I-YOUniverse

Gordon Atkinson’s comment at CCblogs on my piece Requiem for Cannibals prompts me to write about homophobia, the church, and me.

A prayer for healing

A couple decades ago the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond offered a service for healing at which unidentified people who were gay and HIV+ or living with AIDS assisted. If you wished, you could receive anointing and prayer for healing. I was anointed and prayed to be healed of my homophobia, which flared up in my training to be a pastoral counselor.

 About then, a Southern Baptist Convention president announced in San Francisco that AIDS was God’s judgment on homosexuals. Of course, most people don’t know that in Baptist polity, rightly construed, he was speaking for himself alone.

I felt I must do something. So I began volunteering with the local AIDS ministry. In those days we still didn’t know much about how the disease was spread; antiviral cocktails hadn’t been discovered yet.

(Although this is about 20 years ago, I am not disclosing identifying details about clients or volunteers.)

Panic up close and personal

The training I received in a neighborhood Episcopal parish house was glorious. I met vibrant Christians who were really making a difference. Sunlight literally bathed the room.

But nothing prepared me for my first visit. On the living room wall was the large family portrait like they take for church directories: a vigorous healthy young minister in all his pastoral dignity, his beaming wife, and two-year-old daughter. When I met him, however, he lay on the bed, weighing less than 100 pounds. Half conscious, he rolled about, crying out, “Lord, have mercy! Have mercy!”

I used up my latex gloves changing his diapers. When I wrongly fed him a bit of cheese, he choked. I had to reach my unprotected hand into his mouth to remove the cheese. Of course, now we know that, although dumb, that action is not as life-threatening as it felt.

I drove home, and succumbed to a panic attack.

The prodigal Sonny

I decided, given my own physical challenges, to volunteer in an AIDS hospice rather than in private homes. My client now was a 6′4″ skinny 20-something man with a sunny smile, so let’s call him Sonny. I met him once a week for a couple years.

When His Baptist family of birth ejected him because of his addictions and attendant problems, Sonny learned to survive on the street. His vocabulary, however, was better than mine. I quickly learned to trust Sonny to use all his survival skills at all times. He knew how to direct my guilt symphony with the expertise of a Leonard Bernstein.

I had to stop seeing Sonny for my favorite pastime, spine surgery. But, when he was baptized by a Baptist pastor and received into the church, he called me to tell me. Shortly before his death, he enjoyed a Thanksgiving feast at home. His father gave him a key to the family home.  

I love Sonny. I miss him to this day.

For simplicity’s sake I’ll use “gay” as shorthand for “male homosexual, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered” persons.

 Entering into the church’s closet

While the church is wrangling about homosexuality, about one in ten of its members wrestles with core identity concerns about being gay. A much larger percentage love gay family members, co-workers or friends. Gay teens experience a much higher rate of depression, addiction, and suicide than other teens. Unlike minorities whose difference is visible, gay youth often feel utterly alone; they know no one like them. Church is the last place they dare go for help. Many media images of gays are unhealthy or destructive.

Several years after leaving a church, I got a phone call from a member. (Again, identifying details changed.) ”Can I come see you?” she said. The issue was her son’s being gay. After her own conversion, she lived totally for Jesus. She believed the Bible condemns homosexuals. But her son hurt so deeply. He rejected his homosexual nature, but could not change; he felt damned.

His mother called to ask me to share my understanding. She took it and studied the Bible intensively on her own. I passed on copies of Fr. John McNeill’s Taking a Chance on God and Walter Wink’s Homosexuality and the Christian Faith.

Frankly, I was dumbfounded. Years earlier, she was closed. Now, not having seen her for a long time, I found her heart tender and open to her son’s suffering. The seed God’s Spirit had hidden in the soil of her heart, after long dormancy, had germinated.

After walking away from—where to turn to

A third instance, more recent. Homosexuality was the headline everywhere. When my Sunday School class asked me to teach what the Bible says about homosexuals, I did. The pastor told me to stick to the safe parts of the Bible; instead, I walked away. I should have done it sooner, more simply. People have a right to their beliefs; I, however, will never again be involved in a church that does not expressly welcome gay people.

You’ll find whispers of openness (often more powerful than shouts) on my blog. From day one, I described e-thou encounter (precursor to I-YOUniverse) as a welcoming affirming space. Those words describe Baptist churches who welcome gay members (go here: http://www.wabaptists.org/.) 

On the side bar is a link to What We Wish We’d Known, a fabulous resource nicknamed The Blue Book compiled by caring friends, here: http://www.pcmk.org/Blue_Book_V5.pdf.

Other resources can be found at the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, here: http://www.bpfna.org/.

I never thought my post about enduring schism and living to tell the tale might covertly endorse the fear and hatred of people who are lesbian, gay, transgendered or bisexual.

Fighting is not the best way. Use your good energies to make a difference. If you can’t agree, walk away. Shake the dust off your feet. Put the church assets in God’s hands, and walk away.

What Paul did

One biblical model is how Paul dealt with Hebrew-Greek racism:

When [the legalist faction] opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue.

