Presbytery

My family’s been Presbyterian since it became impractical to be Druids. I grew up with it around me like air. But in the wisdom of my youth I decided that if I was going to do this theology thing, I ought to shop. I don’t know if I was looking for low bids or what. I attended a seminary/graduate school hooked up with the University of California at Berkeley. As the Presbyterian San Francisco Theological Seminary it was one of twelve such schools in the Graduate Theological Union. I took classes in them all, Buddhist, Unitarian, Episcopalian, Franciscan, Jesuit, Baptist, etc. It was interesting. Lots of different spins going on all at the same time. Interestingly, the more I wandered, the more I gravitated back to good old Calvinism.
So, thirty odd years later, I’m looking back on a career. Pretty wild, huh? I’ve worked all this time in a handful of churches, using a theological perspective that my ancestors helped build. Nothing like coming full circle.
The night before last we had a Presbytery meeting. All the ministers from about fifty churches and lay representatives to balance them meet periodically to do the business of this governing body. Conflict simmered beneath a crust of parliamentary function. It was more fun than chicken pox, but not much. Differences in perspectives and attitudes coupled with a power vacuum have yielded a lack of trust and loss of common vision. It’s a microcosm of our culture. The gorilla in the room refused us to let us get much done unless we operated at a level so shallow as to make the meeting nearly meaningless. At one especially difficult juncture, after a hasty conference with my wife, I got up and commented on the presence of the gorilla, and in an effort to deal with our commonality invited the whole presbytery to our house for a party in October. They laughed. But I waded in and finally convinced them Chris and I meant business. Hospitality created the church. Maybe Hospitality can help it now.
I love the church. I love its scholarship and insistence on self criticism. I love its inclusiveness that demands an openness uncomfortable in a polarized society. I love its unflinching approach to suffering and its willingness to stand in the face of injustice. I love the way it supports art and music and drama and in a cynical and lonely world insists on celebrating and pot luck suppers. I love the way it shelters the victim, prods the arrogant, invites the greedy, embraces the isolated, touches the outcast, and tells jokes to the self important. I love the way it points beyond itself toward something we may not be able to see but that something opens the mind and the universe to relationships more powerful than death. I can’t stand its marginalization because of narcissism and traveling soccer.
I think the world should take lessons from my wife. I do. She knows how to be good. It’s called loving. She wants to make sure we don’t overcrowd the house. People won’t have the opportunity to really get to know each other. Maybe there should be two parties. She understands.
The Hispanic church is making tostadas. Here goes nothin’. Or maybe here goes something.

Presbytery

My family has been Presbyterian just after it became impractical to be Druids. So you could say it's been in the family a while. When I decided to do the ministry thing, I went to a seminary with twelve, yup, twelve different schools included in the amalgum. I took classes at them all, Buddhist, Unitarian, Baptist, Episcopalian, Franciscan, Jesuit, etc. Learned a lot about a lot. And in the process I migrated to this interesting place called home. Boiling it all down Presbyterianism made the most sense to me. It had just as many warts as most of them, but there was a grace in it, a freedom with a down to earth sense of realism and honesty that drew me.

Fast forward thirty odd years and I still feel that way. It's not the easiest way to go. It bonds us with people that alternately infuriate and frustrate what I sense is best. But that very bonding is perhaps the best part. All the abrasion and struggle demands tolerance and patience and putting the Law of Love into action.

Last night we had a regular meeting of the Presbytery. This is a gathering of all the ministers from about 50 churches and an equal number of elder delegates. We do the business of this governing body. These meetings will fry your brain if you let them. Kick in the tolerance and patience and add stamina. But we worship and we laugh and we get to see people that we've been too busy to see since last meeting.

