Bintel Brief

Many years ago I recorded a radio program in Milwaukee, in honor of the Jewish New Year. It gathered together a wonderful collection of glimpses into Jewish life. (I'm reminded of the saying, a rabbi explaining how Jews are different from everyone else? He said, ``Oh, they're the same as everyone else - only more so.'')

This excerpt is from a Yiddish newspaper column, a long-running ``Dear Abby'' sort of thing.

Worthy Editor, 1965

I was not quite 19 and my husband a few months under 21 when we got aquainted. We were members of an idealist group who dreamed of building a heaven on earth for everyone. We believed in free love. I can tell you that many young couple would hope to lead as beautiful a family life as we have had. The fact that we were never married legally, however, has been on our minds for the past 50 years. More than ever of late. I tell my husband lately that we should do something about it. If only for the children's sake.

---

The story makes me think:

1. It's never too late
2. How silly of them. How endearing of them.
3. God loves them - and you and me

Our Stories

Last Sunday we concluded a whirlwind overview of the book of Job by hearing from the last chapter of the book. It began with a wager between God and Satan about Job's steadfastness. Would he break away from steadfastness toward God in the wake of horrible things happening to him? And horrible things did happen. Things that shouldn't happen to anyone - though grieving I observe that we humans are capable of inflicting even worse on one another.

Job's friends tried to persuade him that God is just at all times, so he (Job) must be at fault. He must somehow have brought it on himself. Job protested. Finally he virtually questions God himself.

Then God answers ``out of the whirlwind'' and Job bows down before that which is beyond him.

``I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. `Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?' ... Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.''

What I'm intrigued with in this story is the identities it reveals - or at least begins to reveal. Who is this God who appears as a major character? What kind of person is Job - beyond the description of him as a righteous man? If you were required to give an accounting of who you are, how would you tell the story?

Job's story could be reduced to a simple: He was born and grew, stuff (good and bad) happened, his suffering and loss was redeemed by a gracious God. God, it seems, cannot be limited in the gifts he gives to his children. In the end, Job isn't just rewarded by God, but he becomes a partner with God, a co-giver of gifts.

How would you tell your story?

Agnes' Birthday Party and the Church

Like so many others, I am indebted to Tony Campolo. Thank you. He doesn't know me, but I am one among the many who have been moved to take action because of his persuasive preaching. At one of the early Hawaiian Island Ministries conferences I attended, he concluded his keynote speech/preaching with a call to walk out the doors and sign up to support one of the children whose pictures could be found on the Compassion International tables. There was such power in his words that I couldn't help myself. I walked out those doors and signed up to support a child.

It reminded me of a time in the early 1980's when I heard Elie Wiesel, the great Nobel Prize winner and the voice for "never forgetting," speak at Notre Dame. He spoke passionately about the plight of the Soviet dissident Anatoly B. Shcharansky. He summoned the president of Notre Dame, another legendary figure, Fr. Ted Hesburgh, to come up on the stage. Together they stood, arm in arm, while Wiesel cried out with the conviction and passion of a prophet or a mad-man, "We must do something. We must do something." We believed that something was going to happen. And it was not so long before Shcharansky was freed. And not long after that the Soviet Union itself collapsed.

I am reminded of one of the early "conversion" experiences I had as an adult Christian. I had returned to the church and had set my sights on learning and praying with a seriousness and passion that I had not previously known as a child growing up in the church. I was ready to be serious about my faith. But, I was not prepared to be pulled from my chair, seemingly against my will.

That's what happened on the day that we were in church for the bishop's visitation. He had a number of folk to confirm, but after that he went on to call on anyone who was ready to make a new commitment to Jesus Christ to come forward for the laying on of hands. We sat in the front pews by that time – a sign of our "seriousness" I suppose. But I was determined that I was not going to be moved to action by these mere words of the bishop. I held on to the pew so as not to be pulled forward.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the priest who had shepherded me back into the church. He was headed for the altar rail to renew his commitment to Jesus Christ. And in a brisk moment all my defenses collapsed. I flowed out of my seat and up to the bishop, and there experienced a "whirlwind" surround me. I would experience that same thing again when he ordained me deacon some years later.

We are called to be so much more, as the church, than we have been in the past. We have been called by preachers of power, by prophets of the Spirit, by Jesus himself, to be salt, to be a light to the world, to be a force in servanthood that can conquer the world's principalities.

I retold the story on Sunday that so many of us have heard before. Tony told the story – I have to believe – relating an actual experience he had here in Honolulu at one of those H.I.M. conferences. It is the story of Agnes' Birthday Party. I won't retell it here. You can easily find it by "googling". The content of the story is Honolulu, early in the dark hours of morning, prostitutes getting off work, bartenders serving all the late night folk, and a "preacher" who didn't know any better than to suggest throwing a birthday party for one of the prostitutes.

I told the story not for that content, but for the punch line of the story. The story is really about the church, the CHURCH, you and me, and our feeble attempts to do what Jesus said to do, "whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all."

Harry, the bartender in the story, says to Tony that there wasn't really a church like that, because if there were, he'd have heard about it and joined it.

The point of the story is that there really is a church like that, a church that serves with power in the Spirit, to all and sundry. A church that gives away in abundance, because God first gave to us in an abundance we cannot even measure. There is a church like that. But it is often under the radar of most people.

I heard just today about one person who takes the trouble to prepare a meal twice a week to deliver to the homeless at a local park. He takes along fresh and clean clothes to exchange for the dirty clothes they wear. He's not doing it for recognition. He's doing it for love – for the love of God.

