It’s time to take on The Flicker again. Some readers may need to be reminded of a number of posts chronicling my battle with the persistent flicker who invaded my house late last summer, pecked a hole high up in the exterior wall, and took up winter residence therein. Steve the contractor came over this week to work out some plans for better insulation, and while he was at it also took on the repair of the flicker hole, a nest of starlings inside a vent, and some miscellaneous issues up on the roof. What he found in the garage attic was a flicker nest the size of a dog bed. That bird had made him/herself a four star Ritz Carlton hideaway, now occupied by more starlings on a sublet. A little cleaning, a little patching, a little carpentry to take away any place to perch and peck, and I can confidently assert that, as of this evening, we have no more flicker and/or starling nests in our house. I can start removing their outside wall decorations soon. Whether it stays that way is another question altogether. Tomorrow the insulation people show up to do whatever it is that they do, which has nothing to do with flickers or starlings, but it’s supposed to keep us warmer in winter, cooler in summer and save on utility bills. They way I figure it, the flicker will just consider this a Ritz Carlton renovation designed especially for him/her.
Month: April 2009
It was one of Those Days!
Ever had one of those days? The day got off to a bad start for Mary Magdalene and the other women who went with her to the tomb. What they encountered there left them dazed with wonder and fear, but somewhere, in the middle of it all, the music began and filled their lives. What had been a hardly dared for hope became a joyful reality. How could it not end with tears of joy and delight?
Easter Sunday morning was one of those days for me too, which means that this post takes on the form of a true confession. Along with two other retired priests, l serve Grace Episcopal Church in Dayton, Washington. This morning we had seventeen eager and joyful souls gathered for Easter Sunday worship. Music would make the day extra special. A friend of mine who teaches music at a local college recruited two of his top students to adorn our worship with their skills. So far so good. The first hint that this would not be a normal Sunday morning was my wife reminding me that worship was at 9:00, not 10:00, and I have no idea why 10:00 was stuck in my head because worship at Grace is always at 9:00. The second hint was the nagging suspicion that I had told the students to be sure to be there by 9:30 to get ready. It was true.
How do you stand in front of a congregation waiting for the service to start and tell them you blew it, on Easter of all days for crying out loud? Well, it’s best just to do it and face the music, or lack of it. Their response was to say OK, if we have to wait a bit tell us about the Great Vigil of Easter, tell us all about it. We did finally get underway without music, but just as I was about to begin my sermon, in walked our two musicians. How do you stand in front of a congregation and apologize to two befuddled college students who are not even Episcopalians and have never been here, or in any Episcopal church, before? Well, it’s best just to do it and face the music, and hope for it. The congregation gave them seventeen individual welcomes, they sat down and led us in through the opening hymn, and then the misplaced gospel hymn after my sermon, then a portion of their prelude during the offertory, and by now in sync, they led us in the closing hymn at the right time. Seventeen people then sat back down and listened to a virtuoso violin and piano duet. When it was over, seventeen pairs of eyes were wet with tears of joy and delight. What had been a hardly dared for hope became a joyful reality. How could it not end with tears of joy and delight?
Alleluia, Christ is Risen! The Lord is Risen Indeed, Alleluia!
It’s a good thing that great good news does not depend on pastors like me to get it right. Sometimes God’s messengers bringing that great good news look a lot like college students. Sometimes God’s grace makes itself known through seventeen people in a rural congregation bearing that very name.
A Holy Week Observed
Over the years I have come to respect and deeply value the journey of Holy Week that involves daily worship and the observance of the Triduum Sacrum, the sacred three days, encompassing a single service that begins on Thursday evening, first in light and then in darkness, continues through Good Friday’s long service of prayer and meditation, and culminates in the Great Vigil of Easter on Saturday evening that starts in the dark and ends in the triumphant light of the Resurrection.
Although it is a long standing custom in our denomination, and locally in our parish, there are relatively few who fully participate, and who can blame them. The services are long, some of them two or three hours. They come at inconvenient times. The symbolism involved is rich but complex and not easy to understand. Although the three day service of the Triduum, that begins with the Last Supper and ends with the Resurrection, is broken up by long stretches of hours for ordinary life and leisure, it is still something of an endurance run, but worth every minute of it.
That first “Alleluia, Christ is Risen”, shouted out in a dark church following an hour or more of scripture and prayer just shakes one’s soul to its deepest roots. Then, in a thunder of bells and music, the candles are lit, the lights blaze, and the church is illuminated in all its Easter finery. Alleluias are cried out, Easter hymns are sung and the Eucharist celebrated. No matter how beautiful or extravagant the Sunday morning services may be, they are simply anticlimactic in comparison.
I always feel a bit sorry for those who know only the hymns, flowers and celebration of Easter Sunday morning because I think they have missed out on almost everything. If that’s all there is it can be, perhaps, a bit too easy to forget Easter Sunday morning almost as soon as the eggs are found, the chocolate bunny decapitated, and the ham served.
It is all but impossible to forget a Holy Week observed, or to deny that it has some deep ontological meaning to the rest of life that begins afresh on Monday. I commend to your reading Sunrise Sister at Mindsieve who says it all much better than I.
Alleluia, Christ is Risen!
Happy Easter!
The Triduum Sacrum
The Triduum Sacrum is upon us. No more posting. It’s time to be quiet, pray and meditate. More in three days.