Acts 18:6-7 (NRSV)

In taking up the Collection for the poor of Jerusalem, he continued throughout his life to reach out to those who excluded themselves (Rom. 15.26-27).

Where I am now and here

Concerning this phobia (like all the others), still I have miles to go. But it’s way past time for followers of Christ like me to get up off our assertions and

reach out to,
learn about,
get acquainted with,
invite home for dinner,
celebrate the weddings and anniversaries of,
share the heartbreak of,
be politically active on behalf of

gay people, black people, Hispanic people, undocumented immigrant people, Jewish people, Muslim people—

 WHOSOEVER’s a pretty big group of people—

It’s way past time for followers of Jesus to be and to do everything, anything you do when you’re for real.

 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane.”

Matt 26:36 (NRSV)

Some words are so redolent, so full of beauty and meaning, that your eye can’t slide past them without pausing.

Bethlehem, “house of bread,” is such a word—Bethphage and Bethany, two others, the first meaning “house of figs”; the second, “house of the poor.”

Bethany, among the poor, is where Jesus stayed the night before his final confrontation with religious authorities. The next day in powerful action parables he cursed the fig tree and cleansed the Temple. (Mark 11.1-14)

 Alone

Gethsemane is another word, which needs nothing but itself. It’s found in today’s gospel reading of the Daily Lectionary, BCP. Here, in an ancient olive grove named for the olive presses that might have stood there in the garden, Jesus spent the night before his arrest, praying.

Though he longed not to be, he was alone. (NRSV brackets the angel of Luke 22.43.) From the larger group of 11 men and others perhaps, he invited Peter, James and John to go a little farther with him.

Some people have a vocation to go deeper with God in prayer, if they will.

Despite his repeated requests and warnings that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” the disciples fell into a sleep heavy with grief and confusion. They did not understand, yet they surely must have sensed their Master’s mood was grim, even before he told them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death.”

 Moment of decision

The real moment of decision did not come during the trials before the high priest or Pilate or Herod. It didn’t come when Pilate asked the crowd, “Which man shall I release to you?”

No, it came now in this quiet garden, here on the side of the Mount of Olives.

 Precedents

Maybe he recalled the prophecy of Zechariah, how in the end time

the LORD will go forth and fight against those nations as when he fights on a day of battle. On that day his feet shall stand on the Mount of Olives.

Zech 14:3-4 (NRSV)

Or perhaps he remembered how David fled Jerusalem,  ascending the mount, bare-foot, his head covered, weeping. (2 Sam 15.30)

Whom did he identify with more—the triumphant Son of Man, or the failed aging king?

 Before they are useful

 Jesus knew what awaited the fruit of these trees. The first to be produced was light, fruity virgin olive oil. Further pressings produced lower grade oil used for lamps. Prized as a cosmetic, as an emollient and medicine; blended with spices, it provided the basis for the holy oil to light the Temple and  to anoint prophets, priests, and kings.

But Jesus knew what stood between the oil of such glorious usefulness, and the fruit developing on the tree. Raw olives are too bitter to eat. Immature green olives, struck or picked from the tree, are brined or soaked in water or oil.

Those allowed to mature are crushed by a huge millstone. The resulting mash is pressed through screens, vegetable matter and water are then removed.

In this verse John acknowledges in a similar image that Jesus knew self must die on the cross:

Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

John 12:24 (NRSV)

 A Post-Easter realization?

The gospels agree that he repeatedly predicted

The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.

Mark 9:31 (NRSV)

Is this actually a post-Easter realization? Did he never wonder (as most of us would), there alone in the darkness: “What if I am wrong? What if there is nothing more?”

 Blowin’ in the Wind

Perhaps a light wind stirred. It was months before the olive harvest. Did the breeze unveil cream-colored blossoms now and then among the thick gray-green folliage? Did their fragrance scent the night air?

What passed through his mind?

We are told he prayed, ”Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want.”

The cup of wrath. Staggering. Drunkenness. Vomit. Judgment. Not at all like the cup of salvation he had so recently shared with his closest friends.

He groaned—groans too deep for words.

 Intimations of Life

Perhaps he gripped the twisted trunk of a stump before which he knelt. Perhaps from the old ax blows he saw new foliage sprouting. Perhaps he remembered what Job said:

There is hope for a tree,
     if it is cut down, that it will sprout again,
     and that its shoots will not cease. 

Job 14.7 (NRSV)

Perhaps.

 Unveiling Jesus’ psyche

How did this account of Gethsemane come to be told? Jesus’ friends lay all asleep. He was alone, but for the wood, the leaves, the blossoms.

Did the Risen Christ tell the story, fill in the gaps the disciples didn’t know or couldn’t remember?

Here’s what we know: he came from that place, put on trial the greatest legal system known to humanity, and won eternal life for us and all our kind.

The best words about Gethsemane

The best account, apart from the glimpses preserved in the gospels, is in the words of Sidney Lanier, writing in 1880 (according to Oremus):

Into the woods my Master went,
clean forspent, forspent,
into the woods my Master came,
forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to him.
the little grey leaves were kind to him,
the thorn tree had a mind to him,
when into the woods he came.

