I-YOUniverse

TUESDAY, JANUARY 29, 2008

Bard byte

Falstaff

Can honour set to a leg? no: or

an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.

Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is

honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what

is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?

he that died o’ Wednesday.

1 Henry IV, Act 5, Scene 1

MONDAY, JANUARY 28, 2008

You pick up an international calling card at colorful shops here and there, to get the best calling rate. There are more efficient methods, but they require computer hookups you can’t always count on. You scratch off the coating that conceals a number which translates into a few minutes of heaven.

Jean-Emile–minister, pastoral counselor, Protestant leader–alternates performing extraordinary duties on behalf of the Protestant churches and the African Counseling Center in Yaoundé with being exhausted due to lifelong health issues. When we called Saturday, we heard the weariness in his voice. For about 20 minutes, Sandy and he discussed plans for the Center to receive donations through the United Methodist Church. Since 9/11, anti-terrorist regulations make transferring funds overseas much more complicated and expensive. Using existing channels will ensure all the funds will go to the cause they were donated to, not siphoned off as fees to third party money handlers.

While it’s an exciting concept, the details could choke whales. I proposed that we sing!

I moved to the piano, hung my phone set on intercom on my T-shirt, and began to play. Before Jean-Emile left the States, we loved to sing from the Lead Me, Guide Me Hymnal; he took a copy home with him. We sang the title hymn: Lead Me, Guide Me, page 168; Spirit Song, page 271; and, I love the Lord, page 238. In the film The Preacher’s Wife Whitney Houston sings that beautifully. The sentiment is, “I won’t complain as long as I have breath to pray.” I always pray for her spiritual journey when we watch that DVD or sing the hymn.

According to Acts 16.25-26, Paul and Silas were imprisoned, probably chained to the wall, lying in muck. At midnight, they were praying and singing hymns to God; an earthquake occurred, shaking the prison foundatons, opening the doors , and smashing everyone’s chains. Now that’s what a little rock ‘n roll can do for worship!

Sophie–Jean-Emile’s wife, hostess, mother, and church leader in her own right–requested Peace! Be Still! page 296 in the Voice of Praise Hymnal, which I used as a child. The disciples are bailing water from the sinking boat, while Jesus sleeps. They cry, “Master, don’t you care, we are about to perish?” The music imitates the storm, as the lyrics state:

Whether the wrath of the storm-tossed sea,

or demons, or men, or whatever it be,

no water can swallow the ship where lies

the Master of ocean and earth and skies;

they all shall sweetly obey my will;

peace, be still! Peace, be still!

They all shall sweetly obey my will,

Peace, peace, be still!

The kid in me still gets wonky hearing the storm boil over, then quietly resolve into harmony at the keyboard.

JRR Tolkien wrote about the “eucatastrophe,” eu- being a positive prefix; the word means a positive turning point in the story. One eucatastrophe in the Lord of the Rings occurs when Sam climbs the tower in Mordor, only to find an empty room. He’s looking for Frodo, whom the orcs captured after Shelob the spider stung him. Now Sam hasn’t got a clue what to do next.

“And then softly, to his own surprise, there at the vain end of his long journey and his grief, moved by what thought in his heart he could not tell, Sam began to sing…. and suddenly new strength rose in him, and his voice rang out, while words of his own came unbidden to fit the simple tune.

Though here at journey’s end, I lie.

In darkness buried deep,

beyond all towers strong and high,

beyond all mountains steep,

above all shadows rides the Sun

and Stars forever dwell:

I will not say the Day is done.

Nor bid the Stars farewell,” (pp. 887-888 LOTR)

Some weird kink in my cervical spine took about 50% use of my hands last year, so I don’t to play Dave Brubeck anymore. (That’s also why I have a Dragon stenographer!) But I can stumble through hymns well enough to play for a family sing along.

We used two calling cards; the second worth 50 minutes ended after 38 minutes. The computer came online: “You have one minute remaining,” said the mechanical voice.

