Nothing, but nonetheless, everything

When the floor under us collapses, dare we make an act of faith to save ourselves?

A journal called Image works hard to provide answers to that kind of question by providing a forum in which today’s religion and today’s art meet, sometimes to shake one another’s hands and other times to shake their fists at each other. Toward the closing pages of Image No. 98 (fall 2018) I was struck by a couple of lines and paragraphs that first dismayed me and then offered me hope.

The dismay came in single sentences from each of two poems by Douglas Luman. The first line is from a poem entitled “Kneses Tifereth Israel Synagogue, Port Chester, New York,” and the second is from “The Rothko Chapel, Houston, Texas.” Forgive me for simply sharing the words that struck me without giving you more about their context. What hit me were the few words by themselves:

… I have nothing to pawn but grains

of sand.

and

… the world owes

you nothing, but gives it anyway.

Nothing to pawn…nothing owed…nothing given…anyway.

The words emptied me of my human pretense that I am owed anything or (much more devastating), that I have anything to exchange for what desperately think I need.

Then I read the next article, Homo Liturgicus: On the Presence of Ritual in Contemporary Fiction, a review by James K. A. Smith of two books. Again, without context, some near-concluding lines:

Sometimes the things we do that make no sense turn out to be the things we need to do in order to withstand the heartbreak that makes no sense, the tragedy that shouldn’t be, the evil that doesn’t deserve a place in the cosmos. These rituals–the things we do over and for “for no reason”–mysteriously build a capacity to do the things we’d never dream of doing–the things we have to do that we’ll try to forget and hope never to do again. …

… a line from “A Father’s Story” by Andre Dubus…succinctly encapsulates what I’ve been circling around: “For ritual allows those who cannot will themselves out of the secular  to perform the spiritual, as dancing allows the tongue-tied man a ceremony of love.” …

What if rituals are the way we dance with the love that drives the universe?

The last couple years I’ve been worshipping in an Episcopal Church. For a cradle-Presbyterian this has been a bit of stretch, and I am only being honest in sharing that it was not the heightened ritual that brought me there, nor is it all that keeps me there. But I have come to appreciate the rituals I’ve learned to accept and even to anticipate. They link me to something greater than the mere secularity of my daily life.

At our best we Presbyterians have our rituals, though they are neither as elaborate nor as lengthy as those of our Episcopal siblings. And Presbyterians don’t have to do them, as seems to be required by more liturgical churches, so you never know what you will get when you worship with Presbyterians.

One day I will probably return to a Presbyterian Church, but for now, I worship where I need to be. and I am compelled by the ritual.

Returning to Douglas Luman’s poems I focused for first time on a quote by Dominique de Menil printed under the title of the Rothko poem:

“When the floor collapses, it’s time to make an act of faith.”

To “make an act of faith”…to do faith, not just to claim, say, or believe something. Perhaps not even to do something good or just and identify it as an act of faith, as important as that is. But to find a welcoming community of healthy and holy spoken and enacted ritual and, no matter how strange or foreign it sounds or looks the first couple of times, to give it time to speak to you. And to give yourself time to hear.

My Solution

Give the man his wall, but call it a monument ... a monument to fear, hatred, distrust, disfunction, and racism. Move the Statue of Liberty to someplace in its middle, her uplifted arm amputated, her eyes downcast, with tears flowing down her cheeks. Engrave the word “ego” every ten yards for all the egos that went into it and the fight over it. 

Then, please give us an effective, fair, and functioning government. And please, elected folks, old AND new, stop your constant grandstanding at the people’s expense. We are tired of it! Just do your jobs!

In Praise of the Laud

I just finished my annual listen to Respighi's Laud to the Nativity, and I was once again moved by how authentically it retells the story of Christ's birth and conveys the emotions of the people involved. To me, it truly says it all about who he is and why he was born.

I am grateful that I was introduced to it years ago by Sandy Willette, Director of the Southern Maryland Choral Society, when we performed it. And that Mel Unger conducted it early in my days as a member of the Singers' Club of Cleveland (accompanied by some beautiful women's voices). How happy when the unplanned circumstances of our lives intersect to enrich us!

"To a guilty world you have pledged yourself not out of duty, but because such was your pleasure."

In the wake of Interior Secretary Zinke's resignation...

If the Earth were only a

few feet in diameter, floating a few

feet above a field somewhere, people

would come from everywhere to marvel at it.

People would walk around it, marveling at its big

pools of water, its little pools and the water flowing

between the pools. People would marvel at the bumps 

on it, and the holes in it, and they would marvel at the very

thin layer of gas surrounding it and the water suspended in the

gas. The people would marvel at all the creatures in the water. The

people would declare it precious because it was the only one,

and they should protect it so that it would not be hurt.  The

ball  would  be  the  greatest  wonder  known,  and  people

would come to behold it, to be healed, to gain knowledge,

to know beauty and to wonder how it could be. People

would love it, and defend it with their lives, because

they would somehow know that their lives,

their own roundness, could be nothing

without it. If the Earth were only a 

few feet in diameter.

I found this today while going through some old files. It dates back at least to 2001 for me, but I do not know how old it is or who authored it. It becomes more compelling with each passing day.

