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.