Today is July 30th, the 211th day of 2010; 154 days remain in the year. If your travels take you to Indiana today you might want to stop in Berne for an hour or two and join in the festivities of “Berne Swiss Days,” with yodeling competitions, polka bands and a “stein-toss” contest. If your tastes run to a more literary vein and you’re in Mystic, Connecticut (I was ordained to the diaconate in Mystic long, long ago), there is a marathon reading of Moby Dick beginning this afternoon and continuing until the whole book is read aloud. The reading is supposed to go on until sometime around midnight of August 1, the day and hour the book’s author was born. The text will be recited aboard the Charles W Morgan, the last wooden whaling ship in the world, permanently docked at the Mystic seaport. An actor portraying Herman Melville will read the first and last chapters of the book, otherwise those attending will be asked to take turns. A big WHITE birthday cake (I’ll let you guess what the WHITE birthday cake is in the shape of) will be served at midnight, shipboard. At 2.30 this afternoon, there will be more macabre gathering in the parking lot of the former Red Fox Restaurant, when members of the “Where’s Jimmy?” Club hold their 9th annual celebration. More on that later.
Among those on the long list of saints whose feasts are kept today, St Calimerius of Milan is often overlooked. His feast is observed only in Milan, Italy, where he served as bishop late in the second century. During persecutions under the Emperor Commodus, about 190, he was dropped, headfirst, down a deep, dry well. Orthodox Christians today celebrate the feast of St Leonid of Ust'nedumsk, a seventeenth century monk whose labors included the draining of swamps. According to the Coptic calendar, today is the 23rd of Abib and the feast of St Marina, “the young virgin whose inner strength proved her mightier than that of many young men,” according to the hymn written in her honor, and also the feast of St Longinus, the Roman soldier whose spear pierced the side of Christ at His Crucifixion (this wasn’t why he is recognized as a saint). On the Jewish calendar today is the 19th of Av, they year is 5770. For the ancient Romans, today was “ante diem II kalendas augusti.” For citizens of the United States it is, and has been since 2008, National Cheesecake Day, brought to you by the men and women who now sit in the seats once occupied by Daniel Webster, Henry Clay and John C Calhoun. Is this a great county or what?
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I doubt they were incited by the story of St Calimerius, but today commemorates the first of the three most famous Defenestrations in history. On July 30, 1419, a group of angry citizens in Prague forced their way into the Town Hall and defenestrated a city judge, the mayor and all thirteen members of the city council. The defenestration (from the Latin de: out of, with a downward motion implied; fenestra: window) proved fatal to each and every one; a look at the picture above right will show you why. Sixty-five years later, seven city councilmen were defenestrated by a group of citizens angry about what they claimed was unfairly administered taxes and one hundred and forty years after that, two imperial regents, appointed to govern the city by Emperor Rudolf II, were similarly defenestrated, a current chronicle noted “according to custom.” On March 10, 1948, Jan Masaryk, was found on the sidewalk outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and a bathroom window seven stories above was discovered open. His death was ruled a suicide, but as Masaryk was an agent of the unpopular communist government, rumors immediately spread that he was defenestrated. Is it by accident that congressional office buildings in Washington, DC, rarely have more than two stories?
Today is Mozart’s birthday. Not Johann Chrysostomos Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but that of his sister, Maria Anna Wulburgia Ignatia Mozart (nicknamed “Nannerl” by her family). She was born July 30, 1751, five years before her famous brother. When she was six, her father began teaching her the harpsichord, and before long she had mastered both that and the piano. At nine, she’d published a book of harpsichord compositions and was regarded as a local prodigy. Two years later, Maria Anna and her young brother Wolfgang played a concert before Maximilian III in Munich and filled the concert halls of the city for three weeks. In those days, Maria was regarded as a wunderkind and given top billing over her brother. For five years, the brother-sister act traveled the courts of Europe, winning accolades in Paris and Vienna under the protective eye of their father. They performed for the “crowned heads of Europe,” playing a concert before the King and Queen of France in January of 1764 and two months later they amazed King George III in London, who said they were “living proof of the existence of God.” The Mozarts remained in England more than a year and a half, and performed several times at the request of the king. When the family returned to the continent, Maria became seriously ill and her father was told she would die. She was given Last Rites, but after six months hovering close to death, she recovered. During her recuperation, her father took young Wolfgang Amadeus and continued their concert schedule without her. Early in 1768, she played again with her brother before the French court at Versailles, but now her brother was the more celebrated of the two. Later that year, when Mozart was invited to play before Pope Clement XVI on Easter Day, his sister was left home in Salzburg. She had played her last concert. Her father informed her it was time for her to marry instead and shortly thereafter he chose her future husband from among a group of suitors he’d interviewed. Though she continued play privately and even to write music (which her brother highly praised) her father deemed this was inappropriate for a married woman and some biographers say he destroyed her compositions to prove his point. After the death of her husband, long after the deaths of her famous brother and overbearing father, she returned to a musical career, teaching piano to the children of Salzburg’s minor nobility. And unlike any of the rest of her family, Maria died very rich. None of her children had any interest in music.
Thirty-five years ago this afternoon, at 2.30, Jimmy Hoffa was seen for the last time—at least, by anybody who’s willing to talk about it. He was sitting in a car outside one of his favorite eateries, Harris Machus’ posh Red Fox Restaurant in the Detroit suburb of Bloomfield Hills. Nobody knows for sure whether Hoffa was sent to “sleep with the fishes,” but a federal judge ruled on July 30, 1985 (ten years to the day after his disappearance), that the Teamster boss was permanently sleeping somewhere. After Hoffa’s disappearance, Machus worried his up-scale restaurant, with its English fox-hunt theme and expensive cusine—rack of lamb a la Leopold, veal scaloppine a la Française—were specialties of the house, would go under because of the bad publicity. He needn’t have worried. The high-end crowds doubled in size, it took weeks for reservations to be honored. All the right people in the Detroit area, it seemed, wanted to eat at the place Jimmy Hoffa might have had his last meal. Twenty years after Jimmy Hoffa went on his Last Ride, Machus sold his restaurant and retired to Florida. “It’s where Jimmy himself might have retired,” Machus said, “but he loved our Boston scrod too much. He should’ve planned to eat somewhere else that afternoon.”
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I have a friend in Santa Barbara, a sometime reader of these posts, who is an atheist. Like many atheists, he doesn’t hesitate to share the reasons for his disbelief; unlike some, he acknowledges his inability to understand everything. More than being an atheist (which he most certainly is), I’ve told him more than once, he’s looking for what he believes to be the truth. Ultimately, someone who’s looking for “the truth” will find themselves walking away from atheism. They’ll also, though, walk away from a host of other “-isms.” To be an atheist is to have a belief as firmly entrenched as that of the most ardent Muslim or snake-handling Pentecostalist. Atheism is not lack of belief in God, it’s a “positive” statement and belief, an intellectual assurance that there IS no God. Most people who don’t believe in God aren’t atheists—I reckon there aren’t really too any like my friend who lives in the cooling shades and gentle breezes of Santa Barbara (where, though you may not believe in God, it’s hard not to believe in Heaven!). Most people simply don’t care; they don’t see the relevance of God—or if I can be blunt—they don’t see the relevance of faith as lived in the lives of those who profess faith.
Christian, Muslim or Jew, many “religious” people (and let me hasten to say “religion” is not a bad word in my vocabulary, as is commonplace nowadays) have little notion of the inner content, the underlying principles of their religion. Lutherans, Shiites and Hasidic Jews have decidedly different doctrines and there are many things to keep them apart. But there are things about which they can agree—and I don’t mean that it’s better to feed the hungry than to let them starve (though that may be a point worth considering). The beginning, the foundation and underlying principle of each of these three religions is the insistence on God—something they don’t share, say, with Buddhism, which finds the notion of “God” unnecessary and irrelevant. But it’s more than an insistence on belief in God. Each of these religions insists on the complete “otherness” of God. God is not like us. He’s not one of us to the “nth” degree—not just smart but super-smart, not just good but really, really good, not just like a kindly uncle but more an always jolly, ever-indulgent Santa Claus. God is Holy, Separate, Different. In ancient times, when a scribe would write the word “God” in a manuscript, he would use distinctive letters to mark it apart from the surrounding text. They would wash their hands before writing God’s name. In times past, Christians would bow their heads whenever the name of Jesus was said, in church and out. If you go to a church supply store today, you’ll see Jesus’ name printed on Frisbees and “God” used as a marketing logo.
Small wonder there are atheists.
We’ve created God in our own image. Dummied Him down, fattened Him up and made Him a good ole beer-drinkin’ buddy, who winks when we “sin.” Today’s worship is no longer an “entering into His courts” “laying aside all earthly things,” but more an Amway meeting. We don’t approach Him with awe (a word which has almost lost its meaning) to offer Him our worship; we expect to be entertained and made to feel good about ourselves. Such a god, regardless of who believes in him, Christian, Jew or Muslim, isn’t worth believing in, is certainly undeserving or worship and if this is what “religion” is offering, regardless of how much this may pack ‘em in the pews and fill up the collection plates, it will shrivel the souls of its adherents.
St Ephrem the Syrian, the theological poet of 1600 years ago, said that God was unknowable in Himself, completely different and wholly removed from His creation. We don’t even have the ability to describe Him, because He can’t be encompassed in words. We know about God, Ephrem says, only because God has revealed Himself to us.
“Nature and Scripture bear witness to the Creator;
Nature, as we live in its midst,
Scripture, as we ponder its words.”
If the Lord hadn’t shown Himself glimpses of Himself, St Ephrem says, we’d be completely ignorant of Him. As it is, our minds can only grasp Him through symbols and words that hint at Who He Is.
“Scripture refers to His ‘ears’
To promise us He hears us;
To His ‘eyes’
To let us know He sees.