Out of the woods my Master came
and he was well content;
out of the woods my Master came,
content with death and shame.
When death and shame would woo him last,
from under the trees they drew him last,
’twas on a tree they slew him last
when out of the woods he came.

I’m currently reading 12 books—actually, 11. One “book” on my list is the Sacred Text Archive online, which contains hundreds of scripture-type books. But Internet reading ain’t the same, is it?

You see, I’ve got all this time on my hands. Due to chronic pain, I have to rest my joints and muscles a lot; my brain keeps going 100 mph, however.

Maybe I should memorize the DSM IV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 4^th ed. This 1000+ page tome contains all the quirks, defense mechanisms, and mental disorders a psychiatrist can dream up.

Believe me, you’re in there. (Me, too.) And your insurance company has your number, the code which stands for the emotional or mental problem you want them to pay for the treatment of. It goes in a box on a form in a computer file. And it’s public knowledge. Ain’t no such thing as privacy where your insurance company’s money is concerned.

I like the classics: Shakespeare. I have all the plays on CDs, so I listen to one or two a week. I can’t keep up with the President, who read three Shakespeares.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKiWWi8rdJQ

Oh, I failed to mention how much I enjoy teaching DVDs: Shakespeare survey, history of Africa, Greek myths, Greek tragedy, surveys of Russian literature and existentialism.

Bitten by the used book bug, I find essential used books on Amazon and eBay; there’s always some book I, y’know, got to have. I’m careful, though.

For instance, C.F. Andrews, my current rage, referred to The Hidden Life of the Soul by Jean Nicolas Grou, a French Catholic writing at the time of the French Revolution. I found it on Amazon for $1777.00.

At that moment I got very nervous about the buy-it-with-one-click button.

Alibris had The Spiritual Life by Grou for $3.95, which’ll have to do for now.

Yesterday I became aware how I’m racing internally from one spiritual aid to another, trying to get better being still, better being for others, etc. It’s like all this popcorn’s exploding in my brain, and I’m compulsively consuming.

As a Nursing Home chaplain, I got a beautiful leather gilt-edged 1928 Book of Common Prayer to read with residents. I decided to start reading from that the Gospel and Epistle each week. Today the gospel was Luke 15, the waiting Father.

I’m into lectio divina. I have four or five essays on how to do that, and a small book somewhere on my shelves. I haven’t seen it in about five years.

Anyway I was lectio-ing away at the exquisite King James Version (naturally, because I’m in my Elizabethan English phase—y’know, the beauty of the language!) And these words hit home:

“And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat,” Luke 15:16 (KJV)

Dead bang! The Spirit uses scripture like a shrink uses the DSM IV.

Here I am, cramming anything and everything into my intellectual spiritual maw, like a whale engulfing krill by the millions.

What’s up?

Last week I jet read through Andrews’ Christ in the Silence; now I’m reading him one or two paragraphs aloud. Take this morning:

There was evidently a suppurating disease at the heart of Western civilization, draining its life-blood, which only the infusion of a life-giving spirit could staunch and heal.

C. F. Andrews, Christ in the Silence (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933), p. 31.

Suppurating – causing to generate pus. I guess he’d seen many a suppurating wound on bodies in Calcutta. In the West he saw suppurating souls.

The earthquake, tornado, and lightning strikes passed, and finally, finally I got still. I realized, both Sandy and I have some run ins with medical types in the next few weeks. These are supposed to be fairly routine. But I’ve had more than once, a medical appointment rip up my life, shred my planner, implode my future. Even so called routine ones give me the heevie jeebies.

“You’re skittish about these appointments,” the Spirit said. No scolding. “Don’t be afraid.”

Lectio divina. That means reading only six books at once, huh?

Well, I’ll stick to 10, at least until we get the all clear from the docs.

A Tale of Patmos

                “Old John’s nurse at Patmos called,” his wife Minnie said.

                “What about?” Nick asked.

                “They found him standing in Route 29 on the double yellow line, staring at the sun again.”

                “I keep telling that doctor his meds ain’t right,” Nick said. “Where’re them oatmeal raisin cookies y’made?”

                “Wrapped in foil, there on the end table by the door. Been a snake, they’d a bit ya-Elmo!”

                Daddy named him Elmo out of spite. Daddy hated Elmo Knickerbocker III, the state senator two generations removed, the family’s only claim to fame. “Near-sighted bilious old goat” is how Daddy described him under his breath. Nana, Elmo’s maternal grandmother, insisted he had old Knickerbocker’s distinguished dome-like forehead and elegant grey eyes.

                “Wouldn’t you rather take ‘em cookies yourself? He likes you,” Nick whimpered.

                “Oh, hush. It’s you he always asks about: “How’s Nick?”–y’d think there was no one else in this wide world.”

                So Nick backed the SUV out of the driveway. Every trip to Patmos cost $16.72 gas money they didn’t have. Before he got to the corner, he’d wrestled open the foil and begun munching on a cookie.