Risky Gifts

While the commercial world rushes recklessly toward its version of Christmas, the church’s world, when its heart is right, prepares for the more sober, reflective season of Advent, Christmas joy to follow. This approaching Advent my spirit is struck by a new-to-me Christmas poem, Francis Chesterton’s, “Here is the Little Door.” I believe it was written around the First World War, though I haven’t been able to confirm that.

Here is the little door, lift up the latch, oh lift!

We need not wander more but enter with our gift;

Our gift of finest gold,

Gold that was never bought nor sold;

Myrrh to be strewn about his bed;

Incense in clouds about his head;

All for the Child who stirs not in his sleep.

But holy slumber holds with ass and sheep.

Bend low about his bed, for each he has a gift;

See how his eyes awake, lift up your hands, O lift!

For gold, he gives a keen-edged sword

(Defend with it Thy little Lord!),

For incense, smoke of battle red.

Myrrh for the honoured happy dead;

Gifts for his children terrible and sweet,

Touched by such tiny hands and 

Oh such tiny feet.

I do not pretend to understand this poem completely, which is the way of fine poetry. But I think that Chesterton is getting at the risks inherent in giving and in receiving great gifts. Are we up to handling them?

The first stanza gives voice to the Wise Men and their gifts to the infant, sleeping Jesus–gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

The second stanza places gifts in the hands of a sinister and cynical Jesus, who seems to return those gifts to "his children" in drastically altered form. Instead of gold he gives a sword; instead of sweet incense he gives the smoke of battle. And Jesus gives myrrh to anoint the bodies of “the honoured happy dead,” not his own body. That strange pairing of words suggests something “terrible and sweet.” But I am not sure: are the gifts “terrible and sweet,” or are Jesus's children, who receive those gifts, "terrible and sweet"? What has his touch made of them?

It is not hard to imagine that Chesterton, writing in a time of war, was reflecting on how easily we succumb to misusing the gifts we give and receive. Like children, we turn gifts, including the gift of faith, into reasons to compare ourselves to others, and to prove either that we are more worthy than others or that we just have not been given what we are due. We fight to keep what we have or to get what we deserve.

Blogger Charlie Warren hears the poem as a caution against the “ever-present possibility for bold faith to be used in the service of deadly hate.” His warning resonates deeply in me tonight.

Fine gifts divide us. We’d perhaps be better off if there were no such gifts given, if we were just simply free to receive the tiny touch of the humanity that is our common gift.

The community choir I am rehearsing with these days is singing Herbert Howell’s sensitive 1918 setting of Francis Chesterton’s poem. It is the musical highpoint of our concert for me, and it haunts me as Advent begins. What am I to do with the Gift that I am preparing to receive? What is the world to do with it?

A Sin Too Deep?

A couple of days ago as we drove through Zelionope PA, I noticed a sign at a car wash that warned, “Thick mud not permitted.”

Feels like a ready-made sermon illustration to me.

Adventures in Downsizing

What do I do with a career-worth of sermons?

Of course, I cannot do much about the sermons themselves, not as they were preached. They have long been absolutely free of my ability to retrieve them. Like all spoken words, once they were said they could not be taken back.

But the manuscripts and/or notes from which I spoke them are in several large cardboard file boxes stowed in our attic. Being who I am, I’ve kept them all. The earliest are from my college days (mid-1960s). The latest is from two weeks ago. All neatly stapled along with the worship bulletin for that service, which usually includes announcements about life in that congregation. In a way all of this paper is not only a record of my preaching, but of my whole ministry.

What do I do with a career, perhaps even, if I dare, a calling?

It has seemed too hard to me to simply pitch the whole lot of them. I guess I have too much invested in how I spent much of my time on this earth. But I know I will never go through them all, Sunday by Sunday, in order to learn what I can about me and my ministry from their witness. I certainly do not want anyone who survives me to have to decide what to do with them all, although it would probably be easier for them to decide to pitch them than I want to admit. And publishing some of them, as some have most graciously suggested? Nope…too much work, too little pay-off.

So I came up with a grid whereby I select four sermons from each year in an ordered yet random way, one from each quarter of each year, but from different Sundays in each quarter. That’s the best I can explain it. This method most likely leaves me with a mix of the good, the bad, and the indifferent. In order to allow myself some freedom of choice, if I see a title or topic that somehow sticks in my memory as worthy of saving, I keep that one. But then I move forward according to my pre-ordained plan.

I’ve culled my sermons through 1996, so only a couple more decades to go. A very small box holds the blessed remnant of 32 years of my pulpit wisdom. I feel good about that.

It’s been a worthwhile process so far, reminding me of many things I’d forgotten. I’ve found some memorable correspondence from folks and some interesting articles I saved filed between the manuscripts. It’s been a quick review of my career, of my calling. And in some ways going through all those boxes is clearing space in my brain and heart for the writing I am doing these days.

But I haven’t yet pitched all the manuscripts my systematic approach has determined I shall not keep. I moved them back into the attic, until… And I know all of the sermons from the 90s on are saved in my computer, so what about them? They are sadly easy to keep. And what will become of the invaluable but small box or two of the saved sermons that I will likely want to carry to smaller quarters one day? What do I really expect anyone to do with them? Who will have to decide about them if I do not?

A career-worth of sermons is no small matter to me.