There really is a church like that, but all too often we have fallen short of being such a church. God have mercy upon us. God give us the grace to be able to change. Thank you.

From a homily at St. Andrew's Priory

Teresa of Avila

I guess the connection really got made a long time ago. I told the Priory students I was talking to that she lived about the time that their great (repeated 13 times) grand parents lived - give or take. The ``she'' is Teresa of Avila, and I was giving a talk on her at the weekly chapel at St. Andrew's Priory. I already knew some of the kinship I felt with Teresa, but the really delightful connection I discovered was associated with her death. We were remembering her because she falls on October 15 on our calendar. Usually we observe a Saint on the date of his or her death - the occasion of her joining the communion of the saints. Teresa, though, you see, died either on October 4^th (my birthday) or on October 15^th - depending on which side of midnight she actually left this earthly existence.

Teresa died at the very moment that Catholic Spain (together with 3 other countries in Europe) was making the transition from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. The details of that would bore you - though the nuances of keeping time have fascinated me for years - but in summary the change meant that the days of October 5 - October 14 of that year were not observed. October 4^th, at midnight, turned into October 15. Teresa would have been tickled with that confusion, I am sure.

She was a passionate woman. Passionate in her determination to be a close an intimate friend of God's. Passionate in her tenacity in ensuring that others also could practice an intimacy with God like she had known. ``It is love alone that gives worth to all things,'' she wrote. Like so many before and so many after, love did not come easily or simply. There was opposition a plenty. And she took it in stride. The story is told that ``in 1582, she was invited to found a convent by an Archbishop but when she arrived in the middle of the pouring rain, he ordered her to leave. ``And the weather so delightful too'' was Teresa's comment.''

She didn't reserve her sarcasm for the religious superiors who often opposed her, even to imprisonment. She could level it at herself. The story is related about her dying that ``Though very ill, she was commanded to attend a noblewoman giving birth. By the time they got there, the baby had already arrived so, as Teresa said, `The saint won't be needed after all.''' She didn't take herself over seriously. And so perhaps floated with the angels.

A favourite story about St Teresa illustrates the intimate relationship that the saints have with God. When she was on one of her innumerable journeys across Spain, her horse threw her as she was crossing a river. Soaked to the skin she looked up to heaven and said, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few of them!” We should bring everything to God in our prayers, even our reproaches. For a reproach, in the end, is simply our way of offering up to God our incomprehension of what he is giving us. See the articles in Wikipedia and the Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Getting knocked off her horse – was that God's work? I don't actually think it happened because of God. I think it was just that the horse didn't want to cross the water. But the story wonderfully shows how close Teresa was to God. She told him everything. She was able to tell him her frustration, her disappointment, her feelings of lostness and confusion -- and she told him of her ecstasy, her joy, her unstoppable hope. She was God's friend. She has been a hero of mine for a long time because she had that kind of relationship with God. She was prepared to hear and bear anything God had in mind for her. She trusted God to that extent.

• Obstacles may be put in your path. Don't let that slow you down. Use the opposition to your advantage where possible. Don't let it stop you.
• Don't be afraid to pursue your calling. God called to Teresa to share her friendship with God with others. Whoever would listen.
• Be a friend with God. God has called you to be the very best you can be. So do it.
  

Let nothing trouble you,
let nothing make you afraid.
All things pass away.
God never changes.
Patience obtains everything.
God alone is enough.

(Teresa of Avila)

Threshold

Such a simple thing. All of us have one at the door to homes. It's a threshold. It's something none of us takes any notice of until something goes wrong with it. Actually a lot of our lives are marked by that – even our bodies. We are unaware of so much until it goes wrong. Lots of different kinds of folks, going way back in time, have recommended that we cultivate an awareness of those things around us that we take for granted. For some time it has seemed to me that Jesus' message about the Kingdom of God was at least partly aimed at getting us to recognize that God's territory was all around us, if only we'd pay attention and recognize it.

Definition: Threshold

1. The plank, stone, or piece of timber, which lies under a door, especially of a dwelling house, church, temple, or the like; the doorsill; hence, entrance; gate; door.
2. Fig.: The place or point of entering or beginning, entrance; outset; as, the threshold of life.

Definition: Thresh v., threshed, thresh·ing, thresh·es. v.tr.

1. To beat the stems and husks of (grain or cereal plants) with a machine or flail to separate the grains or seeds from the straw.
2. To separate (grains or seeds) in this manner.
3. To discuss or examine (an issue, for example) repeatedly.
4. To beat severely; thrash.

It took a poet to point out that these two words are related. I don't think of the threshold to my home as a place where I will get "thrashed" – though clearly "home" is that for some – too many – people. Or maybe the association is the other way around. As we leave the peace and calm of our homes, crossing the threshold, we go out to get "thrashed" in the big wide world out there. Again, that has not generally been my experience, though I recognize that it is for some people.

The poet John O'Donohue uses the image of "threshold" to point to a line of demarcation, a dividing line, a limit, that points to the intersection of the spiritual and the material. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how he uses the image of the ocean shore in a similar way. It is the place where heaven and earth meet and cross paths. Bishop N.T. Wright has used imagery like that in the video series we have just completed on Wednesday mornings.

God's kingdom, the place where God's in charge, is right here. But we most of the time don't pay attention to that fact. Often it is only when things go wrong or don't work. But our paying attention to it – or not – doesn't have any impact on God's being in charge. It's really up to us to become aware of that "threshold" that separates, but also helps us to see, heaven on earth.