For our sakes He puts on such names and words
Though they nowhere describe His true Being
He clothes Himself with words of human language
Because otherwise, we would be blind.”
This is a God to worship, Who guides us, otherwise blind, down the labyrinthine paths we walk. We don’t know what He will do with us, but make no mistake: each halting step brings us nearer to a burning Fire—of Self-giving Love. If we lived as if that were true, there would be no atheists, agnostics or even believers. We would all be, in that happy phrase of St Thomas Aquinas, “friends of God.”
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Friday, July 30, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Goat-Stealing
Today is July 23, the 204th day of the year; there are 161 days still to go in 2010, and 60 of those are summer days. Supposedly the “dog days” of summer last from mid-July until the beginning of September (the ancient Romans called the hot, sultry part of the late summer the dies caniculares based on the notion that the Dog Star, Sirius, was somehow responsible for their climatologically-induced suffering; they offered Sirius the annual sacrifice of an unweaned, brown puppy to ease the heat). If the Texas heat thus far this season is any indication, though, there may be few little brown dogs left come Labor Day.
The calendar of the Western Church today puts forward two great saints for veneration: St Brigit of Sweden, a medieval mystic who was herself the mother of a saint, and St Apollinarius of Ravenna, a Syrian who ended up bishop of a big Italian city. Eastern Christians celebrate the feast of St Hannah, mother of the Prophet Samuel. The Coptic calendar for the 16th of Abib (that’s today) commemorates the discovery of the relics of St George, the Great Martyr (of dragon-slaying fame) and the death of St John the Evangelist (the Copts call his Gospel “the Golden gospel”). The Jewish calendar reckons today as the 12th of Av, 5770, and, when they weren’t sacrificing small dogs to stave off the heat, the Romans celebrated July 23 (ante diem IX kalendas augusti) as the “Neptunalia,” to honor the god of oceans and rivers during the parched time of the year. Beginning in 1971 and continuing since despite whatever opposition and criticism they’ve had to face, the Congress of the United States has ordained this day to be National Ice Cream Cone Day.
Though today’s date is crowded with events both portentous and memorable (Sir Harry “Hotspur” Percy, President Ulysses S Grant and novelist Raymond Chandler all passed to eternity on this day), the dog days focused my attention on what happened in St Louis, Missouri, 106 years ago this afternoon. That day, the World’s Fair (formally known as the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition) opened, sprawling over a 1,200 acre site with more than 1,500 buildings. Among them were the immense Italianate Festival Hall, the Palace of Education modeled after a Greek temple and the Egyptian-themed Palace of Mines and Metallurgy. John Philip Sousa opened the Exposition with a concert that sweltering July morning, and a congratulatory telegraph was read to the crowds from President Theodore Roosevelt. But hidden among the Palace of Machinery and the Venetian-inspired Palace of Electricity were ice cream stands, and there, a handful of vendors helped assure the otherwise-forgotten Exposition an abiding place in history. In Ernest Manwi’s waffle stand that afternoon, the Ice Cream Cone was born. It could have been Nick Kabbaz and his brother Albert, Syrian immigrants both of whom worked in Hamwi’s booth, rather than Hamwi, who developed the notion. Nick says it was his idea, and he told Hamwi about it the day the Fair opened. Abe Doumar, also a Syrian vendor at the Fair, claimed that he was the first to wrap a waffle around a ball of ice cream. Abes’ nephew, also named Albert (we’re getting close to needing a chart here, but I don’t know how to do one up), later wrote a book to substantiate the Doumar claim, called The Saga of the Ice Cream Cone. You can’t find a copy on Amazon, but the Smithsonian Institution does have a copy in its archives. David Avayou, a Turkish ice cream salesman, also had a concession stand at the Fair. You won’t be surprised to learn he claimed to have come up with the idea first. “Long before the fair,” he wrote later, “I wanted to make an edible cone for ice cream, having seen metal ice cream cones in France. It took me three weeks and hundreds of pounds of flour and eggs, but I finally got it right.” Charles Menches and his brother Frank sold ice cream at the Fair, too. They don’t claim to have come up with the idea—Charles says a woman he knew was at the fair and wanted to find a “dainty” way to eat some of his ice cream. She bought a fresh waffle from a nearby vendor (could it have been one of Doumar’s waffles? we’ll probably never know) wrapped it into a cone and had Charles fill it with ice cream. Though the Menches brothers aren’t officially credited in the books as the originators of the First Cone, they went on to make a fortune from a candy factory they built in Akron. They made a concoction of caramel-coated peanuts and popcorn they first called “Gee Whiz.” Later they changed the name to “Cracker Jacks.” Whether it was Hamwi, the Kabbaz twins (who later opened the St Louis Ice Cream Cone Company), Abe Doumar, Avayou or the unknown lady friend of the Cracker Jack kings, everybody who’s anybody acknowledges that on the afternoon of July 23rd, 1904, lightning struck someone at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition and World’s Fair at St Louis and the ice cream cone was born. Popes and emperors may come and go, Presidents and Constitutions may rise and fall, but the crunchy ice cream cone might well outlive our American Republic.
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Walking the Labyrinth—Somebody’s been stealing the goats off my parent’s ranch. That may sound like the opening line of an improbable joke, but there are goats missing and more than a few (now even I’m starting to think of punchlines!). There are some large clusters of Live Oaks right on the fence line running alongside a road and clear imprints of truck tires pulling right up to the fence. Sherlock Holmes isn’t needed to figure out this caper. The local sheriff’s office told my mother when she called to report the thefts “Yeah, it’s happening a lot right now. Price of goats is up, so somebody’s taking advantage.” He’s right about that. Goats have almost doubled what they bring at auction in the past year. When she asked the local representative of Law and Order what could be done, his reply was succinct. “Well, shoot ‘em” (I’m pretty sure he meant the goat-rustlers, not the goats). I’m also pretty sure this lawman had no idea who he was talking to. Giving my almost 80 year-old mother carte blanche to fire off the somewhat impressive collection of weaponry at the ranch may devolve into many more official visits to the property than if the Sheriff had bothered to come and commiserate with her in the first place—to say nothing of goats shot dead in the middle of the night!
The situation will have to be addressed—it is a goat ranch, after all—but I can’t escape the potential humor (or the potential deadliness) of the situation. As usual, my mind goes off in its own direction. I found myself meditating, not on how to frustrate the rustlers, but on the role of goats in Holy Scripture, particularly the parable of the sheep and the goats found in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s about the Last Judgment (St Matthew 25. 31-46): “…when the Son of man shall come in His glory…before Him shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats: the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.” Things continue downhill for the goats for the rest of the parable, culminating in the final verse: “these [the unhappy goats] shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous [the smiling sheep] into eternal life.”
One of the unmentioned commemorations this day marks is the gathering of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 AD, called by the Emperor Justinian in the imperial city of Constantinople. One hundred and sixty-five bishops, drawn from across the Mediterranean world, condemned “Origenism,” the writings of a third-century Christian teacher. In particular, they condemned his teachings on the soul and what was called Universal Salvation. Origen, it seems, taught that nobody was going to hell, God would save everybody in the end. He evidently taught (or at least, theorized) that whatever the temporary discomfiture of the goats, eventually they’d be reunited with the sheep (who might be a bit surprised at the new arrivals into bliss). Nobody will know for sure, because the original records of the Council have been misplaced.
The question of hell has long been debated by theologians, professional and otherwise. Though there are many permutations of the argument, succinctly stated it runs: how can a God of love construct a creation which incorporates eternal suffering for any of His creatures? There are many issues to consider, i.e., He is a God of both Justice and Mercy, He gives every human being free will to choose the good or the evil, or simply, “it says so in the Bible.” On the other hand, a very good and dear friend of mine, Merlin Liversidge, used to say, “The idea of subjecting someone—even Adolf Hitler who I fought against in WWII—to an eternity of suffering seems unworthy of an all-loving, all-knowing God.”
It seems to me the first thing to consider in any theological argument (and the thing to continually acknowledge as we go along), is that the question is too deep for us. When we talk about God, we’re guessing. We have things like Scripture, the teaching of faith which has preceded us and our (very limited) reason to guide our discussions, but there is much more we don’t know about the mystery of God than we do. The most important verse in the whole of Scripture, and the most abused, is “God is love” (first letter of St John, 4.16). Any theological consideration which doesn’t continually set that before its face will wander off-base. The problem is that theology is done with words. We use words (because we have nothing else) to describe Something Infinitely Beyond words. “Love” is itself a word so misused and twisted we would have a hard time agreeing what that means in our own situation, much less in Eternity.
We’re not gonna solve the question of the eternity of hell and the sufferings of the damned on these pages, though we may very well turn to consider certain aspects of the question from time to time. What interests me today is simply the question of misplaced goats. When I have listened to the arguments of those who press for the eternal damnation of the goats (Calvinist, Catholic or anything in between) one thing always raises its head. “If there isn’t a hell, why bother to be good? Why not eat, drink and be merry if I’m not going to have to answer for it in the end?” Some of the sheep, at least, want to make sure those goats get what’s coming to them. “We’ve paid our dues here, now it’s their turn!” It is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a pathetic argument, but one I’ve heard many (not just lay people) make time and again. “Why do all this if I don’t have to?”
I think any person, Protestant, Catholic, Jew or Muslim (with maybe many a thoughtful agnostic and a brace of atheists throw in), would agree that the unending joys of Heaven aren’t a reward for good behavior, but the gift of an all-loving Lord. Somehow, in the mystery of God, Heaven is not a reward nor is hell a place of exacting penalties. St John is right, more right than we can or will ever know. God is Love, and if that’s so, hell is part of His mystery of love. Here, seeing through this glass so darkly, we don’t know the particulars. And my old friend Merlin was right, too. God is bigger than our most grandiose conceptions. What seems to us an impossible conundrum, exists as such only for us. Somehow, whatever the fate of the wayward goats, they are encompassed eternally in Love.
