Dirt

       Sunday, we watched a video about breath at Alan and Sue Dailey's. The video started with a discussion of us as "fragile, divine dirt." The speaker posed the idea that breathing in and breathing out is the equivalent of speaking God's Name. That when we are born the first thing we must do is speak, and as we die, the last thing we do is speak God's name. I went off onto a private tangent, with my breath control for meditation. Breathing, and awareness of our breath as an avenue to peace for meditation and prayer has always been mystical for me. I remember, untrained at the time, sitting in my dormitory room, lights out except for a primitive light board, and concentrating on making my breating regular and calm. My roommate came home 6 hours later to find me in lotus and so quiet it scared him.
     I also remember almost drowning when I traveled to Southern California for Seminarian Summer. I got caught in a rip tide and was being pulled north and out and down. I remember my fear, remember straining, remember being determined not to lose a single breath, and when the surfer came to lift me up, I remember pausing with him holding me to get my breath back. I was overwhelmed by gratitude, and when I got back to shore, I was also overwhelmed by my awareness of my breathing. I lay there for an hour, feeling myself inhale, pause, exhale, pause. The slow pulse of my life.
     Yesterday, I was able to participate in the Ash Wednesday services at Highland Hospital and at Unity Living Center at St. Mary's. Each began days earlier with a flurry of organizing, deciding on what to do, printing flyers and bulletins, arranging for ashes, deciding the  tactics. On the day, both sites held a short service in the chapel. Lay-led at Highland, priest-led at St. Mary's. Then we chaplains took containers of ash to the floors. For rooms with infection alerts, we used medical swabs. But most people I was able to touch. The ash in my little container was so fragile, so ephemeral, but the looks on the faces of the patients family and staff as they received it were stunning. I was exhausted. This morning, that fragile ephemeral ash is still embedded in my thumb pad, under the nail and in the cuticle. Divine dirt.

Relativism and Generations

In my own continuing “trip” I go to a Bible/Book study group out of the UCC church in Riga. At our meeting on the 6th, we prayed for the world in the context of Pearl Harbor and WWII, and then instead of Bible study, we watched the TV movie “Silent Night,” starring Linda Hamilton.

This is the story of a German hausfrau and her 13 year-old son, who have hiked to the family hunting lodge and spend Christmas there. The lodge becomes a resting place and field hospital for three American and three German soldiers. The hostess demands that the weapons be left outside, but the conflict rages on. Conversation ranged over what morality means, where “honor” can play a part in our lives, and what will prompt a person to take action against the standards and norms of the culture in which she finds herself embedded.

It made me realize that I often get into the “US versus THEM” mindset, thinking of others as barriers, obstructions, and problems rather than as my sisters and brothers, not only as children of God but as kindred in the flesh, with aches and pains, sadnesses and easily bruised egos, all of us alike in the frailty of our earthly and earthy bodies as well is in our eternal souls.

The people of the Greatest Generation are aging away from us at greater and greater speed. The Silent Generation (or the “War Babies”) are now our active elders, and the “Baby Boomers” are the adults and soon to be seniors. The biggest difference in the three cultures from my perspective is the lessening of the black and white and increase in the grey for all conflicts. A friend once lectured me that he thought we would all end up in a great sea of relativist morality unless we decided to take a stand. He argued that we must stand firm and draw moral lines in the sand; we must forbid certain activities and punish the violators. But I understand, and that movie on the 6th brought me to appreciate that there are two forces at work in all of us. The first is self preservation, which operated in the Hausfrau – she began to see the evil of the War only when it came to take her 13 year old son away. The second is an innate (God-given) sense of right and wrong which was shown by her outreach to both the Germans and Americans. The miracle described in the movie is that she was in the right place at the right time to save six lives and celebrate Christmas in the midst of the evil war she was fleeing. I believe that with those two forces in all of us, we can reach for a civilization that respects and preserves all people, what Christians call the Kingdom of God.

Can a person truly understand, empathize and forgive what might also be deemed alien, immoral and unforgiveable? I agonized over the Killing Fields of Cambodia. How could there be such things as the Holocaust and Khmer Rouge’s decimations and the Chinese Cultural Revolution? How could humans with souls like mine commit these atrocities? How could American criminals become mass murderers and torturing cannibals? My father and Goldwater both believed in the philosophy of “just wipe ‘em off the face of the earth.” The Silent Generation wanted blockade and separation – “Let ‘em go to Hell on their own.” Boomers, who earned their stripes questioning the motives of the Viet Nam war on both sides, began our journey starting at the process of trying to understand the others. And I believe it is in the trying that we become Christ-like. We must still oppose, but to truly and successfully oppose, we must understand, we must love and we must forgive. To mindlessly oppose is to become mindless. Isolation from the world is impossible. Evil is permutable, so we must be able to perceive, understand and adapt our defenses and even become preventative. Christ’s teachings first and foremost demand that we THINK not that we apply a formula or look it up in a table. We must become Sun Bin for Peace.