And the fact that thresholds are verbally related to the verbs for "threshing" and "thrashing" helps us to recognize that often it is only when we have had the things we take for granted stripped away that we realize what really matters, what really lasts. It often takes a certain "thrashing" before we "get it." "Putting things right", as Bp. Wright puts it, involves putting things in order, justifying things. And that means getting them in the order that God sees. It can be painful. But the end, the goal, is to cross the threshold of our lives into a wide and beautiful landscape – another of O'Donohue's metaphors – where God reigns.

Lady Poverty

In my daily devotions, one particular reading recurs on the 29th of the month. It is related to St. Francis, written by Murray Bodo. The title is: Lady Poverty in the eyes of Juniper, friend of Francis, Fool of God.

The first time I read it I felt like my face was slapped. Right at the beginning he expressed gratitude for the experience of being dependent on other people. And I could quickly imagine the many ways that we just "hate" being dependent on other people. Growing old. Waiting in line for other people. Taking orders from others. Being at the mercy of someone else's whims. And here was Murray Bodo saying:

If I am truly poor, then I am dependent on others for everything, and I feel useless and worthless, and I realize deep within that everything is a gift from the Father. Then in this attitude of complete dependence, I become useful again, for then I am empty of selfishness and I am free to be God's instrument instead of my own.

I thought to myself, "I could never have that attitude to things so painful. That kind of attitude is beyond me." But as I have prayed it, month by month, over the course of more than a year, now, my defenses have softened. Sometimes I can imagine that I could have such a spirit of surrender and gratitude – well, at least for a little while.

God is at work in me. He's not finished yet. Thanks be to God.

Lady Poverty, I love you. You, my Lady, take all the sting from being poor. In your embrace I am rich indeed, for I have someone to love. I have you. … and we know it is all worthwhile because when we look into your eyes, we see Christ Himself.

Holy Water

When I was still new to Hawai'i, I heard or read about how rainbows were regarded as blessings. I had already experienced the gentle rain that was sufficient to produce a rainbow but not enough to cause me to run for cover if I was out on the street. I thought, "How cool." Then the old spirituality that saw God's hand in the rainbow and a sign of God's providence through it. And I began the habit that continues to this day of making the sign of the cross whenever I see a rainbow.

The purpose of this gesture, for me, has several parts:

• I recognize God's hand in the world around me
• I remind myself that God is in charge
• I remember that it's not all about me. It's all about God.
• I claim God's strength in a world that too often seems bereft of the Godly

Something like that happens whenever I make the sign of the cross with holy water. I first discovered it for my personal devotions many years ago. As a child I would have thought of holy water, if at all, as one of those strange magical things that Roman Catholics do. Then, in my 20's I discovered that making the sign of the cross with the holy water at the entrance to an Episcopal Church I attended allowed me to mark the entrance into a sacred space, to recognize God's sphere of activity. It became a holy gesture. I have appreciated holy water ever since.

I was so touched when so many folk took little vials of holy water after my sermon last Sunday. My emphasis on Sunday had been the connection between the salt and the water and our baptism into Christ's death and resurrection. The water is for us a sign of of deliverance and the passage from death to life. Whenever we use it it becomes a blessing because of that sign.

I also made some reference to how salt, and holy water (sometimes with salt in it) is a way to claim God's blessing on a place, a blessing that casts out darkness, a blessing that claims God's sovereignty. It could be over a place, over a thing, over a time.

So in answer to the question, "What do I do with this vial of water?" I would say:

• Remember and Proclaim God's blessing whenever you feel the need for reminding.
• After a long day. After a trying time. Take the vial out, sprinkle it on your hand. If you feel comfortable with the gesture, make the sign of the cross: touch your fingers to your forehead, your diaphragm, your left breast and then your right breast. There are variations that include touching your thumb to your mouth and the eastern orthodox have a slight variation. It all means the same thing.
• If you feel dis-ease within yourself or your surroundings. That is an illness or a discomfort of any kind, sprinkle the water to remind yourself, to claim for yourself, that God is in charge. That in God "all shall be well."

The physical and spiritual

I have for a long time believed that reality is often not intuitive. Like the fact that from a nuclear physicists point of view, the solid world that we inhabit – the one where we bump into walls and jump up and down on hard floors – is mostly empty space. That is to say, the atomic and molecular material that makes up our solid world is mostly the space between particles. Not intuitive.

So it was that I was breathless with delight last week with an image that came to me courtesy of Krista Tippet and the late Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue. I was fairly old – into my teens – before I actually saw an ocean beach. I had seen the Great Lakes – but that's not the same thing. We know of the spiritual power of the ocean. Our bishop has talked about it the past few years. I have known for years of poets and story tellers who found their inspiration sitting on the ocean's shore. So much is common place. Mr. O'Donohue gave me a startling image, pulling together the "material" and the "spiritual" world. We so easily think of the "spiritual" realities somehow inhabited the physical, material world. Like we think of the soul inhabiting the body of a person.

Mr. O'Donohue said that he believes that something almost like the opposite is true. The material world we see and touch and smell is like a splashed up manifestation of the spiritual realities which are much vaster and deeper. As if what was going on at the ocean's shore was the vastness of God's spiritual reality being splashed up in a fleeting material presence.