                Minnie wasn’t a looker. None too bright, neither (he told himself), though she could whiz Little Joe through his trig like it was soccer practice. However, he had to admit, nobody came that close to matching Minnie’s cookies. For rich buttery taste and soft crumbly texture, wasn’t a woman in the state could equal her oatmeal raisins.

                Alice (down the block, worked at Wal-Mart 32 hours a week, wore a blonde wig, said it made her look like Madonna) she made a passable snicker doodle. But Minnie never messed with the snicker doodle. She stuck to the tried and true: oatmeal raisin, or white chocolate chip, or caramel chocolate chip, or iced double fudge brownies.

                If the guys at work missed a batch of Minnie’s iced double fudges in a week, they thought she was goin’ through another one of her female spells. More than once, after work, a man stopped by with a sympathy card and a bunch of carnations in his fist.

                Patmos “closest thing to Glory this side of the Pecos” was Nick’s last choice of Nursing Homes for old John. It was decrepit, cramped; had so many coats of paint, the walls were an extra inch thick. But Nick didn’t catch on in time, that old John was going to choose whichever Home Nick hated most.

                His first day at Patmos, ignoring Nick and Minnie’s protests, the administrator moved him into Room 16, a frilly pink room overlooking the back parking lot and the garbage, dumped behind a bright green wall. Large clay pots full of blooming pansies prettied up the view. And in the center a small fountain featured the angel Gabriel blowing his trumpet, out of which a stream of water flowed on Family Days. The rest of the time, they shut it off to save money.

                It always brought to Nick’s mind a chubby angeling pissing in a pond.

                Nick tried to explain to old John the difference between 16 and 666. Of course, no other suitable room was available. (Translation: you’ll pay more for a room with a better view.) Nick thought of asking for a demon discount. But the administrator was not religious, except when introduced to prospective residents; old John had already signed.

                What they did, after repeated exorcisms failed to scare Satan away, is this: Nick found a decorative spray bottle at the dollar store, Minnie painted a cross with gold sequins on it, they filled it with water, and the volunteer chaplain blessed it. They sprayed the door and windows of the Room, and when Satan or his minions appeared, old John was to give ‘em a direct hit. To Nick’s and the chaplain’s disbelief, it worked.

                That afternoon, by the time Nick nosed his truck into the narrow parking place at the Home, there’re only three oatmeal raisins left. Pity to take the old man only three. So Nick left them in the truck to eat on the trek home. Next trip he’d make it up to old John.

                Anyway, Minnie never asked John how he liked the cookies, because he never remembered them, and he got upset.

                “Hey, Snickerdoodle,” old John said, when Nick walked into his room, “you bring me some o’ Minnie’s white chocolate chips?”

                “The name’s Knickerbocker, Nick Knickerbocker,” Nick said, as always. “You can call me Nick. No cookies this afternoon. Things get so jammed up in the summer, she just don’t have time.”

                “Ate ‘em all on the way, eh?”

                “No, “Nick said in perfect honesty. He couldn’t figure a tactful way to mention the old man standing in the middle of the highway.

                “Too bad,” old John sighed. “Before the End comes, I crave one more o’ her oatmeal raisins, but now there’s no time.”

                “No time?” protested Nick. “I’ll get her to bake you some next week for sure.”

                “Too late,” the old man shook his head. A single wisp of white hair floated at the top of his forehead, oscillating gently back and forth.

                “Aren’t sick, are you?”

                “Nope, I’m in tip top condition.”

                “Well, what do you mean, no time?” The second he said it, Nick wanted to suck the syllables out of the air right back between his lips.

                The old man gathered Nick by the shoulders into a conspiratorial clinch. “Snickerdoodle,” he whispered loudly, “I’ve had me a visitor!”

                “Has that gorgeous 79-year-old doll from Room 19 been checking you out?”

                “No, I mean a heavenly visitor! I saw the Lord!”

                Nick tried to be patient. “I’m going to talk to Dr. Valentine about your meds. I think they’re out of whack.”

                “You don’t believe me, do you, Snickerdoodle?”

                Nick took a deep breath. “No, old John, I don’t. I don’t believe in angels, or demons, or 666, or that obsolete old Bible you got on your laptop. I don’t believe a thee or thou of it, not one.”

                “Somebody sure addled your eggs today.”

                Words tumbling out of his mouth, Nick backed out the door. “Y’know, come to think of it, I forgot, I do have some oatmeal raisins in the truck for you. Minnie baked ‘em up this morning special. Don’t know why they slipped my mind.”

                He fled from the room.

                Old John’s reputation for a Seer spanned the whole state. Like others read the morning newspaper, he delved into End Times; every now and then he had a vision. Angels streaked across the heavens. Locusts plagued. A huge neon 666 appeared in the heavens.

                When he got back to Room 16, he found old John at his laptop, reading the book of Revelation, King James Version, red letter edition.

                “Y’see! Y’see!” old John said. Out loud he read, “I John, who also am your brother, and companion in tribulation, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day!”