I doubt the Powers That Be, political or otherwise, took note of four unremarkable voices singing across the Atlantic Ocean.

But foundations shook!

FRIDAY, JANUARY 25, 2008

I sometimes look into the eyes of a house cat….[it asks,] “Can it be that you mean me? Do you actually want that I should not merely do tricks for you? Do I concern you? Am I there for you?”… No other event has made me so deeply aware of the evanescent actuality in all relationships to other beings, the sublime melancholy of our lot, the faded lapse into It of every single You…. Every actual relationship in the world alternates between actuality and latency; every individual You has to disappear into the chrysalis of the It in order to grow wings again. In the pure relationship, however, latency is merely actuality drawing a deep breath during which the You remains present.” (pp. 145-148)

If you’re a cat fancier, you have to chuckle at the thought of the philosopher longing for an enduring relationship with a cat. The joke goes, dogs come when you call them; cats say, leave a message and I’ll get back to you.

My two cats have distinct personalities. Jazzi is a lover. Provided I keep the Kitty Commandments, she’ll spend time in my lap:

I. Thou shall not move.

II. Thou shalt make no noise.

III. Thou shalt have a blanket for me to lie on.

IV. Thou shalt have no other kitty before me.

I’m sure there are more rules. We make them up as we go along.

The other cat, a survivor of the hard knock life on the streets–named Nasha, Hebrew for “miracle,” by the Jewish family who rescued her–is always focused on food; any opportunity to beg treats finds her on duty. It took months before she’d leave food in her dish, confident she’d always have food.

Rarely, Jazzi’s eyes will melt with tenderness. I can only imagine what is going through her mind at that moment–some sort of primal connection with mother, I suppose. We got her to be my companion following orthopedic surgery. She has delighted me, comforted me, exasperated me, and shared with me the long isolation of recovery.

In CS Lewis’s The Horse and His Boy the runaway Shasta waits for his friends at the tombs. When he is frightened, a big cat appears and snuggles close to him, comforting him through the long night. Later he learns this cat was the great cat Aslan, the Christ in Lewis’s work.

Jonah is a sour prophet, angry at God for having compassion on his political enemies. “Why shouldn’t I?” God asks. “There are 120,000 people in Nineveh, who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many animals besides.”

Psalm 104 describes God’s care for creation, including animals. It says,

When you send forth your spirit, they are created;

and you renew the face of the ground. Psalms 104:30 (NRSV)

I know there are exceptions, but I believe animals exist in the immediate Presence.

Also from the animal world comes the other image in the quotation above: a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis as a butterfly.

Buber uses the metaphor of the rainbow, too. The I and the You form the two anchors; the hyphen, the bow. This is visually consistent with Buber’s idea that spirit flows between partners in relation. Would that jive with the doctrine that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son?

I also think of string theory, with the I and the You being the ends and the relation, the vibration between them.

I continue reading I and Thou aloud, about my fifth read. This morning I had an epiphany. I realized I was reading to gain power through mastery over the material, rather than to enter relation with the You abiding in Buber’s work.

In the prologue to the gospel of John it says, “Light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not mastered it.” (John 1.5) It occurred to me that, although we need to master some things, like our ABCs, the will to master belongs to the It-world. What I really want occurs by grace instead, in moments of actualization: not mastery but relation and dialog.

As a veteran of graduate school, I know that knowledge is power, especially comprehension of an obscure German masterpiece like I and Thou! But,”if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Right? He’s a phony–nobody has mastery but God alone!

In the actuality of body-spirit, a Buber-like phrase that means standing in I-You relation with all three spheres of being (material-animal below human, human, spirit above human) mastery pertains to the It-world; mystery, to the You-world. Even in glory, we won’t master the light. We’ll simply dance in it.

MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 2008

You’ll have to pardon me while I do a little mental health work. For those of you in the know, it’s called cognitive behavioral therapy, and I’m indebted to David Burns’ book Feeling Good for many fun hours allegedly straightening out my twisted thinking.

My current snit is, “What the devil do I have to offer, when there are so many good blogs out there?” About 100 million blogs are being written. So it’s a fair question.