I'm not sure I can say what I experienced when I heard the image. What I do know is that it sounded correct to me, in a deep-down kind of way. Mr. O'Donohue sets the stage for that kind of thinking in the opening paragraph from his web site:

Humans have an uncanny ability to domesticate everything they touch. Eventually, even the strangest things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety and contentment. Only seldom does the haze lift, and we glimpse for a second, the amazing plenitude of being here. Sometimes, unfortunately, it is suffering or threat that awakens us. It could happen that one evening, you are busy with many things, netted into your role and the phone rings. Someone you love is suddenly in the grip of an illness that could end their life within hours. It only takes a few seconds to receive that news. Yet, when you put the phone down, you are already standing in a different world. All you know has just been rendered unsure and dangerous. You realise that the ground has turned into quicksand. Now it seems to you that even mountains are suspended on strings. (John O'Donohue)

Thank you.

Becoming more Christ-like

"Something Christlike" was the way John Buchanan opened his editorial in the July 29th edition of Christian Century. In it he outlines the recent history of Holy Apostles Episcopal church in New York City, and says rather plainly that we could use with more churches practicing what we preach. An excerpt of Buchanan's piece:

The version of Christianity that appears in the media often embarrasses me: it's narrow, sectarian, exclusive and sometimes mean-spirit. So it was a joy to find in the May 26 New Yorker an article by novelist Ian Frazier about a church being a church in the best sense.

Frazier conducts a weekly writing workshop at a church soup kitchen in New York City, and he regularly encounters gifted men and women who, for one reason or another, are homeless and hungry. The Church of the Holy Apostles is a landmark, with a high arched ceiling and gorgeous stained-glass windows. Over the years the Episcopal congregation dwindled in size as the neighborhood changed until the 200 members could no longer afford to pay the bills to keep it going. A new rector suggested that "if Holy Apostles is going out of business, it might as well do some good before it does."

So in 1982 the church launched a free-lunch program. Thirty-five people showed up. The program grew and attracted more people and outside support. In a few years the congregation was serving 900 lunches daily and bursting the seams of its mission house.

...

The program rules are simple: no proselytizing and no one turned away. If anyone wants more food, that person can go outside, stand in line, get another ticket and eat again. Frazier asked Elizabeth Maxwell of the Holy Apostles staff about the religious motivation behind the program. She said: "well, we do this because Jesus said to feed the hungry. There's no more to it than that. Jesus told us to take care of the poor and hungry and those in prison ... In all the intricacies of scriptural interpretation, that message -- feed the hungry -- could not be more clear. Those of us at Holy Apostles feel we have a Sunday-Monday connection. The bread and wine of the Eucharist we share on Sunday becomes the food we share with our neighbors during the week.

It seems so plain to me that we as Christians, and we working within the church, have a huge job before us. The world does not perceive us the way we perceive ourselves. Buchanan puts it, "Maybe the world would find churches more interesting and compelling if they showed something of the love of Jesus in their lives and practices."

I was reminded of our need for this in the recently completed class I have been teaching at Iolani schools during the summer. I have before me 17 high school students who are enrolled in a "required" class on the bible. For the last few years I have included a question on the final that asks whether the student thinks that Christianity (based on our reading of the New Testament) is inherently exclusivist and intolerant of other religions. The question has added poignance because many of the students come from non-Christian or completely secular homes.

This year, more than in past years, I was startled to read on perhaps a quarter of the answers, some version of a view that while Islam was accepting of other religions, Christianity was essentially intolerant.

I thought to myself that the view reflected the perceptions of the younger population that was utterly at variance with the perception of another (older) slice of our population, one that would see Christianity as essentially tolerant and accepting of everyone, "Christ-like hospitality."

The message for me is similar to what I find powerfully expressed in a story that originates with Tony Campolo. He tells a true story. The punchline probably goes back at least to G.K. Chesterton, that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and not tried.

I encountered Campolo's story first in a book by Philip Yancey, but variations of the story have apparently been circulated broadly. It goes like this (from /www.swapmeetdave.com):

A few years ago Tony flew to Hawaii to speak at a conference. The way he tells it, he checks into his hotel and tries to get some sleep. Unfortunately, his internal clock wakes him at 3:00 a.m. The night is dark, the streets are silent, the world is asleep, but Tony is wide awake and his stomach is growling.

He gets up and prowls the streets looking for a place to get some bacon and eggs for an early breakfast. Everything is closed except for a grungy dive in an alley. He goes in and sits down at the counter. The fat guy behind the counter comes over and asks, "What d'ya want?"

Well, Tony isn't so hungry anymore so eying some donuts under a plastic cover he says, "I'll have a donut and black coffee."

As he sits there munching on his donut and sipping his coffee at 3:30, in walk eight or nine provocative, loud prostitutes just finished with their night's work. They plop down at the counter and Tony finds himself uncomfortably surrounded by this group of smoking, swearing hookers. He gulps his coffee, planning to make a quick getaway. Then the woman next to him says to her friend, "You know what? Tomorrow's my birthday. I'm gonna be 39." To which her friend nastily replies, "So what d'ya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake, and sing happy birthday to you?"

The first woman says, "Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I'm just sayin' it's my birthday. I don't want anything from you. I mean, why should I have a birthday party? I've never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?"

Well, when Tony Campolo heard that, he said he made a decision. He sat and waited until the women left, and then he asked the fat guy at the counter, "Do they come in here every night?"

"Yeah," he answered.

"The one right next to me," he asked, "she comes in every night?"