                “Oh, you crazy old coot!” Nick shouted. “You’re living in a Nursing Home some marketing guru called “Patmos closest thing to Glory this side of the Pecos.” You ain’t seen no angels, no Jesus!”

                 ”I saw the Lord, high and lifted up. His head and his hairs were like wool, white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength!”

                Nick reached down to pull the foil wrapping off the oatmeal raisins. Old John snatched the spray bottle of holy water off his dresser, shouted “Get thee behind me, Satan!” and spritzed him right in the kisser.

My childhood church had a holy heirarchy (lowest to highest):

Sinners

• lowest were those who committed the Unpardonable Sin (somewhat vague in nature). I got the notion in my young head that these guys were queers (whatever they were).
• The Pope, the Anti-Christ (hard to tell which was which)
• Madeleine Murray O’Hare, who was perpetually petitioning the FCC about something
• godless materialistic communists
• drunkards
• Catholics
• then other sinners
• In the summer Christian ladies who wore short shorts always got a dishonorable mention. Connected to them in some spooky way were loose girls who got themselves in Trouble. This was never specified.

Among church goers

• lowest were 6th grade boys. The Nominating Committee could never find or keep a teacher for them.
• Negroes and Mexicans who knew their place, weren’t uppity
• Methodists, who were low on the list because they preached the social gospel. You could go there all your life and never learn the Plan of Salvation and how to be saved.
• seminary professors. These took discernment; they could be infidel intellectuals who disbelieved the Virgin Birth, and read from the Revised Standard Version.
• backsliders
• About here you’d find the folk who white-knuckled the pew in front of them to keep from walking the aisle, even after you’d sung the invitation hymn twice through. You discovered who these people were by peeking when the preacher signaled the choir director to go into the second invitation hymn, “Almost Persuaded.”
• lukewarm believers

The next group included most of the saints

•  godly grandmothers and saintly mothers (pretty much always kneeling in prayer)
• then your soul winners
• next, your prayer warriors
• then you had deacons. But they were kinda hard to classify because every so often them and the preacher got into a knock down drag out with each other. Of course, the preacher always won or got run out of town.

Climbing the ranks of righteousness, you’d find

• boys who’d surrendered to the ministry. Preachers loved to recall their struggle, especially if it was long and bloody. Here’s where weeping mothers kneeling in prayer, and in the most exciting cases alcohol and backsliding, often came in.
• beloved former pastors who did everything right, and refused to take salary increases. These were the deacons’ favorite.
• current pastors. Again, this category was confusing, because in theory preachers were men o’ God, but in practice they caused right many first class dust ups, the best of which required kids to be sent from the room.

The nosebleed section of sanctity included

• missionaries
• medical missionaries. The great thing about these guys is that they were only around once or twice a year. If possble you had one to display during the Lottie Moon Offering season (otherwise known as Christmas shopping days).
• Martyrs
• Billy Graham

This system comes in mighty handy for those who want to avoid their sins. You always have a scapegoat: gay or drunk or Catholic or ladies who wear short shorts, and almost always a goal that’s out of reach: medical missionary or the next Billy Graham. So at both ends you’re off the hook.

The problem is, it doesn’t match up with what the Bible says, that we’re all sinners, none is righteous, no not one.

And, while it helps us avoid our sin, it also causes us to avoid our Savior. In his sight there is no heirarchy. Only people he loves and righteousness he freely gives.

My family of origin was DYSfunctional. Like most of my blood relatives, Mom was an alcoholic. Dad chose to stay away from home a lot of the time. Having learned a little Freud, I blamed my mother for some of my problems. Though she was a dry drunk by my growing up years, she was difficult to live with.  I kept my distance.

A healing dream-vision

A few months after my mother died, I had a dream or vision, I don’t know which. I saw her as the woman clothed with the sun with a crown of 12 stars on her head (Revelation 12). She held me a baby in her arms and was singing “Mighty Lak a Rose.”

I actually remember a photo of me as a baby on the piano bench and that sheet music on the piano.

This vision healed the breach between my mother and me. I believe whatever was cruel or unpredictable in her is now gone, and she is the woman God created her to be. I feel very close to her.

Uncovering unwelcome truth

During my training in pastoral counseling I discovered some big sins of Dad’s. In the last ten years of his life, I lived across country. We talked on the phone now and then. When he was no longer able to live alone, my oldest sister and I worked together to get him into a nursing home of his choice.

She became his legal guardian. In court I stood beside his wheelchair, my hand on his shoulder, except for the moment when the judge asked him if he understood and agreed.

As we left the federal building in El Paso, the lawyer said, “Your father’s legally dead.”

Accepting and forgiving is a process

Dad’s mother was Mexican. He grew up in El Paso, speaking Spanish at home and hiding from the outside world his Mexican heritage. To this day the Hamilton roots are more prominent than the Mercado ones. I know a little of the Mexican story based on my Aunt Margaret’s remembrances.

