“O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you.
“Let not those who hope in you be put to shame through me, Lord God of hosts; let not those who seek you be disgraced of me, O God of Israel.” [Ps. 69:6 & 7]
Sobering thoughts for those in positions of moral and spiritual leadership, leaders in the Church, priests and bishops of our Church. If this consideration was in the forefront of our thoughts, much of the mess within the Church might be alleviated.
Moving enables me to look through long kept stuff. When I left employment at Kent State University, among the good folks of Undergraduate Studies (who I still miss, today) for seminary in NYC, they sent me off with a lovely bound folio of written remembrances and well-wishes. My dear friend, Amy Quillan (now Dr. Quillan, PhD.), with whom I shared a great deal during our graduate studies and life at Kent afterward, wrote a long bit to me. One paragraph probably hits closest to my hopeful self-perception (or self-delusion, depending on who one talks to), and here it is (a bit of self-indulgence, if I may):
“You are a man of vision and passion, a lover of life, and a tenacious pursuer of the greater good. And you unabashedly call others to that great good, too, challenging and encouraging them to think, reflect, and ponder, and maybe change for the sake of a higher calling. You’ve done that for me, and I am forever grateful.”
I guess if one is to have a legacy, what Amy wrote about me, then, would be a pretty darn good one to have. I can only hope that I have lived up to her perception of me over the passing years, and now live even more fully into such a way of being. With a bit of self-reflection, I have to admit that I’ve missed the mark, but my hope is that I will be such a man for the rest of today and tomorrow and the remainder of my life.
I’ve been thinking about Halloween and comments some make about how easy it could be for me to just dress up as a priest. Well, it could, but that seems too irreverent, so I never will. However, I was thinking about how dressing up as a Steampunk Priest might be fun. So, I googled it, like any good, red-blooded, American male, to see what others have done, if anything. There is a bit of stuff and some good ideas. However…
I came across a blog: Steampunk Vicar. His latest post had a quote from Rev. Rogers (that’s “Mr. Rogers” to you and me, of Neighborhood fame, who was, in fact, an ordained Presbyterian minister). This little quote may be one of those things that just shifts my whole perspective (kind of like what Steampunk does). Here it is:
“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'” (Fred Rogers)
Mr./Rev. Rogers’ mother was a profoundly wise woman, and I am sure much of Mr. Rogers’ sensibility came from her.
Look for those who are helping! Instead of absorbing the blathering of crazed pundits or protesting ditties, look for those who are helping. It is easy to talk and can be fun to march, but to roll up one’s sleeves and be in the midst of those who smack-you-upside-the-head need help – on the ground, in the field, beside the one prone in the gutter – will be a much better and in the end more satisfying-for-the-soul thing to do. In the midst of the worst of everything, look for the helpers! I want to be with the helpers.
“To reach satisfaction in all
desire its possession in nothing
To come to the knowledge of all
desire the knowledge of nothing
To come to possess all
desire the possession off nothing
To arrive at being all
desire to be nothing
To come to the pleasure you have not
you must go by a way in which you enjoy not
To come to the knowledge you have not
you must go by a way in which you know not
To come to the possession you have not
you must go by a way in which you possess not
To come to be what you are not
you must go by a way in which you are not
When you turn toward something
you cease to cast yourself upon all
for to go from the all to the all
you must leave yourself in all
And when you come to the possession of all
you must possess it without wanting anything
In this nakedness the spirit
finds its rest, for when it
covets nothing, nothing
raises it up, and nothing
weights it down, because it is
in the center of its humanity.”
St. John of the Cross
This migration began in earnest back in the 1990’s and is not coming into its own. I look at my own experience and understand that those of us, back then, were on the forefront of this migration among X-er’s, and now even more so among Millennial’s.
These are the general 5 reasons:
From the article:
“The departure of young people from “new” churches to “old” ones can be deeply confusing to many who grew up with strict denominational boundaries. However, it has the potential to lead to healthy, restorative spaces for many of God’s people. After all, we are all one church. As Brian Zhand expresses it; ‘we need the whole body of Christ to properly form the body of Christ. This much I’m sure of: Orthodox mystery, Catholic beauty, Anglican liturgy, Protestant audacity, Evangelical energy, Charismatic reality — I need it all!’”
Read the post, here…
http://www.churchinacircle.com/2015/03/31/why-young-people-are-seeking-old-ways-of-doing-church/
So, what now? How often do we ask that question? For life? For work? For love? For faith? In excitement – in frustration – with anxiety – with joy – in anticipation – in wonderment? What is our disposition when we ask such a thing?
I find myself at this point, once again. So, what now? No bad, mind you, but a bit anxiety producing. It is through the struggle that the most precious… most worthwhile… most significant is realized. Unless, of course, we let it stymie us into inaction – we are stuck and can’t move forward. So, what now?