Sandy, my beloved, shot right to the heart of the matter when I confessed my misgivings. “Is it what God wants you to do?” she asked.

It is.

Writing has always been in my blood. Finding precisely the right words turns me on like nothing else in the world. But even more — making that connection with people through words excites and fulfills me.

Buber can help here, I think. The I-It mindset follows the I-You relation, and standing before the You always gives way to experiencing or analyzing the other (I-It). The I-It state of mind inevitably occurs, and in fact represents most experience.

In my own game of Twister, however, I need to distinguish between I-It attitudes toward other bloggers as competitors or people to use, and an I-You state of mind in which what motivates me to blog is conversation, mutual self-revelation, and sharing the common project of advancing human communication and oneness.

God, how serious! When you’re depressed and doing CBT, having fun certainly won’t enter the picture.

I’d like to turn a corner.

Translator Walter Kaufmann criticizes Buber for being obscure in I and Thou. He contrasts Buber’s other works: Tales of the Hasidim, and The Way of Man according to the Teachings of Hasidism. The second is available here:

http://www.pendlehill.org/resources/files/pdf%20files/php106.pdf Pendle Hill pamphlet #106 online. (If you don’t know these, they’re great!) This essay of 31 pages models clarity and brevity. To say the least, I and Thou lacks clarity. It contains so many coinages, not even Buber himself could remember what he meant! So you’ll forgive me for having to read I and Thou aloud in order to understand more of it.

I’m having a great time!

BTW, I’m also having a great time writing the drunken. (I’ll leave that as is.) It should be: riding the dragon. Perhaps Buber also was “writing the drunken,” and that explains why nobody knows what the hell he was talking about. Dragon Naturally Speaking software is great!

As they say in the meeting, thanks for listening. JLH.

PS — I deleted a post explaining JLH. The middle initial L is legally my father’s name Leverett. But instead, for me it represents an homage to my doppelgänger Lázaro. I’m the original 90 pound weakling — never mind about the 90 pounds! But my doppelgänger introduced himself to me in a dream: handsome, athletic, dashing! So when I’m feeling particularly weak and wimpish, I call on Lázaro, Spanish for Lazarus, Laz for short. The serious note about Lazarus is, Jesus raised him from the dead, and one of these days, Jesus will finish raising me, too. Thanks for listening! JLH

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17, 2008

Saddling the Dragon

My friend Michael asked me, “What’s the goal of e-thou encounter?” The title e-thou encounter actually states the goal: that people stand in relation to each other and to God through the medium of the Internet. This is a lofty goal, maybe even presumptuous, but I think possible.

A gezillion words have been written about the Internet. You can find on every other blog something silly or obscene. But there are many blogs which people use to share important information about their lives or their concerns.

Reading Buber’s book again last night. I was reminded that the fundamental encounter which he had in mind is the encounter between a human being and the divine. I am not sure whether I get what he means by “relation.” Another way, he says that is “stand before the countenance.” He insists that to understand, to experience, or to use something is to make it an It. To be in relation, them, is to open yourself to the presence of God unconditionally. Likewise, to be in relation to other humans is to open yourself unconditionally to them, and to invite them to reciprocate.

How do you stand in relation to other people via the Internet? I can answer that only by saying that to write as honestly, clearly, and compellingly as I can is to invite others into relation with me.

I’m having an interesting experience. I’ve done so much writing recently that my arthritic hands are yowling. In response, I’ve started to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It’s a pretty good program. I’m learning quickly how to use it, but composing by dictation is a whole different experience from composing by typing. Sometimes what the computer hears is pretty funny. When I have more confidence in my ability to use the program, I may allow some of the bloopers to stand in the text. Just for fun. jlh

FRIDAY, JANUARY 11, 2008

Christ the Shepherd Calls Our People

Meter: 87 87 D

Tune: Beach Spring, p. 581 UM Hymnal;

also Austria , Converse, Ebenezer, Holy Manna, In Babilone, Nettleton, Promise

 Christ the Shepherd calls our people
To community in God,
By God’s grace to love each other,
Live in hope, spread peace abroad:
Called to be and make disciples,
Called to serve our neighbor’s need,
Sharing out of God’s abundance,
Blessing by both word and deed.