Dad did some wonderful things. He was a Major in the Army, serving in World War II. He founded five Spanish-speaking missions in Juarez, Mexico, and one in El Paso. He was a lay preacher, and for awhile ministered among migrant workers. He was devoted to his grandchildren, rearing two.

I realize it’s not up to me to forgive Dad. It’s between him, those he wronged, and God. I’m certain he spent the last years of his life trying to atone for his sins.

Yet … I’m still in the process of accepting. On my graduating from Seminary Dad gave me an 1862 Greek New Testament, edited by Constantin von Tischendorf. On the cover leaf are the signatures of my great grandfather B. B. Hamilton, a Baptist minister, another Hamilton preacher, my father, and me. I have put this book away for now; though precious, it has very complicated meanings for me.

I am a Father, too

I’m a sinner, too. My sins aren’t like Dad’s. But nevertheless I stand in need of God’s grace.

I hope and pray my son, who will discover no surprises about me, has a Dad whom he can look up to, though not perfect. But one who loved him and loved his Mom more than life itself.

When I get to glory, I look forward to meeting the man God created my father to be.

Healing, blessing memories of Dad

For now, I have two memories:

One. As a ten year old I accompanied Dad to the San Juan Mission, where he preached in Spanish and English. One communion Sunday, I felt unworthy to partake. Dad noticed, stopped the service, and directed the servers to serve me.

Two. Dad and several fathers took a group of us boys camping in the desert. Early in the morning Buzzy Parks the PK and several of us set off on a trek by ourselves and got lost. I recall clearly seeing Dad coming toward us late in the day, red-faced, having searched for us in the scorching heat for long hours. That evening, I heard him on the phone with other parents defending me from being blamed for the misadventure.

So, my image of God is not of the waiting Father, but of the searching Father, who treated me in a no-fault way. In that as in many things he’s an example.

I love you, Dad.

I feel like a sap, writing about heaven. Hard-headed realists do without it. People with the purest motives do without it.

Not me. I need heaven.

What the mind cannot conceive

I grant you that words about heaven are language that can’t be put into words, the chick breaking its shell.

So I’m not into streets of gold and all that jazz. It’s metaphor.

The same goes for hell. Literal fire and brimstone etc. etc. belong to another age or another mindset. I’m not attacking or belittling it, just admitting it’s not my point of view.

Heaven’s where God is

The psalmist wrote:

You guide me with your counsel,
     and afterward you will receive me with honor.

Whom have I in heaven but you?
     And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you.

My flesh and my heart may fail,
     but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

Psalms 73:24-26 (NRSV)

 I’m not exactly where he or she is, because on earth I love my wife and my son, and others, too. On a lighter note, books and chocolate make my list. (Not necessarily in that order.)

For here and now a taste

It’s the other lines of the psalm that get me. You guide me here and now….God is the strength of my heart. God is present in the moment, not some far-off future or distant past.

Yet, my heart longs for a deeper, truer union with God. It’s like what I have now is just a taste. But what I have now is enough to persuade me that God’s promises for the future are true.

Sandy made this scrumptious blueberry cheesecake for my birthday. She came into the living room with a spoonful of blueberry topping. “There’s too much, do you want a taste?”

Some questions don’t need asking!

Youth without acne

What prompted me to write this piece was an Aha! moment. I waste a lot of time looking back to my youth. I wasn’t much to look at back then, either. But 20 vs. 60?–you get it! And, it occurred to me that looking forward to the resurrection body is a lot more fruitful than looking back at a lost youth.

Funny, you don’t recall the acne.

I don’t have a clue what the risen body will be like, except that it will be like Jesus’:

He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory.

Phil 3:21 (NRSV)

Perhaps it will be some flesh-and-bone chasis, or an energy imprinted with my transformed personality, or a memory in the heart of God.

For a long time, I’ve thought of heaven and hell, too, as relationship rather than place. Being one with God or being cut off from God.

Seeing through glass darkly

Language shatters reaching for truth of this kind.

But we can take the shards and make a window of stained glass. You can’t see out of it like ordinary glass. But you can see light, beauty, truth.

You can’t see the literal reality of heaven. Neither can you grab for it. God alone knows the number of days God has allotted each of us on earth. Gandalf reminded Denethor, authority is not given us to order the hour of our death (Lord of the Rings, 1994, p. 835). None in that epic is more selfish and petulant than Denethor, blinded by his own vanity.

However glorious the future may be, the present partakes of it already here and now. The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heaven begins here and now

I need to know that, when my flesh and heart fail, as now when they function (more or less), God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

I once preached a sermon entitled “Hometown: Heaven” about Abraham. “He looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” Heb 11:10 (NRSV)

The point is not pining all the time to be someplace you’re not. Born and reared in El Paso, I’ll always be a paisano–think of mountains as bare granite jagging up into an endless clear blue sky above red land that grows prickly pear and yucca, listen for the melody of Spanish, admire the might of the Maya and Aztecs, and love Mexican food.

The point is being citizens in two dimensions at once, finding heaven now and here.

I suppose living on both sides of the border makes me a sap.

But then I’m in pretty good company.