"Yeah," he said, "that's Agnes. Yeah, she's here every night. She's been comin' here for years. Why do you want to know?"

"Because she just said that tomorrow is her birthday. What do you think? Do you think we could maybe throw a little birthday party for her right here in the diner?"

A cute kind of smile crept over the fat man's chubby cheeks. "That's great," he says, "yeah, that's great. I like it." He turns to the kitchen and shouts to his wife, "Hey, come on out here. This guy's got a great idea. Tomorrow is Agnes' birthday and he wants to throw a party for her right here."

His wife comes out. "That's terrific," she says. "You know, Agnes is really nice. She's always trying to help other people and nobody does anything nice for her."

So they make their plans. Tony says he'll be back at 2:30 the next morning with some decorations and the man, whose name turns out to be Harry, says he'll make a cake.

At 2:30 the next morning, Tony is back. He has crepe paper and other decorations and a sign made of big pieces of cardboard that says, "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" They decorate the place from one end to the other and get it looking great. Harry had gotten the word out on the streets about the party and by 3:15 it seemed that every prostitute in Honolulu was in the place. There were hookers wall to wall.

At 3:30 on the dot, the door swings open and in walks Agnes and her friend. Tony has everybody ready. They all shout and scream "Happy Birthday, Agnes!" Agnes is absolutely flabbergasted. She's stunned, her mouth falls open, her knees started to buckle, and she almost falls over.

And when the birthday cake with all the candles is carried out, that's when she totally loses it. Now she's sobbing and crying. Harry, who's not used to seeing a prostitute cry, gruffly mumbles, "Blow out the candles, Agnes. Cut the cake."

So she pulls herself together and blows them out. Everyone cheers and yells, "Cut the cake, Agnes, cut the cake!"

But Agnes looks down at the cake and, without taking her eyes off it, slowly and softly says, "Look, Harry, is it all right with you if...I mean, if I don't...I mean, what I want to ask, is it OK if I keep the cake a little while? Is it all right if we don't eat it right away?"

Harry doesn't know what to say so he shrugs and says, "Sure, if that's what you want to do. Keep the cake. Take it home if you want."

"Oh, could I?" she asks. Looking at Tony she says, "I live just down the street a couple of doors; I want to take the cake home, is that okay? I'll be right back, honest."

She gets off her stool, picks up the cake, and carries it high in front of her like it was the Holy Grail. Everybody watches in stunned silence and when the door closes behind her, nobody seems to know what to do. They look at each other. They look at Tony.

So Tony gets up on a chair and says, "What do you say that we pray together?"

And there they are in a hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon, half the prostitutes in Honolulu, at 3:30 a.m. listening to Tony Campolo as he prays for Agnes, for her life, her health, and her salvation. Tony recalls, "I prayed that her life would be changed, and that God would be good to her."

When he's finished, Harry leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"

In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."

Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."

During my class this summer, many of the students had a nervous habit of saying "Yeeaaah" in a real drawn out way. It was a way of saying, "That's all. I don't have any more. That's it." At one point I said to them that that was a rough translation of the Greek word they encountered in the New Testament: "Amen."

"Yeah."

Trying to keep it simple

March Angelus

Fr. Dale

As I write this, we are half way through Lent. It has been a delightful journey thus far. Our Wednesday fellowship group (meeting at 9:30 am) has moved from discussion (and practice) of prayer to a metaphysical discussion on Being and God as that which is. With that group we have to try to keep things simple, but we cover lots of ground. On Wednesday evenings, between 45 and 60 folks from the east Honolulu parishes have been meeting to consider various perspectives on the Joseph of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Each time we have met it has been better than the last. And it took me 3 sessions to finally get a bowl of mushroom soup. Joseph has been seen as a member of a dysfunctional family, as a sign of redemption, as reminder of the need to work against slavery in the world today, . . . and upcoming Joseph as dreamer and Joseph as a way of seeing ourselves. As I began preaching, Lent just beginning, I stumbled onto a phrase that has become my personal mantra for the season. Show up Listen Speak heart-felt truth Let go of the results These 4 steps have become for me a short-hand way of understanding my daily task of living faithfully, under the banner of the Lord Jesus Christ. They don’t say all that needs to be said, but they provide a road-map for me of what I must do in order to recognize God’s sovereignty over my life. The other day I happened to share with the small youth group meeting the message I tell myself at least once a week. They didn’t really believe me. I said, “I don’t necessarily do a very good job of it, but I tell myself that it’s the goal.” The acronym means: “keep it simple stupid.” It originated with the growth of Alcoholics Anonymous and its Twelve Steps to sobriety. But I apply the wisdom of “keep it simple stupid” to my daily affairs and to my aim in preaching, teaching, and counseling. Now the fact is that I am not very good at keeping it simple. The “stupid” part of the saying is usually the loudest for me. “Don’t think too highly of yourself, Dale,” I hear it say. “Take yourself much less seriously.” As the bumper sticker said, that’s why angels can fly, because they regard themselves lightly. Many before me have noted that the 12 steps are in fact a marvelous short-hand way to understand the Christian life. They match remarkable well with the way of life outlined by saints and holy men and women of ages past. These are the original Twelve Steps as defined by Alcoholics Anonymous: We admitted we were powerless over . . . that our lives had become unmanageable. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to . . . , and to practice these principles in all our affairs. I learned some time ago a short-hand way of remembering the 12 steps, reducing them to 3: “I can’t. God can. I think I’ll let him.” Now these don’t really cover all of the steps, only the 1st half. The 2nd half could be summarized by the opening of St. Mary’s mission statement, “Share God’s love.” I can’t God can I think I’ll let Him Share His Love Easter (in this short-hand environment) is getting to the end of the 12∕4 steps (which is really a way to get to the beginning of them all over again). Easter is recognition that in the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, we have indeed been awakened, we have been raised with him, we have become a new creature. Thank you for the journey. I invite you into the simple steps that proceed from showing up to sharing God’s love.

