I was following, almost as a tangent last week, the story of the latest convocation of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in their decision to put off a decision on same-gender couple marriages for another two years of study (no big surprise there: large denominations tend to make canonical change at glacier speeds.) What was most surprising, though, was that the church DID approve the ordination of (outwardly) Gay-Lesbian people to the ministry in that church (no notes made for Bisexual, Transgender, or Queer.)
My thoughts went immediately to the ongoing hemming and hawing of the Anglican Communion sic following the 2003 installation of V. Gene Robinson+ as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. That was a point in the ongoing life of the Episcopalians when the canonical Manna hit the fan.
What followed was years and years (and still going on) of schismatic sand-kicking as rogue bishops pulled entire dioceses away from the Canons of the Episcopal Church. Separated the church in the United States from the Archbishop of Canterbury and turned many large chunks of Africa against us.
The Anglican Church of Canada joined in proclaiming the ordination of Lesbi-Gay ministers, and opened arms to the legalization of gay marriage in Canada. And for that stand, they took their place with the American church on the spanking stool. Fights became ugly and personal.
I had that moment of “Instant Discernment” when I heard an NPR interview with one of the opposing Bishops, Bob Duncan in Pittsburgh (since removed himself from the Episcopal Church) who was my chaplain at University in North Carolina. The words he spoke of American Episcopalians being a “broken people” cut so deep into the marrow of my bones that I (literally) stood up from my desk, shouted “Oh the HELL no!” at my speakers, as if the man was sitting in front of me, and, dusting off my neglected religion, my butt was in a pew at my home church the next day. And there I stayed until the cancer and the chemo kept me at home, worshiping from afar.
That moment was a deciding moment for me. Already ordained years earlier, and sort of put to the side while I had to do what I now see as my “growing up time,” I jumped into church, I jumped into graduate school, and continued studying and studying more, as long as my health would allow. I made it (just barely!) through two Doctoral programs: the first in Divinity, specializing in Hymnody (the study of hymns and church music as a non-musician) and in Preaching and Pulpit Communications. That last one was very tough, for as the chemo drugs got stronger and stronger, it took away my skills at public speaking, short term memory, and instead gave me a bad time of losing my place in mid-sentence.
Nobody wants a preacher who cannot speak.
You’d think that would be a depressing moment, as I had to step out of my Third program: an advance psychology program over 2 years in the field of Spiritual Direction. The travel involved in the program kicked me out. However – after a couple of Divinity degrees and a psych degree at University, and experience with nearly every possible religious / spiritual slant, and dealing for years with angry LGBT people who are totally anti-church, I was set to get into the field and run with it.
Who knows – maybe it’s time to re-enroll in the program!
Which brings me around to the Presbyterians, and the sacrifices that lay ahead. And about my old buddy Dietrich Bonheoffer. Please note that what follows has nothing to do with my own thoughts on the ordination of Lesbi-Gay folks (duuuh! I think you could figure that one out!) but about the ‘bigger picture,’ so you can’t read this as my preaching either for OR against the decision.
The Presbyterians and nip and tuck with the Episcopalians for which is the smallest mainstream Protestant denomination in America. Worse: as of 2006 data, the Presbyterians were LOSING ground in membership, while the Episcopalians were just barely inching up. I doubt that is still true, given all the problems within the Episcopal church.
The leadership and the laity of the Presbyterian church had to know about all the problems their Anglican brethren had, and must have realized that to allow the ordination of Lesbi-Gay ministers could trigger a schism within the church. To do so could splinter the small denomination, and (potentially) mean the end of the Presbyterian Church (USA) as we know it today.
Yikes!
If you were a voting delegate on that day, beyond your own conscience on the issue (and that of your congregation and your Presbytery, who you’d be representing), how would you feel making that vote, if the possibility was there that it could destroy your church?
One of the most often cited ideas in Dietrich Bonheoffer’s THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP is his concept of CHEAP and of COSTLY grace.
- “cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance,
- baptism without church discipline.
- Communion without confession.
Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ.”
“costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus, it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. It is costly because it compels a man to submit to the yoke of Christ and follow him; it is grace because Jesus says: “My yoke is easy and my burden is light.“
Late in my career working with business groups an doing goal setting training, and teaching them how to compose (or fix) their corporate mission statements, I introduced the concept of the “Sacred Goal.”
This is a tough sell to hard-shelled business people who don’t want to mix words like “Sacred” into their profit and loss, their corporate growth, and building highly- productive work teams. And the goal itself is the antithesis of growth, profit, and productivity. And it makes them stop and think outside their own sales pitch.
The sacred goal is:
If everything around you fails. If your business model fails, if you lose all your money, if they padlock the doors, if you lose all your employees, even if you get busted and go to jail, then what is it that you want to attain with your company (your group, your team, whatever) that is positive?
Asking folks to face ultimate destruction of their company/work team and find something (anything!) positive is tough. As Bonheoffer says, the walk of grace is not easy.