This is in response to commendation of the book The New Monasticism in Jesus Creed, June 6, 2008. It’s interesting to me that Gandhi lived in an ashram; we see the power of the group in such movements as Alcoholics Anonymous.  Common life is the only way we can address some of the huge problems of our time, like consumersm (devouring the planet) and inner city decay. If you know of contemporary rules, I’d appreciate your letting me know about them.

I tried my hand at a contemporary rule of common life. Here goes:

A RULE OF COMMON LIFE

I. Name. We will be called “Jesus’ family,” or “sisters and brothers of Jesus” because he said, “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:35 (NRSV)

II. Jesus is our only Lord. The Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5-7, is our only charter; the Bible, interpreted in the Spirit of Christ, our only creed. The following is our rule of common life. Persons over 21 who do not accept Jesus as Savior and Lord will not live among us.

III. Purpose.

a. Above all else, even survival as individuals or community, we seek to glorify God.

b. We seek to fulfill the great commandments: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” Matt 22:37-39 (NRSV)

IV. Vows. Keeping in mind the traditional vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, we will take these vows upon entering the community. After a trial year, we will take them for life.

a. Simplicity. We will seek to live with few possessions. Our clothing will be that of the poor; our “Sunday best” will be clean, everyday wear. One or two changes will suffice. All of us will dress in similar fashion, there being no difference among us. Our community will decide what other individual possessions there will be, but let the Rule of Benedict guide us.

b. Purity. Those who are single will be celibate. Couples will be monogamous and true to each other for life. We will use such codes of conduct necessary to protect one another, and children in our care, from abuse. We will guard heart and mind, where purity begins, by establishing community standards for use of media.

c. Solidarity.  We will strive to discern the will of God through consensus. We will honor liberty of conscience. We will hold all property in common.

V. Worship

a. The family’s calling is prayer.

b. All who can will gather for family prayers at evening, morning and noon, using as our guide the Daily Lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer and a hymnal of our choice.

c. The psalms provide our model for disclosure in public prayer. With God’s help we will seek to pray more for others than for self.

d. Once a day at a time chosen by the Holy Spirit, we will gather for a full service of worship.

e. Members may therefore set aside time for prayer with fasting, but let such times be not habitual but few, only in urgent need or periods requiring discernment.

VI. Property and Work

a. We will use good financial management, holding all funds and assets in common. We will be accountable to one another and transparent to all.

b. Family members will work at their vocation, remembering that Paul said, let us labor and work honestly with our own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. (See Eph 4:28 NRSV.)

c. The community will be self-supporting, holding in highest regard those of us who work with our hands.

d. Any venture will be cooperative; proceeds will be shared equitably according to need. Any worker among us, although not having taken vows, will share proceeds equally with family members.

e. The family will not hoard its resources, remembering that Jesus said, “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Luke 12:33-35 (NRSV) Therefore, when God prospers the community, it will set aside a reasonable reserve for hard times (not a large endowment) and give its surplus to the poor.

f.  After the first two or three years, the community will give a tithe or more to the Lord’s work beyond and outside itself, remembering that the faithful of Old Testament times tithed more than 20%.

g. When someone wishes to separate from the community, they shall receive appropriate wages and the family’s blessing.

VII. Leaders. We will elect from our community by consensus

a. Community leader, appointed for a renewable term of five years

b. Business manager, appointed for a renewable term of five years (business being as much a spiritual matter as prayer)

i. Trustees, three persons who will legally represent the community, but who are authorized to act only upon direction of the whole community

ii. Trustees will serve rotating three year terms, and must remain out of office for three years before eligible to be re-elected.

c. Worship leader

d. Community, business, and worship leaders will be the administrators of the community, making decisions as needed between meetings for business.

VIII. Relationships

a. Our first relationship is to God.

b. We will love and cherish the earth, our mother.

c. We will practice good self-care and have self-esteem because we are God’s “works of art” Eph 2.10 NJB, and Jesus said, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” John 10:10 (NRSV) We will seek to avoid both self-indulgence and the masochism of some earlier orders.

d. We will abide by the Golden Rule, and love especially those of the household of faith.

e. If the Lord blesses us with more than one community, each will be autonomous. Our only tie will be love. We are not an organization or institution, nor do we aspire ever to be.

f. Following Jesus’ instruction, we will give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s (see Matt 22:21 NRSV).

g. We will be people of peace, adhering to principles of non-violence exemplified by Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. While we honor those who serve with honor in the armed forces, we will not bear arms.

h. We adhere to God’s preference for the poor.

i. We acknowledge that ours is not the only way, but it is the only way we know.

IX. Order

a. The community will diligently practice all principles of Christ.

b. In the event a member fails to do so, the community leader, business manager, and worship leader will investigate and seek to restore the member following Matthew 18.15-22 in a spirit of humility and mercy. A member who refuses to amend their life will be excluded. No other action will be taken against them. The community leader will excuse those under 17 from any meeting where such matters are discussed.

c. The community will abide by all laws and cooperate fully with law enforcement, except in public matters of civil disobedience.