Now if I can only figure out how to lock up all those guns at the ranch…
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The calendar of the Western Church today puts forward two great saints for veneration: St Brigit of Sweden, a medieval mystic who was herself the mother of a saint, and St Apollinarius of Ravenna, a Syrian who ended up bishop of a big Italian city. Eastern Christians celebrate the feast of St Hannah, mother of the Prophet Samuel. The Coptic calendar for the 16th of Abib (that’s today) commemorates the discovery of the relics of St George, the Great Martyr (of dragon-slaying fame) and the death of St John the Evangelist (the Copts call his Gospel “the Golden gospel”). The Jewish calendar reckons today as the 12th of Av, 5770, and, when they weren’t sacrificing small dogs to stave off the heat, the Romans celebrated July 23 (ante diem IX kalendas augusti) as the “Neptunalia,” to honor the god of oceans and rivers during the parched time of the year. Beginning in 1971 and continuing since despite whatever opposition and criticism they’ve had to face, the Congress of the United States has ordained this day to be National Ice Cream Cone Day.
Though today’s date is crowded with events both portentous and memorable (Sir Harry “Hotspur” Percy, President Ulysses S Grant and novelist Raymond Chandler all passed to eternity on this day), the dog days focused my attention on what happened in St Louis, Missouri, 106 years ago this afternoon. That day, the World’s Fair (formally known as the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition) opened, sprawling over a 1,200 acre site with more than 1,500 buildings. Among them were the immense Italianate Festival Hall, the Palace of Education modeled after a Greek temple and the Egyptian-themed Palace of Mines and Metallurgy. John Philip Sousa opened the Exposition with a concert that sweltering July morning, and a congratulatory telegraph was read to the crowds from President Theodore Roosevelt. But hidden among the Palace of Machinery and the Venetian-inspired Palace of Electricity were ice cream stands, and there, a handful of vendors helped assure the otherwise-forgotten Exposition an abiding place in history. In Ernest Manwi’s waffle stand that afternoon, the Ice Cream Cone was born. It could have been Nick Kabbaz and his brother Albert, Syrian immigrants both of whom worked in Hamwi’s booth, rather than Hamwi, who developed the notion. Nick says it was his idea, and he told Hamwi about it the day the Fair opened. Abe Doumar, also a Syrian vendor at the Fair, claimed that he was the first to wrap a waffle around a ball of ice cream. Abes’ nephew, also named Albert (we’re getting close to needing a chart here, but I don’t know how to do one up), later wrote a book to substantiate the Doumar claim, called The Saga of the Ice Cream Cone. You can’t find a copy on Amazon, but the Smithsonian Institution does have a copy in its archives. David Avayou, a Turkish ice cream salesman, also had a concession stand at the Fair. You won’t be surprised to learn he claimed to have come up with the idea first. “Long before the fair,” he wrote later, “I wanted to make an edible cone for ice cream, having seen metal ice cream cones in France. It took me three weeks and hundreds of pounds of flour and eggs, but I finally got it right.” Charles Menches and his brother Frank sold ice cream at the Fair, too. They don’t claim to have come up with the idea—Charles says a woman he knew was at the fair and wanted to find a “dainty” way to eat some of his ice cream. She bought a fresh waffle from a nearby vendor (could it have been one of Doumar’s waffles? we’ll probably never know) wrapped it into a cone and had Charles fill it with ice cream. Though the Menches brothers aren’t officially credited in the books as the originators of the First Cone, they went on to make a fortune from a candy factory they built in Akron. They made a concoction of caramel-coated peanuts and popcorn they first called “Gee Whiz.” Later they changed the name to “Cracker Jacks.” Whether it was Hamwi, the Kabbaz twins (who later opened the St Louis Ice Cream Cone Company), Abe Doumar, Avayou or the unknown lady friend of the Cracker Jack kings, everybody who’s anybody acknowledges that on the afternoon of July 23rd, 1904, lightning struck someone at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition and World’s Fair at St Louis and the ice cream cone was born. Popes and emperors may come and go, Presidents and Constitutions may rise and fall, but the crunchy ice cream cone might well outlive our American Republic.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Walking the Labyrinth—Somebody’s been stealing the goats off my parent’s ranch. That may sound like the opening line of an improbable joke, but there are goats missing and more than a few (now even I’m starting to think of punchlines!). There are some large clusters of Live Oaks right on the fence line running alongside a road and clear imprints of truck tires pulling right up to the fence. Sherlock Holmes isn’t needed to figure out this caper. The local sheriff’s office told my mother when she called to report the thefts “Yeah, it’s happening a lot right now. Price of goats is up, so somebody’s taking advantage.” He’s right about that. Goats have almost doubled what they bring at auction in the past year. When she asked the local representative of Law and Order what could be done, his reply was succinct. “Well, shoot ‘em” (I’m pretty sure he meant the goat-rustlers, not the goats). I’m also pretty sure this lawman had no idea who he was talking to. Giving my almost 80 year-old mother carte blanche to fire off the somewhat impressive collection of weaponry at the ranch may devolve into many more official visits to the property than if the Sheriff had bothered to come and commiserate with her in the first place—to say nothing of goats shot dead in the middle of the night!
The situation will have to be addressed—it is a goat ranch, after all—but I can’t escape the potential humor (or the potential deadliness) of the situation. As usual, my mind goes off in its own direction. I found myself meditating, not on how to frustrate the rustlers, but on the role of goats in Holy Scripture, particularly the parable of the sheep and the goats found in the Gospel of Matthew. It’s about the Last Judgment (St Matthew 25. 31-46): “…when the Son of man shall come in His glory…before Him shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separates the sheep from the goats: the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left.” Things continue downhill for the goats for the rest of the parable, culminating in the final verse: “these [the unhappy goats] shall go away into eternal punishment: but the righteous [the smiling sheep] into eternal life.”
One of the unmentioned commemorations this day marks is the gathering of the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553 AD, called by the Emperor Justinian in the imperial city of Constantinople. One hundred and sixty-five bishops, drawn from across the Mediterranean world, condemned “Origenism,” the writings of a third-century Christian teacher. In particular, they condemned his teachings on the soul and what was called Universal Salvation. Origen, it seems, taught that nobody was going to hell, God would save everybody in the end. He evidently taught (or at least, theorized) that whatever the temporary discomfiture of the goats, eventually they’d be reunited with the sheep (who might be a bit surprised at the new arrivals into bliss). Nobody will know for sure, because the original records of the Council have been misplaced.
The question of hell has long been debated by theologians, professional and otherwise. Though there are many permutations of the argument, succinctly stated it runs: how can a God of love construct a creation which incorporates eternal suffering for any of His creatures? There are many issues to consider, i.e., He is a God of both Justice and Mercy, He gives every human being free will to choose the good or the evil, or simply, “it says so in the Bible.” On the other hand, a very good and dear friend of mine, Merlin Liversidge, used to say, “The idea of subjecting someone—even Adolf Hitler who I fought against in WWII—to an eternity of suffering seems unworthy of an all-loving, all-knowing God.”
It seems to me the first thing to consider in any theological argument (and the thing to continually acknowledge as we go along), is that the question is too deep for us. When we talk about God, we’re guessing. We have things like Scripture, the teaching of faith which has preceded us and our (very limited) reason to guide our discussions, but there is much more we don’t know about the mystery of God than we do. The most important verse in the whole of Scripture, and the most abused, is “God is love” (first letter of St John, 4.16). Any theological consideration which doesn’t continually set that before its face will wander off-base. The problem is that theology is done with words. We use words (because we have nothing else) to describe Something Infinitely Beyond words. “Love” is itself a word so misused and twisted we would have a hard time agreeing what that means in our own situation, much less in Eternity.
We’re not gonna solve the question of the eternity of hell and the sufferings of the damned on these pages, though we may very well turn to consider certain aspects of the question from time to time. What interests me today is simply the question of misplaced goats. When I have listened to the arguments of those who press for the eternal damnation of the goats (Calvinist, Catholic or anything in between) one thing always raises its head. “If there isn’t a hell, why bother to be good? Why not eat, drink and be merry if I’m not going to have to answer for it in the end?” Some of the sheep, at least, want to make sure those goats get what’s coming to them. “We’ve paid our dues here, now it’s their turn!” It is, I’m sure you’ll agree, a pathetic argument, but one I’ve heard many (not just lay people) make time and again. “Why do all this if I don’t have to?”
I think any person, Protestant, Catholic, Jew or Muslim (with maybe many a thoughtful agnostic and a brace of atheists throw in), would agree that the unending joys of Heaven aren’t a reward for good behavior, but the gift of an all-loving Lord. Somehow, in the mystery of God, Heaven is not a reward nor is hell a place of exacting penalties. St John is right, more right than we can or will ever know. God is Love, and if that’s so, hell is part of His mystery of love. Here, seeing through this glass so darkly, we don’t know the particulars. And my old friend Merlin was right, too. God is bigger than our most grandiose conceptions. What seems to us an impossible conundrum, exists as such only for us. Somehow, whatever the fate of the wayward goats, they are encompassed eternally in Love.
Now if I can only figure out how to lock up all those guns at the ranch…
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Friday, July 16, 2010
"The More Things Change..."