Christ the Shepherd leads our worship
With Creator, Comforter
At the center of all being,
Eucharist and living Word.
As we leave this place of Presence,
Jesus calls us each by name,
And as always goes before us,
Cloud by day, by night a flame.

Christ the Shepherd teaches daily
Closer to the Lord to live,
How to grow Christ-like in character,
Of our means and time to give,
Nurture all in Christian friendship,
Share Good News with everyone,
Work for justice for all people,
Till the world in Christ be one.

This hymn text is based on the mission and vision statements of Trinity UMC Richmond VA, and inspired by Christ the Shepherd in the stained glass Window of the sanctuary. jlh

All material on the blog is copyright ©2007- 2008 by John L. Hamilton, except the picture of Young Will Shakespeare.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10, 2008

On November 9, 2007, Richard Genter wrote the Richmond Times Dispatch arguing that Jesus did not exist; perhaps Paul invented him. So why did people use a fictitious Jesus to exert power over others’ lives? My friend Jon Tracy called my attention to the letter, and knowing how we writers love to see our words in print egged me on. This is the reply

Many Christians Honor Freedom of Religion

Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) - November 24, 2007

Editor, Times-Dispatch:

Richard Genter’s letter objects to those who use Jesus to impose their philosophy and lifestyle on others. I agree with him, and I agree because I am a follower of Christ.

People pervert Jesus when, in his name, they burn crosses and lynch African-Americans. Politicians and preachers abuse Jesus’ name when they build political careers by grossly oversimplifying complex issues such as abortion and end-of-life care - or by denying the fundamental human rights of those who are gay or lesbian, or by demonizing Muslims and undocumented workers.

People who use religion to gain power are nothing new. In “A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens has the Ghost of Christmas Present speak of them: “There are some upon this earth of yours who lay claim to know us, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in our name, who are as strange to us and all our kith and kin, as if they had never lived.”

Most scholars find solid history in New Testament texts - as a good study Bible will demonstrate, such as the HarperCollins Study Bible produced with the Society of Biblical Literature and the association of college and university professors of the Bible.

The nature of history in the New Testament is an intellectual issue. But the abuse of power in the name of any religion is a threat to its future.

Many thousands of my spiritual forebears died advocating absolute freedom of conscience and separation of church (mosque, synagogue, temple) and state. They relied on the power of love and light to win people to faith, rather than on hardball politics to browbeat or coerce them. I can’t help thinking that they, too, would have agreed with Genter’s letter.

To me the key to Mr. Genter’s letter is his feeling hardballed by Christian extremists. The pastoral response was to reach out to him, and trust that Jesus could take care of himself. Many bullied by politics turn off to faith forever. May it not be the case with this man. j

TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2008

“Never trust anybody over 30″ the slogan went. Since I’ll soon be 30 twice over, does that mean you can wholly trust one half of me, or half trust all of me?

We celebrated the 40th anniversary of my ordination this past Sunday. The day began with a dead battery. Since we were to meet the preacher for prayers before the 8:15 AM service, we did so by phone. Triple A replaced our battery and we arrived, calm and collected, for the 11 AM eucharistic service. Dr. Charles Staples and the Adult Choir presented “In the Season of Rejoicing,” a hymn text I wrote. (It’s included here earler.)

In the afternoon family and friends joined us, with the Jean-Emile Ngue family, who were physically in Yaounde, Cameroon. These included Billy and Marlis Kruschwitz, Jon Tracy, Karen Selden, Mary-Fran Hughes-McIntyre, Jim Hamilton, and Sandy. We read scripture from Luke 4, Jesus’ inaugural text (Isaiah 61) and the 100th Psalm. We shared prayers and the Blessing Cup, and noted it all in a family worship book of that title, in which we’ve recorded times of worship throughout our family’s life together. And again we sang “In the Season of Rejoicing.”