Season of Hope

Season of Hope

Fr Dale

December Angelus

Thanksgiving Day is past. The stores have rolled out their Christmas promotions and decorations. We have entered the “holiday season.” As has been said countless times before, such a pattern of time is not the church’s time but the culture’s time. During my 2 weeks of vacation at the beginning of November, I concentrated on doing 3 things: Resting, Reading, and Exercise. I did tolerably well at each of them, which is to say I could have done better but I could have done worse. In the reading department, while at Camp Mokule’ia, I read Sephen Hawking’s The Universe in a Nutshell. I had eyed this book in the bookstore from its first appearance, but put off buying it. Finally a friend loaned it to me. Hawking, for those of you unfamiliar with the name, is a world-famous physicist (perhaps familiar from the image of him in a motorized wheel-chair, since he has suffered from ALS for many years). He made his name in physics because of his work in demonstrating the theoretical existence of “black holes.” He now holds the same chair of Mathematics at Cambridge as did Isaac Newton 300 years ago. Of late, Hawking is well-known to many because he has done better than most at making contemporary physics accessible to ordinary folks like myself. The reading My reading was exhilarating and challenging. When I was 16 years old I had some facility in science and math. 40 years later it is all a faint glimmer in the past. It turns out the stars in the sky are somethig like that glimmer of the past. The light we see sparkling in the night sky actually left those stars millions of years ago. And that’s just the beginning of the journey that Hawking offers the reader. Einstein’s contributions, string theory (wherein there are postulated many more dimensions than the 4 to which we are accustomed: 3d + time) and much more awaits the reader. Among the mind-bending discussions in the book, a fair amount of time is spent considering the possibility of time travel. Though the question is hotly debated among today’s scientists, Hawking believes that there is a good possibility that time-travel is theoretically (as opposed to “practically”) possible. You may well be asking why I am writing about this here and why I think you might care. The reason grows out of my own conviction – it is a foundation of my faith in God – that “God is Truth.” For this reason I believe that anyone who is able to know or glimpse any facet of what is true, that person is knowing something of God. Scientists, for me, can teach me something about God – not everything, to be sure, but something. So I pay attention and am interested in what they are saying – as I try to pay attention to what artists, musicians, even politicians are saying and doing. They each are capable of teaching me something of God. From my own experience of God, I am not at all astonished by the idea of time being slippery, the present slipping into the past and then again into the future. Something like that proclamation is built into our brief exclamation of faith at the Eucharist: “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” Ancient meditation on the meaning of the Seder meal at Passover indicates that while the stories of past events are retold (e.g. enslaved Israelites in Egypt being delivered by Yahweh) what was past is made present and God’s deliverance is made real for us. The same thing is believed by Christians to occur at the Eucharistic prayer. What I found intriguing about my reading of Hawking was that he seemed to primarily consider the possibilty of going back in time. He wasn’t really considering the possibility of discovering where it’s all headed. The reason for that, as he freely admits, is that as a positivist scientist, he is interested in the evidence that can be seen and demonstrated. As Christians, we have a different starting point, a different platform for hearing the evidence and for looking out from this place we call home and the present time. In particular, I have in mind the essential nature of “hope” in the Christian view of the world and the “universe.” We are now entering that season of hope, approaching the “holidays” as the popular culture calls them. In the language of the church, we are ending a church year and beginning another with the anticipation, the waiting, the expectation, the listening, and the preparation that is involved with celebrating the Nativity of Jesus the Messiah. The Meaning of Faith 1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts; and always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, with humility and fear: 2 When I was in college, I laughed at the stories from a couple of comedians based in Maine. They told stories that were local to the northeast of the U.S., but somehow the comedy played in other parts of the country too. I was able to “get it.” One of the stories I still remember is of the directions being given to a traveler in some rural area of Maine. The local person begins by pointing to the barn “down thar” where you turn left and go a pretty far piece, then you make a right turn at the big oak tree, . . . and after a long account, he ends by saying, “Come to think of it, you can’t get there from here.” I thought of that story because it seems to me that you can’t get from Stephen Hawking’s starting point to the place of hope as told in the Letter to the Hebrews or 1st Peter. As fantastical as Hawking’s reflections are, they are rooted in a rear-ward looking view of the universe. His universe in a nut-shell can’t include the place to which we are headed. Hope looks out to the future, to what we cannot yet see, but to which we are headed. It is our destination that is now unfolding. When my children were younger – and in their eyes I was big and strong – they would jump off the stairs into my arms. Sometimes there would be a contest to see how high up they could go. I enjoyed exercising with them their ability to trust. That seems to be the missing ingredient in the scientist’s view of the universe. It’s difficult for them to trust in what is unseen (or unmeasurable). When the eyes of faith look out at the universe, we can see all of what Stephen Hawking can see, looking backward. But we can also see that which we anticipate, that for which we long, that which is unfolding into our present. The season is upon us, and we begin to long for the coming (the advent) of Christmas. And as God is faithful, from ages past to the future ages, he appears among us, Emmanuel. The light that is come into the world illuminates our path so that both present, past and future are made manifest (Epiphany). And our journey continues. We proceed through the slow days and the fast ones, the lengthening (Lent) of days. And the God of ages past and the future ages continues with us. Finally, in the center of our life, at the beginning of the meaning of the universe, God’s Son comes to an end and a new beginning on the cross (Easter). God is with us. Praise be to Him who was, who is, and who is to come. The alpha and the omega.