Today is July 16, the 197th day of the year; 168 days remain in 2010. July 16 marks the beginning of the Muslim era. On this night in 622 AD (or, if you are a Muslim, 1 AH), Muhammed ibn Abdullah, warned of an assassination plot, secretly fled from his home to what is now called the city of Medina. Muhammed’s flight from potential martyrdom (nowadays euphemistically called his “emigration”) has been counted as the beginning of the New Age by Muslims ever since. “AH” stands for the Latin anno hegirae, “in the year of the hijra." By Muslim reckoning, then, the year is 1431 AH. On the Church's calendar today is the feast of Blessed Mary Magdalene Françoise de Justamond, a French Cistercian nun who, in 1794, was guillotined for refusing to deny her faith during the Days of the Terror in Paris. Russian Christians celebrate today solemnly, commemorating the murder of Tzar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and their five children by their Bolshevik captors in the basement of a house in Ekatrinberg, Russia. The Russian Church venerates them as “the Royal Martyrs” who are said to have died for their faith. On the Coptic Christian calendar, this is the 9th of Abib, the year is 1726, and it’s the feast of St Celadion, the 9th Pope of Alexandria. According to the Hebrew calendar, it's the 5th of Av, 5770. The United States Congress, which lives to please its constituency, has declared July not only National Hot Dog Month and and National Relish Month, but boldly named July National Ice Cream Month as well. Is it any wonder the old American Book of Common Prayer exhorts us to pray that God “wouldest be pleased to direct and prosper all their consultations”? In Canada National Rabbit Week concludes today; and for those who plan ahead, there are only 162 Shopping Days Left till Christmas.
July 16th is a bad day for Russian royalty. As already noted, Tsar Nicholas and his family were shot and bayoneted in the early hours of July 16th on the orders of Lenin (who till his death denied issuing the order; it wasn’t until after the collapse of the Soviet empire that Lenin's handwritten instructions were made public). But long before that, on this day back in 1605, the young Tsar Fyodor II Borisovich Godunov was imprisoned by his enemies in the imperial palace (Fyodor was the son of the Boris Godunov, about whom Mussorgsky wrote his famous opera, if you’re the highbrow sort; if not, you’ll be familiar with the name only because of the nefarious Boris Badonov of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” fame). Four days later a group of thugs broke into the royal apartments and strangled both the boy and his mother. The story was put out that the pair died of food poisoning. However, the nobles who orchestrated the whole thing were stupid enough to put the bodies on public display before the funeral, and the rope burns and abrasions around their necks were visible to everyone. His death inaugurated the period known in Russian history as the “Time of Troubles” (the Smutnoye Vremya), a time of civil wars, imperial imposters and economic chaos. The ascent of the Romanov Dynasty in the person of Mikhail Romanov, crowned in 1613, ended the Smutnoye Vremya. Peter III was crowned Tsar on January 5, 1762 and strangled to death on the afternoon of July 16. As a boy, the young Peter loved all things military. He was enthralled by the military successes of the Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great and on his coronation announced he would “turn Russia into Prussia.” To the discomfiture of the Orthodox clergy, he ordered them to shave their beards, adopt the attire of Protestant clergymen and remove icons from the churches. To drive the point home, he built a Lutheran chapel in the palace. The new Tsar alienated the clergy and pious. He ordered the army, then conducting a war with Prussia, to return home and abandon all the territorial gains they’d made in the war. The Tsar ordered new uniforms and equipment for the army based on Prussian models. Peter loved the sound of cannon-fire and would on occasion order all the canon surrounding the Kremlin to fire, one after another, all night long. When the whim struck, he would call out the imperial soldiers in stationed in Moscow to get up in the middle of the night and parade back and forth in front of him on the grounds of the Kremlin for hours. The new Tsar alienated the military. Peter took as his mistress Elizabeth Vorontzova, niece of the Chancellor of the Russian Court. The French ambassador wrote in his diary that Elizabeth “has a dull mind. Her pockmarked face has nothing to recommend it ad all her make-up does little to improve matters. In all respects she reminds one of the lowest class of serving wench. She swears like a trooper, squints, stinks and spits when she talks.” The emperor declared her “Grand Mistress of the Court.” The new Tsar alienated his nobles and most dangerously, his wife, who history would come to call Catherine the Great. Catherine gave every appearance of meek acquiescence but befriended the insulted clergy, the indignant generals and the outraged nobles. One afternoon when Peter went out to lead the troops in maneuvers, she had him quietly taken into custody and locked in the rooms of a royal hunting lodge. Beginning to see a pattern here? On July 16th, unidentified persons with ropes entered the lodge and later the Tsar’s body was discovered, showing all the signs of strangulation. Catherine was happily proclaimed empress by the clergy, the army and the nobles. But Catherine knew her history: Peter’s body was never put on public display.
On July 16th, 1453, King Henry VI forbad kissing throughout his realm. The Black Plague was ravaging the Netherlands, and there was much fear it would cross the Channel. Though the notion of “germs” was unknown, a group of royal physicians convinced the king that invisible “specks,” which passed from person to person at times of intimate contact, were the cause of the plague. While stopping short of outlawing acts of procreation (which one speculates might have proved ineffectual anyway), it was decided that a royal proclamation against kissing would be sufficient. Regardless of how we may snicker, there was no outbreak of the plague in England that year. So put that in your pipe.
On July 16, 1935, the first parking meters in the world were installed on the downtown streets of Oklahoma City. Ten years later, to the day, the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Call it a coincidence if you want.
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Walking the Labyrinth—Odi et amo, “I love and I hate,” wrote the Roman poet Catullus two thousand years ago. Though he was writing about something very different, I know how he feels every time I sit down in front of my computer. Old friends know I viewed computers with a mixture of distain and distrust for more than a decade. Twice people gave me computers as gifts in the 1990’s—I “regifted” both, one never even having been removed from its box. I viewed them as expensive, time-consuming and overly complex typewriters. I had pencils. They fit in my pocket, didn’t need manuals or require on-call technicians.
Historians regard Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press as one of the most significant events in history. As a lover of the printed word, I agree (for what that’s worth). It seems obvious to me, though, that Gutenberg’s revolution pales in comparison with the computer revolution of the past two decades. We are in the process of seeing a new world created around us and we don’t know where we’re headed with it, or where it’s taking us. The conservative wiring in my brain (see? it’s already affected our view of ourselves!) tells me to be afraid, but when I can travel to Mongolia or view Bourbon Street live while sitting at my desk, I am amazed. I can examine—in unbelievable detail—a 6th century Byzantine manuscript locked in the vaults of the Vatican Library. I’ve done it. Seconds later I could be listening to the raspy voice of Johnny Cash sing the theme song to “The Rebel,” a TV show I watched when I was a kid. I’ve done this too, but I’ll leave it to you to guess which of the two web pages I spent almost three hours of my life on. Odi et amo. The possibilities frighten and entice me.
It may be—I have a sense almost certainly it will be—centuries before we grasp what we have wrought. But there are a few things a walker in the Labyrinth can know right now. In spite of the fact that you can buy fabric that enables you to make a shirt or blouse “wearable computer,” we, us, our souls—remain unchanged through the millennia. We don’t like to hear that. Look at what we’ve done! We can circle the globe in hours. We’ve been to the moon and back repeatedly. I can talk to someone in Africa after pressing a few buttons on my cell phone, which now fits in the pocket of my t-shirt. But when they answer in Africa, what are we going to talk about? When you look at the horned moon white in the black night sky, do you see only real estate? No doubt, some of us do. But there beats in the breast of every computer geek a heart longing for Mystery. Life must be more than balance of trade agreements and electro-cardiogram readings. Our hearts are restless for more than computerized shirts.
As wonderful as it is to view up close a 1500 year old parchment on my laptop, it’s the words that matter. Pressed into a clay tablet, carved in stone, quilled onto papyrus, written on foolscap, printed in a book or read on a Kindle, it’s the words that matter. After Gutenberg and Gates we’re still in search of who we are and why we’re here. That hasn’t changed because we haven’t changed. The greed and generosity, the envy and self-sacrifice, the hatred and love around since Eden surround us still. We continue the same. Technology may terrorize us or bless us or—most likely—it will do both. After all, it’s made in our image.
We’re made in the image of Another. The labyrinth of your life is laid out to take you to Him, every step molding you into who He created you to be. Our labyrinths twist and turn in unguessed and sometimes unwelcome ways. We don’t know what’s around the bend. We do know, we can grasp with certainty this truth: our lives, our sorrows and joys, sufferings and delights have meaning. More meaning than you and I can imagine. Through our insignificance (“what? do you know who I am?”), in spite of our pettiness and failings, He Who made us in His own image is redeeming and recreating the world. Next to that truth, our greatest technologies are toys.
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A note to those who’ve written (some repeatedly) asking me for my thoughts on the Pope’s Anglicanorum Coetibus: I appreciate your patience. I’m not being coy, just ruminant. Months back I spent a few days writing on this, but on review it seemed premature. There’s still much to learn before anything definitive can be said, but since nothing I say is definitive anyway, that’s not an issue. It’s become plain to me is that the most important things to be addressed are not the “hows” or even the “whys” but the presumptions that run in front of these questions. I’m now writing, but I won’t be publishing what I write on Labyrinthus, it’s not the proper forum. If you’re interested, please let me know. As always, I’m more than happy to hear other people’s thoughts. I may not always agree, but that’s how I learn. On such an important topic, I hope that there’s more praying than talking going on, but my emails suggest otherwise.
