to the wider church: at once an obvious drawback from the 2003 G. C’s consent to the election of a homosexual bishop - and by extension an affront to all social justice principles held dearly in the church - and an untenably compromised resolution given the same Convention’s consent to the election in the Diocese of Northern California of a man who has been married four times.

Nothing more need be said about Browning, a cheerleader for the Democratic Party at prayer. But about Bishop Griswold’s disturbing last step: it was an uncharacteristically unilateral, pre-emptive act of an otherwise successful, much-needed centering administration. Hopefully Resolution B033 will not be the defining moment of Griswold’s tenure in office, nor will it augur the character of Jefferts Schori’s administration as she was co-opted into pleading on behalf of the resolution before the House of Deputies. A church that espouses transparency, openness, inclusiveness; that acts prophetically, courageously, honestly; that follows in the Spirit where others dare not tread and where itself has hope for what it yet knows not, such a church as ours needs better and more consistent leadership.

What matters now is that the church give no more ground to political or religious extremists, nor support such craven behavior by any other authorities in the name of a false peace. The only way State-sponsored terrorists will win the war for fundamentalist Islam is by the peoples of the West thinking foolishly that our values and purposes are the same as those of our self-declared enemies. Radical Islamists question not the firepower of the West but the willpower of the people, and therein lay their greatest hope – that their fanatical religious devotion is greater than the devotion of Christians - and that they can win the war between civilizations because Christians no longer have the stomach for the good fight and will compromise basic values and principles in order to keep their standard of living and domestic comforts. They are wrong. We have not even begun to rally our true inner strengths to the challenges that are being put before us.

Lord, give us faithful leaders to persevere and prevail in these troubling times, for the sake of humanity as we know it revealed in Jesus your Son.

Again, the role of the church in these troubling times is to think globally and act compassionately, with the MDGs as our focus for agenda and the motivation and model of Christ as our constant guide. While our military and law enforcement agencies do the work that has been evilly forced upon them, and over which they will triumph at great cost, we must prepare the future order of humanity by living faithfully the mandates of Matthew 25. Whither we go is not so much the matter any longer as is how we go, how we move into the 21^st century and who we serve along the way.

Let us serve the whole of humanity, O God; and let our service be in your way of love with living sacrifice, peace with equal justice, judgment with tempering mercy, faith with practical works, devotion with observable discipline, O Lord our God.

2006-08-10T14:34:00.000-04:00

BRITISH AUTHORITIES DISRUPTED a terrorist plot to simultaneously blow up several aircraft midair between the U.K. and the U.S. using explosives smuggled in hand luggage . . . That’s how this morning’s edition of the WSJ Online, which I use for my Internet home page, opens. The news is a steely reminder that we are at war. This terrorist plot out of the UK we are told, has earmarks of al Qaeda going for a global statement on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. The alleged terrorists are all Pakistani in background. One of the leaders hiding in Pakistan is accused of murdering his uncle in 2002.

We have been at war for over 25 years now, since 1979 when militant students of radical Islamism took 52 American citizens hostage in the US Embassy in Tehran, during the failed administration of Jimmy Carter. Four years later Hezbollah, formed in the mid-70s as the militant organized terrorist arm of Syrian and Iranian foreign policy, bombed the US Embassy in Beirut killing 63 people and then executed the homicidal suicide attack on the Marine barracks also in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. The Marines were there to secure a safe retreat for the Lebanese army and PLO factions at risk by Hezbollah’s aggression into southern Lebanon and the subsequent violent conflict with Israeli forces defending their northern border.

The list of radical Islamic violence targeted against military and civilian populations around the world needs to be recounted in the mind of Western peoples everywhere for we are at war, a war between two civilizations, and the world as we know it and the hope for a better future hangs in the balance. Who will win? What of our way of life if we were to lose? These are real questions everyone on the side of Western civilization need to recognize and answer. Our enemy is set on world disruption, the annihilation of the Jews, the domination of all peoples by radical fundamentalist Islam, and the destruction of America.

Christians don’t get to sit this one out any longer. We must choose sides in this great contest and do so reluctantly but choose nonetheless. It is no longer a matter of living blind to the fierce, strange cultural realities of the Middle East while enjoying our privileged comforts in the West. The Middle East and the West are inextricably bound together now, though at present in a death struggle: the result of over 100 years of failed foreign policy and weak resolves in the West, of our living off the misappropriated natural resources of other peoples and nations in the Middle East, and of being complicit in the rule of Middle Eastern autocracies so anathema to our own way of life in their oppression and degradation of their own people, yet supported by us for our own convenience. Nonetheless, we must choose one way or the other. And how are we to live with our choice as Christians? How are we to live spiritually?

There is sin abounding on all sides in this latest and most dangerous world war. Yet the past and how we got to the present is no longer the matter of the day. These are dangerous, troubling times demanding firm resolve and clarity of purpose. We must deal with now and how we do will determine whither goes our future and the future of world civilization. The first and immediate need is to cut off the radical terrorists and their ability to do violence, at the same time standing down their supporters principally in Iran and Syria, and if possible enabling and empowering new orders of indigenous governance and control in all the nations of the Middle East. Then and only then can everyone together set about the long term work of redressing the imbalances that are at the root of the hostilities. For now though the work of the day is cutting off terrorists.

All will change, both the Middle East and West in this great conflict of civilizations, and yet all will be for the better, all will be well in the end. The Lord our God will make it so. The hard part for us as Christians in the West will be in sanctioning the use of force in response to the real and present dangers of rampant State-sponsored terrorism. Admittedly the underlying issues will not be resolved by engaging the terrorists with deadly force, but the issues will never be addressed without first capping the violence at its evil sources. You expect police to keep your neighborhood safe and intervene when violence occurs (preferably before it occurs), so too should we expect the same of our military and law-enforcement agencies in these troubling times. Or to say the same thing differently using a healing metaphor, you would not deny the doctor’s knife or laser or chemotherapy in the hope of removing a cancer from your body, nor should we deny the use of force for the purpose of achieving a greater good for the global body.

Pushed to choose between a West that has learned over the centuries how to moderate their own extremist tendencies including when appropriate the use of proportional force to protect innocent civilians or a Middle East that has not shown any will or ability to control the radical Islamists and their homicidal bombers and paramilitary terrorist organizations, I choose the West. Pushed to choose between what motivates the peoples of Christianity or Islam in the main – and I believe this choice is a matter of life or death for civilization as we know it and hope for it in the future – I choose the West. I choose the West knowing in my Christian heart that in the end, having won, we will make a greater, just peace for the peoples and nations of the Middle East than they would do or support if the winners, on our behalf. We’ve done so before in Germany, in Japan and will do so again in Afghanistan and Iraq and soon, if necessary, in Syria and Iran. Meanwhile, what has Islam done in over 500 years?

In a word, I have no desire to see my children’s children at the mercies of a radical fundamentalist mullah. The issue for me then is how to support the good fight and advance true civilization. I would not have us advance as arrogant Christus Victors. I would rather have us advance as humble Christian men and women resolutely seeking the holy ground of an inclusive, open, transparent, free and forgiving society. Let us then advance in Christ's image toward what once was called confidently the Kingdom of God and not with Christians only but with people of good will everywhere.