I thought about Costly Grace when reading the stories about the Presbyterians. It’s very possible that the folks who voted in favor of gay folks’ ordination could be signing a death sentence for the viability of their entire church. And yet…
Where is our grace without discipleship? Where are we without the cross? And where are we if we chose to take the Easy Way Out and not go the full pathway of our covenant? Where would we be if we chose to step around that Yoke, and ignore that Burden just to play it safe?
To the determent of some of our fellow Christians, we are often called to the ministry of God.
Whatever happens in the future (and two years from now when the Presbyterians re-consider permitting the blessing of same-gender marriage) is out of our individual hands. It’s left to the discernment of that denomination. It’s up to the providence of the Maker.
When it comes time to make that Sacred decision of what to do, even if it means the loss of that which is close to us, in that moment, in the silence of our meditations we find the tough grace. We find that what we pay for the costly grace is nothing, compared to the Good we have done for the rest of the world.
Had it not been for that (former) Bishop and his ugly Saturday morning statements, I would not have jumped up from that chair and been in a pew the next day. All those Growing Up Years would have been (spiritually) wasted.
Often when facing oblivion, we find the true peace: the grace we need to move on to the next step.
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Tags: Christians, compassion, discipline, grace
This is a short poem from e.e. cummings that inspires me, even on my days that are not textbook “Amazing.”
Thank You For This Amazing Day
by e.e. cummingsi thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginably You?(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Consider today what it is in your life that, even when the sky is grayed-over with clouds of Bad Times, even when there is more to doubt than there is to believe, and even when there is more to cry for than to laugh for: consider what is within you and around you that leaps with the greenly spirits of trees,
and that which is your infinite yes!
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Not every soldier in the Great Battle wears camo.
I thought it would be appropriate to submit this on Memorial Day weekend… as we take time to remember our own…
Aunt Ida Pieces A Quilt
by Melvin Dixon
They brought me some of his clothes. The hospital gown.
Those too-tight dungarees, his blue choir robe
with the gold sash. How that boy could sing!
His favorite color in a necktie. A Sunday shirt.
What I’m gonna do with all this stuff?
I can remember Junie without this business.
My niece Francine say they quilting all over the country.
So many good boys like her boy, gone.At my age I ain’t studying no needle and thread.
My eyes ain’t so good now and my fingers lock in a fist,
they so eaten up with arthritis. This old back
don’t take kindly to bending over a frame no more.
Francine say ain’t I a mess carrying on like this.
I could make two quilts the time I spend running my mouth.Just cut his name out the cloths, stitch something nice
about him. Something to bring him back. You can do it,
Francine say. Best sewing our family ever had.
Quilting ain’t that easy, I say. Never was easy.
Y’all got to help me remember him good.Most of my quilts was made down South. My Mama
and my Mama’s Mama taught me. Popped me on the tail
if I missed a stitch or threw the pattern out of line.
I did “Bright Star” and “Lonesome Square” and “Rally Round,”
what many folks don’t bother with nowadays. Then Elmo and me
married and came North where the cold in Connecticut
cuts you like a knife. We was warm, though.
We had sackcloth and calico and cotton. 100% pure.
What they got now but polyester-rayon. Factory made.Let me tell you something. In all my quilts there’s a secret
nobody knows. Every last one of them got my name Ida
stitched on the backside in red thread.That’s where Junie got his flair. Don’t let anybody fool you.
When he got the Youth Choir standing up and singing
the whole church would rock. He’d throw up his hands
from them wide blue sleeves and the church would hush
right down to the funeral parlor fans whisking the air.
He’d toss his head back and holler and we’d all cry holy.And never mind his too-tight dungarees.
I caught him switching down the street one Saturday night,
and I seen him more than once. I said, Junie,
You ain’t got to let the whole world know your business.
Who cared where he went when he wanted to have fun.
He’d be singing his heart out come Sunday morning.When Francine say she gonna hang this quilt in the church
I like to fall out. A quilt ain’t no show piece,
it’s to keep you warm. Francine say it can do both.
Now I ain’t so old fashioned I can’t change,
but I made Francine come over and bring her daughter
Belinda. We cut and tacked his name, JUNIE.
Just plain and simple. “JUNIE, our boy.”
Cut the J in blue, the U in gold. N in dungarees
just as tight as you please. The I from the hospital gown
and the white shirt he wore First Sunday. Belinda
put the necktie E in the cross stitch I showed her.Wouldn’t you know we got to talking about Junie.
We could smell him in the cloth.
Underarm. Afro-Sheen pomade. Gravy stains.
I forgot all about my arthritis.
When Francine left me to finish up, I swear
I heard Junie giggling right along with me
as I stitched Ida on the backside in red thread.Francine say she gonna send this quilt to Washington
like folks doing from all across the country,
so many good people gone. Babies, mothers, fathers,
and boys like our Junie. Francine say
they gonna piece this quilt to another one,
another name and another patch
all in a larger quilt getting larger and larger.Maybe we all like that, patches waiting to be pieced.
Well, I don’t know about Washington.
We need Junie here with us. And Maxine,
she cousin May’s husband’s sister’s people,
she having a baby and here comes winter already.
The cold cutting like knives. Now where did I put that needle?