July 16th is a bad day for Russian royalty. As already noted, Tsar Nicholas and his family were shot and bayoneted in the early hours of July 16th on the orders of Lenin (who till his death denied issuing the order; it wasn’t until after the collapse of the Soviet empire that Lenin's handwritten instructions were made public). But long before that, on this day back in 1605, the young Tsar Fyodor II Borisovich Godunov was imprisoned by his enemies in the imperial palace (Fyodor was the son of the Boris Godunov, about whom Mussorgsky wrote his famous opera, if you’re the highbrow sort; if not, you’ll be familiar with the name only because of the nefarious Boris Badonov of “Rocky and Bullwinkle” fame). Four days later a group of thugs broke into the royal apartments and strangled both the boy and his mother. The story was put out that the pair died of food poisoning. However, the nobles who orchestrated the whole thing were stupid enough to put the bodies on public display before the funeral, and the rope burns and abrasions around their necks were visible to everyone. His death inaugurated the period known in Russian history as the “Time of Troubles” (the Smutnoye Vremya), a time of civil wars, imperial imposters and economic chaos. The ascent of the Romanov Dynasty in the person of Mikhail Romanov, crowned in 1613, ended the Smutnoye Vremya. Peter III was crowned Tsar on January 5, 1762 and strangled to death on the afternoon of July 16. As a boy, the young Peter loved all things military. He was enthralled by the military successes of the Prussian Emperor Frederick the Great and on his coronation announced he would “turn Russia into Prussia.” To the discomfiture of the Orthodox clergy, he ordered them to shave their beards, adopt the attire of Protestant clergymen and remove icons from the churches. To drive the point home, he built a Lutheran chapel in the palace. The new Tsar alienated the clergy and pious. He ordered the army, then conducting a war with Prussia, to return home and abandon all the territorial gains they’d made in the war. The Tsar ordered new uniforms and equipment for the army based on Prussian models. Peter loved the sound of cannon-fire and would on occasion order all the canon surrounding the Kremlin to fire, one after another, all night long. When the whim struck, he would call out the imperial soldiers in stationed in Moscow to get up in the middle of the night and parade back and forth in front of him on the grounds of the Kremlin for hours. The new Tsar alienated the military. Peter took as his mistress Elizabeth Vorontzova, niece of the Chancellor of the Russian Court. The French ambassador wrote in his diary that Elizabeth “has a dull mind. Her pockmarked face has nothing to recommend it ad all her make-up does little to improve matters. In all respects she reminds one of the lowest class of serving wench. She swears like a trooper, squints, stinks and spits when she talks.” The emperor declared her “Grand Mistress of the Court.” The new Tsar alienated his nobles and most dangerously, his wife, who history would come to call Catherine the Great. Catherine gave every appearance of meek acquiescence but befriended the insulted clergy, the indignant generals and the outraged nobles. One afternoon when Peter went out to lead the troops in maneuvers, she had him quietly taken into custody and locked in the rooms of a royal hunting lodge. Beginning to see a pattern here? On July 16th, unidentified persons with ropes entered the lodge and later the Tsar’s body was discovered, showing all the signs of strangulation. Catherine was happily proclaimed empress by the clergy, the army and the nobles. But Catherine knew her history: Peter’s body was never put on public display.
On July 16th, 1453, King Henry VI forbad kissing throughout his realm. The Black Plague was ravaging the Netherlands, and there was much fear it would cross the Channel. Though the notion of “germs” was unknown, a group of royal physicians convinced the king that invisible “specks,” which passed from person to person at times of intimate contact, were the cause of the plague. While stopping short of outlawing acts of procreation (which one speculates might have proved ineffectual anyway), it was decided that a royal proclamation against kissing would be sufficient. Regardless of how we may snicker, there was no outbreak of the plague in England that year. So put that in your pipe.
On July 16, 1935, the first parking meters in the world were installed on the downtown streets of Oklahoma City. Ten years later, to the day, the world’s first atomic bomb was exploded in Alamogordo, New Mexico. Call it a coincidence if you want.
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Walking the Labyrinth—Odi et amo, “I love and I hate,” wrote the Roman poet Catullus two thousand years ago. Though he was writing about something very different, I know how he feels every time I sit down in front of my computer. Old friends know I viewed computers with a mixture of distain and distrust for more than a decade. Twice people gave me computers as gifts in the 1990’s—I “regifted” both, one never even having been removed from its box. I viewed them as expensive, time-consuming and overly complex typewriters. I had pencils. They fit in my pocket, didn’t need manuals or require on-call technicians.
Historians regard Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press as one of the most significant events in history. As a lover of the printed word, I agree (for what that’s worth). It seems obvious to me, though, that Gutenberg’s revolution pales in comparison with the computer revolution of the past two decades. We are in the process of seeing a new world created around us and we don’t know where we’re headed with it, or where it’s taking us. The conservative wiring in my brain (see? it’s already affected our view of ourselves!) tells me to be afraid, but when I can travel to Mongolia or view Bourbon Street live while sitting at my desk, I am amazed. I can examine—in unbelievable detail—a 6th century Byzantine manuscript locked in the vaults of the Vatican Library. I’ve done it. Seconds later I could be listening to the raspy voice of Johnny Cash sing the theme song to “The Rebel,” a TV show I watched when I was a kid. I’ve done this too, but I’ll leave it to you to guess which of the two web pages I spent almost three hours of my life on. Odi et amo. The possibilities frighten and entice me.
It may be—I have a sense almost certainly it will be—centuries before we grasp what we have wrought. But there are a few things a walker in the Labyrinth can know right now. In spite of the fact that you can buy fabric that enables you to make a shirt or blouse “wearable computer,” we, us, our souls—remain unchanged through the millennia. We don’t like to hear that. Look at what we’ve done! We can circle the globe in hours. We’ve been to the moon and back repeatedly. I can talk to someone in Africa after pressing a few buttons on my cell phone, which now fits in the pocket of my t-shirt. But when they answer in Africa, what are we going to talk about? When you look at the horned moon white in the black night sky, do you see only real estate? No doubt, some of us do. But there beats in the breast of every computer geek a heart longing for Mystery. Life must be more than balance of trade agreements and electro-cardiogram readings. Our hearts are restless for more than computerized shirts.
As wonderful as it is to view up close a 1500 year old parchment on my laptop, it’s the words that matter. Pressed into a clay tablet, carved in stone, quilled onto papyrus, written on foolscap, printed in a book or read on a Kindle, it’s the words that matter. After Gutenberg and Gates we’re still in search of who we are and why we’re here. That hasn’t changed because we haven’t changed. The greed and generosity, the envy and self-sacrifice, the hatred and love around since Eden surround us still. We continue the same. Technology may terrorize us or bless us or—most likely—it will do both. After all, it’s made in our image.
We’re made in the image of Another. The labyrinth of your life is laid out to take you to Him, every step molding you into who He created you to be. Our labyrinths twist and turn in unguessed and sometimes unwelcome ways. We don’t know what’s around the bend. We do know, we can grasp with certainty this truth: our lives, our sorrows and joys, sufferings and delights have meaning. More meaning than you and I can imagine. Through our insignificance (“what? do you know who I am?”), in spite of our pettiness and failings, He Who made us in His own image is redeeming and recreating the world. Next to that truth, our greatest technologies are toys.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A note to those who’ve written (some repeatedly) asking me for my thoughts on the Pope’s Anglicanorum Coetibus: I appreciate your patience. I’m not being coy, just ruminant. Months back I spent a few days writing on this, but on review it seemed premature. There’s still much to learn before anything definitive can be said, but since nothing I say is definitive anyway, that’s not an issue. It’s become plain to me is that the most important things to be addressed are not the “hows” or even the “whys” but the presumptions that run in front of these questions. I’m now writing, but I won’t be publishing what I write on Labyrinthus, it’s not the proper forum. If you’re interested, please let me know. As always, I’m more than happy to hear other people’s thoughts. I may not always agree, but that’s how I learn. On such an important topic, I hope that there’s more praying than talking going on, but my emails suggest otherwise.
Friday, July 09, 2010
The Joy of Singing
Today is July 9, the 190th day of the year; 175 days remain in 2010. It’s the feast of St Cyril of Crete, a fourth-century bishop, St Everild of Everingham, a Saxon noblewoman who forsook the world and became a nun (much to her parent’s dismay), and St Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury. It is to him that we owe the division of the Bible into the chapters with which we are familiar (which isn’t why he was declared a saint). He quarreled with King John (“evil Prince John” of “Robin Hood” fame) and was of the group that eventually forced the unhappy King to sign the Magna Carta on the field at Runnymede (that wasn’t why, either). Eastern Orthodox Christians celebrate the feasts of St David of Thessalonica and the Venerable Serapion of Kozha Lake. On the Coptic calendar today is the 2nd of Abib and the year is 1726, while the ancient Romans called this ante diem VII Idus Julius (the seventh day before the ides of July). If any of them were still around to count, this would be the Roman year 2763. On their calendar, today was a minor Roman feast, the Caprotinia, a holiday for the slave girls of Rome. It's the 27th of Tammuz according to Hebrew reckoning. July is Tour de France Month in that Gallic country, while in the United States it’s both National Hot Dog and National Horseradish Month. Today begins National Nudist Recreation Weekend (there is a website listing activities with a minimal dress code) and July 9th, in several States of the Union (Texas demurring), is Sugar Cookie Day.
July 9th isn’t one of the more monumentous days of the calendar. No popes were crowned or emperors deposed, no battles of consequence were fought or treaties signed, no immortal symphonies were composed nor were any of the world's great books published on this day. But for a couple of people in ages past, it was a day to recall or reckon with.
