Companions on the Journey

Walking the Labyrinth, July 17, 2009—Today, both Orthodox Churches of the East and the Latin Church of the West unite to celebrate the feast of St Alexis, the “Man of God.” He was the son of a noble Roman family who lived a life of prayer and fasting in the deserts of Syria. In 1918, in the hours after midnight, the family of Tsar Nicholas II was killed by the local militia of the Ekaterinburg Soviet. Since the forced abdication of the Tsar the previous March, he and his family had become pieces in a chess game (one hesitates to say pawns, but…) between the Bolsheviks and White Russians during the Russian Civil War. They were moved from place to place to keep them from the hands of Tsarist forces. On July 16, the town of Ekaterinburg echoed with the sounds of battle; forces of the White and Red armies clashed just outside the town. Fearing the Romanovs might be freed, the decision was made to kill them. The accounts of their death make gruesome but uninteresting reading. More intriguing is what happened afterward. The royal corpses were disposed of down abandoned wells and mineshafts, and various chemical attempts were made to destroy any trace of them, but these proved unsuccessful. Lenin, in Moscow, made loud and public declarations that he was shocked and had nothing to do with the deaths. When the White Russians captured Ekaterinburg the local Soviet officials claimed they weren’t responsible. Later a White Russian leader caustically remarked, “The Tsar was evidently killed by accident, no one knows by whom.” A scrutiny of secret Soviet State documents in 1990, however, uncovered a telegraph from Lenin to the Ekaterinburg Soviet ordering them to “kill them all.” On this day in 1861, the United States Congress authorized the first federal paper money (“greenbacks”—in $5, $10, and $20 notes); a month later, the same Congress imposed the first federal income tax on Americans. Things have been going in the same direction ever since. In 1836, Bishop William White, who had been consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1787, died. He was the first homeowner in Philadelphia to install an indoor “necessary room.” At a Brooklyn, New York printing shop, in 1901, Dr Willis Carrier installed the world’s first air conditioning system, allowing printers to control the temperature, humidity, ventilation and air quality of their shop. For the first two decades of the 20th Century, Carrier’s invention was used to cool machines, not people. Then, in 1925, it occurred to the owner of the Rivoli Theater on Broadway that the “Apparatus for Treating Air” (the air conditioner's first official name) might be equally used to cool off people, too. He hung a sign out saying, “It’s Cool Inside.” Skyrocketing ticket sales at the Rivoli forced his competitors to seek out Mr Carrier. In 1505 Martin Luther, the German from Eisleben, joined the monastic order of Augustinians. Twelve years later, he would want out in the worst way, and made quite a ruckus doing so. Disneyland, “the Happiest Place on Earth,” opened its gates for the first time in 1955. Walt Disney, Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings and Ronald Reagan (who received the “low billing” that day) hosted a television gala of the event. It was not a Happy Day at the earth’s Happiest Place. Disney had ordered 6,000 special invitations to be printed for the first day, but by noon over 28,000 people attempted to enter, most with counterfeit tickets. A strike by the plumbers’ union meant there was no water, including the “necessary rooms!” A heat wave pushed the thermometer in Anaheim that day to 110 degrees. The heat wave continued and Walt met with financiers to discuss the possibility of failure. Fortunately for children and bankers the world over, people did continue to come. In ancient Egypt, today was celebrated as the birthday of Isis (“She of the Throne”), goddess of motherhood and fertility, responsible for the seasonal rise of the Nile. The old Roman calendar counts today as the thirteenth day before the kalends of August (or as they would have written it: ad XIII Kal. Aug.) It is the 198th day of the year; 167 remain. The United States Congress (the same ones who brought you the Income Tax) have decreed July as National Horseradish Month and also National Blueberry Month, so choose. So important is the hot dog that the same body has recognized July as National Hot Dog Month and July 18 as National Hot Dog Day. Others, far wiser than I, have noted we get the government we deserve.

A CLOSE FRIEND of mine is dying. I am going to see him tomorrow, not for the last time, I hope, but to bid him Godspeed. Bob has been a rare companion on my walk through the labyrinth. A true friend, in my book of definitions, is one who loves you enough to tell you the truth, but privately. That Bob has done and I hope, so too, have I. My journey along the labyrinth has been a particularly rich one. I have known souls of great depth and incredible shallowness, men of wealth and homeless vagabonds, liars and poets, saints and scoundrels. All of them, one way or another, have enriched my journey (admittedly, my appreciation for some of them has grown only as my association with them has faded). But as I pause to jot down my weekly thoughts on the labyrinth, I can’t help but to remember those I’ve known and loved—or at least—known. One of the greatest gifts God gives us is those with whom we share our lives. Like ‘em or not, they are walking a labyrinth no less difficult, if obviously different, than our own. Sometimes, it takes a death to remind us how great are the gifts of life. Each of us must walk our path by ourselves, but God knows it’s not good for us to be alone.