There was conflict simmering just beneath the business. Factions doing their thing. Financial issues coupled with dissatisfaction with staff. Sound familiar? So I got up and invited everybody to a party at our house in October(Chris and I planned it in about 30 seconds during debate over an amendment to the original motion). They all laughed and I had to give a speech about the church needing more hospitality and less business. We'll see what happens. My wife is a saint. They should all take lessons from her. I do.

I love the church. I love how it has lifted up scholarship and learning and wisdom and caring and the arts and music and fellowship in a cynical and lonely world. I love the way it points beyond itself to something we can't even see, but we affirm as being as or more real than anything the culture sells. I love the way it won't settle for easy answers. I love the way it transcends boundaries and pulls at polarities and pokes at self importance and arrogance. I love the way it couragously embraces suffering and humbly confronts evil. I hate seeing it die because people are too busy and too narcissistic(however you spell that). But if we've got to die we'll go out the way we've always been. Obstinate and unwilling to settle for anything less than the kingdom of God.

What do you think? Should we play twister at the party?

Buying a House and Dying

We bought a house! That may seem a prosaic observation. Not real philosophic, but this is like my first girl friend. No it's not, it's better. My first girl friend was more a product of my own imagination than real flesh and blood. This place has a front yard and a kitchen and a mortgage.
The process is amazing, offers and counter offers flying through agents. They should be called seconds. They carry our blades and make sure we get to the dueling field on time. (See? I'm out there in my imagination already.) Getting married is easy compared to all the hoops of buy a house.
In some ways that's appropriate. Claiming one another needs no signature, it needs a commitment of spirit. Claiming a property as your own requires a putting down of foundations and roots that have a profound effect on a whole community of people. Maybe we should sign more papers to get married. We'd probably take it more seriously. Who would do the inspections? Anyway, the process of choosing, bidding, signing reorients world order and perspective. That specific part of the map begins to grow in importance.
Here's where death comes in.
In the movie Signs, the main character's wife is pinned agains a tree by a truck. She's basically cut in half, killed, but kept alive by the pressure of the truck, momentarily. Her husband comes to see her and hold her hand as she dies. The movie made me think about the process of dying. Do we desperately try to hold on to the life we've known, the life of wonder and glory that has meant so much to us? Or do we turn in expectation to the unknown that is a whisper away?
One could say it's only fear that keeps us from turning to the new and leaving this, all of this behind. But I think that's cheap. The bonds of affection and appreciation run deep. And we not only grieve for the loss of our own life here, we grieve for the others who are not going with us on the great adventure of life beyond life. No wonder there are tears. They are a mixture of joy and pain, of anxiety and anticipation.
So now here I am, feet on two sides of moments of my life. It will be a while before we leave, years. But the tide is changing. No one else can see it. It runs within me, a tide of the heart. But it is coming.

ICONS

I was talking with a class the other day about what moved an individual from important or powerful or famous into the place of an icon.  We nosed around it for a while, looking at people that had iconic place in our culture.  FDR, Kennedy, Regan, Martin Luther King, Mohamed Ali, Janis Joplin, Sinatra, people that stood out.  It had nothing to do with our approval or sense of resonance with their thoughts and attitudes.  It had to do with how they siezed their moment in history, how they lived in such a way as to help define that moment.

It made me consider individuals that have done that for me.  How my history has been defined, for better or worse by individuals I have known.  Some of it has to do with them and some of it has to do with me.  It would be nice if such dominant personalities in my life had been all positive, lovely people.  But such is not the case for any of us.  Our struggles are just as formative as our blessed days.  A considerable amount of my life has been spent in defending myself from the incursions of people who weren't very nice to me.  It took me a long time to find a style of balance that kept me away from fear of losing myself. 

I said to the class that one of the best definitions of a healthy person is one who doesn't feel the need to defend or justify themselves, but is willing to accept people for who and what they are and allow them the space to be that way.   It's not easy to be graceful, partly because we do react in fear and we do spend a lot of our lives defining ourselves according to ego boundaries that are rarely more sophisticated than our two year old protestations of "No" and "Mine."  Our vocabulary is larger and we have all kinds of justifications but it's hard to grow into a secure person.  Another reason it's hard to be graceful is that sometimes it's painful.  We get punished for not seeking to win or convert or have our own way. 