Anne of Cleves was the daughter of a little-known German prince, born in 1515 near Dusseldorf. She was an unexceptional child. At twelve, she was betrothed to the future Duke of Lorraine and her future seemed set. Before the marriage took place, however, Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died (of natural causes, her head still attached) and the uxorious Henry set his men a-looking across the Christian world for Wife Number Four. Soon the king’s attention was directed to Dusseldorf, where Anne was waiting for the Duke of Lorraine to come and sweep her off her feet. Instead, spurred on by accounts of her beauty, Henry sent the world-famous portrait painter Hans Holbein to Dusseldorf castle. He painted the picture you see up right. When Henry saw it, marriage negotiations began and, by November of 1539, a marriage treaty had been signed. Anne and her entourage arrived in England on New Year’s Eve and the next day Henry anxiously went to see her. Afterward, with some irritation, he told his courtiers he’d been misled about her looks. Could he get out of the marriage? His principal advisor, Thomas Cromwell, reminded him treaties were signed and warned the king’s reputation among the crowns of Europe would suffer if he simply sent her home (Cromwell was the foremost advocate of the marriage and was not unconcerned about his own fate if the king was unhappy). So, laying aside his disappointment, the wedding took place on January 6, 1540. That evening, in the royal bedchamber, Henry’s conjugal duties went unfulfilled. A nervous Cromwell was waiting outside the room the next morning and asked the king, “How liked you the Queen?” Henry looked at him darkly and said, “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse.” He ordered Cromwell and his Archbishop of Canterbury (who’d just performed the marriage) to work out a divorce. It took six months, but it was done. On July 9, 1540, Parliament issued a decree of nullity. Anne (who knew how Henry’s previous marriages ended) acquiesced and even wrote a letter supporting the King, asking that the marriage be annulled. Henry was so pleased he gave her several manor houses and a settlement of 3,000 pounds a year, making her the richest woman in England. Three weeks after the parliamentary decree, Thomas Cromwell’s head was “stricken from his shoulders” on the green outside the Tower of London for disappointing his king. Anne lived out her days in wealth and quietness and died peacefully in her bed in 1557, twenty years after Henry met his eternal fate. The young woman who could barely speak English may have been the smartest of the Six Wives.
Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, served one of the shortest terms in history. “Old Rough and Ready,” the hero of the Mexican War, attended ceremonies for the dedication of the Washington Monument on the Fourth of July in 1850. Dressed in a black, high-collar suit, the president suffered a sun stroke and was removed to the White House. When he regained consciousness, Taylor demanded several pitchers of iced milk. After drinking those, he called for more, asking also for “a large bowl of cherries.” By that evening he was very sick. His doctors prescribed several large doses of opium and quinine and bled him repeatedly, but in spite of these “attentions,” his condition worsened. The physicians told his wife early on July 9th there was no hope of survival. He died that morning shortly after 10 AM having been president for 491 days. Historians say his term was so short he had no discernible impact on the country. Maybe that's a lesson worth remembering!
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Walking the Labyrinth—I love early American music. As I write this, I’m listening to a beautifully-done recording of the Tudor Choir singing selections from their CD The Shapenote Album, a collection of tunes, songs and hymns from the 18th and early 19th centuries. The music is rich and boisterous, full of energy and powerful in delivering its message in the straightforward language of our forbearers. Music speaks to us on several levels at once, affecting us sometimes in unconscious ways. The final nights of Holy Week there is an ancient service called Tenebrae (Latin for “Shadows”). It’s a collection of eighteen Psalms interspersed with readings from Scripture. The Psalms are chanted with melodies many centuries old and the chanting weaves a strange magic on the participants. Chant a few Psalms and you can appreciate the music and get something of the words the music conveys. Chant eighteen Psalms in an hour or two and you will be transported by the music. The steady cadence of the music enables the words of the Psalms to caress the soul; God can speak words of consolation even when we don’t realize we’re listening. I imagine something very much like that happened to our ancestors when they enjoyed a “hymn-sing.”
St Ephrem was a deacon in Syria sixteen hundred years ago. You may have heard of him from the famous prayer attributed to him which is recited by Orthodox Christians daily throughout Lent, “O Lord and Master of My Life.” St Ephrem was a theologian of renown during his lifetime but as he wrote in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke) his works have been closed to those who don’t know the language. Most interesting to me, though, is that Ephrem wrote his most profound theology as poetry. He wrote his theology not to be read in quiet candle-lit chambers but to be sung out loud!
Theology isn’t usually associated with poetry, but Ephrem thought it was the best medium for conveying profound truths. He understood something which theologians and believers of any faith sometimes forget when they talk about what they believe: God is not a doctrine and theology is not a theory. Ephrem believed we can only talk about God after we acknowledge we don’t know what we’re talking about. We use words to talk about God because we don’t have anything else. “God clothed Himself with language,” Ephrem sang, “so He could clothe us with Himself.” For centuries and more, religious language has been a weapon that has obscured truth as much as it has been a vehicle that expressed it.
Ephrem insists that we approach God with real humility. My old mentor, Fr Rogers, used to tell me humility was not trying to convince yourself you were worthless and bad (which, he said, no sane person ever really believes anyway). Humility, he said, is from the word humus, “earth.” The humble person is one whose feet are firmly set on the ground. Real humility is to know ourselves as best we can, and understand we can know God only in tiny bits and pieces, as best we can catch an occasional glimpse of He Who Is. If we know our vision is imperfect, Ephrem says, if we’re “clothed with humility,” we begin to be ready to talk—or, better yet—to sing about God. St Ephrem didn’t treat words about God as an intellectual exercise. Ephrem’s songs about God are as much addressed to God as about Him. He has no interest in God as a theory—for the Syrian saint, God Is Present Now, here, everywhere and always. An academic discussion about God, to Ephrem’s mind, is as ludicrous as one person carrying on a conversation about himself with himself.
St Ephrem was not indifferent to the necessity of dogma, but wanted it to reflect the reality of human limitations. We are fallen, easily-distracted, argumentative creatures contemplating the Infinite Sea of Charity. One of his hymns is entitled “Against Heresies.” After singing the dangers of the heresies of his day, St Ephrem concludes his work with a stanza of warning to himself and his hearers:
“As I have acknowledged Thee, O Lord
Do Thou acknowledge me.
Show Thy compassions on this sinner
Who believes in Thee.
Even as he sins, O Master
He knocks at Thy door.
Even though his steps are sluggish
Still, he travels Thy highway.”
I read this poem for the first time only a few weeks ago, but it seems to me a perfect song for a walker on any Labyrinth. We cling to our imperfect vision of God, confident not in what we know but Who we know. He’s the One Who guides our faltering steps—and we know where He’s taking us. Our steps may be sluggish and the scenery for each of us a bit different, but our Labyrinths take us along the King’s Highway. You might want to sing as you walk.
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July 9th isn’t one of the more monumentous days of the calendar. No popes were crowned or emperors deposed, no battles of consequence were fought or treaties signed, no immortal symphonies were composed nor were any of the world's great books published on this day. But for a couple of people in ages past, it was a day to recall or reckon with.
Anne of Cleves was the daughter of a little-known German prince, born in 1515 near Dusseldorf. She was an unexceptional child. At twelve, she was betrothed to the future Duke of Lorraine and her future seemed set. Before the marriage took place, however, Henry VIII’s third wife, Jane Seymour, died (of natural causes, her head still attached) and the uxorious Henry set his men a-looking across the Christian world for Wife Number Four. Soon the king’s attention was directed to Dusseldorf, where Anne was waiting for the Duke of Lorraine to come and sweep her off her feet. Instead, spurred on by accounts of her beauty, Henry sent the world-famous portrait painter Hans Holbein to Dusseldorf castle. He painted the picture you see up right. When Henry saw it, marriage negotiations began and, by November of 1539, a marriage treaty had been signed. Anne and her entourage arrived in England on New Year’s Eve and the next day Henry anxiously went to see her. Afterward, with some irritation, he told his courtiers he’d been misled about her looks. Could he get out of the marriage? His principal advisor, Thomas Cromwell, reminded him treaties were signed and warned the king’s reputation among the crowns of Europe would suffer if he simply sent her home (Cromwell was the foremost advocate of the marriage and was not unconcerned about his own fate if the king was unhappy). So, laying aside his disappointment, the wedding took place on January 6, 1540. That evening, in the royal bedchamber, Henry’s conjugal duties went unfulfilled. A nervous Cromwell was waiting outside the room the next morning and asked the king, “How liked you the Queen?” Henry looked at him darkly and said, “I liked her before not well, but now I like her much worse.” He ordered Cromwell and his Archbishop of Canterbury (who’d just performed the marriage) to work out a divorce. It took six months, but it was done. On July 9, 1540, Parliament issued a decree of nullity. Anne (who knew how Henry’s previous marriages ended) acquiesced and even wrote a letter supporting the King, asking that the marriage be annulled. Henry was so pleased he gave her several manor houses and a settlement of 3,000 pounds a year, making her the richest woman in England. Three weeks after the parliamentary decree, Thomas Cromwell’s head was “stricken from his shoulders” on the green outside the Tower of London for disappointing his king. Anne lived out her days in wealth and quietness and died peacefully in her bed in 1557, twenty years after Henry met his eternal fate. The young woman who could barely speak English may have been the smartest of the Six Wives.
Zachary Taylor, the 12th President of the United States, served one of the shortest terms in history. “Old Rough and Ready,” the hero of the Mexican War, attended ceremonies for the dedication of the Washington Monument on the Fourth of July in 1850. Dressed in a black, high-collar suit, the president suffered a sun stroke and was removed to the White House. When he regained consciousness, Taylor demanded several pitchers of iced milk. After drinking those, he called for more, asking also for “a large bowl of cherries.” By that evening he was very sick. His doctors prescribed several large doses of opium and quinine and bled him repeatedly, but in spite of these “attentions,” his condition worsened. The physicians told his wife early on July 9th there was no hope of survival. He died that morning shortly after 10 AM having been president for 491 days. Historians say his term was so short he had no discernible impact on the country. Maybe that's a lesson worth remembering!
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Walking the Labyrinth—I love early American music. As I write this, I’m listening to a beautifully-done recording of the Tudor Choir singing selections from their CD The Shapenote Album, a collection of tunes, songs and hymns from the 18th and early 19th centuries. The music is rich and boisterous, full of energy and powerful in delivering its message in the straightforward language of our forbearers. Music speaks to us on several levels at once, affecting us sometimes in unconscious ways. The final nights of Holy Week there is an ancient service called Tenebrae (Latin for “Shadows”). It’s a collection of eighteen Psalms interspersed with readings from Scripture. The Psalms are chanted with melodies many centuries old and the chanting weaves a strange magic on the participants. Chant a few Psalms and you can appreciate the music and get something of the words the music conveys. Chant eighteen Psalms in an hour or two and you will be transported by the music. The steady cadence of the music enables the words of the Psalms to caress the soul; God can speak words of consolation even when we don’t realize we’re listening. I imagine something very much like that happened to our ancestors when they enjoyed a “hymn-sing.”