This week—today, in fact—the Episcopal Church in the United States concludes its General Convention, which meets every three years. Given the choices Episcopalians have made at these get-togethers over the past few decades, it’s probably just as well they don’t meet more often. This time, they made a couple of decisions that surprised nobody who is in the least familiar with that religious body—they decided to remove any bars to the ordination of practicing homosexuals (that phrase always strikes me as funny—are they homosexuals who will keep trying till they get it right? if so, shouldn’t we at least occasionally use the phrase “accomplished homosexuals?”) and to authorize the insertion of rites for homosexual marriages into the next edition of the Book of Common Prayer. No surprises there. Much more interesting was the opening sermon of the Convention, preached by Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopals. She declared it was heretical to believe in “individual” salvation. The bishopess called this “the great Western heresy: that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God." Christians of every denomination from the Catholic Church to television evangelists have decried her remarks. Every error, though, is palatable because it contains a kernel of truth, regardless of what the kernel may be buried in. The truth is, we find salvation, to a very great degree, because of the others with us on our pilgrimage. Whatever our faith, or lack of it, we learned its essentials because of those around us. Our families and friends and teachers and pastors have helped each of us become what we are. So Ms Schori is right to this degree: none of us can be saved without the help of those around us. But she is wrong in this equally profound degree: God has made us as individuals, each bearing His image. How I walk along the labyrinth either mars or polishes the greatest gift God has given me: His image of Himself in me. And to the degree I deface the image, nobody around me has to wonder about the reality of hell: I carry hell wherever I go. And most happily, the opposite is also true. To the degree I burnish that image and make it shine, I make it possible for those around me to know, without an intellectual discourse, that Heaven, too is a reality. My friend Bob walked his labyrinth nobly and gracefully, and is now taking his last steps. To the eye which sees but does not understand, he can barely walk. But I know he is sprinting to the center of his labyrinth, knowing Who waits for him there.

FROM MY BOOKSTACK this week, I confess to picking up a book out of sheer indulgence. I first read this book, Journey into Fear, back in 1970. I don’t know how many times—ten at least—I’ve read it since. The copy I now own is my third. Eric Ambler, the author, worked writing copy for a London advertising agency before World War II, writing short stories and a few novels on the side. Journey into Fear was the last, and best, he wrote before the war (many, me included, would simply say this was his best). It is pure escapism, a spy novel whose main character is not a spy, and is wonderfully peopled with Turkish spies and Italian sailors, a elderly German archaeologist and a pair of seedy flamenco dancers. Howard Graham, the protagonist, is an English engineer sent to Istanbul as a temporary consultant. The night before he is to return home, he enters his still-dark hotel room and is shot. He doesn’t know why and neither do we readers for some time. His dangerous escape from would-be assassins puts him aboard slow-moving tramp steamers and fast moving French trains each replete with hidden dangers. Ambler’s writing is tight and fast-paced, but the characters are well-drawn and fascinating, and it is the characters, wittingly and unwittingly, who drive the plot. I’ve read—and own—all eighteen of Ambler’s novels and a collection of his short stories called Waiting for Orders, and occasionally find myself drawn back to the bookshelf where they stand, lined at attention and ready for use. But this is the one I pick up most often when I go there. If you see it somewhere, pick it up, but I offer the invitation with this caveat—don’t plan to read anything else for the next day or two, because you will be otherwise occupied.

QUOTES OF THIS WEEK’S PRINCIPALS:

“I feel much better now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist.”—Martin Luther

“All dressed up, with nowhere to go.”—Bishop William White

“I am not yet ready to be Tsar. I know nothing of the business of ruling.”—Tsar Nicholas II, on the day of his coronation.

“It is true that liberty is precious; so precious that it must be carefully rationed.”—Vladimir I Lenin, who ordered the Romanov’s slaughter

“We will not do less research and development work, and I will not discharge any of the people we have hired; I will work for nothing if I have to."—Dr Willis Carrier, when told by his bankers at the coming of the Depression he needed to fire workers tp keep up profits

“I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing – all this was started by a mouse.”—Walt Disney as he opened Disneyland