The circle presented gifts of original poems and prayers, cards, books, and a father’s handmade book stand, all of which will bless me through the years.

Sandy served a scrumptious meal: snax, chili con carne with beans, fiesta corn muffins, and raspberry lava chocolate cake!

Throughout the day friends called who’ve blessed us across time: Mark Gardner, Herb Gardner, John Parker, Jack Burton, Elaine Littler, Pam and Clint Dunagan, Hollie Atkinson. Tommy and Becky Campbell with their sons Austin and Will had stopped en route to a wedding during the holidays.

The scripture contrasts two ways of aging. There’s Eli (1 Sam 4) who died, spiritually blind and impotent. And there’s Simeon “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.” Luke 2:25 (NRSV) May the Lord grant that I be more like Simeon, less like Eli!

Several years ago I was stunned by a hostile spirit of closedness and discriminaton that erupted over the issue of homosexuality when class members brought in the headlines and asked me what the Bible says. It wasn’t that leaders engaged the issues and decided they could not accept homosexuals; they prohibited any discussion. In answer to people’s questions, of course, I shared my views (see http://www.pcmk.org/Blue_Book_V5.pdf ) and invited others to voice different viewpoints.

Simply for holding unacceptable views I felt cursed by those who refused even the dialogue. (I affirm homosexual folk, not in spite of the Bible, but because of it.) At that point, after years of slowly withdrawing, I said good-bye to the church and have been unable even to take communion when I visited in church. It’s been a slow healing process, finding a church whose members do not agree, but have agreed to listen to each other and to the Holy Spirit with discernment.

Over the years in counseling I’ve met persons who are homosexual, and I feel called to speak for those who dare not yet speak for themselves. If that means I end up outside, then I’m okay with that.

The author of Hebrews urged those he wrote to leave the safety of established religion and follow Christ to something new God was up to in the world. The author used Temple ritual as a metaphor:

For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the city gate in order to sanctify the people by his own blood. Let us then go to him outside the camp and bear the abuse he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. Heb 13:11-14 (NRSV)

Nashville, headquarters for a significant number of denominational entities, is no lasting city. If the Lord gives me 40 more years, I’ll spend them in the wilderness maybe, but in my heart I hear oh! the clear ringing of silver trumpets calling me home to another city, not made with hands.

SUNDAY, JANUARY 6, 2008

Menudo

A freak ice storm greeted the Feast of the Epiphany January 6, 1968, in El Paso, Texas, where a small group gathered for the ordination of their new 19-year-old pastor. In following years I served

* McCombs Church, El Paso, TX

* Rolling Fork Church, Gleanings, KY

* Ridgetop Church, Austin, TX

* Nolynn Church, Hodgenville, KY

* Calvary Church, Madison, IN, and

* Emmaus Church, Quinton, VA

At McCombs we had a lot of fun. Bill Latham, also a student, was music minister. The Jim Turner and Marvn Pettit families taught me a lot, as did an elder pastor whose name I no longer remember. His death panicked me, and I failed to provide good care to his wife. Hollie Atkinson was campus minister at UTEP; he and Janell continued to bless our lives for years to come. But he told me that my decision to go to seminary in Kentucky meant I’d serve outside Texas. Jerry Pettit was a special kid among the young people there.

Before going to seminary the first time I made the single best decision I ever made: I married Sandy Kruschwitz. Now she is a United Methodist elder, a Diplomate in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, a teacher and loving mother. Our son Jim is 34!

I completed M.Div. and D.Min. degrees as well as a Clinical Residency in Pastoral Counseling at The Virginia Institute of Pastoral Care and served on the Associate Staff for two years. In addition, for ten years I wrote curriculum for the Baptist Sunday School Board. I also was Director of Pastoral Care at the Hermitage Retirement Community in Richmond, before retiring on disability in 2004.