American poet Melvin Dixon died in 1992 from AIDS-related illness. Aut Ida Pieces A Quilt is from his final volume of poetry, Love’s Instruments, published posthumously in 1995.
Keep the faith!
- Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt – 1996
Today, think on this simple Call to Prayer as a meditation on what it is in our lives that is good, that blesses us, that which blesses others through us.
Even on the days that you may think that your life is on the Down side of the roller coaster, what is there that is good – even Great – that you cannot see?
I will praise You with all my heart,
I will sing of the wonders You have done!- Alleluia!
In order to be able to see that which within us is a foundation of greatness, and to share that with those beyond the reach of the tips of our fingers, we first must realize that on whatever path we walk, we never travel alone.
In someone else’s life, totally unknown to you, there may exist salvation in your simple nod,
and your pleasant “Hello.”
Keep the faith!
Christ Jesus,
You wish for each one of us your peaceful light.
To the point that living in communion with one another
means advancing
together
on the same road
opened by the Holy Spirit.
- Amen
Tags: Call to Prayer, compassion, contemplative prayer, Inspiration, Meditation, prayer, salvation
I spent my usual piano practice time today instead out piddling and hoeing in the Prayer Garden beside our house. The garden was commissioned as a private chapel in 2009 following the passing of our next door neighbor and very dear friend, Jean. She loved the outside, and kept bird feeders and baths, and built a screened porch onto the back of her house to sit out in the mornings and evenings and watch life. Jean passed quickly one night in her sleep and didn’t get to see, from this side of the veil, her beautiful garden porch completed.
I kept up the bird feeders as best as I could until illness took away my ability to walk, and rehabilitation gave me many months of push-back before I could walk without fear on uneven ground. This week, hiking staff in hand, I walked out and refilled her feeders, washed out the bird baths, and set about thinking what do to next, what to do…
Jean was in the military during the Korean conflict: a surgical nurse. She was such a woman of great power that I never would have wanted to cross her in those days. And she was also such a woman of great love and compassion that I would have only asked for her to be at my side when battlefield days got rough. Unlike some regular “next door neighbor” she had such an impact on my life that I decided to keep the beauty that she loved so much to look out on, to make it more beautiful in her memory, and to bring forth the Maker’s blessings on the ground as a place of quiet worship, prayer, and meditation.
A long winter of illness came over me after her death, and the Prayer Garden grew over, got weedy, her statue of St. Francis started to list on one side from sinking into soft ground.
But winters always end, and spring is never too far behind. Even the great “100 Year Winter” of Narnia turned to springtime.
Today as I was sweeping away dead plant debris and washing out the fountains and straightening up St. Francis, I thought about that end of winter, the coming of spring, and how our healing is just like the garden: we sweep up, we wash away the mess, and we enjoy the sunshine. I thought for once that it was time to plant new things in the ground, and not just the temporary beauty of pots. I wanted to make it more beautiful, to lift the spirits of those who see it, or stop by for a little prayer, or who come and sit a while and just BE.
Of all the songs to pop into my head (unfortunately nothing from GLEE this time!), I wandered back to something stiff and formal and churchy, unlike the breezy casual green and brown of my Chapel. It was the Ralph Vaughan Williams version of The Old Hundredth. The original hymn tune goes back to the 16th Century and is one of those hymns that is “a Bible in a Song.” If you know this one, and understand it, then you’ve got Christian faith down pretty solid.
In my younger Baptist days, this was what we listed as a “call to worship” – when this song comes up, it’s time to draw your hearts and minds toward the Heavenly kingdom. It’s time for Good Things to happen all around you. My later Episcopalian years stiffened it up some as a processional, and added a deep bow on the last line, at the mention of the Trinity.
That bowing stuff is not just rubrics to me: it’s a means of reflecting back on those early days… pulling my heart, my mind, my soul upward to the betterment of the Kingdom. Even if on this particular day, that “betterment” can only be accomplished by my showing up, listening, and taking my place in the pews.
This version was recorded at the United States Military Academy in West Point, NY. I chose it because near the end of the piece the camera pans over a sign that shows the Academy’s mission statement which is so very simple, and yet as sharp as swords:
To provide the Nation
With Leaders of Character
Who Serve
The Common Defense
I think of my friend Jean, the hard-fought old Marine nurse and gentlest soul I ever knew. I think of my young friend who is leaving for West Point this summer to begin her adventure in what it means to become that Leader of Character. I sit in the garden watching the Cardinals in the feeders, and I’m swept up in those words, Praise Father, Praise Son, Praise Holy Ghost. And from my chair I take a long, deep bow. This here, today, right now, is what I can do to the betterment of that Heavenly kingdom. Some of us go and protect the nation. Some of us stay back and refill the feeders and sweep away the weeds.
Keep the faith!
- Amen
Old Hundredth Words by Thomas Ken, 1695 Hymn Tune, Old Hundredth, from the Geneva Psalter, 1551 Arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams
Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise Him all creatures here below; Praise Him above ye Heavenly host; Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Tags: Call to Prayer, healing, Video