Guns and Good Friday
I just listened to an NPR report on gun and ammunition sales. According to the reporter, and the Texas gun shop owner she interviewed, gun sales went through the roof and ammunition out the door the day after the election, and it has not slowed down. The gun shop owner said is was due to fear: fear that Obama would take away their ammunition and impose confiscatory taxes on gun sales or even take them away altogether. After all, if he is already taking away the banks, car companies, oil companies and who knows what else, as well as squandering our hard earned money on bailouts and welfare for people who don’t work as hard as we do. What else will he start taking away with all this socialism? In the end, he said, it came down to the need to defend one’s self and property against all those criminals, who, if they suspected that guns and ammunition were restricted, would unleash a flood of violence against innocent hard working people like us.
This kind of irrational hysteria is, in my opinion, a combination of fear driven ignorance nourished by the worst of the ultra right wing talk radio commentators who deliberately encourage it with outlandish hate filled distortions of truth. We have seen some of the fruits of this kind of thinking in the dramatic increase in shooting rampages inflicted, not by criminals, but by dads, moms, brothers, sisters, and former friends and associates. I’m too saddened to be outraged. And I’m especially saddened that a good percentage of these ignorant fear driven souls probably claim the name of Christ as well. I know a few of them, and at least among those few, any challenge to their way of thinking is met with an instantaneous and angry defense. What a way to live: fearful, angry and armed.
If I had my way, I’d like to see us license gun owners just as we license drivers. There would be age limits as well as required study and a test. Permits and background checks would be required for all gun sales and not just some, and guns would be registered just as automobiles are registered. That, of course, is precisely what the gun nuts fear the most as the immediate and certain sign that the end of America as we know it has come.
As we approach Good Friday, let us reflect on how far fear driven human behavior can go in defense of its worst motivations.
To Brighten a Pastor’s Monday in Holy Week
Here’s a Holy Week thought.
When a congregation has become a social club and begins to think of its pastor as its chief master of ceremonies as well as its primary recruiter for new (and acceptable) members of the club, has it ceased being a Christian church regardless of the sign on the door?
When they fondly remember the wonderful pastor who did just that and brought so many new comers into the church that it was always full, do they wonder where all those people went and why they left?
When some smart-ass church consultant tells them that it is their job, and not the pastor’s, to become seekers of seekers, fishers of men and women, and the only kind of evangelism they can think of is a Jehovah’s Witness door knock, have they ever been taught how to be disciples?
When inviting someone to Rotary or the Country Club is natural, expected and enthusiastically accomplished, but not a word will ever be spoken about St. Swithen’s Church, have we, who are called and ordained to be teachers of the faith, simply failed for lack of trying even a little bit?
My guess is that, if congregations and pastors were included in the national No Christian Left Behind program of evaluation, most of us would receive failing grades and few of us would be entitled to any merit pay. We were called to be shepherds. Have we ended up as hirelings?
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance, that’s the thing we humans just can’t stand. We’ll manufacture almost any what we can think of to eliminate it, even if it means twisting reality into unrecognizable knots. Somehow we need to harmonize events and/or ideas with our own world views, attitudes and beliefs, and we work hard to do that whenever cognitive dissonance enters into our personal realms.
In our tradition, Palm Sunday is the ultimate exercise in cognitive dissonance in which no amount of twisting or turning can achieve harmony. We begin with the joyful singing of Hosannas, waving our palm fronds about, as we celebrate the entrance into Jerusalem of our Messiah. Within moments, we are deep into the crucifixion narrative yelling Crucify Him! Crucify Him! and ending with the unresolved death of Jesus on the cross. It is unsettling at best. No one wants to be left with no clear way to harmonize the scene just played out. There are only four solutions. Ignore it altogether and just jump straight to Easter. Include one part or the other but not both in the same service. Invent some imaginative theological mumbo-jumbo to satisfy the congregation as long as they don’t think about it too much. Or, why not just sink into the mystery of God’s unfathomable plan being worked out. God, after all, seems to have shown no real concern for whether we humans are or are not suffering a little cognitive dissonance over it. Maybe we need to learn to live with it, not only in this moment but in others as well. I’ll have more to say about that on Sunday. You can say whatever you want now.
The Foolishness of It All
Holy Week always brings me deep into the presence of the Holy Mystery, and fills me with words that can be neither written nor spoken, not even to myself. Paul called it a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, and he was right. I think it was his way of saying that the whole event simply doesn’t make sense to any ordinary way of thinking. Bringing Paul more up to date, we might say that it is a stumbling block to anyone who would force a particular doctrine of salvation on it. Or, for that matter, to anyone who would require a particular way of expressing one’s faith in order to gain salvation. In like manner, it is utter foolishness to anyone who would apply the rules of logic or scientific method to unravel it. It simply won’t yield.
How many honored and much studied theologians have tried? Like Aquinas said, in the end it all comes to straw. Nevertheless, here I am, a sort of modern day Jewish Greek (so to speak), ordained by the church, and expected by those I’m called to teach, to provide The Answer: the explanation that will bring it all together and make it perfectly clear. I am perfectly willing, want to, and try to do just that, but it always eludes me. In the early 1990s a friend gave me a photocopy of Rowan Williams’ then out of print book Resurrection. I read it and reread it again as at last shedding light on my own great questions. It’s back in print, has been for years. I’ve got a couple of copies and have given others away. Reviews have not always been kind. The big complaint is that his theology is far too poetic and never really comes to a tightly and logically drawn conclusion. What other language than poetry could there be?
So, on Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday I will stand before a few expectant people and do what I can to express some small portion of some small understanding of this Holy Mystery, and that’s all about I can hope for.