My resume doesn’t seem like much. I’m reminded of the Mexican stew they serve for two bits. On certain days restaurants advertise “Menudo.” It’s hot and spicy, made of tripe, onions, tomatoes, chilis, and hominy. It’s prized by the poor, not least because it’s cheap.

My first love is pastoring people. Churches I’m not crazy about. My sweetest experiences were in the two smallest churches. They are small country churches with long histories of nurturing seminary students. If I gained any merit, much of the credit goes to what I learned there. James and Mina Scott, David Scott, and Larry and Sandra Bell among others blessed our lives at Rolling Fork. Many families at Nolynn enriched us, including William and Katherine Bale.

Ridgetop stood on the edge of the huge University of Texas campus, but its people didn’t like college students much. It existed in the shadow of two megachurches within a mile or so. Among others I cherished getting to know Mark Gardner and Jeff and Janey Lancaster, students who went on to ministry. Jack and Janet Burton were at Woodlawn Church and mentored Sandy and me. We began the Guided Gadabouts, a weekly gathering of seniors with committed lay leaders; I enjoyed singing country gospel at the piano.

In 1979, after three years graduate study of Hebrew and Old Testament, I moved to Calvary Church, north of the Ohio River, outside the South. The church consisted of two groups, transplanted Kentuckians and native Indiana folk. The Marble Hill Nuclear Power Plant was under construction nearby, providing thousands of engineering jobs. Jim Morgan was a committed lay leader. The church has a turbulent history, with many very short pastorates and only three or four longer. I was there more than eight years. After the collapse of the Marble Hill project, however, many of the forward-thinking lay leaders moved away and the church slumped. Several years afterward, I too left. It was a joy to serve on staff with Tim and Ginny Moore, John and Beth Parker, and Tommy and Becky Campbell, talented and committed associate ministers of music and youth. This church was rocked by scandal in its previous ministers and by a refusal to escape its Southern ethnic ghetto. We left scarred, exhausted, and forever changed.

The schism between conservatives and fundamentalists began to cleave the Southern Baptist Convention into huge bleeding stumps during my years at Calvary. Many fellow pastors envied our move to Virginia, considered a haven for non-fundamentalists. But I didn’t find a pastorate for a year. (I wrote about this transition in “Out of Egypt,” below.)

On that slick treacherous Sunday morning forty years ago none of us knew it was the Feast of the Epiphany, in the Middle Ages also celebrated as the Feast of Fools (see Victor Hugo’s Notre Dame). On January 6 the magi are remembered, representing a world of people drawn out of the darkness into God’s marvelous light.

Has the service of these years been insignificant, negligible, Lord? Despite what I often feel, i choose to gamble on what the still small voice within says: all things human are menudo, but in the hands of the Almighty their worth cannot be measured.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2007

I-Wow!

Just finished reading Kaufmann’s translation of I and Thou. A lot of it I couldn’t understand precisely, an experience many readers share. But that which I did understand moved me profoundly.

I felt very much akin to this man, whose particulars are so vastly different from mine. I was reared in a Southern Baptist home in West Texas in the 50’s.

His description of returning to stand ‘before the countenance,’ if that’s the proper idiom, struck the same chords in my soul that Garrison Keilor’s stories of an altar call strike. I felt the same presence I used to feel in church when someone “walked the aisle” to receive Christ as Savior, or when the Lord’s Supper was served.

For me that feeling is long gone from church. I don’t miss the organization so smug in its possession of content as truth, so careful to shut out undesirables and shut in the saints, so indifferent to the anawim, the poor, the leper, the outcast.

Now I’ll read again, this time striving to catch a bit more of the idiomatic German structure underlying the translation. I’m grateful for the new translation. The first I tried to read in seminary, and couldn’t get past the first page or two. That says more about me than the translation.

Buber speaks of standing before the saying of the wise as if the masters themselves are speaking to you, and this becomes an I-You relation as though the wise is standing there speaking. (Afterword, pp. 174-175). What an unspeakble gift it will be,whether now or a lifetime from now on my hundredth read, to enter into an I-You relation with his words almost as if with him.