St Ephrem was a deacon in Syria sixteen hundred years ago. You may have heard of him from the famous prayer attributed to him which is recited by Orthodox Christians daily throughout Lent, “O Lord and Master of My Life.” St Ephrem was a theologian of renown during his lifetime but as he wrote in Syriac (a dialect of Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke) his works have been closed to those who don’t know the language. Most interesting to me, though, is that Ephrem wrote his most profound theology as poetry. He wrote his theology not to be read in quiet candle-lit chambers but to be sung out loud!
Theology isn’t usually associated with poetry, but Ephrem thought it was the best medium for conveying profound truths. He understood something which theologians and believers of any faith sometimes forget when they talk about what they believe: God is not a doctrine and theology is not a theory. Ephrem believed we can only talk about God after we acknowledge we don’t know what we’re talking about. We use words to talk about God because we don’t have anything else. “God clothed Himself with language,” Ephrem sang, “so He could clothe us with Himself.” For centuries and more, religious language has been a weapon that has obscured truth as much as it has been a vehicle that expressed it.
Ephrem insists that we approach God with real humility. My old mentor, Fr Rogers, used to tell me humility was not trying to convince yourself you were worthless and bad (which, he said, no sane person ever really believes anyway). Humility, he said, is from the word humus, “earth.” The humble person is one whose feet are firmly set on the ground. Real humility is to know ourselves as best we can, and understand we can know God only in tiny bits and pieces, as best we can catch an occasional glimpse of He Who Is. If we know our vision is imperfect, Ephrem says, if we’re “clothed with humility,” we begin to be ready to talk—or, better yet—to sing about God. St Ephrem didn’t treat words about God as an intellectual exercise. Ephrem’s songs about God are as much addressed to God as about Him. He has no interest in God as a theory—for the Syrian saint, God Is Present Now, here, everywhere and always. An academic discussion about God, to Ephrem’s mind, is as ludicrous as one person carrying on a conversation about himself with himself.
St Ephrem was not indifferent to the necessity of dogma, but wanted it to reflect the reality of human limitations. We are fallen, easily-distracted, argumentative creatures contemplating the Infinite Sea of Charity. One of his hymns is entitled “Against Heresies.” After singing the dangers of the heresies of his day, St Ephrem concludes his work with a stanza of warning to himself and his hearers:
“As I have acknowledged Thee, O Lord
Do Thou acknowledge me.
Show Thy compassions on this sinner
Who believes in Thee.
Even as he sins, O Master
He knocks at Thy door.
Even though his steps are sluggish
Still, he travels Thy highway.”
I read this poem for the first time only a few weeks ago, but it seems to me a perfect song for a walker on any Labyrinth. We cling to our imperfect vision of God, confident not in what we know but Who we know. He’s the One Who guides our faltering steps—and we know where He’s taking us. Our steps may be sluggish and the scenery for each of us a bit different, but our Labyrinths take us along the King’s Highway. You might want to sing as you walk.
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Friday, July 02, 2010
A Foretaste of Joy
Today is July 2, the 183rd day of the year; 182 days remain of 2010. It is the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the calendar of the Western Church; the Russian Orthodox today venerate St Job, the first Patriarch of Moscow. He died 403 years ago. On the calendar of Coptic (Egyptian) Christians, today is Baunah 25th, and the year is 1726; they are celebrating the feast of St Peter IV, the 34th Patriarch of Alexandria who died in 569. It is June 19th on the “Old Style” Julian calendar, and the 20th of Tamuz, in the year 5770 on the Jewish calendar. The ancient Romans called July 2nd “ante diem VI Nonas July.”
As ever, today's calendar of our past is chock-full of people and events great and small. Valentinian III, one of the last Roman Emperors, was born in Ravenna in 419. His claim to the imperial purple was unassailable: he was the son, grandson, great-grandson, cousin, and nephew (twice over) of Roman Emperors—but sometimes, the situation calls for more than just imperial genes. When he was proclaimed emperor Valentinian was only six years old, and the Empire was collapsing. During his reign the Romans lost their last footholds in Spain and Gaul (that's "France" to you and me), they were unable to prevent pirates from raiding Sicily at will, and the few Roman cities remaining in North Africa were lost to the Visigoths. As the empire wheezed towards its end, the response of the Emperor and his court was to repeatedly raise taxes on an already financially-strained populace—a frequent policy (then and now) of failing governments. Valentinian was assassinated when he was 30 years old by agents of a wealthy Roman who wanted to see what it was like to be emperor. That man was himself assassinated eleven months later by people who thought he was doing a worse job than Valentinian. “Uneasy rests the head…” Valentinian is gone, but not quite forgotten. He strutted on the stage 1300 years later in George Frederich Handel’s opera Ezio, and aficionados of the old "Prince Valiant" comic strip may recall Valentinian’s appearance there. In neither case did he cast a heroic shadow.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who presided over Henry VIII’s pillaging of the medieval English Church, was born today in 1489. He was a befuddled theologian, but a master of English prose. To him we owe the unforgettable cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, with its elegant collects and stately litanies. Sadly, with Anglican liturgical “reforms” of the past 40 years, little of Cranmer’s linguistic bequest remains in the current versions of the Book of Common Prayer . The modern poet W H Auden cautioned that there was no one alive capable of revising the language of the Prayer Book and today's "revisers" have proved him right. Modern liturgical language seems principally inspired by phrases taken off fast-food wrappers. Can anyone doubt that the trite level of religion in the world today, which primarily assures us God is our "bud" and everything and anything we want to do is just fine by Him, is unrelated to the trite language we use in worship? Cranmer's line from the General Confession which reads "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done" has become "we have done wrong and not done right." Our worship isn't profound because our thoughts aren't profound; our thoughts aren't profound because our language is "lite."
Sharing this natal day with Valentinan and the Archbishop is Walter Brennan, “Grampa” in the old television series The Real McCoys. He nicely rounds out today's trio.
Two other events drawn from the historical record demand mention: in this day in 1843, while a thunderstorm crackled over Charleston, South Carolina, a full-grown, live alligator fell from the clouds and landed near the front steps of old St John’s Church on Broad Street. After hurtling through the atmosphere and a relatively safe landing, the alligator was promptly killed by the citizenry. One hundred and four years later, Mr and Mrs Dan Wilmot witnessed a “large glowing object" zoom across the sky at "400 or 500 miles per hour." This was outside Roswell, New Mexico. A few days after their sighting, the public information office of the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release claiming to have recovered the remains of a “flying disc.” People have been reporting "flying saucers" ever since. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Nostradamus died today in 1566.
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Walking the Labyrinth—I am delighted to return to the Labyrinth after an Eastertide hiatus. I return with an odd and perhaps unbelievable confession: I miss Lent.
If you’ve ever been on a retreat, one of the first things you probably remember is that you didn’t want it to end. The evening before leaving a retreat, most people begin to regret their immanent return to the everyday world. For many this might be the first time they’ve been able to turn their attention exclusively to their neglected spiritual lives. When the time comes to actually leave, it's often a time of tears—tears of sorrow at leaving; tears of joy at what they’ve received: rare glimpses of their own souls, friendships formed, insights gained and even occasional brushes against the One Who Is. Psychologists have a name for this, as they do for most things: Coming Down from the Mountain Syndrome (it’s possible to name things and not quite understand the thing you’ve named). It usually takes a few days to a week (depending on how long you spent in retreat) to acclimatize to the banality of the world—but we do. Still, sometimes for months or even years, afterward, we remember the time and cherish the memories.
Lent can be like that. Our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the focus on our spiritual lives, time devoted to something other than ourselves, these and the other facets of Lent can make it a spiritually rich--dare I use the word--a spritually luxurious time. We may surprise ourselves when we become vaguely aware of a sense of regret at the approaching Feast of the Resurrection.
True joy is foreign to most of us. We all feel happy at times, maybe even a lot of the time. But true joy is a gift of the Spirit, St Paul tells us. My guess is that most of us wouldn’t know what to do with true joy. That’s part of the reason for our Lenten/Easter dilemma—certainly it’s mine. Of course, a lot of people will say “I know what true joy is” in a sort of knee-jerk response. But true joy doesn’t wax and wane, it simply “is,” it remains, it endures. It’s an ongoing, continuing Gift, given by the Lord to those He has prepared to receive it. And “preparation” is the key word. Joy is formed in us by a spiritual process. Eastertide, with its alleluias, the sustained joy of the liturgy which endures even when our personal Easter “highs” have evaporated, is the liturgical sign of that spiritual Gift of joy. Easter has meaning, though, because of the Three Days which precede it. Easter shines so brightly because Good Friday is so very dark.
In St John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon, he calls one and all—those who have fasted through the season and those who have ignored the fast—all to come to the table. “The fatted calf has been slain; let all partake!” he cries. And we all do. But if we ignore the fast and show up only for the feast, we participate only in the flesh—we eat the Easter ham but miss the Easter Lamb—the One “slain from before the foundation of the world.”
The Easter Feast is the earthly sign of Heaven, and, despite what we may think, most of us aren’t ready for Heaven. We still need the fasting and praying and almsgiving that Lent exhorts us to. We need it to grow. We crave joy but most of us aren’t spiritually ready for it. It’s a Gift God gives to souls prepared to receive it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of that most of us have only occasional “foretastes” of joy; given the fallen world in which we live (and live oh, so willingly!), those foretastes can feed and sustain us through a host of “slings and arrows.”