American exceptionalism today – the same as or similar to American “messianism” of the mid-nineteenth century… right before the Civil War? Yes, I think – and what it does, negatively, to the religion, the common perception of it all, and the spiritual welfare of Americans.
Professor Mark Noll in his book, “The Civil War as a Theological Crisis,” writes about the debates going on between pro- and anti-slavery theologians and biblical scholars leading up to the Civil War. The following quote comes from his analysis of Moses Stuart, considered one of America’s most competent biblical scholars of the time, a Reformed theologian, and how Stuart allowed his American citizenship (American messianism/exceptionalism) to overwhelm his scholarship and common application of scripture.
According to Noll, Stuart was compromised and thus blantantly inconsistent – his advocacy for slavery within his sense of “America” clouded his exegesis to the point of believing in the scriptural allowance of it. Are we are doing the same, today, in allowing notions of “America” to infringe upon and cloud what we are supposed to be and do as citizens of a different kingdom? We (many of us who claim Christ) make an idol of this nation-state and this notion of American exceptionalism. (This need not infringe upon the imagination of the American Ideal grasped by so many around the world and often forgotten by us, the supposed holders of it.)
From Noll, dealing with the specific debate over returning escaped slaves to their owners:
“Stuart, however, did not seem to feel that escaped slaves – considered as either Christians or potential Christians – had a higher claim on fellow believers than did Southern slaveholders considered as fellow American citizens. Rather, by overriding his commitment to standard Reformed theology, Stuart’s strong sense of American national messianism constrained his interpretation of Scripture. Even for this rightly honored defender of strict biblical exegesis, race exerted a powerful sway. White fellow Americans counted far more than black fellow Christians. Analogical Israel meant more than Spiritual Israel. A dubious theological warrant (treating America as the chosen people) exerted more force than a strong theological warrant (including blacks in the fellowship of the Church.” (Noll, p. 61)
“I am almost a hundred years old; waiting for the end and thinking about the beginning.
“There are things I need to tell you, but would you listen if I told you how quickly time passes?
“I know that you are unable to imagine this.
“Nevertheless, I can tell you that you will awake someday to find that your life has rushed by at a speed once impossible and cruel. The most intense moments will seemed to have occurred only yesterday and nothing will have erased the pain and pleasure, the impossible intensity of love and its dog-leaping happiness, the deep blackness of passions unrequited, or unexpressed, or unresolved.
“And still the brain continues to yearn, continues to burn, foolishly with desire. My old man’s brain is mocked by a body that still longs to stretch in the sun and form a beautiful shape in someone else’s gaze, to lie under a blue sky and dream of helpless, selfless love, to behold itself, illuminated, in the golden light of another’s eyes.
“Time erodes us all.”
[“What I Was,” Meg Rosoff, p.205]
My seminary – for which I have great love, within which I made fast friends and found colleagues, from which I was formed in worship in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd (what incredible symbolism in that name, alone) and in scholarship found in classroom and conversation – this seminary of long tradition (honored by many, ridiculed by others) is in a very difficult place, a different kind of trouble in these days.
I don’t know the details. I don’t, so I can’t bring myself to throw down the club of blame and accusation on either side. I have to wait. I know the Dean as a fellow seminarian. I know some of the faculty as teachers and mentors. I know them all, and respect them all. We not only studied together, but we lived together in the tight confines of the Close.
This is, I’m afraid, what tends to happen within institutions as they go through profound change. Frankly, this is what happens within communities and nations, too. We see it in our own politics, in the events in the Middle East, and in other graduate institutions, too. These types of things happen as a result of our very human nature – sources of great good and great evil, incredible creativity and deadening banality. This is way we need, frankly, the One who redeems and restores and saves us from the worst of our human nature, from ourselves – individually and collectively.
What we see happening at the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church we will continue to see with increasing frequency and ferociousness until the turn comes. This is a microcosm of what is stating within the entire Church. How will we respond? The question asked within the title of a book by Francis Schaeffer comes to mind – “How should we then live?” This is the crux, isn’t it? How are we each to live out the commands of Jesus in this very difficult, but practical, situation? How will each of us love God with all of our being and then, and here is where the significance really finds it’s ground, how will we love our neighbors – deans and faculties and pundits all around?
Will GTS and will the entire Church make the decision to do the profoundly difficult thing, the profoundly counter-cultural thing, and be reconciled, be redeemed, be reformed, and be transformed in the glory of the grace and mercy and love and faithfulness shown to us by the One to whom we owe everything? We have a choice, don’t we? Frankly, we have to “man-up”, we have to “woman-up”, we have to “Christ-up” and do the right thing, else we are just another example of hypocrisy – a failed thought-system, a worthless religion. We know what we need to do, and with God’s help we can do it, if we are willing. Are we willing? If so, just watch what God will do! Amazing!