Change and transitions

Angelus February 2007

Fr. Dale

I returned last week from 4 days attending a conference put on by the national church. The title was “Upward Bound.” It was billed as a follow up to workshops titled “Start Up Start Over.” I was interested in the work because of my conviction that St. Mary’s is now going through an important transition in its life of just over 100 years. I hoped to gain some insight both for myself and for the congregation, some tools and some new skills, that would help us along this time of change. The diocese is quite obviously going through change that is marked by the election of a new bishop. The change confronting us is less obvious and is really not unlike the changes facing congregations all over the country. Linda Lingle was aware of a similar kind of dynamic when she gave her “State of the State” address this year. She said, Some think it is easier to keep doing what we have been doing. They think it is too hard to change. But, hard or not . . . change will happen. The question for us to answer is, will we just let change happen to us in the coming years . . . or will we create the change we want to see so that future generations are able to live a good life in Hawai’i? I had a somewhat quirky approach to our workshop because the title of it sounded like a program I was quite aware of growing up in Colorado. “Outward Bound” grew out of the observation that under similar conditions of stress, some people some people survive and some perish. The observation was first made in the Navy during World War II. When a ship was torpedoed and sinking, some sailors survived and others didn’t. Outward Bound was intended to train people to be a part of the survivors. How to function well under extreme stress. I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn’t Outward Bound, it was Upward Bound. However, because of my association, I had a thought that perhaps Upward Bound was intended to train people (leaders) in congregations to be able to be survivors at a time when many Episcopal congregations are facing deep questions of survival. Why is it that some congregations flourish while others in more or less similar circumstances perish? And what can we do about it? Maybe the association was intentionally made by the organisers? As I write, I am aware of Lent being upon us. It always seems to come too early for me, whatever the actual calendar date may be. It no doubt has something to do with what “keeping Lent” means to a pastor of a small congregation. It may also have to do with an inner voice that says, “This year, Dale, you should do better than last.” Every year is new, and yet every year it is the same. Not unlike the rhythm of our lives. Things are constantly changing and forever familiar. We help to make them that way. We don’t want to be overtaken by the “new” and we want things to get better. We want there to be an upward trajectory in our lives, while not disrupting the things that we know and are familiar. Keeping Lent in the wider “catholic” tradition of which we are a part means to intentionally travel the way of the cross that Jesus’ entire life was. If during the Epiphany season we have heard of the highlights of Jesus’ emerging ministry that reveal his identity as Savior and Lord, during Lent we travel in lightning fashion the main road that he took – from Nazareth to Jerusalem, from promise and excitement to death on the cross. As we travel, we expect that the ship we are on is impregnable, it cannot be sunk. We anticipate advancing from one victory to another, from one awesome sign to another. That’s what Jesus did, afterall. The first sign at Cana. Wonders and healings that followed him wherever he went. No wonder the disciples anticipated that this was going to be a big deal. They just didn’t know what kind of big deal it was to be. And so we (at least I) get surprised each Lent as we discover that the end of the road is an ignoble execution. Year by year I really do end up experiencing a little piece of Jesus’ way of the cross. Enough. God’s mercy gives me just enough. Not too much. Not too little. The main opportunity for keeping Lent that we are offering this year at St. Mary’s will occur on Wednesday evenings. The congregations of east Honolulu will be gathering for a light supper, followed by a teaching and discussion about Joseph the Patriarch (son of Jacob). This is the first such cooperative venture that I am aware of on this side of the mountains among our Episcopal congregations. I very much hope it is a success that we can build on. This effort will really begin the day before Ash Wednesday with a pancake supper and video presentation at Holy Nativity. Erni Uno was the last to spearhead such a dinner at St. Mary’s. I will be remembering him on that day. The schedule for Ash Wednesday will be slightly different from what it has been in the past. There will be 2 services offered, one at noon and the other at 7:00 p.m. Ashes will be imposed at both services and the schedule should allow almost everyone to attend one of them. I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. (BCP, p. 265)

To climb mountains

Sermon: Last Epiphany 2/18/07

Pride in Colorado expedition up Mt. Everest

It's a very ordinary story that I have to tell this morning. It happens that it is my story -- but it could be that of any of you. It's a story of longing for a closeness with God. It is about seeking God in the high places -- and finding him in the ordinary. It is a story of conversion not unlike that faced by Jesus' good friends Peter and James and John. They had left everything to follow him, to learn from him -- but still they didn't really get it until they had followed all the way to Calvary and beyond -- to the empty tomb.

"If we can pull it off," Norman Dyhrenfurth said of the West Ridge, "it would be the biggest possible thing still to be accomplished in Himalayan mountaineering." This judgment came from the man best qualified to make it. He was leading the American Mount Everest Expedition when he said it; he had already climbed in many lands, had been on four previous Himalayan expeditions including the Swiss Expedition to Everest, and he had been dreaming of the West Ridge for years. SIERRA CLUB SAN FRANCISCO Copyright 1965 from the foreword . . .