God is preparing us for an eternity of joy, but as we each walk our earthly labyrinths, following sometimes with little more than blind faith (which, in spite of all that’s said against it, is sometimes the only thing that can sustain us), abiding joy seems elusive. It should. Until it’s been formed in us, until our souls have been prepared to receive and live in joy, we can’t endure it. It would be like looking at the sun all the time. “Now, we see through a glass, darkly,” St Paul lectures us, “but then,” when we’re ready, “we’ll see face to Face.” Seeing through a glass darkly is preparation, a mercy. Seeing darkly prepares us for the Day we’ll see clearly. Walking the Labyrinth—the one prepared for you—with its joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, is full of foretastes of Heaven and reminders of earth. Each step, even the painful ones (perhaps I should say, especially the painful ones), on your labyrinthine walk is necessary. It’s taking you Home. I’m glad to be walking it with you again.
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Some of you followed my daily blog, “The Lenten Oasis,” through that season, and several have asked me to continue something similar. After ruminating like an old steer on it for the whole of Eastertide, I’ve decided to write another weekly blog in addition to “Labyrinthus.” I’ve titled it “When I Am Gray-Headed” after one of the verses in the Psalter that never fails to bring a smile to my face, Psalm 71.17. I am writing it for the “gray-headed,” those of “riper years,” and the spiritual challenges we face. You recall the Law of the Conservation of Energy from physics? Energy never disappears, it just changes shape. The same is true of the struggles and challenges (and opportunities!) of the spiritual life. They don’t disappear as we get older, they just change shape. The Seven Deadly Sins remain equally deadly and the growth in Grace remains just as promising as in our younger years, but both sin and Grace now look a bit different—they may have changed shape, but they’re still there, as pressing as ever. I’m thinking no one under fifty years old will be allowed to read this blog. How does that sound? I will begin “Gray-Headed” the first week of August. Let me know if you’re interested—I’ll be putting together a mailing list in the next week or so.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As ever, today's calendar of our past is chock-full of people and events great and small. Valentinian III, one of the last Roman Emperors, was born in Ravenna in 419. His claim to the imperial purple was unassailable: he was the son, grandson, great-grandson, cousin, and nephew (twice over) of Roman Emperors—but sometimes, the situation calls for more than just imperial genes. When he was proclaimed emperor Valentinian was only six years old, and the Empire was collapsing. During his reign the Romans lost their last footholds in Spain and Gaul (that's "France" to you and me), they were unable to prevent pirates from raiding Sicily at will, and the few Roman cities remaining in North Africa were lost to the Visigoths. As the empire wheezed towards its end, the response of the Emperor and his court was to repeatedly raise taxes on an already financially-strained populace—a frequent policy (then and now) of failing governments. Valentinian was assassinated when he was 30 years old by agents of a wealthy Roman who wanted to see what it was like to be emperor. That man was himself assassinated eleven months later by people who thought he was doing a worse job than Valentinian. “Uneasy rests the head…” Valentinian is gone, but not quite forgotten. He strutted on the stage 1300 years later in George Frederich Handel’s opera Ezio, and aficionados of the old "Prince Valiant" comic strip may recall Valentinian’s appearance there. In neither case did he cast a heroic shadow.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who presided over Henry VIII’s pillaging of the medieval English Church, was born today in 1489. He was a befuddled theologian, but a master of English prose. To him we owe the unforgettable cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, with its elegant collects and stately litanies. Sadly, with Anglican liturgical “reforms” of the past 40 years, little of Cranmer’s linguistic bequest remains in the current versions of the Book of Common Prayer . The modern poet W H Auden cautioned that there was no one alive capable of revising the language of the Prayer Book and today's "revisers" have proved him right. Modern liturgical language seems principally inspired by phrases taken off fast-food wrappers. Can anyone doubt that the trite level of religion in the world today, which primarily assures us God is our "bud" and everything and anything we want to do is just fine by Him, is unrelated to the trite language we use in worship? Cranmer's line from the General Confession which reads "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done" has become "we have done wrong and not done right." Our worship isn't profound because our thoughts aren't profound; our thoughts aren't profound because our language is "lite."
Sharing this natal day with Valentinan and the Archbishop is Walter Brennan, “Grampa” in the old television series The Real McCoys. He nicely rounds out today's trio.
Two other events drawn from the historical record demand mention: in this day in 1843, while a thunderstorm crackled over Charleston, South Carolina, a full-grown, live alligator fell from the clouds and landed near the front steps of old St John’s Church on Broad Street. After hurtling through the atmosphere and a relatively safe landing, the alligator was promptly killed by the citizenry. One hundred and four years later, Mr and Mrs Dan Wilmot witnessed a “large glowing object" zoom across the sky at "400 or 500 miles per hour." This was outside Roswell, New Mexico. A few days after their sighting, the public information office of the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release claiming to have recovered the remains of a “flying disc.” People have been reporting "flying saucers" ever since. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Nostradamus died today in 1566.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Walking the Labyrinth—I am delighted to return to the Labyrinth after an Eastertide hiatus. I return with an odd and perhaps unbelievable confession: I miss Lent.
If you’ve ever been on a retreat, one of the first things you probably remember is that you didn’t want it to end. The evening before leaving a retreat, most people begin to regret their immanent return to the everyday world. For many this might be the first time they’ve been able to turn their attention exclusively to their neglected spiritual lives. When the time comes to actually leave, it's often a time of tears—tears of sorrow at leaving; tears of joy at what they’ve received: rare glimpses of their own souls, friendships formed, insights gained and even occasional brushes against the One Who Is. Psychologists have a name for this, as they do for most things: Coming Down from the Mountain Syndrome (it’s possible to name things and not quite understand the thing you’ve named). It usually takes a few days to a week (depending on how long you spent in retreat) to acclimatize to the banality of the world—but we do. Still, sometimes for months or even years, afterward, we remember the time and cherish the memories.
Lent can be like that. Our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the focus on our spiritual lives, time devoted to something other than ourselves, these and the other facets of Lent can make it a spiritually rich--dare I use the word--a spritually luxurious time. We may surprise ourselves when we become vaguely aware of a sense of regret at the approaching Feast of the Resurrection.
True joy is foreign to most of us. We all feel happy at times, maybe even a lot of the time. But true joy is a gift of the Spirit, St Paul tells us. My guess is that most of us wouldn’t know what to do with true joy. That’s part of the reason for our Lenten/Easter dilemma—certainly it’s mine. Of course, a lot of people will say “I know what true joy is” in a sort of knee-jerk response. But true joy doesn’t wax and wane, it simply “is,” it remains, it endures. It’s an ongoing, continuing Gift, given by the Lord to those He has prepared to receive it. And “preparation” is the key word. Joy is formed in us by a spiritual process. Eastertide, with its alleluias, the sustained joy of the liturgy which endures even when our personal Easter “highs” have evaporated, is the liturgical sign of that spiritual Gift of joy. Easter has meaning, though, because of the Three Days which precede it. Easter shines so brightly because Good Friday is so very dark.
In St John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon, he calls one and all—those who have fasted through the season and those who have ignored the fast—all to come to the table. “The fatted calf has been slain; let all partake!” he cries. And we all do. But if we ignore the fast and show up only for the feast, we participate only in the flesh—we eat the Easter ham but miss the Easter Lamb—the One “slain from before the foundation of the world.”
The Easter Feast is the earthly sign of Heaven, and, despite what we may think, most of us aren’t ready for Heaven. We still need the fasting and praying and almsgiving that Lent exhorts us to. We need it to grow. We crave joy but most of us aren’t spiritually ready for it. It’s a Gift God gives to souls prepared to receive it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of that most of us have only occasional “foretastes” of joy; given the fallen world in which we live (and live oh, so willingly!), those foretastes can feed and sustain us through a host of “slings and arrows.”
God is preparing us for an eternity of joy, but as we each walk our earthly labyrinths, following sometimes with little more than blind faith (which, in spite of all that’s said against it, is sometimes the only thing that can sustain us), abiding joy seems elusive. It should. Until it’s been formed in us, until our souls have been prepared to receive and live in joy, we can’t endure it. It would be like looking at the sun all the time. “Now, we see through a glass, darkly,” St Paul lectures us, “but then,” when we’re ready, “we’ll see face to Face.” Seeing through a glass darkly is preparation, a mercy. Seeing darkly prepares us for the Day we’ll see clearly. Walking the Labyrinth—the one prepared for you—with its joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, is full of foretastes of Heaven and reminders of earth. Each step, even the painful ones (perhaps I should say, especially the painful ones), on your labyrinthine walk is necessary. It’s taking you Home. I’m glad to be walking it with you again.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Some of you followed my daily blog, “The Lenten Oasis,” through that season, and several have asked me to continue something similar. After ruminating like an old steer on it for the whole of Eastertide, I’ve decided to write another weekly blog in addition to “Labyrinthus.” I’ve titled it “When I Am Gray-Headed” after one of the verses in the Psalter that never fails to bring a smile to my face, Psalm 71.17. I am writing it for the “gray-headed,” those of “riper years,” and the spiritual challenges we face. You recall the Law of the Conservation of Energy from physics? Energy never disappears, it just changes shape. The same is true of the struggles and challenges (and opportunities!) of the spiritual life. They don’t disappear as we get older, they just change shape. The Seven Deadly Sins remain equally deadly and the growth in Grace remains just as promising as in our younger years, but both sin and Grace now look a bit different—they may have changed shape, but they’re still there, as pressing as ever. I’m thinking no one under fifty years old will be allowed to read this blog. How does that sound? I will begin “Gray-Headed” the first week of August. Let me know if you’re interested—I’ll be putting together a mailing list in the next week or so.
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