Psalm 46:10 Be still and know that I am God.

The magazine "A Northern Light" had a repeat of an 1886 article which advised the reader that noise and busy-ness was not a sign of work being done. I t reminded me of a truism in engineering one of my college fraternity brothers was fond of repeating, "If a part makes a lot of noise, replace it, it is going to fail." Quietly doing one's job without fanfare or hullabaloo is not only efficient, but effective.

Coincidentally, my spiritual director, Marie, has asked me to think on the idea that God may not want or expect us to "do" anything. It might be our calling to "be" for God.

It is who we are that may encourage, enable or even drive us to take one action or another. We are not doing it "for God;" we are doing it because it is in our nature. That is also simply "being" for God. But I think Marie was calling me to consider taking a break from activity and spend some time in quiet and reflection.

My sister sent this to me. I remember seeing it in the theaters when I was just a lad...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVh75ylAUXY&feature=player_embedded

Covenant

What is covenant? The Anglican Communion seems to be in a furor over the breaking of covenant. The Episcopal Church of the USA is in an uproar about what appears to me to be accusations of the breaking of covenant.

In the Bible, God offers Covenant with the created several times. Each time the created break the covenant. Each time God follows up with another covenant. We are constantly called to be, think and act like members of a covenant. The offer stands and we can choose to be or not to be in relationship with God. If we fail, God tries again.

I see the Universal Church as an on-going covenant. We're asked to believe and act as though we are believers that we are all one, through communion with God. I also see us continually failing, and see God continuing to offer paths to communion no matter how broken our side of the covenant.

All that said, a word from the jailhouse lawyer in me: Neither side in the current battle is right.

The literalists are saying that the Word cannot be altered by the changes in the culture of the World in which it is immersed, and therefor they have a right to break away. They ignore the (small "t") truth that logically, if covenants and agreements cannot be broken, then they have no argument before law to take away assets with them when they go. The original covenant of each parish should not be altered by the culture in which it is immersed...

The progressives are saying that the Word is constantly being revealed and that new understandings reveal new meaning. Well and good, but apply that evenly, and the original covenant of each congregation must also be re-examined in the light of new revelation.

Last week's New Testament reading from Ephesians is being ignored by both sides, but especially by the dissenters. They seem to be unable to put aside their anger, and it is leading them into slander and libel, as seen from this one set of eyes. Now I hear that South Carolina Diocese is rattling their chains. First, the Bishop is being led into falsifying his pledge to remain in the ECUSA. He either lied to obtain sanction or he had plans to violate the covenant. Either way, I am hurt by another clod falling off the continent. Second, if the covenant feels like chains, they should throw them off until the concept of covenant fits their theology better.

I have remained an Episcopalian despite the hurt, betrayal and faithlessness I perceived. My formation as a member of a denomination defined by covenant and compromise and my desire to worship in communion, even with those who hurt and/or provoked me, was stronger than my desire to hurt or provoke them. Eventually, piece by piece, my heart has been healed and my communion with God and my siblings in God's Church strengthened. Not strengthened by agreement, but by the commonalities, the joint struggle to remain a parish in the Episcopal Church, but also to do mission and ministry together in difficult times and situations.

What next, God? What can I do to help? Speak, Adonai, your servant is listening.

Dan's Sermon

My pastor gave a sermon today about the crowd the day after the feeding of the 5,000. he talked about us (the crowd) just not getting it. We want a miracle each and every day, and we don't understand that we ARE being fed. When asked, we quote Scripture, but we don't listen to the words we're given: Love God and each other. We are commanded to be in relationship: relationship to God and to each other.

My mind drifted a little, and I thought of my concentric circles of living. With the pastor's sermon, the bull's eye became God, around that, me, and around that my family and in-laws, around that my friends and around that my community, and then outward. The sermon said that there are only two: the bull's eye, which is God, and then the rest of Creation. Hm. No wonder we cite Scripture instead of obey it! It's easier!

Rainbows

There is in Rochester a bridge over the Genesee River. On one side is the Kodak Hawkeye plant (which during WWII manufactured bombsights and now that Kodak, Bausch and Lomb and other Rochester companies no longer actually MAKE things, has been let to ITT for some purpose no one knows) and its employee parking. On the other side of the bridge is the Maplewood rose garden park and the YMCA. On the bridge is a perpetual rainbow. Driving across westbound in the morning and eastbound in the evening, the mist from the cascade directly upriver floats in front of you, and the sun shines through it. It is a visual caress. No matter the season, there are people who make a special trip to use that bridge rather than the one a mile south or north.

I choose to drive up St. Paul Street to go to church two or three times a week so that I can cross there rather than downtown or at Bausch Street. I carry that rainbow into church with me. I have that image of God's creation when I hear the priest say, "and this fragile Earth, our island home," and the people respond, "By your will they were created and have their being." (BCP p370) Then my heart sings and that rainbow shimmers in my mind's eye.