Anyway, I  think if I want to put a few icons on my psychic refrigerator, it might do me good to consider what I've learned from them.  How have they facilitated my growth toward demonstrating grace and peace in my life?  How do they, in their own way teach me about living?  Abraham Lincoln does that for me.  As does Michaelangelo.  So does my wife.  There are a few others that shall not be named.  I tend to get hives when I consider them.  Boy, are they instructive.

Dogs

I heard on NPR today that dogs' genome is unlocking all kinds of insight into the causes and the very nature of cancer. Evidentally these hairy companions are not only faithful with their tongues and their wagging tails but they are faithful in carrying all kinds of possible solutions to one of the worst horrors that stalk us.

Finals

This is the time of year when I finish my classes at Monmouth University. I don't give a final exam. I grade according to projects that the students work on all semester. So the final class is always kind of bitter sweet. The students are leaving and the students are leaving. I miss them. I've gotten to know them over the semester and they've come to me with issues and bits and pieces of their lives. I help them through. It creates a bond that is important to me and is one of the main reasons I teach.

In that last class I bring junk food, lots of junk food. Popcorn, peanuts, cookies, chips, salsa, crackers, pretzels, all the stuff that they eat. The cheeze doodles leave us with orange hands, but they're popular. It's a party. We do the Kiersey Bates temperment sorter. It gives them a chance to talk about themselves and where to from here. And I give them a speech.

I tell them that school is an amazing place. It's a powerful place that offers them opportunities that they will never have again in their lives. I also apologize for teachers who don't appreciate them. I ask them to never forget that even when they think we teachers are fools, they can learn from fools, if they hang in there. And then I tell them to always remember that if they feel judged or put down by a teacher, that they should never forget that learning doesn't depend on teachers. Learning depends on a willing and an open student. Teachers in all their vaunted authority are very vulnerable. Teachers need students to be teachers. I tell them they should never forget that they carry within them a seed of star dust. In my language, they are children of God. I tell them that it has been a great privilage to be their teacher. I thank them and bless them on their way.

It seems to touch them. It doesn't seem they are used to being affirmed.

Robert Frost said that the first green is gold. They are so beautiful and unaware of it. They are young and full of the potential that rests in each and all of us. Stardust, golden....

I get to bring home what's left from the feeding frenzy. Cheeze doodles!!!!!!!

May 2009

I was always taught that places are not holy. Only God is holy. But there are places that are sacred for me. Places that are the environments of moments in my life. Places where the spirits of people who are dear to me seem close. And some places where I feel a resonance that transcends scenery and memory. Places that seem to vibrate with power beyond my understanding or control. Some are places of peace. Some are places of harmony. And some are not. 

I have visited the battlefield at Gettysburg many times, as a child and an adult. The hills and fields are full of striving and pain. Sometimes when I've walked near the light house on Long Beach Island, especially at night, I can feel the fear and sorrow of all those lost on the shoals. Call me weird. I have found a new place. It is a place of calm and peace. 

I've talked before about walking my dog, Sam, early in the morning, through the cemetery to our sanctuary. Sometimes Chris comes with me, but most of the time, Sam and I make the trip on our own. It is quiet. For part of the year it is dark, another part it is dim, and now it is dawn. Away from the road, against the trees, there is a cross, Celtic, in the ground, with a stone standing at its center. It is new. Its shape came to the designer in a dream. It grew from the commitment and work of many. It is not temporary. It feels ancient, though the plantings aren't even in the ground. 

Its purpose is to be a memorial garden. But it is already more than that. It is a place of peace for any and all who come to it, and pause there. It inspires me. It humbles me. Give it a try. It's really good around dawn.