The West Ridge

It was especially important to me that 2 members of the team were from Colorado. Dick Pownall I knew slightly because of my involvement with the Colorado Mountain Club and the Colorado Ski Patrol.

I experienced a mild disappointment that the Colorado members weren't on the final assault.

But the experience helped to ignite a longing within to be in the wilderness -- to go to places that not many had gone before.

Mountaintop experiences

Mt. Athos

Because the longing in my heart was really a longing experience God -- to be close in some way to the power of God -- eventually the longing for the wilderness took the shape of a spiritual seeking. I looked to other kinds of mountains and mountain experiences.

Like Mt. Everest, which I never expected to climb, I became enchanted for a time with the spirit of Mt. Athos.

Monastery at Mt. Athos, Greece

Metaphors and Symbols for Religious and Spiritual Experiences

Mountains have always been places where God was especially prone to be encountered. Consider these words about religious language:

"Language which authentically describes a spiritual experience transcends verifiable knowledge and is very imaginative, poetic, metaphoric and inexact. It is language stretched to the breaking point. In speaking about spiritual matters, we are always beating around the bush, albeit a burning bush."

". . . Authentic spiritual language about God does not confuse the map with the territory, the symbol with the thing. Literalism concentrates on the letter and misses the spirit; it gets the words but never the music, creates a spiritual tone-deafness. You can starve to death trying to eat a cookbook."

Although direct and precise words aren't adequate to the task of answering the question, I'd like to suggest that metaphors will do very well. In fact, some metaphors convey the essence of a religious or spiritual experience so well that they have been used by people throughout the world and in different cultures.

For example, take the metaphor of a sacred peak. Such mountains have been used as a cosmic axis for centuries—Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, The Mount of Olives, Mount Olympus, ... During the Second World War, a French mystic and writer, Rene Daumal, drew on this symbolism and wrote Mount Analogue, an allegorical novel of a supreme mountain where people may awake from the slumber of their usual state of mind and ascend to higher levels of consiousness:

"In the mythic tradition, the Mountain is the bond between Earth and Sky. Its solitary summit reaches the sphere of eternity, and its base spreads out in manifold foothills into the world of mortals. It is the way by which man can raise himself to the divine and by which the divine can reveal itself to man. . . . For a mountain to play the role of Mount Analogue, the ultimate symbolic mountain, its summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings as nature has made them. It must be unique, and it must exist geographically." By Arlene F. Harder, MA, MFT

One of my climbing partners introduced me to that book -- it was many years and much suffering before he would find his way to Christ's embrace.

Malcolm Muggeridge: story of conversion

It was the priest who brought me back to the church who introduced me to Malcolm Muggeridge. MM was going through hiw own personal journey of gradual conversion. And that was how my priest friend found me.

I found a keen connection with Muggeridge -- his quest and his "curmudgeonly" attitude toward establishment institutions.

He wrote wonderfully, curmudgeonly (giving me the word)

"As Hilaire Belloc truly remarked, the Church must be in God's hands because, seeing the people who have run it, it couldn't possibly have gone on existing if there weren't some help from above. I also felt unable to take completely seriously . . . the validity or permanence of any form of human authority . . . There is . . . some other process going on inside one, to do with faith which is really more important and more powerful. I can no more explain conversion intellectually than I can explain why one falls in love with someone whom one marries. It's a very similar thing . . ."

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. Malcolm Muggeridge

I can say that I never knew what joy was like until I gave up pursuing happiness, or cared to live until I chose to die. For these two discoveries I am beholden to Jesus. Malcolm Muggeridge

Muggeridge became known as the "discoverer" of Mother Teresa, whom he first interviewed in London in 1968. He told the world about her deeds through a television documentary filmed in Calcutta called Something Beautiful for God, and through a best-selling book of the same name. He was well-known for his wit and profound writings (e.g., "Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream"). He wrote two volumes of an autobiography called Chronicles of Wasted Time. The first volume (1972) was The Green Stick. The second volume (1973) was The Infernal Grove. A projected third volume The Right Eye was started but never completed.

Something Beautiful for God

My search for spiritual experience

Mother Theresa

Before embracing Christianity I looked for spiritual enlightenment in hallucinogenic drugs. I quickly discovered it wasn't there.

I was curious about a cult in our college town (Colorado Springs). I was disinclined. A friend I went with was “caught” and eventually became a leader.of what became a white supremacist group in Idaho and Montana.

Later, after conversion, I was interested in Charismatic/Pentecostal experiences. Here, too, eventually I concluded that this path was not a “be-all and end-all.”

My conversion came from having a "taste" of the sacred at Good Friday. It was a simple parish. Not an unusal celebration of the liturgy, though it was “high church”. God had captured me.

Consider:

• Moses on Mt. Sinai -- but then returns to the people

• Jesus at Transfiguration -- revealing glory, but bringing his disciples right down to the nitty-gritty of life.

Like Jesus, our call from God is not to dwell on the mountains. It is to plow into the plains. Into the everyday life that surrounds us.

And that way, leads us to the least among us, to those in need, ...

Sisters of Charity at work

... and to Calvary.

To walk with Christ, to be a disciples, is to have a longing for God -- to haave seen a glimpse, to have heard a voice, to have had a foretaste of the heavenly banquet --

But then to go down into the valley, as Moses did, as Peter and James and John did, as Mother Theresa did,

And there to embrace the world. To love it. To bring some healing as God provides. To be a companion. And to tell anyone who will listen, the story of climbing the mountain and coming back down again.

That's our story for today.