X. A family meeting for business will be held annually, more often if, in response to the community’s wishes, administrators decide to do so, but not more than once a quarter.  Articles I, II, and III may not be amended. Other amendments may be introduced at one annual meeting; if adopted by consensus at the next annual meeting, they will take effect.

At our house through DVDs we’re reliving The Waltons, the mythic story of a family in Appalachian Virginia during the great depression. Sandy brings dinner into the living room on wicker TV trays, and we settle in for a feel-good hour. OK, sure, the show rasps off all the rough edges.

But I can’t imagine too many shows today that would continue to feature a star after a stroke, as Waltons did Ellen Corby. On TCM I looked for her as a much younger woman in I Remember Mama; she got more beautiful as the years passed, especially the lovely shots of her in the Waltons reunion show, on Easter Sunday.

Last night, we made it through half of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I had remembered the cute child “Short Run,” but even he couldn’t hold our attention. So we switched and watched a Waltons episode about the Revival Meeting.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Preacher

The evangelist arrives in town, demanding to go to the local den of iniquity. The preacher suggests the nearest they have is the Dew Drop Inn, which serves beer as Jason Walton pounds out country ballads on the upright piano. The evangelist blasts the patrons with the news that they’re going to hell, if they don’t come to his meeting and get saved.

Young Ben Walton happens to be there with ne’er do well Yancey Tucker. The outraged preacher sends him home.

John and Olivia are divided, John having never been a church-going man. He insists the children be let alone to make up their own minds. But the saved siblings tease those who are lost, particularly Ben. He asks why he should get baptized if Daddy never has.

Peacocks and Other Sinners

John does go to the meeting, but, as the preacher yells at the top of his lungs, John walks out, drenched in the rain. I can’t help wondering if that isn’t symbolic of John’s being a natural-born man of God, whose faith doesn’t express itself through ritual.

Each  episode seems to have a symbol parallel to the story. In this one the symbol is a peacock. Jim-Bob names it Rover; when he confines it to the barn so that it won’t fly off, it begins to lose its feathers. At last, persuaded he must let it go, he releases it and it roosts in the tree-house. There it cries through the night, until Jim-Bob goes outside to keep it company.

Maybe the subtext is that the church folk need to go outside the walls of the safe and familiar.

Seeing with an Outsider’s Eyes

Having given most of my life to the church and been baptized twice, I’m now seeing things more from John’s point of view.

American Christians have lost a lot of ground the past several decades, by throwing our weight around. I wonder if we will only reach people today “from below,” in Bonhoeffer’s words; outside the corridors of power, in the alleys with Mother Teresa, and on strike with the sanitation workers and Martin Luther King Jr.

As for the century, the Indian poet Tagore expressed it like this:

Alas, shadowy Africa,
Under your black veil
Your human aspect remained unknown,
Blurred by the murk of contempt….
You wailed wordlessly, muddied the soil of your steamy jungles
With blood and tears;
The hobnailed boots of your violators
Stuck gouts of that stinking mud
Forever on your stained history.

Meanwhile across the sea in their native parishes
Temple-bells summoned your conquerors to prayer…

“Africa,” by Rabindranath Tagore, Selected Poems, trans. William Radice, (NY: Penguin, 1985).

A Christian whose example we might follow is William Wilberforce, whose determined efforts led to the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. (His story is told in the 2006 film Amazing Grace.)

Hope of the Hopeless

Flipping through the channels, I heard one scientist say that we’re headed for another mass extinction like the one that occurred 65 million years ago. On CNN was a review of the documentary I.O.U.S.A., a serious look at the public debt, which will shackle our grandchildren.

I struggle to find hope. There are historical examples of civilizations that used up their resources, like the empire whose capital was Angkor Wat in Southeast Asia, or that destroyed themselves through warfare like the Mayan culture of Central America. Today the world is one culture. We live or die together.

“Is there any hope?” Pippin asked Gandalf, as they looked out over the destruction of the great City. “There never was much hope,” answers the old wizard, “just a fool’s hope.”

The poet of Lamentations, surveying in heart-breaking detail the razing of Jerusalem, found this reason to hope:

But this I call to mind,
     and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,
     his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
     great is your faithfulness.
“The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,
     ”therefore I will hope in him.”
The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
     to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
     for the salvation of the LORD.

Lam 3:21-26 (NRSV)

Gandhi taught us that meaning abides in the struggle for, as well as the achievement of, our goals. If there was hope for the poet of Lamentations, surely on this side of the cross there is hope as well-even if, in the eyes of the world, it is just a fool’s hope.

When the heart is hard and parched, come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides, shutting me out from beyond, come to me, God of silence, with Your peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner, break open the door, my God.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust, O Holy One, come with Your light and Your thunder.

The Heart of God: Prayers of Rabindranath Tagore, ed. Herbert Vetter (Boston: Tuttle Publishing, 1997).

First Asian to win Nobel Prize for literature (1913), Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) is a national poet of India, an educator, lyricist, advocate of Indian liberation from British rule.